Female sociopath are excel in false accusations, including rape accusations. They are born actresses and have no empathy, so
framing their victim is just an easy game for them
In a fiery speech announcing her decision, Collins ripped unsupported claims by Avenatti's
client, Julie Swetnick, that Kavanaugh facilitated a Cosby-esque "gang rape" operation while in
high school.
Some of the allegations levied against Judge Kavanaugh illustrate why the presumption of
innocence is so important . I am thinking in particular not of the allegations raised by
Professor Ford, but of the allegation that, when he was a teenager, Judge Kavanaugh drugged
multiple girls and used their weakened state to facilitate gang rape .
This outlandish allegation was put forth without any credible supporting evidence and
simply parroted public statements of others . That such an allegation can find its way into
the Supreme Court confirmation process is a stark reminder about why the presumption of
innocence is so ingrained in our American consciousness. -Sen. Susan Collins
I didn't really care much about the stuff alleged to have been done by Kavanaugh
thirty-five years ago. Arguing with a close family friend I stated that there was nothing
I found more tiresome than the old lawyers tactic of springing something on you at the last
possible minute, leaving a steaming pile of turds in the middle of your desk, and then
expecting to be taken seriously. Decorum? Rules of debate? How about the laws of
discovery, sharing info amongst colleagues?
Just because this was not a criminal trial is no reason to throw out the rules for policy
making, the nomination process, which both sides have adhered to in the past. People were
comparing this to the Anita Hill fiasco during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.
Delay, interrupt, stall, maximum media exposure. Never any evidence or criminal charges to
point to.
In criminal trials there is the process of discovery by which the admission of
evidence at the last minute is strongly ill advised, and can result in it being tossed out.
Sen. Feinstein would be aware of all the rules and procedures, but she feels above it
all.
Hey Avenatti! If you and your client had any idea of what the truth is no one would every
have heard of her or of you. Don't give us this ******** that you were just representing your
client. If you had a brain you would have known she was FOS from the get go, and if you were
honest you never would have represented her. So what is it? Are you just stupid or are you
dishonest, or both?
People who make salacious claims unconfirmed or outright denied by their own named
"witnesses" tend to get sued for defamation. And the lawyers they rode in on.
Michael Avenatti is not a nice man at all. He was a factor in making the accusations seem
like a circus. No one takes him seriously as he slinks around the gutters.
Avenatti is the scapegoat. The Ford story was already fast breaking down, and the secret
polygraph and the secret therapist notes and her ex-boyfriend should have made more noise in
the Senate.
They embraced this puke and revelled in his garbage accusations. Now they need a
scapegoat, and he's it. God forbid Feinstein get raked over the coals for screwing this thing
up. The was a political hit, and everyone knew it. But the GOP are so spineless that a
high-school-drunken-grope-fest brought them to their knees. Fortunately, the Dems stayed true
to form and blew themselves up.
What I do not understand is how could they be so stupid as to endorse the Avenatti slime
factory in the first place? TONE DEAF.
Avenatti needs to be disbarred. To file a complaint for his breach of professional
responsibility, suborning perjury, and engaging in acts of moral turpitude:
If enough complaints are filed with the CA state bar, he may get disbarred.
Attorneys ALREADY have a really bad rep. Part of professional responsibility is to uphold
the integrity of the legal profession. The ONLY thing Avenatti did was to make every attorney
look like a complete shyster sleazeball, which given I just took the bar exam and will
probably become an attorney soon, I find immensely offensive.
The Demonrats used false sexual allegations against Roy Moore coupled with ballot box
cheating (their typical mode) to win a senate seat in conservative Alabama. So, since their
main national platform of open borders is so repugnant to any normal taxpaying voter, this is
their only strategy. They simply got caught. All the allegations against both Kavanaugh and
Moore were fabricated and the proof is the Soros' paid lawyers who represented them all. And
Feinstein and Schumer conspired in this farce. And independent voters know it!
They're just pissed they got caught in their fraud and this energized the R. base which
will lead to a red wave in a few weeks. And just think of the political commercial
possibilities for any Demonrat senator hoping to prevail if they vote against Kavanaugh. I
expect the final confirmation vote won't as close as the vote for cloture for this
reason.
Be careful, Roy Moore was a different story. There was evidence including him saying he
liked to date high school age girls as a 30 year old along with multiple other people who
remembered what was alleged. Not just Democrat operatives. Morals were not that different
then than now. Was he guilty of a crime no, could reasonable people still dislike his morals
sure. I grew up close to that era and thought the college age kids hanging around HS girls
was nasty. Moore verified as a 30 year old he liked them young.
Ford 0 corroborating evidence. By lumping in Moore with Kavanaugh you are giving credence
to believe the victim because all you are following the "patriarchy" of believing the accused
regardless of evidence.
The Democrats have a long history of making last minute sexual misconduct allegations
against their political opponents, always without any evidence or corroboration. And sexual
misconduct allegations that pale in comparison to what a lot of Democrats have been alleged
to do (rape allegations against Clinton, Kennedy having an affair that left a woman dead,
John Conyers for settling sexual harassment allegations with taxpayer money, Hillary for
trashing victims, or consider Weinstein and other famous/rich Democrat donors or newsmen).
I'd bet most of these allegations against Republicans were simply made up for political
purposes because they were plausible, couldn't be disproven, and couldn't be proven. Ford's
allegations fit the pattern.
The charges are always last minute, to deny the accused an opportunity to defend
themselves. Kavanaugh provided an excellent defense that would be good court room drama in a
movie, when no one in the GOP was willing to defend him, and too afraid of being accused of
not believing a victim and attacking them.
What's really going on are the Democrats in charge, are looking to deflect the attention
from what they did, to Avanetti because Avanetti did the same, except the charges of his
client, weren't believable, even though they couln't be proven or disproven. They don't want
to take the blame, for what voters might do in the midterms.
One thing's for sure, you don't see Democrats calling for indicting and prosecuting false
accusers. They're teaching people to bear false witness for their personal purposes.
avenatti gave the diversion, the clutter, the political sideshow so that all charges could
be swept away and completely fake and uncorroborated. there was no provable basis for the
ford charges, but the crazy swetnick stories simplified brooming the whole thing.
we can only hope that avenatti will be back in 2020, to run for president, and to come
marching with his parade of **** stars and "wronged" women who spend all their time
performing in strip clubs.
"... The core beliefs of these people was in a world where money, labor and products could flow across borders without any limit. Their vision was to remove these subjects (tariffs, immigration and controls on the movement of money) from the control of the democracy-based nation-state and instead vesting them in international organizations. International organizations which were by their nature undemocratic and beyond the influence of democracy. That rather than rejecting government power, what they rejected was national government power. They wanted weak national governments but at the same time strong undemocratic international organizations which would gain the powers taken from the state. ..."
"... The other thing that characterized many of these people was a rather general rejection of economics. While some of them are (at least in theory) economists, they rejected the basic ideas of economic analysis and economic policy. The economy, to them, was a mystical thing beyond any human understanding or ability to influence in a positive way. Their only real belief was in "bigness". The larger the market for labor and goods, the more economically prosperous everyone would become. A unregulated "global" market with specialization across borders and free migration of labor being the ultimate system. ..."
"... The author makes the point, though in a weak way, that the "fathers" of neoliberalism saw themselves as "restoring" a lost golden age. That golden age being (roughly) the age of the original industrial revolution (the second half of the 1800s). And to the extent that they have been successful they have done that. But at the same time, they have brought back all the political and economic questions of that era as well. ..."
"... He also makes a good point about the EEC and the organizations that came before the EU. Those organizations were as much about protecting trade between Europe and former European colonial possessions as they were anything to do with trade within Europe. ..."
"... But he has NOTHING to say about BIll Clinton or Tony Blair or EU expansion or Obama or even the 2008 economic crisis for that matter. Inexplicably for a book written in 2018, the content of the book seems to end in the year 2000. ..."
"... I'm giving it three stars for the first 150 pages which was decent work. The second half rates zero stars. ..."
"... It would have been better yet if the author had the courage to talk about the transformation of the parties of the left and their complicity in the rise of neoliberalism. The author also tends to waste lots of pages repeating himself or worse telling you what he is going to say next. One would have expected a better standard of editing by the Harvard Press. ..."
"... However, most importantly it follows the thinking and the thoughts behind the building of a global empire of capitalism with free trade, capital and rights. All the way to the new "human right" to trade. It narrows down what neoliberal thought really consist of and indirectly make a differentiation to the neoclassical economic tradition. ..."
"... Slobodan does a really masterful exposition of the roots of neoliberalism and neoliberals like Von Mises and Hayek by going all the way back to the 'Geneva School'. It is amazing to see the dedication and devotion of these water carriers for the owners of capital spend their entire life times devising subtle and sleight of hand schemes and methods to basically subvert society to serve the owners of capital. Fantastic work Slobodan. I await your next work. ..."
Chosen by Pankaj Mishra as one of the Best Books of the Summer
Neoliberals hate the state. Or do they? In the first intellectual history of neoliberal
globalism, Quinn Slobodian follows a group of thinkers from the ashes of the Habsburg Empire to
the creation of the World Trade Organization to show that neoliberalism emerged less to shrink
government and abolish regulations than to redeploy them at a global level.
Slobodian begins in Austria in the 1920s. Empires were dissolving and nationalism,
socialism, and democratic self-determination threatened the stability of the global capitalist
system. In response, Austrian intellectuals called for a new way of organizing the world. But
they and their successors in academia and government, from such famous economists as Friedrich
Hayek and Ludwig von Mises to influential but lesser-known figures such as Wilhelm Röpke
and Michael Heilperin, did not propose a regime of laissez-faire. Rather they used states and
global institutions―the League of Nations, the European Court of Justice, the World Trade
Organization, and international investment law―to insulate the markets against sovereign
states, political change, and turbulent democratic demands for greater equality and social
justice.
Far from discarding the regulatory state, neoliberals wanted to harness it to their grand
project of protecting capitalism on a global scale. It was a project, Slobodian shows, that
changed the world, but that was also undermined time and again by the inequality, relentless
change, and social injustice that accompanied it. >
This is a rather interesting look at the political and economic ideas of a circle of
important economists, including Hayek and von Mises, over the course of the last century. He
shows rather convincingly that conventional narratives concerning their idea are wrong. That
they didn't believe in a weak state, didn't believe in the laissez-faire capitalism or
believe in the power of the market. That they saw mass democracy as a threat to vested
economic interests.
The core beliefs of these people was in a world where money, labor and products could flow
across borders without any limit. Their vision was to remove these subjects (tariffs,
immigration and controls on the movement of money) from the control of the democracy-based
nation-state and instead vesting them in international organizations. International
organizations which were by their nature undemocratic and beyond the influence of democracy.
That rather than rejecting government power, what they rejected was national government
power. They wanted weak national governments but at the same time strong undemocratic
international organizations which would gain the powers taken from the state.
The other thing that characterized many of these people was a rather general rejection of
economics. While some of them are (at least in theory) economists, they rejected the basic
ideas of economic analysis and economic policy. The economy, to them, was a mystical thing
beyond any human understanding or ability to influence in a positive way. Their only real
belief was in "bigness". The larger the market for labor and goods, the more economically
prosperous everyone would become. A unregulated "global" market with specialization across
borders and free migration of labor being the ultimate system.
The author shows how, over a period extending from the 1920s to the 1990s, these ideas
evolved from marginal academic ideas to being dominant ideas internationally. Ideas that are
reflected today in the structure of the European Union, the WTO (World Trade Organization)
and the policies of most national governments. These ideas, which the author calls
"neoliberalism", have today become almost assumptions beyond challenge. And even more
strangely, the dominating ideas of the political left in most of the west.
The author makes the point, though in a weak way, that the "fathers" of neoliberalism saw
themselves as "restoring" a lost golden age. That golden age being (roughly) the age of the
original industrial revolution (the second half of the 1800s). And to the extent that they
have been successful they have done that. But at the same time, they have brought back all
the political and economic questions of that era as well.
In reading it, I started to wonder about the differences between modern neoliberalism and
the liberal political movement during the industrial revolution. I really began to wonder
about the actual motives of "reform" liberals in that era. Were they genuinely interested in
reforms during that era or were all the reforms just cynical politics designed to enhance
business power at the expense of other vested interests. Was, in particular, the liberal
interest in political reform and franchise expansion a genuine move toward political
democracy or simply a temporary ploy to increase their political power. If one assumes that
the true principles of classic liberalism were always free trade, free migration of labor and
removing the power to governments to impact business, perhaps its collapse around the time of
the first world war is easier to understand.
He also makes a good point about the EEC and the organizations that came before the EU.
Those organizations were as much about protecting trade between Europe and former European
colonial possessions as they were anything to do with trade within Europe.
To me at least, the analysis of the author was rather original. In particular, he did an
excellent job of showing how the ideas of Hayek and von Mises have been distorted and
misunderstood in the mainstream. He was able to show what their ideas were and how they
relate to contemporary problems of government and democracy.
But there are some strong negatives in the book. The author offers up a complete virtue
signaling chapter to prove how the neoliberals are racists. He brings up things, like the
John Birch Society, that have nothing to do with the book. He unleashes a whole lot of venom
directed at American conservatives and republicans mostly set against a 1960s backdrop.
He
does all this in a bad purpose: to claim that the Kennedy Administration was somehow a
continuation of the new deal rather than a step toward neoliberalism.
His blindness and
modern political partisanship extended backward into history does substantial damage to his
argument in the book. He also spends an inordinate amount of time on the political issues of
South Africa which also adds nothing to the argument of the book. His whole chapter on racism
is an elaborate strawman all held together by Ropke. He also spends a large amount of time
grinding some sort of Ax with regard to the National Review and William F. Buckley.
He keeps resorting to the simple formula of finding something racist said or written by
Ropke....and then inferring that anyone who quoted or had anything to do with Ropke shared
his ideas and was also a racist. The whole point of the exercise seems to be to avoid any
analysis of how the democratic party (and the political left) drifted over the decades from
the politics of the New Deal to neoliberal Clintonism.
Then after that, he diverts further off the path by spending many pages on the greatness
of the "global south", the G77 and the New International Economic Order (NIEO) promoted by
the UN in the 1970s.
And whatever many faults of neoliberalism, Quinn Slobodian ends up
standing for a worse set of ideas: International Price controls, economic "reparations",
nationalization, international trade subsidies and a five-year plan for the world (socialist
style economic planning at a global level). In attaching himself to these particular ideas,
he kills his own book. The premise of the book and his argument was very strong at first. But
by around p. 220, its become a throwback political tract in favor of the garbage economic and
political ideas of the so-called third world circa 1974 complete with 70's style extensive
quotations from "Senegalese jurists"
Once the political agenda comes out, he just can't help himself. He opens the conclusion
to the book taking another cheap shot for no clear reason at William F. Buckley. He spends
alot of time on the Seattle anti-WTO protests from the 1990s. But he has NOTHING to say about BIll Clinton or Tony Blair or EU expansion or Obama or even the 2008 economic crisis for that
matter. Inexplicably for a book written in 2018, the content of the book seems to end in the
year 2000.
I'm giving it three stars for the first 150 pages which was decent work. The second half
rates zero stars. Though it could have been far better if he had written his history of
neoliberalism in the context of the counter-narrative of Keynesian economics and its decline.
It would have been better yet if the author had the courage to talk about the transformation
of the parties of the left and their complicity in the rise of neoliberalism. The author also
tends to waste lots of pages repeating himself or worse telling you what he is going to say
next. One would have expected a better standard of editing by the Harvard Press.
Anybody interested in global trade, business, human rights or democracy today should read
this book.
The book follow the Austrians from the beginning in the Habsburgischer empire to the
beginning rebellion against the WTO. However, most importantly it follows the thinking and
the thoughts behind the building of a global empire of capitalism with free trade, capital
and rights. All the way to the new "human right" to trade. It narrows down what neoliberal
thought really consist of and indirectly make a differentiation to the neoclassical economic
tradition.
What I found most interesting is the turn from economics to law - and the conceptual
distinctions between the genes, tradition, reason, which are translated into a quest for a
rational and reason based protection of dominium (the rule of property) against the overreach
of imperium (the rule of states/people). This distinction speaks directly to the issues that
EU is currently facing.
The author explicates how with Hayek and von Mises the economics of the central Europe has
had a development, such that we can consider it a true entry in the modernity.
The structures
which the neo-liberalism introduced were truly important for allowing the social progress. So
some politicians have had the way for following particular models, which also today are
considered with interest by many experts. The result is that the globalization has given to
the several countries the same possibility . This competence has a strong value, because the
author has a clear style and an efficient vision of the reality.
This is a fantastic God send for those who are interested in the neoliberal disease that
has caught this globe in the last 3 decades. It is different from other books like 'A Brief
History of Neoliberalism' by David Harvey.
The difference is that Slobodan does a really
masterful exposition of the roots of neoliberalism and neoliberals like Von Mises and Hayek
by going all the way back to the 'Geneva School'. It is amazing to see the dedication and
devotion of these water carriers for the owners of capital spend their entire life times
devising subtle and sleight of hand schemes and methods to basically subvert society to serve
the owners of capital. Fantastic work Slobodan. I await your next work.
The hard reality remains that the financial markets are, in the long term, forward-looking.
But in the short-term, they are dominated by high-speed electronic trading.
Anyone who felt
Monday's (December's, Q4's) meltdown, or watched Tuesday night's reopening of equity index
futures, watched in entertained astonishment, if not anguish.
Clearly, sentient, reasoned
thought has now been sacrificed at the altar of short-term profit. The task is to come up with
a thesis moving forward, and the challenge is to stick to that conclusion at times when the
evils of algorithmic, high-frequency and passive trading styles turn against those core
beliefs. Risk Management. Before one might profit with sustained regularity, one must learn to
effectively preserve one's capital.
just so 5 hours ago
You can
have whatever opinion you want about Yahoo's reporting of the daily ups and downs of the
markets, and keep in mind, the exchanges are betting parlors. That said, these types of wild
swings over the last 6 weeks or so, are very similar to what took place before housing bubble
burst in the late mid-ots, keep an eye on the amount of private uncollateralized debt that
mid-cap companies are carrying, if they start defaulting and these private equity houses
start running for cover, it create the same type of liquidity situation that Lehman's
caused.
"... You know we can't touch the corporations - they are sacrosanct because they are the supposed "job creators" - this one title gives them carte blanche to act however they like, to make spurious claims about economies faltering, businesses going offshore and unemployment. They also donate heavily to the political parties. ..."
Shhhh... whatever you do, don't ever let them hear you criticizing the "job creators" or
there will be trouble.
You know we can't touch the corporations - they are sacrosanct because they are the
supposed "job creators" - this one title gives them carte blanche to act however they like,
to make spurious claims about economies faltering, businesses going offshore and
unemployment. They also donate heavily to the political parties.
Repeat after me:
"Blessed are the job creators"
"Blessed are the job creators"
"Blessed are the job creators"
"For THEY shall inherit the wealth"
"... This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs , by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT , by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State , by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com ; Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc. ; Zen Cash ; Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom ; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott ; and LibertyStickers.com . ..."
"... To me, it is not so much the lies that major media organizations may broadcast, but the enormous amount of news of major importance that the networks censor that is doing the greatest harm. ..."
Journalist Justin Elliott comes on the show to talk about casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who has become one of President Trump's
biggest donors. Although Trump derided him early in his campaign, the two have formed a close partnership with Adelson providing
tens of millions in funding so long as Trump continues the correct policies with respect to Israel, Palestine, and Iran. Elliott
and others have also speculated that Trump is trying to get Adelson approval to open a casino in Japan, helping him to expand his
gambling empire in Asia.
"Adelson expresses support for ZOA efforts to depose McMaster" (
Times of
Israel )
Justin Elliott is a reporter for ProPublica . He
has produced stories for The New York Times and National Public Radio, and his reporting with NPR on the Red Cross' troubled post-earthquake
reconstruction efforts in Haiti won a 2015 Investigative Reporters and Editors award. Follow him on Twitter
@JustinElliott .
Whether Adelson or some other plutocrat, American politics is awash in money, and it this money is crippling our democracy. I
don't think that I have heard this topic discussed on any news program, and I don't expect to. To me, it is not so much the
lies that major media organizations may broadcast, but the enormous amount of news of major importance that the networks censor
that is doing the greatest harm.
Americans never get to see what they need to know. Keeping the peasants ignorant is the current mass media program, and they
are doing a great job of it.
Junk author, junk book of the butcher of Yugoslavia who would be hanged with Bill clinton by
Nuremberg Tribunal for crimes against peace. Albright is not bright at all. she a female bully
and that shows.
Mostly projection. And this arrogant warmonger like to exercise in Russophobia (which was the
main part of the USSR which saved the world fro fascism, sacrificing around 20 million people)
This book is book of denial of genocide against Iraqis and Serbian population where bombing with
uranium enriched bombs doubled cancer cases.If you can pass over those facts that this book is
for you.
Like Robert Kagan and other neocons Albright is waiving authoritarism dead chicken again and
again. that's silly and disingenuous. authoritarism is a method of Governance used in military.
It is not an ideology. Fascism is an ideology, a flavor of far right nationalism. Kind of
"enhanced" by some socialist ideas far right nationalism.
The view of fascism without economic circumstances that create fascism, and first of
immiseration of middle and working class and high level of unemployment is a primitive
ahistorical view. Fascism is the ultimate capitalist statism acting simultaneously as the civil
religion for the population also enforced by the power of the state. It has a lot of common with
neoliberalism, that's why neoliberalism is sometimes called "inverted totalitarism".
In reality fascism while remaining the dictatorship of capitalists for capitalist and the
national part of financial oligarchy, it like neoliberalism directed against working class
fascism comes to power on the populist slogans of righting wrong by previous regime and kicking
foreign capitalists and national compradors (which in Germany turned to be mostly Jewish)
out.
It comes to power under the slogans of stopping the distribution of wealth up and elimination
of the class of reinters -- all citizens should earn income, not get it from bond and other
investments (often in reality doing completely the opposite).
While intrinsically connected and financed by a sizable part of national elite which often
consist of far right military leadership, a part of financial oligarchy and large part of lower
middle class (small properties) is is a protest movement which want to revenge for the
humiliation and prefer military style organization of the society to democracy as more potent
weapon to achieve this goal.
Like any far right movement the rise of fascism and neo-fascism is a sign of internal problem
within a given society, often a threat to the state or social order.
Still another noted that Fascism is often linked to people who are part of a distinct ethnic
or racial group, who are under economic stress, and who feel that they are being denied rewards
to which they are entitled. "It's not so much what people have." she said, "but what they think
they should have -- and what they fear." Fear is why Fascism's emotional reach can extend to
all levels of society. No political movement can flourish without popular support, but Fascism
is as dependent on the wealthy and powerful as it is on the man or woman in the street -- on
those who have much to lose and those who have nothing at all.
This insight made us think that Fascism should perhaps be viewed less as a political
ideology than as a means for seizing and holding power. For example, Italy in the 1920s
included self-described Fascists of the left (who advocated a dictatorship of the
dispossessed), of the right (who argued for an authoritarian corporatist state), and of the
center (who sought a return to absolute monarchy). The German National Socialist Party (the
Nazis) originally came together ar ound a list of demands that ca- tered to anti-Semites,
anti-immigrants, and anti-capitalists but also advocated for higher old-age pensions, more
educational op- portunities for the poor, an end to child labor, and improved ma- ternal health
care. The Nazis were racists and, in their own minds, reformers at the same time.
If Fascism concerns itself less with specific policies than with finding a pathway to power,
what about the tactics of lead- ership? My students remarked that the Fascist chiefs we remem-
ber best were charismatic. Through one method or another, each established an emotional link to
the crowd and, like the central figure in a cult, brought deep and often ugly feelings to the
sur- face. This is how the tentacles of Fascism spread inside a democ- racy. Unlike a monarchy
or a military dictatorship imposed on society from above. Fascism draws energy from men and
women who are upset because of a lost war, a lost job, a memory of hu- miliation, or a sense
that their country is in steep decline. The more painful the grounds for resentment, the easier
it is for a Fascist leader to gam followers by dangling the prospect of re- newal or by vowing
to take back what has been stolen.
Like the mobilizers of more benign movements, these secular evangelists exploit the
near-universal human desire to be part of a meaningful quest. The more gifted among them have
an apti- tude for spectacle -- for orchestrating mass gatherings complete with martial music,
incendiary rhetoric, loud cheers, and arm-
lifting salutes. To loyalists, they offer the prize of membership in a club from which
others, often the objects of ridicule, are kept out. To build fervor, Fascists tend to be
aggressive, militaristic, and -- when circumstances allow -- expansionist. To secure the
future, they turn schools into seminaries for true believers, striv- ing to produce "new men"
and "new women" who will obey without question or pause. And, as one of my students observed,
"a Fascist who launches his career by being voted into office will have a claim to legitimacy
that others do not."
After climbing into a position of power, what comes next: How does a Fascist consolidate
authority? Here several students piped up: "By controlling information." Added another, "And
that's one reason we have so much cause to worry today." Most of us have thought of the
technological revolution primarily as a means for people from different walks of life to
connect with one another, trade ideas, and develop a keener understanding of why men and women
act as they do -- in other words, to sharpen our perceptions of truth. That's still the case,
but now we are not so sure. There is a troubling "Big Brother" angle because of the mountain of
personal data being uploaded into social media. If an advertiser can use that information to
home in on a consumer because of his or her individual interests, what's to stop a Fascist
government from doing the same? "Suppose I go to a demonstra- tion like the Women's March,"
said a student, "and post a photo
on social media. My name gets added to a list and that list can end up anywhere. How do we
protect ourselves against that?"
Even more disturbing is the ability shown by rogue regimes and their agents to spread lies
on phony websites and Facebook. Further, technology has made it possible for extremist
organiza- tions to construct echo chambers of support for conspiracy theo- ries, false
narratives, and ignorant views on religion and race. This is the first rule of deception:
repeated often enough, almost any statement, story, or smear can start to sound plausible. The
Internet should be an ally of freedom and a gateway to knowledge; in some cases, it is
neither.
Historian Robert Paxton begins one of his books by assert- ing: "Fascism was the major
political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain." Over the
years, he and other scholars have developed lists of the many moving parts that Fascism
entails. Toward the end of our discussion, my class sought to articulate a comparable list.
Fascism, most of the students agreed, is an extreme form of authoritarian rule. Citizens are
required to do exactly what lead- ers say they must do, nothing more, nothing less. The
doctrine is linked to rabid nationalism. It also turns the traditional social contract upside
down. Instead of citizens giving power to the state in exchange for the protection of their
rights, power begins with the leader, and the people have no rights. Under Fascism,
the mission of citizens is to serve; the government's job is to rule.
When one talks about this subject, confusion often arises about the difference between
Fascism and such related concepts as totalitarianism, dictatorship, despotism, tyranny,
autocracy, and so on. As an academic, I might be tempted to wander into that thicket, but as a
former diplomat, I am primarily concerned with actions, not labels. To my mind, a Fascist is
someone who identifies strongly with and claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is
unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use whatever means are necessary --
including violence -- to achieve his or her goals. In that conception, a Fascist will likely be
a tyrant, but a tyrant need not be a Fascist.
Often the difference can be seen in who is trusted with the guns. In seventeenth-century
Europe, when Catholic aristocrats did battle with Protestant aristocrats, they fought over
scripture but agreed not to distribute weapons to their peasants, thinking it safer to wage war
with mercenary armies. Modern dictators also tend to be wary of their citizens, which is why
they create royal guards and other elite security units to ensure their personal safe- ty. A
Fascist, however, expects the crowd to have his back. Where kings try to settle people down,
Fascists stir them up so that when the fighting begins, their foot soldiers have the will and
the firepower to strike first.
Hypocrisy at its worst from a lady who advocated hawkish foreign policy which included the
most sustained bombing campaign since Vietnam, when, in 1998, Clinton began almost daily
attacks on Iraq in the so-called no-fly zones, and made so-called regime change in Iraq
official U.S. policy.
In May of 1996, 60 Minutes aired an interview with Madeleine Albright, who at the time was
Clinton's U.N. ambassador. Correspondent Leslie Stahl said to Albright, in connection with
the Clinton administration presiding over the most devastating regime of sanctions in history
that the U.N. estimated took the lives of as many as a million Iraqis, the vast majority of
them children. , "We have heard that a half-million children have died. I mean, that's more
children than died in Hiroshima. And -- and, you know, is the price worth it?"
Madeleine Albright replied, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think
the price is worth it.
While I found much of the story-telling in "Fascism" engaging, I come away expecting much
more of one of our nation's pre-eminent senior diplomats . In a nutshell, she has devoted a
whole volume to describing the ascent of intolerant fascism and its many faces, but punted on
the question "How should we thwart fascism going forward?"
Even that question leaves me a bit unsatisfied, since it is couched in double-negative
syntax. The thing there is an appetite for, among the readers of this book who are looking
for more than hand-wringing about neofascism, is a unifying title or phrase which captures in
single-positive syntax that which Albright prefers over fascism. What would that be? And, how
do we pursue it, nurture it, spread it and secure it going forward? What is it?
I think Albright would perhaps be willing to rally around "Good Government" as the theme
her book skirts tangentially from the dark periphery of fascistic government. "Virtuous
Government"? "Effective Government"? "Responsive Government"?
People concerned about neofascism want to know what we should be doing right now to avoid
getting sidetracked into a dark alley of future history comparable to the Nazi brown shirt or
Mussolini black shirt epochs. Does Albright present a comprehensive enough understanding of
fascism to instruct on how best to avoid it? Or, is this just another hand-wringing exercise,
a la "you'll know it when you see it", with a proactive superficiality stuck at the level of
pejorative labelling of current styles of government and national leaders? If all you can say
is what you don't want, then the challenge of threading the political future of the US is
left unruddered. To make an analogy to driving a car, if you don't know your destination, and
only can get navigational prompts such as "don't turn here" or "don't go down that street",
then what are the chances of arriving at a purposive destination?
The other part of this book I find off-putting is that Albright, though having served as
Secretary of State, never talks about the heavy burden of responsibility that falls on a head
of state. She doesn't seem to empathize at all with the challenge of top leadership. Her
perspective is that of the detached critic. For instance, in discussing President Duterte of
the Philippines, she fails to paint the dire situation under which he rose to national
leadership responsibility: Islamic separatists having violently taken over the entire city of
Marawi, nor the ubiquitous spread of drug cartel power to the level where control over law
enforcement was already ceded to the gangs in many places...entire islands and city
neighborhoods run by mafia organizations. It's easy to sit back and criticize Duterte's
unleashing of vigilante justice -- What was Mrs. Albright's better alternative to regain
ground from vicious, well-armed criminal organizations? The distancing from leadership
responsibility makes Albright's treatment of the Philippines twin crises of gang-rule and
Islamist revolutionaries seem like so much academic navel-gazing....OK for an undergrad
course at Georgetown maybe, but unworthy of someone who served in a position of high
responsibility. Duterte is liked in the Philippines. What he did snapped back the power of
the cartels, and returned a deserved sense of security to average Philippinos (at least those
not involved with narcotics). Is that not good government, given the horrendous circumstances
Duterte came up to deal with? What lack of responsibility in former Philippine leadership
allowed things to get so out of control? Is it possible that Democrats and liberals are
afraid to be tough, when toughness is what is needed? I'd much rather read an account from an
average Philippino about the positive impacts of the vigilante campaign, than listen of
Madame Secretary sermonizing out of context about Duterte. OK, he's not your idea of a nice
guy. Would you rather sit back, prattle on about the rule of law and due process while
Islamic terrorists wrest control over where you live? Would you prefer the leadership of a
drug cartel boss to Duterte?
My critique is offered in a constructive manner. I would certainly encourage Albright (or
anyone!) to write a book in a positive voice about what it's going to take to have good
national government in the US going forward, and to help spread such abundance globally. I
would define "good" as the capability to make consistently good policy decisions, ones that
continue to look good in hindsight, 10, 20 or 30 years later. What does that take?
I would submit that the essential "preserving democracy" process component is having a
population that is adequately prepared for collaborative problem-solving. Some understanding
of history is helpful, but it's simply not enough. Much more essential is for every young
person to experience team problem-solving, in both its cooperative and competitive aspects.
Every young person needs to experience a team leadership role, and to appreciate what it
takes from leaders to forge constructive design from competing ideas and champions. Only
after serving as a referee will a young person understand the limits to "passion" that
individual contributors should bring to the party. Only after moderating and herding cats
will a young person know how to interact productively with leaders and other contributors.
Much of the skill is counter-instinctual. It's knowing how to express ideas...how to field
criticism....how to nudge people along in the desired direction...and how to avoid ad-hominem
attacks, exaggerations, accusations and speculative grievances. It's learning how to manage
conflict productively toward excellence. Way too few of our young people are learning these
skills, and way too few of our journalists know how to play a constructive role in managing
communications toward successful complex problem-solving. Albright's claim that a
journalist's job is primarily to "hold leaders accountable" really betrays an absolving of
responsibility for the media as a partner in good government -- it doesn't say whether the
media are active players on the problem-solving team (which they have to be for success), or
mere spectators with no responsibility for the outcome. If the latter, then journalism
becomes an irritant, picking at the scabs over and over, but without any forward progress.
When the media takes up a stance as an "opponent" of leadership, you end up with poor
problem-solving results....the system is fighting itself instead of making forward
progress.
"Fascism" doesn't do nearly enough to promote the teaching of practical civics 101 skills,
not just to the kids going into public administration, but to everyone. For, it is in the
norms of civility, their ability to be practiced, and their defense against excesses, that
fascism (e.g., Antifa) is kept at bay.
Everyone in a democracy has to know the basics:
• when entering a disagreement, don't personalize it
• never demonize an opponent
• keep a focus on the goal of agreement and moving forward
• never tell another person what they think, but ask (non-rhetorically) what they think
then be prepared to listen and absorb
• do not speak untruths or exaggerate to make an argument
• do not speculate grievance
• understand truth gathering as a process; detect when certainty is being bluffed;
question sources
• recognize impasse and unproductive argumentation and STOP IT
• know how to introduce a referee or moderator to regain productive collaboration
• avoid ad hominem attacks
• don't take things personally that wrankle you;
• give the benefit of the doubt in an ambiguous situation
• don't jump to conclusions
• don't reward theatrical manipulation
These basics of collaborative problem-solving are the guts of a "liberal democracy" that
can face down the most complex challenges and dilemmas.
I gave the book 3 stars for the great story-telling, and Albright has been part of a great
story of late 20th century history. If she would have told us how to prevent fascism going
forward, and how to roll it back in "hard case" countries like North Korea and Sudan, I would
have given her a 5. I'm not that interested in picking apart the failure cases of
history...they teach mostly negative exemplars. Much rather I would like to read about
positive exemplars of great national government -- "great" defined by popular acclaim, by the
actual ones governed. Where are we seeing that today? Canada? Australia? Interestingly, both
of these positive exemplars have strict immigration policies.
Is it possible that Albright is just unable, by virtue of her narrow escape from Communist
Czechoslovakia and acceptance in NYC as a transplant, to see that an optimum immigration
policy in the US, something like Canada's or Australia's, is not the looming face of fascism,
but rather a move to keep it safely in its corner in coming decades? At least, she admits to
her being biased by her life story.
That suggests her views on refugees and illegal immigrants as deserving of unlimited
rights to migrate into the US might be the kind of cloaked extremism that she is warning us
about.
Albright's book is a comprehensive look at recent history regarding the rise and fall of
fascist leaders; as well as detailing leaders in nations that are starting to mimic fascist
ideals. Instead of a neat definition, she uses examples to bolster her thesis of what are
essential aspects of fascism. Albright dedicates each section of the book to a leader or
regime that enforces fascist values and conveys this to the reader through historical events
and exposition while also peppering in details of her time as Secretary of State. The climax
(and 'warning'), comes at the end, where Albright applies what she has been discussing to the
current state of affairs in the US and abroad.
Overall, I would characterize this as an enjoyable and relatively easy read. I think the
biggest strength of this book is how Albright uses history, previous examples of leaders and
regimes, to demonstrate what fascism looks like and contributing factors on a national and
individual level. I appreciated that she lets these examples speak for themselves of the
dangers and subtleties of a fascist society, which made the book more fascinating and less of
a textbook. Her brief descriptions of her time as Secretary of State were intriguing and made
me more interested in her first book, 'Madame Secretary'. The book does seem a bit slow as it
is not until the end that Albright blatantly reveals the relevance of all of the history
relayed in the first couple hundred pages. The last few chapters are dedicated to the reveal:
the Trump administration and how it has affected global politics. Although, she never
outright calls Trump a fascist, instead letting the reader decide based on his decisions and
what you have read in the book leading up to this point, her stance is quite clear by the
end. I was surprised at what I shared politically with Albright, mainly in immigration and a
belief of empathy and understanding for others. However, I got a slight sense of
anti-secularism in the form of a disdain for those who do not subscribe to an Abrahamic
religion and she seemed to hint at this being partly an opening to fascism.
I also could have done without the both-sides-ism she would occasionally push, which seems
to be a tactic used to encourage people to 'unite against Trump'. These are small annoyances
I had with the book, my main critique is the view Albright takes on democracy. If anything,
the book should have been called "Democracy: the Answer" because that is the most consistent
stance Albright takes throughout. She seems to overlook many of the atrocities the US and
other nations have committed in the name of democracy and the negative consequences of
capitalism, instead, justifying negative actions with the excuse of 'it is for democracy and
everyone wants that' and criticizing those who criticize capitalism.
She does not do a good job of conveying the difference between a communist country like
Russia and a socialist country like those found in Scandinavia and seems okay with the idea
of the reader lumping them all together in a poor light. That being said, I would still
recommend this book for anyone's TBR as the message is essential for today, that the current
world of political affairs is, at least somewhat, teetering on a precipice and we are in need
of as many strong leaders as possible who are willing to uphold democratic ideals on the
world stage and mindful constituents who will vote them in.
The book is very well written, easy to read, and follows a pretty standard formula making
it accessible to the average reader. However, it suffers immensely from, what I suspect are,
deeply ingrained political biases from the author.
Whilst I don't dispute the criteria the author applies in defining fascism, or the targets
she cites as examples, the first bias creeps in here when one realises the examples chosen
are traditional easy targets for the US (with the exception of Turkey). The same criteria
would define a country like Singapore perfectly as fascist, yet the country (or Malaysia)
does not receive a mention in the book.
Further, it grossly glosses over what Ms. Albright terms facist traits from the US
governments of the past. If the author is to be believed, the CIA is holier than thou, never
intervened anywhere or did anything that wasn't with the best interests of democracy at
heart, and American foreign policy has always existed to build friendships and help out their
buddies. To someone ingrained in this rhetoric for years I am sure this is an easy pill to
swallow, but to the rest of the world it makes a number of assertions in the book come across
as incredibly naive. out of 5 stars
Trite and opaque
We went with my husband to the presentation of this book at UPenn with Albright before it
came out and Madeleine's spunk, wit and just glorious brightness almost blinded me. This is a
2.5 star book, because 81 year old author does not really tell you all there is to tell when
she opens up on a subject in any particular chapter, especially if it concerns current US
interest.
Lets start from the beginning of the book. What really stood out, the missing 3rd Germany
ally, Japan and its emperor. Hirohito (1901-1989) was emperor of Japan from 1926 until his
death in 1989. He took over at a time of rising democratic sentiment, but his country soon
turned toward ultra-nationalism and militarism. During World War II (1939-45), Japan attacked
nearly all of its Asian neighbors, allied itself with Nazi Germany and launched a surprise
assault on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, forcing US to enter the war in 1941. Hirohito
was never indicted as a war criminal! does he deserve at least a chapter in her book?
Oh and by the way, did author mention anything about sanctions against Germany for
invading Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Poland? Up until the Pearl Harbor USA and
Germany still traded, although in March 1939, FDR slapped a 25% tariff on all German goods.
Like Trump is doing right now to some of US trading partners.
Next monster that deserves a chapter on Genocide in cosmic proportions post WW2 is
communist leader of China Mao Zedung. Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural
history from 1958 to 1962, when the nation was facing a famine, compared the systematic
torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants compares to the Second World
War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in
China over these four years; the total worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55
million.
We learn that Argentina has given sanctuary to Nazi war criminals, but she forgets to
mention that 88 Nazi scientists arrived in the United States in 1945 and were promptly put to
work. For example, Wernher von Braun was the brains behind the V-2 rocket program, but had
intimate knowledge of what was going on in the concentration camps. Von Braun himself
hand-picked people from horrific places, including Buchenwald concentration camp. Tsk-Tsk
Madeline.
What else? Oh, lets just say that like Madelaine Albright my husband is Jewish and lost
extensive family to Holocoust. Ukrainian nationalists executed his great grandfather on
gistapo orders, his great grandmother disappeared in concentration camp, grandfather was
conscripted in june 1940 and decommissioned september 1945 and went through war as
infantryman through 3 fronts earning several medals. his grandmother, an ukrainian born jew
was a doctor in a military hospital in Saint Petersburg survived famine and saved several
children during blockade. So unlike Maideline who was raised as a Roman Catholic, my husband
grew up in a quiet jewish family in that territory that Stalin grabbed from Poland in 1939,
in a polish turn ukrainian city called Lvov(Lemberg). His family also had to ask for an
asylum, only they had to escape their home in Ukraine in 1991. He was told then "You are a
nice little Zid (Jew), we will kill you last" If you think things in ukraine changed, think
again, few weeks ago in Kiev Roma gypsies were killed and injured during pogroms, and nobody
despite witnesses went to jail. Also during demonstrations openly on the streets C14 unit is
waving swastikas and Heils. Why is is not mentioned anywhere in the book? is is because
Hunter Biden sits on the board of one of Ukraine's largest natural gas companies called
Burisma since May 14, 2014, and Ukraine has an estimated 127.9 trillion cubic feet of
unproved technically recoverable shale gas resources? ( according to the U.S. Energy
Information Administration (EIA).1 The most promising shale reserves appear to be in the
Carpathian Foreland Basin (also called the Lviv-Volyn Basin), which extends across Western
Ukraine from Poland into Romania, and the Dnieper-Donets Basin in the East (which borders
Russia).
Wow, i bet you did not know that. how ugly are politics, even this book that could have been
so much greater if the author told the whole ugly story. And how scary that there are
countries where you can go and openly be fascist.
To me, Fascism fails for the single reason that no two fascist leaders are alike. Learning
about one or a few, in a highly cursory fashion like in this book or in great detail, is
unlikely to provide one with any answers on how to prevent the rise of another or fend
against some such. And, as much as we are witnessing the rise of numerous democratic or
quasi-democratic "strongmen" around the world in global politics, it is difficult to brand
any of them as fascist in the orthodox sense.
As the author writes at the outset, it is difficult to separate a fascist from a tyrant or
a dictator. A fascist is a majoritarian who rouses a large group under some national, racial
or similar flag with rallying cries demanding suppression or exculcation of those excluded
from this group. A typical fascist leader loves her yes-men and hates those who disagree: she
does not mind using violence to suppress dissidents. A fascist has no qualms using propaganda
to popularize the agreeable "facts" and theories while debunking the inconvenient as lies.
What is not discussed explicitly in the book are perhaps some positive traits that separate
fascists from other types of tyrants: fascists are rarely lazy, stupid or prone to doing
things for only personal gains. They differ from the benevolent dictators for their record of
using heavy oppression against their dissidents. Fascists, like all dictators, change rules
to suit themselves, take control of state organizations to exercise total control and use
"our class is the greatest" and "kick others" to fuel their programs.
Despite such a detailed list, each fascist is different from each other. There is little
that even Ms Albright's fascists - from Mussolini and Hitler to Stalin to the Kims to Chavez
or Erdogan - have in common. In fact, most of the opponents of some of these
dictators/leaders would calll them by many other choice words but not fascists. The
circumstances that gave rise to these leaders were highly different and so were their rules,
methods and achievements.
The point, once again, is that none of the strongmen leaders around the world could be
easily categorized as fascists. Or even if they do, assigning them with such a tag and
learning about some other such leaders is unlikely to help. The history discussed in the book
is interesting but disjointed, perfunctory and simplistic. Ms Albright's selection is also
debatable.
Strong leaders who suppress those they deem as opponents have wreaked immense harms and
are a threat to all civil societies. They come in more shades and colours than terms we have
in our vocabulary (dictators, tyrants, fascists, despots, autocrats etc). A study of such
tyrant is needed for anyone with an interest in history, politics, or societal well-being.
Despite Ms Albright's phenomenal knowledge, experience, credentials, personal history and
intentions, this book is perhaps not the best place to objectively learn much about the risks
from the type of things some current leaders are doing or deeming as right.
Each time I get concerned about Trump's rhetoric or past actions I read idiotic opinions,
like those of our second worst ever Secretary of State, and come to appreciate him more.
Pejorative terms like fascism or populism have no place in a rational policy discussion. Both
are blatant attempts to apply a pejorative to any disagreeing opinion. More than half of the
book is fluffed with background of Albright, Hitler and Mussolini. Wikipedia is more
informative. The rest has snippets of more modern dictators, many of whom are either
socialists or attained power through a reaction to failed socialism, as did Hitler. She
squirms mightily to liken Trump to Hitler. It's much easier to see that Sanders is like
Maduro. The USA is following a path more like Venezuela than Germany.
Her history misses that Mussolini was a socialist before he was a fascist, and Nazism in
Germany was a reaction to Wiemar socialism. The danger of fascism in the US is far greater
from the left than from the right. America is far left of where the USSR ever was. Remember
than Marx observed that Russia was not ready for a proletarian revolution. The USA with ready
made capitalism for reform fits Marx's pattern much better. Progressives deny that Sanders
and Warren are socialists. If not they are what Lenin called "useful idiots."
Albright says that she is proud of the speech where she called the USA the 'Indispensable
Nation.' She should be ashamed. Obama followed in his inaugural address, saying that we are
"the indispensable nation, responsible for world security." That turned into a policy of
human rights interventions leading to open ended wars (Syria, Yemen), nations in chaos
(Libya), and distrust of the USA (Egypt, Russia, Turkey, Tunisia, Israel, NK). Trump now has
to make nice with dictators to allay their fears that we are out to replace them.
She admires the good intentions of human rights intervention, ignoring the results. She says
Obama had some success without citing a single instance. He has apologized for Libya, but
needs many more apologies. She says Obama foreign policy has had some success, with no
mention of a single instance. Like many progressives, she confuses good intentions with
performance. Democracy spreading by well intentioned humanitarian intervention has resulted
in a succession of open ended war or anarchy.
The shorter histories of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Venezuela are much more
informative, although more a warning against socialism than right wing fascism. Viktor Orban
in Hungary is another reaction to socialism.
Albright ends the book with a forlorn hope that we need a Lincoln or Mandela, exactly what
our two party dictatorship will not generate as it yields ever worse and worse candidates for
our democracy to vote upon, even as our great society utopia generates ever more power for
weak presidents to spend our money and continue wrong headed foreign policy.
The greatest danger to the USA is not fascism, but of excessively poor leadership
continuing our slow slide to the bottom.
Money quote: " neoliberalism is the fight of finance to subdue society at large, and to
make the bankers and creditors today in the position that the landlords were under
feudalism."
Notable quotes:
"... ... if you take the Bible literally, it's the fight in almost all of the early books of the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible, all about the fight over indebtedness and debt cancellation. ..."
"... neoliberalism is the fight of finance to subdue society at large,and to make the bankers and creditors today in the position that the landlords were under feudalism. ..."
"... They call themselves free marketers, but they realize that you cannot have neoliberalism unless you're willing to murder and assassinate everyone who promotes an alternative ..."
"... Just so long as you remember that most of the strongest and most moving condemnations of greed and money in the ancient and (today) western world are also Jewish--i.e. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, the Gospels, Letter of James, etc. ..."
"... The history of Jewish banking after the fall or Rome is inextricable from cultural anti-judaism of Christian west and east and de facto marginalization/ghettoization of Jews from most aspects of social life. The Jewish lending of money on interest to gentiles was both necessary for early mercantilist trade and yet usury was prohibited by the church. So Jewish money lenders were essential to and yet ostracized within European economies for centuries. ..."
"... Now Christianity has itself long given up on the tradition teaching against usury of course. ..."
"... In John, for instance most of the references to what in English is translated as "the Jews" are in Greek clearly references to "the Judaeans"--and especially to the ruling elite among the southern tribe in bed with the Romans. ..."
Just finished reading the fascinating
Michael Hudson interview I linked to on previous thread; but since we're discussing Jews
and their religion in a tangential manner, I think it appropriate to post here since the
history Hudson explains is 100% key to the ongoing pain us humans feel and inflict. My
apologies in advance, but it will take this long excerpt to explain what I mean:
"Tribes: When does the concept of a general debt cancellation disappear historically?
"Michael: I guess in about the second or third century AD it was downplayed in the Bible.
After Jesus died, you had, first of all, St Paul taking over, and basically Christianity was
created by one of the most evil men in history, the anti-Semite Cyril of Alexandria. He
gained power by murdering his rivals, the Nestorians, by convening a congress of bishops and
killing his enemies. Cyril was really the Stalin figure of Christianity, killing everybody
who was an enemy, organizing pogroms against the Jews in Alexandria where he ruled.
"It was Cyril that really introduced into Christianity the idea of the Trinity. That's
what the whole fight was about in the third and fourth centuries AD. Was Jesus a human, was
he a god? And essentially you had the Isis-Osiris figure from Egypt, put into Christianity.
The Christians were still trying to drive the Jews out of Christianity. And Cyril knew the
one thing the Jewish population was not going to accept would be the Isis figure and the
Mariolatry that the church became. And as soon as the Christian church became the
establishment rulership church, the last thing it wanted in the West was debt
cancellation.
"You had a continuation of the original Christianity in the Greek Orthodox Church, or the
Orthodox Church, all the way through Byzantium. And in my book And Forgive Them Their Debts,
the last two chapters are on the Byzantine echo of the original debt cancellations, where one
ruler after another would cancel the debts. And they gave very explicit reason for it: if we
don't cancel the debts, we're not going to be able to field an army, we're not going to be
able to collect taxes, because the oligarchy is going to take over. They were very explicit,
with references to the Bible, references to the jubilee year. So you had Christianity survive
in the Byzantine Empire. But in the West it ended in Margaret Thatcher. And Father
Coughlin.
"Tribes: He was the '30s figure here in the States.
"Michael: Yes: anti-Semite, right-wing, pro-war, anti-labor. So the irony is that you have
the people who call themselves fundamentalist Christians being against everything that Jesus
was fighting for, and everything that original Christianity was all about."
Hudson says debt forgiveness was one of the central tenets of Judaism: " ... if
you take the Bible literally, it's the fight in almost all of the early books of the Old
Testament, the Jewish Bible, all about the fight over indebtedness and debt
cancellation. "
Looks like I'll be purchasing Hudson's book as he's essentially unveiling a whole new,
potentially revolutionary, historical interpretation.
@ karlof1 with the Michale Hudson link....thanks!!
Here is the quote that I really like from that interview
"
Michael: No. You asked what is the fight about? The fight is whether the state will be taken
over, essentially to be an extension of Wall Street if you do not have government planning.
Every economy is planned. Ever since the Neolithic (era), you've had to have (a form of)
planning. If you don't have a public authority doing the planning, then the financial
authority becomes the planners. So globalism is in the financial interest –Wall Street
and the City of London, doing the planning, not governments. They will do the planning in
their own interest. So neoliberalism is the fight of finance to subdue society at
large,and to make the bankers and creditors today in the position that the landlords were
under feudalism.
"
karlof1, please email me as I would like to read the book as well and maybe we can share a
copy.
And yes, it is relevant to Netanyahoo and his ongoing passel of lies because humanity has
been told and been living these lives for centuries...it is time to stop this shit and grow
up/evolve
@13 / 78 karlof1... thanks very much for the links to michael hudson, alastair crooke and the
bruno maraces articles...
they were all good for different reasons, but although hudson is being criticized for
glossing over some of his talking points, i think the main thrust of his article is very
worthwhile for others to read! the quote to end his article is quite good "The question is,
who do you want to run the economy? The 1% and the financial sector, or the 99% through
politics? The fight has to be in the political sphere, because there's no other sphere that
the financial interests cannot crush you on."
it seems to me that the usa has worked hard to bad mouth or get rid of government and the
concept of government being involved in anything.. of course everything has to be run by a
'private corp' - ie corporations must run everything.. they call them oligarchs when talking
about russia, lol - but they are corporations when they are in the usa.. slight rant..
another quote i especially liked from hudson.. " They call themselves free marketers,
but they realize that you cannot have neoliberalism unless you're willing to murder and
assassinate everyone who promotes an alternative ." that sounds about right...
@ 84 juliania.. aside from your comments on hudsons characterization of st paul "the
anti-Semite Cyril of Alexandria" further down hudson basically does the same with father
coughlin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin..
he gets the anti-semite tag as well.. i don't know much about either characters, so it's
mostly greek to me, but i do find some of hudsons views especially appealing - debt
forgiveness being central to the whole article as i read it...
it is interesting my own view on how money is so central to the world and how often times
I am incapable of avoiding the observation of the disproportionate number of Jewish people in
banking.. I guess that makes me anti-semite too, but i don't think of myself that way.. I
think the obsession with money is killing the planet.. I don't care who is responsible for
keeping it going, it is killing us...
Just so long as you remember that most of the strongest and most moving condemnations
of greed and money in the ancient and (today) western world are also Jewish--i.e. Isaiah,
Jeremiah, Micah, the Gospels, Letter of James, etc.
The history of Jewish banking after the fall or Rome is inextricable from cultural
anti-judaism of Christian west and east and de facto marginalization/ghettoization of Jews from
most aspects of social life. The Jewish lending of money on interest to gentiles was both
necessary for early mercantilist trade and yet usury was prohibited by the church. So Jewish
money lenders were essential to and yet ostracized within European economies for
centuries.
Now Christianity has itself long given up on the tradition teaching against usury of
course.
I too greatly admire the work of Hudson but he consistently errs and oversimplifies
whenever discussing the beliefs of and the development of beliefs among preNicene followers
of the way (as Acts puts is) or Christians (as they came to be known in Antioch within
roughly eight or nine decades after Jesus' death.) Palestinian Judaism in the time of Jesus
was much more variegated than scholars even twenty years ago had recognized. The gradual
reception and interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls in tandem with renewed research into
Phili of Alexandria, the Essenes, the so-called Sons of Zadok, contemporary Galilean zealot
movements styles after the earlier Maccabean resistance, the apocalyptism of post exilic
texts like Daniel and (presumably) parts of Enoch--all paint a picture of a highly diverse
group of alternatives to the state-Church once known as Second Temple Judaism that has been
mistaken as undisputed Jewish "orthodoxy" since the advent of historical criticism.
The
Gospel of John, for example, which dates from betweeen 80-120 and is the record of a much
earlier oral tradition, is already explicitly binitarian, and possibly already trinitarian
depending on how one understands the relationship between the Spirit or Advocate and the Son.
(Most ante-Nicene Christians understood the Spirit to be *Christ's* own spirit in distributed
form, and they did so by appeal to a well-developed but still largely under recognized strand
in Jewish angelology.)
The "theological" development of Christianity occurred much sooner
that it has been thought because it emerged from an already highly theologized strand or
strands of Jewish teaching that, like Christianity itself, privileged the Abrahamic covenant
over the Mosaic Law, the testament of grace over that of works, and the universal scope of
revelation and salvation as opposed to any political or ethnic reading of the "Kingdom."
None
of these groups were part of the ruling class of Judaean priests and levites and their
hangers on the Pharisees.
In John, for instance most of the references to what in English is
translated as "the Jews" are in Greek clearly references to "the Judaeans"--and especially to
the ruling elite among the southern tribe in bed with the Romans.
So the anti-Judaism/Semiti
of John's Gispel largely rests on a mistranslation. In any event, everything is much more
complex than Hudson makes it out to be. Christian economic radicalism is alive and well in
the thought of Gregory of Nysa and Basil the Great, who also happened to be Cappadocian
fathers highly influential in the development of "orthodox" Trinitarianism in the fourth
century.
I still think that Hudson's big picture critique of the direction later Christianity
took is helpful and necessary, but this doesn't change the fact that he simplifies the
origins, development, and arguably devolution of this movement whenever he tries to get
specific. It is a worthwhile danger given the quality of his work in historical economics,
but still one has to be aware of.
Lambert here: There's no way I'm opening up comments for a post about gold, and be very
careful not to go crazy over in Links, either. Plus I don't care about shiny substances.
However, Wolf's thinking on asset correlation in the "Everything Bubble" is interesting, which
is why I'm cross-posting this.
Since October 1, the S&P 500 index has plunged 19.6%, to 2,351 as of Monday's fiasco.
Over the same period, the price of gold has risen 7.3% to $1,271/oz. Over this short period,
gold was an effective diversification.
For the year so far, the S&P 500 index is down 12.1%, gold is down 1.6%. For the past
two years, the S&P 500, despite the huge volatility, is up 4.2%, and gold, also with some
volatility, is up 9.7%. Moving in the same direction over these time frames, gold has been
somewhat less effective as diversification, than it has been over the past three months. But as
the chart below shows, its moves were not in lockstep with the S&P 500, and thus gold has
helped counter-balance the erratic gyrations of the S&P 500 with its own erratic but
different gyrations. Diversification can be messy:
There are many reasons to trade or own gold. But here I focus on gold as diversification to
the Everything Bubble and particularly to stocks – and how that panned out over the
longer term.
Nearly all asset classes have risen in parallel for nine years since the onset of global QE,
zero-interest-rate policy, and negative-interest-rate policy: Stocks, bonds, leveraged loans,
commercial real estate, residential real estate, art, classic cars, emerging market bonds,
emerging market stocks . We call it the Everything Bubble. And now they're headed down
together.
Diversification is not possible among asset classes that move together. If for nine years
all asset classes in your holdings rose together, no matter how good this feels, you're not
diversified.
Effective diversification means that some assets rise as others fall. But in the Everything
Bubble, most asset classes rose together. And "well-diversified" investors were diversified
only in their imagination, as they're now finding out as nearly all asset classes have been
falling in parallel.
Effective diversification comes with some costs, and it's not risk free, but it provides
some stability and lowers the overall risk of your holdings.
Cash always provides diversification in the sense of stability in addition to providing
liquidity. But from 2009 through 2016, the return on cash – such as short-term Treasury
bills, FDIC-insured CDs, or FDIC-insured high-yield savings accounts – has been near zero
even as inflation ate away at its purchasing power.
But since interest rates started rising, cash generates better returns. This year, the yield
on short-term Treasury bills, FDIC-insured CDs, or FDIC-insured high-yield savings accounts has
beaten most other assets classes (to find those CDs and savings accounts, you need to shop
around). They now yield between 2% and 3%. And when these instruments are held to maturity,
there is no risk to the principal since they're redeemed at face value.
Gold doesn't offer a yield. And its price changes constantly. So the only return obtained
from gold would be derived from an increase in price. And as long as that price moves in the
opposite direction over the longer term from stock-market indices, gold provides effective
diversification to stocks – even if it hurts, such as when stocks surge and gold plunges,
which is what happened from late 2011 through 2016.
Over the long term, gold and the S&P 500 have moved in lockstep some of the time, and
diverged much of the time. This chart goes back to 1995 (both gold in $/oz and the S&P 500
index on the same axis; click to enlarge):
And when asset classes have risen together like this, it becomes very difficult to achieve
diversification going forward – because now they're at risk of all going down
together.
My thoughts at the time were somewhat speculative since the S&P 500 was still surging.
The chart I provided at the time was the long-term chart above, but it lacked the near-20%
plunge of the S&P 500 since October 1 that the current chart shows. So in this instance,
over those three months since then, gold has turned out to be a very effective diversification
to stocks.
But the risk with gold remains: there is no guarantee that gold can't also plunge, right
along with the S&P 500. This is a real risk, and diversification might sound good, but when
push comes to shove in a sell-off, it might not work. Nevertheless, given the difficulties of
finding effective diversification in the Everything Bubble, other than cash, gold has shown it
could do the job over the past three months – which largely mirrors its performance as
diversification during the 2000-2002 crash and most of the 2008-2009 crash.
By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and
author, with extensive international work experience.
Originally published at Wolf Street .
By abetting the ad industry, universities are leading us into temptation, when they
should be enlightening us
... ... ...
I ask because, while considering the frenzy
of consumerism that rises beyond its usual planet-trashing levels at this time of year, I
recently stumbled across a paper that astonished
me . It was written by academics at public universities in the Netherlands and the US.
Their purpose seemed to me starkly at odds with the public interest. They sought to identify
"the different ways in which consumers resist advertising, and the tactics that can be used to
counter or avoid such resistance".
Among the "neutralising" techniques it highlighted were "disguising the persuasive intent of
the message"; distracting our attention by using confusing phrases that make it harder to focus
on the advertiser's intentions; and "using cognitive depletion as a tactic for reducing
consumers' ability to contest messages". This means hitting us with enough advertisements to
exhaust our mental resources, breaking down our capacity to think.
Intrigued, I started looking for other academic papers on the same theme, and found an
entire literature. There were articles on every imaginable aspect of resistance, and helpful
tips on overcoming it. For example, I came across a paper that counsels advertisers on how to
rebuild public trust when the celebrity they work with gets into trouble. Rather than dumping
this lucrative asset, the researchers advised that the best means to enhance "the authentic
persuasive appeal of a celebrity endorser" whose standing has slipped is to get them to display
"a Duchenne smile", otherwise known as "a genuine smile". It precisely anatomised such smiles,
showed how to spot them, and discussed the "construction" of sincerity and "genuineness": a
magnificent exercise in inauthentic authenticity.
Another paper considered how
to persuade sceptical people to accept a company's corporate social responsibility claims,
especially when these claims conflict with the company's overall objectives. (An obvious
example is ExxonMobil's attempts to convince people that it is environmentally responsible,
because it is researching algal fuels that could one day reduce CO2 – even as it
continues to
pump millions of barrels of fossil oil a day ). I hoped the paper would recommend that the
best means of persuading people is for a company to change its practices. Instead, the authors'
research showed how images and statements could be cleverly combined to "minimise stakeholder
scepticism".
A further
paper discussed advertisements that work by stimulating
Fomo – fear of missing out . It noted that such ads work through "controlled
motivation", which is "anathema to wellbeing". Fomo ads, the paper explained, tend to cause
significant discomfort to those who notice them. It then went on to show how an improved
understanding of people's responses "provides the opportunity to enhance the effectiveness of
Fomo as a purchase trigger". One tactic it proposed is to keep stimulating the fear of missing
out, during and after the decision to buy. This, it suggested, will make people more
susceptible to further ads on the same lines.
Yes, I know: I work in an industry that receives most of its income from advertising, so I
am complicit in this too. But so are we all. Advertising – with its destructive
impacts on the living planet, our peace of mind and our free will – sits at the heart of
our growth-based economy. This gives us all the more reason to challenge it. Among the places
in which the challenge should begin are universities, and the academic societies that are
supposed to set and uphold ethical standards. If they cannot swim against the currents of
constructed desire and constructed thought, who can?
Which suckers will invest in companies with no profits? This is really repetition of Dotcom
era in tech.
Notable quotes:
"... By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street ..."
"... Nasdaq down 24% already. Renaissance IPO ETF down 31%. But Uber and other unicorns are planning record IPOs in 2019, à la dotcom-crash-debut in 2000. ..."
By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and
author, with extensive international work experience.
Originally published at Wolf Street
Nasdaq down 24% already. Renaissance IPO ETF down 31%. But Uber and other unicorns are
planning record IPOs in 2019, à la dotcom-crash-debut in 2000.
The IPO hype machine has produced some very successful companies and a lot of spectacular
wealth transfers from the hapless public to early investors selling their shares. Here are two
of the standouts that I covered:
Snap [SNAP] , purveyor of the
Snapchat app and must-have sunglasses with a built-in camera: Shares peaked at $29 on the
second day after its IPO, given it a market capitalization of $32 billion. Shares closed on
Friday at $4.96 and this morning trade at $5.24, down 82% from day two of trading.
Blue Apron [APRN] , the
cream of the crop of about 150 VC-funded meal-kit startups founded over the past five years,
was valued at $2 billion during its last round of funding in June 2015 when it was one of the
most hyped unicorns that would change the world. Then enthusiasm began to sag. By the time the
IPO approached, the IPO price was cut from a range of $15-$17 a share to $10 a share. Shares
closed on Friday at $0.68 and are trading this morning at $0.71, down 93% from its IPO
price.
But not all IPOs are "tech" companies – though there's nothing "tech" about a meal-kit
maker other than the least important part, the app. The Renaissance IPO ETF
[IPO] holds the shares of companies across the board that went public over the past two years.
After two years, the companies are removed from the ETF. Its top five holdings are in real
estate, insurance products, music streaming, and cable TV, so not exactly pushing the
boundaries of tech invention.
These five IPOs haven't done all that badly, compared to the wholesale destruction of Blue
Apron, though they all have dropped sharply from their recent peaks (prices as of this
morning):
Vici Properties [VICI], a casino property company, at $18.02, is down 22% from its
peak in January 2018 shortly after the IPO. Athene Holding [ATH] – a "retirement services
company that issues, reinsures and acquires retirement savings products" – at $38.36, has
dropped 29% since September, 2018. Invitation Homes [INVH], Blackstone's buy-to-rent creature
that acquired over 48,000 single-family homes out of foreclosure at the end of the housing
bust, at $19.40, is down 18% from its peak in September. Spotify [SPOT], the music streaming
service, at $107.46, has plunged 46% from its peak on July 26. It went public in April. Altice
USA [ATUS], a cable TV operator, at $15.37, is down 39% from the peak on the day after its IPO
in July 2017.
Overall, the Renaissance IPO ETF has plunged 31% from its peak in June 2018 (data via
Investing.com):
The Nasdaq itself has dropped 24% from its all-time peak at the end of August.
It is in this new reality that some of the biggest startups and some of the biggest
money-losers in the startup circus are trying to unload the shares to the public in 2019 before
the "window" closes. The enormous hype about these IPOs has already started, with bankers
funneling this hype to the Wall Street
Journal , which breathlessly reported on the big numbers to be transferred from the public
to the selling insiders and the companies. The hyped numbers are truly huge.
The biggest candidates that are that are now being hyped for an IPO in 2019 are:
Uber , with a current "valuation" of $76-billion, could go for an IPO in early 2019 that
would value it at "as much as $120 billion," the WSJ reported, based on the hype the bankers
are now spreading to maximize their bonuses. Not all shares would be sold in the IPO, so the
proceeds in this scenario could reach "as much as $25 billion."
Palantir (data mining), with a current valuation of $20 billion, could see an IPO valuation
of $41 billion, according to the WSJ's "people familiar with its plans," who also cautioned
that these plans remained in flux, and that, according to the WSJ, "investment bankers often
exaggerate projected IPO values to win business."
Lyft , with a current valuation of $15 billion, is also looking for an IPO in early 2019, at
"more than $15 billion."
Then there is a gaggle of other big startups that could also head for the IPO window in
2019, according to the WSJ's "people familiar with the matter," but apparently haven't decided
on the timing yet. They include:
The all-time high that "tech" IPOs combined raised in a single year was $44.5 billion. If
these tech IPOs come to pass in 2019, and if these valuations can be pulled off, with Uber
alone hoping to raise $25 billion, the 2000-record would be broken by a large amount.
That would make sense: The year 2000 was when the dotcom bubble began to collapse
catastrophically, and everyone tried to get their heroes out the IPO window before it would
close for years to come. The Nasdaq, where these IPOs were concentrated, would eventually crash
78% from its peak in March 2000, with catastrophic consequences for those who'd bought the
hype.
The WSJ muses about this new generation of record-setting IPOs and Wall Street bankers' hype
machine:
For average investors, it could mean they finally will be able to bet on companies like
Uber that have become part of their everyday lives but have been out of reach, even as their
estimated values ballooned.
When all IPOs are included, and not just "tech" IPOs, 2018 was a banner year, with $54
billion raised. This includes 47 tech companies that raised only about $18 billion – a
far cry from the $44.5 billion that tech IPOs raised in 2000. But 2019 is going to fix this
shortcoming, assuming that the hype works and that the public is buying.
The WSJ, citing Dealogic, pointed out that tech IPOs this year on average soared 28% on the
first day of trading. No word about what happened afterwards. But the Renaissance IPO ETF is
down 31% so far this year. Reality starts after the first few days of trading.
Tech companies that had already gone public raised an additional $21 billion in 2018 by
selling more shares to the public in follow-on offerings, the most for follow-on offerings
since 2000.
Then, the WSJ tucked this reality-infested warning into its last paragraph:
In another sign of exuberance, investors are overlooking lofty valuations and measly -- or
zero -- profits to have a shot at outsized returns. In the first three quarters of the year,
four-fifths of all U.S.-listed IPOs were of companies that lost money in the 12 prior months
. That is the highest proportion on record.
So the last three months of 2018 plus 2019 and perhaps years to come are shaping up to be,
by the looks of it, a similarly glorious period for tech stocks, IPOs, and the Nasdaq as the
period from March 2000 till late 2002.
So, the bastard waited until his last day on the job to do a little fake media
pay-per-view kiss-and-tell. He couldn't be mensch enough to give his boss a professional
courtesy of telling him to take this job and shove it, he just succumbed to the siren's call
of money and spilled the beans to the fake media first before anyone in the Administration
had a chance to tell him how dangerous and detrimental to the interests of American people
his words would become (anyone taking bets that the kiss-and-tell New York Times bestseller
memoir is in the works?). Such is the psycho-profile of an average Pentagon brass. No
vertebratae there -- just mollusks, tapeworms, snails and amoebas. Throw the money at them,
and watch them grovel. Everything is for sale: service record, decorations, rank, faux
military and political expertise, integrity, character, valor, heroism, cavalier and valiant
battlefield engagement, self-sacrifice, loyalty to the nation...their family...their
kids...their asses...everything@!. If it has a rank, it is casually sold on an open market.
The winning bidder takes all.
Yes, General, Donald Trump is a deeply flawed human being. To his credit, though. we have
been duly forwarned. He never - ever - claimed that he was a saint and cautioned us against
turning him into a Mao Zedong-like personality cu;t. We knew all along that we were electing
a profoundly imperfect person, and the reason why we elected him nonetheless is that the
honesty of his admission was so refreshing that it outweighed all other considerations and
was too brilliantly confessional to ignore. When was the last time you heard Hillary Clinton
focus on her shortcomings, ethical lapses, judgment failures and mental syncopes instead a
litany of her glorious accomplishments/?
Now, I have a question for you, General: what kind of ball-less, dickless and brainless
asswipe devoid of any moral scurples and personal values serves his "unfit-for-the-job "
(sic) and dangerous-to-the-country Supreme Commander for two consecutive years without
uttering a word of criticism and dissent and then, after being fired, unleashes a torrent of
hysterical fury and not even minimally credible accusations? In my mother tongue there is a
phrase for characters like you: worthless piece of ****. And you can quote me on it, Sir.
PresidentTrump , 24 minutes ago
good riddance kelly
veritas semper vinces , 37 minutes ago
"What difference does it make, at this point?" who is the president? To paraphrase a Soros
supported ex candidate, who is still not in jail.
As Ms. No a stutely observed a few days ago : there was a petition to investigate Soros ,
signed by more than the necessary number for the White House to respond, and this 1 year
ago.
And the Donald ignored it, braking the law this way.
Does this count as more or less evidence he is fighting the swamp, trumptards?
Together with the fact Sheldon Adelson , the zionist financed his campaign and Wilbur
Ross, Rothschild's man bailed him out of his bankruptcies.
Wilbur Ross , who is now his Commerce Secretary.
Can trumptards put 2+2 together ?
Conscious Reviver , 40 minutes ago
Kelly is just more senior management in the crime syndicate known by the acronym USG. What
about the oath he swore to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic?
If he was a true soldier and patriot, he would have arrested the criminals, hiding in broad
daylight, who did 9/11.
As it is, he's just another toady. Good riddance to bad trash.
youshallnotkill , 2 hours ago
These kind of threads always make me wonder how many of the commenters here are paid to
**** on our US military.
Hans-Zandvliet , 1 hour ago
No need to pay people for shitting on the US military. Even marine corps general Smedly
Butler (most decorated marine in US history) wrote it himself ("War is a Racket" [1935]),
saying: "[while serving as a marine] I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle-man for
Big Bussiness, for Wall St and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for
capitalism."
Nothing much has changed since then in the US army, or has it?
11b40 , 46 minutes ago
Only gotten worse since eliminating the draft and getting a mercenary army.
Baron von Bud , 2 hours ago
These military generals portray themselves as selfless victims of Trump. These are the
same clueless idiots that couldn't or wouldn't grow a spine and tell Obama or Bush they were
destroying America with senseless wars. Trump may be a loose cannon but he has great
instincts. These generals make me want to puke. Starched uniforms and a high tipped hat but
no brain for good policy underneath and behind all those little medals. Good riddance. Trump
needs to dump these guys and John Bolton.
terrific , 2 hours ago
The title to this story is a lie. Just because the NYT reported that Kelly told two
anonymous sources that Trump is not up to the role of President, doesn't mean that Kelly
actually said it. I'm actually surprised that a news site like ZH would use that title for a
story, when the story was never even sourced, much less corroborated.
Celotex , 2 hours ago
He'll go to Boeing and will be pulling down eight figures annually.
Moribundus , 2 hours ago
„Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in
the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are
not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its
laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." -- Dwight D.
Eisenhower
" Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the
final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not
clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its
laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine,
fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single
fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new
homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life
to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any
true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Is there no other way the world may live?"
GoldRulesPaperDrools , 2 hours ago
That's because this county hasn't fought a REAL war in decades, and by a REAL war I mean
one where you can honestly expect if you go and you're in combat you're got no more than an
even chance to come back. Military service has become another gubmint job where you wear a
uniform and play with expensive hardware paid for by the taxpayer while doing some neocon's
bidding overseas.
Moribundus , 2 hours ago
The best amerikan soldier was Smedley Butler.
The best amerikan war is Vietnam war.
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent
most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the
bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and
especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a
decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping
of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify
Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought
light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make
Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to
it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al
Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I
operated on three continents.
Our proposals are based on the creation of a Budget for democratization which would be
debated and voted by a sovereign European Assembly. This will at last enable Europe to equip
itself with a public institution which is both capable of dealing with crises in Europe
immediately and of producing a set of fundamental public and social goods and services in the
framework of a lasting and solidarity-based economy. In this way, the promise made as far back
as the Treaty of Rome of 'improving living and working conditions' will finally become
meaningful.
This Budget, if the European Assembly so desires, will be financed by four major European
taxes, the tangible markers of this European solidarity. These will apply to the profits of
major firms, the top incomes (over 200,000 Euros per annum), the highest wealth owners (over 1
million Euros) and the carbon emissions (with a minimum price of 30 Euros per tonne). If it is
fixed at 4% of GDP, as we propose, this budget could finance research, training and the
European universities, an ambitious investment programme to transform our model of economic
growth, the financing of the reception and integration of migrants and the support of those
involved in operating the transformation. It could also give some budgetary leeway to member
States to reduce the regressive taxation which weighs on salaries or consumption.
The issue here is not one of creating a 'Transfer payments Europe' which would endeavour to
take money from the 'virtuous' countries to give it to those who are less so. The project for a
Treaty of Democratization ( www.tdem.eu )
states this explicitly by limiting the gap between expenditure deducted and income paid by a
country to a threshold of 0.1% of its GDP. This threshold can be raised in case there is a
consensus to do so, but the real issue is elsewhere: it is primarily a question of reducing the
inequality within the different countries and of investing in the future of
all Europeans, beginning of course with the youngest amongst them, with no
single country having preference. This computation does exclude spending that benefit
equally to all countries, such as policies to curb global warming. Because it will finance
European public goods benefiting all countries, the Budget for democratization will de facto
also foster convergence between countries.
Because we must act quickly but we must also get Europe out of the present technocratic
impasse, we propose the creation of a European Assembly. This will enable these new European
taxes to be debated and voted as also the budget for democratization. This European Assembly
can be created without changing the existing European treaties.
This European Assembly would of course have to communicate with the present decision-making
institutions (in particular the Eurogroup in which the Ministers for Finance in the Euro zone
meet informally every month). But, in cases of disagreement, the Assembly would have the
final word. If not, its capacity to be a locus for a new transnational, political
space where parties, social movements and NGOs would finally be able to express
themselves, would be compromised. Equally its actual effectiveness, since the issue is one of
finally extricating Europe from the eternal inertia of inter-governmental negotiations, would
be at stake. We should bear in mind that the rule of fiscal unanimity in force in the European
Union has for years blocked the adoption of any European tax and sustains the eternal evasion
into fiscal dumping by the rich and most mobile, a practice which continues to this day despite
all the speeches. This will go on if other decision-making rules are not set up.
Looks like Guardian start turning away from neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... What price is paid when a promise is broken? Because for much of my life, and probably yours, the political class has made this pledge: that the best way to run an economy is to hack back the public realm as far as possible and let the private sector run free. That way, services operate better, businesses get the resources they need, and our national finances are healthier. ..."
"... I don't wish to write about the everyday failings of neoliberalism – that piece would be filed before you could say "east coast mainline". Instead, I want to address the most stubborn belief of all: that running a small state is the soundest financial arrangement for governments and voters alike. Because 40 years on from the Thatcher revolution, more and more evidence is coming in to the contrary. ..."
"... The other big reason for the UK's financial precarity is its privatisation programme, described by the IMF as no less than a "fiscal illusion". British governments have flogged nearly everything in the cupboard, from airports to the Royal Mail – often at giveaway prices – to friends in the City. Such privatisations, judge the fund, "increase revenues and lower deficits but also reduce the government's asset holdings". ..."
"... IMF research shows is that the Westminster classes have been asset-stripping Britain for decades – and storing up financial trouble for future generations ..."
The fund reports that Britain's finances are weaker than all other nations except Portugal,
and says privatisation is to blame
Columnists usually proffer answers, but today I want to ask a question, a big one. What price
is paid when a promise is broken? Because for much of my life, and probably yours, the
political class has made this pledge: that the best way to run an economy is to hack back the
public realm as far as possible and let the private sector run free. That way, services operate
better, businesses get the resources they need, and our national finances are healthier.
It's why your tax credits keep
dropping , and your mum has to wait half a year to see a hospital consultant –
because David Cameron slashed public spending, to stop it "crowding out" private money. It's
why water bills are so high and train services can never be counted on – because both
industries have been privatised.
From the debacle of universal credit to the forced conversion of state schools into
corporate-run academies, the ideology of the small state – defined by no less a body than
the International Monetary Fund as neoliberalism – is all pervasive. It decides how much
money you have left at the end of the week and what kind of future your children will enjoy,
and it explains why your elderly relatives can't get a decent carer.
I don't wish to write about the everyday failings of neoliberalism – that piece would
be filed before you could say "east coast mainline". Instead, I want to address the most
stubborn belief of all: that running a small state is the soundest financial arrangement for
governments and voters alike. Because 40 years on from the Thatcher revolution, more and more
evidence is coming in to the contrary.
Let's start with the IMF itself. Last week it published
a report that barely got a mention from the BBC or in Westminster, yet helps reframe the
entire debate over austerity. The fund totted up both the public debt and the publicly owned
assets of 31 countries, from the US to Australia, Finland to France, and found that
the UK had among the weakest public finances of the lot. With less than £3 trillion
of assets against £5tn in pensions and other liabilities, the UK is more than £2tn
in the red . Of all the other countries examined by researchers, including the Gambia and
Kenya, only Portugal's finances look worse over the long run. So much for fixing the
roof.
'British governments have flogged nearly everything in the cupboard from airports to
the Royal Mail – often at giveaway prices – to friends in the City.' Photograph:
Amer Ghazzal/Rex/Shutterstock
Almost as startling are the IMF's reasons for why Britain is in such a state: one way or
another they all come back to neoliberalism. Thatcher loosed finance from its shackles and used
our North Sea oil money to pay for swingeing tax cuts. The result is an overfinancialised
economy and a government that is £1tn worse off since the banking crash. Norway has
similar
North Sea wealth and a far smaller population, but also a sovereign wealth fund. Its net
worth has soared over the past decade.
The other big reason for the UK's financial precarity is its privatisation programme,
described by the IMF as no less than a "fiscal illusion". British governments have flogged
nearly everything in the cupboard, from airports to the Royal Mail – often at giveaway
prices – to friends in the City. Such privatisations, judge the fund, "increase revenues
and lower deficits but also reduce the government's asset holdings".
Throughout the austerity decade, ministers and economists have pushed for spending cuts by
pointing to the size of the government's annual overdraft, or budget deficit. Yet there are two
sides to a balance sheet, as all accountants know and this IMF work recognises. The same goes
for our public realm: if Labour's John McDonnell gets into No 11 and renationalises the
railways, that would cost tens of billions – but it would also leave the country with
assets worth tens of billions that provided a regular income.
Instead, what this IMF research shows is that the Westminster classes have been
asset-stripping Britain for decades – and storing up financial trouble for future
generations.
Privatisation and austerity have not only weakened the country's financial position –
they have also handed unearned wealth to a select few. Just look at
a new report from the University of Greenwich finding that water companies could have
funded all their day-to-day running and their long-term investments out of the bills paid by
customers. Instead of which, managers have lumbered the firms with £51bn of debt to pay
for shareholders' dividends. Those borrowed billions, and the millions in interest, will be
paid by you and me in our water bills. We might as well stuff the cash directly into the
pockets of shareholders.
Instead of competitively run utilities, record investment by the private sector and sounder
public finances, we have natural monopolies handed over to the wealthy, banks that can dump
their liabilities on the public when things get tough, and an outsourcing industry that feasts
upon the carcass of the public sector. As if all this weren't enough, neoliberal voices
complain that we need to cut taxes and red tape, and further starve our public services.
This is a genuine scandal, but it requires us to recognise what neoliberalism promised and
what it has failed to deliver. Some of the loudest critics of the ideology have completely
misidentified it. Academics will daub the term "neoliberal" on any passing phenomenon. Fitbits
are apparently neoliberal, as is Ben & Jerry's ice-cream and Kanye West. Pundits will say
that neoliberalism is about markets and choice – tell that to any commuter wedged on a
Southern rail train. And centrist politicians claim that the great failing of neoliberalism is
its carelessness about identity and place, which is akin to complaining that the boy on a moped
who snatched your smartphone is going too fast.
Let us get it straight. Neoliberalism has ripped you off and robbed you blind. The evidence
of that is mounting up – in your bills, in your services and in the finances of your
country.
• Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist and senior economics commentator
"... This post first appeared on November 29, 2011 ..."
"... By Andrew Dittmer, who recently finished his PhD in mathematics at Harvard and is currently continuing work on his thesis topic. He also taught mathematics at a local elementary school. Andrew enjoys explaining the recent history of the financial sector to a popular audience. ..."
"... Simulposted at The Distributist Review ..."
"... Recently journalist Philip Pilkington has interviewed authors with unconventional perspectives on economic issues, including Satyajit Das and David Graeber. I thought it would be fun to interview someone too – but the man I interviewed uses a pseudonym. This is a six-part series. ..."
"... Now that Code Name Cain has indicated the promise of a libertarian society, in the next part of the interview he will give a step-by-step plan for how we can make this society a reality. ..."
Yves here. In some summers past, we've rerun NC classics during slow news periods. We
haven't had slow news period in a while, and one side effect is that we haven't yet reprised
this series on libertarianism, which will run this week and into next week. Enjoy!
By Andrew Dittmer, who recently finished his PhD in mathematics at Harvard and is
currently continuing work on his thesis topic. He also taught mathematics at a local elementary
school. Andrew enjoys explaining the recent history of the financial sector to a popular
audience.
Recently journalist Philip Pilkington has interviewed authors with unconventional
perspectives on economic issues, including Satyajit Das and David Graeber. I thought it would
be fun to interview someone too – but the man I interviewed uses a pseudonym. This is a
six-part series.
ANDREW : Some people say that you represent a fringe view, and so interviewing you is a
waste of time.
CODE NAME CAIN : If people obsessed with inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom
underestimate libertarians, so much the better.
ANDREW : Can you give any evidence that your ideas are taken seriously?
CNC : Well, people used to think that the financial crisis was caused by antisocial behavior
in the finance sector. In September 2007, Tom DiLorenzo pointed out on the Lew Rockwell
website that the crisis was actually the result of the government forcing banks to make
risky loans to low-income borrowers. Although initially ignored, DiLorenzo's thesis is now
widely accepted among careful observers.
ANDREW : Is that your only convincing example?
CNC : Hardly. Did you notice how over the last year or so, everyone started to talk about
how the threat of new taxes and regulations was making producers uncertain? And when producers
are uncertain, the economy fails to improve? Well, the fact that worries about taxes and
regulations cause uncertainty and so damage the economy is a key insight of Austrian economics
that we have proclaimed for decades.
ANDREW : Wait, I thought people said that Obama was causing the uncertainty.
CNC : Obama is causing the uncertainty now. Before Obama, George W. Bush was causing the
uncertainty. In general, democratic government causes uncertainty. Hans-Hermann Hoppe made all
of this clear in his 2001 book "Democracy: The God That Failed."
ANDREW : Are there things you have learned from the work of Dr. Hoppe that you had not found
in the writings of other libertarians?
CNC : "Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard were great men, but they lived in a time when
supporters of freedom needed to be careful about what they said. As a result, libertarians
often fail to describe their ideal future society in clear detail. But, as the Cato
Institute's Patri Friedman has recognized , Hans-Hermann Hoppe is an exception to this
reticence. He is willing to speak the truth, no matter how much it makes "politically correct"
people squirm, and he is so logical and eloquent that I routinely quote from his classic book
on the failure of democracy. Please color such quotes in red – I would never try to pass
off my own ideas as if they were on his level.
ANDREW : Tell us now about the libertarian society you are working to make possible.
CNC : It will be a free society – no government, no coercion. People will have their
rights respected. Everyone will be free to do whatever they want as long as it doesn't
interfere with anyone else's rights why are you looking at me like that?
ANDREW : I was kind of hoping for less speeches and more details.
CNC : What do you mean?
ANDREW : In our society, the government is the only organization allowed to kill people. In
the libertarian society, which organizations will kill people?
CNC : There will be no government that is allowed to use force against people and kill
them.
ANDREW : Some people will be very rich, right?
CNC : Of course. Some people will always be stronger and more brilliant than others.
ANDREW : Will the wealthy people still be worried about people stealing from them?
CNC : Obviously – all property is necessarily valuable; hence, every property owner
becomes a possible target of other men's aggressive desires . [255]
ANDREW : So who will protect property owners?
CNC : Insurance companies in a competitive marketplace.
ANDREW : So in your society, insurance companies will be sort of like governments. Can we
call them security GLOs (Government-Like Organizations)?
CNC : Sure, as long as we stress that the insurance companies, as security GLOs, will be
very different from the statist, coercive governments we have today.
ANDREW : Will security GLOs be different from governments because they will be small family
firms?
CNC : No. One reason that insurance companies will be well-suited for the role of security
GLOs is that they are "big" and in command of the resources necessary to accomplish the task of
dealing with the dangers of the real world. Indeed, insurers operate on a national or even
international scale, and they own substantial property holdings dispersed over wide territories
[281]
ANDREW : Will security GLOs be different from governments because they don't use physical
force against criminals?
CNC : You gotta be kidding, right? in cooperation with one another, insurers [will] want to
expel known criminals not just from their immediate neighborhoods, but from civilization
altogether, into the wilderness or open frontier of the Amazon jungle, the Sahara, or the polar
regions. [262]
ANDREW : So the security GLOs will be allowed to kill people, if they are known
criminals?
CNC : The security GLOs will not kill people, they will just expel them to the Sahara or
polar regions. What happens then is up to the criminals.
ANDREW : Can we say that the security GLOs will effectively kill them?
CNC : I really don't like that choice of wording. You make it sound like the security GLOs
will be committing aggression against the criminals. That's backwards – the criminal
commits aggression, and security GLOs will just defend people. They won't violate anyone's
rights.
ANDREW : Maybe you would prefer that we say: the security GLOs will effectively kill people
in a rights-respecting manner.
CNC: Yeah, that's better.
ANDREW : Will everybody be able to get insurance from the security GLOs?
CNC : Of course – in a market economy, shortages are impossible. Anyone can get
anything by paying the market price.
ANDREW : What if the market price of insurance for some people is more money than they can
pay?
CNC : Don't worry, competition among insurers for paying clients will bring about a tendency
toward a continuous fall in the price of protection [281-282] .
ANDREW : In the future everyone will pay less for security than they currently pay in
taxes?
CNC: Well, certain government-induced distortions would be eliminated. Government taxes more
in low crime and high property value areas than in high crime and low property value areas.
[259] Security GLOs would do the exact opposite.
ANDREW : So in rough neighborhoods, most people might not be able to afford security
insurance.
CNC : Possibly.
ANDREW : Suppose there are people who aren't covered by any security GLO – would it
effectively be legal to kill them?
CNC : They would definitely be rendered economically isolated, weak, and vulnerable
outcast[s] [287] .
ANDREW : Then people are effectively forced to join a security GLO?
CNC : Maybe you haven't realized it yet, but this will be a free society. The relationship
between the insurer and the insured is consensual. Both are free to cooperate and not to
cooperate. [281] No one will force people to buy protection, and no one will force insurers to
offer protection at a price they think is too low.
ANDREW : What are some other ways that you think this would be a good system?
CNC : Well, every property can be shaped and transformed by its owner so as to increase its
safety and reduce the likelihood of aggression. I may acquire a gun or safe-deposit box, for
instance, or I may be able to shoot down an attacking plane from my backyard or own a laser gun
that can kill an aggressor thousands of miles away. [256] In a free society, security GLOs
would encourage the ownership of weapons among their insured by means of selective price cuts
[264] because the better the private protection of their clients, the lower the insurer's
protection and indemnification costs will be [285].
ANDREW : Let's see if I understand. In poor neighborhoods, most people will not be insured,
and it will be legal to kill them. The people that are insured will be encouraged by the
security GLO to carry weapons that are as technologically advanced as possible. It sounds to me
like this would be bad for the poor neighborhoods.
CNC : On the contrary – in "bad" neighborhoods the interests of the insurer and
insured would coincide. Insurers would not want to suppress the expulsionist inclinations among
the insured toward known criminals. They would rationalize such tendencies by offering
selective price cuts (contingent on specific clean-up operations). [262]
ANDREW : Suppose that security GLOs, or private groups that they sponsor, are looking for
criminals. When the enforcers catch the criminals, will they always transport them to an
uninhabited area, or will they sometimes put them in prison?
CNC : Prisons like the ones we have? With basketball courts and televisions for the
criminals? How would that be fair?
ANDREW : Maybe other kinds of prisons?
CNC : Look, it's not about putting people in prisons. It's about people getting what they
deserve. And in the libertarian society of the future, people will get what they deserve.
Security GLOs can be counted upon to apprehend the offender, and bring him to justice, because
in so doing the insurer can reduce his costs and force the criminal to pay for the damages and
cost of indemnification. [282]
ANDREW : So they'll have to do forced labor for the security GLO?
CNC : How can you possibly think this could be worse than our current system? Where instead
of compensating the victims of crimes it did not prevent, the government forces victims to pay
again as taxpayers for the cost of the apprehension, imprisonment, rehabilitation and/or
entertainment of their aggressors [259] ?
ANDREW : Still, as a libertarian, aren't you against coercion?
CNC : Coercion? Obviously you don't understand what you're talking about. Coercion is only
when someone interferes with rights someone else actually holds. Criminals can forfeit their
rights through their own choices. When that happens, requiring them to make restitution for
their actions doesn't violate their rights.
ANDREW : Will there be any other people in the free society who will be slaves?
CNC : Slaves?! Don't you know that the first condition of a libertarian society is that
everyone owns themselves?
ANDREW : Sorry, I meant to say: effectively slaves in a rights-respecting manner.
CNC: Oh. Hmmm. Let me think about that.
ANDREW: For example, suppose someone signs a business contract and then, later, can't
fulfill the terms of the contract. What would happen?
CNC : In a libertarian society, sanctity of contract is absolutely fundamental.
ANDREW : Let me be a little more specific. Suppose some guy can't pay his debts. Would he be
allowed to declare bankruptcy and move on, or would he become, in a rights-respecting manner,
the effective slave of whoever had loaned him the money?
CNC : That would depend upon the debt contract that the lender and borrower had together
voluntarily signed. If they had chosen to include a bankruptcy proviso, then the borrower could
declare bankruptcy.
ANDREW : Suppose that in the libertarian society, lenders would rather encourage borrowers
to focus on repayment – and so they decide not to give borrowers an easy way out. Suppose
that no lenders offer loans with a bankruptcy proviso. Would that be okay?
CNC : Economic theory tells us that loans without a bankruptcy proviso will be made at lower
interest rates than loans allowing borrowers to go bankrupt. So if no loans contain a
bankruptcy proviso, it will just mean that borrowers prefer low-interest no-bankruptcy
loans.
ANDREW : I see some problems here.
CNC : Look, it sounds from your question like you think that the lenders should be coerced
into allowing borrowers to be irresponsible and go bankrupt! That would effectively make them
loan their hard-earned money in ways that they don't want. How is that any different than
forcing them to work at hard labor?
ANDREW : Obviously it would be better to have defaulting borrowers be effectively enslaved
in a way that fully respects their natural rights.
CNC : Obviously. Now that we've cleared that up, can you turn off the tape recorder? I want
to get started on my steak.
Now that Code Name Cain has indicated the promise of a libertarian society, in the next
part of the interview he will give a step-by-step plan for how we can make this society a
reality.
"... What is neoliberalism? A programme for destroying collective structures which may impede the pure market logic. ..."
"... The movement toward the neoliberal utopia of a pure and perfect market is made possible by the politics of financial deregulation. And it is achieved through the transformative and, it must be said, destructive action of all of the political measures (of which the most recent is the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), designed to protect foreign corporations and their investments from national states) that aim to call into question any and all collective structures that could serve as an obstacle to the logic of the pure market: the nation, whose space to manoeuvre continually decreases; work groups, for example through the individualisation of salaries and of careers as a function of individual competences, with the consequent atomisation of workers; collectives for the defence of the rights of workers, unions, associations, cooperatives; even the family, which loses part of its control over consumption through the constitution of markets by age groups. ..."
"... The neoliberal programme draws its social power from the political and economic power of those whose interests it expresses: stockholders, financial operators, industrialists, conservative or social-democratic politicians who have been converted to the reassuring layoffs of laisser-faire, high-level financial officials eager to impose policies advocating their own extinction because, unlike the managers of firms, they run no risk of having eventually to pay the consequences. Neoliberalism tends on the whole to favour severing the economy from social realities and thereby constructing, in reality, an economic system conforming to its description in pure theory, that is a sort of logical machine that presents itself as a chain of constraints regulating economic agents. ..."
"... This structural violence also weighs on what is called the labour contract (wisely rationalised and rendered unreal by the "theory of contracts"). Organisational discourse has never talked as much of trust, co-operation, loyalty, and organisational culture as in an era when adherence to the organisation is obtained at each moment by eliminating all temporal guarantees of employment (three-quarters of hires are for fixed duration, the proportion of temporary employees keeps rising, employment "at will" and the right to fire an individual tend to be freed from any restriction). ..."
"... How could we not make a special place among these collectives, associations, unions, and parties for the state: the nation-state, or better yet the supranational state - a European state on the way toward a world state - capable of effectively controlling and taxing the profits earned in the financial markets and, above of all, of counteracting the destructive impact that the latter have on the labour market. This could be done with the aid of labour unions by organising the elaboration and defence of the public interest . Like it or not, the public interest will never emerge, even at the cost of a few mathematical errors, from the vision of accountants (in an earlier period one would have said of "shopkeepers") that the new belief system presents as the supreme form of human accomplishment. ..."
What is neoliberalism? A programme for destroying collective structures which may impede the pure market logic.
As the dominant discourse would have it, the economic world is a pure and perfect order, implacably unrolling the logic of its
predictable consequences, and prompt to repress all violations by the sanctions that it inflicts, either automatically or -- more
unusually -- through the intermediary of its armed extensions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the policies they impose: reducing labour costs, reducing public expenditures and making work
more flexible. Is the dominant discourse right? What if, in reality, this economic order were no more than the implementation of
a utopia - the utopia of neoliberalism - thus converted into a political problem ? One that, with the aid of the economic
theory that it proclaims, succeeds in conceiving of itself as the scientific description of reality?
This tutelary theory is a pure mathematical fiction. From the start it has been founded on a formidable abstraction. For, in the
name of a narrow and strict conception of rationality as individual rationality, it brackets the economic and social conditions of
rational orientations and the economic and social structures that are the condition of their application.
To give the measure of this omission, it is enough to think just of the educational system. Education is never taken account of
as such at a time when it plays a determining role in the production of goods and services as in the production of the producers
themselves. From this sort of original sin, inscribed in the Walrasian myth (
1 ) of "pure theory", flow all of the deficiencies and
faults of the discipline of economics and the fatal obstinacy with which it attaches itself to the arbitrary opposition which it
induces, through its mere existence, between a properly economic logic, based on competition and efficiency, and social logic, which
is subject to the rule of fairness.
That said, this "theory" that is desocialised and dehistoricised at its roots has, today more than ever, the means of making
itself true and empirically verifiable. In effect, neoliberal discourse is not just one discourse among many. Rather, it is a
"strong discourse" - the way psychiatric discourse is in an asylum, in Erving Goffman's analysis (
2 ) . It is so strong and so hard to combat only because
it has on its side all of the forces of a world of relations of forces, a world that it contributes to making what it is. It does
this most notably by orienting the economic choices of those who dominate economic relationships. It thus adds its own symbolic force
to these relations of forces. In the name of this scientific programme, converted into a plan of political action, an immense
political project is underway, although its status as such is denied because it appears to be purely negative. This project aims
to create the conditions under which the "theory" can be realised and can function: a programme of the methodical destruction
of collectives .
The movement toward the neoliberal utopia of a pure and perfect market is made possible by the politics of financial deregulation.
And it is achieved through the transformative and, it must be said, destructive action of all of the political measures (of
which the most recent is the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), designed to protect foreign corporations and their investments
from national states) that aim to call into question any and all collective structures that could serve as an obstacle to
the logic of the pure market: the nation, whose space to manoeuvre continually decreases; work groups, for example through the individualisation
of salaries and of careers as a function of individual competences, with the consequent atomisation of workers; collectives for the
defence of the rights of workers, unions, associations, cooperatives; even the family, which loses part of its control over consumption
through the constitution of markets by age groups.
The neoliberal programme draws its social power from the political and economic power of those whose interests it expresses:
stockholders, financial operators, industrialists, conservative or social-democratic politicians who have been converted to the reassuring
layoffs of laisser-faire, high-level financial officials eager to impose policies advocating their own extinction because, unlike
the managers of firms, they run no risk of having eventually to pay the consequences. Neoliberalism tends on the whole to favour
severing the economy from social realities and thereby constructing, in reality, an economic system conforming to its description
in pure theory, that is a sort of logical machine that presents itself as a chain of constraints regulating economic agents.
The globalisation of financial markets, when joined with the progress of information technology, ensures an unprecedented mobility
of capital. It gives investors concerned with the short-term profitability of their investments the possibility of permanently comparing
the profitability of the largest corporations and, in consequence, penalising these firms' relative setbacks. Subjected to this permanent
threat, the corporations themselves have to adjust more and more rapidly to the exigencies of the markets, under penalty of "losing
the market's confidence", as they say, as well as the support of their stockholders. The latter, anxious to obtain short-term profits,
are more and more able to impose their will on managers, using financial directorates to establish the rules under which managers
operate and to shape their policies regarding hiring, employment, and wages.
Thus the absolute reign of flexibility is established, with employees being hiring on fixed-term contracts or on a temporary basis
and repeated corporate restructurings and, within the firm itself, competition among autonomous divisions as well as among teams
forced to perform multiple functions. Finally, this competition is extended to individuals themselves, through the individualisation
of the wage relationship: establishment of individual performance objectives, individual performance evaluations, permanent evaluation,
individual salary increases or granting of bonuses as a function of competence and of individual merit; individualised career paths;
strategies of "delegating responsibility" tending to ensure the self-exploitation of staff who, simple wage labourers in relations
of strong hierarchical dependence, are at the same time held responsible for their sales, their products, their branch, their store,
etc. as though they were independent contractors. This pressure toward "self-control" extends workers' "involvement" according to
the techniques of "participative management" considerably beyond management level. All of these are techniques of rational domination
that impose over-involvement in work (and not only among management) and work under emergency or high-stress conditions. And they
converge to weaken or abolish collective standards or solidarities (
3 ) .
In this way, a Darwinian world emerges - it is the struggle of all against all at all levels of the hierarchy, which finds support
through everyone clinging to their job and organisation under conditions of insecurity, suffering, and stress. Without a doubt, the
practical establishment of this world of struggle would not succeed so completely without the complicity of all of the precarious
arrangements that produce insecurity and of the existence of a reserve army of employees rendered docile by these social processes
that make their situations precarious, as well as by the permanent threat of unemployment. This reserve army exists at all levels
of the hierarchy, even at the higher levels, especially among managers. The ultimate foundation of this entire economic order placed
under the sign of freedom is in effect the structural violence of unemployment, of the insecurity of job tenure and the menace
of layoff that it implies. The condition of the "harmonious" functioning of the individualist micro-economic model is a mass phenomenon,
the existence of a reserve army of the unemployed.
This structural violence also weighs on what is called the labour contract (wisely rationalised and rendered unreal by the
"theory of contracts"). Organisational discourse has never talked as much of trust, co-operation, loyalty, and organisational culture
as in an era when adherence to the organisation is obtained at each moment by eliminating all temporal guarantees of employment (three-quarters
of hires are for fixed duration, the proportion of temporary employees keeps rising, employment "at will" and the right to fire an
individual tend to be freed from any restriction).
Thus we see how the neoliberal utopia tends to embody itself in the reality of a kind of infernal machine, whose necessity imposes
itself even upon the rulers. Like the Marxism of an earlier time, with which, in this regard, it has much in common, this utopia
evokes powerful belief - the free trade faith - not only among those who live off it, such as financiers, the owners and managers
of large corporations, etc., but also among those, such as high-level government officials and politicians, who derive their justification
for existing from it. For they sanctify the power of markets in the name of economic efficiency, which requires the elimination of
administrative or political barriers capable of inconveniencing the owners of capital in their individual quest for the maximisation
of individual profit, which has been turned into a model of rationality. They want independent central banks. And they preach the
subordination of nation-states to the requirements of economic freedom for the masters of the economy, with the suppression of any
regulation of any market, beginning with the labour market, the prohibition of deficits and inflation, the general privatisation
of public services, and the reduction of public and social expenses.
Economists may not necessarily share the economic and social interests of the true believers and may have a variety of individual
psychic states regarding the economic and social effects of the utopia which they cloak with mathematical reason. Nevertheless, they
have enough specific interests in the field of economic science to contribute decisively to the production and reproduction of belief
in the neoliberal utopia. Separated from the realities of the economic and social world by their existence and above all by their
intellectual formation, which is most frequently purely abstract, bookish, and theoretical, they are particularly inclined to confuse
the things of logic with the logic of things.
These economists trust models that they almost never have occasion to submit to the test of experimental verification and are
led to look down upon the results of the other historical sciences, in which they do not recognise the purity and crystalline transparency
of their mathematical games, whose true necessity and profound complexity they are often incapable of understanding. They participate
and collaborate in a formidable economic and social change. Even if some of its consequences horrify them (they can join the socialist
party and give learned counsel to its representatives in the power structure), it cannot displease them because, at the risk of a
few failures, imputable to what they sometimes call "speculative bubbles", it tends to give reality to the ultra-logical utopia (ultra-logical
like certain forms of insanity) to which they consecrate their lives.
And yet the world is there, with the immediately visible effects of the implementation of the great neoliberal utopia: not only
the poverty of an increasingly large segment of the most economically advanced societies, the extraordinary growth in income differences,
the progressive disappearance of autonomous universes of cultural production, such as film, publishing, etc. through the intrusive
imposition of commercial values, but also and above all two major trends. First is the destruction of all the collective institutions
capable of counteracting the effects of the infernal machine, primarily those of the state, repository of all of the universal values
associated with the idea of the public realm . Second is the imposition everywhere, in the upper spheres of the economy and
the state as at the heart of corporations, of that sort of moral Darwinism that, with the cult of the winner, schooled in higher
mathematics and bungee jumping, institutes the struggle of all against all and cynicism as the norm of all action and behaviour.
Can it be expected that the extraordinary mass of suffering produced by this sort of political-economic regime will one day serve
as the starting point of a movement capable of stopping the race to the abyss? Indeed, we are faced here with an extraordinary paradox.
The obstacles encountered on the way to realising the new order of the lone, but free individual are held today to be imputable to
rigidities and vestiges. All direct and conscious intervention of whatever kind, at least when it comes from the state, is discredited
in advance and thus condemned to efface itself for the benefit of a pure and anonymous mechanism, the market, whose nature as a site
where interests are exercised is forgotten. But in reality, what keeps the social order from dissolving into chaos, despite the growing
volume of the endangered population, is the continuity or survival of those very institutions and representatives of the old order
that is in the process of being dismantled, and all the work of all of the categories of social workers, as well as all the forms
of social solidarity, familial or otherwise.
The transition to "liberalism" takes place in an imperceptible manner, like continental drift, thus hiding its effects from view.
Its most terrible consequences are those of the long term. These effects themselves are concealed, paradoxically, by the resistance
to which this transition is currently giving rise among those who defend the old order by drawing on the resources it contained,
on old solidarities, on reserves of social capital that protect an entire portion of the present social order from falling into anomie.
This social capital is fated to wither away - although not in the short run - if it is not renewed and reproduced.
But these same forces of "conservation", which it is too easy to treat as conservative, are also, from another point of view,
forces of resistance to the establishment of the new order and can become subversive forces. If there is still cause for some
hope, it is that forces still exist, both in state institutions and in the orientations of social actors (notably individuals and
groups most attached to these institutions, those with a tradition of civil and public service) that, under the appearance of simply
defending an order that has disappeared and its corresponding "privileges" (which is what they will immediately be accused of), will
be able to resist the challenge only by working to invent and construct a new social order. One that will not have as its only law
the pursuit of egoistic interests and the individual passion for profit and that will make room for collectives oriented toward the
rational pursuit of ends collectively arrived at and collectively ratified .
How could we not make a special place among these collectives, associations, unions, and parties for the state: the nation-state,
or better yet the supranational state - a European state on the way toward a world state - capable of effectively controlling and
taxing the profits earned in the financial markets and, above of all, of counteracting the destructive impact that the latter have
on the labour market. This could be done with the aid of labour unions by organising the elaboration and defence of the public
interest . Like it or not, the public interest will never emerge, even at the cost of a few mathematical errors, from the vision
of accountants (in an earlier period one would have said of "shopkeepers") that the new belief system presents as the supreme form
of human accomplishment.
Pierre Bourdieu. Professor at the Collčge de France Translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro
( 1 ) Auguste Walras (1800-66), French economist,
author of De la nature de la richesse et de l'origine de la valeur ("On the Nature of Wealth and on the Origin of Value")(1848).
He was one of the first to attempt to apply mathematics to economic inquiry.
( 2 ) Erving Goffman. 1961. Asylums: Essays on
the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates . New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
( 3 ) See the two journal issues devoted to "Nouvelles
formes de domination dans le travail" ("New forms of domination in work"), Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales , nos.
114, September 1996, and 115, December 1996, especially the introduction by Gabrielle Balazs and Michel Pialoux, "Crise du travail
et crise du politique" & Work crisis and political crisis, no. 114: p.3-4.
You can find original interview at using the lisnk above, or if it disappeared, in Humor
section of this site
Notable quotes:
"... I will say that, just as Marxism provides an essential way of examining capitalism, libertarianism provides a filter for examining and criticizing stateist impulses. But a society organized around libertarian principles, just silly. ..."
"... The one thing libertarians want desperately to ignore is that imposing their vision of an utopian society is that while no one is "coerced" and will have equal rights, the inequalities that exist today will be cemented into society. ..."
What puzzles me about the Libertarian Dream is their ability to ignore the Dark Ages in
Western Europe.
It fulfills all their requirements, and by what accounts survive, was remarkably
unsuccessful. Life was poor, nasty, brutish and short.
I've has the discussion of rule of law with libertarians, and it went like this:
Lb: We could have a farming society without rule of law.
Me: How are disputes resolved?
Lb: We all get together and resolve the dispute.
Me: How is the dispute resolution enforced?
Lb: Everybody agrees to the resolution.
Me: What happens if some do not agree? What happens if someone cheats?
Lb: ..
Me: We've used this mechanism before, Hatfields vs McCoy' in the US, and Campbells Vs
McDonalds in Scotland.
Lb: ..
Those who don't know their History, are condemned to repeat it.
Winston Churchill in his "History of the English Speaking Peoples" refers to the desire
of the People in England to have "The King's Peace," otherwise known as "The Rule of Law"
with all it's apparatus, Police, Courts, etc.
The Libertarians appear to want "Rule by the Rich and Powerful" and do not understand
that that includes few, if any, of the current libertarians, except perhaps for the Koch
Brothers.
In the 90's when encountering a want-to-be business tycoon spouting Libertarian
nonsense, I would encourage them to seek their fortune in Somalia, where no government
existed.
I will say that, just as Marxism provides an essential way of examining capitalism,
libertarianism provides a filter for examining and criticizing stateist impulses. But a
society organized around libertarian principles, just silly.
Tom DiLorenzo pointed out on the Lew Rockwell website that the crisis was actually the
result of the government forcing banks to make risky loans to low-income borrowers.
Oh the poor banks, forced to loan money for houses aka: The Brer Rabbit Loan Origination
philosophy.
"Forced "the banks were not. They juiced the bankruptcy laws, and bundle up the loans
and sold then to a willing set of buyers, Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, "Government
Corporations", who were re-nationalized when they fell into trouble.
The Bank's happily took the loan origination fees, and survived when they were then
"forced" to accept Government bail outs.
Why some senior bank executives even took a cut in Bonuses – the misery of it all!
/s
That was the first thing that leaped out at me too.
Are you kidding? the banks were "forced" by the government where to start with that
one?
The only thing that fits was said here not to long ago.
" arguing with an idiot is like playing chess with a pigeon. They just knock over the
pieces, shit on the board, and strut around like they won anyway."
The one thing libertarians want desperately to ignore is that imposing their vision of
an utopian society is that while no one is "coerced" and will have equal rights, the
inequalities that exist today will be cemented into society. Until someone can explain to
me what my recourse is when my right to breathe clean air and drink clean water or to speak
my mind freely is destroyed by a polluter or someone who doesn't like what I have to say, I
will view libertarianism as the worst of all possible worlds.
when i was still on faceborg, years ago, I would often be confronted by wandering
libertarians.
one way to send them into conniptions was to say, "fine. let's run your experiment of
lawlessness and "freedom" but first, in order to adhere to good experimental methodology,
shouldn't we first redistribute the wealth?"
a race hardly proves anything if it's between a fighter jet and a rickshaw.
the resulting frothing fits were entertaining. They believe that they are paragons of
logical thinking as opposed to us silly lefties.
and , like the neoreactionaries that threaten to take their place in corporate philosophy,
they seem to believe that they will naturally be the Lords of the Manor.
Libertarians hate to hear about Rawls' Veil of Ignorance.
Cain's libertarian views have the depth and breadth of a bunch of mutually contradictory
bumper stickers. The views lack a grasp of system interactions and impacts, and display a
narrow rigid simplicity that neglects scads of important social, economic and environmental
factors. The views are so inept it makes me wonder, was this interview satire?
The interview is based on the works of Hans-Hermann Hoppe; the parts in red either links
or when they have numbers, direct quotes with page references.
In my experience (from Usenet days, mostly) libertarians vary quite a bit in their
views. Mr. Hoppe's seem to be of the anarcho-capitalist flavor, similar to David
Friedman's, but many libertarians would disagree with them and some would say they are
crazy. Libertarianism seems to be a tendency, an attitude, a sensibility, rather than an
explicit set of principles cast in the form of propositions and rules. It is more aesthetic
than logical, in spite of the way they regard themselves; see Thus Spake
Zarathustra, on 'the coldest of all cold monsters' for a taste.
In regard to libertarianism on the ground: as with other marginal ideologies, there have
been some experiments; for example, there was a project of getting libertarians to move to
some county in New Hampshire where their numbers would enable them to have some influence
on the social order and its government. None that I know about have been very
successful.
> The views are so inept it makes me wonder, was this interview satire?
The interview is satire, but as you can imagine, libertarianism is extremely hard to
satirize; the author faced technical challenges in making the self-ownage even more obvious
than it already is.
More perhaps a caper, frolic, or prank -- of which are extended in time with no single
punchline (except for the running gag of "in a rights-respecting manner"). It's
satirical.
I have to admit that nowadays when someone says they are a libertarian, my 1st
assumption is that they are an idiot, who doesn't realize they are just a tool for the
republican/neoliberal overlords/industrialists who just want to go back to pre-regulatory
and pre-taxation years as were 120 years ago.Back when snake oil salesmen were free to
peddle their wares, any how they saw fit.
Thirty years ago, being a libertarian at least had some logic behind it. they were anti-
drug war and anti- police state and things that actually make sense. They realized there
had to be SOME laws, and Some civic responsibility.
anyone who has crazy ideas like this today are actual and factual "conspiracy theorists".
Talk about crazy. There isn't any substance here to refute . this is all total BS.
Again, we find the "information age" taken up by peoples opinions of "fact" that are pure
propaganda.
I've had close contact with libertarians. One is a medical doctor. A primary goal is to
eliminate democracy entirely. The people would have no input in determining the conditions
under which they live. A market unpreturbed by taxes and regulations would yield the most
optimum rusults which benefit the society. People who are lazy and who lack ambition, which
is proven by their low economic status, would be isolated and cast aside into favelas
because they are undeserving of anything better. The greatest threat is not global warming,
or the threat of nuclear war but tyranny. He and his son are armed and expect to be able to
defeat the government when the time comes. Based on a discussion where I used the term
social justice, the good doctored recoiled and said social justice is communism. He was
also against helping ( I suppose via the givernment) victims of natural catastrophies such
as floods, hurricanes, fires, earth quakes etc. When asked what kind of society would
result from these beliefs, they don't have a clue except to say that when one persues a
just and moral cause the outcome is of no consequence. When asked about global warming they
emphasized their right to have all the plastic straws they want. A tyrannical government
imposing rules is the greatest threat.
All very logical. Yes? Another doctor, my primary care physician welcomes global warming
because he thinks we can deal with it very easily and feels that it is most fortunate that
we don't have global cooling.
Another retired doctor I talk to expressed the view that all Muslim mosques in the US
should be blown up and all Muslims should leave the country or be killed.
hell no!
But they have a different "schtik" .. like cinton/obama doing the same thing but they use
different words . appealing to different people.
for clarity, i suppose I should have used some better punctuation.
"republican/neoliberal" meaning "the deregulation crowd"
""overlords/industrialist" meaning the powers that be who make money in manufacturing and
other related industries who have liabilities in relation to their waste/pollution
disposal, working conditions,safety standards/practices/costs,etc . who are the funders of
this type of propaganda.
I have no illusions that the deregulation gang didn't gain ascension to our gov't as of
late; with carter, and has been in EVERY administration since.
The absence of a thriving libertarian polity across all human history and geography
implies a fundamental incompatibility with human nature.
My guess is that any human group which tries it is simply destroyed and/or absorbed by
neighbouring human groups which employ more effective arrangements (whatever defects those
particular arrangements may have).
Libertarians aren't much for empiricism, I suppose .
Most of the last 10k years are feudal and libertarianism is just feudalism. Even the
Roman states were mostly run on a private law basis – aka libertarianism. Mass
slavery, citizenship limited to an elite who personally acted as enforcers, courts and
legislators.
Libertarianism is the perennial philosophy, horribly compatible with human nature.
It's interesting that this post is generating separate comment threads 7 years apart. I
started reading the 2011 comments thinking they were current and was immediately struck by
the thoroughness and passion of the debate, occurring around the time of the Obamacare
rollout and closer to the 2008 crash. Possibly more people had a stake in libertarianism
back then and found this interview threatening? In any event, one thing common to both
threads is the tendency not to recognize the interview as satire. Compliments to Mr.
Dittmer for his enduring dry wit (even though the internet makes irony hard to
recognize).
so what happens when the GLOs from different customers are pulled into a battle between
them? and how does this work when some one who hired them to protect them dies from a
business ?
At the inception of this entire RussiaGate spectacle I suggested that it was a political
distraction to take the attention away from the rejection by the people of neoliberalism which
has been embraced by the establishments of both political parties.
And that the result of the investigation would be indictments for perjury in the covering up
of illicit business deals and money laundering. But that 'collusion to sway the election' was
without substance, if not a joke.
Everything that has been revealed to date tends to support that.
One thing that Aaron overlooks is the evidence compiled by William Binney and associates
that strongly suggests the DNC hack was no hack at all, but a leak by an insider who was
appalled by the lies and double dealing at the DNC.
In general, RussiaGate is a farcical distraction from other issues as they say in the video.
And this highlights the utterly Machiavellian streak in the corporate Democrats and the Liberal
establishment under the Clintons and their ilk who care more about money and power than the
basic principles that historically sustained their party. I have lost all respect for them.
But unfortunately this does open the door for those who use this to approve of the
Republican establishment, which is 'at least honest' about being substantially corrupt servants
to Big Money who care nothing about democracy, the Constitution, or the public. The best of
them are leaving or have already left, and their party is ruined beyond repair.
This all underscores the paucity of the Red v. Blue, monopoly of two parties, 'lesser of two
evils' model of political thought which has come to dominate the discussion in the US.
We are heavily propagandized by the owners of the corporate media and influencers of the
narrative, and a professional class that has sold its soul for economic advantage and access to
money and power.
"... an old-school Christian democracy, rooted in European traditions ..."
"... Beggar-thy-neighbor migration policies, such as building border fences, will not only further fragment the union; they also seriously damage European economies and subvert global human rights standards. ..."
"... at least 300,000 refugees each year ..."
"... surge funding, ..."
"... raising a substantial amount of debt backed by the EU's relatively small budget. ..."
"... To finance it, new European taxes will have to be levied sooner or later, ..."
It is no secret that neoliberalism relentlessly pursues a globalized, borderless world where labor, products, and services obey
the hidden hand of the free market. What is less often mentioned, however, is that this system is far more concerned with
promoting the well-being of corporations and cowboy capitalists than assisting the average person on the street. Indeed, many of
the world's most powerful companies today have
mutated
into
"
stateless superpowers
," while consumers are forced to endure crippling austerity
measures amid
plummeting
standards
of living. The year 2018 could be seen as the tipping point when the grass-roots movement against these dire conditions took off.
Since 2015, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants into Germany and the EU,
a groundswell of animosity has been steadily building against the European Union, perhaps best exemplified by the Brexit
movement. Quite simply, many people are growing weary of the globalist
argument
that
Europe needs migrants and austerity measures to keep the wheels of the economy spinning. At the very least, luring migrants with
cash
incentives
to move to Germany and
elsewhere
in
the EU appears incredibly shortsighted.
Indeed, if the globalist George Soros wants to lend his
Midas
touch
to ameliorating the migrant's plight, why does he think that relocating them to European countries is the solution? As
is becoming increasingly apparent in places like
Sweden
and
France, efforts to assimilate people from vastly different cultures, religions and backgrounds is an extremely tricky venture,
the success of which is far from guaranteed.
One worrying consequence of Europe's season of open borders has been the rise of far-right political movements. In fact, some of
the harshest criticism of the 'Merkel plan' originated in
Hungary
,
where its gutsy president, Viktor Orban, hopes to build "
an old-school Christian democracy,
rooted in European traditions
." Orban is simply responding to the democratic will of his people, who are fiercely
conservative, yet the EU parliament voted to
punish
him
regardless. The move shows that Brussels, aside from being adverse to democratic principles, has very few tools for addressing
the rise of far-right sentiment that its own misguided policies created.
Here it is necessary to mention once again that bugbear of the political right, Mr. Soros, who has received no political mandate
from European voters, yet who campaigns relentlessly on behalf of globalist initiatives through his Open Society Foundations (OSF)
(That campaign just got some serious clout after Soros
injected
$18bn
dollars of his own money into OSF, making it one of the most influential NGOs in the world).
With no small amount of impudence, Soros has condemned EU countries – namely his native Hungary – for attempting to protect their
territories by constructing border barriers and fences, which he believes violate the human rights of migrants (rarely if ever
does the philanthropist speak about the "human rights" of the native population). In the
words
of
the maestro of mayhem himself: "
Beggar-thy-neighbor migration policies, such as building
border fences, will not only further fragment the union; they also seriously damage European economies and subvert global human
rights standards.
"
Through a leaked
network
of
compromised EU parliamentarians who do his bidding, Soros says the EU should spend $30 billion euros ($33bln) to accommodate "
at
least 300,000 refugees each year
." How will the EU pay for the resettling of migrants from the Middle East? Soros has an
answer for that as well. He calls it "
surge funding,
" which entails "
raising
a substantial amount of debt backed by the EU's relatively small budget.
"
Any guesses who will be forced to pay down the debt on this high-risk venture? If you guessed George Soros, guess again. The
already heavily taxed people of Europe will be forced to shoulder that heavy burden. "
To
finance it, new European taxes will have to be levied sooner or later,
" Soros admits. That comment is very interesting in
light of the recent French protests, which were
triggered
by
Emmanuel Macron's plan to impose a new fuel tax. Was the French leader, a former investment banker, attempting to get back some
of the funds being used to support the influx of new arrivals into his country? The question seems like a valid one, and goes far
at explaining the ongoing unrest.
At this point, it is worth remembering what triggered the exodus of migrants into Europe in the first place. A large part of the
answer comes down to unlawful NATO operations on the ground of sovereign states. Since 2003, the 29-member military bloc, under
the direct command of Washington, has
conducted
illicit
military operations in various places around the globe, including in Iraq, Libya and Syria. These actions, which could be best
described as globalism on steroids, have opened a Pandora's Box of global scourges, including famine, terrorism and grinding
poverty. Is this what the Western states mean by 'humanitarian activism'? If the major EU countries really want to flout their
humanitarian credentials, they could have started by demanding the cessation of regime-change operations throughout the Middle
East and North Africa, which created such inhumane conditions for millions of innocent people.
This failure on the part of Western capitals to speak out against belligerent US foreign policy helps to explain why a number of
other European governments are experiencing major shakeups. Sebastian Kurz, 32,
won
over
the hearts of Austrian voters by promising to tackle unchecked immigration. In super-tolerant Sweden, which has
accepted
more
migrants per capita than any other EU state, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats party
garnered
17.6
percent of the vote in September elections – up from 12.9 percent in the previous election. And even Angela Merkel, who is seen
by many people as the de facto leader of the European Union, is watching her political star crash and burn mostly due to her
bungling of the migrant crisis. In October, after her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered a stinging setback in Bavaria
elections, which saw CDU voters abandon ship for the anti-immigrant AfD and the Greens, Merkel
announced
she
would resign in 2021 after her current term expires.
Meanwhile, back in the US, the government of President Donald Trump has been shut down as the Democrats refuse to grant the
American leader the funds to build a wall on the Mexican border – despite the fact that he essentially made it to the White House
on precisely that promise. Personally, I find it very hard to believe that any political party that does not support a strong and
viable border can continue to be taken seriously at the polls for very long. Yet that is the very strategy that the Democrats
have chosen. But I digress.
I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal on
desperately needed Border Security. At some point the Democrats not wanting to make a deal will cost our
Country more money than the Border Wall we are all talking about. Crazy!
The lesson that Western governments should have learned over the last year from these developments is that there exists a
definite red line that the globalists cross at risk not only to the social order, but to their own political fortunes. Eventually
the people will demand solutions to their problems – many of which were caused by reckless neoliberal programs and austerity
measures. This collective sense of desperation may open the door to any number of right-wing politicians only too happy to meet
the demand.
Better to provide fair working conditions for the people while maintaining strong borders than have to face the wrath of the
street or some political charlatan later. Whether or not Western leaders will change their neoliberal ways as a populist storm
front approaches remains to be seen, but I for one am not betting on it.
Neoliberalism is a most troubled term, one that denotes a variety of
ideologies, beliefs, policies and practices. This article outlines some of the changes concerning corporate governance, managerial
control, and employee relations and points at the interrelations between the scholarly debates and theoretical contributions,
macroeconomic conditions, and political agenda all being part of the century-long history of neoliberalism.
The roots of neoliberalism runs deep in Western thinking
and the history of the term is more complex than is generally recognized, especially among those who associate the term with
laissez-faire policies and what at times has been rejected as "market fundamentalism." Liberalism as a political and economic term
is of British origin, but the neoliberal tradition of thinking derives from the continent, and from Austria and Germany in
particular.
1
The Austrian School of Economics, represented by
Friedrich von Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter and the so-called Ordo-liberals at Freiburg University in Germany represent two distinct
branches of economic liberalism. While Hayek early on warned against an expanded role of the state as the central planner of
economic activities, the German group of liberal economists was more ready to recognize the role of the state as the legitimate
regulator of the economy.
Hayek was a peripheral figure in the economic profession
in the interwar period, but the anti-Keynesian sentiments at London School of Economics, best represented by the economist Lionel
Robbins, served to advance Hayek as an alternative to the widely endorsed Keynesian economic theory and its application in policy.
In 1950, Hayek was offered a position at LSE on the basis of a private donation. A few years earlier, in 1947, Hayek had founded the
Mont Pčlerin Society (MPS), a community of intellectuals including economists such as Frank Knight, Milton Friedman, and Lionel
Robbins and the philosopher Karl Popper. This group was committed to advancing a liberal economic agenda and to counteracting
collectivist solutions to economic problems. For more than two decades, MPS was operating out of the limelight as Keynesianism
effectively enabled economic growth and handled the issue of the distribution of economic resources through the use of progressive
taxation in the emerging welfare states. In both economics departments and in policy-making quarters, Keynesianism became highly
influential, at times hegemonic. However, by the mid-1960s, the profit rates started to decline in American industry and during the
first oil crisis in the 1970s, caused by political conflicts, industry's profit rates sharply declined as energy costs soared.
Liberalism as a political and economic term is of
British origin, but the neoliberal tradition of thinking derives from the continent, and from Austria and Germany in particular
The remainder of the 1970s were characterized by the new
phenomenon of
stagflation
, high inflation in combination with rising
unemployment, and the new monetarist economic theory advocated by Milton Freidman proposed a high interest-rate policy to curb
inflation and to promote economic growth. Paul Volcker, the new chairman of the Federal Reserve named by President Carter, announced
a high interest rate policy that would last well into the 1980s. By the mid-1970s, the predominant Keynesianist economic policy came
under attack and neoliberal intellectuals could advance their positions.
The triumph of neoliberalism in the 1980s was caused by
both macroeconomic and political changes in American society. First, the combination of high overseas savings, primarily in Japan
reporting significant trade surplus, an overrated dollar, and the high-interests policy of the Fed led to an inflow of capital into
the American economy, creating an oversupply of capital in the 1980s.
2
In
addition, Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 on the basis of a pro-business agenda, and the Reagan Administration recruited
economic advisors and co-workers from neoliberal and neoconservative think tanks that were either formed. or significantly increased
their budgets, in the 1970s, as private capital owners donated money to advance free market policies. The new administration wanted
to promote economic growth by implementing new regulatory policies based on the idea of the virtues of "small governments" as
prescribed by Hayek's work published during the war years and thereafter. One of the key targets in this neoliberal framework were
the trade unions, which were widely regarded as representing a collectivist solution that poorly fitted with the free-market policy
advocated by neoliberal intellectuals. In addition, substantial tax reforms in the 1980s were justified on the basis of what was
branded "trickle-down economics" by its critics, the idea that reduced taxes would create their own economic momentum as the supply
of capital would "trickle down" the economic system and generate economic growth through increased demand.
By the mid-1980s, a wave of hostile takeovers strongly contributed to
the decline in managerial capitalism, the economic regime characterized by large, public corporations run by professional
managers representing various functional domains of expertise, and promoted a shift to "investor capitalism.
The tax-reforms reduced the federal income but the inflow
of foreign capital into the American economy enabled the Reagan Administration to eat the cake and have it too: while Reagan was
fond of speaking of "rolling back the state," he had larger budget deficits than any other post-World War II president, and
government bonds served to finance the sharp increase in military spending in the 1980s. In fact, the issuing of government bonds
closely followed the budget deficits in the Reagan era.
3
Investor capitalism
The new economic advisors, equipped with the new finance
theory, advocated a liberalization of regulatory frameworks enabling new financial operations. By the mid-1980s, a wave of so-called
hostile takeovers strongly contributed to the decline in managerial capitalism, the economic regime characterized by large, public
corporations run by professional managers representing various functional domains of expertise, and promoted a shift to "investor
capitalism," an economic regime closely bound up with the emergence of an increasingly dominant finance industry. As the American
economy overflowed with capital, there were opportunities for a new class of professional finance professionals to raise capital, to
buy large conglomerate firms being underrated after 1970s bear markets, and to divest them. Permissive regulators endorsed economic
theories that regarded hostile takeovers as a legitimate mechanism serving to eliminate poorly managed firms with low-growth
opportunities and therefore playing a key role in renewing and invigorating the economy. Such theoretically logical arguments were,
however, not supported by empirical evidence as it was primarily sound and well-functioning companies that were subject to hostile
takeover bids.
4
Regardless of the legitimacy of the new forms of
financial engineering, strongly dependent on the ability to issue junk bonds popular among the new generation of finance industry
actors such as Michael Milken, the new threat to corporate survival made CEOs and directors aware of the need to pay close attention
to the market valuation of the stock. The popularity of agency theory and its insistence on the creation of shareholder value as the
sole legitimate objective of the corporation further underlined the firm's orientation towards the finance market. In the new
political and regulatory environment of the 1980s, the focus shifted from long-term survival and economic stability, i.e., virtues
of managerial capitalism, to short-term capital accumulation and the ability to live with the turmoil of the ups and downs of the
economy. Managers had traditionally been paid to secure long-term and stable growth and to cater to a variety of constituencies,
while in the new economic regime, that of investor capitalism, high returns on investment and the one-sided focus of shareholder
enrichment were rewarded. Managers started to "think like shareholders."
The popularity of agency theory and its insistence on the creation of
shareholder value as the sole legitimate objective of the corporation further underlined the firm's orientation towards the
finance market.
The inflow of capital into the U.S. economy had also
created a new form of finance industry actor, the fund manager. While fund managers controlled 20% of shares of a stock-listed
company in 1970, in 2005, the comparable figure was 60%.
5
In the
ideal case of market-based transactions, an investor being unsatisfied with the financial performance of the firm acts through
exit
rather
than
voice
(in Albert Hirschman's terms), i.e., he or she sells the
stock. In the case where one single actor holds large shares of the stock, the selling of the shares would affect the market price,
and therefore fund managers started to influence how CEOs and directors were recruited to the firms in which they held stocks, that
is, they increasingly turned to
voice
rather than
exit
.
As a consequence, CEOs and the directors with a background in finance that shared a belief in finance market efficiency and the
virtue of shareholder value creation were increasingly recruited. As both fund managers and CEOs were now compensated on the basis
of their ability to report a growth in the value of the stock, the interests of CEOs, directors, and owners converged as they were
now all serving the same finance market. In an agency theory view, this led to a reduction of the so-called agency costs.
Unfortunately, there was evidence of new forms of behavior that were not anticipated by free-market protagonists.
If markets were efficient, why would firms invest their so-called
"free cash flow" to manipulate the price of their stock rather than investing the money in productive capital, or transfer the
capital to the owners as dividends?
For instance, in the period of 1987-2007, the amount of
annual repurchases of stocks by individual firms increased eighteen-fold.
6
Agency
theory makes the assumption that finance markets are effectively pricing assets, that is, all publically available information is
reflected in a financial asset's market price. Yet, the de-regulation of the finance markets from the 1980s to promote market
efficiency coincides with a strong preference of firms to repurchase their own stock. If markets were efficient, why would then
firms invest their so-called "free cash flow" to manipulate the price of their stock rather than investing the money in productive
capital, or transfer the capital to the owners as dividends? The literature on stock repurchases offers a number of explanations but
fails to provide a unified and comprehensive view.
7
Under all
conditions, stock repurchases remain a puzzling phenomenon for free-marketeers.
In the new regime of investor capitalism, dominated by
neoclassic economic theory favouring market transactions and skeptical of the role of organizations altogether (as they to some
extent represent a market failure in terms of offering lower transaction costs vis-ŕ-vis comparable market transactions), managerial
authority has been moved to the outside of the corporation. First of all, to repeat, the shareholder value creation policy locates
the shareholders who know better than executives inside the firm where to invest the free-cash flow; if there are promising
potentials within the focal firm, capital owners will buy more shares, but if there are higher expected returns elsewhere, the
capital will be invested accordingly. Second, as a consequence of the suspicion that executives are at risk to act
opportunistically, various forms of auditing, accreditations, and credit ratings are widely used in an attempt to move the corporate
control outside of the firm. The extensive literature on auditing and the issuing of accreditations and credit ratings unfortunately
reveal that it is complicated to maintain the arm's-length distance needed between the auditor and the auditee,
8
and
in the case of credit-rating, the so-called "issuer pays" policy leads to a series of governance problems.
9
Third, the orientation towards finance markets and its
emphasis on high returns over long–term stability -- there is ample evidence of a sharp growth of recurrent financial crises after 1980
10
-- has
led to new human resources and employment practices, wherein a larger proportion of the workforce is hired on short-term contracts
and receive lower pay and fewer benefits. In addition, in the U.S., and the U.K., the two epicentra of neoliberal reforms, the level
of unionization has been in decline, further reducing the collective bargaining power of workers.
11
The
perhaps largest explanatory factor regarding the decline in long-term stability in employment is the loss in manufacturing jobs in
the U.S., and the succession of service-industry jobs offering both lower pay and lower demands for technical expertise. In
addition, in the attempt to boost shareholder value, downsizing and off-shoring have been popular among finance market-oriented
executives. By and large, the shift from the managerial capitalism of the Keynesian, post-World War II period to the neoliberal
investor capitalism brought a new theory of the firm, novel corporate governance practices, an accentuated short-term perspective on
economic value creation, and not least, a new vocabulary of how to address and speak about managerial practices and firm
performance.
The triumph of free-market thinking and neoliberal policy is perhaps
not so much to be treated as the ultimate evidence of the superior rationality of the market, as it is indicative of the decline
of the U.S. and U.K. economies and the West more broadly speaking on the global scale.
Concluding Remarks
In hindsight, after five decades of consolidation and
organization, free-market protagonists managed to move from the periphery of economic policy-making and into its very centres by the
end of the 1970s. Those who were initially regarded as outsiders and eccentrics started to claim the Nobel Memorial Prizes in
Economic Sciences by the mid-1970s, but this is, skeptics may say, not so much about "being right" (in terms of making adequate
predictions or providing policies that regulate the economy effectively) as much as it is indicative of the ability to capitalize on
strong political and economic interests being mobilized when, for example, trade unions' influence and demands for economic equality
were regarded to be too far advanced by certain groups. In addition to the ability to align capital owners and intellectuals in
financing academic departments and think tanks in the post-World War II period and in the crisis-ridden 1970s in particular,
12
macroeconomic
conditions were beneficial for the free-market cause. At the same time, it is complicated to predict the outcome from policy-making,
and there are significant influences from unforeseen events and unanticipated consequences of purposeful action in the history of
neoliberalism and free market reforms. Therefore, the triumph of free-market thinking and neoliberal policy is perhaps not so much
to be treated as the ultimate evidence of the superior rationality of the market as economists like Friedrich von Hayek and Milton
Friedman would assume, as it is indicative of the decline of the U.S. and U.K. economies and the West more broadly speaking on the
global scale as suggested by economic statistics.
13
While finance theory professors are fond of
speaking of finance markets as being "the brain of capitalist system," the events of 2008 rendered such statements subject to
doubt, to say the least.
The enormous growth of financial markets and the finance
industry is also a topic subject to much scholarly and media attention, and while finance theory professors are fond of speaking of
finance markets as being "the brain of capitalist system," the events of 2008 rendered such statements subject to doubt, to say the
least. In addition, the free-market capitalism being dreamed about by neoliberal intellectuals since the 1930s does by no means
imply a diminished state but rather the government and state agencies becoming an ally of capital owners, serving to rearticulate
the welfare state into a "neoliberal ownership society state." Whether that is a sustainable role of the state, or if it rewards
certain groups at an intolerable level is subject to ongoing discussions.
This article draw on A. Styhre
(2014)
Management and Neoliberalism: Connecting Policies and Practices
(New
York & London: Routledge)
Alexander Styhre
, Ph.D (Lund University) is Chair of
Organization Theory and Management, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Styhre has published
widely in the field of organization studies and is the author of several research monographs and textbooks. Alexander is the
Editor-in-Chief of
Scandinavian Journal of Management.
Jerri-Lynn here. This is
the latest installment in Justin Mikulka's excellent series on the fracking beat,
Finances
of Fracking: Shale Industry Drills More Debt Than Profit
. The industry lacks even the excuse of profit to justify
the environmental costs it inflicts – yet the mainstream media continue to swallow industry waffle. I've crossposted other
articles in the series, and I encourage interested readers to look at them – the entire series is well worth your time.
By Justin Mikulka, a freelance writer, audio and video producer living in Trumansburg, NY.
Originally published at
DeSmog
Blog
2018 was the year the oil
and gas industry promised that its darling, the shale fracking revolution, would stop focusing on endless production and
instead turn a profit for its investors. But as the year winds to a close, it's clear that hasn't happened.
Instead, the fracking
industry has helped set new
records
for
U.S. oil production while continuing to lose huge amounts of money -- and that was before the recent crash in oil prices.
But plenty of people in
the industry and media make it sound like a much different, and more profitable, story.
Broken Promises and Record Production
Going into this year, the
fracking industry needed to prove it was a good investment (and not just for its CEOs, who are garnering
massive
paychecks
).
In January,
The
Wall Street Journal touted the prospect
of frackers finally making "real money for the first time" this year. "Shale
drillers are heeding growing calls from investors who have chastened the companies for pumping ever more oil and gas even as
they incur losses doing so," oil and energy reporter Bradley Olson wrote.
Olson's story quoted an
energy asset manager making the (always) ill-fated prediction about the oil and gas industry that
this time will
be different.
Is this time going to be
different? I think yes, a little bit," said energy asset manager Will Riley. "Companies will look to increase growth a little,
but at a more moderate pace."
Despite this early
optimism,
Bloomberg noted in
February
that even the Permian Basin -- "America's hottest oilfield" -- faced "hidden pitfalls" that could "hamstring"
the industry.
They were right.
Those pitfalls turned out to be the ugly reality of the fracking industry's finances.
And this time was
not different.
On the edge of the Permian
in New Mexico,
The
Albuquerque Journal
reported the industry is "on pace this year to leap past last year's record oil production," according
to Ryan Flynn, executive director of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association. And yet that oil has at times been discounted as
much as
$20
a barrel
compared to world oil prices because New Mexico doesn't have the infrastructure to move all of it.
Who would be foolish
enough to produce more oil than the existing infrastructure could handle in a year when the industry promised restraint and a
focus on profits? New Mexico, for one. And North Dakota. And Texas.
Texas is experiencing a
similar story. Oilprice.com cites a
Goldman
Sachs
prediction of discounts "around $19-$22 per [barrel]" for the fourth quarter of 2018 and through the first three
quarters of next year.
Oil producers in fracking
fields across the country seem to have resisted the urge to reign in production and instead produced record volumes of oil in
2018. In the process -- much like the
tar
sands industry in Canada
-- they have created a situation where the market devalues their oil. Unsurprisingly, this is not a
recipe for profits.
Shale Oil Industry 'More Profitable Than Ever'
--
Or
Is It?
However,
Reuters
recently
analyzed 32 fracking companies and declared that "U.S. shale firms are more profitable than ever after a strong third
quarter." How is this possible?
Reading a bit
further reveals what Reuters considers "profits."
"The group's cash flow
deficit has narrowed to $945 million as U.S.benchmark crude hit $70 a barrel and production soared," reported Reuters.
So, "more profitable than
ever" means that those 32 companies are running a deficit of nearly $1 billion. That does not meet the accepted
definition
of profit.
A
separate
analysis
released earlier this month by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis and The Sightline
Institute also reviewed 32 companies in the fracking industry and reached the same conclusion: "The 32 mid-size
U.S.exploration companies included in this review reported nearly $1 billion in negative cash flows through September."
The numbers don't lie.
Despite the highest oil prices in years and record amounts of oil production, the fracking industry continued to spend more
than it made in 2018. And somehow, smaller industry losses can still be interpreted as being "more profitable than ever."
The Fracking Industry's Fuzzy Math
One practice the fracking
industry uses to obfuscate its long money-losing streak is to change the goal posts for what it means to be profitable.
The
Wall Street Journal recently highlighted
this practice, writing: "Claims of low 'break-even' prices for shale drilling
hardly square with frackers' bottom lines."
The industry likes to talk
about
low
"break-even"
numbers and how individual wells are profitable -- but somehow the companies themselves keep losing money.
This can lead to statements like this one from Chris Duncan, an energy analyst at Brandes Investment Partners:
"You always scratch
your head as to how they can have these well economics that can have double-digit returns on investment, but it never flows
through to the total company return."
Head-scratching, indeed.
The explanation is pretty
simple: Shale companies are not counting many of their operating expenses in the "break-even" calculations. Convenient for
them, but highly misleading about the economics of fracking because factoring in the costs of running one of these companies
often leads those so-called profits from the black and into the red.
The Wall Street Journal
explains the flaw in the fracking industry's questionable break-even claims: "break-evens generally exclude such key costs as
land, overhead and even at times transportation."
Other tricks, The Wall
Street Journal notes, include companies only claiming the break-even prices of their most profitable land (known in the
industry as "sweet spots") or using artificially low costs for drilling contractors and oil service companies.
While the mystery of
fracking industry finances appears to be solved, the mystery of why oil companies are allowed to make such misleading
claims remains.
Why does the fracking
industry continue to receive more investments from Wall Street despite breaking its "promises" this year?
Because that is how
Wall
Street makes money
. Whether fracking companies are profitable or not doesn't really matter to Wall Street executives who
are getting rich making the loans that the fracking industry struggles to repay.
An excellent example of
this is the risk that
rising
interest rates pose
to the fracking industry. Even shale companies that have made profits occasionally have done so while
also
amassing
large debts
. As interest rates rise, those companies will have to borrow at higher rates, which increases operating costs
and decreases the likelihood that shale companies losing cash will ever pay back that debt.
Continental Resources, one
of the largest fracking companies, is often touted as an excellent investment. Investor's Business Daily
recently
noted t
hat "[w]ithin the Oil& Gas-U.S.Exploration & Production industry, Continental is the fourth-ranked stock with a
strong 98 out of a highest-possible 99 [Investor's Business Daily] Composite Rating."
And yet when
Simply
Wall St.
analyzed the company's ability to pay back its over $6 billion in debt, the stockmarket news site concluded that
Continental isn't well positioned to repay that debt. However, it noted "[t]he sheer size of Continental Resources means it is
unlikely to default or announce bankruptcy anytime soon." For frackers, being at the top of the industry apparently means
being too big to fail.
As interest rates rise,
common sense might suggest that Wall Street would rein in its lending to shale companies. But when has common sense applied to
Wall Street?
The Chronicle notes the
epic money-losing streak for the industry and how fracking bankruptcies have already ended up "stiffing lenders and investors
on more than $70 billion in outstanding loans."
So, is the party over?
Not according to Katherine
Spector,
a
research scholar
at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. She explains how Wall Street will reconcile
investing in these fracking firms during a period of higher interest rates: "Banks are going to make more money [through
higher interest rates], so they're going to want to get more money out the door."
1. The
Sightline Institute methodology had 33 cos. Not 32. I would bet the Reuters reporter took out one company out from the
analysis. Bear in mind XOP has 72 or so companies so there is a lot of scope for cherry picking there too.
2. What
bank wants to run an oil company? The banks lent to a sector which conned them. I guess rates were too low for too long. Those
loans/bonds are only recoverable if oil prices are high. The oil men know they are long a massive call option, and you can't
take it off them. They can't get new money so they won't give back the old.
3.
Diamondback and maybe 8 others make money. Infrastructure in the right place and good geologies.
4. The
numbers are unfair to Andarko cos the cut off misses a bunch of cash coming back in q3
Remember Enron? We're clearly not smart enough to understand the genius of how this is profitable. I guess we should
just step aside and watch the smart guys spin straw into gold. I'm sure they will share the wealth with the land
owners right?
These oil men are not stupid. They like to get their DUCs in a row – wells drilled but uncompleted. If oil goes up
enough they can open the DUCs in less than 2 months. Its the weakly capitalized ones who will pump oil out of a
reservoir with low oil prices to service debt. Also by drilling they often validate a lease which would void if
they didnt drill. However by not pumping they dont have to pay any royalties – just rents.
Below $50 on WTI a lot of the sector doesn't generate enough cashflow to meet investment plans.
I think a lot of the funding is with junk bonds. So most of those bonds are sold to investors, including ETFs, mutual
funds, and pension funds. Many of the banks are just middlemen and will probably not be left holding too much of the bag if
they haven't kept them on their own books or written lots of stupid derivatives on them.
This
should be a much smaller sector than the housing sector so a sub-prime mortgage bond-like crash shouldn't have the impact
of 2008. But who knows, the main thing aI marvel about with the financial sector is their unerring ability to take
something that should be relatively safe, weaponize it, and threaten global financial stability with it.
I've watched in horror from a distance in regards to fracking, and then a few days ago, this planning area map for open
hydraulic fracking leases has me surrounded in a sea of red
We're on
a fractured rock aquifer in the foothills here that's separate from the one on the valley floor, and because it gets scant use
in Ag, and not many people live here (we're 2.5x as big as Paradise,Ca. in size, with 1/10th of the population and at a
similar altitude) nobody's hard rock wells had any issues with going dry during the lengthy drought and having to drill
hundreds if not a thousand feet deeper in search of H20, as was occurring to the farmers et al on the fruited plain.
I sure
don't like the idea of a fractured rock aquifer and fracking
One thing
going against us, is land is cheap here, it's nature acres, nice to look at. but no development potential, as the trees are
all in the way, and what sorry sap is going to cut down oaks a couple hundred old and level the hills to put in tiny boxes?
That
villain doesn't exist, luckily.
But if
you were to dangle large amounts of money at the owners of such low value acres, in oil leases?
And the
idea it was all a circle jerk by Wall*Street & Big Oil, to get the money!
.
Makes it even harder to swallow
Its not just the environmental damage. Banks lending to frackers will be precedent creditors. They'll keep loaning until
whatever value in the company that can be extracted in extremis has been used up. One can easily imagine the sort of
accounting Wall Street uses.
So when these companies finally go bust, faced with the diminishment of oil production, will US taxpayers be forced to bail
out the industry because of the economic/national security implications of the prospects of eviscerated US oil production
volumes? If so, Wall Street wins yet again.
A gigantic hidden cost is the liabilities associated with the resulting abandoned wells. This is why this fall there was a
Supreme Court challenge in Canada to a ruling on who gets paid first in such cases. In Canada the reclamation costs fall to
the remaining producers who share costs of the Orphan Well Association. In the US, it is completely off the books, and
therefore falls to the government to clean up abandoned plays when companies go bust.
So,
taxpayers could be on the hook both if there is a government bailout on bad loans, a al 2008/2009, AND will have to pay to
clean this up (it's expensive, by the way, there are thousands and thousands of these sites that need to be remediated). I
suspect the reason all this is happening is a strategic effort to use tax payer backstopped risk to punish Russia to daring
to exist.
This is similar to mines and old waste dumps. If the owners were limited partnerships or companies that went bankrupt
with no remaining solvent pieces, then there is no money in the kitty to clean them up. The remaining game in town then
is Superfund and state programs for inactive hazardous waste sites and orphan wells.
The
RCRA Subtitle C and D regulations in the 1980s and early 90s required landfill operators to set aside funds in
lock-boxes so that if they went bankrupt, the state could access those funds to close the landfills. The landfills
typically charge a fee per ton just to fund these financial assurance accounts and they need to keep them on file with
the states. Unfortunately, the resource extraction industry has generally been able to successfully fight against these
types of requirements as "job-killers".
One economic problem with fracked gas wells is they only produce large quantities of gas for a short time. It's usually 2 to 3
years. After that production tanks. I suspect a similar thing happens with fracked oil wells. I I've in NY close to the PA
boarder. For about 4 years, fracking was really booming. Now it has almost stopped. You see big lots filled with fracking
equipment gathering rust. It didn't take most people long to realize that only a few made money while the rest pay the bill
for all of the damage done. I'm glad in NY state they banned fracking. I own 50 acres and refused to buy into a leasing deal
before fracking was banned. My biggest concern was my well water becoming contaminated as well as losing control over how my
land is used. A big problem is that a company is allowed to drill under your land even if you don't have a lease agreement
with them. They have to pay you but they can also pollute your well. If that happens your property becomes of no value and
useless.
We'd become curious about folks moving to the NE tip of PA, as it looked like NJT might actually reopen rail service to all
those $80-$140K houses, right before Williams/ Transco's Constitution Pipeline finally caused hundreds of new fracked
wells? We'd guessed the only effect of the '16 election was who'd be prodding retirees into GasLand Poconos. Seems like a
great location for a remake of Green Acres meets Deliverance?
https://www.njherald.com/20180410/lackawanna-cutoff-project-may-finally-be-back-on-track
Looks like there's a mess of unwatchable YouTube videos. I wonder if refugees have any idea of what could happen up there?
Yes, when liquidity has a much smaller time constant then actual production, the rules of liquidity will decouple from the
production and actually dominate the process.
This is
well-known from physics, and why many economic theories are obviously and fundamentally wrong.
As long
as the economy is financialized with almost infinite velocity, nothing in the real world (including profits) will actually
drive the system. This is trivially obvious.
This kind of thing makes me chuckle. So the CEOs and other suits at the fracking companies are scamming their investors to
enrich themselves. Hard to feel bad about it (even though a fair number of the investors are probably "institutional") if it
wasn't for the needless environmental destruction that goes along with these two groups of elites ripping each other off.
Very broadly speaking, wouldn't this be a good real-world example of MMT? There is a natural resource we want to extract, we
have the manpower and machinery to do it, so we just do it? The money to fund it is limitless bound only by the constraints of
the resource itself. Wall street is just a rent-extracting intermediary
It's ironic that, having lived thru the 80's when the financial "geniuses" took over and it was all about ROI – Westinghouse
somehow came to the conclusion that you could make 6% on golf courses (they didn't even know, I don't think) instead of 2% on
industrials (that was probably correct) so they basically sold the store. Except for the nukes, sigh.
The
comments above, apes's for instance, point to the whole slosh of money. And there is some truth to that. But in this case, I'm
afraid much of the answer is that people in the oil bidness make oil wells because that's what they know how to do. ROI, Scmoi
O I.
Of all
the industries that are gone because they weren't allowed to "do what they know" because it was "cheaper to offshore" – read a
greater ROI to Wall Street – how come the worst is the only one that keeps its nose to the grindstone and does the actual work
it knows how to do?
No, what I meant was those other ones just "diversified" or whatever the word of the moment was, just did whatever made
the people at the top money.
But
oil/gas is different. They just "have to go get it". It's like termites and wood. I respect that, even if it's the wrong
thing to do. If I must refer to The Terminator again, "it's what they do. It's ALL they do".
PS:
there is oil/gas everywhere. I worked in the "bidness,"btw.
So frackers can take out billions of unpayable debt and discharge it in bankruptcy, but I get to carry a millstone of student
debt around my neck for the rest of my life? Great system we got here. Pretty flipping great.
You should have issued a junk bond on yourself instead of taking a student loan. You could then just default on the junk
bond (after having written some derivatives to short it to profit from your financial demise).
I have a different take on all this fracking.
I believe it was decided at the highest levels of our government to support it; including financially if necessary. The basis
for this support and secrecy would be national security. Easy enough to see how this could have transpired.
All that
said, if my theory is correct, the frackers will be bailed in some form or fashion. Probably the next QE will pick up the tab
or perhaps the DOD is funding it indirectly already.
Your take parallels Pym of Nantucket's. Ever since the end of WWII, the United States has been allowed to just 'print
money', first to pay for its contest with the former Soviet Union for global hegemony and then to 'pay for' its energy and
the products its industries could no longer profitably produce – at least as profitably as they could by off-shoring those
industries. This is all really just an extension of 'petrodollar warfare' – gigantic bluff the US can continue to go it
alone if necessary – having salted the central banks of 'developing countries' with all the 'reserve currencies' they
realistically need, at least if the depredations of the likes of George Soros are held in check.
In
summary, fracked oil is propping up not just Big Oil but the US military industrial complex and ultimately Wall Street and
its banks. As long as the US can control the world's access to energy (and possibly retard its transition to renewable
sources?), US politicians and bankers can continue to 'print money' (i.e. export debt) and sustain the whole rotten edifice
of US and Western 'political economy'.
As
usual Michael Hudson has it right:
"Finance is the new form of warfare – without the expense of a military overhead and an occupation against unwilling
hosts." It is a competition in credit creation to buy foreign resources, real estate, public and privatized
infrastructure, bonds and corporate stock ownership. Who needs an army when you can obtain the usual objective (monetary
wealth and asset appropriation) simply by financial means?
The time will come, as a result of this, that the US
will
have to go it alone. They are turning your money to
shit. Unless our corporate masters sell out the rest of the country to foreigners, like they already have much of our
nation's productive capital.We won't be alone, but like Greece, we will no longer be independent or free.
This kind of crap increasingly pervades our economy. Military. Finance. Healthcare. Like money with Gresham's Law, bad
investment drives out good. Every cost is also someone's profit opportunity, so costs are magnifying and spinning out of
control. More and more the welfare of society depends on 'borrowed' money.
It's like the modern day pyramids. Nicely dressed piles of rocks in the desert. Total waste and destruction of
resources. It also destroyed the social capital of Ancient Egypt, and turned them into slaves of Pharoah. It was the
people of Egypt who paid for the pyramids, with their labor and their liberties.
So
that's what else is going on. Your freedoms are going down those wells. And up the towers of finance. The Egyptians, at
least, got something to look at. They already had the barren wastelands.
At least these depressed oil prices from over fracking in the US will make Saudi Arabia poorer. Possibly poorer to the point
that widespread social unrest ensues there, leading to the dethroning of the House Of Saud, which, in turn, will cause the
dethroning of their chief covert friend and ally Israel.
Then in
order to stave off social unrest here in the US, we'll have to cut off ties with these two roguish troublemakers in the
region. Much needed balance of power will then be restored to the region with Iran and Syria restored to their former glory,
sparking peace and prosperity from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Egypt, Somalia and Yemen.
I don't
know if the pieces on the chessboard will ever realign this way, but it's rather amusing to speculate that this realignment
could possibly be triggered by the stupidity and shortsightedness of the US to over frack!
You got it backwards. KSA and Russia need lower oil prices to force US producers off the field and get their supply chains
back. Your thinking like a 1970's person. Think 2010's.
This is a non-climate change reason why developing electric vehicles in North America, Europe, and China would be good.
It would strip away much of the demand for oil which is a major funding source for Russia and KSA.
Jesus Herbert Walker Christ. Is anyone else getting sick of this stupid series? If you keep writing the same article every
year, and Wall Street keeps engaging in the same apparently irrational behavior, you might want to rethink your smug pose and
ask yourself whether there might be some additional digging to do to understand what the hell is going on.
The
contrast between this series and Hubert Horan's Uber work is striking. Horan not only points out the fact that Uber is
unprofitable, but also clearly shows who has an interest in extending the hype, and how and why the bandwagon keeps rolling.
This series is the complete opposite.
Fracking
"investors" aren't getting ripped off, and they're not stupid. You've just completely missed half the point of the Master
LImited Partnership structure. For the limited partners, the losses are a feature, not a bug. Until MLP shares are cashed in,
they generate tax losses for the LPs. Those losses are valuable generally, but 501c3s, especially love them because they allow
non-profits to offset Unrelated Business Income.
Go to
Guidestar or Nonprofit Explorer and pull down the 990T of any nonprofit with a few billion dollars worth of invested assets.
Line 5 (usually blank but filled in as a long attachment at the end) is almost invariably a who's who of the fracking
industry, with thousands of dollars in losses from each company. In any given year, LPs only liquidate positions in a small
number of the companies their holding each year, allowing them to avoid taxes with the annual losses, then cash in (at least
sometimes) when the value of the company is high.
The
industry's a scam, but just as much of the taxpayers as of the investors.
Do you make a habit of putting your foot in your mouth and chewing? Because you did it here, by copping a 'tude while being
100% wrong.
Passive tax exempt investors have no use for losses. Zero. Zip. Nada.
An
investor in a limited partnership is a passive investor. Income from a passive investment NEVER generates Unrelated
Business Income. If the idiocy you presented was correct, no endowment or public pension fund could ever show a net profit
from their investments in private equity and hedge funds without it being taxed as UBI. There would literally be no private
equity industry as we know it because most of its money comes from tax exempt investors, namely public pension funds,
endowments, foundations, private pension funds.
UBI
results from activity conducted by the not for profit. The classic example is an art museum's gift shop. See IRS
Publication 598 (emphasis ours):
Unrelated business income is the income from a trade or business
regularly
conducted by an exempt organization
and not substantially related to the performance by the organization
of its exempt purpose or function, except that the organization uses the profits derived from this activity.
Limited partners are required to be passive and have nada to do with the operation of the partnership. They typically make
double sure that their investment income won't be characterized as business income. As one tax expert confirmed by e-mail:
Endowments/exempts/pension funds can wind up having UBTI when they don't structure their investments through
corporations. They rarely fail to do this structuring. They wouldn't put themselves in the position of deliberately
incur UBTI and then go hunting for losses to offset it.
So it
is possible that you heard of a not-very-competent endowment that wound up seeking tax losses, but that would be highly
unusual, when you incorrectly said the opposite.
There
are other tells that you don't even remotely understand the how limited partnerships work, such as your comment "In any
given year, LPs only liquidate positions in a small number of the companies their holding each year, allowing them to avoid
taxes with the annual losses."
Limited partnerships are pass-through entities. LPs receive their pro-rata share of income and loss annually. They do not
need to sell to recognize gains or losses resulting from their participation in operations.
The
mainstream journalist who first wrote about the pervasiveness of losses in fracking after oil prices started trading in the
new normal of $70 a barrel and below, John Dizard of the Financial Times, explained why frackers would keep drilling at
losses as long as they could get their hands on funding, so this is entirely consistent with his forecast. And Dizard's
column is for wealthy individuals and he is conversant with tax issues, unlike you.
Politically Obama was a "despicable coward", or worse, a marionette.
Notable quotes:
"... A 50 state strategy, or no 50 state strategy, it really doesn't matter. Democrats were going to take losses. The key is, making sure the party is unified enough to run public policy courses. ..."
"... Your points make little sense in the face of what people wanted in 2016 that Obama could have delivered without interference from the Republicans. Things like anti-trust enforcement, SEC enforcement aka jailing the banksters, not going into Syria, not supporting the war in Yemen (remember he did both of those on his own without Congress), not making the Bush tax cuts permanent, not staying silent on union issues and actually wearing those oft mentioned comfortable shoes while walking a picket line, the list of what could have been done and that people supported goes on and on. None of which required approval from Congress. ..."
"... And speaking of the ACA, we know that Obama and others did whatever they could to kill single payer and replace it with Romneycare 1.5. The language in the bill and the controversy surrounding it show that no one thought this would give them a short term political advantage. If anything, the run up to the vote finally made enough citizens realize that they didn't hate government insurance, they just hated insurance. And here were the Democrats and Obama, forcing people to buy expensive insurance. ..."
"... He had a mandate for change. He had a majorities in both houses. He had the perfect bully pulpit. He chose not to use any of it. He and others killed the support for local parties. The Democrats needed the JFA with Hillary because Obama had pretty much bankrupted the party in 2012. A commitment to all 50 states would have been huge and would have helped Hillary get on the ground where she needed to shore up support by a few thousand votes. ..."
"... Obama and the Democrats took losses from 2008 on because they promised to do what their constituents voted them in to do and then decided not to do it. ..."
"... People don't have Republican fatigue. They don't have Democrat fatigue. They simply don't see the point in voting for people who won't do what they're voted in to do. ..."
"... The citizens of this country want change. They want higher wages and lower prices. They want less war. They want less government interference. They want their kids to grow up with more opportunities than they did. ..."
"Democratic left playing a long game to get 'Medicare for All'" [Bloomberg Law]. "'We don't have the support that we need,'
said Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who will co-chair the Progressive Caucus. She said that she'd favor modest expansions
of Medicare or Medicaid eligibility as a step toward Medicare for All. 'I am a big bold thinker; I'm also a good practical
strategist,' Jayapal said.
'It's why the Medicare for All Caucus was started, because we want to get information to our members so people feel
comfortable talking about the attacks we know are going to come.'" • So many Democrat McClellans; so few Democrat Grants.
"Progressives set to push their agenda in Congress and on the campaign trail. The GOP can't wait." [NBC]. "While the party
has moved left on health care, many Democrats seem more comfortable offering an option to buy into Medicare or a similar public
plan rather than creating one single-payer plan that replaces private insurance and covers everyone. Progressives, led by Rep.
Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and her Medicare For All PAC, plan to whip up support for the maximalist version and advance
legislation in 2019." • The "maximalist version" is exactly what Jayapal herself, quoted by Bloomberg, says she will not seek.
Not sure whether this is Democrat cynicism, sloppy Democrat messaging, or poor reporting. Or all three!
The problem is unlike 1933 large sections of the electorate just wanted more Republican
economics to "deal" with the aftermath. That is the difference between a moderate
recession(historically) and a collapse like the early 1930's had when the British Empire and
the de Rothschild dynasty finally collapsed.
40% didn't want anything the Obama Administration came up with succeed. 40% wanted more
than they could possible politically come up with and that left 20% to actually get something
done. You see why the Democrats had to take losses.
Even if Health Care, which was controversial in the party was nixed for more "stimulus",
Democrats look weak. Politically, Stimulus wasn't that popular and "fiscal deficit" whiners were going to whine
and there are a lot of them.
Naked Capitalism ignores this reality instead, looking for esoteric fantasy. I would argue
Democrats in 2009-10 looked for short term political gain by going with Health Care reform
instead of slowly explaining the advantage of building public assets via stimulus, because
the party was to split on Health Care to create a package that would satisfy enough
people.
Similar the Republican party, since Reagan had done the opposite, took short term
political gain in 2016, which was a mistake, due to their Clinton hatred.
Which is now backfiring and the business cycle is not in a kind spot going forward, which
we knew was likely in 2016.
So not only does "Republican fatigue" hurt in 2018, your on the political defensive for
the next cycle. Short-termism in politics is death.
A 50 state strategy, or no 50 state strategy, it really doesn't matter. Democrats were
going to take losses. The key is, making sure the party is unified enough to run public
policy courses.
I truly don't understand your point of view. I also don't understand your claim that NC
deals in fantasy.
Your points make little sense in the face of what people wanted in 2016 that Obama could
have delivered without interference from the Republicans. Things like anti-trust enforcement,
SEC enforcement aka jailing the banksters, not going into Syria, not supporting the war in
Yemen (remember he did both of those on his own without Congress), not making the Bush tax
cuts permanent, not staying silent on union issues and actually wearing those oft mentioned
comfortable shoes while walking a picket line, the list of what could have been done and that
people supported goes on and on. None of which required approval from Congress.
There's even the bland procedural tactic of delaying the release of the Obamacare exchange
premium price increases until after the election in 2016. He could have delayed that notice
several months and saved Hillary a world of hurt at the polls. But he chose not to use the
administrative tools at his disposal in that case. He also could have seen the writing on the
wall with the multiple shut down threats and gotten ahead of it by asking Congress that if
you are deemed an essential employee you will continue to be paid regardless of whether your
department is funded during a shutdown. With 80% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck
that would have been a huge deal.
And speaking of the ACA, we know that Obama and others did whatever they could to kill
single payer and replace it with Romneycare 1.5. The language in the bill and the controversy
surrounding it show that no one thought this would give them a short term political
advantage. If anything, the run up to the vote finally made enough citizens realize that they
didn't hate government insurance, they just hated insurance. And here were the Democrats and
Obama, forcing people to buy expensive insurance.
Obama took a huge organization that could have helped him barnstorm the country (OFA) just
like what Bernie is doing now and killed it early in his first term. He had a mandate for
change. He had a majorities in both houses. He had the perfect bully pulpit. He chose not to
use any of it. He and others killed the support for local parties. The Democrats needed the JFA with Hillary because Obama had pretty much bankrupted the party in 2012. A commitment to
all 50 states would have been huge and would have helped Hillary get on the ground where she
needed to shore up support by a few thousand votes.
Obama and the Democrats took losses from 2008 on because they promised to do what their
constituents voted them in to do and then decided not to do it. By the time 2016 rolled
around, there were estimates which placed 90% of the counties in the US as not having
recovered from the disaster in 2007. Hillary ran on radical incrementalism aka the status
quo. Who in their right mind could have supported the status quo in 2016?
The Democrats lost seats at all levels of government because of their own incompetence,
because of their cowardice, because of their lazy assumptions that people had nowhere else to
go. So when record numbers of people didn't vote they lost by slim margins in states long
considered True Blue. There is nothing cyclical about any of that.
People don't have Republican fatigue. They don't have Democrat fatigue. They simply don't
see the point in voting for people who won't do what they're voted in to do.
The citizens of
this country want change. They want higher wages and lower prices. They want less war. They
want less government interference. They want their kids to grow up with more opportunities
than they did.
Obama and Hillary and all the rest of the Democrats stalking MSM cameras could
have delivered on some of that but chose not to. And here we are. With President Trump. And
even his broken clock gets something right twice a day, whereas Team Blue has a 50/50 chance
of making the right decision and chooses wrong everytime.
Please provide better examples of your points if you truly want to defend your
argument.
And, that often mentioned reason for voting for Democrats, the Supreme Court. Neither
Obama nor the Democrats fought for their opportunity to put their person on the Supreme
Court. Because of norms I guess. Which actually makes some sense because it broke norms.
Because they simply don't care
I truly don't understand why you think any of that. Most mystifying is your claim that
anyone thought ACA would provide short term political benefit?
You know how Obamacare could have given Hillary a short term political gain? If Obama had
directed HHS to delay releasing any premium increase notices until after the election.
Otherwise, you'd have to support your argument a lot better. NC has the least fantastical
commentary base of any website I've seen.
This is complete and utter nonsense. Your calling depicting NC as "fantasy" is a textbook
example of projection on your part.
The country was terrified and demoralized when Obama took office. Go read the press in
December 2008 and January 2009, since your memory is poor. He not only had window of
opportunity to do an updated 100 days, the country would have welcomed. But he ignored it and
the moment passed.
Obama pushed heath care because that was what he had campaigned on and had a personal
interest in it. He had no interest in banking and finance and was happy to let Geither run
that show.
As for stimulus, bullshit. Trump increased deficit spending with his tax cuts and no one
cares much if at all. The concern re deficit spending was due to the fact that the Obama
economic team was the Clinton (as in Bob Rubin) economics team, which fetishized balanced
budgets or even worse, surpluses. We have explained long form that that stance was directly
responsible for the rapid increase in unproductive household debt, most of all mortgage debt,
which produced the crisis.
Relotius, meanwhile, has "gone underground," according to the Guardian, returning several
awards for his work while being stripped of others, such as CNN's two Journalist of the Year
awards. A German publication also stripped the journalist of a similar accolade.
At least 14 articles by Relotius for Der Spiegel were falsified , according to Steffen
Klusmann, its editor-in-chief. They include an award-winning piece about a Syrian boy called
Mouwiya who believed his anti-government graffiti had triggered the civil war. Relotius
alleged he had interviewed the boy via WhatsApp .
The magazine – a prestigious weekly – is investigating if the interview took
place and whether the boy exists. Relotius won his fourth German reporter prize this month
with a story headlined "Child's Play".
Klusmann admitted the publication still had no idea how many articles were affected. On
Thursday it was revealed that parts of an interview with a 95-year-old Nazi resistance
fighter in the US were fabricated. -
The Guardian
According to Relotius' Der Spiegel colleague Juan Moreno - who busted Relotius after
conducting his own research after his bosses failed to listen to his doubts , released a video
in which he attempted to describe how Relotius got away with his fabrications.
"He was the superstar of German journalism if one's honest, and if his stories had been
true, that would have been fully justified to say so, but they were not," said Moreno. "At the
start it was the small mistakes, things that seemed too hard to believe that made me
suspicious."
In addition to having several awards stripped from him, the 33-year-old Relotius now faces
embezzlement charges for allegedly soliciting donations for Syrian orphans from readers "with
any proceeds going to his personal account," according to the BBC . On Thursday, Relotius denied the
accusations.
Here's a comment I wrote, lifted from the thread at the original post. It's in response to
a previous comment that references the postwar reconstruction era.
"I have thought the WWII period is enormously undervalued as a moment of social thought
and system-building. The global capitalist class suffered a tremendous loss of power during
the 1930s everywhere, even where it was "saved", but there was no immediate plan for how to
restructure on the basis of the new dispensation. I think a lot of that planning took place
as the war was waged during the early-mid 40s, so that a system could congeal the elements of
experimentation already on the books. This took different forms in different countries, but
it was progressive overall in a way that would have been impossible a generation earlier --
and was to become impossible two generations later when the class configuration had shifted
once more.
"The argument beneath the argument in this post is that the cultural shifts we've gone
through, like the rise of neoliberal ideology (or family of ideologies) is incomprehensible
without recognition that the power and organizational dynamics of the global system evolved
to be incompatible with the previous social democratic regime. I'm fairly sure of that. What
I'm less sure of is exactly how that evolution took place and what its main constituents are.
Exploring that, it seems to me, is what political economy should be about.
"What I'm not happy with is a political environment in which ideas are regarded as prime
movers in and of themselves, where "capitalism" becomes a particular bundle of values and
predilections and neoliberalism just a more extreme version of the same. It puts the terrain
of politics in struggles over consciousness (and therefore the microregulation of individual
thought and behavior) rather than over the power to change the rules we live by. Not that
consciousness doesn't matter, of course, but if the most powerful determinant of it is how we
live and what constraints we have to adapt to, evangelizing people is not the best way to
alter that either."
I certainly do not think it was one thing, but if there was one thing above all that
mattered, it was the decision of the rich to pay executives, especially ceo's, a whole lot
more, and to pay for the ideological rationalization of that policy as a theory of economics
and finance. Reducing marginal income tax rates made it practical.
The professional manager, the balancer of many stakeholders, had been at odds with the
capitalist, to the end of the 1960's. Soaring CEO compensation, tied to financialization, set
in motion the change that changed everything.
There is no need to talk about capitalism or neoliberalism it is Wealth that matters,
wealth as a being with its own trajectory around which names of nations and oligarchs are
appended as accidents. Wealth is a mysterious being, it has the will to remain to continue
existing and changes agents for its survival continuously. The poor and the rich are the
material visible aspect of that invisible being that is Wealth. But being invisible does not
mean it does not exist. Wealth manipulates all of us in order to exist and the very rich are
as much contingent accidents in the life of Wealth as the very poor. All are necessary for
its existence.
From David Harvey's
A Brief History of Neoliberalism Part 11 – The Reagan/Thatcher neoliberal legacy: a bizarre form of a sinister
political doctrine from which it would be difficult one to escape
But Thatcher had to fight the battle on other fronts. A noble rearguard action against
neoliberal policies was mounted in many a municipality –– Sheffield, the Greater
London Council (which Thatcher had to abolish in order to achieve her broader goals in the
1980s), and Liverpool (where half the local councillors had to be gaoled) formed active centres
of resistance in which the ideals of a new municipal socialism (incorporating many of the new
social movements in the London case) were both pursued and acted upon until they were finally
crushed in the mid-1980s.
She began by savagely cutting back central government funding to the municipalities, but
several of them responded simply by raising property taxes, forcing her to legislate against
their right to do so. Denigrating the progressive labour councils as 'loony lefties' (a phrase
the Conservative-dominated press picked up with relish), she then sought to impose neoliberal
principles through a reform of municipal finance. She proposed a 'poll tax' –– a
regressive head tax rather than a property tax –– which would rein in municipal
expenditures by making every resident pay. This provoked a huge political fight that played a
role in Thatcher's political demise .
Thatcher also set out to privatize all those sectors of the economy that were in public
ownership. The sales would boost the public treasury and rid the government of burdensome
future obligations towards losing enterprises. These state-run enterprises had to be adequately
prepared for privatization, and this meant paring down their debt and improving their
efficiency and cost structures, often through shedding labour.
Their valuation was also structured to offer considerable incentives to private capital
–– a process that was likened by opponents to 'giving away the family silver'. In
several cases subsidies were hidden in the mode of valuation –– water companies,
railways, and even state-run enterprises in the automobile and steel industries held high-value
land in prime locations that was excluded from the valuation of the enterprise as an ongoing
concern.
Privatization and speculative gains on the property released went hand in hand. But the aim
here was also to change the political culture by extending the field of personal and corporate
responsibility and encouraging greater efficiency, individual/corporate initiative, and
innovation. British Aerospace, British Telecom, British Airways, steel, electricity and gas,
oil, coal, water, bus services, railways, and a host of smaller state enterprises were sold off
in a massive wave of privatizations.
Britain pioneered the way in showing how to do this in a reasonably orderly and, for capital,
profitable way. Thatcher was convinced that once these changes had been made they would become
irreversible: hence the haste. The legitimacy of this whole movement was successfully
underpinned, however, by the extensive selling off of public housing to tenants. This vastly
increased the number of homeowners within a decade. It satisfied traditional ideals of
individual property ownership as a working-class dream and introduced a new, and often
speculative, dynamism into the housing market that was much appreciated by the middle classes,
who saw their asset values rise –– at least until the property crash of the early
1990s .
Dismantling the welfare state was, however, quite another thing. Taking on areas such as
education, health care, social services, the universities, the state bureaucracy, and the
judiciary proved difficult. Here she had to do battle with the entrenched and sometimes
traditional upper-middle-class attitudes of her core supporters .
Thatcher desperately sought to extend the ideal of personal responsibility (for example through
the privatization of health care) across the board and cut back on state obligations. She
failed to make rapid headway. There were, in the view of the British public, limits to the
neoliberalization of everything. Not until 2003, for example, did a Labour government,
against widespread opposition, succeed in introducing a fee-paying structure into British
higher education .
In all these areas it proved difficult to forge an alliance of consent for radical change. On
this her Cabinet (and her supporters) were notoriously divided (between 'wets' and 'drys') and
it took several years of bruising confrontations within her own party and in the media to win
modest neoliberal reforms. The best she could do was to try to force a culture of
entrepreneurialism and impose strict rules of surveillance, financial accountability, and
productivity on to institutions, such as universities, that were ill suited to them. Thatcher forged consent through the cultivation of a middle class that relished the joys of
home ownership, private property, individualism, and the liberation of entrepreneurial
opportunities. With working-class solidarities waning under pressure and job structures
radically changing through deindustrialization, middle-class values spread more widely to
encompass many of those who had once had a firm working-class identity .
The opening of Britain to freer trade allowed a consumer culture to flourish, and the
proliferation of financial institutions brought more and more of a debt culture into the centre
of a formerly staid British life. Neoliberalism entailed the transformation of the older
British class structure, at both ends of the spectrum.
Moreover, by keeping the City of London as a central player in global finance it increasingly
turned the heartland of Britain's economy, London and the south-east, into a dynamic centre of
ever-increasing wealth and power. Class power had not so much been restored to any traditional
sector but rather had gathered expansively around one of the key global centres of financial
operations. Recruits from Oxbridge flooded into London as bond and currency traders, rapidly
amassing wealth and power and turning London into one of the most expensive cities in the
world.
While the Thatcher revolution was prepared by the organization of consent within the
traditional middle classes who bore her to three electoral victories, the whole programme,
particularly in her first administration, was far more ideologically driven (thanks largely to
Keith Joseph) by neoliberal theory than was ever the case in the US. While from a solid
middle-class background herself, she plainly relished the traditionally close contacts between
the prime minister's office and the 'captains' of industry and finance. She frequently turned
to them for advice and in some instances clearly delivered them favours by undervaluing state
assets set for privatization . The project to restore class power –– as opposed
to dismantling working-class power –– probably played a more subconscious role in
her political evolution.
The success of Reagan and Thatcher can be measured in various ways. But I think it most useful
to stress the way in which they took what had hitherto been minority political, ideological,
and intellectual positions and made them mainstream. The alliance of forces they helped
consolidate and the majorities they led became a legacy that a subsequent generation of
political leaders found hard to dislodge.
Perhaps the greatest testimony to their success lies in the fact that both Clinton and Blair
found themselves in a situation where their room for manoeuvre was so limited that they could
not help but sustain the process of restoration of class power even against their own better
instincts. And once neoliberalism became that deeply entrenched in the English-speaking world
it was hard to gainsay its considerable relevance to how capitalism in general was working
internationally.
This is not to say, as we shall see, that neoliberalism was merely imposed elsewhere by
Anglo-American influence and power. For as these two case studies amply demonstrate, the
internal circumstances and subsequent nature of the neoliberal turn were quite different in
Britain and the US, and by extension we should expect that internal forces as well as external
influences and impositions have played a distinctive role elsewhere. Reagan and Thatcher seized on the clues they had (from Chile and New York City) and placed
themselves at the head of a class movement that was determined to restore its power. Their
genius was to create a legacy and a tradition that tangled subsequent politicians in a web of
constraints from which they could not easily escape . Those who followed, like Clinton and
Blair, could do little more than continue the good work of neoliberalization, whether they
liked it or not.
Overinvestment in stocks of retires is very common under neoliberalism.
There are several factors here: one is greed cultivated by neoliberal MSM, the second is
insufficient retirement funds (gambling with retirement savings) and the last and not least is
lack of mathematical skills an inability to use Excel for viewing their portfolio and making
informed decisions.
Notable quotes:
"... At the end of 2016, 69 percent of investors in their 60s had at least 40 percent of their 401(k) portfolio invested in stocks, up from 65 percent in 2007, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington. ..."
"... 19 percent had more than 80 percent of their 401(k) invested in stocks in 2016 ..."
"... "We had lousy forecasts in 2008. The housing market was in a tailspin," said 76-year-old John Bauer, who worked for McDonnell Douglas and Boeing Co for 36 years in St. Louis. "Today, employment is way up. The housing market is steady and corporations are flush." ..."
BOSTON (Reuters) - Nancy Farrington, a retiree who turns 75 next month, admits to being in a
constant state of anxiety over the biggest December stock market rout since Herbert Hoover was
president.
"I have not looked at my numbers. I'm afraid to do it," said Farrington, who recently moved
to Charleston, South Carolina, from Boston. "We've been conditioned to stand pat and not panic.
I sure hope my advisers are doing the same."
Retirees are worrying about their nest eggs as this month's sell-off rounds out the worst
year for stocks in a decade, and some fear they are headed for a day of reckoning like the 2008
market meltdown or dot-com crash of the early 2000s.
Retirees have less time to recover from bad investment moves than younger workers. If they
or their advisers panic and sell during a brief downturn, they may lock in a more meager
retirement. But their portfolio could be even more at risk if they hold on too long in a
prolonged decline.
"I have no way of riding it out if that happens," said Farrington. "I can feel the anxiety
in my stomach all the time."
While many industrialized countries still have generous safety nets for retirees, pensions
for U.S. private-sector workers largely have been supplanted by 401(k) accounts and other
private saving plans. That means millions of older Americans are effectively their own pension
managers.
Workers in countries like Belgium, Canada, Germany, France and Italy receive, on average,
about 65 percent of their income replaced by mandatory pensions. In the Netherlands the ratio
of benefits to lifetime average earnings is abut 97 percent, according to a 2017 Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development report.
The OECD says the comparable U.S. replacement rate from Social Security benefits is about 50
percent.
U.S. retirees had watched their private accounts mushroom during a bull stock market that
began in early 2009. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve kept interest rates near zero for years,
enticing retirees deeper into stocks than previous generations as investments like certificates
of deposit, government bonds and money-market funds generated paltry income.
At the end of 2016, 69 percent of investors in their 60s had at least 40 percent of their
401(k) portfolio invested in stocks, up from 65 percent in 2007, according to the Employee
Benefit Research Institute in Washington.
Still, fewer have gone all in on stocks in recent years. Just 19 percent had more than 80
percent of their 401(k) invested in stocks in 2016, down from 30 percent at year-end 2007,
according to nonprofit research group EBRI.
"Nothing has gone wrong, but it seems the market is trying to figure out what could go
wrong," said Brooke McMurray, a 69-year-old New York retiree who says she became a financial
news junkie after the 2007-2009 financial crisis.
"Unlike before, I now know what I own and I constantly read up on my companies," she
said.
The three major U.S. stock indexes have tumbled about 10 percent this month, weighed by
investor worries including U.S.-China trade tensions, a cooling economy and rising interest
rates, and are on track for their worst December since 1931.
The S&P 500 is headed for its worst annual performance since 2008, when Wall Street
buckled during the subprime mortgage crisis. But some are not quite ready to draw
comparisons.
"We had lousy forecasts in 2008. The housing market was in a tailspin," said 76-year-old
John Bauer, who worked for McDonnell Douglas and Boeing Co for 36 years in St. Louis. "Today,
employment is way up. The housing market is steady and corporations are flush."
Still, Bauer said he is uneasy about White House leadership. He and several other retirees
referenced U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin's recent calls to top bankers, which did more
to rattle than assure markets. U.S. stocks tumbled more than 2 percent the day before the
Christmas holiday.
Nevertheless, Bauer is prepared to ride out any market turmoil without making dramatic moves
to his retirement portfolio. "When it's up, I watch it. When it's down, I don't," he said. And there are some factors helping take the sting out of the market rout, said Larry Glazer,
managing partner of Boston-based Mayflower Advisors LLC.
When we reported last week that Imran Awan and his wife had been indicted by a grand jury on
4 counts, including bank fraud and making false statements related to some home equity loans,
we also noted that those charges could simply be placeholders for further developments yet to
come. Now, according to a new report from the
Daily Caller , the more interesting component of the FBI's investigation could be tied to
precisely why New York Democrat Representative Yvette Clarke quietly agreed in early 2016 to
simply write-off $120,000 in missing electronics tied to the Awans.
A chief of staff for Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke quietly agreed in early 2016 to sign
away a $120,000 missing electronics problem on behalf of two former IT aides now suspected of
stealing equipment from Congress, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned. Clarke's
chief of staff at the time effectively dismissed the loss and prevented it from coming up in
future audits by signing a form removing the missing equipment from a House-wide tracking
system after one of the Awan brothers alerted the office the equipment was gone. The
Pakistani-born brothers are now at the center of an FBI investigation over their IT work with
dozens of Congressional offices.
The $120,000 figure amounts to about a tenth of the office's annual budget, or enough to
hire four legislative assistants to handle the concerns of constituents in her New York
district. Yet when one of the brothers alerted the office to the massive loss, the chief of
staff signed a form that quietly reconciled the missing equipment in the office budget, the
official told TheDCNF. Abid Awan remained employed by the office for months after the loss of
the equipment was flagged.
If true, of course this new information would seem to support previously reported rumors
that the Awans orchestrated a long-running fraud scheme in which their office would purchase
equipment in a way that avoided tracking by central House-wide administrators and then sell
that equipment for a personal gain while simultaneously defrauding taxpayers of $1,000's of
dollars.
Meanwhile, according to the Daily Caller, CDW Government could have been in on the
scheme.
They're suspected of working with an employee of CDW Government Inc. -- one of the Hill's
largest technology providers -- to alter invoices in order to avoid tracking. The result
would be that no one outside the office would notice if the equipment disappeared, and
investigators think the goal of the scheme was to remove and sell the equipment outside of
Congress.
CDW spokeswoman Kelly Caraher told TheDCNF the company is cooperating with investigators,
and has assurance from prosecutors its employees are not targets of the investigation. "CDW
and its employees have cooperated fully with investigators and will continue to do so,"
Caraher said. "The prosecutors directing this investigation have informed CDW and its
coworkers that they are not subjects or targets of the investigation."
Not surprisingly, Clarke's office apparently felt no need whatsoever to report the $120,000
worth of missing IT equipment to the authorities... it's just taxpayer money afterall...
According to the official who talked to TheDCNF, Clarke's chief of staff did not alert
authorities to the huge sum of missing money when it was brought to the attention of the
office around February of 2016. A request to sign away that much lost equipment would have
been "way outside any realm of normalcy," the official said, but the office did not bring it
to the attention of authorities until months later when House administrators told the office
they were reviewing finances connected to the Awans.
The administrators informed the office that September they were independently looking into
discrepancies surrounding the Awans, including a review of finances connected to the brothers
in all the congressional offices that employed them. The House administrators asked Clarke's
then-chief of staff, Wendy Anderson, whether she had noticed any anomalies, and at that time
she alerted them to the $120,000 write-off, the official told TheDCNF.
Of course, the missing $120,000 covers only Clarke's office. As we've noted before, Imran
and his relatives worked for more than 40 current House members when they were banned from the
House network in February, and have together worked for dozens more in past years so who know
just how deep this particular rabbit hole goes.
Also makes you wonder what else Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the Awans might be hiding.
Certainly the decision by Wasserman-Shultz to keep Awan on her taxpayer funded payroll, right
up until he was arrested by the FBI while trying to flee the country, is looking increasingly
fishy with each passing day.
The 911 protection swamp is deep, and profiteers and drug, human traffic, NGO, Body part,
war mongers runs deep.
Please stop calling it building 7 It was the Solomon building.. While you are at it look
at the 1991 Solomon bond scandal which gave the Citi Clinton Mafia all power.... Oh yea
Bush/Clinton cabal did get Saudis to buy Citi stocks and GE plastics. Swampy enough?
120k write off ! You are kidding me?
south40_dreams , 1 year ago
Blackmail was where the real money was at
pissantra , 1 year ago
The real problem here is being completely ignored -- and that is this: the Awan bros were
likely spies (with Wasserman either forced to allow them to spy or the spymaster selling
intel to Pakistan). This would mean that 21+ congress-critters have been completely
compromised. THIS is important NOW, after Trumps Afghan speech -- if he plans to lean on
Pakistan with an "either you stop helping the Taliban or we will destroy you (economically
and/or physically) along with them...."--- these compromised congress-critters will defund
Trumps war.
Freddie , 3 weeks ago
No. Pakistan is the smokescreen. Wasserscum, like Scott Israel, are dual shitizens. This
is, as is Broward County, a MO$$$$ad op. Broward County for vote theft, fraud, attorney
killings, false flags, etc. I would guess a lot more in Congress are owned.
Just watched Congress during Bibi and even ko$$her Porschenko addressing Congrez-zio. They
jump up like circus trained animals to give standing ovations for every word.
Awans and Wasserscum will get passes. George Webb on youtube appears to be doing good work
but it is probably another smoke screen because George has said he is a zioni$$t.
Ban KKiller , 1 year ago
Gee Michelle....you used the Pakistanis for your IT work? What, you like filthy muslims?
Guess so.... When will you confess that you have NO IDEA where your confidential information is? Michelle Lynn Lujan Grisham is an American lawyer and politician who is the U.S.
Representative for New Mexico's 1st congressional district, serving since 2013.
mtanimal , 1 year ago
I didn't know espionage and extortion were tax deductible. Who's her accountant?
Cardinal Fang , 1 year ago
I regret that we may never know the extent of the duplicity of our government with this
ISI stooge.
pc_babe , 1 year ago
with Jeff Session at the helm, you can rest assured you never will
Loanman26 , 1 year ago
My spidy senses are flaring. It was the Russians who stole the equipment. It was comrade Sergei Awan
Blazing in BC , 1 year ago
To whoever is "in charge"....THE STENCH IS UNBEARABLE
runnymede , 1 year ago
Institutionalized unaccountability is what makes the systemic corruption function. As long
as Wasserman's brother is in charge of D.C. prosecutions, nothing will happen. He is the
gatekeeper, which is why DWS, the DNC and the Clinton Crime Machine have not only acted with
impunity, but with extreme contempt. They know they are untouchable. Honest prosecution would
expose D.C. itself as the professional criminal operation that it is, including most Repubs.
There will never be allowed a real look into the rabbit hole, George Webb's outstanding
efforts notwithstanding.
One of We , 1 year ago
President Not Hillary needs to lock some bitches up and expose the Clinton Crime Family
Foundation. Definitely lowering the bar from my lofty hopes but I'd be happy with a partial
roto rootering of the swamp if that's all he has to show for his term.
SRV , 1 year ago
The Awans were working for DWS and The Crook... this fruad is the tip of the
iceberg...
How about doping Blackberry's for 80 House Dems to sync with servers around the Capital
(remember DWS threatening the Capital Police Chief with "consequences" if he didn't give her
back her laptop found in a Capitol Hill building. The Awans were selling the access to most
of the secrets in congress since 2004... this was a spy ring (he has serious ties to
Pakistani ISI).
JiminyCrickets , 1 year ago
As long as Debbie Wasserman Schultz's Brother Steven Wasserman is running the Seth Rich
murder investigation this wont go any where.
gregga777 , 1 year ago
Unfortunately, the Anglo-Zionist FAKE NEWS Media won't cover this story, especially the
links to Debbie Wasserman Schultz. It's anti-Semitic to discuss her criminality or to
criticize her in any other way.
JiminyCrickets , 1 year ago
George Webb's detailed 300+ day investigation indicates the Awans were shipping stolen
high end cars to foreign diplomats and depleted uranium weapons using DNC Diplomatic
Containers.
no surprise that demonRat politicians throughout all legislatures have been guilty of
defrauding the tax payer for decades - in much the same way that demonRat politicians
directly legislate for welfare benefits, free insurance and tax cuts for their family and
friends - at the expense of tax payers - and who also extract tax payer funds via the gravy
train of internships, federal grants etc for their family and friends.
this is how libtard demonRat politicians infect the swamp and then infest it with their
filth and cronyism.
aided and abetted by the MSM.
if only iy was just the demonRats, there might be a chance - however, corrupt republicRats
have been just as guilty.
one day, all this will be out in the open and perhaps demonRat and republicRat voters will
see how they have been voting for corruption all these years.
are we there yet , 1 year ago
Because you are one of the little people.
NoPension , 1 year ago
We are below " little people". We are irrelevant. Just keep paying, slave. Someone correct
me if I'm wrong..... This country was founded on the principle that the individual had
sovereign rights, imbued from God...and was the vessel of ultimate power. Today...these
illegally elected ( it's almost ALL proven a fraud) cocksuckers go in broke and come out the
other end multimillionaires with legal immunity from anything, up to and including murder.
It's high time to water the ******* tree.
"
Nation
states must today be prepared to give up their sovereignty
",
according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel,
who told an audience in Berlin that sovereign nation states must not listen to the will of their citizens when it comes
to questions of immigration, borders, or even sovereignty.
No this wasn't something Adolf Hitler said many decades ago, this is what German Chancellor Angela Merkel
told
attendants
at an event by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin. Merkel has announced she won't seek re-election
in 2021 and it is clear she is attempting to push the globalist agenda to its disturbing conclusion before she stands
down.
"
In
an orderly fashion of course,
" Merkel joked, attempting to lighten the mood. But Merkel has always had a tin ear
for comedy and she soon launched into a dark speech condemning those in her own party who think Germany should have
listened to the will of its citizens and refused to sign the controversial UN migration pact:
"
There
were [politicians] who believed that they could decide when these agreements are no longer valid because they are
representing The People
".
"
[But]
the people are individuals who are living in a country, they are not a group who define themselves as the [German]
people
," she stressed.
Merkel has previously accused critics of the UN Global Compact for Safe and Orderly Migration of not being patriotic,
saying "
That
is not patriotism, because patriotism is when you include others in German interests and accept win-win situations
".
Her words echo recent comments by the deeply unpopular French President Emmanuel Macron who stated in a Remembrance Day
speech that "
patriotism
is the exact opposite of nationalism [because] nationalism is treason
."
The French president's words were deeply unpopular with the French population and his approval rating nosedived even
further after the comments.
Macron, whose lack of leadership is proving unable to deal with growing protests in France, told the Bundestag that
France and Germany should be at the center of the emerging New World Order.
"
The
Franco-German couple [has]the obligation not to let the world slip into chaos and to guide it on the road to peace"
.
"
Europe
must be stronger and win more sovereignty
," he went on to demand, just like Merkel, that
EU
member states surrender national sovereignty to Brussels
over "
foreign
affairs, migration, and development
" as well as giving "
an
increasing part of our budgets and even fiscal resources".
Obamacare is like at least the fifth time in over a century to introduce affordable
healthcare. Looks like we're going to need at least a sixth attempt to actually do it right.
What was Winston Churchill's saying that Americans will always do the right thing but only
after doing everything else?
Notable quotes:
"... Nixon is not just to the left of today's reps, he's to the left of the so called centrist dems I would call them right wing corporate lackays that never saw a war they didn't like. ..."
Nixon is not just to the left of today's reps, he's to the left of the so called
centrist dems I would call them right wing corporate lackays that never saw a war they didn't
like.
They are several varieties of the Mueller candle. The vendor below said they sold out the
original supply of candles but more will arrive in the future. Pray to St. Mueller!! /s
That should be a St. Mueller vigil candle cover. Something appropriate for a saint
dedicated to blocking the cleansing power of light.
From "The Legend of Saint Mueller":
"And then the Priest of the Temple named Mueller didst procure screens with which to block
out from the sight of the People those necessary sins taken upon themselves by the Priests to
protect that same People from the Forces of Evil."
In later days, that Priest named Mueller
was elected to the ranks of the anointed as the patron of all who cast shade and do other
evils in the service of a Good Cause. His Saint Day is February 29. The prayer to Saint
Mueller begins: "Redactio ad absurdum." His sigil is 'A Candle Under a Basket.'
'Trickle down effect' - the favourite buzzword of neoliberal supporters. I'd like to see
trickle down effect tried at the local pub on the taps by the local mp. Imagine what would
happen. Definitely doesn't pass the pub test.
Spending cuts reduce demand in the economy, for every dollar spend by the govt at the lowest
levels (welfare and essential services) around five to seven dollars of extra economic
activity is generated.
This sustains demand in the economy, and despite what Scott Morrison thinks, demand is
actually the thing that drives investment. Investment will not be made by businesses if there
is no demand, no matter how low the tax on profits is.
If you continually cut govt spending you will dampen down economic activity and
demand.
If you give tax breaks on profit to those who with a low propensity to spend locally (ie
foreign investors and super wealthy) and then impose Austerity to "balance the books" then
you will do a few things:
Profits in the short term will increase as there is a greater intensive to declare profits
as the tax is lower;
The increased profit will be more than likely achieved by reducing investment and and not
giving wage rises. Both are costs deducted before profit is calculated;
Investment in productive businesses will stall as demand falls as austerity measures kick
in;
Investments in speculative / safe haven investments will increase (shares, Property,
artworks etc); This will drive up speculative house prices and price out many ordinary
people.
Wages will stagnate and start to fall in real terms; Demand will stagnate and fall.
Businesses will cut back on investment and wages.
Inequality will worsen; and
Social discontent rise.
The cut taxes and impose austerity mantra is the fatuous economic and social thinking we
have come to expect from from the neo-cons.
IT MAKES NO SENSE WHATSOEVER
It never was going to work long terms. Only the massive con job by the media and
politicians made it seem even plausible.
If you want evidence of a con job by politicians you need look no further than the
assumption made that "all government spending is worthless" made by scot Morrison and co.
Even with this ridiculous assumption he was only able to get even one of five scenarios to
give a 0.5% boost to GDP in ten years time.
If he actually subtracted any negative effect of cutting govt spending, even without any
multiplier effect, then there was no scenario where the tax cuts made any sort of economic
sense.
And of course the MSM which is owned by the super wealth elite, will only continue to put
out pro neo-cons propaganda and ruthlessly degenerate any opposition viewpoint.
This is actually ironic as capitalism actually works best for all, including by the way
the super wealthy, when governments continually redistribute wealth downwards.
Economic well-being is something that thrives very well with social well-being.
Capitalism will fail catastrophically if governments continue to redistribute wealth
upwards.
Social dislocation is the probable outcome of the current ideological trajectory.
After the US government elicited outrage from the Chinese due to its attempts to convince
its allies to bar the use of equipment made by telecoms supplier Huawei, President Trump is
apparently weighing whether to take another dramatic antagonistic step that could further
complicate trade negotiations less than two weeks before a US delegation is slated to head to
Beijing.
According to
Reuters , the White House is reportedly considering an executive order that would ban US
companies from using equipment made by Huawei and ZTE, claiming that both companies work "at
the behest of the US government" and that their equipment could be used to spy on US citizens.
The order would invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to order the Department
of Commerce to prohibit the purchase of equipment from telecoms manufacturers that could
threaten national security. Though it wouldn't explicitly name Huawei or ZTE, the ban would
arise from Commerce's interpretation. The IEEA allows the president the authority to regulate
commerce in the face of a national emergency. Back in August, Congress passed and Trump signed
a bill banning the use of ZTE and Huawei equipment by the US government and government
contractors. The executive order has reportedly been under consideration for eight months,
since around the time that the US nearly blocked US companies from selling parts to ZTE, which
sparked a mini-diplomatic crisis, which
ended with a deal allowing ZTE to survive, but pay a large fine.
The feud between the US and Huawei has obviously been escalating in recent months as the US
has embarked on an
"extraordinary influence campaign" to convince its allies to ban equipment made by both
companies, and the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Canada has also blossomed into a
diplomatic crisis of sorts.
But the real reason issuing a ban on both companies' equipment is seen as a priority is
because Huawei's lead in the race to build 5G technology is making its products more appealing
to global telecoms providers. Rural telecoms providers in the US - those with fewer than
100,000 subscribers - are particularly reliant on equipment made by both companies. They've
expressed concerns that a ban would require them to rip out and scrap their equipment at an
immense cost.
Rural operators in the United States are among the biggest customers of Huawei and ZTE,
and fear the executive order would also require them to rip out existing Chinese-made
equipment without compensation. Industry officials are divided on whether the administration
could legally compel operators to do that.
While the big U.S. wireless companies have cut ties with Huawei in particular, small rural
carriers have relied on Huawei and ZTE switches and other equipment because they tend to be
less expensive.
The company is so central to small carriers that William Levy, vice president for sales of
Huawei Tech USA, is on the board of directors of the Rural Wireless Association.
The RWA represents carriers with fewer than 100,000 subscribers. It estimates that 25
percent of its members had Huawei or ZTE equipment in their networks, it said in a filing to
the Federal Communications Commission earlier this month.
As Sputnik
pointed out, the news of the possible ban followed questions from Defense Secretary Gavin
Williamson, who expressed serious concerns over the involvement of Huawei in Britain's 5G
network, suggesting that Beijing sometimes acted "in a malign way." But even if it loses access
to the US market, Huawei's global expansion and its leadership in the 5G space are expected to
continue to bolster profits and growth. Currently, Huawei sells equipment in 170 countries.
According to a statement from the company's rotating chairman, the company's full-year sales
are expected to increase 21% to $108.5 billion this year. The company has signed 26 contracts
globally to supply 5G equipment for commercial use, leaving it well ahead of its US rivals.
'Trickle down effect' - the favourite buzzword of neoliberal supporters. I'd like to see
trickle down effect tried at the local pub on the taps by the local mp. Imagine what would
happen. Definitely doesn't pass the pub test.
Compare with "That's set to worsen in the new year, experts told CNBC on Monday, pointing to
risks including the Federal Reserve likely raising interest rates further and mounting concerns
about a global economic slowdown." The problem iether expecting rally or expecting further
downturn is that stock prices are so detached from reality that everything is possible.
Wall Street will see a "relief rally" in stocks that would offer a better selling
opportunity for investors, technical analyst Katie Stockton says.
The rally would last for several weeks and would be up to 8 percent higher than where
the markets closed on Friday, she says.
Obamacare is like at least the fifth time in over a century to introduce affordable
healthcare. Looks like we're going to need at least a sixth attempt to actually do it right.
What was Winston Churchill's saying that Americans will always do the right thing but only
after doing everything else?
Notable quotes:
"... Nixon is not just to the left of today's reps, he's to the left of the so called centrist dems I would call them right wing corporate lackays that never saw a war they didn't like. ..."
Nixon is not just to the left of today's reps, he's to the left of the so called
centrist dems I would call them right wing corporate lackays that never saw a war they didn't
like.
I still had some things I didn't talk about in Sunday's Trump Derangement
International , about how the European press have found out that they, like the US MSM, can
get lots of viewers and readers simply by publishing negative stories about Donald Trump. The
US president is an attention magnet, as long as you only write things about him designed to
make him look bad.
The Guardian is only too happy to comply. They ran a whole series of articles on Sunday to
do juts that: try to make Trump look bad. Note that the Guardian editorial team that okayed the
articles is the same as the one that allowed
the fake Assange/Manafort one , so their credibility is already shot to pieces. It's the
magic triangle of today's media profits: spout non-stop allegations against Russia, Trump and
Julian Assange, and link them when and where you can. It doesn't matter if what you say is true
or not.
Anyway, all the following is from the Guardian, all on December 23. First off, Adam Gabbatt
in New York, who has painstakingly researched how Trump's businesses, like Trump Tower and the
Trump store, don't appear to have sufficiently (as per him) switched from Happy Holidays to
Merry Christmas. Sherlock Holmes would have been proud. A smash hit there Adam, bring out the
handcuffs.
During Donald Trump's presidential campaign he talked often about his determination to win
one particular war. A war that had been raging for years, he said. Specifically: the war on
Christmas. But despite Trump's repeated claims that "people are saying Merry Christmas again"
instead of the more inclusive "happy holidays", there are several places where the Christmas
greeting is absent: Trump's own businesses.
The Trump Store, for example. Instead of a Christmas gift guide – which surely would
be more in keeping with the president's stated desire for the phrase to be used – the
store offers a holiday gift guide. "Shop our Holiday Gift Guide and find the perfect present
for the enthusiast on your list," the online store urges. "Carefully curated to celebrate the
most wonderful time of year with truly unique gifts found only at Trump Store. Add a bow on
top with our custom gift wrapping. Happy Holiday's!"
The use of the phrase "Happy Holiday's" [sic] in Trump marketing would seem particularly
egregious. The long-standing "War-on-Christmas" complaint from the political right is that
stores use the phrase "Happy Holidays", rather than specifically mentioning the Christian
celebration. It is offered as both an example of political correctness gone mad, and as an
effort to erase Christianity from the US.
It's just, I think that if Trump had personally interfered to make sure there were Merry
Christmas messages all around, you would have remarked that as president, he's not allowed to
be personally involved in his businesses. But yeah, you know, just to keep the negativity
going, it works, no matter how fluffy and hollow.
Second, still on December 23, is Tom McCarthy for the Guardian in New York, who talks about
Robert Mueller's phenomenal successes. Mueller charged 34 people so far. In a case that
involves "this complexity which has international implications, aspects relying on the
intelligence community, complicated cyber components". It really says that.
And yes, that's how many people view this. What do they care that Mueller's original mandate
was to prove collusion between the Trump campaign and 'Russians', and that he has not proven
any collusion at all so far, not even with 34 people charged? What do they care? It looks like
Trump is guilty of something, anything, after all, and that's all the circus wants.
One measure of special counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutorial success in 2018 is the list
of former top Donald Trump aides brought to justice: Michael Cohen pleaded guilty, a jury
convicted Paul Manafort, a judge berated Michael Flynn. Another measure is the tally of new
defendants that Mueller's team charged (34), the number of new guilty pleas he netted (five)
and the amount of money he clawed back through tax fraud cases ($48m).
Yet another measure might judge Mueller's pace compared with previous independent
prosecutors. "I would refer to it as a lightning pace," said Barb McQuade, a University of
Michigan law professor and former US attorney. "In a case of this complexity which has
international implications, aspects relying on the intelligence community, complicated cyber
components – to indict that many people that quickly is really impressive work."
But there's perhaps a more powerful way to measure Mueller's progress in his investigation
into Russian interference in the 2016 US election and links between Moscow and the Trump
campaign; that's by noticing how the targets of his investigation have changed their postures
over the course of 2018, from defiance to docility – or in the case of Trump himself,
from defiance to extreme, hyperventilating defiance.
In reality, you would be at least as correct if you would claim that Robert Mueller's
investigation has been an abject failure. Not one iota of collusion has been proven after 20
months and $20 million in funds have been used. And any serious investigation of Washington's
culture of fixers and lobbyists would land at least 34 people who have committed acts that
border on or over illegality. And in a matter of weeks, for a few hundred bucks.
Third, still on December 23, is Julian Borger in Washington, who's been elected to convey
the image of chaos. Trump Unleashed, says our modern day Shakespeare. With Jim Mad Dog Mattis
characterized as ".. the last independently minded, globally respected, major figure left in
the administration".. . Again, it really says that.
Because woe the man who tries to bring US troops home, or even promises to do so a few days
before Christmas. For pulling out America's finest, Donald Trump is being portrayed as
something eerily close to the antichrist. That truly is the world on its head. Bringing troops
home to their families equals chaos.
Look, guys, if Trump has been guilty of criminal behavior, the US justice system should be
able to find that out and convict him for it. But that's not what this is about anymore. A
million articles have been written, like these ones in the Guardian, with the sole intention,
evidence being scarce to non-existent, of smearing him to the extent that people see every
subsequent article in the light of a man having previously been smeared.
The US stumbled into the holiday season with a sense of unravelling, as a large chunk of
the federal government ground to a halt, the stock market crashed and the last independently
minded, globally respected, major figure left in the administration announced he could no
longer work with the president. The defense secretary, James Mattis, handed in his
resignation on Thursday, over Donald Trump's abrupt decision to pull US troops out of
Syria.
On Saturday another senior official joined the White House exodus. Brett McGurk, the
special envoy for the global coalition to defeat Isis and the US official closest to
America's Kurdish allies in the region, was reported to have handed in his resignation on
Friday. That night, senators flew back to Washington from as far away as Hawaii for emergency
talks aimed at finding a compromise on Trump's demand for nearly $6bn for a wall on the
southern border, a campaign promise which has become an obsession.
Now look at the next headline, December 23, Graeme Wearden, Guardian, and ask yourself if
it's really Trump saying he doesn't agree with the rate hikes that fuels the fears, or whether
it's the hikes themselves. And also ask yourself: when Trump and Mnuchin both deny reports of
Trump firing Powell, why do journalists keep saying the opposite? Because they want to fuel
some fears?
From where I'm sitting, it looks perfectly logical that Trump says he doesn't think Powell's
decisions are good for the US economy. And it doesn't matter which one of the two turns out to
be right: Trump isn't the only person who disagrees with the Fed hikes.
The main suspect for 2019 market turmoil is the inevitable fallout from the Fed's QE under
Bernanke and Yellen. And there is something to be said for Powell trying to normalize rates,
but there's no doubt that may hasten, if not cause, turmoil. Blaming it on Trump not agreeing
with Jay Powell is pretty much as left field as it gets.
Over the weekend, a flurry of reports claimed Donald Trump had discussed the possibility
of firing the Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell. Such an unprecedented move would
trigger further instability in the markets, which have already had their worst year since the
2008 crisis. US officials scrambled to deny Trump had suggested ousting Powell, who was
appointed by the president barely a year ago.
The Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, tweeted that he had spoken to the president, who
insisted he "never suggested firing" Powell, and did not believe he had the right to do this
. However, Trump also declared – via Mnuchin – that he "totally disagrees" with
the Fed's "absolutely terrible" policy of raising interest rates and unwinding its
bond-buying stimulus programme, piling further pressure on the US's independent central
bank.
And now, in the only article in the Guardian series that's December 24, not 23, by Victoria
Bekiempis and agencies, the plunging numbers in the stock markets are Trump's fault, too.
Top Democrats have accused Donald Trump of "plunging the country into chaos" as top
officials met to discuss a growing rout in stock markets caused in part by the president's
persistent attacks on the Federal Reserve and a government shutdown. "It's Christmas Eve and
President Trump is plunging the country into chaos," the two top Democrats in Congress, House
speaker nominee Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, wrote in a joint
statement on Monday. "The stock market is tanking and the president is waging a personal war
on the Federal Reserve – after he just fired the Secretary of Defense."
Trump criticized the Federal Reserve on Monday, describing it as the "only problem" for
the US economy, even as top officials convened the "plunge protection team" forged after the
1987 crash to discuss the growing rout in stock markets. The crisis call on Monday between US
financial regulators and the US treasury department failed to assure markets, and stocks fell
again amid concern about slowing economic growth, the continuing government shutdown, and
reports that Trump had discussed firing Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell.
The last one is from one Jonathan Jones, again December 23, again for the Guardian. And it
takes the top award in the narrative building contest.
Again, the Guardian editorial team that okayed this article is still the same as the one
that allowed the fake Assange/Manafort one, an editorial team that sees no problem in making
things up in order to smear people. To portray Trump, Assange and anyone who's had the
misfortune of being born in Russia as suspicious if not outright criminal.
But look at what Jones has to say, and what Guardian editor-in-chief Kathy Viner and her ilk
allowed and pressured him to say. He wants to have a say in how Trump should dress (seasonal
knitwear), he evokes the image of Nazi architect Albert Speer for no reason at all, and then
it's a matter of mere inches until you arrive at Trump as a king, an emperor, an inner
tyrant.
"He's in a tuxedo!", Like that's a bad thing for Christmas. "She's in white!". Oh dear, call
the pope. If both Trumps would have put on Christmas sweaters in front of a fire, the writer
would have found something negative in that.
The absence of intimacy in the Trumps' official Christmas portrait freezes the heart. Can
it be that hard to create a cosy image of the presidential couple, perhaps in front of a
roaring hearth, maybe in seasonal knitwear? Or is this quasi-dictatorial image exactly what
the president wants to project? Look on my Christmas trees, ye mighty, and despair! If so, it
fuels suspicions that it is only the checks and balances of a 230-year-old constitution that
are keeping America from the darkest of political fates. You couldn't create a creepier
Yuletide scene if you tried. Multiple Christmas trees are currently a status symbol for the
wealthy, but this picture shows the risks.
Instead of a homely symbol of midwinter cheer, these disciplined arboreal ranks with their
uniform decorations are arrayed like massed soldiers or colossal columns designed by Albert
Speer. The setting is the Cross Hall in the White House and, while the incumbent president
cannot be held responsible for its architecture, why heighten its severity with such rigid,
heartless seasonal trappings? Everything here communicates cold, empty magnificence. Tree
lights that are as frigid as icicles are mirrored in a cold polished floor. Equally frosty
illuminations are projected on the ceiling. Instead of twinkling fairy magic, this lifeless
lighting creates a sterile, inhuman atmosphere.
You can't imagine kids playing among these trees or any conceivable fun being had by
anyone. It suggests the micromanaged, corporate Christmas of a Citizen Kane who has long
since lost touch with the ordinary, warm pleasures of real life. In the centre of this
disturbing piece of conceptual art stand Donald and Melania Trump. He's in a tuxedo, she's
wearing white – and not a woolly hat in sight. Their formal smartness adds to the
emotional numbness of the scene. Trump's shark-like grin has nothing generous or friendly
about it. He seems to want to show off his beautiful wife and his fantastic home rather than
any of the cuddly holiday spirit a conventional politician might strive to share at this
time.
It begs a question: how can a man who so glaringly lacks anything like a common touch be
such a successful "populist"? What can a midwestern voter find in this image to connect with?
Perhaps that's the point. After more than two centuries of democracy, Trump is offering the
US people a king, or emperor. In this picture, he gives full vent to his inner tyrant. If
this portrait contains any truth about the state of America and the world, may Santa help us
all.
I realize that you may be tired of the whole story. I realize you may have been caught in
the anti-Trump narrative. And I am by no means a Trump fan. But I will keep on dragging you
back to this. Because the discussion should not be based on a handful of media moguls not
liking Trump. It should not be based on innuendo and smear. If Trump is to be convicted, it
must be on evidence.
And there is no such evidence. Robert Mueller has charged 34 people, but none with what his
mandate was based on, none with Russia collusion. This means that the American political
system, and democracy itself, is under severe threat by the very media that are supposed to be
its gate keepers.
None of this is about Trump, or about whether you like him or not, or even if he's a shady
character or not. Instead, it's about the influence the media have on how our opinions and
ideas about people and events are being shaped on a daily basis.
And once you acknowledge that your opinions of Trump, Putin et al, even without any proof of
a connection between them, are actively being molded by the press you expect to inform you
about the truth behind what goes on, you will have to acknowledge, too, that you are a captive
of forces that use your gullibility to make a profit off you.
If our media need to make up things all the time about who's guilty of what, because our
justice systems are incapable of that, then we have a problem so enormous we may not be able to
overcome it in our present settings.
Alternatively, if we trust our justice systems to deliver true justice, we don't need a
hundred articles a day to tell us how Trump or Putin are such terrible threats to our world.
Our judges will tell us, not our journalists or media who are only in it for a profit.
I can say: "let's start off 2019 trying to leave prejudice behind", and as much as that is
needed and you may agree with me, it's no use if you don't realize to what extent your views of
the world have been shaped by prejudice.
I see people reacting to the star writer at Der Spiegel who wrote a lot about Trump, being
exposed as a fraud. I also see people trying to defend Julian Assange from the Guardian article
about his alleged meetings with Paul Manafort, that was an obvious big fat lie (the truth is
Manafort talked to Ecuador to help them 'sell' Assange to the US).
But reacting to the very obvious stuff is not enough . The echo chamber distorts the truth
about Trump every single day, and at least six times on Sunda y, as this essay of mine shows.
It's just that after two years of this going on 24/7, it is perceived as the normal.
Everyone makes money dumping on the Donald, it's a proven success formula, so why would the
Guardian and Der Spiegel stay behind? They'd only hurt their own bottom line.
It has nothing to do with journalism, though, or news. It's smear and dirt, the business
model of the National Enquirer. That's how far our once truthful media have fallen.
All these journalists are influenced and manipulated by 'Australian-American Leadership
Dialogue', 'Atlantikbrücke', Open Society Foundation money etc. Wars boost the NYSE
because many weapons manufacturers are listed there.
If the journalists weren't manipulated all 2018 compilations would not have omitted the
World Cup in Russia.
"... Friends of mine who make a living out of dealing both in stock and wealth creating schemes have no loyalty to this country, they are self motivated and libertarian in persuasion. "Government should get out of the way!" This is nothing short of scandalous. ..."
"... Unless we stand up for our rights and a civil society that provides adequate provision for fair and balanced policy making,xwe will continue until we will see an implosion. History is littered with examples of revolution based on the kind of inequality we are seeing happen in this country. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. ..."
This message is clear and concise. It is however never going to be heard beyond the
'Guardian'.
The MSM are hardly going to publish this article, nor are they going to
reference it, why should they? It goes against everything they have been fighting for and the
tin ear of their readership are unwilling to change teir views.
The only thing that they understand is money and the concentration of wealth. This
misonception as Dennis So far this has been handed to them on a plate, the taxation system
has enabled them to manipulate an multiply their earnings. So much of money the has nothing
to do with adding value to this countries economy but is speculative in nature based on
financial and overseas instruments.
No is the time for our government to take the lead and start as the Victorian ALP have
done and invest in people and jobs on the back of strategic investment. It is a fallacy that
governments don't create jobs they, through their policies do just that.
Friends of mine who make a living out of dealing both in stock and wealth creating
schemes have no loyalty to this country, they are self motivated and libertarian in
persuasion. "Government should get out of the way!" This is nothing short of
scandalous.
Unless we stand up for our rights and a civil society that provides adequate provision
for fair and balanced policy making,xwe will continue until we will see an implosion. History
is littered with examples of revolution based on the kind of inequality we are seeing happen
in this country. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
When governments like the LNP (driven as it is by its ideology of greed, the IPA manifesto
and Gina Rinehart's idea of what Australia should look like [and how little she should pay to
pillage "communally owned" assets to enrich herself beyond imagination - she has no greater
claim over the Pilbara than any other Australian, but like all who live by the ethos of
greed, she thinks she should get it all for nothing]).
When the LNP talk about "small government" and "slashing red tape" it is politician-speak
for small government and NO red tape for the rich. What it also means is much more government
and red tape for the poor and vulnerable - as we would expect, the rich and powerful, who
really dictate economic and social policy in this country enlist willing governments to enact
measures that suppress the lower classes. It is not quite calling out the military (as Hawke
did during the pilot's strike at the insistence of the corpulent Ables - one act for which I
will always despise Hawke), but it has the same result by more surreptitious, lasting and
egregious means.
And one of the lasting legacies of the philosophies of neo-liberalism, from which the
Hanson's of the world "suck their oxygen" is that the political and corporate dialogue of the
last 30 or so years has pushed the notion of self-entitlement and vilification of the poor
and vulnerable further down the economic ladder. So now, we have countless Australians on
reasonable incomes who, like the rich, are convinced that all of our social and economic ills
can be rectified if we stop giving handouts to the bludgers, the malingerers, the disabled
and the indigenous - the neo-liberal rhetoric is now so widespread that it is easier than
ever for the vulnerable to be attacked and for many, that is seen as absolutely necessary. It
is the false US-sourced notion that if you are poor, it is because you deserve to be and if I
am rich - it isn't luck or inheritance - it is because I deserve it. This world-view makes it
so much easier to attack the vulnerable as receiving way to much to sit at home and
bludge.
Want to forget the now disgraced CEO of Australia Post who bought a Sydney mansion for $22
million and now wants to sell it for $40 million - tax free I might add. He is entitled to
that wealth enhancement. But someone on the dole smokes a spliff now and then and we think
they should lose their entitlements to an income that doesn't even get them up to the poverty
line (but they should be grateful for that pittance). Want to forget the CEO's who
pretentiously do their "sleeping rough" for a night and proclaim their empathy for the
homeless who would shriek at paying more tax to genuinely fund programmes to help the down
and outs. No problem - just embrace the selfish and greedy neo-liberalism philosophy.
This article is excellent and well overdue. All we need to do now is to wrench control of our
mainstream media out of the hands of Corporate (foreign) control. We are being told to vote
against ourselves in order for the few corporate elite to accrue massive wealth and
power over us.
MEDIA laws need to be very strict with very, very severe financial penalties for bias and
propaganda. Certainly remove this concept of self regulation whereby they sit on their own
disciplinary boards. Raise the standards of our media and allow us to retrieve some semblance
of our democracy.
Without media control, how would corporations be able to manipulate and propagandise the
populace with their own vested interests.
That is why governments are doing corporate bidding and getting fascist style surveillance
of its people, in order to counteract the ability of the people to gain knowledge through the
internet and vote against corporate control of our democracy.... nothing to do with terrorism
which was caused mostly by corporate foreign extraction of wealth through weapon sales;
resource acquisition, etc.
It is back to control of our mainstream media by the very (foreign) corporations that are
sucking out our wealth and putting nothing back.
Corporate media ia all powerful. They insidiously permeate the populace with corporate
views of Australia's financial and economy; infrastructure and every aspect of social
life from birth to euthanasia with racism and religion thrown in for good measure.
Should a politician have the audacity to act against their corporate interests, they do
not last long, without exclusions - PMs Whitlam and Rudd being prime examples.
This current mob of gutless underachieving dinosaur neo con nutters in govt, are
completely turning over Australia to these Corporate (foreign) parasites and our prospect is
not looking good.
Within no time we will be a Corporatocracy (as is the USA) and along with that comes 1%
owning 99% of the wealth; third world poverty; crime through the roof; drugs out of control;
public health and education a joke; public services non existent; legal system in disarray
and entrenched with bias and inequity.
"... Her targets range from pharmaceutical companies, which uphold a heartless version of market rationality, to internet companies with monopoly power such as Google and Facebook. Her most compelling example, however, is the workings of the financial sector, and its Friedman-style obsession with "shareholder value maximization," which has infected the corporate sector as a whole. ..."
"... Reading Mazzucato's book, it is hard not to wonder just how "neoliberal" ideas and values, which uphold the rationality of the market and exclude notions of the common good, came to shape the conduct of individuals and institutions. ..."
"... In these narratives, neoliberalism appears indistinguishable from laissez-faire. In " Globalists : The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism," Quinn Slobodian briskly overturns this commonplace view. Neoliberals, he argues, are people who believe that "the market does not and cannot take care of itself," and indeed neoliberalism is a form of regulation -- one that insulates the markets from vagaries of mass democracy and economic nationalism. ..."
Ideas once dismissed as the ravings of the loony left are breaking into the mainstream of economic and intellectual debate. We live
in an age of political earthquakes: That much, at least, seemed clear from newspaper headlines nearly every day of 2018. But intellectual
tectonic plates were also shifting throughout the year, with ideas once dismissed as the ravings of the loony left breaking into
the mainstream.
A Western consensus quickly formed after the collapse of communist regimes in 1989. It was widely believed by newspaper editorialists
as well as politicians and businessmen that there was no alternative to free markets, which alone could create prosperity.
The government's traditional attempts to regulate corporations and banks and redistribute wealth through taxes were deemed a problem.
As the economist Milton Friedman
put it , "The
world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests."
Neither individuals nor companies needed to worry much about inequality or social justice. In Friedman's influential view, "There
is one and only one social responsibility of business -- to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits."
Political fiascos in the West, following its largest financial crisis -- events accompanied by the emergence of China, a Communist-run
nation-state, as a major economic power, as well as an unfolding environmental calamity -- have utterly devastated these post-1989
assumptions about free markets and the role of governments.
Confessions to this effect come routinely from disenchanted believers. Take, for instance, Olivier Blanchard, former chief economist
of the International Monetary Fund, who recently posed the once-blasphemous question: "What comes after capitalism?"
Blanchard was commenting on the recent demonstrations in France against President Emmanuel Macron. He
rightly described a global impasse: "Given
the political constraints on redistribution and the constraints from capital mobility, we may just not be able to alleviate inequality
and insecurity enough to prevent populism and revolutions."
Nor, for that matter, can we work towards a greener economy. In any case, Blanchard's admission confirms that we inhabit, intellectually
and culturally, a radical new reality -- one in which "neoliberalism," a word previously confined to academic seminars, has entered
rap lyrics , and stalwarts of the establishment
sound like activists of Occupy Wall Street.
Thus, Martin Wolf, respected columnist for the Financial Times, recently
concluded , if "reluctantly," that
"capitalism is substantially broken." This year, many books with titles such as "The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death
of Competition" and "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World" blamed an unjust economic system and its beneficiaries
for the rise of demagogues.
It is becoming clear that the perennial conflict between democracy, which promises equality, and capitalism, which generates inequality,
has been aggravated by a systemic neglect of some fundamental issues.
In " The Value of
Everything : Making and Taking in the Global Economy," Mariana Mazzucato bracingly focuses our attention on them. Mazzucato
has previously written about the innovative role of governments in the modern economy. In her new book, she asks us to distinguish
between people who create value and those who merely extract it, often destroying it in the process.
Her targets range from pharmaceutical companies, which uphold a heartless version of market rationality, to internet companies
with monopoly power such as Google and Facebook. Her most compelling example, however, is the workings of the financial sector, and
its Friedman-style obsession with "shareholder value maximization," which has infected the corporate sector as a whole.
Reading Mazzucato's book, it is hard not to wonder just how "neoliberal" ideas and values, which uphold the rationality of the
market and exclude notions of the common good, came to shape the conduct of individuals and institutions.
In the conventional account of neoliberalism, Friedman looms large, along with his disciple Ronald Reagan, and Britain's Margaret
Thatcher. Much has been written about how the IMF's structural adjustment programs in Asia and Africa, and "shock-therapy" for post-Communist
states, entrenched orthodoxies about deregulation and privatization.
In these narratives, neoliberalism appears indistinguishable from laissez-faire. In "
Globalists : The
End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism," Quinn Slobodian briskly overturns this commonplace view. Neoliberals, he argues, are
people who believe that "the market does not and cannot take care of itself," and indeed neoliberalism is a form of regulation --
one that insulates the markets from vagaries of mass democracy and economic nationalism.
Beginning with the breakup of the Hapsburg Empire, Slobodian's lucidly written intellectual history traces the ideas of a group
of Western thinkers who sought to create, against a backdrop of anarchy, globally applicable economic rules.
Their attempt, it turns out, succeeded all too well in our own time. We stand in the ruins of their project, confronting political,
economic and environmental crises of unprecedented scale and size.
It is imperative to chart our way out of them, steering clear of the diversions offered by political demagogues. One can only
hope that the new year will bring more intellectual heresies of the kind Mazzucato's and Slobodian's books embody. We need them urgently
to figure out what comes after neoliberalism.
"... The political strategy behind these contradictions is simple: it is difficult to criticise government spending on health and education, or popular regulations like consumer protection and limits on executive pay. So why not just criticise all government spending and all ..."
After the mining boom and decades of economic growth, how can Australia be broke?
Gina Rinehart was becoming the world's richest woman those on the minimum wage were falling further and
further behind
Australia just experienced one of the biggest mining booms in
world history. But even at the peak of that boom, there was no talk of the wonderful opportunity we finally had to invest in world-class
mental health or domestic violence crisis services.
Nor was there much talk from either major party about how the wealth of the
mining boom gave us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in remote Indigenous communities. Nope, the peak of the mining boom
was not the time to help those who had missed out in decades past, but the Howard government thought it was a great time to introduce
permanent tax cuts for high-income earners. These, of course, are the tax cuts that caused the budget deficits we have today.
Millions of tonnes of explosives were used during the mining boom to build more than 100 new mines, but it wasn't just prime farmland
that was blasted away in the boom, it was access to the middle class. At the same time that Gina Rinehart was becoming the world's
richest woman on the back of rising iron ore prices, those on the minimum wage were falling further and further behind their fellow
Australians.
Like Joe Hockey, Rinehart saw the problem of inequality as having more to do with the character of the poor than
with the rules of the game: "If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain. Do something
to make more money yourself – spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working."
Privatisation is deeply unpopular with voters. Here's how to end it | John Quiggin
Australia isn't poor; it is rich beyond the imagining of anyone living in the 1970s or 80s. But so much of that
new wealth has been vacuumed up by a few, and so little of that new wealth has been paid in tax, that the public has
been convinced that ours is a country struggling to pay its bills.
Convincing Australians that our nation is poor and that our governments "can't afford" to provide the level of services they provided
in the past has not just helped to lower our expectations of our public services and infrastructure, it has helped to lower our expectations
of democracy itself. A public school in Sydney has had to ban kids from running in the playground because it was so overcrowded.
Trains have become so crowded at peak hours that many people, especially the frail and the disabled, are reluctant to use them. And
those who have lost their jobs now wait for hours on the phone when they reach out to Centrelink for help.
Although people with low expectations are easier to con, fomenting cynicism about democracy comes at a long-term cost. Indeed,
as the current crop of politicians is beginning to discover, people with low expectations feel they have nothing to lose.
As more and more people live with the poverty and job insecurity that flow directly from neoliberal welfare and industrial relations
policies, the scare campaigns run so successfully by the likes of the Business Council of Australia have lost their sting. Scary
stories about the economy become like car alarms: once they attracted attention, but now they simply annoy those forced to listen.
'If governments can't make a difference and all politicians are corrupt, why not vote for outsiders?
After decades of hearing conservative politicians say that government is the problem, a growing number of conservative
voters no longer care which major party forms government. If governments can't make a difference and all politicians
are corrupt, why not vote for outsiders like Jacqui Lambie or Clive Palmer? There is perhaps no clearer evidence of
the short-termism of the Liberal and National parties today than their willingness to fan the flames of anti-politician
rhetoric without considering that it is their own voters who are most likely to heed the message.
Back when he was leading the campaign against Australia becoming a republic, Tony Abbott famously argued that you couldn't trust
politicians to choose our head of state. And more recently, in campaigning against marriage equality, Minister Matt Canavan was featured
in a television advertisement laughing at the thought that we could trust politicians.
Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world
Convincing Australians that the country was broke also helped convince us that we have no choice but to sell the
family silver. But of course we have a choice. Just as there is no right answer as to whether it's better to rent
a home or buy one, there is no right answer to whether it's better for governments to own the electricity supply,
the postal service or the water supply, or none of these things.
Different governments in different countries make different decisions at different points in time. While much of neoliberalism's
rhetorical power comes from the assertion that "there is no alternative," the simple fact is that the world is full of alternatives.
Indeed, even the so-called free marketeers in Australia can see alternatives.
Consider stadiums, for example. The NSW Liberal government has a long track record of being pro-privatisation. It has sold off
billions of dollars' worth of electricity, water and health infrastructure. But when it comes to football stadiums, it has no ideological
problem with public ownership, nor any fiscal inhibition about spending billions of taxpayers' dollars.
In 2016 the NSW Liberal government spent $220m buying back ANZ Stadium, built in the 1990s with taxpayer funds at a cost of $690m
and subsequently sold to Stadium Australia Group. Having bought back the stadium, the NSW government plans to spend hundreds of millions
of dollars refurbishing it. That same money could build a lot of school science labs, domestic violence crisis centres or skate parks
for the bored kids the shopping malls don't want scratching up their marble stairs. For the past 30 years, Australians have been
told that we can't afford high-quality public services, that public ownership of assets is inefficient, and that the pursuit of free
markets through deregulation would create wealth and prosperity for all. But none of this is true.
While the policy agenda
of neoliberalism has never been broadly applied in Australia, for 30 years the language
of neoliberalism has been applied to everything from environmental protection to care of the disabled. The result of the partial
application of policy and the broad application of language is not just a yawning gap between those with the greatest wealth and
those with the greatest need, but a country that is now riven by demographic, geographic and racial divides.
Cutting the budget deficit is very important – except when it isn't
Australian politics
isn't about ideology, it's about interests. The clearest proof of that claim is that neoliberal ideas such
as deregulation were never aimed at powerful interest groups like the pharmacists or the gambling industry. And savage spending cuts
were never aimed at subsidies for the fossil-fuel industry or private health insurers.
Tony Abbott, who claimed to have a philosophical problem with carbon taxing, once proposed a 20% increase in the tobacco excise
Just as conservative Christian theology provides an excuse for sexism and homophobia, neoliberal language allows
powerful groups to package their personal preferences as national interests – systematically cutting spending on their
enemies and giving money to their friends. Here are some examples:
John Howard said he was obsessed with deregulating the labour market, but introduced 762 pages of labour-market regulation,
which he entitled WorkChoices. He didn't deregulate the labour market; he re-regulated it in his preferred form. He knew that
government decisions matter. Similarly, the Abbott government declared it was waging a war on red tape, yet the Turnbull government
is determined to pass new laws restricting unions and NGOs.
If there is one thing that neoliberals really seem to believe, it is that reducing the budget deficit is very, very important.
Except when it isn't. The political and business leaders who said we needed to slash welfare spending because we had a "budget
emergency" are currently advocating a $65bn tax cut for business – even though the deficit is bigger now than it was at the
time of the alleged emergency.
The Productivity Commission and state treasuries spent years advocating the deregulation and privatisation of the electricity
industry – and succeeded in creating a "free market" system governed by 5,000 pages of electricity market rules. Electricity
is too dangerous and too important to be deregulated, and those pushing for deregulation always knew that. They didn't want
a free market; they simply wanted a market, one in which the government played a smaller role and the private sector made large
profits selling an essential service for much higher prices than the government ever charged.
The NSW government requires NGOs and disability service providers to compete with each other but, when it sold Port Botany
and the Port of Newcastle, it structured the sales to ensure that Newcastle could not compete with Port Botany for the landing
of the millions of containers that arrive by ship each year. While "competition policy" is applied to the vulnerable, those
buying billion-dollar assets are protected from those same forces of competition.
To be clear, there has been no obsession among the political elite with the neoliberal goals of reducing government spending,
regulation or tax collection in Australia over the past three decades. None. They didn't mean a word of it. While there may have
been economists, commentators and even business leaders who sincerely believed in those goals, it is clear from their actions, as
distinct from their words, that John Howard, Tony Abbott and even the former head of the Business Council of Australia Tony Shepherd,
the man tasked with running Abbott's National Commission of Audit, had no principled objection to spending large amounts of public
money on things they liked spending large amounts of public money on. Indeed, in his speakers' agency profile, Tony Shepherd brags
about his ability to get public money for private ventures:
It is no mean feat to convince governments to support private sector proposals, but as former prime minister, the honourable
Paul Keating, said, "Tony managed to get more money out of my government than any other person I can recall."
Hundreds of new pages of regulation now govern the conduct of charities. Billions of taxpayers' dollars have been spent by "small
government" politicians on everything from television ads for innovation to subsidies for marriage counselling. And Tony Abbott,
who claimed to have a philosophical problem with carbon taxing, once proposed a 20% increase in the tobacco excise.
The political strategy behind these contradictions is simple: it is difficult to criticise government spending on health and education,
or popular regulations like consumer protection and limits on executive pay. So why not just criticise all government spending and
all
red tape in general? Once you have convinced the public that all government spending is inefficient, you can set about
cutting spending on your enemies and retaining it for your friends. And once you convince people that all regulation is bad, you
can set about removing consumer protections while retaining the laws that protect the TV industry, the gambling industry, the pharmaceutical
industry and all your other friends.
Cover of Dead Right by Richard Denniss, Quarterly Essay.
When powerful groups want subsidies, we are told they will create jobs. When powerless groups want better funding
for domestic violence shelters or after-school reading groups, they are told of the need to reduce the budget deficit.
When powerful groups demand new regulations, we are told it will provide business with certainty, but when powerless
groups demand new regulations, they are told it will create sovereign risk.
Ideology has a bad name these days, but it simply means a "system of ideas and ideals." By that definition, it is possible to
think of neoliberalism as an ideology focused on the idea that market forces are superior to government decision-making. But while
large segments of Australian politics and business have draped themselves, and their policy preferences, in the cloak of neoliberal
ideas and ideals, in reality to call them "ideologues" is to flatter them. They lack the consistency and strength of principle to
warrant the title.
Tue 16 Oct 2018
13.00 EDT
Last modified on Tue 16 Oct 2018
19.11 EDT
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Australian economic growth has been a 'standout' says Bernie Fraser, but too many have missed the benefits.
Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/EPA
Neoliberalism has caused "misery and social polarisation" yet remains in vogue with the Coalition government,
according to the economist Bernie Fraser.
The former Treasury secretary and Reserve Bank governor has made the
comments in a presentation circulated to participants of the Australia Institute's revenue summit to be held in
Canberra on Wednesday.
Michael Keating, a former secretary to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, will also use the summit
to raise doubts about the Morrison government's budget forecasts.
Australia's housing boom is not heading for a soft landing. How did we get
here? | Greg Jericho
Read more
In the background notes for Fraser's speech, seen by Guardian Australia, he says that Australia's 27 consecutive
years of economic growth is a "standout", "Winx-like" performance.
But the record deserves only "qualified applause" because "too many Australians remain unemployed, under-employed,
underskilled, underpaid and lack job security".
Fraser warns that society has become "less fair, less compassionate and more divided" and "more devoid of trust in
almost every field of human activity" in the past 20 years.
"As a disinterested player in climate change negotiations and a miserable foreign aid donor, we have slipped well
down the list of good global citizens."
Political ideologies appear to have contributed to inequality and disadvantage in Australia in that time, he
argues.
Fraser in large part blames "neoliberalism" and its influence on policymaking for the "disconnect between
Australia's impressive economic growth story and its failure on so many markers to show progress towards a better,
fairer society".
"Favouring the market system ahead of the state system, and individual interests ahead of community interests, can
lead to profoundly unfair social outcomes.
More than three million Australians living in poverty, Acoss report reveals
Read more
"Those unable to afford access to decent standards of housing, healthcare, and other essential services have to
settle for inferior arrangements, or go without."
Fraser says charitable organisations see the effects of "real poverty" that result in "misery, anxiety and loss of
self-esteem of mothers unable to put food on the table for their kids, of old and young homeless people, and the
victims of domestic violence and drug overdoses".
Fraser summarises the key thrusts of neoliberalism as "the pursuit of the lowest possible rates of income and most
other taxes and the maximum restraint on government interventions and spending programs".
Evidence in Australia and overseas shows the influence of neoliberalism on fiscal policy "and the misery and
social polarisation that has come with it", he says.
The global financial crisis "should have" marked a tipping point, when the "idealised view of financial markets
being self-regulating" was shattered. While Australia "avoided the worst traumas of the GFC" with prompt fiscal and
monetary policy responses, in Europe "taxes were increased and spending programs slashed", resulting in a further
five or six years of severe recession.
Fraser says that all political ideologies – taken to extremes – can be divisive and cause damage, including an
ideology "based on a state system".
But the former Reserve Bank governor focuses on neoliberalism because it "remains in vogue". The Morrison
government "continues to reaffirm its over-riding commitment to lower taxation, and to assert that this is the best
way to increase investment, jobs and economic growth" -
despite the lack of evidence to support the theory
.
Although Fraser recognises that politics never can or should be taken out of policymaking, he suggests the best
course is to "hammer away" at flaws of particular approaches.
In a separate presentation Keating – who headed PM&C from 1991 to 1996 – warns the government's promise to cap
expenditure while simultaneously cutting taxes and returning the budget to surplus is based on overly optimistic
assumptions of growth in GDP, wages and productivity.
Why are stock markets falling and how far will they go?
Read more
According to Keating, the government must stop assuming there have been no structural changes in the relationship
between unemployment and the rate of wage increases.
He notes that predictions of a tightening labour market leading to higher wages are predicated on assumptions of
growth averaging 3% or as much as 3.5%.
He will also say a sustained return to past rates of economic growth will be impossible unless we can ensure a
reasonably equitable distribution of income, involving a faster rate of wage increases, especially for the low-paid.
Eric Kaufmann, professor of politics at Birkbeck, has a forthcoming book, Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and
the Future of White Majorities . He argues that what I would call "bad nationalism" –
the global surge in rightwing populism – is driven by large-scale immigration, and the
threat it poses to the cultural identity of the ethnic majority. Some people fear change; they
prefer the monocultural landscape in which they grew up, and visible changes to it threaten
their sense of belonging and security. Certain attitudes are, if not hereditary, baked in to
the point where they may as well be.
He supports this view with plentiful survey data, a favourite nugget being that the way you
answer the question, "Would you prefer your children to be well-mannered, or to be
considerate?" is a major predictor of whether you'd vote for or against Trump and Brexit .
The question is a proxy for what the cognitive linguist George Lakoff calls the strict
father (well-mannered) versus the nurturant family (considerate) model. These frames are the
timeless and elemental organising principles for our political divisions –
authoritarian versus pluralist, right versus left – all the way back to Christ the
Warrior versus Christ the Saviour.
I believe people respond to authoritarian and pluralist arguments according to who's
making them, how trenchantly they are made, and the economic, media and political environment
around them. Austerity soil has always been notoriously fertile for authoritarian ideas. Yet
Kaufmann dismisses any economic factor, saying that had there been one, 2008 would have seen
an upturn in rightwing nationalism, not 2017. My view is that depressions take years, not
months, to grind people down.
To me the key questions are how are the key decisions made and by whom are they made?
Globalism (not globalization, mind you) is a process whereby decisionmaking gets shifted
farther and farther from the people and democratic accountability is continually weakened -
ironically often with the rationale that we need this to "compete with China".
As a result, national borders (and therefore cultures) become less and less important
and institutions like central banks, the EU, the WTO, etc. become ever more powerful. What
you call neoliberalism is an effect - not the cause - of this phenomenon, in my
opinion.
By the way, I agree with you that there is hope - in fact I am more optimistic today
than I have been for many years - although probably for very different reasons than
you.
I am quite sure that for the time being the nation state is an essential form of political
and economic organisation. So I accept the necessity of nations. I reject nationalist
ideologies which at best are confused, like ZW's argument, and at worst are very nasty
things indeed.
I was stunned by the modernity of Renan's speech when I read it. Glad to see that it is
available online. Hope you read it.
Globalisation is the ability to move goods/finance/ideas/culture around the global at
speeds unheard of - there is no way to alter this, so your definition is inexact by quite a
margin.
What is happening is neoliberalism - the economic sytem which has hijacked Globalisation
- is playing havoc across the world.
These are not one and the same thing. Nationalism is a reaction to neoliberailsm, and
the way it is concentrating wealth in the hands of the few.
Take a look at places like Finland, Norway and other parts of Europe, where they have
restrained neoliberalism and do not have the same levels of inequality as in the USA or the
UK. Japan is the most equal developed nation in the world. We need to marry strong
democratic structures (at national and global level) with globalisation at the expense of
neo-liberalism, not in support of it.
In short, your view is depressing and misguided. There is hope.
Globalism is a system where a cosmopolitan class of technocratic elites makes all the
decisions after talking among themselves in well-appointed conference rooms to which common
people are not given access (think of what goes on in Brussels or in the ECB tower every
day).
Democracy is something else.
In my opinion the two are mutually incompatible.
Yes, I'm talking about both British and non-British Muslims. Here's the clarification
you're looking for: ICM Research for Channel 4 found that more than 100,000 British Muslims
sympathize with suicide bombers and people who commit other terrorist acts. Moreover, only
one in three British Muslims (34%) would contact the police if they believed that somebody
close to them had become involved with jihadists.
In addition, 23% of British Muslims said Islamic Sharia law should replace British law
in areas with large Muslim populations.
On social issues, 52% of the Muslims surveyed said they believe homosexuality should be
illegal, compared to 22% of non-Muslim Britons.
39% of Muslims surveyed believe women should always obey their husbands, compared to 5%
for non-Muslims. One in three British Muslims refuse completely to condemn the stoning of
women accused of adultery.
Admittedly, this ICM survey is from 2016 so the picture may have improved, but I think
you'll agree, these attitudes are quite a long way from the enlightenment values
mentioned.
Open borders and nationalism are really different issues. One can recognise the need for
borders and border controls without convincing oneself that the people within a given
border line are therefore endowed with some common essence about which they can feel pride
or shame.
The pity about this is that liberal writers like ZW nearly always start from zero on
this issue as if there wasn't a whole mass of discussion of a very detailed kind that has
already taken place. Thus I would say that Ernest Renan's speech to the Surbonne in the
1880s published as What is a Nation? (reprinted in Shloma Sand's book On the
Nation and the 'Jewish People' ) is well in advance of ZW's musings.
I am with Einstein on this. He was once asked if he regarded himself as a German or a Jew.
He replied: "I look upon myself as a man. Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the
measles of mankind".
I found ZW's suggestion that "you do not need to be proud of Oliver Cromwell in order to be
proud of Jessica Ennis-Hill" both revealing and ridiculous. If one is going to pick a
figure from English history not to be proud of why on earth would one choose Cromwell? And
on what grounds exactly does ZW feel proud of JE-H?
The Cromwell reference leads to a further point. Can the English, on ZW's argument, take
pride in the actions of Scots prior to the Act of Union? And can they take pride in the
actions of the Irish from Northern but not Southern Ireland?
I would nuance what you say just a little. Our actions contribute to producing not only
things but also people. A parent can feel justified pride in the actions of his/her
children as can a teacher in the actions of his/her pupils. There can also be a justified
sense of collective pride for people who have contributed to that collective. ZW is right
about that. She gets into a muddle when she tries to project this collective pride
backwards in time to things we could have had no part in.
People can be proud of their country , there is nothing wrong with it ,but when a country
consists of many ethnic groups and religions, identifying the country only with majority
ethno linguistic or religious group can lead to discrimination , alienation and resentment
. This has led to civil wars in many regions. Canada and Switzerland are some of the
exceptions where federal system and equalities of ethno linguistic groups have strengthened
their countries .I would call this good nationalism.
On the other hand, many countries in Asia and Africa are suffering from the conflicts due
to persecution or discrimination inflicted upon minorities from the majoritarian
governments.
Modi in India is using the nationalistic card, trying to give an impression that the
country only belongs to Hindus and Hindi speakers. In reality, India is not even a country
, it is a collection of nation states with many ethnic groups , languages and religions
which were united during the British rule. It is more diverse than the whole of Europe
.However Modi is keen to perpetuate the myth India is homogenous , this natinalistic
ideology might risk formenting divisions and conflicts in the future.I would call it 'bad
nationalism '
Aren't we looking for the word patriotism as opposed to nationalism here Mz. Williams? I've
always cleaved to Orwell's definitions of patriotism and nationalism. Predictably,
nationalism gets short shrift.....largely because nationalism is dim, divisive and utterly
undigestible for the vast majority of a nation at ease with itself. This is why Moggo,
Bojo, Foxy and Gove prefer nationalism.
I'm not the one who has a problem with neo-liberalism, it's provided for me more than
adequately. Having spent a lot of time living overseas, it's provided ALL Australians with a
far better deal than a few billion others.
If you are too naive to see this, then maybe you need to try an alternative for a while.
It's quite ok, i'll be waiting for when the alternative fails (they always do) and I can come
back and pick off the assets from the carcus of that little experiment for less than a cent
in the dollar.
The dog eat dog economy simply represents our nature, it's who we are, we thrive under
libertarianism.
Po-faced, Libertarian BOLLOCKS.
Privatisation is sucker-farming.
Milking the punters, like ants milk aphids.
Farming them, like bellbirds do with leaf-bugs.
And even THAT is only part of the equation.
The fondest goal, the one which gives the management class hard-ons ?
Privatisation de-unionises their workforces.
It is quite strange that the biggest supporters of neo-liberal economics with its belief that
giving money to the rich will solve all our problems call themselves 'Christians'.
I can't remember when Jesus preached trickle down. I don't remember the bit where Jesus
said to treat those seeking asylum and fleeing violence like they are the scum of the earth.
I don't remember when Jesus said the poor needed a good kick in the guts while they are down
to motivate them to work harder. I don't remember when Jesus said we should cut funds from
the sick to balance the budget. I don't remember Jesus saying that if you bear false witness
often enough then you will fool enough of the people enough to keep power so you can look
after your corporate buddy buddies.
In fact, almost all of the politicians in the Coalition who proclaim to be 'Christian'
must have their own secret bible because nothing I have heard from the New Testament
justifies their actions.
Me, I'm an atheist and I have more care, consideration, ethics and compassion than the
entire collection of right wing bible bashers sitting in parliament today.
Thanks for this. We need more of these articles pointing out the bullshit behind this story
that the Coalition has been feeding the gullible peasantry with for over 30 years, sneering,
smirking and sniggering as truckloads of public money goes to private corporations. The money
received from selling off public assets has been shoved into private businesses who then feel
very free to charge like bulls.
It's a shame so many folk still fall for this bullshit meaning that their own families, work
colleagues and community get shafted through diminishing public services.
They used to tell me I was building a dream
And so I followed the mob
When there was earth to plow or guns to bear
I was always there right on the job
They used to tell me I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead
Why should I be standing in line
Just waiting for bread?
Once I built a railroad, I made it run
Made it race against time
Once I built a railroad, now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower up to the sun
Brick and rivet and lime
Once I built a tower, now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell
Full of that yankee doodle de dum
Half a million boots went sloggin' through hell
And I was the kid with the drum
Say, don't you remember, they called me Al
It was Al all the time
Say, don't you remember, I'm your pal
Buddy, can you spare a dime?
'This is more or less the definition of increased productivity and it is what ultimately
leads to improved living standards for everyone'
Lazy, neoliberal, supply-side economic guff. Neoliberals undermine government and
democracy and then scavenge on the wreckage. When does 'ultimately' begin for 'everyone'?
Never.
'Private companies provide the same service with much less labour'
Firing people is the answer? What a hardened realist you are. Must be great to be so
certain in your neoliberal convictions. Are you really telling us that every privatisation
has been a success?
These pieces of infrastructure have been built through generations of work and wise
investment - they are not any one government's to sell. It's just easier for a corrupt,
rudderless, feckless neoliberal shill to sell it than it is for them to to run it.
Can't even begin to address the characteristic Libertarian slyness in all that.
But I'll try.
"What you call neoliberalism was a set of responses to the failure of socialism or as Tony
Blair said 'what matters is what works'."
Incorrect.
What I--what the world--calls "Neoliberalism', is the corpse of Classical economics,
resurrected post-WW2 by Friedman and Hayek's 'Mont Pelerin Society. '
Why was it buried ?
Because during the Great Depression, its dogmatic insistence on continued austerity and wage
cuts only made things worse.
After all, in an economic slump, whats the worst thing you can do ?
Deprive people of whatever little purchasing power they have.
So, goodbye Classical economics.
After which, govts SPENT their societies out of slump, putting people to work.
(O, the horror ! O, the heresy !)
The public works of that era include Germany's autobahns and the US New Deal projects,
including the Tennessee Valley system and similar in Western States.
( O the horror ! O the heresy !)
Friedman, Hayek and the gang looked at those and post-WW2 programs of public benefit, such as
the UK's NHS and shat themselves. Typical fear-driven conservatives, they were convinced such
programs represented the thin end of the wedge which MUST end in imposition of Soviet-style
conditions.
What utter paranoid crap.
Their resurrected corpse of Classical economics ?.
THAT is what is 'Neoliberalism'.
Whether or not I call it so is immaterial.
Then, this lofty bit of finger-wagging assertion;
"This process of economic evolution is necessarily imperfect and incomplete...."
Your Lordship's overview is appreciated...
"....but currently leaves you free to own a computer, read news on-line, communicate using
the internet (maybe using NBN?) and express your views freely. "
Sez who ?
You ?
Besides, the only one talking about that old bogey, "socialism" is you.
Because its a conveniently perjorative label, eh ?
Pretty infantile, though.
"Anybody who doesn't agree with EVERYTHING I say, must be a 'socialist.' And they can't
play with my toys."
PS 'Adam', why do LIbertarians always project a Superiority Complex ?
Why are the buggers always so PLEASED WITH THEMSELVES ?
Neoliberalism = Socialism for the Rich - Capitalism for the Poor.
Politics needs reform, plain & simple. Fed ICAC and Integrity Commission is a good
start but it's not enough. The rules have to change too. Major decisions like privatising
services or tax handouts to the rich, shouldn't by law be allowed to get through parliament
or the senate unless the claims being made to justify them are quantifiable &
demonstrated to be in the National Interest. Currently politicians have no obligation to do
either.
e.g. claiming that jobs will be created if Penalty rates are cut = there's no way to
quantify such a BS claim and Doug Cameron got them to admit that in Senate Estimates. Even so
they were allowed to lie through their teeth and impose it anyway with no requirement to
prove their BS claims. This corporate tax handout = once again they claim it will lead to
more wealth to average Australians and more jobs but it can't be quantified or guaranteed via
regulation so it's all bullshit. The rich will hoard the wealth & kick Australians in the
guts as usual. That's what they've always done and always will do. Privatisation of
electricity..what a crock of shit. They claimed it would create competition and drive down
prices. What's happened? The complete opposite but politicians KNOW they're not accountable
and therein 'lies' the problem. The shortsheeting of the original NBN, = yet another lie.
They've totally crippled Australia's ability to compete in a digital age and completely
screwed regional 2nd tier cities and towns in terms of growth. As far as the National
interest is concerned the shortsheeting of the NBN is the complete opposite. Even so they
were allowed to bastardise that too without any accountability whatsoever. Australians need
to start demanding political reform so these bastards are accountable to the people.
Neoliberalism is just the academic name for the political ideology of greed, corruption, self
interest, self entitlement, corporate welfare, inequality, user pays, and poverty is your
fault.
Do you see any contradiction between privatised electricity and socialised stadiums?
Neoliberalism explains it all. Corruption in politics means that only profitable assets
are privatised. Stadiums lose money, so are kept in private hands as corporate welfare for
the various billionaire team owners and TV networks.
I love Richard Denniss! What a brilliantly concise and yet well supported argument. Now we
just need someone who can say it in terms that will persuade unwilling voters to think
carefully about their vote. If they do think carefully they simply cannot return this
government to power, now that they're all revealed as nothing but crony capitalists.
I must admit that like many people I also thought neoliberalism was an ideology, but then
I couldn't understand why they were so inconsistent in their spending of 'tax-payers'
funds'.
From now on I'll be pointing out those inconsistencies with more confidence - armed with
Richard's incontrovertible points, and also by a closer reading of Canadian Kean Birch's
article:
[The term neoliberalism ] is used to refer to an economic system in which the
"free" market is extended to every part of our public and personal worlds.
And here's wikipedia's definition of crony capitalism:
Crony capitalism is an economy in which businesses thrive not as a result of
risks they take, but rather as a return on money amassed through a nexus between a business
class and the political class.
NB But there's a more explicit definition here, which I like much better:
Crony capitalism is a term describing an economy in which success in business
depends on close relationships between business people and government officials. It may be
exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special
tax breaks, or other forms of state interventionism.
Yes, we have a spot of bother, and I think that their name - Institute of Public Affairs - is
quite a misnomer.
The way these people operate is more akin to Opus Dei and many other 'secret societies'
that have another public face altogether.
Given that IPA's agenda is a private members wish list which has a huge impact on matters
of a broad public nature, it's rather akin to incest, and we know where the confusion between
Church and State takes us regarding separation of powers, exactly where we are right now .two
Royal Commissions that are joined at the hip, Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
(2013 – 2017) and our current horror show Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation,
and Financial Services Industry which could for all intents and purposes be as long as
aforementioned.
Stay with me, as these are issues that relate to other 'energy' systems, namely money, sex
and power, and if we have any doubts as to how far this cancer has spread, a quick purview of
the following members ought to resolve it for you:
For the 70th Birthday big bash, we know that guests to the party were:
• Gina Rinehart
• Rupert Murdoch
• Tony Abbott
• George Pell - Australian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church
• Michael Kroger - President of the Victorian division of the Liberal Party of Australia
and former director of the IPA
• Mitch Fifield - Communications Minister
Think horizontal and vertical industries/associations and you begin to get the picture,
and that's before thinking about BCA and VECCI.
First, elect the other mob next time around. They're in the pockets of the multinationals and
the US alliance as well, but they're not quite as bad, yet. The next thing is a full-on
assault on mainstream media. The frontline of the revolution, if there is to be one, is the
media. No more guns or territorial claims, it's a battle for the mind. Education is the key.
The "Neolibs" attack education at every opportunity - teachers, curriculum, funding etc. etc.
but there's nothing wrong with education - the real problem is that the mainstream media
relentlessly, all day every day works to an agenda of dis-education, deliberately undermining
and destroying the work of our schools. They preach doubt and mistrust - of learning, facts,
truth, intelligence, pure science, art, music, culture, thoughtfulness, forbearance, empathy
and altruism. They teach us to monetise and gamble on everything. Their aim is to dumb
everyone down to the point where not only can't they read an analog clock or drive their own
car but become entirely dependent on the word of authority (of which they are the mouthpiece)
for a continued existence. Today, with our vast social platforms we can target their lies and
threats, one by one. Pick each one, attack it, viciously, loudly, risibly, with facts,
comedy, derision and invitations to dance. Spread it wide. Call them out at every
opportunity. Sneer them into oblivion. Mainstream media is the primary problem. That's what
must be destroyed.
No, regrettably they have not.
The neoliberalist 'mistake' has been going on for around 40 yrs now - it has proved a
relentless descent into inequality and austerity.
Chris Bowen
at the National Press Club : "...Labor will go to the next election:
Achieving budget balance in the same year as the government;
Delivering bigger cumulative budget surpluses over forward estimates as well as substantially
bigger surpluses over the ten year medium term; and
That the majority of savings raised from our revenue measures over the medium term will go
towards budget repair and paying down debt...."
Pure neoliberal economic poison that will create further hardship for our citizens, worsen
inequality and recess the economy yet further.
People have got to come to understand that the bigger surpluses Bowen speaks of are
federal tax collection surpluses; i.e. he intends to withdraw further spending capacity from
the private sector, all while the current account deficit already draws 3.5% GDP (~$30bn) a
yr from that same heavily indebted private sector.
This Bowen statement report
from the SMH : "The whiff of a surplus, not reaching at least 1 per cent of GDP until 2026-27, does not
adequately protect Australia against the potential roiling seas of international
uncertainty," he will say.
"Australia needs bigger surpluses, sooner than the government is scheduling.
"We can't afford to let the next four years go to waste in the efforts for a healthier, safer
budget surplus."
Absolute macroeconomic stupidity, arrogant, vandalous ideological madness.
When will the people come to their senses and stop supporting such socially destructive
errant neoliberal economic alchemy?
Just look at the Citizens Assembly overseeing the law change in the recent Irish referendum.
Worked a treat, cause those involved wanted to find the bvest alternative, rather than
feather their own nest.
It is indeed important to make the distinction between the ideology of neoliberalism - the
ideology of private enterprise is good, and public spending is bad - and the operational
system of crony capitalism - the game of mates played by government and the special
interests.
And it is certainly equally important to call out the monumental hypocrisy involved in the
government's application of the ideology's set of rules to the powerless and public and the
government's application of corrupt practice rules to the special interests.
The system is destroying the egalitarian character of Australia and fanning the flames of
nativist authoritarianism here.
But what's even more dangerous is the fundamental dishonesty that the system necessitates,
and the alienating influence it has - on top of the growing economic inequality.
The system has destroyed the economic and environmental viability and sustainability of
the planet on which human civilization depends.
What is becoming increasingly clear to more and more of the public is that - simple put-
the system cannot be allowed to go on as it has been proceeding because it threatens the
future of civilization on earth.
Change is imperative now. However, how that will unfold is unclear, as well as, the toll
the destruc5turing system will take.
What is clear is that a great restructuring must happen - and soon.
That'd be like astronomers saying that although Hellenic astrology is pseudoscientific nonsense they can probably do business
with Ptolemaic or Hindu astrology. Other scientists would laugh and call astronomy the dismal physics. Isn't it about time economists
like yourself just told the knuckle dragging ideologues - of whatever colour and salinity - to fuck off?
That'd be like astronomers saying that although Hellenic astrology is pseudoscientific nonsense they can probably do business
with Ptolemaic or Hindu astrology. Other scientists would laugh and call astronomy the dismal physics. Isn't it about time economists
like yourself just told the knuckle dragging ideologues - of whatever colour and salinity - to fuck off?
One interesting argument against bond rates rising further is that will be tremendous hit for
the USA budget as they need to pay interest of their debt. So it might be that there is just one
hike on the road from now.
Hasenstab described his market outlook during an interview with
the Financial Times .
"October was not a fluke," Hasenstab said. "There is a lot of entrenched interest rate
risk in all financial markets right now."
But even if raising interest rates leads to some discomfort in the short term, the Fed
should keep hiking, because "it's the right thing to do."
"I don't know what they will do, but I know what they should do, and that is to keep
raising rates," he said. "It is better to have these periodic downturns than procrastinating
and have to move even more aggressively later on."
Hasenstab's $35 billion Templeton Global Bond Fund is up 1.6% on the year, compared with a
2.2% loss for the global bond market , thanks to aggressive bets against the euro and US
equities. Judging by Hasenstab's outlook, if his view proves correct, those trades should
continue to generate profits during the new year.
A bond manager predicting rates will rise .... that´s a rarity in this business.
Looks like he is trying to tell the truth. But I don't trust politicians and neocons and Wall
Street guys. They will do everything to keep rates down. They will even start a war or sell
their mother, if that keeps rates down.
"...Templeton Global Bond Fund is up 1.6% on the year, compared with a 2.2% loss for
the global bond market, thanks to aggressive bets against the euro and US equities."
I was under the impression a bond fund invested in bonds? Stupid me! So I guess its not
really a bond fund - its just a fund.
Oh man, open up the holdings of any actively managed bond funds- MBS, CLOs, Loans, junk,
paper without ANY ratings. Very difficult to find a pure non-leveraged avtively managed bond
fund to hedge equities. You're better off building a ladder out of Treasuries and AAA
corporates yourself - and then holding till maturity.
A great many investors are about to be hit with huge margin calls and flushed out of this
market.
Imagine the shock this morning of a fictitious couple named Joe and Jill Average that are
nearing retirement with a net worth last month of around 250 thousand dollars as they check
to see how they are doing after hearing "murmurs" the market has slipped. With three-quarters
of it in the market, they will be horrified to find that the mere pullback of stocks in
recent weeks has ripped away over 50 thousand dollars or 20% of their wealth.
Few people watch their investments daily but rather chose to peek at them every now and
then. This is the main reason a lot more Americans are not waking up today sick to their
stomach and in near panic from the devastation markets have wrecked upon their savings as
trillions of dollars have vanished into a big black hole. The article below argues this does
not make for a Merry Christmas!
Neoclassical economics makes you thing the markets are something they are not.
The 1920's sucker that believed in free markets – "Everything is getting better
and better look at the stock market"
The 1920's neoclassical economist that believed in free markets - "Stocks have reached
what looks like a permanently high plateau." Irving Fisher 1929. It was obviously a
stable equilibrium.
What had gone wrong?
Henry Simons and Irving Fisher supported the Chicago Plan to take away the bankers ability
to create money, so that free market valuations could have some meaning.
The real world and free market, neoclassical economics would then tie up.
Henry Simons was actually at the University of Chicago (free market headquarters), but
they had forgotten about his work in a few decades.
What is real wealth?
In the 1930s, they pondered over where all that wealth had gone to in 1929 and realised
inflating asset prices doesn't create real wealth, they came up with the GDP measure to track
real wealth creation in the economy.
The transfer of existing assets, like stocks and real estate, doesn't create real wealth
and therefore does not add to GDP.
The real wealth in the economy is measured by GDP.
Inflated asset prices aren't real wealth, and this can disappear almost over-night, as it
did in 1929 and 2008.
Free and modestly regulated markets are good, no arguments there. The time for free
markets in interest rates, was before Nixon signed the Venganza contract. Now, it'd be
counterproductive, not with $22 Trillion in direct liabilities, and multiples in indirect
ones. If you're championing interest rates free markets under this condition, you're
suspicious.
How do you repay $22 Trillion under a free market determined 32% rate of interest, how? If
you default, the destabilization would be unimaginable. The governments can simply not be
allowed to keep piling on unproductive debt, not at all. If folks are bawling like newborns
at 2.7% rates, then what'd happen at conservative market rates of 6% and above, what
exactly?
Find out again, why the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States was founded, it'd open
your eyes to human depravity...
S&P still comfortably above anything 'real', and yet all this talk about the Fed's
unwavering resolve. And housing crisis 2.0 hasn't even rounded 2nd base.
The hypothesis is that due to emergence of mutual funds and other financial instruments the capitalist class became more
homogeneous in its interests and more united with financial oligarchy.
Notable quotes:
"... In such a situation there were significant divisions within the capitalist class that attenuated its overall political clout. Industries divided according to policy preferences, and political parties, which were essentially interest group coalitions, attracted different segments of this class. (In the US the Republicans were just as much an interest group coalition as the Democrats, just different interests like small retail business, domestic mining, nonunion manufacturing, etc.) Public policy in this dispensation, whatever its ostensible justification, reflected sectoral influence. ..."
"... Since the early 1970s capital ownership has become substantially more fungible in every respect. Equity funds of various sorts established themselves as institutional players, allowing individual capitalists to diversify via investment in these funds. Regulatory restrictions on capital movements were dismantled or bypassed. New information technology dramatically reduced (but not eliminated!) the fog of all financial markets. ..."
"... The other side of the coin was political influence over ideas. Intellectuals who advanced the positions we now call neoliberal were rewarded with research funding, jobs and influence over government policy. ..."
"... Lending conditionality reproduced in developing countries the same incentives that had shifted the intellectual environment in the core capitalist world. ..."
"... This hypothesis -- and it's important to be clear that's what it is -- also gives us an explanation for why the 2008 crisis, while it did provoke a lot of reconsideration by intellectuals -- did not result in meaningful institutional or policy change: the underlying political economic factors were unaltered . And it implies that further intellectual work, necessary as it is, will not be enough to extricate us from the shackles of neoliberal political constraints. For that we need to contest the power that undergirds them. ..."
"... The alliance (in the US, the focus of my comments) of the monied interests, providing the financial resources and seeking the repeal of the social and fiscal policies of the New Deal, and the heavily Southern-based evangelical/religious right, providing the voting bloc and seeking to turn back the progress of minorities and women in achieving more equal social and political rights -- created the powerful political base from which the revisionist onslaught was mounted. Reagan then provided the smiling face to sell the proposition that "government isn't the solution to your problems; government IS the problem" that effectively neutered the one institution capable of regulating the monied interests. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is a dialectic between them more than it has been a fixed doctrine. The remarkable power and resistance to outside critique is attributable to the insular nature of that dialectic. ..."
"... Where we are -- neoliberalism triumphant albeit spent ..."
A standard narrative is that the Keynesian postwar order cracked up over the crisis of inflation during the mid-1970s. A conservative
alternative that trusted markets more and government less was vindicated by events and established its intellectual dominance. After
a lag of a few years, policy followed along. One can critique this on matters of detail: economic growth remained stronger during
the 70s than it would be thereafter, anti-Keynesians did not have a superior understanding of economic developments, and no intellectual
revolution was complete within the space of just a few years. But the deeper problem, it seems to me, is that this attributes vastly
exaggerated agency to coteries of intellectuals. Do we really think that the elections of Reagan and Thatcher, for instance, were
attributable to a shift in grad school syllabi in economics and related fields?
I propose an alternative hypothesis. From the end of WWII to the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system, a large portion
of capital was illiquid, its value tied to its existing use. The rich sought to diversify their portfolios, of course, but there
were limits. Stock market transactions were beclouded by large information costs, and share ownership tended to be more stable and
concentrated. Fortunes were rooted in specific firms and industries. In such a situation there were significant divisions within
the capitalist class that attenuated its overall political clout. Industries divided according to policy preferences, and political
parties, which were essentially interest group coalitions, attracted different segments of this class. (In the US the Republicans
were just as much an interest group coalition as the Democrats, just different interests like small retail business, domestic mining,
nonunion manufacturing, etc.) Public policy in this dispensation, whatever its ostensible justification, reflected sectoral influence.
Since the early 1970s capital ownership has become substantially more fungible in every respect. Equity funds of various sorts
established themselves as institutional players, allowing individual capitalists to diversify via investment in these funds. Regulatory
restrictions on capital movements were dismantled or bypassed. New information technology dramatically reduced (but not eliminated!)
the fog of all financial markets. And firms themselves became separable bundles of assets as new technology and business methods
allowed for more integrated production across ownership lines. The combined result is a capitalist class with more uniform interests
-- an interest in a higher profit share of income and greater freedom for capital in every respect.
The crisis in real returns to
capital during the 1970s, the true economic instigator, galvanized this reorganization of the political economy. (In the US the S&P
peaked in 1972 and then lost almost half its inflation-adjusted value by the end of the decade. This is not an artifact of business
cycle timing.)
Of course, all understanding of the world is mediated by the way we think about it. The wealthy didn't say to themselves, "Gee,
my assets are taking a hit, so the government needs to change course." They turned to dissident, conservative thinkers who explained
the "failures" of the 70s as the result of too little concern for the engine of growth, which (of course) was understood to be private
investment. Market-friendly policy would, it was said, reinvigorate investment and spur economic growth. Keynesianism was seen as
having failed because it took investors for granted, taxing and regulating them and competing with them for finance; politicians
needed to show respect. It's understandable why capitalists would interpret their problems in this way.
The other side of the coin was political influence over ideas. Intellectuals who advanced the positions we now call neoliberal
were rewarded with research funding, jobs and influence over government policy. When the World Bank and the IMF were remade in the
wake of the 1982 debt crisis, this influence was extended internationally. Lending conditionality reproduced in developing countries
the same incentives that had shifted the intellectual environment in the core capitalist world.
This hypothesis -- and it's important to be clear that's what it is -- also gives us an explanation for why the 2008 crisis,
while it did provoke a lot of reconsideration by intellectuals -- did not result in meaningful institutional or policy change:
the underlying political economic
factors were unaltered . And it implies that further intellectual work, necessary as it is, will not be enough to extricate us
from the shackles of neoliberal political constraints. For that we need to contest the power that undergirds them.
The alliance (in the US, the focus of my comments) of the monied interests, providing the financial resources and seeking
the repeal of the social and fiscal policies of the New Deal, and the heavily Southern-based evangelical/religious right, providing
the voting bloc and seeking to turn back the progress of minorities and women in achieving more equal social and political rights
-- created the powerful political base from which the revisionist onslaught was mounted. Reagan then provided the smiling face
to sell the proposition that "government isn't the solution to your problems; government IS the problem" that effectively neutered
the one institution capable of regulating the monied interests.
An interesting discussion of the roots, differences and similarities between neoliberalism and ordoliberalism. And believe it
or not, the many comments raise some interesting points. Only one real gaslighting comment.
One thing Barkley said should be repeated: neoliberalism has opposing poles quite a distance apart. Neoliberalism is a dialectic
between them more than it has been a fixed doctrine. The remarkable power and resistance to outside critique is attributable to
the insular nature of that dialectic. The neoliberal right has chosen its interlocutors, the centrist "left" very well, which
is an important reason that the non-neoliberal real Left is emerging now from the sojurn in the politics of cultural critique
where it went in the 1960's with no knowledge or interest in economics.
It does not take a genius to see that human civilization and the natural ecology can only survive if people somehow manage
to produce a rational architecture for political economy deliberately and on an unprecedented scale and level of sophistication.
Where we are -- neoliberalism triumphant albeit spent and a Left at peak consciousness -- is exactly the wrong place to be in
the political cycle.
The Guardian is the best newspaper with 4,049,000 daily readers, they are owned by
non-profit foundation and they are free to write whatever they are pleased but their contents
is verified 100% so you are free not to like it but you have to accept it as a facts.
The Guardian is the best newspaper with 4,049,000 daily readers, they are owned by
non-profit foundation and they are free to write whatever they are pleased but their contents
is verified 100% so you are free not to like it but you have to accept it as a facts.
Michael Greenwood , Geoff Naylor and David Murray on the failures of economic policy
While agreeing with the thrust of Paul Mason's article (
A new politics of emotion is needed to beat the far right , Journal, 26 November), it is
surely necessary to employ economics if we are to defeat neoliberalism. We have lived under
this regime, with increasing severity, for 25 years or so. The result has been the stagnation
of real incomes for the large majority, with the benefits of GDP growth accruing to those at
the top of income and wealth distributions. This has suppressed growth, as those with less
money tend to spend it and those with more hide it and avoid tax. Lower UK growth is clearly
shown in comparative data.
So if neoliberalism is a school of economics, it is a failure if the aim of economic policy
is to encourage growth and the reinvestment of the benefits. Of course, neoliberalism is not
economics, it is political dogma, supported by its beneficiaries. We need economics
undergraduates to demand to be taught real economics and not the propaganda of power that is
neoliberalism.
Michael Greenwood Manchester
• In his search for a political narrative of economic hope to counteract the rise of
rightwing populism, Paul Mason overlooks the sense of belonging that exists in faith
communities. Here, a selfless collaboration for the inclusive good of one another has never
required disruption of the free-market economy. It is just that this ethos has not been
introduced at the national economic and political levels.
Geoff Naylor Winchester, Hampshire
• All suffered the same 2007-08 financial crash, but the "UK has weakest wage growth of
wealthy nations" ( Report
, 27 November). Anything to do with Tory-led government economic policy?
David Murray Wallington, Surrey
For 40 years, the ideology popularly known as "neoliberalism" has dominated political decision-making in the English-speaking
west.
People hate
it . Neoliberalism's sale of state assets, offshored jobs, stripped services, poorly-invested infrastructure and armies of the
forcibly unemployed have delivered, not promised "efficiency" and "flexibility" to communities, but discomfort and misery. The wealth
of a few has now swelled to a level of conspicuousness that must politely be considered
vulgar
yet the philosophy's entrenched itself so deeply in how governments make decisions and allocate resources that one of its megaphones
once declared its triumph "the end of history".
... ... ...
Paul Keating's rejection
It was a year ago that a third sign first appeared, when the dark horse of Australian prime ministers, Paul Keating, made public
an on-balance rejection of neoliberal economics. Although Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser instigated Australia's first neoliberal policies,
it was Keating's architecture of privatisation and deregulation as a Labor treasurer and prime minister that's most well remembered.
Now, "we have a comatose world economy held together by debt and central bank money," Keating has said, "Liberal economics has run
into a dead end and has had no answer to the contemporary malaise." What does the disavowal mean? In terms of his Labor heir Bill Shorten's growing appetite for redistributive taxation and close relationship to the union movement, it means "if Bill Shorten becomes
PM, the rule of engagement between labour and capital will be rewritten," according to The Australian this week. Can't wait!
Tony
Abbott becomes a fan of nationalising assets
Or maybe's Sukkar's right about the socialists termiting his beloved Liberal party. How else to explain the earthquake-like paradigm
shift represented by the sixth sign? Since when do neoliberal conservatives argue for the renationalisation of infrastructure, as
is the push of Tony Abbott's gang to nationalise the coal-fired Liddell power station? It may be a cynical stunt to take an unscientific
stand against climate action, but seizing the means of production remains seizing the means of production, um, comrade. "You know,
nationalising assets is what the Liberal party was founded to stop governments doing," said Turnbull, even as he hid in the dens
and in the rocks of the mountains to weather – strange coincidence –
yet another Newspoll
loss.
"new introduction to a re-released Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto.
Collective, democratic political action is our only chance for freedom and enjoyment."
Might be true. But frightening that people should naively still think that democracy is to be found in the 'Dictatorship of
the Proletariat' [ ie those who know what's good for you even if you don't like it ] of the Communist Manifesto after the revelations
of what that leads to in the Gulag Archipelago , Mao's China , Pol Pot , Kim John - un .
How quickly the world forgets. - you
might just as well advocate Mein Kampf it's the same thing in the end !
That's what you claim and it might be so but I'm not interested in keeping a score on the matter. The point you failed to get
is that the people you mentioned where totalitarian thugs. They used the banner of communism to achieve their ends. They would
have used what ever ideology that was in fashion to achieve the same results.
Does present day neo-liberalism actually qualify as a political movement?
Vested interests and the dollar seem to have all the power. Lies and deception are so common the truth is seen as the enemy.
The voting public are merely fools for manipulation. Nah, neo-liberalism is not government, it is something far nastier, and clearly
not what the public vote for, presuming a vote actually counts for anything anymore.
The S&P crashed below its bear market level of 2352.7 - the lowest since April 2017 -
ending the longest bull market in history. This is the worst December for the S&P 500 since
The Great Depression
Volatility on Wall Street has led shares worldwide on a wild ride in recent months,
resulting in a number of stock markets dipping into bear territory -- typically defined as
20 percent or more off a recent peak.
That's set to worsen in the new year, experts told CNBC on Monday, pointing to risks
including the Federal Reserve likely raising interest rates further and mounting concerns
about a global economic slowdown.
"I think the worst is yet to come next year, we're still in the first half of a global
equity bear market with more to come next year," said Mark Jolley, global strategist at CCB
International Securities. Volatility on Wall Street has led shares worldwide on a wild ride
in recent months, resulting in a number of stock markets dipping into bear territory --
typically defined as 20 percent or more off a recent peak.
That's set to worsen in the new year, experts told CNBC on Monday, pointing to risks
including the Federal Reserve likely raising interest rates further and mounting concerns
about a global economic slowdown.
"I think the worst is yet to come next year, we're still in the first half of a global
equity bear market with more to come next year," said Mark Jolley, global strategist at CCB
International Securities.
A decade after the subprime bubble burst, a new one seems to be taking its place – a
phenomenon aptly characterized by Ricardo Caballero, Emmanuel Farhi, and Pierre-Olivier
Gourinchas as "
Financial 'Whac-a-Mole .'" A world economy geared toward increasing the supply of
financial assets has hooked us into a global game of waiting for the next bubble to
emerge somewhere.
Like the synchronous boom in residential housing prior to 2007 across several advanced
markets, CLOs have also gained in popularity in Europe. Higher investor appetite for European
CLOs has predictably led to a
surge in issuance (up almost 40% in 2018). Japanese banks, desperately seeking higher
yields, have swelled the ranks of buyers. The networks for financial contagion, should things
turn ugly, are already in place.
The artificial bull market is officially over, with the SPX officially entering bear market
today. BTFD is dead. Worst single day drop ahead of Christmas since 1918! As the first bear
market in years hits the most artificial stock market in history...
... ... ...
Trump is right, the Fed is the problem, but not for raising rates. Trump and
the MSM media are saying the Fed is making a policy mistake by raising rates as the economy
slows, and more importantly because the stock market is selling off. The current FF rate is
sitting between 2.25 and 2.5%, which historically is still low and accomodative. But Trump
should have stuck to his campaign version of the Fed, when he called out the Fed for the bubble
in stocks, and for keeping rates to low which led to what he called a "big fat ugly bubble."
After his election, he embraced the stock market, and now he owns it.
The Fed is the problem because they cut rates to Zero and held it there for 7 years. The Fed
is the problem for helping orchestrate the bailouts. The Fed is the problem because they did
multiple rounds of QE which did NOTHING for the middle class and the average Americans, instead
it made the rich richer and created the largest wealth inequality. The Fed is the problem
because they waited too long to begin raising rates, which helped create the largest asset
bubbles the world had ever seen.
And on CNBC, as the market has been selling off nonstop, they have the audacity to ask 'why
the relentless selling'?! As the market rallied 342% over the last 10 years, not once did they
ever ask why the relentless buying. Not once were they or anyone else worried about the
repercussions. They were cheerleading the entire time. Not once did anyone mention that the
Fed's reckless policies led to a dangerous rally in stocks and across multiple asset classes.
People thought the party would and could never end.
So as the market is only down -20%, today former Hollywood movie director turned Treasury
Secretary sent the markets into deeper selling as he made headlines for calling Bank CEO's and
consulting with the Plunge Protection Team (PPT) about the market conditions and liquidity. We
haven't even seen panic in the markets yet, and we are consulting bank ceo's and the PPT??? But
once again, the old conspiracy theory of the existence of the PPT became a fact.
Mnuchin confirmed their existence. Now all of a sudden we are seeing "recession fears"
headlines all over the place, but a few months ago when stocks were at records you never heard
the "r" word. Yet they love to say the stock market is not the economy. The longest artificial
bull market is officially over. Now we will see just how bad it will get. We are only down
-20%, and it is a long way down if this is only the start.
They herded folks into gambling ventures, while piling them high with alcohol (debt), just
like in Vegas. We're tempted to just give up, and let the chips fall wherever. Some folks
think recalibration comes without unpleasantness. Making America Great Again, requires
sacrifice, work, and determination but if folks would rather sacrifice their children to the
Moloch of a levitated market, perhaps we're interacting with the wrong people and ought just
quit.
It's depressing that folks claim they wanna go to heaven, but keep looking longingly at
hell...
I stayed out of this abomination of a market once I made the money back I lost in 2008.
Never again, I said to myself. The Fed herds people into stocks, houses, whatever they think
they can pump and dump. Why doesn't Trump shut them down?
If the goal of the OPEC+ cuts was to boost oil prices, then the deal is clearly failing.
OPEC+ is scrambling to figure out a way to rescue oil prices from another deep downturn. WTI is
now down into the mid-$40s and Brent into the mid-$50s, both a 15-month low. U.S. shale
continues to soar, even if shale producers themselves are now
facing financial trouble with prices so low. Oil traders are clearly skeptical that OPEC+
is either willing or capable of balancing the oil market.
OPEC+ thought they secured a strong deal in Vienna in early December, but more needs to be
done, it seems. OPEC's Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo wrote a letter to the cartel's
members, arguing that they need to increase the cuts. Initially, the OPEC+ coalition suggested
that producers should lower output by 2.5 percent, but Barkindo said that the cuts need to be
more like 3 percent in order to reach the overall 1.2 million-barrel-per-day reduction.
More importantly, the group needs to detail how much each country should be producing. "In
the interests of openness and transparency, and to support market sentiment and confidence, it
is vital to make these production adjustments publicly available," Barkindo told members in the
letter, according to
Reuters . By specifying exactly how much each country will reduce, the thinking seems to
be, it will go a long way to assuaging market anxiety about the group's seriousness.
Still, the plunge in oil prices this month is evidence that traders are not convinced.
The view is "that the U.S. will continue to grow like gangbusters regardless of price and
overwhelm any OPEC action," Helima Croft, the chief commodities strategist at Canadian broker
RBC, told
the Wall Street Journal .
"Unless there is a real geopolitical blowup, it could take time for these cuts to really
shift sentiment."
While cuts from producers like Saudi Arabia will help take supply off of the market, OPEC
might help erase the surplus in another unintended way. Bloomberg
raises the possibility that low oil prices could increase turmoil in some OPEC member
states . The price meltdown between 2014 and 2016 led to, or at least exacerbated, outages in
Libya, Venezuela and Nigeria. The same could happen again.
Just about all OPEC members need much higher oil prices in order to balance their books.
Saudi Arabia
needs roughly $88 per barrel for its budget to breakeven. Libya needs $114. Nigeria needs
$127. Venezuela needs a whopping $216. Only Kuwait -- at $48 per barrel -- can balance its
books at prevailing prices. Brent is trading in the mid-$50s right now.
How unlikely did it seem (pre-Khashoggi) that the Syrian situation would take the turns
we're now starting to witness?
Totally under the radar during the holiday newscycle.....major news story!
▪Saudi Arabia Agrees to Finance Rebuilding of Syria - Trump▪
US President Donald Trump said in a statement on Monday that Saudi Arabia has agreed to
pay for the reconstruction of Syria rather than the United States financing the
reconstruction of that country.
>>> "Saudi Arabia has now agreed to spend the necessary money needed to help
rebuild Syria, instead of the United States. See? Isn't it nice when immensely wealthy
countries help rebuild their neighbors rather than a Great Country, the U.S., that is 5000
miles away. Thanks to Saudi A! " Trump said via Twitter.<<<
Trump has welcomed Riyadh's decision, adding that it is "nice when immensely wealthy
countries help rebuild their neighbors rather than a Great Country, the US, that is 5000
miles away."
The US president's comment comes after, on Wednesday, he announced that the United States
would withdraw its roughly 2,000 troops from Syria since the Daesh* terror group had been
defeated. However, the White House later clarified the decision does not mean the US-led
international coalition's fight against the Daesh has ended.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers in the US Congress who have supported US military
engagement and intervention throughout the world have criticized Trump's decision, saying
that a US troop withdrawal from Syria will lead to the reemergence of the Daesh and aid
Russia, Turkey and Iran fulfilling their interests in the region.
Right now neo-fascism is the most probably scenario of the social system after the decline of
neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... But, in Europe, there has always been a deep distrust of the Anglo-American celebration of "possessive individualism" and its repudiation of community and society. Remember Margaret Thatcher's contempt for the idea of "society"? So, it is unsurprising that neoliberalism's advocates dismiss recent European analyses of local, regional and global economies as the nostalgia of "old Europe", even as neoliberalism's failures stack up unrelentingly. ..."
"... The consequences of these failures are largely unseen or avoided by policymakers in the US and their camp followers in the UK and Australia. They are in denial of the fact that not only has neoliberalism failed to meet its claimed goals, but it has worked devastatingly to undermine the very foundations of late-modern capitalism. The result is that the whole shambolic structure is tottering on the edge of an economic abyss. ..."
"... If Streeck is correct, then we need to anticipate what a post-capitalist world may look like. He thinks it will be terrible. He fears the emergence of a neocorporatist state and close crony-like collaboration between big capital, union leaders, government and the military as the consequence of the next major global financial crisis ..."
"... Jobs will disappear, Streeck believes. Capital will be intensely concentrated in very few hands. The privileged rich will retreat into security enclaves dripping with every luxury imaginable ..."
"... Meanwhile, the masses will be cast adrift in a polluted and miserable world where life – as Hobbes put it – will be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. ..."
"... As Piketty and Streeck are pointing out to us, the post-neoliberal era has started to self-destruct. Either a post-capitalist, grimly neo-fascist world awaits us, or one shaped by a new and highly creative version of communitarian democracy. It's time for some great imagining. ..."
It is unfashionable, or just embarrassing, to suggest the
taken-for-granted late-modern economic order – neoliberal capitalism – may be in a
terminal decline. At least that's the case in what former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott
likes to call the "Anglosphere" .
What was once known as the Chicago school of economics
– the neoclassical celebration of the "free market" and "small government" – still
closes the minds of economic policymakers in the US and its satellite economies (although
perhaps less so in contemporary Canada).
But, in Europe, there has always been a deep distrust of the Anglo-American celebration
of "possessive individualism" and its repudiation of community and society. Remember Margaret
Thatcher's
contempt for the idea of "society"? So, it is unsurprising that neoliberalism's advocates
dismiss recent European analyses of local, regional and global economies as the nostalgia of
"old Europe", even as neoliberalism's failures stack up unrelentingly.
The consequences of these failures are largely unseen or avoided by policymakers in the
US and their camp followers in the UK and Australia. They are in denial of the fact that not
only has neoliberalism failed to meet its claimed goals, but it has worked devastatingly to
undermine the very foundations of late-modern capitalism. The result is that the whole
shambolic structure is tottering on the edge of an economic abyss.
What the
consequences might be
Two outstanding European scholars who are well aware of the consequences of the neoliberal
catastrophe are French economist Thomas Piketty and German economist Wolfgang Streeck.
Piketty's 2013 book, Capital in the
Twenty-First Century , charts the dangers of socioeconomic inequality in capitalism's
history. He demonstrates how this inequality can be – and has been over time –
fundamentally destructive of sustained economic growth.
Most compellingly, Piketty documented in meticulous detail how contemporary neoliberal
policies have constructed the worst forms of socioeconomic inequalities in history. His
analysis has been underlined by the recent Oxfam report that showed a mere eight
multi-billionaires own the equivalent amount of capital of half of the global population.
Despite Piketty's scrupulous scholarship, Western neoliberal economies continue merrily down
the road to nowhere. The foundations of that road were laid by the egregiously ideological
policies of Thatcher and Ronald Reagan – and slavishly followed by Australian politicians
on all sides ever since.
Streeck's equally detailed scholarship has demonstrated how destructive of capitalism itself
neoliberal policymaking has been. His latest book, How Will Capitalism
End? , demonstrates how this neoliberal capitalism triumphed over its opponents (especially
communism) by devouring its critics and opponents, obviating all possible alternatives to its
predatory ways.
If Streeck is correct, then we need to anticipate what a post-capitalist world may look
like. He thinks it will be terrible. He fears the emergence of a neocorporatist state and close
crony-like collaboration between big capital, union leaders, government and the military as the
consequence of the next major global financial crisis .
Jobs will disappear, Streeck believes. Capital will be intensely concentrated in very
few hands. The privileged rich will retreat into security enclaves dripping with every luxury
imaginable .
Meanwhile, the masses will be cast adrift in a polluted and miserable world where life
– as Hobbes put it – will be solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish and short.
What comes next is up to us
The extraordinary thing is how little is known or understood of the work of thinkers like
Piketty and Streeck in Australia today.
There have been very fine local scholars, precursors of the Europeans, who have warned about
the hollow promises of "economic rationalism" in Australia.
But, like the Europeans, their wisdom has been sidelined, even as inequality has been
deepening exponentially and its populist consequences have begun to poison our politics,
tearing down the last shreds of our ramshackle democracy.
The time is ripe for some creative imagining of a new post-neoliberal world that will repair
neoliberalism's vast and catastrophic failures while laying the groundwork for an Australia
that can play a leading role in the making of a cosmopolitan and co-operative world.
Three immediate steps can be taken to start on this great journey.
First, we need to see the revival of what American scholar Richard Falk called "globalisation
from below" . This is the enlivening of international civil society to balance the power of
the self-serving elites (multinational managers and their political and military puppets) now
in power.
Second, we need to come up with new forms of democratic governance that reject the fiction
that the current politics of representative government constitute the highest form of
democracy. There is nothing about representative government that is democratic. All it amounts
to is what Vilfredo Pareto described as
"the circulation of elites" who have become remote from – and haughtily contemptuous
of – the people they rule.
Third, we need to see states intervening comprehensively in the so-called "free market".
Apart from re-regulating economic activity, this means positioning public enterprises in
strategic parts of the economy, to compete with the private sector, not on their terms but
exclusively in the interests of all citizens.
As Piketty and Streeck are pointing out to us, the post-neoliberal era has started to
self-destruct. Either a post-capitalist, grimly neo-fascist world awaits us, or one shaped by a
new and highly creative version of communitarian democracy. It's time for some great
imagining.
This article is based on an earlier piece published in John Menadue's blog Pearls
and Irritations.
The longest and most ridiculous bull market. I once saw an epitaph on a tombstone that
read "I told you I was sick". I want mine to say "I told you to sell at Dow 26,000".
This wasn't a bull market, it was a levitated market.
In other news, we heard the Saudis have committed to help in rebuilding Syria and if true,
then we say to the Saudis, find redemption within your reach. And while we're at that, what
plans are in place for Yemen, the Kashoggi family, and the Saudi next generations, beyond
financial subsidies.
Concisely, what's the human development plan, devoid of white elephants, that cogently
integrates Saudi Arabia into the 21st century. A plan that can be coherently backed by the
globe, shorn of repression and terror cultivation?
Repentance, Restitution, and Recalibration, the three R's of a new leaf...
The Saudis wont do ****, they will send a few dozen Indians and maybe 100 Pakis (someone
has to manage the pakis you know). They will Spackle over the noticeable bullet holes, duct
take the plumbing back together and if they are lucky they may even free up a few Filipino
maids from slavery to clean the bathrooms that ISIS fucked up due to squatting on the seats
of the toilets and shooting the *** washer water all over the place.
Other than that, Saudis dont do **** all for themselves.
The market and RSI where overheated. Just correcting and cooling of RSI. Reading ZH would
make you believe the end of the world was here. Smart money been in cash since august.
They'll be buying these heavenly discounted companies soon. Especially oil equipment and
services who are now below 2008 lows.
You could be right? But I remember doing some DOW studies going back to DOW inception, and
it was always a very ominous signal when markets crashed in late December.
President Donald Trump has put a number of burning issues back on the agenda.
These include the widening income gap in the United States, the unintended and unexpected
consequences of outsourcing, and the disequilibrium created by signing trade agreements with
countries with different labor laws and environmental, health and safety standards.
In foreign policy, Trump has managed to pass on an important message: don't take
American heavy lifting for granted!
More importantly, Trump has persuaded millions of
Americans excluded or self-excluded from the political arena to end their isolation and demand a
meaningful place in collective decision-making.
Thus, for the time being at least, air-brushing Trump out of the picture is a
forlorn task.
(Image source: Ryan Johnson/City of North Charleston/Wikimedia Commons)
As the American political elite head for Christmas holidays,
the buzz in Washington
circles is that 2019 will start with fresh attempts at curtailing the Trump presidency or, failing
that, preventing Donald Trump's re-election in 2020.
Amateurs of the conspiracy theory may
suggest that the whole thing may be a trap set by the Trump camp to keep the president's opponents
chained to a strategy doomed to failure.
By devoting almost all of their energies to attacking Trump personally and praying that the
Mueller probe may open the way for impeachment,
the president's opponents, starting with
the Democrat Party leadership, have shut down debate about key issues of economic, social and
foreign policy -- issues that matter to the broader public.
Reducing all politics to a
simple "Get Trump!' slogan makes them a one-trick pony that may amuse people for a while but is
unlikely to go very far.
Despite sensational daily headlines furnished by the Mueller soap opera,
there is little
chance of the impeachment strategy to get anywhere close to success.
And even if the
pro-impeachment lobby succeeds in triggering the process, it is unlikely that this would lead to
Trump's removal from office. In fact, out of the 45 men who have served as President of the United
States only two, Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton, faced formal impeachment procedures, but neither
was driven out of office.
Two others, Richard Nixon and John Tyler, came close to being impeached but managed not to face
the music in the end.
Nixon resigned and Tyler dodged by not seeking re-electi
on.
With impeachment unlikely, Trump's opponents may be looking for other ways of terminating his
tenure at the White House. One way is to exert so much psychological pressure that he decides to
regain his tranquility by resigning. However, apart from Nixon's special case, the resignation has
never been a feature of the American presidential history.
In any case, Trump looks like the last man on earth to opt for the humiliation of entering
history as a quitter.
A third way to get rid of Trump is to persuade the Republican Party
not to nominate him for a second term
. At first glance that may look like a credible
option if only because the main body of the Republican Party has never warmed up to Trump.
In fact, calling Trump a Republican president may be more of a verbal conceit than an accurate
depiction of reality. In the mid-term elections in November, some Republican senators and
congressmen insisted that Trump should stay away from their campaigns. Some who did lose their
seats may have regretted their decision, as Trump proved to be in command of his own support base
beyond the Republican Party.
The anti-Trump section of the US media is desperate to find at least one Republican
figure capable of challenging the incumbent president in the coming nomination contest. So far,
however, none
of the putative knights-in-shining-armor fielded by the anti-Trump media has
succeeded in making an impression.
In any event,
there are only five cases in which an incumbent president failed to win
re-nomination by his party
. Of these, four were men who had inherited the presidency after
the death of the president.
One was the already mentioned -- John Tyler, who became president in 1841 after the death of
President William Henry Harrison. Another was Millard Fillmore, who entered the White House after
the death of President Zachary Taylor.
The third on the list was the already mentioned Andrew Jackson, who not only failed to secure
re-nomination but also narrowly escaped impeachment. The fourth was Chester Arthur, who took over
after the assassination of President James Garfield. He was ditched when he launched an anti-graft
campaign that alienated many within his own party.
Only one sitting president who had won the first term failed to secure re-nomination by his
party. He was Franklin Pierce, whose demise came in exceptional circumstances created by the
division over the issue of slavery as the nation moved towards the War of Secession. Today, none of
those conditions obtains in the United States and the Republican Party, and the possibility of a
palace revolt against the incumbent seems remote.
Some of Trump's opponents publicly pray
that he might forswear a second term because of poor health. Although he has entered his
eight-decade, however, Trump shows no signs of physical fatigue let alone serious illness leading
to possible incapacitation.
During the mid-term elections, this septuagenarian was capable
of flying from one end of the continent to the other in a single day to address half a dozen public
meetings.
That political power may act as an aphrodisiac and doping agent has been known at least since
the time of the great Xerxes, whose only regret was that, in 100 years, none in his million-man
army would be alive. There is no doubt that Trump thrives on power and, despite the extra kilos he
has gained in the past two years, still sees himself as a long-distance runner.
The mistake
that Trump's opponents made from the start, and some still continue to make, is to underestimate
him and dismiss his appeal to wide segments of society as an aberration.
Trump has, however, managed to question the political agenda by
questioning the
so-called Washington Consensus that led to globalization with all its benefits and drawbacks.
In his unorthodox manner, Trump has put a number of burning issues back on the agenda.
These include the widening income gap in the United States, the unintended and unexpected
consequences of outsourcing, and the disequilibrium created by signing trade agreements with
countries with different labor laws and environmental, health and safety standards. In foreign
policy, Trump has managed to pass on an important message: don't take American heavy lifting for
granted!
More importantly, Trump has persuaded millions of Americans excluded or
self-excluded from the political arena to end their isolation and demand a meaningful place in
collective decision-making.
Thus, for the time being at least, air-brushing Trump out of
the picture is a forlorn task.
Tags
Politics
Since
I last wrote about the bipartisan shrieking, hysterical reaction to Trump's planned
military withdrawal from Syria the other day, it hasn't gotten better, it's gotten worse. I'm
having a hard time even picking out individual bits of the collective freakout from the
political/media class to point at, because doing so would diminish the frenetic white noise of
the paranoid, conspiratorial, fearmongering establishment reaction to the possibility of a few
thousands troops being pulled back from a territory they were illegally occupying .
Endless war and military expansionism has become so normalized in establishment thought that
even a slight scale-down is treated as something abnormal and shocking. The talking heads of
the corporate state media had been almost entirely ignoring the buildup of US troops in Syria
and the operations they've been carrying out there, but as soon as the possibility of those
troops leaving emerged, all the alarm bells started ringing. Endless war was considered so
normal that nobody ever talked about it, then Trump tweeted he's bringing the troops home, and
now every armchair liberal in America who had no idea what a Kurd was until five minutes ago is
suddenly an expert on Erdoğan and the YPG. Lindsey Graham, who has never met an
unaccountable US military occupation he didn't like, is now suddenly cheerleading for
congressional oversight: not for sending troops into wars, but for pulling them out.
"I would urge my colleagues in the Senate and the House, call people from the
administration and explain this policy," Graham recently told
reporters on Capitol Hill. "This is the role of the Congress, to make administrations
explain their policy, not in a tweet, but before Congress answering questions."
"It is imperative Congress hold hearings on withdrawal decision in Syria --
and potentially Afghanistan -- to understand implications to our
national security," Graham tweeted today .
In an even marginally sane world, the fact that a nation's armed forces are engaged in daily
military violence would be cause for shock and alarm, and pulling those forces out of that
situation would be viewed as a return to normalcy. Instead we are seeing the exact opposite. In
an even marginally sane world, congressional oversight would be required to send the US
military to invade countries and commit acts of war, because that act, not withdrawing them, is
what's abnormal. Instead we are seeing the exact opposite.
A hypothetical space alien observing our civilization for the first time would conclude that
we are insane, and that hypothetical space alien would be absolutely correct. Have some Reese's
Pieces, hypothetical space alien.
It is absolutely bat shit crazy that we feel normal about the most powerful military force
in the history of civilization running around the world invading and occupying and bombing and
killing, yet are made to feel weird about the possibility of any part of that ending . It is
absolutely bat shit crazy that endless war is normalized while the possibility of peace and
respecting national sovereignty to any extent is aggressively abnormalized. In a sane world the
exact opposite would be true, but in our world this self-evident fact has been obscured. In a
sane world anyone who tried to convince you that war is normal would be rejected and shunned,
but in our world those people make six million dollars a year reading from a teleprompter on
MSNBC.
How did this happen to us? How did we get so crazy and confused?
I sometimes hear the analogy of sleepwalking used; people are sleepwalking through life, so
they believe the things the TV tells them to believe, and this turns them into a bunch of
mindless zombies marching to the beat of CIA/CNN narratives and consenting to unlimited
military bloodbaths around the world. I don't think this is necessarily a useful way of
thinking about our situation and our fellow citizens. I think a much more useful way of looking
at our plight is to retrace our steps and think about how everyone got to where they're at as
individuals.
We come into this world screaming and clueless, and it doesn't generally get much better
from there. We look around and we see a bunch of grownups moving confidently around us, and
they sure look like they know what's going on. So we listen real attentively to what they're
telling us about our world and how it works, not realizing that they're just repeating the same
things grownups told them when they were little, and not realizing that if any of those
grownups were really honest with themselves they're just moving learned concepts around inside
a headspace that's just as clueless about life's big questions as the day it was born.
And that's just early childhood. Once you move out of that and start learning about
politics, philosophy, religion etc as you get bigger, you run into a whole bunch of clever
faces who've figured out how to use your cluelessness about life to their advantage. You
stumble toward adulthood without knowing what's going on, and then confident-sounding people
show up and say "Oh hey I know what's going on. Follow me." And before you know it you're
donating ten percent of your income to some church, addicted to drugs, in an abusive
relationship, building your life around ideas from old books which were promoted by dead kings
to the advantage of the powerful, or getting your information about the world from Fox
News.
For most people life is like stumbling around in a dark room you have no idea how you got
into, without even knowing what you're looking for. Then as you're reaching around in the
darkness your hand is grasped by someone else's hand, and it says in a confident-sounding
voice, "I know where to go. Come with me." The owner of the other hand doesn't know any more
about the room than you do really, they just know how to feign confidence. And it just so
happens that most of those hands in the darkness are actually leading you in the service of the
powerful.
That's all mainstream narratives are: hands reaching out in the darkness of a confusing
world, speaking in confident-sounding voices and guiding you in a direction which benefits the
powerful. The largest voices belong to the rich and the powerful, which means those are the
hands you're most likely to encounter when stumbling around in the darkness. You go to school
which is designed to indoctrinate you into mainstream narratives, you consume media which is
designed to do the same, and most people find themselves led from hand to hand in this way all
the way to the grave.
That's really all everyone's doing here, reaching out in the darkness of a confusing world
and trying to find our way to the truth. It's messy as hell and there are so many
confident-sounding voices calling out to us giving us false directions about where to go, and
lots of people get lost to the grabbing hands of power-serving narratives. But the more of us
who learn to see through the dominant narratives and discover the underlying truths, the more
hands there are to guide others away from the interests of the powerful and toward a sane
society. A society in which people abhor war and embrace peace, in which people collaborate
with each other and their environment, in which people overcome the challenges facing our
species and create a beautiful world together.
People aren't sleepwalking, they are being duped . Duped into insanity in a confusing,
abrasive world where it's hard enough just to get your legs underneath you and figure out which
way's up, let alone come to a conscious truth-based understanding of what's really going on in
the world. But the people doing the duping are having a hard time holding onto everyone's hand,
and
their grip is slipping . We'll find our way out of this dark room yet.
Has anyone noticed that Rachel Maddow with her sooo patronizing, sooo objectionally smug
manner, implying that anyone who likes Trump is laughably pathetic, well – she keeps on
doing this and oddly (and effectively) generates a lot of support for Trump and what he's
doing. Her absolutely foul manner is perfectly crafted to turn folks against her and what she
espouses. You go girl!
It seems to me that, objectively, there are about three basic reasons for Endless War in
the Middle East.
One, to insure the security of the Israeli state. Two, to insure the free flow of cheap ME
petroleum to our 'trading partners' around the world who burn it to make cheap **** and ship
it across sealanes kept open by the U.S. Navy to Walmart and Amazon for resale (on credit!)
to the sheeple. Three, to finance the multi-billion dollar arms-building American MIC.
Purposes One, Two and Three mutually reinforce each other. You don't have to agree with all
Purposes as long as you agree with one of them. Proponents of Purpose One find allies among
the proponents of Purposes Two and Three. And vice versa. And, in a 'virtuous' (or is it
vicious?) circle, all at the top get very rich. The ultra-wealthy supporters of Israel, the
globalists, the corporatists, the militarists and their financiers and media mouthpieces.
Essentially all the new money in the Billionaire Class.
And who is opposed to this little arrangement? A few libertarians, and realists, and some
historians? A few folks on 'conservative' (but not neocon) websites? A few deplorables who
are actually thinking about their own best interests? A few people morally offended by the
notion of living in an 'exceptional' country which sponsors deadly perpetual war? A few
people who think its crazy to go half way around the world to kill people engaged in a
conflict which is critical to their daily lives but theoretical to us? A few men and women
who have seen combat and know the bloody truth? A few people who would prefer to re-invest in
the United States and repair the damage done to this country over the last forty years?
When you think about it the deck is definitely stacked in favor of Endless War. And what
Trump did on Thursday is again rather extraordinary.
The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge." Lord
Acton
George Herbert Walker Bush died on Saturday. He was 94 years old. Thanks to decisions he made
throughout his career, thousands – perhaps millions – of people never got near 94. He
invaded Iraq in 1991, instituted sanctions that destroyed the country. He pardoned those involved
in the Iran-Contra affair and was head of the CIA when Operation Condor launched the military coup
in Argentina in 1976 .
Instead, Simon Tisdall – a mindless servant to the status quo, always happy to weave
invective about our designated enemies – treats us to paragraph after paragraph of inane
anecdotes.
Good old Georgie once gave him a lift in Air Force One.
Barbara gave him useful advice about raising Springer Spaniels.
The following words and phrases are not found anywhere in this article: CIA, Iraq,
Iran-Contra, Argentinian coup, Iran Air Flight 655, NAZI, Panama.
Rather, Tisdall refers Bush's term as "before the era of fake news". Which makes him either a
complete a liar or profoundly under-qualified to write on the subject – as the Bush-era
spawned the original fake news: The Nayirah testimony . A pack of lies told
before the Senate, and used to justify a war in the middle-east.
Bush started two wars as President. Planned and enabled countless crimes as director of the
CIA. pardoned all those implicated in the Iran-Contra affair. Refused to apologise when the US
Navy "accidentally" shot down an Iranian airliner, killing over 200 civilians, including 60
children.
He was the original neocon – his administration brought us Cheney and Powell and
Rumsfeld. Gave birth to the ideology that stage-managed 9/11, launched the "War on Terror", and
cut a blood-stained swath across North Africa and the Middle East.
We don't hear about that.
What we DO hear about is Bush's "deep sense of public duty and service" and that
"Bush was a patriot who did not need cheap slogans to express his belief in enduring American
greatness". No space is given over to analysis, to examine the fact that "belief in enduring
American greatness" is quasi-fascism, and responsible for more violent deaths this century than
any other cause you can name.
In hundreds of words, a notionally left-wing paper has nothing but praise for a highly
unpopular right-wing president. No space is given over even to the gentlest of rebukes.
The whole article is an exercise in talking without saying anything. Pleasantries replacing
truth. Platitudes where facts should be. A nothing burger, with a void on the side and an extra
order of beige.
It's an obituary of Harold Shipman that eschews murder talk and rhapsodises about his love of
gardening.
A eulogy to Pinochet that praises his economic reforms but neglects all the soccer stadiums
full of corpses.
An epitaph to Hitler that focuses, not on his "controversial political career", but on his
painting and his vegetarianism.
Did you know Genghis Khan once lent me a pencil? He was a swell guy. The world will miss
him.
We're no longer supposed to examine the lives, characters or morals of our leaders. Only
"honour their memory" and be "grateful for their service". History is presented to us, not as a
series of choices made by people in power, but as a collection of inevitabilities. Consequences
are tragic but unavoidable. Like long-dead family squabbles – To dwell on them is unseemly,
and to assign blame unfair.
Just as with John McCain, apologism and revisionism are sold to us as manners and good taste.
Attempts to redress the balance and tell the truth are met with stern glares and declarations
that it is "too soon".
It's never "too soon" to tell the truth.
John McCain was a dangerous war-mongering lunatic. George Bush Sr was a sociopath from a
family of corrupt sociopaths. The world would be a far better, and much safer place if just one
major newspaper was willing to say that.
Really, there are two obituaries to write here:
First – George HW Bush, corrupt patriarch of an old and malign family, passing out of
this world to face whatever eternal punishment (hopefully) awaits those who sell their immortal
soul in exchange for a brief taste of power.
Second – The Guardian, perhaps a decent newspaper once-upon-a-time, now a dried out
husk. A zombified slave to the state, mindless and brainless and lifeless. No questions, no
reservations, no hesitation. Obediently licking up the mess their masters leave behind.
It's sickening.
Kit Knightly is co-editor of OffGuardian. The Guardian banned him from commenting.
Twice. He used to write for fun, but now he's forced to out of a near-permanent sense of
outrage.
My mother believed it was only Bush Senior's longevity that prevented some of the neo-cons from
bumping off Bush Junior. He was President in name only and has long since fulfilled his
usefulness in committing the US to endless war. He is prone to verbal gaffes and that must make
him a liability, and when powerful evil people get nervous they often turn deadly.
Cut&Pasted from Lavrov interview in today's Saker Vineyard:
Question: When the death of President George H.W. Bush was announced, President Putin
expressed his condolences in a very emotional message. George Bush Sr. believed that one of the
worst mistakes of his presidency was failure to prevent the Soviet Union's dissolution. Did you
meet with him? What are your impressions of him?
Sergey Lavrov: I believe that George Bush Sr greatly contributed to the development of the
United States and ensured that his country responsibly played its role in the world,
considering its weight in international affairs.
I remember very well how President George H.W. Bush visited Moscow, and then he went to
Ukraine where he encouraged the Soviet republics' political forces to do their duty by
preserving the country rather than create huge, tragic problems for millions of people who
became citizens of different states the morning after the Soviet Union collapsed.
Mr Bush was a great politician. I believe that every word that will be said about his
achievements reflect the people's true attitude to this man. However, one comment about the
link between President Bush and the demise of the Soviet Union. I heard a commentator say that
George Bush Sr made history by helping Mikhail Gorbachev soft-land the Soviet Union. In fact,
George Bush Sr never did that; he simply wanted to protect millions of people from political
games. This is what we can say confidently about him.
It was German journalist, Udo Ulfkotte actually spilled the beans regarding the western media
in his best seller, Journalisten Gekaufte, (Bought Journalists). Ulfkotte described the degree
to which the CIA has penetrated the western media and corrupted, or bribed ( including himself)
the system which has become a PR organization for the intelligence services, and MIC. On
publication it immediately sold 120,000.00 copies and then strangely became unavailable in
English. He was described as a 'conspiracy theorist' (but of course) and died at the relatively
young age of a heart attack at 56. There are some salient issues surrounding his death raised
by Jonas Schneider in his book 'The Mysterious Death of Udo Ulfkotte: Evidence for a Murder.
He has announced his order to withdraw US troops from Syria.
His Defense Secretary James Mattis has resigned. There are rumors National Security
Adviser John Bolton may go too. (Please take
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with you!)
He announced a start to withdrawing from Afghanistan.
He now says he will veto a government funding bill unless he gets $5 billion for his
Wall, and as of 12:01 AM Washington time December 22 the federal government is officially
under partial shutdown.
All of this should be taken with a big grain of salt. While this week's assertiveness
perhaps provides further proof that Trump's impulses are right, it doesn't mean he can
implement them.
Senator Lindsey Graham is demanding
hearings on how to block the Syria pullout . Congress hardly ever quibbles with a
president's putting troops into a country, where the Legislative Branch has legitimate
Constitutional power. But if a president under his absolute command authority wants to pull
them out – even someplace where they're deployed illegally, as in Syria – well hold
on just a minute!
This will be a critical time for the Trump presidency. (And if God is really on his side, he
soon might get
another Supreme Court pick .) If he can get the machinery of the Executive Branch to
implement his decision to withdraw from Syria, and if he can pick a replacement to General
Mattis who actually agrees with Trump's views, we might start getting the America First policy
Trump ran on in 2016.
Mattis himself said in his resignation letter, "Because you have the right to have a
Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these [i.e., support for
so-called "allies"] and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my
position."
Right on, Mad Dog! In fact Trump should have had someone "better aligned" with him in that
capacity from the get-go. It is now imperative that he picks someone who agrees with his core
positions, starting with withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan, and reducing confrontation with
Russia.
Former Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagel complains that "our government is not a one-man show." Well, the "government"
isn't, but the Executive Branch is. Article II,
Section 1 : "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of
America." Him. The President. Nobody else. Period.
Already the drumbeat to saddle Trump with another Swamp critter at the Pentagon is starting:
"Several possible replacements for Mattis this week trashed the president's decision to pull
out of Syria. Retired Gen. Jack Keane called the move a "strategic mistake" on Twitter.
Republican Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) signed a letter demanding
Trump reconsider the decision and warning that the withdrawal bolsters Iran and Russia." If
Trump even considers any of the above as Mattis's replacement, he'll be in worse shape than he
has been for the past two years.
On the other hand, if Trump does pick someone who agrees with him about Syria and
Afghanistan, never mind
getting along with Russia , can he get that person confirmed by the Senate? One possibility
would be to nominate someone like Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney specifically
to run the Pentagon bureaucracy and get control of costs, while explicitly deferring
operational decisions to the Commander in Chief in consultation with the Service Chiefs.
Right now on Syria Trump is facing pushback from virtually the whole Deep State
establishment, Republicans and Democrats alike, as well as the media from Fox News , to NPR ,
to MSNBC . Terror has again gripped the establishment that the Trump who was elected president
in 2016 might actually start implementing what he promised. It is imperative that he pick
someone for the Pentagon (and frankly, clear out the rest of his national security team) and
appoint people he can trust and whose views comport with his own. Just lopping off a few heads
won't suffice – he needs a full housecleaning.
In the meantime in Syria, watch for another "Assad poison gas attack against his own
people." The last time Trump said we'd be
leaving Syria "very soon " was on March 29 of this year. Barely a week later, on April 7,
came a supposed chemical incident in Douma, immediately hyped as a government attack on
civilians
but soon apparent as likely staged . Trump, though, dutifully took the bait, tweeting that
Assad was an "animal." Putin, Russia, and Iran were "responsible" for "many dead, including
women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack" – "Big price to pay." He then for the
second time launched cruise missiles against Syrian targets. A
confrontation loomed in the eastern Med that could to have led to war with Russia. Now, in
light of Trump's restated determination to get out,
is MI6 already ginning up their White Helmet assets for a repeat ?
Trump's claim that the US has completed its only mission, to defeat ISIS, is being compared
to George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" banner following defeat of Iraq's army and the
beginning of the occupation (and, as it turned out, the beginning of the real war). But if it
helps get us out, who cares if Trump wants to take credit? Whatever his
terrible, horrible, no good, very bad national security team told him, the US presence in
Syria was never about ISIS. We are there as Uncle Sam's Rent-an-Army for the Israelis and
Saudis to block Iranian influence and especially an overland route between Syria and Iran (the
so-called
"Shiite land bridge" to the Mediterranean ).
For US forces the war against ISIS was always a sideshow, mainly carried on by the Syrians
and Russians and proportioned about like the war against the Wehrmacht: about 20% "us," about
80% "them." The remaining pocket ISIS has
on the Syria-Iraq border has been deliberate ly left alone, to keep handy as a lever to
force Assad out in a settlement (which is not going to happen). Thus the claim an American
pullout will
lead to an ISIS "resurgence " is absurd. With US forces ceasing to play dog in the manger,
the Syrians, Russians, Iranians, and Iraqis will kill them. All of them.
If Trump is able to follow through with the pullout, will the Syrian war wind down? It needs
to be kept in mind that the whole conflict has been because we (the US, plus Israel, Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, UAE, the United Kingdom, etc) are the aggressors. We sought to use
al-Qaeda and other jihadis to effect regime change via the tried and true method. It
failed.
Regarding Trump's critics' claim that he is turning over Syria to the Russians and Iranians,
Assad is nobody's puppet. He can be allied with a Shiite theocracy but not controlled by it;
Iran, likewise, can also have mutually beneficial ties with an ideologically dissimilar
country, like it does with Christian Armenia. The Russians will stay and expand their presence
but unlike our presence in many countries – which seemingly never ends, for example in
Germany, Japan, and Korea, not to mention Kosovo – they'll be there only as long and to
the extent the Syrians want them. (Compare our eternal occupations with the Soviets' politely
leaving Egypt when Anwar Sadat asked them, or leaving Somalia when Siad Barre wanted them out.
Instead of leaving, why didn't Moscow just do a " Diem " on them?) It
seems that American policymakers have gotten so far down the wormhole of their paranoid
fantasies about the rest of the world – and it can't be overemphasized, concerning areas
where the US has no actual national interests – that we no longer recognize classic
statecraft when practiced by other powers defending genuine national interests (which of course
are legitimate only to the extent we say so).
Anyway, if this week's developments are the result of someone putting something into
Donald's morning Egg
McMuffin , America and the world owe him (or her) a vote of thanks. Let's see more of
the wrecking ball we Deplorables voted for !
Trump thought that by bringing the swamp into his fold he might be able to defang it. He
bent the knee, played nice and kissed the ring but still they kept at him. I think Trump has
had enough of giving a mile for getting an inch. I like Trump when he presents himself as a
human wrecking ball to all the evil plans of the Washington establishment and if he continues
like this I honestly believe he will be reelected in 2020, and one day will be acknowleged as
a true chapion for every day Americans but if he shrinks back into his shadow and gives the
likes of Bolton and Pompeo free reign to **** all over the globe with their insane scheming
he will be a one term failure.
Don't get too excited about the possibility that there may be more kinds of viagra to try
out, Jattras. If Trump recently seems to be more like the candidate we voted for, the real
reason for his reversion back is because the midterm elections are over and Trump kept the
Senate.
Check with me before you start making a lot of crack-pot statements
You know already what I will respond to this. And I know already what you will say in return.
So, instead of getting into a back and forth about it, I will simply leave you with something
to consider.
The fact that each successive report that comes out that refutes the claims of the truther
movement is automatically dismissed by people like you shows how conspiracy theory thinking
works. The final 9/11 report comes out in 2004 and, of course, the truthers dismiss it
because it was written by a branch of the federal government who you believe perpetrated 9/11
in the first place. Then Popular Mechanics publishes a 5,500 word report in 2005 extensively
answering and debunking the movement claims.
Here, you people can't claim that it was a government cover-up -- at least not directly --
because Popular Mechanics is a privately owned publication. Therefore, new sub-conspiracy
theories are invented to "prove" how Popular Mechanics is part of the cover-up. To give just
one example Christopher Bollyn "claimed to have discovered why the 100-year-old engineering
magazine would take part in a government cover-up of the crime of the century: A young
researcher on the magazine's staff named Benjamin Chertoff was a cousin of then-Homeland
Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and the magazine was seeking to whitewash the criminal
conspiracy with its coverage." (Slate 2011) Here we are seeing the kind of incredible mental
contortion that truthers are willing to engage in to continue believing their theories.
Then in 2008 the National Institute of Standards and Technology released the final
installment of its study into the causes behind the collapse of the buildings -- $16 million
was invested into the investigation. And, as I well know, you and other truthers will have a
smart Alec come-back as to why the NIST report is wrong, its authors are part of the vast
conspiracy and so on. On and on it goes no matter how many reports are published by however
many experts.
Again, I am not interested in getting dragged into a back-and-forth about the merits and
demerits of these reports. Rather, I wish to point out the flawed reasoning inherent to 9/11
trutherism: that it has its own internal mechanisms for discounting any evidence that
contradicts its central tenets. It therefore constitutes a closed system of thought because
there is nothing that would ever count as a refutation. In other words, for all contradictory
evidence another explanation is made to retroactively fit the latest gap in the theory that
is exposed.
Now, I know full well that this is probably not going to change your mind either. And I'm
sure that there will be plenty of responses to this comment and thumbs down from Off-Guardian
readers. But I hope that you at least consider whether you are wrong about this subject. For
my part, I worry that 9/11 trutherism obscures what are indeed important subjects -- US
imperialism, US govt. corruption, the nefarious influence of the CIA, the legitimate
grievance that people in the Middle East have against the US, Israel, the Saudi dictatorship
and so on. Above all, I worry that 9/11 trutherism makes it open season for the real enemies
-- the US foreign policy establishment, et cetera -- to portray the resistance to them and
their agenda as a bunch of tin foil hat wearing fruitcakes. I feel strongly that the left
needs to jettison this in-group, conspiracy theory-type stuff really become a major force and
overturn the status quo.
People like you must count as a great success for the obedience training that keeps
capitalist society running smoothly, with the few dissidents casually dismissed as "a bunch
of tin foil hat wearing fruitcakes".
Even NIST eventually admitted that WTC-7 free-fell for 2.5 seconds. That can only happen
if all the support columns fail at exactly the same time; otherwise it would topple over
sideways. Only controlled explosives can make that happen.
Your touching faith in the word of ruling-class "experts", over the evidence of your own
eyes, and basic physics, is a credit to the Middle Ages. It would warm the hearts of the
Catholic theologians who refused to look through Galileo's telescope because they knew, as a
matter of revealed truth, that what he said couldn't possibly be true.
What do the claims of a bunch of tinfoil-hat-wearing fruitcakes count for, against not
just ruling class dogma, but the entire weight of respectable middle-class opinion? The
social status and careers of millions of right-thinking professionals, like you, depend on
believing, or at least pretending to believe, not just the 9/11 Official Story, but all the
other Official Stories as well. How could all those comfy middle-class people, with their
comfy middle-class careers and high-status friends, be wrong? That would throw the entire
plan for next weekend's dinner party into question.
Do you believe the Offical Skripal Story? The Official ISIS story? The Official Syrian
Chemical Weapons Story? The Official JFK Assassination Story? The Official USS Liberty Story?
The Official Tonkin Gulf Story? How do you decide which Official Stories to believe, except
on the basis of careerism and status-seeking?
Again, I am not interested in getting drawn into a back-and-forth about the various claims of
9/11 truthers like yourself. I would just like to make one comment and then leave two things
for yourself and other truthers on here to consider.
First, I would like to comment upon the fact that I have been subjected to some rather
nasty personalized abuse on this thread simply for challenging the claims of trutherism. I'm
not pointing this out to feel aggrieved or to search for sympathy or to make myself out as
some kind of victim. Rather I do so to illustrate how it is indicative of the negative and
mind-closing effects of the group-think and the conspiracy theorist mind-set. It goes
something like this: "everyone who questions the tenets of the great truther theory is the
enemy, not just a skeptic but rather a collaborator in the evil system that suppresses the
"truth"."
The people it discusses were truthers and many of them reexamined their beliefs after
being confronted by actual specialists on the subjects basing their truther beliefs on. If
you are open-minded as you claim to be, then have the decency to at least read the article
and consider its points, rather than just reflexively rejecting the source as part of the
great cover-up.
Finally, I would like to leave you with a quote from Noam Chomsky. Now, I am well aware
that you think Chomsky is a sell-out for not getting on board with trutherism and that you
have all kinds of fancy come-backs as to why he is wrong. But he raises a very important
issue of priorities for people on the anti-imperialist left to consider. Is this obsession
with this issue really helping us to fight against imperialism and all of the other
iniquities of the world? I think not:
"One of the major consequences of the 9/11 movement has been to draw enormous amounts of
energy and effort away from activism directed to real and ongoing crimes of state, and their
institutional background, crimes that are far more serious than blowing up the WTC would be,
if there were any credibility to that thesis. That is, I suspect, why the 9/11 movement is
treated far more tolerantly by centers of power than is the norm for serious critical and
activist work." Noam Chomsky
Ah "truther", that neologism which serves the same purpose as the recasting of the term
"conspiracy" to designate foolishness, gullibilty etc.
And as for Chomsky, well here's what he had to say about the 9/11 "inside job" theory:
"And even if it were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares? It doesn't have any
significance. It's a little bit like the huge energy that's put out on trying to figure out
who killed John Kennedy. Who knows? Who cares? Plenty of people get killed all the time, why
does it matter that one of them happened to be John F. Kennedy?"
Let's just consider that for a moment. Chomsky is considering the possibilty -- however
remote in his view -- that 9/11 may indeed have been an inside job. And he's saying it
doesn't have any significance that the US goverment carried out an attack on its own
population! It doesn't have any significance that the "war on terror" was launched on the
basis of a lie!
This is the moment when Chomsky truly stood revealed. He was like the kid with his hand in
the cookie jar who instantly concocts any number of excuses all of which contradict each
other. And yet even when caught out like this, he has his supporters who say he "dispels 9/11
theories with sheer logic"!
That's the one. I mean – who knows and who cares? It's not as if a terrorist attack on
mainland America that altered the face of New York and launched a war across the world is
actually important.
Well, I think the fact that Noam Chomsky has said this demonstrates how few people accept
these 9/11 truther ideas -- even amongst people who generally agree with your (and my) kind
of politics. George Galloway, who like Chomsky is about as far politically from the neocons
as you can get, has also spoken very eloquently against trutherism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A5ToK6g0m8
Ironically, the only remotely public figure who does that I've heard mentioned on this
thread is some Reaganite crank that I had never heard of until now. That really does not bode
well for you, does it?
And having now listened to Mr Galloway and once again having to put up with his portentous
stretching out ..of the ..sentence to -- quite frankly pad the time out, I see that his
"points" come down to the following:
Two planes flew into the twin towers. Yes -- there's no disputing that one.
GW Bush could not possibly have planned the thing himself. Yes again -- no dispute. At
this point I must express my gratitude to Reagan for finally proving that the guy in front is
just a puppet.
If the US did it themselves and it "got out" it would be the end of America's credibility.
Yes indeed. Which is why, all across the mainstream press, it will only ever be presented as
a "nutty conspiracy theory"
Galloway: "I saw, myself, the airplanes hitting the twin towers."
-- which is supposed to constitute proof of the official
Evil-Terrorists-In-A-Cave-In-Afghanistan story.
attention, "flaxgirl": your grand unified theory of 9/11 now needs to incorporate George
Galloway as a fake witness for the US government, which seems strange, given his decades of
opposition, both before and after, to the imperial warfare for which 9/11 served as a
pretext.
The political function of the No-Planes-At-WTC claims could not be more clear; it's so
that people who dispute other aspects of the Official Story can all be dismissed as deranged
idiots.
But Peter you need to look at the evidence for yourself and not take others' word for it. And
be guided by those who know how buildings collapse -- Chomsky certainly doesn't.
This is a wonderful tutorial by Richard Gage, founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11
Truth.
The story of 9/11 is utterly preposterous. The only reason people believe it is to do with
psychology of how we relate to power nothing to do with the actuality of the story -- because
it's utterly ludicrous.
Wut? " less violent ones like England, the US or France " From here on it just gets worse
until Chomsky has no credible position left to argue from.
Heightened sense of cognitive dissonance by old Noam.
' even if it were true, which is extremely unlikely, then who cares? It doesn't have any
significance."
Wow, for someone with such intellect this is some low-level thinking. I almost feel sorry
for Chomsky for holding such an immoral position. Would he feel the same way if his wife was
murdered? "Ah, there's other things to worry about, anything else is a diversion of energy."
Very sad.
Where basic physics is concerned we should not speak of theory. The only possible explanation
for the collapse of the buildings is controlled demolition. There is no doubt whatsoever that
9/11 was an inside conspiracy. There is also no doubt that death and injury were staged
– at least, there is zero evidence of its reality in the visual record and one would
think that for the 3,000 dead and 6,000 injured claimed there would be at least one piece of
evidence for their reality, rather than every piece (anomalously small in number) in the
visual record perfectly fitting "staged". Not to mention other anomalies unrelated to the
visual record and that actual killing and injuring of people by the perpetrators would take a
highly-problematic form in the shape of a great number of loved ones (as opposed to the tiny
number presented) and the injured themselves when controlled demolition was so obvious.
When you say that there is no doubt whatsoever that 9/11 was an inside conspiracy, I feel you
are being overconfident unless what you are saying is that there is some evidence that some
figures at the World Trade Centres seemed to have foreknowledge.
Frankly, although we all have our theories as to who was responsible, I remain in full
agreement with Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth who state simply that the official
account conflicts with physics. All else is suspicion and supposition. It may well be well
grounded supposition, but until we discover who planned and executed the event and who
definitely had foreknowledge, what we are dealing with is speculation.
The problem with that is that the great many people who refuse to believe anything other
than the official account of 9/11 dismiss our views as those of cranks
The buildings came down by controlled demolition. The evidence for that is
incontrovertible and the rationale presented by NIST for fire being the cause is demonstrably
not based on a skerrick of evidence and is obviously fraudulent and false. There is not a
single reason to suspect that the cause of collapse of all the buildings wasn't controlled
demolition. If you believe there is a single reason to suspect another cause can you please
provide it.
Since waking up to 9/11, I find that people either decide something is something with too
little evidence or refrain from deciding on what something is when the evidence is so
overwhelming you're practically drowning in it. Being conservative in judgement in the face
of overwhelming evidence is no virtue in my opinion.
I have engaged in conversation with Mick West who runs the metabunk.org website that
allegedly debunks all the conspiracy theories. We have gone back and forth a number of times
over the cause of WTC-7's collapse and I have invited him to respond to an Occam's Razor
challenge to provide 10 points that favour "fire" over "controlled demolition". He did not
respond to the challenge, nor could he provide a single point that favours fire over
controlled demolition. Not a single point -- didn't change his mind though. https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/5000-challenge.html
Nor has anyone responded to my other Occam's Razor challenges. I judge when I see that
there is a reasonable amount of evidence and that evidence points all one way and there is no
evidence pointing any other way. If you disagree with this method fair enough.
And just to add, that, of course, it must be an inside job in the case of controlled
demolition. As Graeme MacQueen says, there is no room in the official story for controlled
demolition.
The big secret is though that death and injury were staged. That's the real secret.
It was a totally excellent piece. No reservations.
"Theory"? Are you serious? If you believe that 9/11 was the work of 19 barely-trained
terrorists (one of whom cried when asked to do steep turns and stalls according to his
alleged flying instructor but was tasked with the most impossibly-expert manoeuvre of doing a
330 degree turn into the Pentagon), armed with boxcutters who managed to hijack 4 planes,
navigate them into 3 iconic buildings without being molested by a single fighter interceptor
through the most defended airspace on earth, which subsequently caused the 10-second
collapses (displaying all the characteristics of controlled demolition and none of
fire-caused collapses) of three high-rise steel frame buildings, here's a $5,000 challenge
for you. All you have to do is provide 10 points that support the "fire" hypothesis over the
"controlled demolition" hypothesis for the collapse of WTC-7 and you can choose your own
structural engineer to validate your points. There's so very much material on the collapse it
shouldn't be very difficult. In fact, all you have to do is come up with one point to support
WTC-7's collapse by fire and I'll give you $5,000. One point -- validated by a structural
engineer of your choice. https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/5000-challenge.html
9/11 is probably the biggest hoax in history and includes the very clever subhoax of 3,000
dead and 6,000 injured. Not only was it a hoax but they did not aim for realism in any shape
or form and gave us extra clues in addition to their preposterous
against-physical-and-administrative-reality story.
This is what Paul Craig Roberts, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy, who has
had careers in scholarship and academia, journalism, public service, and business, has to say
about 9/11. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/pages/about-paul-craig-roberts/
According to the official story, on September 11, 2001, the vaunted National Security
State of the World's Only Superpower was defeated by a few young Saudi Arabians armed only
with box cutters. The American National Security State proved to be totally helpless and was
dealt the greatest humiliation ever inflicted on any country claiming to be a power.
That day no aspect of the National Security State worked. Everything failed.
The US Air Force for the first time in its history could not get intercepter jet fighters
into the air.
The National Security Council failed.
All sixteen US intelligence agencies failed as did those of America's NATO and Israeli
allies.
Air Traffic Control failed.
Airport Security failed four times at the same moment on the same day. The probability of
such a failure is zero.
If such a thing had actually happened, there would have been demands from the White House,
from Congress, and from the media for an investigation. Officials would have been held
accountable for their failures. Heads would have rolled.
Instead, the White House resisted for one year the 9/11 families' demands for an
investigation. Finally, a collection of politicians was assembled to listen to the
government's account and to write it down. The chairman, vice chairman, and legal counsel of
the 9/11 Commission have said that information was withheld from the commission, lies were
told to the commission, and that the commission "was set up to fail." The worst security
failure in history resulted in not a single firing. No one was held responsible.
Washington concluded that 9/11 was possible because America lacked a police state.
The PATRIOT Act, which was awaiting the event was quickly passed by the congressional idiots.
The Act established executive branch independence of law and the Constitution. The Act and
follow-up measures have institutionalized a police state in "the land of the free."
Osama bin Laden, a CIA asset dying of renal failure, was blamed despite his explicit
denial. For the next ten years Osama bin Laden was the bogyman that provided the excuse for
Washington to kill countless numbers of Muslims. Then suddenly on May 2, 2011, Obama claimed
that US Navy SEALs had killed bin Laden in Pakistan. Eyewitnesses on the scene contradicted
the White House's story. Osama bin Laden became the only human in history to survive renal
failure for ten years. There was no dialysis machine in what was said to be bin Laden's
hideaway. The numerous obituaries of bin Laden's death in December 2001 went down the memory
hole. And the SEAL team died a few weeks later in a mysterious helicopter crash in
Afghanistan. The thousands of sailors on the aircraft carrier from which bin Laden was said
to have been dumped into the Indian Ocean wrote home that no such burial took place.
The fairy tale story of bin Laden's murder by Seal Team Six served to end the challenge by
disappointed Democrats to Obama's nomination for a second term. It also freed the "war on
terror" from the bin Laden constraint. Washington wanted to attack Libya, Syria, and Iran,
countries in which bin Laden was known not to have organizations, and the succession of faked
bin Laden videos, in which bin Laden grew progressively younger as the fake bin Laden claimed
credit for each successive attack, had lost credibility among experts.
Watching the twin towers and WTC 7 come down, it was obvious to me that the buildings were
not falling down as a result of structural damage. When it became clear that the White House
had blocked an independent investigation of the only three steel skyscrapers in world history
to collapse as a result of low temperature office fires, it was apparent that there was a
coverup.
After 13 years people at home and abroad find the government's story less believable.
The case made by independent experts is now so compelling that mainstream media has opened to
it. Here is Richard Gage of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth on C-SPAN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zbv2SvBEec#t=23
At the same time, however, it seems fair to point out that Trump and López Obrador both represent what
the Times described as "a global repudiation of the establishment." Indeed, this fact could actually help to distinguish
between the two leaders (along with other populist leaders) and their competing worldviews. While they stand on opposite sides
of the political spectrum, both Trump and López Obrador are part of the global revolt against what critics call neoliberalism,
and this is important for understanding our current era.
The past 30-plus years has been defined by the
political
project
of neoliberalism, spearheaded by the U.S. government and international financial institutions like the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, with the utopian aim of creating a global capitalist economy perfectly guided
by the invisible hand of the market (for neoliberals and free-market fundamentalists, the invisible hand is an almost divine
concept, worshipped in economics departments around the country). The neoliberal era peaked in the 1990s, and in America it
was Democratic President Bill Clinton who accomplished neoliberal "reforms" that right-wingers had long dreamed of, including
financial deregulation, NAFTA and "ending welfare as we knew it" (he would probably have
privatized
Social Security too
had it not been for Monica Lewinsky).
Though the 1990s is often remembered as the beginning of our hyper-partisan age (demonstrated by the Clinton impeachment
scandal), the irony is that Democrats and Republicans became closer than ever before on economic issues during this decade.
The "Washington consensus" dominated this period, and it took a Democrat to pass a Republican trade deal and other
conservative economic policies. (Not surprisingly, the Democratic Party's shift to the right simply resulted in the GOP
shifting even further to the right.)
Neoliberalism was a global project advanced by economic elites. Not surprisingly, then, the neoliberal policies of the past
few decades have benefited those who pushed for them, creating enormous wealth for the richest individuals while leaving the
world grossly unequal. According to Oxfam, 82 percent of the wealth created in 2017
went
to the top one percent
, while the poorest half got nothing. In America alone, inequality is at historic levels and more
than 40 million people live in poverty; a
UN report
from
last month notes that the U.S. "now has one of the lowest rates of intergenerational social mobility of any of the rich
countries," and zip codes "are tragically reliable predictors of a child's future employment and income prospects."
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In Europe, Latin America, Asia and the United States, the status quo is no longer acceptable to a populace that has been
betrayed time and again throughout the neoliberal era. Leaders who represent this status quo are being thrown out of office
left and right. Those who have challenged the "establishment" have been labeled "populists" by the press, of course, and
thus are categorized more for what they stand
against
than what they stand
for
(this would be like
identifying the Soviet Union and the U.S. for their anti-fascism, rather than their communism or capitalism).
Some dispute the characterization of right-wing populists as anti-neoliberal, and correctly point out that most of the
Trump administration's economic policies have actually been neoliberalism on steroids (e.g., the GOP tax bill, deregulation,
etc.). Right-wing populism is purely about racism and xenophobia, these critics insist, and to make it about economics is to
ignore these ugly realities. But as Thomas Frank
pointed
out
in The Guardian back in 2016, "trade may be [Trump's] single biggest concern -- not white supremacy."
"It seems to obsess him," wrote Frank, who watched several hours of Trump's speeches. "The destructive free-trade deals our
leaders have made, the many companies that have moved their production facilities to other lands, the phone calls he will make
to those companies' CEOs in order to threaten them with steep tariffs unless they move back to the US."
Say what you will about Trump's tendency to lie and spew falsehoods, but on the issue of trade he has actually been pretty
consistent since entering the White House, and free trade is one of the staples of the neoliberal project. On the left, free
trade deals like NAFTA and TPP have also been major talking points, as we saw with Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign in
2016. There are other economic issues where some agreement exists, and right-wing populist parties in Europe are even more
likely to be anti-neoliberal on economic issues. Marine Le Pen's National Front, for example,
opposed
austerity cuts and promised to increase welfare for the working class
(at least for French citizens), while lowering the
retirement age and increasing tariffs to benefit French companies (and, the claim goes, workers too).
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Still, the left- and right-wing alternatives to neoliberalism are poles apart, and the differences between left-populists
like López Obrador and Sanders and right-populists like Trump and Le Pen are hard to overstate. To appreciate just how
different their worldviews are, it is worth considering how the left and right have historically understood themselves in
relation to the Enlightenment and modernity.
Throughout the modern era progressives and reactionaries have more or less rejected the status quo, with thinkers from both
sides offering critiques of the modern world. The fundamental difference was that the left considered itself a part of the
Enlightenment tradition, while the right was part of the "counter-Enlightenment" (this goes back to the French Revolution,
when revolutionaries sat on the left side of the Estates General and royalists sat on the right).
The left criticized modernity not because it rejected the modern world, but because it saw the Enlightenment project as
incomplete. Karl Marx praised the bourgeoisie and called capitalism a "great civilizing influence," considering it to be a
positive development in history. He also wrote the most influential critique of capitalism to date, and while he acknowledged
that capitalism was progress over feudalism, he also believed that it must eventually be replaced with socialism to
realize the goals of the Enlightenment. Put simply, Marx and other leftists believed in the idea of progress, long associated
with the Enlightenment.
On the right, criticisms of modernity came from a very different perspective. Reactionaries did not see the modern world as
progress over the pre-modern world; rather, they saw it as a decline. Driven by nostalgia and resentment, reactionaries
romanticized the past and believed that the ills of modernity could be cured by simply turning back the clock and restoring
the status quo ante.
In his classic book "
Escape from Freedom
," the psychiatrist and
social philosopher Erich Fromm attempted to make sense of the rise of fascism in the early 20th century, and in doing so
offered a penetrating analysis of modernity. While the modern world had liberated men and women from social conventions of the
past and various restrictions on the individual (i.e., "freedom from"), it had also severed what Fromm called "primary bonds,"
which gave security to the individual and provided meaning. Forced from their communities into urban and industrial
environments, modern men and women were left alienated and rootless, feeling powerless and purposeless in the new world.
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There were two ways that people could respond to this situation, Fromm argued; either they could reject freedom
altogether and embrace counter-Enlightenment movements like fascism, or they could progress to a "positive freedom," where one
can relate oneself "spontaneously to the world in love and work."
"If the economic, social and political conditions on which the whole process of human individuation depends, do not offer a
basis for the realization of individuality," wrote Fromm, "while at the same time people have lost those ties which gave them
security, this lag makes freedom an unbearable burden." Freedom, he continued, "becomes identical with doubt, with a kind of
life which lacks meaning and direction. Powerful tendencies arise to escape from this kind of freedom into submission or some
kind of relationship to man and the world which promises relief from uncertainty, even if it deprives the individual of his
freedom."
The reactionary impulse would be to "escape from freedom" and restore the conventions and "primary bonds" of the past,
while the progressive impulse would be to progress to a more complete and dynamic kind of freedom.
The reader may be wondering where all of this fits in with the current revolt against neoliberalism. Put simply, the
neoliberal age has left many people with the same kind of doubts and anxieties that Fromm discussed in his book almost 80
years ago. Numerous articles have been written in recent years about how the policies of neoliberalism have
worsened stress and loneliness
, exacerbated
mental
health problems
,
driven
rising rates of suicide
and the opioid crisis, and left people feeling desperate and hopeless in general. Globalization,
deindustrialization, consumerism and "financialization"; all these economic trends are contributing to the breakdown of our
democratic society, leading some to embrace authoritarian alternatives, as many did in Fromm's day.
From this point of view, the global rise of populism that continued with López Obrador isn't much of a surprise. The
popular rejection of neoliberalism around the world is undeniable at this point, but it is still unclear whether this
rejection of the status quo will lead to reactionary or progressive change in the long run. López Obrador represents
progressive change, as does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's surprise primary victory in New York's 14th congressional district.
Trump and other far-right populists like Le Pen represent something very different.
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It will ultimately come down to which side can offer the more appealing alternative, and the left should recognize that the
more realistic and "pragmatic" approach isn't always the most politically persuasive. One of the most common criticisms of
populists has been that they are selling a pipe dream, which to an extent is true -- especially for right-wing populists who
base their entire worldview on falsehoods. If the left wants to stop reactionary populism, however, it will have to adopt an
unapologetically populist approach of its own, and reject the dogma of neoliberalism once and for all.
Captain
Nonobvious
Leader
21 Jul
Neoliberalism is nothing more than a set of excuses and fables for giving more wealth, power
and income to the rich and well off than they have at any given moment, and for distributing
the assets of ownership and governance across borders, out of reach and jurisdiction of the
people.
Which brings us to today.
But what next? Neoliberalism is ending because enough of society now is owned and run by the top end --completely in Russia,
and mostly, here in the US-- that the people no longer have enough to work with to compete
against oligarchy.
In the US there's no more need for the pretense, so we get the blatant language and behavior of a Trump, and public display
of the aggression against the people and the nation that neoliberalism has been practicing
out of view all along. (It's not actually been so much hidden as willfully ignored by
moderates and commentators since the Administration of the previous lying, delusional
national media star.)
What's next is rapid consolidation of oligarchy. The Supreme Court will be held by oligarchy
fanatics for the coming 40 years, and will be ruling every imaginable practice of liberal or
progressive governance to be unconstitutional. Even an economic collapse like the Great
Depression can't unseat a Court, and no voting majorities can legislate against their
Constitution.
Basho
Leader
21 Jul
No matter how much you pretty up neoliberalism with racial diversity, women' empowerment, and
homosexual rights, it still stinks. Neoliberalism has turned the Democratic Party into a
political-correct Republican Party. All the great accomplishments that came from the1930s to
the mid-70s are gone. Democrats have become the party of the oligarchs and the professional
elites who serve them. They have - as Thomas Frank has suggested - ceased to be the party of
the people. The whole point of neoliberalism is to please big money donors by dismantling all
that Democrats did to help and ordinary working Americans before the1980s. This had been what
Noam Chomsky called Amerca's Golden Age. America had become the finest country to live in in
the entire history of the world. That's gone. Today Democrats join with Republicans in
supporting a corporate oligarchy. If the Democratic Party is to have a future (and if I am to
be a part of it) they must turn to new voices like Tulsi Gabbard and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
They need to make Bernie Sanders the Chair of the Democratic Party. And they need to quit
warmongering. The Democratic Party must model itself after Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and Andrés
Manuel López Obrador in Mexico. Neoliberalism is a plague. It is anti-democratic. It must
end. The Democratic Party must once again be a moral force for economic justice.
Mike Calcagno
Leader
Basho
23 Jul
Edited
nYes, things were great in American cities in the 60s and 70s. Those riots - how
wonderful? Almost 1000 murders a year in Chicago in the early 70s, more than 2000 a year
in New York. Major American cities looked like Dresden after WWII in many neighborhoods.
LBJ was a warmonger who got 57000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians
killed, and Kennedy won by running to the right of Nixon. You continue to peddle this
nonsense that there was this golden age of liberalism. There was a brief period where the
White working class did well as a result of unions, and because wealthier white men who
served with them during the war felt an obligation to their fellow servicemen. As usual,
you ignore the plight of non-White Americans. I'm not calling you a racist; I'm
challenging you on your myopia. n
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Basho
Leader
Mike Calcagno
23 Jul
Edited
Today we have police armed with military equipment harassing and killing people of color
in American cities. Driving while Black has become a crime. Our Golden Age (which ended in
the 1970s) saw the least economic inequality of any industrialized nation. FDR created an
excellent economic safety net. He essentially created our middle class. Today we have
greatest wealth inequality of any industrialized nation. In the Golden Age we had the
nonviolent Civil Rights Movement (in which I participated.) There was a major peace
movement in the Democratic Party (in which I participated.) We had the War on Poverty.
Unions were strong. Working people had a decent standard of living. The Democratic Party
was actually liberal (The word liberal today has been drained of all meaning.) Kennedy
ran, not to the right of NIxon but as a hawk like Nixon, but at the time of his death he
was working to get out of Vietnam. And he started pushing the Democratic Party towards
civil rights.Kennedy got rid of the evil Alan Dulles as head of the CIA. Today's Dulles's
techniques are a clear part of the Democratic Party's foreign policy. Our CIA is Murder
Incorporated. The Democratic Party that I once loved has gone to hell.
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FreeQuark
Leader
22 Jul
The social agenda of the left is entirely compatible with neoliberalism, and in fact certain
aspects of that social agenda - unrestricted immigration, for example - are fundamental
components of neoliberal economic ideology. Neoliberal politicians who are members of
center/left political parties thus run on a far left social platform and thereby win election
after election over economic progressives. The left has consequently neutered itself on
economics through its overemphasis on social issues. Most people on the left are totally
unwilling to acknowledge that reality, and that is why neoliberals will continue to dominate
center/left politics around the world. Even though "progressives" may manage to win an
election here or there, neoliberals will always be able to maintain overall control of
center/left parties by associating left-wing economics with opposition to immigration and
other alleged "right-wing" causes. For people on the left primarily concerned about
economics, alternative right politicians on the order of Trump or Le Pen are likely to remain
the only viable political options in most elections for a long time to come.
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Darren
Tomlyn
Leader
21 Jul
Edited
Humanity now stands at a crossroads, for there's a difference between reacting against the
corruption of civilization, and reacting against civilization itself... The latter is
unfortunately what Trump (and Brexit) truly represents. If the latter is what people vote
for, then they vote for DEATH... Unfortunately, as has been proven throughout the past few
thousand years, this usually ultimately results in their very own death at the same time.
Although neoliberalism has been about the corruption of capitalism - using economic power to
get one part of humanity to essentially wage war on the rest to further their own goals -
this particular underlying economic conflict (the rich and powerful vs everyone else) is
inherent to civilization, and is what government exists to manage. So again, the main problem
stems from people not learning from history and repeating many of the same mistakes, even it
the context and outcomes merely rhyme...
Todd
Dunning
Leader
22 Jul
Can someone here help me out to properly define "Neoliberalism"?
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FreeQuark
Leader
Todd Dunning
22 Jul
Neoliberalism is the idea that the removal of protectionist trade policies, government
regulations, immigration quotas, and other barriers to international commerce is the key
to economic growth and prosperity. It's safe to say I think that the adoption of the
neoliberal policy agenda by many governments around the world has not produced the outcome
that economists and globalist think tanks claimed it would produce. The problem now is
that mainstream political parties in Western countries have bought, hook, line, and sinker
into neoliberalism and are refusing to let it go regardless of its failings. The reason
they won't let it go of course is that most of those parties are controlled by wealthy
people who haven't been harmed by neoliberal policies. I'm guessing Justin Trudeau,
Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, and the Clintons have never lost a night's sleep worrying
that the factory they work in may move overseas or that they will lose a job to some
upwardly-mobile immigrant.
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RobertSF
Leader
Todd Dunning
22 Jul
Is there no wiki in your internet? Or are you looking for an argument?
jak123
Leader
21 Jul
Excellent article. Trump and AMLO are similar in that both are insurgents. The question for
both is whether they can make real progress within their respective political systems. The
Russia issue is a test of that. On one side is Trump, who represents a break from the
neoliberal policies of the past (even if many of his policies are neoliberal, as Lynch says),
such as hostility toward Russia, and on the other hand are elements of his government, such
as the intelligence agencies, that backed Clinton and are part of the effort to undermine
Trump because they want to topple Putin to allow the US to plunder Russia. The hysterical
overreaction to the summit. Strzok's shocking testimony to Congress and Mueller's pretend
indictments of Russians who will never stand trial represent an escalation by the elements of
Trump's government who oppose him.
It was over two years ago that Wells Fargo's fake accounts scandal burst into the headlines, and since then, there has been an
unrelenting torrent of bad news. In late October, the American Banker
reported
that two executives were placed on leave after they received notifications of pending sanctions from the Office of the Comptroller
of the Currency. In November, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell sent a
letter
to Senator Elizabeth Warren saying the Fed will not lift a cap on Wells's growth until the bank addresses deficiencies in oversight
and risk management. "The underlying problem at the firm was a strategy that prioritized growth without ensuring that risks were
managed, and as a result the firm harmed many of its customers," Powell wrote.
In early November, Jay Welker, who was the head of the private bank, which sits within the bank's wealth management business,
retired . Under Welker,
the private bank
pushed wealth advisors to vigorously sell
high-fee products . There may be more bad news about this aspect of the embattled bank. The Justice Department, the SEC, the
Labor Department, and Wells Fargo's own board are conducting ongoing investigations into its wealth management business that have
yet to be resolved.
There's still one aspect of how the wealth management business pushed for growth that former Wells Fargo employees say hasn't
gotten the scrutiny it should. For four years, starting in 2012 and through the end of 2015, Wells incentivized some of its advisors
in that business through something called the "Growth Award." Some former employees say these awards led to behavior that was not
in the best interest of clients, including steering them towards higher-fee products. The Growth Award was much discussed internally,
says a former investment strategist at Wells, although not everyone was privy to the details of how it worked.
Last summer, the Wall Street Journal
reported
the existence of the growth award, but not the details of how the money worked. Essentially, the growth award was a way of motivating
advisors to grow their businesses. In and of itself, that isn't unusual. The industry has for years offered successful brokers incentives,
often in the form of elaborate trips to exotic locales.The SEC is
weighing new rules that may curtail the use of such rewards under the theory that they could make brokers "predominantly motivated"
by "self enrichment." Firms have also long used rich packages to lure successful brokers to move their business.
But firms are cutting back on the use of such packages, according to industry insiders. When told about the details of the growth
award, three financial advisors at other firms with whom Yahoo Finance spoke expressed shock at both the sheer size and the way it
incentivized advisors for short-term growth, rather than long-term business building. (Another advisor thought that in the context
of the packages that were used to incentivize brokers to switch, it wasn't so surprising.) Or as former Wells Fargo executive, who
was in the retail brokerage industry for decades, says, "If a free golf outing is bad business, then the Growth Award is bad business
on steroids."
In a statement to Yahoo Finance, spokesperson Shea Leordeanu said, "At Wells Fargo Wealth and Investment Management, we are committed
to taking care of our clients' financial needs every day and take seriously our responsibility to help them preserve and invest their
hard-earned savings. Our primary goal is to be a trusted advisor to our clients and to act in their best interests. And we have supervisory
processes and controls in place so that, if a team member acts in a manner not in line with our values and our policies, we take
appropriate action."
An enormous, compounding bonus for bringing revenue to Wells Fargo
The Growth Award wasn't available to the entire army of some 14,000 advisors, who make up the broad group of Wells Fargo Advisors.
(Many others, most prominently those who came with the 2008 Wachovia merger, had different compensation plans with lock-ups that
are just now expiring, leading to something of an
exodus , according to press reports.) This Growth Award, on the other hand, was meant for the 3,000 or so advisors who were part
of something known as Wealth Brokerage Services, or WBS. These advisors are located in the bank branches, or in hubs -- Wells Fargo
buildings in cities -- that housed wealth management personnel among others like business bankers. (Wells Fargo subsequently
announced a reorganization
that is expected to combine what were separate groups of advisors.) To be eligible, you couldn't be a newbie -- you needed a two
year minimum at the bank -- and you had to be doing more than $350,000 in annual revenue. The former executive and another advisor
estimate that narrowed the group down to about 2,000 people.
The amounts people stood to make were extraordinary. Here's how the math worked. The goal was for an individual financial advisor
to increase his or her revenue by at least 15% for each of the four years that the Growth Award was in place. The award multiplied
each year the goal was achieved. So if you achieved 15% growth in the first year, you received a 15% bonus. If you achieved 15% growth
again in the second year, you received a 30% bonus. If you achieved 15% growth in the third year, you received a 45% bonus. Finally,
if you achieved 15% growth again in the 4th year, you received a whopping 60% bonus.
If you didn't achieve the goal, you were not penalized, but you didn't receive the bonus.
To get specific about just what these percentages could mean, say you generated $1 million in revenue in 2011, and you achieved
precisely 15% growth each year for the next 4 years. In year one, your revenue would be $1,150,000, and your bonus, at 15% of that,
would be $172,500. The new 2013 goal would be $1,322,500 (a 15% increase from the $1,150,000.). If you hit that goal, your Growth
Award bonus for 2013 would be $396,393. And so on. If you hit the goals for 2014 and 2015, you stood to make a bonus of $684,393
and $1,049,403, respectively. That means you stood to make $2.3 million in total Growth Award bonuses. In other words, the financial
incentives to hit the numbers were enormous.
Perhaps for the very reason the incentives were so enormous, more advisors hit the numbers than Wells had expected. (Of course,
there was also a strong bull market during that period.) The Journal reported that Wells had allotted $250 million for the Growth
Award bonuses. Instead, Wells had to pay $750 million between 2012 and 2015. "It's widely known inside Wells that they were so way
over budget," says another former advisor. "I personally know brokers who were awarded bonuses of over $2 million, which is a stunning
amount of money," says a former investment advisor.
Roughly two-thirds of the 2,000 or so eligible advisors earned an award.
"When you throw that kind of money out, it incentivizes."
Now consider the Growth Award from the perspective of a client, who might wander into a bank branch, maybe having gotten an unexpected
inheritance. "You have to connect the dots," the former executive says. "This is where the sales pressure in the bank branches meets
the wealth and investment management business."
The staff of the branch was incentivized to steer clients to a Wells financial advisor, because investment management referrals
helped them meet their sales goals, and that advisor, in turn had incentives -- really big incentives -- to steer the clients toward
products that generate upfront revenue. "If you don't have a high moral background, it'll put you in a position to do things for
clients that aren't in their best interest," says a former advisor. "I'm always looking at what's best for the client but it's also
what's best for my paycheck." "You are absolutely incentivizing advisors to sell the products with the highest upfront fees," says
the former executive.
"Yeah, when you throw that kind of money out, it incentivizes," says another former advisor. "Jesus would probably be okay. But
the disciples probably would have had some morals put to the test on that one."
Multiple sources say the Growth Award helps explain why annuity sales at Wells Fargo were so high, especially after the bank tried
to tamp down on the amount the Award was going to cost them. In 2014, Wells Fargo decided to stop "fee fronting," which allowed advisors
to count fees that would be paid in subsequent years toward their annual tally. So advisors began to search for products with high
initial fees, one former advisor said.
Annuities come with high upfront revenues for the broker, making them an obvious choice for someone who is trying to hit a revenue
target -- but maybe not the optimal choice for the client. "You think Wells Fargo's Bankers Are Bad? Take a Look at its Brokers,"
was the headline of an October 2016 piece in thestreet.com. The piece
noted that Wells had argued to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it should not be subject to rules to put its investors
first in cases where its advisors were making referrals for products including annuities, and that in 2015, Wells was number one
in the country for annuity sales.
"It's pretty stunning that a firm that has just half the assets of its larger competitors sells more annuities," says a former
advisor. "I think that just speaks to the emphasis on making sales numbers and a need to sell more of the highest payout products."
Indeed, the Journal reported and several former advisors corroborate that internally, 2015 was dubbed "The Year of the Annuity."
It wasn't just annuities. One former advisor also noted that advisors trying to chase the growth award also favored mutual funds
with high upfront fees. "You'd think if revenue was going up by 15% a year, your AUM would at least go up at least 12% or 13%," a
former advisor said. "That was not the case. The award was only revenue based -- there was nothing in there for AUM, longevity, or
anything like that. Strictly show us the money and we'll show you the money."
All the fees were disclosed to Wells Fargo's clients. But what clients didn't know was the incentive structure that was in place
for their advisor. So yes, clients understood the fees -- but they were in the dark as to at least part of the reason one product
might have been recommended over another. "Imagine that it's November," says the former executive. "You have to do $250,000 in revenue,
or you going to leave a million dollars on the table. What are you doing to do?" He continues, "Every client of WBS has to go back
and look at every trade, every single decision, from 2012 to 2015 and scrutinize whether it was impacted by the Growth Award." "I
think if clients and the public knew that Wells Fargo Advisors had given such substantial and amazing well-timed retention bonuses
to lock up their advisors, they would begin to wonder whether their advisors were giving the best advice to their clients," says
another former investment strategist.
There could be another problem, too. "If you achieved the goal early, you would stop doing business so you didn't have the higher
base to start from in the next year," says the former executive. "You'd sand bag -- and that might not be in the client's best interest
either."
A golden handcuff at a very good time for Wells Fargo
The Growth Award may also help explain why Wells has been able to retain as many advisors as it has, despite the ongoing scandals.
Six months before the end of the Growth Award program, midway through 2015, Wells Fargo asked those advisors who had qualified for
the award how they would like to receive their pay. There were two options. The first option essentially allowed the advisor to unlock
all the money at the end of February 2021. If the advisor left before that, the money was forfeited. A third of the advisors who
earned awards chose this option.
The other option paid out a tenth of the bonus each year for 10 years. If the advisor so chose, they could get that money up front
as a forgivable loan. Every year the advisor remained at Wells Fargo, he or she would simply pay the interest on their bonus, and
a tenth of the principle would be forgiven. But if the advisor left, he or she had to pay back the unforgiven principle. (Or if the
advisor hadn't taken the forgivable loan, the annual checks would stop.) Two-thirds of advisors opted for this route.
The Growth Award also had the potential to create another problem for advisors. The nice thing about building a fee-based business
is that it's an annuity for the advisor. Every year, there's a fee. If, on the other hand, the advisors put clients' money into things
that generate a one-time pop of revenue, the advisor doesn't get the same type of ongoing fees. So, the former executive says, some
advisors are in a hole, where they owe taxes on the Growth Award, while their income has shrunk dramatically. "I know guys who got
it who built or bought a huge house and are now stuck," he says.
The golden handcuff of the Growth Award has been good for the bank in the face of all of the scandals. One advisor told Yahoo
Finance that the growth in the number of clients also shrank dramatically amid the unrelenting negative news.
"I went from around 30 referrals to two in six months after the scandal hit," this person said. What had been a solid stream of
clients slowed to a trickle. But the only out for advisors would have been to have another firm hire them away and pay off their
loan.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Growth Award is how deliberate it was. "It was not a computer glitch or an oversight,"
as the former executive says. "It was not perpetrated by a few rogue employees. The Growth Award was conceived by the Compensation
Committee. The Compensation Committee is the most senior of senior management. The goal was to drive growth and drive growth it did."
But perhaps at a price for clients -- making the Growth Award, in its way, the most telling evidence yet of the cultural issues within
Wells Fargo.
"... The Pity of It All : A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933 ..."
"... Perhaps you are making too much of the so called decline of the neocons. At the strategic level, there is little difference between the neocon "Project for a the New American Century" and Brzezinski's "The Grand Chessboard," both of which are consistent with US policy and actions in the Ukraine. ..."
"... The most significant difference seems to me to be the neocon emphasis on American unilateral militarism versus Obama's emphasis on multilateralism, covert operations and financial warfare to achieve the desired results. ..."
"... Perhaps another significant difference is the neocon emphasis on the primacy of the American nation-state versus the neoliberal emphasis on an American dominated global empire. ..."
"... Interesting to juxtapose Brzezinski and the neocons. In a Venn diagram they would over-lap 90%. ..."
"... Right now, their interests have diverged over the Ukraine crisis. Though many of the American neocons do support subverting Ukraine as does Brzezinski it looks like Israel itself is leaning towards supporting Russia. ..."
"... Right Sector militias are the fighting force that led the coup against the legally elected Yanukovich government and were almost certainly involved in the recent massacre in Odessa. And you support them for their fight for freedom? You should be ashamed. Zionism is sinking to new lows that they feel the need to identify with open neo-Nazis. ..."
"... Well, the point is that Zionists in Israel do not identify with that particular set of open neo-Nazis. I suspect that this is simply a matter of the headcount of Jewish business tycoons that are politically aligned with (western) Ukraine and Russia. Or you can count their billions. ..."
"... The problem with your reasoning, Yonah, is that you are espousing the Neocon line while not apparently recognizing that embarrassing fact. You lament that the US is no longer playing the role of the world's superpower, and acting as the world's cop, confronting militarily Russia, China, Iran and anyone else. It is precisely that mentality that got us into Iraq, could yet have us in a war with Iran, would like to see us defending Ukraine, and thinks we should confront China militarily over bits of rock it and its neighbors are quibbling over. That is a neocon, American supremacy mentality. ..."
"... Zionism under Likud has played a major role in promoting the neocon approach to foreign policy in the US. It was heavily involved in the birth of that approach, and has helped fund and promote the policy and its supporters and advocates in this country. They (Likud Zionists and Neocons) played a major role in getting us into the Iraq war and are playing a major role in trying to get us involved in a war with Iran, a war in Syria, and even potential wars in Eastern Europe. That is a very dangerous trend and one folks as intelligent as you are, should be focusing on. ..."
"... "nationalist Armageddon that is nowhere found in the article by Sleeper" ..."
"... "The misadventure in Iraq has cost the US and the world a lot. The US a loss in humans and money and willingness to play the role of superpower, and the world has lost its cop. " ..."
"... Tough. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives don't rate a mention. ..."
"... " (let the Russians have their sphere of influence, let the Iranians have their bomb, let the Chinese do whatever they want to do in their part of the world, for after all they hold a trillion dollars in US government debt and so let them act like the boss, for in fact they have been put in that role by feckless and destructive and wasteful US policy). But Sleeper does not say that." ..."
"... But even if we do focus on neocons, neocons don't have opinions about foreign policy and USA dominance that are much distinct from what most Republican interventionists have. How much difference is there between David Frum and Mitt Romney or between Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld? ..."
"... Don't look to the US to get any justice in the ME, nor to regain US good reputation in the world. This will situation will not change because US political campaign fiancé system won't change–it just gets worse, enhanced by SCOTUS. ..."
"... But neoocns have the confidence that if they could impose the neocon's theology on the rest of the world, they can do it here as well on American street . They call it education, motivation, duty, responsibility, moral burden, and above all the essence of the manifest destiny. ..."
At the Huffington Post, Jim Sleeper addresses
"A Foreign-Policy Problem
No One Speaks About," and it turns out to Jewish identity, the need to belong to the powerful nation on the part of Jewish neoconservatives.
Sleeper says this is an insecurity born of European exclusion that he understands as a Jew, even if he's not a warmongering neocon
himself. The Yale lecturer's jumping-off point are recent statements by Leon Wieseltier and
David Brooks lamenting the decline of
American power.
In addition to Wieseltier and Brooks, the "blame the feckless liberals" chorus has included Donald Kagan, Robert Kagan, David
Frum, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and many other American neoconservatives. Some of them have
been chastened, or at least been made more cautious, by their grand-strategic blunders of a few years ago ..
I'm saying that they've been fatuous as warmongers again and again and that there's something pathetic in their attempts to
emulate Winston Churchill, who warned darkly of Hitler's intentions in the 1930s. Their blind spot is their willful ignorance
of their own complicity in American deterioration and their over-compensatory, almost pre-adolescent faith in the benevolence
of a statist and militarist power they still hope to mobilize against the seductions and terrors rising all around them.
At bottom, the chorus members' recurrent nightmares of 1938 doom them to reenact other nightmares, prompted by very similar
writers in 1914, on the eve of World War I. Those writers are depicted chillingly, unforgettably, in Chapter 9, "War Fever," of
Amos Elon's
The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933. Elon's account of Germany's stampede into World
War I chronicles painfully the warmongering hysterics of some Jewish would-be patriots of the Kaiserreich who exerted themselves
blindly, romantically, to maneuver their state into the Armageddon that would produce Hitler himself.
This is the place to emphasize that few of Wilhelmine German's warmongers were Jews and that few Jews were or are warmongers.
(Me, for example, although my extended-family history isn't much different from Brooks' or Wieseltier's.) My point is simply that,
driven by what I recognize as understandable if almost preternatural insecurities and cravings for full liberal-nationalist belonging
that was denied to Jews for centuries in Europe, some of today's American super-patriotic neo-conservatives hurled themselves
into the Iraq War, and they have continued, again and again, to employ modes of public discourse and politics that echo with eerie
fidelity that of the people described in Elon's book. The Americans lionized George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and
many others as their predecessors lionized Kaiser Wilhelm, von Bethmann-Hollweg, and far-right nationalist associates who hated
the neo-cons of that time but let them play their roles .
Instead of acknowledging their deepest feelings openly, or even to themselves, the writers I've mentioned who've brought so
much folly and destruction upon their republic, are doubling down, more nervous and desperate than ever, looking for someone else
to blame. Hence their whirling columns and rhythmic incantations. After Germany lost World War I, many Germans unfairly blamed
their national folly on Jews, many of whom had served in it loyally but only a few of whom had been provocateurs and cheerleaders
like the signatories of [Project for New American Century's] letter to Bush. Now neo-cons, from Wieseltier and Brooks to [Charles]
Hill, are blaming Obama and all other feckless liberals. Some of them really need to take a look in Amos Elon's mirror.
Interesting. Though I think Sleeper diminishes Jewish agency here (Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban are no one's proxy) and can't
touch the Israel angle. The motivation is not simply romantic identification with power, it's an ideology of religious nationalism
in the Middle East, attachment to the needs of a militarist Sparta in the Arab world. That's another foreign policy problem no one
speaks about.
Krauss, May 6, 2014, 2:11 pm
"Democracy in in the Middle East" was always just a weasel-word saying of "let's try to improve Israel's strategic position
by changing their neighbours".
The neocons basically took a hardline position on foreign interventionism based out of dual loyalty. This is the honest truth.
For anti-Semites, a handful of neocons will always represent "The Jews" as a collective. For many Jews, the refusal to come to
grips with the rise of the neocons and how the Jewish community (and really by "community" I mean the establishment) failed to
prevent them in their own midst, is also a blemish.
Of course, Jim Sleeper is doing these things now. He should have done them 15-20 years ago or so. But better late than never,
I guess.
Krauss, May 6, 2014, 2:16 pm
P.S. While we talk a lot about neocons as a Jewish issue, it's also important to put them in perspective. The only war that
I can truly think of that they influenced was the Iraq war, which was a disaster, but it also couldn't have happened without 9/11,
which was a very rare event in the history of America. You have to go back to Pearl Harbor to find something similar, and that
wasn't technically a terrorist attack but rather a military attack by Japan.
Leading up to the early 2000s, they were mostly ignored during the 1990s. They did take over the GOP media in the early 90s,
using the same tactics used against Hagel, use social norms as a cover but in actuality the real reason is Israel.
Before the 90s, in the 70s and 80s, the cold war took up all the oxygen.
So yeah, the neocons need to be talked about. But comparing what they are trying to do with a World War is a bit of a stretch.
Finally, talking about Israel – which Sleeper ignored – and the hardline positions that the political class in America have
adopted, if you want to look who have ensured the greatest slavishness to Israel, liberal/centrist groups like ADL, AJC and AIPAC(yes,
they are mostly democrats!) have played a far greater role than the neocons.
But I guess, Sleeper wasn't dealing with that, because it would ruin his view of the neocons as the bogeymen.
Just like "liberal" Zionists want to blame Likud for everything, overlooking the fact that Labor/Mapai has had a far greater
role in settling/colonizing the Palestinian land than the right has, and not to speak about the ethnic cleansing campaigns of
'48 and '67 which was only done by the "left", so too the neocons often pose as a convenient catch-all target for the collective
Jewish failure leading up to Iraq.
And I'm using the words "collective Jewish failure" because I actually don't believe, unlike Mearsheimer/Walt, that the war
would not have gone ahead unless there was massive support by the Israel/Jewish lobby. If Jews had decided no, it would still
have gone ahead. This is also contrary to Tom Friedman's famous saying of "50 people in DC are responsible for this war".
I also think that's an oversimplification.
But I focus more on the Jewish side because that's my side. And I want my community to do better, and just blaming the neocons
is something I'm tired of hearing in Jewish circles. The inability to look at liberal Jewish journalists and their role in promoting
the war to either gentile or Jewish audiences.
Kathleen, May 6, 2014, 6:53 pm
There was talk about this last night (Monday/5th) on Chris Matthew's Hardball segment on Condi "mushroom cloud" Rice pulling
out of the graduation ceremonies at Rutger's. David Corn did not say much but Eugene Robinson and Chris Matthews were basically
talking about Israel and the neocons desires to rearrange the middle east "the road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad" conversation.
Bumblebye, May 6, 2014, 2:33 pm
"some of today's American super-patriotic neo-conservatives hurled themselves into the Iraq War"
Have to take issue with that – the neo-cons hurled young American (and foreign) servicemen and women into that war, many to
their deaths, along with throwing as much taxpayer money as possible. They stayed ultra safe and grew richer for their efforts.
Citizen, May 7, 2014, 9:03 am
@ Bumblebye
Good point. During WW1, as I read the history, the Jewish Germans provided their fair share of combat troops. If memory serves,
despite Weimar Germany's later "stab in the back" theory, e.g., Hitler himself was given a combat medal thanks to his Jewish senior
officer. In comparison to the build-up to Shrub Jr's war on Iraq, the Jewish neocons provided very few Jewish American combat
troops.
It's hard to get reliable stats on Jewish American participation in the US combat arms during the Iraq war. For all I've been
able to ascertain, more have joined the IDF over the years. At any rate, it's common knowledge that Shrub's war on Iraq was instigated
and supported by chicken hawks (Jew or Gentile) at a time bereft of conscription. They built their sale by ignoring key facts,
and embellishing misleading and fake facts, as illustrated by the Downing Street memo.
Keith, May 6, 2014, 7:47 pm
PHIL- Perhaps you are making too much of the so called decline of the neocons. At the strategic level, there is little
difference between the neocon "Project for a the New American Century" and Brzezinski's "The Grand Chessboard," both of which
are consistent with US policy and actions in the Ukraine.
The most significant difference seems to me to be the neocon emphasis on American unilateral militarism versus Obama's
emphasis on multilateralism, covert operations and financial warfare to achieve the desired results.
Perhaps another significant difference is the neocon emphasis on the primacy of the American nation-state versus the neoliberal
emphasis on an American dominated global empire.
So yes, the nationalistic emphasis is an anachronism, however, the decline of the US in conjunction with the extension of a
system of globalized domination should hardly be of concern to elite power-seekers who will benefit. In fact, the new system of
corporate/financial control will be beyond the political control of any nation, even the US. If they can pull it off. An interesting
topic no doubt, but one which I doubt is suitable for extended discussion on Mondoweiss. As for power-seeking as a consequence
of a uniquely Jewish experience, perhaps the less said the better.
Interesting to juxtapose Brzezinski and the neocons. In a Venn diagram they would over-lap 90%. The Ukraine crisis exposes that
10% difference. Brzezinski I very much doubt has any emotional attachment to Israel though he is happy to work in coalition with
them to further his one true goal which is to isolate and defeat Russian influence in the world. In the 1980s both were on the
same page in the "let my people go" campaign against the Soviet Union. Brzezinski saw it as a propaganda opportunity to attack
Russia and the neocons saw it has a source of more Jews to settle Palestine.
Right now, their interests have diverged over the
Ukraine crisis. Though many of the American neocons do support subverting Ukraine as does Brzezinski it looks like Israel itself
is leaning towards supporting Russia. When it comes down to it it is hard for many Jews, right wing or not, to support the political
movement inside Ukraine that identifies with Bandera. Now that was one nasty antisemite whose followers killed many thousands
of Ukrainian Jews during the holocaust. My wife's family immigrated from Galicia and the Odessa region and those left behind perished
during the holocaust. The extended family includes anti-zionists and WB settlers. There is no way that any of them would identify
with Ukrainian fascist movements now active there.
In any case, there does seem to be a potential split among the neocons over Ukraine. It would be the ultimate in hypocrisy
for all of those eastern European Jews who became successful in the US in the last few generations to enter into coalition with
the Bandera brigades.
(I know I'm always grabbing OT threads of discussion, but when it comes down to it, I know much less about Zionism and Israel/Palestine
than many, if not most of the regular commenters here.)
I also am going to drift further off-topic by saying there is strong evidence that the slaughter in Odessa last Friday was
highly orchestrated and not solely the result of spontaneous mob violence. Very graphic and disturbing images in all of these
links:
" and it turns out to Jewish identity, the need to belong to the powerful nation on the part of Jewish neoconservatives.
Sleeper says this is an insecurity born of European exclusion that he understands as a Jew, ..>>
Stop it Sleeper. Do not continue to use the victim card ' to explain' the trauma, the insecurities, the nightmares, the angst,
the feelings, the sensitivities, blah blah, blah of Zionist or Israel.
That is not what they are about. These are power mad psychos like most neocons, period.
And even if it were, and even if all the Jews in the world felt the same way, the bottom line would still be they do not have
the right to make others pay in treasure and blood for their nightmares and mental sickness.
As near as I can tell (correct me if I'm wrong), the Ukrainians themselves are about half and half pro Russia and Pro NATO.
Your glance at the history of the region as to why this is so, and your text on historical Ukranian suffering and POTV on MW commentary
on this –did not help your analysis and its conclusion.
There's a difference between isolationism and defensive intervention, and even more so, re isolationism v. pro-active interventionism
"in the name of pursuing the democratic ideal". See Ron Paul v. PNAC-style neocons and liberal Zionists.
Also, if you were Putin, how would you see the push of NATO & US force posts ever creeping towards Russia and its local environment?
Look at the US military postings nearing Russia per se & those surrounding Iran. Compare Russia's.
And note the intent to wean EU from Russian oil, and as well, the draconian sanctions on Iran, and Obama's latest partnering
sanctions on Russia.
Imagine yourself in Putin's shoes, and Iran's.
Don't abuse your imagination only by imagining yourself in Netanyahu's shoes, which is the preoccupation of AIPAC and its whores
in the US Congress.
Interesting to juxtapose Brzezinski and the neocons. In a Venn diagram they would over-lap 90%. The Ukraine crisis exposes
that 10% difference. Brzezinski I very much doubt has any emotional attachment to Israel though he is happy to work in coalition
with them to further his one true goal which is to isolate and defeat Russian influence in the world. In the 1980s both were on
the same page in the "let my people go" campaign against the Soviet Union. Brzezinski saw it as a propaganda opportunity to attack
Russia and the neocons saw it has a source of more Jews to settle Palestine.
Right now, their interests have diverged over
the Ukraine crisis. Though many of the American neocons do support subverting Ukraine as does Brzezinski it looks like Israel
itself is leaning towards supporting Russia. When it comes down to it it is hard for many Jews, right wing or not, to support
the political movement inside Ukraine that identifies with Bandera. Now that was one nasty anti-Semite whose followers killed
many thousands of Ukrainian Jews during the holocaust. My wife's family immigrated from Galicia and the Odessa region and those
left behind perished during the holocaust. The extended family includes anti-Zionists and WB settlers. There is no way that any
of them would identify with Ukrainian fascist movements now active there.
In any case, there does seem to be a potential split among the neocons over Ukraine. It would be the ultimate in hypocrisy
for all of those eastern European Jews who became successful in the US in the last few generations to enter into coalition with
the Bandera brigades.
Yonah writes The freedom of Ukraine is a worthy goal. If the US is not able to back up our attempt to help them gain their
freedom it is not something to celebrate, but something to lament.
What are you saying? Ukraine has been an independent nation for 22 years. What freedom is this? What we have witnessed is that
one half of Ukraine has gotten tired that the other half keeps on electing candidates that represent those Ukrainians that identify
with Russian culture. They (the western half) successfully staged a coup and purged the other (eastern half) from the government.
You call that "freedom". Doesn't it embarrass you, Yonah, that the armed militias that conducted that coup are descendants of
the Bandera organization.
Does that ring a bell? These are the Ukrainians that were involved in the holocaust. Does Babi Yar stir any memories Yohan?
It was a massacre of 40,000 Jews just outside of Kiev in 1942. It was the single largest massacre of Jews during WWII. The massacre
was led by the Germans ( Einsatzgruppe C officers) but was carried out with the aid of 400 Ukrainian Auxillary Police. These were
later incorporated into the 14th SS-Volunteer Division "Galician" made up mostly Ukrainians. The division flags are to this day
displayed at Right Sector rallies in western Ukraine.
Right Sector militias are the fighting force that led the coup against the legally elected Yanukovich government and were
almost certainly involved in the recent massacre in Odessa. And you support them for their fight for freedom? You should be ashamed.
Zionism is sinking to new lows that they feel the need to identify with open neo-Nazis.
Well, the point is that Zionists in Israel do not identify with that particular set of open neo-Nazis. I suspect that this
is simply a matter of the headcount of Jewish business tycoons that are politically aligned with (western) Ukraine and Russia.
Or you can count their billions. In any case, the neutral posture is sensible for Israel here. Which is highly uncharacteristic
for that government.
Toivo S- The history of Jew hatred by certain anti Russian elements in the Ukraine is not encouraging and nothing that I celebrate.
Maybe I have been swayed by headlines and a superficial reading of the situation.
If indeed I am wrong regarding the will of the Ukrainian people, I can only be glad that my opinion is just that, my opinion
and not US or Israel or anyone's policy but my own. I assume that a majority of Ukrainians want to maintain independence of Russia
and that the expressions of rebellion are in that vein.
My people were murdered by the einsatzgruppen in that part of the world and so maybe I have overcompensated by trying not to
allow my personal history to interfere with what I think would be the will of the majority of the Ukraine.
But Toivo S. please skip the "doesn't it embarrass you" line of thought. Just put a sock in it and skip it.
Well thanks for that Yonah. My wife's family descended from Jewish communities in Odessa and Galicia. They emigrated to the US
between 1900 and 1940. After WWII none of their relatives left behind were ever heard from again. Perhaps you have family that
experienced similar stories. What caused me to react to your post above is that you are describing the current situation in Ukraine
as a "freedom" movement by the Ukrainians when the political forces there descended from the same people that killed my inlaws
family (and apparently yours to). Why do you support them?
ToivoS- I support them because I trust/don't trust Putin. I trust him to impose his brand of leadership on Ukraine, I don't trust
him to care a whit about freedom. It is natural that the nationalist elements of Ukraine would descend from the elements that
expressed themselves the last time they had freedom from the Soviet Union, that is those forces that were willing to join with
the Nazis to express their hatred for the communist Soviet Union's rule over their freedom. That's how history works. The nationalists
today descend from the nationalists of yesterday.
But it's been 70 years since WWII and the Ukrainians ought to be able to have freedom even if the parties that advocate for
freedom are descended from those that supported the Nazis. (I know once i include the Nazi part of history any analogies are toxic,
but if I am willing to grant Hamas its rights as an expression of the Palestinian desire for freedom, why would I deny the Ukrainian
foul nationalist parties their rights to express their people's desire for freedom.)
Political parties are not made in a sterile laboratory, they evolve over history and most specifically they emerge from the
past. I accept that Ukrainian nationalism has not evolved much, but nonetheless not having read any polls I assume that the nationalists
are the representatives of the people's desire for freedom. And because Putin strikes me as something primitive, I accept the
Ukrainian desire for freedom.
What are you supporting? Let me refresh your historic memory: Black's Transfer Agreement. Now apply analogy, responding
to ToivoS. Might help us all to understand, explore more skillfully, Israel's current stance on the Putin-Ukranian matter .?
(I think Nuland's intervention caught on tape, combined with who she is married to, already explores with great clarification
what the US is doing.
"The misadventure in Iraq has cost the US and the world a lot. The US a loss in humans and money and willingness to play
the role of superpower, and the world has lost its cop. Most people here would probably disagree with Sleeper, because he does
not deny that the world needs a cop, nor that the US would play a positive role, if it only had the means and the desire to
do so. People here (overwhelmingly) see the US role as a negative one (let the Russians have their sphere of influence, let
the Iranians have their bomb, let the Chinese do whatever they want to do in their part of the world,"
The problem with your reasoning, Yonah, is that you are espousing the Neocon line while not apparently recognizing that
embarrassing fact. You lament that the US is no longer playing the role of the world's superpower, and acting as the world's cop,
confronting militarily Russia, China, Iran and anyone else. It is precisely that mentality that got us into Iraq, could yet have
us in a war with Iran, would like to see us defending Ukraine, and thinks we should confront China militarily over bits of rock
it and its neighbors are quibbling over. That is a neocon, American supremacy mentality.
Contrast that with the realist or realism approach recommended by George Kennan, and followed by this country successfully
through the end of the Cold War. That approach is conservative and contends we should stay out of wars unless the vital national
security interests of the US are at stake, like protecting WESTERN Europe, Japan, Australia, and the Western Hemisphere. This
meant we could sympathize with the plight of all the eastern Europeans oppressed by the Soviets, but would not defend militarily
the Hungarians (1956) or the Czechs (1968). It also meant we wouldn't send US troops into North Vietnam because we didn't want
to go to war with the Chinese over a country that was at best tangential to US interests. When we varied from that policy (Vietnam
and Iraq wars, Somalia) we paid a very heavy price while doing nothing to advance or protect our vital national security interests.
The sooner this country can return to our traditional realism-based foreign policy the better. Part of that policy would be
to disassociate the US from its entangling alliance with Likud Israel and its US Jewish supporters that espouse the Likud Greater
Israel line.
Zionism under Likud has played a major role in promoting the neocon approach to foreign policy in the US. It was heavily
involved in the birth of that approach, and has helped fund and promote the policy and its supporters and advocates in this country.
They (Likud Zionists and Neocons) played a major role in getting us into the Iraq war and are playing a major role in trying to
get us involved in a war with Iran, a war in Syria, and even potential wars in Eastern Europe. That is a very dangerous trend
and one folks as intelligent as you are, should be focusing on.
Please note, my criticism is directed neither at all Jews in general, Jews in the US, nor or all Israeli Jews. It is directed
at a particular subset of Zionists who support Likud policies, and their supporters, many of whom are not Jews. It is also directed
at Neoconservative foreign policy advocates, comprised of Jews and non-Jews, and overlap between the two groups. Please also note
my use of the term "major role", and that I am not saying the Neocons and their supporters (Jewish or non) were solely responsible
for our involvement in the Iraq war. I am offering these caveats in the hope that the usual changes of antisemitism can be avoided
in your or anyone else's response to my arguments.
The influence of Neocons on US foreign policy has been very harmful to this country and poses a grave danger to its future.
It would be wise for you to reflect on that harm and those dangers and decide whether you belong in the realist camp or want to
continue running with the Neocons.
Please note, my criticism is directed neither at all Jews in general, Jews in the US, nor or all Israeli Jews. It is directed
at a particular subset of Zionists who support Likud policies, and their supporters, many of whom are not Jews.
What about the role of *liberal Zionists*, like Hillary Clinton, in supporting and promoting the Iraq War? Clinton still hasn't
offered an apology for helping to drive the United States in a multi-trillion dollar foreign policy disaster - and she has threatened
to "totally obliterate" Iran.
What about Harry Reid's lavish praise of Sheldon Adelson?
"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has for some time billed the Koch brothers as public enemy No.1 .
But billionaire Republican donor Sheldon Adelson? He's just fine, Reid says.
"I know Sheldon Adelson. He's not in this for money," the Nevada Democrat said of Adelson, the Vegas casino magnate who
reportedly spent close to $150 million to support Republicans in the 2012 presidential election."
@ yonah fredman "nationalist Armageddon that is nowhere found in the article by Sleeper"
Strange
"state into the Armageddon .. "
"The misadventure in Iraq has cost the US and the world a lot. The US a loss in humans and money and willingness to
play the role of superpower, and the world has lost its cop. "
Tough. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives don't rate a mention.
" (let the Russians have their sphere of influence, let the Iranians have their bomb, let the Chinese do whatever they
want to do in their part of the world, for after all they hold a trillion dollars in US government debt and so let them act
like the boss, for in fact they have been put in that role by feckless and destructive and wasteful US policy). But Sleeper
does not say that."
You do tho, without quoting anyone "here".
BTW Pajero, strawmen no matter how lengthy and seemingly erudite, rarely walk anywhere
I'm going to put this down as Jewish navel gazing.
Jews are disproportionately liberal. Jews make up a huge chunk of the peace movement. Jews are relative to their numbers on
the left of most foreign policy positions.
Iraq was unusual in that Jews were not overwhelming opposed to the invasion, but it is worth noting the invasion at the time
was overwhelming popular. Frankly given the fact that Jews are now considered white people and the fact that Jews are almost all
middle class they should be biased conservative. There certainly is no reason they should be more liberal than Catholics. Yet
they are. It is the degree of Jewish liberalism not the degree of Jewish conservatism that is striking.
But even if we do focus on neocons, neocons don't have opinions about foreign policy and USA dominance that are much distinct
from what most Republican interventionists have. How much difference is there between David Frum and Mitt Romney or between Paul
Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld?
Strongly antiwar incumbent Rep. Walter Jones (R – NC) has won a hotly contested primary tonight, defeating a challenge from
hawkish challenger and former Treasury Dept. official Taylor Griffin 51% to 45%.
Voter turn out was light .. tea party types did a lot of lobbying for Griffin here .but Jones prevailed. Considering the
onslaught of organized activity against him by ECI and the tea partiers for the past month he did well.
@ lysias
Let's refresh our look at what Ron Paul had to say about foreign policy and foreign aid. Then, let's compare what his son has
said, and take a look of his latest bill in congress to cut off aid to Palestine. Yes, you read that right; it's not a bill to
cut off any aid to Israel.
Don't look to the US to get any justice in the ME, nor to regain US good reputation in the world. This will situation will
not change because US political campaign fiancé system won't change–it just gets worse, enhanced by SCOTUS.
The heavy artillery included the detestable Karl Rove, former Governor and RNC Chair Haley Barber and the War Party's highly
paid chief PR flack, Ari Fleischer.
But it was Neocon central that hauled out the big guns. Bill Kristol was so desperate to thwart the slowly rising anti-interventionist
tide within the GOP that he even trotted out Sarah Palin to endorse Jones's opponent"
But neoocns have the confidence that if they could impose the neocon's theology on the rest of the world, they can do it
here as well on American street . They call it education, motivation, duty, responsibility, moral burden, and above all the essence
of the manifest destiny.
"... It is also a nice illustration of how "Westminster Style" democracy works. Any chance that the electorate might elect a left wing government and you get a Zinoviev letter or a Bologna railway station bombing. ..."
"... In other words "Elect whom you like". ("Provided we like them too!") It's really a bit like herding sheep. ..."
The documents reveal him as Alexis Bellegarde, one of four White Russian aristocrats believed
to have been behind an infamous forgery 15 years before the war began. The revelations of Bellegarde's
importance to MI6 will increase suspicions that British agents had a hand in the production of the
"Zinoviev letter"; its leak to the Daily Mail many believe cost Labour the 1924 general election.
foolisholdman -> Brian Milne 11 Oct 2015 05:55
Brian Milne
It is also a nice illustration of how "Westminster Style" democracy works. Any chance that
the electorate might elect a left wing government and you get a Zinoviev letter or a Bologna railway
station bombing.
In other words "Elect whom you like". ("Provided we like them too!") It's really a bit
like herding sheep.
AlbertTatlock53 -> LordUpminster 11 Oct 2015 08:35
Despite the blandness of the OH volumes on Ultra, some facts did leak out, like having a month's
notice of the Italian declaration of war and useful tactical and operational details like the
positions of wolf packs. It also reminded me of a couple of anecdotes about Ultra information
by unwitting sources in memoirs. I wouldn't deprecate Ultra or the British war effort that far.
The British army that went to Normandy was the most mechanised and armoured army in history and
pulled rather more than its own weight in the coalition. The principal offensive weapon of the
British empire was Bomber Command, which in the spring-summer of 1943 began to devastate the German
war economy.
The Soviet and then the US contributions to the war dwarfed the British empire but only relatively,
it was still a superpower in 1945, though by the Suez crime it had become a wholly-owned subsidiary
of Murder Inc.
LordUpminster ID7678903 11 Oct 2015 04:04
And no doubt the establishment will continue to play such dirty tricks to undermine our
so called democracy
Not the slightest: according to our friend jamesforysthe below that's essentially what they're
for.
Re. the Zinoviev letter, I did see one theory many years ago that the man behind it was the
then-Polish Army Minister Władysław Sikorski, the one who later headed the Polish exile government
in London and was killed in an air crash. Certainly in October 1924 he was bragging to people
in governmental circles in Warsaw that it was his agents who had arranged it - though why exactly
is not easy to see, given that Poland had no particular political interest in Britain at the time.
I suspect that it was empty boasting, and that it was Russian emigrés who were responsible.
Coming up soon: conclusive proof that Jeremy Corbyn was once an agent of the Tsarist Okhrana.
Brian Milne 11 Oct 2015 04:00
Had Labour won, thus Baldwin, MacDonald, Baldwin, Chamberlain probably not have been the course
of politics, would the UK necessarily have moved further left? The question remains to be seen,
but unless somebody more genuinely socialist had replaced MacDonald probably not. However, the
outcome may well have been a far more amicable relationship with the Soviet Union, the Versailles
Treaty and League of Nations possibly better conformed to and the rise of Hitler less likely.
The Zinoviev letter may well have been as much a contributory denominator in that than is implied.
Of course, we hall never know really, only historians expounding their own theories and interpretations
of history.
samuel glover -> jamesforsythe 11 Oct 2015 01:43
"Some brilliant espionage across the Middle-east and Israel is precisely what's needed
to bring these politically infantile areas into western like democratic administrations, this
century, not next. And with fewer wars. "
First, you think western intelligence agencies **haven't** been prominent in the history of
that region?!?!?
Second, you think these same agencies are capable of just whipping up entire social and political
structures and cultures on demand? Do you read newspapers?
Remember that these agencies -- in America, in Britain, in every NATO country -- spent decades
and billions of dollars and billions of man-hours staring obsessively at the USSR. EVERY ONE of
them was completely blindsided when the Soviet Union folded up.
error418 -> jamesforsythe 10 Oct 2015 23:21
"Our" best interests or that intelligence service´s best interests? ISI in Pakistan is a good
example of such a service gone rogue. Experts in election rigging.
Frisco27 10 Oct 2015 19:06
"Sexing up" documents? What a scumbag... That would never happen these days.
"... Stocks have always been "a legal form of gambling". What is happening now however, is that a pair of treys can beat out your straight flush. Companies that have never turned a profit fetch huge prices on the stock market. ..."
"... The stock market suckered millions in before 2008 and then prices plummeted. Where did the money from grandpa's pension fund go? ..."
"... Abraham Lincoln said that the purpose of government is to do for people what they cannot do for themselves. Government also should serve to keep people from hurting themselves and to restrain man's greed, which otherwise cannot be self-controlled. Anyone who seeks to own productive power that they cannot or won't use for consumption are beggaring their neighbor––the equivalency of mass murder––the impact of concentrated capital ownership. ..."
"... family wealth" predicts outcomes for 10 to 15 generations. Those with extreme wealth owe it to events going back "300 to 450" years ago, according to research published by the New Republic – an era when it wasn't unusual for white Americans to benefit from an economy dependent upon widespread, unpaid black labor in the form of slavery. ..."
"... Correction: The average person in poverty in the U.S. does not live in the same abject, third world poverty as you might find in Honduras, Central African Republic, Cambodia, or the barrios of Sao Paulo. ..."
"... Since our poor don't live in abject poverty, I invite you to live as a family of four on less than $11,000 a year anywhere in the United States. If you qualify and can obtain subsidized housing you may have some of the accoutrements in your home that you seem to equate with living the high life. You know, running water, a fridge, a toilet, a stove. You would also likely have a phone (subsidized at that) so you might be able to participate (or attempt to participate) in the job market in an honest attempt to better your family's economic prospects and as is required to qualify for most assistance programs. ..."
"... So many dutiful neoliberals on here rushing to the defense of poor Capitalism. Clearly, these commentators are among those who are in the privileged position of reaping the true benefits of Capitalism - And, of course, there are many benefits to reap if you are lucky enough to be born into the right racial-socioeconomic context. ..."
"... Please walk us through how non-capitalist systems create wealth and allow their lowest class people propel themselves to the top in one generation. You will note that most socialist systems derive their technology and advancements from the more capitalistic systems. Pharmaceuticals, software, and robotics are a great example of this. I shutter to think of what the welfare of the average citizen of the world would be like without the advancements made via the capitalist countries. ..."
The poorest Americans have no realistic hope of achieving anything that approaches income equality. They still struggle
for access to the basics
... ... ...
The disparities in wealth that we term "income inequality" are no accident, and they can't be fixed by fiddling at the edges of
our current economic system. These disparities happened by design, and the system structurally disadvantages those at the bottom.
The poorest Americans have no realistic hope of achieving anything that approaches income equality; even their very chances for access
to the most basic tools of life are almost nil.
... ... ...
Too often, the answer by those who have hoarded everything is they will choose to "give back" in a manner of their choosing –
just look at Mark Zuckerberg and his much-derided plan to "give away" 99% of his Facebook stock. He is unlikely to help change inequality
or poverty any more than "giving away" of $100m helped children in Newark schools.
Allowing any of the 100 richest Americans to choose how they fix "income inequality" will not make the country more equal or even
guarantee more access to life. You can't take down the master's house with the master's tools, even when you're the master; but more
to the point, who would tear down his own house to distribute the bricks among so very many others?
mkenney63 5 Dec 2015 20:37
Excellent article. The problems we face are structural and can only be solved by making fundamental changes. We must bring
an end to "Citizens United", modern day "Jim Crow" and the military industrial complex in order to restore our democracy. Then
maybe, just maybe, we can have an economic system that will treat all with fairness and respect. Crony capitalism has had its
day, it has mutated into criminality.
Kencathedrus -> Marcedward 5 Dec 2015 20:23
In the pre-capitalist system people learnt crafts to keep themselves afloat. The Industrial Revolution changed all that. Now
we have the church of Education promising a better life if we get into debt to buy (sorry, earn) degrees.
The whole system is messed up and now we have millions of people on this planet who can't function even those with degrees.
Barbarians are howling at the gates of Europe. The USA is rotting from within. As Marx predicted the Capitalists are merely paying
their own grave diggers.
mkenney63 -> Bobishere 5 Dec 2015 20:17
I would suggest you read the economic and political history of the past 30 years. To help you in your study let me recommend
a couple of recent books: "Winner Take all Politics" by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson and "The Age of Acquiescence" by Steve Fraser.
It always amazes me that one can be so blind the facts of recent American history; it's not just "a statistical inequality", it's
been a well thought-out strategy over time to rig the system, a strategy engaged in by politicians and capitalists. Shine some
light on this issue by acquainting yourself with the facts.
Maharaja Brovinda -> Singh Jill Harrison 5 Dec 2015 19:42
We play out the prisoner's dilemma in life, in general, over and over in different circumstances, every day. And we always
choose the dominant - rational - solution. But the best solution is not based on rationality, but rather on trust and faith in
each other - rather ironically for our current, evidence based society!
Steven Palmer 5 Dec 2015 19:19
Like crack addicts the philanthropricks only seek to extend their individual glory, social image their primary goal, and yet
given the context they will burn in history. Philanthroptits should at least offset the immeasurable damage they have done through
their medieval wealth accumulation. Collaborative philanthropy for basic income is a good idea, but ye, masters tools.
BlairM -> Iconoclastick 5 Dec 2015 19:10
Well, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, capitalism is the worst possible economic system, except for all those other economic
systems that have been tried from time to time.
I'd rather just have the freedom to earn money as I please, and if that means inequality, it's a small price to pay for not
having some feudal lord or some party bureaucrat stomping on my humanity.
brusuz 5 Dec 2015 18:52
As long as wealth can be created by shuffling money from one place to another in the giant crap shoot we call our economy,
nothing will change. Until something takes place to make it advantageous for the investor capitalists to put that money to work
doing something that actually produces some benefit to the society as a whole, they will continue their extractive machinations.
I see nothing on the horizon that is going to change any of that, and to cast this as some sort of a racial issue is quite superficial.
We have all gotten the shaft, since there is no upward mobility available to anyone. Since the Bush crowd of neocons took power,
we have all been shackled with "individual solutions to societal created problems."
Jimi Del Duca 5 Dec 2015 18:31
Friends, Capitalism is structural exploitation of ALL WORKERS. Thinking about it as solely a race issue is divisive. What we
need is CLASS SOLIDARITY and ORGANIZATION. See iww.org We are the fighting union with no use for capitalists!
slightlynumb -> AmyInNH 5 Dec 2015 18:04
You'd be better off reading Marx if you want to understand capitalism. I think you are ascribing the word to what you think
it should be rather than what it is.
It is essentially a class structure rather than any defined economic system. Neoliberal is essentially laissez faire capitalism.
It is designed to suborn nation states to corporate benefit.
AmyInNH -> tommydog
They make $40 a month. Working 7 days a week. At least 12 hour days. Who's fed you that "we're doing them a favor" BS?
And I've news for you regarding "Those whose skills are less adaptable to doing so are seeing their earnings decline." We have
many people who have 3 masters degrees making less than minimum wage. We have top notch STEM students shunned so corporations
can hire captive/cheaper foreign labor, called H1-Bs, who then wait 10 years working for them waiting for their employment based
green card. Or "visiting" students here on J1 visas, so the employers can get out of paying: social security, federal unemployment
insurance, etc.
Wake up and smell the coffee tommydog. They've more than a thumb on the scale.
I am a socialist. I decided to read this piece to see if Mr. Thrasher could write about market savagery without propounding the
fiction that whites are somehow exempt from the effects of it.
No, he could not. I clicked on the link accompanying his assertion
that whites who are high school dropouts earn more than blacks with college degrees, and I read the linked piece in full. The
linked piece does not in fact compare income (i.e., yearly earnings) of white high school dropouts with those of black college
graduates, but it does compare family wealth across racial cohorts (though not educational ones), and the gap there is indeed
stark, with average white family wealth in the six figures (full disclosure, I am white, and my personal wealth is below zero,
as I owe more in student loans than I own, so perhaps I am not really white, or I do not fully partake of "whiteness," or whatever),
and average black family wealth in the four figures.
The reason for this likely has a lot to do with home ownership disparities, which in turn are linked in significant part to
racist redlining practices. So white dropouts often live in homes their parents or grandparents bought, while many black college
graduates whose parents were locked out of home ownership by institutional racism and, possibly, the withering of manufacturing
jobs just as the northward migration was beginning to bear some economic fruit for black families, are still struggling to become
homeowners. Thus, the higher average wealth for the dropout who lives in a family owned home.
But this is not what Mr. Thrasher wrote. He specifically used the words "earn more," creating the impression that some white
ignoramus is simply going to stumble his way into a higher salary than a cultivated, college educated black person. That is simply
not the case, and the difference does matter.
Why does it matter? Because I regularly see middle aged whites who are broken and homeless on the streets of the town where
I live, and I know they are simply the tip of a growing mountain of privation. Yeah, go ahead, call it white tears if you want,
but if you cannot see that millions (including, of course, not simply folks who are out and out homeless, but folks who are struggling
to get enough to eat and routinely go without needed medication and medical care) of people who have "white privilege" are indeed
oppressed by global capitalism then I would say that you are, at the end of the day, NO BETTER THAN THE WHITES YOU DISDAIN.
If you have read this far, then you realize that I am in no way denying the reality of structural racism. But an account of
economic savagery that entirely subsumes it into non-economic categories (race, gender, age), that refuses to acknowledge that
blacks can be exploiters and whites can be exploited, is simply conservatism by other means. One gets the sense that if we have
enough black millionaires and enough whites dying of things like a lack of medical care, then this might bring just a little bit
of warmth to the hearts of people like Mr. Thrasher.
Call it what you want, but don't call it progressive. Maybe it is historical karma. Which is understandable, as there is no
reason why globally privileged blacks in places like the U.S. or Great Britain should bear the burden of being any more selfless
or humane than globally privileged whites are or have been. The Steven Thrashers of humanity are certainly no worse than many
of the whites they cannot seem to recognize as fully human are.
But nor are they any better.
JohnLG 5 Dec 2015 17:23
I agree that the term "income inequality" is so vague that falls between useless and diversionary, but so too is most use of
the word "capitalism", or so it seems to me. Typically missing is a penetrating analysis of where the problem lies, a comprehensibly
supported remedy, or large-scale examples of anything except what's not working. "Income inequality" is pretty abstract until
we look specifically at the consequences for individuals and society, and take a comprehensive look at all that is unequal. What
does "capitalism" mean? Is capitalism the root of all this? Is capitalism any activity undertaken for profit, or substantial monopolization
of markets and power?
Power tends to corrupt. Money is a form of power, but there are others. The use of power to essentially cheat, oppress or kill
others is corrupt, whether that power is in the form of a weapon, wealth, the powers of the state, or all of the above. Power
is seductive and addictive. Even those with good intensions can be corrupted by an excess of power and insufficient accountability,
while predators are drawn to power like sharks to blood. Democracy involves dispersion of power, ideally throughout a whole society.
A constitutional democracy may offer protection even to minorities against a "tyranny of the majority" so long as a love of justice
prevails. Selective "liberty and justice" is not liberty and justice at all, but rather a tyranny of the many against the few,
as in racism, or of the few against the many, as by despots. Both forms reinforce each other in the same society, both are corrupt,
and any "ism" can be corrupted by narcissism. To what degree is any society a shining example of government of, for, and by the
people, and to what degree can one discover empirical evidence of corruption? What do we do about it?
AmyInNH -> CaptainGrey 5 Dec 2015 17:15
You're too funny. It's not "lifting billions out of poverty". It's moving malicious manufacturing practices to the other side
of the planet. To the lands of no labor laws. To hide it from consumers. To hide profits.
And it is dying. Legislatively they choke off their natural competition, which is an essential element of capitalism. Monopoly
isn't capitalism. And when they bribe legislators, we don't have democracy any more either.
Jeremiah2000 -> Teresa Trujillo 5 Dec 2015 16:53
Stocks have always been "a legal form of gambling". What is happening now however, is that a pair of treys can beat out
your straight flush. Companies that have never turned a profit fetch huge prices on the stock market.
The stock market suckered millions in before 2008 and then prices plummeted. Where did the money from grandpa's pension
fund go?
Gary Reber 5 Dec 2015 16:45
Abraham Lincoln said that the purpose of government is to do for people what they cannot do for themselves. Government
also should serve to keep people from hurting themselves and to restrain man's greed, which otherwise cannot be self-controlled.
Anyone who seeks to own productive power that they cannot or won't use for consumption are beggaring their neighbor––the equivalency
of mass murder––the impact of concentrated capital ownership.
The words "OWN" and "ASSETS" are the key descriptors of the definition of wealth. But these words are not well understood by
the vast majority of Americans or for that matter, global citizens. They are limited to the vocabulary used by the wealthy ownership
class and financial publications, which are not widely read, and not even taught in our colleges and universities.
The wealthy ownership class did not become wealthy because they are "three times as smart." Still there is a valid argument
that the vast majority of Americans do not pay particular attention to the financial world and educate themselves on wealth building
within the current system's limited past-savings paradigm. Significantly, the wealthy OWNERSHIP class use their political power
(power always follows property OWNERSHIP) to write the system rules to benefit and enhance their wealth. As such they have benefited
from forging trade policy agreements which further concentrate OWNERSHIP on a global scale, military-industrial complex subsidies
and government contracts, tax code provisions and loopholes and collective-bargaining rules – policy changes they've used their
wealth to champion.
Gary Reber 5 Dec 2015 16:44
Unfortunately, when it comes to recommendations for solutions to economic inequality, virtually every commentator, politician
and economist is stuck in viewing the world in one factor terms – human labor, in spite of their implied understanding that the
rich are rich because they OWN the non-human means of production – physical capital. The proposed variety of wealth-building programs,
like "universal savings accounts that might be subsidized for low-income savers," are not practical solutions because they rely
on savings (a denial of consumption which lessens demand in the economy), which the vast majority of Americans do not have, and
for those who can save their savings are modest and insignificant. Though, millions of Americans own diluted stock value through
the "stock market exchanges," purchased with their earnings as labor workers (savings), their stock holdings are relatively minuscule,
as are their dividend payments compared to the top 10 percent of capital owners. Pew Research found that 53 percent of Americans
own no stock at all, and out of the 47 percent who do, the richest 5 percent own two-thirds of that stock. And only 10 percent
of Americans have pensions, so stock market gains or losses don't affect the incomes of most retirees.
As for taxpayer-supported saving subsidies or other wage-boosting measures, those who have only their labor power and its precarious
value held up by coercive rigging and who desperately need capital ownership to enable them to be capital workers (their productive
assets applied in the economy) as well as labor workers to have a way to earn more income, cannot satisfy their unsatisfied needs
and wants and sufficiently provide for themselves and their families. With only access to labor wages, the 99 percenters will
continue, in desperation, to demand more and more pay for the same or less work, as their input is exponentially replaced by productive
capital.
As such, the vast majority of American consumers will continue to be strapped to mounting consumer debt bills, stagnant wages
and inflationary price pressures. As their ONLY source of income is through wage employment, economic insecurity for the 99 percent
majority of people means they cannot survive more than a week or two without a paycheck. Thus, the production side of the economy
is under-nourished and hobbled as a result, because there are fewer and fewer "customers with money." We thus need to free economic
growth from the slavery of past savings.
I mentioned that political power follows property OWNERSHIP because with concentrated capital asset OWNERSHIP our elected representatives
are far too often bought with the expectation that they protect and enhance the interests of the wealthiest Americans, the OWNERSHIP
class they too overwhelmingly belong to.
Many, including the author of this article, have concluded that with such a concentrated OWNERSHIP stronghold the wealthy have
on our politics, "it's hard to see where this cycle ends." The ONLY way to reverse this cycle and broaden capital asset OWNERSHIP
universally is a political revolution. (Bernie Sanders, are you listening?)
The political revolution must address the problem of lack of demand. To create demand, the FUTURE economy must be financed
in ways that create new capital OWNERS, who will benefit from the full earnings of the FUTURE productive capability of the American
economy, and without taking from those who already OWN. This means significantly slowing the further concentration of capital
asset wealth among those who are already wealthy and ensuring that the system is reformed to promote inclusive prosperity, inclusive
opportunity, and inclusive economic justice.
yamialwaysright 5 Dec 2015 16:13
I was interested and in agreement until I read about structured racism. Many black kidsin the US grow up without a father in
the house. They turn to anti-social behaviour and crime. Once you are poor it is hard to get out of being poor but Journalists
are not doing justice to a critique of US Society if they ignore the fact that some people behave in a self-destructive way. I
would imagine that if some black men in the US and the UK stuck with one woman and played a positive role in the life of their
kids, those kids would have a better chance at life. People of different racial and ethnic origin do this also but there does
seem to be a disproportionate problem with some black US men and some black UK men. Poverty is one problem but growing up in poverty
and without a father figure adds to the problem.
What the author writes applies to other countries not just the US in relation to the super wealthy being a small proportion
of the population yet having the same wealth as a high percentage of the population. This in not a black or latino issue but a
wealth distribution issue that affects everyone irrespective of race or ethnic origin. The top 1%, 5% or 10% having most of the
wealth is well-known in many countries.
nuthermerican4u 5 Dec 2015 15:59
Capitalism, especially the current vulture capitalism, is dog eat dog. Always was, always will be. My advice is that if you
are a capitalist that values your heirs, invest in getting off this soon-to-be slag heap and find other planets to pillage and
rape. Either go all out for capitalism or reign in this beast before it kills all of us.
soundofthesuburbs 5 Dec 2015 15:32
Our antiquated class structure demonstrates the trickle up of Capitalism and the need to counterbalance it with progressive
taxation.
In the 1960s/1970s we used high taxes on the wealthy to counter balance the trickle up of Capitalism and achieved much greater
equality.
Today we have low taxes on the wealthy and Capitalism's trickle up is widening the inequality gap.
We are cutting benefits for the disabled, poor and elderly so inequality can get wider and the idle rich can remain idle.
They have issued enough propaganda to make people think it's those at the bottom that don't work.
Every society since the dawn of civilization has had a Leisure Class at the top, in the UK we call them the Aristocracy and
they have been doing nothing for centuries.
The UK's aristocracy has seen social systems come and go, but they all provide a life of luxury and leisure and with someone
else doing all the work.
Feudalism - exploit the masses through land ownership
Capitalism - exploit the masses through wealth (Capital)
Today this is done through the parasitic, rentier trickle up of Capitalism:
a) Those with excess capital invest it and collect interest, dividends and rent.
b) Those with insufficient capital borrow money and pay interest and rent.
The system itself provides for the idle rich and always has done from the first civilisations right up to the 21st Century.
The rich taking from the poor is always built into the system, taxes and benefits are the counterbalance that needs to be applied
externally.
Iconoclastick 5 Dec 2015 15:31
I often chuckle when I read some of the right wing comments on articles such as this. Firstly, I question if readers actually
read the article references I've highlighted, before rushing to comment.
Secondly, the comments are generated by cifers who probably haven't set the world alight, haven't made a difference in their
local community, they'll have never created thousands of jobs in order to reward themselves with huge dividends having and as
a consequence enjoy spectacular asset/investment growth, at best they'll be chugging along, just about keeping their shit together
and yet they support a system that's broken, other than for the one percent, of the one percent.
A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies issued this week analyzed the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans
and found that "the wealthiest 100 households now own about as much wealth as the entire African American population in the
United States". That means that 100 families – most of whom are white – have as much wealth as the 41,000,000 black folks walking
around the country (and the million or so locked up) combined.
Similarly, the report also stated that "the wealthiest 186 members of the Forbes 400 own as much wealth as the entire Latino
population" of the nation. Here again, the breakdown in actual humans is broke down: 186 overwhelmingly white folks have more
money than that an astounding 55,000,000 Latino people.
family wealth" predicts outcomes for 10 to 15 generations. Those with extreme wealth owe it to events going back "300
to 450" years ago, according to research published by the New Republic – an era when it wasn't unusual for white Americans
to benefit from an economy dependent upon widespread, unpaid black labor in the form of slavery.
soundofthesuburbs -> soundofthesuburbs 5 Dec 2015 15:26
It is the 21st Century and most of the land in the UK is still owned by the descendants of feudal warlords that killed people
and stole their land and wealth.
When there is no land to build houses for generation rent, land ownership becomes an issue.
David Cameron is married into the aristocracy and George Osborne is a member of the aristocracy, they must both be well acquainted
with the Leisure Class.
I can't find any hard work going on looking at the Wikipedia page for David Cameron's father-in-law. His family have been on
their estate since the sixteenth century and judging by today's thinking, expect to be on it until the end of time.
George Osborne's aristocratic pedigree goes back to the Tudor era:
"he is an aristocrat with a pedigree stretching back to early in the Tudor era. His father, Sir Peter Osborne, is the
17th holder of a hereditary baronetcy that has been passed from father to son for 10 generations, and of which George is next
in line."
If we have people at the bottom who are not working the whole of civilisation will be turned on its head.
"The modern industrial society developed from the barbarian tribal society, which featured a leisure class supported
by subordinated working classes employed in economically productive occupations. The leisure class is composed of people exempted
from manual work and from practicing economically productive occupations, because they belong to the leisure class."
The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions, by Thorstein Veblen. It was written a long time ago but
much of it is as true today as it was then. The Wikipedia entry gives a good insight.
DBChas 5 Dec 2015 15:13
"income inequality" is best viewed as structural capitalism. It's not as if, did black and brown people and female people somehow
(miraculously) attain the economic status of the lower-paid, white, male person, the problem would be solved--simply by adjusting
pay scales. The problem is inherent to capitalism, which doesn't mean certain "types" of people aren't more disadvantaged for
their "type." No one is saying that. For capitalists, it's easier to rationalize the obscene unfairness (only rich people say,
"life's not fair") when their "type" is regarded as superior to a different "type," whether that be with respect to color or gender
or both.
Over time--a long time--the dominant party (white males since the Dark Ages, also the life-span of capitalism coincidentally
enough) came to dominance by various means, too many to try to list, or even know of. Why white males? BTW, just because most
in power and in money are white males does not mean ALL white males are in positions of power and wealth. Most are not, and these
facts help to fog the issue.
Indeed, "income inequality," is not an accident, nor can it be fixed, as the author notes, by tweaking (presumably he means
capitalism). And he's quite right too in saying, "You can't take down the master's house with the master's tools..." I take that
ALSO to mean, the problem can't be fixed by way of what Hedges has called a collapsing liberal establishment with its various
institutions, officially speaking. That is, it's not institutional racism that's collapsing, but that institution is not officially
recognized as such.
HOWEVER, it IS possible, even when burdened with an economics that is capitalism, to redistribute wealth, and I don't just
mean Mark Zuckerberg's. I mean all wealth in whatever form can be redistributed if/when government decides it can. And THIS TIME,
unlike the 1950s-60s, not only would taxes on the wealthy be the same as then but the wealth redistributed would be redistributed
to ALL, not just to white families, and perhaps in particular to red families, the oft forgotten ones.
This is a matter of political will. But, of course, if that means whites as the largest voting block insist on electing to
office those without the political will, nothing will change. In that case, other means have to be considered, and just a reminder:
If the government fails to serve the people, the Constitution gives to the people the right to depose that government. But again,
if whites as the largest voting block AND as the largest sub-group in the nation (and women are the largest part of that block,
often voting as their men vote--just the facts, please, however unpleasant) have little interest in seeing to making necessary
changes at least in voting booths, then...what? Bolshevism or what? No one seems to know and it's practically taboo even to talk
about possibilities. Americans did it once, but not inclusively and not even paid in many instances. When it happens again, it
has to happen with and for the participation of ALL. And it's worth noting that it will have to happen again, because capitalism
by its very nature cannot survive itself. That is, as Marx rightly noted, capitalism will eventually collapse by dint of its internal
contradictions.
mbidding Jeremiah2000 5 Dec 2015 15:08
Correction: The average person in poverty in the U.S. does not live in the same abject, third world poverty as you might
find in Honduras, Central African Republic, Cambodia, or the barrios of Sao Paulo.
Since our poor don't live in abject poverty, I invite you to live as a family of four on less than $11,000 a year anywhere
in the United States. If you qualify and can obtain subsidized housing you may have some of the accoutrements in your home that
you seem to equate with living the high life. You know, running water, a fridge, a toilet, a stove. You would also likely have
a phone (subsidized at that) so you might be able to participate (or attempt to participate) in the job market in an honest attempt
to better your family's economic prospects and as is required to qualify for most assistance programs.
Consider as well that you don't have transportation to get a job that would improve your circumstances. You earn too much to
qualify for meaningful levels of food support programs and fall into the insurance gap for subsidies because you live in a state
that for ideological reasons refuses to expand Medicaid coverage. Your local schools are a disgrace but you can't take advantage
of so-called school choice programs (vouchers, charters, and the like) as you don't have transportation or the time (given your
employer's refusal to set fixed working hours for minimum wage part time work) to get your kids to that fine choice school.
You may have a fridge and a stove, but you have no food to cook. You may have access to running water and electricity, but
you can't afford to pay the bills for such on account of having to choose between putting food in that fridge or flushing that
toilet. You can't be there reliably for your kids to help with school, etc, because you work constantly shifting hours for crap
pay.
Get back to me after six months to a year after living in such circumstances and then tell me again how Americans don't really
live in poverty simply because they have access to appliances.
Earl Shelton 5 Dec 2015 15:08
The Earned Income Tax Credit seems to me a good starting point for reform. It has been around since the 70s -- conceived by
Nixon/Moynihan -- and signed by socialist (kidding) Gerald Ford -- it already *redistributes* income (don't choke on the term,
O'Reilly) directly from tax revenue (which is still largely progressive) to the working poor, with kids.
That program should be massively expanded to tax the 1% -- and especially the top 1/10 of 1% (including a wealth tax) -- and
distribute the money to the bottom half of society, mostly in the form of work training, child care and other things that help
put them in and keep them in the middle class. It is a mechanism already in existence to correct the worst ravages of Capitalism.
Use it to build shared prosperity.
oKWJNRo 5 Dec 2015 14:40
So many dutiful neoliberals on here rushing to the defense of poor Capitalism. Clearly, these commentators are among those
who are in the privileged position of reaping the true benefits of Capitalism - And, of course, there are many benefits to reap
if you are lucky enough to be born into the right racial-socioeconomic context.
We can probably all agree that Capitalism has brought about widespread improvements in healthcare, education, living conditions,
for example, compared to the feudal system that preceded it... But it also disproportionately benefits the upper echelons of Capitalist
societies and is wholly unequal by design.
Capitalism depends upon the existence of a large underclass that can be exploited. This is part of the process of how surplus
value is created and wealth is extracted from labour. This much is indisputable. It is therefore obvious that capitalism isn't
an ideal system for most of us living on this planet.
As for the improvements in healthcare, education, living conditions etc that Capitalism has fostered... Most of these were
won through long struggles against the Capitalist hegemony by the masses. We would have certainly chosen to make these improvements
to our landscape sooner if Capitalism hadn't made every effort to stop us. The problem today is that Capitalism and its powerful
beneficiaries have successfully convinced us that there is no possible alternative. It won't give us the chance to try or even
permit us to believe there could be another, better way.
Martin Joseph -> realdoge 5 Dec 2015 14:33
Please walk us through how non-capitalist systems create wealth and allow their lowest class people propel themselves to
the top in one generation. You will note that most socialist systems derive their technology and advancements from the more capitalistic
systems. Pharmaceuticals, software, and robotics are a great example of this.
I shutter to think of what the welfare of the average citizen of the world would be like without the advancements made via
the capitalist countries.
VWFeature 5 Dec 2015 14:29
Markets, economies and tax systems are created by people, and based on rules they agree on. Those rules can favor general prosperity
or concentration of wealth. Destruction and predation are easier than creation and cooperation, so our rules have to favor cooperation
if we want to avoid predation and destructive conflicts.
In the 1930's the US changed many of those rules to favor general prosperity. Since then they've been gradually changed to
favor wealth concentration and predation. They can be changed back.
The trick is creating a system that encourages innovation while putting a safety net under the population so failure doesn't
end in starvation.
A large part of our current problems is the natural tendency for large companies to get larger and larger until their failure
would adversely affect too many others, so they're not allowed to fail. Tax law, not antitrust law, has to work against this.
If a company can reduce its tax rate by breaking into 20 smaller (still huge) companies, then competition is preserved and no
one company can dominate and control markets.
Robert Goldschmidt -> Jake321 5 Dec 2015 14:27
Bernie Sanders has it right on -- we can only heal our system by first having millions rise up and demand an end to the corruption
of the corporations controlling our elected representatives. Corporations are not people and money is not speech.
moonwrap02 5 Dec 2015 14:26
The effects of wealth distribution has far reaching consequences. It is not just about money, but creating a fair society -
one that is co-operative and cohesive. The present system has allowed an ever divide between the rich and poor, creating a two
tier society where neither the twain shall meet. The rich and poor are almost different species on the planet and no longer belong
to the same community. Commonality of interest is lost and so it's difficult to form community and to have good, friendly relationships
across class differences that are that large.
"If capitalism is to be seen to be fair, the same rules are to apply to the big guy as to the little guy,"
Sorry. I get it now. You actually think that because the Washington elite has repealed Glass-Steagel that we live in a unregulated
capitalistic system.
This is so far from the truth that I wasn't comprehending that anyone could think that. You can see the graph of pages published
in the Federal Register here. Unregulated capitalism? Wow.
Dodd Frank was passed in 2010 (without a single Republican vote). Originally it was 2,300 pages. It is STILL being written
by nameless bureaucrats and is over 20,000 pages. Unregulated capitalism? Really?
But the reality is that Goliath is conspiring with the government to regulate what size sling David can use and how many stones
and how many ounces.
So we need more government regulations? They will disallow David from anything but spitwads and only two of those.
neuronmaker -> AmyInNH 5 Dec 2015 14:16
Do you understand the concept of corporations which are products of capitalism?
The legal institutions within each capitalist corporations and nations are just that, they are capitalist and all about making
profits.
The law is made by the rich capitalists and for the rich capitalists. Each Legislation is a link in the chain of economic slavery
by capitalists.
Capitalism and the concept of money is a construction of the human mind, as it does not exist in the natural world. This construction
is all about using other human beings like blood suckers to sustain a cruel and evil life style - with blood and brutality as
the core ideology.
Marcedward -> MarjaE 5 Dec 2015 14:12
I would agree that our system of help for the less-well-off could be more accessible and more generous, but that doesn't negate
that point that there is a lot of help out there - the most important help being that totally free educational system. Think about
it, a free education, and to get the most out of it a student merely has to show up, obey the rules, do the homework and study
for tests. It's all laid out there for the kids like a helicopter mom laying out her kids clothes. How much easier can we make
it? If people can't be bothered to show up and put in effort, how is their failure based on racism
tommydog -> martinusher 5 Dec 2015 14:12
As you are referring to Carlos Slim, interestingly while he is Mexican by birth his parents were both Lebanese.
slightlynumb -> AmyInNH 5 Dec 2015 14:12
Why isn't that capitalism? It's raw capitalism on steroids.
Zara Von Fritz -> Toughspike 5 Dec 2015 14:12
It's an equal opportunity plantation now.
Robert Goldschmidt 5 Dec 2015 14:11
The key to repairing the system is to identify the causes of our problems.
Here is my list:
The information technology revolution which continues to destroy wages by enabling automation and outsourcing.
The reformation of monopolies which price gouge and block innovation.
Hitting ecological limits such as climate change, water shortages, unsustainable farming.
Then we can make meaningful changes such as regulation of the portion of corporate profit that are pay, enforcement of national
and regional antitrust laws and an escalating carbon tax.
Zara Von Fritz -> PostCorbyn 5 Dec 2015 14:11
If you can believe these quality of life or happiness indexes they put out so often, the winners tend to be places that have
nice environments and a higher socialist mix in their economy. Of course there are examples of poor countries that practice the
same but its not clear that their choice is causal rather than reactive.
We created this mess and we can fix it.
Zara Von Fritz -> dig4victory 5 Dec 2015 14:03
Yes Basic Income is possibly the mythical third way. It socialises wealth to a point but at the same time frees markets from
their obligation to perpetually grow and create jobs for the sake of jobs and also hereford reduces the subsequent need for governments
to attempt to control them beyond maintaining their health.
Zara Von Fritz 5 Dec 2015 13:48
As I understand it, you don't just fiddle with capitalism, you counteract it, or counterweight it. A level of capitalism, or
credit accumulation, and a level of socialism has always existed, including democracy which is a manifestation of socialism (1
vote each). So the project of capital accumulation seems to be out of control because larger accumulations become more powerful
and meanwhile the power of labour in the marketplace has become less so due to forces driving unemployment. The danger is that
capital's power to control the democratic system reaches a point of no return.
Jeremiah2000 -> bifess 5 Dec 2015 13:42
"I do not have the economic freedom to grow my own food because i do not have access to enough land to grow it and i do not
have the economic clout to buy a piece of land."
Economic freedom does NOT mean you get money for free. It means that means that if you grow food for personal use, the federal
government doesn't trash the Constitution by using the insterstate commerce clause to say that it can regulate how much you grow
on your own personal land.
Economic freedom means that if you have a widget, you can choose to set the price for $10 or $100 and that a buyer is free
to buy it from you or not buy it from you. It does NOT mean that you are entitled to "free" widgets.
"If capitalism has not managed to eradicate poverty in rich first world countries then just what chance if there of capitalism
eradicating poverty on a global scale?"
The average person in poverty in the U.S. doesn't live in poverty:
In fact, 80.9 percent of households below the poverty level have cell phones, and a healthy majority-58.2 percent-have computers.
Fully 96.1 percent of American households in "poverty" have a television to watch, and 83.2 percent of them have a video-recording
device in case they cannot get home in time to watch the football game or their favorite television show and they want to record
it for watching later.
Refrigerators (97.8 percent), gas or electric stoves (96.6 percent) and microwaves (93.2 percent) are standard equipment in
the homes of Americans in "poverty."
More than 83 percent have air-conditioning.
Interestingly, the appliances surveyed by the Census Bureau that households in poverty are least likely to own are dish washers
(44.9 percent) and food freezers (26.2 percent).
However, most Americans in "poverty" do not need to go to a laundromat. According to the Census Bureau, 68.7 percent of households
in poverty have a clothes washer and 65.3 percent have a clothes dryer.
"... By far the biggest act of wage slavery rebellion, don't buy shit. The less you buy, the less you need to earn. Holidays by far the minority of your life should not be a desperate escape from the majority of your life. Spend less, work less and actually really enjoy living more. ..."
"... How about don't shop at Walmart (they helped boost the Chinese economy while committing hari kari on the American Dream) and actually engaging in proper labour action? Calling in sick is just plain childish. ..."
"... I'm all for sticking it to "the man," but when you call into work for a stupid reason (and a hangover is a very stupid reason), it is selfish, and does more damage to the cause of worker's rights, not less. I don't know about where you work, but if I call in sick to my job, other people have to pick up my slack. I work for a public library, and we don't have a lot of funds, so we have the bear minimum of employees we can have and still work efficiently. As such, if anybody calls in, everyone else, up to and including the library director, have to take on more work. ..."
"Phoning in sick is a revolutionary act." I loved that slogan. It came to me, as so many good things did, from Housmans, the radical
bookshop in King's Cross. There you could rummage through all sorts of anarchist pamphlets and there I discovered, in the early 80s,
the wondrous little magazine Processed World. It told you basically how to screw up your workplace. It was smart and full of small
acts of random subversion. In many ways it was ahead of its time as it was coming out of San Francisco and prefiguring Silicon Valley.
It saw the machines coming. Jobs were increasingly boring and innately meaningless. Workers were "data slaves" working for IBM ("Intensely
Boring Machines").
What Processed World was doing was trying to disrupt the identification so many office workers were meant to feel with their management,
not through old-style union organising, but through small acts of subversion. The modern office, it stressed, has nothing to do with
human need. Its rebellion was about working as little as possible, disinformation and sabotage. It was making alienation fun. In
1981, it could not have known that a self-service till cannot ever phone in sick.
I was thinking of this today, as I wanted to do just that. I have made myself ill with a hangover. A hangover, I always feel,
is nature's way of telling you to have a day off. One can be macho about it and eat your way back to sentience via the medium of
bacon sandwiches and Maltesers. At work, one is dehydrated, irritable and only semi-present. Better, surely, though to let the day
fall through you and dream away.
Having worked in America, though, I can say for sure that they brook no excuses whatsoever. When I was late for work and said
things like, "My alarm clock did not go off", they would say that this was not a suitable explanation, which flummoxed me. I had
to make up others. This was just to work in a shop.
This model of working – long hours, very few holidays, few breaks, two incomes needed to raise kids, crazed loyalty demanded by
huge corporations, the American way – is where we're heading. Except now the model is even more punishing. It is China. We are expected
to compete with an economy whose workers are often closer to indentured slaves than anything else.
This is what striving is, then: dangerous, demoralising, often dirty work. Buckle down. It's the only way forward, apparently,
which is why our glorious leaders are sucking up to China, which is immoral, never mind ridiculously short-term thinking.
So again I must really speak up for the skivers. What we have to understand about austerity is its psychic effects. People must
have less. So they must have less leisure, too. The fact is life is about more than work and work is rapidly changing. Skiving in
China may get you killed but here it may be a small act of resistance, or it may just be that skivers remind us that there is meaning
outside wage-slavery.
Work is too often discussed by middle-class people in ways that are simply unrecognisable to anyone who has done crappy jobs.
Much work is not interesting and never has been. Now that we have a political and media elite who go from Oxbridge to working for
a newspaper or a politician, a lot of nonsense is spouted. These people have not cleaned urinals on a nightshift. They don't sit
lonely in petrol stations manning the till. They don't have to ask permission for a toilet break in a call centre. Instead, their
work provides their own special identity. It is very important.
Low-status jobs, like caring, are for others. The bottom-wipers of this world do it for the glory, I suppose. But when we talk
of the coming automation that will reduce employment, bottom-wiping will not be mechanised. Nor will it be romanticised, as old male
manual labour is. The mad idea of reopening the coal mines was part of the left's strange notion of the nobility of labour. Have
these people ever been down a coal mine? Would they want that life for their children?
Instead we need to talk about the dehumanising nature of work. Bertrand Russell and Keynes thought our goal should be less work,
that technology would mean fewer hours.
Far from work giving meaning to life, in some surveys 40% of us say that our jobs are meaningless. Nonetheless, the art of skiving
is verboten as we cram our children with ever longer hours of school and homework. All this striving is for what exactly? A soul-destroying
job?
Just as education is decided by those who loved school, discussions about work are had by those to whom it is about more than
income.
The parts of our lives that are not work – the places we dream or play or care, the space we may find creative – all these are
deemed outside the economy. All this time is unproductive. But who decides that?
Skiving work is bad only to those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
So go on: phone in sick. You know you want to.
friedad 23 Oct 2015 18:27
We now exist in a society in which the Fear Cloud is wrapped around each citizen. Our proud history of Union and Labor, fighting
for decent wages and living conditions for all citizens, and mostly achieving these aims, a history, which should be taught to
every child educated in every school in this country, now gradually but surely eroded by ruthless speculators in government, is
the future generations are inheriting. The workforce in fear of taking a sick day, the young looking for work in fear of speaking
out at diminishing rewards, definitely this 21st Century is the Century of Fear. And how is this fear denied, with mind blowing
drugs, regardless if it is is alcohol, description drugs, illicit drugs, a society in denial. We do not require a heavenly object
to destroy us, a few soulless monsters in our mist are masters of manipulators, getting closer and closer to accomplish their
aim of having zombies doing their beckoning. Need a kidney, no worries, zombie dishwasher, is handy for one. Oh wait that time
is already here.
Hemulen6 23 Oct 2015 15:06
Oh join the real world, Suzanne! Many companies now have a limit to how often you can be sick. In the case of the charity I
work for it's 9 days a year. I overstepped it, I was genuinely sick, and was hauled up in front of Occupational Health. That will
now go on my record and count against me. I work for a cancer care charity. Irony? Surely not.
AlexLeo -> rebel7 23 Oct 2015 13:34
Which is exactly my point. You compete on relevant job skills and quality of your product, not what school you have attended.
Yes, there are thousands, tens of thousands of folks here around San Jose who barely speak English, but are smart and hard
working as hell and it takes them a few years to get to 150-200K per year, Many of them get to 300-400K, if they come from strong
schools in their countries of origin, compared to the 10k or so where they came from, but probably more than the whining readership
here.
This is really difficult to swallow for the Brits back in Britain, isn't it. Those who have moved over have experiences the
type of social mobility unthinkable in Britain, but they have had to work hard and get to 300K-700K per year, much better than
the 50-100K their parents used to make back in GB. These are averages based on personal interactions with say 50 Brits in the
last 15 + years, all employed in the Silicon Valley in very different jobs and roles.
Todd Owens -> Scott W 23 Oct 2015 11:00
I get what you're saying and I agree with a lot of what you said. My only gripe is most employees do not see an operation from
a business owner or managerial / financial perspective. They don't understand the costs associated with their performance or lack
thereof. I've worked on a lot of projects that we're operating at a loss for a future payoff. When someone decides they don't
want to do the work they're contracted to perform that can have a cascading effect on the entire company.
All in all what's being described is for the most part misguided because most people are not in the position or even care to
evaluate the particulars. So saying you should do this to accomplish that is bullshit because it's rarely such a simple equation.
If anything this type of tactic will leaf to MORE loss and less money for payroll.
weematt -> Barry1858 23 Oct 2015 09:04
Sorry you just can't have a 'nicer' capitalism.
War ( business by other means) and unemployment ( you can't buck the market), are inevitable concomitants of capitalist competition
over markets, trade routes and spheres of interests. (Remember the war science of Nagasaki and Hiroshima from the 'good guys'
?)
"..capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt". (Marx)
You can't have full employment, or even the 'Right to Work'.
There is always ,even in boom times a reserve army of unemployed, to drive down wages. (If necessary they will inject inflation
into the economy)
Unemployment is currently 5.5 percent or 1,860,000 people. If their "equilibrium rate" of unemployment is 4% rather than 5% this
would still mean 1,352,000 "need be unemployed". The government don't want these people to find jobs as it would strengthen workers'
bargaining position over wages, but that doesn't stop them harassing them with useless and petty form-filling, reporting to the
so-called "job centre" just for the sake of it, calling them scroungers and now saying they are mentally defective.
Government is 'over' you not 'for' you.
Governments do not exist to ensure 'fair do's' but to manage social expectations with the minimum of dissent, commensurate
with the needs of capitalism in the interests of profit.
Worker participation amounts to self managing workers self exploitation for the maximum of profit for the capitalist class.
Exploitation takes place at the point of production.
" Instead of the conservative motto, 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!' they ought to inscribe on their banner the
revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition of the wages system!'"
Karl Marx [Value, Price and Profit]
John Kellar 23 Oct 2015 07:19
Fortunately; as a retired veteran I don't have to worry about phoning in sick.However; during my Air Force days if you were
sick, you had to get yourself to the Base Medical Section and prove to a medical officer that you were sick. If you convinced
the medical officer of your sickness then you may have been luck to receive on or two days sick leave. For those who were very
sick or incapable of getting themselves to Base Medical an ambulance would be sent - promptly.
Rchrd Hrrcks -> wumpysmum 23 Oct 2015 04:17
The function of civil disobedience is to cause problems for the government. Let's imagine that we could get 100,000 people
to agree to phone in sick on a particular date in protest at austerity etc. Leaving aside the direct problems to the economy that
this would cause. It would also demonstrate a willingness to take action. It would demonstrate a capability to organise mass direct
action. It would demonstrate an ability to bring people together to fight injustice. In and of itself it might not have much impact,
but as a precedent set it could be the beginning of something massive, including further acts of civil disobedience.
wumpysmum Rchrd Hrrcks 23 Oct 2015 03:51
There's already a form of civil disobedience called industrial action, which the govt are currently attacking by attempting
to change statute. Random sickies as per my post above are certainly not the answer in the public sector at least, they make no
coherent political point just cause problems for colleagues. Sadly too in many sectors and with the advent of zero hours contracts
sickies put workers at risk of sanctions and lose them earnings.
Alyeska 22 Oct 2015 22:18
I'm American. I currently have two jobs and work about 70 hours a week, and I get no paid sick days. In fact, the last time
I had a job with a paid sick day was 2001. If I could afford a day off, you think I'd be working 70 hours a week?
I barely make rent most months, and yes... I have two college degrees. When I try to organize my coworkers to unionize for
decent pay and benefits, they all tell me not to bother.... they are too scared of getting on management's "bad side" and "getting
in trouble" (yes, even though the law says management can't retaliate.)
Unions are different in the USA than in the UK. The workforce has to take a vote to unionize the company workers; you can't
"just join" a union here. That's why our pay and working conditions have gotten worse, year after year.
rtb1961 22 Oct 2015 21:58
By far the biggest act of wage slavery rebellion, don't buy shit. The less you buy, the less you need to earn. Holidays
by far the minority of your life should not be a desperate escape from the majority of your life. Spend less, work less and actually
really enjoy living more.
Pay less attention to advertising and more attention to the enjoyable simplicity of life, of real direct human relationships,
all of them, the ones in passing where you wish a stranger well, chats with service staff to make their life better as well as
your own, exchange thoughts and ideas with others, be a human being and share humanity with other human beings.
Mkjaks 22 Oct 2015 20:35
How about don't shop at Walmart (they helped boost the Chinese economy while committing hari kari on the American Dream)
and actually engaging in proper labour action? Calling in sick is just plain childish.
toffee1 22 Oct 2015 19:13
It is only considered productive if it feeds the beast, that is, contribute to the accumulation of capital so that the beast
can have more power over us. The issue here is the wage labor. The 93 percent of the U.S. working population perform wage labor
(see BLS site). It is the highest proportion in any society ever came into history. Under the wage labor (employment) contract,
the worker gives up his/her decision making autonomy. The worker accepts the full command of his/her employer during the labor
process. The employer directs and commands the labor process to achieve the goals set by himself. Compare this, for example, self-employed
providing a service (for example, a plumber). In this case, the customer describes the problem to the service provider but the
service provider makes all the decisions on how to organize and apply his labor to solve the problem. Or compare it to a democratically
organized coop, where workers make all the decisions collectively, where, how and what to produce. Under the present economic
system, a great majority of us are condemned to work in large corporations performing wage labor. The system of wage labor stripping
us from autonomy on our own labor, creates all the misery in our present world through alienation. Men and women lose their humanity
alienated from their own labor. Outside the world of wage labor, labor can be a source self-realization and true freedom. Labor
can be the real fulfillment and love. Labor together our capacity to love make us human. Bourgeoisie dehumanized us steeling our
humanity. Bourgeoisie, who sold her soul to the beast, attempting to turn us into ever consuming machines for the accumulation
of capital.
patimac54 -> Zach Baker 22 Oct 2015 17:39
Well said. Most retail employers have cut staff to the minimum possible to keep the stores open so if anyone is off sick, it's
the devil's own job trying to just get customers served. Making your colleagues work even harder than they normally do because
you can't be bothered to act responsibly and show up is just plain selfish.
And sorry, Suzanne, skiving work is nothing more than an act of complete disrespect for those you work with. If you don't understand
that, try getting a proper job for a few months and learn how to exercise some self control.
TettyBlaBla -> FranzWilde 22 Oct 2015 17:25
It's quite the opposite in government jobs where I am in the US. As the fiscal year comes to a close, managers look at their
budgets and go on huge spending sprees, particularly for temp (zero hours in some countries) help and consultants. They fear if
they don't spend everything or even a bit more, their spending will be cut in the next budget. This results in people coming in
to do work on projects that have no point or usefulness, that will never be completed or even presented up the food chain of management,
and ends up costing taxpayers a small fortune.
I did this one year at an Air Quality Agency's IT department while the paid employees sat at their desks watching portable
televisions all day. It was truly demeaning.
oommph -> Michael John Jackson 22 Oct 2015 16:59
Thing is though, children - dependents to pay for - are the easiest way to keep yourself chained to work.
The homemaker model works as long as your spouse's employer retains them (and your spouse retains you in an era of 40% divorce).
You are just as dependent on an employer and "work" but far less in control of it now.
Zach Baker 22 Oct 2015 16:41
I'm all for sticking it to "the man," but when you call into work for a stupid reason (and a hangover is a very stupid
reason), it is selfish, and does more damage to the cause of worker's rights, not less. I don't know about where you work, but
if I call in sick to my job, other people have to pick up my slack. I work for a public library, and we don't have a lot of funds,
so we have the bear minimum of employees we can have and still work efficiently. As such, if anybody calls in, everyone else,
up to and including the library director, have to take on more work. If I found out one of my co-workers called in because
of a hangover, I'd be pissed. You made the choice to get drunk, knowing that you had to work the following morning. Putting it
into the same category of someone who is sick and may not have the luxury of taking off because of a bad employer is insulting.
No one knows how the Midas myth ends, but he dies of starvation because everything turns to gold. The the culture equates wealth
and self-worth, this is repetition of Midas myth on a new level. Like Russian oligarchs (Prokhorov is one example), or Getty in the
USA enjoying a harem of "girlfriends"
For those that haven't seen the first few episodes of British TV series about Getty, you should. There are many parables that
come to mind that include Getty Sr, his children, his kidnapped grandson, and him harem, or how I would call them Getty's female
posse.
Notable quotes:
"... The esteemed filmmaker observed how the vapid trickle-down culture of the plutocracy could be the end of us all ..."
The esteemed filmmaker observed how the vapid trickle-down culture of the plutocracy could be the end of us all
This article was co-produced with
Original
Thinkers
, an annual ideas festival in Telluride, Colorado that brings speakers, art and filmmakers together to create new
paradigms.
It is ironic that, as the
gulf between rich and poor
reaches record levels, the language of the underclass has become infected with the culture and
mores of the rich
. Twenty years ago, English began to absorb and normalize verbal markers of wealth, consumption and
status, evidenced by the mainstreaming of luxury brands like Chanel, Gucci and Louis Vuitton and their appearance in pop
culture and media. Reality TV went from nonexistent in the 1970s to one of the most popular television genres in the 2000s,
much of it homed in on the lifestyles and lives of the rich -- culminating in a billionaire,
reality-TV star
president. Social media in the late 2000s and 2010s seems to have exacerbated a cultural
normalization of
narcissism
, an obsession with self-image, and a propensity for conspicuous consumption. Few of us are rich, but we
all aspire to appear that way on Instagram.
In the past twenty-five years, documentarian and photograph Lauren Greenfield has been documenting this profound shift in
culture, as the vapid materialism of the plutocracy has trickled down to the rest of us. Greenfield, who was once named
"America's foremost visual chronicler of the plutocracy" by the New York Times, is an Emmy award-winning filmmaker and
photographer. Greenfield has experience documenting the lifestyles of the rich and (in)famous: her much-lauded 2012
documentary, "
The
Queen of Versailles
," followed the billionaire Siegel family during their quest to build the largest house in the United
States. Her unflinchingly honest depiction of their bleak existence led to patriarch David Siegel filing a lawsuit against the
filmmakers for defamation, which increased publicity to the film and which the Siegels lost handily.
Greenfield's latest opus, "
Generation
Wealth
," is an attempt to understand the intricacies of the trickle-down culture of the wealthy. Simultaneously an
exhibition,
monograph
and
film
, Greenfield's
camera follows not just the wealthy, but many folks who are middle- or working-class and yet who have absorbed the narrative
and values of the elite in their quest to be thin, forever beautiful, and image- and luxury-obsessed. The film is unflinching
in a way that is occasionally macabre: The on-screen depiction of plastic surgery is a grisly counterpoint to the pristine
resorts, lifestyles and houses of the well-heeled. "This movie is neither trickle-down treat nor bacchanal guised as bromide,
but rather an interrogation of an era defined by an obsession with wealth," wrote Eileen G'Sell in
Salon's review
.
I interviewed Lauren Greenfield at the Original Thinkers Festival in Telluride, Colorado. A video from this interview can
be viewed
here
; the print version has been condensed and edited.
Keith Spencer: "
Generation
Wealth
" is such a fascinating [book and film] project, and it's so rich. For those who may not know about it, how would
you describe the overall project? I know it took 25 years of work?
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Lauren Greenfield
: I started looking back at my photography since the early nineties and seeing that, in a
way, all of the stories that I had been doing -- about consumerism and body image and fame and celebrity and the economic
crisis -- that in a way they were connected. And I decided to do an archeological dig in my own work and look at the pictures
as evidence of how we had changed as a culture.
And what I came to was that they revealed a kind of fundamental shift in the American dream, that we had gone from a dream
that prized hard work and frugality and discipline, to a culture that elevated bling and celebrity and narcissism.
Interesting. And like you said, it's a global phenomenon, right? I mean, the pictures and the shots in the film
were taken are all over the planet, right?
Yeah, I started in L[os Angeles] in the nineties, but even when I was doing the work in L.A., I felt like [I] was more
looking at L.A. as the extreme manifestation of how you see the influence of the popular culture. In a way you are closest to
the flame there.
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But then I found that other people saw [that culture] as just L.A., so I kind of made it my mission to first go across the
country and then go to different places in the world to show how we were exporting these values -- exporting this culture with
global media, with the Internet, with social media, with branding and international branding. In "Generation Wealth," I really
tried to show this global virus that is consumerism.
And that's something that I thought was so interesting about the film, was that the goods and the brands and the
imagery look the same whether they were in Hong Kong or Moscow or Los Angeles or Orlando. It was like there's this culture
that exists everywhere. It's so interesting how something like that is transmitted everywhere, the same idea, the same
cultural values.
Yeah, I was really looking at how our culture, international culture in a way is being homogenized by these influences of
corporations and globalism and media. In my work, I'm really looking for the similarities in values and influence and behavior
in people who are really, really different.
And that really came together for me during the economic crisis. Because from L.A., from middle class to working class,
to billionaires in
Florida
... to the
crash in Dubai
, to Iceland
to
Ireland
, I was seeing similar consequences from
similar behavior.
And the interconnected financial system was one more kind of homogenizing factor. And so that's what I was really
interested in looking at. [Cultural critic] Chris Hedges speaks throughout the movie and at the end he says this comment,
which I really love, about how authentic culture is being destroyed by the values of corporate capitalism. And that it's
authentic culture that actually teaches us who we are and where we came from.
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And so in a way we lose our identities when we lose that. And I think we see, especially with young people, how identity is
so connected to brands and what you have and what you wear and what you buy.
Right. And that's one of the other interesting threads through the film, is just that in almost every subject's
case -- because you followed a lot of them for a long time through their lives or pick up at different points in their life --
they all seem to sort of admit that either the money itself or the things that they bought with the money never made them
happy. But yet at the same time, what I thought was so funny was some of them just seemed like they couldn't quit the
lifestyle, like especially the German hedge fund manager.
Yeah. That's exactly right. For me, I realized it was really about addiction and it wasn't about the money -- in the [film],
you see that wealth is not just money, but all the things that give you value. And so you see people searching for beauty and
youth and fame and image. But it's like addiction in the sense that you think it's going to bring you something that it
doesn't.
[In] a way, all of the subjects are kind of looking to fill a void or an emptiness that can't be filled by that
thing
. [You]
just stay on that gold plated hamster wheel... in the metaphor of addiction, the only way to stop is when you hit rock bottom.
And so we see a lot of crashes, both collective and individual in the film.
Speaking of addiction -- you ended up bringing in and talking about your own family too, both your mother and your
children. Which I was not expecting, because before I saw "Generation Wealth" I'd seen "The Queen of Versailles," which you
don't really bring yourself in that one much at all. Did you think while you were making it that you were going to end up
turning the camera around on yourself and your family?
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No, it kind of evolved. I started thinking I would be in it in some way as a kind of narrator, thinking mostly my voice,
not physically in it, which was really scary to me in the beginning. But I felt like I was kind of the connective tissue and
my journey was the connective tissue between these subjects.
I've always tried to go in really non-judgmentally, and show phenomena and people in situations that I think speak to the
larger culture and are part of mainstream culture and influence. So I want people to see themselves in the characters, like in
"Queen of Versailles."
And so I felt like it was also important to make the point that we're all complicit and that I'm not outside of it. And
[to] look at how I'm also affected by these influences.
And it kind of emerged organically. I was talking to Florian -- the German Hedge Fund banker -- who is a very flamboyant
character in the film. Makes $800,000,000, loses it all and becomes a truth-teller for how [money] doesn't bring you what you
think it will.
And he challenged me at a certain point, and said, "How can a hundred-hour work week not affect your relationship with
anything that matters?" And he kind of looks at me. And it forced me to kind of think about -- you know, there I was in Germany
on a three week trip on my way to Iceland, two kids at home that I'm trying to connect with on FaceTime. It made me think
about my own addiction to my work.
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There's this great scene in the movie where your son Gabriel talks about how his older brother got a perfect score
on the ACT and how he's just afraid that he'll never be able to live up to that and he'll never be able to go to Harvard like
his parents and brother. And it was amazing because it was like, before the camera was focused on all these rich kids -- but
they had similar anxieties to your son.
Yeah. And I think that this cycle of wanting
more
manifests in all different ways. I don't think that anybody
can say they're outside of it. It's kind of like, I always think about modernism in a way, being kind of a justifiable luxury
for [a] sophisticated or intellectual class.
And yeah... achievement was really important in my family. Gabriel also speaks to the weight and pressure of comparison,
which is really a theme of the whole movie, that we're all kind of living in the state of collective FOMO where we can never
be good enough because we're comparing ourselves to what we see not just on media but on social media. Not just real people
but fictional, curated people.
I did a lot of work on gender, and so I made a short film called "
Beauty Culture
."
And even in my book, "
Girl
Culture
," looking at how girls are comparing themselves to pictures of models that are not just genetically specific, but
also retouched and styled. And so it's literally impossible to measure up. And now I think we're all kind of in that state.
And so when Gabriel talked about comparing himself to his brother or not feeling like he could measure up, I wasn't
initially planning to have my family be in there, but I did feel an obligation [to] be willing to ask of myself what I ask of
the subjects -- a hard, intimate look into the hard issues of living.
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Last night at the Q&A after the film screening, you mentioned that this movie is a feminist film in the specific
way that it looks at girls and women. Can you elaborate on that? I thought it was interesting how you noted that women are
both a commodity, and also get power from commodifying themselves.
Yeah. I had done a lot of work on gender and I wasn't sure in the beginning how it would fit into "Generation Wealth." And
then I realized that, in a way, girls were a really powerful and tragic case study for how human beings are commodified, and
how in a way it's the ultimate cost and degradation of capitalism, the sale of the human being. And so for girls, I had been
looking at both how girls were sold to -- because their body image insecurities make them very vulnerable and avid consumers;
"buy this and you can fix whatever's wrong with your skin, your body," or whatever -- but also how they are physically sold.
And I think, for me, Kim Kardashian is a really powerful symbol of how that's changed. That the sex tape is a means to a
lifestyle of money and affluence, and it's not the scarlet letter anymore. It's a badge of honor if that's what you bring.
And that manifests in different ways from an innocent game of dress-up, where there's also kind of precocious
sexualization, to teenage girls putting sexy pictures of themselves on social media, to women who feel like they can't age
and [get] plastic surgery -- because if their beauty and bodies are their value, you can't lose that.
Speaking of that, that was another thing about the film I thought was interesting. From watching the trailer I had
the sense that [the film] would be focused mostly on the 1%, but actually it's about how the values and the culture that the
wealthy, the hypermaterialism and such, trickles down to the working class. I'm thinking specifically of Cathy, the bus
driver... there's the very gruesome scenes of her getting plastic surgery in Brazil, multiple times I believe if I remember
right.
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Well, she gets multiple surgeries on one trip to Brazil, because if you go to Brazil you can get surgery much cheaper and
the doctors will actually perform multiple operations on you in a way that they won't in the US. And yeah, I was really blown
away by a statistic about plastic surgery that I heard, where 75% of women who get plastic surgery make $50,000 or less.
Like eating disorders -- these things were thought to be kind of practices of the rich, but they have really trickled down.
And I think part of that is the way we're bombarded with images of luxury and affluence. And also the kind of, in a way, new
mythmaking of the American Dream, where the body is the new frontier of the rags to riches -- where anybody with enough money,
effort and willpower can transform themselves physically.
And so it's kind of like your fault if you don't have the drive and motivation to do that. And we see these shows, reality
shows like "The Swan" and these transformation shows... I apologize for showing such hard images, but I felt like it was
really important to
not
see the before and after that we get in the media, but to see the middle, and the violence
and risk that's really part of that transformation.
Towards the end, cultural critic Chris Hedges describes us as a civilization on the verge of collapse. But then the
movie ends on a more hopeful note. I was wondering if you share Chris Hedges' apocalyptic view of the future, or if you felt
hope at the end?
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I do share his view, but I have, I guess, kind of a split or duality, in the sense that I feel like the reason I did this
work and put it all together now, and went through a half a million pictures, is I do feel we're kind of barreling towards the
apocalypse if we stay on this path. It's not a sustainable path. And from what I've seen over the last 25 years, it's blown-up
exponentially.
Yet I think that there's a possibility of not staying on this path. A lot of the characters in the movie and in the book --
when they do hit rock bottom, whether it's the economic crisis or their own personal crashes -- they have insights that make
them want to change.
And I feel like, in a way, this work is about kind of showing the Matrix that we live in, and having the option of the red
pill. But I think that you kind of need a super-majority for that to happen on any significant scale.
"... Nearly 50% of the top executives and managers surveyed admit that they mobilize their workers politically. ..."
"... The most important factor in determining whether a firm engages in partisan mobilization of its workers-and thinks that that mobilization is effective-is the degree of control it has over its workers. ..."
"... But the problem isn't corruption. It's capitalism. Workers are dependent on employers for their well-being. That makes them vulnerable to their bosses' demands, about a great many matters, including politics. The ballot and the buck are fused. Not because of campaign donations but because of the unequal relationship between capital and labor. Not just in the corridors of Congress but also in the halls of the workplace. Unless you confront the latter, you'll never redress the former. Without economic democracy, there's no political democracy. ..."
"... I'd argue though that in terms of the overall discourse, "the bosses" have won without even resorting to anything so crude. ..."
"... people soak up attitudes about economics and trade policy from work. ..."
"... They aren't being threatened, it's simply a matter of culture – of lionising the "private sector" and bashing the "public sector" and those out of work. The identity comes out of water cooler moments and the lunch break. It takes a strong outside-work identity not to want the halo of "private sector wealth creator" and thus disdain a union, or a strike or a dole recipient ..."
"... But hey, it's not him getting black lung or dying in a mine collapse. It's his workers. The ones he's been fined repeated times for ignoring safety regulations to save a buck here and there. ..."
"... Much conservative rhetoric, especially in the US, is caught up in an anachronistic big-government/small-government debate. But real government is not where the nominal authority lies, but who has the real power! ..."
"... conservatives are leading a revolution, in which national governments are being usurped by the big government of the international corporate oligopoly. ..."
"... . . . the problem isn't corruption. It's capitalism. ..."
"... 15% report that employer messages affected their vote choice. ..."
"... Some workers are terribly underpaid, forcing them to work extra hours/job; some are subject to capricious scheduling, and irregular hours; others in prestige jobs intentionally overworked, makes for easier conditioning. All around the 40hr/week standard persists despite massive productivity gains. At least the French get August off to take a proper trip to the beach. ..."
In
my Salon column today, I look at new research examining how corporations influence politics.
Money talks. But how?
From "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" to
Citizens United, the story goes like this: The
wealthy corrupt and control democracy by purchasing politicians, scripting speech and writing laws. Corporations and rich people
make donations to candidates, pay for campaign ads and create PACs. They, or their lobbyists, take members of Congress out to
dinner, organize junkets for senators and tell the government what to do. They insinuate money where it doesn't belong. They don't
build democracy; they buy it.
But that, says Alex Hertel-Fernandez, a PhD student in Harvard's
government department, may not be the only or even the best way to think about the power of money. That power extends far beyond
the dollars deposited in a politician's pocket. It reaches for the votes and voices of workers who the wealthy employ. Money talks
loudest where money gets made: in the workplace.
Among Hertel-Fernandez's findings:
1. Nearly 50% of the top executives and managers surveyed admit that they mobilize their workers politically.
2. Firms
believe that mobilizing their workers is more effective than donating money to a candidate, buying campaign ads, or investing
in large corporate lobbies like the Chamber of Commerce.
3. The most important factor in determining whether a firm engages in partisan mobilization of its workers-and thinks that
that mobilization is effective-is the degree of control it has over its workers. Firms that always engage in surveillance
of their employees' online activities are 50 percent more likely to mobilize their workers than firms that never do.
4. Of the workers who say they have been mobilized by their employers, 20% say that they received threats if they didn't.
My conclusion:
When we think of corruption, we think of something getting debased, becoming impure, by the introduction of a foreign material.
Money worms its way into the body politic, which rots from within. The antidote to corruption, then, is to keep unlike things
apart. Take the big money out of politics or limit its role. That's what
our campaign finance reformers tell us.
But the problem isn't corruption. It's capitalism. Workers are dependent on
employers for their well-being. That makes them vulnerable to their bosses' demands, about a great many matters, including
politics. The ballot and the buck are fused. Not because of campaign donations but because of the unequal relationship between
capital and labor. Not just in the corridors of Congress but also in the halls of the workplace. Unless you confront the
latter, you'll never redress the former. Without economic democracy, there's no political democracy.
That's a disgusting state of affairs, and one which I hope is confined to the US. I've never seen anything remotely like that
– never had a hint that my boss wanted to influence my vote – at any of the places I've worked, including the ones with no pension
scheme and no union recognition.
.2
Metatone 06.07.15 at 3:44 pm
I think in terms of campaigning (letter writing) etc. these abuses have clear effects.
I'd argue though that in terms of the overall discourse, "the bosses" have won without even resorting to anything so crude.
At least here in the UK it's palpable that people soak up attitudes about economics and trade policy from work. And
those policy preferences aren't designed around their prosperity
They aren't being threatened, it's simply a matter of culture – of lionising the "private sector" and bashing the "public
sector" and those out of work. The identity comes out of water cooler moments and the lunch break. It takes a strong outside-work
identity not to want the halo of "private sector wealth creator" and thus disdain a union, or a strike or a dole recipient
Josh Jasper 06.07.15 at 4:38 pm
cassander : Seems to me that coal miners and coal mine owners have a lot of interests in common.
You might want to mention that to someone who's worked for Massey energy at the Upper Big Branch Mine. Suggest to him that
he really ought to be giving his wages to the PACs if Massey tells them to.
I suggest having your dentist on speed dial.
For that matter, it's evident that the lot of interests Murray and his labor force have in common exclude worker safety as
well
But hey, it's not him getting black lung or dying in a mine collapse. It's his workers. The ones he's been fined repeated
times for ignoring safety regulations to save a buck here and there.
Does mobilization to vote Republican affect coal workers? Yes. It makes it very likely that the industry will get away with
ignoring safety regulations to save money, because destroying mining safety regulations for major donors is a Republican party
practice.
Sasha Clarkson 06.07.15 at 6:45 pm
Much conservative rhetoric, especially in the US, is caught up in an anachronistic big-government/small-government debate.
But real government is not where the nominal authority lies, but who has the real power!
Like it or not, conservatives are leading a revolution, in which national governments are being usurped by the big government
of the international corporate oligopoly. This of course is barely accountable for its actions, nor subject to democratic
oversight, and hence can ride roughshod over the broad mass of humanity. Of course, like the Star Wars Trade Federation, the oligopoly
also subverts/coerces the loyalties of employees from the wider community to itself.
I suspect that the trend is that national governments will be important only in that they will provide the armies to enforce
the will of the corporate elite. Eventually even this may become unimportant as other means are found to suppress us!
. . . the problem isn't corruption. It's capitalism.
So simple, then. So obvious.
More than a century of organizing work in hierarchy was all just a big mistake, but no worries, we'll just exchange it for
"economic democracy" at the service desk at Best Buy.
Ronan(rf) 06.07.15 at 8:11 pm
Not to display a put on world weary cynicism , but I'm surprised people are surprised by this. It isn't "capitalism" , it's politics.
People have always been pressured into how they vote, whether by domineering individuals in their family, notable families in
their community , factions in their village, political machines in their towns and cities , so on and so forth. In workplaces
of all sizes, from small shops to local factories, individuals have been coerced, whether implicitly (through peer pressure) or
explicitly (threats of dismissal) into supporting political positions a dominant faction wants them to. (Is this not part of what
trade unions do, or have done?)
It is a fallacy of WEIRD thinking to imagine away such pressures historically. Obviously this situation in the OP isn't ideal,
but it is politics , as it has existed since time immemorial. (Or at least a date I can't place)
Alex Hertel-Fernandez 06.07.15 at 8:24 pm
Cassander: I've looked at workers' self-reports of whether employer messages changed their behaviors. About half of all workers
who have been contacted by their bosses report a change in at least one of their political behaviors or attitudes, and 15%
report that employer messages affected their vote choice. Is this a lot or a little? I think the answer depends on whether
you think it is an appropriate role for managers to play in the political lives of their employees.
You're definitely right that the economic interests of workers and managers are often aligned on things like trade and regulation.
But many times they are not - as in the cases of working conditions (e.g. minimum wage) or redistributive policies. And independent
of the content of employers' political messages, we might be worried about the power that managers have over their workers. For
instance, I find that about 28% of contacted workers reported that their employers' messages either made them uncomfortable or
included threats of economic retaliation. I think whether you are troubled by these statistics or not depends on whether you are
concerned about power differentials between employers and their employees.
Barry Freed: Many of these employer tactics used to be illegal, for the most part, before Citizens United. And some states
have taken action to curb the most coercive practices (NJ and OR). But most states haven't.
hix 06.07.15 at 8:40 pm
Well, I associate such behaviour with defect democracy – which is how id think of most historical democracies. So for me it is
shocking to see this kind of mechanism in a modern long established rich democracy (ok not that shocking, considering all the
other fingerpointers towards that direction with regards to the US).
gianni 06.07.15 at 8:46 pm
Not to mention the ways in which American corporations especially have worked to diminish the employee's time for political activity.
Some workers are terribly underpaid, forcing them to work extra hours/job; some are subject to capricious scheduling, and
irregular hours; others in prestige jobs intentionally overworked, makes for easier conditioning. All around the 40hr/week standard
persists despite massive productivity gains. At least the French get August off to take a proper trip to the beach.
Added to this our antiquated infrastructure and sprawling residential geography make the simple fact of getting to work a huge
time investment. While in your car you are more likely to be fed the political opinions of well-funded media figures than to those
of your peers. Don't forget that this is in the country that invented the internet – how many of those people could just be telecommuting
anyway?
Ronan(rf) 06.07.15 at 8:55 pm
@13 – I don't know if I'd see the US as an institutionally mature democracy akin to what exists in Northern Europe, more as a
hybrid of areas that are economically and politically developed, and others that are more comparable to weak states or emerging
democracies (at best the European 'periphery', Spain, Greece, Italy, Ireland- perhaps in the 80s more than now) You can see this
in the weak state capacity, corrupt militia like police forces and late agrarian style of politics.
Also, perhaps I'm wrong.
Bruce Wilder 06.07.15 at 9:44 pm
Rich Puchalsky @ 11:
I appreciate that when you're going against an established story, you have to emphasize that what's really
going on is a whole different story.
That's what I'd take "the problem isn't corruption. It's capitalism." to be.
A very good article from is considered to be a neocon publication
Notable quotes:
"... Additionally, hard-line conservatives had been hazed out of power since 1932, but had been carefully organizing and building their strength ever since. The Volcker Recession allowed them to seize the moment, finally electing one of their own to the presidency: Ronald Reagan. The three succeeding Republican terms finally cemented the idea among the Democratic elite that the party would simply have to submit to neoliberalism to be able to compete ..."
"... Effectively, both parties conspired to break the New Deal ..."
"... The spectacular late-'90s boom was, in retrospect, the first and last time the U.S. saw full employment under neoliberalism. It was followed immediately by a financial crisis and a prolonged "jobless recovery," where growth returned reasonably quickly but employment and wages lagged far behind. (Only in 2017 did the median household income finally surpass the 1999 peak -- despite the economy being 18 percent larger.) ..."
Meanwhile, New Dealers ran into political difficulties. In 1972, George McGovern
ran on a strongly left-wing platform, and got flattened by Nixon, seemingly demonstrating that
the New Deal was no longer a vote winner. Neoliberal economists were reaching the height of
academic respectability, they had a convincing story to explain the problems, and they gained
the ears of top Democratic politicians like Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter. On the advice of
Alfred Kahn, Kennedy
shepherded through airline deregulation , while Carter appointed neoliberal Paul Volcker to
chair of the Federal Reserve, where Volcker proceeded to create a terrible recession to crush
inflation. "
The standard of living of the average American has to decline ," he said.
This produced growing inequality, which turned out to be a keystone element of neoliberal
political economy. Deregulation, union-busting, abandoning anti-trust, and so forth shunted
money to the top of the income ladder -- thus providing more resources for lobbying, political
pressure groups, think tanks, and economics departments to produce yet more neoliberal
policy.
All this enabled neoliberal political operatives, who were organizing within the Democratic
Party to
push out the old New Dealers . The Democratic "
Watergate Babies " elected after Nixon's downfall were largely neoliberals, and proved
quickly to be amenable to deregulation and abandoning anti-trust.
Additionally, hard-line conservatives had been hazed out of power since 1932, but had
been carefully organizing and building their strength ever since. The Volcker Recession allowed
them to seize the moment, finally electing one of their own to the presidency: Ronald Reagan.
The three succeeding Republican terms finally cemented the idea among the Democratic elite that
the party would simply have to submit to neoliberalism to be able to compete .
Effectively, both parties conspired to break the New Deal .
For a time, it seemed that the neoliberals were right. America enjoyed reasonably good
growth under Reagan, and did even better in the late '90s under Bill Clinton, when a boom in
high-tech companies led to the first sustained period of full employment since the '70s --
without so much as a whisper of inflation. The Democratic elite's adoption of neoliberalism
seemed to be paying off -- partly, no doubt, why Clinton followed Reagan's lead on anti-trust
and passed two large packages of financial deregulation.
However, there were problems below the surface. In the New Deal days, wages had grown along
with productivity. But in the mid-'70s, the link was broken, and median wages began to
stagnate. As a result, income inequality began to increase, as economic growth flowed into
corporate profits, executive pay, and capital gains instead of to the working class.
The spectacular late-'90s boom was, in retrospect, the first and last time the
U.S. saw full employment under neoliberalism. It was followed immediately by a financial crisis
and a prolonged "jobless recovery," where growth returned reasonably quickly but employment and
wages lagged far behind. (Only in 2017 did the median household income finally surpass the 1999 peak --
despite the economy being 18 percent larger.)
Financial deregulation also dramatically increased financial sector size and instability.
Contrary to prophets of the self-regulating market, an unchained Wall Street quickly created an
escalating series of financial crises, requiring expensive government bailouts. Not even a
single decade after Clinton's last package of deregulation, the worst financial panic since
1929 struck, leading to the worst recession since the 1930s.
The Democrats swept to power in a wave election in 2008, as the economy entered free fall.
They had every opportunity to abandon neoliberalism and return to the kind of New Deal policy
that the Great Recession called for -- and they blew it.
Early on, there was a brief window where the Democrats' old thinking snuck through, leading
to the passage of the Recovery Act stimulus under President Obama. But this was only about half
the necessary size, and instead of continuing to work on unemployment, the party became
obsessed with deficits, turning to austerity by February 2010 .
With unemployment still at 10 percent during that year's midterms, the Democrats were flattened
at the polls, leading to Republican control of the House and dozens of state legislatures.
Incredibly, the Democrats responded by doubling down on neoliberalism. Over and over again
during the Obama years, the party elite proved itself overly sympathetic to the concerns of the
market.
Instead of attacking the concentrated wealth and power of big finance, Democrats took the
neoliberal route and passed a blizzard of complicated rules in the Dodd-Frank financial reform
package that attempted to reduce specific financial sector risk. Many of those provisions were
quite worthy, to be sure, but after the crisis the biggest banks are even
larger than they were before the crisis and financial sector profits quickly bounced back
to their previous levels.
The Obama administration also proved itself largely incapable of enforcing laws against
white-collar crime. Department of Justice careerists like Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer were terrified
that anything more than gentle wrist-slap fines would undermine
the stability of the financial sector . As a result, despite
massive fraud carried out
during the housing bubble and the ensuing crash , no major
bank and none of their top executives were convicted of anything.
Most damning of all, neoliberalism under Obama turned in the worst economic performance
since the 1930s . Despite the fact that the 2008 crash left obvious excess capacity, there
was no catch-up growth -- on the contrary, growth was about two-thirds the 1945-2007 average,
with no sign of speeding up on the horizon. Even 10 years after the start of the recession,
there is every sign that the economy is still depressed.
So despite the confident predictions of the Chicago School, the political economy created by
neoliberalism turned out to be identical to 1920s laissez-faire economics in every important
respect. The United States is once again a country which functions mostly on behalf of a tiny
capitalist elite. It has the same extreme inequality, the same bloated, crisis-prone financial
sector, the same corruption, and the same political backlash to the status quo and rising
extremist factions.
Now, it must be admitted that Obama is a magnificent political talent, the finest national
politician in terms of raw ability since FDR. As long as he was at the top of the party, his
sheer charisma and moderately good policy record allowed him to get re-elected -- especially
against a tone-deaf aristocrat like Mitt Romney, who had advocated that Detroit be allowed to
go bankrupt.
But Hillary Clinton,
by her own admission , is not very good at retail politics. She has neither the cool,
effortless charisma of Obama, nor the warm human touch of her husband. Worse, she is accurately
perceived as being firmly ensconced in the political and economic elite -- made worse still by
a ( partly
unfairly ) awful relationship with the press, and a lingering miasma of scandal and
corruption. But fundamentally, Clinton -- virtually handpicked by the party elite, and
promising to continue and build on the accomplishments of Obama -- was the candidate of
Democratic Party neoliberalism, for better and worse. And she lost to Donald Trump.
All this has profoundly discredited neoliberalism within the Democratic Party. The last
generation of centrist policymaking has been a giant failure. There was some partial
recognition of the problems under President Obama, and much worthy policy, but nowhere near the
fundamental economic restructuring that is clearly needed to stop the economic elite from
hoarding the fruits of growth.
"... The aim of classical economics was to tax unearned income, not wages and profits. The tax burden was to fall on the landlord class first and foremost, then on monopolists and bankers. The result was to be a circular flow in which taxes would be paid mainly out of rent and other unearned income. The government would spend this revenue on infrastructure, schools and other productive investment to help make the economy more competitive. Socialism was seen as a program to create a more efficient capitalist economy along these lines. ..."
"... Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire ..."
"... Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy ..."
"... J Is for Junk Economics – A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception ..."
"... J is for Junk Economics ..."
"... Guns and Butter ..."
"... J Is for Junk Economics ..."
"... The Fictitious Economy ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... J Is for Junk Economics – A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception ..."
"... Killing the Host ..."
"... J is for Junk – A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception ..."
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The aim of classical economics was to tax unearned income, not wages and profits. The
tax burden was to fall on the landlord class first and foremost, then on monopolists and
bankers. The result was to be a circular flow in which taxes would be paid mainly out of rent
and other unearned income. The government would spend this revenue on infrastructure, schools
and other productive investment to help make the economy more competitive. Socialism was seen
as a program to create a more efficient capitalist economy along these lines.
I'm Bonnie Faulkner. Today on Guns and Butter, Dr. Michael Hudson. Today's show: The
Vocabulary of Economic Deception. Dr. Hudson is a financial economist and historian. He is
President of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, a Wall Street financial
analyst and distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas
City. His 1972 book Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire is a
critique of how the United States exploited foreign economies through the IMF and World Bank.
His latest books are, Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global
Economy and J Is for Junk Economics – A Guide to Reality in an Age of
Deception . Today we discuss J is for Junk Economics , an A to Z guide that
describes how the world economy really works, and who the winners and losers really are. We
cover contemporary terms that are misleading or poorly understood, as well as many important
concepts that have been abandoned – many on purpose – from the long history of
political economy.
BONNIE FAULKNER: Dr. Michael Hudson, welcome to Guns and Butter again.
MICHAEL HUDSON: It's good to be back, Bonnie.
BONNIE FAULKNER: You write that your recent book, J Is for Junk Economics , a
dictionary and accompanying essays,was drafted more than a decade ago for a book to have been
entitled The Fictitious Economy . You tried several times without success to find a
publisher. Why wouldn't publishers at the time take on your book?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Most publishers like to commission books that are like the last one that
sold well. Ten years ago, people wanted to read about how the economy was doing just fine. I
was called Dr. Doom, which did very well for me in the 1970s when I was talking about the
economy running into debt. But they wanted upbeat books. If I were to talk about how the
economy is polarizing and getting poorer, they wanted me to explain how readers could make a
million dollars off people getting more strapped as the economy polarizes. I didn't want to
write a book about how to get rich by riding the neoliberal wave dismantling of the economy. I
wanted to create an alternative.
If I wanted to ride the wave of getting rich by taking on more debt, I would have stayed on
Wall Street. I wanted to explain how the way in which the economy seemed to be getting richer
was actually impoverishing it. We are in a new Gilded Age masked by a vocabulary used by the
media via television and papers like The New York Times that are euphemizing what was
happening.
A euphemism is a rhetorical trick to make a bad phenomenon look good. If a landlord gets
rich by gentrifying a neighborhood by exploiting tenants and forcing them out, that's called
wealth creation if property values and rents rise. If you can distract people to celebrate
wealth and splendor at the top of the economic pyramid, people will be less focused on how the
economy is functioning for the bottom 99%.
BONNIE FAULKNER: Can you describe the format of J Is for Junk Economics – A Guide
to Reality in an Age of Deception as an A-to-Z dictionary with additional essays? It seems
to me that this format makes a good reference book that can be picked up and read at any
point.
MICHAEL HUDSON: That's what I intended. I wrote it as a companion volume to my outline of
economic theory, Killing the Host , which was about how the financial sector has taken
over the economy in a parasitic way. I saw the vocabulary problem and also how to solve it: If
people have a clear set of economic concepts, basically those of classical economics –
value, price and rent – the words almost automatically organize themselves into a
worldview. A realistic vocabulary and understanding of what words mean will enable its users to
put them together to form an inter-connected system.
I wanted to show how junk economics uses euphemisms and what Orwell called Doublethink to
confuse people about how the economy works. I also wanted to show that what's called think
tanks are really lobbying institutions to do the same thing that advertisers for toothpaste
companies and consumer product companies do: They try to portray their product – in this
case, neoliberal economics, dismantling protection of the environment, dismantling consumer
protection and stopping of prosecution of financial fraud – as "wealth creation" instead
of impoverishment and austerity for the economy at large. So basically, my book reviews the
economic vocabulary and language people use to perceive reality.
When I was in college sixty years ago, they were still teaching the linguistic ideas of
Benjamin Lee Whorf. His idea was that language affects how people perceive reality. Different
cultures and linguistic groups have different modes of expression. I found that if I was going
to a concert and speaking German, I would be saying something substantially different than if I
were speaking English.
Viewing the economic vocabulary as propaganda, I saw that we can understand how the words
you hear as largely propaganda words. They've changed the meaning to the opposite of what the
classical economists meant. But if you untangle the reversal of meaning and juxtapose a more
functional vocabulary you can better understand what's actually happening.
ORDER IT NOW
BONNIE FAULKNER: You write that "the terms rentier and usury that played so central
a role in past centuries now sound anachronistic and have been replaced with more positive
Orwellian doublethink," which is what you've begun to explain. In fact, your book J is for
Junk – A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception is all about the depredation of
vocabulary to hide reality, particularly the state of the economy. Just as history is written
by the victors, you point out that economic vocabulary is defined by today's victors, the
rentier financial class. How is this deception accomplished?
MICHAEL HUDSON: It's been accomplished in a number of ways. The first and most brutal way
was simply to stop teaching the history of economic thought. When I went to school 60 years
ago, every graduate economics student had to study the history of economic thought. You'd get
Adam Smith, Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, Marx and Veblen. Their analysis had a common
denominator: a focus on unearned income, which they called rent. Classical economics
distinguished between productive and unproductive activity, and hence between wealth and
overhead. The traditional landlord class inherited its wealth from ancestors who conquered the
land by military force. These hereditary landlords extract rent, but don't do anything to
create a product. They don't produce output. The same is true of other recipients of rent.
Accordingly, the word used through the 19 th century was rentier . It's a
French word. In French, a rente was income from a government bond. A rentier
was a coupon clipper, and the rent was interest. Today in German, a Rentner is a
retiree receiving pension income. The common denominator is a regular payment stipulated in
advance, as distinct from industrial profit.
The classical economists had in common a description of rent and interest as something that
a truly free market would get rid of. From Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill down to Marx and the
socialists, a free market was one that was free of a parasitic overclass that got income
without doing work. They got money by purely exploitative means, by charging rent that doesn't
really have to be paid; by charging interest; by charging monopoly rent for basic
infrastructure services and public utilities that a well-organized government should provide
freely to people instead of letting monopolists put up toll booths on roads and for technology
and patent rights simply to extract wealth. The focus of economics until World War I was the
contrast between production and extraction.
An economic fight ensued and the parasites won. The first thing rentiers –
the financial class and monopolists, a.k.a. the 1% – did was to say, "We've got to stop
teaching the history of economic thought so that people don't even have a memory that there is
any such a thing as economic rent as unearned income or the various policies proposed to
minimize it. We have to take the slogan of the socialist reformers – a free market
– and redefine it as a free market is one free from government – that is,
from "socialism" – not free from landlords, bankers and monopolists." They turned the
vocabulary upside down to mean the opposite. But in order to promote this deceptive vocabulary
they had to erase all memory of the fact that these words originally meant the opposite.
BONNIE FAULKNER: How has economic history been rewritten by redefining the meaning of words?
What is an example of this? For instance, what does the word "reform" mean now as opposed to
what reform used to mean?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Reform used to mean something social democratic. It meant getting rid of
special privileges, getting rid of monopolies and protecting labor and consumers. It meant
controlling the prices that monopolies could charge, and regulating the economy to prevent
fraud or exploitation – and most of all, to prevent unearned income or tax it away.
In today's neoliberal vocabulary, "reform" means getting rid of socialism. Reform
means stripping away protection or labor and even of industry. It means deregulating the
economy, getting rid of any kind of price controls, consumer protection or environmental
protection. It means creating a lawless economy where the 1% are in control, without public
checks and balances. So reform today means getting rid of all of the reforms that were promoted
in the 19 th and early-20 th century. The Nobel Economics Prize reflects
this neoliberal (that is, faux-liberal) travesty of "free markets."
BONNIE FAULKNER: What were the real reforms of the progressive era?
MICHAEL HUDSON: To begin with, you had unions to protect labor. You had limitations on the
workweek and the workday, how much work people had to do to earn a living wage. There were
safety protections. There was protection of the quality of food, and of consumer safety to
prevent dangerous products. There was anti-trust regulation to prevent price gouging by
monopolies. The New Deal took basic monopolies of public service such as roads and
communications systems out of the hands of monopolists and make them public. Instead of using a
road or the phone system to exploit users by charging whatever the market would bear, basic
needs were provided at the lowest possible costs, or even freely in the case of schools, so
that the economy would have a low cost of living and hence a low business overhead.
The guiding idea of reform was to get rid of socially unnecessary income. If landlords were
going to charge rent for properties that they did nothing to improve, but merely raise the
rents whenever cities built more transportation or more parks or better schools, this rent
would be taxed away.
The income tax was a basic reform back in 1913. Only 1% of America's population had to pay
the tax. Most were tax-free, because the aim was to tax the rentiers who lived off
their bond or stock holdings, real estate or monopolies. The solution was simply to tax the
wealthiest 1% or 2% instead of labor or industry, that is, the companies that actually produced
something. This tax philosophy helped make America the most productive, lowest-cost and
competitive yet also the most equal economy in the world at that time.
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This focus on real industry has gradually been undermined. Today, if you're a real estate
speculator, monopolist, bankster or financial fraudster, your idea of reform is to get rid of
laws that protect consumers, tenants, homebuyers and the public at large. You campaign for
"consumer choice," as if protection is "interference" with the choice to be poisoned, cheated
or otherwise exploited. You deregulate laws designed to protect the atmosphere, free air and
water. If you're a coal or oil company, your idea of reform is to get rid of the Clean Air Act,
as the Trump administration has been doing.
The counterpart to junk science is junk economics. It is a lobbying effort to defend the
idea of a world without any laws or regulations against the wealthy, only against the debtors
and the poor, only against consumers for the "theft" of downloading music or stealing
somebody's patented songs or drug monopoly privilege. This turns inside out the classical
philosophy of fairness.
BONNIE FAULKNER: According to 19 th -century classical economists, what is
fictitious capital, and why is this distinction no longer being made by economists?
MICHAEL HUDSON: That's a wonderful question. Today the term "fictitious capital" is usually
associated with Marx, but it was used by many people in the 19 th century, even by
right-wing libertarians such as Henry George.
Fictitious capital referred to purely extractive claims for income, as distinct from profits
and wages earned from tangible means of production. Real capital referred to factories,
machinery and tools, things that were used to produce output, as well as education, research
and public infrastructure. But an ownership privilege like a title to land and other real
estate, a patent or the monopoly privilege to charge whatever the market will bear for a
restricted patent, without reference to actual production costs, does not add anything to
production. It is purely extractive, yielding economic rent, not profits on real capital
investment.
BONNIE FAULKNER: You say that by the late-19 th century, "reform movements were
gaining the upper hand, that nearly everyone saw industrial capitalism evolving into what was
widely called socialism." How would you describe the socialism that classical economists like
Mill or Marx envisioned?
MICHAEL HUDSON: They all called themselves socialists. There were many kinds of socialism in
the late 19 th century. Christians promoted Christian socialism, and anarchists
promoted an individualistic socialism. Mill was called a Ricardian socialist. The common
denominator among socialists was their recognition that the industrial capitalism of their day
was a transitory stage burdened by the remnants of feudalism, headed by the landlord class
whose hereditary rule was a legacy of the medieval military invasions of England, France,
Germany and the rest of Europe. This was the class that controlled the upper house of
government, e.g ., Britain's Lordships. For socialists, the guiding idea was to run
factories and operate land and provide public services for the economy at large to grow instead
of imposing austerity and letting the rentier classes exploit the rest of the economy
and concentrate income, political control and tax policy in their own hands.
Until World War I, socialism was popular because most people saw industrial capitalism as
evolving. Politics was in motion. The term "capitalism," by the way, was coined by Werner
Sombart, not Marx. But classical political economy culminated in Marx. He looked at society's
broad laws of motion to see where they were leading.
The socialist idea was not only that of Marx but also of American business school professors
like Simon Patten of the WhartonSchool. He said that the kind of economy that would dominate
the world's future was one that was the most efficient in preventing monopoly and preventing or
taxing away absentee land rent so that almost all income would be paid as wages and profits,
not rent or interest or monopoly rents.
The business classes in the United States, Germany and even in England were in favor of
reform – that is, anti-rentier reform. They recognized that only a strong government
would have the political power to tax away or regulate parasitic economic rent by the
wealthiest classes at that time, in the late 19 th and early 20 th
century. This economic and political cleanup of the rentiers stemmed very largely from
the ideological battle that occurred in England after the Napoleonic Wars were over in 1815.
Ricardo, representing the banking class, argued against Reverend Malthus, the population
theorist who also was a spokesman for the landlord class. Malthus urged agricultural
protectionism for landlords, so that they would get more and more rent from their land as grain
prices were kept high. Ricardo argued that high food prices to support rents for the
agricultural landlords would mean high labor costs for industrial employers. And if you have
high labor costs then England cannot be the industrial workshop of the world. In order for
England to become the industrial supreme power, it needed to overcome the power of its landlord
class. Instead of protecting it, England decided to protect its industrial capital by repealing
its protectionist Corn Laws in 1846. (I describe its strategy in my history of theories of
Trade, Development and Foreign Debt .)
At that time England's banking class was still a carryover from Europe's Medieval period.
Christianity had banned the charging of interest, so banks were able to make their money by
combining their loans with a foreign exchange charge, called agio. Banks even
Ricardo's day in the early 19 th century made most of their money by financing
foreign trade and charging foreign exchange fees. If your listeners they have ever tried to
change money at the airport, they will know what a big rake-off the change booths take.
Later in the 19 th century, bankers began to shift their lending away from
international trade financing to real estate as home ownership became democratized. Home owners
became their own landlords – but on mortgage credit.
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Today we're no longer in the situation that existed in England 200 years ago. Almost
two-thirds of the American families own their homes. In Scandinavia and much of Europe, 80% are
homeowners. They don't pay rent to landlords. Instead, they pay their income as interest to the
mortgage lenders. That's because hardly anyone has enough money to buy a
few-hundred-thousand-dollar home with the cash in their pocket. They have to borrow the money.
The income that used to be paid as rent to a landlord is now paid as interest to the mortgage
banker. So you have a similar kind of exploitation today that you had two centuries ago, with
the major difference that the banking and financial class has replaced the landlord class.
Already by the late-19 th century, socialists were advocating that money and
credit don't have to take the form of gold and silver. Governments can create their own money.
That's what the United States did in the Civil War with its greenbacks. It simply printed the
money – and gave it value by making it acceptable for payment of taxes. In addition to
the doctrine that land and basic infrastructure should be owned by the public sector –
that is, by governments – banking was seen as a public utility. Credit was to be created
for productive purposes, not for rent-extracting activities or financial speculation. Land
would be fully taxed so that instead of labor or even most industry paying an income tax,
rentiers would pay tax on wealth that took the form of rent-extracting privileges.
The aim of classical economics was to tax unearned income, not wages and profits. The tax
burden was to fall on the landlord class first and foremost, then on monopolists and bankers.
The result was to bea circular flow in which taxes would be paid mainly out of rent and other
unearned income, and the government would spend this revenue on infrastructure, schools and
other productive investment to help make the economy more competitive. Socialism was seen as a
program to create a more efficient capitalist economy along these lines, until the word was
hijacked by the Russian Revolution after World War I. The Soviet Union became a travesty of
Marxism and the word socialism.
BONNIE FAULKNER: You write that: "Today's anti-classical vocabulary redefines free markets
as ones that are free for rent extractors and that rent and interest reflect their
recipients' contribution to wealth, not their privileges to extract economic rent
from the economy." How do you differentiate between productive and extractive sectors,
and how is it that the extractive sectors, essentially Finance, Insurance and Real Estate
(FIRE), actually burden the economy?
MICHAEL HUDSON: If you're a real estate owner, you want lower property taxes so that as the
economy grows and people are able to pay more rent, or when a land site in a neighborhood
becomes more valuable because the government builds a new subway – like New York City's
Second Avenue line – real estate prices rise to reflect the property's higher income that
is not taxed.
New York landlords all along the subway line raised rents. That meant that their real estate
had a "capital" gain reflecting the higher rent roll. Individual owners fortunate enough to own
a condo or a townhouse near the stations became more wealthy – while new renters or
buyers had to pay much more than before. None of this price rise created more living space or
other output (although today's post-classical GDP figures pretend that it did!). It simply
meant that instead of recapturing the $10 billion the government spent on this subway extension
by taxing the increased land valuations all along the subway route, New York's income and real
estate taxes have been raised for everybody, to pay interest on the bonds issued to finance the
subway's construction. So the city's cost of living and doing business rises – while the
Upper East Side landlords have received a free lunch.
Creating that kind of real estate "fictitious wealth" is a capitalization of unearned income
– unearned because the Upper East Side landlords didn't do anything themselves to
increase the value of their property. The City raised rental values by making the sites more
desirable when it built the subway extension.
The same logic applies to insurance. When President Obama passed the basically Republican
Obamacare law advocated by the pharmaceutical and health management sectors, the cost of
medical care went way up in the United States. It was organized so as to be a giveaway to the
healthcare and pharmaceutical monopolies.
None of this increased payment for medical care increases its quality. In fact, the more
that's paid for medical care, the more the service declines, because it is paid to health
insurance companies that try to legally fight against consumers. The effect is predatory, not
productive.
Finally, you have the financial part of the FIRE sector. Finance has accounted for almost
all of the growth in U.S. GDP in the ten years since the Lehman Brothers crisis and the Obama
bailout in 2008. The biggest banks at that time were insolvent as a result of bad loans and
outright financial fraud. But the government created $4.3 trillion of reserves to bail out
Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, with Goldman Sachs thrown in, despite the fact that
their fraudulent junk mortgage loans were predatory, not productive credit that actually
increased wealth in the form of productive power. There's a growing understanding that the
financial sector has become so dysfunctional that it is a deadweight on the economy, burdening
it with increasing debt charges –student loans are an example – instead of actually
helping the economy grow.
BONNIE FAULKNER: So just to reiterate, what is the classical distinction between earned and
unearned income?
MICHAEL HUDSON: This distinction is based on classical value and price theory. Price is what
people have to pay. The margin of price over and above real cost value is called economic rent.
A product's value is its actual, necessary costs of production: the cost of labor, raw
materials and machinery, and other elements of what it costs to tangibly produce it. Rent and
financial charges are the product of special privileges that have been privatized and now
financialized.
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Classical value theory isolated this economic rent as unearned income. It was the aim of
society either to prevent it from occurring in the first place, by anti-monopoly regulation or
by public land ownership, or to tax it away in cases where you can't help it going up. For
instance, it's natural for neighborhoods to become more valuable and high-priced over time as
the economy gets richer. But it doesn't cost more to construct buildings there, and rents keep
going up and up and up on buildings that were put up 100 years ago. This increased rent does
not reflect any new cost of production. It's a free lunch.
Neoliberals, most notoriously the University of Chicago's Milton Friedman at, kept insisting
that "There's no such thing as a free lunch." But that's exactly what most of the wealth and
income of the richest 1% is. It's the result of running the economy primarily to siphon off a
rentier free lunch. Of course, its recipients try to distract public attention from
this face and tell national income and Gross Domestic Product statisticians to pretend that
they actually earn their income wealth, not merely transfer income from the rest of the economy
into their hands as creditors, monopolists and landlords. The leading Wall Street firm Goldman
Sachs said so notoriously a few years ago that "Our partners are the most productive in the
country because look at how much we're paid." But they don't really earn their wealth
in the classical sense of earning by performing a productive economic service. The economy
would get along much better without Goldman Sachs and indeed the banking and financial system
or the health insurance system being run the way they are, and without real estate the being
untaxed in the way that it is.
BONNIE FAULKNER: I noticed that you used the term "rent" for unearned income. Is rent the
same as profit, or not?
MICHAEL HUDSON: It's not at all the same. Profit is earned by investing in a means of
production to make useful goods and services. Classical economists viewed profit as an element
of cost if you're going to have a privately owned economy – and most socialists have
accepted private ownership, although in a system regulated so as to benefit society as a whole.
If you make a profit by a productive act acting within this system, you've earned it by being
productive.
Economic rent is different. It is not earned by actively building means of production,
conducting research or development. It's passive income. When pharmaceutical companies earn
rent, it's simply for charging much more for the drugs they sell than it actually costs to
produce them. This is especially the case when the government has borne the research and
development cost of the drugs and simply assigns the rent-yielding patent privilege to the
pharmaceutical companies. So rent is something over and above the profit necessary to induce
the activity that these companies actually perform. Profits are why investors produce more.
Rent is not necessary. If you got rid of it, you wouldn't discourage production, because it's
purely an overhead charge, whereas profits are a production charge in a capitalist economy.
BONNIE FAULKNER: Well, thank you for that distinction between rent and profit. That's a very
important thing to understand.
MICHAEL HUDSON: I describe it more clearly in my book, which includes the appropriate
classical quotations.
BONNIE FAULKNER: You point out that interest and rent are reported as "earnings," as if
bankers and landlords produce gross domestic product (GDP) in the form of credit and ownership
services. How do you think interest and rent should be reported?
MICHAEL HUDSON: They should be classified interest and rent. But the rentier
classes have taken over the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) to depict their takings
as actual production of a service, not as overhead or a transfer payment, that is, not as
parasitic extraction of other peoples' earnings.
For instance, suppose you have a credit card and you miss a payment, or miss a payment on a
student loan, electric bill or your rent. The credit card company will use this as an excuse to
raise your interest charge from 11% to 29%. The national income account treat this rise to 29%
as providing a "financial service." The so-called service is simply charging a penalty rate.
The pretense is that everything that a bank charges – higher interest or penalties
– is by definition providing a service, not simply extracting money from cardholders,
transferring income from them to itself.
Classical economists would have subtracted this financial rake-off from output, counting it
as overhead. After all, it simply adds to the cost of living and doing business. Instead, the
most recent statisticians have added this financial income to the Gross National
Product instead of subtracting it, as the classical economists would have done – or
simply not counted it, as was the case a generation ago.
Most reporters and the financial press don't get into the nitty-gritty of these national
accounts, so they don't realize how lobbyists have intervened in recent years to turn them into
propaganda flattering bankers and property owners. Today's "reformed" GDP format pretends that
the economy has been going up since 2008. A more realistic description would show that it is
shrinking for 95 percent of the population, being eaten away by the wealthiest 5% extracting
more rentier income and imposing austerity.
If you look at the national balance sheet of assets and liabilities, the economy is becoming
more debt-ridden. As student debt and mortgage debt go up, and penalty fees, arrears and
defaults are rising. The long rise in home ownership rates is being reversed, and rents are
rising, while people also have to pay more for medical care and other basic needs. Academic
economists depict this as "consumer choice" or "demand," as if it is all a voluntary choice of
"the market." The GDP accounting format has been modified to make it appear that the economy is
getting richer. This statistical sleight-of-hand is achieved by counting the takings of the
rentier 1% as a product, not a cost borne by the economy at large. What really should
be shown is a loss – land and monopoly rent, interest and penalties is in fact so large a
"product" that the economy seems to be growing. But most of that growth is unreal.
BONNIE FAULKNER: How does government fiscal policy, taxation and expenditure influence the
economy?
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MICHAEL HUDSON: That's what Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is all about. When governments run
a budget deficit, they pump money into the economy. For Keynesians the money goes into the real
economy in ways that employ labor. For neoliberals, quantitative easing is spent directly into
the financial sector, and is used to finance the purchase of real estate, stocks and bonds,
supporting the valuation of wealth owned mainly by the One Percent. The effect is to make
housing more expensive, and also the price of buying a retirement income. Having to take on
larger mortgage debt to buy a house and spend less each month in order to save for one's
pension is not really "wealth creation," unless your perspective is that of the One Percent
increasing its power over the 99%.
At least the United States is able to run deficits and avoid the kind of unemployment and
austerity that Europe is imposing on itself and especially on Greece and Italy. I think in one
of our talks on this show explained the problem that Europe is suffering. Under the
constitution of the Eurozone, its member countries are not allowed to run a budget deficit of
more than 3%. Most actually aim at extracting a surplus from the economy (as distinct from
producing a surplus for the economy). That means that the government doesn't spend
money into the economy. People and businesses are obliged to get their money from the banks.
That requires them to pay more interest. All Europe is on the road to looking like
Greece– debt-strapped economies that are kept artificially alive by the government
creating reserves to give to the banks and bail out bond markets, not spending into economies
to help them recover.
The ability to create debt by writing a bank loan that creates a deposit is a legal
privilege. There's no reason why governments cannot do this themselves. Instead of borrowing
from private creditors to finance their budget deficits, governments can create their own money
– without burdening budgets with interest charges. Credit creation has little cost of
production, and therefore does not require interest charges to cover this cost. The interest is
a form of monopoly rent to privatized privilege.
Classical economists saw the proper role of government as being to create social
infrastructure and upgrade living standards and productivity for their labor force. Governments
should build roads to minimize the cost of transportation, not private companies creating toll
roads to maximize the cost by building in financial charges, real estate and management charges
to what users have to pay. Government should be in charge of providing public health insurance,
not private companies that charge extortionate prices and whatever the market will bear for
their drugs. It's the government that should run prisons, not private companies that use
prisoners as cheap labor to make a profit and advocate that more people get arrested so to make
more of a profit from their incarceration.
The great question is, what is the government going to spend money on, and how can it spend
money into the economy in a way that helps growth? Imagine if this trillion dollars a year
that's spent on arms and military – in California and the districts of the key
congressmen on the budget committee – were spent on building roads, schools,
transportation and subsidizing medical care. The country could become a utopia. Instead, the
rentier classes have hijacked the government, taking over its money creation and
taxing power to spend on themselves, not to help the economy at large produce more or raise
living standards. Special interests have captured the regulatory agencies to make them serve
rent extractors, not protect the economy from them.
BONNIE FAULKNER: Interest is tax-deductible, whereas profit is taxable. Does the tax
deductibility of interest have a major impact on the economy?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Yes, because tax deductibility encourages companies to raise money by going
into debt. This tax deductibility of interest catalyzed the corporate raiding movement of the
1980s. It was based on debt leveraging.
Suppose a company makes $100 million a year in profit and pays this out to its stockholders
as dividends. In the 1980s this profit was taxed at about 50%, so you could only pay $50
million to the stockholders. Then as today, they were the wealthiest layer of the population.
Drexel Burnham and other Wall Street firms sought out corporate raiders as clients and offered
to lend them enough money to buy companies out, by buying out their stockholders. Stocks were
replaced by bonds. That enabled companies to pay out twice as much income as interest than they
had been paying as dividends. When they bought out target companies with debt, a company could
pay all $100 million of its income as interest instead of only $50 million as dividends on
stock.
So the wealthiest classes in the United States and other countries decided that they could
get more from own bonds than stocks anymore. Government revenue declined by the added amount
paid to financial investors as a result of this tax subsidy for debt.
The advantage of issuing stocks is that when business conditions turn down and profits fall,
companies can cut back their dividend. But if they have committed to pay this $100 million to
bondholders, when their earnings go down they may face insolvency.
The result was a wave of bankruptcy since the 1980s as companies became more debt-pyramided.
Also companies heads went to the labor unions and threatened to declare bankruptcy and wipe out
their pension funds, if their leaders did not agree to change these funds and replace the
guaranteed retirement pension that were promised for a defined contribution plan. All they know
is what they have to pay in every month. Retirees will only get whatever is left when they
reach pension age. The equity economy shift into a debt economy has enriched the wealthy
financial class at the top, while hurting employees.
Most statistical trends turned around in 1980 for almost every country as this shift
occurred. Indebting companies has made them more fragile and also higher-cost, because now they
have to factor in the price of interest payments to the bondholders and corporate raiders
who've taken them over.
BONNIE FAULKNER: Do you think that changes should be made to the tax deductibility of
interest?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Sure. If interest were to be taxed, that would leave less incentive for
companies to keep on adding debt. It would deter corporate raiding. It is a precondition for
companies being run to minimize their cost of production and to serve their labor force and
their customers more. For homebuyers, removing the tax-deductibility of interest would leave
less "free" rent to be pledged to banks for mortgages, and hence would reduce the size of bank
loans that bid up housing prices.
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I think that interest and rents should be taxed, not wages and legitimate profits. The FICA
wage withholding now absorbs almost 16% of most wage-earning income for Social Security and
Medicare. But wealthy people don't have to pay any contribution on what they make over than
about $ $116,000 a year. They don't have to pay any FICA contribution on their capital gains,
which is how most fortunes are made. The rentiers' idea of a free market is to make
labor pay for all of the Social Security and Medicare – and then to give so much to Wall
Street that they can say, "Oh, there's no more money. The system's short, so we have to wipe
out Social Security," just as so many companies have wiped out the pension commitments. As
George W. Bush said, tere's not really any money in the Social Security accounts. Its tax on
the lower income brackets was all used to cut taxes on the higher income and wealth brackets.
The economy has been turned into a grab bag for the rich.
BONNIE FAULKNER: What about monetary policy, interest rates and the money supply? Who
controls monetary policy, and how does it affect the economy?
MICHAEL HUDSON: The biggest banks put their lobbyists in charge of the Federal Reserve,
which was created in 1913 to take monetary policy out of the hands of the Treasury in
Washington and put it in the hands of Wall Street. That made the Fed a lobbyist for its
members, the commercial banking system. It's run to control the money supply – in
practice, the debt supply – in a way that steers money into the banks. That's why not a
single banker was jailed for committing the junk mortgage scams and other frauds that caused
the crash. The Fed has turned the banking system into a predatory monopoly instead of the
public service that it was once supposed to be.
Monetary policy is really debt policy, because money is debt on the liabilities side of the
balance sheet. The question is, what kind of debt is the economy going to have, and
what happens when it exceeds the ability to be paid? How is the government going to provide the
economy with money, and what will it do to keep debts line with the ability to be paid? Will
money and credit be provided to build more factories and product more output, to rebuild
American manufacturing and infrastructure? Or, are you going to leave credit and debt creation
to the banks, to make larger loans for people to buy homes at rising prices reflecting the
increasingly highly leveraged and outright reckless credit creation?
Monetary policy is debt policy, and on balance most debts are owed by the bottom 90% to the
wealthiest 10%. So monetary policy becomes an exercise in how the 10% can extract more and more
interest, rent and capital gains from the economy – all the while making money by
impoverishing the economy, not helping most people prosper.
BONNIE FAULKNER: The economy is always being planned by someone or some force, be it Wall
Street, the government or whatever. It's not the result of natural law, as you point out in
your book. It seems like a lot of people think that the economy should somehow run itself
without interference. Could you explain how this is an absurd idea?
MICHAEL HUDSON: It's an example of rhetoric overcoming people's common sense. Every economy
since the Stone Age has been planned. Even in the stone age people had to plan when to plant
the crops, when to harvest them, how much seed you had to keep over for the next year. You had
to operate on credit during the crop year to get beer and rent draft animals. Somebody's in
charge of every economy.
So when people talk about an unplanned economy, they mean no government planning.
They mean that planning should be taken out of the hands of government and put in the hands of
the 1%. That is what they mean by a "free market." They pretend that if the 1% control the
economy it's not really a planned economy anymore, because it's not planned by government,
officials serving the public interest. It's planned by Wall Street. So the question is, really,
who's going to plan the American economy? Is it going to be the government of elected
officials, or is it going to be Wall Street? Wall Street will euphemize its central planning by
saying this is a free market – meaning it's free of government regulation, especially
over the financial sector and the mining companies and other monopolies that are its major
clients.
BONNIE FAULKNER: You emphasize the difference between the study of 19 th -century
classical political economy and modern-day economics. How and when and why did political
economy become "economics"?
MICHAEL HUDSON: If you look at the books that almost everybody wrote in the 19 th
century, they called it political economy because economics is political. And
conversely, economics is what politics has always been about. Who's getting what? Or as Lenin
said, who-whom? It's about how society makes decisions about who's going to get rich and how
they are going to do it. Are they going to get wealthy by acting productively, or
parasitically? Eeverything economic turns out to be political.
The economy's new central planners on Wall Street pretend that what they're doing is not
political. Cutting taxes on themselves is depicted as a law of nature. But they deny that this
is politics, as if there's nothing anyone can do about it. Margaret Thatcher's refrain was
"There is no alternative" (TINA). That is the numbing political sedative injected into today's
economic discussion.
The aim is to make people think that there is no alternative because if they're getting
poorer, if they're losing their home by defaulting on a junk mortgage of if they have to pay so
much on the student loan so that they can't afford to buy a home, or if they find that the only
kind of job they can get driving an Uber car, it's all their fault. It's as if that's just
nature, not the way the economy has been malstructured.
The role of neoliberalism is to make people think that they are powerless in the face of
"the market," as if markets are not socially and politically structured. The 1% have hired
lobbyists and subsidized business schools so as to shape markets in their own interest. Their
aim is to control the economy and call it "nature." Their patter talk is that poverty is
natural for short-sighted "deplorables," not the result of the predatory neoliberal takeover
since 1980 and their capture of the Justice Department so that none of the bank fraudsters go
to jail.
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BONNIE FAULKNER: In your chapter on the letter M – of course, we have chapters from A
to Z – in your chapter on M, you have an entry for Hyman Minsky, an economist who
pioneered Modern Monetary Theory and explained the three stages of the financial cycle in terms
of rising debt leveraging. What is debt leveraging, and how does it lead to a crisis?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Debt leveraging means buying an asset on credit. Lending for home ownership
in the United States is the leading example. From the 1940s to the 1960s, if you took out a
mortgage, the banker would look at your income and calculate that the mortgage on the house you
buy shouldn't absorb more than 25% of your income. The idea was that this would leave enough
income to pay the interest charge and amortize – that is, pay off – the mortgage 30
years later, near the end of your working life. Minsky called this first credit stage the hedge
stage, meaning that banks had hedged their bets within limits that enabled the economy to carry
and pay off its debts.
In the second credit stage, banks lent more and loosened their lending standards so that
mortgages would absorb much more than 25% of the borrower's income. At a certain point, people
could not afford to amortize, that is to pay off the mortgage. All they could do was to pay the
interest charge. By the 1980s, the federal government was lending up to almost 40% of the
borrower's income, writing mortgages without any amortization taking place. The mortgage
payment simply carried the existing homeowner's debt. Banks in fact didn't want to ever be
repaid. They wanted to go on collecting interest on as much debt as possible.
Finally, Minsky said, the Ponzi stage occurred when the homeowner didn't even have enough
money to pay the interest charge, but had to borrow the interest. So this was how Third World
countries had gotten through the 1970s and the early 1980s. The government of, let's say Mexico
or Brazil or Argentina, would say, well, we don't have the dollars to pay the debt, and the
banks would say, we'll just add the interest onto the debt. Same thing with a credit card or a
mortgage. The mortgage homeowner would say, I don't have enough money to pay the mortgage, and
the bank would say, well, just take out a larger mortgage; we'll just lend you the money to pay
the interest.
That's the Ponzi stage and it was named after Carlo Ponzi and his Ponzi scheme –
paying early buyers out of income paid into the scheme by new entrants. That's the stage that
the economy entered around 2007-08. It became a search for the proverbial "greater fool"
willing to borrow to buy overpriced real estate. That caused the crash, and we're still in the
post-crash austerity interim (before yet a deeper debt writeoff or new bailout). The debts have
been left in place, not written down. If you have a credit card and have to pay a monthly
balance but lack enough to pay down your debt, your balance will keep going up every month,
adding the interest charge onto the debt balance.
Any volume of debt tends to grow at compound interest. The result is an exponential growth
that doubles the debt in little time. Any rate of interest is a doubling time. If debt keeps
doubling and redoubling, it's carrying charges are going to crowd out the other expenses in
your budget. You'll have to pay more money to the banks for student loans, credit card debts,
auto loans and mortgage debt, leaving less to spend on goods and services. That's why the
economy is shrinking right now. That's why people today aren't able to do what their parents
were able to do 50 years ago – buy a home they can live in by paying a quarter of their
income.
BONNIE FAULKNER: Dr. Michael Hudson, thank you so very much.
Craig Murray is right that "As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies
the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier."
Collapse of neoliberal ideology and rise of tentions in neoliberal sociarties resulted in unprecedented increase of covert and false
flag operations by British intelligence services, especially against Russia, which had been chosen as a convenient scapegoat.
With Steele dossier and Skripal affair as two most well known.
New Lady Macbeth (Theresa May) Russophobia is so extreme that her cabinet derailed the election of a Russian to head
Interpol.
Looks like neoliberalism cannot be defeated by and faction of the existing elite. Only when shepp oil end mant people will
have a chance. The US , GB and EU are part of the wider hegemonic neoliberal system. In fact rejection of neoliberal
globalization probably will lead to "national neoliberals" regime which would be a flavor of neo-fascism, no more no less.
Notable quotes:
"... The British state can maintain its spies' cover stories for centuries. ..."
"... I learnt how highly improbable left wing firebrand Simon Bracey-Lane just happened to be on holiday in the United States with available cash to fund himself, when he stumbled into the Bernie Sanders campaign. ..."
"... It is, to say the least, very interesting indeed that just a year later the left wing, "Corbyn and Sanders supporting" Bracey-Lane is hosting a very right wing event, "Cold War Then and Now", for the shadowy neo-con Institute for Statecraft, at which an entirely unbalanced panel of British military, NATO and Ukrainian nationalists extolled the virtues of re-arming against Russia. ..."
"... the MOD-sponsored Institute for Statecraft has been given millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by the FCO to spread covert disinformation and propaganda, particularly against Russia and the anti-war movement. Activities include twitter and facebook trolling and secretly paying journalists in "clusters of influence" around Europe. Anonymous helpfully leaked the Institute's internal documents. Some of the Integrity Initiative's thus exposed alleged covert agents, like David Aaronovitch, have denied any involvement despite their appearance in the documents, and others like Dan Kaszeta the US "novichok expert", have cheerfully admitted it. ..."
"... By sleuthing the company records of this "Scottish charity", and a couple of phone calls, I discovered that the actual location of the Institute for Statecraft is the basement of 2 Temple Place, London. This is not just any basement – it is the basement of the former London mansion of William Waldorf Astor, an astonishing building . It is, in short, possibly the most expensive basement in London. ..."
"... Which is interesting because the accounts of the Institute for Statecraft claim it has no permanent staff and show nothing for rent, utilities or office expenses. In fact, I understand the rent is paid by the Ministry of Defence. ..."
"... I have a great deal more to tell you about Mr Edney and his organisation next week, and the extraordinary covert disinformation war the British government wages online, attacking British citizens using British taxpayers' money. Please note in the interim I am not even a smidgeon suicidal, and going to be very, very careful crossing the road and am not intending any walks in the hills. ..."
"... I am not alleging Mr Bracey-Lane is an intelligence service operative who previously infiltrated the Labour Party and the Sanders campaign. He may just be a young man of unusually heterodox and vacillating political opinions. He may be an undercover reporter for the Canary infiltrating the Institute for Statecraft. All these things are possible, and I have no firm information. ..."
"... one of the activities the Integrity Initiative sponsors happens to be the use of online trolls to ridicule the idea that the British security services ever carry out any kind of infiltration, false flag or agent provocateur operations, despite the fact that we even have repeated court judgements against undercover infiltration officers getting female activists pregnant. The Integrity Initiative offers us a glimpse into the very dirty world of surveillance and official disinformation. If we actually had a free media, it would be the biggest story of the day ..."
"... As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier. ..."
"... You can bank on continued ramping up of Russophobia to supply "the enemy". ..."
The British state can maintain its spies' cover stories for centuries. Look up Eldred Pottinger, who for 180 years appears
in scores of British history books – right up to and including William Dalrymple's Return of the King – as a British officer who
chanced to be passing Herat on holiday when it came under siege from a partly Russian-officered Persian army, and helped to organise
the defences. In researching
Sikunder Burnes, I discovered and published from the British Library incontrovertible and detailed documentary evidence that
Pottinger's entire journey was under the direct instructions of, and reporting to, British spymaster Alexander Burnes. The first
historian to publish the untrue "holiday" cover story, Sir John Kaye, knew both Burnes and Pottinger and undoubtedly knew he was
publishing lying propaganda. Every other British historian of the First Afghan War (except me and latterly
Farrukh Husain) has just followed Kaye's official propaganda.
Some things don't change. I was irresistibly reminded of Eldred Pottinger just passing Herat on holiday, when I learnt how
highly improbable left wing firebrand Simon Bracey-Lane
just happened to be on holiday in the
United States with available cash to fund himself, when he stumbled into the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Recent university graduate Simon Bracey-Lane took it even further. Originally from Wimbledon in London, he was inspired to
rejoin the Labour party in September when Corbyn was elected leader. But by that point, he was already in the US on holiday. So
he joined the Sanders campaign, and never left.
"I had two weeks left and some money left, so I thought, Fuck it, I'll make some calls for Bernie Sanders," he explains. "I just
sort of knew Des Moines was the place, so I just turned up at their HQ, started making phone calls, and then became a fully fledged
field organiser."
It is, to say the least, very interesting indeed that just a year later the left wing, "Corbyn and Sanders supporting" Bracey-Lane
is hosting a very right wing event, "Cold War Then and Now", for the shadowy neo-con Institute for Statecraft, at which an entirely
unbalanced panel of British
military, NATO and Ukrainian nationalists extolled the virtues of re-arming against Russia.
Nor would it seem likely that Bracey-Lane would be involved with the Integrity Initiative. Even the mainstream media has been
forced to give a few paragraphs to the outrageous Integrity Initiative, under which the MOD-sponsored Institute for Statecraft
has been given millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by the FCO to spread covert disinformation and propaganda, particularly against
Russia and the anti-war movement. Activities include twitter and facebook trolling and secretly paying journalists in "clusters of
influence" around Europe. Anonymous helpfully leaked the Institute's internal documents. Some of the Integrity Initiative's thus
exposed alleged covert agents, like David Aaronovitch, have denied any involvement despite their appearance in the documents, and
others like Dan Kaszeta the US "novichok expert", have cheerfully admitted it.
The mainstream media have
tracked down
the HQ of the "Institute for Statecraft" to a derelict mill near Auchtermuchty. It is owned by one of the company directors, Daniel
Lafayeedney, formerly of D Squadron 23rd SAS Regiment and later of Military Intelligence (and incidentally born the rather more prosaic
Daniel Edney).
By sleuthing the company records of this "Scottish charity", and a couple of phone calls, I discovered that the actual location
of the Institute for Statecraft is the basement of 2 Temple Place, London. This is not just any basement – it is the basement of
the former London mansion of William Waldorf Astor, an astonishing building.
It is, in short, possibly the most expensive basement in London.
Which is interesting because the accounts of the Institute for Statecraft claim it has no permanent staff and show nothing
for rent, utilities or office expenses. In fact, I understand the rent is paid by the Ministry of Defence.
Having been told where the Institute for Statecraft skulk, I tipped off journalist Kit Klarenberg of Sputnik Radio to go and physically
check it out. Kit did so and was
aggressively
ejected by that well-known Corbyn and Sanders supporter, Simon Bracey-Lane. It does seem somewhat strange that our left wing
hero is deeply embedded in an organisation that
launches troll attacks on Jeremy Corbyn.
I have a great deal more to tell you about Mr Edney and his organisation next week, and the extraordinary covert disinformation
war the British government wages online, attacking British citizens using British taxpayers' money. Please note in the interim I
am not even a smidgeon suicidal, and going to be very, very careful crossing the road and am not intending any walks in the hills.
I am not alleging Mr Bracey-Lane is an intelligence service operative who previously infiltrated the Labour Party and the
Sanders campaign. He may just be a young man of unusually heterodox and vacillating political opinions. He may be an undercover reporter
for the Canary infiltrating the Institute for Statecraft. All these things are possible, and I have no firm information.
But one of the activities the Integrity Initiative sponsors happens to be the use of online trolls to ridicule the idea that the
British security services ever carry out any kind of infiltration, false flag or agent provocateur operations, despite the fact that
we even have repeated court judgements against undercover infiltration officers getting female activists pregnant. The Integrity
Initiative offers us a glimpse into the very dirty world of surveillance and official disinformation. If we actually had a free media,
it would be the biggest story of the day.
As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies
the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier.
You can
bank on continued ramping up of Russophobia to supply "the enemy".
As both Scottish Independence and Jeremy Corbyn are viewed as
real threats by the British Establishment, you can anticipate every possible kind of dirty trick in the next couple of years, with
increasing frequency and audacity
While not specifically labeled, this look like an open thread. So....
The French MSM (and the BBC) are doing the usual underreporting of the numbers involved in
todays GJ activities. If interested, check out the RTL coverage: the "reporter" is standing
on a street that is filled shoulder to shoulder as far as the lens can see with yellow vests,
and states "there are about 50, maybe a hundred people here..."
The police concentrated their manpower around Versailles, and the GJ are everywhere but
there, so no gas, no violence. The infiltrators/casseurs didn't get the memo.
Speaking of the gas, one of the men seen bathing in the stuff these past weekends has put
out (FB? Twitter? This is being passed along from my French family members) that he has been
diagnosed with cyanide poisoning. I am not a chemist, but I don't think this is a usual
component of "tear gas ". Probably the Russians tampering with the gendarmes CS supply.
Chinese refineries that used to purchase U.S. oil regularly said they had not resumed buying
due to uncertainty over the outlook for trade relations between Washington and Beijing, as well
as rising freight costs and poor profit-margins for refining in the region.
Costs for shipping U.S. crude to Asia on a supertanker are triple those for Middle eastern
oil, data on Refinitiv Eikon showed.
A senior official with a state oil refinery said his plant had stopped buying U.S. oil from
October and had not booked any cargoes for delivery in the first quarter.
"Because of the great policy uncertainty earlier on, plants have actually readjusted back to
using alternatives to U.S. oil ... they just widened our supply options," he said.
He added that his plant had shifted to replacements such as North Sea Forties crude,
Australian condensate and oil from Russia.
"Maybe teapots will take some cargoes, but the volume will be very limited," said a second
Chinese oil executive, referring to independent refiners. The sources declined to be named
because of company policy.
A sharp souring in Asian benchmark refining margins has also curbed overall demand for crude
in recent months, sources said.
Despite the impasse on U.S. crude purchases, China's crude imports could top a record 45
million tonnes (10.6 million barrels per day) in December from all regions, said Refinitiv
senior oil analyst Mark Tay.
Russia is set to remain the biggest supplier at 7 million tonnes in December, with Saudi
Arabia second at 5.7-6.7 million tonnes, he said.
19 hours ago This is an
economic/political tight rope for both countries. China is the largest auto market in the
world with numerous manufacturers located inside its borders. Apple sales will disappoint
inside China after Meng's arrest over Iran sanctions (Huawei is a world heavy weight in terms
of sales), and this has already begun inside China due to national pride. Canada has already
seen one trade agreement postponed over her detention. US firm on the main have already
issued orders to not have key employees travel to their Chinese plants unless absolutely
necessary for fear of retaliation. Brussels is actively working on a plan to bypass US
Iranian sanctions, which are deeply unpopular in Europe.
The key to this solution might be in automotive. Oil is possibly on the endangered bargaining
list. Russia is a key trading partner (for years) with China and, along with Saudi Arabia and
Iran (or even without Iran) will be able to supply their needs. Our agricultural sector,
particularly in soybeans, has been hit hard, forcing the US govt. into farm subsidies. Brazil
just recorded a record harvest in soybeans. The US could counter with lifting Meng from
arrest in return for an agricultural break, but those negotiations won't make the mainstream
news. Personally, I think her arrest was a very ill-thought move on the part of law
enforcement, as the benefits don't even begin to outweigh the massive retaliation to US firms
operating inside their borders. It is almost akin to arresting Tim Cook of Apple or Apple's
CFO. You don't kill a bug with a sledge hammer.
"... According to the narrative fabricated by the intelligence agencies and promoted by the Democratic Party and the corporate media over the past year and a half, Putin and his minions hacked the Democrats and stirred up social divisions and popular grievances to secure the election for Donald Trump, and they have been working ever since to destroy "our institutions." ..."
A central theme of the hysteria over alleged "Russian meddling" in US politics is the
sinister effort supposedly being mounted by Vladimir Putin "to undermine and manipulate our
democracy" (in the words of Democratic Senator Mark Warner).
According to the narrative fabricated by the intelligence agencies and promoted by the
Democratic Party and the corporate media over the past year and a half, Putin and his minions
hacked the Democrats and stirred up social divisions and popular grievances to secure the
election for Donald Trump, and they have been working ever since to destroy "our
institutions."
Their chosen field of battle is the internet, with Russian trolls and bots infecting the
body politic by taking advantage of lax policing of social media by the giant tech companies
such as Google, Facebook and Twitter.
To defend democracy, the argument goes, these companies, working with the state, must
silence oppositional viewpoints -- above all left-wing, anti-war and socialist viewpoints --
which are labeled "fake news," and banish them from the internet. Nothing is said of the fact
that this supposed defense of democracy is a violation of the basic canons of genuine
democracy, guaranteed in the First Amendment to the US Constitution: freedom of speech and
freedom of the press.
But what is this much vaunted "American democracy?" Let's take a closer look.
The
two-party monopoly
In a vast and complex country with a population of 328 million people, consisting of many
different nationalities, native tongues, religions and other demographics, spanning six time
zones and thousands of miles, two political parties totally dominate the political
system.
The ruling corporate-financial oligarchy controls both parties and maintains its rule by
alternating control of the political institutions -- the White House, Congress, state houses,
etc. -- between them. The general population, consisting overwhelmingly of working people, is
given the opportunity every two or four years to go to the polls and vote for one or the
other of these capitalist parties. This is what is called "democracy."
The monopoly of the two big business parties is further entrenched by the absence of
proportional representation, which it makes it impossible for third parties or independent
candidates to obtain significant representation in Congress.
The role of corporate
money
The entire political process -- the selection of candidates, elections, the formulation of
domestic and foreign policies -- is dominated by corporate money. No one can seriously bid
for high office unless he or she has the backing of sponsors from the ranks of the richest 1
percent -- or 0.01 percent -- of the population. The buying of elections and politicians is
brazen and shameless.
Last month's midterm elections set a record for campaign spending in a non-presidential
year -- $5.2 billion -- a 35 percent increase over 2014 and triple the amount spent 20 years
ago, in 1998. The bulk of this flood of cash came from corporations and multi-millionaire
donors.
In the vast majority of contests, the winner was determined by the size of his or her
campaign war chest. Eighty-nine percent of House races and 84 percent of Senate races were
won by the biggest spender.
Democratic candidates had a huge spending advantage over their Republican opponents,
exposing the fraud of their attempt to posture as a party of the people. The securities and
investment industry -- Wall Street -- favored Democrats over Republicans by a margin of 52
percent to 46 percent.
Elections are anything but a forum to openly and honestly discuss and debate the great
issues facing the voters. The real issues -- the preparation for new wars, deeper austerity
and further attacks on democratic rights -- are concealed behind a miasma of attack ads and
mudslinging. The research firm PQ Media estimates that total political ad spending will reach
$6.75 billion this year. In last month's elections, the number of congressional and
gubernatorial ads rose 59 percent over the previous, 2014, midterm.
The setting of policy and passage of legislation is helped along by corporate bribes,
euphemistically termed lobbying. In 2017 alone, corporations spent $3 billion to lobby the
government.
Ballot access restrictions
A welter of arcane, arbitrary and anti-democratic requirements for gaining ballot status,
which vary from state to state, block third parties from challenging the domination of the
Democrats and Republicans. These include filing fees and nominating petition signature
requirements in the tens of thousands in many states. Democratic officials routinely
challenge the petitions of socialist and left-wing candidates who are likely to find support
among young people and workers.
Media blackout of third party candidates
The corporate media systematically blacks out the campaigns of third party and independent
candidates, especially left-wing and socialist candidates. The exception is candidates who
are either themselves rich or who have the backing of wealthy patrons.
Third party candidates are generally excluded from nationally televised candidates'
debates.
In last month's election, the Socialist Equality Party candidate for Congress in
Michigan's 12th Congressional District, Niles Niemuth, won broad support among workers, young
people and students for his socialist program, but received virtually no press
coverage.
Voting restrictions
Since the stolen election of 2000, when the Supreme Court shut down the counting of votes
in Florida in order to hand the White House to the loser of the popular vote, George W. Bush,
with virtually no opposition from the Democrats or the media, attacks on the right of workers
and poor people to vote have mounted.
Thirty-three states have implemented voter identification laws, which, studies show, bar
up to 6 percent of the population from voting. States have cut back early voting and absentee
voting and shut down voting precincts in working class neighborhoods. A number of states
impose a lifetime ban on voting by felons, even after they have done their time. In 2013, the
Supreme Court gutted the enforcement mechanism of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, with no real
opposition from the Democrats. The United States is one of the few countries that hold
elections on a work day, making it more difficult for workers to cast a
ballot.
Government of, by and for the rich
The two corporate parties have overseen a social counterrevolution, resulting in a
staggering growth of social inequality. In tandem with this process, the oligarchic structure
of society has increasingly found open expression in the political forms of rule. Alongside
the erection of the infrastructure of a police state -- mass surveillance, indefinite
detention, the militarization of the police, Gestapo raids on workplaces and attacks on
immigrants, the ascendancy of the military in political affairs, internet censorship -- the
personnel of government have increasingly been recruited from the rich and the
super-rich.
More than half of the members of Congress are millionaires, as compared to just 1 percent
of the American population. All the presidents for the past three decades -- George H. W,
Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama -- have either been multi-millionaires going
in or have cashed in on their presidencies to become multi-millionaires afterward. In the
person of the multi-billionaire real estate speculator and con man Donald Trump, the
financial oligarchy has directly taken occupancy of the White House.
In The State and Revolution , Vladimir Lenin wrote: "Bourgeois democracy,
although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under
capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for
the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor."
PATRICK COCKBURN: The Turks benefit from this. It also shows, you know, that Turkey
is really powerful in the region. You know, they've moved a lot of troops up to the border.
They'd been threatening to come in anyway. I think, you know, portraying this as Russia being
the big winner, this is pretty naive, or even childish, in many ways. It's in Russia's
interests that the U.S. should stay in Syria in alliance with the Kurds, which means that the
U.S. is probably confronting Turkey, whose main policy objective is to eliminate this Kurdish
enclave. So if anything, you know, this is something which makes it easier for the
administration to revive the old U.S. alliance with Turkey. And so it doesn't necessarily work
in Russia's favor.
This is a very simpleminded view, that this benefits Russia. Turkey benefits because
suddenly this whole area in northeast Syria becomes vulnerable to them. They've threatened to
move in. They've talked about burying the Kurdish militants in ditches. And we know what
happened earlier in the year in Afrin, another Kurdish enclave. You know, there was extreme
ethnic cleansing. Almost half the Kurdish population was driven out, and hasn't come back.
They've been taken over by extreme Arab jihadis. So yeah, it's very much in Turkey's interests
what's happened. But it is not necessarily in Russia's interests at all. BEN NORTON:
Yeah, Donald Trump himself, in fact, repeatedly tweeted this on December 20 in response to the
news. You know, many media reports portrayed this as a gift to Russia and Iran. Trump pointed
out that now Russia and Iran will be fighting ISIS on their own in Syria, and there are still
elements of ISIS that are in the country. Thousands of fighters, although ISIS doesn't control
a territorial capital, as it had in the past. And what's also interesting about this is that on
the same day Trump announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops on December 19, the U.S. State
Department also cleared a $3.5 billion sale of air defense systems to Turkey. And in addition
to that, a few journalists, mostly Kurdish and Turkish journalists, pointed out that Trump's
decision to withdraw came just two days, or a few days, after he had a phone call with the
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. And just two days before that decision, Erdogan had, in
fact, claimed that in the phone call Trump had agreed, had greenlighted, to a Turkish assault
on northeast Syria. Turkey has been trying to get the U.S. to get approval to send Turkish
troops and embedded jihadist rebels east of the Euphrates River. So do you think that this is
essentially a kind of green light from Trump, saying to Erdogan go ahead and invade?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, it kind of–it opens the door to that. Green light
creates a picture of somebody saying, you know, go for it. Which is doubtful. But you withdraw
the troops, Turkey has been threatening to intervene. Yeah, I think, you know, it may well
amount to that.
I think that, you know, it's easy to pillory what Trump said and did. You know, saying that
the Islamic State will come back, ISIS will come back. But you know, this was a movement that
once controlled territory really from Baghdad to almost to the Mediterranean. And you know, it
just lost its last small town on the east of the Euphrates in eastern Syria. So you know, will
it come back? Well, yeah, there will be more guerrilla warfare. But again, you know, what
strikes me about a lot of the coverage is it's kind of hysterical. It kind of–it is based
on a sort of conspiratorial view of what Trump is up to, what his relations with the Russians
are. You know, this stuff is so far from the reality of what's actually happening on the ground
in Syria, or in Iraq, for that matter. It's very difficult to to discuss it or contradict it.
But it's just sort of off the wall.
BEN NORTON: And the question now up in the air is what will happen to the Kurdish
forces in northeast Syria, specifically the YPG, the People's Protection Units, which control
this area in the northeast. For months now the YPG has, in fact, had kind of on and off
relations with Damascus, the central government of Syria. They had brief negotiations and peace
talks, and they made some–a few agreements. But it seems that the agreements didn't go
very far. It seems to me that this decision will encourage the YPG to seek further
rapprochement and a kind of alliance with Damascus. So what do you think-
PATRICK COCKBURN: They'll be desperate to do that right now, because they may not
like Damascus very much, but they'd much prefer the Syrian government to the Turks. They're
really terrified of the Turks coming in. They're threatened. They are terrified of ethnic
cleansing. So they'll go to Damascus.
Now, previously, because of the U.S. presence that inhibited them, stopped them doing that.
And also the Russians didn't want them to do that. So they'll do that. But it's it's–you
know, the Turkish army is pretty big, pretty strong. Even supposing the Syrian army came into
this enclave it wouldn't necessarily be able to stop the Turks. I mean, what's happened is
that, you know, if you go to that area, one, it's not a great place for the Turks to fight
against heavy armor and aircraft. It's very flat, most of the east of the Euphrates. Not many
mountains, or no mountains, and few hills. And also mostly about 2 million Kurds there. But a
lot of them are in towns or cities along the Syrian-Turkish border. Often cities, when the
frontier was drawn up between Syria and Turkey, it ran along the old railway line between
Aleppo and Mosul. And so cities were cut in half. Kurdish cities were cut in half. So a lot of
these the Kurds live within artillery range of the Turkish army/.
It's important to talk about this, because if the Turks do come across, we could have a
great wave of 2 million Kurds taking to the roads, desperate to get out, going to northern
Iraq, going elsewhere. And there seems very little concern about this, and it's kind of
depressing to hear these sort of conspiracy theories about Russia when what is happening is
that, you know, is in many ways pretty–you know, pretty simple, but pretty bad.
BEN NORTON: And then finally, Patrick, let's just take a big look at what's going on
here. What do you think this will mean for the future of the war in Syria? The war has been
going on since early 2011, and it looks like the conflict is really finally in its final
stages. It might come to an end pretty soon. We've also seen, interestingly, negotiations
between Iran, Russia, and Syria, and Turkey. And specifically, Iran, Turkey, and Russia have
had these kinds of peace negotiations. They've had some developments, some breakthroughs, and
then some obstacles. But the three of them, it seems like they have had many agreements,
although there are some agreements that seem pretty intractable. And I think the question of
Idlib, and now the question of the Northeast, seem to be two major obstacles that Russia, Iran,
and Turkey have really different views on. So with this potentially the U.S. withdrawal, would
this potentially accelerate a peace negotiation for the end of the war? Or could it potentially
usher in a new phase of the war?
PATRICK COCKBURN: It could go either way. It's very difficult to tell which way the
ball will roll after this. Will the Turks come in directly, or will the Russians try to stop
them? Will the Syrian government sort of take over the, do a deal with the Kurds and take over?
You know, if the Turks do come in, what will happen to the Kurds in this area? You know, it's
about 50-50 Kurds and Arabs. And they–you know, the relations are very hostile. You know,
there could be a lot of revenge killings in this area.
So you know, it's difficult to say that. But I think a lot of this has to do with Trump
wanting to get on better terms with Turkey. And if he does want to do anything against Iran,
having better relations with Turkey is essential. But the actual having a U.S.–a Kurdish
enclave supported by the U.S. in Turkey never really, you know, didn't do any damage to the
Russians, and didn't do any damage to Iran. So I think the idea that this is, you know, Happy
Christmas for Putin and slogans like that is really completely unrealistic.
BEN NORTON: We'll have to end our conversation there. We were speaking with the
award-winning journalist Patrick Cockburn, who has for decades been a foreign correspondent for
the British newspaper the Independent, and he's also the author of several books. Thanks so
much for joining us, Patrick.
PATRICK COCKBURN: Thank you.
BEN NORTON: For The Real News Network, I'm Ben Norton.
The Grauniad just quoted a tweet from a predictably OUTRAGED @HillaryClinton:
Actions have consequences, and whether we're in Syria or not, the people who want to
harm us are there & at war. Isolationism is weakness. Empowering ISIS is dangerous.
Playing into Russia & Iran's hands is foolish. This President is putting our national
security at grave risk.
This from the woman who almost singlehandedly (i.e. along with David Cameron and Sarkovy)
destroyed Libya and allowed -- if not encouraged -- the flow of US weapons to go into the
hands of ISIS allies in the US-Saudi-Israeli obsession with toppling Assad regardless of the
consequences. As Justin Raimondo wrote in
Antiwar.com in 2015:
The policy of the Obama administration, and particularly Hillary Clinton's State
Department, was – and still is – regime change in Syria. This overrode all
other considerations. We armed, trained, and "vetted" the Syrian rebels, even as we looked
the other way while the Saudis and the Gulf sheikdoms funded groups like al-Nusra and
al-Qaeda affiliates who wouldn't pass muster. And our "moderates" quickly passed into the
ranks of the outfront terrorists, complete with the weapons we'd provided.
This crazy policy was an extension of our regime change operation in Libya, a.k.a.
"Hillary's War," where the US – "leading from behind" – and a coalition of our
Western allies and the Gulf protectorates overthrew Muammar Qaddafi. There, too, we
empowered radical Islamists with links to al-Qaeda affiliates – and then used them to
ship weapons to their Syrian brothers, as another document uncovered by Judicial Watch
shows.
After HRC's multiple foreign policy fiascos she is the last person who should be
commenting on this matter.
We used to jokingly call the Washington Post 'Pravda on the Potomac' because of what
appeared to be occasional heavy spin – the official story – in news coverage on
foreign policy. Now, the new coverage seems to be 'all spin all the time'. It's getting
harder and harder find reporting on foreign policy issues.
What is the most valuable thing Turkey has? The ability to block pipelines to Europe. They
need to have Syria in semi chaos to complete that block, but it is already the case. And
there is no shortage of cheap options to maintain it, nor any huge objection by regional
players to maintain it.
Turkey, otoh, controls its territory well enough to make its own moves, leveraging its
strategically central location to the max. (The whole flood-the-EU-with-refugees extortion
move was just vicious. Kissinger would be proud )
Also the pipeline expansion is a big part of the Russia phobia too. Keeping hydrocarbons
flowing by sea under the protection of the navy is a cornerstone of maintaining global
security. Thus, as long as Turkey blocks Russian pipelines too, it will get away with it for
the time being.
With a likely Emerging markets bust, however, TR will be at the mercy of creditors, so
Erdogan is going to need a whole new stack of cards to play for that round, which wol be next
year very possibly.
Thanks for this post. I makes the best sense of our actions. We want to keep Turkey loyal
to NATO, keep them buying our missiles, etc. The raging hatred of Turkey for the Kurds and
their pursuit of a corner of land to call their own somewhere in the east of Turkey (close to
huge oil reserves) and the threat of relentless terrorism has been Erdogan's big nightmare.
At odds with Erdogan has been the policy of the US Military which has always used the Kurds
as trusted allies in the ME. But all the sturm und drang of Syria has now subsided and seems
to have been almost pointless thanks to the Saudis falling apart. At least it looks that way.
And this also explains Mattis' abrupt resignation, explicitly stating he does not agree with
Trump turning his back on the Kurds. Basically. Mattis has worked with the Kurds for decades
probably. The only question now is what concessions did we get from Erdogan that Turkey will
not have a total pogrom on the Kurds? It is going to be interesting to see what becomes of
the Saudis as well.
For the past year I have concluded that the market was vulnerable to a number of factors and
was likely making an important top and likely setting up for a Bear Market:
Global economic growth was becoming more ambiguous and the fragility of worldwide growth
would be shortly exposed
An avalanche of debt would serve as a governor to growth
Corporate profit expectations for 2018-20 were too elevated
The pivot to monetary restraint by the Federal Reserve (taking the punch bowl away) would
be market unfriendly
With less liquidity would come a new regime of volatility
The risks of fiscal and monetary policy mistakes were growing
The behavior of the President and hastily crafted policy (e.g. the U.S. retreat from
Syria) would make economic uncertainty and market volatility great again (#muvga)
The reduction in the corporate tax rate has failed to deliver the growth expected to
reduce the burgeoning deficit – the benefit has trickled up and not down
Market structure represented a potential market threat that was being underestimated
Investors, participating in The Bull Market of Complacency, were ignoring the risks of a
large market drawdown
I concluded that the notion of T.I.N.A ("there is no alternative) was no longer applicable
and that rising short term interest rates made the compelling case for C.I.T.A. ("cash is the
alternative"):
Chart Courtesy of Charlie Bilello of Pension Partners
Out of 15 major asset classes ranging from stocks to bonds to REITs to Gold and Commodities,
only one is higher in 2018: Cash.
After the markets responded quite vigorously to the corporate tax reduction and cash
repatriation bills in January, markets swiftly moved higher – making a top near month
end. Consolidation and a multi-month period of choppiness followed but the markets made a new
high by mid-September at about 2920.
The toxic cocktail of the above factors have contributed to a more than 400 handle drop
(-13%) in the S&P Index to 2500 currently – below my (short term) expected trading
range of 2550-2700.
Back in early July I presented this suite of projections for the S&P Index – which
proved reasonably prescient, and to the penny we have just hit my six month projection of
S&P 2500 (!):
By the Numbers
As SPYDERS moved towards $273 yesterday afternoon -- on a full day spike in the S&P
Index of over 20 handles -- I moved back to market neutral.
Should the S&P Index climb back to 2,750-2,750 (my very short term prognostication), I
will move back again to a net short exposure, as downside risk expands over upside
reward.
My gross and net exposures remain light in a background of uncertainty (e.g., current
trade battle with China) and in the new regime of volatility. Quite frankly, I am playing
things "tight" in light of these factors -- and in consideration that I have had a very good
year thus far.
Again, my expectations below should be viewed not with precision, but rather as a
guideline to overall strategy:
Very Short Term (in the next five trading days)
–Higher, but not materially so. 2,750-2,775 seems a reasonable guesstimate.
–I plan to scale into a net short position on strength, but I will give the market a
wider berth today and into the first few days of the second half (inflows expected).
Short Term (in the next two months)
–Lower, but not materially so.
–I expect a series of tests of the S&P level 2,675-2,710.
Intermediate Term (in the next six months)
–Lower, a break towards "fair market value" of about 2,500 is my expectation.
More Lessons Learned
"When we ask for advice we are looking for an accomplice." – Saul Bellow
The investment mosaic is complex and Mr. Market is often unpredictable.
There is no quick answer or special sauce to capture the holy grail of investment results
– it takes hard work, common sense and the ability to navigate the noise.
The common thread of these naked swimmers are self confidence, smugness and the failure to
memorialize their investment returns (because the typically are so inconsistent and
dreadful).
They are bad and deceptive actors who are in denial to themselves and are artful and
accountable dodgers to the investing masses.
"In my next life I want to live my life backwards." – Woody Allen
Take Woody Allen's advice (above) – be forewarned and learn from history as common
sense is not so common as:
"A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore."– Yogi Berra
I have spent a lot of time over the last few months exposing the bad actors who, we learned,
were swimming naked this year; as the market's tide went out .
I did so, not because of any hatred but because I saw this also in 2008-09 and we should
finally be learning from history so that we don't call on those same resources in the
futures.
Where Do We Go From Here?
"I'll just conclude by saying most of the issues we are dealing with today are induced by
bad political choices."– Fred Smith, CEO Of Fed Express (
conference call )
Over the last year I have consistently written that "fair market value" (based on a
multi-factor analysis) for the S&P Index was between 2400-2500 – well below the
expectations of every major Wall Street strategist. I posited that 2018 would be the first year
(in many) in which the revaluation of price earnings ratios would be headed lower. (Multiples
are down by nearly 20% this year).
The major indices have had the worst month of December since the Great Depression –
declining by about -9%. Though many pin the loss (especially yesterday's) on the Federal
Reserve's actions and communications, the recent market drawdown is a function of the reality
of the headwinds I listed at the beginning of this morning's missive (that most have
dismissed).
We are now at 2500 (down from 2920 three months ago) – which means the market is at
the upper end of being fairly valued for the first time all year. It also means that an
expanding list of stocks are now attractive if my recession expectations prove unfounded.
Expanding problems facing the White House and policy blunders (underestimated by investors
– see FedEx quote above), reduced domestic economic expectations and a continuation of
Fed tightening (and balance sheet drawdowns) have contributed to the latest market swoon. That
drawdown has occurred in a backdrop of rising fear and some extreme sentiment readings –
abetted by a changing market structure in which passive products and strategies "buy high and
sell low."
As posited this week I believe we are now going to have a playable year end rally from here
but as we move into the New Year things get more problematic.
"Though the third year of a Presidential cycle is usually bullish – it's different
this time.
Trump confusing brains with a bull market can't fathom the emerging Bear Market. At first
he blames it on Steve Mnuchin, his Secretary of Treasury (who leaves the Administration in
the middle of the year). Then he blames a lower stock market on the mid-term election which
turned the House. Then he blames the market correction on the Chinese.
The S&P Index hits a yearly low of 2200 in the first half of the year as the market
worries about slowing economic and profit growth and a burgeoning deficit/monetization. The
announcement of QE4 results in a year end rally in December, 2019. In a continued regime of
volatility (and in a market dominated by ETFs and machines/algos), daily swings of 1%-3%
become more commonplace. Investor sentiment slumps as redemptions from exchange traded funds
grow to record levels. The absence of correlation between ETFs and the underlying component
investments causes regulatory concerns throughout the year.
Congress holds hearings on the changing market structure and the weak foundation those
changes delivered during the year.
Short sellers provide the best returns in the hedge fund space as the S&P Index
records a second consecutive yearly loss (which is much deeper than in 2018).
As the Fed cuts interest rates the US dollar falls and emerging markets outperform the US
in 2019. The ten year Treasury note yield falls to 2.25%.
I, like many, are concerned about corporate credit (See Surprise #8) and though credit is
not unscathed, it is equities that bear the brunt of the Bear since they are below credit in
the company capitalization structure.
Bottom line, after a steep drop in the first six months of the year, the markets rise off
of the lows late in the year in response to this shifting political scene (the decline of
Trump) and a reversal to a more expansive Fed policy – ending the year with a -10%
loss."
Bottom Line
* For now, think like a trader and not an investor"
The illusion of positive possibilities is fading quickly in a market hampered by political
turmoil and strapped with untenable debt loads.
The key to delivering superior investment performance in 2018 was not a buy and hold
strategy. Rather, it was opportunistic and unemotional trading and for the foreseeable future
this will likely be the case.
While I believe we are likely to rally into year end, the near term upside to that rally has
been markedly reduced (though I still believe we can reach to at least 2600 or so on the
S&P Index by year end, a gain of 100 handles or more) -- the likelihood of a recession and
Bear Market in 2019 has increased.
The trouble with CIA democrats is not that they are stupid, but that that are evil.
Hillary proved to be really destructive witch during her Obama stunt as the Secretary of State. Destroyed Libya and Ukraine,
which is no small feat.
Notable quotes:
"... The policy of the Obama administration, and particularly Hillary Clinton's State Department, was – and still is – regime change in Syria. This overrode all other considerations. We armed, trained, and "vetted" the Syrian rebels, even as we looked the other way while the Saudis and the Gulf sheikdoms funded groups like al-Nusra and al-Qaeda affiliates who wouldn't pass muster. And our "moderates" quickly passed into the ranks of the outfront terrorists, complete with the weapons we'd provided. ..."
"... She is truly an idiot. Thanks again, Ivy League. ..."
The Grauniad just quoted a tweet from a predictably OUTRAGED @HillaryClinton:
Actions have consequences, and whether we're in Syria or not, the people who want to
harm us are there & at war. Isolationism is weakness. Empowering ISIS is dangerous.
Playing into Russia & Iran's hands is foolish. This President is putting our national
security at grave risk.
This from the woman who almost singlehandedly (i.e. along with David Cameron and Sarkovy)
destroyed Libya and allowed -- if not encouraged -- the flow of US weapons to go into the
hands of ISIS allies in the US-Saudi-Israeli obsession with toppling Assad regardless of the
consequences. As Justin Raimondo wrote in
Antiwar.com in 2015:
The policy of the Obama administration, and particularly Hillary Clinton's State
Department, was – and still is – regime change in Syria. This overrode all
other considerations. We armed, trained, and "vetted" the Syrian rebels, even as we looked
the other way while the Saudis and the Gulf sheikdoms funded groups like al-Nusra and
al-Qaeda affiliates who wouldn't pass muster. And our "moderates" quickly passed into the
ranks of the outfront terrorists, complete with the weapons we'd provided.
This crazy policy was an extension of our regime change operation in Libya, a.k.a.
"Hillary's War," where the US – "leading from behind" – and a coalition of our
Western allies and the Gulf protectorates overthrew Muammar Qaddafi. There, too, we
empowered radical Islamists with links to al-Qaeda affiliates – and then used them to
ship weapons to their Syrian brothers, as another document uncovered by Judicial Watch
shows.
After HRC's multiple foreign policy fiascos she is the last person who should be
commenting on this matter.
a different chris, December 21, 2018 at 11:50 am
> the people who want to harm us are there & at war
Sounds like then they are too busy to harm us? She is truly an idiot. Thanks again, Ivy League.
We used to jokingly call the Washington Post 'Pravda on the Potomac' because of what
appeared to be occasional heavy spin – the official story – in news coverage on
foreign policy. Now, the new coverage seems to be 'all spin all the time'. It's getting
harder and harder find reporting on foreign policy issues.
Many threads to tug on at the close of this tumultuous work-week before the supreme holiday
of white privilege rolls through, all silver bells and hovering angels.
It took hours of rumination and prayer to arrive at a coherent notion about the strange
doings in Gen. Mike Flynn's sentencing hearing, but here goes: Judge Emmet Sullivan sent Gen
Flynn to the doghouse for three months to reconsider his guilty plea. The judge may believe
that Gen. Flynn needs to contest the charge in open court, where all the Special Prosecutor's
janky evidence will be subject to discovery and review. Mr. Mueller tried to toss a wrecking
bar into the proceedings the day before by pressing charges against two of Gen. Flynn's
colleagues in the Turkish lobbying gambit, which was meant to terrify Gen. Flynn as a hint that
separate charges would be dumped on him if he doesn't play ball. A lot can happen in three
months, including the arrival of a new Attorney General, and we'll leave it there for the
moment.
The stopgap spending bill before congress -- to avert a government shut-down -- is based on
the comical idea that the money is actually there to spend. Everyone with half a brain knows
that it's not money but " money ," a hypothetical abstraction composed of hopes and wishes. The
USA is worse than broke. It's down to liquidating its rehypothecated hypotheticals. After all,
financialization added up to money with its value removed . The global credit markets seem to
be sensing this as the tide of borrowings retreats , exposing all the wretched, slimy creatures
wheezing in the exposed mudflats who have no idea how to service their old loans or generate
credible new ones. But, no matter. We'll continue pretending until the US$ flies up its own
cloacal aperture and vanishes.
Contingent on that exercise is "money" for Mr. Trump's promised-and-requested border wall.
The wall is really a symbol for the nation's unwillingness to set a firm policy on immigration.
Half of the political spectrum refuses to even make a basic distinction between people who came
here legally and those who snuck in and broke the law. They've super-glued themselves to that
position not on any plausible principle, but because they're desperate to corral Hispanic votes
-- and notice how eager they are to get non-citizens on the voting rolls. Their mouthpiece, The
New York Times , even ran an op-ed today,
None of Us Deserve Citizenship , (is that even grammatical?) arguing that we should let
everybody and anybody into the country because of our longstanding wickedness.
The simple resolve to firmly and politely send interlopers back across the border would go a
long way to providing border security, but we've allowed this process to be litigated into
incoherence so that it is increasingly impossible to enforce the existing rules. Mr. Trump's
wall is an acknowledgement of that failure to agree on lawful action to defend the border. It
evokes the works of past empires, like the wall built across Britain by the Roman emperor
Hadrian to keep out the warlike, filthy, blue-faced Scots, or the Great Wall of China built to
block marauding Mongols. Of course, these societies didn't have closed circuit TV, drones,
laser sensors, four-wheel-drive landcruisers, and night-vision goggles. I'm not persuaded that
the US really requires Mr. Trump's wall, but it does require a functioning consensus that
national borders mean something, and the president's argument is a lever to produce that
consensus.
In the meantime, the condition of the US economy, which Mr. Trump has boasted is roaring on
his account, wobbles badly. It has been based for two decades on a three-card-monte trade
set-up in which China sends us amazingly cheap products and we send them IOUs (dollars, i.e.
Federal Reserve promissory notes). It was not an arrangement bound to last. And it entailed a
lot of mischief around the theft of complex intellectual property. The damage there appears to
be already done. China may have enough computer mojo now to make all kinds of trouble in the
world. Of course, China will have enough political and economic trouble when its Molto-Ponzi
banking system flies apart, so I would not assume that they are capable of attaining the kind
of world domination that scenario-gamers in the US Intel-and-Military offices dream up.
To me, these disturbances and machinations suggest the unravelling of the arrangements we've
called "globalism." That's what we face most acutely in 2019, along with the fragile conditions
in banking, markets, and currencies that can put the schnitz on supply lines as everybody and
his uncle around the world fear that they will never get paid. It all makes for a suspenseful
holiday. Bake as many cookies as you can while the fixings are still there and stuff a few in
your ammunition box for the fretful days ahed.
... In the introduction to the second volume in his series, The State and the
Opposition , Rogovin noted:
A peculiarity of the counter-revolution realized by Stalin and his accomplices was that it
took place under the ideological cover of Marxist phraseology and never-ending attestations
of loyalty to the October Revolution Naturally, such a counter-revolution demanded
historically unprecedented conglomerations of lies and falsifications, the fabrication of
ever-newer myths
Similar to the Stalinists, modern anti-communists use two kinds of myths: namely,
ideological and historical. Under ideological myths we have in mind false ideas, oriented to
the future -- that is, illusory prognoses and promises. These sorts of products of false
consciousness reveal their mythological character by way of their practical realization.
Myths that appeal not to the future but to the past are another matter.
In principle, it is easier to expose these myths than anti-scientific prognoses and
reactionary projects.
Like ideological ones, historical myths are a product of immediate class interests
products of historical ignorance or deliberate falsification -- that is, the concealment of
some historical facts, the tendentious exaggeration, and the distorted interpretation of
others.
Refuting these myths is only possible by rehabilitating historical truth -- the honest
portrayal of actual facts and tendencies of the past.
In this work, Rogovin argued that the fundamental problem facing the USSR was "a
deepening of socially unjustified differentiation of incomes and the comforts of life."
"Workers regularly encounter instances of unearned enrichment through the deceit and the
ripping-off of the state and the people. [ ] Certain groups of the population have the means to
meet their needs at a scale beyond any reasonable norms and outside of their relationship to
social production. [ ] There does not exist any systematic control of sources of income and the
acquisition of valuable goods," he wrote.
In a remarkable statement, inequality, he insisted, not wage-leveling, expressed "in
essence, the social structure of [Soviet] society."
Rogovin called for the implementation of income declarations, whereby people would be
required to report the size of their total income, not just their official wages, so that the
government and researchers might actually know the real distribution of earnings. He advocated
for the establishment of a "socially-guaranteed maximum income" to combat "unjustified
inequality."
Vadim Rogovin and Nina Naumova's 1984 Social Development and Societal
Morals
Elsewhere, Rogovin further argued that inequality lay at the center of the USSR's falling
labor productivity. In a work co-authored with Nina Naumova, Social Development and
Societal Morals , he maintained that the socio-economic crisis facing the USSR stemmed
from the fact that inequality was growing in Soviet society; people worked poorly in the Soviet
Union not because their work was inadequately remunerated relative to others, but
because their commitment to social production had been eroded by intensifying social
stratification that was unrecorded in official statistics.
In 1983, the very same year that Rogovin authored his critical report on the state of
inequality in the USSR that ended up in the hands of the Moscow authorities, another
sociologist, Tatyana Zaslavskaya, would issue a report, kept secret at first but later leaked
to the Western press, advocating a transition to "economic methods of management," -- in other
words, market-based reforms. A central aspect of this was policy centered around increasing
inequality in workers' compensation in order to stimulate production. Zaslavskaya noted at the
time that such reforms would be opposed by what she described as "the more apathetic, the more
elderly, and the less qualified groups of workers."
In a few years, Zaslavskaya would become a leading advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev and one of
the main architects of the pro-market, perestroika reforms. In 1986, she was appointed
the head of the Soviet Sociological Association. Her positions were widely embraced by the
discipline.
Tatiana Zaslavskaya and Mikhail Gorbachev 1989 at Congress of People's Deputies.
[Copyright RIA Novosti]
In contrast, Rogovin's views were frequently, and ever more so, the object of sharp
criticism. In 1985, a discussion occurred at the Institute of Sociology regarding a report
produced by Rogovin and his research team about Soviet lifestyles. In it, Rogovin made openly
critical comments about the anti-egalitarian impact of the shadow economy and the transfer of
wealth through inheritance. It was sharply criticized by some of the Institute's top scholars,
who both disagreed with its content and were nervous about the response it might get from the
authorities. At the discussion, one such individual remarked:
The report by the author presented here has two basic failings: 1) it is inadequately
self-critical; 2) the authors, and in particular, Rogovin himself, aren't appropriately
thinking of the addressee to whom this report is directed. The report is going to the highest
levels [of the Communist Party] and superfluous emotion is not necessary. The next criticism
[I have] is about "unjustified inequality." In principle, there can be no such thing.
[ ] in the note to the TsK KPSS [Central Committee of the Communist Party] [ ] the
recommendations [that you make] demand the utmost care in how you approach them, particularly
those that relate to the "third economy" and taxes on inheritance. [There should be] a
minimum of categoricalness and a maximum of conciliatoriness.
As the decade wore on, Rogovin began to adopt an ever more critical stance on
perestroika , whose devastating economic consequences were increasingly showing
themselves. Rather than bringing prosperity to the masses, Gorbachev's reforms created a total
crisis in the state sector of the economy, exacerbating widespread shortages in food, clothing
and other basic necessities. Economic growth declined from 1986 onwards. In 1989, inflation
reached 19 percent, eroding the gains the population had made in income over the preceding
years. As the scholar John Elliot noted, "When account is taken of additional costs, real per
capita income and real wages probably decreased, particularly for the bottom half of the
population. These costs included: deteriorating quality and unavailability of goods;
proliferation of special distribution channels; longer and more time-consuming lines; extended
rationing; higher prices and higher inflation-rates in non-state stores (e.g., collective farm
market prices were nearly three times those in state stores in 1989); virtual stagnation in the
provision of health and education; and the growth of barter, regional autarky, and local
protectionism."
Newly established private enterprises had great leeway to set prices because they faced
little to no competition from the state sector. They charged whatever the market would bear,
which led to substantial increases in income inequality and poverty, with the most vulnerable
layers of the population hardest hit. The changes were so severe that Elliot insists that
"income inequalities had actually become greater in the USSR than in the USA." In the late
1980s, fully two-thirds of the Soviet population had an income that fell below the
officially-recommended "decent level" of 100 to 150 rubles a month. At the same time, the
shadow economy alone is estimated to have produced 100,000–150,000 millionaires in the
late 1980s. By the early 1990s, one-quarter of the population or 70 million people were
destitute according to official Soviet estimates. Miners' strikes and other signs of social
discontent erupted across the country.
Sociologists were intimately aware of the growing popular discontent. The Communist Party
bureaucracy called upon them to help manage the situation. In 1989, the director of the
Institute of Sociology received a request from the highest layers of the Communist Party. He
was asked to respond to a letter from a rank-and-file party member that expressed extreme
hostility towards the country's "elites." The letter writer described the party as dominated by
an "opportunist nucleus" and called for the waging of a "class war" by the working masses
against their policies. The ideology division of the Central Committee of the Communist Party
wanted the Institute's director to respond to the letter because the sentiments expressed in it
were "widespread (representative) [sic] among the working class."
Soviet economist and
sociologist Genady Lisichkin
In the midst of these circumstances, Rogovin came under fire in one of the country's media
outlets for articles he was writing against the promotion of social inequality. Since the
mid-1980s, he had been championing the implementation of income declarations that would require
people to report their full earnings, progressive taxes, and a socially-declared maximum
income. Based on the amount of positive correspondence he was receiving from readers, it was
clear that his views resonated with the population, a fact noted by Western scholars at the
time. In a public press debate with the economist Gennady Lisichkin, the latter accused Rogovin
of wanting to strengthen the hand of the bureaucracy and implied that he was a Stalinist. He
was allegedly guilty of "Luddism," religious-like preaching, misquoting Marx to find support
for his arguments, wanting the state to have the power to move people around "like cattle,"
defending a deficit-system of distribution based on "ration cards," suffering from "left-wing"
infantilism, and being a "demagogue" and a "war communist." He attempted to link Rogovin to the
very force to which he was most hostile -- Stalinism. The head of the Soviet Sociological
Association, Tatiana Zaslavskaya, openly endorsed Lisichkin's positions.
The disagreements between Rogovin and other scholars over perestroika evolved into
a fierce dispute about Soviet history and the nature of Stalinism. Rogovin identified a
relationship between cheerleading for pro-market reforms and historical falsification. There
was an increasingly widespread effort to link egalitarianism with Stalinism, the struggle for
equality with political repression. In Was There an Alternative? , Rogovin frequently
talked about the fact that the move towards a market economy was accompanied by the propagation
of myths about Soviet history. This was one of those myths.
In 1991, Zaslavskaya co-authored a book that claimed that the Soviet Union's problems lay in
the fact that in the late 1920s it abandoned the New Economic Policy (NEP), during which the
government had loosened state control of the economy and restored market relations to an
extent, in an effort to revitalize the economy under conditions of isolation, backwardness, and
near economic collapse due to years of war. A one-sided and historically dishonest account of
the NEP, this work did not contain any discussion of the political struggle that occurred
during the NEP between Stalin and the Left Opposition over the malignant growth of inequality,
the bureaucratization of the state and economy, and the crushing of inner-party democracy. The
book skipped over this history because it would have cut across one of the central arguments
made at the time in favor of perestroika -- that market relations were inherently at
odds with the interests of the Communist Party bureaucracy. The book's account of labor policy
under Stalin was also false. It insisted that during the 1930s revolutionary enthusiasm was the
primary method used to stimulate people to work, ignoring the fact that income inequality rose
substantially at this time. As the scholar Murray Yanowitch has pointed out, under Stalin
"equality mongering" was labeled the brainchild of "Trotskyites, Zinovievites, Bukharinites and
other enemies of the people."
In the 1980s, sociologists and other scholars promoting perestroika sought to imbue
these policies with a humanitarian mission, insisting that market reforms would allow "the
human factor," which had been crushed under the weight of bureaucratic stagnation, to rise
again. The "human factor" was defined as man's desire for personal recognition through
differentiated, material reward. It was supposedly the primary driver of human activity. To the
degree that official wage policy in the USSR led to a relatively egalitarian distribution of
social resources with wages leveled-out between skilled and unskilled labor, it flew in the
face of man's desire for recognition of his own individual contribution. Rising inequality in
income -- necessitated by the demands of socio-economic development -- was part of the process
of "humanizing socialism." The argument was made that increasing social stratification would
ultimately provide real "socialist justice."
As Tatiana Zaslavskaya claimed in 1990, "Despite all its limitations, the 'classical' market
is, in fact, a democratic (and therefore anti-bureaucratic) economic institution. Within the
framework of its exchange relationships, all participants are at least formally equal; no-one
is subordinated to anyone else. Buyers and sellers act in their own interests and nobody can
make them conclude deals they do not want to conclude. The buyers are free to select sellers
who will let them have goods on the most advantageous terms, but the sellers too can chose
buyers offering the best price."
In making this argument, scholars relied upon the official Soviet definition of socialism --
"from each according to his ability, to each according to his labor" -- that was enshrined in
the country's 1936 constitution. This was also known as the Stalin constitution.
In 1988, Rogovin used the concept of the "human factor" to make a very different argument.
In a piece entitled, "The Human Factor and the Lessons of the Past," he insisted that the
defense of social inequality by the Soviet elite was one of the key reasons why the "human
factor" had degenerated in the USSR. The very best elements of "the human factor" had been
crushed by Stalin during the Terror. Corruption, disillusionment, parasitism, careerism and
individual self-promotion -- the most distinctive features of the Brezhnev era -- were the
"human factor" created by Stalinism. In promoting inequality and the market, Rogovin insisted,
perestroika did not mark a break with Stalinism or the legacy of the Brezhnev era, as
was so often claimed, but rather their further realization.
One year later he wrote, "The adherents of the new elitist conceptions want to see Soviet
society with such a level of social differentiation that existed under Stalin but having gotten
rid of Stalinist repression. It is forgotten that the debauched character of these repressions
[ ] flowed from the effort to not simply restrain, but rather physically annihilate above all
those forces in the party and in the country that, though silenced, rejected the social
foundations of Stalinism."
After years of studying these questions in near-total isolation, Rogovin was finally able to
write openly about this subject. He tested the waters by first publishing "L.D. Trotsky on Art"
in August 1989 in the journal Theater . It was followed shortly thereafter by an
article entitled "The Internal Party Struggles of the 1920s: Reasons and Lessons," also
published in a journal outside of his discipline, Political Education . Moving closer
to a forum likely to be followed by his colleagues in sociology, in early 1990 Rogovin
published "L.D. Trotsky on NEP" in Economic Sciences . And finally, a few months
later, "L.D. Trotsky on Social Relations in the USSR" came out in the flagship journal of his
discipline, Sociological Research .
Rogovin's first article on the subject within his discipline reviewed Trotsky's role in
Soviet history during the 1920s and summarized his seminal work, The Revolution
Betrayed . It made clear to whom Rogovin fundamentally owed the views he had been
advancing over the course of the previous decade.
Trotsky, however, continued to be vilified by Soviet officialdom. In 1987, on the 70th
anniversary of the Russian Revolution, Gorbachev described Trotsky as "the arch-heretic of
Soviet history, an 'excessively self-assured politician who always vacillated and cheated."
As a result of Rogovin's profound sympathies for Trotskyism and efforts to place his work in
the tradition of the Left Opposition's critique of Stalinism, he was increasingly isolated from
his colleagues, several of whom entered the Yeltsin administration and helped facilitate the
eventual implementation of shock therapy, a key component of capitalist restoration in Russia.
His discipline never forgave him for his intransigence and principles. One will find almost no
mention of Rogovin or his contributions in the numerous monographs and other publications that
have come out over the last 20 years about sociology in the USSR.
But Rogovin's isolation from Soviet sociology did not undermine his capacity to work.
Rather, it coincided with the start of the publication of Was There an Alternative? In
1992, Rogovin met the International Committee of the Fourth International, and established a
close political and intellectual relationship with the world Trotskyist movement that would
intensify over the course of the next several years. This relationship was the basis upon which
Rogovin made his immense contribution to the fight to defend Trotsky and historical truth. Two
recently republished tributes to Rogovin by David
North review this history.
Despite his death twenty years ago, through his work Rogovin continues his struggle to arm
the working class with historical consciousness.
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. ~ Ian Fleming
Notable quotes:
"... We believe that in all three cases Guccifer 2 was unlikely to anticipate that this Eastern timezone setting could be derived from the metadata of the documents that he published. However, one vocal critic with significant media reach objected to our East Coast finding as it related to our analysis of the ngpvan .7z file. This critic concluded instead that Guccifer 2 deliberately planted that clue to implicate a DNC worker who would die under suspicious circumstances a few days later on July 10, 2016. ..."
"... Now, we have this additional East Coast indication, which appears just one day after the ngpvan.7z files were collected. This new East Coast indication is found in a completely different group of files that Guccifer 2 published on his blog site. Further, this East Coast finding has its own unique and equally unlikely method of derivation. ..."
"... If we apply our critic's logic, what do we now conclude? That Guccifer 2 also deliberately planted this new East Coast indication? To what end? We wonder: Will this new evidence compel our out-spoken critic to retract his unsubstantiated claims and accusations? ..."
Editorial Note: The Forensicator recently published a report, titled " Guccifer
2 Returns To The East Coast ." Forensicator provided the following introduction to his
latest findings, reproduced here with the permission of the author.
In this post, we announce a new finding that confirms our previous work and is the basis for
an update that we recently made to Guccifer 2's Russian
Breadcrumbs . In our original publication of that report, we posited that there were
indications of a GMT+4 timezone offset (legacy Moscow DST) in a batch of files that Guccifer 2
posted on July 6, 2016. At the time, we viewed that as a "Russian breadcrumb" that Guccifer 2
intentionally planted.
Now, based on new information, we have revised that conclusion: The timezone offset was in
fact GMT-4 (US Eastern DST) . Here, we will describe how we arrived at this new, surprising
conclusion and relate it to our prior work.
A month/so after publication, Stephen McIntyre ( @ClimateAudit ) replicated our analysis. He ran a few
experiments and found an error in our
original conclusion.
We mistakenly interpreted the last modified time that LibreOffice wrote as
"2015-08-25T23:07:00Z" as a GMT time value. Typically, the trailing "Z" means " Zulu Time ", but
in this case, LibreOffice incorrectly added the "Z". McIntyre's tests confirm that LibreOffice
records the "last modified" time as local time (not GMT). The following section describes the
method that we used to determine the timezone offset in force when the document was saved.
LibreOffice Leaks the Time Zone Offset in Force when a Document was Last Written
Modern Microsoft Office documents are generally a collection of XML files and image files.
This collection of files is packaged as a Zip file. LibreOffice can save documents in a
Microsoft Office compatible format, but its file format differs in two important details: (1)
the GMT time that the file was saved is recorded in the Zip file components that make up the
final document and (2) the document internal last saved time is recorded as local time (unlike
Microsoft Word, which records it as a GMT [UTC] value).
If we open up a document saved by Microsoft Office using the modern Office file format (
.docx or .xlsx ) as a Zip file, we see something like the following.
LibreOffice , as shown below, will record the GMT time that the document components were
saved. This time will display as the same value independent of the time zone in force when the
Zip file metadata is viewed.
For documents saved by LibreOffice we can compare the local "last saved" time recorded in
the document's properties with the GMT time value recorded inside the document (when viewed as
a Zip file). We demonstrate this derivation using the file named
potus-briefing-05-18-16_as-edits.docx that Guccifer 2 changed using LibreOffice and then
uploaded to his blog site on July 6, 2016 (along with several other files).
Above, we calculate a time zone offset of GMT-4 (EDT) was in force, by subtracting the last
saved time expressed in GMT (2016-07-06 17:10:58) from the last saved time expressed as local
time (2016-07-06 13:10:57).
We've Been Here Before
The Eastern timezone setting found in Guccifer 2's documents published on July 6, 2016 is
significant, because as we showed in Guccifer 2.0
NGP/Van Metadata Analysis , Guccifer 2 was likely on the East Coast the previous day, when
he collected the DNC-related files found in the ngpvan.7z Zip file. Also, recall that Guccifer
2 was likely on the East Coast a couple of months later on September 1, 2016 when he built the
final ngpvan.7z file.
We believe that in all three cases Guccifer 2 was unlikely to anticipate that this Eastern
timezone setting could be derived from the metadata of the documents that he published.
However, one vocal critic with significant media reach objected to our East Coast finding as it
related to our analysis of the ngpvan .7z file. This critic concluded instead that Guccifer 2
deliberately planted that clue to implicate a DNC worker who would die under suspicious
circumstances a few days later on July 10, 2016.
Further, this critic accused the Forensicator (and Adam Carter ) of using this finding to amplify the
impact of Forensicator's report in an effort to spread disinformation. He implied that
Forensicator's report was supplied by Russian operatives via a so-called "tip-off file." The
Forensicator addresses those baseless criticisms and accusations in The Campbell
Conspiracy .
Now, we have this additional East Coast indication, which appears just one day after the
ngpvan.7z files were collected. This new East Coast indication is found in a completely
different group of files that Guccifer 2 published on his blog site. Further, this East Coast
finding has its own unique and equally unlikely method of derivation.
If we apply our critic's logic, what do we now conclude? That Guccifer 2 also deliberately
planted this new East Coast indication? To what end? We wonder: Will this new evidence compel our out-spoken critic to retract his
unsubstantiated claims and accusations?
Closing Thought: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. ~ Ian Fleming
It is curious how those running vpn's often don't bother appropriately setting their
device time zones.
Regarding the closing thought, that was my thinking regarding the Byzantine Vegetable
'ally' at /qr in a non-American time zone who repeatedly attacked me.
Perhaps I have shared some harsh words with you and William, but I do sincerely care for
your well being and my appreciation for the work you both have done remains. The Optics have
been understandably difficult to swallow for many, but I hope that in your own time, you both
will be willing to take another look at Q.
Interesting to see Fleming -- as time goes on, it is pretty clear that he was telling us a
few things about how power really works--psychopathic oligarchs with private wetworkers. Of
course now we have governments competing to hire the same mercenaries -- and the uniformed
mercenaries working oligarchs with government complicity.
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. ~ Ian Fleming
Notable quotes:
"... We believe that in all three cases Guccifer 2 was unlikely to anticipate that this Eastern timezone setting could be derived from the metadata of the documents that he published. However, one vocal critic with significant media reach objected to our East Coast finding as it related to our analysis of the ngpvan .7z file. This critic concluded instead that Guccifer 2 deliberately planted that clue to implicate a DNC worker who would die under suspicious circumstances a few days later on July 10, 2016. ..."
"... Now, we have this additional East Coast indication, which appears just one day after the ngpvan.7z files were collected. This new East Coast indication is found in a completely different group of files that Guccifer 2 published on his blog site. Further, this East Coast finding has its own unique and equally unlikely method of derivation. ..."
"... If we apply our critic's logic, what do we now conclude? That Guccifer 2 also deliberately planted this new East Coast indication? To what end? We wonder: Will this new evidence compel our out-spoken critic to retract his unsubstantiated claims and accusations? ..."
Editorial Note: The Forensicator recently published a report, titled " Guccifer
2 Returns To The East Coast ." Forensicator provided the following introduction to his
latest findings, reproduced here with the permission of the author.
In this post, we announce a new finding that confirms our previous work and is the basis for
an update that we recently made to Guccifer 2's Russian
Breadcrumbs . In our original publication of that report, we posited that there were
indications of a GMT+4 timezone offset (legacy Moscow DST) in a batch of files that Guccifer 2
posted on July 6, 2016. At the time, we viewed that as a "Russian breadcrumb" that Guccifer 2
intentionally planted.
Now, based on new information, we have revised that conclusion: The timezone offset was in
fact GMT-4 (US Eastern DST) . Here, we will describe how we arrived at this new, surprising
conclusion and relate it to our prior work.
A month/so after publication, Stephen McIntyre ( @ClimateAudit ) replicated our analysis. He ran a few
experiments and found an error in our
original conclusion.
We mistakenly interpreted the last modified time that LibreOffice wrote as
"2015-08-25T23:07:00Z" as a GMT time value. Typically, the trailing "Z" means " Zulu Time ", but
in this case, LibreOffice incorrectly added the "Z". McIntyre's tests confirm that LibreOffice
records the "last modified" time as local time (not GMT). The following section describes the
method that we used to determine the timezone offset in force when the document was saved.
LibreOffice Leaks the Time Zone Offset in Force when a Document was Last Written
Modern Microsoft Office documents are generally a collection of XML files and image files.
This collection of files is packaged as a Zip file. LibreOffice can save documents in a
Microsoft Office compatible format, but its file format differs in two important details: (1)
the GMT time that the file was saved is recorded in the Zip file components that make up the
final document and (2) the document internal last saved time is recorded as local time (unlike
Microsoft Word, which records it as a GMT [UTC] value).
If we open up a document saved by Microsoft Office using the modern Office file format (
.docx or .xlsx ) as a Zip file, we see something like the following.
LibreOffice , as shown below, will record the GMT time that the document components were
saved. This time will display as the same value independent of the time zone in force when the
Zip file metadata is viewed.
For documents saved by LibreOffice we can compare the local "last saved" time recorded in
the document's properties with the GMT time value recorded inside the document (when viewed as
a Zip file). We demonstrate this derivation using the file named
potus-briefing-05-18-16_as-edits.docx that Guccifer 2 changed using LibreOffice and then
uploaded to his blog site on July 6, 2016 (along with several other files).
Above, we calculate a time zone offset of GMT-4 (EDT) was in force, by subtracting the last
saved time expressed in GMT (2016-07-06 17:10:58) from the last saved time expressed as local
time (2016-07-06 13:10:57).
We've Been Here Before
The Eastern timezone setting found in Guccifer 2's documents published on July 6, 2016 is
significant, because as we showed in Guccifer 2.0
NGP/Van Metadata Analysis , Guccifer 2 was likely on the East Coast the previous day, when
he collected the DNC-related files found in the ngpvan.7z Zip file. Also, recall that Guccifer
2 was likely on the East Coast a couple of months later on September 1, 2016 when he built the
final ngpvan.7z file.
We believe that in all three cases Guccifer 2 was unlikely to anticipate that this Eastern
timezone setting could be derived from the metadata of the documents that he published.
However, one vocal critic with significant media reach objected to our East Coast finding as it
related to our analysis of the ngpvan .7z file. This critic concluded instead that Guccifer 2
deliberately planted that clue to implicate a DNC worker who would die under suspicious
circumstances a few days later on July 10, 2016.
Further, this critic accused the Forensicator (and Adam Carter ) of using this finding to amplify the
impact of Forensicator's report in an effort to spread disinformation. He implied that
Forensicator's report was supplied by Russian operatives via a so-called "tip-off file." The
Forensicator addresses those baseless criticisms and accusations in The Campbell
Conspiracy .
Now, we have this additional East Coast indication, which appears just one day after the
ngpvan.7z files were collected. This new East Coast indication is found in a completely
different group of files that Guccifer 2 published on his blog site. Further, this East Coast
finding has its own unique and equally unlikely method of derivation.
If we apply our critic's logic, what do we now conclude? That Guccifer 2 also deliberately
planted this new East Coast indication? To what end? We wonder: Will this new evidence compel our out-spoken critic to retract his
unsubstantiated claims and accusations?
Closing Thought: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. ~ Ian Fleming
It is curious how those running vpn's often don't bother appropriately setting their
device time zones.
Regarding the closing thought, that was my thinking regarding the Byzantine Vegetable
'ally' at /qr in a non-American time zone who repeatedly attacked me.
Perhaps I have shared some harsh words with you and William, but I do sincerely care for
your well being and my appreciation for the work you both have done remains. The Optics have
been understandably difficult to swallow for many, but I hope that in your own time, you both
will be willing to take another look at Q.
Interesting to see Fleming -- as time goes on, it is pretty clear that he was telling us a
few things about how power really works--psychopathic oligarchs with private wetworkers. Of
course now we have governments competing to hire the same mercenaries -- and the uniformed
mercenaries working oligarchs with government complicity.
Believe it or not, all these faces are fake. They have been synthesized by Nvidia's new AI
algorithm, a generative adversarial network capable of automagically creating humans, cats, and
even cars.
Credit: Nvidia
The technology works so well that we can expect synthetic image search engines soon - just
like Google's, but generating new fake images on the fly that look real. Yes, you know where
that is going - and sure, it can be a lot of fun, but also scary . Check out the video. It
truly defies belief:
According to Nvidia, its GAN is built around a concept called "style transfer." Rather than
trying to copy and paste elements of different faces into a frankenperson, the system analyzes
three basic styles - coarse, middle, and fine styles - and merges them transparently into
something completely new.
Coarse styles include parameters such as pose, the face's shape, or the hair style. Middle
styles include facial features, like the shape of the nose, cheeks, or mouth. Finally, fine
styles affect the color of the face's features like skin and hair.
According to the scientists, the generator is "capable of separating inconsequential
variation from high-level attributes" too, in order to eliminate noise that is irrelevant for
the new synthetic face.
For example, it can distinguish a hairdo from the actual hair, eliminating the former while
applying the latter to the final photo. It can also specify the strength of how styles are
applied to obtain more or less subtle effects.
Not only the generative adversarial network is capable of autonomously creating human faces,
but it can do the same with animals like cats. It can even create new cars and even
bedrooms.
Credit: Nvidia
Nvidia's system is not only capable of generating completely new synthetic faces, but it can
also seamlessly modify specific features of real people, like age, the hair or skin colors of
any person.
The applications for such a system are amazing. From paradigm-changing synthetic free-to-use
image search pages that may be the end of stock photo services to people accurately previewing
hair styling changes. And of course, porn.
you're one
of the millions of human beings who, despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary, still
believe there is such a thing as "the truth," you might not want to read this essay. Seriously,
it can be extremely upsetting when you discover that there is no "truth" or rather, that what
we're all conditioned to regard as "truth" from the time we are children is just the product of
a technology of power, and not an empirical state of being. Humans, upon first encountering
this fact, have been known to freak completely out and start jabbering about the "Word of God,"
or "the immutable laws of quantum physics," and run around burning other people at the stake or
locking them up and injecting them with Thorazine. I don't want to be responsible for anything
like that, so consider this your trigger warning.
OK, now that that's out of the way, let's take a look at how "truth" is manufactured. It's
actually not that complicated. See, the "truth" is well, it's a story, essentially. It's
whatever story we are telling ourselves at any given point in history ("we" being the majority
of people, those conforming to the rules of whatever system wields enough power to dictate the
story it wants everyone to be telling themselves). Everyone understands this intuitively, but
the majority of people pretend they don't in order to be able to get by in the system, which
punishes anyone who does not conform to its rules, or who contradicts its story. So, basically,
to manufacture the truth, all you really need is (a) a story, and (b) enough power to coerce a
majority of people in your society to pretend to believe it.
I'm not going to debunk the Guardian article here. It has been debunked by better
debunkers than I (e.g., Jonathan
Cook ,
Craig Murray ,
Glenn Greenwald , Moon of Alabama, and many others). [ ed. including
us ]
The short version is, The Guardian's Luke Harding, a shameless hack who will affix
his name to any propaganda an intelligence agency feeds him, alleged that Paul Manafort,
Trump's former campaign manager, secretly met with Julian Assange (and unnamed "Russians") on
numerous occasions from 2013 to 2016, presumably to conspire to collude to brainwash Americans
into not voting for Clinton. Harding's earth-shaking allegations, which The Guardian
prominently featured and flogged, were based on well, absolutely nothing, except the usual
anonymous "intelligence sources." After actual journalists pointed this out, The
Guardian quietly revised the piece (employing the subjunctive mood rather
liberally), buried it in the back pages of its website, and otherwise pretended like they had
never published it.
The Guardian's latest attack on Julian Assange was not only a fallacious smear, it
represented a desperate attempt on behalf of the British intelligence community to conflate the
pending US charges against the journalist with Russiagate. The Guardian's article seeks to
deflect from the reality that the prosecution of Assange will
focus on Chelsea Manning-Era releases and Vault 7, not the DNC or Podesta emails.
We assert this claim based on the timing of the publication, the Guardian's history of
subservience to British intelligence agencies, animosity between The Guardian and WikiLeaks,
and the longstanding personal feud between Guardian journalist Luke Harding and Assange. This
conclusion is also supported by Harding's financial and career interest in propping up the
Russiagate narrative
"... " The information in this post alone should make everyone question why in the world the Guardian would continue to use a source like Villavicencio who is obviously tied to the U.S. government, the CIA, individuals like Thor Halvorssen and Bill Browder, and opponents of both Julian Assange and former President Rafael Correa." ..."
"... 2014 Ecuador's Foreign Ministry accused the Guardian of publishing a story based on a document it says was fabricated by Fernando Villavicencio, pictured below with the authors of the fake Manafort-Assange 'secret meeting' story, Harding and Collyns." ..."
"... "There is also evidence that the author of this falsified document is Fernando Villavicencio, a convicted slanderer and opponent of Ecuador's current government. This can be seen from the file properties of the document that the Guardian had originally posted (but which it has since taken down and replaced with a version with this evidence removed)." ..."
"... " This video from the news wire Andes alleges that Villavicencio's name appeared in the metadata of the document originally uploaded alongside The Guardian's story." ..."
"... One of my greatest journalistic experiences was working for months on Assange's research with colleagues from the British newspaper the Guardian, Luke Harding, Dan Collins and the young journalist Cristina Solórzano from @ somos_lafuente " ..."
"... The tweet suggests, but does not specifically state, that Villavicencio worked with the disastrous duo on the Assange-Manafort piece. Given the history and associations of all involved, this statement alone should cause extreme skepticism in any unsubstantiated claims, or 'anonymously sourced' claims, the Guardian makes concerning Julian Assange and Ecuador. ..."
"... The two photographs of Villavicencio with Harding and Collyns as well as the evidence showing he co-authored the piece doesn't just capture a trio of terrible journalists, it documents the involvement of multiple actors associated with intelligence agencies and fabricated stories. ..."
"... Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win." ..."
"... That Harding and Collyns worked intensively with Villavicencio for "months" on the "Assange story," the fact that Villavicencio was initially listed as a co-author on the original version of the Guardian's article, and the recent denial by Fidel Narvaez , raises the likelihood that Harding and the Guardian were not simply the victims of bad sources who duped them, as claimed by some. ..."
Regular followers of WikiLeaks-related news are at this point familiar with the multiple
serious infractions of journalistic ethics by Luke Harding and the Guardian, especially (though
not exclusively) when it comes to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. However, another individual at
the heart of this matter is far less familiar to the public. That man is Fernando
Villavicencio, a prominent Ecuadorian political activist and journalist, director of the
USAID-funded NGO Fundamedios and editor of online publication FocusEcuador .
Most readers are also aware of the Guardian's recent publication of claims that Julian
Assange met with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort on three occasions. This has now
been
definitively debunked by Fidel Narvaez, the former Consul at Ecuador's London embassy
between 2010 and 2018, who says Paul Manafort has never visited the embassy during the time he
was in charge there. But this was hardly the first time the outlet published a dishonest smear
authored by Luke Harding against Assange. The paper is also no stranger to publishing stories
based on fabricated documents.
In May,
Disobedient Media reported on the Guardian's hatchet-job relating to 'Operation Hotel,' or
rather, the normal
security operations of the embassy under former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. That
hit-piece ,
co-authored by Harding and Dan Collyns, asserted among other things that (according to an
anonymous source) Assange hacked the embassy's security system. The allegation was promptly
refuted by Correa as "absurd" in an interview with The Intercept , and also by WikiLeaks as an "anonymous libel" with which the
Guardian had "gone too far this time. We're suing."
How is Villavicencio tied to The Guardian's latest smear of Assange? Intimately, it turns
out.
Who is Fernando Villavicencio?
Earlier this year, an independent journalist writing under the pseudonym Jimmyslama penned a
comprehensive report
detailing Villavicencio's relationships with pro-US actors within Ecuador and the US. She sums
up her findings, which are worth reading in full :
" The information in this post alone should make everyone question why in the world the
Guardian would continue to use a source like Villavicencio who is obviously tied to the U.S.
government, the CIA, individuals like Thor Halvorssen and Bill Browder, and opponents of both
Julian Assange and former President Rafael Correa."
As most readers recall, it was Correa who granted Assange asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy
in London. Villavicencio was so vehemently opposed to Rafael Correa's socialist government that
during the failed 2010 coup against Correa he falsely accused the President of "crimes against
humanity" by ordering police to fire on the crowds (it was actually Correa who was being shot
at). Correa sued him for libel, and won, but pardoned Villavicencio for the damages awarded by
the court.
Assange legal analyst Hanna Jonasson
recently made the link between the Ecuadorian forger Villavicencio and Luke Harding's Guardian
stories based on dubious documents explicit. She Tweeted : 2014 Ecuador's
Foreign Ministry accused the Guardian of publishing a story based on a document it says was
fabricated by Fernando Villavicencio, pictured below with the authors of the fake
Manafort-Assange 'secret meeting' story, Harding and Collyns."
Jonasson included a link to a 2014 official Ecuadorian government statement which reads in part:
"There is also evidence that
the author of this falsified document is Fernando Villavicencio, a convicted slanderer and
opponent of Ecuador's current government. This can be seen from the file properties of the
document that the Guardian had originally posted (but which it has since taken down and
replaced with a version with this evidence removed)."
The statement also notes that
Villavicencio had fled the country after his conviction for libeling Correa during the 2010
coup and was at that time living as a fugitive in the United States.
It is incredibly significant, as Jonasson argues, that the authors of the Guardian's latest
libelous article were photographed with
Villavicencio in Ecuador shortly before publication of the Guardian's claim that Assange
had conducted meetings with Manafort.
Jonasson's Twitter thread also states: " This video from the news wire
Andes alleges that Villavicencio's name appeared in the metadata of the document originally
uploaded alongside The Guardian's story." The 2014 Guardian piece, which aimed a falsified
shot at then-President Rafael Correa, would not be the last time Villavicencio's name would
appear on a controversial Guardian story before being scrubbed from existence.
Just days after the backlash against the Guardian reached fever-pitch, Villavicencio had the
gall to publish another image of himself
with Harding and Collyns, gloating : "
One of my greatest journalistic experiences was
working for months on Assange's research with colleagues from the British newspaper the
Guardian, Luke Harding, Dan Collins and the young journalist Cristina Solórzano from @somos_lafuente " [Translated from Spanish]
The tweet suggests, but does not specifically state, that Villavicencio worked with the
disastrous duo on the Assange-Manafort piece. Given the history and associations of all
involved, this statement alone should cause extreme skepticism in any unsubstantiated claims,
or 'anonymously sourced' claims, the Guardian makes concerning Julian Assange and Ecuador.
Astoundingly, and counter to Villavicencio's uncharacteristic coyness, a recent video posted
by WikiLeaks via Twitter does show that
Villavicencio was originally listed as a co-author of the Guardian's Manafort-Assange
allegations, before his name was edited out of the online article. The original version can be
viewed, however, thanks to archive services.
The two photographs of Villavicencio with Harding and Collyns as well as the evidence
showing he co-authored the piece doesn't just capture a trio of terrible journalists, it
documents the involvement of multiple actors associated with intelligence agencies and
fabricated stories.
All of this provoke the question: did Villavicencio provide more bogus documents to Harding
and Collyns – Harding said he'd seen a document, though he didn't publish one (or even
quote from it) so readers might judge its veracity for themselves – or perhaps these
three invented the accusations out of whole-cloth?
Either way, to quote WikiLeaks, the Guardian has "gone too far this time" and its
already-tattered reputation is in total shambles.
Successful Propaganda, Failed Journalism
Craig Murray calls Harding an " MI6
tool ", but to this writer, Harding seems worse than an MI6 stooge: He's a wannabe-spook,
hanging from the coat-tails of anonymous intelligence officers and publishing their drivel as
fact without so much as a skeptical blink. His lack of self-awareness and conflation of
anecdote with evidence sets him apart as either one of the most blatant, fumbling propagandists
of our era, or the most hapless hack journalist to stain the pages of printed news.
To provide important context on Harding's previous journalistic irresponsibility, we again
recall that he co-authored the infamous book containing the encryption password of the entire
Cablegate archive, leading to a leak of the unredacted State Department Cables across the
internet. Although the guilty Guardian journalists tried to blame Assange for the debacle, it
was they themselves who ended up on the receiving end of some well-deserved scorn.
In addition to continuing the Guardian's and Villavicencio's vendetta against Assange and
WikiLeaks, it is clearly in Harding's financial interests to conflate the
pending prosecution of Assange with Russiagate. As this writer
previously noted , Harding penned a book on the subject, titled: " Collusion: Secret
Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win." Tying Assange to
Russiagate is good for business, as it stokes public interest in the self-evidently faulty
narrative his book supports.
Even more concerning is the claim amongst publishing circles, fueled by recent events, that
Harding may be writing another book on Assange, with publication presumably timed for his
pending arrest and extradition and designed to cash in on the trial. If that is in fact the
case, the specter arises that Harding is working to push for Assange's arrest, not just on
behalf of US, UK or Ecuadorian intelligence interests, but also to increase his own book
sales.
That Harding and Collyns worked intensively with Villavicencio for "months" on the "Assange
story," the fact that Villavicencio was initially listed as a co-author on the original version
of the Guardian's article, and the recent denial by Fidel Narvaez
, raises the likelihood that Harding and the Guardian were not simply the victims of bad
sources who duped them, as claimed by some.
It indicates that the fake story was constructed deliberately on behalf of the very same
intelligence establishment that the Guardian is nowadays only too happy to take the knee
for.
In summary, one of the most visible establishment media outlets published a fake story on
its front page, in an attempt to manufacture a crucial cross-over between the pending
prosecution of Assange and the Russiagate saga. This represents the latest example in an
onslaught of fake news directed at Julian Assange and WikiLeaks ever since they published the
largest CIA leak in history in the form of Vault 7, an onslaught which appears to be building
in both intensity and absurdity as time goes on.
The Guardian has destroyed its reputation, and in the process, revealed the desperation of
the establishment when it comes to Assange.
Flynn "treason" is not related to Russia probe and just confirm that Nueller in engaged in witch hunt.
I believe half of Senate and House of Representative might go to jail if they were dug with the ferocity Mueller digs Flynn's past.
So while Flynn behavior as Turkey lobbyist (BTW Turkey is a NATO country and not that different int his sense from the US -- and you
can name a lot of UK lobbyists in high echelons of the US government, starting with McCabe and Strzok) is reprehensible, this is still a witch hunt
When American law enforcement and intelligence officials, who carry Top Secret clearances and authority to collect intelligence
or pursue a criminal investigation, decide to employ lies and intimidation to silence or intimidates those who worked for Donald
Trump's Presidency, we see shadow of Comrage Stalin Great Terror Trials over the USA.
Former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn passes by members of the
media as he departs after his sentencing was delayed at U.S. District Court in
Washington, U.S., December 18, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
By Jan Wolfe and Ginger Gibson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge fiercely criticized President Donald
Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Tuesday for lying to
FBI agents in a probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and
delayed sentencing him until Flynn has finished helping prosecutors.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan told Flynn, a retired U.S. Army
lieutenant general and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency,
that he had arguably betrayed his country. Sullivan also noted that Flynn had
operated as an undeclared lobbyist for Turkey even as he worked on Trump's
campaign team and prepared to be his White House national security adviser.
Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about his December 2016
conversations with Sergei Kislyak, then Russia's ambassador in Washington,
about U.S. sanctions imposed on Moscow by the administration of Trump's
Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, after Trump's election victory but before
he took office.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller, leading the investigation into possible
collusion between Trump's campaign team and Russia ahead of the election, had
asked the judge not to sentence Flynn to prison because he had already
provided "substantial" cooperation over the course of many interviews.
But Sullivan sternly told Flynn his actions were abhorrent, noting that
Flynn had also lied to senior White House officials, who in turn misled the
public. The judge said he had read additional facts about Flynn's behavior
that have not been made public.
At one point, Sullivan asked prosecutors if Flynn could have been charged
with treason, although the judge later said he had not been suggesting such a
charge was warranted.
"Arguably, you sold your country out," Sullivan told Flynn. "I'm not hiding
my disgust, my disdain for this criminal offense."
Flynn, dressed in a suit and tie, showed little emotion throughout the
hearing, and spoke calmly when he confirmed his guilty plea and answered
questions from the judge.
Sullivan appeared ready to sentence Flynn to prison but then gave him the
option of a delay in his sentencing so he could fully cooperate with any
pending investigations and bolster his case for leniency. The judge told Flynn
he could not promise that he would not eventually sentence him to serve prison
time.
Flynn accepted that offer. Sullivan did not set a new date for sentencing
but asked Mueller's team and Flynn's attorney to give him a status report by
March 13.
Prosecutors said Flynn already had provided most of the cooperation he
could, but it was possible he might be able to help investigators further.
Flynn's attorney said his client is cooperating with federal prosecutors in a
case against Bijan Rafiekian, his former business partner who has been charged
with unregistered lobbying for Turkey.
Rafiekian pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to those charges in federal court
in Alexandria, Virginia. His trial is scheduled for Feb. 11. Flynn is
expected to testify.
Prosecutors have said Rafiekian and Flynn lobbied to
have Washington extradite a Muslim cleric who lives in the United States
and is accused by Turkey's government of backing a 2016 coup attempt. Flynn
has not been charged in that case.
'LOCK HER UP!'
Flynn was a high-profile adviser to Trump's campaign team. At the
Republican Party's national convention in 2016, Flynn led Trump's
supporters in cries of "Lock her up!" directed against Democratic candidate
Hillary Clinton.
A group of protesters, including some who chanted "Lock him up,"
gathered outside the courthouse on Tuesday, along with a large inflatable
rat fashioned to look like Trump. Several Flynn supporters also were there,
cheering as he entered and exited. One held a sign that read, "Michael
Flynn is a hero."
Flynn became national security adviser when Trump took office in January
2017, but lasted only 24 days before being fired.
He told FBI investigators on Jan. 24, 2017, that he had not discussed
the U.S. sanctions with Kislyak when in fact he had, according to his plea
agreement. Trump has said he fired Flynn because he also lied to Vice
President Mike Pence about the contacts with Kislyak.
Trump has said Flynn did not break the law and has voiced support for
him, raising speculation the Republican president might pardon him.
"Good luck today in court to General Michael Flynn. Will be interesting
to see what he has to say, despite tremendous pressure being put on him,
about Russian Collusion in our great and, obviously, highly successful
political campaign. There was no Collusion!" Trump wrote on Twitter on
Tuesday morning.
After the hearing, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters
the FBI had "ambushed" Flynn in the way agents questioned him, but said his
"activities" at the center of the case "don't have anything to do with the
president" and disputed that Flynn had committed treason.
"We wish General Flynn well," Sanders said.
In contrast, Trump has called his former long-time personal lawyer
Michael Cohen, who has pleaded guilty to separate charges, a "rat."
Mueller's investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 election and
whether Trump has unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe has cast a shadow
over his presidency. Several former Trump aides have pleaded guilty in
Mueller's probe, but Flynn was the first former Trump White House official
to do so. Mueller also has charged a series of Russian individuals and
entities.
Trump has called Mueller's investigation a "witch hunt" and has denied
collusion with Moscow.
Russia has denied meddling in the election, contrary to the conclusion
of U.S. intelligence agencies that have said Moscow used hacking and
propaganda to try to sow discord in the United States and boost Trump's
chances against Clinton.
Lying to the FBI carries a statutory maximum sentence of five years in
prison. Flynn's plea agreement stated that he was eligible for a sentence
of between zero and six months.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Ginger
Gibson; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Kieran Murray and
Will Dunham)
Matt o'Brien and Barbara Ortutay, AP Technology Writers
,
Associated Press
•
December
17, 2018
<img alt="Key takeaways from new reports on Russian disinformation" src="https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/9VGA29inJ83dPeqC.cvqTg--~A/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjtzbT0xO3c9ODAwO2lsPXBsYW5l/http://globalfinance.zenfs.com/images/US_AHTTP_AP_HEADLINES_BUSINESS/e66de17c8e1a4cecaf1da81f2bf87093_original.jpg" itemprop="url"/>
Some suspected Russian-backed fake social media accounts on Facebook.
Russians seeking to influence U.S. elections through social media had their
eyes on Instagram and the black community.
These were among the findings in two reports released Monday by the Senate
intelligence committee. Separate studies from University of Oxford researchers
and the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge reveal insights into how Russian
agents sought to influence Americans by saturating their favorite online
services and apps with hidden propaganda.
Here are the highlights:
INSTAGRAM'S "MEME WARFARE"
Both reports show that misinformation on Facebook's Instagram may have had
broader reach than the interference on Facebook itself.
The New Knowledge study says that since 2015, the Instagram posts generated
187 million engagements, such as comments or likes, compared with 77 million
on Facebook.
And the barrage of image-centric Instagram "memes" has only grown since the
2016 election. Russian agents shifted their focus to Instagram after the
public last year became aware of the widespread manipulation on Facebook and
Twitter.
NOT JUST ADS
Revelations last year that Russian agents used rubles to pay for some of their
propaganda ads drew attention to how gullible tech companies were in allowing
their services to be manipulated.
But neither ads nor automated "bots" were as effective as unpaid posts
hand-crafted by human agents pretending to be Americans. Such posts were more
likely to be shared and commented on, and they rose in volume during key dates
in U.S. politics such as during the presidential debates in 2016 or after the
Obama administration's post-election announcement that it would investigate
Russian hacking.
"These personalized messages exposed U.S. users to a wide range of
disinformation and junk news linked to on external websites, including content
designed to elicit outrage and cynicism," says the report by Oxford
researchers, who worked with social media analysis firm Graphika.
DEMOGRAPHIC TARGETING
Both reports found that Russian agents tried to polarize Americans in part by
targeting African-American communities extensively. They did so by campaigning
for black voters to boycott elections or follow the wrong voting procedures in
2016, according to the Oxford report.
The New Knowledge report added that agents were "developing Black audiences
and recruiting Black Americans as assets" beyond how they were targeting
either left- or right-leaning voters.
The reports also support previous findings that the influence operations
sought to polarize Americans by sowing political divisions on issues such as
immigration and cultural and religious identities. The goal, according to the
New Knowledge report, was to "create and reinforce tribalism within each
targeted community."
Such efforts extended to Google-owned YouTube, despite Google's earlier
assertion to Congress that Russian-made videos didn't target specific segments
of the population.
PINTEREST TO POKEMON
The New Knowledge report says the Russian troll operation worked in many ways
like a conventional corporate branding campaign, using a variety of different
technology services to deliver the same messages to different groups of
people.
Among the sites infiltrated with propaganda were popular image-heavy services
like Pinterest and Tumblr, chatty forums like Reddit, and a wonky geopolitics
blog promoted from Russian-run accounts on Facebook and YouTube.
Even the silly smartphone game "Pokemon Go" wasn't immune. A Tumblr post
encouraged players to name their Pokemon character after a victim of police
brutality.
WHAT NOW?
Both reports warn that some of these influence campaigns are ongoing.
The Oxford researchers note that 2016 and 2017 saw "significant efforts" to
disrupt elections around the world not just by Russia, but by domestic
political parties spreading disinformation.
They warn that online propaganda represents a threat to democracies and public
life. They urge social media companies to share data with the public far more
broadly than they have so far.
"Protecting our democracies now means setting the rules of fair play before
voting day, not after," the Oxford report says.
4 hours
ago
so where's the evidence that Russian
facebook or twitter posts changed a single vote?
"... If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs ... If you can wait and not be tired by waiting ... If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim ... If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you ... Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it. ..."
The stock market has had a volatile year, and it's not over yet: The Dow Jones Industrial
Average lost more than 520 points on Monday and the S&P 500 fell 2.1 percent. Both are in
correction and on pace for their worst December performance since the Great Depression in
1931.
But for the average person, shifts in the market , even ones as dramatic as the ones we've
seen this year, shouldn't be cause for panic. During times of volatility, seasoned investor
Warren Buffett says it's best to stay calm and stick to the basics, meaning, buy-and-hold for
the long term.
So, during downturns, "heed these lines" from the classic 19th century Rudyard Kipling poem
"If -- " which help illustrate this lesson, Buffett wrote in his 2017 Berkshire Hathaway
shareholder letter :
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs ...
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting ...
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim ...
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you ...
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it.
Market downturns are inevitable, Buffett pointed out, using his own company as an example:
"Berkshire, itself, provides some vivid examples of how price randomness in the short term can
obscure long-term growth in value. For the last 53 years, the company has built value by
reinvesting its earnings and letting compound interest work its magic. Year by year, we have
moved forward. Yet Berkshire shares have suffered four truly major dips."
He went on to cite each of the steep share-price drops, including the most recent one from
September 2008 to March 2009, when Berkshire shares plummeted 50.7 percent.
Major declines have happened before and are going to happen again, he says: "No one can tell
you when these will happen. The light can at any time go from green to red without pausing at
yellow."
Rather than watch the market closely and panic, keep a level head. Market downturns "offer
extraordinary opportunities to those who are not handicapped by debt," he says, which brings up
another important investing lesson: Never borrow money to buy stocks .
"There is simply no telling how far stocks can fall in a short period," writes Buffett.
"Even if your borrowings are small and your positions aren't immediately threatened by the
plunging market, your mind may well become rattled by scary headlines and breathless
commentary. And an unsettled mind will not make good decisions."
Don't miss: Warren Buffett and Ray Dalio agree on what to do when the stock market
tanks
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Stock Sell-Off Defies Everything the Bulls Hoped Would Stop It
(Bloomberg) -- Valuations aren't stopping it. Jerome Powell's softer tone failed
to soothe anyone. The moratorium on tariffs is a fading memory and now the
sturdiest chart level of the year is in danger of giving way.
A stock rout that bulls thought was finished three different times since October
is in a new and ominous phase, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing 1,004
points in two days. No Santa Claus rally. Instead, the S&P 500 Index is hurtling
toward the second-worst December on record.
"The stock market doesn't care what looks good now. It's wondering if
fundamentals will deteriorate in the future," said Peter Mallouk, co-chief
investment officer of Creative Planning, which has around $36 billion under
management. "You have a lot of people that are scared, and they're sitting on the
sidelines to wait it out."
Waiting it out is starting to look like the only viable strategy. On Monday, the
S&P 500 briefly pierced a level that had been a psychological foundation for 10
months, its intraday low from Feb. 9. Valuations shrink and shrink -- computer
and software stocks trade at 15 times next year's earnings estimates, cheaper
than utilities and soapmakers -- and the selling just gets worse.
With Monday's 54-point loss, the S&P has now fallen 2 percent or more six times
this quarter. The Nasdaq Composite has done it 10 times. Both are the most since
the third quarter of 2011.
Pinning a single cause on the carnage has become an exercise in absurdity, with
analysts cycling through a rotating list of reasons that include trade, Donald
Trump's legal travails, China data, sinking oil and cooling home prices. Anyone
daring to suggest economic growth may slow in 2019 is pointed to charts showing
factories, employment and profits are booming -- but those assurances are
starting to fall on deaf ears.
While S&P 500 Index futures indicated a potential respite in Asian trading
Tuesday, rising as much as 0.5 percent, traders remained cautious.
Investors "are too worried, but that's the big driver behind the declines we've
seen recently, overall worries about U.S. growth and worries about global
growth," said Kate Warne, investment strategist at Edward Jones. "Investors have
gotten very nervous about the changes they're seeing ahead and they're uncertain
about what they mean."
A troubling sign for Americans: equity pain, which all year has been worse
overseas, is landing with more force in the U.S. The Russell 2000 Index of small
caps, a proxy for domestically oriented companies, slid into a bear market
Monday, falling 21 percent since Aug. 31.
On the other hand, since hitting a 19-month low in late October, the MSCI
Emerging Markets Index has trended higher, even as the S&P 500 Index keeps making
new lows. Stocks in the EM gauge have outperformed the S&P 500 for three
consecutive weeks, the most since late January, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
To comfort themselves in the face of such depressing facts, beaten-up investors
have looked at past corrections and noticed that this one is still playing out
according a relatively benign plan. Under the pattern, major swoons that have
interrupted the bull market that began in 2009 have taken around 100 days to tire
out before dip-buyers swooped in to put things right.
At the same time, anyone betting the New Year will bring an end to the volatility
should be aware that bull markets can die slow deaths. The 88-day sell-off has
been going on roughly one-third as long as it has taken for the S&P 500 to fall
into the 11 bear markets it's suffered going back to World War II.
How many more sellers than buyers were there on Monday? The volume of stocks
trading lower on the New York Stock Exchange reached 1 billion shares, compared
with 158 million that were bought. The difference in trading volume, at 883
million shares, is on track to become the biggest weekly gap since 2016, data
compiled by Bloomberg show.
That the worst two-day sell-off since October landed on the same week Powell's
Federal Reserve is expected to announce its ninth interest rate hike was grist
for those who see central bank policy behind everything. As willingly as the Fed
chairman has walked back his most hawkish pronouncements, nobody thinks monetary
policy is likely to loosen even as growth in the economy and earnings slows from
this year's pace.
"That's what the market is struggling with right now -- do they believe in a
growth slowdown to trend or something more sinister than that?" said Phil
Camporeale, managing director of multi-asset solutions for JPMorgan Asset
Management. "I don't think people really want to take risk, but especially
trying to catch a falling knife on equity prices."
(Adds details on S&P 500 futures trading in seventh paragraph.)
j
3 hours ago
Don't borrow money to buy stocks. Got
that ? No margin accounts. Ever.
H
5
hours ago
This has been a long, ho-hum recovery
from the Great Recession. Asset prices got way ahead of the
fundamentals. Everything returns to the mean; margins, interest
rates, unemployment, etc. Count your blessings, a nine year
bull is rare.
s
3
hours ago
To make matters worse I read a
story earlier today indicating that the hedge funds in
Europe are literally being wiped out and those are their
favourite & biggest ones. Yup, Alex Jones (yeah I know
how everyone in mainstream media loves to hate the guy
and even censors him) predicted what would happen back in
2008 or 2009. He said that the recession then was just
the start of it. That the powers that be would facilitate
a come back, so that people could get into EVEN BIGGER
DEBTS (which they did with the 0% interest rates) and
then they'd engineer an even more massive crash that
would suck all the liquidity and equity out of the
markets towards the big wigs that controls everything -
read BOIS (Bank of International Settlements) which is
owned by a few very wealthy secretive people and they are
the ones that basically owns and operates the banks the
world over - and dictating all the banking laws too. They
just keep getting richer & richer at our expense. Like as
if they need all that wealth.
K
1 hour ago
40 years watching markets and people
just do not understand that forward PE's get cut in half or go
as low as 5x PE with a recession -- all the fluff on the upside
gets parsed out and once the income flows slow the gratuitous
accounting stops and suddenly there is transparency and people
wait 10 years to get even-maybe 20 this cycle- and the public
realizes they have been hoodwinked
b
2 hours
ago
Maybe POTUS can rehire Yellin after he
fires Powell (if only he could)
"... Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive of DoubleLine Capital, on Monday said the S&P 500 stock index is headed to new lows and that U.S. equities are in a long-term bear market. ..."
"... "I think it is a bear market. I think we've had the first leg down and the second leg down is usually more painful than the first leg down," said Gundlach, who oversees more than $123 billion. ..."
"... "I think this lasts a long time. It has a lot to do with the fact that, I believe, that we're in a situation that is ... highly unusual - that we're increasing the budget deficit so spectacularly so late in the cycle while the Fed is hiking interest rates." ..."
"... The intraday low for the year in the S&P was on Feb. 9, when it bottomed at 2532.69. The low close for the year was on April 2 at 2581.88. On Monday, the S&P closed 2545.94. ..."
<img alt="FILE PHOTO: Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine Capital, speaks during the Sohn Investment Conference in New York" src="https://s.yimg.com/it/api/res/1.2/BXVsdhZsK0OiZdcOd8_ffw--~A/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7c209MTt3PTQ1MDtoPTMwMDtpbD1wbGFuZQ--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2018-12-17T182416Z_1_LYNXMPEEBG1NJ_RTROPTP_2_FUNDS-DOUBLELINE-GUNDLACH.JPG.cf.jpg" itemprop="url"/>
NEW YORK (Reuters) -
Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive of DoubleLine Capital,
on Monday said the S&P 500 stock index is headed to new lows and that U.S.
equities are in a long-term bear market.
Gundlach, speaking on CNBC TV, said passive investing has reached "mania status"
and will exacerbate market problems.
"I think it is a bear market. I think we've had the first leg down and the
second leg down is usually more painful than the first leg down," said
Gundlach, who oversees more than $123 billion.
"I think this lasts a long time. It has a lot to do with the fact that, I
believe, that we're in a situation that is ... highly unusual - that we're
increasing the budget deficit so spectacularly so late in the cycle while the
Fed is hiking interest rates."
The S&P 500 briefly erased its losses in late-morning trade on Monday but resumed
its steep decline and pierced through Gundlach's target after he made his "bear
market" comments.
The intraday low for the year in the S&P was on Feb. 9, when it bottomed at
2532.69. The low close for the year was on April 2 at 2581.88. On Monday, the S&P
closed 2545.94.
Investors are also bracing for the Federal Reserve's last rate decision of the
year on Wednesday, when they are expected to raise U.S. interest rates for a
fourth time for 2018.
Gundlach said the Fed should not raise rates this week but will. "The bond market
is basically saying, 'You know, Fed, there's no way you should be raising
interest rates'," he said.
The U.S. central bank's quantitative tightening campaign has made markets nervous
because of the ultra-low levels that have remained in place for several years,
Gundlach said.
"The problem is that the Fed shouldn't have kept them (rates) so low for so long.
The problem is, we shouldn't have had negative interest rates like we still have
in Europe. We shouldn't have had done quantitative easing, which is a circular
financing scheme," he said.
Gundlach also said the China-U.S. trade war gets worse from here. "China doesn't
like to be told what to do by President Trump," he said. For its part, "I think
they (the United States) will probably ratchet up the tariffs."
The remarks by Gundlach, who in April recommended investors short Facebook Inc,
extended losses in Facebook shares on Monday after he characterized the social
media giant as a "diabolical data-collection monster that would ultimately fall
victim to regulation." The stock closed 2.69 percent lower.
Gundlach took a shot at passive investment strategies such as index funds,
declaring the investing strategy a "mania" that is causing widespread problems in
global stock markets.
"I'm not at all a fan of passive investing. In fact, I think passive investing
... has reached mania status as we went into the peak of the global stock
market," Gundlach said. "I think, in fact, that passive investing and robo
advisers ... are going to exacerbate problems in the market because it's hurting
behavior," he said.
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Traders and investors will be glad to see the back of 2018. It's been
the worst rout since 1901, by Deutsche Bank AG's reckoning, with almost every asset class
delivering losses. These charts illustrate the backdrop to what went wrong this year –
and hint at what could go better in 2019.
$14,889,930,106,680
That's how much the total value of companies listed on the world's stock markets has
declined since peaking at $87,289,962,917,450 on Jan 28. In other words, almost $15 trillion
has been wiped off the global equity market this year.
The list of potential motivations for the sell-off is long and includes rising geopolitical
risks, the prospect of trade wars erupting, the risk that a slowdown in global growth that
could degenerate into a worldwide recession, and the evergreen what-goes-up-must-come-down. But
might it just be possible that investors start to take the view stocks have fallen far and fast
enough to offer value next year?
Talkin' About a Recession
It's clear that one of the fundamental worries spooking investors is that the period of
coordinated global growth that propelled stock markets higher in recent years is coming to an
end.
The R word is increasingly cropping up in news articles. But economists put the chances of a
recession in the coming year at 15 percent in the U.S. and 18 percent in the euro zone,
according to Bloomberg surveys. Even the Brexit-battered U.K. economy is only at a 20 percent
risk, while for Japan the likelihood rises to 30 percent. Perhaps those concerns about a
recession are overdone.
Curving to Inversion
Or perhaps not. One trend was omnipresent in 2018 – the relentless flattening of the
yield curve in the U.S.
Yields at the short end of the Treasury market pushed higher with every quarterly increase
in the Fed's benchmark interest rate. Longer-dated bonds danced to a different beat,
particularly as the October equity shakeout drove a flight to quality.
An inverted yield curve – when yields on shorter-dated bonds are higher than their
longer-dated counterparts – is often seen as an indicator of impending recession. It's
finally happened: yields on five-years are below those for two-years. A key question for 2019
will be how the feedback loop develops between the Federal Reserve's policy intentions and the
shape of the curve.
Quantitative Tightening
The Fed has been reducing its economic stimulus by not replacing the bonds it bought under
its Quantitative Easing program as they mature.
But this "normalization" is already taking its toll as the sharp equity market sell off in
October showed. The Fed has a tricky choice to make in 2019 about whether it can persist both
with hiking rates and reducing quantitative easing. Is the world ready yet to stand on its own
feet without ongoing central bank support?
No Alarms and No Surprises
Economic surprise indexes – which measure actual economic data compared to forecasts
– are designed to be portents of the future. And for 2018 they largely did their job.
U.S. strength is waning and Brexit is taking a toll on the U.K. In particular the third-quarter
weakness in euro-zone growth, when both Germany and Italy turned negative, was well-flagged
from as early as the first quarter.
For 2019 there is a more neutral outlook, but it is interesting that the U.S. economic data
is much more evenly balanced in terms of expectations. Europe continues to be the worst
performer – quite something considering the predicament the U.K. is in.
Europe Stumbles
Europe has seen growth falter this year, with Italy's political crisis and Germany's diesel
vehicle emissions scandal taking their toll.
Italy's third-quarter growth was revised to -0.1 percent, beating only Germany. The
prospects for 2019 are none-too-rosy, bar the notable exception of Spain, as momentum has
evaporated. Europe remains in the sick bay of the developed world – just as the European
Central Bank prepares to remove its monetary stimulus to the economy.
Relying on China
China came to the global economy's rescue in the wake of the financial crisis, but it is
starting to pay the price for increasing its debt to create additional GDP growth. Total social
financing as a percentage of gross domestic product – a broad measure of credit creation
– is flat-lining. Adding extra debt to boost the economy is becoming a less effective
measure. It is not just the threat of a trade war with America that has pushed Chinese equities
down by 20 percent in 2018.
China faces the classic emerging-market middle-income trap where growth fueled by credit
runs out of road. This debt bubble will not be easily fixed.
Finding Reverse Again
Japanese Prime Minister's famous three economic arrows are failing to hit their mark. Debt
that stands in excess of 250 percent of GDP is hampering all efforts to resuscitate inflation
and sustainable growth in the world's third-largest economy. Third-quarter GDP contracted 2.5
percent on an annualized basis, the worst performance for four years.
Tokyo might be hosting the Olympics in 2020, but there is little benefit flowing through so
far. Japan, like the rest of the once dominant Asian export powerhouses, is just as beholden to
the outcome of the trade war with Trump as China is.
Hunting for Neutral
Until very recently, many economists were anticipating at least four more rate increases
from the Fed next year at a pace of one per quarter. While the futures market still suggests a
Dec. 19 hike is a done deal, the outlook for monetary policy in 2019 has shifted significantly
in recent weeks.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has trimmed its forecast for number of potential Fed rate increases
in 2019; billionaire fund manager Paul Tudor Jones said earlier this month that he's not
expecting any additional tightening from the U.S. central bank next year. A halt to the hikes
might prove as pleasing to financial markets as to President Donald Trump.
Credit Squeeze
Companies with dollar bonds have seen their borrowing costs soar relative to those of the
U.S. government as the Fed has driven its benchmark interest rate higher this year. Investors
have seen a corresponding slump in the value of the corporate debt they own.
Any slowdown in the ascent of U.S. borrowing costs as the Fed pauses for breath should give
succor to corporate bonds – provided it isn't accompanied by a rise in defaults.
Other People's Money
It's been a terrible year for the stocks of firms that manage other people's money for a
living.
Fund managers tend to invest in each other's shares. And you'd expect them to have
better-than-average insight into the business prospects of their peers. So watch for an
inflection point in asset management stocks – it might be a sign of a turning point for
the wider market.
Happy Birthday to the Euro
The common European currency celebrates its 20th birthday at the start of January. During
the two decades of its existence, rumors of the euro's demise have been proven to be greatly
exaggerated.
The European debt crisis at the beginning of this decade posed an existential threat to the
euro's well-being. The currency survived. At several points in the past few years, Greece
seemed on the verge of either quitting or being ousted from the project. Its membership
survived. And Italy's election of a populist government earlier this year raised the prospect
of a founding member threatening to leave if it wasn't allowed to break the bloc's budget
rules. Still, the euro survives.
In fact, as the chart above shows, investors are close to the most relaxed they've been
about the euro fracturing in more than five years based on the Sentix Euro Break-Up Index, a
monthly gauge of investor concern about the threat. So let's end by wishing the euro many happy
returns.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Edward Evans at [email protected]
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP
and its owners.
Mark Gilbert is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering asset management. He previously was
the London bureau chief for Bloomberg News. He is also the author of "Complicit: How Greed and
Collusion Made the Credit Crisis Unstoppable."
Marcus Ashworth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering European markets. He spent three
decades in the banking industry, most recently as chief markets strategist at Haitong
Securities in London.
"... christophere steele admitted before a british court today that he was hired by the clintons/obama/DNC to make up the dossier as a weapon to use against trump as a backup plan in case he won the election.. this proves the DNC lied, paid for a fake dossier, and comey admitted he knew the fake dossier was false before using it to get a FISC warrant and to spy on trump, which was used as an excuse for the mueller investigation.. yahoo news and leftwing media arent covering the story.. educate yourselves ..."
1 hour ago
When I read articles like this I look to see who wrote it, printed it etc. When I see
Bloomberg, Yahoo, HuffPo I approach it as fake news. Now I no longer watch any of Fox news
as they are fast becoming just like the rest of the propaganda outlets. This is just
inflammatory anti Trump drivel with no basis in fact.
O 1 hour
ago Was this the interview report that was written 7 months after the interview?
R 44 minutes ago
Actually this story is not accurate. Mueller released copies of the 302 memos, which are in
effect official documentation to a case file. The 302 was dated seven months after the
interview, when the FBI policy requires such reports to be filed within five days. The
judge will ask tomorrow for copies of agent's contemporaneous interview notes and any other
documents supporting what is written in the 302, as well as an explanation for the delay in
filing the memo. 1
hour ago You mean the notes the FBI, in the person of one Peter Strzok, (yes that Strozk)
made seven months after he was interviewed? with the required 302 documents that are either
to be taken extemporaneously or done within days of the interview being dated months later?
You mean those notes?!!!! Nice try Bloomberg, but no amount of yellow journalism spin will
stop this case from being thrown out! 15 minutes ago christophere steele
admitted before a british court today that he was hired by the clintons/obama/DNC to make
up the dossier as a weapon to use against trump as a backup plan in case he won the
election.. this proves the DNC lied, paid for a fake dossier, and comey admitted he knew
the fake dossier was false before using it to get a FISC warrant and to spy on trump, which
was used as an excuse for the mueller investigation.. yahoo news and leftwing media arent
covering the story.. educate yourselves 1 hour ago Not so bias garbage news .. they
entrapped him what 302 form you want to go with .. FBI doctored the original.. FBI
curuption runs rampant.. comey lied so much about knowing about fake dossier.. then what
the hell was he doing.. comey the tall guy phony
Wall Street, Banks, and Angry Citizens
The Inequality Gap on a Planet Growing More Extreme
Nomi Prins
December 13, 2018
2,400 Words
16 Comments
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As we head into 2019, leaving the chaos
of this year behind, a major question remains unanswered when it comes to the state of Main Street, not just
here but across the planet. If the global economy really is booming, as many politicians claim, why are
leaders and their parties around the world continuing to get booted out of office in such a sweeping
fashion?
One obvious answer: the post-Great
Recession economic "recovery" was largely reserved for the few who could participate in the rising financial
markets of those years, not the majority who continued to work longer hours, sometimes at multiple jobs, to
stay afloat. In other words, the good times have left out so many people, like those struggling to keep even
a
few hundred dollars
in their bank accounts to cover an emergency or the
80%
of American workers who live paycheck to paycheck.
In today's global economy, financial
security is increasingly the property of the 1%. No surprise, then, that, as a sense of economic instability
continued to grow over the past decade, angst turned to anger, a transition that -- from the U.S. to the
Philippines, Hungary to Brazil, Poland to Mexico -- has provoked a plethora of voter upheavals. In the
process, a 1930s-style brew of rising nationalism and blaming the "other" -- whether that other was an
immigrant, a religious group, a country, or the rest of the world -- emerged.
This phenomenon offered a series of
Trumpian figures, including of course The Donald himself, an opening to ride a wave of "populism" to the
heights of the political system. That the backgrounds and records of none of them -- whether you're talking
about Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, Rodrigo Duterte, or Jair Bolsonaro (among others) -- reflected the daily
concerns of the "common people," as the
classic definition
of populism might have it, hardly mattered. Even a billionaire could, it turned out,
exploit economic insecurity effectively and use it to rise to ultimate power.
Ironically, as that American master at
evoking the fears of apprentices everywhere showed, to assume the highest office in the land was only to
begin a process of creating yet more fear and insecurity. Trump's trade wars, for instance, have typically
infused the world with increased
anxiety
and distrust toward the U.S., even as they thwarted the ability of domestic
business
leaders and ordinary
people
to plan for the future. Meanwhile, just under the surface of the reputed good times, the
damage
to that future only intensified. In other words, the groundwork has already been laid for what
could be a frightening transformation, both domestically and globally.
That Old Financial Crisis
To understand how we got here, let's take
a step back. Only a decade ago, the world experienced a genuine global financial crisis, a meltdown of the
first order. Economic growth ended; shrinking economies threatened to collapse; countless jobs were cut;
homes were foreclosed upon and lives wrecked. For regular people, access to credit suddenly disappeared. No
wonder fears rose. No wonder for so many a brighter tomorrow ceased to exist.
The details of just why the Great
Recession happened have since been glossed over by time and partisan spin. This September, when the 10th
anniversary of the collapse of the global financial services firm Lehman Brothers came around, major
business news channels considered whether the world might be at risk of another such crisis. However,
coverage of such fears, like so many other topics, was quickly tossed aside in favor of paying yet more
attention to Donald Trump's latest tweets, complaints, insults, and lies. Why? Because such a crisis was so
2008 in a year in which, it was
claimed,
we were enjoying a first class economic high and edging toward the
longest
bull-market in Wall Street history. When it came to "boom versus gloom," boom won hands down.
None of that changed one thing, though: most people still feel
left behind
both in the U.S. and
globally
. Thanks to the massive accumulation of wealth by a 1% skilled at gaming the system, the roots
of a crisis that didn't end with the end of the Great Recession have spread
across the planet
, while the dividing line between the "have-nots" and the "have-a-lots" only sharpened
and widened.
Though the media hasn't been paying
much attention to the resulting inequality, the statistics (when you see them) on that ever-widening wealth
gap are mind-boggling. According to Inequality.org, for instance, those with at least $30 million in wealth
globally had the fastest growth rate of any group between 2016 and 2017. The size of that club rose by 25.5%
during those years, to 174,800 members. Or if you really want to grasp what's been happening, consider that,
between 2009 and 2017, the number of billionaires whose combined wealth was greater than that of the world's
poorest 50% fell from
380
to just
eight
. And by the way, despite claims by the president that every other country is screwing America, the
U.S. leads the pack when it comes to the growth of inequality. As Inequality.org
notes
, it has "much greater shares of national wealth and income going to the richest 1% than any other
country."
That, in part, is due to an institution
many in the U.S. normally pay little attention to: the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve. It helped
spark that increase in wealth disparity domestically and globally by adopting a post-crisis monetary policy
in which electronically fabricated money (via a program called quantitative easing, or QE) was offered to
banks and corporations at significantly cheaper rates than to ordinary Americans.
Pumped into financial markets, that
money sent stock prices soaring, which naturally ballooned the wealth of the small percentage of the
population that actually owned stocks.
According to
economist Stephen Roach, considering the Fed's Survey of Consumer Finances, "It is hardly a
stretch to conclude that QE exacerbated America's already severe income disparities."
Wall Street, Central Banks, and
Everyday People
What has since taken place around the
world seems right out of the 1930s. At that time, as the world was emerging from the Great Depression, a
sense of broad economic security was slow to return. Instead, fascism and other forms of nationalism only
gained steam as people turned on the usual cast of politicians, on other countries, and on each other. (If
that sounds faintly Trumpian to you, it should.)
In our post-2008 era, people have
witnessed
trillions
of dollars flowing into bank bailouts and other financial subsidies, not just from governments
but from the world's major central banks. Theoretically, private banks, as a result, would have more money
and pay less interest to get it. They would then lend that money to Main Street. Businesses, big and small,
would tap into those funds and, in turn, produce real economic growth through expansion, hiring sprees, and
wage increases. People would then have more dollars in their pockets and, feeling more financially secure,
would spend that money driving the economy to new heights -- and all, of course, would then be well.
That fairy tale was pitched around the
globe. In fact, cheap money also pushed debt to epic levels, while the share prices of banks rose, as did
those of all sorts of other firms, to record-shattering heights.
Even in the U.S., however, where a
magnificent recovery was supposed to have been in place for years, actual economic growth simply didn't
materialize at the levels promised. At
2% per year
, the average growth of the American gross domestic product over the past decade, for
instance, has been half the average of 4% before the 2008 crisis. Similar numbers were repeated throughout
the developed world and most emerging markets. In the meantime, total global debt hit
$247 trillion
in the first quarter of 2018. As the
Institute of International Finance
found, countries were, on average, borrowing about three dollars for
every dollar of goods or services created.
Global Consequences
What the Fed (along with central banks
from Europe to Japan) ignited, in fact, was a disproportionate rise in the stock and bond markets with the
money they created. That capital sought higher and faster returns than could be achieved in crucial
infrastructure or social strengthening projects like building roads, high-speed railways, hospitals, or
schools.
What followed was anything but fair. As
former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen
noted
four years ago, "It is no secret that the past few decades of widening inequality can be summed up
as significant income and wealth gains for those at the very top and stagnant living standards for the
majority." And, of course, continuing to pour money into the highest levels of the private banking system
was anything but a formula for walking that back.
Instead, as more citizens fell behind, a
sense of disenfranchisement and bitterness with existing governments only grew. In the U.S., that meant
Donald Trump. In the United Kingdom, similar discontent was reflected in the June 2016 Brexit vote to leave
the European Union (EU), which those who felt economically squeezed to death clearly meant as a
slap at
both the establishment domestically and EU leaders abroad.
Since then, multiple governments in the
European Union, too, have shifted toward the populist right. In Germany, recent elections swung both
right
and
left
just six years after, in July 2012, European Central Bank (ECB) head Mario Draghi
exuded optimism
over the ability of such banks to protect the financial system, the Euro, and generally
hold things together.
Like the Fed in the U.S., the ECB went
on to manufacture money, adding another
$3 trillion
to its books that would be deployed to buy bonds from favored countries and companies. That
artificial stimulus, too, only increased inequality within and between countries in Europe. Meanwhile,
Brexit negotiations remain ruinously divisive,
threatening
to rip Great Britain apart.
Nor was such a story the captive of the
North Atlantic. In Brazil, where left-wing president Dilma Rouseff was ousted from power in 2016, her
successor Michel Temer oversaw plummeting economic growth and escalating unemployment. That, in turn, led to
the election of that country's own Donald Trump, nationalistic far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro who won a
striking
55.2%
of the vote against a backdrop of popular discontent. In true Trumpian style, he is disposed
against both the very idea of climate change and multilateral trade agreements.
In Mexico, dissatisfied voters similarly
rejected the political known, but by swinging left for the
first time
in 70 years. New president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, popularly known by his initials AMLO,
promised to put the needs of ordinary Mexicans first. However, he has the U.S. -- and the whims of Donald
Trump and his "great wall" -- to contend with, which could hamper those efforts.
As AMLO took office on
December 1st
, the G20 summit of world leaders was unfolding in Argentina. There, amid a glittering
backdrop of power and influence, the trade war between the U.S. and the world's rising superpower, China,
came even more clearly into focus. While its president, Xi Jinping, having fully consolidated power amid a
wave of Chinese nationalism, could become his country's
longest serving
leader, he faces an international landscape that would have amazed and befuddled Mao
Zedong.
Though Trump declared his meeting with
Xi a success because the two sides agreed on a
90-day tariff truce
, his prompt
appointment
of an anti-Chinese hardliner, Robert Lighthizer, to head negotiations, a tweet in which he
referred to himself in superhero fashion as a "
Tariff
Man
," and news that the U.S. had requested that Canada arrest and extradite an executive of a key
Chinese tech company, caused the Dow to take its
fourth largest plunge
in history and then
fluctuate wildly
as economic fears of a future "Great Something" rose. More uncertainty and distrust
were the true product of that meeting.
In fact, we are now in a world whose
key leaders, especially the president of the United States, remain willfully oblivious to its long-term
problems, putting policies like deregulation, fake nationalist solutions, and profits for the already
grotesquely wealthy ahead of the future lives of the mass of citizens. Consider the
yellow-vest protests
that have broken out in France, where protestors identifying with left and right
political parties are calling for the resignation of neoliberal French President Emmanuel Macron. Many of
them, from financially starved provincial towns, are angry that their purchasing power has dropped so low
they can barely
make ends meet
.
Ultimately, what transcends geography
and geopolitics is an underlying level of economic discontent sparked by twenty-first-century economics and
a resulting Grand Canyon-sized global inequality gap that is still
widening
. Whether the protests go left or right, what continues to lie at the heart of the matter is the
way failed policies and stop-gap measures put in place around the world are no longer working, not when it
comes to the non-1% anyway. People from
Washington
to
Paris
,
London
to
Beijing
, increasingly grasp that their economic circumstances are not getting better and are not likely
to in any presently imaginable future, given those now in power.
A Dangerous Recipe
The financial crisis of 2008 initially
fostered a policy of bailing out banks with cheap money that went not into Main Street economies but into
markets enriching the few. As a result, large numbers of people increasingly felt that they were being left
behind and so turned against their leaders and sometimes each other as well.
This situation was then exploited by a
set of self-appointed politicians of the people, including a billionaire TV personality who capitalized on
an increasingly widespread fear of a future at risk. Their promises of economic prosperity were wrapped in
populist platitudes, normally (but not always) of a right-wing sort. Lost in this shift away from previously
dominant political parties and the systems that went with them was a true form of populism, which would
genuinely put the needs of the majority of people over the elite few, build real things including
infrastructure, foster organic wealth distribution, and stabilize economies above financial markets.
In the meantime, what we have is, of
course, a recipe for an increasingly unstable and vicious world.
However, coverage of such fears, like so many other topics, was quickly tossed aside in favor of
paying yet more attention to Donald Trump's latest tweets, complaints, insults, and lies.
Tossed aside by whom? The corporate media of course. Fake news. Their ONLY agenda is the ongoing
demonetization of Donald Trump.
Minus the obligatory Trump bashing this is a good piece. The beating heart of Neo Feudalism (against
which we populists/nationalists/deplorables rebel) is debt money aka the FED. So what would you have us
actually do about the banking cartel? Vote BETO? Check our privilege?
I suggest stepping back further than the GFC, to the halcyon days of Thatcher and Reagan and TINA.
That's
when we stopped investing in ourselves, which is why R&D has a 50% lower share of GDP today than then.
Encouraged by the success of this non-investment, we then stopped keeping up the infrastructure we had
built–including the great corporate labs that created our recent prosperity–and now the maintenance bill is
coming due.
Needless to say, the Chinese did the opposite and the current "China!" noise is designed to distract us
from the dreadful destiny our faux democracy created for us.
But a country deserves the government it gets and we've always liked Elmer Gantry's style of
self-confident bullshit.
I miss Mike Whitney. Where did he go? He hasn't posted anything here at Unz since June. He was just as good
as Nomi on the finance/economic topics, but we didn't have to endure the constant anti-Trump
virtue-signalling. It's a bit like being served castor oil along with your beef bourguignon: it spoils the
whole effect.
Another thing I don't like about Nomi is how she fails to make the connection between
hyper-financialization and falling median incomes in the West on the one hand, and open borders and 'free'
trade on the other. Neoliberalism could succinctly be defined as the free movement of goods, capital and
people across borders. Hence, there is nothing left-wing about hating borders–not if you by 'left-wing' you
mean
pro-workingclass
.
Remember, the Tea Party was a grassroots anti-banker movement. The media successfully convinced the rest of
America that they were all racist fascist deplorables.
Post-housing collapse, maybe, the Fed should have provided loans to Main Street merchants, unleashing more
small-business energy, especially since so few Americans are starting businesses these days. But those
loans, too, always need to be allocated to people with a reasonable chance to pay them back. The Fed gave
the dough to the banks and the zombies, but in different ways, the small-business climate in the USA is
almost as bad as the zombie-business climate.
Back in 2008, any small-business stimulus would have been
complicated by the need for small fish to compete with the Goliath of big-box chains and on-every-corner
franchise mills spawned by big corporations, which, in neither case, generate many quality, rent-covering
jobs beyond a few management positions. In many cases, the owners of franchise businesses do not make
much -- they can't pay much. And the recent attempt to stimulate small businesses via the LLC tax cut might be
diluted by the undermining of small retail by volume sellers, like Amazon & Walmart -- behemoths that sell
everything under the sun at cut rates, now speedily delivering to customers' doors.
Infrastructure spending would create long-term value and some quality, if temporary, jobs mostly for
underemployed males, one of the groups unable to just work part-time or temp jobs at low wage levels, making
up the difference between living expenses and inadequate pay with spousal income, child support checks or
multiple monthly welfare streams from .gov and a refundable child tax credit up to $6,431. Rather than
working multiple jobs, that is what many single-breadwinner parents do. They stay below the income limits
for the .gov handouts, strategically, thereby keeping wages and job quality low for many women who lack
access to unearned income streams unrelated to their employment.
College-educated Americans (and others) also face the problem of the many dual-earner parents, keeping
two of the few decent-paying jobs with benefits under one roof. These are often not two rocket-scientist
jobs, but jobs that many educated people could perform. They maintain those jobs despite tons of time off to
accommodate their personal lives, letting $10-per-hour daycare workers, NannyCam-surveilled babysitters and
never-retiring grandparents do the work of raising their kids. The middle-class job pool would expand
dramatically if they were just more interested in raising the kids they produce, but they put house size and
multiple vacations first, with the liberals among them insincerely bemoaning the fact that 30 million
Americans lack health insurance, while they are double-covered in their above-firing, family-friendly jobs.
Still, if infrastructure spending is used to build The Wall, everyone will at least be safer, welfare
expenditures will go down and fewer welfare-assisted noncitizens will chase jobs, driving wages down for
underemployed US citizens. Bridges require repair -- something that affects the safety of everyone in the
country. The electrical grid and nuclear plants need to be fortified. Something needs to be done about
cybersecurity, a type of invisible infrastructure that is more and more important.
We need US citizens to get these jobs, including the record number of working-aged US citizens out of the
laborforce. Infrastructure spending should not be used to employ the citizens of other countries, like the
1.5 to 1.7 new legal immigrants admitted into the country each year, many of whom qualify for welfare and
tax credits for US-born kids and boatloads of illegal immigrants.
The Western propaganda continues unabated. In the latest episode of #FakeNews France3 TV got caught
broadcasting a fake Yellow Vests image–photoshoped by its disinformation division–to their viewers, and then
blatantly lied about afterwards:
I fear for the Jews, both universalist Tikkun Olas like Nomi and the Zio-nationalists,
when the (((Great Ponzi))) collapses.
Haxo has to be hasbara of some sort trying to discredit Prins' article. That aside, I hope for major
correction before we see a complete collapse of the U.S. and global economy which will result in complete
social collapse. For no other reason than I live in a major East Coast city and am not prepared to forage
for food.
That's when we stopped investing in ourselves, which is why R&D has a 50% lower share of GDP today
than then.
Encouraged by the success of this non-investment, we then stopped keeping up the infrastructure we had
built–including the great corporate labs that created our recent prosperity–and now the maintenance bill
is coming due.
Is this the result of Ivy League schools pumping out more degrees in finance rather than science and
engineering, or the cause?
Including Hungary and Viktor Orban in your piece demonstrates a lack of research and a definite lack of
perspective. I discount the rest of what you babble on about as a result. Try doing some on-the-spot
research. You might learn what really is going on. Start with the hundreds of YouTube tourist blogs. Then
visit. Stop blindly regurgitating the narrow, usually distorted crap you find in the press. You may have a
point but it appears to be a house of cards. To me at least. An expat enjoying my freedoms in Hungary.l
Yeah, and what 'tomdispatch regular' Prins does is increase the sense of rage and helplessness by pointing
out the degenerative process without offering any avenue to lance the boil and treat the infection. This
only contributes to the resultant social problems she describes. Not necessarily smart.
Better had she
pointed to some means of holding those responsible accountable, example given:
I'm old, mid seventies, studied economics in the sixties.
Among the many stupid things I did or thought in my life is that economics is what is expressed by
'economics is common sense made difficult'.
Maybe I had also the completely wrong idea about common sense, looking back, and looking around me now, it
hardly seems to exist.
The figures about CO2 ppm can be explained in one sentence, yet mankind seems to be embarking on the most
expensive experiment ever, the outcome of which will, my conviction, be that the only effect is back to
barbarism, civilisation depends on cheap energy.
About financial crises, around 1880 there was a crash in
Germany, Wild West around emission of shares was ended.
In 1929 USA financial regulations were way behind German, the great crash.
The USA, with GB, is the only country in the world where the central bank is not state owned.
Therefore derivatives were not regulated, the fairy tales about absolute minimum value were believed, as
were before 1880 in Germany emission fairy tales.
We have one more problem central bank, ECB, in theory owned by the euro countries, in practice Draghi can do
what he wants, as long as he stays within his statutes.
Anyone with some insight in the world economy sees that w're heading towards a gigantic crash, who is
unable to see this can read Varoufakis.
Now how did we get into this mess ?
In my opinion quite simple: globalisation, that made the political power of the nation states disappear, EU
of course also is globalisation.
Central bankers of the world monthly meet at BIS Basle, financially, economically, in my opinion, there the
world is ruled.
What these central bankers think, I've no idea.
But that Dutch central bank director Klaas Knot does not care for Dutch interests, is more than clear.
There is one important and interesting thing about economies, economy defined as the finances of a
country, the euro zone, the USA, politicians, and bankers, even central bankers, do not control economies.
A few aspects can be controlled, but not all of them at the same time.
So inconsistent decisions lead to unwanted, and/or unforeseen consequences.
The euro is a political experiment, the object was to force euro countries to become more or less
economically the same.
It failed, southern euro countries differ economically as much now from northern as when the euro was
introduced.
The only way out for France economically now I can see is the old devaluation recipe.
Alas, 'thanks' to the euro this is no longer possible.
So that, what is erronuously called elite, has maneuvred itself into a lose lose situation, do nothing, and
France will have a second 1791, or remove the euro flag from the sinking EU ship.
In both cases, as far as I can see, end of EU.
@tac
Quite simple, more and more French are running into financial difficulties.
Most of them of course do not understand why, but they're not interested in why, as the immigrants 'we want
a better life'.
Since over ten years now, I'm retired, we live many months yearly in France.
Great country, compared to the Netherlands, more and more resembling LA.
We do not pay French income taxes, just property tax.
But the steady increase over the years of the cost of living in France we noticed quite well.
For the last two or three years it is clear to us that even our French neighbours are less affluent, our
neighbouring houses all are second homes, owned by upper middle class, of course.
Complaints about the cost of the gardener, no parties with traiteurs any more.
A traiteur is someone who prepares expensive dishes for parties etc.
French complain, even in casual conversations, a restaurant owner 'Macron is right, nobody wants to work in
France any more', someone else 'France is ill, we pay to much for social security'.
Nomi doesn't even mention the impact a million and a half legal immigrants coming in each year has had on
our supposed recovery. How can we trust what she says when she leaves out such pertinent information? In
fact we could argue the only way we were able to recover after the Great Depression is because immigration
had been cut.
Mike was possibly the
only
journalist who gave Trump a modicum of good advice when he mentioned
bumping retirees pay instead of pretending corporate tax cuts will ever "trickle down" to the workers still
on the job. Bullseye! I could use a raise.
Mike said $150 more per month would go directly for stuff retirees need, especially the ones right on the
edge. Young plumbers, roofers, electricians and so on would have tons of work to do.
Cut corporate tax, on the other hand. and the buggers only send more work to China, sluice money to
anti-worker NGOs, or sit on it all like Bill Gates.
I'd go one step further: Put a cork in the billions for Israel program and pay off all American student
loans. Further still: Tax corporations that outsource work to pay every young worker $2500 monthly till
America learns how to pay "middle class wages" again. Bezos at Amazon can get a special bill for the
millions of worker-years he's stiffed and pay them US Marshall rates, backdated to their start date with
interest.
I know, I know. Fascist economics is
so
boring. But we're near the centennial of the days when
Benito Mussolini was the most respected and successful politician in Europe if not the world.
So in 2018 chickens hatched in 2008 come home to roost.
The financial meltdown of 2008 is no longer fresh in our minds. In the wake of the 2008
crisis, to save itself from bankruptcy, the US paid leading banks in excess of $16 trillion - the
biggest bailout ever! This itself had a huge impact on the overall debt burden.
Was 2017 a bond bubble that was deflated in 2018 or it was "everything bubble" and stocks are
the next in line. The lowest S&P500 went during22008 crisis was 670 I think.
Notable quotes:
"... financial crisis poses a fundamental challenge to globalization and to the finance capitalism of the Anglo-American neoliberal model of the free market. ..."
Reinhart and Rogoff (2008) suggest that 'the present U.S. financial crisis is severe by any
metric.' Many have pointed to the systemic nature of the crisis. Gokay (2009) suggests an
analysis in terms of' the explosive growth of the financial system during the last three
decades relative to manufacturing and the economy as a whole' with the huge growth of finance
capitalism and 'the proliferation of speculative and destabilizing financial institutional
arrangements and instruments of wealth accumulation.' This has meant 'the rise of new centers
and the loss of relative weight of the U.S. as a global hegemonic power' with increasing
resource depletion and ecological crisis. He goes on to argue:
The current financial crisis (and economic downturn) has not come out of blue. It is the
outcome of deep-seated contradictions within the structure of global economic system. It is
not a 'failure' of the system, but it is central to the mode of functioning of the system
itself. It is not the result of some 'mistakes' or 'deviations,' but rather it is inherent to
the logic of the system. ( http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?contexr=va&and=123
)
... ... ...
The question is the nature of the systemic crisis: does it mean the end of U.S. style
capitalism? Does it mean the end of neoliberalism? Does it mean the end of capitalism
itself?
Undoubtedly, the financial and economic crisis of 2008 is a major geopolitical setback for
the United States and Europe.
Altman (2009) argues hat governments in the U.S. and Europe will turn inward to focus on
domestic recovery especially as their citizens begin to make demands, such as the 'tea-party' )
phenomenon in the U.S.
The international fiscal deficits will discourage the U.S. and Western nations from
embarking on any international initiatives in foreign policy and Western capital markets will
take several years to recover as the banks insulate themselves by becoming risk-averse.
Perhaps, most importantly 'the economic credibility of the West has been undermined by the
crisis' (p. 10)...
... ... ...
Whatever the economic advantages of progress toward the 'knowledge economy,' the 'creative
economy' and, even the 'green economy the fact is that the cur- rent financial crisis poses
a fundamental challenge to globalization and to the finance capitalism of the Anglo-American
neoliberal model of the free market. As Harold James (2009: 168) reminds us
'The response to the Asian crisis of 1997-98 was the reinforcement of the American model
of financial capitalism, the so-called Washington consensus'
and he goes on to argue
'The response to the contagion caused by the U.S. subprime crisis of 2007-8 will be the
elaboration of the Chinese model.' ...
The key problem of the USA is that neoliberalism ideology is now discredited (since 2008) and
neoliberalism as the social system clearly entered the stage of decline. Trump and Brexit
were the first Robin (as in "One robin doesn't make a spring" )
The key problem that probably will prolong the period of neoliberalism past its Shelf LIfe
Expiration Date is that the alternative to it is still unclear. and probably will not emerge
until the end of the age of "cheap oil" which might mean another 40-50 years. But the rise of
far-right nationalism is a clear indication of people in various countries started reject
neoliberal globalization (including the USA, GB and most of Europe.) Trump's "national
neoliberalism" and Brexit are just another side of the same coin.
Economic rape of Russia and post Soviet republic in 1991-2000 as well as the communication
revolution postponed the crisis of neoliberalism for a decade or so. Otherwise, it might well
start around 2000 instead of 2008. Now G7 countries that adopted neoliberalism entered the
phase of "secular stagnation" (as Summers called it) and probably will not be able to escape
for it without some war-style mobilization or military coup d'état and introduction of
command economics.
IMHO military remains one of the few realistic hopes to play the role of countervailing
force for the financial oligarchy -- which owns that state under neoliberalism, So when we
talk about the Depp State that created anti-Trump witch hunt it is not just intelligence
agencies (although they assume active political role now and strive to be the kingmakers).
This Wall street, military-industrial complex and intelligence agencies.
It will be interesting if establishment neoliberals will try to take revenge in 2020, as
they clearly do not have any viable candidate right now (Biden is a sad joke). But they
definitely can put Trump on the ropes in 2019 and sign of their intention to do so already
emerged.
BTW the key problem of Trump survival is that Trump abandoned (or was forced to abandon)
most of his key election promises to the electorate (with the only exception of tariffs for
China, I think).
In this sense Trump behaved much like Obama did with his "Change and hope" bait and switch
trick, and Nobel Peace Price. Nobel Peace Prize for the butcher of Libya and Syria, the
godfather of ISIS, is rich.
During election campaign, his message was straightforwardly anti-globalization. He
believes that the interests of the working class have been sacrificed in favor of the big
corporations that have been encouraged to invest around the world and thereby deprive
American workers of their jobs. Further, he argues that large-scale immigration has
weakened the bargaining power of American workers and served to lower their wages.
He proposes that US corporations should be required to invest their cash reserves in the
US. He believes that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has had the effect of
exporting American jobs to Mexico. On similar grounds, he is opposed to the TPP and the
TTIP. And he also accuses China of stealing American jobs, threatening to impose a 45%
tariff on Chinese imports.
To globalization, Trump counterposes economic nationalism: "Put America first". His
appeal, above all, is to the white working class who, until Trump's (and Bernie Sander's)
arrival on the political scene, had been ignored and largely unrepresented since the 1980s.
Given that their wages have been falling for most of the last 40 years, it is extraordinary
how their interests have been neglected by the political class. Increasingly, they have
voted Republican, but the Republicans have long been captured by the super-rich and Wall
Street, whose interests, as hyper-globalisers, have run directly counter to those of the
white working class. With the arrival of Trump they finally found a representative: they
won Trump the Republican nomination.
Trump believes that America's pursuit of great power status has squandered the nation's
resources
The economic nationalist argument has also been vigorously pursued by Bernie Sanders , who
ran Hillary Clinton extremely close for the Democratic nomination and would probably have
won but for more than 700 so-called super-delegates, who were effectively chosen by the
Democratic machine and overwhelmingly supported Clinton. As in the case of the Republicans,
the Democrats have long supported a neoliberal, pro-globalization strategy, notwithstanding
the concerns of its trade union base. Both the Republicans and the Democrats now find
themselves deeply polarized between the pro- and anti-globalizers, an entirely new
development not witnessed since the shift towards neoliberalism under Reagan almost 40
years ago.
Another plank of Trump's nationalist appeal – "Make America great again" –
is his position on foreign policy. He believes that America's pursuit of great power status
has squandered the nation's resources. He argues that the country's alliance system is
unfair, with America bearing most of the cost and its allies contributing far too little.
He points to Japan and South Korea, and NATO's European members as prime examples. He seeks
to rebalance these relationships and, failing that, to exit from them.
As a country in decline, he argues that America can no longer afford to carry this kind
of financial burden. Rather than putting the world to rights, he believes the money should
be invested at home, pointing to the dilapidated state of America's infrastructure. Trump's
position represents a major critique of America as the world's hegemon. His arguments mark
a radical break with the neoliberal, hyper-globalization ideology that has reigned since
the early 1980s and with the foreign policy orthodoxy of most of the postwar period. These
arguments must be taken seriously. They should not be lightly dismissed just because of
their authorship.
Roughly two-thirds of Americans agree that "we should not think so much in international
terms but concentrate more on our own national problems". And, above all else, what will
continue to drive opposition to the hyper-globalizers is inequality.
" Miller also admits that the dossier's broad claims are more closely aligned with
reality, but that the document breaks down once you focus on individual claims. "
Two months ago, to the chagrin of a generation of traders, Morgan Stanley made a dismal
observation : Price action in 2018 has shown that 'buy the dip' is on its way out. To wit,
buying the S&P 500 after a down week was a profitable strategy from 2005 through 2017, and
buying these dips fueled most of the post-crisis S&P 500 gains (relative to buying after
the market rallied). But in 2018 'buying the dip' has been a negative return strategy for the
first time in 13 years . In other words, "buying the fucking dip" is no longer the winning
strategy it had been for years (even if buying the most shorted hedge fund names still is a
stable generator of alpha).
However, a more concerning observation is that while BTFD may no longer work, it has been
replaced with an even more troubling trend for market bulls: Selling The Fucking Rip, or as it
is also known, STFR.
This selling of rallies has been especially obvious for the past two weeks as traders have
observed ongoing intra- US session asset-allocation trades out of the S&P and into TY, with
simultaneous volume spikes / blocks trading in ESH9 (selling) and THY9 (buying) at a number of
points throughout the day, but usually after the European close, and toward the end of the
trading day.
"SELL THE RIPS" IN SPOOZ BECOMING THE NORM
So what is behind this pernicious, for bulls if quite welcome for bears, pattern?
Here, Nomura's Charlie McElligott has some thoughts and in his morning note reminds clients
that he had previously highlighted a similar potential observation YTD between the inverse
relationship of UST stripping activity (buying US fixed-income) and the SMART index (end of day
US Equities flows being sold) -- which indicates a similar trend with pension fund de-risking
throughout 2018, as their funding ratios sit at post GFC highs.
In other words, one possible culprit is pension funds who have decided that the market may
have peaked, and are taking advantage of the recent selldown in fixed income, to reallocate
back from stocks and into bonds, locking in less risky funding ratios.
And, as McElligott concludes, this equities de-risking/outflow corroborates what we touched
upon this morning, namely this week's EPFR fund flows data which showed an astounding -$27.7B
outflow for US Equities (Institutional, Retail, Active and Passive combined), the second worst
weekly redemption of the past 1Y period.
Meanwhile, the equity weakness is being coupled with surprising strong bid for US
Treasuries, further confirmation of an intraday Pension reallocation trade.
According to McElligott, the price-action in the long-end of late indicates "that we
potentially are seeing "real money" players back involved for the first-time in awhile,
"toe-dipping" again in adding / receiving as the global slowdown story picks-up steam amidst
growing 2019 / 2020 recession belief", a hypothesis which is further validated by the sharp
rebound in direct bidders in recent auctions and especially yesterday's 30Y which we have
documented extensively, as the "buyers-strike" in long duration auctions seems to have
ended.
This Treasury bid could include large overseas pensions (which are less sensitive to hedge
costs than say Lifers), Risk-Parity (as previously-stated, our QIS RP model estimated the
risk-parity universe as a large buyer of both USTs and JGBs over the past month and a half) and
potentially, resumption of long-end buying from "official" overseas sources as well (with
market speculation that there could be an implicit agreement / gesture coming out of the G20
trade truce arrangement), McElligott notes.
One tangent to note: the bid has been more evident in futures and derivatives (as they are
"off-balance sheet" expressions into a liquidity constrained YE reality), which is reflected in
the fresh record dealer holdings of USTs and which the Nomura strategist notes has made made
futures super rich to cash, creating arb opportunities in the cash/futures basis as the
calendar is about to flip.
Finally, as to who or what is the real reason behind these inexplicable bouts of "selling
the rip", whoever it is, the biggest threat to the market is that once the pattern manifests
itself enough times it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at which point it's not a question of
who started it - as everyone will be doing it - but rather at what point does the Fed step in
to stop it.
Considering that nothing was fixed in 2008, we have had zirp for a decade, there is no
doubt that capital has been misallocated....GM closing plants, Caterpillar closing plants are
economic manifestations of this ponzi scheme...They cannot normalize interest rates with the
amount of debt used to paper over the last crisis...or to satisfy an American government
spending a trillion dollars a year more than they take in....Dow 6000...
Yes they CAN normalize interest rates. Why should someone with saved capital hold the bag
so that crooks who gamed the Globalist movement remain whole? Flotsam in the middle who lose
are fodder. Sorry but even the new socialism won't save them.
Blame the Globalists, not the savers. I suspect many Globalists are morphing into the new
Socialists. Yet to come is the Globalist definition of the new Socialist. Globalists demanded
low rates, low wages, open boarders for goods, and open boarders for people. Socialists will
demand much the same, I suspect.
Selling overvalued stocks and buying Treasuries after the Fed's brief tightening cycle
with the backdrop of a slowing global economy would be a smart and coherent move. Call me
skeptical but I just can't see pension funds behind such a logical move.
Buying Treasuries today is not smart. Flight to safety, multiplied by big money pouring
into the interest rate dip as a 'taper tantrum' move to scare the Fed into not raising rates
any more, is sucker money.
Money market funds are the only safe harbor at this moment.
Wait until rate increases from the Fed end, perhaps in another 3 or 4 increases.
Between now and then, liquidity issues will create big capital gains opportunities on debt
and debt funds if you wait it out.
Both BTFD and STFR are cynical HFT strategies. The faster algos prey on the slower ones,
except for the unique cases where a human predator preys on the algos. (In England, it's a
crime for humans to prey on algos.)
BTFD has a warm appeal because it appears to forecast blue skies and better days, but is
still a predator strategy if there's no fundamental reason to expect better times ahead.
STFR is based on the fear of missing out. Any human who loses on that one makes me
sad.
No, the day they stop will be the day the EU officially starts to decompose and rot in
front of the world. The entertainment will be watching and listening as the try to explain
away the festering and leprosy. All due to 'Kick the Can', not to mention the fact they were
dumb enough to fall for the Globalist scam of low rates and open boarders. There's no
explanation for that level of stupid. A few people sold out the entire Continent using
ideology and gullibility. All it took was a great sales pitch.
ok, so with the 10-yr already falling, what exactly is the Fed going to do. If they lower
then bonds just become a better investment (short run). Guess that's why they're gonna raise.
It's like a house of mirrors.
The Fed and/or SEC will not act until there is a major decline; like circuit breakers
kicking in. Which by the way were put in after the 1987 crash and have never been used.
The 80's had program buying/selling and portfolio insurance. Now we have algos and
computers running the show. Same kind of thing just faster to act with better speeds and
computer power.
This will eventually lead to a similar market mega move and those in power will not act
until it does.
They need something to blame (not someone-think financial crisis) as it can't be their
lack of oversight and blindness [sarc]
Anything goes until the market comes unglued and then the rules get changed. The
regulators are always late to the show and need to be shown what to do after it happens even
though it was clear to many.
Swing between extremes, however, consistent in US history, economic predatory dependence on
free/ultra cheap labor with no legal rights. Current instantiation, offshored and illegal and
"temporary" immigrant labor. Note neither party in the US is proposing "immigration reform"
is green card upon hire. Ds merely propose green card for time served for those over X number
of years donated as captive/cheap.
The entitled to cheap/captive now want it in law, national laws and trade agreements.
All privilege/no responsibilities, including taxes.
Doesn't scale. 1929 says so, 2008 says so.
Liberals, the Left, Progressives -- whatever you want to call them suffer from a basic
problem. They don't work together and have no common goals. As the article stated they
complain but offer no real solutions that they can agree on. Should we emphasize gay pride or
should we emphasize good-paying jobs and benefits with good social welfare benefits? Until
they can agree at least on priorities they will never reform the current corrupt system -- it
is too entrenched. Even if the Capitalist Monstrosity we have now self-destructs as the
writer indicates -- nothing good will replace it until the Left get their act together.
"Lesser of two evils" needs to go on the burn pile.
Encumbent congress needs a turn over.
Not showing up to vote is not okay. If people can't think of someone they want to write-in,
"none of the above" is a protest vote. Not voting is silence, which equals consent.
Local elections, beat back Koch/ALEC, hiding on ballots as "Libertarian". "Privatize
everything" is their mantra, so they can further profitize via inescapeable taxes, while
gutting "regulation" - safety and market integrity, with no accountability.
Corporation 101: limited liability. While means we are left holding the bag. As in bailout -
$125 billion in 1990, up to $7.7 trillion in 2008.
Anything the Economist presents as the overriding choice is probably best relegated to
one factor among many. I respect Milanovic's work, but he's seeing things from where we are
now. Remember we've seen populist surges come and go from the witch-burnings and religious
panics of the 17th century to 1890s Bryanism and the 1930s far right, and each time they've
yielded to a more articulate vision, though the last time it cost sixty million dead - not
something we want to see repeated. This time it's hard because dissent still clings to a
"post-ideological" delusion that those on top never succumbed to. But change will come as
what I'd term "post-rational" alternatives fail to deliver. Let's hope it's sooner rather
than later.
"Brexit, too, was primarily a working-class revolt." Thank you Martin, at least someone
writing in the Guardian has got the point!
We voted against the EU's unelected European Central Bank, its unelected European Commission,
its European Court of Justice, its Common Agricultural Policy and its Common Fisheries
Policy.
We voted against the EU's treaty-enshrined 'austerity' (= depression) policies, which have
impoverished Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy.
We voted against the EU/US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which would
privatise all our public services, which threatens all our rights, and which discriminates
against the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
We voted against the EU's tariffs against African farmers' cheaper produce.
We opposed the City of London Corporation, the Institute of Directors, the CBI, the IMF,
Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, which all wanted us to
stay in the EU.
We voted against the EU's undemocratic trilogue procedure and its pro-austerity Semester
programme. We voted to leave this undemocratic, privatisation-enforcing, austerity-enforcing
body.
Bailout was because that was public savings, pensions, 401ks, etc. the banks were playing
with, and lost. Bailout is billing all of us for it. Bad, letting the banks/financial
"services" not only survive but continue the exact same practices.
Bailout: $7.2 to $7.7 trillion. Current derivative holdings: $500 trillion.
Not just moral hazard but economic hazard when capitalism basic rule is broken, allow bad
businesses to die of their own accord. Subversion currently called "too big to fail", rather
than tell the public "we lost all your savings, pensions, ...".
Relocating poverty from the East into the West isn't improvement.
Creating sweatshops in the East isn't raising their standard of living.
Creating economies so economically unstable that population declines isn't improvement.
Trying to bury that fact with immigration isn't improvement.
Configuring all of the above for record profit for the benefit of a tiny percentage of the
population isn't improvement.
Gaming tax law to avoid paying into/for extensive business use of federal services and tax
base isn't improvement.
Game over. Time for a reboot.
I am glad you finally concede a point on neo-liberalism. The moral hazard argument is
extremely poor and typical in this era of runaway CEO pay, of a tendency to substitute
self-help fables (a la "The monk who sold his Ferrari) and pop psychology ( a la Moral
Hazard) for credible economic analysis.
The economic crisis is rooted in the profit motive just as capitalist economic growth is.
Lowering of Tarrif barriers, outsourcing, changes in value capture (added value), new
financial instruments, were attempts to restore the falling rate of profit. They did for a
while, but, as always happens with Capitalism, the seeds of the new crisis were in the
solution to the old.
And all the while the state continues growing in an attempt to keep capitalism afloat.
Neoliberalism failed ( or should I say "small state" ) and here is the graph to prove it: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/usgs_chartSp03t.png
Interesting, and I believe accurate, analysis of the economic and political forces afoot.
However it is ludicrous to state that Donald trump, who is a serial corpratist, out-sourcer,
tax avoider and scam artist, actually believes any of those populist principles that you
ascribe so firmly to him. The best and safest outcome of our election, in my opinion, would
be to have a Clinton administration tempered by the influences from the populist wings of
both parties.
Great article, however the elite globalists are in complete denial in the US. Our only choice
is to vote them out of power because the are owned by Wall Street. Both Bernie and Trump
supporters should unite to vote establishment out of Washington.
There were similar observations in the immediate aftermath of 2008, and doubtless before.
Many of us thought the crisis would trigger a rethink of the whole direction of the previous
three decades, but instead we got austerity and a further lurch to the right, or at best
Obama-style stimulus and modest tweaks which were better than the former but still rather
missed the point. I still find it flabbergasting and depressing, but on reflection the 1930s
should have been a warning of not just the economic hazards but also the political fallout,
at least in Europe. The difference was that this time left ideology had all but vacated the
field in the 1980s and was in no position to lead a fightback: all we can hope for is better
late than never.
Yes it is, it's an extremely bad thing destroying the fabric of society. Social science
has documented that even the better off are more happy, satisfied with life and feel safer in
societies (i.e. the Scandinavian) where there is a relatively high degree of economic
equality. Yes, economic inequality is a BAD thing in itself.
Oh, give me a break. Social science will document anything it can publish, no matter how
spurious. If Scandanavia is so great, why are they such pissheads? There has always been
inequality, including in workers' paradises like the Soviet Union and Communist China.
Inequality is what got us where we are today, through natural selection. Phenotype is largely
dependent on genotype, so why shouldn't we pass on material wealth as well as our genes?
Surely it is a parent's right to afford their offspring advantages if they can do so?
Have you got any numbers? Or references for your allegations. I say the average or median
wealth, opportunity, economic circumstance and health measures are substantially better than
a generation (lets say 30 years) ago.
Again I don't think our system is perfect. I don't deny that some in our societies
struggle and don't benefit, particularly the poorly educated, disabled, mentally ill and drug
addicted. I actually agree that we could better target our social redistribution from those
that have to those that need help. I disagree that we need higher taxes, protectionism,
socialism, more public servants, more legislation. Indeed I disagree with proposition that
other systems are better.
George Orwell said, in the 30s, that the price of social justice would include a lowering of
living standards for the working- & middle-classes, at least temporarily, so I follow
your line of thought. However, the outrageous tilt toward the upper .1% has no "adjustment"
fluff to shield it from the harsh despotism it represents. So, do put that in your
statistical pipe and smoke it.
Trump never ceases to crack me up. While his (terrible) current lawyer, declares on TV
that there was collusion but it just didn't last long, Trump calls his former lawyer/fixer at
"Rat".
This is just too funny, I mean this is the President of the United States calling his
former personal lawyer a "Rat" which of course is a common mob term for a witness testifying
against you.
Of course it never happened, just like Manafort didn't make 3 trips to London to meet
Julian Assange. These fictions were just used as a pretext for diving into the backgrounds of
Trump's political supporters and find crimes to charge them with.
The Cohen raid was particularly egregious, a likely violation of attorney-client
privilege. Not suprisingly the American Bar Association is silent.
So, Manafort never laundered money and failed to report taxes? Did Flynn never fail to
report his work as a foreign agent? Did he also not report income taxes?
Look at all these poor crooks, unfairly being prosecuted for cheating and stealing.
All that could have been prosecuted by a district attorney. They looked at all of
Manafort's dealings 10 years ago and passed because he was working with the Podesta Group at
the time and thus protected by Hillary Clinton's influence.
Add to this that Trump changed his election slogan from "make America [ "working class"]
great again" to "make Amerca [financial oligarchy] great again"
The only problem is that 'America' does not exist. America is a part description of a
continent and I think we are talking about the USA (only one country on North American
soil) Why do the yanks always have to exaggerate their own importance like the Olympics
bloke who claimed he was robbed at gunpoint lol! Do the USAians actually have an
inferiority complex?
" Miller also admits that the dossier's broad claims are more closely aligned with
reality, but that the document breaks down once you focus on individual claims. "
Jana Bacevic
59
2 years ago
PhD researcher at the University of Cambridge, Department of Sociology; sociology of
knowledge, social theory, political economy of knowledge production.
This is an extremely interesting and important question. In the past years, critics are
increasingly proclaiming that neoliberalism has
come to an end
, or at least become too broad or
too vague
to be used as an explanatory term.
Yet, neoliberalism has proven to be remarkably resilient. This, as
Jamie Peck
has argued, may be due to its propensity to 'fail forward', that is, perpetuate
rather than correct or reverse the mechanisms that led to its failures in the first place – the
economic/fiscal policies following the
2008 economic crisis
are a good example. Or it may have to do with what
Boltanski and Chiapello
have dubbed 'the new spirit of capitalism', meaning its capacity to
absorb political and societal challenges and subsume them under the dominant economic paradigm –
as reflected, for instance, in the way neoliberalism has managed to coopt politics of identity.
But the success of neoliberalism has arguably less to do with its performance as an economic
philosophy (at least after 2008, that is patently not the case – even IMF
has admitted
that neoliberal policies may be exacerbating inequality), and more to do with
what seems to be the consensus of political and economic elites over its application.
Neoliberalism allows for the convergence of financial, governmental, military, industrial and
technological networks of power in ways that not only make sustained resistance difficult, but
also increasingly constrain possibilities for thinking about alternatives.
This is not to say that
heterodox economic
ideas are lacking. Alternatives to mainstream (or neo-classical)
economics range from Marxist and Keynesian approaches, to post-Keynesian, participatory, or
'sharing' economies, and the philosophy of
degrowth.
Yet, in the framework of existing system of political and economic relations,
successfully implementing any of these would require a strong political initiative and at least
some level of consensus beyond the level of any single nation-state.
In this sense, the economic philosophy to succeed neoliberalism will be the one that manages
to capture the 'hearts and minds' of those in power. While the Left needs to start developing
sustainable economic alternatives, it seems that, in the short term, economic policies will be
driven either by some sort of
authoritarian populism,
(as for instance in Trump's pre-election speeches), or a new version
of neoliberalism (what
Will Davies
has called "punitive" neoliberalism). Hopefully, even from such a shrunk space,
alternatives can emerge; however, if we are to draw lessons from the
intellectual history of neoliberalism
, they will require long-term political action to
seriously challenge the prevailing economic order.
This isn very important question that i try to answer in my books. I think
regulation and taxation are key, as well as moving toward a more local circular
economy. You can download the books for free at
Exploitation is high on the priority list of any Tory government, wealth should be
distributed much more fairly than it currently is. The tories only serve the rich, they have
no time or empathy for the poor.
Empathy and compassion are vacant in the tory philosophy of the world. These two
components make up a psychopathic personality.
The median retirement account balance among all working US adults is $0 . This is true
even for the cohort closest to retirement age, those 55-64 years old.
The average (i.e., mean) near-retirement individual has less than 8% of one year's income
saved in a retirement account
77% of all American households aren't on track to have enough net worth to retire , even
under the most conservative estimates.
There a number of causal factors that have contributed to this lack of retirement
preparedness (decades of stagnant real wages, fast-rising cost of living, the Great Recession,
etc), but as we explained in our report The Great Retirement Con
, perhaps none has had more impact than the shift from dedicated-contribution pension plans to
voluntary private savings:
The Origins Of The Retirement Plan
Back during the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress promised a monthly lifetime
income to soldiers who fought and survived the conflict. This guaranteed income stream,
called a "pension", was again offered to soldiers in the Civil War and every American war
since.
Since then, similar pension promises funded from public coffers expanded to cover retirees
from other branches of government. States and cities followed suit -- extending pensions to
all sorts of municipal workers ranging from policemen to politicians, teachers to trash
collectors.
A pension is what's referred to as a defined benefit plan . The payout promised a worker
upon retirement is guaranteed up front according to a formula, typically dependent on salary
size and years of employment.
Understandably, workers appreciated the security and dependability offered by pensions.
So, as a means to attract skilled talent, the private sector started offering them, too.
The first corporate pension was offered by the American Express Company in 1875. By the
1960s, half of all employees in the private sector were covered by a pension
plan.
Off-loading Of Retirement Risk By Corporations
Once pensions had become commonplace, they were much less effective as an incentive to
lure top talent. They started to feel like burdensome cost centers to companies.
As America's corporations grew and their veteran employees started hitting retirement age,
the amount of funding required to meet current and future pension funding obligations became
huge. And it kept growing. Remember, the Baby Boomer generation, the largest ever by far in
US history, was just entering the workforce by the 1960s.
Companies were eager to get this expanding liability off of their backs. And the more
poorly-capitalized firms started defaulting on their pensions, stiffing those who had loyally
worked for them.
So, it's little surprise that the 1970s and '80s saw the introduction of personal
retirement savings plans. The Individual Retirement Arrangement (IRA) was formed by the
Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) in 1974. And the first 401k plan was created
in 1980.
These savings vehicles are defined contribution plans . The future payout of the plan is
variable (i.e., unknown today), and will be largely a function of how much of their income
the worker directs into the fund over their career, as well as the market return on the
fund's investments.
Touted as a revolutionary improvement for the worker, these plans promised to give the
individual power over his/her own financial destiny. No longer would it be dictated by their
employer.
Your company doesn't offer a pension? No worries: open an IRA and create your own personal
pension fund.
Afraid your employer might mismanage your pension fund? A 401k removes that risk. You
decide how your retirement money is invested.
Want to retire sooner? Just increase the percent of your annual income contributions.
All this sounded pretty good to workers. But it sounded GREAT to their employers.
Why? Because it transferred the burden of retirement funding away from the company and
onto its employees. It allowed for the removal of a massive and fast-growing liability off of
the corporate balance sheet, and materially improved the outlook for future earnings and cash
flow.
As you would expect given this, corporate America moved swiftly over the next several
decades to cap pension participation and transition to defined contribution plans.
The table below shows how vigorously pensions (green) have disappeared since the
introduction of IRAs and 401ks (red):
So, to recap: 40 years ago, a grand experiment was embarked upon. One that promised US
workers: Using these new defined contribution vehicles, you'll be better off when you reach
retirement age.
Which raises a simple but very important question: How have things worked out?
The
Ugly AftermathAmerica The Broke
Well, things haven't worked out too well.
Four decades later, what we're realizing is that this shift from dedicated-contribution
pension plans to voluntary private savings was a grand experiment with no assurances.
Corporations definitely benefited, as they could redeploy capital to expansion or bottom line
profits. But employees? The data certainly seems to show that the experiment did not take
human nature into account enough – specifically, the fact that just because people have
the option to save money for later use doesn't mean that they actually will.
And so we end up with the dismal retirement stats bulleted above.
The Income Haves
& Have-Nots
In our recent report The Primacy Of Income , we
summarized our years-long predictions of a coming painful market correction followed by a
prolonged era of no capital gains across equities, bond and real estate.
Simply put: the 'easy' gains made over the past 8 years as the central banks did their
utmost to inflate asset prices is over. Asset appreciation is going to be a lot harder to come
by in the future.
Which makes income now the prime source of building -- or simply just maintaining -- wealth
going forward.
That being the case, it's obvious that those receiving a pension will be in far better shape
than those who aren't. They'll have a guaranteed income stream to partially or fully fund their
retirement.
Resentment Brewing
While the total number of people expecting a pension isn't tiny, it's certainly a minority
of today's workers.
31 million private-sector, state and local government workers in the US participate in a
pension plan. 3.3 million currently-employed civilian Federal workers will receive a pension;
as will some percentage of the 2 million people serving in the active military and
reserves.
Combined, that's about 25% of current US workers; roughly 13% of total US adults.
The danger here is of festering social discord. The majority, whom we already know will not
be able to retire, will highly likely start regarding pensioners with envy and resentment.
"Hey, I worked as hard as Joe during my career. How come he gets to retire and I don't?"
will be a common narrative running in the minds of those jealous of their neighbors.
This bitterness will only increase as taxes continue to rise to fund government pension
payouts, already
a huge drain on public budgets . "Why am I paying more so Joe can relax on the beach??"
Humans are wired to react angrily to perceived injustice and unfairness. This short clip
shows how it's hard-coded into our primate brains:
So it's not a stretch at all to predict the divisive tension and prejudice that will result
from the growing gap between the pension haves and have-nots.
The negative stereotypes of union workers will be tightly re-embraced. This SNL sketch
captures a good number of them:
The steady news
reports of pension fraud and abuse will anger the majority further. Any projected decreases
in Social Security (benefit payouts will only be 79 cents on the dollar by 2035 at our current
trajectory) will only exacerbate the ire, as the small governmental income the have-nots
receive becomes even more meager.
The growing potential here is for an emerging social schism, possibly accompanied with
intimidation and violence, not dissimilar to that which has occurred along racial or religious
lines during darker eras of our history.
As people become stressed, they react emotionally, and look for a culprit to blame. And as
they become more desperate, as many elderly workers with no savings often do, they'll resort to
more desperate measures.
Broken Promises
And it's not all sunshine and roses for the pensioners, either. Being promised a pension and
actually receiving one are two very different things.
Underfunded pension liabilities are a massive ticking time bomb, certain to explode over the
next few decades.
For example, many pensions offered through multi-employer plans are bad shape. The
multiemployer branch of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the federally-instated
insurer behind private pensions, will be out of business by 2025 if no changes in law are made
to help. If that happens, retirees in those plans will get only 10% of what they were
promised.
Moreover, research conducted by the Pew Charitable Trusts shows a
$1.4 trillion shortfall between state pension assets and guarantees to employees. There are
only two ways a gap that big gets addressed: massive tax hikes or massive benefit cuts. The
likeliest outcome will be a combination of both.
So, many of those today counting on a pension tomorrow may find themselves in a similar boat
to their pension-less neighbors.
No Easy Systemic Solutions, So Act For Yourself
There's no "fix" to the retirement predicament of the American workforce. There's no policy
change that can be made at this late date to reverse the decades of over-spending,
over-indebtedness, and lack of saving.
All we can do at this time is influence how we take our licks. Do we simply leave the masses
of unprepared workers to their sad fate? Or do we share the pain across the entire populace by
funding new social support programs via more taxes?
Time will tell. But what we can bet on is tougher times ahead, especially for those with
poor income prospects.
So the smart strategy for the prudent investor is to prioritize building a portfolio of
income streams in order to have sufficient dependable income for a sustainable retirement. Or
for simply remaining afloat financially.
Sadly, accustomed to the speculative approach marketed to us for so long by the financial
industry, most investors are woefully under-educated in how to build a diversified portfolio of
passive income streams (inflation-adjusting and tax-deferred whenever possible) over time.
Those looking to get up to speed can read our recent report A
Primer On Investing For Inflation-Adjusting Income , where we detail out the wide range of
prevalent (and not-so-prevalent) solutions for today's investors to consider when designing an
income-generating portfolio. From bonds, to dividends (common and preferred), to real estate,
to royalties -- we explain each vehicle, how it can be used, and what the major benefits and
risks are.
And in the interim, make sure the wealth you have accumulated doesn't disappear along with
the bursting of the Everything Bubble. If you haven't already read it yet, read our premium
report from last week What To Do Now That 'The
Big One' Is Here .
They can try and tax to fill pension buckets that are empty, but the population is more
likely than ever to react negatively to this sort of thing.
People will not move to areas where the potential for extortion to satisfy pension
promises exists. Nor will they move to any place where there's the possibility of a big tax
increase to fill public coffers.
In my own area there's already the threat of a large property tax increase to cover
'social improvements' that are not really the responsibility of the local government, but you
can't tell them that, they extend their tentacles into everything. The county is just as bad,
with property tax increases and then handing out grants that no one monitors and no one knows
about.
If govt's would go back to doing what they're supposed to do instead of the garbage
they're involved in now we'd be better off and it would cost those who actually pay the taxes
a lot less. It's one big reason people are moving to rural areas. My muni has voted several
times now to increase local option sales tax, the people keep putting it down, the voting
costs thousands to conduct, I wish they would give it up.
It's no wonder that Chicago loses 150 people every day...not a good thing.
"The list includes a married couple -- a police captain and a detective -- who joined DROP
at around the same time and collected nearly $2 million while in the program. They both filed
claims for carpal tunnel syndrome and other cumulative ailments about halfway through the
program. She spent nearly two years on disability and sick leave; he missed more than two
years ... the couple spent at least some of their paid time off recovering at their condo in
Cabo San Lucas and starting a family theater production company with their daughter..."
Pensions in many ways they are the biggest Ponzi Scheme of modern man. Pension payouts are
often predicated on the idea the money invested in these funds will yield seven to eight
percent a year and in today's low-interest rate environment, this has forced funds into ever
riskier investments.
The PBGC America's pension safety net is already under pressure and failing due to the
inability of pension funds to meet their future obligations. The math alone is troubling but
when coupled with the overwhelming possibility of a major financial dislocation looming in
the future a nightmare scenario for pensions drastically increases. More on this subject in
the article below.
84% of state and local public sector workers receive defined benefit pensions as do 100%
of federal workers with little to no contribution on their part. After 30 years Federal
workers receive 33% of their highest 3 consecutive years pay and state workers average
benefits are $43000 with a range from 15000 (MS) to 80000 (CA). Private sector employees get
to pay for this and have little if anything coming from their employers in the form of a
pension. Instead, private sector employees get to gamble their savings in the stock and bond
markets to secure a retirement. And don't thing government employees are paid less - they are
usually paid very competitively with the private sector. Bottom line is private sector
employees are slaves to federal, state, and local governments.
Not only are government workers not paid that less, they get a slew of days off, sicks
days, mental health days , every minor holiday is a day off. And because they never get laid
off, the lower salary is worth more over the long term. then the private sector worker who
gets fired every 5 years
A 401K is not a pension plan and if you don't put anything into the 401K then you get
nothing out of the 401K. Plus, pensions can fail. The people that made no other arrangements
for their retirement other than rely on SocSec will have more because they will qual for food
stamps, housing subsidies, utility credits, etc. The picture is being distorted.
There is not going to be the old American pension, it's the new America, where everything
has been hollowed out. The new American economic conditions has created a vast
underclass.
The growing underclass is because of being hollowed out. Social services for the
underclass is costing hundreds of billions. The Trumpers want a massive cut in social
funding.
The communist Democratic Socialist have a wedge issue of underclass causes which keeps the
Democratic Socialist party growing. Clinton is their enemy as we now know from Clinton's out
burst.
The only way out for Trumpers is an infrastructure build. This will draw in the masses as
labor markets tighten, thus pushing wages up.
"... By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and co-founder of Bank Whistleblowers United. Jointly published with New Economic Perspectives ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... The idea that examiners should not criticize any bank misconduct, predation, or 'unsafe and unsound practice' that does not constitute a felony is obviously insane. ..."
"... The trade association complaint that examiners dare to criticize non-felonious bank conduct – and the WSJ ..."
"... I have more than a passing acquaintance with banking, banking regulation, and banking's rectitude (such an old fashioned word) in the importance for Main Street's survival, and for the country's as a whole survival as a trusted pivot point in world finance , or for the survival of the whole American project. I know this sounds like an over-the-top assertion on my part, however I believe it true. ..."
"... Obama et al confusing "banking" with sound banking is too ironic, imo. ..."
"... It was actually worse than this. The very deliberate strategy was to indoctrinate employees of federal regulatory agencies to see the companies they regulated not as "partners" but as "customers" to be served. This theme is repeated again and again in Bush era agency reports. Elizabeth Warren was viciously attacked early in the Obama Administration for calling for a new "watchdog" agency to protect consumers. The idea that a federal agency would dedicate itself to protecting citizens first was portrayed as dangerously radical by industry. ..."
"... Models on Clinton and Bush. What's not to like? Why isn't msm and dem elites showing him the love when he's following their long term policies? And we might assume these would be hills policies if she had been pushed over the line. A little thought realizes that in spite of the pearl clutching they far prefer him to Bernie. ..."
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is
to Own One, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas
City, and co-founder of Bank Whistleblowers United. Jointly published with New Economic Perspectives
The Wall Street Journal published an article
on December 12, 2018 that should warn us of coming disaster: "Banks Get Kinder, Gentler
Treatment Under Trump." The last time a regulatory head lamented that regulators were not
"kinder and gentler" promptly ushered in the Enron-era fraud epidemic. President Bush made
Harvey Pitt his Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair in August 2001 and, in one of
his early major addresses, he spoke on October 22, 2001 to a group of accounting
leaders.
Pitt, as a private counsel, represented all the top tier audit firms, and they had
successfully pushed Bush to appoint him to run the SEC. The second sentence of Pitt's speech
bemoaned the fact that the SEC had not been "a kinder and gentler place for accountants." He
concluded his first paragraph with the statement that the SEC and the auditors needed to work
"in partnership." He soon reiterated that point: "We view the accounting profession as our
partner" and amped it up by calling accountants the SEC's "critical partner."
Pitt expanded on that point: "I am committed to the principle that government is and must be
a service industry." That, of course, would not be controversial if he meant a service agency
(not "industry") for the public. Pitt, however, meant that the SEC should be a "service
industry" for the auditors and corporations.
Pitt then turned to pronouncing the SEC to be the guilty party in the "partnership." He
claimed that the SEC had terrorized accountants. He then stated that he had ordered the SEC to
end this fictional terror campaign.
[A]ccountants became afraid to talk to the SEC, and the SEC appeared to be unwilling to
listen to the profession. Those days are ended.
This prompted Pitt to ratchet even higher his "partnership" language.
I speak for the entire Commission when I say that we want to have a continuing dialogue,
and partnership, with the accounting profession,
Recall that Pitt spoke on October 22, 2001. Here are the relevant excerpts from the NY
Times' Enron
timeline :
Oct. 16 – Enron announces $638 million in third-quarter losses and a $1.2 billion
reduction in shareholder equity stemming from writeoffs related to failed broadband and water
trading ventures as well as unwinding of so-called Raptors, or fragile entities backed by
falling Enron stock created to hedge inflated asset values and keep hundreds of millions of
dollars in debt off the energy company's books.
Oct. 19 – Securities and Exchange Commission launches inquiry into Enron
finances.
Oct. 22 – Enron acknowledges SEC inquiry into a possible conflict of interest
related to the company's dealings with Fastow's partnerships.
Oct. 23 – Lay professes confidence in Fastow to analysts.
Oct. 24 – Fastow ousted.
The key fact is that even as Enron was obviously spiraling toward imminent collapse (it
filed for bankruptcy on December 2) – and the SEC knew it – Pitt offered no warning
in his speech. The auditors and the corporate CEOs and CFOs were not the SEC's 'partners.'
Thousands of CEOs and CFOs were filing false financial statements – with 'clean' opinions
from the then 'Big 5' auditors. Pitt was blind to the 'accounting control fraud' epidemic that
was raging at the time he spoke to the accountants. Thousands of his putative auditor
'partners' were getting rich by blessing fraudulent financial statements and harming the
investors that the SEC is actually supposed to serve.
Tom Frank aptly characterized the Bush appointees that completed the destruction of
effective financial regulation as "The Wrecking Crew." It is important, however, to understand
that Bush largely adopted and intensified Clinton's war against effective regulation. Clinton
and Bush led the unremitting bipartisan assault on regulation for 16 years. That produced the
criminogenic environment that produced the three largest financial fraud epidemics in history
that hyper-inflated the real estate bubble and drove the Great Financial Crisis (GFC).
President Trump has renewed the Clinton/Bush war on regulation and he has appointed banking
regulatory leaders that have consciously modeled their assault on regulation on Bush and
Clinton's 'Wrecking Crews.'
Bill Clinton's euphemism for his war on effective regulation was "Reinventing Government."
Clinton appointed VP Al Gore to lead the assault. (Clinton and Gore are "New Democrat" leaders
– the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party.) Gore decided he needed to choose an
anti-regulator to conduct the day-to-day leadership. We know from Bob Stone's memoir the sole
substantive advice he gave Gore in their first meeting that caused Gore to appoint him as that
leader. "Do not 'waste one second going after waste, fraud, and abuse.'" Elite insider fraud
is, historically, the leading cause of bank losses and failures, so Stone's advice was sure to
lead to devastating financial crises. It is telling that it was the fact that Stone gave
obviously idiotic advice to Gore that led him to select Stone as the field commander of Clinton
and Gore's war on effective regulation.
Stone convinced the Clinton-Gore administration to embrace the defining element of crony
capitalism as its signature mantra for its war on effective regulation. Stone and his troops
ordered us to refer to the banks, not the American people, as our "customers." Peters' foreword
to Stone's book admits the action, but is clueless about the impact.
Bob Stone's insistence on using the word "customer" was mocked by some -- but made an
enormous difference over the course of time. In general, he changed the vocabulary of public
service from 'procedure first' to 'service first.'"
That is a lie. We did not 'mock' the demand that we treat the banks rather than the American
people as our "customer" – we openly protested the outrageous order that we embrace and
encourage crony capitalism. Crony capitalism's core principle – which is unprincipled
– is that the government should treat elite CEOs as their 'customers' or 'partners.' A
number of us publicly expressed our rage at the corrupt order to treat CEOs as our customers.
The corrupt order caused me to leave the government.
Our purpose as regulators is to serve the people of the United States – not bank CEOs.
It was disgusting and dishonest for Peters to claim that our objection to crony capitalism
represented our (fictional) disdain for serving the public. Many S&L regulators risked
their careers by taking on elite S&L frauds and their powerful political fixers. Many of us
paid a heavy personal price because we acted to protect the public from these elite frauds. Our
efforts prevented the S&L debacle from causing a GFC – precisely because we
recognized the critical need to spend most of our time preventing and prosecuting the elite
frauds that Stone wanted us to ignore..
Trump's wrecking crew is devoted to recreating Clinton and Bush's disastrous crony
capitalism war on regulation that produced the GFC. In a June 8,
2018 article , the Wall Street Journal mocked Trump's appointment of Joseph Otting
as Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The illustration that introduces the article bears the
motto: "IN BANKS WE TRUST."
Otting, channeling his inner Pitt, declared his employees guilty of systematic misconduct
and embraced crony capitalism through Pitt's favorite phrase – "partnership."
I think it is more of a partnership with the banks as opposed to a dictatorial perspective
under the prior administration.
Otting, while he was in the industry, compared the OCC under President Obama to a fictional
interstellar terrorist. Obama appointed federal banking regulators that were pale imitation of
Ed Gray, Joe Selby, and Mike Patriarca – the leaders of the S&L reregulation. The
idea that Obama's banking regulators were akin to 'terrorists' is farcical.
The WSJ's December 12, 2018 article reported that Otting had also used Bob Stone's
favorite term to embrace crony capitalism.
Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting has also changed the tone from the top at his
agency, calling banks his "customers."
There are many terrible role models Trump could copy as his model of how to destroy banking
regulation and produce the next GFC, but Otting descended into unintentional self-parody when
he channeled word-for-word the most incompetent and dishonest members of Clinton and Bush's
wrecking crews.
The same article reported a trade association's statement that demonstrates the type of
outrageous reaction that crony capitalism inevitably breeds within industry.
Banks are suffering from "examiner criticisms that do not deal with any violation of law,"
said Greg Baer, CEO of the Bank Policy Institute ."
The article presented no response to this statement so I will explain why it is absurd.
First, "banks" do not "suffer" from "examiner criticism." Banks gain from examiner criticism.
Effective regulators (and whistleblowers) are the only people who routinely 'speak truth to
power.' Auditors, credit rating agencies, and attorneys routinely 'bless' the worst CEO abuses
that harm banks while enriching the CEO. The bank CEO cannot fire the examiner, so the
examiners' expert advice is the only truly "independent" advice the bank's board of directors
receives. That makes the examiners' criticisms invaluable to the bank. CEOs hate our advice
because we are the only 'control' (other than the episodic whistleblower) that is willing and
competent to criticize the CEO.
The idea that examiners should not criticize any bank misconduct, predation, or 'unsafe
and unsound practice' that does not constitute a felony is obviously insane. While
"violations of law" (felonies) are obviously of importance to us in almost all cases, our
greatest expertise is in identifying – and stopping – "unsafe and unsound
practices" because such practices, like fraud, are leading causes of bank losses and
failures.
Third, repeated "unsafe and unsound practices" are a leading indicator of likely elite
insider bank fraud and other "violations of law."
The trade association complaint that examiners dare to criticize non-felonious bank
conduct – and the WSJ reporters' failure to point out the absurdity of that
complaint – demonstrate that the banking industry's goal remains the destruction of
effective banking regulation. Trump's wrecking crew is using the Clinton and Bush playbook to
restore fully crony capitalism. He has greatly accelerated the onset of the next GFC.
Thank you for this, Bill Black. IMO the long-term de-regulatory policies under successive
administrations cited here, together with their neutering the rule of law by overturning the
Glass-Steagall Act; de-funding and failing to enforce antitrust, fraud and securities laws;
financial repression of the majority; hidden financial markets subsidies; and other policies
are just part of an organized, long-term systemic effort to enable, organize and subsidize
massive control and securities fraud; theft of and disinvestment in publicly owned resources
and services; environmental damage; and transfers of social costs that enable the organizers
to in turn gain a hugely disproportionate share of the nation's wealth and nearly absolute
political control under their "Citizens United" political framework.
Not to diminish, but among other things the current president provides nearly daily
entertainment, diversion and spectacle in our Brave New World that serves to obfuscate what
has occurred and is happening.
I'm with you Chauncey. I believe the rot really got started with creative accounting in
early 1970s. That's when accountants of every flavor lost themselves and were soon followed
by the lawyers. Sauce for the goose.
Banks and Insurers and many industrial concerns have become too big. We could avoid all
the regulatory problems by placing a maximum size on commercial endeavour.
A number of years ago I did both the primary capital program and environmental (NEPA) review
for major capital projects in a Federal Region. Hundreds of millions of dollars were at
stake. A local agency wanted us (the Feds) to approve pushing up many of their projects using
a so-called Public Private Partnership (PPP). This required the local agency to borrow many
millions from Wall Street while at the same time privatizing many of their here-to-fore
public operations. And of course there was an added benefit of instituting a non-union
shop.
To this end I was required to sit down with the local agency head (he actually wore white
shoes), his staff and several representatives of Goldman-Sachs. After the meeting ended, I
opined to the agency staff that Goldman-Sachs was "bullshit" and so were their projects.
Shortly thereafter I was removed to a less high-profile Region with projects that were not
all that griftable, and there was no danger of me having to review a PPP.
Oh, and I denied, denied, denied saying "bullshit."
Thank you, NC, for featuring these posts by Bill Black.
I have more than a passing acquaintance with banking, banking regulation, and banking's
rectitude (such an old fashioned word) in the importance for Main Street's survival, and for
the country's as a whole survival as a trusted pivot point in world finance , or for
the survival of the whole American project. I know this sounds like an over-the-top assertion
on my part, however I believe it true.
Main Street also knows the importance of sound banking. Sound banking is not a 'poker
chip' to be used for games. Sound banking is key to the American experiment in
self-determination, as it has been called.
Politicians who 'don't get this" have lost touch with the entire American enterprise,
imo. And, no, the neoliberal promise that nation-states no longer matter doesn't make this
point moot.
adding: US founding father Alexander Hambleton did understand the importance of sound
banking, and so Obama et al confusing "banking" with sound banking is too ironic, imo.
It was actually worse than this. The very deliberate strategy was to indoctrinate
employees of federal regulatory agencies to see the companies they regulated not as
"partners" but as "customers" to be served. This theme is repeated again and again in Bush
era agency reports. Elizabeth Warren was viciously attacked early in the Obama Administration
for calling for a new "watchdog" agency to protect consumers. The idea that a federal agency
would dedicate itself to protecting citizens first was portrayed as dangerously radical by
industry.
Models on Clinton and Bush.
What's not to like? Why isn't msm and dem elites showing him the love when he's following
their long term policies?
And we might assume these would be hills policies if she had been pushed over the line.
A little thought realizes that in spite of the pearl clutching they far prefer him to
Bernie.
CIA democrats are still determined to sink Tramp, and continues to beat the dead cat of
"Russian collision". What is interesting is that Jacob Schiff financed Bolsheviks revolution in
Russia.
Yahoo comments reflect the deep split in the opinions in the society, which is positioned
mainly by party lines. Few commenters understadn that the problem is with neoliberalism, not
Trump, or Hillary who represent just different factions of the same neoliberal elite.
Notable quotes:
"... Schiff said Deutsche Bank has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines to the state of New York for laundering Russian money, and that it was the one bank willing to do business with the Trump Organization. ..."
"... In an interview with the New Yorker that was posted on line on Dec. 14, Schiff said the Intelligence Committee is "going to be looking at the issue of possible money laundering by the Trump Organization, and Deutsche Bank is one obvious place to start." ..."
"... A Senate investigation, which Warren and Van Hollen want to see followed by a report and a hearing, could put further pressure on the lender. The written request from the senators, sent Dec. 13, cites Deutsche Bank's "numerous enforcement actions" and a recent raid by police officers and tax investigators in Germany. ..."
"... Schiff, a target of Trump's on Twitter, also referred to reported comments by the president's sons some years ago that they didn't need "to deal with U.S. banks because they got all of the cash they needed from Russia or disproportionate share of their assets coming from Russia." He said Sunday he expects to learn more about that claim through financial records. ..."
The incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee joined Democratic colleagues in
questioning ties between Deutsche Bank AG and President Donald Trump's real estate
business.
Representative Adam Schiff of California said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that any type
of compromise needs to be investigated. That could add his panel's scrutiny to that of
Representative Maxine Waters, who's in line to be chair of the House Financial Services
Committee and has also focused on the bank's connections to Trump.
Schiff's comments came three days after Wall Street critic Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts
and fellow Senate Democrat Chris Van Hollen called for a Banking Committee investigation of
Deutsche Bank's compliance with U.S. money-laundering regulations.
Schiff said Deutsche Bank has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines to the state
of New York for laundering Russian money, and that it was the one bank willing to do business
with the Trump Organization.
"Now, is that a coincidence?" Schiff said. "If this is a form of compromise, it needs to be
exposed."
In an interview with the New Yorker that was posted on line on Dec. 14, Schiff said the
Intelligence Committee is "going to be looking at the issue of possible money laundering by the
Trump Organization, and Deutsche Bank is one obvious place to start."
More Pressure
A Senate investigation, which Warren and Van Hollen want to see followed by a report and
a hearing, could put further pressure on the lender. The written request from the senators,
sent Dec. 13, cites Deutsche Bank's "numerous enforcement actions" and a recent raid by police
officers and tax investigators in Germany.
It also notes the lender's U.S. operations being implicated in cross-border money-laundering
accusations such as in a recent case involving Danish lender Danske Bank A/S and the movement
of $230 billion in illicit funds.
"The compliance history of this institution raises serious questions about the national
security and criminal risks posed by its U.S. operations," the senators said in their letter.
"Its correspondent banking operations in the U.S. serve as a gateway to the U.S. financial
system for Deutsche Bank entities around the world."
Troy Gravitt, a Deutsche Bank spokesman, responded that the company "takes its legal
obligations seriously and remains committed to cooperating with authorized investigations."
Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, had questioned the Federal Reserve earlier this year about
how it would keep the White House from interfering with oversight of the lender, which had been
a major lender to Trump's real estate business.
Schiff, a target of Trump's on Twitter, also referred to reported comments by the
president's sons some years ago that they didn't need "to deal with U.S. banks because they got
all of the cash they needed from Russia or disproportionate share of their assets coming from
Russia." He said Sunday he expects to learn more about that claim through financial
records.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jesse Hamilton in Washington at
[email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jesse Westbrook at
[email protected], Mark Niquette, Ros Krasny
55 seconds ago A
special Special Prosecutor must be appointed with a billion dollar budget. Where will the
money come from? Fines, penalties, and restitution by the Godfather.
U 46 seconds ago With
all these investigations, who should die hard Republicans vote for in 2020? Should it be
Donald Trump or Individual 1 or David Dennison? Gonna' be a hard choice next year.
F 1
minute ago Investigations of Trump are just getting started! hahaha
A 7 minutes ago Don
the Con is certainly getting a lot of probes of his illegal, criminal business deals. He
was a total idiot to become president and draw all this attention considering all the
crimes he has committed.
W 3 minutes ago
"Shifty" Schiff....doing everything to bring America together again!
D 17 minutes ago Lets investigate SLIMEY SHIFTLESS SCHIFF for leaking to
the News Media and running faster than a speedy bullet to a microphone and running his
loose lips !
B 3 minutes ago One of
the problem is that politicians, like schiffhead, have never had a real job and only have
scammed their donors and havent a clue how the real world works.
"... Nik Williams, the policy advisor for Scottish PEN, the Scottish centre of PEN International. We are leading the campaign opposing suspicionless surveillance and protecting the rights of writers both in Scotland and across the globe. Find out more on Twitter at @scottishpen and @nikwilliams2 . Originally published at openDemocracy ..."
"... In 2013, NSA whistle blower, Edward Snowden revealed the extent of government surveillance that enables intelligence agencies to capture the data of internet users around the world. Some of the powers revealed enable agencies to access emails in transit, files held on devices, details that document our relationships and location in real-time and data that could reveal our political opinions, beliefs and routines. ..."
"... As big data and digital surveillance is interwoven into the fabric of modern society there is growing evidence that the perception of surveillance affects how different communities engage with the internet. ..."
"... In 2013, PEN America surveyed American writers to see whether the Snowden revelations impacted their willingness to explore challenging issues and continue to write. In their report, Chilling Effects: NSA Surveillance Drives US Writers to Self-Censor , PEN America found that "one in six writers avoided writing or speaking on a topic they thought would subject them to surveillance". ..."
"... At times, surveillance appears unavoidable and this was evident in many of the writers' responses to whether they could take actions to mitigate the risks of surveillance. Without knowing how to secure themselves there are limited options: writers either resign themselves to using insecure tools or choose to avoid the internet all together, cutting them off from important sources of information and potential communities of readers and support. ..."
"... Although not explicitly laid out in the post, I'm inclined to believe any online research on PETs might single one out as a "Person of Interest" ..."
"... we know better now – EVERYTHING is recorded and archived. Privacy may not be dead yet, but now exists only in carefully curated offline pockets, away from not just the phone and the laptop, but also the smart fridge's and the face-recognising camera's gimlet eye. ..."
"... And it's not just off centre political opining that could be used in such efforts. The percentages of internet users who have accused [people of using] porn sites suggests there would be some serious overlap between the set of well known and/or 'important' people and the set of porn hounds. Remember the cack-handed attempts to smear Hans Blix? ..."
"... Most of us (real writers or just people who write) need to hold down a job and increasingly HR depts don't just 'do a Google' on all potential appointees to important roles but in large concerns at least, use algorithmic software connected to the web and the Cloud to process applications. ..."
We know what censorship looks like: writers being murdered, attacked or imprisoned; TV and
radio stations being shut down; the only newspapers parrot the state; journalists lost in the
bureaucratic labyrinth to secure a license or permit; government agencies approving which
novels, plays and poetry collections can be published; books being banned or burned or the
extreme regulation of access to printing materials or presses. All of these damage free
expression, but they leave a fingerprint, something visible that can be measured, but what
about self-censorship? This leaves no such mark.
When writers self-censor, there is no record, they just stop writing or avoid certain topics
and these decisions are lost to time. Without being able to record and document isolated cases
the way we can with explicit government censorship, the only thing we can do is identify
potential drivers to self-censorship.
In 2013, NSA whistle blower, Edward Snowden revealed the extent of government surveillance
that enables intelligence agencies to capture the data of internet users around the world. Some
of the powers revealed enable agencies to access emails in transit, files held on devices,
details that document our relationships and location in real-time and data that could reveal
our political opinions, beliefs and routines. Following these revelations, the UK government
pushed through the Investigatory Powers Act ,
an audacious act that modernised, consolidated and expanded digital surveillance powers. This
expansion was opposed by civil rights organisations, (including Scottish PEN where I work),
technologists, a number of media bodies and major tech companies, but on 29th November 2016, it
received royal assent.
But what did this expansion do to our right to free expression?
As big data and digital surveillance is interwoven into the fabric of modern society there
is growing evidence that the perception of surveillance affects how different communities
engage with the internet. Following the Snowden revelations, John Penny at the Oxford
Internet Institute analysed traffic to Wikipedia pages on topics designated by the Department
of Homeland Security as sensitive and identified "a 20 percent decline in page views on
Wikipedia articles related to terrorism, including those that mentioned 'al Qaeda,' 'car bomb'
or 'Taliban.'" This report was in line with a study by Alex Marthews and
Catherine Tucker who found a similar trend in the avoidance of sensitive topics in Google
search behaviour in 41 countries. This has significant impact on both free expression and
democracy, as
outlined by Penney: "If people are spooked or deterred from learning about important policy
matters like terrorism and national security, this is a real threat to proper democratic
debate."
But it doesn't end with sourcing information. In a study of Facebook, Elizabeth Stoycheff
discovered that when faced with holders of majority opinions and the knowledge of government
surveillance, holders of minority viewpoints are more likely to "self-censor their dissenting
opinions online". If holders of minority opinions step away from online platforms like
Facebook, these platforms will only reflect the majority opinion, homogenising discourse and
giving a false idea of consensus. Read together, these studies document a slow erosion of the
eco-system within which free expression flourishes.
In 2013, PEN America surveyed American writers to see whether the Snowden revelations
impacted their willingness to explore challenging issues and continue to write. In their
report, Chilling Effects:
NSA Surveillance Drives US Writers to Self-Censor , PEN America found that "one in six
writers avoided writing or speaking on a topic they thought would subject them to
surveillance". But is this bigger than the US? Scottish PEN, alongside researchers at the
University of Strathclyde authored the report,
Scottish Chilling: Impact of Government and Corporate Surveillance on Writers to explore
the impact of surveillance on Scotland-based writers, asking the question: Is the perception of
surveillance a driver to self-censorship? After surveying 118 writers, including novelists,
poets, essayists, journalists, translators, editors and publishers, and interviewing a number
of participants we uncovered a disturbing trend of writers avoiding certain topics in their
work or research, modifying their work or refusing to use certain online tools. 22% of
responders have avoided writing or speaking on a particular topic due to the perception of
surveillance and 28% have curtailed or avoided activities on social media. Further to this, 82%
said that if they knew that the UK government had collected data about their Internet activity
they would feel as though their personal privacy had been violated, something made more likely
by the passage of the investigatory Powers Act.
At times, surveillance appears unavoidable and this was evident in many of the writers'
responses to whether they could take actions to mitigate the risks of surveillance. Without
knowing how to secure themselves there are limited options: writers either resign themselves to
using insecure tools or choose to avoid the internet all together, cutting them off from
important sources of information and potential communities of readers and support.
Literacy
concerning the use of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (oftentimes called PETs) is a vital part
of how we protect free expression in the digital age, but as outlined by the concerns of a
number of the participants, it is largely under-explored outside of the tech community: "I
think probably I need to get educated a wee bit more by someone because I think we probably are
a bit exposed and a wee bit vulnerable, more than we realize." Another was even more stark
about their worries about the available alternatives: "I have no idea about how to use the
Internet 'differently'".
When interviewed, a number of writers expressed concerns about how their writing process has
changed or is in danger of changing as a result of their awareness of surveillance. One
participant who had covered the conflict in Northern Ireland in 70s and 80s stated that they
would not cover the conflict in the same manner if it took place now; another stopped writing
about child abuse when they thought about what their search history may look to someone else;
when they heard of a conviction based on the ownership of the Anarchist Cookbook, a participant
who bought a copy for research shredded it. Further to this a participant stated: "I think I
would avoid direct research on issues to do with Islamic fundamentalism. I might work on
aspects of the theory, but not on interviewing people in the past, I have interviewed people
who would be called 'subversives'."
These modifications or avoidance strategies raise a stark and important question: What are
we as readers being denied if writers are avoiding sensitive topics? Put another way, what
connects the abuse of personal data by Cambridge Analytica, the treatment of asylum seekers by
the Australian government on Manus and Nauru, the hiding of billions of pounds by wealthy
individuals as revealed in the Panama and Paradise Papers, the deportation of members of the
'Windrush Generation' and the Watergate scandal? In each case, writers revealed to the world
what others wanted hidden. Shadows appear less dense if writers are able to explore challenging
issues and expose wrongdoing free from the coercive weight of pervasive surveillance. When
writers are silenced, even by their own hand, we all suffer.
Surveillance is going nowhere – it is embedded into the fabric of the internet. If we
ignore the impact it has on writers, we threaten the very foundations of democracy; a vibrant
and cacophonous exchange of ideas and beliefs, alongside what it means to be a writer. In the
words of one participant: "You can't exist as a writer if you're self-censoring."
Thanks Yves, this is an important topic. Although not explicitly laid out in the post, I'm
inclined to believe any online research on PETs might single one out as a "Person of
Interest" (after all the state wants unfettered access to our digital lives and any attempt
by individuals to curtail such access is viewed with suspicion, and maybe even a little
contempt).
I trust the takeaway message from this post will resonate with any person who holds what
might be considered "heretical" or dissenting views. I'd also argue that it's not just
writers who are willingly submitting themselves to this self-censorship straitjacket,
ordinary people are themselves sanitizing their views to avoid veering too far off the
official line/established consensus on issues, lest they fall foul of the machinery of the
security state.
Yes – not just 'writers' as in 'those who write for a living or at least partly
define themselves as writers in either a creative or an activist sense, or both' – but
all of us who do not perceive ourselves as 'writers', only as people who in the course of
their lives write a bit here and there, some of it on public platforms such as this, but much
of it in emails and texts to friends and family. It wouldn't be quite so bad if the
surveillance was only of the public stuff, but we know better now – EVERYTHING is
recorded and archived. Privacy may not be dead yet, but now exists only in carefully curated
offline pockets, away from not just the phone and the laptop, but also the smart fridge's and
the face-recognising camera's gimlet eye.
Staying with the 'not just' for a moment – the threat is not just government
security agencies and law enforcement, or indeed Surveillance Valley. It is clear that if
egghead techs in those employments are able to crack our lives open then egghead techs in
their parent's basement around the corner may be capable of the same intrusions, their
actions not subject to any of the official box-ticking govt actors with which govt actors
must (or at least should) comply.
And it is not just the danger of govt/sinister 3rd parties identifying potential security
(or indeed political or economic) threats out of big data analysis, but the danger of govt
and especially interested third parties targeting particular known individuals –
political enemies to be sure, but also love rivals, toxic bosses, hated alpha males or queen
bitches, supporters of other football clubs, members of other races not deemed fully human,..
the list is as long as that of human hatreds and jealousies. The danger lies not just in the
use of the tech to ID threats (real or imagined) but in its application to traduce threats
already perceived.
And it's not just off centre political opining that could be used in such efforts. The
percentages of internet users who have accused [people of using] porn sites suggests there would be some
serious overlap between the set of well known and/or 'important' people and the set of porn
hounds. Remember the cack-handed attempts to smear Hans Blix? Apparently no fire behind that
smoke, but what if there was? The mass US surveillance of other parties prior to UN Iraq
deliberations (from the Merkels down to their state-level support bureaucrats) was a fleeting
and hastily forgotten glimpse of the reach of TIA, its 'full spectrum dominance', from the
heights of top level US-free strategy meetings down to the level of the thoughts and hopes of
valets and ostlers to the leaders, who may be useful in turning up references to the
peccadilloes of the higher-ups 'go massive – sweep it all up, things related and
not'
And it's not just the fear of some sort of official retribution for dissenting political
activism that guides our hands away from typing that deeply held but possibly inflammatory
and potentially dangerous opinion. Most of us (real writers or just people who write) need to
hold down a job and increasingly HR depts don't just 'do a Google' on all potential
appointees to important roles but in large concerns at least, use algorithmic software
connected to the web and the Cloud to process applications.
This is done without human
intervention at the individual level but the whole process is set up in such a way that the
algorithms are able to neatly, bloodlessly, move applicants for whom certain keywords turned
up matches (union or party membership, letters to the editor or blog posts on financial
fraud, climate change vanguardism, etc) to the back of the queue, in time producing a grey
army of yes people in our bureaucracies.
The normal person's ability to keep pace with (let alone ahead of) the tech disappeared
long ago. So when a possible anonymising solution – Tor – crops up but is soon
exposed as yet another MI/SV bastard love child, the sense of disappointment is profound.
Shocked but not surprised.
"Then they got rid of the sick, the so-called incurables. – I remember a
conversation I had with a person who claimed to be a Christian. He said: Perhaps it's right,
these incurably sick people just cost the state money, they are just a burden to themselves
and to others. Isn't it best for all concerned if they are taken out of the middle [of
society]? "
We already
know insurers have been using online searches to discriminate amongst the victimae. The
married/unmarried differences in cancer treatments are a confirmation. Self-censorship is a
rational decision in seeking information in a linked world. (I gave up on affording
insurance, and I do searches for friends; the ads I get are amusing.)
It could be said that journalists have a professional duty, but as the man said, "If you
believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting."
As the woman said, "If your business depends on a platform, your business is already
dead."
(As for the above quote, check the provenance for the relevance.)
I confess I do concatenate your quotes on
occasion: "For a currency to function as a reserve currency is tantamount to exporting jobs."
Some of your most illuminating statements are in side comments to linked articles.
Means I spend a lot of time reading the site. But then I get to recategorize most other
current events sites as 'Entertainment.' And since they're not very, they've been
downregulated.
My choice being shackled e'n more to chains of FIRE, or living a healthy happy life,
rather than increasing my stress by fighting institutions, we're investing in ourselves. Good
sleep, good food, good exercise.
The basis of our diet is coffee, with cocoa (7% daily fiber with each tablespoon) and
organic heavy whipping cream (your fats should be organic (;)). That cream's not cheap; well,
actually it is amazingly cheap considering the energy inputs. I'll be fasting soon to murder
cancer cells, and fasting also costs, lets see, nothing.
That the best thing you can do is nothing, occasionally, is a strong offset to the
institutional framework. Janet's been a nurse 40 years, and every day (truth) we get another
instance of not wanting the probisci inserted. Even when we get M4A, we'll be cautious in our
approach.
I suppose that here we are looking at the dogs that did not bark for evidence of
self-censorship. Certainly my plans to take over the world I do not keep on my computer. I
had not considered the matter but I think that a case could be made that this may extend
further than just writers. The number of writers that cannot publish in the US but must
publish their work in obscure overseas publications is what happens to those who do not seek
to self censor. There are other forms of censorship to be true. I read once where there was
an editorial meeting for either the Washington Post or New York Times when a story came up
that would make Israel look bad. The people at the table looked around and without so much as
a nod that story was dropped from publication. Now that is self-censorship.
But I can see this self censorship at work elsewhere. To let my flight take fancy, who will
paint the modern "Guernica" in this age? Would there be any chance that a modern studio would
ever film something like "The Day After" mentioned in comments yesterday again? With so many
great stories to be told, why has Hollywood run itself into a creative ditch and is content
to film 1960s TV shows as a movie or a version of Transformers number 32? Where are the
novels being written that will come to represent this era in the way that "The Great Gatsby"
came to represent the 1920s? My point is that with a total surveillance culture, I have the
feeling that this is permeating the culture and creating a chilling effect right across the
board and just not in writing.
What we are experiencing censorship-wise is nothing new, just more insidious. It is not
even a Left/Right politics issue. We just saw Trumpist fascist conservatives KILL the
Weekly Standard (an action praised by Trump) for advocating the wrong
conservativism. The shift in the televised/streamed media from news to infotainment has
enabled neoliberal capitalism to censor any news that might alienate viewers/subscribers to
justify obscene charges for advertising. Hilariously, even fascist Laura Ingram got gored by
her own neolib ox.
Of course, a certain amount of self-censorship is prudent. Insulting, inflammatory,
inciteful, hateful speech seldom animates beneficial change – just pointless violence
(an sometimes law suits). Americans especially are so hung up on "free speech" rights that
they too often fail to realize that no speech is truly free . There are always consequences
for the purveyor, good and bad. Ask any kid on the playground with a bloody nose.
I would like to see some Google traitor write an article on the latest semantic analysis
algorithms and tools. Thanks to the government, nobody but the FEDs and Google have access to
these new tools that can mine terabytes of speech in seconds to highlight global patterns
which might indicate plotting or organizing that might be entirely legal. I have been trying
for years to get access to the newer unobtainable tools to help improve the development of
diagnostic and monitoring self-report health measures. Such tools can also quickly scan
journals to highlight and coordinate findings to accelerate new discoveries. For now, they
are used to determine if your emails indicate you are a jihadist terrorist or dope peddler,
or want to buy a Toyota or a Ford.
Rhetorical I know, but Don DeLillo is quite good. It was in his novel Libra ,
although arguably from/about a different era at this point, where it first hit home to me
that the Blob really does manipulate the media to its own ends all the time. And you can't
swing a cat without hitting a terrorist in his books.
But to your point, DeLillo is pretty old at this point and I'm hard pressed to think of
anyone picking up his mantle. And none of his novels, as brilliant as some of them might be,
rise to the level of The Great Gatsby in the popular imagination to begin with.
The surveillance people are the nicest, kindest human beings that have only your best
interest at heart.
They would never break down your door and terrorize you for searching online for a
pressure cooker and if you heard stories that they did that, the surveillancers have an
answer for you, it's fake news, and if you persisted in not believing them, there are other
methods of persuasion to get you to change your mind or at least shut up about it.
That pressure cooker story gets a lot of mileage. While there is undoubtedly a lot of
surveillance it might be interesting to see a story on just how much of it leads to actual
arrests on real or trumped up charges. Here's suggesting that the paranoia induced by books
like Surveillance Valley is over the top in the same way that TV news' focus on crime stories
causes the public to think that crime is rampant when it may actually be declining.
That said, journalists who indulge their vanity with Facebook or Twitter accounts are
obviously asking for it. And the journalistic world in general needs to become a lot more
technologically "literate" and realize that Youtube videos can be faked as well as how to
separate the internet wheat from the chaff. Plus there's that old fashioned way of learning a
story that is probably the way most stories are still reported: talking to
people–hopefully in a room that hasn't been bugged.
Just to add that while the above may apply to America that doesn't mean the web isn't a
much more sinister phenomenon in countries like China with its new social trust score. We
must make sure the US never goes there.
For your first sentence I think you are referencing:
The surveillance people are "the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being[s]
I've ever known in my life." (ref. Statement by Major Marco about Raymond Shaw from 1962 and
2004 movies "The Manchurian Candidate"). ?
Maybe you need some refresher re-education.
Expression of minority opinions and surpressed information is not a safe activity, thus we
self censor. However reality asserts itself and perhaps in those moments one can more safely
express alternate points of view. As far as writing online i worry about the future –
with everything recorded and searchable, will we at some point be facing round ups of
dissidents? What kind of supression will stressed governments and corporate hierarchies do in
the future?
I think the last blog post I wrote that was linked here at NC was called "TPP is
Treason."
I was writing and was published on the Internet from 2011-2016. I continue to write, but I
no longer publish anything online, I closed my Facebook account, and I rarely comment on
articles outside of NC, especially anywhere I have to give up a digital-ton of personal info
and contacts just to say a few words one time.
Goodness knows I do not worry a bit about fundamentalist Islamic militancy. Do I have any
anxiety about jackbooted "law enforcement" mercenaries in riot gear and automatic rifles
breaking down my door at the behest, basically, of the corporate/banking/billionaire,
neoliberal/neoconservative status quo, my big mouth excoriating these elite imperialists, at
the same time asset forfeiture laws are on the books and I can have EVERYTHING taken from me
for growing a single plant of cannabis, or even having any cannabis in my house, or not, all
they have to report to a complicit media and prosecutorial State is that I was growing
cannabis when there was none.
Of course there is little danger of that if I am not publishing, and hardly anyone knows I
ever have, and no one currently is paying any attention.
The fact in America at least is, as long as the status quo is secure, TPTB don't really
care what I write, as long as they do not perceive it as a threat, and the only way they
would is if a LOT of people are listening But still, there is nothing more terrifying on
earth than America's Law/Corporate/Bank/Privatized Military/Media imperialist State, chilling
to say the least, evidenced in the extreme by a distracted, highly manipulated and neutered
citizenry.
"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular."
"If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search
may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain."
Former FBI Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz has asked SaraACarter.com to post her letter to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan
in support of her friend and colleague retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who will be
sentenced on Dec. 18. The Special Counsel's Office has requested that Flynn not serve any
jail time due to his cooperation with Robert Mueller's office. Based on new information
contained in a memorandum submitted to the court this week by Flynn's attorney, Sullivan has
ordered Mueller's office to turn over all exculpatory evidence and government documents on
Flynn's case by mid-day Friday. Sullivan is also requesting any documentation regarding the
first interviews conducted by former anti-Trump agent Peter Strzok and FBI Agent Joe Pientka
-known by the FBI as 302s- which were found to be dated more than seven months after the
interviews were conducted on Jan. 24, 2017, a violation of FBI policy, say current and former
FBI officials familiar with the process. According to information contained in Flynn's
memorandum, the interviews were dated Aug. 22, 2017.
Read Gritz's letter below... (emphasis added)
The Honorable Emmet G. Sullivan. December 5, 2018 U.S. District Court for the District of
Columbia
333 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington D.C. 20001
Re: Sentencing of Lt. General Michael T. Flynn (Ret.)
Dear Judge Sullivan:
I am submitting my letter directly since Mike Flynn's attorney has refused to submit it as
well as letters submitted by other individuals. I feel you need to hear from someone who was an
FBI Special Agent who not only worked with Mike, but also has personally witnessed and reported
unethical & sometimes illegal tactics used to coerce targets of investigations externally
and internally.
About Myself and FBI Career
For 16 years, I proudly served the American people as a Special Agent working diligently on
significant terrorism cases which earned noteworthy results and fostered substantial
interagency cooperation. Prior to serving in the FBI I was a Juvenile Probation Officer in
Camden, NJ. Currently, I am a Senior Information Security Metrics and Reporting Analyst with
Discover Financial Services in the Chicago Metro area. I have recently been named as a Senior
Fellow to the London Center for Policy Research.
While in the FBI, I served as a Special Agent, Supervisory Special Agent, Assistant
Inspector, Unit Chief, and a Senior Liaison Officer to the CIA. I served on the NSC's Hostage
and Personnel Working Group and brought numerous Americans out of captivity and was part of the
interagency team to codify policies outlining the whole of government approach to hostage
cases.
In November 2007, I was selected over 26 other candidates to become the Supervisory Special
Agent, CT Extraterritorial Squad; Washington Field Office (WFO) in Washington, DC. At WFO, I
led a squad of experts in extraterritorial evidence collection, overseas investigations,
operational security during terrorist attacks/events, and overseas criminal investigations. I
coordinated and managed numerous high profile investigations (Blackwater, Chuckie Taylor,
Robert Levinson, and other pivotal cases) comprised of teams from US and foreign intelligence,
military, and law enforcement agencies. I was commended for displaying comprehensive leadership
performance under pressure, extensive teamwork skills, while conducting critical investigative
analysis within and outside the FBI.
In December 2009, I was promoted to GS-15 Unit Chief (UC) of the Executive Strategy Unit,
Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate (WMDD). While the UC, I codified the WMDD five-year
strategic plan, formulated goals and objectives throughout the division, while translating the
material into a directorate scorecard with cascading measurements reflecting functional and
operational unit areas. This was the only time in Washington, DC when I did not work with of
for McCabe.
From September to December 2010, I was selected as the FBI's top candidate to represent the
FBI, and the USG in a rigorous, intellectually stimulating; 12 week course for civilian
government officials, military officers, and government academics at the George C. Marshall
Center in Garmisch, Germany, Executive Program in Advanced Security Studies. The class was
comprised of 141 participants from 43 countries.
I have received numerous recommendations and commendations for my professionalism, liaison
and interpersonal ability and experience . Additionally, I have been rated Excellent or
Outstanding for my entire career, to include by Andrew McCabe when I was stationed at the
Washington Field Office. Further, other awards of note are: West Chester University 2005 Legacy
of Leadership recipient, Honored with House of Representatives Citation for Exemplary record of
Service, Leadership, and Achievements: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and Awarded with a framed
Horn of Africa blood chit from the Department of Defense and Office of the DASD (POW/MPA/MIA)
for my work in bringing Americans Out of captivity, "Patriot, Law Enforcement Warrior, and
Friend."
Length of Association with Flynn, McCabe, and Mueller
I met Michael Flynn in 2005, while working in the Counterterrorism Division (CTD) at FBI
Headquarters (FBIHQ).
I met then Supervisory Special Agent Andrew McCabe, when he reported to CTD at FBIHQ, around
the same time. McCabe subsequently was the Assistant Section Chief over my unit, my Assistant
Special Agent in Charge at the Washington Field Office, and the Assistant Director (AD) over
CTD when I encountered the discrimination and McCabe spearheaded the retaliation personally
(according to documentation) against me.
I have known both men for 12-13 years and worked directly with both throughout my career.
They are on the opposite spectrum of each other with regard to truthfulness, temperament, and
ethics, both professionally and personally.
I regularly briefed former FBI Director and Special Prosecutor Mueller on controversial and
complex cases and attended Deputies meetings at the White house with then Deputy Director
Pistole. I got along with both and trusted both. Watching what has been done to Mike and
knowing someone on the 7th floor had to have notified Mueller of my situation (Pistole had
retired), has been significantly distressing to me.
Lt.G. Michael T. Flynn:
Mike and I were counterparts on a DOJ-termed ground-breaking initiative which served as a
model for future investigations, policies, legislation and FBI programs in the Terrorist Use of
the Internet. For this multi-faceted and leading-edge joint operation, I was commended by Gen.
Stanley McChrystal, Gen. Keith Alexander (NSA Director), and LtG. Michael Flynn as well as
others for leading the FBI's pivotal participation in this dynamic and innovative interagency
operation. I received two The National Intelligence Meritorious Unit Citation (NIMUC) I for my
role in this operation. The NIMUC is an award of the National Intelligence Awards Program, for
contributions to the United States Intelligence Community.
Mick Flynn has consistently and candidly been honest and straightforward with me since the
day I met him in 2005. He has been a mentor and someone I trust to give me frank advice when I
ask for his opinion. His caring nature has shown through especially when he saw me being torn
apart by the FBI and he felt compelled to write a letter in support of me. He further took the
extra step to comment on my character in an NPR article and interview exposing the wrongdoings
in my case and others who have stood up for truth and against discrimination/retaliation.
Senator Grassley also commented on my behalf. NPR characterized this action against me as a
"warning shot" to individuals who stood up to individuals such as McCabe.
The day after I resigned from the FBI, while I was crying, Mike reached out and
congratulated me on my early retirement. I really needed to hear that from someone I respected
so much. His support for the last 13 years has been unparalleled and extremely valuable in
helping me get through the trauma of betrayal, unethical behavior, illegal activity executed
against me and to rebuild my life. Additionally, his support has helped my family in dealing
with their painful emotions regarding my situation. My parents wanted me to pass on to you that
they are blessed that I have had a compassionate and supportive individual on my side
throughout this trying time.
Mike has been a respected leader by his peers and by FBI Agents and Analysts who have
interacted with him. I personally feel he is the finest leader I have ever worked with or for
in my career. Our continued friendship and subsequent friendship with his family has helped all
of us cope with the stress a situation like this puts on individuals and families.
It is so very painful to watch an American hero, and my friend, torn apart like this. His
family has had to endure what no family should have to. I know this because of the damaging
effect my case had on my parent's health, finances, and emotional well-being. Mike and I both
had to sell our houses due to legal fees, endured smear campaigns (mostly by the same
individual, McCabe). I ended up being deemed homeless by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was
on public assistance and endured extensive health and emotional damage due to the retaliation.
Mike kept in touch and kept me motivated. He has always reached out to help me with whatever he
could.
The Process is the Punishment
Thomas Fitton of Judicial Watch commented to me that the "Process is the punishment." This
is the most accurate description I have heard regarding the time Mike has gone through with
this process and the year and a half I was ostracized and idled before I resigned. This process
is one which many FBI employees, current, retired and former, feel was brought to the FBI by
Mueller and he subsequently brought this to the Special Prosecutor investigation.
It also fostered the behavior among FBI "leadership" which we find ourselves shocked at when
revealed on a daily basis. Is this the proper way to seek justice? I say no. I swore to uphold
the Constitution while protecting the civil rights of the American people. I believe many
individuals involved in Mike's case have lost their way and could care less about protection of
due process, civil and legal rights of who they are targeting. Mike has had extensive
punishment throughout this process. This process has punished him harder than anyone else
could.
Andrew McCabe
I believe I have a unique inside view of the mannerisms surrounding Andrew McCabe, other FBI
Executive Management and Former Director Mueller, as well as the unethical and coercive tactics
they use, not to seek the truth, but to coerce pleas or admissions to end the pain, as I call
it. They destroy lives for their own agendas instead of seeking the truth for the American
people. Candor is something that should be encouraged and used by leadership to have necessary
and continued improvement. Under Mueller, it was seen as a threat and viciously opposed by
those he pulled up in the chain of command.
I am explaining this because numerous Agents have expressed the need for you to know
McCabe's and Mueller's pattern of "target and destroy" has been utilized on many others,
without regard for policies and laws. I, myself, am a casualty of this reprehensible behavior
and I have spoken to well over 150 other FBI individuals who are casualties as well.
I am the individual who filed the Hatch Act complaint against McCabe and provided
significant evidentiary documents obtained via FOIA, open source, and information from current,
former, and retired Special Agents. The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) asked why my filing of
the complaint was delayed from the actual acts. I said I personally thought I was providing
additional information to what should have been an automatic referral to OSC by FBI OPR. I was
notified I was the only complainant. This illustrates not only a fatal flaw in OPR AD Candice
Will not making the appropriate and crucial referral, but also shows the fear of those within
the FBI to report individuals like McCabe for fear of retaliation.
While serving at the CIA, detailed by the FBI in January 2012, I was responsible for
overseas investigations, as opposed to Continental United States-based (CONUS) cases.
Unfortunately, during my assignment at the CIA, I encountered extensive discrimination by two
FBI Special Agents and subsequently, in 2012, I filed an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)
complaint. Instead of addressing the issues, then CTD Assistant Director Andrew McCabe chose to
authorize a retaliatory Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) investigation against me,
five days after my EEO contact. The OPR referral he signed was authored by the two individuals
I had filed the EEO complaint against. In his signed sworn statement, McCabe admitted he knew I
had filed or was going to file the EEO.
Numerous members of my department at the CIA requested to be spoken with by CTD executive
management, regarding my work ethic and accomplishments. However, CTD, Inspection Division, and
OPR disregarded the list of names and contact numbers I submitted. This is an example of
knowing you are being targeted and the truth is not being sought.
Although my time at this position was short, I was commended by my CIA direct supervisor
for: "having already contributed more than your predecessor in the short time you have been
here." My predecessor had been assigned to the post for 18 months; I had been there four
months.
In contrast and showing lack of candor, McCabe wrote on official documents the following
statement, contradicting the actual direct supervisor I worked with daily:
"SA Gritz had to be removed from a prior position in an interagency environment, due to
inappropriate communications and general performance issues"
This is one of many comments McCabe used to discredit my reputation and to ostracize me.
McCabe knew me as someone who told the truth, worked hard, got results, and was always willing
to be flexible when needed. He was also acutely aware of the excellent relationships I had
formed in the USG interagency due to comments made by individuals from numerous agencies. Yet,
he continued to make false statements on official documents. He has done this to numerous other
very valuable FBI employees, destroying their careers and lives. He used similar tactics of
lies against Flynn. It should be noted, McCabe was very aware of my professional association
with Mike Flynn.
In July 5, 2012, I was involuntarily pulled back to CTD from the CIA. I was told McCabe made
the decision. A year and a month later, I resigned from the job I absolutely loved and was good
at. All because of the lack of candor of numerous individuals within the FBI.
Unethical and
dishonest investigative tactics
Throughout the last year, I have kept abreast of the revelations surrounding anything
related to Mike's case. I believe, from my years at the FBI and in exposing corruption and
discrimination, the circumstances surrounding the targeting, investigation, leaking, and
coercion of him to plea are all consistent with the unethical process I and many others have
witnessed at the FBI. The charge which Mike Flynn plead to was the result of deception,
intimidation, and bias/agenda. Simply, Mike is being branded a convicted felon due to an
unethical and dishonest investigation by people who were malicious, vindictive, and corrupt.
They wished to silence Mike, like they had once silenced me.
The American people have read the Strzok/Page text messages, the conflicting testimony and
lack of candor statements of former Director Comey, the perceived overstepping of the
reasonable scope of the Special Prosecutor's investigation, the extensive unethical,
untruthful, and outright illegal behavior of Andrew McCabe, to include slanderous statements
against Flynn, and the facts found within FOIA released documents and Congressional testimony.
As a former/retired Agent, I have combed through every piece of information regarding Mike's
case, as if I was combing through evidence in the hundreds of cases I have successfully handled
while in the FBI.
The publicly reported Brady material alone, in this case, outweighs any statement given by
any FBI Agent (we now know at least one FD-302 was changed), Special Prosecutor investigator
report, and any other party still aggressively seeking that this case remain and be sentenced
as a felony. Quite simply, I cannot see justice being served by branding LtG. Michael Flynn a
convicted felon, when the truth is still being revealed while policies, ethics, and laws have
been violated by those pursuing this case.
We now know all FBI employees involved in Mike Flynn's case have either been fired, forced
to resign or forced to retire because of their excessive lack of candor, punitive biases,
leaking of information, and extensive cover-up of their deeds.
Summation
Michael Flynn has always displayed overwhelming candor and forthrightness. One of the main
individuals involved in his case is Andrew McCabe, who used similar tactics against me in my
case, of which Mike Flynn defended me by penning a letter of character reference and is a
witness. Seeing McCabe was named as a Responding Management Official in my case, he should have
recused himself with anything having to do with a character witness on my behalf against him
and DOJ.
I'm told by numerous people, but have been unable to confirm, that McCabe was asked why he
was so viciously going after Flynn; my name was mentioned. I do know, from experience with
McCabe, he is a vindictive individual and I have no doubt Mike's support of me fueled McCabe's
disdain and personally vindictive aggressive unethical activities in this case . It matches his
behavior in my case.
Reliable fact-finding is essential to procedural due process and to the accuracy and
uniformity of sentencing. I'm unsure if the fact-finding in this case is reliable, nor do I
think we currently have all the facts.
The punishment which LtG. Flynn has already endured this past year, due to the nature of the
case, legal fees and reputation damage, is punishment enough. He is a true patriot, a loving
husband and father, a devoted grandfather, a trusted friend, and has a close knit family made
up of compassionate and honest individuals. To be branded a felon, is a major hit to a hero who
protected the American people for 33 years. I do not think society would benefit from Mike
Flynn going to jail nor being branded as a convicted felon. Not knowing the sentencing
guidelines for this charge but if there is any chance that the case can be downgraded to a
misdemeanor, this would be an act of justice that numerous Americans need to see to stay
hopeful for further justice.
This lady is seriously brave. She confirms one more reason i strongly support our Second
Amendment; it's to protect us from tyrants and corrupt people like McCabe, Ohr, Comey and
Mueller. Oh yes. I almost forget Rosenstein who should be hung for treason also.
WOW...all this time I had been asking where are the whistle blowers and kept saying,
certainly not all the FBI are this corrupt -and further asked are they being threatened to
not come forward?"
Well, the later sure seems true when you consider Ms. Gristz statements, particularly "
the fear of those within the FBI to report individuals like McCabe for fear of retaliation.
"
This is the level of corruption that ought to bring this entire cabal to their knees and
place them behind bars. Hopefully Judge Sullivan's intuitions will be bolstered by Ms.
Gristz' letter.
The FBI is corrupt to the core...from top to bottom. If she joined the FBI to "uphold the
Constitution" or "serve the American People" or some other horseshit then that was her first
mistake. The FBI is a completely corrupt & unconstitutional organization that protects
only the (((globalists))) and other enemies of freedom. The Hoover Buliding should be
padlocked and all of the agents of evil put on trial for treason.
Flynn was an example to the rest of the Trump supporters. His guilt or innocense was/is
meaningless and irrlevant to the Prog Attack Dogs. The message was/is clear:
"We are the Power. Resistance is futile. Bend your knee or we will destroy you."
It is prudent for reasonable people to believe that the Progs have spent the past couple
years destroying evidence that can be used against their gods (Obama, Clinton, Soros, etc.)
and their cohorts.
There is no penalty or negative consequence for the Mueller team who engaged in
"unethical" activity. None of them will have to answer to anyone or disgorge the millions of
dollars in "fees" they have been paid by the Sheeple.
All Progs must hang.
Christopher Wray must hang next.
It is very interesting and educational to read this pre-election article two years later and see where the author is
right and where he is wrong. The death of neoliberalism was greatly exaggerated. It simply mutated in the USA into "national
neoliberalism" under Trump. As no clear alternative exists it remain the dominant ideology and universities still
brainwash students with neoclassical economics. And in way catchy slogan "Make America great again" under Trump
means "Make American working and lower middle class great again"
It is also clear that Trump betrayed or was forced to betray most of his election promises. Standrd of living of common
americans did not improve under his watch. most of hi benefits of his tax cuts went to large corporations and financial
oligarch. He continued the policy of financial deregulation, which is tantamount of playing with open fire trying to
warm up the house
What we see under Trump is tremendous growth of political role of intelligence agencies which now are real kingmakers and can
sink any candidate which does not support their agenda. And USA intelligence agencies operated in 2016 in close cooperation
with the UK intelligence agencies to the extent that it is not clear who has the lead in creating Steele dossier. They are
definitely out of control of executive branch and play their own game. We also see a rise of CIA democrats as a desperate
attempt to preserve the power of Clinton wing of the Democratic Party ('soft neoliberals" turned under Hillary into into warmongers
and neocons) . Hillary and Bill themselves clearly belong to CIA democrats too, not only to Wall Street democrats, despite the fact
that they sold Democratic Party to Wall Street in the past. New Labor in UK did the same.
But if it is more or less clear now what happened in the USa in 2016-2018, it is completely unclear what will happen next.
I think in no way neoliberalism will start to be dismantled. there is no social forces powerful enough to start this job, We
probably need another financial crisi of the scale of 2008 for this work to be reluctantly started by ruling
elite. And we better not to have this repetition of 2008 as it will be really devastating for common people.
Notable quotes:
"... the causes of this political crisis, glaringly evident on both sides of the Atlantic, are much deeper than simply the financial crisis and the virtually stillborn recovery of the last decade. They go to the heart of the neoliberal project that dates from the late 70s and the political rise of Reagan and Thatcher, and embraced at its core the idea of a global free market in goods, services and capital. The depression-era system of bank regulation was dismantled, in the US in the 1990s and in Britain in 1986, thereby creating the conditions for the 2008 crisis. Equality was scorned, the idea of trickle-down economics lauded, government condemned as a fetter on the market and duly downsized, immigration encouraged, regulation cut to a minimum, taxes reduced and a blind eye turned to corporate evasion. ..."
"... It should be noted that, by historical standards, the neoliberal era has not had a particularly good track record. The most dynamic period of postwar western growth was that between the end of the war and the early 70s, the era of welfare capitalism and Keynesianism, when the growth rate was double that of the neoliberal period from 1980 to the present. ..."
"... In the period 1948-1972, every section of the American population experienced very similar and sizable increases in their standard of living; between 1972-2013, the bottom 10% experienced falling real income while the top 10% did far better than everyone else. In the US, the median real income for full-time male workers is now lower than it was four decades ago: the income of the bottom 90% of the population has stagnated for over 30 years . ..."
"... On average, between 65-70% of households in 25 high-income economies experienced stagnant or falling real incomes between 2005 and 2014. ..."
"... As Thomas Piketty has shown, in the absence of countervailing pressures, capitalism naturally gravitates towards increasing inequality. In the period between 1945 and the late 70s, Cold War competition was arguably the biggest such constraint. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there have been none. As the popular backlash grows increasingly irresistible, however, such a winner-takes-all regime becomes politically unsustainable. ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... "'Populism' is the label that political elites attach to policies supported by ordinary citizens that they don't like." Populism is a movement against the status quo. It represents the beginnings of something new, though it is generally much clearer about what it is against than what it is for. It can be progressive or reactionary, but more usually both. ..."
"... According to a Gallup poll, in 2000 only 33% of Americans called themselves working class; by 2015 the figure was 48%, almost half the population. ..."
"... The re-emergence of the working class as a political voice in Britain, most notably in the Brexit vote, can best be described as an inchoate expression of resentment and protest, with only a very weak sense of belonging to the labour movement. ..."
"... Economists such as Larry Summers believe that the prospect for the future is most likely one of secular stagnation . ..."
"... those who have lost out in the neoliberal era are no longer prepared to acquiesce in their fate – they are increasingly in open revolt. We are witnessing the end of the neoliberal era. It is not dead, but it is in its early death throes, just as the social-democratic era was during the 1970s. ..."
In the early 1980s the author was one of the first to herald the emerging dominance of neoliberalism in the west. Here he argues
that this doctrine is now faltering. But what happens next?
The western financial crisis of 2007-8 was the worst since 1931, yet its immediate repercussions were surprisingly modest. The
crisis challenged the foundation stones of the long-dominant neoliberal ideology but it seemed to emerge largely unscathed. The banks
were bailed out; hardly any bankers on either side of the Atlantic were prosecuted for their crimes; and the price of their behaviour
was duly paid by the taxpayer. Subsequent economic policy, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, has relied overwhelmingly on monetary
policy, especially quantitative easing. It has failed. The western economy has stagnated and is now approaching its lost decade,
with no end in sight.
After almost nine years, we are finally beginning to reap the political whirlwind of the financial crisis. But how did neoliberalism
manage to survive virtually unscathed for so long? Although it failed the test of the real world, bequeathing the worst economic
disaster for seven decades, politically and intellectually it remained the only show in town. Parties of the right, centre and left
had all bought into its philosophy, New Labour a classic
in point. They knew no other way of thinking or doing: it had become the common sense. It was, as Antonio Gramsci put it, hegemonic.
But that hegemony cannot and will not survive the test of the real world.
The first inkling of the wider political consequences was evident in the turn in public opinion against the banks, bankers and
business leaders. For decades, they could do no wrong: they were feted as the role models of our age, the default troubleshooters
of choice in education, health and seemingly everything else. Now, though, their star was in steep descent, along with that of the
political class. The effect of the financial crisis was to undermine faith and trust in the competence of the governing elites. It
marked the beginnings of a wider political crisis.
But the causes of this political crisis, glaringly evident on both sides of the Atlantic, are much deeper than simply the financial
crisis and the virtually stillborn recovery of the last decade. They go to the heart of the neoliberal project that dates from the
late 70s and the political rise of Reagan and Thatcher, and embraced at its core the idea of a global free market in goods, services
and capital. The depression-era system of bank regulation was dismantled, in the US in the 1990s and in Britain in 1986, thereby
creating the conditions for the 2008 crisis. Equality was scorned, the idea of trickle-down economics lauded, government condemned
as a fetter on the market and duly downsized, immigration encouraged, regulation cut to a minimum, taxes reduced and a blind eye
turned to corporate evasion.
It should be noted that, by historical standards, the neoliberal era has not had a particularly good track record. The most dynamic
period of postwar western growth was that between the end of the war and the early 70s, the era of welfare capitalism and Keynesianism,
when the growth rate was double that of the neoliberal period from 1980 to the present.
But by far the most disastrous feature of the neoliberal period has been the huge growth in inequality. Until very recently, this
had been virtually ignored. With extraordinary speed, however, it has emerged as one of, if not the most important political issue
on both sides of the Atlantic, most dramatically in the US. It is, bar none, the issue that is driving the political discontent that
is now engulfing the west. Given the statistical evidence, it is puzzling, shocking even, that it has been disregarded for so long;
the explanation can only lie in the sheer extent of the hegemony of neoliberalism and its values.
But now reality has upset the doctrinal apple cart. In the period 1948-1972, every section of the American population experienced
very similar and sizable increases in their standard of living; between 1972-2013, the bottom 10% experienced falling real income
while the top 10% did far better than everyone else. In the US, the median real income for full-time male workers is now lower than
it was four decades ago: the income of the bottom 90% of the population has
stagnated for over 30 years .
A not so dissimilar picture is true of the UK. And the problem has grown more serious since the financial crisis. On average,
between 65-70% of households in 25 high-income economies experienced stagnant or falling real
incomes between 2005 and 2014.
Large sections of the population in both the US and the UK are now in revolt against their lot
The reasons are not difficult to explain. The hyper-globalisation era has been systematically stacked in favour of capital against
labour: international trading agreements, drawn up in great secrecy, with business on the inside and the unions and citizens excluded,
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the
Transatlantic
Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) being but the latest examples; the politico-legal attack on the unions;
the encouragement of large-scale immigration in both the US and Europe that helped to undermine
the bargaining power of the domestic workforce; and the failure to retrain displaced workers in any meaningful way.
As Thomas Piketty has shown, in the absence of
countervailing pressures, capitalism naturally gravitates towards increasing inequality. In the period between 1945 and the late
70s, Cold War competition was arguably the biggest such constraint. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there have been none.
As the popular backlash grows increasingly irresistible, however, such a winner-takes-all regime becomes politically unsustainable.
Large sections of the population in both the US and the UK are now in revolt against their lot, as graphically illustrated by
the support for Trump and Sanders in the US and the Brexit vote in the UK. This popular revolt is often described, in a somewhat
denigratory and dismissive fashion, as populism. Or, as Francis Fukuyama writes in a recent excellent
essay
in Foreign Affairs : "'Populism' is the label that political elites attach to policies supported by ordinary citizens
that they don't like." Populism is a movement against the status quo. It represents the beginnings of something new, though it is
generally much clearer about what it is against than what it is for. It can be progressive or reactionary, but more usually both.
Brexit is a classic example of such populism. It has overturned a fundamental cornerstone of UK policy since the early 1970s.
Though ostensibly about Europe, it was in fact about much more: a cri de coeur from those who feel they have lost out and been left
behind, whose living standards have stagnated or worse since the 1980s, who feel dislocated by large-scale immigration over which
they have no control and who face an increasingly insecure and casualised labour market. Their revolt has paralysed the governing
elite, already claimed one prime minister, and left the latest one fumbling around in the dark looking for divine inspiration.
The wave of populism marks the return of class as a central agency in politics, both in the UK and the US. This is particularly
remarkable in the US. For many decades, the idea of the "working class" was marginal to American political discourse. Most Americans
described themselves as middle class, a reflection of the aspirational pulse at the heart of American society. According to a Gallup
poll, in 2000 only 33% of Americans called themselves working class; by 2015 the figure was 48%, almost half the population.
Brexit, too, was primarily a working-class revolt. Hitherto, on both sides of the Atlantic, the agency of class has been in retreat
in the face of the emergence of a new range of identities and issues from gender and race to sexual orientation and the environment.
The return of class, because of its sheer reach, has the potential, like no other issue, to redefine the political landscape.
The working class belongs to no one: its orientation, far from predetermined, is a function of politics
The re-emergence of class should not be confused with the labor movement. They are not synonymous: this is obvious in the US
and increasingly the case in the UK. Indeed, over the last half-century, there has been a growing separation between the two in Britain.
The re-emergence of the working class as a political voice in Britain, most notably in the Brexit vote, can best be described as
an inchoate expression of resentment and protest, with only a very weak sense of belonging to the labour movement.
Indeed, Ukip has been as important – in the form of immigration and Europe – in shaping its current attitudes as the Labour party.
In the United States, both Trump and Sanders have given expression to the working-class revolt, the latter almost as much as the
former. The working class belongs to no one: its orientation, far from predetermined, as the left liked to think, is a function of
politics.
The neoliberal era is being undermined from two directions. First, if its record of economic growth has never been particularly
strong, it is now dismal. Europe is barely larger than it was on the eve of the financial crisis in 2007; the United States has done
better but even its growth has been anaemic. Economists such as Larry Summers believe that the prospect for the future is most likely
one of secular stagnation .
Worse, because the recovery has been so weak and fragile, there is a widespread belief that another financial crisis may well
beckon. In other words, the neoliberal era has delivered the west back into the kind of crisis-ridden world that we last experienced
in the 1930s. With this background, it is hardly surprising that a majority in the west now believe their children will be worse
off than they were. Second, those who have lost out in the neoliberal era are no longer prepared to acquiesce in their fate – they
are increasingly in open revolt. We are witnessing the end of the neoliberal era. It is not dead, but it is in its early death throes,
just as the social-democratic era was during the 1970s.
A sure sign of the declining influence of neoliberalism is the rising chorus of intellectual voices raised against it. From the
mid-70s through the 80s, the economic debate was increasingly dominated by monetarists and free marketeers. But since the western
financial crisis, the centre of gravity of the intellectual debate has shifted profoundly. This is most obvious in the United States,
with economists such as Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Dani Rodrik and Jeffrey Sachs becoming increasingly influential. Thomas Piketty's
Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been a massive seller. His work and that of
Tony Atkinson
and Angus Deaton have pushed the question of the inequality to the top of the political agenda. In the UK,
Ha-Joon Chang , for long isolated within the economics
profession, has gained a following far greater than those who think economics is a branch of mathematics.
Meanwhile, some of those who were previously strong advocates of a neoliberal approach, such as Larry Summers and the Financial
Times 's Martin Wolf, have become extremely critical. The wind is in the sails of the critics of neoliberalism; the neoliberals
and monetarists are in retreat. In the UK, the media and political worlds are well behind the curve. Few recognize that we are at
the end of an era. Old attitudes and assumptions still predominate, whether on the BBC's Today programme, in the rightwing
press or the parliamentary Labor party.
Following Ed Miliband's resignation as Labour leader, virtually no one foresaw the triumph of
Jeremy Corbyn in the subsequent leadership election.
The assumption had been more of the same, a Blairite or a halfway house like Miliband, certainly not anyone like Corbyn. But the
zeitgeist had changed. The membership, especially the young who had joined the party on an unprecedented scale, wanted a complete
break with New Labour. One of the reasons why the left has failed to emerge as the leader of the new mood of working-class disillusionment
is that most social democratic parties became, in varying degrees, disciples of neoliberalism and uber-globalisation. The most extreme
forms of this phenomenon were New Labour and the Democrats, who in the late 90s and 00s became its advance guard, personified by
Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, triangulation and the third way.
But as David Marquand observed in a review for the New Statesman , what is the point of a social democratic party if
it doesn't represent the less fortunate, the underprivileged and the losers? New Labour deserted those who needed them, who historically
they were supposed to represent. Is it surprising that large sections have now deserted the party who deserted them? Blair, in his
reincarnation as a money-obsessed consultant to a shady bunch of presidents and dictators, is a fitting testament to the demise of
New Labour.
The rival contenders – Burnham, Cooper and Kendall – represented continuity. They were swept away by Corbyn, who won nearly 60%
of the votes. New Labour was over, as dead as Monty Python's parrot. Few grasped the meaning of what had happened. A Guardian
leader welcomed the surge in membership and then, lo and behold, urged support for Yvette Cooper, the very antithesis of the
reason for the enthusiasm. The PLP refused to accept the result and ever since has tried with might and main to remove Corbyn.
Just as the Labour party took far too long to come to terms with the rise of Thatcherism and the birth of a new era at the end
of the 70s, now it could not grasp that the Thatcherite paradigm, which they eventually came to embrace in the form of New Labour,
had finally run its course. Labour, like everyone else, is obliged to think anew. The membership in their antipathy to New Labour
turned to someone who had never accepted the latter, who was the polar opposite in almost every respect of Blair, and embodying an
authenticity and decency which Blair patently did not.
Labour may be in intensive care, but the condition of the Conservatives is not a great deal better
Corbyn is not a product of the new times, he is a throwback to the late 70s and early 80s. That is both his strength and also
his weakness. He is uncontaminated by the New Labour legacy because he has never accepted it. But nor, it would seem, does he understand
the nature of the new era. The danger is that he is possessed of feet of clay in what is a highly fluid and unpredictable political
environment, devoid of any certainties of almost any kind, in which Labour finds itself dangerously divided and weakened.
Labour may be in intensive care, but the condition of the Conservatives is not a great deal better. David Cameron was guilty of
a huge and irresponsible miscalculation over Brexit. He was forced to resign in the most ignominious of circumstances. The party
is hopelessly divided. It has no idea in which direction to move after Brexit. The Brexiters painted an optimistic picture of turning
away from the declining European market and embracing the expanding markets of the world, albeit barely mentioning by name which
countries it had in mind. It looks as if the new prime minister may have an anachronistic hostility towards China and a willingness
to undo the good work of George Osborne. If the government turns its back on China, by far the fastest growing market in the world,
where are they going to turn?
Brexit has left the country fragmented and deeply divided, with the very real prospect that Scotland might choose independence.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives seem to have little understanding that the neoliberal era is in its death throes.
Dramatic as events have been in the UK, they cannot compare with those in the United States. Almost from nowhere,
Donald Trump rose to capture the Republican nomination
and confound virtually all the pundits and not least his own party. His message was straightforwardly anti-globalisation. He believes
that the interests of the working class have been sacrificed in favour of the big corporations that have been encouraged to invest
around the world and thereby deprive American workers of their jobs. Further, he argues that large-scale immigration has weakened
the bargaining power of American workers and served to lower their wages.
He proposes that US corporations should be required to invest their cash reserves in the US. He believes that the North American
Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) has had the effect of exporting American jobs to Mexico. On similar grounds, he is opposed to the TPP
and the TTIP. And he also accuses China of stealing American jobs, threatening to impose a 45% tariff on Chinese imports.
To globalisation Trump counterposes economic nationalism: "Put America first". His appeal, above all, is to the white working
class who, until Trump's (and Bernie Sander's) arrival on the political scene, had been ignored and largely unrepresented since the
1980s. Given that their wages have been falling for most of the last 40 years, it is extraordinary how their interests have been
neglected by the political class. Increasingly, they have voted Republican, but the Republicans have long been captured by the super-rich
and Wall Street, whose interests, as hyper-globalisers, have run directly counter to those of the white working class. With the arrival
of Trump they finally found a representative: they won Trump the Republican nomination.
Trump believes that America's pursuit of great power status has squandered the nation's resources
The economic nationalist argument has also been vigorously pursued by
Bernie Sanders , who ran Hillary Clinton extremely
close for the Democratic nomination and would probably have won but for more than 700 so-called super-delegates, who were effectively
chosen by the Democratic machine and overwhelmingly supported Clinton. As in the case of the Republicans, the Democrats have long
supported a neoliberal, pro-globalisation strategy, notwithstanding the concerns of its trade union base. Both the Republicans and
the Democrats now find themselves deeply polarised between the pro- and anti-globalisers, an entirely new development not witnessed
since the shift towards neoliberalism under Reagan almost 40 years ago.
Another plank of Trump's nationalist appeal – "Make America great again" – is his position on foreign policy. He believes that
America's pursuit of great power status has squandered the nation's resources. He argues that the country's alliance system is unfair,
with America bearing most of the cost and its allies contributing far too little. He points to Japan and South Korea, and NATO's
European members as prime examples. He seeks to rebalance these relationships and, failing that, to exit from them.
As a country in decline, he argues that America can no longer afford to carry this kind of financial burden. Rather than putting
the world to rights, he believes the money should be invested at home, pointing to the dilapidated state of America's infrastructure.
Trump's position
represents a major critique of America as the world's hegemon. His arguments mark a radical break with the neoliberal, hyper-globalisation
ideology that has reigned since the early 1980s and with the foreign policy orthodoxy of most of the postwar period. These arguments
must be taken seriously. They should not be lightly dismissed just because of their authorship. But Trump is no man of the left.
He is a populist of the right. He has launched a racist and xenophobic attack on Muslims and on Mexicans. Trump's appeal is to a
white working class that feels it has been cheated by the big corporations, undermined by Hispanic immigration, and often resentful
towards African-Americans who for long too many have viewed as their inferior.
A Trump America would mark a descent into authoritarianism characterised by abuse, scapegoating, discrimination, racism, arbitrariness
and violence; America would become a deeply polarised and divided society. His threat to impose
45%
tariffs on China , if implemented, would certainly provoke retaliation by the Chinese and herald the beginnings of a new era
of protectionism.
Trump may well lose the presidential election just as Sanders failed in his bid for the Democrat nomination. But this does not
mean that the forces opposed to hyper-globalisation – unrestricted immigration, TPP and TTIP, the free movement of capital and much
else – will have lost the argument and are set to decline. In little more than 12 months, Trump and Sanders have transformed the
nature and terms of the argument. Far from being on the wane, the arguments of the critics of hyper-globalisation are steadily gaining
ground. Roughly two-thirds of Americans agree that "we should not think so much in international terms but concentrate more on our
own national problems". And, above all else, what will continue to drive opposition to the hyper-globalisers is inequality.
End of cheap oil is the next milestone in the development of neoliberalism. It remain to be seen if it can survive the end of
cheap oil.
Notable quotes:
"... According to a Gallup poll, in 2000 only 33% of Americans called themselves working class; by 2015 the figure was 48%, almost half the population. ..."
"... American politicians, Obama in particular, constantly talk about "the middle class" when they want to refer to the bulk of the working population, as if almost everybody were doctors, lawyers, teachers and managers. ..."
"... This situation in the USA remind me of Australia where we have a choice between two right wing parties ..."
"... austerity for the working class while the rich go untouched even to pay a fair share of taxation. It's world wide the servants of the 1% who own 50% of the world's economy. ..."
"... There is no country in the world that doesn't have a mixture of both. The mix is probably a bit strained in north Korea but those countries where private capital is supreme all have intolerable conditions for workers. The Nordic countries probably have the most enlightened approach and best living standards for the majority. Remember well the old adage: With communism man exploits man. With capitalism it's the other way round. ..."
"... one can only hope neoliberalism is dead and/or dying.... ..."
"... Trump does not truly represent the labor or economically frustrated class. He is saying things that they'd like to hear. He is a rich and pompous man who belongs to the class which benefited tremendously from neoliberalistic policies. People are so fed up with inequality, their emotions can be directed in any direction and manipulated. Anger needs a target - Mexicans, Blacks, women, Muslims, immigrants and the list expands. Trump is misleading them by speaking in their voices while enjoying the comfort of luxury that he built by exploiting those very people. ..."
Quote: According to a Gallup poll, in 2000 only 33% of Americans called themselves working
class; by 2015 the figure was 48%, almost half the population.
How strange. American politicians, Obama in particular, constantly talk about "the middle
class" when they want to refer to the bulk of the working population, as if almost everybody
were doctors, lawyers, teachers and managers. It's good therefore to know that the American
people know better than their politicians how to classify themselves.
This situation in the USA remind me of Australia where we have a choice between two right
wing parties. The LNP is extreme/ultra right wing and our Labor Party is right wing
controlled. At least in Britain you have a choice, from afar it seems that your Conservative
Party is equal to our LNP but your Labour Party seems to be a little more Left wing than our
Labor Party which is a good thing for Britain.
willpodmore your next target must be your tory government, they are doing to you what our
tory government in Australia is doing to us and if Trump gets elected the USA tory government
will do to them, austerity for the working class while the rich go untouched even to pay a
fair share of taxation. It's world wide the servants of the 1% who own 50% of the world's
economy. If you don't believe me type the 1% own 50% of Earth's economy into Dr Goggle and
see what come up.
The one thing all Left leaning people do agree on is 'fairness' and equity for all, in
economic terms it means that huge corporations pay a fair share of tax, as working people do.
Sadly Tory govts ignore the profits of corporations and fail to force them to pay a fair
share of tax. The basic problem that the neo-cons suffer from is insatiable greed where
enough is never enough, selfishness is also a trait along with lack of empathy or compassion
for their fellow mankind.
"neoliberalism" is simply unregulated capitalism as practiced by Tory governments around the
world. Labour governments usually regulate and force these huge corporations to pay a fair
share of taxation from their huge incomes. The corporations are owned by the 1% who own 50%
of the world economy and continuing to grow on a daily basis.
Yes, nothing has changed in my lifetime except the 1% now own 50% of Earth's economy. Working
people have always struggled while the rich build their mansions, both Bernie Sanders and
Jeremy Corbyn have the right idea of a fair distribution of wealth. This means these huge
corporations paying their fair share of their income in taxes to the host country so "all"
the people receive some benefit, apart from the 1%.
blaster1, the joke of the century, globalisation -- which will only increase to the benefit of
everyone eventually. You obviously have little knowledge apart from what the Tories feed you.
1% of the global population own 50% of Earth's economy and through their corporations who the
tories allow to avoid paying tax will build on that 50% how long will it eventually take the
other 99% to receive any benefit? 200,000 years?
Exploitation is high on the priority list of any Tory government, wealth should be
distributed much more fairly than it currently is. The tories only serve the rich, they have
no time or empathy for the poor. Empathy and compassion are vacant in the tory philosophy of
the world. These two components make up a psychopathic personality.
pantomimetorie yes, and England could also be if you had a government who were not merely
servants of the rich. A government interested in the fair distribution of wealth. Not a tory
government, obviously!
There's no such thing as neoliberalism, it's just capitalism and capitalism actually works,
unlike socialism.
Yes it works alright, it works for the 1% of the global population who own 50% of the global
economy, sadly it leaves in its wake an underclass of people living below the poverty line
struggling to survive. It works for the rich, but there is no mechanism in the system that
the conservative will use to force the rich to pay their fair share of taxation to the
country included in that are the multibillion pound multinational corporations who pay little
to naught in taxes also which leaves a huge swathe of the population on Struggle Street and
the sooner that democratic socialism is instituted the better off the other 99% will be.
Keep up! There is no country in the world that doesn't have a mixture of both. The mix is
probably a bit strained in north Korea but those countries where private capital is supreme
all have intolerable conditions for workers. The Nordic countries probably have the most
enlightened approach and best living standards for the majority. Remember well the old
adage:
With communism man exploits man.
With capitalism it's the other way round.
Think they call it lobbying. Companies pay professional lobby firms staffed with ex MPs or
whatever to ' meet' ministers. The PR companies make 'donations' to party funds and push for
government contracts, changes in legislation, favorable to their industry tax breaks. You
can do it of course. Write to your mp to get your local roads, parks, libraries, improved.
Don't hold your breath.
That has to be the joke of the year if not the century!!!!!!!!!!!!
The most dynamic period of postwar western growth was that between the end of the war and
the early 70s, the era of welfare capitalism and Keynesianism, when the growth rate was
double that of the neoliberal period from 1980 to the present.
It would be interesting to see those growth figures with inflation taken into account or
to average them out across the whole world and not just the West. I suspect that if the
massive growth in India, China and the rest of Asia was taken into account the growth figures
wouldn't be so bad.
Excuse me? You're the one claiming rural inhabitants "have no idea" what city life entails.
That may have been the case centuries ago, but not now. Offshoring is small potatoes in the shift of global production. It may have been big news
a decade ago. We aren't a decade ago.
"Poverty = no kids" is your myth. Human history proves otherwise. Nobody's "decimating western/westernized population for profit". Is what you're about
really more white people, fewer brown people? Just say it, this is the Guardian, we've heard
it all before.
So run your country then. But intelligently, not on the basis of twisted myth-making and
dodgy race myths that we had enough of in 1945.
The left, at least as far as I know, have not been able to build up a solid set of
ideas on which to build a political agenda nor have they sought to gain traction for their
ideas in sites of knowledge production. The neoliberals were organised and waiting when
their turn came. For me, the left have fragmented and have turned to cultural critiques and
identity politics, forgoing any kind of realistic transformative agenda.
Apologies for not answering earlier.
i) Traction in sites of knowledge production is happening certainly. Again I can point to the
article for support - Stiglitz, Ha-Joon Chang, Piketty etc did not arise to such prominence
due to an organised left-wing agenda but because events in the real world demanded an
explanation for why neoliberalism wasn't delivering its universal benison as promised, and
indeed was showing empirical signs that it might be poisonous to economic activity in certain
fundamental ways.
ii) In my view it is quite possible to support identity politics (social liberalism if you
like) and a more left wing view of economics. At present the more enthusiastic placard wavers
are seeing identity politics as more likely to produce a beneficial change, but many are
recognising that the former hegemony of neoliberalism is breaking, and the best way to really
enhance the welfare of vulnerable groups is to promote universal economic justice in some
form.
iii) You appear to want to replace one hegemonic system of thought with another. But these
are the wrong tactics for me, since we have things to do in the real world.
By all means explain some of the properties your new left hegemonic theory should have, I'd
be very interested to hear them.
But in the end the practical steps are obvious and consist of applying left wing principles
to the modern economy. An example would be privatising the natural monopoly of the
railways.
If that sounds retro, it isn't, because we've never had to deal with an economy in this
condition before. We must proceed step by step in my view. The hegemony of neoliberalism was
damaging and lasted 40 years and counting. We must be pragmatic to be successful, given what
we know about the modern economy, and proceed by finding successful strategies rather than an
abstruse new theory that ignores the messy present in favour of some pure, simple conception
of the world backed up by the PR department. As I said above, one of the critical faults of
neoliberalism is its insistence that it is the answer to everyone's prayers. That certainty
is also the seed of its destruction, because to avoid doubts it eventually has to answer
those unrealistic prayers.
Trump does not truly represent the labor or economically frustrated class. He is saying
things that they'd like to hear. He is a rich and pompous man who belongs to the class which
benefited tremendously from neoliberalistic policies. People are so fed up with inequality,
their emotions can be directed in any direction and manipulated. Anger needs a target -
Mexicans, Blacks, women, Muslims, immigrants and the list expands. Trump is misleading them
by speaking in their voices while enjoying the comfort of luxury that he built by exploiting
those very people.
Billions of Chinese and Indian have never seen a toilet in their life, so yes, they really
don't know what life in a city is. And that doesn't make them "dumb". In their domain,
farming, you don't look like a brain storm either.
Offshoring isn't a "tiny element". We are no longer self sustaining and if China slammed the
door (as they did for a brief instant on Japan), there'd be serious heartburn in the US
before transitioning.
The official western tautology is fail/fail for the public. Not enough jobs to consider
having kids? Too bad. Not enough money to raise your kids? Too bad. Due to natural events?
No, due to political gaming.
Decimating western/westernized population for profit. It's not complicated. It is you who
claim immigration is needed to leave it as it is. "Ending our ability to pay pensions by
ending immigration isn't improvement either. "
The west has no business meddling with the rest of the planet if it can't run their own
countries.
People aren't so dumb as you imagine. They really didn't know about life in the city? Every
village had its emigrant. I've no such disdain for those who made that move.
Offshoring's now a tiny element in western deindustrialisation. Your costs are too high,
you can't compete: don't blame those worse off than yourself, put your own house in order and
educate your workforce to do better than flip burgers.
"Birth control brings down reproduction rates" is a meaningless tautology. People have
been practising birth control for centuries, mainly by delaying marriage. The PRB peddles
malthusian nonsense that the past half-century has clearly discredited. I thought you were
for population growth anyway: "economies so economically unstable that population declines"?
Make your mind up.
The ridiculous boom did crash, in 2008. Maybe you missed it. I want to know how we go
forward. But people need to pay attention to what's going on outside our head too.
I correct misrepresentations of the truth such as yours.
And the problem with communism is that it suspends peoples right in favour of central
control.
Communism and socialism is a post -capitalist society, means exactly the same thing to
me as they did to Marx also.
The common ownership and democratic control by us all, of all the means and instruments
for creating and distributing wealth. 'Common' and 'social' mean the same.
Nothing to do with state ownership or corporate or private ownership.
Nothing to do with central control either . It is a post-capitalist system
which utilises the technological advances of capitalism to produce for use to satisfy human
needs, using self feeding loopback informational tools for stock measurements and control
with direct inputs at local regional and global levels to allow calculation in kind, as
opposed to the economic calculation of capitalism, only necessary to satisfy profit
taking.
The reality is that we can all choose to be rich or poor. We are free to do as we wish
(within the law).
Nonsense. If you are born poor you will most likely die poor. Poverty is both absolute
and relative.
All wealth comes from the exploited abour of the working class which creates a surplus value
above its rationed access (wages). A commonly owned society, would not have rich or poor, we
would all have free access to the commonly produced wealth, with no elite classes creaming it
off and storing it.
Other than that, mind your own damn business, if you can't deal with the arguments.
One of the biggest downsides of the rise of Corbyn and Sanders, interesting though it is, is
the oxygen it seems to be giving to several old Marxist hacks who have made a good living for
decades banging on about their discredited and blood soaked ideology, ie Jacques et al.
Recently joined by that newly hatched Marxist harpie on the block, the hipster bearded and
thoroughly poisonous Richard Seymour.
The fact is there is not and never was any such thing as "neoliberalism". What they are
really referring to is globalisation- which will only increase to the benefit of everyone
eventually. The world is shrinking ever faster and that is no bad thing. Progress, evolution,
the future, call it what you want. To try and make out that it is halting or in reverse is
plainly nonsense.
???
What I remember of Reagan,
- spent like a drunken sailor, "defense" spending, til it broke US economy
- unbounded "adjustable rate" and "balloon" mortgages, first bank bailout, bill kicked down
the road to Bush Sr., $125 billion, when it blew up
- "trickle down", wealth transfer, via having taxed public pick up the tab for not just his
defense binge spending, but also corporate welfare programs (patent office, Import/Export
bank, infrastructure, etc.)
- first soup kitchens, adults panhandling/will work for food signs that I'd ever seen
- illegal immigrant amnesty, millions
- "War On Drugs" and right after that black neighborhoods flooded with crack
Reagan and Thatcher kicking off their "gut the public of wealth" agenda.
Their story is "you're a failure". Because a) you don't work hard enough/long enough, b) hold
your household together (if you were at work all waking hours), c) don't know how to raise
decent, independent kids (whilst being at work every waking hour), d) aren't motivated to
improve your lot in life if you need to work every waking hour and e) probably need to take
stress management classes if this gets on your nerves because you personally are driving up
"our" health care costs with your irresponsible neglect of your health.
Or, as the economists tout in the papers, "Productivity is up!" Or as the oligarchical put
it, "we need immigrant work force", who'll do it for cheaper and not complain or
burden us with their need for an actual life outside of work.
Clinton is, was, and still is. despite her recent fake reversal, a staunch supporter of TPP
and other trade agreements that will further impoverish the working class. She is the
furthest thing from a populist. Case closed.
Neoliberal economic policies, with their emphasis on market-led development and individual
rationality, have been exposed as bankrupt not only by the global economic crisis but also by
increasing social opposition and resistance. Social movements and critical scholars in Latin
America, East Asia, Europe and the United States, alongside the Arab uprisings, have triggered
renewed debate on possible different futures. While for some years any discussion of
substantive alternatives has been marginalized, the global crisis since 2008 has opened up new
spaces to debate, and indeed to radically rethink, the meaning of development. Debates on
developmental change are no longer tethered to the pole of 'reform and reproduce': a new pole
of 'critique and strategy beyond' neoliberal capitalism has emerged.
Despite being forcefully challenged, neoliberalism has proven remarkably resilient. In the
first years since the crisis erupted, the bulk of the alternative literature pointed to
continued growth in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and in other big
emerging market countries to affirm the necessary role for the state in sustaining capitalist
development. New developmental economists have consequently reasserted themselves. Their
proposals converged into a broader demand for global Keynesianism (Patomaki, 2012) -- a demand
that is proving to be less and less realistic in the face of a deepening global economic
crisis.
Interpreting and Resisting Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is a historical phenomenon. In the early 1970s firms began to feel acutely the
impact of falling profitability. Many managers and owners believed the mounting power of
organized labor was responsible. Indeed, this emerging structural crisis of capitalism was
amplified by increasing labor militancy and social opposition, and by the rising challenge of
socialism and nationalism from the Global South - the greatest wave of decolonization in world
history (Arrighi, 2007: 136). The power of the United States reached its nadir with its defeat
in Vietnam (1975), with the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s, and with the spread of
revolutionary struggles, notably in Latin America. It is against this backdrop that the rise of
neoliberalism becomes understandable.
Neoliberalism's set of pro-market and anti-labor policies were first implemented by the
brutal US-backed Pinochet dictatorship in Chile (1973). The monetarist economic principles of
the infamous 'Chicago Boys' guided the process. At this time, however, many other governments
in the South resisted initial demands by the Northern-dominated international financial
institutions (IFIs), notably the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), to implement
rapid 'shock therapy' structural adjustment programmes.
The 1979 to 1982 Volcker Shock changed matters dramatically. Paul Volcker, then head of the
US Federal Reserve, allowed US interest rates to skyrocket from around 5 per cent to over 20
per cent, ostensibly to halt persistent inflation and to shock the US economy out of
stagnation. This move sparked a global rise in interest rates and a wave of profound economic
crises in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Soviet bloc. Governments in these countries lost
the ability to service their debts because of the dramatic falls in the prices received for and
the quantity of their primary goods exported. This triggered the 1980s debt crisis, which
opened an opportunity for governments North and South to press more systematically for
neoliberal transformation.
Instead of mobilizing workers and peasants against this new form of economic imperialism,
governments in the South began to reorient their economies toward intensified export production
in order to earn the foreign currency needed to repay their loans. With the fall of the Soviet
Union, neoliberal shock therapy was also extended to Russia and other Eastern European
countries. In the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan, Western governments mobilized their
military power to facilitate the entrenchment of neoliberal policies at a terrible human
cost.
Neoliberalism has entailed processes of contested socio-economic transformation. Amidst
great popular resistance and economic instability, post-war state-led strategies of development
gave way to market-oriented neoliberal ones, or the so-called 'Washington consensus'. The
economist John Williamson identified ten policies characteristic of the consensus: fiscal
discipline, reduction in public expenditure, tax reform, financial liberalization,
market-determined exchange rates, trade liberalization, an open door to foreign direct
investment, privatization of public service and state-owned enterprises, deregulation, and
secure property rights. These policies have led to higher unemployment, worsening social
inequalities, widespread impoverishment, peasant land dispossessions, unsustainable
urbanization and increased worker exploitation.
Contributors to this book describe many of the specific developmental transformations in the
Global South, and how neoliberal processes have led to an expansion of the global reserve army
of workers and accelerated international migration. At the same time, financial and trade
deregulation have enhanced the power of finance capital and multinational corporations, which
they have used to pursue the outsourcing and offshoring of many industrial and service
activities. This globalization of production has brought with it intensified processes of
ecological destruction.
Women and the poor are the most negatively impacted by the neoliberal privatization of
public services. As women increasingly enter into the workforce, the privatization of public
services magnifies their 'double burden'. Such transformations have been global, having
negative impacts on workers in the South and, increasingly, in the North.
The neoliberal policies shaping these transformative processes are derived from neoclassical
economic theory. Neoclassical theory obscures and naturalizes the exploitative foundations of
capitalism because it reduces labor to just another factor of production, not unlike other
'technical inputs' like land and capital. The social reproduction of workers is further assumed
to be a private, genderless process restricted to the household, when it is in fact vital to
overall capital accumulation processes. In not dissimilar ways, neoclassical economics tends to
treat the environment as an externality. Further embedded in this kind of approach is a
tendency towards methodological nationalism. Certain models presuppose that capital and labor
do not move internationally and that international trade represents merely exchange of
commodities between national units. It follows, in theory, that by promoting domestic
specialization according to a given country's comparative advantage, free trade would
spontaneously stabilize participating 'national' economies at an equilibrium level, maintaining
employment and growth in all of them.
With its emphasis on liberal, market-based notions of individual equality and freedom,
neoclassical economics conceals underlying social polarizations and exploitative relationships
characteristic of capitalism. In reality, neoliberal transformation favors the interests of the
strongest capitals internationally (see Shaikh, 2005). Despite the proclaimed spontaneity of
the market, moreover, neoliberalism does not lead to a retreat of the state. Rather,
neoliberalism is marked by the class-based restructuring of the state apparatus in ways that
have responded to the evolving needs of capital accumulation (for example, around new financial
imperatives). What is more, as today's capitalism is dominated by Northern powerhouses like the
United States and Western European countries, the extension of capitalist relations globally
embodies these imperialist powers' aspirations to retain supremacy in the hierarchy of
states.
Neoliberalism, in fact, has always occurred through and within states, never in the absence
of states. Actually existing neoliberal transformations are mediated by the hierarchical
position of a given state within the world market and by specific social struggles.
Consequently, neoliberal transition in the United States is not the same as neoliberalism
transition in India or Iraq, and each entails specific national, class, racial and gendered
dimensions. Yet contributors to this book recognize that neoliberalism is a class-based
political and economic project, defined by the attack of capital and neoliberal state
authorities on the collective capacity of organized labor, the peasantry and popular classes to
resist the subordination of all social, political, economic and ecological processes to
accumulation imperatives. The subsequent consolidation of neoliberalism globally has thus been
to the benefit of global capital, and has come at the expense of workers, women and the poor.
Relations of imperialist domination, environmental exploitation, racial and gender oppression
are constitutive dimensions of this class struggle.
Neoliberal consolidations nonetheless generate new social resistances. Many contributors to
this book identify continuing processes involving the decomposition of working classes and the
formation of important social movements. With the 1999 demonstrations in Seattle, these
struggles assumed an inter-American character. Various indigenous groups, trade unionists,
faith-based and women's organizations marched alongside environmentalists and farmers in a
collective bid to shut down the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks (Burbach, Fox and Fuentes,
2013: 2). In the new millennium, the 'alter-globalisation' movement has attained a truly global
scale. Yet the movement has not been without problems. Notably, the activists and organizations
have failed to produce precise sets of collective demands or a coherent international political
programme. Pre-existing antagonisms among workers and peoples across lines of national and
social oppression were not overcome. The movement, as a result, failed to articulate collective
resistance across national, regional and international levels (Prashad, 2013: 235). After the
huge demonstrations against the war on Iraq (2003), it gradually faded away.
Still, resistances to neoliberalism grew thereafter, especially in the Global South. In some
cases these made significant advances. For example, while the United States and other Western
states were bogged down with military aggressions in the Middle East, US control over Latin
America eased. Social mobilizations there enjoyed new spaces for action, which helped give rise
to a variety of progressive governments less subservient to imperialist interests and the
competitive imperatives of neoliberal development. In this book, Abelardo Marifta-Flores
suggests that progressive income redistribution and the reinforcement of regional integration
processes are among the most significant achievements. Susan Spronk and Sarah Miraglia
highlight the progressive, albeit imperfect, gendered dimensions of the Bolivarian
transformative movement in Venezuela. Neoliberal transformations also create new socio-economic
conditions that may undermine US and Western hegemony. As several authors attest, for example,
the relocation of industrial production towards East Asia has generated new centers of
accumulation. Consequently, Western imperial powers now face a major challenge with the rise of
China and India. So too have other big emerging capitalisms, like Brazil, Russia, South Africa,
Indonesia and the Gulf States, become ever more important centers of accumulation. This has
lent support to arguments suggesting global hegemony has started to shift from the West to the
East.
To be sure, these emerging capitalisms, China in particular, offer alternative sources of
foreign direct investment, international aid, developmental loans and technological know-how to
countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Leaders of the BRICS have, for example, called for
a 'multipolar' reform of the financial system and of the IFIs, which includes the establishment
of a new multilateral Development Bank, the 'BRICS Bank'. Yet the extent to which these changes
offer an alternative at all has everything to do with the extent to which South -- South
relations and flows of know-how do not serve to extend and reproduce exploitative class
relations of domination, even be they under novel forms of sub/ Southern imperialism. This
remains to be seen, and indeed the global crisis is affecting the terms of this debate.
The Global Crisis and the Resilience of Neoliberalism
The global crisis that emerged in the United States in 2007 was rooted in the preceding
decades of neoliberal restructuring. Its immediate trigger, however, was the subprime mortgage
lending debacle. The US subprime crisis then took a global turn in late September 2008 with the
collapse of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers. As investors scrambled to preserve their
wealth and dump any toxic assets they had bought into, otherwise liquid US credit markets
seized up, bringing the global financial system to the edge of ruin. Only massive and sustained
state intervention prevented the system's implosion. Many Western governments rolled out
financial Keynesianism. This entailed nationalizing failed private banks and industries and
adding trillions of dollars to the public debt. The governments thus staved off global economic
collapse but only by incurring massive increases in new public debts. This gave rise to the
sovereign debt crises in the 'peripheral' EU countries. A number of developing countries also
incurred new public debts as governments rolled out economic stimulus packages to help sustain
domestic investment, maintain employment and buttress internal demand.
On the one hand, the privileges and powers gained by global capital under neoliberal
transformation remain largely intact. Indeed, imperialist governments have done everything in
their power to reinforce the current system. Such is the aim of the quantitative easing and
zero interest rate policies being pursued by the US Federal Reserve, the Banks of England and
Japan, and increasingly the European Central Bank. These actions are intended to prop up the
financial markets, support the prices of financial assets and make these countries' exports
more competitive. Throughout it all neoliberal technocrats remain unwavering in their
ideological commitments to market-oriented development. For example, the World Bank's Global
Financial Development Report 2013 attempts to reframe the global crisis not as a fundamental
problem of 'market failure' and capitalism, but instead as essentially about 'state failure'
and flawed human nature. The solution? More of the same neoliberal policies implemented since
the 1980s, but now guided and sustained by a more robust state apparatus that ensures better
market discipline...
"... The teen also claims that Walmart managers attempt to cut costs by reducing full-time associates to part-time workers, something that the behemoth retailer has been accused of in the past . "I'm sick of all the b-------, bogus write-ups and my job," Racicot concluded. "F--- management, f--- this job and f---- Walmart. ..."
Some people know how to make an entrance, while others specialize in exits.
On December 6th, 17-year old Jackson Racicot posted a video titled, "How I quit my job
today," on Facebook. As of today, the video has been viewed nearly 300,000 times.
"Attention all shoppers, associates and management, I would like to say to all of you today
that nobody should work here, ever," he said over the speakers. "Our managers will make
promises and never keep them."
During his remarks, Racicot noted that he has been working for Walmart for over a year and a
half, and calls out his assistant manager for insulting him.
"[Management] will preach to us about how they care about their employees but about a month
ago, my boss, assistant manager Cora called me a 'waste of time,' and management did
nothing."
.... ... ...
The teen also claims that Walmart managers
attempt to cut costs by reducing full-time associates to part-time workers, something that the
behemoth retailer has been accused of in the
past . "I'm sick of all the b-------, bogus write-ups and my job," Racicot concluded. "F---
management, f--- this job and f---- Walmart. "
"... The American Chamber of Commerce subsequently expanded its base from around 60,000 firms in 1972 to over a quarter of a million ten years later. Jointly with the National Association of Manufacturers (which moved to Washington in 1972) it amassed an immense campaign chest to lobby Congress and engage in research. The Business Roundtable, an organization of CEOs 'committed to the aggressive pursuit of political power for the corporation', was founded in 1972 and thereafter became the centrepiece of collective pro-business action. ..."
"... Nearly half the financing for the highly respected NBER came from the leading companies in the Fortune 500 list. Closely integrated with the academic community, the NBER was to have a very significant impact on thinking in the economics departments and business schools of the major research universities. ..."
"... In order to realize this goal, businesses needed a political class instrument and a popular base. They therefore actively sought to capture the Republican Party as their own instrument. The formation of powerful political action committees to procure, as the old adage had it, 'the best government that money could buy' was an important step. ..."
"... The Republican Party needed, however, a solid electoral base if it was to colonize power effectively. It was around this time that Republicans sought an alliance with the Christian right. The latter had not been politically active in the past, but the foundation of Jerry Falwell's 'moral majority' as a political movement in 1978 changed all of that. The Republican Party now had its Christian base. ..."
"... It also appealed to the cultural nationalism of the white working classes and their besieged sense of moral righteousness. This political base could be mobilized through the positives of religion and cultural nationalism and negatively through coded, if not blatant, racism, homophobia, and anti feminism. ..."
"... The alliance between big business and conservative Christians backed by the neoconservatives consolidated, not for the first time has a social group been persuaded to vote against its material, economic, and class interests ..."
"... Any political movement that holds individual freedoms to be sacrosanct is vulnerable to incorporation into the neoliberal fold. ..."
"... Neoliberal rhetoric, with its foundational emphasis upon individual freedoms, has the power to split off libertarianism, identity politics, multiculturalism, and eventually narcissistic consumerism from the social forces ranged in pursuit of social justice through the conquest of state power. ..."
"... By capturing ideals of individual freedom and turning them against the interventionist and regulatory practices of the state, capitalist class interests could hope to protect and even restore their position. Neoliberalism was well suited to this ideological task. ..."
"... Neoliberalization required both politically and economically the construction of a neoliberal market-based populist culture of differentiated consumerism and individual libertarianism. As such it proved more than a little compatible with that cultural impulse called 'postmodernism' which had long been lurking in the wings but could now emerge full-blown as both a cultural and an intellectual dominant. This was the challenge that corporations and class elites set out to finesse in the 1980s. ..."
"... Powell argued that individual action was insufficient. 'Strength', he wrote, 'lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations'. The National Chamber of Commerce, he argued, should lead an assault upon the major institutions––universities, schools, the media, publishing, the courts––in order to change how individuals think 'about the corporation, the law, culture, and the individual'. US businesses did not lack resources for such an effort, particularly when they pooled their resources together. ..."
The American Chamber of Commerce subsequently expanded its base from around 60,000 firms in 1972 to over a quarter of a million
ten years later. Jointly with the National Association of Manufacturers (which moved to Washington in 1972) it amassed an immense
campaign chest to lobby Congress and engage in research. The Business Roundtable, an organization of CEOs 'committed to the aggressive
pursuit of political power for the corporation', was founded in 1972 and thereafter became the centrepiece of collective pro-business
action.
The corporations involved accounted for 'about one half of the GNP of the United States' during the 1970s, and they spent close
to $900 million annually (a huge amount at that time) on political matters. Think-tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation, the
Hoover Institute, the Center for the Study of American Business, and the American Enterprise Institute, were formed with corporate
backing both to polemicize and, when necessary, as in the case of the National Bureau of Economic Research, to construct serious
technical and empirical studies and political-philosophical arguments broadly in support of neoliberal policies.
Nearly half the financing for the highly respected NBER came from the leading companies in the Fortune 500 list. Closely
integrated with the academic community, the NBER was to have a very significant impact on thinking in the economics departments
and business schools of the major research universities. With abundant finance furnished by wealthy individuals (such as
the brewer Joseph Coors, who later became a member of Reagan's 'kitchen cabinet') and their foundations (for example Olin, Scaife,
Smith Richardson, Pew Charitable Trust), a flood of tracts and books, with Nozick's Anarchy State and Utopia perhaps the most widely
read and appreciated, emerged espousing neoliberal values. A TV version of Milton Friedman's Free to Choose was funded with a
grant from Scaife in 1977. 'Business was', Blyth concludes, 'learning to spend as a class.
In singling out the universities for particular attention, Powell pointed up an opportunity as well as an issue, for these
were indeed centers of anti-corporate and anti-state sentiment (the students at Santa Barbara had burned down the Bank of America
building there and ceremonially buried a car in the sands). But many students were (and still are) affluent and privileged, or
at least middle class, and in the US the values of individual freedom have long been celebrated (in music and popular culture)
as primary. Neoliberal themes could here find fertile ground for propagation. Powell did not argue for extending state power.
But business should 'assiduously cultivate' the state and when necessary use it 'aggressively and with determination'
In order to realize this goal, businesses needed a political class instrument and a popular base. They therefore actively
sought to capture the Republican Party as their own instrument. The formation of powerful political action committees to procure,
as the old adage had it, 'the best government that money could buy' was an important step. The supposedly 'progressive' campaign
finance laws of 1971 in effect legalized the financial corruption of politics.
A crucial set of Supreme Court decisions began in 1976 when it was first established that the right of a corporation to make
unlimited money contributions to political parties and political action committees was protected under the First Amendment guaranteeing
the rights of individuals (in this instance corporations) to freedom of speech.15 Political action committees could thereafter
ensure the financial domination of both political parties by corporate, moneyed, and professional association interests. Corporate
PACs, which numbered eighty-nine in 1974, had burgeoned to 1,467 by 1982.
The Republican Party needed, however, a solid electoral base if it was to colonize power effectively. It was around this time
that Republicans sought an alliance with the Christian right. The latter had not been politically active in the past, but the
foundation of Jerry Falwell's 'moral majority' as a political movement in 1978 changed all of that. The Republican Party now had
its Christian base.
It also appealed to the cultural nationalism of the white working classes and their besieged sense of moral righteousness.
This political base could be mobilized through the positives of religion and cultural nationalism and negatively through coded,
if not blatant, racism, homophobia, and anti feminism.
The alliance between big business and conservative Christians backed by the neoconservatives consolidated, not for the first
time has a social group been persuaded to vote against its material, economic, and class interests the evangelical Christians
eagerly embraced the alliance with big business and the Republican Party as a means to further promote their evangelical and moral
agenda.
Any political movement that holds individual freedoms to be sacrosanct is vulnerable to incorporation into the neoliberal fold.
The worldwide political upheavals of 1968, for example, were strongly inflected with the desire for greater personal freedoms.
This was certainly true for students, such as those animated by the Berkeley 'free speech' movement of the 1960s or who took to
the streets in Paris, Berlin, and Bangkok and were so mercilessly shot down in Mexico City shortly before the 1968 Olympic Games.
They demanded freedom from parental, educational, corporate, bureaucratic, and state constraints. But the '68 movement also had
social justice as a primary political objective.
Neoliberal rhetoric, with its foundational emphasis upon individual freedoms, has the power to split off libertarianism,
identity politics, multiculturalism, and eventually narcissistic consumerism from the social forces ranged in pursuit of social
justice through the conquest of state power. It has long proved extremely difficult within the US left, for example, to forge
the collective discipline required for political action to achieve social justice without offending the the Construction of Consent
desire of political actors for individual freedom and for full recognition and expression of particular identities. Neoliberalism
did not create these distinctions, but it could easily exploit, if not foment, them.
In the early 1970s those seeking individual freedoms and social justice could make common cause in the face of what many saw
as a common enemy. Powerful corporations in alliance with an interventionist state were seen to be running the world in individually
oppressive and socially unjust ways. The Vietnam War was the most obvious catalyst for discontent, but the destructive activities
of corporations and the state in relation to the environment, the push towards mindless consumerism, the failure to address social
issues and respond adequately to diversity, as well as intense restrictions on individual possibilities and personal behaviors
by state-mandated and 'traditional' controls were also widely resented. Civil rights were an issue, and questions of sexuality
and of reproductive rights were very much in play.
For almost everyone involved in the movement of '68, the intrusive state was
the enemy and it had to be reformed. And on that, the neoliberals could easily agree. But capitalist corporations, business, and
the market system were also seen as primary enemies requiring redress if not revolutionary transformation: hence the threat to
capitalist class power.
By capturing ideals of individual freedom and turning them against the interventionist and regulatory practices of the state,
capitalist class interests could hope to protect and even restore their position. Neoliberalism was well suited to this ideological
task. But it had to be backed up by a practical strategy that emphasized the liberty of consumer choice, not only with respect
to particular products but also with respect to lifestyles, modes of expression, and a wide range of cultural practices. Neoliberalization
required both politically and economically the construction of a neoliberal market-based populist culture of differentiated consumerism
and individual libertarianism. As such it proved more than a little compatible with that cultural impulse called 'postmodernism'
which had long been lurking in the wings but could now emerge full-blown as both a cultural and an intellectual dominant. This
was the challenge that corporations and class elites set out to finesse in the 1980s.
In the US case a confidential memo sent by Lewis Powell to the US Chamber of Commerce in August 1971. Powell, about to be elevated
to the Supreme Court by Richard Nixon, argued that criticism of and opposition to the US free enterprise system had gone too far
and that 'the time had come––indeed it is long overdue––for the wisdom, ingenuity and resources of American business to be marshaled
against those who would destroy it'.
Powell argued that individual action was insufficient. 'Strength', he wrote, 'lies in organization, in careful long-range
planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available
only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations'. The National
Chamber of Commerce, he argued, should lead an assault upon the major institutions––universities, schools, the media, publishing,
the courts––in order to change how individuals think 'about the corporation, the law, culture, and the individual'. US businesses
did not lack resources for such an effort, particularly when they pooled their resources together.
"... Dan Davies on financial fraud is certainly the most entertaining book on Economics I have read this year. Highly recommend ..."
"... Chris Dillow : Review of Dan Davies: Lying for Money ..."
"... Lying For Money ..."
"... Dan has also a theory of fraud. 'The optimal level of fraud is unlikely to be zero' he says. If we were to take so many precautions to stop it, we would also strangle legitimate economic activity... ..."
"Squalid crude affairs committed mostly by inadequates. This is a message of Dan Davies' history of fraud, Lying For Money ....
Most frauds fall into a few simple types.... Setting up a fake company... pyramid schemes...
control frauds, whereby someone abuses a position of trust...
plain counterfeiters.
My favourite was Alves dos Reis, who persuaded the printers of legitimate Portuguese banknotes to
print even more of them....
All this is done with the wit and clarity of exposition for which
we have long admired Dan. His footnotes are an especial delight, reminding me of William
Donaldson.
Dan has also a theory of fraud. 'The optimal level of fraud is unlikely to be zero'
he says. If we were to take so many precautions to stop it, we would also strangle legitimate
economic activity...
"... Because once we go from "corruption is getting more and more common; something must be done" to "meh," we are crossing from a flawed democratic republic to outright tyranny and oligarchy with little way back. ..."
"... Why would anyone expect anything different from the Times, or any major U.S. Newspaper or media outlet? They are organs of the intelligence community and have been for many years. ..."
"... I think the ridiculous and pathetic explanations by NYT in this case are, in part, due to the fact that they simply don't care enough to produce better answers. In their view, these CIA connections and those with other Govt. agencies are paramount, and must be maintained at all costs. ..."
"... It is likely that the relationship is a little more formal than mere collusion ..."
"... "Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few" [George Bernard Shaw" ..."
"... Has been since Judith Miller told us there were WMD in Iraq in 2003. They don't plan anticipations of crises, but the actual crises themselves. In a moral world, the NYT is as guilty of genocide as Bush and Blair. ..."
The more important objection is that the fact that a certain behavior is common does not negate its being corrupt. Indeed,
as is true for government abuses generally, those in power rely on the willingness of citizens to be trained to view corrupt
acts as so common that they become inured, numb, to its wrongfulness. Once a corrupt practice is sufficiently perceived as
commonplace, then it is transformed in people's minds from something objectionable into something acceptable.
Because once we go from "corruption is getting more and more common; something must be done" to "meh," we are crossing
from a flawed democratic republic to outright tyranny and oligarchy with little way back.
Besides, they don't all do it ... there are honorable reporters out there, some few of whom work for the Times and the Post.
Another great article Glenn. The Guardian will spread your words further and wider. Salon's loss is the world's gain.
Why would anyone expect anything different from the Times, or any major U.S. Newspaper or media outlet? They are organs
of the intelligence community and have been for many years. That these email were allowed to get out under FOIA is indicative
of the fact that there are some people on the inside who would like to get the truth out. Either that, or the head of some ES-2's
Assistant Deputy for Secret Shenanigans and Heinous Drone Murders will roll.
Scott Horton quote on closely related Mazzetti reporting (in this case regarding misleading reporting on how important CIA/Bush
torture was in tracking down and getting bin Laden, the focus of this movie):
"I'm quite sure that this is precisely the way the folks who provided this info from the agency [to Mazzetti] wanted them to
be understood, but there is certainly more than a measure of ambiguity in them, planted with care by the NYT writers or their
editors. This episode shows again how easily the Times can be spun by unnamed government sources, the factual premises of whose
statements invariably escape any examination."
I think the ridiculous and pathetic explanations by NYT in this case are, in part, due to the fact that they simply don't
care enough to produce better answers. In their view, these CIA connections and those with other Govt. agencies are paramount,
and must be maintained at all costs.
If you don't like their paper-thin answers, tough. In their view (imo) this will blow over and business will resume, with the
all-important friends and connections intact. Thus leaving the machinery intact for future uncritical, biased and manipulative
"spin" of NYT by any number of unnamed govt. sources/agencies...
In what conceivable way is Mazzetti's collusion with the CIA an "intelligence matter" that prevents the NYT's managing
editor from explaining what happened here?
That one is easy, as we learned in the Valerie Plame affair. It is likely that the relationship is a little more formal
than mere collusion.
Just another step down the ladder towards despotism. "Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment
by the corrupt few" [George Bernard Shaw"
The relationship between the New York Times and the US government is, as usual, anything but adversarial. Indeed, these
emails read like the interactions between a PR representative and his client as they plan in anticipation of a possible crisis.
Has been since Judith Miller told us there were WMD in Iraq in 2003. They don't plan anticipations of crises, but the actual
crises themselves. In a moral world, the NYT is as guilty of genocide as Bush and Blair.
The humor seems to go completely out of the issue when 100,000 people are dead and their families and futures changed forever.
"We pledge subservience to the Owners of the United Corporations of America, and to the Oligarchy for which it stands, one Greed
under God, indivisible, with power and wealth for few."
Notable quotes:
"... bin laden gave terror a face. how conveeeenient for warmongers everywhere! ..."
"... CIA in collusion with mainstream newspaper NYT. And you call this news ? ..."
"... collusion between the us media and the us government goes back much, much further. Chomsky has plenty of stuff about this... ..."
"... The NYTimes has its own agenda and bends the news that's fit to print. Journalistic integrity? LOL. No one beat the war drums louder for Bush's Neocons before the Iraq war. Draining our nation's resources, getting young Americans killed (they didn't come from the 1%, you see). The cradle of civilization that's the Iraqi landscape wiped out. Worst, 655,000 Iraqis lost their lives, said British medical journal Lancet, creating 2.5mn each internal & external refugees. ..."
"... The NYT never dwelled on the numbers of Iraqis killed. Up to a few weeks ago, its emphasis on the current Syrian tragedy is to inform us on the hundreds or thousands who've lost their lives. ..."
"... World financial meltdown? When Sanford Weill of Citi pushed for the repeal of Glass-Steagall late 1990's, the FDR era 17-page law separating commercial from investment banks, a measure that's preserved the nation's banking integrity for over half a century, the Nyt added its megaphone to the task, urging Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin to comply, editorializing In 1988: "Few economic historians now find the logic behind Glass-Steagall persuasive" . In 1990, that "banks and stocks were a dangerous mixture" "makes little sense now." ..."
"... just off the top of my head I recall the editor of one of a British major was an MI5 agent; this is in the public domain. ..."
"... We pledge subservience to the Owners of the United Corporations of America, and to the Oligarchy for which it stands, one Greed under God, indivisible, with power and wealth for few. ..."
"... The NYT has been infiltrated for decades by CIA agents. Just notice their dogged reporting on the completely debunked "lone-gunman" JFK theory---they will always report that Oswald acted alone---this is the standard CIA story, pushed and maintained by the NYT despite overwhelming evidence that there was a conspiracy (likely involving the CIA). ..."
I've often wondered what you think of the journalism of someone like Seymour Hirsch. (sic) He broke some very important
stories by cozying up to moles in the MIC.
You'e confusing apples with oranges. Hersh seeks information on issues that outrage him. These do not usually include propaganda
for the intelligence agencies, but information they would like to suppress. He's given secret information because he appears to
his informers as someone who has a long record of integrity.
It's straight outta that old joke about the husband being caught by his wife in flagrante delicto with the pretty young lady neighbour,
who then tells his wife that he and his bit on the side weren't doing anything: "And who do you believe-- me, or your lying eyes?"
The NYTimes has its own agenda and bends the news that's fit to print. Journalistic integrity? LOL. No one beat the
war drums louder for Bush's Neocons before the Iraq war. Draining our nation's resources, getting young Americans killed (they
didn't come from the 1%, you see). The cradle of civilization that's the Iraqi landscape wiped out. Worst, 655,000 Iraqis lost
their lives, said British medical journal Lancet, creating 2.5mn each internal & external refugees.
Following the pre-Iraq
embellishment, NYT covered up its deeds by sacrificing Journalist Judith Miller. As Miller answered a post-war court case, none
other than Chairman & CEO Arthur Sulzberger jr. locked arms with her as they entered the courtroom.
The NYT never dwelled on the numbers of Iraqis killed. Up to a few weeks ago, its emphasis on the current Syrian tragedy is
to inform us on the hundreds or thousands who've lost their lives.
World financial meltdown? When Sanford Weill of Citi pushed for the repeal of Glass-Steagall late 1990's, the FDR era 17-page
law separating commercial from investment banks, a measure that's preserved the nation's banking integrity for over half a century,
the Nyt added its megaphone to the task, urging Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin to comply, editorializing In 1988: "Few economic
historians now find the logic behind Glass-Steagall persuasive" . In 1990, that "banks and stocks were a dangerous mixture" "makes
little sense now."
NYT, a liberal icon? In year 2000, when I lived in NYC, New York Daily News columnist A.M. Rosenthal used to regularly demonize
China in language surpassing even Rush Limbaugh. I told myself nah, that's not the Rosenthal-former-editor of the NYT. Only when
I read his obituary a few years later did I learn that it was indeed the same one.
We pledge subservience to the Owners of the United Corporations of America, and to the Oligarchy for which it stands, one Greed
under God, indivisible, with power and wealth for few.
NOAM CHOMSKY _MANUFACTURING CONSENT haven't read it? read it. read it? read it again.
thought totalitarianism and the ruling class died in 1945? think again. thought you wouldn't have to fight like grandpa's generation
to live in a democratic and just society? think again.
Would that we could hold these discussions without reference to personal defamations -- "darkened ignorance" and "educate yourself"
which sounds like "f___ yourself". Why can't we just say "I respectfully disagree"? Alas, when discussing political issues with
leftists, that seems impossible. Why the vitriol?
Greenwald's more lengthy posts make it clear that he believes that people who differ with him are "lying" and basing their
viewpoint upon "a single right wing blogger". He chooses this explanation over the obvious and accurate one -- legal rationales
developed by the Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush administration. The date of Greenwald's archive is February 19, 2006.
Oddly, he bases all of his contentions upon whatever he could glean up to that date. But the legal rationale for warrantless wiretaps
was based upon memos written by John Yoo at the OLC that Greenwald did not have access to in 2006. The memos were not released
until after Obama took office in 2009.
Obama released them in a highly publicized press conference staged for maximum political impact. Greenwald could not possibly
have understood the legal rationale for the program since he had not been privy to them until March 2009 if, indeed, he has bothered
to acquaint himself with them since then. Either way, nobody was "lying" except those who could have understood the full dimension
and willfully chose to hide or ignore the truth. It's not exactly like I am new to this subject as you seem to imply. I wrote
a 700 page book about Obama administration duplicity in this same vein. An entire chapter is devoted to this very topic.
Warrantless wiretaps were undertaken after a legal ruling from OLC. And after Obama took office, warrantless wiretaps were
continued. Obviously since they were based upon OLC rulings, since no prosecutions have ever been suggested and since they have
continued uninterrupted after Obama took office, the Justice Department under both administrations agrees with me and disagrees
with Greenwald. We arrive at this disagreement respectfully. Despite Obama's voluminous denunciations of the Bush anti-terror
approach on the campaign trail, he resurrected nearly every plank of it once he took office.
But this is a subsidiary point to a far larger point that some observers on this discussion to their credit were able to understand.
Despite all of these pointless considerations, the larger point of my original post was that Greenwald missed the "real" story
here, which was that the collusion between NYT and CIA was not due to institutional considerations as Greenwald seems to allege,
but due to purely partisan considerations. That, to me, is the story he missed.
I find that people who are losing debates try to shift the focus to subsidiary points hoping that, like a courtroom lawyer,
if they can refute a small and inconsequential detail raised in testimony, they will undercut the larger truth offered by the
witness. It won't work. Too much is on the record. And neither point, the ankle-biting non-issue about legality of warrantless
wiretaps or the larger, salient point about the overt partisan political dimension of NYT's collusion with a political appointee
at CIA who serves on the Obama reelection committee, has been refuted.
Joseph Toomey
Author, "Change You Can REALLY Believe In: The Obama Legacy of Broken Promises and Failed Policies"
Conspiracy theorists, have been, of course, telling you this for years (given media's motive is profit and not honesty). I suppose
the exact same conspiracy theorists other guardian authors have been too eager to denounce previously?
The NSA wiretap program revealed by Risen was not illegal as Greenwald wrongly asserts. As long as one end of the intercepted
conservation originated on foreign soil as it did, it was perfectly legal and required no FISA court authorization.
Mr. Toomey, in 2006 Greenwald
published a compendium of legal arguments defending the Bush Admin's warrantless wiretapping and the (sound) rebuttals of
them. It is exhaustive, and covers your easily dispensed with argument. By way of introduction to his many links to his
aggregated, rigorous analyses of the legal issues, he wrote this:
I didn't just wake up one day and leap to the conclusion that the Administration broke the law deliberately and that there
are no reasonable arguments to defend that law-breaking (as many Bush followers leaped to the conclusion that he did nothing
wrong and then began their hunt to find rationale or advocates to support this conclusion). I arrived at the conclusion that
Bush clearly broke the law only by spending enormous amounts of time researching these issues and reading and responding to
the defenses from the Administration's apologists.
He did spend enormous time dealing with people such as yourself, and all of his work remains available for you to educate
yourself with, at the link provided above.
Maybe you'd like to explain that to Samuel Loring Morison who was convicted and spent years in the federal system for passing
classified information to Janes Defence Weekly. I'm sure he'd be entertained. Larry Franklin would also like to hear it. He's
in prison today for violating the Espionage Act.
Courts have recognized no press privilege exists when publishing classified data. In 1971, the Supreme Court vacated a prior
restraint against NYT and The Washington Post allowing them to publish the Pentagon Papers. But the court also observed that prosecutions
after-the-fact would be permissible and not involve an abridgement of the free speech clause. It was only the prior restraint
that gave the justices heartburn. They had no issue with throwing them in the slammer after the deed was done.
Thomas Drake, a former NSA official, was indicted and convicted after revealing information to reporters in 2010. The statute
covers mere possession which even NYT recognized could cover reporters as well. There have been numerous other instances of arrests,
indictments and prosecutions for disclosure to reporters. It's only been due to political calculations and not constitutional
limitations that have kept Risen and others out of prison.
The NYT has been infiltrated for decades by CIA agents. Just notice their dogged reporting on the completely debunked "lone-gunman"
JFK theory---they will always report that Oswald acted alone---this is the standard CIA story, pushed and maintained by the NYT
despite overwhelming evidence that there was a conspiracy (likely involving the CIA).
What outrages me the most is the NYT's condescending attitude towards its readers when caught in this obvious breach of journalistic
ethics.
Both Baquet and Abramson, rather than showing some humility or contrition, are acting as if nothing bad has happened, and that
we are stupid to even talk about this.
This article misses the elephant in the room. Namely, that the NYT only plays footsies with Democrats in positions of power.
With the 'Pubs, it's open season.
Not true. There are many examples of the NYT colluding with the Bush administration, some of which Glenn has mentioned in this
article. Take, for example, the fact that the NYT concealed Bush's wire-tapping program for almost a year, at the request of the
White House, and didn't release details until after Bush's re-election.
"... The Government leaks classified material at will for propaganda advantage, but hunts Assange and tortures Private Manning for the same. ..."
"... these emails reflect the standard full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger – between our the government and the establishment media outlets that claim to act as "watchdogs" over them. ..."
"... The issue under discussion here, however, is the extent to which the media is an eager partner in the message-sending, rather than an unwitiing tool. ..."
The New York Crimes. The seamless web of media, government, business: a totalitarian system.
Darkly amusing, perhaps, unless one begins to tally the damage.
USA Inc. Viva Death,
Did you hear the one about the investment banker whose very expensive hooker bite off his
crank?
I'm not sure what's scarier--that the CIA is spending taxpayer dollars spending even a split
second worrying about what a two bit hack like Maureen Dowd writes, or that the NY Times
principals are so institutionally "captured" that they parrot "CIA speak".
Or maybe that our purported public servants in the legislature are bipartisanly
and openly attempting to repeal portions of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign
Relations Authorization Act in 1987 banning domestic propaganda.
America is becoming a real sick joke. And the last to know will be about 65% of the
populace I like to call Sheeple.
Very depressing. I thought we would get a smart bunch over here. The major trend I've noticed
instead? Blind support for the empire and the apparatus that keeps it thriving. Unable to be
good little authoritarians and cheer for the now collapsing British Empire, they have to
cheer for it's natural predecessor, the American Empire. This includes attacking all those
who might question the absolute infallible of The Empire. Folks like.. Glenn. It is
fascinating to watch, if not disheartening.
So all cozying up to spooks is not always a bad thing, huh?
Just my point.
I see. I thought your point was that there was some sort of equivalence between Hersh's
development of sources to reveal truths that their agencies fervently wished to keep secret
and Mazzetti's active assistance in protecting an agency's image from sullying by fellow
journalists.
And that ended his career in government service, as it should have...or not:
From Wikipedia: John O. Brennan is chief counterterrorism advisor to U.S. President
Barack Obama; officially his title is Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security
and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President.
Unfortunately this is nothing new for Mazetti or the New York Times, nor is it the first time
Glenn Greenwald has called Mazetti out on his cozy relationship with the CIA:
The CIA and its reporter friends: Anatomy of a backlash
The coordinated, successful effort to implant false story lines about John Brennan
illustrates the power the intelligence community wields over political debates.
Glenn Greenwald Dec. 08, 2008 |
...Just marvel at how coordinated (and patently inaccurate) their messaging is, and --
more significantly -- how easily they can implant their message into establishment media
outlets far and wide, which uncritically publish what they're told from their cherished
"intelligence sources" and without even the pretense of verifying whether any of it is true
and/or hearing any divergent views:
Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, New York Times, 12/2/2008:
Last week, John O. Brennan, a C.I.A. veteran who was widely seen as Mr. Obama's likeliest
choice to head the intelligence agency, withdrew his name from consideration after liberal
critics attacked his alleged role in the agency's detention and interrogation program. Mr.
Brennan protested that he had been a "strong opponent" within the agency of harsh
interrogation tactics, yet Mr. Obama evidently decided that nominating Mr. Brennan was not
worth a battle with some of his most ardent supporters on the left.
Mr. Obama's search for someone else and his future relationship with the agency are
complicated by the tension between his apparent desire to make a clean break with Bush
administration policies he has condemned and concern about alienating an agency with a
central role in the campaign against Al Qaeda.
Mark M. Lowenthal, an intelligence veteran who left a senior post at the C.I.A. in 2005, said
Mr. Obama's decision to exclude Mr. Brennan from contention for the top job had sent a
message that "if you worked in the C.I.A. during the war on terror, you are now tainted," and
had created anxiety in the ranks of the agency's clandestine service.
...The story, by Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, noted that John O. Brennan had withdrawn
his name from consideration for CIA director after liberal critics attacked his role in the
agency's interrogation program, even though Brennan characterized himself as a "strong
opponent" within the agency of harsh interrogation techniques. Brennan's characterization was
not disputed by anyone else in the story, even though most experts on this subject agree that
Brennan acquiesced in everything that the CIA did in this area while he served there.
"these emails reflect the standard full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger –
between our the government and the establishment media outlets that claim to act as
"watchdogs" over them."
Glenn - the only objection I have to your column and all your previous columns on this
matter is that I am not sure the establishment media actually claim to be watchdogs, at least
not any more, and certainly not since Sept 11. They really are more like PR reps.
The media is another tool in the [government, in this case] arsenal to help send a
message, as are speeches before think tanks and etc.
Yes. The issue under discussion here, however, is the extent to which the media is an
eager partner in the message-sending, rather than an unwitiing tool.
Did everyone forget the Judith Miller article? The usage of Twitter and other social media
during the Iranian election of 2009? The leaks about the Iranian nuclear program in the
Telegraph? ARDA?
The U.S. government, along with every other government in the world, uses the media to
influence public opinion and send geopolitical messages to others that understand the message
(normally not the masses). The media is another tool in the arsenal to help send a message,
as are speeches before think tanks and etc.
We use social media to create social unrest if it aligns with our interests. We use the
media to send political messages and influence public opinion. The vast majority of reporting
in the N.Y. Times, WSJ, Guardian, Telegraph, and etc. do not reflect this, but every now and
then "unnamed sources" help further a geopolitical message.
In this country, it has been that way since before the founding fathers and the Republic.
Remember the Federalist, Anti-Federalist, Sam Adams as Vtndex, and etc.? Newspapers used for
"propaganda" purposes.
Upthread I asked him for his comments on the reporting of Seymour Hirsh. He is someone
who cozied up to all kinds of people - and wound up busting some extremely important
stories in the process.
I think a modest amount of review of Sy Hersh's work will demonstrate that his "cozying
up" hasn't included running interference for the spooks' official PR flacks.
"... Bob Marley got it right.... the human race is becoming a rat race, and it's a disgrace. ..."
"... The biggest problem is the financialisation of the economy... what is the actual value of things? The market is so manipulated that real price discovery is not possible. ..."
"... We have an over-cooked service-sector economy unsustainably reliant on cheap debt, cheap energy, and cheap manufactured goods to fuel our 'high-end levels of consumption, and mobility or living standards, and an over-heated housing market that is unsustainably run according to the needs of investors and landlords rather than residents or tenants. ..."
"... What we need is a coordinated approach between our nations. Undercutting each other on corporate taxes, writing tax avoidance into law, and continuing to allow multinationals to influence our politicians and play our governments against each other is exactly the game we must end. ..."
"... Instead, it places the financially powerful beyond any state, in an international elite that makes its own rules, and holds governments to ransom. That's what the financial crisis was all about. The ransom was paid, and as a result, governments have been obliged to limit their activities yet further.... ..."
"... "Ransom". There is no better word to describe it. This (the ransom mentality) is exactly the reactionary, vindictive, doctrinaire psychology that must be extracted like a cancer from our institutional lives and the human species. A monolithic task. But identifying the cause is the first step to cure. ..."
"... these are the new medieval transnational barons ..."
@Crackerpot - The whole austerity crisis thing appears to have been engineered so that a few blinkered and unpatriotic, vulture
mafia privateers can make a killing, selling off vital state assets, such as infrastructure and ports, to the Chinese. This is
a very suspicious and widespread trend.
Bob Marley got it right.... the human race is becoming a rat race, and it's a disgrace.
I see it every day from the window of my flat, on a main road, in Bethnal Green. There's a 'mentally unstable' Rastafarian
who stands by the overground station, and shouts things out to people like "You're living in babylon".
The biggest problem is the financialisation of the economy... what is the actual value of things? The market is so manipulated
that real price discovery is not possible.
We have an over-cooked service-sector economy unsustainably reliant on cheap debt, cheap energy, and cheap manufactured
goods to fuel our 'high-end levels of consumption, and mobility or living standards, and an over-heated housing market that is
unsustainably run according to the needs of investors and landlords rather than residents or tenants.
The whole thing is going to blow apart. Our 'aspirations' are slowly killing us - they're destroying the social fabric.
What we need is a coordinated approach between our nations. Undercutting each other on corporate taxes, writing tax avoidance
into law, and continuing to allow multinationals to influence our politicians and play our governments against each other is exactly
the game we must end.
Deborah Orr:Instead, it places the financially powerful beyond any state, in an international elite that makes
its own rules, and holds governments to ransom. That's what the financial crisis was all about. The ransom was paid, and as
a result, governments have been obliged to limit their activities yet further....
I never thought I would live long enough to see this level of honesty ATL. It should have been published long ago, but at least
the discussion now begins.
"Ransom". There is no better word to describe it. This (the ransom mentality) is exactly the reactionary, vindictive, doctrinaire
psychology that must be extracted like a cancer from our institutional lives and the human species. A monolithic task. But identifying
the cause is the first step to cure.
"... Neoliberalism? This is not just a financial agenda. This a highly organized multi armed counterculture operation to force us, including Ms Orr [unless she has...connections] into what Terence McKenna [who was in on it] termed the `Archaic Revival'. That is - you and me [and Ms Orr] - our - return to the medieval dark ages, if we indeed survive that far. ..."
"... The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. ..."
"... the UK government did intervene in the economy when it bailed out the banks to the tune of many billions of pounds underwritten by the taxpayer. The markets should always be regulated sufficiently (light touch is absolutely useless) to prevent the problems currently being experienced from ever happening again. ..."
"... Traditional liberalism had died decades before WWII and was replaced by finance capitalism. What happened after WW II was that capitalism had to make various concessions to avoid a socialist revolution: social and political freedoms indeed darted ahead. ..."
"... No chance mate, at least not all the time greasy spiv and shyster outfits like hedge funds are funding Puffin face and the Vermin Party. They are never going to bite the hand that feeds them ..."
"... And in case we get uppity and endeavour to challenge the economic paradigm and the rule of these neoliberal elites, there's the surveillance state panopticon to track our movements and keep us in check. ..."
"... There is not a shred of logical sense in neoliberalism. You're doing what the fundamentalists do... they talk about what neoliberalism is in theory whilst completely ignoring what it is in practice. In theory the banks should have been allowed to go bust, but the consequences where deemed too high (as they inevitable are). The result is socialism for the rich using the poor as the excuse, which is the reality of neoliberalism. ..."
"... She, knowingly, let neo-liberal economic philosophy come trumpeting through the door of No10 and it's been there ever since; it has guided our politicians for the past 30 odd years. Hence, it is Thatcher's fault. She did this and another bad thing: the woman who glorified household economics pissed away billions of pounds of North Sea Oil. ..."
"... Bailouts have been a constant feature of neoliberalism. In fact the role of the state is simply reduced to a merely commissioning agent to private parasitical corporations. History has shown the state playing this role since neoliberalism became embedded in policy since the 1970s - Long Term Capital Management, Savings and Loans, The Brady Plan, numerous PFI bailouts and those of the Western banking system during the 1982 South American, 1997 Asian and 2010 European debt crises. ..."
@EllisWyatt - Here's the funny thing about those who cheer the broken neoliberal model. They
promise we will get to those "sunny uplands" with exactly the same fervor as old Marxists.
Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom
Neoliberalism? This is not just a financial agenda. This a highly organized multi armed counterculture operation to
force us, including Ms Orr [unless she has...connections] into what Terence McKenna [who was in on it] termed the `Archaic
Revival'. That is - you and me [and Ms Orr] - our - return to the medieval dark ages, if we indeed survive that far.
The same names come up time and time again. One of them being, father of propaganda, Edward Bernays.
Bernays wrote what can be seen as a virtual Mission Statement for anyone wishing to bring about a "counterculture." In the
opening paragraph of his book Propaganda he wrote:
"..The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important
element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government
which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas
suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.
This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organised. Vast numbers of human beings must
cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our daily
lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by
the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses.
It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind..."[28]
Bernays' family background made him well suited to "control the public mind." He was the double nephew of psychoanalysis
pioneer Sigmund Freud. His mother was Freud's sister Anna, and his father was Ely Bernays, brother of Freud's wife Martha
Bernays.
@OneCommentator - the UK government did intervene in the economy when it bailed out the banks
to the tune of many billions of pounds underwritten by the taxpayer. The markets should
always be regulated sufficiently (light touch is absolutely useless) to prevent the problems
currently being experienced from ever happening again.
Those at the bottom of society and
those in the public sector are the ones paying the price for this intervention in the UK. If
you truly believe in the 'free' market then all of these failing organisations (banks, etc)
should have been allowed to fail. The problem is that the wealth created under the current
system is virtually all going to those at the top of the income scale and this needs to
change and is one of the main reasons that neo liberalism should be binned!
Traditional liberalism had died decades before WWII and was replaced by finance
capitalism. What happened after WW II was that capitalism had to make various concessions to
avoid a socialist revolution: social and political freedoms indeed darted ahead.
@brighton2 - No chance mate, at least not all the time greasy spiv and shyster outfits like hedge funds are funding Puffin
face and the Vermin Party. They are never going to bite the hand that feeds them.
And in case we get uppity and endeavour to challenge the economic paradigm and the rule of
these neoliberal elites, there's the surveillance state panopticon to track our movements and
keep us in check.
I know what you are saying it's just sooner or later as those at the bottom continue to be
squeezed the wealthy will sow their own seeds of destruction. I think we are witnessing the
end game which is reflected in the desperation of the coalition to flog everything regardless
of the efficacy of such behavior, they feel time is running out and they would be right.
Call it what you will - "neoliberalism", "neoconservatism", "socialism" or whatever it is...
This debate is not even really solely about money: this is about liberty , about
free choice, about being permitted to engage in voluntary exchange of goods and services with
others, unmolested. About the users of services becoming the ones paying for those
services.
Ultimately the real effect will be to remove power from governments and hand it back to
where it belongs - the free market.
voluntary transactions among free agents. That's called a free market and it is by far
the most efficient way to produce wealth humanity has ever known.
Could you explain how someone bound by a contract of employment, with the alternative,
destitution, is a 'free agent'?
@SpinningHugo - Nothing comes out of nothing and i well remember black Monday in the City.
That was the start of the spivs running the economy as if it were a casino. If you think its only on CiF that Thatcher gets the blame, think on this, Scotland, a
whole nation blames her too.
Unless you are completely confused by what neoliberalism is there is not a shred of
logical sense in this.
There is not a shred of logical sense in neoliberalism. You're doing what the
fundamentalists do... they talk about what neoliberalism is in theory whilst completely
ignoring what it is in practice. In theory the banks should have been allowed to go bust, but
the consequences where deemed too high (as they inevitable are). The result is socialism for
the rich using the poor as the excuse, which is the reality of neoliberalism.
Savers in a neoliberal society are lambs to the slaughter. Thatcher "revitalised" banking, while everything else withered and died.
Neoliberalism is based on the thought of personal freedom, communism is definitely not.
Neoliberalist policies have lifted millions of people out of poverty in Asia and South
America.
Neoliberalism is based on the thought that you get as much freedom as you can
pay for, otherwise you can just pay... like everyone else. In Asia and South America it has
been the economic preference of dictators that pushes profit upwards and responsibility down,
just like it does here.
I find it ironic that it now has 5 year plans that absolutely must not be deviated from,
massive state intervention in markets (QE, housing policy, tax credits... insert where
applicable), and advocates large scale central planning even as it denies reality, and makes
the announcement from a tractor factory.
Neoliberalism is a blight... a cancer on humanity... a massive lie told by rich people and
believed only by peasants happy to be thrown a turnip. In theory it's one thing, the reality
is entirely different. Until we're rid of it, we're all it's slaves. It's an abhorrent cult
that comes up with purest bilge like expansionary fiscal contraction to keep all the money in
the hands of the rich.
@MickGJ - You are wrong about the first 2 of course.
Banksters get others to do their shit.
But unfortunately the poor sods who went down on D Day were in their way fighting for Wall
Street as much as anything else. It's just that they weren't told about it by the Allies massive propaganda machine. So partly right
The response should be a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created
and distributed around the globe
Which would be what? State planning? Communism? Totally free market capitalism? Oh wait, we already have the best of a bad bunch, a mixed capitalist economy with
democracy. That really is the crux of it, our system isn't perfect, never will be, but nobody has come
up with a better solution.
Barclays bank "only" paid out £660m in dividends to the bearers of risk capital,
while its bonus pot for a very select number of its staff was £1.5bn.
Fascinating! Now, one could infer that Barclays represent "beneficial capitalism",
rewarding its hard-working employees, but maybe we won't.
This is not the traditional capitalist style
The Traditional capitalist is not an extinct species but under threat. For the time
being the population is stagnant in some countries and even increasing in some others.
However, due to the foraging capacity of Neoliberal creature , competing in the same
economical niche, the size and life expectation of it are diminishing.
She, knowingly, let neo-liberal economic philosophy come trumpeting through the door of
No10 and it's been there ever since; it has guided our politicians for the past 30 odd years.
Hence, it is Thatcher's fault. She did this and another bad thing: the woman who
glorified household economics pissed away billions of pounds of North Sea Oil.
@MickGJ - No, you're right. Why let yesterdays experience feed into what you expect of the
future? Lets go forwards goldfish like, every minute a brand new one, with no baggage!
And by the way, who saved the hide of the very much private sector banks and financial
institutions? The hated STATE, us tax payers!
I think I agree with everything that you say here? The people at the top these days aren't
really of much use for anything, including capitalism. The only thing that they do excel at
is lining their own pockets and securing their privileged position in society.
They have become quite up front about it. There was a bit of a fuss last year when
Barclays bank "only" paid out £660m in dividends to the bearers of risk capital, while
its bonus pot for a very select number of its staff was £1.5bn. Barclays released a
statement before their AGM explaining:
"Barclays is fully committed to ensuring that a greater proportion of income and profits
flow to shareholders notwithstanding that it operates within the constraints of a
competitive market."
This is not the traditional capitalist style competition that they are talking about where
companies competed as to who can return the biggest profit for their shareholders this now
comes secondary to the real competition which is for which company can return the biggest
bonuses for a small group of employees.
Bailouts have been a constant feature of neoliberalism. In fact the role of the state is
simply reduced to a merely commissioning agent to private parasitical corporations. History
has shown the state playing this role since neoliberalism became embedded in policy since the
1970s - Long Term Capital Management, Savings and Loans, The Brady Plan, numerous PFI
bailouts and those of the Western banking system during the 1982 South American, 1997 Asian
and 2010 European debt crises.
No wonder you're so ignorant of the basics of economic policy if you won't flick through a
book - fear of accepting that you're simply wrong is a sure sign of either pig ignorance or
denial, and is as I said embarrassing so its not really much point in wasting anymore time
engaging with you.
The neoliberal idea is that the cultivation itself should be conducted privately as
well. They see "austerity" as a way of forcing that agenda.
..."neoliberal", concept behind the word, has nothing to do with liberal or liberty or
freedom...it is a PR spin concept that names slavery with a a word that sounds like the
opposite...if "they" called it neoslavery it just wouldn't sell in the market for political
concepts.
..."austerity" is the financial sectors' solution to its survival after it sucked most the
value out of the economy and broke it. To mend it was a case of preservation of the elite and
the devil take the hindmost, that's most of us.
...and even Labour, the party of trade unionism, has adopted austerity to drive its
policy.
...we need a Peoples' Party to stand for the revaluation of labour so we get paid for our
effort rather than the distortion, the rich xxx poor divide, of neoslavery austerity.
Of course it has. And it will continue to "fail", while provide us with all
sorts of goodies, for the foreseeable future. Capitalism's endless "failure" is of no more
concern than human mortality. Ever tried, ever failed, try again, fail better.
"... Now we see moneyed entities with vested interests, carpet bagging and flogging off the NHS and an unelected fossil fuel mandarin, at the heart of government decision making, appointing corporate yea-sayers, to the key government departments, with environmental responsibilities. Corporations capturing the state apparatus for their own ends, is 'corporatism.' ..."
"... "Neoliberalism in practice is every bit as bad as Communism in practice, with none of the benefits." ..."
"... The bailout is simply actual neoliberalism as opposed to the theory inside tiny right wing minds. The system depends on the wealthy not being allowed to suffer the consequences of their own greed, or it would represent revolution and still not work. ..."
"... Neoliberalism in practice is every bit as bad as Communism in practice, with none of the benefits. It always amusing to see neoliberal morons shout about the red menace when they're two sides of the same coin. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is nothing if not the opposite extreme of the communist planned economy. Like the communist planned economy, neoliberalism is doomed to failure. I think we've all been sold a lie. ..."
@NotAgainAgain - this is very true, it reminds me of an engineering company I worked for in
Nottingham (since gone under). The production manger was a corrupt thief. He gradually
sub-contracted the production work out to other companies in the area, taking backhanders for
his troubles.
Once all the production was farmed out, he somehow got himself promoted to
director level, where he and a sycophant subbed all the design work out. So all the
production and design was done out of house, standards dropped and the company closed,
leaving him with a nice payoff, just prior to retirement.
Some would say he played a blinder, my interpretation is he ruined a perfectly viable
company, making a very good product, and over the course of about 5 years put over 30 people
out of work.
In a just world he would be spending his retirement in prison.
Income distribution and a happy workforce is actually very good for business as well as
society!
Of course it is, but the capitalists do not know it. In many countries, including Finland,
the "condition of the working classes", ie. working conditions, have been in rapid decline
for the last 20 years.
Permanent salaried jobs have been replaced with temps from agencies, unpaid overtime is
becoming the norm, burnouts are commonplace and so on.
If in your country things are different, no mass lay-outs and outsourcing to China, count
yourself lucky!
But even though an illiterate market wouldn't be so great for them, they avoid their
taxes, because they can, because they are more powerful than governments
Noam Chomsky pointed this out aeons ago though-that the American model is to use tax money
to benefit private interests through technological infrastructure.
It was ever thus, if in slightly different forms. Still it is surprising that they have gone
so quickly from their stated position at the start of the republic of a rejection of kings
and emperors to their position now of corruption so ingrained it is impossible to make
distinctions. Proxy emperors are emperors all the same, no matter the rhetoric that promotes
them.
One senses that there is very little 'going back' possible. Besides, the great Neoliberal
scam is predicated upon the qualities of the 'governments' we have and the capacity of those
'rhetoricians' with the capacity to say anything or play any role, to lick any arse, to get
elected. Such apparent strength is weakness. In this world that now exists here, we have now
entered the same world as the USSR in the eighties, where the announcement of bumper harvests
of wheat, made everyone with a brain cell groan and think
'Oh fuck! no bread this winter-quick, run to the shops now, and buy up all the flour
there'.
But there is now no way to declare that without being seen as beyond the pale-a bug eyed
conspiracist.
Still, I am a believer in the connectedness of this world. The economic system and its
mythologies are just weird and distorted canaries in the coalmine of the wider environment.
It is indicating that there is a misalignment between the way we think and what is possible
in this world. Austerity promoters and 'Keynsian' Ballsites are one and the same thing-both
pretenders that the key to the problems is within their narrow gifts
Hubris is followed by nemesis. In a wider sense what we seen now is a complete failure of
the capacity to educate and to learn,and moderate behaviour, and find some way of caring for
our 'others', beyond the core of 'self'. nationalism is essentially an extension of 'self'.
We now shall see the failure of a retraction of thought into nationalism and
scapegoating.
I predict that the population of the world will decline over the next century-quite
markedly.
The only solace is that at the end of the process, the pain will be forgotten. It always
is.
@MickGJ - Cameron said 'We will cut the deficit, not the NHS,' and promised to be the
'greenest government ever,' saying that you could 'go green,' if you voted 'blue.'
Now we see
moneyed entities with vested interests, carpet bagging and flogging off the NHS and an
unelected fossil fuel mandarin, at the heart of government decision making, appointing
corporate yea-sayers, to the key government departments, with environmental responsibilities.
Corporations capturing the state apparatus for their own ends, is 'corporatism.'
Much of the healthy economic growth – as opposed to the smoke and mirrors of many
aspects of financial services – that Britain enjoyed during the second half of the
20th century was due to women swelling the educated workforce.
There was very little 'healthy economic growth' in Britain in the second half of the 20th
century.
Britain was bankrupt after WW2 with its people dependent on Marshall Aid and food
contributions from its former 'colonies'.
Whatever 'growth' occured after Marshall Aid arrived was scuppered by a class system where
company managers were more concerned with walking on the workers than with keeping their
businesses afloat while such discrimination provoked hard left trade union policies which
left british industry uncompetitive and ultimately non-existent.
If that wasn't enough, Thatcherism arrived to re-inforce class discrimination, sell off
national services and assets and replace social policy with neo-liberal consumerism.
Whether the workforce was swollen by women or anyone else is immaterial.
The anti-democratic incestuous class conflict latent in British society continues to ensure
that the UK will remain a mere vassal state of foot-soldiers and consumers for international
neo-liberal capitalism.
@DasInternaut - Completely agree. The performance has been poor to absymal. But this is a
failure of democratic governance because the collective interests of citizens as consumers
and service users are not being represented and enforced by the elected politicians since
they have been suborned by the capitalists elites and their fellow-travellers.
The people, indeed, have been sold a lie, but, unfortunately, it is only UKIP which is
making the political waves by revealing selected aspects of this lie. The three established
parties have been 'bought' to varying extents. But more and more citizens are beginning to
realise the extent to which they have been bought.
There is an upside to all of this, maybe I wont get modded so much from now on for being so
angry at the ideological criminals . Hopefully the middle classes will cotton on to the fact
that all this is not a mad hatters tinfoil hobby, we need more of them to be grumpy.
@MickGJ - We've already seen it. Not great so far. GS4, Winterbourne view, southern cross,
trains...............Welfare to work companies, delivering no better results than people left
to their own devices. Energy companies.
We'll see if the new wave of free schools, academy schools, and all the service outsourced by
the council perform any better.
Doubtful, as to make a profit, they have to employ poorer paid people, less well qualified,
and once they've got a contract, they've got very little competition, as when the second
round of bidding comes around, as the firms having got the first contract are the only one
with relevant experience, they are assured of renewal, the money machine will keep going!
Neoliberalism are policies that are
influenced by neo classical economics. If you are suggesting that the neoliberal school of
thought would advocate any kind of a bailout then you are mistaken. Where else have I
"apparently" embarrassed myself?
@TedSmithAndSon - This is just an inaccurate rant not a reply.
"The system depends on the wealthy not being allowed to suffer the consequences.."
Unless you are completely confused by what neolibralism is there is not a shred of logical
sense in this.
"The debt industry are the lenders who take advantage of a financial system..."
Which is what savers are. They come in the form of individuals businesses and governments.
This encompasses everyone.
"whilst paying the lowest possible rate. Wonga, for instance."
If you are a lender you do not pay anything, you receive.
"Thatchers revolution was to take our citizenship and give it a value, whilst making
everyone else a consumer, all for a handful of magic beans in the shape of British Gas
shares."
...not forgetting that she revitalised the economy and got everyone back to work
again.
"Neoliberalism in practice is every bit as bad as Communism in practice, with none of the
benefits."
Neoliberalism is based on the thought of personal freedom, communism is definitely not.
Neoliberalist policies have lifted millions of people out of poverty in Asia and South
America. Communism has no benefits for society open your eyes!
@ATrueFinn - After they are finished, what do Singaporeans eat?
Next year's harvest (possibly of GM food which makes better use of scarce
resources). I imagine the sun will eventually stop bombarding us with the energy that powers
photosynthesis but I'm not losing any sleep over it.
@MurchuantEacnamai - I think the point is this, Amazon make money by selling books, they
avoid paying taxes, yet expect an educated, literate population to be provided for them, on
the grounds that illiterate people don't buy books, and expect roads to move the books around
on.
@theguardianisrubbish - No! The bailout is simply actual neoliberalism as opposed to
the theory inside tiny right wing minds. The system depends on the wealthy not being
allowed to suffer the consequences of their own greed, or it would represent revolution and
still not work.
The debt industry are the lenders who take advantage of a financial system designed to
push profits upwards (neoliberalism in practice), whilst paying the lowest possible rate.
Wonga, for instance.
Thatchers revolution was to take our citizenship and give it a value, whilst making
everyone else a consumer, all for a handful of magic beans in the shape of British Gas
shares.
Neoliberalism in practice is every bit as bad as Communism in practice, with none of the
benefits. It always amusing to see neoliberal morons shout about the red menace when they're
two sides of the same coin.
.and provides them at a massively inflated cost accompanied by unforgivable waste and
inefficiency, appalling service and life-threatening incompetence.
as opposed to the private sector, who always does what it says it will do, at reasonable
cost, for the benefit of their customers, and with due regards to ethics?
Like the Banks, the financial sector, who will never sell you a product that isn't the best
for you, regardless of their interest? the private companies like Southern Cross, GS4?
The private insurance who refuse to take you on the minute you've got some illness or
disability? Get off it! The state isn't perfect, the services it provides are not perfect,
but replacing them with private provision isn't the answer!
@MurchuantEacnamai - How would you rate how well British government has done in ensuring
markets are genuinely competitive. How well has British government done in ensuring our
energy market is competitive, for example. Does the competitiveness we observe in the energy
market give customers better or worse value than they had before deregulation? How do you
rate the British government's performance in rail and public transport, with respect to
competitiveness?
Personally, and notwithstanding the notable exception of telecoms, I rate the British (and
US) government's performance in deregulating state entities, creating new markets and
ensuring competition, as poor.
Neoliberalism is nothing if not the opposite extreme of the communist planned economy.
Like the communist planned economy, neoliberalism is doomed to failure. I think we've all
been sold a lie.
"... Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom ..."
"... Neoliberal ideology acted as a smokescreen that enabled the financially powerful to rewrite the rules and place themselves beyond the law. ..."
"... So it seems that your suggestion is for a return to western capitalism post-war style - would that be right? (b.t.w. if I bring up the whole Soviet Union thing, it is partly because quite a few commentators in this debate come across as if they wish for something much more leftist than that). ..."
"... What you have missed, is that the lions share of the proceeds of that growth are not going to ordinary people but to a tiny minority of super rich. It is not working for the majority. ..."
"... The taxpayers are left to pick up the tab, nations are divided against immigrants and scroungers and then unfettered evangelists like you can spout as pompously as you like about how much big business would like to remove the state from corporate affairs. ..."
"... Without the state there wouldn't be neo-Liberalism, it took state regulated capitalism to build what unfettered purists insist on tearing apart for short term greed. ..."
"... The trouble is Neo-Liberals do not want to remove the state at all, they want to BE the state and in the process rendering democracy pretty much meaningless. And they've succeeded. ..."
"... The biggest swindle ever pulled was turning the most glaring and crushing failure of unfettered corporatism into the biggest and most crushing power grab implemented in order to suppress the will of the people ..."
"... Nobody hates a market more than a monopoly and capitalism must inevitably end in monopoly as it has. For the profiteering monopolies investment especially via taxation is insane as it can only undermine their monopoly. ..."
"... The bankers have always known that the austerity caused by having to pay off un-payable loans, that increase every year, will eventually produce countries very similar to the "Weimar Days" in pre-Hitler Germany. ..."
"... They also know that drastic conditions such as these often lead to a collapse of democracy and a resurgence of Fascism. ..."
"... Neoliberalism could not exist without massive state support. So the term is meaningless. There is nothing "liberal" about having a huge state funded military industrial complex that acts a Trojan horse for global corporations, invading other countries for resources. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is a branch of economic ideology which espouses the value of the free-market, and removing all protective legislation, so that large companies are free to do what they want, where-ever they want, with no impediments from social or environmental considerations, or a nation's democratic preferences. ..."
"... Business-friendly to who exactly: the nation or hostile overseas speculators? ..."
"... The golden age of 1945 - 1975 or so witnessed huge rises in standards of living so your point linking neo-liberalism to rising standards of living is literally meaningless. There was an explosive growth in economic activity during the three or four post war decades ..."
"... The assumption shared by many round here that the young are some untapped resource of revolutionary energy is deeply mistaken ..."
A wonderful article that names the central issue. Neoliberal ideology acted as a smokescreen
that enabled the financially powerful to rewrite the rules and place themselves beyond the
law. The resultant rise of financial capitalism, which now eclipses the productive
manufacturing-based capitalism that was the engine of world growth since the industrial
revolution, has propelled a dangerous self-serving elite to the centre of world power. It's
not just inequality that matters, but the character of the global elite.
The neo-liberal order commenced only in the late 1970s - there was a very different
order prior to this which was not "soviet socialism" as you term it.
So it seems that your suggestion is for a return to western capitalism post-war style -
would that be right? (b.t.w. if I bring up the whole Soviet Union thing, it is partly because
quite a few commentators in this debate come across as if they wish for something much more
leftist than that).
Anyway, my worry with this idea is that I am just not convinced that life in "The West
1945-80" was better on the whole than in "The West 1980-present". It's true that
unemployment is higher these days, but a lot of work in the post-war years was boring and
physically exhausting; in factories and mines where conditions were degrading and bad for
health; and where industrial relations were simply terrible. I think as well that the higher
unemployment is a localized phenomenon that many developing countries are not experiencing
(this is relevant because Deborah Orr proposes change for the whole world, not merely the
West).
There were also frequent recessions and booms - in fact, more frequent (albeit shorter)
than now. What seems to have changed in this respect is that, whereas we used to alternate
regularly between 2-3 years of boom and 1-2 years of bust, we now have 15 years of continuous
boom followed by a (maybe?) 10 year bust (this pattern began around 1980). If you asked me
which of these two patterns I preferred, then I think I'd go for the pre-1980 pattern, but
its not clear to me that the post-1980 pattern is so much worse as to underwrite a savage
indictment of the whole system.
As for Casino banking: they should reform that. Britain's Coalition Government has done
something in that respect, although its not very radical - I am hoping Labour can do more.
There is certainly a lot to be said for banks going back to a pre-"Big Bang" sense of
tradition and prudence.
Buts let's not also forget the plus sides in the ledger for post-1980 capitalism: hundreds
of millions in the former third world lifted out of poverty; unprecedented technological
innovation (e.g. the internet, which makes access to knowledge more equal even as income
inequality grows); and the accomodation (at least in the West) of progressive social change,
such as the empowerment of ethnic minorities, LGBT people and women.
Change, yes - but lets be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
OK, but both the claim and the link cited in support talk only about a problem in the US.
This can't really answer my point, which was that the rest of the world should not be
expected to support a change to the economic system of the whole world just because of
problems that are mostly localised to North America and Europe. People in developing
countries might like the fact that they are, at last, catching "the West" up, and might well
not care much about widening inequality of incomes in Western societies.
If you are going to propose changes that you want the whole world to adopt, as Deborah Orr
does, then you should be careful to avoid casually assuming that Africa, India, China, et al,
feel the same way about the world's recent history as we do. It seems to me that not enough
care has been demonstrated in this regard.
@MickGJ - Left to their own devices the most extreme neo-liberals would remove the state
almost completely from corporate life.
Except when the State has to step in to prop up an unsustainable ideology. Then it's all
meek murmurings and pleas for forgiveness and a timid "we'll be better from now" concessions
and the Government obliges the public with the farce that they actually intend to do anything
at all but make the public pay for the financial sector's state subsidized profligacy.
Once the begging bowl is re-filled of course then the pretense of "business as usual"
profligacy rises to the fore.
The taxpayers are left to pick up the tab, nations are divided against immigrants and
scroungers and then unfettered evangelists like you can spout as pompously as you like about
how much big business would like to remove the state from corporate affairs.
When you well know that is the last thing big business would like to do. More of the state
owned pie is always the most urgent of priorities. Poorer services at inflated costs equates
as 'efficiency' until the taxpayer is again left to step in and pick up the bill.
Without the state there wouldn't be neo-Liberalism, it took state regulated capitalism to
build what unfettered purists insist on tearing apart for short term greed.
The trouble is Neo-Liberals do not want to remove the state at all, they want to BE the
state and in the process rendering democracy pretty much meaningless. And they've
succeeded.
The biggest swindle ever pulled was turning the most glaring and crushing failure of
unfettered corporatism into the biggest and most crushing power grab implemented in order to
suppress the will of the people.
Just as IMF loans come with 'obligations' the principle of democracy itself was sold as
part of 'the solution'.
The unsustainable, sustained. By slavery to debt, removal of society's safety net and an
economy barely maintained by industries that serve the rich, vultures that prey on the weak
and rising living costs and the drudgery of a life compounded by a relentless bombardment of
everything in life that is unattainable.
Nobody hates a market more than a monopoly and capitalism must inevitably end in monopoly as
it has. For the profiteering monopolies investment especially via taxation is insane as it
can only undermine their monopoly. With the economy now globalised not even a world war could
sweep away the current ossified political economy and give capitalism a new lease on life.
It's socialism or monopoly capitalist barbarism. Make your choice.
Money that the governments don't actually need as they can print their own money and spend it
to use their countries own resources and then raise taxes to offset the extra spending and
thus maintaining monetary value. The reality is that a government should never, ever borrow
money.
The beginning period between the two world wars (1919-33) in Germany called the Weimar
Republic shows us exactly what severe austerity imposed by the Treaty of Versailles caused.
Because the German economy contracted severely due to reparations payments, steady inflation
and severe unemployment ensued. Of course the FED having started the Great Depression in
America had not helped matters much anywhere in the world. The bankers have always known that
the austerity caused by having to pay off un-payable loans, that increase every year, will
eventually produce countries very similar to the "Weimar Days" in pre-Hitler Germany.
They
also know that drastic conditions such as these often lead to a collapse of democracy and a
resurgence of Fascism.
What causes inflation is uncontrolled speculation of the kind we have seen fed by private
banking at various crucial points in history, such as the Weimar Republic. When speculation
is coupled with debt (owed to private banking cartels) such as we are seeing in America and
Europe now, the result is disaster. On the other hand, when a government issues its own "good
faith" commerce-related currency in carefully measured ways as we saw in Roman times or
Colonial America, it causes supply and demand to increase together, leaving prices
unaffected. Hence there is no inflation, no debt, no unemployment, and no need for income
taxes.
In reality, the Weimar financial crisis began with the impossible reparations payments
imposed at the Treaty of Versailles. It is very similar to the austerity being imposed on
European Nations and America as we speak – regardless of the fact that the IMF is
trying to pose as "the Good Cop" at the moment! The damage has been done to nations like
Greece, and others are soon to follow. The uncontrollable greed of banks and corporations is
leading to an implosion of severe magnitude! It's time to open their books and put a stop to
these private banks right now!
@MysticFish - So the US who has a greater spend on the military than communist China is
neoliberal?
Neoliberalism could not exist without massive state support. So the term is
meaningless. There is nothing "liberal" about having a huge state funded military industrial complex
that acts a Trojan horse for global corporations, invading other countries for resources.
The term neoliberal is not only meaningless but misleading as it implies a connection with
true liberalism, of which it has no meaningful connection.
Do away with deceptive terms like neoliberalism, capitalism, socialism, left wing and right
wing and things become clearer.
At root a lot of the people who get involved in all of the above have very similar
character traits - love of power, greed, deceitful, ruthlessness. Most start out with these
character traits, and others gain them as a result of power.
Anyone high up in politics or business is unhinged. You have to be. The organizational
structures in these things are so synthetic, the beliefs so artificial, rigid, dogmatic and
inhuman that only a unhinged person could prosper in this climate.
Most reasonable people admit doubt, are willing to accept compromise, are willing to make
the occasional sacrifice for the greater good. All these things are what make us human,
however all these things are seen as weaknesses in the inverted world of business and
politics.
Business and politics creates an environment where the must inhuman traits prosper.
"no but the highly placed banking and financial class are along with their venal
political mates"
For sure but are they capitalists? Although they may well own capital does their power
derive from the ownership of capital? You may, or may not be interested in this
lecture on the future of capitalism by John Kay.
@AssistantCook - Neoliberalism is a branch of economic ideology which espouses the value of
the free-market, and removing all protective legislation, so that large companies are free to
do what they want, where-ever they want, with no impediments from social or environmental
considerations, or a nation's democratic preferences. Von Hayek was a major influence and
Thatcher was a loyal disciple, as was the notorious dictator, Pinochet. It is economic
theory, designed for vulture capitalists, and unpopular industries like fossil fuel or
tobacco, and usually the 'freedom' is all one-sided.
@DavidPavett - If states are too big, then what about multinational banks and corporations? I
wonder why Neoliberal ideology does not try to limit the size of these. They are cumbersome
and destructive, predatory dinosaurs and yet our politicians seem mesmerised to the point of
allowing them special favours, tax incentives and the ability to determine our nation's
policies in matters such as energy and health. Why not 'Small is Beautiful,' when it comes to
companies? It doesn't make sense to shrink the state but then let non-transparent and
unaccountable, multinational companies become too powerful. One gets the feeling the country
is being invaded by the interests of hostile nations, using all-too-convenient Neoliberal
ideology and hidden behind a corporate mask.
Is the IMF ever stop evading its responsibility and blaming others for the worldwide
financial tragedy it has provoked? Is it ever stop hurting the working class?
"Neo-liberalism is based on the thought of personal freedom for the rich and powerful
elites is all."
No it is not that is what you want to believe. There is nothing in this statement other
than an opinion based on nothing.
"Many people across the globe were lifted out of poverty between 1945-1980 so what does
your statement about neo-liberalism prove"
Which countries during this period saw massive sustainable reductions in poverty without
some free market model in place?
"It is you who should open your eyes and stop expecting people on here to accept your
ideological beliefs and statements as facts."
I don't expect people to accept my beliefs I am just pointing out why I think their
beliefs are wrong. This is a comment section the whole idea of it is to comment on different
views and articles. How can you ever benefit or make an accurate decision or belief if you do
not try to understand what the opposite belief is? I think nearly everything I have said has
been somewhat backed up by logic or a fact, I have not said wishy washy statements like:
"Neo-liberalism is based on the thought of personal freedom for the rich and powerful
elites is all."
Unless you can expand on this and give evidence or some form of an example why you think
its true then it makes no sense. You are not the only commentor on this article to make a
similar statement and the way people have attempted to justify it is due to bailouts but as I
have said a bailout is not part of the neoliberal school of thought so if you have a problem
with bailouts you don't have a problem with neoliberalism.
@murielbelcher - I don't want to go to far into Thatcherism because it is slightly off topic.
The early 80s recession was a global recession and yes during the first few years
unemployment soared. Why was that because the trade unions were running amok the UK was
losing millions of days of work per month.
Inflation was getting out of control and the only
way to solve it was a self induced recession. You cannot seriously believe that without the
reforms that she implemented we would not have recovered as quick as we did nor can you argue
that it was possible for her or anyone else to turn around such an inefficient industry.
Don't forget the problems of the manufacturing industry go back way before Thatcher's time.
"Here's your problem. You believe that banks lend savings. They don't. Loans create
deposits create reserves."
I am not claiming to be an expert on this if you are then let me know and please do
correct me. I agree banks do not lend deposits but they do lend savings. There is a
difference putting money on deposit is different to say putting money into an ISA. I don't
agree though that deposits create reserves I believe that they come from the central bank
otherwise banks would be constrained by the amount of deposits in the system which is not
true and something you have said is not true.
Nevertheless, the majority of liquidity in the bond markets (like most other markets)
comes from institutional investors, i.e pension funds, unit trusts, insurance companies, etc.
They get their money from savings by consumers as well as sometimes companies. Ok we don't
always give our money to insurance companies when we save but via premiums is another way the
ordinary consumer contributes to this so called "debt industry". I also said that foreign and
local governments buy debt and companies invest directly into the debt market.
"In theory the banks should have been allowed to go bust, but the consequences where deemed
too high (as they inevitable are). "
Iceland would disagree.
"The result is socialism for the rich using the poor as the excuse, which is the reality
of neoliberalism."
Why have only the rich benefited from the bailout? You are not making any sense.
"The result is socialism for the rich using the poor as the excuse, which is the reality
of neoliberalism."
Why? You cannot just say a statement like that and not expand, it makes no sense.
"Thatcher "revitalised" banking, while everything else withered and died."
...but also revitalised the economy and got everyone back to work.
"Neoliberalism is based on the thought that you get as much freedom as you can pay for,
otherwise you can just pay... like everyone else."
Again you have to expand on this because it makes no sense.
"In Asia and South America it has been the economic preference of dictators that pushes
profit upwards and responsibility down, just like it does here."
Don't think that is true in most cases nor would it make sense. Why would a dictator who
wants as much power as possible operate a laissez-faire economy? You cannot have personal
freedom without having economic freedom, it is a necessary not sufficient condition. Tell me
a case where these is a large degree of political freedom but little to no economic freedom.
Moreover look at the countries in Asia and South America that have adopted a neoliberal
agenda and notice their how poverty as reduced significantly.
"I find it ironic that it now has 5 year plans that absolutely must not be deviated from,
massive state intervention in markets (QE, housing policy, tax credits... insert where
applicable), and advocates large scale central planning even as it denies reality, and makes
the announcement from a tractor factory."
Who has 5 year plans?
"In theory it's one thing, the reality is entirely different."
If the reality is different to the theory then it is not neoliberalism that is being
implemented therefore it makes no sense to dispute the theory. Look at where it has been
implemented, the best case in the world at the moment is Hong Kong look at how well that
country has performed.
"a massive lie told by rich people "
I can assure you I am not rich.
"Until we're rid of it, we're all it's slaves."
Neoliberalism is based on personal freedom. If you believe this about neoliberalism in your
opinion give me one economic school of thought where this does not apply.
"Bailouts have been a constant feature of neoliberalism."
What you are saying does not make sense. Whatever you say about that there was no where else
to turn the government had to bailout out the banks a neolibralist would disagree.
"In fact the role of the state is simply reduced to a merely commissioning agent to
private parasitical corporations. "
That's corporatism which so far you have described pretty well.
"History has shown the state playing this role since neoliberalism became embedded in
policy since the 1970s - Long Term Capital Management, Savings and Loans, The Brady Plan,
numerous PFI bailouts and those of the Western banking system during the 1982 South American,
1997 Asian and 2010 European debt crises."
What?! Bailouts have been occurring before the industrial revolution. Deregulation in the
UK occurred mainly during the 80s not 70's. Furthermore financial deregulation occurred in
the UK in 1986. In the USA the major piece of financial deregulation was the Gramm Leach
Bliley Act which was passed in 1999. So you have just undercut your own point with the
examples you gave above. You could argue Argentina and we could argue all day about the
causes of that, but I would say that any government that pursues an expansionary monetary
policy under a fixed ER is never going to end well.
"...policy if you won't flick through a book."
My point was that when people quote a source they tend to either quote the page that the
point comes from. To be honest if this book is telling you that neoliberalism and
neoclassical are significantly different (which you seemed to suggest in you earlier post)
then I would suggest put the book down.
"Google, Amazon and Apple... avoid their taxes, because they can, because they are more
powerful than governments."
Yes to the first, no to the second. Corporations with revenues exceeding the GDP of a small nation have quite a lot of power:
Exxon's revenue is between the GDP of Norway and Austria. In Finland Nokia generated 3 4 % of the GDP for a decade and the government bent backwards
to accommodate its polite requests, including a specific law reducing the privacy of
employees' emails.
We percieve a problem in (most of) Europe and North America because our economies are
growing more slowly than this, and in some cases not at all. The global growth figure comes
out healthy because of strong growth in the emerging countries, like China, Brazil and
India, who are narrowing the gap between their living standards and ours. So, the world as
a whole isn't broken, even if our bit of it is going through a rough patch.
@Fachan - Except that it isn't capitalism that was being criticized here, but neoliberalism:
a distinction that's often lost on neoliberals themselves, ironically.
I'm sure that Denis Healy and any number of African economists would confirm that the IMF is
quite simply a refuge of absolutely last resort, when investor confidence in your economy is
so shattered that the only way ahead is to open the shark gates and allow big money to
plunder whatever value remains there, without the benefit of any noticeable return for your
people. Greece is but one more victim of a syndrome that encompasses all the science and
forensic analysis of ritual sacrifice.
@OneCommentator - don't confuse economic deregulation which acted as handmaiden to global
finance and multinationals as economic freedoms for population
China's govt was doing what china's govt had decided to do from 1978 BEFORE the election
of Thatcher in 1979 or Reagan in 1980 (office from Jan 1981), so very little correlation
there I think
The GATT rounds whether you agree with their aims or not were the products of the post war
decades, again before Thatcher and Reagan came to power
The golden age of 1945 - 1975 or so witnessed huge rises in standards of living so your
point linking neo-liberalism to rising standards of living is literally meaningless. There
was an explosive growth in economic activity during the three or four post war decades
@theguardianisrubbish - you can't get away with this
She DID not get everyone back to work again. There were two recessions at either end of the 1980s. She TRIPLED unemployment during the first half of the 1980s and introduced the phenomenon
of high structural unemployment and placing people on invalidity benefits to massage the
headline unemployment count. Give us the figures to back up your assertion that she "got
everyone back to work again." I suspect that you cannot and your statement stands for the
utter nonsense that it is in any kind of reality.
A few months after she was forced out Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont in 1991 during yet
another recession declared that "unemployment was a price worth paying"!!!
Neo-liberalism is based on the thought of personal freedom for the rich and powerful
elites is all. Many people across the globe were lifted out of poverty between 1945-1980 so
what does your statement about neo-liberalism prove
It is you who should open your eyes and stop expecting people on here to accept your
ideological beliefs and statements as facts.
"The IMF exists to lend money to governments, so it's comic that it wags its finger at
governments that run up debt. And, of course, its loans famously come with strings attached:
adopt a free-market economy, or strengthen the one you have, kissing goodbye to the Big
State."
That's glib and inaccurate. A better read about the IMF from an insider:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/ Digest: the biggest problem the IMF have to deal with in bailouts is always the politics
of cronyism; free-market oligarchs and government in cahoots.
"Many IMF programs "go off track" (a euphemism) precisely because the government can't
stay tough on erstwhile cronies, and the consequences are massive inflation or other
disasters. A program "goes back on track" once the government prevails or powerful oligarchs
sort out among themselves who will govern -- and thus win or lose -- under the IMF-supported
plan. The real fight in Thailand and Indonesia in 1997 was about which powerful families
would lose their banks. In Thailand, it was handled relatively smoothly. In Indonesia, it led
to the fall of President Suharto and economic chaos."
Generally whoever happens to be in opposition at the time. This made the LibDems
the ideal (sorry) choice for a long time but then they broke a long-standing if unspoken
promise that they would never actually be in government.
Last weekś Economist has some very interesting stuff from the British Social
Attitudes survey which shows the increasing drift away from collectivist ideals towards
liberalism over each succeeding generation.
The assumption shared by many round here that the young are some untapped resource of
revolutionary energy is deeply mistaken
"... The crash was a write-off, not a repair job. The response should be a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe ..."
"... The IMF also admits that it "underestimated" the effect austerity would have on Greece. Obviously, the rest of the Troika takes no issue with that. Even those who substitute "kick up the arse to all the lazy scroungers" whenever they encounter the word "austerity", have cottoned on to the fact that the word can only be intoned with facial features locked into a suitably tragic mask. ..."
"... Yet, mealy-mouthed and hotly contested as this minor mea culpa is, it's still a sign that financial institutions may slowly be coming round to the idea that they are the problem. ..."
"... Markets cannot be free. Markets have to be nurtured. They have to be invested in. Markets have to be grown. Google, Amazon and Apple haven't taught anyone in this country to read. But even though an illiterate market wouldn't be so great for them, they avoid their taxes, because they can, because they are more powerful than governments. ..."
"... The neoliberalism that the IMF still preaches pays no account to any of this. It insists that the provision of work alone is enough of an invisible hand to sustain a market. Yet even Adam Smith, the economist who came up with that theory , did not agree that economic activity alone was enough to keep humans decent and civilised. ..."
"... Governments are left with the bill when neoliberals demand access to markets that they refuse to invest in making. Their refusal allows them to rail against the Big State while producing the conditions that make it necessary. ..."
The crash was a write-off, not a repair job. The response should be a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is
created and distributed around the globe
Sat 8 Jun 2013 02.59 EDT First published on Sat 8 Jun 2013 02.59 EDT
The IMF's limited admission of guilt over the Greek bailout is a start, but they still can't see the global financial system's
fundamental flaws, writes Deborah Orr. Photograph: Boris Roessler/DPA FILE T he International Monetary Fund has admitted that some
of the decisions it made in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis were wrong, and that the €130bn first bailout of Greece was
"bungled". Well, yes. If it hadn't been a mistake, then it would have been the only bailout and everyone in Greece would have lived
happily ever after.
Actually, the IMF hasn't quite admitted that it messed things up. It has said instead that it went along with its partners in
"the Troika" – the European Commission and the European Central Bank – when it shouldn't have. The EC and the ECB, says the IMF,
put the interests of the eurozone before the interests of Greece. The EC and the ECB, in turn, clutch their pearls and splutter with
horror that they could be accused of something so petty as self-preservation.
The IMF also admits that it "underestimated" the effect austerity would have on Greece. Obviously, the rest of the Troika takes
no issue with that. Even those who substitute "kick up the arse to all the lazy scroungers" whenever they encounter the word "austerity",
have cottoned on to the fact that the word can only be intoned with facial features locked into a suitably tragic mask.
Yet, mealy-mouthed and hotly contested as this minor mea culpa is, it's still a sign that financial institutions may slowly be
coming round to the idea that they are the problem. They know the crash was a debt-bubble that burst. What they don't seem to acknowledge
is that the merry days of reckless lending are never going to return; even if they do, the same thing will happen again, but more
quickly and more savagely. The thing is this: the crash was a write-off, not a repair job. The response from the start should have
been a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe, a "structural adjustment",
as the philosopher
John Gray has said all along.
The IMF exists to lend money to governments, so it's comic that it wags its finger at governments that run up debt. And, of course,
its loans famously come with strings attached: adopt a free-market economy, or strengthen the one you have, kissing goodbye to the
Big State. Yet, the irony is painful. Neoliberal ideology insists that states are too big and cumbersome, too centralised and faceless,
to be efficient and responsive. I agree. The problem is that the ruthless sentimentalists of neoliberalism like to tell themselves
– and anyone else who will listen – that removing the dead hand of state control frees the individual citizen to be entrepreneurial
and productive. Instead, it places the financially powerful beyond any state, in an international elite that makes its own rules,
and holds governments to ransom. That's what the financial crisis was all about. The ransom was paid, and as a result, governments
have been obliged to limit their activities yet further – some setting about the task with greater relish than others. Now the task,
supposedly, is to get the free market up and running again.
But the basic problem is this: it costs a lot of money to cultivate a market – a group of consumers – and the more sophisticated
the market is, the more expensive it is to cultivate them. A developed market needs to be populated with educated, healthy, cultured,
law-abiding and financially secure people – people who expect to be well paid themselves, having been brought up believing in material
aspiration, as consumers need to be.
So why, exactly, given the huge amount of investment needed to create such a market, should access to it then be "free"? The neoliberal
idea is that the cultivation itself should be conducted privately as well. They see "austerity" as a way of forcing that agenda.
But how can the privatisation of societal welfare possibly happen when unemployment is already high, working people are turning to
food banks to survive and the debt industry, far from being sorry that it brought the global economy to its knees, is snapping up
bargains in the form of busted high-street businesses to establish shops with nothing to sell but high-interest debt? Why, you have
to ask yourself, is this vast implausibility, this sheer unsustainability, not blindingly obvious to all?
Markets cannot be free. Markets have to be nurtured. They have to be invested in. Markets have to be grown. Google, Amazon
and Apple haven't taught anyone in this country to read. But even though an illiterate market wouldn't be so great for them, they
avoid their taxes, because they can, because they are more powerful than governments.
And further, those who invest in these companies, and insist that taxes should be low to encourage private profit and shareholder
value, then lend governments the money they need to create these populations of sophisticated producers and consumers, berating them
for their profligacy as they do so. It's all utterly, completely, crazy.
The other day a health minister,
Anna Soubry
, suggested that female GPs who worked part-time so that they could bring up families were putting the NHS under strain. The
compartmentalised thinking is quite breathtaking. What on earth does she imagine? That it would be better for the economy if they
all left school at 16? On the contrary, the more people who are earning good money while working part-time – thus having the leisure
to consume – the better. No doubt these female GPs are sustaining both the pharmaceutical industry and the arts and media, both sectors
that Britain does well in.
As for their prioritising of family life over career – that's just another of the myriad ways in which Conservative neoliberalism
is entirely without logic. Its prophets and its disciples will happily – ecstatically – tell you that there's nothing more important
than family, unless you're a family doctor spending some of your time caring for your own. You couldn't make these characters up.
It is certainly true that women with children find it more easy to find part-time employment in the public sector. But that's a prima
facie example of how unresponsive the private sector is to human and societal need, not – as it is so often presented – evidence
that the public sector is congenitally disabled.
Much of the healthy economic growth – as opposed to the smoke and mirrors of many aspects of financial services – that Britain
enjoyed during the second half of the 20th century was due to women swelling the educated workforce. Soubry and her ilk, above all
else, forget that people have multiple roles, as consumers, as producers, as citizens and as family members. All of those things
have to be nurtured and invested in to make a market.
The neoliberalism that the IMF still preaches pays no account to any of this. It insists that the provision of work alone
is enough of an invisible hand to sustain a market. Yet even Adam Smith, the economist who
came up with that theory , did not agree
that economic activity alone was enough to keep humans decent and civilised.
Governments are left with the bill when neoliberals demand access to markets that they refuse to invest in making. Their refusal
allows them to rail against the Big State while producing the conditions that make it necessary. And even as the results of their
folly become ever more plain to see, they are grudging in their admittance of the slightest blame, bickering with their allies instead
of waking up, smelling the coffee and realizing that far too much of it is sold through Starbucks.
"... The era of neoliberalism has seen a massive increase in government, not a shrinkage. The biggest change is the role of governments - to protect markets rather than to protect the rights and dignities of its citizens. When viewed by outcome rather than ideological rhetoric, it becomes increasingly clear that neoliberalism has nothing to do with shrinking the state, freeing markets, or freeing the individual, and everything to do with a massive power grab by a global elite. ..."
"... What was the billions of pounds in bank bailout welfare and recession on costs all about? You tell me. All the result of the application of your extremist free market ideology? Let the banks run wild, they mess up and the taxpayer has to step in with bailout welfare and pay to clear up the recession debris ..."
"... Market participants and their venal political friends have during the past 30 years of extremist neo-liberal ideology rigged, abused, distorted and subverted their market and elite power to tilt the economic and social balance massively in their favour ..."
"... Neo liberalism = the favoured ideology of the very rich and powerful elite ..."
"... at last somebody is looking at globalisation and asking whose interests is it designed to serve? It certainly ain't for the people. ..."
"... the highly placed banking and financial class are along with their venal political mates ..."
"... We've had three decades of asset stripping in favor of the rich elites and look at the mess we're in now. ..."
"... I strongly believe that people are not being told the full story. Like the NSA surveillance revelation, the effects will not be pretty when the facts are known. No country needs the IMF. ..."
"... The mythology surrounding deficits and national debt is a religion that the world is in desperate need of debunking. Like religion, the mythology is used as a means of power and entrenchment of privilege for the Ruling Caste, not the plebs (lesser mortals). ..."
This article is a testament to our ignorance. Orr is no intellectual slouch, but somehow,
like many in the mainstream, she still fails to address some fundamental assumptions and thus
ends up with a muddled argument.
"What they don't seem to acknowledge is that the merry days of reckless lending are never
going to return;"
Lending has not stopped - it's just moved out of one market into another. Banks are making
profits, and banks profit are made by expanding credit.
Neoliberal ideology insists that states are too big and cumbersome, too centralised and
faceless, to be efficient and responsive.
Yes and no. There is a difference between what is preached and what happens in practice. The
era of neoliberalism has seen a massive increase in government, not a shrinkage. The biggest
change is the role of governments - to protect markets rather than to protect the rights and
dignities of its citizens. When viewed by outcome rather than ideological rhetoric, it
becomes increasingly clear that neoliberalism has nothing to do with shrinking the state,
freeing markets, or freeing the individual, and everything to do with a massive power grab by
a global elite.
@MurchuantEacnamai - well righty ideologues such as yourself and your venal political
acolytes have utterly failed to support the case or institute measures that: "apply effective
democratic governance to ensure market
What was the billions of pounds in bank bailout welfare and recession on costs all about?
You tell me. All the result of the application of your extremist free market ideology? Let
the banks run wild, they mess up and the taxpayer has to step in with bailout welfare and pay
to clear up the recession debris
Market participants and their venal political friends have during the past 30 years of
extremist neo-liberal ideology rigged, abused, distorted and subverted their market and elite
power to tilt the economic and social balance massively in their favour
You the taxpayer are good enough to bail us out when we mess up but then we demand that
your services are cut in return and that your employment is ever more precarious and wages
depressed (at the lower end of the scale - never ever the higher of course!! That's the
neo-liberal deal isn't it
Neo liberalism = the favoured ideology of the very rich and powerful elite and boy don't
they know how to work its levers
Very insightful commentary and at last somebody is looking at globalisation and asking whose
interests is it designed to serve? It certainly ain't for the people. Amazing it's been
approved on a UK liberal newspaper as well!
@Fachan - There was nothing in the article about envy. It was an exposition of the failure of
our present system which allows the rich to get ever richer. That would be fine if it weren't
for the fact that the increasing disparity in wealth is bringing down the economy and making
it less productive while leaving a large part of the population in, or on the verge of,
poverty.
@CaptainGrey - but we're not talking about that form of capitalism are we?
Surely you must realise that there are very very different forms of capitalism. The capitalism that reigns now would not have permitted the creation of the NHS had it not
been devised in the1940s when a very different type of capitalism reigned. Its political acolytes and its cheerleader press would have denounced the NHS as an
extremist commie idea!!
The Chicago boys swarmed into eastern Europe after 1989 to introduce a form of gangster
unbridled capitalism. The very Chicago boys led by Milton Friedman who used the dictator Pinochet's Chile as
test bed for their ideology from September 1973 after the coup that overthrew Allende
The neo-liberal order commenced only in the late 1970s - there was a very different order
prior to this which was not "Soviet Socialism" as you term it.
As such this extremist rich man's ideological experiment has had a long innings and has
failed as the events of 2008 laid bare for all to see - it has been tried out disastrously on
live human beings for 34 years and has now been thoroughly discredited with the huge bank
bailouts and financial crash and ensuing and enduring recession It was scarcely succeeding
prior to this with high entrenched rates of unemployment, frequent recessions/booms and busts
and unsustainable property bubbles and deregulated unstable speculative aka casino banking
activity
1. Neoliberalism cannot be pinned on one party alone. It was accepted by the Thatcher
government, but no Prime Minister since has seriously challenged it.
2. Neoliberalism is logically contrary to conservative values. Either there are certain
moral imperatives so important that it is worth wasting money over them, or there are not. No
wonder that Tories are torn in two, not to mention Labour politicians who also try to combine
neoliberalism and moral principle.
3. Saying "even Adam Smith" is understandable but unfair. His work was rather enlightened
in the context of mercantilism, and of course the Wealth of Nations was not his only book.
Others will know his work better than me, but I think he dwells rather strongly on problems
of persistent poverty.
4. The political and redistributive functions of nations are indeed damaged by neolib, but
I don't think there is any realistic way of getting that power back without applying capital
controls. If we apply capital controls, all hell breaks loose.
5. Ergo, we are stuck with a situation where neolib is killing democracy, distributive
justice and conservative moral values, but there is nothing we can do about it without
pulling the plug altogether and unleashing a sharp drop in wealth and 1930s nationalistic
havoc. A bit of a tragedy, indeed.
Deborah Orr: The IMF exists to lend money to governments, so it's comic that it
wags its finger at governments that run up debt.
I strongly believe that people are not being told the full story. Like the NSA
surveillance revelation, the effects will not be pretty when the facts are known. No country needs the IMF. Any national government with its own national currency
sovereignty can pay its own debts within its own country with its own currency. International
borrowing in foreign markets is the biggest myth since religion. But since neoliberalism and
its inherent myths have been swallowed whole for so long, we are still at the stage where the
child points and laughs at the nude emperor. The fallout from the revelation and remedy is to
follow.
The problem with the Eurozone is not that the Euro is the "national" currency. Control of
the Euro resides with the European Central Bank, not the Troika (European Commission,
European Central Bank, IMF). The European Central Bank, as sole controller of the Euro (the
"national" currency), can issue funds to constituent Eurozone states to the extent necessary.
I challenge anyone to demonstrate how any central bank does not have power over its own
currency!
The mythology surrounding deficits and national debt is a religion that the world is in
desperate need of debunking. Like religion, the mythology is used as a means of power and
entrenchment of privilege for the Ruling Caste, not the plebs (lesser mortals).
@DavidPavett - Does anyone have any idea what this is supposed to mean? There are
certainly no leads on this in the link given to "the philosopher" John Gray
Gray wrote this in the Guardian in 2007:
Whether in Africa, Asia, Latin America or post-communist Europe, policies of wholesale
privatisation and structural adjustment have led to declining economic activity and social
dislocation on a massive scale
This doesn't seem to support Orrś assertion that he is calling for a
structural adjustment, rather the opposite. I'ḿ not really familiar with Grayś work
but he seems to be rather against the universal imposition of any system, new or old.
@CaptainGrey - Capitalism is not an undifferentiated mass. Late-stage neoliberal
hypercapitalism as practiced in the US and increasingly in the UK is a very different beast
than the traditional European capitalist social democracy or the Nordic model, which have
been shown to work relatively well over time. In fact, neoliberal capitalism - the sort Orr
is talking about here - is marked by increasing decline both in the state and in the economy,
as inequality in wealth distribution creates a society of beggars and kings instead of
spenders and savers. The gains achieved through carefully regulated capitalism won't stick
around in the free-for-all conditions preferred by those whose ideology demands the sell-off
of the state.
@PeterWoking - For some parts of the world , yes they are more affluent now , but a huge part of the globe is still without
food and water .
I think de regulation of the financial sector has caused a huge amount of damage to the world all round and
to be honest, i expect more of the same as the Bankers are still in control.
"... The structures of the global economy present challenges to any country or political party that wants to try to break out of U.S. hegemony. Even for countries as big and with as much potential as Brazil or Egypt, countries that have experienced waves of relative independence, the inertia of these economic structures helps send them back into old patterns of extraction and debt. In this moment of right-wing resurgence it is hard to imagine political movements arising with plans to push off the weight of the economic past. But that weight cannot be ignored. ..."
"... I'm guessing the short answer is credit. The amazing genius of the US reserve currency policies have given them such massive leverage over the world, it is nearly impossible to recreate elsewhere. This is why China is trying to get loans flowing from their belt/road relationships. ..."
"... Without the ability to simply declare into existence wealth, the US would have to compete fairly for their global relationships. What is amazing about this system, is that the right to owe money to the US is something countries will beg for, because there is no alternate trust system that could be used to stimulate economic activity. ..."
"... The global economy is truly in an unusual situation and the completely financialized creation of credit is less than 50 years old as a human experiment. (before it was linked to precious metals, and I think returning to that would squash liquidity). ..."
"... The same forces that are being applied to Brazil and Venezuela have been, and will continue to be applied to American workers. America is not busy spreading democracy, it's busy extending the reach of Wall $treet's steely fingers. ..."
"... The author does mention the problems with an extraction state. I think that that is at the root of the problem. It also is a result of the general trade pattern set up by the Western Europeans, with others brought in over time. Industrialization-Colonialism I think can fairly be described as root causes. It is also a lot more plausible than claiming the relatively recent introduction of the US $ as a reserve currency as a root versus aggravating cause. ..."
Why is it so difficult even for huge countries with large, diversified economies to maintain
independence from the West?
If anyone could have done it, it was Brazil. In the 19th century it was imagined that Brazil
could be a Colossus of the South to match the U.S., the Colossus of the North. It never panned
out that way.
And 100 years later, it still hasn't happened. With a $2 trillion GDP (a respectable $9,800
per capita), nearly 200 million people, and a strong manufacturing base (the second largest in
the Americas and 28.5 percent of its GDP), Brazil is far from a tiny, weak island or peninsula
dependent on a patron state to keep it afloat.
When Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva won a historic election to become president of Brazil in
2003, it seemed like an irreversible change in the country's politics. Even though Lula's
Workers' Party was accused of being communists who wanted to redistribute all of the country's
concentrated wealth, the party's redistributive politics were in fact modest -- a program to
eradicate hunger in Brazil called Zero Hunger, a family-based welfare program called the Family
Allowance, and an infrastructure spending program to try to create jobs. But its politics of
national sovereignty were ambitious.
It was under Workers' Party rule (under Lula and his successor, president Dilma Rousseff,
who won the 2010 election to become president at the beginning of 2011) that the idea surged of
a powerful BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) alliance that could challenge the
ambitions of the U.S.-led West. Brazil took steps to strengthen its manufacturing, and held its
ground on preventing pharmaceutical patent monopolies. Lula's Brazil accused Western countries
of hypocrisy for insisting both on "free trade" with poor countries and farm subsidies for
themselves. Brazil even moved in the direction of building an independent arms industry.
Contradictions remained: The Workers' Party government sent Brazilian troops to command the
UN force that enacted the U.S.-impelled occupation of Haiti -- treating the world to the
spectacle of the biggest, wealthiest country in the region helping the U.S. destroy the
sovereignty of the poorest as part of its foreign policy. But in those years Brazil refused to
renounce its alliance with Venezuela's even more independent-minded government under Hugo
Chavez; it defended ideas of South-South cooperation, especially within Latin America, and it
made space for movements like the Landless Peasants' Movement (MST).
But after more than a decade of Workers' Party rule, what happened? President Rousseff was
overthrown in a coup in 2016. When polls showed that Lula would have won the post-coup
election, he was imprisoned to prevent him from running. And so with the Workers' Party
neutralized, Brazil elected Jair Bolsonaro, a man who famously saluted the American flag and
chanted "USA" while on campaign (imagine an American leader saluting the Brazilian flag during
a presidential campaign). No doubt the coup and the imprisonment of Lula were the key to
Bolsonaro's rise, and failings like supporting the coup in Haiti played a role in weakening the
pro-independence coalition.
But what about the economy? Or Brazil's leaders now dragging the economy into the U.S. fold?
Or did the Brazilian economy drag the country back into the fold?
Brazil's economic history and geography have made independence a challenge. Colonial-era
elites were interested in using slave labor to produce sugar and export as much of it as
possible: The infrastructure of the country was built for commodity extraction. Internal
connections, including roads between Brazil's major cities, have been built only slowly and
recently. The various schemes of the left-wing governments of the last decade for South-South
economic integration were attempting to turn this huge ship around (not for the first time --
there have been previous attempts and previous U.S.-backed coups in Brazil), and to develop the
internal market and nurture domestic industries (and those of Brazil's Latin neighbors).
Yesterday's dependent economy was based on sugar export -- today's is based on mining
extraction. When Bolsonaro was elected, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation quickly posted a
story speculating on how the new government would be good for Canadian mining companies. The
new Brazilian president plans to cut down huge swaths of the Amazon rainforest. Brazil is to
return to its traditional role of providing natural resources to the U.S. and to the other rich
countries.
A smaller country with a stronger pro-independence leadership, Venezuela faced similar
structural economic problems that have imperiled and nearly derailed the independent-minded
late president Hugo Chavez's dream that Venezuelans would learn to eat arepas instead of
hamburgers and play with Simon Bolivar dolls instead of Superman ones. There, too, the
pro-independence project had a long-term goal of overcoming the country's dependence on a
single finite commodity (oil), diversifying its agricultural base and internal markets. And
there, too, the challenge of doing so proved too great for the moment, especially in the face
of an elite at least as ruthless as Brazil's and nearly two decades of vindictive, pro
regime-change U.S. policy. Today Venezuela's "Bolivarian project" is in crisis, along with its
economy and political system.
There are other sleeping giants that remain asleep, perhaps for economic reasons. In the
face of relentless insults by Trump, the Mexican electorate chose a left-wing government
(Mexicans have elected left-wing governments many times in the past few decades, but elections
have been stolen). But locked into NAFTA, dependent on the U.S. market, Mexico also would seem
to have little option but to swallow Trump's malevolence.
Egypt is the Brazil of the Middle East. With 100 million people and a GDP of $1.4 trillion,
the country that was for a few thousand years the center of civilization attempted in the 20th
century to claim what is arguably its rightful place at the center of the Arab world. But
today, this giant and former leader of the nonaligned movement is helping Israel and the U.S.
starve and besiege the Palestinians in Gaza and helping Saudi Arabia and the U.S. starve and
blockade the people of Yemen.
Egypt stopped challenging the U.S. in the 1970s after a peace deal brought it into the fold
for good. Exhaustion from two wars with Israel were cited as the main cause -- though a proxy
war with Saudi Arabia in Yemen and several domestic factors also played a role. But here, too,
is there a hidden economic story?
Egypt has oil, but its production is small -- on the order of 650,000 barrels a day compared
to Saudi Arabia's 10 million barrels, or the UAE's 2.9 million. It has a big tourist industry
that brings in important foreign exchange. But for those who might dream of an independent
Egypt, the country's biggest problem is its agricultural sector: It produces millions of tons
of wheat and corn, but less than half of what it needs. As told in the classic book
Merchants of Grain , the politics of U.S. grain companies have quietly helped feed its
power politics all over the world. Most of Egypt's imported grain comes from the U.S. As
climate change and desertification wreak havoc on the dry agricultural ecosystems of the
planet, Egypt's grain dependence is likely to get worse.
The structures of the global economy present challenges to any country or political
party that wants to try to break out of U.S. hegemony. Even for countries as big and with as
much potential as Brazil or Egypt, countries that have experienced waves of relative
independence, the inertia of these economic structures helps send them back into old patterns
of extraction and debt. In this moment of right-wing resurgence it is hard to imagine political
movements arising with plans to push off the weight of the economic past. But that weight
cannot be ignored.
Justin Podur, a
Toronto-based writer who teaches at York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies.
His site is podur.org . Follow him on Twitter:
@justinpodur . Produced by by
Globetrotter
, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
So Egypt has a massive and rapidly growing population, but relatively little arable land,
and so is dependent on food imports.
Duh. Perhaps the problem is not Western grain merchants. Perhaps the problem is when a country
that could comfortably feed 20 million people boosts its population to 100 million and
beyond, that more people do NOT automatically create more wealth. I mean, that is an
established fact: more Egyptians are certainly creating more demand for food, but they are
not automatically and without delay creating more fresh water, or new industries, etc.
I'd always wondered why in the aftermath of WW2, when most of the developed world was in
tatters, why South America didn't arise to become more than the continual basket case of a
place that it is? Every country there has had hyperinflation (Brazil had a decade long+ stretch of it)
episodes-post WW2, but surprisingly none before the war
I think the answer for South America is structural to its politics and society. Both were
settled by Europeans from feudal societies and incorporated all the worst aspects of a
decaying Spain and Portugal into their systems. They are not just dependent on resource
extraction, they are dominated by elites who's sole source of power is that resource
extraction. In Classical economics terms, they are dominated by rentiers, not industrial
capitalists. In modern development economics, you would say their structural issues prevent
them escaping the middle income trap. When you look at
reactionary movements in Brazil or Argentina, its usually big ranchers and mining interests
who are behind them. The urban middle classes are usually not strong enough to form a buffer
– as historically has happened in Europe and the US and most other countries that have
achieved high development status.
Some might argue that a major contributor to the problem is simple geography. South
American has a largely impenetrable interior, encouraging an urban and infrastructural system
based on connecting agricultural and mining areas to big coastal cities, who's wealth is then
dependent on trading those goods across the ocean. When you compare North American or Europe
or even China to South America, you can see the former countries have dense internal networks
of rail/road and many similar sized cities. South American has a few mega cities and very
undeveloped internal networks. Of course, there is a chicken and egg argument here –
did geography lead to a rentier dominated society, or did a rentier society result in an
undeveloped urban structure and infrastructure?
Good start but article doesn't really give explicit answer to its rhetorical question. I'm
guessing the short answer is credit. The amazing genius of the US reserve currency policies
have given them such massive leverage over the world, it is nearly impossible to recreate
elsewhere. This is why China is trying to get loans flowing from their belt/road
relationships.
Without the ability to simply declare into existence wealth, the US would have to compete
fairly for their global relationships. What is amazing about this system, is that the right
to owe money to the US is something countries will beg for, because there is no alternate
trust system that could be used to stimulate economic activity.
The global economy is truly
in an unusual situation and the completely financialized creation of credit is less than 50
years old as a human experiment. (before it was linked to precious metals, and I think
returning to that would squash liquidity).
I think in the future a different currency will be needed that is anchored to energy in a
more direct way than the petrodollar. I think we should trade in kWh.
It might be also worth focusing on those countries which have succeeded in keeping some
independence, whether small or large. Bhutan is an example of a very small country which has
to some extent succeeded in keeping western and other foreign interests at arms length. Of
course, its protected from western domination by being landlocked by two regional
superpowers. But it has resisted the temptation to play off one against the other. The price
has been relative poverty, although its proud of having a very happy (by their own measure)
populace. It has though accepted its military dependence on India, in effect ceding its
military independence to that country (as was proven in the recent Chinese incursion, the
Bhutanese depended on the Indian military to chase the Chinese off).
Plenty of countries have tried some level of autarky. Ireland tried it after independence
– both military neutrality and economic independence. The latter was a disaster, it
proved completely impractical and left the country entirely impoverished by the 1950's.
Larger states including of course Russia, India and China have had their experiments.
Russia
at the moment seems the most successful, something nobody I think would have predicted 10
years ago.
India has been largely proud to be apart for decades, but seems determined under Modi to abandon that. In South America, Uruguay is arguably the most successful example of a
country that has kept to some degree its own independence. Costa Rica has been successful
too, although you can't really say its kept US influence at bay.
In Africa, Botswana is a
country which has had some degree of success. In Asia, Laos has tried to keep all influences
out, but its pretty much being swallowed up by the Chinese now. This, of course leads us to
the other conclusion – if you are small, and you resist Western influence, you may just
end up getting swallowed up by another imperial power, be it the Saudi's (Yemen) or
Laos/Tibet/Myanmar (China), etc.
The New World Order (GHW Bush) has only a couple of rules, and one is you will do
'business' only with the western finance Borg.
And what they mostly mean by 'business' , is everything you do should be financed
by the Borg, the Borg gets a cut of everything you do, or you don't get to do it.
It's not only bad for other countries, it's bad for the American people because those same
finance institutions that screw over other countries, screw Americans over by
leading/prompting the rush to off-shore American jobs.
The same forces that are being applied to Brazil and Venezuela have been, and will
continue to be applied to American workers. America is not busy spreading democracy, it's busy extending the reach of Wall $treet's
steely fingers.
It is taken for granted here that there was a coup. But the charges of corruption against
Lulu stemming from the Operation Car Wash investigations seem pretty real and plausible. The
Clintons have their foundation, and Trump has his "all-sorts-of-stuff" . They are still
walking free. Is it a coup because somebody in a high office actually got convicted of
something?
The author does mention the problems with an extraction state. I think that that is at
the root of the problem. It also is a result of the general trade pattern set up by the
Western Europeans, with others brought in over time. Industrialization-Colonialism I think
can fairly be described as root causes. It is also a lot more plausible than claiming the
relatively recent introduction of the US $ as a reserve currency as a root versus aggravating
cause.
Since a huge number of countries seem to have had this problem (half of the issue is
referred to as the Dutch disease after all), it would be more interesting to compare
experience to countries that escaped the problem. My guess is that a close look at the
history, and current trends, would show that the problem is actually much deeper rooted and
far more problematic than just some hand-wringing over the United States replacing nice
guy/gal governments and the US$ reserve currency.
Yves: "Homer had this figured out long ago: "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts." But the press has done a great job of presenting
squillionaires trying to remake society along their preferred lines as disinterested philanthropy. "
Notable quotes:
"... By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst, the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website ..."
"... America's new "philanthrocapitalists" are enabling social problems rather than solving them ..."
"... British novelist Anthony Trollope once observed, "I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so bloodthirsty as a professed philanthropist." ..."
"... Legendary short seller Jim Chanos, who teaches business students to spot fraud, understands why: when he scrutinizes a company for signs of shady activity, one of the things he looks for is an uptick in philanthropy -- a strategy business ethics professor Marianne Jennings has named as one of the "seven signs of ethical collapse" in organizations. Chanos refers to the ruse as "doing good to mask doing bad." ..."
America's new "philanthrocapitalists" are enabling social problems rather than solving
them
A new breed of wealthy do-gooders armed with apps and PowerPoints claim they want to change
the world. But with their market-oriented values and often-shortsighted prescriptions, are
really they going to change it for the better?
Or change it at all?
Anand Giridharadas, who has traveled first-class in the rarefied realm of 21 st
-century "philanthrocapitalists," harbors serious doubts. In his acclaimed book, "
Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World ," the business reporter and
former McKinsey consultant exposes the willful blindness of bright-eyed social entrepreneurs
and TED-talking executives who, having drunk their own late-stage capitalist Kool-Aid, are now
ready to serve us all. Compliments of the house.
Doing Good, Masking Bad
British novelist Anthony Trollope once observed, "I have sometimes thought that there is no
being so venomous, so bloodthirsty as a professed philanthropist."
Legendary short seller Jim Chanos, who teaches business students to spot fraud, understands
why: when he
scrutinizes a company for signs of shady activity, one of the things he looks for is an
uptick in philanthropy -- a strategy business ethics professor Marianne Jennings has named
as one of the "seven signs of ethical collapse" in organizations. Chanos refers to the ruse as
"doing good to mask doing bad."
Such cynical public relations gambits are familiar enough to New Yorkers using Citi Bike,
the public-private bike share system funded by Citigroup, whose misdeeds helped spark the
global financial crisis of 2007-8. Or visitors to the Sackler Gallery at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, named for the family whose members own Purdue, the pharmaceutical company that
fueled America's opioid crisis through deceptive marketing of the addictive painkiller
OxyContin.
But another sort of deep-pocketed philanthropist is harder to pin down. The harm she causes
seems less direct; her motives more lofty. This type is fond of touting "win-win" solutions to
social problems and tossing out terms like "impactful" and "scalable" and "paradigm-shifting"
-- the kind of lingo fed to business school students in lieu of critical thinking. Members of
this group nevertheless refer to themselves as "thought leaders."
These would-be benefactors of humanity tend to like former president Bill Clinton, whose
Clinton Global Initiative became the ultimate road show for eager converts to what Giridharadas
calls the faith of "win-winnerism," i.e. "I'm doing great in this racket, and so can you."
Inhabiting Silicon Valley start-ups, venture capital firms, think tanks, and consulting
companies in large metropolitan areas, philanthrocapitalists speak reverently of global
poverty, but rarely touch down in places like Appalachia or rural Mississippi.
They are people like John Mackey, the chief executive of Whole Foods Market, whose book
"Conscious Capitalism" is the bible for those aspiring to the win-win faith. In his
formulation, CEOs are not simply the heads of companies, but transcendent beings that find
"great joy and beauty in their work, and in the opportunity to serve, lead, and help shape a
better future." Mackey's philosophy is one in which the beneficiaries of commerce should
dedicate themselves to social improvement because they are obviously the best equipped to do
the job. The public is meant to humbly follow.
This last bit, as Giridharadas shrewdly points out, may be far more radical than the old
trickle-down philosophy of yesterday's winners, who lobbied the government to get out of their
way so that the bounteous by-products of their cutthroat activities could descend unimpeded to
the poor. The new winners want something even more audacious: to replace the role of government
as guardian of the common good.
Giridharadas presents searching conversations with well-educated, often well-meaning people
floating above and apart from the lives of ordinary Americans, wishing to ease their
consciences but failing both to clearly see the problems of society and to notice, for more
than a nagging moment, the ways in which their own lives are financed by the fruits of
injustice. They end up embracing a warm-and-fuzzy vision of changing the world that leaves
brutal underlying structures securely in place.
The author has said what few who have traveled in this world have said plainly, lest their
passport be revoked: the efforts of philanthrocapitalists are largely disruptive, rather than
beneficial, to public life.
You can see it in the kind of ideas they embrace. Lecture slots at Davos don't get doled out
for discussing the need to expand popular, time-tested programs like Social Security and
Medicare that are proven to reduce poverty and economic inequality. Such sensible fare is not
nearly "innovative" or exotic enough -- and besides, it might require the wealthy to pay
additional taxes. Better are schemes like universal basic income that tend to favor elite
interests (such as continuing to pay workers inadequate wages) or creating technological
solutions like the one offered in the book by a young win-winnerist: an app that charges
workers to manage the unpredictable cash flow caused by erratic work schedules.
And what of campaigning to outlaw the exploitative business practice that causes the problem
in the first place? Notsomuch.
Talking about victims plays well on the philanthrocapitalist circuit, but pointing out
perpetrators is largely forbidden. You can wow the crowd by peddling for-profit schemes to help
the poor, but you won't get the same applause by calling to jail criminal executives. Yet, as
Giridharadas makes clear, even the fanciest app will not erase the feeling among ordinary
people that the system has been captured by a small group of the rich and powerful -- a feeling
that drives them away in disgust from establishment politics and makes them very angry
indeed.
What the philanthrocapitalist has a hard time admitting is that meaningful structural change
involves a lot more than an app and a PowerPoint. It means taking on financialized corporations
that engage in
stock market manipulation to enrich shareholders rather than investing in workers and
products that are actually useful to human beings. It requires fixing a regressive tax system
in which the wealthy pay less on their investments than working people pay on their earned
income. It means empowering workers and taking on the coercive hierarchies of wealth and power
that are locking into place a dual economy where the affluent become so removed from the
struggles of the majority that they hardly speak the same language.
Antidemocratic and unaccountable, the new philanthropists emerge in Giridharadas's
cautionary book less as the solvers of social problems than the deluded enablers. The emperor
may stand there in his organic underpants waving a pie chart, but in the court of public
opinion, it is increasingly obvious that he's not in the least interested in dismantling his
own palace.
"... Somewhat foolishly he deepened the cleavage between himself and ordinary people by both his patrician predilections and the love of lecturing ..."
This is the question that I am often asked and will be asked in two days. So I decided to
write my answers down.
The argument why inequality should not matter is almost always couched in the following
way: if everybody is getting better-off, why should we care if somebody is becoming extremely
rich? Perhaps he deserves to be rich -- or whatever the case, even if he does not deserve, we
need not worry about his wealth. If we do that implies envy and other moral flaws. I have
dealt with the misplaced issue of envy here * (in response to points made by Martin
Feldstein) and here ** (in response to Harry Frankfurt), and do not want to repeat it. So,
let's leave envy out and focus on the reasons why we should be concerned about high
inequality.
The reasons can be formally broken down into three groups: instrumental reasons having to
do with economic growth, reasons of fairness, and reasons of politics.
The relationship between inequality and economic growth is one of the oldest relationships
studied by economists. A very strong presumption was that without high profits there will be
no growth, and high profits imply substantial inequality. We find this argument already in
Ricardo where profit is the engine of economic growth. We find it also in Keynes and
Schumpeter, and then in standard models of economic growth. We find it even in the Soviet
industrialization debates. To invest you have to have profits (that is, surplus above
subsistence); in a privately-owned economy it means that some people have to be wealthy
enough to save and invest, and in a state-directed economy, it means that the state should
take all the surplus.
But notice that throughout the argument is not one in favor of inequality as such. If it
were, we would not be concerned about the use of the surplus. The argument is about a
seemingly paradoxical behavior of the wealthy: they should be sufficiently rich but should
not use that money to live well and consume but to invest. This point is quite nicely, and
famously, made by Keynes in the opening paragraphs of his "The Economic Consequence of the
Peace". For us, it is sufficient to note that this is an argument in favor of inequality
provided wealth is not used for private pleasure.
The empirical work conducted in the past twenty years has failed to uncover a positive
relationship between inequality and growth. The data were not sufficiently good, especially
regarding inequality where the typical measure used was the Gini coefficient which is too
aggregate and inert to capture changes in the distribution; also the relationship itself may
vary in function of other variables, or the level of development. This has led economists to
a cul-de-sac and discouragement so much so that since the late 1990s and early 2000s such
empirical literature has almost ceased to be produced. It is reviewed in more detail in this
paper. ***
More recently, with much better data on income distribution, the argument that inequality
and growth are negatively correlated has gained ground. In a joint paper **** Roy van der
Weide and I show this using forty years of US micro data. With better data and somewhat more
sophisticated thinking about inequality, the argument becomes much more nuanced: inequality
may be good for future incomes of the rich (that is, they become even richer) but it may be
bad for future incomes of the poor (that is, they fall further behind). In this dynamic
framework, growth rate itself is no longer something homogeneous as indeed it is not in the
real life. When we say that the American economy is growing at 3% per year, it simply means
that the overall income increased at that rate, it tells us nothing about how much better
off, or worse off, individuals at different points of income distribution are getting.
Why would inequality have bad effect on the growth of the lower deciles of the
distribution as Roy and I find? Because it leads to low educational (and even health)
achievements among the poor who become excluded from meaningful jobs and from meaningful
contributions they could make to their own and society's improvement. Excluding a certain
group of people from good education, be it because of their insufficient income or gender or
race, can never be good for the economy, or at least it can never be preferable to their
inclusion.
High inequality which effectively debars some people from full participation translates
into an issue of fairness or justice. It does so because it affects inter-generational
mobility. People who are relatively poor (which is what high inequality means) are not able,
even if they are not poor in an absolute sense, to provide for their children a fraction of
benefits, from education and inheritance to social capital, that the rich provide to their
offspring. This implies that inequality tends to persist across generations which in turns
means that opportunities are vastly different for those at the top of the pyramid and those
on the bottom. We have the two factors joining forces here: on the one hand, the negative
effect of exclusion on growth that carries over generations (which is our instrumental reason
for not liking high inequality), and on the other, lack of equality of opportunity (which is
an issue of justice).
High inequality has also political effects. The rich have more political power and they
use that political power to promote own interests and to entrench their relative position in
the society. This means that all the negative effects due to exclusion and lack of equality
of opportunity are reinforced and made permanent (at least, until a big social earthquake
destroys them). In order to fight off the advent of such an earthquake, the rich must make
themselves safe and unassailable from "conquest". This leads to adversarial politics and
destroys social cohesion. Ironically, social instability which then results discourages
investments of the rich, that is it undermines the very action that was at the beginning
adduced as the key reason why high wealth and inequality may be socially desirable.
We therefore reach the end point where the unfolding of actions that were at the first
supposed to produce beneficent outcome destroys by its own logic the original rationale. We
have to go back to the beginning and instead of seeing high inequality as promoting
investments and growth, we begin to see it, over time, as producing exactly the opposite
effects: reducing investments and growth.
"he argument is about a seemingly paradoxical behavior of the wealthy: they should be
sufficiently rich but should not use that money to live well and consume but to invest."
I disagree on this. I do not care if they use the high income to invest or to live well,
as long as it is one or the other.
The one thing I do not want the rich to do is to become a drain of money out of active
circulation. The paradox of thrift. Excess saving by one dooms others into excess debt to
keep the economy liquid.
If you invent a new widget that everyone on earth simply must have, and is willing to give
you $1 per to get it, such that you have $7 billion a year income... good for you!
Now what do you deserve in return?
1) To consumer $7 billion worth of other peoples' production?
Or
2) To trap the rest of humanity in $7 billion a year worth of debt servitude, which will
have your income ever increase as interest is added to your income, a debt servitude from
which it will be mathematically impossible for them to escape since you hold the money that
they must get in order to repay their debts?
The choice of capitalists
to buy paper not products
Wealthy households are obscene
But not macro drags.
When they buy luxury products and personal services
When they buy existing stocks of land paintings and the like of course this is as bad as
buying paper.
But at least that portfolio shifting
Can CO exist with product purchases.
So long as each type of spending remains close to a stable ratio
In my "ideal" tax regimen, steeply progressive income taxes would be avoided by real property
spending or capital investment to get deductions.
This, of course, would lead to over-investment in land, buildings, houses, etc. WHICH is
why my regimen also includes a real property tax (in addition to state and local real estate
taxes). The income tax would not be "avoided" by real property purchases as much as
"delayed".
To avoid 90% income tax, buy diamonds, paintings, expensive autos... then only pay 5% per
year on the real property, spreading the the tax over 20 years. Buy land, buildings, houses,
etc., get hit with the 5%, plus the local real estate taxes.
It really depends on what is consumed. Consumption can lead to malinvestment. For instance,
buying 1960s ferraris does very little for the current economy. This is an exceptionally low
multiplier activity.
inequality have bad effect on the growth of the lower deciles of the distribution as Roy and
I
"
~~BM~
keep in mind that there are many directions of growth. there is growth that benefits the
workers, the rank-and-file. there is growth that benefits the excessively wealthy. but now,
finally there's a third type of growth, the kind of growth that destroys the planet, and
perhaps a 4th a new channel of growth that would help us to preserve the planet. we need to
think about some of these things.
One VERY important item is missing from that list - environmental sustainability - giving
people control over much more resources than they need is a waste of something precious.
Ted Turner owning millions of acres of land he's restoring to prairie sustained by bison,
prairie dogs, wolves, etc is bad?
I wish he had ten times as much land. Or more so a million bison were roaming the west and
supplying lots of bison steaks, hides, etc, as they did for thousands of years before about
1850.
First reflections on the French "événements de décembre"
Because I am suffering from insomnia (due to the jetlag) I decided to write down, in the
middle of the night, my two quick impressions regarding the recent events in France -- events
that watched from outside France seemed less dramatic than within.
I think they raise two important issues: one new, another "old".
It is indeed an accident that the straw that broke the camel's back was a tax on fuel that
affected especially hard rural and periurban areas, and people with relatively modest
incomes. It did so (I understand) not as much by the amount of the increase but by
reinforcing the feeling among many that after already paying the costs of globalization,
neoliberal policies, offshoring, competition with cheaper foreign labor, and deterioration of
social services, now, in addition, they are to pay also what is, in their view and perhaps
not entirely wrongly, seen as an elitist tax on climate change.
This raises a more general issue which I discussed in my polemic with Jason Hickel and
Kate Raworth. Proponents of degrowth and those who argue that we need to do something
dramatic regarding climate change are singularly coy and shy when it comes to pointing out
who is going to bear the costs of these changes. As I mentioned in this discussion with Jason
and Kate, if they were serious they should go out and tell Western audiences that their real
incomes should be cut in half and also explain them how that should be accomplished.
Degrowers obviously know that such a plan is a political suicide, so they prefer to keep
things vague and to cover up the issues under a "false communitarian" discourse that we are
all affected and that somehow the economy will thrive if we all just took full conscience of
the problem--without ever telling us what specific taxes they would like to raise or how they
plan to reduce people's incomes.
Now the French revolt brings this issue into the open. Many western middle classes,
buffeted already by the winds of globalization, seem unwilling to pay a climate change tax.
The degrowers should, I hope, now come up with concrete plans.
The second issue is "old". It is the issue of the cleavage between the political elites
and a significant part of the population. Macron rose on an essentially anti-mainstream
platform, his heterogenous party having been created barely before the elections. But his
policies have from the beginning been pro-rich, a sort of the latter-say Thatcherism. In
addition, they were very elitist, often disdainful of the public opinion. It is somewhat
bizarre that such "Jupiterian" presidency, by his own admission, would be lionized by the
liberal English-language press when his domestic policies were strongly pro-rich and thus not
dissimilar from Trump's. But because Macron's international rhetoric (mostly rhetoric) was
anti-Trumpist, he got a pass on his domestic policies.
Somewhat foolishly he deepened the cleavage between himself and ordinary people by both
his patrician predilections and the love of lecturing others which at times veered into the
absurd (as when he took several minutes to teach a 12-year old kid about the proper way to
address the President). At the time when more than ever Western "couches populaires" wanted
to have politicians that at least showed a modicum of empathy, Macron chose the very opposite
tack of berating people for their lack of success or failure to find jobs (for which they
apparently just needed to cross the road). He thus committed the same error that Hillary
Clinton commuted with her "deplorables" comment. It is no surprise that his approval ratings
have taken a dive, and, from what I understand, even they do not fully capture the extent of
the disdain into which he is held by many.
It is under such conditions that "les evenements" took place. The danger however is that
their further radicalization, and especially violence, undermines their original objectives.
One remembers that May 1968, after driving de Gaulle to run for cover to Baden-Baden, just a
few months later handed him one of the largest electoral victories -- because of
demonstrators' violence and mishandling of that great political opportunity.
"So, harvesting energy from the sun is unsustainable?"
No. I'm saying it is not scale-able.
How are you going to do it? Run diesel fuel powered tractors to dig pit mines to get
metals, to be smelted in fossil fuel powered refineries. Burn fossil fuels to heat sand into
glass. Use toxic solvents purify the glass and to electroplate toxic metals. Then incinerate
the solvents in fossil fuel powered furnaces.
That may get us to a 40% reduction in carbon, but it isn't getting us to 90%
reduction.
Even then, how are you going to get nitrogen fertilizers for farms? Currently we strip H2
from CH4 (natural gas), then mix with nitrogen in the air, apply electricity, poof, nitrogen
fertilizers, and LOTS of CO2. I have yet to see a proposal for large-scale farming that
offers a method of obtaining nitrogen fertilizers without CO2 emissions.
AND, there is still a massive problem of storing the electricity from when the wind is
blowing and sun is shining until times when it isn't.
"So, you are calling for global thermonuclears war to purge 6 billion people from the
planet?"
Nope.
"You clearly believe the solution is not paying workers to work, but to not pay them so
they must die."
I'm all about paying workers to work. I vehemently disagree with liberals when they breach
the idea of "universal basic income"... a great way to end up like the old Soviet Union,
where everyone has money, but waits in long lines to get into stores with nothing on the
shelves for sale.
"The population is too high to support hunter-gathers and subsistence farming for 7
billion people plus."
Correct.
"You have bought into Reagan's free lunch framing and argue less trash, less processing of
6trash to cut costs, so everyone must earn less so they consume less, ideally becoming
dead."
Not even close.
This is where Liberals pissed me off right after Trump won and was still talking "border
adjustment tax". The cry from the likes of Robert Reich was "oh noooo... prices will go up
and hurt the poor." Since when were progressives the "we need low prices" party? I thought we
were the ones that wanted higher prices, if those higher prices were caused by higher wages
to workers!
"I call for evveryone paying high living costs to pay more workers to eliminate the waste of
landfilling what was just mined from the land."
Not sure how that makes it magically possible to cut carbon emissions 90% though.
Besides that, Saudi Arabia requires the organization to maintain a high level of oil
production due to pressure coming from
Washington to achieve a very low cost per barrel of oil. The US energy strategy targets
Iranian and Russian revenue from oil exports, but it also aims to give the US a speedy economic
boost. Trump often talks about the price of oil falling as his personal victory. The US
imports
about 10 million barrels of oil a day, which is why Trump wrongly believes that a decrease in
the cost per barrel could favor a boost to the US economy. The economic reality shows a strong
correlation
between the price of oil and the financial growth of a country, with low prices of crude oil
often synonymous of a slowing down in the economy.
It must be remembered that to keep oil prices high, OPEC countries are required to maintain
a high rate of production, doubling the damage to themselves. Firstly, they take less income
than expected and, secondly, they deplete their oil reserves to favor the strategy imposed by
Saudi Arabia on OPEC to please the White House. It is clearly a strategy that for a country
like Qatar (and perhaps Venezuela and Iran in the near future) makes little sense, given the
diplomatic and commercial rupture with Riyadh stemming from
tensions between the Gulf countries.
In contrast, the OPEC+ organization, which also includes other countries like the Russian
Federation, Mexico and Kazakhstan, seems to now to determine oil and its cost per barrel. At
the moment, OPEC and Russia have agreed to cut production by 1.2 million barrels per day,
contradicting Trump's desire for high oil output.
With this last choice Qatar sends a clear signal to the region and to traditional allies,
moving to the side of OPEC+ and bringing its interests closer in line with those of the Russian
Federation and its all-encompassing oil and gas strategy, two sectors in which Qatar and Russia
dominate market share.
In addition, Russia and Qatar's global strategy also brings together and includes partners
like Turkey (a future
energy hub connecting east and west as well as north and south) and Venezuela. In this
sense, the meeting between
Maduro and Erdogan seems to be a prelude to further reorganization of OPEC and its members.
It's crazy to think of all of the natural gas burned off by the world's oil producers. I
think of those oil platforms that have a huge burning flame on top. This is the kind of ****
that reminds us that the people who control the world care not for the people who live here.
Can't make a buck from it? ******* burn it.
Consider though that those oil producers are only in it for the money; it's not an
avocation with them. I imagine if there was a way to salvage the natural gas, it would be
done. Mo Muny would dictate it.
This could be the beggining of a level 5 popcorn event. It started a year or two ago and
when I saw it everybody laughed. Well look at it now. Saudi wants to defect. They have had
nothing but problems with the House of Sodomy for quite some time now.
If this leads to war in the Persian Gulf Edgar Cayce called it. The empire will burn that
place down before losing it. They may fail but something is going to go down.
Are the Sauds still full heartedly pushing the Zionist mission in Yemen?
As an Iranian-American I have been waiting for something big to happen with Iran. I am
really tired of waiting. I hope that Iran will grow some balls and fight the coalition. I
know that there are 80 million lives in danger, including my mom going back to Iran for a
short term. But this has been like a long torture and unending nightmare.
There is no multipolarity yet, but a bipolar hype of the world dominance run by US and its
vassals. An awakening will be harsh, when these realize their emperor goes naked.
Update 5: Cohen has been sentenced to 36 months in prison for his crimes, far below the
guideline of 51 - 63 months laid out by New York prosecutors. The Judge noted that the
guidelines aren't binding and had the ability to issue a lesser sentence.
Cohen has also been hit with forfeiture of $500,000, restitution of $1.4 million and a fine
of $50,000. He will be allowed to voluntarily surrender on March 6 .
Update 4: Judge Pauley has responded following Cohen's statement, saying "Mr. Cohen's crimes
implicate a far more insidious crime to our democratic institutions especially in view of his
subsequent plea to making false statements to Congress," adding that Cohen's crimes warrant
"specific deterrence."
Update 3: Cohen has spoken, telling the Judge: "Recently the president tweeted a statement
calling me weak and it was correct but for a much different reason than he was implying. It was
because time and time again i felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds." Judge William
Pauley, meanwhile, noted that Cohen pleaded guilty to a " veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent
conduct ," which was motivated by "personal greed and ambition."
Update 2: Petrillo, Cohen's attorney, continues to reference Cohen's desire to cooperate
further with prosecutors to answer future questions - however Manhattan prosecutors don't
appear to care, according to Bloomberg banking reporter Shahien Nasiripour. In a memo last week
to the court, they said that Cohen's promise to cooperate further is worthless - especially
since there would be nothing requiring him to do so once he's already been sentenced.
Meanwhile, Jeannie Rhee - an attorney with Robert Mueller's office, told the court that
while Cohen lied to the special counsel's team during his first interview in July, he has been
truthful since.
Manhattan Assistant US Attorney Nicolas Roos, however, says that any reduction in sentence
"should be modest."
Roos added that Cohen "has eroded faith in the electoral process and compromised the rule of
law," and that he engaged in " a pattern of deception of brazenness and greed ."
Update: Cohen's attorney, Guy Petrillo, says Cohen thought that President Trump would shut
down the Mueller probe, and has argued that his client's cooperation warrants a lenient
sentence.
"Mr. Cohen's cooperation promotes respect for law and the courage of the individual to stand
up to power and influence," said Petrillo.
"His decision was an importantly different decision from the usual decision to cooperate,"
added Petrillo. "He came forward to offer evidence against the most powerful person in our
country. He did so not knowing what the result would be, not knowing how the politics would
play out and not even knowing that the special counsel's office would survive."
"The special counsel's investigation is of the utmost national significance... Not seen
since 40 plus years ago in the days of Watergate." -Guy Petrillo
Petrillo has asked the judge to "consider Cohen's "life of good works" in his decision,
adding that Cohen's cooperation stands in "profound contrast" to others who havern't cooperated
and who "have continued to double-deal while pretending to cooperate."
***
Michael Cohen, former longtime personal lawyer for President Trump, has shown up to a New
York courthouse where he will be sentenced on Wednesday for a laundry list of crimes - some of
which implicate Trump in possible wrongdoing, but most of which have nothing to do with the
president. Judge William Pauley, meanwhile, noted that Cohen pleaded guilty to a " veritable
smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct ," which was motivated by "personal greed and ambition."
Update 2: Petrillo, Cohen's attorney, continues to reference Cohen's desire to cooperate
further with prosecutors to answer future questions - however Manhattan prosecutors don't
appear to care, according to Bloomberg banking reporter Shahien Nasiripour. In a memo last week
to the court, they said that Cohen's promise to cooperate further is worthless - especially
since there would be nothing requiring him to do so once he's already been sentenced.
Meanwhile, Jeannie Rhee - an attorney with Robert Mueller's office, told the court that
while Cohen lied to the special counsel's team during his first interview in July, he has been
truthful since.
Manhattan Assistant US Attorney Nicolas Roos, however, says that any reduction in sentence
"should be modest."
Roos added that Cohen "has eroded faith in the electoral process and compromised the rule of
law," and that he engaged in " a pattern of deception of brazenness and greed ."
Update: Cohen's attorney, Guy Petrillo, says Cohen thought that President Trump would shut
down the Mueller probe, and has argued that his client's cooperation warrants a lenient
sentence.
"Mr. Cohen's cooperation promotes respect for law and the courage of the individual to stand
up to power and influence," said Petrillo.
"His decision was an importantly different decision from the usual decision to cooperate,"
added Petrillo. "He came forward to offer evidence against the most powerful person in our
country. He did so not knowing what the result would be, not knowing how the politics would
play out and not even knowing that the special counsel's office would survive."
"The special counsel's investigation is of the utmost national significance... Not seen
since 40 plus years ago in the days of Watergate." -Guy Petrillo
Petrillo has asked the judge to "consider Cohen's "life of good works" in his decision,
adding that Cohen's cooperation stands in "profound contrast" to others who havern't cooperated
and who "have continued to double-deal while pretending to cooperate."
***
Michael Cohen, former longtime personal lawyer for President Trump, has shown up to a
New York courthouse where he will be sentenced on Wednesday for a laundry list of crimes - some
of which implicate Trump in possible wrongdoing, but most of which have nothing to do with the
president.
Cohen, who went from claiming he would "take a bullet" for President Trump to stabbing his
former boss in the back, faces sentencing on nine federal charges , including campaign finance
violations based on a hush-money scheme to pay off two women who claimed to have had affairs
with Trump, as well as making false statements to special counsel Robert Mueller.
Prosecutors alleged that Cohen paid off two women at the "direction" of "Individual-1,"
who is widely assumed to be Trump.
Prosecutors said the payments amounted to illegal campaign contribution s because they
were made with the intent to prevent damaging information from surfacing during the 2016
presidential election, which Cohen pleaded guilty to in August.
Legal experts view the filing as an ominous sign for Trump , suggesting prosecutors have
evidence beyond Cohen's public admissions implicating the president in the payoff scheme.
While the Justice Department has said previously that a sitting president cannot be indicted,
that would not stop prosecutors from bringing charges against Trump once he leaves office. -
The Hill
New York prosecutors have recommended that Judge William Pauley impose "a substantial term
of imprisonment" on Cohen - which may be around five years. Cohen's attorneys, meanwhile, have
asked Pauley for a sentence which avoids prison time - citing his cooperation with the Mueller
probe and other investigations which began prior to his guilty plea last summer. Mueller said
that Cohen had "gone to significant lengths to assist the Special Counsel's investigation,"
having met with Mueller's team seven times where he reportedly provided information useful to
the Russia investigation. The special counsel's office has recommended that any sentence Cohen
receives for lying to Congress should run concurrently with the charges brought by the
Manhattan federal prosecutors.
Cohen, 52, pleaded guilty in August to tax evasion,
lying to banks and violating campaign finance laws - charges filed by the US Attorney's Office
for the Southern District of New York.
The campaign finance charges relate to his facilitation of two hush-money payments to porn
star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal shortly before the 2016 presidential
election. Both women say they had sex with Trump in the prior decade. The White House has
denied Trump had sex with either woman.
Prosecutors say the payments were made "in coordination with and at the direction of"
Trump, who is called "Individual-1" in a sentencing recommendation filed last week.
Cohen's crimes were intended "to influence the election from the shadows," prosecutors
wrote. -
CNBC
In November Cohen also pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the Trump Organization's
ill-fated plans to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow - a project floated by Cohen and longtime
FBI asset who had been in Trump's orbit for years, Felix Sater. Cohen claims he understated
Trump's knowledge of the project. He also lied to Congress when he said that the Moscow project
talks ended in early 2016, when in fact he and the Trump Organization had continued to pursue
it as late as June 2016.
On Wednesday, Stormy Daniels' lawyer, Michael Avenatti - who is in attendance at Cohen's
sentencing, said in a Wednesday tweet that Cohen "thought we would just go away and he/Trump
would get away with it. He thought he was smart and tough. He was neither. Today will prove
that in spades."
Trump's paying around $280,000 in " hush money " .. out of his own pocket is
dwarfed into virtual insignificance by Obama's Presidential Campaign in 2008..,.
BEING FOUND "GUILTY" OF ILLEGAL USE OF 2 MILLION IN CAMPAIGN MONEY
barely reported by the media that saw THE OBAMA DOJ decide not to prosecute Obama and
instead quietly dispose of this
"REAL CRIME" with a fine of 375 thousand dollars by the US FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISION.
Welcome to the two tier Justice System we all live under..
One for the Deeeep State Globalist Elite and .. the other...
"... Brexit can be considered as the rebuilding of the old nation state wall between England and the Continent. To an extent, this is a repudiation of the Globalist Movement, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Neo-Liberal Experiment. In it's essence, Trumps Wall is a repudiation of the NAFTA Consensus. The American 'deplorables' support it because they see it as a means of defending their livelihoods from those hordes of 'foreign' low wage workers. In both cases, it is a looking inwards. ..."
Brexit can be considered as the rebuilding of the old nation state wall between
England and the Continent. To an extent, this is a repudiation of the Globalist Movement, a
wholly owned subsidiary of the Neo-Liberal Experiment. In it's essence, Trumps Wall is a
repudiation of the NAFTA Consensus. The American 'deplorables' support it because they see it
as a means of defending their livelihoods from those hordes of 'foreign' low wage workers. In
both cases, it is a looking inwards.
Arguably, May is one of a generation of politicos in decline. Macron, (perhaps Merkel's
hope of having a posterity,) has caved. Merkel has seen the face of her political mortality
recently. May has her Pyrrhic victory.
The Clintons cannot even give tickets to their road show away. In all of these examples,
the replacements waiting in the wings are, to be charitable about it, underwhelming. Brexit
is but the opening act of a grand, worldwide crisis of governance.
How England muddles through this will be an object lesson for us all. We had better take
notes, because there will be a great testing later.
While the UK has rightly been the focus, I can't help wondering what the deeper feelings
are across Europe. It's very hard to gauge how much thought the rest of Europe is giving to
Brexit at this stage. The average punter seems very uninterested at this point, while a
growing number (from what I'm reading from other sources) just wish they'd get it over with
so the rest of Europe could be allowed to get on with its own internal concerns. I suspect
the rest of the EU economies most affected must be putting their 'crash-out' plans into
over-drive after this week's continuing escapades.
(Re: Sinn Féin. I was wondering if there was the remotest possibility that they
would cross their biggest line just to help a Tory government, and a particularly vile Tory
government from their standpoint. When speaking to veteran Belfast Republican during
negotiations on the GFA (Good Friday Agreement), their viewpoint was that nearly everything
could be negotiated but one thing was impossible: entering into a foreign London parliament.
Symbolically and practically, it was a step beyond the pale. I also noticed lately that a
couple of older Sinn Féin Republicans, who had to be persuaded into the negotiation
camp all those years ago, are again contemplating running for local government positions in
the North.)
Everything I've read indicates that the rest of Europe has simply given up on Brexit
– they are unwilling to expend any more energy or political capital on it. The leaders
have much bigger things on their plates than Brexit, and the general population have lost
interest – I'm told it rarely features much in reporting on the major media. I think
they'll grant an extension purely to facilitate another couple of months preparation for a
crash out, and thats it.
As for Sinn Fein, I get the feeling that after been caught on the hop by Brexit, they now
see a crash out as an opportunity. NI looks likely to suffer more than anywhere else if there
is a no-deal – there is hardly a business there that won't be devastated. But they are
caught between trying to show their soft face in the south and their hardliner face in the
North, and I think they are having difficulty deciding how to play it.
The British circus attracts interest and there is coverage on the motions and so on
treated as UK internal politics. May and the ultra-brexiteers get almost all the attention.
The only options mentioned are no deal and May's agreement.
" European diplomats in London watching the government's Brexit agony have conveyed a
mixture of despair, and almost ghoulish fascination, at the state of British politics, with
one saying it is as melodramatic as a telenovela, full of subplots, intrigue, tragedy and
betrayal
Although privately many diplomats would love Brexit to be reversed, and believe it could
mark a turning point against populism, there was also a wariness about the disruption of a
second referendum. One ambassador suggested the French realised that European parliamentary
election campaign of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, would be damaged by the sight of
furious British leave campaigners claiming they had been cheated of their democratic rights
by an arrogant elite who refused to listen: "What is happening in France is potentially
momentous. The social fabric is under threat, and this anger could spread across the
continent," the ambassador said, referring to the gilets jaunes protests ."
During the last decades of Soviet power, the importance of Communist ideology' was
frequently
overrated abroad. Only after the downfall of the regime did it become clear that
Marxism-Leninism
was no longer taken seriously; lip service was still paid to it, but it became the subject of
ridicule
among those at the very' top.
Is there a danger that a similar misapprehension may prevail now that political views once
found only' at the periphery' of the political system have moved to its center?
... ... ....
... In the 1980s, a strange situation had arisen: The KGB spent much of its time harassing
and persecuting the dissidents, but they believed as little in communism and the Soviet system
as their victims. They did what they did because they had been given orders from above. What is
known about their real convictions? Deep down many of them were probably cynics, willing
apparently' to serve any' system as long as it preserved their privileged positions. What of
the current situation? How important is ideology', and what is the specific weight of power and
money'?
... ... ...
In its cultural history, Russia went through a golden and a silver age, but now there are
few prospects even for a bronze age. One feels reminded of Pushkin's reaction having finished
listening to Nikolai Gogol reading to him Dead Souls: "God, what a sad country, our
Russia."
As with the USSR if promised of better life are not fulfulled, ideology is bankruppt and
nationalism is on the rise.
Notable quotes:
"... The Party of Davos is yet unwilling to make the fundamental changes that would reduce the huge advantages they have accumulated over the past 40 years. We should therefore expect an intensification of this conflict with the natural ups and downs but a general trend towards increasing angst and frustration manifesting in unpredictable ways ..."
The main fault of the EU is that the biggest party at the table always in the end, when
things get serious, gets its way. The 80 million or so people of Germany de facto rule the 500
million of the Union, or you know, the three handfuls that rule Germany. No important decision
can or will ever be taken that Berlin does not agree with. Angela Merkel has been the CEO of
Europe Inc. since November 22 2005, gathering more power as time went by . That was never going
to work unless she made everyone richer. Ask the Greeks about that one.
Merkel was the leader of both Germany and of Europe, and when things got precarious, she
chose to let German interests prevail above Italian or Greek ones. That's the fundamental flaw
and failure of the Union in a nutshell. All other things, the Greek crisis, Salvini, Macron,
Brexit, are mere consequences of that flaw. In absence of a forever economic boom, there is
nothing left to fall back on. SF
-----------
A persuasive article, the Europeans here can now explain to us all how much better and more
virtuous Europe is than the United States.
What was it that Macron was saying about a European army? The CRS and the Gendarmerie Mobile
will get this under control but Macron may well be neutered by the unrest.
FWIW, the disparate power exercised by the great and the small states under present EU
conditions is exactly what the US Framers successfully avoided by the Great Compromises in the
US Constitution. pl
The main breaking point of the EU is the Euro. The rules agreed in the Maastricht Treaty
are not suitable for the participating countries but are written by the northern european
countries such as Germany and my country The Netherlands.
The rules each Euro-country are:
* maximum of 60% debt to GDP
* maximum deficit of 3% of GDP
* maximum inflation of 1.5%
These rules made national politicians toothless. A lot of monetary policy they could use
were taken away from them and delegated to the non-democratic, non-chosen technocratic
institute of the European Central Bank.
They are not allowed to print money battle a recession which would increase inflation.
This strategy makes a country cheap. So when there is a lot of inflation in Italy, Greece,
Portugal or Greece a lot of people from northern Europe go there on holiday.
In your discussion of the Eurozone you do not mention the Target 2 balances. This is almost a
non subject in Germany and not referred to that often elsewhere. I believe they amount to an
unacknowledged form of fiscal transfer.
Even if I'm correct, I don't think it's enough.
All unified countries, from the US to Iceland, recognise the duty of the richer areas to
transfer funds to poorer areas if needed. So, in the UK, HMG sends large sums of money over
to Northern Ireland as subsidy.
The other side of the coin to this is that the central government may supervise the
expenditure of that subsidy. That entails overall control over the entire expenditure of the
recipient area.
This system of fiscal transfer is seldom adequate and seldom well supervised.
It is, however, essential in any country.
As the EU becomes more unified this question of fiscal transfer becomes more important.
There are two obstacles.
1. The richer countries are reluctant to pay the subsidy. Since the EU is not yet a
unified state there are no means of coercing the richer countries into paying the subsidy. To
be part of a superstate, and to benefit from being part of it, is one thing. To face a
reduced standard of living in order to subsidise other parts of it is quite another.
2. Even if the richer parts of the EU are willing to pay, there are no effective means of
supervising the spending of the subsidy.
This is I think the greatest problem the EU faces and it faces it because it is in
transition from a collection of countries to a unified state under unified control. As a
collection of countries there is no onus on any one country to subsidise another. As a
unified state the process would happen automatically. But the in-between stage the EU's
currently at allows for neither one nor the other.
This is why we hear so often the calls for "ever greater unity" for the EU. That is no
mere expression of an ideological or millenarian dream. It is a precondition that must be met
if the EU is to hold together. Given the other stresses to which the EU is subjected I do not
believe it will arrive quickly enough or at all at the degree of unification that will allow
that precondition to be satisfied.
"The Union appears fatally wounded, and that's even before the next financial crisis has
materialized. Speaking of which, the Fed has been hiking rates and can lower them again a
little if it wants, but much of Europe 'works' on negative rates already. That next crisis
could be a doozy."
Sir
IMO, the Southfront article has a lot of merits. The problem that much of Europe faces is
similar to what we face here. Extreme wealth inequality caused by the concentration of
political and economic power in the hands of a few. The divide between the working class and
the urban upper class. The "Deplorables" are expressing their frustration at the ballot box
now by voting for Brexit, Trump, Bolsonaro, AMLO, Salvini & Five Star and what would have
been considered fringe parties not too long ago. The social contract has fallen apart.
The Party of Davos is yet unwilling to make the fundamental changes that would reduce
the huge advantages they have accumulated over the past 40 years. We should therefore expect
an intensification of this conflict with the natural ups and downs but a general trend
towards increasing angst and frustration manifesting in unpredictable ways
Russian articles are about as close to the truth as we are going to get on the internet
since it serves their interests to weaken the sanctions placed on them by the West. Facts do
not serve western Media Moguls. The last thing they want published is that the news is
manipulated to make them richer and more powerful. The closest I ever got to the White House
was standing on the lawn when Jimmy Carter welcomed Pierre Trudeau. Still, there is a video
of Huma Abedin hugging Lindsey Graham with the Generals looking on at John McCain's
funeral.
The fundamental problem of the EU is that the Euro is an unfinished project. Unfinished
because it lacks the internal transfer payments required to make it fully functional. Every
single currency essentially subsidizes to some degree it's poorer regions at the expense or
the richer. This is true or the US, all European countries prior to the euro etc The reason
for this is that under normal circumstances a poorer region (or under the current EURO
scenario, a poorer country) would be able to benefit from a weaker currency, in its
relationship with a better off country enjoying a stronger currency. By agreeing to a common
currency it gives up this essential compensating mechanism, but (normally) only in exchange
for meaningful fiscal transfers as compensation.
Today euro zone fiscal transfer amount to a fraction of comparative rates in the us or
other countries. Practically, it's non existent.
And the main reason for the current situation is Merkel/Germany. It takes all the benefits
(a lower weaker currency then it would otherwise have and unfettered access for is products
across Europe) without any costs. Of course, in the long run it's undermining the golden
goose, but it's difficult to focus even Germans on the long term...
The topic can be expanded at length but I've tried to keep it simple. Nothing is more
important than this.
The article is over the top. Brussels has very limited economic power and less political
power. The EU budget is only around 1% of Gross National Income. What is the Federal Budget
in the USA in comparison? Just your defence spending is around 3% of GDP. Fx. Hungary
receives around 4 billion Euros in 2017 from the EU and paid ca 800 million Euros to the EU.
How vital is 3.2 billion Euros for Hungary in a existential question? It's ca 2.7 % of GDP.
As for the commission it is only able to administrate existing rules.
New rules required the Council of Europe (the governments) and the EU parliament to pass
them.
The Council's voting rules require a majority to pass and sometimes unanimity. Which is
why the is no agreement on the distribution of refugees/immigrants. Member countries can
refuse to take part. Germany has limited
" .. if the more national-minded parties of the EU get a majority in the EU parliament
..."
They are a most disparate group of parties and it's unlikely in any case that they'd end
up having the say in the European Parliament. If they got near to it, we would see the same
mechanism operating as can operate in the parliaments of the constituent countries - the
status quo parties would join together to keep them from power.
But that's speculation. Here we are on firmer ground -
"The article is over the top. Brussels has very limited economic power and less
political power. The EU budget is only around 1% of Gross National Income."
There are two points relevant here.
1. "Brussels" or "the EU" are very imprecise terms. It is safer to talk in terms of the
Berlin/Paris/Brussels axis, with the two first components having the ultimate say and the
third being mainly the means through which that say is expressed.
2. The size and expenditure of Brussels itself is remarkably small. Compare it to the
massive size and expenditure of the governing apparatus in Washington and it's almost
invisible. But through regulation and law it has at its disposal increasing control over the
much larger establishments and budgets of the constituent nation states.
It is important not to exaggerate the reach of EU regulation. Many regulations we think of
as "EU regulations" are made elsewhere at international level and the EU only transmits these
regulations to its member states. For this and other reasons the Berlin/Paris/Brussels axis,
or whatever term one may wish to use, cannot be directly compared with the central power in
the US. But the EU does have very much more power than is indicated in the sentence quoted
above.
Good day Colonel. We can only hope so. The EU was conceived as an idea that would prevent
another European Conflict. Its initial organisation the European Coal and Steel
Community was designed to bring the sinews of war under centralised control. This was a
practical measure which was quite separate from the founder's beliefs about the origins of
the war; this was that it was the people who by their nationalism and subordination to
demagoguery that had enabled that power to be harnessed by the forces of Fascism. They thus
determined to create a political system in parallel that would neutralise the people as a
factor in political decisions within what would eventually become the EU. This involved
rendering their choices at the ballot box ineffective puppets who can initiate no legislation
and by virtue of their large constituencies are so distant from the people that no real
representation can take place. I doubt that there is one person in twenty in the UK who could
tell you the name of their MEP. What this means in effect is that there is no demos, no
people in the original Greek political sense and since there is no demos there can be no
democracy. The European Commission, which is the executive arm of the EU is voted for by the
Parliament, there is no input from the people which is why you see strange anomalies like
Prime Minister May negotiating with Michael Barnier or President Donald Trump talking to
Jean-Claude Juncker, two men who wield enormous power and yet have never received a single
vote from a citizen of the EU.
The truly frightening thing about this state of affairs is not the present EU even with
its lack of accountability, malice and incompetence but the opportunities it offers for
future tyranny and oppression. Human beings being what they are, no system that leaves the
people out of its decision making process will endure long as a force for good in the
world.
A currency is both an instrument and a product of a nation's monetary, fiscal and budgetary
policies.
Multiple nations with separate, and often contrary policies, cannot realistically share a
currency.
on one hand the dream of the internationalist eurocrats is the United States of Europe,
that is a USA on steroids from the aspect of govt powers. They are after it with 'all
possible despatch' as the old british navy slang goes. For them nation states are a thing of
the past and they see a rainbow society stretching from Gibraltar to Tallinn, and from Faroer
islands to Rhodes, with all possible colours, and other liberal nightmares of 'families', as
well as as a refuge open to everybody, who is not christian/and or conservative. Political
and economical control is absolute in their hands, and a police state is chasing 'family
values', but not petty crime. Drugs are legalized and stuff.
That dream is falling apart. Thank God.
On the other hand everything a semi-official russian source says must be taken with a huge
spoon of salt, since those 'pesky rooshans' are always up to something. A united and strong
EU not to mention a strong european army is not in their interest, since they fear a
Barbarossa 2.0. But what they want less is the version of Mr. Trump's NATO, an enlarged and
obeying military AND political arm of the US.
Yes the current EU is weak and will be weaker when in April 2019 more eu-sceptical parties
will join the EU parliament, I would even go as far as they will the majority. The neoliberal
top down, forced 'gleichschaltung' has failed and the Yellow Vests are only one aspect. A
thorough reform is needed, and as always I promote the way the austro-hungarian empire
worked, and worked reliably. That is a common foreign and defence politics, financed commonly
BUT this budget was to be suported by BOTH parliaments. The rest is voluntary. Standards,
education, police and intelligence services obligatorily share data etc. but NOTHING ELSE is
mandatory.
As of anti US sentiments. The late G. Bush with his visit in 1989 has left a deep and very
positive mark on hungarian public opinion. Some 30 years later the new ambassador appointed
by the running Pres himself says, that although Mr. Trump and Mr. Orban see the world very,
very similarly, a gesture from the hungarian govt is needed to facilitate a personnal
meeting. It could be a defence cooperation, a step to increase energy independence, or
helping to resolve the ukrainian situation.
Let me translate.
Buy US weapons for billions of dollars, buy US LNG for 50-70% higher price, or let 150 000
hungarians be forcefully assimilated into ukrainians becuase that is in-line with US
interests.
If you would like Sir, I would be more than honoured to write you a piece on the growing
disillusionment about the „West" in the Visegrad 4 countries, and the impossibility of
US geopolitical plans with this region.
"The 80 million or so people of Germany de facto rule the 500 million of the Union, or you
know, the three handfuls that rule Germany. No important decision can or will ever be taken
that Berlin does not agree with. "
Stupid lie, in the past I was used to better quality Rusian propaganda. :-)
"A persuasive article, the Europeans here can now explain to us all how much better and
more virtuous Europe is than the United States."
Sir;
It may be a stretch, but I can see the present state of the European Union as analogous to
America under the Articles of Confederation. That experiment wasn't working out as expected,
so, America went back to the drawing board and developed the Constitution. This set in train
events that, arguably, culminated in the War Between the States. Out of that crucible came a
strong central government, with some allowances for differences between states and regions,
but a general and enforceable national system. Where is the District of Columbia for Europe?
Berlin? Hardly. German civil law does not run in France, or Spain. Brussels? Conrad was right
in describing it in the opening of his book "The Heart of Darkness" as full of whited
sepulchers. Until some true Capitol is established for Europe, apart from and distinct from
the state capitols, and given effective power, Europe will just limp along.
The real value of the European Union lies in its function as a brake on inter-european
disputes. Preventing round three of the Great War might be it's biggest achievement.
As for Merkel being CFO of Germany, well, a nation is not just it's financial and economic
systems. If she concentrated her energies only on the financial aspects of her country, then
she deserves to go. Not enough of the 'vision' thing.
"The real value of the European Union lies in its function as a brake on inter-european
disputes."
I've seen that statement so often that I might eventually have to agree with it out of
weariness. But I don't think it'll do.
The reason we've had seventy years of peace, more or less, is that the European powers,
possibly excepting Germany, are no longer Great Powers.
In such disputes as have seriously escalated the EU has not been a brake. It has if
anything been a promoter of conflict, though its contribution to conflict so far has
necessarily been less than the contribution of its constituent nation states.
The reaction of the western media to these protests in France is quite different compared to
how they reported (aka propagandized) the Arab Spring and the Color Revolutions in Eastern
Europe. There they created the mythology of the liberty loving people vs the authoritarian
state. And the hysteria to gin up support for regime change.
In this instance on the protests in France, on most days there is no reporting. And when
there is any analysis these protesters are deemed as anarchists and troublemakers. I can't
wait for the subversive Russian hand to show up in the NY Times and WaPo. I for one would be
very interested to learn more about the Yellow Vests and the sentiments among the broad
public they are mining. It seems their demands are the demands of the disenfranchised. Those
who have paid the price for the enormous wealth of the Davos globalist elites. It also seems
that 70% of the French public support the protests.
The poll ratings of Macron the favorite of the globalist elites has plummeted that makes
Trump a very popular leader relatively. Will the "regime changers" in the west demand that
Macron go as they would if these protests were taking place in Russia for example?
IMO, the biggest problem in Europe is that an unelected bureaucracy in Brussels has
essentially stripped EU countries of their sovereignty and make classic bureaucratic
decisions that make ordinary lives more challenging, like the well known example of the pages
of directive about the shape and color of bananas that can be sold in the EU, which is an
example of a bureaucracy that is so big that they have to invent knew ways to remain
relevant.
We've seen many countries in Europe starting to take independent stances and pushing back
against the Brussels bureaucracy. Hungary, Czech Republic, Italy are examples of countries in
some conflict with Brussels. Even in Germany what would have been considered fringe political
parties are gaining substantial ground in national, state and local elections. All signs that
the average person is getting more frustrated.
this article from SF is provocative, not so persuasive. The mantra that some German Kamarilla
is ruling the EU, that German "deep state" if you will, exists in order to conquer the
European continent by peaceful, economic, financial means is IMO total BS. Germany is not
sovereign country, that is no. 1; secondly - the important decisions like the Greece bailouts
were made by France (Sarkozy) and others by "pulling Merkel over the table", by ramming these
decisions through the Bundestag without proper deliberations. Thirdly, the ECB boss and the
Board are totally out of German hands. Merkel saw to it that Mario Draghi became the boss,
and not Weidmann. The issue of Greece´s debts and the role of Goldman Sachs in getting
Greece into the Euro zone is well known, and I will not spend any more time digesting it
again here. Facts are that Greece´s billions of Euro´s received from printing
presses, ended up in the pockets of oligarchs, who purchased real estate in Geneva, Lausanne,
Paris, Berlin, Munich, London, New York. The famous 2000 names on Lagarde´ list never
materialized in public.
Now, the state of infrastructure in Germany is bad, people´s savings disappeared,
poverty in old age is a big issue for average German worker. Tell me, how did Germany profit?
There is no disparate power of Germany in the EU. France does not know "wo ihr der Schwanz
steht" - and talking about european military force is of course excluding the control over
the French nuclear arsenal.
I am not linking to sources but I can provide these if so desired, the SF article did not
provide any for their claims.
Fanto - I am so glad that you distinguish between "Germany" - still one of the finest
countries in Europe - and the German ruling apparatus.
The elites tend to drag us along with them when it comes to conflict. So because the
Western power structures are at present opposed to, say, Russia, we must all line up
dutifully and uncritically behind the anti-Russian line. And many of us do just that.
I've seen this mechanism at work in my own country. Our government, Brussels, and the
Irish government are involved in a complex dispute. This is now spilling over into antagonism
on our part against "the Irish" and antagonism on their part against "the Brits" - not
unexpected in the latter case because the Irish do have a fair few reasons for hostility to
"the Brits" in any case. What a mess!
The same mechanism operated internally in the Ukraine. A generalised sense of resentment
against a corrupt and greedy elite was diverted to the quite different channel of conflict
between pro-Russian and anti-Russian sectors of the population.
They got the conflict, all right, but the corrupt and greedy elite is still there.
I believe this will happen to us in Europe if we don't look out. The crony corporatist
club we term "the EU", and the crony corporatist governments of its constituent nations, are
the common burden of the many peoples of Europe. If we allow them to become our leaders in a
fight against each other they will remain our common burden.
The Greek bailout was simply EU self preservation and not in their interests. The IMF was
more lenient that Germany in those bailouts.. Seriously. =)
Germany did not mind the wealth transfer from the southern states, nor the lower euro due
to their economic inefficiencies (see Pres. Trumps comments), Goldman or no Goldman. If the
Chinese do it they are currency manipulators but when Germany does it...
And Germany not spending on infrastructure restrained consumption, imposing their short
sighted austerity on the rest of Europe. This exacerbated the crazy trade surpluses that
Europe had with the rest of the world, basically starving the European consumers and screwing
the USA further.
hah. I would hope no one is suggesting that Merkel's 'refugees for cheap labour' imposed on
Europe was due to American pressure. It is basically an extension of the German predatory
economic polices.
The financial sovereignty of the Eurozone countries, Germany included, is constrained by the
terms of the Maastricht Treaty, by which they are restricted from running budget deficits in
excess of 3%. The north/south divide that has been unfolding since it went into effect early
in this century was uncannily predicted by the late Wynne Godley in the London Review of
Books a few months the treaty's ratification. Godley was a senior analyst in the British
Finance Ministry and his analyses were said by some to be the primary influence in the
government's decision not to forsake the pound for the common currency.
As for Germany having minimal influence on Eurozone financial policy, try telling that to
Yanis Varoufakis, who was the Finance Minister of Greece during the 2015 negotiations that
led to the draconian austerity program under which the country's economy has all but
collapsed and its infrastructure looted at bargain basement prices. There was little question
in his mind that it was Wolfgang Schäuble, the German Finance Minister at the time,
running the show.
exSpec4Chuck, I see that you are full on board of emotional German bashing tour; I can
recommend the book by H.W.Sinn, "Der Euro", Hanser Verlag, 2015. quote (p.27) "....Italiens
große Tageszeitung iL Giornale sieht in Deutschland das Bestreben am Werk, das Vierte
Reich zu errichten... Das linke englische Wochenmagazin New Statesman nannte Angela Merkel
gar das ´gefährlichste deutsche Staatsoberhaupt seit Hitler´ " (if you are
not proficient in German, you can try Google translate).
and what Varoufakis claims are concerned - he was refuted by the research of H.W. Sinn, who
calculated that only 1/3 of money which was going to Greece - benefited the French, German,
American banks, and not 90% as Varoufakis claims. The 2/3rds of it benefited Greeks, who were
buying foreign assets because they did not trust their own economy.
BTW, the introduction of the Euro was a political decision to weaken to Deutsche Mark,
against the Franc, it was promoted by Mitterrand as "better than Versaille", meaning better
than the reparations after WW1. -also called "Versaille without war". So, tell me -who is
right, give me some other points of view, please.
Related to the question ( rethorical? ) you pose, it was really very timely that these
protests in France started just a week after Macron supported the creation of an European
Army....They were organized by social networks ( not workers assemblies, as it is the usual
way amongst French working class movements... )... like the last so succesful electoral
campaign of Bolsonaro.... There is a significant extrem right component and claims for only
low taxes..... In fact it seems that people from the "Yellow Vests" who are willing to
negotiate are receiving death threats from the far-righters, who, at the same time, claim for
the rise to power of a general whom Macron dismissed in the past, once taking over....Then...
it is the presence of strange strong fitted masked people wearing sunglasses and dressed in
military fatigues with backpacks....wearing strange white brazelets.... amongst the first
line in the front of the riots...Believe me, I have seen many working class movements through
these years in Europe and this one resembles more the "Ukrainian Maidan" than any other
else...by its extrem violence, even attacking representative signs of French nation as
Marianne statue, Arc du Triumphe , or even burning of French flags...and calls
to storm L´ Elysée ...
Macron, like it or not, is the legitimate president of France elected in democratic
elections....There is an excellent opportunity to fight him in the next European elections,
since the real fish ( we all seem to agree in that ) is cut in Brussels.... Why it is that
this people can not wait till May..., or is it that the real organizers of these riots do not
expect any good result in those elections, be it because they are fringe organizations with
scarce support amongst the French people, or because they can not concur as subjects to these
elections because they are... well, foreigners...?
There are a lot of people who live far worst that the French today, including people in
the US ( only you would wish to have the still remaining French welfare state...to which the
globalist want to take a dent in...) and then, would you be happy seeing this happening in
the US?
Anyway, am I detecting some schadenfreude here by this South Front people?
Who they are, btw?
I use to read them when at first The Saker was publishing their "analyses"...It seemed to me
they were military people then....
Nobody in the US disputes Macron's legitimacy. His fantastical effort to prevent global
warming by raising the already sky high taxes on consumer energy products are a French
problem and worthy of an Enarch. The US has far fewer bases in Europe that it used to have,
especially in Germany. The remaining ones are there because of a mistaken policy of
containing Russia post USSR.
You Europeans and your governments are fully complicit in that
policy although as Trump observes you are unwilling to fund your own defense adequately under
NATO agreements. As I have said, I personally, think NATO should be dissolved and that
whatever security arrangements should exist between the US and European countries should be
on a bi-lateral basis, but it appears that your governments do not want NATO dissolved.
Pompeo is pretty simplistic guy from the "Coalition for the peace from the position of strength". A neocon hell bent on US hegemony.
And it not true that Mike Pompeo is doing his best to demolish the global neoliberal world order. It just point to US vassals its real
place in the neoliberal pecking order.
Notable quotes:
"... "Multilateralism has too often become viewed as an end unto itself," said Pompeo. "The more treaties we sign, the safer we supposedly are. The more bureaucrats we have, the better the job gets done." Maybe I ran in strange circles during my eight years in the State Department, but few of my colleagues were in thrall to such simplistic thinking. ..."
"... For its part, the Trump administration hasn't been shy about trespassing on other countries' sovereignty. Trump has threatened to invade Venezuela and to punish South Africa for its land-reform policies. By the end of 2017, he had also sanctioned nearly 1,000 individuals and entities. Apparently, there are limits to how much other countries can "exert their sovereignty" within their own borders if doing so goes against the interests of the U.S. ..."
"... The liberal international order actually provides a legal basis for such interventions -- if, that is, you're willing to uphold it and play by its rules. The UN Security Council has passed hundreds of Chapter VII resolutions authorizing action to "restore international peace and security." Many investigations and prosecutions by the ICC, to which all NATO members except Turkey and the U.S. belong, have advanced many U.S. policy interests. Multilateral bodies also provide a forum for resolving lesser disputes. Trump's animus toward the World Trade Organization, for instance, ignores the better than average (and better than China) U.S. winning streak in trade cases. ..."
"... Do multilateral institutions need review, reform and renewal? Well, what institution doesn't? And as the largest funder from 2014 to 2016 for 24 out of 53 leading UN and non-UN multilateral institutions (compared with nine each for Japan and the U.K.), the U.S. has a strong interest in making sure they work effectively and advance the interests of member states. ..."
If a diplomat truly is, as the old saying goes, "an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country," then Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo has earned his pay. His speech in
Brussels on "Restoring the Role of the Nation-State in the Liberal International Order" deserves a State Department Distinguished
Honor Award for Intellectual Dishonesty.
"Multilateralism has too often become viewed as an end unto itself," said Pompeo. "The more treaties we sign, the safer we supposedly
are. The more bureaucrats we have, the better the job gets done." Maybe I ran in strange circles during my eight years in the State
Department, but few of my colleagues were in thrall to such simplistic thinking.
Pompeo then hurled rhetorical grenades at a row of multilateral bunkers: United Nations peacekeeping missions don't work; the
Organization of American States hasn't brought freedom to Cuba; the African Union doesn't advance the mutual interest of its members;
the World Bank and International Monetary Fund just make things worse; the European Union puts the interests of its bureaucrats before
those of its countries and citizens. Admittedly, each of those institutions is imperfect. But none lives down to the caricatures
Pompeo made of them.
Finally, in his own Mount Suribachi moment
, Pompeo brazenly planted the flag of American leadership on an international liberal order that this administration has worked
harder to blow up than to build. Wisely, he beat a retreat after his speech, taking no questions.
So, let's look at his points one by one. In attacking multilateralism, Pompeo claimed that the Trump administration's mission
is "to reassert our sovereignty and we want our friends to help us and exert their sovereignty as well." Trump himself played up
this same theme at the United Nations General Assembly in September.
But it's not clear that multilateral agreements and institutions have actually done much to abuse U.S. sovereignty. The UN
charter , for instance, clearly excludes intervention in
any state's domestic affairs. The U.S. veto on the Security Council gives it an unassailable backstop. America has unrivaled
voting power in the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank. Many of the supposed threats to U.S. sovereignty that the Trump administration has cited have been either
illusory -- such as a hortatory compact on migration the U.S. pulled out of last year -- or could be easily
countered
, such as a possible investigation by the International Criminal Court into U.S. actions in Afghanistan.
For its part, the Trump administration hasn't been shy about trespassing on other countries' sovereignty. Trump has threatened
to invade Venezuela and to punish South Africa for its land-reform policies. By the end of 2017, he had also sanctioned
nearly 1,000 individuals and entities. Apparently,
there are limits to how much other countries can "exert their sovereignty" within their own borders if doing so goes against the
interests of the U.S.
The liberal international order actually provides a legal basis for such interventions -- if, that is, you're willing to uphold
it and play by its rules. The UN Security Council has passed hundreds of Chapter VII resolutions authorizing action to "restore international
peace and security." Many investigations and prosecutions by the ICC, to which all NATO members except Turkey and the U.S. belong,
have advanced many U.S. policy interests. Multilateral bodies also provide a forum for resolving lesser disputes. Trump's animus
toward the World Trade Organization, for instance, ignores the
better than average (and better than China) U.S. winning streak in trade cases.
Even in those situations where international rules may constrain future U.S. behavior, they reflect trade-offs that negotiators
have weighed and accepted. As Secretary of State Dean Rusk said to Congress in 1965 about the thousands of treaties and agreements
that the U.S. had inked in the previous two decades, "We are constantly enlarging our own freedom by being able to predict what others
are going to do."
At their best, multilateral institutions allow their member states to leverage national power. Twice in the last decade, the U.S.
Government Accountability Office has compared the cost of UN peacekeeping missions to U.S. boots on the ground and found them to
be a much more cost-effective
alternative . Fittingly, two days after Pompeo blasted his hosts at the EU for shortchanging the interests of its members' citizens,
news broke of a massive, multi-nation EU-coordinated
raid on the 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate in
Italy -- the kind of bust that no country can mount on its own.
Do multilateral institutions need review, reform and renewal? Well, what institution doesn't? And as the
largest funder
from 2014 to 2016 for 24 out of 53 leading UN and non-UN multilateral institutions (compared with nine each for Japan and the
U.K.), the U.S. has a strong interest in making sure they work effectively and advance the interests of member states.
But the way to do that isn't to browbeat them, or to take your ball and go home when things don't go your way. For all the weaknesses
of the UN Human Rights Council, the U.S. withdrawal (Iceland
took its place) won't make it better, and makes it even less likely that offenders will be held to account. Moreover, China and Russia
are busy building their own multilateral bodies or suborning existing ones like
Interpol .
Pompeo claimed that the U.S. wants to create international organizations "that deliver on their stated missions, and that create
value for the liberal order and for the world." But the administration's drastic budget cuts to the State Department and international
organizations (which a more multilaterally-minded Congress
has blunted) and its preference for bilateral over multilateral deals suggest it would rather they withered on the vine. Equally
toxic has been Trump's disdain for the work of experts and seasoned public servants -- witness his recent repudiation of a searing
U.S. government
report on climate change's economic impact.
One of my wonkiest jobs as a Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo was to cover Japan's conduct in commodities
groups such as the International Tropical Timber Organization, the International Coffee Organization and the now-defunct International
Natural Rubber Organization. I never became an expert, though I did come to understand why Japan has such good coffee. I did, however,
develop a healthy respect for the wonks, nerds and gnomes who inhabit the multilateral garden, tending to their countries' national
interests while advancing the greater common good. They need and deserve your support, Mr. Secretary, not your contempt.
"... The unquenchable quest for high income on the part of the upper classes must be halted. ..."
"... They maintain it is a mistake to isolate it merely in the context of the financial innovation and deregulation occurring from the late 1990s. Instead, capitalism has particular historical tendencies and specific class relations. ..."
"... However, because politics and social class alliances can change, so can the profitability. The current crisis was not caused by falling rates of profits, but by financial innovation, credit overextension, and the particular social class alliances facilitating these activities. ..."
Neoliberalism is a new stage of capitalism that emerged in the wake of the
structural crisis of the 1970s. It expresses the strategy of the capitalist classes
in alliance with upper management, specifically financial managers, in-
tending to strengthen their hegemony and to expand it globally. As of 2004,
when our book Capital Resurgent: Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution was
published by Harvard University Press, this strategy appeared successful,
based on its own objectives, the income and wealth of a privileged minority,
and the dominance of a country. The contemporary crisis is an outcome
of the contradictions inherent in that strategy. The crisis revealed the
strategy's unsustainable character, leading to what can be denoted as the
"crisis of neoliberalism." Neoliberal trends ultimately unsettled the foundations
of the economy of the "secure base" of the upper classes -- the capability of the United States
to grow, maintain the leadership of its financial institutions worldwide, and ensure the dominance of its currency
-- a class and imperial strategy that resulted in a stalemate.
A New Social Order-A Multipolar World
The crisis of neoliberalism is the fourth structural crisis in capitalism since
the late nineteenth century. Each of these earthquakes introduced the establishment
of a new social order and deeply altered international relations. The
contemporary crisis marks the beginning of a similar process of transition.
Not only is financial regulation involved, but a new corporate governance,
the rebuilding of the financial sector, and new policies are now required. The
basic tenets and practices of neoliberal globalization will be questioned, and
production has to be "re-territorialized" in the United States to a significant
extent. Accordingly, countries such as China, India, or Brazil will become
gradually less dependent on their relationship to the United States. It will be,
in particular, quite difficult to correct for the macro trajectory of declining
trends of accumulation and cumulative disequilibria of the U.S. economy
once the present Great Contraction is stopped.
In any event, the new world order will be more multipolar than at present. Further, if such changes are not realized successfully in
the United States, the decline of U.S. international hegemony could be sharp. None of the urgently required tasks in the coming
decades to slow down the comparative decline of the U.S. economy can be realized under the same class leadership and unchecked
globalizing trends. The unquenchable quest for high income on the part of the upper classes must be halted. Much will
depend on the pressure exerted by the popular classes and the peoples of the world, but the "national factor," that is, the national
commitment in favor of the preservation of U.S. preeminence worldwide, could play a crucial role. The necessary adjustment can be realized in the context of a new
social arrangement to the Right or to the Left, although, as of the last months
of 2009, the chances of a Left alternative appear slim.
It is important to understand that the contemporary crisis is only the
initial step in a longer process of rectification. How long this process will
last depends on the severity of the crisis, and national and international
political strife. The capability of the U.S. upper classes to perform the much
needed adjustment and the willingness of China to соllaborate will be
crucial factors. A crisis of the dollar could precipitate a sequence of events
that would alter the basic features of the process.
Two very distinct categories of phenomena are involved in the analysis of the contemporary crisis: the historical dynamics of
capitalism, on the one hand, and financial and macro mechanisms, on the other hand. The interpretation of the crisis lies at the
intersection of these two sets of processes, and the difficulty is to do justice to both and account for their reciprocal
relationships.
Neoliberalism should be understood as a new phase in the evolution of capitalism. As such, it can be described
intrinsically-its basic mechanisms and contradictions. The reference to a m ost recent phase raises, however, the issue of
previous phases. The comparison with earlier periods reveals the traits proper to the new period. The analysis of the social,
political, and economic trends that led to the establishment of neoliberalism is also telling of the nature and fate of this
social order. Symmetrically, the notion of a crisis of neoliberalism implies a possible transition to a new phase, and the
nature of the society that will prevail in the wake of the contemporary crisis is a major component of the investigation here.
... ... ...
A central thesis in Capital Resurgent: Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution
is that the overall dynamics of capitalism under neoliberalism,
both nationally and internationally, were determined by new class
objectives that worked to the benefit of the highest income brackets,
capitalist owners, and the upper fractions of management. The greater
concentration of income in favor of a privileged minority was a crucial
achievement of the new social order. Income statement data make this
apparent. In this respect, a social order is also a power configuration,
and implicit in this latter notion is "class" power. National accounting
frameworks add to this observation that a large and increasing fraction
of U.S. capital income comes from outside of the United States. Not only
class relations are involved, but also imperial hierarchies, a permanent
feature of capitalism.
The new configuration of income distribution was the outcome of
various converging trends. Strong pressure was placed on the mass of
salaried workers, which helped restore profit rates from their low levels
of the 1970s or, at least, to put an end to their downward trend. The opening
of trade and capital frontiers paved the way to large investments in
the regions of the world where prevailing social conditions allowed for
high returns, thus generating income flows in favor of the U.S. upper
classes (and broader groups that benefit to some extent by capital income).
Free trade increased the pressure on workers, the effect of the
competition emanating from countries where labor costs are low. Large
capital income flows also derived from the growing indebtedness of households
and the government. Extreme degrees of sophistication and expansion
of financial mechanisms were reached after 2000, allowing for
tremendous incomes in the financial sector and in rich households. The
crisis, finally, revealed that a significant fraction of these flows of income
were based on dubious profits, due to a n increasing overvaluation of
securities.
Besides the comparative interests of social classes, the leading position
of the United States, economically, politically, and militarily, must also
be considered. The political conditions underlying the dominance of the
United States in the decades preceding the crisis are well known. Two
major factors are the fall of the Soviet Union and the weakness of Europe
as a political entity. Neoliberalism corrected for the earlier decline of
the leadership of the United States in the 1970s, at least vis-a-vis Europe
and Japan. The U.S. economy is still the largest in the world in terms of
gross domestic product (GDP), with a leadership in fields as important
as research and innovation, both in production and financial mecha-
nisms. As a consequence, the dollar is acknowledged as the international
currency.
The international neoliberal order -- known as neoliberal globalization --
was imposed throughout the world, from the main capitalist countries of
the center to the less developed countries of the periphery, often at the cost
of severe crises as in Asia and Latin America during the 1990s and after
2000. As in any stage of imperialism, the major instruments of these international
power relations, beyond straightforward economic violence, are
corruption, subversion, and war. The main political tool is always the establishment
of a local imperial-friendly government. The collaboration of the
elites of the dominated country is crucial, as well as, in contemporary capitalism,
the action of international institutions such as the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the
World Bank (WB), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Economically, the purpose
of this domination is the extraction of a "surplus" through
the imposition of low prices of natural resources and investment abroad, be
it portfolio or foreign direct investment. That countries of the periphery
want to sell their natural resources and are eager to receive foreign invest-
ment does not change the nature of the relations of domination, just as
when, within a given country, workers want to sell their labor power, the
ultimate source of profit.
The same notion, hegemony, is used here to refer to both class hierarchi-
cal relationships, as in neoliberalism, and imperialism internationally. No
distinction is made between hegemony and domination as in approaches of
Gramscian inspiration. The notion emphasizes a common aspect within
class and international mechanisms. In each instance, a class or country
leads a process of domination in which various agents are involved. In
neoliberalism, the upper fractions of capitalist classes, supported by finan-
cial institutions, act as leaders within the broader group of upper classes in
the exercise of their common domination. Similarly, the United States acts
as leader within the broader group of imperialist countries.
... ... ..
..the upper classes, to the Right. A shift would occur within the compara-
tive interests of these classes.
b. It is hard to imagine that such a far-reaching transformation would
be accomplished without significant support from the popular classes. A
degree of concession to the popular classes might be necessary. Consequently,
a political orientation to the Center Right could be expected.
3. Diversification in the rest of the world. Such a new strategy of strengthening
of the U.S. domestic economy would have important consequences for countries
of the periphery profoundly engaged in the neoliberal international
division of labor. But, in the long run, such trends open opportunities
toward the establishment of national development models as was the case
after the Great Depression (as in import-substitution industrialization in
Latin America), the much needed alternative to neoliberal globalization.
Independent of the path followed by the United States, the situation will
differ significantly around the globe. An increased diversity will be observed
in the establishment of new social orders more or less to the Right
or to the Left. Europe is not committed to international hegemony as is the
United States, and the European Union is politically unable to pursue such
an ambitious strategy. Europe might-paradoxically, given its history -- become the traditional
neoliberal stronghold in the coming decades.
It is still unclear whether social democratic trends in a few countries of Latin America
will open new avenues to social progress. The crucial factor
will be the impact of the contemporary crisis on China. Either, having suecessfully
superseded the consequences of the crisis, China will experience
strengthened neoliberal trends as if nothing had happened, or the experience
of the crisis, in China itself or in the rest of the world, will work in
favor of a "third way" along the contemporary pattern of the mixed economy
that prevails in China.
Even if new social arrangements are successfully established in the
United States, it is hard to imagine that U.S. hegemony will be preserved.
There will be no clear substitute to an impaired U.S. dominance, and a
multipolar configuration, around regional leaders, will gradually prevail
in the coming decades. A bipolar world, Atlantic and Asian, is a possible
outcome. Abstracting from rising international confrontation if conflicting
interests cannot be superseded, the optimistic scenario is that new international
hierarchies will be expressed within international institutions
to which the task of global governance would be slowly transferred.
This
new environment would be favorable to the international diversification of
social orders around the globe. This would mean a sharp break with the
logic of neoliberal globalization, with a potential for developing countries
depending, as in the case of the popular classes concerning domestic social
orders, on what these countries would be able to impose.
This book can be highly recommended as a book on the Great Financial
Crisis of 2008, and a book of politics, political economy, class analysis,
sociology, and history. Very impressive accomplishment.
The strength of this book on the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 is that
Dumenil and Levy place the crisis in a larger historical perspective.
They maintain it is a mistake to isolate it merely in the context of
the financial innovation and deregulation occurring from the late 1990s.
Instead, capitalism has particular historical tendencies and specific class
relations.
This is a very impressive volume published by Harvard University Press.
It offers a play by play of the Great Financial Recession of 2008, beginning
from 2000 in chapters 12 - 17, the political response and the continued
stagnation in domestic economies and instability within the international
economic order in chapters 18 - 20, along with very interesting historical
policy observations and recommendations for this current crisis in chapters
21 - 25. Nonetheless the real power of this book occurs in its historical
analysis of capitalist development since 1970s described in great detail
in chapters 1 - 11.
According to Dumenil and Levy the historical
tendencies of capitalism are radically mediated by politics and social class
configurations (i.e. alliances). They argue capitalistic
development, since 1880s, has gone through four primary stages and corresponding
crises. They emphasize these developments are not historically necessary,
but contingent on politics and social class configurations. Moreover, their
analysis is particular to the capitalistic development in the United States
and Western Europe, they are able to generalize or internationalize their
analysis because of the U.S. global hegemony (although they certainly accept
there are modes of resisting this hegemony (e.g. Iran, Venezuela, Cuba,
China, etc.).
Dumenil and Levy have demonstrated in previous work the tendency of the
rate of profit to fall in capitalistic economies. However, because politics
and social class alliances can change, so can the profitability. The current
crisis was not caused by falling rates of profits, but by financial innovation,
credit overextension, and the particular social class alliances facilitating
these activities. There is no single cause of the crisis, but broader
social political mechanisms at work and in the process of transformation.
The basic story goes like this: following the Great Depression of 1930
a strong social political alliance emerged between
the management class and "popular classes" (this popular
class includes blue and white collar workers, including quasi-management,
clerical, and professional, which cannot be reduced to the traditional "working-class").
In the 1970s there was a severe profitability crisis, the legislative and
institutional response to this crisis caused a fracture between management
and popular classes, and a re-alliance between
management and capitalist classes (which includes ownership and financial
classes).
Once the alliance between capitalist classes and management had been
forged in late 1970s and 1980s, profitability returned and financial incentives
and financial innovation reconfigured personal incentives and corporate
motivations. Most important according to Dumenil and Levy is that these
historical transformations manifested a "divorce" between ownership/finance
and the domestic economy and its actual production process. The political
system did nothing to reconcile this disconnect, indeed expedited the divorce
via deregulation and financial innovation, what the economic literature
calls "financialization" (although, to repeat in several countries the response
was radically different and in specific opposition to U.S. hegemony and
the neo-liberalism which the U.S. Treasury, IMF, World Bank, and WTO exported
to the rest of the world).
No-deal Brexit: Disruption at Dover 'could
last six months' BBC. I have trouble understanding why six months. The UK's customs IT
system won't be ready and there's no reason to think it will be ready even then. I could
see things getting less bad due to adaptations but "less bad" is not normal
The
Great Brexit Breakdown Wall Street Journal. Some parts I quibble with, but generally
good and includes useful historical detail.
The "special relationship" between the United States and the United Kingdom is often assumed
to be one where the once-great, sophisticated Brits are subordinate to the upstart, uncouth
Yanks.
Iconic of this assumption is the mocking of former prime minister Tony Blair as George W.
Bush's "poodle" for his riding shotgun on the ill-advised American stagecoach blundering into
Iraq in 2003. Blair was in good practice, having served as Bill Clinton's dogsbody in the no
less criminal NATO aggression against Serbia over Kosovo in 1999.
On the surface, the UK may seem just one more vassal state on par with Germany, Japan, South
Korea, and
so many other useless so-called allies . We control their intelligence services, their
military commands, their think tanks, and much of their media. We can sink their financial
systems and economies at will. Emblematic is German Chancellor Angela Merkel's impotent ire at
discovering the Obama administration had listened in on her cell phone, about which she –
did precisely nothing. Global hegemony means never having to say you're sorry.
These countries know on which end of the leash they are: the one attached to the collar
around their necks. The hand unmistakably is in Washington. These semi-sovereign countries
answer to the US with the same servility as member states of the Warsaw Pact once heeded the
USSR's Politburo. (Sometimes more. Communist Romania, though then a member of the Warsaw Pact
refused to participate in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia or even allow Soviet or other
Pact forces to cross its territory.
By contrast, during NATO's 1999 assault on Serbia, Bucharest allowed NATO military aircraft
access to its airspace, even though not yet a member of that alliance and despite most
Romanians' opposition to the campaign.)
But the widespread perception of Britain as just another satellite may be misleading.
To start with, there are some relationships where it seems the US is the vassal dancing to
the tune of the foreign capital, not the other way around. Israel is the unchallenged champion
in this weight class, with Saudi Arabia a runner up. The alliance between Prime Minister Bibi
Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) – the ultimate Washington
"power couple" – to get the Trump administration to destroy Iran for them has American
politicos listening for instructions with all the rapt attention of the terrier Nipper on the RCA
Victor logo . (Or did, until the recent disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Whether this portends a real shift in
American attitudes toward Riyadh remains questionable .
Saudi cash still speaks loudly and will continue to do so whether or not MbS stays in
charge.)
Specifics of the peculiar US-UK relationship stem from the period of flux at the end of
World War II. The United States emerged from the war in a commanding position economically and
financially, eclipsing Britannia's declining empire that simply no longer had the resources to
play the leading role. That didn't mean, however, that London trusted the Americans' ability to
manage things without their astute guidance. As Tony Judt describes in Postwar , the
British attitude of "
superiority towards the country that had displaced them at the imperial apex " was "nicely
captured" in a scribble during negotiations regarding the UK's postwar loan:
In Washington Lord Halifax
Once whispered to Lord Keynes:
"It's true they have the moneybags
But we have all the brains."
Even in its diminished condition London found it could punch well above its weight by
exerting its influence on its stronger but (it was confident) dumber cousins across the Pond.
It helped that as the Cold War unfolded following former Prime Minister Winston
Churchill's 1946 Iron Curtain speech there were very close ties between sister agencies
like MI6 (founded 1909) and the newer wartime OSS (1942), then the CIA (1947); likewise the
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ, 1919) and the National Security Administration
(NSA, 1952). Comparable sister agencies – perhaps more properly termed daughters of their
UK mothers – were set up in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. This became the so-called
"Five Eyes" of the tight Anglosphere spook community, infamous
for spying on each others' citizens to avoid pesky legal prohibitions on domestic
surveillance .
Despite not having two farthings to rub together,
impoverished Britain – where wartime rationing wasn't fully ended until 1954 – had
a prime seat at the table fashioning the world's postwar financial structure. The 1944 Bretton Woods
conference was largely an Anglo-American affair , of which the
aforementioned Lord John Maynard Keynes was a prominent architect along with Harry Dexter
White, Special Assistant to the US Secretary of the Treasury and Soviet agent.
American and British agendas also dovetailed in the Middle East. While the US didn't have
much of a presence in the region before the 1945 meeting between US President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt and Saudi King ibn Saud, founder of the third and current ( and hopefully last ) Saudi state – and didn't
assume a dominant role until the humiliation inflicted on Britain, France, and Israel by
President Dwight Eisenhower during the 1956 Suez Crisis – London has long considered much
of the region within its sphere of influence. After World War I under the Sykes-Picot agreement with
France , the UK had expanded her holdings on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, including
taking a decisive
role in consolidating Saudi Arabia under ibn Saud. While in the 1950s the US largely
stepped into Britain's role managing the "East of Suez," the former suzerain was by no means
dealt out. The UK was a founding member with the US of the now-defunct Central Treaty
Organization (CENTO) in 1955.
CENTO – like NATO and their one-time eastern counterpart, the Southeast Asia Treaty
Organization (SEATO) – was designed as a counter to the USSR. But in the case of Britain,
the history of hostility to Russia under tsar or commissar alike has much deeper and longer
roots, going back at least to the
Crimean War in the 1850s . The reasons for the longstanding British vendetta against Russia
are not entirely clear and seem to have disparate roots: the desire to ensure that no one power
is dominant on the European mainland (directed first against France, then Russia, then Germany,
then the USSR and again Russia); maintaining supremacy on the seas by denying Russia
warm-waters ports, above all the Dardanelles; and making sure territories of a dissolving
Ottoman empire would be taken under the wing of London, not Saint Petersburg. As described by
Andrew
Lambert , professor of naval history at King's College London, the Crimean War still echoes
today :
"In the 1840s, 1850s, Britain and America are not the chief rivals; it's Britain and
Russia. Britain and Russia are rivals for world power, and Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, which
is much larger than modern Turkey -- it includes modern Romania, Bulgaria, parts of Serbia,
and also Egypt and Arabia -- is a declining empire. But it's the bulwark between Russia,
which is advancing south and west, and Britain, which is advancing east and is looking to
open its connections up through the Mediterranean into its empire in India and the Pacific.
And it's really about who is running Turkey. Is it going to be a Russian satellite, a bit
like the Eastern Bloc was in the Cold War, or is it going to be a British satellite, really
run by British capital, a market for British goods? And the Crimean War is going to be the
fulcrum for this cold war to actually go hot for a couple of years, and Sevastopol is going
to be the fulcrum for that fighting."
Control of the Middle East – and opposing the Russians – became a British
obsession, first to sustain the lifeline to India, the Jewel in the Crown of the empire, then for
control of petroleum, the life's blood of modern economies. In the context of the 19th and
early 20th century Great Game of empire, that was understandable. Much later, similar
considerations might even support Jimmy Carter's taking up much the same position, declaring in
1980 that "outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an
assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be
repelled by any means necessary, including military force." The USSR was then a superpower and
we were dependent on energy from the Gulf region.
But what's our reason for maintaining that posture almost four decades later when the Soviet
Union is gone and the US doesn't need Middle Eastern oil? There are no reasonable national
interests, only corporate interests and those of the Arab monarchies we laughably claim as
allies. Add to that the bureaucracies and habits of mind that link the US and UK
establishments, including their intelligence and financial components.
In view of all the foregoing, what then would policymakers in the United Kingdom think about
an aspirant to the American presidency who not only disparages the value of existing alliances
– without which Britain is a bit player – but
openly pledges to improve relations with Moscow ? To what lengths would they go to stop
him?
Say 'hello' to Russiagate!
One can argue whether or not the phony claim of the Trump campaign's "collusion" with Moscow
was hatched in London or whether the British just lent some "
hands across the water " to an effort concocted by the Democratic National Committee, the
Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, the Clinton Foundation, and their collaborators at
Fusion GPS and inside the Obama administration. Either way, it's clear that while evidence of
Russian connection is nonexistent that of British agencies is unmistakable, as is the UK's hand
in a sustained campaign of demonization and isolation to sink any possible
rapprochement between the US and Russia .
As for Russiagate itself, just try to find anyone involved who's actually Russian. The only
basis for the widespread assumption that any material in the Dirty Dossier that underlies the
whole operation
originated with Russia is the claim of Christopher Steele , the British "ex" spy who wrote
it, evidently in collaboration with people at the US State Department and Fusion GPS. (The
notion that Steele, who hadn't been in Russia for years, would have Kremlin personal contacts
is absurd. How chummy are the heads of the American section of Chinese or Russian intelligence
with White House staff?)
Andrew Wood , a
former British ambassador to Russia Stefan Halper , a dual US-UK citizen. Ex-MI6 Director
Richard Dearlove . Robert Hannigan , former director of GCHQ; there is
reason to think surveillance of Trump was conducted by GCHQ as well as by US agencies under
FISA warrants. Hannigan abruptly resigned from GCHQ soon after the British government denied
the agency had engaged in such spying. Alexander Downer , Australian diplomat (well, not
British but remember the Five Eyes!). Joseph Mifsud , Maltese academic and suspected British
agent.
At present, the full role played by those listed above is not known. Release of unredacted
FISA warrant requests by the Justice Department, which President Trump ordered weeks ago, would
shed light on a number of details. Implementation of that order was derailed after a request by
– no surprise – British Prime Minister Theresa May . Was she seeking
to conceal Russian perfidy, or her own underlings'?
It would be bad enough if Russiagate were the sum of British meddling in American affairs
with the aim of torpedoing relations with Moscow. (And to be fair, it wasn't just the UK and
Australia. Also implicated are Estonia,
Israel, and Ukraine .) But there is also reason to suspect the same motive in
false accusations against Russia with respect to the supposed Novichok
poisonings in England has a connection to Russiagate via a business associate of Steele's,
one Pablo Miller , Sergei
Skripal's MI6 recruiter . (So if it turns out there is any Russian connection to the
dossier, it could be from Skripal or another dubious expat source, not from the Russian
government.) Skripal and his daughter Yulia have disappeared in British custody. Moscow
flatly accuses MI6 of poisoning them as a false flag to blame it on Russia.
A similar pattern
can be seen with claims of chemical weapons use in Syria : "We have irrefutable evidence
that the special services of a state which is in the forefront of the Russophobic campaign had
a hand in the staging" of a faked chemical weapons attack in Douma in April 2018. Ambassador
Aleksandr Yakovenko pointed to the so-called White Helmets, which is closely associated with
al-Qaeda elements and considered by some their PR arm: "I am naming them because they have done
things like this before. They are famous for staging attacks in Syria and they receive UK
money." Moscow warned for weeks before the now-postponed Syrian government offensive in Idlib
that the same ruse was being prepared
again with direct British intelligence involvement, even having prepared in advance a video
showing victims of an attack that had not yet occurred.
The campaign to demonize Russia shifted into high gear recently with the UK, together with
the US and the Netherlands,
accusing Russian military intelligence of a smorgasbord of cyberattacks against the World
Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and other sports organizations, the Organization for the Prohibition
of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the Dutch investigation into the downing of MH-17 over Ukraine, and
a Swiss lab involved with the Skripal case, plus assorted election interference. In case anyone
didn't get the point,
British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson declared : "This is not the actions of a great
power. This is the actions of a pariah state, and we will continue working with allies to
isolate them."
In sum, we are seeing a massive, coordinated hybrid campaign of psy-ops and political warfare
conducted not by Russia but against Russia, concocted by the UK and its Deep
State collaborators in the United States. But it's not only aimed at Russia, it's an attack
on the United States by the government of a foreign country that's supposed to be one of
our closest allies, a country with which we share many venerable traditions of language, law,
and culture.
But for far too long, largely for reasons of historical inertia and elite corruption, we've
allowed that government to exercise undue influence on our global policies in a manner not
conducive to our own national interests. Now that government, employing every foul deception
that earned it the moniker Perfidious Albion , seeks to embroil us
in a quarrel with the only country on the planet that can destroy us if things get out of
control.
This must stop. A thorough reappraisal of our "special relationship" with the United Kingdom
and exposure of its activities to the detriment of the US is imperative.
James George Jatras is an analyst, former U.S. diplomat and foreign policy adviser to
the Senate GOP leadership.
"... Non-elite members of the Party -- functionaries -- mistake their "secret" knowledge as professional courtesy rather than as perquisite and status marker. (I don't suppose it's a secret to anyone that the US CIA regularly plants stories in the NYTimes and elsewhere... unless you weren't paying attention in the strident disinfo campaign prior to the Iraq invasion.) ..."
Howard Zinn said, in a speech given shortly after the 2008 Presidential election, "If you don't know history, it's like you were
born yesterday. The government can tell you anything." (Speech was played on DemocracyNow www.democracynow.org about Jan. 4, 2009
and is archived, free on the website.)
Being older (18 on my last Leap Year birthday - 72), I recall the NYTimes and CIA have had relationship with, and was caught
having "planted CIA workers" as NYTimes writers. Within my adult lifetime, in fact.
This is what the CIA reflexively does: insists that [...] it is an "intelligence matter".
In a sense the CIA is always going to be right on this one - "Central Intelligence Agency" - but only as a matter of nomenclature,
rather than of any other dictionary definition of the word "intelligence".
Actually the collusion between the CIA and big business is far more damaging. The first US company I worked for in Brussels (it
was my first job) was constantly being targeted by the US media for having connections to corrupt South American and Third World
regimes. On what seemed like an almost monthly basis our personnel department would send round memos saying that we were strictly
forbidden to talk to journalists about the latest exposé.
It was great fun - even the telex operators knew who the spies were.
The line "'The optics aren't what they look like,' is truly an instant classic. It reminds me of one of my favorite Yogi Berra
quotes (which, unlike many attributed to him, is real, I think). Yogi once said about a restaurant in New York "Nobody goes there
anymore. It's too crowded." Perhaps Yogi should become an editor for the Times.
British readers will no doubt be shocked -- shocked! -- to learn of cozy relations between a major news organization and a national
intelligence agency.
"'I know the circumstances, and if you knew everything that's going on, you'd know it's much ado about nothing,' Baquet
said. 'I can't go into in detail. But I'm confident after talking to Mark that it's much ado about nothing.'
"'The optics aren't what they look like,' he went on. 'I've talked to Mark, I know the circumstance, and given what I know,
it's much ado about nothing.'"
How can you have a Party if you don't have Party elites?
And how can a self-respecting member of the Party claim their individual status within the Party without secret knowledge designed
to identify one another as members of the Party elite?
[Proles are] natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals ... Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance
not only to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals the Party was trying to achieve. ... The
ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering -- a world of of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines
and terrifying weapons -- a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts
and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting -- 300 million people all with the same
face. The reality was decaying, dingy cities, where underfed people shuffled to and fro in leaky shoes... [
1984 ,pp 73-74]
It makes no difference if an imagined socialist England, a collapsing Roman city-state empire, an actual Soviet Union, or a
modern American oligarchy.
Party members thrive while those wretched proles flail in confused and hungry desperation for something authentic (like a George
Bush) or even simply reassuring (like a Barack Obama.)
Non-elite members of the Party -- functionaries -- mistake their "secret" knowledge as professional courtesy rather than
as perquisite and status marker. (I don't suppose it's a secret to anyone that the US CIA regularly plants stories in the NYTimes
and elsewhere... unless you weren't paying attention in the strident disinfo campaign prior to the Iraq invasion.)
Manzetti has "no bad intent" because he is loyal to the Party.
Like all loyal (and very well compensated) Party members, he would never do anything as subversive as reveal Party secrets.
"... The term is used as a catchall for anything that smacks of deregulation, liberalisation, privatisation or fiscal austerity. Today it is routinely reviled as a shorthand for the ideas and practices that have produced growing economic insecurity and inequality, led to the loss of our political values and ideals, and even precipitated our current populist backlash ..."
"... The use of the term "neoliberal" exploded in the 1990s, when it became closely associated with two developments, neither of which Peters's article had mentioned. One of these was financial deregulation, which would culminate in the 2008 financial crash and in the still-lingering euro debacle . The second was economic globalisation, which accelerated thanks to free flows of finance and to a new, more ambitious type of trade agreement. Financialisation and globalisation have become the most overt manifestations of neoliberalism in today's world. ..."
"... That neoliberalism is a slippery, shifting concept, with no explicit lobby of defenders, does not mean that it is irrelevant or unreal. ..."
"... homo economicus ..."
"... A version of this article first appeared in Boston Review ..."
"... Main illustration by Eleanor Shakespeare ..."
As even its harshest critics concede, neoliberalism is hard to pin down. In broad terms, it denotes a preference for markets over
government, economic incentives over cultural norms, and private entrepreneurship over collective action. It has been used to describe
a wide range of phenomena – from Augusto Pinochet to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, from the Clinton Democrats and the UK's
New Labour to the economic opening in China and the reform of the welfare state in Sweden.
The term is used as a catchall for anything that smacks of deregulation, liberalisation, privatisation or fiscal austerity.
Today it is routinely reviled as a shorthand for the ideas and practices that have produced growing economic insecurity and inequality,
led to the loss of our political values and ideals, and even precipitated our current populist backlash .
We live in the age of neoliberalism, apparently. But who are neoliberalism's adherents and disseminators – the neoliberals themselves?
Oddly, you have to go back a long time to find anyone explicitly embracing neoliberalism. In 1982, Charles Peters, the longtime editor
of the political magazine Washington Monthly, published an essay titled
A Neo-Liberal's Manifesto . It makes for interesting reading 35 years later, since the neoliberalism it describes bears little
resemblance to today's target of derision. The politicians Peters names as exemplifying the movement are not the likes of Thatcher
and Reagan, but rather liberals – in the US sense of the word – who have become disillusioned with unions and big government and
dropped their prejudices against markets and the military.
The use of the term "neoliberal" exploded in the 1990s, when it became closely associated with two developments, neither of
which Peters's article had mentioned. One of these was financial deregulation, which would culminate in the 2008
financial
crash and in the still-lingering euro debacle
. The second was economic globalisation, which accelerated thanks to free flows of finance and to a new, more ambitious type of trade
agreement. Financialisation and globalisation have become the most overt manifestations of neoliberalism in today's world.
That neoliberalism is a slippery, shifting concept, with no explicit lobby of defenders, does not mean that it is irrelevant
or unreal. Who can deny that the world has experienced a decisive shift toward markets from the 1980s on? Or that centre-left
politicians – Democrats in the US, socialists and social democrats in Europe – enthusiastically adopted some of the central creeds
of Thatcherism and Reaganism, such as deregulation, privatisation, financial liberalisation and individual enterprise? Much of our
contemporary policy discussion remains infused with principles supposedly grounded in the concept of
homo economicus
, the perfectly rational human being, found in many economic theories, who always pursues his own self-interest.
But the looseness of the term neoliberalism also means that criticism of it often misses the mark. There is nothing wrong with
markets, private entrepreneurship or incentives – when deployed appropriately. Their creative use lies behind the most significant
economic achievements of our time. As we heap scorn on neoliberalism, we risk throwing out some of neoliberalism's useful ideas.
The real trouble is that mainstream economics shades too easily into ideology, constraining the choices that we appear to have
and providing cookie-cutter solutions. A proper understanding of the economics that lie behind neoliberalism would allow us to identify
– and to reject – ideology when it masquerades as economic science. Most importantly, it would help us to develop the institutional
imagination we badly need to redesign capitalism for the 21st century.
N eoliberalism is typically understood as being based on key tenets of mainstream economic science. To see those tenets without
the ideology, consider this thought experiment. A well-known and highly regarded economist lands in a country he has never visited
and knows nothing about. He is brought to a meeting with the country's leading policymakers. "Our country is in trouble," they tell
him. "The economy is stagnant, investment is low, and there is no growth in sight." They turn to him expectantly: "Please tell us
what we should do to make our economy grow."
The economist pleads ignorance and explains that he knows too little about the country to make any recommendations. He would need
to study the history of the economy, to analyse the statistics, and to travel around the country before he could say anything.
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But his hosts are insistent. "We understand your reticence, and we wish you had the time for all that," they tell him. "But isn't
economics a science, and aren't you one of its most distinguished practitioners? Even though you do not know much about our economy,
surely there are some general theories and prescriptions you can share with us to guide our economic policies and reforms."
The economist is now in a bind. He does not want to emulate those economic gurus he has long criticised for peddling their favourite
policy advice. But he feels challenged by the question. Are there universal truths in economics? Can he say anything valid or useful?
So he begins. The efficiency with which an economy's resources are allocated is a critical determinant of the economy's performance,
he says. Efficiency, in turn, requires aligning the incentives of households and businesses with social costs and benefits. The incentives
faced by entrepreneurs, investors and producers are particularly important when it comes to economic growth. Growth needs a system
of property rights and contract enforcement that will ensure those who invest can retain the returns on their investments. And the
economy must be open to ideas and innovations from the rest of the world.
But economies can be derailed by macroeconomic instability, he goes on. Governments must therefore pursue a sound
monetary policy , which means restricting the growth of liquidity to the increase in nominal money demand at reasonable inflation.
They must ensure fiscal sustainability, so that the increase in public debt does not outpace national income. And they must carry
out prudential regulation of banks and other financial institutions to prevent the financial system from taking excessive risk.
Now he is warming to his task. Economics is not just about efficiency and growth, he adds. Economic principles also carry over
to equity and social policy. Economics has little to
say about how much redistribution a society should seek. But it does tell us that the tax base should be as broad as possible, and
that social programmes should be designed in a way that does not encourage workers to drop out of the labour market.
By the time the economist stops, it appears as if he has laid out a fully fledged neoliberal agenda. A critic in the audience
will have heard all the code words: efficiency, incentives, property rights, sound money, fiscal prudence. And yet the universal
principles that the economist describes are in fact quite open-ended. They presume a capitalist economy – one in which investment
decisions are made by private individuals and firms – but not much beyond that. They allow for – indeed, they require – a surprising
variety of institutional arrangements.
So has the economist just delivered a neoliberal screed? We would be mistaken to think so, and our mistake would consist of associating
each abstract term – incentives, property rights, sound money – with a particular institutional counterpart. And therein lies the
central conceit, and the fatal flaw, of neoliberalism: the belief that first-order economic principles map on to a unique set of
policies, approximated by a Thatcher/Reagan-style agenda.
Consider property rights. They matter insofar as they allocate returns on investments. An optimal system would distribute property
rights to those who would make the best use of an asset, and afford protection against those most likely to expropriate the returns.
Property rights are good when they protect innovators from free riders, but they are bad when they protect them from competition.
Depending on the context, a legal regime that provides the appropriate incentives can look quite different from the standard US-style
regime of private property rights.
This may seem like a semantic point with little practical import; but China's phenomenal economic success is largely due to its
orthodoxy-defying institutional tinkering. China turned to markets, but did not copy western practices in property rights. Its reforms
produced market-based incentives through a series of unusual institutional arrangements that were better adapted to the local context.
Rather than move directly from state to private ownership, for example, which would have been stymied by the weakness of the prevailing
legal structures, the country relied on mixed forms of ownership that provided more effective property rights for entrepreneurs in
practice. Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs), which spearheaded Chinese economic growth during the 1980s, were collectives owned
and controlled by local governments. Even though TVEs were publicly owned, entrepreneurs received the protection they needed against
expropriation. Local governments had a direct stake in the profits of the firms, and hence did not want to kill the goose that lays
the golden eggs.
China relied on a range of such innovations, each delivering the economist's higher-order economic principles in unfamiliar institutional
arrangements. For instance, it shielded its large state sector from global competition, establishing special economic zones where
foreign firms could operate with different rules than in the rest of the economy. In view of such departures from orthodox blueprints,
describing China's economic reforms as neoliberal – as critics are inclined to do – distorts more than it reveals. If we are to call
this neoliberalism, we must surely look more kindly on the ideas behind the most dramatic
poverty reduction in history.
One might protest that China's institutional innovations were purely transitional. Perhaps it will have to converge on western-style
institutions to sustain its economic progress. But this common line of thinking overlooks the diversity of capitalist arrangements
that still prevails among advanced economies, despite the considerable homogenisation of our policy discourse.
What, after all, are western institutions? The size of the public sector in OECD countries varies, from a third of the economy
in Korea to nearly 60% in Finland. In Iceland, 86% of workers are members of a trade union; the comparable number in Switzerland
is just 16%. In the US, firms can fire workers almost at will;
French
labour laws have historically required employers to jump through many hoops first. Stock markets have grown to a total value
of nearly one-and-a-half times GDP in the US; in Germany, they are only a third as large, equivalent to just 50% of GDP.
The idea that any one of these models of taxation, labour relations or financial organisation is inherently superior to the others
is belied by the varying economic fortunes that each of these economies have experienced over recent decades. The US has gone through
successive periods of angst in which its economic institutions were judged inferior to those in Germany, Japan, China, and now possibly
Germany again. Certainly, comparable levels of wealth and productivity can be produced under very different models of capitalism.
We might even go a step further: today's prevailing models probably come nowhere near exhausting the range of what might be possible,
and desirable, in the future.
The visiting economist in our thought experiment knows all this, and recognises that the principles he has enunciated need to
be filled in with institutional detail before they become operational. Property rights? Yes, but how? Sound money? Of course, but
how? It would perhaps be easier to criticise his list of principles for being vacuous than to denounce it as a neoliberal screed.
Still, these principles are not entirely content-free. China, and indeed all countries that managed to develop rapidly, demonstrate
the utility of those principles once they are properly adapted to local context. Conversely, too many economies have been driven
to ruin courtesy of political leaders who chose to violate them. We need look no further than
Latin American populists or eastern European communist regimes to appreciate the practical significance of sound money, fiscal
sustainability and private incentives.
O f course, economics goes beyond a list of abstract, largely common-sense principles. Much of the work of economists consists
of developing
stylised models of how economies work and then confronting those models with evidence. Economists tend to think of what they
do as progressively refining their understanding of the world: their models are supposed to get better and better as they are tested
and revised over time. But progress in economics happens differently.
Economists study a social reality that is unlike the physical universe. It is completely manmade, highly malleable and operates
according to different rules across time and space. Economics
advances not by settling on the right model or theory to answer such questions, but by improving our understanding of the diversity
of causal relationships. Neoliberalism and its customary remedies – always more markets, always less government – are in fact a perversion
of mainstream economics. Good economists know that the correct answer to any question in economics is: it depends.
Does an increase in the minimum wage depress employment? Yes, if the labour market is really competitive and employers have no
control over the wage they must pay to attract workers; but not necessarily otherwise. Does trade liberalisation increase economic
growth? Yes, if it increases the profitability of industries where the bulk of investment and innovation takes place; but not otherwise.
Does more government spending increase employment? Yes, if there is slack in the economy and wages do not rise; but not otherwise.
Does monopoly harm innovation? Yes and no, depending on a whole host of market circumstances.
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and precipitated our current populist backlash' Trump signing an order to take the US out of the TPP trade pact. Photograph: AFP/Getty
In economics, new models rarely supplant older models. The basic competitive-markets model dating back to Adam Smith has been
modified over time by the inclusion, in rough historical order, of monopoly, externalities, scale economies, incomplete and asymmetric
information, irrational behaviour and many other real-world features. But the older models remain as useful as ever. Understanding
how real markets operate necessitates using different lenses at different times.
Perhaps maps offer the best analogy. Just like economic models, maps are
highly stylised representations
of reality . They are useful precisely because they abstract from many real-world details that would get in the way. But abstraction
also implies that we need a different map depending on the nature of our journey. If we are travelling by bike, we need a map of
bike trails. If we are to go on foot, we need a map of footpaths. If a new subway is constructed, we will need a subway map – but
we wouldn't throw out the older maps.
Economists tend to be very good at making maps, but not good enough at choosing the one most suited to the task at hand. When
confronted with policy questions of the type our visiting economist faces, too many of them resort to "benchmark" models that favour
the
laissez-faire
approach. Kneejerk solutions and hubris replace the richness and humility of the discussion in the seminar room. John Maynard
Keynes once defined economics as the "science of thinking in terms of models, joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant".
Economists typically have trouble with the "art" part.
This, too, can be illustrated with a parable. A journalist calls an economics professor for his view on whether free trade is
a good idea. The professor responds enthusiastically in the affirmative. The journalist then goes undercover as a student in the
professor's advanced graduate seminar on international trade. He poses the same question: is free trade good? This time the professor
is stymied. "What do you mean by 'good'?" he responds. "And good for whom?" The professor then launches into an extensive exegesis
that will ultimately culminate in a heavily hedged statement: "So if the long list of conditions I have just described are satisfied,
and assuming we can tax the beneficiaries to compensate the losers, freer trade has the potential to increase everyone's wellbeing."
If he is in an expansive mood, the professor might add that the effect of free trade on an economy's longterm growth rate is not
clear either, and would depend on an altogether different set of requirements.
This professor is rather different from the one the journalist encountered previously. On the record, he exudes self-confidence,
not reticence, about the appropriate policy. There is one and only one model, at least as far as the public conversation is concerned,
and there is a single correct answer, regardless of context. Strangely, the professor deems the knowledge that he imparts to his
advanced students to be inappropriate (or dangerous) for the general public. Why?
The roots of such behaviour lie deep in the culture of the economics profession. But one important motive is the zeal to display
the profession's crown jewels – market efficiency, the invisible hand, comparative advantage – in untarnished form, and to shield
them from attack by self-interested barbarians, namely
the protectionists . Unfortunately, these economists typically ignore the barbarians on the other side of the issue – financiers
and multinational corporations whose motives are no purer and who are all too ready to hijack these ideas for their own benefit.
As a result, economists' contributions to public debate are often biased in one direction, in favour of more trade, more finance
and less government. That is why economists have developed a reputation as cheerleaders for neoliberalism, even if mainstream economics
is very far from a paean to laissez-faire. The economists who let their enthusiasm for free markets run wild are in fact not being
true to their own discipline.
H ow then should we think about globalisation in order to liberate it from the grip of neoliberal practices? We must begin by
understanding the positive potential of global markets. Access to world markets in goods, technologies and capital has played an
important role in virtually all of the economic miracles of our time. China is the most recent and powerful reminder of this historical
truth, but it is not the only case. Before China, similar miracles were performed by South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and a few non-Asian
countries such as
Mauritius . All of these countries embraced globalisation rather than turn their backs on it, and they benefited handsomely.
Defenders of the existing economic order will quickly point to these examples when globalisation comes into question. What they
will fail to say is that almost all of these countries joined the world economy by violating neoliberal strictures. South Korea and
Taiwan, for instance, heavily subsidised their exporters, the former through the financial system and the latter through tax incentives.
All of them eventually removed most of their import restrictions, long after economic growth had taken off.
But none, with the sole exception of Chile in the 1980s under Pinochet, followed the neoliberal recommendation of a rapid opening-up
to imports. Chile's neoliberal
experiment eventually produced the worst economic crisis in all of Latin America. While the details differ across countries,
in all cases governments played an active role in restructuring the economy and buffering it against a volatile external environment.
Industrial policies, restrictions on capital flows and currency controls – all prohibited in the neoliberal playbook – were rampant.
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Pinterest Protest against Nafta in Mexico City in 2008: since the reforms of the mid-90s, the country's economy has underperformed.
Photograph: EPA
By contrast, countries that stuck closest to the neoliberal model of globalisation were sorely disappointed. Mexico provides a
particularly sad example. Following a series of macroeconomic crises in the mid-1990s, Mexico embraced macroeconomic orthodoxy, extensively
liberalised its economy, freed up the financial system, sharply reduced import restrictions and signed the North American Free Trade
Agreement (Nafta). These policies did produce macroeconomic stability and a significant rise in foreign trade and internal investment.
But where it counts – in overall productivity and economic growth –
the experiment failed
. Since undertaking the reforms, overall productivity in Mexico has stagnated, and the economy has underperformed even by the
undemanding standards of Latin America.
These outcomes are not a surprise from the perspective of sound economics. They are yet another manifestation of the need for
economic policies to be attuned to the failures to which markets are prone, and to be tailored to the specific circumstances of each
country. No single blueprint fits all.
A s Peters's 1982 manifesto attests, the meaning of neoliberalism has changed considerably over time as the label has acquired
harder-line connotations with respect to deregulation, financialisation and globalisation. But there is one thread that connects
all versions of neoliberalism, and that is the
emphasis
on economic growth . Peters wrote in 1982 that the emphasis was warranted because growth is essential to all our social and political
ends – community, democracy, prosperity. Entrepreneurship, private investment and removing obstacles that stand in the way (such
as excessive regulation) were all instruments for achieving economic growth. If a similar neoliberal manifesto were penned today,
it would no doubt make the same point.
ss="rich-link"> Globalisation: the rise and fall of an idea that swept the world Read more
Critics often point out that this emphasis on economics debases and sacrifices other important values such as equality, social
inclusion, democratic deliberation and justice. Those political and social objectives obviously matter enormously, and in some contexts
they matter the most. They cannot always, or even often, be achieved by means of technocratic economic policies; politics must play
a central role.
Still, neoliberals are not wrong when they argue that our most cherished ideals are more likely to be attained when our economy
is vibrant, strong and growing. Where they are wrong is in believing that there is a unique and universal recipe for improving economic
performance, to which they have access. The fatal flaw of neoliberalism is that it does not even get the economics right. It must
be rejected on its own terms for the simple reason that it is bad economics.
A version of this article first appeared in
Boston Review
"... The record of deceit and deception that has surfaced in just the past two months points to yes. ..."
"... You want to get really, really pissed off? Then read " Major Banks Aid in Payday Loans Banned by States " by Jessica Silver-Greenberg in the New York Times ..."
"... The big banks, however, don't make the loans. They hide behind the scenes to facilitate the transactions through automatic withdrawals from the victim's bank account to the loansharking payday companies. Without those services from the big banks, these Internet loansharks could not operate. ..."
"... Banks like JPMorgan Chase provide the banking services that allow Internet payday loansharks to exist in the first place, with the sole purpose of breaking the state laws against usury ..."
"... Then Chase vultures the victims, who are often low-wage earners struggling to make ends meet, by extracting late fees from the victims' accounts. ..."
"... Let's be clear: JPMorgan Chase, the big bank that supposedly is run oh-so-well by Obama's favorite banker, Jamie Dimon, is aiding, abetting and profiting from screwing loanshark victims. ..."
"... What possible justification could anyone at Chase have for being involved in this slimy business? The answer is simple: profit. Dimon and company can't help themselves. They see a dollar in someone else's pocket, even a poor struggling single mom, and they figure out how to put it in their own. Of course, everyone at the top will play dumb, order an investigation and then if necessary, dump some lower-level schlep. More than likely, various government agencies will ask the bank to pay a fine, which will come from the corporate kitty, not the pockets of bank executives. And the banks will promise -- cross their hearts -- never again to commit that precise scam again. ..."
The record of deceit and deception that has surfaced in just the past two months points to yes. Print 147
COMMENTS Photo Credit: Songquan Deng / Shutterstock.com
Are too-big-to-fail banks organized criminal conspiracies? And if so, shouldn't we seize their assets, just like we do to drug
cartels?
Let's examine their sorry record of deceit and deception that has surfaced in just the past two months:
Loan Sharking
You want to get really, really pissed off? Then read "
Major Banks Aid in Payday Loans Banned by States " by Jessica Silver-Greenberg in the New York Times (2/23/13). In sickening
detail, she describes how the largest banks in the United States are facilitating modern loansharking by working with Internet payday
loan companies to escape anti-loansharking state laws. These payday firms extract enormous interest rates that often run over 500
percent a year. (Fifteen states prohibit payday loans entirely, and all states have usury limits ranging from 8 to 24 percent.
See the list .)
The big banks, however, don't make the loans. They hide behind the scenes to facilitate the transactions through automatic withdrawals
from the victim's bank account to the loansharking payday companies. Without those services from the big banks, these Internet loansharks
could not operate.
Enabling the payday loansharks to evade the law is bad enough. But even more deplorable is why the big banks are involved in the
first place.
For the banks, it can be a lucrative partnership. At first blush, processing automatic withdrawals hardly seems like a source
of profit. But many customers are already on shaky financial footing. The withdrawals often set off a cascade of fees from problems
like overdrafts.
Roughly
27 percent of payday loan borrowers say that the loans caused them to overdraw their accounts, according to a report released
this month by the Pew Charitable Trusts. That fee income is coveted, given that
financial regulations limiting fees on debit and credit cards have cost banks billions of dollars.
Take a deep breath and consider what this means. Banks like JPMorgan Chase provide the banking services that allow Internet payday loansharks to exist in the first place, with the sole purpose of breaking the state laws against usury.
Then Chase vultures the victims,
who are often low-wage earners struggling to make ends meet, by extracting late fees from the victims' accounts. So impoverished
single moms, for example, who needed to borrow money to make the rent, get worked over twice: First they get a loan at an interest
rate that would make Tony Soprano blush. Then they get nailed with overdraft fees by their loansharking bank.
For Subrina Baptiste, 33, an educational assistant in Brooklyn, the overdraft fees levied by Chase cannibalized her child support
income. She said she applied for a $400 loan from Loanshoponline.com
and a $700 loan from Advancemetoday.com in 2011. The loans, with annual
interest rates of 730 percent and 584 percent respectively, skirt New York law.
Ms. Baptiste said she asked Chase to revoke the automatic withdrawals in October 2011, but was told that she had to ask the
lenders instead. In one month, her bank records show, the lenders tried to take money from her account at least six times. Chase
charged her $812 in fees and deducted over $600 from her child-support payments to cover them.
Let's be clear: JPMorgan Chase, the big bank that supposedly is run oh-so-well by Obama's favorite banker, Jamie Dimon, is aiding,
abetting and profiting from screwing loanshark victims.
What possible justification could anyone at Chase have for being involved in this slimy business? The answer is simple: profit.
Dimon and company can't help themselves. They see a dollar in someone else's pocket, even a poor struggling single mom, and they
figure out how to put it in their own. Of course, everyone at the top will play dumb, order an investigation and then if necessary,
dump some lower-level schlep. More than likely, various government agencies will ask the bank to pay a fine, which will come from
the corporate kitty, not the pockets of bank executives. And the banks will promise -- cross their hearts -- never again to commit
that precise scam again.
(Update: After the publication of Jessica Silver-Greenberg's devastating article, Jamie Dimon "vowed on Tuesday to change how
the bank deals with Internet-based payday lenders that automatically withdraw payments from borrowers' checking accounts,"
according to the New York Times . Dimon called the practices "terrible." In a statement, the bank said, it was "taking a thorough
look at all of our policies related to these issues and plan to make meaningful changes.")
Money Laundering for the Mexican Drug Cartels and Rogue Nations
HSBC, the giant British-based bank with a large American subsidiary, agreed on Dec. 11, 2012 to pay $1.9 billion in fines for
laundering $881 million for Mexico's Sinaloa cartel and Colombia's Norte del Valle cartel. The operation was so blatant that "Mexican
traffickers used boxes specifically designed to the dimensions of an HSBC Mexico teller's window to deposit cash on a daily basis,"
reports Reuters . They
also facilitated "hundreds of millions more in transactions with sanctioned countries,"
according to the Justice Department
.
Our banks got nailed as well. "In the United States, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Wachovia Corp and Citigroup Inc have been cited for
anti-money laundering lapses or sanctions violations," continues the Reuters report. My, my, JPMorgan Chase, the biggest bank in
the U.S. sure does get around.
And the penalty? A fine (paid by the HSBC shareholders, of course, that amounts to 5.5 weeks of the bank's earnings) and we promise
– honest -- never to do it again.
Too Big to Indict?
Wait, it gets worse. Why weren't criminal charges filed against the bank itself? After all, the bank overtly violated money laundering
laws. This was no clerical error. The answer is simple: "
Too big to Indict," screams
the NYT editorial headline. You see federal authorities are worried that if they indict, the bank would fail, which in turn would
lead to tens of thousands of lost jobs, just like what happened to Arthur Anderson after its Enron caper, or like the financial hurricane
that followed the failure of Lehman Brothers. So if you're a small fish running $10,000 in drug money, you serve time. But if you're
a big fish moving nearing a billion dollars, you can laugh all the way to your too-big-to-jail bank.
Fleecing Distressed Homeowners
The big banks, in collusion with hedge funds and the rating agencies, puffed up the housing bubble and then burst it. Nine million
workers, due to no fault of their own, lost their jobs in a matter of months. Entire neighborhoods saw their home values crash. Tens
of millions faced foreclosure.
The big banks, which were bailed out and survived the crash, sought to foreclose on as many homes as possible, as fast as possible.
Hey, that's where the money was. In doing so they resorted to many unsavory practices including illegal robo-signing of foreclosure
documents. When nailed by the government, the big banks agreed to provide billions in aid for distressed homeowners. Were they finally
forced to do the right thing? Not a chance. (See "
Homeowners still face foreclosure despite billion in aid" NYT 2/22 .)
The big banks, despite what they say in their press statements, found a convenient loophole in the government settlement. The
banks began forgiving second mortgages, and then foreclosing on the first mortgage. That's a cute maneuver because in a foreclosure,
the bank rarely can collect on the second mortgage anyway. So they're giving away something of no value to distressed sellers and
getting government credit for it. Just another day at the office for our favorite banksters.
JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs have been fined over a billion dollars for creating and selling mortgage-related securities
that were designed to fail so their hedge fund buddies could make billions. And then we've got the recent LIBOR scandal where the
biggest banks colluded to manipulate interest rates for fun and profit.
It's not about good people or bad people running these banks and hedge funds. It's the very nature of these institutions. That's
what they do. They make big money by doing what the rest of us would call cheating. As the record clearly shows, they cheat the second
they get the chance.
What kind of institution would loanshark, money launder, fix rates, game mortgage relief programs, and produce products designed
to fail? Answer: An institution that should not exist.
Nationalize Now and Create State Banks
There are about 20 too-big-to fail banks which have been designated "systematically significant." These should be immediately
nationalized. Shareholder value should be wiped out because these banks are repeatedly violating the law, including aiding and abetting
criminal enterprises. All employees should be placed on the federal civil service scale, where the top salary is approximately $130,000.
Can the government run banks? Yes, if we break up the big banks and turn them over to state governments so that each state would
have at least one public bank. (North Dakota has a strong working model.) The larger states would have several public state banks.
But never again would we allow banks to grow so large as to threaten our financial system and violate the public trust. Let FDIC
regulate the state banks. They're actually good at it.
(We'd also have to do something about the shadow banking industry -- the large hedge funds and private equity firms. Eliminating
their carried-interest tax loophole and slapping on a strong financial transaction tax would go a long way toward reining them in.)
Won't the most talented bankers leave the industry?
Hurray! It can't happen soon enough. It's time for the best and the brightest to rejoin the human race and help produce value
for their fellow citizens. Let them become doctors, research scientists, teachers or even wealthy entrepreneurs who produce tangible
goods and services that we want and need. What we don't need are more banksters.
Isn't This Socialism?
We already have socialism for rich financiers. They get to keep all of the upside of their shady machinations and we get to bail
them out when they fail. This billionaire bailout society is now so entrenched that our nascent economic recovery of the last two
years has been entirely captured by the top 1 percent. Meanwhile the rest of have received nothing. Nada. (See
"Why Is the Entire Recovery
Going to the Top One Percent? ")
I know, I know, people say, "Next time, just don't bail them out!" Meanwhile, they get to rip us off, day in and day out, until
the next crash? No thanks. Put them out of business now. If you have a better idea, let's hear it.
So what are we going to do about this? I fully agree with the assessment of this article and even the solution. State banks
would make very positive contributions to replacing these criminal enterprises. But, you have to understand that the Bank of North
Dakota was instituted in a time where the populist farmers were in a battle with the same criminal Banksters of the 1800/early
1900s. Thankfully, they succeeded in establishing their bank and it has shown us how well it works, even in a Red state like ND.
So, why is it that the dumbfuck Dems don't overwhelmingly endorse them? Two years ago, I publicly endorsed (as a citizen) state
banks as a solution to the financial problems for my state (Idaho), citing the BND as a model to follow. Who do you think gave
me the most shit about it? It wasn't the Idaho GOP, it was a Dem state senator who downplayed the state bank idea and pinned the
success that ND had on its shale oil production and proclaimed that Idaho needs to exploit its own natural resources more. Well,
they are. We are now going to start fracking for nat gas in Payette County. Dems and GOP alike here are endorsing the fracking
of our land. The sad fact is that there is not very much nat gas here to get excited about. We have nowhere near what ND has in
plays.
And, the Dems here completely miss the point of what a state bank can do for you
Try the last three centuries. They have absolute power as they control every nation's money supply and could if they wished
crash the economy next Tuesday. They can drag out a recession for years and have the ability to determine if you have job or not.
As the axiom about absolute power goes so goes the banking/financial business. Robbers and pond scum who just happen to know how
the system works but have no idea of what life is about.
"Globalism" is their mantra. Globalism is code for the Darwinian truth the elites pray to; which is their superiority giving them
the right to acquire ever increasing wealth always at any cost to other life or life support system. This IS their sum total understanding
of the meaning of existence. They laugh at our collective utter blind stupidity. If you haven't viewed "Money as Debt" on youtube
better have a boo. Then have a look at "The Money Masters" to see how the elites managed their take over of America and are now
going for the world.
"It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did I believe
we would have a revolution before tomorrow morning."
Henry Ford
It is mandated fleecing by the likes of Bank of America in the state of Maryland- beginning January of this year, all child
support is handled by BoA via an "Epic" atm card... just one of the many ways they will skim from the people collecting support
for their kids is the 1 time per week atm rule for withdrawing cash- after that- $5 per transaction.
This is coordinated robbery with state legislature and the big banks... and it is abhorrant.
You want more examples - read Zero Day Threat by Ocheedo & Swartz (2009). That book peels back the curtain on the entire bank
card vs credit data corporation vs congressional enablers. And it's easy to read as it tracks a bunch of Canadian meth heads in
their successful efforts to steal our identities and then take our money and put it into fake bank accounts.
A reminder that the WASP society has it's roots in Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest which has been taken to new
heights lately to mean one is considered savvy if they are able to rob the meek and humble honest guy, the honest Abe's are just
too week minded, so the pain is internalized turned into self-blame "i guess i was too dumb to fall for it". I suggest the old
saying to put your hand into the tiger's mouth and take back what's yours. People are too damn dismissive and artificially programmed
to confuse nationalism with wall street thievery which they associate to the government and dare not criticize their USA government,
that would be unpatriotic and rebel rousing. I say hang the bastards all the way from Houston Texas to Los Angeles California
on every power pole from which they have stollen billion's of people's money by faking those "rolling blackouts". Authoritarianism
begets authoritarianism.
Not only are the banks a criminally organized mafia, there are more. For instance does anybody here know that there are two
mafia organizations in Italy? Let me explain to the novices here especially the knowledge challenged tea bagers cons repubics.
One mafia is in souther Italy in sicily which everyone knows including the dumbest tea bagers cons. The other one is in northern
Italy near Roma and is called the vatican where everything which goes on in southern Italy mafia also goes on here from money
laundering, power abuse from the top, human rights violation like converting all and sundry in foreign lands especially the vulnerables
and so on and on.
Yes they are criminals.....they just have laws that saya its ok to use people and steal from them unlike your average street
criminals.
The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution
so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
~Thomas Jefferson~
When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since
the hand that gives is above the hand that takes Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency;
their sole object is gain." – Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, 1815
Are these banks operating as criminals? Not really when you understand that they own lock, stock and barrel those who make
the laws. So if some pesky law was out there that prevented these capitalists from sucking every ounce of our blood they will
pay a meager fine, for appearances, and then bring the politicians and lawyers into their offices and tell them to change the
law. The government will obey as they know who the owners are.
Now let's talk about justice. When we get to that we see the whole system is so corrupt that there is no reform possible- if
you could fix it you wouldn't want to anyway.
Look, nowadays there is very little conspiratorial in any of this. They are doing it so blatantly out in the open and in our
faces it's as if they are challenging the people to stand up and fight back. So far not much resistance on the streets of the
Homeland.
I think it's also futile to attempt regulations or ask for any legal oversight. This is like the proverbial fox guarding the
hen house. The police will not police themselves. It's up to us.
Welcome to the world where businesses can 'regulate themselves'. I've said for decades that the business community is only
as socially responsible as they are legally required to be. The white collar criminal class has, like scum, risen to the top.
The first clue was the savings and loans collapse during King George the firsts rule. The creation of these entites came about
from the Reaganistas anti-regulation frenzy within the banking industry. They milked the system until it collapsed but very few
paid any price. Most actually made out like the bandits they were from THAT taxpayer bailout. So the pattern was set. Even the
Democratic party fell into lockstep because so much money could be legally stolen by these machinations. Of course, in order to
hide the fallout they had to change how inflation and unemployment was calculated.
This was all as predictable as the sunrise.
This is not a revelation - that big banks are little more than organized crime whose bosses dress in better suits, live at
better addresses and have more money than most people in organized crime ever dreamed of because these criminals are protected
by law and by the fact that even when the break what few laws there are that seriously affect them, they are simply not prosecuted.
After all who is going to launder the trillion or so dollars in drug money every year for handsome profits - as much as 20% sometimes.
Who is going to facilitate the transfer of laundered and other money in the international sale of hundreds of billions of dollars
in weapons to dictators, warlords and various other sleazebags around the world? The banks have an absolutely necessary role to
play in the Western World where Corruption is the norm in all businesses and banking operations that are bigger than one person.
Private banks need to be abolished and private bankers need to be in prison for life.
The current banking and economic system that is in place operates outside normal perception. Look at how Barclays was manipulating
interest rates to favour their investments and to charge others more. Geee I wonder if the other banks and investment houses did
the same? Toxic derivatives being sold as great investments knowing that they are going to fail. Goldman Sachs complicit in hiding
Greek debt for decades. Hyper trading where algorithms and nano second trading drive market values. These elite hyper traders
never seem to lose money.
The system is broken and those few benefiting from it do not want it to change.
We need to re-envision our world. I want a system where legislation benefits citizens, not corporations. I want legislation
that ensures the best possible results for the most people. I am not opposed to capitalist style economic system that serves a
citizenry needs. I am opposed to an economic system that has us serving it.
It seems it is only going to get worse. We have people trying to privatize education. Their goal is not better education but
a profit. The same people want a larger privatized penal system. Not to protect society and rehabilitate, but to generate profit.
We have this system in place in the health care industry. It does not get us better health care, it gets u more expensive health
care.
We seriously need to rethink how our economy functions, our society, etc....
Yes, Mo -- privatizing ed's about profit. But also about the new corporate religion.
Privatized schools play much more into the hands of admin. Teaching itself gets more niched into the specialized departments
whereby the specialists model the habits and reduced language of never looking into anything in anyone else's cubicles.
So few and so much rarer are the tenured posts in all these turfs that careerists will readily shear themselves of all ethics
in order to conform to the safe and orthodox. So will the many tens of thousands of Ph.D. contingent labor, who increasingly wither
in academe's vast corporate gulag.
Yes, you're so correct -- it's money that drives these massively amoral and immoral of high finance. But idolatry's more than
money. It's also the steroided vulgarized corporate religion. And it's rotting all ed, so the weakest rise to the top, and now
all K-12, too, becomes enablers of the standardized numbers rackets.
I would gladly award the DEATH penalty to the crooks who run Bank of America and Wells Fargo, two criminal organizations with
whom I have had dealings.
Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail Rolling Stone Magazine / by Matt Taibbi
The bank has defrauded everyone from investors and insurers to homeowners and the unemployed. So why does the government keep
bailing it out?
http://www.rollingstone.com...
And:
"It's Time to Break Up AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner and the Rest of the Telecoms." AlterNet / By David Rosen and Bruce
Kushnick
Today's telecoms provide overpriced and inferior service, and are systematically overcharging the hapless American consumer.
http://www.alternet.org/new...
"How the Phone Companies Are Screwing America: The $320 Billion Broadband Rip-Off" AlterNet / By David Rosen and Bruce Kushnick
Americans are stuck with an inferior and overpriced communications system, compared with the rest of the world, and we're being
ripped off in the process.
Great article. Spot on. Democrats used to be wary of the bankers, knowing that they needed to be watched and controlled. Regulated
banking is something necessary for an economy to run, with the emphasis on regulated. But, the banks have bought the regulators,
the "people's party," the democrats are sleeping with the bankers, and we are all paying the price.
Time to separate investment banking from commercial banking.
Time to enforce usury laws, including "fees" as part of the interest rate calculation
and, way past time to nationalize or simply yank the charters from the offending banks.
Clear, simple; and exactly what folks in Washington cannot understand.
The democrats? Who was it presided over this between 2000 and 2008, allowing it and creating laws to ensure the banks succeeded
in their ripoff? And who is currently standing in the way of any forward momentum? Republicans. Tea Party, Koch -funded Republicans
and their "Libertarian" network of slimeballs. Who was it pushing for the repeal of Glass-Steagall that made all of this possible?
Koch and their "Libertarian" slimeball network of free marketeers.And who was it that made the situation worse by getting more
of these aholes elected in 2010 and pretty much ensurig that nothing will get ccomplished? "Progressives" and "Libertarian" shysters
who were out in force yelling "both sidess are the same" - "don't vote."
And I see we're still at it in spite of everything we've witnessed the Tea Party do both at the federal and state levels.
But it's in alignment with the new, 21st century Neo-Fascist America.
Debtor prisons were eliminated more than a century ago because legislators had the sense (yes, they had some back then) to
understand that society is worse off, and no one benefits by putting those who can't pay their debts in prison. The burden was
thus shifted to creditors to assure their debtors could repay them before making the loan. The burden of indebtedness was thus
shifted from the debtor to the creditor as it should be.
In recent years the US has gone back to the old model of encouraging indebtedness and then punishing the debtors, initially
with non-bankruptable debt (thank you Joe Biden) and now with imprisonment.
There is absolutely nothing progressive or good for society in general or for individuals in particular in all of this. This
is all part of the reactionary movement in this country to destroy the Middle-class and return to a (neo) feudal society controlled
by a small class of "economic royalist" lording over a vast majority of disenfranchised and economically hopeless "serfs".
Six years after these criminals crashed the economy and almost took down the entire global structure we're still trying to
decide if these were crimes? The real crime is that We, the People meekly allow these crimes -and many others- to go unpunished.
After all, it really doesn't interest anybody outside of a small circle of friends.
Well put. If the mainstream media doesn't say something, the general population acts like it doesn't exist. The rich and powerful
have been very creative in hijacking public opinion and decimating our ability to think for ourselves. We are supposed to have
checks and balances between branches of government, but every single branch has been bought out and is in cahoots with each other.
I don't think anything short of a revolution will fix this corporatocracy. The White House has abandoned us, Congress has abandoned
us, and the Supreme Court has struck the final chord of war claiming that corporations are to be treated as people.
How much is your life worth? Not much if you aren't a politician or banker.
Neo Conned, look around you; look at the morons glued to their "smart" phones. Look at the idiots with their pants hanging
off their butts; listen to the people who can't put together a sentence in Standard English or who can't say two consecutive words
without at least one of them being a vulgar Anglo-Saxon term for a bodily function.
In general, Americans are probably the stupidest people in the world and we have lost our (at least at one time nominal) democratic
republic because of that: the obliviousness of the American people. (For reference please see Chris Hedges' excellent book, The
End of Reason and the Triumph of Illusion.)
Recently MI6 were implicated in Steel report, Skripals poisonings, Browder machinations, and creation of the Integrity
Initiative. Nice "non-interference" mode...
Notable quotes:
"... The UK's top spy spent some of his time blaming Russia for trying to, as he put it, "subvert the UK way of life" by supposedly poisoning the Skripals and through other mischievous but ultimately never verified actions, though moving beyond the infowar aspect of his speech and into its actual professional substance, he nevertheless touched on some interesting themes ..."
"... In other words, it's all about applying what he calls the "Fusion Doctrine" for building the right domestic and international teams across skillsets in order to best leverage new technologies for accomplishing his agency's eternal mission, which is "to understand the motivations, intentions and aspirations of people in other countries." ..."
"... "being able to take steps to change [targets'] behavior", this has actually been part and parcel of the intelligence profession since time immemorial, albeit nowadays facilitated by social media and other technological platforms that allow shadowy actors such as the UK's own "77th Brigade" to carry out psychological, influence, and informational operations. ..."
"... Considering Russia to be a country that "regards [itself] as being in a state of perpetual confrontation with [the West]", Younger believes that unacceptably high costs must be imposed upon it every time it's accused of some wrongdoing, forgetting that the exact same principle could more applicably be applied against the West by Russia for the same reasons. ..."
"... If read from a cynical standpoint by anyone who's aware of the true nature of contemporary geopolitics, Younger's speech is actually quite informative because it inadvertently reveals what the West itself is doing to Russia by means of projecting its own actions onto its opponent . ..."
"... That in and of itself is actually the very essence of Hybrid War , which is commonly understood to largely include blatantly deceptive techniques such as the one that the UK's top spy is unabashedly attempting to pull off. ..."
"... Accusing one's adversaries of the exact same thing that you yourself are doing is a classic method of deflecting attention from one's own actions by pretending that you're being victimized by the selfsame, which therefore "justifies" escalating tensions by portraying all hostile acts as "proactive defensive responses to aggression". ..."
"... Basically, the British spymaster just sloppily revealed his hand to Russia while attempting to implicate it for allegedly conducting "fourth generation espionage" against the UK. ..."
The head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) Alex Younger briefed the public
about the challenges of so-called " fourth
generation espionage ".
The UK's top spy spent some of his time blaming Russia for trying to, as he put it, "subvert
the UK way of life" by supposedly poisoning the Skripals and through other mischievous but
ultimately never verified actions, though moving beyond the infowar aspect of his speech and
into its actual professional substance, he nevertheless touched on some interesting themes.
According to him, "fourth generation espionage" involves "deepening our partnerships to counter
hybrid threats, mastering covert action in the data age, attaching a cost to malign activity by
adversaries and innovating to ensure that technology works to our advantage."
In other words, it's all about applying what he calls the "Fusion Doctrine" for building the
right domestic and international teams across skillsets in order to best leverage new
technologies for accomplishing his agency's eternal mission, which is "to understand the
motivations, intentions and aspirations of people in other countries."
While he remarked that the so-called "hybrid threats" associated with "fourth generation
espionage" necessitate "being able to take steps to change [targets'] behavior", this has
actually been part and parcel of the intelligence profession since time immemorial, albeit
nowadays facilitated by social media and other technological platforms that allow shadowy
actors such as the UK's own "77th Brigade" to
carry out psychological, influence, and informational operations.
Younger warned that "bulk data combined with modern analytics" could be "a serious
challenge" if used against his country , obviously alluding to Cambridge
Analytica's purported weaponization of these cutting-edge technological processes to
supposedly "hack" elections, though neglecting to draw any attention to the fact that his
intelligence agency and its allies could conceivably do the same in advance of their own
interests, something that everyone who uses Western-based social media platforms is theoretically
at risk of having happen to them.
What Younger is most concerned about, however, are what he describes as the "eroded
boundaries" that characterize so-called "hybrid threats" lying between war and peace, which he
fears could undermine NATO's Article 5 obligation for all of the military alliance's members to
support one another during times of conflict. Considering Russia to be a country that "regards
[itself] as being in a state of perpetual confrontation with [the West]", Younger believes that
unacceptably high costs must be imposed upon it every time it's accused of some wrongdoing,
forgetting that the exact same principle could more applicably be applied against the West by
Russia for the same reasons.
He claims that it's the UK that will never respond in kind by
destabilizing Russia like Moscow's accused of doing to the UK, but in reality, it's President
Putin's so-called "judo moves" which prove that it's Russia who has mastered asymmetrical
responses instead. If read from a cynical standpoint by anyone who's aware of the true nature
of contemporary geopolitics, Younger's speech is actually quite informative because it
inadvertently reveals what the West itself is doing to Russia by means of projecting its own
actions onto its opponent .
That in and of itself is actually the very essence of HybridWar ,
which is commonly understood to largely include blatantly deceptive techniques such as the one
that the UK's top spy is unabashedly attempting to pull off.
Accusing one's adversaries of the
exact same thing that you yourself are doing is a classic method of deflecting attention from
one's own actions by pretending that you're being victimized by the selfsame, which therefore
"justifies" escalating tensions by portraying all hostile acts as "proactive defensive
responses to aggression".
Basically, the British spymaster just sloppily revealed his hand to
Russia while attempting to implicate it for allegedly conducting "fourth generation espionage"
against the UK.
"... Yes, its far better than the "first past the post" systems of the UK and the US where the number of votes split between two almost identical candidates can lead to a far different candidate winning with only a little over a third of the total vote. ..."
Proportional representation is definitely the way to go. I am sick to death of the
born-to-rule mentality of the major parties, and how they change the rules to benefit
themselves and to exclude others.
Minority government? There is no such thing - there is only 'government', and it is
supposed to involve all members of parliament in the decision-making process. 'Majority'
governments are an anathema to good governance. Every time I hear the likes of Tony Abbott
claim they have a mandate to implement ALL their policies, even though they only receive
around 35% of the primary vote, I want to throw something at the TV.
Bugger them! Make them work for a living - and make them consider ALL views, not just the
ones from their own party.
Preferences are an extremely good feature of our voting system
Yes, its far better than the "first past the post" systems of the UK and the US where the
number of votes split between two almost identical candidates can lead to a far different
candidate winning with only a little over a third of the total vote.
Preferential voting also makes it more possible for the major party duopoly being
overturned, allowing people to vote for a good independent without taking the risk of helping
a despised major party candidate from winning by default.
"The problem with representative democracy is that it represents the special interest groups
far more than it represents the citizenry." You are spot on.
What a logical and stirring argument you put forward Richard Denniss, and a large majority of
the electorate would have to agree.
However there is also a large number of people in the electorate that cannot appear to rise
from their nightly slumber without wearing their Blue, Red, Green or Orange tinted glasses
before facing the new day.
And because of this, and preferential voting, sneaking in the background is a plethora of the
wild mindless sub creatures called politicians who demand their rights to sit in the big
white building on Canberra;s Capital Hill, just waiting to spoil not only the electorate's
party but also known to prostitute the country's governance to their own advantage.
Richard, we desperately need a follow up stirring article on how to overcome this black
menace to our country, for the sake of our country.
If you think the public has an appetite for more bureaucrats, more rules and regulations to
micromanage people's lives and even more political wheeling and dealing in Canberra, you
should get out more.
That the coalition government is on the slide is of no long term consequence. We'll get a
Labor government next year and in a few years another coalition government and so on.
What is of long term significance is the loss of public trust in pretty much all of the
institutions - including goverment and the various government agencies that would be more
powerful under your scenario.
The problem with representative democracy is that it represents the special interest
groups far more than it represents the citizenry. Perhaps the solution lies in more direct
democracy.
The same sex marriage plebiscite demonstrated that we commoners can deliberate on a
sensitive issue, and in doing so behave far better than our elected representatives in
Parliament. And can make a sensible and progressive decision that our elected representatives
could not - both coalition and Labor MPs had opposed same sex marriage when it was raised in
th e Parliament.
The internet provides a platform for direct decision making by the citizenry. Perhaps we
should try that instead of what you are suggesting.
It's been clear for years that proportional representation has progressively meant death to
effective government, and that it forces major parties policy development further to the
political fringes to appeal to the fruit loops on the periphery of their respective
demographics. Time for a return to simple preferential voting (a-la-house of Reps) in the
senate, and an overhaul of what's considered a valid ballot - if you want to only rank 1, 2,
3 or all candidates it should be entirely your choice.
Hung parliaments, with diametrically opposed clumps of "independents" jointly holding the
balance of power can only ever deliver legislative stasis and constant political turmoil (as
we have experienced since 2010 and Europe and the US have suffered for the last decade).
Oh for the good old days when one or the other of the major parties held a working
majority in both houses, and policy was targeted at the 'sensible centre" of the Australian
electorate. At worst, they only had to deal with a couple of sensible Democrats, and the odd
lunatic fringe-ist like Harradine.
"... I find the Australian electoral system very mediocre. All those people who vote but really don't get represented. All those votes that just get mopped up by the major parties. I really can't understand why Australians have put up with such a poor system for so long. ..."
Having spent many years in a New Zealand under a First Past the Post system
and then Mixed Member Proportional, I am an enthusiastic supporter of proportional systems.
I
find the Australian electoral system very mediocre. All those people who vote but really
don't get represented. All those votes that just get mopped up by the major parties. I really
can't understand why Australians have put up with such a poor system for so long.
Hettie7-> melbournesam 31 Oct 2018 00:45
Proportional representation makes the most sense. Each party gets the same percentage of seats in the parliament as it
received votes in the election. That really is fair.
Nationalisation of essential services is required to put this country back on an even keel.
It was a stupid idea by governments (of all persuasions) to sell off monopoly essential
service assets. The neoliberal experiment has failed.
Beware: Just build a HUGE worker owned, democratically run (by workers) sector to compete
against privately owned concerns. If workers are (democratically) involved in running and
managing their own workplaces that will give plenty of competition for private concerns.
Workers will be involved in the 'politics' and economics of their local area as part of work.
They'll have more control over the technologies they want to use, how much profit they want
to make or not, wages, investment, working conditions and all aspects of their concern.
Workers would 'participate' more and be more involved in thinking about larger concerns. This
would make a nation/region more democratic on the 'ground'. Not just reliant on
'representative' democracy/voting. You'd still need over-arching government(s) but people
would have more direct control over their livelihoods and work conditions. Such a BIG sector
would give (I'm talking about Health, Education, manufacturing etc - not 'bread shop',
basket-weaving coops/social enterprises) private enterprise some REAL competition on prices
and services. It would deliver democracy to masses of people, some control over wealth
generation/economy and on a large enough scale CHANGE society in terms of social justice and
politics.
You don't need to go to State control or Private control of 'the economy'. Just the right
kinds of structures.
Neoliberalism is like a cancer on a health democracy. If we'd treated it in its early
magnifications (when the Librerals and far right old version of Labor), first started selling
off public assets (that are then charged back to citizens to use at increasing price rates
etc), we would have been fine.
But now the cancer is deep in democracy's lymph glads ( in many of our public services)
and so needs radical prolonged treatment and some surgery to assure the country's thriving
democracy survives.
First surgically remove the source: cease (vote out always) all right wing conservative
nutters from ever gaining power, or media mogul influence of government. Most but not all
hide in the Coalition.
Then, begin the reconstruction surgery to re-assert public assets and services. This is a
temporary but life saving cost.
Then, monitor and manage, (educate) the citizens about this scourge on democracy.
The death of neoliberalism means we can finally have a national debate about the size
and role of government, and the shape of the economy and society we want to build.
Neoliberalism is far from dead Richard - neoliberalism is deeply entrenched in mainstream
thinking its corporate enriching magic works insidiously - mostly subliminally under cover of
'sensible' free market self clearing 'orthodox' economics.
You and many others from 'progressive' TAI almost daily, unwittingly play a role in
reinforcing and entrenching neoliberal ideology in the community by framing macroeconomic
analysis/commentary in neoliberal terms.
Your oft repeated call for 'budget balance' over the business cycle is such an example. Only
fiscal deficits can build a prosperous productive nation in the absence of consistent
external surpluses - no government can ever build and expand a nation without permanently
injecting more funds into the non government sector than (through taxation etc) it
withdraws.
Both our major parties of government espouse neoliberal economic orthodoxy as if there is
no alternative - and no one calls them out - not even the quasi progressive TAI.
DSGE based 'orthodox' economics provides the lifeblood to neoliberalism - the myth of tax
collections funding expenditure provides plausible cover to constrain spending on
citizen/social services - but when it comes to war/corporate subsidy spending, such
constraints are immediately abandoned.
Hetereodox MMT exposes the lie of such DSGE myths - but faithful Ptolemaic 'progressives'
refuse to investigate or debate such Copernican macroeconomic sacrilege.
The recent TAI 'outlook' economic conference (proudly sponsored by 'The Australian'!! )
was a classic progressive 'fail'; loaded with orthodox 'experts' like Bowen and Keating
spouting austerity inducing neoliberal orthodoxy - not one heterodox economist was invited to
present the unwelcome, uncomfortable truth of sovereign nation macroeconomic reality.
Prof Bill Mitchell is Australia's most widely & internationally respected REAL
progressive heterodox academic - yet the TAI ignores him.
Neoliberalism won't die until it extracts the last breath of available wealth from
Australia's citizenry. It will die a savage death with the onset of the impending depression
'to end all depressions' when the collapsing housing bubble leaves citizens with a 'decades
long' bubble of unpayable private debt.
Only then will people realise they have been elaborately 'conned' - too late.
P.S. For all TRUE progressives:
Some brilliant short videos here
and here by Parody Project.
That's really the point, much as you might expect government like the Howard and Abbott ones
to have stuck to their claimed neo-liberal principles, neither substantially altered the
compulsory nature of the scheme, despite the fact that it ran more or less completely
contrary to Chicago School principles. Howard might have been fond of shouting "socialism" or
"nanny state" when he felt the need to criticise something, but deeds speak stronger than
words, and for all his p!ssing and moaning he was never going to do anything that stopped all
those truckloads of money finding their way to his friends in the banking industry.
Yes historically high mass immigration in Australia has been used as a trojan horse by the
adherents of neo-liberalism - to break down the pay and conditions of Australian workers and
their rights and entitlements.
By importing "ready made" skilled workers, neither the Government or the private sector have
had to go to the trouble of training their workforce nor bear any of the costs of educating
and training them.
As to the lower skilled imported workers, in the main, this is a crude device to cut out the
locals so that accepted or legislated pay and conditions can be lowered. Most of those
imported workers don't know their rights and are ripe for exploitation.
The shonks, rip off and quick buck merchants love neo-liberalism for the what it has done to
the Australian labour market.
And the Labor party has been complicit in all this - when it should have been protecting
Australians and Australian workers present and future from the ravaging impacts of
neo-liberalism.
For something that's supposedly dead, it still looks like neoliberalism is in charge to me.
The relentless commodification of every aspect of life continues apace. Money is still the
measure of everything and takes precedence over the environment, ethics, community,
creativity, discovery, and virtually everything else you care to name. When water thiefs, big
bankers, corrupt politicians, environmental despoilers, and those that start pointless wars
are IN GAOL, then I'll start to believe things are changing.
Neoliberalism is not simply an economic agenda. From the beginning it was conceived as and
then constructed to be much more than that - it was in fact as much a pedagogical cum
psychological operation to change minds across generations with regard to free-market
capitalism and thus to orient all thinking to that, than it was a matter of simple monetary
or trade policy. Of course, this had to be done with a good deal of repression and oppression
backing it up, here and there - Chile e.g. Thus electing neoliberalism is an effect of this
pedagogy over time - we are all schooled in its 'normality - and not a reflection of either
some natural desire for it or an educated choice.
I agree that we should be discussing fiscal policy but I suspect that Richard Denniss is
using a false frame for this topic. He probably adheres to the claim made by the
macroeconomic equivalent of pre-Copernican physics that a government that issues its own
currency, enforces taxes in that currency, and allows the currency to float in foreign
exchange markets can run out of its currency.
The fiscal policy of the federal government should be to employ all available labour in
socially useful and environmental sustainable productive activity, maintain price stability,
minimize inequality of income and wealth, and fund public services and infrastructure to the
maximum extent permitted by the resources that are available for sale in the government's
currency.
If you think that the government's fiscal policy should be to reduce a fiscal deficit or
deliver a fiscal surplus, you are a dill.
It makes no sense to target a particular fiscal balance because the outcome is driven
largely by the aggregated spending and saving decisions of the domestic non-government sector
and the external sector. The federal government does not control those variables.
The federal government needs to target economically, socially, and environmentally
desirable goals and allow the fiscal balance to reach whatever level is needed at any given
time to achieve those goals.
'Democracy' needs to be structural as well as a moral idea. Workers have been disempowered
and impoverished and disenfranchished by neoliberalism. An answer to structurally improve the
wealth AND democratic power of the workers is to build a HUGE co operative sector in each
economy: worker owned workplaces/businesses/concerns AND democratically run. THAT will
improve the situation for workers/punters: democracy where they live and work. Democracy
rooted not in fine ideas only about rights but bedded down in economic livelihoods. People
will take an interest in their local 'politics' and also understand more of the politics of
the nation. You don't have to get rid of 'capitalism' just give it a 'good run' for it's
money - some real COMPETITION. Cooperatively run Hospitals, owned by doctors and nurses and
other stakeholders - not for profit - that'll soon see the 'private' for profit' health
providers/rorters wind their prices and necks in. Socially owned, worker-owned,
government/taxpayer supported enterprise, work places, democratically run will boot up the
level of 'democracy' in our societies. We can still have voter style over-arching national
government of course. If you don't root democracy where people actually can participate and
which gives them a lot of control over their workplaces/livelihood, then it can all be
hijacked by the greedy and cunning (see neoliberalism). OH, a large cooperative sector in the
economy democratically run by workers won't deliver 'heaven on earth' - it'll still be run by
people!
It is also a tool of the neoliberals along with the whole neoliberal trend in macroeconomic
policy. The essential thing underlying this, is to try to reduce the power of government and
social forces that might exercise some power within the political economy -- workers and
others -- and put the power primarily in the hands of those dominating in the markets. That's
often the financial system, the banks, but also other elites. The idea of neoliberal
economists and policymakers being that you don't want the government getting too involved in
macroeconomic policy. You don't want them promoting too much employment because that might
lead to a raise in wages and, in turn, to a reduction in the profit share of the national
income.
Austerity fits into the mix very well Keeping wages low, or debt pressure high, means
workers will be less likely to complain or make demands. As workers struggle to provide their
families with all the temptations that a capitalist society offers, they become far less
likely to risk their employment, and less able to improve their situation.
At bottom, conservatives believe in a social hierarchy of "haves" and "have nots". They
have taken this corrosive social vision and dressed it up with a "respectable" sounding
ideology which all boils down to the cheap labour they depend on to make their fortunes.
It shows a great sense of inferiority and knowing our "proper"place, that the populace
apparently accepted the colloquial term for neo-liberalism or economic rationalism, as being
"trickle down economics" and that all that the populace deserved and was going to get was a
trickle of the alleged wealth and benefits created.
Why were most people so compliant and accepting of something that as a concept, from the
outset, was clearly signalling it would economically completely discriminate against the 99%
and was intended to provide such a meager share of the wealth and economic benefits
generated?
A quick look around the world provides clear evidence that there really are a lot of
alternatives.
That's the crux: many (western, developed) countries before us have
proven over and over again that the best type of democratic government is one in which
consensus is the basis for long-term decisions to the benefit of all. Is it tedious? Yes.
Frustrating at times? You bet. Slow? Indeed, quite often so. But the point is,
consensus-based decision making works and eventually is in everyone's interest (left,
right and centre), resulting in better long-term outcomes. With the added benefit that new
"majority" Governments won't throw out the children with the bathwater all the time.
I'd add one aspect to the article though, and that is to combine a form of proportional
representation with longer terms of Government. You won't get much meaningful done in
3 years, whatever form of representation you choose. 4 years, 5 years... whatever strikes the
best balance between governments getting some runs on the board and voters feeling empowered
to change government coalitions in the ballot box when they stuff up.
But what economic system worked in the interests of majority of population. There was only
one such system -- USA in 1935-1970th and it was the result of WWII and record profits of the US
corporation after the war, when both Europe and Japan were devastated.
In no way the USSR was social system that worked for the majority of population. It worked
for the Nomenklatura -- a pretty narrow caste, similar to current top 1% under
neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism clearly works for the interests of the minority and against the interests of
the majority. Households are now worse off than they were 6 years ago and large businesses
are enjoying record profits. It feels as if the australian economy is being run for the
benefit of a small percentage of wealthy shareholders.
While a purported devotion to the principles and precepts of neo-liberalism has been claimed
by decades of right-wing politicians, businesses and bankers, drilling down deeper often reveals
that what is really happening in favoring the economic interests of the few at the expense of the
many, and very often involving compulsorily actions like switch to 401K accounts. Which was stoke
of genius for neoliberals to fleeces common people. acquired
Speaking as no fan of neo-liberalism, but there is a risk that the term gets overused. Things
that the right have embraced with open arms, like compulsory retirement savings (which have
enriched the private sector, especially banks and their shareholders), would have caused
sharp intakes of breath from the steely-eyed theorists who came up with the concept. While a
purported devotion to the principles and precepts of neo-liberalism has been claimed by
decades of right-wing politicians, businesses and bankers, drilling down deeper often reveals
that what is really happening in favouring the economic interests of the few at the expense
of the many, and very often involving compulsorily acquired public resources being
re-directed to business, with barely even the thinnest veneer of genuine theoretical
observance to the neo-liberal model. Both neo-liberalism itself, and bogus claims of its
practical use and benefits, need to be dead and buried.
I really would love the rich and powerful who basically prey on the average
person/worker/mums and dads, to be held accountable and penalised properly in relation to
their deeds. These bastards destroy families in their grab for greed, and almost every time
they are excused by their cohorts, and even go on to bigger and better opportunities to keep
feeding their voracious greedy appetites. Basically they steal, so why isn't their proceeds
of crime taken back by government; and why do they not do any jail time?
Natural monopolies like water and power, roads and public transport should be in public
hands. All call centres dealing with government issues should be done by public servants, not
outsourced to foreign corporations.
I'd start with a bank. Give people a non-greed infested alternative.
Under neo-liberalism we have gone from 1 person, 1 vote to $1, one vote. The con job that
is 'small government and little or no regulations' is bad for society and the environment.
Greed over need.
Dr. T. J. Coles is director of the Plymouth Institute for Peace Research and the author of
several books, including Voices for Peace (with Noam Chomsky and others) and the forthcoming
Fire and Fury: How the US Isolates North Korea, Encircles China and Risks Nuclear War in Asia
(both Clairview Books).
The current economic model being used by capitalist countries across the world is failing
most of the people in these countries while enriching tiny elites. Unfortunately, politicians
in these countries are often in the pockets of the elite or are themselves members of the
elite.
We need a new economic narrative which better reconciles the needs of the population with
the directives of the market.
Why not? Profits to the nation, not greedy corporates and their shareholders.
I think you will find there were no profits made that could be put "to the nation." When
the wall came down, the USSR and the entire eastern bloc were completely bankrupt.
As was Mao's China prior to the emergence of Deng and his "to get rich is glorious"
mantra, that set China on its current path. Of course his generally market-oriented approach
has since been bastardised to one of One Party State-capitalism dominated by cronyism,
corruption, and a perverted justice system.
Yes it has generated vast wealth, but it is an empire built on sand. As any analysis of
its shadow banking system will show.
And while the legions of newly minted millionaires of party benevolence celebrate, the
hundreds of millions stuck in poverty are left to fend for themselves.
Neoliberalism is a secular religion, so it doe need to be rational, to remains influential or even dominant, much like
Bolshevism or Trotskyism (actually neoliberalism should be viewed as a perverted mutation of Trotskyism -- Trotskyism for irch) .
It took 70 years for Bolshevism to became discredited and collapse (under the attack from neoliberalism).
In the absence of alternatives neoliberalism might continues to exist in zombie state for a very long time.
Notable quotes:
"... Poverty rate in the USA has been increasing since about the year 2000. ..."
"... Why do you think that all around the world voters are going hard against Neoliberalism and why do you think that Neoliberals are desperately trying to save their bankrupt philosophy by hiding behind Nationalism and Racism? ..."
"... While I would very much like to agree with the notion that neo-liberalism is dead, there's rather too much evidence that its pernicious influence lingers ghost-like and ghastly, having suffused far too many politicians of an ultra-conservative ilk ..."
"... The true believers in the neo-liberal faith, as it was never other than a creed espoused by Thatcher and Pinochet among others, are like those in the catholic church who continued to advocate an earth centric universe long after science proved them wrong. ..."
"... It will be a long wait until these myopic adherents to the gospel of Hayek, Friedman and Buchanan, are consigned to the waste bin of history where they belong. Until then, it will remain a struggle to right the many wrongs of this mis-guided and shallow populism. ..."
"... The neocons have had their day, though it'll no doubt take one hell of an effort to drag them out of their crony-capitalist, snouts-in-the-trough ways. The profit motive in the provision of essential services should be confined to covering costs, maintenance and associated investment. ..."
The death of neoliberalism means we can finally have a national debate about the size and
role of government, and the shape of the economy and society we want to build.
Unfortunately, I see lots of deaths but none of them is neoliberalism. I can see death of
a decent safety net in Australia. Death of biodiversity. Death of ecosystems. Death of
intelligent debate. Death of science.
Poverty rate in the USA has been increasing since about the year 2000. The international
poverty trend has been decreasing over time only because the definition of poverty is to earn
less than $1.25 per day..... So, if you earn $10/day you are well above the poverty line:
Good luck living on that income in any OECD country!
Standards of living are decreasing in Australia... ever heard of the housing crisis? The
household debt crisis?.... Paying for hospital and medicines, education, electricity and
other services.... should I go on?.... ACOSS found that "there are just over 3 million people
(13.2%) living below the poverty line of 50% of median income – including 739,000
children (17.3%)".
"The evil neo-liberalism" has delivered poverty, massive inequality, dissatisfaction,
unemployment/sub-employment and casualization, collapse of public services, high costs of
living.... and deterioration of the environment...
Why do you think that all around the world
voters are going hard against Neoliberalism and why do you think that Neoliberals are
desperately trying to save their bankrupt philosophy by hiding behind Nationalism and
Racism?
While I would very much like to agree with the notion that neo-liberalism is dead, there's
rather too much evidence that its pernicious influence lingers ghost-like and ghastly, having
suffused far too many politicians of an ultra-conservative ilk.
The true believers in the neo-liberal faith, as it was never other than a creed espoused
by Thatcher and Pinochet among others, are like those in the catholic church who continued to
advocate an earth centric universe long after science proved them wrong.
It will be a long wait until these myopic adherents to the gospel of Hayek, Friedman and
Buchanan, are consigned to the waste bin of history where they belong. Until then, it will
remain a struggle to right the many wrongs of this mis-guided and shallow populism.
Abso-bloody-lutely! The neocons have had their day, though it'll no doubt take one hell of an
effort to drag them out of their crony-capitalist, snouts-in-the-trough ways. The profit
motive in the provision of essential services should be confined to covering costs,
maintenance and associated investment. It's so painfully obvious that the market has not met
the needs of the average citizen without absurd cost. Bring on the revolution!
What made anyone think neo-liberalism was going to work? Why was this even tried or got past
a focus group?
Only the Murdoch press ever dreamed this could have any merit and a few totally selfish and
controlling wealthy people. 2008 and the GFC should have killed this idea instead it gained
traction as the perpetrators not only were not prosecuted but were subsidised to create more
havoc. Find the culprits and jail them ... it is not too late.
"... What about "competition", the God of Neoliberals?.... Competition can have some positive role in society only in an environment of Regulation. That's why the future is neither Neoliberal nor Socialist, but a Mixed Economy Social Democracy. ..."
"... Bring back a Commonwealth Bank! In fact bring back State run Electricity, Gas and Water utilities... ..."
"... The Coalition these days proudly subsidise their friends and regulate their enemies in order to reshape Australia in their preferred form. ..."
All essential infrastructure should be Nationalised. Water electricity supply and generation,
ports and railways, educational facilities, one major bank, one country wide telco and mail
delivery. Remove the for profit aspect, and they become assets. In at least a few of these
they also provide training opportunities across a wide spectrum of careers
Nationalise the banks and the Mining Industry .
Take back control of outrageous wages in both these sectors and return profits to the
taxpayer .
Nationalise the State Governments in other words get rid of them and appoint federal
controlled administrators same with local councils, sack the lot of them and appoint
administrators.
Just like the AFP is "nationalised", or education is also to a big extent "nationalised",
alongside a big chunk of the health system.... so we can nationalise other things, such as
the modes of production and distribution of energy, major mineral resources, etc.
What about "competition", the God of Neoliberals?.... Competition can have some positive
role in society only in an environment of Regulation. That's why the future is neither
Neoliberal nor Socialist, but a Mixed Economy Social Democracy.
Which party is for a Mixed Economy Social Democracy?.... Labor and to some extent the
Greens. A bunch of independents are also happy with the concept.... Together they are
currently a majority, only waiting for a Federal election.
"... I don't like using the term "neo-liberalism" that much because there is nothing "new" or "liberal" about it, the term itself just helps hide the fact that it's a political project more about power than profit and the end result is more like modern feudalism - an authoritarian system where the lords (bankers, energy companies and their large and inefficient attendant bureaucracies), keep us peasants in thrall through life long debt-slavery simply to buy a house or exploit us as a captured market in the case of the energy sector. ..."
"... Since the word "privatisation" is clearly no longer popular, the latest buzzword from this project is "outsourcing". ..."
"... As far as I can see "neo-liberalism", or what I prefer to call managerial and financialised feudalism is not dead, it's still out and about looking around for the next rent-seeking opportunity. ..."
"... In the political arena, is enabling porkies facilitate each other in every lunatic pronouncement about "Budget repair" and "on track for a surplus". And its spotty, textbook-spouting clones ("all debt is debt! Shriek, gasp, hyperventilate!") fall off the conveyor belts of tertiary education Australia-wide, then turn up on The Drum as IPA 'Research Fellows' to spout their evidence-free assertions. ..."
"... And don't forget the handmaiden of neoliberalism is their macroeconomic mythology about government "debt and borrowing" which will condemn our grandchildren to poverty - inter-generational theft! It also allows them to continue dismantling government social programs by giving tax-cuts to reduce "revenue" and then claiming there is no money to fund those programs. ..."
"... "Competition" as the cornerstone of neoliberal economics was always a lie. Corporations do their best to get rid of competitors by unfair pricing tactics or by takeovers. And even where some competitors hang in there by some means (banks, petrol companies) the competition that occurs is not for price but for profit. ..."
"... We find a shift away from democratic processes and the rise of the "all new adulation of the so-called tough leader" factor, aka Nazism/Fascism. From Trump to Turkey, Netanyahu to Putin, Brazil to China, the rise of the "right" in Europe, the South Americas, where the leader is "our great and "good" Teacher", knows best, and thus infantalises the knowledge and awareness of the rest of the population. Who needs scientists, when the "leader" knows everything? ..."
"... There are indeed alternatives to neoliberalism, most of which have been shown to lead back to neoliberalism. Appeals for fiscal and monetary relief/stimulus can only ever paper over the worst aspects of it's relentless 'progress', between wars, it seems. ..."
"... Neoliberalism seems vastly, catastrophically misunderstood. Widely perceived as the latest abomination to spring from the eternal battle 'twixt Labour and Capital, it's actual origins are somewhat more recent. Neoliberalism really, really is not just "Capitalism gone wrong". It goes much deeper, to a fundamental flaw buried( more accurately 'planted') deep in the heart of economics. ..."
"... In 1879 an obscure journalist from then-remote San Francisco, Henry George, took the world by storm with his extraordinary bestseller Progress and Poverty . Still the only published work to outsell the Bible in a single year, it did so for over twenty years, yet few social justice advocates have heard of it. ..."
"... George gravely threatened privileged global power-elites , so they erased him from academic history. A mind compared, in his time with Plato, Copernicus and Adam Smith wiped from living memory, by the modern aristocracy. ..."
"... In the process of doing so, they emasculated the discipline of economics, stripped dignity from labour, and set in motion a world-destroying doctrine. Neo-Classical Economics(aka neoliberalism) was born , to the detriment of the working-citizen and the living world on which s/he depends. ..."
I don't like using the term "neo-liberalism" that much because there is nothing "new" or
"liberal" about it, the term itself just helps hide the fact that it's a political project
more about power than profit and the end result is more like modern feudalism - an
authoritarian system where the lords (bankers, energy companies and their large and
inefficient attendant bureaucracies), keep us peasants in thrall through life long
debt-slavery simply to buy a house or exploit us as a captured market in the case of the
energy sector.
Since the word "privatisation" is clearly no longer popular, the latest buzzword from this
project is "outsourcing". If you've had a look at The Canberra Times over the last couple of
weeks there have been quite a few articles about outsourcing parts of Medicare and Centrelink, using labour hire companies and so on – is this part of a current LNP plan
to "sell off" parts of the government before Labour takes the reins in May?
As far as I can see "neo-liberalism", or what I prefer to call managerial and
financialised feudalism is not dead, it's still out and about looking around for the next
rent-seeking opportunity.
Neoliberalism "dead"?
I think not.
It is riveted on the country like a straitjacket.
Which is exactly what it was always intended to be, a system gamed and rigged to ensure the
wage-earning scum obtain progressively less and less of the country's productive wealth,
however much they contributed to it.
The wage theft and exploitation Neoliberalism fosters has become the new norm.
Neoliberal idealogues thickly infest Federal and State Treasuries.
In the political arena, is enabling porkies facilitate each other in every lunatic
pronouncement about "Budget repair" and "on track for a surplus".
And its spotty, textbook-spouting clones ("all debt is debt! Shriek, gasp, hyperventilate!")
fall off the conveyor belts of tertiary education Australia-wide, then turn up on The Drum as
IPA 'Research Fellows' to spout their evidence-free assertions.
The IPA itself has moles in govt at every level--even in your local Council.
Certainly in ours.
Neoliberalism is "dead"?
Correction.
Neoliberalism is alive, thriving---and quick to ensure its glaring deficiencies and
inequities are solely attributable to its opponents. Now THERE'S a surprise.....
Agree! And don't forget the handmaiden of neoliberalism is their macroeconomic mythology
about government "debt and borrowing" which will condemn our grandchildren to poverty -
inter-generational theft! It also allows them to continue dismantling government social programs by giving tax-cuts
to reduce "revenue" and then claiming there is no money to fund those programs.
Neoliberalism will not be dead until the underpinning of neoliberalism is abandoned by ALP
and Greens. That underpinning is their mindless attachment to "budget repair" and "return to
surplus". The federal government's "budget" is nothing like a currency user's budget.
Currency users collect in order to spend whereas every dollar spent by the federal government
is a new dollar and every dollar taxed by the federal government is an ex-dollar. A currency
cannot sensibly have "debt" in the currency that it issues and no amount of surplus or
deficit now will enhance or impair its capacity to spend in future. A currency issuer does
not need an electronic piggybank, or a Future Fund, or a Drought Relief Fund. It can't max
out an imaginary credit card. It's "borrowing" is just an exchange of its termless no-coupon
liabilities (currency) for term-limited coupon-bearing liabilities (bonds). The federal
budget balance is no rational indicator of any need for austerity or for stimulus. The
rational indicators are unemployment (too small a "deficit"/too large a surplus) and
inflation (too large a "deficit"/too small a "surplus"). Federal taxation is where dollars go
to die. It doesn't "fund" a currency issuer's spending - it is there to stop the dollars it
issues from piling up and causing inflation and to make room for spending by democratically
elected federal parliament. The name of the game is to balance the economy, not the entirely
notional and fundamentally irrelevant "budget".
"Competition" as the cornerstone of neoliberal economics was always a lie. Corporations do
their best to get rid of competitors by unfair pricing tactics or by takeovers. And even
where some competitors hang in there by some means (banks, petrol companies) the competition
that occurs is not for price but for profit.
And changing the electoral system? Yes indeed. After years of observation it seems to me
that the problem with our politics is not individual politicians (although there are notable
exceptions) but political parties. Rigid control of policies and voting on party instruction
(even by the Greens) makes the proceedings of parliament a complete waste of time. If every
policy had to run the gauntlet of 150 people all voting by their conscience we would have
better policy. The executive functions could be carried out by a cabinet also elected from
those members. But not going to happen - too many vested interests in the parties and their
corporate sponsors.
With the election of Bolsonaro in Brazil (even though nearly 30% of electors refused to vote)
it may be a little presumptuous to dissect the dead corpse of neoliberalism, as Richard
Denniss' hopes that we can.
What is absolutely gob-smacking is that Brazilians voted for him; a man that Glenn Greenwald
describes as "far more dangerous than Trump" , that Bolsonaro envisages military
dictatorships as "being a far more superior form of government" advocating a civil war
in order to dispose of the left.
Furthermore, the election of this far-right neoliberal extremist also threatens the Amazon
forest and its indigenous people; with a global impact that will render combatting climate
change even more difficult.
Locally, recent Liberal Party battles over leadership have included the neolib factor, as the
lunatic right in that party - who I suspect would all love to be a Bolsonaro themselves -
aggressively activate their grumblings and dissension.
Oh, Richard how I wish you were right; but in the Victorian election campaign - currently
underway - I have seen Socialist candidates behaving in a manner that doesn't garner hope in
a different way of doing politics.
The fact that 'our' democracy is based on an adversarial, partisan system leaves me with
little hope.
Alain Badiou wrote that "ours is not a world of democracy but a world of imperial
conservatism using democratic phraseology" ; and until that imposition is discarded 'our'
democracy will remain whatever we are told it is, and neolibs will continue to shove their
bullshit down our throats as much as they can.
We find a shift away from democratic processes and the rise of the "all new
adulation of the so-called tough leader" factor, aka Nazism/Fascism. From Trump to
Turkey, Netanyahu to Putin, Brazil to China, the rise of the "right" in Europe, the South
Americas, where the leader is "our great and "good" Teacher", knows best, and thus
infantalises the knowledge and awareness of the rest of the population. Who needs scientists,
when the "leader" knows everything?
Have the people of the world abrogated their democratic responsibility?
Or is it the gerrymandering chicanery of US Republican backers/politicians( so long as you
control the voting machines ) that have sent the ugly message to the world, Power is yours
for the making and taking by any means that ignores the public's rights in the decision
making process. Has the "neo-liberal" world delivered a corrupted system of democracy that
has deliberately alienated the world's population from actively participating fully in the
full awareness that their vote counts and will be counted?
Do we need to take back the controls of democracy to ensure that it is the will of the
people and not a manipulation by vested interest groups/individuals? You're darn
tootin'!!!
A thoughtful piece. Thanks. There are indeed alternatives to neoliberalism, most of which
have been shown to lead back to neoliberalism. Appeals for fiscal and monetary
relief/stimulus can only ever paper over the worst aspects of it's relentless 'progress',
between wars, it seems.
Neoliberalism seems vastly, catastrophically misunderstood. Widely perceived as the
latest abomination to spring from the eternal battle 'twixt Labour and Capital, it's actual
origins are somewhat more recent. Neoliberalism really, really is not just "Capitalism gone
wrong". It goes much deeper, to a fundamental flaw buried( more accurately 'planted')
deep in the heart of economics.
Instead of trying to understand Neo-Classical Economics it is perhaps more instructive to
understand what it was built, layer by layer, to obscure. First the Land system, then the
Wealth system, and finally the Money system (hived off into a compartment - 'macroeconomics').
Importantly, three entirely different categories of "thing" .
In 1879 an obscure journalist from then-remote San Francisco, Henry George, took the world
by storm with his extraordinary bestseller Progress and Poverty . Still the only
published work to outsell the Bible in a single year, it did so for over twenty years, yet
few social justice advocates have heard of it.
George set out to discover why the worst poverty always seemed to accompany the most
progress. By chasing down the production process to its ends, and tracing where the proceeds
were going, he succeeded spectacularly. From Progress and Poverty , Chapter 17 - "The Problem Explained"
:
Three things unite in production: land, labor, and capital. Three parties divide the
output: landowner, laborer, and capitalist. If the laborer and capitalist get no more as
production increases, it is a necessary inference that the landowner takes the gain.
George
gravely threatened privileged global power-elites , so they erased him from academic
history. A mind compared, in his time with Plato, Copernicus and Adam Smith wiped from living
memory, by the modern aristocracy.
In the process of doing so, they emasculated the discipline of economics, stripped dignity
from labour, and set in motion a world-destroying doctrine. Neo-Classical
Economics(aka neoliberalism) was born , to the detriment of the working-citizen and the
living world on which s/he depends.
Einstein was a fan of George, and used his methods of thought-experiment and powerful
inductive reasoning to discover Relativity, twenty years later. Henry Georges brilliant
insights into Land (aka nature), Wealth (what you want, need), and Money
(sharing mechanism) are as relevant as ever, and until they are rediscovered, we are likely
to re-run the 1900's over and over, with fewer and fewer resources.
In Christian tradition, the
love of money is condemned as a sin primarily based on texts
such as Ecclesiastes 5.10 and
1 Timothy 6:10. The Jewish and
Christian condemnation relates to avarice
and greed rather than
money itself. Christian texts (scriptures) are full of
parables and use easy to understand subjects, such as money, to convey the actual message, there are further parallels in
Solon and
Aristotle,[1]
and Massinissa-who ascribed love of
money to Hannibal and the
Carthaginians.[2].
While certain political ideologies, such as
neoliberalism, assume and promote the view that the behavior that capitalism fosters in individuals is natural to humans,[2][3]
anthropologists like
Richard Robbins
point out that there is nothing natural about this behavior - people are not naturally dispossessed to accumulate wealth and
driven by wage-labor
Neoliberalism abstract the economic sphere from other aspects of society (politics, culture, family etc., with any political
activity constituting an
intervention into the natural process of the market, for example) and assume that people make rational exchanges in the sphere
of market transactions. In reality rational economic exchanges are actually heavily influenced by pre-existing social ties and
other factors.
Under neoliberalism both the society and culture revolve around business activity (the accumulation of capital). As such,
business activity and the "free market" exchange (despite the fact that "free market" never existed in human history) are often
viewed as being absolute or "natural" in that all other human social relations revolve around these processes (or should exist to
facilitate one's ability to perform these processes
Notable quotes:
"... Conwell equated poverty with sin and asserted that anyone could become rich through hard work. This gospel of wealth, however, was an expression of Muscular Christianity and understood success to be the result of personal effort rather than divine intervention. [5] ..."
"... They criticized many aspects of the prosperity gospel, noting particularly the tendency of believers to lack compassion for the poor, since their poverty was seen as a sign that they had not followed the rules and therefore are not loved by God ..."
According to historian Kate Bowler , the prosperity gospel was formed
from the intersection of three different ideologies: Pentecostalism , New Thought , and "an American gospel of
pragmatism, individualism, and upward mobility". [4]
This "American gospel" was best exemplified by Andrew Carnegie 's Gospel of Wealth and Russell Conwell 's famous sermon
"Acres of Diamonds", in which Conwell equated poverty with sin and asserted that anyone could
become rich through hard work. This gospel of wealth, however, was an expression of Muscular Christianity
and understood success to be the result of personal effort rather than divine intervention.
[5]
... ... ...
In 2005, Matthew
Ashimolowo , the founder of the largely African
Kingsway International Christian Centre in southern England, which preaches a "health and
wealth" gospel and collects regular tithes, was ordered by the Charity Commission to repay money he had
appropriated for his personal use. In 2017, the organisation was under criminal investigation
after a leading member was found by a court in 2015 to have operated a Ponzi scheme between 2007 and 2011, losing or
spending £8 million of investors' money. [43]
36]Hanna Rosin of The Atlantic argues that
prosperity theology contributed to the housing bubble that caused the
late-2000s
financial crisis . She maintains that home ownership was heavily emphasized in prosperity
churches, based on reliance on divine financial intervention that led to unwise choices based
on actual financial ability. [36]
... ... ...
Historian Carter
Lindberg of Boston University has drawn parallels
between contemporary prosperity theology and the medieval indulgence trade .
[69] Coleman notes that several pre–20th century Christian movements in the
United States taught that a holy lifestyle was a path to prosperity and that God-ordained hard
work would bring blessing. [16]
... ... ...
In April 2015, LDS apostle
Dallin H. Oaks
stated that people who believe in "the theology of prosperity" are deceived by riches. He
continued by saying that the "possession of wealth or significant income is not a mark of
heavenly favor, and their absence is not evidence of heavenly disfavor". He also cited how
Jesus differentiated the attitudes towards money held by the young rich man in Mark
10:17–24, the good Samaritan, and Judas Iscariot in his betrayal. Oaks concluded this
portion of his sermon by highlighting that the "root of all evil is not money but the love of
money". [90]
In 2015, well known pastor and prosperity gospel advocate Creflo Dollar launched a
fundraising campaign to replace a previous private jet with a $65 million Gulfstream G650.
[91] On the August
16, 2015 episode of his HBO
weekly series Last
Week Tonight , John Oliver satirized prosperity
theology by announcing that he had established his own tax-exempt church, called Our Lady of
Perpetual Exemption . In a lengthy segment, Oliver focused on what he characterized as the
predatory conduct of televangelists who appeal for repeated gifts from people in financial
distress or personal crises, and he criticized the very loose requirements for entities to
obtain tax exempt status as churches under U.S. tax law. Oliver said that he would ultimately
donate any money collected by the church to Doctors Without Borders .
[92]
In July 2018, Antonio Spadaro and Marcelo Figueroa, in the Jesuit journal La Civilità
Cattolica , examined the origins of the prosperity gospel in the United States and
described it as a reductive version of the American Dream which had offered
opportunities of success and prosperity unreachable in the Old World . The authors distinguished the
prosperity gospel from Max
Weber 's Protestant
ethic , noting that the protestant ethic related prosperity to religiously inspired
austerity while the prosperity gospel saw prosperity as the simple result of personal faith.
They criticized many aspects of the prosperity gospel, noting particularly the tendency of
believers to lack compassion for the poor, since their poverty was seen as a sign that they had
not followed the rules and therefore are not loved by God . [93][94]
Neoliberalism, the economic stablemate of big religion's Prosperity Evangelism cult.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
. Dual streams of bull shit to confuse the citizens while the Country's immense wealth is
stolen.
"... Apologies, but Neoliberalism is far from 'dead'. But of course it should never have given 'life'. However, if it were 'dead' why did Labor vote with the Coalition to ratify the ultra-Neoliberal TPP??? The TPP is the penultimate wet dream of all neoliberal multinational vulture corporations. Why???? Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) Under these rules, foreign investors can legally challenge host state regulations outside that country's courts. A wide range of policies can be challenged. ..."
Apologies, but Neoliberalism is far from 'dead'. But of course it should never have given
'life'. However, if it were 'dead' why did Labor vote with the Coalition to ratify the
ultra-Neoliberal TPP??? The TPP is the penultimate wet dream of all neoliberal multinational
vulture corporations. Why???? Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) Under these rules,
foreign investors can legally challenge host state regulations outside that country's courts.
A wide range of policies can be challenged.
Yeah! Philip Morris comes to mind. "The cost to taxpayers of the Australian government's
six-year legal battle with the tobacco giant Philip Morris over plain packaging laws can
finally be revealed, despite the government's efforts to keep the cost secret.
The commonwealth government spent nearly $40m defending its world-first plain packaging
laws against Philip Morris Asia, a tobacco multinational, according to freedom of information
documents.
Documents say the total figure is $38,984,942.97."
Neo- liberalism is not dead its only just started. We are not in an era of democracy and
freedom but of Oligarchy and governmental servitude.
Less restrictions doesn't mean freedom it mean free booters, privateers , and plunderers are
given government support and handouts the only thing free is their right to take.
The pirates who plunder the most are given Hero status and those plundered are laughed at
as losers.
Looks around you governments are becoming agents of theft find ways to channel money to
those who don't need it . They say its right wing fascism but its not for all their evil the
fascists were determined to improve the lot of the people, however perversely they went about
it.
What we have today is legalised privateering.
None of the political parties today have the least intention to change a system that works
for them.
Fred, I can't remember who said it, but an observer of human systems and institutions made
the observation that unless the prevalent social, economic or political structures of the day
was not either changed or renewed, then those within the system would 'game' it; corrupting
it from within for personal benefit to the detriment of society as a whole.
This perfectly sums up neo-liberalism.
Whatever positive virtues were extolled when this ideology was adopted wholesale by so many
governments and societies (and please spare me the '-we delivered billions out of poverty!'
line, that was a positive byproduct, never the objective of neo-liberalism), it has since
become thoroughly corrupted, serving an ever shrinking percentage of society - entrenching a
super-wealthy 'ruling class' that makes a mockery of the idea of democracy.
It's time to ditch this 21st Century feudalistic construct, and replace it with something
that serves the whole of society with more justice than this current gravy train for the one
percenters.
Fully agree with the things being said here. The privatisation of essential services has been
a bloody disaster. Telecommunications, health, education energy production/distribution. Look
at what the NSW conservatives are doing the the public transport or the feds have done to our
communications, including Telstra the ABC and SBS.
But the issue is that this will just turn into an ongoing political football with each
successive conservative government trying to sell off the farm again.
These critical public services and infrastructure must be protected in law needing a
referendum to make major changes. Also their funding must be guaranteed and they must be run
at arms length from the government to reduce political interference and ensure they are
delivering the best possible service and are competitive with the huge private sector
operators.
There charter of operation and obligation to the public must be extremely robust and
clearly outline their duties of care to operate in a transparent and open fashion putting the
public interest as a priority.
The opposite of a neoliberal economic agenda isn't a progressive economic agenda, but
democratic re-engagement.
You can have democratic engagement voting for a 'neo-liberal economic agenda'. In fact
we've had it for decades.
But of course not even the Coalition believes that any more. These days they proudly
subsidise their friends and regulate their enemies in order to reshape Australia in their
preferred form.
They're politicians - they've never applied their ideological views in a pure way. This is
nothing new.
Ironically, one of the major objections to proportional representation in Australia has
been that it tends to deliver minority government, a situation that the major parties
prefer to avoid.
There's a big difference between minority government by a major party + a handful of
votes, versus a minority government by a handful of minority parties, or a major party + a
minor party. They tend to lead to the kind of instability we'd prefer to avoid.
The death of neoliberalism means
I think you've called it a bit prematurely. Both major parties here are still peddling
neo-liberalism, with policies which only differ on the margins.
Not knowing about his role is a dangerous blind spot. Please real MacLean brilliant book,
Democracy in Chains, a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction.
Ask people to name the key minds that have shaped America's burst of radical
right-wing attacks on working conditions, consumer rights and public services, and they
will typically mention figures like free market-champion Milton Friedman, libertarian
guru Ayn Rand, and laissez-faire economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.
James McGill Buchanan is a name you will rarely hear unless you've taken several
classes in economics. And if the Tennessee-born Nobel laureate were alive today, it would
suit him just fine that most well-informed journalists, liberal politicians, and even
many economics students have little understanding of his work.
The reason? Duke historian Nancy MacLean contends that his philosophy is so stark that
even young libertarian acolytes are only introduced to it after they have accepted the
relatively sunny perspective of Ayn Rand. (Yes, you read that correctly). If Americans
really knew what Buchanan thought and promoted, and how destructively his vision is
manifesting under their noses, it would dawn on them how close the country is to a
transformation most would not even want to imagine, much less accept.
That is a dangerous blind spot, MacLean argues in a meticulously researched book,
Democracy in Chains , a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction. While
Americans grapple with Donald Trump's chaotic presidency, we may be missing the key to
changes that are taking place far beyond the level of mere politics. Once these changes
are locked into place, there may be no going back.
The greedy right wing want it all for themselves.
Stephen
Hancock31 Oct 2018 00:04 3 4
Neo-liberalism will never die, it might mutate in to another parasitic ideology and the
Liberals might re-brand their party, but as long as there's human greed to want more power
and financial gain over others, people like Abbott and Joyce will continue to surface and
thrive.
ocratato31
Oct 2018 00:03 5 6 I think declaring neoliberalism dead is way too premature.
The rich and powerful have their greedy hands on the levers of government in many
countries. They are not going to give that up without a fight.
Basically neoliberalism will eventually go down kicking and screaming. Sadly it will
take a lot of us with it. It is going to get nasty.
Authoritarianism has always existed. But it hasn't always been clearly visible. Technology
makes authoritarianism more powerful. Centralization and urbanization have served the
purposes of the elite well.
People need information and communication. The inverted totalitarianism we live in,
doesn't like that. It wants the Internet to implement that inverted totalitarianism (see
China). They want everything (in a corporatist way) to be mandatory, except for what is
forbidden. What has been revealed, and is being revealed, is that the current
political-economic system isn't fit for purpose, human purpose.
So the real answer is like what is happening in France now...
Attempting to blame the internet for the increasingly authoritarian world we live in is
not seeing the forest through the trees. The internet is surely a tool used against
humanity,That doesn't make it "bad". I would say the reason people can be fooled by these
social media propaganda tactics, is precisely because the fourth estate is practicing such in
depth propaganda campaigns, with all propaganda, all the time coverage on every other form of
media as well. People have nowhere to turn.
Why do people think some russians posting on facebook and twitter skewed the electorate in
this country than say nothing about:fox news,npr,cnn,rush limbaugh,hannity,the new york
times, wall st journal,the weekly standard, time magazine,people magazine, etc.All of these
organizations and all the others spout disinformation. every day.
And america's trend towards the authoritarian state has been accelerating since at least the
national security act of 1947.as a national trend, whereas in the beginning of this countries
existence, there have been authoritarian control of local districts by local groups, ie.
whites over blacks, or whites over indians, or rich over poor immigrants, etc.
All the internet age and the "information age is doing, is changing the medium. the message
is still the same. and there has always been resistance. now that resistance seems more
futile, but is it?
Why do people think some russians posting on facebook and twitter skewed the electorate
in this country than say nothing about:fox news,npr,cnn,rush limbaugh,hannity,the new york
times, wall st journal,the weekly standard, time magazine,people magazine, etc.All of these
organizations and all the others spout disinformation. every day.
Exactly. Our society is mainly shaped by its elites. And other than Twitter they are
barely involved with the internet at all but rather get their news and attitudes from the NY
Times or (in Trump's case) cable TV. Therefore rather than enhancing the always existing
authoritarianism of "manufactured consent," the internet works to undermine it. This of
course provokes much fingering of worry beads among the elite who see the mob and their
pitchforks as real threats. The situation in France illustrates this phenomenon nicely and
there have been calls by some to block Facebook in France so those yellow vests can't
communicate with each other.
Diversity of opinion is a good thing, not bad, and some of us scan right leaning websites
just to get a different view. The internet is not the problem. Powerful authoritarians are
the problem.
In my own undoubtedly faulty memory of Animal Farm , Orwell characterized the
devolution as "the nature of the beast" through his characters. That is (over and above the
allegory of the Russian revolution/devolution), there are strong traits in human character
that makes this devolution inevitable. We have the pigs; the aggressors, and the followers,
and less savory characters, and the "never quite enough" wise annimal(s) and so on, working
unwittingly together against the welfare of the whole making the end result seem precast. Not
so much that we did nothing, as that we could do nothing.
1984 never really addressed that issue (or at least I don't remember it doing so), but
from the start everything seemed inevitable, there was no discussion of any "might have
been," that could have been an alternative to the dystopia of an engineered rivalry between
two super-powers that worked off each other to maintain a compliant global society in
hopeless mass psychological, never mind physical, irons.
But even assuming this inevitability was Orwell's own belief and intent in his
writings (and not simply my misunderstanding of them), I agree with your point that we had
plenty of warning, and not just Orwell, and that society as a whole too frequently took the
easier road but with a lot of help and insistent guidance (manipulation) from our
increasingly corrupt leaders and captains of industry (our own pigs).
Animal Farm was Orwell's best book IMO because it speaks to universal human tendencies
even though the book was also about Stalin and Trotsky. 1984 was far fetched speculation
based on, as it turned out, the short lived totalitarianism of figures like Hitler and
Stalin. People assume we are living 1984 when it's really Animal Farm.
"... Neoliberal doctrine leads to skyrocketing inequality, a swelling in the desperate and forgotten poor who are vulnerable to populist messaging and the idea of a strongman peddling easy answers to keep people safe as civil unrest increases. Fascism seeks power for power's sake and total control over the populace, and always cruelty to the marginalised, the 'others'. How all the right wingers hand-wringing over the idea of 'socialist communisms!!1!' can't see that, I don't know. ..."
"... All over the world, failed neoliberalism is being replaced by right-wing populist nationalism & I don't think "repairing democratic institutions" is at the top of their to-do list. ..."
"... I'm certainly in favour of greater nationalisation, especially of essential services. But around the world, neo-liberalism has morphed into neo-fascism and this is where the next fight must be. ..."
"... In social systems, natural selection favours cooperation. In addition, we are biased toward ethical behaviours, so cooperation and sharing are valued in human societies. ..."
"... The consequences of four decades of financialized neoliberal trade policies were by no means equally shared. Internal and external class relations were made evident through narrowly distributed booms followed by widely distributed busts. ..."
"... No wonder you get fascist right wing insurgence in this climate! ..."
Never forget that fascism is the natural defence mechanism of capital. After it is accrued,
it must be defended. The current trend in global politics is not an anomaly but an entirely
predictable outcome.
Neoliberal doctrine leads to skyrocketing inequality, a swelling in the
desperate and forgotten poor who are vulnerable to populist messaging and the idea of a
strongman peddling easy answers to keep people safe as civil unrest increases. Fascism seeks
power for power's sake and total control over the populace, and always cruelty to the marginalised, the 'others'. How all the right wingers hand-wringing over the idea of
'socialist communisms!!1!' can't see that, I don't know.
It's too late for the US I fear, and time is rapidly running out for the UK if they don't
pull their finger out and have another referendum before the self immolation of Brexit.
All over the world, failed neoliberalism is being replaced by right-wing populist nationalism
& I don't think "repairing democratic institutions" is at the top of their to-do list.
If
Australia does swing the pendulum to the left, it, along with NZ, will be one of the few
countries to do so. De-privatising will not be easy & will be met with a huge reactionary
backlash. They'll need to tread very carefully if they want to stay in government.
Neoliberalism may be dead but the neoliberals in the government will never admit it as they
seamlessly transition to authoritarian nationalism with populist promises - and failure to
deliver on them.
The neoliberal project was always a philosophical cover for crony capitalism that betrayed
the public interest by rewarding vested interests for their patronage, perverted democracy,
and served as a mechanism for perverting the natural function of an economy - to fairly
distribute goods, resources, and services throughout society - to favor the welfare of the
few over the many.
The self-interested culture of neoliberalism - the cult of the individual that denies the
common good - pervades every aspect of Australia's life as a nation - business, politics,
sport, education, and health - denying and crowding out public spirit, selfless service, and
societal wellbeing.
For meaningful change to occur there must be a rebirth of the conception of the public
good, and the virtue and necessity of acting to realise it.
However at this stage there is not a communal recognition of what the problem is let alone
how to go about repairing it. For that to happen there must be a widely accepted narrative
that naturally leads to the obvious actions that must be take to redress the damage done by
the neoliberal con job: decreasing economic inequality, restoring democracy, and rebuilding a
sense of common cause.
Piecemeal change will not be sufficient to enact the the sweeping transformation that has
to occur in every department of life. It is not enough to tax multinationals, to have a
federal integrity commission, to build a renewable future, or to move to proportional
representation.
Someone, some party, some coherent philosophical perspective has to explain why it must be
done.
It's certainly the case that the Liberal party, in particular, are now using ideas that fall
outside and to the right of neo-liberalism, but it's also obviously the case that
neo-liberalism and current Liberal thinking share the same underlying goal. Namely, the
transfer of wealth and power towards a narrower and narrower group of people and
corporations.
That suggests the death of neo-liberalism is coming about because – having done so
much damage already – it's no longer capable of delivering the required results, and
that we're moving into a new phase of the death spiral. I think that can also be seen in both
the US (where Trump is using the identified problems of neo-liberalism to further the same
basic agenda, but with less decorum and a larger cadre of useful idiots) and the UK (where
there's still a very strong possibility that Brexit will be used as an excuse to roll back
great swathes of social and democratic safeguards).
Perhaps even more worrying – given the latest reports on how we're destroying
habitat as well as the climate, and how much of our biodiversity is in South America,
particularly the Amazon – is that Brazil is how on a similar path.
The likelihood is that the Liberal party won't get away with what they have planned, but
they – and the forces behind them – certainly won't stop trying. And
unfortunately it's far from obvious that the Labor party will repudiate neo-liberalism
anytime soon. That they signed up for the latest iteration of TPP is hardly a good omen.
Democratic re-engagement is the better way forward from neo-liberalism, but unfortunately
I think it's unlikely to be the one that we end up taking.
All of that said, the deepest problem of all is the way in which democracy and government
have been corrupted, often via the media, but typically at the behest of corporations, and if
there is a way forward it has to be found in addressing those interactions
I'm certainly in favour of greater nationalisation, especially of essential services. But
around the world, neo-liberalism has morphed into neo-fascism and this is where the next
fight must be.
In social systems, natural selection favours cooperation. In addition, we are biased
toward ethical behaviours, so cooperation and sharing are valued in human societies.
But what happens when we are forced into an economic system that makes us compete at every
level? The logical outcome is societal decline or collapse.
Perhaps the worst aspect of neoliberalism was its infection of the Labor party. This has
left our social infrastructure alarmingly exposed.
The consequences of four decades of financialized neoliberal trade policies were by no
means equally shared. Internal and external class relations were made evident through
narrowly distributed booms followed by widely distributed busts.
Globally, debt has forced policy convergence between political parties of differing
ideologies. European center-left parties have pushed austerity even when ideology would
suggest the opposite.
No wonder you get fascist right wing insurgence in this climate!
Thank you Richard Denniss we need to highlight this more and more and start educating the
dumbed down population saturated with neoliberal snake oil!
No-deal Brexit: Disruption at Dover 'could
last six months' BBC. I have trouble understanding why six months. The UK's customs IT
system won't be ready and there's no reason to think it will be ready even then. I could
see things getting less bad due to adaptations but "less bad" is not normal
The
Great Brexit Breakdown Wall Street Journal. Some parts I quibble with, but generally
good and includes useful historical detail.
The overwhelming majority of economists, including all those in top policymaking positions, completely missed the growth of an
$8 trillion housing bubble. Furthermore, even as the collapse of the bubble began to push the economy into recession, policymakers
repeatedly downplayed its significance, minimizing any negative effects on the economy. As a result, the policy responses last year
were too late and far too small to have much effect countering the downturn.
This paper argues that policymakers are still underestimating the severity of the downturn. Specifically, it argues that the unemployment
rate by the end of 2009 is likely to be far higher than the most recent projections from the Congressional Budget Office and the
Federal Reserve Board.
In this context, it argues for additional stimulus in the neighborhood of 2-3 percent of GDP for two years ($300 billion to $450
billion annually). It suggests two specific mechanisms for getting this money into the economy quickly:
1) an employer tax credit of $3,000 for extending health insurance coverage to workers not already covered by health insurance.
The tax credit can include an additional $1,000 per worker to make coverage more generous.
2) an employer tax credit of up to $2,500 per worker for increasing the amount of paid time off per worker. This paid time off
can take the form of paid family leave, paid sick days, increased vacation, or shorter standard workweeks. This would both boost
demand and lead to more employment at every level of GDP. For example, if the average number of hours per worker per year were reduced
by just 3 percent, this would lead to 4.2 million more jobs at the same level of GDP.
The paper also argues for a housing policy that is focused on stabilizing housing prices, but only in markets where the bubble
has deflated. To advance this goal, it should have Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stop buying mortgages that were used to purchase homes
at bubble inflated prices. (This can be determined by the ratio of the sale price-to-annual rent. As a national average, this ratio
should not exceed 15 to 1, although there is some regional variation.)
Because they continue to buy mortgages on homes purchased at bubble-inflated prices, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are generating
new losses for taxpayers, while providing no real benefit for homeowners. Homeowners in these markets will pay more in housing costs
by owning rather than renting and still find themselves with no equity when they sell their home. By contrast, if relief was focused
on markets where the bubble has deflated, prices could be stabilized and it is likely that taxpayers would actually profit in the
long-run.
The last section points out that the frequently-discussed notion that investors will flee the dollar is actually not to be feared
at all. It is in fact necessary, since the dollar must fall to correct the country's huge trade imbalance. The rest of the world
has more to fear from a free-falling dollar than the United States, since a very low dollar would make U.S. goods hyper-competitive
in the world economy. As a result, other countries would have no alternative but to act to prevent the dollar from falling too far.
Therefore, concerns about a loss of international confidence in the dollar are completely unfounded. This should not be a basis
for limiting the size of future stimulus packages.
Most economists now acknowledge that the collapse of the housing bubble is leading the country into the worst downturn since the
Great Depression. However, even as newly released economic data consistently come in worse than expected, policymakers still do not
appear to have grasped the seriousness of the downturn. The policies that have been put forward to date are in some cases tangential
to solving the economy's real problems and almost certainly not large enough to reverse the economy's slide.
The first part of this paper summarizes the evidence indicating that the recession is likely to be worse than is generally expected
and that the stimulus approved by Congress thus far will be inadequate to boost the economy back to full employment. The second section
outlines two tax credits that would be effective forms of short-term stimulus while also providing long-term benefits to the economy.
The third section discusses the inadequacy of the Obama administration's plans for dealing with the housing market. The fourth part
briefly explains why concerns about an investor flight from the dollar are misplaced, and why these concerns should not be a basis
for limiting the size of future stimulus packages.
Reply
Sunday, April 16, 2017 at 09:58 AM
Not that Wikipedia gets everything right but here is a snippet of what it says about the Goldman Sachs CEO:
'Blankfein testified before Congress in April 2010 at a hearing of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He
said that Goldman Sachs had no moral or legal obligation to inform its clients it was betting against the products which they
were buying from Goldman Sachs because it was not acting in a fiduciary role. The company was sued on April 16, 2010, by the SEC
for the fraudulent selling of a synthetic CDO tied to subprime mortgages. With Blankfein at the helm, Goldman has also been criticized
"by lawmakers and pundits for issues from its pay practices to its role in helping Greece mask the size of its debts". In April
2011, a Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report accused Goldman Sachs of misleading clients about complex mortgage-related
investments in 2007, and Senator Carl Levin alleged that Blankfein misled Congress, though no perjury charges have been brought
against Blankfein. In August of the same year, Goldman confirmed that Blankfein had hired high-profile defense lawyer Reid Weingarten'
Weingarten helped in the defense of the Worldcom thieves. Why would anyone do business with a company led by such an ethically
challenged CEO?
The problem here is probably deeper then personality of Blankfein.
There is such thing as system instability of economy caused by outsized financial sector and here GS fits the bill. Promotion
of psychopathic personalities with no brakes and outsize taste for risk is just an icing on the cake.
> Why would anyone do business with a company led by such an ethically challenged CEO?
Why you are assuming the other TBTF are somehow better then GS?
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.~Thomas Jefferson~
When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since
the hand that gives is above the hand that takes Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency;
their sole object is gain." – Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, 1815
This is about destruction of neoliberalism. Transnational financial elite under neoliberalism is above the law. the USA blatantly
breaches this convention now. And will pay the price.
This is Onion-style humor is no it : White House, Trudeau seek to distance themselves from Huawei move
Notable quotes:
"... The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the arrest could complicate efforts to reach a broader U.S.-China trade deal but would not necessarily damage the process. ..."
"... Meng's detention also raised concerns about potential retaliation from Beijing in Canada, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sought to distance himself from the arrest. ..."
Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, the 46-year-old daughter of the company's founder, was detained
in Canada on Dec. 1, the same day Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping dined together at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires.
A White House official told Reuters Trump did not know about a U.S. request for her extradition from Canada before he met Xi and
agreed to a 90-day truce in the brewing trade war.
Meng's arrest during a stopover in Vancouver, announced by the Canadian authorities on Wednesday, pummeled stock markets already
nervous about tensions between the world's two largest economies on fears the move could derail the planned trade talks.
The arrest was made at Washington's request as part of a U.S. investigation of an alleged scheme to use the global banking system
to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran, according to people familiar with the probe.
Another U.S. official told Reuters that while it was a Justice Department matter and not orchestrated in advance by the White
House, the case could send a message that Washington is serious about what it sees as Beijing's violations of international trade
norms.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the arrest could complicate efforts to reach a broader
U.S.-China trade deal but would not necessarily damage the process.
Meng's detention also raised concerns about potential retaliation from Beijing in Canada, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
sought to distance himself from the arrest.
"The appropriate authorities took the decisions in this case without any political involvement or interference ... we were advised
by them with a few days' notice that this was in the works," Trudeau told reporters in Montreal in televised remarks.
Originally from:
Truthdig
December 8, 2018, 4:38 AM GMT
Wall Street's corruption runs deeper than you can fathom | Alternet
Wall Street's corruption runs deeper than you can fathom
As an employee at the Federal Reserve in 2011, three years after
the dissolution of Lehman Brothers, Carmen Segarra witnessed the results of this deregulation firsthand
Of the myriad policy decisions that have brought us to our current precipice, from the signing of the
North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
to the invasion of Iraq and the
gerrymandering
of House districts across the country, few have proven as consequential as the demise of
Glass-Steagall
. Signed into law as the U.S.A.
Banking Act of 1933, the legislation had been crucial to safeguarding the financial industry in the wake of the Great Depression.
But with its repeal in 1999, the barriers separating commercial and investment banking collapsed, creating the preconditions for
an economic crisis from whose shadow we have yet to emerge.
Carmen Segarra might have predicted as much. As an employee at the Federal Reserve in 2011, three years after the dissolution
of Lehman Brothers, she witnessed the results of this deregulation firsthand. In her new book, "
Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall Street,
"
she chronicles the recklessness of institutions
like Goldman Sachs and the stunning lengths the United States government went to to accommodate them, even as they authored one of
the worst crashes in our nation's history.
"They didn't want to hear what I had to say," she tells Robert Scheer in the latest installment of "Scheer Intelligence." "And
so I think what we have in terms of this story is really not just a failure of the banks and the regulators, but also a failure of
our prosecutors. I mean, a lot of the statutes that could be used -- criminal statutes, even, that could be used to hold these executives
accountable are not being used, and they have not expired; we could have prosecutors holding these people accountable."
Segarra also explains why she decided to blow the whistle on the Fed, and what she ultimately hopes to accomplish by telling her
story. "I don't like to let the bad guys win," she says. "I'd rather go down swinging. So for me, I saw it as an opportunity to do
my civic duty and rebuild my life. I was very lucky to be blessed by so many people who I shared the story to, especially lawyers
who were so concerned about what I was reporting, who thought that the Federal Reserve was above this, who thought that the government
would not fail us after the financial crisis, and who were livid."
"Noncompliant" explores one of the darkest chapters in modern American history, but with a crook and unabashed narcissist occupying
the Oval Office, its lessons are proving remarkably timely. "We live in a culture where we reward bad behavior, we worship bad behavior,
and it's something that needs to stop," she cautions. "Changing the regulatory culture on [a] U.S. governmental level is something
that's going to take a decade, maybe two. And we need to start now, before things get worse."
Listen to Segarra's interview with Scheer or read a transcript of their conversation below:
Robert Scheer:
Hi, I'm Robert Scheer, and this is another edition of "Scheer Intelligence," where the intelligence comes from
my guests. Today, Carmen Segarra. She's written a book, just came out, called "Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants
of Wall Street." And boy, did she ever. Perhaps you remember this case; it was in 2011, two, three years into the Great Recession.
There was a lot of pressure from Congress that these banks be regulated in a more serious way. As a result, Carmen Segarra, someone
of considerable education, was brought in. And she was assigned to do a survey of Goldman Sachs, to go over to Goldman Sachs. And
I just want to preface this, people have to understand that not only is the Federal Reserve an incredibly -- the most important economic
institution in the United States, but the New York Federal Reserve plays a special role being in New York. And they are basically
entrusted with regulating the banks, and they are the institution that most definitely failed in that task, and helped bring about
the Great Recession. Would you agree with that assessment?
Carmen Segarra:
Yes, I would agree with that assessment. When I joined the Federal Reserve, as you pointed out, I was hired from
outside the regulatory world, but within the legal and compliance banking world, to help fix its problems. And I was well aware of
the problems that existed. And scoping the problems itself was relatively easy; I mean, within days of arriving, I had participated
in meetings where you had Goldman Sachs executives, you know, lying, doublespeaking, and misrepresenting to regulatory agencies without
fear of repercussions. And where I saw Federal Reserve regulators actively working to suppress and expunge from the record evidence
of wrongdoing that could be used by regulatory agencies, prosecutors, and even the Federal Reserve itself to hold Goldman Sachs accountable.
The question was, when I arrived, you know, are these problems fixable? And, spoiler alert: I don't think so.
RS:
Well, your book really is a compelling read on, really, what one could consider the dark culture of finance capital. Most
of us know very little about it; we think it's boring, it's detailed and so forth. And I was thinking of another woman observer of
great education and experience, who first tipped me off as a journalist when I was trying to cover the stuff about banking deregulation
and so forth, and when Clinton was president and they did the basic financial deregulation. A woman named Brooksley Born, who was
head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and she had your kind of background, you know; a leading lawyer with the banks,
and so forth. Understood this a lot better than most of the men who were powerful, including Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin; Lawrence
Summers, who took over from him and went on to be the head of Harvard; Alan Greenspan–none of them really understood these collateralized
debt obligations, credit default swaps; she did. She blew the whistle on it, and they basically destroyed her. She was forced out
of the Clinton administration, and what have you. Did you know about Brooksley Born's work when you got into this? Do you have any
sense? I mean, this was really sort of the first major whistleblower, and she was, as you have been, basically pushed aside.
CS:
Yes. I definitely knew about her. And you know, I have to say that I was, you know, just taking that historical perspective,
which I think is an important point of view through which we should approach this topic. I mean, I remember when I was in law school,
I was one of the very first graduating classes to graduate into a post-Glass-Steagall world. From a 50,000-foot level, I think people
have a better understanding of what that means, in the sense, you know, you have all of a sudden the securities and the banking products
can get together.
But from a practical standpoint, from a ground-zero level, where I was at, that essentially meant two things. From
a professional standpoint, we studied and were aware of the fact that there were a bunch of people on one side of the aisle, the
investment products side–you know, the collateralized debt obligations that you mentioned.
And then there were people who were on
the banking side; we're talking, you know, for purposes of argument, credit cards and debit cards. And that these people, they may
have known about their products, but they were highly specialized; they only knew about the one or two things that they touched,
and they certainly didn't know about them and how they interacted together. And one of the things that I remember studying were not
just the cases of whistleblowers, but also discussing amongst our classmates, you know, what the impact would be of all of a sudden
having a class or a series of classes, graduating from law school, with people who are focusing on banking and compliance, like I
was, and who are having to understand both of these products and sort of how they interact together. And what, sort of visualizing
what our work life would be like, in terms of reporting to people that had an incomplete understanding of how the banking world worked.
So, yes, I was definitely aware; I understood perfectly where she was coming from. And she was very much a cautionary tale for the
rest of us who are lawyers. In terms of, if you find yourself in these difficult situations, you sort of game out what potentially
can happen. And I certainly took it into consideration when I was gaming out whether or not to whistleblow.
RS:
Well, before you get to the whistleblowing stage, I think you're being too kind to what I personally think are people who
should be considered as, or at least charged and examined often with what is criminal behavior. Because ignorance is really not a
good defense; when they were called before congressional committees, these knowledgeable people admitted they really didn't understand
collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps. And for people who are not that familiar, you mentioned Glass-Steagall.
And what Glass-Steagall was, was one of the, really maybe the most important response of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's democratic administration
to the Great Depression. And how did this terrible depression happen, how were the banks so irresponsible. And they decided the key
thing was to separate investment banks from commercial bank; investment banks could be high-rollers, private money, you know what
you're doing, you have knowledge; and commercial banks where you're basically protecting the assets of ordinary people, they're not
knowledgeable, they're trusting your expertise. And eliminating Glass-Steagall eliminated this wall between the two kinds of banking.
And the company that you went to observe, Goldman Sachs, was an investment bank. And by the working of that law, they should have
been allowed to go belly-up when it turned out they had a lot of these dubious credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations.
To people who don't know, a credit default swap was a phony insurance policy pretending to cover these things, but really there's
nothing backing it up. And somehow, in order to save them, they were allowed to announce they could do commercial banking. One could
argue, in some ways, the barrier was lifted to help–Citigroup was of course the other one–Citibank. And these are two banks that
the government stepped in to help and create this monster. Is it not the case?
CS:
Yeah, that's absolutely the case. But there's a couple of things that we need to keep in mind. I mean, I think that
we're all sort of educated enough to know that, you know, where there's a will, there's a way. And so if a system can be
corrupted, people that are allowed to grab hold of power will corrupt it–insofar and only for so long as we allow those people to
have the ability and the power to corrupt it. So ultimately, talking about more or less rules, or different rules, is productive
only to a point. Because ultimately what we're talking about here is the haphazard, slap on the wrist, failure to truly enforce
the rules and regulations equitably across the system. And that creates the imbalances that you see, for example, in Goldman
Sachs, and that you see in the system in general. One of the things that happened as a result of Glass-Steagall coming down was
that a lot of the investment bankers were allowed to take over the commercial banks. And those investment bankers knew nothing
about banking, and Goldman is a great example of that. I mean, when I arrived three years in after the financial crisis, what was
one of the things that was very shocking to me was going into meeting after meeting with Goldman senior management and hearing
them lie, doublespeak, and most shockingly of all, insist that they didn't have to comply with the law. And that is a problem.
Because a bank that doesn't believe, or management at a bank that doesn't believe they have to comply with the law–you bet they
are not supervising their employees correctly, and they're not incentivizing employees correctly in terms of how to do their job.
So their behavior is injecting enormous risk into the system
... ... ...
CS:
The case was assigned to a judge who was friends with the attorney, I had worked with the attorney that represented
the Fed. And then two days before dismissing the case, she revealed that she was married to someone who represented Goldman Sachs
for a living. So, yeah, there you go. [Laughs] I mean, it's almost impossible in terms of successfully blowing the whistle. But
going back to your question with respect to the recordings and having a say, I think the question that we need to be asking
ourselves is this: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Federal Reserve in general, is tasked with supervising the
banks. They have recorders. They have the law on their side. New York is a one person consent state. Banks, private banks,
habitually record everything that goes on inside the bank, and they do it for good reason. Because they do it to stop and prevent
fraud, among employees and by anybody that walks in the door. Why is the Federal Reserve not recording these executives? Why are
they not preserving evidence? I think that is the question that we need to be asking ourselves. You know, what I did was not
special. What I did is what the Fed should have been doing.
Wall Street's corruption runs deeper than you can fathom | Alternet
RS:
Well, it was special in that [Laughs]–come on! There have been a lot of witnesses to
these crimes, really, and you're the lone voice from within that system that dared to speak up. And as I
said, had you not been able to document it with these tapes, you would have been just dismissed as some
kind of kook. The book is called
Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall
Street.
You know, what is so important is nuance and language and attitude. And the people on Wall
Street can affect the protection of manners and complexity. I remember Lawrence Summers testifying in
Congress on why you had to get rid of Glass-Steagall, and he said "this is very complicated." And he said
the same thing Alan Greenspan said: "These people know what they're doing," and so forth. It wasn't
complicated. If the Mafia did it, you'd see right through it in five minutes. Right? You were bundling a
bunch of lousy deals together with some good deals, and you didn't even know what was in there, and you
sold them, and you got a phony insurance contract to back it up. And yet none of these people have been,
gone to jail; very few, one or two have been prosecuted as kind of a scapegoat. But the book is a great
story of an American heroine–but this is what everybody should do! [Laughs] I mean, the real issue about
whistleblowers like yourself is why did it take you? Where were the other folks? How many people–yeah, go
ahead.
CS:
Yeah, agreed. I think that's exactly right. You know, there's a number of
reasons why I wrote the book. First of all, because I think it's an important contribution to the
historical record. As to what is the systemic culture of corruption that exists in these regulatory
agencies that are taking our taxpayer dollars and paying themselves handsome salaries to work against the
American taxpayers. And then the second reason I wrote it is to incentivize people to come forward with
their stories. I wasn't the only person who wanted to blow the whistle in terms of what was going on
there. My circumstances were unique, and I sort of go through it in the book, in the sense that I was
very lucky, for example, that the Fed refused to even negotiate the mandated settlement that they were
supposed to negotiate with me. But they refused, and that allowed me to sue. There's a number of people
who have gone through the process and have been silenced by, you know, getting a monetary offer and
signing a settlement agreement. And we don't hear about them because they are forced not to talk. What I
sort of thought about was, you know, this is just a unique–you know, I didn't ask to be in this
situation, but I felt it was my civic duty. Because I do think that we need more people to really think
about how in their daily lives, they can stop rewarding bad behavior. We live in a culture where we
reward bad behavior, we worship bad behavior, and it's something that needs to stop, you know. Changing
the culture, the regulatory culture on the U.S. governmental level is something that's going to take a
decade, maybe two. And we need to start now, before things get worse. We are not in the best-off of
situations as a country; you know, we have what seems like an economic boom, but it's really just a
debt-fueled economic boom that is going to be temporary. And it's very tough to fix these types of
cultural issues, system issues, when the hurricane of the next financial crisis hits. We need to fix it
now, while we still have a semblance of peace, while we still have the sun shining. And we don't know how
much longer that's going to be. I hope it's long enough to fix it. I hope that people are inspired to
come forward and to think about how to make a difference in their daily lives. You know, because we need
to start thinking of raising children and raising adults that are incentivized in their daily lives to
reward good behavior. I think that until we create a critical mass of Americans that in their daily lives
refuse to reward bad behavior, we're not going to see real systemic change.
RS:
Well, we'll see change. It might not be good change. I mean, you have Donald
Trump–and I want to put some oomph behind this, that it's bipartisan. Because one of the–you know,
everybody, a lot of people I know are very upset about Donald Trump. He's speaking to what Hillary
Clinton calls the "deplorables"; but there's a lot of people hurting out there. And if you read a study
done by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis about the consequence of this economic meltdown that was
engineered from places like Goldman Sachs, the human cost was incredible. I mean, people lost everything.
They weren't bailed out. There was no mortgage relief. They were not helped. The banks were bailed out.
And yet no one has been held accountable, and the politicians, democrats and republicans, who supported
it, have gotten off scot-free.
Wall Street's corruption runs deeper than you can fathom | Alternet
CS:
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. This is not a democratic problem, this is not
a republican problem. This is an American problem with worldwide impact. The U.S. dollar is a reserve
currency. The world depends in large part on the American banking system to work. And for it to work,
there are these rules, and these rules are there to create trust in the system and to create smooth
processes in the system, so that money can be moved and the economy can continue to grow. If the world
can no longer trust the American banking system because Americans cannot be trusted to regulate it, they
are going to move away from the American banking system. They are going to move away from the U.S. dollar
as a reserve currency. And then we are going to find ourselves in the situation that a lot of countries
that are not governed by reserve currencies find themselves occasionally, from time to time, whenever
they have a crisis. You know, we're talking about countries in Latin America; we're talking about
countries in Africa; we're talking about countries in Asia. I hope the book will inspire people to really
take a look around and realize, you know, the American consumer, the American worker, is incredibly
powerful. You know, these banks cannot survive without our money. We don't have to wait for the
government to keep failing us; we don't have to wait for the judiciary to keep failing us; we don't have
to wait for lawyers to keep failing us. We choose who we work for. We choose where we keep our money. We
can choose to protest. We can choose to call our pension funds and tell them, I want you to stop doing
business with Goldman Sachs. It's what we do on a daily basis. When we stand up and we say, I am not
going to be banking with these people–they will listen. It's like, they control all of these other checks
and balances that were put in place in terms of the government to stop them. So now it's up to us as a
people to actually do something about this.
RS:
Let me take a break. And I've been
talking to Carmen Segarra, who is actually the lone honest person from within the banking system that I
know of who really took the story of what these people were doing, and swindling the American people, and
fortunately documented it with tape recording–as they document everything; if you call the bank for
information, "your conversation will be recorded to make it more efficient"–well, she turned the table on
that, had the record. The book is called
Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of
Wall Street.
[omission for station break] I'm not going to be able, in the time that I have here, to
do justice to this book, because the devil is in the details. I want to talk about some people who did
speak up. I mentioned Brooksley Born, who was this brilliant member of the Clinton administration who got
pushed out for speaking up. But when the pressure came down after the Great Recession, and the banks had
to be questioned, they at Goldman Sachs turned to a Columbia University finance professor, David Beim.
And he did a report. He had access to everything, he did this incredible report. We only know about it
because it showed up in some footnote somewhere. And by the way, I haven't given enough credit here to
the people who have helped break this story. ProPublica, who did a really terrific job on it, and the NPR
show This American Life, which really did a great job. So there has been really good reporting. As you
pointed out, it was absolutely shameful that Congress did not really take testimony from you; you were
there as an observer–I think in a red dress, to be noticed. [Laughs]
CS:
Yes. Well, you know, red is the color of martyrs.
RS:
And so I want to ask you about that. Before you even went there, this guy David
Beim had done a study. And William Dudley, the president of the bank, didn't even respond. He said thank
you, they looked at the–and they never responded to the criticisms in that study, which were devastating.
Of how the bank was operating.
CS:
Yeah, but that's how the Federal Reserve Bank of New York operates. And that's,
curiously enough, also how Goldman Sachs operates. They say one thing and do another. If you want to know
what they're doing, just flip it, right? I mean, if they're asking for a report, that means that they
plan to do nothing about it. And you know, the book sort of walks you through the story of how they
played at this game of pretending to clean up the regulatory issues. I mean, the joke really was on us,
the new regulators that were brought in from the industry to actually clean up the problems that were
there. None of us are there at the Fed anymore. Every single one of those people that I talk about that
validated my story, they're gone. And they are gone under different circumstances, some in good standing,
some in less good standing, but the point is they're all gone. Because the purpose of bringing us in was
not really to change things, it was to ensure that they had a smoke screen and a story to feed the press,
that they would print, saying that they had indeed fixed this. And there was nothing else there to see.
Wall Street's corruption runs deeper than you can fathom | Alternet
RS:
We're going to run out of time here, but I want to nail down
one–this chain of responsibility. And I had just mentioned New York Fed president
William Dudley, who I believe ran into some difficulty; he had ownership in
something that they were trading with. But leaving that aside, he replaced
Timothy Geithner. And when Goldman Sachs, when this whole banking thing happened,
there was no more important individual in this country, in a position to observe
it, than Timothy Geithner. He had been in the Clinton administration; he had
worked for Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers in the Clinton administration when
they deregulated Wall Street. And he was rewarded for that deregulation, right,
by being named to the most important regulatory position, to be head of the New
York Fed. And Barack Obama in 2008, as the banking meltdown was happening, gave a
speech at Cooper Union, April of 2008, blasting Wall Street. And then, when
Hillary Clinton lost the primary, Barack Obama turned to Lawrence Summers and
Timothy Geithner, and these people for advice, and he named Timothy Geithner to
be his treasury secretary. The guy who at the New York Fed, where you went there
to work and to try to supervise Goldman Sachs–he knew everything about this, and
told us nothing, and he was rewarded by being made treasury secretary.
CS:
When I'm saying, you know, we have to stop rewarding bad behavior,
that's an example of what I'm talking about. It's like, we have a culture where
we reward people for their bad behavior. And in the Fed it is a systemic problem.
And it is a problem that comes from the top down. And when I was at the Fed, Ben
Bernanke was head of the Fed; Bill Dudley, as you pointed out, was the head of
the New York Fed; and Sarah Dahlgren was his head of supervision. This is a very
small world. We're not talking about a lot of people; the culture is top-down,
and everybody there just does what these people say, because if they don't
they're afraid they're going to lose their jobs. So from their perspective, they
have nothing to lose, because they have a bunch of workers that are going to do
as they say. And they will do what is in their best corporate interests. I mean,
you have Bill Dudley, who was allowed to hold on to a lot of his investments that
predated his arrival at the Fed and were held at Goldman Sachs. And you know,
when you have somebody who's not forced to really work for the government–as in
divesting themselves of their own conflicts and truly taking taxpayer money and
doing their job–then you can't expect a good result to come from that. Again, we
rewarded bad behavior. And that's why I think, you know, the key here is really
about taking a really good look at our daily lives and seeing, who are we
rewarding on a regular basis? And we need to stop rewarding that bad behavior.
Wall Street's corruption runs deeper than you can fathom | Alternet
RS:
But I want to challenge what I think is your optimism. And in
fact, you are living proof that doing the right thing can be a career-ender. I
haven't asked you, I mean, I assume you still have a good career; you're highly
talented and competent, and you were, you know, extremely well educated. But
you're not being considered to be treasury secretary or something, right? The
consequences for you were quite dire, weren't they?
CS:
They
were. And you know, my career in banking is over on a permanent basis. But I
think you sort of point out to, a little bit to my personality, and I hope it
comes through in the book; I sort of talk about that fact that I'm just a very
resilient person. And I just, I don't like to let the bad guys win. I'd rather go
down swinging. So for me, I saw it as an opportunity to do my civic duty and
rebuild my life. You know, and I was very lucky to be blessed by so many people
who I shared the story to, especially lawyers who were so concerned about what I
was reporting, who thought that the Federal Reserve was above this, who thought
that the government would not fail us after the financial crisis, and who were
livid. And I've been blessed with their support through the process of
whistleblowing, and I continue to be blessed by their support even after. I have
a husband who was, you know, a real hero of the story in my book, and I have been
able to remake my life as a lawyer in private practice. And my clients, you know,
God bless them, they trust me to help them. And I wouldn't change what I did for
anything. Because I think for me–and I talk about it in the book–I think living a
meaningful life is more important than making money. I think for me, making money
is important insofar as it pays the bills. But once my bills are paid, it's about
having a meaningful life. And I just feel very, very lucky that I have had the
life that I've had, that I got to go to a Catholic school that taught me the
morals that I believe in. I think that I am who I am, and I think that I would be
just as moral if I had grown up Jewish, or if I had grown up a Mormon, or if I
had grown up a Protestant. So I feel very blessed that I was exposed to what good
values and good behavior are. I decided since I was very little that that's just
the way I wanted to live my life, and that to live meaningfully was more
important than anything else. And that has driven all of my decisions, and I
found the experience to be rewarding. And when people talk to me about how bad
things are and how things sort of look like they're never going to turn around, I
tell them, no. They will turn around. We just need to believe in ourselves and be
our own saviors, and be our own heroes in our own daily lives.
RS:
But let me, let me challenge that. And yes, you're an
exemplary person. No question. And people should read this book,
Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall Street.
But I
want to focus on that word, "lone." Lone whistleblower. These people had the same
great education you had at the best schools, OK? They didn't blow the whistle.
No, they abetted the crime! They made it possible. They destroyed people like
Brooksley Born, who dared challenge it. And the fact of the matter is, you can't
expect ordinary people–even myself. You know, I did graduate work in economics,
I'm a professor, blah blah blah. But I can tell you, when I went into my bank
loans, I didn't know all the details and what they were talking about and
everything. I counted on regulation, I counted on government, I counted on
accountability, frankly, on the part of these institutions. So my view is, you
can't expect ordinary people–that's why we had a distinction between investment
banks and commercial banks. Commercial banks are supposed to deal with ordinary
people, OK? They're supposed to hold their money, give them a fair interest rate,
make loans on their houses, and help them out. And they have to be regulated,
because you know, the ordinary person can't be an expert. The failure here is of
the educated class. Of the superachievers. And you count on those people, yes, to
do the right thing. But money talks. And the fact of the matter is, the people
you went to school with, at the Ivy League schools, at the wherever–they sold us
all out.
CS:
I think you make a good point. But I also think that the
problems are systemic and run deeper. I mean, I would point out, for example,
just from a personal perspective, when I graduated both college and law school I
happened to be one of those that graduated into a recession, twice. There weren't
too many jobs. I didn't have too many options. I ended up working in where I
ended up working because it was either that or not feed myself. And I think one
of the problems that we have that is systemic is that we have allowed capitalism
to create such huge imbalances in how we reward people for their daily work. So
people are forced to do something that they may not even like, or may not even be
good at, because they have no choice. It's a shame, because we're a big enough
country, we have a lot of talent, there should be more invisible hand, central
planning. This whole system where we are now turning our attention to creating
computer programmers is more based on making sure that computer programming
becomes a cheap, minimum-wage job where the owners of the computer companies like
Apple don't have to overpay like they are doing now for those workers. So I think
that there are more systemic issues than we realize. And I agree with you, I
think that, you know, we were sold out by the intellectual class. But we still
need to figure out–and the intellectuals are the ones who are going to help us–we
need to figure out how to fix the system on a larger scale if we are going to
rebalance things. And I don't have the monopoly on the answer, on all the
answers, you know? I'm just a girl born in Indiana to two Puerto Rican parents,
you know? [Laughs] It's not like I have any terms, in any way access to the
higher echelons and how that works. But I think that we really do need to think
about, in our own ways and in our own lives, how we can sort of convince other
people to make the right choices on a daily basis. Because I think that if
everybody takes making the right choices seriously, and realizes that we're all
in the same boat–you know, we're all Americans, this is going to impact us all–I
think that we can, slowly but surely, right the boat and start heading in the
right direction.
RS:
People should read
Noncompliant
–it's an important
word; they weren't compliant–
A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall
Street.
And recognize that the problem with modern governance is that the
decisions are made by people who don't have our common interest, who are bought
off. That money talks. And one reason we have such despair now, and we go for
demagogues, and we have such divisive, ugly language and ugly politics, is the
so-called civilized, well-educated leaders of our country went for the money and
betrayed ordinary people. I'll let you take the last word, and then we'll wrap it
up.
CS:
Ah, well, thank you. And again, you know, I know that you
are sort of [Laughs] thinking about it from the perspective of a hopeless sort of
case. But I do think that there is–and I hope people will look at it as the
beginning of change. You know, yes, the book is a very sad story; the bad guys do
win, for now. But just because they win the battle doesn't mean they're going to
win the war. And I refuse to give up hope in the American people, and I refuse to
give up hope in the American consumer. I think that we can make a difference if
we try. Because I think that when we get the American people–no matter whether
they're democrats, republicans, independent–when we get them educated on the
topic of finance, when we get them accessible stories, they will have their say.
And they matter–we matter. And it's important that they come to the table,
otherwise this problem isn't going to get solved.
Big finance does behave like an organized crime. And should be treated by society as
such...
Notable quotes:
"... By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and co-founder of Bank Whistleblowers United. Jointly published with New Economic Perspectives ..."
By
Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, an associate professor of
economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and co-founder of Bank
Whistleblowers United. Jointly published with New Economic
Perspectives
I cannot write many blogs during the fall semesters because I teach four classes (I co-teach
one of them). The fall term of instruction at UMKC is now over so I am writing one piece before
turning to grading. I have recently done additional research on a topic I know is of great
interest -- the prosecution of elite white-collar criminals. I have organized it in the form of
a game in which the reader guesses who authored the quoted passage.
Which President
described the elite banksters of his era as "charlatans, chiselers and cheats?" Which Vice
President criticized prosecutions, enforcement actions, and even safety rules for the elite
white-collar criminals of his era in these terms?
But the number of complex regulations is only half the problem. As President [deleted] has
repeatedly emphasized, it is also the adversarial and seemingly mindless enforcement methods
that really get under people's skins. Business owners are sick of being treated like
criminals. They see a government that just doesn't make sense, that charges them with safety
violations when no one is in harm's way.
[Note that enforcement action is supposed to be 'adversarial' and that 'business owners'
need to be 'treated [as] [not 'like'] criminals' when they are criminals. A safety violation
that does not cause injury because no worker is in the unsafe trench when it collapsed should
be charged as a safety violation because it is. A well-run company with a strong safety record
takes that approach to safety. The government must too.]
Which U.S. Attorney General offered
the excuse for refusing to create a national task force to prioritize the prosecution of the
elite banksters of his era that the fraudsters were merely "white collar street criminals"?
Which U.S. Attorney General explained in these terms why he was working with the regulators
because prosecutions of elite banksters require enormous sophistication and prioritization?
[T]hese investigations most often involve complicated paper trails leading to highly
sophisticated schemes which disguise illegality under the veneer of legitimate business and
financial transactions.
[Note that this AG understood the essential danger that makes 'control frauds' uniquely
damaging -- the fact that the CEO finds it far easier to 'disguise illegality' 'under the
veneer' of seeming 'legitima[cy].']
Which U.S. President met with the Nation's U.S.
Attorneys to emphasize in these terms the criticality of prosecuting elite banksters?
It takes a snake, a cold-blooded snake, to betray the trust and innocence of hard-working
people," [deleted] said in a speech to his administration's U.S. attorneys in announcing his
effort. "And so, if we have to look under rocks to find these white-collar criminals, then we
will leave no stone unturned.
Which U.S. President proclaimed "I did not run for office to be helping out a
bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street"? Which FBI Director characterized the level of elite
fraud in failed insured institutions as 'pervasive' and explained that the fraud problem came
from the top in these terms?
The American public relied upon banking institutions and financial institutions being
soundly managed by people who were honest. Therefore, it is absolutely essential that this
program go forward to the end no matter how long that takes.
He discounted past arguments that Texas' economy was the root cause for the state's
financial crisis. "Although it was the general economic downturn in Texas that surfaced the
problem, it
appears to the FBI as if a pervasive pattern of fraudulent lending activity began much
earlier."
Which U.S. President told the Nation's leading bankers "My administration is the
only thing between you and the pitchforks"?
[Note that the President was characterizing the American people as a mob out to murder the
banksters that caused the financial crisis -- and stressing that his administration would
safeguard them from accountability for their crimes.]
Which U.S. Attorney General explained
in these terms how he began working with the new regulator the day after he was appointed to
ensure the prioritization of the most elite banksters in the ongoing financial crisis they were
both confronting?
I met with [deleted] Director of [deleted], the day after he assumed office to map out a
joint effort between the regulatory agencies and the Department of Justice to winnow through
the mass of referrals that had already been made to ensure that we were focusing upon the
most significant cases as our first priority.
Which regulatory agency made the 'mass of [criminal] referrals' the AG was
referring to? How many criminal referrals did the agency make in response to its financial
crisis? How many felony convictions of individuals did the Department of Justice (DOJ) obtain
in 'major' cases in response to these referrals? Which senior law enforcement agency warned in
September 2004 that an 'epidemic' of mortgage fraud was developing that would, he predicted,
cause a financial 'crisis' if it were not stopped? Which administration "debated for months the
advantages and perils of a criminal indictment against HSBC" given an FBI investigation
confirming the congressional finding that the bank, between 2001 and 2010, "exposed the U.S.
financial system to money laundering [by a leading drug cartel] and terrorist financing risks"
[by Saudis]"? The U.S. Attorney General, at the urging of the Fed and the Comptroller of the
Currency, refused to indict the bank or its senior officers who committed and profited from
tens of thousands of felonies. What U.S. Attorney General testified to Congress in the
following terms that the largest banks were too big to prosecute?
I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does
become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do
prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national
economy, perhaps even the world economy.
Under which administration did Scott G. Alvarez, general counsel at the Federal
Reserve successfully intervene with the SEC to weaken fraud penalties against some of the
world's largest banks? Under which administration did Timothy Geithner, then President of the
NY Fed, successfully intervene with then NY Attorney General Cuomo to caution against vigorous
prosecution of elite banksters? Did this harm Geithner and Cuomo's careers? Which President
unconstitutionally appointed the first Director of the Office of Thrift Supervision -- after
being warned that appointing him without the Senate's 'advice and consent' would be
unconstitutional? Why did the President do so -- and why did the Senate not protest the action?
Which administration ended the career prospects of a top regulator they appointed when he had
the audacity to bring an enforcement action against the President's son? Which U.S. Attorney
General wrote: "We are presently facing the largest financial disaster in American history
grounded in the betrayal of public trust by flagrant self-dealing in 'other people's money'"?
Which U.S. Attorney General described the causes of the financial crisis he was investigating
"the biggest white-collar swindle in history"?
For bonus points, these questions relate to a non-government party.
Who wrote the
following -- and made it public?
"Our savings and loan industry has created the largest mess in the history of U.S.
financial institutions," [deleted] said in a letter to the [industry trade association -- the
'league']. "The league responds to the savings and loan mess as Exxon would have responded to
the oil spill from the Valdez if it had insisted thereafter on liberal use of whisky by
tanker captains." [Deleted] blamed the league for 'constant and successful' lobbying over
many years that prevented government regulators from cracking down on S&Ls run by 'crooks
and fools' and persuaded regulators to use 'Mickey Mouse' accounting .
"It is not unfair to liken the situation now facing Congress to cancer and to liken the
league to a significant carcinogenic agent ."
"Because the League has clearly misled its government for a long time, to the taxpayers'
great detriment, a public apology is in order, not redoubled efforts to mislead further."
Answers : (plus the President that appointed the official):
George HW Bush Gore Mukasey
(Bush II) Thornburgh (Bush I) George HW Bush Obama William Sessions (Bush II) Obama Thornburgh
(Tim Ryan was the OTS Director he worked with) OTS, during the S&L debacle, made >
30,000 criminal referrals (all federal banking agencies combined made fewer than a dozen
criminal referrals in response to the Great Financial Crisis) and DOJ obtained > 1,000
felony convictions in cases DOJ defined as 'major.' The FBI (through Chris Swecker) Obama 13.
Holder (Obama) Bush II Bush II (No, Cuomo was elected Governor of NY and Obama appointed
Geithner as Treasury Secretary) George HW Bush (the unconstitutional appointment was Danny Wall
as OTS Director) George HW Bush (Tim Ryan was the OTS Director who brought the enforcement
action v. Neil Bush) Thornburg (Bush I) Thornburgh (Bush I) Warren Buffett and Charles Munger
(May 30, 1989).
The mess is caused by deregulation, money in politics, lobbying by the rich, wealth
inequality, fraud in the banking system, corruption of corporations, the wealthy hiding taxes
off-shore, greed, failure of democratic institutions, etc. In another way, you could say It's
the Love of Money. (It is a very long list epitomized by Black's quotations from the highest
offices in the land.)
Concise and enlightening summary. Thank you, Bill Black. Should be taught in every high
school US History and Civics class in America together with financial and monetary literacy.
Interesting how pervasive this behavior has been across so called "leaders" of both legacy
political parties and whose names repeatedly appear on the summary list. The damage to the
social and political fabric of the nation is incalculable.
"... L.A City Attorney Mike Feuer announced a $185 million settlement reached with Wells Fargo, after thousands of bank employees siphoned funds from their customers to open phony checking and savings accounts raking in millions in fraudulent fees. ..."
"... So where is the FBI? Where is the Department of Justice? How about California Attorney General Kamala Harris? Too busy campaigning for the Senate to notice? How about L.A. District Attorney Jackie Larry? ..."
"... Only City Attorney Mike Feuer took action, and he only has the authority to prosecute misdemeanors ..."
"... multi-billion dollar ..."
"... If the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes were to go out with his lantern in search of an honest man today, a survey of Wall Street executives on workplace conduct suggests he might have to look elsewhere. ..."
"... A quarter of Wall Street executives see wrongdoing as a key to success, according to a survey by whistleblower law firm Labaton Sucharow released on Tuesday. ..."
"... In a survey of 500 senior executives in the United States and the UK ..."
"... , 26 percent of respondents said they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace, while 24 percent said they believed financial services professionals may need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct to be successful ..."
Organized crime. This phrase is now a precise synonym for big-banking in the United States.
These Big Banks commit big crimes; they commit small crimes. They cheat their own clients; they
swindle outsiders. They break virtually every financial law on the books. What do all these
crimes have in common? The Big Banks commit all these crimes
again and
again and
again – with utter impunity.
These fraud factories commit their serial mega-crimes, year after year, because the Big
Banks know that they will never, ever be punished. On rare occasions, their crimes have been so
egregious that U.S. 'justice' officials could no longer pretend to be oblivious to them. In
such cases, there was a token prosecution, there was a settlement where the law-breaking banks
didn't even have to acknowledge their own criminality, and there was a microscopic fine –
which didn't even force the felonious financial institutions to disgorge all of their profits
from these crimes.
Criminal sanctions, by definition, are supposed to deter criminal conduct.
The token prosecutions against U.S. Big Banks didn't deter Big Bank crime, they encouraged it.
But even these wrist-slaps were becoming embarrassing for this crime syndicate, so they dealt
with this problem. The Big Bank crime syndicate told
its lackeys in the U.S. 'justice' department that they were not allowed to prosecute one of its
tentacles, ever again.
The lackeys, as always, obeyed their Masters, and issued
a new proclamation . The U.S. 'Justice' Department would never prosecute a U.S. Big Bank
ever again – no matter what crimes it committed, no matter how large the crimes, no
matter how many times the same Big Banks committed the same crimes. Complete, legal immunity;
totally above the law. A literal culture of crime.
What happens when you create a culture of crime in (big) banking? Not only the banks break
laws – with impunity – their bank employees do so as well. Case in point:
Warren Buffett's favorite Big Bank – Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo employees came up with
a good idea for boosting their salaries: stealing money directly out of the accounts of
the bank's clients .
Consider how large this crime became, in just one of these tentacles of organized crime.
L.A City Attorney Mike Feuer announced a $185 million settlement reached with Wells
Fargo, after thousands of bank employees siphoned funds from their customers to open
phony checking and savings accounts raking in millions in fraudulent fees.
[emphasis mine]
Thousands of bank employees stealing millions of dollars from bank customers, in tiny,
little increments, again and again and again. But the story gets much worse. Why was a lowly
city attorney involved with the prosecution of this organized crime?
So where is the FBI? Where is the Department of Justice? How about California
Attorney General Kamala Harris? Too busy campaigning for the Senate to notice? How about L.A.
District Attorney Jackie Larry?
Only City Attorney Mike Feuer took action, and he only has the authority to prosecute
misdemeanors
There are only two ways in which the non-action of the U.S. pseudo-justice system can be
explained:
Take your pick. The U.S. pseudo-justice system is used to seeing so many
multi-billion dollar mega-crimes being committed by these fraud factories that
the systemic crime at Wells Fargo (which was 'only' in the $millions) didn't even attract their
attention. Or, the entire U.S. pseudo-justice system is completely bought-off and corrupt
– and they refuse to prosecute Big Bank organized crime .
A culture of crime.
It gets still worse. Thousands of Wells Fargo employees stole
millions of dollars, from countless clients. They were caught. But not even one
banker was sent to jail. In a real justice system, systemic crime of this nature would/could
only be prosecuted in one of three ways. Either every Wells Fargo criminal would be prosecuted
to the full extent of the law (given the egregious nature of the crime), or Wells Fargo
management would be prosecuted – because they would have/should have known about this
crime-wave. Or else both.
Bankers stealing money, directly and brazenly, right out of customer accounts, but no one
goes to jail? A culture of crime.
Understand that endemic, cultural changes of this nature don't originate at the bottom of
the corporate ladder. They originate at the top. In the case of the Wall Street crime
syndicate; we already know that their management personnel are criminals, because they have
admitted to
being criminals.
Many Wall Street executives says [sic] wrongdoing is necessary: survey
If the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes were to go out with his lantern in search
of an honest man today, a survey of Wall Street executives on workplace conduct suggests he
might have to look elsewhere.
A quarter of Wall Street executives see wrongdoing as a key to success, according to
a survey by whistleblower law firm Labaton Sucharow released on Tuesday.
In a survey of 500 senior executives in the United States and the UK
[New York and London] , 26 percent of respondents said they had observed or had
firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace, while 24 percent said they believed
financial services professionals may need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct to be
successful [emphasis mine]
One-quarter of Big Bank management admitted that they "need" to commit crimes. A culture of
crime. More needs to be said about the rampant, disgusting criminality among upper management
in the Big Banks of the U.S. (and UK).
A known whistleblower was conducting a public survey, asking known criminals how many of
them were engaging in criminal behavior. What percentage of respondents would
lie when answering such a survey? Three-quarters sounds about right.
One-quarter of Wall Street executives admitted that committing crimes was a way of life. The
other three-quarters lied about their criminal acts.
Monkey see; monkey do. The lower level foot soldiers see their Bosses breaking laws, with
impunity, on a daily basis. Their reaction, at Wells Fargo? "Me too."
Most if not all of the Wall Street fraud factories conduct detailed "personality testing" on
their bank personnel. Are they looking to weed-out those with criminal (if not psychopathic)
inclinations? Of course not. They conduct this personality testing to find which employees have
no reservations about engaging in criminal conduct – so they can be fast-tracked
for promotion .
There is no other way in which the systemic criminality of senior banking personnel can be
reconciled with the detailed personality-testing in which they participated, in order to reach
that level of management. The Wall Street fraud factories look for the most amoral criminals
which they can find. And with the exorbitant, ludicrous "compensation" they award to these
criminals for their systemic crimes, they end up with (literally) the best criminals that money
can buy.
A culture of crime.
As a final note; the U.S. system of pretend-justice already has a powerful weapon in its
arsenal to fight organized crime: the "RICO" act.
This anti-racketeering statute was created for one, precise purpose: to not merely
prosecute/punish organized crime, but to literally dismantle the crime
infrastructure which supports the organized crime.
Not only does the statute confer strong (almost limitless) powers in gathering evidence of
organized crime, it also permits mass seizures of assets – anything/everything connected
to the organized crime of the entity(ies) in question. In the case of the Big Bank crime
syndicate, where all of its operations are directly/indirectly tied into criminal operations of
one form or another, if RICO was turned loose on these fraud factories, by the time the dust
had settled there would be nothing left.
Oh yes. If the U.S. 'Justice' Department ever went "RICO" on U.S. Big Banks, lots and lots
and lots of bankers would go to prison, for a very, long time.
Now that the banks are calling in their insurance, the EU has to deliver either by 1)
screwing down Italy the same as they did Greece, or 2) getting the French and German public
(or better the whole EU) to bail out the banks.
There is a third option: the banks simply accept their losses, and the bankers make do
without their customary bonuses for a few quarters.
"... Since Mrs Thatcher and the 364 economists, the neoliberal right has had an interest in discrediting economic expertise, and replacing academic economists with City economists in positions of influence. ..."
"... The first is access. Through a dominance of the printed media, a right wing elite can get a message across despite it being misleading or simply untrue. ..."
"... The second is that the elite often plays on a simple understanding of how things work, and dismisses anything more complex, when it suits them. ..."
"... As the earlier reference to Mrs Thatcher suggests, there is a common pattern to these attacks by elites on experts: they come from the neoliberal right. ..."
"... Attacks by elites on experts tend to come from the political right and not the left, and the neoliberal right in particular because they have an ideology to sell. ..."
The Bank's analysis is of course not beyond criticism. [2] But the attacks of the Brexiter
elite are quite deliberately not economic in character but political: Rees Mogg claimed Carney
is a second rate politician (a second rate foreign politician!) and his forecast is
designed to produce a political outcome ('Project Hysteria'). The idea is to suggest that these
projections should not be taken as a warning by experts but instead as a political act. Once
again, I'm not suggesting
we should never think about what an experts own interests might be, but if you carry this line
of thought to the Rees Mogg extreme you undermine all expertise that is not ideologically
based, which is exactly what Rees Mogg wants to do.
This I think is the second reason why the view of the overwhelming majority academic economists
that Brexit will be harmful is going to be ignored by many. Since Mrs Thatcher and the 364
economists, the neoliberal right has had an interest in discrediting economic expertise, and
replacing academic economists with City economists in positions of influence. (Despite
what most journalists will tell you, the 364 were correct
that tightening fiscal policy delayed the recovery.) Right wing think tanks like the IEA are
particularly useful in this respect, partly because the media often makes no distinction
between independent academics and think tank employees. Just look at how the media began to
treat climate change as controversial.
But isn't there a paradox here? Why would members of the public, who have little trust in
politicians compared to academics, believe politicians and their backers when they attack
academics? In the case of Brexit, and I think other issues like austerity, these elites have
two advantages. The first is access. Through a dominance of the printed media, a right wing
elite can get a message across despite it being misleading or simply untrue. Remember how
Labour's fiscal profligacy caused record deficits? Half the country believe this to be a fact
despite it being an obvious lie. What will most journalists tell you about Brexit and
forecasts? My guess is that forecasters got the immediate impact of Brexit very wrong, rather
than the reality that what they expected to happen immediately happened more gradually. Why
will journalists get these things wrong? Because they read repeated messages about failed
forecasts in the right wing press, but very little about how GDP is currently around 2.5% lower
as a result of Brexit, and real wages are lower still. The second is that the elite often plays on a simple understanding of how things work, and
dismisses anything more complex, when it suits them. Immigrants 'obviously' increase
competition for scarce public resources, because people typically fail to allow for immigrants
adding to public services either directly or through their taxes. The government should
'obviously' tighten its belt when consumers are having to do the same, and so on. In the case
of the economic effects of Brexit, it is obvious that we will save money by not paying in to
the EU, whereas everything else is uncertain and who believes forecasts etc. As the earlier reference to Mrs Thatcher suggests, there is a common pattern to these
attacks by elites on experts: they come from the neoliberal right. If you want to call the
Blair/Brown years neoliberal as well, you have to make a distinction between [neoliberal] right
and left. The Blair/Brown period was a high point for the influence of academics in general and
academic economists in particular
on government. As I note here , Iraq was
the exception not the rule, for clear reasons. Attacks by elites on experts tend to come
from the political right and not the left, and the neoliberal right in particular because they
have an ideology to sell.
I think the Internet and the infotech revolution in general have been largely negative in their impact on the world. Ian Welsh
has a blog post that largely sums up my views on the issue.
Contrary to what many people say I think large organizations like governments and corporations have significantly more power
now than before and ordinary people have less power. The Internet has made it easier to get information but you have to sift through
tons of junk to get to anything decent. For every website like Naked Capitalism there are thousands pushing nonsense or trying
to sell you stuff.
And even if you are more knowledgeable, so what? If you cannot put that knowledge to use what good is it? At best it makes
you more well-rounded, interesting and harder to fool but in political terms knowing a lot of stuff doesn't make you more effective.
In the past people didn't have access to nearly as much information but they were more willing and able to organize and fight
against the powerful because it was easier to avoid detection/punishment (that is where stuff like widespread surveillance tech
comes in) and because they still had a vibrant civic life and culture.
I actually think people are more atomized now than in the past and the Internet and other technologies have probably fueled
this process. Despite rising populism, the Arab Spring, Occupy, the Yellow Jackets in France, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
and the DSA this is all a drop in the bucket compared to just the massive social movements of the 1960s much less earlier periods.
Robert Putnam argued that television, the Internet and other technologies likely helped to produce the collapse of civic life
in the United States by "individualizing" people's leisure time and personally I think Putnam is right. Civic life today is very
weak and I think the Internet is partially to blame.
And even if you are more knowledgeable, so what? If you cannot put that knowledge to use what good is it?
Agreed. If anything these more knowledgeable people had a greater audience prior to the internet. Whether you were a journalist,
a great economist, a great author, or a great orator you need to persist and show intellect and talent to have your message heard
wide and broad.
(This is probably a little idealistic, but I think there is truth there.)
Now you need very little of this. If your most famous asset is your attractive body you can attract a greater audience than
great scholars and politicians.
I can't speak much on authoritarianism since whatever form it takes on today is wildly different from what it was in the past.
Unfortunately, it is hard to convince many people living in western societies that they are living in an authoritarian system
because their metal images are goose-stepping soldiers and Fraktur print posters.
I suppose the way I can assure myself that we are living in an authoritarian society is by analyzing the endless propaganda
spewed from countless, high-viewership media and entertainment outlets. It is quite simple, if the media and entertainment narratives
are within a very narrow intellectual window (with lots of 600 lb. gorillas sitting in corners) than the culture and politics
are being defined by powerful people with a narrow range of interests. This is not to say that forming public opinion or preferring
particular political views is a new thing in Western media and entertainment, just that its application, IMO, is far more effective
and subtle (and becoming more-so by the day) than it ever was in, say, NAZI Germany or the Soviet Union.
I'd put my money down that most educated Germans during NAZI rule were well aware that propaganda was being utilized to "manufacture
consent" but they participated and accepted this despite the content for pragmatic/selfish reasons. Much of the NAZI propaganda
played on existing German/European cultural narratives and prejudices. Leaveraging existing ideology allowed the party to necessitate
their existence by framing the German as juxtaposed against the impure and unworthy. Again, ideologies that existed independent
of the party not within it. Goebbels and company were just good at utilizing the technology of the time to amplify these monstrosities.
I question that being the case today. It is far more complicated. Technology is again the primary tool for manipulation, but
it is possible that current technology is allowing for even greater leaps in reason and analysis. The windows for reflection and
critical thought close as soon as they are opened. Seems more like the ideology is manufactured on the fly. For example, the anti-Russia
narrative has some resonance with baby boomers, but how the hell is it effective with my generation (millennial) and younger?
The offhand references to Putin and Russian operatives from my peers are completely from left field when considering our life
experience. People in my age group had little to say about Russia three years ago. It says volumes on the subtle effectiveness
of Western media machines if you can re-create the cold war within two years for an entire generation.
In addition and related to above, the West's understanding of "Freedom of Speech" is dated by about 100 years. Governments
are no longer the sole source of speech suppression (more like filtering and manipulation), and the supremacy of the free-market
coupled with the erroneously perceived black-and-white division between public and private have convinced the public (with nearly
religious conviction) that gigantic media and entertainment organizations do not have to protect the free speech of citizens because
they are not government. Public/Private is now an enormous blob. With overlapping interests mixed in with any antagonisms. It
is ultimately dictated by capital and its power within both government and business. Cracking this nut will be a nightmare.
Yes, this is an authoritarian world, if measured by the distance between the populace and its governing powers, but it is an
authoritarianism operating in ways that we have never seen before and using tools that are terribly effective.
"... Capitalism never was benign, Chrustjow worked as a miner in a commercially exploited mine, where there was little regard for
safety, he abhorred capitalism. ..."
@Bill Jones Interesting to read
how these idealists agree with Christian Gerondeau, 'Le CO2 est bon pour la planete, Climat, la grande manipulation', Paris 2017
Gerondeau explains how many deaths reducing CO2 emissions will cause in poor countries, simply as an example how electricity
for cooking will remain too expensive for them, so cooking is done on smoky fires in confined spaces.
" to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history." " To intentionally impoverish
the world. To what end, I wonder ?
Anyone who knows anything about history is that the rich were always better off than the poor, in fact the very definition
of rich and poor.
In this respect it never mattered if a society was capitalistic, communistic, or a theocracy, as Tibet was.
These idealistic idiots do not understand how they created the problem they now intend to solve with creating an even bigger
problem, their example is the EU, the EU is following this policy for more than twelve years now, since 2005, when the EU grabbed
power through the rejected EU 'consitution'.
Capitalism is no more than deciding between consumption and investment, Robinson Crusoë invested in a fishing net by temporarily
reducing consumption, he did not go fishing, but made a fishing net, expecting that his investment would make it possible to eat
more fish.
Capitalism never was benign, Chrustjow worked as a miner in a commercially exploited mine, where there was little regard
for safety, he abhorred capitalism.
Dutch 17th century capitalistic commerce to the far Indies, east and west, was not benign. Typically a ship left Amsterdam,
near the Schreierstoren, trans 'the tower for the crying', wives, mothers and girl friends, with 300 men aboard, and returned
with 100. Most of those who died were common sailors, captain and officers had a far lower mortality, mainly better food.
Our East Indies commerce also was not much fun for the people in the East, in the Banda Sea Islands massacre some 30.000 people
were killed, for a monopoly on pepper, if I remember correctly.
But, as the earth developed economically, there came room for also poor people getting lives beginning to look as worth living.
Engels in 1844, hope the year is right, described the conditions of working people in GB, this resulted in Das Kapital.
This room for a better life for also the poor was not given by the capitalistic system
In their struggle for a better world for anyone the idealists wanted globalisation, level playing field, anyone should be welcome
anywhere, slogans like this.
Globaliation, however, is the end of the nation state, the very institution in which it was possible to provide a better life.
Anyone following me until here now can see the dilemma, the end of the nation state was also the end of protection by that state
against unbridled capitalism.
As the idealists cannot give up their globalisation religion they must, as those who cannot give up the biblical creation story,
find an ideological way out of their dilemma. My conclusion now is 'in order to save our globalisation religion we try to destroy
economic growth, by making energy very expensive, in the hope of destroying capitalism'.
Alas, better, luckily, capitalism cannot be destroyed, those who invented the first furnaces for more or less mass producing
iron, they were capitalists. They saw clearly how cheap iron would bring economic growth, the plow.
In the country where the CO2 madness has struck most, my country, the Netherlands, the realisation of the poverty that drastically
reducing CO2 emissions will cause, has begun. If there really is madness, I wonder.
I indeed see madness, green leftists unable to make a simple multipiclation calculations about costs, but maybe mainly political
opportunism. Our dictator, Rutte, is now so hated that he needs a job outside the Netherlands, in order to qualify, either at
Brussels or in New York, with the UN, has to howl with the wolves.
At the same time, we have a gas production problem,, earthquakes in the NE, houses damaged, never any decision made to solve
the problem, either stop gas production, or strenghten the houses, both expensive solutions.
So, in my suspicious ideas, Rutte now tries to improve himself, at the same time solving a problem: within, say ten years,
the Netherlands functions without gas, and remains prosperous; the idea he tries to sell to us. In a few years time it will emerge
that we cannot have both, prosperous, and zero emission, but the time horizon for a politician is said to be five years.
"The game motif is useful as a metaphor for the broader rivalry between nations and
economic systems with the rise of imperialism and the pursuit of world power. This game has
gone through two major transformations since the days of Russian-British rivalry, with the
rise first of Communism and then of Islam as world forces opposing imperialism. The main
themes of Postmodern Imperialism: Geopolitics and the Great Games include:
US imperial strategy as an outgrowth of British imperialism, and its transformation
following the collapse of the Soviet Union;
the significance of the creation of Israel with respect to the imperial
project;
the repositioning of Russia in world politics after the collapse of the Soviet
Union;
the emerging role of China and Iran in Eurasia;
the emerging opposition to the US and NATO.
This work brings these elements together in historical perspective with an understanding
from the Arab/ Muslim world's point of view, as it is the main focus of all the "Great
Games"."
Jay Dyer discusses the book here, its strengths and weaknesses:
Games in US intelligence agencies are one thing, but the fact that this arrest is a severe
blow, almost knockdown for neoliberalism is another.
From comments: "Spot on with your comment. As you point out, this event will cast a dark
shadow over executive travel for a long time to come, including those American executives who
will now be fearful of countermeasures."
Moreover, John Bolton is the sort who'd love to collect a high profile scalp like the arrest
of Meng, so it's credible that he would find a way to go ahead whether or not the China trade
negotiation team was on board.
Meng has her bail hearing in Vancouver today, so we will probably learn more about the
expected process and timetable.
Wondering why US dollars would ever be involved in transactions between a Chinese
supplier, a UK bank, and Iranian customers Assuming usage of correspondent banks in NYC?
Would also be a reason for where the indictment was filed.
The conspiracy theorist in me says that transactions are being routed through the US not
for any practical reason, or due to customer wishes, but only to expose them to US
jurisdiction for potential prosecution. An alternative to SWIFT is desperately needed
The FCPA is extremely expansive: a non U.S. company doing business in the U.S. must not do
business with Iran directly or indirectly if it knows or has reason to suspect the business
is related to Iran. So if they have the evidence it all looks like a slam dunk.
As to SWIFT, doesn't the U.S. have access to all SWIFT transactions, even those not
touching U.S. banks? They'd certainly have the Five Eyes SWIFT data.
Plus apparently the U.S. has (or had) access to Huawei's email traffic.
Not correspondent banks. HSBC has a New York branch, as does pretty much every foreign
bank with an international business. Dollar transactions clear though the US because no bank
is going to run intraday balances with other banks without the end of day settlement
ultimately being backstopped by the Fed. That means running over Fedwire.
Ah, thanks for the technical detail on why it would be cleared through the US. The Masters
of the Universe really are unwilling to take any risk unless it's socialized in some way.
Still curious why they would ever let it touch US jurisdiction, but I guess the details of
the case will eventually reveal that.
"The heart of the problem is that the Chinese firm uses a system of encryption that
prevents the NSA from intercepting its communications. A number of governments and secret
services in the non-Western world have begun to equip themselves exclusively with Huawei
materials, and are doing so to protect the confidentiality of their communications."
"The struggle centred around Huawei illustrates the way in which economic and military
preoccupations inter-connect. Already, many States have observed that Washington is so far
unable to decode this technology. Thus, as they did in Syria, they have entirely re-equipped
their Intelligence services with Huawei material, and forbid their civil servants to use any
others."
Taking into account this story from Syria the following dismissal, by China's Foreign
Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying of a report in The New York Times, could be understood
differently than it was initially
"China on Thursday denounced a U.S. newspaper report that it is listening to Donald
Trump's phone calls as "fake news," and suggested he exchange his iPhone for a cellphone made
by Chinese manufacturer Huawei".
in AP, 2018-10-26, "China denies spying on Trump's phone, suggests he use Huawei".
So I turned on the local TV network to see how the story would be spun to find out what
the official line would be. There was no mention of the fact in the story that Meng was just
not the CFO of Huawei but also the daughter – the daughter – of the founder. More
to the point, nearly every scene showing Meng was when she was on-stage with Putin somewhere
so there is your guilt by association right there. They even used close-ups of the two
together though the stage was full of people seated there.
Something else in that story that I noticed. It featured the last day of the G-20 when the
American and Chinese delegation were facing each other over a conference table. On the right
was Trump and a bit further down was John Bolton. Now Trump has said he had no idea that this
arrest was taking place but Bolton said that he know beforehand. Does it not seem strange
that Bolton would not have pulled Trump aside beforehand and said 'Hey boss, we are going to
do something never done before and arrest a high-level Chinese citizen which could blow up
your whole agreement. You know, just so you know.'
With this is mind, it may be fairer to say that this was more a case of 'Huawei's Meng
Targeted using US Bank Sanctions'. The pity is that the US Justice Department finds no
trouble with targeting a corporation nearly 7,000 miles away but just can't seem to target
Wall Street which is only about 200 miles away from their headquarters. And I am afraid that
I am not too impressed with that internal Huawei memo as probably most international
corporations want to know where they can push the envelope. Personally I would be more
interested on a memo from the Clinton Foundation listing the amounts needed to gain access
the SecState and how much could be purchased for that amount. Both memos would amount to the
same thing.
This is new this development. The US has targeted individuals with sanctions but for the
first time they are attempting the extraterritorial rendition of a foreign citizen in
connection with sanctions violations meaning extraterritorial jurisdiction which means that
American laws apply all over the world. Could you imagine if this became standard practice?
The chill it would put on executive travel? The possibilities of tit for tat arrests? US tech
execs have already been warned on China travel. Do they really want to go there? This is
nothing less that a US declaration of war on firms competing with US business interests like
they have done with Russia.
I would be also wary of this massive 'coincidence' in the timing of her arrest. The US
Justice Department would probably know Meng's travel schedule better that she would –
Bolton with his contacts would see to that. It may be that events in her calendar were
pre-arranged for her. The Justice Department has a long history of setting up people.
Canada's involvement is simply another member of the Five Eyes group doing active
participation. It has not escaped my notice that all the countries rejecting Huawe's 5G
technology – Australia, the UK, New Zealand – are also members of the Five Eyes.
Not looking good.
This is not a rendition. Meng's extradition is all being done by the book. She is still in
Canada, and will have a bail hearing today. She will have the opportunity to contest her
extradition in Canada. Assuming she loses, she then goes to the US to face charges.
And I'm not keen about the CT. A top Chinese tech company like Huawei which knows it's on
America's shit list would have a very well protected Intranet. The US does not have access to
Chinese telcoms to locate or steal the data of Chinese citizens. Get real.
I'm not sure I embrace the notion of all this being done by the book as much as you Yves.
After all, even charades can have the appearance of procedural compliance and the following
of by the book rules, in fact, perhaps the incentive to create the appearance of following
the rules is even more pronounced in a high profile case such as this. As to whether she will
have a fair opportunity to defend herself, this is a watershed moment for Canada and she's is
in the spotlight here and no matter which way it goes, the decision to extradite or not will
have irrevocable implications on her international relations.
This is not a rendition. Canada isn't the UK. It's not going to bend its court processes,
particularly since Chinese have become big investors in Canada and Trump has been
astonishingly rude to Trudeau. And it has an independent judiciary.
I was pretty unimpressed by Trudeau's pusillanimity. He tried to give the impression that
Canada was just an innocent bystander in this whole process. Get real. If there's an
extradition treaty, the US has to make a formal request to the Canadian government. The idea
that the PM wasn't consulted on this is nonsensical. Justin engaging in his own version of
"cakeism". Wants to stay on the good side of both Beijing and Washington, which is an
impossible thing to do. Trudeau is already on Trump's sh*t list, and I'm sure Xi is taking
his measure of the man as well. Probably not terribly impressed with him either.
I have family and friends in Canada. Trust me, Canadians would be REALLY pissed if they
thought that the Canadian judiciary was rolling over for Trump and Bolton.Trump is not making
Canadian friends by running around throwing tantrums over NAFTA given that US-Canada trade is
one of the most balanced trade relationships in the world with very little net trade deficit
for either side.
I think this is very much being done by the book. Is there a viable law that is not, by
itself, a human rights violation? Is there credible evidence that this person broke this law?
Those are the basic questions that will need to be answered in a Canadian court room to have
an extradition move forward.
Canadians want the big powers to have coherent rational laws and treaties related to trade
etc. and then follow them. They also want to have rational, coherent international plans on
addressing conflicts and have historically been very strong supporters of the UN and
routinely have blue helmet troops all around the world on peace-keeping missions. Canada can
do this safely because it has balanced relationships with most countries around the world. It
will not do these types of arrests and extraditions on a whim because that would upset
Canada's role in the world.
Judging from what I've read, the US are claiming she committed fraud by alleging that a
company, Skycom that allegedly did business with Iran was not separate from Huawei. Here's
the BBC's take:
"On Friday, US prosecutors told the Supreme Court of British Columbia that Ms Meng had
used a Huawei subsidiary called Skycom to evade sanctions on Iran between 2009 and 2014 .
Spot on with your comment. As you point out, this event will cast a dark shadow over
executive travel for a long time to come, including those American executives who will now be
fearful of countermeasures.
Whose laws, one might ask? The US says ITS laws rule the world. ISDS says corporate right
to profit (by their accounting methods that discount externalities to zero) outweighs ALL
national and local laws.
And having spent some years as a lawyer, and observing several different kinds of courts
in operation, I would dare to challenge the assertion that "courts have to follow rules."
Like they have done in the foreclosure mess, maybe? Like the shenanigans displayed via
Chicago's "Operation Greylord" prosecutions? Or in traffic courts in small towns in Flyover
Country? how about the US bankruptcy courts, where shall we say "bad decisions" are endemic?
Remember Julius Hoffman? how about Kimba Woods, who sua sponte curtailed Michael Milken's
jail term for his junk bond racket? Even FISA, of course?
Good luck with that. It's almost impossible in the US never to break the law in some way.
It just takes a cop or prosecutors motivated enough. I find it hard to believe it's not the
same in China, let alone Russia or the UK, to name a few.
This law school lecture is 45mins long but really fun (it's got 2.5 million views). You
should never talk to the police – one reason being that, as Lynne says, there are SO
many possible offences, that you can never be sure you are not guilty of
something .
"Sounds like a good reason for executives not to break laws "
Yeah, I remember when all those HSBC executives were arrested, tried and thrown in jail.
Good times The U.S. government really believes in the rule of law. Remember when the Chief
Executive was sent to prison for life for committing "the supreme war crime" and shredding
the U.S. Constitution?
Rules are for little people Meng isn't big enough to be unprosecutable apparently.
So the US DOJ, according to "people familiar with the matter", has been investigating
Huawei for at least two years. My math tells me this is roughly since the signing of the deal
between Iran and the P5+1 countries in 2016, a deal subsequently incorporated into
international law by the UN. Now a bank that has run a laundry service for dirty money is
suddenly thrust into victimhood and (with Uncle Sam's boot on its neck no doubt) is
"cooperating" with the investigation? You couldn't make this more surreal if you tried.
If this isn't the final act in peeling off the rose tinted glasses from countries that
still consider the US a trusted friend and loyal ally, one wonders how much more evidence
they need to see it for what it really is, a duplicitous, hypocritical, tyrannical
imperialist. The irony of this charade being undertaken by the department of "justice" makes
this even more egregious. Expect development of an alternative system to Swift to go into
overdrive after this.
The point isn't "Is the US acting legally/by the book in enforcing the law", it's "Why is
the US legally enforcing the law in this case and not the million other cases equally
deserving of enforcement?" When the law isn't enforced evenly, then the law just becomes a
cover story for dishing out and withholding punishment by authorities.
Very interesting-actually mystifying. The powers that are- from their
pronouncements,haven't a clue about modern money, and in that framework the benefits of the
reserve currency they print. Maybe they do, but why, for what appears a minimal foreign
corporate compliance offence, would we want China, Russia, and a host of others to find
enough cause to continue their effort on a replacement reserve? Why are we so hell bent on
militarising the dollar? Save it for really big fish. Sure, its extremely difficult under the
current political framework for the world to organise and opt away from our dollar , but the
stability and leadership America has offered since the end of ww11, maybe appears
diminishing. Given Trump just made a deal with Xi, at the same time his vip citizen was being
targeted- obviously kind of humiliating-,as well as the administration turning a blind eye to
the murderous soprano fiefdom of Saudi Arabia; from any rational standpoint prioritising
human rights over crooked bank compliance issues , this looks keystone cop like! Sure we only
have a little info, but it still smells of hypocritical, imperialistic, one hand doesnt know
what the other hand is doing idiots in charge. Mike Hudson sees nefarious purposes,maybe hes
a bit hawkish, but this just seems so obtuse given the g20 hand shakes. Going to be very
interesting watching China's response. Then again maybe this lady is a criminal.
" the US Justice Department finds no trouble with targeting a corporation nearly 7,000
miles away but just can't seem to target Wall Street which is only about 200 miles away from
their headquarters "
This.
Having power over others seems to be a standard condition of our species. How one uses or
abuses power reveals the inner nature of the one(s) wielding the power. There need not be a
conspiracy of the powerful, just a consensus of how power should be used so that the sum
total exercises of the powerful reveal where their interests intersect. The rest of us just
got get out of the way.
If one wants to know what interesting times look like, well, we have front row seats. And
its in 3-D.
I must admit that President Trump is doing a better job than former President Obama in
ramping up a new theatre of economic warfare across the globe. Former President Obama was
rather crude, what with his drones. I'm thinking we have to update von Clausewitz's dictum:
"War is the continuation of politics by other means." to something along the lines of
"Economics is a continuation of war by other means."
The USA polity is certainly making it up close and personal.
Indeed. The possibilities for China to retaliate are seemingly endless though they won't
have the long arm the U.S. has.
Perhaps China should respond by trying to arrest and indicting some of the Wall Street big
wigs Obama never indicted. I'm sure China could come up with reasons why fraud Wall Street
committed violated Chinese law and damaged China.
Of course, being an exporter to the U.S. I'm sure China would much rather this go away,
than to retaliate.
Very interesting-actually mystifying. The powers that are- from their
pronouncements,haven't a clue about modern money, and in that framework the benefits of the
reserve currency they print. Maybe they do, but why, for what appears a minimal foreign
corporate compliance offence, would we want China, Russia, and a host of others to find
enough cause to continue their effort on a replacement reserve? Why are we so hell bent on
militarising the dollar? Save it for really big fish. Sure, its extremely difficult under the
current political framework for the world to organise and opt away from our dollar , but the
stability and leadership America has offered since the end of ww11, maybe appears
diminishing. Given Trump just made a deal with Xi, at the same time his vip citizen was being
targeted- obviously kind of humiliating-,as well as the administration turning a blind eye to
the murderous soprano fiefdom of Saudi Arabia; from any rational standpoint prioritising
human rights over crooked bank compliance issues , this looks keystone cop like! Sure we only
have a little info, but it still smells of hypocritical, imperialistic, one hand doesnt know
what the other hand is doing idiots in charge. Mike Hudson sees nefarious purposes,maybe hes
a bit hawkish, but this just seems so obtuse given the g20 hand shakes. Going to be very
interesting watching China's response. Then again maybe this lady is a criminal.
Why are we so hell bent? The U.S. hyper power status started in 1991. This is a generation
where they knew nothing else, coming off 45 years where allies did what they were told.
Whether its throwing around terms such as "American exceptionalism" or "indispensable
nation", there is a religious fervor around the U.S. among American foreign policy
elites.
Then there is imperial rot. The tenures in the U.S. Senate are longer than the Soviet
Politburo. At a practical level the Bushes and Clintons (not exactly great people) have been
responsible for who gets promoted in Washington and who develops marketable connections since
1986 with Reagan's alzheimers kicking in big time if not longer.
In many places in the US, if I jaywalk, I am a criminal. What corporate executive is not a
criminal, given the mass of laws that apply (until said criminals can bribe the legislatures
into de-criminalizing the bad behaviors)? Not to mention persuading the executive branch to
not prosecute, for all kinds of "political" reasons? Ask Wells Fargo and the other Banksters
how that works. Selective or non-prosecution for me, "the full weight of the law," that
fraudulent notion, for thee, I guess. And none of that is in any way new.
Speaking of Chinese criminals, I would add an anecdote. I have not been able to find the
episode, but one of the formerly investigative programs (20-20 or 60 Minutes, I believe) took
part in a sting of a Chinese corp that sells counterfeit medicines. This was maybe 8-10 years
ago. A very pretty if somewhat English-challenged young woman met with a bunch, maybe 10, men
and women who she thought were buyers for distributors and Pharma corps in the US and I
believe Canada. This meeting took place in a West Coast S city as I recall.
She offered that her company produced counterfeit meds using "latest technology" that from
the shape and color and texture and markings of the pills and package inserts, right down to
the packaging, holograms and all, could not be distinguished from the original. The products
were touted as being biologically inactive and "safe." She averred that her company could
deliver any quantity, from cartons to container loads, at very reasonable and attractive
price.
But that is a little different case from what appears at this point (barring correction as
the "case" develops) from the Huawei matter.
Not easy for another entity to take over the reserve currency.
China Germany etc want a trade surplus with us, so they must accept and store dollars. Very
similarly. Many individuals want to save dollars because they don't trust their own currency.
And some countries actually use dollars as their currency.
So the desire to accept or save dollars in exchange for their goods means the dollar is the
reserve currency. This won't change until something else becomes more attractive to savers
and mercantilists.
I agree that "done by the book" is irrelevant here. Selective enforcement is the issue.
Wall Street crooks have committed greater sins yet none of them is really punished.
Anyone could have written an "internal memo" like that. Proving its authenticity is a
different matter. After all, the biggest "smoking gun" I have ever seen in my life was the
"evidence" of Iraqi WMD.
Another interesting aspect of the case is that as I suspected, it might be difficult to
prove that Huawei sold Iran some specific American technologies that still have valid patents
in effect.
I personally know IBM and others breached the US arms control export laws by exporting
Cryptography to Apartheid South Africa, and believe that Shell Oil has broken nearly all
environmental laws in the Niger Delta for decades.
Is this what happens when a government is sliding rapidly down the slope of loss of
legitimacy?' We become acutely aware of the selective enforcement of its laws; a situation
that our poor and black and brown citizens have known for decades.
We have even become aware that the laws themselves are not always enacted for the public
good, but for the enrichment of certain small segments of the population.
This is not a good place to be. I mean this state of mind, not the NC site, which, as
always, provides the opportunity for much thoughtful and creative discussion.
Don't forget that the US ambassador to Germany threatened secondary sanctions against
Germany if they went ahead with Nordstream2. Trump then walked that back. But as for this
latest move, we know that Bolton at least was informed of the impending arrest so it's fair
to say that such a sensitive action would not have happened without some form of White House
approval–even if it wasn't Trump himself. It's probably not a CT therefore to say that
there's more going on here than a prosecutor making a routine request. The administration
hawks are firing a shot over the bow of anyone who defies them on Iran (the place "real men"
go to). Given what we know about Bolton's Iran obsession it may not even have much to do with
China.
And this bully boy approach to the rest of the world isn't only coming from Trump's
neocons since sanctions bills are a bipartisan favorite of our Congress. Apparently being
bribed on domestic matters isn't enough (unless you consider foreign policy to only be about
MIC profits). Doing the bidding overseas actors and their supporters taps a whole other
vein.
Flights that over fly US airspace are required to submit their manifests and passenger
names are bounced against the National Crime Information Center databases by CBP.
I would venture that her flight overflew Alaskan airspace and that is how they found out
she was on board.
So the USA decided to take hostages ;-) The key rule of neoliberalism is the financial
oligarchy is untouchable. This is a gangster-style move which will greatly backfire.
Now Russian financial executives would think twice about visiting UK, Canada, New Zealand or
Australia. and that's money lost. Probably forever.
Appearing in court wearing a green jumpsuit and without handcuffs, Meng reportedly looked to
be in good spirits in a Vancouver courtroom where the prosecutions' case was detailed publicly
for the first time. Specifically, the US alleges that Meng helped conceal the company's true
relationship with a firm called Skycom, a subsidiary closely tied to its parent company as it
did business with Iran.
Meng used this deception to lure banks into facilitating transactions that violated US
sanctions, exposing them to possible fines. The prosecutor didn't name the banks, but US media
on Thursday reported that a federal monitor at
HSBC flagged a suspicious transaction involving Huawei to US authorities, according to
Bloomberg. Prosecutors also argued that Meng has avoided the US since learning about its probe
into possible sanctions violations committed by Huawei, and that she should be held in custody
because she's a flight risk whose bail could not be set high enough. Before Friday's hearing, a
publication ban prevented details about the charges facing Meng from being released. However,
that ban was lifted at the beginning of her hearing.
Meng was arrested in Vancouver on Saturday while on her way to Mexico, according to reports
in the Canadian
Press.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said Canada's ambassador in Beijing had
briefed the Chinese foreign ministry on Meng's arrest. The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa had
branded Meng's detention as a "serious violation of human rights" as senior Chinese officials
debate the
prospects for retaliation. Freeland said McCallum told the Chinese that Canada is simply
following its laws - echoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's claim that Meng's arrest was the
result of a legal process happening independent of politics.
Friday's hearing in Vancouver is just the start of a legal process that could end with Meng
being extradited to stand trial in the US. Even if prosecutors believe there is little doubt as
to Meng's guilt, the extradition process could take months or even years.
Anything involving Iran is inherently political. The US is abusing Interpol in no less
brazen fashion than Russia and China when seeking the extradition of dissidents. Canada
shouldn't accomodate this BS.
It has become all too easy for democracy to be turned on its head and popular nationalist
mandates, referenda and elections negated via instant political hypocrisy by leaders who show
their true colours only after the public vote. So it has been within the two-and-a-half year
unraveling of the UK Brexit referendum of 2016 that saw the subsequent negotiations now provide
the Brexit voter with only three possibilities. All are a loss for Britain.
One possibility, Brexit, is the result of Prime Minister, Theresa May's negotiations- the
"deal"- and currently exists in name only. Like the PM herself, the original concept of Brexit
may soon lie in the dust of an upcoming UK Parliament floor vote in exactly the same manner as
the failed attempt by the Greeks barely three years ago. One must remember that Greece on June
27, 2015 once voted to leave the EU as well and to renegotiate its EU existence as well in
their own "Grexit" referendum. Thanks to their own set of underhanded and treasonous
politicians, this did not go well for Greece. Looking at the Greek result, and understanding
divisive UK Conservative Party control that exists in the hearts of PMs on both sides of the
House of Commons, this new parliamentary vote is not looking good for Britain. Brexit:
Theresa May Goes Greek! "deal" -- would thus reveal the life-long scars of their true
national allegiance gnawed into their backs by the lust of their masters in Brussels. Brexit:
Theresa May Goes Greek!, by Brett Redmayne-Titley - The Unz Review
Ironically, like a cluster bomb of white phosphorous over a Syrian village, Cameron's Brexit
vote blew up spectacularly in his face. Two decades of ongoing political submission to the EU
by the Cons and "new" labour had them arrogantly misreading the minds of the UK
voter.
So on that incredible night, it happened. Prime Minister David Cameron the Cons New Labour
The Lib- Dems and even the UK Labour Party itself, were shocked to their core when the
unthinkable nightmare that could never happen, did happen . Brexit had passed by popular
vote!
David Cameron has been in hiding ever since.
After Brexit passed the same set of naïve UK voters assumed, strangely, that Brexit
would be finalized in their national interest as advertised. This belief had failed to
read
Article 50 - the provisos for leaving the EU- since, as much as it was mentioned, it was
very rarely linked or referenced by a quotation in any of the media punditry. However, an
article published four days after the night Brexit passed,
" A Brexit Lesson In Greek: Hopes and Votes Dashed on Parliamentary Floors," provided
anyone thus reading Article 50, which is only eight pages long and double-spaced, the info to
see clearly that this never before used EU by-law would be the only route to a UK exit.
Further, Article 50 showed that Brussels would control the outcome of exit negotiations along
with the other twenty-seven member nations and that effectively Ms May and her Tories
would be playing this game using the EU's ball and rules, while going one-on-twenty-seven
during the negotiations.
In the aftermath of Brexit, the real game began in earnest. The stakes: bigger than
ever.
Forgotten are the hypocritical defections of political expediency that saw Boris Johnson and
then Home Secretary Theresa May who were, until that very moment, both vociferously and very
publicly against the intent of Brexit. Suddenly they claimed to be pro- Brexit in their quest
to sleep in Cameron's now vacant bed at No. 10 Downing Street. Boris strategically dropped out
to hopefully see, Ms May, fall on her sword- a bit sooner. Brexit: Theresa May Goes Greek!, by
Brett Redmayne-Titley - The Unz Review
So, the plucky PM was left to convince the UK public, daily, as the negotiations moved on,
that "Brexit means Brexit!" A UK media that is as pro-EU as their PM chimed in to help
her sell distortions of proffered success at the negotiating table, while the rise of "old"
Labour, directed by Jeremy Corbyn, exposed her "soft" Brexit negotiations for the
litany of failures that ultimately equaled the "deal" that was strangely still called
"Brexit."
Too few, however, examined this reality once these political Chameleons changed their
colours just as soon as the very first results shockingly came in from Manchester in the wee
hours of the morning on that seemingly hopeful night so long ago: June 23, 2016. For thus would
begin a quiet, years-long defection of many more MPs than merely these two opportunists.
What the British people also failed to realize was that they and their Brexit victory would
also be faced with additional adversaries beyond the EU members: those from within their own
government. From newly appointed PM May to Boris Johnson, from the Conservative Party to the
New Labour sellouts within the Labour Party and the Friends of Israel , the
quiet internal political movement against Brexit began. As the House of Lords picked up their
phones, too, for very quiet private chats within House of Commons, their minions in the British
press began their work as well.
Brexit: Theresa May Goes Greek!, by Brett Redmayne-Titley -
The Unz Review
This article by Brett Redmayne is certainly right re the horrific sell-out by the Greek
government of Tsipras the other year, that has left the Greek citizenry in enduring political
despair the betrayal of Greek voters indeed a model for UK betrayal of Brexit voters
But Redmayne is likely very mistaken in the adulation of Jeremy Corbyn as the 'genuine
real deal' for British people
Ample evidence points to Corbyn as Trojan horse sell-out, as covered by UK researcher
Aangirfan on her blogs, the most recent of which was just vapourised by Google in their
censorship insanity
Jeremy Corbyn was a childhood neighbour of the Rothschilds in Wiltshire; with Jeremy's
father David Corbyn working for ultra-powerful Victor Rothschild on secret UK gov scientific
projects during World War 2
Jeremy Corbyn is tied to child violation scandals & child-crime convicted individuals
including Corbyn's Constituency Agent; Corbyn tragically ignoring multiple earnest complaints
from child abuse victims & whistleblowers over years, whilst "child abuse rings were
operating within all 12 of the borough's children's homes" in Corbyn's district not very
decent of him
And of course Corbyn significantly cucked to the Israel lobby in their demands for purge
of the Labour party alleged 'anti-semites'
The Trojan Horse 'fake opposition', or fake 'advocate for the people', is a very classic
game of the Powers That Be, and sadly Corbyn is likely yet one more fake 'hero'
My theory is, give "capitalism" and financial interests enough time, they will consume any
democracy. Meaning: the wealth flows upwards, giving the top class opportunity to influence
politics and the media, further improving their situation v.s. the rest, resulting in ever
stronger position – until they hold all the power. Controlling the media and therefore
the narrative, capable to destroy any and all opposition. Ministers and members of
parliaments, most bought and paid for one way or the other. Thankfully, the 1% or rather the
0.1% don't always agree so the picture can be a bit blurred.
You can guess what country inspired this "theory" of mine. The second on the list is
actually the U.K. If a real socialist becomes the prime minister of the U.K. I will be very
surprised. But Brexit is a black swan like they say in the financial sector, and they tend to
disrupt even the best of theories. Perhaps Corbin is genuine and will become prime minister!
I am not holding my breath.
However, if he is a real socialist like the article claims. And he becomes prime minister
of the U.K the situation will get really interesting. Not only from the EU side but more
importantly from U.K. best friend – the U.S. Uncle Sam will not be happy about this
development and doesn't hesitate to crush "bad ideas" he doesn't like.
Case in point – Ireland's financial crisis in 2009;
After massive expansion and spectacular housing bubble the Irish banks were in deep
trouble early into the crisis. The EU, ECB and the IMF (troika?) met with the Irish
government to discuss solutions. From memory – the question was how to save the Irish
banks? They were close to agreement that bondholders and even lenders to the Irish banks
should take a "haircut" and the debt load should be cut down to manageable levels so the
banks could survive (perhaps Michael Hudson style if you will). One short phone call from
the U.S Secretary of the treasury then – Timothy Geithner – to the troika-Irish
meeting ended these plans. He said: there will be no haircut! That was the end of it.
Ireland survived but it's reasonable to assume this "guideline" paved the road for the
Greece debacle.
I believe Mr. Geithner spoke on behalf of the financial power controlling – more or
less-our hemisphere. So if the good old socialist Corbin comes to power in the U.K. and
intends to really change something and thereby set examples for other nations – he is
taking this power head on. I think in case of "no deal" the U.K. will have it's back against
the wall and it's bargaining position against the EU will depend a LOT on U.S. response. With
socialist in power there will be no meaningful support from the U.S. the powers that be will
to their best to destroy Corbin as soon as possible.
My right wing friends can't understand the biggest issue of our times is class war. This
article mentions the "Panama papers" where great many corporations and wealthy individuals
(even politicians) in my country were exposed. They run their profits through offshore tax
havens while using public infrastructure (paid for by taxpayers) to make their money. It's
estimated that wealth amounting to 1,5 times our GDP is stored in these accounts!
There is absolutely no way to get it through my right wing friends thick skull that
off-shore accounts are tax frauds. Resulting in they paying higher taxes off their wages
because the big corporations and the rich don't pay anything. Nope. They simply hate taxes
(even if they get plenty back in services) and therefore all taxes are bad. Ergo tax evasions
by the 1% are fine – socialism or immigrants must be the root of our problems.
MIGA!
Come to think of it – few of them would survive the "law of the jungle" they so much
desire. And none of them would survive the "law of the jungle" if the rules are stacked
against them. Still, all their political energy is aimed against the ideas and people that
struggle against such reality.
I give up – I will never understand the right. No more than the pure bread
communist. Hopeless ideas!
" This is because the deal has a provision that would still keep the UK in the EU Customs
Union (the system setting common trade rules for all EU members) indefinitely. This is an
outrageous inclusion and betrayal of a real Brexit by Ms May since this one topic was the
most contentious in the debate during the ongoing negotiations because the Customs Union is
the tie to the EU that the original Brexit vote specifically sought to terminate. "
Here I stopped reading, maybe later more.
Nonsense.
What USA MSM told in the USA about what ordinary British people said, those who wanted to
leave the EU, I do not know, one of the most often heard reasons was immigration, especially
from E European countries, the EU 'free movement of people'.
"Real' Britons refusing to live in Poland.
EP member Verhofstadt so desperate that he asked on CNN help by Trump to keep this 'one of
the four EU freedoms'.
This free movement of course was meant to destroy the nation states
What Boris Johnson said, many things he said were true, stupid EU interference for example
with products made in Britain, for the home market, (he mentioned forty labels in one piece
of clothing), no opportunity to seek trade without EU interference.
There was irritation about EU interference 'they even make rules about vacuum cleaners', and,
already long ago, closure, EU rules, of village petrol pumps that had been there since the
first cars appeared in Britain, too dangerous.
In France nonsensical EU rules are simply ignored, such as countryside private sewer
installations.
But the idea that GB could leave, even without Brussels obstruction, the customs union,
just politicians, and other nitwits in economy, could have such ideas.
Figures are just in my head, too lazy to check.
But British export to what remains of the EU, some € 60 billion, French export to GB,
same order of magnitude, German export to GB, far over 100 billion.
Did anyone imagine that Merkel could afford closing down a not negligible part of Bayern car
industry, at he same time Bayern being the Land most opposed to Merkel, immigration ?
This Brexit in my view is just the beginning of the end of the illusion EU falling
apart.
In politics anything is connected with anything.
Britons, again in my opinion, voted to leave because of immigration, inside EU
immigration.
What GB will do with Marrakech, I do not know.
Marrakech reminds me of many measures that were ready to be implemented when the reason to
make these measures no longer existed.
Such as Dutch job guarantees when enterprises merged, these became law when when the merger
idiocy was over.
The negative aspects of immigration now are clear to many in the countries with the imagined
flesh pots, one way or another authorities will be obliged to stop immigration, but at that
very moment migration rules, not legally binding, are presented.
As a Belgian political commentator said on Belgian tv 'no communication is possible
between French politicians and French yellow coat demonstrators, they live in completely
different worlds'.
These different worlds began, to pinpoint a year, in 2005, when the negative referenda about
the EU were ignored. As Farrage reminded after the Brexit referendum, in EP, you said 'they
do not know what they're doing'
But now Macron and his cronies do not know what to do, now that police sympathises with
yellow coat demonstrators.
For me THE interesting question remains 'how was it possible that the Renaissance
cultures manoevred themselves into the present mess ?'.
@Digital
Samizdat Corbyn, in my opinion one of the many not too bright socialists, who are caught
in their own ideological prison: worldwide socialism is globalisation, globalisation took
power away from politicians, and gave it to multinationals and banks.
@niceland The
expression class war is often used without realising what the issue is, same with tax
evasion.
The rich of course consume more, however, there is a limit to what one can consume, it takes
time to squander money.
So the end of the class war may make the rich poor, but alas the poor hardly richer.
About tax evasion, some economist, do not remember his name, did not read the article
attentively, analysed wealth in the world, and concluded that eight % of this wealth had
originated in evading taxes.
Over what period this evasion had taken place, do not remember this economist had reached a
conclusion, but anyone understands that ending tax evasion will not make all poor rich.
There is quite another aspect of class war, evading taxes, wealth inequality, that is
quite worrying: the political power money can yield.
Soros is at war with Hungary, his Open University must leave Hungary.
USA MSM furious, some basic human right, or rights, have been violated, many in Brussels
furious, the 226 Soros followers among them, I suppose.
But since when is it allowed, legally and/or morally, to try to change the culture of a
country, in this case by a foreigner, just by pumping money into a country ?
Soros advertises himself as a philantropist, the Hungarian majority sees him as some kind of
imperialist, I suppose.
For me THE interesting question remains 'how was it possible that the Renaissance cultures
manoevred themselves into the present mess ?'.
Well , I am reading " The occult renaissance church of Rome " by Michael Hoffman ,
Independent History and research . Coeur d`Alene , Idaho . http://www.RevisionistHistory.org
I saw about this book in this Unz web .
I used to think than the rot started with protestantism , but Hoffman says it started with
catholic Renaissance in Rome itself in the XV century , the Medici , the Popes , usury
This whole affair illustrates beautifully the real purpose of the sham laughingly known as
"representative democracy," namely, not to "empower" the public but to deprive it of
its power.
With modern means of communication, direct democracy would be technically feasible even in
large countries. Nevertheless, practically all "democratic" countries continue to delegate
all legislative powers to elected "representatives." These are nothing more than consenting
hostages of those with the real power, who control and at the same time hide behind those
"representatives." The more this becomes obvious, the lower the calibre of the people willing
to be used in this manner – hence, the current crop of mental gnomes and opportunist
shills in European politics.
I would only shout this rambling ignoramus a beer in the pub to stop his mouth for a while.
Some of his egregious errors have been noted. and Greece, anyway, is an irrelevance to the
critical decisions on Brexit.
Once Article 50 was invoked the game was over. All the trump cards were on the EU side.
Now we know that, even assuming Britain could muster a competent team to plan and negotiate
for Brexit that all the work of proving up the case and negotiating or preparing the ground
has to be done over years leading up to the triggering of Article 50. And that's assuming
that recent events leave you believing that the once great Britain is fit to be a sovereign
nation without adult supervision.
As it is one has to hope that Britain will not be constrained by the total humbug which
says that a 51 per cent vote of those choosing to vote in that very un British thing, a
referendum, is some sort of reason for not giving effect to a more up to date and better
informed view.
@Digital
Samizdat Hypothesis: The British masses would fare better without a privatized
government.
"Corbyn may prove to be real .. .. old-time Labour platform [leadership, capable to]..
return [political, social and financial] control back to the hands of the UK worker".. [but
the privateers will use the government itself and mass media to defeat such platforms and to
suppress labor with new laws and domestic armed warfare]. Why would a member of the British
masses allow [the Oligarch elite and the[ir] powerful business and foreign political
interests restrain democracy and waste the victims of privately owned automation revolution?
.. ..
[Corbyn's Labour platform challenges ] privatized capitalist because the PCs use the
British government to keep imprisoned in propaganda and suppressed in opportunity, the
masses. The privateers made wealthy by their monopolies, are using their resources to
maintain rule making and enforcement control (via the government) over the masses; such
privateers have looted the government, and taken by privatization a vast array of economic
monopolies that once belonged to the government. If the British government survives, the
Privateers (monopoly thieves) will continue to use the government to replace humanity, in
favor of corporate owned Robots and super capable algorithms.
Corbyn's threat to use government to represent the masses and to suppress or reduce
asymmetric power and wealth, and to provide sufficient for everyone extends to, and alerts
the masses in every capitalist dominated place in the world. He (Corbyn) is a very dangerous
man, so too was Jesus Christ."
There is a similar call in France, but it is not yet so well led.
Every working Dutch person is "owed" 50k euro from the bailout of Greece, not that Greece
will ever pay this back, and not as if Greece ever really got the money as it just went
straight to northern European banks to bail them out. Then we have the fiscal policy creating
more money by the day to stimulate the economy, which also doesn't reach the countries or
people just the banks. Then we have the flirting with East-European mobsters to pull them in
the EU sphere corrupting top EU bureaucrats. Then we have all of south Europe being extremely
unstable, including France, both its populations and its economy.
It's sad to see the British government doesn't see the disaster ahead, any price would be
cheaper then future forced EU integration. And especially at this point, the EU is so
unstable, that they can't go to war on the UK without also committing A kamikaze attack.
@Brabantian
Thank you for your comment and addition to my evaluation of Corbyn. I do agree with you that
Corbyn has yet to be tested for sincerity and effectiveness as PM, but he will likely get his
chance and only then will we and the Brits find out for sure. The main point I was hoping to
make was that: due to the perceived threat of Labour socialist reform under Corbyn, he has
been an ulterior motive in the negotiations and another reason that the EU wants PM May to
get her deal passed. Yes, I too am watching Corbyn with jaundiced optimism. Thank you.
My right wing friends can't understand the biggest issue of our times is class war. This
article mentions the "Panama papers" where great many corporations and wealthy individuals
(even politicians) in my country were exposed. They run their profits through offshore tax
havens while using public infrastructure (paid for by taxpayers) to make their money. It's
estimated that wealth amounting to 1,5 times our GDP is stored in these accounts!
There is absolutely no way to get it through my right wing friends thick skull that
off-shore accounts are tax frauds. Resulting in they paying higher taxes off their wages
because the big corporations and the rich don't pay anything. Nope. They simply hate taxes
(even if they get plenty back in services) and therefore all taxes are bad. Ergo tax evasions
by the 1% are fine – socialism or immigrants must be the root of our problems.
MIGA!
Come to think of it – few of them would survive the "law of the jungle" they so much
desire. And none of them would survive the "law of the jungle" if the rules are stacked
against them. Still, all their political energy is aimed against the ideas and people that
struggle against such reality.
I give up – I will never understand the right. No more than the pure bread
communist. Hopeless ideas!
@niceland
Your friends are not "right wing". The left/right paradigm is long dead. Your friends are
globalists, whether they realize it or not. Globalism is about moving capital to the benefit
of the haves. Migrants/immigrants are a form of capital. Investing in migration/immigration
lowers the long term costs and increases long term profit. The profit (money capital) is then
moved to a place where it best serves its owner.
I agree Jilles, and with many other of the commenters.
Read enough to see that the article has many errors of fact and perception. It is bad
enough to suspect *propaganda* , but Brett is clearly not at that level.
An important point that you hint at is that the Brits were violently and manipulatively
forced to accept mass immigration for many years.
Yet strangely, to say anything about it only became acceptable when some numbers of the
immigrants were fellow Europeans from within the EU, and most having some compatibility with
existing ethnicity and previous culture.
Even people living far away notice such forced false consciousness.
As for Corbyn, he is nothing like the old left of old Labour. He tries to convey that
image, it is a lie.
He may not be Blairite-Zio New Labour, and received some influence from the more heavily
Marxist old Labour figures, but he is very much a creature of the post-worst-of-1968 and
dirty hippy new left, Frankfurt School and all that crap, doubt that he has actually read
much of it, but he has internalised it through his formal and political education.
By the way, the best translation of the name of North Korea's ruling party is 'Labour
Party'. While it is a true fact, I intend nothing from it but a small laugh.
"... In bull markets, everything works. In bear markets, the only thing that really works is short-term government and municipal bonds and cash. Ample opportunity is being given to cut exposure to risk, and it's clear that few people are taking advantage of it. They never do. ..."
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- As a longtime market observer, what I find most interesting about the latest correction in equities has
the feeling of inevitability that it will turn into something worse. It wasn't this way in late January, when everyone wanted to
buy that dip. It certainly wasn't this way in 2007, when the magnitude of the recession was grossly underestimated.
Even the Federal Reserve is getting into the pessimism. Chairman Jerome Powell signaled last week that a pause in interest-rate
hikes might be forthcoming. What's interesting about that is Powell surely knew that such a reference might be interpreted as
bowing to pressure from President Donald Trump and yet he did it anyway. In essence, he risked the perception of the Fed's
independence probably because he knows the economic data is worsening.
Just about everyone I talk to in the capital markets, including erstwhile bulls, acknowledges that things are slowing down. Yes,
the Institute for Supply Management's monthly manufacturing index released earlier this week was strong, but jobless claims are
ticking up and I am hearing anecdotal reports of a wide range of businesses slowing down. Even my own business is slowing.
Anecdotes aside, oil has crashed, home builder stocks have been crushed, and the largest tech stocks in the world have taken a
haircut. If we get a recession from this, it will be a very well-telegraphed recession. Everyone knows it is coming.
A
recession is nothing to fear. We have lost sight of the fact that a recession has cleansing properties, helping to right the
wrong of the billions of dollars allocated to bad businesses while getting people refocused on investing in profitable
enterprises. Stock market bears are so disliked because it seems as though they actually desire a recession and for people to
get hurt financially. In a way, they are rooting for a recession because they know that the down part of the cycle is necessary.
There are signs that capital has been incorrectly allocated. In just in the span of a year, there have been three separate
bubbles: one in bitcoin, one in cannabis and one in the FAANG group of stocks: Facebook, Apple, Amazon.com, Netflix and
Google-parent Alphabet. This is uncommon. I begged the Fed to take the punch bowl away, and it eventually did, and now yields of
around 2.5 percent on risk-free money are enough to get people rethinking their allocation to risk.
Yet, I wonder if it is possible to have a recession when so many people expect one. The worst recessions are the ones that
people don't see coming. In 2011, during the European debt crisis, most people were predicting financial markets Armageddon. It
ended up being a smallish bear market, with the S&P 500 Index down about 21 percent on an intraday basis between July and
October of that year. It actually sparked a huge bull market in the very asset class that people were worried about: European
sovereign debt. We may one day have a reprise of that crisis, but if you succumbed to the panic at the time, it was a missed
opportunity.
But just the other day, the front end of the U.S. Treasury yield curve inverted, with two- and three-year note yields rising
above five-year note yields. Everyone knows that inverted yield curves are the most reliable recession indicators. Of course,
the broader yield curve as measured by the difference between two- and 10-year yields or even the gap between the federal funds
rate and 10-year yields has yet to invert, but as I said before, there is an air of inevitability about it. Flattening yield
curves always precede economic weakness. They aren't much good at exactly timing the top of the stock market, but you can get in
the ballpark.
I suppose all recessions are a surprise to some extent. If you are a retail investor getting your news from popular websites
or TV channels, you might not be getting the whole picture. In the professional community, it is becoming harder to ignore the
very obvious warning signs that a downturn is coming. In bull markets, everything works. In bear markets, the only thing
that really works is short-term government and municipal bonds and cash. Ample opportunity is being given to cut exposure to
risk, and it's clear that few people are taking advantage of it. They never do.
S 25 minutes
ago If our country is going bankrupt, there is no better President, with greater experience
at going bankrupt, than this President.
M 24 minutes ago
Another Republican recession whoda thunk that would happen trump's "greatest economy ever".
D 9 minutes ago So
let's see the market is up over 20% since January 3 2017 which means it's above it's
historical average gain per year. Meanwhile everyone is screaming recession and bear
market. I want to know why anyone who has been invested in the market longer than the last
two years is so upset about. Do you think your entitled to a gain of more than 10% a year.
In the United States
today, and throughout "Western Brainwashed Civilization," only a handful of people exist who
are capable of differentiating the real from the created reality in which all explanations are
controlled and kept as far away from the truth as possible.
Everything that every Western government and "news" organization says is a lie to control
the explanations that we are fed in order to keep us locked in The Matrix.
The ability to control people's understandings is so extraordinary that, despite massive
evidence to the contrary, Americans believe that Oswald, acting alone, was the best shot in
human history and using magic bullets killed President John F. Kenndy; that a handful of Saudi
Arabians who demonstratively could not fly airplanes outwitted the American national security
state and brought down 3 World Trade Center skyscrapers and part of the Pentagon; that Saddam
Hussein had and was going to use on the US "weapons of mass destruction;" that Assad "used
chemical weapons" against "his own people;" that Libya's Gaddifi gave his soldiers Viagra so
they could better rape Libyan women; that Russia "invaded Ukraine;" that Trump and Putin stole
the presidential election from Hillary.
The construction of a make-believe reality guarantees the US military/security complex's
annual budget of $1,000 billion dollars of taxpayers' money even as Congress debates cutting
Social Security in order to divert more largess to the pockets of the corrupt military/security
complex.
Readers ask me what they can do about it. Nothing, except revolt and cleanse the system,
precisely as Founding Father Thomas Jefferson said.
"... Another reason for the instability of the Western system is that two of the main areas of sovereignty are not included in the state structure: control of credit/banking and corporations. These two elements are therefore free of political controls and responsibility. They have largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American society. They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labour, entrepreneur-management skills and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of production. ..."
Summary of Prof. Carroll Quigley's
Last Public Lecture Given Months Before He Died:
"The 3rd. Oscar Iden Lecture 1978"
By Christopher M. Quigley B.Sc., M.M.I.I., M.A.
"This shift from customary conformity to decision making by some other power, in its
final stages, results in the dualism of almost totalitarian imperialism and an
amorphous mass culture of atomised individuals.
The fundamental, all pervasive cause of World instability today is the destruction of
communities by the commercialization of all human relationships and the resulting
neurosis and psychosis.
Another reason for the instability of the Western system is that two of the main areas
of sovereignty are not included in the state structure: control of credit/banking and
corporations. These two elements are therefore free of political controls and
responsibility.
They have largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American society.
They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labour, entrepreneur-management
skills and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of
production.
The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they control:
capital. Thus capital intensification has destroyed food, manufacturing, farming and
communities. All these processes create frustrations on every level of modern human
experience and result in the instability and disorder we see around everyday."
Carroll Quigley
In 1978 Professor Carroll Quigley, a few months before he died, gave three lectures at
Georgetown University, Washington. The lecture series was sponsored by a grant from the
Oscar Iden endowment.
The genius of Carroll Quigley shone through his three presentations because, as always, he
forced his audience to think. His essays covered the thousand years of the growth of the
State in the Western tradition from 976 – 1976. His approach went against the grain of
most academics who only taught history in short sound bites.
Quigley believed that you could not understand anything unless you saw the whole, and the
essence of his philosophy was that history is logical, i.e. things happen for a reason.
For him the core of all that occurs throughout the ages is the underlying force of
fundamental human values.
Leaders, rulers and executives who miss this point are prone to make erroneous decisions
because their actions will be based on flawed analysis and understanding. The professor
saw that American society and Western Civilization were in serious trouble in the late
70's. In hindsight his final essay
The State of Individuals
was particularly
prophetic and events during the subsequent 32 years have exonerated his controversial
conclusions.
In summary this essay stated the following:
Society is an organization of persons and artifacts to satisfy human needs.
Currently our desires are remote from our true needs. Societies are built on needs and
they are ultimately destroyed through desires.
Power between the state and the society rests on the ability of the state to satisfy human
needs. The state is a good state if it is sovereign and responsible.
There are seven level of culture or aspects of society: military, political, economic,
social, emotional, religious and intellectual.
Military
: men cannot live outside of groups. They can satisfy their needs only by
co-operating within community. The group needs to be defended.
Political:
If men operate within groups you must have a method to settle disputes.
Economic:
The group must have organizational patterns for satisfying material
needs.
Social:
Man and women are social beings. They have a need for other people. They
have a need to love and be loved.
Emotional:
Men and women must have emotional experiences. Moment to moment with
other people and moment to moment with nature.
Religious:
Human beings have a need for a feeling of certitude in their minds about
things they cannot control and do not fully understand.
Intellectual:
Men and women have a need to comprehend and discuss.
Power is the ability in society to meet these eight fore-mentioned human needs.
Community is group of people with close inter-personal relationships. Without community no
infant will be sufficiently socialized. Most of our internal controls which make society
function have historically been learnt in community. Prior to 976 most controls in society
were internal. In the West after 976 due to specialization and commercial expansion
controls began to be externalized.
Sovereignty has eight aspects: defence, judicial, administrative, taxation, legislation,
executive, monetary and incorporating power.
Expansion in society brings growing commercialization with the result that all values, in
time, become monetized. As expansion continues it slows with the result that society
becomes politicized and eventually militarized. This shift from customary conformity to
decision making by some other power in its final stages results in the dualism of almost
totalitarian imperialism and an amorphous mass culture of atomised individuals.
The main theme in our society today is [ruthless] competition, and no truly stable society
can possibly be built on such a premise. In the long term society must be based on
association and co-operation.
From 1855 Western Civilization has shown signs of becoming increasingly unstable due to:
technology and the displacement of labour: increased use of propaganda to brainwash people
into thinking society was good and true; an increased emphasis on material desires; the
increased emphasis on individualism over conformity; growing focus on quantity rather than
quality; increased demand for vicarious satisfactions.
As a result more and more people began to comprehend that the state was not a society with
community values. This realisation brought increasing instability.
Another element of the trend towards instability in Western Civilization was the growth in
weapon
systems that if actually used would ensure total destruction of the planet. This in effect
meant that they were effectively redundant.
In addition the expansion of the last 150 years has in essence been based on fossil fuels.
The energy which gave us the industrial revolution, coal – oil – natural gas – represented
the combined savings of four weeks of sunlight that managed to be accumulated on earth out
of the previous three billion years of sunshine.
This resource instead of being saved has been lost. Gone forever never to return. The
fundamental all pervasive cause of World instability today is the destruction of
communities by the commercialization of all human relationships and the resulting neurosis
and psychosis.
Medical science and all the population explosions have continued to produce more and more
people while the food supply and the supply of jobs are becoming increasingly precarious,
not only in the United States, but everywhere, because the whole purpose of using fossil
fuels in the corporate structure is the elimination of jobs.
Another reason for the instability of the Western system is that two of the main areas of
sovereignty are not included in the state structure: control of credit/banking and
corporations. These two elements are therefore free of political controls and
responsibility. They have largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in
American society. They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labour,
entrepreneur-management skills and everything else the economists once told us were the
chief elements of production.
The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they control: capital.
Thus capital intensification has destroyed food, manufacturing, farming and communities.
All these processes create frustrations on every level of modern human experience and
result in the instability and disorder we see around everyday.
Today in America there is a developing constitutional crisis. The three branches of
government set up in 1789 do not contain the eight aspects of sovereignty. As a result
each has tried to go outside the sphere in which it should be restrained. The constitution
completely ignores, for example, the administrative power.
As a result the courts, in particular the Supreme court, is making decisions it should not
be making. In addition the President, who by the constitution should be easily impeached,
has become all powerful to such an extent that the office is now as basically Imperial.
However, to me the most obvious flaw in our constitutional set-up is the fact that the
federal government does not have control over money and credit and does not have control
over corporations. It is therefore not really sovereign and is not really responsible.
The final result is that the American people will unfortunately prefer communities. They
will cop or opt out of the system. Today everything is a bureaucratic structure, and
brainwashed people who are not personalities are trained to fit into it and say it is a
great life but I think otherwise.
Do not be pessimistic. Life goes on; life is fun. And if a civilization crashed it
deserves to. When Rome fell the Christian answer was. "Create your own communities."
Source: The Oscar Iden Lecture Series Georgetown University Library: Prof. Carroll
Quigley
Please replace conservatism with neoliberalism in this post...
Notable quotes:
"... There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. ..."
"... As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself -- backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence. ..."
"... FDR used "liberal" for its connotation of generosity just as he repurposed "freedom" as, say, freedom from fear or want. A practical politician overseeing one of the great realignments in American partisan political history, FDR, by virtue of his own family name, could appropriate much of the reputational capital of progressive reform, but he also needed the Republican Progressive faction in his New Deal coalition, as support for agenda items like the Tennessee Valley Authority (public ownership of the means of producing electricity! What will we tell the grandkids?) ..."
"... US partisan politics now is undergoing its own crisis of legitimacy and realignment, as is, not incidentally, European party politics. There are splits in both Parties, though Wilentz is concerned with the split in the Democratic Par ..."
There is no such thing as liberalism -- or progressivism, etc.
There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political
analogue of Gresham's Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.
There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it
be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize
conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups
whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not
protect.
There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.
For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been
proposed. "The king can do no wrong." In practice, this immunity was always extended to the
king's friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king's
friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the
king is a faction, rather than an individual.
As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always
been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions
of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the
accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy
is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core
proposition itself -- backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by
violence.
So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect
anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
Then the appearance arises that the task is to map "liberalism", or "progressivism", or
"socialism", or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of
anti-conservatism.
No, it a'n't. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the
collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition
of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is
necessary. What you see is what you get:
The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone
unless it protects everyone.
bruce wilder, 03.23.18 at 1:40 pm
I read the Sean Wilentz article and it seems to be an exercise in virtue signalling by a
political centrist and Democratic partisan. Like most left-neoliberals, he doesn't want to be
called a neoliberal or acknowledge the political dynamics that have cast his own political
tendency as villains, and he cannot understand why betrayal rebranded as "practical" isn't
selling better.
Wilentz did not write the straightforward piece J-D wishes for because to do so would
reveal too much of the reprehensible nature of the Democratic Party politics he has decided
to praise.
It is strange that an historian would write a piece whose rhetoric seems premised on such
labels having reliable definitions constant thru time when he clearly knows that such labels
are repeatedly re-purposed by succeeding generations.
FDR used "liberal" for its connotation
of generosity just as he repurposed "freedom" as, say, freedom from fear or want. A practical
politician overseeing one of the great realignments in American partisan political history,
FDR, by virtue of his own family name, could appropriate much of the reputational capital of
progressive reform, but he also needed the Republican Progressive faction in his New Deal
coalition, as support for agenda items like the Tennessee Valley Authority (public ownership
of the means of producing electricity! What will we tell the grandkids?)
But, the New Deal was then, and now is something else.
US partisan politics now is
undergoing its own crisis of legitimacy and realignment, as is, not incidentally, European
party politics. There are splits in both Parties, though Wilentz is concerned with the split
in the Democratic Party, which has people who actually care at odds with those, like Wilentz,
who want to be seen to care while maintaining plausible deniability.
It is strange that an historian would write a piece whose rhetoric seems
premised on such labels having reliable definitions constant thru time when he clearly knows
that such labels are repeatedly re-purposed by succeeding generations.
Yes, I was amused to think of François Hollande presidency, the successful
candidate of the Socialist party, each time he wrote the word socialism to relate today and
the 1920s.
"... Everything Flynn had to say implicated Obama, Clapper & Brennan but the corrupt cabal isn't subject to the laws of unwashed inbreds like you and I and the other 320 million Americans (including those who THINK they're part of the club because they virtue signal so well). ..."
You realize 2 years of Flynn under Mueller's microscope yielded nothing? And the fact he's
facing sentencing means he's not going to be called as a witness to anything.
Everything Flynn had to say implicated Obama, Clapper & Brennan but the corrupt cabal
isn't subject to the laws of unwashed inbreds like you and I and the other 320 million
Americans (including those who THINK they're part of the club because they virtue signal so
well).
Says Summer Sausage who was of course not in the room. You think you know stuff? You know
stuff from the koolaide you've swallowed for the past 20 years...
The American labor market is increasingly unequal, characterized by extraordinary returns to
work at the top of the market but rising precarity and instability at the bottom of the market.
Research on precarious work and its consequences has overwhelmingly focused on the economic
dimension of precarity, epitomized by low and stagnant wages.
But, the rise in precarious work has also involved a major shift in the temporal dimension
of work such that many workers now experience routine instability in their work schedules. This
temporal instability represents a fundamental and under-appreciated manifestation of the risk
shift from firms to workers and their families.
To date, a lack of suitable existing data has precluded empirical investigation of how such
precarious scheduling practices affect the health and wellbeing of workers. We use an
innovative approach to collect survey data from a large and strategically selected segment of
the US workforce: hourly workers in the service sector. These data reveal relationships between
exposure to routine instability in work schedules and psychological distress, poor sleep
quality, and unhappiness.
While low wages are also associated with these outcomes, unstable and un-predictable
schedules are much more strongly associated. Further, while precarious schedules affect worker
wellbeing in part through the mediating influence of household economic insecurity, a much
larger proportion of the association is driven by work-life conflict. The temporal dimension of
work is central to the experience of precarity and an important social determinant of worker
wellbeing.
Margaret Thatcher Against Friedrich von Hayek's Pleas for a Lykourgan Dictatorship :
"My dear Professor Hayek, Thank you for your letter of 5 February. I was very glad that you
were able to attend the dinner so thoughtfully organised by Walter Salomon. It was not only a
great pleasure for me, it was, as always, instructive and rewarding to hear your views on the
great issues of our time...
Von Hayek, to put it bluntly, loved Pincohet's shooting people in soccer stadiums:
the "Lykourgan Moment" in which unconstitutional and illiberal actions create the space for
future stable libertarian capitalism was a recurrent fantasy of his.
Friedman saw his trips to Chile to be an opportunity to preach to the gentiles -- to
primarily preach free markets and small government, but also respect for individuals, for their
liberty, and for democracy. And he had no tolerance for those who said it was evil to try to
make the Chilean people more prosperous because that might reinforce the dictatorship.
Buchanan... where was Buchanan on this spectrum, anyway? It's complicated:
"Buchanan has repeatedly argued that the 'political economist should not act as if he or
she were providing advice to a benevolent despot' (Boettke Constitutional Political
Economy, 25, 110–124, 2014: 112), but an increasingly influential body of scholarship
argues that Buchanan provided a wealth of early 1980s policy advice to Augusto Pinochet's
military dictatorship in Chile (e.g., Fischer 2009; Maclean 2017). In particular, Buchanan
reportedly provided an analytical defense of military rule to a predominantly Chilean
audience when he visited the country in late 1981...
...This paper draws upon largely ignored archival evidence from the Buchanan House
Archives and Chilean primary source material to assess whether Buchanan provided a defense of
Pinochet's "capitalist fascism" (Samuelson 1983) or whether he defended democracy when he
visited Chile in 1981.
Aside from the importance of this for assessing Buchanan's own legacy, his constitutional
political economy arguments presented in Chile also provide an interesting and distinct
perspective on the connection between democracy and growth, which remains highly relevant to
current debates. Despite a general agreement about the desirability of democracy, the view
that authoritarian regimes can spur "growth miracles", or might even be a necessary stage in
political-economic development, still has prominent supporters (e.g. Sachs 2012)...
Guardian is just a propaganda outlet. That sad fact does not exclude the possibility of publishing really good articles,
thouth. That still happens occasionally.
The fact that they follow MI6 and Foreign Office talking points in all foreign events coverage a is just a testament the GB is
a "national security state". Nothing more, nothing less.
Notable quotes:
"... I'm not going to debunk the Guardian article here. It has been debunked by better debunkers than I (e.g., Jonathan Cook , Craig Murray , Glenn Greenwald , Moon of Alabama , and many others). ..."
"... The short version is, The Guardian 's Luke Harding, a shameless hack who will affix his name to any propaganda an intelligence agency feeds him, alleged that Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, secretly met with Julian Assange (and unnamed "Russians") on numerous occasions from 2013 to 2016, presumably to conspire to collude to brainwash Americans into not voting for Clinton. Harding's earth-shaking allegations, which The Guardian prominently featured and flogged, were based on well, absolutely nothing, except the usual anonymous "intelligence sources." After actual journalists pointed this out, The Guardian quietly revised the piece ( employing the subjunctive mood rather liberally ), buried it in the back pages of its website, and otherwise pretended like they had never published it. ..."
"... By that time, of course, its purpose had been served. The story had been picked up and disseminated by other "respectable," "authoritative" outlets, and it was making the rounds on social media. Nonetheless, out of an abundance of caution, in an attempt to counter the above-mentioned debunkers (and dispel the doubts of anyone else still capable of any kind of critical thinking), Politico posted this ass-covering piece speculating that, if it somehow turned out The Guardian 's story was just propaganda designed to tarnish Assange and Trump well, probably, it had been planted by the Russians to make Luke Harding look like a moron. This ass-covering piece of speculative fiction, which was written by a former CIA agent, was immediately disseminated by liberals and "leftists" who are eagerly looking forward to the arrest, rendition, and public crucifixion of Assange. ..."
"... And this is why The Guardian will not be punished for publishing a blatantly fabricated story. Nor will Luke Harding be penalized for writing it. Luke Harding will be rewarded for writing it, as he has been handsomely rewarded throughout his career for loyally serving the ruling classes. Greenwald, on the other hand, is on thin ice. It will be instructive to see how far he pushes his confrontation with The Guardian regarding this story. ..."
"... It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. ..."
"... Those who are conforming to [official truth] are doing so, not because they are deceived, but because it is safer and more rewarding to do so. ..."
"... The powerless are either servants of power or they are heretics. There is no third alternative. ..."
"... It is important to realize that "the truth" is not going to "rouse the masses from their slumber" and inspire them to throw off their chains. People are not going to suddenly "wake up," "see the truth" and start "the revolution." ..."
"... The distinction is simple. We can't know the truth about distant and complex events like 9/11 or JFK unless we were directly involved, and those people are all dead. For big events we have to rely on, or ignore, the official accounts. ..."
"... Given all this, still, we can approach an approximation of truth that some can agree on. Here is where the trouble starts . ..."
The short version is, The Guardian 's Luke
Harding, a shameless hack who will affix his name to any propaganda an intelligence agency
feeds him, alleged that Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, secretly met with
Julian Assange (and unnamed "Russians") on numerous occasions from 2013 to 2016, presumably to
conspire to collude to brainwash Americans into not voting for Clinton. Harding's earth-shaking
allegations, which The Guardian prominently featured and flogged, were based on well,
absolutely nothing, except the usual anonymous "intelligence sources." After actual journalists
pointed this out, The Guardian quietly revised the piece ( employing the subjunctive mood
rather liberally ), buried it in the back pages of its website, and otherwise pretended
like they had never published it.
By that time, of course, its purpose had been served. The story had been picked up and
disseminated by other "respectable," "authoritative" outlets, and it was making the rounds on
social media. Nonetheless, out of an abundance of caution, in an attempt to counter the
above-mentioned debunkers (and dispel the doubts of anyone else still capable of any kind of
critical thinking), Politico posted this
ass-covering piece speculating that, if it somehow turned out The Guardian 's story
was just propaganda designed to tarnish Assange and Trump well, probably, it had been planted
by the Russians to make Luke Harding look like a moron. This ass-covering piece of speculative
fiction, which was written by a former CIA agent, was immediately disseminated by liberals and
"leftists" who are eagerly looking forward to the arrest, rendition, and public crucifixion
of Assange.
At this point, I imagine you're probably wondering what this has to do with manufacturing
"truth." Because, clearly, this Guardian story was a lie a lie The Guardian got
caught telling. I wish the "truth" thing was as simple as that (i.e., exposing and debunking
the ruling classes' lies). Unfortunately, it isn't. Here is why.
Much as most people would like there to be one (and behave and speak as if there were one),
there is no Transcendental Arbiter of Truth. The truth is what whoever has the power to say it
is says it is. If we do not agree that that "truth" is the truth, there is no higher court to
appeal to. We can argue until we are blue in the face. It will not make the slightest
difference. No evidence we produce will make the slightest difference. The truth will remain
whatever those with the power to say it is say it is.
Nor are there many "truths" (i.e., your truth and my truth). There is only one "truth" the
"official truth". The "truth" according to those in power. This is the whole purpose of the concept
of truth. It is the reason the concept of "truth" was invented (i.e., to render any other
"truths" lies). It is how those in power control reality and impose their ideology on the
masses (or their employees, or their students, or their children). Yes, I know, we very badly
want there to be some "objective truth" (i.e., what actually happened, when whatever happened,
JFK, 9-11, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Schrödinger's dead cat, the Big Bang, or
whatever). There isn't. The truth is just a story a story that is never our story.
The "truth" is a story that power gets to tell, and that the powerless do not get to tell,
unless they tell the story of those in power, which is always someone else's story. The
powerless are either servants of power or they are heretics. There is no third alternative.
They either parrot the "truth" of the ruling classes or they utter heresies of one type or
another. Naturally, the powerless do not regard themselves as heretics. They do not regard
their "truth" as heresy. They regard their "truth" as the truth, which is heresy. The truth of
the powerless is always heresy.
For example, while it may be personally comforting for some of us to tell ourselves that we
know the truth about certain subjects (e.g., Russiagate, 9-11, et cetera), and to share our
knowledge with others who agree with us, and even to expose the lies of the corporate media on
Twitter, Facebook, and our blogs, or in some leftist webzine (or "fearless adversarial" outlet
bankrolled by a beneficent oligarch), the ruling classes do not give a shit, because ours is
merely the raving of heretics, and does not warrant a serious response.
Or all right, they give a bit of a shit, enough to try to cover their asses when a
journalist of the stature of Glenn Greenwald (who won a Pulitzer and is frequently on
television) very carefully and very respectfully almost directly accuses them of lying. But
they give enough of a shit to do this because Greenwald has the power to hurt them, not because
of any regard for the truth. This is also why Greenwald has to be so careful and respectful
when directly confronting The Guardian , or any other corporate media outlet, and state
that their blatantly fabricated stories could, theoretically, turn out to be true. He can't
afford to cross the line and end up getting branded a heretic and consigned to Outer Mainstream
Darkness, like Robert Fisk, Sy Hersh, Jonathan Cook, John Pilger, Assange, and other such
heretics.
Look, I'm not trying to argue that it isn't important to expose the fabrications of the
corporate media and the ruling classes. It is terribly important. It is mostly what I do
(albeit usually in a more satirical fashion). At the same time, it is important to realize that
"the truth" is not going to "rouse the masses from their slumber" and inspire them to throw off
their chains. People are not going to suddenly "wake up," "see the truth" and start "the
revolution." People already know the truth the official truth, which is the only truth there
is. Those who are conforming to it are doing so, not because they are deceived, but because it
is safer and more rewarding to do so.
And this is why The Guardian will not be punished for publishing a blatantly
fabricated story. Nor will Luke Harding be penalized for writing it. Luke Harding will be
rewarded for writing it, as he has been handsomely rewarded throughout his career for loyally
serving the ruling classes. Greenwald, on the other hand, is on thin ice. It will be
instructive to see how far he pushes his confrontation with The Guardian regarding this
story.
As for Julian Assange, I'm afraid he is done for. The ruling classes really have no choice
but to go ahead and do him at this point. He hasn't left them any other option. Much as they
are loathe to create another martyr, they can't have heretics of Assange's notoriety running
around punching holes in their "truth" and brazenly defying their authority. That kind of stuff
unsettles the normals, and it sets a bad example for the rest of us heretics.
#
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist
based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play
Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is
published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .
Good piece. I think there's another layer, though.
The truth or falsehood of individual facts about the physical world can often be
determined with near-certainty. But when it comes to history, or "news" about current events/
politics, reality is much too complex to address directly. Too many individual facts to be
comprehensible, let alone useful.
We must pick, choose, emphasize, or ignore particular elements, and arrange them into some
kind of structure, in order to form a useful narrative. Or in the case of "news," the legacy
media oligarchy largely performs this function for us -- we simply passively accept/ adopt
their narrative. Or, in many cases, "choose" between the closely-related variants of that
narrative offered by the "liberal" vs. "conservative" press.
This process of abstraction, simplification, and organization inevitably involves data
loss. So no narrative is "true" in the same sense that individual facts about the real world
are true. But some narratives incorporate large amounts of "facts" that are demonstrably
false, and some are more useful/ descriptive/ predictive than others. No one engaged in this
process is "objective." They -- or we -- are all in some way part of the story. It should be
self-evident that some narratives are more useful to the perceived interests of owners of
major media outlets than others, and that these will assume a much more prominent place in
their coverage than ones that are deleterious to those interests.
Ideally, most people would take these factors into account when evaluating the "news," and
maintain a much more skeptical attitude than they typically do. But there are several factors
that prevent this.
One is simply time/ efficiency. These individual narratives, taken together, support --
and are supported by -- our overall worldview. There aren't enough hours in the day to be
constantly skeptical about everything, especially since the major tools of distortion
involved in constructing mainstream narratives tend to be selection bias/ memory-holing, with
obvious lies about known facts (like the Guardian story referenced here) used only sparingly.
It's simply not practical to to constantly consider potentially "better" narratives, and to
reevaluate one's worldview based on these.
And which narrative we believe often has more to do with perceived social pressure/ social
acceptability than with "truth." As you put it,
Those who are conforming to it are doing so, not because they are deceived, but because
it is safer and more rewarding to do so.
Mass media pushing a common narrative creates an artificial perception of social
consensus. Creating, or even finding, alternative narratives means fighting the inertia of
this perceived consensus, and potentially suffering social costs for believing in the "wrong"
one. The social role of narratives is largely independent of their "truth" -- if what you're
"supposed" to believe is highly implausible, that actually gives it higher value as a signal
of loyalty to the establishment.
It's probably best to maintain a resolutely agnostic attitude toward most "news" items,
unless one is particularly interested in that particular event. " Why are they pushing
this particular story?" "Why now ?" and " What are they trying to accomplish
here?" are often more useful questions than "Is it true?"
It's not a new issue -- only exacerbated by the advent of mass visual media:
"Propaganda" -- Edward Bernays (1928)
"The Free Press"– Hilaire Belloc (1918)
I get what Hopkins is trying to do here, but redefining terms (i.e., "truth") doesn't do what
he thinks it does.
The truth is not ' what most people think '; it's not ' what we are told to
believe '; it's not ' the official narrative '.
There is a useful cautionary tale embedded in Hopkins' piece, but he doesn't tease it out
properly.
Take this excerpt:
The truth is what whoever has the power to say it is says it is. If we do not agree that
that "truth" is the truth, there is no higher court to appeal to. We can argue until we are
blue in the face. It will not make the slightest difference. No evidence we produce will
make the slightest difference. The truth will remain whatever those with the power to say
it is say it is.
With significant caveats, it is a reasonable description of the way the political world
works: if the political class decides that its interests are best served by declaring that a
specific narrative X is 'true', it will obtain immediate compliance from about half
the livestock, and can then rely on force (peer pressure; subsidy or taxation; state
coercion) to get an absolute majority of the herd to declare that they accept the 'truth' of
X .
If X is objectively false, too bad.
Try to run a legal argument based on the objective falsity of a thing that the political
class has deemed to be true: you'll be shit outta luck.
This is highly relevant where I am sitting: here are two examples – one really
obvious, one a bit less so (but far more important because of its radical implications).
Obvious Example: Drug Dogs
Recent research has shown that drug sniffing dogs give false positive signals between 60%
and 80% of the time – i.e., in terms of identifying people who are in actual
physical possession of drugs at any point in time, drug sniffing dogs perform worse than
a coin toss.
Note that this is before considering that the dog's handler is often pointing the dog at a
target that the handler thinks is likely to be carrying drugs. (Although in reality, drug
dogs are paraded around at concerts and in public spaces, sniffing every passer-by).
However there is an Act of Parliament (capitalise all the magic words) that asserts that a
signal from a drug sniffing dog is sufficient to qualify as what Americans call "probable
cause" – i.e., reasonable suspicion for a search.
Does anyone think that evidence should be admissible if it results from a search conducted
based on 'probable cause' derived from a method that produces worse outcomes than tossing a
coin?
Judges will tie themselves into absolute epistemological knots to get that evidence
admitted – and they will refuse to permit defence Counsel from adducing evidence about
drug dog inaccuracy because since the defendant actually did have drugs in their
possession, the dog didn't signal falsely.
In other words, the judge conflates posterior probability with prior
probability; the prior probability that the dog is correct, is 10%-40%; this should not
suffice to generate probable cause (or 'reasonable suspicion).
More Interesting Example: 'Representative' Democracy
In general, Western governments assert that their legitimacy stems from two primary
sources: some founding set of principles (usually a constitution – written or
otherwise), and 'representativeness' (including ratification of the constitution by a
representative mechanism, for those places with written foundational documents).
The Arrow Impossibility Theorem [1,2] and the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem
[3,4], both show that there is no way of accurately determining group preferences using an
ordinal voting mechanism.
What this boils down to, is that representativeness is a lie – and it's a lie before
any consideration of voting outcomes ; it's a meta -problem (the problem that
ordinal voting cannot do what it is claimed to do – viz ., accurately identify
the 'will of the people'/'social preferences'/'what the people want').
Beyond the meta-problem, there is also the actual counting problem: no government has ever
been elected having obtained the votes of an outright bare majority, i.e., 50%-plus-1
of the entire eligible franchise. (It's more like 25-35% for most parliamentary systems
– for US presidential elections in the full-franchise period, the winner is voted for
by 29% of the eligible population; you would be horrified to look at US Senate
results).
So when the new unhappy lords (and their Little Eichmann bureaucrat enablers)
promulgate laws based on assertions of legitimacy because of a constitutional
Grundnorm and/or the representative nature of government both of those things are
pretty obvious furphies; they are objectively not 'truth' and no amount of heel-clicking and
wishing will make it so.
Which brings us to a key legal aphorism that has a jurisprudential history going back four
centuries: Ratio legis est anima legis, et mutata legis ratione, mutatur ex lex
– which dates from Milborn's case ( Coke 7a KB [1609]).
The reason for a law is the soul of the law, and if the reason for a law has changed,
the law is changed .
What this means – explicitly – is that " no law can survive the
[extinction of the] reasons on which it is founded ".
American courts re-expressed this as " cessante ratione legis, cessat ipsa lex "
(the reason for a law having ceased, the law itself ceases) – e.g., in Funk v. United
States , 290 US 371 (1933) in which Justice Sutherland opined –
This means that no law can survive the reasons on which it is founded. It needs no
statute to change it; it abrogates itself . If the reasons on which a law rests are
overborne by opposing reasons, which in the progress of society gain a controlling force,
the old law, though still good as an abstract principle, and good in its application to
some circumstances, must cease to apply as a controlling principle to the new
circumstances.
(Emphasis mine)
Again: try running this argument in a court: " The asserted basis for all laws
promulgated by the government, is provably false. Under a doctrine with a 4-century
jurisprudential provenance, the law itself is void ."
See how far you get.
So Hopkins makes a good-but-obvious point – power does not respect either rights
or truth; as such it does you no good whatsoever to have the actual truth on your side.
He should have made the point better.
C J Hopkins, despite some good quotes and insights above, regrettably falls into the trap of
peddling Derrida-tier relativistic nonsense, playing a word game about 'truth', as if 'truth'
was not real merely because most people have strong incentives to avoid being devoted to it
Where you stand depends upon where you sit, etc., Karl Marx's dictums about economic and
power positions shaping consciousness, and of course the century-old classic:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not
understanding it.
from Upton Sinclair (1878-1968). Hopkins more or less repeats Sinclair when he says
Those who are conforming to [official truth] are doing so, not because they are
deceived, but because it is safer and more rewarding to do so.
Despite selling-out truth to the relativism devil in some passages, Hopkins nevertheless
creates some quotable, including the particularly insightful:
The powerless are either servants of power or they are heretics. There is no third
alternative.
The following notion of Hopkins is seen now and then in the alt-sphere, but always bears
repeating
It is important to realize that "the truth" is not going to "rouse the masses from their
slumber" and inspire them to throw off their chains. People are not going to suddenly "wake
up," "see the truth" and start "the revolution."
Iron and blood are the tools used to force people to accept what isn't true.
(Another way to tell: it was uttered by a fucking politician – a cunt who wanted to
live in palaces paid for by the sweat of other people's brows).
Truth does not need violence to propagate itself: in a completely-peaceful system of free
exchange, bad ideas (of which lies are a subset) will get driven out of the market place
because they will fail to conform to ground truth.
Falsehood requires violence (arguably it is a form of violence: fraud is 'violent'
because it causes its victims to misallocate their resources or to deform their preferences
and expectations).
In a very real sense, truth does not need friends: all it requires is an absence of
powerful enemies.
The distinction is simple. We can't know the truth about distant and complex events like 9/11
or JFK unless we were directly involved, and those people are all dead. For big events we
have to rely on, or ignore, the official accounts.
But we CAN know the truth about our own situation, our own neighborhood, and our own
families. The current riots in France are a concrete ASSERTION of local truth against the
blatant and condescending official lies. The majority of France is getting poorer and
suffering more from migrant crime. Macron insists that starvation is necessary to serve Gaia,
and crime is necessary to serve Juncker. The people would prefer to have a leader that serves
France.
@FB Scientific truth
is limited by two factors – assumptions, and hidden variables. For example,
we might drop a brick in a vacuum and believe that it falls at 9.8 m/s squared. Here, we make
the assumption that the force of gravity is constant. And for most of history we were unaware
of the hidden variable of relativity to the speed of light.
So, assuming (LOL) that we are able to eliminate all assumptions and account for all
hidden variables, there is a scientific truth. That is ASSUMING we are not just a simulation
in someone elses computer!
Given all this, still, we can approach an approximation of truth that some can agree on.
Here is where the trouble starts .
@The scalpel LOL and
then there is the 'observer effect' also especially in good old quantum mechanics in the end
scientific truth does boil down to what 'some can agree on'
@Kratoklastes Strength
is the production of force over distance. That is to say, force is a quantifiable, physical
phenomenon that, deconstruct it as much as you want, will hit you like a tsunami whether you
believe it or not.
Force only works because there is a real world that transcends philosophical bullshit and
marketing.
The subjective piece is will: victory is attained when the enemies will to resist is
crushed. Through the repeated use of physical force, eventually any enemy can be worn down
and vanquished.
The world is finite, desire is infinite, and for every desire and appetite, there is a
will. As multiple wills will that they attain their infinite desires in a finite world, there
will always be a conflict of will, which will always ultimately be resolved by force. Which
means ultimately, despite the rich imaginations and appetites of humans, and their related
striving, physical force will ultimately rule the day, and conquer, condition, and constrain
the mental life of mankind.
Of course, desire and appetite will not take no for an answer, and in their frustration,
they will imagine, fantasize, and conceptualize rationales for why this is not so. This is
the nature of our desires, and in good times of prosperity and peace, they may even bend our
reason in the direction of these appetites and fantasies, until the instincts for self
preservation and endurance rust, and are even forgotten. But like the moon revealed by a
passing cloud, the perpetual war of human existence will inevitably reassert itself, and
those that have prepared for the inevitable will vanquish those who were content to daydream
when they should have been preparing.
After reading the article and the aggregate comments, I am strengthened in my belief that
the physics analogy of Schrödinger's cat is among the most useful (and
notwithstanding the otherwise valid criticism of it in the comments). In the same way that
the Oxford English Dictionary, for example, does not purport to define a given word,
per se , but rather gives a detailed description of how the word has in fact been used
over the years and centuries.
I refer to my version of Schrödinger's cat as counter-sense words or
oscillating-contradictions .
Oscillating contradictions and cogno-linguistic manipulation
The primary means by which corporate supremacy, for example, is achieved and maintained in
practice is via the maintenance and use of a small arsenal of about two dozen critical
counter-sense or yo-yo -like words/terms that are asserted or claimed to mean
either "X" or "Minus-X" at the option of the decision-maker.
Among the most important and sui generis (in a class of its own) is the word
person which is held to mean a living, breathing being of conscience (literally
a being of equity) with the rights, powers and privileges of such being ("X"), or else it can
mean a corporate entity which is a notional/inanimate item of property to be bought
and sold and otherwise traded for profit in the stock and financial markets ("Minus-X").
By way of example/demonstration of the ongoing cognitive manipulation process, if someone
had managed to hit the judges of the U.S. Supreme Court with a blast of truth-ray just
before they announced their decision in Citizens United, here is what we may have got
instead:
[MORE]
We here at the Supreme Court are part of what can be fairly and broadly referred to as
an arm of the entrenched-money-power.
At certain times and under certain circumstances it is to our enormous advantage over
you the masses that corporations be natural-persons-in-law with the rights, powers and
privileges of a natural person or living being of conscience.
At other times and other circumstances it is to our enormous advantage over you the
masses that corporations be items of property that can be actively bought and sold and
traded for profit in the stock and financial markets.
Your laughable naiveté is manifest in your expectation that you are going to
receive a definitive answer from this Court, or even that it is possible for us to give you
one. Among the foundational purposes of this Court is to actively prevent that question
from being answered definitively at all. The instant we give a definitive answer, the game
is over.
Whatever answer we give you must perpetuate the systematized delusion that the same
concept (corporate personhood) can mean either X (a living being of conscience), or minus-X
(an item of property), depending on the ever-changing needs of the decider.
So our current answer is that a corporation is a natural-person-in-law with the rights,
powers and privileges of a natural person, except when it isn't. We'll let you know next
time whether that situation has changed in the meantime.
Essentially all counter-sense words/terms follow that same template .
Notwithstanding that the respective concepts are logically and objectively mutually
exclusive , the judges of the Courts (and the broadly-defined
financial-world/social-control-structure) maintain that it can be either or both , and
we'll let you know if and when it becomes important.
So a corporate person has a right of free speech when giving money to
influence political parties, but not to object to itself being sold as a piece of property in
the stock and financial markets or when it is acquired in a merger or takeover financed by
its own assets. If a corporation has the legal capacity and rights of a natural person, then
how can it be owned as the legal property of another? The purpose of the Courts is to ensure
that that question is never presented in that way.
After person , the remaining most significant counter-sense or yo-yo
-like words are (surprise surprise) essentially all money-and-finance-based, and the most
important among these is the word principal and its role in facilitating illegal
front-loading or ex-temporal fraud (interest illegally and unlawfully compounded in
advance).
Is the amount of principal the actual or net amount advanced by the creditor and
received by the debtor for their own use and control?
Or is it the amount that the debtor agrees that they owe regardless of the amount
received?
Is the amount of principal a question of fact ? Or of the agreement of
parties ?
[Here is the premise / offer that is referenced immediately below:]
Lender (e.g., typical second-mortgage lender): "I will loan you $10,000 at 20%
per annum provided that you sign and give to me a marketable security that claims or
otherwise purports to evidence that I have loaned you $15,000 at 10% per annum, plus an
undisclosed and unregistered side-agreement and cheque (check) back to me for a bonus or
loan fee of $5,000 as a payment from the nominal proceeds."
In the process example used above, what is the principal amount of the loan? Is it
$10,000 because that is the factual net amount invested by the creditor and received by the
debtor for their own use? Or is it $15,000 because that is the amount that the debtor is
required to falsely agree that they have received and owe as a condition of the loan? Or is
it $20,000 because that is the total cash-equivalent/money assets ($15,000 mortgage + $5,000
cheque) that the debtor has to give to the creditor?
Is it a noun/fact ? Or is it an adjective/opinion merely pretending to be a
noun? All debt and therefore money in the world today depends on the answer to that question
that theoretically cannot exist.
Principal is a special type (and most significant form) of counter-sense
word or oscillating contradiction where dictionaries normally only give one sense,
while commercial practice defines the contrary. It would be very difficult to put the
Whatever-the-debtor-agrees-that-they-owe sense into a dictionary, because the fraud against
meaning (as well as the criminal law) is manifest in spelling it out, and ever more so in
more specialized financial dictionaries.
So virtually every legal, financial, accounting, and ordinary English dictionary and/or
regulation defines it to the effect "The actual amount invested, loaned or advanced to the
debtor/borrower net of any interest, discount, premium or fees", while virtually every
financial security in the real world at least implicitly incorporates the fraudulent
alternative/contrary meaning.
This in turn allows the academic world to function on the rational/factual
definition, while the markets maintain a wholly contradictory deemed or pretended
reality, while both remain oblivious to the contradiction.
Thus principal means the nominal creditor's actual and net investment, unless it
doesn't .
With this class of counter-sense word where there is a necessary and definitive
answer, the real job of the judges of the Courts becomes to make certain that the question is
never officially asked, and under no circumstances is it to be definitively answered.
With just one of these words you can theoretically steal the Earth . With a
financial system that is relatively saturated with them, such becomes child's play .
With these rules a group of competently-trained chimpanzees otherwise pulling
levers at random could do as well as the so-called wizards of Wall Street .
And significantly, these oscillating contradictions enable the judges to be self-righteous
in the extreme on behalf of the entrenched-money-power, while looting the little
people of the product of their labour.
As in: You have received the principal amount ($10,000) and you are going to pay
back the principal amount ($15,000) plus the ever-accumulating (and super-leveraged)
interest upon it according to your contract, while the meaning of the word oscillates
between fact and opinion – between a noun and an adjective
– according to what the judge needs it to mean (or accommodate) at any given instant in
time.
It seems impossibly obvious in this simple example, but with several of them orchestrated
simultaneously or sequentially, anything can truly be made to mean anything
.
A partial list of the most critical oscillating-contradicitions includes: loan, credit,
discount, interest, rate-of-interest, agreement, contract, security, repay, restitution,
etc., all of which mean either "X" or its conceptual opposite "Minus-X" at the option of the
entrenched-money-power whose vast financial fortunes are founded on such cogno-linguistic
arbitrage .
Here are what I believe to be four essential tools needed to triangulate
reality via congo-linguistic parallax . The first two are mine, and the last two
are from the American and English Courts, respectively.
1. Humans are highly cogno-linguistic . We perceive reality very largely as a
function of the language that we use to describe it. Most everyone inherently believes
and presumes that you have to be able to think something before you can say it.
The greater reality is that, above a certain base level of perception and communication, you
have to have the words and language by which to say something before you can think
it .
2. The world is ever-increasingly controlled and administered by people who genuinely
believe whatever is necessary for the answer they need. Administrative agents of the
entrenched-money-power have solved the criminal-law enigma of mens rea or guilty
mind by evolving or devolving (take your pick) into professional schizophrenics
who genuinely believe whatever they need to believe for the answer they need, and who
communicate among themselves subconsciously by how they name things. They suffer a
cogno-linguistically-induced diminished capacity that renders them incapable of
perceiving reality beyond labels .
3. Their core business model or modus operandi is the systematized delusion
:
"A "systematized delusion" is one based on a false premise, pursued by a logical process
of reasoning to an insane conclusion ; there being one central delusion, around which other
aberrations of the mind converge." Taylor v. McClintock, 112 S.W. 405, 412, 87 Ark. 243.
(West's Judicial Words and Phrases (1914)).
4.
One must not confuse the object of a conspiracy [to defraud] with the
means by which it is intended to be carried out. Scott v. Metropolitan Police
Commissioner [1974] 60 Cr. App. R. 124 H.L.
I have long since abandoned my search for truth, per se, since I came to realize that the
best I can ever do is to constantly strive to move closer to it. With apologies to the
physicists, Truth is the Limit of Infinite Good Faith .
@Tulip " which will
always ultimately be resolved by force."
Right there is where you lost the plot. That statement is just your opinion and it cannot
be proven true. The rest of your argument falls victim to this logical error.
" and those that have prepared for the inevitable will vanquish those who were content to
daydream when they should have been preparing."
Also, just your opinion. For example, the "dreamer" might die still comforted by his/her
dreams, while the "prepper" might waste his life witing for the "inevitable' that never
arrives.
In what can be described as a monumental step forward in the relentless pursuit of 9/11
truth, a United States Attorney has agreed to comply with federal law requiring submission to
a Special Grand Jury of evidence that explosives were used to bring down the World Trade
Centers.
The Lawyers' Committee for 9/11 Inquiry successfully submitted a petition to the federal
government demanding that the U.S. Attorney present to a Special Grand Jury extensive
evidence of yet-to-be-prosecuted federal crimes relating to the destruction of three World
Trade Center Towers on 9/11 (WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7).
After waiting months for the reply, the U.S. Attorney responded in a letter, noting that
they will comply with the law.
Some good documentary films here to watch for free:
My question/quibble relates to your objection to the use of sniffer dogs to establish
probable cause for search because it is no better than a coin toss. That seems fallacious
if, according to your figures, the dogs sniff 500 people and get excited by 10 of them of
which 3 are correctly identified and 7 are false positives.
Yeah. The concepts of sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative
predictive value might be very helpful in assessing this.
Chinese version of neoliberalism and the USA version do differ.
Notable quotes:
"... I especially encourage the Russians on here to return to their home country. There is little point writing material critical of America in English on fringe media sites while in America contributing to the US economy and paying US taxes. My observation has been that the Russian personality not to mention background doesn't fare terribly well in corporate America. Why waste your energy in a country and system beyond reform that despises you for who you are that only accepts you for your labor. You'll find a better fit in your home country where you'll actually have genuine social belonging, which, unlike China, actually really needs more people. ..."
"... Xi might have stepped up too early, but maybe this wouldn't matter. When the Americans decide to confront China depends on the Americans. In case you believe that US presidents drive US policy, Trump was saying things about China 25 years ago. ..."
"... Chinese progress has been most impressive but the country is sitting on an enormous pile of private and SOE debt.. There has not been a country in recorded history that has accumulated debt at the rate China did post the 2008 crash. ..."
"... @Achmed E. Newman Dictatorships are personality dependent, as opposed to democracies that are ? dependent. Communism came up with a catchy slogan – dictatorship of the proletariat. Why couldn't US – which are, after all, a birthplace of propaganda – come up with a similarly catchy slogan, such as: Democracy – dictatorship of the elitariat? Or maybe, Democracy – dictatorship of the deep state. ..."
"... I worked for Chinese-Filipinos and this is really 100% true. The ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia are the most heartless capitalists on earth. ..."
"... [You have been repeatedly warned that you leave far too many rambling, vacuous comments, especially since so many of them demonstrate your total ignorance. Fewer and fewer of your comments will be published until you improve your commenting-behavior or better yet permanently depart for another website] ..."
Great, but kinda pedestrian. Lemme use this platform to point out China's flaws from a
Chinese perspective.
Chinese society and Chinese people are too arrogant, materialistic, and hypersensitive to
criticism.
This is a huge problem. One, it alienates pretty much anyone who becomes familiar with
China. Two, it leads to mistake after mistake when no criticism is offered to correct them in
time. Three, it causes society to view things overly in terms of money, falling behind in all
other aspects. Nobody cares how much rich or strong you are if you're a crass, materialistic
asshole. They'll hate you.
All societies have these issues, few are as bad as China. There are Chinese reading this
right now and getting angry and ready to call me a traitor, demonstrating my point
exactly.
A wise dictator is great for the country, but Xi is not wise. He is a stubborn old man
stuck in the past who is clearly not listening to advisers. He has overplayed his hand,
confronted the US 10~20 years too early, damaged China's image out of some paranoid fear of
Uyghurs, and absolutely failed at making friends with our East Asian neighbors, instead
driving them further into the arms of the Americans.
China does not need more repression right now, it needs to slowly liberalize to keep the
economy growing and competitive. I'm not talking about western style "open society" bullshit,
traitors like multiculturalists and feminists should always be persecuted. But the
heavy-handed censorship, monitoring of everyday citizens is completely unnecessary. If China
does not develop a culture of trust, and genuine, non-money based curiosity, it will not have
the social structure to overcome the west.
Outside of trade and money-related issues, the Chinese citizenry is woefully ignorant of
the outside world. There is no widespread understanding of foreign cultures and ideologies,
how they might threaten us, how to defend against them, or how to work around them. An
overwrought sense of nationalism emphasizes Chinese victimhood to the point of absurdity,
squandering any sympathy onlookers might have, and actually causes some to turn 180 and hate
China instead.
Angry, condescending attitudes towards our neighbors, especially Japan, severely cripple
China's ability to be a world player. Without a network of like-minded friends (actual
friends, not trade partners), China will never be able to match the western alliance. It is
not just America we have to overcome, but an entire bloc of nations. I don't care how much
people hate our neighbors, China must extend the olive branch, present a sincere face of
benevolence, and not act like the big guy with a fragile ego. Racially and culturally similar
East Asians are the best candidates for long-term friendship, it is wrong to forsake them
under the assumption that all we need is Russia or Pakistan.
Despite the trade war, I'm not worried about China's economy, infrastructure, political
system, or innate ability. These are our strengths. I have no love for liberal democracy or
western values. But China must change its attitude and the way it interacts with the outside
world soon, or face geopolitical disaster.
Don't overreact to every insult or criticism. Compete in areas that isn't just money or
materials. Really understand soft power, and what it takes to be liked around the world.
Develop our own appealing ideas and worldview. Listen to well-meaning, nationalistic critics,
and change before the world discovers China's ugly side.
I would say that yes, dictatorships tend to be more efficient than "democracy". The only
major downside to dictatorships are that usually dictators – thanks perhaps to personal
ambitions, lack of accountability, volatile personalities – tend to cause major wars.
That's a reason why someone becomes a dictator – to make it into the history books.
And the easiest way to make it into the history books is to cause a major war(s) and capture
all the glory that comes with causing the deaths of as many people as possible.
But then again, looking at the US, they don't seem to have been disadvantaged by a lack of
dictators at all, as far as starting wars goes. One has to wonder, are dictatorships even
competitive with US in the category of causing wars?
By Tiensen do you mean Tencent, famous now for its WeChat which I use for messaging and
payments. I now also use their cloud storage Weiyun (3 TB on only 10 RMB / month) as well as
their email.
By the way, Nvidia, YouTube, and Yahoo were all founded by ethnic Chinese from Taiwan. I
actually think Nvidia is more impressive than both Microsoft or Google. Its GPU technology is
much higher barrier to entry and as far as I can tell still exclusive to America.
I may well never come back to America ever again, and thus, most of what goes on in
America will no longer be directly relevant to me. I could give pretty much zero of a fuck
about the nonsense on China in the English language press, which I will only look at very
occasionally, and those who create it. It would be rather futile to try to change the views
of the majority of white Americans. Of course, there are a minority of white Americans who
are more informed, reasonable, and open-minded, the ones I tended to interact with back in
America, many of whom are unhappy with the state of American society. They are welcome to
contact me (my email is on my website), and if they use not an American email, I'll be more
willing to share certain information with them and possibly connect them to China-related
business/opportunities.
I especially encourage the Russians on here to return to their home country. There is
little point writing material critical of America in English on fringe media sites while in
America contributing to the US economy and paying US taxes. My observation has been that the
Russian personality not to mention background doesn't fare terribly well in corporate
America. Why waste your energy in a country and system beyond reform that despises you for
who you are that only accepts you for your labor. You'll find a better fit in your home
country where you'll actually have genuine social belonging, which, unlike China, actually
really needs more people.
Main difference is China is about Chinese ruling over Chinese with Chinese pride, whereas
America is about JAG(Jews-Afros-Gays) ruling over whites with 'white guilt', jungle fever,
and homomania.
Problem with China is too much corruption and petty greed.
Many tried to warn the weenies what would happen while our industries were "donated" to China
and got hosed for their trouble. Pat Buchanan's troubles actually started when he wrote
The Great Betrayal , even if they took a little extra time to pull his syndicated
column down.
Did you know about a World War II-era Kaiser steel mill once in California, that was cut
up in blocks like a model kit and shipped in its entirety to China?
It happened right out in the open, under Daddy Bush, and everyone who complained became an
unperson, Orwell-style. Nobody dared object to the glories of free trade. And the Chinese in
California said it was doing so because they had a multi-million ton Plan to fill, and it was
almost the 21st century.
China is now taking the wealth their nation is creating with stuff developed in Europe,
Britain, and the United States. The hole in the donut is they could have done all that under
license and we could have kept on with, and even improved our industrial base.
But in fact our leaders had Gender Reassignment in mind for the 21st century, not actual
productive work that truly builds nations. The Impoverishment of Nations is well known: Send
the real work out, keep the barbarians inside well-fed, sharp-clawed, and morally
depraved.
" its stunning advance in forty years from impoverished Third World to a huge economy"
Bullshit. The stunning advance occurred between 1950-1975. Starting with an industrial
base smaller than that of Belgium's in the 50s, the China that for so long was ridiculed as
"the sick man of Asia" emerged at the end of the Mao period as one of the six largest
industrial producers in the world.
National income grew five-fold over the 25-year period 1952-78, increasing from 60 billion
to over 300 billion yuan, with industry accounting for most of the growth. On a per capita
basis, the index of national income (at constant prices) increased from 100 in 1949 (and 160
in 1952) to 217 in 1957 and 440 in 1978.
Over the last two decades of the Maoist era, from 1957 to 1975, China's national income
increased by 63 percent on a per capita basis during this period of rapid population growth,
more than doubling overall and the basic foundations for modern industrialism were laid and
outpacing every other development takeoff in history.
In Germany the rate of economic growth 1880-1914 was 33 percent per decade.
In Japan from 1874-1929 the rate was 43 percent.
The Soviet Union over the period 1928-58 the rate was 54 percent.
In China over the years 1952-72 the decadal rate was 64 percent.
Bear in mind that, save for limited Soviet aid in the 1950s, repaid in full and with
interest by 1966, Mao's industrialization proceeded without benefit of foreign loans or
investments–under punitive embargoes the entire 25 years–yet Mao was unique among
developing country leaders in being able to claim an economy burdened by neither foreign debt
nor internal inflation.
Socially China has a great advantage over America in that, except for the Muslims of
Xinjiang, it is pretty much a Han monoculture. Lacking America's racial diversity, its
cities do not burn, no pressure exists to infantilize the schools for the benefit of
incompetent minorities, racial mobs do not loot stores, and there is very little street
crime.
Wait, weren't you a supporter of American racial diversity? Weren't the millions of dusty
beaners entering the US a God's gift to the country's rich, colorful, cultural tapestry?
A dictatorship can simply do things. It can plan twenty, or fifty, years down the
road.
So can the Western, globalist (((deep state))). The Chinese dictatorship is simply doing
it for themselves and their nation. Their people's lives are getting better for
decades while we have every reason to envy our grandfathers.
"China has an adult government that gets things done. America has a kaleidoscopically
shifting cast of pathologically aggressive curiosities in the White House."
Well put: I have long argued that the last adult president was Bush the Elder – what
followed was a sorry sequence of adolescents.
There was only one chance to elect a non-preposterous grown-up – Romney. It was
spurned.
But be of good cheer: the White House might currently be occupied by an absurd oaf, but it
might have been Hellary, a grown-up with vices not to my taste. Better the absurd than the
appalling?
As for China – I've never been there. At second-hand I am impressed. But it too
could take a tumble – life's like that.
@Cyrano Having a
dictator is not just a bad idea because of wars, Cyrano. The English spent many centuries
slowly chipping away at the ultimate power of Kings and Queens. I'm pretty sure that if they
hadn't done that, you and I would not be here writing to each other today.
There can be a powerful Monarchy or Dictator, say, like under Queen Victoria or Josef
Stalin. There will be much different outcomes. It would be a shame if the good King or
dictator happens to die and leave the whole nation to a bad one, and your children's lives
are much the worse for it, don't you think?
China is a perfect example, as anyone growing up under Mao had it very rough, even if he
didn't get swept up in the 1,000 lawnmowers campaign or the Cultural Revolution. If you had
been born in 1950, say, that was tough luck for much of your life. If you were born in 1985,
though, well, as one can read in the column above, it's a different story.
Since I brought up Queen Victoria, and now have this song in my head (not a bad thing), I
will move it into Reed's Reeders' heads now. Great stuff!:
@dearieme I agree
with your sentiment, Dearieme, and I completely agree with you about George H.W. Bush* being
the last President to act like one should.. However, that shouldn't matter anyway. Our system
of government is NOT supposed to be about who is president making a big difference in how
things run. It used to work like that too, before the people betrayed the US Constitution and
let the Feral Gov't get out of hand.
The fact is, that Mitt Romney or not, per Mr. Franz above,
the country has been in the process of being given away for > 2 decades now. Yes, no
manufacturing might, no country left. That brings up what is wrong with Mr. Reed's article,
which I'll get to in a minute.
* Politically, I hate the guy, but that's not what your point is.
I am not knocking the observations of how things run economically in America vs. in China. I
think the article does a good job on that. However, the whole analysis part seems kind of
STATIC. I know Fred knows better, as he grew up in what was a different country and BY FAR
the most powerful economically, precisely because it was when the US Feral Gov't still left
private (at least small) business alone for the most part.
You do realize, Mr. Reed, that the US was NOT created to be a democracy, but a
Constitutional Republic? China WAS a totalitarian society, but things only got (WAY) better
after Chairman Deng decided that the central government would start leaving people alone to
do business. The Chinese are very good at business and are very hard workers.
Yes, the Chinese government runs much better, at this point, than the US Feral Gov't after
years and years (say 5 decades) of infiltration by the ctrl-left. All of our institutions
have been infiltrated, governments , big-business , media , universities ,
lower
education all of it. China had it's physical Long March, and 3 decades of hard-core
Communism, but they got over it. America has had it's Long March on the down low, and is
reaping the whirlwind at the present. Will we get over it? Maybe, but it'll take guns. We got
'em.
The winds of change have blown through. They can change direction again. For a place like
America, it's not going to take one powerful man (look how ineffective President Trump has
been), but the people and a movement. Just as some have been unobservant of China over the
last 2 decades, many will miss the changes here too.
Germany in 1880 was much nearer the technological frontier than China was in 1950. The Japan comparison is better, but Japan at the end of the Tokugawa era was about as
developed as Britain in 1700 (and had already for instance substantially displaced China in
the exported silk market).
The Soviet Union suffered certain events in the period from 1941-1945 you may wish to look
up.
More relevant comparisons might be South Korea and Taiwan. Or even postwar Italy, Spain,
Portugal, and Greece.
I think most informed people now are aware that Soviet-style central planning is effective
for the initial industrialization phase. What we dispute is that it is uniquely
effective, as Mazuo and Sovoks insisted. Other systems have matched its performance at lower
human and geopolitical cost.
@dearieme GHW
certainly acted Presidential, but did that help America?
He was the architect of NAFTA (even if signed by Bill Clinton) and signed the Immigration
Act of 1990, which significantly increased the yearly number of immigrant visas that could be
issued and created the disastrous Temporary Protected Status visa.
A wise dictator is great for the country, but Xi is not wise. He is a stubborn old man
stuck in the past who is clearly not listening to advisers. He has overplayed his hand,
confronted the US 10~20 years too early, damaged China's image out of some paranoid fear of
Uyghurs, and absolutely failed at making friends with our East Asian neighbors, instead
driving them further into the arms of the Americans.
Xi might have stepped up too early, but maybe this wouldn't matter. When the Americans
decide to confront China depends on the Americans. In case you believe that US presidents
drive US policy, Trump was saying things about China 25 years ago.
The Uyghur thing nobody cares about. The western media would find something else to lie
about.
I agree with the things you say afterwards. although I find it difficult to see China
becoming likable to it's neighbors. I believe the big thing will be to see what the CCP does
in the next economic crisis; will they change or will they turtle into bad policy and
stagnate. The challenge after that would be the demographics.
@dearieme Mormons
are idealists, not realists, which puts them outside the grown-up pale in my book. Mormonism
might as well be called American Suburbanism at this point. That lifestyle takes a lot of
things for granted that will not be around much longer. They top out intellectually at the
level of mid-tier management.
To be fair, this applies to most Americans, convinced that inside everybody is a
conformist, suburban American just waiting to get out.
There's a case that can be made that Mormonism is actually the official American
religion.
Chinese progress has been most impressive but the country is sitting on an enormous pile of
private and SOE debt.. There has not been a country in recorded history that has accumulated
debt at the rate China did post the 2008 crash.
It would be a shame if the good King or dictator happens to die and leave the whole
nation to a bad one, and your children's lives are much the worse for it, don't you
think?
Sure, but the bad one would run the risk of being overthrown and his bloodline
slaughtered. Everyone would know that the buck ends with him and his family.
Modern "democracies" dilute this responsibility and leave room for a set of hidden kings
and dictators to run the show from the shadows. The plebs are supposed to vent their
frustration by voting out the bad guys but that's useless (a pressure relief valve, really)
if the shadow dictators control the information and the choices.
@Thorfinnsson
"GHW certainly acted Presidential, but did that help America?:
I've no idea but it's not the point anyway. The point is that he presumably arrived at his
decisions by thinking like an adult, instead of being blown around on gusts of adolescent
emotions, like Slick Willie, W, O, and Trump.
@Anonymous He may
run that risk, but with absolute authority, who will stand up to him? You've got to know the
history of Western Civilization (Europe, I mean) is filled with years and centuries of
terrible, evil Kings and Queens in countries far and wide, right?
As far as democracies go, no, it doesn't work in the long, or even medium, run, unless you
withhold the vote for landowners and only those with responsibility. I don't thing that's
been the case here except for the first 50 years or so. You give the vote to the young, the
stupid, the irresponsible, the women, etc., and it goes downhill. In America's case, it took
a long time to go downhill because we had a lot of human and real capital built up.
Now, this is all why this country, as I wrote already above, was not set up to BE a
democracy, Mr #126. It was to be a Constitutional Republic, with powers of the Feral Gov't
limited by the document. However, once the population treats it as nothing but a piece of
paper, that's all it becomes.
Chinese progress is impressive in absolute terms, but it is much more impressive in relative
terms. While the US and all its sidekicks are ruining their countries by losing
manufacturing, running up mountains of debt, and dumbing down the populace by horrible
educational system and uncontrolled immigration of wild hordes with medieval mentality, some
countries, including China, keep moving up. But the achievements of China or Russia wouldn't
look so great without the simultaneous suicide of the West.
Let me give you the example I know best. As a scientist and an Editor of several
scientific journals I see the decline of scientific production in the US: just 20 years ago
it clearly dominated, but now it went way down. There emerged lots of papers from big China.
Quality-wise, most of them are still sub-par, but they are getting into fairly decent
journals because of the void left by the decline of science in the US.
Yes, if current tendencies continue for 20 more years, Chinese science would improve and
China would become an uncontested leader in that field. However, if the US reins in its
thieving elites and shifts to a more sensible course, it still has the potential to remain
the world leader in science. It just needs to cut military spending to 20-30% of its current
crazy unsustainable levels and invest some of the saved resources into science, industry
(real one, not banking that only produces bubbles galore), and infrastructure. Is this
realistic? Maybe not, but hope springs eternal.
@Jason Liu As a
long time China watcher myself I didn't see anything you described with regards to China's
foreign policy, including its dealing with its East Asian neighbors. From what I saw China's
statecraft with respect to its neighbors is mature, friendly, measured, restraint and long
term thinking. May be I am missing something or see something and interpret it in an opposite
way than you did. For example you said
"and absolutely failed at making friends with our East Asian neighbors, instead driving
them further into the arms of the Americans"
"Angry, condescending attitudes towards our neighbors, especially Japan, severely cripple
China's ability to be a world player. "
I didn't see any of that. Any specific example to illustrate your point?
@DB Cooper Again,
Chinese and Russian foreign policy looks best when you compare it to the US. Both countries
made their fair share of blunders, but next to the rabid dog US they look decidedly sensible
and restrained.
@Jason Liu You
may very well be accurately describing the attitudes of individual Chinamen; but I see
no evidence that the Chinese government is all that guilty of alienating other countries. On
the contrary, they seem to be doing quite well. Even the hated Japs can't seem to invest
enough money into China.
There may be something to this. If you look at centuries of Chinese painting, you will
see that each generation largely made copies of earlier masters. As nearly as I, a
nonexpert, can tell, there is more variety and imagination in the Corcoran Gallery's annual
exhibition of high-school artists than in all of Chinese paining.
There was a point in time when I would have agreed with Fred on this; but seeing what's
become of Western art over the last century, I can't anymore. A few centuries ago, Western
art was surely making progress by leaps and bounds. These days though, it's in swift decline.
All it's got left to offer is pointless pretentiousness. At least traditional Chinese
painting still requires some real craftsmanship and skill.
Chinese progress has been most impressive but the country is sitting on an enormous pile
of private and SOE debt.. There has not been a country in recorded history that has
accumulated debt at the rate China did post the 2008 crash.
This is what happens to your brain on Forbes and the Wall Street Journal .
In reality, China is the world's largest creditor. In fact, it's the US which is the largest
debtor in the world.
All that Chinese debt that the Western presstitutes go on an on about is really just an
accounting gimmick: some state-owned bank in China makes a loan to some state-owned
conglomerate there, and this gets written down as a debt. But the Chinese government (which
owns both of them) is never going to allow either of the two parties to actually go bankrupt,
so the debt isn't actually real. It's no different than ordering your right-pocket to lend
your left-pocket ten dollars: your right-pocket may now record that loan as an 'asset' on a
balance sheet somewhere, while your left-pocket will now record it as a 'liability', but
you as a person aren't any richer or poorer than you were before. You still have ten
dollars–no more, no less. And so it is with China. They merely 'owe' that money to
themselves.
@Achmed E. Newman
Dictatorships are personality dependent, as opposed to democracies that are ? dependent.
Communism came up with a catchy slogan – dictatorship of the proletariat.
Why couldn't US – which are, after all, a birthplace of propaganda – come up
with a similarly catchy slogan, such as: Democracy – dictatorship of the elitariat? Or
maybe, Democracy – dictatorship of the deep state.
I personally prefer elections where there is only one candidate and one voter – the
dictator, it kind of simplifies things. I think it takes a lot of bravery to be a dictator,
you don't delegate glory, but you don't delegate blame either, you take full responsibility
and full credit for whatever is happening in the country.
@Digital Samizdat
The sheer amount of shadow debt outstanding is huge. 250 to 300% of GDP by some estimates.
You reckon the Chinese government have this covered and can rescue failing institutions. They
probably don't even know how many bad loans need to be written off and how badly it will
cause a squeeze on normal lending.
From what I saw China's statecraft with respect to its neighbors is mature, friendly,
measured, restraint and long term thinking.
Do you think that correctly describes China's handling of claims in the South China Sea,
or its attitude toward the independent country of Taiwan, or its promotion of anti-Japanese
propaganda on Chinese television?
but I see no evidence that the Chinese government is all that guilty of alienating other
countries.
Its complete disregard of other nations' entirely legitimate claims in the South China Sea
is evidence to the contrary. It's not as if other nations must completely sever all relations
with China for any alienation to be occurring.
@Jason Liu
Excellent comment, Jason. Certainly if China wishes to again become Elder Brother to East
Asia, it needs to start relating to its neighbors as Little Brothers instead of obstacles to
be rudely shoved aside.
@gmachine1729
gmachine, Glad to hear you are in a place that you like and suits you. That is what nations
are all about. I am also in favor of native peoples contributing their effort (through
commercial, intellectual and spiritual endeavors) to the benefit of their fellow
nation-citizens, as long as those contributions are not wrung out by force of the state.
And Russia will have a lot more people by and by. They will be Chinese or Uyghar (sp?)
perhaps, but that empty space will surely be put to use by someone or someones. Whether the
Russians like that much could be another matter.
@Random
Smartaleck China's handling of the claims in South China Sea has been characterized by
restraint and a lot of patience. Basically a combination of dangling a big carrot with a
small stick. This is the reason the ASEAN has signed up to the SCS code of conduct and the
relation between the Philippines and China is at a all time high since Aquino's engineered
the PCA farce several years ago.
Taiwan considered itself the legitimate government of all of China encompassing the
mainland. It's official name is the Republic of China. Mainland China considered itself the
legitimate the government of all of China encompassing the island of Taiwan. Its official
name is the People's Republic of China. The so called 92 consensus agreed by both sides is
that each side agreed there is only one China and each side is free to interpret its own
version of China. For the mainland that means PRC (Peoples Republic of China). For Taiwan
that means ROC (Republic of China). There is no such thing as the independent country of
Taiwan.
China's tv has world war II drama doesn't constitute propaganda in as much as history
channel in the US has world war II topics all the time.
If the reporting I have read (widely sourced) about infrastructure quality, durability, and
actual utility is even 1/2 correct, quite a lot of government (especially provincial
government) directed development cannot and will not prove to be wise investment. Combined
with the opaque economic reporting, also subject to differing reporting as is infrastructure
rating, there is some good reason t believe that the nation has some huge huge challenges
diretly ahead.
The male overhang in China (and in India, others as well, but much smaller) is another
potential problem that is difficult to assess. Maybe it is a nothingburger, and 50 million
men without any chance to have a single wife will just find something else worthwhile and
rewarding to do with their time. Maybe not. Combine wasted urban investment, financial
chicanery on a gross scale, a narrow authoritarian structure and tens of millions of
unsatisfied, un-familied men, the downside looks pretty ugly.
Maybe that reporting is all bullshit. I don't think so. I think that Chinese leadership is
likely very concerned, hence so many of them securing property and anchor babies in the West.
I do hope for the sake of the Chinese people, and the rest of the globe, that whatever comes
along will not be too bad.
This is why I'm not afraid of China: Chinese are greedy soulless capitalists, or pagans as
another poster calls them. Spot on. A country of 1.3 billion pagans will always stay a low
trust society. Every Chinese dreams of getting rich, so they can get the hell out of China.
As for all the worship of education, no fear there either, the end goal of every single
one of their top students is to go an American university, then once they get here, do
everything they can to stay and never go back.
This is why I fear China: they are invading us, and bringing their dog-eat-dog, pagan ways
with them, slowly but surely turning us into another low-trust, pagan society like the one
they left behind. Also once they get here they instantly start chanting "China #1!", and look
out for interest of China rather than that of the US. If we were wise we would stop this
invasion now, but Javanka can't get enough of their EB5 dollars.
@Digital Samizdat
The problem is neither debt nor bankruptcies, although they are part of what is going on. It
is the artificially elevated level of economic activity and the expectations of the people
depending on that level continuing to sustain their lifestyles. The activity can only be
sustained by expanding credit. If you believe that credit can continue to expand infinitely,
well, we will see.
I notice that the Chinese are reducing their personal consumption in response to the
cracks appearing in the economies of the world. They are wise to do so.
We have the same problem in the US, probably worse, and it exists throughout most of the
"first" world. China has a decided advantage because of the degree of social control of its
people, but China will not be immune when the bubble breaks.
@Anon Fred
probably shouldn't say anything about art, but when has ignorance got in the way of USian
cultural putdowns? Anyway, the very idea that the Chinese merely make copies is nonsense,
pure and simple.
@Digital Samizdat
Well put. The propaganda on US websites is always about the debt as there is a need to
believe that China is going to collapse as it simply can't have achieved what it has without
freedom, democracy and the American way, or more accurately by not employing the disastrous
policy mix known as the Washington Consensus. It is the countries who followed that (likely
deliberately) flawed model of open exchange rates, low value added manufacturing (to enrich
US multinationals and consumers) with western FDI that have given the support for the
otherwise flawed Reinhardt and Roghoff study that everyone (who hasn't actually read it) uses
to justify why debt to GDP is 'a bad thing' over a certain level. As those benighted emerging
economies prospered from their trade relationship they were then offered lots of nice $ loans
for consumption, buying cars and houses and lots of western consumer goods. So current
account deficit, more $ funding, inflation, higher interest rates to control inflation
triggering a flow of hot money that drivers the exchange rate temporarily higher undermining
the export model. Then crash – exchange rate has killed export model, interest rates
cripple domestic demand, financial markets plummet, hot money rushes out, exchange rate
collapses so stagflation. Wall Street comes in and privatises the best assets and the US
taxpayer bails out the banks. Rinse and repeat.
China was supposed to 'act like a normal country' and play this game, but it didn't. It
followed the mercantilist model and built a balanced economy without importing western
consumer goods and financial services. However, unlike Germany, Japan or S.Korea, China does
not have a standing US Army on its soil to ensure that everything gets done for good old
Uncle Sam. Hence the bellicosity and the propaganda. China's debts are owned by China, as are
a lot of America's debts. Raising debt to build infrastructure and assets like toll roads,
airports, electricity grids, high speed railways means that there is an income bearing asset
to offset the liability. Raising debt to maintain hundreds of imperial bases around the world
less so.
@Mark T You are
very perceptive. The reason why China's debts are 'bad' while Uncle Scam's debts are 'good'
is because (((the usual suspects))) are profiting off the latter, but not the former. They
were betting that, if they gave the Chinese our industry, China would repay the favor by
giving them their finance sector in return. But that's not what happened! And now, (((the
usual suspects))) are waking up to the rather embarrassing realization they got played by
some slick operators from the East from wayyyy back East.
The so called 92 consensus agreed by both sides is that each side agreed there is only
one China and each side is free to interpret its own version of China. For the mainland
that means PRC (Peoples Republic of China). For Taiwan that means ROC (Republic of China).
There is no such thing as the independent country of Taiwan.
The "One China Policy" is a diplomatic sham designed to avoid bruising the fragile egos of
the two Chinas, and is insisted on by the PRC to aid in their Finlandization & eventual
absorption of Taiwan. Taiwan has been an independent country in all but diplomatic
nomenclature for 70 years. The PRC's claim that Taiwan is a "renegade province" is laughable.
The island is simply territory that the CCP never conquered. It is only the CCP's mad
insistence on the "China is the CCP, the CCP is China" formulation that convinces it
otherwise.
Likewise, Taiwan's claim of jurisdiction over the mainland -- while justifiable given
history -- is simply delusional. The ROC can do absolutely nothing to enforce this claim,
and, barring something truly extraordinary, will never be the government of the mainland
again. Regardless, this claim does not negate Taiwan's de facto independence because it has
absolutely nothing to do with placing Taiwan under others' control.
China's tv has world war II drama doesn't constitute propaganda in as much as history
channel in the US has world war II topics all the time.
You know better than that. We aren't talking about sober, fair-minded documentaries here.
The Chinese productions are lurid, over-the-top demonizations of the Japanese. These combined
with the National Humiliation curriculum and various museums show that the CCP quite likes
stoking hatred against Japan among the Chinese masses perhaps they hope to exploit it in some
near-future manufactured conflict.
@Random
Smartaleck "The "One China Policy" is a diplomatic sham designed to avoid bruising the
fragile egos of the two Chinas, and is insisted on by the PRC to aid in their Finlandization
& eventual absorption of Taiwan. "
It is insisted on by both sides. The quarrel between the ROC and the PRC is which one is
the legitimate government of China. The 92′ consensus only formalized this
understanding in a documented form.
This "One China Policy" has its root deep into the historic narrative of China when
successive dynasties replaced one after another and which dynasty should be recognized as the
legitimate successor dynasty to the former dynasty. If you read any Chinese history book at
the end of the book there is usually a cronological order of successive Chinese dynasties one
followed another in a linear fashion. But of course in reality very often it is not that
clean cut. Sometimes between transition several petty dynasties coexist each vying for the
legitimacy to get the mandate of heaven to rule the whole of China. This "One China Policy"
is just a modern manifestation of this kind of cultural understanding of the Chinese people
and has nothing to do with Communism, Nationalism or whateverism.
@Random
Smartaleck "These combined with the National Humiliation curriculum and various museums
show that the CCP quite likes stoking hatred against Japan among the Chinese masses perhaps
they hope to exploit it in some near-future manufactured conflict."
These kind of museums are fairly newly built, three decades old at most, many are even
newer and is a direct response to Japan historic revisism. If the CCP want to milk this kind
of anti-Japanese sentiment for its political purpose shouldn't they built this kind of museum
earlier? From what I understand the elaborate annual reenactment of the atomic bombing in
Nagasaki and Hiroshima begin the moment the US retreated from the administration of Japan in
1972. Now this is what I called the milking a victimhood sentiment for its political
purpose.
The largest tourist group to Japan from a foreign country is from mainland. If the CCP is
really stoking hatred to the Japanese then they really suck at it. What Japan did to China in
the last century don't need any stoking. History speaks for itself.
I would not debate Fred on any of the points he makes but I have a point of my own.After they
read Fred's article select any number of Chinese men and women at random and tell them they
are welcome to migrate to the US with no strings attached and at the same time select any
number of American men and women at random and tell them they will likewise be welcomed by
the Chinese. The proof should be in the pudding.
It followed the mercantilist model and built a balanced economy without importing
western consumer goods and financial services.
Agree somewhat. China did and does import a lot of western consumer goods. China is Germany's biggest
trading partner, and Germany has trade surplus with China. And China isn't even the world's largest trade surplus country . Germany is, followed by
Japan.
..
Germany poised to set world's largest trade surplus.
Germany is on track to record the world's largest trade surplus for a third consecutive year.
The country's $299 billion surplus is poised to attract criticism, however, both at home and
internationally. Germany is expected to set a €264 billion ($299 billion) trade surplus this year, far
more than its closest export rivals Japan and the Netherlands, according to research
published Monday by Munich-based economic research institute Ifo.
GM does well in China, selling more cars in China than it does in the US. (Personally I
think GM makes crappy cars. ) It is successful in China, because GM has been doing a
fantastic job of marketing its brand and American brands still enjoy prestige in China. And
Apple certainly wouldn't have become the first trillion dollar company without China's
market.
On a personal note, one of my relatives sells American medical devices to China and makes
decent money. It isn't easy though as competition is fierce. America is not the only country
that makes good medical devices. You have to compete with products from other countries.
With regard to the financial section, China has been extremely cautious of opening it up.
Can you blame China? Given how the Wall Street operates. China just didn't have expertise,
experience or regulations to handle a lot of these stuff. China has been preparing it,
though, and it is ready to reform the market.
Beijing pushes ahead with opening up its financial sector despite trade
tensions.
In "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" , the first sentence of the book is "
話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分.
It can be roughly translated as "Under the heaven the general trend is : what is long
divided, must unite; what is long united, must divide".
I believe in my lifetime China and Taiwan will unite again, and North Korea and South
Korea will become One Korea.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a 14th-century historical novel attributed to Luo
Guanzhong. It is set in the turbulent years towards the end of the Han dynasty and the
Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history
What is wrong with less 'inventiveness'? Do we really need a software update every 1 or 2
years? Just think, for example, how annoying the 'microsoft office ribbon' is for most of its
adult and serious users who would prefer good-old drop-down menus! Or do we really need to
change our clothes and phones every year and renew our furniture every decade because the
preferred style is changing? The vast majority of the world, especially those areas where
communitarian family models were the norm at some point in time, would embrace a little
stability over coping with each unnecessary 'invention'. For the Anglo-Saxon world, marked by
the 'absolute nuclear family', on the other hand, stability and predictability is a nightmare
and an assault on their precious individuality. Hence, the tension between the US-led bloc of
English-speaking nations and China-Russia-led Eurasia is no surprise, but rather the natural
outcome of the cultural fabric of each bloc. A world succumbing to the Chinese vision would
definitely be more dull, but more stable and foreseeable as well.
This has been an excellent article along with some excellent commentary. It's difficult to
get a clear picture of what's actually happening in China and every little bit helps. Two of
my kids went to Ivy League schools and when we were doing the drive to check them all out,
they were filled with Asians. The Chinese I deal with are very materialistic and appear to
base their importance on wealth and position. One poor Chinese kid I know who works as a
mechanic tells me Chinese girls won't even date him because of his status. Of course I live
in NY where most people are materialistic so it's hard to tell if that's a Chinese trait or
not. They do appear to be a very smart, hard driven people and there's a whole lot of them,
so there's a chance we start seeing them replace our present elite in the near future.
One poor Chinese kid I know who works as a mechanic tells me Chinese girls won't even
date him because of his status.
so it's hard to tell if that's a Chinese trait or not.
Yes that is a trait, Rich, and though somewhat prevalent in America too, the Chinese seem
to have no respect for guys that work with their hands. To me, that's shameful. They respect
the rich conniving businessman over the honest laborer.
I'd like to see one of the China-#1 commenters on here, or even Fred Reed*, argue with me
on that one. The British-descended especially, but all of white American culture has a
respect for honesty. That is absolutely NOT the case with the Chinese, whether living in
China or right here. See Peak Stupidity on DIY's in China vs.
America – Here is Part 1 .
* You're not gonna gain this kind of knowledge in a couple of weeks and without hanging
with Chinese people, though.
Socially China has a great advantage over America in that, except for the Muslims of
Xinjiang, it is pretty much a Han monoculture. Lacking America's racial diversity, its
cities do not burn, no pressure exists to infantilize the schools for the benefit of
incompetent minorities, racial mobs do not loot stores, and there is very little street
crime.
America's huge urban pockets of illiteracy do not exist. There is not the virulent
political division that has gangs of uncontrolled Antifa hoodlums stalking public
officials. China takes education seriously, as America does not. Students study, behave as
maturely as their age would suggest, and do not engage in middle-school politics.
Agreed. China is not burdened by the abomination of cultural and racial strife. The United
States has lost trillions of dollars due to racial and cultural differences.
@DB Cooper I'm
not picking on, or arguing at all with, you in particular, Mr. Cooper, but let me chime in
about this whole Mainland China vs. Taiwan thing. The first thing to remember is, excepting
the original Taiwanese people who've been invaded left and right, these people are ALL
CHINESE. They will eventually get back together, as the Germans have, and (I'm in agreement
with another guy on this thread) the Koreans will.
Even the Chinese widow of Claire Chenault, the leader of the great American AVG Flying
Tigers who supported the Nationalist Chiang Kai-Shek, had worked for years enabling business
between Taiwan and the mainland. There is so much business between the 2 that any kind of war
would seriously impede, and right now, the business of China is business (where have I heard
that before?)
Another thing I can say about it is that it's sure none of America's business, at this
point. The Cold War ended almost 3 decades ago. We are beyond broke, and it does us nothing
but harm in thinking we must "defend" an island of Chinamen against a continent of Chinamen.
Let the Republic Of China and the People's Republic Of China save faces in whatever asinine
ways they see fit to. It's not a damn bit of America's business.
After they read Fred's article select any number of Chinese men and women at random and
tell them they are welcome to migrate to the US with no strings attached and at the same
time select any number of American men and women at random and tell them they will likewise
be welcomed by the Chinese. The proof should be in the pudding.
American propaganda plays a big part here. Plus more Chinese speak English than Americans
speak Mandarin.
What I mean is, you may not have looked at it in a while, but the last bunch of times I've
seen the "History Channel", it was all about one set of guys trying to sell their old crap to
another bunch of guys, and the drama that apparently goes with that the Pawn Stars .
Where history comes in, I have no earthly idea. I'd much rather be watching the Nazi Channel
over this latest iteration of that network. Better yet, though, I don't watch TV.
* I think from the Chongching vs. Chongqing thing (you were right, of course). I hope I am
remembering correctly.
@Simply Simon I
recently did a graduate degree at MIT, where there are a ton of Chinese students. They seem
to be proud of China's progress, but as far as I can tell, almost all of them want to remain
in the U.S.
@Realist
abomination of racial and cultural strife! Incredible! why is such diversity an abomination
and not an advantage?
Because America ripped off all the people who are in strife' currently..and never
addressed what such exploitation did to them socially ..making what could be an advantage a
so-called 'abomination'
if some of the trillions had been spent on the needs of the American people by building
essential physical and social infrastructure to meet popular need, then there would be no
strife, people would have opportunity and structures to do their business..there would be no
social loss and diversity would not be the problem that it is
the American system uses up people and discards them to the wayside when immediate
exploitation needs are met. but we all know this making that comment inaccurate, nonsense
really.
and again the 'strife has been going on so long that the elites should know it inside out
and be able to address it positively. that they have not means that they do not care about
the people period. they are prepared to let the strife go on and exploit that for profit and
social control too
@MIT Handle It's
the proof of the pudding. No matter how progressive China is the students value America's
freedom of speech, movement, and religious liberty to name a few of the things we cherish.
It just needs to cut military spending to 20-30% of its current crazy unsustainable
levels and invest some of the saved resources into science,
An idealist, and way off the mark. Empire's number one goal isn't a scientific one, but
rather a financial one. The entire purpose of the U.S. military is to secure, and shore up
Wall Street(White/Jewish) capitol on a global scale. Smedley Butler wrote about this very
fact in the 1930's, and it still remains just as true. The Cold War/Vietnam war wasn't fought
to battle a weak, retarded economic system such as communism, but rather to shore up
financial dominance – for the same reason the U.S. military is fixated on oil fields,
pipelines and other resources – Money!
Financial weapons(sanctions) can kill way more people than bombs, and(loan sharking-IMF World
Bank) can conquer more territory than armies(Central, South America, Africa, Greece, etc
)
And the goal is not to just remain the the financial dominant system, but more importantly,
to destroy any potential competition – this is what is putting Russia, China,
and the Eurasian economic system in Washington's cross hairs.
The U.S. military strategists have mentioned on many occasions that they are not afraid of
a larger military, but rather they are deathly afraid of a larger economy. If scientists are
needed for stated goals then so be it, but they are not the crucial factor.
@MBlanc46 Why
would China need US investment? They get massive investment from Singapore other wealthy
Asian countries.
There is massive remissions from Chinese in Canada, UK and Australia. China has the money to invest extensively in Africa. Recently the Philippines went to China for investment instead of the United States. The rest of the world has pretty much written the US as declining irrelevant former
Superpower in economic terms. It still has military power as Fred noted but you cannot take
over foreign economies with a military.
You say all that but Fuji Chinese took over the economies of Philippines (A US ally no
less), Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam (Less so because the Vietnamese hate the
Chinese).
If the Koreans or Japanese did not hate the Chinese so much, they would probably take over
their economies as well.
The real Chinese power is not IN China. It is with Fuji Chinese merchants in Southeast
Asia.
Petty greed? And this is not rampant in Israel, US, Russia, Latin America .
@Jason Liu The
most anti-China people I've ever spent time with were the incredibly successful Chinese
diaspora in SE Asia. I found their contempt shocking. Chinese people were made the butt of
their jokes even on seemingly random topics. Your post offers an explanation.
I'm much more positive about your (?) country. I really liked it. But it does give me
pause for thought whenever familiarity breeds contempt.
My own little annoyance came recently. I had reason to download WeChat. It was the easiest
way to coordinate some business. When I later tried to delete my account, I found I could
not. After searching for an answer, I read that I had to email the company and was certainly
not guaranteed a response nor any action. That put the first line of their marketing about
"300 million" users into perspective.
Another anecdotal thing I've noticed. There used to be lots of Chinese restaurants in
London and very few Japanese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese. There are now more of all of the
latter near me, and the Chinese restaurants are generally very low quality holdouts, probably
surviving by holding long cheap leases. People really like the other cultures, especially
Korea and Japan, not so much the Chinese – a strange fact given the history of East
Asia.
More relevant comparisons might be South Korea and Taiwan
Neither comparisons are exactly relevant. These two countries are tiny compared to
China. But more importantly, America took both of them entirely under its wings, due to
specific geopolitical conditions. Without the Korean and Vietnam wars, China-US thaw might have happened earlier, who
knows. Godfree isn't wrong when he points out that China was under complete embargo. It's not
like they had much of a choice other than central planning.
@Jason Liu
Brilliant, Jason! Now, what does he have to fear from giving the Uigurs and Tibetans the
right of self-determination instead of following the Israeli model and sending swarms of Han
in?
And why the threat of war over every square inch along the Indian border, where the people
are definitely not Han?
Why this greedy insanity, when if the idiot could learn the meaning of reconciliation
China would zoom ahead at record speed! Is he a Jew in disguise?
@Tyrion 2I
worked for Chinese-Filipinos and this is really 100% true.
The ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia are the most heartless capitalists on earth.
China has a government that can do things: In 2008 an 8.0 quake devastated the region
near the Tibetan border, killing, according to the Chinese government, some 100,000 people.
Buildings put up long before simply collapsed
Well what the Chinese government could not do is prevent the corruption that
allowed many of these collapsed buildings to be constructed from poor materials and without
regard for earthquake-related building codes.
That an overall mediocre country like China can be held up as a paragon of efficiency and
achievement to an American audience only speaks to the desperate rot afflicting America
itself. China has not managed to produce any internationally competitive products of any
complexity such as cars or airplanes; and to the extent it is beginning to succeed, this is
due to foreign investment and theft of IP. Meanwhile, South Korea has shown the world how
it's done properly.
In terms of economic systems, the Chinese are clearly superior. China runs a large
economic surplus
Up to now on the backs of poorly paid/overworked peasants. Shot a big hole in your article
right away. Damn and I don't get paid for this?!? (Grin)
PS. Intelectual theft of mostly Western knowledge. Snap! Second hole shot.
I need to get an agent, I'm soooo good I should be in charge of Face the Nation. (Smile) But
I would keep the lovley Margaret Brennan as the host. (Grin)
1. China's one-child policy did not come about as a sort of attempt at eugenics. It came
about because the previous six-child policy ("strength through numbers") was a colossal
failure, and the resulting poverty nearly tore the communist state apart at the seems. So
often governments insist on rapidly growing the population, and then when they get their
wish, they realize that a massive number of hungry and angry people leads not to strength but
to weakness. Just look at what happened when the Syrian government tried that
2. China peaceful? Not hardly. China is peaceful now because most people are doing OK.
Back when population was pushing at the limits – during Mao's early phase, and before
– when people were chronically malnourished and living in mud – no, the Chinese
people were not peaceful.
3. Again, numbers do not always translate into strength. India looks to surpass China in
total population, and they will be lucky just to avoid collapse.
4. Another thought: China is essentially ethnically pure Han Chinese. This might make
revolts possible, as the people find it easy to band together. Not so in India, which is a
massive pastiche of 100′s of different racial and ethnic groups – which are too
busy competing with each other to band together. There is an old saying that the worst
poverty that a people will accept before revolting, is exactly what they will end up with.
Could part of China's strength be the fear of the elites that, if the people are crushed too
much, that things could fall apart?
Regarding economic and scientific advancements with which no one at the time could
effectively compete, China sounds a bit like Germany prior to England, Russia and the United
States combining economic and military resources to destroy it.
@Realist That
isn't true. There are thousands of us now in Asia.
White males are everywhere in Asia doing every kind of business. I've been here for years.
Can some ethnic Han Chinese in the know give us the scoop on this:
Are Han Chinese merchants, bankers getting back on top in places like Vietnam,
Indonesia? There were huge anti Chinese riots in Indonesia in the 1960s and Han Chinese Merchants
were singled out for ethnic cleansing by victorious Vietnamese Communists in ~ 1975 –
the first Vietnamese boat people were Han Chinese merchants.
My take is that the Han Chinese in China and elsewhere in Asia are a lot like Japanese
nationalist in the 1930s and Jewish merchants/bankers forever.
In all of this Chinese sphere of influence ares of Asia I think 2018 USA has pretty much
nothing to offer except maybe playing balance of power to contain China and yes, have
military alliances with all the countries in Asia that are not mainland China – I'm
sure the Vietnamese want us back to militarize the Vietnam/China border – and we're
good at that sort of thing, but we absolutely can not and will not control, protect our own
Southern border.
Nov 28, 2018 Belt & Road Billionaire in Massive Bribery Scandal
The bribery trial of Dr. Patrick Ho, a pitchman for a Chinese energy company, lifts the
lid on how the Chinese regime relies on graft to cut Belt and Road deals in its global push
for economic and geopolitical dominance.
@nickels When was
the last time Western Christianity demonstrated any moral conduct toward other nations? Was
it England and the US fire-bombing German cities filled with civilians, followed by dropping
two nuclear bombs on a defeated nation?
as the US tries to garrison the world. Always favoring coercion, Washington now tries to
batter the planet into submission via tarifffs, sanctions, embargos, and so on.
"and so on" ? Why not just be honest Fredo? Without tariffs, the lot of the American working class would eventually fall to the level
of the rest of the Third World's teeming billions of near-starving wretches. As the one
percent continued to move all its manufacturing to the slave labor wage rates of China and
Mexico, et al.
By imposing tariffs on the products that the internationalist scumfucks build in China and
elsewhere, it tends to encourage the production of these things domestically, thereby
protecting the ever falling wages of the reviled American working class. Also China engages
in policies that are specifically intended to bolster China, like protectionist economics.
Whereas the ZUS does the opposite, its elite favoring policies that specifically fuck over
the despised American citizen in favor of anyone else.
So Trump's tariffs are one of the few things he's actually doing right. At least if you're
not one of those internationalist scumfucks who despise all things working class
American.
As for
"US tries to garrison the world. Always favoring coercion, Washington now tries to batter
the planet into submission sanctions, embargos,"
That is all being done on behalf of the Zionist fiend who owns our central bank. Duh.
What would be good, is for the ZUS to tell the Zionists to fuck off –
- returned to being the USA (by ending the Fed), and imposed massive tariffs on any
industry that off-shored its manufacturing. Hell, any industry that threatens the well-being
of our domestic industries. That pay domestic taxes and employ Americans.
This is the kind of thing China does, and if though some miracle our treasonous government
scoundrels were all to get hanged by lampposts on the glorious Day of the Rope, perhaps then
we'd do the same.
A wise dictator is great for the country, but Xi is not wise. He is a stubborn old man
stuck in the past who is clearly not listening to advisers. He has overplayed his hand,
confronted the US 10~20 years too early, *
When was the last time China sent gunboats or spy planes to murikka's doorstep ?
[hint] fukus have been doing that since the day of Opium war.]
Who started the trade war anyway ?
*damaged China's image out of some paranoid fear of Uyghurs,*
Tell that to the victims of CIA sponsored Uighurs head choppers
[1]
*and absolutely failed at making friends with our East Asian neighbors, instead driving
them further into the arms of the Americans.*
[sic]
I've posted many times here and MOA, a tally of all panda huggers PM/prez in EA,
SA, SEA .,who were ousted/liquidated by fukus shenanigans. [2]
True to form, fukus turned around to accuse China .of ' driving all its friends into
the arm of the murikkans'
fukus have many sins.
but their vilest depravity must surely be . Robbery crying out robbery.
There's this sanctimonious journo from BBC , who 'boldly' confront a Chinese diplomat,
' Do you realise your assertive/aggressive policies are driving all your friends away/
/ .'
what a prick !
[1]
Ron frowns on image posting,
but very often a picture is worth a thousand words.!
P.S.
YOUR critique might be very PC and earns you hundreds of up votes, but its all a load of
bull.
Trouble is, the mushroom club members have been kept in the dark and fed bullshit so long,
bull is exactly what they enjoy most. hehehheh
@Achmed E. Newman
So Mao's Cultural Revolution to elevate the status of workers and peasants didn't have any
lasting effect?
I seem to remember from Historian David Hackett Fisher how in the British American
colonies craftsmen who work with their hands such as tinsmith/silversmith Paul Revere were
highly regarded and enjoyed status due to recognition of the value of their work to society,
with honest skilled workers enjoying status as a calling equal to religious and government
leaders.
I also remember from somewhere the idea that countries with thriving middle classes were
countries that acknowledged and valued the work of blue collar and even unskilled labor,
while those that don't value the work of the "lower classes" are the ones stuck with a rich
elite, and poverty for the masses.
@Durruti Nah,
humor doesn't come across too well, or you missed my "dictator" signature – your
language, if you will recall. That's where the "or else" came from. You do need to calm down,
as we are pretty much on the same side here.
Don't mind the Commies on here – it was much worse under the previous 2 Fred Reed
posts on China.
OK, pre-emptive apologies here for any more wrong interpretations
Great comments. I can only add (1) Here in Calif the Chinese-Americans I know all seem to
love vegetables, and are lean. I wish I could be more like that. New Year's Resolution. (2)
Harvard downgrades Asian-American applicants because of the "personality" factor of being
decent. I think our culture is in trouble if we are penalizing students for being polite,
genial, decent.
Answer: To replace WW 2, which was the best thing that ever happened to the US economy,
allowing it to recover from an economic depression that would have otherwise been permanent.
The US started the Cold War like they started all other wars in which they've been engaged,
including the current war on terror.
@Random
Smartaleck As I understand it the ROC and the PRC share the view that the South China Sea
islands are Chinese even though they don't entirely agree how to define China.
So Mao's Cultural Revolution to elevate the status of workers and peasants didn't
have any lasting effect?
Noooooo it didn't. [/George Castanza mode]
Actually, wait, it didn't have ANY effect to elevate ANYONE, besides those elevated onto
the stage to get pig blood poured on them sort of a poor man's Carrie scene.
Anyway, Mark, whatever you remember from your David Hackett Fischer (sorry that I'm not
familiar) along with your last paragraph sound like pretty good explanations. Though China
has a pretty large middle class now, it's NOT your father's middle class. I don't know if it
could ever be a very trusting society, no matter how much money the median Chinafamily
has.
If you read Mein Kampf, you'll find that Adolph Hitler held similar views regarding German
citizenship, with the first requirement being that you must be of German blood, followed by
meeting various physical, civic and educational requirements prior to anyone becoming a
citizen of Germany, including those born in Germany. The idea that there could be any such
thing as a Black German struck him as preposterous.
(2) Harvard downgrades Asian-American applicants because of the "personality" factor
of being decent. I think our culture is in trouble if we are penalizing students for being
polite, genial, decent.
If you don't already, SafeNow, you should read the archives (or current writings) of Mr.
Steve Sailer, right here on this very site. He has been all over this stuff for years –
I think that the college admissions/high-school quality/graduation rates/etc by race, IQ etc.
is close to an obsession for him, but the posts are usually pretty interesting.
As to this specific point of yours, my answer is that this is the way Harvard keeps the
black/hispanic/other special people's numbers up where they want them along with Oriental
numbers down where they want them. That personality thing is just a way of putting "vibrant"
young people ahead. I don't like vibrancy a whole lot myself, unless there are kegs of beer
involved and only on the weekends. That is a problem for some of the Oriental young people,
as they can't drink as much as they would like – I'm not sure if it's allergies or
not.
BTW, I'd be remiss in not letting you know that the blog owner himself, Mr. Unz, is
involved in a lawsuit about Harvard admissions and has also written a whole lot about
this.
Oh, on your (1), agreed about the tons of vegetables, but they do not consider anything
without rice a meal. Rice can be OK, but when you eat lots of the white rice, with its very
high Glycemic Loading, you can balloon up fast. Not as many of the Oriental girls I see in
America and China are as slim as the way it used to be.
The sheer amount of shadow debt outstanding is huge. 250 to 300% of GDP by some
estimates.
The amount of shadow debt is probably exaggerated: all that extra cash would either
increase China's inflation rate or else greatly boost the import of goods. The Chinese
inflation rate is reasonable, as is the quantity of imports (nowhere near GDP).
As Digital Samizdat said, China's debt is mostly internal; the country's development was
largely due to her own efforts.
@Godfree Roberts
You continue to use bad statistics. World Bank specialists know more than you do. Ordinary
Chinese know that their living standards lagged terribly under Chairman Mao. The most
important changes came after he died.
Deng Xiaoping traveled to Southeast Asia in November 1978. Rather than telling the
Southeast Asians about China's "incredible advances," he sought to learn from Singapore's
progress and listened intently to Lee Kuan Yew, who told Deng that China must re-open
international trade, move toward privatization, and respect market forces. Farmers were given
greater choice in planting crops and, after meeting production quotas, were allowed to sell
surplus produce on the free market. Starvation deaths declined. Widespread privatization
began in the 1990s. China eventually acceded to the World Trade Organization. Economic growth
took off as economic freedom increased from less than 4 to more than 6 on a 10-point scale.
(Hong Kong and Singapore are close to 9 on this scale, and the US is about 8.) Human capital,
which China has in abundance (more so than the US) is more than important than economic
freedom, once a minimum of economic freedom (at least 6 on a 10-point scale) is attained, but
economic freedom below 4 (as in pre-1979 China or today's Venezuela or North Korea) does not
lead to much improvement in living standards.
@Simply Simon
China is still a developing country: the average per capita income is lower than Mexico's
level. (China is growing faster than Mexico, of course.) However, because China has so many people, the country as a whole can do great things.
tar all whiteys as white trash supremacists, even tho there's an army out there.
what is that? another gratuitous smear? Here's a clue: Not wanting to see your nation- whether it be Chinese or Palestinian or
German – flooded and overcome by foreigners- does not make you a Chinese or Palestinian
or German "supremacist". K? It simply means that you are sane and of sound mind and
psychological health. Only the insane would agitate to fund an army of foreign invaders to
overcome your nation and people. That, or having an ((elite)) that resents, envies and
despises your people, and desires to see them replaced and bred out and overcome.
Being an American, we're acutely aware of the loss suffered by the Amerindian tribes when
whitey overcame them.
But somehow I can't imagine anyone telling an Apache that his desire to preserve the lands
they had conquered – as distinctly Apache lands, suggested that he was a vile and
reprobate "Apache supremacist". I can only imagine the look on Geronimo's face if some SJW
type of the day, were to scold him as an 'Apache supremacist!' for not laying down and
accepting his tribe's marginalization and replacement.
But in the insane world we live in, Germans and N. Americans and others, are all expected
to want to be overcome, or it can only mean that they must be terrible "white trash
supremacists".
It's so laughably deranged that it's literally, clinically insane, but you still hear such
raving nevertheless.
@neutral It's all
relative. Our freedom of speech , movement and religious liberty has been degraded but
obviously not to the degree the MIT students would prefer to return to China.
So you have a better plan than President Xi ? That's pretty fucking funny especially as your plan sounds like the talking points coming
out of some neocon stinktank
The world is moving on your dinosaur thinking where the irrelevant west is still the
reference point doesn't exist anymore except in the fervid imaginations of American
exceptionalists
Basically everything you said is bullshit China's diplomacy is light years ahead of the
west the country is in fact presenting all kinds of benevolence to neighbors, with mutually
beneficial development pulled along by the Chinese locomotive
Even Japan, a country in denial about its massive crimes of the past, is coming around to
the inevitable conclusion that it must live in CHINA'S neighborhood India joined the SCO last
year look up the SCO btw and think about which will be more relevant 10 or 20 years from now
this org or dying bullshit like Nato and the G7
As for supposedly 'challenging' the US that's pretty funny what's to challenge US doesn't
have a pot to piss in
US doesn't even have an industrial base anymore with which to produce weapons in case of a
real war with an actual enemy that doesn't wear sandals look up the Pentagon's 'Annual
Industrial Capabilities' report even the MIC's stuff comes from China, somewhere down the
supply chain that's fucking hilarious
US is is well on its way to finding out the hard way a financialized Ponzi economy that
has figured out how to de-industrialize a previously industrial country for untold riches for
a handful of parasites and actually being a strong and healthy country with actual
capabilities to PRODUCE REAL STUFF are two mutually exclusive goals
Look at the so-called 'trade war' most Americans don't even realize that tariffs on
Chinese goods only means that they will be paying an extra tax Chinese are laughing at this
'trade war' what happens to Walmart and Amazon if China just stops exporting stuff to the US
they can do that you know it will hit some Chinese billionaires but so what 70 percent of the
economy is in government hands and there is enough of a consumer base in China that even
eliminating all US exports is not going to do much damage
In the meantime GM is shutting down factories and cutting 15,000 high paying jobs but
setting up shop in China along with Harley and others LOL
You're obviously some brainwashed Chang Kai-shek acolyte keep on living in your make
believe disneyworld while a socialist and dynamic China grows tall all around you LOL
No amount of tariff will force China to go along with Trump's "fair trade" plan until Trump
does what his brilliant senior advisor Stephen Miller wants him to do -- stop issuing student
visas, plus EB5, H1b, OPT and green cards to Chinese nationals, step up raids of Chinese
birth hotels in CA, NY, WA, and rescind all passports issued to Chinese birth tourist babies.
That will send tens of thousands of Chinese citizens out on the streets protesting as they
are all eager to get the hell out with their ill gotten gains while they still can, and Xi
will bend over backwards in no time.
@FB I think your
diatribe just proved Jason Liu's point about mainland Chinese being thin skin, arrogant and,
I will also add, extremely dishonest and ill-mannered. It's why most people in Southeast Asia, Oz and NZ, including the Chinese diaspora, despise
the mainland Chinese.
@Anon Machine
tools make up a fair percentage of what China imports from Germany. Tools to make tools and
patterns for manufacturing should be considered an investment.
@FB FB gets it.
All the bluster of the disingenuous American billionaire sellouts and their xenophobic,
gullible domestic fanbase will amount to nothing.
Apart from nuking China or bribing their leaders (a la Yeltsin) to follow the Washington
Consensus, China will continue its economic development. And unlike dissolution era Soviet
Union, China isn't broken and desperate to seek the "knowledge" of neoclassical economists.
Unlike Plaza Accord Tokyo, China isn't under American occupation, and unlike Pinochet era
Chile and countless other minnows, the US establishment cannot hope to overthrow the Chinese
government.
Then we get the Anon dude who replied to FB. Way to ignore history and empirical evidence
and bolster yet another dimbulb argument with racism.
Jason Liu is a retard. You resorting to typical racism is acceptable to a number of this
site's resident know-nothings, but resorting to racism to bolster your non-argument is pretty
much the definition of stupidity.
Democracy fails simply because it is basically mob rule, and 51% of the mob isn't anymore
intelligent than the minor 49%. When the Supreme Court passed Citizens United (a misnomer)
which misinterpreted money as speech, the coup, that began with the assassination of JFK, was
complete. The effect has been devastating for the average Joe; completing the transfer of
power from the people to the corporations and the billionaire class, i.e. the bGanksters.
There's much to be said of a dictatorship, but where do we fit in with the selection, and
would the elite ever allow a new JFK? No, they wouldn't even tolerate a new Muammar Gaddafi.
So were stuck with the revolving door wannabes.
No western country allowed itself to be destroyed by its leadership as China did. This
includes Nazi Germany (and I do not consider USSR a western country).
Watch this video and reflect on the fatal flaw in Chinese culture and character.
@anonymous The
ethnic Chinese of Southeast Asia who control the economies of those places are Fuji Chinese,
not Han.
Fuji Chinese actually immigrated to Philippines and Malaysia and Indonesia to escape Han
persecution and the Han themselves were escaping the Manchu Chinese by migrating South into
the Fuji Province.
Virtually all the ethnic Chinese of Southeast Asia are from the Fujian Province. This is especially true of the Philippines. Virtually all Chinese-Filipinos are from Amoy
very near to Taiwan on the coast of the Fujian Province.
@someone But he
didn't resort to racism. And if anyone deserves the insulting "retard" it is you and FB for
not seeming to see the lack of relevance to what he said in your purported responses to Jason
Liu.
@Carroll Price
Hitler wrote that in jail before he was taking orders from psychics and astrologers. The
syphilis had not really set in yet at that point.
Black US GI's wreaked a fair amount of havoc in Germany on and off the bases. There were
always rapes, stolen cars, assaults around US army bases.
Of course so did some white American GI's. Dahmer is suspected-though he did not admit
it-of having killed people around the base where he was stationed. Ironically the country most adhering to this policy these days is Israel.
What is it with people whose grasp of Chinese history is limited to the Cultural Revolution?
Why do they comment here, and why are they somehow ignorant of the previous.. say 130 years
of Chinese history? Maybe, just maybe, Chinese society would not have collapsed if it weren't
for Opium traders destroying both China and India under the guise of free trade, de facto
colonization, then outright genocidal invasion and occupation from the Japanese military
regime?
And way to bag on any sort of collective action against the ossified rentier class. Cause
Marx/Engels/Lenin/Mao is a scourge of present-day societies for some reason?
The Cultural Revolution sure has an analogue in the US and its vassal states. The whole
neoliberal/militarist Reagan revolution and similar class war developments have wracked the
US and its minion states for FORTY YEARS. Yet few people seem to be aware of it. And others
correctly note the decline in living standards, then proceed to ignore the oligarchy
beneficiaries of neoliberalism/militarism, and instead are led to demagogues to blame
irrelevant scapegoats.
@FB If you
believe this arrogant rant counts as a responsive reply to Jason Liu then, assuredly you are
the candidate retard. And that is true notwithstanding the presence of intemperately stated
truths in your rant.
@denk And you are
a typical non-American who is obsessed with a country you have never been to because you have
been watching US films your entire life and your perception of reality is formed by
screenwriters in Los Angeles.
You secretly would like to go to the United States but have a distorted perception based
upon second-rate Hollywood films.
Typical of the Chinese Singaporean you are not Chinese and possibly have never been to
China. Your family has been in Singapore for three or four generations.
As a result you see white Americans and are secretly enthralled by them. Their towering
height and self-confidence and loud voices in Orchard Road STARBUCKS.
@Jeff Stryker
Jeff, your history sucks, your political economy sucks.
Filipino Chinese are Fujian, not Fuji–Not written nor pronounced like the Japanese
mountain or film.
Fujianese are Han. Their dialect is distinct, but they are as Han as the other southern
subgroups like the Hakka (who also compose a part of Sino-Filipinos) and Cantonese. Places
like Thailand and Malaysia have large numbers of Teochow and Cantonese, not Fujis or Fujians
or any other of your malapropisms.
What is it with your dipsh!t obsession with (incorrect) demographics and your piss poor
knowledge of EVERYTHING ELSE?
@Carroll Price
Yes, the comparison of late 19th century Germany and China today has been made quite often
with at least some plausibility for non specialist readers. Happily Miranda Carter's
marvellous New Yorker article doesn't seem to have relevance to China's leadership today. See
"What happens when a bad tempered distractible doofus runs an empire".
@Realist I've
already said that no person not born in China can be a citizen.
The only Caucasians who are Chinese citizens are the descendants of Portuguese settlers in
Macau of which there is still a small community.
Philippines in particular would take a huge economic hit if every Western man living there
left. Other Asian countries would feel a similar affect to their economies.
Locals PREFER to work for Western men rather than the Chinese ethnics because Chinese
ethnics treat Malay employees like farm animals and pay a pittance.
I did not mention Thailand because the Chinese-Thai (I'm married to one and we have two
children) are no longer a distinct group and don't have the economy in a stranglehold like
they do in Philippines or Malaysia.
Cantonese have never been the businessmen that Fujian Chinese are in Southeast Asia and
live in piss-poor Chinatowns in Manila or Jakarta.
When we talk about ethnic Chinese economic dominance in Southeast Asia we are talking
about Fujian Chinese shopkeepers.
[You have been repeatedly warned that you leave far too many rambling, vacuous comments,
especially since so many of them demonstrate your total ignorance. Fewer and fewer of your
comments will be published until you improve your commenting-behavior or better yet
permanently depart for another website]
ATTENTION ALL CHINESE POSTERS (OR ETHNIC CHINESE WHO FANCY THEMSELVES AS SUCH)
You may be offended by my views but I have earned them. I've worked with ethnic Chinese in
Asia a long time.
I'm married to one. I have two children with one. They go to Chinese schools.
So I have a right to my cynical opinions.
Most of you see a bunch of loud American tourists in some local Starbucks and you think
you know everything about the West.
You know very little.
I at least have lived in squalor with ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia in the trenches
doing business with them.
Well what the Chinese government could not do is prevent the corruption that allowed
many of these collapsed buildings to be constructed from poor materials and without regard
for earthquake-related building codes.
That an overall mediocre country like China can be held up as a paragon of efficiency
and achievement to an American audience only speaks to the desperate rot afflicting America
itself. China has not managed to produce any internationally competitive products of any
complexity such as cars or airplanes; and to the extent it is beginning to succeed, this is
due to foreign investment and theft of IP. Meanwhile, South Korea has shown the world how
it's done properly.
Those buildings were built in a different era, when China was much poorer. When China gets
richer, the regulations will be strengthened and more effectively enforced. It's the same for
every country.
East Asian countries develop in stages. Today's China is like South Korea 20 years ago. 20
years ago, South Korea was like Japan 40 years ago. The difference is that while Japan and
South Korea can obtain Western technologies without problem, China has been under Western
military embargo since 1989.
You probably did not realize it, but China has burst onto the scene of some cutting edge
technologies such as super computer, the application of quantum physics, and space
technologies including China's own GPS system; not to mention dominating in ship-building,
the manufacturing of solar panel, LCD panel and LED light, cell phone including 5G
technology, electric vehicles and highspeed rail etc etc.
@someone Dude
you're never going to convince the koolaid gulping Unz whackadoodles with actual historical
knowledge and facts
They're Pavlovian reactions is to defend the rentier class that is driving them into the
ground talk about irrational and self-destructive they must love and worship the 0.01 percent
since they are voting for their good which in fact entails the death of the middle class and
ordinary folks by definition
What clowns they only spout what they have been spoonfed to spout marching blindly like
the proverbial lemmings off the cliff believe me, better men have tried to talk sense into
these morons, without effect see PCR
PS notice the flurry of anon retards here and they actually think I'm Chinese LOL
@Simply Simon
Most MIT graduates want to stay in the U.S. because it's a much richer country than China and
much easier to get ahead materialistically. After working 10-15 years in the U.S., you can
easily get a 4-bed room house with 2 nice cars in its garages in a decent neighborhood. What
can you get in China? You probably can only afford an apartment with a semi-decent car with
nowhere to park. It has little to do with free speech or politics.
@Anon You worship
at the altar of that incompetent demagogue Steven Miller. Not only are you a dimbulb racist,
you can't see through the thinnest veneer of an oligarch who harnesses the latent xenophobia
of the masses to ram through yet more regressive policies. His dipsh!t eugenicist immigration
policies are just a reflection of the same color/ethnicity bar which led to the deaths of his
relatives several generations ago.
You think banning individuals of a certain ethnicity are enough to make America Great
Again? That's gullible, even for this site.
Should have followed eugenics and banned your idiot fetus from ever hatching.
@someone Actually
I have to wonder if even the standard narrative about the 'terrible' cultural revolution has
anything to do with reality
I would love to see a Godfree Roberts essay on this subject, since I am far from anything
approaching a China scholar his essays on Mao were absolutely tremendous there can be no
doubt that there could have been no modern Chinese economic miracle had it not been for Mao's
Great Leap Forward
I did not mention Thailand because the Chinese-Thai are no longer a distinct group and
don't have the economy in a stranglehold like they do in Philippines or Malaysia.
According to Amy Chua in her book World on Fire , the Chinese make up 12% of
Thailand's population and they do still by and large control Thailand's economy, it's just
that it's very hard to tell them apart from native Thais because they've changed their names
to local Thai names, but those in the know can still tell because Chinese Thai last names
tend to be very long.
@FB I like
Godfree. He is a contrarian and certainly not afraid of voicing his opinions. He offers some
unique perspective on looking at China and this is very refreshing because I can say most of
the things the MSM on China is just nonsense and Godfree got some but not all of them right,
in my opinion.
As to Mao's Great Leap Forward, or Cultural Revolution for that matter, let's look at it
this way. If you pay attention to China's pundits talking about China in Chinese TV today you
get the impression that the Chinese government is very proud of what it has accomplished in
the last forty years. And it should be. Lifting hundreds of millions of people out of abject
poverty and transforming China to today's situation like what Fred described in such a short
span is no easy feat. These Chinese pundits always talk about 'Reform and Opening Up' all the
time. This is the phrase they used most often. But 'Reform and Opening Up' refers to the
policy Deng implemented when he took over. I have yet to see anybody praising the Great Leap
Forward and Cultural Revolution in Chinese TV. To the extent that it was brought up on very
rare occasion, it was brought up in passing but never elaborated. It is as if the history of
Communist China started in 1979 instead of 1949. May be it has some dirty laundry it doesn't
want to air? The CCP has officially declared Mao's legacy as 70% good and 30% bad. What's
that 30% bad about?
I am convinced that the standard narrative about the 'terrible' cultural revolution is
close to reality. utu posted a video on China's Great Leap Forward on this thread. Do you
think the video is CGI graphics?
@Anonymous Amy
Chau got a good many things about her own Chinese-Filipino people wrong, I place little stock
in what she says about Thailand. Or even about the Philippines.
She is only relevant for touting herself as Chinese when her family has been in the
Philippines for generations-that reflects how at odds Chinese-Filipinos are with the
predominant population and also why the Indonesians and Malaysians have carried out savage
pogroms from time to time.
Worse in the Philippines is Chinese-Filipino involvement in meth. They make it and
distribute it and import it from China. The drug war in Philippines is entirely the result of
Chinese. And Tiger Mom is unlikely to bring that up in her wildly self-congratulatory books
which also focus on German Jews because she is married to one.
Chinese do not control the Thai economy to anywhere near the extent that they control the
economy of the Philippines or other countries. Thailand has actively forced the Chinese to
assimilate to a degree and at any rate they are probably the most clever of the Southeast
Asians.
Chinese immigrants also fair best in countries broken up by colonialism like Philippines
by Spain or Malaysia by Brits where they can slide in during post-colonial confusion.
*And why the threat of war over every square inch along the Indian border, where the
people are definitely not Han?*
Pleeeeze,
Show me ONE instance of China threatening war on India.
*In the NEFA, China seemed tacitly to have accepted the Indian claim and the fact of
indian occupation, even though this meant the loss of a very large and valuable territory
populated by Mongoloid people and which in the past had clearly belonged to Tibet. It had
come into Indian hands only as a result of British expansionism during China's period of
historical weakness, a fact firmly suggested by the very name of the frontier Beijing had
tacitly accepted as the line of control -- the McMahon Line. *
"... The IMF exists to lend money to governments, so it's comic that it wags its finger at governments that run up debt. And, of course, its loans famously come with strings attached: adopt a free-market economy, or strengthen the one you have, kissing goodbye to the Big State. ..."
"... Yet, the irony is painful. Neoliberal ideology insists that states are too big and cumbersome, too centralized and faceless, to be efficient and responsive ..."
"... The problem is that the ruthless sentimentalists of neoliberalism like to tell themselves – and anyone else who will listen – that removing the dead hand of state control frees the individual citizen to be entrepreneurial and productive. Instead, it places the financially powerful beyond any state, in an international elite that makes its own rules, and holds governments to ransom. That's what the financial crisis was all about ..."
"... Markets cannot be free. Markets have to be nurtured. They have to be invested in. Markets have to be grown. Google, Amazon and Apple haven't taught anyone in this country to read. But even though an illiterate market wouldn't be so great for them, they avoid their taxes, because they can, because they are more powerful than governments. ..."
"... The neoliberalism that the IMF still preaches pays no account to any of this. It insists that the provision of work alone is enough of an invisible hand to sustain a market. Yet even Adam Smith, the economist who came up with that theory , did not agree that economic activity alone was enough to keep humans decent and civilised. ..."
The crash was a write-off, not a repair job. The response should be a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth
is created and distributed around the globe
he IMF's limited admission of guilt over the Greek bailout is a start, but they still can't see the global financial system's
fundamental flaws, writes Deborah Orr.
The International Monetary Fund has admitted that some of the decisions it made in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis
were wrong, and that the €130bn first bailout of Greece was "bungled". Well, yes. If it hadn't been a mistake, then it would have
been the only bailout and everyone in Greece would have lived happily ever after.
Actually, the IMF hasn't quite admitted that it messed things up. It has said instead that it went along with its partners in
"the Troika" – the European Commission and the European Central Bank – when it shouldn't have. The EC and the ECB, says the IMF,
put the interests of the Eurozone before the interests of Greece. The EC and the ECB, in turn, clutch their pearls and splutter with
horror that they could be accused of something so petty as self-preservation.
The IMF also admits that it "underestimated" the effect austerity would have on Greece. Obviously, the rest of the Troika takes
no issue with that. Even those who substitute "kick up the arse to all the lazy scroungers" whenever they encounter the word "austerity",
have cottoned on to the fact that the word can only be intoned with facial features locked into a suitably tragic mask.
Yet, mealy-mouthed and hotly contested as this minor mea culpa is, it's still a sign that financial institutions may slowly be
coming round to the idea that they are the problem. They know the crash was a debt-bubble that burst. What they don't seem to acknowledge
is that the merry days of reckless lending are never going to return; even if they do, the same thing will happen again, but more
quickly and more savagely. The thing is this: the crash was a write-off, not a repair job. The response from the start should have
been a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe, a "structural adjustment",
as the philosopher
John Gray has said all along.
The IMF exists to lend money to governments, so it's comic that it wags its finger at governments that run up debt. And, of
course, its loans famously come with strings attached: adopt a free-market economy, or strengthen the one you have, kissing goodbye
to the Big State.
Yet, the irony is painful. Neoliberal ideology insists that states are too big and cumbersome, too centralized and faceless,
to be efficient and responsive. I agree.
The problem is that the ruthless sentimentalists of neoliberalism like to tell themselves – and anyone else who will listen
– that removing the dead hand of state control frees the individual citizen to be entrepreneurial and productive. Instead, it places
the financially powerful beyond any state, in an international elite that makes its own rules, and holds governments to ransom. That's
what the financial crisis was all about. The ransom was paid, and as a result, governments have been obliged to limit their
activities yet further – some setting about the task with greater relish than others. Now the task, supposedly, is to get the free
market up and running again.
But the basic problem is this: it costs a lot of money to cultivate a market – a group of consumers – and the more sophisticated
the market is, the more expensive it is to cultivate them. A developed market needs to be populated with educated, healthy, cultured,
law-abiding and financially secure people – people who expect to be well paid themselves, having been brought up believing in material
aspiration, as consumers need to be.
So why, exactly, given the huge amount of investment needed to create such a market, should access to it then be "free"? The neoliberal
idea is that the cultivation itself should be conducted privately as well. They see "austerity" as a way of forcing that agenda.
But how can the privatization of societal welfare possibly happen when unemployment is already high, working people are turning to
food banks to survive and the debt industry, far from being sorry that it brought the global economy to its knees, is snapping up
bargains in the form of busted high-street businesses to establish shops with nothing to sell but high-interest debt? Why, you have
to ask yourself, is this vast implausibility, this sheer un-sustainability, not blindingly obvious to all?
Markets cannot be free. Markets have to be nurtured. They have to be invested in. Markets have to be grown. Google, Amazon
and Apple haven't taught anyone in this country to read. But even though an illiterate market wouldn't be so great for them, they
avoid their taxes, because they can, because they are more powerful than governments.
And further, those who invest in these companies, and insist that taxes should be low to encourage private profit and shareholder
value, then lend governments the money they need to create these populations of sophisticated producers and consumers, berating them
for their profligacy as they do so. It's all utterly, completely, crazy.
The other day a health minister,
Anna Soubry
, suggested that female GPs who worked part-time so that they could bring up families were putting the NHS under strain. The
compartmentalised thinking is quite breathtaking. What on earth does she imagine? That it would be better for the economy if they
all left school at 16? On the contrary, the more people who are earning good money while working part-time – thus having the leisure
to consume – the better. No doubt these female GPs are sustaining both the pharmaceutical industry and the arts and media, both sectors
that Britain does well in.
As for their prioritising of family life over career – that's just another of the myriad ways in which Conservative neoliberalism
is entirely without logic. Its prophets and its disciples will happily – ecstatically – tell you that there's nothing more important
than family, unless you're a family doctor spending some of your time caring for your own. You couldn't make these characters up.
It is certainly true that women with children find it more easy to find part-time employment in the public sector. But that's a prima
facie example of how unresponsive the private sector is to human and societal need, not – as it is so often presented – evidence
that the public sector is congenitally disabled.
Much of the healthy economic growth – as opposed to the smoke and mirrors of many aspects of financial services – that Britain
enjoyed during the second half of the 20th century was due to women swelling the educated workforce. Soubry and her ilk, above all
else, forget that people have multiple roles, as consumers, as producers, as citizens and as family members. All of those things
have to be nurtured and invested in to make a market.
The neoliberalism that the IMF still preaches pays no account to any of this. It insists that the provision of work alone
is enough of an invisible hand to sustain a market. Yet even Adam Smith, the economist who
came up with that theory , did not agree
that economic activity alone was enough to keep humans decent and civilised.
Governments are left with the bill when neoliberals demand access to markets that they refuse to invest in making. Their refusal
allows them to rail against the Big State while producing the conditions that make it necessary. And even as the results of their
folly become ever more plain to see, they are grudging in their admittance of the slightest blame, bickering with their allies instead
of waking up, smelling the coffee and realising that far too much of it is sold through Starbucks.
"... power in our societies resides in structure, ideology and narratives – supporting what we might loosely term our current "neoliberal order" – rather than in individuals. Significantly, our political and media classes, who are of course deeply embedded in this neoliberal structure, are key promoters of the very opposite idea: that individuals or like-minded groups of people hold power; that they should, at least in theory, be held accountable for the use and misuse of that power; and that meaningful change involves replacing these individuals rather than fundamentally altering the power-structure they operate within. ..."
"... The [neoliberal] focus on individuals happens for a reason. It is designed to ensure that the structure and ideological foundations of our societies remain invisible to us, the public. The neoliberal order goes unquestioned – presumed, against the evidence of history, to be permanent, fixed, unchallengeable. ..."
"... These minor narratives conceal the fact that such individuals are groomed before they ever gain access to power. Business leaders, senior politicians and agenda-setting journalists reach their positions after proving themselves over and over again – not consciously but through their unthinking compliance to the power-structure of our societies. ..."
"... They rise to the top because they are the most talented examples of those who are blind or submissive to power, those who can think most cleverly without thinking critically. Those who reliably deploy their skills where they are directed to do so. ..."
"... Were the neoliberal order laid bare – were the emperor to allow himself to be stripped of his clothes – no one apart from a small psychopathic elite would vote for neoliberalism's maintenance. ..."
"... elections become an illusory contest between more transparent and more opaque iterations of neoliberal power ..."
"... Despite its best efforts, neoliberalism is increasingly discredited in the eyes of large sections of the electorate in the US and UK. Its attempts at concealment have grown jaded, its strategy exhausted. It has reached the end-game, and that is why politics now looks so unstable. "Insurgency" candidates in different guises are prospering. ..."
"... Neoliberal power is distinctive because it seeks absolute power, and can achieve that end only through global domination. Globalisation, the world as a plaything for a tiny elite to asset-strip, is both its means and its end. Insurgents are therefore those who seek to reverse the trend towards globalisation – or at least claim to. There are insurgents on both the left and right. ..."
"... A Trump figure can usefully serve power too, because he dons the clothes of an insurgent while doing little to actually change the structure. ..."
"... Nonetheless, Trump is a potential problem for the neoliberal order for two reasons. First, unlike an Obama or a Clinton, he too clearly illuminates what is really at stake for power – wealth maximisation at any cost – and thereby risks unmasking the deception. And second, he is a retrograde step for the globalising power-structure. ..."
"... The neoliberal order prefers a Trump to a Bernie Sanders because the nativist insurgents are so much easier to tame. A Trump can be allowed to strut on his Twitter stage while the global power-structure constrains and undermines any promised moves that might threaten it. Trump the candidate was indifferent to Israel and wanted the US out of Syria. Trump the president has become Israel's biggest cheerleader and has launched US missiles at Syria. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is now so entrenched, so rapacious that even a moderate socialist like Corbyn is seen as a major threat. And unlike a Blair, Obama or Trump, Corbyn is much harder to tame because he has a grassroots movement behind him and to which he is ultimately accountable ..."
"... In the US, the neoliberal wing of the Democratic party prevented the left-insurgent candidate, Bernie Sanders, from contesting the presidency by rigging the system to keep him off the ballot paper ..."
"... How anti-semitism is being weaponised, not to protect Jews but to protect the neoliberal order, was made starkly clear this week when Corbyn criticised the financial elite that brought the west to the brink of economic ruin a decade ago, and will soon do so again unless stringent new regulations are introduced. Useful idiots like Stephen Pollard, editor of the rightwing Jewish Chronicle, saw a chance to revive the anti-semitism canard once again, accusing Corbyn of secretly meaning "Jews" when he actually spoke of bankers. It is a logic intended to make the neoliberal elite untouchable, cloaking them in a security blanket relying on the anti-semitism taboo. ..."
"... The weaponising of anti-semitism by the neoliberal order to protect its power risks turning Jews into collateral damage. It makes them another small or bigger drama in the increasingly desperate attempt to create a narrative that deflects attention from the real power-structure. ..."
"... And second, the effort to stitch together a narrative of Corbyn's anti-semitism out of non-existent cloth is likely to encourage more and more people to take a step back from the screen so that those unintelligible pixels can more easily be discerned as a smoking gun. The very preposterousness of the allegations, and the fact that they are taken so seriously by a political and media class selected for their submissiveness to the neoliberal order, accelerates the process by which these opinion-formers discredit themselves. Their authority wanes by the day, and as a result their usefulness to the power-structure rapidly diminishes. ..."
"... No one pays me to write these blog posts. If you appreciated it, or any of the others, please consider hitting the donate button in the right-hand margin (computer) or below (phone). ..."
In
my last
blog post I argued that power in our societies resides in structure, ideology and
narratives – supporting what we might loosely term our current "neoliberal order" –
rather than in individuals. Significantly, our political and media classes, who are of course
deeply embedded in this neoliberal structure, are key promoters of the very opposite idea: that
individuals or like-minded groups of people hold power; that they should, at least in theory,
be held accountable for the use and misuse of that power; and that meaningful change involves
replacing these individuals rather than fundamentally altering the power-structure they operate
within.
In other words, our political and media debates reduce to who should be held to
account for problems in the economy, the health and education systems, or the conduct of a war.
What is never discussed is whether flawed policies are really the fleeting responsibility of
individuals and political parties or symptoms of the current neoliberal malaise –
manifestations of an ideology that necessarily has goals, such as the pursuit of maximised
profit and endless economic growth, that are indifferent to other considerations, such as the
damage being done to life on our planet.
The [neoliberal] focus on individuals happens for a reason. It is designed to ensure
that the structure and ideological foundations of our societies remain invisible to us, the
public. The neoliberal order goes unquestioned – presumed, against the evidence of
history, to be permanent, fixed, unchallengeable.
So deep is this misdirection that even efforts to talk about real power become treacherous.
My words above might suggest that power is rather like a person, that it has intention and
will, that maybe it likes to deceive or play tricks. But none of that is true either.
Big
and little power
My difficulty conveying precisely what I mean, my need to resort to metaphor, reveals the
limitations of language and the necessarily narrow ideological horizons it imposes on anyone
who uses it. Intelligible language is not designed adequately to describe structure or power.
It prefers to particularise, to humanise, to specify, to individualise in ways that make
thinking in bigger, more critical ways near-impossible.
Language is on the side of those, like politicians and corporate journalists, who conceal
structure, who deal in narratives of the small-power of individuals rather than of the
big-power of structure and ideology. In what passes for news, the media offer a large stage for
powerful individuals to fight elections, pass legislation, take over businesses, start wars,
and a small stage for these same individuals to get their come-uppance, caught committing
crimes, lying, having affairs, getting drunk, and more generally embarrassing themselves.
These minor narratives conceal the fact that such individuals are groomed before they
ever gain access to power. Business leaders, senior politicians and agenda-setting journalists
reach their positions after proving themselves over and over again – not consciously but
through their unthinking compliance to the power-structure of our societies. They are
selected through their performances in exams at school and university, through training
programmes and indentures. They rise to the top because they are the most talented examples
of those who are blind or submissive to power, those who can think most cleverly without
thinking critically. Those who reliably deploy their skills where they are directed to do
so.
Their large and small dramas constitute what we call public life, whether politics, world
affairs or entertainment. To suggest that there are deeper processes at work, that the largest
of these dramas is not really large enough for us to gain insight into how power operates, is
to instantly be dismissed as paranoid, a fantasist, and – most damningly of all – a
conspiracy theorist.
These terms also serve the deception. They are intended to stop all thought about real
power. They are scare words used to prevent us, in a metaphor used in my previous post, from
stepping back from the screen. They are there to force us to stand so close we see only the
pixels, not the bigger picture.
Media makeover
The story of Britain's Labour party is a case in point, and was illustrated even before
Jeremy Corbyn became leader. Back in the 1990s Tony Blair reinvented the party as New Labour,
jettisoning ideas of socialism and class war, and inventing instead a "Third Way".
The idea that gained him access to power – personified in the media narrative of the
time as his meeting
with Rupert Murdoch on the mogul's Hayman Island – was that New Labour would
triangulate, find a middle way between the 1 per cent and the 99 per cent. The fact that the
meeting took place with Murdoch rather than anyone else signaled something significant: that
the power-structure needed a media makeover. It needed to be dressed in new garb.
In reality, Blair made Labour useful to power by re-styling the turbo-charged neoliberalism
Margaret Thatcher's Conservative party of the rich had unleashed. He made it look compatible
with social democracy. Blair put a gentler, kinder mask on neoliberalism's aggressive pursuit
of planet-destroying power – much as Barack Obama would do in the United States a decade
later, after the horrors of the Iraq invasion. Neither Blair nor Obama changed the substance of
our economic and political systems, but they did make them look deceptively attractive by
tinkering with social policy.
Were the neoliberal order laid bare – were the emperor to allow himself to be
stripped of his clothes – no one apart from a small psychopathic elite would vote for
neoliberalism's maintenance. So power is forced to repeatedly reinvent itself. It is like
the shape-shifting Mystique of the X-Men films, constantly altering its appearance to lull us
into a false sense of security. Power's goal is to keep looking like it has become something
new, something innovative. Because the power-structure does not want change, it has to find
front-men and women who can personify a transformation that is, in truth, entirely hollow.
Power can perform this stunt, as Blair did, by repackaging the same product –
neoliberalism – in prettier ideological wrapping. Or it can, as has happened in the US of
late, try a baser approach by adding a dash of identity politics. A black presidential
candidate (Obama) can offer hope, and a woman candidate (Hillary Clinton) can cast herself as
mother-saviour.
With this model in place, elections become an illusory contest between more transparent
and more opaque iterations of neoliberal power . In failing the 99 per cent, Obama so
woefully voided this strategy that large sections of voters turned their back on his intended
successor, the new makeover candidate Hillary Clinton. They saw through the role-playing. They
preferred, even if only reluctantly, the honest vulgarity of naked power represented by Trump
over the pretensions of Clinton's fakely compassionate politics.
Unstable politics
Despite its best efforts, neoliberalism is increasingly discredited in the eyes of large
sections of the electorate in the US and UK. Its attempts at concealment have grown jaded, its
strategy exhausted. It has reached the end-game, and that is why politics now looks so
unstable. "Insurgency" candidates in different guises are prospering.
Neoliberal power is distinctive because it seeks absolute power, and can achieve that
end only through global domination. Globalisation, the world as a plaything for a tiny elite to
asset-strip, is both its means and its end. Insurgents are therefore those who seek to reverse
the trend towards globalisation – or at least claim to. There are insurgents on both the
left and right.
If neoliberalism has to choose, it typically prefers an insurgent on the right to the left.
A Trump figure can usefully serve power too, because he dons the clothes of an insurgent
while doing little to actually change the structure.
Nonetheless, Trump is a potential problem for the neoliberal order for two reasons.
First, unlike an Obama or a Clinton, he too clearly illuminates what is really at stake for
power – wealth maximisation at any cost – and thereby risks unmasking the
deception. And second, he is a retrograde step for the globalising power-structure.
Neoliberalism has dragged capitalism out its nineteenth-century dependency on nation-states
into a twenty-first ideology that demands a global reach. Trump and other nativist leaders seek
a return to a supposed golden era of state-based capitalism, one that prefers to send our
children up chimneys if it prevents children from far-off lands arriving on our shores to do
the same.
The neoliberal order prefers a Trump to a Bernie Sanders because the nativist insurgents
are so much easier to tame. A Trump can be allowed to strut on his Twitter stage while the
global power-structure constrains and undermines any promised moves that might threaten it.
Trump the candidate was indifferent to Israel and wanted the US out of Syria. Trump the
president has become Israel's biggest cheerleader and has launched US missiles at
Syria.
Faustian pacts
The current power-structure is much more frightened of a left insurgency of the kind
represented by Corbyn in the UK. He and his supporters are trying to reverse the accommodations
with power made by Blair. And that is why he finds himself relentlessly assaulted from every
direction – from his political opponents; from his supposed political allies, including
most of his own parliamentary party; and most especially from the state-corporate media,
including its bogus left-liberal elements like the Guardian and the BBC.
The past three years of attacks on Corbyn are how power manifests itself, shows its hand,
when it is losing. It is a strategy of last resort. A Blair or an Obama arrive in power having
already made so many compromises behind the scenes that their original policies are largely
toothless. They have made Faustian pacts as a condition for being granted access to power. This
is variously described as pragmatism, moderation, realism. More accurately, it should be
characterised as betrayal.
It does not stop when they reach high office. Obama made a series of early errors, thinking
he would have room to maneuver in the Middle East. He made a speech in Cairo about a "New
Beginning" for the region. A short time later he would help to snuff out the Egyptian Arab
Spring that erupted close by, in Tahrir Square. Egypt's military, long subsidized by
Washington, were allowed to take back power.
Obama won the 2009 Nobel peace prize, before he had time to do anything, for his
international diplomacy. And yet he stepped up the war on terror, oversaw the rapid expansion
of a policy of extrajudicial assassinations by drone, and presided over the extension of the
Iraq regime-change operation to Libya and Syria.
And he threatened penalties for Israel over its illegal settlements policy – a
five-decade war crime that has gone completely unpunished by the international community. But
in practice his inaction allowed Israel to entrench its settlements to the point where
annexation of parts of the West Bank is now imminent.
Tame or destroy
Neoliberalism is now so entrenched, so rapacious that even a moderate socialist like
Corbyn is seen as a major threat. And unlike a Blair, Obama or Trump, Corbyn is much harder to
tame because he has a grassroots movement behind him and to which he is ultimately
accountable .
In the US, the neoliberal wing of the Democratic party prevented the left-insurgent
candidate, Bernie Sanders, from contesting the presidency by rigging the system to keep him off
the ballot paper . In the UK, Corbyn got past those structural defences by accident. He
scraped into the leadership race as the token "loony-left" candidate, indulged by the Labour
party bureaucracy as a way to demonstrate that the election was inclusive and fair. He was
never expected to win.
Once he was installed as leader, the power-structure had two choices: to tame him like
Blair, or destroy him before he stood a chance of reaching high office. For those with short
memories, it is worth recalling how those alternatives were weighed in Corbyn's first
months.
On the one hand, he was derided across the media for being shabbily dressed, for being
unpatriotic, for threatening national security, for being sexist. This was the campaign to tame
him. On the other, the Murdoch-owned Times newspaper, the house journal of the neoliberal
elite, gave a platform to an anonymous army general to warn that the British military would
never allow Corbyn to reach office. There would be an army-led
coup before he ever got near 10 Downing Street.
In a sign of how ineffectual these power-structures now are, none of this made much
difference to Corbyn's fortunes with the public. A truly insurgent candidate cannot be damaged
by attacks from the power-elite. That's why he is where he is, after all.
So those wedded to the power-structure among his own MPs tried to wage a second leadership
contest to unseat him. As a wave of new members signed up to bolster his ranks of supporters,
and thereby turned the party into the largest in Europe, Labour party bureaucrats stripped as
many as possible of their right to vote in the hope Corbyn could be made to lose. They failed
again. He won with an even bigger majority.
Redefining words
It was in this context that the neoliberal order has had to play its most high-stakes card
of all. It has accused Corbyn, a lifelong anti-racism activist, of being an anti-semite for
supporting the Palestinian cause, for preferring Palestinian rights over brutal Israeli
occupation. To make this charge plausible, words have had to be redefined: "anti-semitism" no
longer means simply a hatred of Jews, but includes criticism of Israel; "Zionist" no longer
refers to a political movement that prioritises the rights of Jews over the native Palestinian
population, but supposedly stands as sinister code for all Jews. Corbyn's own party has been
forced under relentless pressure to adopt these malicious reformulations of meaning.
How anti-semitism is being weaponised, not to protect Jews but to protect the neoliberal
order, was made starkly clear this week when Corbyn criticised the financial elite that brought
the west to the brink of economic ruin a decade ago, and will soon do so again unless stringent
new regulations are introduced. Useful idiots like Stephen Pollard, editor of the rightwing
Jewish Chronicle, saw a chance to revive the anti-semitism canard once again, accusing Corbyn of
secretly meaning "Jews" when he actually spoke of bankers. It is a logic intended to make the
neoliberal elite untouchable, cloaking them in a security blanket relying on the anti-semitism
taboo.
Almost the entire Westminister political class and the entire corporate media class,
including the most prominent journalists in the left-liberal media, have reached the same
preposterous conclusion about Corbyn. Whatever the evidence in front of their and our eyes, he
is now roundly declared an
anti-semite . Up is now down, and day is night.
High-stakes strategy
This strategy is high stakes and dangerous for two reasons.
First, it risks creating the very problem it claims to be defending against. By crying wolf
continuously about Corbyn's supposed anti-semitism without any tangible evidence for it, and by
making an unfounded charge of anti-semitism the yardstick for judging Corbyn's competence for
office rather than any of his stated policies, the real anti-semite's argument begins to sound
more plausible.
In what could become self-fulfilling prophecy, the anti-semitic right's long-standing ideas
about Jewish cabals controlling the media and pulling levers behind the scenes could start to
resonate with an increasingly disillusioned and frustrated public. The weaponising of
anti-semitism by the neoliberal order to protect its power risks turning Jews into collateral
damage. It makes them another small or bigger drama in the increasingly desperate attempt to
create a narrative that deflects attention from the real power-structure.
And second, the effort to stitch together a narrative of Corbyn's anti-semitism out of
non-existent cloth is likely to encourage more and more people to take a step back from the
screen so that those unintelligible pixels can more easily be discerned as a smoking gun. The
very preposterousness of the allegations, and the fact that they are taken so seriously by a
political and media class selected for their submissiveness to the neoliberal order,
accelerates the process by which these opinion-formers discredit themselves. Their authority
wanes by the day, and as a result their usefulness to the power-structure rapidly
diminishes.
This is where we are now: in the final stages of a busted system that is clinging on to
credibility by its fingernails. Sooner or later, its grip will be lost and it will plunge into
the abyss. We will wonder how we ever fell for any of its deceptions.
In the meantime, we must get on with the urgent task of liberating our minds, of undoing the
toxic mental and emotional training we were subjected to, of critiquing and deriding those
whose job is to enforce the corrupt orthodoxy, and of replotting a course towards a future that
saves the human species from impending extinction.
No one pays me to write these blog posts. If you appreciated it, or any of the others,
please consider hitting the donate button in the right-hand margin (computer) or below
(phone).capitalism , corporations , Jeremy Corbyn
Professor Carroll Quigley - Last Lectures, The Western
Tradition, Fall of the American Republic
These quotations excerpted below are all taken from
Public Authority and the State in the Western Tradition
by Carroll Quigley.
It was the three part Oscar Iden Lecture at Georgetown University in 1978, a few months
before he died.
Quigley is perhaps most well known for being the author of
Tragedy and Hope
.
Later this week I intend to publish a very nice essay and summary of these thoughts in
this last lecture by Christopher Quigley.
Needless to say I do not necessarily agree with everything that Professor Quigley states
in his writings. But I do find them extraordinarily well informed and interesting. Given
that they were written in the 1970s his forecasting, although not perfect, was quite
prescient.
He does state that after Nixon it is unlikely that another President will be impeached,
because of the manner in which the impeachment process has become 'lawyerized.' How ironic
then that we have seen the impeachment of William J. Clinton, who himself was a student of
Quigley and who publicly thanked and acknowledged him as a mentor.
"And since what we get in history is never what any one individual or group is
struggling for, but is the resultant of diverse groups struggling, the area of
political action will be increasingly reduced to an arena where the individual,
detached from any sustaining community, is faced by gigantic and irresponsible
corporations."
Prof Carroll Quigley,
Part 1 The State of Communities
, Georgetown University
1978
"The reality of the last two hundred years of the history of the history of Western
Civilization, including the history of our own country, is not reflected in the general
brainwashing you have received, in the political mythology you have been hearing, or in
the historiography of the period as it exists today.
Persons, personalities if you wish, can be made only in communities. A community is
made up of intimate relationships among diverse types of individuals--a kinship group,
a local group, a neighbourhood, a village, a large family. Without communities, no
infant will be sufficiently socialized. He may grow up to be forty years old, he may
have made an extremely good living, he may have engendered half a dozen children, but
he is still an infant unless he has been properly socialized and that occurs in the
first four or five years of life. In our society today, we have attempted to throw the
whole burden of socializing out population upon the school system, to which the
individual arrives only at the age of four or five.
Human needs are the basis of power. The state, as I said, is a power structure on a
territorial basis, and the state will survive only if it has sufficient ability to
satisfy enough of these needs. It is not enough for it to have organized force, and
when a politician says, "Elect me President and I will establish law and order," he
means organized force or power of other kinds. I won't analyze this level; it's too
complex and we don't have time. I will simply say that the object of the political
level is to legitimise power: that is, to get people, in their minds, to recognize and
accept the actual power relationship in their society.
We no longer have intellectually satisfying arrangements in our educational system, in
our arts, humanities or anything else; instead we have slogans and ideologies. An
ideology is a religious or emotional expression; it is not an intellectual expression.
So when a society is reaching its end, in the last couple of centuries you have what I
call misplacement of satisfactions. You find your emotional satisfaction in making a
lot of money, or in being elected to the White House in 1972, or in proving to the
poor, half-naked people of Southeast Asia that you can kill them in large numbers.
And then, as the society continues and does not reform, you get increased
militarisation. You can certainly see that process in Western Civilization and in the
history of the United States. In the last forty years our society has been drastically
militarized. It isn't yet as militarized as other societies and other periods have
been; we still have a long way to go in this direction. Our civilization has a couple
of centuries to go, I would guess. Things are moving faster than they did in any
civilization I ever knew before this one, but we probably will have another century or
two.
As this process goes on, you get certain other things. I've hinted at a number of them.
One is misplacement of satisfactions. You find your satisfactions--your emotional
satisfaction, your social satisfaction-- not in moment to moment relationships with
nature or other people, but with power, or with wealth, or even with organized
force--sadism, in some cases: Go out and murder a lot of people in a war, a just war,
naturally.
The second thing that occurs as this goes on is increasing remoteness of desires from
needs. I've mentioned this. The next thing is an increasing confusion between means and
ends. The ends are the human needs, but if I asked people what these needs are, they
can hardly tell me. Instead they want the means they have been brainwashed to accept,
that they think will satisfy their needs. But it's perfectly obvious that the methods
that we have been using are not working. Never was any society
in human history as rich and as powerful as Western Civilization and the United States,
and it is not a happy society.
In its final stages, the civilization becomes a dualism of almost totalitarian imperial
power and an amorphous mass culture of atomized individuals.
Freedom is freedom from restraints. We're always under restraints. The difference
between a stable society and an unstable one is that the restraints in an unstable one
are external. In a stable society, government ultimately becomes unnecessary ; the
restraints on people's actions are internal, there're self disciplined, they are the
restraints you have accepted because they make it possible for you to satisfy all your
needs to the degree that is good for you.
Communities and societies must rest upon cooperation and not on competition. Anyone who
says that society can be run on the basis of everyone's trying to maximise his own
greed is talking total nonsense. All the history of human society shows that it's
nonsense. And to teach it in schools, and to go on television and call it the
American way of life still doesn't make it true. Competition and envy cannot become the
basis of any society or any community.
The fundamental, all pervasive cause of world instability today is the destruction of
communities by the commercialisation of all human relationships and the resulting
neuroses and psychoses. The technological acceleration of transportation, communication
and weapons systems is now creating power areas wider than existing political
structures. We still have at least half a dozen political structures in Europe, but our
technology and the power system of Western Civilization today are such that most of
Europe should be a single power system. This creates instability.
Another cause of today's instability is that we now have a society in America, Europe
and much of the world which is totally dominated by the two elements of sovereignty
that are not included in the state structure: control of credit and banking and the
corporation. These are free of political controls and social responsibility, and they
have largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American society.
They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labour, entrepreneurial-managerial
skills, and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of
production. The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they can
control:
capital.
So now everything is capital intensive, including medicine, and it hasn't worked. ['financialised'
is a more current term - J.]
Secrecy in government exists for only one reason: to prevent the American people from
knowing what's going on. It is nonsense to believe that anything our government does is
not known to the Russians at about the moment it happens.
To me, the most ominous flaw in our constitutional set-up is the fact that the federal
government does not have control over of money and credit and does not have control of
corporations. It is therefore not really sovereign. And it is not really responsible,
because it is now controlled by these two groups, corporations, and those who control
the flows of money.
The administrative system and elections are dominated today by the private power of
money flows and corporation activities.
Certain thin regulations were established in the United States regarding corporations:
restricted purpose and activities especially by banks and insurance companies;
prohibition on one corporation's holding the stock of another without specific
statutory grant; limits on the span of the life of the corporation, requiring recurrent
legislative scrutiny; limits on total assets; limits on new issues of capital, so that
the proportion of control of existing stockholders could be maintained; limits on the
votes allowed to any stockholder, regardless of the size of his holding; and so forth.
By 1890 all of these had been destroyed by judicial interpretation which extended to
corporations -- fictitious persons -- those constitutional rights guaranteed, especially by
the Fifteenth Amendment, to living persons.
Now I want to say good night. Do not be pessimistic. Life goes on; life is fun. And if
a civilization crashes, it deserves to. When Rome fell, the Christian answer was,
'Create our own communities.'"
Prof Carroll Quigley,
The State of Individuals
, Georgetown University 1978
Famous song of Vladimir Vysotsky about Soviet system. Sound now as if it was written about the current crisis of neoliberalism
I found several translation of it at Vysotsky Translations Of
course, original is better, but it is assessable only for Russian-speaking readers
Notable quotes:
"... Yes, something wrong along the road But at the end nightmare Neither church nor even pub Non of them is right way Nor my friends, oh nor my friends All are wrong, friends, I can say ..."
"... At the end of that long road Nothing but the gallows. ..."
"... Nothing's holy anymore, Neither drink nor prayer. ..."
Dreaming I see yellow lights
Hoarsely scream while dreaming
Give me time, oh give me time
Morning will be easy
But the morning was also hard
My party have been over
So I am smoking on empty gut
Or drinking in hangover
I saw the pub-a lot of fun
And many sexy women
This place is heaven for drunkard
But for me it's prison
In holy church was dusk and stunk
Priest burned incensed honey
No, even church was wrong, I think
Nothing there was holy
I saw wild field along the stream
That God forgot forever
Blue bells were only in clear field
And road that led somewhere
Dark ancient forest by this road
With evil witches orgies
And at the end of that scary road
Were guillotine and axes
So loosing breath I climbed on hill
To save myself from horror
I saw red alder on the top of hill
But at the foot-black cherry
If even ivy twined hills slope
I might be happy see it
Or, if there was only something else
But nothing pleased my spirit
So, I am dreaming on empty gut
Or drinking in hangover
Yes, something wrong along the road
But at the end nightmare
Neither church nor even pub
Non of them is right way
Nor my friends, oh nor my friends
All are wrong, friends, I can say
Hey one, another one,
And many, many, many, many ones
Another one and other ones
All are wrong, I can say.
In my dream burn yellow lights,
And I spill my sorrow:
"Do not go - please, stay the night!
Wait! Fresh for the morrow!"
But the morning seems all wrong,
No joy - more's the pity -
Ugh - the hair of the dog,
Of the dog that bit you!
In the bars, red, bloodshot eyes,
All that sparkling poison -
Clowns' and beggars' paradise
And my gilded prison.
In the church, stench, Evensong,
Even gold looks shabby...
No, the church, it feels all wrong,
Not the way it should be!
In a hurry, I climb up,
Why? I do not know.
There's an alder-tree on top,
A cherry-tree below.
Wish there was plush on the slope -
It would look less scrubby.
There is not a bloody hope,
Nothing's as it should be.
I keep searching high and low:
Oh my God, where are you?
By the roadside, bluebells grow,
And the road climbs higher.
All along the road, a wood
Full of witches, fellows.
At the end of that long road
Nothing but the gallows.
Horses dancing all along,
Smoothly dance the horses.
On the road it seems all wrong,
At the end, much worser.
Nothing's holy anymore,
Neither drink nor prayer.
It's all wrong, boys, by the Lord,
No, boys, it's not fair...
Into my dream creep yellow lights,
And I shout myself hoarse in my sleep:
"Wait a bit, wait a bit -
It'll get better in the morning."
But in the morning nothing is right,
It's no fun anymore:
You either smoke on empty stomach,
Or drink from a hangover.
In the drinking-house there is a familiar sight
Of a green shot, white napkins, -
It's a heaven for beggars and buffoons,
I feel like a caged bird in it.
The church dissolves in stench and darkness ,
The deacons are smoking the incense...
No, nothing is right in here, either,
Nothing is the way it's supposed to be!
I hurry off onto the hill,
So nothing would come before me, -
There grows an alder on the hill
And under the hill - a cherry tree.
If only the ivy twined the slope, -
It would bring me a slight consolation,
If there only was something else...
But no, nothing is the way it should be!
I go off onto the field, along the river.
Tons of light, no God.
Corn-flowers in the clear field
And a road leading far away.
Along the road - a deep forest
With evil witches.
And at the end of that road -
A guillotine and axes.
Somewhere horses are dancing to the beat,
Half-heartedly and smoothly..
Nothing is right along the road,
And it's no better at the end of it.
And not the church or the drinking-house -
Nothing is holy!
No, folks, nothing is right!
Nothing is right, folks...
"... 'Neoliberalism' is just a sanitised-sounding expression, to cover-up the fact that what we are really seeing here is re-branded, far-right, corporatist ideology. ..."
"... There is a major dividing line. There are those who recognise the abuses of the system and lobby for changes and there are those who lobby for further exploitation. ..."
"... The West became over-indebted when it embraced globalisation which necessarily impoverishes the Middle and Working Classes of the developed nations. A chap called Jimmy Goldsmith warned of this and was widely condemned for it. There is another issue Guardianistas would rather not confront : you can a welfare state or you can have open borders. But you can't have both. ..."
"... Private enterprise is inefficient because at it's heart it rules out cooperation. Being happiest if it's a monopoly, there's nothing a business would like better than wipe out all competition. ..."
"... Right now, the neoliberals think that those in the Far East are the workers and those in the West are the consumers, until the Far East becomes the market and wages so low in the West that they become the workers, unless of course some kind souls decide to invest money in Education, Health and infrastructure in Africa on a huge scale, so we then have Africa as the workers and the far East as the market, and the West, apart from those who own large numbers of shares or business outright, presumably either starve to death or pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and start all over again, inventing and setting up completely new industries, providing the newly universally educated and healthy Chinese and Africans and South Americans haven't done it first. ..."
"... The economic model we have is bankrupt and in its death throes ..."
"... Except it's not. It is still very much alive and growing. ..."
"... deregulated capitalism has failed. That is the product of the last 20 years. The pure market is a fantasy just as communism is or any other ideology. In a pure capitalist economy all the banks of the western world would have bust and indeed the false value "earned" in the preceding 20 years would have been destroyed. ..."
"... "Multinationals need to recognise that paying tax is an investment. Without that tax, their markets will slowly evaporate." However, the gains for the transnational rich are immediate and enormous, while the failure of their markets is slow and, so far, almost entirely painless. ..."
"... Accountants now hold the whip hand in government and business. They know the price of everything but the value of nothing. They advocate selling off industries, outsourcing to low wage economies, zero hours contracts and deregulation (under the bogus campaign line of cutting red tape). ..."
"... Google, Amazon and Apple haven't taught anyone in this country to read. But even though an illiterate market wouldn't be so great for them, they avoid their taxes, because they can , because they are more powerful than governments. ..."
"... If you invent a set of rules that says a country that deficit spends above an arbitrary percentage of its GDP is horribly inefficient and far too high then it should not be a surprise that when that happens, it is described as such. ..."
"... But the basic problem is this: it costs a lot of money to cultivate a market – a group of consumers – and the more sophisticated the market is, the more expensive it is to cultivate them. A developed market needs to be populated with educated, healthy, cultured, law-abiding and financially secure people ..."
"... The economic model we have is bankrupt and in its death throes is gobbling up the last scintilla of surplus that can be extracted from the poor ( anyone not independently wealthy). ..."
'Neoliberalism' is just a sanitised-sounding expression, to cover-up the fact that what we are really seeing here is re-branded,
far-right, corporatist ideology.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."
- Benito Mussolini
There is a major dividing line. There are those who recognise the abuses of the system and lobby for changes and there
are those who lobby for further exploitation.
So on the one hand there are relatively rich philanthropists who are quietly supporting campaigns to redistribute wealth and
our abstaining, and on the other you have people arguing for repealing employment legislation.Worst of the lot are people who
pretend to care about the poor but then proceed to fill their own boots.
As consequence people like Warren Buffet should perhaps be among the good guys, whilst people like Tony Blair are the worst
of lot.
All very true. The failures of markets are well documented in economics: the tendency towards monopoly, the failure to value social
goods etc.
In addition, it is ironic that the arch advocates of the 'free market' came begging ( read lobbying) to their governments insisting
upon public financial bailouts for themselves or their counter parties. It was the 'free markets' failure to correctly price 'risk'
that was the route of the economic collapse.
As regards access to 'free markets' it seems patently obvious that if you extract the most money from that market (Amazon et
al), you should contribute a fair share towards the infrastructure of that market: roads, educations, health care etc.
@EllisWyatt - ... we have a real problem with corporations that have a default setting of minimize taxes through ever more
complex structures. It can't be beyond the wit of HMRC to reduce the complexity of the tax legislation and make it harder to
avoid? The prize is continued access to the UK market
We also have the problem that for half the households in the land the level of welfare and benfits rather than wages is the
major determinant of their disposable income and general prosperity.
The welfare code is now comparable in size to the tax code. The tax-benefit affairs of the working poor in the UK are now becoming
as complex as those of the companies that employ them.
The welfare rights industry, which is essentially tax-benefit-lawyering for claimants, is now as large and complex as the tax-lawyering
industry for companies.
It really is insane that we set the minimum wage so low that it attracts income tax, and then attempt to collect tax from the
employing company to fund a tax credit to top up the same low wages that the same company is paying.
The neoliberalism that the IMF still preaches pays no account to any of this. It insists that the provision of work alone is
enough of an invisible hand to sustain a market
Does it? where does it say that? An article which as usual blanket condemns "financial institutions" but actually means banks.
The West became over-indebted when it embraced globalisation which necessarily impoverishes the Middle and Working Classes of
the developed nations. A chap called Jimmy Goldsmith warned of this and was widely condemned for it. There is another issue Guardianistas
would rather not confront : you can a welfare state or you can have open borders. But you can't have both.
Though I'd say private enterprise is capable of building markets - but not of sustaining them. Take books: If few people
know how to read, someone will start a fee paying school to teach those who can pay for it. Then books will take off. And that
will generate money for some, who'll send their kids to school.
However it will always, inevitably, crash at some point: Business can build up, but will always do it in destructuve cycles
- exactly like the brush fires that destroy and regenerate the savannas. As somebright spark once said: Capitalism contains the
seeds of it's own destruction, or something along those lines.
And we don't want to live like that - so we have regulation, and the state.And the state fertilises, and safeguards, by cutting
the grass, making mulch, and spreading the rich gooey muck all over the nice, green, verdant, state controlled pampa.
The cowboys, now, they prefer no cutting of grass, and letting their cattle chomp away undistrurbed. And now my analogy is
starting to wear thin.
The bottom line: Private enterprise is inefficient because at it's heart it rules out cooperation. Being happiest if it's
a monopoly, there's nothing a business would like better than wipe out all competition.
Hence, the necessity for state spending, and state regulation, which the private sector is blind to, because it can't look
ahead.
People are members of families, and are employers and workers, who are customers or clients, and part of
their local communities and professions and trades and hobbyists/clubs who are large scale wholesale consumers who create the
markets that provides employment and income to individuals who are workers. And, and, one big circle.
Right now, the neoliberals think that those in the Far East are the workers and those in the West are the consumers, until
the Far East becomes the market and wages so low in the West that they become the workers, unless of course some kind souls decide
to invest money in Education, Health and infrastructure in Africa on a huge scale, so we then have Africa as the workers and the
far East as the market, and the West, apart from those who own large numbers of shares or business outright, presumably either
starve to death or pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and start all over again, inventing and setting up completely new industries,
providing the newly universally educated and healthy Chinese and Africans and South Americans haven't done it first.
OK. I was against it for a long time, but go ahead. There's no way of avoiding it. Eat the Rich. Apart from the fact that ultra
thin is fashionable, and with all that dieting and exercising, they are the only people who actually get the time for lots of
exercise these days, and they'll taste incredibly tough and stringy.
@CaptainGrey - Ssshhh not on CiF, we all know that capitalism has failed its just that we can't point to a successful alternative
model because such a thing has never existed, its just that this time its different and the model I advocate will lead us all
to the sunny uplands of utopia.
Obviously there will be a little bit of coercion and oppression to get us to those sunny uplands, but you can't make an omlette
etc. plus don't worry that stuff will only happen to "bad people"
The economic model we have is bankrupt and in its death throes
Except it's not. It is still very much alive and growing. The "alternatives" have crashed and burned save Cuba and North
Korea. Capitalism, especially the beneficial capitalism of the NHS, free education etc. has won and countless people have gained
as a result.
@CaptainGrey - deregulated capitalism has failed. That is the product of the last 20 years. The pure market is a fantasy just
as communism is or any other ideology. In a pure capitalist economy all the banks of the western world would have bust and indeed
the false value "earned" in the preceding 20 years would have been destroyed.
In the 19th century based on experience the public services became part of the public sector to avoid corruption and corporate
blackmail. The neoclassical revolution of the late 20th century has pushed us back to days when elites regarded the state as their
property. Democracy was a threat which won out either through the British model or violent revolution. A small elite cannot endure
if the majority feel exploited.
The Bilderberg Conference should look to the past and learn from the mistakes committed. Neoclassicism will eventually impoverish
them
@UnevenSurface - Multinationals need to recognise that paying tax is an investment. Without that tax, their markets will
slowly evaporate.
"Multinationals need to recognise that paying tax is an investment. Without that tax, their markets will slowly evaporate."
However, the gains for the transnational rich are immediate and enormous, while the failure of their markets is slow and, so far,
almost entirely painless.
@UnevenSurface - I think corporation tax is becoming obsolete given globalization and the increasing dominance of online / global
distribution.
Amazon, Starbucks (and to a lesser extent Google) need to have people on the ground in their market, for customer service,
distribution, warehouse staff, baristas etc. So they'll pay employer taxes etc.
The question is is that enough? I think we are missing a trick with the UK market due to outdated tax legislation that hasn't
really changed in 30 years.
After the US the UK is arguably the most attractive market in the world. Large, homogenous, wealthy with a low propensity to
save and a rapid rate of adoption of new technology / products. We need to think about how we can exploit this in relation to
corporate taxes because even though I am far from left wing, we have a real problem with corporations that have a default setting
of minimise taxes through ever more complex structures.
It can't be beyond the wit of HMRC to reduce the complexity of the tax legislation and make it harder to avoid? The prize is
continued access to the UK market
Accountants now hold the whip hand in government and business. They know the price of everything but the value of nothing.
They advocate selling off industries, outsourcing to low wage economies, zero hours contracts and deregulation (under the bogus
campaign line of cutting red tape).
All of these policies will ultimately end up with capitalism destroying itself. Low wage stagnation will result in penniless
consumers which results in no growth which results in cuttin wages to maintain shareholder returns which results in penniless
consumers etc etc etc. All our institutions are gradually eroded and life for the average citizen will become more and more unpleasant.
Profit share may be a way forward, it's not perfect, companies can effectively use it to freeze wages and benefit from unpaid
overtime, that creates unemployment as four people working a couple of hours extra ever day are denying someone else a job, but
used in the right way it could ensure people get a share in the wealth they help create.
At the sharp end it's tough, at the
company I worked at, all the managers were summoned to a meeting in September and told they had until Christmas to increase turnover
and profits, or they would be out of a job.
At the same company, one of my managers complained that a successful manager at another branch was a crook. The CEO replied
'Yes, but he's a crook that makes a million pounds in profit every year'. I wonder how Deborah's article would have gone down
with him?
Everything was easier when the U S and Europe ran the world's economies with Bank regulations, currency controls and only the
establishment could avoid income, capital gains and IHT taxes and grow wealthy generation after generation. Today there are simply
too many players in the global arena and the rules have been torn up. We are in a jungle where greed is rife and only the powerful
and corrupt survive, shipping and burying their loot in offshore havens.
We need a new global order with a change of mentality
and more morality among the world's politicians, banking and corporate leaders. Unless we end corruption and exploitation of natural
resources in the poor nations and a fairer distribution of the economic wealth the world faces economic and social collapse
Google, Amazon and Apple haven't taught anyone in this country to read. But even though an illiterate market wouldn't
be so great for them, they avoid their taxes, because they can , because they are more powerful than governments.
Is it beyond the wit of government to close these (perfectly legal) loopholes? Otherwise, what you are asking for is for these
companies to make charitible donations to government - nothing wrong with that per se, but let's not hide behind the misleading
term 'tax avoidance' - companies are obliged to minimise taxes within the law, face it.
It is perfectly clear that in much of the EU public expenditure has been horribly inefficient and far too high
If you invent a set of rules that says a country that deficit spends above an arbitrary percentage of its GDP is horribly
inefficient and far too high then it should not be a surprise that when that happens, it is described as such.
Whether that has any basis in reality or, as I suspect, is only relevant within its own ridiculous framework, is surely the
question.
Deborah Orr is established writer for the Guardian and Married to a Will Self whose is almost certainly a millionaire. She
is one of the rich. The idea that envy is driving her politics is just utterly absurd, and suggests a total lack of reflection.
But the basic problem is this: it costs a lot of money to cultivate a market – a group of consumers – and the more sophisticated
the market is, the more expensive it is to cultivate them. A developed market needs to be populated with educated, healthy,
cultured, law-abiding and financially secure people
Not really; Amazon is just as happy to sell us trashy films, multipacks of chocolate, obesity drugs and baseball bats to stove
our neighbour's head in. There's certainly an argument to be made that companies should have a duty to invest in the infrastructure
that enables their product to be transported, stored etc...but they shouldn't be expected to give a toss if their customers are
unhealthy ignoramuses. A market's a market.
But some countries manage to do this much more efficiently and effectively than others.
In Europe it would appear to be the Social Democratic Nordic countries and Germany which has very strong employment rights.
Korea's economic growth was based on government investment and a degree of protectionism. These are precisely the ideas that neoliberalism
opposes.
If they had adopted The Keynes Plan at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference then the IMF and the World Bank would never have been
set up. We most likely would not have had the euro crisis and the problem of trade imbalances between counties would most likely
have gone away.
Now that is what I call 'Keynesian'. Feel free to continue to make up your own definitions though.
Socialism for the 1% with the rest scraping around for the crumbs in an ever more divided world run by The Bilderbergers who play
the politicians like puppets.
@emkayoh - I am not sure its in its death throes, I think what we are seeing is capitalism attempting to transform itself again.
The success of that transformation will depend on how willing people across the western world to put up with reduced welfare,
poverty pay and almost no employment rights. If we say no and make things too hot for the ruling class we have a chance to take
control of the future direction of our world, if not then what's the point.
This is a strange rant. Everyone agrees that free markets need to be nurtured by appropriate state institutions. But some countries
manage to do this much more efficiently and effectively than others. It is perfectly clear that in much of the EU public expenditure
has been horribly inefficient and far too high.
There is no contradiction between being in favour of free markets and believing that markets and societies should be nurtured
appropriately. We think people should be free and all accept that they should be nurtured.
So why, exactly, given the huge amount of investment needed to create such a market, should access to it then be "free"?
Corporate taxation is best explained as the license that business pays to access the market -- which is in turn created through
the schools, hospitals, roads, etc. that the tax pays for. Unfortunately the new Corporate Social Irresponsibility being acted
out by multinationals today neatly avoids paying that license, and sooner or later will damage them. Multinationals need to recognize
that paying tax is an investment. Without that tax, their markets will slowly evaporate.
The economic model we have is bankrupt and in its death throes is gobbling up the last scintilla of surplus that can be extracted
from the poor ( anyone not independently wealthy).
"... What sticks in the neoliberalism craw is that the state provides these services instead of private businesses, and as such "rob" them of juicy profits! The state, the last easy cash cow! ..."
"... Who could look at the way markets function and conclude there's any freedom? Only a neoliberal cult member. They cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be dissuaded. They cannot be persuaded. Only the market knows best, and the fact that the market is a corrupt, self serving whore is completely ignored by the ideology of their Church. ..."
"... when Thatcher and Reagan deregulated the financial markets in the 80s, that's when the trouble began which in turn led to the immense crash in 2008. ..."
"... Neo-liberalism is just another symptom of liberal democracy which is government by oligarchs with a veneer of democracy ..."
"... The state has merged with the corporations so that what is good for the corporations is good for the state and visa versa. The larger and richer the state/corporations are, the more shyster lawyers they hire to disguise misdeeds and unethical behavior. ..."
"... If you support a big government, you are supporting big corporations as well. The government uses the taxpayer as an eternal fount of fresh money and calls it their own to spend as they please. Small businesses suffer unfairly because they cannot afford the shyster lawyers and accountants that protect the government and the corporations, but nobody cares about them. ..."
"... Deborah's point about the illogical demands of neoliberalism are indeed correct, which is somewhat ironic as neoliberalism puts objective rationality at the heart of its philosophy, but I digress... ..."
"... There would not be NHS, free education etc. without socialism; in fact they are socialism. It took the Soviet-style socialism ("statism") 70 years to collapse. The neoliberalistic capitalism has already started to collapse after 30 years. ..."
"... I'm always amused that neoliberal - indeed, capitalist - apologists cannot see the hypocrisy of their demands for market access. Communities create and sustain markets, fund and maintain infrastructure, produce and maintain new consumers. Yet the neolibs decry and destroy. Hypocrites or destructive numpties - never quite decided between Pickles and Gove ..."
"... 97% of all OUR money has been handed over to these scheming crooks. Stop bailing out the banks with QE. Take back what is ours -- state control over the creation of money. Then let the banks revert to their modest market-based function of financial intermediaries. ..."
"... The State can't be trusted to create our money? Well they could hardly do a worse job than the banks! Best solution would be to distribute state-created money as a Citizen's Income. ..."
"... To promote the indecent obsession for global growth Australia, burdened with debt of around 250 billion dollars, is to borrow and pay interest on a further 7 billion dollars to lend to the International Monetary Fund so as it can lend it to poorer nations to burden them with debt. ..."
This private good, public bad is a stupid idea, and a totally artificial divide. After all,
what are "public spends"? It is the money from private individuals, and companies,
clubbing together to get services they can't individually afford.
What sticks in the
neoliberalism craw is that the state provides these services instead of private businesses,
and as such "rob" them of juicy profits! The state, the last easy cash cow!
Neoliberalism is a modern curse. Everything about it is bad and until we're free of it, it
will only ever keep trying to turn us into indentured labourers. It's acolytes are required
to blind themselves to logic and reason to such a degree they resemble Scientologists or
Jehovah's Witnesses more than people with any sort of coherent political ideology, because
that's what neoliberalism actually is... a cult of the rich, for the rich, by the rich... and
it's followers in the general population are nothing but moron familiars hoping one day to be
made a fully fledged bastard.
Who could look at the way markets function and conclude there's any freedom? Only a
neoliberal cult member. They cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be dissuaded. They cannot
be persuaded. Only the market knows best, and the fact that the market is a corrupt, self
serving whore is completely ignored by the ideology of their Church.
It's subsumed the entire planet, and waiting for them to see sense is a hopeless cause. In
the end it'll probably take violence to rid us of the Neoliberal parasite... the turn of the
century plague.
"Capitalism, especially the beneficial capitalism of the NHS, free education etc. has
won and countless people have gained as a result."
I agree with you and it was this beneficial version of capitalism that brought down the
Iron Curtain. Working people in the former Communist countries were comparing themselves with
working people in the west and wanted a piece of that action. Cuba has hung on because people
there compare themselves with their nearest capitalist neighbor Haiti and they don't want a
piece of that action. North Korea well North Korea is North Korea.
Isn't it this beneficial capitalism that is being threatened now though? When the wall
came down it was assumed that Eastern European countries would become more like us. Some have
but who would have thought that British working people would now be told, by the likes of
Kwasi Kwarteng and his Britannia Unchained chums, that we have to learn to accept working
conditions that are more like those in the Eastern European countries that got left behind
and that we are now told that our version of Capitalism is inferior to the version adopted by
the Communist Party of China?
@bullwinkle - No , when Thatcher and Reagan deregulated the financial markets in the 80s,
that's when the trouble began which in turn led to the immense crash in 2008.
Neo-liberalism is just another symptom of liberal democracy which is government by oligarchs
with a veneer of democracy.
This type of government began in America about 150 years ago with the Rockefellers,
Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, Ford etc who took advantage of new inventions, cheap immigrant labour
and financial deregulation in finance and social mores to amass wealth for themselves and
chaos and austerity for workers.
All this looks familiar again today with new and old oligarchs hiding behind large
corporations taking advantage of the invention of the €uro, mass immigration into
western Europe and deregulation of the financial "markets" and social mores to amass wealth
for a super-wealthy elite and chaos and austerity for workers.
So if we want to see where things went wrong we need only go back 150 years to what happened
to America. There we can also see our future?
The beneficial capitalism of the NHS, free education etc. has won
Free education and the NHS are state institutions. As Debbie said, Amazon never taught
anyone to read. Beneficial capitalism is an oxymoron resulting from your lack of
understanding.
especially the beneficial capitalism of the NHS, free education etc. has won and
countless people have gained as a result.
At one and the same time being privatized and having their funding squeezed, a direct
result of the neoliberal dogma capitalism of austerity. Free access is being eroded by the
likes of ever larger student loans and prescription costs for a start.
they avoid their taxes, because they can, because they are more powerful than
governments
Let's not get carried away here. Let's consider some of the things governments can do,
subject only to a 5 yearly check and challenge:
force people upon pain of imprisonment to pay taxes to them
pay out that tax money to whomever they like
spend money they don't have by borrowing against obligations imposed on future taxpayers
without their agreement
kill people in wars, often from the comfort of a computer screen thousands of miles
away
print money and give it to whomever they like,
get rid of nation state currencies and replace them with a single, centrally controlled
currency
make laws and punish people who break them, including the ability to track them down in
most places in the world if they try and run away.
use laws to create monopolies and favour special interests
Let's now consider what power apple have...
- they can make iPhones and try to sell them for a profit by responding to the demands of
the mass consumer market. That's it. In fact, they are forced to do this by their owners who
only want them to do this, and nothing else. If they don't do this they will cease to
exist.
The state has merged with the corporations so that what is good for the corporations is good
for the state and visa versa. The larger and richer the state/corporations are, the more
shyster lawyers they hire to disguise misdeeds and unethical behavior.
If you support a big government, you are supporting big corporations as well. The
government uses the taxpayer as an eternal fount of fresh money and calls it their own to
spend as they please. Small businesses suffer unfairly because they cannot afford the shyster
lawyers and accountants that protect the government and the corporations, but nobody cares
about them. Remember, that Green Energy is big business, just like Big Pharma and Big Oil.
Most government shills have personally invested in Green Energy not because they care about
the environment, only because they know that it is a safe investment protected by government
for government. The same goes for large corporations who befriend government and visa
versa.
@NeilThompson - It's all very well for Deborah to recommend that the well paid share work.
Journalists, consultants and other assorted professionals can afford to do so. As a
self-employed tradesman, I'd be homeless within a month.
@SpinningHugo - Interesting that those who are apparently concerned with prosperity for all
and international solidarity are happy to ignore the rest of the world when it's going well,
preferring to prophesy apocalypse when faced with government spending being slightly reduced
at home.
@1nn1t - That is a point which just isn't made enough. This is the first group of politicians
for whom a global conflict seems like a distant event.
As a result we have people like Blair who see nothing wrong with invading countries at a
whim, or conservatives and UKIP who fail to understand the whole point of the European Court
of Human Rights.
They seem to act without thought of our true place in the world, without regard for the
truly terrible capacity humanity has for self destruction.
Deborah's point about the illogical demands of neoliberalism are indeed correct, which is
somewhat ironic as neoliberalism puts objective rationality at the heart of its philosophy,
but I digress...
The main problem with replacing neoliberalism with a more rational, and fairer system,
entails that people like Deborah accept that they will be less wealthy. And that my friends is the main problem. People like Deborah, while they are more than
happy to point the fingers at others, are less than happy to accept that they are also part
of the problem.
(Generalisation Caveat: I don't know in actuality if Deborah would be unhappy to be less
wealthy in exchange for a fairer system, she doesn't say)
Good critique of conservative-neoliberalism, unless you subscribe to it and subordinate any
morals or other values to it.
She mentions an internal tension and I think that's because conservatism and neoliberal
market ideology are different beasts.
There are different models of capitalism quite clearly the social democratic version in
Scandinavia or the "Bismarkian" German version have worked a lot better than the UKs.
Yet, mealy-mouthed and hotly contested as this minor mea culpa is, it's still a sign
that financial institutions may slowly be coming round to the idea that they are the
problem.
How is it a sign of that? We are offered no clues.
What they don't seem to acknowledge is that the merry days of reckless lending are never
going to return;
Try reading a history of financial crashes to dislodge this idea.
... even if they do, the same thing will happen again, but more quickly and more
savagely.
This may or may not be true but here it is mere assertion.
The IMF exists to lend money to governments, so it's comic that it wags its finger at
governments that run up debt.
At this point I start to have real doubts as to whether Deborah Orr has actually read even
the Executive Summary of the Report this article is ostensibly a response to.
All the comments that follow about the need for public infrastructure, education,
regulated markets and so on are made as if they were a criticism of the IMF and yet the IMF
says many of those same things itself. The IMF position may, of course, be contradictory -
but then that is something that would need to be demonstrated. It seems that Deborah has not
got beyond reading a couple of Guardian articles on the issues she discusses and therefore is
in no position to do this.
Efforts are being made to narrow the skills gap with other countries in the region, as
the authorities look to take full advantage of Bangladesh's favorable demographics and help
create conditions for more labor-intensive led growth. The government is also scaling up
spending on education, science and technology, and information and communication
technology.
Which seems to be the sort of thing Deborah Orr is calling for. She should spend a little
time on the IMF website before criticising the institution. It is certainly one that merits
much criticism - but it needs to be informed.
And the solution to the problems? For Deborah Orr the response
... from the start should have been a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth
is created and distributed around the globe, a "structural adjustment", as the philosopher
John Gray has said all along.
Does anyone have any idea what this is supposed to mean? There are certainly no leads on
this in the link given to "the philosopher" John Gray. And what a strange reference that is.
John Gray, in his usual cynical mode, dismisses the idea of progress being achieved by the
EU. But then I suppose that is consistent from a man who dismisses the idea of progress
itself.
... Conservative neoliberalism is entirely without logic.
The first step in serious political analysis is to understand that the people one opposes
are not crazy and are not devoid of logic. If that is not clearly understood then all that is
left is the confrontation of assertion and contrary assertion. Of course Conservative
neoliberalism has a logic. It is one I do not agree with but it is a logic all the same.
The neoliberalism that the IMF still preaches pays no account to any of this [the need
for public investment and a recognition of the multiple roles that individuals have].
Wrong again.
It insists that the provision of work alone is enough of an invisible hand to sustain a
market.
And again.
This stuff can't be made up as you go along on the basis of reading a couple of newspaper
articles. You actually have to do some hard reading to get to grip with the issues. I can see
no signs of that in this piece.
@NotAgainAgain - We are going off topic and that is in no small part down to my own fault, so
apologies. Just to pick up the point, I guess my unease with the likes of Buffet, Cooper-Hohn
or even the wealthy Guardian columnists is that they are criticizing the system from a
position of power and wealth.
So its easy to advocate change if you feel that you are in the vanguard of defining that
change i.e. the reforms you advocate may leave you worse off, but at a level you feel
comfortable with (the prime example always being Polly's deeply relaxed attitude to swingeing
income tax increases when her own lifestyle will be protected through wealth).
I guess I am a little skeptical because I either see it as managed decline, a smokescreen
or at worst mean spiritedness of people prepared to accept a reasonable degree of personal
pain if it means other people whom dislike suffer much greater pain.
"There is a clear legal basis in Germany for the workplace representation of employees in
all but the very smallest companies. Under the Works Constitution Act, first passed in 1952
and subsequently amended, most recently in 2001, a works council can be set up in all private
sector workplaces with at least five employees."
The UK needs to wake up to the fact that managers are sometimes inept or corrupt and will
destroy the companies they work for, unless their are adequate mechanisms to hold poor
management to account.
Capitalism, especially the beneficial capitalism of the NHS, free education etc. has
won
There would not be NHS, free education etc. without socialism; in fact they are
socialism. It took the Soviet-style socialism ("statism") 70 years to collapse. The neoliberalistic
capitalism has already started to collapse after 30 years.
I'm always amused that neoliberal - indeed, capitalist - apologists cannot see the hypocrisy
of their demands for market access. Communities create and sustain markets, fund and maintain
infrastructure, produce and maintain new consumers. Yet the neolibs decry and destroy.
Hypocrites or destructive numpties - never quite decided between Pickles and Gove, y'see.
@JamesValencia - Actually on reflection you are correct and I was wrong in my attack on the
author above. Having re-read the article its a critique of institutions rather than people so
my points were wide of the mark.
I still think that well heeled Guardian writers aren't really in a position to attack the
wealthy and politically connected, but I'll save that for a thread when they explicitly do
so, rather than the catch all genie of neoliberalism.
@CaptainGrey - deregulated capitalism has failed. That is the product of the last 20
years. The pure market is a fantasy just as communism is or any other ideology. In a pure
capitalist economy all the banks of the western world would have bust and indeed the false
value "earned" in the preceding 20 years would have been destroyed.
If the pure market is a fantasy, how can deregulated capitalism have failed? Does one not
require the other? Surely it is regulated capitalism that has failed?
97% of all OUR money has been handed over to these scheming crooks. Stop bailing out the
banks with QE. Take back what is ours -- state control over the creation of money. Then let
the banks revert to their modest market-based function of financial intermediaries.
The State can't be trusted to create our money? Well they could hardly do a worse job than
the banks! Best solution would be to distribute state-created money as a Citizen's
Income.
@1nn1t - Some good points, there is a whole swathe of low earners that should not be in the
tax system at all, simply letting them keep the money in their pocket would be a start.
Second the minimum wage (especially in the SE) is too low and should be increased.
Obviously the devil is in the detail as to the precise rate, the other issue is non
compliance as there will be any number of businesses that try and get around this, through
employing people too ignorant or scared to know any better or for family businesses - do we
have the stomach to enforce this?
Thirdly there is a widespread reluctance to separate people from the largesse of the
state, even at absurd levels of income such as higher rate payers (witness child tax
credits). On the right they see themselves as having paid in and so are "entitled" to have
something back and on the left it ensures that everyone has a vested interest in a big state
dipping it hands into your pockets one day and giving you something back the next.
@Uncertainty - Which is why the people of the planet need to join hands.
The only group of people in he UK to see that need were the generation that faced WW2
together.
It's no accident that, joining up at 18 in 1939, they had almost all retired by 1984.
To promote the indecent obsession for global growth Australia, burdened with debt of around
250 billion dollars, is to borrow and pay interest on a further 7 billion dollars to lend to
the International Monetary Fund so as it can lend it to poorer nations to burden them with
debt.
It is entrapment which impoverishes nations into the surrender of sovereignty,
democracy and national pride. In no way should we contribute to such economic immorality and
the entire economic system based on perpetual growth fuelled by consumerism and debt needs
top be denounced and dismantled. The adverse social and environmental consequence of
perpetual growth defies all sensible logic and in time, in a more responsible and enlightened
era, growth will be condemned.
"... Socialism for the 1% with the rest scraping around for the crumbs ..."
"... Don't you think a global recession and massive banking collapse should be classified as 'crash and burn'? ..."
"... It's one of the major contradictions of modern conservatism that the raw, winner-takes-all version of capitalism it champions actually undermines the sort of law abiding, settled communities it sees as the societal ideal. ..."
"... Rich people have benefited from this more than most: they need workers trained by a state-funded education system and kept healthy by a state-funded healthcare system; they depend on lending from banks rescued by the taxpayer; they rely on state-funded infrastructure and research, and – like all of us – on a society that does not collapse. Whether they like it or not, they would not have made their fortunes without the state spending billions of pounds ..."
"... You have to be careful when you take on the banksters. Abe Lincoln John Kennedy and Hitler all tried or (in Kennedy's case planned) on the issuance of money via the state circumventing the banks. All came to a sticky end. No wonder politicians run scared of them. ..."
"... Now, that's a novel interpretation! The working people in "Communist" countries had free healthcare and education, guaranteed employment and heavily subsidized housing. The reason we have healtcare and free education is that working people in Capitalist countries would otherwise have revolted to have Socialism. In the absence of competition, there is no benefit for the Capitalist to be "beneficial". ..."
"... The banks could plainly see that they were stoking a bubble, but chose not to pass on the increased risk of lending to consumers by raising their interest rates and coolling the market. Why? Because they were making a handsome short-term profit. The banks put their own short-term interests above their long-term interests of financial stability. When the house of cards came tumbling down - we bailed them out. It was idiotic banks who failed to properly control their risk of lending that caused the crash, not interventionist politicians. ..."
Virtually everyone knows what went wrong, with the exception only of uncontrollable
ultra-right neoliberal buffs who try and put the blame on everyone else with various out and
out lies and deceptions, and they are thankfully petering and dying out by the day, including
deluded contributors to CiF, who seem to be positively and cruelly reveling in the suffering
their beloved thesis has and is causing.
So, now that we know the symptoms, what about the cure? The coalition want to make the poor
and vulnerable suffer even more than they have done over the last three decades or so while
still refusing to clamp down and wholly regulate the bankers, corporates and free markets, who
still hold too much power like the unions in the 70's,while Ed Miliband and 'One Nation
Labour' merely suggest in mild, diffident terms about financial regulation and a more balanced
economy, while still not wanting to upset those nice bankers too much.
It's time they were
upset though, and made to pay for their errors and recklessness; while they still award
themselves bonuses and take advantage of Gideon's recent tax cut, the poor and vulnerable who
were never responsible for the long recession now have money taken off them and struggle to
feed, pay bills and clothe themselves and their families, supported by the Daily Fail and co.
who look on them as scrounging, lazy, criminal, violent, drunken, drug addicted and promiscuous
sub-humans, who deserve their fate.
There's quite a few in the middle/professional classes
(many bankers) if they didn't know, but they don't bother with such, do they?
The economic model we have is bankrupt and in its death throes
I am not sure if this is true. We have the same economic system (broadly speaking,
capitalism) as nearly every country in the world, and the world economy is growing at a
reasonable rate, at around 3-4% for 2013-14 (see http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2013/01/pdf/c1.pdf
for more details).
We perceive a problem in (most of) Europe and North America because our economies are
growing more slowly than this, and in some cases not at all. The global growth figure comes
out healthy because of strong growth in the emerging countries, like China, Brazil and India,
who are narrowing the gap between their living standards and ours. So, the world as a whole
isn't broken, even if our bit of it is going through a rough patch.
This is pertinant to a discussion of Deborah Orr's article, because in it she calls for
global changes:
The response from the start should have been a wholesale reevaluation of the way in
which wealth is created and distributed around the globe, a "structural adjustment", as the
philosopher John Gray has said all along.
My point is: I don't think this argument will work, because I don't see why the emerging
countries would want wholesale change to what, for them, is quite a successful recipe, just
because it going down badly in Europe. Instead, European countries need to do whatever it
takes to fix their banking systems; but also learn to live within their means, and show some
more of the discipline and enterprise that made them wealthy in the first place.
@Uncertainty - I`m not defending philanthropy, i am saying in answer to some personal attacks
on Miss Orr below the line, that her status as either rich or poor is irrelevant, it is her
politics that count .
Tony Benn and Polly Toynbee both receive much abuse in this manner on Cif.
@kingcreosote - Socialism for the 1% with the rest scraping around for the crumbs
And yet the rest have more crumbs than under any other conceivable system. Look
at the difference that even limited market liberalisation has made to poverty in China. No loaf, no crumbs. You can always throw the loaf out of the window if you don't like the
inequality and then no-one can have anything.
@jazzdrum - I don't have much time for those rich who feel guilty about their greed and do
'charity' to salve their souls. Oh and get a Knighthood as a result.
The more honest giver is the person who gives of what little they have in their purse and
go without as a result. Not a tax dodge re-branded as philanthropy.
Also, such giving from the rich often has strings and may be tailored to what they think
are the 'deserving poor'. I don't like that either.
@Herbolzheim - It's one of the major contradictions of modern conservatism that the raw,
winner-takes-all version of capitalism it champions actually undermines the sort of law
abiding, settled communities it sees as the societal ideal.
More and more people are beginning to understand this as a fundamentally political problem (
ref. @XerXes1369). The 'left' prefers to concentrate on the role of a financial elite (which
is supposed to be exerting some kind of malign supernatural force on the state), to divert
attention from what mainstream 'left' poltics in this society has turned out to be.
When the state is taking over 60% of the income of even those on minimum wages we se
how, from the very top to the very bottom, that the state is the problem.
It's become a monster that will destroy us all.
I would query where you get these figures from, but where it not for the state, do you really
think that somebody on the minimum wage, keeping 100% of their wages, would be able to
afford, out of these wages, health care, schooling for their children, infrastructure
maintenance, their own police force and army, their own legal system?
This from an article in the Independent:
Rich people have benefited from this more than most: they need workers trained by a
state-funded education system and kept healthy by a state-funded healthcare system; they
depend on lending from banks rescued by the taxpayer; they rely on state-funded
infrastructure and research, and – like all of us – on a society that does not
collapse. Whether they like it or not, they would not have made their fortunes without the
state spending billions of pounds.
So the state, although not perfect benefit all of us, get over it!
You have to be careful when you take on the banksters.
Abe Lincoln John Kennedy and Hitler all tried or (in Kennedy's case planned) on the
issuance of money via the state circumventing the banks. All came to a sticky end. No wonder politicians run scared of them.
Free education and the NHS are state institutions. As Debbie said, Amazon never taught
anyone to read. Beneficial capitalism is an oxymoron resulting from your lack of
understanding.
Yes they are state institutions and the tax system should be changed to prevent
Amazon et al from avoiding paying their fair share. But beneficial capitalism is not an
oxymoron, it is alive and present in virtually every corner of the world. Rather than accuse
me of not understanding, I think you would do well to take the beam out of your eye.
I agree with you and it was this beneficial version of capitalism that brought down the
Iron Curtain. Working people in the former Communist countries were comparing themselves
with working people in the west and wanted a piece of that action.
Now, that's a novel interpretation! The working people in "Communist" countries had free
healthcare and education, guaranteed employment and heavily subsidized housing. The reason we have healtcare and free education is that working people in Capitalist
countries would otherwise have revolted to have Socialism. In the absence of competition, there is no benefit for the Capitalist to be
"beneficial".
The banks couldn't stop property hyperinflation, at 20% a year for well over a
decade.
The banks could plainly see that they were stoking a bubble, but chose not to pass on the
increased risk of lending to consumers by raising their interest rates and coolling the
market. Why? Because they were making a handsome short-term profit. The banks put their own
short-term interests above their long-term interests of financial stability. When the house
of cards came tumbling down - we bailed them out. It was idiotic banks who failed to properly
control their risk of lending that caused the crash, not interventionist politicians.
Last week there was a story where HSBC have taken on a senior ex-MI5 person to shore up
their money laundering 'problems'. They're being fined over a billion dollars by the fed
for taking blood money from murderers, drug dealers and corrupt politicians.
Not the Security Services' Director General by any chance?
-- In a filing to the Bermuda Stock Exchange ("BSX"), HSBC Holdings plc (Ticker:
HSBC.BH), announced the appointment of Sir Jonathan Evans to the Board of Directors.
The filing stated:
Sir Jonathan Evans (55) has been appointed a Director of HSBC Holdings plc with effect
from 6 August 2013. He will be an independent non-executive Director and a member of the
Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee.
Sir Jonathan's career in the Security Service spanned 33 years, the last six of which as
Director General. During his career Sir Jonathan's experience included counter-espionage,
protection of classified information and the security of critical national infrastructure.
His main focus was, however, counter-terrorism, both international and domestic including,
increasingly, initiatives against cyber threats. As Director General he was a senior
advisor to the UK government on national security policy and attended the National Security
Council.
He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 2013 New Year's
Honours List and retired from the Service in April 2013.
I think there's some really good points in the article.
Last week there was a story where HSBC have taken on a senior ex-MI5 person to shore up
their money laundering 'problems'. They're being fined over a billion dollars by the fed for
taking blood money from murderers, drug dealers and corrupt politicians.
Their annual fee for this guy with 20 years experience to tackle a billion dollar fine and
the disfunction in their organisation? A lousy 100 k. Fee to UK for training him? 0.
Ridiculous! It should have been 10 times that for him and a finders fee of perhaps 10
million to the state.
Realistically, the state has NO clue about it's real value, or the real value of the UK
population. And the example above, I think, demonstrates banks' attitude to the global demand
that they clean up their act. We neef to take this lot to the cleaners before the stench gets
any worse.
But the internet has largely disabled the gigantic CIA fog-machine. Thousands of skilled
researchers quickly blow apart the propaganda line from the Deep State which is why there's
an hysterical reach these days to shut down the 'net (but still keep it open enough to sell
lots of stuff and nake money for the Predator Class).
Take the JFK assassination. One skilled researcher directs readers to the Warren
Commission, where buried deep inside one volume is a finding that Oswald's rife was
inoperable, certainly unable to function as a precise assassination weapon. Plus Oswald was a
lousy shot to begin with. Yet Military sharpshooters had to add parts just to site the weapon
and fire. This info in the WC pretty much excludes Oswald as the lone assassin. Without the
'net, how many people could find this info themselves.
9/11? Several researchers and web sites disclosed findings of a support network for the
alQ hijackers run by Saudi intelligence and the Royal family (the 28 pages inside the
Congressional 9/11 Inquiry); FBI informants providing financing, housing and other logistical
support to the hijackers; CIA knowledge that alQ had entered the US 18 months before 9/11 and
hid this knowledge etc.
Ditto for the OKC bombing (where local TV found bombs inside the Federal Building, which
blew away the FBI narrative about McVeigh)... ditto for the FBI role in handing out
explosives to the perps at the first WTC bombing etc. etc.
All this info, including news reports are up on the web even today... So with this kind of
info available for large numbers of people to find, the only tactic left for the deep state
psy-war operations to function is complete martial law in an Orwellian Police State. At that
point the game is over and the US collapses as a nation.
One month to the day after President Kennedy's assassination, the Washington Post published
an article by former president Harry Truman.
I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our
Central Intelligence Agency -- CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason
why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected
it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.
Truman had envisioned the CIA as an impartial information and intelligence collector from
"every available source."
But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting
conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to
established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what's worse, such
intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.
Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all
intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as
President without department "treatment" or interpretations.
I wanted and needed the information in its "natural raw" state and in as comprehensive a
volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about
this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead
the President into unwise decisions -- and I thought it was necessary that the President do
his own thinking and evaluating.
Truman found, to his dismay, that the CIA had ranged far afield.
For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original
assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government.
This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive
areas.
I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into
peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we
have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the
President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol
of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue -- and a subject for cold war enemy
propaganda.
The article appeared in the Washington Post's morning edition, but not the evening
edition.
Truman reveals two naive assumptions. He thought a government agency could be apolitical and
objective. Further, he believed the CIA's role could be limited to information gathering and
analysis, eschewing "cloak and dagger operations." The timing and tone of the letter may have
been hints that Truman thought the CIA was involved in Kennedy's assassination. If he did, he
also realized an ex-president couldn't state his suspicions without troublesome
consequences.
Even the man who signed the CIA into law had to stay in the shadows, the CIA's preferred
operating venue. The CIA had become the exact opposite of what Truman envisioned and what its
enabling legislation specified. Within a few years after its inauguration in 1947, it was
neck-deep in global cloak and dagger and pushing agenda-driven, slanted information and
outright disinformation not just within the government, but through the media to the American
people.
The CIA lies with astonishing proficiency. It has made an art form of "plausible
deniability." Like glimpsing an octopus in murky waters, you know it's there, but it shoots
enough black ink to obscure its movements. Murk and black ink make it impossible for anyone on
the outside to determine exactly what it does or has done. Insiders, even the director, are
often kept in the dark.
For those on the trail of CIA and the other intelligence agencies' lies and skullduggery,
the agencies give ground glacially and only when they have to. What concessions they make often
embody multiple layers of back-up lies. It can take years for an official admission -- the CIA
didn't officially confess its involvement in the 1953 coup that deposed Iranian leader Mohammad
Mosaddeq until 2013 -- and even then details are usually not forthcoming. Many of the so-called
exposés of the intelligence agencies are in effect spook-written for propaganda or
damage control.
The intelligence agencies monitor virtually everything we do. They have tentacles reaching
into every aspect of contemporary society, exercising control in pervasive but mostly unknown
ways. Yet, every so often some idiot writes an op-ed or bloviates on TV, bemoaning the lack of
trust the majority of Americans have in "their" government and wondering why. The wonder is
that anyone still trusts the government.
The intelligence agency fog both obscures and corrodes. An ever increasing number of
Americans believe that a shadowy Deep State pulls the strings. Most major stories since World
War II -- Korea, Vietnam, Kennedy's assassination, foreign coups, the 1960s student unrest,
civil rights agitation, and civic disorder, Watergate, Iran-Contra, 9/11, domestic
surveillance, and many more -- have intelligence angles. However, determining what those angles
are plunges you into the miasma perpetuated by the agencies and their media accomplices.
The intelligence agencies and captive media's secrecy, disinformation, and lies make it
futile to mount a straightforward attack against them. It's like attacking a citadel surrounded
by swamps and bogs that afford no footing, making advance impossible. Their deadliest operation
has been against the truth. In a political forum, how does one challenge an adversary who
controls most of the information necessary to discredit, and ultimately reform or eliminate
that adversary?
You don't fight where your opponent wants you to fight. What the intelligence apparatus
fears most is a battle of ideas. Intelligence, the military, and the reserve currency are
essential component of the US's confederated global empire. During the 2016 campaign, Donald
Trump questioned a few empire totems and incurred the intelligence leadership's wrath,
demonstrating how sensitive and vulnerable they are on this front. The transparent flimsiness
of their Russiagate concoction further illustrates the befuddlement. Questions are out in the
open and are usually based on facts within the public domain. They move the battle from the
murk to the light, unfamiliar and unwelcome terrain.
The US government, like Oceania, switches enemies as necessary. That validates military and
intelligence; lasting peace would be intolerable. After World War II the enemy was the USSR and
communism, which persisted until the Soviet collapse in 1991. The 9/11 tragedy offered up a new
enemy, Islamic terrorism.
Seventeen years later, after a disastrous run of US interventions in the Middle East and
Northern Africa and the rout of Sunni jihadists in Syria by the combined forces of the Syrian
government, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, it's clear that Islamic terrorism is no longer a
threat that stirs the paranoia necessary to feed big military and intelligence budgets . For
all the money they've spent, intelligence has done a terrible job of either anticipating
terrorist strikes or defeating them in counterinsurgency warfare
So switch the enemy again, now it's Russia and China. The best insight the intelligence
community could offer about those two is that they've grown stronger by doing the opposite of
the US. For the most part they've stayed in their own neighborhoods. They accept that they're
constituents, albeit important ones, of a multipolar global order. Although they'll use big
sticks to protect their interests, carrots like the Belt and Road Initiative further their
influence much better than the US's bullets and bombs.
If the intelligence complex truly cared about the country, they might go public with the
observation that the empire is going broke. However, raising awareness of this dire threat --
as opposed to standard intelligence bogeymen -- might prompt reexamination of intelligence and
military budgets and the foreign policy that supports them. Insolvency will strangle the US's
exorbitantly expensive interventionism. It will be the first real curb on the intelligence
complex since World War II, but don't except any proactive measures beforehand from those
charged with foreseeing the future.
Conspiracy theories, a term popularized by the CIA to denigrate Warren Commission skeptics,
are often proved correct. However, trying to determine the truth behind intelligence agency
conspiracies is a time and energy-consuming task, usually producing much frustration and little
illumination. Instead,
as Caitlin Johnstone recently observed , we're better off fighting on moral and
philosophical grounds the intelligence complex and the rest of the government's depredations
that are in plain sight.
Attack the intellectual foundations of empire and you attack the whole rickety edifice,
including intelligence, that supports it. Tell the truth and you threaten those who deal in
lies . Champion sanity and logic and you challenge the insane irrationality of the powers that
be. They are daunting tasks, but less daunting than trying to excavate and clean the
intelligence sewer.
I sometimes wonder whether the Bond films are a psy-op.
I mean, the 'hero' is a psycho-killer ... the premise of the films is 'any means to an
end' ... they promote the ridiculous idea that you can be 'licensed to kill', and it's no
longer murder ... and they build a strong association between the State and glamour.
Bond makes a virtue out of 'following orders', when in reality, it's a Sin.
Can't remember which Section of MI6 Ian Fleming (novelist 007.5) worked but he came into
contact with my Hero, the best double-agent Cambridge, maybe World, has Ever produced, Kim
Philby. Fleming was a lightweight compared to him and was most likely provided the Funds, by
MI6 to titillate the Masses, spread the Word of Deep State.
The article makes many good points but still falls into use of distorting bs language.
For example, "after a disastrous run of US interventions" - well, they stole Libya's
wealth and destroyed the country: mission accomplished; that's what they were trying to do.
It was not an ""intervention", it was a f***ing war of aggression based on lies.
Well the good news is that folks now know there is deep State, shadow govt, puppet
masters, fake news MSM mockingbird programming, satanic "musik/ pop" promoters, etc.
Not everyone knows but more know, and some are now questioning the Matrix sensations they
have. That they have not been told the Truth.
Eventually humanity will awaken and get on track, how long it will take is unknown.
The CIA is a symptom of the problem but not the whole problem. Primarily it is the
deception that it sows, the confusion and false conclusions that the easily led fill their
heads with.
Now that you know there are bad guys out there...
Find someone to love, even if it is a puppy or a guppy. Simplify your needs, and commit
small acts of kindness on a regular basis. The World will heal, it may be a rocky
convalescence, yet Good triumphs in the end.
Like bolshevism this secular regions is to a large extent is a denial of Christianity. While Bolshevism is closer to the Islam,
Neoliberalism is closer to Judaism.
The idea of " Homo economicus " -- a person who in all
his decisions is governed by self-interest and greed is bunk.
Notable quotes:
"... There is not a shred of logical sense in neoliberalism. You're doing what the fundamentalists do... they talk about what neoliberalism is in theory whilst completely ignoring what it is in practice. ..."
"... In theory the banks should have been allowed to go bust, but the consequences where deemed too high (as they inevitable are). The result is socialism for the rich using the poor as the excuse, which is the reality of neoliberalism. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is based on the thought that you get as much freedom as you can pay for, otherwise you can just pay... like everyone else. In Asia and South America it has been the economic preference of dictators that pushes profit upwards and responsibility down, just like it does here. ..."
"... We all probably know the answer to this. In order to maintain the consent necessary to create inequality in their own interests the neoliberals have to tell big lies, and keep repeating them until they appear to be the truth. They've gotten so damn good at it. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is a modern curse. Everything about it is bad and until we're free of it, it will only ever keep trying to turn us into indentured labourers. ..."
"... It's acolytes are required to blind themselves to logic and reason to such a degree they resemble Scientologists or Jehovah's Witnesses more than people with any sort of coherent political ideology, because that's what neoliberalism actually is... a cult of the rich, for the rich, by the rich... and it's followers in the general population are nothing but moron familiars hoping one day to be made a fully fledged bastard ..."
"... Who could look at the way markets function and conclude there's any freedom? Only a neoliberal cult member. They cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be dissuaded. They cannot be persuaded. Only the market knows best, and the fact that the market is a corrupt, self serving whore is completely ignored by the ideology of their Church. ..."
Unless you are completely confused by what neoliberalism is there is not a shred of logical sense in this.
There is not a shred of logical sense in neoliberalism. You're doing what the fundamentalists do... they talk about what neoliberalism
is in theory whilst completely ignoring what it is in practice.
In theory the banks should have been allowed to go bust, but the consequences where deemed too high (as they inevitable
are). The result is socialism for the rich using the poor as the excuse, which is the reality of neoliberalism.
Savers in a neoliberal society are lambs to the slaughter. Thatcher "revitalised" banking, while everything else withered and
died.
Neoliberalism is based on the thought of personal freedom, communism is definitely not. Neoliberalist policies have lifted
millions of people out of poverty in Asia and South America.
Neoliberalism is based on the thought that you get as much freedom as you can pay for, otherwise you can just pay... like
everyone else. In Asia and South America it has been the economic preference of dictators that pushes profit upwards and responsibility
down, just like it does here.
I find it ironic that it now has 5 year plans that absolutely must not be deviated from, massive state intervention in markets
(QE, housing policy, tax credits... insert where applicable), and advocates large scale central planning even as it denies reality,
and makes the announcement from a tractor factory.
Neoliberalism is a blight... a cancer on humanity... a massive lie told by rich people and believed only by peasants happy
to be thrown a turnip. In theory it's one thing, the reality is entirely different. Until we're rid of it, we're all it's slaves.
It's an abhorrent cult that comes up with purest bilge like expansionary fiscal contraction to keep all the money in the hands
of the rich.
Why, you have to ask yourself, is this vast implausibility, this sheer unsustainability, not blindingly obvious to all?
We all probably know the answer to this. In order to maintain the consent necessary to create inequality in their own interests
the neoliberals have to tell big lies, and keep repeating them until they appear to be the truth. They've gotten so damn good
at it.
Neoliberalism is a modern curse. Everything about it is bad and until we're free of it, it
will only ever keep trying to turn us into indentured labourers.
It's acolytes are required
to blind themselves to logic and reason to such a degree they resemble Scientologists or
Jehovah's Witnesses more than people with any sort of coherent political ideology, because
that's what neoliberalism actually is... a cult of the rich, for the rich, by the rich... and
it's followers in the general population are nothing but moron familiars hoping one day to be
made a fully fledged bastard.
Who could look at the way markets function and conclude there's any freedom? Only a
neoliberal cult member. They cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be dissuaded. They cannot
be persuaded. Only the market knows best, and the fact that the market is a corrupt, self
serving whore is completely ignored by the ideology of their Church.
It's subsumed the entire planet, and waiting for them to see sense is a hopeless cause. In
the end it'll probably take violence to rid us of the Neoliberal parasite... the turn of the
century plague.
Thatcher (aka "Milk Snatcher" ) pushed neoliberalism and globalization as the solution of
New Deal Capitalism problems. Now the UK arrived at the dead end of this "1 Neoliberal Road"
and now needs to pay the price. So much for TINA.
From a pure propaganda standpoint, Neoliberalism is just a sanitized-sounding expression, to
cover-up the fact that what we really see here is re-branded corporatist ideology.
That's why the crisis of neoliberalism created Renaissance for far-right movements in
Europe, which now threaten to destroy its "globalization" component and switch to "national
neoliberalism" (aka Trumpism) as the solution to the current crisis of neoliberalism ( aka
"secular stagnation" which started in 2008).
Ideology is as dead as Bolshevik's ideology became in early 60th. And I see Trump as a
somewhat similar figure to Khrushchev. An uneducated reformer with huge personal flaws, but
still a reformer of "classic neoliberalism." Which was rejected by voters with Hillary Clinton,
was not it ?
As financial oligarchy is pretty powerful and, as we now see, have intelligence agencies as
a part of their "toolset", the trend right now is to rely on "patriotic military" and far-right
nationalism to counter neoliberal globalization.
We will see where it would get us, but with oil over $100 Goldman employees might eventually
really find themselves under fire like in Omaha beach.
Hayek, while a second rate economist, proved to be a talented theologian, and he managed to
create what can be called "civil religion" not that different from Mormonism or
Scientology.
It was mostly based on Trotskyism rebranded for financial elite instead of the proletariat
and the network of think tanks instead of "professional revolutionaries" of the Communist Party
("Financial oligarchy of all countries unite", "All power to Goldman Sacks and Bank of
America," etc.).
Pope Francis did a pretty good theological analysis of this secular religion in his
Evangelii Gaudium, Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis, 2013. Rephrasing Oscar Wilde, we can
say that "objective analysis is the analysis of ideologies we do not like".
He pointed out that neoliberalism explicitly rejects the key idea of Christianity -- the
idea of equal and ultimate justice for all sinners as a noble social goal. The idea that a
human being should struggle to create justice ( including "economic justice") in this world
even if the ultimate solution is beyond his grasp. "Greed is good" is as far from Christianity
as Satanism.
As Reinhold Niebuhr noted a world where there is only one center of power and authority
(financial oligarchy under neoliberalism) "preponderant and unchallenged... its world rule
almost certainly violate the basic standard of justice".
Here are selected quotes from Evangelii Gaudium, Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis,
2013
... Such a [neoliberal] economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an
elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two
points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away
while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the
laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the
powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized:
without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.
Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We
have created a "disposable" culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about
exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it
means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society's
underside or its fringes or it's disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of
it. The excluded are not the "exploited" but the outcast, the "leftovers."
54. In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume
that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about
greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed
by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding
economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile,
the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain
enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed.
Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the
outcry of the poor, weeping for other people's pain, and feeling a need to help them, as
though all this were someone else's responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity
deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase; and in the
meantime, all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to
move us.
How many alternative economic systems would you say have been given a fair trial under
reasonably favorable circumstances?
A good question. Answer: admittedly, not a huge number - but not none either. Feudalism
held sway in the middle ages and mercantilism in the 18th century, before both fell out of
fashion. In the 20th century Russia stuck with communism for 74 years, and many other
countries tried it for a while. At one time (around 1949-89) there were enough countries in
the communist block for us to be able to say that they at least had a fair chance to make it
work - that is, if it didn't work, they can't really blame it on the rest of the world
ganging up on them.
Lately, serious challengers to the global economic order have been more isolated
(Venzuela, Cuba, North Korea?) - so maybe you could argue that, if they are struggling, it is
because they have been unfairly ganged up on. But then again, aren't they pursuing a
version of socialism that has close affinities to that tried in the Soviet Union?
The problem with giving any novel political idea a really extended trial is that you have
to try it out on live human beings. This means that, once a critical mass of data has built
up that indicates a political idea doesn't work out as hoped, then people inevitably lose the
will to try that idea again.
So my question is: are critics of the current world economic order able to spell out
exactly how their proposed alternative would differ from Soviet-style socialism?
I'd tend to agree with you but in that case it's not an ideology, merely
pragmatism. The convergence of the parties merely reflects the wider consensus in society.
The alternative is simple but people have become so wedded to the libertarian parts of
liberal democracy that it will be some time before they are ready to contemplate the
alternative, a return to the Judaeo/Christian version of human rights - an absolute right to
God who made us, to the truth, to life, to a natural family, and to own the means of earning
a living - to which all should be entitled and all should be held to account.
These are rights that any sensible person will tell you that we should be entitled to but
believe it or not they are anathema to liberal democracy which is based on exploiting the
selfishness of the individual to the detriment of the common good and the good of society at
large.
This post is a variant of "fake prosperity" -- yet another neoliberal myth. Also known as
"rising tidelift all boats"
The improvement of the standard of living in 90th was mainly due to economic plunder of xUSSR
and Eastern Europe as well as well as communication revolution happening simultaneously. The
period from 1990 to 2000 is known as "Triumphal March of Neoliberalism". Aftger year 200
neoliberalism went into recession and in 2008 in deep crisis. The neoliberal ideology was dead by
2008.
Indeed. That was in the time of feudalism and mercantilism.
No, it was as recently as WW2 more or less. After that it followed a confusing
period where social and political freedoms darted ahead up to the '80s when the economic
freedoms started being championed by the right: Thatcher, Reagan, etc.
That saw a liberalisation of trade and an explosive growth in international trade with
huge benefits for the whole world: developing countries like the Asian dragons have seen
their standards of living skyrocket and practically they can't get up with the developed
countries in one generation. China, and India to an extent, is following on that path with
pretty good results.
As the same time the developed countries saw a huge improvement in their standard of
living with products and services available at incredible prices. Even the countries that did
not get on this yet are benefiting and the fact that starvation in the world is less of a
problem is the proof of that for example.
The response should be a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created
and distributed around the globe
But we know already how that is done: voluntary transactions among free agents.
That's called a free market and it is by far the most efficient way to produce wealth
humanity has ever known. Sure, we tried other methods (slavery, forced labour, communal
entities, government controlled economies, tribal economies, etc.) but nothing worked as well
as free markets.
The calls for governments' intervention in the economy is misguided and counterproductive.
They already extract about 50% of all wealth created in this country. That's way too much
since most of the money taken by governments is money diverted from productive use.
Wrong. Traditional liberalism supported both social and economic freedoms. That included
support for most of the civil rights and freedoms we enjoy today AND free trade and free
investments.
Indeed. That was in the time of feudalism and mercantilism.
I take this opportunity to draw everyone's attention to a Finnish theorist and proponent
of liberal economical and political thinking, whose treatise on liberal national economy
preceded Adam Smith by 11 years: Anders Chydenius (1729-1803).
Margaret Thatcher left office 23 years ago. The de-regulation of the City occurred in
1986, 27 years ago. Since then UK GDP has more than doubled, inflation and unemployment are
far lower, and the numbers living in extreme poverty have fallen dramatically.
This is an attractive but idealistinc notion, because the person destiny often is shaped by
forces beyond his control. Like Great Depression or WWII. The proper idea is that the society as
a whole serves as a "social security" mechanism to prevent worst outcomes. At the same time
neoliberalism accept bailout for financial sector and even demand them for goverment.
@dmckm - Nobody is owed a good living in this world. That's what freedom means: one is free
to chose the best way to make a living. Are you saying that by forcing people to pay you
something they don't want to is freedom?
No market is 'Free'. Free markets do not exist. Markets are there for those with a vested
interest. i.e. the banksters. Note the growth of Hedge funds or slush funds for the rich.
Neoliberalism like Bolshevism is based on brainwashing and propaganda. In this case by
bought by financial elite and controlled by intelligence agencies MSM.
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism? This is not just a financial agenda. This a highly organized multi armed counterculture operation to force us, including Ms Orr [unless she has...connections] into what Terence McKenna [who was in on it] termed the `Archaic Revival'. That is - you and me [and Ms Orr] - our - return to the medieval dark ages, if we indeed survive that far. ..."
"... The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. ..."
"... A free market larger than a boot fair has never existed. A market can never have power, it's just a market after all. It's the people in the market that have power... or some of them... the few... have it disproportionately compared to others, and straight away the market isn't free. ..."
"... It's only even approximately free when properly regulated, but that's anathema to market fundamentalists so they end up with a market run for the benefit of vested interests that they will claim is "free" until their dying breath. ..."
"... Power belongs with democratically elected governments, not people in markets responsible only to themselves. Amazing that people still think as you do after all that's happened. ..."
@taxhaven - I love this "free markets" expression, but can we really have free markets please
then? This means that no taxpayer money is to be spent to bail out the capitalist bankers
when things so sour.
It also means that there is completely free movement of labor so I as an employer should
be able to hire anyone I like for your job and pay the wage that the replacement is willing
to take i.e. tough luck to you if the person is more qualified and is willing to work for
less but does not have the work visa because in free markets there will be no such things as
work permits.
Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom
Neoliberalism? This is not just a financial agenda. This a highly organized multi
armed counterculture operation to force us, including Ms Orr [unless she has...connections]
into what Terence McKenna [who was in on it] termed the `Archaic Revival'. That is - you and
me [and Ms Orr] - our - return to the medieval dark ages, if we indeed survive that
far.
The same names come up time and time again. One of them being, father of propaganda,
Edward Bernays.
Bernays wrote what can be seen as a virtual Mission Statement for anyone wishing to bring
about a "counterculture." In the opening paragraph of his book Propaganda he wrote:
".. The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions
of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this
unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling
power of our country. We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas
suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.
This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organised. Vast
numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a
smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere
of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by
the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social
patterns of the masses.
It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind..."[28]
Bernays' family background made him well suited to "control the public mind." He was the
double nephew of psychoanalysis pioneer Sigmund Freud. His mother was Freud's sister Anna,
and his father was Ely Bernays, brother of Freud's wife Martha Bernays.
about being permitted to engage in voluntary exchange of goods and services with others,
unmolested.
And if we ever had that, would it make the ideal society?
A free market larger than a boot fair has never existed. A market can never have power,
it's just a market after all. It's the people in the market that have power... or some of
them... the few... have it disproportionately compared to others, and straight away the
market isn't free.
It's only even approximately free when properly regulated, but that's
anathema to market fundamentalists so they end up with a market run for the benefit of vested
interests that they will claim is "free" until their dying breath.
Power belongs with democratically elected governments, not people in markets responsible
only to themselves. Amazing that people still think as you do after all that's happened.
The evidence of social decay in America is becoming more visible. As other countries
continue to show increases in life expectancy, the US continues its deterioration.
Life expectancy in the US fell to 78.6 years in 2017, a o.1 year fall from 2016 and a 0.3
year decline from the peak.
Overdose deaths reached a new high in 2017, topping 70,000, while the suicide rate
increased by 3.7%, the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics reports.
Dr. Robert Redfield, CDC director, called the trend tragic and troubling. "Life expectancy
gives us a snapshot of the Nation's overall health and these sobering statistics are a wakeup
call that we are losing too many Americans, too early and too often, to conditions that are
preventable," he wrote in a statement.
While this assessment is technically correct, it is too superficial in seeing the rising
rate of what Angus Deaton and Ann Case called "deaths of despair" as a health problem, rather
than symptoms of much deeper societal ills. Americans take antidepressants at a higher rate
than any country in the world. The average job tenure is a mere 4.4 years. In my youth, if you
changed jobs in less than seven or eight years, you were seen as an opportunist or probably
poor performer. The near impossibility of getting a new job if you are over 40 and the fact
that outside hot fields, young people can also find it hard to get work commensurate with their
education and experience, means that those who do have jobs can be and are exploited by their
employers. Amazon is the most visible symbol of that, working warehouse workers at a deadly
pace, and regularly reducing even white collar males regularly to tears.
On top of that, nuclear families, weakened communities, plus the neoliberal expectation that
individuals be willing to move to find work means that many Americans have shallow personal
networks, and that means less support if one suffers career or financial setbacks.
But the big driver, which the mainstream press is unwilling to acknowledge, is that highly
unequal societies are unhealthy societies. We published this section from a Financial Times
comment by Michael Prowse in 2007, and it can't be
repeated often enough :
Those who would deny a link between health and inequality must first grapple with the
following paradox. There is a strong relationship between income and health within countries.
In any nation you will find that people on high incomes tend to live longer and have fewer
chronic illnesses than people on low incomes.
Yet, if you look for differences between countries, the relationship between income and
health largely disintegrates. Rich Americans, for instance, are healthier on average than
poor Americans, as measured by life expectancy. But, although the US is a much richer country
than, say, Greece, Americans on average have a lower life expectancy than Greeks. More
income, it seems, gives you a health advantage with respect to your fellow citizens, but not
with respect to people living in other countries .
Once a floor standard of living is attained, people tend to be healthier when three
conditions hold: they are valued and respected by others; they feel 'in control' in their
work and home lives; and they enjoy a dense network of social contacts. Economically unequal
societies tend to do poorly in all three respects: they tend to be characterised by big
status differences, by big differences in people's sense of control and by low levels of
civic participation .
Unequal societies, in other words, will remain unhealthy societies – and also
unhappy societies – no matter how wealthy they become. Their advocates – those
who see no reason whatever to curb ever-widening income differentials – have a lot of
explaining to do.
The stats first. They tell a clear story: Americans now live shorter lives than men and
women in most of the rest of the developed world. And that gap is growing.
Back in 1990, shouts
a new study published last week in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical
Association, the United States ranked just 20th on life expectancy among the world's 34
industrial nations. The United States now ranks 27th -- despite spending much more on health
care than any other nation.
Americans, notes an editorial the
journal ran to accompany the study, are losing ground globally "by every" health measure.
Why such poor performance? Media reports on last week's new
State of U.S. Health study hit all the usual suspects: poor diet, poor access to
affordable health care, poor personal health habits, and just plain poverty.
In the Wall Street Journal, for instance, a chief wellness officer in Ohio opined
that if Americans exercised more and ate and smoked less, the United States would surely
start moving up in the global health rankings.
But many epidemiologists -- scientists who study health outcomes -- have their doubts.
They point out that the United States ranked as one of the world's healthiest nations in the
1950s, a time when Americans smoked heavily, ate a diet that would horrify any 21st-century
nutritionist, and hardly ever exercised.
Poor Americans, then as now, had chronic problems accessing health care. But poverty,
epidemiologists note, can't explain why fully insured middle-income Americans today have
significantly worse health outcomes than middle-income people in other rich nations.
The University of Washington's Dr. Stephen Bezruchka
has been tracking these outcomes since the 1990s. The new research published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association, Bezruchka told Too Much last week, should worry
Americans at all income levels.
"Even if we are rich, college-educated, white-skinned, and practice all the right health
behaviors," he notes, "similar people in other rich nations will live longer."
A dozen years ago, Bezruchka
published in Newsweek the first mass-media commentary, at least in the United States, to
challenge the conventional take on poor U.S. global health rankings.
To really understand America's poor health standing globally, epidemiologists like
Bezruchka posit, we need to look at "the social determinants of health," those social and
economic realities that define our daily lives.
None of these determinants matter more, these researchers contend, than the level of a
society's economic inequality, the divide between the affluent and everyone else. Over 170
studies worldwide have so far linked income inequality to health outcomes. The more
unequal a society, the studies show, the more unhealthy most everyone in it -- and not the
poor alone.
Just how does inequality translate into unhealthy outcomes? Growing numbers of researchers
place the blame on stress. The more inequality in a society, the more stress on a daily
level. Chronic stress, over time, wears down our immune systems and leaves us more vulnerable
to disease.
Data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Thursday show life
expectancy fell by one-tenth of a year, to 78.6 years, pushed down by the sharpest annual
increase in suicides in nearly a decade and a continued rise in deaths from powerful opioid
drugs like fentanyl. Influenza, pneumonia and diabetes also factored into last year's
increase.
Economists and public-health experts consider life expectancy to be an important measure
of a nation's prosperity. The 2017 data paint a dark picture of health and well-being in the
U.S., reflecting the effects of addiction and despair, particularly among young and
middle-aged adults, as well as diseases plaguing an aging population and people with lower
access to health care
Life expectancy is 84.1 years in Japan and 83.7 years in Switzerland, first and second in
the most-recent ranking by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The
U.S. ranks 29th..
White men and women fared the worst, along with black men, all of whom experienced
increases in death rates. Death rates rose in particular for adults ages 25 to 44, and
suicide rates are highest among people in the nation's most rural areas. On the other hand,
deaths declined for black and Hispanic women, and remained the same for Hispanic men .
Earlier this century, the steady and robust decline in heart-disease deaths more than
offset the rising number from drugs and suicide, Dr. Anderson said. Now, "those declines
aren't there anymore," he said, and the drug and suicide deaths account for many years of
life lost because they occur mostly in young to middle-aged adults.
While progress against deaths from heart disease has stalled, cancer deaths -- the
nation's No. 2 killer -- are continuing a steady decline that began in the 1990s, Dr.
Anderson said. "That's kind of our saving grace," he said. "Without those declines, we'd see
a much bigger drop in life expectancy."
Suicides rose 3.7% in 2017, accelerating an increase in rates since 1999, the CDC said.
The gap in deaths by suicide widened starkly between cities and the most rural areas between
1999 and 2017, the data show. The rate is now far higher in rural areas. "There's a much
wider spread," Dr. Hedegaard said.
"This is extremely discouraging," Christine Moutier, chief medical officer of the American
Foundation for Suicide Prevention, said of the suicide-rate increase. Studies show that
traumas such as economic difficulties or natural disasters, along with access to lethal means
including guns and opioid drugs, and lack of access to care can affect suicide rates, she
said. More accurate recording of deaths may also have added to the numbers, she said.
Japan leads the pack in life expectancy and pretty much every other measure of social well
being. Yet when its financial bubbles were bigger than the ones in the US pre our crisis, and
it's on its way to having a lost three decades of growth. On top of that, Japan has one of the
worst demographic crunches in the world, in terms of the aging of its population. So how it is
that Japan is coping well with decline, while the US is getting sicker in many ways (mental
health, obesity, falling expectancy)?
It's easy to hand-wave by saying "Japanese culture," but I see the causes as more specific.
The Japanese have always given high employment top priority in their economic planning.
Entrepreneurs are revered for creating jobs, not for getting rich. Similarly, Japan was long
criticized by international economist types for having an inefficient retail sector (lots of
small local shops), when they missed the point: that was one way of increasing employment, plus
Japanese like having tight local communities.
After their crisis, Japanese companies went to considerable lengths to preserve jobs, such
as by having senior people taking pay cuts and longer term, lowering the already not that large
gap between entry and top level compensation. The adoption of second-class workers (long-term
temps called "freeters") was seen as less than ideal, since these workers would never become
true members of the company community, but it was better than further reducing employment.
Contrast that to our crisis response. We reported in 2013 that
the top 1% got 121% of the income gains after the crisis. The very top echelon did better
at the expense of everyone else. Longer term, lower-income earners have fallen behind. From a
2017 MarketWatch story, quoting a World Economic Forum report: "America has experienced 'a
complete collapse of the bottom 50 percent income share in the U.S. between 1978 to 2015.'"
There is a lot of other data that supports the same point: inequality continues to widen in
America. The areas that are taking the worst hits are states like West Virginia and Ohio that
have been hit hard by deindustrialization. But the elites are removed in their glamorous cities
and manage not to notice the conditions when they transit through the rest of America. They
should consider themselves lucky that America's downtrodden are taking out their misery more on
themselves than on their betters.
God, this is so depressing to read. The worse aspect of it is that it never had to be this
way but that these deaths were simply 'collateral damage' to the social and economic changes
in America since the 1970s – changes by choice. This seems to be a slow motion move to
replicate what Russia went through back in the 1990s which led to the unnecessary, premature
deaths of millions of its people. Dmitry Orlov has a lot to say about the subject of collapse
and there is a long page in which Orlov talks about how Russia got through these bad times
while comparing it with America as he lives there now. For those interested, it is at-
What gets me most is how these deaths are basically anonymous and are not really
remembered. When AIDS was ravishing the gay community decades ago, one way they got people to
appreciate the numbers of deaths was the AIDS Memorial Quilt which ended up weighing over 50
tons. It is a shame that there can not be an equivalent project for all these deaths of
despair.
There were pictures in the Wall Street Journal article I didn't pull over due to copyright
issues, but it did show people commemorating these deaths Captions:
People in Largo, Fla., hold candles at a vigil on Oct. 17 to remember the thousands who
succumbed to opioid abuse in their community.
More than 1,000 backpacks containing belongings of suicide victims and letters with
information about them are scattered across a lawn during a demonstration at the University
of Tennessee at Chattanooga on March 22.
But to your point, these seem isolated and are not getting press coverage at anywhere near
the level of the AIDS crisis.
It focuses too much on peak oil. As if the social collapse of the United States (and the
Soviet Union) was some kind of natural consequence of resources dryinf out instead of a
premeditated looting.
Orlov's posts on how Russians survived the collapse is a small masterpiece. I read it a
couple of years back and it affected me greatly. I just reread it, thanks, Rev Kev, and it
seems even more relevant now.
Small gems: Money becomes useless: items or services that can be swapped are paramount.
Bottles of alcohol, fresh homegrown veggies (and pot), I re-fashion your old suit and you fix
my broken window.
Social networks keep you alive. Know and be on good terms with your neighbors. Communal
gardens keep you fed.
War-hardened men (and the women who love them), who thrive on violence abound. They will
either be hired as security or rove about as free-lancers. A community is better able either
to hire them, or defend against them.
Our ancestors lived and thrived without: central heating, electric lights, hot and cold
running water, flush toilets, garbage collection, the Internet. We can too; it just takes
forethought and planning. Densely packed cities without these amenities are hell.
Cultivate an attitude of disdain for the 'normal' things that society values, especially
if you are a middle-aged male; career, large house and SUV, foreign vacations, a regular
salary. Enjoy contemplating nature. When the former disappear, you have the latter to fall
back upon. And consider a second career as a recycler of abandoned buildings, or a distiller
of potatoes. (Think of all the Medieval structures built from crumbling Roman edifices.)
Russians, in many ways, had more resilience built in to their system: housing was
State-owned, so there was less homelessness. Private automobiles were relatively rare, but
public transportation was wide-spread and remained in good-running order. Minimal universal
health care existed.
Cease from trying, futilely, to change the System. Ain't gonna happen. Instead, prepare to
survive, if only just, the coming dismantling.
> Once a floor standard of living is attained, people tend to be healthier when three
conditions hold: they are valued and respected by others; they feel 'in control' in their
work and home lives; and they enjoy a dense network of social contacts.
"Sapolsky: We belong to multiple hierarchies, and you may have the worst job in your
corporation and no autonomy and control and predictability, but you're the captain of the
company softball team that year and you'd better bet you are going to have all sorts of
psychological means to decide it's just a job, nine to five, that's not what the world is
about. What the world's about is softball. I'm the head of my team, people look up to me, and
you come out of that deciding you are on top of the hierarchy that matters to you."
iirc, there was a perspective of some economists that infinite groaf could be carried by
the creative, emergent, and infinite wants of homo sapiens. But that creates compounding
deprivations, never enough time, money, resources. With the 2:1 ratio of loss aversion, what
is compounded are bad affects.
That 'dense network of social contacts' means smaller groups with symmetric interactions. The multiple
dominance heirarchies is the healthy version of creative emergence, but supplying needs, not
creating wants.
I think that one of the most valuable tools used by government in the Great Depression was
the CCC, WPA, and TVA set of programs that provided jobs to people while they created
valuable infrastructure and art. How many of those people could go back to the dams or state
parks and tell their spouses and kids that "I helped build that." During a time of despair,
it was a way of making people believe they had value.
Today, it would be viewed as a waste of money that could be better spent on the military
or another tax cut for the wealthy.
I'd mentioned some wrongheaded policies of Sequoia NP of 90 years ago yesterday, and they
seem ridiculous in retrospect, and we no longer treat natural places as ad hoc zoos, where
everybody gets to see the dancing bears @ a given hour.
Our methodology as far as our rapport with fire was just as stupid, but we've really done
nothing to repair our relationship with trees and the forests they hang out in.
There's an abundance of physical labor needed to clear out the duff, the deadfalls and
assorted debris from huge swaths of guaranteed employment until the job is done, which could
take awhile.
There's really few graft possibilities though, we're talking chainsaws, Pulaskis, never
ending burn pile action and lots of sweat equity. If KBR wanted to be in charge of
backcountry camps housing crews, that'd be ok, they'd be doing something useful for a
change.
Yes, why do you think video games appeal so much to young males? Because of the pixels?
What these gamers are really after is the ability to excel in a niche hierarchy. It doesn't
(usually) appeal to females as much as more traditional kinds of success but it serves a
psychological need.
A traitorous ruling class that has sold out its workers in favor of foreign workers.
And it's very lucrative – the Walton's fortune was made by being an agent of
communist Chinese manufacturers. In direct competition with US manufacturers. Does this not
seem like treason to you?
The word 'communist' in relation to the Chinese government and party is void of content.
'Communist' in the current Chinese context is legacy branding, nothing more. Its use in this
comment is inflammatory, as is the too-loose bandying of 'treason'. The Waltons are loyal to
their class (however fierce their disputes may be with rival oligarch factions), and since
the state exists to serve the interests of their class, how can they be traitors to the
state?
"Communist" is what they call themselves. They're totalitarians. Which is what most people
think "communist" means – because all countries that called themselves communist used
authoritarian rule. Methinks you might be a marxist idealist. Offended by the misuse of your
ideal State word by totalitarians.
Similarly, I used "treason" in the sense of acting against the interests of the citizens,
not in the sense of a crime against the state. You clearly believe the state to be
representative of only the ruling class. And I don't disagree wrt the USA and its imperial
machine. Which would make the State treasonous, according to the sense of the word I
used.
One could always say communism is an end point developed through a process preceded by
socialism and before that capitalism which replaces feudalism. The idea being Chinese
Communists, the rich Chinese have bug out spots for a reason, believe Mao and the Soviets
moved too quickly skipping a Marxist historical epoch.
The Communist Party officially is always a vanguard for the future society not the
Communist society. Phrases such as "under communism" aren't Soviet features as much as they
are propaganda from the West.
When the Reds were the only game in town, the greedy class joined the CCP, but since 1991,
they skipped signing up, leaving believers in control. What the party congress believes is
probably important.
As far as branding goes, all Communists are branded because the are all vanguard parties,
not parties of blocs or even current populations. Star Trek is the only communist society.
The Soviet thinkers definitely wrote about what an Ideal society would look like, the nature
of work, and self and societal improvement.
Overthrowing a long established government shouldn't be done for light and transient
reasons, and Xi has seemed to be concerned with the demands of the party congress. The party
at large doesn't have a single voice to rally behind which makes it difficult to overthrow a
government.
the word is "communist". The gov't isn't anything of the sort these days. Isn't the
chinese gov't of today "fascist". just like the national socialists of the german stripe?
They are the state that may be lord over controller of private institutions, and ruler of
other state institutions, all intermixed into what is "the chinese economy". They allow the
private wealth creation in a controlled sense. that is state function serving private wealth.
and if you are a party loyal, private wealth may come to you some day too.
It is just another part of the world trend "everyone is turning into full fledged
fascists"
No wonder people in the states are dying earlier.. to get back on topic
Last night, my wife and I took our boys to meet Santa at my older son's school. Elementary
school in Mississippi. The town is an outer suburb of Memphis. A mile east of the town you
are in rural Mississippi. I noticed 2 or 3 parents with visible drug addiction issues. These
folks were still people. Want their kids to see Santa and have a better life. The country
doesn't care.
I'll guess that you're near Byhalia. Happy memories of visiting family there from late
forties through sixties. Wonder what its like now – how the economic changes have
affected it.
Byhalia is a little further down highway 78. Kids from Byhalia drive up to Olive Branch to
go to a McDonald's and other fast food. Things may be changing because they just completed an
outer interstate loop that passes close by Byhalia. Byhalia was just in news a couple months
ago because a kid died during a football game. People were up in arms about no doctor at game
and a 30 to 40 minute drive to closest hospital. There aren't any doctors offices in Byhalia.
Then toxicology report came back. Kid had cocaine in his system. Holly Springs and Byhalia
area are big drug smuggling area. Close to Memphis and it's distribution network, but across
state line in poor rural Mississippi. NBA players linked to this area and smuggling
networks.
I'm always amazed @ the suicide by gun numbers, as it strikes me as a not so fool proof
way of checking out, exacerbated by perhaps dying slowly in a painful way?
Oh, and bloody, very much so.
Fentanyl seems an easier way out, you just drift into the ether and leave a presentable
corpse for everybody you knew, who all wonder if they could have done something to stop it
from happening, posthaste.
It's cheap and fairly efficient, and the drug way out can be tricky. Silent film legend,
Lupe Valez, is the famed example of suicide by drugs gone wrong. She still died but not on
her own terms because the sleeping pills she took didn't react well with her last meal.
How many people have tried to check out and had it not work is something to consider.
The level of denial people are capable of can be daunting.
1). My dentist who I think is Republican told me when I brought up Medicare for all said
"I don't think we can afford Medicare for all." This was not an immediate response to my
raising the topic, but something he told me after several visits and having thought about
what I had said and around the time Sanders got media coverage introducing a Medicare for all
bill (I was getting a crown and required many visits). Talking to your dentist can be a one
sided conversation for obvious reasons, but I thought "don't you mean we can't afford NOT to
have Medicare for all?"
2). A co-worker of mine who is African American. When I said U.S. life expectancy is
falling, this is a sign of extreme policy failure and should affect how we rate the ACA (read
that here, of course!) replied "You're assuming health has an impact on life expectancy." I
was stunned and didn't know what to say for a second and finally said "yes, absolutely."
These are the types that are more than happy to hand the place over to the next Bolsonaro
if only to protect the status gap between themselves and those beneath them.
They also "hand the place over" when the Bolsonaro types tell everyone they have the
solution and the opposition party is tainted by austerity and corruption.
"You're assuming health has an impact on life expectancy"
I have absolutely no idea how I would respond to this either. Was this comment by this
person some kind of built in knee-jerk response to criticism of the ACA/Obama?
actually you are assuming health coverage, even if it was real coverage for what one
needed, has that much of an impact on life expectancy and from what I've read it probably
doesn't compared to things like poverty *regardless* of health coverage. Because the greatest
link to say heart attacks is with poverty (not diet etc.)
At this point though it doesn't even make sense to talk about the ACA circa now and say
it's Obama's ACA, it wasn't that great to begin with. But Trump has made it worse.
My dentist who I think is Republican told me when I brought up Medicare for all said
"I don't think we can afford Medicare for all."
When I brought up Medicare for All to my dentist, after listening to him describe some of
his ER work where he claims to routinely see people who have intentionally damaged their
teeth in order to obtain painkillers (which he is not allowed to proscribe to them
regardless), he said he would never want to have the kind of inferior health care they have
"in Europe." He seemed genuinely surprised when I reported that my wife had done most of a
pregnancy in Italy in the mid-90s and got pre-natal care that was better than anything she
ever got in this country.
My dentist is definitely a Repub. And he socializes with other medical professionals,
which I presume gives him a very distorted image of the health care system. I often hear him
railing against the idiotic dictates of insurance companies and he seems genuinely proud
that, unlike the inscrutable and BS pricing of hospitals, dentists have to have
straightforward pricing because many people do pay 100% out of pocket (so he says).
This is a part of the 10% that is going to be very hard to reach. But I tell him
socialists need dental care too and so he will always have work even after we take over.
Suicide can be a rational and sensible choice.
Bluntly, if the quality of your life is shitty and not going to improve why stick around?
That the reason so many people's lives are bad enough that they decide death is preferable to
life is societal doesn't change their circumstances.
If you are old and sick, barely surviving financially or in poor health and unable to afford
care suicide might look like your best alternative.
The "Hemlock Society" has been around for quite a while, that its membership is growing in
the short term says a great deal about America.
Suicide is never rational. It is arrogance that one could weigh the pros and cons of
suicide like they think the have all the pertinent information. The only truth is that we
have no idea what happens when we die or if there is some kind of experience that continues
in a form that might not be a personal consciousness. Also, why don't you see the decision to
die is made under duress and therefor invalid like signing a contract with a gun pointed at
your head? There were several times in my life that I determined "the quality of [my] life is
shitty and not going to improve [so] why stick around", but yet, I became better off going
through the struggle. As a result I have made others lives better with the understanding I
have gained going through the Shaman's journey.
By considering suicide you are considering trading a known (suffering) for an unknown
(Death). In what way can that be considered rational?
The sad fact is that we spend our whole lives avoiding suffering and never take the time
to understand it. Opioids, all drugs, are a route to avoid suffering, to avoid looking at our
trauma. Materialism is about avoiding our suffering. Suicide is materialistic because it
supposes there is a mind that we can stop.
But even in the Buddhist centers I visit it has turned away from the spiritual and people
go there not to understand their suffering, but rather only to escape it.
American society does not have an economic problem, it has a spiritual problem.
I respect your view that suicide is an arrogant act and that suffering is an unavoidable
part of life. I totally agree with the latter philosophy. You suffer, and you wade through it
and come out on the other side as a better person. Forged in fire, so to speak.
Plus, I am, by nature, an optimist. There is always something to look forward to, every
morning.
But, a few years ago, I suffered a cascade of bodily failures, whose symptoms were at
first ignored, then misdiagnosed, resulting in my taking medications that made me worse off.
At one point, for two months, I had constant nerve pain (comparable to having teeny barbed
wire wrapped around my torso and and being zapped by an electric charge every few seconds.)
Plus back pain. I could not eat, and when I did, I vomited. I lost 20 pounds. I could not
sleep for more than hour at a time, and that hour happened only once a day. I walked only
with the aid of two walking sticks. I was totally constipated for a month (gross, but this
condition just adds to one's misery.) There was no end in sight and my condition just kept
worsening with each round of new medication.
I did not seriously contemplate suicide. But I did give some thought to what I would do if
I had to face life without sleep, without food, without the ability to walk, and death came
up as one of the better solutions. Fortunately, I changed doctors.
I empathize with your struggles, and I have contemplated suicide myself, but contemplating
death is part of the shaman's journey. I do not think that suicide is arrogant, I think it is
a misunderstanding.
IMHO, medical doctors will disrupt this journey. They should be consulted but with the
understanding that they know very little about the balance of the body and what is needed to
heal.
Truth is, we will die. The greater the suffering the easier to find out "who" that is
suffering.
I get in fights with my therapist all the time about this. She is always advocating for ME
to change when I feel if she wants to help us all she should be helping us change the
system.
Well roles like therapist are part of what props up the system and they get paid for
precisely that.
I mean if we are just living our lives we see that things are both individual and
systematic. And some things are strongly systematic (economic problems), and others probably
have a significantly personal component (phobias etc.). And so we have to exist with both
being true, but if we are drowning in economic problems the rest doesn't matter. But
therapists have a specific role to individualize all problems. But if people are just doing
therapy to get stuff off their chest, who can blame them. Enough people are, although it's
not how therapists like to see their role.
The train goes right by Chester, Pa, and you can see decay along the tracks all along
BosWash. Except for Biden, a corrupt tool who hasn't figured out how to cash in, the elites
don't take the train.
Remember the Kingsman movie where the president was going to let all the dopers die? Think
Trump.
Not only is the WH response to the opioid problem merely cosmetic, they (and NIH) refuse
to link it to the economics of human obsolescence. How convenient. As jobs die, the workers
do too – less welfare burden. That is fascist thinking, and it is evident today.
Finally, let us recall that all public health leaders are Trump appointees – i.e.,
incompetent. CDC too refuses to link suicide to the economy. It's bad politics. They can do
this because there are no national standards for reporting deaths as suicides or even drug
overdoses. It is entirely up to the elected coroner. Thus 10s of thousands of suicides are
reported as natural or accidental either intentionally to ease the grief of family members or
because they lack the manpower to investigate suspicious deaths. Note the bump in accidental
deaths. Driving your car into a concrete abutment or over a cliff might be an accident, but
more often than not, the driver was pickled (Irish courage) and the death was
intentional.
So, until we do a better job of measuring the causes of death, the administration can
continue to blame the deaths on moral weakness rather than its cruel economic policies.
Sadly, I believe if suicide attempts were taken into account, the picture would even look
far bleaker, and likely include far more Metro areas. In those Metro areas there are likely
far less gun/rifle owners (reportedly the most successful method), far quicker ambulance
response times, and significant expenditures have been made, and actions taken, to thwart
attempts on transit lines and bridges, along with committing suicidal persons to locked down
psychiatric facilities (which then adds further financial burden, significant employment
issues, and possibly ugly, forced medication side effects); while doing absolutely nothing
whatsoever to address the causes.
What a sickening blotch on the US , with such wealth and power – sovereign in
its own currency – that it's citizens are increasingly attempting and committing
suicide because they can no longer afford to live in any manner that's considered humane.
That, while its Fourth Estate deliberately obscures the deadly problem – which
cannot be cured by forcing Pharma™, Therapy™, and Psychiatric Confinement™
at it, when a predatory crippling of economic stability is the entire cause – and
refuses to hold the Government and Elites accountable.
I would commend to all Beth Macy's riveting book "
Dopesick : Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America ."
Equal parts nicely written investigative reporting and painful personal stories. I'd
thought that the "opioid epidemic" meme was hyperbolic. I was wrong.
@MysticFish - If these are completely different things, why has the austerity-stricken
tax-payer been co-opted into paying for events like Thatcher's funeral
How is that corporatism?
Bilderberg policing,
How is that corporatism?
corporate funded think-tanks are having their non-mandated corporatist policies
prioritized over government election pledges on policy?
Neo-liberalism and fascist corporatism are completely different things.
If these are completely different things, why has the austerity-stricken tax-payer been
co-opted into paying for events like Thatcher's funeral and Bilderberg policing, and why is
it that corporate funded think-tanks are having their non-mandated corporatist policies
prioritised over government election pledges on policy?
In reality this is mostly neocolonial way of dealing with countries. Allowing local oligarchy
to steal as much loaned by foreign states money as they can and converting the country into the
debt slave. Look at Greece and Ukraine for two prominent examples.
The position of OneCommentator is a typical position of defenders and propagandists
of neoliberalism
IMF is part of "Washington Consensus" with the direct goal of converting countries into debt slaves of industrialized
West. It did not work well with Acia counties, but it is great success in some countries in Europe and most of Africa and Latin
America (with Argentina as the most recent example)
Notable quotes:
"... As central banks such as the FED and the ECB operate with insatiable greed and cannot be audited or regulated by any government body anywhere in the world, due to their charters having been set up that way, then bankers are free to meet secretly and plot depressions so as to gain full control over sovereign nations and manipulate markets so that their "chums and agents" in business can buy up assets and land in depressed economies – while possible wars could also make corporations and banks more money as well! ..."
..."neoliberal", concept behind the word, has nothing to do with liberal or liberty or
freedom..
Wrong. Traditional liberalism supported both social and economic freedoms. That
included support for most of the civil rights and freedoms we enjoy today AND free trade and
free investments. It used to be that liberals were practically unpopular with right wing
(traditional conservative for example) parties but more or less on the same side as left wing
parties, mainly because of their social positions. More recently the left wing parties became
more and more unhappy with the economic freedoms promoted by liberals while the right wing
parties embraced both the economic and social freedoms to a certain degree.
So, the leftists
found themselves in a bind practically having reversed roles which the the conservatives as
far as support for liberalism goes. So, typically, they're using propaganda to cover their
current reactionary tendencies and coins a new name for liberals: neoliberals which, they
say, are not the same as liberals (who are their friends since liberal means freedom lover
and they like to use that word a lot).
"austerity" is the financial sectors' solution to its survival after it sucked most the
value out of the economy and broke it.
Austerity is caused by incompetent governments unable to balance their budgets.
They had 60 years to do it properly after ww2 and the reconstruction that followed but many
of them never did it. So now it is very simple: governments ran out of money and nobody wants
to lend them more. That's it, they hit the wall and there is nothing left on the bottom if
the purse.
The IMF exists to lend money to governments, so it's comic that it wags its finger at
governments that run up debt.
It is a bit more complicated than that. Developed countries like Greece are supposed to run
more or less balanced budgets over longer periods. Sure, they need to borrow money on a
regular basis and may that is supposed to be done by issuing bonds or other forms of
government debt that investors buy on the open market. For such governments the IMF is
supposed to just fill in in a minor way not to provide the bulk of all the loans needed on a
temporary basis. Because of incompetent governments Greece is practically bankrupt hence it
is not going to be able to pay back most of the existing debts and definitely not newer
debts. So practically the IMF is not, ending money to them, it is giving them the money. So,
I would say that they have a good reason to wag its finger.
If private, stockholder-held central banks such as the FED and the FED-backed ECB were not
orchestrating this depression, and anybody who believed they were was a "wacko-nutcase
conspiracy theorist", then why do they keep repeating the same mistakes of forcing un-payable
bailout loans, collapsing banks, wiping out people's savings and then imposing austerity on
those nations year after year – when it is clearly a failed policy?
Possible Answers :
1. Bank presidents are all ex-hippies who got hooked on LSD in the 70's and have not yet
recovered fully as their brains are still fried!
2. Central bankers have been recruited from insane asylums in both Europe and America in
government-sponsored programs to see whether blithering idiots are capable of running large,
international financial institutions.
3. All catastrophic events in the banking/business world, such as the derivative and
housing crash of 2008, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and The Great Depression of 1929-40
were totally random events that just occurred out of nowhere and central banks were caught
off guard – leaving them no option but to play with their willies for years on end
until a major war suddenly happened to pull the whole world out of "bad times"!
4. As central banks such as the FED and the ECB operate with insatiable greed and cannot
be audited or regulated by any government body anywhere in the world, due to their charters
having been set up that way, then bankers are free to meet secretly and plot depressions so
as to gain full control over sovereign nations and manipulate markets so that their "chums
and agents" in business can buy up assets and land in depressed economies – while
possible wars could also make corporations and banks more money as well!
Please choose one of the possible answers from above and write a short 500 word essay on
whether it may or may not true – using well-defined logical arguments. I expect your
answers in by Friday of this week as I would like to get pissed out of my mind at the pub on
Saturday night!
The neoliberal idea is that the cultivation itself should be conducted privately as
well. They see "austerity" as a way of forcing that agenda.
..."neoliberal", concept behind the word, has nothing to do with liberal or liberty or
freedom...it is a PR spin concept that names slavery with a a word that sounds like the
opposite...if "they" called it neoslavery it just wouldn't sell in the market for political
concepts.
..."austerity" is the financial sectors' solution to its survival after it sucked most the
value out of the economy and broke it. To mend it was a case of preservation of the elite and
the devil take the hindmost, that's most of us.
...and even Labour, the party of trade unionism, has adopted austerity to drive its
policy.
...we need a Peoples' Party to stand for the revaluation of labour so we get paid for our
effort rather than the distortion, the rich xxx poor divide, of neoslavery austerity.
@outragedofacton - You have to be careful when you take on the banksters.
Abe Lincoln, John Kennedy and Hitler all tried or (in Kennedy's case planned) on the
issuance of money via the state circumventing the banks.
I hadn't realised the John WIlkes Booth and Lee Harey Oswald were bankers.
But I do always enjoy the scenes in Saving Private Ryan when thousands of
heavily-armed Goldman Sachs employees land on Omaha beach.
Still it is surprising that they have gone so quickly from their stated position at the
start of the republic of a rejection of kings and emperors to their position now of
corruption so ingrained it is impossible to make distinctions.
Too right, I've spat my tea every time I hear some non-Brit brag of their
freedom from royal tyranny. They are blissfully unaware they have created/inherited such in
all but name. Fat Cat Bastard or Henry the Eighth, try to spot the difference in style or
attitude.
There is a particular transparency of motive which becomes clear, and reconciles all inquiry, when an interested observer accepts
a particular media framework:
The media outlet CNN provides for their domestic and international audience, the preferred position for all policy and
points of advocacy from Hillary Clinton's Department of State.
The media outlet The Washington Post serves a similar purpose, however their specialized role is as a conduit for Barack
"Hussein" Obama's Central Intelligence Agency.
"the rout of Sunni jihadists in Syria by the combined forces of the Syrian government, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, it's clear
that Islamic terrorism is no longer a threat that stirs the paranoia necessary to feed big military and intelligence budgets .
For all the money they've spent, intelligence has done a terrible job of either anticipating terrorist strikes or defeating them
in counterinsurgency warfare"
Excuse me,but WTF??
It's the US,NATO, Israhell and Saudis that created ISIS, with the above mentioned spending BILLIONS to combat ISIS in Syria.
The war on terror is a hoax. The lame exploitation of Arabs and Islam to manufacture consent for war on Iraq, starting with
Mossad planting of low yield thermal nuke weapons that brought the Towers down..Saudis were the patsies.
All of this with blessing of Zionists banksters and US Treasury& Fed Reserve.
Nobody would dispute the fact that sanctification of truth is an essential foundation for
a free society. The full extent of perversion and depravity of psychopaths in power is held
in check to some extent by their need to pay lip service to civility and rule of law in the
public eye -- until **** hits the fan. The full extent of pathocracy is about to become
obvious in the Reset. It's going to stun the general public.
I don't know if there is a general formula for describing this, but in my experience,
organizations with psychopaths at the top tend to disintegrate on their own, but they do one
hell of a lot of damage on the way down, since the psychopaths never cede their power and
make moral decisions willingly. Things are essentially guaranteed to get worse as long as
they retain power. It's hard to imagine any remedy to this situation that doesn't involve
some kind of violence, starting of course with manipulation of different groups on the
street. The trouble with any scenario fitting the description of Civil War is that it tends
to center around proxy groups, while those ultimately responsible get away.
We have anecdotes about 'white hat' groups like the so-called White Dragons. They, like the
CIA, appear to operate in the shadows. Do they really exist, and are they really working to
make a positive difference? Will we know them by their works?
I have no faith in Trump as some kind of solo superhero, because thus far all the talk
about him appears to have been nothing but wishful thinking. The man seems like a human
pinball, utterly inconsistent and unpredictable. That's helpful in some ways, not in others.
Something else needs to happen / someone else needs to rise in the role of a statesman and
genuine, meaningful reformer.
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - China and the United States have agreed to halt new tariffs as
both nations engage in trade talks with the goal of reaching an agreement within 90 days, the
White House said on Saturday after U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi
Jinping held high-stakes talks in Argentina.
Trump agreed not to boost tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods to 25 percent on Jan. 1
as previously announced, as China agreed to buy an unspecified but "very substantial" amount
of agricultural, energy, industrial and other products, the White House said. The White House
also said China "is open to approving the previously unapproved Qualcomm Inc <QCOM.O>
NXP <NXPI.O> deal should it again be presented."
The White House said that if agreement on trade issues including technology transfer,
intellectual property, non-tariff barriers, cyber theft and agriculture have not been reached
with China in 90 days that both parties agree that the 10 percent tariffs will be raised to
25 percent.
"... I can also assure you that Luke Harding, the Guardian, Washington Post and New York Times have been publishing a stream of deliberate lies, in collusion with the security services. ..."
Luke Harding and the Guardian Publish Still More Blatant MI6 Lies
The right wing Ecuadorean government of President Moreno continues to churn out its
production line of fake documents regarding Julian Assange, and channel them straight to MI6
mouthpiece
Luke Harding of the Guardian.
Amazingly, more Ecuadorean Government documents have just been discovered for the Guardian,
this time spy agency reports detailing visits of Paul Manafort and unspecified "Russians" to
the Embassy. By a wonderful coincidence of timing, this is the day after Mueller announced that
Manafort's plea deal was over.
The problem with this latest fabrication is that Moreno had already released the visitor
logs to the Mueller inquiry. Neither Manafort nor these "Russians" are in the visitor logs.
This is impossible. The visitor logs were not kept by Wikileaks, but by the very strict
Ecuadorean security. Nobody was ever admitted without being entered in the logs. The procedure
was very thorough. To go in, you had to submit your passport (no other type of document was
accepted). A copy of your passport was taken and the passport details entered into the log.
Your passport, along with your mobile phone and any other electronic equipment, was retained
until you left, along with your bag and coat. I feature in the logs every time I visited.
There were no exceptions. For an exception to be made for Manafort and the "Russians" would
have had to be a decision of the Government of Ecuador, not of Wikileaks, and that would be so
exceptional the reason for it would surely have been noted in the now leaked supposed
Ecuadorean "intelligence report" of the visits. What possible motive would the Ecuadorean
government have for facilitating secret unrecorded visits by Paul Manafort? Furthermore it is
impossible that the intelligence agency – who were in charge of the security –
would not know the identity of these alleged "Russians".
Previously Harding and the Guardian have published documents faked by the Moreno government
regarding a diplomatic appointment to Russia for Assange of which he had no knowledge. Now they
follow this up with more documents aimed to provide fictitious evidence to bolster Mueller's
pathetically failed attempt to substantiate the story that Russia deprived Hillary of the
Presidency.
My friend William Binney, probably the world's greatest expert on electronic surveillance,
former Technical Director of the NSA, has stated that
it is impossible the DNC servers were hacked, the technical evidence shows it was a
download to a directly connected memory stick. I knew the US security services were conducting
a fake investigation the moment it became clear that the FBI did not even themselves look at
the DNC servers, instead accepting a report from the Clinton linked DNC "security consultants"
Crowdstrike.
I would love to believe that the fact Julian has never met Manafort is bound to be
established. But I fear that state control of propaganda may be such that this massive "Big
Lie" will come to enter public consciousness in the same way as the non-existent Russian hack
of the DNC servers.
Assange never met Manafort. The DNC emails were downloaded by an insider. Assange never even
considered fleeing to Russia. Those are the facts, and I am in a position to give you a
personal assurance of them.
I can also assure you that Luke Harding, the Guardian, Washington Post and New York
Times have been publishing a stream of deliberate lies, in collusion with the security
services.
I am not a fan of Donald Trump. But to see the partisans of the defeated candidate (and a
particularly obnoxious defeated candidate) manipulate the security services and the media to
create an entirely false public perception, in order to attempt to overturn the result of the
US Presidential election, is the most astonishing thing I have witnessed in my lifetime.
Plainly the government of Ecuador is releasing lies about Assange to curry favour with the
security establishment of the USA and UK, and to damage Assange's support prior to expelling
him from the Embassy. He will then be extradited from London to the USA on charges of
espionage.
Assange is not a whistleblower or a spy – he is the greatest publisher of his age, and
has done more to bring the crimes of governments to light than the mainstream media will ever
be motivated to achieve. That supposedly great newspaper titles like the Guardian, New York
Times and Washington Post are involved in the spreading of lies to damage Assange, and are
seeking his imprisonment for publishing state secrets, is clear evidence that the idea of the
"liberal media" no longer exists in the new plutocratic age. The press are not on the side of
the people, they are an instrument of elite control.
My opinions are conflicted, but I'd rather give Assange a Nobel Peace Prize than a criminal
conviction. He definitely deserves a Nobel Prize more than Obama. I was in an eatery in
Cambridge, MA, when I heard Obama's prize announced, and even there people where aghast and
astounded.
The Guardian was bought by Soros, a few years ago.
Washpost, NYT and CNN, Deep State mouthpieces.
That the USA, as long as Deep State has not been eradicated completely from USA society, will
continue to try to get Assange, and of course also Snowdon, in it claws, is more than
obvious.
So what are we talking about ?
Assange just uses the freedom of information act, or how the the USA euphemism for telling
them nothing, is called.
How Assange survives, mentally and bodily, being locked up in a small room without a
bathroom, for several years now, is beyond my comprehension.
But of course, for 'traitors' like him human rights do not exist.
"I can also assure you that Luke Harding, the Guardian, Washington Post and New York Times
have been publishing a stream of deliberate lies, in collusion with the security services."
These outfits are largely state-run at this point. The Washington Post is owned by Jeff
Bezos, a man with deep ties to the CIA through his Amazon company (which depends upon federal
subsidies and has received security agency "support") and the Guardian is clandestinely
funded through UK government purchases, among other things. MI6 has also effectively
compromised the former integrity and objectivity of that outlet by threatening them with
prosecutions for revealing MI6 spy practices. And the NYT has always been state-run. See
their coverage of the Iraq War. The Israelis have bragged about having an asset at the Times.
The American government has several.
It's amazing to see the obvious progression of the lies as they take hold in an anti-Trump
elite who seem completely impervious to understanding his victory over Clinton. All these
people who claim to be so cosmopolitan and educated seem to think Assange or Manafort would
have any interest in meeting each other. (Let alone in the company of unspecified
'Russians'.)
At first it was that Assange was wrong to publish the DNC leaks because it hurt Clinton
and thus helped Trump.
Then it was that Assange was actively trying to help Trump.
Now it's that Assange is in collusion with Trump and the 'Russians'.
The same thing happened with the Trump-Russian nonsense which goes ever more absurd as
time goes on. Slowly boiling the frog in the public's mind. The allegations are so
nonsensical, yet there are plenty of educated, supposedly cosmopolitan people who don't
understand the backgrounds or motives of their 'liberal' heroes in the NYT or Guardian who
believe this on faith.
None of these people will ever question how if any of this is true how the security
services of the West didn't know it and if they supposedly know it, how come they aren't
acting like it's true. They are acting like they're attempting to smear politicians they
don't like, however.
Luke Harding is particularly despicable. He made his name as a journalist off privileged
access to Wilkileaks docs, and has been persistently attacking Assange ever since the Swedish
fan-girl farce.
Assange did make a mistake (of which I am sure he is all too aware now) in the choice to,
rather than leave the info. open on-line, collaborate with the filthy Guardian, the sleazy
NYT, and I forget dirty name of the third publication.
@anon Since you
are posting as Anon coward, I am not expecting a reply, but would be interested in (and would
not doubt) state funding of the 'Guardian'?
As for the NYT, they are plainly in some sense state-funded, but the state in question is
neither New York nor the U.S.A., but the state of Israel.
@Che Guava
Perhaps he is referring to the sheer volume of ads the British government places for public
sector appointments. As for the paper edition, most of it seems to be bought by the BBC!
So he screamed in the cafeteria and spilled his morning coffee. We all wondered what
happened to him and so we looked at his friend, and he told us that he must have read the
NYT, as that was his common reaction, a cry of pain and anguish and screams of "all lies, all
lies, all lies" whenever he reads the newspaper or watches the TV, esp. NYT.
Your article and the previous news about Manfort visiting Assange and the funny timing of
the same reminded me of this story.
The Western MSM is a lying scamming neoliberal propaganda machine.
"... You might like to report on the recent bill in Congress giving broadcasters "immunity" for spying. The New York Times acquires information from spying on citizens by the CIA twenty four hours a day - aa CIA Wire Service which is unconscionable for a newspaper. Such information allows the Times to keep competitors out of favored industries, scoop other news groups, and enhance revenues by pirated material. The Times isn't a newspaper at all but a clandestine operation run by intelligence units. ..."
"... Interestingly, the NYT revelation itself was illegal, a felony under the Intelligence Act of 1917. ..."
"... Which, ipso facto, makes at least that part of the Intelligence Act of 1917 unconstitutional: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" ( US. Constitution, Amendment I ). This perhaps explains why no newspaper has ever been prosecuted under the Intelligence Act of 1917. Prosecutors would rather have it available as a threat rather than having it thrown out as unconstitutional, and of course the Supreme Court can't rule on its constitutionality unless someone has standing to bring a case against it before them. ..."
"... It's also not surprising that the CIA would take an interest in how it is perceived. I would argue that the CIA was actually preventing or controlling the flow of info the WH was giving to filmmakers. ..."
"... This story only scratches the surface on the extent of corruption in US media and journalism in general over the last 10-15 years. The loss of journalistic integrity and objectivity in US media is on display as many media outlets showcase their one-sided liberal or conservative views. Sadly, the US media has become just as polarized as the government. However, the greatest corruption is not with the govt-media connection; the greatest corruption involves the lobbyists - foreign and domestic. Lobbying groups exert an enormous influence on politicians and the media and it extends to both sides of the aisle. ..."
"... It's no secret that the CIA and State Department have colluded with media since 1950. Public relations is nothing more than propaganda. And if you think the CIA doesn't have it's own PR department, with *hundreds* of employees, dedicated to misinformation, spin, half-truths, and psychological operations, well, consider this your wake-up call. ..."
"... "The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media." - William Colby - Former CIA Director ..."
"... "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director 1981 ..."
"... While you rightly characterize this case as indicating the "virtual merger" of government and media "watchdogs," I think a meta-theme running through your writings illuminates the "virtual merger" of both corporate & state power (esp. after Citizens United), ..."
"... the real issue is not personalities or trivial post deletions, the real issue is that the CIA is tightly bound to the institutions of America ... and that this is not a good thing for everyone ..."
...this is the norm not the exception. It's also representative of a very significant cross
section of the State Department/CIA/Pentagon/DC Beaurcratic Machine, made up of various
Leftists, Statists, academia, and privileged youth with political science degrees from east
coast/DC/Ivy League schools.
I am having a very difficult time wrapping my mind around this story.....we have an alleged
CIA spokesperson purportedly attempting to engage in damage control with a prominent national
newspaper regarding the flow of information between the CIA and film-makers doing a story on
the Bin Laden raid. Ostensibly, the information provided, regarding the raid, was to help
secure the President's reelection bid?
I note that the logo on the phone of the published photo of CIA spokesperson Marie Harf
looks remarkably similar, if not identical, to the Obama campaign logo. A "Twitter" account
profile for M's. Harf references that she is a "National Security Wonk at OFA...." . Could
the "OFA" she makes reference to possibly be "Obama for America"? Her recent tweet history
includes commentaries critical of Romney and his supporters, which appear to be in response
to her observations while watching Republican Convention coverage.
My understanding heretofore was that those engaged in the Intelligence Community,
particularly spokespersons, preferred to keep a low profile and at least appear apolitical.
Based upon the facts as presented, one must reexamine whether a US intelligence agency is
engaging in the most blatant form political partisanship to unduly influence a US
Presidential election.
You might like to report on the recent bill in Congress giving broadcasters "immunity" for
spying. The New York Times acquires information from spying on citizens by the CIA twenty
four hours a day - aa CIA Wire Service which is unconscionable for a newspaper. Such
information allows the Times to keep competitors out of favored industries, scoop other news
groups, and enhance revenues by pirated material. The Times isn't a newspaper at all but a
clandestine operation run by intelligence units.
I'm surprised by the pettiness of it all. And it's this pettiness that makes me think that
such data exchange is not only routine, but an accepted way to enhance a career. After all, who really cares what Dowd writes? I
believe Chomsky called her 'kinda a gossip columnist'. And, that's what she is.
That anyone
would bother passing her column to the CIA is, on the face of it, a little absurd. I don't
say she is a bad columnist, she's probably quite good, but hardly of interest to the CIA,
even when she is writing about the CIA. So basically, someone passed her column along,
because this is normal, and the more ambitious understand that this is how you 'get along'.
This kind of careerism is something I see, on some level, every day: the ambitious see the
rules of the game, and follow them, and the rationale comes later. For most of us, this
doesn't involve the security services. However, the principle that the MSM is, at the least,
heavily influenced by state power is fairly well understood by now in more critical circles:
all forms of media are subject to unusual and particular state pressures, due to their
central import in propaganda and mass-persuasion. The NYT is, in short, an obvious target for
this kind of influencing. And as such should really know much much better.
Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that most of what I read, or see on the nightly
broadcasts, is essentially bullshit. I could switch to RT, and in a way its counter-point
would be useful in stimulating my own critical thinking, but much of what RT broadcasts is
also likely to be bullshit. We have a world of competing propaganda memes where nobody knows
the truth. It's like we are all spooks now, each and every one of us. An excellent article,
again.
Interestingly, the NYT revelation itself was illegal, a felony under the Intelligence
Act of 1917.
Which, ipso facto, makes at least that part of the Intelligence Act of 1917
unconstitutional: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the
press" ( US. Constitution,
Amendment I ). This perhaps explains why no newspaper has ever been prosecuted under the
Intelligence Act of 1917. Prosecutors would rather have it available as a threat rather than
having it thrown out as unconstitutional, and of course the Supreme Court can't rule on its
constitutionality unless someone has standing to bring a case against it before them.
Excellent article, but it's not necessarily a surprise to see a reporter who has developed a
relationship with his source do that source a favor in hopes that the favor will some day be
returned with greater access.
It's also not surprising that the CIA would take an interest in
how it is perceived. I would argue that the CIA was actually preventing or controlling the
flow of info the WH was giving to filmmakers.
This story only scratches the surface on the
extent of corruption in US media and journalism in general over the last 10-15 years. The
loss of journalistic integrity and objectivity in US media is on display as many media
outlets showcase their one-sided liberal or conservative views. Sadly, the US media has
become just as polarized as the government. However, the greatest corruption is not with the govt-media connection; the greatest corruption involves the lobbyists - foreign and domestic.
Lobbying groups exert an enormous influence on politicians and the media and it extends to
both sides of the aisle.
What the commoners fail to understand is that the Public Relations (PR) industry controls 75%
of the information that you are fed from major media outlets. It's an industry that has
artfully masked everything you thought you knew. It's no secret that the CIA and State
Department have colluded with media since 1950. Public relations is nothing more than
propaganda. And if you think the CIA doesn't have it's own PR department, with *hundreds* of
employees, dedicated to misinformation, spin, half-truths, and psychological operations,
well, consider this your wake-up call.
Glenn, thanks for illuminating the insidious, dangerous cynicism pervading American media
& culture, which have become so inured to hypocrisy, corruption & desecration of
sacrosanct democratic values & institutions that has been crucial to the normalization of
formerly intolerable practices, laws & policies eating away at the foundations of our
constitutional democracy. The collective moral, principled "lines in the sand" protecting us
from authoritarian pressures are steadily being washed away, compromised, thanks to media
obsequious complicity.
While you rightly characterize this case as indicating the "virtual merger" of government
and media "watchdogs," I think a meta-theme running through your writings illuminates the
"virtual merger" of both corporate & state power (esp. after Citizens United), and all
the "checks & balances" enshrined in our constitution after 9/11 (e.g. deferential
judiciary, bi-partisan Congressional consensus on increasingly authoritarian, secretive US
executive, propagandistic media, etc.). At least that's my thinking, and I see no significant
countervailing pressure capable of slowing- let alone reversing- this authoritarian
re-ordering of our constitutional order & political culture, though a few exceptions
exist (e.g. Judge Forrest's suprising courage to suspend NDAA provision 1021), and rare
journalists like yourself.
One astounding example of this widespread cynicism facilitating this authoritarian trend,
was the media's rather restrained response to the revelation that elements in the massive
Terrorist/Military Industrial Complex (HBGary) had been plotting military-style
social-engineering operations to discredit & silence progressive journalists,
specifically naming YOU, who I see as one of the rare defenders of the
constitutional/democratic "lines in the sand" under relentless attack. Where was the
overwhelming collective shock & outrage, or media demanding criminal investigations into
US taxpayer-funded attacks on our so-called "free press?"
My question for Glenn, is whether he thinks it would be possible for him to get legal
standing to sue the private (& US??) entities, which proposed the covert
discrediting/repression operations targeting you specifically?
I'm no lawyer, but it seems the documents published by Anonymous, reveal actions
constituting criminal conspiracy. Given the proposed methods included forms of
politically-motivated military warfare & coercion, the guilty parties would likely be
aggressively investigated and charged with some terrorist crimes, if they had been busted
planning attacks on people/entities that trumpeted Obama administration policies or its
corporate backers (i.e. if they were Anonymous). The HBGary proposal to discredit/silence
Wikileaks defenders strongly indicated they had experience with- & confidence in- such
covert operations. Requiring a journalist/academic to be covertly
discredited/destroyed/silenced before they get legal standing would be as absurd as the Obama
administration's argument that Chris Hedges & Co. plaintiffs lack standing because they
hadn't yet been stripped of their rights & secretly indefinitately detained without
charges or trial.
I thought you might be in the unique position to use the US courts to pry open & shine
some light upon the clearly anti-democratic, authoritarian abuses of power, & virtual
fusion of corporate & state powers, which you so eloquently write about.
I glad that foreign journalism is available for me to read our the internet, it's the only
way i can find truthful information about what's going on in my own country (USA). I've known the liberal media bias was a problem for a long time, but articles like this
continually remind me that things are far worse than they appear.
All the actions surrounding the NY Times and the CIA on this issue are atrocious. With this
type of "journalistic independence", why am I paying for a Times account??
As a favor to all readers, following is a summation of all past, present, and future ideas as
articulated by the Fortune Cookie Thinker, John Andersson:
A certain amount of genocide is good because the world is overpopulated.
You should never question authority; after all, you are not an expert on authority.
Everyone wins when we kill terrorists; the more we kill, the more we generate, thus the
more we kill again, which makes us win more.
It is not possible to have absolute power; therefore, power does not corrupt.
Drones kill bad people. Only bad people are killed by drones. Thus, drones are good. We
should have more drones. That is all.
I secretly think he's the real "Jack Handy" from the Deep Thoughts series on SNL.
In my high school history class in 1968 I learned all about how newspapers printed propaganda
stories before WWI and Spanish American war in order to influence the public so they would
want to go to war and it was called "yellow journalism". I also had an English teacher that
taught us about "marketing" and how they use visuals and printed words and film to make us
want to buy a product. My father taught me to NOT BELEIVE everything you read. Now it is
called "critical thinking" and has been added as a general education class in college that
you have to take for a college degree. Critical thinking about what you read and see and hear
should be taught as early as 10 year olds so people can think for themselves. I do not read
main stream newspapers in America but read news sites all over the world.
THANK GOD FOR THE
INTERNET THAT YOU CAN READ WHAT OTHER NEWSPAPERS. I discovered Glenn on Democracy Now and
they are my go to place to read about what is really happening.
the real issue is not personalities or trivial post deletions, the real issue is that the CIA
is tightly bound to the institutions of America ... and that this is not a good thing for
everyone
"... We should not even talk about "conflict of interest" anymore. It is a collusion all the way. We saw it in the phone hacking scandal here, now at the New York Times. I have always wondered about these white tie dinners in Washington DC and how chummy and cozy the reporters looked mingling with the power-holders and -brokers. ..."
"... In what is turning out to be the CIA Century, the American President and major news outlets seem to operate under CIA authority and in accordance with CIA standard operating procedures. ..."
"... Or Afghanistan. Many of the cruise missile libs supported the invasion of Afghanistan but not Iraq. ..."
"... The press is managed on behalf of what I will call US powers. Those powers seem to be high level military, clandestine agencies, financial industry "leaders", and war contractors. The political parties and the faces they present to the public (with some few exceptions) act as functionaries to keep up the illusion that the US is a democracy. ..."
"... And I am not sure why I associate Washington's bureaucratic CIA with dancing midgets. ..."
If we thought the public trust in journalism is low, then this news only pushes it down further. Do people in journalism care?
Some do very much but for the most the media and the power-holders are in collusion.
We should not even talk about "conflict of interest" anymore. It is a collusion all the way. We saw it in the phone hacking
scandal here, now at the New York Times. I have always wondered about these white tie dinners in Washington DC and how chummy
and cozy the reporters looked mingling with the power-holders and -brokers.
The critical articles are nothing more than smokescreens. We are led to believe how hard-hitting the newspapers are and how
they hold the politicians and other power-brokers to fire. All hogwash. It is better we recognize that the citizens are merely
props they need to claim legitimacy.
Not till this moment did I realize that we are under siege. I thought Julian Assange was the one under siege but he was just trying
to offer us a path to freedom. With Assange neutralized and The New York Times and its brethren by all appearances thoroughly
compromised, how can any one of us stand for all of us against government malfeasance let alone tyranny?
Where would you go if you had dispositive proof of devastating government malfeasance? In what is turning out to be the
CIA Century, the American President and major news outlets seem to operate under CIA authority and in accordance with CIA standard
operating procedures.
It would actually be foolish to take evidence of horrific government behavior to the titular head of the government {who'd
likely persecute you as a whistleblower} or the major news organizations supposedly reporting to us about it {they'd bring it
right back to the government for guidance on what to do}.
Without safe and reliable ways to stand and speak for and to each other on a large scale about the foul deeds of our government,
we are damned to live very lonely vulnerable lives at the mercy of an unrestrained government.
Excerpt from script of Three Days of the Condor --
Higgins: I can't let you stay out, Turner.
Turner slowly stops, leans back against a building, shakes his head sadly.
Turner: Go home, Higgins. They have it all.
Higgins: What are you talking about?
Turner: Don't you know where we are?
Higgins looks around. The huge newspaper trucks are moving out.
Turner: It's where they ship from.
Higgins' head darts upward and he reads the legend above Turner's head. THE NEW YORK TIMES. He is stunned.
Higgins: You dumb son of a bitch.
Turner: It's been done. They have it.
Higgins: You've done more damage than you know.
Turner: I hope so.
Higgins: You want to rip us to pieces, but you damn fool you rely on us. {then} You're about to be a very lonely man,
Turner.
***
Higgins: It didn't have to turn out like this.
Turner: Of course it did.
Higgins: {calling out as they depart separate ways} Turner! How do you know they'll print it?
Turner stops. Stares at Higgins. Higgins smiles.
Higgins: You can take a walk. But how far? If they don't print it.
Several commenters have pointed out that the NYT does do "good" journalism. That is true. It is also true that they tell
absolute lies. See Judith Miller. The best way to sell a lie is to wrap it in the truth.
I know it's late in the comments thread by the time anyone bothers to read THIS minor contribution, but I think it worth mentioning
how this article from Glenn proves just how important are outlets like Democracy Now, RT, Cenk Uyger, Dylan Ratigan, et al. You
really have to turn away from the mainstream media as a source of anything. Far too compromised, by both their embeddedness with
the government, and their for-profit coroporate owners.
Note CNN's terrible ratings problems as of late, and the recent news that they are considering turning to more reality-type
shows to get the eyeballs back. If that isn't proof positive of the current value of corporate news, I don't know what is.
DemocracyNow.org. I think I'm going to donate to them today....
i'm do not understand why so many people are against authority in general, even when the legal & enforcement system is there
to protect your property, life and rights. i understand when corruption exists, it should be seriously addressed, but why throw
out a whole system that is "somewhat working"? why blindly call for revolution?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments
are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying
its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety
and Happiness."
This is a political officer acting as editor of a major newspaper. I agree this has been going on for some time. Here is my analysis
of that. The press is managed on behalf of what I will call US powers. Those powers seem to be high level military, clandestine
agencies, financial industry "leaders", and war contractors. The political parties and the faces they present to the public (with
some few exceptions) act as functionaries to keep up the illusion that the US is a democracy.
Romney and Obama are functionaries. They do as they're told. Obama is the more useful of the two as fewer people seem able
to look honestly at his policies. They will not oppose Obama for doing the same things and worse as Bush. It is why all stops
are being pulled out to get him, rather than Romney elected. The policies will be the same but the reaction of our population
to each man is vastly different.
So yes, the capture of the media has been going on for quite some time. It appears nearly consolidated at this time. Instead
of using this as a reason to ignore the situation, it is more important than ever to speak out. History is helpful in learning
how to confront injustice. It is not a reason, as I see many use it, to say; "well it's always been that way, so what?" In history,
we learn about corruption but we also learn that people opposed corruption. Is there some reason why we cannot also oppose corruption
right now?
I though Michael Wolff's recent analysis of Apple (here in the Guardian) was in many ways metaphorical for Western leadership,
his article acting in some ways to explain the behavior we see in cultural "elites."
Worth the read.
And somehow, after reading this article, all I can think of is the Wizard of Oz and a dancing midget army singing in
repetitive, high-pitched tones.
And I am not sure why I associate Washington's bureaucratic CIA with dancing midgets.
Who will be the first commenter to leave the classic devastating critique: "The author fails to present a balanced view, showing
only one side. The author's argument has no substance and is not really worth anything."
Don't forget this one: "The author just complains and complains without ever offering a solution or a better approach."
Also, can anyone 'splain me how to do a "response"?
China does not have its own technological base and is depended on the USA for many technologies. So while China
isdefinitly in assendance, Washington still have capability to stick to "total global dominance" agenda for some time.
Attempt to crush China by Tariffs might provoke the economic crisi in China and possible a "regime change", like Washington
santions to the USSR in the past. And that's probably the calculation.
Notable quotes:
"... President Trump has taken long-simmering US complaints about China to boiling point, castigating Beijing for unfair trade, currency manipulation, and theft of intellectual property rights. China rejects this pejorative American characterization of its economic practices. ..."
"... The problem is that Washington is demanding the impossible. It's like as if the US wants China to turn the clock back to some imagined former era of robust American capitalism. But it is not in China's power to do that. The global economy has shifted structurally away from US dominance. The wheels of production and growth are in China's domain of Eurasia. ..."
"... Combined with its military power, the postwar global order was defined and shaped by Washington. Sometimes misleading called Pax Americana, there was nothing peaceful about the US-led global order. It was more often an order of relative stability purchased by massive acts of violence and repressive regimes under Washington's tutelage. ..."
"... In American mythology, it does not have an empire. The US was supposed to be different from the old European colonial powers, leading the rest of the world through its "exceptional" virtues of freedom, democracy and rule of law . In truth, US global dominance relied on the application of ruthless imperial power. ..."
"... Washington likes to huff and puff about alleged Chinese expansionism "threatening" US allies in Asia-Pacific. But the reality is that Washington is living in the past of former glory. Trading blocs like the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) realize their bread is buttered by China, no longer America. ..."
"... Washington's rhetoric about "standing up to China" is just that – empty rhetoric. It doesn't mean much to countries led by their interests of economic development and the benefits of Chinese investment. ..."
"... China's strategic economic plans – the One Belt One Road initiative – of integrating regional development under its leadership and finance have already created a world order analogous to what American capital achieved in the postwar decades. ..."
"... American pundits and politicians like Vice President Mike Pence may disparage China's economic policies as creating "debt traps" for other countries . But the reality is that other countries are gravitating to China's dynamic leadership ..."
The G20 summits are nominally about how the world's biggest national economies can cooperate
to boost global growth. This year's gathering – more than ever – shows, however,
that rivalry between the US and China is center stage.
Zeroing in further still, the rivalry is an expression of a washed-up American empire
desperately trying to reclaim its former power. There is much sound, fury and pretense from the
outgoing hegemon – the US – but the ineluctable reality is an empire whose halcyon
days are a bygone era.
Ahead of the summit taking place this weekend in Argentina, the Trump administration has
been issuing furious ultimatums to China to "change its behavior". Washington is threatening an
escalating trade war if Beijing does not conform to American demands over economic
policies.
President Trump has taken long-simmering US complaints about China to boiling point,
castigating Beijing for unfair trade, currency manipulation, and theft of intellectual property
rights. China rejects this pejorative American characterization of its economic practices.
Nevertheless, if Beijing does not comply with US diktats then the Trump administration says
it will slap increasing tariffs on Chinese exports.
The gravity of the situation was highlighted by the comments this week of China's
ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai, who warned that the "lessons of history" show trade wars can
lead to catastrophic shooting wars. He urged the Trump administration to be reasonable and to
seek a negotiated settlement of disputes.
The problem is that Washington is demanding the impossible. It's like as if the US wants
China to turn the clock back to some imagined former era of robust American capitalism. But it
is not in China's power to do that. The global economy has shifted structurally away from US
dominance. The wheels of production and growth are in China's domain of Eurasia.
For decades, China functioned as a giant market for cheap production of basic consumer
goods. Now under President Xi Jinping, the nation is moving to a new phase of development
involving sophisticated technologies, high-quality manufacture, and investment.
It's an economic evolution that the world has seen before, in Europe, the US and now
Eurasia. In the decades after the Second World War, up to the 1970s, it was US capitalism that
was the undisputed world leader. Combined with its military power, the postwar global order was
defined and shaped by Washington. Sometimes misleading called Pax Americana, there was nothing
peaceful about the US-led global order. It was more often an order of relative stability
purchased by massive acts of violence and repressive regimes under Washington's tutelage.
In American mythology, it does not have an empire. The US was supposed to be different from
the old European colonial powers, leading the rest of the world through its "exceptional"
virtues of freedom, democracy and rule of law . In truth, US global dominance relied on the
application of ruthless imperial power.
The curious thing about capitalism is it always outgrows its national base. Markets
eventually become too small and the search for profits is insatiable. American capital soon
found more lucrative opportunities in the emerging market of China. From the 1980s on, US
corporations bailed out of America and set up shop in China, exploiting cheap labor and
exporting their goods back to increasingly underemployed America consumers. The arrangement was
propped up partly because of seemingly endless consumer debt.
That's not the whole picture of course. China has innovated and developed independently from
American capital. It is debatable whether China is an example of state-led capitalism or
socialism. The Chinese authorities would claim to subscribe to the latter. In any case, China's
economic development has transformed the entire Eurasian hemisphere. Whether you like it or
not, Beijing is the dynamo for the global economy. One indicator is how nations across
Asia-Pacific are deferring to China for their future growth.
Washington likes to huff and puff about alleged Chinese expansionism "threatening" US allies
in Asia-Pacific. But the reality is that Washington is living in the past of former glory.
Trading blocs like the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) realize their bread is buttered
by China, no longer America.
Washington's rhetoric about "standing up to China" is just that
– empty rhetoric. It doesn't mean much to countries led by their interests of economic
development and the benefits of Chinese investment.
One example is Taiwan. In contrast to Washington's shibboleths about "free Taiwan", more and
more Asian countries are dialing down their bilateral links with Taiwan in deference to China's
position, which views the island as a renegade province. The US position is one of rhetoric,
whereas the relations of other countries are based on material economic exigencies. And
respecting Beijing's sensibilities is for them a prudent option.
A recent
report by the New York Times starkly illustrated the changing contours of the global
economic order. It confirmed what many others have observed, that China is on the way to
surpass the US as the world's top economy. During the 1980s, some 75 per cent of China's
population were living in "extreme poverty", according to the NY Times. Today, less than 1 per
cent of the population is in that dire category. For the US, the trajectory has been in reverse
with greater numbers of its people subject to deprivation.
China's strategic economic plans – the One Belt One Road initiative – of
integrating regional development under its leadership and finance have already created a world
order analogous to what American capital achieved in the postwar decades.
American pundits and politicians like Vice President Mike Pence may disparage China's
economic policies as creating "debt traps" for other countries . But the reality is that other
countries are gravitating to China's dynamic leadership.
Arguably, Beijing's vision for economic development is more enlightened and sustainable than
what was provided by the Americans and Europeans before. The leitmotif for China, along with
Russia, is very much one of multipolar development and mutual partnership. The global economy
is not simply moving from one hegemon – the US – to another imperial taskmaster
– China.
One thing seems inescapable. The days of American empire are over. Its capitalist vigor has
dissipated decades ago. What the upheaval and rancor in relations between Washington and
Beijing is all about is the American ruling class trying to recreate some fantasy of former
vitality. Washington wants China to sacrifice its own development in order to somehow
rejuvenate American society. It's not going to happen.
That's not to say that American society can never be rejuvenated . It could, as it could
also in Europe. But that would entail a restructuring of the economic system involving
democratic regeneration. The "good old days" of capitalism are gone. The American empire, as
with the European empires, is obsolete.
That's the unspoken Number One agenda item at the G20 summit. Bye-bye US empire.
What America needs to do is regenerate through a reinvented social economic order, one that
is driven by democratic development and not the capitalist private profit of an elite few.
If not, the futile alternative is US failing political leaders trying to coerce China, and
others, to pay for their future. That way leads to war.
An interesting distinction: "nationalism is patriotism in its irritated state, or that nationalism recruits the patriotic
sentiment to accomplish something in a fit of anger." But he might be mixing nationalism, far right nationalism, and
fascism. It is fascism that emerges out of feeling of nation/country being humiliated, oppressed, fall into economic
despair... It tries to mobilize nation on changing the situation as a united whole -- in this sense fascism
rejects individualism and "human rights".
BTW there were quite numerous far right movements in the USA history.
The current emergence of nationalist movements is a reaction on the crisis of neoliberalism as an ideology (since 2008). So nationalism
might be a defense reaction of societies when the dominant ideology (in our case neoliberalism) collapses. It is a temporary and defensive
reaction. As the author notes: "Foreign aggression and the onset of war will reliably generate nationalist moods and responses. "
The key question here is when a nation "deserves" a sovereign state, and when it would be better off by being a part of a larger
("imperial state" if we understand empire as conglomerate of multiple nations). As it involved economics, some choices can be bad,
even devastating for people's wellbeing.
Notable quotes:
"... Macron is not the first to try to make a hard, fast, and rhetorically pungent distinction between nationalism and patriotism. Orwell attempted to do the same in a famous essay . He wrote that patriotism is "devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally." ..."
"... In the end, Orwell gives a rather unsatisfying account in which all the mental and moral vices of self-interest and self-regard are transmuted and supercharged by their absorption into a nationalistic "we." Nationalists in his account hold their nations supreme, thereby encouraging themselves to traduce any other people or nation. For Orwell, the patriot prefers this to that . The nationalist privileges us over them . For us, everything, to others nothing. ..."
"... In his recent book, The Virtue of Nationalism , Yoram Hazony makes a different contrast. His work is not primarily concerned with the moral status or self-deception of individuals, but with the organization of geopolitics. For him the contrast is between nationalism and imperialism. ..."
"... Orwell is tempted to believe the nationalist thinks his nation is best in all things, but much of nationalist rhetoric throughout Europe is a rhetoric of envy or arousal. Nationalists sometimes boast about their nations, but in many circumstances they express despair about their countries; they want to excite their people to achieve more, to take themselves as seriously as some rival national actor takes itself. ..."
"... Instead, nationalism is an eruptive feature of politics. It grows out of the normal sentiments of national loyalty, like a pustule or a fever. It could even be said that nationalism is patriotism in its irritated state, or that nationalism recruits the patriotic sentiment to accomplish something in a fit of anger. ..."
"... National loyalty attaches us to a place, and to the people who share in its life. Destroying national loyalty would almost certainly bring about the return of loyalties based on creed and blood. ..."
"... One of the outstanding features of nationalist political movements, the thing that almost always strikes observers about them, is their irritated or aroused character. And it is precisely this that strikes non-nationalists as signaling danger. ..."
"... nationalist movements are teeming with powerful emotions: betrayal, anger, aggression. ..."
"... Nationalist politics tends to be opportunist; it takes other political ideas, philosophies, and forms of mobilization in hand and discards them. Nationalists throughout the 20th century adopted Communism or capitalism to acquire the patronage or weapons to throw off imperial rule, or stick it to a neighbor, for example. ..."
"... The reemergence of nationalist politics in America and abroad requires us to ask those simple questions. What is bothering them? Do they have a point? What do they want to do about it? Would it be just? In broad strokes I intend to take those questions up. ..."
"... What the vast majority of people apparently fail to realize is that the United states is an empire which by definition is a group of states or countries containing diverse ethnic and cultural identities. ..."
"... The break-up of the Soviet Union can be blamed in part for failing to establish a strong national identity ..."
"... Greenfeld describes it as "civic nationalism" to differentiate it from the ethnic, anti-liberal "nationalism" later adopted by Russia and Germany. ..."
"... Identifying "the people" as a linguistic-cultural entity with or without borders set the stage for the bloody conflicts that were fought over borders for these groups, and the discrimination and ethnic cleansing for those who didn't belong to the dominant linguistic-cultural group, to say nothing of what needed to be done about members of the dominant group who lived outside its borders. ..."
"... Also, in the late 16th century during what is now called the Wars of Religions (but which they called Civil Wars) in continental Europe, people moved from Monarchists to Republicans and back, depending of whether they were Catholics or Protestants, but mostly depending of the position of strength in which they were at the time... ..."
"... "Modern Conservatives" have a vested interest in muddying the debate, so that it does not become clear that "conservatism" is not linked to specific political or economical models, and more importantly it is not true that the Founding Fathers were all absolutist libertarian free traders... ;-) ..."
"... What, exactly, are our children inheriting? Press 2 for Spanish. ..."
"... And let us not forget neocons. ..."
"... You should be out there carving an empire for yourself, showing your supremacy and spreading the seeds of your "culture" over uncharted territories and untamed tribes... ;-) ..."
"... I think the obvious irritant lending support to Nationalist sentiments is the non benign aspects of Globalism. ..."
What is nationalism? The word is suddenly and surprisingly important when talking about the times we live in. But we seem to be
working without a shared definition.
"You know what I am? I'm a nationalist," Donald Trump said in an October rally in Houston.
French president Emmanuel Macron slapped back at a commemoration ceremony for World War I in France. "Nationalism is a betrayal
of patriotism," he said. "By saying 'our interests first, who cares about the others,' we erase what a nation holds dearest, what
gives it life, what makes it great and what is essential: its moral values."
Macron is not the first to try to make a hard, fast, and rhetorically pungent distinction between nationalism and patriotism.
Orwell attempted to do the same in a
famous essay . He wrote that patriotism is "devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to
be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally."
On the other hand, "The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the
nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality."
In the end, Orwell gives a rather unsatisfying account in which all the mental and moral vices of self-interest and self-regard
are transmuted and supercharged by their absorption into a nationalistic "we." Nationalists in his account hold their nations supreme,
thereby encouraging themselves to traduce any other people or nation. For Orwell, the patriot prefers this to that . The nationalist
privileges us over them . For us, everything, to others nothing.
In his recent book, The Virtue of Nationalism , Yoram Hazony makes a different contrast. His work is not primarily concerned with
the moral status or self-deception of individuals, but with the organization of geopolitics. For him the contrast is between nationalism
and imperialism. For Hazony, it is the nationalist who respects spontaneous order and pluralism. Imperialists run roughshod over
these, trampling local life for the benefit of the imperial center.
A border will rein in the ambition of the nationalist, whereas the imperial character rebels against limits. A century ago, in
what he called the days of "clashing and crashing Empires," the Irish nationalist Eoin MacNeil felt similarly. For him, the development
of a nation -- any nation -- had in it "the actuality or the potentiality of some great gift to the common good of mankind."
It's difficult to find a consistent definition of nationalism from its critics, meanwhile. Sometimes nationalism is dismissed
as the love of dirt, or mysticism about language. Other times it's the love of DNA.
In the critics' defense, though, the way nationalism has expressed itself in different nations and different times can be maddeningly
diverse. Orwell is tempted to believe the nationalist thinks his nation is best in all things, but much of nationalist rhetoric throughout
Europe is a rhetoric of envy or arousal. Nationalists sometimes boast about their nations, but in many circumstances they express
despair about their countries; they want to excite their people to achieve more, to take themselves as seriously as some rival national
actor takes itself.
I'd like to propose a different way of thinking about the question. When we use the vocabulary of political philosophies, we recognize
that we are talking about things that differ along more than one axis. Take Communism, liberalism, and conservatism: The first is
a theory of history and power. The second is a political framework built upon rights. The final disclaims the word "ideology" and
has been traditionally defined as a set of dispositions toward a political and civilizational inheritance.
I would like to sidestep Hazony's championing of nationalism as a system for organizing political order globally, a theory that
my colleague Jonah Goldberg is tempted to call "nationism."
My proposal is that nationalism as a political phenomenon is not a philosophy or science, though it may take either of those in
hand. It isn't an account of history. Instead, nationalism is an eruptive feature of politics. It grows out of the normal sentiments
of national loyalty, like a pustule or a fever. It could even be said that nationalism is patriotism in its irritated state, or that
nationalism recruits the patriotic sentiment to accomplish something in a fit of anger.
In normal or propitious circumstances, national loyalty is the peaceful form of life that exists among people who share a defined
territory and endeavor to live under the laws of that territory together. National loyalty attaches us to a place, and to the people
who share in its life. Destroying national loyalty would almost certainly bring about the return of loyalties based on creed and
blood.
One of the outstanding features of nationalist political movements, the thing that almost always strikes observers about them,
is their irritated or aroused character. And it is precisely this that strikes non-nationalists as signaling danger. Republican democracies
should be characterized by deliberation. Conservatives distrust swells of passion. Liberals want an order of voluntary rights. But
nationalist movements are teeming with powerful emotions: betrayal, anger, aggression.
Therefore, I contend, like a fever, nationalism can be curative or fatal. And, like fevers, it can come and go depending on the
nation's internal health or the external circumstances a nation finds itself in. Foreign aggression and the onset of war will reliably
generate nationalist moods and responses. But cultural change can do it too. Maybe a national language falls into sharp and sudden
decline under pressure from a more powerful lingua franca. Even something as simple or common as rapid urbanization can be felt to
agitate upon a people's loyalties, and may generate a cultural response for preserving certain rural traditions and folkways. And
of course, sometimes nationalism is excited by the possibility of some new possession coming into view, the opportunity to recover
or acquire territory or humiliate a historic rival. The variety of irritants explains the variety of nationalisms.
You tend to find a lot of nationalism where there are persistent or large irritants to the normally peaceful sense of national
loyalty. Think of western Ukraine, where the local language and political prerogatives have endured the powerful irritant of Moscow's
power and influence in its region, and even in its territory. You find a great deal of nationalism in Northern Ireland, where a lineage
of religious differences signals dueling loyalties to the United Kingdom and to Ireland.
Until recently you didn't find a lot of political nationalism in the United States, because it is a prosperous nation with unparalleled
independence of action. But we are familiar with bursts of nationalism nonetheless -- for example, at times when European powers
threatened the U.S. in the early days of the Republic, during the Civil War and its aftermath, and especially during World War I,
which coincided with the tail end of a great wave of migration into the country.
If nationalist political movements are national loyalties in this aroused state, then we must judge them on a case-by-case basis.
When non-nationalists notice the irritated and irritable character of nationalism, often the very next thing they say is, "Well,
they have a point." You would judge a nationalist movement the way you would judge any man or group of men in an agitated state.
Do you have a right to be angry about this matter? What do you intend to do about it? How do you intend to do it?
We all do this almost instinctively. We understand that there are massive differences among nationalist projects. In order to
assert his young nation's place on the world stage, John Quincy Adams sought to found a national university. We may judge that one
way, whereas we judge Andrew Jackson's Indian-removal policy very differently. In Europe, we might cheer on the ambition of the Irish
Parliamentary party to establish a home-rule parliament in Dublin. That was a nationalist project, but so was the German policy of
seeking lebensraum through the racial annihilation of the Jews and the enslavement of Poland, which we judge as perhaps the most
wicked cause in human history. We might cheer the reestablishment of a Polish nation after World War I, but deplore some of the expansionist
wars it immediately embarked upon.
Nationalist politics tends to be opportunist; it takes other political ideas, philosophies, and forms of mobilization in hand
and discards them. Nationalists throughout the 20th century adopted Communism or capitalism to acquire the patronage or weapons to
throw off imperial rule, or stick it to a neighbor, for example.
The reemergence of nationalist politics in America and abroad requires us to ask those simple questions. What is bothering them?
Do they have a point? What do they want to do about it? Would it be just? In broad strokes I intend to take those questions up.
Kontraindicated 2 days ago
There is much discussion below as to the meaning of the term "nationalism" below. In the minds of many, it seems to be a relatively
benign term.
However, even recently we have seen extremely violent episodes break out that appear to be associated with some sort of flavour
of "nationalism", however it's defined.
In the former Yugoslavia, Tito tried to create a new "nation" that would have a common identity by breaking up the "nations"
that had previously existed on the same territory. This involved the forced relocation of various groups of Serbs and Croats (and,
to a lesser extent, Bosnians) who would now all live together in peace and harmony. However, when the political structures fell,
the people fell back into their old groups and immediately began fighting each other. The end result was an incredibly bloody
and vicious civil war and the ultimate re-establishment of Nations/Countries that mapped more closely to the ethnic/cultural/race
divisions that the people involved in the conflict were concerned with. Ultimately, they (as individuals) decided which team they
wanted to belong to and, as long as the "nation" agreed, they became part of that "nation".
Similar scenarios have played out across Africa and the Middle East (which was artificially set up for a century's worth of
conflict by Europeans in 1919).
All of which is mildly interesting, but it's not really related to the reason that this topic is coming up in NRO. The reason
that we are discussing this is that Macron spent a considerable amount of time during the Armistice Ceremony decrying "Nationalism"
(which, if we treat the term in the Yugoslavian context, likely did play a significant role in two World Wars) and Fox and Friends
were then able to teach Donald Trump a new word - after which he declared himself a "Nationalist".
So rather than beating ourselves up over semantics, would it not be better instead to debate two questions?:
Does "Nationalism" represent a growing force within enough countries that it represents a significant threat to the current
world order?
Does whatever Donald Trump thinks "Nationalism" means pose a threat to America's current place in the world and is it driving
the US away from its leadership role? (will "America First" lead to "America Isolated and Alone?")
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 2 days ago
Dear Kontraindicated,
First, your last question is already answered, in the WTO, the EU, China, Canada, Mexico have raised a complaint against the
falsified use of "national security" by Trump to justify tariffs. If the USA decided then to leave the WTO, because Trump's personal
honor would be stained, (without forgetting that the US Congress should have already protested that these tariffs were illegal
in the first place) this will be another occasion to show that it is indeed "America Isolated and Alone"... Trump could have allied
himself with the EU, Canada, etc. against some of the unfair practices of China, instead he got two of the biggest trading block
in the world (including its two territorial neighbors) to ally themselves against the USA.
What a way of winning Donnie! ;-)
Then, let's go back to the question of the meaning of Nationalism.
There are two aspects:
What is the real meaning of nationalism compared to patriotism, when we remove all the fake ideological recent additions
to these terms? (and I have answered at length on this in my other comments) And this meaning is not necessarily nefarious. It
becomes a problem when one claims that each Nation must have one "sovereign" State (in the sense of country), and there should
be only one such Nation per country.
What is the meaning which is actually meant by Trump? And it is clear that he means it the way that it was whispered to
him, which is "One Nation, One and only One State; One State, One and only One Nation"...
It is no longer "e pluribus unum", but "e uno unum" (one from one), which is slightly less ambitious and certainly less of
a reason to get up in the morning and do something productive (but then there is a lot of opportunity for "Executive Time" and
playing golf)... ;-)
Leroy 2 days ago
"Out of many, one." ONE. Get it through your head. ONE. If you are MANY, you ARE Yugoslavia. And that doesn't end well.
TitoPerdue 2 days ago
I try to imagine my parents being informed that they must now accustom themselves to white people being turned into a minority.
Would have been stunned, my folks, who first arrived in 1771.
My folks: "But what did we do wrong!"
Me: "You've been too successful and must now be punished."
My folks: "What's wrong with being successful!"
Me: "It's racist. Ask Jonah Goldberg. You know how much the Jews despise ethnocentrism."
Gaurus 3 days ago
This is a useful take on the subject. There is a big Tower of Babel problem with this word as it seems to mean different things
to different people, and different nations also define it differently.
This language barrier is why Macron's criticism of the President should be taken with a grain of salt. The left's myopic/robotic
attempts to unilaterally define this word on their terms is reprehensible, just like so many of their other attempts at PC authoritarianism
aka thought control which is pushed by the national media.
What the vast majority of people apparently fail to realize is that the United states is an empire which by definition
is a group of states or countries containing diverse ethnic and cultural identities.
You must at some point come to ask yourself, "what keeps these diverse groups contained in the U.S. from fracturing, dividing,
and falling apart?" The answer is nationalism/national identity. It is the keystone or glue that binds these diverse ethnic and
cultural groups together. Anyone or anything that tugs or tears at nationalism therefore is altogether a bad thing for the country
and will sow division and strife that was not previously there. Ultimately civil war could result if those seeking to divide the
country for political gain go too far and the left ignorantly seems all-in on doing this.
Applying recent trends in politics using this as a backdrop, one can see how pro-globalists wouldn't care to attack nationalism
as they are by definition against the very concept of a nation-state and want top bring back good old feudalism, but this time
on a global scale. For comparison Russia is another example of an empire that is aware It needs to fuel nationalist sentiment
to hold itself together. The EU is an emerging empire that is conflicted with what this means. The break-up of the Soviet Union
can be blamed in part for failing to establish a strong national identity.
Plymouth mtng, PA 3 days ago
Well said! This truth is exemplified by the evidentiary and documented history that the Founding Fathers and Jackson, Lincoln,
and Grant and the whole of 19th century America used the language of Liberty and Patriot to define the American Republic.
Leroy 3 days ago
I just learned something new. I thought that ethnicity was the same as race. It isn't. Ethnicity: "the fact or state
of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition." By that definition, we're all in an ethnic
group, and we can belong to smaller ethnic groups as well.
If Americans don't become nationalists, understand that we share common interests and goals, it won't matter how much we love
our country, because it will be unrecognizable.
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 3 days ago
Dear Leroy,
I happen to think that "race" does not exist, but we know that in the USA when people say "ethnic" they mean "race"... ;-)
I remember 30 years ago, at the hairdresser in London, picking up a copy of the tabloid "The Sun", and reading a sentence where
"ethnic" was used to mean "foreigner with a darker complexion"... (something like "the three men were ethnic") ;-)
Once more "ethnic" means "national", nothing more nothing less: "ethnos" is the Greek translation of "natio". These are words
which have been used for a few thousand years, and we have to understand what they really meant and what they really mean now,
and to remove from them the "ideological" additions.
The definition which you give shows such ideological addition, by adding "cultural" and "tradition". By definition a "nation",
as the same traditions and therefore the same "culture": they are just redundant in this definition.
An ethnic group is a nation. So yes, you are in an ethnic group, and you can "define" smaller and smaller ethnic groups within
the bigger one (the "tribes"). So in Gaul, there were many different "nations", who were Gauls, but had a great diversity between
them (just read a few pages of Cćsar).
But at some point when there are many ethnic groups within you country (and this is how a country like France was made by the
addition of regions with varying ethnic backgrounds and the migration/invasion of many other ethnic groups), at some point the
only unity is in the country, the "patria", this is there that you find the common interests and goals.
So you see in France the difference going from Nation to the Country, because in the early middle ages the king was called
"King of the French" Rex Francorum, (there were many other nations recognized on the French territory) and in the later part of
the Middle Ages, he was called "King of France", Rex Franciae.
But because the word "nation" is important, and people would not let it go, there has been a tendency to use it to mean "country",
as when we speak of the National Anthem, but this is by a shifting of its original sense.
When we want to oppose nationalism and patriotism, we need to go back to the original technical meaning, not invent a new one.
PS: the reason why "ethnic" and "race" are not the same thing, and we saw it with "Pocahontas" controversy (I mentioned it
then), it is because a nation can "adopt" somebody who was not genetically related to them. They shall still be fully part of
the nation... but their genetic material shall be different.
Leroy 3 days ago
I know you enjoy history, but the meaning of words can shift. I'll go with the meaning of the word Nation that the founders
meant when they founded this nation. Nations are sovereign, make laws and control territory. A group of people, who share a culture,
but who do not control territory is not a nation.
Hub312 3 days ago ( Edited )
Whoever wants a clear-headed understanding of nationalism, I suggest you read the world's foremost scholar on nationalism,
Liah Greenfeld's "Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity" and Pierre Manent's concise but rich "Democracy Without Nations?".
Nationalism is really just another word for modernity and democracy. . It arose in England at the end of the 17th and the 18th
centuries as the liberal answer to the question: if the people are sovereign, who are "the people" that we are now calling the
nation? Answer: those who live within the borders controlled by the sovereign. The nation state is our home and our protection
and we're all in it together regardless of language, culture, etc. This was the essentially liberal idea that was adopted and
adapted by the French. This was the form adopted by Americans too. Greenfeld describes it as "civic nationalism" to differentiate
it from the ethnic, anti-liberal "nationalism" later adopted by Russia and Germany.
It is the Russians, followed by the Germans and other central Europeans who followed their lead that gave nationalism a bad
name. Identifying "the people" as a linguistic-cultural entity with or without borders set the stage for the bloody conflicts
that were fought over borders for these groups, and the discrimination and ethnic cleansing for those who didn't belong to the
dominant linguistic-cultural group, to say nothing of what needed to be done about members of the dominant group who lived outside
its borders.
Empires and nations based on racial and ethnic identity have bloody borders, since it is impossible to draw any border anywhere
in the world that includes all members of the dominant group and excludes or oppresses all members of other groups.
Are they both called nationalisms? Yes. But they couldn't be farther apart.
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 3 days ago
Dear Hub312,
the word that is missing in your comment is "country". "if the people are sovereign, who are "the people" that we are
now calling the nation?... etc."
I am interested to see in which English author of the end of the 17th century you find the expression of "sovereign people"
or the "people are sovereign". Do you have some primary sources? I do not find it in Locke, but perhaps I am looking in the wrong
place.
And in the UK, in the 18th and 19th century, and still now, it is clear that English, Welsh, Irish and Scots are different
nations in the same "country"... Today, in Rugby the 6 nations championship takes place actually between four countries.
In the Middle Ages it is clear that the "supreme power" "summa potestas" comes God, and after this it is a question of open
debate whether it is invested directly in the King, or through the people who then may elect a king, or decide on a Republic.
And I find in the Renaissance of the 16th and early 17th century, many proponents of a summa potestas that belongs to the people,
which gives incidentally rise to the possibility of removing from power bad kings, but they happen to be Spanish and Catholics:
Francisco Suarez, Juan de Mariana and Roberto Bellarmino... worse, they are all Jesuits... ;-), and they claim that the supreme
power comes from the consent of the governed, and they were all dead by 1630... So that's it when it comes to the notion of people's
sovereignty "arising" in England in the late 17th century... It was up and awake already.
I cannot find "souveraineté" as a word (which is different from having a "sovereign"), before Jean Bodin (16th century) (but
you perhaps have better sources than mine), then I can direct you to many discussions about the nature and origin of "souveraineté"
in French in the 16th and 17th century.
Rousseau (mid-18th century) is famous for ascribing sovereignty to the people, but he was not English (although he was Protestant),
nor French, but he is also the inspiration for the "dictatorship of the people", and the Terror.
Rousseau is part of the Social Contract school, to which is usually adjoined his predecessors Hobbes and Locke, but there is
no doubt that Hobbes is a partisan of absolute monarchy, and again I fail to see in Locke a direct notion of people's sovereignty:
when he speaks of civil sovereigns he speaks of the "magistrates" who rule. But I am certain that you shall direct me to the proper
place in Locke, which currently escapes me.
The thing is that the "consent of the people" or even the "sovereignty of the people", or the "social contract" does not mean
that they are individually free afterwards... they may actually live under an absolute monarchy and still have "consented" to
it, or under a dictatorship of the people (socialist), or a national dictatorship, or a mixture of both... ;-)
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 3 days ago
Of course, as I read again what I wrote, I made the most silly of blunders: Bellarmino was Italian, not Spanish... this invalidates
all that I have ever written.. ;-)
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 3 days ago
Also, in the late 16th century during what is now called the Wars of Religions (but which they called Civil Wars) in
continental Europe, people moved from Monarchists to Republicans and back, depending of whether they were Catholics or
Protestants, but mostly depending of the position of strength in which they were at the time... There is a very interesting literature regarding the nature
and origin of the supreme power, and whether the people must have absolute obedience to the the sovereign civil power (whatever
shape it has). Of course none of this has to do with 17th century England, except that the same questions where asked and answered
their own way in the English Civil War (which was a religious war), when the Round-Heads decided to chop that of their King, whose
shape they did not like. ;-)
Bellarmino wrote against James I when he tried to sustain is absolute divine right to rule.
All of this to say that these questions were raised long before the Glorious Revolution. ;-)
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 2 days ago
Dear Hub312,
well, why would I read a secondary source book, if it does not know the primary sources which I know?
If this book describes nothing more than what you described (i.e. England, end of the 17th century, etc.), which is refuted
by the sources that I know, why would I waste time reading it? it could not edify me, if it does not add to what I know.
Hub312 4 hours ago ( Edited )
...and you would love the Manent book, written from a very European liberal perspective, which is brief and very concise.
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 3 days ago
Dear Michael Brendan Dougherty,
I have a revolutionary proposal: instead of investing words with supposed meanings in order to be able to say that we approve
of them or not (which in English is called begging the question), why don't we simply use the etymological meaning of the word?
;-)
It's easy, "national" means precisely the same thing as "ethnic": one is Latin, the other is Greek. You know what ethnicity
is a euphemism for in the US: "race". A "nation" does not need to have borders to be a nation, the "barbarian nations" of late
Antiquity early Middle Ages were roving nations. This is why also initially German nationalism i the 19th and early 20th century
was expansive: it meant to "unify" the German nation in one country. This is why Irish, Scottish or Welsh nationalism is divisive
and restrictive, it is meant to separate the English (seen as invaders) from the local version of a Celtic nation.
The "Patria" is the Land of the fathers: this is the "country", the "land".
The one is "Blood", the other is "Soil", you see that each can be assigned bad meaning or good meaning, if one wants to.
Behind this you have the age old conflicts between Cain and Abel, between the roving pastor, and the settled farmer.
Both Nation and Patria can be a limit within which to stay, or a limit to expand: so one can be an "imperialist" or not, whether
one is a patriot or a nationalist. Because even a patriot, may require more land, to ensure the safety of the one that he has,
his own version of "lebensraum".
These two notions are also linked to the "jus sanguinis" (right of blood) and the "jus soli" (right of soil/land) question
regarding citizenship.
In countries which have official separate notions of citizenship and nationality (in the former USSR for instance), citizenship
is clearly ascribed to the country, and nationality is clearly ascribed to ethnicity: so one can be a Russian national, citizen
of Kazakhstan.
It is the notion of the Nation-State (which is comparatively recent), which tends to make believe that for each identifiable
"Nation" there must be one identifiable "Country" (a sovereign state). It is the geographical difficulty if not impossibility
of this which lead to the political upheavals in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was trying to merge Nationalism and Patriotism
that created the problems.
In some cases when supposed "nations" wanted to be unified within one country, there was the notion of "Pan-somethingism",
Pan-Germanism, Pan-Slavism, etc., and/or Nations wanted to become independent: so you had the fights for the unification of Italy,
Germany, the independence of Poland, Greece, etc., within the 19th century. And then there were all these places were the population
was too mixed to make any such separation easy: the Balkans, the remnants of the Turkish Empire (a perfect example together with
the Persian Empire (for those who read Xenophon), why "Imperialism" does not mean "centralization"), remnants of "German" populations
in "Slavic" countries, etc. You know what followed.
So both nationalism and patriotism can have a good or a bad meaning, depending of how one intends to use them.
For instance the notion of a "Europe of Nations" is what helped secure the Good Friday Agreement, because another way of saying
it is a "Europe of Regions", where Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Basques, Bretons (of little Brittany), etc., have a possibility of
recognition, without necessarily breaking up "countries".
So you are right there is much more than one axis of meaning, and it is important that one opposes the right terms, and this
is the responsibility of what used to be called the "publicists", those who speak of the Res Publica, what we now call "pundits":
but in the USA none are more adept at using the wrong formulations than the "modern conservative" pundits. Why? well, "modern
conservative" says it all... because you are partly right conservatism is about "a set of dispositions toward a political and
civilizational inheritance", and "modern conservatism" is therefore an oxymoron. ;-)
And this is why "Modern Conservatism" became such an easy prey for the Alt-Right Anarchists: because they are not grounded
in an actual "tradition", but like all the "progressives" (which they are), they have to reinvent for themselves a new beginning...
in the 1950s, they said, now that there is National Review, we shall become "real" conservatives, "modern conservatives", before
us, they were not really conservatives... ;-)
But you cannot be a real conservative if you have to identify a date for the birth of your movement.
"Modern Conservatives" have a vested interest in muddying the debate, so that it does not become clear that "conservatism"
is not linked to specific political or economical models, and more importantly it is not true that the Founding Fathers were all
absolutist libertarian free traders... ;-)
So Conservatism is not the opposite of Liberalism, it is the opposite of Progressivism. Imperialism is indeed about expansion
of power, but it is not necessarily about "centralization", as many empires not only have left the "local life" untouched, but
this "local life" disappeared when a supposedly more "liberal" power took over...
Therefore I do beg American publicists, especially those of the conservative variety writing in NRO, stop begging the question
when you falsely "define" terms, so that they align with what you deem to be good or bad; be instead a real conservative, go back
to the etymology and the actual meaning of the words, see how they were used initially, not only in the last 50 or even 100 years...
because then you are using "progressive" definitions, and you keep repeating that "progressives" always change the meaning of
the words to suit their purpose... You are right on that one. ;-)
Leroy 3 days ago
Conservatism "has been traditionally defined as a set of dispositions toward a political and civilizational inheritance"?
That can't be true. We all know that conservatism now means free trade, where American workers are replaced by Chinese slave
labor. We know that conservatism means an insatiable desire for foreign migrants, adding millions of campesino's to our economy
every year. Most of all, we know that conservatism stands for foreign imperialist wars and globalist profits.
What, exactly, are our children inheriting? Press 2 for Spanish.
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 3 days ago
Dear Leroy,
I agree with you that US Conservatives are Progressives by another name. see my main comment here. ;-)
TitoPerdue 2 days ago
Indeed. And let us not forget neocons.
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 2 days ago
Dear TitoPerdue,
given that the Founding Fathers were already progressives, who for you committed the original sin of believing that "all men
are created equal", why do you still live in that den of iniquity that is the USA?
You should be out there carving an empire for yourself, showing your supremacy and spreading the seeds of your "culture" over
uncharted territories and untamed tribes... ;-)
I hear that there are still some fairly inaccessible places in Papua-New-Guinea... ;-)
Perfect place to show your supremacy, or end up in the cooking pot. For once your philosophy of life would become true: eat
or be eaten! ;-)
hawkesappraisal 3 days ago
I agree. "Nationalism" is a charged but nebulous word, but it describes something that is clearly important in spite of the
obscurity of its meaning. So the struggle to come up with coherent definitions is worthwhile. The current Nationalism is probably
best defined by, Progressives saying "America sucks!" and the Right responding, "No it doesn't! America is Awesome!"
freedom1 3 days ago ( Edited )
Thoughtful piece. I think the obvious irritant lending support to Nationalist sentiments is the non benign aspects of Globalism.
"What do you mean by claiming Hersh "cozys up" to MIC ppl? And what would be a specific
example of a story he broke after doing that?"
Our Men in Iran?
"We did train them here, and washed them through the Energy Department because the
D.O.E. owns all this land in southern Nevada," a former senior American intelligence
official told me. ... In a separate interview, a retired four-star general, who has advised
the Bush and Obama Administrations on national-security issues, said that he had been
privately briefed in 2005 about the training of Iranians associated with the M.E.K. in
Nevada
His conversations with Lieutenant Calley are apparently what allowed him to break the My
Lai massacre story as well, even though members of the military had already spoken out about
it, and there had been already been charges brought. It just revealed the story to the
general public, which prompted a fuller investigation and courts martial. I'm sure there are
others.
So, obviously Hersh's "cozying up" (surely not the right term for it, though) is in the
interests of raising public awareness of nefarious deeds, and is not scared of painting these
organizations in a bad light, whereas Mazzetti's goal here seems to be to maintain his
privileged access by providing favors - totally different motivations. It's rather easy to
contrast the two, which "smartypants54" has even stated here.
Whatever the case, it's true that elements of the NYT have been mouthpieces more or less
for government and corporate power for a long time. While I agree with Glenn about the faux
cynicism perpetuating this kind of activity - "don't be naive, this is done all the time" - I
can understand that it exists.
Such cynicism on the part of the public, rather than being an acknowledgment of
acceptance and approval of such practices, can also be seen as part of a more radical
critique of the corporate media in general, and the NYT particularly, in that such
organizations - not that I totally agree with this - , by their very nature, can't be
reformed and can never be totally effective checks on power because of the way they're
structured, and who they answer to.
That's definitely not a reason to stop pointing it out, though.
"... Here's a wonderful example of the NYT's propensity for re-writing history: http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/08/30/ny-times-scrubs-mention-cia-arming-syrian-rebels-177311/ Long live the memory hole. ..."
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence Victor Marchetti
"It is the first book the federal government of the United States ever went to court to
censor before its publication. The CIA demanded the authors remove 399 passages but they
stood firm and only 168 passages were censored. The publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, chose to
publish the book with blanks for censored passages and with boldface type for passages that
were challenged but later uncensored."
There exists in our nation today a powerful and dangerous secret cult -- the cult of
intelligence. Its holy men are the clandestine professionals of the Central Intelligence
Agency.
Its patrons and protectors are the highest officials of the federal government.
Its membership, extending far beyond governmental circles, reaches into the power centers
of industry, commerce, finance, and labor. Its friends are many in the areas of important
public influence -- the academic world and the communications media.
The cult of
intelligence is a secret fraternity of the American political aristocracy.
The purpose of
the cult is to further the foreign policies of the U.S. government by covert and usually
illegal means, while at the same time containing the spread of its avowed enemy, communism.
Traditionally, the cult's hope has been to foster a world order in which America would
reign supreme, the unchallenged international leader.
Today, however, that dream stands
tarnished by time and frequent failures. Thus, the cult's objectives are now less
grandiose, but no less disturbing. It seeks largely to advance America's self-appointed
role as the dominant arbiter of social, economic, and political change in the awakening
regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And its worldwide war against communism has to
some extent been reduced to a covert struggle to maintain a self-serving stability in the
Third World, using whatever clandestine methods are available.
Have some heart. It wouldn't be right to stop Mueller and his pals from billing their law
fees of $800/hr right before Christmas. Do you have any idea how much a yacht runs these
days?
A brand new expose
by Bloomberg shines light on modern day loan sharks: city officials that are armed with badges
like Vadim Barbarovich, who earned $1.7 million last year, easily giving him the most lucrative
job within the government of New York City. His official title is City Marshal, and he's one of
35 that the mayor has appointed to compete for fees from recovering debts. While traditionally
marshals evict tenants and tow cars, Barbarovich has found his place in part of a debt
collection industry that allows them to use their legal authority on behalf of predatory
lenders.
It's a practice that dates back to the 17th century. Back then, jobs across the Hudson River
for marshals yielded the highest fees. Under current law, marshals are entitled to keep 5% of
cash that they collect. The city also has a Sheriff's office that does similar work, but those
employees get a salary. Several mayors have called for an end to the marshal system over the
last few decades, but nobody has been successful in getting the state legislature to act upon
it.
While Barbarovich's jurisdiction is supposed to end at city limits, he has worked to recover
debts from places like California and Illinois, among others nationwide.
One person he "recovered" debt money from, to the tune of $56,000, Jose Soliz, asked: "How
could they pull all that money? I've never even been to New York."
When asked about Barbarovich's practices, a spokesman for the New York City Marshals
Association said that marshals simply "enforce court judgments".
The genesis of these judgments are often lenders who advance money to people at rates that
can sometimes top 400% annualized. They have found a loophole around loansharking rules by
stating that they are instead buying the money that businesses will likely make in the future
at a discounted price. Courts have been supportive of this distinction and, as such, the
"merchant cash advance" industry has grown to about $15 billion a year.
As soon as lenders see that borrowers have fallen behind they call marshals, whose job is to
force the banks to handover whatever cash is left. They do this by using a court order stamped
by a clerk that's obtained without going before a judge. Banks generally comply immediately,
without checking if the marshal has the right to actually take the funds. The borrower often
doesn't understand what's going on until the money is gone.
Prior to becoming a marshal, Barbarovich worked in property control earning about $70,000 a
year and sometimes volunteered as a Russian translator. Upon starting as a marshal in 2013, he
earned about $90,000. When cash advance companies discovered the power he had, his income
skyrocketed and his earnings increased almost 20 fold.
His financial disclosures show that his work enforcing Supreme Court property judgments
skyrocketed dramatically over the last two years, as did the amount of cash he recovered. In
some respects, the collection process is like the wild west: marshals don't draw a salary, earn
fees from customers and are encouraged to compete with one another, which can catalyze
aggressive behavior.
Avery Steinberg, a lawyer in White Plains, New York, who represents a few clients whose
accounts were seized by Barbarovich, told Bloomberg: "He goes about it in any which way he can.
He has a reputation of being a bully."
The Bloomberg article tells the story of Jose Soliz, whose company builds concrete block
walls for schools and stores in the Texas Panhandle. He had started borrowing from cash advance
companies several years ago and found himself trapped in a cycle of debt.
He eventually wound up taking out a $23,000 loan that he agreed to pay back within nine
weeks – to the tune of $44,970 : an 800% annualized interest rate.
He says that the fees were more than expected, so he stopped payment. When he went to go pay
his employees a couple days later, he noticed that his Wells Fargo account had been frozen and
his paychecks bounced.
He found out the hard way that cash advance companies like the one he used required him to
sign a document agreeing in advance that if there's a legal dispute, the borrower will
automatically lose, rendering any type of judicial review useless.
Those who are signing these agreements don't often realize the power that they are waiving.
Based on these agreements, the lender can accuse the borrower of defaulting, without proof, and
have a court judgment signed by a clerk on the same day.
This is exactly what happened to Soliz. His lender obtained such a judgment against him in
Buffalo, New York and called in Barbarovich to collect. Even though his Wells Fargo account was
opened in Texas, and the judgment was only valid in New York State, the bank turned over
$56,764 to the marshal. The rule is supposedly that marshals can go after out of state funds as
long as they serve demands at a bank location in New York City, according to the New York City
Department of Investigation.
On the other hand, it's not clear whether or not banks have to comply with these orders.
Some banks reject these demands but most have a policy of following any legal order they
receive so as to avoid the hassle of reviewing them and not to ruffle any feathers.
Wells Fargo, when contacted by Bloomberg, stated that it "carefully review[s] each legal
order to ensure it's valid and properly handled."
Barbarovich claims that he serves all legal orders by hand, though that is disputed by
Soliz's lawyer.
The Department of Investigation reportedly "continues to review" Barbarovich's work and
offered few specifics to Bloomberg.
The Department has stated that they're conducting multiple investigations into the
enforcement of judgments and focusing on whether not marshals are serving orders by hand.
Reminds me of another 'vishibalo' (shakedown artist) Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel who's parents
hailed from Odessa, Ukraine (a city which until today is still run by the Jewish mafia) and
his boyhood friend Meyer Lansky (who came from Belarus), who formed the first Jewish criminal
group in New York. Fiddler on the Roof: "If I were a rich man...... Tradition! Tradition!
"
His jurisdiction ends in NY, bank in Texas has no reason to comply, Soliz could suecthe
bank and sue the 'marshall' - he has no legal authority outside of nyc to seize funds absent
a court order in that jurisdiction.
Guy has a property interest of some sort in his funds being available. At very least due
process rights that were ignored.
My state had a loan shark running multiple easy cash joints and spending the money on all
sorts of properties and businesses. Voters capped his interest on loans and he left the
state.
"It's a practice that dates back to the 17th century."
Incorrect. This was a method used in ancient Rome to collect taxes. It's the reason
landowners and farmers abandoned their land. Excessive taxation and the capacity to acquire
wealth by collecting taxes from the state. By the way, the IRS pays 10%.
February 21, 1871 and the Forty-First Congress is in session. I refer you to the "Acts of
the Forty-First Congress," Section 34, Session III, chapters 61 and 62. On this date in the
history of our nation, Congress passed an Act titled: "An Act To Provide A Government for the
District of Columbia." This is also known as the "Act of 1871." What does this mean? Well, it
means that Congress, under no constitutional authority to do so, created a separate form of
government for the District of Columbia, which is a ten mile square parcel of land.
In essence, this Act formed the corporation known as THE UNITED STATES. Note the
capitalization, because it is important. This corporation, owned by foreign interests, moved
right in and shoved the original "organic" version of the Constitution into a dusty corner.
With the "Act of 1871," our Constitution was defaced in the sense that the title was
block-capitalized and the word "for" was changed to the word "of" in the title. The original
Constitution drafted by the Founding Fathers, was written in this manner:
"The Constitution for the united states of America".
The altered version reads: "THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA". It is the
corporate constitution. It is NOT the same document you might think it is. The corporate
constitution operates in an economic capacity and has been used to fool the People into
thinking it is the same parchment that governs the Republic. It absolutely is not.
Capitalization -- an insignificant change? Not when one is referring to the context of a
legal document, it isn't. Such minor alterations have had major impacts on each subsequent
generation born in this country. What the Congress did with the passage of the Act of 1871
was create an entirely new document, a constitution for the government of the District of
Columbia. The kind of government THEY created was a corporation. The new, altered
Constitution serves as the constitution of the corporation, and not that of America. Think
about that for a moment.
"He found out the hard way that cash advance companies like the one he used required him
to sign a document agreeing in advance that if there's a legal dispute, the borrower will
automatically lose, rendering any type of judicial review useless."
Immoral? Yep.
Unethical? Of course.
Surprising? Nope.
Bottom line is, these dumb shits signed off on a bottom line that SPELLED OUT THIS EXACT
PROCESS if they defaulted.
"... With the advent of Obama, many peace leaders and followers joined the Obama political machine .Those who were not co-opted were quickly disillusioned on all counts. Obama continued the ongoing wars and added new ones -- Libya, Honduras, Syria. The US occupation in Iraq led to new extremist militia armies which preceded to defeat US trained vassal armies up to the gates of Baghdad. In short time Obama launched a flotilla of warships and warplanes to the South China Sea and dispatched added troops to Afghanistan. ..."
"... The anti-war movement which started in opposition to the Iraq war was marginalized by the two dominant parties. The result was the multiplication of new wars. By the second year of Obama's presidency the US was engaged in seven wars. ..."
"... The international conditions are ripening. Washington has alienated countries around the world ;it is challenged by allies and faces formidable rivals. The domestic economy is polarized and the elites are divided. ..."
Over the past three decades, the US government has engaged in over a dozen wars, none of
which have evoked popular celebrations either before, during or after. Nor did the government
succeed in securing popular support in its efforts to confront the economic crises of 2008
– 2009.
This paper will begin by discussing the major wars of our time, namely the two US invasions
of Iraq . We will proceed to analyze the nature of the popular response and the political
consequences.
In the second section we will discuss the economic crises of 2008 -2009, the government
bailout and popular response. We will conclude by focusing on the potential powerful changes
inherent in mass popular movements.
The Iraq War and the US Public
In the run-up to the two US wars against Iraq, (1990 – 01 and 2003 – 2011) there
was no mass war fever, nor did the public celebrate the outcome. On the contrary both wars were
preceded by massive protests in the US and among EU allies. The first Iraqi invasion was
opposed by the vast-majority of the US public despite a major mass media and regime propaganda
campaign backed by President George H. W. Bush. Subsequently, President Clinton launched a
bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998 with virtually no public support or
approval.
March 20, 2003, President George W. Bush launched the second major war against Iraq despite
massive protests in all major US cities. The war was officially concluded by President Obama in
December 2011. President Obama's declaration of a successful conclusion failed to elicit
popular agreement.
Several questions arise:
Why mass opposition at the start of the Iraq wars and why did they fail to continue?
Why did the public refuse to celebrate President Obama's ending of the war in 2011?
Why did mass protests of the Iraq wars fail to produce durable political vehicles to
secure the peace?
The Anti-Iraq War Syndrome
The massive popular movements which actively opposed the Iraq wars had their roots in
several historical sources. The success of the movements that ended the Viet Nam war, the ideas
that mass activity could resist and win was solidly embedded in large segments of the
progressive public. Moreover, they strongly held the idea that the mass media and Congress
could not be trusted; this reinforced the idea that mass direct action was essential to reverse
Presidential and Pentagon war policies.
The second factor encouraging US mass protest was the fact that the US was internationally
isolated. Presidents George H. W. and George W. Bush wars faced hostile regime and mass
opposition in Europe, the Middle East and in the UN General Assembly. US activists felt that
they were part of a global movement which could succeed.
Thirdly the advent of Democratic President Clinton did not reverse the mass anti-war
movements.The terror bombing of Iraq in December 1998 was destructive and Clinton's war against
Serbia kept the movements alive and active To the extent that Clinton avoided large scale
long-term wars, he avoided provoking mass movements from re-emerging during the latter part of
the 1990's.
The last big wave of mass anti-war protest occurred from 2003 to 2008. Mass anti-war protest
to war exploded soon after the World Trade Center bombings of 9/11. White House exploited the
events to proclaim a global 'war on terror', yet the mass popular movements interpreted the
same events as a call to oppose new wars in the Middle East.
Anti-war leaders drew activists of the entire decade, envisioning a 'build-up' which could
prevent the Bush regime from launching a series of wars without end. Moreover, the
vast-majority of the public was not convinced by officials' claims that Iraq, weakened and
encircled, was stocking 'weapons of mass destruction' to attack the US.
Large scale popular protests challenged the mass media, the so called respectable press and
ignored the Israeli lobby and other Pentagon warlords demanding an invasion of Iraq. The
vast-majority of American, did not believe they were threatened by Saddam Hussain they felt a
greater threat from the White House's resort to severe repressive legislation like the Patriot
Act. Washington's rapid military defeat of Iraqi forces and its occupation of the Iraqi state
led to a decline in the size and scope of the anti-war movement but not to its potential mass
base.
Two events led to the demise of the anti-war movements. The anti-war leaders turned from
independent direct action to electoral politics and secondly, they embraced and channeled their
followers to support Democratic presidential candidate Obama. In large part the movement
leaders and activists believed that direct action had failed to prevent or end the previous two
Iraq wars. Secondly, Obama made a direct demagogic appeal to the peace movement – he
promised to end wars and pursue social justice at home.
With the advent of Obama, many peace leaders and followers joined the Obama political
machine .Those who were not co-opted were quickly disillusioned on all counts. Obama continued
the ongoing wars and added new ones -- Libya, Honduras, Syria. The US occupation in Iraq led to
new extremist militia armies which preceded to defeat US trained vassal armies up to the gates
of Baghdad. In short time Obama launched a flotilla of warships and warplanes to the South
China Sea and dispatched added troops to Afghanistan.
The mass popular movements of the previous two decades were totally disillusioned, betrayed
and disoriented. While most opposed Obama's 'new' and 'old wars' they struggled to find new
outlets for their anti-war beliefs. Lacking alternative anti-war movements, they were
vulnerable to the war propaganda of the media and the new demagogue of the right. Donald Trump
attracted many who opposed the war monger Hilary Clinton.
The Bank Bailout: Mass Protest
Denied
In 2008, at the end of his presidency, President George W. Bush signed off on a massive
federal bailout of the biggest Wall Street banks who faced bankruptcy from their wild
speculative profiteering.
In 2009 President Obama endorsed the bailout and urged rapid Congressional approval.
Congress complied to a $700-billion- dollar handout ,which according to Forbes (July 14, 2015)
rose to $7.77 trillion. Overnight hundreds of thousands of American demanded Congress rescind
the vote. Under immense popular protest, Congress capitulated. However President Obama and the
Democratic Party leadership insisted: the bill was slightly modified and approved. The 'popular
will' was denied. The protests were neutralized and dissipated. The bailout of the banks
proceeded, while several million households watched while their homes were foreclosed ,despite
some local protests. Among the anti-bank movement, radical proposals flourished, ranging from
calls to nationalize them, to demands to let the big banks go bankrupt and provide federal
financing for co-operatives and community banks.
Clearly the vast-majority of the American people were aware and acted to resist
corporate-collusion to plunder taxpayers.
Conclusion: What is to be Done?
Mass popular mobilizations are a reality in the United States. The problem is that they have
not been sustained and the reasons are clear : they lacked political organization which would
go beyond protests and reject lesser evil policies.
The anti-war movement which started in opposition to the Iraq war was marginalized by the
two dominant parties. The result was the multiplication of new wars. By the second year of
Obama's presidency the US was engaged in seven wars.
By the second year of Trump's Presidency the US was threatening nuclear wars against Russia,
Iran and other 'enemies' of the empire. While public opinion was decidedly opposed, the
'opinion' barely rippled in the mid-term elections.
Where have the anti-war and anti-bank masses gone? I would argue they are still with us but
they cannot turn their voices into action and organization if they remain in the Democratic
Party . Before the movements can turn direct action into effective political and economic
transformations, they need to build struggles at every level from the local to the
national.
The international conditions are ripening. Washington has alienated countries around the
world ;it is challenged by allies and faces formidable rivals. The domestic economy is
polarized and the elites are divided.
Mobilizations, as in France today, are self-organized through the internet; the mass media
are discredited. The time of liberal and rightwing demagogues is passing; the bombast of Trump
arouses the same disgust as ended the Obama regime.
Optimal conditions for a new comprehensive movement that goes beyond piecemeal reforms is on
the agenda. The question is whether it is now or in future years or decades?
Mass protest, which must ignore the mass media, depends on organizers. No organizers--no
protest. Since organizers are mostly working for somebodies agenda, those agendas apparently
don't want mass protest against war. They only want to push multi-genderism and minority
resistance, these days.
" Where have the anti-war and anti-bank masses gone? I would argue they are still with us
but they cannot turn their voices into action and organization if they remain in the
Democratic Party . Before the movements can turn direct action into effective political and
economic transformations, they need to build struggles at every level from the local to the
national. "
.gov gives not one damn what the people think and they willl do what pleases their
masters. We are allowed to "vote" once in a while to maintain the illusion that they
care.
Very few Americans are anti-war. They are just fine with endless war and the killing of
millions of people with brown skin for any reason the government gives. Even the so-called
anti-war protesters of the Sixties are now pro war. Back then there was a draft, and they
were at risk of dying in the war. Turns they were only against themselves dying, not somebody
else's child. The volunteer army is staffed by the unfortunates of American society who have
very few options except the military. Uneducated rural whites and inner city black youths are
today's military. Poor white trash and ghetto blacks. Who cares if they die? That's the
attitude of the Sixties anti-war crowd. Hypocrites.
A universal draft, male and female, would stop all the wars in a day.
True, I also believe many Americans turn their heads toward these endless/unneeded wars
because the "enemies" mortar fire is not landing in our own backyard.
But White people know if they pray, buy groceries, buy clothes for kids, keep their
appearance up... then losing jobs & middle class is only an obstacle if you don't work
harder... Fascism is about responsibility, looking and acting like the winner class. White
people will enlist in military, police, fire department... will work harder... will work 2-4
jobs... will blame themselves for everything.
No warning or reason given for closures,Customers, employees and communities are outraged
after Papa Gino's Pizza abruptly closed dozens of locations across New England overnight.
Now that congress serves only as a mechanism for creating and maintaining skimming
operations and rigging all markets, it is imperative that citizens get no information. Since
organized crime also owns the major media outlets, that is an easy task. With no information
in the mainstream there is no anti war and no anti bank.
Gone, like the people who wanted a real 9/11 investigation. Yahoos out there still think
that if it was an inside job someone would have spoke out by now . Lol
They are all their, they are just silenced in corporate main stream media whilst corporate
main stream media absolutely 'SCREAMS' about identity politics, not an accident. Identity
politics is the deep state and shadow government plan to silence the masses about fiscal and
foreign policy.
For example, even though I am centre left, I was there in the beginning of the alt right,
it was not white supremacy for the first few weeks it was Libertarian vs corporate
Republican, then the deep state and shadow government stepped in and using corporate main
stream media, re-branded alt-right as white supremacy, is was really fast.
Most people don't even know alt-right started out as very much Libertarian taking on the
corporate state and that is what triggered that attack and a stream of fake right wingers
(deep state agents) screaming they were the alt-right together with corporate main stream
media, to ensure Libertarian where silenced.
Look at it now, how much do you here from Libertarians, practically nothing, every time
they try, they are targeted as alt-right which they were as in the alternate to corporate
Republicans much the same as the Corporate Democrats. From my perspective the real left and
the Libertarians had much more in common, than the corporate Republicans and the corporate
Democrats (both attacking the libertarians and the greens to silence them).
They are all there fighting, just totally silenced in corporate main stream media, you
have to go to https://www.rt.com/ to find
them.
Bankers control the CFR, the CFR controls the media and most gov positions and most of the
deepstate 3 letter agencies.. Everything said is tracked by the NSA and everywhere you go is
tracked by your phone and cars. Ever wonder how they take over a grass root movement so fast?
Think about it.
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every
Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether
he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass
arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city,
people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the
downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing
left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people
with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly
have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's
thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom
enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and
simply deserved everything that happened afterward.
The United States is now too big for popular protest. How can I, living in California,
have common cause with someone living in New York? We live on opposite sides of this
continent and have wildly different climates. Our heavy hitters are in Technology while New
York has Banking and Wall St.
Our elected officials are unable to get crap done in the same manner we're unable to get a
good protest underway. We can withdraw somewhat or go off grid where possible but that's
about it.
African American lack of support for the Iraq war:
According to several polls taken right before the war, only a minority of African-Americans
supported the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq. Most notably, a poll by the
Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies had found that only 19 percent of
African-Americans supported it.
That is a striking statistic, especially considering that more than 70 percent of white
Americans were in favor of the military invasion, according to some polls.
Also note that 90% of white males were for that illegal war of aggression.
the left is so obsessed with getting trump, they can do nothing else. they are so *******
stoopid, that they wont even try to develop someone to beat trump. they put 100% of their
energy in hating trump. they are blinded by hatred.
the end is nigh and there's nothing to be done about it.... 10 years and thats it....
beyond that and event horizon... black hole... no one knows. ai terminator coming soon...
thats all i can see.
Most thinking people are not wanting to be part of a movement that will be co-opted for
someone else's political gain. I would rather prepare myself and family for the inevitable
collapse of the economy and perhaps more that awaits us. That's enough to keep me busy. I
can't change the whole world but I can prepare to help my family friends and neighbors.
In answer to the the question posed by the headerof this article, they have either been
exiled from 'respectable' media or are stuck yelling "Trump! Trump! Trump! Russia! Russia!
Russia" like a poorly programmed NPC caught in an infinite loop.
The hidden hand behind the puppet show has done a hell of a job massaging the masses, and
turning their minds into mush.
"Where have the anti-war and anti-bank masses gone? I would argue they are still with us
but they cannot turn their voices into action and organization if they remain in the
Democratic Party ."
Exactly! If there are any anti-war people out there they sure as hell are not with the
Democratic Party. Those leftist lunatics are the most destructive political group on this
planet. Their thinking is 'divide & conquer', incite racial tensions, spew hatred,
promoting that killing babies before they are born, or even on the day they are born is
awesome. One has to wonder if people that evil even have souls.
As for anti-bankers... is this author off his rocker? He's not fooling anyone by trying to
present the theory that if there are any consciencous objectors out there they would be
supporters of the Democratic party. That thought is outright laughable. Even worse, to try to
create this new narrative by writing this type of article is absolutely despicable.
Fortunately, not the least bit convincing. People know better.
" Where have the anti-war and anti-bank masses gone? I would argue they are still with us
but they cannot turn their voices into action and organization if they remain in the
Democratic Party "
OK, so..... it's the Democrat Party, not the Democratic Party. Not like anyone gives a
**** what words mean any more, but.... whatever. Use the right ******* words or..... *******
don't. Not like any of this **** matters any more at this level.
And not all of us are ******* Democrats. Neither party is really anti-war or anti-bank
now, so the red/blue thing has little relevance to those subjects. We all argue about much
more important issues now like transgender bathrooms and whether Kanye West is a racist for
supporting Trump or not.
Politics has become a black hole collapsing on us. Black hole don't give a ****. Look at
that black hole. It just ate a star and became bigger. It don't care.
Sorry but I do not see Trump as "threatening nuclear war".
Surely some of the Deep Staters did. But it's hard to see Trump as in control. His
presidency has been great for exposing how things really work. That's worth a lot. If only
the idiots would pay attention. But they won't. They're too busy placing great importance on
the trifling and little or none on the critically important.
Excuse me I have to run now and get the latest iPhone.
President Trump's ex-longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen worked with an FBI informant
known as "The Quarterback" to negotiate a deal for Trump Tower Moscow during the 2016 US
election, according to
BuzzFeed News .
"The Quarterback," Felix Sater - a longtime FBI and CIA undercover
intelligence asset who was busted running a $40 million stock scheme, leveraged his
Russia connections to pitch the deal, while Cohen discussed it with Putin's press secretary,
Dmitry Peskov, according to BuzzFeed , citing two unnamed US law enforcement
officials.
Sater told BuzzFeed News today that he and Cohen thought giving the Trump Tower's most
luxurious apartment, a $50 million penthouse , to Putin would entice other wealthy buyers
to purchase their own. "In Russia, the oligarchs would bend over backwards to live in the
same building as Vladimir Putin," Sater told BuzzFeed News. "My idea was to give a $50
million penthouse to Putin and charge $250 million more for the rest of the units. All the
oligarchs would line up to live in the same building as Putin." A second source confirmed
the plan. -
BuzzFeed
The Trump Tower Moscow plan is at the center of Cohen's
new plea agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller after he admitted to lying to
congressional committees investigating Trump-Russia collusion.
According to the
criminal information filed against Cohen Thursday, on Jan. 20, 2016 he spoke with a
Russian government official, referred to only as Assistant 1, about the Trump Tower Moscow
plan for 20 minutes. This person appears to be an assistant to Peskov, a top Kremlin
official that Cohen had attempted to reach by email.
Cohen "requested assistance in moving the project forward, both in securing land to
build the proposed tower and financing the construction," the court document states.
Cohen had previously maintained that he never got a response from the official, but in
court on Thursday he acknowledged that was a lie. -
BuzzFeed
While the deal ultimately fizzled, "and it is not clear whether Trump knew of the
intention to give away the penthouse," Cohen has said in court filings that Trump was
regularly briefed on the Moscow negotiations along with his family.
Sater and Cohen "worked furiously behind the scenes into the summer of 2016 to get the
Moscow deal finished," according to BuzzFeed - although it was claimed that the project was
canned in January 2016, before Trump won the GOP nomination.
Sater, who has worked with the Trump organization on past deals, said that he came up with
the Trump Tower Moscow idea, while Cohen - Sater recalled, said "Great idea." "I figured,
he's in the news, his name is generating a lot of good press," Sater told BuzzFeed earlier in
the year, adding "A lot of Russians weren't willing to pay a premium licensing fee to put
Donald's name on their building. Now maybe they would be."
So he turned to his old friend, Cohen, to get it off the ground . They arranged a
licensing deal, by which Trump would lend his name to the project and collect a part of the
profits. Sater lined up a Russian development company to build the project and said that
VTB, a Russian financial institution that faced US sanctions at the time, would finance it.
VTB officials
have denied taking part in any negotiations about the project. -
BuzzFeed
Two FBI agents with "direct knowledge of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations" told
BuzzFeed earlier this year that Cohen had been in frequent contact with foreigners about the
potential real estate project - and that some of these individuals "had knowledge of or
played a role in 2016 election meddling."
Meanwhile, Trump reportedly personally signed the letter of intent to move forward with
the Trump Tower Moscow plan on October 28, 2015 - the third day of the Republican primary
debate.
Cohen is scheduled to be sentenced on December 12. By cooperating with the DOJ, he is
hoping to avoid prison.
In 1998, Sater pleaded guilty to his involvement in a $40 million stock fraud scheme
orchestrated by the Russian Mafia , and became an informant
for the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and federal prosecutors, assisting with organized crime investigations.
In 2017, Sater agreed to cooperate with investigators into international money laundering schemes.
Left, right and centre in contemporary USSA politics are rotten and corrupt. Bernie
Sanders proved that even he is susceptible to dodgy business decisions. Trump is no more
rotten and adverse to dodgy/boarderline legally tenuous deals than anybody in politics on
Capitol Hill. Do I care about this? No, because there are far more important issues to be
dealt with by a magnitude of 90000 times.
Both sides on this issue are imbeciles. One side is pushing guilt, when compared to what
Killary and the Clinton foundation got up to, it is a complete non-story. The other side
are completely absolving Orange Jesus of any guilt and making out he has morals beyond
reproach.
I rarely comment on the Trump/Russia angle, because most of it is overblown, the
narrative is distorted and context is deliberately misinterpreted.
President Trump's ex-longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen worked with an FBI
informant known as "The Quarterback" to negotiate a deal for Trump Tower Moscow during
the 2016 US election, according to BuzzFeed News.
There is nothing about this sentence which carries any credibility at all.
Honestly, you might not have bothered writing it, or the rest of the article. No. I
didn't read it, and am not going to waste any of my life doing so either.
Can somebody just give me the short, simple, dumbed-down version of what any of this
means? What does this amount to? Is this any kind of game-changer? Does it change
anything?
" ...an un-named source" ..... another fantastical fairytale from a failed american
media company by yet another un-named source. How very convenient. President Vladimir
living in an american themed cramped badly designed apartment building ? Please, I do not
like to laugh much but this is starting to make me smile. Our President has a State owned
mansion in the best part of our glorious capital ....like me he owns almost nothing and
works all the time ....why would anybody with sanity in their brain believe that he would
make this change, especially to be associated with ANYTHING american. Also no Russian
businessman that I know has ever bought a property in a trump complex .... the build
quality and design is rubbish. Westerners should take time to view some of our exceptional
office and residential towers along the Moskva River to see where wealthy people want to
invest, work and live here. Get real West !!
OK thought experiment, given that he "only" earns perhaps 150k, how is Putin going to
pay for the upkeep of such a White Elephant? Imagine if he had to pay for maintenance of
the complementary hot n cold running whores that inevitable come with such an apartment
.... what if something breaks and needs replaced?
It's like giving a Ferrari to an Amish. Thanks, but no, thanks. Not his style.
Because Putin wants to live in a building with a bunch of mobsters.
And small world - wouldnt you know the Russians who try to do hotel deals are also into
hacking illegal, unsecure servers?
And though this indicates nothing, true or not, about the election - here's the secret :
the judeocorporate media has got the public trained to react to 'Russia' and 'Putin' purely
emotionally - so much so the Maddows of the world will shriek that this proves 'collusion'
- when it does no such thing.
More Deep State smoke and mirrors.
If you havent watched any Dan Bongino speeches on youtube its worth a look.
Crooks and criminals took over worldwide. Now even US-citizens elected one for
President. It´s a shame. How long will it take until the killer squads of Blackstone
financed by Blackrock prowl through the streets to kill anybody who isn´t useful in
their view? They have been practicing for years in foreign countries, paid with taxpayers
money.
Why did the FBI or Muller zero in on this guy Michael Cohen?
Because they got everything on him, Trump and his family and associates, long before any
investigations were initiated.
NSA collected all the phone records, emails, text messages, internet usages, banking
records, library loan records, etc, . . . on EVERY Americans. All they need to do is type
in a name, like you type in a search phrase on Google, and everything associated with that
person would come up, on the screen.
The FBI knew everything they need to know about Michael Cohen, and General Michael
Flynn.
All they need to get them or entrap them is to ask them questions, which they already
knew the answers, and wait for them to "lie" or misrepresent themselves.
BINGO!
They are charged with lying to the FBI.
Trump was smart that he refused to be "interview" with the Muller, the Inquisitor. His
lawyers knew Muller will try to trap into "lying" to the FBI.
"... No longer were the chief executive officers of these companies chosen because they were of the right social background. Connections still mattered, but so did bureaucratic skill. The men who possessed those skills were rewarded well for their efforts. Larded with expense accounts and paid handsomely, they could exercise national influence not only through their companies, but through the roles that they would be called upon to serve in "the national interest." ..."
"... Given an unlimited checking account by politicians anxious to appear tough, buoyed by fantastic technological and scientific achievements, and sinking roots into America's educational institutions, the military, Mills believed, was becoming increasingly autonomous. Of all the prongs of the power elite, this "military ascendancy" possessed the most dangerous implications. "American militarism, in fully developed form, would mean the triumph in all areas of life of the military metaphysic, and hence the subordination to it of all other ways of life." ..."
"... Rather they understood that running the Central Intelligence Agency or being secretary of the Treasury gave one vast influence over the direction taken by the country. Firmly interlocked with the military and corporate sectors, the political leaders of the United States fashioned an agenda favorable to their class rather than one that might have been good for the nation as a whole ..."
"... The new breed of political figure likely to climb to the highest political positions in the land would be those who were cozy with generals and CEOs, not those who were on a first-name basis with real estate brokers and savings and loan officials. ..."
"... the emergence of the power elite had transformed the theory of balance into a romantic, Jeffersonian myth. ..."
"... neither Congress nor the political parties had much substantive work to carry out. "In the absence of policy differences of consequence between the major parties," Mills wrote, "the professional party politician must invent themes about which to talk." ..."
"... the image he conveyed of what an American had become was thoroughly unattractive: "He loses his independence, and more importantly, he loses the desire to be independent; in fact, he does not have hold of the idea of being an independent individual with his own mind and his own worked-out way of life." Mills had become so persuaded of the power of the power elite that he seemed to have lost all hope that the American people could find themselves and put a stop to the abuses he detected. ..."
Power in America today looks far different from the picture that C. Wright Mills painted nearly half a century ago. C. Wright Mills's
The Power Elite was published in 1956, a time, as Mills himself put it, when Americans were living through "a material boom,
a nationalist celebration, a political vacuum." It is not hard to understand why Americans were as complacent as Mills charged.
Let's say you were a typical 35-year-old voter in 1956. When you were eight years old, the stock market crashed, and the resulting
Clutch Plague began just as you started third or fourth grade. Hence your childhood was consumed with fighting off the poverty of
the single greatest economic catastrophe in American history. When you were 20, the Japanese invaded Pearl Harbor, ensuring that
your years as a young adult, especially if you were male, would be spent fighting on the ground in Europe or from island to island
in Asia. If you were lucky enough to survive that experience, you returned home at the ripe old age of 24, ready to resume some semblance
of a normal life -- only then to witness the Korean War, McCarthyism, and the beginning of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
Into this milieu exploded The Power Elite . C. Wright Mills was one of the first intellectuals in America to write that
the complacency of the Eisenhower years left much to be desired. His indictment was uncompromising. On the one hand, he claimed,
vast concentrations of power had coagulated in America, making a mockery of American democracy. On the other, he charged that his
fellow intellectuals had sold out to the conservative mood in America, leaving their audience -- the American people themselves --
in a state of ignorance and apathy bearing shocking resemblance to the totalitarian regimes that America had defeated or was currently
fighting.
One of the goals Mills set for himself in The Power Elite was to tell his readers -- again, assuming that they were roughly
35 years of age -- how much the organization of power in America had changed during their lifetimes. In the 1920s, when this typical
reader had been born, there existed what Mills called "local society," towns and small cities throughout Am erica whose political
and social life was dominated by resident businessmen. Small-town elites, usually Republican in their outlook, had a strong voice
in Con gress, for most of the congressmen who represented them were either members of the dominant families themselves or had close
financial ties to them.
By the time Mills wrote his book, this world of local elites had become as obsolete as the Model T Ford. Power in America had
become nationalized, Mills charged, and as a result had also become interconnected. The Power Elite called attention to three
prongs of power in the United States. First, business had shifted its focus from corporations that were primarily regional in their
workforces and customer bases to ones that sought products in national markets and developed national interests. What had once been
a propertied class, tied to the ownership of real assets, had become a managerial class, rewarded for its ability to organize the
vast scope of corporate enterprise into an engine for ever-expanding profits. No longer were the chief executive officers of
these companies chosen because they were of the right social background. Connections still mattered, but so did bureaucratic skill.
The men who possessed those skills were rewarded well for their efforts. Larded with expense accounts and paid handsomely, they could
exercise national influence not only through their companies, but through the roles that they would be called upon to serve in "the
national interest."
Similar changes had taken place in the military sector of American society. World War II, Mills argued, and the subsequent start
of the Cold War, led to the establishment of "a permanent war economy" in the United States. Mills wrote that the "warlords," his
term for the military and its civilian allies, had once been "only uneasy, poor relations within the American elite; now they are
first cousins; soon they may become elder brothers." Given an unlimited checking account by politicians anxious to appear tough,
buoyed by fantastic technological and scientific achievements, and sinking roots into America's educational institutions, the military,
Mills believed, was becoming increasingly autonomous. Of all the prongs of the power elite, this "military ascendancy" possessed
the most dangerous implications. "American militarism, in fully developed form, would mean the triumph in all areas of life of the
military metaphysic, and hence the subordination to it of all other ways of life."
In addition to the military and corporate elites, Mills analyzed the role of what he called "the political directorate." Local
elites had once been strongly represented in Congress, but Congress itself, Mills pointed out, had lost power to the executive branch.
And within that branch, Mills could count roughly 50 people who, in his opinion, were "now in charge of the executive decisions made
in the name of the United States of America." The very top positions -- such as the secretaries of state or defense -- were occupied
by men with close ties to the leading national corporations in the United States. These people were not attracted to their positions
for the money; often, they made less than they would have in the private sector. Rather they understood that running the Central
Intelligence Agency or being secretary of the Treasury gave one vast influence over the direction taken by the country. Firmly interlocked
with the military and corporate sectors, the political leaders of the United States fashioned an agenda favorable to their class
rather than one that might have been good for the nation as a whole.
Although written very much as a product of its time, The Power Elite has had remarkable staying power. The book has remained
in print for 43 years in its original form, which means that the 35-year-old who read it when it first came out is now 78 years old.
The names have changed since the book's appearance -- younger readers will recognize hardly any of the corporate, military, and political
leaders mentioned by Mills -- but the underlying question of whether America is as democratic in practice as it is in theory continues
to matter very much.
Changing Fortunes
The obvious question for any contemporary reader of The Power Elite is whether its conclusions apply to the United States
today. Sorting out what is helpful in Mills's book from what has become obsolete seems a task worth undertaking.
Each year, Fortune publishes a list of the 500 leading American companies based on revenues. Roughly 30 of the 50 companies
that dominated the economy when Mills wrote his book no longer do, including firms in once seemingly impregnable industries such
as steel, rubber, and food. Putting it another way, the 1998 list contains the names of many corporations that would have been quite
familiar to Mills: General Motors is ranked first, Ford second, and Exxon third. But the company immediately following these giants
-- Wal-Mart Stores -- did not even exist at the time Mills wrote; indeed, the idea that a chain of retail stores started by a folksy
Arkansas merchant would someday outrank Mobil, General Electric, or Chrysler would have startled Mills. Furthermore, just as some
industries have declined, whole new industries have appeared in America since 1956; IBM was fifty-ninth when Mills wrote, hardly
the computer giant -- sixth on the current Fortune 500 list -- that it is now. (Compaq and Intel, neither of which existed when Mills
wrote his book, are also in the 1998 top 50.) To illustrate how closed the world of the power elite was, Mills called attention to
the fact that one man, Winthrop W. Aldrich, the Am erican ambassador to Great Britain, was a director of 4 of the top 25 companies
in America in 1950. In 1998, by contrast, only one of those companies, AT&T, was at the very top; of the other three, Chase Manhattan
was twenty-seventh, Metropolitan Life had fallen to forty-third, and the New York Central Railroad was not to be found.
Despite these changes in the nature of corporate America, however, much of what Mills had to say about the corporate elite still
applies. It is certainly still the case, for example, that those who run companies are very rich; the gap between what a CEO makes
and what a worker makes is extraordinarily high. But there is one difference between the world described by Mills and the world of
today that is so striking it cannot be passed over. As odd as it may sound, Mills's understanding of capitalism was not radical enough.
Heavily influenced by the sociology of its time, The Power Elite portrayed corporate executives as organization men who "must
'fit in' with those already at the top." They had to be concerned with managing their impressions, as if the appearance of good results
were more important than the actuality of them. Mills was disdainful of the idea that leading businessmen were especially com petent.
"The fit survive," he wrote, "and fitness means, not formal competence -- there probably is no such thing for top executive positions
-- but conformity with the criteria of those who have already succeeded."
It may well have been true in the 1950s that corporate leaders were not especially inventive; but if so, that was because they
faced relatively few challenges. If you were the head of General Motors in 1956, you knew that American automobile companies dominated
your market; the last thing on your mind was the fact that someday cars called Toyotas or Hondas would be your biggest threat. You
did not like the union which organized your workers, but if you were smart, you realized that an ever-growing economy would enable
you to trade off high wages for your workers in return for labor market stability. Smaller companies that supplied you with parts
were dependent on you for orders. Each year you wanted to outsell Ford and Chrysler, and yet you worked with them to create an elaborate
set of signals so that they would not undercut your prices and you would not undercut theirs. Whatever your market share in 1956,
in other words, you could be fairly sure that it would be the same in 1957. Why rock the boat? It made perfect sense for budding
executives to do what Mills argued they did do: assume that the best way to get ahead was to get along and go along.
Very little of this picture remains accurate at the end of the twentieth century. Union membership as a percentage of the total
workforce has declined dramatically, and while this means that companies can pay their workers less, it also means that they cannot
expect to invest much in the training of their workers on the assumption that those workers will remain with the company for most
of their lives. Foreign competition, once negligible, is now the rule of thumb for most American companies, leading many of them
to move parts of their companies overseas and to create their own global marketing arrangements. America's fastest-growing industries
can be found in the field of high technology, something Mills did not anticipate. ("Many modern theories of industrial development,"
he wrote, "stress technological developments, but the number of inventors among the very rich is so small as to be unappreciable.")
Often dominated by self-made men (another phenomenon about which Mills was doubtful), these firms are ruthlessly competitive, which
upsets any possibility of forming gentlemen's agreements to control prices; indeed, among internet companies the idea is to provide
the product with no price whatsoever -- that is, for free -- in the hopes of winning future customer loyalty.
These radical changes in the competitive dynamics of American capitalism have important implications for any effort to characterize
the power elite of today. C. Wright Mills was a translator and interpreter of the German sociologist Max Weber, and he borrowed from
Weber the idea that a heavily bureaucratized society would also be a stable and conservative society. Only in a society which changes
relatively little is it possible for an elite to have power in the first place, for if events change radically, then it tends to
be the events controlling the people rather than the people controlling the events. There can be little doubt that those who hold
the highest positions in America's corporate hierarchy remain, as they did in Mills's day, the most powerful Americans. But not even
they can control rapid technological transformations, intense global competition, and ever-changing consumer tastes. American capitalism
is simply too dynamic to be controlled for very long by anyone.
The Warlords
One of the crucial arguments Mills made in The Power Elite was that the emergence of the Cold War completely transformed
the American public's historic opposition to a permanent military establishment in the United States. In deed, he stressed that America's
military elite was now linked to its economic and political elite. Personnel were constantly shifting back and forth from the corporate
world to the military world. Big companies like General Motors had become dependent on military contracts. Scientific and technological
innovations sponsored by the military helped fuel the growth of the economy. And while all these links between the economy and the
military were being forged, the military had become an active political force. Members of Congress, once hostile to the military,
now treated officers with great deference. And no president could hope to staff the Department of State, find intelligence officers,
and appoint ambassadors without consulting with the military.
Mills believed that the emergence of the military as a key force in American life constituted a substantial attack on the isolationism
which had once characterized public opinion. He argued that "the warlords, along with fellow travelers and spokesmen, are attempting
to plant their metaphysics firmly among the population at large." Their goal was nothing less than a redefinition of reality -- one
in which the American people would come to accept what Mills called "an emergency without a foreseeable end." "War or a high state
of war preparedness is felt to be the normal and seemingly permanent condition of the United States," Mills wrote. In this state
of constant war fever, America could no longer be considered a genuine democracy, for democracy thrives on dissent and disagreement,
precisely what the military definition of reality forbids. If the changes described by Mills were indeed permanent, then The Power
Elite could be read as the description of a deeply radical, and depressing, transformation of the nature of the United States.
Much as Mills wrote, it remains true today that Congress is extremely friendly to the military, at least in part because the military
has become so powerful in the districts of most congressmen. Military bases are an important source of jobs for many Americans, and
government spending on the military is crucial to companies, such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, which manufacture military equipment.
American firms are the leaders in the world's global arms market, manufacturing and exporting weapons everywhere. Some weapons systems
never seem to die, even if, as was the case with a "Star Wars" system designed to destroy incoming missiles, there is no demonstrable
military need for them.
Yet despite these similarities with the 1950s, both the world and the role that America plays in that world have changed. For
one thing, the United States has been unable to muster its forces for any sustained use in any foreign conflict since Vietnam. Worried
about the possibility of a public backlash against the loss of American lives, American presidents either refrain from pursuing military
adventures abroad or confine them to rapid strikes, along the lines pursued by Presidents Bush and Clinton in Iraq. Since 1989, moreover,
the collapse of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe has undermined the capacity of America's elites to mobilize support for military
expenditures. China, which at the time Mills wrote was con sidered a serious threat, is now viewed by American businessmen as a source
of great potential investment. Domestic political support for a large and permanent military establishment in the United States,
in short, can no longer be taken for granted.
The immediate consequence of these changes in the world's balance of power has been a dramatic decrease in that proportion of
the American economy devoted to defense. At the time Mills wrote, defense expenditures constituted roughly 60 percent of all federal
outlays and consumed nearly 10 percent of the U. S. gross domestic product. By the late 1990s, those proportions had fallen to 17
percent of federal outlays and 3.5 percent of GDP. Nearly three million Americans served in the armed forces when The Power Elite
appeared, but that number had dropped by half at century's end. By almost any account, Mills's prediction that both the economy and
the political systemof the United States would come to be ever more dominated by the military is not borne out by historical developments
since his time.
And how could he have been right? Business firms, still the most powerful force in American life, are increasingly global in nature,
more interested in protecting their profits wherever they are made than in the defense of the country in which perhaps only a minority
of their employees live and work. Give most of the leaders of America's largest companies a choice between invading another country
and investing in its industries and they will nearly always choose the latter over the former. Mills believed that in the 1950s,
for the first time in American history, the military elite had formed a strong alliance with the economic elite. Now it would be
more correct to say that America's economic elite finds more in common with economic elites in other countries than it does with
the military elite of its own. The Power Elite failed to foresee a situation in which at least one of the key elements of
the power elite would no longer identify its fate with the fate of the country which spawned it.
Mass Society and the Power Elite
Politicians and public officials who wield control over the executive and legislative branches of government constitute the third
leg of the power elite. Mills believed that the politicians of his time were no longer required to serve a local apprenticeship before
moving up the ladder to national politics. Because corporations and the military had become so interlocked with government, and because
these were both national institutions, what might be called "the nationalization of politics" was bound to follow. The new breed
of political figure likely to climb to the highest political positions in the land would be those who were cozy with generals and
CEOs, not those who were on a first-name basis with real estate brokers and savings and loan officials.
For Mills, politics was primarily a facade. Historically speaking, American politics had been organized on the theory of balance:
each branch of government would balance the other; competitive parties would ensure adequate representation; and interest groups
like labor unions would serve as a counterweight to other interests like business. But the emergence of the power elite had transformed
the theory of balance into a romantic, Jeffersonian myth. So anti democratic had America become under the rule of the power
elite, according to Mills, that most decisions were made behind the scenes. As a result, neither Congress nor the political parties
had much substantive work to carry out. "In the absence of policy differences of consequence between the major parties," Mills wrote,
"the professional party politician must invent themes about which to talk."
Mills was right to emphasize the irrelevance of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century images to the actualities of twentieth-century
American political power. But he was not necessarily correct that politics would therefore become something of an empty theatrical
show. Mills believed that in the absence of real substance, the parties would become more like each other. Yet today the ideological
differences between Republicans and Democrats are severe -- as, in fact, they were in 1956. Joseph McCarthy, the conservative anticommunist
senator from Wisconsin who gave his name to the period in which Mills wrote his book, appears a few times in The Power Elite
, but not as a major figure. In his emphasis on politics and economics, Mills underestimated the important role that powerful symbolic
and moral crusades have had in American life, including McCarthy's witch-hunt after communist influence. Had he paid more attention
to McCarthyism, Mills would have been more likely to predict the role played by divisive issues such as abortion, immigration, and
affirmative action in American politics today. Real substance may not be high on the American political agenda, but that does not
mean that politics is unimportant. Through our political system, we make decisions about what kind of people we imagine ourselves
to be, which is why it matters a great deal at the end of the twentieth century which political party is in power.
Contemporary commentators believe that Mills was an outstanding social critic but not necessarily a first-rate social scientist.
Yet I believe that The Power Elite survives better as a work of social science than of social criticism.
At the time Mills was writing, academic sociology was in the process of proclaiming itself a science. The proper role of the sociologist,
many of Mills's colleagues believed, was to conduct value-free research emphasizing the close em pirical testing of small-bore hypotheses.
A grand science would eventually be built upon extensive empirical work which, like the best of the natural sciences, would be published
in highly specialized journals emph a sizing methodological innovation and technical proficiency. Because he never agreed with these
objectives, Mills was never considered a good scientist by his sociological peers.
Yet not much of the academic sociology of the 1950s has survived, while The Power Elite , in terms of longevity, is rivaled
by very few books of its period. In his own way, Mills contributed much to the understanding of his era. Social scientists of the
1950s emphasized pluralism, a concept which Mills attacked in his criticisms of the theory of balance. The dominant idea of the day
was that the concentration of power in America ought not be considered excessive because one group always balanced the power of others.
The biggest problem facing America was not concentrated power but what sociologists began to call "the end of ideology." America,
they believed, had reached a point in which grand passions over ideas were exhausted. From now on, we would require technical expertise
to solve our problems, not the musings of intellectuals.
Compared to such ideas, Mills's picture of American reality, for all its exaggerations, seems closer to the mark. If the test
of science is to get reality right, the very passionate convictions of C. Wright Mills drove him to develop a better empirical grasp
on Am erican society than his more objective and clinical contemporaries. We can, therefore, read The Power Elite as a fairly
good account of what was taking place in America at the time it was written.
As a social critic, however, Mills leaves something to be desired. In that role, Mills portrays himself as a lonely battler for
the truth, insistent upon his correctness no matter how many others are seduced by the siren calls of power or wealth. This gives
his book emotional power, but it comes with a certain irresponsibility. "In Am erica today," Mills wrote in a typical passage, "men
of affairs are not so much dogmatic as they are mindless." Yet however one may dislike the decisions made by those in power in the
1950s, as decision makers they were responsible for the consequences of their acts. It is often easier to criticize from afar than
it is to get a sense of what it actually means to make a corporate decision involving thousands of workers, to consider a possible
military action that might cost lives, or to decide whether public funds should be spent on roads or welfare. In calling public officials
mindless, Mills implies that he knows how they might have acted better. But if he did, he never told readers of The Power Elite
; missing from the book is a statement of what concretely could be done to make the world accord more with the values in which Mills
believed.
It is, moreover, one thing to attack the power elite, yet another to extend his criticisms to other intellectuals -- and even
the public at large. When he does the latter, Mills runs the risk of becoming as antidemocratic as he believed America had become.
As he brings his book to an end, Mills adopts a termonce strongly identified with conservative political theorists. Appalled by the
spread of democracy, conservative European writers proclaimed the twentieth century the age of "mass society." The great majority,
this theory held, would never act rationally but would respond more like a crowd, hysterically caught up in frenzy at one point,
apathetic and withdrawn at another. "The United States is not altogether a mass society," Mills wrote -- and then he went on to write
as if it were. And when he did, the image he conveyed of what an American had become was thoroughly unattractive: "He loses his
independence, and more importantly, he loses the desire to be independent; in fact, he does not have hold of the idea of being an
independent individual with his own mind and his own worked-out way of life." Mills had become so persuaded of the power of the power
elite that he seemed to have lost all hope that the American people could find themselves and put a stop to the abuses he detected.
One can only wonder, then, what Mills would have made of the failed attempt by Republican zealots to impeach and remove the President
of the United States. At one level it makes one wish there really were a power elite, for surely such an elite would have prevented
an extremist faction of an increasingly ideological political party from trying to overturn the results of two elections. And at
another level, to the degree that America weathered this crisis, it did so precisely because the public did not act as if were numbed
by living in a mass society, for it refused to follow the lead of opinion makers, it made up its mind early and thoughtfully, and
then it held tenaciously to its opinion until the end.
Whether or not America has a power elite at the top and a mass society at the bottom, however, it remains in desperate need of
the blend of social science and social criticism which The Power Elite offered. It would take another of Mills's books --
perhaps The Sociological Imagination -- to explain why that has been lost.
Corey is an iconoclast and the author of
'Man's Fight for Existence' . He believes that the key to life is for men to honour their
primal nature. Visit his new website at primalexistence.com
It wasn't long ago that the Left represented the anti-establishment wing in politics. They
used to fight against globalism (remember the anti-globalization movement?) even if their
motives were different from those of today's anti-globalists, as well as being against
censorship, imperialist wars, and the expanding powers of governments and corporations. But
today, you see leftists protesting against Brexit, attacking and censoring anyone who disagrees
with the establishment (using Twitter on their Apple products while sipping on their Starbucks
coffee), and are calling for war in Syria to challenge the Russians. So, just how the hell did
did they end up becoming the patsies for the elites?
To understand, we must go back to 2011 when the Occupy movement was ongoing. The Occupy
protests, which now seem like ages ago, came about as a response to the economic downturn with
the people realizing that they were being screwed by the system. We can debate endlessly about
exactly who these people were and the motives behind them, but the important fact is that, to
the elites, it was a sign that the people were waking up and challenging their power.
The elites were in a panic as this was the first time in post-war history that the people of
West mobilized in mass to threaten their rule. So, the cabals decided that they needed to act
fast before the whole movement evolved to a full-blown revolution. And they already had a plan
in mind: the never antiquated strategy of divide and rule.
The Diversion
When the people are discontent and angry from being powerless and dispossessed, the pressure
will mount and it won't go anywhere. The people want to vent out their frustrations. The elites
know that responding directly with repression only inspires greater desire to rise up, so
instead of fighting it, they prefer to re-channel that pent up energy elsewhere.
On February 2012, with the Occupy movement still raging, the elites were given that golden
opportunity -- or, rather, they created one -- when a black teenager was shot dead in Florida:
the none other than the infamous Trayvon Martin case. The shooter wasn't even a full white, but
the elites jumped at the chance and used their control of the media to throw everything they
had on it; anything to divert the public attention away from them. With their efforts, it
quickly became the biggest story of America.
But they didn't stop there. Police shootings, which have always been happening and to all
races, were also highly publicized by the mainstream media to stoke liberal outrage and racial
tensions that led to the creation of Black Lives Matter movement -- a movement that is
financed by George Soros and others to stir up unrests across America.
Did the elites convert Occupy protesters into SJW patsies?
The diversion was complete as the people were now more interested in racial issues than the
"1%" who were dictating their lives. The Occupy movement faded away and the people were now
venting out their anger elsewhere. Although I don't have as much proof as with the rise of BLM
movement, I strongly suspect that the resurgence of social justice warriors around the same
time is also the work of the elites who want the Leftists to target fellow citizens over
asinine cultural issues rather than the established order.
The Strategy
Back in 19th century, Karl Marx claimed that religion and nationalism was being used to
distract the masses from the fact that they were being oppressed under capitalism. If we were
to apply this concept to the world today, the culture wars going on now are distractions to
keep the masses from undermining the power of the elites.
The goal the elites is simple: divide the masses and let them fight each other so that they
will never come together to topple those in power. Meanwhile, they themselves focus on
expanding their own wealth and continue to implement institutional control to further their
globalist plans. The worst case scenario the elites want to avoid is to have the common people
unite as one, so they must do everything they can to fragment them by creating as many
divisions as possible.
My understanding of their modus operandi is this: 1) Use hot-button issues to stir up
controversy (something that doesn't affect them like gay marriage, race issues, and all other
politically correct nonsense). 2) Have the Leftists either get outraged or do something that
will provoke a reaction from the Right. 3) Let the people vent out their anger onto each other
and get at each other's throats. 4) When the issue fades away, foment a new controversy to
repeat the whole process. By cycling through them over and over again, the elites are able to
maintain the status quo and keep the people from uniting against them.
Thus, we have our current situation where the masses are divided with blacks against whites,
women against men, Islam and atheism against Christianity, Left against Right, and so on, but
no more anti-globalization, Tea Party movement, or Occupy Wall Street.
As long as those on the left continue berating the right as racists, sexists, and bigots who
are controlled by corporations and the right in turn accuse the left of being degenerate,
socialist slackers who just want freebies from a nanny government, nothing will change. As long
as the two sides see each others as enemies who are stupid and ignorant, and getting in the way
of creating a decent society, the people will remain divided. As long as the rest of the
population go berserk over wedding cakes for homosexuals, the latest "misogynist" outrage, or
how a lion named Cecil got shot, the elites will continue to win.
I know they look like an occupying army, but there's nothing to be alarmed about. They're
just your friendly neighborhood police doing their jobs to protect you from the
"terrorists."
First, while this article has been focused on how the Left has been toyed by the globalist
elites, let's not forget that the Right are not totally immune to their influence either.
Remember how Neo-cons (
globalist puppets disguised as conservatives ) effectively lured the conservatives in
America through faith and patriotism? The support they got from that base was the impetus to
launch their war against Iraq based on bullshit evidences of WMD's and Saddam–Al-Queda
link. While the Right has changed a lot since then, there are still "conservatives" today who
are itching for a war with Russia because USA! USA! USA! .
Second, it is crucial to remember that although the main goal is to maintain divide and
rule, it is not the end of it. The elites have far more sinister aims. By raising hell in
societies through demographic conflicts and terrorism, the elites are preparing for a total
social control. I get the feeling that the elites are letting the chaos and violence run its
course so that the people from the two opposing camps will join together in their approval of
new government measures for social control.
No matter their differences, when the people get terrified of savagery and disorder, they'll
welcome the state to intervene in the name of security. Europe is already getting used to large
military presence on their
streets while the US government is seemingly
preparing for a war against their own citizens . A leaked Soros memo also reveals that the
BLM movement is potentially being used to federalize the US
police . While many people seem to be concerned about violence and terrorism, it seems
those are just tools used by the elites to justify a totalitarian state in the near
future.
The Culture Wars: Necessary Fight Or Engineered Distraction?
The issue of culture wars is not an easy one as they are important in many ways, but are
still forms of distraction implemented by the elites.
On one hand, we are playing into the hands of elites by raging against social justice and
feminist pigshits instead of trying to stop the globalists,
Zionists , bankers,
mega-corporations , and the governments from undermining our existence. Really, do the
issues of politically-incorrect Halloween costumes and whatever bathroom trannies use matter
more than the fact that the middle-class is being destroyed, revelations of
massive corruption in the DNC, the coming police-state, and the globalist wars that are
causing death and destruction around the world? All the drama of outrage and counter-outrage is
silly when the elites are snickering as their new world order is taking shape.
On the other hand, culture does matter in many ways. Uncontrolled immigration, anti-male
laws, and censorship are all very relevant issues. And as much of the Leftists are now serving
as pawns of the establishment, the situation isn't exactly the divide and rule model I
described above. In a way, we are now forced to fight the Left and everyone else who are
getting in the way of fighting the globalist elites.
So, does this mean we should ally with those who scorn us? Or should we continue playing the
elite's games and bicker with their SJW drones? I don't have a good answer, but whatever we
choose to do, I believe it is crucial for us to focus our battles and not get trolled into
petty issues that the mainstream media wants us to focus on. We should always keep in mind that
it is always those at the top who are the true enemies of mankind.
Conclusion: Is There
Still Hope?
Although we no longer see grassroots movements and popular mobilization, the current US
election has shown that the people are still awake and sick of the establishment. To me, that
alone is a hopeful sign that people are still willing to challenge the ruling class.
With Bernie Sanders brought down by the establishment and his supporters scattered into
different camps, the only anti-establishment movement now is the presidential campaign led by
Donald Trump. This is why we are seeing unprecedented efforts by the elites to bring down Trump
and use disgruntled Leftists against his supporters.
I have my doubts
about Trump , but he is thousand times preferable to the certain nightmare that Hillary
Clinton will bring to America and the world if she gets elected. But besides voting, I believe
that it is more important for the people themselves to wake up and be aware of the methods of
control that are being implemented upon us. We can't constantly expect some knight in shinning
armor to come rally us; we must take the initiative ourselves and be willing to fight for our
own destiny.
"People of the West", not just the US. It's possible that the Occupy movement, too,
was created by the elites to counter the Tea Party until it spiraled out of
control.
GhostOfJefferson
✓ᴺᵃᵗᶦᵒᶰᵃˡᶦˢᵗ
It's more than just possible, it's pretty clear that it was. They show up with
buses rented and food vendors in tow. Somebody was paying for that shit, and it
sure as hell wasn't the unwashed hippy wannabes out shitting on cop cars.
Hugo
Its a false statement by the author to state that the 'left' was anti
establishment back in the day. It wasn't. It's goal, then and now was to create
a global, Marxist establishment and to do that it had brainwash the masses into
believing it was 'fightin the man'.
When in fact the 'left' has always been 'the man' as Marxism is focused on
control and authority. None of this is new. Perhaps new to North America but,
exactly the methodology that was used in Europe since WW1 to turn it into the
Marxist shiithole it has become. That in essence was what WW2 was about;
Nationalism vs. Globalized Marxism. And Nationalism lost.
Although it is in how you define the establishment. At the time of
progressives assuming power (around WW1, give or take) the "Establishment" was
fairly Classical Liberal and friendly to liberty and free trade, at least to an
extent. Now the "establishment" is them, and they are absolutely "the Man"
these days.
Koch brothers and Soros are accused of funding Tea Party and OWS
respectively; both denied the charges. Buses and food vendors aren't that
expensive and they did receive donations from ordinary people.
But I feel like the whole point of the article is now lost due to this
debate of who funded who, who's controlled by who, which is the good side and
which the bad, which just confirms that we are divided. I guess some things
never change.
Sorry man, but I didn't bring up OWS, the article did. They were so
astroturfed that I can't even pretend to take them seriously as legitimate
protest. When you have Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the bulk of the Democrat
party cheering them on, that should give a moment for pause. On the flip side,
the Tea Party was reviled by the Dems AND the GOP simultaneously.
Oh please. Most free-market libertarian organizations are astroturfed by the Koch
brothers. They're every bit as insidious as the left, being the pro-free-trade and
pro-immigration people they are.
Spare me your Leftism. I took part in them, they were locally organized and
unfinanced, basically we just showed up (here in central Ohio) when a college
sophomore at OSU sent out a mass email to various local groups.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with free trade, and not all libertarians are
open borders/pro-immigration.
I concur whole heartedly. The tea party movement was a locally organized
movement and stood for ideals that made our country great .which is exactly why
the left lied so hard and loud about it.
Free trade is what caused all the factories in the rust belt to close and
outsourced all of American industry.
The Koch brothers themselves, the one that fund things like FreedomWorks,
GMU and certain elements of the Tea Party (simply because they weren't directly
involve in events does not make them not involved). They themselves are
pro-immigration.
I'm not a leftist in the slightest. Being an economic nationalist does not
make one left-wing.
Give me a break. Nobody "funded" us. There isn't even a leadership hierarchy
to fund. That's what you people don't get, it was a decentralized movement,
which gives it a lot of advantages that other movements do not have. It's why
we can't be "funded" as monolithic group.
"Free trade" didn't give us the current situation. The government now, and
at the time of NAFTA, so regulated the market and taxed it to the hilt that
it's laughable to even suggest that it's "free" in any real sense. The best you
can say about it is that it's mercantilist, which funny enough, is one step
away from "economic nationalism" aka national socialism.
> Give me a break. Nobody "funded" us. There isn't even a leadership
hierarchy to fund. That's what you people don't get, it was a
decentralized movement, which gives it a lot of advantages that other
movements do not have. It's why we can't be "funded" as monolithic
group.
BLM is also highly decentralized. Doesn't mean it isn't funded.
> "Free trade" didn't give us the current situation. The government
now,
and at the time of NAFTA, has so regulated the market and taxed it to
the hilt that it's laughable to even suggest that it's "free" in any
real sense. The best you can say about it is that it's mercantilist,
which funny enough, is one step away from "economic nationalism" aka
national socialism.
There's a difference between regulating industries and imposing preferential
tariffs and lavishing companies with subsidies similar to how China does.
They're the ones winning, in case you haven't noticed.
BLM has a hierarchy, a chain of command and this is easily seen by going to
the website of the people who started it.
If the government is out granting favors (or restricting access) then this
is not a "free market". Adam Smith would spit on the economic system that
America, and by proxy, most of the West has adopted since the
1930's.
> BLM has a hierarchy, a chain of command and this is easily seen by
going to the website of the people who started it
Yet the fact it can't keep the rank and file in line (as evidenced by the
endless rioting) speaks to this command structure not working.
> If the government is out granting favors (or restricting access)
then
this is not a "free market". Adam Smith would spit on the economic
system that America, and by proxy, most of the West has adopted since
the 1930's.
Funny you mention Adam Smith, because he argued for a social safety net and
a tax on beer to pay for it. Free-market fundamentalists love to ignore
this.
Yet the fact it can't keep the rank and file in line (as evidenced by the
endless rioting) speaks to this command structure not working.
They don't *want* them to be "in line". Their entire existence is to create
chaos to necessitate "change" at various levels. They are doing exactly what
they're told to do.
Sneering at Adam Smith does not change my statement at all. We are not now,
nor have we been since at least WW1, a "free market". Not even freaking close.
So the position you hold, I reject entirely.
> They don't *want* them to be "in line". Their entire existence is
to
create chaos to necessitate "change" at various levels. They are doing
exactly what they're told to do.
Do you honestly think that people trying to win the majority over to their
side would encourage beating the shit out of the majority? BLM, for all its
failings and Marxism, has lost the media war it was trying to win.
> They don't *want* them to be "in line". Their entire existence is
to
create chaos to necessitate "change" at various levels. They are doing
exactly what they're told to do.
Free-market capitalism is impossible in a situation where the state can
easily be used to slant the market in its favor. Corporations, especially big
ones, don't really like free markets.
Who says that they're trying to win the majority over to their side? This
aggitation is meant to spur a new set of "rules" and enforcers and empower
certain political groups at the expense of others.
Free-market capitalism is impossible in a situation where the state can
easily be used to slant the market in its favor. Corporations, especially big
ones, don't really like free markets.
Exactly, this is *exactly* what I'm pointing out. Blaming the "free market"
for things like NAFTA thus, is incorrect.
> Who says that they're trying to win the majority over totheir side?
This aggitation is meant to spur a new set of "rules" and enforcers and
empower certain political groups at the expense of others.
The people who are most able to facilitate change are the voters and the
organizations that control cops. Coming across as a bunch of thugs certainly
doesn't help them.
> Exactly, this is *exactly* what I'm pointing out. Blaming the "free
market" for things like NAFTA thus, is incorrect.
"Economic internationalism" (i.e no tariffs) would be a better term
then.
The people who are most able to facilitate change are the voters and
the
organizations that control cops. Coming across as a bunch of thugs
certainly doesn't help them.
You don't understand, this isn't about organizing voters. The changes I'm
talking about are not even vaguely connected to "democracy". Their entire point
is to be the firebomb throwers that enable a "crackdown". This is an old
script.
"Economic internationalism" (i.e no tariffs) would be a better term
then.
It's just the beginning. My hunch is that they will be fully mobilized after
Trump takes POTUS. The violence from the Left and their group of retards will
escalate an awful lot, I suspect.
Nah, the election is over, he's going to landslide. The only people who see
it as "iffy" are the mainstream media, and they're just trying to cover their
own asses at this point.
Just imagine, BLM if it got big enough could be the justification for a
police state. And when they raise the minium wage to $15 an hour, and even more
blacks have even fewer jobs .a desperate man does desperate things. Its BS that
blacks won't work, they had a higher employment rate in the 50's than whites.
And if you can't get a job you turn to crime. And families get broken up, and
welfare and divorce laws break up the family. And what has happened to them is
happening to everyone else, they were just the canaries in the coal
mine.
BLM has exceeded spectacularly. George Soros doesnt make many bad bets. The
police are against blacks, now blacks can justify killing cops, and cops can
justify killing blacks. Divide and conquer and no one sees that we are killing
you all.
Why would Adam Smith oppose the current model, when it is a continuation of
the British Empire he worked for, except that at least Britain forced Free
Trade on everyone else but themselves, this system asset strips every country.
BTW you show what an idiot you are mentioning 'what the West has adopted since
the 1930'. You do realise that we have had multiple conflicting economic models
since the 1930s? There was the Bretton Woods System, which Rockefeller and
Kissinger crushed to bring in the floating exchange rate, then Clintons 1999
repeal of the Glass Steagil Act, which set off the last 17 years of madness, so
there is no 1930s-2016 Western model Adam Smith would critique, as the current
madness is Smiths model. Free Trade was never some mom and pop trading freely
with each other utopia you might think, it was all about monopoly and gunboat
diplomacy. I thought that cult had ended 5 years ago? There is only 1 working
economic model, a high tech, high level education national socialist republic
with a national bank, where kikes have no control of finance, with one and only
one racial group, whites; no niggers, muds or kikes, then everything we work
towards is for Our Posterity.
Resorting? Fuck dude, you bring up "kikes" and go full dick sucking
admiration about "national socialism" which, I'm going to go out on a limb
here, is what the *FREAKING NAZIS* practiced.
And of course, when I note that you're for Nazism, that means that I'm under
jewish influence.
This whole "congruity" thing is new to you isn't it?
You do realise that national socialism is far older than "the
nazisssssssssss". It simply means a nation, as an ethnic group, and a
government of the people for the people. Most European countries have been
national socialists except the one major factor – they didn't have
control of the issuance of currency (as the Founding Fathers planned), ergo, it
was a socialist hive for jewish financiers/ central banking cartel. The
nazisssssssssss were pretty much the first country (other than Britain briefly
after WW1) to get control of the issuance of credit for what the Founding
Fathers coined The General Welfare. And look what happened, an economic miracle
in under a decade. When whites are given heir own space, free of jewish
parasitism, they are completely unbounded and can achieve anything (that was
until jew brainwashed America and allies fucked it up).
It simply means a nation, as an ethnic group, and a government of the
people for the people
Oh please, save that for people who have no grounding in socio-economic
theory.
Nationalism means what you say (in essence). SOCIALISM does NOT mean
anything of the sort. Trying to combine the two as a package deal is not going
to fly. Simply put, that dog don't hunt, son.
The Industrial Revolution from the very start, was a product of what the
French called Dirigisme. It was planned, financed and exectuted as a state run
project, both in Britian and France with the investment into science and the
creation of the canals, which laid the route for sending coal to the factories.
Americas developement was all through the same means, actually the US govenment
poaching the best scientists and miners etc from Britain, to use in America. I
guess you have never heard of Alexander Hamilton and is Report on Manufactures.
It is socialism minus any sick minded jewish involvement, ergo national
socialism. The left has been completely co-opted by jewish financiers with
Marx. Before Marx joined Masonry, he was a proponent of Freidrich List –
the true left, before kikes/ Freemasons hijacked it.
you had a great argument going until you started with the racial horse shit.
color and race dont matter to me. Its big government and big business against
everyone else, and those on top see no difference between black or white poor
people. to them, we are all trolls.
Free trade doesn't exist in the real world. The closer the West got to that
idea was in the 19th century. Moreover should we have a free trade, then
agreements and other binding documents wouldn't be necessary. A free trade
agreement is an oxymoron. Regulated trade agreement would be closer to the
truth.
Moreover China doesn't practice free trade, it practices mercantilism at a
high price: the suffering of its own people (check the working conditions and
the environmental costs). Had we (the west) exercised the ideas of free market,
we wouldn't be in this situation.
Really? Which country practised the uptoian Free Trade? Britian didn't
practise it; it forced Free Trade onto everyone else to keep rival countries
from developing, whilst using its own working class under worse conditions than
Africans-in-America slaves. Workhouses, borstals, child workers in mines from
age 6, 14 hours a day 6 days a week, dying on average at 28 years old. The good
old days of Free Trade!
You can go to Hell if what you search are utopias. In Earth and probably in
this universe you will find none. Moreover you misrepresent what I wrote. No
matter how you define it, in the 19th century there was more economic freedom
than now, at least within the countries. It was not a coincidence that that
century marked the zenith of European greatness.
By the way, I never said worldwide free trade is possible because it's not.
Intra-national free trade is possible and necessary along with a smaller
government, however not even within the European nations or within the U.S.
there is free trade. Endless Regulations, currency manipulation, finance
speculation are stifling trade and labor, and are making ever more attractive
the replacement of human labor via automation due to the high costs and risks
of hiring human beings (sex-lawsuits, constant pay rises) and the currency loss
of worth (devaluation).
By your writings, I can infer that you are just a racist communist. So I
guess the pogroms and gulags will continue until the morale
improves.
Free trade means freedom for the most prosperous country to flood foreign
countries with goods. There are two kinds of systems: overt mercantilism
(tariffs) or covert mercantilism (free "trade" with the WTO backing it).
If free trade benefitted the elite, they'd accept it.
That's why I said global unfettered (free) trade was impossible. Too many
differences. Free trade between two or more similar nations might be possible.
But free trade between unequal nations it doesn't work out as intented. However
we don't even have free trade within our borders how can you try to have free
trade with another nation?
Not exactly. Free market within a country is possible and the ideal
condition. Communism is just hellish ideology that ignores human nature, for
the "common good". Global or international free trade is most likely impossible
due to the human nature.
If you have a Free Market within a country, that means you are excluding
foreign competition, ergo it is not Free Trade, its just trade within a
protectionist country.
Wow, is it so simple now that simple minded man has explained it. Now how do
you suppose you protect your own economy (that your ancestors gifted to you)
from being flooded with cheaper imports, or your companies closing down and
moving to slave plantations to under cut wages? You do realise that Free Trade,
as an economic model (as opposed to the fantasy interpretation you have
deduced), was created with the sole purpose of looting and undercutting prices
to keep competators down? We can have a world of nation states – ethnic
nation states – where we have borders, regulations, protective tarrifs
and a central bank owned by and for the poeple, as opposed to the Roschild
family, and have a system of fair trade. It can't be free trade as you will
basically give every incentive to people who are not your people to undercut
you and practise economic and intellectual/ copyright espionage (like China
does). You do realise that this economic system since the start of the
Industrial Revolution, was created by known people, it was a conspiracy against
the feudal powers by the likes of John Baptiste Colbert and the French Academy
of Sciences. This Industrial Revolution didn't just happen by men who were
trying to make money and trade. There was a conspiracy by top scientists and
mathematicians to unlock nature through technology, in the face of the feudal
powers that tried suppressing it, such as the pressure Denis Papin had against
his work. There was literally government money all over the Industrial
Revolution from the start, and government regulation to protect
it.
Being thankful to your ancestors and proud of your ethnicity or race is one
thing. This guy however, he takes it to the next level.
Not white = not good enough.
All non-whites are enemies.
ENEMIES EVERYWHERRREEEE!!!
lol
Yeah, but then the state and the International bankers come in and demand 20
percent of the proceeds. Utopian in the sense it isn't possible given the
circumstances.
It's completely possible and happens all the time, in the black and gray
market. If left to our own devices, it would happen naturally and organically
among normal people.
With the caveat that there is no coercion. Coercion has managed to take on
incredible forms these days. I poison your food and try to sell you a health
book that promises a cure..free trade? I bribe researchers, to fake studies,
then sell drugs that don't work and share the money with doctors who are
accepted to be experts. Free trade? The more of a difference in intelligence
and money two parties have, usually the less free trade exists.
You are correct. The original Taxed Enough Already movement was designed as
a "headless" organization in an attempt to prevent the co-option of the group
by the Big Tent Republicans. Didn't work because Sarah Palin and the
FreedomWorks goons would show up in their Koch supplied buses and act like they
organized the events.
Open borders is fine, as long as you have zero welfare. Once you start
giving gibsmedats (welfare, health care, even free road use), then you need to
lock down the border tighter than a muslim's 9 year old bride.
Similarly (though more complex), free trade is great, as long as there is
little to no interference by the government, or at least similar business
crushing regulations on both ends (which is why free trade between Canada and
the US is a problem for neither country). Regulations, minimum wages, maternity
leave mandates, and such are the reason that free trade results in jobs going
over seas. Get the government to remove the regulations, and you eliminate
99.9% of the problem.
Wrong. Free trade didn't close the factories. Labor arbitrage is NOT a
function of free trade. That is how the masters have modified the language to
suit their needs.
The word you're looking for is arbitration. As for what destroyed the rust
belt, the fact the car industry went international and sought to produce cars
closer to markets meant that the old industrial heartland went to shit. Free
trade (or economic internationalism, just so GOJ doesn't call me out on this)
is partially to blame for this.
You're still at that magical thinking level where you think grassroots
movements just spring up? How quaint. The Tea Party was always funded by
billionaires. The Tea Party cult members acted like it got co-opted, but in
this country everything is lead from the top, they just pretend its grassroots
so you'll buy into something that really isn't in your best interest. As for
people saying America was created on Tea Party principles, it wasn't. The
Founding Father opposed the British Empires Free Market model which dumped
goods onto the colonies and prevented industry from developing. America is
inherently a high wage, high tech, protectionist nation state. Free Trade is
the opposite – cheap labor, no workers rights and monopoly, which is
really feudalism rebranded. For those who think the battle is Free Trade vs
Marxism, read what Marx said about British Free Trade (he was employed by the
Empire), he was wholly in support of it and David Ricado. Orginially Marx was
in favor of Freidrich List, and wrote essays on his system, then he got got
hooked into the Freemasonic networks, joined the British Library (spooks) and
pushed Free Trade, i.e British (jewish Freemasonic) Imperialism. There was a
left wing that was pushing our values, before the kikes took over it.
http://www.schillerinstitute.org/books/Robert-Burns-book-2007.pdf
Occupy always stank to me. I don't know. It's as if I have some bullshit meter in my
head. This bullshit meter goes off when I see Obama. When I see people going crazy over
their country losing at football. When I see celebrity gossip. And when I see
OWS.
It stunk to me too because they didn't even seem to have a goal. Im mad so I'm
going to sit here stinking up the place. I'm mad, so we should close the federal
reserve..now that would have struck fear into the elitists!
I guess it stunk to me for two reasons:
1. Big organized movement with streamlined ideology. I always get a weird
feeling around my stomach when great numbers of people gather.
2. This super-focused blame on bankers, as if they were responsible for
everything wrong in their lives. I mean, most of those people aren't even the
underprivileged ones. They're probably students who just love the thrill of
protesting and get fed by mommy and daddy.
I experienced no.2 a few years back when a guy came to visit me to go to a
protest. So we were there walking with the crowd. A few people shouting through
megaphones attacking the police verbally. Police all around the movement.
Everybody kinda just walking like a zombie for some nebulous cause. Totally
pointless. I don't even feel the thrill. It's just boring to me. I would call
it scary, but it isn't even that. Those people are harmless. They aren't
killers. They have just enough courage to keep holding up a sign with some
slogan. When they shout, they don't even shout with passion. Or in other words:
They have just as much courage as the elite wants them to have in order for
them to not feel totally powerless. They get a little 'high' from the thing and
feel like they are changing the world, while nobody really cares. And this guy
who I was there with, he just loved it for fun. He didn't really care about the
cause either.
There were a bunch of enviro protesteres once at an event I went to, and I
started talking to them and asking basic enviro questions like " What causes
the ozone hole?" They had no clue. For many its a social club, maybe more of a
religion, they show up for their protests on Sunday and have a barbeque after,
and maybe get laid. But I agree with that guy you mentioned, there is a very
famous quote that he who controls the money controls the world. You might like
the movie Zeitgeist. The consipiracy theories arent theories, now with the
internet the proof can be so strong. I thought there was just NO WAY 911 could
have been faked-NO WAY. The fact that they pulled it off shows just how much
power the elites really have. 911 was a good deal all around, the new owner
made a fortune, the strongest reinsurance companies got stronger, US got the go
ahead to invade a few countries, and laws got passed depriving us of more
liberties(fear is always the best way to accomplish that). Win win
win.
Reminds me 1:1 of a former friend who is now a Scientologist. Scientology
has that "Say No To Drugs" campaign. They are against all drugs, no matter
what. My former friend happened to be at one of their stands so I went there
and confronted him, asked a few questions. The simplest one: Have you ever
taken drugs?
He said he took alcohol. And that's enough for him. He took alcohol and by
that he judges all drugs, including psychedelics. He gave some vague examples
of some cases where LSD supposedly hurt someone or whatever. But he didn't have
much answers either.
Only that Scientologists don't get laid is my guess. They attract and select
for the weakest of society. They appear to me to be mostly like sheep with zero
confidence, looking for a cause and a leader and a set of rules that explains
everything and blah blah.
Guess what. I told him I took LSD. He told me that that would probably
disqualify me from becoming a Scientologist. Hah! So you have thousands of
people working against psychedelics but not a single one of them has actually
taken them.
The more ironic that some people think Ron Hubbard came up with most of his
ideas on LSD
I read something about 911. Has it actually been proven to be true? That
would be a great thing to throw at people.
I've been learning alot about psychedelics lately too-a few interesting
things about them. They are all chemically related to adrenochrome-oxidized
adrenaline. oxidized adrenaline is a psychedelic(asthmatics take adrenaline,
which as it goes bad turns pink red then brown oxidizing), and it looks like
schizos are merely producing an excessive internal amount of this. To me, there
is a progression of behaviour modification..from normal, to borderline,
narcicism and ending with schizo with increased stress. Schizos are narcissists
by the way. But to me its adaptive, when you are under a great deal of stress
is when you drastically need to learn something and change your situation.
Another thing is that it appears mushrooms, reduce brain activity, which to me
links it to sensory deprivation and meditation. As for 911 heres a few good
videos, the simplest is the amazing stories told by the owner, that have to
change because they are so bad. And a multibillion dollar operation and he only
lost 4 people..and profited handsomely from the investment! Truly jewish
lightning.
its fantasyland stuff that you can demo a building in an afternoon. Which is
probably why he changed his story. Oh and he had plans drawn up for WTC 7 a
year before the attack. Perfectly normal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOSObJDs67Y
this guys says some interesting things
Hmm. What do you mean by chemically related? Is that some stuff you have
deeper knowledge that I probably wouldn't grasp? If so, that's cool. And what
do you mean by "it looks like" when you refer to schizos producing an excessive
amount? And where does the link between schizos and narcs come from and where
did you get that succession from (normal, borderline, narc, schizo). Seems a
bit inconclusive to me, especially since those are all groups of symptoms that,
as far as I can tell, have not been somehow linked to a real thing, but rather
those people are simply linked together because of similar symptoms. And the
symptoms of those 3 things are quite different, I'd say, and not really the
same or in some way successive.
Maybe you have a few good points, but I can't logically follow you because I
don't understand the links you make.
You also use 'it looks like' when you talk about mushrooms. What leads you
to that conclusion? Psychedelics have been shown to greatly increase brain
activity (not decrease). There was a test with LSD, the video is floating
around Youtube etc. Basically, they observed that there was a lot more activity
and what they called 'interconnectivity', which basically means all brain parts
lit up at the same time.
In other cultures, schizophrenics have been considered as those who walk
among the dead and given great respect. It's all a matter of perspective. My
experience with psychedelics is that they greatly raise awareness. They are
like an amplifier to all perceptions. I think you have to try it to be able to
make a conclusion, but maybe you have
But even then, schizophrenia is probably not even a real thing, just like
narcissism and borderline. More like a group of symptoms that don't necessarily
all have the same cause. So it is arguable that one schizophrenic is not the
same as another, which rings true from my experience in the nuthouse. One was
diagnosed with schizophrenia and yes, I would call him narcissistic. Others
were rather quiet and beaten down and shit (partly due to medication
probably).
Also, I wouldn't say meditation has much links to sensory deprivation,
although you could say that if you just think of some guy in a cave sitting
still. But that can be a good thing, too, because reducing the input from the
outside leaves more attention for the stuff that's inside, which can greatly
help you be mindful of your emotions and deal with your demons. Psychedelics
can help with this, although I use them scarcely. I see psychedelics a bit like
signposts for meditation. You take them and kinda know the direction you're
going and then you do the rest 'on foot'.
Thanks for the video links. I thought it was something that was officially
acknowledged, but it still seems to be kind of a borderline thing where you
have to do your own research, so I'll abstain from that for now. (Other stuff
on my mind)
By chemically similar I just mean similar molecular shape, if you read more
about the guys on that page you found they get more into it. Its good to talk
to you sounds like you have much experience on the subject.
Who knows, maybe my theory is wrong. To explain a little better my theory I
should say, a man usually goes through normal narcissism and then schizo, with
increasing amounts of stress. Borderline is more for women. And it seems like
environmental toxins might be able to cause it as well, and since they tend to
lodge in different places, that could cause different specific effects and
maybe they don't cause some of the same effects as adrenaline caused
narcissism. Now if you look at alot of the typical aspects of Narcissism you'll
notice that they would be good for say fighting or fleeing- black and white
thinking(no time for gray areas) more impulsive(no time to reflect), lack of
empathy(again there isnt enough time to consider nuances). One interesting
study found that narcissists actually can read emotion in others, just for some
reason they don't react to that info . Do you find that people with narc/schizo
have really really good memories? If so thats high adrenaline. If they also
tend to have a high heart rate, that would also tend to confirm my theory.
I had an interesting experience with a woman I know who had a resting heart
rate of 110(!) and a borderline personality. Just giving her a gram of sodium
ascorbate a day brought her resting heart rate down to 70, and she could sleep
8 hours now, and her personality actually changed. She went from being always
cold in a warm environment to absolutely radiating heat. This took place over a
few days.
Oh and for sensory deprivation, you can do the lite version, find some white
noise music and put something redish over your eyes. When I did this it was
like having a waking dream, very bizarre.
Yeah 911 is not officially debunked, everything is misinformation wars, and
people seem to be finally waking up to it this election.
Personally, I've gone through phases that would apply to pretty much all 3
of the categories. In fact, I dare say most of my life I've been stuck in a
fight or flight without realizing it. I think it's spot on. It allows black and
white, pretty much. In my case, it's a little more weird, because it kinda
conflicts with some other desires, leading to me being somewhat unpredictable
(borderline maybe, heh). I also seem to tend to have very high heart rate. Guy
at the gym told me this once despite me having not done much work or anything
beforehand. It was really just the stress of my social anxiety.
I find that this kind of stress creates a kind of sensation in my body that
may very well have to do with adrenaline. It feels kinda dead-ish. A bit like
the taste of blood when you get it into your mouth. Hard to describe. Numb, a
little sizzling, dark, oppressive, hot. Well yeah, dead. Also get it during
intensive training and too much of this makes me almost faint and gets me into
extremely weird states for a short amount of time. Like when I totally power
myself out, I can feel it coming. It's like I know shit I went too far and in
the next moment, I almost black out. Extremely extremely uncomfortable. It's
like I can feel my whole personality being deconstructed very quickly into
nothingness and then coming back again.
Interesting tip with the white noise I'll keep it in mind.
You might try paying attention to your heart rate more, either feel the side
of your neck, time for 15 seconds, then multiply by 4, or there are even
programs for smart phones that use the light and camera and can see the blood
pulses. What is likely happening to you is that when the heart beats
excessively fast, it actually stops pumping effectively, it seems to be a
defect we have-horses on the other hand have a max heart rate and wont go
beyond that even if they run faster. Now like I was telling the woman i know,
its like she's running a marathon, but she can never sit down, its a very
unhealthy thing. I think I saw a study in men where it correlates with a 400%
increase in mortality rate. There are many consequences of excess acid
production(co2 dissolved in blood is acidic). A little talked about fact of the
human body is that it goes to extreme effort to maintain PH. When you exercise,
your body aggressively and actively releases alkaline bone mineral to help
maintain PH, and when you rest it is rebuilt. You also eliminate acid through
breathing, urine and to a small extent through sweat. Excessive acid, can cause
kidney stones, gout, collagen breakdown, mild scurvy, acne, joint pain, feeling
of coldness. You might try like the woman I was talking with some potassium
ascorbate around a gram dissolved in a glass of water, take maybe two to three
times a day and see what your heart rate does, and if it improves some of your
other symptoms(potassium ascorbate I've learned is much better than sodium
ascorbate). You may see some initial negative effects too, because sometimes
all of a sudden you are eliminating toxins from your body that you werent
before. It isnt a panacea, but it can correct some of the basic problems going
on. For example the basic problem could be hyperthyroidism, which most likely
that woman had, and you have to treat that to decrease hormone production. I
suspect heavy metals that cross the blood brain barrier may be able to cause it
as well.
Quite interesting, I have to say. I am wondering how that can be reconciled
with my experiences. Maybe extreme stress is a precursor to death to the body,
hence it prepares itself to enter the world of the dead, in a sense. I think it
was proven (or hypothesized?) that the brain generates DMT on birth and death,
a potent psychedelic substance. It's like the mother of all psychedelics. Let's
you talk to God and shit like that.
This could indicate though, that schizophrenia (if the link is valid) is
less a result of a malfunctioning brain than some kind of constant stress that
is so severe that it creates those chemicals, leading to a 'disconnect from
reality'. If you think about it, death is a form of disconnect from reality, so
schizophrenia may be a half-way thing. That doesn't mean though that you have
to fight those chemicals with neuroleptika. In fact, I'd say the body produces
these things precisely because they are helpful in extreme stress. I have also
read here on ROK that extreme stress during lifting can create an almost
transcendental experience where you become one with the universe (or perceive
so) and stuff like that. If those chemicals create that kind of awareness, it
makes sense to me that it can be used constructively if the 'patient' practices
a lot of mindfulness or meditation.
Now, I will readily admit that I had something you could call a psychotic
episode on psychedelics. Only that I don't see it as pathologic. I am glad I
had that experience and I think it was important. Psychotic only describes the
symptoms. But a person that looks like he's freaking out from the outside may
be having a great experience on the inside that is actually healing and
helpful. Which is why indigenous tribes used psychedelics for thousands of
years as a cure, as a guide, as an initiation rite. Hah, and since we're
creating links: Initiation rites often deal with a lot of intense pain or even
symbolical dying. Christianity also talks about dying and being reborn. I think
there is a lot of truth in it. That to enter manhood fully, one has to die in a
sense and be reborn. Which is what those experiences can do they literally rip
you apart and put you back together in a better way.
Yeah those guys had an 80% ish success rate curing schizo. Looks like
toxoplasmosis(common infection) can cause it too. Orthomolecular was started by
Linus Pauling a double nobel prize winner. There are numerous things like this
where there are amazing cures, and no one cares to study further. Most medicine
is a scam. It would be horrible if it turned out simple herbs could cure
cancer, I mean they would lose about $50k per patient. Number two monopoly
according to Milton Friedman the famous economist. Japan and Germany seem to be
exceptions.
Thanks for the info on DMT and lifting, Ill check it out. Maybe DMT is an even
more potent one? I noticed that most of the greatest mathematical discoveries
happened during grave illness and a year before death. Look up Riemann or
Ramanujan as good examples. Now in my experience heart rate seems to be a good
measure of adrenaline..and from what Im reading it seem LSD and mushrooms
increases heart rate. As for rebirth in religion watch that movie I mentioned
Zeitgeist, it has a very interesting take on it. Many religions share the same
beliefs and it seems to be taken from the movement of the Sun.
Those rituals about killing the boy and going through hardship to be accepted
into the group of men seem very important. In a way its the classic heros
quest. A man can no longer run from danger as a child would, should no longer
cry from pain. Very important lessons that are rarely taught.
Honestly – do your own research. I know that's a redundant statement,
but that's what it has come down to. Zeitgeist promotes things such as the
Horus/Jesus theory – which has been debunked numerous times by mainstream
secular scholars. And that's only one among many other lies it propogates. When
it's so glaring that info is false – one is forced to look into their own
knowledge gathering
Doing your own research includes getting info from others with common
interests. The term "debunking" is a shit term. There are only better theories,
and better evidence. Many mainstream researchers are shit too, I talk alot
about medicine, and so much of what they do is provably crap based on their own
studies of what they do. And here as we've learned in the manosphere, studies
about men and women interactions are often gamed, to show that men are horrible
and women are saints. Someone producing a paper showing the wrong results will
almost never get published. Just like if you control the media, its easy to
have the appearance of authority, when in reality, money bought a fake
authority. SO do you have anything good to recommend?
But now its so clear how much control the elitists have, and how much they
are exerting now, I've had several posts insta vaporized from various places.
One was regarding threats to Trump and the other about a high level murder.
What they try to contol the most is what is most dangerous to them. They really
don't want Trump to win, because then they have to try to control him with
bullets, and that never looks good when you murder the highest guys. Because
then people notice. Putin is their nightmare, the elites set him up and pretty
soon some elites were floating in the river, and some were locked up. He let
others stay in their places, but it was clear a new sheriff was in town. I'm
enjoying watching them sweat.
Hmm but then, if "we" send people floating in the river are we actually
better or any different than the elite? Sounds like a perfectly mirror-reversed
behavior.
Well at the very least I would say the second was revenge while the first
was murder, however revolutions often produce the same tyrants they seek to
depose. And Tyrants create the same revolutions that kill them. They have a
goal to cull the worlds populations through social engineering(you might notice
for example all the porn now with incest one pornhub now) through toxins(drugs,
contaminated food and water), and financially. Sounds like a perfect program to
create a superman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8
Reminds me of some comment on Youtube by someone who met one of those
'reptilians' and asked why they are causing suffering and that thing replied
'to make humanity stronger'. Heh.
Yeah, I suppose it is that way. There will always be the oppressed and
underprivileged and there will always be those who enjoy being in the current
mainstream. The truly oppressed will never be equal with those in power, that's
a fever dream.
I looked up the reptillian stuff. It works perfectly if you relace reptilian
with"jewish banker" and half reptillian as "collaborator". Sometimes they have
to act crazy to even be allowed to spread ideas without getting murdered like
say kubrick after eyes wide shut.
Mad that reckless gambling by financial institutions caused a massive
economic crash and global recession, millions of people losing their jobs and
their homes, job market and middle class still hasn't recovered from it. How do
you not know any of that??? It's been in the news for 8 years now.
Dont be and idiot everyone knows that.b Being mad isnt a goal. If they had
said we want to break up all of the biggest banks that would have been a goal.
Sitting there because you are mad inspires nothing and no one. And not
surprisingly they changed nothing.
If being mad wasn't a goal, Fox 'news' and Breitbart wouldn't exist.
You're sadly uninformed about the occupy wall street movement. But you
already made up your mind about it, it seems, dismissing people braver and more
involved than you who actually went out to risk their safety and freedom
protesting the criminal recklessness of financial institutions and their
failure to take responsibility for their actions. What was the goal? to show
American politicians and the financial industry that American people are fed up
with their behavior so much they've shaken off their apathy that infects the
brains of so many.
THAT is what the people in power fear – that the sleeping sheep would
wake up and get informed and start fighting back.
The movement inspired a lot and it's a pity you can't see it ( or simply
refuse to ).
You're the one who is sitting there. These people actually got off their
asses to go out and try to make a difference. Doubt you can say the
same.
It stank to me as well because the stock exchange isn't some evil globalist
tool. Everybody can buy shares and, you know, they don't always go up making you
filthy rich, quite the contrary. They are a useful financing tool for companies
though.
Who was proposing abolishing the stock exchange in it's entirety? Total
straw man you made up. OWS was about the criminal executives who gambled and
crashed the global economy, wanting accountability and new laws to prevent a
similar disaster from occuring. I'd think anyone with common sense could agree
on that.
As it stands, they avoid any criminal liability by paying fines as part of a
settlement and admitting no guilt. And the fines are a small fraction of their
profits so there is no incentive to follow the laws. It's seen as the cost of
doing (shady) business.
They came to the government hat in hand after they screwed up, and got a fat
bailout at the taxpayers expense. This is why I can't stand conservatives.
They're all for socialism for the rich, but rugged individualism for the poor
and middle class. It should be the reverse. Goldman and the others should have
been turned away and homeowners bailed out instead.
Can you imagine going to a casino, recklessly gambling, losing it all, then
begging/demanding the government give you more money?
that was just a bunch of ignorant conservative rednecks who didn't like paying
taxes. Astroturf. That joke of a movement isn't even worth mentioning. But it's funny
when they eat their own, like with Eric Cantor. Now he has to take a job as million
dollar a year lobbyist subverting our government, how sad.
Great article, and probably true. Part of self-development is seeing through this
shit.
The thing is, if we as Men focus on our own self-development, and on expressing our
bigger and better selves by dominating our environments, none of this stuff matters and
will eventually change anyway.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Occupy and Tea Party had one thing in common. How quickly they suckered the masses into
thinking they were for the people. Movements that large don't suddenly appear
overnight.
If somebody does something heinous, like nationalize 1/6th of the economy (health
care) you bet your bippy that great amounts of people will gather suddenly overnight.
Same for the nationwide pro-gun demonstrations that happened after the CN shooting.
Technology has made organizing and getting large groups together in a flash pretty
easy. Not everything is some nefarious conspiracy.
Now if the Tea Party had shown up with organized busses, vendors and pre-selected
college faculty in tow, like OWS, then you'd have something.
Some do and they start out as a emotive grassroots network, but get quickly
comprimised. I had relatives active in the Tea Party and after awhile it gets hijacked
and ran into the ground.
Did you read about the Oregon uprising against the feds and how they were acquitted?
The evidence revealed half the people involved were paid FBI informants. Thats what
happens over time to any organization deemed a threat.
You'll not get many thumbs up here, given half the idiots are unrecovered Tea Party
Free Trade dupes, that like cheap labor being imported, so long as their jobs are not
threatened.
There has always been elites who have tried to control the masses through divide and
conquer. Even if this crop is eliminated, others will arise. The only way we can come
together is if we have a common guiding set of principals to go by. Throughout history,
violent revolutions that have resulted in a loss of freedom, (French Revolution, Bolshevik,
Nazi, Cuban .etc.) all had an anti-christian element, or a bastardization of
Christianity.
In retrospect, as a people, we need to be continually reminded of the principals that
enable freedom to exist. Integrity, work, charity, self determination, etc. are taught in
church. Go to church, work to strengthen those virtues, and expect virtue from your
neighbor. If we as a whole, reject the crap spewed out main stream media and leftists, we
will have a stronger society.
You are exactly correct, and this is *precisely* why the Marxists, back to Marx,
targeted things like the church, family and traditional social constructs for
destruction. He understood what you're saying perfectly.
The Left has been successful appealing to Angry Destructive People but since the
seventies they have run out of people with legitimate grievances so all they have are the
angry anti-social dregs of society, the lazy Delta Males, Ugly Feminists, Perverts and
assorted scum.
To directly address the argument of the article, I'll offer this.
Divide and Conquer is a known strategy and yes, politicians use it (as do generals on a
battlefield). It's legitimate to note the tactic and try to avoid falling for it. That
being said, if we go so paranoid that we don't ever, ever take positions based on principle
or form opposition groups, we'll have given these very same powers the victory that they're
looking for with divide and conquer.
The moment you form a group to "counter the controlling elite" I guarantee you that it
will be attacked and discredited because "divide and conquer!". Even if it succeeds (let's
be optimistic) it will simply install itself as the new elite. This is human nature. It may
not happen immediately, it may take a few generations (think the early united States, where
Washington refused to be a "king" and instead deferred to the new Constitutional Republic)
to happen, but it will happen eventually (think the same nation in the 1930's).
Last, not every mass movement is 'financed by nefarious sources'. Sometimes, people just
get pissed off. That said, lots of mass movements are financed by unsavory types. The
problem becomes that we tend to default accept "all" instead of taking each group
individually for what they are.
They kind of ebb and flow. I really haven't kept up much the last couple of
years. My focus since 2010 or so has been pro-2nd Amendment advocacy, to be
honest.
They made significant gains at the local and state level. The RINOs are clinging
to the national GOP, but as their candidates just got punked by Trump they are on
borrowed time.
I heard that after the death of Muhammad Ali, the Orlando shootings happened to prevent
people's unity. I strongly suspected, after his death, an attack would happen in the US by
a Muslim to prevent American Muslim and nonMuslim cooperation and understanding. Media
won't say, but the shooter was gay.
We don't need mulsim/ non-muslim co-operation in America. America was designed and
built by and for whites, for Our Posterity. Freedom of religion clearly meant the sects
of Christianity and secular deists. There is no place in America for Islam or
muslims.
How about natives? Or perhaps we need to reintroduce pox in certain areas? And
let us not forget 3/5ths. Designed and built by and for whites, on the red mans
land, upon the black man's back.
Your emotive points are not based on fact, but feel free to source your
agruement. But slogans like "pox on the red mans land, upon the black man's
back" are simply leftist slogans. The "pox" Thing was debunked years ago. Red
man lands? Which tribe and under what conditions? One Million Indians inhabited
North America until the White man showed up. Now there are more reds that have
ever lived in the old days. Black mans back did very little. Most of America
was built on white Europeans backs no blacks in the wilderness in the old days
and most of the swamp draining, coal mining, tree cutting, etc.. was done by us
poor white folk.
Believe your myths if it makes you feel better, but your bullshit exists to
bridge your inferiority complex and has little to do with the
truth.
The pox did wipe out a good chunk of natives, but let us say that was not
the case, intentionally or not. Tribes and conditions- does this imply that,
were there a formal written declaration, it would have been unethical and they
would not have attempted to gain control? More reds than before argument cannot
hold water- populations tend to increase in the long run. Blacks did nothing
for the same reason economic communism does not- lack of incentives. Why work
for your slavemaster if you're not getting much out of it?
You assume inferiority complex is the cause of these arguments. I have
friends of all races but also recognize that all races have their bloody hands.
I am simply pointing out the case of the origins of American here, as this is
what the conversation became. I find it ironic, as far as the title if this
article goes. Also ironic is how I mentioned the possibility of Muslim and
American peace and then get opposed while the same people praise the
traditionalism of muslim women. Everyone claims they're objective and
truthful.
Lets talk about Natives, who, like Stone Age tribes the world over, were in
endless inter-tribal warfare with each other. The colonialists that arrived in
America often sided with peaceful tribes and co-operated, as they did in New
Zealand with the weaker (more peaceful) Maori Iwi, who begged the colonialists
to buy land as a buffer between waring tribes. The less technologically
developed in terms of producing food and storing it, the more scarcity and the
more war. That is just a smple reality, and Stone Age primitives are always at
war. Since they are always at war, its an open invite to conquer. Native
Indians now have technology and means of living 3000 years in advance of what
they had 400 years ago. You are welcome.
The issue of smallpox is just mythology. Most colonialists either had smallpox
or were semi-resistent. Indians were not, and it hit them harder. Are you going
to also bring up the Hollywood History theory that whites raped native woemn
when the records show that the more violent tribes kidnapped other tribes women
and sold them to colonialists for goods – the women were them married off
and lived at higher living standards that they otherwise would have, so some
good came out of that bad situation.
As for 3/5th, blacks were classed as 3/5ths yet they were dumped onto America
by Jewish Dutch slave merchants, having been bought from African tribesmen.
Less than 5% of whites owned slaves, yet freed slaves – who were paid btw
(so they were really indentured labor) – bought slaves at higher rates
than any other people – except jews, of which 70% owned slaves (as they
created the hatred of blacks with their Curse of Ham bullshit). Blacks are not
3/5ths human. They are worthless and have no place in any advanced country.
Personally I would wipe them out and have Africa as a big Safari Park for
Asians and Europeans.
Blacks labour didn't build America. There were more whites in indentured labor
than blacks. Blacks were freed from slavery by the technological inventions (o
white men) which made their labor surplus to requirements. Again, like Native
Americans, blacks were given a leg up from Stone Age savages, of at least 3000
years of know-how and technological progress. There is every reason to believe
they are incapable of even making metal of their own volition. So again, you
are welcome, you are a beneficiary of my ancestors superior creativity.
BTW, British working class had higher productivty that black slaves, were paid
less, worked longer hours, died 5 years younger on average, had to endure
Northern Winters often with no shoes and simple clothing, while slaves worked
as seasonal farm workers. You have no idea how hard whites worked to build this
civilisation you benefit from, and you probably don't care so long as it
magically appears to you via your welfare cheque.
-"Open invite to conquer" By that reasoning, I guess Muslims would be
justified entry and establish traditionalism over feminism in the US.
Technology=/=happiness.
-I was referring only to the smallpox, which killed the majority of the
native population.
-Distribution is irrelevant. Mass cheap labor.
-"Blacks were freed from slavery by the technological inventions (o white
men) which made their labor surplus to requirements" Stabbing a guy 9″
deep and pulling out 6 doesn't mean you did him a favor. Progress, which was
built on previous civilizations, which is the case for all great nations. But
as for your example-I suppose you'd have your mother raped and killed in
exchange for technology. I hear kids these days kill for PS4's sometimes.
-"Had higher productivity" and had freedom of choice. Willing
labor>unwilling labor.
Hunter Gatherer peoples do not have concepts such as nations. They have not
created property rights, they merely have inter-tribal war, endless revenge
killings. In such a society, yes, it is an open invite to walk in and claim
unclaimed land. Muslims coming here is exactly the opposite, they are trying to
extort property rights we created. If you haven't even grasped the basics of
anthropology and patriarchy vs matriarchy (stone age primitivism) then perhaps
you are on the wrong website.
As for smallpox, I was aware that you were talking about smallpox. Smallpox
wasn't spread deliberatly, it was just the nature of the airborne virus.
You comment on native indian women is disingenuous. Colonialists could have
bought the women or not, if not, they'd be raped and killed by other tribes
(who wholesale slanghtered women and children); why would they not buy them
under such circumstances?
Willing labor vs unwilling labor? Really did British working class have a
choice? They didn't own land, and couldn't open property. They were renting as
serfs for hundreds of years, and serfdom was really just renamed. They were
still a class of tennents, so were they willing workers? They could have
refused to work, and be beaten by their master and put into workhouses, where
people lasted on average 2 months before dying of injuries. Slaves had an easy
life compared to white Irish and British workng class, extremely easy, and in a
moderate climate. No sensible person could suggest otherwise.
You know oppression isn't just a thing niggers have suffered, just because
those worthless pieces of shit constantly whine about slavery – slavery
their own ancestors sold them into. They wouldn't last 5 minutes in a Northern
English or Welsh coal mine from the age of 6, as was standard practice.
Say what you like, the fact is, blacks sold blacks into slavery, to Dutch Jews.
Rich land owners used them to undercut white labor. It isn't the responsibility
of the 95% of whites that didn't own slaves, and who worked under worse
conditions. Whites freed slaves through technology, so your analogy is bullshit
and you know it. You do realise that many niggers went back to African –
Libberia, and threw their passports in the sea in protest at America. 2 weeks
later they were all in the water looking for their passports to return to the
Land of the Free Stuff. They are just worthless parasites like kikes, so why
defend them? Can we even really consider them human when their history is
basically no better or more advanced than other lower primates? They are just
niggers.
Claim unclaimed land land is one thing, unused land is another. I suppose
you submit a written consent form before a bang as well. The US has invaded
many muslim lands and the government created isis by proxy, which has led to
the refugee crisis in the first place. So the US owes something to refugees
(although owing something back in such a form will be a failure of epic
proportions, I think.)
-And you think that if they knew, anything would have been different?
Smallpox was considered a triumph for them.
-Not all. If there were a way to tell which ones would have been raped and
killed, and which not, I could understand. They just did the same thing. My
point still stands; control for benefit. They did not have the natives
interests at heart- it was a matter of what method would be best to subjugate
and control.
Slaves in the US vs other nonslaves. If working class whites had it worse
off, they could have asked to be slaves too. But that wasn't the case.
Blacks sold blacks because there are sellouts of all races so they can be on
the winning team. Its easy to say the US is better if they take everything if
value and leave the other country worse off .
You're pretty ignorant of actual history aren't you?
I'll bet you can't actually explain to me why blacks were counted as 3/5 of
a person in the Constitution, can you? I mean the real reason, not the Malcom X
bullshit.
Blacks barely built anything, most of them worked on plantations in the
South. I collect antique photos, your sneering little "reality" bears no
resemblance to what was actually going on, at the time.
As to the "red man's land", well, he should have made a real claim to it
instead of doing that stupid hippy "no man can own the land" crap. And, he lost
the war. It was a war, he lost, that's what happens when you lose a war. Get,
the fuck, over it.
Politics and elections. Blacks were property, southerners needed voting
power, etc. is what I was taught in school.
It was to help out blacks. In order to stymie the South and keep them from
enshrining slavery as a permanent institution through Congress, the Founding
Fathers thought ahead and counted each black slave as 3/5 instead of a full
person to keep Southern state representation manageable until slavery could be
abolished.
Worked on plantations, yes. And a lot harder than whites, because they
were slaves. Therefore, their contribution per person in labor was
greater.
Oh please. Picking cotton is hard work, no doubt, but it's no harder than
being a free man carting around marble and laying down foundations for great
buildings, or steel work or any other kind of highly labor intensive job.
-Typical justification to do what you want. Sounds exactly like a Jewish
method.
LOL! Yeah man, because only Jews say "Woe to the defeated" in regard to war.
Well, them and every other ethnicity on the planet. But yeah dude,
(((jews!)))
– Which wouldn't ever be enough. Sticking a knife in 9 inches and then
taking it out 6 via 3/5ths isn't doing him a favor.
-A free man is willing labor. Also, they get more say in their hours. Job
flexibility.
-Didn't say something was yours? I'll take it. Oh you're living in it? I'll
take it anyway That's basically it in a nutshell, in this regard and with the
Jews in regards to Israel-Palestine.
Actually, it was enough. Which is why they passed a law eliminating any more
slave states being admitted to the union, which then resulted in Kansas being a
bunch of dicks, which then brought on the civil war (in summary).
A free man is willing labor. Also, they get more say in their hours. Job
flexibility.
You are thinking that "then" is like "now". It wasn't. Good luck trying that
attitude in 1830.
Didn't say something was yours? I'll take it. Oh you're living in it? I'll
take it anyway That's basically it in a nutshell, in this regard and with the
Jews in regards to Israel-Palestine.
And the Celts who first sacked Rome. And the Germans in France. And the
English across their empire. And Rome across its empire. And China in regards
to Mongolia.
-Talking about initial justification. If the blacks weren't that good, never
should have brought em. Slavery was the 9 inch.
-Not as much flexibility, sure. But relative to slaves, I meant.
– If Empire A was peaceful, but Empire B attacked and lost, then A has
the right to conquer B in self defense and simultaneously grow. This is just
one example of an ethical conquest, but it has happened. America was anything
but.
Shoulda Woulda Coulda has nothing to do with the reality as they then faced
it. Slaves were already there, long predating the births of the Founding
Fathers. Telling me what they "shoulda woulda coulda" is irrelevant, they had
reality, and they dealt with it in a way that ultimately helped end
slavery.
Flexibility. Heh. Yeah, like, none.
The point on empires is that they did the same thing and used the same
justification, just like every other ethnicity on the planet. You trying to
make this into "Jeeeewwwwws!" is silly. There are instances where you can call
out the wrong perpetrated by some Jews, but this is not one of them. You may
wish to cede this point to remain honest and consistent.
Founding fathers supported slavery. Ending slavery wasn't enough. Equality
is.
So slaves and free men have equal freedom of labor?
Not all empires have done this. Most have, yes. But essentially my point is
that you insist that conquering was a good thing and the natives and blacks
should be grateful for getting killed, raped, and enslaved in exchange for a
television. Same in the middle east. They don't want democracy. Everyone else
did it so I should do it too? Well in that case, so does the hate, hence blm
and why the world hates america.
Oh bullshit. Now you're back to square one. Some supported it, many were
against it. This is precisely why they did the 3/5 thing, which I've patiently
explained to you.
Most have, yes
Correct Ergo your sneering "you sound like a Jeeeewwww!" is rendered
meaningless.
So are you. Admit it- it wasn't justified, and 3/5ths wasn'tt near enough.
Get rid of the white hero complex. Its the reason America is so hated around
the world.
No, you claim victimhood from blacks and all the other people you take from
and still claim to be the savior. Hatred outside and within the US takes a
special kind of people. It is just retribution. And the Islamic empire, at
least the Rashidun caliphate, did not.
According to the 1850 census blacks were 12.5% of the population.
Most of the rest of the 35,000,000 of the population at the time were white.
Those 3.5 million slaves didn't build everything.
As for the natives, they had no boundarys no government, no property rights
,they were cavemen who were conquered and white folk started a country with
government, property rights and civilization.
But those 12.5% were slaves, so they were doing more labor per person. Mass
cheap labor. I agree that the natives needed codified law, but it would be
ridiculous to think that was the reason that was justification to conquer. It
was just Manifest Destiny, something that is happening today via western
imperialism.
Yes I agree the slaves would have worked more man hours but all those other
people were not just sitting around.
The natives just were not prepared.it was was simply the way of the world at
the time. It just is what it is.
I expect the unwillingness to work was a big factor as well; lack of
incentives. My main issue is that some people today are still trying to justify
that what they did. Just because many other nations of the past did so, does
not a right make. This goes the other way too of course- there have been times
where whites were massacred and enslaved and driven out, which is also
wrong.
Right, but what do you consider white. I mentioned the other day that a girl
who was a member of the daughters of the American revolution, had membership to
the union club etc called me a "gateway minority" because 5 generations ago my
forebearers came her eyes from Italy
I don't know, I guess those damn ole wops are white too
I get a really really dark tan every year I guess I'm white too.
What in the hell is a gateway minority anyway? .now I've forgotten the point I
was trying to make anyway.
Usually by about the middle of May I start looking funny when I take my hat
off because my face,neck,arms and legs are dark brown and my head is BRIGHT
white.
As usual, you are full of shit.
America was built BY Anglos, FOR Anglos. This country was never meant to be
"whiteopia." The alt-right looks at the 1950s as the glory days of America. The
founding fathers would have been disgusted at all of the "lesser European" groups
that were in the country at that time, such as the Irish. The blacks have more of a
right to be here than many European immigrant groups.
Historically you have a point. But the circumstances are pushing the
European derived ethnicities of that country (U.S.) towards the formation of
multiple "white" identities (Southern, Midwestern, etc) which are the
combination of all types of Europeans. For European observers like me it seems
a ridiculous development if it were in Europe, but once again It's happening in
America and I am not American. It just is (the phenomenon I just described).
Hence your argument is out of date.
Well, there already were significant differences between the regions of the
United States, even when the European population was majority Anglo. Compare
the aristocratic, agrarian South to the liberal urban North.
Total bullshit made up from your pathetic negro brainpower. The Irish,
Scttish, Germans and French were invited as immigrants from the start of
America as a Constitutional Republic – INVITED TO SETTLE. You stupid
cunt, you don't even realise that the Founding Fathers got many of their ideas
from the French and the French Academy of Sciences, as well as German
economists. It was created by white Freemasons, some of whom were Scottish not
Anglo YOU STUPID CUNT. You think slave owning Alexander Hamilton was an anglo,
dumbshit? Blacks have no right to be in America, they were never part of the
Founding Fathers vision. You think they were fucking retarded and wanted the
dregs of the bell curve as citizens? OUR POSTERITY means European.
The Irish were INVITED? The fuck are you smoking? The Irish were viewed as
little, if any better than the Negroes. If you had told Washington or Jefferson
that they were the same race as an Irishman, they would have laughed in your
fucking face. Franklin viewed the Germans in America as a problematic presence
in the United States. OUR POSTERITY meant the descendants of the (largely)
Anglo-Germanic Protestants who founded this country, not all European peoples.
Get your head out of Unkie Adolf's ass and learn some history, provided you
have more than a single-digit IQ, something which I think you
lack.
You are making shit up as you go. What an absurd way to argue. The Irish
were invited to settle, its an historical fact. Jefferson was even a proponent
of the Irish independence. There were Catholic Founding Fathers, even at a time
when in Britain they were persecuted. Oh now America is Anglo-Germanic, not
Anglo like you previously stated? What about the Scots such as Alexander
Hamilton, or Benjamin Frankin being a product of French schooling, and the
American Revolutionary War was funded by Russians, French aristocrats such as
Marquez de Lafayette. What about the Dutch colonies, which New York is from. Go
and make up some shitty historical fantasy with someone who doesn't know
history. America was European – white, from the start.
The United States of America was founded by Anglo-Germanic Protestants,
mostly Englishmen. The Dutch, French and Spanish had colonies in North America,
but they did not create the country that would become the United States of
America. That was almost entirely the English, with a few Scots thrown in
there. First point refuted.
"Irish immigrants of this period participated in significant numbers in the
American Revolution, leading one British major general to testify at the House
of Commons that "half the rebel Continental Army were from Ireland."[14] Irish
Americans signed the foundational documents of the United States -- the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution -- and, beginning with Andrew
Jackson, served as President." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Americans
This first wave of Irish immigrants were the SCOTS-Irish, Scotsmen and
Englishmen who had settled (and in many ways colonized) Ireland. Second point
refuted.
I had an Irish forefather who fought as a private in the Revolution In the
PA Militia and another Irish forefather who came to America to fight the
British in the War of 1812. Johnny Bulls were still looked down upon in the
1950s by Irish and vice versa. LOL!
So now you have been proven incorrect, lets talk about why you elivate the
worthless nigger over fellow Europeans, in light of the evidence that Irish,
Russians, Italians (there was an Italian involved with the Founding documents
– look up Founding Fathers by Country of Origin), Prussians, Dutch,
Scottish and especially French were intimately involved in the creation of
America.
Correct. These are the people still pissed that Joe DiMaggio go to to play.
Ethnics in the major leagues?
I've mentioned it before, but there is a great quote from the movie The Good
Shepherd. Matt Damon plays an OSS office, Yale, skull and bones, American
pedigree, founding member o the CIA. He talks to Pesci who plays the mob boss
that the CIA tried to get to kill Castro.
Pesci: let me as you something. Us Italians, we got our families and the
church. The Jews have their traditions. The micks have their homeland. Even the
niggers have something, they have their music. What do you have
Damon: we have the United States of America the rest of you are just
tourists
If you don't date your family back to the mayflower than you are no
different than the Muslim invaders. Alt right would do well to remember than in
some people's eyebrows most of them are just light skinned niggers
The alt-right, like their SJW counterparts, don't care about facts. You
could lay it all out for them in the simplest terms imaginable and they'd still
be living in their fantasylands.
While I'm sure there's some truth to the notion of elites using divide and conquer, I
nonetheless get tired of fence-sitting rhetoric that implies that coming together with
leftists is the only way to defeat the elites.
Rank-and-file leftists want to BE elite, that's the main thing (other than provably
broken ideology) that differentiates them from me. I don't want power, I simply want people
to tell the truth and pull their weight. If you can't do that, I'd just as soon kill you as
look at you, because you are a cancer on this planet. I'm certainly not going to join up
with you to defeat some separate but equally evil group, lol. I prefer to fight and destroy
both groups.
I've been thinking about that a lot lately but I don't have the answer. I do
know that trying to find common ground with people who are part of the problem is
both the wrong answer and a waste of time.
It started in July 2012 at the Anaheim Riots. The whole thing was started by the white
anarchist anti authoritarian who s tired of taking shit from the cops.
I'm afraid your solution on a large scale basis is too ambitious. Most don't want to get
involved in any unpleasantness, much easier to go along to get along. Most don't want to
observe what's going on around them, it's much more important to walk around with one's
face in their iPhone or have it up to their ear. Most don't want to read, it's easier to
watch a video and have it summarized and spoon fed them. There is no right and wrong, it's
all relative.
Until the unthinkable happens to them or close friend or family most don't care,and if
said unthinkable DOES happen, it's Plan B time. Demand government find a solution to the
problem, any solution that makes them feel like something was done. And sure, they'll give
up privacy, their own ability to protect themselves, or agree to pay a little more as long
as a "feel good" measure is taken.
I was involved very early on in the Occupy movement, and I must say there were a lot of
good people in it who simply wanted to limit global finance capitalism from destroying the
American economy. Most of these people were older whites who were more in line with the
leftists we picture from the mid to late twentieth century. Unfortunately, the Occupy
movement already had the SJW seeds sown into its fabric from the very beginning. During the
meetings and marches I attended, it was made VERY CLEAR to me that if you are a white male,
it is your job to step aside and let the women and non-whites run the show and set the
agenda. And indeed that was the case. I stuck around for a little bit, listening to what
these angry black/brown women, socially retarded white women, and the token while male
faggot had to say. It started off as more anti-bank/capitalism, but the writing was on the
wall and I could see exactly how this movement was going to turn into the anti-white male
patriarchy, pro feminism, pro faggot, pro degeneracy movement it has transformed into
today.
"It started off as more anti-bank/capitalism, but the writing was on the
wall and I could see exactly how this movement was going to turn into
the anti-white male patriarchy, pro feminism, pro faggot, pro degeneracy
movement it has transformed into today."
Most movements and social-justice groups start out benevolent, like many religions.
Soon, those whom I call the "Crazy Elements" infiltrate that group/movement and alter
its definition. After not long, the "crazy" becomes the movement, and attracts more
bat-shit insane types faster than water seeking its own level. Once the lame-stream
media get bored, the ranks thin out, and everyone goes home, until the next group of
aggrieved shitheads gets loud (i.e. BLM, etc.). This shit is so easy to see from miles
away, though.
We've never had a natural form of capitalism which accords with the natural strengths of
people and nations. Instead, the natural instincts of what capitalism in its true sense was
meant to signify has always been undermined by the State and creeping socialism along each
step of the way. Civics, culture and customs, including religion were meant to be the
natural bulwarks against unfettered capitalism, not the State with all its forms of social
ideologies.
When will people ever get it- socialism is the natural blood and substance of modern
States in all its forms- the State's future (any western advanced State) is tied up
intrinsically with the "guardian" role of "social nanny" who'll protect her downtrodden
children from the nasty boggy man (who pays all her bills, including her socialist
programs) of libertine capitalism. The truth is that the entire system is rigged this way
and if we had a more conservative or traditional set of values (like religion etc) we
wouldn't need the socialist State to "protect us" from the free market, ispo facto, end of
the State control of peoples lives. Imagine, a world were people could survive in a state
of liberty and happiness without the need of the State? A Utopia perhaps??
The news about the Christian cartoonist Jack Chick's death, and the various reactions to
it, got me to thinking about how our elites view religion. It looks to me as if they think
about religion more rationally than they think about their childish utopianism regarding
globalization, race, immigration, feminism and sexual degeneracy.
Defenders of the elites' world view just laugh off religious obsessives who threaten
ordinary people with hell, especially straight white guys who ogle women, like the one in
Jack Chick's early tract, "This Was Your Life."
But they condemned Chick as a homophobe when he published tracts which threatened gays
with hell, even if they don't believe in it.
What accounts for the difference? Gays exist and hell doesn't, obviously. But also gays
have privileged status in our elites' project to destroy and remake traditional societies,
and they simply must remain immune from criticism, regardless of how much damage they cause
along the way, even from some religious nut who draws comic books which threaten them with
imaginary harm after death.
By contrast, notice that Chick also propagandized the fantasy that Israel's existence
somehow fulfills "bible prophecy," instead of showing the ordinary reality that people get
ideas from books. Not a peep of criticism from our elites about that delusion, curiously.
And not because our elites share Chick's belief about Israel, but because the Jews among
them have used this belief to play American Christians for suckers to make them support
pro-Israel policies in our government.
South Park Season 20 examines the concept of trolling. Here's my take:
trolling is defined as doing something to get a reaction from those defending the person
you insulted, which then brings a reaction from the other side. Sit back and watch the
fireworks.
We are being trolled when we fail to identify where the latest 'outrage' is coming from.
We allow ourselves to waste time and energy when the messenger dictates the terms.
By, for and about are the three key words with any message. Who is sending the message,
who is the message directed at, and what is the message itself. Basic critical analysis is
where the alt-right leaders (could) make the most impact.
It is a revolution against the middle class. With elite usiing weaponized poverty,
zombies and misfits against the middle clas.sRather than the top 1 percent, the left
attacks the privilege of the white assistant manager at Pizza Hut.
The concept of a free, middle class would be the historic exception. Throughout most
of history it was mostly made up of masters and lords as well as slaves and
serfs.
Read or view Milton Friedman on youtube. Every deep recession has been caused by a
drastic drop in money supply. The great depression was caused by the fed so that the
bankers could purchase the pieces for pennies on the dollar after. For those of you who
dont believe in conspiracy theories there has been so much time since 911 and all the
videos of all the people have been looked at and analyzed. Amazing stuff. Even better just
look at a few videos of speeches that the owner who just bought the trade centers not long
before(99 year lease).
The Me generation is the worst of America. And now they are in politics. America will be
better off when the self-serving, self-absorbed flower children are long gone.
Think about this – the elites know that white America is developing an awareness.
They also know that whites will revolt and correct the issue eventually. As a psychological
diffuser, they put a person in like Trump that appears to be everything he is. This will
allow whites to relax their defenses while the elites move to limit and censor information
that will oppose their long term goals. They do this under a president like Trump so whites
will remain docile. After 8 years, they continue their main agenda now with limited, if any
real independent news agencies, etc. It allows them to buy time, diffuse white opposition,
then continue with their program. Did Trump really "ditch" his inside team?
Agree. The radicals of the 60's supported the URSS against the US, today they want to
fight Putin, what is more puzzling is that they oppose Christians because we want to live
our faith, but they willingly accept sharia law that forbids women to wear a dress, are
shunned and considered second class, honor killings are frequent, feminists say nothing,
atheists say nothing, LGBT lobby is quiet, why? Because their leader, Soros has not given
the cue. Group thinking!!!
The occupy movement was a bunch of spoiled middle class suburban brats who were in the
top 1% globally. If they thought they were protesting the economic downturn, they were
fifteen years late. The Clinton administration signed the death warrant for the economy. It
just took 10 years to show the effect.
The housing bubble in 2006 ( which influenced the economic crash in 2008) was caused by
affirmative action policy in the big banks. The Clinton administration pressured the banks
into "not descriminating " against the poor. AKA giving hundreds of billions of dollars in
loans to people who were too irresponsible to pay rent. Then that debt was sold and resold,
until 1 by 1 the floor fell out.
A great explanation is in the new movie " The Big Short."
It was that terrible series of events that scared americans into voting for Barrack
Obama.
Then we had eight years of feminist propaganda, and here we are.
Michael Cohen To Plead Guilty To Lying About Trump Russian Real-Estate Deal
by Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/29/2018 - 09:19 128 SHARES
Four months after
he pleaded guilty to campaign finance law violations, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen has
copped to new charges of lying to congressional committees investigating Trump-Russia
collusion, according to
ABC . His latest plea is part of a new deal reached with Special Counsel Robert Mueller,
which had been said to be winding down before its latest burst of activity, including an
investigation into Roger Stone's alleged ties to Wikileaks. Stone ally
Jerome Corsi this week said he had refused to strike a plea deal with Mueller's
investigators, who had accused him of lying.
To hold up his end of the deal, Cohen sat for 70 hours of testimony with the Mueller probe,
he said Monday during an appearance at a federal courthouse in Manhattan where he officially
pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements.
According to
the Hill, Cohen's alleged lies stem from testimony he gave in 2017, when he told the House
Intelligence Committee that a planned real-estate deal to build the Trump Moscow Hotel had been
abandoned in January 2016 after the Trump Organization decided that "the proposal was not
feasible." While Cohen's previous plea was an agreement with federal prosecutors in New York,
this marks the first time Cohen has been charged by Mueller.
As part of his plea Cohen admitted to lying in a written statement to Congress about his
role in brokering a deal for a Trump Tower Moscow - the aborted project to build a
Trump-branded hotel in the Russian capitol. As has been previously reported, Cohen infamously
contacted a press secretary for President Putin to see if Putin could help with some red tape
to help start development, though the project was eventually abandoned.
Though, according to Cohen's plea, discussions about the project continued through the first
six months of the Trump administration. Cohen had discussed the Trump Moscow project with Trump
as recently as August 2017, per a report in the
Guardian.
As a reporter for NBC News pointed out on twitter, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman
Richard Burr and ranking member Mark Warner foreshadowed today's plea back in August after
Cohen pleaded guilty to the campaign finance violations.
Also notable: The plea comes just as President Trump is leaving for a 10-hour flight to
Argentina. In recent days, Trump appeared to step up attacks on the Mueller probe, comparing it
to
McCarthyism and questioning why the DOJ didn't pursue charges against the Clintons.
Cohen will be sentenced on Dec. 12, as scheduled. By cooperating, Cohen is hoping to avoid
prison, according to his lawyer. While this was probably lost on prosecutors, Cohen's admission
smacks of the "lair's paradox."
Senate Republicans have offered President Trump a degree of relief from his Mueller-related
anxieties by blocking a bill that would have protected the Mueller probe from being disbanded
by the president, but with the special counsel continuing his pursuit of
Roger Stone and
Jerome Corsi , and Congressional Democrats sharpening their knives in anticipation of
taking back the House in January, President Trump is once again lashing out at Mueller and the
FBI, declaring that the probe is an "investigation in search of a crime" and
once again highlighting the hypocrisy in the FBI's decision to give the Clintons a pass for
their "atrocious, and perhaps subversive" crimes.
Reiterating his claims that the Mueller probe bears many similarities to Sen. Joseph
McCarthy's infamous anti-Communist witch hunt, Trump also blasted the DOJ for "shattering so
many innocent lives" and "wasting more than $40,000,000."
"Did you ever see an investigation more in search of a crime? At the same time Mueller and
the Angry Democrats aren't even looking at the atrocious, and perhaps subversive, crimes that
were committed by Crooked Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. A total disgrace!"
"When will this illegal Joseph McCarthy style Witch Hunt, one that has shattered so many
innocent lives, ever end-or will it just go on forever? After wasting more than $40,000,000
(is that possible?), it has proven only one thing-there was NO Collusion with Russia. So
Ridiculous!"
As CBS
News' Mark Knoller notes , this is the 2nd day in a row, Pres Trump likening the Mueller
investigation to the Joe McCarthy witch hunt of the 50s , known for making reckless and
unsubstantiated accusations against officials he suspect of communist views. McCarthy was
eventually censured by the Senate in 1954.
Last night, President Trump threatened to release a trove of
"devastating" classified documents about the Mueller probe if Democrats follow through with
their threatened investigations. He also declared that a pardon for soon-to-be-sentenced former
Trump Campaign executive Paul Manafort was still "on
the table.
My suspicion is that the left, since the special counsel was never actually given a
legitimate crime to investigate, will want this left in place permanently. That's just my
guess though.
Without a crime however, it's hard to argue that the special counsel has any legitimacy,
since the law specifies that there must be a crime.
With that said, how can the results of what Mueller does be looked at as anything but
illegitimate?
Yes, and that I can agree with you on, however, the focus of the investigation has been
misplaced on Trump when it should have been on the Clintons. So again I can say that the
legitimacy of the counsel is in question because with Trump there was no crime.
If anything the criminal activity was perpetrated on Trump by the deep state.
The difference is that McCarthy was right about everything. The similarity is that the
press wanted to talk about everything but the contents of McCarthy's folders. It's like the
Podesta emails - "Russia hacked muh emails!" but no one seems to want to discuss their
contents.
My comments here may try to be humorous but this video needs watched to fully understand
the Mueller probe--and forward to friends........... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aevtHHULag
Trump is right that Mueller is trying to create a crime where there is nothing but
politics as it is played today. Listen to former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who now
characterizes the Mueller investigation as 'a clown show', explain in great detail:
The crimes have been found.....and HRC and the democrats and their fbi pals committed
them. Mueller is not "in search of crimes", he's in search of crimes by trump associated
people.
You can see many similarities between the way the Democrats handled the Kavanaugh
nomination and Muellers investigation. If the GOP is smart they will start consolidating all
the facts about the FISA abuse, FBI abuse, IRS abuse, Mueller abuse and start a campaign
about it in time for the 2020 elections. If the Democrats were smart they would drop this
ASAP since it isn't going any where and hope people forget about it. Somehow, I doubt that
the Democrats are that smart... After all there was a movie about Watergate... and seems like
a lot of these people are trying to live Watergate all over again, but it's really about an
abuse of power, by the government and the media.
**** off, the government isnt going to do a ******* thing to these enterprise
criminals.
I find it completely demoralizing and a slap in the face to a country when you have these
enterprise criminals not being indicted and a president threatening to expose them because HE
doesnt like something. This is not about you Trump, this is about THE UNITED STATES.
I mean come-on Trump stop with the BS. DO YOUR ******* JOB.
What in the hell people, I personally find this to be a constant gut punch when these
criminals just commit crimes over and over and it becomes a Hannity or Limbaugh bullet point
for 3 hours.
How ******* stupid of Americans to sit idle while all of this in your face bank robbing
going on. Put another way the bank robber walks from the door of a bank with a sack of cash
to the car and the police say oh look a bank robber, and they turn to their partner and shrug
their shoulders drinking covfeffe
It's the Anglo-zionist entente that meddled in U.S. elections and if Americans don't get
upset about that then they are cucks who deserve their servile fate.
"In his foreword to my book, Alan Dershowitz discusses his time litigating cases in the
old Soviet Union. He was always taken by the fact that they could prosecute anybody they
wanted because some of the statutes were so vague. Dershowitz points out that this was a
technique developed by Beria, the infamous sidekick of Stalin, who said, " Show me the man
and I'll find you the crime ." That really is something that has survived the Soviet
Union and has arrived in the good old USA. "Show me the man," says any federal prosecutor,
"and I can show you the crime." This is not an exaggeration. "
The only reason Mueller exists is for Trump to flog the Dems with. Thats the only reason
Trump keeps him around. The problem is losing the house means losing the power of subpoena,
so this should get interesting. The Repubs have it in for Trump too. Why else would they lose
a supermajority and the power of subpoena while still retaining the power to crush any bill
that the House pushes through? He's doomed, unless he can pull a rabbit out of his ***.
You don't actually believe that, do you? I suppose you still actually believe that they
even bother to count the votes. Trump was INSTALLED, not elected.
To create the illusion of division, which in turn keeps the population divided. It's
theater. Look at everything that's gone down; it's way too stupid to be real and I am
referring to both sides when I say that. The whole thing is custom tailored to stir the
emotions of a population with an average IQ of 100.
The fact that anybody is still clinging to hope in political solutions to anything is
sad and pathetic.
I don't think the political system will solve any of my problems, but Obama made it
abundantly clear that the political system will create plenty of problems.
Does anyone still believe that we have a political solution to our challenges.
1) More invaders than ever flooding our country.
2) Our most notorious criminals still walking our streets.
3) Fed, et al still manipulating our economy.
4) Law abiding citizens still being thrown into jail.
5) Surveillance state becoming ever more all seeing, and all invasive.
6) The push to war stronger than it has ever been in recent times.
7) Over 150 military bases strung across the planet.
8) Open criminality and rampant lies by press and politicians... I realize I already made
mention of the criminals, but thought this deserved emphasis.
9) Big news today... Supremes may limit the degree to which local government can encroach
on eighth amendment... wow... that this is even a debate.
10) The white population is being ordered into silence and obscurity... though no one has
forgotten to collect taxes... while the chimps and thugs are being encouraged to loot what is
left of the asylum...
I could go on... tell me, what is your vote going to accomplish? We are living on borrowed
time, and time has just about run out...
That's why voting is a waste of time because you're simply exchanging one sociopath for
another and I gave up on the notion long ago that we're living in the "land of the free".
That's the biggest line of BS the state has ever pushed but the rubes still believe it.
Progressive income tax, property taxes, central banking and they're all tenet's of communism,
in fact we have attained all ten planks of the communist manifesto. Read the IRS code or the
federal register and you'll see exactly how much freedom you have.
all you need to know about Mueller is his professional position on 9/11/01. From Judicial
Watch:
Under Mueller's leadership, the FBI tried to discredit the story, publicly countering
that agents found no connection between the Sarasota Saudi family and the 2001 terrorist
plot. The reality is that the FBI's own files contained several reports that said the
opposite, according to the Ft. Lauderdale-based news group's ongoing investigation . Files
obtained by reporters in the course of their lengthy probe reveal that federal agents found
"many connections" between the family and "individuals associated with the terrorist attacks
on 9/11/2001." The FBI was forced to release the once-secret reports because the news group
sued in federal court when the information wasn't provided under the Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA).
Though the recently filed court documents reveal Mueller received a briefing about the
Sarasota Saudi investigation, the FBI continued to publicly deny it existed and it appears
that the lies were approved by Mueller. Not surprisingly, he didn't respond to questions
about this new discovery emailed to his office by the news organization that uncovered it.
Though the mainstream media has neglected to report this relevant development, it's difficult
to ignore that it chips away at Mueller's credibility as special counsel to investigate if
Russia influenced the 2016 presidential election. Even before the Saudi coverup documents
were exposed by nonprofit journalists, Mueller's credentials were questionable to head any
probe. Back in May Judicial Watch reminded of Mueller's
misguided handiwork and collaboration with radical Islamist organizations as FBI
director.
"... Everyone knows it's the US presence in the Middle East which creates terrorists, both as proxies of and in resistance to the US imperial presence (and often one and then the other). So reading Orwellian language, Pompeo is saying the US wants to maximize Islamic terrorism in order to provide a pretext for creeping totalitarianism at home and abroad. ..."
"... The real reason is to maintain the petrodollar system, but there seems to be a conspiracy of silence never to mention it among both supporters and opponents of Trump. ..."
"... everyone knows why the usa is in the middle east.. to support the war industry, which is heavily tied to the financial industry.. up is down and down is up.. that is why the usa is great friends with ksa and israel and a sworn enemy of iran... what they don't say is they are a sworn enemy of humanity and the thought that the world can continue with their ongoing madness... ..."
"... The importance of oil is not to supply US markets its to deny it to enemies and control oil prices in order to feed international finance/IMF ..."
Trump also floated the idea of removing U.S. troops from the Middle East, citing the lower price of oil as a reason to withdraw.
"Now, are we going to stay in that part of the world? One reason to is Israel ," Trump said. "Oil is becoming less and less
of a reason because we're producing more oil now than we've ever produced. So, you know, all of a sudden it gets to a point
where you don't have to stay there."
It is only Israel, it is no longer the oil, says Trump. But the nuclear armed Israel does not need U.S. troops for its protection.
And if it is no longer the oil, why is the U.S. defending the Saudis?
Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo disagrees with his boss. In a Wall Street journal op-ed today he claims that
The U.S.-Saudi Partnership
Is Vital because it includes much more then oil:
[D]egrading U.S.-Saudi ties would be a grave mistake for the national security of the U.S. and its allies.
The kingdom is a powerful force for stability in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is working to secure Iraq's fragile democracy
and keep Baghdad tethered to the West's interests, not Tehran's. Riyadh is helping manage the flood of refugees fleeing Syria's
civil war by working with host countries, cooperating closely with Egypt, and establishing stronger ties with Israel. Saudi
Arabia has also contributed millions of dollars to the U.S.-led effort to fight Islamic State and other terrorist organizations.
Saudi oil production and economic stability are keys to regional prosperity and global energy security.
Where and when please has Saudi Arabia "managed the flood of refugees fleeing Syria's civil war". Was that when it
emptied its jails of violent criminals and sent them to wage jihad against the Syrian people? That indeed 'managed' to push
millions to flee from their homes.
Saudi Arabia might be many things but "a powerful force for stability" it is not. Just ask 18 million Yemenis who, after years
of Saudi bombardment, are near to death for lack of
food .
Pompeo's work for the Saudi dictator continued today with a Senate briefing on Yemen. The Senators will soon vote on a resolution
to end the U.S. support for the war. In his prepared remarks Pompeo wrote:
The suffering in Yemen grieves me, but if the United States of America was not involved in Yemen, it would be a hell of a lot
worse.
What could be worse than a famine that threatens two third of the population?
If the U.S. and Britain would not support the Saudis and Emirates the war would end within a day or two. The Saudi and UAE
planes are maintained by U.S. and British specialists. The Saudis still
seek 102 more U.S. military personal to
take care of their planes. It would be easy for the U.S. to stop such recruiting of its veterans.
It is the U.S. that
holds up an already
watered down UN Security Council resolution that calls for a ceasefire in Yemen:
The reason for the delay continues to be a White House worry about angering Saudi Arabia, which strongly opposes the resolution,
multiple sources say. CNN reported earlier this month that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, "threw a fit" when
presented with an early draft of the document, leading to a delay and further discussions among Western allies on the matter.
There is really nothing in Trump's list on which the Saudis consistently followed through. His alliance with MbS brought him
no gain and a lot of trouble.
Trump protected MbS from the consequences of murdering Jamal Khashoggi. He hoped to gain leverage with that. But that is not
how MbS sees it. He now knows that Trump will not confront him no matter what he does. If MbS "threws a fit" over a UN Security
Council resolution, the U.S. will drop it. When he launches his next 'adventure', the U.S. will again cover his back. Is this
the way a super power is supposed to handle a client state?
If Trump's instincts really tell him that U.S. troops should be removed from the Middle East and Afghanistan, something I doubt,
he should follow them. Support for the Saudi war on Yemen will not help to achieve that. Pandering to MbS is not MAGA.
Posted by b on November 28, 2018 at 03:12 PM |
Permalink
Comments Pompeo: "Saudi Arabia has also contributed millions of dollars to the U.S.-led effort to fight Islamic State and other
terrorist organizations."
Everyone knows it's the US presence in the Middle East which creates terrorists, both as proxies of and in resistance to
the US imperial presence (and often one and then the other). So reading Orwellian language, Pompeo is saying the US wants to maximize
Islamic terrorism in order to provide a pretext for creeping totalitarianism at home and abroad.
The real reason is to maintain the petrodollar system, but there seems to be a conspiracy of silence never to mention it among
both supporters and opponents of Trump.
There is really nothing in Trump's list on which the Saudis consistently followed through. His alliance with MbS brought him
no gain and a lot of trouble.
He did get to fondle the orb - although fuck knows what weirdness was really going on there.
thanks b... pompeo is a very bad liar... in fact - everything he says is about exactly the opposite, but bottom line is he is
a bad liar as he is thoroughly unconvincing..
everyone knows why the usa is in the middle east.. to support the war industry, which is heavily tied to the financial
industry.. up is down and down is up.. that is why the usa is great friends with ksa and israel and a sworn enemy of iran... what
they don't say is they are a sworn enemy of humanity and the thought that the world can continue with their ongoing madness...
oh, but don't forget to vote, LOLOL.... no wonder so many are strung out on drugs, and the pharma industry... opening up to
the msm is opening oneself up to the world george orwell described many years ago...
Take a wafer or two of silicon and just add water. The oil obsession has been eclipsed and within 20 years will be in absolute
disarray. The warmongers will invent new excuses.
A hypothetical: No extraordinary amounts of hydrocarbons exist under Southwest Asian ground; just an essential amount for domestic
consumption; in that case, would Zionistan exist where it's currently located and would either Saudi Arabia, Iraq and/or Iran
have any significance aside from being consumers of Outlaw US Empire goods? Would the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes/Picot
Secret Treaty have been made? If the Orinoco Oil Belt didn't exist, would Venezuela's government be continually targeted for Imperial
control? If there was no Brazilian offshore oil, would the Regime Change effort have been made there? Here the hypotheticals end
and a few basic yet important questions follow.
Previous to the 20th Century, why were Hawaii and Samoa wrested from their native residents and annexed to Empire? In what
way did the lowly family farmers spread across 19th Century United States further the growth of its Empire and contribute to the
above named annexations? What was the unspoken message sent to US elites contained within Frederic Jackson Turner's 1893 Frontier
Thesis ? Why is the dominant language of North America English, not French or Spanish?
None of these are rhetorical. All second paragraph questions I asked of my history students. And all have a bearing on b's
fundamental question.
b says, "And it its no longer the oil, why is the U.S. defending the Saudis?"
The US has a vital interest in protecting the narrative of 9/11. The Saudis supplied the patsies. Mossad and dual-citizen neocons
were the architects of the event. Hence, the US must avoid a nasty divorce from the Saudis. The Saudis are in a perfect blackmailing
position.
Of course, most Americans have no idea that the U.S. Shale Oil Industry is nothing more than a Ponzi Scheme because of the
mainstream media's inability to report FACT from FICTION. However, they don't deserve all of the blame as the shale energy
industry has done an excellent job hiding the financial distress from the public and investors by the use of highly technical
jargon and BS.
S.A. is a thinly disguised US military base, hence the "strategic importance" and the relevance of the new Viceroy's previous
experience as a Four Star General. It's doubtful that any of the skilled personnel in the SA Air Force are other than former US/Nato.
A few princes might fancy themselves to be daring fighter pilots. In case of a Anglo-Zio war with Iran SA would be the most forward
US aircraft carrier. The Empire is sustained by its presumed military might and prizes nothing more than its strategically situated
bases. Saud would like to capture Yemen's oil fields, but the primary purpose of the air war is probably training. That of course
is more despicably cynical than mere conquest and genocide.
Trump is the ultimate deceiver/liar. Great actor reading from a script. The heel in the Fake wrestling otherwise known as US politics.
It almost sounds as if he is calling for an end of anymore significant price drops now that he has got Powell on board to limit
interest rate hikes. After all if you are the worlds biggest producer you dont want prices too low. These markets are all manipulated.
I cant imagine how much insider trading is going on. If you look at the oil prices, they started dropping in October with Iran
sanctions looming (before it was announced irans shipments to its 8 biggest buyers would be exempt) and at the height of the Khashoggi
event where sanctions were threatened and Saudi was making threats of their own. In a real free market prices increase amidst
supply uncertainty.
Regardless of what he says he wants and gets now, he is already planning a reversal. Thats how the big boys win, they know
whats coming and when the con the smaller fish to swim one way they are lined up with a big mouth wide open. Controlled chaos
and confusion. For every winner there must be a loser and the losers assets/money are food for the Gods of Money and War
As for pulling out of the Middle East Bibi must have had a good laugh. My money is on the US to be in Yemen to protect them
from the Saudis (humanitarian) and Iranian backed Houthis while in reality we will be there to secure the enormous oil fields
in the North. Perhaps this was what the Khashoggi trap was all about. The importance of oil is not to supply US markets its to
deny it to enemies and control oil prices in order to feed international finance/IMF
@ Pft who wrote: "The importance of oil is not to supply US markets its to deny it to enemies and control oil prices in order
to feed international finance/IMF"
BINGO!!! Those that control finance control most/all of everything else.
Saudi Arabia literally owns close to 8% of the United States economy through various financial instruments. Their public investment
funds and dark pools own large chunks from various strategic firms resting at the apex of western power such as Blackstone. Trump
and Pompeo would be stupid to cut off their nose to spite their face... It's all about the petrodollar, uncle sam will ride and
die with saudi barbaria. If push comes to shove and the saudis decide to untether themselves from the Empire, their sand kingdom
will probably be partitioned.
The oil certainly still plays an important role, the u.s. cannot maintain the current frack oil output for long. For Tronald's
term in office it will suffice, but hardly longer. (The frack gas supplies are much more substantial.)
Personal interests certainly also play a role, and finally one should not make u.s. foreign policy more rational than it is.
Much is also done because of traditions and personal convictions. Often they got it completely wrong and the result was a complete
failure.
Let us watch what Trump does with this or if the resolution makes it to daylight:
Senate advances Yemen resolution in rebuke to Trump
The Senate issued a sharp rebuke Wednesday to President Trump, easily advancing a resolution that would end U.S. military support
for the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen's civil war despite a White House effort to quash the bill.
The administration launched an eleventh-hour lobbying frenzy to try to head off momentum for the resolution, dispatching
Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Capitol Hill in the morning and issuing a veto threat
less than an hour before the vote started.
But lawmakers advanced the resolution, 63-37, even as the administration vowed to stand by Saudi Arabia following outcry
over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
"There's been a lot of rhetoric that's come from the White House and from the State Department on this issue," said Sen.
Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. "The rhetoric that I've heard and the broadcasts that we've
made around the world as to who we are have been way out of balance as it relates to American interests and American values."
[/] LINK
TheHill
But Mattis says there is no smoking gun to tie the Clown Thug-Prince to Kashoggi's killing.
TheHill
And Lyias @ 2 is a bingo. Always follow the fiat.
Soon, without any announcements, if they wish to maintain selling oil to China, KSA will follow Qatar. It will be priced in
Yuan...especially given the escalating U.S. trade war with China.
2019 holds interesting times. Order a truckload of popcorn.
Midwest For Truth , Nov 28, 2018 7:29:46 PM |
link
You would have to have your head buried in the sand to not see that the Saudi "Kings" are crypto-Zionistas. Carl Sagan once said,
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.
We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even
to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." And Mark Twain also
wrote "It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."
Gee, not one taker amongst all these intelligent folk. From last to first: 1588's Protestant Wind allowed Elizabeth and her cronies
to literally keep their heads as Nature helped Drake defeat the Spanish Armada; otherwise, there would be no British Empire root
to the USA, thus no USA and no future Outlaw US Empire, the British Isles becoming a Hapsburg Imperial Property, and a completely
different historical lineage, perhaps sans World Wars and atomic weapons.
Turner's message was with the Frontier closed the "safety valve" of continental expansion defusing political tensions based
on economic inequalities had ceased to be of benefit and future policy would need to deal with that issue thus removing the Fear
Factor from the natives to immigrants, and from wide-open spaces to the inner cities. Whipsawing business cycles driving urban
labor's unrest, populist People's Party politics, and McKinley's 1901 assassination further drove his points home.
Nationwide, family farmers demanded Federal government help to create additional markets for their produce to generate price
inflation so they could remain solvent and keep their homesteads, which translated into the need to conduct international commerce
via the seas which required coaling stations--Hawaii and Samoa, amongst others--and a Blue Water Navy that eventually led to Alfred
T. Mahan's doctrine of Imperial Control of the Oceans still in use today.
As with Gengis Khan's death in 1227 that stopped the Mongol expansion to the English Channel that changed the course of European
history, and what was seen as the Protestant Wind being Divine Intervention, global history has several similar inflection points
turning the tide from one path to another. We don't know yet if the Outlaw US Empire's reliance on Saudi is such, but we can see
it turning from being a great positive to an equally potential great negative for the Empire--humanity as a whole, IMO, will benefit
greatly from an implosion and the relationship becoming a Great Negative helping to strip what remains of the Emperor's Clothing
from his torso so that nations and their citizens can deter the oncoming financialized economic suicide caused by massive debt
and climate chaos.
Vico's circle is about to intersect with Hegel's dialectic and generate a new temporal phase in human history. Although many
will find it hard to tell, the current direction points to a difficult change to a more positive course for humanity as a whole,
but it's also possible that disaster could strike with humanity's total or near extinction being the outcome--good arguments can
be made for either outcome, which ought to unsettle everyone: Yes, the times are that tenuous. But then, I'm merely a lonely historian
aware of a great many things, including the pitfall inherent in trying to predict future events.
"The suffering in Yemen grieves me, but if the United States of America was not involved in Yemen, it would be a hell of a lot
worse." And I'll bet Pompeo said that with a straight face, too. lmfao
And as for "...keep[ing] Baghdad tethered to the West's interests and not Tehran's," I'm guessing the "secretary" would have
us all agree "yeah, fk Iraqi sovereignty anyway. Besides, it's not like they share a border with Iran, or anything. Oh,
wait..."
p.s. Many thanks for all you have contributed to collective knowledge, b; I will be contacting you about making a contribution
by snail mail (I hate PayPal, too).
"... a powerful force for stability in the Middle East."
"Instability" more like it.
Paid for military coup in Egypt. Funding anti-Syrian terrorists. Ongoing tensions with Iran. Zip-all for the Palestinians.
WTF in Yemen. Wahhabi crazy sh_t (via Mosque building) across Asia. Head and hand chopping Friday specials the norm -- especially
of their South-Asian slave classes. Ok, so females can now drive cars -- woohoo. A family run business venture manipulating the
global oil trade and supporting US-petro-$ hegemony recently out of goat herding and each new generation 'initiated' in some Houston
secret society toe-touching shower and soap ceremonies before placement in the ruling hierarchy back home. But enough; they being
Semites makes it an offence to criticize in some 'free' democratic world domains.
Instead of the "rebuke to Trump" meme circulating around, I found
this statement to be more accurate:
"'Cutting off military aid to Saudi Arabia is the right choice for Yemen, the right choice for our national security, and the
right choice for upholding the Constitution,' Paul Kawika Martin, senior director for policy and political affairs at Peace Action,
declared in a statement. ' Three years ago, the notion of Congress voting to cut off military support for Saudi Arabia would
have been politically laughable .'" [My Emphasis]
In other words, advancing Peace with Obama as POTUS wasn't going to happen, so this vote ought to be seen as an attack on Obama's
legacy as it's his policy that's being reconsidered and hopefully discontinued.
Trump, Israel and the Sawdi's. US no longer needs middle east oil for strategic supply. Trump is doing away with the petro-dollar
as that scam has run its course and maintenance is higher than returns. Saudi and other middle east oil is required for global
energy dominance.
Energy dominance, lebensraum for Israel and destroying the current Iran are all objectives that fit into one neat package.
Those plans look to be coming apart at the moment so it remains to be seen how fanatical Trump is on Israel and MAGA. MAGA
as US was at the collapse of the Soviet Union.
As for pulling out of the Middle East Bibi must have had a good laugh. Remember when he said he wanted out of Syria. My money
is on the US to be in Yemen before too long to protect them from the Saudis (humanitarian) and Iranian backed Houthis, while in
reality it will be to secure the enormous oil fields in the North. Perhaps this was what the Khashoggi trap was all about.
The importance of oil is not to supply US markets its to deny it to enemies and control oil prices in order to feed international
finance/IMF .
@16 karlof1.. thanks for a broader historical perspective which you are able to bring to moa.. i enjoy reading your comments..
i don't have answers to ALL your questions earlier.. i have answers for some of them... you want to make it easy on us uneducated
folks and give us less questions, like b did in his post here, lol.... cheers james
The US Senate has advanced a measure to withdraw American support for a Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen.
In a blow to President Donald Trump, senators voted 63-37 to take forward a motion on ending US support.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defence Secretary Jim Mattis had urged Senators not to back the motion, saying it would
worsen the situation in Yemen.
...
The vote in the Senate means further debate on US support for Saudi Arabia is expected next week.
However, correspondents say that even if the Senate ultimately passes the bipartisan resolution it has little chance of
being approved by the outgoing House of Representatives.
That is quite a slap for the Trump administration. It will have little consequences in the short term (or for Yemen) but it sets
a new direction in foreign polices towards the Saudis.
Pompeo is a Deep State Israel-firster with a nasty neocon agenda. It is to Trump's disgrace that he chose Pompeo and the abominable
Bolton. At least Trump admits the ME invasions are really about Israel.
Take a look at some of the - informed - comments below the vid to which you linked. Then think again about an 'all electric
civilisation within a few years'. Yes, and Father Christmas will be providing everything that everyone in the world needs for
a NAmerican/European standard of living within the same time frame. Er - not.
'Renewables' are not going to save hitech industrial 'civilisation' from The Long Descent/Catabolic Collapse (qv). Apart from
any other consideration - and there are some other equally intractable ones - there is no - repeat NO - 'renewable' energy system
which doesn't rely crucially on energy subsidies from the fossil-hydrocarbon fuels, both to build it and to maintain it. They're
not stand-alone, self-bootstrapping technologies. Nor is there any realistic prospect that they ever will be. Fully renewable-power
hitech industrial civilisation is a non-deliverable mirage which is just drawing us ever further into the desert of irreversible
peak-energy/peak-everythig-else.
@16 karlof1. I also find your historical references very interesting. We do indeed seem to be at a very low point in the material
cycle, it will reverse in due course as is its want, hopefully we will live to see a positive change in humanity.
For example we know Tesla didn't succeed in splitting the planet in half, the way techno-psychotics fantasize. As for that
silly link, how typical of techno-wingnuts to respond to prosaic physical facts with fantasies. Anything to prop up faith in the
technocratic-fundamentalist religion. Meanwhile "electrical civilization" has always meant and will always mean fracking and coal,
until the whole fossil-fueled extreme energy nightmare is over.
Given the proven fact that the extreme energy civilization has done nothing but embark upon a campaign to completely destroy
humanity and the Earth (like in your Tesla fantasy), why would a non-psychopath want to prop it up anyway?
It is still the oil, even for the US. The Persian Gulf supplies 20% of world consumption, and Western Europe gets 40% of its oil
from OPEC countries, most of that from the Gulf. Even the US still imports 10% of its total consumption.
Peter AU 1 | Nov 28, 2018 9:44:50 PM | 20
b | Nov 29, 2018 2:33:04 AM | 23
USD as a world reserve currency could be one factor between the important ones. With non US support the saud land could crash
under neighbours pressure, that caos may be not welcomed.
Humble people around where I live have mentioned that time is speeding up its velocity; there seems to be a spiritual (evolutionary)/physical
interface effect or something...
Tolstoy, in the long theory-of-history exposition at the end of War and Peace, challenges 'the great man' of History idea,
spreading in his time, at the dawning of the so-called: European Romantic period of Beethoven, Goerte and Wagner, when
the unique person was glorified in the name of art, truth, whatever (eventually this bubble burst too, in the 20th C. and IMO
because of too much fervent worship in the Cult of the Temple of the Money God. Dostoyevki's great Crime and Punishment is all
about this issue.)
Tolstoy tries to describe a scientifically-determined historical process, dissing the 'great man of History' thesis. He was
thinking of Napoleon Bonaparte of course, the run-away upstart repulican, anathema to the established order. Tolstoy describes
it in the opening scene of the novel: a fascinating parlor-room conversation between a "liberal" woman of good-birth in the elite
circles of society and a military captain at the party.
...only tenuously relevant to karlofi1's great post touching upon the Theory of History as such; thanks.
Now as to the question: żWhy is Trump supporting Saudi Arabia? Let me think about that...
Funny stuff happens when a judge tells a plaintiff she has to
pay $341,500 for the legal expenses of a lawsuit she lost. All of a sudden
Stormy Daniels is saying her CPL, Michael Avenatti, was acting against her wishes:
"... Predictably, Western media has been complaining again about "Russian aggression", a gift that keeps on giving. Or blaming Russia for its over-reaction, overlooking the fact that Ukraine's incursion was with military vessels, not fishing boats. Russian resolve was quite visible, as powerful Ka-52 "Alligator" assault helicopters were promptly on the scene. ..."
"... Still, Kiev – "encouraged" by Washington – insists on militarizing the Sea of Azov. Misinformed American hawks emerging from the US Army War College even advocate that NATO should enter the Sea of Azov – a provocative act as far as Moscow is concerned. The Atlantic Council , which is essentially a mouthpiece of the powerful US weapons industry, is also pro-militarization. ..."
"... Rostislav Ischchenko , arguably the sharpest observer of Russia-Ukraine relations, in a piece written before the Kerch incident, said: "Ukraine itself recognized the right of Russia to introduce restrictions on the passage of ships and vessels through the Kerch Strait, having obeyed these rules in the summer." ..."
"... Thus a Kerch Strait incident designed as a cheap provocation, bearing all the hallmarks of a US think-tank ploy, is automatically interpreted as "Russian aggression", regardless of the facts. Indeed, any such tactics are good when it comes to derailing the Trump-Putin meeting at the G20 in Buenos Aires this coming weekend. ..."
"... Poroshenko's approval rate barely touches 8% . His chances of being re-elected, assuming polls are credible, are virtually zero. ..."
"... But the US would lose no sleep if they had to throw Poroshenko under the (Soviet) bus ..."
"... Poroshenko, wallowing in despair, may still ratchet up provocations. But the best he can aim at is NATO attempting to modernize the collapsing Ukrainian navy – an endeavor that would last years, with no guarantee of success. ..."
"... Feel sorry for the Ukrainians being used as tools. Before Obama-Hillary-and Pedo Biden overthrew the Democratically elected leader, people were just doing their normal stuff. Now they hide in bomb shelters and search for food at night. ..."
"... But vainglorious folks are not paying attention, and this is dangerous especially for Europe, and the pretenders in the Middle East, if it goes down, they too will go down, it's that simple and why? Because of military and security imperatives. Russia will take down, and out, any US or European ally in the M.E. lest, they open themselves up to flanking maneuvers. ..."
"... Putin already intimated of the current Russian mindset thus: "If you like, let's all go explain ourselves to God!". Do the neocons feel confident of cogent explanation to God, or do they even wish to come before him? I doubt it, and very much so, seeing as their hands are stained with the blood of innocents, and their hearts,plot evil continuously. ..."
"... And this my friends, viscerally demonstrates the wisdom of the founding fathers, especially Washington, who warned of "entangling alliances", buttressed a few generations later, by John Q. Adams, who re-advised "Go not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy". Pay attention folks, pay attention to the architects of the Republic, who knew what they were building, better than the "war loving battle dodging" chickenhawks who love to sip exotic drinks, while instructing others to kill for their depraved egos. ..."
"... NATO delenda est!... ..."
"... Poroshenko & Allies have a team of experts who spend 24/7 searching for the next provocation. Reminds me of May on this Brexit fiasco. ..."
"... This US coup of the Ukraine is turning out to be more hassle than its worth, a bankrupt corrupt country, installing Neo Nazi's as the first government was a big mistake, it could have been handled with more finesse, instead it was like a bull in a China shop. ..."
"... Poroshenko decided to not let a good crisis go to waste. ..."
"... Geopolitics and realpolitik, bitches. So much happening in the gas domain in Eastern Europe. Nordstream, Turkish Stream, BP stream, US LNG facilities in Greece, Poland and Germany, Russia supplying LNG to Germany, Cyprus-Greece-Israel drilling in the East Med, Turkey drilling in Cyprus EEZ. In the meanwhile I see gas infrastructure being build allover Eastern Europe, connecting houses to the grid. Gas heating and energy production is coming to Eastern Europe in addition to supplying Western Europe. The stakes are enormous and that what this is all about and that is why we can see more of this. ..."
"... Most of the Ukraine people hate Poroshenko and he knows he can't win re-election. He threatens Trump with dirt on Manafort, and demands Trump start a war. Or what? is the left in the US going to impeach Trump with the supposed Poroshenko dirt on Manafort? ..."
"... He was installed by Soros during the "Purple Color Revolution" (agent provocateurs with tiki torches getting violent to force a coup against the prior sitting President, a tactic attempted in Charlottesville only a couple years later) ..."
"... " Poroshenko's approval rate barely touches 8% . His chances of being re-elected, assuming polls are credible, are virtually zero. Little wonder he used the Kerch to declare martial law, effective this Wednesday, lasting for 30 days and bound to be extended. Poroshenko will be able to control the media and increase his chances of rigging the election. ..."
The West is complaining about Russian 'aggression' but the incident looks more like a cheap ploy by a desperate Ukrainian president
and US conservatives keen to undermine Trump's next pow-wow with Putin...
When the Ukrainian navy sent a tugboat and two small gunboats on Sunday to force their way through the Kerch Strait into the Sea
of Azov, it knew in advance the Russian response would be swift and merciless.
After all, Kiev was entering waters claimed by Russia with military vessels without clarifying their intent.
The intent, though, was clear; to raise the stakes in the militarization of the Sea of Azov.
The Kerch Strait connects the Sea of Azov with the Black Sea. To reach Mariupol, a key city in the Sea of Azov very close to the
dangerous dividing line between Ukraine's army and the pro-Russian militias in Donbass, the Ukrainian navy needs to go through the
Kerch.
Yet since Russia retook control of Crimea via a 2014 referendum, the waters around Kerch are de facto Russian territorial waters.
Kiev announced this past summer it would build a naval base in the Sea of Azov by the end of 2018. That's an absolute red line
for Moscow. Kiev may have to trade access to Mariupol, which, incidentally, also trades closely with the People's Republic of Donetsk.
But forget about military access.
And most of all, forget about supplying a Ukrainian military fleet in the port of Berdyansk capable of sabotaging the immensely
successful, Russian-built Crimean bridge .
Predictably, Western media has been complaining again about "Russian aggression", a gift that keeps on giving. Or blaming
Russia for its over-reaction, overlooking the fact that Ukraine's incursion was with military vessels, not fishing boats. Russian
resolve was quite visible, as powerful Ka-52 "Alligator" assault helicopters were promptly on the scene.
Washington and Brussels uncritically bought Kiev's "Russian aggression" hysteria, as well as the UN Security Council, which, instead
of focusing on the facts in the Kerch Strait incident, preferring to accuse Moscow once again of annexing Crimea in 2014.
The key point, overlooked by the UNSC, is that the Kerch incident configures Kiev's flagrant violation of articles 7, 19 and 21
of the UN Convention on the
Law of the Sea .
I happened to be right in the middle of deep research in Istanbul over the geopolitics of the Black Sea when the Kerch incident
happened.
For the moment, it's crucial to stress what top Russian analysts have been pointing out in detail. My interlocutors in Istanbul
may disagree, but for all practical purposes, the Kerch Strait, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, in military terms, are de facto
Russian lakes.
At best, the Black Sea as a whole might evolve into a Russia-Turkey condominium, assuming President Erdogan plays his cards right.
Everyone else is as relevant, militarily, as a bunch of sardines.
Russia is able to handle anything – naval or aerial – intruding in the Kerch Strait, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea in a matter
ranging from seconds to just a few minutes. Every vessel moving in every corner of the Black Sea is tracked 24/7. Moscow knows it.
Kiev knows it. NATO knows it. And crucially, the Pentagon knows it.
Still, Kiev – "encouraged" by Washington – insists on militarizing the Sea of Azov. Misinformed
American hawks emerging
from the US Army War College even advocate that NATO should enter the Sea of Azov – a provocative act as far as Moscow is concerned.
The Atlantic
Council , which is essentially a mouthpiece of the powerful US weapons industry, is also pro-militarization.
Any attempt to alter the current, already wobbly status quo could lead Moscow to install a naval blockade in a flash and see the
annexation of Mariupol to the People's Republic of Donetsk, to which it is industrially linked anyway.
This would be regarded by the Kremlin as a move of last resort. Moscow certainly does not want it. Yet it's wise not to provoke
the Bear.
Cheap provocation
Rostislav
Ischchenko , arguably the sharpest observer of Russia-Ukraine relations, in a piece written before the Kerch incident, said:
"Ukraine itself recognized the right of Russia to introduce restrictions on the passage of ships and vessels through the Kerch Strait,
having obeyed these rules in the summer."
Yet, after the US Deep State's massive investment even before the protests on the Maidan in Kiev in 2014 that wrested Ukraine
away from Russian influence a possible entente cordiale between the Trump administration and the Kremlin, with Russia in control
of Crimea and a pro-Russian Donbass, could only be seen as a red line for the Americans.
Thus a Kerch Strait incident designed as a cheap provocation, bearing all the hallmarks of a US think-tank ploy, is automatically
interpreted as "Russian aggression", regardless of the facts. Indeed, any such tactics are good when it comes to derailing the
Trump-Putin
meeting at the G20 in Buenos Aires this coming weekend.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, chaos is the norm . President Petro Poroshenko is bleeding. The hryvnia is a hopeless currency. Kiev's
borrowing costs are at their highest level since a bond sale in 2018. This failed state has been under IMF "reform" since 2015 –
with no end in sight.
Poroshenko's approval rate barely touches 8% . His chances of being re-elected, assuming polls are credible, are virtually zero.
Little wonder he used the Kerch to declare martial law, effective this Wednesday, lasting for 30 days and bound to be extended. Poroshenko
will be able to control the media and increase his chances of rigging the election.
But the US would lose no sleep if they had to throw Poroshenko under the (Soviet) bus. Ukrainians will not die for his survival.
One of the captains at the Kerch incident surrendered his boat voluntarily to the Russians. When Russian Su-25s and Ka-52s started
to patrol the skies over the Kerch Strait, Ukrainian reinforcements instantly fled.
Poroshenko, wallowing in despair, may still ratchet up provocations. But the best he can aim at is NATO attempting to modernize
the collapsing Ukrainian navy – an endeavor that would last years, with no guarantee of success.
For the moment, forget all the rhetoric, and any suggestion of a NATO incursion into the Black Sea. Call it the calm before the
inevitable future storm
Feel sorry for the Ukrainians being used as tools. Before Obama-Hillary-and Pedo Biden overthrew the Democratically elected leader, people were just doing their normal stuff. Now they hide in bomb shelters and search for food at night.
The Bear has set the Trap, let NATO or whoever walk into it, but do so if they must, with the knowledge that it's a one way
ticket to hell. The Russians have been warning for years now, that one day, they'll have had enough and then..
But vainglorious folks are not paying attention, and this is dangerous especially for Europe, and the pretenders in the Middle
East, if it goes down, they too will go down, it's that simple and why? Because of military and security imperatives. Russia will
take down, and out, any US or European ally in the M.E. lest, they open themselves up to flanking maneuvers.
So someone, in this case, Europe, better tell, or force Poroshenko to tone it down, the Russians are not kidding around, this
is not a game, this is existential serious! Ukraine will go down, along with Poland, and the Baltics, if Russia feels, in any
way, shape, or manner, provoked beyond reason. Note the word "feels", some may play games, thinking it's just a game, Russia is
NOT playing games, not at all, not one bit.
Putin already intimated of the current Russian mindset thus: "If you like, let's all go explain ourselves to God!". Do the neocons feel confident of cogent explanation to God, or do they
even wish to come before him? I doubt it, and very much so, seeing as their hands are stained with the blood of innocents, and
their hearts,plot evil continuously.
Minsk was the best the Russians are willing to offer, from here on, the offer reduces exponentially, with every provocation
until there's no offer, just RAW discipline!
And this my friends, viscerally demonstrates the wisdom of the founding fathers, especially Washington, who warned of "entangling
alliances", buttressed a few generations later, by John Q. Adams, who re-advised "Go not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy".
Pay attention folks, pay attention to the architects of the Republic, who knew what they were building, better than the "war loving
battle dodging" chickenhawks who love to sip exotic drinks, while instructing others to kill for their depraved egos.
The biggest victims in all their failed adventures, are the US troops, folks who are deployed to fight wars which does nothing
to secure the Republic, but instead weakens the Republic, deprives the military of honor, capable recruits, and the economy, of
treasure, vigor, and vitality.
Poroshenko & Allies have a team of experts who spend 24/7 searching for the next provocation. Reminds me of May on this Brexit
fiasco.
When you're up ****-creek, Kerch, in this instance, you clutch at straws as the boat sinks.
With regard to NATO, they can't be involved as they're not imbeciles. Russia has provided the s300/Other upgraded Missile Defense
Systems to Syria, effectively nullifying Israeli's illegal incursions via Lebanon airspace, so what protections will Putin have
in place for one of his most strategic jurisdictions in his country? Rhetorical.
This US coup of the Ukraine is turning out to be more hassle than its worth, a bankrupt corrupt country, installing Neo Nazi's
as the first government was a big mistake, it could have been handled with more finesse, instead it was like a bull in a China
shop.
On the Crimea, let us all remember the following :
95% of Crimean's voted yes to joining Russia a result that western agencies, media etc have accepted as correct, This makes
it and the waters surrounding it Russian, I suspect the US would have a similar reaction if a couple of Russian gun boats cruised
unannounced into a US port and started doing donuts.
****** porkoshenko wont last until spring. ukraine is not a chocolate factory. a country too big for a chess piece. the best
move for trump is to stay out or invite willy wonka to pay a visit to us embassy and chop him off lol
Poroshenko decided to not let a good crisis go to waste.
Geopolitics and realpolitik, bitches. So much happening in the gas domain in Eastern Europe. Nordstream, Turkish Stream, BP
stream, US LNG facilities in Greece, Poland and Germany, Russia supplying LNG to Germany, Cyprus-Greece-Israel drilling in the
East Med, Turkey drilling in Cyprus EEZ. In the meanwhile I see gas infrastructure being build allover Eastern Europe, connecting
houses to the grid. Gas heating and energy production is coming to Eastern Europe in addition to supplying Western Europe. The
stakes are enormous and that what this is all about and that is why we can see more of this.
The cheap shot at Trump at the same time demanding action from Trump was Poroshenko's threat the Ukraine has dirt on Manafort.
How low can Poroshenko go?
Most of the Ukraine people hate Poroshenko and he knows he can't win re-election. He threatens Trump with dirt on Manafort,
and demands Trump start a war. Or what? is the left in the US going to impeach Trump with the supposed Poroshenko dirt on Manafort?
But asked if the Ukraine has any evidence that Manafort was getting paid directly by the Kremlin, Poroshenko said, "I am not
personally connected with the process.""
Not just undermine Trump/Putin meetings, but the big picture, Ukrainian "President" declaring martial law to suspend the election
he would no doubt lose.
He was installed by Soros during the "Purple Color Revolution" (agent provocateurs with tiki torches getting violent to force
a coup against the prior sitting President, a tactic attempted in Charlottesville only a couple years later)
" Poroshenko's approval rate barely touches 8% . His chances of being re-elected, assuming polls are credible, are virtually
zero. Little wonder he used the Kerch to declare martial law, effective this Wednesday, lasting for 30 days and bound to be extended.
Poroshenko will be able to control the media and increase his chances of rigging the election.
TTG
Divadab Newton •
6 hours ago Being a rational actor does not mean caring only about one's own skin. Soldiers
jump on grenades knowing they will die to save their comrades. Some soldiers willingly run into
a dark cellar with a hatchet and empty weapon to confront armed murderers in order to save
innocent women and children.
There is a story in Robert Ardrey's "African Genesis" describing how a baboon troop
protected itself from the predations of leopards. An alfa male baboon attacked a leopard
one-on-one. The result of these encounters was the death of the baboon along with the severe
wounding and death of the leopard. This altruistic behavior has evolutionary value. I have the
calculus equations in my old ecology textbook explaining this value. As a species we've
inherited this altruistic trait. Parents willingly sacrifice themselves for the sake of their
children. We've gone beyond kith and kin and can also be willing to sacrifice all for the sake
of complete strangers and abstract societal goals.
Now if another trait would take better hold within our species, we would be much better
off... mercy. I have no mathematical formulas to explain that trait.
"... Legally speaking I'm not quite sure, because there are a number of protocols that are at play here. On top of everything is the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the designation of territorial waters and shelfs, economic zones and so forth. ..."
"... And declaring martial law, what the heck does that have to do with naval affairs? Many suspect that he's reading his polls and knowing that he's in trouble, political trouble, and so he's trying to start something that will help his political chances. ..."
"... And since NATO and the European Union and the United States have been rather in the front of the foxhole claiming that Ukraine is right in many of these disputes, then you've got the recipe for real problem. You've got NATO's ships, U.S. ships, other ships that might challenge Russia in these waters. ..."
"... NATO, so close to Russia's borders–I mean, incorporating former Warsaw Pact members into NATO. Putin's reactions in that regard are perfectly understandable. I'm not saying that the United States and NATO shouldn't take measures to defend themselves. But why does that include taking over for alliance purposes, now? Commercial purposes, the EU, the common market, so forth and so on, that's another deal. But taking them over for alliance purposes–we forget. It's a political alliance, surely. But it's also a military alliance, and that's the way Moscow has to look at it. ..."
"... So their military exercises since about 2013 have been postulated on a NATO invasion of the near abroad, and even a NATO invasion of Russia proper. So this is the way they do their military exercises. Clearly they're not doing that because they think spending all that money on that preposterous possible situation is just that: preposterous. They think it's a probability, or at least a possibility. ..."
"... And to fight over Ukraine–you remember the old expression "Who would die for Danzig?" I keep asking myself, if Americans really were asked to fulfill Article 5 of the NATO treaty for a place like Tbilisi, or even a place like Riga, or any of those countries we've now expanded NATO into or proposed expanding NATO into, like Ukraine, what would Americans say when they were told that full conscription was in process, full mobilization was in process, war taxes are going to be levied, and we're going to war for a city you can't even pronounce and couldn't find on a map? That's what we're talking about. And oh, by the way, Russia is generally speaking cheek and jowl with that city, whereas we're ten thousand miles away. ..."
"... Yaas, let us continue with the fear-uncertainty-doubt support of the Neocon Narrative and whatever Great Game BS the CIA and US Global Network-Centric Battlespace Management have up their dirty sleeves for that part of the world. On the way to Full Spectrum Dominance, of course. Because that is the Manifest Destiny of We The People, new? ..."
"... Excuse me, but what is a US military training range doing in Ukraine? How would US like it if a Russian range were established in Sonora or Coahuila? And if a tourist notices it, don't you think Russians are painfully aware of the situation? But they should just accept it, as US/Nato creep ever closer to the Russian border. The amount of hypocrisy seems boundless ..."
"... I'm waiting for NSA Bolton or SecState Pompeo to claim that Poroshenko made a miscalculation. Isn't that approximately what former SecState Condoleezza Rice said about Saakashvili's shelling of Russian peace keeping troops in South Ossetia, Georgia? So if Poroshenko's aim was internal politics, it was one big belly-flop. ..."
"... Poroshenko got his martial law, but for only 30 days. It will not cover Ukraine entirely, but only regions subject to "Russian aggression," including Vinnytsia, Luhansk, Mykolayiv, Odesa, Sumy, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Kherson, Sea of Azov. Well, just about any region that voted for former President Viktor Yanukovych. ..."
"... Right, most of those regions were bases of support for the pro-Moscow Party of Regions. This is simply broadcasting an intention to commit election fraud. The declaration of martial law is a means to an end. ..."
"... On the other hand, it appears that some of the crew on the Ukrainian vessels were from Ukrainian secret service, one wonders why. ..."
"... There have been op-ed pieces in major US media advocating blowing the bridge up. Russia has to take that seriously. ..."
"... Who needs a mere op-ed when you have the Atlantic Council? http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russia-s-provocations-in-the-sea-of-azov-what-should-be-done ..."
"... If Mexico formed an alliance with Russia, how would the US respond? (Cuban missile crisis?) From the point of view of traditional great power politics, it's that simple. Monroe Doctrine and all that. Russia has been fighting the West in this area from at least 1610. We're poking around their neighborhood and no great power can tolerate such arrogance. ..."
GREG WILPERT: The Ukraine is saying that Russia has no reason to hold
its ships, and Russia is accusing the Ukraine of intentionally creating a provocation in order
to draw NATO from what we know of what happened. Who seems to be in the more solid position
here, legally speaking?
LARRY WILKERSON:Legally speaking I'm not quite sure, because there are a number of
protocols that are at play here. On top of everything is the UN Convention on the Law of the
Sea, and the designation of territorial waters and shelfs, economic zones and so forth. And the
right, even though those things might intersect, to pass through what are called International
Straits or international waters, no matter how narrow they may be. Then you've also got,
underneath that, various protocols and agreements that have been made. In this case, I think
there's one between Russia and Ukraine. There are probably other agreements that impact on the
Black Sea, which, as you know, the strait they were trying to pass through is to the north of,
or the north side of.
So there are all kinds of international agreements and bilateral agreements about passage
through this area. The legal aspects of it really, I think, would boil down to, in many
respects, who has Crimea? Ukraine still claims Crimea. Russia now claims Crimea. And if they
claim Crimea, then their territorial water, even with unclassed–with respect to
unclassed, its definition of straights and so forth–then that territorial water, that is
territorial water, even under [unclass], is Russian. If it's Ukranian, it's Ukrainian. The
Russians are claiming it's Russian and Ukrainian ships violated it. Ukrainians, I guess, are
complaining or asserting the fact that they think it's still Ukrainian, and so they didn't
violate anything.
But all of that, the legal aspects of it, really boil down–as Mao Zedong said,
international law comes out the barrel of a gun. Who has the biggest gun? And in this case,
Russia has the biggest gun. It's also complicated by the fact that Poroshenko has elections
coming up, I think, in March. And declaring martial law, what the heck does that have to do
with naval affairs? Many suspect that he's reading his polls and knowing that he's in trouble,
political trouble, and so he's trying to start something that will help his political
chances.
So you have so many different variables here that it's hard to say who's right and who's
wrong, except to say that you have to determine whether Russia is right about Ukraine, and
ultimately about Crimea, or whether Ukraine is right about Ukraine. And since NATO and the
European Union and the United States have been rather in the front of the foxhole claiming that
Ukraine is right in many of these disputes, then you've got the recipe for real problem. You've
got NATO's ships, U.S. ships, other ships that might challenge Russia in these waters. And
there again, though, power comes out of the barrel of a gun. Russia has the advantage because
it's operating on interior lines from this area, very close to its own homeland, close to its
ports in Crimea. And the United States or NATO would be operating, in the case of NATO, at
quite a distance from the United States, quite a distance from its home water.
So this is just another incident in Putin's ability to poke his fingers in the eyes of NATO,
and the United States in particular, since the United States and NATO started encroaching on
his near abroad.
GREG WILPERT: Right. Actually, that's something I was going to ask as well, is the
extent to which this might be also driven by domestic politics within Russia. Clearly
something's happening within the Ukraine in terms of the elections and the fact that, as you
mentioned, that Poroshenko is behind in the polls. But Putin's own popularity might be being
impacted right now due to a declining economic situation. So I'm just wondering, what role do
you think that those domestic factors within Russia might be at play, that this might be a way
for him to recuperate some of his own popularity?
LARRY WILKERSON: Well, no question about it. We say domestic politics drives most of
Donald Trump's decision making. And I think that's a correct interpretation. It also has an
impact on people like Poroshenko and Putin. And the plunge in oil prices, my goodness. I looked
at a sign this morning, it was $2.19. I never thought I'd see that price again here in
Williamsburg. The plunge in oil prices, the benchmarks, has probably hurt Russia pretty badly.
They are, as one person said to me recently, a gas station with a capital in Moscow. So Putin,
if he's sinking in the polls, this would be something for him to do that has worked for him in
the past. Stick your fingers in Ukraine, which by extension is sticking your fingers in the
U.S.'s eyes, and you get a bump in the polls. I wouldn't put it past him at all.
GREG WILPERT: Now, in 2014, Russia held a referendum in Crimea and ended up annexing
the peninsula after it said that 97 percent of the population voted to join Russia. Now,
looking at the Kerch Strait between Crimea and Russia, which Ukraine needs in order to access
its southeastern coast from the Black Sea, wasn't such a crisis inevitable sooner or later?
LARRY WILKERSON: Oh, it was. And we have had a number of incidents where a Russian
patrol craft, FSB or otherwise, Navy, had come out and challenged Ukrainian ships in accordance
with, they said, the agreement that they saw. And they actually, as I understand it, boarded
some of these ships and searched them, and caused them commercial damage, if you will, because
they held them up so long; didn't let them get under way for a long period of time. So this is,
this has been working up to this more dramatic confrontation that we have now, I think, for
some time. And it's the tit for tat game that Putin is playing with Kiev, and in essence that
NATO, the EU, and the United States are playing with Moscow. Ukraine is Ukraine, and it is
going to be a member of NATO and a member of the EU. And Moscow says over, over our prostrate
body will the whole country of Ukraine–and we've taken Crimea, thank you very much, and
have invested with little green men and other things in much of Eastern Ukraine. So over my
prostate body will that happen.
And Putin has, as I said, the interior lines. It's much easier for him to operate than it is
for NATO or the United States to operate. And as long as that situation exists he's going to
continue to test this. He's not the equal of us in combination, but he is in a position to test
us all the time, and he's become brilliant at it. He goes into a fissure here, a fissure there,
a crack here, a crack there. And if he's challenged resolutely, he just kind of holds what he's
got or he backs up a little bit. But if he finds more mobility he widens it, deepens it, and
exploits it; Syria being a perfect example. And Syria being almost to the point where it's
exterior lines for him.
LARRY WILKERSON: So I have to admire the guy for the brilliance with which he does
this, and then, as you said, he turns it into domestic political gain.
GREG WILPERT: But now turning, actually, to the West, the conflict between
pro-Russian separatists and pro-European government in the Ukraine has been all about an
international conflict already, with constant intervention from NATO, as well as from Russia.
Now, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg issued a declaration, actually, where he declared,
quote, full support for Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty. However, the Ukraine
is not yet part of NATO, and thus there's no obligation to defend the Ukraine. But
Stoltenberg's statement makes it sound like NATO would do just that, defend the Ukraine should
a conflict escalate. Now, what do you think? Is that a wise position for the West to take,
considering the potential for escalation and outright war?
LARRY WILKERSON: Well, I don't think it's been a wise position for the West,
quote-unquote, to take, the United States leading the way. But it's pushed itself and its
alliance, NATO, so close to Russia's borders–I mean, incorporating former Warsaw Pact
members into NATO. Putin's reactions in that regard are perfectly understandable. I'm not
saying that the United States and NATO shouldn't take measures to defend themselves. But why
does that include taking over for alliance purposes, now? Commercial purposes, the EU, the
common market, so forth and so on, that's another deal. But taking them over for alliance
purposes–we forget. It's a political alliance, surely. But it's also a military alliance,
and that's the way Moscow has to look at it.
So their military exercises since about 2013 have been postulated on a NATO invasion of the
near abroad, and even a NATO invasion of Russia proper. So this is the way they do their
military exercises. Clearly they're not doing that because they think spending all that money
on that preposterous possible situation is just that: preposterous. They think it's a
probability, or at least a possibility.
So we're giving them the incentive to do this. And to fight over Ukraine–you remember
the old expression "Who would die for Danzig?" I keep asking myself, if Americans really were
asked to fulfill Article 5 of the NATO treaty for a place like Tbilisi, or even a place like
Riga, or any of those countries we've now expanded NATO into or proposed expanding NATO into,
like Ukraine, what would Americans say when they were told that full conscription was in
process, full mobilization was in process, war taxes are going to be levied, and we're going to
war for a city you can't even pronounce and couldn't find on a map? That's what we're talking
about. And oh, by the way, Russia is generally speaking cheek and jowl with that city, whereas
we're ten thousand miles away.
GREG WILPERT: All right. Well, we're going to leave it there for now. I was speaking
to Larry Wilkerson, Distinguished Professor at the College of William and Mary. Thanks again,
Larry, for having joined us today.
LARRY WILKERSON: Thanks for having me on.
GREG WILPERT: And thank you for joining The Real News Network. If you like Real News
Network stories such as this one, please keep in mind that we've started our winter fundraiser
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The US has had the "Monroe Doctrine" for two centuries now. I think Russia views Ukraine
as within its own "Monroe Doctrine" zone.
While, I would not wish the Russian government on anybody I know, the same can be said for
many CIA-backed governments over the past 65 years, including many in Central America where
the current migrant caravan is coming from. The Ukrainian government is not a bed of roses
either.
This is a pretty sticky situation with a lot of pride on the Russian side that is in
play.
Well, I like Larry Wilkerson generally, but shouldn't we always be reminding ourselves of
the context of Western aggression in which the Ukrainian/Russian drama is playing out? That
would be including the broken promise to refuse NATO membership to former Warsaw Pact
countries if Russia agreed to accept German reunification, the American-sponsored regime
change coup in Kiev of Feb. 'f4, and the ethnic cleansing that followed in Eastern Ukraine at
the hands of literal Ukrainian Neo-Nazis who honor Stepan Bandera?
Bandera wasn't a nazi per se. Bandera was a fanatical Ukrainian nationalist, who was happy
to ally with anyone to fight Soviet Russia (and Poles). He was even for a time in a Nazi
concentration camp with the intention to be liquidated. UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), which
emerged from Bandera-led Organization of Ukrainian Nationalist, were Ukrainian nationalistic
partisans, who fought Germans (once it was clear that they would not creat a Ukrainian state)
and Soviets alike (and Poles).
He was a convenient person for Soviet Russia to paint as a Nazi, because otherwise they
would have to acknowledge strong nationalistic feelings in Ukraine, which would imply that it
wasn't happy to be part of the Soviet Union. Which just wasn't on. It was supposed to be one
happy family.
Before commenting on Ukraine, I recommend one studies the history of it, from original
Kiev Russ via Polish-Lithuanian Duchy and subsequent partitions, to what was happening there
in 1930 (although reading on the Soviet induced famine really requries guts – but its
crucial in understanding of the ethnic composition of the current Eastern Ukraine), WW2 and
immediately post WW2.
Most people have an idea of the problems Balkans suffer as great powers rolled this and
that way, but Ukraine has not dissimilar unhappy history. Which does not excuse it –
but may stop people talking total nonsense and buying propaganda as truth.
Although Bandera and his followers would later try to paint the alliance with the Third
Reich as no more than "tactical," an attempt to pit one totalitarian state against another,
it was in fact deep-rooted and ideological. Bandera envisioned the Ukraine as a classic
one-party state with himself in the role of führer, or providnyk, and expected that a
new Ukraine would take its place under the Nazi umbrella, much as Jozef Tiso's new fascist
regime had in Slovakia or Ante Pavelić's in Croatia.
In some sense, you're right about his not being a nazi. He was, in fact, far worse than
German nazis, who put him under a house arrest. "Bandera remains a highly controversial
figure today in Ukraine, with some hailing him as a liberator who fought both the Soviets and
the Nazis, while trying to establish an independent Ukraine, while others consider him to be
a Nazi collaborator and a war criminal, who was, together with his followers, largely
responsible for the Volhynian genocide and partially for the Holocaust in Ukraine." And that
is just Wikipedia.
When your followers commit atrocities that make even German nazis blush – what exactly
are you?
Good to recommend studying history! And when one does, one learns that there was no such
thing as Ukraine(a), until Lenin and Stalin spliced it together from assorted parts of the
czarist empire: the western part (which was under Poland/Litva, Habsburgs, and taken over
Poland again); the centre (ancient Kievskaja Rus); and the eastern part (which was Russian
Novorosija). They were also, in part, concerned about balancing the ratio of workers and
peasants on this newly formed territory. U. had its own seat at the UN – a ploy by
those pesky Russkies to increase the strength of the socialist bloc.
Under the USSR, U. was perhaps the most prosperous republic, highly developed and productive.
How far it has fallen since 1991 is worse than a Greek tragedy.
Unmentioned are Nordstream, Nordstream II, Southstream (this year, 2018,Bulgaria proposed
restarting the Southstream construction project) and Turkish Stream. Southstream maps through
Ukraine. Turkish Stream maps through Turkey and the Black Sea & Azov Sea.
adding: the Southstream project is now mapped to go through Bulgaria, immediately north of
Ukraine, for obvious reasons. Both routes require crossing the Black Sea.
(tin foil hat time:
a shooting war in the Black Sea might shut gas pipeline projects down.
a shooting war in the Black Sea/Balkans will play hell with the Eurozone and it's reliance
on Russian gas for winter heating at a reasonable price and reliable delivery.
a shooting war in the Black Sea/Balkans will play hell with the Eurozone's cohesion and
with NATO's cohesion, as if there aren't already enough problems with the Eurozone's
cohesion.
NATO alliance to thwart Russian military aggression is one thing; NATO alliance to force
purchase of US products (gas, in this case) to the detriment of European NATO members is
something else.
Purely anecdotal,
Last week a Ukrainian waitress who had been just back to visit family told me that she could
not believe the amount of US military in Ukraine. She said that people felt that "something
was going to happen". Sorry I couldn't get more details.
Could be pretty subjective if her parents lived next to one of the training ranges.
I wonder if this is in the hundreds or thousands.
For example, the "Clear Sky" depicted as "huge" happened earlier this month.
"Clear Sky brought together nearly 1,000 soldiers and airmen from nine partner nations,
including Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and the United
Kingdom."
Imagine a Russian "combat training post" of brigade size in, say, Quebec, maybe teaching
the separatists there the fine points of maneuver-and-fire and hand to hand combat and how to
conduct war in an urban area and how to use the weapons the goddam Rooskies would be shipping
to them, and spreading the Gospel of Putinism amongst the population there to assist said
Separatists to achieve their goal of, you know, separation. Not the best analogy, of course,
given the Ukraine-Russia geography and the presence of "NATO" forces of all kinds on as much
of the periphery of Russia as or War Leaders and Sneaky Petes have been able to manage, but
might be worth a thought.
Yaas, let us continue with the fear-uncertainty-doubt support of the Neocon Narrative and
whatever Great Game BS the CIA and US Global Network-Centric Battlespace Management have up
their dirty sleeves for that part of the world. On the way to Full Spectrum Dominance, of
course. Because that is the Manifest Destiny of We The People, new?
Hey, business as usual, and it's killing not only retail quantities of people in many
lands, but the whole living part of the planet -- albeit at a pace that the mopes can hardly
notice, among all the other claims on their attention and lives. Because that's what the
people who make and sell and deploy and create "doctrines" for the use of and know how to run
a regime change know how to do, right?
Excuse me, but what is a US military training range doing in Ukraine? How would US like it
if a Russian range were established in Sonora or Coahuila? And if a tourist notices it, don't
you think Russians are painfully aware of the situation? But they should just accept it, as
US/Nato creep ever closer to the Russian border. The amount of hypocrisy seems boundless
Wilkerson is often correct, but all those comments about Putin poking the the eye of the US
if just plain gibberish. The Russians did not start this one.
For the past two months, Eastern European media have been reporting on large US Army troop
movements through their countries heading to Ukraine. Trains after trains full of tanks and
other equipment.
Poroshenko got his martial law, but for only 30 days. It will not cover Ukraine entirely,
but only regions subject to "Russian aggression," including Vinnytsia, Luhansk, Mykolayiv,
Odesa, Sumy, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Kherson, Sea of Azov. Well, just about any region that voted
for former President Viktor Yanukovych.
The Lviv region certainly isn't covered under martial law. Even though they're rabid
Russophobes, I suspect that the nationalist Svoboda Party and the white supremacist Right
Sektor would've put on their paranoid tin-foil-hats and figured that Poroshenko was going to
use martial law to go after them. If Poroshenko had gotten what he wanted then there might
have been an internal insurrection and possibly Poroshenko hanging from a lamp post (or on
the lam with his frenemy, Mikheil Saakashvili, former president of Georgia & former
governor of Odesa region).
I'm waiting for NSA Bolton or SecState Pompeo to claim that Poroshenko made a
miscalculation. Isn't that approximately what former SecState Condoleezza Rice said about
Saakashvili's shelling of Russian peace keeping troops in South Ossetia, Georgia? So if Poroshenko's aim was internal politics, it was one big belly-flop.
Poroshenko got his martial law, but for only 30 days. It will not cover Ukraine
entirely, but only regions subject to "Russian aggression," including Vinnytsia, Luhansk,
Mykolayiv, Odesa, Sumy, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Kherson, Sea of Azov. Well, just about any
region that voted for former President Viktor Yanukovych.
Right, most of those regions were bases of support for the pro-Moscow Party of Regions.
This is simply broadcasting an intention to commit election fraud. The declaration of martial
law is a means to an end.
It kinda seems like a dubious proposition to think that anybody in Kiev or Washington
wouldn't anticipate the Russian response when they poked the Bear. So I'm not convinced that
Poroshenko flopped.
Just purely legally, the Ukraina and Russia had 2003 treaty with Russia on unimpeded
access to Azov sea (for both parties). That was unchallenged until now – when Ukraine
tried to send naval vessels there, not just civilian. I believe they provided an upfront
note. Note that Ukraine still has a non-trivial chunk of coastline in Azov sea, and as such
has legal right to send its vessels there – especially if they give substantial
warning.
Russian bridge between Kerch and Crimea blocks largest ships from Mariupol, which is an
important export port for Ukraine.
On the other hand, it appears that some of the crew on the Ukrainian vessels were from
Ukrainian secret service, one wonders why.
No, they did not provide an up front note, that's the entire point of controversy. By
now
* FSB published captured orders to cross the straights *stealthily*
* FSB published interviews with sailors, who confirm this
* The radio conversations between Russians and Ukrainian ships are out, and Russians keep
saying "back off and file your request properly, just like you did last time"
* About a month ago two Ukrainian navy ships did file correctly, and passed with no
problems
Under current rules you have to file your request 48 hours in advance, take a pilot to
pass under the bridge, and pass at assigned time in transit queue
As for the 'attacks' the other day, the Guardian of all outlets explains: "Since the
completion of the bridge over the Kerch strait, Moscow has demanded that Ukrainian ships not
only give notice of their intention to transit the strait but request permission, a change
that Kiev has rejected. According to western diplomats, the dispatch of the three ships was
intended to assert freedom of navigation.."
Sure, you can claim that Russia has no right to ask Ukraine to ask for permission to
the Sea of Azov, but then Kiev should have protested that demand, not send three armed
vessels to ignore the demand and sail through anyway. That is called provocation.
And Ukraine provoking Russia is a bad idea. Unless you're NATO, and you want Ukraine as
a member. And unless you're the chocolate billionaire who took over the government and now
has an approval rating in the single digits with elections coming up in March. Question: how
much chocolate do Ukrainians eat?
Russia just spent several billions on a combined highway – railway bridge over the
Kerch strait. That bridge relieves the threat of siege by Ukraine (and not incidentally is
reducing the cost of living in Ukraine and increasing tourism adding to the sense of economic
vitality that makes accession to Russia popular locally). But, of course, if Ukraine can
routinely route warships and tugs thru the strait under the bridge, without so much as a
by-the-by to Russia, that is itself an important threat to Russia's hold on Crimea.
.
These are realist and economic not legal considerations. But, it is an important aspect of
the context of political context underneath the narrative of who did what to whom when.
Crimea used to be one of highest income provinces of Ukraine and then overnight it became one
of the poorest in European Russia, which is in a good position to give Crimea prosperity and
income growth. There is plenty of cause for dissatisfaction with Russia, particularly among
the Crimean Tartars whose official leader is now a Ukrainian politician. But, absent war, the
Russians are likely to hold on to Crimea with the somewhat grudging approval of the vast
majority of residents.
The Crimean Khanate, a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire, succeeded the Golden Horde
and lasted from 1449 to 1783.[33] In 1571, the Crimean Tatars attacked and sacked Moscow,
burning everything but the Kremlin.[34] Until the late 18th century, Crimean Tatars
maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire, exporting about 2 million slaves
from Russia and Ukraine over the period 1500–1700.[35]
And a lot more at Wikipedia's Crimea article.
Do Crimean Tartars dream of independence for themselves?
They may dream, but ain't gonna happen. OTOH, they are getting a marvelous new, grand
mosque in Simferopol. Generally, relations between Russians and Tatars in Crimea are
cordial.
Yes, it will be hard for one reason, if not more – most of the Crimean Tartars are
in Turkey today (millions of them there, while there are only about 250,000 in Crimea, since
the inhumane and lawless removal by the USSR in 1944.)
Inhumane – may be in the eye of the beholder. The reason they were moved was because
they sided with the Gerrman nazis during WWII and actively supported them against the Russian
population. Among their oh-so-humane acts was betraying the locations of groups that
organized to fight against the nazis. They hid in the mountains, and the ever-humane Tatars
disclosed it all to the Germans.
Given that they spent centuries raiding what are today Ukrainian and Russian territories and
poaching the population to sell people into slavery, I am puzzled they tolerate them at all.
Half of Stambul is blonde and blue-eyed as a result of those raids. Better to know a bit of
history then repeat debunked factoids.
I was reading stories back in 2014 how the Turks gathered some of their Jihadist fighters
from Syria and were going to fly them into Crimea on two airliners to come down hard on
separatists with the Muslim Tatars as a base for them. If true, then this would explain why
the Russians shut down the airport in Crimea as a priority when they made their move.
Probably have to wait years more before the real story comes out about those times.
What a bunch of f*cktards, all of them (gov't critters). Normal people in Ukraine, Poland,
Russia, etc just want to get on with a normal life. But no, we have to have ideologies and
subterfuge. Gov't should just be a service provided and paid for by our taxes. Nothing else.
And they should learn the meaning of the words: cooperate, compromise, civility for the
benefit of their citizens.
Several commentators were predicting that Porky Porosh would resort to one or more
provocations in the run up to the election – mainly on account of his garnering no more
than 8-9% popularity rating. There really is not too much mystery to this whole affair.
So I was reading how Poroshenko was briefing Pompeo on progress in trying to get martial
law passed (
https://www.fort-russ.com/2018/11/mps-block-poroshenko-he-flees-from-the-rada-to-his-facebook-page-phones-pompeo/
) and then I began to wonder. The Ukrainian elections are on 29th March next year so even if
Poroshenko got his full 60 days of martial law, there was still a long gap until the
elections itself so why the odd timing.
Then the penny dropped. There is the G-20 Buenos Aires summit starting soon and Putin is
supposed to be meeting Trump while there. Trump has not fallen in line with people like Nikki
Halley but said: "We do not like what's happening, either way, we don't like what's happening
and hopefully it will get straightened out." So he is not onboard with another raft of
sanctions nor refusing not to meet Putin. Was this all then an attempt to spike that meeting
hence the early timing?
There must be a period of 3-4 months between the end of martial law and elections for
candidate registration, agitation etc. For elections to happen on time it must end in early
January 2019
Once martial law is in place, the president can prolong it indefinitely with no legal
limitations. Unhappiness of western backers might be a practical constraint, but that can be
mitigated through more provocations. So expect something happening in a month –
parliament initially only authorized 30 days, and Poroshenko needs to create a reason to
prolong
If Mexico formed an alliance with Russia, how would the US respond? (Cuban missile
crisis?) From the point of view of traditional great power politics, it's that simple. Monroe
Doctrine and all that. Russia has been fighting the West in this area from at least 1610.
We're poking around their neighborhood and no great power can tolerate such arrogance.
And recall another recent "incident," January 2016, those Mope Marines on "riverine
command boats" somehow "straying into Iranian waters' near the military base on Farsi Island.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_U.S.–Iran_naval_incident
First, "mechanical failure," then "navigation error," then punishment of 9 of the 10 Marines
for dereliction or something. And there was, drum roll, a Command Investigation, that found
mumble mumble grunt sigh Could not have been one of those probing operations that the Great
(sic) Powers do, or the Israel -ites, to check out the capabilities and responses and
electronic and "kinetic" equipage of "the enemy," by sending sacrificial mopes Into Harm's
Way, could it? Naaahh.
Even worse, if it was just Mope Gyrenes demonstrating the actual incompetence in Warcraft
of Our World's Greatest Military, let's remember that there's 4,000 nuclear warheads on
sub-launched and land-based multiple warhead ICBMs and in the bomb bays of the "ready line"
bombers and attack aircraft of "NATO," and thousands more on the Evil Soviet
Russian side, and China with a couple hundred, and Yisrael with 200 to 600 more. All poised
for quick if not instantaneous launch, increasingly under control of Advanced Artificial
Intelligence Genius Command and Control Systems ™,
https://thebulletin.org/landing_article/the-promise-and-peril-of-military-applications-of-artificial-intelligence/
. All waiting, impatiently in many cases, especially the Revelationist Xtian Air Farce
officers and enlisted men, for action, I might add. Waiting for some little 'incident" like
the ginned-up Ukraine idiocy or that oopsie by the Jarheads in January 2016 to trigger the
cascade of interlocking events and doctrines and directives and Operational Plans that means
I can stop churning my guts over the environment my child and grandchildren would otherwise
find themselves having to try to survive in
Ignore the day-to-day moves in the markets, in the big picture, some MAJOR is happening
namely, that the Everything Bubble is bursting.
By creating a bubble in sovereign bonds, the bedrock of the current financial system,
Central Banks created a bubble in EVERYTHING. After all, if the risk-free rate of return is at
FAKE level based on Central Bank intervention ALL risk assets will eventually adjust to FAKE
levels.
This whole mess starting blowing up in February when we saw the bubble in passive investing/
shorting volatility start to blow up (some investment vehicles based on these strategies lost
85% in just three days).
The media and Wall Street swept that mess under the rug which allowed the contagion to start
spreading to other, more senior asset classes like corporate bonds.
The US Corporate bond market took 50 years to reach $3 trillion. It doubled that in the last
9 years, bringing it to its current level of $6 trillion.
This debt issuance was a DIRECT of result of the Fed's intervention in the bond markets.
With the weakest recovery on record, US corporations experienced little organic growth. As a
result, many of them resorted to financial engineering through which they issued debt and then
used the proceeds to buyback shares.
This:
Juiced their Earnings Per Share (the same earnings, spread over fewer shares= better
EPS).
Provided the stock market with a steady stream of buyers, which
Lead to higher options-based compensation for executives.
If you think this sounds a lot like a Ponzi scheme that relies on a bubble in corporate
debt, you're correct. And that Ponzi scheme is now blowing up. The question now is
how bad will it get?"
VERY bad.
The IMF estimates about 20% of U.S. corporate assets could be at risk of default if
rates rise – some are in the energy sector but it also includes companies in real
estate and utilities. Exchange-traded funds that buy junk bonds, like iShares iBoxx $
High Yield Corporate Bond Fund (HYG) and the SPDR Barclays Capital High Yield Bond ETF (JNK),
could be among the most vulnerable if credit risks rise. iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade
Corporate Bond ETF (LQD) could also suffer.
Source: Barron's
With a $6 trillion market, a 20% default rate would mean some $1.2 trillion in corporate
debt blowing up: an amount roughly equal to Spain's GDP .
This process is officially underway.
Credit Markets Are Bracing for Something Bad
Cracks in corporate debt lead market commentary.
the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Corporate Bond Index losing more than 3.5 percent and on
track for its worst year since 2008.
Source: Bloomberg
Indeed, the chart for US corporate junk bonds is downright UGLY.
This is just the beginning. As contagion spreads we expect more and more junior debt
instruments to default culminating in full-scale sovereign debt defaults in the developed world
(Europe comes to mind).
This will coincide with a stock market crash that will make 2008 look like a picnic.
Again, the markets are going to CRASH. The time to prepare is now BEFORE this happens.
On that note we just published a 21-page investment report titled Stock Market Crash
Survival Guide .
In it, we outline precisely how the crash will unfold as well as which investments will
perform best during a stock market crash.
Today is the last day this report will be available to the public. We extended the deadline
into the weekend based on last week's action, but this is IT no more extensions.
Update 4 : A UN Security Council meeting has been called for 11am
tomorrow after Ukraine incident with Russia, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said in a
tweet.
* * *
Update 3 : according to media reports, on Monday Ukraine's president will propose imposing
military law, amid the ongoing crisis with Russia.
* * *
Update 2: This is the moment when the escalating crisis started...
* * *
Update 1: Following reports from the Ukraine navy that Russian ships had fired on Ukraine
vessels near the Kerch Strait, Ukraine accused Moscow of also illegally seizing three of its
naval ships - the "Berdyansʹk" and "Nikopolʹ" Gurza-class small armored artillery
boats and a raid tug A-947 "Jani Kapu" - off Crimea on Sunday after opening fire on them, a
charge that if confirmed could ignite a dangerous new crisis between the two countries.
As reported earlier, Russia did not immediately respond to the allegation, but Russian news
agencies cited the FSB security service as saying it had incontrovertible proof that Ukraine
had orchestrated what it called "a provocation" and would make its evidence public soon.
According to media reports, Russia said it has "impounded" three Ukrainian naval ships after
they crossed the border with Russia
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko immediately called a meeting with his top
military and security chiefs to discuss the situation.
Separately, the EU has urged both sides to rapidly de-escalate the tense situation at the
Kerch strait:
*EU URGES UKRAINE, RUSSIA TO DE-ESCALATE SITUATION AT STRAIT
*UKRAINE, RUSSIA SHOULD ACT W/ `UTMOST RESTRAINT', EU SAYS
*EU URGES RUSSIA TO RESTORE FREEDOM OF PASSAGE AT KERCH STRAIT
NATO has confirmed it is "closely monitoring" developments and is calling for "restraint and
de-escalation"...
" NATO is closely monitoring developments in the Azov Sea and the Kerch Strait, and we are
in contact with the Ukrainian authorities. We call for restraint and de-escalation.
NATO fully supports Ukraine's sovereignty and its territorial integrity, including its
navigational rights in its territorial waters. We call on Russia to ensure unhindered access
to Ukrainian ports in the Azov Sea, in accordance with international law.
At the Brussels Summit in July, NATO leaders expressed their support to Ukraine, and made
clear that Russia's ongoing militarisation of Crimea, the Black Sea, and the Azov Sea pose
further threats to Ukraine's independence and undermines the stability of the broader region.
"
Finally, Ukraine has called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting over 'Russian
aggression' while Ukraine's secretary for national security, Oleksander Turchynov, accused
Russia of engaging in an act of war: "We heard reports on incident and have concluded that it
was an act of war by Russian Federation against Ukraine"
* * *
As we detailed earlier, the Ukrainian navy has accused Russia of opening fire on some of its
ships in the Black Sea, striking one vessel, and wounding a crew member.
In a statement on its Facebook page , the Ukrainian navy said the
Russian military vessels opened fire on Ukrainian warships after they had left the 12-mile zone
near the Kerch Strait, leaving one man wounded, and one Ukrainian vessel damaged and
immobilized, adding that Russian warships "shoot to kill."
Ukraine accused a Russian coastguard vessel, named the Don, of ramming one of its tugboats
in "openly aggressive actions". The incident allegedly took place as three Ukrainian navy boats
- including two small warships - headed for the port of Mariupol in the Sea of Azov, an area of
heightened tensions between the countries.
Russia accused Ukraine of illegally entering the area and deliberately provoking a
conflict.
Sky News reports that the Ukrainian president has called an emergency session of his war
cabinet in response to the incident.
"Today's dangerous events in the Azov Sea testify that a new front of [Russian] aggression
is open," Ukrainian foreign ministry spokeswoman Mariana Betsa said.
"Ukraine [is] calling now for emergency meeting of United Nations Security Council."
It comes after a day of rising tensions off the coast of Crimea, and especially around the
Kerch Strait, which separates Crimea from mainland Russia after Ukrainian vessels allegedly
violated the Russian border. The passage was blocked by a cargo ship and fighter jets were
scrambled.
According to RT , Russia has
stopped all navigation through the waterway using the cargo ship shown above. Videos from the
scene released by the Russian media show a large bulk freighter accompanied by two Russian
military boats standing under the arch of the Crimea Bridge and blocking the only passage
through the strait.
"The [Kerch] strait is closed for security reasons," the Director-General of the Crimean sea
ports, Aleksey Volkov, told TASS, confirming earlier media reports.
Russian Air Force Su-25 strike fighters were also scrambled to provide additional security
for the strait as the situation remains tense. The move came as five Ukrainian Navy ships had
been approaching the strait from two different sides.
According to RT, two Ukrainian artillery boats and a tugboat initially approached the strait
from the Black Sea while "undertaking dangerous maneuvers" and "defying the lawful orders of
the Russian border guards." Later, they were joined by two more military vessels that departed
from a Ukrainian Azov Sea port of Berdyansk sailing to the strait from the other side.
The Russian federal security agency FSB, which is responsible for maintaining the country's
borders, denounced the actions of the Ukrainian ships as a provocation, adding that they could
create a "conflict situation" in the region. According to the Russian media reports, the
Ukrainian vessels are still sailing towards the strait, ignoring the warnings of the Russian
border guards.
According to
Reuters , a bilateral treaty gives both countries the right to use the sea, which lies
between them and is linked by the narrow Kerch Strait to the Black Sea. Moscow is able to
control access between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea after it built a bridge that straddles
the Kerch Strait between Crimea and southern Russia.
Reuters adds that tensions surfaced on Sunday after Russia tried to intercept three
Ukrainian ships -- two small armored artillery vessels and a tug boat -- in the Black Sea,
accusing them of illegally entering Russian territorial waters.
The Ukrainian navy said a Russian border guard vessel had rammed the tug boat, damaging it
in an incident it said showed Russia was behaving aggressively and illegally. It said its
vessels had every right to be where they were and that the ships had been en route from the
Black Sea port of Odessa to Mariupol, a journey that requires them to go through the Kerch
Strait.
Meanwhile, Russia's border guard service accused Ukraine of not informing it in advance of
the journey, something Kiev denied, and said the Ukrainian ships had been maneuvering
dangerously and ignoring its instructions with the aim of stirring up tensions.
It pledged to end to what it described as Ukraine's "provocative actions", while Russian
politicians lined up to denounce Kiev, saying the incident looked like a calculated attempt by
President Petro Poroshenko to increase his popularity ahead of an election next year. Ukraine's
foreign ministry said in a statement it wanted a clear response to the incident from the
international community.
"Russia's provocative actions in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov have crossed the line and
become aggressive," it said. "Russian ships have violated our freedom of maritime navigation
and unlawfully used force against Ukrainian naval ships."
Both countries have accused each other of harassing each other's shipping in Sea of Azov in
the past and the U.S. State Department in August said Russia's actions looked designed to
destabilize Ukraine, which has two major industrial ports there.
It is clear that Poroshenko wants to stay in power. And this is one of the ways to increase Poroshenko chances on forthcoming
elections. It is simultaneously increase chances for him to land in jail as Timoshenko does not looks kindly on such blatant
attempts to hijack elections.
Unwilling to simply accept Poroshenko's claims that he had heard reliable whispers about an
imminent Russian invasion, opposition figures pressed Poroshenko on his reasoning for the
emergency measures, and ultimately succeeded in forcing him to water down the proposal. But
even before Poroshenko's decree won the approval of lawmakers, the Ukrainian president had
already started deploying troops into the streets of his country.
Now in a state of martial law, Ukraine has called up its reservists and deployed all
available troops to join the mobilization. Initially expected to last for two months,
Poroshenko revised his degree to avoid accusations that he would try to interfere in the
upcoming Ukrainian election. The decree passed by the Rada will leave martial law in effect for
30 days. The country has also started restricting travel for Russian nationals. NATO Commander
Jens Stoltenberg told the Associated Press that
Poroshenko had given his word that the order wouldn't interfere with the upcoming vote. The
conflict between the Ukraine and Russia exploded into life on Sunday
when Russian ships fired on two Ukrainian artillery ships and rammed a tugboat as the ships
traveled toward the Kerch Strait, which connects the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea. Russia's
mighty Black Sea fleet has taken the three ships and their crew into custody, and has so far
ignored calls to release the soldiers by the UN, European leaders and Poroshenko himself.
US officials criticized Russia for its "aggressive" defense of the Kerch Strait, which
Ukraine has a right to use according to a bilateral treaty. After Nikki Haley said during an
emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that Russia was making it "impossible" to have
normal relations with the US, Mike Pompeo said Russia's "aggressive action" was a "dangerous
escalation" and also "violates international law." He also advocated for Poroshenko and Russian
President Vladimir Putin to engage in direct talks. Russia says the ships disobeyed orders to
halt, and that Ukraine had failed to notify Russia of the ships' advance. Ukraine claims that
it did notify Russia, and that the incident is the result of "growing Russian aggression." Six
Ukrainian crewmen were injured in the Russian attack, which was the first act of violence
between the two nations since the annexation of Crimea.
Chief diplomats from both countries traded accusations of provocations and "deliberate
hostility."
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin tweeted that the dispute was not an accident and
that Russia had engaged in "deliberately planned hostilities," while Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov blamed Kiev for what he described as a "provocation," adding that "Ukraine had
undoubtedly hoped to get additional benefits from the situation, expecting the U.S. and
Europe to blindly take the provocateurs' side."
Poroshenko said the martial law was necessary because Ukraine was facing nothing short of a
all-out ground invasion.
Poroshenko said it was necessary because of intelligence about "a highly serious threat of
a ground operation against Ukraine." He did not elaborate.
"Martial law doesn't mean declaring a war," he said. "It is introduced with the sole
purpose of boosting Ukraine's defense in the light of a growing aggression from Russia."
But the president's plans to impose martial law throughout the country were rebuffed as the
opposition forced a compromise where troops will only be deployed in 10 border provinces. These
provinces share borders with Russia, Belarus and the Trans-Dniester, a pro-Moscow breakaway
region of Moldova.
Still, many remained skeptical. Opposition figures, including former President Yulia
Tymoshenko pointed out that the order would give soldiers broad latitude to do pretty much
whatever they want. Furthermore, Ukraine never called for martial law during the insurgency in
the east that erupted back in 2014, eventually leading to an armed conflict that killed more
than 10,000.
The approved measures included a partial mobilization and strengthening of air defenses.
It also contained vaguely worded steps such as "strengthening" anti-terrorism measures and
"information security" that could curtail certain rights and freedoms.
But Poroshenko also pledged to respect the rights of Ukrainian citizens.
[...]
Despite Poroshenko's vow to respect individual rights, opposition lawmaker and former
Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko warned before the vote that his proposal would lead to the
possible illegal searches, invasion of privacy and curtailing of free speech.
"This means they will be breaking into the houses of Ukrainians and not those of the
aggressor nation," noted Tymoshenko, who is leading in various opinion polls. "They will be
prying into personal mail, family affairs ... In fact, everything that is written here is a
destruction of the lives of Ukrainians."
Poroshenko's call also outraged far-right groups in Ukraine that have advocated severing
diplomatic ties with Russia. Hundreds of protesters from the National Corps party waved
flares in the snowy streets of Kiev outside parliament and accused the president of using
martial law to his own ends.
But Poroshenko insisted it was necessary because what happened in the Kerch Strait between
Crimea and the Russian mainland "was no accident," adding that "this was not the culmination
of it yet."
His critics reacted to his call for martial law with suspicion, wondering why Sunday's
incident merited such a response. With his approval ratings in free fall following a series of
corruption scandals, Poroshenko's enemies worry that the incident may have been stage-managed
to give the president an excuse to crack down on dissent and free movement ahead of the
vote.
And then there is Yulia Tymoshenko who is doing well in the polls. That crazy bitch said
that the separatists in the East should be nuked. Ukraine gave up on its nukes though.
Wise lesson for the West here: All politicians in Eastern Europe -whatever country and
whatever party- are sick psychopaths. Not that ours are any better. Yet, people keep voting
for them.
Perhaps but Putin has more interest to keep the situation as it is. Russian gas needs to
keep flowing into Europe. Russia needs that cash cow that the US is trying to disrupt .
One of my Russian mates sent me a link to a Russian news website and according to the
iskra-news.info last night ,Ukrainian gold reserves (40 sealed boxes) were loaded on an
unidentified transport aircraft in Kiev's Borispol airport. The plane took off
immediately.
So my guess is, that is if indeed this report is true it either means the new ruling elite
have stolen the gold bullion or perhaps their is a legitimate fear of the Russians taking
possession of this bullion, whatever the facts, it still looks very shady indeed.
Conclusion
Official narrative: gold bullion is going to USA (maybe to reassure the Germans their gold
is in safe hands, after all the despite numerous requests from the German Govt The Feds have
not given access for them to even view their Gold Bullion) . Real narrative: probably to
Switzerland where it is divided between Yulia Tymoshenko and her cronies.
Once again I simply implore one ACTUAL journalist to report on what's happening there.
Beside the mercenary sociopaths that took in millions off the first round of
"freedom".
Russia is a hurt and vulnerable nation.
The US has ginormous truth issues never to be resolved
Hence the Goths and Barbarians will agree that once more......Rome is burning
Btw, not defending Russia and as convoluted as it sounds my point is truth has been lost
even in this Instagram milli-second of info slop offering by those who are not standing in
the snow covered mud of unbiased reality
The last time Poroshenko, the US man in Ukraine (OU) as he was referred to in US
diplomatic cables from 2006 and exposed by Wkikleads, got the Ukes into a war with the
Eastern oblasts, a lot of Ukrainians got killed.
Poor buggers were crushed and they should never have been there. The US / McCain et al
used them as cannon fodder.
The Uke military had rotted after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and that was largely
because their corrupt leaders never gave any consideration to going to war against anyone,
other than political war against each other to determine who got the biggest slice from
plundering the state.
The plundering continues, only now there is scant left for the general population.
After the US putsch, income per capita dropped by approx a third, cost of living doubled
and tax collection was hampered even more than before because the average Uke had no money
left to pay taxes so they went underground. and paid off local officials just to let them
make a living doing whatever the could..
"Why would Russia want Ukraine in the first place?".
Lets see.....so they can fund an addition 50 million lazy ***** and pick up the tab for 25
million fat, diabetes ridden BROKE Ukrainian pensioners?
So Russia can sink tens of billions into Ukraine's bankrupt healthcare system?
Where is the upside for Russia?
Putin can add, he is not in the least bit interested in ruling Ukraine, he'd just as well
seal the ******* boarder and be done with it, in fact its what he is doing. Once those
alternate pipe lines are in there will be a 5,000 km fence and the Ukes can freeze in the
dark on their own.
Russia isn't interested in taking any country, the countries are warming up to Russia and
China. This is pissing off mushroom head and band of gypsies in DC. The failing empire
looking for a war.
"Please stop using incorrect US government propaganda language in your
articles."
US Intel cant remember everything remember they have an agenda to push. It might be a
truther website for the people posting but it is also a intel gathering site to keep abreast
of how some of the sheeple really feel. What better way to get the sheeple to open up?
After Democratic party was co-opted by neoliberals there is no way back. And since Obama the trend of Democratic Party is
toward strengthening the wing of CIA-democratic notthe wing of the party friendly to workers. Bought by Wall Street leadership is
uncable of intruting any change that undermine thier current neoliberal platform. that's why they criminally derailed Sanders.
Notable quotes:
"... When you think about the issue of how exactly a clean-energy jobs program would address the elephant in the room of private accumulation and how such a program, under capitalism, would be able to pay living wages to the people put to work under it, it exposes how non threatening these Green New Deals actually are to capitalism. ..."
"... To quote Trotsky, "These people are capable of and ready for anything!" ..."
"... "Any serious measures to stop global warming, let alone assure a job and livable wage to everyone, would require a massive redistribution of wealth and the reallocation of trillions currently spent on US imperialism's neo-colonial wars abroad." ..."
"... "It includes various left-sounding rhetoric, but is entirely directed to and dependent upon the Democratic Party." ..."
"... "And again and again, in the name of "practicality," the most unrealistic and impractical policy is promoted -- supporting a party that represents the class that is oppressing and exploiting you! The result is precisely the disastrous situation working people and youth face today -- falling wages, no job security, growing repression and the mounting threat of world war." - New York Times tries to shame "disillusioned young voters" into supporting the Democrats ..."
"... It is an illusion that technical innovation within the capitalist system will magically fundamentally resolve the material problems produced by capitalism. But the inconvenient facts are entirely ignored by the corporate shills in the DSA and the whole lot of establishment politicians, who prefer to indulge their addiction to wealth and power with delusions of grandeur, technological utopianism, and other figments that serve the needs of their class. ..."
"... First it was Obama with his phoney "hope and change" that lured young voters to the Dumbicrats and now it's Ocacia Cortez promising a "green deal" in order to herd them back into the Democratic party--a total fraud of course--totally obvious! ..."
"... from Greenwald: The Democratic Party's deceitful game https://www.salon.com/2010/... ..."
they literally ripped this out of the 2016 Green Party platform. Jill Stein spoke repeatedly
about the same exact kind of Green New Deal, a full-employment, transition-to-100%-renewables
program that would supposedly solve all the world's problems.
When you think about the issue of how exactly a clean-energy jobs program would address
the elephant in the room of private accumulation and how such a program, under capitalism,
would be able to pay living wages to the people put to work under it, it exposes how non
threatening these Green New Deals actually are to capitalism.
In 2016, when the Greens made
this their central economic policy proposal, the Democrats responded by calling that platform
irresponsible and dangerous ("even if it's a good idea, you can't actually vote for a
non-two-party candidate!"). Why would they suddenly find a green new deal appealing now
except for its true purpose: left cover for the very system destroying the planet.
To quote
Trotsky, "These people are capable of and ready for anything!"
"Any serious measures to stop global warming, let alone assure a job and livable wage to
everyone, would require a massive redistribution of wealth and the reallocation of trillions
currently spent on US imperialism's neo-colonial wars abroad."
Their political position not only lacks seriousness, unserious is their political
position.
"It includes various left-sounding rhetoric, but is entirely directed to and dependent
upon the Democratic Party."
For subjective-idealists, what you want to believe, think and feel is just so much more
convincing than objective reality. Especially when it covers over single-minded class
interests at play.
"And again and again, in the name of "practicality," the most unrealistic and impractical
policy is promoted -- supporting a party that represents the class that is oppressing and
exploiting you! The result is precisely the disastrous situation working people and youth
face today -- falling wages, no job security, growing repression and the mounting threat of
world war." - New York Times tries to shame "disillusioned young voters" into supporting
the Democrats
It is an illusion that technical innovation within the capitalist system will magically
fundamentally resolve the material problems produced by capitalism. But the inconvenient
facts are entirely ignored by the corporate shills in the DSA and the whole lot of
establishment politicians, who prefer to indulge their addiction to wealth and power with
delusions of grandeur, technological utopianism, and other figments that serve the needs of
their class.
First it was Obama with his phoney "hope and change" that lured young voters to the
Dumbicrats and now it's Ocacia Cortez promising a "green deal" in order to herd them back
into the Democratic party--a total fraud of course--totally obvious!
Only an International Socialist program led by Workers can truly lead a "green revolution" by
expropriating the billionaire oil barons of their capital and redirecting that wealth into
the socialist reconstruction of the entire economy.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal" is a nice laugh. Really, it sure is funny hearing
these lies given any credence at all. This showmanship belongs in a fantasy book, not in real
life. The Democratic Party as a force for good social change Now that's a laugh!
Lies, empty promises, meaningless tautologies and morality plays, qualified and conditional
declarations to be backpedalled pending appropriate political expediencies, devoid any
practical content that is what AOC, card carrying member of DSA, and in fact young energetic
political apparatchik of calcified political body of Dems establishment, duty engulfs. And
working for socialist revolution is no one of them.
What kind of socialist would reject socialist revolution, class struggle and class
emancipation and choose, as a suppose socialist path, accommodation with oligarchic ruling
elite via political, not revolutionary process that would have necessarily overthrown ruling
elite.
What socialist would acquiesce to legalized exploitation of people for profit, legalized
greed and inequality and would negotiate away fundamental principle of egalitarianism and
working people self rule?
Only National Socialist would; and that is exactly what AOC campaign turned out to be all
about.
National Socialism with imperial flavor is her affiliation and what her praises for
Pelosi, wife of a billionaire and dead warmonger McCain proved.
Now she is peddling magical thinking about global change and plunge herself into falacy of
entrepreneurship, Market solution to the very problem that the market solutions were designed
to create and aggravate namely horrific inequality that is robbing people from their own
opportunities to mitigate devastating effects of global change.
The insidiousness of phony socialists expresses itself in the fact that they lie that any
social problem can be fixed by current of future technical means, namely via so called
technological revolution instead by socialist revolution they deem unnecessary or
detrimental.
The technical means for achieving socialism has existed since the late 19th century, with the
telegraph, the coal-powered factory, and modern fertilizer. The improvements since then have
only made socialism even more streamlined and efficient, if such technologies could only be
liberated from capital! The idea that "we need a new technological revolution just to achieve
socialism" reflects the indoctrination in capitalism by many "socialist" theorists because it
is only in capitalism where "technological growth" is essential simply to maintain the
system. It is only in capitalism (especially America, the most advanced capitalist nation,
and thus, the one where capitalism is actually closest towards total crisis) where the dogma
of a technological savior is most entrenched because America cannot offer any other kind of
palliative to the more literate and productive sections of its population. Religion will not
convince most and any attempt at a sociological or economic understanding would inevitably
prove the truth of socialism.
"... The original "New Deal," which included massive public works infrastructure projects, was introduced by Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s amid the Great Depression. Its purpose was to stave off a socialist revolution in America. It was a response to a militant upsurge of strikes and violent class battles, led by socialists who were inspired by the 1917 Russian Revolution ..."
"... Since the 2008 crash, first under Bush and Obama, and now Trump, the ruling elites have pursued a single-minded policy of enriching the wealthy, through free credit, corporate bailouts and tax cuts, while slashing spending on social services. ..."
"... To claim as does Ocasio-Cortez that American capitalism can provide a new "New Deal," of a green or any other variety, is to pfile:///F:/Private_html/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Neoliberalism/Historyromote an obvious political fiction." ..."
"The original "New Deal," which included massive public works infrastructure projects,
was introduced by Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s amid the Great
Depression. Its purpose was to stave off a socialist revolution in America. It was a response
to a militant upsurge of strikes and violent class battles, led by socialists who were
inspired by the 1917 Russian Revolution that had occurred less than two decades before.
American capitalism could afford to make such concessions because of its economic
dominance. The past forty years have been characterized by the continued decline of American
capitalism on a world stage relative to its major rivals. The ruling class has responded to
this crisis with a social counterrevolution to claw back all gains won by workers. This has
been carried out under both Democratic and Republican administrations and with the assistance
of the trade unions.
Since the 2008 crash, first under Bush and Obama, and now Trump, the ruling elites have
pursued a single-minded policy of enriching the wealthy, through free credit, corporate
bailouts and tax cuts, while slashing spending on social services.
To claim as does Ocasio-Cortez that American capitalism can provide a new "New Deal," of a
green or any other variety, is to pfile:///F:/Private_html/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Neoliberalism/Historyromote an obvious political fiction."
Christine Blasey Ford Thanks America For $650,000 Payday, Hopes Life "Will Return To
Normal"
by Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/27/2018 - 17:30 171 SHARES
Amid the sound and fury of the disgusting antics of the Brett Kavanaugh SCOTUS nomination
process, one of the main defenses of Christine Balsey Ford's sudden recollection of an '80s
sexual assault was simply "...why would she lie... what's in it for her?"
Certainly, the forced publicity by Dianne Feinstein and public questioning guaranteed her 15
minutes of fame (and perhaps even more infamy if Kavanaugh's nomination had failed) but now, in
a statement thanking everyone who had supported her, Ford is "hopeful that our lives will
return to normal."
The full statement was posted to her GoFundMe page :
Words are not adequate to thank all of you who supported me since I came forward to tell
the Senate that I had been sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh. Your tremendous outpouring
of support and kind letters have made it possible for us to cope with the immeasurable
stress, particularly the disruption to our safety and privacy. Because of your support, I
feel hopeful that our lives will return to normal.
The funds you have sent through GoFundMe have been a godsend. Your donations have allowed
us to take reasonable steps to protect ourselves against frightening threats, including
physical protection and security for me and my family, and to enhance the security for our
home. We used your generous contributions to pay for a security service, which began on
September 19 and has recently begun to taper off; a home security system; housing and
security costs incurred in Washington DC, and local housing for part of the time we have been
displaced. Part of the time we have been able to stay with our security team in a residence
generously loaned to us.
With immense gratitude, I am closing this account to further contributions. All funds
unused after completion of security expenditures will be donated to organizations that
support trauma survivors. I am currently researching organizations where the funds can best
be used. We will use this space to let you know when that process is complete.
Although coming forward was terrifying, and caused disruption to our lives, I am grateful
to have had the opportunity to fulfill my civic duty. Having done so, I am in awe of the many
women and men who have written me to share similar life experiences, and now have bravely
shared their experience with friends and family, many for the first time. I send you my
heartfelt love and support.
I wish I could thank each and every one of you individually. Thank you.
Christine
Well one thing is for sure - she has almost 650 thousand reasons why life since
the accusations could be more comfortable...
Here's an interesting fact: Her immediate family (siblings and parents) wants nothing to
do with her. They refused to sign a petition of support created by "close family and
friends", they refused to make any supporting statements and they refused to show up to the
hearings.
Sorry doesn't seem like much money to me at all. Put family through all that for that
amount? Risk ones families welfare and safety for that amount and a bad name? One would have
to be a total idiot or crazy for that.
Wanders in, belches out a pack of lies, destroys an entire family's lives, tears a big
chunk out of the social fabric of the country, collects a huge payday and hits the beach for
the rest of her life, or at least the portion not dedicated to indoctrinating yound
minds.
She is at least as much of a Democrat as Obama ever was.
Disgusting female. Brett Kavanaugh and his family donated the gomfund me set up for his
family, to a charity for abused women.
Ford has a second go fund me which raised more, to,pay for legals, she has made a fortune,
has a 3 million plus home, and whatever she was given for this charade. And the abortion drug
company interest. Plus the google renting illegally events thru the second fromt door.
Kavanaugh has an ordinary car, a simple home worth 1.3 million and a debt of 860,000.
Always been an employee so never the big paycheck like Avenatti got.
volunteers for homeless. Plus the sports coaching for school, kids and lecturing...both no
more.
Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund XLE is down by 5.1% year to date. The fall could be
attributed to Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp CVX, the two largest U.S. oil companies which
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The energy sector has slumped 12% in the fourth quarter, majorly due to oil entering the
bear market. However, it has recovered a bit this month and is down nearly 0.5% (as of Nov 19).
Per Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at financial research company CFR, the sector
performs better in the rising rate and inflation scenario. Per CFRA, the energy sector has been
a better performing sector since World War 2 in comparison to consumer staples, healthcare and
utilities (read: Fed Meet Signals December Rate Hike: ETFs That Gained).
However, strengthening of the greenback could pose a threat to the sector. If the U.S.
dollar rallies, it will make buying dollar-denominated oil expensive in foreign currencies. The
greenback is likely to surge in the days ahead due to political and economic turbulence in
Europe. Euro has already shed nearly 5% against the greenback this year (read: Is the Uptrend
in Dollar ETFs Over?).
Given cheap valuations and strong earnings growth, investors could tap into the following
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XLE
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a High risk outlook.
Trump most probably will be a one time President... The American people will elect the next time another bullshit artist
but this time probably from Democratic Party..
Notable quotes:
"... I'll give the congressman all of that, especially ..."
"... When the economy is bad, nobody wants a bullsh*t artist in the White House. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... "He came to our community and said, 'Don't sell your house. These jobs are coming back,' " Green said. "We've seen nothing but job losses around here." ..."
"... What you can blame Trump for is exploiting the hopes of Rust Belt people by telling them that he could bring those jobs back. ..."
Part of the retrenchment is a response to a slowdown in new-car sales that has prompted automakers to slim their operations
and shed jobs. And earlier bets on smaller cars have had to be unwound as consumers have gravitated toward pickup trucks and sport-utility
vehicles in response to low gasoline prices.
In addition, automakers have paid a price for the trade battle that Mr. Trump set in motion. In June G.M. slashed its profit
outlook for the year because tariffs were driving up production costs, raising prices even on domestic steel. Rising interest
rates are also generating headwinds.
Ms. Barra said no single factor had prompted G.M.'s cutbacks, portraying them as a prudent trimming of sails. "We are taking
these actions now while the company and the economy are strong to stay in front of a fast-changing market," she said on a conference
call with analysts.
More:
But demand for small and midsize cars has plunged. Two-thirds of all new vehicles sold last year were trucks and S.U.V.s. That
shift has hit G.M.'s Lordstown plant hard. Just a few years ago, the factory employed three shifts of workers to churn out Chevy
Cruzes. Now it is down to one. In 2017 the plant made about 180,000 cars, down from 248,000 in 2013.
More broadly, the years long boom in car and truck sales in North America appears to be ending, said John Hoffecker, vice chairman
at AlixPartners, a global consulting firm with a large automotive practice. "Sales have held up well this year, but we do see
a downturn coming," he said. AlixPartners forecast that domestic auto sales will fall to about 15 million cars and light trucks
in 2020, from about 17 million this year.
Watching cable news tonight at the gym, I heard an Ohio Democratic Congressman blast the president over this. He ripped Trump
for having made promises to industrial workers in his state in 2016, about how he would bring jobs back. He ripped Trump over the
steel tariffs that have driven up costs of production. And he ripped Trump for not taking his job seriously, for caring more about
Twitter than coming up with a strategy that might save jobs.
I'll give the congressman all of that, especially on Trump being a lazy, golfing-and-tweeting buffoon who doesn't
care about his job. Trump can get away with that when the economy is booming, but now it looks like things might be turning downward.
In Lordstown, workers planned to pray for a miraculous reversal of the company's decision, according to David Green, president
of United Auto Workers Local 1112.
"It's like someone knocks the wind out of you," he said of GM's announcement. "You lose your breath for a minute."
About 40 percent of the local's members voted for Trump, Green said. Now workers want to see the president keep his promises,
he said.
"He came to our community and said, 'Don't sell your house. These jobs are coming back,' " Green said. "We've seen nothing
but job losses around here."
Indeed, even before Monday's announcement, Lordstown had been bleeding jobs. Since Trump took office, GM has eliminated two
shifts and roughly 3,000 jobs at the plant, according to John Russo, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University's Kalmanovitz
Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
But we have to face some facts. People aren't buying what GM is making. Aside from the move away from small cars, an effect of
lower gasoline prices, sedan sales have been declining across all manufacturers. This summer, I got a good deal on a 2018 Honda Accord,
a car I really love, and that received rapturous praise from the automobile press when it came out. Honda struggled to sell the cars.
It's not because they're lousy cars. They're actually terrific cars. It's that consumers are losing interest in sedans. What good
does it do GM to manufacture cars that people will not buy?
You can't blame Trump for that.
What you can blame Trump for is exploiting the hopes of Rust Belt people by telling them that he could bring those jobs back.
The Rust Belt made the crucial difference for Trump in 2016. Unless the Democrats' 2020 nominee is someone who is more or less a
space alien, it's going to be hard to win those voters' support when you've improved your Twitter game and your golf score, but those
plants are idle.
Part 3 - The corporate-backed institutions behind the rapid and artificial ideological transformation of the American society
in favor of neoliberalism
In the US case I begin with a confidential memo sent by Lewis Powell to the US Chamber of Commerce in August 1971. Powell, about
to be elevated to the Supreme Court by Richard Nixon, argued that criticism of and opposition to the US free enterprise system had
gone too far and that ' the time had come –– indeed it is long overdue –– for the wisdom, ingenuity and resources of American
business to be marshalled against those who would destroy it '. Powell argued that individual action was insufficient. ' Strength
', he wrote, ' lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite
period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through
united action and national organizations '.
The National Chamber of Commerce, he argued, should lead an assault upon the major institutions –– universities, schools, the
media, publishing, the courts –– in order to change how individuals think 'about the corporation, the law, culture, and the individual'.
US businesses did not lack resources for such an effort, particularly when pooled .
How directly influential this appeal to engage in class war was, is hard to tell. But we do know that the American Chamber
of Commerce subsequently expanded its base from around 60,000 firms in 1972 to over a quarter of a million ten years later .
Jointly with the National Association of Manufacturers (which moved to Washington in 1972) it amassed an immense campaign
chest to lobby Congress and engage in research.
The Business Roundtable, an organization of CEOs ' committed to the aggressive pursuit of political power for the
corporation ', was founded in 1972 and thereafter became the centrepiece of collective pro-business action. The corporations
involved accounted for ' about one half of the GNP of the United States ' during the 1970s, and they spent close
to $900 million annually (a huge amount at that time) on political matters .
Think-tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, the Center for the Study of American Business, and the
American Enterprise Institute, were formed with corporate backing both to polemicize and, when necessary, as in the case of the National
Bureau of Economic Research, to construct serious technical and empirical studies and political-philosophical arguments
broadly in support of neoliberal policies. Nearly half the financing for the highly respected NBER came from the leading companies
in the Fortune 500 list. Closely integrated with the academic community, the NBER was to have a very significant impact on thinking
in the economics departments and business schools of the major research universities .
With abundant finance furnished by wealthy individuals (such as the brewer Joseph Coors, who later became a member of Reagan's
'kitchen cabinet') and their foundations (for example Olin, Scaife, Smith Richardson, Pew Charitable Trust), a flood of tracts and
books, with Nozick's Anarchy State and Utopia perhaps the most widely read and appreciated, emerged espousing neoliberal values.
A TV version of Milton Friedman's Free to Choose was funded with a grant from Scaife in 1977. ' Business was ', Blyth
concludes, ' learning to spend as a class. '
In singling out the universities for particular attention, Powell pointed up an opportunity as well as an issue, for these were
indeed centres of anti-corporate and anti-state sentiment (the students at Santa Barbara had burned down the Bank of America building
there and ceremonially buried a car in the sands). But many students were (and still are) affluent and privileged, or at least middle
class, and in the US the values of individual freedom have long been celebrated (in music and popular culture) as primary. Neoliberal
themes could here find fertile ground for propagation. Powell did not argue for extending state power. But business should ' assiduously
cultivate ' the state and when necessary use it ' aggressively and with determination '. But exactly how was state power
to be deployed to reshape common-sense understandings?
US allies in Europe and Asia did not expect to be treated like vassal states, at least not
openly. Succumbing to Trump's demands is an admission of being a lapdog.
US allies in Europe and Asia have no choice but to push back against Trump's bullying and
condescending stances. They are elected by their citizens to protect the countries' sovereignty
and interests, after all. Too, these leaders must save face and protect their legacies.
One of the first European leaders having the courage to defy Trump is French President
Emmanuel Macron, calling for the establishment of a European Union army independent of the US
to defend itself against Russia, China and possibly America itself. His proposal is supported
by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Asian allies, particularly India, also seem to have pushed back , buying Iranian oil whether
the US likes it or not.
Washington's attempt to revive the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue comprising itself and
soulmates Australia, India and Japan may be losing support. Instead of joining with the US to
contain China, India and Japan are seeking rapprochement with the Asian giant. Even "deputy
sheriff" Australia is apparently having second thoughts, as one of its states is
officially joining China's Belt and and Road Initiative.
In short, these three allies might finally realize that joining the US in containing China
is harmful to their national interests. Fighting that nuclear power on their own soil might not
be a good idea.
No country treats the US 'unfairly'
The fact of the matter is no country treats the US "unfairly" or is "eating its lunch." On
the contrary, it could be argued that it is the other way around.
Having emerged as the world's strongest nation during and after World War II, US foreign
policies have one goal: Shape the world to its image. That process began at the 1944 Bretton
Woods Conference, insisting on using the US dollar as the world reserve currency and writing
the trade rules. In this way, the US has accumulated a very powerful tool, printing as much
money as it wants without repercussions to itself. For example, when a country wants to cash
its US Treasury holdings, all America has to do is print more greenbacks.
To that end, the US is clearly "eating other countries' lunch." Indeed, a major reason the
US can afford to build so many weapons is that other countries are paying for them.
US
trade practices
On trade, the US in 1950 rejected the UK's proposal of forming an International Trade
Organization (ITO) modeled after the International Monetary Fund and World Bank because it
feared the ITO might have harmed American manufacturing. In its place, the US proposed and
succeeded in forming the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT) framework to negotiate tariff rates on goods.
Being the world's most powerful economy and biggest trading nation at that time, the US
dominated the world trading system and wrote its rules. For example, it was the US that
invented and implemented non-tariff trade barriers such as anti-dumping duties and
national-security concerns to block imports. For example, the US imposed tariffs on Canadian,
EU, Mexican and other countries' steel and aluminum from entering its market for security
reasons.
It is laughable for the US to accuse Canada, the EU and Mexico of posing a national-security
threat. They are, in fact, America's most staunch allies.
US foreign direct investment
abroad
US companies bring with them ideas and technology (for which they charge exorbitant prices)
when investing in a foreign market such as China and elsewhere. The capital needed to build
factories is largely funded by the host country or other partners. For example, it is Taiwanese
and Japanese investors that built Foxconn factories in China to assemble American electronic
gadgets such as the iPad.
What's more, US companies charge huge prices for the products they make in China. According
to the Asian Development Bank and other research organizations, Chinese labor, for example,
receives a small percentage of the profits Apple takes in from gadgets it produces in China.
This lopsided profit distribution raises the question: Who is "eating whose
lunch?"
America has itself to blame
The US cannot blame China or any other country for its declining global influence and
dominance – America, particularly under Donald Trump, did that to itself. Chinese
President Xi Jinping, indeed, has advocated cooperation and dialogue as ways to defuse
conflicts and attain a better world.
No country has ever even hinted at attacking the US; it is after all the world's most
powerful nation, armed with enough conventional and nuclear weapons to blow up the world. The
"threats" are exaggerated or invented by US neoconservatives and vested interests to scare
Americans into supporting huge defense spending.
'Fake news' can only go so far
Using "fake news" to pressure countries into submission might work with those unable to
fight back, but could be extremely costly against powers such as China and Russia. For example,
Trump's escalating trade tensions with China are already adversely affecting the US economy, as
seen in falling GDP growth, decreasing stock prices, a huge agricultural inventory, and rising
poverty.
According to United Nations, the impoverished American population is being hit the hardest
under the Trump administration. The US Federal Reserve and others are projecting significant
economic decline in the foreseeable future if the trade war does not end.
One can only imagine what a nuclear war would bring.
Donald Trump is probably no less bullying than his predecessors (perhaps with the exception
of George W Bush), but he is more open about it. Bush's outburst, "You are either with us or
against us," earned America a bad reputation when he demanded that allies join him to invade
Iraq.
Trump has bullied or offended everyone, friends and foes alike. Unless he shifts gear, he
could alienate friends as well as foes, which could erode US geopolitical influence and
economic growth or might even bring the country down. He cannot threaten sovereign nations
without incurring huge costs to America.
@ABasu - My comment was not in direct agreement with the article, it was a critique of the
first comment above.
I won't even begin with the welfare debate in which you somehow think that 'welfare' and
its relatively recent introduction is somehow anti neo-liberal because that is nothing other
than newspeak...
The point I was making (with perhaps a less than perfect example) is that language is
political and therefore it matters greatly what we call things.
"... And that bloody word...'modernisation' (Moderni- z -ation - for the management speak geeks). Why is it every time I come across that word in meetings, it means some worker is either losing money or losing their job? ..."
"... the monetisation of everything and the use of language to make the neo-liberal nightmare through which we are living seem, not only the norm, but the only way. ..."
"... Social security becomes welfare and suddenly masses of society (the majority of benefit claimants being in work) are not drawing on an insurance policy but are in receipt of 'welfare' subject to the largesse and judgements of an ever more cruel and avaricious 'elite'. ..."
"... I'm a big fan of Steven Poole's Unspeak , which looks at the way in which terms and terminology have been engineered precisely to hollow out meaning and present an argument instead. A kind of Neoliberal Emperor's New Clothes, the problem is that, obviously, if your vocabulary and your meanings become circumscribed, it limits what can be said, and even how people think about what's being said. ..."
And that bloody word...'modernisation' (Moderni- z -ation - for the management
speak geeks). Why is it every time I come across that word in meetings, it means some worker
is either losing money or losing their job? Or some manager is about to award themselves
a bonus?
@gyges1 - No, she is surely railing against the monetisation of everything and the use of
language to make the neo-liberal nightmare through which we are living seem, not only the
norm, but the only way.
Social security becomes welfare and suddenly masses of society (the majority of benefit
claimants being in work) are not drawing on an insurance policy but are in receipt of
'welfare' subject to the largesse and judgements of an ever more cruel and avaricious
'elite'.
Language matters and its distortion is a political act.
But without these Exciting New Word Uprating Initiatives, we can never win The Global Race...
or something.
I'm a big fan of Steven Poole's
Unspeak , which looks at the way in which terms and terminology have been engineered
precisely to hollow out meaning and present an argument instead. A kind of Neoliberal
Emperor's New Clothes, the problem is that, obviously, if your vocabulary and your meanings
become circumscribed, it limits what can be said, and even how people think about what's
being said.
(By the way, the link's to Amazon, but, obviously, you may find you have a better
"Customer Experience" if you get from somewhere less tax-dodgy.)
Quite. Language is the first victim of any hegemonic project. Examples abound in communism,
fascism and neoliberalism. There's nothing to argue with in this article yet, unsurprisingly,
the usual swivel-eyed brigade seem to have popped up. Perhaps your discussion of work strays
a little too close to philosophy for the unthinking. I don't know why I'm disheartened by
some of the responses, as the same voices appear btl in almost ever CIF article, but I am
somehow. Perhaps because the point of the article - the hijacking of language - is so
obviously true as to be uncontroversial to any but the ideologically purblind, yet still....
@thesingingdetective - what is an insurance policy other than a financial product where in
return for payments over a period of time a claim can be made in certain circumstances?
If anything, particularly given that the link between contributions and claims is now
nugatory, describing welfare as welfare is much more honest and much less "neoliberal". It is
a set of payments and entitlements society has agreed upon to ensure a level of welfare for
all rather than an insurance policy which each individual may claim against if they've kept
up their payments.
If an anti-neo-liberal, supportive of the article can get this so back to front, perhaps
the "debate" being posited is an empty one about language.
If you changed a few words from the Communist Manifesto, it could easily be about
neo-liberalism and leftist attitudes towards it.
"A spectre is haunting Europe; the spectre of neo-liberalism. All the leftists of old
Europe have entered into a Holy Alliance to exorcise this spectre; Toynbee and Loach;
Redgrave and Harris.
Where is the party in power that has not been decried as neo-liberalistic by its leftist
opponents on the sidelines?"
Take FE as a case study on how the coin counters have taken over the world.
Back in the dark ages of the 1980s, the maths department had 7 lecturers (2 part time) and
two people to look after the admin - there was also the Department Head (who was a lecturer)
and a Head of School. They had targets, loosely defined, but it was a rare year when there
wasn't a smattering of A grades at A level...
Then along came the coin counters, the target setters, with their management degrees and
swivel eyed certainty that 'greed is good... competition! competition! competition!' and with
them came the new professionals into the department... the 'Quality Manager'... the
'Curriculum Manager' the 'Exams Manager' the 'Deputy Exams Manager'... and the paperwork
increased to feed the beast that counts everything but knows nothing... and targets were
set.... 'Targets! Targets! Targets!... and we were all sent in search of excellence... 'teach
to the exam' 'We must meet our targets'... 'we won't use exam board 'A' because they're
tough' and the exam boards reacted to their own target culture by all simplifying. The
universities began to notice the standard of 'A' grade students (who increased) was
equivelant to a C grade of 5 years ago. However, targets were being met (on paper) quality
was maintained (on paper) we were improving year on year (on paper). However, what was going
on in the real world is that our students were being sold a pup - their level of competence
and of knowledge was very much inferior to their same grade fore bearers of just 5 years
previous
Eventually, the department became 1 full time lecturer and 4 on 'zero hour contracts' and
the Head of School became 'Chief Executive' the 'Head of Department' became 'Department
Manager' and a gap developed between those who taught and those who 'managed'... not just a
culture gap... a bloody big pay gap...
Who benefited from all this marketisation?
Not the lecturers... not the students... not the universities... not industry...not the
economy...
Who benefited? Work it out for yourselves (as I used to tell my students)
@roachclip - I am familiar with the numerous wiki sites including Wikipedia, thank you very
much. If you read the article yourself you would see it supports my point of view here.
There are loads of other examples of rarely scrutinised terms in our economic
vocabulary, for instance that bundle of terms clustered around investment and expenditure
– terms that carry with them implicit moral connotations. Investment implies an
action, even a sacrifice, undertaken for a better future. It evokes a future positive
outcome. Expenditure, on the other hand, seems merely an outgoing, a cost, a burden.
This is absolute nonsense...the terms "investment" and "expenditure" carry no moral
connotations that I can determine. Does the author accept that we need to have terms to
express each of these concepts? Perhaps she would like to come up with some alternative
suggestions for the notions of "contributing money" and "spending money"?
Seconded, its uses and abuses of the English Language second only that of the Church. A
fitting comparison in my book because they both have much in common. Both are well aware that
it is through language and the control of which that true cultural change is achieved.
Both know that this new language must be propagated as far and as wide as possible, with
saturation coverage. Control of information is a a must, people must see and they must know
only things of your choosing.
For example, back in the 4th Century AD (which is incidentally an abbreviation of the Latin
'Anno Domini', which means 'in the year of our Lord'), the church became centralised and
established under the patronage of the Roman Emperor Constantine. Part of this centralising
mission was the creation of a uniform belief system. Those that 'chose' to believe something
else were branded 'heretics'. The word 'heresy' coming from the Greek
'αἵρεσις' for 'choice'. Thus to choose to have your
own opinions was therefore deemed to be a bad thing.
As a quick aside, 'Pagan' comes from the Latin 'paganus' which means 'rural dweller'. I.e.
those beyond the remit of the urban Christian elites. 'Heathen' on the other hand is Old
English (hæðen). It simply means 'not Christian or Jewish.
When you have complete control over the flow of information, as the Church did by the 5th
Century, then you can write practically anything. This doesn't mean just writing good things
about yourself and bad things about your enemies. Rather it means that you can frame the
debate anyway you wish.
In modern times, I would argue that you can see similar things happen here. As the author
suggests, terms like 'Wealth Creator', 'Scrounger', 'Sponger', 'living on welfare', 'Growth',
'progress' and my personal favourite, 'reform', take on a whole new meaning.
Their definition of the word 'reform' and what we would see it to mean are two totally
different things, Yet since it is they that has access to the wider world and not us, then it
is their definition that gets heard. The same could be said for all the other words and their
latter day connotations.
Thus when you hear the news and you hear what passes for debate, you hear things on their
terms. Using their language with their meanings. A very sad state of affairs indeed.
Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that
proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial
freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private
property rights, free markets, and free trade.
You'll notice I've highlighted the word freedoms. Freedom is a word they hijacked right
from the start of the process and how they hijacked the Republican party in the USA.
For any way of thought to become dominant, a conceptual apparatus has to be advanced that
appeals to our intuitions and instincts, to our values and our desires, as well as to the
possibilities inherent in the social world we inhabit. If successful, this conceptual
apparatus becomes so embedded in common sense as to be taken for granted and not open to
question. The founding figures of neoliberal thought took political ideals of human
dignity and individual freedom as fundamental.
Concepts of dignity and individual freedom are powerful and appealing in their own right.
Such ideals empowered the dissident movements in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union before
the end of the Cold War as well as the students in Tiananmen Square. The student movements
that swept the world in 1968––from Paris and Chicago to Bangkok and Mexico
City––were in part animated by the quest for greater freedoms of speech and of
personal choice.
More generally, these ideals appeal to anyone who values the ability to make decisions for
themselves.
The idea of freedom, long embedded in the US tradition, has played a conspicuous role in
the US in recent years. '9/11' was immediately interpreted by many as an attack on it. 'A
peaceful world of growing freedom', wrote President Bush on the first anniversary of
that awful day, 'serves American long-term interests, reflects enduring American ideals
and unites America's allies.' 'Humanity', he concluded, 'holds in its hands the opportunity
to
offer freedom's triumph over all its age-old foes', and 'the United States welcomes its
responsibilities to lead in this great mission'. This language was incorporated into the US
National Defense Strategy document issued shortly thereafter. 'Freedom is the Almighty's gift
to every man and woman in this world', he later said, adding that 'as the greatest power on
earth we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom'.
When all of the other reasons for engaging in a pre-emptive war against Iraq were proven
wanting, the president appealed to the idea that the freedom conferred on Iraq was in and of
itself an adequate justification for the war. The Iraqis were free, and that was all
that really mattered. But what sort of 'freedom' is envisaged here, since, as the cultural
critic Matthew Arnold long ago thoughtfully observed, 'freedom is a very good horse to ride,
but to
ride somewhere'.To what destination, then, are the Iraqi people expected to ride the horse of
freedom donated to them by force of arms?
As Hayek quoted....
Planning and control are being attacked as a denial of freedom. Free
enterprise and private ownership are declared to be essentials of freedom.
No society built on other foundations is said to deserve to be called free.
The freedom that regulation creates is denounced as unfreedom; the justice, liberty and
welfare it offers are decried as a camouflage of slavery.
The Neoliberal idea of freedom 'thus degenerates into a mere advocacy of free
enterprise. It helps explain why neoliberalism has turned so authoritarian, forceful, and
anti-democratic at the very moment when 'humanity holds in its hands the opportunity to
offer freedom's triumph over all its age-old foes'. It makes us focus on how so many
corporations have profiteered from withholding the benefits of their
technologies, famine, and environmental disaster. It raises the worry as to whether or not
many of these calamities or
near calamities (arms races and the need to confront both real and
imagined enemies) have been secretly engineered for corporate advantage.
Political slogans can be invoked that mask specific strategies beneath vague
rhetorical devices. The word 'freedom' resonates so widely within the common-sense
understanding of Americans that it becomes 'a button that elites can press to open the door
to the masses' to justify almost anything.
Appeals to traditions and cultural values bulked large in all of this. An open project
around the restoration of economic power to a small elite would probably not gain much
popular support. But a programmatic attempt to advance the cause of individual freedoms could
appeal to a mass base and so disguise the drive to restore class power.
Fascinating article, thanks for publishing. It goes some way to explaining, not only the
tenacity of neo-liberalism, but also its ability to consolidate its power, even at the moment
when it seemed weakest. Its ability to rearticulate language and to present as natural law
what is socially constructed, shows the depth of its hold on society, economics, politics,
culture and even science.
There is a neat cross-over here between neo-liberal discourses and the use of language by
the military. Not only does this extend to the general diffusion of certain key phrases, but
I think it also runs deeper. Just as the elision of meaning in the language of war
facilitates the perpetuation of abuses and war crimes, so the neo-lib discourse permits the
perpetuation of questionable economic activity, even as this presents itself in the
unquestionable guise of "common sense".
@gyges1 - The idea of language is very important in the production of a way of thinking which
closes down other alternatives and futures. One which leaves neoliberal globalisation as 'the
only game in town'.
I worry that the very term 'neoliberalism' is one not used by the political classes and
much of the media, I don't think I've ever heard the world 'neoliberalism' used on the
BBC.
This unwillingness to even call a spade a spade has political consequences . For
example, I had an online discussion with someone over Thatchers death a little while ago. He
called me 'comrade' and then questioned the very existence of the term Neo-liberalism. At the
time I thought this was a bit of a cheap shot, but if you can quite cheerfully label someone
a 'socialist' and then refuse to accept that neo-liberalism exists, you are well on your way
to making people believe that the current set of social relations are indeed completely
normal and that there are few, if any, alternative ways of rewiring the world which can
create a better world.
"... I was, of course, referring to the families of the disappeared in Chile. They are, of course, relevant and should not be excluded from any arguments about neoliberalism and its effects. Nor should the families of the disappeared in Argentina, though it is less well known, the junta was entrusted with the introduction of neoliberal policies in Argentina. ..."
"... The Argentinian military coup, like those in Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and Nicaragua, was sponsored by the US to protect and further its interests during the Cold War. By the 1970s neoliberalism was very much part of the menu; paramilitary governments were actively encouraged to practice neoliberal politics; neoliberalism was at this stage, what communism was to the Soviet Union; the ideological wing of the Cold War. You may be familiar with Operation Condor? ..."
"... It has been pretty firmly established that the Allende regime was victim of US sponsored military coup and that said coup was sponsored to protect US interests. The Chicago boys then flew into Chile to use the nation as a laboratory for the more outlandish (at the time) neoliberal policies they were unable to practice at home. ..."
"... The political class, with the aid of their subservient corporate media quislings, have taken our language apart and used it against us. We have been backed into a corner, we are told, by both Labour and Tories, that there is no choice, either rabid profiteering or penury and we have, to our everlasting shame, lapped up every word of it. ..."
"... We have become so embedded in the language of individuals, choice, contracts and competition that we cannot see any alternative. Even Adam Smith understood the difference between "economy" and "society" when he argued that labor is directly connected to public interest while business is connected to self-interest. If business took over the public sphere, Smith argued, this would be quite destructive. ..."
@finnkn - Apologies. I was, of course, referring to the families of the disappeared in Chile. They are, of course, relevant
and should not be excluded from any arguments about neoliberalism and its effects. Nor should the families of the disappeared
in Argentina, though it is less well known, the junta was entrusted with the introduction of neoliberal policies in Argentina.
The Argentinian military coup, like those in Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and Nicaragua, was sponsored
by the US to protect and further its interests during the Cold War. By the 1970s neoliberalism was very much part of the menu;
paramilitary governments were actively encouraged to practice neoliberal politics; neoliberalism was at this stage, what communism
was to the Soviet Union; the ideological wing of the Cold War. You may be familiar with Operation Condor?
To be clear: I am arguing that the direct effects of 'actually existing neoliberalism' are very far from benign. I do not argue
that the militarisation of Central and South America are the direct consequence neoliberal theory.
@finnkn - Well I think many would. It has been pretty firmly established that the Allende regime was victim of US sponsored
military coup and that said coup was sponsored to protect US interests. The Chicago boys then flew into Chile to use the nation
as a laboratory for the more outlandish (at the time) neoliberal policies they were unable to practice at home.
Neoliberalism was first practiced in authoritarian states; the states in which neoliberalism is most deeply embedded are (surprise,
surprise) increasingly authoritarian, and neoliberalism solutions are regularly imposed on client/vulnerable states by suprastructures
such as the IMF, the EU, and the World Bank. Friedrich Hayek and Adam Smith were very clear that the potential for degeneracy
existed. We have now reached that potential; increasingly centralised authority, states within states, the denuding of democratic
institutions and crony capitalism. Neoliberalism in practice is very different to neoliberalism in practice. Rather like 'really
existing socialism' and Marxism.
works best in authoritarian states because (in practice, if not in theory
As the statistics on that link show, there are certain countries (notably Russia and the Ukraine) where the +65 age group disapprove
of the change to democracy and capitalism. In the majority, however, people of all ages remain in favour.
For 'job' read 'bribe' (keep your mouth shut or lose it), for 'management' read 'take most of the interest out of the job
for everybody else and put them on a lower scale', etc. I guess you get my drift.
It's sad that you have such a negative, self-hating attitude towards your work.
Work is usually – and certainly should be – a central source of meaning and fulfilment in human lives. And it has – or could
have – moral and creative (or aesthetic) values at its core
Spoken like a true champagne socialist in a creative industry. How do you find meaning and fulfillment, or creative values, in
emptying bins, cleaning offices, sweeping the streets and a whole load of other work which needs doing but which is repetitive,
menial and not particularly pleasant?
There are two ways to get people to do work that needs doing but wouldn't be done voluntarily: coercion or payment. I think
the second is a more healthy way to run a society.
I've thought pretty much the same myself. Democracies can be good or bad (as the Greeks knew well)...but in our politic-speak
it is used to denounce and make good; as in "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East"...it is intended to make us feel
something good about Israel, as it humiliates the Palestinians and steals their land.
In ancient Greece....'tyrant' simply meant
'usurper' without any neccessary negative association....simply someone who had usurped political power...they recognized that
tyrannies could be good, bad or indifferent.
In Rome, dictator simply meant the cahp that took over fpr periods of six months at a time, during times of crisis.
I used to vacation in Yugoslavia in Marshall Tito's time....it was a wonderful place, beautiful, inexpensive and safe...very
very safe. What came into the power vacuum after he died in 1980...what happened to the country? I'd argue that his was a good
dictatorship or tyranny....
I'm also not too sure what the 90% of people unaffected by and uninterested in power politics in any given country feel about
the 'liberation' of Libya and Iraq from their prior dictatorships...I'm sure that plenty of people whose previously steady lives
have been wrecked, are all that thrilled.
I have recently been exercised by the right's adoption of "Social Justice". In the past it was the left and churches who talked
of social justice as a phenomenon to empower the poor and dispossessed, whether in this country or the developing world. Social
Justice was a touchstone of Faith in the City, for example, but it seems now to be the smoke screen behind which benefits are
stipped from the "undeserving poor".
Most of this crap comes from America. Crappy middle-management bureaucrats spouting "free-market" bollocks.
The efficiency of the private sector - some nob with a name badge timing how long you've been on the toilet.
Freedommm!!!!
It is not just neoliberalism. Everyone is at it - sucking the meaning out of words. Corporate bullshit, public sector bullshit.
Being customers of your own government is a crime that everyone is guilty of. This is what Orwell railed against decades ago,
and it has got worse.
Case in point; just look at the way in which the Cameron set about co-opting words and phrases justifiably applied to his own
regime and repurposed them against his detractors.
For example, people who took a stand against the stealth privatisation of the NHS were branded as "vested interests", quite
unlike the wholesome MPs who voted for the NHS bill who, despite the huge sums of money they received from the private healthcare
lobby, we are encouraged to believe were acting in our best interests by selling our health service to their corporate paymasters.
Or the farcical attempt to rebrand female Tory MPs as "feminists" despite their anti-social mobility, anti-equality, anti-human
rights and anti-abortion views.
The political class, with the aid of their subservient corporate media quislings, have taken our language apart and used
it against us. We have been backed into a corner, we are told, by both Labour and Tories, that there is no choice, either rabid
profiteering or penury and we have, to our everlasting shame, lapped up every word of it.
@Obelisk1 - You have single-handedly proven Massey's argument. We have become so embedded in the language of individuals,
choice, contracts and competition that we cannot see any alternative. Even Adam Smith understood the difference between "economy"
and "society" when he argued that labor is directly connected to public interest while business is connected to self-interest.
If business took over the public sphere, Smith argued, this would be quite destructive.
Our whole conversation seemed somehow reduced, my experience of it belittled into one of commercial transaction. My relation
to the gallery and to this engaging person had become one of instrumental market exchange.
But in the eyes of the economic right, that is precisely the case. Adjectives like altruistic, caring, selfless, empathy and
sympathy are simply not in their vocabulary. They are only ever any of those things provided they can see some sort of beneficial
payback at the end.
maxfisher -> Venebles 11 Jun 2013 06:20
@Venebles - I was simply joining many commentators in the mire. Those that dispute the neoliberal worldview are routinely dismissed
as marxists. I thought I'd save you all the energy, duck.
I'm not sure that the families of the disappeared of Chile and Argentina would concur with you benign view of neoliberalism
and its effects.
Fascinating article, thanks for publishing. It goes some way to explaining, not only the
tenacity of neo-liberalism, but also its ability to consolidate its power, even at the moment
when it seemed weakest. Its ability to rearticulate language and to present as natural law
what is socially constructed, shows the depth of its hold on society, economics, politics,
culture and even science.
There is a neat cross-over here between neo-liberal discourses and the use of language by
the military. Not only does this extend to the general diffusion of certain key phrases, but
I think it also runs deeper. Just as the elision of meaning in the language of war
facilitates the perpetuation of abuses and war crimes, so the neo-lib discourse permits the
perpetuation of questionable economic activity, even as this presents itself in the
unquestionable guise of "common sense".
In essence this is the largest casino in the world, created by casino capitalism. Previously
only wealthy individuals owned stocks. Now everybody owed them via thier 401K (which in recession
can easily become 201K ;-). In 2008 S&P500 touched the level of around 700. Does this mean
that the it was oversold? And what would happen to him if the government will not pushed
trillions to large banks, and some of those money went into S&p500.
Notable quotes:
"... There is no magic valuation level that supports high-flying stocks. They are driven by sentiment in both directions. ..."
"... That gets to the oft-quoted notion of "support." Does it really exist? Is there a level at which assets are just "too cheap" relative to their intrinsic values and therefore must be bought regardless of prevailing market trends? ..."
"... The mistake many market observers often make is to attribute all selloffs to gyrations in sentiment and to misunderstand that stock booms are driven by that exact factor -- in reverse. Sentiment will always rule market pricing in the short-term. ..."
Stocks quotes in this article: AAPL , NFLX , FB , AMZN , F , GE , IBM , T , GOOGLThere is no magic valuation level
that supports high-flying stocks. They are driven by sentiment in both directions.
It's on now. The markets are in full-blown correction mode.
I hope the truncated trading day on Friday did not escape your attention, because it
continued a negative price trend for stocks that began in late-September. The question now is:
How low can we go?
That gets to the oft-quoted notion of "support." Does it really exist? Is there a level
at which assets are just "too cheap" relative to their intrinsic values and therefore must be
bought regardless of prevailing market trends?
The mistake many market observers often make is to attribute all selloffs to gyrations
in sentiment and to misunderstand that stock booms are driven by that exact factor -- in
reverse. Sentiment will always rule market pricing in the short-term. That was just as
true with Apple ( AAPL ) at $220 per share as it is with
Apple at $172 per share, Netflix ( NFLX ) at $420 and $258 and on and on
down the list. Portfolio managers were buying Facebook ( FB ) above $200 per share and Amazon (
AMZN ) above
$2,000 because they had to, though, not based on innately unquantifiable, voodoo metrics such
as "disruption."
I am basing that statement on my regular conversations with fund managers at very large
asset managers, and of course no one can definitively take the pulse of every player in the
market. That is the great divide between individuals (my clients at Portfolio Guru LLC) and
institutions (pension funds, insurance companies, college endowments, sovereign wealth funds,
etc.)
Individuals want their portfolio values to rise. Period. Institutions want their portfolios
to outperform their carefully selected benchmarks over specific time periods on a risk-adjusted
basis.
So, that's what creates high-flying stocks to begin with. Portfolio managers need to
overweight the biggest names in the market -- owning more Apple, for instance, than its
weighting in the chosen benchmark would require, not simply owning or not owning Apple. In a
rising market that has a beneficial effect on valuations of those names.
If every portfolio manager needs to buy more Apple, Apple's share price will go up, making
it a larger component of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100. As Apple's weighting increases, those
fund managers would have to -- you guessed it -- buy more Apple!
The circularity of that logic is undeniable, but I am telling you that's how the market for
big-cap stocks works. Please remember the men and women pulling those levers are responsible
for much, much larger asset bases than you are. So they will always move the markets, even if
history has proven their timing to be poor more often than it is excellent.
Bottom line: High-flying stocks are driven by sentiment in both directions, thus there is no
magic valuation level that supports them.
This is quite apparent in the charts of "fallen angel" stocks such as Ford ( F ) , General Electric (
GE ) , IBM (
IBM ) , and
AT&T ( T ) . The
market hates those stocks no more the day after Thanksgiving than it did the day after
Independence Day, but certainly no less, either. An investor could generate hours of amusement
by Googling "this is a bottom for..." and then entering in any of those names. So many pundits,
so many bad support level calls.
So, value traps are no way to ride out a market correction, but what about the stocks that
brought us into that correction? Are the FAANG names -- Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Apple
and Alphabet ( GOOGL ) (parent company of Google) --
destined to end up in the "hate pile" with GE and IBM? God, I hope not. That's the difference
between a pullback and a crash and, by implication, the difference between a depression and a
recession.
My analysis shows that buying Apple at 13x next year's earnings -- which implies a price of
$172.55, slightly above Friday's close -- has been a lucrative strategy in the past three
years. That said, I am worried that the steady stream of noise about production cuts from
Apple's suppliers implies Wall Street's estimates for Apple's fiscal 2019 earnings are
inflated. So I am not buying Apple today.
And so it goes. Chicken and egg. Is the stock market telling us the global economy is
slowing or is the global economy slowing driving down prices for assets, especially oil, thus
creating an economic slowdown? Crude's decline has spooked the market to no end, but so has
Apple's decline. And Netflix's and Facebook's.
At the end of the day, all securities are assets on someone's balance sheet. Gold, oil,
stocks, bonds, really anything on your screen except crypto, which is very very difficult to
clear and hence to accurately value. Anything that can be physically transferred can be sold,
and in a downturn that can be a sobering thought. Don't forget it.
Get an email alert each
time I write an article for Real Money. Click the "+Follow" next to my byline to this article.
"... In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has collected 5.4m "adverse event" reports over the past decade, some from manufacturers reporting problems in other parts of the world. ..."
"... Interviews with patients and doctors have revealed flaws in how the medical devices industry is regulated. ..."
Patients around the world are suffering pain and many have died as a result of faulty
medical devices that have been allowed on to the market by a system dogged by poor regulation,
lax rules on testing and a lack of transparency, an investigation has found.
Pacemakers, artificial hips, contraceptives and breast implants are among the devices that
have caused injuries and resulted in patients having to undergo follow-up operations or in some
cases losing their lives.
In some cases, the implants had not been tested in patients before being allowed on to the
market.
In the UK alone, regulators received 62,000 "adverse incident" reports linked to medical
devices between 2015 and 2018. A third of the incidents had serious repercussions for the
patient, and 1,004 resulted in death.
In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has collected 5.4m "adverse event"
reports over the past decade, some from manufacturers reporting problems in other parts of the
world.
These included 1.7m reports of injuries and almost 83,000 deaths. Nearly 500,000 mentioned
an explant – surgery to remove a device.
The figures come from research by 252 journalists from 59 media organisations in 36
countries, which has uncovered a litany of problems in the global $400bn (£310bn)
industry.
Examples of failure in the market include:
Replacement hips and vaginal mesh products sold to
hospitals without any clinical trials. Patients relying on faulty pacemakers when manufacturers
were aware of problems. Complications with hernia mesh that ruled one of Britain's top athletes
out of competing for years. Regulators approving spinal disc
replacements that later disintegrated and migrated in patients. Surgeons admitting they were
unable to tell patients about the risks posed by implants because of a lack of central
registers. Patients in Australia being given devices that the regulator has approved on the
basis they have been approved in Europe.
The findings raise concerns about the level of scrutiny devices undergo before and after
they go on the market, and whether regulators detect and act upon findings quickly enough.
Information about problems with devices is, in many countries, kept under wraps, making it
difficult for patients to research procedures that have been recommended to
them.
Interviews with patients and doctors have revealed flaws in how the medical
devices industry is regulated.
Prof Derek Alderson, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said there had been
enough incidents involving flawed devices to "underline the need for drastic regulatory
changes", including the introduction of mandatory national registries for all implantable
devices.
"In contrast to drugs, many surgical innovations are introduced without clinical trial data
or centrally held evidence," he said. "This is a risk to patient safety and public
confidence."
The Guardian and organisations including the BBC , Le Monde and Süddeutsche Zeitung,
coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), have trawled
through thousands of documents, many obtained through freedom of information (FoI) requests, to
unearth some of the biggest problems.
Alongside interviews with patients and doctors, these have revealed flaws in the way the
industry is regulated that are unlikely to be fixed by rules due to come into force in
Europe.
Among the concerns raised by the Implant Files project are that manufacturers are in
charge of testing their own products after faults have developed – and are allowed to
shop around for approval to market their products, without declaring any refusals.
The Guardian has also heard about doctors who have close industry ties or seem eager to be
early adopters of the latest devices to enhance their professional standing.
Plans for tougher EU rules have been watered down after industry lobbying, according to a
huge trove of documents uncovered by the project.
England may well be the only country in the world that is so snobbish about "trade" that, in
spite of having rung up record numbers of fundamental scientific breakthroughs and engineering
inventions, it has hardly earned any money at all from them.
If you really want to see a country "that treats a vacuum cleaner salesman like he's some
sort of genius physicist", take a look at the USA. Half its immense wealth was built on
pinching other people's ideas and "monetizing" them (a characteristically American word for a
quintessentially American practice).
She thought the investigation might have about six months left, although if Trump refuses a
face-to-face meeting, Mueller could seek a subpoena to put him before the grand jury. That
could be fought all the way to the supreme court.
There is a precedent, US v Nixon, when the justices ruled that the president must deliver
subpoenaed materials to a district court. Sixteen days later, Nixon resigned.
If Mueller decides not to have that fight, he could write a report saying he believed the
president obstructed justice. If he does not reach that conclusion, the Democratic-led House
could issue its own subpoenas.
"It is a chess match," said Milgram. "We'll have to see how it plays out in the next
year."
The denial of the economic ideology of Neo-liberalism is nothing more than a cheap debating point. If you pretend something
doesn't exist then you make it difficult to attack.
Notable quotes:
"... Strange then, that you can buy a book called: "Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. By Daniel Stedman Jones. Princeton University Press". ..."
"... What were Friedrich Heyek and Milton Friedman: lollypop salesmen? ..."
"... All one needs to know is that English language is being manipulated just as it always has been by those that have the power to do it. Today the main manipulators are, Madison Avenue, agencies and departments the United States government, Wall Street, US television media. Most people don't realize that the language is being manipulated, when they hear or see in print words being used in unusual ways they just go along with it. ..."
"... Advertising frequently refers to things being "better" with no explanation of what it is better than. ..."
"... "Underpriviliged" to describe people living in poverty but no explanation of the privileges that people have who are not poor. ..."
"... I could go on and on, but I am sure that you scribblers who do not indulge in "confuse speak" know exactly what I am trying to explain. Best example I can give is "The free world" which by latest check includes Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and sundry other brutal regimes and one time actually included outright fascist countries. ..."
"... Yes - the person who said language was mankind's first technology were absolutely correct. I expect language was invented by those who invent all technology to be just out of reach of the general public until the inventers decide they can do business for themselves out of it. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is the final stage of liberal democracy which has been around for 60-70 years, the most destructive form of government the world has ever seen, based on deregulation for the wealthy oligarchs and debt and debauchery for the poor .............. which is rapidly taking us back to feudal times. ..."
"... I prescribe a course of Orwell, Start, perhaps, with short stories...... Politics and the English Language, Why I Write, Notes on Nationalism, for example. And then a full dose of Nineteen Eighty-Four. That should do the trick! ..."
"... Nothing has been learnt from the crash of 2008 beyond "get rich even quicker", or as its more commonly known, economic and ecological suicide. ..."
Term abuse didn't arrive with neoliberalism; it's been around since forever. Also, the fact
that most of our daily transactions might be commercial is a reflection of our own habits as
much as the changing use of language.
If a person is employed by a commercial gallery, they are effectively working in a shop,
and the people who visit these galleries are potentially customers. No surprise there. Just
like a person who uses transport can be a customer. Of course, there are public services
where commercial terms such as customer make little sense.
Sure, it isn't that important who is making the point, even if the point is made by
reference to questionable and contentious examples.
I also think that any even bigger influence on meaning / lack of meaning / interchangeable
meaning etc.has been postmodernity far more than neoliberalism.
All true but the left is just as bad as coining its Orwellisms. Witness the way nobody has to use an approved vocabulary to talk about every and any group
on fear of moral ridicule or worse. Language is a mental battlefield.
@RClayton - Can I suggest resurrecting William Morris's distinction between "work" (ie labour
that is moral, creative, aesthetic or, at least, hygienic - ie intrinsically worth doing) and
"toil" which is work done only because of the necessity to earn money to buy the means of
existence?
Having words that distinguish between these two ideas is useful. The 'work' you talk about
is 'toil' and most of it is done simply to service the money/capitalist system.
As an example, I have in front of me a rubber 'stress reliever' in the shape of PacMan. It
was given to me as a gift.
Presumably, somewhere in the world there is a factory full of people turning out this
rubbish. It adds nothing to the world's beauty, nor its ability to support the people living
on it. Its only uses are in providing paid 'toil' to support the factory workers and to
enable someone to give me something I don't need as a token of their friendship, probably
paid for from the fruits of their own toil.
Changing the words we use will not change this, but it does give us a framework in which
to think about how it might be changed.
Strange then, that you can buy a book called: "Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman,
and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. By Daniel Stedman Jones. Princeton University
Press".
What were Friedrich Heyek and Milton Friedman: lollypop salesmen?
If I can repeat what I said at the top of this thread - The denial of the economic
ideology of Neo-liberalism is nothing more than a cheap debating point. If you pretend
something doesn't exist then you make it difficult to attack.
The biggest problem isn't so much that people use the language of commercial business and are
free and easy with their abuse of terms (there's a new one), but that people treat government
and politics as a service, and see their relationship with governance as akin to a
client/customer relationship, to that end we elect politicians who tell us what we want to
hear, even if what we hear can be, all to often, somewhat meaningless or trite.
@TheRealCmdrGravy - There's nothing vague about it, It represents the whole of UK and US
government economic policy for the last thirty years with the happy outcomes that we enjoy
today.
But now you know what a neoliberal is, perhaps you can reread the excellent article above
with added relish and understanding. Glad to be of assistance. If you want anything else
looking up I suggest using a search engine before posting here that a particular word is too
difficult for you.
According to Bradford DeLong, a Berkeley economic historian, neoliberalism has two main
tenets:
"The first is that close economic contact between the industrial core and the developing
periphery is the best way to accelerate the transfer of technology which is the sine qua
non for making poor economies rich (hence all barriers to international trade should be
eliminated as fast as possible).
The second is that governments in general lack the
capacity to run large industrial and commercial enterprises. Hence, [except] for core
missions of income distribution, public-good infrastructure, administration of justice, and
a few others, governments should shrink and privatize)."
All one needs to know is that English language is being manipulated just as it always has been by
those that have the power to do it.
Today the main manipulators are, Madison Avenue, agencies and departments the United States
government, Wall Street, US television media.
Most people don't realize that the language is being manipulated, when they hear or see in
print words being used in unusual ways they just go along with it.
Example:
A couple of years back a motormouth U.S TV show host used the word "impact" in place of the
word "affect". He did so simply because "impact" seemed more dramatic. Now it is almost
impossible to hear or see the word "affect" used anywhere.
Now there are some of you that will say that language and usage of words change over time,
and I would agree with you, but when you see a word used in a context that is completely
inappropriate and that use is adopted in general you have to ask yourself questions like who
benefits from this.
Remember when Bush wanted to increase troop levels, he refered to the increase as a "surge".
"Surge" until then had a distinct meaning it was not associated with any meaning of
permanence, and that is why it was used.
Advertising frequently refers to things being "better" with no explanation of what it is
better than.
"Underpriviliged" to describe people living in poverty but no explanation of the privileges
that people have who are not poor.
I could go on and on, but I am sure that you scribblers who do not indulge in "confuse speak"
know exactly what I am trying to explain.
Best example I can give is "The free world" which by latest check includes Saudi Arabia,
Yemen, and sundry other brutal regimes and one time actually included outright fascist
countries.
Now all London Underground passengers are 'customers', which implies you are buying the
travel experience rather than paying for transportation. When misused it suggests to me lack
of strength and self-belief from the organization concerned.
@callaspodeaspode - Gosh - an excellent example of how to get things completely wrong. Just because a firm has the government for a customer does not mean it is a public sector
business.
Note the word 'customer'. In the case of the FE college, who is the customer - the
government or the students? Are the students just incidental fodder?
Your contract with the government will be for a certain job done in a certain for a
certain sum of money. In FE, the government has a sum of money which gets paid out
irrespective of the outcome. Indeed, how do you measure the 'outcome' of an FE college? In
your case, it's easy - either the software works or it doesn't.
Your company no doubt is either owned by an individual, or has shareholders. Those people
live on the profits of the company, or lose their money if it goes bust.
What is the profit made by an FE college? Who are the shareholders? Who goes broke if the
college folds? Still think an FE college is the same as private company?
@TheRealCmdrGravy - No definition is a distinct improvement on your deliberate distortion. I
was assuming you had the sense to find a definition on the internet for yourself, since you
managed to find your way here.
I do not consider alternative viewpoints brainless, i consider a refusal to even engage in
debate brainless, pretending that a word is undefined when there's reams of literature as
well as concise definitions freely available from any number of sources. That might
reasonably be construed as brainless.
Here, fill your boots, then if you have an actual argument instead of a crude attempt to
derail the debate it can be considered.
Neoliberalism is a political philosophy whose advocates support economic
liberalization, free trade and open markets, privatization, deregulation, and decreasing the
size of the public sector while increasing the role of the private sector in modern society.
(From wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism)
I'm convinced you had the brains to look it up yourself, that's why I suspect your agenda.
Now please stop wasting everyone's time unless you have something to contribute. I even
looked it up for you.
And I can give a further example. I used to work in a Private Equity-owned firm, which
happened to have some contracts to provide software support to the government.
Thus, in your conceptual framework, it was a public sector business. Indeed, by your reasoning, Lockheed Martin is a state-owned company as well.
I agree that 'Neoliberalism' has hijacked our vocabulary, but that is about the limit of our
agreement. People fling the word 'neoliberalism' around these days as a synonym for 'anything
I and my friends have decided is politically-economically objectionable' ('have decided', not
'think'). In the old days, 'fascist' served the same purpose in all those late-night student
flat discussions. I assume, until proven otherwise, that people who talk about
'neoliberalism', fall into the same category as those people who had so much difficulty
distinguishing between 'liberal democracy' and 'fascism'.
I can actually think of liberal left-leaning intellectuals who I can recall having
self-described as neoliberal. They, however, are distinctive for the sort of nuanced
understanding of political economy you are unlikely to find represented around the candles in
the kitchen on a Friday night when the world's problems are being discussed and solved.
First of all I am impressed by the psychic ability which enables you to deduce my
"closed political agenda", very impressive
Not really. It is transparently obvious when you declare that neo-liberalism is "vague
stuff which I don't like" when there are cogent definitions of it, to which you have been
referred in the past.
this is not the kind of liberalism we needed it needed to be socially liberal but not
economically liberal. How dare people become entrepenurial or take the thatcherite tax cuts,
or buy goods made from slave labour. Some seriously sick yuppies out there.
Yes - the person who said language was mankind's first technology were absolutely correct.
I expect language was invented by those who invent all technology to be just out of reach
of the general public until the inventers decide they can do business for themselves out of
it.
She says that we need to look at the language as it says a lot about how we think. Sounds
about right to me. It's hardly arguing white means black, just that the words we choose say
something about what we mean.
Then she says that what we talk about isn't the stuff we need to concentrate on. That's a
matter of debate and opinion.
Except that preference theory does not take into account causality. In any event we have
the evidence, there are those who are perfectly happy to cast others to the wall just so long
as they do OK and even benefit from it.
@makingtime - Really ? Some very interesting points you've made there ...
your closed political agenda may make it impossible for you to understand without a
brain transplant.
First of all I am impressed by the psychic ability which enables you to deduce my "closed
political agenda", very impressive. Secondly though it's interesting that you think a "closed
political agenda", which I am taking to mean a concrete political viewpoint, can only be
remedied with a "brain transplant" rather than through discussion. It's almos as though
you're saying "those with political views different to mine are brainless" which is quite a
bigoted point of view.
No definition from you regarding the word neo-liberal though so all in all not a very
helpful or insightful post. Disappointing.
..the word "neo-liberal" which, so far as I can see, simply means "vague stuff which I
don't like".
Is it possible that you can't see very far because you're deliberately not looking? There
are perfectly adequate and precise definitions. I quite liked 'A Brief History of
Neoliberalism' by Prof D.Harvey as a long form definition, but since it's rather critical of
'vague stuff which I don't like', your closed political agenda may make it impossible for you
to understand without a brain transplant.
It is exasperating when political discussion is reduced to which foghorn can generate the
loudest interference. I suppose it's a mistake to waste time on correcting this rubbish
Doreen Massey is an academic. It shows in the way she writes. It's good that she raises
fundamental questions about society and the way it is managed. It has traditionally been the
role of academics to play that role.
The disappointing feature of the debate however is the absence of input from our
politicians. All our leading politicians have essentially the same view of our society and
economy. One in which, as Ms Massey indicates, choice exercised through market based
mechanisms is the key principal. There is no view of progress towards a good society. There
is no view of co-operation rather than competition. The only option is for us to measure
ourselves by what we consume.
Our political system and its parties have failed us. In particular it is the left that has
failed. It has accepted the social and economic arguments of the right and contented itself
with suggesting minor variations on the same theme. Activists on the left need to re-gather
their strength and more forcefully put forward a better alternative.
@retarius - Any government is only as good as the human rights it upholds.
Neoliberalism is the final stage of liberal democracy which has been around for 60-70 years,
the most destructive form of government the world has ever seen, based on deregulation for
the wealthy oligarchs and debt and debauchery for the poor .............. which is rapidly
taking us back to feudal times.
This is a view that misunderstands where pleasure and fulfilment in human lives are
found. Work is usually – and certainly should be – a central source of meaning
and fulfilment in human lives.
Wishful and naive thinking. Most work is very unfulfilling and even in cases where it is
meaningful the day to day grind and intensity required by a job is making it a chore. There
are very few people who have a job that is really a pleasure. There are many people though
who have empty lives and were brainwashed into believing that their job is the most important
part of their existence.
@gyges1 - " This is playground level debating. You are just saying the meaning you give to
words is to be preferred to that of your opponents."
Ah, I see the problem - a narrow mind with a broad-brush tendency.
I prescribe a course of Orwell, Start, perhaps, with short stories...... Politics and the
English Language, Why I Write, Notes on Nationalism, for example. And then a full dose of
Nineteen Eighty-Four. That should do the trick!
@RClayton - But if we start to think about work differently - which then gets its expression
with the words we use - maybe it can change. Your Bangladeshi example is interesting because
it assumes they need to work in that way to exist. Should we not try and change the system so
a Bangladeshi can harness his or her creativity to connect their creative ideas to a global
market and earn money in this way, rather than selling their physical labour to connect
someone else's t-shirt to a global market?
It's not just vocabulary, its demeanor, etiquette and peoples entire self perception that has
been usurped by the skewed modern logic of markets and the service industry.
People are preempting the technological singularity by rendering themselves robotic in a
quite tragic struggle to perpetually remain relevant and employable in the form that the
whims of the dictatorship of the market see fit to determine.
Some nationalities even have an intrinsic advantage, their national character tending rather
to the robotic from the outset. What remains of human expression, of impulsivity, of
spontaneity, of charisma, of originality is up for question, but the paucity of modern life,
of human expression and interaction, will increase in direct relation to the increases in
efficiency and productivity that will be demanded of citizens. And this despite the fact that
we are suffering under the weight of massive over production, and the excessive demand on
resources that this entails.
Nothing has been learnt from the crash of 2008 beyond "get rich even quicker", or as its more
commonly known, economic and ecological suicide.
@BaronessHawHaw - Working class pride in their jobs came from being highly skilled –
for example riveting in shipyards was difficult and you really were adding value there, so
was assembling a car and so on. Also, didn't most of their 'meaning and fulfilment' come from
the community, not really the work they were doing, except in so far as most of the people in
the community would be doing the same work so it gave them something to talk about?
I've never heard a modern person saying how much any of the jobs I listed give them
meaning or fulfilment. The kind of jobs that gave working class people a meaningful identity
have pretty much all gone.
Just looking at the Governments of Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Hungary as an
example seems to indicate centrist and centre-right parties in power.
As I'm reading the annual report of my old sixth form college - which also operate adult
learning courses - and they're an exempt charity and therefore not liable for corporation
tax. They have an operating surplus (read: profit) on which no tax is paid, quite unlike a
private sector company.
"... Neoliberalism is bankrupt, it isn't even a philiosophy its simple social nihilism. The proof is in the get rich quick, or short term profit mentality of those at the top. Get rich quick is tantamount to jumping the ship, its the economic equivalent of deserting a sinking vessel. Until people recognise the destructive cynical nature of the current economic philosophy and cast out those that are steering the ship, we are all doomed. ..."
"... Strange then, that you can buy a book called: "Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. By Daniel Stedman Jones. Princeton University Press". ..."
"... What were Friedrich Heyek and Milton Friedman: lollypop salesmen? ..."
"... Well it could be argued that postmodernism is the necessary condition for neoliberalism. ..."
'Customer'; 'growth'; 'investment'. We should scrutinise the everyday language that shapes how we think about the
economy
'We need to question that familiar categorisation of the economy as a space into which people enter in order to
reluctantly undertake unwelcome and unpleasing "work''.'
A
t a recent art exhibition I engaged in an
interesting conversation with one of the young people employed by the gallery. As she turned to walk off I saw she
had on the back of her T-shirt "customer liaison". I felt flat. Our whole conversation seemed somehow reduced, my
experience of it belittled into one of commercial transaction. My relation to the gallery and to this engaging
person had become one of instrumental market exchange.
The message underlying this use of the term customer for so
many different kinds of human activity is that in all almost all our daily activities we are operating as consumers
in a market – and this truth has been brought in not by chance but through managerial instruction and the
thoroughgoing renaming of institutional practices. The mandatory exercise of "free choice" – of a GP, of a hospital,
of schools for one's children – then becomes also a lesson in social identity, affirming on each occasion our
consumer identity.
This is a crucial part of the way that neoliberalism has become part of our commonsense understanding of life.
The vocabulary we use to talk about the economy is in fact a political construction, as Stuart Hall, Michael Rustin
and I have argued in our
Soundings manifesto
.
Another word that reinforces neoliberal common sense is "growth", currently deemed to be the entire aim of our
economy. To produce growth and then (maybe) to redistribute some of it, has been a goal shared by both neoliberalism
and social democracy. In its crudest formulation this entails providing the conditions for the market sector to
produce growth, and accepting that this will result in inequality, and then relying on the redistribution of some
portion of this growth to help repair the inequality that has resulted from its production.
This of course does nothing to question the inequality-producing mechanisms of market exchange itself, and it has
also meant that the main lines of struggle have too often been focused solely on distributional issues. What's more,
today we are living with a backlash to even the limited redistributional gains made by labour under social
democracy. In spite of all this, growth is still seen as providing the solution to our problems.
The second reason our current notion of wealth creation, and our commitment to its growth, must be questioned is
to do with our relationship with the planet. The environmental damage brought about by the pursuit of growth
threatens to cause a catastrophe of which we are already witnessing intimations. And a third – and perhaps most
important – defect of this approach is that increased wealth, especially as measured in the standard monetary terms
of today, has few actual consequences for people's feelings of wellbeing once there is a sufficiency to meet basic
needs, as there is in Britain. In pursuing "growth" in these terms, as a means to realise people's life goals and
desires, economies are pursuing a chimera.
Instead of an unrelenting quest for growth, might we not ask the question, in the end: "What is an economy for?",
"What do we want it to provide?"
Our current imaginings endow the market and its associated forms with a special status. We think of "the economy"
in terms of natural forces, into which we occasionally intervene, rather than in terms of a whole variety of social
relations that need some kind of co-ordination.
Thus "work", for example, is understood in a very narrow and instrumental way. Where only transactions for money
are recognised as belonging to "the economy", the vast amount of unpaid labour – as conducted for instance in
families and local areas – goes uncounted and unvalued. We need to question that familiar categorisation of the
economy as a space into which people enter in order to reluctantly undertake unwelcome and unpleasing "work", in
return for material rewards which they can use for consuming.
This is a view that misunderstands where pleasure and fulfilment in human lives are found. Work is usually – and
certainly should be – a central source of meaning and fulfilment in human lives. And it has – or could have – moral
and creative (or aesthetic) values at its core. A rethinking of work could lead us to address more creatively both
the social relations of work and the division of labour within society (including a better sharing of the tedious
work, and of the skills).
There are loads of other examples of rarely scrutinised terms in our economic vocabulary, for instance that
bundle of terms clustered around investment and expenditure – terms that carry with them implicit moral
connotations. Investment implies an action, even a sacrifice, undertaken for a better future. It evokes a future
positive outcome. Expenditure, on the other hand, seems merely an outgoing, a cost, a burden.
Above all, we need to bring economic vocabulary back into political contention, and to question the very way we
think about the economy in the first place. For something new to be imagined, let alone to be born, our current
economic "common sense" needs to be challenged root and branch.
•
Doreen Massey will be discussing Vocabularies of the Economy at a
Soundings seminar
on 13 June, 6.30-8.30pm, at the Marx Memorial Library, London. More information [email protected]
@Yorkied24 - Well, I just don't accept that. I agree that monetarism is a major part
of Friedman's legacy (as incorporated into neo-liberal doctrine). But, neo-liberalism
is what is says on the tin. It is a 'new' version of the liberalist free trade agenda
of the past, modified to take into account the welfare state.
I guess what I'm most
interested in is how you can disentangle and separate politics from economics, since
they are two sides of the same coin (where does 'science' fit in, by the way).
it seems that the political side of Neo-liberalism (or liberal democracy) has come up
with a new definition of the word "Catholic".
The Irish Prime-minster stated with a straight face in the Irish parliament today
........ that he is a "Catholic" outside parliament but when he enters parliament he
is not a "Catholic"........ in relation to a bill allowing for abortion to be
legalized in Ireland.
@NeverMindTheBollocks - when you criticise the author of "nonsensical thinking", this
suggests to me that you are uncomfortable with ideas that question "common sense".
Rather than engaging with the arguments, you are simply dismissing them as somebody's
arbitrary opinion. You seem to be suggesting that Massey is forcing her opinion on you
- but surely, like any good academic, she is really asking critical questions, rather
than providing answers and solutions. That's what academia is for. Why does that seem
to make you so angry?
@Pumplechook - Enterprise culture is a fine emboldening phrase to describe the sinking
of society casting citizens adrift with nothing but what nature gave them to keep them
afloat. Some might suggest we need to concentrate on mono platform non deliverables
going backwards. Or on a fleet of very cheap rubber dinghies.
Ms Massey clearly fails to see importance of remaining customer/client-focused in our
modern enterprise culture. It is crucial in terms of achieving outcomes-based win-win
solutions, as well as assisting in the interation of leading-edge opportunities and
leveraging cross-platform deliverables going forward.
@KingOfNothing - No, what I said was that neoliberalism is not an economic theory. For
a start, Milton Friedman's work has its own name in economics, which is monetarism.
Neoliberalism is a made up political word only used by those who are more interested
in politics and rhetoric than economics and science.
Neoliberalism is bankrupt, it isn't even a philiosophy its simple social nihilism. The
proof is in the get rich quick, or short term profit mentality of those at the top.
Get rich quick is tantamount to jumping the ship, its the economic equivalent of
deserting a sinking vessel. Until people recognise the destructive cynical nature of
the current economic philosophy and cast out those that are steering the ship, we are
all doomed.
@bill4me - 'Sweet smell of success'?
No, it's just that your shit-detector is so absent or degraded that you can no longer
smell the stink of 'filthy lucre'.
@Yorkied24 - I disagree. There is only one writer that deserves volleys of ad hominem
attacks and cheap insults and thats Julie Burchill. I know she's about as relevant as
a horse drawn carriage but nevertheless I think we need to keep criticism of
journalists in proportion.
@bill4me - The US under the aegis of freedom and capitalism sponsored paramilitary
regimes in Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Chile and
Argentina. Not to mention Greece and Iran. It continues to sponsor repressive regimes
in the middle east and is about to make peace with the Taliban.
You mistake capitalism
as it exists in theory, or in your head with 'actually existing capitalism' which is
often red in tooth and claw. The bloody history of the 20th century (particularly
world war one, without which no world war two) was in many ways a consequence of
imperialism which was a consequence of capitalism.
Theories are all very well, but
they run into problems called people. This applies equally to Marx, Smith and Hayek.
@Yorkied24 - But they don't do they? They don't engage in cowardly and anonymous ad
hominem attacks. They are professional journalists. The Guardian pays them to write
articles. They then put their name to said articles. It's a transparent process. They
are infinitely better than people who anonymously insult them without engaging in
debate.
@bill4me - No, but it rather skews the data doesn't it? The Soviet Union lifted more
people out of extreme poverty than perhaps any society before or since. But I wouldn't
advocate Stalinism. I'm sure Pinochet's supporters could point to a growth in
prosperity during his reign, but I shouldn't imagine many Chileans would favour a
return to authoritarian rule.
Headline date is often meaningless, for example George
Osborne may be able to argue that more people are employed than ever before, whilst
the opposition may be able to argue that more people are unemployed than ever before.
Bo
Both statements my be true, but what do they tell us in isolation?
Does it not occur to you that appalling governance may be a consequence of the form
capitalism takes right now?
Strange then, that you can buy a book called: "Masters of the Universe: Hayek,
Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. By Daniel Stedman Jones. Princeton
University Press".
What were Friedrich Heyek and Milton Friedman: lollypop salesmen?
So, someone writes a book calling two economists 'neoliberals', so that makes it
so? By that argument, it also calls them Masters of the Universe, so they're fucking
He-Man too.
If you think capitalism is all winners and no losers you're either
tremendously naive or a bit thick.
I wouldn't rely on headline figures on Wikipedia to
support your argument. Drill down a little, find the data, look at individual
countries, see what type of regimes operate in said countries. And imagine, for a
second, that the stats are meaningful, then imagine what responsible capitalism could
achieve.
@Justthefactsman - Slightly off topic, but I hanker for obliged rather than obligated.
Also, most of the time I just feel ok, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Fair to middlin'
you might say. I seldom feel awesome.
No definition from you regarding the word neo-liberal though so all in all not a
very helpful or insightful post. Disappointing.
It's sometimes worth having a debate about what particular words mean, but all
debate rests on certain presumptions, a foundation on which the argument is built, and
in this case, Massey counts on her audience sharing her understanding of the term
'neoliberal', which many of us do. Anyone who doesn't can very easily look it up
online and quickly find a definition which sits well with Massey's points.
Your and others' approach to rejecting her argument is ungracious cavilling. It's
easy to do this in response to any argument, and make no mistake - anyone with
intelligence and an open mind can recognise it very clearly.
@Ken Terry - Chomsky is right, ("The Manufacturing of Consent") 'At the head of it is
the Military\Industrial Complex, coining the euphemisms of war to make the unthinkable
palatable.
On a localised scale, consider the Coalition who have done a similar job on the word,
"Reform". If you look at history's most accurate and honorific incidences of political
and parliamentary Reform look at the two Reform Acts which extended the franchise to
adult male suffrage, 1832 and 1867, under Peel and Disraeli, Tories FFS, opposed to
the Liberal's merciless free market obsessions.
What is "reforming" about stripping poor, ill and vulnerable people of their material
support?
Pure Deformation.
I'm not a Tory, (Lifelong Socialist) but I think it's important to reconnect the
Conservative Party with some of its avowed traditional self-definitions. "Maintaining
continuity with past institutions, and a 'gradualism', if change is necessary." (Henry
Cecil, I think).
Where has been the 'gradualism' in this Govt's' sudden and relentless pace of forcing
change on the mass of its people by Bill after Bill restricting our aspirations and
well-being?
We are governed by political liars who see this state of affairs as a triumph for
their expertise. Any criticism is dismissed as not being able to accept the world 'as
it is.'
The irony, of course, is that neoliberalism has *always* been coupled by high state
spending. I know they say different, but that doesn't make it a reality. Stop showing
your ignorance of the subject and go and delve in to some of the vast literature on
the subject.
@joseph1832 - I think this misses the point though. You're trying to claim there can
be words that are neutral, a language without a political dimension. This is besides
the point, it's certainly not feasible in a society constructed as it is now.
The
real point is that language is itself a field of struggle. It's a terrain on which
neoliberalism must be fought. In doing so we need not pretend to be doing anything
less than entering a political fight. In combating neoliberalism no claim to be
'neutral' is necessary, that would be precisely to do what it does from the opposite
direction - claim universality, eternalisation etc. The left does need to assert
interrogate the language of neoliberalism and assert its own. Not becuase this is less
political (I think "manipulation" is too strong a word here, the matter is somewhat
more complex than that) but becuase it can offer a better future.
@DemocracyNever - I should think the first two responses illustrate how and why debate
is increasingly meaningless. Neither of you engage with the argument or posit an
alternative; hence no debate.
That debate should be meaningful is given, that it should be an art form is,
frankly, silly.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum
of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."
Noam Chomsky
The world according to Trump -- notice a trend here?
Reporter: "Who should be held accountable?" [for Jamal Khashoggi's murder]
Trump: "Maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a vicious place. The world is a very, very vicious
place. " -- November 22, 2018.
2007:
" The world is a vicious and brutal place. We think we're civilized. In truth, it's a cruel world and people are ruthless.
They act nice to your face, but underneath they're out to kill you." Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and in Life , Donald
Trump & Bill Zanker, 2007, p. 71.
"Life is not easy. The world is a vicious, brutal place. It's a place where people are looking to kill you, if not
physically, then mentally. In the world that we live in every day it is usually the mental kill. People are looking to put you
down, especially if you are on top. When I watched Westerns as a kid, I noticed the cowboys were always trying to kill the fastest
gun. As a kid, I never understood it. Why would anyone want to go after the fastest gun?
"This is the way it is in real life. Everyone wants to kill the fastest gun. In real estate, I am the fastest gun, and everyone
wants to kill me. You have to know how to defend yourself. People will be nasty and try to kill you just for sport. Even your
friends are out to get you!" Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and in Life , Donald Trump & Bill Zanker, 2007, p. 139.
2018:
"Well, not all people. But it's a vicious place. The world is a vicious place. You know, the lions and tigers, they
hunt for food, we hunt for sport. So, it can be a very vicious place. You turn on the television and you look at what's happening."
Interview with John Barton, Golf Digest , October 13, 2014.
" This is the most deceptive, vicious world. It is vicious, it's full of lies, deceit and deception. You make a deal
with somebody and it's like making a deal with– that table." Interview with Lesley Stahl, CBS 60 Minutes , October 15,
2018.
"This is a r– this is a vicious place. Washington DC is a vicious, vicious place. The attacks, the– the bad mouthing,
the speaking behind your back. –but – you know, and in my way, I feel very comfortable here." Interview with Lesley Stahl, CBS
60 Minutes , October 15, 2018.
Karl Kolchak , November 23, 2018 8:54 pm
The world is a vicious place -- that is utterly dependent on oil and other fossil fuels, and will be until civilization
finally collapses.
ilsm , November 24, 2018 7:19 am
Newly posted DNC democrat Bill Kristol thinks regime change in China a worthwhile endeavor.
The "world is a vicious place" designed, set up, held together, secured by the capitalist "post WW II world order" paid for
by the US taxpayer and bonds bought by arms dealers and their financiers.
The tail wagging the attack dog being a Jerusalem-Medina axis straddling Hormuz and Malacca .
An inept princely heir apparent assassin is far better than Rouhani in a "vicious place".
"... "The 10 Bcm/year into Europe is not a game-changer from a volume point of view, but it is a game-changer from a new source of product into mainland Europe perspective and it can be expanded." ..."
"... Meanwhile, however, Russia and Turkey are building another pipeline, Turkish Stream, that will supply gas to Turkey and Eastern Europe, as well as possibly Hungary. The two recently marked the completion of its subsea section. Turkish Stream will have two lines, each able to carry up to 15.75 billion cubic meters. One will supply the Turkish market and the other European countries. ..."
"... In this context, the Southern Gas Corridor seems to have more of a political rather than practical significance for the time being , giving Europe the confidence that it could at some future point import a lot more Caspian gas because the infrastructure is there. ..."
The Southern Gas Corridor on which the European Union is pinning most of its hopes for
natural gas supply diversification away from Russia is coming along nicely and will not just be
on schedule, but it will come with a price tag that is US$5-billion lower than the original
budget , BP's vice president in charge of the project
told S&P Global Platts this week.
"Often these kinds of mega-projects fall behind schedule. But the way the projects have
maintained the schedule has meant that your traditional overspend, or utilization of
contingency, has not occurred," Joseph Murphy said, adding that savings had been the top
priority for the supermajor.
The Southern Gas Corridor will carry natural gas from the Azeri Shah Deniz 2 field in the
Caspian Sea to Europe via a network of three pipelines : the Georgia South Caucasus Pipeline,
which was recently expanded and can carry 23 billion cubic meters of gas; the TANAP pipeline
via Turkey, with a peak capacity of 31 billion cubic meters annually; and the Trans-Adriatic
Pipeline, or TAP, which will link with TANAP at the Turkish-Greek border and carry 10 billion
cubic meters of gas annually to Italy.
TANAP was
commissioned in July this year and the first phase of TAP is expected to be completed in
two years, so Europe will hopefully have more non-Russian gas at the start of the new decade.
But not that much, at least initially: TANAP will operate at an initial capacity of 16 billion
cubic meters annually, of which 6 billion cubic meters will be supplied to Turkey and the
remainder will go to Europe. In the context of total natural gas demand of 564 billion cubic
meters in 2020, according to a forecast from the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies released
earlier this year, this is not a lot.
Yet at some point the TANAP will reach its full capacity and hopefully by that time, TAP
will be completed. Surprisingly, it was the branch to Italy that proved the most challenging,
and BP's Murphy acknowledged that. While Turkey built TANAP on time to the surprise of the
project operator, TAP has been struggling because of legal issues and uncertainty after the new
Italian government entered office earlier this year.
At the time, the government of Giuseppe Conte said the pipeline was pointless but, said
Murphy, since then he has accepted the benefits the infrastructure would offer, such as transit
fees. And yet local opposition in southern Italy remains strong but BP still sees first
deliveries of gas through Italy in 2020.
The BP executive admitted that at first the Southern Gas Corridor wouldn't make a
splash.
"The 10 Bcm/year into Europe is not a game-changer from a volume point of view, but it is
a game-changer from a new source of product into mainland Europe perspective and it can be
expanded."
Meanwhile, however, Russia and Turkey are building another pipeline, Turkish Stream, that
will supply gas to Turkey and Eastern Europe, as well as possibly Hungary. The two recently
marked the completion of its subsea section. Turkish Stream will have two lines, each able to
carry up to 15.75 billion cubic
meters. One will supply the Turkish market and the other European countries.
In this context, the Southern Gas Corridor seems to have more of a political rather than
practical significance for the time being , giving Europe the confidence that it could at some
future point import a lot more Caspian gas because the infrastructure is there.
If anybody had any doubts about the Washington's determination to
give Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman a pass over allegations that he was involved with
the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump put them to rest earlier this
week when he
released a statement praising Saudi Arabia, openly
questioning the CIA and stressing the importance of the US-Saudi relationship (while also
portraying Khashoggi as a suspicious and untrustworthy figure with ties to terror groups).
And while rumors about a possible intra-family coup in Riyadh have been simmering since
Khashoggi disappeared inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 (with
the latest reports surfacing earlier this week ), the notion that MbS's spurned relatives
might rise up and exact their revenge for last year's brutal
"corruption crackdown" at the Riyadh Ritz Carlton is looking increasingly improbable. In
other words, as long as the international response to the Khashoggi incident is limited to
countries that don't sell weapons to Saudi Arabia ending arms sales to the kingdom, then MbS
will almost certainly survive.
And in the latest indication that the royal family - not to mention nearly all of the
Saudis' regional allies - remains firmly behind the Crown Prince, even as the return of his
uncle from exile has set tongues wagging about MbS' impending ouster, one senior prince
recently told
Reuters that the CIA's findings are "not to be trusted."
"... The Private Contractors Using Vault 7 Tools for US Gov: Testimony Shows US Intel Needs a Ground-Up Rebuild Part 1... https://www.opednews.com/ar... ..."
"... Why Vault 7 Tools Used by Private Contractors Shows US Intel Needs a Ground-Up Rebuild- It's the News- Part 2... https://www.opednews.com/ar... ..."
"... Or is it owing to MI5/MI6 desperation, with how Trump will handle their involvement in the US Presidential Campaign. James Bond never had those types of problems, in the days when UK intelligence was not run by social media outlets. ..."
Not forgetting the US have their battalions of cyber trolls, together with the EU.
Then look into the media branches of cyber trolls. Ironic, when the UK Government is so
focused on Russia Today and the few funds they receive from the Russian Government.
Good point, with regards 'news' via social; media.
I do like the George Eliason articles, which explain intelligence agencies reliance on
social media. Including the US outsourcing 80% of it's intelligence to the social media.
Not just the US, when you look at the similarities with UK Media.
The Private Contractors Using Vault 7 Tools for US Gov: Testimony Shows US Intel
Needs a Ground-Up Rebuild Part 1...
https://www.opednews.com/ar...
Why Vault 7 Tools Used by Private Contractors Shows US Intel Needs a Ground-Up
Rebuild- It's the News- Part 2...
https://www.opednews.com/ar...
..........................
So what is with the timing? Is it to take attention away from BREXIT?
Or is it owing to MI5/MI6 desperation, with how Trump will handle their
involvement in the US Presidential Campaign. James Bond never had those types of
problems, in the days when UK intelligence was not run by social media outlets.
I have never managed fully to understand the mechanism by which the media and political
class decide when to leave a fact, a glaringly obvious and vital fact, completely excluded from
public debate. That process of exclusion is a psychological, not an organisational, phenomenon
but extremely effective.
Brexit continues to dominate mainstream political discussion, and the Northern Ireland
border issue remains at the centre of current negotiations, forced there by the London
government's reneging on the agreement it signed almost a year ago. But there is a secret here,
hidden in plain sight, the glaring fact driving the entire process, but which the media somehow
never mention.
"I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame,"
Clinton said, speaking as part of a series of interviews with senior centrist political
figures about the rise of populists, particularly on the right, in Europe and the
Americas.
"I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by
leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must
send a very clear message – 'we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and
support ' – because if we don't deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil
the body politic."
Hillary still can't admit to herself that she lost the election because she was a horrible
candidate and people refused to vote for her.
Clinton urged forces opposed to rightwing populism in Europe and the US not to neglect the
concerns about race and i dentity issues that she says were behind her losing key votes in
2016. She accused Trump of exploiting the issue in the election contest – and in
office.
"The use of immigrants as a political device and as a symbol of government gone wrong, of
attacks on one's heritage, one's identity, one's national unity has been very much exploited
by the current administration here," she said.
"There are solutions to migration that do not require clamping down on the press, on your
political opponents and trying to suborn the judiciary, or seeking financial and political
help from Russia to support your political parties and movements."
Let's recap what Obama's coup in
Ukraine has led to shall we? Maybe installing and blatantly backing Neo Nazis in Ukraine
might have something to do with the rise of " populists on the right " that is
spreading through Europe and this country, Hillary.
America's criminal 'news' media never even reported the coup, nor that in 2011 the Obama
regime began planning
for a coup in Ukraine . And that by 1 March 2013 they started organizing it inside
the U.S. Embassy there . And that they hired members of Ukraine's two racist-fascist,
or nazi, political parties , Right Sector and Svoboda (which latter had been called the
Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine until the CIA advised them to change it to Freedom Party,
or "Svoboda" instead). And that in February 2014 they did it (and here's the 4 February 2014 phone call
instructing the U.S. Ambassador whom to place in charge of the new regime when the coup will
be completed), under the cover of authentic anti-corruption demonstrations that the Embassy
organized on the Maidan Square in Kiev, demonstrations that the criminal U.S. 'news' media
misrepresented as 'democracy demonstrations ,' though Ukraine already had democracy (but
still lots of corruption, even more than today's U.S. does, and the pontificating Obama said
he was trying to end Ukraine's corruption -- which instead actually soared after his coup
there).
"... Operating on a budget of Ł1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity Initiative consists of "clusters" of local politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists and academics. The team is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian interference in European affairs , while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes, the documents claim. ..."
"... The Integrity Initiative "clusters" currently operate out of Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, Norway, Lithuania and the netherlands. According to the leak by Anonymous, the Integrity Initiative is working to aggressively expand its sphere of influence throughout eastern Europe, as well as the US, Canada and the MENA region ..."
"... The work done by the Initiative - which claims it is not a government body, is done under "absolute secrecy via concealed contacts embedded throughout British embassies," according to the leak. It does, however, admit to working with unnamed British "government agencies." ..."
The hacking collective known as "Anonymous" published a
trove of documents on November 5 which it claims exposes a UK-based psyop to create a " large-scale information secret service
" in Europe in order to combat "Russian propaganda" - which has been blamed for everything from
Brexit to US President Trump winning the 2016 US election.
The primary objective of the " Integrity Initiative " - established
in 2015 by the Institute for Statecraft - is "to provide a coordinated
Western response to Russian disinformation and other elements of hybrid warfare."
And while the notion of Russian disinformation has become the West's favorite new bogeyman to excuse things such as Hillary Clinton's
historic loss to Donald Trump, we note that "Anonymous" was called out by WikiLeaks in October 2016 as an FBI cutout, while the report
on the Integrity Initiative that Anonymous exposed comes from Russian state-owned network
RT - so it's anyone's guess whose 400lb
hackers are at work here.
Operating on a budget
of Ł1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity Initiative consists of "clusters" of local politicians, journalists,
military personnel, scientists and academics. The team is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian interference
in European affairs , while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes, the documents claim.
The UK establishment appears to be conducting the very activities of which it and its allies have long-accused the Kremlin,
with little or no corroborating evidence. The program also aims to "change attitudes in Russia itself" as well as influencing
Russian speakers in the EU and North America, one of the leaked
documents states. -
RT
The Integrity Initiative "clusters" currently operate out of Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, Norway,
Lithuania and the netherlands. According to the leak by Anonymous, the Integrity Initiative is working to aggressively expand its
sphere of influence throughout eastern Europe, as well as the US, Canada and the MENA region .
The work done by the Initiative - which claims it is not a government body, is done under "absolute secrecy via concealed contacts
embedded throughout British embassies," according to the leak. It does, however, admit to working with unnamed British "government
agencies."
The initiative has received Ł168,000 in funding from HQ NATO Public Diplomacy and Ł250,000 from the
US State Department , the
documents allege.
Some of its purported members include British MPs and high-profile " independent" journalists with a penchant for anti-Russian
sentiment in their collective online oeuvre, as showcased by a brief glance at their Twitter feeds. -
RT
Noted examples of "inedependent" anti-Russia journalists:
Spanish "Op"
In one example of the group's activities, a "Moncloa Campaign" was successfully conducted by the group's Spanish cluster to block
the appointment of Colonel Pedro Banos as the director of Spain's Department of Homeland Security. It took just seven-and-a-half
hours to accomplish, brags the group in the
documents .
"The [Spanish] government is preparing to appoint Colonel Banos, known for his pro-Russian and pro-Putin positions in the Syrian
and Ukrainian conflicts, as Director of the Department of Homeland Security, a key body located at the Moncloa," begins Nacho Torreblanca
in a seven-part tweetstorm describing what happened.
Others joined in. Among them – according to the leaks – academic Miguel Ángel Quintana Paz, who wrote that "Mr. Banos is to
geopolitics as a homeopath is to medicine." Appointing such a figure would be "a shame." -
RT
The operation was reported in Spanish media, while Banos was labeled "pro-Putin" by UK MP Bob Seely.
In short, expect anything counter to predominant "open-border" narratives to be the Kremlin's fault - and not a natural populist
reflex to the destruction of borders, language and culture.
"... It lists Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council as "partner organisations" ..."
"... "The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016." ..."
"... "Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele dossier..." ..."
"... this movement in the west by gov'ts to pay for generating lies, hate and propaganda towards russia is really sick... it is perfect for the military industrial complex corporations though and they seem to be calling the shots in the west, much more so then the voice of the ordinary person who is not interested in war ..."
"... Seems to me that this shows the primacy of the City of London, with its offshore network of illicit capital accumulation, within Britain. It is a state within a state or even a financial empire within a state, which, for deep historical reasons isn't subject to the same laws as the rest of the UK. ..."
"... The UK's pathological obsession with Russia only makes sense to me as the city's insistence on continued 90s style appropriation of Russia's wealth ..."
"... British hypocrisy publicly called out. How this all unravels is one to watch. Extra large popcorn and soda for me ..."
"... It seems to me that the UK has far more to lose from doxxing than Russia does. The interference in sovereign allied states to 'manage' who the UK thinks they should appoint does not bode well for such relations ..."
"... A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times and Neil Buckley from the FT." Subcluster. Love it. Just how crap do you have to be to fail to make it to membership of a full cluster of smear merchants? ..."
"... I doubt very seriously that the British launched this operation without the CIA's implicit and explicit support. This has all the markings of a John Brennan operation that has been launched stealthily to prevent anyone from knowing its real origins. ..."
"... The Brits don't act alone, and a project of this magnitude did not begin without Langley's explicit approval. ..."
"... Now check out the wording in the above document: "Funding from institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed by internal disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding should now flow." Think about that. What would have blocked the flow of USG support for this project?? Why, the allegations of collusion against Trump, of course. Naturally, the Republicans are not going to provide money to an operation that threatens to destroy the head of their own party. So, there has been no bipartisan agreement on funding for anti-Russia propaganda ..."
"... This mob was created in the autumn of 2015, according to their site. That would have been about the time -- probably just after -- the Russians intervened in Syria. The Brits had plans for an invasion of Syria in 2009, according to their fave Guardian fish wrap. ..."
"... Pat Lang posted a report that strongly implies that charges of Russian influence on Trump are a deliberate falsification ..."
"... It seems quite possible that what is alleged as "Russian meddling" is actually CIA-MI6 meddling ..."
"... As I have said before, MAGA is a POLICY RESPONSE to the challenge from Russia and China. The election of a Republican faux populist was necessary and Trump, despite his many flaws, was the best candidate for the job. ..."
"... The Integrity Initiative's goal is to defend democracy against the truth about Russia. All this is so Orwellian. When will we get the Ministry of Love? ..."
"... They shot at an elephant and failed to kill it. So yes, out of the combo of frustration, resentment, and fear they hate the resurgent Russia and prefer Cold War II, and if necessary WWIII, to peaceful co-existence. Of course the usual corporate imperative (in this case weapons profiteering) reinforces the mass psychological pathology among the elites. ..."
"... The ironic thing is that Putin doesn't prefer to challenge the neoliberal globalist "order" at all, but would happily see Russia take a prominent place within it. It's the US and its UK poodle who are insisting on confrontation. ..."
"... Great article! It reminded me of what I read in George Orwell's novella "1984." He summed it all up brilliantly in nine words: "War is Peace"; "Freedom is Slavery"; "Ignorance is Strength." The three pillars of political power. ..."
"... Since UK has always blocked the "European Intelligence" initiative, on the basis of his pertenence to the "Five Eyes", and as UK is leaving the European Union, where it has always been the Troyan Horse of the US, one would think that all these people belonging to the so called "clusters" should register themselves as "foreign agents" working for UK government. ..."
British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear CampaignsSteveg , Nov 24,
2018 11:43:44 AM |
link
In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia
propaganda into the western media stream.
We have already seen
many consequences of this and similar programs which are designed to smear anyone who
does not follow the anti-Russian government lines. The 'Russian collusion' smear campaign
against Donald Trump based on the Steele dossier was also a largely British operation but
seems to be part of a different project.
The ' Integrity
Initiative ' builds 'cluster' or contact groups of trusted journalists, military
personal, academics and lobbyists within foreign countries. These people get alerts via
social media to take action when the British center perceives a need.
On June 7 it took the the Spanish cluster only a few hours to derail the appointment of
Perto Banos as the Director of the National Security Department in Spain. The cluster
determined that he had a too positive view of Russia and launched a coordinated social media
smear
campaign (pdf) against him.
The Initiative and its operations were unveiled when someone liberated some of its
documents, including its budget applications to the British Foreign Office, and
posted them under the 'Anonymous' label at cyberguerrilla.org .
The Integrity Initiative was set up in autumn 2015 by The Institute for Statecraft in
cooperation with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) to bring to the attention of
politicians, policy-makers, opinion leaders and other interested parties the threat posed
by Russia to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom, across Europe and North
America.
It lists Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council as "partner organisations" and
promises that:
Cluster members will be sent to educational sessions abroad to improve the technical
competence of the cluster to deal with disinformation and strengthen bonds in the cluster
community. [...] (Events with DFR Digital Sherlocks, Bellingcat, EuVsDisinfo, Buzzfeed,
Irex, Detector Media, Stopfake, LT MOD Stratcom – add more names and propose cluster
participants as you desire).
The Initiatives Orwellian slogan is 'Defending Democracy Against Disinformation'. It
covers European countries, the UK, the U.S. and Canada and seems to want to expand to the
Middle East.
On its About page
it claims: "We are not a government body but we do work with government departments and
agencies who share our aims." The now published budget plans show that more than 95% of the
Initiative's funding is coming directly from the British government, NATO and the U.S. State
Department. All the 'contact persons' for creating 'clusters' in foreign countries are
British embassy officers. It amounts to a foreign influence campaign by the British
government that hides behind a 'civil society' NGO.
The organisation is led by one Chris N. Donnelly who
receives (pdf) £8,100 per month for creating the smear campaign network.
To counter Russian disinformation and malign influence in Europe by: expanding the
knowledge base; harnessing existing expertise, and; establishing a network of networks of
experts, opinion formers and policy makers, to educate national audiences in the threat and
to help build national capacities to counter it .
The Initiative has a black and white view that is based on a "we are the good ones"
illusion. When "we" 'educate the public' it is legitimate work. When others do similar, it
its disinformation. That is of course not the reality. The Initiative's existence itself,
created to secretly manipulate the public, is proof that such a view is wrong.
If its work were as legit as it wants to be seen, why would the Foreign Office run it from
behind the curtain as an NGO? The Initiative is not the only such operation. It's
applications seek funding from a larger "Russian Language Strategic Communication Programme"
run by the Foreign Office.
The 2017/18 budget application sought FCO funding of £480,635. It received
£102,000 in co-funding from NATO and the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense. The 2018/19
budget application shows a
planned spending (pdf) of £1,961,000.00. The co-sponsors this year are again NATO
and the Lithuanian MoD, but
also include (pdf) the U.S. State Department with £250,000 and Facebook with
£100,000. The budget lays out a strong cooperation with the local military of each
country. It notes that NATO is also generous in financing the local clusters.
One of the liberated papers of the Initiative is a talking points memo labeled
Top 3 Deliverable for FCO (pdf):
Developing and proving the cluster concept and methodology, setting up clusters in a
range of countries with different circumstances
Making people (in Government, think tanks, military, journalists) see the big
picture, making people acknowledge that we are under concerted, deliberate hybrid attack
by Russia
Increasing the speed of response, mobilising the network to activism in pursuit of
the "golden minute"
Under top 1, setting up clusters, a subitem reads:
- Connects media with academia with policy makers with practitioners in a country to impact
on policy and society: ( Jelena Milic silencing pro-kremlin voices on Serbian TV )
Defending Democracy by silencing certain voices on public TV seems to be a
self-contradicting concept.
Another subitem notes how the Initiative secretly influences foreign governments:
We engage only very discreetly with governments, based entirely on trusted personal
contacts, specifically to ensure that they do not come to see our work as a problem, and to
try to influence them gently, as befits an independent NGO operation like ours, viz;
- Germany, via the Zentrum Liberale Moderne to the Chancellor's Office and MOD
- Netherlands, via the HCSS to the MOD
- Poland and Romania, at desk level into their MFAs via their NATO Reps
- Spain, via special advisers, into the MOD and PM's office (NB this may change very soon
with the new Government)
- Norway, via personal contacts into the MOD
- HQ NATO, via the Policy Planning Unit into the Sec Gen's office.
We have latent contacts into other governments which we will activate as needs be as the
clusters develop.
A look at the 'clusters' set up in U.S. and UK shows some prominent names.
Members of the Atlantic Council, which has a contract to
censor Facebook posts , appear on several cluster lists. The UK core cluster also
includes some prominent names like tax fraudster William Browder , the daft Atlantic Council
shill Ben Nimmo and the neo-conservative Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum. One person
of interest is Andrew Wood who
handed the Steele 'dirty dossier' to Senator John McCain to smear Donald Trump over
alleged relations with Russia. A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah
Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times, Neil Buckley from the FT and Jonathan Marcus
of the BBC.
A ' Cluster
Roundup ' (pdf) from July 2018 details its activities in at least 35 countries. Another
file reveals (pdf) the local
partnering institutions and individuals involved in the programs.
The Initiatives Guide
to Countering Russian Information (pdf) is a rather funny read. It lists the downing of
flight MH 17 by a Ukranian BUK missile, the fake chemical incident in Khan Sheikhoun and the
Skripal Affair as examples for "Russian disinformation". But at least two of these events,
Khan Sheikun via the UK run White Helmets and the Skripal affair, are evidently products of
British intelligence disinformation operations.
The probably most interesting papers of the whole stash is the 'Project Plan' laid out at
pages 7-40 of the
2018 budget application v2 (pdf). Under 'Sustainability' it notes:
The programme is proposed to run until at least March 2019, to ensure that the clusters
established in each country have sufficient time to take root, find funding, and
demonstrate their effectiveness. FCO funding for Phase 2 will enable the activities to be
expanded in scale, reach and scope. As clusters have established themselves, they have
begun to access local sources of funding. But this is a slow process and harder in some
countries than others. HQ NATO PDD [Public Diplomacy Division] has proved a reliable source
of funding for national clusters. The ATA [Atlantic Treaty Association] promises to be the
same, giving access to other pots of money within NATO and member nations. Funding from
institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed by internal
disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to have been
resolved and funding should now flow.
The programme has begun to create a critical mass of individuals from a cross society
(think tanks, academia, politics, the media, government and the military) whose work is
proving to be mutually reinforcing . Creating the network of networks has given each
national group local coherence, credibility and reach, as well as good international
access. Together, these conditions, plus the growing awareness within governments of the
need for this work, should guarantee the continuity of the work under various auspices and
in various forms.
The
third part of the budget application (pdf) list the various activities, their output and
outcome. The budget plan includes a section that describes 'Risks' to the initiative. These
include hacking of the Initiatives IT as well as:
Adverse publicity generated by Russia or by supporters of Russia in target countries, or by
political and interest groups affected by the work of the programme, aimed at discrediting
the programme or its participants, or to create political embarrassment.
We hope that this piece contributes to such embarrassment.
Posted by b on November 24, 2018 at 11:24 AM |
Permalink
"The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to
prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election
meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil
throughout 2016."
"Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that
Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In
Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling
custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele
dossier..."
For M16 to expose this level of stupidity is stunning.
this movement in the west by gov'ts to pay for generating lies, hate and
propaganda towards russia is really sick... it is perfect for the military industrial complex
corporations though and they seem to be calling the shots in the west, much more so then the
voice of the ordinary person who is not interested in war.. i guess the idea is to get the
ordinary people to think in terms of hating another country based on lies and that this would
be a good thing... it is very sad what uk / usa leadership in the past century has come down
to here.... i can only hope that info releases like this will hasten it's demise...
Seems to me that this shows the primacy of the City of London, with its offshore network of
illicit capital accumulation, within Britain. It is a state within a state or even a
financial empire within a state, which, for deep historical reasons isn't subject to the same
laws as the rest of the UK.
The UK's pathological obsession with Russia only makes sense to
me as the city's insistence on continued 90s style appropriation of Russia's wealth
@6 ingrian... things didn't go as planned for the expropriation of Russia after the fall of
the Soviet Union.. it seems the west is still hurting from not being able to exploit Russia
fully, as they'd intended...
Let the Doxx wars begin! Sure, Anonymous is not Russian but it will surely now be targeted
and smeared as such which would show that it has hit a nerve. British hypocrisy publicly
called out. How this all unravels is one to watch. Extra large popcorn and soda for me.
I think we've all noticed the euro-asslantic press (and friends) on behalf of, willingly
and in cooperation with the British intelligence et al 'calling out' numerous Russians as
G(R)U/spies/whatever for a while now yet providing less than a shred of credible
evidence.
It seems to me that the UK has far more to lose from doxxing than Russia does. The
interference in sovereign allied states to 'manage' who the UK thinks they should appoint
does not bode well for such relations.
Meanwhile in Brussels they are having their cake and eating it, i.e. bemoaning Europe's
'weak response' to Russian propaganda:
"A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of
the London Times and Neil Buckley from the FT." Subcluster. Love it. Just how crap do you
have to be to fail to make it to membership of a full cluster of smear merchants?
Yet another example of the pot calling the kettle black when in fact the kettle may not be
black at all; it's just the pot making up things. "These Russian criminals are using
propaganda to show (truths) like the fact the DNC and Clinton campaigns colluded to prevent
Sanders from being nominated, so we need to establish a clandestine propaganda network to
establish that the Russians are running propaganda!"
"In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia
propaganda into the western media stream."
I doubt very seriously that the British launched this operation without the CIA's implicit
and explicit support. This has all the markings of a John Brennan operation that has been
launched stealthily to prevent anyone from knowing its real origins.
The Brits don't act alone, and a project of this magnitude did not begin without Langley's
explicit approval.
Now check out the wording in the above document: "Funding from institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed
by internal disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to
have been resolved and funding should now flow." Think about that. What would have blocked the flow of USG support for this project?? Why, the allegations of collusion against Trump, of course. Naturally, the Republicans are
not going to provide money to an operation that threatens to destroy the head of their own
party. So, there has been no bipartisan agreement on funding for anti-Russia propaganda
BUT...the author assures us that the "deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding
should now flow" Huh?? In other words, the fix is in. Mueller will pardon Trump on collusion charges but the
propaganda campaign against Russia will continue...with the full support of both parties. I could be wrong, but that's how I see it...
This mob was created in the autumn of 2015, according to their site. That would have been
about the time -- probably just after -- the Russians intervened in Syria. The Brits had
plans for an invasion of Syria in 2009, according to their fave Guardian fish wrap.
A lot of
sour grapes with this so-called 'integrity initiative', IMO. BP was behind a lot of this, I
would also think. When Assad pulled the plug on the pipeline through the Levant in 2009, the
Brits hacked up a fur ball. It's gone downhill for them ever since. Couldn't happen to a
nicer lot. If you can't invade or beat them with proxies, you can at least call them names.
If Trump was taking dirty money or engaged in criminal activity with Russians then he
was doing it with Felix Sater, who was under the control of the FBI... And who was in
charge of the FBI during all of the time that Sater was a signed up FBI snitch? You got it
-- Robert Mueller (2001 thru 2013) ...
It seems quite possible that what is alleged as "Russian meddling" is actually CIA-MI6
meddling, including:
Steele dossier: To create suspicion in government, media, and later the public
Leaking of DNC emails to Wikileaks (but calling it a "hack"):
To help with election of Trump and link Wikileaks (as agent) to Russian election
meddling
Cambridge Analytica: To provide necessary reasoning for Trump's (certain) win of the electoral college.
Note: We later found that dozens of firms had undue access to Facebook data. Why did the
campaign turn to a British firm instead of an American firm? Well, it had to be a British
firm if MI6 was running the (supposed) Facebook targeting for CIA.
As I have said before, MAGA is a POLICY RESPONSE to the challenge from Russia and China. The
election of a Republican faux populist was necessary and Trump, despite his many flaws, was
the best candidate for the job.
The Integrity Initiative's goal is to defend democracy against the truth about Russia. All this is so Orwellian. When will we get the Ministry of Love?
"things didn't go as planned for the expropriation of russia after the fall of the soviet
union.. it seems the west is still hurting from not being able to exploit russia fully, as
they'd intended..."
They shot at an elephant and failed to kill it. So yes, out of the combo of frustration, resentment, and fear they hate the resurgent
Russia and prefer Cold War II, and if necessary WWIII, to peaceful co-existence. Of course
the usual corporate imperative (in this case weapons profiteering) reinforces the mass
psychological pathology among the elites.
The ironic thing is that Putin doesn't prefer to challenge the neoliberal globalist
"order" at all, but would happily see Russia take a prominent place within it. It's the US
and its UK poodle who are insisting on confrontation.
Great article! It reminded me of what I read in George Orwell's novella "1984." He summed it
all up brilliantly in nine words: "War is Peace"; "Freedom is Slavery"; "Ignorance is
Strength." The three pillars of political power.
Since UK has always blocked the "European Intelligence" initiative, on the basis of his
pertenence to the "Five Eyes", and as UK is leaving the European Union, where it has always
been the Troyan Horse of the US, one would think that all these people belonging to the so
called "clusters" should register themselves as "foreign agents" working for UK
government...and in this context, new empowerished sovereign governemts into the EU should
consider the possibility expelling these traitors as spies of the UK....
Country list of agents of influence according to the leak:
Germany: Harold Elletson ,Klaus NaumannWolf-Ruediger Bengs, Ex Amb Killian, Gebhardt v Moltke, Roland
Freudenstein, Hubertus Hoffmann, Bertil Wenger, Beate Wedekind, Klaus Wittmann, Florian
Schmidt, Norris v Schirach
Sweden, Norway, Finland: Martin Kragh , Jardar Ostbo, Chris Prebensen, Kate Hansen Bundt, Tor Bukkvoll, Henning-Andre
Sogaard, Kristen Ven Bruusgard, Henrik O Breitenbauch, Niels Poulsen, Jeppe Plenge, Claus
Mathiesen, Katri Pynnoniemi, Ian Robertson, Pauli Jarvenpaa, Andras Racz
Netherlands: Dr Sijbren de Jong, Ida Eklund-Lindwall, Yevhen Fedchenko, Rianne Siebenga, Jerry Sullivan,
Hunter B Treseder, Chris Quick
Spain: Nico de Pedro, Ricardo Blanco Tarno, Eduardo Serra Rexach, Dionisio Urteaga Todo, Dimitri
Barua, Fernando Valenzuela Marzo, Marta Garcia, Abraham Sanz, Fernando Maura, Jose Ignacio
Sanchez Amor, Jesus Ramon-Laca Clausen, Frances Ghiles, Carmen Claudin, Nika Prislan, Luis
Simon, Charles Powell, Mira Milosevich, Daniel Iriarte, Anna Bosch, Mira Milosevich-Juaristi,
Tito, Frances Ghiles, Borja Lasheras, Jordi Bacaria, Alvaro Imbernon-Sainz, Nacho Samor
US, Canada:
Mary Ellen Connell, Anders Aslund, Elizabeth Braw, Paul Goble, David Ziegler
Evelyn Farkas, Glen Howard, Stephen Blank, Ian Brzezinski, Thomas Mahnken, John Nevado,
Robert Nurick, Jeff McCausland
Todd Leventhal
UK: Chris Donnelly
Amalyah Hart William Browder John Ardis
Roderick Collins, Patrick Mileham Deborah Haynes
Dan Lafayeedney Chris Hernon Mungo Melvin
Rob Dover Julian Moore Agnes Josa David Aaronovitch Stephen Dalziel Raheem Shapi Ben
Nimmo
Robert Hall Alexander Hoare Steve Jermy Dominic Kennedy
Victor Madeira Ed Lucas Dr David Ryall
Graham Geale Steve Tatham Natalie Nougayrede Alan Riley [email protected]Anne Applebaum Neil Logan Brown James Wilson
Primavera Quantrill
Bruce Jones David Clark Charles Dick
Ahmed Dassu Sir Adam Thompson Lorna Fitzsimons Neil Buckley Richard Titley Euan Grant
Alastair Aitken Yusuf Desai Bobo Lo Duncan Allen Chris Bell
Peter Mason John Lough Catherine Crozier
Robin Ashcroft Johanna Moehring Vadim Kleiner David Fields Alistair Wood Ben Robinson Drew
Foxall Alex Finnen
Orsyia Lutsevych Charlie Hatton Vladimir Ashurkov
Giles Harris Ben Bradshaw
Chris Scheurweghs James Nixey
Charlie Hornick Baiba Braze J Lindley-French
Craig Oliphant Paul Kitching Nick Childs Celia Szusterman
James Sherr Alan Parfitt Alzbeta Chmelarova Keir Giles
Andy Pryce Zach Harkenrider
Kadri Liik Arron Rahaman David Nicholas Igor Sutyagin Rob Sandford Maya Parmar Andrew Wood
Richard Slack Ellie Scarnell
Nick Smith Asta Skaigiryte Ian Bond Joanna Szostek Gintaras Stonys Nina Jancowicz
Nick Washer Ian Williams Joe Green Carl Miller Adrian Bradshaw
Clement Daudy Jeremy Blackham Gabriel Daudy Andrew Lucy Stafford Diane Allen Alexandros
Papaioannou
Paddy Nicoll
"... By Nat Dyer, a freelance writer based in London. He was previously an investigator and campaigner at Global Witness, an anti-corruption group. He tweets at @natjdyer. Originally published at openDemocracy ..."
By Nat Dyer, a freelance writer based in London. He was previously an investigator and campaigner at Global
Witness, an anti-corruption group. He tweets at @natjdyer. Originally published at
openDemocracy
There was a little bit of good news this month for those worried about a tidal wave of
McMafia-style financial crime. A new UK government agency tasked with fighting it – the
National
Economic Crime Centre (NECC) – opened its doors.
I say "little" because financial crime is far more deeply rooted in our financial and
political systems than we like to acknowledge.
From the LIBOR-rigging scandal to the offshore
secrets of the Panama Papers and
'dark money' in the Brexit vote , it is everywhere. In my recent work with anti-corruption
group Global Witness , I saw
first-hand how ordinary people in some of the world's poorest countries suffer the consequences
of corruption and financial crime. We
exposed suspicious mining and oil deals in Central Africa, in which over a billion dollars
of desperately-needed public finances were lost offshore. The story is about the West as much
as Africa. The deals were routed through a dizzying web of offshore shell companies in the
British Virgin Islands, often linked to listed companies in London, Toronto and elsewhere. Even
if the NECC is given enough resources and collaborates widely, it has got its work cut out.
One reason all this financial crime is tolerated is that thinkers who shine a light on its
systemic nature have been erased from the record. Top of my list of neglected economic
superstars is Professor Susan Strange of the London School of Economics, one of the founders of
the field of international political economy. In a series of ground-breaking books –
States and Markets, The Retreat of the State and Mad Money – Strange showed how epidemic
levels of financial crime were a consequence of specific political decisions.
"This financial crime wave beginning in the 1970s and getting bigger in later years is not
accidental," Strange wrote.
It would have hardly been possible to design a system, she said, "that was better suited
than the global banking system to the needs of drug dealers and other illicit traders who want
to conceal from the police the origin of their large illegal profits."
For Strange, money laundering, tax evasion and public embezzlement were a result of the
collapse in the 1970s of the post-war financial order. Here are four ways she showed how
politics and the financial crime epidemic were intimately connected.
1) Money Is Global, Regulation Is National
There was nothing inevitable about financial globalisation, Strange said. It was born out of
a series of political decisions. It means that global money can skip freely across borders
beyond the reach of national laws and supervision. For smart operators tax, regulations, and
compliance become a choice, not an obligation. Strange argued that international organisations
lack the power to control global money, only coordination between the world's major economies
can rein it in.
2) Tax Havens Are an Open Invitation to Embezzlement
Unless you have somewhere to stash the cash, the looting of public money and state
enterprises can only go so far.
Tax havens give "open invitations", Strange said, to corrupt politicians to steal from their
people.
Banking secrecy in the havens allows money from tax evasion, drug trafficking and public
embezzlement to mix together until they become indistinguishable from legitimate business.
For Strange the "obscenely large" bonuses paid to those in financial markets leads to a kind
of "moral contamination", she wrote which has "reinforced and accelerated the growth of the
links between finance and politics". Strange recognised that corruption and bribery were a
problem in London and New York as well as Asia, Africa and Latin America. "Bribery and
corruption in politics are not new at all. It is the scale and extent of it that have risen,
along with the domination of finance over the real economy," she wrote.
4) Money Is Political Power
Globalisation has redefined politics, Strange argued. Political power is not just what
happens in governments, but money and markets also have power. As legitimate and illegitimate
private operators grow richer, they increase their power to shape the world system. States
starved of tax revenues grow weaker and retreat, in a reinforcing spiral. National politics
becomes captured by global money markets.
In the twenty years since Susan Strange's death in 1998, these trends have only bedded down.
Bankers' bonuses have continued to skyrocket and in 2018 reached
their pre-crisis peak .
Columbia University professor James S Henry
estimates tha t in 2015 a scarcely imaginable $24 trillion to $36 trillion of the world's
financial wealth was held offshore. Much of that is money from legitimate businesses but
contributes to a system where financial crime can prosper.
We cannot hope to get out of the morass of financial crime, and out-of-control financial
markets, without understanding how they relate to one another. The genie of globalised money
cannot be put back into the bottle, but Strange would argue that we should challenge banking
secrecy, and through coordinated action of the world's large economies close down tax
havens.
Finance and crime was only one strand of her work, but it contributed to her unnerving,
perhaps prophetic, conclusion that unless we rein in the financial system it could sweep away
the entire Western liberal order. One only has to glance at the combination of financial
chicanery and violent rhetoric that characterises the Trump presidency to see that her concerns
could hardly be more contemporary.
Strange would tell us that we need more than a new government agency to turn back the tide
of financial crime. We need nothing less than a new approach to political economy at national
and global level.
The key observation here is that the financial system is de-facto a criminal cartel and
financial oligarchy can and should be viewed as a Mafioso-style group. So organized crime laws
are perfectly applicable to the financial sector. Removal of New Deal regulations essentially get
tremendous impulse for flourishing financial sector criminality.
Notable quotes:
"... By Nat Dyer, a freelance writer based in London. He was previously an investigator and campaigner at Global Witness, an anti-corruption group. He tweets at @natjdyer. Originally published at openDemocracy ..."
"... "This financial crime wave beginning in the 1970s and getting bigger in later years is not accidental," Strange wrote. ..."
"... that was better suited than the global banking system to the needs of drug dealers and other illicit traders who want to conceal from the police the origin of their large illegal profits." ..."
By Nat Dyer, a freelance writer based in London. He was previously an investigator and
campaigner at Global Witness, an anti-corruption group. He tweets at @natjdyer. Originally
published at openDemocracy
There was a little bit of good news this month for those worried about a tidal wave of
McMafia-style financial crime. A new UK government agency tasked with fighting it -- the
National
Economic Crime Centre (NECC) -- opened its doors.
I say "little" because financial crime is far more deeply rooted in our financial and
political systems than we like to acknowledge.
From the LIBOR-rigging scandal to the offshore
secrets of the Panama Papers and
'dark money' in the Brexit vote , it is everywhere. In my recent work with anti-corruption
group Global Witness , I saw
first-hand how ordinary people in some of the world's poorest countries suffer the consequences
of corruption and financial crime. We
exposed suspicious mining and oil deals in Central Africa, in which over a billion dollars
of desperately-needed public finances were lost offshore. The story is about the West as much
as Africa. The deals were routed through a dizzying web of offshore shell companies in the
British Virgin Islands, often linked to listed companies in London, Toronto and elsewhere. Even
if the NECC is given enough resources and collaborates widely, it has got its work cut out.
One reason all this financial crime is tolerated is that thinkers who shine a light on its
systemic nature have been erased from the record. Top of my list of neglected economic
superstars is Professor Susan Strange of the London School of Economics, one of the founders of
the field of international political economy. In a series of ground-breaking books -- States
and Markets, The Retreat of the State and Mad Money -- Strange showed how epidemic levels of
financial crime were a consequence of specific political decisions.
"This financial crime wave beginning in the 1970s and getting bigger in later years is
not accidental," Strange wrote.
It would have hardly been possible to design a system, she said, " that was better
suited than the global banking system to the needs of drug dealers and other illicit traders
who want to conceal from the police the origin of their large illegal profits."
For Strange, money laundering, tax evasion and public embezzlement were a result of the
collapse in the 1970s of the post-war financial order. Here are four ways she showed how
politics and the financial crime epidemic were intimately connected.
1) Money Is Global, Regulation Is National
There was nothing inevitable about financial globalisation, Strange said. It was born out of
a series of political decisions. It means that global money can skip freely across borders
beyond the reach of national laws and supervision. For smart operators tax, regulations, and
compliance become a choice, not an obligation. Strange argued that international organisations
lack the power to control global money, only coordination between the world's major economies
can rein it in.
2) Tax Havens Are an Open Invitation to Embezzlement
Unless you have somewhere to stash the cash, the looting of public money and state
enterprises can only go so far.
Tax havens give "open invitations", Strange said, to corrupt politicians to steal from their
people.
Banking secrecy in the havens allows money from tax evasion, drug trafficking and public
embezzlement to mix together until they become indistinguishable from legitimate business.
For Strange the "obscenely large" bonuses paid to those in financial markets leads to a kind
of "moral contamination", she wrote which has "reinforced and accelerated the growth of the
links between finance and politics". Strange recognised that corruption and bribery were a
problem in London and New York as well as Asia, Africa and Latin America. "Bribery and
corruption in politics are not new at all. It is the scale and extent of it that have risen,
along with the domination of finance over the real economy," she wrote.
4) Money Is Political Power
Globalisation has redefined politics, Strange argued. Political power is not just what
happens in governments, but money and markets also have power. As legitimate and illegitimate
private operators grow richer, they increase their power to shape the world system. States
starved of tax revenues grow weaker and retreat, in a reinforcing spiral. National politics
becomes captured by global money markets.
In the twenty years since Susan Strange's death in 1998, these trends have only bedded down.
Bankers' bonuses have continued to skyrocket and in 2018 reached
their pre-crisis peak .
Columbia University professor James S Henry
estimates tha t in 2015 a scarcely imaginable $24 trillion to $36 trillion of the world's
financial wealth was held offshore. Much of that is money from legitimate businesses but
contributes to a system where financial crime can prosper.
We cannot hope to get out of the morass of financial crime, and out-of-control financial
markets, without understanding how they relate to one another. The genie of globalised money
cannot be put back into the bottle, but Strange would argue that we should challenge banking
secrecy, and through coordinated action of the world's large economies close down tax
havens.
Finance and crime was only one strand of her work, but it contributed to her unnerving,
perhaps prophetic, conclusion that unless we rein in the financial system it could sweep away
the entire Western liberal order. One only has to glance at the combination of financial
chicanery and violent rhetoric that characterises the Trump presidency to see that her concerns
could hardly be more contemporary.
Strange would tell us that we need more than a new government agency to turn back the tide
of financial crime. We need nothing less than a new approach to political economy at national
and global level.
Came across mention of her in a book recently and it struck me how much she seemed to be
a prophetess without honour. Her obituary on her life makes interesting reading-
Yes, it is a great shame, Rev. I read her obit, too, and I agree with you. I do
recommend Casino Capitalism and its sequel, Mad Money (Manchester U Press editions). She
was ahead of her time.
Oil continues collapsing. The 7% move today is probably magnified due to lack of liquidity
post-Thanksgiving, but nevertheless the move is huge. Oil is down 34% from recent highs.
Fundamentals and real economy do not change this quick, so expect to hear about more "hedge(ed)
funds" blowing up. After all this is a 3 sigma move .
What´s next for oil nobody knows, but 50 USD is a rather big level to watch. For
believers in Fibonacci, 50 is the 50% retracement from the 2016 lows.
Oil volatility, OIV index, is now in full explosion mode. This is pure panic and these
levels won´t be sustainable longer term, but the rise in oil volatility is simply
amazing.
As we outlined earlier, oil stress started spreading to credit several weeks ago. We have
been pointing out, no bounce in equities until we possibly see some stabilization in
credit . For the equity bulls, unfortunately credit continues imploding. European iTraxx
main continues the move violently higher.
Similar chart is to be found for the US CDX IG index.
Below chart shows the CDX IG index (white) versus oil (inverted, orange). The relationship
is rather clear. Add to this crowded positions and low liquidity and the moves continue feeding
of each other, causing enormous p/l pain and further risk reduction among funds.
European iTraxx main (inverted white) is now "aggressively" under performing the Eurostoxx
50 index (orange). The moves in credit are starting to feel rather "panicky", helping VIX and
other related volatilities higher.
Given the continuation in oil prices, we ask ourselves when will the market start to realize
Fed can´t be tightening as aggressively as (still) priced in. Maybe time for the Powell
put to revive?
Comments while mostly naive, are indicative for the part of the US society that elected Trump
and that Trump betrayed.
But the fact that gas went not to Europe, but to Turkey is pretty indicative. And even larger volume with go to China. At some
point Europe might lose part or all Russia gas supply as Russian gas reserved are not infinite. That the perspective EU leaders
are afraid of.
US shale gas is OK as long as the USA is supplied from Canada, Russia and other places as well. Some quantity can be
exported. But the USA can't be a large and stable gas supplier to Europe as shale gas is capital intensive and sweet spots
are limited.
Notable quotes:
"... Some worthy observations, especially with all the US "Think Tanks." But I would include the number of non-Jewish elites who have banded together with the Jewish elite and who have greatly aided in eating out the very heart of America. ..."
"... History also shows that ANY smaller entity (Israel) that depends on a larger entity (America) for its survival becomes a failed entity in the long run. Just saying. ..."
"... The American Empire is all cost and no benefit to the great majority of Americans. The MIC and that's it. Politicians on the right wave the flag and politicians on the left describe a politically correct future. All on our dime. ..."
While the Trump Administration still thinks it can play enough games to derail the
Nordstream 2 pipeline via sanctions and threats, the impotence of its position geopolitically
was on display the other day as the final pipe of the first train of the Turkstream pipeline
entered the waters of the Black Sea.
The pipe was sanctioned by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan who shared a public stage and held bilateral talks afterwards. I think it is
important for everyone to watch the response to Putin's speech in its entirety. Because it
highlights just how far Russian/Turkish relations have come since the November 24th, 2015
incident where Turkey shot down a Russian SU-24 over Syria.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/TkFR25SArYM
When you contrast this event with the strained and uninspired interactions between Erdogan
and President Trump you realize that the world is moving forward despite the seeming power of
the United States to derail events.
And Turkey is the key player in the region, geographically, culturally and politically.
Erdogan and Putin know this. And they also know that Turkey being the transit corridor of
energy for Eastern Europe opens those countries up to economic and political power they haven't
enjoyed in a long time.
The first train of Turkstream will serve Turkey directly. Over the next couple of years the
second train will be built which will serve as a jumping off point for bringing gas to Eastern
and Southern Europe.
Turkstream will bring 15.75 bcm annually to Turkey and the second train that same amount to
Europe. The TAP – Trans Adriatic Pipeline -- will bring just 10 bcm annually and won't do
so before 2020, a project more than six years in the making.
Political Realities
The real story behind Turkstream, however, is, despite Putin's protestations to the
contrary, political. No project of this size is purely economic, even if it makes immense
economic sense. If that were the case then the STC wouldn't exist because it makes zero
economic sense but some, if not much, political sense.
No, this pipeline along with the other major energy projects between Russia and Turkey have
massive long-term political implications for the Middle East. Erdogan wants to re-take control
of the Islamic world from the Saudis.
This is why they have the Saudis on a residual-poison-type drip
feed of information relating to the death of Jamal Khashoggi to extract maximal value from
the situation as Erdogan plays the U.S. deep state against the Trump/Mohammed bin Salman (MbS)
alliance.
The U.S. deep state wants Trump weakened and MbS removed from power. Trump needs MbS to
advance his plans for securing Israel's future and prolong the dollar's long-term health.
Erdogan is using this rift to extract concessions left and right while continuing to do
whatever he wants to do vis a vis Syria, Iran and his growing partnership with Russia.
Erdogan is in a position now to drive a very hard bargain over U.S. involvement in Syria,
which neither faction in the U.S. government (Trump and the deep state) wants to give up
on.
By controlling the oil fields in the eastern part of Syria and blocking the roads leading
from Iraq the U.S. is playing a game it can't win because ultimately the Kurds will either have
to be betrayed by the U.S. to keep Erdogan happy or cut a deal with the Syrian government for
their future alienating the U.S.
This has been the ultimate end-game of the occupation of eastern Syria for months now and
time is on both Putin's and Erdogan's side. Because the U.S. can't pressure Turkey to stop
growing closer to Russia and Iran.
Eventually the U.S. troops in Syria will be nothing more than an albatross around Trump's
neck politically and he'll have to announce a pull out, which will be popular back home helping
his re-election campaign for 2020.
The big loser in this is Israel who is now having to circle the wagons politically since
Putin put the screws to Benjamin Netanyahu for his part in the deaths of 15 Russian airmen back
in September by closing the Syrian airspace and allowing mostly free movement of materiel to
Lebanon.
Netanyahu, as I talked about last week, is now in a very precarious position after Israel
was forced to sue for peace thanks to the unprecedentedly strong response by the Palestinians
in Gaza.
Elijah Magnier commented
recently that it this was the net result of Trump's unconditional support of Israel which
united the Arab resistance rather than dividing and conquering it.
But the US establishment decided to distance itself from the Palestinian cause and
embraced unconditionally the Israeli apartheid policy towards Palestine: the US supports
Israel blindly. It has recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, suspended financial aid
to UN institutions supporting Palestinian refugees (schools, medical care, homes), and
rejected the right of return of Palestinians. All this has pushed various Palestinian groups,
including the Palestinian Authority, to acknowledge that any negotiation with Israel is
useless and that also the US can no longer be considered a reliable partner. Moreover, the
failed regime-change in Syria and the humiliating conditions place on Arab financial support
were in a way the last straws that convinced Hamas to change its position, giving up on the
Oslo agreement and joining the Axis of the Resistance.
Project Netanyahu,
as Alistair Crooke termed it , was predicated on keeping the support of the Palestinians
split with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority at odds and then grinding out the resistance in
Gaza over time.
Trump's plans also involved the formation of the so-called "Arab NATO" the summit for which
has been put off until next year thanks to Erdogan's deft handling of the Saudi hit on
Khashoggi. There are still a number of issues outstanding -- the financial blockade of Qatar,
the war in Yemen, etc. -- that need to be resolved as well before any of this is even remotely
possible.
At this point that plan has failed and the clash with Israel last week proved it is
unworkable without tacit approval of Turkey who is gunning for the Saudis as the leaders of the
Sunni world.
Show me the Money
But, more importantly, over time, a Turkey that can ween itself off the U.S. dollar over the
next decade is a Turkey that can survive politically the upheaval to the post-WWII
institutional order coming over the next few years.
Remember, all of this is happening against the backdrop of a U.S. and European political
order that is failing to maintain the confidence of the people it governs.
The road to dollar independence will be long and hard but it will be possible. Russia is the
model for this having successfully removed the dollar from a great deal of its trade and is now
reaping the benefits of that stability.
And projects like Turkstream and the soon to be completed Power of Siberia Pipeline to China
will see the gas from both trade without the dollar as the intermediary.
If you don't think this de-dollarization of the Russian economy is happening or significant,
take one look at the Russian ruble versus the price of Brent crude in recent weeks. We've had
another historic collapse in oil prices and yet the ruble versus the dollar hasn't really moved
at all.
The upward move from earlier this year in the ruble (not shown) came from disruptions in the
Aluminum market and the threat of further sanctions. But, as the U.S. puts the screws even
tighter to Russia's finances by forcing the price of oil down, the effect on the ruble has been
minimal.
With today's move Brent is off nearly $30 from its October high ( a massive 35% drop in
prices) just seven weeks ago and the Ruble hasn't budged. The Bank of Russia hasn't been in
there propping up its price. Normally this would send the ruble into a tailspin but it
hasn't.
The other so-called 'commodity currencies' like the Canadian and Australian dollars have
been hit hard but not the ruble.
Set the Way Back Machine to 2014 when oil prices cratered and you'll see a ruble in free
fall which culminated in a massive blow-off top that required a fundamental shift in both
fiscal and monetary policy for Russia.
This had to do with the massive dollar-denominated debt of its, you guessed it, oil and gas
sector. Today that is not a point of leverage.
Today lower oil prices will be a forward headwind for Russian oil companies but a boon to
the Russian economy that won't experience massive inflation thanks to the ruble being sold to
cover U.S. dollar liabilities.
Those days are over.
And so too will those days come for Turkey which is now in the process of doing what Russia
did in 2015, divest itself of future dollar obligations while diversifying the currencies it
trades in.
Stability, transparency and solvency are the things that increase the demand for a currency
as not only a medium of exchange but also as a reserve asset. Russia announced the latest
figures of bilateral trade with China bypassing the dollar and RT had a very interesting
quote from Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev.
No one currency should dominate the market, because this makes all of us dependent on the
economic situation in the country that issues this reserve currency, even when we are talking
about a strong economy such as the United States," Medvedev said.
He added that US sanctions have pushed Moscow and Beijing to think about the use of their
domestic currencies in settlements, something that "we should have done ten years ago."
" Trading for rubles is our absolute priority, which, by the way, should eventually turn
the ruble from a convertible currency into a reserve currency, " the Russian prime minister
said.
That is the first statement by a major Russian figure about seeing the ruble rise to reserve
status, but it's something that many, like myself, have speculated about for years now.
Tying together major economies like Turkey, Iran, China and eventually the EU via energy
projects which settle the trade in local currencies is the big threat to the current political
and economic program of the U.S. It is something the EU will only embrace reluctantly.
It is something the U.S. will oppose vehemently.
And it is something that no one will stop if it makes sense for the people on each side of
the transaction. This is why Turkstream and Nordstream 2 are such important projects they
change the entire dynamic of the flow of global capital.
Oil and commodity markets were used as a finishing move on the Soviet system. The book,
"The Oil Card: Global Economic Warfare in the 21st Century" by James R. Norman details the
use of oil futures as a geopolitical tool. Pipelines change the calculus quite a bit.
Soros funded 'migration' to Europe has also failed and created a massive cultural and
economic burden on Europe.
The Soros/Rothschild plan to destroy Middle Eastern countries and displace the people was
- of course - motivated by the Rothschilds 'bread and butter ' - OIL ( the worlds largest
traded commodity ) !!
...Where ever they go, they [neoliberals] get organised, identify the institutions/establishments/courts to infiltrate and then use that
influence to -
* Hijack the economy.
* Corrupt the society.
As the current trend shows, the nexus of the international economic activity is shifting
east. Turkey is not making a mistake aligning itself with the goals of Russia, Iran and
China. Although there is still a huge debt of the previous deeds that has to be paid.
"Half of the US billionaires are Jews while only being less then 3% of the population. And
it doesn't stop there. They work collectively to hijack the institutions critical for the
operations of the democracy."
Some worthy observations, especially with all the US "Think Tanks." But I would include
the number of non-Jewish elites who have banded together with the Jewish elite and who have
greatly aided in eating out the very heart of America.
I read on here previously some dimwit comment about "America prints a bill for 2 cents
while other countries have to earn a dollars worth of equity to buy it and we can do this
forever" kind of thing. Not if other countries don't supply the demand you can't :)
History also shows that ANY smaller entity (Israel) that depends on a larger entity
(America) for its survival becomes a failed entity in the long run. Just saying.
I think you could quite reasonably replace the term 'depends on a larger entity', with a
term that better describes a (smaller) ' parasite ' on a (larger) host...
From your lips to God's ear. The American Empire is all cost and no benefit to the great majority of Americans. The MIC
and that's it. Politicians on the right wave the flag and politicians on the left describe a
politically correct future. All on our dime.
Israhell is losing its status via Putins peaceful diplomacy and trade with ME countries
who are not onboard with the Yinon plan. This is why RUSSIAGATE, led by dual Israhelli democrats in Congress. There is always a
foreign policy issue attached to their demonizing of other countries. This is also why the UK just sent UK soldiers to Ukraine declaring war on Russia for
"invading Ukraine" and not telling parliament or the UK people.
UK/US blind support for Israhell will get us all killed.
We do know that UK soldiers have been sent to the Ukraine. We also know that, according to elements in the Government and the Civil Service, Russia
invaded and annexed the Ukraine, which is just another reason to not trust the
Government--any Government.
WRONG!!!!! NordStream Eins und Zwei are the Prizes, because DEU, Scandinavia, CHE, and FRA will
Benefit. TRK Wins 2nd Prize with TRKStream and SouthStream Pipelines. Losers are BGR and EU_PARAGOV, since BGR went from Prime Partner to Trickledown
Transiteer.
Ultimately, along with Nordstream and Turkstream, there will also be a Polarstream
(leading to UK and Iceland) and Southstream (which was already begun but temporarily
suspended after Obama threatened Bulgaria via Angela Merkel).
And, oh...I am sure there will also be a Ukrostream (also known as Mainstream)
unfortunately the Ukronazi government of Ukrainistan doesn't know this just yet. They will
find out in due course, I am sure.
First PolarStream is highly unlikely both because laying it would be extremely difficult
and expensive and because Iceland has no need for gas as it is sitting on thermal reserves
and the UK won't deal with Russia.
You are correct on SouthStream.
As to UkroStream (I assume you mean Ukraine) it is already in existence and has been for
50 plus years. Given the bad history between the parties the Russians will want to stop that
route asap, hence the timing of NordStream 2 and TurkStream. So in the future UkroSream is
going to end, not start.
long-term political implications for the Middle East. Erdogan wants to re-take control of
the Islamic world from the Saudis.
SA still has control of the Hajj -- religious tourism - command by the Magic Book that
even Turkish mohammadist must complete. +/- 18% of SA GDP-- and SA isn't sharing any of that
loot.
Ticip is required to go and throw rocks at the black orb -- and do the Muslim Hokey Pokey
along with all the rest.. oh, and pay the SA kings for the privilege !
The new 3D Grand Chessboard is being played very quietly out of Moscow.
The article is a wee bit deceptive. Whilst this was indeed the last bit of under sea pipe
they were celebrating, it should be pointed out the stunning speed that they achieved, about
a mile a day some to a depth of over 1000 feet, quite an achievement on land, let alone at
sea. This is quite interesting, especially the map
Also, as its landfall in Turkey is west of the Bosphorus, that is west of Istanbul, maybe
that 'for Turkish use' is a cover for its primary purpose, supplying the Balkans as well as
Turkey from January 2020.
Note the significance of the start to pump date, December 2019, the same as NordStream 2.
What else happens then? Oh yes, the gas transit contract with Ukraine ends. The combination
of these two new pipelines to a very great extent replace that agreement. Even though
politically everyone is saying Ukraine ($4B p.a. transit fees) should be protected.
Take another look at the map, note that it takes a dogleg south to Turkey. If at that
point it had gone straight ahead it would have gone to Bulgaria as SouthStream. But the US
and its EU vassal stopped that. Maybe the second pipeline the Russians are now discussing
will resurrect that route.
Oil and commodity markets were used as a finishing move on the Soviet system. The book,
"The Oil Card: Global Economic Warfare in the 21st Century" by James R. Norman details the
use of oil futures as a geopolitical tool. Pipelines change the calculus quite a bit.
"... By Axel Dreher, Professor of International and Development Politics, Heidelberg University, Valentin Lang,Post-Doctoral Researcher in Political Economy, University of Zurich, B. Peter Rosendorff, Professor of Politics, New York University and James Vreeland, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University. Originally published at VoxEU ..."
"... Countries that vote with the US when serving on the UN Security Council also receive more financial assistance. This column uses voting records in the Council to show that when these countries were US allies, they received more in US aid, but when the countries were not natural allies, they received more financial assistance from US-dominated international institutions instead. ..."
Dirty
Work: Buying Votes at the UN Security Council Posted on November
24, 2018 by Yves SmithBy Axel Dreher,
Professor of International and Development Politics, Heidelberg University, Valentin
Lang,Post-Doctoral Researcher in Political Economy, University of Zurich, B. Peter Rosendorff,
Professor of Politics, New York University and James Vreeland, Professor of Politics and
International Affairs, Princeton University. Originally published at VoxEU
Countries that vote with the US when serving on the UN Security Council also receive
more financial assistance. This column uses voting records in the Council to show that when
these countries were US allies, they received more in US aid, but when the countries were not
natural allies, they received more financial assistance from US-dominated international
institutions instead.
On 18 December 2017, the US vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that had
called for the withdrawal of US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the
capital of Israel. The resolution was supported by all remaining 14 members of the Council. Two
days after the vote, Trump threatened to cut foreign aid to countries that voted against the US
at the UN. "These nations that take our money and then they vote against us at the Security
Council We're watching those votes. Let them vote against us, we'll save a lot," he said.
The Trump administration is not the first to pay attention to these votes. When Hillary
Clinton, at that time the US Secretary of State, paid a visit to Togo in 2012, the press
questioned her choice of destination. Clinton explained that, "[n]o secretary of state had ever
been to Togo before. Togo happens to be on the UN Security Council. Going there, making the
personal investment, has a real strategic purpose When you look at the voting dynamics in key
international institutions, you start to understand the value of paying attention to these
places."
Several years earlier, the first Bush administration famously pressured governments to vote
in favour of the Security Council resolution approving Operation Desert Storm. When Yemen voted
'no', James Baker, the Secretary of State, reportedly told colleagues, "[t]hat's the most
expensive vote they ever cast." The US subsequently cut $70 million in foreign aid.
These anecdotes reflect a systematic pattern. In previous research, we and others have found
that countries that serve on the UN Security Council get financial favours. They receive more
US aid and more loans from international institutions in which the US commands a powerful
voice, including the IMF, the World Bank, and UN aid agencies. Countries also receive softer
IMF conditionality during their two years of temporary membership (Kuziemko and Werker 2006,
Vreeland and Dreher 2014, Dreher et al. 2015).
Linking Voting Behaviour to Favours
In recent research (Dreher et al. 2018) we asked whether these favours are linked to voting
behaviour in the Security Council, what the rewards might be for voting with the US, and the
method by which the US could 'buy' agreement, given that it would be frowned upon if done
openly. To answer the questions, we used an original dataset that comprehensively records
Security Council voting data.
We estimate that countries that voted with the US in the Security Council also got an
increase in US aid of about 40%. Those members that voted against the US, on the other hand,
got no more aid while serving on the Council than countries outside the Council.
Figure 1 UN Security Council decisions over time
Source : Dreher et al. (2018).
This pattern of increased aid is only observable for US allies (see Figure 2). While the US
government would not be criticised for giving aid to allies, it might be politically costly to
an administration to openly reward non-allies in ways that the US Congress and public could
see.
Figure 2 UN Security Council voting and US aid allocation
Source : Dreher et al. (2018). Notes : The figure shows the marginal effect of serving on the UN Security Council
while voting all the time with the US on bilateral US aid flows for different levels of
political proximity to the US (in concert with the 90% confidence interval). The histogram
shows the distribution of political proximity to the US among aid-eligible countries, measured
as voting alignment in the UN General Assembly.
These payments may be seen as improper. Also, an increase in foreign aid following a vote at
the Security Council might damage the legitimacy of the UN, when this legitimacy a key reason
for governments to seek Security Council support in the first place. The US public might also
frown upon providing aid to a country not viewed as a friend of the US.
An historical example suggests that these risks do not entirely prevent the US from buying
support from countries of this type. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US attempted
to influence political developments in Russia with billions in bilateral aid in the early
1990s. In the mid-1990s, these aid packages came under increasing popular pressure in the US
because of concerns over the budget deficit, and an unpromising outcome (for US interests) in
Russian parliamentary elections.
This led to large reductions in US aid in the late 1990s. But when the US turned away from
using direct bilateral aid, it started using obfuscated sources of funding. In 1995, the IMF
approved a $6 billion loan program. It increased it to more than $10 billion the next year, and
to the extraordinary figure of $18 billion in 1998. It is now clear that the US put pressure on
the IMF behind the scenes. Boris Yeltsin, the Russian President at the time, said that to get
the IMF to commit to these loans "[w]e had to involve [Bill] Clinton, Jacques Chirac, Helmut
Kohl, and [John] Major" (Gordon 1996). Apparently, the US exploited its influence on the IMF to
provide multilateral financial support when it had become difficult and politically costly to
give bilateral aid.
We find systematic evidence that this pattern held when looking at UN Security Council
voting data. While allies received increased bilateral aid from the US when they voted for the
US position, governments not allied with the US did not. Instead, when these governments voted
with the US, there were increases in loans to them from the IMF. Our results suggest that these
countries received an increase in IMF loans of about 50%.
Figure 3 UN Security Council voting and IMF loan allocation
Source : Dreher et al. (2018). Notes : The figure shows the marginal effect of serving on the UN Security Council
while voting all the time with the US on IMF loan size for different levels of political
proximity to the US (in concert with the 90% confidence interval). The histogram shows the
distribution of political proximity to the US among aid-eligible countries, measured as voting
alignment in the UN General Assembly.
It may be no surprise to find that powerful countries would be willing to buy influence.
Realpolitikhowever, has required different channels for different countries. We see that the
practice of buying influence around the world, while perhaps crude, has been nuanced and
finessed by obscuring the funding sources. The US may have openly funded its allies, but it hid
similar favours to less friendly states. Ironically, the international institutions that the US
used for this obfuscation are the same institutions that the Trump administration is currently
weakening in its attempt to put American interests first.
Ironically, the international institutions that the US used for this obfuscation are the
same institutions that the Trump administration is currently weakening in its attempt to
put American interests first.
Never listen to what a politician says but instead concentrate like a laser on what he
does. Trump talks a good nationalist game but what about his actions? Is he undermining the
US-led international imperial order? Once again, this article is evidence that he is indeed
walking the walk. What's always amusing is opponents of the US Empire on the good-thinking
left are in fact quite clueless about how to dismantle it. They concentrate of the immorality
of it all. But in reality the concept of nationalism, which is for the most part verboten to
the left, is the very ideology required to fight Empire. Which is why bad-thinking right
wingers like Trump are the only ones that will ever succeed in undermining and destroying the
US Empire. There is nothing ironic about it.
So Trump's blatant call for "allies" to vote with the US or face an aid cut-off was only
tactically aimed at influencing the poor countries on the Security Counsel. It's strategic
goal was to undermine the whole moral legitimacy of the UN by making it blatant that poor
country votes are on sale for international aid gimmedats.
It is an empire. The last remaining19th century empire.
Consider its scope: The reserve currencyof the world. Control of vassel stayes, by
sanctions, reward of stayes with aid, actually bribes, and with secret police and armed might
in a majoroty of counyries.
Um, it might have helped if the authors had spoken to somebody who knew how the Security
Council worked. Most SC resolutions are uncontentious, and a lot of effort goes into agreeing
compromise texts. There is seldom a "US position" as such. Far from attempts to influence
other nations being hidden, they are usually semi-public, with delegations lobbying for their
language, or their position on a particular paragraph. The cases mentioned are extreme ones:
most resolutions are fairly well supported from the beginning, if the Secretary General and
the P3 are together. There are certainly egregious cases – the 2002 /3 Iraq saga is the
best known – but they are quite rare, and in general resolutions are agreed by
consensus. The cases you hear about (Syria, Palestine) are precisely those where the system
fails to work. Incidentally, Clinton's visit to Togo can't really be held against her: it's
standard practice for permanent members to have consultations with non-permanent ones, and
her staff would have been incompetent not to have suggested it.
"... When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots "psyops", you tend to come up with plots for "psyops". The word "entrapment" comes to mind. Probably "self-serving" also. ..."
"... Anti-Russian is just a code word for Globalist, Internationalist. ..."
"... This is such BS. Since when does Russia have the resources to pull all this off? They have such a complex program that they need the coordinated efforts of all the resources of the WEST? This is nuts. ..."
One of the documents lists a series of propaganda weapons to be used against Russia. One is
use of the church as a weapon. That has already been started in Ukraine with Poroshenko
buying off regligious leader to split Ukraine Orthodoxy from Russian Orthodoxy. It also
explicitly states that the Skripal incident is a 'Dirty Trick' against Russia.
The British political system is on the verge of collapse. BREXIT has finally demonstrated
that the Government/ Opposition parties are clearly aligned against the interests of the
people. The EU is nothing more than an arm of the Globalist agenda of world domination.
The US has shown its true colours - sanctioning every country that stands for independent
sovereignty is not a good foreign policy, and is destined to turn the tide of public opinion
firmly against global hegemony, endless wars, and wealth inequity.
The old Empire is in its death throes. A new paradigm awaits which will exclude all those
who have exploited the many, in order to sit at the top of the pyramid. They cannot escape
Karma.
The Western world needs to come to terms with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its
aftermath. Today, Russia is led by Putin and he obviously has objectives as any national
leader has.
Western "leaders" need to decide whether Putin:
Is trying to create Soviet Union 2.0, to have a 2nd attempt at ruling the world thru
communism and to do this by holding the world to ransom over oil/gas supplies. OR
Is wanting Russia to become a member of the family of nations and of a multi-polar world to improve the lives of
Russian people, but is being blocked at every twist and turn by manufactured events like Russia-gate and the Skripal affair
and now this latest revelation of anti-Russian propaganda campaigns being coordinated and run out of London.
Both of the above cannot be true because there are too many contradictions. Which is it??
Yes because imagine that that we lived in 1940 without any means to inform ourselves and
that media was still in control over the information that reaches us. We would already be in
a fullblown war with Russia because of it but now with the Internet and information going
around freely only a whimpy 10% of we the people stand behind their desperately wanted war.
Imagine that, an informed sheople.
Can't have that, they cannot do their usual stuff anymore.... good riddance.
"250,000 from the US State
Department , the documents allege."....... Interesting.
"During the third
Democratic debate on Saturday night, Hillary Clinton called for a "Manhattan-like
project" to break encrypted terrorist communications. The project would "bring the government and the tech communities together" to find a way
to give law enforcement access to encrypted messages, she said. It's something that some
politicians and intelligence officials have wanted for awhile,"........
***wasn't the Manhatten project a secret venture?????? Hummmmm"
Hillary Clinton has all of our encryption keys, including the FBI's . "Encryption keys" is
a general reference to several encryption functions hijacked by Hillary and her surrogate
ENTRUST. They include hash functions (used to indicate whether the contents have been altered
in transit), PKI public/private key infrastructure, SSL (secure socket layer), TLS (transport
layer security), the Dual_EC_DRBG
NSA algorithm and certificate authorities.
The convoluted structure managed by the "Federal Common Policy" group has ceded to
companies like ENTRUST INC the ability to sublicense their authority to third parties who in
turn manage entire other networks in a Gordian knot of relationships clearly designed to fool
the public to hide their devilish criminality. All roads lead back to Hillary and the Rose
Law Firm."- patriots4truth
When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots "psyops", you tend to come up with
plots for "psyops". The word "entrapment" comes to mind. Probably "self-serving" also.
FBI/Anonymous can use this story to support a narrative that social media bots posting
memes is a problem for everybody, and it's not a partisan issue. The idea is that fake news
and unrestricted social media are inherently dangerous, and both the West and Russia are
exploiting that, so governments need to agree to restrict the ability to use those platforms
for political speech, especially without using True Names.
Oilygawkies in the UK and USSA seem to be letting their spooks have a good-humored (rating
here on the absurd transparency of these ops) contest to see who can come up with the most
surreal propaganda psy-ops.
But they probably also serve as LHO distractions from something genuinely sleazy.
Anti-Russian is just a code word for Globalist, Internationalist. Anything that is
remotely like Nationalism is the true enemy of these Globalist/Internationalists, which is
what the Top-Ape Bolshevik promoted: see Vladimir Lenin and his quotes on how he believed
fully in "internationalism" for a world without borders. Ironic how they Love the butchers of
the Soviet Union but hate Russia. It is ALL ABOUT IDEOLOGY to these people and "the means
justify the ends".
Basically, if one acquires factual information from an internet source, which leads to
overturning the propaganda to which we're all subjected, then it MUST have come from Putin.
This is the direction they're headed. Anyone speaking out against the official story is
obviously a Russian spy.
Better to call it the Anti-Integrity Initiative. UK cretins up to their usual dirty tricks - let them choke on their poison. The judgement of history will eventually catch up with them.
A good 'ole economic collapse will give western countries a chance to purge their crazy
leaders before they involve us all in a thermonuclear war. Short everything with your entire
accounts.
This is such BS. Since when does Russia have the resources to pull all this off? They have
such a complex program that they need the coordinated efforts of all the resources of the
WEST? This is nuts.
Isn't it just as likely someone in the WEST planted this cache, intending Anonymous to
find it?
Any propaganda coming from the UK or US is strictly zionist. EVERYTHING they put out is to
the benefit of Israel and the "lobby". Russia isn't perfect, but if they're an enemy of the
latter, then they should NOT be considered a foe to all thinking and conscientious
people.
Yesterday, the BBC had a thing on Thai workers in Israel, and how they keep dying of
accidents, their general level of slavery etc. Very odd to have a negative Israel story, so I
wonder who upset whom, and what the ongoing status will be.
Thai labourers in Israel tell of harrowing conditions
A year-long BBC investigation has discovered widespread abuse of Thai nationals living
and working in Israel - under a scheme organized by the two governments.
Many are subjected to unsafe working practices and squalid, unsanitary living
conditions. Some are overworked, others underpaid and there are dozens of unexplained
deaths.
England and the U.S. don't like their very poor and rotten social conditions put out for
the public to see. Both countries have severely deteriorating problems on their streets
because of bankrupt governments printing money for foreign wars.
More of the same fraudulent duality while alleged so called but not money etc continues to
flow (everything is criminal) and the cesspool of a hierarchy pretends it's business as
usual.
This isn't about maintaining balance in a lie this is about disclosing the truth and
agendas (Agenda 21 now Agenda 2030 = The New Age Religion is Never Going To Be Saturnism).
The layers of the hierarchy are a lie so unless the alleged so called leaders of those layers
are publicly providing testimony and confession then everything that is being spoon fed to
the pablum puking public through all sources is a lie.
Operating on a budget of £1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity
Initiative consists of "clusters" of (((local politicians, journalists, military personnel,
scientists and academics))).
The (((team))) is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian
interference in European affairs, while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes,
the documents claim.
In a trite refrain straight out of the standard Washington regime change playbook, the
United States has lodged a formal complaint alleging Iran is developing nerve agents "for
offensive purposes".
Somehow I doubt that this Christmas will win the Bing Crosby star of approval. Rather, we
see the financial markets breaking under the strain of sustained institutionalized fraud, and
the social fabric tearing from persistent systemic political dishonesty. It adds up to a
nation that can't navigate through reality, a nation too dependent on sure things, safe
spaces, and happy outcomes. Every few decades a message comes from the Universe that faking
it is not good enough.
The main message from the financials is that the global debt barge has run aground, and
with it, the global economy. That mighty engine has been chugging along on promises-to-pay
and now the faith that sustained those promises is dissolving. China, Euroland, and the USA
can't possibly meet their tangled obligations, and are running out of tricks for rigging,
gaming, and jacking the bond markets, where all those promises are vested. It boils down to a
whole lot of people not getting paid, one way or the other -- and it's really bad for
business.
Our President has taken full credit for the bubblicious markets, of course, and will be
Hooverized as they gurgle around the drain. Given his chimerical personality, he may try to
put on an FDR mask -- perhaps even sit in a wheelchair -- and try a few grand-scale policy
tricks to escape the vortex. But the net effect will surely be to make matters worse -- for
instance, if he can hector the Federal Reserve to buy every bond that isn't nailed to some
deadly derivative booby-trap. But then he'll only succeed in crashing the dollar. Remember,
there are two main ways you can go broke: You can run out of money; or you can have plenty of
worthless money.
" Remember, there are two main ways you can go broke: You can run out of money; or you can
have plenty of worthless money". Both pretty much sums up America's predicament. Americans
are deep in debt, and their money is worthless.
he may try to put on an FDR mask -- perhaps even sit in a wheelchair -- and try a few
grand-scale policy tricks to escape the vortex. But the net effect will surely be to make
matters worse -- for instance, if he can hector the Federal Reserve to buy every bond that
isn't nailed to some deadly derivative booby-trap. But then he'll only succeed in crashing
the dollar. Remember, there are two main ways you can go broke: You can run out of money; or
you can have plenty of worthless money.
Here's a prediction. If the next GFC is bad enough, will the Government and the Fed bypass
the Banks and send Cash direct to Consumers? Maybe everybody with a SIN Number who is over 18
gets a Housing Voucher to be used towards the purchase of Real Estate??
- Will it be the last one or can they kick the can just..a..little..further down the
road
- Where will it leak to besides Bankruptcies? Politics? War? All of the Above?
didyoujustpullthatoutofyourass , 16 minutes ago
link
I think the powers that be are going to lose control of everything. We're going to be
looking at a Bolshevik Revolution on a global scale. The bad parts of the bible. Because of
years of indoctrination and immigration we can no longer fix our situation with ballots.
Because of years of overspending we can no longer get out of debt. Because of years of
outsourcing we can no longer produce our own basic necessities. All of Western civilization
is in a predicament that is impossible to get out of. We're screwed. This was done to us on
purpose, and the people who did it, still haven't stopped, because they want us
destroyed.
[reposted from previous open thread, following economics and culture discussion re:
Michael Hudson]
It's time once again to pop in a blurb for Jane Jacobs, the American urban planner, city
explainer, practical activist and culture-exploring goddess. Her self-taught understanding of
cities, people and their needs, failures and successes are put forth in dozens of books
published in the late 20th and early 21st century. She rocks.
"Jacobs argued that modern political and economic ideologies were in effect no different
from those dominant in Western civilization's past Dark Ages, such as Middle Age Roman
Catholicism. In both cases, she claimed, the dominant ideology prevented and discouraged
people from finding rational and scientifically verifiable explanations and solutions.
... Community and Family
People are increasingly choosing consumerism over family welfare, that is: consumption over
fertility; debt over family budget discipline; fiscal advantage to oneself at the expense of
community welfare.
Higher Education
Universities are more interested in credentials than providing high quality education.
Bad Science
Elevation of economics as the main "science" to consider in making major political
decisions.
Bad Government
Governments are more interested in deep-pocket interest groups than the welfare of the
population.
Bad Culture
A culture that prevents people from understanding the deterioration of fundamental physical
resources on which the entire community depends."
Another good read is Systems Of Survival . In this book she unravels the two main
castes or cultures in human society: Guardians and Merchants. Merchants make deals, guardians
enforce laws. It's excellent for buyers and sellers to bargain and explore options, that is
where innovation comes from. On the other hand, it is bad for guardians such as police or
politicians to make deals, those would be bribes or cronyism.
The book is written as a Socratic dialog so it's a different read but the ideas are sound
and in fact fundamental to understanding how our society has been perverted by the
cross-pollination of guardian and commercial values.
There's a free PDF download of Jane Jacobs'
Systems Of Survival at AllBookServe.org.
There's a great interview with Michael Hudson from last year that I only watched
yesterday. It's on the RT show, Renegade, Inc., which produces some excellent economic
commentary.
Towards the end they were discussing Obama's actual legacy, and Hudson was very clear
about all the broken promises Obama made. He said that in 2016, Hillary told everyone that
after 8 years of Obama, they were better off than they were in 2008. Everyone knew this was
not true, and so they voted for Trump, who at least presented himself as understanding
this.
So Obama's actual true legacy, said Hudson, was Trump.
I thought that was a gem worth sharing. The brief interview is here: J is for Junk
Economics
"... Once again I'd like to point out that Ralph's idolization of "Mom and Pop" businesses is its own form of unempirical ideology. Small businesses in reality tend to pay lower wages, have less benefits, and can get away with less worker protections. For example there are all sorts of statutes that do not need to be enforced until a business has 15-20 workers. There never has been and never will be such thing as exploitation-free capitalism. ..."
Market fundamentalism's ideological tyranny is metastasizing, afflicting the young,
silencing politicians and hoodwinking the media. Too few progressives have a handle on the
powerful arguments that can be made to counter market fundamentalism. It's time to confront the
myths with compelling empirical reality that deconstructs and destroys the plutocratic hoax. A
roundtable recorded at the Carnegie Institution of Washington DC, on October 19, 2018
Market fundamentalism's ideological tyranny is metastasizing, afflicting the young,
silencing politicians and hoodwinking the media. Too few progressives have a handle on the
powerful arguments that can be made to counter market fundamentalism. It's time to confront the
myths with compelling empirical reality that deconstructs and destroys the plutocratic hoax. A
roundtable recorded at the Carnegie Institution of Washington DC, on October 19, 2018
I am so delighted to see this terminology catching on, because I see great parallels
between the extremism of Market Fundamentalism and Religious Fundamentalism. The cult of
American Economics is just as hostile to outside ideas, such as Marxist Economics as any
religious cult is. The fact is that talking about the social good was so taboo due to the red
scare from the time of the Russian revolutions, that no US University or Business school
taught a single course covering Marxist Economic Theory until at least 2010.
The business ideologs go into the schools, the exact same way the 'Officer Friendly' Pigs
go into the schools -- to sell the various lies and crimes of the exploitative capitalist
order.
What happened to the older ~8 hr video? Once again I'd like to point out that Ralph's
idolization of "Mom and Pop" businesses is its own form of unempirical ideology. Small
businesses in reality tend to pay lower wages, have less benefits, and can get away with less
worker protections. For example there are all sorts of statutes that do not need to be
enforced until a business has 15-20 workers. There never has been and never will be such
thing as exploitation-free capitalism.
"... Well, if the objective of having many women on board is to keep all the occupants occupied full-time on a one-to-one basis instead of letting them get busy at shooting at people, then I am all for that, they should adopt it for the whole of NATO, especially the US. ..."
"... Sounds like a good Scandinavian way of addressing NATO policy deficiencies. But when through your distraction you end up crashing into oil tankers, just don't blame it on the Russians or the Chinese. ..."
From the article this gem: "It is advantageous to have many women on board. It will be a
natural thing and a completely different environment, which I look at as positive,"
Lieutenant Iselin Emilie Jakobsen Ophus said. She is a navigation officer at KNM Helge
Ingstad, according to Defense Forum.
Well, if the objective of having many women on board is to keep all the occupants
occupied full-time on a one-to-one basis instead of letting them get busy at shooting at
people, then I am all for that, they should adopt it for the whole of NATO, especially the
US.
Sounds like a good Scandinavian way of addressing NATO policy deficiencies. But when
through your distraction you end up crashing into oil tankers, just don't blame it on the
Russians or the Chinese.
Also in the article a very nice picture of the frigate (not the one at the top, the one a
little further down the page) which makes for an excellent picture of a George-Soros-frigate.
It should be renamed KNM George Soros. Anyone for an HMS George Soros Aircraft carrier?
Embarrassing yellow paper journalism: attempt to connect the deal with Skripals false flag
operation by British intelligence agencies. The Daily Mail story preudo-analyst from Bellingcat
as a serious source, but provides no source at all for the alleged Russian quotes.
This actually a quite interesting article ( [written] by the 5 eyes intelligence
agencies)
Hot on the heels of proven Saudi state sanctioned murder under diplomatic immunity we have
a completely UNFOUNDED accusation that Russia has essentially committed the same crime.
Saudi bad guy.....Russia bad guy. Two negatives equals a positive (kind of thing). See
what I just did there? LMAO
The US spent $824.6 billion in 2018 compared to Russia's budget of $46 billion (18 times
the difference). Nevertheless, Congress recently declared, that in the event of a war with
Russia, the US could lose! So, if a President (Obama, Trump, whoever) really wanted to "Make
America Great Again" he would have to begin by firing 90% of the Military Industrial
Complex.
and Daily Mail knows this detail of how he emerged after the meeting because ...
more to come from BS factory ...
janus 1 day ago
Daily Mail will report that he died trying to slaughter a convention of journalists at
Putin's behest.
So ******* sick of britain's ruling class i want to wretch, if we need to break Britain to
get rid of them, so be it. They're all a bunch of decadent pedos and foppish fags
matriculated on globalism. they're disgusting, and even though we'll never get to see the
details, they actively tried to undermine our democracy (along with Tel Aviv).
And so it goes with our 'special relationships', special indeed, with friends like
these...
janus
Shemp 4 Victory 1 day ago
And Daily Mail knows this detail of how he emerged after the meeting because. Because they
read it from a script provided by a branch of MI6 known as OSF (Office of Substandard
Fiction).
In a trite refrain straight out of the standard Washington regime change playbook, the
United States has lodged a formal complaint alleging Iran is developing nerve agents "for
offensive purposes".
Comey knows where all the skeletons are buried and has nothing to fear, apart from a
stitch-up behind closed doors hanging, where nobody gets to see. We all know Comey is a Deep
State puppet. This hearing is all for show, to give the dunces the illusion of a functioning
dumbocracy.
Pretty rich that he's worried about leaks....but then again, he would know.
He is damned worried about private testimony as doing so would open him up to suspicion
from guilty parties concerned he might rat them out to save his hide.
Select leaks, even if untrue (fake news turned against them) could bring great pressure
upon his life.
Former
FBI Director James Comey announced over Twitter on Thursday that he has been subpoenaed by
House Republicans.
He has demanded a public testimony (during which legislators would be unable to ask him
questions pertaining to classified or sensitive information), saying that he doesn't trust the
committee not to leak and distort what he says.
"Happy Thanksgiving. Got a subpoena from House Republicans," he tweeted " I'm still happy to
sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a "closed door" thing because I've
seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion . Let's have a hearing and invite
everyone to see." In October Comey rejected a request by the House Judiciary Committee to
appear at a closed hearing as part of the GOP probe into allegations of political bias at the
FBI and Department of Justice, according to Politico
.
"Mr. Comey respectfully declines your request for a private interview," said Comey's
attorney, David Kelly, in a repsonse to the request.
The Judiciary Committee, chaired by Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) didn't appreciate Comey's
response.
" We have invited Mr. Comey to come in for a transcribed interview and we are prepared to
issue a subpoena to compel his appearance ," said a committee aide.
Goodlatte invited Comey to testify as part of a last-minute flurry of requests for
high-profile Obama administration FBI and Justice Department leaders, including former
Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. He threatened
to subpoena them if they didn't come in voluntarily. -
Politico
The House committee has been investigating whether overwhelming anti-Trump bias with in the
FBI and Department of Justice translated to their investigations of the President during and
after the 2016 US election.
Didn't Gowdy deal with this already? "When did the FBI conduct an interview limited to 5
minutes?" "When did the FBI ever conduct an interview in public?" And the rest. Sauce for the
goose is sauce for the gander.
(I happen to think Gowdy is compromised, but the points remain.)
The crook knows a public hearing will allow him to defer answering EVERY question because
it "involves a current investigation", "it's classified", "I don't recall" and every other
dodge under the sun. Put this creep away for good!
Comey knows he can't withstand real questioning. He will be forced to take the 5th. A lot
of desperation showing here. He won't show and time will run out on the House, so Lindsay
Graham needs to take up the cause.
House Republicans will hear testimony on December 5 from the prosecutor appointed by
Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by the Clinton
Foundation, according to Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC).
Meadows - chairman of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations, told The
Hill that it's time to "circle back" to former Utah Attorney General John Huber's probe with
the Justice Department into whether the Clinton Foundation engaged in improper activities,
reports
The Hill .
"Mr. [John] Huber with the Department of Justice and the FBI has been having an
investigation – at least part of his task was to look at the Clinton Foundation and what
may or may not have happened as it relates to improper activity with that charitable foundation
, so we've set a hearing date for December the 5th.," Meadows told Hill.TV on Wednesday.
Meadows says the questions will include whether any tax-exempt proceeds were used for
personal gain and whether the Foundation adhered to IRS laws.
Sessions appointed Huber last year to work in tandem with the Justice Department to look
into conservative claims of misconduct at the FBI and review several issues surrounding the
Clintons. This includes Hillary Clinton 's ties to a Russian nuclear
agency and concerns about the Clinton Foundation.
Huber's
work has remained shrouded in mystery . The White House has released little information
about Huber's assignment other than Session's address to Congress saying his appointed should
address concerns raised by Republicans. -
The Hill
According to a report by the
Dallas Observer last November, the Clinton Foundation has been under investigation by the
IRS since July, 2016.
Meadows says that it's time for Huber to update Congress concerning his findings, and
"expects him to be one of the witnesses at the hearing," per The Hill . Additionally Meadows
said that his committee is trying to secure testimonies from whistleblowers who can provide
more information about potential wrongdoing surrounding the Clinton Foundation .
" We're just now starting to work with a couple of whistleblowers that would indicate that
there is a great probability, of significant improper activity that's happening in and around
the Clinton Foundation ," he added.
The Clinton Foundation - also under
FBI investigation out of the Arkansas field office, has denied any wrongdoing.
Launched in January, the Arkansas FBI probe, is focused on pay-for-play schemes and tax code
violations , according to The Hill at the time, citing law enforcement officials and a witness
who wishes to remain anonymous.
The officials, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the probe is examining
whether the Clintons promised or performed any policy favors in return for largesse to their
charitable efforts or whether donors made commitments of donations in hopes of securing
government outcomes .
The probe may also examine whether any tax-exempt assets were converted for personal or
political use and whether the Foundation complied with applicable tax laws , the officials
said. -
The Hill
The witness who was interviewed by Little Rock FBI agents said that questions focused on
"government decisions and discussions of donations to Clinton entities during the time Hillary
Clinton led President Obama's State Department," and that the agents were "extremely
professional and unquestionably thorough."
TheRealNews
Published on 14 Nov 2018
The latest revelation about Brazil's slow motion coup, designed to ensure that the
center-left remains out of power and the far-right takes control, involves a general who
admitted that he threatened the Supreme Court so it would imprison presidential front-runner
Lula da Silva. We discuss the development with Brian Mier
History repeats -- Looks like yet another
"Excessively careless" enthusiastic email sender: "The revelation prompted demands from
congressional investigators that Kushner preserve his records, which his attorney said he
had."
Ivanka Trump used her personal email account to send "hundreds" of emails last year to White
House aides, assistants and Cabinet officials, according to the Washington Post, citing "people
familiar with a White House examination of her correspondence." Of that, however, she discussed
government policies "less than 100 times" - and none of the content was classified.
"his daughter's practices bore similarities to the personal email use of Hillary Clinton"
Some truth here. They are both chromosomally female, both were using email. Sure same thing
here, give her the cell next to Hillary. Fair sentencing would be something around life for
Hillary, week for Ivanka?
Honestly, after all of the grief those of us on the right gave Hillary, and rightfully so,
for Ivanka to be so obtuse and do this .... it just gives the liberals something to harp on.
Why make things harder than they need to be? The Trumps are under a microscope and have to
know that everything they do is going to be picked apart and debated in the court of public
opinion.
Now we will have to listen to people like Don Lemon and Rachel Madcow and the
Morning Joe Idiots for the next 2 months blow this waaayyyy out of proportion
@ChuckOrloski
Not surprising to anyone who understands that stealing ,especially from 'others' is a first
choice career of Jews/Israelis.
I have always suspected that the 9 billion of stolen Iraq funds were stolen by the Jews who
were embedded in the US occupation administration and sent to Israel. Israel was so broke in
2001 they asked the Us for economic aid then suddenly in 2004 by some miracle they were
rolling in surplus money again.
Investigations reveal a pattern of Israeli officials stone-walling efforts to stop the
perpetrators of massive financial swindles in various countries, from Europe to the US to the
Philippines While some Israeli reporters work to expose the scams, a new one is already
underway
By Alison Weir
[MORE]
French and Israeli media report that a group largely made up of Israelis scammed 3,000 French
citizens out of approximately $20 million. Most of the stolen money is in Israel, but Israeli
authorities are reportedly failing to cooperate with France in prosecuting the scammers and
retrieving the money.
This is the latest of numerous examples of Israeli officials stone-walling international
efforts against the perpetrators of massive financial swindles around the world, according to
Israeli investigative journalists and others. These scams have brought estimated billions
into the Israeli economy, propping up a regime widely condemned for human rights abuses and
ethnic cleansing against indigenous Palestinians. Together, the stories paint a picture of a
government that seems to be turning a blind eye to -- and even protecting -- scammers.
A Finance Magnates analysis reports that one of the swindles alone has brought in over a
billion dollars and employs 5,000 people. And a new scam, described below, may help what is
predicted to be "the next major driver of the Israeli economy."
A former IRS expert on international crime notes that "fraudulent industries are often
major economic drivers, and that can translate into political clout."
Some Israeli journalists have been working to expose the situation in Israeli newspapers,
publishing exposés like "As Israel turns blind eye to vast binary options fraud,
French investigators step in" and "Are French Jewish criminals using Israel as a
get-out-of-jail card?" (Short answer: yes.)
Victimizing French business owners & churches
The victims of the recent scam against French citizens included churches and the owners of
small businesses -- delicatessens, car repair shops, hair salons, plumbers, etc. Some lost
their life savings and describe being threatened and intimidated by the scammers.
3 hours ago At one company
I interviewed nine times. Figured if they have this difficult of a time making a decision
I'll lose my mind working there and accepted a position elsewhere.
J 3 hours ago Google
wasn't the only company with excessive reliance on the school and GPA for new hires. It was
and might still be very common for technology companies to use this on the assumption that
a high GPA in school means high performance in the real world. My former company had a 3.7
minimum GPA on a four point scale just to be considered for an interview. I would
frequently get candidates from my manager to interview and evaluate. I found many of the
high performers lacked the ability to generalize concepts and skills that could be used
across a wide breadth of technologies. Instead they tended to apply a concept to a specific
subject and learn/create skills that would only work in that one area. When it came time to
move to development of newer technologies the skills they had learned would not transfer
and they would start the learning process all over. After talking to a comp sci professor
friend it made sense why this was happening. It has a lot to do with how schools
compartmentalize their teaching. The tend to be lessons and labs teaching a single concept
and nothing is done to teach the kids how to take that as a generalization that can be
applied across many areas. Due to this I found I ended up with better coworkers with
somewhat lower performing students as they appeared to be better at applying concepts in a
broad manner and more.
F 3 hours ago An
interview is not just about a company interviewing a prospective employee, but the employee
interviewing the company. If you interview me more the 3 times, you're done. As a company
you need to get your stuff together.
p 3
hours ago If some company needs more than 3 interviews to hire someone, then they are too
indecisive, tedious and flaky to bother with.
History repeats -- Looks like yet another
"Excessively careless" enthusiastic email sender: "The revelation prompted demands from
congressional investigators that Kushner preserve his records, which his attorney said he
had."
Ivanka Trump used her personal email account to send "hundreds" of emails last year to White
House aides, assistants and Cabinet officials, according to the Washington Post, citing "people
familiar with a White House examination of her correspondence." Of that, however, she discussed
government policies "less than 100 times" - and none of the content was classified.
"his daughter's practices bore similarities to the personal email use of Hillary Clinton"
Some truth here. They are both chromosomally female, both were using email. Sure same thing
here, give her the cell next to Hillary. Fair sentencing would be something around life for
Hillary, week for Ivanka?
Honestly, after all of the grief those of us on the right gave Hillary, and rightfully so,
for Ivanka to be so obtuse and do this .... it just gives the liberals something to harp on.
Why make things harder than they need to be? The Trumps are under a microscope and have to
know that everything they do is going to be picked apart and debated in the court of public
opinion.
Now we will have to listen to people like Don Lemon and Rachel Madcow and the
Morning Joe Idiots for the next 2 months blow this waaayyyy out of proportion
The Israelis were extradited to the U.S., where the prosecutor described them as "a predatory group that targeted elderly people
in the U.S., conning them into believing they were lottery winners. Preying on their victims' dreams of financial comfort, [they]
bilked them out of substantial portions of their life savings." According to the
U.S. Attorney's office :
"The defendants operated multiple boiler rooms that used the names of various sham law firms purportedly located in New York,
including law firms named 'Abrahams Kline,' 'Bernstein Schwartz,' 'Steiner, Van Allen, and Colt,' 'Bloomberg and Associates,"
and 'Meyer Stevens.' The defendants further used various aliases and call forwarding telephone numbers to mask the fact that the
defendants were located in Israel. The defendants also possessed bank accounts in Israel, Cyprus, and Uganda, to which illegal
proceeds were wired."
The ringleaders, Avi Ayache and Yaron Bar, were eventually convicted, and the U.S. prosecutor announced that they would "spend a
substantial portion of their lives in prison." Ayache was sentenced in 2014 to 13 years in prison and Bar to 12. Yet,
prison records indicate the two were released the next year.
Other members
of the ring also appear to have been released after extraordinarily little time. If these men did serve only a tiny portion of their
U.S. sentences, as public records and phone calls and emails to the Bureau of Prisons indicate, this may be due to the fact that
Israelis are allowed to be imprisoned in Israel instead of in the U.S. Their sentences then are determined by Israel and, as we will
see below, are often far shorter than they would be in the U.S.
Gery Shalon – hundreds of millions of dollars
In 2015 Gery Shalon and
two other Israelis were charged with utilizing hacked data for 100 million people to spam them with "pump and dump" penny stocks,
netting hundreds of millions of dollars.
The money was then laundered through an illegal bitcoin exchange allegedly owned by Shalon (more on bitcoin below). Shalon was
considered the ringleader of what U.S. prosecutors called a "
sprawling
criminal enterprise. " He faced decades behind bars.
However, he was instead given a
plea deal
in which he escaped any prison sentence whatsoever. Worth $2 billion, Shalon was to pay a $403 million fine.
...The ringleaders, Avi Ayache and Yaron Bar, were eventually convicted, and the U.S. prosecutor announced that they would
"spend a substantial portion of their lives in prison." Ayache was sentenced in 2014 to 13 years in prison and Bar to 12. Yet,
prison records indicate the two were released the next year. Other members of the ring also appear to have been released after
extraordinarily little time.
So if the US government is secretly releasing Federal prisoners, and if that is the case then American justice is on par with
the Mexican penal system, where such occurrences are routine.
Can anyone here verify if those two are in prison in Israel or free?
"... farmers are, in any society in which interest on loans is calculated, inevitably subject to being impoverished, then stripped of their property, and finally reduced to servitude (including the sexual servitude of daughters and wives) by their creditors, creditors. The latter inevitably seek to effect the terminal polarization of society into an oligarchy of predatory creditors cannibalizing a sinking underclass mired in irreversible debt peonage ..."
"... For what is the most basic condition of civilization, Hudson asks, other than societal organization that effects lasting "balance" by keeping "everybody above the break-even level"? ..."
"... they possessed the financial sophistication to understand that, since interest on loans increases exponentially, while economic growth at best follows an S-curve. This means that debtors will, if not protected by a central authority, end up becoming permanent bondservants to their creditors. So Mesopotamian kings regularly rescued debtors who were getting crushed by their debts. ..."
"... By clearing away the buildup of personal debts, rulers saved society from the social chaos that would have resulted from personal insolvency, debt bondage, and military defection ..."
"... In ancient Mesopotamian societies it was understood that freedom was preserved by protecting debtors. ..."
"... For us freedom has been understood to sanction the ability of creditors to demand payment from debtors without restraint or oversight. This is the freedom to cannibalize society. This is the freedom to enslave. This is, in the end, the freedom proclaimed by the Chicago School and the mainstream of American economists. ..."
"... A constant dynamic of history has been the drive by financial elites to centralize control in their own hands and manage the economy in predatory, extractive ways. Their ostensible freedom is at the expense of the governing authority and the economy at large. As such, it is the opposite of liberty as conceived in Sumerian times ..."
"... And our Orwellian, our neoliberal notion of unrestricted freedom for the creditor dooms us at the very outset of any quest we undertake for a just economic order. Any and every revolution that we wage, no matter how righteous in its conception, is destined to fail. ..."
"... But, in the eighth century B.C., along with the alphabet coming from the Near East to the Greeks, so came the concept of calculating interest on loans. This concept of exponentially-increasing interest was adopted by the Greeks -- and subsequently by the Romans -- without the balancing concept of Clean Slate amnesty. ..."
"... Hudson is able to explain that the long decline and fall of Rome begins not, as Gibbon had it, with the death of Marcus Aurelius, the last of the five good emperors, in A.D. 180, but four centuries earlier, following Hannibal's devastation of the Italian countryside during the Second Punic War (218-201 B.C.). ..."
"... latifundia Italiam ..."
"... Arnold Toynbee is almost alone in emphasizing the role of debt in concentrating Roman wealth and property ownership" (p. xviii) -- and thus in explaining the decline of the Roman Empire. ..."
"... This is a typical example of Orwellian doublespeak engineered by public relations factotums for bondholders and banks. The real hazard to every economy is the tendency for debts to grow beyond the ability of debtors to pay. The first defaulters are victims of junk mortgages and student debtors, but by far the largest victims are countries borrowing from the IMF in currency "stabilization" (that is economic destabilization) programs. ..."
"... The analogy in Bronze Age Babylonia was a flight of debtors from the land. Today from Greece to Ukraine, it is a flight of skilled labor and young labor to find work abroad. ..."
"... "Sin" and "Debt" are the same word in many languages, such as German, Scandinavian etc. ..."
"... The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity ..."
"... Yes, Hudson's scholarship puts the lie to a lot of common economic beliefs today. ..."
"... Bankruptcy is essentially a form of debt jubilee that isn't society-wide on a specific date. ..."
"... Keeping inflation target extremely low should serve the creditors more than the debtors. ..."
"... The ECB, as currently constituted, is a full on neoliberal disaster. Copious evidence provided here: http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/ ..."
"... Western civilization, until very recently, had very strict anti-usury laws which prevented most people from borrowing money at all, let alone falling into debt servitude. Indeed, while laws varied widely from place to place, most victims of over-borrowing were royal courts and aristocrats, not smallholders. And of course, since most moneylenders were Jewish, one solution for debtors regularly employed was to simply run the creditors out of town or indeed, the country. Isn't that a kind of jubilee? ..."
"... The parallels of debt oligarchies to tech oligarchies, this article draws for me .. "So it was inevitable that, in the last century of American history, increasing numbers of small firms became irredeemably unviable and lost their ability to compete. It likewise was inevitable that the FANGS amassed the masses of entrepreneurial talent and established themselves in parasitic oligarchies." ..."
"... For what is the most basic condition of civilization, Hudson asks, other than societal organization that effects lasting "balance" by keeping "everybody above the break-even level"? ..."
"... That's the core regulating idea Geoff Mann draws out of Keynes in his recent "In the Long Run We Are All Dead." As best as I can tell his take on Keynes is accurate, and he's able to make a case for aligning him with the likes of Hegel and -- drum roll -- Robespierre, who was fiercely insistent on the guarantee of an "honorable poverty." In a way, they were all theorists of the abyss, pragmatists who insisted on measures to make sure economies didn't kill their members. I was particularly taken by the idea that the General Theory is not systematic but rather an analysis of different modes of breakdown, e.g. the liquidity trap, that must be compensated for. ..."
"... Yes. Bankruptcy is hardly any kind of Jubilee. Any debt is much harder to discharge post 2005, including medical, which is the cause of half of bankruptcies according to filers. ..."
"... Student loans. Now there's a naked fleecing scam by the moneychangers. High interest, zero risk, no forgiveness. A great racket if you can get it, like Medical Insurance, profiteering guaranteed by Obamacare. ..."
"... Cooperation. Because we can decline the idea of debt right back to one thing. Cooperation. When Graeber says "Money is Debt" he is right but he fails to define the root of debt. Because debt is not money. ..."
"... Ordinary people in pension plans do own debt. That is where the hit would be hardest to absorb. ..."
"... At some point, supporters of debt forgiveness need to reconcile their position with the fact that the extinguishing of debt is, in effect, a sovereign action taking the property of another on a scale without much parallel in modern society. ..."
"... Let me suggest a parallel or two: the acquisition of property by means of enforced indebtedness combined with creditor fraud that occurred in the Great Foreclosure Carnage around 2008? Or the appropriation of the lion's share of economic growth since 1970 to the richest 1% or so? ..."
"... Creditors SHOULD be required to exercise judgment and restraint in extending credit. It's moral hazard in the other direction if the government lets them squeeze the life out of people. ..."
"... Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle ..."
"... "That is what creditors really wanted: Not merely the interest as such, but the collateral -- whatever economic assets debtors possessed, from their labor to their property, ending up with their lives" Creditors=Predators ..."
"... prædia/latifundia ..."
"... The purpose of doing so was as to keep society functioning by meeting demands that conflict with and at times are superior to the normal need to repay debt. Periodic debt forgiveness is equally normal, in the manner that medieval farmers let their land lie fallow so as to bear fruit another year. ..."
"... If the bank is stupid enough to make the loan, they are stupid enough to lose it. The bank must take the consequence of making a un-payable loan. ..."
"... The bank has far more resources to know if the loan is repayable than the person getting the loan. Since the bank 'knows' more, it should take on more responsibility for making the loan than the person getting the loan. And so, back to reason #1 above, stupid bank loses stupid loan. ..."
"... What could have facilitated debt jubilees in ancient societies was the fact that the new rulers which overthrew the old as a result of frequent wars, found it convenient to eliminate the former propertied classes to win over the support of the indebted and enslaved commoners. 'Wiping the slate clean' could have been just a measure to win political legitimacy. ..."
"... let me pre-purchase the book, and their system will download it and notify me when the content is available. ..."
To say that Michael Hudson's new book And Forgive Them Their Debts: Lending, Foreclosure,
and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Yea r (ISLET 2018) is profound is an
understatement on the order of saying that the Mariana Trench is deep. To grasp his central
argument is so alien to our modern way of thinking about civilization and barbarism that Hudson
quite matter-of-factly agreed with me that the book is, to the extent that it will be
understood, "earth-shattering" in both intent and effect. Over the past three decades, Hudson
gleaned (under the auspices of Harvard's Peabody Museum) and then synthesized the scholarship
of American and British and French and German and Soviet assyriologists (spelled with a
lower-case a to denote collectively all who study the various civilizations of ancien t
Mesopotamia, which include Sumer, the Akkadian Empire, Ebla, Babylonia, et al., as well as
Assyria with a capital A ). Hudson demonstrates that we, twenty-first century
globalists, have been morally blinded by a dark legacy of some twenty-eight centuries of
decontextualized history. This has left us, for all practical purposes, utterly ignorant
of the corrective civilizational model that is needed to save ourselves from tottering into
bleak neo-feudal barbarism.
This corrective model actually existed and flourished in the economic functioning of
Mesopotamian societies during the third and second millennia B.C. It can be termed Clean Slate
amnesty, a term Hudson uses to embrace the essential function of what was called amargi
and níg-si-sá in Sumerian, andurārum and mīš
arum in Akkadian (the language of Babylonia), šudūtu and kirenzi
in Hurrian, para tarnumar in Hittite, and deror (
דְּרוֹר ) in Hebrew: It is the necessary and periodic
erasure of the debts of small farmers -- necessary because such farmers are, in any society in
which interest on loans is calculated, inevitably subject to being impoverished, then stripped
of their property, and finally reduced to servitude (including the sexual servitude of
daughters and wives) by their creditors, creditors. The latter inevitably seek to effect the
terminal polarization of society into an oligarchy of predatory creditors cannibalizing a
sinking underclass mired in irreversible debt peonage. Hudson writes: "That is what creditors
really wanted: Not merely the interest as such, but the collateral -- whatever economic assets
debtors possessed, from their labor to their property, ending up with their lives" (p. 50).
And such polarization is, by Hudson's definition, barbarism. For what is the most basic
condition of civilization, Hudson asks, other than societal organization that effects lasting
"balance" by keeping "everybody above the break-even level"?
"Mesopotamian societies were not interested in equality," he told me, "but they were
civilized. And they possessed the financial sophistication to understand that, since interest
on loans increases exponentially, while economic growth at best follows an S-curve. This means
that debtors will, if not protected by a central authority, end up becoming permanent
bondservants to their creditors. So Mesopotamian kings regularly rescued debtors who were
getting crushed by their debts. They knew that they needed to do this. Again and again, century
after century, they proclaimed Clean Slate Amnesties."
Hudson also writes: "By liberating distressed individuals who had fallen into debt bondage,
and returning to cultivators the lands they had forfeited for debt or sold under economic
duress, these royal acts maintained a free peasantry willing to fight for its land and work on
public building projects and canals . By clearing away the buildup of personal debts, rulers
saved society from the social chaos that would have resulted from personal insolvency, debt
bondage, and military defection" (p. 3).
Marx and Engels never made such an argument (nor did Adam Smith for that matter). Hudson
points out that they knew nothing of these ancient Mesopotamian societies. No one did back
then. Almost all of the various kinds of assyriologists completed their archaeological
excavations and philological analyses during the twentieth century. In other words, this book
could not have been written until someone digested the relevant parts of the vast body of this
recent scholarship. And this someone is Michael Hudson.
So let us reconsider Hudson's fundamental insight in more vivid terms. In ancient
Mesopotamian societies it was understood that freedom was preserved by protecting debtors. In
what we call Western Civilization, that is, in the plethora of societies that have followed the
flowering of the Greek poleis beginning in the eighth century B.C., just the opposite,
with only one major exception (Hudson describes the tenth-century A.D. Byzantine Empire of
Romanos Lecapenus), has been the case: For us freedom has been understood to sanction the
ability of creditors to demand payment from debtors without restraint or oversight. This is the
freedom to cannibalize society. This is the freedom to enslave. This is, in the end, the
freedom proclaimed by the Chicago School and the mainstream of American economists.
And so
Hudson emphasizes that our Western notion of freedom has been, for some twenty-eight centuries
now, Orwellian in the most literal sense of the word: War is Peace • Freedom is
Slavery• Ignorance is Strength . He writes: "A constant dynamic of history has been
the drive by financial elites to centralize control in their own hands and manage the economy
in predatory, extractive ways. Their ostensible freedom is at the expense of the governing
authority and the economy at large. As such, it is the opposite of liberty as conceived in
Sumerian times" (p. 266).
And our Orwellian, our neoliberal notion of unrestricted freedom for the creditor
dooms us at the very outset of any quest we undertake for a just economic order. Any and every
revolution that we wage, no matter how righteous in its conception, is destined to fail.
And we are so doomed, Hudson says, because we have been morally blinded by twenty-eight
centuries of deracinated, or as he says, decontextualized history. The true roots of
Western Civilization lie not in the Greek poleis that lacked royal oversight to cancel
debts, but in the Bronze Age Mesopotamian societies that understood how life, liberty and land
would be cyclically restored to debtors again and again. But, in the eighth century B.C., along
with the alphabet coming from the Near East to the Greeks, so came the concept of calculating
interest on loans. This concept of exponentially-increasing interest was adopted by the Greeks
-- and subsequently by the Romans -- without the balancing concept of Clean Slate amnesty.
So it was inevitable that, over the centuries of Greek and Roman history, increasing numbers
of small farmers became irredeemably indebted and lost their land. It likewise was inevitable
that their creditors amassed huge land holdings and established themselves in parasitic
oligarchies. This innate tendency to social polarization arising from debt unforgiveness is the
original and incurable curse on our post-eighth-century-B.C. Western Civilization, the lurid
birthmark that cannot be washed away or excised. In this context Hudson quotes the classicist
Moses Finley to great effect: " . debt was a deliberate device on the part of the creditor to
obtain more dependent labor rather than a device for enrichment through interest." Likewise he
quotes Tim Cornell: "The purpose of the 'loan,' which was secured on the person of the debtor,
was precisely to create a state of bondage"(p. 52 -- Hudson earlier made this point in two
colloquium volumes he edited as part of his Harvard project: Debt and Economic Renewal in
the Ancient Near East , and Labor in the Ancient World ).
Hudson is able to explain that the long decline and fall of Rome begins not, as Gibbon had
it, with the death of Marcus Aurelius, the last of the five good emperors, in A.D. 180, but
four centuries earlier, following Hannibal's devastation of the Italian countryside during the
Second Punic War (218-201 B.C.). After that war the small farmers of Italy never recovered
their land, which was systematically swallowed up by the pr æ dia (note the
etymological connection with predatory ), the latifundia , the great oligarchic
estates: latifundia Italiam ("the great estates destroyed Italy"), as Pliny the Elder
observed. But among modern scholars, as Hudson points out, "Arnold Toynbee is almost alone in
emphasizing the role of debt in concentrating Roman wealth and property ownership" (p. xviii)
-- and thus in explaining the decline of the Roman Empire.
"Arnold Toynbee," Hudson writes, " described Rome 's patrician idea of 'freedom' or '
liberty ' as limited to oligarchic freedom from kings or civic bodies powerful enough to check
creditor power to indebt and impoverish the citizenry at large. 'The patrician aristocracy's
monopoly of office after the eclipse of the monarchy [Hudson quotes from Toynbee' s book
Hannibal's Legacy ] had been used by the patricians as a weapon for maintaining their
hold on the lion's share of the country's economic assets; and the plebeian majority of the
Roman citizen-body had striven to gain access to public office as a means to securing more
equitable distribution of property and a restraint on the oppression of debtors by creditors.'
The latter attempt failed," Hudson observes, "and European and Western civilization is still
living with the aftermath" (p. 262).
Because Hudson brings into focus the big picture, the pulsing sweep of Western history over
millennia, he is able to describe the economic chasm between ancient Mesopotamian civilization
and the later Western societies that begins with Greece and Rome: "Early in this century [
i.e . the scholarly consensus until the 1970s] Mesopotamia's debt cancellations were
understood to be like Solon's seisachtheia of 594 B.C. freeing the Athenian citizens
from debt bondage. But Near Eastern royal proclamations were grounded in a different
social-philosophical context from Greek reforms aiming to replace landed creditor aristocracies
with democracy. The demands of the Greek and Roman populace for debt cancellation can rightly
be called revolutionary [italics mine], but Sumerian and Babylonian demands were based
on a conservative tradition grounded in rituals of renewing the calendrical cosmos and its
periodicities in good order.
The Mesopotamian idea of reform had ' no notion [Hudson is quoting
Dominique Charpin ' s book Hammurabi of Babylon here] of what we would call social
progress. Instead, the measures the king instituted under his mīš arum were
measures to bring back the original order [italics mine]. The rules of the game had not
been changed, but everyone had been dealt a new hand of cards'" (p. 133). Contrast the Greeks
and Romans: " Classical Antiquity, " Hudson writes, "replaced the cyclical idea of time and
social renewal with that of linear time. Economic polarization became irreversible, not merely
temporary" (p. xxv). In other words: "The idea of linear progress, in the form of irreversible
debt and property transfers, has replaced the Bronze Age tradition of cyclical renewal" (p.
7).
After all these centuries, we remain ignorant of the fact that deep in the roots of our
civilization is contained the corrective model of cyclical return – what Dominique
Charpin calls the "restoration of order" (p. xix). We continue to inundate ourselves with a
billion variations of the sales pitch to borrow and borrow, the exhortation to put more and
more on credit, because, you know, the future's so bright I gotta wear shades.
Nowhere, Hudson shows, is it more evident that we are blinded by a deracinated, by a
decontextualized understanding of our history than in our ignorance of the career of
Jesus. Hence the title of the book: And Forgive Them Their Debts and the cover
illustration of Jesus flogging the moneylenders -- the creditors who do not forgive debts -- in
the Temple. For centuries English-speakers have recited the Lord's Prayer with the assumption
that they were merely asking for the forgiveness of their trespasses , their theological
sins : " and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us ."
is the translation presented in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. What is lost in
translation is the fact that Jesus came "to preach the gospel to the poor to preach the
acceptable Year of the Lord": He came, that is, to proclaim a Jubilee Year, a restoration of
deror for debtors: He came to institute a Clean Slate Amnesty (which is what
Hebrew דְּרוֹר connotes in this context).
So consider the passage from the Lord's Prayer literally: καὶ
ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ
ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν: " and
send away (ἄφες) for us our debts
(ὀφειλήματα)." The Latin translation is
not only grammatically identical to the Greek, but also shows the Greek word
ὀφειλήματα revealingly translated as
debita : et dimitte nobis debita nostra : " and discharge ( dimitte ) for
us our debts ( debita )." There was consequently, on the part of the creditor class, a
most pressing and practical reason to have Jesus put to death: He was demanding that they
restore the property they had rapaciously taken from their debtors. And after His death there
was likewise a most pressing and practical reason to have His Jubilee proclamation of a Clean
Slate Amnesty made toothless, that is to say, made merely theological: So the rich could
continue to oppress the poor, forever and ever. Amen.
Just as this is a profound book, it is so densely written that it is profoundly difficult to
read. I took six days, which included six or so hours of delightful and enlightening
conversation with the author himself, to get through it. I often availed myself of David
Graeber' s book Debt: The First 5,000 Years when I struggled to follow some of Hudson's
arguments. (Graeber and Hudson have been friends, Hudson told me, for ten years, and Graeber,
when writing Debt; The First 5,000 Years , relied on Hudson's scholarship for his
account of ancient Mesopotamian economics, cf. p. xxiii).
I have written this review as
synopsis of the book in order to provide some help to other readers: I cannot emphasize too
much that this book is indeed earth-shattering , but much intellectual labor is required
to digest it.
ADDENDUM: Moral Hazard
When I sent a draft of my review to a friend last night, he emailed me back with this
question:
-- Wouldn't debt cancellations just take away any incentive for people to pay back loans
and, thus, take away the incentive to give loans? People who haven't heard the argument
before and then read your review will probably be skeptical at first.
Here is Michael Hudson's response:
-- Creditors argue that if you forgive debts for a class of debtors – say, student
loans – that there will be some "free riders," and that people will expect to have bad
loans written off. This is called a "moral hazard," as if debt writedowns are a hazard to the
economy, and hence, immoral.
This is a typical example of Orwellian doublespeak engineered by public relations factotums
for bondholders and banks. The real hazard to every economy is the tendency for debts to grow
beyond the ability of debtors to pay. The first defaulters are victims of junk mortgages and
student debtors, but by far the largest victims are countries borrowing from the IMF in
currency "stabilization" (that is economic destabilization) programs.
It is moral for creditors to have to bear the risk ("hazard") of making bad loans, defined
as those that the debtor cannot pay without losing property, status or becoming insolvent. A
bad international loan to a government is one that the government cannot pay except by imposing
austerity on the economy to a degree that output falls, labor is obliged to emigrate to find
employment, capital investment declines, and governments are forced to pay creditors by
privatizing and selling off the public domain to monopolists.
The analogy in Bronze Age Babylonia was a flight of debtors from the land. Today from Greece
to Ukraine, it is a flight of skilled labor and young labor to find work abroad.
No debtor – whether a class of debtors such as students or victims of predatory junk
mortgages, or an entire government and national economy – should be obliged to go on the
road to and economic suicide and self-destruction in order to pay creditors. The definition of
statehood – and hence, international law – should be to put one's national solvency
and self-determination above foreign financial attacks. Ceding financial control should be
viewed as a form of warfare, which countries have a legal right to resist as "odious debt"
under moral international law.
The basic moral financial principal should be that creditors should bear the hazard for
making bad loans that the debtor couldn't pay -- like the IMF loans to Argentina and Greece.
The moral hazard is their putting creditor demands over the economy' s survival.
So is Hudson making the claim that Jesus was never talking about 'original sin' at all?
That he was talking about literal, temporal-world financial debts and the need to erase
them? If so, when and where did this theological confusion arise? Saul of Tarsus and his
mysticism?
King James version: "and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."
However, the temple whip episode demonstrated, by action, that he wanted separation of the
material economy from the religious, and 'render unto Caesar' that money was not his concern.
His inclusion of Matthew as a disciple had an antithesis with Simon the Zealot, sworn to kill
tax collectors, and says that material and financial values were to be set aside amongst his
followers.
If Hudson is claiming that the verse refers solely to this-world indebtedness, then he's
out over his skis. Not Jesus' problem.
Then of course there is the pharisee/sadducee conflict which ties into the Samaritan
story. The Samaritans were basically Jews with their own temple that didn't hand money over
to the Sadducees at the big shrine in Jerusalem everyone is always going on about. Of course,
Jesus does seem to share quite a bit in common with the Pharisees. Oh Lord, Jesus was
probably taking orders for tables and chairs during the Sermon on the Mount!
"Of course, Jesus does seem to share quite a bit in common with the Pharisees."
In his book The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity the late British Talmudic
scholar Hyam Maccoby
argues exactly that – that Jesus was a pharisee. He further asserts that Saul arrived
in Jerusalem seeking to study to become a Pharisee, a process that required extensive study,
but couldn't cut it. He then became an agent provocateur on behalf of the Sadducees in their
efforts to suppress phariseeism and the related sect founded by Jesus's disciples. After his
"road to Damascus moment," the now Paul cobbled together a new theology combining elements of
Judaism with elements of the pagan, nature religions of the Middle East. This "Jerusalem
Church," as Maccoby labels it, disappeared from history following the Roman sack of the city
in 70 CE. What has come down to us as the New Testament, argues the author in a footnote, is
a history of early Christianity that is analogous to a Stalinist history of the Russian
Revolution.
That's the theological equivalent to 'climate change is a natural phenomenon." That anti
semitic 'paul made it a jewish church' heresy been considered incorrect for over 1000 years.
read something else
add in the Constantinian Shift as well as the convenient lack of contemporary or original
texts and Christianity is hopelessly muddled. Theodosius muddled it even more.
In the same way as someone mentioned Judaism was split by the Babylonian Captivity(the elites
carted off, leaving the sub-elites in charge back home) upon their return, texts and ideas
were lost or burned, in the interest of temporal power.
same as it ever was.
in a former life, I endeavored to read all the source material of all this even read Eusebius
Constantine's pet bishop.
the various apocryphae throw everything we think we know about the history -- let alone the
original versions–into question. Nobody I've encountered in the world of religion wants
to go there but the idea of "Flog a Banker -- it's what Jesus would do" resonates with
ordinary Christians out here(except for the bankers, of course, and the rest of the
parasitium.
This book looks like a must-read. Any idea of a non-amazon source?
I was told, many years ago, that the Samaritans were the descendants of Jews who were not
shipped off to Babylon, while the sect that became dominant were the descendants of those who
went to Babylon. While there "in exile" they maintained their culture, but the two groups
inevitably diverged. When they returned from Babylon that group found the ones who had not
been exiled were not performing the rituals or interpreting "the Law" in exactly the same way
they did. Of course it was not possible that their own practices had changed.
Only the elite went into captivity, a common means of securing loyalty and assimilation.
My guess is the peasant religion probably wasn't terribly different from area to area when
you moved away from the coast and didn't get too close to Babylon or Egypt and likely just
assimilated new traditions various charismatic types passed through, not relying on anything
too specific as overlords also changed. Jerusalem was the last place the major powers could
fortify before they had to commit to a proper invasion of a major power. It was probably like
Christendom before the schism between East and West with powerful regional churches and
localized saints. Through the Americas, there are Christian celebrations with heavy local
influence from the Mexican Day of the Dead to the Irish throwing parades which aren't so
welcoming.
Islam strikes me more of a unifying religion of what was already there in a fashion
especially where Rome (Byzantines) wasn't really governing as well as a government
should.
The original sin was humans gaining the knowledge of duality and hence, the creation of
morality:
Genesis 2:15
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care
of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the
garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when
you eat from it you will certainly die. "
Genesis 3:4
"You will not certainly die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when
you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and
evil."
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye,
and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her
husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and
they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for
themselves. "
There are some who will say that Good and Evil in hebrew really mean that it was not
duality, but they would know "everything". However, if it did not mean good and evil why
would Adam and Eve be ashamed because they were naked? They did not know they were naked
because the dualism of naked/clothed did not exist.
Duality already existed but God did not want them to know about it because it would mean
they would suffer.
Jesus was a teacher of non-dualism. How can one die if there is no dualism, if there is no
opposite for "birth"?
I don't know. God looked over his creation and saw it was Good. I doubt that is a moral statement. I think it has more to do with creation and destruction.
They saw they were naked, so they destroyed gods creation, 'fig leaves', and created their
own, 'covering for themselves'.
Then god says the punishment for this was 'by the sweat of your brow, you will eat your
bread'
You were a hunter-gatherer, but now you have knowledge of creation and destruction, you
will become 'civilized' and become a farmer.
If we look at Cain and Abel we see one son was loved by god, while the other was not. It
was civilized man who offering god rejected, not the hunter-gatherer.
And after the murder, god told Cain "you are your brothers keeper'.
Its civilization that makes one man rich and another poor. Hunter gatherers are much more
egalitarian than civilized societies.
Jesus, and many others, are here to remind us that we are all children of god and in this
together.
And that 'civilized' man has a duty to those who are 'uncivilized'. The losers, they
people who can't make it, the bottom class, we owe them, because we 'took' their
livelihood.
"Original Sin" isn't part of Judaism or Islam despite the obvious inclusion of Adam and
Eve. IMHO, its probably not possible to separate Christianity from the Imperial structures of
Rome. A religion replacing a structure which makes its former leaders deities needs a good
story to be successful.
Adam and Eve aren't important stories in Judaism and Islam (they are evidence of
polytheistic roots), but they matter to Christians because of Saul's rants.
The other issue is the authors of the various doctrines depended on what they were
attracted to. "I am the Alpha and the Omega." If this line is the case, then in the
narrative, Jesus needs to reflect the beginning and the end. He's that important. Its like
when Q was in the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation in the same setting as the
premiere, but instead of dealing with a mystery, Picard has to deal with saving humanity and
his fish once again. Its a nice bow, but when Kirk shows up in Generations after dealing with
his issues both in Star Trek II and VI, it doesn't work. One Gospel traces Jesus through the
line of Kings, one through the prophets, and one just "the word." The Son of God isn't dying
for an extra day of lamp oil.
Mohammad is out there directing battles and building an empire that was probably better
than what was there before. Jesus was born into Pax Romana. He could have been born into much
worse places.
I do not feel anything you wrote is in disagreement with my thoughts.
Eden, I feel, is a an imprint of pre-history, of the paleolithic. A time when money was
not the common story that people willingly (or unwillingly) currently believe. I think this
is largely driven by genetics. If your genes can change by our diet why would they not be
able to be changed by our culture? So I do not care if someone wants to be capitalist, just give me my space to be an
anarchist. You capitalism does not work in my brain.
I think it is extremely unfortunate that Professor Hudson chose to make claims about 'mere
theology' that don't have a basis in the texts concerning Jesus. The inference I get from
reading all the evangelists wrote on the subject of the Lord's Prayer is that debt collecting
is indeed frowned upon, or rather to be forgiven, but what sense would it make for a follower
of Jesus to ask God to forgive economic debt? And the evangelists expand that concept to
mean, as has been earlier written by them, all the many shortcomings man is capable of, not
just penury.
Certainly the entire message of the Bible, old and new testaments, deals with the
honorable matter of helping the poor, widows and orphans as well, because that is a good
thing to do in the eyes of the Lord, who loves mankind created in His image as it is. All of
that is part of the compassionate spiritual being He is and we ought to be.
I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. For those of us who think the
spiritual message is important, there is no conflict between our faith and Dr. Hudson's
excellent reminder that mankind realized what was necessary to provide for a stable earthly
government very early in the historic record. But it has really always been recognized until
the recent economic period that governments must manage equity in their populations or else
come to a speedy ruin. Maybe never spelled out in economic theory, but even the pueblo
Indians would have something to say on the matter. Chaco Canyon is a case in point.
I think Dr. Hudson is commenting on what makes for a stable, just and durable
society . Like symmetry, humans are exquisitely attuned to imbalances in equity and fairness. Ask
two siblings made to share what they each most want. Governments and societies ignore that at
their peril.
I think he would say that much of economics is a form of special pleading, an argument by
the wealthy that what they do to become wealthy is of great value to all (not just the few)
– despite the overwhelming contrary evidence – and determined by the nearly
divine laws of the market.
Societies, like families, prosper, however, through enduring and repetitive
self-sacrifice.
Not to put words into Professor Hudson's mouth, I would say that he is correct on the
perceptions he has about the jubilee year as it is represented in the Old Testament and even
Jesus' reference to a jubilee year in the early part of his ministry. I give Professor Hudson
great credit for pointing out that powerful part of Jesus' early speech in the Temple that
did scandalize many of the listeners there. I had not seen that message before Dr. Hudson
pointed to it, but it is a very important one as he says. But Jesus was then and also in all
his further sayings taking that economic law promulgated in earlier texts and not only
pointing out that it wasn't being observed by unscrupulous taxation practices, but also
expanding it into a larger spiritual context wherein the poor are really blessed in spirit,
because poverty is right down there with humility, and that emptying of oneself on behalf of
another is where true compassion begins.
In my faith, Jesus is God incarnate. God incarnate in order that we see in his humility,
the humility intrinsic to God's relationship to mankind. Humility and 'humus' are related,
and so they should be. The hard shell of the seed falling to the ground preserves the soul of
the seed, even as what hardens it is the vicissitudes of its early life. We all presently
have life; we are like seeds that way. And as you say, EoH, societies, like families, prosper
through enduring and repetitive self-sacrifice. That's where faith and economics, true
economics such as Professor Hudson is proposing, meet.
The only church that, to me, holds to Jesus's teaching is the Franciscan Church. Jesus also tried to help people with their fears of "doing without". This is crucial to
me. If you are unafraid to do without the capitalists have no power.
25 Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye
shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the
food, and the body than the raiment? 26 Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not,
neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not
ye of much more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit
unto [a]the measure of his life? 28 And why are ye anxious concerning raiment? Consider the
lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: 29 yet I say unto
you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God
doth so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the
oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? 31 Be not therefore anxious,
saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be
clothed?
There were different factions within Judaism vying for public and ideological support. A
prophetic Judaism where "God desired mercy and not sacrifice", where those who were outcasted
by the priestly Judaism, the poor who couldn't afford the Priestly ritual, taxes that
enriched the Pharisaic elite that acted as a proxy for Rome, the alien, the sinner, etc. In
this prophetic tradition love your neighbor, forgiveness of debts, and extending your
neighbor to include this traditionally outcasted, alongside predictions of Judgement for the
temple elites, and return of Gods Kingdom. Jesus belonged in this tradition. Jesus was seen
as a political and religious messiah in this tradition.
Paul belonged to the Pharisaic tradition but had some sort of religious/mystical
conversion to move from prosecuting early Christian's to starting a Christ cult. Instead of
Jesus proclaiming God desired Mercy and not sacrifice, Paul claimed Jesus became the required
sacrifice. Instead of forgiveness of debts, mercy and acceptance being the way to God, Jesus
became the priestly ritual and Christianity became a cult. Richard Horsely has done great
research on First century Judaism and the historical Jesus. I also really like "the last
week" by Borg and crossan
This is a very similar thesis to one found in David Graebers "5000 Years of Debt",
interesting that it's the conclusion being arrived at by multiple scholars.
Graeber and Hudson have been friends, Hudson told me, for ten years, and Graeber, when
writing Debt; The First 5,000 Years, relied on Hudson's scholarship for his account of
ancient Mesopotamian economics
was just going to add the point about "Debt". I found Graeber's work to be fascinating,
especially how the relationship between "sin" and debt, and the implications on the
development and rise of Christianity, the rejection of homosexuality (not just wives and
daughters became sex slaves), and perhaps most importantly, how wrong market fundamentalist
are in their understanding of how economic systems evolve and their belief that market-based
systems are "natural", arising from a pre-market barter state.
It's an excellent alternative to the creation myths of mainstream economics. I've listened
to the audio book three times through and gotten more out of it each time. It's always a
pleasure to see 'conventional wisdom' dethroned by that most pernicious of enemies: actual
history.
looking forward to picking up a copy. loved graeber's Debt: and this seems to build on
that and adds Hudson's economic background to Graeber's anthropological one
There is no 'moral hazard'. This is a non sequitur designed to deceive like a lot of
'sponsored' economic theory. Every loan carries a risk and the risk is it won't be paid
back.
The moral hazard argument only applies if debts are paid back at once, thus debtors can
'wait' for a jubilee. In the real world debt is paid back in bits along with interest. So no
one will be waiting for jubilee in day to day economic life without facing consequences.
What a debt jubilee does is wipes the slate clean of loans that 'won't' be paid back, and
maintains systemic balance rather than concentration and exploitation.
It's also pretty telling that those who control the "moral hazard" meme rarely if ever
discuss the moral hazard of bailing out major Corps and Financial Houses or the "moral
hazard" of handing large Corps years of taxpayer contributions to various States.
Also overlooks that outside of personal debt, the world of corporate debt see "strategic
defaults" occur all the time with no moral hand wringing involved. Debts are a promise to pay
back, not an obligation.
I had an interesting argument with my brother-in-law several years ago, usually a very
level headed fellow who was going back to school for engineering in his 30s, as soon as I
brought up the possibility of dissolving student debt he grew quite heated. To
paraphrase:
"Why should I be punished for responsibly paying back my loans while someone else who was
irresponsible gets that debt annulled?"
Moral outrage for the debtors being forgiven their sin! Of course, a few years later with
his debt built up his tune had completely changed
Bankruptcy is essentially a form of debt jubilee that isn't society-wide on a specific
date. The big problem I see with student loan debt is that it can't be discharged in
bankruptcy. Individual bankruptcy is not something to enter into lightly, but there are a
number of people out there who can never pay back their student debt and they should be able
to go through bankruptcy and reduce it to a manageable level so they can live the rest of
their lives productively instead of indentured servitude. At the very least, Social Security
should not be garnished to pay student debt.
Very nice read! It has been voiced by many people that ECB should set and achieve higher inflation
targets, but it sticks to the 2% target, for 'price stability', while underachieving even on
that. Keeping inflation target extremely low should serve the creditors more than the
debtors.
Real "moral hazard" are people who enable this system.
I'll have to pick up a copy of the book, which sounds quite interesting. However, I cannot
go along with the argument made here that Western Civilization is less civilized than the
Ancient Near East because it did not include regular debt jubilees.
Western civilization, until very recently, had very strict anti-usury laws which prevented
most people from borrowing money at all, let alone falling into debt servitude. Indeed, while
laws varied widely from place to place, most victims of over-borrowing were royal courts and
aristocrats, not smallholders. And of course, since most moneylenders were Jewish, one
solution for debtors regularly employed was to simply run the creditors out of town or
indeed, the country. Isn't that a kind of jubilee?
Depends what you mean by "very recently." In theory, and according to canon law
(Deuteronomy 23:19) lending at interest was completely forbidden. But quite sophisticated
banking systems had developed by the end of the middle ages, and "usury" became increasingly
defined as just "excessive interest". There was a huge controversy over this in the 16th an
17th centuries, effectively ending with the creation of the Bank of England in 1694. Most
countries had (and still have) laws against "usury" – excessive rates of interest
– but that's a different issue. Many ordinary people until quite recently lived on
non-cash economies and so this was, as you say, largely an issue for the rich. Kings in those
days frequently went bankrupt, usually because of the need to finance wars. Interestingly,
one of the biggest borrowers was the Pope, in his role as a secular prince. He had an account
with the Medici Bank in Florence, which was usually overdrawn. Someone should write a history
of the effect of the debts of Princes on history.
Supposedly the richest man *ever* was Baron Fugger . His biography by Streider is a
great read. He kept the Pope's plate as collateral for some debt or another -- when the Pope
wanted to display it in some procession, the Baron agreed. He personally accompanied the
convoy that brought the plate to Rome and also marched with it in the procession. What a
message that must have sent!
He was a miner as well as banker. Some of those mines, like earlier Roman ones across the
Mediterranean, remain among the most polluted spots on earth.
Yes. Well, the problem with interest rates being too low is because the wealthy already
have enough money, nominally speaking, to buy the world a couple times over. There is already
too much money tucked away by the wealthy as assets, but because of interest and profits,
more money is always being taken out of circulation in the real economy, and sequestered in
the financial sector. Even as the government borrows to replace it in circulation, and so
prevent *deflation.* in the real economy. The money will (eventually) be destroyed, but since
the government(s) of the world are too weak, it won't be by collecting taxes, (a la MMT.)
The parallels of debt oligarchies to tech oligarchies, this article draws for me .. "So it was inevitable that, in the last century of American history, increasing numbers of
small firms became irredeemably unviable and lost their ability to compete. It likewise was
inevitable that the FANGS amassed the masses of entrepreneurial talent and established
themselves in parasitic oligarchies."
"by keeping "everybody above the break-even level" why? to enable – the planet to go from 7 Billion people to 14 Billion? in an age of AI and vast chasm of IQ's below 100 – what could be the purpose?
I'm going to get the book.
And I wonder if the notion of "IQ" and what we've come to believe is "intelligent" could have
been as manipulated as people's relationship with and beliefs about debt.
For what is the most basic condition of civilization, Hudson asks, other than societal
organization that effects lasting "balance" by keeping "everybody above the break-even
level"?
That's the core regulating idea Geoff Mann draws out of Keynes in his recent "In the Long
Run We Are All Dead." As best as I can tell his take on Keynes is accurate, and he's able to
make a case for aligning him with the likes of Hegel and -- drum roll -- Robespierre, who was
fiercely insistent on the guarantee of an "honorable poverty." In a way, they were all
theorists of the abyss, pragmatists who insisted on measures to make sure economies didn't
kill their members. I was particularly taken by the idea that the General Theory is not
systematic but rather an analysis of different modes of breakdown, e.g. the liquidity trap,
that must be compensated for.
It's also worth noting that, according to Mann, Keynes was a poor, indifferent reader of
Marx, and that a better appreciation would have led Keynes to see they were in significant
agreement on some crisis dynamics in capitalism.
"latifundia Italiam ("the great estates destroyed Italy"), as Pliny the Elder observed."
< the quote is lacking its verb; should read "latifundia perdidere Italiam".
Also, Hudson's quote in the addendum seems to partly lack indentation
Looking forward to reading it. I really enjoyed the History of debt by David Graeber so
would be interesting to go more in depth. Does Hudson discuss bankruptcy law? After all in most of the world most types of loans can
be discharged in a bankruptcy which is the closest we have to the Jubilees
Except, of course, for the 1.5 trillion student loan debt. "For us freedom has been understood to sanction the ability of creditors to demand payment
from debtors without restraint or oversight. This is the freedom to cannibalize society. This
is the freedom to enslave. This is, in the end, the freedom proclaimed by the Chicago School
and the mainstream of American economists"
I only mentioned it because it's an example of an enormous, oppressive, non-dischargeable
debt for something that used to be considered a public good, and almost free.
The No Creditor Left Behind Bankruptcy "Reform" Act of 2005 carved a big hole in the idea
of debt forgiveness in America. Neoliberalism at its finest. Rescinding those changes would
probably be a big win for Democrats at the polls and in governance.
Yes. Bankruptcy is hardly any kind of Jubilee. Any debt is much harder to discharge post
2005, including medical, which is the cause of half of bankruptcies according to filers.
But that would mean showing contrition by the very malefactors who (hear's looking at you
– Biden, Schumer, Clinton .. along with their counterparts across the aisle)
Don't expect rescission from the likes of them !
The Plutocrats are just 'Biden their time until they own everything.
He's the main one responsible for this as a U.S. Senator servicing those "little family
businesses" headquartered in Delaware.
Wonder the same about bankruptcy. IIRC, think the moneychangers' bankruptcy "reform" under
the Bush II regime turned it into a virtual debtors' prison, excluding several kinds of debt
from discharge, including student loans.
Student loans. Now there's a naked fleecing scam by the moneychangers. High interest, zero
risk, no forgiveness. A great racket if you can get it, like Medical Insurance, profiteering
guaranteed by Obamacare.
Hudson perceives things that should be but aren't obvious -- about money, power, and
freedom. The love of money may be the root of all evil, but it's ultimately a weapon wielded
in an insatiable lust for power, absolute, utterly corrupt power, the ownership and
enslavement of others. Inequality is not a flaw of rigged-market cannibalism; it's a feature,
a feature those at the top of the food chain have no intention of "fixing". The US empire,
imo, is the nadir of this evil, a kleptocracy dependent on perpetual mass-murder. The paradox
is, they may be more enslaved to their narcotic than anyone.
"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." Janis Joplin
I wonder if Janis was an organ donor? These days, organ harvesting doesn't seem as
far-fetched. Were all those just urban legends about waking up in an ice bath with a note
attached about that impromptu kidney donation? /s
Regarding the point of moral hazard: what would Hudson's reply be to the person who says
"I paid off all my debts through hard work and abstinence; why should someone get a free pass
under the Jubilee. To yours truly, that would be ultimate slap in the face
Yes, the tab at the pub DID go away. A "pub" is "public house", in Babylonia too. The ale
wives weren't paid -- and they in turn didn't have to pay the palace or temples for the
consignment of beer.
A clean slate is a clean slate -- for consumer debts (NOT business debts).
It's necessary to read the book to get the details. i guarantee that nobody can deduce Bronze
Age finance abstractly.
Cooperation. Because we can decline the idea of debt right back to one thing. Cooperation.
When Graeber says "Money is Debt" he is right but he fails to define the root of debt.
Because debt is not money. It's just as the biologist here on NC said: If one amoeba hoarded
all the ATP it would simply kill off the rest of the amoeba because adenosinetriphosphate is
their source of energy, their "money".
The original sin is getting money mixed up by claiming
it is both a medium of exchange and a store of value. The word "store" goes off in its own
direction and becomes "hoard" and "deprive others". You get my drift? Debt must be
cooperation for the system to work.
A business loan used to help pay for workers' insurance – that would seem to be
worthy of consideration. A consumer loan used for an exotic vacation in the middle of an ocean – not so
worthy. A debt owed for child support or ex-wife (or husband) – would that be private or
public?
Found the source of my
misunderstanding: "In such cases rulers cancelled debts that were owed. (In that case, the ale women would
not owe the palace for the beer that had been advanced during the crop year.)" I had not put it together that the consumers were then forgiven by the ale women. Stands
to reason.
"i guarantee that nobody can deduce Bronze Age finance abstractly." Now that I can lift myself off the floor after the spastic convulsions of laughter that
brought on .. Kudos Sir . that was the best chortle I've had in yonks – !!!!!!! It is
probably the most hilarious synopsis of what ails about 90% of what we call economics at this
juncture. I think I'll have that put to paper in calligraphy and in a stunning frame on the wall
next to my Japanese charcoal art collection, of which sits on the wall around my comp
screen.
Let me get this straight your stance is basically, "I had to suffer through injustice and
I survived, why should anybody else get to have any justice?!"
It seems to favor mortgaged 'owners' of homes, if those loans are not considered
'business.' And disadvantages renters (who are thinking of borrowing to buy in the near future).
The answer is so that those other people will be able to sustain the consumption that is
necessary to absorb your production so that you don't get laid off -- but this requires an
understanding of macroeconomics unavailable in the current economic orthodoxy.
I've seen these arguments supporting debt forgiveness many, many times, but I have yet to
see any details on how this would be functionally accomplished today. I don't disagree with
the sentiment that debt has become a huge problem for many people, but sentiments aren't road
maps.
One person's debt is another person's credit. If you wipe out the debt on one side, you
extinguish the asset on the other (unless, of course, the sovereign government "buys" this
debt from the creditors in an eminent domain type fashion). Perhaps in ancient times
creditors were mostly well-healed oligarchs who could survive the loss. Today, much of the
debt is bundled and securitized and held by all sorts of individuals and institutions (think
mutual funds, pension plans, 401k's etc). While the one-percenters could absorb the hit, I'm
not so sure about those lower on the ladder who thought their retirement savings were secure
in a "safe" bond fund.
At some point, supporters of debt forgiveness need to reconcile their position with the
fact that the extinguishing of debt is, in effect, a sovereign action taking the property of
another on a scale without much parallel in modern society.
You could exchange equity interest for debt for business loans or loans secured by an
underlying asset. (mortgage loan). You could extend the time period or write down the interest rate enabling smaller
payments. You could have the Fed buy the debt, as you mentioned, and then forgive it. You could have the fed take over payments, or a portion of the payment, thereby proving
relief for the debtor while still keeping the creditor whole.
I think in the Ancient Middle East the government was the most important creditor (with
the debt arising from tax arrears) so yes, it was easier to forgive a debt then than now.
As I wrote a few lines before, another option (which has an advantage of having been in
use for centuries) is a bankruptcy.
Credit is an essential tool for stimulating any economy. Farmers often need funds to buy
seeds and get through the winter, auto manufacturers couldn't possibly survive if they had to
demand full payment up front for their cars, etc., etc (think up your own examples).
An intelligent state (or rather an idealized intelligent state) can and should issue
credit or print money to best utilize the society's productive potential. The problems begin
when the state allows this crucial function to be monopolized by the oligarchs, who unlike
the state are in the game only for profit, not for upgrading the overall well being (or war
readiness, if you prefer) of the society. A state that can print its own money can either
dispense with interest charges or forgive debt when it the debt/interest burden is excessive.
Since private lenders, who don't own the government, can't print money, they're in no
position to forgive debt. The advantage of maintaining a belief in the sanctity of debt, and
therefore the immiseration of the debtors, is that it allows the oligarchs to amass
staggering wealth, and build fabulous Xanadus in Malibu or on Long Island. You really
wouldn't want to live in a world where nobody could afford a thirty thousand square foot
house, would you?
At some point, supporters of debt forgiveness need to reconcile their position with
the fact that the extinguishing of debt is, in effect, a sovereign action taking the
property of another on a scale without much parallel in modern society.
Let me suggest a parallel or two: the acquisition of property by means of enforced
indebtedness combined with creditor fraud that occurred in the Great Foreclosure Carnage
around 2008? Or the appropriation of the lion's share of economic growth since 1970 to the
richest 1% or so?
You may have solved the problem right here: the sovereign government "buys" this debt." MMT is the perfect mechanism to do this. It accomplishes what the Temple could do in the
past. Then, the banking and insurance services required by society can be shifted to the
National Postal Service. Speculation, for those who need it, can be continued in the casinos,
where it belongs. And then we can have a real discussion about the "resource base" we call
Earth and look at ways that we can live within it, and even possibly beyond it, without
irreversibly damaging the ecology we need to revisit all this again, and again, and again
I would email your friend back and say, "you write like this is a bad thing!??!!?"
Creditors SHOULD be required to exercise judgment and restraint in extending credit. It's
moral hazard in the other direction if the government lets them squeeze the life out of
people.
Maybe its cause I have an M.div. How is this earth shattering? Its been the basic view of every dusty old Old Testament
churchman for years.
Sounds like Hudson skipped medieval cannon law and early modern eras to try and bolster the
"rediscovery" angle.
This is old hat:
Creditors aiming to own you- proverbs
Jubilee- Torah
Debts- they stoped saying that only in the 60s but I learned it like that.
But Hudson really shoulda resisted the urge to name drop Jesus quite so hard and make him
the economic revolutionary. Or is he trying to give reasons for his probable opponents to
write him off?
We on here are the choir. What do the folks in the pews here?
If he'd of kept the prophetic, he had then an ability to reach down into the prophets
which condemn growing estates, refusing jubilees, and even condemned sacrificing Children
(for material benefits from Idols) he would then be wielding a whole and big religion stick
Not just casting yet another 1800s historical Jesus.
I think you're overlooking the difference between prophecy and history here. Jesus was
another quite noisy prophet, saying what prophets say: "God's gonna getcha!" And of course He
got His for saying that, as they usually do.
We've been ignoring prophets while sanctifying them for a very long time. Hudson stitches
them back into the fabric of history. He takes them far more seriously and literally than
canon lawyers have. He helps me to understand their topsy-turvy justification of–to
build on your delightful auto-correct–cannon law.
What is the trigger point for debt forgiveness? When does it operate and upon what class
of debtors? Is it predictable or unpredictable? Is it frequent or infrequent?
It needs to be frequent enough yet to some extent unpredictable, or a class of predatory
debtors will be created, piling up debt immediately before the jubilee.
This is a means of redistribution of wealth. But aren't there better means, such as a
minimum basic income AKA universal SSI and other social entitlements? Of course, this assumes
that government seeks public welfare and is not merely the collective will of a predatory
oligarchy. Also not sure how it applies to the redistribution of wealth between nations.
If a student and medical debt jubilee, for example, were coupled with free tuition at
public colleges and M4A there would be no accumulation of debt going forward. I don't know if
there are comparable systemic changes for other types of debt, and most of this discussion is
over my head as far as theology or economic history. However, if it's about a religious,
social justice, or moral force for forgiving debts, it would include re-framing how we think
of society and our obligations to each other – not just debt forgiveness but changes to
structures to guard against further unsustainable debt.
WW I, the Russian Revolution, and WW II make one wonder about the definition of "Western
Civilization".
Each of these occurred after a period of very high wealth and income inequality with large
public and private debts in some cases.
the past century of history makes one wonder how smart it is for the 0.1% to focus on
increasing wealth and income inequality. It frequently does not end well for anybody.
Skeletons of wealthy and "noble" people at the bottom of mine shafts is often proof of
that.
And Piketty shows that these events interrupted and temporarily reversed the accumulation
of wealth, ushering in the abundance of the mid twentieth century.
'"Classical Antiquity," Hudson writes, "replaced the cyclical idea of time and social
renewal with that of linear time. Economic polarization became irreversible, not merely
temporary" (p. xxv). In other words: "The idea of linear progress, in the form of
irreversible debt and property transfers, has replaced the Bronze Age tradition of cyclical
renewal" '
I remember reading one of John Michael Greer's posts a few years back that pointed out the
differences in Western concept of time-as-linear and other, earlier societies', concept of
time as circular. We, in the West, think things will become increasingly better, (or worse)
right up to infinity. GDP will always grow, the stock market will always rise, freedom will
always increase.
Other societies thought of events as cyclical. The early growth of spring blossomed into
the fruitfulness of summer, then decayed in autumn and lay fallow in winter (or whatever
passed for winter where you were living). That's how Nature worked. And, it is inevitable
that societies grow, prosper, decline, die, then are renewed.
And, using the circle in deliberative sessions probably leads to different results than
the usual Western, linear one, of having the 'leaders' sitting in front, and the 'followers'
facing them in a subservient position. Witness the setups of most city council chambers.
Stephen Jay Gould wrote about it at length in Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle
(1987).
His immediate topic was the history of the discovery of deep time, the idea that processes
observable today could explain vast changes in the earth if allowed to act over long enough
spans of time. Being Gould, he considers cultural applications beyond geology and
evolution.
One application is that the "biblical" version of a jubilee year was by the time of the
writing of the bible an ancient idea that had survived several thousand years of middle
eastern history. That writing was contemporaneous with the early Greeks and predates the
impact of Alexander and Roman rule over the eastern Mediterranean.
Cycles are real (see Nature); linear progress is delusional.
Which is why our deluded system of imaginary linear growth is subject to chronic booms and
busts which bring cyclical reality back -- Every. Single. Time.
I am troubled by these statements in the post:
" to the extent that it will be understood,'earth-shattering' in both intent and effect."
"Just as this is a profound book, it is so densely written that it is profoundly difficult to
read."
I fear too much that is "earth-shattering" will be lost if it is profoundly difficult.
Readers less able or less determined will let the interpretations of others sway their
understanding. Those others may not share the author's perspective or intent in their
interpretations, and they may not be of persons of honesty and good will.
How would Hudson respond to the person who laments " I worked and deprived my self to pay
back my loan. Why should someone else get a free ride, if I did not"?
I guess he would say that there is another moral hazard, on part of the lender which has
to be balanced against it. If I as a lender know that I can collect any loan that I make up
to enslaving the debtor if he falls in arrears then I don't assume any risk and have no skin
in the game.
Times change, we learn from mistakes, and change our ways? Before we did the wrong thing,
now we're getting it right?
Why does someone else being done justice hurt you? It's not a "free ride," either; that
implies getting something for nothing. Farmers wiped out by drought were hardly getting a
free ride when they were forgiven debts for grain that didn't grow in fields that didn't
exactly plant and tend themselves. People often do immense amounts of work only for the
bottom to drop out on the way back from the well.
One day I took a fall off a 4′ ladder, helping a friend paint their house,
shattering my left wrist. The $20,000 bill sent my life into a tailspin. Finally declared
bankruptcy, but I've still got a few years of purgatory.
That was no "free ride," friend.
I paid back my student loans, and it sucked. Literally sucked the food off my table many a
month. And I would rejoice at someone else not having to go through that. Education should be
free, to begin with, so relieving people of crushing burdens they shouldn't have at all would
be doubly enjoyable.
The answer is so that those other people will be able to sustain the consumption that is
necessary to absorb your production so that you don't get laid off -- but this requires an
understanding of macroeconomics unavailable in the current economic orthodoxy.
Jesus was not just driving the debt collectors out of the temple, he was driving out all
of the capitalists :
Mark 11:15 KJV
15 And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out
them that sold and bought in the temple , and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers,
and the seats of them that sold doves ;
16 And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple .
17 And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all
nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves.
So he was kicking out people who were selling things in the temple, not just the money
changers, all the capitalists. A vessel carried goods and he did not even want to see them in
the temple.
It is not enough to end debt, because that still leaves us with capitalism.
The VERY NEXT verse is Mark 12, The Parable of the Tenants, literally telling the
capitalists that the people will rise up if you follow capitalism and then they will have to
kill the renters.
Oh, no, you don't. In the story it's the renters. My bad. But the renters in the story
would, I suppose, be equivalent to the rentiers we find ourselves plagued with today
"That is what creditors really wanted: Not merely the interest as such, but the collateral
-- whatever economic assets debtors possessed, from their labor to their property, ending up
with their lives"
Creditors=Predators
I would argue that it would be more appropriate to say that the
prædia/latifundia explains the ascent of the medieval feudal order rather than
explaining the decline of the Roman empire. The fall of the WRE is a multi-faceted phenomenon
with no singular cause, and besides it's a bit suspect to say that something that came about
6 centuries earlier caused it. The latifundia provided the template for social order
that would fill the void left by the collapse of the WRE, reaching its apex in high medieval
manorialism.
Late to comment on this but I always thought it would be an interesting thought to write a
history of the Western Roman Empire backwards in time starting maybe at the early middle ages
as the final presence of the Empire itself. As the end point of the Empire. As a culmination
of a process and working back tracing each step that was "caused" by the previous one
stretching back to its beginning in the 2d Cent BCE Rome-Italy and the economic problems of
debt, loss of the small farming economy, and the political social consequences. The Roman
victory in the Second Punic as the beginning of it as an Imperium with the Middle Ages as its
logical end, or so to speak, final "perfection".
Fascinating scholarship with very far reaching and profound implications, but I'm not
really satisfied with Hudson's answer to the friend of John Siman. The question posed is a
very fair one and of a very practical nature, concerning the possible deleterious effects of
systemic debt forgiveness on credit/lending. Hudson's answer, at least as it's presented
here, sidesteps the question and instead dives into a discussion of morality. I would think
loan durations, terms, interest rates, and generalized credit availability would all vary
greatly depending on whether or not debt cancellation was a regularly occurring, scheduled
event or a more fluid and unpredictable event based on political winds and the whims of
whatever autocrat happens to be in power. Regardless of the morality of a particular
debt/monetary system, requests for more information concerning the likely side effects of
debt forgiveness programs and any lessons regarding best debt forgiveness practices from the
ancient civilizations who practiced it are very much in order if Hudson is making the
argument that systematic debt cancellation is preferable to our present system of lifelong
compounding debts and generational indebtedness. I'm certainly not saying Hudson is off base
here, I like where he's going with his scholarship, but these are inevitable questions.
Anyone interested in the history Hudson has unearthed will want to know if he believes debt
forgiveness could work in a modern, interconnected, industrial society or if it only works
with pre-industrial grain farming peasants and a small class of aristocrats.
Oh my, perhaps the system that allowed the entire human world to be poisoned into
extinction would end. That would be awful, so many portfolios would be ruined.
Who is going to lend money for a loss? Credit card lenders manage risk with high interest
rates, limited credit lines, and closing accounts at will: good luck paying for college on
those terms. I'd guess the generous loan forgiveness in ancient times was made possible
through slave labor and spoils of war
What if students didn't have to pay for college? Or patients, health care? Pretty sure
I'd've done a much better job of spreading that money around than the deep pockets it went
into. Maybe, in not being unduly indebted myself, I could've helped others do likewise, at
least in my small way.
Where's the money going to come from? We have all the money we need, and then some, for
the things we deem necessary. Ask Wall St. and the Pentagon.
So I guess my question to all this is : why has Western civilization not collapsed? What's
the mechanisms that we have used that say, the Romans, didn't?
Who says we're not collapsing right now? The plow gave farmers mechanical advantage to speed things up. The steam engine, then
internal combustion, did likewise. Computers are aka information engines.
Sure, we've got immense momentum, way more than ever, but we're headed straight for
Climate Change Peak. And the morons in the cockpit? I can't even.
For your decades long, truth to power investigative and intellectual rigor. The
experience(s) from a young age, up to and including your work on modern money and now this
latest book.
Truly a view from a life long perspective the likes of which may never come along again.
A voice that is worthy of attention.
I wonder about the sources of debt in ancient times? It wasn't driven by consumerism like todays debt is, was it? Hopefully the book will speak to this.
Satisfying explanation of the failure of European and now North American society to
achieve civilization due to our reliance on Greek and Roman precedents for our public acts.
We were besotted by the birth of democracy in Athens and the abuse of force in Rome.
I shall buy this book, not because I am unaware of the basic argument but because I expect
Michael Hudson has a great many illustrations of the improved society that assyriologists
have discovered.
It is a great personal delight to know Hudson values Arnold Toynbee, one of my heroes and
a fine human being. Thanks NC for the review.
John Siman here. You seem to be one of only a few people posting comments who understands
the depth and vastness and importance of Hudson's project. You also love Toynbee. All this
makes me very happy!
I've never read Toynbee and my library only has a couple of his books. But I've read
elsewhere that he fell from scholarly favor in part because of his critical view of Zionism.
From Wikipedia:
Toynbee maintained, among other contentions, that the Jewish people have neither
historic nor legal claims to Palestine, stating that the Arab
"population's human rights to their homes and property over-ride all other rights in
cases where claims conflict." He did concede that the Jews, "being the only surviving
representatives of any of the pre-Arab inhabitants of Palestine, have a further claim to
a national home in Palestine." But that claim, he held, is valid "only in so far as it
can be implemented without injury to the rights and to the legitimate interests of the
native Arab population of Palestine."[30]
Time for a Toynbee revival? And while I'm a great fan of Hudson's writing on this blog and would humbly decline any
challenge to his scholarship, I do wonder about the notion of framing all of human history in
terms of money. Surely creditors only have power as long as they have force to back it up.
The book's thesis sounds a tad reductionist..
Pierre Bourdieu would probably say that the societal relations at issue are those of
power. Debtor-Creditor relations, using "money" as shorthand, are an expression of them.
Power and its absence define the rights and obligations of debtor and creditor – and
the manner in which they can be modified.
Hudson seems to be saying that his historical research tells him that the political
leaders in the ancient societies he has studied reserved to themselves the power periodically
to alter those relationships.
The purpose of doing so was as to keep society functioning by meeting demands that
conflict with and at times are superior to the normal need to repay debt. Periodic debt
forgiveness is equally normal, in the manner that medieval farmers let their land lie fallow
so as to bear fruit another year.
Rootless, unrestrained capital would plant the same ground every year, exhaust it, and
move on, leaving behind the detritus of its "creative destruction". For Hudson, a political
ruler with nowhere to move on to, feels compelled instead to play steward.
Under present day neoliberalism, most political leaders have out a less ambitious role for
themselves: they ask permission from capital to blow wind. Restraining it from unsustainably
harvesting every available resource – cotton, coal, fish, data, the earth – is
not within their normal purview.
I feel like I'm out of phase here after bringing up Toynbee in the early years of NC or is
it just a flash back thingy . society as a journey vs. a harbor.
I am reminded of this from the Merchant of Venice.
"Go with me to a notary, seal me there
Your single bond; and, in a merry sport,
If you repay me not on such a day,
In such a place, such sum or sums as are
Express'd in the condition, let the forfeit
Be nominated for an equal pound
Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken
In what part of your body pleaseth me".
Yes!! And do you know Horace's second epode, about Alfius the fænerator =
usurer?
Beatus ille qui procul negotiis,
ut prisca gens mortalium,
paterna rura bobus exercet suis,
solutus omni fænore .
Hudson's work totally illuminates this poem!
To answer the eternal question, often posed by concerned bankers or their supporters:
-- Wouldn't debt cancellations just take away any incentive for people to pay back loans
and, thus, take away the incentive to give loans?
While Dr. Hudson's answer is technically correct, it misses the mark. The question is
filled with incorrect assumptions and moral certainty. A better answer would be:
1st. If the bank is stupid enough to make the loan, they are stupid enough to lose it. The
bank must take the consequence of making a un-payable loan. And.
2nd. The bank has far more resources to know if the loan is repayable than the person getting
the loan. Since the bank 'knows' more, it should take on more responsibility for making the
loan than the person getting the loan. And so, back to reason #1 above, stupid bank loses
stupid loan.
Now when said banker or supporter starts to sputter about how you don't understand how the
world works, or how people must do the right thing, etc., reply back with: "Banks' don't give
loans, they sell loans." The price the borrower pays for the loan is both the face
value of the amount borrowed plus the price the bank sets on 'selling' that amount of money
(the interest rate of the loan). And that is if the borrower pays back the loan with money.
Otherwise the borrower pays back with the collateral used as a Plan B for the lender. So
banks 'give' (sell) loans if and only if:
1. they can make money loaning to that person (or business, or country). 'Make money' means
either getting the collateral for the loan or getting the purchase price (cost of the loan)
in full.
OR
2. they are 'requested' by a higher authority to make the loan. A government or even just a
higher up boss could 'request' that the loan officer approve the loan, regardless of the
borrower's ability to repay. This accounts for the fraud and bribery too often seen with the
banker's side of debt.
And while I'm at it, further reasons why debt should be retired and not paid back: The
consequence to society of a bank not getting repaid is much less than the consequence to
society of the individual being forced to pay back a loan that the individual can not
reasonably do. The society is not that much troubled by a bank losing 'its' money than its
members being forced into debt slavery via loan foreclosures and such. Second, the bank
should not get more money or services back from a defaulted loan than what the loan itself
was worth. Society is poorly served when the bank (and its officers) get rich by foreclosing
on loans.
Lastly, and deserving its own paragraph: Yes, the borrower usually has a gun to their head
-- want a good job? get a college degree or training, which needs a school loan to get; want
groceries on the table (but not earning enough wages to cover it)? get a payday loan; want to
make your small company's payroll (but did not see a downturn in the economy)? get a bridging
loan, etc., etc., etc.
The central question about debt, loans, and contracts is: Is a contract fair if it is
'your brains or your signature on the paper'? In case mafia bosses are reading this, the
answer is NO, it's not. And unfair contracts are not or should not be legally enforceable.
The sanctity of the contract rests on a foundation of is it a 'free and even' entered into
agreement.
What could have facilitated debt jubilees in ancient societies was the fact that the new
rulers which overthrew the old as a result of frequent wars, found it convenient to eliminate
the former propertied classes to win over the support of the indebted and enslaved commoners.
'Wiping the slate clean' could have been just a measure to win political legitimacy.
Finally someone dared to say it.
The debt economy is sustainable only by debt forgiveness: Personal bankruptcy as in USA (prior
to 2005) Or as corporations all around the world enjoy it. Remember how many times did
Trump's corporations went bankrupt?
There is a mass debt forgiveness that is not so obvious yet it is very effective to keep debt
economies alive and well. Moderate and higher inflation is a form of creeping debt forgivness
en mass. The fixed interest rates play a major role in having inflation forming a slow but
sure debt forgiveness.
Do you wonder why Ben Bernanke called for higher inflation in the midst of the GFC? Because
the moderate inflation is a crucial part of debt forgiveness that debt economy has to have in
order to function properly.
Jesus only shortened the Moses' orders on what to do with poverty in Deutoronomy 15.
Second part of Lord's Prayer is a shorter version of Moses' orders on Debt Jubilee. Even then
they knew the importance of Debt forgiveness and especially since rates were 20% all till
recently.
Today, with lower rates and inflation the need is lesser but personal bankruptcy is an
imediate help to debtors.
Since banks create money as issuing a loan and destroy money as loan is repaid (and only
interest stay as bank's profit) it is very usefull for a bank to have debt forgiven even when
loan is secured. Banks do not have to sell the property underpriced (as they usually do) to
get rid of liability that unperforming loan creates. There are expenses in selling property
especially under the price.
It is much better if the bankruptcy judge allows banks to erase their and debtors liabilities
without money being returned. It saves the banks and debtors.
This is all easy to learn when you know that banks create money when issuing a loan and
then destroy the money as the loan is returned. that is a Law.
Banks create money and then destroy it.
By forgiving the debts everyone benefits.
Same goes with moderate inflation 4-20%, everyone benefits.
A possible case of debt jubilee in our times comes to mind. In India opposition Congress
Party has promised that if it wins general elections in 2019 it will work to forgive the
debts of poor farmers. Here the motivation of this party might not be so much as to relieve
the distress of destitute farmers, many of whom are driven to suicides, as to get votes and
regain power.
Many a time benefits accrue to disadvantaged groups as an inadvertent collateral effect of
conflict of contending power groups and not as a deliberate benign act.
I guess the question is whether the local landsharks who hold these debts will observe the
edicts of New Delhi .
Speaking of which, it would be interesting to see whether and under what conditions the
jubilee model occurred in the Oriental civilizations, all of which were all too well
acquainted with rural usury. I know the Chinese empires had state granaries as insurance
against famines.
But I also recall an 1950s book "Slaves of the Cool Mountains". This discussed the
subcaste of non-Han families in the remote mountain valleys of Yunnan Province who had been
in multigenerational debt bondage and whose unusual economic order proved especially
challenging for the Communist authorities to reinvent. (I also think these areas suffered
horribly in the later famines)
Also, the Parsees (Farsis) of Mumbai were bankers to the Mughals for centuries, but I
suppose that would be state banking, not rural usury.
What distinguishes modern times from the ancient is that propertied classes in many
developed societies have strengthened their political stranglehold, which increases by the
day thanks to new artificial intelligence technologies, so much so that it appears
inconceivable how they could be displaced at all.
In ancient societies most rulers were frequently changing military adventurers and conquerors
and there was still some disconnect between power and wealth; but in modern there has
developed a close convergence between the two. In ancient societies political power was
arbiter of wealth but in modern, developed ones at least, wealth has become arbiter of
power.
Wealthy are the creditors who will not let debtors of the hook easily. I am afraid, we could
be moving to a dystopian future a la Aldous Huxley and George Orwell where rulers and asset
owners would form a same class, the ruled being little better than serfs and plebeians.
Look around. Do we not see the incipient signs already?
Sorry, I dont get it. Very much with the critical reviewer on this one:
"Wouldn't debt cancellations just take away any incentive for people to pay back loans and,
thus, take away the incentive to give loans?"
Hudson's response:
-- Creditors argue that if you forgive debts for a class of debtors – say, student
loans – that there will be some "free riders," and that people will expect to have bad
loans written off. This is called a "moral hazard," as if debt writedowns are a hazard to the
economy, and hence, immoral.
I bed to disagree. The argument is not a moral one. It is an economic one. If I expect my
dept to be written off, i have very little incentive to pay it back. As a creditor on the
other hand I would not care if i get my money from the state or the debtor. However if the
state if going to give money to people anyway we could arrange that by direct transfers and
spare us the trouble of calling it "debt", which we all know is not really debt, but just a
temporary pseudo-debt that will eventually be covered by the state.
I understand Hudson implies that the harm from taking away incentives to pay back debt is
lesser than the harm from dependencies arising from debt in general. I would like a
clarification for which kind of loans this actually holds true and would like to remind the
insame rise of wealth, well-being, long-livety of humanity since the rise of organised
credit/ loan systems.
You may expect there to be a window between the moment where your debt is due, and where a
debt jubilee could occur. So if you don't pay back your debt, bad things may happen: your
kids are incited to pay on your behalf, your house is sold to pay back the debt, your
paycheck is garnished whatever is in the law, and you should end up paying back after
all.
But if you have no kids, no house and no paycheck big enough to be garnished, no debt is paid
back, because no debt can be paid back, and on the day of the jubilee, you walk out clean,
but still with no money, no house and no significant paycheck.
What does change, however, is the risk factor for the creditor: debts that cannot be paid
back, will not be paid back: not by the debtor and not by the state.
So the bank should think twice before handing out a student loan for a very expensive
university where nobody finds work because they offer useless degrees.
As far as I can see, a jubilee would apply to any kind of debt.
Sorry about coming in late to this discussion. I want to comment on the earlier mention of
"Original Sin." I encourage those interested to read "Adam, Eve and the Serpent" by Elaine
Pagels. One of her theses is that Original Sin was a doctrine created by Augustine of Hippo
and that it fit very neatly with a drive to convince the Roman rulers to make Christianity
the official religion. After all, if humans are fundamentally flawed, they need a strong
ruler to tamp down the chaos. As one poster noted, Original Sin is not found in Judaism, and
if it dated from the story of Adam and Eve, you would expect it to be.
Actually, in my case, the Bronze Age angle is of particular interest. I don't mean to offer too much information, but hope that someone can perhaps pass this
info along to Dr. Hudson's publisher . it's not the shipping that plagues me if I have to
order via Amazon, it's the font sizes and the narrow kerning of printed pages 8^p
My eyes vastly prefer a screen reader to enlarge font sizes -- despite my
relative youth 8^\
Also, tablets and phones are vastly more portable.
Calls to my two favorite Seattle-area bookshops today went something like, "Wow, that book
looks interesting . We're going to have trouble ordering from that small publisher It would
be really hard for us to get you a copy -- why don't you just order it from Amazon
?"
In my case, ordering from Amazon would take about 3 weeks for delivery, which is hardly
the end of the world however, if I can't get it on a screen reader, then I would not be able
to take advantage of bumping up the font size >8^\
I hope that your publisher will be able to release the eBook version sooner, rather than
later. They might also contact iBooks to get a notification in Apple's system so that people
could at least see the book will be available there soon -- that way, iBooks can
automatically let me pre-purchase the book, and their system will download it and notify
me when the content is available.
FWIW, I have two of your books via iBooks ( The Monsters, Killing the Host ).
Very simple to carry around that way. Also, ginormous font size
Sorry to be Mr Pedant but The Monster is not by this Michael Hudson but a Dubya who's more
of a journalist if memory serves.
That being said, The Monster is a jaw-dropping work and will always pay re-reading after each
financial crash.
The new MH tome drops on my doormat on Monday all decks are being cleared as we speak for the
time that will be known to history as the Great Seclusion of 2018
Okay feeling silly , and thanks for the correction!
I busted through "The Monsters" some years back and must have mixed up authorship in my
memory archives. Yipes!
I was thinking that if mine arrived mid-Dec, it would be a grand northern latitude time of
year for an invigorating read. But it's all about font size (also, backlighting!)
Thanks again, and congrats on clearing your decks ;-)
Umm Sellers soft shoe at the door after spilling the rice .
After all the wrangling with the beard years ago_cough_ Babylonian debates, not to mention
the early refugees exodus out of the Sumerian collapse, only to experience a population boom
in near historical time, leading to the first city states in the region and all the baggage
that goes with it – evolution of everything.
Only to experience waves of external forces until it becomes de-facto state religion.
But yeah . some tell us human history is only 5000 years old or there about, never mind
the ad hoc assemblage as it drifts through history and the propensity of some to do a
Jefferson's bible treatment to forward personal biases – usual suspects IMO.
At certain points in social history, debt resistance becomes quite literally a matter of
war. Lenders will kill you if that is part of getting their money back. Debtors may have to kill the lenders to get out of debt. It is not always a heroic process. One of the most strident goals of the Nazi Party was to take over the Allied governments
that were imposing reparations.
For more perspective, see my article on "Ending the Evil of Student Loans" on this blog a
couple of months ago.
The question of the relationship between the oligarchs of ancient Rome and the kings who
forgave debts in even more ancient bronze age civilizations can be seen in high relief in the
life of Julius Caesar. The Roman Senate was a den of very rich thieves, while Caesar was a
charismatic leader popular with the common people. He was hated by the Roman elite because he
wanted to make the Roman state work by supporting the common people, while the Senate wanted
to be free to enrich themselves at the expense of both the people and the state. Caesar toyed
with the issue of becoming a king, leading the Senators to hate and fear him, and the people
to cheer him. Indeed, his comment on one occasion when the crowd would crown him king finds
echo in the gospels, for Caesar said "My name is not King, but Caesar!" During the passion
week of Christ, the chief priests cried out "We have no king but Caesar!" (John 19:15) Caesar
worked to find land for his retired soldiers so that they could raise the next generation of
citizen soldiers. Roman estates progressively decreased the supply of citizen soldiers, and
forced increasing reliance on mercenaries.
If anyone wants to follow up on the life of Caesar, take a look at "Caesar: Politician and
Statesman" by Matthias Gelzer or "Julius Caesar" by Phillip Freeman. Freeman ends his book
with a report by Thomas Jefferson that Alexander Hamilton told him "The greatest man who ever
lived was Julius Caesar."
If anyone wants to take the question of Julius Caesar one step further in considering
Hudson's new book, they might want to read "Et tu, Judas? Then Fall Jesus!" by Gary Courtney
or "Jesus Was Caesar" by Francesco Carrota. While taking somewhat different paths to their
conclusion, both find reasons to conclude that Julius Caesar was the historical Jesus, while
the gospels are allegorical retellings of Caesar's life, set in a Jewish milieu, If so,
Christianity began its career in a cauldron of political and religious strife and propaganda,
not so different from what we live with now. After all, both died around Passover, and big
things happened on the third day!
It is a truism that Christianity began in a cauldron of political and religious strife.
Jews were living in a militarily occupied Palestine, a troublesome peripheral territory in
the Roman empire, one that had been assaulted culturally for centuries by the allure of the
Hellenistic world and assaulted physically for millenia by competing empires.
It is common to draw parallels from the surviving accounts of Jesus with the cultures of
Greece and Roman (conceding that Rome had a culture other than barbarism). Greek language and
culture was the lingua franca of the time.
Crossan, for one, points out that tales of divine origins and virgin births were common
when poet historians sought to explain the earthly power of emperors. What was uncommon was
to associate them with the cultural meaning of the life of an itinerant preacher and peasant
village Jew.
Humans understand the new by comparing it with the a parallel from the known. But to
conclude that the historical Julius was the historical Jesus confuses the real and the
metaphorical.
Looking at the coming 2019, Goldman's economists have retained their cheerful outlook and
despite recent hints of an economic slowdown, they expect the Fed to tighten five times between
now and the end of next year (4 in 2019 including once in December), lifting the funds rate to
3.25%-3.5%. And since Goldman also expects 10Y Treasury yields to peak at 3.5% during 2H 2019
and decline to 3.3% in 2020, this means that it is Goldman's official forecast that "the 2s-10s
portion of the yield curve will invert in 2H next year."
Inversion will likely be problem for the economy, and certainly for financial conditions. As
the latest Fed Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS) indicated,
banks said that should the yield curve invert , they would tighten lending standards, as
they would view a moderate yield curve inversion both as signaling a "less favorable or more
uncertain" economic outlook and as likely to reduce the profitability of lending.
"... I am currently reading "The Gulag Archipelago", and there are some very obvious common threads between what happened in the early Soviet days and what we see today: freedom of speech being attacked, publications shut down completely because the editor published material written by people who were out of favor with the party, people put on trial and their past associations ..."
"... Most of these "nothing to see here" commenters are [neo]liberals that approve of and support these social changes. They are just trying to gaslight the rest of us into not noticing what is right in front of our noses. ..."
"... Leaving out personally identifiable information. My current employer has the following groups: Women & Allies, Pan-Asian & Allies, African American & Allies, Hispanic & Allies, and finally LGBT & Allies. Does anyone notice a group who's missing? I'll give you a hint, it's the only other possible category of race/gender/sexual orientation not already listed. These groups are constantly pushed as THE networking opportunity within the company. Managers and executives run the groups and make it clear that if you want to be recognized in the organization you need to put yourself out there through one of these groups. ..."
"... A lot of your commenters laugh at this kind of wacky corporate signaling, while others react with fear for the future. I can only speak for myself and a few other straight white men when I say our reaction is anger. ..."
"... At the end of his presentation they opened the floor to questions, and the very first question was: "Do we have a social justice mission?" From the tone of the commenter, you could tell immediately she thought we should indeed have a "social justice mission." The CEO fumbled through a few sentences about diversity and opportunity, he was clearly caught off guard. ..."
"... Why bother with the hassle? Make your policies as strict as possible so that someone with a petty grudge has no grounds should they decide to sue. ..."
I wanted to bring this to your attention. My husband had a conversation with a young
friend of ours who is a recent college grad. He has been working at [a major retailer] for
the last year. I'm not sure what his title is, but we have encountered him at the store. He
is a great worker and has earned a number of company awards for his performance. He related
to my husband that he had had a conversation with a friend at work about the use or non-use
of transgender pronouns. He took the position that he would not feel comfortable doing
this.
He was later called into his manager's office and reprimanded. The manager told him that
someone had overheard his conversation (manager wouldn't say who), and that he had made this
person feel "unsafe". Our friend was written up for this, transferred to another store a long
distance away, and suffered other severe sanctions! He was a bit naive to have engaged in
this conversation at work, but good grief!
Yes, under communism, the slightest infraction was met with overwhelming punitive force.
People were taught that they had better be afraid at all times, because one mistaken word, said
in front of the wrong person, could mean their lives would change forever.
The reader goes on:
I am currently reading "The Gulag Archipelago", and there are some very obvious common
threads between what happened in the early Soviet days and what we see today: freedom of
speech being attacked, publications shut down completely because the editor published
material written by people who were out of favor with the party, people put on trial and
their past associations (before the revolution) and families of origins being used against
them, defense lawyers being threatened with prison for the very act of defending those whom
the state had deemed its enemies, etc, etc. The major difference that I see is that, in this
age, it is mostly the corporations (along with schools and smaller government entities) who
are acting in the place of the state to force people to toe the line in their thoughts and
speech.
Yes, I'm working on a book proposal now about this very thing. You cannot trust anybody in
these workplaces. Companies are forever wanting to do "team-building," but everything about the
woke workplace compels those with any common sense to consider everyone around them a potential
threat.
The reader went on to talk about her husband's experience in his workplace at a major
international corporation. I can't speak in any detail about that, at her request, but she
talked about how the Human Resources Department conducted a survey of all employees to find out
their viewpoints on LGBT issues and allyship -- which have nothing at all to do with the
company's business. Employees weren't compelled to respond, but if you did not respond, HR took
note. It all goes in your file. I've heard this from other readers too, about their
companies.
The reader said that her husband knows how to work around all this, and will probably be
okay, at least until retirement. It's their children that she worries about:
We talk about these issues. Every time something new a happens, I tell them to ask,
"What's next?", because something is always coming next. Even still, I believe it will take a
miracle for them to resist this relentless indoctrination. I sometimes laugh to myself (not
without sadness) when I see those commenters on your blog who still insist that there is
"nothing to see here", and things aren't as bad as you're making it out to be. I am amazed
that these people continue to say this in the midst of very fast social changes that are
affecting real people every single day in ways that would not have happened even three years
ago. We're heading for very dangerous times.
I'm going to start a new category of blog posts: "The Woke Workplace". Send me your accounts
of political correctness run amok in your office. If you want me to edit any details out for
privacy's sake, say so.
"I sometimes laugh to myself (not without sadness) when I see those commenters on your
blog who still insist that there is "nothing to see here", and things aren't as bad as you're
making it out to be. I am amazed that these people continue to say this in the midst of very
fast social changes that are affecting real people every single day in ways that would not
have happened even three years ago. "
Most of these "nothing to see here" commenters are [neo]liberals that approve of and support
these social changes. They are just trying to gaslight the rest of us into not noticing what
is right in front of our noses.
I sometimes laugh when I see those commenters on your blog who still insist that there is
"nothing to see here"
Look, many of us lived this many decades ago, so don't see anything new.
Many of us have held our tongues our entire careers. There have been taboos about many
subjects that are obviously true, but you just don't say anything. Just like an entrepreneur
keeps his political opinions to himself to not offend is customers, I can keep my mouth shut
to make a buck. I've worked totalitarian companies for decades so none of this crap even
raises my blood pressure.
In fact, I kind of enjoy watching middle-class women freak out when their ox is
finally gored. Why? They've been a large part of the political force that has led to
this situation as women entered the workforce. I'm always careful not to denigrate woman's
sports, or abortion, or gays, or incompetent female bosses. Welcome to jungle, ladies, when
you try to keep trans out of your bathrooms.
I look at the silver lining: there is so much incompetence due to this
homosexual/feminist/political crap it's actually a great opportunity for competent guys (who
live in the real world, natch) to keep the lights on for an expensive price. Good help is now
very hard to find everywhere.
The Left made a brilliant insight when it realized it could implement the dictatorship via
good old all-American institutions like Corporations, Schools, and Churches (all much
respected, at one time, by conservatives and most normal people) instead of the bad old
State. Even today, naïve conservatives think the country will get better if anti-normal
Corporations (which is about all of them now) get reduced regulations and taxes. This has got
to be one of the most brilliant political jiu-jitsus in history.
He is great worker who has earned a number of awards for his performance. Well, why on Earth
didn't he tell his manager that he would not accept the transfer and that the manager must
either rescind the order or lose him as an employee. Moreover, he should make it clear that
he does not feel "safe" in a working environment which seeks to police its employees for
their political and social opinions.
If Christians and other sane workers in America do not push back, and support one another
in doing so, when accosted by workplace stupidity and caviling groupthink they will surely be
subjected to it more and more. Stop telling America this is a battle we have lost. If there
are companies which are committed to the policies of absurdity there are still certainly
others that are not. It won't take more than a few years of such episodes of repression
making headlines for Americans to discern for what companies they will choose to work and
those they will not. Christians will find safe havens enough, and they will find politicians
enough to elect to office who will guarantee them legal protection.
This is an escalation of a trend that has been ongoing for some time. Not that it isn't a
meaningful escalation, but it's also part of a larger and longer trend towards overt
politicization of workspaces.
I am not unused to it. My policy for many years has been to offer no opinions at work on
any topic that could in any way be controversial socially, culturally or politically -- I
just don't participate in those conversations, or, if I can't manage that, I simply nod and
smile and don't really contribute to the conversation. Of course I will share my opinions
about things that aren't touching one of those areas, but inside those areas I just steer
clear and keep my opinions to myself.
The escalation here is in having to affirm things (even if it isn't technically mandatory)
in order to avoid being branded as a dissenter from social orthodoxy. That is a serious
escalation, I agree. It has not happened in my workplace yet. If it were to happen, I would
probably grit my teeth and fill the thing out the way the company would prefer, and that
would be that. Let them think they have more support than they really do.
Leaving out personally identifiable information. My current employer has the following
groups: Women & Allies, Pan-Asian & Allies, African American & Allies, Hispanic
& Allies, and finally LGBT & Allies. Does anyone notice a group who's missing? I'll
give you a hint, it's the only other possible category of race/gender/sexual orientation not
already listed. These groups are constantly pushed as THE networking opportunity within the company.
Managers and executives run the groups and make it clear that if you want to be recognized in
the organization you need to put yourself out there through one of these groups.
As a (TRIGGER WARNING) straight white man, it appears my only option is to attach myself
to one of the above groups as a groveling ally. Maybe if I did that I would be able to signal
to my peers that I am part of their "class".
However I am not part of their class; while most of my coworkers (regardless of race)
spent their childhood taking Japanese language instruction and study abroad trips to France,
I was working in restaurants and in construction so I could pay my rent while I went to a
poor kids university.
A lot of your commenters laugh at this kind of wacky corporate signaling, while others
react with fear for the future. I can only speak for myself and a few other straight white
men when I say our reaction is anger.
I work in a troubled industry (to say the least) and about a year ago there was a
company-wide conference call where the CEO was talking about our strategy going forward, how
we planned to retool and shift gears to navigate the increasing headwinds, etc.
At the end of his presentation they opened the floor to questions, and the very first
question was: "Do we have a social justice mission?" From the tone of the commenter, you could tell immediately she thought we should indeed
have a "social justice mission." The CEO fumbled through a few sentences about diversity and
opportunity, he was clearly caught off guard.
But I thought: Here this industry (media) is struggling to survive, and the very
first priority among younger employees is social justice.
If this industry's primary mission is social justice over "just the facts ma'am," then
this industry is doomed. But I definitely get the idea the younger crowd would just as soon
drive the business into the ground as work for a company that wasn't sufficiently "woke."
"I look at the silver lining: there is so much incompetence due to this
homosexual/feminist/political crap it's actually a great opportunity for competent guys (who
live in the real world, natch) to keep the lights on for an expensive price. Good help is now
very hard to find everywhere."
No, incompetence is rewarded. The woke political opinions count more than anything else in
a nation that's outsourced making things, which is no longer thought important Paper pushing
requires no particular competence at all, and the paper pushers are now ascendant.
No longer can managers tell the difference between a good job and a bad job, except the
bad job is more profitable for them.
I have to say, that if the Russians really were as malevolent as they make them out to be,
God help us.
I've worked in IT for a number of large companies in Ohio, some of whom have their
national headquarters here. They all have progressive policies in terms of hiring and all
that, but the guys who run things in practice are generally conservative white men in their
40s and 50s.
I think this is less a matter of imposed ideology by hardened ideologues than a matter of
wanting to avoid lawsuits by the actual fanatics.
It's the same reason we're forced to endure HR seminars on what is and what is not
appropriate physical contact in a work environment. A pat on the back that lasts for too long
or is placed a half inch too low will result in a lawsuit.
Why bother with the hassle? Make your policies as strict as possible so that someone
with a petty grudge has no grounds should they decide to sue.
And now for a word from Common Sense, though I can already tell from the comments above the
Panicky Horde will reject it and run around screaming "The sky is falling!". But here
goes:
Only about 5% of the population is Gay or Lesbian. a far smaller percent is Trans. I've had
"G" and "L" coworkers, but never a "T" person. I expect this be true of most people here. If
you are working at a small to mid sized employer there will be neither the personnel nor the
budget to allow for any sort of extravagance along these lines (nor for other trendy causes:
businesses exist to make money after all and in our day they are especially stingy about
lavishing funds on mere staff). You will find some of it at larger employers, but even there
the primary mission to make money for the shareholders. Can anyone dispute that? When I was
at Big Wall Street Bank, the Baltimore office, with about 1000 employees, hosted a Women's
Group, a Black Employees' Group, and yep, a GL group (again, no "T" anywhere in evidence
there). Each group held an annual fundraiser for a decidedly non-political Worthy Cause: the
women for breast cancer (they did a spaghetti luncheon for the office), the Black group for
the local animal shelter, and the GL group for a meals on wheel type of charity, with a bake
sale. The latter named of these was a "movable" event: the folks brought the goodies around
the office for purchase on carts. Most of us did buy something: sweets in the afternoon!
There was a Russian guy in our area– he bought nothing. Why not? Maybe he had no cash
on him that day, maybe he had dietary issues, maybe he disapproved of the group and never
mind the innocuous charity the money went to. Whatever: nothing came of that.
One note of caution here: I am speaking about private employment only. I am not making a
comment about circumstances in public employment, including academia as I have no experience
there.
Naked Capitalism with a review of Michael Hudson's new
book, And Forgive Them Their Debts: Lending, Foreclosure, and Redemption from Bronze Age
Finance to the Jubilee Year. It digs into the ancient history of debt and forgiveness
which is, for obvious reasons, not taught in the neo-liberal 'west':
Nowhere, Hudson shows, is it more evident that we are blinded by a deracinated, by a
decontextualized understanding of our history than in our ignorance of the career
of Jesus. Hence the title of the book: And Forgive Them Their Debts and the cover
illustration of Jesus flogging the moneylenders -- the creditors who do not forgive debts
-- in the Temple. For centuries English-speakers have recited the Lord's Prayer with the
assumption that they were merely asking for the forgiveness of their trespasses ,
their theological sins : " and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who
trespass against us ." is the translation presented in the Revised Standard Version of the
Bible. What is lost in translation is the fact that Jesus came "to preach the gospel to the
poor to preach the acceptable Year of the Lord": He came, that is, to proclaim a Jubilee
Year, a restoration of deror for debtors: He came to institute a Clean Slate
Amnesty (which is what Hebrew דְּרוֹר
connotes in this context).
---
Back in July I wrote
that there is no Jewish race or Jewish people. There are only followers of the Jewish
religion strewn all over the world. Prof. Shlomo Sand makes a similar point and also debunks
some other religious fairytales:
Our political culture insists on seeing the Jews as the direct descendants of the
ancient Hebrews. But the Jews never existed as a 'people' – still less as a
nation
---
The UAE/Saudi alliance stopped their latest attempt to conquer Hodeidah port in Yemen.
They try to sell that as a humanitarian step. But the attack was failing when their
mercenaries ran into a wall of mines and missile attacks. They took a large number of
casualties. Videos:
1 , 2 .
I am copying my comment from the last open thread about the Hudson interview to below
@ karlof1 with the Michael Hudson book review
A quote from the review of the book
"
This innate tendency to social polarization arising from debt unforgiveness is the original
and incurable curse on our post-eighth-century-B.C. Western Civilization, the lurid birthmark
that cannot be washed away or excised.
"
I will write again that the problem I have with Michael Hudson is that he does everything BUT
question why the existence of private finance still.
Debt unforgiveness is only one symptom of the systemic cancer humanity of the West faces.
That systemic cancer is private finance/God of Mammon mentality. The incentives are all
wrong. Paradise California is the latest example. God Of Mammon greed compelled PG&E to
not maintain their infrastructure properly and they kept the equipment running when they
should have shut it down. PG&E has admitted complicity and also said that they didn't
have enough insurance to cover this tragedy and would go under. Someone representing
California government oversight of power providers have stated basically that PG&E is too
big to fail and they will be backstopped by taxpayers.
So how is debt forgiveness of any sort going to fix the underlying problem? It is not and
unless you have government managing any debt forgiveness instead of private folks, you will
have some form of genocide by the rich.
Until and unless Michael Hudson calls out private finance as the systemic problem Western
society has I will consider him an economic Sheep Dog like Bernie Sanders is a political
one
Thanks to b for the coverage of Syria on the ground.
The US has lost in Ukraine (US + 'allies' - Germany in first place), and lost in Syria ( +
Israel, KSA, Turkey crossed purposes..)
Syria. When Foreign Policy publishes The Syrian War is over and America has lost in
July 2018, it is kinda official...(don't recommend the article) and/or a warning to change
tack or up the game..
The upshot of the defeats. Internal groups, manipulated grass-roots-stuff (paid) -
so-called rebels (paid) / despots, dictators, corporations, on a rapacious bent, looking for
support and pie sharing - 'mafia' types who have their own code of profit-sharing - +
others.. in X country, will be very wary or will not enter into a partnership with the US as
it is not successful.
As the losses can't be acknowledged, the US will create as much hysterical clamor and
obfuscation as possible.
Exs. the Assad must go red-line demand has been seriously degraded now muted. The
emphasis at present seems to be on a 'new constitution' for Syria, i.e. the very lowest form
of law-warfare which will not succeed. As if a bunch of foreignors can draft the thing.. De
Mistura has quit.
The problem is that money is a voucher system and as such, the social contract enabling mass
society to function, yet we assume it to be a commodity to be mined from society. Which goes
to the western view of society as emergent from autonomous individuals, rather than
individuals as expressions of the organic network.
There was a time when government was private as well. It was called monarchy and eventually
the kings had to understand they served a function to society, not just be served by it. We
are at the "Let them eat cake." moment with the financial system. The problems and conceptual
flaws go much deeper than how money functions. If we want to cure the surface social issues,
we will need to get into those issues. If you want to turn off a stove, you don't just put
your hand on it, you turn off what powers it.
To psychohistoriian (#10) Thank you for the analysis of Michael Hudson. I have studied his
work and came to the same
conclusion. He seems to walk around the core issue, which happens a disappointing number of
times. Viz. the now
17 year old "wah on Terra" Core issue: what is the real truth about nine-eleven - and how the
hell does it relate to Iraq?
Core issue: The private server emails of Hillary Clinton and her cabal break numerous laws.
No one has EVER disputed the
veracity of the emails; the pay to play; the subverting of Saunders, etc etc. Instead they
scapegoat Julian Assange.
It's shocking - and I'm amazing that I still have the capacity to be shocked.
Pax.
""As economies polarize between debtors and creditors, planning is shifting out of public
hands into those of bankers. The easiest way for them to keep this power is to block a true
central bank or strong public sector from interfering with their monopoly of credit creation.
The counter is for central banks and governments to act as they were intended to, by
providing a public option for credit creation""
Michael Hudson is actually a pretty strong proponent of public finance.
He is more in the 'positive money' camp than most MMTers but that mostly reflects his
disgust at the abuses of private credit creation.
@juliana - Please read the review of Hudson's book I linked.
The issue of periodic debt forgiveness has a much longer history in the middle eastern
society and Jesus words can only be understand within that historic context.
The view of Jesus as a Jewish revolutionary is not new at all. Reza Aslan wrote a whole
book about it: Zealot: The Life
and Times of Jesus of Nazareth as did many others. In the end the local aristocracy would
no longer condone that he was firing up the plebs with his commie talk against the money
changer and they told the imperial Roman overlords to off him ... or else.
The Christian religions defused the revolutionary aspect when they changed the target of
his teaching from real life issues towards a more spiritual perspective. The real meaning of
"forgive our debt" was turned from a real money thing into a the forgiveness of sins by some
heavily figure. (The Churches/priests also made billions from selling of indulgences due to
this transferred teaching.)
Thanks for highlighting Michael Hudson's work. Those who wish to understand Hudson
himself can find his autobiography at his web site -- http://michael-hudson.com/2018/08/life-thought-an-autobiography/
You will find that his primary mission in his economic life (though there are several) is
to untangle the mysterious processes by which the oligarchs maintain their power and by
which they continually strip the working class of everything they own.
I have been reading his articles for years, and once had the honor of being asked to
edit a chapter in one of his recent books, which I did.
If from time to time you have the choice of doing anything else in the world or reading
some of Hudson's works, choose Hudson every time. You will be very glad that you did.
//
A few years ago, while I was searching the interwebs for some appropriate children's
videos for the small daughter of some friends of mine, I came across the "Masha and the
Bear" videos.
I have to confess that I was utterly entranced, and ended up watching all that were
available at the time. Utterly charming! The contention that they are Putin propaganda is
possibly the single most absurd assertion that I have ever encountered.
//
Thanks for all this, and all the other work that you do in bringing us probably the
single most enlightening site on the web -- at least as far as international relations and
the outrages of the ruling classes are concerned.
There is a renegade school of thought according to which Jesus did not exist. There are
multiple variations. A common idea is that there were one or more Hellenistic cults in the
region of Judea around or even before the 1st century CE that believed that Christ, son of
God the Father, in something like a cosmic practical joke was sent down in disguise from
the 7th Heaven by God the Father into the lower realms because the demons/angels/lesser
gods running things there/here were screwing up and needed to be put in their place. This
Christ got crucified in disguise, probably in a lesser heaven rather than on Earth, and
then ascended triumphant in full glory. Later the various Christian stories -- were written
and rewritten by various factions, getting their final form to include a Jesus on Earth in
the 2nd to 4th century CE. Some Christian works are presented by this school of thought as
novel-like allegories or even at times parodies. This sort of thinking was presented at
least as early as about 1930 (Couchoud). Mainstream divinity school scholars, even the
atheists, hate it. Prominent proponents include RG Price and Richard Carrier, whose works I
haven't read. I do not know it well. I read about it for entertainment on vridar.org which
may or may not be the best place to go to to read about it.
A related concept is that Judaism may be best seen as a Hellenistic cult as well; that
it may be far more recent than commonly thought (not much older than Christianity); and
that it may not have become distinct from Christianity until several centuries CE. Again, I
just skim this stuff for entertainment and don't know so don't rely on me. (A current post
at vridar.org I haven't read I think is one of many that notes similarities of Old
Testament contents to Plato.)
Different denominations use "debts" vs "trespasses" in the US for the Lord's Prayer. I
believe translators have put a lot of work into which word to use dating back to circa
1600. I do not know whether there was a difference in the original Greek texts. I once read
about it but am not going to look it up now.
Australia totally blew its respect and relationship with south pacific nations under John
Howard. He coerced, blackmailed and then bluntly stole the oil reserves from East Timor in
the years following their liberation. EVERYBODY was watching this hideous theft of natural
resources from the smallest, poorest, and suffering nation on earth. Just like the yankee
carpetbaggers.
Nowadays Australia continues to totally screw up its relations with most Pacific Island
neighboring states. It can't even get the independence referendum underway as Papua New
Guinea just ignores it. China would no doubt be absolutely focussed on that
opportunity.
hey, we have people chopping off dissidents heads in ksa.. i have no problem imaging some
barbaric people from a few thousand years ago nailing someone to a cross... not saying i
know anything for sure, but reality as practiced in ksa is more strange then anything i
would like to have to witness directly... speaking of which - trump doesn't want to listen
to the suffering tape, yet he wants to continue his support for this headchopper cult..
interesting dude trump... or, strange what money will do to a persons brain..
Zionists wanted Trump to win the election ... betraying millions of voters on the Left
to forward the Zionist agenda
Thanks for the link. The Schumer info is important. But the contextualization of
Schumer's craven, complicit behavior is all wrong. To bemoan Schumer, Obama, or Hillary's
betrayal of the left is to accept the ruse that they actually represent the
left.
It should be clear by now that the Democratic Party's primary mission is to protect the
establishment. They drip-feed just enough small changes - like bathroom rights - to keep
their claim to be "left" alive. Just look at tax cuts: Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump have
all cut taxes.
Likewise, to say that "Zionists" wanted to elect Trump is confusing and
counterproductive as most people (wrongly) see Zionism as being only about Israel and
associate "Zionism" with Jews (only). It should be clear by now that most of the American
establishment (aka the 'people that matter') is 'Zionist' and that these 'Zionists'
are not only pro-Israel but pro-MIC and pro-oligarchy too.
It was the US establishment that wanted Trump despite pretending to hate him. MAGA is
not a Trump invention but a POLICY RESPONSE to the challenge from Russia and China. Trump
was selected as the best person to lead that response.
I've been saying for some time now that the 2016 Presidential election was a complete
set-up. Most people reject that 'conspiracy theory' out of hand until they are reminded
that Hillary: ran against two old friends (Sanders and Trump); she snubbed the progressives
by bringing DWS into her campaign and selecting Tim Kaine as her running mate while also
including moderate whites with her "deplorables" comment, -AND- she didn't campaign in the
three crucial states that would decide the election. Meanwhile, new-comer Trump did
everything right: the only Republican to run as a populist, the only republican to champion
veterans, etc.
Up around #34 in discussing the "mythicist" school of thought about Jesus (ie, did not
exist--Christianity based on myth even deliberate fiction-writing later reworked back and
forth by various factions into its current form) I neglected the name of a 3d major author
whose works I have not read interested people might go to: Earl Doherty. I do not know this
stuff other than as a curious passerby, but it does seem erudite and well-argued to my
naive mind.
That Jesus was a rebel in conflict with authority is obvious to any child who can read.
Flipping the tables of merchants in church is pretty hard to misinterpret right?! It
blows my mind they weren't more creative with some of the rewrites, the 'bad guys' of the
story are priests...
Correct. But just for those who still don't get it, you should add that even though
Trump campaigned as a populist; he's really a faux populist who in fact cares squat about
Veterans; he prefers not to get his hair wet than honor them. What he likes to do is
pretend that because he invested close to a billion U.S. funds in the MIC, that constitutes
honoring Veterans when we all know what is driving that investment, bases, proxy civil wars
and invasions on behalf of regime change, especially in Iran, for now, and the Empire's
expansion.
Jesus was the Jewish Martin Luther. That goes to the underlaying dynamic of renewal. Which
was the original source of the Trinity, the Greek Year Gods. Father, Son, Holy Ghost =
Past, Present, Future.
Read Gilbert Murray's; The Five Stages of Greek Religion: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30250/30250-h/30250-h.htm
James,
We live in interesting times. The powers that be are throwing everything on the fire to
keep the status quo going. So when it does totally blow up, the system will be that much
more vulnerable. Then the question will be, what changes are possible?
The most profound would be understanding time is not a real dimension, from past to future,
but change turning future to past. More like temperature, pressure, color, etc, than space.
This dissolves the idea of history as singular and that everyone has to conform to the
dominant narrative.
The Eastern view of time is the past is in front of the observer and the future behind, as
what is in front and past are known and the future and what is behind are unknown. Which
conforms to the Eastern philosophy of the individual as part of its context, given we do
see events after they occur. The Western view is of the future in front and past behind,
because we see ourselves as autonomously moving through our context. Both are effectively
true, as we are moving in and part of our context.
Which then gets to the idea of God, as "all-knowing absolute," in the words of Pope John
Paul 2. A spiritual absolute(source of consciousness), would be an essence of sentience,
from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom, from which we fell. Analogous to the raw
awareness of the new born, rather than the wisdom of the old man. The religious deity is a
political construct; The father figure ruler. Yet in the wrong hands, it becomes treating
one's cultural assumptions as absolute and that results in extremism. Which the various
monotheisms seem quite adept at.
If those two dominos could be tipped over, than resetting money as a social contract,
rather than a commodity, would be almost be easy. We would own money like we own the
section of road we are driving on. Neither entirely public or private, as our notion of
public and private has been networked into a larger dynamic. Two sides of a larger coin.
Node and network.
So that is how I see the coming explosion; Both destruction of the old, but opening up the
possible.
The Outlaw US Empire's inability to coerce other nations to adopt its lie-filled draft
declaration for the APEC-CEO Conference caused it to accuse China of being the stuck-up
nation; so, unlike the ASEAN and Asia-Summit Conferences which didn't include the Outlaw
Empire and had no difficulty reaching consensus on their Declarations, no APEC Declaration
was agreed upon for publication. We do have an idea of what was discussed thanks to
Medvedev's attendance. Here's
his speech with his primary pitch excerpted so readers will understand what the Outlaw
US Empire opposes:
"First of all, the global economy needs clear and transparent rules of trade. Therefore,
a key goal is to combine efforts to improve the effectiveness of the World Trade
Organisation and its regulatory role.
"Like many countries, we recognise that the organisation needs to be modernised, but
without weakening its influence or undermining the fundamental principles of its work, let
alone its dismantling, which would mean a collapse of civilised trade.
"The institutional foundations of international trade formed by the WTO also need to be
preserved to condition further deepening of regional economic integration. Russia strongly
believes that transparent WTO rules incorporating the specifics of each Asia-Pacific, each
APEC economy, are essential for creating an Asia-Pacific free trade zone, making it a truly
open market, rather than a narrow-format system of collective protectionism.
"I would suggest the Eurasian Economic Union as an example of such an integration
platform, an alliance which Russia and its partners are developing in strict accordance
with the WTO principles. It is one of the largest regional associations in terms of market
capacity and a single market with uniform rules for doing business.
"We are cooperating with other integration projects and are now working on aligning it
with the well-known Chinese Belt and Road initiative. We are working in close contact as
part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. We also have strong ties with ASEAN.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin has launched an initiative to create the Greater
Eurasian Partnership, based on openness and mutual trust between states, and uniform rules
of the game.
"Asia-Pacific countries joining this format would help harmonise the multi-level
integration architecture that is being formed on the continent. We invite our colleagues
and stakeholders to collectively develop the landscape for such work.
"We believe that a similar principle could underlie the Asia-Pacific free trade zone
concept. This would promote truly comprehensive and indivisible economic growth in Eurasia
and the Asia-Pacific region."
Much more follows, and it's easy to see why the Empire's on the defensive as it's now
exposed as the Reactionary Power it's always been while hiding its true nature behind
self-laudatory rhetoric and propaganda.
About the only thing to admire about Trump is his ability to stand naked before the
world without a hint of embarrassment. The future lies in Eurasia and Asia-Pacific as does
the rediscovery of the past and its actual history, not the contrived, distorted narrative
fed to most everyone over the past 2K+ years to service the power of the money-lenders--The
Living-Breathing Satans.
Masha the Bear -- Putin propaganda, LOL. The lunatics propagating this pathetic drivel have
probably raised their children, and were probably raised themselves on pure, innocent and
surely non-propagandistic cartoons from Walt Disney!
From the wiki article on Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart's How to Read Donald
Duck :
According to [Sophia A.] McClennen, the Disney comics are insidious, masquerading
themselves as innocent and light-hearted entertainment. How to Read Donald Duck
set out to reveal the ideological message of the comics, their support of capitalism and
imperialism.[9] The writers questioned why there are no parents in Disney comics, only
uncles and cousins. This means the concept of the family is destroyed within their
context. There is no potential dialectic between a father and his son, a mother and her
daughter.[9] The children of the stories never grow up to become parents in their own
right. Consequently, social authority is depicted as ever-lasting and never
challenged.[9] There is both a lack of parents and absence of any hint of sexual
reproduction within the stories. This is connected to another element missing from them,
the depiction of material production. All characters apparently work in the service
sector of the economy. There is no real workforce.[9] Characters who gain wealth, have
only managed to do so through treasure hunting and looting.[9] The only depictions of an
exchange of commodities, involve crafty imperialists who take advantage of ignorant
savages. When Donald and his family travel to foreign lands, they fool the locals into
trading precious resources for useless items.[9] There is a depiction of both wealthy and
poor nations. But the poverty of the latter is attributed to the ignorance of the
barbarians who inhabit them.[9] There is no labor, and no real leisure either. Donald
Duck is frequently depicted as bored with his life and dreaming of his next adventure.
His adventures invariably depict him using deception against other characters. Donald's
antics are depicted as innocent fun.[9]
sir charles drake talked here about schlomo sand and the inventions
talked of douglas reeds problem with zion
talked of the book the 13th tribe by ashkanazi author talked of eutace mullins.
it is nice too know that even after all the deletions and forum memory holing
history will absolve this great man.
he may be a bot program but he is a lover of the children of jesus the semites of gaza and
west bank.
charles believes ask a nazi should go home and rebuild khazaria in mongolia deserta
I wonder how much meat there be on them thar bones. I am inclined to assume F all.
Both the UK and Germany have the nasty habit of infiltrating organisations that show
any modicum of abillity to put words into action that may affect the supremacy
of the state. Same goes for the other NATO members.
So these efforts are either permitted to proceed until they are not,
or cancelled continuation of new/renewed Gladio cells.
Strategy Of Tension part infinity.
James @ 17: One way in which finance becomes public is for the banking system (or whatever
replaces it) to become public. Instead of privately owned banks lending to individuals,
families or small businesses, community-owned banks or banks controlled by local councils,
trade unions, student unions or grassroots organisations would lend money. These banks
would draw their funds from savings and day-to-day business accounts operated by the same
groups of people they lend to. They could also be funded by national governments.
You ask if all land is public, then who controls it? Answer must be that some kind of
government (national, regional, local) must control it on behalf of the people who support
that government. One presumes young couples (newly married perhaps or with documents to
support their having been together for a defined period) get first preference in applying
for (let's say) a 50-year lease on a dwelling which can be renewed once, maybe twice. If
the couple divorces or one of them dies, the lease would return to the government. Perhaps
the divorcee or the widowed survivor must show evidence that the lease should be
renewed.
Similarly all businesses must lease land from the government and be able to renew the
lease once, maybe twice.
Major infrastructure projects would only take place if governments controlling the land
where these projects take place agree to cooperate or transfer / sell the land to the
national government. The national government "pays" for the land by offering jobs in the
project to the people living or working in the areas of the projects.
Problem with Hudsons book is it cost 30 bucks (not including international shipping) for
336 pages of paperback and is already out of stock and NOT available on kindle. Not going
to be widely read I don't think unless something changes.
Anyways, Christianity was a split in Judaism designed by elites and executed by their
agents. Christians were then allowed to be fair game for the money lenders who could charge
interest and not forgive them their debts (unlike with fellow Jews). Christians forbid
charging usury to all. However, they also did not forgive debts to appease the ruling class
that allowed them to exist. An uneasy truce in the early years before Christianity was
formally adopted by Rome. This required a rewrite of the bible, which was easy to do before
the printing press as few copies were in circulation and most of the flock illiterate.
After Rome fell the non church elite (nobles and such) used Jews to collect taxes and when
in need of a loan borrowed money at interest from them. To pay the interest they had to
raise taxes. Another reason for their unpopularity.
The church (thanks to a rogue Pope) eventually succumbed to borrowing at interest, although
somewhat constrained, but the indulgences sold to pay the interest led to the Reformation
which was backed by the money lenders. This split the church and opened the flood gates for
heavenly usury and debt, and spilled much blood in wars that required debt to be fought .
This also enriched the money lenders ( Christians and Jews) who loaned to both sides of the
wars, and led them to eventually seize control of money creation, and thus control over
government.
Free of the church leaders who enforced "Gods" law , which could not be amended by men
outside the church (Reformation gave states control of the religion and allowed
reinterpretation), man was liberated and free to create his own laws. That made it possible
to legally break Gods laws (as Hitler and Stalin both said, everything they did was legal
under their laws) . Thus slavery, war, drugs, usury and debt were free to expand (we know
it as Free Trade).
Re: The Christian religions defused the revolutionary aspect when they changed the
target of his teaching from real life issues towards a more spiritual perspective.
_____________________________________________
I know someone in the religious life, a theologian who generally shares my high regard
for Hudson, and also shares my penchant for "alternative" news and analysis. I am well
aware that, despite his leftist politics, my friend is actually a conservative,
traditional-minded Roman Catholic.
Anyway, my friend was horrified some months ago, when we discussed a short video we'd
both seen of Hudson outlining the topic of this book. My friend was more sorrowful than
angry, but emphatically deplored Hudson's perspective as a tragic case of a worthy scholar
making a fool of himself by-- well, pontificating-- outside of his area of expertise.
My friend knows that I am always attracted to contrarian research and iconoclastic
theories that challenge settled narratives. When I protested that Hudson's interpretation
of the Lord's Prayer had the ring of truth, he strenuously demurred.
He could understand why a "non-believer", especially a cynic like me, would be intrigued
by the idea that the Fathers of the institutional church "tweaked" Jesus's words and
meanings to suit their theological purposes. But he insisted that of course Jesus
was speaking metaphorically about spiritual matters, and wasn't trying to be a secular
economics "revolutionary".
I'm not sure how generally well-known Hudson is, but I wonder if he'll be subjected to
vicious criticism and even harassment for daring to even suggest that Jesus might've
been, at least in part, preaching a gospel of economic or financial salvation. I
presume that devout Christian critics-- especially clergy and theologians-- will, you
should pardon the expression, crucify him.
karlof1,
Yet would that integration of the Eurasian continent have happened, without the threat and
pressure of the Empire?
The Empire has peaked and the integration of the Old World will continue, for survival, so
the question will be the future of the Americas. That is the real blank slate.
Jen,
Government is the central nervous system of the community. It is the Chief and the council
of elders, mutated to the king and lords, to presidents and legislatures. Finance, on the
other hand, is the circulation system of the economy. Banks and money are the arteries and
blood. Yet we have become parasites and mine value out of this medium, with those most
obsessive in the practice able to create feedback loops and take more and more. It would be
as if the head and heart told the hands and feet they don't need so much blood and should
work harder for what they do get.
Necessarily though, the nervous system and the circulation system are distinct and serve
different functions, even though they both serve the entire body. Politicians succeed by
how much hope they give the community and we experience money as quantified hope, so there
is a natural tendency to inflate the money supply, when other promises cannot be fulfilled.
The dawn of modern capitalism was when the Rothschild's took over control of the royal
treasury, from Charles 1 and created the Bank of England. For better or worse, it worked
magnificently. Now bankers are just running their own ponzi scheme and have no vision
beyond it.
The two poles of social control are hope and fear. Money is quantified hope and when the
system fails, the pendulum will swing to fear and the police and military will be in
control. Likely quite a few bankers will be used as pinatas, to appease the masses. How do
we really get beyond that, is the real question.
And, how many people who read the Lord's Prayer understand the historical meaning of
trespass?
I sure didn't! And nobody has ever made a point of drawing my attention to the issue.
Just made a search for the "official" Lord's Prayer at the Vatican site and found this:
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on
earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our
trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
To me it's an odd coincidence Michael Hudson is talking about the "Prayer" at the same
time the current Pope is speaking of plans to modify one of the lines. NOT the one about
"trespass", but rather the one speaking of "temptation".
If I was a betting man, I'd wager the Vatical won't be messing with the "tresspass"
language. Vague and misleading for ages, and just the way that one ought stay.
John Merryman @ 54: Thanks for your biological analogy. May I suggest though that the
analogy may not be entirely apt and one problem with it is that it would too easy for
people to think of society entirely in biological terms such as you describe, with the
result that to think of society as something other than in biological metaphors becomes a
barrier to thinking of creative solutions in dealing with particular problems?
Your metaphor seems to take for granted that government is centralised and the finance
industry is also centralised (whether in parallel centralised networks or joined
together).
I would suggest that we need to have decentralised systems of finance, each centred on
particular communities perhaps, with their own currencies and institutions, all linked in a
network. Rather like the Internet, I suppose. Yes, redundancy will be built into the
network but is that necessarily a bad thing?
Likewise we would have decentralised politics and governments, with the flatter
hierarchies and greater public participation in political decision-making that such
decentralisation might suggest.
The banking system in England was never magnificent for industrialists and mid/small
businesses which were starved of cash and generally looked down upon by bankers who got
much better returns from overseas investment. Part of the success of Germany and Japan post
WWII was due to a recognition of the importance of engineers to economic success and the
ease with which companies could obtain loans from commercial, not investment banks. A ten
or twenty year loan by a local commercial bank ties the firm's fortunes into the bank's own
interests. Capital in these countries thus thinks or thought more in the mid-to-long
term.
The key for me is the joint stock or public company which is totally at the mercy of
investment bankers. Private firms not listed on the stock market like IKEA or Mars or even
Trump's own business are not under the slightest obligation to the stock market. According
to Time magazine 84% of the stocks in the US are owned by the top 10% of the population, so
the stock exchange exists to make rich people richer and subject public (which are most of
the largest) companies to continual blackmail to produce outsize profits at the expense of
the workforce or else executives can find themselves having to land, albeit with their
golden parachutes, on the street.
Hilariously, the repeated attempts to bludgeon their readers into accepting the
government line is couched as a reprimand to some UK fact-seekers (who were actually
prepared to travel to find facts) for being stooges for Syrian propaganda!
i see some other responses to john and jens posts have happened since i wrote this!
@46 john merryman.. thanks for articulating a fascinating view on time and history in an
innovative way that i hadn't seen before! you're right that we can't see the future, so in
a sense it is behind us out of view... the past is staring us in the face, but could be
interpreted countless ways, and could have spun a number of different ways too, depending
on many factors, some of which we can know of, and others that we can't.. regardless - we
will have to wait and see, as i am prone to saying.. i really enjoy the way you articulate
your ideas..
@ 51 jen.. thanks for your response! i see i made a small typo in my post - 'but'
instead of 'not'... i think it is possible - public finance, and i know examples abound as
you show.. who would control the release of it is where i get anxious.. perhaps it is my
own paranoia... it seems if one knows someone on the inside, they have a better chance..
our dream of an egalitarian system where fairness rules, is subject to human nature with
all it's foibles.. granted, public finance, as opposed to private is worth going for, as
the system we have at present is clearly broken for 99% of the world today..
here where i live in b.c. - what land the gov't didn't hand over to corporations, they
let them use in such a way that doesn't spread the wealth to the locals... and the locals
aren't given the same opportunities to use the land either.. so, public land use is in the
hands of the gov't... i suppose in theory, the idea is good, but as it presently stands -
the corporations have the favour of gov'ts.. perhaps this also goes into the private,
verses public finance issue.. if the gov't wasn't beholden to private finance - it might
change all this..
finally - caitlin johnstones
latest on assange and usa "resistance"..
@43 john.. regarding your comments to jen- again, i am drawn to your perspective and agree
with the importance of the question you end with.. i personally don't know..
@57 jen.. i agree that decentralization is necessary.. anything that is big, is usually
out of touch with local needs - federal, verses local is how this works..
it would appear we have to wait for everything to collapse.. have we evolved beyond the
darwinian concept of the survival of the strongest to where we are interested in sharing
with others in some type of egalitarian way? would be nice... presently the financial world
is stacked in the usa's favour, but this appears to be changing... it seems conflicts with
power - who has it and who wants more of it - are a fertile ground for war.. that seems to
be where we are at present with the usa threatening china and russia more regularly
today... how much of that is power wanting to retain it's position? it seems like a lot to
me.. public finance would be very different and is worth pursuing, but it will have to be
pursued by gov'ts and leaders that are not beholden to corporations.. we have a ways to
go..
There are lots of comments to respond to so let me just expand on my public finance
concept.
I am advocating for totally public finance and no private banking.
I am also advocating, as others have commented, for a limit on the "ownership" of private
property. I like the 50 year lease proposed earlier and have read that China has 99 year
leases.
I also would advocate for limits on inheritance to inhibit future concentration of
"wealth".
And, yes, I am advocating for government to manage debt reconciliation and not the God
of Mammon owners.
It is time for humanity to grow up beyond the feudal insanity that has lived way beyond
its cultural imperative. The myth we are living is that these global historical elite are
moving the levers of power behind the curtain of Capitalism to provide most with war and
slavery. I am saying very clearly that I prefer the socialism with a Chinese face approach
over the Western private finance motivated one.
China has created and executed 13 5-year plans. Somewhere within the bowels of that huge
government is a group of people charged with managing China's finances. Given what I have
seen of the way China is handling corruption I can only expect that the folks making macro
economic/finance decisions put the pluralist goals of the country ahead of any oligarch
bribes or pressure. In the Western world, global finance is a profit center for the elite
and the rest of us be dammed.
Back to more components of a new social contract
New evolving definition of responsibility to and benefits from government (mandatory
voting and regular participation in government operation/management, free
education/balanced with social payback, ongoing evolution of mix of sharing/competition in
provision of goods and services as well as regulation to insure safety and advertised
value).
And it was deliberately destroyed by Hillary Clinton. In fact, she wanted so desperately
to make sure that she got full credit for the complete destruction of Libya (she thought it
would help her win her presidential campaign) and the slaughter of 40,000 Libyans, that she
kept riding her staff for assurances and evidences that could be put in front of the world
that, yes indeed, it had been all her doing.
If we are pointing out the mendacity of englander fishwraps, the Grauniad which has once
again albeit in a new way covered itself in the slimy patina of hypocrisy by enjoining it's
shrinking readership to 'get behind' May's abortion of a brexit strategy wins the prize of
scummiest journalism of the decade.
A bit like the obese and useless cat my neighbor claims to 'own' now he has vivisected
it to his taste, May's brexit is neither Arthur nor Martha.
May's plan gets england outta the EU but leaves it shackled to that organisation forced to
obey the rules but without the right to advocate or take part in changes as only members of
the EU can do that.
If May doesn't get her mess through parliament she will lose her gig and a
general election will inevitably follow, one which despite what the dodgy polls claim the
Tories will inevitably lose, meaning Mr Corbyn will be PM. That is a fate worse than death
for zionists, mega capitalists and the theiving banks, consequently the graun's editors are
in panic mode as they
praise their former nemesis and repeat her lies about "Getting back control of our
borders". Playing the race card straight off the top of the deck.
""As economies polarize between debtors and creditors, planning is shifting out of public
hands into those of bankers. The easiest way for them to keep this power is to block a true
central bank or strong public sector from interfering with their monopoly of credit creation.
The counter is for central banks and governments to act as they were intended to, by
providing a public option for credit creation""
Michael Hudson is actually a pretty strong proponent of public finance.
He is more in the 'positive money' camp than most MMTers but that mostly reflects his
disgust at the abuses of private credit creation.
Ah, yes. Goldman Sachs is
famous for their "good work and integrity".
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has said about $4.5 billion was misappropriated from 1MDB,
including some money that Goldman Sachs helped raise, by high-level officials of the fund and
their associates from 2009 through 2014.
US prosecutors filed criminal charges against 2 former Goldman Sachs bankers earlier this
month. One of them, Tim Leissner, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder money and
conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
I'm sure it was just a "few bad apples", like Goldman Sachs's Ex-CEO
Lloyd Blankfein , who was personally involved in the transaction.
You might remember Lloyd from his doing "God's
Work" .
According to Save the Children, upwards of 50,000 children died from hunger
and disease in 2017 alone, while the UN estimates that at least 16,000 civilians have been
killed or maimed by the Saudi air attacks.
So we called a spade a spade on the matter, only to have our Fox host retort as follows:
" ..not making a judgment on the moral right or wrong of the matter but if we crack down
hard with sanctions and such, are you telling us you don't think there is a financial market
impact?"
Of course that wasn't what we were saying. But what we were thinking was: Really?
Apparently this Foxified stock market cult-boy assumes even America's foreign policy should
be driven by the divine right of the casino to be pleasured by rising stock prices each and
every day.
Then again, it looks like Fox's greatest Fan-boy is slouching in the same direction and for
the same reason. That is, to keep what he has now embraced as the Trump Bubble levitated come
hell or high water.
As the Middle East Eye noted this morning, it would appear that Jared Kushner and/or
the Donald have seized upon a solution. Namely, that the hotheaded 33-year old MBS, who has
created the greatest murder spectacle since O.J. Simpson's wild ride in the Bronco, could
benefit from the steadying hand of, well, his 28-year old brother, Khalid bin Salman!
"In DC the talk is about Khalid becoming a deputy crown prince to show the world
that MBS is basically opening up his autocratic and self-centered leadership to include others
and create more accountability.
We don't know whether this prospective Salman Brothers duo can make the Istanbul Bonesaw
Massacre go away or not, or keep the stock market rising on its appointed ascent. But we can at
least hope the MBS contretemps will stir a modicum of thought in the Imperial City about the
larger issue involved.
Namely, that the biggest state sponsor of terror in the Middle East is Saudi Barbaria, not
the Iranians. And that the house of Saud's corrupt bargain with its own medieval Wahhabi
clerics is the true source of jihadi terrorism in the region, not the Shiite/Alawite
communities of Iran, Syria and Lebanon.
The truth of the matter is that it was the Iran-led Shiite coalition – with the help
of the Russian Air Force – which essentially extinguished the barbaric Islamic State in
Syria and Iraq.
So not only has Washington long been on the wrong side of the Shiite/Sunni divide, but owing
to the Donald and Jared's bromance with MBS, the Trump administration has taken the US right
off the deep-end with its vicious attack on the Iran nuke deal and the ruling regime in
Tehran.
And that's the real evil being perpetrated by MBS. His infantile yet bloodthirsty vendetta
against Iran is the driving force behind much that roils the middle east at present.
Thus, MBS' political and economic attack on Qatar was motivated not only by the Muslim
Brotherhood friendly policies of its ruler, but more especially by Qatar's friendly relations
and diplomatic recognition of Iran, with which it shares the largest natural gas field in the
world.
Likewise, he recently kidnapped, roughly interrogated and humiliated Prime Minister Hariri
of Lebanon for being too soft on Hezbollah. Never mind that the latter controls the largest
bloc in Lebanon's parliament and is a participant in the nation's constitutionally prescribe
three-way split of power – wherein the Shiite elect the Speaker of the Parliament, the
Sunnis name the Prime Minister and the Chrisitians select the country's President.
But none of this mattered because MBS is determined to confront Tehran and its allies from
one end of the Mideast to the other. And that's the real reason for his genocidal attack on
Yemen.
The latter is among the poorest, most industrially backward redoubts in the entire world and
doesn't remotely have the capacity to threaten Riyadh. Its GDP of just $18
billion or a paltry $650 per capita is less than 3% of Saudi's stupendous
oil-fueled GDP, which funds the fourth largest military budget in the world.
And now Yemen's polity has been completely shattered, too, by civil war and the relentless
Saudi bombing campaigns.
The west and north are controlled by the Houthi government, which sized power during 2015 in
the country's capital city of Sana'a. So doing, they inherited a large cache of American
weapons left behind by the fleeing official government.
At the same time, the south and east are fragmented between former President's Hadi's Saudi
puppet government and regions controlled by al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and various tribal
potentates and small time warlords – some or all of whom are warring with each other as
well as with the Houthi.
In a sane world it would be instantly obvious that America has no dog in this fratricidal
bloodletting in one of the true armpits of the planet. But the Houthis, who have long dominated
their region of the country, practice a form of Shiite Islam. In turn, that makes them a
confessional ally of Iran and therefore a convenient target for MBS' proxy war on Tehran.
That's the sum and substance of the Yemen catastrophe: It's a genocide launched three years
ago by the then 30-year old Defense Minister of Saudi Arabia and son of its dementia-enfeebled
king for no other purpose than to kick the Iranians in the shins.
But one thing has led to another – including the aforementioned bromance of the Donald
and his son-in-law with a reckless power-hungry young tyrant who has gotten the White House to
fall hook, line and sinker for his anti-Iranian agenda. And that didn't take much doing –
since Bibi Netanyahu had already polluted their thin grasp of the region with his own
demonization of Tehran.
The irony is palpable. The boys and girls on Wall Street may get by accident that which they
desperately do not want: Namely, a material oil outage in the Persian Gulf and a temporary
surge in oil prices back to $150 per barrel.
That eventuality would make no matter in the longer run because world supply and demand
would adjust, and high-cost deep water oil and shale production would get an added incentive,
as would conservation and all the various flavors of alternative energy.
But a Persian Gulf oil interruption would instantly shatter an egregious stock market bubble
that is being held aloft on fumes and awaits only for a windshield on which to splatter.
At the end of the day, however, that may well be the silver lining.
The Donald's demented sanctions campaign to reduce Iran's oil exports to zero after November
had already threatened to upset the applecart in the global oil market; and, apparently, it had
also given the reckless Crown Prince the impression that he could operate with impunity, and
that no act of thuggery was to brazen to be eschewed.
But now the Khashoggi imbroglio threatens to get totally out of hand. Mohammed bin Salman's
recklessness in Istanbul may yet send the house of Saud into an existential crisis –
especially if the Donald's stubby little hands are forced to severely punish the Saudi's owing
to the overwhelming sentiment of the world community.
That is to say, along with the collapse of the stock market we could also see the collapse
of the monarchy, and the seizure or sabotage of its Persian Gulf oil fields. After all, they
happen to lie in the eastern region of the country which is heavily populated by Shiites, who
have been brutally prosecuted by MBS.
Needless to say, you will be worse for the wear if you hang around the casino in the face of
this potential double collapse.
But the world will be far better off on both counts.
Ah, yes. Goldman Sachs is
famous for their "good work and integrity".
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has said about $4.5 billion was misappropriated from 1MDB,
including some money that Goldman Sachs helped raise, by high-level officials of the fund and
their associates from 2009 through 2014.
US prosecutors filed criminal charges against 2 former Goldman Sachs bankers earlier this
month. One of them, Tim Leissner, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder money and
conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
I'm sure it was just a "few bad apples", like Goldman Sachs's Ex-CEO
Lloyd Blankfein , who was personally involved in the transaction.
You might remember Lloyd from his doing "God's
Work" .
A federal judge has ordered Hillary Clinton to respond to further questions, under oath,
about her private email server.
Following a lengthy Wednesday court hearing, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan (who is also presiding
over fmr. National Security adviser Michael Flynn's case), ruled that Clinton has 30 days to
answer two additional questions about her controversial email system in response to a lawsuit
from Judicial Watch .
Hillary must answer the following questions by December 17 (via
Judicial Watch )
Describe the creation of the clintonemail.com system, including who decided to create the
system , the date it was decided to create the system, why it was created, who set it up, and
when it became operational .
During your October 22, 2015 appearance before the U.S. House of Representatives Select
Committee on Benghazi, you testified that 90 to 95 percent of your emails "were in the
State's system" and "if they wanted to see them, they would certainly have been able to do
so." Identify the basis for this statement, including all facts on which you relied in
support of the statement, how and when you became aware of these facts, and, if you were made
aware of these facts by or through another person, identify the person who made you aware of
these facts.
Sillivan rejected Clinton's assertion of attorney-client privilege on the question over
emails "in the State's system," however he did give Clinton a few victories:
The court refused Judicial
Watch's and media's requests to unseal the deposition videos of Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills
and other Clinton State Department officials . And it upheld Clinton's objections to
answering a question about why she refused to stop using her Blackberry despite warnings from
State Department security personnel . Justice Department lawyers for the State Department
defended Clinton's refusal to answer certain questions and argued for the continued secrecy
of the deposition videos. -
Judicial Watch
Wednesday's decision is the latest twist in a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA)
lawsuit targeting former Clinton deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin. The case seeks records
which authorized Abedin to conduct outside employment while also employed by the Department of
State.
"A federal court ordered Hillary Clinton to answer more questions about her illicit email
system – which is good news," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "It is shameful
that Judicial Watch attorneys must continue to battle the State and Justice Departments, which
still defend Hillary Clinton, for basic answers to our questions about Clinton's email
misconduct."
Allow me to predict Hillary's answers: I really can't recall. Somebody else was in charge
of creating it. I don't recall who that was but I was left out of the loop when it was
created. I don't know anything about computers. Somebody who had knowledge did that. I don't
know who authorized it, I assume it went through standard channels.
As a reminder, all the data to date suggests that Hillary broke the following 11 US CODES.
I provided the links for your convenience. HRC needs to immediacy be Arrested &
Indicted.
CEO aka "President" TRUMP was indeed correct when he said: "FBI Director Comey was the
best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad
deeds!"
18 U.S. Code § 1905 - Disclosure of confidential information generally
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to
their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty
of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined
under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office
under the United States.
The Preponderance of Evidence suggests that she broke these Laws, Knowingly, Willfully and
Repeatedly. This pattern indicates a habitual/career Criminal, who belongs in Federal
Prison.
If Pure Evil War Criminal Treasonous Seditious Psychopath Hillary Clinton would have been
elected. Many if not all of the High Crimes, Crimes & sexual perversion's we see coming
to Light never would have been known off.
The Tyrannical Lawlessness we see before our eyes never would have seen the light of
day.
This critique is pretty superficial. The truth is that Ukraine drifted to Baltic model (not without help from Western Europe
and the USA) for a long time. And the process started in 2001 not in 2014. That means that February 2014 coup d'état by far right
nationalist forces was just quantity turned into quality. With the dissolution of the USSR, it is clear that the result of WWII
and Yalta conference will be revised.
While it is true that it was the greatest geopolitical victory of Barack Obama and the USA against Russia, it made
the world more dangerous. The fact that it saws the teeth of dragon escaped those great US neocon strategists, like
Victoria Nuland. She looks pretty medictre person to me, judging from her public appearances. Far below the level of
position she occupied. Out of depth. Kind of early variation of Nikki Haley theme.
The USA established itself as a world power at the end of WWI, and the No.1 nation after WWII. So apparance of the USA on
world scene happened a century ago and the period of the USA primacy started around 1945 or 72 year ago. But after
dissolution of the USSR the US elite lost the countervailing power that kept it in check (and Sober) and now neocons which came to
power after the crash fo the USSR are destroying the USA pretty fast. They are real national cancer. So sad...
Neocons policy of fighting and challenging the rest of the world essentially guarantee that its dominant position will not last
more one century.
In
March 23rd, Gallup headlined
"South Sudan, Haiti and Ukraine Lead World in Suffering" , and the Ukrainian part of that
can unquestionably be laid at the feet of U.S. President Barack Obama, who in February 2014
imposed upon Ukraine a very bloody coup (see above), which he and his press misrepresented (and
still misrepresent) as being (and still represent as having been) a 'democratic revolution',
but was nothing of the sort, and actually was instead the start of the Ukrainian dictatorship
and the hell that has since destroyed that country, and brought the people there into such
misery, it's now by far the worst in Europe, and nearly tied with the worst in the entire
world.
America's criminal 'news' media never even reported the coup, nor that in 2011 the Obama
regime began planning
for a coup in Ukraine . And that by 1 March 2013 they started organizing it inside
the U.S. Embassy there . And that they hired members of Ukraine's two racist-fascist, or
nazi, political parties, Right Sector and Svoboda (which latter had been called the Social
Nationalist Party of Ukraine until the CIA advised them to change it to Freedom Party, or
"Svoboda" instead). And that in February 2014 they did it (and here's the 4 February 2014 phone call instructing
the U.S. Ambassador whom to place in charge of the new regime when the coup will be completed),
under the cover of authentic anti-corruption demonstrations that the Embassy organized on the
Maidan Square in Kiev, demonstrations that the criminal U.S. 'news' media misrepresented as
'democracy demonstrations,' though Ukraine already had democracy (but still lots of corruption,
even more than today's U.S. does, and the pontificating Obama said he was trying to end
Ukraine's corruption -- which instead actually soared after his coup there).
The head of the 'private CIA' firm Stratfor said it was
"the most blatant coup in history" but he couldn't say that to Americans, because he knows
that our press is just a mouthpiece for the regime (just like it was during the lead-up to
George W. Bush's equally unprovoked invasion of
Iraq -- for which America's 'news' media suffered likewise no penalties).
When subsequently accused by neocons for his having said this, his response was "I told the
business journal Kommersant that if the US were behind a coup in Kiev, it would have been the
most blatant coup in history," but he was lying to say this, because, as I
pointed out when writing about that rejoinder of his, he had, in fact, made quite clear in
his Kommersant interview, that it was, in his view "the most blatant coup in history," no
conditionals on that.
Everybody knows what Obama, and Clinton , and Sarkozy, did to Libya -- in
their zeal to eliminate yet another nation's leader who was friendly toward Russia (Muammar
Gaddafi), they turned one of the highest-living-standard nations in Africa into a failed state
and huge source of refugees (as well as of weapons that the
Clinton State Department transferred to the jihadists in Syria to bring down Bashar
al-Assad, another ally of Russia) -- but the 'news' media have continued to hide what Obama
(assisted by America's European allies, especially Poland and Netherlands, and also by
America's apartheid Middle Eastern ally, Israel) did to Ukraine.
I voted for Obama, partly because the insane McCain ("bomb, bomb, bomb Iran") and the creepy
Romney ("Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe") were denounced by
the (duplicitous) Obama for saying such evil things, their aggressive international positions,
which continued old Cold-War-era hostilities into the present, even after the Cold War had
ended long ago (in 1991) (
but only on the Russian side ). I since have learned that in today's American political
system, the same aristocracy controls both of our rotten political Parties, and American
democracy no longer exists. (And the
only scientific study of whether America between the years 1981 and 2002 was democratic
found that it was not, and it already confirmed what Jimmy
Carter later said on 28 July 2015 :
Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting
the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to
governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members."
But yet our Presidents continue the line, now demonstrably become a myth, of 'American
democracy', and use it as a sledgehammer against other governments, to 'justify' invading (or,
in Ukraine's case, overthrowing via a 'democratic revolution') their lands (allies of Russia)
such as in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and maybe even soon, Iran.
Here are some of the events and important historical details along the way to Ukraine's
plunge into a worse condition than most African nations:
Please send this article to every friend who is part of the majority that, as a Quinnipiac
University poll published on March 22nd reported, "A total of 51 percent of voters say they
can trust U.S. intelligence agencies to do what is right 'almost all of the time' or 'most of
the time'" (and that level of trust was far higher than for the rotten press and for the rotten
politicians), even after the CIA's rubber-stamping Bush's lies to invade Iraq, and after the
FBI's shameless performance on Hillary Clinton's privatized State Department emails even after
her
smashing their cell-phones with hammers , etc., and all the other official cover-ups, with
no American officials even so much as being charged for their rampant crimes against the
American public. Besides: ever since the CIA's founding, it has had an "Operation Gladio" that specializes in
organizing terrorist acts so as for them to be blamed on, first, communist countries when they
existed; and, then, after the end of communism, on allies of Russia. Did the American
dictatorship begin right after FDR died in 1945? How much longer will these lies succeed?
For the people of
Iraq , and of Syria
, and of Ukraine, and many such countries, this dictatorship has destroyed their lives.
Trusting the 'intelligence' services of a dictatorship doesn't make any sense at all. They're
all working for the aristocracy, the billionaires -- not for any public, anywhere; not here,
not there, just nowhere. Should the cattle trust the feedlot-operator? Only ignorance can
produce trust, under the conditions that actually exist.
So, unless the idea is that ignorance is bliss, pass along the truth, when you find it,
because it is very rare -- and the system operates to keep it that way.
Overthrowing Ukraine was an attempt to end Russia being the major power on the Black Sea and
establish it as a NATO lake to stop Russia from using the sea to aid Syria or Iran. That was
ruined when Putin seized Crimea, keeping the Russian naval base.
In fact, the destabilization of the Ukraine occurred at the dawn of the new century in 2004.
The Presidential election of that year between Victor Yuschenko and Victor Yanukovich
resulted initially in the victory of Yanukovich. However serious allegations regarding
electoral fraud were raised. This resulted in mass demonstrations in Kiev and other cities
throughout Ukraine.
A re-run was ordered and the second time around Yushchenko took the Presidency with 52% of
the vote to Yanukovich's 44%. Suffice it to say that prior to the re-run a number of shadowy
foreign NGOs – including the National Endowment for Democracy – were active in
promoting civic disobedience in a number of Ukrainian cities in west and central Ukraine.
Independence Square in the middle of Kiev was occupied after the first election which was
declared invalid. These events became known as the 'Orange Revolution'.
It would be misleading to assume that significant numbers of the protestors did not have a
valid case against Yanukovich in terms of corruption and self-serving. However, it was
equally true that many of the demonstrators' motives were somewhat less noble. Prior to the
election Yushchenko had promised his running mate Yulia Tymoshenko the position of Prime
Minister should he win the election. Thus throughout, the disturbances were a struggle
between the eastern and western oligarchs.
On the crucial question of the nature of these events, 'Peoples power' or 'revolutionary
coup' the issue remains undecided.
This notwithstanding the British historian David Lane of Emmanuel College Cambridge argued
that
"The 'Orange Revolution' in Ukraine was widely considered to be an instance of the
'coloured revolutions' of 1989 engendered by democratic values and nascent civil societies in
the process of nation building. The extent to which the 'Orange Revolution' could be
considered a revolutionary event stimulated by civil society, or a different type of
political activity (a putsch, coup d'état), legitimated by elite-sponsored 'soft'
political power. Based on public opinion poll data and responses from focus groups, the
author contends that what began as an orchestrated protest election fraud developed into a
novel type of political activity -- a revolutionary coup d'état. It is contended that
the movement was divisive rather than integrative and did not enjoy widespread popular
support."
Which is about the nearest we will get to an authentic answer.
What followed, however, was a complete and corrupt shamble of opportunism, corruption and
self-serving misrule of Yuschenko and Tymoshenko who, after becoming involved in some dubious
energy deals was to become known as the 'Gas Princess'. These two paragons of democracy
eventually became bitter enemies and saw the return of Yanukovich after the Presidential
contest between her and Yanukovich in 2010 which Yanukovich narrowly won.
It's long been a truth that democracy in the US died a long time ago and the wealth and
power behind the POTUS, irrespective of who that might be, are mere puppets. Obama won his
presidency on outright lies and the crooked Clintons and Sarkozys of the US corrupt elite
serve no-one's interests but their own at the cost of the lives of Ukrainian Russian ethnics
and the Libyan, Iraqi and Syrian people. "Saving Syria's children" would require the removal
of the source of their suffering, which can be firmly laid at the door of murderous
Washington War Hawks, rent-a-gobs like Samantha Powers and Victoria Nuland(nee Kagan)and
corrupt MSM supporting the rogue state that is the USA.
by John Quiggin on November 11, 2018 It's 100 years since
the Armistice that brought an end to fighting on the Western Front of the Great War. Ten
million soldiers or more were dead, and even more gravely wounded, along with millions of
civilians. Most of the empires that had begun the war were destroyed, and even the victors had
suffered crippling losses. Far from being a "war to end war", the Great War was the starting
point for many more, as well as bloody and destructive revolutions. These wars continue even
today, in the Middle East, carved up in secret treaties between the victors.
For much of the century since then, it seemed that we had learned at least something from
this tragedy, and the disasters that followed it. Commemoration of the war focused on the loss
and sacrifice of those who served, and were accompanied by a desire that the peace they sought
might finally be achieved.
But now that everyone who served in that war has passed away, along with most of those who
remember its consequences, the tone has shifted to one of glorification and jingoism.
In part, this reflects the fact that, for rich countries, war no longer has any real impact
on most people. As in the 19th century, we have small professional armies fighting in faraway
countries and suffering relatively few casualties. Tens of thousands of people may die in these
conflicts, but the victims of war impinge on our consciousness only when they seek shelter as
refugees, to be turned away or locked up.
In the past, I've concluded message like this with the tag "Lest we Forget". Sadly, it seems
as if everything important has already been forgotten.
novakant 11.11.18 at 11:11 am (no link)
There's an interesting review in this week's TLS (paywall) by Richard J. Evans of
Jörn Leonhard: Pandora's Box – A History of the First World War
I think it varies per place, even within countries. In my English village this morning, about
a quarter of the population gathered in front of the war memorial, closing the only road.
They stood there, quietly. A couple of older people spent twenty minutes reading out the
names of all the poor souls who had left the village for war and never returned. Then there
was two minutes silence, the vicar called for personal peace for all those affected by war,
and then demanded that all those who could work for peace do so. A grim soberness marked the
whole thing
I had nearly not gone, expecting it to be too jingoistic, but it was nothing of the sort. I
am sure across the many communities remembering the Armistice across the world, many will be
doing the same.
This is my way of responding to Armistice Day.
Bob Dylan, Masters of War" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCnYmrADSns
"You that fasten all the trigger
For the others to fire
And you sit back and watch
While the death toll gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud"
Phil Ochs, "I Declare the War Is Over https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOs9xYUjY4I
"One-legged veterans will greet the dawn
And they're whistling marches as they mow the lawn
And the gargoyles only sit and grieve
The gypsy fortune teller told me that we'd been deceived
You only are what you believe"
Big Ed McCurdy, "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc5hxqNdqKo
"Last night I had the strangest dream
I ever dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war"
Just a personal question on jq. I left Australia 30 years ago. I can remember no jingoism on
armistice Day. On Australia Day and Anzac Day perhaps, but never on remembrance Day. Had that
really changed?
Regarding Leonhard, it is always a cause for concern when a reviewer calls a historian
"judicious."
The most important thing to remember about the Great War is that it wasn't caused by
malign ideologies, or nefarious leveling schemes, or crazed utopian economic cranks. It was
simply an inevitable breakdown of the normal operation of the capitalist world system.
Remember that when the ever growing infestation of libertarians, respected by their peers,
trot out their mythology.
Speaking of "lest we forget," how many people and how many commemorations have managed to
forget that the armistice came about as a direct consequence of the socialist uprising in
Germany, sparked in large part by a mass mutiny among German sailors in Kiel? Two days before
the formal armistice declaration, workers led by the left wing of the SPD stormed the
Reichstag, an ad hoc governing coalition led by the right wing of the SPD negotiated the
abdication of the Kaiser, and both the left and right wings of the SPD simultaneously issued
separate proclamations of a socialist German republic (by which they meant two very different
things, of course, a divergence that was notoriously written out over the following few years
in the blood of revolutionaries like Rosa Luxemburg).
In short, you can toss Armistice Day into the category as things like weekend, the 8 hour
work day, the 40 hour work week, social safety nets, and so on: if you celebrate it, don't
forget to thank revolutionary socialism for making it possible.
I'm with John on this one. I'll wear the poppy in recognition of the sacrifice, but will
avoid the local cenotaph ceremony. I find the current temper of Remembrance Day services
distasteful and the "our freedoms" trope abhorrent.
Reason @5 It's mostly Anzac Day, but the 100th anniversary has made Remembrance Day a bigger
deal than usual. And we just had a breathless announcement that "veterans" (I still haven't
got used to this Americanism) would be given boarding priority on Virgin airlines.
To be fair, our PM, who is generally hopeless on this and other issues, gave quite a good
speech on the day, which ran under the headline "War is always a failure of our humanity"
the loss of life and the lasting injuries that follow the fighting remain to show the
futility of allowing war to arise as an answer to our conflicting ideas. humanity has failed
as the dominant species. the fault lies in the hopes of too many to emulate the past society
of material greed as a goal. reaching our limits of destroying the clean air and poisoning
the seas with chemical and plastic waste as though the planet could absorb an endless spew
will cause humanity's end. honoring the dead is the least we may do to salute those that went
before us.
steven t johnson@6: WWI was "simply an inevitable breakdown of the normal operation of the
capitalist world system".
Remind me how many other "inevitable breakdowns of the normal operation" happened before,
or after 1914.
Remind me how far the authorities in Serbia, Russia (or indeed Austria-Hungary or Germany)
believed themselves to be operating in the interests of, or governed by, the capitalist world
system.
Come to that, for the next catastrophe in 1939, do the same for the authorities in Russia,
Poland and Germany.
And explain why there have been no such inevitable breakdowns since.
John Quiggin@10 "To be fair, our PM, who is generally hopeless on this and other issues, gave
quite a good speech on the day, which ran under the headline 'War is always a failure of our
humanity'" It seems to me to be quite unfair to blame WWI on us and our depraved human
nature. As Norman Angell notoriously demonstrated "us" do not get any benefit from war. Cui
bono? Nationalists want to go back to a world where sovereign nations struggle for their
place in the sun. Some, like Trump and Putin, want to go it alone. Others like the lords of
the EU want a consortium. What all share is a system of capitalist competition which will,
like all complex, crisis-ridden systems, eventually break down. Whining about human nature
seems to me detestable.
stephen@12 agrees with majority here, and elsewhere, of course. Nonetheless the confidence
the Spanish-American war, the Boer war, the Russian-Turkish war, the Sino-Japanese war, the
Russian-Japanese war and either of the Balkan wars would of course not, ever, possibly, have
spread like the third Balkan war, er, WWI would be touching were it not so disingenuous. Even
if one insists only conflicts between the great powers, the possibility that the Crimean war,
the war with Magenta and Solferino, the Schleswig-Holstein war, the Franco-Prussian war
(proper,) could not possibly have spread out of control is equally disingenous. Remember
54-40 or fight, the Aroostook war? The monotonously repetitive crises like Fashoda and the
first and second Moroccan crises and the brouhaha over the annexation of Bosnia clearly shows
crisis is normal operation. stephen's insistence this is all irrelevant is convenience, not
argument.
As to the absurd notion that a capitalist world system, in which states are the protectors
of the property of the nation's ruling class, somehow means the chieftains are pursuing the
general interests of world capitalism is delirious twaddle. It is the reformist who pretends
globalism means trade and peace.
I am well aware that everyone agrees with stephen on this point, but it is still
wrong.
Tens of thousands of people may die in these conflicts
Try 2 million in Korea.
One million in Vietnam.
500,000 in Iraq.
And who knows how many in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Serbia, Somalia and all our
various proxy wars in Yemen, Latin America and Africa plus all of the civilians massacred by
our client-state dictators in Chile, Nicaragua, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, Congo, Egypt, the
Dominican Republic, Haiti, Guatemala and others I'm likely forgetting.
America is the biggest purveyor of death, destruction and human misery on the globe, but
it sounds like we've "forgotten" that as well.
Plenty of horrible things have happened in various American and other war zones since the
Western Front. Plenty of busted-up vets in every city. The problem can't be that we
forgot .
but isn't the capitalist system an emergent effect based on properties of human nature:
individualism, acquisitiveness, aggression. Surely a change of human nature would lead to a
change of economics at least; hopefully in a progressive direction but not necessarily
so.
A while back, a native American on Twitter commented that her people had already
experienced an apocalypse. This led to the following reflection on my part:
The history of modern Western Europe can be viewed as a series of apocalypses. War after
war after war, only at peace after nearly destroying itself. And that is the history of the
modern world.
>In short, you can toss Armistice Day into the category as things like weekend, the 8
hour work day, the 40 hour work week, social safety nets, and so on: if you celebrate it,
don't forget to thank revolutionary socialism for making it possible.
Do and the 100 million people revolutionary socialists would murder in the 80 or so years
following armistice day, what do they owe the revolutionary socialists?
@13
>What all share is a system of capitalist competition which will, like all complex,
crisis-ridden systems, eventually break down. Whining about human nature seems to me
detestable.
Ah yes, we all remember how non-violent those non-capitalist systems were, with the gulags
and mass killing and terror famines.
In an Old Holborn 'baccy tin somewhere in the house is my grandad's WW1 medal. He served in
the London Labour Battalions. Gassed.
He worked twice between his return and his too early death. Both jobs being very
temporary. His family lived in poverty in the East End; the "Panel" was used at times:
charity from the worthies. My dad was crippled with diseases of poverty. He was a communist
(until the 50s).
He signed up with his mates in '39. His best mate Jimmy Biscoe killed in a bomber operation
in the early 40s.
I got my dad's medals this year, twenty years after his death. He only told me a bit of
his experiences when he was dying. He loved my mum, music and kindness.
My dear, gruff dad-in-law lost his left leg at Monte Cassino. Every few years he'd get a
new "fitting", which was a great strain for him. He loved his family, his garden, rowing; we
talked a little about his experiences one quiet afternoon at the RSA. He too died too
early.
My Mum's favourite brother was a boy sailor. He went through the River Plate among other
actions. He spent time in psychiatric hospital after the war for his 'war trauma'. He too
died early.
The padre at my daughter's funeral had been a padre at Arnhem. A quiet, deeply
compassionate man who took his own life some three years later.
My best friend at school, dead in his twenties, doing his "duty".
Not a hero among them: ordinary, flawed, loved and loving human beings.
And the people left behind ? Lives filled with quiet, unresolved sadness and loss; getting by
with grit and quiet courage.
I used to go to Dawn Service. Then it got to be political Theatre. I get f .g angry with
all the brouhaha, preening and cavorting. None of this helps or helped any of those people
mentioned above.
Half a billion for the AWM? And cutting the funding of food banks? Moral bloody Bankruptcy
writ large.
You know I could possibly be sympathetic with all of you if it wasn't the case that
utopian ideology didn't have more victims than all the nationalisms put together. A plague on
all your houses.
Birdie@17 is telling us human nature generated capitalism a hundred thousand years ago? Or is
telling us that human nature is only free in a capitalist system? I think neither.
Raven Onthill@18 seems to think it is incumbent on the lesser peoples to surrender without
a fight, and accept the status quo as God-given. That Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman empires
could be liquidated peacefully, like a common bankruptcy. That is not how it works in a
capitalist system of sovereign states defending the property of their respective ruling
classes, against other states. The rise of Germany and the US against the relative decline of
the British empire meant the balance of forces must change. The new balance could only be
found by war.
The relative decline of the US means the current balance of forces must change. That's why
the US government has explicitly declared Russia and China to be revisionist powers. The US
state will no more go quietly than the British empire, which would not reach a peaceful
accommodation with Germany then any more than it can reach a real accommodation with "Europe"
today.
ironoutofcavalry@19 spells out the shared premises of liberal democrats and fascists, the
determination that famines and wars under capitalism are acts of God, while everything that
happens under socialism is always deliberate. Even if you somehow pretend the depopulation of
the Americas and the mass deaths of the Middle Passage somehow had nothing to do with
capitalism, there were plenty of holocausts in later days. See Mike Davis' Late Victorian
Holocausts. (Davis contention that famines relatively soon after the revolution are the same
as the great Bengal famine or the Irish famine is social-democratic piety, the sort of thing
that gives it a bad name.) Idiot theorists of "totalitarianism" are invited to comment upon
the Triple War in South America.
ironoutofcavalry, the Black Book of Communism is a contemptible far-right propaganda rag
whose death tally was denounced by several of its own co-authors due to the main author's
obsession with reaching the nice round 100 million mark by any means necessary, with "victims
of communism" including such figures as hypothetical deaths due to lack of population growth
during famine periods, Soviet civilian deaths resulting from the economic dislocations of the
Nazi invasion, and even Nazi soldiers killed on the battlefields of the Eastern Front. By
standards much more rigorous and defensible than those used in the Black Book of Communism,
the basic functioning of global capitalist material inequality kills tens of millions of
people per decade -- which is before you even begin trying to tally the casualties of
capitalist conflicts like the two world wars, let alone any of the other massively
destructive imperial interventions around the world before and since, which people like
stephen seem to have trained themselves not to regard as catastrophic in the same way as
WWI/WWII as long as the victims are mostly poor brown people in the Third World. Hell, even
at this very moment the US is providing direct political and military support for a campaign
of intentional starvation by its Saudi proxy state against millions of people in northern
Yemen, a "terror famine" at least as deliberate and premeditated as anything Stalin or Mao
ever dreamed of.
If you must insist on spreading uninformed reactionary bromides, at least take it to a
less serious discussion space where it belongs, and regardless, don't forget to thank a
socialist if you enjoy not being sent to die in a muddy trench.
Stephen, here's a reasonable
summary of how the dynamics of capitalist economic development led inexorably to WWI and
WWII, and are leading to a future global conflict that may be much less distant than we'd
like to imagine. Now before you click the link, note the following passage quoted in the
linked article, by a political commentator writing in 1887 about the prospect of:
a world war, moreover of an extent the violence hitherto unimagined. Eight to ten
million soldiers will be at each other's throats and in the process they will strip Europe
barer than a swarm of locusts. The depredations of the Thirty Years' War compressed into
three to four years and extended over the entire continent; famine, disease, the universal
lapse into barbarism, both of the armies and the people, in the wake of acute misery
irretrievable dislocation of our artificial system of' trade, industry and credit, ending
in universal bankruptcy collapse of the old states and their conventional political wisdom
to the point where crowns will roll into the gutters by the dozen, and no one will be
around to pick them up; the absolute impossibility of foreseeing how it will all end and
who will emerge as victor from the battle. That is the prospect for the moment when the
development of mutual one-upmanship in armaments reaches us, climax and finally brings
forth its inevitable fruits. This is the pass, my worthy princes and statesmen, to which
you in your wisdom have brought our ancient Europe.
Now based on what you can guess of my political orientation strictly from what I've
posted here, try to guess which 19th century European political figure might have written
that passage. No, your first guess is wrong, he died in 1883, but close, now guess again.
Yes, your second guess is correct .
I've seen "X is bad" statements receive the "Oh yeah? Well Stalin was worse !" non
sequitur in response for many values of X. But this thread is the first time I've seen it
happen for X = WWI.
WLGR@7: if you think that revolutionary socialism made possible "weekend, the 8 hour work
day, the 40 hour work week, social safety nets" how do you explain that all these things
happened in states that did not have to endure the catastrophic misfortunes of revolutionary
socialism?
steven t johnson@14
This is the first time that I have ever been told that everyone [on CT? in the wider
universe?] agrees with me, but if that is so I do not see it as a reason for supposing I am
wrong. Rational arguments dissenting from my opinions are of course always welcome.
stj's argument that, because conflicts pre-1914 did not result in world wars, therefore
WWI was inevitable, has only to be made explicit to collapse.
I am particularly interested by stj's argument that the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78,
between two absolutist non-capitalist monarchies, was in some way the result of international
capitalism. If he will reconsider that opinion, he might like to recalibrate his denunciation
of other wars as capitalist. I would recommend the works of an intelligent Marxist, Perry
Anderson, who explains why pre-Revolutionary Russia and Wilhelmine Germany had many
capitalists, they were not actually capitalist states.
As for his denunciation of capitalism in which "states are the protectors of the property
of the nation's ruling class": there is of course some truth there, but in which system is
that not true? In capitalism, unlike some other systems – revolutionary socialism, to
start with – whose property has been protected?
Birdie@17: "isn't the capitalist system an emergent effect based on properties of human
nature: individualism, acquisitiveness, aggression?" Human nature indeed; try explaining to
Ashurbanipal of Assyria, Alexander, Genghiz Khan why these properties did not apply to their
very n0n-capitalist selves.
Stephen, are you under the impression that western Europe and the US never had a
revolutionary socialist tradition? If so, I don't really know what to tell you other than to
read even the most passing history of Western mass politics and labor struggles, the upshot
of which is that yes of course it was Western ruling classes' fear of working-class
revolutionary agitation that led to the implementation of every single one of those things,
up to and including the German ruling class in early November 1918 deciding to hand over
power to the moderate reformist wing of the SPD, whose first major policy decision as soon as
they'd settled into their desks was to pursue an armistice with the Entente. I can understand
maybe a few token Birchers or Randroids poking their heads out here and there, but has the
anti-intellectual right-wing fever swamp of our current era really risen high enough that
such mild observations are somehow surprising or controversial even in a forum like this one?
'I used to go to Dawn Service. Then it got to be political Theatre. I get f .g angry with
all the brouhaha, preening and cavorting. None of this helps or helped any of those people
mentioned above."
After Trump's election, I chose to abstain for a while from the drenching but never quenching
fire hose of information of the web, and for a while worked through the stacks of books I had
long left unread.
One I avoided for quite a while, not remembering its provenance was "Human Smoke", by
Nicholson Baker. It could not have been a gift; no one in the family still living is familiar
with this author.
It's an assemblage of quotes from various authors from the beginning of the twentieth
century up until the operation of the crematoria which furnishes the title, and its general
tendency is pacifism, disarmament, the efforts made both before and after the Great War to
prevent such catastrophes, and the inhumanity of the conduct of the war. From the outset, the
policy of our side was to starve the other into submission through naval blockades, and to a
considerable extent it was successful.
In the second round, our side was the first to start bombing civilians, and we got better
at it the longer the war went on, though it's far from clear that this was a useful
strategy.
Baker's book is not, could hardly be, a convincing argument for pacifism, given the
drumbeat of fascist pronouncements, threats, denunciations, bragging and swaggering. The
first world war was so pointless that it's hard to understand how it happened, why it
couldn't have been avoided, why it couldn't have been stopped sooner. The second was
different.
It is worth remembering that the First World War was called, by those who opposed it after
the fact, the "War to End War". An organisation was set up to ensure that there would be no
more wars, and an international agreement renouncing war was signed.
The organisation was being set up while the war was actually going on, if you count the
Western blockade and invasion of Russia, and the Greek invasion of Turkey, as part of the
war.
Nevertheless, within less than twenty years you had the Italian invasion of Ethiopia
(arguably an after-effect of Italy's failure to get what it wanted out of the First World
War) and soon after that, the Japanese invasion of southern China (inarguably, ditto).
It is possible for people to argue that since there has not been a similar war since 1945,
"humanity" has "learned its lesson". In reality, however, the reason why there has been no
similar war has been that the principal protagonists have nuclear weapons and no means of
defense against them. If anybody comes up with a genuinely reliable defense against ballistic
and cruise missiles, I'd give the world less than ten more years of peace.
Incidentally, I'd give the world less than ten more years of peace at the moment, but
that's because of the preponderance of doltish psychopaths in governments. It's interesting,
however, that a doltish psychopath like Macron is nevertheless capable of realising that
France is vulnerable to the intermediate-range nuclear missiles which the U.S. is currently
unleashing on the world, and therefore is trying to, er, have a conference about banning the
use of naughty weapons and about promoting world peace.
Stephen has won the gallery with the claim that repeated crises failing to result in systemic
failure of the world diplomatic system (that is, causing world war,) on a an easily
predictable schedule shows obviously it is entirely possible for us to go back to a world of
sovereign nations like before the US hegemony and have endless crises with nary a collapse.
It's like the capitalist economy that way. "We" are now so wise that we can avoid the follies
of our predecessors, who are obviously stupid, which is proven by their being dead, dead,
dead.
I am sure Stephen has also won hearts and minds with the claim Russian conquests
against Turkey meant the extension of the Russian empire rather than the creation of the
states of Montenegro, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria. But perhaps people think those new
countries came complete with serfdom; extensive church lands and widespread monasticism;
aristocratic estates and caste privileges; relative absence of cities, etc. That is, the new
states were non-capitalist because absolutist monarchy isn't capitalist.
(I'm not familiar with Perry Anderson because leftist and foreign means it will not be
easily available in the US outside elite libraries. But if Perry Anderson thinks absolutism
and mercantilism were not part of the transition to capitalism, I believe he is gravely
mistaken. Defining "capitalism" as the most refined bourgeois democracy in the imperial
metropole is popular, because it is so usefully apologetic, yet it is still nonsense.)
Last and least, reason@21 utters the preposterous claim "utopian ideologies" have killed
more people than anything else. (The comment seems to include ironoutof cavalry, but I'm sure
ironoutofcavalry, like Stephen and reason, are resolutely complacent about social evils,
because, anti-utopian.) Personally I think business as usual, not utopian ideology, had
everything to do with the great Bengal famine circa 1770 (not the WWII one.) Etc. etc. etc.
in a litany that would sicken the soul, were it not fortified by the conviction it is utopian
ideology that is the spirit of evil.
"Sadly, it seems as if everything important has already been forgotten".
But Von Clownstick just remembered it was "them Germans" – and sadly not one comment
here was about Macron reminding US that "everything important" is how to deal with
"Nationalism"?
– and about:
"But now that everyone who served in that war has passed away, along with most of those who
remember its consequences, the tone has shifted to one of glorification and jingoism".
Didn't the French and the Germans mention that it is now 70 years that these "Archenemies"
at peace? – and I think to this "Armistice Day" the first time even the Germans were
invited? – but how true there was a "shifted tone" by the German Baron Von Clownstick
–
(who somehow still pretends he is "American"?)
Britain tried to negotiate an end to the naval arms race with Germany at least twice
before 1914. Germany was not interested. After 1905 Russia was also keen to avoid conflict.
The proponents of this policy lost credibility due to German sabre-rattling and insouciant
reversals by Vienna.
– and for everybody who might have missed it – let me explain what was going on
at this "Armistice Day".
Baron von Clownstick was very, VERY unhappy -(not only because he was afraid to ruin his
hair) BUT also – BE-cause as he always says "we built the best Arms" – "the most
beautiful weaponry" – and when he always told them Germans and them French and all
these other Nato members to pay more for Nato he was hoping for more Sales of US Arms BUT
then this Macron dude -(and now also Merkel) suddenly were talking about "Europeans
protecting themselves" -(and NOT buying more US weapons) and that made Von Clownstick very,
VERY sad – as his funny tweets about the US not wanting to protect Europe anymore
– if Europe wasn't "pony up" came to let's call it – to "fruition" – or a
classical "protect me from what I want" – and THAT's what happened on this –
"Armistice Day" –
(besides the danger for Von Clownsticks hair)
Just wading in a bit to say that "Revolutionary Socialism" is one of those labels that
obfuscates more than it reveals. Lenin, Debs, and Luxembourg were all contemporaries who
believed in Socialism and revolution, but they didn't all believe in the same "Revolutionary
Socialism." Just look at the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks for proof that even seemingly
small distinctions in what it means to be "revolutionary" have huge implications.
People seem to have settled on using "Revolutionary" as a code word to mean "violent,
dangerous, and radical," or "serious, committed, and effective," depending on their politics,
while "Democratic" is treated as being the opposite (for good or ill), but it's a false
dichotomy. Pacifists can be radical, democrats can be thuggish, and democracy can be
revolutionary or counterrevolutionary, and "effectiveness" is subjective. Given that even
with conventional definitions, it's not always easy to see which of the two camps a
particular Socialist falls under (and many of them changed factions), it's probably best to
clarify what type of revolution you're talking about up front.
er, Peter T, Britain wanted to end the naval arms race with Germany because it was ahead and
in complete control of European seas. It was Britain which had introduced the Dreadnought
battleship and the battlecruiser. It's rather like the American calls to restrict the number
of nuclear weapons and discourage countries which don't have them from acquiring them.
I won't say that German sabre-rattling wasn't a factor in promoting European crisis.
However, it's hard not to see the Russian military buildup in Europe between 1905 and 1914 as
anything other than preparation for war (however inept it turned out to be in practice), and
of course the Russians were heavily involved (diplomatically) in the Balkan wars. It
certainly wasn't the Austrians who orchestrated the murder of their heir to the throne, and
if Britain were to grow grumpy at Syria murdering Prince Charles I would hardly call that
"insouciant".
Wars are a strategy for male reproduction. Invade. Kill the competing men. Impregnate the
women. Enslave and trade women as reproductive property. Repeat. It's what men have done for
centuries.
Eg. Iceland
. ""This supports the model, put forward by some historians, that the majority of females
in the Icelandic founding population had Gaelic ancestry, whereas the majority of males had
Scandinavian ancestry,"
Britain had roughly 70% of the world's merchant fleet, a world-wide empire tied together
by maritime communications and was critically dependent on sea-borne trade. This was not new
– it had been the situation since 1815. Germany set out to build a fleet specifically
designed to challenge Britain's control of its home waters (heavy on battleships, short
range). Britain responded by building the dreadnoughts, then by coming to an arrangement with
France so as to free up forces from the Med, all the while seeking a naval truce. One can
argue that Germany had every right to seek to diminish British naval dominance, but it was
surely both a foolish and an aggressive policy, given that it posed a threat no British
government could not respond to (the invasion of Belgium and German plans to annex the
Belgian coast were similar, in that they would place the High Seas Fleet across Britain's
major trade artery. In 1914 London was the greatest port in the world).
The Viennese insouciance I had in mind was in regard to the Bosnian annexation in 1909.
The details are in Dominic Lieven's Towards the Flame, but it was a typical bit of
Austro-Hungarian over-clever dickishness. It added a layer of distrust that was not helpful
in 1914.
What worried Germany the most was Russian railway-building, which threatened to make their
military planning more difficult. They saw 1914 as a narrow and shrinking window (much as
many of the same people saw war in 1939 as a last military opportunity). Indeed, they had
mooted war against Russia in 1906 and again in 1909.
It's overlooked that Europe had an established mechanism for resolving diplomatic crises
– either an international congress or a meeting of the affected powers (as at Vienna
1813, Berlin 1878, London 1912..). The Powers had imposed settlements in the Balkans on
several previous occasions, and could have done so this time. Britain and France proposed a
congress; Berlin refused.
While they all look similar to us, Germany really was much more militarist and much more
inclined to seek salvation from their dilemmas in war than the other powers. While all the
elites were in a febrile state, Germany's were in something close to a collective nervous
breakdown, isolated, truculent and fearful.
I am a big fan of Hobson's book "Imperialism, a study", written in 1902, that I believe
explain tendencies, that evidently were present in 1902 and before, that later exploded and
caused WW1 and WW2.
The general theory of the book is that capitalist countries face underconsumption problems
at home, due to the exceedigly low wage share (Hobson though is not a marxist so he doesn't
believes that this is the normal situation in capitalism).
This underconsumption forces capitalist countries to expand in the colonies, and ultimately
also to create an military/financial/industrial complex that becomes the valve through which
excess savings (due to underconsumption due to excessively low wages) can be reinvested.
I'll leave out a discussion if Hobson's economic theories make sense (I think they do) or
wether they are the same of marxist theories (I think they are the same expressed from
another point of view and with a more moderate approach), but I want to point out the chapter
about "the scientific defence of imperialism" (pp.162 onwards in the link), because it
clearly speaks of the "scientific racism" theories that are nowadays associated with fascism
and nazism.
Here a cite from p.163:
Admitting that the efficiency of a nation or a race requires a suspension of intestine
warfare, at any rate l' =trance, the crude struggle on the larger plane must, they urge, be
maintained. It serves, indeed, two related purposes. A constant struggle with other races
or nations is demanded for the maintenance and progress of a race or nation ; abate the
necessity of the struggle and the vigour of the race flags and perishes. Thus it is to the
real interest of a vigorous race to be " kept up to a high pitch of external efficiency by
contest, chiefly by way of war with inferior races, and with equal races by the struggle
for trade routes and for the sources of raw material and of food supply." " This," adds
Professor Karl Pearson," is the natural history view of mankind, and I do not think you can
in its main features subvert it." Others, taking the wider cosmic standpoint, insist that
the progress of humanity itself requires the main-tenance of a selective and destructive
struggle between races which embody different power and capacities, different types of
civilisation.
From this I think it's obvious how Italian fascism and German nazism were mostly an
extremisation of theories that were already present before WW1 (and Japanese militarism and
probably many other militarism that we prefer to forget today).
In fact Mussolini justified the entry of Italy into WW2 with the idea of a natural struggle
between nations/races/cultures.
Now the main question is: was Hobson correct to say that these theories were just covers
for economic interests, that in turn were caused by underconsumption?
Or to say the same thing from a more marxist standpoint, is it true that WW1 was caused by
various capitalist countries were forced by the capitalist need for continuous
growth/expansion to continually expand their colonial empires, and in the end they had to
clash one with the other?
I think it is true.
This doesn't mean that all war in history were caused by capitalism, before capitalism ever
existed. Hower this gives an answer to some of your questions, and specifically:
1) Why didn't the normal conditions of capitalist production give rise to a world war
before?
Because various capitalist powers hadn't already conquered most of the world, so they didn't
have to go directly at each other's throat before WW1.
2) Why didn't the normal conditions of capitalist production give rise to a world war
after WW2?
Because
(2.a) after WW2 the capitalist system in developed countries had a much higer wage share due
to government intervention and anyway excess savings were repurposed through Keynesian
policies and inflation, thus much less underconsuption,
and
(2.b) because after WW2 for some decades there was only one main capitalist pole, that was
the USA, that was the main proponent of this kind of keynesian policies, either because it
was wiser, or because of the menace of socialism, or for whatever the reason.
WLGR@29: You ask whether I am "under the impression that western Europe and the US never had
a revolutionary socialist tradition?" Well, definitely not, and I cannot see that I have
written anything that could lead you to form an honest opinion that I am, or even might be.
Nor can I see any basis for your belief that, disagreeing with you, I must be wholly ignorant
of Western mass politics. I would advise you to have less faith in your own powers of
telepathy.
To refresh your memory: I wrote that various good thing happened in states that did not
have to endure the catastrophic misfortunes of revolutionary socialism. And I cannot see how
you can dispute either that states which were historically ruled by revolutionary socialists
suffered catastrophes; or that many European and other states, though never ruled by
revolutionary socialists and so avoiding their catastrophes, acquired these good things.
Pre-emptive disclaimer: I am not of course claiming that all catastrophes have been due to
revolutionary socialism.
stj@33: with regard to Russo/Turkish history, I think you are rather confused. You seem to
think I claimed that "Russian conquests against Turkey meant the extension of the Russian
empire rather than the creation of the states of Montenegro, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria." I
didn't: I merely pointed out that the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-8 was not in any intelligible
sense a conflict between two capitalist states. But if you want to widen the discussion to
cover Russian conquests against Turkey, I must point out that (1) several such conquests did
in fact involve extension of the Russian empire: take a quick look at the history of Ukraine
and Crimea (2) the creation of Montenegro was a result of Austrian and Venetian victories,
not Russian (3) Russia never conquered any part of Serbia from the Turks, though Russian
support for autonomously rebellious Serbs was significant (4) a complicating factor in the
formation of Romania was the Russian invasion of the principalities of Wallachia and
Moldavia, followed by an attempt to incorporate them into the Russian empire: many Romanians
preferred Ottoman rule (5) Bulgaria, you're right for once, that was a direct and
uncomplicated result of Russian conquest followed by creation of a new state. Which I never
said it wasn't.
I really do think it would be a good idea for you to read Perry Anderson's thoughtful and
erudite works before dismissing them; they may be more accessible than you think. I don't
know if your socialist principles would allow you to use the capitalist outfit Amazon
yourself, but if so Anderson's Lineages of the Absolutist state is available at $29.95 plus
postage. I would also recommend on a rather different topic Passages from Antiquity to
Feudalism, same price: second-hand copies of either are a little cheaper.
Wasn't World War I the result of Germany pursuing conquest?
World War 1 was equally the result of Britain 'pursuing conquest', i.e. its decades-long
ambition to expand its empire into the Near and Far Easts. Josh Marshall is, I'm afraid, an
unreconstructed Anglophile who also believes silly claims that the British went back to
'peace' (whatever that may be for a militarised empire) after WWI.
MFB @ 39
Correct. From contemporary accounts, we know that those members of the public who were
paying attention at the time could see the various empires building up to war for years
beforehand.
Marxist explanations work better for some events than for others; I don't think they work
particularly well for WW 1, though they aren't completely irrelevant.
I don't keep up with the historiography (e.g., the probably endless debate btw the Fischer
school and its critics/opponents), but one can distinguish btw contingent and deeper causes.
The latter were both 'ideational' (e.g., hypernationalism; views of war in general; 'cult of
the offensive'; influence of Social Darwinist and racialist perspectives on intl relations;
relative weakness of the peace mvts and their msg; dominant styles of diplomacy; etc.) and
'material' (e.g., problems faced by the multinational empires, esp. Austria-Hungary; rigidity
of mobilization plans; economic and political pressures on ruling elites; etc.), though the
distinction between ideational and material is somewhat artificial.
I'm not sure which among all the historical works is most worth reading (J.C.G. Rohl was
mentioned by someone in a past thread on this topic, and there were a lot of books published
around 2014 on the centenary of the war's start); but istm James Joll's work, among others,
has held up pretty well. Political scientists/ IR people have also continued to publish on
this. (The last journal article I'm aware of is Keir Lieber's in Intl Security several yrs
ago [and the replies], though I'm sure there have been others since. And even though it's
old, S. Van Evera's piece from the '80s, "Why Cooperation Failed in 1914," is still worth
reading, for the copious footnotes to the then-extant historical work in English (and English
translation), among other things.)
MFB: "It was Britain which had introduced the Dreadnought battleship and the battlecruiser."
Hmm, wasn't the Dreadnought class a direct response to the Tirpitz Memorandum (1896) and
the subsequent German Navy Bill of 1898, the purpose of which was to build a battleship fleet
with which to confront the Royal Navy?
As regards the historical arguments about war guilt, there was a strong pro-war faction in
nearly every European country, and even in Australia (on this last point, and the links to
the British pro-war faction, see Douglas Newton's Hell Bent ). The pro-war faction
prevailed nearly everywhere. Arguing about which pro-war faction was most responsible for
bringing about the war they all wanted seems pointless to me.
Moreover, once the war started, no-one wanted in power anywhere to bring it to an end on
any terms other than victory, annexations and reparations.
Looking specifically at the British government, since it seems to have the most defenders,
they first refused an offer of alliance from Turkey and then (when Turkey entered on the
German side instead) made a secret deal with France to carve up the Ottoman empire. As
mentioned in the OP, we are still dealing with the consequences today. That's not to excuse
the pro-war factions that dominated the governments of Germany, France, Russia,
Austria-Hungary, Italy etc.
The brutal warlord understood how to govern shrewdly and even humanely.
Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Winston Churchill, even Barack Obama: there are many
historical figures who Americans have turned to for inspiration in this political distemper.
That's especially true with the midterm elections only a week in the books. But I've recently
found an even more surprising leader who offers a number of political lessons worth
contemplating: Genghis Khan.
I'm quite serious.
As a former history teacher, I picked up Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern
World because I realized I knew relatively little about one of the most influential men in
human history. Researchers have
estimated that 0.5 percent of men have Genghis Khan's DNA in them, which is perhaps one of
the most tangible means of determining historical impact. But that's just the tip of the
iceberg. The Mongolian warlord conquered a massive chunk of the 13th-century civilized world --
including more than one third of its population. He created one of the first international
postal systems. He decreed universal freedom of religion in all his conquered territories --
indeed, some of his senior generals were Christians.
Of course, Genghis Khan was also a brutal military leader who showed no mercy to enemies who
got in his way, leveling entire cities and using captured civilians as the equivalent of cannon
fodder. Yet even the cruelest military geniuses (e.g. Napoleon) are still geniuses, and we
would be wise to consider what made them successful, especially against great odds. In the case
of Genghis Khan, we have a leader who went from total obscurity in one of the most remote areas
of Asia to the greatest, most feared military figure of the medieval period, and perhaps the
world. This didn't happen by luck -- the Mongolian, originally named Temujin, was not only a
skilled military strategist, but a shrewd political leader.
As Genghis Khan consolidated control over the disparate tribes of the steppes of northern
Asia, he turned the traditional power structure on its head. When one tribe failed to fulfill
its promise to join him in war and raided his camp in his absence, he took an unprecedented
step. He summoned a public gathering, or khuriltai , of his followers, and conducted a public
trial of the other tribe's aristocratic leaders. When they were found guilty, Khan had them
executed as a warning to other aristocrats that they would no longer be entitled to special
treatment. He then occupied the clan's lands and distributed the remaining tribal members among
his own people. This was not for the purposes of slavery, but a means of incorporating
conquered peoples into his own nation. The Mongol leader symbolized this act by adopting an
orphan boy from the enemy tribe and raising him as his own son.
Weatherford explains:
"Whether these adoptions began for sentimental reasons or for political ones, Temujin
displayed a keen appreciation of the symbolic significance and practical benefit of such acts
in uniting his followers through his usage of fictive kinship ."
Genghis Khan employed this equalizing strategy with his military as well -- eschewing
distinctions of superiority among the tribes. For example, all members had to perform a certain
amount of public service. Weatherford adds:
"Instead of using a single ethnic or tribal name, Temujin increasingly referred to his
followers as the People of the Felt Walls, in reference to the material from which they made
their gers [tents]."
America, alternatively, seems divided along not only partisan lines, but those of race and
language as well. There is also an ever-widening difference between elite technocrats and
blue-collar folk, or "deplorables." Both parties have pursued policies that have aggravated
these differences, and often have schemed to employ them for political gain. Whatever shape
they take -- identity politics, gerrymandering -- the controversies they cause have done
irreparable harm to whatever remains of the idea of a common America. The best political
leaders are those who, however imperfectly, find a way to transcend a nation's many differences
and appeal to a common cause, calling on all people, no matter how privileged, to participate
in core activities that define citizenship.
The Great Khan also saw individuals not as autonomous, atomistic individuals untethered to
their families and local communities, but rather as inextricably linked to them. For example,
"the solitary individual had no legal existence outside the context of the family and the
larger units to which it belonged; therefore the family carried responsibility of ensuring the
correct behavior of its members to be a just Mongol, one had to live in a just community." This
meant, in effect, that the default social arrangement required individuals to be responsible
for those in their families and immediate communities. If a member of a family committed some
crime, the entire unit would come under scrutiny. Though such a paradigm obviously isn't ideal,
it reflects Genghis Khan's recognition that the stronger our bonds to our families, the
stronger the cohesion of the greater society. Politicians should likewise pursue policies that
support and strengthen the family, the
"first society," rather than undermining or redefining it.
There are other gems of wisdom to be had from Genghis Khan. He accepted a high degree of
provincialism within his empire, reflecting an ancient form of subsidiarity. Weatherford notes:
"He allowed groups to follow traditional law in their area, so long as it did not conflict with
the Great Law, which functioned as a supreme law or a common law over everyone." This reflects
another important task for national leaders, who must seek to honor, and even encourage, local
governments and economies, rather than applying one-size-fits-all solutions.
He was an environmentalist, codifying "existing ideals by forbidding the hunting of animals
between March and October during the breeding time." This ensured the preservation and
sustainability of the Mongol's native lands and way of life. He recognized the importance of
religion in the public square, offering tax exemptions to religious leaders and their property
and excusing them from all types of public service. He eventually extended this to other
essential professions like public servants, undertakers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and
scholars. Of course, in our current moment, some of these professions are already well
compensated for their work, but others, like teachers, could benefit from such a tax
exemption.
There's no doubt that Genghis Khan was a brutal man with a bloody legacy. Yet joined to that
violence was a shrewd political understanding that enabled him to create one of the greatest
empires the world has ever known. He eschewed the traditional tribal respect for the elites in
favor of the common man, he pursued policies that brought disparate peoples under a common
banner, and he often avoided a scorched earth policy in favor of mercy to his enemies. Indeed,
as long as enemy cities immediately surrendered to the Mongols, the inhabitants saw little
change in their way of life. And as Weatherford notes, he sought to extend these lessons to his
sons shortly before his death:
He tried to teach them that the first key to leadership was self-control, particularly
mastery of pride, which was something more difficult, he explained, to subdue than a wild
lion, and anger, which was more difficult to defeat than the greatest wrestler. He warned
them that "if you can't swallow your pride, you can't lead." He admonished them never to
think of themselves as the strongest or smartest. Even the highest mountain had animals that
step on it, he warned. When the animals climb to the top of the mountain, they are even
higher than it is.
Perhaps if American politicians were to embrace this side of the Great Khan, focusing on
serving a greater ideal rather than relentless point-scoring , we might achieve the same level
of national success, without the horrific bloodshed.
Changing the direction of American politics from the continued descent into degeneracy and
ahistoricity will be a dynastic task requiring us to teach our youngest generations about
civics and civility and U.S. history all the way from the intellectual and historical events
that led to the formation of the U.S. to the varied movements over the years that have either
strengthened the social cohesion of our melting pot nation or provoked rot from the inside
out.
Swallowing one's pride is the most difficult task of any political leader who tastes power
even once. At that point the politician frequently craves the citizenry to get on bended knee
and swallow the the arrogant decisions of the politician who has grown turgid from the
lustful exceses of the governmental trough.
I realize this "American Conservative" author is trying to point out strengths of someone
who he admits was also a tyrant, but there's a little too much much tyrant love for my taste.
Maybe strong leaders are exactly the problem, and maybe one of the reasons conservatives
often have their pants on fire is their claim that they love freedom as they beg for law and
order at the end of someone else's gun.
President Macron's protests against nationalism this weekend stand in stark contrast with
the words of France's WWII resistance leader and the man who would then become president:
General Charles de Gaulle.
Speaking to his men in 1913, de Gaulle reminded them:
"He who does not love his mother more than other mothers, and his fatherland more than
other fatherlands, loves neither his mother nor his fatherland."
This unquestionable invocation of nationalism reveals how far France has come in its pursuit
of globalist goals, which de Gaulle described later in that same speech as the "appetite of
vice."
While this weekend the media have been sharpening their knives on Macron's words, for use
against President Trump, very few have taken the time to understand what really created the
conditions for the wars of the 20th century. It was globalism's grandfather: imperialism, not
nationalism.
This appears to have been understood at least until the 1980s, though forgotten now. With
historical revisionism applied to nationalism and the great wars, it is much harder to
understand what President Trump means when he calls himself a "nationalist." Though the fault
is with us, not him.
" Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism: nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism
By pursuing our own interests first, with no regard to others,' we erase the very thing that
a nation holds most precious, that which gives it life and makes it great: its moral values,"
President Macron declared from the pulpit of the Armistice 100 commemorations.
Had this been in reverse, there would no doubt have been shrieks of disgust aimed at Mr.
Trump for "politicizing" such a somber occasion. No such shrieks for Mr. Macron, however, who
languishes below 20 percent in national approval ratings in France.
With some context applied, it is remarkably easy to see how President Macron was being
disingenuous.
Nationalism and patriotism are indeed distinct. But they are not opposites.
Nationalism is a philosophy of governance, or how human beings organize their affairs.
Patriotism isn't a governing philosophy. Sometimes viewed as subsidiary to the philosophy of
nationalism, patriotism is better described as a form of devotion.
For all the grandstanding, Mr. Macron may as well have asserted that chicken is the opposite
of hot sauce, so meaningless was the comparison.
Imperialism, we so quickly forget, was the order of the day heading into the 20th century.
Humanity has known little else but empire since 2400 B.C. The advent of globalism, replete with
its foreign power capitals and multi-national institutions is scarcely distinct.
Imperialism -- as opposed to nationalism -- seeks to impose a nation's way of life, its
currency, its traditions, its flags, its anthems, its demographics, and its rules and laws upon
others wherever they may be.
Truly, President Trump's nationalism heralds a return to the old U.S. doctrine of
non-intervention, expounded by President George Washington in his farewell address of 1796:
" It must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary
vicissitudes of [Europe's] politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her
friendships or enmities."
It should not have to be pointed out that the great wars of the 20th century could not be
considered "ordinary vicissitudes", but rather, that imperialism had begun to run amok on the
continent.
It was an imperialism rooted in nihilism, putting the totality of the state at its heart.
Often using nationalism as nothing more than a method of appeal, socialism as a doctrine of
governance, and Jews as a subject of derision and scapegoating.
Today's imperialism is known as globalism.
It is what drives nations to project outward their will, usually with force; causes armies
to cross borders in the hope of subjugating other human beings or the invaded nation's natural
resources; and defines a world, or region, or continent by its use of central authority and
foreign capital control.
Instead of armies of soldiers, imperialists seek to dominate using armies of economists and
bureaucrats. Instead of forced payments to a foreign capital, globalism figured out how to
create economic reliance: first on sterling, then on the dollar, now for many on the Euro. This
will soon be leapfrogged by China's designs.
And while imperialism has served some good purposes throughout human history, it is only
when grounded in something larger than man; whether that be natural law, God, or otherwise. But
such things are scarcely long-lived.
While benevolent imperialism can create better conditions over a period of time, humanity's
instincts will always lean towards freedom and self-governance.
It is this fundamental distinction between the United States' founding and that of the
modern Republic of France that defines the two nations.
The people of France are "granted" their freedoms by the government, and the government
creates the conditions and dictates the terms upon which those freedoms are exercised.
As Charles Kesler wrote for the Claremont
Review of Books in May, "As a result, there are fewer and fewer levers by which the governed
can make its consent count".
France is the archetypal administrative state, while the United States was founded on
natural law, a topic that scarcely gets enough attention anymore.
Nationalism - or nationism, if you will - therefore represents a break from the war-hungry
norm of human history . Its presence in the 20th century has been rewritten and
bastardized.
A nationalist has no intention of invading your country or changing your society. A
nationalist cares just as much as anyone else about the plights of others around the world but
believes putting one's own country first is the way to progress. A nationalist would never seek
to divide by race, gender, ethnicity, or sexual preference, or otherwise. This runs contrary to
the idea of a united, contiguous nation at ease with itself.
Certainly nationalism's could-be bastard child of chauvinism can give root to imperialistic
tendencies. But if the nation can and indeed does look after its own, and says to the world
around it, "these are our affairs, you may learn from them, you may seek advice, we may even
assist if you so desperately need it and our affairs are in order," then nationalism can be a
great gift to the 21st century and beyond.
This is definitely looks like the USSR trajectory with alcoholism. When people feel that they
are not needed they start to behave in self-destructive ways.
Drug overdoses led to more deaths in the U.S. in 2017 than any year on record and were the
leading cause of death in the country, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration
report issued Friday .
More than 72,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2017 , according to
the NIH -- about 200 per day. That number is more than four times the number who died in
1999 from drug abuse: 16,849.
The figures are up about 15 percent from 63,632 drug-related deaths in 2016.
Since 2011, more people have died from drug overdoses than by gun violence, car accidents,
suicide, or homicide, the DEA report stated.
In 2017,
40,100 people died in vehicle incidents; 15,549 were fatally shot, not
including suicide;
17,284 were homicide victims, though an unspecified portion of this number includes gunshot
victims; and nearly 45,000 committed suicide.
The DEA attributed last year's uptick in deaths to a spike in opioid-related fatalities. The
agency said 49,060 people died as a result of abusing opioids, up from 42,249 in 2016.
Of those opioid deaths, synthetic opioids were responsible for nearly 20,000. More people
died from them than heroin. The DEA report said synthetic fentanyl and comparable types of
drugs are cheaper than heroin , making them more attractive to buyers.
The DEA also found heroin-related drug overdoses had doubled from 2013 to 2016 because
manufacturers illegally producing synthetic fentanyl have laced the heroin with opioids.
President Trump
declared the opioid epidemic a "national emergency" in October 2017. Last month, he
signed a comprehensive bill that included $8.5 billion in funding for related projects to
reduce addiction and deaths.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions noted one positive trend in the study.
"Preliminary data from the CDC shows that drug overdose deaths actually began to decline
in late 2017 and opioid prescriptions fell significantly," Sessions said in a statement.
Saudi Arabia has fully complied with OPEC+ agreement in every month through May. Since then
it has cut supply, but by less than it pledged to curb. October is 1st time it has increased
output above the starting point.
WTI has now retraced 60% of the two-year uptrend...
WTI Crude is now down over 6% YTD to its lowest since Dec 2017.
The Democrats are politically responsible for the rise of Trump.
Notable quotes:
"... As Obama said following Trump's election, the Democrats and Republicans are "on the same team" and their differences amount to an "intramural scrimmage." They are on the team of, and owned lock stock and barrel by, the American corporate-financial oligarchy, personified by Trump. ..."
"... The Democrats are, moreover, politically responsible for the rise of Trump. The Obama administration paved the way for Trump by implementing the pro-corporate (Wall Street bailout), pro-war (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, drone killings) and anti-democratic (mass surveillance, persecution of Snowden, Assange, Manning) policies that Trump is continuing and intensifying. And by breaking all his election promises and carrying out austerity policies against the working class, Obama enabled the billionaire gangster Trump to make an appeal to sections of workers devastated by deindustrialization, presenting himself as the anti-establishment spokesman for the "forgotten man." ..."
"... This was compounded by the right-wing Clinton candidacy, which exuded contempt for the working class and appealed for support to the military and CIA and wealthy middle-class layers obsessed with identity politics. Sanders' endorsement of Clinton gave Trump an open field to exploit discontent among impoverished social layers. ..."
Pelosi's deputy in the House, Steny Hoyer, sums up the right-wing policies of the Democrats,
declaring: "His [Trump's] objectives are objectives that we share. If he really means that,
then there is an opening for us to work together."
So much for the moral imperative of voting for the Democrats to stop Trump! As Obama said
following Trump's election, the Democrats and Republicans are "on the same team" and their
differences amount to an "intramural scrimmage." They are on the team of, and owned lock stock
and barrel by, the American corporate-financial oligarchy, personified by Trump.
The Democrats are, moreover, politically responsible for the rise of Trump. The Obama
administration paved the way for Trump by implementing the pro-corporate (Wall Street bailout),
pro-war (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, drone killings) and anti-democratic (mass
surveillance, persecution of Snowden, Assange, Manning) policies that Trump is continuing and
intensifying. And by breaking all his election promises and carrying out austerity policies
against the working class, Obama enabled the billionaire gangster Trump to make an appeal to
sections of workers devastated by deindustrialization, presenting himself as the
anti-establishment spokesman for the "forgotten man."
This was compounded by the right-wing Clinton candidacy, which exuded contempt for the
working class and appealed for support to the military and CIA and wealthy middle-class layers
obsessed with identity politics. Sanders' endorsement of Clinton gave Trump an open field to
exploit discontent among impoverished social layers.
The same process is taking place internationally. While strikes and other expressions of
working class opposition are growing and broad masses are moving to the left, the right-wing
policies of supposedly "left" establishment parties are enabling far-right and neo-fascist
forces to gain influence and power in countries ranging from Germany, Italy, Hungary and Poland
to Brazil.
As for Gay's injunction to vote "pragmatically," this is a crude promotion of the bankrupt
politics that are brought forward in every election to keep workers tied to the capitalist
two-party system. "You have only two choices. That is the reality, whether you like it or not."
And again and again, in the name of "practicality," the most unrealistic and impractical policy
is promoted -- supporting a party that represents the class that is oppressing and exploiting
you! The result is precisely the disastrous situation working people and youth face today --
falling wages, no job security, growing repression and the mounting threat of world war.
The Democratic Party long ago earned the designation "graveyard of social protest
movements," and for good reason. From the Populist movement of the late 19th century, to the
semi-insurrectional industrial union movement of the 1930s, to the civil rights movement of the
1950s and 1960s, to the mass anti-war protest movements of the 1960s and the eruption of
international protests against the Iraq War in the early 2000s -- every movement against the
depredations of American capitalism has been aborted and strangled by being channeled behind
the Democratic Party.
After a screening of "Vice" Thursday, I asked McKay which of our two right-wing Dementors
was worse, Cheney or Trump.
"Here's the question," he said.
"Would you rather have a professional assassin after you or a frothing maniac with a meat
cleaver? I'd rather have a maniac with a meat cleaver after me, so I think Cheney is way
worse.
And also, if you look at the body count, more than 600,000 people died in Iraq. It's
not even close, right? "
Modern technology makes many things possible, but it does not make them cheap... The camera
needs to work in pretty adverse conditions (think about the temperature inside the light on a hot
summer day, and temperature at winter) and transmit signal somewhere via WiFi (which has range
less then 100m) , or special cable that needs to be installed for this particular pole. With wifi
there should be many collection units which also cost money. So it make sense only for
streetlights adjacent to building with Internet networking. And there are already cameras of the
highway, so highways are basically covered. Which basically limits this technology to cities.
Just recoding without transmission would be much cheaper (transmission on demand). Excessive
paranoia here is not warranted.
According to new government procurement data, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have purchased an undisclosed number of secret
surveillance cameras that are being hidden in streetlights across the country.
Quartz
first reported this dystopian development of federal authorities stocking up on "covert
systems" last week. The report showed how the DEA paid a Houston, Texas company called Cowboy
Streetlight Concealments LLC. approximately $22,000 since June for "video recording and
reproducing equipment." ICE paid out about $28,000 to Cowboy Streetlight Concealments during
the same period.
"It's unclear where the DEA and ICE streetlight cameras have been installed, or where the
next deployments will take place. ICE offices in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio have
provided funding for recent acquisitions from Cowboy Streetlight Concealments; the DEA's most
recent purchases were funded by the agency's Office of Investigative Technology, which is
located in Lorton, Virginia," said Quartz.
Christie Crawford, who co-owns Cowboy Streetlight Concealments with her husband, said she
was not allowed to talk about the government contracts in detail.
"We do streetlight concealments and camera enclosures," Crawford told Quartz. "Basically,
there's businesses out there that will build concealments for the government and that's what
we do. They specify what's best for them, and we make it. And that's about all I can probably
say."
However, she added: "I can tell you this -- things are always being watched. It doesn't
matter if you're driving down the street or visiting a friend, if government or law enforcement
has a reason to set up surveillance, there's great technology out there to do it."
Quartz notes that the DEA issued a solicitation for "concealments made to house network PTZ
[Pan-Tilt-Zoom] camera, cellular modem, cellular compression device," last Monday. According to
solicitation number D-19-ST-0037, the sole source award will go to Obsidian Integration
LLC.
On November 07, the Jersey City Police Department awarded Obsidian Integration with "the
purchase and delivery of a covert pole camera." Quartz said the filing did not provide much
detail about the design.
It is not just streetlights the federal government wants to mount covert surveillance
cameras on, it seems cameras inside traffic barrels could be heading onto America's highways in
the not too distant future.
And as Quartz reported in October, the DEA operates a complex network of digital
speed-display road signs that covertly scan license plates. On top of all this,
Amazon has been aggressively rolling out its
Rekognition facial-recognition software to law enforcement agencies and ICE, according to
emails uncovered by the Project for Government Oversight.
Chad Marlow, a senior advocacy and policy counsel for the ACLU, told Quartz that cameras in
street lights have been proposed before by local governments, typically under a program called
"smart" LED street light system.
"It basically has the ability to turn every streetlight into a surveillance device, which
is very Orwellian to say the least," Marlow told Quartz. "In most jurisdictions, the local
police or department of public works are authorized to make these decisions unilaterally and
in secret. There's no public debate or oversight."
And so, as the US continues to be distracted, torn amid record political, social and
economic polarization, big brother has no intention of letting the current crisis go to waste,
and quietly continues on its path of transforming the US into a full-blown police and
surveillance state.
I previously worked for one of these types of federal agencies and to be fair, $50,000
doesn't buy a lot of video surveillance equipment at government procurement costs. The
contractor doesn't just drill a hole and install a camera, they provide an entirely new
streetlight head with the camera installed.
It would be nice if they put some of this technology to work for a good cause. Maybe
warning you of traffic congestion ahead. Or advising you that one of your tires will soon go
flat.
Obviously that won't happen, so in the meantime, I can't wait to read next how the hackers
will find a way to make this government effort go completely haywire. As if the government
can't do it without any help. At least when the hackers do it, it will be funny and
thorough.
Besides the creepy surveillance part, some of the street light tech is interesting .
lights that dim like the frozen food section - when no one is in front of the case --- RGB
lighting that shows the approximate location for EMS to a 911 call ( lights that EMS can
follow by color)
basic neighborhood street lights are being replaced by LED -- lights in this article.
Hey, I have street lights AND cameras on the same poles at the shop/mad scientist lab/
play house.
but- surveillance -- the wall better have these lights -- light up the border !
This is yesteryears news. Shot Spotter has microphones that can pick up whispered
conversations for 300 feet for a long time now, while triangulating any gunshot in a
city...
The flailing New York Times attempted, frantically, to reassemble
George Soros into something resembling a respectable person in its November 1st edition.
The made-up claims and artifices used by the Gray Lady in this respect would tickle Edgar Allen
Poe who chronicled such an effort in his short story, "The Man Who Was All Used Up." If you
know Poe's story, he encounters a pile of clothing and artificial limbs lying on the floor
which begins speaking to him. A man then slowly assembles himself using all artificial parts.
As is typical of this newspaper, the actual George Soros is nowhere to be found in the
article.
The Times describes Soros' fanatical drive to turn the United States into an opium den as
"drug reform." His disgusting crusade which looted Russia and subverted its intelligentsia on
behalf of the City of London is described as "service" on behalf of the United States. His
currency speculations which also destroyed whole countries are described as "intriguing"
investment decisions. The Times goes out of its way to mischaracterize Soros' confessed
adolescent role under the Nazis, working under forged identity papers in his native Hungary, to
confiscate the property of his fellow Jews. In a CBS 60 Minutes interview about this
perfidy, Soros admitted it, and stated that he had no guilt or regrets. Had he not acted in
this way somebody else would have, he said. The experience formed his character. The Times'
only reference to this well-known but inconvenient reality is to state that Soros lived under
the Nazis as a "Christian." But, what can you expect from a newspaper which openly praised
Adolph Hitler in his early incarnations?
The central purpose of the Times piece is name calling: pinning an anti-Semitic label on
those who think Soros is evil, particularly President Donald Trump. The fact that Soros is
funding British spy Christopher Steele's post-FBI existence, and the fact of Soros' continued
direction, participation, and funding of the regime change operation against the President
including many of the operations of RESIST, of course, have nothing to do with Trump's dislike
of George and are never mentioned to the reader. In this exercise, the Times also omits the
Israeli government's recent characterization of George Soros. While condemning recent
anti-Semitic incidents in Hungary, the Israeli Foreign Ministry emphasized that its statement
was not "meant to delegitimize criticism of George Soros, who continuously undermines Israel's
democratically elected governments by funding organizations that defame the Jewish state and
seek to deny it the right to defend itself." Finally, the Times asserts that all of the facts
now in circulation about George Soros are attributable to Lyndon LaRouche and unnamed Eastern
European tyrants. They link to the New York Times coverage of LaRouche's criminal
conviction. But even the footnote to that linked article makes clear that the Grey Lady can't
even do straight news coverage of a court case when it comes to their bete noire, Lyndon
LaRouche. As the corrective footnote explains, LaRouche was not convicted of substantive fraud
charges, like the Times article about that event asserted. Rather, the footnote explains,
LaRouche was convicted of a broad conspiracy. In truth, this was exactly the same type of Klein
conspiracy Robert Mueller is now using against the Russians he indicted for an alleged small
bore social media campaign in 2016. Klein conspiracies are famously abusive uses of the
conspiracy laws which allow prosecutors to cheat and convict people of made up crimes.
The Times' futile reconstruction effort of course fails, miserably. Soros is, simply, a man
who is all used up. The stuff people recount about him is provably and devastatingly true. The
only error made by his detractors is to believe he has any kind of power anymore. He only has
his money and such fame as comes from being a thoroughly British project –an aging and
overused hitman for the failing City of London.
"... Adam Schiff will shut down the probe that found FBI abuses. ..."
"... Credit for knowing anything at all goes to Intel Chairman Devin Nunes and more recently a joint investigation by Reps. Bob Goodlatte (Judiciary) and Trey Gowdy (Oversight). Over 18 months of reviewing tens of thousands of documents and interviewing every relevant witness, no Senate or House Committee has unearthed evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the presidential election. If Special Counsel Robert Mueller has found more, he hasn't made it public. ..."
"... But House investigators have uncovered details of a Democratic scheme to prod the FBI to investigate the Trump campaign. We now know that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee hired Fusion GPS, which hired an intelligence-gun-for-hire, Christopher Steele, to write a "dossier" on Donald Trump's supposed links to Russia. ..."
"... Mr. Steele fed that document to the FBI, even as he secretly alerted the media to the FBI probe that Team Clinton had helped to initiate. Fusion, the oppo-research firm, was also supplying its dossier info to senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion. ..."
"... This abuse of the FBI's surveillance powers took place as part of a counterintelligence investigation into a presidential campaign -- which the FBI also hid from Congress. Such an investigation is unprecedented in post-J. Edgar Hoover American politics, and it included running informants into the Trump campaign, obtaining surveillance warrants, and using national security letters, which are secret subpoenas to obtain phone records and documents. ..."
Adam Schiff will shut down the probe that found FBI abuses.
Arguably the most important power at stake in Tuesday's election was Congressional
oversight, and the most important change may be Adam Schiff at the House Intelligence
Committee. The Democrat says his top priority is re-opening the Trump-Russia collusion probe,
but more important may be his intention to stop investigating how the FBI and Justice
Department abused their power in 2016. So let's walk through what we've learned to date.
Credit for knowing anything at all goes to Intel Chairman Devin Nunes and more recently a
joint investigation by Reps. Bob Goodlatte (Judiciary) and Trey Gowdy (Oversight). Over 18
months of reviewing tens of thousands of documents and interviewing every relevant witness, no
Senate or House Committee has unearthed evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia
to win the presidential election. If Special Counsel Robert Mueller has found more, he hasn't
made it public.
But House investigators have uncovered details of a Democratic scheme to prod the FBI to
investigate the Trump campaign. We now know that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the
Democratic National Committee hired Fusion GPS, which hired an intelligence-gun-for-hire,
Christopher Steele, to write a "dossier" on Donald Trump's supposed links to Russia.
Mr. Steele fed that document to the FBI, even as he secretly alerted the media to the FBI
probe that Team Clinton had helped to initiate. Fusion, the oppo-research firm, was also
supplying its dossier info to senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose wife, Nellie,
worked for Fusion.
House investigators have also documented the FBI's lack of judgment in using the dossier to
obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against former Trump aide Carter
Page. The four FISA warrants against Mr. Page show that the FBI relied almost exclusively on
the unproven Clinton-financed accusations, as well as a news story that was also ginned up by
Mr. Steele.
The FBI told the FISA court that Mr. Steele was "credible," despite Mr. Steele having
admitted to Mr. Ohr that he passionately opposed a Trump Presidency. The FBI also failed to
tell the FISA court about the Clinton campaign's tie to the dossier.
This abuse of the FBI's surveillance powers took place as part of a counterintelligence
investigation into a presidential campaign -- which the FBI also hid from Congress. Such an
investigation is unprecedented in post-J. Edgar Hoover American politics, and it included
running informants into the Trump campaign, obtaining surveillance warrants, and using national
security letters, which are secret subpoenas to obtain phone records and documents.
Mr. Nunes and his colleagues also found that officials in Barack Obama's White House
"unmasked" Trump campaign officials to learn about their conversations with foreigners; that
FBI officials exhibited anti-Trump bias in text messages; and that the FBI team that
interviewed then Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn reported that they did not think
Mr. Flynn had lied about his Russian contacts. Mr. Mueller still squeezed Mr. Flynn to cop a
guilty plea.
All of this information had to be gathered despite relentless opposition from Democrats and
their media contacts. Liberal groups ginned up a phony ethics complaint against Mr. Nunes,
derailing his committee leadership for months. Much of the media became Mr. Schiff's scribes
rather than independent reporters. Meanwhile, the FBI and Justice continue to stonewall
Congress, defying subpoenas and hiding names and information behind heavy redactions.
There is still much more the public deserves to know. This includes how and when the FBI's
Trump investigation began, the extent of FBI surveillance, and the role of Obama officials and
foreigners such as Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic who in spring 2016 supposedly told Trump
campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that Russia held damaging Clinton emails. When he takes
over the committee, Mr. Schiff will stop asking these questions and bless the FBI-Justice
refusal to cooperate.
Senate Republicans could continue to dig next year, but Mr. Mueller seems uninterested.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions in March asked Utah U.S. Attorney John Huber to look into FBI
misconduct, but there has been little public reporting of what he is finding, if he is even
still looking. Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz is investigating, though that report
is likely to take many more months.
* * *
All of which puts an additional onus on Mr. Trump to declassify key FBI and Justice
documents sought by Mr. Nunes and other House investigators before Mr. Schiff buries the truth.
A few weeks ago Mr. Trump decided to release important documents, only to renege under pressure
from Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein and members of the intelligence community.
Mr. Sessions resigned this week and perhaps Mr. Rosenstein will as well. Meantime, Mr. Trump
should revisit his decision and help Mr. Nunes and House Republicans finish the job in the lame
duck session of revealing the truth about the misuse of U.S. intelligence and the FISA court in
a presidential election.
"... Later, it emerged that QIA and Glencore planned to sell the majority of the stake they had acquired in Rosneft to China's energy conglomerate CEFC, but the deal fell through after Beijing set its sights on CEFC and launched an investigation that saw the removal of its chief executive. The investigation was reportedly part of a wide crackdown on illicit business practices on the part of private Chinese companies favored by Beijing. ..."
Russian VTB, a state-owned bank, funded a significant portion of the Qatar Investment
Authority's acquisition of a stake in oil giant Rosneft , Reuters
reports , quoting nine unnamed sources familiar with the deal.
VTB, however, has denied to Reuters taking any part in the deal.
"VTB has not issued and is not planning to issue a loan to QIA to finance the
acquisition," the bank said in response for a request for comment.
The Reuters sources, however, claim VTB provided a US$6 billion loan to the Qatar sovereign
wealth fund that teamed up with Swiss Glencore to acquire 19.5 percent in Rosneft last year.
Reuters cites data regarding VTB's activity issued by the Russian central bank that shows VTB
lent US$6.7 billion (434 billion rubles) to unnamed foreign entities and the loan followed
another loan of US$5.20 billion (350 billion rubles) from the same central bank.
The news first made
headlines in December, taking markets by surprise, as Rosneft's partial privatization was
expected by most to be limited to Russian investors. The price tag on the stake was around
US$11.57 billion (692 billion rubles), of which Glencore agreed to contribute US$324 million.
The remainder was forked over by the Qatar Investment Authority, as well as non-recourse bank
financing.
Russia's budget received about US$10.55 billion (
710.8 billion rubles ) from the deal, including US$ 270 million (18 billion rubles) in
extra dividends. Rosneft, for its part, got an indirect stake in Glencore of 0.54 percent.
Later, it
emerged that QIA and Glencore planned to sell the majority of the stake they had acquired
in Rosneft to China's energy conglomerate CEFC, but the deal fell through after Beijing set its
sights on CEFC and launched an investigation that saw the removal of its chief executive. The
investigation was reportedly part of a wide crackdown on illicit business practices on the part
of private Chinese companies favored by Beijing.
"... With all due cynical respect... I find it highly ironic that some of the biggest money launderers and Mafiosi are Baltic banks. The hilarity never ends. ..."
"... Full scale bull ****. No single former Soviet bloc country get into economic level of pre-Berlin wall fall. They are done. ..."
With all due cynical respect... I find it highly ironic that some of the biggest money
launderers and Mafiosi are Baltic banks. The hilarity never ends.
Here is classic: GDP PPP per capita. What to pay attention.
#1, After 30 years and joining EU and NATO there is no difference in former Soviet bloc.
Just looks like Russia is greatest profiteer. Now those parasites are chained to west.
#2, countries of former Soviet bloc are in better shape than countries that were in sphere
of western imperialism. Especially look at countries where USA imperialism worked since 1823
Monroe's doctrine. Chart shows that in 200 years USA was not able to achieve much progress
despite permanent military interventions and political influence.
As much as I like the idea of taking my state to Estonia status, too many winner-take-all
politicians and weak thinkers to recognize that new borders would solve lots and lots of
problems.
Socialists are clearly smart, but in actuality just simple evil, immoral thieves. They
will be unlikely to support any secession because they know their enemies are the source of
their lucre.
Balkanization, what little there will be, will most likely come after we are drug into
WWIII and we are back to a 1700's subsistence existence.
A pessimist is never disappointed, but I will happily take an optimist's surprise if
people just stop and live and let live.
.............. try, try to "Unchain America" next July 4. What better way to celebrate
Independence Day than with a joining of hands across the land, if not to secede, then to
affirm our right to, one state at a time?
It's 2,790 miles from New York to Los Angeles, which is 14,731,200 feet. At three feet per
person, it would take around 4,910,400 people -- less than 1/66th of the US population -- to
make a human chain like the three Balkan states did.
"... With the benefit of hindsight, I suspect most Democrat leaders now realize that their attempt to take out Judge Brent Kavanaugh with false charges that he sexually assaulted someone in High School was a disaster. Their heavy handed, Bolshevik tactics backfired and galvanized a broad spectrum of Americans who were sickened by the spectacle of a verbal lynch mob being led by the decrepit Diane Feinstein. ..."
"... that he dated Dr. Ford for six years. He said that she never mentioned being the victim of sexual assault or misconduct. He also stated that Dr. Ford did not mention any fear of close quarters or flying, and that the two traveled together, including on a small propeller plane. also said that he witnessed Dr. Ford, drawing from her background in psychology, help prepare her roommate, Ms. Monica McLean, for a potential polygraph examination when Ms. McLean wasinterviewing for jobs with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office. He stated that Dr. Ford helped Ms. McLean become familiar and less nervous about the exam. ..."
"... No! Let's see her tried for perjury with full discovery I will be glad to be a pro bone consultant on that trial and i have a lot of experience. ..."
"... The Dems COULD have made Kavanaugh's support for torture a principled reason for opposing him. ..."
"... The Dems could've raised all kinds of principled objections to Kavanaugh; but tellingly, they chose not to. They chose to take the low road instead. ..."
"... They are complicit. Especially Feinstein. SHe's AOK with torture and 24-7 surveillance. WHat do you expect from an ardent cannabis prohibitionist? ..."
"... Indeed. That would have been a principle worth highlighting. And the question put forward - "Should a torture supporter serve on the Supreme Court?" But..Dianne Feinstein and Chuckie Schumer were never interested in that. All they were interested in was creating a media spectacle and that's exactly what they did by holding on to Ford's letter for 2 months and unleashing it the day before the vote. ..."
"... Christine Ford, Monica McLean and the others should testify to a grand jury. Isn't perjury what they indicted & convicted Gen. Flynn & George Papadopolous for? ..."
"... Why is it that Christine Ford can get away with blatantly and repeatedly lying to Congress about a federal judge but Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos were dragged through court (no doubt at great expense to them) for so-called minor lies to FBI interrogators? ..."
"... Launching 18 USC 1001 prosecutions like so many torpedoes might look expeditious in the short term but in the long term, it will be bad for both the working agent on the street and for justice in the bigger picture. ..."
"... Ford lied to the senate judiciary committee under oath. In your scheme of things people like Avenatti and his female tools can slander and libel at will in conformations even if they are interviewed by the FBI? OK, then the FBI should interview them under oath. ..."
"... If at least one Democrat is going to be removed from the Senate Judiciary Committee as a result of the midterm election realignment, I nominate 'Spartacus' as the guy. ..."
"... Kavanaugh's real crime was he went after Bill Clinton and now he paid the price for it. It's too bad in Yale they don't teach them how to watch their backs in Washington. ..."
"... Brian Merrick has been revealed as the boyfriend. He is a realtor in Malibu. His letter states: " Despite trying to maintain a long distance relationship, I ended the relationship once I discovered that Dr. Ford was unfaithful while living in Hawaii. After the breakup, I took her off the credit card we shared. But nearly 1 year later, I noticed Dr. Ford had been charging the card and charged about $600 worth of merchandise. When confronted, Dr. Ford said she did not use the card but later admitted the use after I threatened to involve fraud prevention." 'Revealed: The Man Accusing Blasey Ford of Lying About Polygraphs.' The Daily Caller, October 3, 2018. https://dailycaller.com/201... ..."
"... A woman who said that she attended UNC with Dr. Ford, identified a third woman, name blotted out, and stated that the three of them "used to purchase drugs" from a male whose name also has been blotted out. The three of them "regularly attended parties with members of his fraternity." The witness said "that she was present at --a blotted out name of an apartment--"one night in April 1987 when Dr. Ford and --someone again blotted out--"arrived to consume drugs." This witness "said that the Dr. Ford she knew had an active and robust social life in college." (Sept.25) ..."
With the benefit of hindsight, I suspect most Democrat leaders now realize
that their attempt to take out Judge Brent Kavanaugh with false charges that he sexually assaulted someone in High School was a disaster.
Their heavy handed, Bolshevik tactics backfired and galvanized a broad spectrum of Americans who were sickened by the spectacle of
a verbal lynch mob being led by the decrepit Diane Feinstein. The truth about the sex-fraud, Dr. Chrissie Ford, is now exposed
by the voluminous report issued by Senator Grassley's Judiciary Committee staff. Read it
here . (
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2018-11-02%20Kavanaugh%20Report.pdf
). Here are the highlights:
The Committee was informed that Dr. Ford had a fear of flying caused by Justice Kavanaugh's alleged sexual assault on her
more than 35 years before. That was a lie and the committee staffers discovered subsequently that Dr. Ford had racked up a ton
of frequent flyer miles. When asked about her fear of flying and about whether she had ever helped anyone prepare for a polygraph
examination, Dr. Ford acknowledged that she flew to the hearing and traveled by plane for work and leisure. Indeed, Dr. Ford listed
on her CV that one of her hobbies includes international surf travel.
The Judiciary staffers interviewed 17 people who had information about Dr. Ford's allegations. No one could corroborate her
claims about Judge Kavanaugh. In fact, two men testified that they had a contact with Dr. Ford as teen-agers that was in line
with the account provided by Dr. Ford except that it was consensual.
A long time boyfriend of Chrissie testified:
that he dated Dr. Ford for six years. He said that she never mentioned being the victim of sexual assault or misconduct. He also
stated that Dr. Ford did not mention any fear of close quarters or flying, and that the two traveled together, including on a small
propeller plane. also said that he witnessed Dr. Ford, drawing from her background in psychology, help prepare her roommate, Ms.
Monica McLean, for a potential polygraph examination when Ms. McLean wasinterviewing for jobs with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's
Office. He stated that Dr. Ford helped Ms. McLean become familiar and less nervous about the exam. The Judiciary Committee report
also details the allegations and findings from others who alleged sexual misconduct by the Judge. It was all a pack of lies. A contrived
hit job intended to destroy the man's reputation and try to cow him into backing away from the nomination. That bullying tactic failed
spectacularly. It ended up rallying a broad swath of the American public, especially women, who understand fairness and justice.
The injustice on display by the Democrats ended up helping the Republicans nail down a bigger majority in the Senate. Look for fewer
Democrat seats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Absolutely agree. With Nadler now openly talking about impeaching Kavanaugh, there is no alternative. The truth must be brought
out. The alternative is to leave him exposed permanently and keep this whole plan viable for use against future nominees. With
RBG approaching retirement this is critical.
Getting to the actual facts would be a great good. But we know that will not happen. The administration and the senate have already
shown their attitude toward professional quality investigation. That appears to be the last thing they want. If they actually
believed any of what they said, they would follow your advice. We will see.
On second thought that is probably an unfair standard. Opening up discovery for a trial would have negative effects even for
a very solid case.
"The administration and the senate have already shown their attitude toward professional quality investigation."
You mean the Mueller "Russia" investigation? That is beyond a joke at this point. Dr. Ford should be charged. She's got $1 million
or more from the go bribe fund me accounts. She should lawyer up. So should Ms. Mclean.
I think the lesson to be learned is that getting all the facts simply cannot be done, which is why we have a statute of limitations,
and why Dr. Ford's accusation should not ever have seen the light of day 30 years after the purported event.
Most liberals seem to think the statute of limitations has to do with the purported offender "living with guilt," but the law
does not acknowledge the "sensation of guilt." The statute is because after a period of time the offense cannot be fairly prosecuted
because witnesses die or move away, memories fade, evidence degrades or disappears, and so forth, and this shoddy exhibition is
proof of the validity of that principle.
I do not see how you can fault Grassley's efforts to get the facts. He bent over backward to accommodate the Democrats lies about
Kavanaugh and the WH authorized the the additional FBI investigation.
The Dems COULD have made Kavanaugh's support for torture a principled reason for opposing him. Then if they lost, which they were
likely going to do anyway, it would have at least been considered fair politics and it would have placed the spotlight on a very
ugly chapter in the country's recent history that needs to be addressed.
Shaming, shunning, bullying, threats of violence, and violence are all now accepted as methods by the left. They are totally consumed
in a political tribalism. Rather than raising the moral standards of the group they are using the most primitive instincts and
you can see this in many of the tweets from the left that use gross sexual imagery to demean their "enemies".
The more I read on group psychology such as Freud, Le Bon, etc. the more concerned I become whether the age of reason, principles,
and science will survive group psychosis given the powerful tools like social media enabling it. Social media is one of the most
dangerous technologies we have developed.
"In order to make a correct judgment upon the morals of groups, one must take into consideration the fact that when individuals
come together in a group all their individual inhibitions fall away and all the cruel, brutal and destructive
instincts, which lie dormant in individuals as relics of a primitive epoch, are stirred up to find free gratification. But under
the influence of suggestion groups are also capable of high achievements in the shape of abnegation, unselfishness, and devotion
to an ideal.
While with isolated individuals personal interest is almost the only motive force, with groups it is very rarely
prominent.
It is possible to speak of an individual having his moral standards raised by a group. Whereas the intellectual capacity
of a group is always far below that of an individual, its ethical conduct may rise as
high above his as it may sink deep below it." - Gustave Le Bon
Indeed. That would have been a principle worth highlighting. And the question put forward - "Should a torture supporter serve
on the Supreme Court?" But..Dianne Feinstein and Chuckie Schumer were never interested in that. All they were interested in was
creating a media spectacle and that's exactly what they did by holding on to Ford's letter for 2 months and unleashing it the
day before the vote.
Christine Ford, Monica McLean and the others should testify to a grand jury. Isn't perjury what they indicted & convicted Gen.
Flynn & George Papadopolous for?
The recent accident that RBG experienced has probably caused both Democrats and Republicans some concern that there may soon be
another Supreme Court seat to fill under a Trump administration.
Why is it that Christine Ford can get away with blatantly and repeatedly lying to Congress about a federal judge but Michael Flynn
and George Papadopoulos were dragged through court (no doubt at great expense to them) for so-called minor lies to FBI interrogators?
Off topic: I'd love to read PT's take on the mid-term election with attention paid to the boxes of suddenly-discovered ballots
in AZ that have put (wouldn't you know!) Democratic Senate candidate Sinema in the lead. And in light of the FL recount, I'd also
be interested in what he has to say about the flagrant disregard for chain of custody of [the infamous] Broward Co. boxes of ballots.
Why is it that ballots discovered post-election day always seem to help Democrats? I don't recall ever reading or hearing about
newly-discovered ballots that benefited Republican candidates.
In my experience lying to the FBI, 18 USC 1001, was used very, very infrequently. It was used as an add on charge in the prosecution
of some of the Watergate subjects and they had been placed under oath. It was used to my knowledge to prosecute an individual
who had made a false accusatory statement in the Ray Donavan investigation in the early 80's, another debacle instigated by Senate
Democrats. Otherwise it was rarely used, and it shouldn't be used in my opinion unless the person has been given a
separate warning
and waiver, or placed under oath.
Once Big Government has opened the floodgates on prosecuting people for lying to the FBI, especially when it becomes obvious that
it is being used selectively, and in isolation in order to hang a charge on somebody in pursuit of manifestly political ends,
cooperation with FBI Agents trying to do their job will, and should, dry up. Who needs to take a chance on some partisan operation,
such as Bob Mueller, parsing their adverbs and adjectives for signs of deceit when the option is to take advantage of your right
to silence.
Launching 18 USC 1001 prosecutions like so many torpedoes might look expeditious in the short term but in the long term, it will
be bad for both the working agent on the street and for justice in the bigger picture.
Ford lied to the senate judiciary committee under oath. In your scheme of things people like Avenatti and his female tools can
slander and libel at will in conformations even if they are interviewed by the FBI? OK, then the FBI should interview them under
oath.
If at least one Democrat is going to be removed from the Senate Judiciary Committee as a result of the midterm election realignment,
I nominate 'Spartacus' as the guy.
Now that there's a new AG in town--one who isn't either cowed, incompetent, or possibly blackmailed--Mrs.Ford may get her just
deserts.
Kavanaugh's real crime was he went after Bill Clinton and now he paid the price for it. It's too bad in Yale they don't teach
them how to watch their backs in Washington.
"The injustice on display by the Democrats ended up helping the Republicans nail down a bigger majority in the Senate. Look
for fewer Democrat seats on the Senate Judiciary Committee."
While this may have held true for the Senate, it didn't in the House.
I agree with you in the sense that many of the Democrat candidates did not take the ultra progressive (socialist?) path. Many
seemed more centrist.
That was the result of state and country Democratic parties.
I think this because I definitely see a difference in the different county Republican parties in my state.
Unfortunately in my state (CO) what happens in Boulder and Denver usually carries. And as we say in CO, Boulder is about 40
square miles surrounded by reality. Denver is becoming a similar alternate reality.
Thus, I am ashamed to say, our current Governor is a person from a quite alternate reality from the one in which I live.
Brian Merrick has been revealed as the boyfriend. He is a realtor in Malibu. His letter states: " Despite trying to maintain a
long distance relationship, I ended the relationship once I discovered that Dr. Ford was unfaithful while living in Hawaii. After
the breakup, I took her off the credit card we shared. But nearly 1 year later, I noticed Dr. Ford had been charging the card
and charged about $600 worth of merchandise. When confronted, Dr. Ford said she did not use the card but later admitted the use
after I threatened to involve fraud prevention."
'Revealed: The Man Accusing Blasey Ford of Lying About Polygraphs.' The Daily Caller, October 3, 2018.
https://dailycaller.com/201...
A male witness "(Sept. 26): stated that when he was a 19-year-old college student, he visited D.C. over spring break and kissed
a girl he believes was Dr. Ford. He said that the kiss happened in the bedroom of a house which was about a 15-to- 20 minute walk
from the Van Ness Metro, that Dr. Ford was wearing a swimsuit under her clothing, and that the kissing ended when a friend jumped
on them as a joke. The witness said that the woman initiated the kissing and that he did not force himself on her. "
A woman who said that she attended UNC with Dr. Ford, identified a third woman, name blotted out, and stated that the three
of them "used to purchase drugs" from a male whose name also has been blotted out. The three of them "regularly attended parties
with members of his fraternity." The witness said "that she was present at --a blotted out name of an apartment--"one night in
April 1987 when Dr. Ford and --someone again blotted out--"arrived to consume drugs." This witness "said that the Dr. Ford she
knew had an active and robust social life in college." (Sept.25)
PT, thanks very much for posting this.
I cannot find any mention of this Judiciary Committee report at the Washington Post web site.
They had a ton of coverage of Ford's allegation before the vote, including a lengthy interview with her current husband.
It says a lot about them that they have, unless I have missed something, ignored this report.
Could the reason they are ignoring it be that they don't want to publicize anything which contradicts the line that "Women tell
the truth"?
A line that they have used to great political effect, in particular in the sinking of the Senate candidacy of Judge Roy Moore
of Alabama.
"... By Richard Murphy, a chartered accountant and a political economist. He has been described by the Guardian newspaper as an "anti-poverty campaigner and tax expert". He is Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London and Director of Tax Research UK. He is a non-executive director of Cambridge Econometrics . He is a member of the Progressive Economy Forum. Originally published at Tax Research UK ..."
"... 'a research paper by Hendrik Bessembinder published in the September edition of the Journal of Financial Economics posed the question "Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills?" with some rather worrying conclusions for most equity investors. ..."
"... the view that stock markets themselves create value ..."
"... the view that stock markets themselves create value ..."
"... One aspect not touched upon is stocks are loans that never get repaid. If I pay $100 of a share and the company thrives. I get paid dividends in perpetuity. Plus, If I buy that share from someone who already had bought it (a trade) I am being paid when I actually provided none of the original loan (like a bank buying the "paper" from another bank). Someone calculated that the dividends paid by Apple have paid off the amount originally tendered by several hundred percent, which would make them the worst bank loans in all of creation. ..."
As many readers will know, I am not the greatest fan of stock markets. I consider most
activity on such markets to be exploitative because of the asymmetry of the information
available to investors. Much of it, from the pay directors take to the actions of most market
managers, I consider to be rent seeking. The idea that equities provide strong returns is
pretty much an urban myth, in my opinion, based on selective reading of data in those periods
between market crashes.
There is quite a lot of evidence to support my view in an article by long-term and highly
opinionated equity investor Terry Smith in the
FT this morning . As he notes he did this based on 'a research paper by Hendrik
Bessembinder published in the September edition of the Journal of Financial Economics posed the
question "Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills?" with some rather worrying conclusions for most
equity investors. ' I should make clear that the research is US based. I have no reason to
think that performance in the UK is any different.
The main conclusions is that the majority of shares do not perform nearly as well as
government bonds. It is an exceptional few that make it look as though shares outperform
gilts.
Since 1977 the median new shares issued on the stock exchange has delivered a negative rate
of return, even with dividends reinvested.
On average, a quoted security has a life expectancy of just 7.5 years over the 90 year
period studied. No wonder short-termism is rife.
And as he notes:
Just five companies out of the universe of 25,967 in the study account for 10 per cent of
the total wealth creation over the 90 years, and just over 4 per cent of the companies
account for all of the wealth created.
So, what is to be learned?
First, the stock exchange is not a business funding mechanism: it is a business exit
strategy for most companies.
Second, most people are fools to take part in this game.
Third, if you insist on taking part only invest in the best stocks.
Fourth, since you have no way of knowing which ones they are, invest in a market
tracker.
Or fifth, buy gilts.
But whatever you don't believe the story that the market deliver higher rates of return than
government bonds: 96% of it does not.
When 43 pushed the privatization of Social Security through more 401k and similar
approaches my immediate thought was that he was rationalizing the transfer of wealth and
increased fees to Wall Street. Someday there will be a post-mortem about Neo-Liberalism and
that episode merits at least a footnote. To escape the memory hole.
Don't forget that Clinton had reached a deal with Gingerich to privatize up to half of the
Social Security Trust Fund in the stock market, which was only derailed by the Lewinski
scandal. Clinton was scheduled to unveil this at the State of the Union address the week
after the Lewinski story started to break, and pulled back because he was advised that if he
were impeached he'd need the Democrats in the Senate to avoid conviction. Google "Robert
Kuttner" "Clinton" and "Social Security" to get the details. There's also a book called "The
Pact" by Steven Gillon that documents the back channel negotiations, which were conducted by
Erskine Bowles, Clinton's last Chief of Staff.
It would have been the ultimate Neo-Liberal betrayal of the party of FDR, but we were
saved by a blue dress. Amazing story, not nearly as well known as it should be. We might have
been spared the Hillary Clinton phenomenon.
I don't want my Social Security benefits to be any kind of loan that has to be repaid.
That just gives the government another way to cut my benefits at some point.
I don't want Wall Street to get one penny of the contributions I have made to Social
Security for the past 50 years. They don't deserve it!
Your proposal is no more than a neoliberal justification for subjecting the Social
Security system to the depredations of the "Market", allowing the rentiers to get their cut
off the top.
Remember that taxes don't really pay for government expenses in a fiat system; don't
forget MMT.
Accounts are not real wealth any more than the map is the territory (CF Korzibsky and
general semantics). The stock market, as well as the bond market, are accounting gizmos, and
accounting is not actual wealth creation, and neither does owning stocks or binds produce
anything real.
Anyone investing in bonds in the low interest rate environment that has prevailed these
past ten years would disagree, I think.
I call rubbish on this article. Not my experience. My investing strategy is to follow the
oligarchs. Invest in stocks that make money by destroying the planet. Take profits when
things look toppy. Reinvest dividends.
Buy bonds at your own peril. Maybe when rates are in the 6% plus range but we're a long
way from that.
The main conclusions is that the majority of shares do not perform nearly as well as
government bonds. It is an exceptional few that make it look as though shares outperform
gilts.
Since 1977 the median new shares issued on the stock exchange has delivered a negative
rate of return, even with dividends reinvested.
On average, a quoted security has a life expectancy of just 7.5 years over the 90 year
period studied. No wonder short-termism is rife.
Have it your way – be poor. I'd rather have money than snark.
I have practical experience and have done better in equities.
The time scale of the article is 40 years – in our current economy 40 years ago is
ancient history. And they focus only on new issues, which represent a fraction of total
market cap. And I doubt many financial advisors would agree with me as I a) don't employ any
of them; and b) find them to be a repository of groupthink and always to miss inflection
points.
I dismiss anyone advising bonds in the current interest rate environment. Unless you want
to end up with less money than you started out with.
while it's great that you are succeeding in the market, remember that we have had 10 years
of qe and stock buybacks. I hear student loan bonds are very lucrative if you've got enough
dough to make a position
On average, a quoted security has a life expectancy of just 7.5 years over the 90 year
period studied. No wonder short-termism is rife.
This does not mean the average company goes bankrupt in 7.5 years. Acquisitions also
remove quoted securities. I don't see the link between how long a security is traded and
whether or not the underlying assets are managed for long or short term.
The dot com bubble sure had it's share of here today gone tomorrow stocks but, I'm also
wondering if they took into account many of the mergers and aquisitions that occurred during
the lead up to the bubble's popping.
The issue here is that companies only get money from e events:
1. During the initial IPO
2. If they issue new shares afterwards, which dilutes existing owners
Other than that, you are not, when you buy a share, sending money to the bank account of
the firm that you are investing in. What are you doing? Sending money to the person who you
bought the share from. It is pretty much speculation. Capitalists hate to admit this
idea.
Also, companies that buy back shares or pay dividends are taking money of their cash flows
and giving money to the shareholders.
In this regard, capitalism is not a good way to allocate capital. It can be used for
various types of manipulation, an example being a share buyback right before executives cash
in their stock options.
Years ago I read in Marjorie Kelly's The Divine Right of Capital
that 97% of all stock trades never contribute one direct penny to the Company who's shares
are traded. It's purely a speculative game.
It was the book that first woke me up 15 years ago to the way our financial system really
works. Needless to say, this site has become my ongoing educational resource.
Stock prices are a zero sum game. Every extra dollar the seller of a stock gets is an
extra dollar that the purchaser has paid to secure a share of future profits.
IMO stock markets in and of themselves both create and destroy "value" in much the same
way that a casino does, including largely hidden social costs. While there is little in the
way of public data to support either a pro or con view and setting aside issues of
manipulation of market prices, the view that stock markets themselves create value by
enabling price discovery is integral to neoliberalism. I agree with the view that the related
long-term "financialization" of the economy contributes to recurring speculative asset price
bubbles and leads to long-term economic stagnation while enriching a few.
"price discovery is integral to neoliberalism"
I would have thought it's the exact opposite ?
(Perhaps your "indeed" was ironic ?)
It's the inequality of information (ie price discovery) that makes the stock market so
profitable for the "right" people.
The Fed's years of QE is another factor that has made price discovery very difficult.
I believe that the concept of price 'discovery' is already an important element of
neoliberal framing, and that Chauncey Gardiner has shared a profound insight. Discovery
implies that there is a natural price, somehow prior to and independent of human/political
intervention. The stock market is a way to embody the collective of individual 'rational
actors', and give this collective transcendent power over individuals, corporations and
nations. It is perhaps more clear when one looks at bond markets and the way they are used to
'discipline' nations whose fiscal policies diverge from the neoliberal consensus. The fact
that the hand holding the whip is invisible is a feature, not a bug. The whipped feel the
lash, les autres hear the crack and see the blood, but there is no recourse
imaginable -- because Markets.
Your point about information inequality is good, but I think that would be viewed in
neoliberal doctrine as a minor flaw in the market, even if, for the main actors, it is the
raison d'etre .
Yup, what the author describes as a flaw -- "asymmetry of the information available to
investors", isn't a bug; it's a feature. But the real elephant soiling the room is who has
access to all that free debt printed by the unaccountable private cartel we refer to as the
Federal Reserve. Could you benefit from a zero-interest deferred-payment mortgage?
Even better "our" millionaire legislators are exempt from insider-trading laws and they in
turn have immunized their investors. Clearly the most lucrative investment by far is
political bribery. The new Wall Street Socialists have redefined capitalism and democracy as
Orwellian doublespeak.
I agree -- I think this post plays on its words. The stock market price for a stock
indicates what speculators are willing to pay and sellers are willing to accept for the
stock. These need have very little to do with the 'value' of the stock other than its 'value'
in the stock market. That's seldom been truer than in the current stock 'market'. I'm not a
very trusting sort so I don't believe more than half the numbers in corporate reports. Many
stocks stocks like Apple or Amazon tend to trade on 'value' instead of anything like what
used to be called value. At a time when there seems to be no limit on the amount of money
finding its way into the hands of the wealthy I'm not sure the selling of stock has anything
to do with raising money for investments. Many firms can coin their own money through their
many monopolies and monopsonies, and 'retained earnings' -- a category I believe often labels
earnings squeezed from the small sellers, suppliers, and labor thrall to the large firms. To
me, asserting "Stock markets do not create value" is shorthand for a much deeper critique of
our financialized stock markets.
Westinghouse in the days of George Westinghouse, General Electric in the days of Thomas
Edison, Xerox in the days shortly after Chester Carlson all created value. I like to believe
that at least in some periods of the stock market their stocks represented and did not create
but "shared" the value these firms invented and developed. I also like to believe at least
some of the new issues these and other firms sold did indeed once help fund real investments
in productive capital. But all that has become but romantic memory.
I believe the Corporate Management is busily engaged in cashing-out what real value
remains within the firms they control and will continue doing so until all that's left is a
hollow shell servicing the bonds and notes the firm created as part of their liquidation
process. The stock market is where speculators can bet against each other on the ebb and flow
of prices moving toward a great twilight of our stock markets and our gutted economy.
Well, there's entertainment value, just like casinos and horse racing, but that isn't what
they're paid for – unlike casinos or race tracks.
An Indiana paper (Indy Star? used to print the stock market numbers facing the horse race
results. My father was not amused when I pointed that out, since investing in stocks was part
of his job. I thought it was hilarious.
Realistically, financial "markets" are an overhead cost, part of your management system
for the economy. Not saying whether it's MIS- management.
They used to say you can make money if you are right 51% of the time. Such a narrow edge
– because the reverse is also true. This is a good argument for not wasting time and
money on the cherished institution of the market. Nancy Pelosi was blabbering on about all
our sacred institutions (cows) trying to cover her fauxpaux when she tried to defuse the
demand for single payer with her stumbling, tooth sucking comment that "this is a capitalist
country" and therefore we simply canot have anything so cost effective as single payer. I'm
convinced she doesn't know her capitalism from a hot rock. So now, armed with this simple
demonstration of how wasteful the whole idea of a stock market is, I'm thinking the Market is
a very questionable institution. Much better to be highly selective and deliberate about
stocks and stock companies. Not just in the share-buying but in the whole company concept. If
returns on government bonds are the best choice then why would anyone get upset about "the
debt". It's the best investment. And I am left to assume this is true because that money is
spent on valuable things in the first place. I'm also thinking how to do an end-run around
Nancy's new Institution-patriotism with a movement to provide everyone with a medical credit
card. Why not? Everything else, including Nancy's paycheck and percs, are on credit. What a
velvet revolution, no?
I went to Richard Murphy's websites and I'm not sure his new book "The Joy of Tax" will be
a big winner here in the US. He may need to give it a new title.
Your post supports the paper's conclusion. In the USA, there are about 4,000 companies
listed on exchanges and another 15,000 that trade OTC. Members of the S&P 500 are in fact
the "exceptional few."
I think that stock markets are reflective of value, they don't in themselves create value.
Certainly there is speculation and cheating, but in general, the value of a stock should
increase as the value of the underlying business increases. Better to say that the price
reflects the expected business in the future.
We've done fantastically well investing in stocks and mutual funds over the last 30 years.
Not every fund went up. Not every stock went up. But the total gains far outpaced the
losses.
Companies take money from the market by going public and by issuing new shares. They also
hold some shares from some issues that are used to incentivize employees.
I think the original author sort of tilted the table by talking treating all securities
the same. Likely the newcomers to the market are much smaller and have more risk of
failure.
I'm also puzzled how they square this claim agains the historical value of something like
he Russell 2000 index.
"Since 1977 the median new shares issued on the stock exchange has delivered a negative
rate of return, even with dividends reinvested." If this were true I'd expect to see a lot
more red in the historical returns. Maybe the word "median" is doing some heavy lifting?
This data would seem to indicate that corporations have consistently earned money and
these profits should be reflected in stock prices. (I don't know if these are in constant
dollars).
Hopefully someone can correct me here, if necessary, but hasn't the stock market risen in
a dollar amount roughly equivalent to the amount of QE pumped into the economy ?
No correction from me. The stock-casino representing "free-market capitalism" has risen in
lockstep with the Central Cartel's QE. The evidence, if circumstantial, is overwhelming, with
countless charts showing an almost exact correlation. Pretty hard to argue against
causation.
The 1980s financial innovation of sheer unadulterated genius that enabled the cartel to
buy the market -- legalizing stock buybacks -- a syringe for mainlining monetary heroin
straight into market veins. This is the new efficient-markets theory called "hindsight price
discovery". You will discover the true price and value after insiders dump their pumped
holdings
The only "correction" coming is in the market casino.
You forget that equities are a form of money which C-corps can create at will and don't
necessarily have fundamentals underpinning them e.g. Jbonds sold for stock by backs or abuse
of risk tools to lower credit weighing and deals between the sell and buy side marry go
round.
Don't know what to make out of the comment about communists e.g. old school classical
capitalists likened the financial traders to rats in the back alleys or bars they once traded
in. Not to mention the propensity for the financial traders to blow themselves and everyone
up with them like clock work. It has only been during the neoliberal period that the FIRE
sector gained a veneer of respectability through broad spectrum PR.
Something of a reference point to the Australian experience.
If the general managers of the 12 banks that burst in 1891 and 1893 had kept paid clowns
to make fun of the valuations of city and suburban land, made by the old-established
auctioneers and valuators of Melbourne in the land boom days, their banks would never have
closed their doors.
Every bank should keep a laughing department where absurd valuations and ridiculous
securities could be laughed off the premises. The easiest marks as borrowers were the
building societies and the land and estate agents, and they had a right royal time asking for
and getting advances. In those halcyon days nobody was ever refused a loan by a bank manager.
So the banks opened agencies in Scotland, Ireland and England, and borrowed millions on
deposit receipts for 18 months and lent them out in Victoria for 30 years, and a great deal
of the money, for eternity.
It wasn't a mad or pessimistic or despondent thing to do. It was one calling for laughter,
for merriment, for jocosity.
Why should the good-humoured borrower explain to the dismal bank manager, irritated and
worried by Head Office letters and circulars censuring him for not lending money fast enough,
that though he had paid £1 a foot for land at Coburg or Glen Iris or Mentone that it
was not in his own opinion worth the £10 a foot of his own valuation.
Nobody dared to laugh at these insane transactions, nobody was brave enough to say,
" All this business is frenzied, delusive and pure buffoonery. There must be a smash.
" And there was. Prices of houses and lands jumped higher and higher, day by day, nay, hour
by hour, and more and more people were drawn into the maelstrom, into a true Walpurgis ride
to sudden wealth.
Rateable property in cities, towns and boroughs went up by leaps and bounds from £53
to £86 million sterling in 5 years, while the rateable property of shire councils
jumped from £71 to £108 million in the 5 years 1886-1890. It was all so dashed
funny, because there was no solid foundation for all this paper wealth.
Production did not increase part passu, nor overseas trade, nor exports, nor shipping,
except that imports increased literally horribly. During 1886 and 1890 in Victoria, railways
costing Z8 ,000,000 and 486 new churches and chapels were built. To me it was all so
ridiculous and amusing, and the best of the joke was that none of the leaders of the people
in Press, Parliament, Church, or on the platform, ever uttered a single word of warning about
the coming debacle, The terrible catastrophe so close at hand which brought ruin to tens of
thousands of decent people and nearly smashed Victoria.
Bank assets rose from £41m in 86 to £63m in 91.
Deposits grew from £31m in 86 to £40m in 91.
After that they fell away and did not reach £40m until 1907, or 28 years later. I am
writing of what I know because I went through that critical period on the inside in a finance
company and in a property company as an executive officer, and when the panic stopped I was a
member of the Stock Exchange.
"the view that stock markets themselves create value"
Value as determined by who? In terms of which inputs to achieve what outputs? As an
example, a company experiencing challenges (or as I call them – problems) may need to
hire more people to achieve long-term growth. However, if they do that Wall Street will
hammer their stocks which will go down. If they cut their workforce instead, Wall Street will
reward them by valuing their stocks even higher though the company has effectively sabotaged
their future growth plans. Thus Wall Street is not doing price discovery so much as
constructing their own outputs to be achieved by individual companies along some ideological
goal. Perhaps they are trying to create the 'perfect market' by warping reality which
is a neoliberal trait.
One aspect not touched upon is stocks are loans that never get repaid. If I pay $100
of a share and the company thrives. I get paid dividends in perpetuity. Plus, If I buy that
share from someone who already had bought it (a trade) I am being paid when I actually
provided none of the original loan (like a bank buying the "paper" from another bank).
Someone calculated that the dividends paid by Apple have paid off the amount originally
tendered by several hundred percent, which would make them the worst bank loans in all of
creation.
Would not simple loans make more sense? (Yes I am aware of the abuses of the Japanese uses
of banks, but they were abuses of a system, not the system itself that resulted in their
decline.)
ardent 19 minutes ago ( Edited ) remove Share link Copy Report flag
"Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, is an Israeli Mossad-trained operative whose
real name is Elliot Shimon, a *** who took courses in Islamic theology and Arabic Speech." -
Snowden
Old Poor Richard 49 minutes ago remove Share link Copy
Now how would Ed Snowden know this? Is he some kind of super h4x0r tapped into the Pegasus
mainframe?
ShakenNotStirred 42 minutes ago remove Share link Copy
I heard you have a bunch of Mossad agents below your bed. Check it out or you will be
"Mossaded" before the morning.
passingthroughtown 2 hours ago remove Share link Copy
Proving once again that the Saudis and Israelies have been working hand in glove for a
very long time. Is there any doubt about the connection between the two and what happened on
911?
But what is even more disturbing:
In recent days, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi and Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu have reached out to the Trump administration to express support for the
crown prince, arguing that he is an important strategic partner in the region, said people
familiar with the calls.
"Strategic partner" makes it all okay. This is merely a glimpse of what is coming in the
future. You ain't seen NOTHIN yet.
He–Mene Mox Mox 3 hours ago remove Share link Copy
Derezzed 3 hours ago ( Edited ) remove Share link Copy
" Israel is routinely at the top of the US' classified threat list of hackers along
with Russia and China [ ] even though it is an ally "
Our best allies ! " Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the United States to stand by Saudi
Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman (MBS) in the wake of the Khashoggi case. "
The most morale people !
I bet they are behind ISIS too with their (((allies))) and the (((deep state))).
But hey isn't it conspirationnist and antisemitic to accuse them of anything ?
Because you know as the most " kind " and " human " people there needs to be
laws, censorship and repression, to protect them from being hated.
< 1% of the global population and they make the headlines 4/5 times a day.
Can only be bad luck and a cohencidence !
Dickweed Wang 3 hours ago remove Share link Copy
"Israel is routinely at the top of the US' classified threat list of hackers along
with Russia and China [ ] even though it is an ally"
Sorry Ed, IsraHell isn't an ally of the USA. It's a ******* parasite and it's well on its
way to killing the host.
alamac 4 hours ago remove Share link Copy
I guess Netanyahoo and KSM love each other because they have a common hobby: Killing
Arabs.
RagnarRedux 4 hours ago ( Edited ) remove Share link Copy
ISRAEL FLAGGED AS TOP SPY THREAT TO U.S. IN NEW SNOWDEN/NSA DOCUMENT (2007)
Former U.S. Officials Say CIA Considers Israel To Be Mideast's Biggest Spy Threat
(2012)
U.S. intelligence agents stationed in Israel report multiple cases of equipment
tampering, suspected break ins in recent years; CIA officials tell the Associated Press that
Israel may have leaked info that led to the capture of an agent inside Syria's chemical
weapons program.
What is really troubling, is Kushner's involvement in the affair. He would have been
debriefed once he returned to the U.S., not only by his father-in-law, Trump, but the intel
community too. You can bet every dollar you have that both the Israelis and Saudis were using
NSO surveillance on him. What is even more troubling, it appears that the action taken to
"neutralize" Jamal Khashoggi, more than likely had the blessings of Washington, since Kushner
met with the Saudis prior to the killing. It really makes one wonder, since Kushner declined
to discuss the state of his relationship with Prince Mohammed.
GRDguy 4 hours ago remove Share link Copy
"licensed only to legitimate government agencies"
That's the problem.
There are no legitimate government agencies any more.
"... Trump wasn't finished, however, and during the same gaggle, he suggested he could pull press credentials from other reporters who don't show him "respect" two days after the president suspended the press pass of CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta after a contentious exchange during a news conference. ..."
"... "I think Jim Acosta is a very unprofessional man," Trump explained and when asked how long Acosta's credentials will be suspended, the president replied: "As far as I'm concerned, I haven't made that decision. But it could be others also." ..."
"... On this one Trump needs to take a hint from Obozo, stop doing daily press briefings... Hold them once a month ..."
"... the stooge press/talking heads have made a cottage industry off of the press conferences. the msm sends stooges to sell their product. trump is 100% correct- the msm doesn't have the guts to cull their stooge legions- oh dear- the white house will do their job for them. ..."
Having barred his CNN arch nemesis Jim Acosta from the White House,
on Friday the president lashed out at another CNN reporter at the White House over his
appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting AG as well as Whitaker's views towards the special
counsel investigation.
During a Friday morning gaggle with White House reporters before Trump's trip to Paris,
CNN's Abby Phillip asked the president if he was hoping Whitaker, who previously criticized
Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation, would "rein in" the Russia probe. " Do you want
[Whitaker] to rein in Robert Mueller?" Phillip asked.
Trump's response left the stunned reported speechless. "What a stupid question that is,"
Trump said and, just in case it was lost, repeated "what a stupid question."
"But I watch you a lot," Trump continued. "You ask a lot of stupid questions."
Trump then demonstrably walked away, leaving the shocked reporters screaming more questions
in his wake.
Earlier, Trump said he has not spoken to acting AG Matt Whitaker about the Russia
investigation, which Whitaker now oversees. Trump defended Whitaker as a "very well respected
man in the law enforcement community" but claimed he does not know him personally. "I didn't
speak to Matt Whitaker about it. I don't know Matt Whitaker," Trump told reporters at the White
House before leaving for a trip to Paris.
While Trump sought to place personal distance
between himself and Whitaker, he made it clear he stood by his decision to place a loyalist in
charge of the Justice Department, a move many see as an effort to seize control of special
counsel Robert Mueller's probe. The president also rejected suggestions that Whitaker is
ineligible to serve as attorney general, a position held by some legal experts who say the
Justice Department leader must be confirmed by the Senate.
The acting AG has raised eyebrows, and in some cases prediction of a constitutional crisis,
because before joining the DOJ, Whitaker was an outspoken critic of Mueller's investigation and
many Democrats and legal scholars have said he should recuse himself from leading the probe.
Whitaker also claimed there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian
interference efforts in the 2016 election, which is the central question of the Mueller
probe.
Trump lamented the criticism of Whitaker's past commentary, saying "it's a shame that no
matter who I put in, they go after him."
Trump then reiterated his plans to have Whitaker serve in an acting capacity, but declined
to reveal who might be Sessions' permanent replacement. He said he likes Chris Christie, who is
under consideration , but said he has not spoken to the former NJ governor about the post.
Christie was at the White House on Thursday for an event on prison reform but Trump said he did
not speak to him.
* * *
Trump wasn't finished, however, and during the same gaggle, he suggested he could pull press
credentials from other reporters who don't show him "respect" two days after the president
suspended the press pass of CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta after a contentious
exchange during a news conference.
"I think Jim Acosta is a very unprofessional man," Trump explained and when asked how long
Acosta's credentials will be suspended, the president replied: "As far as I'm concerned, I
haven't made that decision. But it could be others also."
Trump also went after April Ryan of American Urban Radio Networks as a "loser" who "doesn't
know what the hell she is doing."
Keyser 15 minutes ago
On this one Trump needs to take a hint from Obozo, stop doing daily press briefings...
Hold them once a month, then hand-pick which reporters you want in the room... And if a
reporter publishes a story you don't like, prosecute them... What we have now is what happens
when the lunatics are given free reign...
dcmbuffy 55 minutes ago remove
the stooge press/talking heads have made a cottage industry off of the press conferences.
the msm sends stooges to sell their product. trump is 100% correct- the msm doesn't have the
guts to cull their stooge legions- oh dear- the white house will do their job for them.
America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because
anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs [sic],
not to protect or favor the American people.
And who do you suppose are the forces which are funding US politicians and thus getting to
call their shots in foreign policy? Can you bring yourself to name them? Oligarchs...you're
FULL of ****. Who exactly pools all (((their))) money, makes sure the [s]elected officials
know (((who))) to not question and, instead, just bow down to them, who makes sure these
(((officials))) sign pledges for absolute commitment towards Israel--or in no uncertain
terms-- and know who will either sponsor them/or opposes them next time around?
Gold age of the USA (say 40 years from 1946 to approximately 1986 ) were an in some way an aberration caused by WWII. As soon
as Germany and Japan rebuilt themselves this era was over. And the collapse of the USSR in 1991 (or more correct Soviet
nomenklatura switching sides and adopting neoliberalism) only make the decline more gradual but did not reversed it. After
200 it was clear that neoliberalism is in trouble and in 2008 it was clear that ideology of neoliberalism is dead, much like
Bolshevism after 1945.
As the US ruling neoliberal elite adopted this ideology ad its flag, the USA faces the situation somewhat similar the USSR
faced in 70th. It needs its "Perestroika" but with weak leader at the helm like Gorbachov it can lead to the dissolution of
the state. Dismantling neoliberalism is not less dangerous then dismantling of Bolshevism. The level of brainwashing of both
population and the elite (and it looks like the USA elite is brainwashed to an amazing level, probably far exceed the level of
brainwashing of Soviet nomenklatura) prevents any constructive moves.
In a way, Neoliberalism probably acts as a mousetrap for the country, similar to the role of Bolshevism in the
USSR. Ideology of neoliberalism is dead, so what' next. Another war to patch the internal divisions ? That's probably
why Trump is so adamant about attacking Iran. Iran does not have nuclear weapons so this is in a way an ideal target.
Unlike, say, Russia. And such a war can serve the same political purpose. That's why many emigrants from the USSR view the current
level of divisions with the USA is a direct analog of divisions within the USSR in late 70th and 80th. Similarities are
clearly visible with naked eye.
Notable quotes:
"... t is well known that legendary American gangster Al Capone once said that 'Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class', - and I have commented on the links between organised crime and capitalist accumulation before on this blog, but I recently came across the following story from Claud Cockburn's autobiography, and decided to put it up on Histomat for you all. ..."
"... "Listen," he said, "don't get the idea I'm one of those goddam radicals. Don't get the idea I'm knocking the American system. The American system..." As though an invisible chairman had called upon him for a few words, he broke into an oration upon the theme. He praised freedom, enterprise and the pioneers. He spoke of "our heritage". He referred with contempuous disgust to Socialism and Anarchism. "My rackets," he repeated several times, "are run on strictly American lines and they're going to stay that way"...his vision of the American system began to excite him profoundly and now he was on his feet again, leaning across the desk like the chairman of a board meeting, his fingers plunged in the rose bowls. ..."
"... A month later in New York I was telling this story to Mr John Walter, minority owner of The Times . He asked me why I had not written the Capone interview for the paper. I explained that when I had come to put my notes together I saw that most of what Capone had said was in essence identical with what was being said in the leading articles of The Times itself, and I doubted whether the paper would be best pleased to find itself seeing eye to eye with the most notorious gangster in Chicago. Mr Walter, after a moment's wry reflection, admitted that probably my idea had been correct.' ..."
"... The biggest lie ever told is that American hegemony relies on American imperialism and warmongering. The opposite is true. America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs, not to protect or favor the American people. ..."
"... please mr. author don't give us more globalist dribble. We want our wealth back ..."
"... America the empire is just another oligarchic regime that other countries' populations rightly see as an example of what doesn't work ..."
"... It's the ruling capitalist Predator Class that has been demanding empire since McKinley was assassinated. That's the problem. ..."
"... And who do you suppose are the forces which are funding US politicians and thus getting to call their shots in foreign policy? Can you bring yourself to name them? ..."
"... The US physical plant and equipment as well as infrastructure is in advanced stages of decay. Ditto for the labor force which has been pauperized and abused for decades by the Predator Class... ..."
"The only wealth you keep is wealth you have given away," said Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD),
last of the great Roman emperors. US President Donald Trump might know of another Italian,
Mario Puzo's Don Vito Corleone, and his memorable mumble : "I'm going to make him
an offer he can't refuse."
Forgetting such Aurelian and godfather codes is propelling the decline and fall of the
American empire.
Trump is making offers the world can refuse – by reshaping trade deals, dispensing
with American sops and forcing powerful corporations to return home, the US is regaining
economic wealth but relinquishing global power.
As the last leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Mikhail Gorbachev's
perestroika (restructuring) led to the breakup of its vast territory(22 million square
kilometers). Gorbachev's failed policies led to the dissolution of the USSR into Russia and
independent countries, and the end of a superpower.
Ironically, the success of Trump's policies will hasten the demise of the American empire:
the US regaining economic health but losing its insidious hold over the world.
This diminishing influence was highlighted when India and seven other countries geared up to
defy Washington's re-imposition of its unilateral, illegal sanctions against Iran, starting
Monday.
The US State Department granting "permission" on the weekend to the eight countries to buy
Iranian oil was akin to waving the green flag at a train that has already left the
station
The US State Department granting "permission" on the weekend to the eight countries to buy
Iranian oil was akin to waving the green flag at a train that has already left the station.
The law of cause and effect unavoidably delivers. The Roman Empire fell after wars of greed
and orgies of consumption. A similar nemesis, the genie of Gorbachev, stalks Pennsylvania
Avenue, with Trump unwittingly writing the last chapter of World War II: the epilogue of the
two rival superpowers that emerged from humanity's most terrible conflict.
The maverick 45th president of the United States may succeed at being an economic messiah to
his country, which has racked up a $21.6 trillion debt, but the fallout is the death of
American hegemony. These are the declining days of the last empire standing.
Emperors and mafia godfathers knew that wielding great influence means making payoffs.
Trump, however, is doing away with the sops, the glue that holds the American empire together,
and is making offers that he considers "fair" but instead is alienating the international
community– from badgering NATO and other countries to pay more for hosting the US legions
(800 military bases in 80 countries) to reducing US aid.
US aid to countries fell from $50 billion in fiscal year 2016, $37 billion in 2017 to $7.7
billion so far in 2018. A world less tied to American largesse and generous trade tarrifs can
more easily reject the "you are with us or against us" bullying doctrine of US presidents. In
the carrot and stick approach that largely passes as American foreign policy, the stick loses
power as the carrot vanishes.
Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) in The Godfather. Big payoffs needed for big influence. A
presidential lesson for Don Trump
More self-respecting leaders will have less tolerance for American hypocrisy, such as
sanctioning other countries for nuclear weapons while having the biggest nuclear arsenal on the
planet.
They will sneer more openly at the hysteria surrounding alleged interference in the 2016 US
presidential elections, pointing to Washington's violent record of global meddling. They will
cite examples of American hypocrisy such as its sponsorship of coups against elected leaders in
Latin America, the US Army's Project Camelot in 1964 targeting 22 countries for intervention
(including Iran, Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia), its support for bloodthirsty dictators, and its
destabilization of the Middle East with the destruction of Iraq and Libya.
Immigrant
cannon fodder
Trump's focus on the economy reduces the likelihood of him starting wars. By ending the
flood of illegal immigrants to save jobs for US citizens, he is also inadvertently reducing the
manpower for illegal wars. Non-citizen immigrants comprise about 5% of the US Army. For its
Iraq and Afghanistan wars, US army recruiters offered citizenship to lure illegal immigrants,
mostly Latinos.
Among the first US soldiers to die in the Iraq War was 22-year old illegal immigrant
Corporal Jose Antonio Gutierrez, an orphan from the streets of Guatemala City. He sneaked
across the Mexican border into the US six years before enlisting in exchange for American
citizenship.
On March 21, 2003, Gutierrez was killed by friendly fire near Umm Qasr, southern Iraq. The
coffin of this illegal immigrant was draped in the US flag, and he received American
citizenship – posthumously.
Trump policies targeting illegal immigration simultaneously reduces the availability of
cannon fodder for the illegal wars needed to maintain American hegemony.
Everything comes to an end, and so too will the last empire of our era.
The imperial American eagle flying into the sunset will see the dawn of an economically
healthier US that minds its own business, and increase hopes for a more equal, happier world
– thanks to the unintentional Gorbachev-2 in the White House.
I am sure that many of us are OK with ending American Empire. Both US citizens and other
countries don't want to fight un-necessary and un-ending wars. If Trump can do that, then he
is blessed.
See a pattern here? Raja Murthy, you sound like a pro-American Empire shill. 1964 Project
Camelot has nothing to do with the current administration. Raja, you forgot to wear your
satirical pants.
The idea and catchy hook of 2016 was Make America Great Again, not wasting lives and
resources on the American Empire. You point out the good things. Who might have a problem
with the end of the American Empire are Globalists. What is wrong with relinquishing global
power and not wasting lives and money?
"The only lives you keep is lives you've given away" That does not ring true. The only
lies you keep are the lies you've given away. What? You're not making any sense, dude. How
much American Empire are you vested in? Does it bother you if the Empire shrinks its death
grip on Asia or the rest of the world? Why don't you just say it: This is good! Hopefully
Trump's policies will prevent you from getting writers' cramp and being confusing--along with
the canon fodder. Or maybe you're worried about job security.
America is a super power, just like Russia. Just like England. However, whom the US
carries water for might change. Hope that's ok.
Trump is an empirial president, just like every other US president. In fact, that's what
the article is describing. MAGA depends upon imperialist domination. Trump and all of US
capitalism know that even if the brain-dead MAGA chumps don't.
Capitalism can't help but seek to rule the world. It is the result of pursuing
capitalism's all-important growth. If it's not US capitalism, it will be Chinese capitalism,
or Russian capitalism, or European capitalism that will rule the world.
The battle over global markets doesn't stop just because the US might decide not to play
anymore. Capitalism means that you're either the global power who is ******* the royal ****
out of everyone else, or you're the victim of being fucked up the *** by an imperialist
power.
The only thing which makes the US different from the rest of the world is its super
concentration of power, which in effect is a super concentration of corruption.
Another day and another ZeroHedge indictment of American capitalism.
And how refreshing that the article compares US capitalism to gangsterism. It's a most
appropriate comparison.
--------------------
Al Capone on Capitalism
It is well known that legendary American gangster Al Capone once said that 'Capitalism is the
legitimate racket of the ruling class', - and I have commented on the links between organised
crime and capitalist accumulation before
on this blog, but I recently came across the following story from Claud Cockburn's autobiography, and decided
to put it up on Histomat for you all.
In 1930, Cockburn, then a correspondent in America for the Times newspaper,
interviewed Al Capone at the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, when Capone was at the height of his
power. He recalls that except for 'the sub-machine gun...poking through the transom of a door
behind the desk, Capone's own room was nearly indistinguishable from that of, say, a "newly
arrived" Texan oil millionaire. Apart from the jowly young murderer on the far side of the
desk, what took the eye were a number of large, flattish, solid silver bowls upon the desk,
each filled with roses. They were nice to look at, and they had another purpose too, for
Capone when agitated stood up and dipped the tips of his fingers in the water in which
floated the roses.
I had been a little embarrassed as to how the interview was to be launched. Naturally the
nub of all such interviews is somehow to get round to the question "What makes you tick?" but
in the case of this millionaire killer the approach to this central question seemed mined
with dangerous impediments. However, on the way down to the Lexington Hotel I had had the
good fortune to see, I think in the Chicago Daily News , some statistics offered by an
insurance company which dealt with the average expectation of life of gangsters in Chicago. I
forget exactly what the average was, and also what the exact age of Capone at that time - I
think he was in his early thirties. The point was, however, that in any case he was four
years older than the upper limit considered by the insurance company to be the proper average
expectation of life for a Chicago gangster. This seemed to offer a more or less neutral and
academic line of approach, and after the ordinary greetings I asked Capone whether he had
read this piece of statistics in the paper. He said that he had. I asked him whether he
considered the estimate reasonably accurate. He said that he thought that the insurance
companies and the newspaper boys probably knew their stuff. "In that case", I asked him, "how
does it feel to be, say, four years over the age?"
He took the question quite seriously and spoke of the matter with neither more nor less
excitement or agitation than a man would who, let us say, had been asked whether he, as the
rear machine-gunner of a bomber, was aware of the average incidence of casualties in that
occupation. He apparently assumed that sooner or later he would be shot despite the elaborate
precautions which he regularly took. The idea that - as afterwards turned out to be the case
- he would be arrested by the Federal authorities for income-tax evasion had not, I think, at
that time so much as crossed his mind. And, after all, he said with a little bit of
corn-and-ham somewhere at the back of his throat, supposing he had not gone into this racket?
What would be have been doing? He would, he said, "have been selling newspapers barefoot on
the street in Brooklyn".
He stood as he spoke, cooling his finger-tips in the rose bowl in front of him. He sat
down again, brooding and sighing. Despite the ham-and-corn, what he said was probably true
and I said so, sympathetically. A little bit too sympathetically, as immediately emerged, for
as I spoke I saw him looking at me suspiciously, not to say censoriously. My remarks about
the harsh way the world treats barefoot boys in Brooklyn were interrupted by an urgent angry
waggle of his podgy hand.
"Listen," he said, "don't get the idea I'm one of those goddam radicals. Don't get the
idea I'm knocking the American system. The American system..." As though an invisible
chairman had called upon him for a few words, he broke into an oration upon the theme. He
praised freedom, enterprise and the pioneers. He spoke of "our heritage". He referred with
contempuous disgust to Socialism and Anarchism. "My rackets," he repeated several times, "are
run on strictly American lines and they're going to stay that way"...his vision of the
American system began to excite him profoundly and now he was on his feet again, leaning
across the desk like the chairman of a board meeting, his fingers plunged in the rose
bowls.
"This American system of ours," he shouted, "call it Americanism, call it Capitalism, call
it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it
with both hands and make the most of it." He held out his hand towards me, the fingers
dripping a little, and stared at me sternly for a few seconds before reseating himself.
A month later in New York I was telling this story to Mr John Walter, minority owner of
The Times . He asked me why I had not written the Capone interview for the paper. I
explained that when I had come to put my notes together I saw that most of what Capone had
said was in essence identical with what was being said in the leading articles of The
Times itself, and I doubted whether the paper would be best pleased to find itself seeing
eye to eye with the most notorious gangster in Chicago. Mr Walter, after a moment's wry
reflection, admitted that probably my idea had been correct.'
This article was obviously written by someone who wants to maintain the status quo.
America would be much stronger if it were not trying to be an empire. The biggest lie ever
told is that American hegemony relies on American imperialism and warmongering. The opposite
is true. America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because
anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs, not to
protect or favor the American people.
I truly believe that "America First" is not selfish. America before it went full ******
was the beacon of freedom and success that other countries tried to emulate and that changed
the world for the better.
America the empire is just another oligarchic regime that other
countries' populations rightly see as an example of what doesn't work.
Empire is a contrivance, a vehicle for psychopathic powerlust. America was founded by
people who stood adamantly opposed to this. Here's hoping Trump holds their true spirit in
his heart.
If he doesn't, there's hundreds of millions of us who still do. We don't all live in
America...
America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because
anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs [sic],
not to protect or favor the American people.
And who do you suppose are the forces which are funding US politicians and thus getting to
call their shots in foreign policy? Can you bring yourself to name them? Oligarchs...you're
FULL of ****. Who exactly pools all (((their))) money, makes sure the [s]elected officials
know (((who))) to not question and, instead, just bow down to them, who makes sure these
(((officials))) sign pledges for absolute commitment towards Israel--or in no uncertain
terms-- and know who will either sponsor them/or opposes them next time around?
JSBach1 called you a 'coward', for being EXACTLY LIKE THESE TRAITOROUS SPINELESS
VERMIN who simply just step outside just 'enough' the comfort zone to APPEAR 'real'. IMHO, I
concur with JSBach1 ...your're a coward indeed, when you should know better .....
shame you you indeed!
There is little evidence, Trump's propaganda aside (that he previously called Obama
dishonest for) that the US economy is improving. If anything, the exploding budget and trade
deficits indicate that the economy continues to weaken.
Correct. The US physical plant and equipment as well as infrastructure is in advanced
stages of decay. Ditto for the labor force which has been pauperized and abused for decades
by the Predator Class...
the US can't even raise an army... even if enough young (men) were
dumb enough to volunteer there just aren't enough fit, healthy and mentally acute recruits
out there.
"... But the state as a bureaucratic institution had another, more fundamental function. Lenin, citing Engels, defined the essence of the state as "bodies of armed men, prisons, etc.," in short, an instrument for the maintenance of the rule of the exploiting minority over the exploited majority. ..."
"... As capitalism burst the bounds of the nation-state, the coercive military function of the state took on a new dimension -- that of protecting (and projecting) the interests of the capitalists of one country over those of another. As capitalism developed, the role of the state increased, the size of the state bureaucracy increased, and the size of its coercive apparatus increased. ..."
"... The forces of production which capitalism has evolved have outgrown the limits of nation and state. The national state, the present political form, is too narrow for the exploitation of these productive forces. The natural tendency of our economic system, therefore, is to seek to break through the state boundaries ..."
"... But the way the governments propose to solve this problem of imperialism is not through the intelligent, organized cooperation of all of humanity's producers, but through the exploitation of the world's economic system by the capitalist class of the victorious country ..."
America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because
anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs [sic],
not to protect or favor the American people.
And who do you suppose are the forces which are funding US politicians and thus getting to
call their shots in foreign policy? Can you bring yourself to name them? Oligarchs...you're
FULL of ****. Who exactly pools all (((their))) money, makes sure the [s]elected officials
know (((who))) to not question and, instead, just bow down to them, who makes sure these
(((officials))) sign pledges for absolute commitment towards Israel--or in no uncertain
terms-- and know who will either sponsor them/or opposes them next time around?
Fu Ying, the chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of China's National People's
Congress, said while confirming the reality that China and Russia now find themselves in the
same trenches: "I just hope that if some people in the U.S. insist on dragging us down the hill
into Thucydides' trap, China will be smart enough not to follow."
Indeed to step back and review the breadth of Russia-China cooperation over the past couple
years alone reveals the full potential "cost" of a US-China conflict , given the ways Russia
could easily be pulled in. Fu Ying articulated the increasingly common view from Beijing, that
"There is no sense of threat from Russia" and that "We feel comfortable back-to-back."
And participants in a
recent study by the National Bureau of Asian Research , a
Seattle-based think tank, actually agree. They were asked whether American policy was at fault
for pushing China and Russia into closer cooperation, and alarmingly, as Bloomberg notes: "Some
among the 100-plus participants called for Washington to prepare for the worst-case scenario
the realignment implies: a two-front war ."
Here's but a partial list of the way Sino-Russian relations have been transformed in recent
years:
China is now Russia's biggest single trade partner.
Since 2015 Russia has been China's top supplier of crude oil, displacing Saudi Arabia.
Early this year Russia ramped up its capacity to pipe crude oil to China, to about 600,000
barrels per day, which is about double the prior capability
Increased coordination at the U.N. Security Council.
Regional coordination in Asia, such as Russia supplying the engines for Chinese-Pakistani
fighter jets, resulting in an increasingly worried India which is seeing Russia move into the
Chinese orbit instead of being an arbiter in Chinese-Pakistani relations
The "bromance" at recent summits between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, who meet each
other with increased regularity.
Joint military exercises between the two are now routine.
This year Russia supplied China with its most advanced S-400 air defense system as well
as Sukhoi SU-35 fighter aircraft
Increased willingness on the part of Russia to thwart Washington's argument that China is
a threat to Moscow's aims in the East.
The new "Power of Siberia" natural gas pipeline set to start pumping 38 billion cubic
meters (1.3 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas per year to northern China in December
2019.
Increasingly discovering non-conflicting interests: Europe and China "are two independent
destinations and two independent routes" for gas and oil, Russian Energy Minister Alexander
Novak said in an October interview. "We do not see any need to redirect volumes."
There were moments when Putin showed support and a practical approach toward Trump (like
when he schooled Fareed Zakaria). Putin even expressed that he was welcoming and respectful
of Trumps proposition to restore full-fledged relations with Russia.
I blame the democrats for pointlessly antagonizing Russia for two years just to attempt to
cover up the stench of their own excrement. Now it will be even more difficult to address the
problem of the Chi-coms.
US has nothing to offer Russia as China has. Stop dreaming to befriend Russia to fight
China. US had the opportunity to lead the world after the collapse of USSR but flunk it big
time being the biggest bully in the history.
Forrest Trump - "My Herpes and Genital Warts are responsible for Melania sleeping in
another room, not my small uncircumcised **** and uncontrollable flatulence. Just wanted to
clarify." Hum, ahhhhhhh gee thanks for info...I think. Poor Forrest...sigh
You are absolutely right. Add in that they are greedy motherfuckers and pied pipers to
millions of blithering idiots that can't go one day without making things worse.
China and Russia make an almost perfect symbiosis:
Adjacent countries, transportation costs are as low as possible
Neither regime cares as much as a gnat tear about civil rights & freedoms and
neither is impeded by the vagaries of elections
China has a huge need for natural resources, especially oil & nat gas, but has few
resources beyond coal & not-so-rare earths, while Russia has natural resources in
abundance
Russia manufactures almost nothing for the international goods market while China is
the world's factory
USA regime lords have done an excellent job of alienating and uniting both of them
There were moments when Putin showed support and a practical approach toward Trump (like
when he schooled Fareed Zakaria). Putin even expressed that he was welcoming and respectful
of Trumps proposition to restore full-fledged relations with Russia.
I blame the democrats for pointlessly antagonizing Russia for two years just to attempt to
cover up the stench of their own excrement. Now it will be even more difficult to address the
problem of the Chi-coms.
US has nothing to offer Russia as China has. Stop dreaming to befriend Russia to fight
China. US had the opportunity to lead the world after the collapse of USSR but flunk it big
time being the biggest bully in the history.
Russia and China will come to blows soon enough. China has their eyes on all of that
unpopulated land in Siberia, and they won't like it too much when Russia takes advantage of
the fact that China is dependent on them for energy. The idea that they'll be best buddies is
laughable.
Trump's balls are so big that he ran like a bitch away from his campaign promises to
normalize relations with Russia and prevent this exact scenario. Or maybe he was just
lying.
Nevermind, the ZH herd is stampeding on how great Trump is for pulling some press
privileges of a CNN guy.
I don't think Trump was lying. I think he is doing his best to stay alive and get done
what he can. This country is more fucked up than even he realized.
Forrest Trump - "My Herpes and Genital Warts are responsible for Melania sleeping in
another room, not my small uncircumcised **** and uncontrollable flatulence. Just wanted to
clarify." Hum, ahhhhhhh gee thanks for info...I think. Poor Forrest...sigh
You are absolutely right. Add in that they are greedy motherfuckers and pied pipers to
millions of blithering idiots that can't go one day without making things worse.
China and Russia make an almost perfect symbiosis:
Adjacent countries, transportation costs are as low as possible
Neither regime cares as much as a gnat tear about civil rights & freedoms and
neither is impeded by the vagaries of elections
China has a huge need for natural resources, especially oil & nat gas, but has few
resources beyond coal & not-so-rare earths, while Russia has natural resources in
abundance
Russia manufactures almost nothing for the international goods market while China is
the world's factory
USA regime lords have done an excellent job of alienating and uniting both of them
There were moments when Putin showed support and a practical approach toward Trump (like
when he schooled Fareed Zakaria). Putin even expressed that he was welcoming and respectful
of Trumps proposition to restore full-fledged relations with Russia.
I blame the democrats for pointlessly antagonizing Russia for two years just to attempt to
cover up the stench of their own excrement. Now it will be even more difficult to address the
problem of the Chi-coms.
US has nothing to offer Russia as China has. Stop dreaming to befriend Russia to fight
China. US had the opportunity to lead the world after the collapse of USSR but flunk it big
time being the biggest bully in the history.
Russia and China will come to blows soon enough. China has their eyes on all of that
unpopulated land in Siberia, and they won't like it too much when Russia takes advantage of
the fact that China is dependent on them for energy. The idea that they'll be best buddies is
laughable.
Trump's balls are so big that he ran like a bitch away from his campaign promises to
normalize relations with Russia and prevent this exact scenario. Or maybe he was just
lying.
Nevermind, the ZH herd is stampeding on how great Trump is for pulling some press
privileges of a CNN guy.
I don't think Trump was lying. I think he is doing his best to stay alive and get done
what he can. This country is more fucked up than even he realized.
The US is going to extend its "combat operations" - the sanctions war aimed at reshaping the
world - to Latin America.
Tough new penalties are planned against the "troika of tyranny," consisting of Venezuela,
Cuba, and Nicaragua "in the very near future." This
announcement was made by National Security Adviser (NSA) John Bolton on Nov.1 -- a few days
before the US mid-term elections -- in an attempt to draw more support from Hispanic voters,
especially in Florida. An executive order on sanctions against Venezuela has already been
signed by President Trump, but that's just the beginning.
It was rather symbolic that on the same day the NSA delivered his bellicose speech, the UN
General Assembly (UNGA)
voted overwhelmingly in support of a resolution calling for an end to the US economic
embargo against Cuba. The document did not include amendments proposed by the US that would put
pressure on Havana to improve its human-rights record.
This is a prelude to a massive escalation in US foreign policy, which will include the
formation of alliances, in addition to the active confrontation of those who dare to pursue
policies believed to be anti-US.
"Under this administration, we will no longer appease dictators and despots near our
shores," Bolton stated, adding,
"The troika of tyranny in this hemisphere -- Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua - has finally
met its match."
Sounds like a declaration of war. Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, and Peru are probably
some of the nations the US is eyeing for a potential alliance.
Bolton's "troika" includes only countries ruled by governments that are openly "red" or
Communist. The list of nations unfriendly to the US is much longer and includes Bolivia,
Ecuador, Dominica, Grenada, Uruguay, and some other states ruled by leftist governments.
Andrés Obrador , the president-elect of Mexico, takes office on Dec. 1. The Mexican
leader represents the country's left wing and looks like a tough nut to crack. Outright
pressure may not be helpful in this particular case.
Now that this new US policy is in place, Moscow and Washington appear to have another
divisive issue clouding their relationship. The "troika of tyranny" against which Washington
has declared war enjoys friendly relations with Russia.
With Cuba facing tougher restrictions, new opportunities are opening up that will encourage
the Russian-Cuban relationship to thrive. The chairman of the Cuban State Council and Council
of Ministers, Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin
during his official
visit to Moscow Nov. 1-3. Their joint statement reaffirmed the strategic and allied
relations between the two counties. Their long list of joint projects includes the deployment
of a Russian GLONASS ground station in Cuba, which will give it access to a broad array of
technical capabilities for satellite and telecommunications services and for taking remote
readings of Earth. Russia will modernize Cuba's railways. Sixty contracts are scheduled to be
signed during President Putin's visit to Cuba next year. Rosneft, the Russian state oil giant,
has recently resumed fuel shipments to Cuba and is negotiating a major energy agreement.
Military cooperation is also to get a boost. The military chiefs are to meet this month to
discuss the details. Moscow is considering granting Havana €38 million for Russian arms
purchases.
The US-imposed restrictions are a factor spurring Russian exports to Cuba and other regional
countries. When the US cut aid to Nicaragua in 2012, Russia increased its economic and military
cooperation with that country. The memorandum signed between the Russian and Nicaraguan
governments on May 8, 2018 states that the parties are to "mark a new step to boost political
dialog" in such areas as "international security and cooperation through various international
political platforms." Russia accounts for about 90% of Nicaraguan arms and munitions
imports. It has far-reaching interests in building the Nicaraguan Canal in its role as a
stakeholder and partner responsible for security-related missions.
President Vladimir Putin offered support for his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro after
the United States rejected his reelection in May. Russian energy giant Rosneft plays an
important role in that country's energy sector. It was Russia that came to Venezuela's rescue
in 2017 with a debt-restructuring deal that prevented the default that was looming after the US
sanctions were imposed. This was just
another example of Moscow lending a helping hand to a Latin American nation that was facing
difficult times.
Russia is currently pursuing a number of commercial projects in the region, in oil, mining,
nuclear energy, construction, and space services. It enjoys a special relationship with the
Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our
America (ALBA), which was founded by Cuba and Venezuela and includes Bolivia, Ecuador, and
Nicaragua, among other countries. This grouping is looking to create economic alternatives to
Western-dominated financial institutions. This cooperation with Latin American nations goes far
beyond ALBA. For instance, the Peruvian air force is in the process of contracting for 24
additional Mi-171s, as well as establishing a maintenance facility for their helicopters near
the La Joya base in Arequipa. A contract to upgrade its aging Mig-29 fighters is under
consideration. In January 2018, Russia signed a number of economic agreements with Argentina
during President Macri's visit to Moscow. All in all, trade between Russia and Latin American
countries reached $14.5 bln in 2017 and is growing.
RT Spanish was launched in 2009, featuring its own news presenters and programming in
addition to translated content, with bureaus operating in Buenos Aires, Caracas , Havana , Los Angeles , Madrid , Managua , and Miami. Russia's Sputnik media outlet
has been broadcasting in Spanish since 2014, offering radio- and web-based news and
entertainment to audiences across Latin America.
Some countries may back down under the US sanctions and threats, but many will not. There's
a flip side to everything. The policy could backfire. The harder the pressure, the stronger the
desire of the affected nations to diversify their international relations and resist the
implementation of the Monroe doctrine that relegates them to the role of America's
backyard.
"... There is only the Deep Purple Mil.Gov UniParty. The Titanic is dead in the water, lights out, bow down hard. The Rich, the Corporate Profiteers and the Military-Political Establishment have pulled away in their fur and jewel-encrusted life boats. It's one minute after midnight on the Doomsday Clock, the hands have fallen off the Debt Clock, the skies are burning and seas are rising (they say), and we are in WW3 in 8 nations. Or is it 9? ..."
"... So the Democrat faction of the Corporate One-Party took back control of the House from the Republican faction. (It's one hard-right party, of course; only liars and those ignorant of history call the Dems "centrist". By any objective or historical standard they're a right-wing party.) ..."
"... I made no prediction on what would happen in this election, but I've long predicted that if/when the Democrats win control of either house they'll do nothing with that control. Jack squat. Status quo all the way, embellished with more retarded Russia-Derangement stuff and similar nonsense. ..."
"... If there really were a difference between these corporate factions, here's the chance for the House to obstruct all Senate-passed legislation. ..."
"... They claim there's a difference between the two parties? ..."
"... But I predict this House won't lift a finger vs. the Senate, and that it'll strive to work with the Senate on legislation, and that it'll fully concur with the Senate on war budgets, police state measures, anything and everything demanded by Wall Street, Big Ag, the fossil fuel extractors, and of course the corporate welfare state in general. ..."
"... Nothing I've talked about here is anything but what is possible, what is always implicitly or explicitly promised by Dembots, and what it would seem is the minimum necessary given what Dembots claim is the scope of the crisis and what is at stake. ..."
It's not even decent theatre. Drama is much lacking, character development zilch. The outcome that dems take congress,& rethugs
improve in senate is exactly as was predicted months ago.
The dems reveal once again exactly how mendacious and uncaring of
the population they are. Nothing matters other than screwing more cash outta anyone who wants anything done so that the DC trough
stays full with the usual crew of 4th & 5th generation wannabe dem pols guzzling hard at the corporate funded 'dem aligned' think
tanks which generate much hot air yet never deliver. Hardly suprising given that actually doing something to show they give a
sh1t about the citizenry would annoy the donor who would give em all the boot, making all these no-hopers have to take up a gig
actually practising law.
These are people whose presence at the best law schools in the country prevented many who wanted to be y'know lawyers from
entering Harvard, Cornell etc law school. "one doesn't go to law school to become a lawyer It too hard to even pull down a mil
a year as a brief, nah, I studied the law to learn how to make laws that actually do the opposite of what they seem to. That is
where the real dough is."
Those who think that is being too hard on the dem slugs, should remember that the rethugs they have been indoctrinated to detest
act pretty much as printed on the side of the can. They advertise a service of licking rich arseholes and that is exactly what
they do. As venal and sociopathic as they are, at least they don't pretend to be something else; so while there is no way one
could vote for anyone spouting republican nonsense at least they don't hide their greed & corruption under a veneer of pseudo-humanist
nonsense. Dems cry for the plight of the poverty stricken then they slash welfare.
Or dems sob about the hard row african americans must hoe, then go off to the house of reps to pass laws to keep impoverished
african americans slotted up in an over crowded prison for the rest of his/her life.
Not only deceitful and vicious, 100% pointless since any Joe/Jo that votes on the basis of wanting to see more blackfellas
incarcerated is always gonna tick the rethug box anyhow.
Yeah- yeah we know all this so what?
This is what - the dems broke their arses getting tens of millions of young first time voters out to "exercise their democratic
prerogative" for the first time. Dems did this knowing full well that there would be no effective opposition to rethug demands
for more domestic oppression, that in fact it is practically guaranteed that should the trump and the rethug senate require it,
in order to ensure something particularly nasty gets passed, that sufficient dem congress people will 'cross the floor' to make
certain the bill does get up.
Of course the dems in question will allude to 'folks back home demanding' that the dem slug does vote with the nasties, but
that is the excuse, the reality is far too many dem pols are as bigoted greedy and elitist as the worst rethugs.
Anyway the upshot of persuading so many kids to get out and vote, so the kids do but the dems are content to just do more of
the same, will be another entire generation lost to elections forever.
If the DNC had been less greedy and more strategic they would have kept their powder dry and hung off press-ganging the kids
until getting such a turnout could have resulted in genuine change, prez 2020' or whenever, would be actual success for pols and
voters.
But they didn't and wouldn't ever, since for a dem pol, hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens living on the street isn't
nearly as problematic for them, as the dem wannabe pol paying off the mortgage on his/her DC townhouse by 2020, something that
would have been impossible if they hadn't taken congress as all the 'patrons' would have jerked back their cash figuring there
is no gain giving dosh to losers who couldn't win a bar raffle.
As for that Sharice Davids - a total miss she needed to be either a midget or missing an arm or leg to qualify as the classic
ID dem pol. Being a native american lezzo just doesn't tick enough boxes. I predict a not in the least illustrious career since
she cannot even qualify as the punchline in a circa 1980's joke.
As you said, nothing will get out of the House, Pelosi can't lead. They can easily swing 3 Democrats, then Mike Pence puts
the hammer down. If anything manages to crawl through, it won't even be brought to a vote in the Republican Senate. Trump can
still us his bully pulpit to circle the White wagons, fly in even more than his current 1,125,000 H-visa aliens, and No Taxes
for the Rich is now engraved in stone for the Pharoahs.
The imminent $1,500B Omnibus Deficit Bill Three will be lauded as a 'bipartisan solution' by both houses, and 2020 looks to
be a $27,000B illegal, onerous, odious National Debt open Civil War.
There is only the Deep Purple Mil.Gov UniParty. The Titanic is dead in the water, lights out, bow down hard. The Rich,
the Corporate Profiteers and the Military-Political Establishment have pulled away in their fur and jewel-encrusted life boats.
It's one minute after midnight on the Doomsday Clock, the hands have fallen off the Debt Clock, the skies are burning and seas
are rising (they say), and we are in WW3 in 8 nations. Or is it 9?
Smart money is moving toward the exits. This shyte is gonna blow. Let's move to Australia, before it becomes part of Xi's PRC
String of Girls.
Reading most of the comments explaining how the D's won/lost,,, the R's won/lost,,, Trump and company won/lost,,, but couldn't
find one post about how America is losing due to the two suffocating party's and a greedy, disunited, selfish, electorate that
wants it all free.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the Majority discovers it can vote itself
largess out of the public treasury,,,,,,, After that the Majority always votes for the candidate 'promising the most' ,,,,,,,
Alex Fraser.
So the Democrat faction of the Corporate One-Party took back control of the House from the Republican faction. (It's one hard-right
party, of course; only liars and those ignorant of history call the Dems "centrist". By any objective or historical standard they're
a right-wing party.)
It's no big surprise. Last two years it's been the normally self-assured Republicans who, because of their ambivalence about Trump,
have uncharacteristically taken on the usual Democrat role of existential confusion and doubt. Meanwhile the Democrats, in a berserk
batsh$t-insane way, have been more motivated and focused.
So what are these Democrats going to do with this control now that they have it?
I made no prediction on what would happen in this election, but I've long predicted that if/when the Democrats win control of
either house they'll do nothing with that control. Jack squat. Status quo all the way, embellished with more retarded Russia-Derangement
stuff and similar nonsense.
If there really were a difference between these corporate factions, here's the chance for the House to obstruct all Senate-passed
legislation. And as for things which are technically only in the power of the Senate such as confirming appointments, here's the
chance for the House to put public moral pressure on Democrats in the Senate. And there's plenty of back-door ways an activist
House can influence Senate business. Only morbid pedantry, so typical of liberal Dembots, babbles about what the technical powers
of this or that body are. The real world doesn't work that way. To the extent I pay attention at all to Senate affairs it'll be
to see what the House is doing about it.
They claim there's a difference between the two parties? And they claim Trump is an incipient fascist dictator? In that case there's
a lot at stake, and extreme action is called for. Let's see what kind of action we get from their "different" party in control
of the House.
But I predict this House won't lift a finger vs. the Senate, and that it'll strive to work with the Senate on legislation, and
that it'll fully concur with the Senate on war budgets, police state measures, anything and everything demanded by Wall Street,
Big Ag, the fossil fuel extractors, and of course the corporate welfare state in general.
Nor will any of these new-fangled fake "socialist" types take any action to change things one iota. Within the House Democrats,
they could take action, form any and every kind of coalition, to obstruct the corporate-Pelosi leadership faction. They will not
do so. This "new" progressive bloc will be just as fake as the old one.
Nothing I've talked about here is anything but what is possible, what is always implicitly or explicitly promised by Dembots,
and what it would seem is the minimum necessary given what Dembots claim is the scope of the crisis and what is at stake.
Fu Ying, the chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of China's National People's
Congress, said while confirming the reality that China and Russia now find themselves in the
same trenches: "I just hope that if some people in the U.S. insist on dragging us down the hill
into Thucydides' trap, China will be smart enough not to follow."
Indeed to step back and review the breadth of Russia-China cooperation over the past couple
years alone reveals the full potential "cost" of a US-China conflict , given the ways Russia
could easily be pulled in. Fu Ying articulated the increasingly common view from Beijing, that
"There is no sense of threat from Russia" and that "We feel comfortable back-to-back."
And participants in a
recent study by the National Bureau of Asian Research , a
Seattle-based think tank, actually agree. They were asked whether American policy was at fault
for pushing China and Russia into closer cooperation, and alarmingly, as Bloomberg notes: "Some
among the 100-plus participants called for Washington to prepare for the worst-case scenario
the realignment implies: a two-front war ."
Here's but a partial list of the way Sino-Russian relations have been transformed in recent
years:
China is now Russia's biggest single trade partner.
Since 2015 Russia has been China's top supplier of crude oil, displacing Saudi Arabia.
Early this year Russia ramped up its capacity to pipe crude oil to China, to about 600,000
barrels per day, which is about double the prior capability
Increased coordination at the U.N. Security Council.
Regional coordination in Asia, such as Russia supplying the engines for Chinese-Pakistani
fighter jets, resulting in an increasingly worried India which is seeing Russia move into the
Chinese orbit instead of being an arbiter in Chinese-Pakistani relations
The "bromance" at recent summits between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, who meet each
other with increased regularity.
Joint military exercises between the two are now routine.
This year Russia supplied China with its most advanced S-400 air defense system as well
as Sukhoi SU-35 fighter aircraft
Increased willingness on the part of Russia to thwart Washington's argument that China is
a threat to Moscow's aims in the East.
The new "Power of Siberia" natural gas pipeline set to start pumping 38 billion cubic
meters (1.3 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas per year to northern China in December
2019.
Increasingly discovering non-conflicting interests: Europe and China "are two independent
destinations and two independent routes" for gas and oil, Russian Energy Minister Alexander
Novak said in an October interview. "We do not see any need to redirect volumes."
There were moments when Putin showed support and a practical approach toward Trump (like
when he schooled Fareed Zakaria). Putin even expressed that he was welcoming and respectful
of Trumps proposition to restore full-fledged relations with Russia.
I blame the democrats for pointlessly antagonizing Russia for two years just to attempt to
cover up the stench of their own excrement. Now it will be even more difficult to address the
problem of the Chi-coms.
US has nothing to offer Russia as China has. Stop dreaming to befriend Russia to fight
China. US had the opportunity to lead the world after the collapse of USSR but flunk it big
time being the biggest bully in the history.
Forrest Trump - "My Herpes and Genital Warts are responsible for Melania sleeping in
another room, not my small uncircumcised **** and uncontrollable flatulence. Just wanted to
clarify." Hum, ahhhhhhh gee thanks for info...I think. Poor Forrest...sigh
You are absolutely right. Add in that they are greedy motherfuckers and pied pipers to
millions of blithering idiots that can't go one day without making things worse.
China and Russia make an almost perfect symbiosis:
Adjacent countries, transportation costs are as low as possible
Neither regime cares as much as a gnat tear about civil rights & freedoms and
neither is impeded by the vagaries of elections
China has a huge need for natural resources, especially oil & nat gas, but has few
resources beyond coal & not-so-rare earths, while Russia has natural resources in
abundance
Russia manufactures almost nothing for the international goods market while China is
the world's factory
USA regime lords have done an excellent job of alienating and uniting both of them
There were moments when Putin showed support and a practical approach toward Trump (like
when he schooled Fareed Zakaria). Putin even expressed that he was welcoming and respectful
of Trumps proposition to restore full-fledged relations with Russia.
I blame the democrats for pointlessly antagonizing Russia for two years just to attempt to
cover up the stench of their own excrement. Now it will be even more difficult to address the
problem of the Chi-coms.
US has nothing to offer Russia as China has. Stop dreaming to befriend Russia to fight
China. US had the opportunity to lead the world after the collapse of USSR but flunk it big
time being the biggest bully in the history.
Russia and China will come to blows soon enough. China has their eyes on all of that
unpopulated land in Siberia, and they won't like it too much when Russia takes advantage of
the fact that China is dependent on them for energy. The idea that they'll be best buddies is
laughable.
Trump's balls are so big that he ran like a bitch away from his campaign promises to
normalize relations with Russia and prevent this exact scenario. Or maybe he was just
lying.
Nevermind, the ZH herd is stampeding on how great Trump is for pulling some press
privileges of a CNN guy.
I don't think Trump was lying. I think he is doing his best to stay alive and get done
what he can. This country is more fucked up than even he realized.
Forrest Trump - "My Herpes and Genital Warts are responsible for Melania sleeping in
another room, not my small uncircumcised **** and uncontrollable flatulence. Just wanted to
clarify." Hum, ahhhhhhh gee thanks for info...I think. Poor Forrest...sigh
You are absolutely right. Add in that they are greedy motherfuckers and pied pipers to
millions of blithering idiots that can't go one day without making things worse.
China and Russia make an almost perfect symbiosis:
Adjacent countries, transportation costs are as low as possible
Neither regime cares as much as a gnat tear about civil rights & freedoms and
neither is impeded by the vagaries of elections
China has a huge need for natural resources, especially oil & nat gas, but has few
resources beyond coal & not-so-rare earths, while Russia has natural resources in
abundance
Russia manufactures almost nothing for the international goods market while China is
the world's factory
USA regime lords have done an excellent job of alienating and uniting both of them
There were moments when Putin showed support and a practical approach toward Trump (like
when he schooled Fareed Zakaria). Putin even expressed that he was welcoming and respectful
of Trumps proposition to restore full-fledged relations with Russia.
I blame the democrats for pointlessly antagonizing Russia for two years just to attempt to
cover up the stench of their own excrement. Now it will be even more difficult to address the
problem of the Chi-coms.
US has nothing to offer Russia as China has. Stop dreaming to befriend Russia to fight
China. US had the opportunity to lead the world after the collapse of USSR but flunk it big
time being the biggest bully in the history.
Russia and China will come to blows soon enough. China has their eyes on all of that
unpopulated land in Siberia, and they won't like it too much when Russia takes advantage of
the fact that China is dependent on them for energy. The idea that they'll be best buddies is
laughable.
Trump's balls are so big that he ran like a bitch away from his campaign promises to
normalize relations with Russia and prevent this exact scenario. Or maybe he was just
lying.
Nevermind, the ZH herd is stampeding on how great Trump is for pulling some press
privileges of a CNN guy.
I don't think Trump was lying. I think he is doing his best to stay alive and get done
what he can. This country is more fucked up than even he realized.
While this and the previous post on the US elections may well be right that the
republicans and trump will retain their majorities, the posts omit major factors playing a
determining role in these ev
While this and the previous post on the US elections may well be right that the republicans
and trump will retain their majorities, the posts omit major factors playing a determining
role in these events..
1. Gerrymandering.. supposedly creates about a 5% advantage to the republicans. 5% in a
2-party system is almost a landslide. even this article downplaying the role of
gerrymandering includes this line,
2. Voter-suppression. indications are that this may create and even bigger bias than
gerrymandering. it includes numerous tactics, in florida the felon-dienfranchisement tactic
alone suppresses 1.4 million majority black voters. it may be difficult for naive people like
me to imagine the mindset of the vote-suppressors, this excellent short article by meghan
tinsley, sketches the historical origins of these tactics, e.g.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/meghan-tinsley/civil-rights-and-voter-suppression-in-us
" The end of federal support for Reconstruction in 1877 ushered in the Jim Crow era, wherein
southern states waged a relentless campaign of racial terror against empowered black
citizens. From the outset, disenfranchising black citizens was a priority: the Black Codes
enforced severe penalties for minor 'crimes', such as vagrancy, and permanently barred
convicted felons from the vote. As these tactics spread, those who imposed them became
increasingly brazen about their purpose: in 1884, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld felon
disenfranchisement as an effective means to "preserve the purity of the ballot box".
With the entrenchment of segregation in the late nineteenth century, felon
disenfranchisement, combined with poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses,
effectively disenfranchised virtually all African-Americans in Southern states...
In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, hailed as the single most important
legislative achievement of the Civil Rights Movement...
The effects were immediate and wide-reaching: whereas only seven percent of eligible
African-Americans in Mississippi were registered to vote in 1964, the number had jumped to
sixty-seven percent by 1969. Ostensibly colourblind policies, including laws that would
require citizens to present state-issued photo identification before voting, were blocked
because they would disproportionately prevent African-Americans from voting."
4. Electronic vote flipping. this has the least hard evidence, but there are anecdotes, even
in this election, of voters in texas ticking straight democratic slate options but finding
that the machine had entered their senate vote for ted cruz. There are also anecdotes in
earlier elections of vote tallies flipping suddenly, of electronic data not being recorded or
being erased before it could be checked and analysed etc. For those inclined to pooh-pooh
such reports, here is a troubling article on the 2012 mexican elections,
Looking ahead, barring no major upsets, analysts at Deutsche Bank and other Wall Street
banks see potential for the market to rally into the end of the year, with some analysts who
were only recently calling for an extended losing streak now seeing potential upside of between
11% and 14%. But then again, with so much uncertainty between now and then, market returns -
and analysts' expectations - could shift dramatically between now and then.
The leader of Communist China, Chairman Mao, warned the country that revisionists were
threatening to erase all the progress made since the Communist Revolution which brought Mao to
power.
It had been almost 20 years since the bloody revolution, and Mao wanted to reinvigorate the
rebel spirit in the youth. He instructed students to root out any teachers who wove subtle
anti-communist sentiments in their lessons.
Mao encouraged students to rebel against any mindless respect for entrenched authority,
remnants, he said, of centuries of capitalist influence.
Students at Yizhen Middle School, like many others, quickly took up the task. They "exposed"
capitalist intellectual teachers and paraded them around in dunce caps with insulting signs
hung around their necks.
Teachers were beaten and harassed until they confessed to their crimes most of which were,
of course, false confessions to avoid further torture.
It only escalated from there.
What ensued puts Lord of the Flies to shame.
One teacher killed himself after being taken captive by students. Most teachers fled.
Soon the students were left entirely in charge of their school. Two factions quickly
emerged, one calling themselves the East is Red Corps, and the other the Red Rebels.
One student was kidnapped by the East is Red Corps, and suffocated to death on a sock
stuffed in his mouth.
A girl was found to be an East is Red spy among the Red Rebels. She was later cornered with
other East is Red students in a building. She shouted from a window that she would rather die
than surrender. Praising Chairman Mao, she jumped to her death.
Some Red Rebels died from an accidental explosion while making bombs.
Many were tortured, and another student died from his injuries at the hands of the East is
Red Corps.
A female teacher refused to sign an affidavit lying about the cause of death. She was beaten
and gang-raped by a group of students.
Although it might be tempting to see what happened at YMS as mostly relevant to group
adolescent behavior what happened at the school occurred throughout China in government
offices, factories, within the army, and among Chinese of all ages in an eerily similar
way
The students' repressed resentment at having to be so obedient now boiled over into anger
and the desire to be the ones doing the punishing and oppressing
In the power vacuum that Mao had now created, another timeless group dynamic emerged.
Those who were naturally more assertive, aggressive, and even sadistic pushed their way
forward and assumed power , while those who were more passive quietly receded into the
background becoming followers
Once all forms of authority were removed and the students ran the school, there was
nothing to stop the next and most dangerous development in group dynamics. The split into
tribal factions
People may think they are joining because of the different ideas or goals of this tribe or
the other, but what they want more than anything is a sense of belonging and a clear tribal
identity.
Look at the actual differences between the East is Red Corps and the Red Rebels. As the
battle between them intensified it was hard to say what they were fighting for, except to
assume power over the other group.
One strong or vicious act of one side called for a reprisal from the other, and any type
of violence seemed totally justified. There could be no middle ground, nor any questioning of
the rightness of their cause.
The tribe is always right. And to say otherwise is to betray it.
I write this on the eve of the 2018 midterm elections.
And like Mao handing down his orders to dispose of capitalist sympathizers, such have the
leaders of each major US political party rallied their supporters.
This is the most important election of our lifetime, they say.
No middle ground. Violence is justified to get our way. Betray the tribe, and be considered
an enemy.
Just like Mao, they have manufactured a crisis that did not previously exist.
The students had no violent factions before Mao's encouragement. They had no serious
problems with their teachers.
Is there any natural crisis occurring right now? Or has the political establishment whipped
us into an artificial frenzy?
This isn't just another boring election, they say. This is a battle for our future.
The students battled over who were the purest revolutionaries.
The voters now battle over who has the purest intentions for America.
Do the factions even know what they are fighting for anymore?
They are simply fighting for their tribe's control over the government.
The battle of the factions at schools across China were "resolved" when Mao came to support
one side or the other. In that sense, it very much did matter which side the students were
on
The government came down hard against the losing faction.
They had chosen wrong and found themselves aligned against the powerful Communist Party.
It won't be a dictator that hands control to one faction or another in this election. It
will be a simple majority. And those in the minority will suffer.
The winners will feel that it is their time to wield power, just as the students were happy
to finally have the upper hand on their teachers.
If Mao didn't have so much power, he could have never initiated such a violent crisis.
And if our government didn't have so much power, it would hardly matter who wins the
election.
Yet here we are, fighting for control of the government because each faction threatens to
violently repress the other if they gain power.
It is a manufactured crisis. A crisis that only exists because political elites in the
government and media have said so.
They decided that this election will spark the USA's "Cultural Revolution."
And anyone with sympathies from a bygone era will be punished.
You don't have to play by the rules of the corrupt politicians, manipulative media, and
brainwashed peers.
When you subscribe to The Daily Bell, you also get a free guide:
How to Craft a Two Year Plan to Reclaim 3 Specific Freedoms.
This guide will show you exactly how to plan your next two years to build the free life of
your dreams. It's not as hard as you think
Tribal warfare? You clearly don't understand what's happening here. The Globalist cartel
has created division between two parties to incite chaos and violence. The "warfare" you
reference will be nothing but protesting ->rioting ->anarchy ->police restraint of
the Democrat incited sheeple.
There's no tribalism associated with upholding and preserving the Constitution.
I think the globalists will try to cool it off before things spin out of (((their)))
control. Either that or move to the next phase...world war... so they can just slaughter us
and not have to bother trying to herd the increasingly "woke" goyim live stock.
I have NOT heard about a SINGLE CREDIBLE violent incident where people got hurt FROM THE
RIGHT. All the incidents of "White Fascist Violence" look like FALSE FLAGS and contrived
incidents. The foregoing CAN NOT be said of the Leftist Antifa types including racist La Raza
supporters, racist Blacks who want something for nothing, immigrants from any country who
want to be fully supported because they BREATHE and the Top Group (pun intended) Whites who
do not believe in boundaries, standards or quality of life UNLESS it's their lives. NOT all
Blacks, Hispanics and Immigrants are in the Left; but most Blacks, Hispanics and Immigrants
are on the Left and havn't a clue they are responsible for their own prisons because they
cannot REASON and virtue signaling is more important so they are part of the GROUP. Misplaced
EMPHASIS on what is important in creating a CIVILIZED and SAFE society.
Here are a few quotes from President Trump's constant cheerleading of the American economy
in the last several months leading up to next week's midterms.
"In many ways, this is the greatest economy in the HISTORY of America"
-- President Trump tweeted, June 04
"We have the strongest economy in the history of our nation."
-- Trump told reporters, June 15
"We have the greatest economy in the history of our country."
-- Trump said in an interview with Fox News, July 16
"We're having the best economy we've ever had in the history of our country."
-- Trump, said in a speech in Illinois, July 26
"This is the greatest economy that we've had in our history, the best."
-- Trump said at rally in Charleston, W.Va., Aug. 21
"You know, we have the best economy we've ever had, in the history of our country."
-- Trump said in an interview on "Fox and Friends," Aug. 23
"It's said now that our economy is the strongest it's ever been in the history of our
country, and you just have to take a look at the numbers."
-- Trump said on a White House video log, Aug. 24
"We have the best economy the country's ever had and it's getting better."
-- Trump told the Daily Caller, Sept. 03
Democrats are anticipating a blue wave during the November midterm elections, but according
to President Trump, the "strong" US economy could propel Republicans to victory next week.
"History says that whoever's president always seems to lose the midterm," Trump said on an
Oct. 16 interview with FOX Business' Trish Regan.
"No one had the economy that we do. We have the greatest economy that we've ever had."
President Trump's cheerleading sounds great and certainly helps animal spirits, but a new
study warns that more than 25% of American renters are not confident they could cover a $400
emergency. About 18% of homeowners report record low emergency savings. And if you thought that
was bad, more than 30% of renters feel insecure about eating, as do 19% of homeowners, the
Urban Institute study , a
nonpartisan think tank in Washington, reported.
The main takeaway from the report: renters are struggling more than homeowners in the
"greatest economy ever."
"Rental costs are rising much faster than renters' salaries. Between 1960 and 2016, the
median income for a renter grew by just 5%. During the same period, the median rent ballooned
by more than 60%, according to The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.
(Both figures account for inflation.)
To be sure, buying a house has also become harder for many Americans -- to do so now costs
four times the median household income. The homeownership rate fell to 63% in 2016 –
the lowest rate in half a century," said
CNBC .
Corianne Scally, a senior research analyst at the Urban Institute and a co-author of the
study, told CNBC that "renters seem to be worse off." Scally said the report was derived from
its 2017 well-being and basic needs survey, which received about 7,500 responses from people
aged 18 to 64.
2017 living arrangements for Americans
About half of renters in the survey reported financial hardships since President Trump took
office, compared with 33% of homeowners. More than 25% of renters in the survey were not
confident they could cover a $400 emergency. Around 18% of homeowners reported low emergency
savings. Almost 20% of renters saw large and unexpected declines in pay in the past year,
compared with 14% of homeowners.
Reported problems paying family medical bills
More than 12% of renters said they could barely pay rent, compared with 9% of homeowners who
warned their mortgage payments were getting too expensive. 15% of renters said they were on the
brink of not being able to afford utilities during the last 12 months, while 11% of homeowners
said the same.
Households unable to consistenly access or afford food
Scally made it clear to CNBC that renters are much worse off than ever before, but it is
also clear that some homeowners are feeling the pain as well.
"It seems that some of them are having to make trade-offs in just meeting their basic
needs," she said.
Maybe the "greatest economy ever," is not so great?
If so, then why is the Trump administration creating smoke and mirrors about the
economy?
The simple answer: it is all about winning the midterms by any means necessary. As for after
the midterms, then into 2019, a global slowdown lingers, that is the reason why the stock
market had one of its worst months since the 2008 crash. Trouble is ahead.
"... "As the heat of packed-together bodies fogged the windows, passengers beat on the walls and clawed at the doors in a scene from a real-life horror story," ..."
Spending time in Western Europe, as I have done the last several months, provides some
serious perspective on America's decline. In most European countries, like Germany for example,
public transportation works efficiently and there is a social safety net. While homelessness is
a problem, it's nowhere near as rampant as in the US and usually seems to be associated with
addiction. People in Europe are generally much healthier and happier, housing and food and
higher education are affordable and people don't spend all their time working – they are
able to take vacations and enjoy life in a way the vast majority of Americans are not.
Europeans are typically entitled to lengthy paid maternity leave, whereas in the US working
class women are forced to return to work in as little as
two weeks . Read more 130,000 homeless
children, empty food banks predicted this Christmas
Meanwhile, New York's Subway system is decaying due to disinvestment and corruption. Last
summer a train stalled, leaving passengers in the dark with no air conditioning for an hour.
"As the heat of packed-together bodies fogged the windows, passengers beat on the walls and
clawed at the doors in a scene from a real-life horror story,"reported
the New York Times. In Washington DC, the nation's capital, the Metro is always late and
totally unreliable, with train fires
becoming a regular occurrence while Amtrak trains experience routine derailments . These
are just some examples of infrastructure decay. The list goes on: bridges are crumbling,
schools are shuttered. In Baltimore dozens of schools had no heat
during record freezing temperatures this winter. The only thing America's leadership seems
capable of investing in is prisons and war.
In America, the old devour the young. Young Americans are struggling under the weight of
$1.4 trillion in student loan debt. But don't let that confuse you about the state of
America's elderly. They too aren't taken care of. In many European countries people are
entitled to pensions and they can retire comfortably. In the US some have to
work until they die as Social Security isn't enough to live on and Medicare doesn't quite
cover all of their medical needs. As for healthcare, as many as
45,000 people a year die because they cannot access it.
And then there is the issue of water. There are
over 3,000 counties across America whose water supplies have lead levels higher than in
Flint, Michigan, and nothing substantial is being done to address the problem.
Haves and
Have nots
All this is taking place in a nation where inequality continues to climb. There are counties
a few miles apart from one another where the life expectancy drops by 20 years.
Researchers say the life expectancy gap, as high as
20.1 years between rich and poor counties, resembles the gap seen between low-income
countries versus rich countries. In other words, there are pockets of the US that have the
characteristics of third world countries. It seems that the US in many ways, after having
destroyed other parts of the world, has turned inward on itself, sacrificing its most
vulnerable citizens at the altar of capitalism.
Bernie Sanders made an issue of this during his presidential bid, often noting in his stump
speeches the dramatic difference in lifespan in McDowell County, West Virginia, where men live
to about 64, and six hours away in Fairfax, Virginia, where the average lifespan shoots up to
82.
"... So, as with Rome, Greed is Good has done more to hinder the Outlaw US Empire than anything done by the so-called Revisionist Enemies. Combined with Trump's totally unwise Trade War policy forcing all other nations to abandon US-centric financial institutions and its currency, the specter of the Outlaw US Empire being defeated by its own ideology is rather marvelous, even hilarious, although any levity must be tempered by the Empire's brutality and its massive crimes against humanity that've destroyed millions of innocents. ..."
Aah . the woeful state of the Outlaw US Empire's military, done in by Neoliberal ideology,
the tool designed to help Wall Street being destroyed by its machinations. Yesterday, a
translated Russian article based upon
a Reuters report and the
Department of War research paper (Large PDF) it was based upon appeared at
The Saker . Instead of writing a separate comment here, what follows is the comment I
made there.
"What the Reuters article makes clear but avoids mentioning is the culprit is Neoliberal
ideology that resulted in the deindustrialization and financialization of the Outlaw US
Empire's domestic economy all for a Few Dollars More--that such hollowing out was official
Washington--and Wall Street--policy starting with Carter in 1978, greatly accelerated by
Bush/Reagan during the 1980s, then finished off by Clinton/Bush from 1993-2008.
The Defense Department research paper that's linked is also a hoot as it calls for a level
of performance by the procurement and manufacturing systems that's impossible to accomplish
given decades of corruption that's made the MIC what it is today--a maker of overpriced
junk.
Read the transcript of the latest Michael Hudson interview to discover Wall Street's
policy goals and compare them to what Trump wants to accomplish via MAGA, where
Hudson states banks don't lend to--help capitalize--industry because not enough profit
exists there compared to other opportunities.
So, as with Rome, Greed is Good has done more to hinder the Outlaw US Empire than
anything done by the so-called Revisionist Enemies. Combined with Trump's totally unwise
Trade War policy forcing all other nations to abandon US-centric financial institutions and
its currency, the specter of the Outlaw US Empire being defeated by its own ideology is
rather marvelous, even hilarious, although any levity must be tempered by the Empire's
brutality and its massive crimes against humanity that've destroyed millions of
innocents.
"So, as with Rome, Greed is Good has done more to hinder the Outlaw US Empire than
anything done by the so-called Revisionist Enemies. Combined with Trump's totally unwise
Trade War policy forcing all other nations to abandon US-centric financial institutions and
its currency, the specter of the Outlaw US Empire being defeated by its own ideology is
rather marvelous"
The U.S. is indeed collapsing under its own mismanagement, the result of converting its
(weak) democracy into a full-fledged oligarchic dictatorship. The only solution is for the
U.S. to retrench into a shell in order to re-make itself.
Intentionally or not, Trump's policies are hastening this retrenchment.
Thanks for the link to that poll. Those are astonishing results, to find the mainstream
population afraid of the same things we are: that the US is not being representatively
governed because its government is totally corrupt, and that meanwhile the planet and country
are being stripped of resources, in a vicious downward spiral of paralysis.
It's worth quoting the results in full (sorry it doesn't format well):
[begin]
Below is a list of the 10 fears for which the highest percentage of Americans reported
being "Afraid" or "Very Afraid." :
Top Ten Fears of 2018 --->> % Afraid or Very Afraid
1. Corrupt government officials --->> 74%
2. Pollution of oceans, rivers and lakes --->> 62%
3. Pollution of drinking water --->> 61%
4. Not having enough money for the future --->> 57%
5. People I love becoming seriously ill --->> 57%
6. People I love dying --->> 56%
7. Air pollution --->> 55%
8. Extinction of plant and animal species --->> 54%
9. Global warming and climate change --->> 53%
10. High medical bills --->> 53%
If there's any reality in these numbers it means that a politically vast majority of
people in the US are focused on the right things, principal among which is that their
recourse to address these things is completely broken. The obvious thought in a once famously
"can-do" culture must obviously be that the government must be fixed or replaced. The tough
question lingering is, How?
What you illustrate are known as Structural Adjustment Loans/Programs promoted by both IMF
and World Bank as the major plank of Neoliberal ideology begun by McNamara when he was
appointed to WB by Carter in 1978. This recap provided by developmental economist and
critic Walden Bello details why and for whom the IMF/WB loans were designed to benefit--they
differed little from the purposes of bilateral loans made by the US treasury during the Age
of Dollar Diplomacy, which provided the ideological basis for robbing those nations. The
point being US Imperialism atop centuries of Spanish Colonialism is why Latin America is do
developmentally poor and kept that way through gross class distortions and outright Class War
sponsored by CIA and Spain.
"... Bolsonaro, like Trump, is not a disruption of the current neoliberal order; he is an intensification or escalation of its worst impulses. He is its logical conclusion. ..."
"... Despite their professed concern, the plutocrats and their media spokespeople much prefer a far-right populist like Trump or Bolsonaro to a populist leader of the genuine left. They prefer the social divisions fuelled by neo-fascists like Bolsonaro, divisions that protect their wealth and privilege, over the unifying message of a socialist who wants to curtail class privilege, the real basis of the elite's power. ..."
"... The true left – whether in Brazil, Venezuela, Britain or the US – does not control the police or military, the financial sector, the oil industries, the arms manufacturers, or the corporate media. It was these very industries and institutions that smoothed the path to power for Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Trump in the US. ..."
"... Former socialist leaders like Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Hugo Chavez in Venezuela were bound to fail not so much because of their flaws as individuals but because powerful interests rejected their right to rule. These socialists never had control over the key levers of power, the key resources. Their efforts were sabotaged – from within and without – from the moment of their election. ..."
"... The media, the financial elites, the armed forces were never servants of the socialist governments that have been struggling to reform Latin America. The corporate world has no interest either in building proper housing in place of slums or in dragging the masses out of the kind of poverty that fuels the drug gangs that Bolsonaro claims he will crush through more violence. ..."
"... As in Pinochet's Chile, Bolsonaro can rest assured that his kind of neo-fascism will live in easy harmony with neoliberalism. ..."
"... Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net . ..."
With Jair Bolsonaro's victory in Brazil's presidential election at the weekend, the doom-mongers among western elites are out in force once again. His success, like Donald Trump's, has confirmed a long-held prejudice: that the people cannot be trusted; that, when empowered, they behave like a mob driven by primitive urges; that the unwashed masses now threaten to bring down the carefully constructed walls of civilisation.
The guardians of the status quo refused to learn the lesson of Trump's election, and so it will be with Bolsonaro. Rather than engaging the intellectual faculties they claim as their exclusive preserve, western "analysts" and "experts" are again averting their gaze from anything that might help them understand what has driven our supposed democracies into the dark places inhabited by the new demagogues. Instead, as ever, the blame is being laid squarely at the door of social media.
Social media and fake news are apparently the reasons Bolsonaro won at the ballot box. Without the gatekeepers in place to limit access to the "free press" – itself the plaything of billionaires and global corporations, with brands and a bottom line to protect – the rabble has supposedly been freed to give expression to their innate bigotry.
Here is Simon Jenkins, a veteran British gatekeeper – a former editor of the Times of London who now writes a column in the Guardian – pontificating on Bolsonaro:
"The lesson for champions of open democracy is glaring. Its values cannot be taken for granted. When debate is no longer through regulated media, courts and institutions, politics will default to the mob. Social media – once hailed as an agent of global concord – has become the purveyor of falsity, anger and hatred. Its algorithms polarise opinion. Its pseudo-information drives argument to the extremes."
This is now the default consensus of the corporate media, whether in its rightwing incarnations or of the variety posing on the liberal-left end of the spectrum like the Guardian. The people are stupid, and we need to be protected from their base instincts. Social media, it is claimed, has unleashed humanity's id.
Selling plutocracy
There is a kind of truth in Jenkins' argument, even if it is not the one he intended. Social
media did indeed liberate ordinary people. For the first time in modern history, they were not
simply the recipients of official, sanctioned information. They were not only spoken down to by
their betters, they could answer back – and not always as deferentially as the media
class expected.
Clinging to their old privileges, Jenkins and his ilk are rightly unnerved. They have much
to lose.
But that also means they are far from dispassionate observers of the current political
scene. They are deeply invested in the status quo, in the existing power structures that have
kept them well-paid courtiers of the corporations that dominate the planet.
Bolsonaro, like Trump, is not a disruption of the current neoliberal order; he is an
intensification or escalation of its worst impulses. He is its logical conclusion.
The plutocrats who run our societies need figureheads, behind whom they can conceal their
unaccountable power. Until now they preferred the slickest salespeople, ones who could sell
wars as humanitarian intervention rather than profit-driven exercises in death and destruction;
the unsustainable plunder of natural resources as economic growth; the massive accumulation of
wealth, stashed in offshore tax havens, as the fair outcome of a free market; the bailouts
funded by ordinary taxpayers to stem economic crises they had engineered as necessary
austerity; and so on.
A smooth-tongued Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton were the favoured salespeople, especially
in an age when the elites had persuaded us of a self-serving argument: that ghetto-like
identities based on colour or gender mattered far more than class. It was divide-and-rule
dressed up as empowerment. The polarisation now bewailed by Jenkins was in truth stoked and
rationalised by the very corporate media he so faithfully serves.
Fear of the domino effect
Despite their professed concern, the plutocrats and their media spokespeople much prefer a
far-right populist like Trump or Bolsonaro to a populist leader of the genuine left. They
prefer the social divisions fuelled by neo-fascists like Bolsonaro, divisions that protect
their wealth and privilege, over the unifying message of a socialist who wants to curtail class
privilege, the real basis of the elite's power.
The true left – whether in Brazil, Venezuela, Britain or the US – does not
control the police or military, the financial sector, the oil industries, the arms
manufacturers, or the corporate media. It was these very industries and institutions that
smoothed the path to power for Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Trump in the
US.
Former socialist leaders like Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Hugo Chavez in
Venezuela were bound to fail not so much because of their flaws as individuals but because
powerful interests rejected their right to rule. These socialists never had control over the
key levers of power, the key resources. Their efforts were sabotaged – from within and
without – from the moment of their election.
Local elites in Latin America are tied umbilically to US elites, who in turn are determined
to make sure any socialist experiment in their backyard fails – as a way to prevent a
much-feared domino effect, one that might seed socialism closer to home.
The media, the financial elites, the armed forces were never servants of the socialist
governments that have been struggling to reform Latin America. The corporate world has no
interest either in building proper housing in place of slums or in dragging the masses out of
the kind of poverty that fuels the drug gangs that Bolsonaro claims he will crush through more
violence.
Bolsonaro will not face any of the institutional obstacles Lula da Silva or Chavez needed to
overcome. No one in power will stand in his way as he institutes his "reforms". No one will
stop him creaming off Brazil's wealth for his corporate friends. As in Pinochet's Chile,
Bolsonaro can rest assured that his kind of neo-fascism will live in easy harmony with
neoliberalism.
Immune system
If you want to understand the depth of the self-deception of Jenkins and other media
gatekeepers, contrast Bolsonaro's political ascent to that of Jeremy Corbyn, the modest social
democratic leader of Britain's Labour party. Those like Jenkins who lament the role of social
media – they mean you, the public – in promoting leaders like Bolsonaro are also
the media chorus who have been wounding Corbyn day after day, blow by blow, for three years
– since he accidentally slipped past safeguards intended by party bureacrats to keep
someone like him from power.
The supposedly liberal Guardian has been leading that assault. Like the rightwing media, it
has shown its absolute determination to stop Corbyn at all costs, using any pretext.
Within days of Corbyn's election to the Labour leadership, the Times newspaper – the
voice of the British establishment – published an article quoting a general, whom it
refused to name, warning that the British army's commanders had agreed they would sabotage a
Corbyn government. The general strongly hinted that there would be a military coup first.
We are not supposed to reach the point where such threats – tearing away the
façade of western democracy – ever need to be implemented. Our pretend democracies
were created with immune systems whose defences are marshalled to eliminate a threat like
Corbyn much earlier.
Once he moved closer to power, however, the rightwing corporate media was forced to deploy
the standard tropes used against a left leader: that he was incompetent, unpatriotic, even
treasonous.
But just as the human body has different immune cells to increase its chances of success,
the corporate media has faux-liberal-left agents like the Guardian to complement the right's
defences. The Guardian sought to wound Corbyn through identity politics, the modern left's
Achille's heel. An endless stream of confected crises about anti-semitism were intended to
erode the hard-earned credit Corbyn had accumulated over decades for his anti-racism work.
Slash-and-burn politics
Why is Corbyn so dangerous? Because he supports the right of workers to a dignified life,
because he refuses to accept the might of the corporations, because he implies that a different
way of organising our societies is possible. It is a modest, even timid programme he
articulates, but even so it is far too radical either for the plutocratic class that rules over
us or for the corporate media that serves as its propaganda arm.
The truth ignored by Jenkins and these corporate stenographers is that if you keep
sabotaging the programmes of a Chavez, a Lula da Silva, a Corbyn or a Bernie Sanders, then you
get a Bolsonaro, a Trump, an Orban.
It is not that the masses are a menace to democracy. It is rather that a growing proportion
of voters understand that a global corporate elite has rigged the system to accrue for itself
ever greater riches. It is not social media that is polarising our societies. It is rather that
the determination of the elites to pillage the planet until it has no more assets to strip has
fuelled resentment and destroyed hope. It is not fake news that is unleashing the baser
instincts of the lower orders. Rather, it is the frustration of those who feel that change is
impossible, that no one in power is listening or cares.
Social media has empowered ordinary people. It has shown them that they cannot trust their
leaders, that power trumps justice, that the elite's enrichment requires their poverty. They
have concluded that, if the rich can engage in slash-and-burn politics against the planet, our
only refuge, they can engage in slash-and-burn politics against the global elite.
Are they choosing wisely in electing a Trump or Bolsonaro? No. But the liberal guardians of
the status quo are in no position to judge them. For decades, all parts of the corporate media
have helped to undermine a genuine left that could have offered real solutions, that could have
taken on and beaten the right, that could have offered a moral compass to a confused, desperate
and disillusioned public.
Jenkins wants to lecture the masses about their depraved choices while he and his paper
steer them away from any politician who cares about their welfare, who fights for a fairer
society, who prioritises mending what is broken.
The western elites will decry Bolsonaro in the forlorn and cynical hope of shoring up their
credentials as guardians of the existing, supposedly moral order. But they engineered him.
Bolsonaro is their monster.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include
"Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East"
(Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books).
His website is www.jonathan-cook.net .
The U.S. is going for the jugular with new Iran sanctions intended to punish those who trade
with Teheran. But the U.S. may have a fight on its hands in a possible post- WWII
turning-point...
The next step in the Trump administration's "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran has
begun, with the most severe sanctions being re-imposed on the Islamic Republic. Crucially, they
apply not only to Iran but to anyone who continues to do business with it.
It's not yet clear how disruptive this move will be. While the U.S. intention is to isolate
Iran, it is the U.S. that could wind up being more isolated. It depends on the rest of the
world's reaction, and especially Europe's.
The issue is so fraught that disputes over how to apply the new sanctions have even divided
Trump administration officials.
The administration is going for the jugular this time. It wants to force Iranian exports of
oil and petrochemical products down to as close to zero as possible. As the measures are now
written, they also exclude Iran from the global interbank system known as SWIFT.
It is hard to say which of these sanctions is more severe. Iran's oil exports have already
started falling. They
peaked at 2.7 million barrels a day last May -- just before Donald Trump pulled the U.S.
out of the six-nation accord governing Iran's nuclear programs. By early September oil exports
were averaging a million
barrels a day less .
In August the U.S. barred Iran's purchases of
U.S.-dollar denominated American and foreign company aircraft and auto parts. Since then the
Iranian rial has crashed to
record lows and inflation has risen above 30 percent.
Revoking Iran's SWIFT privileges will effectively cut the nation out of the
dollar-denominated global economy. But there are moves afoot, especially by China and Russia,
to move away from a dollar-based economy.
The SWIFT issue has caused infighting in the
administration between Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and John Bolton, Trump's national security
adviser who is among the most vigorous Iran hawks in the White House. Mnuchin might win a
temporary delay or exclusions for a few Iranian financial institutions, but probably not much
more.
On Sunday, the second round of sanctions kicked in since Trump withdrew the U.S. from the
2015 Obama administration-backed, nuclear agreement, which lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange
for stringent controls on its nuclear program. The International Atomic Energy Agency has
repeatedly certified that the deal is working and the other signatories -- Britain, China,
France, Germany and Russia have not pulled out and have resumed trading with Iran. China and
Russia have already said they will ignore American threats to sanction it for continuing
economic relations with Iran. The key question is what will America's European allies
do?
Europeans React
Europe has been unsettled since Trump withdrew in May from the nuclear accord. The European
Union is developing a trading mechanism to get around U.S. sanctions. Known as a
Special Purpose Vehicle , it would allow European companies to use a barter system similar
to how Western Europe traded with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Juncker: Wants Euro-denominated trading
EU officials have also been lobbying to preserve
Iran's access to global interbank operations by excluding the revocation of SWIFT privileges
from Trump's list of sanctions. They count
Mnuchin,who is eager to preserve U.S. influence in the global trading system, among their
allies. Some European officials, including Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European
Commission, propose making the euro a global trading currency
to compete with the dollar.
Except for Charles de Gaulle briefly pulling France out of NATO in 1967
and Germany and France voting on the UN Security Council against the U.S. invading Iraq in
2003, European nations have been subordinate to the U.S. since the end of the Second World
War.
The big European oil companies, unwilling to risk the threat of U.S. sanctions, have already
signaled they intend to ignore the EU's new trade mechanism. Total SA, the French petroleum
company and one of Europe's biggest, pulled
out of its Iran operations several months ago.
Earlier this month a U.S. official confidently
predicted there would be little demand among European corporations for the proposed barter
mechanism.
Whether Europe succeeds in efforts to defy the U.S. on Iran is nearly beside the point from
a long-term perspective. Trans-Atlantic damage has already been done. A rift that began to
widen during the Obama administration seems about to get wider still.
Asia Reacts
Asian nations are also exhibiting resistance to the impending U.S. sanctions. It is unlikely
they could absorb all the exports Iran will lose after Nov. 4, but they could make a
significant difference. China, India, and South Korea are the first, second, and third-largest
importers of Iranian crude; Japan is sixth. Asian nations may also try to work around the U.S.
sanctions regime after Nov. 4.
India is considering purchases of Iranian crude via a barter system or denominating
transactions in rupees. China, having already said it would ignore the U.S. threat, would like
nothing better than to expand yuan-denominated oil trading, and this is not a hard call: It is
in a protracted trade war with the U.S., and an oil-futures market launched in Shanghai last
spring already claims roughly 14 percent of the global market for "front-month" futures --
contracts covering shipments closest to delivery.
Trump: Unwittingly playing with U.S. long-term future
As with most of the Trump administration's foreign policies, we won't know how the new
sanctions will work until they are introduced. There could be waivers for nations such as
India; Japan is on record asking for one. The E.U.'s Special Purpose Vehicle could prove at
least a modest success at best, but this remains uncertain. Nobody is sure who will win the
administration's internal argument over SWIFT.
Long-term Consequences for the U.S.
The de-dollarization of the global economy is gradually gathering momentum. The orthodox
wisdom in the markets has long been that competition with the dollar from other currencies will
eventually prove a reality, but it will not be one to arrive in our lifetimes. But with
European and Asian reactions to the imminent sanctions against Iran it could come sooner than
previously thought.
The coalescing of emerging powers into a non-Western alliance -- most significantly China,
Russia, India, and Iran -- starts to look like another medium-term reality. This is driven by
practical rather than ideological considerations, and the U.S. could not do more to encourage
this if it tried. When Washington withdrew from the Iran accord, Moscow and Beijing immediately
pledged to support Tehran by staying with its terms.If the U.S. meets significant resistance,
especially from its allies, it could be a turning-point in post-Word War II U.S.
dominance.
Supposedly Intended for New Talks
All this is intended to force Iran back to the negotiating table for a rewrite of what Trump
often calls "the worst deal ever." Tehran has made it clear countless times it has no intention
of reopening the pact, given that it has consistently adhered to its terms and that the other
signatories to the deal are still abiding by it.
The U.S. may be drastically overplaying its hand and could pay the price with additional
international isolation that has worsened since Trump took office.
Washington has been on a sanctions binge for years. Those about to take effect seem
recklessly broad. This time, the U.S. risks lasting alienation even from those allies that have
traditionally been its closest.
Hell is empty and all the devils are here. ~William Shakespeare
Notable quotes:
"... Scum versus scum. That sums up this election season. Is it any wonder that 100 million Americans don't bother to vote? When all you are offered is Bob One or Bob Two, why bother? ..."
"... One-fourth of Democratic challengers in competitive House districts in this week's elections have backgrounds in the CIA, the military, the National Security Council or the State Department. Nearly all candidates on the ballots in House races are corporate-sponsored, with a few lonely exceptions such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, members of the Democratic Socialists of America who are running as Democrats. ..."
"... "In interviews with two dozen Wall Street executives, fund-raisers, donors and those who raise money from them, Democrats described an extraordinary level of investment and excitement from the finance sector ," The New York Times reported about current campaign contributions to the Democrats from the corporate oligarchs. ..."
There is perhaps no better illustration of the deep decay of the American political system than the Senate race in New Jersey.
Sen. Bob Menendez, running for re-election, was censured by the Senate Ethics Committee for accepting bribes from the Florida businessman
Salomon Melgen, who was convicted in 2017 of defrauding Medicare of $73 million. The senator had flown to the Dominican Republic
with Melgen on the physician's private jet and stayed in his private villa, where the men cavorted with young Dominican women who
allegedly were prostitutes. Menendez performed numerous political favors for Melgen, including helping some of the Dominican women
acquire visas to the United States. Menendez was indicted in a federal corruption trial but escaped sentencing because of a hung
jury.
Menendez has a voting record as sordid as most Democrats'. He supported the $716 billion military spending bill, along with 85
percent of his fellow Senate Democrats. He signed
a letter , along with other Democratic leaders, calling for steps to extradite
Julian Assange to
stand trial in the United States. The senator, the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, is owned by the lobby for Israel
-- a country that routinely and massively interferes in our elections -- and supported moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. He helped
cause the 2008 global financial crisis by voting to revoke
Glass-Steagall
, the Depression-era law enacted to create a firewall between commercial and investment banks.
His Republican rival in the Senate race that will be decided Tuesday is
Bob Hugin , whose reported net worth is at least $84 million. With Hugin as its CEO, the pharmaceutical firm Celgene made $200
million by conspiring to keep generic cancer drugs off the market, according to its critics. Celgene, a model of everything that
is wrong with our for-profit health care system, paid $280 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a whistleblower who accused the firm
of improperly marketing two drugs to treat several forms of cancer without getting Federal Drug Administration approval, thereby
defrauding Medicare. Celgene, over seven years, also doubled the price of
the cancer drug Revlimid to some $20,000
for a supply of 28 pills.
The Senate campaign in New Jersey has seen no discussion of substantive issues. It is dominated by both candidates' nonstop personal
attacks and negative ads, part of the typical burlesque of American politics.
Scum versus scum. That sums up this election season. Is it any wonder that 100 million Americans don't bother to vote? When all
you are offered is Bob One or Bob Two, why bother?
One-fourth of Democratic challengers in competitive
House districts in this week's elections have backgrounds in the CIA, the military, the National Security Council or the State Department.
Nearly all candidates on the ballots in House races are corporate-sponsored, with a few lonely exceptions such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
and Rashida Tlaib, members of the Democratic Socialists of America who are running as Democrats.
The securities and finance industry
has backed Democratic congressional candidates 63 percent to 37 percent over Republicans, according to data collected by the
Center for Responsive Politics . Democratic candidates and political action committees have received $56.8 million, compared
with Republicans' $33.4 million, the center reported. The broader sector of finance, insurance and real estate, it found, has given
$174 million to Democratic candidates, against $157 million to Republicans. And
Michael Bloomberg
, weighing his own presidential run, has pledged $100 million to elect a Democratic Congress.
"In interviews with two dozen Wall Street executives, fund-raisers, donors and those who raise money from them, Democrats described
an extraordinary level of investment and excitement from the finance sector ," The New York Times reported about current campaign
contributions to the Democrats from the corporate oligarchs.
Our system of legalized bribery is an equal-opportunity employer.
Of course, we are all supposed to vote Democratic to halt the tide of Trump fascism. But should the Democrats take control of
the House of Representatives, hate speech and violence as a tool for intimidation and control will increase, with much of it directed,
as we saw with the pipe bombs intended to decapitate the Democratic Party leadership, toward prominent Democratic politicians and
critics of Donald Trump. Should the white man's party of the president retain control of the House and the Senate, violence will
still be the favored instrument of political control as the last of democratic protections are stripped from us. Either way we are
in for it.
Trump is a clownish and embarrassing tool of the kleptocrats. His faux populism is a sham. Only the rich like his tax cuts, his
refusal to raise the minimum wage and his effort to destroy Obamacare. All he has left is hate. And he will use it. Which is not
to say that, if only to throw up some obstacle to Trump, you shouldn't vote for the Democratic scum, tools of the war industry and
the pharmaceutical and insurance industry, Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry, as opposed to the Republican scum. But Democratic
control of the House will do very little to halt our descent into corporate tyranny, especially with another economic crisis brewing
on Wall Street. The rot inside the American political system is deep and terminal.
The Democrats, who refuse to address the social inequality they helped orchestrate and that has given rise to Trump, are the party
of racial and ethnic inclusivity, identity politics, Wall Street and the military. Their core battle cry is: We are not Trump!
This is ultimately a losing formula. It was adopted by Hillary Clinton, who is apparently weighing another run for the presidency
after we thought we had thrust a stake through her political heart. It is the agenda of the well-heeled East Coast and West Coast
elites who want to instill corporate fascism with a friendly face.
by Chris Bertram on October 31, 2018 Candice Delmas, A
Duty to Resist: When Disobedience Should Be Uncivil (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Political obligation has always been a somewhat unsatisfactory topic in political
philosophy, as has, relatedly, civil disobedience. The "standard view" of civil disobedience,
to be found in Rawls, presupposes that we live in a nearly just society in which some serious
violations of the basic liberties yet occur and conceives of civil disobedience as a deliberate
act of public lawbreaking, nonviolent in character, which aims to communicate a sense of grave
wrong to our fellow citizens. To demonstrate their fidelity to law, civil disobedients are
willing to accept the consequences of their actions and to take their punishment. When Rawls
first wrote about civil disobedience, in 1964, parts of the US were openly and flagrantly
engaged in the violent subordination of their black population, so it was quite a stretch for
him to think of that society as "nearly just". But perhaps its injustice impinged less
obviously on a white professor at an elite university in Massachusetts than it did on poor
blacks in the deep South.
The problems with the standard account hardly stop there. Civil disobedience thus conceived
is awfully narrow. In truth, the range of actions which amount to resistance to the state and
to unjust societies is extremely broad, running from ordinary political opposition, through
civil disobedience to disobedience that is rather uncivil, through sabotage, hacktivism,
leaking, whistle-blowing, carrying out Samaritan assistance in defiance of laws that prohibit
it, striking, occupation, violent resistance, violent revolution, and, ultimately, terrorism.
For the non-ideal world in which we actually live and where we are nowhere close to a "nearly
just" society, we need a better theory, one which tells us whether Black Lives Matter activists
are justified or whether antifa can punch Richard Spencer. Moreover, we need a theory that
tells us not only what we may do but also what we are obliged to do: when is standing by in the
face of injustice simply not morally permissible.
Step forward Candice Delmas with her superb and challenging book The Duty to Resist:
When Disobedience Should Be Uncivil (Oxford University Press). Delmas points out the
manifold shortcomings of the standard account and how it is often derived from taking the
particular tactics of the civil rights movement and turning pragmatic choices into moral
principles. Lots of acts of resistance against unjust societies, in order to be effective, far
from being communicative, need to be covert. Non-violence may be an effective strategy, but
sometimes those resisting state injustice have a right to defend themselves. [click
to continue ]
Hidari 10.31.18 at 3:41 pm (no link)
Strangely enough, the link I was looking at immediately before I clicked on the OP, was this:
It would be interesting to see a philosopher's view on whether or not civil disobedience
was necessary, and to what extent, to prevent actions that will lead to the end of our
species.
Ebenezer Scrooge 10.31.18 at 4:52 pm (no link)
Two points:
As far as the Nazi-punching goes, it is important to remember that we hung Julius Streicher
for nothing but speech acts.
I have no idea who Candice Delmas is, but "Delmas" is a French name. The French have a very
different attitude toward civil disobedience than we do.
Moz of Yarramulla 10.31.18 at 11:23 pm (no link)
civil disobedience as a deliberate act of public lawbreaking, nonviolent in character,
which aims to communicate a sense of grave wrong to our fellow citizens.
I think that's a pretty narrow view of civil disobedience even if you just count the
actions of the protesters. Often NVDA is aimed at or merely accepts that a violent response
is inevitable. The resistance at Parihaka, for example, was in no doubt that the response
would be military and probably lethal. And Animal Liberation are often classified as
terrorists by the US and UK governments while murderers against abortion are not.
Which is to say that the definition of "nonviolent" is itself an area of conflict, with
some taking the Buddhist extremist position that any harm or even inconvenience to any living
thing makes an action violent, and others saying that anything short of genocide can be
nonviolent (and then there are the "intention is all" clowns). Likewise terrorism, most
obviously of late the Afghani mujahideen when they transitioned from being revolutionaries to
terrorists when the invader changed.
In Australia we have the actual government taking the view that any action taken by a
worker or protester that inconveniences a company is a criminal act and the criminal must
both compensate the company (including consequential damages) as well as facing jail time.
tasmania and
NSW and of course the anti-union
laws . The penalties suggest they're considered crimes of violence, as does the
rhetoric.
Moz of Yarramulla 11.01.18 at 12:13 am (no link)
Jeff@11
one should never legitimize any means toward social change that you would not object to
seeing used by your mortal enemies.
Are you using an unusual definition of "mortal enemy" here? Viz, other than "enemy that
wants to kill you"? Even US law has theoretical prohibitions on expressing that
intention.
It's especially odd since we're right now in the middle of a great deal of bad-faith use
of protest techniques by mortal enemies. "free speech" used to protect Nazi rallies,
"academic freedom" to defend anti-science activists, "non-violent protest" used to describe
violent attacks, "freedom of religion" used to excuse terrorism, the list goes on.
In Australia we have a 'proud boys' leader coming to Australia who has somehow managed to
pass the character test imposed by our government. He's the leader of a gang that requires an
arrest for violence as a condition of membership and regularly says his goal is to incite
others to commit murder. It seems odd that our immigration minister has found those things to
be
not disqualifying while deporting someone for merely
associating with a vaguely similar gang , but we live in weird times.
As far as the Nazi-punching goes, it is important to remember that we hung Julius
Streicher for nothing but speech acts.
I do remember that*, but it's not clear to me why you think it's important to remember it
in this context. If somebody who had fatally punched a Nazi speaker were prosecuted for
murder, I doubt that 'he was a Nazi speaker' would be accepted as a defence on the basis of
the Streicher precedent.
*Strictly speaking, I don't remember it as something that 'we' did: I wasn't born at the
time, and it's not clear to me who you mean by 'we'. (Streicher himself probably would have
said that it was the Jews, or possibly the Jews and the Bolsheviks, who were hanging him, but
I don't suppose that would be your view.) However, I'm aware of the events you're referring
to, which is the real point.
Rawls presupposes that we live in a nearly just society in which some serious violations
of the basic liberties yet occur For the non-ideal world in which we actually live and where
we are nowhere close to a "nearly just" society, we need a better theory
People need to stop spreading this misinterpretation about Rawls on civil disobedience, which
I've seen several places in the past few years. Rawls focuses on the case of a nearly just
society not because he thinks it's the only case in which you can engage in civil
disobedience but because he thinks it's the only case in which there are difficulties with
justifying it. He states this very clearly in A Theory of Justice : in cases where the
society is not nearly just, there are no difficulties in justifying civil disobedience or
even sometimes armed resistance. His natural duty account is not put forward as a general
theory of civil disobedience but to argue that civil disobedience can admit of justification
even in the case in which it is hardest to justify.
I'm not a fan of Rawls myself, but I don't know how he could possibly have been more clear
on this, since he makes all these points explicitly.
LFC 11.02.18 at 12:45 am (no link)
J-D @18
The Nuremberg tribunal was set up and staffed by the U.S., Britain, USSR, and France; so
whether Ebenezer's "we" was intended to refer to the four countries collectively or just to
the U.S., it's clear who hanged Streicher et al., and the tone of your comment on this point
is rather odd.
anon 11.02.18 at 4:23 pm (no link)
Resisting by protesting is OK.
However, here in the USA, actual legislation creating laws is done by our elected
representatives.
So if you're an Amaerican and really want Social Change and aren't just posturing or
'virtue signaling' make sure you vote in the upcoming election.
I'm afraid too many will think that their individual vote won't 'matter' or the polls show
it isn't needed or some other excuse to justify not voting. Please do not be that person.
Don Berinati 11.02.18 at 5:06 pm (no link)
Recently re-reading '1968' by Kurlansky and he repeatedly made this point about protests
– that to be effective they had to get on television (major networks, not like our
youtube, I think, so it would be seen by the masses in order to sway them) and to do that the
acts had to be outlandish because they were competing for network time. This increasingly led
to violent acts, which almost always worked in getting on the news, but flew in the face of
King's and others peaceful methods.
So, maybe punching out a Nazi is the way to change people's minds or at least get them to
think about stuff.
Elections USA, Inc: "Scum Vs. Scum." When I went looking for Hedges's weekly column today I
rather expected him to be onto the next Bigger Picture item that he is always adroit at
tackling.
So it was a little surprising that he chose instead to lead with an example of the midterm
races in his state of NJ, the one between disgraced Democratic Senator Robert Menendez and
Republican Bob Hugin.
He never disappoints.
There is perhaps no better illustration of the deep decay of the American political
system than the Senate race in New Jersey. Sen. Bob Menendez, running for re-election, was
censured by the Senate Ethics Committee for accepting bribes from the Florida businessman
Salomon Melgen, who was convicted in 2017 of defrauding Medicare of $73 million. The
senator had flown to the Dominican Republic with Melgen on the physician's private jet and
stayed in his private villa, where the men cavorted with young Dominican women who
allegedly were prostitutes. Menendez performed numerous political favors for Melgen,
including helping some of the Dominican women acquire visas to the United States. Menendez
was indicted in a federal corruption trial but escaped sentencing because of a hung
jury.
Menendez has a voting record as sordid as most Democrats'. He supported the $716 billion
military spending bill, along with 85 percent of his fellow Senate Democrats. He signed a
letter, along with other Democratic leaders, calling for steps to extradite Julian Assange
to stand trial in the United States. The senator, the ranking member of the Foreign
Relations Committee, is owned by the lobby for Israel -- a country that routinely and
massively interferes in our elections -- and supported moving the U.S. Embassy to
Jerusalem. He helped cause the 2008 global financial crisis by voting to revoke
Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law enacted to create a firewall between commercial and
investment banks.
In what is so emblematic of how pathetic and corrupt the opposition party, their
presidential candidate came out to throw her support behind such an odious criminal and
corporate whore and to campaign with him. While at the same time the Dems have made no secret
about their intention to crush any candidate who espouses socialist values.
Vote if you want, but it's a charade in which the Duopoly will remain beholden to the same
money interests who paid for both the Red and Blue campaigns.
Scum versus scum. That sums up this election season. Is it any wonder that 100 million
Americans don't bother to vote? When all you are offered is Bob One or Bob Two, why bother?
One-fourth of Democratic challengers in competitive House districts in this week's
elections have backgrounds in the CIA, the military, the National Security Council or the
State Department. Nearly all candidates on the ballots in House races are
corporate-sponsored, with a few lonely exceptions such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and
Rashida Tlaib, members of the Democratic Socialists of America who are running as
Democrats. The securities and finance industry has backed Democratic congressional
candidates 63 percent to 37 percent over Republicans, according to data collected by the
Center for Responsive Politics. Democratic candidates and political action committees have
received $56.8 million, compared with Republicans' $33.4 million, the center reported. The
broader sector of finance, insurance and real estate, it found, has given $174 million to
Democratic candidates, against $157 million to Republicans. And Michael Bloomberg, weighing
his own presidential run, has pledged $100 million to elect a Democratic Congress.
"In interviews with two dozen Wall Street executives, fund-raisers, donors and those who
raise money from them, Democrats described an extraordinary level of investment and
excitement from the finance sector ," The New York Times reported about current campaign
contributions to the Democrats from the corporate oligarchs.
Our system of legalized bribery is an equal-opportunity employer.
Of course, we are all supposed to vote Democratic to halt the tide of Trump fascism. But
should the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives, hate speech and violence
as a tool for intimidation and control will increase, with much of it directed, as we saw
with the pipe bombs intended to decapitate the Democratic Party leadership, toward
prominent Democratic politicians and critics of Donald Trump. Should the white man's party
of the president retain control of the House and the Senate, violence will still be the
favored instrument of political control as the last of democratic protections are stripped
from us. Either way we are in for it.
Trump is a clownish and embarrassing tool of the kleptocrats. His faux populism is a
sham. Only the rich like his tax cuts, his refusal to raise the minimum wage and his effort
to destroy Obamacare. All he has left is hate. And he will use it. Which is not to say
that, if only to throw up some obstacle to Trump, you shouldn't vote for the Democratic
scum, tools of the war industry and the pharmaceutical and insurance industry, Wall Street
and the fossil fuel industry, as opposed to the Republican scum. But Democratic control of
the House will do very little to halt our descent into corporate tyranny, especially with
another economic crisis brewing on Wall Street. The rot inside the American political
system is deep and terminal.
"Plus ça change, Plus c'est la même chose."
But it is always necessary to remind folks that the Greatest Democracy In The World is
not. It is An Auction House To The Highest Bidder.
He goes on to talk about fascism, its characteristics, its incarnation today, and the
elements that pave the way for, which are economic instability, concentrated wealth,
monopoly, a police state, imperialism, etc. It is Neoliberalism which has ushered in fascism
across the globe, plain and simple.
No totalitarian state has mastered propaganda better than the corporate state. Our press
has replaced journalism with trivia, feel-good stories, jingoism and celebrity gossip. The
banal and the absurd, delivered by cheery corporate courtiers, saturate the airwaves. Our
emotions are skillfully manipulated around manufactured personalities and manufactured
events. We are, at the same time, offered elaborate diversionary spectacles including
sporting events, reality television and absurdist political campaigns. Trump is a master of
this form of entertainment. Our emotional and intellectual energy is swallowed up by the
modern equivalent of the Roman arena. Choreographed political vaudeville, which costs
corporations billions of dollars, is called free elections. Cliché-ridden slogans,
which assure us that the freedoms we cherish remain sacrosanct, dominate our national
discourse as these freedoms are stripped from us by judicial and legislative fiat. It is a
vast con game.
You cannot use the word "liberty" when your government, as ours does, watches you 24
hours a day and stores all of your personal information in government computers in
perpetuity. You cannot use the word "liberty" when you are the most photographed and
monitored population in human history. You cannot use the word "liberty" when it is
impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or General Dynamics. You cannot
use the word "liberty" when the state empowers militarized police to use indiscriminate
lethal force against unarmed citizens in the streets of American cities. You cannot use the
word "liberty" when 2.3 million citizens, mostly poor people of color, are held in the
largest prison system on earth. This is the relationship between a master and a slave. The
choice is between whom we want to clamp on our chains -- a jailer who mouths politically
correct bromides or a racist, Christian fascist. Either way we are shackled.
American Exceptionalism reigns supreme to the Nationalist. He refuses to acknowledge that
the real idea of "freedom" is not owning a munitions factory full of weaponry and putting a
flag on the back of a pickup. It is instead the freedom to not have to live in the shadow of
being foreclosed upon for a medical emergency, to not have to spend almost all of one's
income on rent or mortgage debt, to have more time to spend with loved ones or doing what you
love instead of working a dead end job just to pay the bills. In other words, a socialist
economy heavily regulating the banks and corporations, in which debt peonage would largely
become a thing of the past.
And then there it is. "We are being shackled incrementally," by unseen, unelected and
unacknowledged vipers who use their wealth and power to also make sure we're ignorant and
impotent to the real story.
Gross understood that unchecked corporate power would inevitably lead to corporate
fascism. It is the natural consequence of the ruling ideology of neoliberalism that
consolidates power and wealth into the hands of a tiny group of oligarchs. The political
philosopher Sheldon Wolin, refining Gross' thesis, would later characterize this corporate
tyranny or friendly fascism as "inverted totalitarianism." It was, as Gross and Wolin
pointed out, characterized by anonymity. It purported to pay fealty to electoral politics,
the Constitution and the iconography and symbols of American patriotism but internally had
seized all of the levers of power to render the citizen impotent. Gross warned that we were
being shackled incrementally. Most would not notice until they were in total bondage. He
wrote that "a friendly fascist power structure in the United States, Canada, Western
Europe, or today's Japan would be far more sophisticated than the 'caesarism' of fascist
Germany, Italy, and Japan. It would need no charismatic dictator nor even a titular head it
would require no one-party rule, no mass fascist party, no glorification of the State, no
dissolution of legislatures, no denial of reason. Rather, it would come slowly as an
outgrowth of present trends in the Establishment."
As far as I'm concerned America has been fascist for a long time, at least since 9/11 but
probably longer. We've been captured by Inverted Totalitarianism. Trump just puts the ugly
villainous face to that Fascism which has been rampant for a long time. Lewis Lapham had a
great piece called, "Due Process: Lamenting the death of
the rule of law in a country where it might have always been missing" that lays out the
case for a how concentrated wealth has pretty much ruled with impunity since the beginning.
(h/t to wendy davis)
How long will we continue to participate in this elaborate Lesser of Two Evil voting
sham?
And these days those who do will surely let you know too. All the Good Zombies will be
smiling for their selfies with their, "I Voted" stickers (now an added bonus to your "voting
experience," as if it were a child's toy inside of a cereal box or something). How long will
it be until we're handed little candies as a reward for voting? In step with the continuation
of the infantilization of interaction in America. Civics? Nah. Stickers? Yeah.
Seems we're fucking doomed. But not unless people turn off the tv's and social media to
begin talking to one another in public as fellow human beings, who as the 99% pretty much
have so many of the same concerns in common.
Partisan ideology, blasted night and day on the propaganda networks, keeping us divided
and conquered, with fear, manufactured distraction and celebrity gossip thrown in, to keep
the lemmings hypnotized from what's really going on.
But he also pulled back from saying one shouldn't vote for the Dems to stem Trump's
insanity, although he quickly added that it wouldn't stop the onslaught of corporate
tyranny.
The only thing giving me hope lately is taking the longview, and the emergence of
whistleblowers/journalists exposing the inner workings of the corporate coup. To what degree
it matters will depend on how many people they reach.
Of course, we are all supposed to vote Democratic to halt the tide of Trump fascism. But
should the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives, hate speech and violence as
a tool for intimidation and control will increase, with much of it directed, as we saw with the
pipe bombs intended to decapitate the Democratic Party leadership, toward prominent Democratic
politicians and critics of Donald Trump. Should the white man's party of the president retain
control of the House and the Senate, violence will still be the favored instrument of political
control as the last of democratic protections are stripped from us. Either way we are in for
it.
Trump is a clownish and embarrassing tool of the kleptocrats. His faux populism is a sham.
Only the rich like his tax cuts, his refusal to raise the minimum wage and his effort to
destroy Obamacare. All he has left is hate. And he will use it. Which is not to say that, if
only to throw up some obstacle to Trump, you shouldn't vote for the Democratic scum, tools of
the war industry and the pharmaceutical and insurance industry, Wall Street and the fossil fuel
industry, as opposed to the Republican scum. But Democratic control of the House will do very
little to halt our descent into corporate tyranny, especially with another economic crisis
brewing on Wall Street. The rot inside the American political system is deep and terminal.
The Democrats, who refuse to address the social inequality they helped orchestrate and that
has given rise to Trump, are the party of racial and ethnic inclusivity, identity politics,
Wall Street and the military. Their core battle cry is: We are not Trump! This is
ultimately a losing formula. It was adopted by Hillary Clinton, who is apparently weighing
another run for the presidency after we thought we had thrust a stake through her political
heart. It is the agenda of the well-heeled East Coast and West Coast elites who want to instill
corporate fascism with a friendly face.
Bertram
Gross (1912-1997) in "Friendly Fascism: The New Face of American Power" warned us that
fascism always has two looks. One is paternal, benevolent, entertaining and kind. The other is
embodied in the executioner's sadistic leer. Janus-like, fascism seeks to present itself to a
captive public as a force for good and moral renewal. It promises protection against enemies
real and invented. But denounce its ideology, challenge its power, demand freedom from
fascism's iron grip, and you are mercilessly crushed. Gross knew that if the United States'
form of fascism, expressed through corporate tyranny, was able to effectively mask its true
intentions behind its "friendly" face we would be stripped of power, shorn of our most
cherished rights and impoverished. He has been proved correct.
"Looking at the present, I see a more probable future: a new despotism creeping slowly
across America," Gross wrote. "Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a
corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to
enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or
unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these
consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the
poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and more important, the subversion of our
constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international
politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion."
No totalitarian state has mastered propaganda better than the corporate state. Our press has
replaced journalism with trivia, feel-good stories, jingoism and celebrity gossip. The banal
and the absurd, delivered by cheery corporate courtiers, saturate the airwaves. Our emotions
are skillfully manipulated around manufactured personalities and manufactured events. We are,
at the same time, offered elaborate diversionary spectacles including sporting events, reality
television and absurdist political campaigns. Trump is a master of this form of entertainment.
Our emotional and intellectual energy is swallowed up by the modern equivalent of the Roman
arena. Choreographed political vaudeville, which costs corporations billions of dollars, is
called free elections. Cliché-ridden slogans, which assure us that the freedoms we
cherish remain sacrosanct, dominate our national discourse as these freedoms are stripped from
us by judicial and legislative fiat. It is a vast con game.
You cannot use the word "liberty" when your government, as ours does, watches you 24 hours a
day and stores all of your personal information in government computers in perpetuity. You
cannot use the word "liberty" when you are the most photographed and monitored population in
human history. You cannot use the word "liberty" when it is impossible to vote against the
interests of Goldman Sachs or General Dynamics. You cannot use the word "liberty" when the
state empowers militarized police to use indiscriminate lethal force against unarmed citizens
in the streets of American cities. You cannot use the word "liberty" when 2.3 million citizens,
mostly poor people of color, are held in the largest prison system on earth. This is the
relationship between a master and a slave. The choice is between whom we want to clamp on our
chains -- a jailer who mouths politically correct bromides or a racist, Christian fascist.
Either way we are shackled.
Gross understood that unchecked corporate power would inevitably lead to corporate fascism.
It is the natural consequence of the ruling ideology of neoliberalism that consolidates power
and wealth into the hands of a tiny group of oligarchs. The political philosopher Sheldon
Wolin , refining Gross' thesis, would later characterize this corporate tyranny or friendly
fascism as "inverted totalitarianism." It was, as Gross and Wolin pointed out, characterized by
anonymity. It purported to pay fealty to electoral politics, the Constitution and the
iconography and symbols of American patriotism but internally had seized all of the levers of
power to render the citizen impotent. Gross warned that we were being shackled incrementally.
Most would not notice until they were in total bondage. He wrote that "a friendly fascist power
structure in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, or today's Japan would be far more
sophisticated than the 'caesarism' of fascist Germany, Italy, and Japan. It would need no
charismatic dictator nor even a titular head it would require no one-party rule, no mass
fascist party, no glorification of the State, no dissolution of legislatures, no denial of
reason. Rather, it would come slowly as an outgrowth of present trends in the
Establishment."
Gross foresaw that technological advances in the hands of corporations would be used to trap
the public in what he called "cultural ghettoization" so that "almost every individual would
get a personalized sequence of information injections at any time of the day -- or night." This
is what, of course, television, our electronic devices and the internet have done. He warned
that we would be mesmerized by the entertaining shadows on the wall of the Platonic cave as we
were enslaved.
Gross knew that the most destructive force against the body politic would be the war
profiteers and the militarists. He saw how they would siphon off the resources of the state to
wage endless war, a sum that now accounts for half of all discretionary spending. And he
grasped that warfare is the natural extension of corporatism. He wrote:
Under the militarism of German, Italian, and Japanese fascism violence was openly
glorified. It was applied regionally -- by the Germans in Europe and England, the Italians in
the Mediterranean, the Japanese in Asia. In battle, it was administered by professional
militarists who, despite many conflicts with politicians, were guided by old-fashioned
standards of duty, honor, country, and willingness to risk their own lives.
The emerging militarism of friendly fascism is somewhat different. It is global in scope.
It involves weapons of doomsday proportions, something that Hitler could dream of but never
achieve. It is based on an integration between industry, science, and the military that the
old-fashioned fascists could never even barely approximate. It points toward equally close
integration among military, paramilitary, and civilian elements. Many of the civilian leaders
-- such as Zbigniew Brzezinski or Paul Nitze -- tend to be much more bloodthirsty than any
top brass. In turn, the new-style military professionals tend to become corporate-style
entrepreneurs who tend to operate -- as Major Richard A. Gabriel and Lieutenant Colonel Paul
L. Savage have disclosed -- in accordance with the ethics of the marketplace. The old
buzzwords of duty, honor, and patriotism are mainly used to justify officer subservience to
the interests of transnational corporations and the continuing presentation of threats to
some corporate investments as threats to the interest of the American people as a whole.
Above all, in sharp contrast with classic fascism's glorification of violence, the friendly
fascist orientation is to sanitize, even hide, the greater violence of modern warfare behind
such "value-free" terms as "nuclear exchange," "counterforce" and "flexible response," behind
the huge geographical distances between the senders and receivers of destruction through
missiles or even on the "automated battlefield," and the even greater psychological distances
between the First World elites and the ordinary people who might be consigned to quick or
slow death.
We no longer live in a functioning democracy. Self-styled liberals and progressives, as they
do in every election cycle, are urging us to vote for the Democrats, although the Democratic
Party in Europe would be classified as a right-wing party, and tell us to begin to build
progressive movements the day after the election. Only no one ever builds these movements. The
Democratic Party knows there is no price to pay for selling us out and its abject service to
corporations. It knows the left and liberals become supplicants in every election cycle. And
this is why the Democratic Party drifts further and further to the right and we become more and
more irrelevant. If you stand for something, you have to be willing to fight for it. But there
is no fight in us.
The elites, Republican and Democrat, belong to the same club. We are not in it. Take a look
at the flight roster of the billionaire
Jeffrey Epstein , who was accused of prostituting dozens of underage girls and ended up
spending 13 months in prison on a single count. He flew political insiders from both parties
and the business world to his secluded Caribbean island, known as "Orgy Island," on his jet,
which the press nicknamed "the Lolita Express." Some of the names on his flight
roster, which usually included unidentified women, were Bill Clinton, who took dozens of trips,
Alan
Dershowitz , former Treasury Secretary and former Harvard President Larry Summers, the
Candide -like
Steven Pinker ,
whose fairy dust ensures we are getting better and better, and Britain's Prince Andrew. Epstein
was also a friend of Trump, whom he visited at Mar-a-Lago.
We live on the precipice, the eve of the deluge. Past civilizations have crumbled in the
same way, although as Hegel understood, the only thing we learn from history is "that people
and governments never have learned anything from history." We will not arrest the decline if
the Democrats regain control of the House. At best we will briefly slow it. The corporate
engines of pillage, oppression, ecocide and endless war are untouchable. Corporate power will
do its dirty work regardless of which face -- the friendly fascist face of the Democrats or the
demented visage of the Trump Republicans -- is pushed out front. If you want real change,
change that means something, then mobilize, mobilize, mobilize, not for one of the two
political parties but to rise up and destroy the corporate structures that ensure our doom.
"... By James Heckman, Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago; Founding Director, Center for the Economics of Human Development and Sidharth Moktan, Predoctoral Fellow, Center for the Economics of Human Development, University of Chicago. Originally published at VoxEU ..."
"... Anecdotal evidence suggests that the 'Top Five' economics journals have a strong influence on tenure and promotion decisions, but actual evidence on their influence is sparse. This column uses data on employment and publication histories for tenure-track faculty hired by the top US economics departments between 1996 and 2010 to show that the impact of the Top Five on tenure decisions dwarfs that of non-Top Five journals. A survey of US economics department faculties confirms the Top Five's outsized influence. ..."
"... American Economic Review ..."
"... Journal of Political Economy ..."
"... Quarterly Journal of Economics ..."
"... Review of Economic Studies ..."
"... We find that the Top Five has a large impact on tenure decisions within the top 35 US departments of economics, dwarfing the impact of publications in non-Top Five journals. A survey of current tenure-track faculty hired by the top 50 US economics departments confirms the Top Five's outsize influence. ..."
Yves
here. In case you hadn't noticed it, the economics discipline has doctrinal norms. Academics
who stray too far from it find themselves welcome only at the small number of colleges and
universities, such as the University of Missouri – Kansas City and the University of
Massachusetts – Amherst, that embrace heterodox views.
The top five economics journals play a large role in enforcing the orthodoxy. Jamie
Galbraith has described how he'd submit suitably mathed-up papers to one of the heavyweights,
get an initial positive response, but when they understood where he was going, they'd alway
reject the paper. The reviewers would claim that the mathematics were flawed, when that was not
the case. But being published by the top five is essential to advancing in prestigious
economics faculties, such as Harvard, Chicago, Princeton, and MIT.
It should be noted that no real science has a rigid hierarchy of journals like this. The
article documents disfunction among the editors at these journals, such as incest and
clientelism.
By James Heckman, Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University
of Chicago; Founding Director, Center for the Economics of Human Development and Sidharth
Moktan, Predoctoral Fellow, Center for the Economics of Human Development, University of
Chicago. Originally published at VoxEU
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the 'Top Five' economics journals have a strong
influence on tenure and promotion decisions, but actual evidence on their influence is sparse.
This column uses data on employment and publication histories for tenure-track faculty hired by
the top US economics departments between 1996 and 2010 to show that the impact of the Top Five
on tenure decisions dwarfs that of non-Top Five journals. A survey of US economics department
faculties confirms the Top Five's outsized influence.
Anyone who talks with young economists entering academia about their career prospects and
those of their peers cannot fail to note the importance they place on publication in the
so-called Top Five journals in economics: the American Economic Review ,
Econometrica ,the Journal of Political Economy ,the Quarterly Journal of
Economics , and the Review of Economic Studies .The discipline's preoccupation
with the Top Five is reflected in the large number of scholarly papers that study aspects of
the these journals, many of which acknowledge the Top Five's de facto role as arbiter in tenure
and promotion decisions (e.g. Ellison 2002, Frey 2009, Card and DellaVigna 2013, Anauti et al.
2015, Hamermesh 2013, 2018, Colussi 2018).
While anecdotal evidence suggests that the Top Five has a strong influence on tenure and
promotion decisions, actual evidence on such influence is sparse. Our paper (Heckman and Moktan
2018) fills this gap in the literature. We find that the Top Five has a large impact on
tenure decisions within the top 35 US departments of economics, dwarfing the impact of
publications in non-Top Five journals. A survey of current tenure-track faculty hired by the
top 50 US economics departments confirms the Top Five's outsize influence.
Our empirical and survey-based findings of the Top Five's influence beg the question: is the
Top Five an adequate filter of quality? Extending the analysis of Hamermesh (2018), we show
that appearance of an article in the Top Five is a poor predictor of quality as measured by
citations. Substantial variation in the citations accrued by papers published in the Top Five
and overlap in article quality across journals outside the Top Five make aggregate measures of
journal quality such as the Top Five label and Impact Factors poor measures of individual
article quality. This is a view expressed by many economists and non-economists alike.
1
There are many consequences of the discipline's reliance on the Top Five. It subverts the
essential process of assessing and rewarding original research. Using the Top Five to screen
the next generation of economists incentivises professional incest and creates clientele
effects whereby career-oriented authors appeal to the tastes of editors and biases of journals.
It diverts their attention away from basic research toward strategising about formats, lines of
research, and favoured topics of journal editors, many with long tenures. It raises the entry
costs for new ideas and persons outside the orbits of the journals and their editors. An
over-emphasis on Top Five publications perversely incentivises scholars to pursue follow-up and
replication work at the expense of creative pioneering research, since follow-up work is easier
to judge, is more likely to result in clean publishable results, and is hence more likely to be
published. 2 This behaviour is consistent with basic common sense: you get what you
incentivise.
In light of the many adverse and potentially severe consequences associated with current
practices, we believe that it is unwise for the discipline to continue using publication in the
Top Five as a measure of research achievement and as a predictor of future scholarly potential.
The call to abandon the use of measures of journal influence in career advancement decisions
has already gained momentum in the sciences. As of the time of the writing of this column, 667
organisations and 13,019 individuals have signed the San Francisco Declaration of Research
Assessment, a declaration denouncing the use of journal metrics in hiring, career advancement,
and funding decisions within the sciences. 3 Economists should take heed of these
actions. We provide suggestions for change in the concluding portion of this column.
Documenting the Power of the Top Five
We find strong evidence of the influence of the Top Five. Without doubt, publication in the
Top Five is a powerful determinant of tenure and promotion in academic economics. We analyse
longitudinal data on employment and publication histories for tenure-track faculty hired by the
top 35 US economics department between 1996 and 2010. We find that Top Five publications
greatly increase the probability of receiving tenure during the first spell of tenure-track
employment (see Figure 1). This is true if we limit samples to the first seven years of
employment. Estimates from duration analyses of time to tenure show that publishingthree Top
Five articles is associated with a 370% increase in the rate of receiving tenure, compared to
candidates with similar levels of publication in non-Top Five journals. The estimated effects
of publication in non-Top Five journals pale in comparison.
Figure 1 Predicted probabilities for receipt of tenure in the first spell of tenure-track
employment
Notes : The figures plot the predicted probabilities associated with
different levels of publications by authors in different journal categories, where the
predictions are obtained from a logit model. White diamonds on the bars indicate that the
prediction is significantly different than zero at the 5% level.
A survey of current assistant and associate professors hired by the top 50 US economics
departments corroborates these findings. On average, junior faculty rank Top Five publications
as being the single most influential determinant of tenure and promotion outcomes (see Figure
2). 4
Figure 2 Ranking of performance areas based on their perceived influence on tenure and
promotion decisions
Notes : The figure summarises respondents' rankings of either performance
areas. Responses are summarised by type of career advancement: tenure receipt, promotion to
assistant professor, and promotion to associate professor. The bars present mean responses for
each performance area. Respondents were given the option to not rank any or all of the eight
performance areas. As a result, the number of respondents varies across the performance
areas.
Responses to our survey reveal a widespread belief among junior faculty that the effect of
the Top Five on career advancement operates independently of differences in article quality. To
separate quality effects from a Top Five placement effect, we ask respondents to report the
probability that their department awards tenure or promotion to an individual with Top Five
publications compared to an individual identical to the first individual in every way except
that he/she has published the same number and quality of articles in non-Top Five journals. If
the Top Five influence operates solely through differences in article impact and quality, the
expected reported probability would be 0.5. The results in Figure 3 show large and
statistically significant deviations from 0.5 in favour of Top Five publication. On average,
respondents from top 10 departments believe that the Top Five candidate would receive tenure
with a probability of 0.89. The mean probability increases slightly for lower-ranked
departments.
Figure 3 Probability that a candidate with Top Five publications receives tenure or
promotion instead of an identical candidate with non-Top Five publications, ceteris paribus
Notes : The figure summarises respondents' perceptions about the probability
that a candidate with Top Five publications is granted tenure or promotion by the respondent's
department instead of a candidate with non-Top Five publications, ceteris paribus. Responses
are summarised by type of career advancement: tenure receipt, promotion to assistant professor,
and promotion to associate professor. The bars present mean responses for each performance
area. White diamonds indicate that the mean response is significantly different than 50% at the
10% level.
The Top Five as a Filter of Quality
The current practice of relying on the Top Five has weak empirical support if judged by its
ability to produce impactful papers as measured by citation counts. Extending the citation
analysis of Hamermesh (2018), we find considerable heterogeneity in citations within journals
and overlap in citations across Top Five and non-Top Five journals (see Figure 4). Moreover,
the overlap increases considerably when one compares non-Top Five journals to the less-cited
Top Five journals. For instance, while the median Review of Economics and Statistics
article ranks in the 38thpercentile of the overall Top Five citation distribution, the same
article outranks the median-cited article in the combined Journal of Political Economy
and Review of Economic Studies distributions.
Figure 4 Distribution of residualalog citations for articles published between 2000 and 2010
(as at July 2018)
Source : Scopus.com (accessed July 2018) Note : a The table plots distributions of residual log citations obtained from a model
that estimates log(citations+1) as a function of third-degree polynomial for years elapsed
between the date of publication and 2018, the year citations were measured. This
residualisation adjusts log citations for exposure effects, thereby allowing for comparison of
citations received by papers from different publication cohorts. Definition of journal abbreviations : QJE–Quarterly Journal Of Economics,
JPE–Journal Of Political Economy, ECMA–Econometrica, AER–American Economic
Review, ReStud–Review Of Economic Studies, JEL–Journal Of Economic Literature,
JEP–Journal Of Economic Perspectives, ReStat–Review Of Economics And Statistics,
JEG–Journal Of Economic Growth, JOLE–Journal Of Labor Economics, JHR–Journal
Of Human Resources, EJ–Economic Journal, JHE–Journal Of Health Economics,
ICC–Industrial And Corporate Change, WBER–World Bank Economic Review,
RAND–Rand Journal Of Economics, JDE–Journal Of Development Economics,
JPub–Journal Of Public Economics, JOE–Journal Of Econometrics, HE–Health
Economics, ILR–Industrial And Labor Relations Review, JEEA–Journal Of The European
Economic Association, JME–Journal Of Monetary Economics, JRU–Journal Of Risk And
Uncertainty, JInE–Journal Of Industrial Economics, JOF–Journal Of Finance,
JFE–Journal Of Financial Economics, ReFin–Review Of Financial Studies,
JFQA–Journal Of Financial And Quantitative Analysis, and MathFin–Mathematical
Finance.
Restricting the citation analysis to the top of the citation distribution produces the same
conclusion. Among the top 1% most-cited articles in our citations database, 5 13.6%
were published by three non-Top Five journals. 6
Low Editorial Turnover and Incest
Figure 5 Density plot of the number of years served by editors between 1996 and 2016
Source : Brogaard et al. (2014) for data up to 2011. Data for subsequent
years collected from journal front pages.
Compounding the privately rational incentive to curry favour with editors is the phenomenon
of longevity of editorial terms, especially at house journals (see Figure 5). Low turnover in
editorial boards creates the possibility of clientele effects surrounding both journals and
their editors. We corroborate the literature that documents the inbred nature of economics
publishing (Laband and Piette 1994, Brogaard et al. 2014, Colussi 2018) by estimating incest
coefficients that quantify the degree of inbreeding in Top Five publications. We show that
network effects are empirically important – editors are likely to select the papers of
those they know. 7
Table 1 Incest coefficients: Publications in Top Five between 2000 and 2016, by author
affiliation listed during publication
Source : Elsevier, Scopus.com.
Notes : The table reports three columns for each Top Five journal. The left
most columns report the number of articles that were affiliated to each university. The middle
columns present the percentage of articles published in the journal that were affiliated to the
university out of all articles affiliated to the list top universities. The right most columns
present the percentage of articles published in the journal that were affiliated to the
university out of all articles published in the journal. An author is defined as being
affiliated with a university during a given year if he/she listed the university as an
affiliation in any publication that was made during that specific year. An article is defined
as being affiliated with a university during a specific year if at least one author was
affiliated to the university during the year.
Discussion
Reliance on the Top Five as a screening device raises serious concerns. Our findings should
spark a serious conversation in the economics profession about developing implementable
alternatives for judging the quality of research. Such solutions necessarily de-emphasise the
role of the Top Five in tenure and promotion decisions, and redistribute the signalling
function more broadly across a range of high-quality journals.
However, a proper solution to the tyranny will likely involve more than a simple
redefinition of the Top Five to include a handful of additional influential journals. A better
solution will need to address the flaw that is inherent in the practice of judging a scholar's
potential for innovative work based on a track record of publications in a handful of select
journals. The appropriate solution requires a significant shift from the current
publications-based system of deciding tenure to a system that emphasises departmental peer
review of a candidate's work. Such a system would give serious consideration to unpublished
working papers and to the quality and integrity of a scholar's work. By closely reading
published and unpublished papers rather than counting placements of publications, departments
would signal that they both acknowledge and adequately account for the greater risk associated
with scholars working at the frontiers of the discipline.
A more radical proposal would be to shift publication away from the current journal system
with its long delays in refereeing and publication and possibility for incest and favoritism,
towards an open source arXiv or PLOS ONE format. 8 Such formats facilitate the
dissemination rate of new ideas and provide online real-time peer review for them. Discussion
sessions would vet criticisms and provide both authors and their readers with different
perspectives within much faster time frames. Shorter, more focused papers would stimulate
dialogue and break editorial and journal monopolies. Ellison (2011 )notes that online
publication is already being practiced by prominent scholars. Why not broaden the practice
across the profession and encourage spirited dialogue and rapid dissemination of new ideas?
This evolution has begun with a recently launched economics version of arXiv .
Under any event, the profession should reduce incentives for crass careerism and promote
creative activity. Short tenure clocks and reliance on the Top Five to certify quality do just
the opposite. In the long run, the profession will benefit from application of more
creativity-sensitive screening of its next generation.
US/Global Economics Many years ago,
Goldman Sachs published research showing that, from about 1995 to 2004, more money had been
taken out of S&P 500 companies in dividends and share buybacks than the companies had
earned during that period.
You would think Boards of Directors and Shareholders would know better than to do it again.
You would
be wrong (registration required):
Stock buyback activity in US equity markets is simply staggering at present: $646 billion
for the 12 months ending June 2018 for the companies of the S&P 500. Total dividend
payments aren't far behind, at $436 billion. The bright spot: the total of the two is $1,082
billion, only 90% of 12 month trailing operating earnings of $1,197 billion . That's
a better buffer than existed in 2015/2016, and an underappreciated positive for US stocks
.
Unlike 2015/2016 , the companies of the S&P 500 are no longer spending 100%
or more of their operating profits on buybacks-plus-dividends. In those years, the ratios
were 108% and 102%, respectively.[all emphases mine]
Companies are not re-investing. Anyone who expects productivity growth in such an
environment is probably going to be gulled into believing there is a Great Stagnation, and not
the Return of the Robber Barons.
Bert Schlitz , October 18, 2018 5:27 pm
That is because there is nothing to invest in. Capitalism is spent. It needs another
Industrial Revolution Consumer Revolution,Digital Revolution to spur investment. Without it,
it requires huge amounts of debt to 'grow'.
Emily B. , October 19, 2018 2:53 pm
Is there any argument left for trickle-down economics?
The actions that are taken are a three-pronged attack in order to foster in global
governance, and they are as such:
Create ubiquitous electronic surveillance with unlimited police power
Throw the entire earth into an economic tailspin
Destroy all nationalism, national borders, and create chaos among all nations prior to an
"incendiary event" or series of actions that leads to a world war.
The world war is the most important part of it all, in the eyes of the globalists. The Great
Depression culminated in a world war, and periods of economic upheaval are always followed by
wars.
... ... ...
Every word here is recorded by XKeyscore mine and yours and stored in the NSA database in
Utah, under a file for "dissenters," "agitators," and every other descriptive label that can be
thought of for those who champion critical thought and independent thinking. Every
conservative-minded journalist or writer who dares to espouse these views and theories is being
recorded and kept under some kind of watch. You can be certain of it . Many are either shutting
down or "knuckling under" and complying.
The globalists are getting what they wish: consolidating the resources while they "tank" the
fiat economies and currencies of the nations. They are destroying cultures who just a mere two
centuries ago would have armed their entire male populaces with swords and sent invaders either
packing or in pieces.
They are destroying cultures by making them question themselves ! The greatest tactic
imaginable!
I submit this last for your perusal. Do you know who you are? The question is not just as
simple as it seems. Let's delve deeply. Do you really know who you are, where your family
originates? Your heritage, and its strengths and weaknesses? Is that heritage yours, along with
your heritage as an American citizen? It is not important that I, or others should know of
these strengths not at this moment in time. The world war is yet to come. As Shakespeare said,
"To thine own self be true." This is important for you to know it and hold fast to it. We are
in the decline of the American nation-now-empire.
When the dust settles, you'll know who will run with the ball even with three blockers
against them and will manage to slip the tackles or forearm shiver them in the face, outside of
the ref's eye, to run that ball in. The Marquis of Queensbury is dead, and those rules will go
out the window. When the dust settles, those who had the foresight and acted on it will be the
ones who will be given a gift: a chance to participate in what is to come. Stay in that good
fight, and fight it to win each day.
Historians of the now seventeen-year old U.S. war in Afghanistan will take note of this past week
when the newly-appointed American general in charge of US and NATO operations in the country made a
bombshell, historic admission.
He conceded that
the United States cannot win in
Afghanistan
.
Speaking to NBC News last week, Gen. Austin Scott Miller made his
first public statements after taking charge of American operations, and shocked with his frank
assessment that that
the Afghan war cannot be won militarily and peace will only be
achieved through direct engagement and negotiations with the Taliban
--
the very
terror group which US forces sought to defeat when it first invaded in 2001.
"This is not going to be won militarily,"
Gen. Miller said.
"This is going to a political solution."
Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the U.S. commander of resolute support, via EPA/NBC
My assessment is the Taliban also realizes they cannot win militarily.
So if you
realize you can't win militarily at some point, fighting is just, people start asking why.
So you do not necessarily wait us out, but I think now is the time to start working through the
political piece of this conflict.
He gave the interview from the Resolute Support headquarters building in Kabul. "We are more in
an offensive mindset and don't wait for the Taliban to come and hit [us]," he said. "So that was an
adjustment that we made early on. We needed to because of the amount of casualties that were being
absorbed."
Starting
last summer it was revealed
that
US State Department officials began meeting with
Taliban leaders in Qatar to discuss local and regional ceasefires and an end to the war
. It
was reported at the time that the request of the Taliban, the US-backed Afghan government was not
invited; however, there doesn't appear to have been any significant fruit out of the talks as
the Taliban now controls more territory than ever before in recent years
.
Such controversial and shaky negotiations come as in total the United States has spent well
over $840 billion fighting the Taliban insurgency
while also paying for relief and
reconstruction in a seventeen-year long war that
has become more expensive, in current
dollars, than the Marshall Plan
, which was the reconstruction effort to rebuild Europe
after World War II.
Even the
New
York Times
recently chronicled the
flat out deception of official Pentagon
statements vs. the reality
in terms of the massive spending that has gone into the
now-approaching two decade long "endless war" which began in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
Via NYT report
As of September of this year the situation was as bleak as it's ever been after over a
decade-and-a-half of America's longest running war, per
the NYT's numbers
:
But since 2017, the Taliban have held more Afghan territory than at any time since
the American invasion
. In just one week last month, the insurgents killed 200 Afghan
police officers and soldiers, overrunning two major Afghan bases and the city of Ghazni.
The American military
says
the
Afghan government effectively "controls or influences" 56 percent of the country. But that
assessment relies on
statistical sleight of hand
. In many districts,
the
Afghan government controls only the district headquarters and military barracks, while the
Taliban control the rest
.
For this reason Gen. Miller spoke to NBC of
an optimal "political outcome" instead of
"winning"
--
the latter being a term rarely if ever used by Pentagon and officials
and congressional leaders over the past years.
Miller
told NBC
: "I naturally feel compelled to try to set the conditions for a political outcome. So,
pressure from that standpoint, yes. I don't want everyone to think this is forever."
And ending on a bleak note in terms of the "save face" and "cut and run" nature of the U.S.
future engagement in Afghanistan, Gen. Miller concluded,
"This is my last assignment as
a soldier in Afghanistan. I don't think they'll send me back here in another grade. When I leave
this time I'd like to see peace and some level of unity as we go forward."
Interestingly, the top US and NATO commander can now only speak in remotely hopeful terms of
"some level of unity"
--
perhaps just enough to make a swift exit at least.
Tags
War Conflict
Politics
There not going to come out as say, where here because we want
BOMB IRAN a few years down the track and maintain US Military
deployment for Israel's long-term interests. Israel are suspected
of committing 9/11 attacks, if you think about it long term policy
of expansion, getting ride of its surrounding threats it's all
makes sense. scraficing 3000 americans for Israel's longterm
policy's seems to be the pill they were willing to swallow.
US is trying to shift the blame on Russia, as the Talibans went
to Moscow for peace talks.
And with Pakistan aligning with Russia/China and Iran (
Pakistan being the main supply route for the US army in
Afghanistan), the US army is practically f*cked.
Good to know that Trump is not prepared to continue to protect
Deep State opium production at the taxpayers' expense. I hope he's
planning to withdraw US armed forces from all foreign soil.
Based on what? What did he stop? Which wars did he pull out out
of?
Military was a huge contributor to his votes. He's not
going to lift a finger. He would have started by pardoning
Snowden, or closing Gitmo - something Obama lied about when
making campaign promises. Where, here is your chance, Donald.
Do at least one single thing that shows you as anything other
that a MIC puppet. Just one thing! Anything!
Bombing Syria? Yep. Blind eye to Saudi crimes in Yemen? Yep.
Dancing to Zionist demands? Yep.
Trade wars? Oh sure, those things never lead to military
conflict either!
The only reason we were in Afghanistan in the first place was to
protect the heroin trade from acquisition by the Taliban. It's
time to pull out and let the British protect their poppy fields if
they want em that badly.
Notice that Rivera says the Marines just had a visit from
Prince Charles. If you want to know more about why we have
so much heroin in America now and who benefits.. read Dope
Inc.
"... What will the postmortem statue of neoliberalism look like? ..."
"... "You stupid Wap, you just scratched my car. That dirty Mick tripped me when I wasn't looking." ..."
"... That [N-word] SOB is just like them other Jew-boy globalists who are sending our jobs to Chinamen and whatnot. Screw him and all the damned Democrat libtards. ..."
LP: You've recently highlighted that this is a
tricky time for historians and those who want to examine the past, like filmmakers.
Well-intentioned people who want to confront the injustices of history may end up replacing one
set of myths for another. You point out the distortion of history in films like "Selma" which
offer uplifting narratives about black experiences but tend to leave out or alter meaningful
facts, such as the ways in which blacks and whites have worked together. This is ostensibly
done to avoid a "white savior" narrative but you indicate that it may serve to support other
ideas that are also troubling.
AR: Exactly, and in ways that are completely compatible with neoliberalism as a style of
contemporary governance. It boils down to the extent to which the notion that group disparities
have come to exhaust the ways that people think and talk about inequality and injustice in
America now.
It's entirely possible to resolve disparities without challenging the fundamental structures
that reproduce inequalities more broadly. As my friend Walter Benn Michaels and I have been
saying for at least a decade, by the standard of disparity as the norm or the ideal of social
justice, a society in which 1% of the population controls more than 90% of the resources would
be just, so long as the 1% is made up non-whites, non-straight people, women, and so on in
proportions that roughly match their representation in the general population.
It completely rationalizes neoliberalism. You see this in contemporary discussions about
gentrification, for example. What ends up being called for is something like showing respect
for the aboriginal habitus and practices and involving the community in the process. But what
does it mean to involve the community in the process? It means opening up spaces for
contractors, black and Latino in particular, in the gentrified areas who purport to represent
the interests of the populations that are being displaced. But that has no impact on the logic
of displacement. It just expands access to the trough, basically.
I've gotten close to some young people who are nonetheless old school type leftists in the
revitalized Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and I've been struck to see that the
identitarian tendency in DSA has been actively opposing participation in the Medicare for All
campaign that the national organization adopted. The argument is that it's bad because there
are disparities that it doesn't address. In the first place, that's not as true as they think
it might be, but there's also the fact that they can't or won't see how a struggle for
universal health care could be the most effective context for trying to struggle against
structural disparities. It's just mind-boggling.
LP: If politicians continue to focus on issues like race, xenophobia, and homophobia without
delivering practical solutions to the economic problems working people face, from health care
costs to the retirement crisis to student debt, could we end up continuing to move in the
direction of fascism? I don't use the word lightly.
AR: I don't either. And I really agree with you. I was a kid in a basically red household in
the McCarthy era. I have no illusions about what the right is capable of, what the bourgeoisie
is capable of, and what the liberals are capable of. In the heyday of the New Left, when people
were inclined to throw the fascist label around, I couldn't get into it. But for the first time
in my life, I think it's not crazy to talk about it. You have to wonder if Obama, who never
really offered us a thing in the way of a new politics except his race, after having done that
twice, had set the stage for Trump and whatever else might be coming.
Thanks, Yves. For decades now Reed has set the standard for integrating class-based
politics with anti-racism. I only wish Barbara Fields, whom he mentions, could get as much
air time.
Those who argue for identity-based tests of fairness (e.g. all categories of folks are
proportionately represented in the 1%) fail to think through means and ends. They advocate
the ends of such proportionality. They don't get that broad measures to seriously reduce
income and wealth inequality (that is, a class approach) are powerful means to the very end
they wish for. If, e.g., the bottom 50% actually had half (heck, even 30 to 40%) of income
and wealth, the proportionality of different groups in any socioeconomic tier would be much
higher than it is today.
There are other means as well. But the point is that identity-driven folks strip their own
objective of it's most useful tools for it's own accomplishment.
In reading this, my mind was drawn back to an article that was in links recently about a
Tea Party politician that ended up being sent to the slammer. He was outraged to learn that
at the prison that he was at, the blacks and the whites were deliberately set against each
other in order to make it easier for the guards to rule the prison.
It is a bit like this in this article when you see people being unable to get past the
black/white thing and realize that the real struggle is against the elite class that rules
them all. I am willing to bet that if more than a few forgot the whole
Trump-supporters-are-racists meme and saw the economic conditions that pushed them to vote
the way that they did, then they would find common cause with people that others would write
off as deplorable and therefore unsalvageable.
Howard Zinn, in " A Peoples' History of the United States" makes a similar argument about
the origins of racism in southern colonial America. The plantation owners and slave owners
promoted racism among the working class whites towards blacks to prevent them ( the working
class blacks and whites) from making common cause against the aristocratic economic system
that oppressed both whites and blacks who did not own property.
The origin of militias was to organize lower class whites to protect the plantation owners
from slave revolts.
The entire book is an eye-opening story of class struggle throughout US history.
The origin of militias was to organize lower class whites to protect the plantation
owners from slave revolts.
The militias were the bulk of the military, if the not the military, for large periods of
time for all of the British American Colonies for centuries. The colonists were in fairly
isolated, often backwater, places for much of the time. Between the constant small scale
warfare with the natives and the various threats from the French and Spanish military, there
was a need for some form of local (semi) organized military. It was the British government's
understandable belief that the colonists should pay at least some of the expensive costs of
the soldiers and forts that were put in place to protect them during and after the Seven
Years War that was the starting step to the revolution; the origins of modern American
policing especially in the South has its genesis in the Slave Patrols although there was some
form of police from the start throughout the Colonies form the very beginning even if it was
just a local sheriff. The constant theme of the police's murderous brutality is a legacy of
that. The Second Amendment is a result of both the colonists/revolutionarie's loathing, even
hatred, of a potentially dictatorial standing army of any size and the slave holders'
essential need to control the slaves and to a lesser degree the poor whites.
people gang up (in racial groups – maybe that's just easiest though it seems to have
systematic encouragement) in prison for protection I think. The protection is not purely from
guards. There are riots in which one could get seriously injured (stabbed), one could get
attacked otherwise etc.. Because basic physical safety of one's person is not something they
provide in prison, maybe quite deliberately so.
"I am willing to bet that if more than a few forgot the whole Trump-supporters-are-racists
meme and saw the economic conditions that pushed them to vote the way that they did, then
they would find common cause with people that others would write off as deplorable and
therefore unsalvageable."
In those for whom poverty caused them to vote for Trump. But some voted for Trump due to
wealth. And whites overall have more wealth than blacks and so overall (not every individual)
are the beneficiaries of unearned wealth and privilege and that too influences their view of
the world (it causes them to side more with the status quo). Blacks are the most economically
liberal group in America. The thing is can one really try simultaneously to understand even
some of say the black experience in America and try hard to understand the Trump voter at the
same time? Because if a minority perceives those who voted for Trump as a personal threat to
them are they wrong? If they perceive Republican economic policies (and many have not changed
under Trump such as cutting government) as a personal threat to them are they wrong? So some
whites find it easier to sympathize with Trump voters, well they would wouldn't they, as the
problems of poor whites more directly relate to problems they can understand. But so
what?
I am glad that Reed mentioned the quasi-religious nature of identity politics, especially
in its liberal form. Michael Lind made a similar observation:
As a lapsed Methodist myself, I think there is also a strong undercurrent of
Protestantism in American identity politics, particularly where questions of how to promote
social justice in a post-racist society are concerned. Brazil and the United States are
both former slave societies, with large black populations that have been frozen out of
wealth and economic opportunity. In the United States, much of the discussion about how to
repair the damage done by slavery and white supremacy involves calls on whites to examine
themselves and confess their moral flaws -- a very Protestant approach, which assumes that
the way to establish a good society is to ensure that everybody has the right moral
attitude. It is my impression that the left in Brazil, lacking the Protestant puritan
tradition, is concerned more with practical programs, like the bolsa familia -- a cash
grant to poor families -- than with attitudinal reforms among the privileged.
Many white liberals are mainline Protestants or former Protestants and I think they bring
their religious sensibilities to their particular brand of liberalism. You can see it in the
way that many liberals claim that we cannot have economic justice until we eliminate racist
attitudes as when Hillary Clinton stated that breaking up the big banks won't end racism. Of
course, if we define racism as a sinful attitude it is almost impossible to know if we have
eliminated it or if we can even eliminate it at all.
Clinton and liberals like her make essentially the same argument that conservatives make
when they say that we cannot have big economic reforms because the problem is really greed.
Once you define the problem as one of sin then you can't really do anything to legislate
against it. Framing political problems as attitudinal is a useful way to protect powerful
interests. How do you regulate attitudes? How do you break up a sinful mind? How can you even
know if a person has racism on the brain but not economic anxiety? Can you even separate the
two? Politicians need to take voters as they are and not insist that they justify themselves
before voting for them.
I thought this reference to the Protestant way of self-justification or absolving oneself
without talking about class in the US is true but was perhaps the weakest point. The
financial elites justify their position and excuse current inequalities and injustices
visiting on the 99% by whatever is the current dominate culturally approved steps in whatever
country. In the US – Protestant heritage; in India – not Protestant heritage; in
Italy – Catholic heritage, etc. Well, of course they do. This isn't surprising in the
least. Each country's elites excuse themselves in a way that prevents change by whatever
excuses are culturally accepted.
I think talking about the Protestant heritage in the US is a culturing interesting artifact
of this time and this place, but runs the danger of creating another "identity" issue in
place of class and financial issues if the wider world's elite and similar self excuse by
non-Protestant cultures aren't included in the example. Think of all the ways the various
religions have been and are used to justify economic inequality. Without the wider scope the
religious/cultural point risks becoming reduced to another "identity" argument; whereas, his
overall argument is that "identity" is a distraction from class and economic inequality
issues. my 2 cents.
Chris Hedges has been warning about the rise of American Fascism for years, and his
warnings are coming to fruition- and still, the general population fails to recognize the
danger. The evils and violence that are the hallmarks of fascist rule are for other people,
not Americans. The terms America and Freedom are so ingrained in the minds of citizens that
the terms are synonymous. Reality is understood and interpreted through this distorted lens.
People want and need to believe this falsehood and resist any messenger trying to enlighten
them to a different interpretation of reality- the true view is just to painful to
contemplate.
The horrors of racism offer a nugget of truth that can misdirect any effort to bring about
systemic change. Like the flow of water finding the path of least resistance, racist
explanations for current social problems creates a channel of thought that is difficult to
alter. This simple single mindedness prevents a more holistic and complicated interpretation
to take hold in the public mind. It is the easy solution for all sides- the tragedy is that
violence, in the end, sorts out the "winners". The world becomes a place where competing
cultures are constantly at each others throats.
Falling in the racism/ identity politics trap offers the elite many avenues to leverage
their power, not the least of which is that when all else fails, extreme violence can be
resorted to. The left/progressives have become powerless because they fail to understand this
use of ultimate force and have not prepared their followers to deal with it. Compromise has
been the strategy for decades and as time has proven, only leads to more exploitation. Life
becomes a personal choice between exploiting others, or being exploited. The whole system
reeks of hypocrisy because the real class divisions are never discussed or understood for
what they are. This seems to be a cyclical process, where the real leaders of revolutionary
change are exterminated or compromised, then the dissatisfaction in the working classes is
left to build until the next crisis point is reached.
WWIII is already under way and the only thing left is to see if the imperialist ideology
will survive or not. True class struggle should lead to world peace- not world domination.
Fascists are those that seek war as a means of violent expansion and extermination to suit
their own ends. Hope for humanity rests in the idea of a multipolar world- the end of
imperialism.
Agressive war is the problem, both on the small social scale and the larger stage between
nations. The main question is if citizens will allow themselves to be swept up into the
deceptions that make war possible, or defend themselves and whatever community they can form
to ensure that mass destruction can be brought under control.
The real crisis point for America will be brought about by the loss of foreign wars- which
seem inevitable. The citizenry will be forced to accept a doubling down on the existing
failures or will show the fortitude to accept failure and defeat and rebuild our country.
Seeking a mythic greatness is not the answer- only a true and sober evaluation will suffice-
it must be a broader accommodation that accepts responsibility for past wrongs but does not
get caught up in narrow, petty solutions that racist recriminations are hallmark. What is
needed is a framework for a truth and reconciliation process- but such a process is only
possible by a free people, not a conquered one. It is only on this foundation that an
American culture can survive.
This will take a new enlightenment that seems questionable, at least in the heart of
American Empire. It entails a reexamination of what freedom means and the will to dedicate
oneself to building something worth defending with ones life. It has nothing to do with
wanting to kill others or making others accept a particular view.
It is finding ones place in the world, and defending it, and cultivating it. It is the
opposite of conquest. It is the resistance to hostility. In a word, Peace.
I don't disagree with many of your assertions and their warrants but I am growing
disturbed by the many uses of the word 'Fascism'. What does the word mean exactly beyond its
pejorative uses? Searching the web I am only confused by the proliferation of meanings. I
believe it's time for some political or sociological analyst to cast off the words 'fascism'
and 'totalitarianism' and further the work that Hannah Arendt started. We need a richer
vocabulary and a deeper analysis of the political, social, philosophical, and human contents
of the concepts of fascism and of totalitarianism. World War II was half-a-century ago. We
have many more examples called fascism and totalitarianism to study and must study to further
refine exactly what kinds of Evil we are discussing and hope to fight. What purpose is served
sparring with the ghosts as new more virulent Evils proliferate.
You have brought up a very important point. The meaning of words and their common usage.
But I have to disagree that "new more virulent Evils" require a new terminology. To my mind,
that plays right into the hand of Evil. The first step in the advancement of evil is the
debasement of language- the spreading of lies and obfuscating true meaning. George Orwell's
doublespeak.
I don't think its a matter of casting off the usage of words, or the creative search to
coin new ones, but to reclaim words. Now the argument can be made that once a word is
debased, it looses its descriptive force- its moral force- and that is what I take as your
concern, however, words are used by people to communicate meaning, and this is where the easy
abandonment of words to their true meaning becomes a danger for the common good. You cannot
let someone hijack your language. A communities strength depends on its common use and
understanding of language.
Where to find that common meaning? Without the perspective of class struggle taken into
account- to orientate the view- this search will be fruitless. Without a true grounding,
words can mean anything. I believe, in America, this is where the citizenry is currently, in
a state of disorientation that has been building for decades. This disorientation is caused
by DoubleSpeak undermining common understanding that is brought about by class consciousness/
solidarity/ community. In a consumerist society, citizens take for granted that they are lied
to constantly- words and images have no real meaning- or multiple meanings playing on the
persons sensibilities at any given moment- all communication becomes fundamentally marketing
and advertising BS.
This sloppiness is then transferred into the political realm of social communication which
then transforms the social dialog into a meaningless exercise because there is really no
communication going on- only posturing and manipulation. Public figures have both private and
public views. They are illegitimate public servants not because they withhold certain
information, but because they hold contradictory positions expressed in each realm. They are
liars and deceivers in the true sense of the word, and don't deserve to be followed or
believed- let alone given any elevated social standing or privilege.
Your oppressor describes himself as your benefactor- or savior- and you believe them, only
to realize later that you have been duped. Repeat the cycle down through the ages.
DoubleSpeak and controlling the interpretation of History are the tools of exercising
power. It allows this cycle to continue.
Breaking this cycle will require an honesty and sense of empathy that directs action.
Fighting evil directly is a loosing game. You more often than not become that which you
fight against. Directly confronting evil requires a person to perform evil deeds.
Perpetuation of War is the perfect example. It must be done indirectly by not performing evil
actions or deeds. Your society takes on a defensive posture, not an aggressive one. Defense
and preservation are the motivating principles.
Speaking the truth, and working toward peace is the only way forward. A new language and
modes of communication can build themselves up around those principles.
Protecting oneself against evil seems to be the human condition. How evil is defined
determines the class structure of any given society.
So much energy is wasted on trying to convince evil people not to act maliciously, which
will never happen. It is what makes them evil- it is who they are. And too much time is
wasted listening to evil people trying to convince others that they are not evil- or their
true intensions are beneficent- which is a lie.
"Sparing with ghosts", is a good way of describing the reclaiming of historical fact. Of
belief in the study of history as a means to improve society and all of humankind thru
reflection and reevaluation. The exact opposite desire of an elite class- hell bent on self
preservation as their key motivating factor in life. If you never spar with ghosts, you have
no reference to evaluate the person standing before you- which can prove deadly- as must be
constantly relearned by generations of people exploited by the strong and powerful.
The breaking point of any society is how much falsehood is tolerated- and in the West
today- that is an awful lot.
"I've gotten close to some young people who are nonetheless old school type leftists in
the revitalized Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and I've been struck to see that the
identitarian tendency in DSA has been actively opposing participation in the Medicare for All
campaign that the national organization adopted "
Check to see how their parents or other relatives made or make their money.
This is quite the challenge. I know a large number of upper middle class young people who
are amenable to the socialist message but don't really get (or don't get at all) what it
means. (I'm convinced they make up a large portion of that percentage that identifies as
socialist or has a positive image of socialism.) But it would be wrong to write them off.
A related point that I make here from time to time: all these UMC kids have been
inculcated with a hyper-competitive world view. We need a systemic re-education program to
break them free.
as a complementary anecdote, i know of economically bottom 50% people who are devout
anti-socialists, because they deal with "micro-triggers" of free-riders, cheaters, petty
theft in their everyday life.
To them, the academic/ivory tower/abstract idea of equality in class, equality in income
is an idealistic pipe dream versus the dog-eat-dog reality of the world.
Interesting that you mention "economically bottom 50% people who are devout
anti-socialists, because they deal with "micro-triggers" of [low income?] free-riders,
cheaters, petty theft in their everyday life."
I read a lot of their snarling against alleged low income "moochers" in the local media.
What I find disturbing is their near total blindness to the for-profit businesses,
millionaires and billionaires who raid public treasuries and other resources on a regular
basis.
Just recently, I read a news story about the local baseball franchise that got $135
million dollars (they asked for $180 million) and the local tourism industry complaining
about their reduction in public subsidies because money had to be diverted to homeless
services.
No one seems to ever question why profitable, private businesses are on the dole. The fact
that these private entities complain about reductions in handouts shows how entitled they
feel to feed from the public trough. Moreover, they do so at a time of a locally declared
"homeless emergency".
Yet, it is the middle class precariat that condemn those below them as 'moochers and
cheaters', while ignoring the free-riders, cheaters and grand larceny above them.
There is no class consciousness. The working stiffs admire their owners so the only people
left to blame for their difficult life conditions are the poor below them on the social
hierarchy. Or they blame themselves, which is just as destructive. In the interim, they enjoy
the camaraderie that sporting events provide, so give the owners a pass. Bread and
Circuses.
A capitalist critique is the only way to change this situation, but that would require
learning Marxist arguments and discussing their validity.
There is that, or Charity for the poor, which only aggravates the class conflict that
plagues our society.
The third way is actually building community that functions on a less abusive manner,
which takes effort, time, and will power.
I homed in on your phrase "they deal with 'micro-triggers' of free-riders, cheaters, petty
theft in their everyday life" and it landed on fertile [I claim!] ground in my imagination. I
have often argued with my sister about this. She used to handle claims for welfare, and now
found more hospitable areas of civil service employment. I am gratified that her attitudes
seem to have changed over time. Many of the people she worked with in social services shared
the common attitudes of disparagement toward their suppliants -- and enjoyed the positions of
power it offered them.
I think the turning point came when my sister did the math and saw that the direct costs
for placing a homeless person or family into appallingly substandard 'housing' in her area
ran in the area of $90K per year. Someone not one of the "free-riders, cheaters, [or villains
of] petty theft in their everyday life" was clearly benefiting. I am very lazy but I might
try to find out who and advertise their 'excellence' in helping the poor.
A "re-education" program? That usage resurrects some very most unhappy recollections from
the past. Couldn't you coin a more happy phrase? Our young are not entirely without the
ability to learn without what is called a "re-education" program.
The comments in this post are all over the map. I'll focus on the comments regarding
statues commemorating Confederate heroes.
I recall the way the issue of Confederate statues created a schism in the NC
commentarient. I still believe in retaining 'art' in whatever form it takes since there is so
little art in our lives. BUT I also believe that rather than tear down the Confederate
statues of Confederate 'heroes' it were far better to add a plaque comemorating just what
sorts of heroism these 'heroes' performed for this country. That too serves Art.
Tearing the statues down only serves forgetting something which should never be
forgotten.
This was intended as a separate comment to stand alone. I believe Art should not forget
but should remember the horrors of our past lest we not forget.
It occurred to me that centrists demonize the left as unelectable based entirely on tokens
of identity. Long haired hippies. The other. It works because the political debate in America
is structured entirely around identity politics. Nancy Pelosi is a San Francisco liberal so
of course white people in Mississippi will never vote for the Democrats. Someone like Bernie
Sanders has a message that will appeal to them but he is presented as to the left of even
Pelosi or alternately a traitor to the liberal identity siding with racists and sexists.
Actually, all of these oppressions are rooted in working class oppression. But that is
inconsistent with the framing of ascriptive identity.
This was a great post. Didn't know about Adolph Reed. He gets straight to the point
– we have only 2 options. Either change neoliberal capitalism structurally or modify
its structure to achieve equality. Identity politics is a distraction. There will always be
differences between us and so what? As long as society itself is equitable. As far as the
fear of fascism goes, I think maybe fascism is in the goal of fascism. If it is oppressive
then its bad. If it is in the service of democracy and equality the its good. If our bloated
corporatism could see its clear, using AR's option #2, to adjusting their turbo neoliberal
capitalism, then fine. More power to them. It isn't racism preventing them from doing this
– it is the system. It is structural. Unfortunately we face far greater dangers,
existential dangers, today than in 1940. We not only have an overpopulated planet of human
inequality, but also environmental inequality. Big mess. And neither capitalism nor socialism
has the answer – because the answer is eclectic. We need all hands on deck and every
practical measure we can conjure. And FWIW I'd like to compare our present delusions to all
the others – denial. The statue of Robert E. Lee, imo, is beautiful in its conveyance
of defeat with deep regret. The acceptance is visible and powerful. What will the postmortem
statue of neoliberalism look like?
Do you really want 'equality' however you might define it? We are not born equal. Each of
us is different and I believe each of us is therefore very special. [I suppose I echo the
retort of the French regarding the equality of the sexes: "Vive la Difference!".] I believe
we should celebrate our inequalities -- while we maintain vigilance in maintaining the equal
chance to try and succeed or fail. The problem isn't inequality but the extreme inequalities
in life and sustenance our society has built -- here and more abroad. I don't mind being
beaten in a fair race. An unfair race lightens my laurels when I win. But our societies run
an unfair competition and the laurels far too heavily grace the brows of those who win. And
worse still, 'inequality' -- the word I'll use for the completely disproportionate rewards to
the winners to the undeserving in-excellent 'winners' is not a matter solved by a quest for
'equality'. The race for laurels has no meaning when the winners are chosen before the race
and the 'laurels' cost the welfare and sustenance for the losers and their unrelated kin who
never ran in the race. And 'laurels' were once but honors and there is too far little honor
in this world.
Nothing denotes a naive idealistic "progressive" than the demand for near absolute
equality in terms of money and status in their future society.all or nothing i guess.
I have read and appreciated many comments by 'Susan the other'. I would not ever
characterize her comments as those of a naive idealistic "progressive" demanding absolute
equality I should and must apologize if that is how you read my comment. I intended to
suggest equality is not something truly desirable in-itself. But re-reading her comment I
find much greater depth than I commented to --
'Susan the other' notes: "The statue of Robert E. Lee, imo, is beautiful in its conveyance
of defeat with deep regret." In answer to her question: "What will the postmortem statue of
neoliberalism look like?" I very much doubt that the post mortem statue of Neoliberalism will
show regret for anything save that all the profits were not accrued before those holding the
reins, the Elite of Neoliberalism, might gracefully die without care for any children they
may have had.
Thanks for this post. I am really surprised these days by black "liberal" media folks who
insist that racism be addressed before inequality/class issues. They are almost vehement in
their discussions about this. Are they protecting neoliberalism because it benefits them
.???
My previous admittedly overlong reply has yet to show. Darn.
But this question is an important one.
Yes, they do very much.
One of the reasons the Civil Rights struggle died was the co-option of the Black elites,
especially of the Civil Rights Movement, by the American elites. After Martin Luther King's
assassination, his Poor People's Campaign slowly died. A quiet quid pro quo was offered.
Ignore all the various social, economic, political and legal wrongs done to all Americans,
and yes blacks in particular, and just focusing on black identity and social "equality" or at
least the illusion of campaigning for it, and in you will be given a guaranteed, albeit
constrained, place at the money trough. Thus the Black Misleadership Class was born.
All the great movements in past hundred plus years have had their inclusivity removed.
Suffragism/Feminism, the Union Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, even the Environmental
Movement all had strong cross cultural, class, and racial membership and concerns. Every
single of these movements had the usually white upper class strip out everyone else and
focusing only on very narrow concerns. Aside from the Civil Rights Movement, black
participation was removed, sometimes forcefully. They all dropped any focus on poor people of
any race.
A lot of money, time, and effort by the powerful went into doing this. Often just by
financially supporting the appropriate leaders which gave them the ability to push aside the
less financially secure ones.
Reading this post in its entirety I feel the author must become more direct in critique.
Old jargon of class or race or a "struggle against structural disparities" should be replaced
by the languages of such assertions as: " the larger objective was to eliminate the threat
that the insurgency had posed to planter-merchant class rule" or "It just expands access to
the trough, basically". Why mince words when there are such horrors as are poised against the
common humanity of all?
Your comment is too brief and too enigmatic. If by Adolf you mean Adolf H. -- he is dead.
New potentially more dangerous creatures roam the Earth these days beware.
I consider currently one of our great intellectuals in that he understands and can use
language to make his case in a layman not necessarily friendly but accessible .
and as a southern born white male I think maybe I should watch Glory I remember a '67 show
and tell when a black classmate had a civil war sword come up in their sugar cane field, and
when I and a friend found a (disinterred yuck) civil war grave just out in the woods in north
florida. People seem to have forgotten that times were chaotic in our country's checkered
past I was in massive race riots and massive anti war protests as a child of the '60s, but
since I was in the single digits at the time no one payed me any mind as a for instance my
dad somehow got the counselors apartment in a dorm at florida state in 68′ and I
remember people in the the dorms throwing eggs at the protesters. It was nuts.
Ferguson's INET paper got me thinking about what triggers racism in us. As a kid, ethnic
pejoratives were usually a reaction to some injury. "You stupid Wap, you just scratched
my car. That dirty Mick tripped me when I wasn't looking." I tend to agree with the
premise that bailing out Wall Street and letting Main Street lose out offers a powerful
trigger for a racist reaction. People might have been softening on their lifelong covert
racism when they succumbed to Obama's charm. But when you lose your job, then your house, and
wind up earning a third of what you did before the GR, that is the sort of thing that
triggers pejorative/racist reactions. That [N-word] SOB is just like them other Jew-boy
globalists who are sending our jobs to Chinamen and whatnot. Screw him and all the damned
Democrat libtards. Then, when a MAGA-hatted Trump echoes those sentiments over a PA
system, the ghost of Goebbels is beaming.
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage,
and those who manage what they do not understand. -- Archibald Putt
Neoliberal PHBs like talk about KJLOCs, error counts, tickets closed and other types of
numerical measurements designed so that they can be used by lower-level PHBs to report fake
results to higher level PHBs. These attempts to quantify 'the quality' and volume of work
performed by software developers and sysadmins completely miss the point. For software is can
lead to code bloat.
The number of tickets taken and resolved in a specified time period probably the most ignorant way to measure performance of
sysadmins. For sysadmin you can invent creative creating way of generating and resolving
tickets. And spend time accomplishing fake task, instead of thinking about real problem that
datacenter face. Using Primitive measurement strategies devalue the work being performed by Sysadmins and programmers. They focus
on the wrong things. They create the boundaries that are supposed to contain us in a manner that is comprehensible to the PHB who
knows nothing about real problems we face.
Notable quotes:
"... Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand. ..."
In an advanced research or development project, success or failure is largely determined
when the goals or objectives are set and before a manager is chosen. While a hard-working and
diligent manager can increase the chances of success, the outcome of the project is most
strongly affected by preexisting but unknown technological factors over which the project
manager has no control. The success or failure of the project should not, therefore, be used as
the sole measure or even the primary measure of the manager's competence.
Putt's Law Is promulgated
Without an adequate competence criterion for technical managers, there is no way to
determine when a person has reached his level of incompetence. Thus a clever and ambitious
individual may be promoted from one level of incompetence to another. He will ultimately
perform incompetently in the highest level of the hierarchy just as he did in numerous lower
levels. The lack of an adequate competence criterion combined with the frequent practice of
creative incompetence in technical hierarchies results in a competence inversion, with the most
competent people remaining near the bottom while persons of lesser talent rise to the top. It
also provides the basis for Putt's Law, which can be stated in an intuitive and nonmathematical
form as follows:
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not
manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
As in any other hierarchy, the majority of persons in technology neither understand nor
manage much of anything. This, however, does not create an exception to Putt's Law, because
such persons clearly do not dominate the hierarchy. While this was not previously stated as a
basic law, it is clear that the success of every technocrat depends on his ability to deal with
and benefit from the consequences of Putt's Law.
Absent independents, Republicans are running away with it. And independents are most assuredly witnessing the insanity that has gripped the
Democratic Party, and will vote for Republicans at least 9:1.
Well, hang in there, sport. Yes, the US does seem to be going down the tubes, in that it's
lost all respect in the world; we still fear it, but don't respect it. Sic transit
gloria , or something like that...
"... Upon investigation, the Judiciary Committee investigators found that Munro-Leighton was a left wing activist who is decades older than Judge Kavanaugh , who lives in Kentucky. When Committee investigators contacted her, she backpedaled on her claim of being the original Jane Doe - and said she emailed the committee "as a way to grab attention." ..."
"... Grassley has also asked the DOJ to investigate Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick, who claimed through her attorney, Michael Avenatti, that Kavanaguh orchestrated a date-rape gang-bang scheme in the early 1980s. ..."
"... She further confessed to Committee investigators that (1) she "just wanted to get attention"; (2) "it was a tactic"; and (3) "that was just a ploy." She told Committee investigators that she had called Congress multiple times during the Kavanaugh hearing process – including prior to the time Dr. Ford's allegations surfaced – to oppose his nomination. Regarding the false sexual-assault allegation she made via her email to the Committee, she said: "I was angry, and I sent it out." When asked by Committee investigators whether she had ever met Judge Kavanaugh, she said: "Oh Lord, no." ..."
A Kentucky woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of rape has been referred
to the Department of Justice after she admitted that she lied .
The woman, Judy Munro-Leighton, took credit for contacting the office of Sen. Kamala Harris
(D-CA) as "Jane Doe" from Oceanside, California. Jane Doe claimed - without naming a time or
place - that Kavanaugh and a friend raped her "several times each" in the backseat of a car.
Harris referred the letter to the committee for investigation.
"They forced me to go into the backseat and took 2 turns raping me several times each. They
dropped me off 3 two blocks from my home," wrote Munro-Leighton, claiming that the pair told
her "No one will believe if you tell. Be a good girl."
Kavanaugh was questioned on September 26 about the allegation, to which he unequivocally
stated: "[T]he whole thing is ridiculous. Nothing ever -- anything like that, nothing... [T]he
whole thing is just a crock, farce, wrong, didn't happen, not anything close ."
The next week, Munro-Leighton sent an email to the Judiciary committee claiming to be Jane
Doe from Oceanside, California - reiterating her claims of a "vicious assault" which she said
she knew "will get no media attention."
Upon investigation, the Judiciary Committee investigators found that Munro-Leighton was a
left wing activist who is decades older than Judge Kavanaugh , who lives in Kentucky. When
Committee investigators contacted her, she backpedaled on her claim of being the original Jane
Doe - and said she emailed the committee "as a way to grab attention."
"I am not Jane Doe . . . but I did read Jane Doe's letter. I read the transcript of the call
to your Committee. . . . I saw it online. It was news." claimed Munro-Leighton.
Grassley has also asked the DOJ to investigate Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick, who claimed
through her attorney, Michael Avenatti, that Kavanaguh orchestrated a date-rape gang-bang
scheme in the early 1980s.
President Trump chimed in Saturday morning, Tweeting: "A vicious accuser of Justice
Kavanaugh has just admitted that she was lying, her story was totally made up, or FAKE! Can you
imagine if he didn't become a Justice of the Supreme Court because of her disgusting False
Statements. What about the others? Where are the Dems on this?"
... ... ...
In a Friday letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray,
Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley wrote:
on November 1, 2018, Committee investigators connected with Ms. Munro-Leighton by phone
and spoke with her about the sexual-assault allegations against Judge Kavanaugh she had made
to the Committee. Under questioning by Committee investigators, Ms. Munro-Leighton admitted,
contrary to her prior claims, that she had not been sexually assaulted by Judge Kavanaugh and
was not the author of the original "Jane Doe" letter .
When directly asked by Committee
investigators if she was, as she had claimed, the "Jane Doe" from Oceanside California who
had sent the letter to Senator Harris, she admitted: "No, no, no. I did that as a way to grab
attention. I am not Jane Doe . . . but I did read Jane Doe's letter. I read the transcript of
the call to your Committee. . . . I saw it online. It was news."
She further confessed to Committee investigators that (1) she "just wanted to get
attention"; (2) "it was a tactic"; and (3) "that was just a ploy." She told Committee
investigators that she had called Congress multiple times during the Kavanaugh hearing
process – including prior to the time Dr. Ford's allegations surfaced – to oppose
his nomination. Regarding the false sexual-assault allegation she made via her email to the
Committee, she said: "I was angry, and I sent it out." When asked by Committee investigators
whether she had ever met Judge Kavanaugh, she said: "Oh Lord, no."
"... Four years in GTS ... joined via being outsourced to IBM by my previous employer. Left GTS after 4 years. ..."
"... The IBM way of life was throughout the Oughts and the Teens an utter and complete failure from the perspective of getting work done right and using people to their appropriate and full potential. ..."
"... As a GTS employee, professional technical training was deemed unnecessary, hence I had no access to any unless I paid for it myself and used my personal time ... the only training available was cheesy presentations or other web based garbage from the intranet, or casual / OJT style meetings with other staff who were NOT professional or expert trainers. ..."
"... As a GTS employee, I had NO access to the expert and professional tools that IBM fricking made and sold to the same damn customers I was supposed to be supporting. Did we have expert and professional workflow / document management / ITIL aligned incident and problem management tools? NO, we had fricking Lotus Notes and email. Instead of upgrading to the newest and best software solutions for data center / IT management & support, we degraded everything down the simplest and least complex single function tools that no "best practices" organization on Earth would ever consider using. ..."
"... And the people management paradigm ... employees ranked annually not against a static or shared goal or metric, but in relation to each other, and there was ALWAYS a "top 10 percent" and a "bottom ten percent" required by upper management ... a system that was sociopathic in it's nature because it encourages employees to NOT work together ... by screwing over one's coworkers, perhaps by not giving necessary information, timely support, assistance as needed or requested, one could potentially hurt their performance and make oneself look relatively better. That's a self-defeating system and it was encouraged by the way IBM ran things. ..."
Four years in GTS ... joined via being outsourced to IBM by my previous employer. Left
GTS after 4 years.
The IBM way of life was throughout the Oughts and the Teens an utter and complete
failure from the perspective of getting work done right and using people to their appropriate
and full potential. I went from a multi-disciplinary team of engineers working across
technologies to support corporate needs in the IT environment to being siloed into a
single-function organization.
My first year of on-boarding with IBM was spent deconstructing application integration and
cross-organizational structures of support and interwork that I had spent 6 years building
and maintaining. Handing off different chunks of work (again, before the outsourcing, an
Enterprise solution supported by one multi-disciplinary team) to different IBM GTS work silos
that had no physical special relationship and no interworking history or habits. What we're
talking about here is the notion of "left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing"
...
THAT was the IBM way of doing things, and nothing I've read about them over the past
decade or so tells me it has changed.
As a GTS employee, professional technical training was deemed unnecessary, hence I had
no access to any unless I paid for it myself and used my personal time ... the only training
available was cheesy presentations or other web based garbage from the intranet, or casual /
OJT style meetings with other staff who were NOT professional or expert trainers.
As a GTS employee, I had NO access to the expert and professional tools that IBM
fricking made and sold to the same damn customers I was supposed to be supporting. Did we
have expert and professional workflow / document management / ITIL aligned incident and
problem management tools? NO, we had fricking Lotus Notes and email. Instead of upgrading to
the newest and best software solutions for data center / IT management & support, we
degraded everything down the simplest and least complex single function tools that no "best
practices" organization on Earth would ever consider using.
And the people management paradigm ... employees ranked annually not against a static
or shared goal or metric, but in relation to each other, and there was ALWAYS a "top 10
percent" and a "bottom ten percent" required by upper management ... a system that was
sociopathic in it's nature because it encourages employees to NOT work together ... by
screwing over one's coworkers, perhaps by not giving necessary information, timely support,
assistance as needed or requested, one could potentially hurt their performance and make
oneself look relatively better. That's a self-defeating system and it was encouraged by the
way IBM ran things.
The "not invented here" ideology was embedded deeply in the souls of all senior IBMers I
ever met or worked with ... if you come on board with any outside knowledge or experience,
you must not dare to say "this way works better" because you'd be shut down before you could
blink. The phrase "best practices" to them means "the way we've always done it".
IBM gave up on innovation long ago. Since the 90's the vast majority of their software has
been bought, not built. Buy a small company, strip out the innovation, slap an IBM label on
it, sell it as the next coming of Jesus even though they refuse to expend any R&D to push
the product to the next level ... damn near everything IBM sold was gentrified, never cutting
edge.
And don't get me started on sales practices ... tell the customer how product XYZ is a
guaranteed moonshot, they'll be living on lunar real estate in no time at all, and after all
the contracts are signed hand the customer a box of nuts & bolts and a letter telling
them where they can look up instructions on how to build their own moon rocket. Or for XX
dollars more a year, hire a Professional Services IBMer to build it for them.
I have no sympathy for IBM. They need a clean sweep throughout upper management,
especially any of the old True Blue hard-core IBMers.
"An intelligent explanation of the mechanisms that produced the crisis and the response to
it...One of the great strengths of Tooze's book is to demonstrate the deeply intertwined nature
of the European and American financial systems." -- The New York Times Book
Review
"Whereas since the 1970s the incessant mantra of the spokespeople of the financial industry
had been free markets and light touch regulation, what they were now demanding was the
mobilization of all of the resources of the state to save society's financial infrastructure
from a threat of systemic implosion, a threat they likened to a military emergency." (Loc.
3172-3174)
Adam Tooze takes the well know Financial Crisis of 2007-08 through its full history of
international ramifications and brings it up to the present with the question of whether the
large organizations, structures and processes on the one hand; decision, debate, argument and
action on the other that managed to fall into place in that crisis period in this and many
other countries will develop if needed again. "The political in "political economy" demands
to be taken seriously." (Loc. 11694). That he does.
Tooze is an Economic Historian and Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the
World is a wonderfully rich enquiry into causes and effects of the Financial Crisis and how
the failing of poorly managed greed motivated practices of a few financial institutions, and
their subprime mortgagees, tumbled economies in the developed and developing world, causing
events that matched the Great Depression's dislocation and could have matched its duration,
springing from world wide money markets "interlocking matrix" of corporate balance sheets --
bank to bank."
A warning he is not kind to existing political beings, the Republican Party in particular
" to judge by the record of the last ten years, it is incapable of legislating or cooperating
effectively in government." (Loc.11704)
His criticism is, in fairness, based on technical management grounds, and he does find fault
as well with the inner core of the Obama advisors and their primary concerns for the
financial sectors well being, rather than nationwide happenings where homes and incomes
disappeared.
This reviewer's favorite (not mentioned by Tooze) is the early 2009 comment of Larry
Sumners when Christina D. Romer, the chairwoman of President Obama's Council of Economic
Advisers and leading authority on the Great Depression saw a need for $1.8 trillion stimulus
package, "What have you been smoking?"
Sumners, Geithner, and Orszag, who favored transferring $700 billion to the banks to offset
possible bank failures and such -- became policy. Tooze mentions that by 2012 Sumners was
concerned by the slowness of the U.S. economy's recovery taking, as it did, 8 years to reach
2008 levels of employment.
Can an Economic History be an exciting read? Tooze gives us over 700 pages of just that,
but much will be familiar as reported news and may be skimmed, and some of the Fed's expanded
international roles very dense in content. His strength is the knowledge of what could have
happened, had solutions not been found, and how agreements were reached out of public
sight.
" the world economy is not run by medium-sized entrepreneurs but by a few thousand massive
corporations, with interlocking shareholdings controlled by a tiny group of asset managers.
(Loc.418-419).
Add wily politicians and hard driven bankers EU Ukraine and China you have an adventure.
Corporate control is not new -- rich descriptions of its inner connections are.
Adam Tooze does this well a reference work for years to come.
5 stars
Columbia history professor Adam Tooze, an authority on the inter-war years, has offered up an
authoritative history of the financial crises and their aftermath that have beset the world
since 2008. He integrates economics, the plumbing of the interbank financial system and the
politics of the major players in how and why the financial crisis of 2008 developed and the
course of the very uneven recovery that followed. I must note that Tooze has some very clear
biases in that he views the history through a social democratic prism and is very critical of
the congressional Republican caucus and the go slow policies of the European Central Bank
under Trichet. To him the banks got bailed out while millions of people suffered as
collateral damage from a crisis that was largely made by the financial system. His view may
very well be correct, but many readers might differ. Simply put, to save the economy policy
makers had to stop the bleeding.
He starts off with the hot topic of 2005; the need for fiscal consolidation in the United
States. Aside from a few dissidents, most economists saw the need for the U.S. to close its
fiscal deficit and did not see the structural crisis that was developing underneath them.
Although he does mention Hyman Minsky a few times in the book, he leaves out Minsky's most
important insight that "stability leads to instability" as market participants are lulled
into a false sense of security. It therefore was against the backdrop of the "great
moderation" that the crisis began. And it was the seemingly calm environment that lulled all
too many regulators to sleep.
The underbelly of the financial system was and still is in many respects is the wholesale
funding system where too many banks are largely funded in repo and commercial paper markets.
This mismatch was exacerbated by the use of asset-backed commercial paper to fund long term
mortgage securities. It was problems in that market that triggered the crisis in August
2007.
The crisis explodes when Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy in September 2008. In
Tooze's view the decision to let Lehman fail was political, not economic. After that the
gates of hell are opened causing the Bush Administration and the Federal Reserve to ask for
$750 billion dollar TARP bailout of the major banks. It was in the Congressional fight over
this appropriation where Tooze believes the split in the Republican Party between the
business conservative and social populist wing hardens. We are living with that through this
day. The TARP program passes with Democratic votes. Tooze also notes that there was great
continuity between the Bush and early Obama policies with respect to the banks and auto
bailout. Recall that in late 2008 and early 2009 nationalization of the banks was on the
table. Tooze also correctly notes that the major beneficiary of the TARP program was
Citicorp, the most exposed U.S. bank to the wholesale funding system.
Concurrent with TARP the Bernanke Fed embarks on its first quantitative easing program
where it buys up not only treasuries, but mortgage backed securities as well. It was with the
latter Europe's banks were bailed out. Half of the first QE went to bail out Europe's
troubled banks. When combined the dollar swap lines with QE, Europe's central banks
essentially became branches of the Fed. Now here is a problem. Where in the Federal Reserve
Act does it say that the Fed is the central bank to the world? To some it maybe a
stretch.
Tooze applauds Obama's stimulus policy but rightly says it was too small. There should
have been more infrastructure in it. To my view there could have been more infrastructure if
only Obama was willing to deal with the Republicans by offering to waive environmental
reviews and prevailing wage rules. He never tried for fear of offending his labor and
environmental constituencies. Tooze also gives great credit to China with it all out monetary
and fiscal policies. That triggered a revival in the energy and natural resource economies of
Australia and Brazil thereby helping global recovery.
He then turns to the slow responses in Europe and the political wrangling over the tragedy
that was to befall Greece. It came down to the power of Angela Merkel and her unwillingness
to have the frugal German taxpayer subsidize the profligate Greeks. As they say "all politics
is local". The logjam in Europe doesn't really break until Mario Draghi makes an off-the-cuff
remark at a London speech in July 2012 by saying the ECB will do "whatever it takes" to
engender European recovery.
As a byproduct of bailing out the banks and failing to directly help the average citizen a
rash of populism, mostly of the rightwing variety, breaks out all over leading to Brexit,
Orban in Hungary, a stronger rightwing in Germany and, of course, Donald Trump. But to me it
wasn't only banking policy that created this. The huge surge in immigration into Europe has a
lot more to do with it. Tooze under-rates this factor. He also under-rates the risk of having
a monetary policy that is too easy and too long. The same type of Minsky risk discussed
earlier is now present in the global economy: witness Turkey, for example. Thus it is too
early to tell whether or not the all-out monetary policy of the past decade will be judged a
success from the vantage point of 2030.
Adam Tooze has written an important book and I view it as must read for a serious lay
reader to get a better understanding of the economic and political policies of the past
decade.
"... The Democratic Party split into a four-headed monster comprised of Wall Street patrons seeking favors, war hawks and their corporate allies looking for new global rumbles, the permanent bureaucracy looking to always expand itself, and the various ethnic and sexual minorities whose needs and grievances are serviced by that bureaucracy. It's the last group that has become the party's most public face while the party's other activities – many of them sinister -- remain at least partially concealed. ..."
"... the Republicans are being forced to engage on some real issues, such as the need for a coherent and effective immigration policy and the need to redefine formal trade relations. (Other issues like the insane system of medical racketeering and the deadly racket of the college loan industry just skate along on thin ice. And then, of course, there's the national debt and all its grotesque outgrowths.) ..."
"... Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has become the party of bad ideas and bad faith, starting with the position that "diversity and inclusion" means shutting down free speech, an unforgivable transgression against common sense and common decency. It's a party that lies even more systematically than Mr. Trump, and does so knowingly (as when Google execs say they "Do no Evil"). Its dirty secret is that it relishes coercion, it likes pushing people around, telling them what to think and how to act. Its idea of "social justice" is a campus kangaroo court, where due process of law is suspended. And it is deeply corrupt, with good old-fashioned grift, new-fashioned gross political misconduct in federal law enforcement, and utter intellectual depravity in higher education. ..."
"... I hope that the party is shoved into an existential crisis and is forced to confront its astounding dishonesty. I hope that the process prompts them to purge their leadership across the board. ..."
Back in the last century, when this was a different country, the Democrats were the "smart"
party and the Republicans were the "stupid" party.
How did that work?
Well, back then the Democrats represented a broad middle class, with a base of factory
workers, many of them unionized, and the party had to be smart, especially in the courts, to
overcome the natural advantages of the owner class.
In contrast, the Republicans looked like a claque of country club drunks who staggered
home at night to sleep on their moneybags. Bad optics, as we say nowadays.
The Democrats also occupied the moral high ground as the champion of the little guy. If not
for the Dems, factory workers would be laboring twelve hours a day and children would still be
maimed in the machinery. Once the relationship between business and labor was settled in the
1950s, the party moved on to a new crusade on even loftier moral high ground: civil rights,
aiming to correct arrant and long-lived injustices against downtrodden black Americans. That
was a natural move, considering America's self-proclaimed post-war status as the world's Beacon
of Liberty. It had to be done and a political consensus that included Republicans got it done.
Consensus was still possible.
The Dems built their fortress on that high ground and fifty years later they find themselves
prisoners in it. The factory jobs all vamoosed overseas. The middle class has been pounded into
penury and addiction.
The Democratic Party split into a four-headed monster comprised of Wall Street patrons
seeking favors, war hawks and their corporate allies looking for new global rumbles, the
permanent bureaucracy looking to always expand itself, and the various ethnic and sexual
minorities whose needs and grievances are serviced by that bureaucracy. It's the last group
that has become the party's most public face while the party's other activities – many of
them sinister -- remain at least partially concealed.
The Republican Party has, at least, sobered up some after getting blindsided by Trump and
Trumpism. Like a drunk out of rehab, it's attempting to get a life. Two years in, the party
marvels at Mr. Trump's audacity, despite his obvious lack of savoir faire. And despite a
longstanding lack of political will to face the country's problems,the Republicans are being
forced to engage on some real issues, such as the need for a coherent and effective immigration
policy and the need to redefine formal trade relations. (Other issues like the insane system of
medical racketeering and the deadly racket of the college loan industry just skate along on
thin ice. And then, of course, there's the national debt and all its grotesque outgrowths.)
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has become the party of bad ideas and bad faith, starting
with the position that "diversity and inclusion" means shutting down free speech, an
unforgivable transgression against common sense and common decency. It's a party that lies even
more systematically than Mr. Trump, and does so knowingly (as when Google execs say they "Do no
Evil"). Its dirty secret is that it relishes coercion, it likes pushing people around, telling
them what to think and how to act. Its idea of "social justice" is a campus kangaroo court,
where due process of law is suspended. And it is deeply corrupt, with good old-fashioned grift,
new-fashioned gross political misconduct in federal law enforcement, and utter intellectual
depravity in higher education.
I hope that Democrats lose as many congressional and senate seats as possible.I hope that
the party is shoved into an existential crisis and is forced to confront its astounding
dishonesty. I hope that the process prompts them to purge their leadership across the board. If
there is anything to salvage in this organization, I hope it discovers aims and principles that
are unrecognizable from its current agenda of perpetual hysteria. But if the party actually
blows up and disappears, as the Whigs did a hundred and fifty years ago, I will be content. Out
of the terrible turbulence, maybe something better will be born.
Or, there's the possibility that the dregs of a defeated Democratic Party will just go
batshit crazy and use the last of its mojo to incite actual sedition. Of course, there's also a
distinct possibility that the Dems will take over congress, in which case they'll ramp up an
even more horrific three-ring-circus of political hysteria and persecution that will make the
Spanish Inquisition look like a backyard barbeque. That will happen as the US enters the most
punishing financial train wreck in our history, an interesting recipe for epic political
upheaval.
The FBI is looking into claims that women have been asked to make false accusations of
sexual harassment against Special Counsel Robert Mueller in exchange for money -- but all may
not be as it seems. The alleged scheme aimed at Mueller, who has been investigating unproven
ties between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia, came to the attention of his
office after several journalists and news outlets, including RT, were contacted by a woman
claiming that she had been approached by a man offering money if she would fabricate claims
against him.
13 days ago I received this tip alleging an attempt to pay off women to make up
accusations of sexual misconduct against Special Counsel Bob Mueller. Other reporters
received the same email. Now the Special Counsel's office is telling us they've referred the
matter to the FBI pic.twitter.com/oqh4Fnel5u
"The perpetrators and their conspiracy is not a theory since it has been proved."
By "proved" I assume you are referring to "proofs" such as the fantastical claim that
Mohammed Atta's passport was allegedly and fortuitously "found" when it supposedly survived
the 600 mph impact of the 767 he was supposedly piloting with a huge steel and concrete
building, survived the huge fireball it was supposedly in the middle of unscorched, and
conveniently fluttered to the ground intact to land at the feet of an FBI agent who
immediately realized it must have belonged to one of the hijackers!
Even Hans Christian Andersen couldn't invent Fairy Tales like that.
Each year I choose a book to be the Globalization Book of the Year, i.e., the "Globie". The prize is strictly honorific and does
not come with a check. But I do like to single out books that are particularly insightful about some aspect of globalization. Previous
winners are listed at the bottom.
This year's choice is
Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the Worldby
Adam Tooze of Yale University . Tooze, an historian, traces the events leading up to the crisis and the subsequent ten years.
He points out in the introduction that this account is different from one he may have written several years ago. At that time Barak
Obama had won re-election in 2012 on the basis of a slow but steady recovery in the U.S. Europe was further behind, but the emerging
markets were growing rapidly, due to the demand for their commodities from a steadily-growing China as well as capital inflows searching
for higher returns than those available in the advanced economies.
But the economic recovery has brought new challenges, which have swept aside established politicians and parties. Obama was succeeded
by Donald Trump, who promised to restore America to some form of past greatness. His policy agenda includes trade disputes with a
broad range of countries, and he is particularly eager to impose trade tariffs on China. The current meltdown in stock prices follows
a rise in interest rates normal at this stage of the business cycle but also is based on fears of the consequences of the trade measures.
Europe has its own discontents. In the United Kingdom, voters have approved leaving the European Union. The European Commission
has expressed its disapproval of the Italian government's fiscal plans. Several east European governments have voiced opposition
to the governance norms of the West European nations. Angela Merkel's decision to step down as head of her party leaves Europe without
its most respected leader.
All these events are outcomes of the crisis, which Tooze emphasizes was a trans-Atlantic event. European banks had purchased held
large amounts of U.S. mortgage-backed securities that they financed with borrowed dollars. When liquidity in the markets disappeared,
the European banks faced the challenge of financing their obligations. Tooze explains how the Federal Reserve supported the European
banks using swap lines with the European Central Bank and other central banks, as well as including the domestic subsidiaries of
the foreign banks in their liquidity support operations in the U.S. As a result, Tooze claims:
"What happened in the fall of 2008 was not the relativization of the dollar, but the reverse, a dramatic reassertion of the pivotal
role of America's central bank. Far from withering away, the Fed's response gave an entirely new dimension to the global dollar"
(Tooze, p. 219)
The focused policies of U.S. policymakers stood in sharp contrast to those of their European counterparts. Ireland and Spain had
to deal with their own banking crises following the collapse of their housing bubbles, and Portugal suffered from anemic growth.
But Greece's sovereign debt posed the largest challenge, and exposed the fault line in the Eurozone between those who believed that
such crises required a national response and those who looked for a broader European resolution. As a result, Greece lurched from
one lending program to another. The IMF was treated as a junior partner by the European governments that sought to evade facing the
consequences of Greek insolvency, and the Fund's reputation suffered new blows due to its involvement with the various rescue operations.The
ECB only demonstrated a firm commitment to its stabilizing role in July 2012, when its President Mario Draghi announced that "Within
our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro."
China followed another route. The government there engaged in a surge of stimulus spending combined with expansionary monetary
policies. The result was continued growth that allowed the Chinese government to demonstrate its leadership capabilities at a time
when the U.S. was abandoning its obligations. But the ensuing credit boom was accompanied by a rise in private (mainly corporate)
lending that has left China with a total debt to GDP ratio of over 250%, a level usually followed by some form of financial collapse.
Chinese officials are well aware of the domestic challenge they face at the same time as their dispute with the U.S. intensifies.
Tooze demonstrates that the crisis has let loose a range of responses that continue to play out. He ends the book by pointing
to a similarity of recent events and those of 1914. He raises several questions: "How does a great moderation end? How do huge risks
build up that are little understood and barely controllable? How do great tectonic shifts in the global world order unload in sudden
earthquakes?" Ten years after a truly global crisis, we are still seeking answers to these questions.
"... "In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy." ..."
"... "Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it's only the other fellow who's greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system." ..."
"... The United States has expended considerable energy and no end of media manipulation to make an enemy of Russia. It hardly seems sensible on Russia's part to go on helping America with its aerospace industry, since much of it is devoted to weapons and military systems production. The others, in order, are Japan (which produces less than half China's total), Kazakhstan, Ukraine and India. ..."
"... The Diplomatic Courier ..."
"... "United States-Russia relations have been perplexing in the last two years, and tensions between the two increased in April when newly imposed sanctions were placed on Russia. Because of these sanctions, Russia has threatened to halt titanium exports to the United States. With a growing dependency on titanium, the result of this would be ruinous for the United States defense industry and for aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing." ..."
"In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed
always defeats disorganized democracy."
Matt Taibbi, from Griftopia
"Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed?
You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed? Of
course, none of us are greedy, it's only the other fellow who's greedy. The world runs on
individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not
come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a
bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases
in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the
only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If
you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of
societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear,
that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people
that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise
system."
Milton Friedman
It's maybe a little unfortunate that cynicism has shoved its way to the fore in social
consciousness; if you smell flowers, look around for a funeral. The world wasn't always that
way, and once the American Dream which is really the dream of everyone everywhere – the
fond hope that all that will make us happy in life; love, family, the kind of paycheck that
will let one enjoy both, will somehow find us if only we are loyal and determined – was
relatively humble, and sort of sweet. Enough was just enough, and not just a little bit more,
if you feel me.
Somewhere along the storied path, greed became a virtue, as enshrined by Milton Friedman and
others like him. Greed is nothing to be ashamed of – it's nothing less than the pistons
in the great engine of human development. Greed is the puppet-master, pulling the strings of
democracy.
So when Uncle Sam starts talking up democracy, look around for something you have that he
might want.
Pardon a brief interjection here; Daniel Witt seems like a pretty straightforward guy. If
this is the same Daniel Witt,
his motivation genuinely seems to be the straightest road to profitability. His most-requested
speech, according to his bio, is "U.S. Protectionism Begs World Retaliation". He shows every
sign of being a guy who believes in free trade going both ways, the freer the better, and not a
shill for an end-run by the US government.
So what makes me so suspicious, suspicion being the natural companion of cynicism? I'm glad
you asked. In a word, titanium.
What's the only state-owned asset he singles out by name as a sign that the Ukrainian
government is backsliding on its reform road, just when real partnership beckons? The
Zaporizhia Titanium and Magnesium Combine. Hmmm. Which just happens to be 49% owned by Dmytro
Firtash, the sole Ukrainian oligarch to whom the USA seems to have taken a deep and abiding
dislike. He remains under house arrest in Vienna at the request of the US government, for
'alleged corrupt practices using U.S. banks', and it seems pretty clear that same US government
would have no problems with the Zaporizhia Titanium and Magnesium Combine being nationalized
and then sold to a private investor with or without his consent. Which is kind of an odd
position for the US government to take, considering its decidedly negative assessment of
Crimea's nationalization of businesses located in Crimea which were formerly the property of
Ukrainian oligarchs.
Two basic facts will guide us as we proceed; one, the United States uses a lot of titanium,
and it is absolutely vital to its aerospace and aircraft industry. Titanium is stronger than
steel but much lighter, and if America had to substitute steel for titanium in its passenger
aircraft, they would be much heavier, and able to carry only reduced loads of passengers and
cargo. Not to mention fuel, so they couldn't fly as far. The Boeing Dreamliner is
somewhere between 12% and 15% titanium , and Boeing was losing $23 million on every
Dreamliner that left the factory in 2015.
Two, the United States is not on the list of
major titanium producers . In fact, only one lone ally is – Japan. Doubtless further
adding to American chagrin, the runaway leader in titanium production is China, with whom the
United States is currently engaged in a loud and messy trade war which relies heavily, from the
American perspective, on acting the tough guy and employing a quickly-escalating sequence of
threats and tariffs. Not a country you want to have your balls in a vise over supplies of a
commodity you have to have in order to remain dominant in a major global industry.
Who's next? Russia. Ditto. The United States has expended considerable energy and no end
of media manipulation to make an enemy of Russia. It hardly seems sensible on Russia's part to
go on helping America with its aerospace industry, since much of it is devoted to weapons and
military systems production. The others, in order, are Japan (which produces less than half
China's total), Kazakhstan, Ukraine and India.
Hmmmm .Ukraine. Ukraine produces about 10,000 metric tons a year, but if a private investor
took over and modernized production, it might be much more. Of course the business could not
sell at a loss, but perhaps it might arrive at a Wal-Mart solution; I know a customer who will
buy 100% of your output – here's how much he's willing to pay. Perhaps not as much as you
hoped, but you can be assured of selling as much as you can produce. Free trade in action,
baby; dig it.
That's roughly
what The Diplomatic Courier thinks, too . In its article, we learn that the United
States sold off its entire National Defense stockpile of titanium, beginning in the late 90's.
Perhaps not the brightest decision, considering the USA now imports 79% of its titanium, and
relies on it more than ever.
"United States-Russia relations have been perplexing in the last two years, and
tensions between the two increased in April when newly imposed sanctions were placed on
Russia. Because of these sanctions, Russia has threatened to halt titanium exports to the
United States. With a growing dependency on titanium, the result of this would be ruinous for
the United States defense industry and for aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing."
Ruinous – you don't say. I hope you'll understand, then, why the cynic in me is
suspicious as the United States turns on the indignation and sorrow when Ukraine's titanium
industry doesn't appear on the list of state assets to be privatized, and simultaneously claims
that such privatization is vital to modernizing the Ukrainian economy. Which is all Uncle Sam
really cares about. Honest.
Going back to the original reference, Daniel Witt waves the carrot under Ukraine's nose by
citing the UK and New Zealand as examples of successful privatization. Ukraine is hesitating,
he says, but it must go down the same path.
Curiously enough, a search using the term
"privatization a disaster for UK" yields contentions that privatization of state rail, bus
and water services have all yielded terrible results. Significantly, though, they have not been
a uniform failure – they have been great for business; in fact, the article describes
privatization as 'a bonanza'. Where they have been a disaster, using water services as an
example, is for users, the environment and those employed in the industry.
Transpose that situation to the titanium industry in Ukraine. Ask yourself how much the USA
would care if the environment in Ukraine suffered because of an ambitious new private producer
and his investors. How about if the workers got dicked over, and the 'bonanza' passed them by?
What about Friedman's implication that Einstein's Theory of Relativity was inspired by his
loyalty to capitalist principles, or that Henry Ford achieved such success because he was an
early advocate for free trade? If anything, his description of individuals pursuing their own
interests making the world go 'round in a manner which is pleasing to the gods of private
enterprise ought to serve as a warning.
You know, I think we're on the same page here. At least I hope so.
I thought to mention how the economics should work out with privatizing the penal system.
It should be easy enough; you simply legislate a conversion of the state itself into the
Gulag. Or invite in the IMF. Just now Kiev is under the gun to raise gas prices where the
pension is reduced in real value to something like $40 a month, the most recent figure we've
heard from our Ukrainian retiree buddy; insuring every Ukrainian must aspire to become a
criminal to survive. So, there's your legitimate rationale to create 'the first circle' of
Solzhenitsyn's dreams where everyone is a prisoner, and the state apparatus (bureaucrat) is
made up of a higher class of prisoner (I believe the term is 'trusty') in a position to skim
the scant rations. Uh, there might be a concern the averaged IQ of 90, typical of Americans
these days, might miss your closing irony
BTW, speaking of world class crimes, if you hadn't seen this one:
That's a great piece, Ron, and – as usual – you did not pull any punches. It's
inspiring to see someone actually trying to do something to force the ICC to notice and to
hold accused perpetrators to account. I hope your evidence is solid, because western
governments have any number of attorneys while western intelligence agencies are getting
pretty good at cover-ups – a natural consequence of having had their mistakes exposed
without incurring any penalty thereby. How smart do you have to be to write in your little
notebook "Don't do that again"?
it must be dangerous for you, so please be careful. Bolton's unmistakable statement that
the USA does not and will not recognize the authority or judgments of the ICC marks America
as a nation which reserves the right to operate outside the law. Imaginary America has always
prided itself on holding itself and its citizens to an even higher standard than any national
set of laws, and its refusal to be bound – 'restricted' might be a better word –
by the ICC should be a warning that it has already violated its rules of conduct, and knows
it.
It's important to note that this is only Friedman's opinion, and probably most who analyze
the course of human development over history would not attribute the work of geniuses as a
byproduct of either greed or capitalism. Often it's just a person or a team that is driven to
solve a problem, and prove that their solution works – it is the drive for
accomplishment, even glory, perhaps, rather than the drive for enrichment. A good example is
the drug industry; very seldom is the discoverer of a remedy motivated by profit. Very seldom
is he who gains control over the marketing of that discovery motivated by anything else.
Milton Friedman actually lived long enough (he died in 2006) to see his neoliberal policies
fail in Chile. The initial neoliberal economic experiment in that country as put together by
the notorious Chicago Boys (Chilean graduates in economics from the University of Chicago)
ran from the mid-1970s (after Augusto Pinochet took over as leader after the 1973 coup) to
1981: the year the Chilean banking sector had a meltdown. From then on, Pinochet steered the
economy back to mixed socialist / neoliberal policies but any credibility he still might have
had with the Chilean public was destroyed and he was a lame duck president until 1988. The
Falklands War and Argentina still being a military police state might have saved his bacon
for a while but once that country's government was out and a limited democracy was restored,
Pinochet's days were numbered.
That goes a long way toward explaining why Latynina worships Pinochet – she's as
Randian as they come, and considers herself a model of progressive enlightenment.
This is just Randroid intellectual excrement. These clowns worship at the altar of
self-organizing order out of chaos. But no such process exists for human society. The order
comes from collusion and ***conspiracy***. And it is all about hiding this from the gullible
masses that are to be fleeced by informed Randroids.
Russia imported this rubbish religion back during the early 1990s thanks to the Harvard
Boys and the comprador regime of Yeltsin. But by 1998 it was apparent that it definitely does
not account for western "prosperity" and Chernomyrdin proclaimed that the era of market
romanticism was over. This coincided with a real turn-around in the Russian economy and there
was a surge in GDP and industrial growth (overseen by Primakov and later Putin).
The "invisible hand" of Adam Smith is not taken in the same sense as used by Smith. Smith
did not actually say that the market is self-organizing. He knew that order requires planning
and power to issue orders (or coerce compliance via more abstract means such as your real
choices as a consumer). The notion that a gas of no-holds-barred self-interested entities can
produce optimal economic and social order is certifiably insane. The only reason this crap
manages to persist is that most people just don't have the mathematical (and to some extent
physics) education to see through it. So Randroids can engage in the same trickery as global
warming deniers, i.e. spew plausibly sounding rubbish.
Consider a system consisting of N elements (where N is large) and each element is
essentially more likely to undermine than support each other element (since they are all
ruthless competitors and totally self-interested). Any positive interactions would be
inadvertent and resulting from greed maximization. You have the show stopping bootstrap
problem. Before any positive coherence can develop in the system allowing for inadvertent net
benefit (individual and collective) interactions, you have primitive local interactions with
nearest-neighbours. In this absurd theory, the elements or humans would behave like bears (or
other solitary predators) and not the social animals that they are. There would be negligible
incentive to cooperate since nobody is rich and the presence of others is competition for
available resources. You would have each element trying to create an exclusive territory
since that is what gives maximal gain (as it does in the real world for various animal
species). Clearly this is the diametric opposite of real humans who form family communes and
optimize their survival through collaboration. This tribal socialism was there for good
reasons and not some accident of history. All "primitive" tribes are socialist and only
exhibit capitalist style greed and self-interest at the inter-tribe level since the dynamics
at this scale begin to resemble those for bears (thanks to the strong human tribalism and
group identification).
Without a process to form human society, Randroid theorizing is not even academic, it is
removed from relevance by its own contradictions. Society has always been a species of
socialism even it involved rule by kings and the development of aristocracy. The
justification for society was and remains the collective good. Tribes became kingdoms because
of the need for security and the incentive to develop the economy to provide better living
conditions. (This does not exclude various regimes where the peasant masses were actually
worse off than if they remained more "primative", but social development is not defined just
by the negative aspects).
Greed is good capitalism is a pathology enabled by social development. And it sells itself
using socialist benefits. That is why we have government, taxes, courts and laws. In the
Randroid theory all of these things are a hindrance to the well being of the greedy. But the
greedy would not have the riches to pillage without all this "inefficient" socialism to build
up society and the economy. These greedy should properly use the totally undeveloped
reference state for their baseline since there would not be any human society if humans
behaved like bears.
"Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of
her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our
society . To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but
evil."
"Rand underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1974 after decades of heavy smoking.[97] In 1976,
she retired from writing her newsletter and, despite her initial objections, she allowed
social worker Evva Pryor, an employee of her attorney, to enroll her in ***Social Security
and Medicare.***[98][99] During the late 1970s her activities within the Objectivist movement
declined, especially after the death of her husband on November 9, 1979.[100] One of her
final projects was work on a never-completed television adaptation of Atlas Shrugged."
Friedman was just parsing Mandeville 1705's poem 'The Fable of the Bees' (and neither, in my
view, was entirely wrong – greed does incentivize):
T h e Root of Evil, Avarice,
That damn'd ill-natur'd baneful Vice,
Was Slave to Prodigality,
That noble Sin; whilst Luxury
Employ'd a Million of the Poor,
And odious Pride a Million more:
Envy it self, and Vanity,
Were Ministers of Industry;
Their darling Folly, Fickleness,
In Diet, Furniture and Dress,
That strange ridic'lous Vice, was made
The very Wheel that turn'd the Trade.
Their Laws and Clothes were equally
Objects of Mutability;
For, what was well done for a time,
In half a Year became a Crime;
Yet while they alter'd thus their Laws,
Still finding and correcting Flaws,
They mended by Inconstancy
Faults, which no Prudence could foresee.
T h u s Vice nurs'd Ingenuity,
Which join'd with Time and Industry,
Had carry'd Life's Conveniencies
It's real Pleasures, Comforts, Ease,
To such a Height, the very Poor
Liv'd better than the Rich before,
And nothing could be added more.
It's certainly true that not all the great accomplishments are the result of altruism,
perhaps not even half. And I suppose if I had to qualify it, I would say it is safe in a
process for the workers to be motivated by greed, if they must have a selfish motivation. But
if the overall controller of the effort is motivated by greed and the 'product' is something
everyone needs, some will surely have to go without because they will not be able to afford
it.
One has to consider the whole timeline of social evolution and not just the instantaneous
events of recent history. Various scientists back 200 years ago sponsored by the rich and
engaged in selfish pursuits would not be there in the first place if the only parameter
driving human "progress" was greed. There would be no rich either since they depend on the
conformity of the masses (peasants) to get rich. Randroid theories are not relevant for
humans and in fact not relevant for anything.
There is confusion about what the actual "7 deadly sins" are, and what are their
definitions.
For example, some people say "Greed" and some say "Avarice". There is a technical difference
between the two concepts, but I am not sure what it is.
There is also a confusion between "Envy" and "Jealousy".
And much confusion surrounding the concept of "Pride". Many modern people consider "Pride" to
be a positive virtue, not a sin. As in "Pride Week", or the like.
Jane Austen considered "Pride" to be a negative characteristic, synonym with "contumely".
Everybody agrees that "Gluttony" and "Lust" are sins, no second thoughts there
The difference between greed and avarice is that greed, being the more commonly used term, is
more general and vague in its meaning whereas avarice has a more specific meaning of intense
and compulsive greed and has connotations of rapacity. As one of the 7 Deadly Sins, Avarice
is the more correct concept.
In this context as well (of the 7 Deadly Sins), Pride refers to arrogance and belief in
one's own superiority over others.
Gluttony and Lust refer to the extreme and compulsive over-indulgence of the senses, to
the point where they become dulled and the person who indulges in gluttony and lust needs
more heightened and more extreme experiences to obtain the same levels of satisfaction.
Notice how such indulgence becomes an addiction that virtually rules the person's life.
Texting all day non-stop with smart phones should be one of the 7 deadlies!
The metro here is full of people (mostly women) doing this. Sometimes they are so bloody
busy talking about fuck-all non-stop, that when the doors open, they're still at it and you
can't get on or off.
Agree; and compulsively taking Selfies with one's phone should also be the 8th Deadly
sin.
Although maybe this fits into the category of "Vanity".
Speaking of which, some people say that "Vanity" rather than "Pride" is the deadly sin.
As in the movie
Bedazzled , I mean the original one with Dudley Moore, not the remake.
In that movie, the 7 sins are: Lust, Vanity, Anger, Envy, Gluttony, Avarice and Sloth.
I don't think Pride is actually a sin, depending. It could just mean just a feeling of
satisfaction or self-worth that one has accomplished something.
Whereas Vanity, as Pushkin noted, is more like a fascination with the notion of
celebrity.
Envy and jealousy were explained to me by my first Spanish teacher by reference to the iron
bars over street level windows.
The person outside, looks in with envy while the guy inside is jealous of what's his own.
It didn't hurt that the name of the set of bars in Spanish is "celosía."
"... Her announcement on Monday that she will vacate the leadership of Germany's ruling center-right Christian Democrats marks the culmination of what has been a slow denouement of Merkelism. ..."
"... Long the emblematic figure of "Europe," hailed by the neoliberal Economist as the continent's moral voice, long the dominant decider of its collective foreign and economic policies, Merkel will leave office with border fences being erected and disdain for European political institutions at their highest pitch ever. In this sense, she failed as dramatically as her most famous predecessors, Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, and Helmut Kohl, succeeded in their efforts to make Germany both important and normal in the postwar world. ..."
"... "We can do this!" she famously declared. Europe, she said, must "show flexibility" over refugees. Then, a few days later, she said there was "no limit" to the number of migrants Germany could accept. At first, the burgeoning flood of mostly young male asylum claimants produced an orgy of self-congratulatory good feeling, celebrity posturing of welcome, Merkel greeting migrants at the train station, Merkel taking selfies with migrants, Merkel touted in The Economist as "Merkel the Bold." ..."
"... The euphoria, of course, did not last. Several of the Merkel migrants carried out terror attacks in France that fall. (France's socialist prime minister Manuel Valls remarked pointedly after meeting with Merkel, "It was not us who said, 'Come!'") Reports of sexual assaults and murders by migrants proved impossible to suppress, though Merkel did ask Mark Zuckerberg to squelch European criticism of her migration policies on Facebook. Intelligent as she undoubtedly is (she was a research chemist before entering politics), she seemed to lack any intellectual foundation to comprehend why the integration of hundreds of thousands of people from the Muslim world might prove difficult. ..."
"... Merkel reportedly telephoned Benjamin Netanyahu to ask how Israel had been so successful in integrating so many immigrants during its brief history. There is no record of what Netanyahu thought of the wisdom of the woman posing this question. ..."
"... In any case, within a year, the Merkel initiative was acknowledged as a failure by most everyone except the chancellor herself. ..."
Drop of Light/Shutterstock Whatever her accomplishments
as pathbreaking female politician and respected leader of Europe's dominant economic power, Angela Merkel will go down in history
for her outburst of naivete over the issue of migration into Europe during the summer of 2015.
Her announcement on Monday that she will vacate the leadership of Germany's ruling center-right Christian Democrats marks
the culmination of what has been a slow denouement of Merkelism.
She had seen the vote share of her long dominant party shrink in one regional election after another. The rebuke given to her
last weekend in Hesse, containing the Frankfurt region with its booming economy, where she had campaigned extensively, was the final
straw. Her CDU's vote had declined 10 points since the previous election, their voters moving toward the further right (Alternative
fur Deutschland or AfD). Meanwhile, the further left Greens have made dramatic gains at the expense of Merkel's Social Democrat coalition
partners.
Long the emblematic figure of "Europe," hailed by the neoliberal Economist as the continent's moral voice, long the
dominant decider of its collective foreign and economic policies, Merkel will leave office with border fences being erected and disdain
for European political institutions at their highest pitch ever. In this sense, she failed as dramatically as her most famous predecessors,
Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, and Helmut Kohl, succeeded in their efforts to make Germany both important and normal
in the postwar world.
One can acknowledge that while Merkel never admitted error for her multiculti summer fling (beyond wishing she had communicated
her goals better), she did manage to adjust her policies. By 2016, Germany under her watch was paying a healthy ransom to Turkey
to keep would-be migrants in camps and preventing them from sailing to Greece. Merkel's departure will make the battle to succeed
her one of the most watched political contests in Europe. She has turned migration into a central and quite divisive issue within
the CDU and Germany, and the party may decide that it has no choice but to accommodate, in one way or another, the voters who have
left them for the AfD.
Related to the issue of who should reside in Europe (objectively the current answer remains anyone who can get there) is the question
of how are such questions decided. In July 2015, five years after asserting in a speech that multiculturalism has
"utterly failed" in Germany (without addressing what policies should be pursued in an increasingly ethnically diverse society)
and several weeks after reducing a young Arab girl to tears at a televised forum by telling her that those whose asylum claims were
rejected would "have to go back" and that "politics is hard," Merkel changed course.
For those interested in psychological studies of leadership and decision making, it would be hard to imagine a richer subject.
Merkel's government first announced it would no longer enforce the rule (the Dublin agreement) that required asylum claimants to
be processed in the first country they passed through. Then she doubled down. The migrants fleeing the Syrian civil war, along with
those who pretended to be Syrian, and then basically just anyone, could come to Germany.
"We can do this!" she famously declared. Europe, she said, must "show flexibility" over refugees. Then, a few days later,
she said there was "no limit" to the number of migrants Germany could accept. At first, the burgeoning flood of mostly young male
asylum claimants produced an orgy of self-congratulatory good feeling, celebrity posturing of welcome, Merkel greeting migrants at
the train station, Merkel taking selfies with migrants, Merkel touted in The Economist as
"Merkel the Bold."
Her words traveled far beyond those fleeing Syria. Within 48 hours of the "no limit" remark, TheNew York Times
reported a sudden stirring of migrants from Nigeria. Naturally Merkel boasted in a quiet way about how her decision had revealed
that Germany had put its Nazi past behind it. "The world sees Germany as a land of hope and chances," she said. "That wasn't always
the case." In making this decision personally, Merkel was making it for all of Europe. It was one of the ironies of a European arrangement
whose institutions were developed in part to transcend nationalism and constrain future German power that 70 years after the end
of the war, the privately arrived-at decision of a German chancellor could instantly transform societies all over Europe.
The euphoria, of course, did not last. Several of the Merkel migrants carried out terror attacks in France that fall. (France's
socialist prime minister Manuel Valls remarked pointedly after meeting with Merkel, "It was not us who said, 'Come!'") Reports of
sexual assaults and murders by migrants proved impossible to suppress, though Merkel did ask Mark Zuckerberg to squelch European
criticism of her migration policies on Facebook. Intelligent as she undoubtedly is (she was a research chemist before entering politics),
she seemed to lack any intellectual foundation to comprehend why the integration of hundreds of thousands of people from the Muslim
world might prove difficult.
Merkel reportedly telephoned Benjamin Netanyahu to ask how Israel had been so successful in integrating so many immigrants
during its brief history. There is no record of what Netanyahu thought of the wisdom of the woman posing this question.
In any case, within a year, the Merkel initiative was acknowledged as a failure by most everyone except the chancellor herself.
Her public approval rating plunged from 75 percent in April 2015 to 47 percent the following summer. The first electoral rebuke came
in September 2016, when the brand new anti-immigration party, the Alternative fur Deutschland, beat Merkel's CDU in Pomerania.
In every election since, Merkel's party has lost further ground. Challenges to her authority from within her own party have become
more pointed and powerful. But the mass migration accelerated by her decision continues, albeit at a slightly lower pace.
Angela Merkel altered not only Germany but the entire European continent, in irreversible ways, for decades to come.
Scott McConnell is a founding editor ofand the author of Ex-Neocon: Dispatches From the Post-9/11 Ideological Wars
.
"... On the other hand, President Trump is pushing Merkel on policy on Russia and Ukraine that furthers the image that she is simply a stooge of U.S. geopolitical ambitions. Don't ever forget that Germany is, for all intents and purposes, an occupied country. So, what the U.S. military establishment wants, Merkel must provide. ..."
"... But Merkel, further weakened by another disastrous state election, isn't strong enough to fend off her emboldened Italian and British opposition (and I'm not talking about The Gypsum Lady, Theresa May here). ..."
"... Merkel is a lame-duck now. Merkelism is over. Absentee governing from the center standing for nothing but the international concerns has been thoroughly rebuked by the European electorate from Spain to the shores of the Black Sea. ..."
"... Germany will stand for something other than globalism by the time this is all over. There will be a renaissance of culture and tradition there that is similar to the one occurring at a staggering pace in Russia. ..."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stepped down as the leader of the Christian Democratic
Union, the party she has led for nearly two decades. Yesterday's election in Hesse, normally a
CDU/SPD stronghold was abysmal for them.
She had to do something to quell the revolt brewing against her.
Merkel knew going in what the polls were showing. Unlike American and British polls, it
seems the German ones are mostly accurate with pre-election polls coming close to matching the
final results.
So, knowing what was coming for her and in the spirit of trying to maintain power for as
long as possible Merkel has been moving away from her staunch positions on unlimited
immigration and being in lock-step with the U.S. on Russia.
She's having to walk a tightrope on these two issues as the turmoil in U.S. political
circles is pulling her in, effectively, opposite directions.
The globalist Davos Crowd she works for wants the destruction of European culture and
individual national sovereignty ground into a paste and power consolidated under the rubric of
the European Union.
They also want Russia brought to heel.
On the other hand, President Trump is pushing Merkel on policy on Russia and Ukraine that
furthers the image that she is simply a stooge of U.S. geopolitical ambitions. Don't ever
forget that Germany is, for all intents and purposes, an occupied country. So, what the U.S.
military establishment wants, Merkel must provide.
So, if she rejects that role and the chaos U.S. policy engenders, particularly Syria, she's
undermining the flow of migrants into Europe.
This is why it was so significant that she and French President Emmanuel Macron joined this
weekend's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan in Istanbul.
It ended with an agreement on Syria's future that lies in direct conflict with the U.S.'s
goals of the past seven years.
It was an admission that Assad has prevailed in Syria and the plan to atomize it into yet
another failed state has itself failed. Merkel has traded 'Assad must go' for 'no more
refugees.'
To President Trump's credit he then piggy-backed on that statement announcing that the U.S.
would be pulling out of Syria very soon now. And that tells me that he is still coordinating in
some way with Putin and other world leaders on the direction of his foreign policy in spite of
his opposition.
But the key point from the Istanbul statement was that Syria's rebuilding be prioritized to
reverse the flow of migrants so Syrians can go home. While
Gilbert Doctorow is unconvinced by France's position here , I think Merkel has to be
focused on assisting Putin in achieving his goal of returning Syria to Syrians.
Because, this is both a political necessity for Merkel as well as her trying to burnish her
crumbling political throne to maintain power.
The question is will Germans believe and/or forgive her enough for her to stay in power
through her now stated 'retirement' from politics in 2021?
I don't think so and it's obvious Davos Crowd boy-toy Macron is working overtime to salvage
what he can for them as Merkel continues to face up to the political realities across Europe,
which is that populism is a natural reaction to these insane policies.
Merkel's job of consolidating power under the EU is unfinished. They don't have financial
integration. The Grand Army of the EU is still not a popular idea. The euro-zone is a disaster
waiting to happen and its internal inconsistencies are adding fuel to an already pretty hot
political fire.
On this front, EU integration, she and Macron are on the same page. Because 'domestically'
from an EU perspective, Brexit still has to be dealt with and the showdown with the Italians is
only just beginning.
But Merkel, further weakened by another disastrous state election, isn't strong enough to
fend off her emboldened Italian and British opposition (and I'm not talking about The Gypsum
Lady, Theresa May here).
And Macron should stop looking in the mirror long enough to see he's standing on a quicksand
made of blasting powder.
This points to the next major election for Europe, that of the European Parliament in May
where all of Merkel's opposition are focused on wresting control of that body and removing
Jean-Claude Juncker or his hand-picked replacement (Merkel herself?) from power.
The obvious transition for Merkel is from German Chancellor to European Commission
President. She steps down as Chancellor in May after the EPP wins a majority then to take
Juncker's job. I'm sure that's been the plan all along. This way she can continue the work she started
without having to face the political backlash at home.
But, again, how close is Germany to snap elections if there is another migrant attack and
Chemnitz-like demonstrations. You can only go to the 'Nazi' well so many times, even in
Germany.
There comes a point where people will have simply had enough and their anger isn't born of
being intolerant but angry at having been betrayed by political leadership which doesn't speak
for them and imported crime, chaos and violence to their homes.
And the puppet German media will not be able to contain the story. The EU's speech rules
will not contain people who want to speak. The clamp down on hate speech, pioneered by Merkel
herself is a reaction to the growing tide against her.
And guess what? She can't stop it.
The problem is that Commies like Merkel and Soros don't believe in anything. They are
vampires and nihilists as I said over the
weekend suffused with a toxic view of humanity.
Oh sure, they give lip service to being inclusive and nice about it while they have
control over the levers of power, the State apparatus. But, the minute they lose control of
those levers, the sun goes down, the fangs come out and the bloodletting begins.
These people are vampires, sucking the life out of a society for their own ends. They are
evil in a way that proves John Barth's observation that "man can do no wrong." For they never
see themselves as the villain.
No. They see themselves as the savior of a fallen people. Nihilists to their very core
they only believe in power. And, since power is their religion, all activities are justified
in pursuit of their goals.
Their messianic view of themselves is indistinguishable to the Salafist head-chopping
animals people like Hillary empowered to sow chaos and death across the Middle East and North
Africa over the past decade.
Add to this Merkel herself who took Hillary's empowerment of these animals and gave them a
home across Europe. At least now Merkel has the good sense to see that this has cost her nearly
everything.
Even if she has little to no shame.
Hillary seems to think she can run for president again and win with the same schtick she
failed with twice before. Frankly, I welcome it like I welcome the sun in the morning, safe in
the knowledge that all is right with the world and she will go down in humiliating defeat yet
again.
Merkel is a lame-duck now. Merkelism is over. Absentee governing from the center standing
for nothing but the international concerns has been thoroughly rebuked by the European
electorate from Spain to the shores of the Black Sea.
Germany will stand for something other than globalism by the time this is all over. There
will be a renaissance of culture and tradition there that is similar to the one occurring
at a staggering pace in Russia.
Congressman Louie Gohmert report can be read
here "What I have accumulated here is absolutely shocking upon the realization that Mueller's
disreputable, twisted history speaks to the character of the man placed in a position to attempt
to legalize a coup against a lawfully elected President," writes Gohmert.
For him to accuse his accuser of attempting to bribe someone to make accusations about him
is no surprise since that is what was most likely done to Kavanaugh. Their playbook is
getting quite old.
Burkman told The Atlantic that he has no clue who the woman is, suggesting he represents a
different accuser.
DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores referred all inquiries back to the special counsel,
however we imagine the "all survivors must be believed" standard applies.
The false flags and fake scandals are flying fast and furious in the final weeks before
the election. Let's see if Mueller is able to construct another charge against Trump. The
collusion failed. Obstruction? Failed. Got to concoct something else.
Remember, this is the guy in charge of the FBI during 911. He's good at constructing a
narrative and has a LOT to lose if the house intelligence committee stays in GOP hands.
I am shocked this man is roaming free tonight. We must believe the women, unless and until
Mueller can prove his innocence. There is too much smoke for there not to be some fire. At
this point, he should resign and begin the process of constructing his defense.
Meanwhile, on the Gateway Pundit, they are spinning this way more aggressively at
Mueller....
The Gateway Pundit obtained a copy of the charges.
What we know: The woman is a "very credible witness." Her story are corroborated. The
incident happened in 2010 in New York City. The woman is a professional.
The Mueller apologists are already trashing the accuser -- and don't even know who she
is!
OMG, this story is the best. It keeps giving. So, the phony security company, "Surefire
Intelligence", which Jacob Wohl created and then claimed he had no connection to, but was
registered to his mom's home phone number, has a guy named "Matthew Cohen" as a supposed
founder, who is supposedly ex-Mossad. The profile for "Matthew Cohen" in one place is a photo
of actor Christoph Waltz, and in another place is a photo of Jacob Wohl himself.
Now Jack Burkman, who's the one who has been promoting this story, says he was being
hoaxed by Wohl. When a reporter was talking to Wohl and brought up the fact that "Surefire
Intelligence" is registered to his mom's phone number, he hung up.
So far, no women have come forward with any allegations against Mueller, but several have
come forward with allegations saying Wohl offered them $20,000 to make up phony
allegations.
The special counsel's office confirmed to CNBC that it learned about the "scheme" from
journalists who had been approached by a woman alleging that she had been offered $20,000 by
Burkman "to make accusations of sexual misconduct and workplace harassment against Robert
Mueller." -
CNBC
So con men covering Bad Bob.....as though CNBC has any credibility...
I think FBI and CIA live in strong conviction that they are Rex Mundi. They can do
whatever they want. There is no law for them at all. Typical demokratorship
Let's see. I believe all Victims. Where have I heard that before? Amazing how the Demtards
have fall guys lined up for miles to take the hit for the team. Their spin control is amazing
to watch in action. I so hope this is true. Mueller seems like an evil cat.
These counter claims sound a whole lot like the technique of inserting "confidential
informants" into the Trump Campaign to insert information - or DISINFORMATION - into the
storyline.
what if this whole Pillsbury email was manufactured to create a counter narrative that
people are paid off.....?
see, no one trusts anyone anymore......so, might as well question everything. or not
question ANYTHING and just #believewomen
Mueller is a huge snake; a guy who'll grin widely into your face as he plants evidence to
frame you from the ground up. Ask those who've been released from years of imprisonment
because of Mueller's set ups. They've got a few things to say about Robert Mueller...
A rapist? Who the hell knows but those involved at the time?
I'd put nothing past this uranium mule Mueller. Nothing. Deepest Statist Mueller's career
was made on being a silent and gruesomely pernicious bastard who'd go there for his pals. A
DC Fixer; like his devotee James Comey. Real dirty crums. And they hold a shitload of
blackmail-able secrets.
Step back and think about this for a minute. There are plenty of examples of people who were
doing their jobs, IN SPADES, putting in tons of unpaid overtime, and generally doing whatever
was humanly possible to make sure that whatever was promised to the customer was delivered
(within their span of control... I'm not going to get into a discussion of how IBM pulls the
rug out from underneath contracts after they've been signed).
These people were, and still are, high performers, they are committed to the job and the
purpose that has been communicated to them by their peers, management, and customers; and
they take the time (their OWN time) to pick up new skills and make sure that they are still
current and marketable. They do this because they are committed to doing the job to the best
of their ability.... it's what makes them who they are.
IBM (and other companies) are firing these very people ***for one reason and one reason
ONLY***: their AGE. They have the skills and they're doing their jobs. If the same person was
30 you can bet that they'd still be there. Most of the time it has NOTHING to do with
performance or lack of concurrency. Once the employee is fired, the job is done by someone
else. The work is still there, but it's being done by someone younger and/or of a different
nationality.
The money that is being saved by these companies has to come from somewhere. People that
are having to withdraw their retirement savings 20 or so years earlier than planned are going
to run out of funds.... and when they're in nursing homes, guess who is going to be
supporting them? Social security will be long gone, their kids have their own monetary
challenges.... so it will be government programs.... maybe.
This is not just a problem that impacts the 40 and over crowd. This is going to impact our
entire society for generations to come.
The business reality you speak of can be tempered via government actions. A few things:
One of the major hardships here is laying someone off when they need income the most -
to pay for their children's college education. To mitigate this, as a country we could make a
public education free. That takes off a lot of the sting, some people might relish a change
in career when they are in their 50s except that the drop in salary is so steep when changing
careers.
We could lower the retirement age to 55 and increase Social Security to more than a
poverty-level existence.Being laid off when you're 50 or 55 - with little chance to be hired
anywhere else - would not hurt as much.
We could offer federal wage subsidies for older workers to make them more attractive to
hire. While some might see this as a thumb on the scale against younger workers, in reality
it would be simply a counterweight to the thumb that is already there against older
workers.
Universal health care equalizes the cost of older and younger workers.
The other alternative is a market-based life that, for many, will be cruel, brutish, and
short.
As a new engineering graduate, I joined a similar-sized multinational US-based company in the
early '70s. Their recruiting pitch was, "Come to work here, kid. Do your job, keep your nose
clean, and you will enjoy great, secure work until you retire on easy street".
Soon after I started, the company fired hundreds of 50-something employees and put we
"kids" in their jobs. Seeing that employee loyalty was a one way street at that place, I left
after a couple of years. Best career move I ever made.
As a 25yr+ vet of IBM, I can confirm that this article is spot-on true. IBM used to be a
proud and transparent company that clearly demonstrated that it valued its employees as much
as it did its stock performance or dividend rate or EPS, simply because it is good for
business. Those principles helped make and keep IBM atop the business world as the most
trusted international brand and business icon of success for so many years. In 2000, all that
changed when Sam Palmisano became the CEO. Palmisano's now infamous "Roadmap 2015" ran the
company into the ground through its maniacal focus on increasing EPS at any and all costs.
Literally. Like, its employees, employee compensation, benefits, skills, and education
opportunities. Like, its products, product innovation, quality, and customer service. All of
which resulted in the devastation of its technical capability and competitiveness, employee
engagement, and customer loyalty. Executives seemed happy enough as their compensation grew
nicely with greater financial efficiencies, and Palisano got a sweet $270M+ exit package in
2012 for a job well done. The new CEO, Ginni Rometty has since undergone a lot of scrutiny
for her lack of business results, but she was screwed from day one. Of course, that doesn't
leave her off the hook for the business practices outlined in the article, but what do you
expect: she was hand picked by Palmisano and approved by the same board that thought
Palmisano was golden.
In 1994, I saved my job at IBM for the first time, and survived. But I was 36 years old. I
sat down at the desk of a man in his 50s, and found a few odds and ends left for me in the
desk. Almost 20 years later, it was my turn to go. My health and well-being is much better
now. Less money but better health. The sins committed by management will always be: "I was
just following orders".
"... Correction, March 24, 2018: Eileen Maroney lives in Aiken, South Carolina. The name of her city was incorrect in the original version of this story. ..."
Consider, for example, a planning presentation that former IBM executives said was drafted by heads of a business unit carved
out of IBM's once-giant software group and charged with pursuing the "C," or cloud, portion of the company's CAMS strategy.
The presentation laid out plans for substantially altering the unit's workforce. It was shown to company leaders including Diane
Gherson, the senior vice president for human resources, and James Kavanaugh, recently elevated to chief financial officer. Its language
was couched in the argot of "resources," IBM's term for employees, and "EP's," its shorthand for early professionals or recent college
graduates.
Among the goals: "Shift headcount mix towards greater % of Early Professional hires." Among the means: "[D]rive a more aggressive
performance management approach to enable us to hire and replace where needed, and fund an influx of EPs to correct seniority mix."
Among the expected results: "[A] significant reduction in our workforce of 2,500 resources."
A slide from a similar presentation prepared last spring for the same leaders called for "re-profiling current talent" to "create
room for new talent." Presentations for 2015 and 2016 for the 50,000-employee software group also included plans for "aggressive
performance management" and emphasized the need to "maintain steady attrition to offset hiring."
IBM declined to answer questions about whether either presentation was turned into company policy. The description of the planned
moves matches what hundreds of older ex-employees told ProPublica they believe happened to them: They were ousted because of their
age. The company used their exits to hire replacements, many of them young; to ship their work overseas; or to cut its overall headcount.
Ed Alpern, now 65, of Austin, started his 39-year run with IBM as a Selectric typewriter repairman. He ended as a project manager
in October of 2016 when, he said, his manager told him he could either leave with severance and other parting benefits or be given
a bad job review -- something he said he'd never previously received -- and risk being fired without them.
Albert Poggi, now 70, was a three-decade IBM veteran and ran the company's Palisades, New York, technical center where clients
can test new products. When notified in November of 2016 he was losing his job to layoff, he asked his bosses why, given what he
said was a history of high job ratings. "They told me," he said, "they needed to fill it with someone newer."
The presentations from the software group, as well as the stories of ex-employees like Alpern and Poggi, square with internal
documents from two other major IBM business units. The documents for all three cover some or all of the years from 2013 through the
beginning of 2018 and deal with job assessments, hiring, firing and layoffs.
The documents detail practices that appear at odds with how IBM says it treats its employees. In many instances, the practices
in effect, if not intent, tilt against the company's older U.S. workers.
For example, IBM spokespeople and lawyers have said the company never considers a worker's age in making decisions about layoffs
or firings.
But one 2014 document reviewed by ProPublica includes dates of birth. An ex-IBM employee familiar with the process said executives
from one business unit used it to decide about layoffs or other job changes for nearly a thousand workers, almost two-thirds of them
over 50.
Documents from subsequent years show that young workers are protected from cuts for at least a limited period of time. A 2016
slide presentation prepared by the company's global technology services unit, titled "U.S. Resource Action Process" and used to guide
managers in layoff procedures, includes bullets for categories considered "ineligible" for layoff. Among them: "early professional
hires," meaning recent college graduates.
In responding to age-discrimination complaints that ex-employees file with the EEOC, lawyers for IBM say that front-line managers
make all decisions about who gets laid off, and that their decisions are based strictly on skills and job performance, not age.
But ProPublica reviewed spreadsheets that indicate front-line managers hardly acted alone in making layoff calls. Former IBM managers
said the spreadsheets were prepared for upper-level executives and kept continuously updated. They list hundreds of employees together
with codes like "lift and shift," indicating that their jobs were to be lifted from them and shifted overseas, and details such as
whether IBM's clients had approved the change.
An examination of several of the spreadsheets suggests that, whatever the criteria for assembling them, the resulting list of
those marked for layoff was skewed toward older workers. A 2016 spreadsheet listed more than 400 full-time U.S. employees under the
heading "REBAL," which refers to "rebalancing," the process that can lead to laying off workers and either replacing them or shifting
the jobs overseas. Using the job search site LinkedIn, ProPublica was able to locate about 100 of these employees and then obtain
their ages through public records. Ninety percent of those found were 40 or older. Seventy percent were over 50.
IBM frequently cites its history of encouraging diversity in its responses to EEOC complaints about age discrimination. "IBM has
been a leader in taking positive actions to ensure its business opportunities are made available to individuals without regard to
age, race, color, gender, sexual orientation and other categories," a lawyer for the company wrote in a May 2017 letter. "This policy
of non-discrimination is reflected in all IBM business activities."
But ProPublica found at least one company business unit using a point system that disadvantaged older workers. The system awarded
points for attributes valued by the company. The more points a person garnered, according to the former employee, the more protected
she or he was from layoff or other negative job change; the fewer points, the more vulnerable.
The arrangement appears on its face to favor younger newcomers over older veterans. Employees were awarded points for being relatively
new at a job level or in a particular role. Those who worked for IBM for fewer years got more points than those who'd been there
a long time.
The ex-employee familiar with the process said a 2014 spreadsheet from that business unit, labeled "IBM Confidential," was assembled
to assess the job prospects of more than 600 high-level employees, two-thirds of them from the U.S. It included employees' years
of service with IBM, which the former employee said was used internally as a proxy for age. Also listed was an assessment by their
bosses of their career trajectories as measured by the highest job level they were likely to attain if they remained at the company,
as well as their point scores.
The tilt against older workers is evident when employees' years of service are compared with their point scores. Those with no
points and therefore most vulnerable to layoff had worked at IBM an average of more than 30 years; those with a high number of points
averaged half that.
Perhaps even more striking is the comparison between employees' service years and point scores on the one hand and their superiors'
assessments of their career trajectories on the other.
Along with many American employers, IBM has argued it needs to shed older workers because they're no longer at the top of their
games or lack "contemporary" skills.
But among those sized up in the confidential spreadsheet, fully 80 percent of older employees -- those with the most years of
service but no points and therefore most vulnerable to layoff -- were rated by superiors as good enough to stay at their current
job levels or be promoted. By contrast, only a small percentage of younger employees with a high number of points were similarly
rated.
"No major company would use tools to conduct a layoff where a disproportionate share of those let go were African Americans or
women," said Cathy Ventrell-Monsees, senior attorney adviser with the EEOC and former director of age litigation for the senior lobbying
giant AARP. "There's no difference if the tools result in a disproportionate share being older workers."
In addition to the point system that disadvantaged older workers in layoffs, other documents suggest that IBM has made increasingly
aggressive use of its job-rating machinery to pave the way for straight-out firings, or what the company calls "management-initiated
separations." Internal documents suggest that older workers were especially targets.
Like in many companies, IBM employees sit down with their managers at the start of each year and set goals for themselves. IBM
graded on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being top-ranked.
Those rated as 3 or 4 were given formal short-term goals known as personal improvement plans, or PIPs. Historically many managers
were lenient, especially toward those with 3s whose ratings had dropped because of forces beyond their control, such as a weakness
in the overall economy, ex-employees said.
But within the past couple of years, IBM appears to have decided the time for leniency was over. For example, a software group
planning document for 2015 said that, over and above layoffs, the unit should seek to fire about 3,000 of the unit's 50,000-plus
workers.
To make such deep cuts, the document said, executives should strike an "aggressive performance management posture." They needed
to double the share of employees given low 3 and 4 ratings to at least 6.6 percent of the division's workforce. And because layoffs
cost the company more than outright dismissals or resignations, the document said, executives should make sure that more than 80
percent of those with low ratings get fired or forced to quit.
Finally, the 2015 document said the division should work "to attract the best and brightest early professionals" to replace up
to two-thirds of those sent packing. A more recent planning document -- the presentation to top executives Gherson and Kavanaugh
for a business unit carved out of the software group -- recommended using similar techniques to free up money by cutting current
employees to fund an "influx" of young workers.
In a recent interview, Poggi said he was resigned to being laid off. "Everybody at IBM has a bullet with their name on it," he
said. Alpern wasn't nearly as accepting of being threatened with a poor job rating and then fired.
Alpern had a particular reason for wanting to stay on at IBM, at least until the end of last year. His younger son, Justin, then
a high school senior, had been named a National Merit semifinalist. Alpern wanted him to be able to apply for one of the company's
Watson scholarships. But IBM had recently narrowed eligibility so only the children of current employees could apply, not also retirees
as it was until 2014.
Alpern had to make it through December for his son to be eligible.
But in August, he said, his manager ordered him to retire. He sought to buy time by appealing to superiors. But he said the manager's
response was to threaten him with a bad job review that, he was told, would land him on a PIP, where his work would be scrutinized
weekly. If he failed to hit his targets -- and his managers would be the judges of that -- he'd be fired and lose his benefits.
Alpern couldn't risk it; he retired on Oct. 31. His son, now a freshman on the dean's list at Texas A&M University, didn't get
to apply.
"I can think of only a couple regrets or disappointments over my 39 years at IBM,"" he said, "and that's one of them."
'Congratulations on Your Retirement!'
Like any company in the U.S., IBM faces few legal constraints to reducing the size of its workforce. And with its no-disclosure
strategy, it eliminated one of the last regular sources of information about its employment practices and the changing size of its
American workforce.
But there remained the question of whether recent cutbacks were big enough to trigger state and federal requirements for disclosure
of layoffs. And internal documents, such as a slide in a 2016 presentation titled "Transforming to Next Generation Digital Talent,"
suggest executives worried that "winning the talent war" for new young workers required IBM to improve the "attractiveness of (its)
culture and work environment," a tall order in the face of layoffs and firings.
So the company apparently has sought to put a softer face on its cutbacks by recasting many as voluntary rather than the result
of decisions by the firm. One way it has done this is by converting many layoffs to retirements.
Some ex-employees told ProPublica that, faced with a layoff notice, they were just as happy to retire. Others said they felt forced
to accept a retirement package and leave. Several actively objected to the company treating their ouster as a retirement. The company
nevertheless processed their exits as such.
Project manager Ed Alpern's departure was treated in company paperwork as a voluntary retirement. He didn't see it that way, because
the alternative he said he was offered was being fired outright.
Lorilynn King, a 55-year-old IT specialist who worked from her home in Loveland, Colorado, had been with IBM almost as long as
Alpern by May 2016 when her manager called to tell her the company was conducting a layoff and her name was on the list.
King said the manager told her to report to a meeting in Building 1 on IBM's Boulder campus the following day. There, she said,
she found herself in a group of other older employees being told by an IBM human resources representative that they'd all be retiring.
"I have NO intention of retiring," she remembers responding. "I'm being laid off."
ProPublica has collected documents from 15 ex-IBM employees who got layoff notices followed by a retirement package and has talked
with many others who said they received similar paperwork. Critics say the sequence doesn't square well with the law.
"This country has banned mandatory retirement," said Seiner, the University of South Carolina law professor and former EEOC appellate
lawyer. "The law says taking a retirement package has to be voluntary. If you tell somebody 'Retire or we'll lay you off or fire
you,' that's not voluntary."
Until recently, the company's retirement paperwork included a letter from Rometty, the CEO, that read, in part, "I wanted to take
this opportunity to wish you well on your retirement While you may be retiring to embark on the next phase of your personal journey,
you will always remain a valued and appreciated member of the IBM family." Ex-employees said IBM stopped sending the letter last
year.
IBM has also embraced another practice that leads workers, especially older ones, to quit on what appears to be a voluntary basis.
It substantially reversed its pioneering support for telecommuting, telling people who've been working from home for years to begin
reporting to certain, often distant, offices. Their other choice: Resign.
David Harlan had worked as an IBM marketing strategist from his home in Moscow, Idaho, for 15 years when a manager told him last
year of orders to reduce the performance ratings of everybody at his pay grade. Then in February last year, when he was 50, came
an internal video from IBM's new senior vice president, Michelle Peluso, which announced plans to improve the work of marketing employees
by ordering them to work "shoulder to shoulder." Those who wanted to stay on would need to "co-locate" to offices in one of six cities.
Early last year, Harlan received an email congratulating him on "the opportunity to join your team in Raleigh, North Carolina."
He had 30 days to decide on the 2,600-mile move. He resigned in June.
David Harlan worked for IBM for 15 years from his home in Moscow, Idaho, where he also runs a drama company. Early last year,
IBM offered him a choice: Move 2,600 miles to Raleigh-Durham to begin working at an office, or resign. He left in June. (Rajah Bose
for ProPublica)
After the Peluso video was leaked to the press, an IBM spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal that the "
vast
majority " of people ordered to change locations and begin reporting to offices did so. IBM Vice President Ed Barbini said in
an initial email exchange with ProPublica in July that the new policy affected only about 2,000 U.S. employees and that "most" of
those had agreed to move.
But employees across a wide range of company operations, from the systems and technology group to analytics, told ProPublica they've
also been ordered to co-locate in recent years. Many IBMers with long service said that they quit rather than sell their homes, pull
children from school and desert aging parents. IBM declined to say how many older employees were swept up in the co-location initiative.
"They basically knew older employees weren't going to do it," said Eileen Maroney, a 63-year-old IBM product manager from Aiken,
South Carolina, who, like Harlan, was ordered to move to Raleigh or resign. "Older people aren't going to move. It just doesn't make
any sense." Like Harlan, Maroney left IBM last June.
Having people quit rather than being laid off may help IBM avoid disclosing how much it is shrinking its U.S. workforce and where
the reductions are occurring.
Under the federal WARN Act , adopted in the wake
of huge job cuts and factory shutdowns during the 1980s, companies laying off 50 or more employees who constitute at least one-third
of an employer's workforce at a site have to give advance notice of layoffs to the workers, public agencies and local elected officials.
Similar laws in some states where IBM has a substantial presence are even stricter. California, for example, requires advanced
notice for layoffs of 50 or more employees, no matter what the share of the workforce. New York requires notice for 25 employees
who make up a third.
Because the laws were drafted to deal with abrupt job cuts at individual plants, they can miss reductions that occur over long
periods among a workforce like IBM's that was, at least until recently, widely dispersed because of the company's work-from-home
policy.
IBM's training sessions to prepare managers for layoffs suggest the company was aware of WARN thresholds, especially in states
with strict notification laws such as California. A 2016 document entitled "Employee Separation Processing" and labeled "IBM Confidential"
cautions managers about the "unique steps that must be taken when processing separations for California employees."
A ProPublica review of five years of WARN disclosures for a dozen states where the company had large facilities that shed workers
found no disclosures in nine. In the other three, the company alerted authorities of just under 1,000 job cuts -- 380 in California,
369 in New York and 200 in Minnesota. IBM's reported figures are well below the actual number of jobs the company eliminated in these
states, where in recent years it has shuttered, sold off or leveled plants that once employed vast numbers.
By contrast, other employers in the same 12 states reported layoffs last year alone totaling 215,000 people. They ranged from
giant Walmart to Ostrom's Mushroom Farms in Washington state.
Whether IBM operated within the rules of the WARN act, which are notoriously fungible, could not be determined because the company
declined to provide ProPublica with details on its layoffs.
A Second Act, But Poorer
W ith 35 years at IBM under his belt, Ed Miyoshi had plenty of experience being pushed to take buyouts, or early retirement packages,
and refusing them. But he hadn't expected to be pushed last fall.
Miyoshi, of Hopewell Junction, New York, had some years earlier launched a pilot program to improve IBM's technical troubleshooting.
With the blessing of an IBM vice president, he was busily interviewing applicants in India and Brazil to staff teams to roll the
program out to clients worldwide.
The interviews may have been why IBM mistakenly assumed Miyoshi was a manager, and so emailed him to eliminate the one U.S.-based
employee still left in his group.
"That was me," Miyoshi realized.
In his sign-off email to colleagues shortly before Christmas 2016, Miyoshi, then 57, wrote: "I am too young and too poor to stop
working yet, so while this is good-bye to my IBM career, I fully expect to cross paths with some of you very near in the future."
He did, and perhaps sooner than his colleagues had expected; he started as a subcontractor to IBM about two weeks later, on Jan.
3.
Miyoshi is an example of older workers who've lost their regular IBM jobs and been brought back as contractors. Some of them --
not Miyoshi -- became contract workers after IBM told them their skills were out of date and no longer needed.
Employment law experts said that hiring ex-employees as contractors can be legally dicey. It raises the possibility that the layoff
of the employee was not for the stated reason but perhaps because they were targeted for their age, race or gender.
IBM appears to recognize the problem. Ex-employees say the company has repeatedly told managers -- most recently earlier this
year -- not to contract with former employees or sign on with third-party contracting firms staffed by ex-IBMers. But ProPublica
turned up dozens of instances where the company did just that.
Only two weeks after IBM laid him off in December 2016, Ed Miyoshi of Hopewell Junction, New York, started work as a subcontractor
to the company. But he took a $20,000-a-year pay cut. "I'm not a millionaire, so that's a lot of money to me," he says. (Demetrius
Freeman for ProPublica)
Responding to a question in a confidential questionnaire from ProPublica, one 35-year company veteran from New York said he knew
exactly what happened to the job he left behind when he was laid off. "I'M STILL DOING IT. I got a new gig eight days after departure,
working for a third-party company under contract to IBM doing the exact same thing."
In many cases, of course, ex-employees are happy to have another job, even if it is connected with the company that laid them
off.
Henry, the Columbus-based sales and technical specialist who'd been with IBM's "resiliency services" unit, discovered that he'd
lost his regular IBM job because the company had purchased an Indian firm that provided the same services. But after a year out of
work, he wasn't going to turn down the offer of a temporary position as a subcontractor for IBM, relocating data centers. It got
money flowing back into his household and got him back where he liked to be, on the road traveling for business.
The compensation most ex-IBM employees make as contractors isn't comparable. While Henry said he collected the same dollar amount,
it didn't include health insurance, which cost him $1,325 a month. Miyoshi said his paycheck is 20 percent less than what he made
as an IBM regular.
"I took an over $20,000 hit by becoming a contractor. I'm not a millionaire, so that's a lot of money to me," Miyoshi said.
And lower pay isn't the only problem ex-IBM employees-now-subcontractors face. This year, Miyoshi's payable hours have been cut
by an extra 10 "furlough days." Internal documents show that IBM repeatedly furloughs subcontractors without pay, often for two,
three or more weeks a quarter. In some instances, the furloughs occur with little advance notice and at financially difficult moments.
In one document, for example, it appears IBM managers, trying to cope with a cost overrun spotted in mid-November, planned to dump
dozens of subcontractors through the end of the year, the middle of the holiday season.
Former IBM employees now on contract said the company controls costs by notifying contractors in the midst of projects they have
to take pay cuts or lose the work. Miyoshi said that he originally started working for his third-party contracting firm for 10 percent
less than at IBM, but ended up with an additional 10 percent cut in the middle of 2017, when IBM notified the contractor it was slashing
what it would pay.
For many ex-employees, there are few ways out. Henry, for example, sought to improve his chances of landing a new full-time job
by seeking assistance to finish a college degree through a federal program designed to retrain workers hurt by offshoring of jobs.
But when he contacted the Ohio state agency that administers the Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA, program, which provides
assistance to workers who lose their jobs for trade-related reasons, he was told IBM hadn't submitted necessary paperwork. State
officials said Henry could apply if he could find other IBM employees who were laid off with him, information that the company doesn't
provide.
TAA is overseen by the Labor Department but is operated by states under individual agreements with Washington, so the rules can
vary from state to state. But generally employers, unions, state agencies and groups of employers can petition for training help
and cash assistance. Labor Department data compiled by the advocacy group Global Trade Watch shows that employers apply in about
40 percent of cases. Some groups of IBM workers have obtained retraining funds when they or their state have applied, but records
dating back to the early 1990s show IBM itself has applied for and won taxpayer assistance only once, in 2008, for three Chicago-area
workers whose jobs were being moved to India.
Teasing New Jobs
A s IBM eliminated thousands of jobs in 2016, David Carroll, a 52-year-old Austin software engineer, thought he was safe.
His job was in mobile development, the "M" in the company's CAMS strategy. And if that didn't protect him, he figured he was only
four months shy of qualifying for a program that gives employees who leave within a year of their three-decade mark access to retiree
medical coverage and other benefits.
But the layoff notice Carroll received March 2 gave him three months -- not four -- to come up with another job. Having been a
manager, he said he knew the gantlet he'd have to run to land a new position inside IBM.
Still, he went at it hard, applying for more than 50 IBM jobs, including one for a job he'd successfully done only a few years
earlier. For his effort, he got one offer -- the week after he'd been forced to depart. He got severance pay but lost access to what
would have been more generous benefits.
Edward Kishkill, then 60, of Hillsdale, New Jersey, had made a similar calculation.
A senior systems engineer, Kishkill recognized the danger of layoffs, but assumed he was immune because he was working in systems
security, the "S" in CAMS and another hot area at the company.
The precaution did him no more good than it had Carroll. Kishkill received a layoff notice the same day, along with 17 of the
22 people on his systems security team, including Diane Moos. The notice said that Kishkill could look for other jobs internally.
But if he hadn't landed anything by the end of May, he was out.
With a daughter who was a senior in high school headed to Boston University, he scrambled to apply, but came up dry. His last
day was May 31, 2016.
For many, the fruitless search for jobs within IBM is the last straw, a final break with the values the company still says it
embraces. Combined with the company's increasingly frequent request that departing employees train their overseas replacements, it
has left many people bitter. Scores of ex-employees interviewed by ProPublica said that managers with job openings told them they
weren't allowed to hire from layoff lists without getting prior, high-level clearance, something that's almost never given.
ProPublica reviewed documents that show that a substantial share of recent IBM layoffs have involved what the company calls "lift
and shift," lifting the work of specific U.S. employees and shifting it to specific workers in countries such as India and Brazil.
For example, a document summarizing U.S. employment in part of the company's global technology services division for 2015 lists nearly
a thousand people as layoff candidates, with the jobs of almost half coded for lift and shift.
Ex-employees interviewed by ProPublica said the lift-and-shift process required their extensive involvement. For example, shortly
after being notified she'd be laid off, Kishkill's colleague, Moos, was told to help prepare a "knowledge transfer" document and
begin a round of conference calls and email exchanges with two Indian IBM employees who'd be taking over her work. Moos said the
interactions consumed much of her last three months at IBM.
Next Chapters
W hile IBM has managed to keep the scale and nature of its recent U.S. employment cuts largely under the public's radar, the company
drew some unwanted attention during the 2016 presidential campaign, when then-candidate
Donald Trump lambasted it for eliminating 500 jobs in Minnesota, where the company has had a presence for a half century, and
shifting the work abroad.
The company also has caught flak -- in places like
Buffalo, New
York ;
Dubuque, Iowa ; Columbia,
Missouri , and
Baton Rouge, Louisiana -- for promising jobs in return for state and local incentives, then failing to deliver. In all, according
to public officials in those and other places, IBM promised to bring on 3,400 workers in exchange for as much as $250 million in
taxpayer financing but has hired only about half as many.
After Trump's victory, Rometty, in a move at least partly aimed at courting the president-elect, pledged to hire 25,000 new U.S.
employees by 2020. Spokesmen said the hiring would increase IBM's U.S. employment total, although, given its continuing job cuts,
the addition is unlikely to approach the promised hiring total.
When The New York Times ran a story last fall saying IBM now has
more employees in India than the U.S.,
Barbini, the corporate spokesman, rushed to declare, "The U.S. has always been and remains IBM's center of gravity." But his stream
of accompanying tweets and graphics focused
as much on the company's record for racking up patents as hiring people.
IBM has long been aware of the damage its job cuts can do to people. In a series of internal training documents to prepare managers
for layoffs in recent years, the company has included this warning: "Loss of a job often triggers a grief reaction similar to what
occurs after a death."
Most, though not all, of the ex-IBM employees with whom ProPublica spoke have weathered the loss and re-invented themselves.
Marjorie Madfis, the digital marketing strategist, couldn't land another tech job after her 2013 layoff, so she headed in a different
direction. She started a nonprofit called Yes She Can Inc. that provides job skills development for young autistic women, including
her 21-year-old daughter.
After almost two years of looking and desperate for useful work, Brian Paulson, the widely traveled IBM senior manager, applied
for and landed a position as a part-time rural letter carrier in Plano, Texas. He now works as a contract project manager for a Las
Vegas gaming and lottery firm.
Ed Alpern, who started at IBM as a Selectric typewriter repairman, watched his son go on to become a National Merit Scholar at
Texas A&M University, but not a Watson scholarship recipient.
Lori King, the IT specialist and 33-year IBM veteran who's now 56, got in a parting shot. She added an addendum to the retirement
papers the firm gave her that read in part: "It was never my plan to retire earlier than at least age 60 and I am not committing
to retire. I have been informed that I am impacted by a resource action effective on 2016-08-22, which is my last day at IBM, but
I am NOT retiring."
King has aced more than a year of government-funded coding boot camps and university computer courses, but has yet to land a new
job.
David Harlan still lives in Moscow, Idaho, after refusing IBM's "invitation" to move to North Carolina, and is artistic director
of the Moscow Art Theatre (Too).
Ed Miyoshi is still a technical troubleshooter working as a subcontractor for IBM.
Ed Kishkill, the senior systems engineer, works part time at a local tech startup, but pays his bills as an associate at a suburban
New Jersey Staples store.
This year, Paul Henry was back on the road, working as an IBM subcontractor in Detroit, about 200 miles from where he lived in
Columbus. On Jan. 8, he put in a 14-hour day and said he planned to call home before turning in. He died in his sleep.
Correction, March 24, 2018: Eileen Maroney lives in Aiken, South Carolina. The name of her city was incorrect in the original
version of this story.
Do you have information about age discrimination at IBM?
Peter Gosselin joined ProPublica as a contributing
reporter in January 2017 to cover aging. He has covered the U.S. and global economies for, among others, the Los Angeles Times and
The Boston Globe, focusing on the lived experiences of working people. He is the author of "High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives
of American Families."
Ariana Tobin is an engagement reporter at ProPublica,
where she works to cultivate communities to inform our coverage. She was previously at The Guardian and WNYC. Ariana has also worked
as digital producer for APM's Marketplace and contributed
to outlets including The
New Republic , On Being , the
St. Louis
Beacon and Bustle .
There's not a word of truth quoted in this article. That is, quoted from IBM spokespeople. It's the culture there now. They don't
even realize that most of their customers have become deaf to the same crap from their Sales and Marketing BS, which is even worse
than their HR speak.
The sad truth is that IBM became incapable of taking its innovation (IBM is indeed a world beating, patent generating machine)
to market a long time ago. It has also lost the ability (if it ever really had it) to acquire other companies and foster their
innovation either - they ran most into the ground. As a result, for nearly a decade revenues have declined and resource actions
grown. The resource actions may seem to be the ugly problem, but they're only the symptom of a fat greedy and pompous bureaucracy
that's lost its ability to grow and stay relevant in a very competitive and changing industry. What they have been able to perfect
and grow is their ability to downsize and return savings as dividends (Big Sam Palmisano's "innovation"). Oh, and for senior management
to line their pockets.
Nothing IBM is currently doing is sustainable.
If you're still employed there, listen to the pain in the words of your fallen comrades and don't knock yourself out trying
to stay afloat. Perhaps learn some BS of your own and milk your job (career? not...) until you find freedom and better pastures.
If you own stock, do like Warren Buffett, and sell it while it still has some value.
This is NOTHING NEW! All major corporations have and will do this at some point in their existence. Another industry that does
this regularly every 3 to 5 years is the pharamaceutical industry. They'll decimate their sales forces in order to, as they like
to put it, "right size" the company.
They'll cloak it as weeding out the low performers, but they'll try to catch the "older" workers in the net as well.
"... I took an early retirement package when IBM first started downsizing. I had 30 years with them, but I could see the writing on the wall so I got out. I landed an exec job with a biotech company some years later and inherited an IBM consulting team that were already engaged. I reviewed their work for 2 months then had the pleasure of terminating the contract and actually escorting the team off the premises because the work product was so awful. ..."
"... Every former or prospective IBM employee is a potential future IBM customer or partner. How you treat them matters! ..."
"... I advise IBM customers now. My biggest professional achievements can be measured in how much revenue IBM lost by my involvement - millions. Favorite is when IBM paid customer to stop the bleeding. ..."
I took an early retirement package when IBM first started downsizing. I had 30 years
with them, but I could see the writing on the wall so I got out. I landed an exec job with a
biotech company some years later and inherited an IBM consulting team that were already
engaged. I reviewed their work for 2 months then had the pleasure of terminating the contract
and actually escorting the team off the premises because the work product was so
awful.
They actually did a presentation of their interim results - but it was a 52 slide package
that they had presented to me in my previous job but with the names and numbers changed.
see more
Intellectual Capital Re-Use! LOL! Not many people realize in IBM that many, if not all of the
original IBM Consulting Group materials were made under the Type 2 Materials clause of the
IBM Contract, which means the customers actually owned the IP rights of the documents. Can
you imagine the mess if just one customer demands to get paid for every re-use of the IP that
was developed for them and then re-used over and over again?
Beautiful! Yea, these companies so fast to push experienced people who have dedicated their
lives to the firm - how can you not...all the hours and commitment it takes - way
underestimate the power of the network of those left for dead and their influence in that
next career gig. Memories are long...very long when it comes to experiences like this.
I advise IBM customers now. My biggest professional achievements can be measured in how
much revenue IBM lost by my involvement - millions. Favorite is when IBM paid customer to
stop the bleeding.
Under neoliberlaism the idea of loyalty between a corporation and an employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests.
Notable quotes:
"... Any expectation of "loyalty", that two-way relationship of employee/company from an earlier time, was wishful thinking ..."
"... With all the automation going on around the world, these business leaders better worry about people not having money to buy their goods and services plus what are they going to do with the surplus of labor ..."
"... This is the nail in the coffin. As an IT manager responsible for selecting and purchasing software, I will never again recommend IBM products ..."
"... The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The idea of loyalty between a corporation and an at-will employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests. ..."
"... The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation. And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980. ..."
I started at IBM 3 days out of college in 1979 and retired in 2017. I was satisfied with my choice and never felt mistreated because
I had no expectation of lifetime employment, especially after the pivotal period in the 1990's when IBM almost went out of business.
The company survived that period by dramatically restructuring both manufacturing costs and sales expense including the firing
of tens of thousands of employees. These actions were well documented in the business news of the time, the obvious alternative
was bankruptcy.
I told the authors that anyone working at IBM after 1993 should have had no expectation of a lifetime career. Downsizing, outsourcing,
movement of work around the globe was already commonplace at all such international companies. Any expectation of "loyalty",
that two-way relationship of employee/company from an earlier time, was wishful thinking .
I was always prepared to be sent packing, without cause, at any time and always had my resume up-to-date. I stayed because
of interesting work, respectful supervisors, and adequate compensation.
The "resource action" that forced my decision to retire was no surprise, the company that hired me had been gone for decades.
With all the automation going on around the world, these business leaders better worry about people not having money to buy
their goods and services plus what are they going to do with the surplus of labor
I had, more or less, the same experience at Cisco. They paid me to quit. Luckily, I was ready for it.
The article mentions IBMs 3 failures. So who was it that was responsible for not anticipating the transitions? It is hard enough
doing what you already know. Perhaps companies should be spending more on figuring out "what's next" and not continually playing
catch-up by dumping the older workers for the new.
I was laid off by IBM after 29 years and 4 months. I had received a division award in previous year, and my last PBC appraisal
was 2+ (high performer.) The company I left was not the company I started with. Top management--starting with Gerstner--has steadily
made IBM a less desirable place to work. They now treat employees as interchangeable assets and nothing more. I cannot/would not
recommend IBM as an employer to any young programmer.
Truly awesome work. I do want to add one thing, however--the entire rhetoric about "too many old white guys" that has become so
common absolutely contributes to the notion that this sort of behavior is not just acceptable but in some twisted way admirable
as well.
Is anyone surprised that so many young people don't think capitalism is a good system any more?
I ran a high technology electronic systems company for years. We ran it "the old way." If you worked hard, and tried, we would
bend over backwards to keep you. If technology or business conditions eliminated your job, we would try to train you for a new
one. Our people were loyal, not like IBMers today. I honestly think that's the best way to be profitable.
People afraid of being unjustly RIFFed will always lack vitality.
I'm glad someone is finally paying attention to age discrimination. IBM apparently is just one of many organizations that discriminate.
I'm in the middle of my own fight with the State University of New York (SUNY) over age discrimination. I was terminated by
a one of the technical colleges in the SUNY System. The EEOC/New York State Division of Human Rights (NYDHR) found that "PROBABLE
CAUSE (NYDHR's emphasis) exists to believe that the Respondent (Alfred State College - SUNY) has engaged in or is engaging in
the unlawful discriminatory practice complained of." Investigators for NYDHR interviewed several witnesses, who testified that
representatives of the college made statements such as "we need new faces", "three old men" attending a meeting, an older faculty
member described as an "albatross", and "we ought to get rid of the old white guys". Witnesses said these statements were made
by the Vice President of Academic Affairs and a dean at the college.
This saga at IBM is simply a microcosm of our overall economy. Older workers get ousted in favor of younger, cheaper workers;
way too many jobs get outsourced; and so many workers today [young and old] can barely land a full-time job. This is the behavior that our system incentivises (and gets away with) in this post Reagan Revolution era where deregulation is
lauded and unions have been undermined & demonized. We need to seriously re-work 'work', and in order to do this we need to purge
Republicans at every level, as they CLEARLY only serve corporate bottom-lines - not workers - by championing tax codes that reward
outsourcing, fight a livable minimum wage, eliminate pensions, bust unions, fight pay equity for women & family leave, stack the
Supreme Court with radical ideologues who blatantly rule for corporations over people all the time, etc. etc. ~35 years of basically
uninterrupted Conservative economic policy & ideology has proven disastrous for workers and our quality of life. As goes your
middle class, so goes your country.
I am a retired IBM manager having had to execute many of these resource reduction programs.. too many.. as a matter of fact. ProPUBLICA....You
nailed it!
IBM has always treated its customer-facing roles like Disney -- as cast members who need to match a part in a play. In the 60s
and 70s, it was the white-shirt, blue-suit white men whom IBM leaders thought looked like mainframe salesmen. Now, rather than
actually build a credible cloud to compete with Amazon and Microsoft, IBM changes the cast to look like cloud salespeople. (I
work for Microsoft. Commenting for myself alone.)
I am a survivor, the rare employee who has been at IBM for over 35 years. I have seen many, many layoff programs over 20 years
now. I have seen tens of thousands people let go from the Hudson Valley of N.Y. Those of us who have survived, know and lived
through what this article so accurately described. I currently work with 3 laid off/retired and rehired contractors. I have seen
age discrimination daily for over 15 years. It is not only limited to layoffs, it is rampant throughout the company. Promotions,
bonuses, transfers for opportunities, good reviews, etc... are gone if you are over 45. I have seen people under 30 given promotions
to levels that many people worked 25 years for. IBM knows that these younger employees see how they treat us so they think they
can buy them off. Come to think of it, I guess they actually are! They are ageist, there is no doubt, it is about time everyone
knew. Excellent article.
Nice article, but seriously this is old news. IBM has been at this for ...oh twenty years or more. I don't really have a problem with it in terms of a corporation trying to make money. But I do have a problem with how IBM also
likes to avoid layoffs by giving folks over 40 intentionally poor reviews, essentially trying to drive people out. Just have the
guts to tell people, we don't need you anymore, bye. But to string people along as the overseas workers come in...c'mon just be
honest with your workers. High tech over 40 is not easy...I suggest folks prep for a career change before 50. Then you can have the last laugh on a company
like IBM.
From pages 190-191 of my novel, Ordinary Man (Amazon):
Throughout
it all, layoffs became common, impacting mostly older employees with many years
of service. These job cuts were dribbled out in small numbers to conceal them
from the outside world, but employees could plainly see what was going on.
The laid off
employees were supplanted by offshoring work to low-costs countries and hiring
younger employees, often only on temporary contracts that offered low pay and
no benefits – a process pejoratively referred to by veteran employees as
"downsourcing." The recruitment of these younger workers was done under the
guise of bringing in fresh skills, but while many of the new hires brought new
abilities and vitality, they lacked the knowledge and perspective that comes
with experience.
Frequently,
an older more experienced worker would be asked to help educate newer
employees, only to be terminated shortly after completing the task. And the new
hires weren't fooled by what they witnessed and experienced at OpenSwitch,
perceiving very quickly that the company had no real interest in investing in
them for the long term. To the contrary, the objective was clearly to grind as
much work out of them as possible, without offering any hope of increased
reward or opportunity.
Most of the
young recruits left after only a year or two – which, again, was part of the
true agenda at the company. Senior management viewed employees not as talent,
but simply as cost, and didn't want anyone sticking around long enough to move
up the pay scale.
This is the nail in the coffin. As an IT manager responsible for selecting and purchasing software, I will never again recommend
IBM products. I love AIX and have worked with a lot if IBM products but not anymore. Good luck with the millennials though...
I worked for four major corporations (HP, Intel, Control Data Corporation, and Micron Semiconductor) before I was hired by IBM
as a rare (at that time) experienced new hire.
Even though I ended up working for IBM for 21 years, and retired in 2013, because
of my experiences at those other companies, I never considered IBM my "family."
The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck
from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything.
The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck
from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything.
The idea of loyalty between a corporation and an at-will employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests.
It is a business arrangement, not a love affair. Every individual needs to continually assess their skills and their value to
their employer. If they are not commensurate, it is the employee's responsibility to either acquire new skills or seek a new employer.
Your employer will not hesitate to lay you off if your skills are no longer needed, or if they can hire someone who can do your
job just as well for less pay. That is free enterprise, and it works for people willing to take advantage of it.
I basically agree. But why should it be OK for a company to fire you just to replace you with a younger you? If all that they
accomplish is lowering their health care costs (which is what this is really about). If the company is paying about the same for
the same work, why is firing older workers for being older OK?
Good question. The point I was trying to make is that people need to watch out for themselves and not expect their employer to
do what is "best" for the employee. I think that is true whatever age the employee happens to be.
Whether employers should be able to discriminate against (treat differently) their employees based on age, gender, race, religion,
etc. is a political question. Morally, I don't think they should discriminate. Politically, I think it is a slippery slope when
the government starts imposing regulations on free enterprise. Government almost always creates more problems than they fix.
Sorry, but when you deregulate the free enterprise, it created more problems than it fixes and that is a fact that has been proven
for the last 38 years.
That's just plain false. Deregulation creates competiiton. Competition for talented and skilled workers creates opportunities
for those that wish to be employed and for those that wish to start new ventures. For example, when Ma Bell was regulated and
had a monopoly on telecommunications there was no innovation in the telecom inudstry. However, when it was deregulated, cell phones,
internet, etc exploded ... creating billionaires and millionaires while also improving the quality of life.
No, it happens to be true. When Reagan deregulate the economy, a lot of those corporate raiders just took over the companies,
sold off the assets, and pocketed the money. What quality of life? Half of American lived near the poverty level and the wages
for the workers have been stagnant for the last 38 years compared to a well-regulated economy in places like Germany and the Scandinavian
countries where the workers have good wages and a far better standard of living than in the USA. Why do you think the Norwegians
told Trump that they will not be immigrating to the USA anytime soon?
What were the economic conditions before Regan? It was a nightmare before Regan. The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare
of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation.
And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980.
At least we had a manufacturing base in the USA, strong regulations of corporations, corporate scandals were far and few, businesses
did not go under so quickly, prices of goods and services did not go through the roof, people had pensions and could reasonably
live off them, and recessions did not last so long or go so deep until Reagan came into office. In Under Reagan, the jobs were
allowed to be send overseas, unions were busted up, pensions were reduced or eliminated, wages except those of the CEOs were staganent,
and the economic conditions under Bush, Senior and Bush, Jr. were no better except that Bush, Jr, was the first president to have
a net minus below zero growth, so every time we get a Republican Administration, the economy really turns into a nightmare. That
is a fact.
You have the Republicans in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin using Reaganomics and they are economic disaster areas.
You had an industrial base in the USA, lots of banks and savings and loans to choose from, lots of mom and pop stores, strong
government regulation of the economy, able to live off your pensions, strong unions and employment laws along with the court system
to back you up against corporate malfeasance. All that was gone when Reagan and the two Bushes came into office.
Amazingly accurate article. The once great IBM now a dishonest and unscrupulous corporation concerned more about earnings per
share than employees, customers, or social responsibility. In Global Services most likely 75% or more jobs are no longer in the
US - can't believe a word coming out of Armonk.
I'm not sure there was ever a paradise in employment. Yeah, you can say there was more job stability 50 or 60 years ago, but that
applied to a much smaller workforce than today (mostly white men). It is a drag, but there are also lot more of us old farts than
there used to be and we live a lot longer in retirement as well. I don't see any magic bullet fix either.
Great article. What's especially infuriating is that the industry continues to claim that there is a shortage of STEM workers.
For example, google "claim of 1.4 million computer science jobs with only 400,000 computer science graduates to fill them". If
companies would openly say, "we have plenty of young STEM workers and prefer them to most older STEM workers", we could at least
start addressing the problem. But they continue to promote the lie of there being a STEM shortage. They just want as big a labor
pool as possible, unemployed workers be damned.
I've worked there 17 years and have worried about being layed off for about 11 of them. Moral is in the toilet. Bonuses for the
rank and file are in the under 1% range while the CEO gets millions. Pay raises have been non existent or well under inflation
for years. Adjusting for inflation, I make $6K less than I did my first day. My group is a handful of people as at least 1/2 have
quit or retired. To support our customers, we used to have several people, now we have one or two and if someone is sick or on
vacation, our support structure is to hope nothing breaks. We can't keep millennials because of pay, benefits and the expectation
of being available 24/7 because we're shorthanded. As the unemployment rate drops, more leave to find a different job, leaving
the old people as they are less willing to start over with pay, vacation, moving, selling a house, pulling kids from school, etc.
The younger people are generally less likely to be willing to work as needed on off hours or to pull work from a busier colleague.
I honestly have no idea what the plan is when the people who know what they are doing start to retire, we are way top heavy with
30-40 year guys who are on their way out, very few of the 10-20 year guys due to hiring freezes and we can't keep new people past
2-3 years. It's like our support business model is designed to fail.
Make no mistake. The three and four letter acronyms and other mushy corporate speak may differ from firm to firm, but this is
going on in every large tech company old enough to have a large population of workers over 50. I hope others will now be exposed.
This article hits the nail right on the head, as I come up on my 1 year anniversary from being....ahem....'retired' from 23 years
at IBM....and I'll be damned if I give them the satisfaction of thinking this was like a 'death' to me. It was the greatest thing
that could have ever happened. Ginny and the board should be ashamed of themselves, but they won't be.
Starting around age 40 you start to see age discrimination. I think this is largely due to economics, like increased vacation
times, higher wages, but most of all the perception that older workers will run up the medical costs. You can pass all the age
related discrimination laws you want, but look how ineffective that has been.
If you contrast this with the German workforce, you see that they have more older workers with the skills and younger workers
without are having a difficult time getting in. So what's the difference? There are laws about how many vacation weeks that are
given and there is a national medical system that everyone pays, so discrimination isn't seen in the same light.
The US is the only hold out maybe with South Africa that doesn't have a good national medical insurance program for everyone.
Not only do we pay more than the rest of the world, but we also have discrimination because of it.
This is very good, and this is IBM. I know. I was plaintiff in Gundlach v. IBM Japan, 983 F.Supp.2d 389, which involved their
violating Japanese labor law when I worked in Japan. The New York federal judge purposely ignored key points of Japanese labor
law, and also refused to apply Title VII and Age Discrimination in Employment to the parent company in Westchester County. It
is a huge, self-described "global" company with little demonstrated loyalty to America and Americans. Pennsylvania is suing them
for $170 million on a botched upgrade of the state's unemployment system.
In early 2013 I was given a 3 PBC rating for my 2012 performance, the main reason cited by my manager being that my team lead
thought I "seemed distracted". Five months later I was included in a "resource action", and was gone by July. I was 20 months
shy of 55. Younger coworkers were retained. That was about two years after the product I worked on for over a decade was off-shored.
Through a fluke of someone from the old, disbanded team remembering me, I was rehired two years later - ironically in a customer
support position for the very product I helped develop.
While I appreciated my years of service, previous salary, and previous benefits being reinstated, a couple years into it I
realized I just wasn't cut out for the demands of the job - especially the significant 24x7 pager duty. Last June I received email
describing a "Transition to Retirement" plan I was eligible for, took it, and my last day will be June 30. I still dislike the
job, but that plan reclassified me as part time, thus ending pager duty for me. The job still sucks, but at least I no longer
have to despair over numerous week long 24x7 stints throughout the year.
A significant disappointment occurred a couple weeks ago. I was discussing healthcare options with another person leaving the
company who hadn't been resource-actioned as I had, and learned the hard way I lost over $30,000 in some sort of future medical
benefit account the company had established and funded at some point. I'm not sure I was ever even aware of it. That would have
funded several years of healthcare insurance during the 8 years until I'm eligible for Medicare. I wouldn't be surprised if their
not having to give me that had something to do with my seeming "distracted" to them. <rolls eyes="">
What's really painful is the history of that former account can still be viewed at Fidelity, where it associates my departure
date in 2013 with my having "forfeited" that money. Um, no. I did not forfeit that money, nor would I have. I had absolutely no
choice in the matter. I find the use of the word 'forfeited' to describe what happened as both disingenuous and offensive. That
said, I don't know whether's that's IBM's or Fidelity's terminology, though.
Jeff, You should call Fidelity. I recently received a letter from the US Department of Labor that they discovered that IBM was
"holding" funds that belonged to me that I was never told about. This might be similar or same story .
"... As long as companies pay for their employees' health insurance they will have an incentive to fire older employees. ..."
"... The answer is to separate health insurance from employment. Companies can't be trusted. Not only health care, but retirement is also sorely abused by corporations. All the money should be in protected employee based accounts. ..."
American companies pay health insurance premiums based on their specific employee profiles. Insurance companies compete with each
other for the business, but costs are actual. And based on the profile of the pool of employees. So American companies fire older
workers just to lower the average age of their employees. Statistically this is going to lower their health care costs.
As long as companies pay for their employees' health insurance they will have an incentive to fire older employees.
They have an incentive to fire sick employees and employees with genetic risks. Those are harder to implement as ways to
lower costs. Firing older employees is simple to do, just look up their ages.
The answer is to separate health insurance from employment. Companies can't be trusted. Not only health care, but retirement
is also sorely abused by corporations. All the money should be in protected employee based accounts.
By the way, most tech companies are actually run by older people. The goal is to broom out mid-level people based on age. Nobody
is going to suggest to a sixty year old president that they should self fire, for the good of the company.
"... It's no coincidence whatsoever that Diane Gherson, mentioned prominently in the article, blasted out an all-employees email crowing about IBM being a great place to work according to (ahem) LinkedIn. I desperately want to post a link to this piece in the corporate Slack, but that would get me fired immediately instead of in a few months at the next "resource action." It's been a whole 11 months since our division had one, so I know one is coming soon. ..."
"... I used to say when I was there that: "After every defeat, they pin medals on the generals and shoot the soldiers". ..."
"... 1990 is also when H-1B visa rules were changed so that companies no longer had to even attempt to hire an American worker as long as the job paid $60,000, which hasn't changed since. This article doesn't even mention how our work visa system facilitated and even rewarded this abuse of Americans. ..."
"... Well, starting in the 1980s, the American management was allowed by Reagan to get rid of its workforce. ..."
"... It's all about making the numbers so the management can present a Potemkin Village of profits and ever-increasing growth sufficient to get bonuses. There is no relation to any sort of quality or technological advancement, just HR 3-card monte. They have installed air bearing in Old Man Watson's coffin as it has been spinning ever faster ..."
"... Corporate America executive management is all about stock price management. Their bonus's in the millions of dollars are based on stock performance. With IBM's poor revenue performance since Ginny took over, profits can only be maintained by cost reduction. Look at the IBM executive's bonus's throughout the last 20 years and you can see that all resource actions have been driven by Palmisano's and Rominetty's greed for extravagant bonus's. ..."
"... Also worth noting is that IBM drastically cut the cap on it's severance pay calculation. Almost enough to make me regret not having retired before that changed. ..."
"... Yeah, severance started out at 2 yrs pay, went to 1 yr, then to 6 mos. and is now 1 month. ..."
"... You need to investigate AT&T as well, as they did the same thing. I was 'sold' by IBM to AT&T as part of he Network Services operation. AT&T got rid of 4000 of the 8000 US employees sent to AT&T within 3 years. Nearly everyone of us was a 'senior' employee. ..."
dragonflap• 7
months ago I'm a 49-year-old SW engineer who started at IBM as part of an acquisition in 2000. I got laid off in 2002 when IBM
started sending reqs to Bangalore in batches of thousands. After various adventures, I rejoined IBM in 2015 as part of the "C" organization
referenced in the article.
It's no coincidence whatsoever that Diane Gherson, mentioned prominently in the article, blasted out an all-employees email
crowing about IBM being a great place to work according to (ahem) LinkedIn. I desperately want to post a link to this piece in the
corporate Slack, but that would get me fired immediately instead of in a few months at the next "resource action." It's been a whole
11 months since our division had one, so I know one is coming soon.
The lead-in to this piece makes it sound like IBM was forced into these practices by inescapable forces. I'd say not, rather
that it pursued them because a) the management was clueless about how to lead IBM in the new environment and new challenges so
b) it started to play with numbers to keep the (apparent) profits up....to keep the bonuses coming. I used to say when I was
there that: "After every defeat, they pin medals on the generals and shoot the soldiers".
And then there's the Pig with the Wooden Leg shaggy dog story that ends with the punch line, "A pig like that you don't eat
all at once", which has a lot of the flavor of how many of us saw our jobs as IBM die a slow death.
IBM is about to fall out of the sky, much as General Motors did. How could that happen? By endlessly beating the cow to get
more milk.
IBM was hiring right through the Great Depression such that It Did Not Pay Unemployment Insurance. Because it never laid people
off, Because until about 1990, your manager was responsible for making sure you had everything you needed to excel and grow....and
you would find people that had started on the loading dock and had become Senior Programmers. But then about 1990, IBM starting
paying unemployment insurance....just out of the goodness of its heart. Right.
1990 is also when H-1B visa rules were changed so that companies no longer had to even attempt to hire an American worker
as long as the job paid $60,000, which hasn't changed since. This article doesn't even mention how our work visa system facilitated
and even rewarded this abuse of Americans.
I found that other Ex-IBMer's respect other Ex-IBMer's work ethics, knowledge and initiative.
Other companies are happy to get them as a valueable resource. In '89 when our Palo Alto Datacenter moved, we were given two
options: 1.) to become a Programmer (w/training) 2.) move to Boulder or 3.) to leave.
I got my training with programming experience and left IBM in '92, when for 4 yrs IBM offerred really good incentives for leaving
the company. The Executives thought that the IBM Mainframe/MVS z/OS+ was on the way out and the Laptop (Small but Increasing Capacity)
Computer would take over everything.
It didn't. It did allow many skilled IBMers to succeed outside of IBM and help built up our customer skill sets. And like many,
when the opportunity arose to return I did. In '91 I was accidentally given a male co-workers paycheck and that was one of the
reasons for leaving. During my various Contract work outside, I bumped into other male IBMer's that had left too, some I had trained,
and when they disclosed that it was their salary (which was 20-40%) higher than mine was the reason they left, I knew I had made
the right decision.
Women tend to under-value themselves and their capabilities. Contracting also taught me that companies that had 70% employees
and 30% contractors, meant that contractors would be let go if they exceeded their quarterly expenditures.
I first contracted with IBM in '98 and when I decided to re-join IBM '01, I had (3) job offers and I took the most lucrative
exciting one to focus on fixing & improving DB2z Qry Parallelism. I developed a targeted L3 Technical Change Team to help L2 Support
reduce Customer problems reported and improve our product. The instability within IBM remained and I saw IBM try to eliminate
aging, salaried, benefited employees. The 1.) find a job within IBM ... to 2.) to leave ... was now standard.
While my salary had more than doubled since I left IBM the first time, it still wasn't near other male counterparts. The continual
rating competition based on salary ranged titles and timing a title raise after a round of layoffs, not before. I had another
advantage going and that was that my changed reduced retirement benefits helped me stay there. It all comes down to the numbers
that Mgmt is told to cut & save IBM. While much of this article implies others were hired, at our Silicon Valley Location and
other locations, they had no intent to backfill. So the already burdened employees were laden with more workloads & stress.
In the early to mid 2000's IBM setup a counter lab in China where they were paying 1/4th U.S. salaries and many SVL IBMers
went to CSDL to train our new world 24x7 support employees. But many were not IBM loyal and their attrition rates were very high,
so it fell to a wave of new-hires at SVL to help address it.
It's all about making the numbers so the management can present a Potemkin Village of profits and ever-increasing growth
sufficient to get bonuses. There is no relation to any sort of quality or technological advancement, just HR 3-card monte. They
have installed air bearing in Old Man Watson's coffin as it has been spinning ever faster
Corporate America executive management is all about stock price management. Their bonus's in the millions of dollars are
based on stock performance. With IBM's poor revenue performance since Ginny took over, profits can only be maintained by cost
reduction. Look at the IBM executive's bonus's throughout the last 20 years and you can see that all resource actions have been
driven by Palmisano's and Rominetty's greed for extravagant bonus's.
Bravo ProPublica for another "sock it to them" article - journalism in honor of the spirit of great newspapers everywhere that
the refuge of justice in hard times is with the press.
Also worth noting is that IBM drastically cut the cap on it's severance pay calculation. Almost enough to make me regret
not having retired before that changed.
You need to investigate AT&T as well, as they did the same thing. I was 'sold' by IBM to AT&T as part of he Network Services
operation. AT&T got rid of 4000 of the 8000 US employees sent to AT&T within 3 years. Nearly everyone of us was a 'senior' employee.
As a permanent old contractor and free-enterprise defender myself, I don't blame IBM a bit for wanting to cut the fat. But
for the outright *lies, deception and fraud* that they use to break laws, weasel out of obligations... really just makes me want
to shoot them... and I never even worked for them.
Where I worked, In Rochester,MN, people have known what is happening for years. My last years with IBM were the most depressing
time in my life.
I hear a rumor that IBM would love to close plants they no longer use but they are so environmentally polluted that it is cheaper
to maintain than to clean up and sell.
One of the biggest driving factors in age discrimination is health insurance costs, not salary. It can cost 4-5x as much to
insure and older employee vs. a younger one, and employers know this. THE #1 THING WE CAN DO TO STOP AGE DISCRIMINATION IS TO
MOVE AWAY FROM OUR EMPLOYER-PROVIDED INSURANCE SYSTEM. It could be single-payer, but it could also be a robust individual market
with enough pool diversification to make it viable. Freeing employers from this cost burden would allow them to pick the right
talent regardless of age.
The American business have constantly fought against single payer since the end of World War II and why should I feel sorry
for them when all of a sudden, they are complaining about health care costs? It is outrageous that workers have to face age discrimination;
however, the CEOs don't have to deal with that issue since they belong to a tiny group of people who can land a job anywhere else.
Single payer won't help. We have single payer in Canada and just as much age discrimination in employment. Society in general
does not like older people so unless you're a doctor, judge or pharmacist you will face age bias. It's even worse in popular culture
never mind in employment.
Thanks for the great article. I left IBM last year. USA based. 49. Product Manager in one of IBMs strategic initiatives, however
got told to relocate or leave. I found another job and left. I came to IBM from an acquisition. My only regret is, I wish I had
left this toxic environment earlier. It truely is a dreadful place to work.
The methodology has trickled down to smaller companies pursuing the same net results for headcount reduction. The similarities
to my experience were painful to read. The grief I felt after my job was "eliminated" 10 years ago while the Recession was at
its worst and shortly after my 50th birthday was coming back. I never have recovered financially but have started writing a murder
mystery. The first victim? The CEO who let me go. It's true. Revenge is best served cold.
Well written . people like me have experienced exactly what you wrote. IBM is a shadow of it's former greatness and I have
advised my children to stay away from IBM and companies like it as they start their careers. IBM is a corrupt company. Shame on
them !
I suspect someone will end up hunt them down with an axe at some point. That's the only way they'll probably learn. I don't
know about IBM specifically, but when Carly Fiorina ran HP, she travelled with and even went into engineering labs with an armed
security detail.
Was let go after 34 years of service. Mine Resource Action latter had additional lines after '...unless you are offered ...
position within IBM before that date.' , implying don't even try to look for a position. They lines were ' Additional business
controls are in effect to manage the business objectives of this resource action, therefore, job offers within (the name of division)
will be highly unlikely.'.
I've worked for a series of vendors for over thirty years. A job at IBM used to be the brass ring; nowadays, not so much.
I've heard persistent rumors from IBMers that U.S. headcount is below 25,000 nowadays. Given events like the recent downtime
of the internal systems used to order parts (5 or so days--website down because staff who maintained it were let go without replacements),
it's hard not to see the spiral continue down the drain.
What I can't figure out is whether Rometty and cronies know what they're doing or are just clueless. Either way, the result
is the same: destruction of a once-great company and brand. Tragic.
Well, none of these layoffs/ageist RIFs affect the execs, so they don't see the effects, or they see the effects but attribute
them to some other cause.
(I'm surprised the article doesn't address this part of the story; how many affected by layoffs are exec/senior management?
My bet is very few.)
I was a D-banded exec (Director-level) who was impacted and I know even some VPs who were affected as well, so they do spread
the pain, even in the exec ranks.
That's different than I have seen in companies I have worked for (like HP). There RIFs (Reduction In Force, their acronym for
layoff) went to the director level and no further up.
IMHO this is perilous for RHEL. It would be very easy for IBM to fire most of the
developers and just latch on to the enterprise services stuff to milk it till its dry.
Why would you say that? IBM is renowned for their wonderful employee relations.
</s>
If I were a Red Hat employee over 40, I'd be sweating right now.
blockquote> We run just about everything on CentOS around here, downstream of
RHEL. Should we be worried?
I don't think so, at least no more than you should have already been. IBM has adopted RHEL
as their standard platform for a lot of things, all the way up to big-iron mainframes. Not to
mention, over the two decades, they've done a hell of a lot of enhancements to Linux that are
a big part of why it scales so well (Darl Mcbride just felt like someone walked over his
grave. Hey, let's jump on it a bit too!).
Say what you like about IBM (like they've turned into a super-shitty place to work for or
be a customer of), but they've been a damn good friend to Linux. If I actually worked for Red
Hat though, I would be really unhappy because you can bet that "independence" will last a few
quarters before everyone gets outsourced to Brazil.
Brazil is too expensive. Last time I heard, they were outsourcing from Brazil to chapear
LA countries...
IBM are paying around 12x annual revenue for Red Hat which is a significant multiple so
they will have to squeeze more money out of the business somehow. Either they grow
customers or they increase margins or both.
IBM had little choice but to do something like this. They are in a terminal spiral
thanks to years of bad leadership. The confused billing of the purchase smacks of rush, so
far I have seen Red Hat described as a cloud company, an info sec company, an open source
company...
So IBM are buying Red Hat as a last chance bid to avoid being put through the PE
threshing machine. Red Hat get a ludicrous premium so will take the money.
And RH customers will want to check their contracts...
They will lay off Redhat staff to cut costs and replace them with remote programmers
living in Calcutta. To big corporations a programmer is a fungible item, if you can swap
programmer A woth programmer B at 1/4 the cost its a big win and you beat earnings estimate
by a penny.
No good will come from this. IBM's corporate environment and financial near-sightedness
will kill Red Hat. Time to start looking for a new standard bearer in Linux for business.
This will kill both companies. Red has trouble making money and IBM has trouble not
messing up what good their is and trouble making money. They both die, but a slow, possibly
accelerating, death.
F or nearly a half century, IBM came as close as any company to bearing the torch for the American Dream.
As the world's dominant technology firm, payrolls at International Business Machines Corp. swelled to nearly a quarter-million
U.S. white-collar workers in the 1980s. Its profits helped underwrite a broad agenda of racial equality, equal pay for women and
an unbeatable offer of great wages and something close to lifetime employment, all in return for unswerving loyalty.
But when high tech suddenly started shifting and companies went global, IBM faced the changing landscape with a distinction most
of its fiercest competitors didn't have: a large number of experienced and aging U.S. employees.
The company reacted with a strategy that, in the words of one confidential planning document, would "correct seniority mix." It
slashed IBM's U.S. workforce by as much as three-quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger, less-experienced
and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas. ProPublica estimates that in the past five years alone, IBM has eliminated
more than 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts during those years.
In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked U.S. laws and regulations intended to protect later-career workers from age
discrimination, according to a ProPublica review of internal company documents, legal filings and public records, as well as information
provided via interviews and questionnaires filled out by more than 1,000 former IBM employees.
Among ProPublica's findings, IBM:
Denied older workers information the law says they need in order to decide whether they've been victims of age bias, and required
them to sign away the right to go to court or join with others to seek redress. Targeted people for layoffs and firings with techniques
that tilted against older workers, even when the company rated them high performers. In some instances, the money saved from the
departures went toward hiring young replacements. Converted job cuts into retirements and took steps to boost resignations and firings.
The moves reduced the number of employees counted as layoffs, where high numbers can trigger public disclosure requirements. Encouraged
employees targeted for layoff to apply for other IBM positions, while quietly advising managers not to hire them and requiring many
of the workers to train their replacements. Told some older employees being laid off that their skills were out of date, but then
brought them back as contract workers, often for the same work at lower pay and fewer benefits.
IBM declined requests for the numbers or age breakdown of its job cuts. ProPublica provided the company with a 10-page summary
of its findings and the evidence on which they were based. IBM spokesman Edward Barbini said that to respond the company needed to
see copies of all documents cited in the story, a request ProPublica could not fulfill without breaking faith with its sources. Instead,
ProPublica provided IBM with detailed descriptions of the paperwork. Barbini declined to address the documents or answer specific
questions about the firm's policies and practices, and instead issued the following statement:
"We are proud of our company and our employees' ability to reinvent themselves era after era, while always complying with the
law. Our ability to do this is why we are the only tech company that has not only survived but thrived for more than 100 years."
With nearly 400,000 people worldwide, and tens of thousands still in the U.S., IBM remains a corporate giant. How it handles the
shift from its veteran baby-boom workforce to younger generations will likely influence what other employers do. And the way it treats
its experienced workers will eventually affect younger IBM employees as they too age.
Fifty years ago, Congress made it illegal with the Age Discrimination
in Employment Act , or ADEA, to treat older workers differently than younger ones with only a few exceptions, such as jobs that
require special physical qualifications. And for years, judges and policymakers treated the law as essentially on a par with prohibitions
against discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation and other categories.
In recent decades, however, the courts have responded to corporate pleas for greater leeway to meet global competition and satisfy
investor demands for rising profits by expanding the exceptions and
shrinking
the protections against age bias .
"Age discrimination is an open secret like sexual harassment was until recently," said Victoria Lipnic, the acting chair of the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, the independent federal agency that administers the nation's workplace anti-discrimination
laws.
"Everybody knows it's happening, but often these cases are difficult to prove" because courts have weakened the law, Lipnic said.
"The fact remains it's an unfair and illegal way to treat people that can be economically devastating."
Many companies have sought to take advantage of the court rulings. But the story of IBM's downsizing provides an unusually detailed
portrait of how a major American corporation systematically identified employees to coax or force out of work in their 40s, 50s and
60s, a time when many are still productive and need a paycheck, but face huge hurdles finding anything like comparable jobs.
The dislocation caused by IBM's cuts has been especially great because until recently the company encouraged its employees to
think of themselves as "IBMers" and many operated under the assumption that they had career-long employment.
When the ax suddenly fell, IBM provided almost no information about why an employee was cut or who else was departing, leaving
people to piece together what had happened through websites, listservs and Facebook groups such as "Watching IBM" or "Geographically
Undesirable IBM Marketers," as well as informal support groups.
Marjorie Madfis, at the time 57, was a New York-based digital marketing strategist and 17-year IBM employee when she and six other
members of her nine-person team -- all women in their 40s and 50s -- were laid off in July 2013. The two who remained were younger
men.
Since her specialty was one that IBM had said it was expanding, she asked for a written explanation of why she was let go. The
company declined to provide it.
"They got rid of a group of highly skilled, highly effective, highly respected women, including me, for a reason nobody knows,"
Madfis said in an interview. "The only explanation is our age."
Brian Paulson, also 57, a senior manager with 18 years at IBM, had been on the road for more than a year overseeing hundreds of
workers across two continents as well as hitting his sales targets for new services, when he got a phone call in October 2015 telling
him he was out. He said the caller, an executive who was not among his immediate managers, cited "performance" as the reason, but
refused to explain what specific aspects of his work might have fallen short.
It took Paulson two years to land another job, even though he was equipped with an advanced degree, continuously employed at high-level
technical jobs for more than three decades and ready to move anywhere from his Fairview, Texas, home.
"It's tough when you've worked your whole life," he said. "The company doesn't tell you anything. And once you get to a certain
age, you don't hear a word from the places you apply."
Paul Henry, a 61-year-old IBM sales and technical specialist who loved being on the road, had just returned to his Columbus home
from a business trip in August 2016 when he learned he'd been let go. When he asked why, he said an executive told him to "keep your
mouth shut and go quietly."
Henry was jobless more than a year, ran through much of his savings to cover the mortgage and health insurance and applied for
more than 150 jobs before he found a temporary slot.
"If you're over 55, forget about preparing for retirement," he said in an interview. "You have to prepare for losing your job
and burning through every cent you've saved just to get to retirement."
IBM's latest actions aren't anything like what most ex-employees with whom ProPublica talked expected from their years of service,
or what today's young workers think awaits them -- or are prepared to deal with -- later in their careers.
"In a fast-moving economy, employers are always going to be tempted to replace older workers with younger ones, more expensive
workers with cheaper ones, those who've performed steadily with ones who seem to be up on the latest thing," said Joseph Seiner,
an employment law professor at the University of South Carolina and former appellate attorney for the EEOC.
"But it's not good for society," he added. "We have rules to try to maintain some fairness in our lives, our age-discrimination
laws among them. You can't just disregard them."
When it comes to employment claims, studies have found that arbitrators overwhelmingly favor
employers.
Research by Cornell University law and labor relations specialist Alexander Colvin found
that workers win
only 19 percent of the time when their cases are arbitrated. By contrast,
they win 36 percent of the time when they go to federal court, and 57 percent in state
courts. Average payouts when an employee wins follow a similar pattern.
Given those odds, and having signed away their rights to go to court, some laid-off IBM
workers have chosen the one independent forum companies can't deny them: the U.S. Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission. That's where Moos, the Long Beach systems security
specialist, and several of her colleagues, turned for help when they were laid off. In their
complaints to the agency, they said they'd suffered age discrimination because of the company's
effort to "drastically change the IBM employee age mix to be seen as a startup."
In its formal reply to the EEOC, IBM said that age couldn't have been a factor in their
dismissals. Among the reasons it cited: The managers who decided on the layoffs were in their
40s and therefore older too.
This makes for absolutely horrifying, chills-down-your-spine reading. A modern corporate horror story - worthy of a 'Black Mirror'
episode. Phenomenal reporting by Ariana Tobin and Peter Gosselin. Thank you for exposing this. I hope this puts an end to this
at IBM and makes every other company and industry doing this in covert and illegal ways think twice about continuing.
Agree..a well written expose'. I've been a victim of IBM's "PIP" (Performance Improvement Plan) strategy, not because of my real
performance mind you, but rather, I wasn't billing hours between projects and it was hurting my unit's bottom line. The way IBM
instructs management to structure the PIP, it's almost impossible to dig your way out, and it's intentional. If you have a PIP
on your record, nobody in IBM wants to touch you, so in effect you're already gone.
I see the PIP problem as its nearly impossible to take the fact that we know PIP is a scam to court. IBM will say its an issue
with you, your performance nose dived and your manager tried to fix that. You have to not only fight those simple statements,
but prove that PIP is actually systematic worker abuse.
Cindy, they've been doing this for at least 15-20 years, or even longer according to some of the previous comments. It is
in fact a modern corporate horror story; it's also life at a modern corporation, period.
After over 35 years working there, 19 of them as a manager sending out more of those notification letters than I care to remember,
I can vouch for the accuracy of this investigative work. It's an incredibly toxic and hostile environment and has been for the
last 5 or so years. One of the items I was appraised on annually was how many US jobs I moved offshore. It was a relief when I
received my notification letter after a two minute phone call telling me it was on the way. Sleeping at night and looking myself
in the mirror aren't as hard as they were when I worked there.
IBM will never regain any semblance of their former glory (or profit) until they begin to treat employees well again.
With all the offshoring and resource actions with no backfill over the last 10 years, so much is broken. Customers suffer almost
as much as the employees.
I don't know how in the world they ended up on that LinkedIn list. Based on my fairly recent experience there are a half dozen
happy employees in the US, and most of them are C level.
Well done. It squares well with my 18 years at IBM, watching resource action after resource action and hearing what my (unusually
honest) manager told me. Things got progressively worse from 2012 onward. I never realized how stressful it was to live under
the shadow of impending layoffs until I finally found the courage to leave in 2015. Best decision I've made.
IBM answers to its shareholders, period. Employees are an afterthought - simply a means to an end. It's shameful. (That's not
to say that individual people managers feel that way. I'm speaking about IBM executives.)
Well, they almost answer to their shareholders, but that's after the IBM executives take their share. Ginni's compensation is
tied to stock price (apparently not earnings) and buy backs maintain the stock price.
If the criteria for layoff is being allegedly overpaid and allegedly a poor performer, then it follows that Grinnin' Jenny should
have been let go long ago.
Just another fine example of how people become disposable.
And, when it comes to cost containment and profit maximization, there is no place for ethics in American business.
Businesses can lie just as well as politicians.
Millennials are smart to avoid this kind of problem by remaining loyal only to themselves. Companies certainly define anyone
as replaceable - even their over-paid CEO's.
The millennials saw what happen to their parents and grandparents getting screwed over after a life time of work and loyalty.
You can't blame them for not caring about so called traditional American work ethics and then they are attacked for not having
them when the business leaders threw away all those value decades ago.
Some of these IBM people have themselves to blame for cutting their own economic throats for fighting against unions, putting
in politicians who are pro-business and thinking that their education and high paying white collar STEM jobs will give them economic
immunity.
If America was more of a free market and free enterprise instead of being more of a close market of oligarchies and monopolies,
and strong government regulations, companies would think twice about treating their workforce badly because they know their workforce
would leave for other companies or start up their own companies without too much of a hassle.
Under the old IBM you could not get a union as workers were treated with dignity and respect - see the 3 core beliefs. Back
then a union would not have accomplished anything.
Doesn't matter if it was the old IBM or new IBM, you wonder how many still actually voted against their economic interests in
the political elections that in the long run undermine labor rights in this country.
So one shouldn't vote? Neither party cares about the average voter except at election time. Both sell out to Big Business - after
all, that's where the big campaign donations come from. If you believe only one party favors Big Business, then you have been
watching to much "fake news". Even the unions know they have been sold out by both and are wising up. How many of those jobs were
shipped overseas the past 25 years.
No, they should have been more active in voting for politicians who would look after the workers' rights in this country for the
last 38 years plus ensuring that Congressional people and the president would not be packing the court system with pro-business
judges. Sorry, but it is the Big Business that have been favoring the Republican Party for a long, long time and the jobs have
been shipped out for the last 38 years.
Age discrimination has been standard operating procedure in IT for at least 30 years. And
there are no significant consequences, if any consequences at all, for doing it in a blatant
fashion. The companies just need to make sure the quota of H1B visas is increased when they
are doing this on an IBM scale!
Age discrimination and a myriad other forms of discrimination have been standard operating
procedure in the US. Period. Full stop. No need to equivocate.
As a new engineering graduate, I joined a similar-sized multinational US-based company in the
early '70s. Their recruiting pitch was, "Come to work here, kid. Do your job, keep your nose
clean, and you will enjoy great, secure work until you retire on easy street".
Soon after I started, the company fired hundreds of 50-something employees and put we
"kids" in their jobs. Seeing that employee loyalty was a one way street at that place, I left
after a couple of years. Best career move I ever made.
As a 25yr+ vet of IBM, I can confirm that this article is spot-on true. IBM used to be a
proud and transparent company that clearly demonstrated that it valued its employees as much
as it did its stock performance or dividend rate or EPS, simply because it is good for
business. Those principles helped make and keep IBM atop the business world as the most
trusted international brand and business icon of success for so many years. In 2000, all that
changed when Sam Palmisano became the CEO. Palmisano's now infamous "Roadmap 2015" ran the
company into the ground through its maniacal focus on increasing EPS at any and all costs.
Literally. Like, its employees, employee compensation, benefits, skills, and education
opportunities. Like, its products, product innovation, quality, and customer service. All of
which resulted in the devastation of its technical capability and competitiveness, employee
engagement, and customer loyalty. Executives seemed happy enough as their compensation grew
nicely with greater financial efficiencies, and Palisano got a sweet $270M+ exit package in
2012 for a job well done. The new CEO, Ginni Rometty has since undergone a lot of scrutiny
for her lack of business results, but she was screwed from day one. Of course, that doesn't
leave her off the hook for the business practices outlined in the article, but what do you
expect: she was hand picked by Palmisano and approved by the same board that thought
Palmisano was golden.
In 1994, I saved my job at IBM for the first time, and survived. But I was 36 years old. I
sat down at the desk of a man in his 50s, and found a few odds and ends left for me in the
desk. Almost 20 years later, it was my turn to go. My health and well-being is much better
now. Less money but better health. The sins committed by management will always be: "I was
just following orders".
"... Correction, March 24, 2018: Eileen Maroney lives in Aiken, South Carolina. The name of her city was incorrect in the original version of this story. ..."
Consider, for example, a planning presentation that former IBM executives said was drafted by heads of a business unit carved
out of IBM's once-giant software group and charged with pursuing the "C," or cloud, portion of the company's CAMS strategy.
The presentation laid out plans for substantially altering the unit's workforce. It was shown to company leaders including Diane
Gherson, the senior vice president for human resources, and James Kavanaugh, recently elevated to chief financial officer. Its language
was couched in the argot of "resources," IBM's term for employees, and "EP's," its shorthand for early professionals or recent college
graduates.
Among the goals: "Shift headcount mix towards greater % of Early Professional hires." Among the means: "[D]rive a more aggressive
performance management approach to enable us to hire and replace where needed, and fund an influx of EPs to correct seniority mix."
Among the expected results: "[A] significant reduction in our workforce of 2,500 resources."
A slide from a similar presentation prepared last spring for the same leaders called for "re-profiling current talent" to "create
room for new talent." Presentations for 2015 and 2016 for the 50,000-employee software group also included plans for "aggressive
performance management" and emphasized the need to "maintain steady attrition to offset hiring."
IBM declined to answer questions about whether either presentation was turned into company policy. The description of the planned
moves matches what hundreds of older ex-employees told ProPublica they believe happened to them: They were ousted because of their
age. The company used their exits to hire replacements, many of them young; to ship their work overseas; or to cut its overall headcount.
Ed Alpern, now 65, of Austin, started his 39-year run with IBM as a Selectric typewriter repairman. He ended as a project manager
in October of 2016 when, he said, his manager told him he could either leave with severance and other parting benefits or be given
a bad job review -- something he said he'd never previously received -- and risk being fired without them.
Albert Poggi, now 70, was a three-decade IBM veteran and ran the company's Palisades, New York, technical center where clients
can test new products. When notified in November of 2016 he was losing his job to layoff, he asked his bosses why, given what he
said was a history of high job ratings. "They told me," he said, "they needed to fill it with someone newer."
The presentations from the software group, as well as the stories of ex-employees like Alpern and Poggi, square with internal
documents from two other major IBM business units. The documents for all three cover some or all of the years from 2013 through the
beginning of 2018 and deal with job assessments, hiring, firing and layoffs.
The documents detail practices that appear at odds with how IBM says it treats its employees. In many instances, the practices
in effect, if not intent, tilt against the company's older U.S. workers.
For example, IBM spokespeople and lawyers have said the company never considers a worker's age in making decisions about layoffs
or firings.
But one 2014 document reviewed by ProPublica includes dates of birth. An ex-IBM employee familiar with the process said executives
from one business unit used it to decide about layoffs or other job changes for nearly a thousand workers, almost two-thirds of them
over 50.
Documents from subsequent years show that young workers are protected from cuts for at least a limited period of time. A 2016
slide presentation prepared by the company's global technology services unit, titled "U.S. Resource Action Process" and used to guide
managers in layoff procedures, includes bullets for categories considered "ineligible" for layoff. Among them: "early professional
hires," meaning recent college graduates.
In responding to age-discrimination complaints that ex-employees file with the EEOC, lawyers for IBM say that front-line managers
make all decisions about who gets laid off, and that their decisions are based strictly on skills and job performance, not age.
But ProPublica reviewed spreadsheets that indicate front-line managers hardly acted alone in making layoff calls. Former IBM managers
said the spreadsheets were prepared for upper-level executives and kept continuously updated. They list hundreds of employees together
with codes like "lift and shift," indicating that their jobs were to be lifted from them and shifted overseas, and details such as
whether IBM's clients had approved the change.
An examination of several of the spreadsheets suggests that, whatever the criteria for assembling them, the resulting list of
those marked for layoff was skewed toward older workers. A 2016 spreadsheet listed more than 400 full-time U.S. employees under the
heading "REBAL," which refers to "rebalancing," the process that can lead to laying off workers and either replacing them or shifting
the jobs overseas. Using the job search site LinkedIn, ProPublica was able to locate about 100 of these employees and then obtain
their ages through public records. Ninety percent of those found were 40 or older. Seventy percent were over 50.
IBM frequently cites its history of encouraging diversity in its responses to EEOC complaints about age discrimination. "IBM has
been a leader in taking positive actions to ensure its business opportunities are made available to individuals without regard to
age, race, color, gender, sexual orientation and other categories," a lawyer for the company wrote in a May 2017 letter. "This policy
of non-discrimination is reflected in all IBM business activities."
But ProPublica found at least one company business unit using a point system that disadvantaged older workers. The system awarded
points for attributes valued by the company. The more points a person garnered, according to the former employee, the more protected
she or he was from layoff or other negative job change; the fewer points, the more vulnerable.
The arrangement appears on its face to favor younger newcomers over older veterans. Employees were awarded points for being relatively
new at a job level or in a particular role. Those who worked for IBM for fewer years got more points than those who'd been there
a long time.
The ex-employee familiar with the process said a 2014 spreadsheet from that business unit, labeled "IBM Confidential," was assembled
to assess the job prospects of more than 600 high-level employees, two-thirds of them from the U.S. It included employees' years
of service with IBM, which the former employee said was used internally as a proxy for age. Also listed was an assessment by their
bosses of their career trajectories as measured by the highest job level they were likely to attain if they remained at the company,
as well as their point scores.
The tilt against older workers is evident when employees' years of service are compared with their point scores. Those with no
points and therefore most vulnerable to layoff had worked at IBM an average of more than 30 years; those with a high number of points
averaged half that.
Perhaps even more striking is the comparison between employees' service years and point scores on the one hand and their superiors'
assessments of their career trajectories on the other.
Along with many American employers, IBM has argued it needs to shed older workers because they're no longer at the top of their
games or lack "contemporary" skills.
But among those sized up in the confidential spreadsheet, fully 80 percent of older employees -- those with the most years of
service but no points and therefore most vulnerable to layoff -- were rated by superiors as good enough to stay at their current
job levels or be promoted. By contrast, only a small percentage of younger employees with a high number of points were similarly
rated.
"No major company would use tools to conduct a layoff where a disproportionate share of those let go were African Americans or
women," said Cathy Ventrell-Monsees, senior attorney adviser with the EEOC and former director of age litigation for the senior lobbying
giant AARP. "There's no difference if the tools result in a disproportionate share being older workers."
In addition to the point system that disadvantaged older workers in layoffs, other documents suggest that IBM has made increasingly
aggressive use of its job-rating machinery to pave the way for straight-out firings, or what the company calls "management-initiated
separations." Internal documents suggest that older workers were especially targets.
Like in many companies, IBM employees sit down with their managers at the start of each year and set goals for themselves. IBM
graded on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being top-ranked.
Those rated as 3 or 4 were given formal short-term goals known as personal improvement plans, or PIPs. Historically many managers
were lenient, especially toward those with 3s whose ratings had dropped because of forces beyond their control, such as a weakness
in the overall economy, ex-employees said.
But within the past couple of years, IBM appears to have decided the time for leniency was over. For example, a software group
planning document for 2015 said that, over and above layoffs, the unit should seek to fire about 3,000 of the unit's 50,000-plus
workers.
To make such deep cuts, the document said, executives should strike an "aggressive performance management posture." They needed
to double the share of employees given low 3 and 4 ratings to at least 6.6 percent of the division's workforce. And because layoffs
cost the company more than outright dismissals or resignations, the document said, executives should make sure that more than 80
percent of those with low ratings get fired or forced to quit.
Finally, the 2015 document said the division should work "to attract the best and brightest early professionals" to replace up
to two-thirds of those sent packing. A more recent planning document -- the presentation to top executives Gherson and Kavanaugh
for a business unit carved out of the software group -- recommended using similar techniques to free up money by cutting current
employees to fund an "influx" of young workers.
In a recent interview, Poggi said he was resigned to being laid off. "Everybody at IBM has a bullet with their name on it," he
said. Alpern wasn't nearly as accepting of being threatened with a poor job rating and then fired.
Alpern had a particular reason for wanting to stay on at IBM, at least until the end of last year. His younger son, Justin, then
a high school senior, had been named a National Merit semifinalist. Alpern wanted him to be able to apply for one of the company's
Watson scholarships. But IBM had recently narrowed eligibility so only the children of current employees could apply, not also retirees
as it was until 2014.
Alpern had to make it through December for his son to be eligible.
But in August, he said, his manager ordered him to retire. He sought to buy time by appealing to superiors. But he said the manager's
response was to threaten him with a bad job review that, he was told, would land him on a PIP, where his work would be scrutinized
weekly. If he failed to hit his targets -- and his managers would be the judges of that -- he'd be fired and lose his benefits.
Alpern couldn't risk it; he retired on Oct. 31. His son, now a freshman on the dean's list at Texas A&M University, didn't get
to apply.
"I can think of only a couple regrets or disappointments over my 39 years at IBM,"" he said, "and that's one of them."
'Congratulations on Your Retirement!'
Like any company in the U.S., IBM faces few legal constraints to reducing the size of its workforce. And with its no-disclosure
strategy, it eliminated one of the last regular sources of information about its employment practices and the changing size of its
American workforce.
But there remained the question of whether recent cutbacks were big enough to trigger state and federal requirements for disclosure
of layoffs. And internal documents, such as a slide in a 2016 presentation titled "Transforming to Next Generation Digital Talent,"
suggest executives worried that "winning the talent war" for new young workers required IBM to improve the "attractiveness of (its)
culture and work environment," a tall order in the face of layoffs and firings.
So the company apparently has sought to put a softer face on its cutbacks by recasting many as voluntary rather than the result
of decisions by the firm. One way it has done this is by converting many layoffs to retirements.
Some ex-employees told ProPublica that, faced with a layoff notice, they were just as happy to retire. Others said they felt forced
to accept a retirement package and leave. Several actively objected to the company treating their ouster as a retirement. The company
nevertheless processed their exits as such.
Project manager Ed Alpern's departure was treated in company paperwork as a voluntary retirement. He didn't see it that way, because
the alternative he said he was offered was being fired outright.
Lorilynn King, a 55-year-old IT specialist who worked from her home in Loveland, Colorado, had been with IBM almost as long as
Alpern by May 2016 when her manager called to tell her the company was conducting a layoff and her name was on the list.
King said the manager told her to report to a meeting in Building 1 on IBM's Boulder campus the following day. There, she said,
she found herself in a group of other older employees being told by an IBM human resources representative that they'd all be retiring.
"I have NO intention of retiring," she remembers responding. "I'm being laid off."
ProPublica has collected documents from 15 ex-IBM employees who got layoff notices followed by a retirement package and has talked
with many others who said they received similar paperwork. Critics say the sequence doesn't square well with the law.
"This country has banned mandatory retirement," said Seiner, the University of South Carolina law professor and former EEOC appellate
lawyer. "The law says taking a retirement package has to be voluntary. If you tell somebody 'Retire or we'll lay you off or fire
you,' that's not voluntary."
Until recently, the company's retirement paperwork included a letter from Rometty, the CEO, that read, in part, "I wanted to take
this opportunity to wish you well on your retirement While you may be retiring to embark on the next phase of your personal journey,
you will always remain a valued and appreciated member of the IBM family." Ex-employees said IBM stopped sending the letter last
year.
IBM has also embraced another practice that leads workers, especially older ones, to quit on what appears to be a voluntary basis.
It substantially reversed its pioneering support for telecommuting, telling people who've been working from home for years to begin
reporting to certain, often distant, offices. Their other choice: Resign.
David Harlan had worked as an IBM marketing strategist from his home in Moscow, Idaho, for 15 years when a manager told him last
year of orders to reduce the performance ratings of everybody at his pay grade. Then in February last year, when he was 50, came
an internal video from IBM's new senior vice president, Michelle Peluso, which announced plans to improve the work of marketing employees
by ordering them to work "shoulder to shoulder." Those who wanted to stay on would need to "co-locate" to offices in one of six cities.
Early last year, Harlan received an email congratulating him on "the opportunity to join your team in Raleigh, North Carolina."
He had 30 days to decide on the 2,600-mile move. He resigned in June.
David Harlan worked for IBM for 15 years from his home in Moscow, Idaho, where he also runs a drama company. Early last year,
IBM offered him a choice: Move 2,600 miles to Raleigh-Durham to begin working at an office, or resign. He left in June. (Rajah Bose
for ProPublica)
After the Peluso video was leaked to the press, an IBM spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal that the "
vast
majority " of people ordered to change locations and begin reporting to offices did so. IBM Vice President Ed Barbini said in
an initial email exchange with ProPublica in July that the new policy affected only about 2,000 U.S. employees and that "most" of
those had agreed to move.
But employees across a wide range of company operations, from the systems and technology group to analytics, told ProPublica they've
also been ordered to co-locate in recent years. Many IBMers with long service said that they quit rather than sell their homes, pull
children from school and desert aging parents. IBM declined to say how many older employees were swept up in the co-location initiative.
"They basically knew older employees weren't going to do it," said Eileen Maroney, a 63-year-old IBM product manager from Aiken,
South Carolina, who, like Harlan, was ordered to move to Raleigh or resign. "Older people aren't going to move. It just doesn't make
any sense." Like Harlan, Maroney left IBM last June.
Having people quit rather than being laid off may help IBM avoid disclosing how much it is shrinking its U.S. workforce and where
the reductions are occurring.
Under the federal WARN Act , adopted in the wake
of huge job cuts and factory shutdowns during the 1980s, companies laying off 50 or more employees who constitute at least one-third
of an employer's workforce at a site have to give advance notice of layoffs to the workers, public agencies and local elected officials.
Similar laws in some states where IBM has a substantial presence are even stricter. California, for example, requires advanced
notice for layoffs of 50 or more employees, no matter what the share of the workforce. New York requires notice for 25 employees
who make up a third.
Because the laws were drafted to deal with abrupt job cuts at individual plants, they can miss reductions that occur over long
periods among a workforce like IBM's that was, at least until recently, widely dispersed because of the company's work-from-home
policy.
IBM's training sessions to prepare managers for layoffs suggest the company was aware of WARN thresholds, especially in states
with strict notification laws such as California. A 2016 document entitled "Employee Separation Processing" and labeled "IBM Confidential"
cautions managers about the "unique steps that must be taken when processing separations for California employees."
A ProPublica review of five years of WARN disclosures for a dozen states where the company had large facilities that shed workers
found no disclosures in nine. In the other three, the company alerted authorities of just under 1,000 job cuts -- 380 in California,
369 in New York and 200 in Minnesota. IBM's reported figures are well below the actual number of jobs the company eliminated in these
states, where in recent years it has shuttered, sold off or leveled plants that once employed vast numbers.
By contrast, other employers in the same 12 states reported layoffs last year alone totaling 215,000 people. They ranged from
giant Walmart to Ostrom's Mushroom Farms in Washington state.
Whether IBM operated within the rules of the WARN act, which are notoriously fungible, could not be determined because the company
declined to provide ProPublica with details on its layoffs.
A Second Act, But Poorer
W ith 35 years at IBM under his belt, Ed Miyoshi had plenty of experience being pushed to take buyouts, or early retirement packages,
and refusing them. But he hadn't expected to be pushed last fall.
Miyoshi, of Hopewell Junction, New York, had some years earlier launched a pilot program to improve IBM's technical troubleshooting.
With the blessing of an IBM vice president, he was busily interviewing applicants in India and Brazil to staff teams to roll the
program out to clients worldwide.
The interviews may have been why IBM mistakenly assumed Miyoshi was a manager, and so emailed him to eliminate the one U.S.-based
employee still left in his group.
"That was me," Miyoshi realized.
In his sign-off email to colleagues shortly before Christmas 2016, Miyoshi, then 57, wrote: "I am too young and too poor to stop
working yet, so while this is good-bye to my IBM career, I fully expect to cross paths with some of you very near in the future."
He did, and perhaps sooner than his colleagues had expected; he started as a subcontractor to IBM about two weeks later, on Jan.
3.
Miyoshi is an example of older workers who've lost their regular IBM jobs and been brought back as contractors. Some of them --
not Miyoshi -- became contract workers after IBM told them their skills were out of date and no longer needed.
Employment law experts said that hiring ex-employees as contractors can be legally dicey. It raises the possibility that the layoff
of the employee was not for the stated reason but perhaps because they were targeted for their age, race or gender.
IBM appears to recognize the problem. Ex-employees say the company has repeatedly told managers -- most recently earlier this
year -- not to contract with former employees or sign on with third-party contracting firms staffed by ex-IBMers. But ProPublica
turned up dozens of instances where the company did just that.
Only two weeks after IBM laid him off in December 2016, Ed Miyoshi of Hopewell Junction, New York, started work as a subcontractor
to the company. But he took a $20,000-a-year pay cut. "I'm not a millionaire, so that's a lot of money to me," he says. (Demetrius
Freeman for ProPublica)
Responding to a question in a confidential questionnaire from ProPublica, one 35-year company veteran from New York said he knew
exactly what happened to the job he left behind when he was laid off. "I'M STILL DOING IT. I got a new gig eight days after departure,
working for a third-party company under contract to IBM doing the exact same thing."
In many cases, of course, ex-employees are happy to have another job, even if it is connected with the company that laid them
off.
Henry, the Columbus-based sales and technical specialist who'd been with IBM's "resiliency services" unit, discovered that he'd
lost his regular IBM job because the company had purchased an Indian firm that provided the same services. But after a year out of
work, he wasn't going to turn down the offer of a temporary position as a subcontractor for IBM, relocating data centers. It got
money flowing back into his household and got him back where he liked to be, on the road traveling for business.
The compensation most ex-IBM employees make as contractors isn't comparable. While Henry said he collected the same dollar amount,
it didn't include health insurance, which cost him $1,325 a month. Miyoshi said his paycheck is 20 percent less than what he made
as an IBM regular.
"I took an over $20,000 hit by becoming a contractor. I'm not a millionaire, so that's a lot of money to me," Miyoshi said.
And lower pay isn't the only problem ex-IBM employees-now-subcontractors face. This year, Miyoshi's payable hours have been cut
by an extra 10 "furlough days." Internal documents show that IBM repeatedly furloughs subcontractors without pay, often for two,
three or more weeks a quarter. In some instances, the furloughs occur with little advance notice and at financially difficult moments.
In one document, for example, it appears IBM managers, trying to cope with a cost overrun spotted in mid-November, planned to dump
dozens of subcontractors through the end of the year, the middle of the holiday season.
Former IBM employees now on contract said the company controls costs by notifying contractors in the midst of projects they have
to take pay cuts or lose the work. Miyoshi said that he originally started working for his third-party contracting firm for 10 percent
less than at IBM, but ended up with an additional 10 percent cut in the middle of 2017, when IBM notified the contractor it was slashing
what it would pay.
For many ex-employees, there are few ways out. Henry, for example, sought to improve his chances of landing a new full-time job
by seeking assistance to finish a college degree through a federal program designed to retrain workers hurt by offshoring of jobs.
But when he contacted the Ohio state agency that administers the Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA, program, which provides
assistance to workers who lose their jobs for trade-related reasons, he was told IBM hadn't submitted necessary paperwork. State
officials said Henry could apply if he could find other IBM employees who were laid off with him, information that the company doesn't
provide.
TAA is overseen by the Labor Department but is operated by states under individual agreements with Washington, so the rules can
vary from state to state. But generally employers, unions, state agencies and groups of employers can petition for training help
and cash assistance. Labor Department data compiled by the advocacy group Global Trade Watch shows that employers apply in about
40 percent of cases. Some groups of IBM workers have obtained retraining funds when they or their state have applied, but records
dating back to the early 1990s show IBM itself has applied for and won taxpayer assistance only once, in 2008, for three Chicago-area
workers whose jobs were being moved to India.
Teasing New Jobs
A s IBM eliminated thousands of jobs in 2016, David Carroll, a 52-year-old Austin software engineer, thought he was safe.
His job was in mobile development, the "M" in the company's CAMS strategy. And if that didn't protect him, he figured he was only
four months shy of qualifying for a program that gives employees who leave within a year of their three-decade mark access to retiree
medical coverage and other benefits.
But the layoff notice Carroll received March 2 gave him three months -- not four -- to come up with another job. Having been a
manager, he said he knew the gantlet he'd have to run to land a new position inside IBM.
Still, he went at it hard, applying for more than 50 IBM jobs, including one for a job he'd successfully done only a few years
earlier. For his effort, he got one offer -- the week after he'd been forced to depart. He got severance pay but lost access to what
would have been more generous benefits.
Edward Kishkill, then 60, of Hillsdale, New Jersey, had made a similar calculation.
A senior systems engineer, Kishkill recognized the danger of layoffs, but assumed he was immune because he was working in systems
security, the "S" in CAMS and another hot area at the company.
The precaution did him no more good than it had Carroll. Kishkill received a layoff notice the same day, along with 17 of the
22 people on his systems security team, including Diane Moos. The notice said that Kishkill could look for other jobs internally.
But if he hadn't landed anything by the end of May, he was out.
With a daughter who was a senior in high school headed to Boston University, he scrambled to apply, but came up dry. His last
day was May 31, 2016.
For many, the fruitless search for jobs within IBM is the last straw, a final break with the values the company still says it
embraces. Combined with the company's increasingly frequent request that departing employees train their overseas replacements, it
has left many people bitter. Scores of ex-employees interviewed by ProPublica said that managers with job openings told them they
weren't allowed to hire from layoff lists without getting prior, high-level clearance, something that's almost never given.
ProPublica reviewed documents that show that a substantial share of recent IBM layoffs have involved what the company calls "lift
and shift," lifting the work of specific U.S. employees and shifting it to specific workers in countries such as India and Brazil.
For example, a document summarizing U.S. employment in part of the company's global technology services division for 2015 lists nearly
a thousand people as layoff candidates, with the jobs of almost half coded for lift and shift.
Ex-employees interviewed by ProPublica said the lift-and-shift process required their extensive involvement. For example, shortly
after being notified she'd be laid off, Kishkill's colleague, Moos, was told to help prepare a "knowledge transfer" document and
begin a round of conference calls and email exchanges with two Indian IBM employees who'd be taking over her work. Moos said the
interactions consumed much of her last three months at IBM.
Next Chapters
W hile IBM has managed to keep the scale and nature of its recent U.S. employment cuts largely under the public's radar, the company
drew some unwanted attention during the 2016 presidential campaign, when then-candidate
Donald Trump lambasted it for eliminating 500 jobs in Minnesota, where the company has had a presence for a half century, and
shifting the work abroad.
The company also has caught flak -- in places like
Buffalo, New
York ;
Dubuque, Iowa ; Columbia,
Missouri , and
Baton Rouge, Louisiana -- for promising jobs in return for state and local incentives, then failing to deliver. In all, according
to public officials in those and other places, IBM promised to bring on 3,400 workers in exchange for as much as $250 million in
taxpayer financing but has hired only about half as many.
After Trump's victory, Rometty, in a move at least partly aimed at courting the president-elect, pledged to hire 25,000 new U.S.
employees by 2020. Spokesmen said the hiring would increase IBM's U.S. employment total, although, given its continuing job cuts,
the addition is unlikely to approach the promised hiring total.
When The New York Times ran a story last fall saying IBM now has
more employees in India than the U.S.,
Barbini, the corporate spokesman, rushed to declare, "The U.S. has always been and remains IBM's center of gravity." But his stream
of accompanying tweets and graphics focused
as much on the company's record for racking up patents as hiring people.
IBM has long been aware of the damage its job cuts can do to people. In a series of internal training documents to prepare managers
for layoffs in recent years, the company has included this warning: "Loss of a job often triggers a grief reaction similar to what
occurs after a death."
Most, though not all, of the ex-IBM employees with whom ProPublica spoke have weathered the loss and re-invented themselves.
Marjorie Madfis, the digital marketing strategist, couldn't land another tech job after her 2013 layoff, so she headed in a different
direction. She started a nonprofit called Yes She Can Inc. that provides job skills development for young autistic women, including
her 21-year-old daughter.
After almost two years of looking and desperate for useful work, Brian Paulson, the widely traveled IBM senior manager, applied
for and landed a position as a part-time rural letter carrier in Plano, Texas. He now works as a contract project manager for a Las
Vegas gaming and lottery firm.
Ed Alpern, who started at IBM as a Selectric typewriter repairman, watched his son go on to become a National Merit Scholar at
Texas A&M University, but not a Watson scholarship recipient.
Lori King, the IT specialist and 33-year IBM veteran who's now 56, got in a parting shot. She added an addendum to the retirement
papers the firm gave her that read in part: "It was never my plan to retire earlier than at least age 60 and I am not committing
to retire. I have been informed that I am impacted by a resource action effective on 2016-08-22, which is my last day at IBM, but
I am NOT retiring."
King has aced more than a year of government-funded coding boot camps and university computer courses, but has yet to land a new
job.
David Harlan still lives in Moscow, Idaho, after refusing IBM's "invitation" to move to North Carolina, and is artistic director
of the Moscow Art Theatre (Too).
Ed Miyoshi is still a technical troubleshooter working as a subcontractor for IBM.
Ed Kishkill, the senior systems engineer, works part time at a local tech startup, but pays his bills as an associate at a suburban
New Jersey Staples store.
This year, Paul Henry was back on the road, working as an IBM subcontractor in Detroit, about 200 miles from where he lived in
Columbus. On Jan. 8, he put in a 14-hour day and said he planned to call home before turning in. He died in his sleep.
Correction, March 24, 2018: Eileen Maroney lives in Aiken, South Carolina. The name of her city was incorrect in the original
version of this story.
Do you have information about age discrimination at IBM?
Peter Gosselin joined ProPublica as a contributing
reporter in January 2017 to cover aging. He has covered the U.S. and global economies for, among others, the Los Angeles Times and
The Boston Globe, focusing on the lived experiences of working people. He is the author of "High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives
of American Families."
Ariana Tobin is an engagement reporter at ProPublica,
where she works to cultivate communities to inform our coverage. She was previously at The Guardian and WNYC. Ariana has also worked
as digital producer for APM's Marketplace and contributed
to outlets including The
New Republic , On Being , the
St. Louis
Beacon and Bustle .
"... I took an early retirement package when IBM first started downsizing. I had 30 years with them, but I could see the writing on the wall so I got out. I landed an exec job with a biotech company some years later and inherited an IBM consulting team that were already engaged. I reviewed their work for 2 months then had the pleasure of terminating the contract and actually escorting the team off the premises because the work product was so awful. ..."
"... Every former or prospective IBM employee is a potential future IBM customer or partner. How you treat them matters! ..."
"... I advise IBM customers now. My biggest professional achievements can be measured in how much revenue IBM lost by my involvement - millions. Favorite is when IBM paid customer to stop the bleeding. ..."
I took an early retirement package when IBM first started downsizing. I had 30 years
with them, but I could see the writing on the wall so I got out. I landed an exec job with a
biotech company some years later and inherited an IBM consulting team that were already
engaged. I reviewed their work for 2 months then had the pleasure of terminating the contract
and actually escorting the team off the premises because the work product was so
awful.
They actually did a presentation of their interim results - but it was a 52 slide package
that they had presented to me in my previous job but with the names and numbers changed.
see more
Intellectual Capital Re-Use! LOL! Not many people realize in IBM that many, if not all of the
original IBM Consulting Group materials were made under the Type 2 Materials clause of the
IBM Contract, which means the customers actually owned the IP rights of the documents. Can
you imagine the mess if just one customer demands to get paid for every re-use of the IP that
was developed for them and then re-used over and over again?
Beautiful! Yea, these companies so fast to push experienced people who have dedicated their
lives to the firm - how can you not...all the hours and commitment it takes - way
underestimate the power of the network of those left for dead and their influence in that
next career gig. Memories are long...very long when it comes to experiences like this.
I advise IBM customers now. My biggest professional achievements can be measured in how
much revenue IBM lost by my involvement - millions. Favorite is when IBM paid customer to
stop the bleeding.
"... It's no coincidence whatsoever that Diane Gherson, mentioned prominently in the article, blasted out an all-employees email crowing about IBM being a great place to work according to (ahem) LinkedIn. I desperately want to post a link to this piece in the corporate Slack, but that would get me fired immediately instead of in a few months at the next "resource action." It's been a whole 11 months since our division had one, so I know one is coming soon. ..."
"... I used to say when I was there that: "After every defeat, they pin medals on the generals and shoot the soldiers". ..."
"... 1990 is also when H-1B visa rules were changed so that companies no longer had to even attempt to hire an American worker as long as the job paid $60,000, which hasn't changed since. This article doesn't even mention how our work visa system facilitated and even rewarded this abuse of Americans. ..."
"... Well, starting in the 1980s, the American management was allowed by Reagan to get rid of its workforce. ..."
"... It's all about making the numbers so the management can present a Potemkin Village of profits and ever-increasing growth sufficient to get bonuses. There is no relation to any sort of quality or technological advancement, just HR 3-card monte. They have installed air bearing in Old Man Watson's coffin as it has been spinning ever faster ..."
"... Corporate America executive management is all about stock price management. Their bonus's in the millions of dollars are based on stock performance. With IBM's poor revenue performance since Ginny took over, profits can only be maintained by cost reduction. Look at the IBM executive's bonus's throughout the last 20 years and you can see that all resource actions have been driven by Palmisano's and Rominetty's greed for extravagant bonus's. ..."
"... Also worth noting is that IBM drastically cut the cap on it's severance pay calculation. Almost enough to make me regret not having retired before that changed. ..."
"... Yeah, severance started out at 2 yrs pay, went to 1 yr, then to 6 mos. and is now 1 month. ..."
"... You need to investigate AT&T as well, as they did the same thing. I was 'sold' by IBM to AT&T as part of he Network Services operation. AT&T got rid of 4000 of the 8000 US employees sent to AT&T within 3 years. Nearly everyone of us was a 'senior' employee. ..."
dragonflap• 7
months ago I'm a 49-year-old SW engineer who started at IBM as part of an acquisition in 2000. I got laid off in 2002 when IBM
started sending reqs to Bangalore in batches of thousands. After various adventures, I rejoined IBM in 2015 as part of the "C" organization
referenced in the article.
It's no coincidence whatsoever that Diane Gherson, mentioned prominently in the article, blasted out an all-employees email
crowing about IBM being a great place to work according to (ahem) LinkedIn. I desperately want to post a link to this piece in the
corporate Slack, but that would get me fired immediately instead of in a few months at the next "resource action." It's been a whole
11 months since our division had one, so I know one is coming soon.
The lead-in to this piece makes it sound like IBM was forced into these practices by inescapable forces. I'd say not, rather
that it pursued them because a) the management was clueless about how to lead IBM in the new environment and new challenges so
b) it started to play with numbers to keep the (apparent) profits up....to keep the bonuses coming. I used to say when I was
there that: "After every defeat, they pin medals on the generals and shoot the soldiers".
And then there's the Pig with the Wooden Leg shaggy dog story that ends with the punch line, "A pig like that you don't eat
all at once", which has a lot of the flavor of how many of us saw our jobs as IBM die a slow death.
IBM is about to fall out of the sky, much as General Motors did. How could that happen? By endlessly beating the cow to get
more milk.
IBM was hiring right through the Great Depression such that It Did Not Pay Unemployment Insurance. Because it never laid people
off, Because until about 1990, your manager was responsible for making sure you had everything you needed to excel and grow....and
you would find people that had started on the loading dock and had become Senior Programmers. But then about 1990, IBM starting
paying unemployment insurance....just out of the goodness of its heart. Right.
1990 is also when H-1B visa rules were changed so that companies no longer had to even attempt to hire an American worker
as long as the job paid $60,000, which hasn't changed since. This article doesn't even mention how our work visa system facilitated
and even rewarded this abuse of Americans.
I found that other Ex-IBMer's respect other Ex-IBMer's work ethics, knowledge and initiative.
Other companies are happy to get them as a valueable resource. In '89 when our Palo Alto Datacenter moved, we were given two
options: 1.) to become a Programmer (w/training) 2.) move to Boulder or 3.) to leave.
I got my training with programming experience and left IBM in '92, when for 4 yrs IBM offerred really good incentives for leaving
the company. The Executives thought that the IBM Mainframe/MVS z/OS+ was on the way out and the Laptop (Small but Increasing Capacity)
Computer would take over everything.
It didn't. It did allow many skilled IBMers to succeed outside of IBM and help built up our customer skill sets. And like many,
when the opportunity arose to return I did. In '91 I was accidentally given a male co-workers paycheck and that was one of the
reasons for leaving. During my various Contract work outside, I bumped into other male IBMer's that had left too, some I had trained,
and when they disclosed that it was their salary (which was 20-40%) higher than mine was the reason they left, I knew I had made
the right decision.
Women tend to under-value themselves and their capabilities. Contracting also taught me that companies that had 70% employees
and 30% contractors, meant that contractors would be let go if they exceeded their quarterly expenditures.
I first contracted with IBM in '98 and when I decided to re-join IBM '01, I had (3) job offers and I took the most lucrative
exciting one to focus on fixing & improving DB2z Qry Parallelism. I developed a targeted L3 Technical Change Team to help L2 Support
reduce Customer problems reported and improve our product. The instability within IBM remained and I saw IBM try to eliminate
aging, salaried, benefited employees. The 1.) find a job within IBM ... to 2.) to leave ... was now standard.
While my salary had more than doubled since I left IBM the first time, it still wasn't near other male counterparts. The continual
rating competition based on salary ranged titles and timing a title raise after a round of layoffs, not before. I had another
advantage going and that was that my changed reduced retirement benefits helped me stay there. It all comes down to the numbers
that Mgmt is told to cut & save IBM. While much of this article implies others were hired, at our Silicon Valley Location and
other locations, they had no intent to backfill. So the already burdened employees were laden with more workloads & stress.
In the early to mid 2000's IBM setup a counter lab in China where they were paying 1/4th U.S. salaries and many SVL IBMers
went to CSDL to train our new world 24x7 support employees. But many were not IBM loyal and their attrition rates were very high,
so it fell to a wave of new-hires at SVL to help address it.
It's all about making the numbers so the management can present a Potemkin Village of profits and ever-increasing growth
sufficient to get bonuses. There is no relation to any sort of quality or technological advancement, just HR 3-card monte. They
have installed air bearing in Old Man Watson's coffin as it has been spinning ever faster
Corporate America executive management is all about stock price management. Their bonus's in the millions of dollars are
based on stock performance. With IBM's poor revenue performance since Ginny took over, profits can only be maintained by cost
reduction. Look at the IBM executive's bonus's throughout the last 20 years and you can see that all resource actions have been
driven by Palmisano's and Rominetty's greed for extravagant bonus's.
Bravo ProPublica for another "sock it to them" article - journalism in honor of the spirit of great newspapers everywhere that
the refuge of justice in hard times is with the press.
Also worth noting is that IBM drastically cut the cap on it's severance pay calculation. Almost enough to make me regret
not having retired before that changed.
You need to investigate AT&T as well, as they did the same thing. I was 'sold' by IBM to AT&T as part of he Network Services
operation. AT&T got rid of 4000 of the 8000 US employees sent to AT&T within 3 years. Nearly everyone of us was a 'senior' employee.
As a permanent old contractor and free-enterprise defender myself, I don't blame IBM a bit for wanting to cut the fat. But
for the outright *lies, deception and fraud* that they use to break laws, weasel out of obligations... really just makes me want
to shoot them... and I never even worked for them.
Where I worked, In Rochester,MN, people have known what is happening for years. My last years with IBM were the most depressing
time in my life.
I hear a rumor that IBM would love to close plants they no longer use but they are so environmentally polluted that it is cheaper
to maintain than to clean up and sell.
One of the biggest driving factors in age discrimination is health insurance costs, not salary. It can cost 4-5x as much to
insure and older employee vs. a younger one, and employers know this. THE #1 THING WE CAN DO TO STOP AGE DISCRIMINATION IS TO
MOVE AWAY FROM OUR EMPLOYER-PROVIDED INSURANCE SYSTEM. It could be single-payer, but it could also be a robust individual market
with enough pool diversification to make it viable. Freeing employers from this cost burden would allow them to pick the right
talent regardless of age.
The American business have constantly fought against single payer since the end of World War II and why should I feel sorry
for them when all of a sudden, they are complaining about health care costs? It is outrageous that workers have to face age discrimination;
however, the CEOs don't have to deal with that issue since they belong to a tiny group of people who can land a job anywhere else.
Single payer won't help. We have single payer in Canada and just as much age discrimination in employment. Society in general
does not like older people so unless you're a doctor, judge or pharmacist you will face age bias. It's even worse in popular culture
never mind in employment.
Thanks for the great article. I left IBM last year. USA based. 49. Product Manager in one of IBMs strategic initiatives, however
got told to relocate or leave. I found another job and left. I came to IBM from an acquisition. My only regret is, I wish I had
left this toxic environment earlier. It truely is a dreadful place to work.
The methodology has trickled down to smaller companies pursuing the same net results for headcount reduction. The similarities
to my experience were painful to read. The grief I felt after my job was "eliminated" 10 years ago while the Recession was at
its worst and shortly after my 50th birthday was coming back. I never have recovered financially but have started writing a murder
mystery. The first victim? The CEO who let me go. It's true. Revenge is best served cold.
Well written . people like me have experienced exactly what you wrote. IBM is a shadow of it's former greatness and I have
advised my children to stay away from IBM and companies like it as they start their careers. IBM is a corrupt company. Shame on
them !
I suspect someone will end up hunt them down with an axe at some point. That's the only way they'll probably learn. I don't
know about IBM specifically, but when Carly Fiorina ran HP, she travelled with and even went into engineering labs with an armed
security detail.
Was let go after 34 years of service. Mine Resource Action latter had additional lines after '...unless you are offered ...
position within IBM before that date.' , implying don't even try to look for a position. They lines were ' Additional business
controls are in effect to manage the business objectives of this resource action, therefore, job offers within (the name of division)
will be highly unlikely.'.
I've worked for a series of vendors for over thirty years. A job at IBM used to be the brass ring; nowadays, not so much.
I've heard persistent rumors from IBMers that U.S. headcount is below 25,000 nowadays. Given events like the recent downtime
of the internal systems used to order parts (5 or so days--website down because staff who maintained it were let go without replacements),
it's hard not to see the spiral continue down the drain.
What I can't figure out is whether Rometty and cronies know what they're doing or are just clueless. Either way, the result
is the same: destruction of a once-great company and brand. Tragic.
Well, none of these layoffs/ageist RIFs affect the execs, so they don't see the effects, or they see the effects but attribute
them to some other cause.
(I'm surprised the article doesn't address this part of the story; how many affected by layoffs are exec/senior management?
My bet is very few.)
I was a D-banded exec (Director-level) who was impacted and I know even some VPs who were affected as well, so they do spread
the pain, even in the exec ranks.
That's different than I have seen in companies I have worked for (like HP). There RIFs (Reduction In Force, their acronym for
layoff) went to the director level and no further up.
Under neoliberlaism the idea of loyalty between a corporation and an employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests.
Notable quotes:
"... Any expectation of "loyalty", that two-way relationship of employee/company from an earlier time, was wishful thinking ..."
"... With all the automation going on around the world, these business leaders better worry about people not having money to buy their goods and services plus what are they going to do with the surplus of labor ..."
"... This is the nail in the coffin. As an IT manager responsible for selecting and purchasing software, I will never again recommend IBM products ..."
"... The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The idea of loyalty between a corporation and an at-will employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests. ..."
"... The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation. And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980. ..."
I started at IBM 3 days out of college in 1979 and retired in 2017. I was satisfied with my choice and never felt mistreated because
I had no expectation of lifetime employment, especially after the pivotal period in the 1990's when IBM almost went out of business.
The company survived that period by dramatically restructuring both manufacturing costs and sales expense including the firing
of tens of thousands of employees. These actions were well documented in the business news of the time, the obvious alternative
was bankruptcy.
I told the authors that anyone working at IBM after 1993 should have had no expectation of a lifetime career. Downsizing, outsourcing,
movement of work around the globe was already commonplace at all such international companies. Any expectation of "loyalty",
that two-way relationship of employee/company from an earlier time, was wishful thinking .
I was always prepared to be sent packing, without cause, at any time and always had my resume up-to-date. I stayed because
of interesting work, respectful supervisors, and adequate compensation.
The "resource action" that forced my decision to retire was no surprise, the company that hired me had been gone for decades.
With all the automation going on around the world, these business leaders better worry about people not having money to buy
their goods and services plus what are they going to do with the surplus of labor
I had, more or less, the same experience at Cisco. They paid me to quit. Luckily, I was ready for it.
The article mentions IBMs 3 failures. So who was it that was responsible for not anticipating the transitions? It is hard enough
doing what you already know. Perhaps companies should be spending more on figuring out "what's next" and not continually playing
catch-up by dumping the older workers for the new.
I was laid off by IBM after 29 years and 4 months. I had received a division award in previous year, and my last PBC appraisal
was 2+ (high performer.) The company I left was not the company I started with. Top management--starting with Gerstner--has steadily
made IBM a less desirable place to work. They now treat employees as interchangeable assets and nothing more. I cannot/would not
recommend IBM as an employer to any young programmer.
Truly awesome work. I do want to add one thing, however--the entire rhetoric about "too many old white guys" that has become so
common absolutely contributes to the notion that this sort of behavior is not just acceptable but in some twisted way admirable
as well.
Is anyone surprised that so many young people don't think capitalism is a good system any more?
I ran a high technology electronic systems company for years. We ran it "the old way." If you worked hard, and tried, we would
bend over backwards to keep you. If technology or business conditions eliminated your job, we would try to train you for a new
one. Our people were loyal, not like IBMers today. I honestly think that's the best way to be profitable.
People afraid of being unjustly RIFFed will always lack vitality.
I'm glad someone is finally paying attention to age discrimination. IBM apparently is just one of many organizations that discriminate.
I'm in the middle of my own fight with the State University of New York (SUNY) over age discrimination. I was terminated by
a one of the technical colleges in the SUNY System. The EEOC/New York State Division of Human Rights (NYDHR) found that "PROBABLE
CAUSE (NYDHR's emphasis) exists to believe that the Respondent (Alfred State College - SUNY) has engaged in or is engaging in
the unlawful discriminatory practice complained of." Investigators for NYDHR interviewed several witnesses, who testified that
representatives of the college made statements such as "we need new faces", "three old men" attending a meeting, an older faculty
member described as an "albatross", and "we ought to get rid of the old white guys". Witnesses said these statements were made
by the Vice President of Academic Affairs and a dean at the college.
This saga at IBM is simply a microcosm of our overall economy. Older workers get ousted in favor of younger, cheaper workers;
way too many jobs get outsourced; and so many workers today [young and old] can barely land a full-time job. This is the behavior that our system incentivises (and gets away with) in this post Reagan Revolution era where deregulation is
lauded and unions have been undermined & demonized. We need to seriously re-work 'work', and in order to do this we need to purge
Republicans at every level, as they CLEARLY only serve corporate bottom-lines - not workers - by championing tax codes that reward
outsourcing, fight a livable minimum wage, eliminate pensions, bust unions, fight pay equity for women & family leave, stack the
Supreme Court with radical ideologues who blatantly rule for corporations over people all the time, etc. etc. ~35 years of basically
uninterrupted Conservative economic policy & ideology has proven disastrous for workers and our quality of life. As goes your
middle class, so goes your country.
I am a retired IBM manager having had to execute many of these resource reduction programs.. too many.. as a matter of fact. ProPUBLICA....You
nailed it!
IBM has always treated its customer-facing roles like Disney -- as cast members who need to match a part in a play. In the 60s
and 70s, it was the white-shirt, blue-suit white men whom IBM leaders thought looked like mainframe salesmen. Now, rather than
actually build a credible cloud to compete with Amazon and Microsoft, IBM changes the cast to look like cloud salespeople. (I
work for Microsoft. Commenting for myself alone.)
I am a survivor, the rare employee who has been at IBM for over 35 years. I have seen many, many layoff programs over 20 years
now. I have seen tens of thousands people let go from the Hudson Valley of N.Y. Those of us who have survived, know and lived
through what this article so accurately described. I currently work with 3 laid off/retired and rehired contractors. I have seen
age discrimination daily for over 15 years. It is not only limited to layoffs, it is rampant throughout the company. Promotions,
bonuses, transfers for opportunities, good reviews, etc... are gone if you are over 45. I have seen people under 30 given promotions
to levels that many people worked 25 years for. IBM knows that these younger employees see how they treat us so they think they
can buy them off. Come to think of it, I guess they actually are! They are ageist, there is no doubt, it is about time everyone
knew. Excellent article.
Nice article, but seriously this is old news. IBM has been at this for ...oh twenty years or more. I don't really have a problem with it in terms of a corporation trying to make money. But I do have a problem with how IBM also
likes to avoid layoffs by giving folks over 40 intentionally poor reviews, essentially trying to drive people out. Just have the
guts to tell people, we don't need you anymore, bye. But to string people along as the overseas workers come in...c'mon just be
honest with your workers. High tech over 40 is not easy...I suggest folks prep for a career change before 50. Then you can have the last laugh on a company
like IBM.
From pages 190-191 of my novel, Ordinary Man (Amazon):
Throughout
it all, layoffs became common, impacting mostly older employees with many years
of service. These job cuts were dribbled out in small numbers to conceal them
from the outside world, but employees could plainly see what was going on.
The laid off
employees were supplanted by offshoring work to low-costs countries and hiring
younger employees, often only on temporary contracts that offered low pay and
no benefits – a process pejoratively referred to by veteran employees as
"downsourcing." The recruitment of these younger workers was done under the
guise of bringing in fresh skills, but while many of the new hires brought new
abilities and vitality, they lacked the knowledge and perspective that comes
with experience.
Frequently,
an older more experienced worker would be asked to help educate newer
employees, only to be terminated shortly after completing the task. And the new
hires weren't fooled by what they witnessed and experienced at OpenSwitch,
perceiving very quickly that the company had no real interest in investing in
them for the long term. To the contrary, the objective was clearly to grind as
much work out of them as possible, without offering any hope of increased
reward or opportunity.
Most of the
young recruits left after only a year or two – which, again, was part of the
true agenda at the company. Senior management viewed employees not as talent,
but simply as cost, and didn't want anyone sticking around long enough to move
up the pay scale.
This is the nail in the coffin. As an IT manager responsible for selecting and purchasing software, I will never again recommend
IBM products. I love AIX and have worked with a lot if IBM products but not anymore. Good luck with the millennials though...
I worked for four major corporations (HP, Intel, Control Data Corporation, and Micron Semiconductor) before I was hired by IBM
as a rare (at that time) experienced new hire.
Even though I ended up working for IBM for 21 years, and retired in 2013, because
of my experiences at those other companies, I never considered IBM my "family."
The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck
from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything.
The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck
from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything.
The idea of loyalty between a corporation and an at-will employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests.
It is a business arrangement, not a love affair. Every individual needs to continually assess their skills and their value to
their employer. If they are not commensurate, it is the employee's responsibility to either acquire new skills or seek a new employer.
Your employer will not hesitate to lay you off if your skills are no longer needed, or if they can hire someone who can do your
job just as well for less pay. That is free enterprise, and it works for people willing to take advantage of it.
I basically agree. But why should it be OK for a company to fire you just to replace you with a younger you? If all that they
accomplish is lowering their health care costs (which is what this is really about). If the company is paying about the same for
the same work, why is firing older workers for being older OK?
Good question. The point I was trying to make is that people need to watch out for themselves and not expect their employer to
do what is "best" for the employee. I think that is true whatever age the employee happens to be.
Whether employers should be able to discriminate against (treat differently) their employees based on age, gender, race, religion,
etc. is a political question. Morally, I don't think they should discriminate. Politically, I think it is a slippery slope when
the government starts imposing regulations on free enterprise. Government almost always creates more problems than they fix.
Sorry, but when you deregulate the free enterprise, it created more problems than it fixes and that is a fact that has been proven
for the last 38 years.
That's just plain false. Deregulation creates competiiton. Competition for talented and skilled workers creates opportunities
for those that wish to be employed and for those that wish to start new ventures. For example, when Ma Bell was regulated and
had a monopoly on telecommunications there was no innovation in the telecom inudstry. However, when it was deregulated, cell phones,
internet, etc exploded ... creating billionaires and millionaires while also improving the quality of life.
No, it happens to be true. When Reagan deregulate the economy, a lot of those corporate raiders just took over the companies,
sold off the assets, and pocketed the money. What quality of life? Half of American lived near the poverty level and the wages
for the workers have been stagnant for the last 38 years compared to a well-regulated economy in places like Germany and the Scandinavian
countries where the workers have good wages and a far better standard of living than in the USA. Why do you think the Norwegians
told Trump that they will not be immigrating to the USA anytime soon?
What were the economic conditions before Regan? It was a nightmare before Regan. The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare
of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation.
And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980.
At least we had a manufacturing base in the USA, strong regulations of corporations, corporate scandals were far and few, businesses
did not go under so quickly, prices of goods and services did not go through the roof, people had pensions and could reasonably
live off them, and recessions did not last so long or go so deep until Reagan came into office. In Under Reagan, the jobs were
allowed to be send overseas, unions were busted up, pensions were reduced or eliminated, wages except those of the CEOs were staganent,
and the economic conditions under Bush, Senior and Bush, Jr. were no better except that Bush, Jr, was the first president to have
a net minus below zero growth, so every time we get a Republican Administration, the economy really turns into a nightmare. That
is a fact.
You have the Republicans in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin using Reaganomics and they are economic disaster areas.
You had an industrial base in the USA, lots of banks and savings and loans to choose from, lots of mom and pop stores, strong
government regulation of the economy, able to live off your pensions, strong unions and employment laws along with the court system
to back you up against corporate malfeasance. All that was gone when Reagan and the two Bushes came into office.
Amazingly accurate article. The once great IBM now a dishonest and unscrupulous corporation concerned more about earnings per
share than employees, customers, or social responsibility. In Global Services most likely 75% or more jobs are no longer in the
US - can't believe a word coming out of Armonk.
I'm not sure there was ever a paradise in employment. Yeah, you can say there was more job stability 50 or 60 years ago, but that
applied to a much smaller workforce than today (mostly white men). It is a drag, but there are also lot more of us old farts than
there used to be and we live a lot longer in retirement as well. I don't see any magic bullet fix either.
Great article. What's especially infuriating is that the industry continues to claim that there is a shortage of STEM workers.
For example, google "claim of 1.4 million computer science jobs with only 400,000 computer science graduates to fill them". If
companies would openly say, "we have plenty of young STEM workers and prefer them to most older STEM workers", we could at least
start addressing the problem. But they continue to promote the lie of there being a STEM shortage. They just want as big a labor
pool as possible, unemployed workers be damned.
I've worked there 17 years and have worried about being layed off for about 11 of them. Moral is in the toilet. Bonuses for the
rank and file are in the under 1% range while the CEO gets millions. Pay raises have been non existent or well under inflation
for years. Adjusting for inflation, I make $6K less than I did my first day. My group is a handful of people as at least 1/2 have
quit or retired. To support our customers, we used to have several people, now we have one or two and if someone is sick or on
vacation, our support structure is to hope nothing breaks. We can't keep millennials because of pay, benefits and the expectation
of being available 24/7 because we're shorthanded. As the unemployment rate drops, more leave to find a different job, leaving
the old people as they are less willing to start over with pay, vacation, moving, selling a house, pulling kids from school, etc.
The younger people are generally less likely to be willing to work as needed on off hours or to pull work from a busier colleague.
I honestly have no idea what the plan is when the people who know what they are doing start to retire, we are way top heavy with
30-40 year guys who are on their way out, very few of the 10-20 year guys due to hiring freezes and we can't keep new people past
2-3 years. It's like our support business model is designed to fail.
Make no mistake. The three and four letter acronyms and other mushy corporate speak may differ from firm to firm, but this is
going on in every large tech company old enough to have a large population of workers over 50. I hope others will now be exposed.
This article hits the nail right on the head, as I come up on my 1 year anniversary from being....ahem....'retired' from 23 years
at IBM....and I'll be damned if I give them the satisfaction of thinking this was like a 'death' to me. It was the greatest thing
that could have ever happened. Ginny and the board should be ashamed of themselves, but they won't be.
Starting around age 40 you start to see age discrimination. I think this is largely due to economics, like increased vacation
times, higher wages, but most of all the perception that older workers will run up the medical costs. You can pass all the age
related discrimination laws you want, but look how ineffective that has been.
If you contrast this with the German workforce, you see that they have more older workers with the skills and younger workers
without are having a difficult time getting in. So what's the difference? There are laws about how many vacation weeks that are
given and there is a national medical system that everyone pays, so discrimination isn't seen in the same light.
The US is the only hold out maybe with South Africa that doesn't have a good national medical insurance program for everyone.
Not only do we pay more than the rest of the world, but we also have discrimination because of it.
This is very good, and this is IBM. I know. I was plaintiff in Gundlach v. IBM Japan, 983 F.Supp.2d 389, which involved their
violating Japanese labor law when I worked in Japan. The New York federal judge purposely ignored key points of Japanese labor
law, and also refused to apply Title VII and Age Discrimination in Employment to the parent company in Westchester County. It
is a huge, self-described "global" company with little demonstrated loyalty to America and Americans. Pennsylvania is suing them
for $170 million on a botched upgrade of the state's unemployment system.
In early 2013 I was given a 3 PBC rating for my 2012 performance, the main reason cited by my manager being that my team lead
thought I "seemed distracted". Five months later I was included in a "resource action", and was gone by July. I was 20 months
shy of 55. Younger coworkers were retained. That was about two years after the product I worked on for over a decade was off-shored.
Through a fluke of someone from the old, disbanded team remembering me, I was rehired two years later - ironically in a customer
support position for the very product I helped develop.
While I appreciated my years of service, previous salary, and previous benefits being reinstated, a couple years into it I
realized I just wasn't cut out for the demands of the job - especially the significant 24x7 pager duty. Last June I received email
describing a "Transition to Retirement" plan I was eligible for, took it, and my last day will be June 30. I still dislike the
job, but that plan reclassified me as part time, thus ending pager duty for me. The job still sucks, but at least I no longer
have to despair over numerous week long 24x7 stints throughout the year.
A significant disappointment occurred a couple weeks ago. I was discussing healthcare options with another person leaving the
company who hadn't been resource-actioned as I had, and learned the hard way I lost over $30,000 in some sort of future medical
benefit account the company had established and funded at some point. I'm not sure I was ever even aware of it. That would have
funded several years of healthcare insurance during the 8 years until I'm eligible for Medicare. I wouldn't be surprised if their
not having to give me that had something to do with my seeming "distracted" to them. <rolls eyes="">
What's really painful is the history of that former account can still be viewed at Fidelity, where it associates my departure
date in 2013 with my having "forfeited" that money. Um, no. I did not forfeit that money, nor would I have. I had absolutely no
choice in the matter. I find the use of the word 'forfeited' to describe what happened as both disingenuous and offensive. That
said, I don't know whether's that's IBM's or Fidelity's terminology, though.
Jeff, You should call Fidelity. I recently received a letter from the US Department of Labor that they discovered that IBM was
"holding" funds that belonged to me that I was never told about. This might be similar or same story .
Step back and think about this for a minute. There are plenty of examples of people who were
doing their jobs, IN SPADES, putting in tons of unpaid overtime, and generally doing whatever
was humanly possible to make sure that whatever was promised to the customer was delivered
(within their span of control... I'm not going to get into a discussion of how IBM pulls the
rug out from underneath contracts after they've been signed).
These people were, and still are, high performers, they are committed to the job and the
purpose that has been communicated to them by their peers, management, and customers; and
they take the time (their OWN time) to pick up new skills and make sure that they are still
current and marketable. They do this because they are committed to doing the job to the best
of their ability.... it's what makes them who they are.
IBM (and other companies) are firing these very people ***for one reason and one reason
ONLY***: their AGE. They have the skills and they're doing their jobs. If the same person was
30 you can bet that they'd still be there. Most of the time it has NOTHING to do with
performance or lack of concurrency. Once the employee is fired, the job is done by someone
else. The work is still there, but it's being done by someone younger and/or of a different
nationality.
The money that is being saved by these companies has to come from somewhere. People that
are having to withdraw their retirement savings 20 or so years earlier than planned are going
to run out of funds.... and when they're in nursing homes, guess who is going to be
supporting them? Social security will be long gone, their kids have their own monetary
challenges.... so it will be government programs.... maybe.
This is not just a problem that impacts the 40 and over crowd. This is going to impact our
entire society for generations to come.
The business reality you speak of can be tempered via government actions. A few things:
One of the major hardships here is laying someone off when they need income the most -
to pay for their children's college education. To mitigate this, as a country we could make a
public education free. That takes off a lot of the sting, some people might relish a change
in career when they are in their 50s except that the drop in salary is so steep when changing
careers.
We could lower the retirement age to 55 and increase Social Security to more than a
poverty-level existence.Being laid off when you're 50 or 55 - with little chance to be hired
anywhere else - would not hurt as much.
We could offer federal wage subsidies for older workers to make them more attractive to
hire. While some might see this as a thumb on the scale against younger workers, in reality
it would be simply a counterweight to the thumb that is already there against older
workers.
Universal health care equalizes the cost of older and younger workers.
The other alternative is a market-based life that, for many, will be cruel, brutish, and
short.
There's not a word of truth quoted in this article. That is, quoted from IBM spokespeople. It's the culture there now. They don't
even realize that most of their customers have become deaf to the same crap from their Sales and Marketing BS, which is even worse
than their HR speak.
The sad truth is that IBM became incapable of taking its innovation (IBM is indeed a world beating, patent generating machine)
to market a long time ago. It has also lost the ability (if it ever really had it) to acquire other companies and foster their
innovation either - they ran most into the ground. As a result, for nearly a decade revenues have declined and resource actions
grown. The resource actions may seem to be the ugly problem, but they're only the symptom of a fat greedy and pompous bureaucracy
that's lost its ability to grow and stay relevant in a very competitive and changing industry. What they have been able to perfect
and grow is their ability to downsize and return savings as dividends (Big Sam Palmisano's "innovation"). Oh, and for senior management
to line their pockets.
Nothing IBM is currently doing is sustainable.
If you're still employed there, listen to the pain in the words of your fallen comrades and don't knock yourself out trying
to stay afloat. Perhaps learn some BS of your own and milk your job (career? not...) until you find freedom and better pastures.
If you own stock, do like Warren Buffett, and sell it while it still has some value.
This is NOTHING NEW! All major corporations have and will do this at some point in their existence. Another industry that does
this regularly every 3 to 5 years is the pharamaceutical industry. They'll decimate their sales forces in order to, as they like
to put it, "right size" the company.
They'll cloak it as weeding out the low performers, but they'll try to catch the "older" workers in the net as well.
"... As long as companies pay for their employees' health insurance they will have an incentive to fire older employees. ..."
"... The answer is to separate health insurance from employment. Companies can't be trusted. Not only health care, but retirement is also sorely abused by corporations. All the money should be in protected employee based accounts. ..."
American companies pay health insurance premiums based on their specific employee profiles. Insurance companies compete with each
other for the business, but costs are actual. And based on the profile of the pool of employees. So American companies fire older
workers just to lower the average age of their employees. Statistically this is going to lower their health care costs.
As long as companies pay for their employees' health insurance they will have an incentive to fire older employees.
They have an incentive to fire sick employees and employees with genetic risks. Those are harder to implement as ways to
lower costs. Firing older employees is simple to do, just look up their ages.
The answer is to separate health insurance from employment. Companies can't be trusted. Not only health care, but retirement
is also sorely abused by corporations. All the money should be in protected employee based accounts.
By the way, most tech companies are actually run by older people. The goal is to broom out mid-level people based on age. Nobody
is going to suggest to a sixty year old president that they should self fire, for the good of the company.
IMHO this is perilous for RHEL. It would be very easy for IBM to fire most of the
developers and just latch on to the enterprise services stuff to milk it till its dry.
Why would you say that? IBM is renowned for their wonderful employee relations.
</s>
If I were a Red Hat employee over 40, I'd be sweating right now.
blockquote> We run just about everything on CentOS around here, downstream of
RHEL. Should we be worried?
I don't think so, at least no more than you should have already been. IBM has adopted RHEL
as their standard platform for a lot of things, all the way up to big-iron mainframes. Not to
mention, over the two decades, they've done a hell of a lot of enhancements to Linux that are
a big part of why it scales so well (Darl Mcbride just felt like someone walked over his
grave. Hey, let's jump on it a bit too!).
Say what you like about IBM (like they've turned into a super-shitty place to work for or
be a customer of), but they've been a damn good friend to Linux. If I actually worked for Red
Hat though, I would be really unhappy because you can bet that "independence" will last a few
quarters before everyone gets outsourced to Brazil.
Brazil is too expensive. Last time I heard, they were outsourcing from Brazil to chapear
LA countries...
IBM are paying around 12x annual revenue for Red Hat which is a significant multiple so
they will have to squeeze more money out of the business somehow. Either they grow
customers or they increase margins or both.
IBM had little choice but to do something like this. They are in a terminal spiral
thanks to years of bad leadership. The confused billing of the purchase smacks of rush, so
far I have seen Red Hat described as a cloud company, an info sec company, an open source
company...
So IBM are buying Red Hat as a last chance bid to avoid being put through the PE
threshing machine. Red Hat get a ludicrous premium so will take the money.
And RH customers will want to check their contracts...
They will lay off Redhat staff to cut costs and replace them with remote programmers
living in Calcutta. To big corporations a programmer is a fungible item, if you can swap
programmer A woth programmer B at 1/4 the cost its a big win and you beat earnings estimate
by a penny.
No good will come from this. IBM's corporate environment and financial near-sightedness
will kill Red Hat. Time to start looking for a new standard bearer in Linux for business.
This will kill both companies. Red has trouble making money and IBM has trouble not
messing up what good their is and trouble making money. They both die, but a slow, possibly
accelerating, death.
F or nearly a half century, IBM came as close as any company to bearing the torch for the American Dream.
As the world's dominant technology firm, payrolls at International Business Machines Corp. swelled to nearly a quarter-million
U.S. white-collar workers in the 1980s. Its profits helped underwrite a broad agenda of racial equality, equal pay for women and
an unbeatable offer of great wages and something close to lifetime employment, all in return for unswerving loyalty.
But when high tech suddenly started shifting and companies went global, IBM faced the changing landscape with a distinction most
of its fiercest competitors didn't have: a large number of experienced and aging U.S. employees.
The company reacted with a strategy that, in the words of one confidential planning document, would "correct seniority mix." It
slashed IBM's U.S. workforce by as much as three-quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger, less-experienced
and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas. ProPublica estimates that in the past five years alone, IBM has eliminated
more than 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts during those years.
In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked U.S. laws and regulations intended to protect later-career workers from age
discrimination, according to a ProPublica review of internal company documents, legal filings and public records, as well as information
provided via interviews and questionnaires filled out by more than 1,000 former IBM employees.
Among ProPublica's findings, IBM:
Denied older workers information the law says they need in order to decide whether they've been victims of age bias, and required
them to sign away the right to go to court or join with others to seek redress. Targeted people for layoffs and firings with techniques
that tilted against older workers, even when the company rated them high performers. In some instances, the money saved from the
departures went toward hiring young replacements. Converted job cuts into retirements and took steps to boost resignations and firings.
The moves reduced the number of employees counted as layoffs, where high numbers can trigger public disclosure requirements. Encouraged
employees targeted for layoff to apply for other IBM positions, while quietly advising managers not to hire them and requiring many
of the workers to train their replacements. Told some older employees being laid off that their skills were out of date, but then
brought them back as contract workers, often for the same work at lower pay and fewer benefits.
IBM declined requests for the numbers or age breakdown of its job cuts. ProPublica provided the company with a 10-page summary
of its findings and the evidence on which they were based. IBM spokesman Edward Barbini said that to respond the company needed to
see copies of all documents cited in the story, a request ProPublica could not fulfill without breaking faith with its sources. Instead,
ProPublica provided IBM with detailed descriptions of the paperwork. Barbini declined to address the documents or answer specific
questions about the firm's policies and practices, and instead issued the following statement:
"We are proud of our company and our employees' ability to reinvent themselves era after era, while always complying with the
law. Our ability to do this is why we are the only tech company that has not only survived but thrived for more than 100 years."
With nearly 400,000 people worldwide, and tens of thousands still in the U.S., IBM remains a corporate giant. How it handles the
shift from its veteran baby-boom workforce to younger generations will likely influence what other employers do. And the way it treats
its experienced workers will eventually affect younger IBM employees as they too age.
Fifty years ago, Congress made it illegal with the Age Discrimination
in Employment Act , or ADEA, to treat older workers differently than younger ones with only a few exceptions, such as jobs that
require special physical qualifications. And for years, judges and policymakers treated the law as essentially on a par with prohibitions
against discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation and other categories.
In recent decades, however, the courts have responded to corporate pleas for greater leeway to meet global competition and satisfy
investor demands for rising profits by expanding the exceptions and
shrinking
the protections against age bias .
"Age discrimination is an open secret like sexual harassment was until recently," said Victoria Lipnic, the acting chair of the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, the independent federal agency that administers the nation's workplace anti-discrimination
laws.
"Everybody knows it's happening, but often these cases are difficult to prove" because courts have weakened the law, Lipnic said.
"The fact remains it's an unfair and illegal way to treat people that can be economically devastating."
Many companies have sought to take advantage of the court rulings. But the story of IBM's downsizing provides an unusually detailed
portrait of how a major American corporation systematically identified employees to coax or force out of work in their 40s, 50s and
60s, a time when many are still productive and need a paycheck, but face huge hurdles finding anything like comparable jobs.
The dislocation caused by IBM's cuts has been especially great because until recently the company encouraged its employees to
think of themselves as "IBMers" and many operated under the assumption that they had career-long employment.
When the ax suddenly fell, IBM provided almost no information about why an employee was cut or who else was departing, leaving
people to piece together what had happened through websites, listservs and Facebook groups such as "Watching IBM" or "Geographically
Undesirable IBM Marketers," as well as informal support groups.
Marjorie Madfis, at the time 57, was a New York-based digital marketing strategist and 17-year IBM employee when she and six other
members of her nine-person team -- all women in their 40s and 50s -- were laid off in July 2013. The two who remained were younger
men.
Since her specialty was one that IBM had said it was expanding, she asked for a written explanation of why she was let go. The
company declined to provide it.
"They got rid of a group of highly skilled, highly effective, highly respected women, including me, for a reason nobody knows,"
Madfis said in an interview. "The only explanation is our age."
Brian Paulson, also 57, a senior manager with 18 years at IBM, had been on the road for more than a year overseeing hundreds of
workers across two continents as well as hitting his sales targets for new services, when he got a phone call in October 2015 telling
him he was out. He said the caller, an executive who was not among his immediate managers, cited "performance" as the reason, but
refused to explain what specific aspects of his work might have fallen short.
It took Paulson two years to land another job, even though he was equipped with an advanced degree, continuously employed at high-level
technical jobs for more than three decades and ready to move anywhere from his Fairview, Texas, home.
"It's tough when you've worked your whole life," he said. "The company doesn't tell you anything. And once you get to a certain
age, you don't hear a word from the places you apply."
Paul Henry, a 61-year-old IBM sales and technical specialist who loved being on the road, had just returned to his Columbus home
from a business trip in August 2016 when he learned he'd been let go. When he asked why, he said an executive told him to "keep your
mouth shut and go quietly."
Henry was jobless more than a year, ran through much of his savings to cover the mortgage and health insurance and applied for
more than 150 jobs before he found a temporary slot.
"If you're over 55, forget about preparing for retirement," he said in an interview. "You have to prepare for losing your job
and burning through every cent you've saved just to get to retirement."
IBM's latest actions aren't anything like what most ex-employees with whom ProPublica talked expected from their years of service,
or what today's young workers think awaits them -- or are prepared to deal with -- later in their careers.
"In a fast-moving economy, employers are always going to be tempted to replace older workers with younger ones, more expensive
workers with cheaper ones, those who've performed steadily with ones who seem to be up on the latest thing," said Joseph Seiner,
an employment law professor at the University of South Carolina and former appellate attorney for the EEOC.
"But it's not good for society," he added. "We have rules to try to maintain some fairness in our lives, our age-discrimination
laws among them. You can't just disregard them."
I recall, back in the mid-1960s, encountering employees of major major corporations like IBM,
US Steel, the Big Three in Detroit, etc, There was a certain smugness there. I recall hearing
bragging about the awesome retirement incomes. Yes, I was jealous. But I also had a clear eye
as to the nature of the beast they were working for, and I kept thinking of the famous
limerick:
There was a young lady of Niger Who smiled as she rode on a Tiger; They came back from the ride With the lady inside, And the smile on the face of the Tiger.
As an ex-IBM employee, I was given a package ( 6 months pay and a "transition" course)
because I was getting paid too much or so I was told. I was part of a company (oil industry)
that outsourced it's IT infrastructure support personnel and on several occasions was told by
my IBM management that they just don't know what to do with employees who make the kind of
money I do when we can do it much cheaper somewhere else (meaning offshore).
Eventually all
the people who I worked with that were outsourced to IBM were packaged off and all of our
jobs were sent offshore. I just turned 40 and found work back in the oil industry. In the
short time I was with IBM I found their benefits very restricted, their work policies very
bureaucratic and the office culture very old boys club.
If you weren't part of IBM and were
an outsourced employee, you didn't fit in. At the time I thought IBM was the glory company in
IT to work for, but quickly found out they are just a dinosaur. It's just a matter of time
for them.
"... There's not an intrinsic advantage to being of a certain nationality, American included. Sure, there are a lot of bad companies and bad programmers coming from India, but there are plenty of incompetent developers right here too. ..."
"... A huge problem with the good developers over there is the lack of English proficiency and soft skills. However, being born or graduated in Calcutta (or anywhere else for that matter) is not a determination of one's skill. ..."
"... I get what the intention of the first comment was intended to be, but it still has that smugness that is dangerous to the American future. As the world becomes more interconnected, and access to learning improves, when people ask you why are you better than that other guy, the answer better be something more than "well, I'm American and he is from Calcutta" because no one is going to buy that. The comment could've said that to a bean counter a solid developer with 10 years of experience is worth the same as a junior dev who just came out of school and make the same point. What exactly was the objective of throwing in Calcutta over there? ..."
"... I have dealt with this far too much these VPs rarely do much work and simply are hit on bottom line ( you are talking about 250k+), but management in US doesn't want to sit off hours and work with India office so they basically turn a blind eye on them. ..."
No good will come from this. IBM's corporate environment and financial near-sightedness will kill Red Hat. Time
to start looking for a new standard bearer in Linux for business.
I agree. Redhat has dev offices all over. A lot of them in higher cost areas of the US and Europe. There's no way
IBM doesn't consolidate and offshore a bunch of that work.
This. To a bean counter a developer in a RH office in North America or Europe who's been coding for RH for 10 years
is valued same as a developer in Calcutta who just graduated from college. For various definitions of word 'graduated'.
I'm just waiting until some major company decides that some of the nicer parts of middle America/Appalachia can be a
LOT cheaper, still nice, and let them pay less in total while keeping some highly skilled employees.
I don't know about that. Cities can be expensive but part of the reason is that a lot of people want to live there, and
supply/demand laws start acting. You'll be able to get some talent no doubt, but a lot of people who live nearby big cities
wouldn't like to leave all the quality of life elements you have there, like entertainment, cultural events, shopping, culinary
variety, social events, bigger dating scene, assorted array of bars and night clubs, theatre, opera, symphonies, international
airports... you get the drift.
I understand everyone is different, but you would actually need to pay me more to move to a smaller town in middle America.
I also work with people who would take the offer without hesitation, but in my admittedly anecdotal experience, more tech people
prefer the cities than small towns. Finally, if you do manage to get some traction in getting the people and providing the
comforts, then you're just going to get the same increase in cost of living wherever you are because now you're just in one
more big city.
Costs of life are a problem, but we need to figure out how to properly manage them, instead of just saying "lets move them
somewhere else". Also we shouldn't discount the capability of others, because going by that cost argument outsourcing becomes
attractive. The comment you're replying to tries to diminish Indian engineers, but the reverse can still be true. A developer
in India who has been working for 10 years costs even less than an American who just graduated, for various definitions of
graduated. There's over a billion people over there, and the Indian Institutes of Technology are nothing to scoff at.
There's not an intrinsic advantage to being of a certain nationality, American included. Sure, there are a lot of bad
companies and bad programmers coming from India, but there are plenty of incompetent developers right here too. It's just
that there are a lot more in general over there and they would come for cheap, so in raw numbers it seems overwhelming, but
that sword cuts both ways, the raw number of competent ones is also a lot.
About 5% of the American workforce are scientists and engineers, which make a bit over 7 million people. The same calculation
in India brings you to almost 44 million people.
A huge problem with the good developers over there is the lack of English proficiency and soft skills. However, being
born or graduated in Calcutta (or anywhere else for that matter) is not a determination of one's skill.
I get what the intention of the first comment was intended to be, but it still has that smugness that is dangerous to
the American future. As the world becomes more interconnected, and access to learning improves, when people ask you why are
you better than that other guy, the answer better be something more than "well, I'm American and he is from Calcutta" because
no one is going to buy that. The comment could've said that to a bean counter a solid developer with 10 years of experience
is worth the same as a junior dev who just came out of school and make the same point. What exactly was the objective of throwing
in Calcutta over there? Especially when we then move to a discussion about how costly it is to pay salaries in America.
Sounds a bit counterproductive if you ask me.
I think a lot of the dislike for Indian developers is that they usually are the outsourced to cheap as possible code monkey
developers. Which can be a problem anywhere, for sure, but at least seem exacerbated by US companies outsourcing there. In my
limited experience, they're either intelligent and can work up to working reasonably independently and expanding on a ticket intelligently.
Or they're copy a pasta code monkey and need pretty good supervision of the code that's produced. Add in the problem if timezones
and folks who may not understand English that great, or us not understanding their English, and it all gives them a bad name.
Yet I agree, I know some quite good developers. Ones that didn't go to a US college.
My impression, totally anecdotal, is that unless you can hire or move a very good architect/lead + project/product manager
over there so you can interact in real-time instead of with a day delay, it's just a huge PITA and slows things down. Personally
I'd rather hire a couple of seemingly competent 3 years out of college on their 2nd job (because they rarely stay very long at
their first one, right?) and pay from there.
Companies/management offshore because it keep revenue per employee and allows them to be promoted by inflating their direct
report allowing them to build another "cheap" pyramid hierarchy. A manager in US can become a director or VP easily by having
few managers report to him from India. Even better this person can go to India ( they are most often Indian) and claim to lead
the India office and improve outsourcing while getting paid US salary.
I have dealt with this far too much these VPs rarely do much work and simply are hit on bottom line ( you are talking about
250k+), but management in US doesn't want to sit off hours and work with India office so they basically turn a blind eye on them.
Outstanding. I had to train people in IBM India to do my job when (early) "retired". I actually found a new internal job in IBM,
the hiring manager wrote/chat that I was a fit. I was denied the job because my current group said I had to transfer and the receiving
group said I had to be on a contract, stalemate! I appealed and group HR said sorry, can't do and gave me one reason after another,
that I could easily refute, then they finally said the job was to be moved overseas. Note most open jobs posted were categorized
for global resources. I appealed to Randy (former HR SVP) and no change. At least I foced them to finally tell the truth. I had
also found another job locally near home and received an email from the HR IBM person responsible for the account saying no, they
were considering foreigners first, if they found no one suitable they would then consider Americans. I appealed to my IBM manager
who basically said sorry, that is how things are now. All in writing, so no more pretending it is a skill issue. People, it is
and always has been about cheap labor. I recall when a new IBM technology began, Websphere, and I was sent for a month's training.
Then in mid-2000's training and raises pretty much stopped and that was when resource actions were stepped up.
IBM is bad, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. I worked for a major international company that dumped almost the entire IT
workforce and replaced them with "managed services", almost exclusively H-1B workers from almost exclusively India. This has been
occurring for decades in many, MANY businesses around the country large and small. Even this article seems to make a special effort
to assure us that "some" workers laid off in America were replaced with "younger, less experienced, lower-paid American workers
and moving many other jobs overseas." How many were replaced with H-1B, H-4 EAD, OPT, L-1, etc? It's by abusing these work visa
programs that companies facilitate moving the work overseas in the first place. I appreciate this article, but I think it's disingenuous
for ProPublica to ignore the elephant in the room - work visa abuse. Why not add a question or two to your polls about that? It
wouldn't be hard. For example, "Do you feel that America's work visa programs had an impact on your employment at IBM? Do you
feel it has had an impact on your ability to regain employment after leaving IBM?" I'd like to see the answer to THOSE questions.
Jonathan Golub, Credit Suisse chief U.S. equity strategist, and Margaret Patel, Wells Fargo
Asset Management senior portfolio manager, join 'Squawk on the Street' to discuss markets
rebounding after last week's sell-off.
yesterday HAHAHAHAHA ...
What ground breaking insight! This claim has ALWAYS been true ... so to claim otherwise
would be insane.
The questions are ... are we going lower before the rebound ... and how long will it take
to get it all back after a 15% to 20% correction.
Any doofus can look at the long term market charts and make this same claim. The key term
is "eventually" ... and key factor is how long will it take along with how old you are or
how much time you have to recoup. yesterday If he could tell the future I sure
wish he would have told me to pull out last month. 23 hours ago Wells Fargo
Asset Management??? THAT inspires confidence. LOL yesterday Move the stock exchange to Las
Vegas. It's a more fitting place to host the gambling.
y
yesterday If you live long enough.
M yesterday I agree - a
nice holiday season rally will put us back to the highs before the end of the year. As soon
as the market starts going up, everyone will jump onboard. Good time to sit on the
sidelines and wait for the drama queens to let it all out
These practices are "interesting". And people still wonder why there are so many deadly amok
runs at US companies? What do they expect when they replace old and experienced workers with
inexperienced millenials, who often lack basic knowledge about their job? Better performance?
This will run US tech companies into the ground. This sort of "American" HR management is
gaining ground here in Germany as well, its troubling. And on top they have to compete against
foreign tech immigrants from middle eastern and asian companies. Sure fire recipe for social
unrest and people voting for right-wing parties.
I too was a victim of IBM's underhanded trickery to get rid of people...39 years with IBM,
a top performer. I never got a letter telling me to move to Raleigh. All i got was a phone
call asking me if i wanted to take the 6 month exception to consider it. Yet, after taking the
6 month exception, I was told I could no longer move, the colocation was closed. Either I find
another job, not in Marketing support (not even Marketing) or leave the company. I received no
letter from Ginni, nothing. I was under the impression I could show up in Raleigh after the
exception period. Not so. It was never explained....After 3 months I will begin contracting
with IBM. Not because I like them, because I need the money...thanks for the article.
dropped in 2013 after 22 years. IBM stopped leading in the late 1980's, afterwards it
implemented "market driven quality" which meant listen for the latest trends, see what other
people were doing, and then buy the competition or drive them out of business. "Innovation that
matters": it's only interesting if an IBM manager can see a way to monetize it.
That's a low standard. It's OK, there are other places that are doing better. In fact, the
best of the old experienced people went to work there. Newsflash: quality doesn't change with
generations, you either create it or you don't.
Sounds like IBM is building its product portfolio to match its desired workforce. And of
course, on every round of layoffs, the clear criterion was people who were compliant and
pliable - who's ready to follow orders ? Best of luck.
I agree with many who state the report is well done. However, this crap started in the early
1990s. In the late 1980s, IBM offered decent packages to retirement eligible employees. For
those close to retirement age, it was a great deal - 2 weeks pay for every year of service
(capped at 26 years) plus being kept on to perform their old job for 6 months (while
collecting retirement, until the government stepped in an put a halt to it). Nobody eligible
was forced to take the package (at least not to general knowledge). The last decent package
was in 1991 - similar, but not able to come back for 6 months.
However, in 1991, those offered the package were basically told take it or else. Anyone
with 30 years of service or 15 years and 55 was eligible and anyone within 5 years of
eligibility could "bridge" the difference.
They also had to sign a form stating they would not sue IBM in order to get up to a years
pay - not taxable per IRS documents back then (but IBM took out the taxes anyway and the IRS
refused to return - an employee group had hired lawyers to get the taxes back, a failed
attempt which only enriched the lawyers).
After that, things went downhill and accelerated when Gerstner took over. After 1991,
there were still a some workers who could get 30 years or more, but that was more the
exception. I suspect the way the company has been run the past 25 years or so has the Watsons
spinning in their graves. Gone are the 3 core beliefs - "Respect for the individual",
"Service to the customer" and "Excellence must be a way of life".
could be true... but i thought Watson was the IBM data analytics computer thingy... beat two
human players at Jeopardy on live tv a year or two or so back.. featured on 60 Minutes just
around last year.... :
IBM's policy reminds me of the "If a citizen = 30 y.o., then mass execute such, else if they
run then hunt and kill them one by one" social policy in the Michael York movie "Logan's
Run."
From Wiki, in case you don't know: "It depicts a utopian future society on the surface,
revealed as a dystopia where the population and the consumption of resources are maintained
in equilibrium by killing everyone who reaches the age of 30. The story follows the actions
of Logan 5, a "Sandman" who has terminated others who have attempted to escape death, and is
now faced with termination himself."
"... The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation. And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980. ..."
If anything, IBM is behind the curve. I was terminated along with my entire department from a
major IBM subcontractor, with all affected employees "coincidentally" being over 50. By
"eliminating the department" and forcing me to sign a waiver to receive my meager severance,
they avoided any legal repercussions. 18 months later on the dot (the minimum legal time
period), my workload was assigned to three new hires, all young. Interestingly, their
combined salaries are more than mine, and I could have picked up all their work for about
$200 in training (in social media posting, something I picked up on my own last year and am
doing quite well, thank you).
And my former colleagues are not alone. A lot of friends of mine have had similar
outcomes, and as the article states, no one will hire people my age willingly in my old
capacity. Luckily again, I've pivoted into copywriting--a discipline where age is still
associated with quality ("dang kids can't spell anymore!"). But I'm doing it freelance, with
the commensurate loss of security, benefits, and predictability of income.
So if IBM is doing this now, they are laggards. But because they're so big, there's a much
more obvious paper trail.
One of the most in-depth, thoughtful and enlightening pieces of journalism I've seen. Having
worked on Capitol Hill during the early 1980's for the House and Senate Aging Committees, we
worked hard to abolish the remnants of mandatory retirement and to strengthen the protections
under the ADEA. Sadly, the EEOC has become a toothless bureaucracy when it comes to age
discrimination cases and the employers, as evidenced by the IBM case, have become
sophisticated in hiding what they're doing to older workers. Peter's incredibly well
researched article lays the case out for all to see. Now the question is whether the
government will step up to its responsibilities and protect older workers from this kind of
discrimination in the future. Peter has done a great service in any case.
The US tech sector has mostly ignored US citizen applicants, of all ages, since the early
2000s. Instead, preferring to hire foreign nationals. The applications of top US citizen
grads are literally thrown in the garbage (or its electronic equivalent) while companies like
IBM have their hiring processes dominated by Indian nationals. IBM is absolutely a
poster-child for H-1B, L-1, and OPT visa abuse.
Bottom line is we have entered an era when there are only two classes who are protected in
our economy; the Investor Class and the Executive Class. With Wall Street's constant demand
for higher profits and increased shareholder value over all other business imperatives, rank
and file workers have been relegated to the class of expendable resource. I propose that all
of us over fifty who have been riffed out of Corporate America band together for the specific
purpose of beating the pants off them in the marketplace. The best revenge is whooping their
youngster butts at the customer negotiating table. By demonstrating we are still flexible and
nimble, yet with the experience to avoid the missteps of misspent youth, we prove we can
deliver value well beyond what narrow-minded bean counters can achieve.
I started at IBM 3 days out of college in 1979 and retired in 2017. I was satisfied with my
choice and never felt mistreated because I had no expectation of lifetime employment,
especially after the pivotal period in the 1990's when IBM almost went out of business. The
company survived that period by dramatically restructuring both manufacturing costs and sales
expense including the firing of tens of thousands of employees. These actions were well
documented in the business news of the time, the obvious alternative was bankruptcy.
I told the authors that anyone working at IBM after 1993 should have had no expectation of
a lifetime career. Downsizing, outsourcing, movement of work around the globe was already
commonplace at all such international companies. Any expectation of "loyalty", that two-way
relationship of employee/company from an earlier time, was wishful thinking. I was always
prepared to be sent packing, without cause, at any time and always had my resume up-to-date.
I stayed because of interesting work, respectful supervisors, and adequate compensation. The
"resource action" that forced my decision to retire was no surprise, the company that hired
me had been gone for decades.
With all the automation going on around the world, these business leaders better worry about
people not having money to buy their goods and services plus what are they going to do with
the surplus of labor
I had, more or less, the same experience at Cisco. They paid me to quit. Luckily, I was ready
for it.
The article mentions IBMs 3 failures. So who was it that was responsible for not
anticipating the transitions? It is hard enough doing what you already know. Perhaps
companies should be spending more on figuring out "what's next" and not continually playing
catch-up by dumping the older workers for the new.
I was laid off by IBM after 29 years and 4 months. I had received a division award in
previous year, and my last PBC appraisal was 2+ (high performer.) The company I left was not
the company I started with. Top management--starting with Gerstner--has steadily made IBM a
less desirable place to work. They now treat employees as interchangeable assets and nothing
more. I cannot/would not recommend IBM as an employer to any young programmer.
Truly awesome work. I do want to add one thing, however--the entire rhetoric about "too many
old white guys" that has become so common absolutely contributes to the notion that this sort
of behavior is not just acceptable but in some twisted way admirable as well.
Is anyone surprised that so many young people don't think capitalism is a good system any
more?
I ran a high technology electronic systems company for years. We ran it "the old way." If
you worked hard, and tried, we would bend over backwards to keep you. If technology or
business conditions eliminated your job, we would try to train you for a new one. Our people
were loyal, not like IBMers today. I honestly think that's the best way to be profitable.
People afraid of being unjustly RIFFed will always lack vitality.
I'm glad someone is finally paying attention to age discrimination. IBM apparently is just
one of many organizations that discriminate.
I'm in the middle of my own fight with the State University of New York (SUNY) over age
discrimination. I was terminated by a one of the technical colleges in the SUNY System. The
EEOC/New York State Division of Human Rights (NYDHR) found that "PROBABLE CAUSE (NYDHR's
emphasis) exists to believe that the Respondent (Alfred State College - SUNY) has engaged in
or is engaging in the unlawful discriminatory practice complained of." Investigators for
NYDHR interviewed several witnesses, who testified that representatives of the college made
statements such as "we need new faces", "three old men" attending a meeting, an older faculty
member described as an "albatross", and "we ought to get rid of the old white guys".
Witnesses said these statements were made by the Vice President of Academic Affairs and a
dean at the college.
This saga at IBM is simply a microcosm of our overall economy. Older workers get ousted in
favor of younger, cheaper workers; way too many jobs get outsourced; and so many workers
today [young and old] can barely land a full-time job.
This is the behavior that our system incentivises (and gets away with) in this post Reagan
Revolution era where deregulation is lauded and unions have been undermined & demonized.
We need to seriously re-work 'work', and in order to do this we need to purge Republicans at
every level, as they CLEARLY only serve corporate bottom-lines - not workers - by championing
tax codes that reward outsourcing, fight a livable minimum wage, eliminate pensions, bust
unions, fight pay equity for women & family leave, stack the Supreme Court with radical
ideologues who blatantly rule for corporations over people all the time, etc. etc. ~35 years
of basically uninterrupted Conservative economic policy & ideology has proven disastrous
for workers and our quality of life. As goes your middle class, so goes your country.
I am a retired IBM manager having had to execute many of these resource reduction programs..
too many.. as a matter of fact. ProPUBLICA....You nailed it!
IBM has always treated its customer-facing roles like Disney -- as cast members who need to
match a part in a play. In the 60s and 70s, it was the white-shirt, blue-suit white men whom
IBM leaders thought looked like mainframe salesmen. Now, rather than actually build a
credible cloud to compete with Amazon and Microsoft, IBM changes the cast to look like cloud
salespeople. (I work for Microsoft. Commenting for myself alone.)
I am a survivor, the rare employee who has been at IBM for over 35 years. I have seen many,
many layoff programs over 20 years now. I have seen tens of thousands people let go from the
Hudson Valley of N.Y. Those of us who have survived, know and lived through what this article
so accurately described. I currently work with 3 laid off/retired and rehired contractors. I
have seen age discrimination daily for over 15 years. It is not only limited to layoffs, it
is rampant throughout the company. Promotions, bonuses, transfers for opportunities, good
reviews, etc... are gone if you are over 45. I have seen people under 30 given promotions to
levels that many people worked 25 years for. IBM knows that these younger employees see how
they treat us so they think they can buy them off. Come to think of it, I guess they actually
are! They are ageist, there is no doubt, it is about time everyone knew. Excellent article.
Nice article, but seriously this is old news. IBM has been at this for ...oh twenty years or
more.
I don't really have a problem with it in terms of a corporation trying to make money. But I
do have a problem with how IBM also likes to avoid layoffs by giving folks over 40
intentionally poor reviews, essentially trying to drive people out. Just have the guts to
tell people, we don't need you anymore, bye. But to string people along as the overseas
workers come in...c'mon just be honest with your workers.
High tech over 40 is not easy...I suggest folks prep for a career change before 50. Then you
can have the last laugh on a company like IBM.
From pages 190-191 of my novel, Ordinary Man (Amazon):
Throughout
it all, layoffs became common, impacting mostly older employees with many years
of service. These job cuts were dribbled out in small numbers to conceal them
from the outside world, but employees could plainly see what was going on.
The laid off
employees were supplanted by offshoring work to low-costs countries and hiring
younger employees, often only on temporary contracts that offered low pay and
no benefits – a process pejoratively referred to by veteran employees as
"downsourcing." The recruitment of these younger workers was done under the
guise of bringing in fresh skills, but while many of the new hires brought new
abilities and vitality, they lacked the knowledge and perspective that comes
with experience.
Frequently,
an older more experienced worker would be asked to help educate newer
employees, only to be terminated shortly after completing the task. And the new
hires weren't fooled by what they witnessed and experienced at OpenSwitch,
perceiving very quickly that the company had no real interest in investing in
them for the long term. To the contrary, the objective was clearly to grind as
much work out of them as possible, without offering any hope of increased
reward or opportunity.
Most of the
young recruits left after only a year or two – which, again, was part of the
true agenda at the company. Senior management viewed employees not as talent,
but simply as cost, and didn't want anyone sticking around long enough to move
up the pay scale.
This is the nail in the coffin. As an IT manager responsible for selecting and purchasing
software, I will never again recommend IBM products. I love AIX and have worked with a lot if
IBM products but not anymore. Good luck with the millennials though...
I worked for four major corporations (HP, Intel, Control Data Corporation, and Micron
Semiconductor) before I was hired by IBM as a rare (at that time) experienced new hire. Even
though I ended up working for IBM for 21 years, and retired in 2013, because of my
experiences at those other companies, I never considered IBM my "family." The way I saw it,
every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost)
even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The idea of loyalty
between a corporation and an at-will employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a
motel and its guests. It is a business arrangement, not a love affair. Every individual needs
to continually assess their skills and their value to their employer. If they are not
commensurate, it is the employee's responsibility to either acquire new skills or seek a new
employer. Your employer will not hesitate to lay you off if your skills are no longer needed,
or if they can hire someone who can do your job just as well for less pay. That is free
enterprise, and it works for people willing to take advantage of it.
I basically agree. But why should it be OK for a company to fire you just to replace you with
a younger you? If all that they accomplish is lowering their health care costs (which is what
this is really about). If the company is paying about the same for the same work, why is
firing older workers for being older OK?
Good question. The point I was trying to make is that people need to watch out for themselves
and not expect their employer to do what is "best" for the employee. I think that is true
whatever age the employee happens to be.
Whether employers should be able to discriminate against (treat differently) their
employees based on age, gender, race, religion, etc. is a political question. Morally, I
don't think they should discriminate. Politically, I think it is a slippery slope when the
government starts imposing regulations on free enterprise. Government almost always creates
more problems than they fix.
Sorry, but when you deregulate the free enterprise, it created more problems than it fixes
and that is a fact that has been proven for the last 38 years.
That's just plain false. Deregulation creates competiiton. Competition for talented and
skilled workers creates opportunities for those that wish to be employed and for those that
wish to start new ventures. For example, when Ma Bell was regulated and had a monopoly on
telecommunications there was no innovation in the telecom inudstry. However, when it was
deregulated, cell phones, internet, etc exploded ... creating billionaires and millionaires
while also improving the quality of life.
No, it happens to be true. When Reagan deregulate the economy, a lot of those corporate
raiders just took over the companies, sold off the assets, and pocketed the money. What
quality of life? Half of American lived near the poverty level and the wages for the workers
have been stagnant for the last 38 years compared to a well-regulated economy in places like
Germany and the Scandinavian countries where the workers have good wages and a far better
standard of living than in the USA. Why do you think the Norwegians told Trump that they will
not be immigrating to the USA anytime soon?
What were the economic conditions before Regan? It was a nightmare before Regan.
The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The
economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare of stagflation," so called because it combined
low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation. And
the prime rate hit 20% by 1980.
At least we had a manufacturing base in the USA, strong regulations of corporations,
corporate scandals were far and few, businesses did not go under so quickly, prices of goods
and services did not go through the roof, people had pensions and could reasonably live off
them, and recessions did not last so long or go so deep until Reagan came into office. In
Under Reagan, the jobs were allowed to be send overseas, unions were busted up, pensions were
reduced or eliminated, wages except those of the CEOs were staganent, and the economic
conditions under Bush, Senior and Bush, Jr. were no better except that Bush, Jr, was the
first president to have a net minus below zero growth, so every time we get a Republican
Administration, the economy really turns into a nightmare. That is a fact.
You have the Republicans in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin using Reaganomics and they are
economic disaster areas.
You had an industrial base in the USA, lots of banks and savings and loans to choose from,
lots of mom and pop stores, strong government regulation of the economy, able to live off
your pensions, strong unions and employment laws along with the court system to back you up
against corporate malfeasance. All that was gone when Reagan and the two Bushes came into
office.
Amazingly accurate article. The once great IBM now a dishonest and unscrupulous corporation
concerned more about earnings per share than employees, customers, or social responsibility.
In Global Services most likely 75% or more jobs are no longer in the US - can't believe a
word coming out of Armonk.
I'm not sure there was ever a paradise in employment. Yeah, you can say there was more job
stability 50 or 60 years ago, but that applied to a much smaller workforce than today (mostly
white men). It is a drag, but there are also lot more of us old farts than there used to be
and we live a lot longer in retirement as well. I don't see any magic bullet fix either.
Great article. What's especially infuriating is that the industry continues to claim that
there is a shortage of STEM workers. For example, google "claim of 1.4 million computer
science jobs with only 400,000 computer science graduates to fill them". If companies would
openly say, "we have plenty of young STEM workers and prefer them to most older STEM
workers", we could at least start addressing the problem. But they continue to promote the
lie of there being a STEM shortage. They just want as big a labor pool as possible,
unemployed workers be damned.
I've worked there 17 years and have worried about being layed off for about 11 of them. Moral
is in the toilet. Bonuses for the rank and file are in the under 1% range while the CEO gets
millions. Pay raises have been non existent or well under inflation for years. Adjusting for
inflation, I make $6K less than I did my first day. My group is a handful of people as at
least 1/2 have quit or retired. To support our customers, we used to have several people, now
we have one or two and if someone is sick or on vacation, our support structure is to hope
nothing breaks. We can't keep millennials because of pay, benefits and the expectation of
being available 24/7 because we're shorthanded. As the unemployment rate drops, more leave to
find a different job, leaving the old people as they are less willing to start over with pay,
vacation, moving, selling a house, pulling kids from school, etc. The younger people are
generally less likely to be willing to work as needed on off hours or to pull work from a
busier colleague. I honestly have no idea what the plan is when the people who know what they
are doing start to retire, we are way top heavy with 30-40 year guys who are on their way
out, very few of the 10-20 year guys due to hiring freezes and we can't keep new people past
2-3 years. It's like our support business model is designed to fail.
Make no mistake. The three and four letter acronyms and other mushy corporate speak may
differ from firm to firm, but this is going on in every large tech company old enough to have
a large population of workers over 50. I hope others will now be exposed.
This article hits the nail right on the head, as I come up on my 1 year anniversary from
being....ahem....'retired' from 23 years at IBM....and I'll be damned if I give them the
satisfaction of thinking this was like a 'death' to me. It was the greatest thing that could
have ever happened. Ginny and the board should be ashamed of themselves, but they won't be.
Starting around age 40 you start to see age discrimination. I think this is largely due to
economics, like increased vacation times, higher wages, but most of all the perception that
older workers will run up the medical costs. You can pass all the age related discrimination
laws you want, but look how ineffective that has been.
If you contrast this with the German workforce, you see that they have more older workers
with the skills and younger workers without are having a difficult time getting in. So what's
the difference? There are laws about how many vacation weeks that are given and there is a
national medical system that everyone pays, so discrimination isn't seen in the same
light.
The US is the only hold out maybe with South Africa that doesn't have a good national
medical insurance program for everyone. Not only do we pay more than the rest of the world,
but we also have discrimination because of it.
This is very good, and this is IBM. I know. I was plaintiff in Gundlach v. IBM Japan, 983
F.Supp.2d 389, which involved their violating Japanese labor law when I worked in Japan. The
New York federal judge purposely ignored key points of Japanese labor law, and also refused
to apply Title VII and Age Discrimination in Employment to the parent company in Westchester
County. It is a huge, self-described "global" company with little demonstrated loyalty to
America and Americans. Pennsylvania is suing them for $170 million on a botched upgrade of
the state's unemployment system.
In early 2013 I was given a 3 PBC rating for my 2012 performance, the main reason cited by my
manager being that my team lead thought I "seemed distracted". Five months later I was
included in a "resource action", and was gone by July. I was 20 months shy of 55. Younger
coworkers were retained. That was about two years after the product I worked on for over a
decade was off-shored.
Through a fluke of someone from the old, disbanded team remembering me, I was rehired two
years later - ironically in a customer support position for the very product I helped
develop.
While I appreciated my years of service, previous salary, and previous benefits being
reinstated, a couple years into it I realized I just wasn't cut out for the demands of the
job - especially the significant 24x7 pager duty. Last June I received email describing a
"Transition to Retirement" plan I was eligible for, took it, and my last day will be June 30.
I still dislike the job, but that plan reclassified me as part time, thus ending pager duty
for me. The job still sucks, but at least I no longer have to despair over numerous week long
24x7 stints throughout the year.
A significant disappointment occurred a couple weeks ago. I was discussing healthcare
options with another person leaving the company who hadn't been resource-actioned as I had,
and learned the hard way I lost over $30,000 in some sort of future medical benefit account
the company had established and funded at some point. I'm not sure I was ever even aware of
it. That would have funded several years of healthcare insurance during the 8 years until I'm
eligible for Medicare. I wouldn't be surprised if their not having to give me that had
something to do with my seeming "distracted" to them. <rolls eyes="">
What's really painful is the history of that former account can still be viewed at
Fidelity, where it associates my departure date in 2013 with my having "forfeited" that
money. Um, no. I did not forfeit that money, nor would I have. I had absolutely no choice in
the matter. I find the use of the word 'forfeited' to describe what happened as both
disingenuous and offensive. That said, I don't know whether's that's IBM's or Fidelity's
terminology, though.
Jeff, You should call Fidelity. I recently received a letter from the US Department of Labor
that they discovered that IBM was "holding" funds that belonged to me that I was never told
about. This might be similar or same story.
Great article. And so so close to home. I worked at IBM for 23 years until I became yet
another statistic -- caught up in one of their many "RA's" -- Resource Actions. I also can
identify with the point about being encouraged to find a job internally yet hiring managers
told to not hire. We were encouraged to apply for jobs outside the US -- Europe mainly -- as
long as we were willing to move and work at the prevailing local wage rate. I was totally
fine with that as my wife had been itching for some time for a chance to live abroad. I
applied for several jobs across Europe using an internal system IBM set up just for that
purpose. Never heard a word. Phone calls and internal e-mails to managers posting jobs in the
internal system went unanswered. It turned out to be a total sham as far as I was concerned.
IBM has laid off hundreds of thousands in the last few decades. Think of the MILLIONS of
children, spouses, brothers/sisters, aunts/uncles, and other family members of laid-off
people that were affected. Those people are or will be business owners and in positions to
make technology decisions. How many of them will think "Yeah, right, hire IBM. They're the
company that screwed daddy/mommy". I fully expect -- and I fully hope -- that I live to see
IBM go out of business. Which they will, sooner or later, as they are living off of past
laurels -- billions in the bank, a big fat patent portfolio, and real estate that they
continue to sell off or rent out. If you do hire IBM, you should fully expect that they'll
send some 20-something out to your company a few weeks after you hire them, that person will
be reading "XYZ for Dummys" on the plane on the way to your offices and will show up as your
IBM 'expert'.
> I was given the choice, retire or get a bad review and get fired, no severance. I
retired and have not been employed since because of my age. Got news for these business
people, experience trumps inexperience. Recently, I have developed several commercial Web
sites using cloud technology. In your face IBM.
> This could well have been written about Honeywell. Same tactics exactly. I laid myself
off and called it retirement after years of shoddy treatment and phonied up employee
evaluations. I took it personally until I realized that this is just American Management in
action. I don't know how they look themselves in the mirror in the morning.
> As an HR professional, I get sick when I hear of these tactics. Although this is not the
first company to use this strategy to make a "paradigm shift". Where are the geniuses at
Harvard, Yale, or the Wharton school of business (where our genius POTUS attended)? Can't
they come up with a better model of how to make these changes in an organization without
setting up the corp for a major lawsuit or God forbid ......they treat their employees with
dignity and respect.
> They are not trained at our business schools to think long-term or look for solutions to
problems or turn to the workforce for solutions. They are trained to maximizes the profits
and let society subsidies their losses and costs.
> Isn't it interesting that you are the first one (here or anywhere else that I've seen)
to talk about the complicity of Harvard and Yale in the rise of the Oligarchs.
Perhaps we should consider reevaluation of their lofty perch in American Education. Now if
we could only think of a way to expose the fraud.
> I was given the choice, retire or get a bad review and get fired, no severance. I
retired and have not been employed since because of my age. Got news for these business
people, experience trumps inexperience. Recently, I have developed several commercial Web
sites using cloud technology. In your face IBM.
> This could well have been written about Honeywell. Same tactics exactly. I laid myself
off and called it retirement after years of shoddy treatment and phonied up employee
evaluations. I took it personally until I realized that this is just American Management in
action. I don't know how they look themselves in the mirror in the morning.
> As an HR professional, I get sick when I hear of these tactics. Although this is not the
first company to use this strategy to make a "paradigm shift". Where are the geniuses at
Harvard, Yale, or the Wharton school of business (where our genius POTUS attended)? Can't
they come up with a better model of how to make these changes in an organization without
setting up the corp for a major lawsuit or God forbid ......they treat their employees with
dignity and respect.
> They are not trained at our business schools to think long-term or look for solutions to
problems or turn to the workforce for solutions. They are trained to maximizes the profits
and let society subsidies their losses and costs.
> Isn't it interesting that you are the first one (here or anywhere else that I've seen)
to talk about the complicity of Harvard and Yale in the rise of the Oligarchs.
Perhaps we should consider reevaluation of their lofty perch in American Education. Now if
we could only think of a way to expose the fraud.
"... In the early 1980's President Regan fired the striking air traffic controllers. This sent the message to management around the USA that it was OK to abuse employees in the workplace. By the end of the 1980's unions were totally emasculated and you had workers "going postal" in an abusive workplace. When unions were at their peak of power, they could appeal to the courts and actually stop a factory from moving out of the country by enforcing a labor contact. ..."
"... The American workplace is a nuthouse. Each and every individual workplace environment is like a cult. ..."
"... The American workplace is just a byproduct of the militarization of everyday life. ..."
"... Silicon Valley and Wall Street handed billions of dollars to this arrogant, ignorant Millennial Elizabeth Holmes. She abused any employee that questioned her. This should sound familiar to any employee who has had an overbearing know-it-all, bully boss in the workplace. Hopefully she will go to jail and a message will be sent that any young agist bully will not be given the power of god in the workplace. ..."
In the early 1980's President Regan fired the striking air traffic controllers. This
sent the message to management around the USA that it was OK to abuse employees in the
workplace. By the end of the 1980's unions were totally emasculated and you had workers
"going postal" in an abusive workplace. When unions were at their peak of power, they could
appeal to the courts and actually stop a factory from moving out of the country by enforcing
a labor contact.
Today we have a President in the White House who was elected on a platform of "YOU'RE
FIRED." Not surprisingly, Trump was elected by the vast majority of selfish lowlives in this
country. The American workplace is a nuthouse. Each and every individual workplace
environment is like a cult.
That is not good for someone like me who hates taking orders from people. But I have seen
it all. Ten years ago a Manhattan law firm fired every lawyer in a litigation unit except an
ex-playboy playmate. Look it up it was in the papers. I was fired from a job where many of my
bosses went to federal prison and then I was invited to the Christmas Party.
What are the salaries of these IBM employees and how much are their replacements making?
The workplace becomes a surrogate family. Who knows why some people get along and others
don't. My theory on agism in the workplace is that younger employees don't want to be around
their surrogate mother or father in the workplace after just leaving the real home under the
rules of their real parents.
The American workplace is just a byproduct of the militarization of everyday life. In the
1800's, Herman Melville wrote in his beautiful book "White Jacket" that one of the most
humiliating aspects of the military is taking orders from a younger military officer. I read
that book when I was 20. I didn't feel the sting of that wisdom until I was 40 and had a 30 year old appointed as
my supervisor who had 10 years less experience than me.
By the way, the executive that made
her my supervisor was one of the sleaziest bosses I have ever had in my career. Look at the
tech giant Theranos. Silicon Valley and Wall Street handed billions of dollars to this
arrogant, ignorant Millennial Elizabeth Holmes. She abused any employee that questioned her.
This should sound familiar to any employee who has had an overbearing know-it-all, bully boss
in the workplace. Hopefully she will go to jail and a message will be sent that any young agist bully will not be given the power of god in the workplace.
Marriage is in decline. This fact is by now so familiar to conservatives that they may be
tempted to gloss over an interesting shift in the manner of marriage's decline.
Thirty years ago, Americans were getting married but
not staying that way . Today divorce rates are down but wedding bells are also in less
demand. Growing numbers of young people are simply staying single. There's evidence they're
becoming less interested
even in casual sex .
Are men and women giving up on each other? It's starting to feel that way. In the vitriol of
the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, the #MeToo movement, and our ongoing discussions of " incels
, " " NEETs
, " and absent
fathers , we see rising levels of frustration and rage, often directed indiscriminately
from one sex towards the other. Making relationships work has always been a challenge -- even
casual human interactions can sometimes be a challenge. So what if people decide that it's just
not worth it anymore?
A few years back, I became aware of that countercultural strain of identity politics known
as the "men's rights movement." I first encountered it on social media, of course, and in a
quest to grasp its red-pilled logic, I spent some time wandering the fever swamps of male
grievance, noting the many interesting parallels between virulent masculinism and the more
radical strains of feminism. It added an interesting layer to my perspective on our ongoing war
of sexes.
It's well worth noting that both masculinism and feminism, at least in their more extreme
forms, are fundamentally materialist in their logic. Feminism draws regularly on Marxist
ideologies, reducing complex social relations to an endless war of classes vying for power. For
masculinists, sociobiology is the more defining influence, as huge swaths of culture and custom
are reduced to mere expressions of the Darwinian imperative to procreate. It all makes sense,
on reflection. Aggrieved women, resenting the natural vulnerability of their bodies, are
attracted to political theories that call for the leveling of power disparities. Aggrieved men,
by contrast, hope to find in the male body a kind of warrant for dominance, which is bestowed
by biology and ostensibly crucial to the survival of the species. Peeling back the layers, it
seems that gender crusaders of both types are intensely fixated on brute corporeal realities:
the strength of man and the comparative neediness of woman.
I noticed something else, too, in my journey through the manosphere. I'd had occasion to
note before that militant feminists tended to be disagreeably female in their
mannerisms, exemplifying many of the vices that are most characteristic of women. This is
particularly obvious in the more misandrist corners of the feminist world (for instance, where
people debate whether non-exploitative heterosexual sex is in principle impossible, or
whether it might theoretically happen in a radically different sort of society where the
patriarchy has truly been defanged). The women in these circles seemed morbidly emotional,
catty, and a mess of hair-trigger sensitivities. You couldn't possibly mistake them for men,
but calling them "feminine" felt like a disservice to my sex.
Sizing up militant man advocates, I saw a fascinating mirror image. They seemed boorish,
rage-prone, and obsessed with one-upping each other. They were everything women find most
noxious in men. Girls would never exhibit such behavior, but it surely did not qualify as
"manly."
These sad cross-sections of society give us a glimpse of a significant truth about the
sexes. We're better off together. Even the apparent exceptions, examined closely, usually
aren't. The
men of Mount Athos or the Poor Clares of
Perpetual Adoration may appear to live in single-sex worlds. But the former regard
themselves as the special servants of Christ's Mother, while the latter see themselves as his
Brides. Their methods may be idiosyncratic, but in their own way they do
enthusiastically embrace the opposite sex. This is dramatically different from what we see with
our resentful gender warriors.
However we go about it, men and women
seem happiest when we are balanced by our sexual complements. Healthy things can still be
difficult though. Men and women readily misunderstand one another, and the fact that we
do need one another opens the door to many types of exploitation and abuse. Avoiding
these pitfalls takes work. Too often nowadays, I hear young people describing family life as a
hazard more than a blessing, wondering not "what can I do to be worthy of another's love and
commitment?" but rather "what can marriage really do for me? "
Love doesn't easily grow in such a stony soil.
I myself had the good fortune of growing up in the Mormon Church, where teenagers are given
extensive instruction in preparing themselves for marriage. There are elements of that teaching
I would modify a bit, just based on my own marital experience. Two commonsense lessons still
stand out in my mind though.
First, you can't possibly be a good spouse unless you're willing to work on yourself.
Your partner will surely have some irritating qualities, but so do you. Also, sometimes
marriage will call for things that are not fully congenial to your comfortable, satisfied,
long-developed individual self. This can be a problem in a society that is constantly urging us
to self-actualize. But be willing to bend a little instead of always insisting that "this is
how I am."
For women, I see this manifested in a stubborn reluctance to do things that remind them too
much of domestic stereotypes. They're so worried about being pigeonholed as domestic that they
don't consider how much the occasional homemade stew or fresh-baked cookie might do to help the
men in their lives feel cared for and at home. Is avoiding Donna Reed associations really more
important than making your men feel loved?
On the men's side, I often hear gripes about how "commercial America" has made women
unreasonably greedy for compliments and ego-stroking. Let's assume this is true (though
personally I'm skeptical because I think women have always craved compliments). How hard is it,
really, to say some nice things to the women in your life? To me it often seems that resentful
men are so allergic to "sensitivity" (which they associate with distasteful images of modern,
metrosexual girly-men) that they can hardly be bothered to be kind.
The second point is that living together inevitably involves some putting-up-with and
I-can-live-with-that. This is expected, and not a violation of your human rights. If men and
women always got along easily, we wouldn't be so good for one another.
The #MeToo movement has given us a remarkable illustration of just how ungenerous men and
women can be towards one another. Aggrieved women, in their zeal to punish the patriarchy,
sometimes act as though any unwanted expression of interest is an outrageous insult. To
be sure, some overtures are improper and deserving of censure. But men and women will never
find happiness together if the latter aren't willing to assume any responsibility for
attracting and encouraging attention in appropriate ways, or for deflecting it graciously when
it is unwanted. If women are unable to distinguish between sexual predation and normal sexual
attraction, Cupid will find it exceedingly difficult to find his mark.
On the male side, some men resent women's "invasion" of once-masculine spaces to the point
that almost any accommodation feels like a personal affront. The truth is, women do
feel more vulnerable than men, in public, at work, or in social gatherings. That's because,
in a very real sense, we are. We shouldn't treat all men as likely aggressors, but men
should be expected to conform to behavioral standards that serve, among other things, to
help women feel safe. That's always been a major function of gentlemanly behavior, without
which men and women rarely find one another bearable for very long.
In their better moments, both feminists and masculinists raise worthwhile points. At the
same time, the posture of each may be inimical to the happiness of both. For the sake of
our children, but even just for our own sakes, men and women need to remember what we used to
like about each other. We used to think human society was worth it. Maybe it still is.
Rachel Lu is a senior contributor at The Federalist and a Robert Novak Fellow.
Four years ago, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) warned
of "the worst rental affordability crisis ever," citing data that:
"About half of renters spend more than 30% of their income on rent, up from 18% a decade
ago, according to newly released research by Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Twenty-seven percent of renters are paying more than half of their income on rent."
This is a significant problem for US consumers, and especially millennials, because as we
have noted repeatedly over the past year, and a new
report confirms , "rent increases continue to outpace workers' wage growth, meaning the
situation is getting worse."
In the second quarter of 2017, median asking rents jumped 5% from $864 to $910. In the first
half of 2018, they have remained at levels crushing the American worker.
While the surge in median asking rents has triggered an affordability crisis, new data now
shows just how much a person must make per month to afford rent.
According to HowMuch.Net, an American should budget 25% to 30% of monthly income for rent,
but as shown by the New Deal Democrat, workers are budgeting about 50% more of their salaries
than a decade earlier. The report specifically looked at the nation's capital, where a person
must make approximately $8,500 per month to afford rent.
In California, the state with the largest housing bubble, the monthly income to afford rent
is roughly $8,300, followed by Hawaii at $7,800 and New York at $7,220.
In contrast, the Rust Belt and the Southeastern region of the United States, one needs to
make only $3,500 per month to afford rent.
"Based on the rule of applying no more than one-third of income to housing, people living
in the Northeast must earn at least twice as much as those living in the South just to afford
rent for what each market considers an average home," HowMuch.net's Raul Amoros told
MarketWatch .
Which, however, is not to say that owning a house is a viable alternative to renting. In
fact, as Goldman notes in its latest Housing and Mortgage Monitor, "buying is looking
increasingly less affordable vs. renting with home prices growing faster than rents."
In short: the situation is not likely to improve in the short-term.
A
sign of relief could be coming in the second half of 2019 or entering into 2020 when the US
economy is expected to enter a slowdown, if not outright recession. This would reverse the real
estate market, thus providing a turning point in rents that would give renters relief after a
near decade of overinflated prices.
"... Today's Blue elite represents the greatest concentration of wealth and power in the United States. Moreover, such wealth is scattered across a mosaic of pristine, manicured, gated communities physically and socially divorced from the realities of normal American life -- glittering bubbles of sovereign privilege . This is the very oligarchy Founders like John Adams so feared . While both Red and Blue elites represent themselves as the people's champion, Blue's protests ring the most false . ..."
Today, two righteous paths are gridlocked in opposition. Both perceive themselves as
champions of national renewal, of cleansing corrupted ideals, and of truly fulfilling America's
promise. Both fervently believe that they alone own virtue. Yet the banners of each course are
absolutist mirrors of one another, pro and contra, all or nothing. Moreover, lightning rod
issues, as in the 1770s and 1850s, make the space between battle lines a no man's land, forcing
majority moderates and compromising fence-sitters to choose or be called out as willing
collaborators with the other.
Today's lightning rods -- a feminist reordering of jurisprudence , a
state-promoted LGBT agenda, closed or open borders, full gun rights guarantees -- should not be
seen as mere hot-button issues that can be manipulated at will by political party elites. These
are way-of-life banners for two warring coalitions. Iconic issues that now represent the future
of two tribal alliances are taking the place of a former, single nation. The time for
compromise is over.
Othering. Here, the barren and
inhospitable new civic space is dominated along looming, fortified lines. Warring
identities have concluded that the only solution is the complete submission of the enemy party,
and both sides are beginning to prepare for an
ultimate showdown . Othering is a transforming process, through which former kin are
reimagined as evil, an American inner-enemy, who once defeated must be punished. The most
familiar metaphor of American othering was the 1770s practice of tarring and feathering .
This less-than-lethal mob punishment corresponds -- in shaming power and severity -- to mob
vengeance pervasive today on social media outlets such as Twitter.
Hence, to work fully as othering, the process must be public, result in the shame of the
transgressor, and show that true virtue is in command. More than anything, othering is a
ceremonial act designed to bring shame not just on the single person being tarred and
feathered, but the entire community to which he belongs. The political object of #MeToo is not
the numerically bounded set of guilty men, but rather the entire population set of
all men . The political object of Black Lives Matter is not racists, but rather all
whitepeople . The
political object of the LGBT movement is not homophobes, but
rather the whole of straight cisgender
society whose reality compass they seek to transform.
The targeted other, equally seized by virtue, operates today from an angry defensive crouch.
Thus do corporate elites support marquee Blue "social justice" agendas on Twitter, Facebook,
and YouTube while censoring counterarguments and comment by Red. This is exactly the goal in
this struggle: namely, to condition moderates to widespread acquiescence of a loud and
insistent Blue agenda, while subtly coercing them to choose sides. They do this by arraigning
Red as social losers, the future minority tribe, on their eventual way to the dustbin of
history.
Red and Blue already represent an irreparable religious schism, deeper in doctrinal terms
even than the 16th-century Catholic-Protestant schism. The war here is over which faction
successfully captures the (social media) flag as
true inheritor of American virtue.
The Decision. Othering's most decisive effect is to condition the whole of society to
believe that an existential clash is coming, that all must choose, and that there are no
realistic alternatives to a final test of wills. Remember, in past times, Jacobins on both
sides were small minorities. Yet for either one of these two angry visions to win, there must
be a showdown. This demands, perversely, that they work together to bring on open conflict,
successfully coercing the majority of Americans to buy into its inevitability. At that point,
only a trigger pull is needed.
This was what the Boston Massacre did to push colonials against Britain in 1770, and this is
what
John Brown's Pottawatomie Massacre and Congressman Preston Brooks's
caning of Charles Sumner on the Senate floor did to push people toward civil war in 1856.
This is what the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh and the nearly two-year effort to
delegitimize and overthrow President Donald Trump may doing today: getting the two halves of
the former nation to pull that trigger.
The Fight. If the political balance shifts dramatically, then conflict checks -- held
in place by lingering political norms and a longstanding electoral standoff -- disintegrate.
Suddenly, both newly advantaged and disadvantaged parties rush to a test of wills sooner rather
than later. A triggering incident becomes a spark -- yet the spark itself does not ignite.
Rather, it is the readiness for combat in this emerging "community of violence" that makes a
fight the natural way forward. In 1774, the Sons of Liberty were spoiling for a fight. In the
1850s, Jayhawkers and Border Ruffians were equally primed to hit back. That pushed the nation
to civil war.
Evidence from history and our own eyes tells us that we are deep into phase four. Three
takeaways show us how close we are to real battle.
Both sides rush to tear down the constitutional order. Just since the 2016 election,
we have witnessed a rolling thunder of Blue and Red elite rhetoric -- packing
the
SupremeCourt,abolishing
the ElectoralCollege , repealing
the
SecondAmendment
, wholesale state nullification of federal law, shackling of voter rights, and Deep State
invocation of the 25th Amendment. These are all potential extremities of action that would not
only dismantle our constitutional order, but also skew it to one side's juridical construct of
virtue, thus dissolving any semblance of adherence to law by the other. Over time each party
becomes emotionally invested in the lust to dismantle the old and make something new.
Hence, constitutional norms exist only conditionally, until such time as they finally be
dismantled, and only as long as a precariously balanced electoral divide holds firm. A big
historical tilt in favor of one party over the other would very quickly push the nation into
crisis because the party with the new mandate would rush to enact its program. The very threat
of such constitutional dismantling would be sure casus belli . Such tilts in the
early 1770s against Britain, and later in
the 1850s against the slaveholding party, were the real tipping points. Not only was
Dred Scott v. Sandford just such a tipping point in 1857, but subconsciously its legacy
weighs heavily on Americans today, as they contemplate -- often with hysterical passion -- the
dread consequences of a Kavanaugh appointment.
The dead hand of the last civil war grabs us from the grave. It is eerie how today's
angst pulls us back to the 1860s -- and shows us what is likely to happen in our third civil
war. If the poisonous hatreds of the 1860s again inform our civil anger today -- i.e. battles
between the alt-right and antifa -- then this should tell us that we are literally on the cusp
of another time of rage, where the continuity of strife is stronger than any hopes for
reconciliation. What is clear is that two warring parties will accept nothing less from the
other than submission, even though the loser will never submit. Moreover, each factional ethos
is incapable of empathizing with
the other.
Yet we should remember that "unconditional surrender" is like an Old Testament doctrine --
meaning that its invocation hearkens unmistakably to God's judgment. It became the
Federal rallying cry throughout the Civil War, a substrate trope in the Versailles Treaty,
the president's official position for the end of World War II, and even our complacent
conviction during the decomposition of the Soviet Union. It is an apocalyptic vision deeply
embedded in both Blue and Red. Such visions presage existential crisis that puts what is left
of the nation at real risk. If, at war's end, the sacred scrolls, artifacts, and symbols -- the
archaeology of a once-cherished identity -- cannot be restored or repurposed, then our entire
history must be destroyed, and the "we" that once was wiped clean. Civil war -- the battle over
how, or whether, we belong to one another -- thus demands nothing less than transformation.
Disbelieving war makes it inevitable. People will always
disbelieve that we could come to blows, until we do. Delegates at the "Democracy" party
convention in Charleston, in the summer of 1860, were still in denial of
the coming fury . No one dares imagine another civil war playing out like the last, when
two grimly determined American armies fought each other to the death in bloody pitched battles.
It is unlikely that a third American civil war will embrace 18th and 19th century military
dynamics. Antique Anglo-American society -- organized around community "
mustering " -- was culturally equipped to fight civil wars. Today's screen-absorbed
Millennials are not. So what?
But the historical consequences of a non-military American civil war would be just as severe
as any struggle settled by battle and blood. For example, the map of a divided America today
suggests that division into functioning state and local sovereignties -- with autonomy over
kinship, identity, and way of life issues -- might be the result of this non-bloody war. This
could even represent de facto national partition -- without de jure secession, achieved through
a gradual process of accretive state and local
nullification .
So what would a non-military civil war look like? Could it be non-violent? Americans are
certainly not lovers, but they do not seem really to be fighters either. A possible path to
kinship disengagement -- a separation without de jure divorce -- would here likely follow a
crisis, a confrontation, and some shocking, spasmodic violence, horrifyingly amplified on
social media. Passions at this point would pull back, but investment in separation would not.
What might eventuate would be a national sorting out, a de facto kinship separation in which
Blue and Red regions would go -- and govern -- their own ways, while still maintaining the
surface fiction of a titular "United States." This was, after all, the arrangement America came
to after 20 years of civil war (1857-1877). This time, however, there will be no succeeding
conciliation (as was achieved in the 1890s). Culturally, this United States will be, from the
moment of agreement, two entirely separate sensibilities, peoples, and politics.
♦♦♦
The winding path to civil war has yet another wrinkle: the people-elite divide. In the 1770s
and the 1850s, American fissuring was championed by opposing elites. In the 1770s, two elites
had emerged: one was the colonial, homegrown elite -- such as Washington, Hamilton, and Adams
-- and the other was the metropole,
trans-Atlantic
British elite , celebrated by royally endowed landowners such as Lord Fairfax , whose holdings
were in the thousands of square miles. Yet the British aristocracy was less intimately engaged
in the colonies, and the loyalist elite a more sotto voce
voice in colonial politics.
Not so the proto-Confederacy, the celebrated "Slave Power." In the looming struggle between
North and South, the Southern elite was the dominant economic force in the nation, thanks to
its overwhelming capital stored in human flesh. In fact, planter aristocracy capital formation
in 1860
equaled all capital invested in manufacturing, railroads, banks, and all currency in
circulation -- combined. This was the power of chattel slavery as the wealth ecology of the
antebellum South. In
defiant opposition to them were the Northern
anti-slavery elites , nowhere as privileged and rich as their Southern counterparts. The
new Republicans were further thwarted by the indissoluble alliance of planter aristocracy and
the nation's financial hub: New York City. There was an unholy bond between a dominant
slaveholder elite and an equally dominant New York slave-enabling elite. To make the point, in
1859, New York shipbuilders outfitted
85 slave ships for the hungry needs of the Southern planter class.
The dominant cultural position occupied by the overlords of chattel slavery has its analogy
today in the overlords of America's Blue elite. While there is a vocal Red elite, the Blue
elite dominates public life through its hold on the Internet, Hollywood, publishing, social
media, academia, the Washington bureaucracy, and the global grip of corporate giants. Blue
elite's power, in its hold on the cultural pulse and economic lifeblood of American life,
compares granularly to the planter aristocracy of the 1850s.
Ruling elites famously overthrown by history -- like the Ancien Régime in
France, Czarist Russia, and even the Antebellum South -- were fated by their insatiable
selfishness, their impenetrable arrogance, and their sneering aloofness from the despised
people -- "the deplorables" -- upon whom their own
economic status feasted .
Today's
Blue elite represents the
greatest concentration of wealth and power in the United States. Moreover, such wealth is
scattered across a mosaic of pristine, manicured, gated communities physically and socially
divorced from the realities of normal American life
-- glittering bubbles of
sovereign privilege . This is the very oligarchy Founders like John Adams
so feared . While both Red and Blue elites represent themselves as the people's champion,
Blue's protests ring the
most false .
America is divided today not by customary tussles in party politics, but rather by
passionate, existential, and irreconcilable opposition. Furthermore, the onset of battle is
driven yet more urgently by the "intersection" of a culturally embedded kinship divide moving
-- however haphazardly -- to join up with an elite-people divide.
Tragically, our divide may no longer be an outcome that people of goodwill work to overcome.
Schism -- with our nation in an ideological Iron Maiden -- will soon force us all to submit,
and choose.
Michael Vlahos teaches strategy and war at Johns Hopkins Advanced Academic Programs and
formerly, at the Naval War College. He is the author of the book
Fighting Identity: Sacred War and World Change .
Likbez
I think that the key for understating the political crisis in the USA is to understand its
connection with the crisis on neoliberalism as an ideology which was encompassed as the USA
national ideology after WWII.
The US neoliberal elite lost the support of the population, and the is what the current
crisis is about. Also, the level of degeneration of the current elite demonstrated by Haley
appointed to the UN and several other disastrous appointments also signify the Us approaching
the situation of " let them eat cakes."
The same time the power of surveillance state is such that outside of random acts of
violence like we observed recently, insurrection is impossible and political ways to change
the situation are blocked.
Neoliberals came to power with Carter, so more than 40 years ago (although formally Reagan
is considered to be the first neoliberal president.) Now they are are losing political power
and popular support.
Trump attempt to reform "classic neoliberalism" into what can be called "national
neoliberalism" or neoliberalism without globalization is probably doomed to be a failure and
not only due to Trump weaknesses as a political leader. He trying increase the level of
neoliberaliztion with the USA failing to understand that the current problems stem from
excessive levels of deregulation (and associated level of corruption), the excessive power of
military industrial complex (supported by Wall Street) which led to waiting for trillion of
arms race and destruction of New Deal Social protection mechanisms.
With the collapse of neoliberalism of global ideology, international standing of the USA
greatly deteriorated, and now in some areas (especially with unilateral Iran sanctions and
behavior in Korea crisis), Trump administration approaches the status of a pariah nation.
My impression is the neoliberalism just can't be reformed the way Trump is trying it to
reform into what can be called "national neoliberalism."
That's probably why intelligence agencies and Clinton wing of the Democratic party,
closely connected to Wall Street launched a color revolution ("Russiagate) against him in
late 2016, trying to depose him and install a more "compliant" leader, who would support
kicking the can down the road.
So the two warring camps now represent "classic neoliberalism" with its idea of the global
neoliberal empire (and related "Full Spectrum Dominance" doctrine) and "revisionists" of
various flavors (including Trump and Sanders supporters)
BTW neocons, who dominate the USA foreign policy, are also neoliberals, just moonlighting
as lobbyists of the military industrial complex.
I think that globalization as an immanent feature and trump policies this will fail.
As the same, the opposition to neoliberalism on the ground level of the US society demand
reforms and retreat form the globalization, which they connect with outsourcing and
offshoring.
That's why Trump's idea of "national neoliberalism" -- an attempt to retreat from
"globalization" and at the same time to obtain some economic advantages by brute force and
bilateral treaties instead of multilateral organizations like WTO got some initial support.
Along with his fake promises to improve the economic position of the middle class, squeezed
by globalization.
the truth is that the "classic neoliberals" (which are represented by Clinton wing of Dems
and Paul Ryan wing in Republicans ) lost popular support.
Dems, for example, now rely as their major constituency fringe groups and elements of
national security state (that's why so many of their candidates for midterm are associated
with intelligence agencies and military). So they are trying to mobilize elements of national
security state to help them to return to power. That gambit, like Russiagate before it,
probably will fail.
Republicans are also in limbo with Trump clearly betraying his electorate, but still enjoy
some level of ground support.
IMHO his betrayals which is very similar to Obama betrayal(in no way he wants to improve
the condition of the lower middle class and workers, it just hot air) might cost him two
important group of voters who will vote for independent candidates if they vote at all:
1. Anti-war republicans
2. People who want the return of the New Deal.
Factions which are against imperial wars and for more fair redistribution of income in the
society, a distribution which were screwed by 40 years of neoliberalism dominance in the
USA.
So the US electorate have a classic political choice between disastrous and unpalatable
policies once again ;-)
whether that will eventually lead to a military coup in best LA style, we can only
guess.
Trump represents himself and expects the little people (IE, everyone except him and his
children) to exist only for him, the spoiled daddy-created globalist so-called billionaire
who doesn't have a clue WTF he's doing as POTUS besides infotaining and enflaming his racist
base, plus giving into the GOP party line on all substantive issues with the result being
more of the same as Barry-O, only worse.
Personally, I enjoy him from an infotainment perspective. We are all only infotaining
ourselves to death anyway, so Trump's just added comedic grist to enliven our time in hospice
care.
Did you expect or hope for another in the globalist class, maybe as slick as Barry-O,
who appealed to the edumacated coastal elites in his incredibly pompous and phony
addresses?
I expected a globalist (either Trump or Hillary) but hoped for Bernie.
Trump is not antithesis. This is where you are most mistaken. If he were the truth (as you
state), there would be stronger social security, Medicare and Medicaid for his base, no tax
cuts favouring corporations, LLCs and the very rich.
There would be newly created infrastructure and improved healthcare.
The trade war would already be won and the wealth equality gap would be well on the road
to closure.
The Pittsburgh attack was conveniently timed to distract US media from another murderous
onslaught by Israel on Gaza. The IDF targets included a Gaza hospital.
Assuming this was not another psyops it seems amazing to me that people cant distinguish
between the Israeli government and their lobby which influences policy and elections in the
US and the average Jew attending a synagogue.
As with any event I always look at who benefits. Certainly the anti-gun lobby. Zionists
have always benefitted from such acts as they use them to get more protection against
criticism of their policies (eg legislation to define antisemitism as hate speech which would
include criticism of Israel). Remember the NY bombing threats a couple of years ago were
coming from an individual said to be working alone in Israel)
Be interesting to learn more about this Bowers. I am skeptical its a psyops at this point
because he was taken alive, but who knows.
Posted by: Pft | Oct 28, 2018 6:36:52 PM | 39 Assuming this was not another psyops it seems amazing to me that people cant distinguish
between the Israeli government and their lobby which influences policy and elections in the
US and the average Jew attending a synagogue.
If I understood correctly his attack was against the Jewish organisation that brings
immigrants. Because he sees that as the enemy action.
While the U.S. Shale Industry
produces a record amount of oil, it continues to be plagued by massive oil decline rates and debt.
Moreover, even as the companies brag about lowering the break-even cost to produce shale oil, the
industry still spends more than it makes. When we add up all the negative factors weighing down
the shale oil industry, it should be no surprise that a catastrophic failure lies dead ahead.
Of course, most Americans have no idea that the U.S. Shale Oil Industry is nothing more than a
Ponzi Scheme because of the mainstream media's inability to report FACT from FICTION. However,
they don't deserve all of the blame as the shale energy industry has done an excellent job hiding
the financial distress from the public and investors by the use of highly technical jargon and BS.
For example, Pioneer published this in the recent Q2 2018 Press Release:
Pioneer placed 38 Version 3.0 wells on production during the second quarter of 2018. The
Company also placed 29 wells on production during the second quarter of 2018 that utilized
higher intensity completions compared to Version 3.0 wells. These are referred to as Version
3.0+ completions. Results from the 65 Version 3.0+ wells completed in 2017 and the first half of
2018 are outperforming production from nearby offset wells with less intense completions. Based
on the success of the higher intensity completions to date, the Company is adding approximately
60 Version 3.0+ completions in the second half of 2018.
Now, the information Pioneer published above wasn't all that technical, but it was full of BS.
Anytime the industry uses terms like "Version 3.0+ completions" to describe shale wells, this
normally means the use of "more technology" equals "more money."
As the shale industry
goes from 30 to 60 to 70 stage frack wells, this takes one hell of a lot more pipe, water, sand,
fracking chemicals and of course, money
.
However, the majority of investors and the public are clueless in regards to the staggering
costs it takes to produce shale oil because they are enamored by the "wonders of technology." For
some odd reason, they tend to overlook the simple premise that
MORE STUFF costs MORE MONEY.
Of course, the shale industry doesn't mind using MORE MONEY, especially if some other poor slob
pays the bill.
Shale Oil Industry: Deep The Denial
According to a recently released article by 40-year oil industry veteran, Mike Shellman,
"Deep
The Denial,"
he provided some sobering statistics on the shale industry:
I recently put somebody very smart on the necessary research (SEC K's, press releases
regarding private equity to private producers, etc.) to determine what total upstream shale oil
debt actually is.
We found it to be between $285-$300B (billion), both public and
private
. Kallanish Energy Consultants recently wrote that there is $240B of long term
E&P debt in the US maturing by 2023 and I think we should assume that at least 90 plus percent
of that is associated with shale oil. That is maturing debt, not total debt.
By year end 2019 I firmly believe the US LTO industry will then be paying over $20B
annually in interest on long term debt.
Using its own self-touted "breakeven" oil price, the shale oil industry must then produce
over 1.5 Million BOPD just to pay interest on that debt each year. Those are barrels of oil that
cannot be used to deleverage debt, grow reserves, not even replace reserves that are declining
at rates of 28% to 15% per year that is just what it will take to service debt.
Using its own "breakeven" prices the US shale oil industry will ultimately have to
produce 9G BO of oil, as much as it has already produced in 10 years just to pay its total long
term debt back
.
Using Mike's figures, I made the following chart below:
For the U.S. Shale Oil Industry just to pay back its debt, it must produce 9 billion
barrels of oil.
That is one heck of a lot of oil as the industry has produced about 10
billion barrels to date. Again, as Mike states, it would take 9 billion barrels of shale oil to
pay back its $285-300 billion of debt (based on the shale industry's very own breakeven prices).
Furthermore, the shale industry may have to sell a quarter of its oil production (1.5
million barrels per day) just to service its debt by the end of 2019.
According to the
EIA, the U.S. Energy Information Agency, total shale oil (tight oil) production is now 6.2 million
barrels per day (mbd):
The majority of shale oil production comes from three fields and regions, the Eagle Ford (Blue),
the Bakken (Yellow) and the Permian (light, medium & dark brown). These three fields and regions
produce 5.2 mbd of the total 6.2 mbd of shale production.
Unfortunately, the shale industry continues to struggle with mounting debt and negative free
cash flow. The EIA recently published this chart showing the cash from operations versus capital
expenditures for 48 public domestic oil producers:
You will notice that capital expenditures (
brown line
) are still higher than
cash from operations (
blue line
). So, it doesn't seem to matter if the oil price
is over $100 (2013-2014) or less than $70 (2017-2018), the shale oil industry continues to spend
more money than it's making.
The shale energy companies have resorted to selling assets,
issuing stock and increasing debt to supplement their inadequate cash flow to fund operations.
A perfect example of this in practice is Pioneer Resources the number one shale oil producer in
the mighty Permian. While most companies increased their debt to fund operations, Pioneer decided
to take advantage of its high stock price by raising money via share dilution.
Pioneer's
outstanding shares ballooned from 115 million shares in 2010 to 170 million by 2017. From 2011 to
2016, Pioneer issued a staggering $5.4 billion in new stock
:
So, as Pioneer issued over $5 billion in stock to produce unprofitable shale oil and gas,
Continental Resources racked up more than $5 billion in debt during the same period. These are
both examples of "Ponzi Finance." Thus, the shale energy industry has been quite creative in
hoodwinking both the shareholder and capital investor.
Now, there is no coincidence that I have focused my research on Pioneer and Continental
Resources.
While Continental is the poster child of what's horribly wrong with the shale
oil industry in the Bakken, Pioneer is a role model for the same sort of insanity and delusional
thinking taking place in the Permian.
Pioneer Spends A Lot More Money With Unsatisfactory Production Results
To be able to understand what is going on in the U.S. shale industry, you have to be clever
enough to ignore the "Techno-jargon" in the press releases and read between the lines. As
mentioned above, Pioneer stated that it was going to add a lot more of its "high-tech" Version 3.0+
completion wells in the second half of 2018 because they were outperforming the older versions.
Well, I hope this is true because Pioneer's first half 2018 production results in the Permian
were quite disappointing compared to the previous period.
If we compare the increase of
Pioneer's shale oil production in the Permian versus its capital expenditures, something must be
seriously wrong
.
First, let's look at a breakdown of Pioneer's Permian energy production from their September
2018 Investor Presentation:
Pioneer's Permian oil and gas production is broken down between its horizontal shale and
vertical convention production. I will only focus on its horizontal shale production as this is
where the majority of their capital expenditures are taking place. The highlighted yellow line
shows Pioneer's horizontal shale oil production in the Permian Basin.
You will notice that Pioneer's shale oil production increased significantly in Q3 & Q4 2017
versus Q1 & Q2 2018. Furthermore, Pioneer's shale gas production surged in Q2 2018 by nearly 50%
(highlighted with a red box) compared to oil production only increasing 5%. That is a serious RED
FLAG for natural gas production to jump that much in one quarter.
Secondly, by comparing the increase of Pioneer's quarterly shale oil production in the Permian
with its capital expenditures, the results are less than satisfactory:
The RED LINE shows the amount of capital expenditures spent each quarter while the OLIVE colored
BARS represent the increase in Permian shale oil production. To simplify the figures in this
chart, I made the following graphic below:
Pioneer spent $1.36 billion in the second half of 2017 to increase its Permian shale oil
production by 30,232 barrels per day (bopd) compared to $1.7 billion in the first half of 2018
which only resulted in an additional 10,832 bopd
. Folks, it seems as if something
seriously went wrong for Pioneer in the Permian as the expenditure of $340 million more CAPEX
resulted in two-thirds less the production growth versus the previous period.
Third, while Pioneer (stock ticker PXD) proudly lists that they are one of the lowest cost
shale producers in the industry, they still suffer from negative free cash flow:
As we can see, Pioneer lists their breakeven oil price at approximately $22, which is downright
hilarious when they spent $132 million more on capital expenditures than the made in cash from
operations:
The public and investors need to understand that "oil breakeven costs" do not include capital
expenditures. And according to Pioneer's Q2 2018 Press Release, the company plans on spending
$3.4 billion on capital expenditures in 2018. The majority of the capital expenditures are spent
on drilling and completing horizontal shale wells.
For example, Pioneer brought on 130 new wells in the first half of 2018 and spent $1.7
billion on CAPEX (capital expenditures) versus 125 wells and $1.36 billion in 2H 2017.
I
have seen estimates that it cost approximately $9 million for Pioneer to drill a horizontal shale
well in the Permian. Thus, the 130 wells cost nearly $1.2 billion.
However, the interesting thing to take note is that Pioneer brought on 125 wells in 2H 2017 to
add 30,000+ barrels of new oil production compared to 130 wells in 1H 2018 that only added 10,000+
barrels.
So, how can Pioneer add five more wells (130 vs. 125) in 1H 2018 to see its oil
production increase a third of what it was in the previous period?
Regardless, the U.S. shale oil industry continues to spend more money than they make from
operations. While energy companies may have enjoyed lower costs when the industry was gutted by
super-low oil prices in 2015 and 2016, it seems as if inflation has made its way back into the
shale patch. Rising energy prices translate to higher costs for the shale energy industry. Rinse
and repeat.
Unfortunately, when the stock markets finally crack, so will energy and commodity prices.
Falling oil prices will cause severe damage to the Shale Industry as it struggles to stay afloat by
selling assets, issuing stock and increasing debt to continue producing unprofitable oil.
I believe the U.S. Shale Oil Industry will suffer catastrophic failure from the impact
of deflationary oil prices along with peaking production.
While U.S. Shale Oil production
has increased exponentially over the past decade, it will likely come down even faster.
AP-NORC
Poll national survey with 1,152 adults found 8 in 10 Americans believe the country is
divided regarding essential values, and some expect the division to deepen into 2020.
Only 20% of Americans said they think the country will become less divided over the next
several years, and 39% believe conditions will continue to deteriorate. A substantial majority
of Americans, 77%, said they are dissatisfied with the state of politics in the country , said
AP-NORC.
... ... ...
The nationwide survey was conducted on October 11-14, using the AmeriSpeak
Panel, the probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. Overall, 59% of
Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling his job as president, while 40% of Americans
approve.
More specifically, the poll said 83% of Republicans approve of how Trump is handling the
job, while 92% of Democrats and 61% of Independents strongly disagree.
More than half of Americans said they are not hearing nor seeing topics from midterm
campaigns that are important to them. About 54% of Democrats and 44% of Republicans said vital
issues, such as health care, education, and economic activity, Social Security and crime, were
topics they wanted to hear more.
Looking at their communities, most American (Republicans and Democrats) are satisfied with
their state or local community. However, on a national level, 58% of Americans are dissatisfied
with the direction of the country, compared to 25%, a small majority who are satisfied.
Most Americans are dissatisfied with the massive gap between rich and poor, race relations
and environmental conditions. The poll noticed there are partisan splits, 84% of Democrats are
disappointed with the amount of wealth inequality, compared with 43% of Republicans. On the
environment, 77% of Democrats and 32% Republicans are dissatisfied. Moreover, while 77%
Democrats said they are unhappy with race relations, about 50% of Republicans said the
same.
The poll also showed how Democrats and Republicans view certain issues. About 80% of
Democrats but less than 33% of Republicans call income inequality, environmental issues or
racism very important.
"Healthcare, education and economic growth are the top issues considered especially
important by the public. While there are many issues that Republicans and Democrats give
similar levels of importance to (trade foreign policy and immigration), there are several
concerns where they are far apart. For example, 80% of Democrats say the environment and
climate change is extremely or very important, and only 28% of Republicans agree. And while
68% consider the national debt to be extremely or very important, only 55% of Democrats
regard it with the same level of significance," said AP-NORC.
Although Democrats and Republicans are divided on most values, many Americans
consider the country's diverse population a benefit.
Half said America's melting pot makes the country stronger, while less than 20% said it
hurts the country. About 30% said diversity does not affect their outlook.
"However, differences emerge by party identification, gender, location, education, and
race . Democrats are more likely to say having a population with various backgrounds makes
the country stronger compared to Republicans or Independents. Urbanities and college-educated
adults are more likely to say having a mix of ethnicities makes the country stronger, while
people living in rural areas and less educated people tend to say diversity has no effect or
makes the country weaker," said AP-NORC.
Overall, 60% of Americans said accusations of sexual harassment with some
high-profile men forced to resign or be fired was essential to them. However, 73% of women said
the issue was critical, compared with 51% of men. The data showed that Democrats were much more
likely than Republicans to call sexual misconduct significant.
More than 40% of Americans somewhat or strongly disapprove of Supreme Court Justice Brett
Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court after allegations of sexual harassment in his
college years. 35% of Americans said they heartily approved of Kavanaugh's confirmation.
The evidence above sheds light on the internal struggles of America. The country is divided,
and this could be a significant problem just ahead.
Why is that? Well, America's future was outlined in a book called "The Fourth Turning: What
Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous With Destiny."
In the book, which was written in the late 1990s, authors William Strauss and Niel Howe
theorize that the history of civilization moves in 80-to-100 year cycles called "saecula."
The idea behind this theory dates back to the Greeks, who believed that at given saeculum's
end, there would come "ekpyrosis," or a cataclysmic event.
This era of change is known as the Fourth Turning, and it appears we are in the midst of one
right now.
The last few Fourth Turnings that America experienced ushered in the Civil War and the
Reconstruction era, and then the Great Depression and World War II. Before all of that, it was
the Revolutionary War.
Each Fourth Turning had similar warning signs: periods of political chaos, division, social
and economic decay in which the American people reverted from extreme division and were forced
to reunite in the rebuild of a new future, but that only came after massive conflict.
Today's divide among many Americans is strong. We are headed for a collision that will rip
this country apart at the seams. The timing of the next Fourth Turning is now, and it could
take at least another decade to complete the cycle.
After the Fourth Turning, America will not be the America you are accustomed to today. So,
let us stop calling today the "greatest economy ever" and start preparing for turbulence.
"... Bankers, agro-business elites, commercial mega owners, manufacturing, real estate and insurance bosses and their financial advisers, elite members of the 'ruling class', have launched a full-scale attack on private and public wage and salary workers, and small and medium size entrepreneurs (the members of the 'popular classes'). The attack has targeted income ,pensions, medical plans, workplace conditions, job security, rents, mortgages, educational costs, taxation,undermining family and household cohesion. ..."
"... Big business has weakened or abolished political and social organizations which challenge the distribution of income and profits and influence the rates of workplace output. In brief the ruling classes have intensified exploitation and oppression through the 'class struggle' from above. ..."
"... The United States witnessed the ruling class take full control of the state, the workplace and distribution of social expenditures. ..."
"... The upsurge of the popular class struggle was contained and confined by the center-left political elite, while the ruling class marked time, making business deals to secure lucrative state contracts via bribes to the ruling center-left allied with the conservative political elite . ..."
"... The big business ruling class learned their lessons from their previous experience with weak and conciliating neo-liberal regimes. They sought authoritarian and, if possible rabble rousing political leaders, who could dismantle the popular organizations, and gutted popular welfare programs and democratic institutions, which previously blocked the consolidation of the neo-liberal New Order. ..."
"... The term "invidious distinction" was coined by Thornstein Veblen in his seminal "The Theory of the Leisure Class", in which Veblen argues that one of the primary human motivations is to evoke envy in our fellows. ..."
"... "Popular" class struggles need to be seen for what they are; temporary expedients whereby one set of rulers uses the populace for their own ends and against their competitors. ..."
"... Too many people get suckered into supporting "popular" movements and sometimes do gain temporary benefits, but when their handlers get what they want, the fun and games are over. ..."
Bankers, agro-business elites, commercial mega owners, manufacturing, real estate and
insurance bosses and their financial advisers, elite members of the 'ruling class', have
launched a full-scale attack on private and public wage and salary workers, and small and
medium size entrepreneurs (the members of the 'popular classes'). The attack has targeted
income ,pensions, medical plans, workplace conditions, job security, rents, mortgages,
educational costs, taxation,undermining family and household cohesion.
Big business has weakened or abolished political and social organizations which challenge
the distribution of income and profits and influence the rates of workplace output. In brief
the ruling classes have intensified exploitation and oppression through the 'class struggle'
from above.
We will proceed by identifying the means, methods and socio-political conditions which have
advanced the class struggle from above and, conversely, reversed and weakened the class
struggle from below.
Historical Context
The class struggle is the major determinant of the advances and regression of the interests
of the capitalist class. Following the Second World War, the popular classes experienced steady
advances in income, living standards, and work place representation. However by the last decade
of the 20 th century the balance of power between the ruling and popular classes
began to shift, as a new 'neo-liberal' development paradigm became prevalent.
First and foremost, the state ceased to negotiate and conciliate relations between rulers
and the working class: the [neoliberal] state concentrated on de-regulating the economy,
reducing corporate taxes, and eliminating labor's role in politics and the division of profits
and income.
The concentration of state power and income was not uncontested and was not uniform in all
regions and countries. Moreover, counter-cyclical trends, reflecting shifts in the balance of
the class struggle precluded a linear process. In Europe, the Nordic and Western European
countries' ruling classes advanced privatization of public enterprises, reduced social welfare
costs and benefits, and pillaged overseas resources but were unable to break the state funded
welfare system. In Latin America the advance and regression of the power, income and welfare of
the popular class, correlated with the outcome of the class and state struggle.
The United States witnessed the ruling class take full control of the state, the
workplace and distribution of social expenditures.
In brief, by the end of the 20 th century, the ruling class advanced in assuming
a dominant role in the class struggle.
Nevertheless, the class struggle from below retained its presence, and in some places,
namely in Latin America, the popular classes were able to secure a share of state power –
at least temporarily.
Popular Power: Contesting the Class Struggle from Above
Latin America is a prime example of the uneven trajectory of the class struggle.
Between the end of World War Two and the late 1940's, the popular classes were able to
secure democratic rights, populist reforms and social organization. Guatemala, Argentina,
Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela were among the leading examples. By the early 1950's with
the onset of the US imperialist 'cold war', in collaboration with the regional ruling classes
launched a violent class war from above, which took the form of military coups in Guatemala,
Peru, Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil. The populist class struggle was defeated by the US
backed military- business rulers who, temporarily imposed US agro-mineral export economies.
The 1950's were the 'golden epoch' for the advance of US multi-nationals and Pentagon
designed regional military alliances. But the class struggle from below rose again and found
expression in the growth of a progressive national populist industrializing coalition, and the
successful Cuban socialist regime and its followers in revolutionary social movements in the
rest of Latin America throughout the 1960's.
The revolutionary popular class insurgency of the early 1960's was countered by the ruling
class seizure of power backed by military-US led coups between 1964-1976 which demolished the
regimes and institutions of the popular classes in Brazil (1964), Bolivia (1970), Chile (1973),
Argentina (1976) , Peru (1973) and elsewhere.
Economic crises of the early 1980s reduced the role of the military and led to a 'negotiated
transition' in which the ruling class advanced a neo-liberal agenda in exchange for electoral
participation under military and US tutelage.
Lacking direct military rule, the ruling class struggle succeeded in muting the popular
class struggle by co-opting the center-left political elites. The ruling class did not or could
not establish hegemony over the popular classes even as they proceeded with their neo-liberal
agenda.
With the advent of the 21 st century a new cycle in the class struggle from below
burst forth. Three events intersected: the global crises of 2000 triggered regional financial
crashes, which in turn led to a collapse of industries and mass unemployment, which intensified
mass direct action and the ouster of the neo-liberal regimes. Throughout the first decade of
the 21 st century, neo-liberalism was in retreat. The popular class struggle and the
rise of social movements displaced the neo-liberal regimes but was incapable of replacing the
ruling classes. Instead hybrid center-left electoral regimes took power.
The new power configuration incorporated popular social movements, center-left parties and
neo-liberal business elites. Over the next decade the cross-class alliance advanced largely
because of the commodity boom which financed welfare programs, increased employment,
implemented poverty reduction programs and expanded investments in infrastructure.
Post-neoliberal regimes co-opted the leaders of the popular classes, replaced ruling class
political elites but did not displace the strategic structural positions of the business ruling
class..
The upsurge of the popular class struggle was contained and confined by the center-left
political elite, while the ruling class marked time, making business deals to secure lucrative
state contracts via bribes to the ruling center-left allied with the conservative political
elite .
The end of the commodity boom, forced the center-left to curtail its social welfare and
infrastructure programs and fractured the alliance between big business leaders and center-left
political elites. The ensuing economic recession facilitated the return of the neo-liberal
political elite to power.
The big business ruling class learned their lessons from their previous experience with weak
and conciliating neo-liberal regimes. They sought authoritarian and, if possible rabble rousing
political leaders, who could dismantle the popular organizations, and gutted popular welfare
programs and democratic institutions, which previously blocked the consolidation of the
neo-liberal New Order.
"The rightist rhetoric turns against itself as its followers engage in invidious
distinctions ."
Interesting. You don't see Veblen's "invidious distinction" trotted out very often these
days which is a pity. More the pity that it is misused in quote above. It's probably
uncharitable to take cheap shots at the article, which is a beautiful, anti-fa inspired,
fairytale history of the modern age. I just wish more care would be used for Marxist and
non-marxist socialist phrases such as "class struggle" and "invidious distinction" because it
impossible to detest them adequately when they are improperly deployed.
The term "invidious distinction" was coined by Thornstein Veblen in his seminal "The
Theory of the Leisure Class", in which Veblen argues that one of the primary human
motivations is to evoke envy in our fellows. Veblen thought that because all value is
subjective/arbitrary, it's quite reasonable to assume that the most efficient value signal is
that which creates the most envy in other men. A man's social standing is therefore
efficiently established by status symbols that invoke envy such as a Rolex or a Mercedes. The
peculiar consequence of this is that often, men desire a thing like a Rolex because other men
want one, even up to the point when the object lacks any utility whatsoever other than signaling wealth, which itself is defined as having things that others want. Invidious
distinction is therefore best evidenced through conspicuous consumption, however nearly all
actions that do not have subsistence as their aim are undertaken to gain social standing or
signal social standing by invoking envy.
Thus the quote above could be rewritten to be "The rightist rhetoric turns against
itself as its followers engage in non-subsistence activities" which is kind of dumb. If
the author is prognosticating that the authoritarian new order will turn on itself, it'd be
nice to know have a more substantive explanation than "non-subsistence activities". Moreover,
if the authoritarian new order is to shed it's "shock troops" in exchange for "meritocrats"
it'd be nice to know why. That's my 2 cents, but I'm curious to know what others think of
this curious tale!
The corruption of upwardly mobile middle-class rabble rousers will disillusion their
voluntary followers. Arbitrary police and military repression usually extends to extortion
and intimidation beyond the drug slums to the middle and working-class neighborhoods.
Also, the rise of AI, data mining, and complex algorithms, as well as the proliferation of
electronic devices that record and analyze our private spaces is a pillar of the new order.
Essentially, we are being watched by machines.
People need to reject the material order. Spiritual awakening is the key.
Revolutionaries will find new ways to defeat these technology-based tactics. Dogwhistling,
communication on a personal level (rather than by mass media or the internet), and
old-fashioned tribalism should help. Also, leaderless resistance can play a role. Weaknesses
will be found in the crumbling edifice, and many hands can chisel separately.
Infiltration and sabotage can also be applied.
Possibly unrelated, but maybe thought-provoking:
Consider the man they just arrested for the mail bomb scare. Reportedly, this person was a
career criminal with drug dealing and grand theft on his record and he was caught in
possession of a white van with decals on it depicting his targets. This man is a caricature
of a Trump supporter, ready-made for the cable news broadcast. Does anyone else see the
absurdity of it? Can this guy be for real?
The authoritarian New Order usually begins to decline through 'internal rot' –
uber- profiteering and flagrant abuse of work.
" However sustaining their advance is conditional on dynamic economic growth "
You cannot fool all people all the time.
Our Dutch Rutte governments now for some ten years have told us that the economy is growing,
alas the average Dutchman by now knows that 'there are lies, big lies, and statistics', in
other words, it may well be that the economy is growing, but the average Dutchman does not
see his buying power increased.
On the contrary, those that work have a more or less constant buying power, those that do not
work, for whatever reason: cannot find a job, permanent illness, retired, see quite well how
their material position deteriorates steadily.
The alliance of big globalized business and big Governments is an unbearable burden for most
of the populations. Since the 70`s you have to work more and more and to study more and more for less and
less
I foresee that if this continue in the next 20 years millions and millions of people will
die of marginalization, of hunger , misery and grief .
This is the most important problem governments, and in the wider sense humanity is
encountering.
The pendulum is incessantly swinging from center to right and than reverses from right to
left.
Marx theories are totally one sided and do not solve anything. Extreme swing to the left
brought at start enthusiasm of the working classes and for certain time progress of the
humanity was phenomenal. But in time the progress did stop and population become lethargic
and progress become stagnation leading to depression. Similar thing happens when pendulum is
swinging to the right.
Eventually the purchasing power of the population diminishes to the size when crisis of the
system is inevitable.
Most important task of the governments is to control the economy that the extent of the
swings are small as possible.
@Anon Things seem to have improved in Asia since I first went abroad in 2000. In the US,
on the other hand, life seems to have gotten more and more difficult.
If you had told me in 1993 when I left home that Gen Y of age 30 would live at home and
that entire families of white people would be homeless or that MBA's would have to work in
Bistros at age 25 I would have said you're crazed.
The odd thing in the US is that it is the middle-class seems to have gotten hit the worst.
The white underclass and blacks have always had it hard and poor. Much of the time they
deserve it because they have babies at 19 and don't go to college. But the destruction of the
middle-class whites is quite phenomenal.
It is unbearable for the middle-class. The underclass does not care. Big governments tend
to be corrupt, so money talks. If you live in the ghetto or the trailer park you have no expectations anyhow. You were
not going to be a great citizen anyhow. But for the middle-class things will be shocking.
I doubt that such a thing ever occurred to any substantial degree. "Popular" class
struggles need to be seen for what they are; temporary expedients whereby one set of rulers
uses the populace for their own ends and against their competitors.
Too many people get suckered into supporting "popular" movements and sometimes do gain
temporary benefits, but when their handlers get what they want, the fun and games are over.
The author noted the concept, saying,
Between the end of World War Two and the late 1940's, the popular classes were able to
secure democratic rights, populist reforms and social organization. [but then began]
bullying of traditional allies
No "will be" about it. You noted it in your comment #10 and my observations agree,
But the destruction of the middle-class whites is quite phenomenal.
The assault on the middle class has been taking place for decades and many people have
been feeling it although most apparently still hope for some Messiah, and many of them
apparently think either Hillaryena or the Trumpster was it. Where they get their faith I'll
never know.
@jilles dykstra Same thing in Spain, and in most of western Europe I would say . The macroeconomy is going well for the chosen ones , and the microeconomy is going very bad for
most of the population .
Much of the time they deserve it because they don't go to college.
Wrong.
Schooling in the USA for some time been nothing more than babysitting and brainwashing and
that's by design. Completing college nowadays is mainly for immature, dependent losers
especially since many of them will be burdened with a non-marketable degree and debt for
decades and in any case, the majority will wind up as wage slaves anyway. The way to go now
is to learn a trade, especially one that a person can practice independently and with low
capital, and get to work, but the window for even that seems to be fast closing too.
If one has the talent (rare) sales can still be a good road to relative independence with
no "collitch" needed.
@Jeff Stryker "If you live in the ghetto or the trailer park you have no expectations
anyhow. You were not going to be a great citizen anyhow."
"But for the middle-class things will be shocking."
Spot on, Jeff. I see remnants of the onetime middle class around me. People with a degree or advanced degree, people with
identifiable special skills (accountancy, engineering) who guard their expertise as would a 15th century guild worker, people
with decent table manners...
Then their Fortune 500 company kicks them out of their corporate featherbed, they spend a
year or two or more discovering their specialized skills are worth half of what they'd
thought, and when they land a job, they're expected to cook the books or sign off on dodgy
products, acting as designated corporate fall guys in the event of an investigation.
When I was in university there was no Leftist programming. People were
there to become engineers, IT specialists, doctors, nurses, businessmen, accounting.
You maybe had to take an "African-American studies" course but that was just to get enough
credits to graduate. Also, by the time most people went to college (when I did from 93-98) they were adults
with opinions. Sales is a diminishing field now with the internet.
@jim jones A shrewd observation is my immediate reaction. Most likely true of the
organised institutional left which, when it's old product no longer sells doesn't want to
declare bankruptcy and shut up shop.
"Government exists to spend. The purpose of government is to serve the general welfare of the
citizens, not just the military-industrial complex and the financial class. Didn't we have a
stimulus, oh, eight years ago? It was tiny and has not been entirely spent. As Yellen
implied, we need more spending of the non-military kind (what Barney Frank memorably called
"weaponized Keynesianism" doesn't stimulate)."
This is what has been missing for over 40 years in the US, government's role in the
economy. When any politician brings up the fact that it's time we used fiscal policy as it
was designed, neoliberals have a socialism meltdown. Both parties have been taken over by the
Kochtopus, The libertarian fascist ideology that hides behind the term "neoliberalism". The
ultimate goal of this zombie ideology that was thoroughly discredited in 2008 but continues
to roam the earth is to replace nations with privately owned cities. This experiment was
going on in Honduras, following the 2009 coup, until it was finally ended by a SC ruling that
it was unconstitutional.
"In a libertarian society, there is no commons or public space. There are property
lines, not borders. When it comes to real property and physical movement across such real
property, there are owners, guests, licensees, business invitees and trespassers – not
legal and illegal immigrants." ~ Jeff Deist, president of the Mises Institute
This is the struggle – the struggle to maintain public space on a planet that was
never meant to be owned in the first place.
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) has
released a new audit of a computer network at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Earth
Resouces Observation and Science (EROS) Center satellite imaging facility in Sioux Falls, South
Dakota.
OIG initiated an investigation into suspicious internet traffic discovered during a regular
IT security audit of the USGS computer network. The review found that a single USGS employee
infected the network due to the access of unauthorized internet web pages.
Those web pages were embedded with harmful malware, and then downloaded onto a
government-issued laptop, which then "exploited the USGS' network."
A digital forensic team examined the infected laptop and found porn. After further review,
it was determined the USGS employee visited 9,000 web pages of porn that were hosted mainly on
Russian servers and contained toxic malware.
OIG found the employee saved much of the pornographic content on an unauthorized USB drive
and personal smartphone, both of which were synced to the government computer and network.
"Our digital forensic examination revealed that [the employee] had an extensive history of
visiting adult pornography websites" that hosted dangerous malware, the OIG wrote.
"The malware was downloaded to [the employees'] government laptop, which then exploited
the USGS' network."
The forensic team determined two vulnerabilities in the USGS' IT security review: website
access and open USB ports. They said the "malware is rogue software that is intended to damage
or disable computers and computer systems." The ultimate objective of the malware was to steal
highly classified government information while spreading the infection to other systems.
The U.S. Department of the Interior's Rules of Behavior explicitly prohibit employees from
using government networks to satisfy porn cravings, and the IOG found the employee had agreed
to these rules "several years prior to the detection."
The employee was discharged from the agency, OIG External Affairs Director Nancy DiPaolo
told
Nextgov.
However, this is not the first time government workers have been figuratively caught with
their pants down.
Over the last two decades, similar incidents have occurred at the Environmental Protection
Agency, Securities and Exchange Commission, and the IRS.
Last year, a D.C. news team uncovered "egregious on-the-job pornography viewing" at a dozen
federal agencies and national security officials have reportedly found an "unbelievable" amount
of child porn on government devices, said Nextgov.
It seems that porn watching on government devices is so widespread that Rep. Mark Meadows,
R-N.C., introduced legislation banning porn at federal agencies -- three separate times.
Government workers have a porn addiction problem, and it is now jeopardizing national
security.
"... This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 1584 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page , which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Read about why we're doing this fundraiser and what we've accomplished in the last year, and our current goal, more original reporting ..."
"... By Nick Cunningham, freelance writer on oil and gas, renewable energy, climate change, energy policy and geopolitics based in Pittsburgh, PA. Originally published at OilPrice ..."
"... Evidence of a slowdown in China is also becoming apparent. 3M saw sales dip in China, as did PPG Industries, which makes paint and coatings. "We see other signs of slowing in China; the automotive build rates are down significantly and that has a knock-on effect," Michael Roman, CEO of 3M, said. Sales of cars in China fell 12 percent in September from a year earlier. ..."
"... A strong dollar is another source of trouble for the global economy. Harley-Davidson said that international sales of its motorcycles were hit by a strong greenback. The Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates multiple times in the last year, and is expected to continue on that course. ..."
"... The array of problems raise the prospect of peak industrial earnings . Strong GDP figures and a massive corporate tax cut temporarily juiced profits, and earnings could fall to more pedestrian levels, ..."
"... The housing market is also starting to flash warning signs. For the week ending on October 12, the volume of mortgage applications fell by 7.1 percent . Higher interest rates are clearly being felt in housing, pushing homes out of reach for some prospective buyers. ..."
"... The next steps are unclear. There will be a tension between the supply losses from Iran, which will serve to tighten the oil market, and the supply gains from U.S. shale and Saudi Arabia. The demand side is decidedly more negative, with economic problems potentially forcing a rethink among forecasters. ..."
By Nick Cunningham, freelance writer on oil and gas, renewable energy, climate change,
energy policy and geopolitics based in Pittsburgh, PA. Originally published at OilPrice
Warning signs about the slowing of the global economy continue to crop up, and market
jitters are taking the steam out of oil prices.
U.S. corporate earnings are no longer sky-high, with a range of factors starting to cut into
margins. The U.S.-China trade war has not made headlines in the same way it did a few weeks and
months ago, but the reality is that the impact of tariffs is only growing as costs work their
way through supply chains.
"These trade tensions are coming home to roost and they are impacting the fundamentals of
the market," Tally Leger, equity strategist at OppenheimerFunds,
told Reuters . "Thanks to trade tariffs we are facing the headwinds of a stronger dollar,
higher oil prices, and rising interest rates."
This week, a slew of disappointing earnings came in. Caterpillar said that tariffs cost the
company $40 million in the third quarter, and its share price fell roughly 7.6 percent after it
reported its figures. Poor figures
also came from 3M and Harley-Davidson , prompting selloffs in their stocks as well. 3M said
that tariffs could cost the company $20 million this year, a figure that will balloon to $100
million next year. The results spooked the markets, dragging down equities more broadly. The
S&P machinery index was down more than 4 percent in the last two days.
Evidence of a slowdown in China is also becoming apparent. 3M saw sales dip in China, as
did PPG Industries, which makes paint and coatings. "We see other signs of slowing in China;
the automotive build rates are down significantly and that has a knock-on effect," Michael
Roman, CEO of 3M, said. Sales of cars in China fell 12 percent in September from a year
earlier.
A strong dollar is another source of trouble for the global economy. Harley-Davidson
said that international sales of its motorcycles were hit by a strong greenback. The Federal
Reserve has hiked interest rates multiple times in the last year, and is expected to continue
on that course.
The array of problems raise the prospect of
peak industrial earnings . Strong GDP figures and a massive corporate tax cut temporarily
juiced profits, and earnings could fall to more pedestrian levels, particularly as costs
start to creep up. Some analysts think the fears of weaker earnings are
overblown , but investors have clearly grown worried about the trajectory of the U.S.
economy. And it has been the U.S. that has stood out while much of the rest of the world
already began to lose steam. The U.S. cannot defy gravity forever.
The housing market is also starting to flash warning signs. For the week ending on
October 12, the volume of mortgage applications
fell by 7.1 percent . Higher interest rates are clearly being felt in housing, pushing
homes out of reach for some prospective buyers.
President Trump recognizes the political threat he faces if interest rate hikes spoil the
party. "Every time we do something great, he raises the interest rates," Trump said of Fed
Chairman Jerome Powell in an interview with the
Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. He "almost looks like he's happy raising interest rates."
Trump added that it was "too early to say, but maybe" he regrets nominating Powell. Trump
complained that "Obama had zero interest rates."
The economic
headwinds are deflating the oil market, where supply tightness has dominated attention for
the past few months. Recently, however, some of the supply fears have eased. Saudi Arabia has
vowed to cover any supply gap, should it emerge. Inventories continue to rise. The outages in
Iran are seem to be less of a concern to traders.
Now demand is becoming a concern. As the global economy slows, particularly in China,
consumption could moderate. Brent crude fell by 4 percent on Tuesday amid a broader market
selloff.
"The crude oil price action yesterday was clearly impacted by bearish equity markets,
falling ten-year interest rates, rising gold prices and a clear risk adverse sentiment," said
Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB.
The next steps are unclear. There will be a tension between the supply losses from Iran,
which will serve to tighten the oil market, and the supply gains from U.S. shale and Saudi
Arabia. The demand side is decidedly more negative, with economic problems potentially forcing
a rethink among forecasters.
The crown jewel of California's Progressive-feminist policy this year was Senate
Bill 826 which mandates publicly-held corporations to put women on their boards. It was
passed and signed by Governor Jerry Brown. California now proudly leads the nation in identity
politics. The law requires a minimum of one woman board member by 2019, and by 2020, two for
boards with five members and three with boards of six or more.
The law's goal is gender
parity, but it is couched in financial terms suggesting that companies with women on their
boards do better than those that don't. Several studies are cited to back this claim (UC Cal,
Credit Suisse, and McKinsey). Catalyst
, a nonprofit that promotes women in the workplace, did a
widely quoted study that claimed:
Return on Equity: On average, companies with the highest percentages of women board
directors outperformed those with the least by 53% .
Return on Sales: On average, companies with the highest percentages of women board
directors outperformed those with the least by 42% .
Return on Invested Capital: On average, companies with the highest percentages of women
board directors outperformed those with the least by 66%.
This claim doesn't meet the smell test and the overwhelming conclusion of scientific
research in the field says that women directors have little or no effect on corporate
performance. Much of the data supporting the feminist theory lacks empirical rigor and is
coincidental ( A happened and then B happened, thus A caused B ).
Professor Alice H.
Eagly , a fellow at Northwestern's Institute of Policy Research, and an expert on issues
related to women in leadership roles, commented on this issue in the Journal of Social Issues :
Despite advocates' insistence that women on boards enhance corporate performance and that
diversity of task groups enhances their performance, research findings are mixed, and
repeated meta‐analyses have yielded average correlational findings that are null or
extremely small.
Rather than ignoring or furthering distortions of scientific knowledge to fit advocacy
goals, scientists should serve as honest brokers who communicate consensus scientific
findings to advocates and policy makers in an effort to encourage exploration of
evidence-based policy options. [Emphasis added]
American politics
has become a game of, by, and for corporate interests, with tax cuts for the rich, deregulation for polluters, and war and global
warming for the rest of us. Americans – and the world – deserve better.
smart traffic they say? Wowsers. I always wanted those lights to turn green immediately (when Im around).
And 24/7 tracking, so they can give you personal ads on LCD billboards while you walk past.
And better yet: access to lock or unlock your front door for a 'repairman'. Yeah that will work out great. I always wanted to
hand the keys to my home to outsiders for safe keeping, but now its automatic!
Amazing. What a different life we would all lead in this Smart City. /s
Alastair Crooke on the JK murder:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/10/23/khashoggi-murder-complex-intersection-three-points-inflection.html
"When a single additional, undifferentiated, snowflake can touch off a huge slide whose mass
is entirely disproportionate to the single grain that triggers it. Was Khashoggi's killing
just such a trigger? Quite possibly yes – because there are several unstable
accumulations of political mass in the region where even a small event might set off a
significant slide. These dynamics constitute a complex nexus of shifting dynamics."
"Is Medicare for All the Answer to Sky-High Administrative Costs?" [New York Times].
The answer will surprise you! "Medicare's direct administrative costs are not only low, but
they also have been falling over the years, as a percent of total program spending.
Yet the program's total administrative costs -- including those of the private plans -- have
been rising. 'This reflects a shift toward more enrollment in private plans," Mr. [Kip]
Sullivan said.
"The growth of those plans has raised, not lowered, overall Medicare administrative costs.'"
• It is very gratifying to see a single payer stalwart like Kip Sullivan quoted as the
authority he indeed is.
And, contrary to the headline, it does look like Medicare has a bad neoliberal infestation
that needs to be dealth with. "Free at the point of delivery" is a good starting point, because
that strikes a deathblow at the complex eligibility determination process so beloved by
markets-first liberals.
I apologize in advance to Lambert for adding this link to his terrific daily water cooler
topics, but since Yves and NC were specifically mentioned I thought it would be interesting
to share. The video is titled, "Should we trust MMT?" with Joe Bongiovanni. It is 48 minutes
long and I only made it about 20 minutes after becoming too annoyed. Yves/NC are mentioned at
18 minutes and 40 seconds in. Joe says he was part of the NC commentariat for years, but was
banned due to his thoughts that MMT proponents are misleading and don't "tell the real
truth".
Not being an economist or comfortable enough with my understanding of MMT to know if what
he was saying had merit. Plus the style and lack of preparation from the interviewer other
than wanting her expert to debunk MMT for her right wing followers.
I'm 30 min in .skip ahead to that point to get to the meat of his discussion.
He keeps repeating that he wants monetary "reform", so that the money system 'works for
the people'. But he doesn't say what that change is or why MMT gets it wrong in its
understanding of how the system works.
He says "govt doesn't create money by spending". Except, yes, it does. It then chooses to
offset that spending later with bond auctions.
He doesn't make a distinction between public and private debt, doesn't distinguish between
currency users and issuers. No distinction between stocks and flows. No discussion of
capacity constraints, inflation.
He actually fear-mongers about the debt around the 38-39 min mark. Says there's going to
be tough times when we get austerity (in addition to environment collapsing).
He talks a lot about how 'the monetary system works', but it's clear to me he doesn't get
how the banking system works. I don't think you can understand one without the other very
well.
MMT can offer a clear explanation of why:
1) 30 yr treasury bond yields fell rapidly in the 1980s while deficits were exploding.
2) 30 yr treasury bond yields rose in 2000, hitting 7% on the 30 yr at one point, when the
government was running surpluses.
3) Japan has a functional currency and economy with massive debts and deficits for many
years.
Conventional economics has NO explanation for the above phenomenon.
Cheers Johnny – he's been here before and took umbrage to the NC crew saying that
taxation for revenue is obsolete. Don't make me go there.
Said NC doesn't like criticism and Yves had banned him I'd be banned too if I thought
that!!
Got some trolls on Youtube worked up. I'll go and finish them off after I do a little more
digging on Joe and his Kettle Pond Institute for Debt Free Money.
He had a go at Bill Mitchell on this post recently:
IMO, Tvc, if you want some relevant stuff, look at how Jimmy Dore (a comedian turned
activist) gets his head around MMT – Stephanie Kelton was good and has been linked here
and also Chris Hedges
People like JD are very influential and I can see a heightened awareness out there that we
are not going to get anywhere now by being polite and civil.
I don't remember the details, but he was banned for behavior. The problem that so often
happens is that the people on losing sides of arguments here (as in not just the moderators
but the commentariat does a good job of debunking their claims) is they don't give up and
start going into various forms of bad faith argumentation: broken record, straw manning, or
just plain getting abusive. Then they try to claim they were banned due to their position, as
opposed to how they started carrying on when they couldn't make their case.
The AMI people are a real problem, and the worst is that they use enough lingo that sounds
MMT-like that they confuse people about MMT. They are also presumptuous as hell. I was part
of an Occupy Wall Street group, Alternative Banking. Every week, a group came and kept trying
to hijack the discussion to be about Positive Money. They got air time because that's Occupy
but everyone else regarded them as an annoyance.
One Sunday, the president of AMI showed up in a suit, uninvited, and expected to be able
to take over the group and lecture. The rules were everyone on stack got only 2 or 3 minutes
each (I forget how long) and then had to cede the floor. Since everyone else was too polite,
I was the one who had to shut him up by blowing up at him and telling him he was totally out
of line and had no business abusing the group's rules. That is the only time in my WASPy life
I have carried on like that in a public setting. Broke up the meeting, which reconvened only
after he left.
Despite the almost unprecedented divisive nature of Donald J. Trump's presidency, he is
chalking up some impressive foreign policy victories, including finally bringing Beijing to
task over its decades long unfair trade practices, stealing of intellectual property rights,
and rampant mercantilism that has given its state-run companies unfair trade advantages and as
a result seen Western funds transform China to an emerging world power alongside the U.S.
Now, it looks as if Trump's recent tirade against America's European allies over its
geopolitically troubling reliance on Russian gas supply may also be bearing fruit. On Tuesday,
The Wall Street Journal reported that earlier this month German Chancellor Angela Merkel
offered government support to efforts to open up Germany to U.S. gas, in what the report called
"a key concession to President Trump as he tries to loosen Russia's grip on Europe's largest
energy market."
German concession
Over breakfast earlier this month, Merkel told a small group of German lawmakers that the
government had made a decision to co-finance the construction of a $576 million liquefied
natural gas (LNG) terminal in northern Germany, people familiar with the development said.
The project had been postponed for at least a decade due to lack of government support,
according to reports, but is now being thrust to the center of European-U.S. geopolitics.
Though media outlets will mostly spin the development, this is nonetheless a geopolitical and
diplomatic win for Trump who lambasted Germany in June over its Nordstream 2 pipeline deal with
Russia.
In a televised meeting with reporters and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg before a
NATO summit in Brussels,
Trump said at the time it was "very inappropriate" that the U.S. was paying for European
defense against Russia while Germany, the biggest European economy, was supporting gas deals
with Moscow.
Both the tone and openness of Trumps' remarks brought scathing rebukes both at home and
among EU allies, including most media outlets. However, at the end of the day, it appears that
the president made a fair assessment of the situation. Russia, for its part, vehemently denies
any nefarious motives over its gas supply contacts with its European customers, though Moscow's
actions in the past dictate otherwise.
Moscow also claims that the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline is a purely commercial venture. The
$11 billion gas pipeline will stretch some 759 miles (1,222 km), running on the bed of the
Baltic Sea from Russian gas fields to Germany, bypassing existing land routes over Ukraine,
Poland and Belarus. It would double the existing Nord Stream pipeline's current annual capacity
of 55 bcm and is expected to become operational by the end of next year.
Russia, who stands the most to lose not only in terms of regional hegemony, but economically
as well, if Germany pushes through with plans to now build as many as three LNG terminals,
always points out that Russian pipeline gas is cheaper and will remain cheaper for decades
compared to U.S. LNG imports.
While that assessment is correct, what Moscow is missing, or at least not admitting, is a
necessary German acquiescence to Washington. Not only does the EU's largest economy need to
stay out of Trump's anti-trade cross hairs, it still needs American leadership in both NATO and
in Europe as well.
Russian advantages
Without U.S. leadership in Europe, a vacuum would open that Moscow would try to fill, most
likely by more gas supply agreements. However, Russia's gas monopoly in both Germany and in
Europe will largely remain intact for several reasons.
First, Russian energy giant Gazprom, which has control over Russia's network of pipelines to
Europe, supplies close to 40 percent of Europe's gas needs.
Second, Russia's gas exports to Europe rose 8.1 percent last year to a record level of 193.9
bcm, even amid concerns over Russia's cyber espionage allegations, and its activities in Syria,
the Ukraine and other places.
Moreover, Russian gas is indeed as cheap as the country claims and will remain that way for
decades. Using a Henry Hub gas price of $2.85/MMBtu as a base, Gazprom
recently estimated that adding processing and transportation costs, the price of
U.S.-sourced LNG in Europe would reach $6/MMBtu or higher – a steep markup.
Henry Hub gas prices are currently trading at $3.151/MMBtu. Over the last 52-week period
U.S. gas has traded between $2.64/MMBtu and $3.82/MMBtu. Russian gas sells for around $5/MMBtu
in European markets and could even trade at lower prices in the future as Gazprom removes the
commodity's oil price indexation.
"... By Dan Smith, Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute . He is also a part-time Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Manchester, affiliated with the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute . Until August, 2015, he was Secretary General of International Alert , the London-based international peacebuilding organization. Originally published at his blog ; cross posted from openDemocracy ..."
At a political rally on Saturday 20 October President Trump announced that the US will
withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty
of 1987. This confirms what has steadily unfolded over the last couple of years: the
architecture of US-Russian nuclear arms control is crumbling.
Building Blocks of Arms Control
As the Cold War ended, four new building blocks of east-west arms control were laid on top
of foundations set by the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of
1972:
1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) reduced the numbers of strategic nuclear
weapons; further cuts were agreed in 2002 and again in 2010 in the New START agreement.
– The 1990 Treaty on
Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE Treaty) capped at equal levels the number of heavy
weapons deployed between the Atlantic and the Urals by the then-members of both the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO). –
The 1991
Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs) were parallel, unilateral but agreed actions by
both the US and the USSR to eliminate short-range tactical nuclear weapons, of which
thousands existed.
Taken together, the nuclear measures – the INF Treaty, START and PNIs – had a
major impact, as this graph from the Federation of American
Scientists shows:
The fastest pace of reduction was in the 1990s. A deceleration began just before the new
century started, and there has been a further easing of the pace in the last six years. But
year by year, the number continues to fall. By the start of 2018 the global total of nuclear
weapons was 14,700 compared to an all-time high of some 70,000 in the mid-1980s. Nuclear
weapons are more capable in many ways than before; the reduction is, nonetheless, both large
and significant.
Cracks Appear: Charge and Counter-Charge
Even while the numbers continued to drop, problems were emerging. Not least, in 2002 the US
unilaterally withdrew from the ABM Treaty. That did not stop the US and Russia signing the
Strategic
Offensive Reductions Treaty in 2002 or New START in 2010 but perhaps it presaged
later developments.
Trump's announcement brings towards its conclusion a process that has been going on
for several years . The US declared Russia to be violating the Treaty in July 2014. That,
of course, was during the Obama administration. The allegation that Russia has breached the INF
Treaty, in other words, is not new. This year the USA's NATO allies also aligned themselves
with the US accusation, albeit somewhat guardedly (cf the careful wording in paragraph 46 of
the July Summit
Declaration ).
The charge is that Russia has developed a ground-launched cruise missile with a range over
500 kilometres. Many details have not been clearly stated publicly but it seems Russia may have
modified a sea-launched missile (the Kalibr ) and combined it with a mobile
ground-based launcher (the Iskander K system). The modified system is known sometimes
as the 9M729 , or t he SSC-8, or the
SSC-X-8 .
Russia rejects the US accusation. It makes the counter-charge that the US has itself
violated the Treaty in three ways: first by using missiles banned under the Treaty for target
practice; second because some US drones are effectively cruise missiles; and third because it
has taken a maritime missile defence system and based it on land ( Aegis Ashore )
although its launch tubes could, the Russians say, be used for intermediate range missiles.
Naturally, the US rejects these charges.
A further Russian criticism of the US over the INF Treaty is that, if the US wanted to
discuss alleged non-compliance, it should have used the Treaty's Special Verification
Commission before going public. This was designed specifically to address questions about each
side's compliance. It did not meet between 2003 and November 2016; it was during that 13-year
interval that US concerns about Russian cruise missiles arose.
Now Trump seems to have closed the argument by announcing withdrawal. Under Article XV of
the Treaty, withdrawal can happen after six months' notice. Unless there is a timely change of
approach by either side or both, the Treaty looks likely to be a dead letter by April 2019.
It could be, however, that the announcement is intended as a manoeuvre to get concessions
from the Russian side on the alleged missile deployment or on other aspects of an increasingly
tense US-Russian relationship. That is what Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov,
implied by calling it "blackmail".
Arms Control in Trouble
Whether the imminence of the INF Treaty's demise is more apparent than real, its plight is
part of a bigger picture. Arms control is in deep trouble. As well as the US abrogation of the ABM Treaty
in 2002,
effectively withdrew
from the CFE Treaty in 2015 arguing that the equal cap was no longer fair when five former
Warsaw Pact states had joined NATO. – The 2010 New START agreement on strategic
nuclear arms lasts until 2021 and there are currently no talks about prolonging or
replacing it. – Russia
claims that the US is technically violating New START because some launchers have been
converted to non-nuclear use in a way that is not visible to Russia so it cannot verify
them in the way the Treaty says it must be able to. The Russian government's
position is that until this is resolved, it is not possible to start work on the
prolongation of New START, despite its imminent expiry date.
It seems likely that the precarious situation of US-Russian arms control will simultaneously
put increasing pressure on the overall nuclear non-proliferation regime, and sharpen the
arguments about the Treaty on the
Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons . For the advocates of what is often known as the nuclear
ban, the erosion of arms control reinforces the case for moving forward to a world without
nuclear weapons. For its opponents, the erosion of arms control shows the world is not at all
ready for or capable of a nuclear ban.
The risk of a return to nuclear weapons build-ups by both Russia and the US is visible. We
risk losing the degree of safety we gained with the end of the Cold War and have enjoyed since
then. With US National Security Advisor John Bolton in Moscow as I write, and more importantly
with the well-earned reputation for springing surprises that the US and Russian Presidents both
have, there may be more developments in one direction or another in the coming days or
weeks.
The British author John Wyndham once wrote that 95 per cent of the human race wants to
live in peace while the other 5 per cent was always considering its chances if it should risk
starting anything. It was chiefly because no one's chances looked too good, what with nuclear
weapons, that the lull after WW2 continued. Now it looks like a new generation of wonks who
are not reality-based want to put the US in the position of being able to launch a
pre-emptive nuclear attack on at least Russia with missiles based in Europe. Like with the
old Pershing missiles, tough luck if you live in Europe. Russia has already said that they
will target any European country that houses these missiles with nukes.
Saw a hint on RT that if the US continues these efforts, that Russia may develop missiles
that could set off the Yellowstone Caldera. That would be not good. The Russians are always
ready to negotiate but the problem is that the US now has a reputation of being
agreement-incapable. Remember that Bush was stationing missiles in Europe as a shield against
non-existent Iranian nukes on top of Iranian missiles that did not have the range. Russia
suggested that the missiles be located in Turkey but the US refused. After the Iran treaty
went into effect, the US announced that – surprise, surprise – the missiles were
for use against Russia after all. How do you negotiate with something like that?
In regard to the INF Treaty the Russian newspapers have had some stories that they
consider that particular treaty likely the worst they ever signed. That's because the USSR
gave up many more missiles than the US did. The articles also mention that the Russians feel
they are many counties that have those type of missiles all around them. For example, China,
Pakistan, Iran and Israel are specially mentioned. Lastly the technology has changed so much
in the 30 or so years since that treaty was signed.
In a better time a new series of treaties might be negotiated but these are not better
times.
But there is a larger question here – I think one that applies to both Russia and
the United States – and that's the countries that are producing intermediate range
ballistic missiles and cruise missiles right now, specifically Iran, China and North Korea.
We have this very unusual circumstance where the United States and Russia are in a
bilateral treaty, whereas other countries in the world are not bound by it. Now some of the
successor states to the Soviet Union are bound by it, but it's really only Russia that has
the wherewithal to have this kind of program. So it has been the view of the United States,
in effect, that only two countries were bound by the INF treaty.
It appears that Mr. Trump likes bilateral trade agreements and multi-lateral arms
agreeements.
This is all part of Bolton's war on Russia. Like Trump, he indulges in old score-settling
with Beltway & Pentagon colleagues as well as proving he was right all along to oppose
these and most other treaties. I am highly suspicious of this entire fiasco.
Why are we so preoccupied with a country that has an economy a fifth the size of the US
alone (much less NATO/EU)? Even if allied with China and NATO ally (?) Califwannabe Erdogan,
Russia is more annoying than a threat.
Bolton, on the other hand, scares the crap out me. He's just plain nuts.
I'm very glad this post is up. That this isn't a huge story is a fine example of "The
tyranny of the urgent." (Those who read the transcript of Putin at the Valdai Club may recall
this passage :
[PUTIN] Look, we live in a world where security relies on nuclear capability. Russia is
one of the largest nuclear powers. You may be aware, I have said it publicly, we are
improving our attack systems as an answer to the United States building its missile defence
system. Some of these systems have already been fielded, and some will be put into service
in the coming months. I am talking about the Avangard system. Clearly, we have overtaken
all our, so to speak, partners and competitors in this sphere, and this fact is
acknowledged by the experts. No one has a high-precision hypersonic weapon. Some plan to
begin testing it in one or two years, while we have this high-tech modern weapon in
service. So, we feel confident in this sense.
Naturally, there are many other risks, but they are shared risks, such as environment,
climate change, terrorism, which I mentioned, and proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction. If we are unable to put an effective end to this, it is not clear where it
will lead to, and in whose hands this deadly weapon may end up.
So, in this sense, nothing has changed. We are not going anywhere, we have a vast
territory, and we do not need anything from anyone. But we value our sovereignty and
independence. It has always been this way, at all times in the history of our state. It
runs in the blood of our people, as I have repeatedly said. In this sense, we feel
confident and calm.
And this:
I have said that our nuclear weapons doctrine does not provide for a pre-emptive strike.
I would like to ask all of you and those who will later analyse and in one way or another
interpret my every word here, to keep in mind that there is no provision for a pre-emptive
strike in our nuclear weapons doctrine. Our concept is based on a reciprocal counter
strike. There is no need to explain what this is to those who understand, as for those who
do not, I would like to say it again: this means that we are prepared and will use nuclear
weapons only when we know for certain that some potential aggressor is attacking Russia,
our territory. I am not revealing a secret if I say that we have created a system which is
being upgraded all the time as needed – a missile early warning radar system. This
system monitors the globe, warning about the launch of any strategic missile at sea and
identifying the area from which it was launched. Second, the system tracks the trajectory
of a missile flight. Third, it locates a nuclear warhead drop zone.
Only when we know for certain – and this takes a few seconds to understand –
that Russia is being attacked we will deliver a counter strike. This would be a reciprocal
counter strike. Why do I say 'counter'? Because we will counter missiles flying towards us
by sending a missile in the direction of an aggressor. Of course, this amounts to a global
catastrophe but I would like to repeat that we cannot be the initiators of such a
catastrophe because we have no provision for a pre-emptive strike. Yes, it looks like we
are sitting on our hands and waiting until someone uses nuclear weapons against us. Well,
yes, this is what it is. But then any aggressor should know that retaliation is inevitable
and they will be annihilated. And we as the victims of an aggression, we as martyrs would
go to paradise while they will simply perish because they won't even have time to repent
their sins.
I've see a video of a fancy new weapon. Is it real?
The Avangard is in testing or just completed testing. Depending what stories you see it
has been successfully tested at least once. Even successful testing may not mean deployment.
Earliest estimate for deployment is about 2020 in very limited numbers. I'm not sure how big
a deal this thing is as it launched from an ICBM. How much faster than an incoming ICBM
warhead does it move?
The Avangard has nothing to do with the INF.
The Russian nuclear doctrine does allow for the use of nuclear weapons – at least in
fairly narrow circumstances. The wording implies the circumstances would "have to threaten
the collapse of the state". First use in those circumstances might not be considered
preemptive. Putin help write to doctrine when he was Secretary of the Russian National
Security Council Staff .
Just a general thing, for those interested in excellent technical (both scientific and
legal/compliance) commentary on arms control, I highly recommend Arms Control Wonk . The level of discussion is very
high, the kind of level NC readers would appreciate. I'm in no way associated with it except
for being a longtime reader.
The UN was created not to sell Sustainable Development but to prevent Apocalyptic Riot.
During the Cold War & a Bi Polar power balance of separate economics it did the job.
However flawed it was, it did that one job.
Now it sits there selling Sustainable Development, which is great, but not what it was really
made to do.
If the UN, or a new one with an overt and covert armed forces becomes the World's Unitary
Power intent on eliminating nuclear weapons it could negotiate them away and fight a war or
two, and be involved in a permanent level of conflict to keep the fields free of nukes.
In fact the banning of nuclear weapons would give a UN the power to enforce transformational
energy programs. I have strong doubt that the UN as it exists now will prevent apocalyptic
riot.
Human nature being what it is does not get excited and passionate about the environment.
Humans get excited about big new power systems and war.
There has been a demonstrated desire to reduce the likelihood of nuclear war. The Cold War
worked. During that period it was long only the US & the USSR that had nuclear bombs and
delivery systems.
Russia moved into the Ukraine with tanks, took Crimea and got away with it. Pretty much the
situation is that wherever you see tanks move you may see the employment of tactical nuclear
weapons. A conventional ability to stop all tanks then is important for those nations
vulnerable to tank attacks.
In fact I say that you cannot expect to reduce nuclear devices unless you address the reason
for them, and that is to stop tanks. Reducing tanks first is then the right order to do
things. Come to tank treaties first and then tackle nuclear weapons and the rest of the WMDs
is what I say.
'Tactical' nuclear weapons are not the only way to stop tanks. The Russian move into
Crimea is hardly an argument for the superiority of a tank invasion or the need for tactical
nuclear weapons. Tanks are effective in open relatively flat even terrain, and as long as you
have control of the air and sufficient infantry support around them. If the objective is to
stop a tank rather than destroy it there are ways. You could stop a tank by spraying glue
over their weapons sight, or vision blocks, or the camera port for some of the more recent
armored vehicles. Even if you can't stop a tank you can stop parts from coming in to make
repairs or diesel to run the their hungry engines if their supply lines are not well
protected. The tanks will quickly stop on their own. You could also stop tanks with opposing
tanks if you're ready to absorb the costs for building the force and keep it ready to roll
near an attack corridor. Tactical nuclear weapons might save a little money (???) but they
are a hellish invention for increasing the threats to our fragile world as we transition
through Climate Disruptions into the new Anthropocene Climate Regime.
While you're working on those tank treaties, please include ground mines especially those
with plastic casings -- oh! and don't forget to eliminate those nasty spent-uranium
shells.
"Russia moved into the Ukraine with tanks, took Crimea and got away with it" Rather a
warped interpretation of a situation where the USA had overthrown the Ukrainian government
and Crimea had been part of Russia and the population overwhelmingly voted to return. NO
bloodshed at all. The video "Crimea, the way back Home" is worth a look.
The Blue Wave seems to be receding. The reason; Democrats rule for the Elite 10%. They are
globalists rich from transnational world trade. They expect to cycle back into power.
However, there is no bull pen. They work against policies that would mitigate the neoliberal
winner takes all society and preserve the middle class. The Cold War restarted. Republican
Corporatists, nationalists or not, are no alternative.
The Western political-economic system, with no feedback corrections from democracy, is
tearing itself into pieces. Even though, corporate media continues to say how great things
are.
"... Third party candidates appear to have popped up in important KS races where far-right candidates might not get enough R votes, but where a 3rd party candidate could draw off moderate R votes that might otherwise to go the D candidate. ..."
"... Since getting the nomination, it seems that they caved to the establishment and diluted their platforms to tripe - Eastman did it within days of winning her primary. Same is true in solid Democrat districts that were never part of this series - I can't even view the change in MA-07 as much of a win, since on policy at least, Presley appears to have defeated Capuano from the right, not the left. I'm not at all surprised that this process leaves only 2 genuine leftists remaining, plus AOC. ..."
I sure hope the Dems take over the House. After McConnel said out loud on teevee that he
plans to Gut Social Security and Medicare to fix the deficit (created by the Trump taxcuts
for the Rich), Repubs have become a frightening breed. And what else will they attack? The
Trump presidency has turned from awful to Nightmarish. I'm not even a fan of the corporate
Dems but Congressional gridlock is our only hope.
If I'm completely honest with myself, I think it would be better for Rs to keep the house.
The D/R charade just gives hope to leftists while preventing meaningful institutional reform.
IMO things need to get worse before they can get better, and having a split Congress will
delay that. I think it'll take 3-4 terms of solid R rule before the left has a chance to make
meaningful change.
Here's a thought experiment: suppose the Dems had solid control of both houses: what would
they do? If you aren't excited about that outcome, why vote for it?
I have had similar thoughts in wondering what would be best. Maybe a complete humiliation
for the Ds in the House, like the GOP gaining 10 seats, but then a flip of the Senate, which
doesn't seem likely. It would have to be by several seats to counter Manchin, etc. I voted
straight D. It's all just speculation on my part; damned if I even know anymore what would be
best.
Historically, "the worse the better" hasn't worked out, unless you're hoping for
revolutionary conditions.
Otherwise, most people are pretty unprincipled at the end of the show -- they'll run to
join the crowd.
And the "revolutionary solution" is really, really bad historically. Really bad.
What you really want is the Dems to kick-ass, even if they're total sell-outs, to create
space on the left. But if they lose? You get a whole lot of people becoming radical right
wingers to be on the side of the winners.
flora, October 25, 2018 at 12:19 pm
KS-02 Paul Davis (D) vs Steve Watkins (R) (Jenkins is retiring, not running again.) with a libertarian candidate thrown in
as a 3rd party.
Trump was in town to rally with Watkins a short while ago. Lot of moderate Rs won't vote for far-right* Watkins, even
though this is an R district. Should be an interesting election.
Third party candidates appear to have popped up in important KS races where far-right candidates might not get enough
R votes, but where a 3rd party candidate could draw off moderate R votes that might otherwise to go the D candidate. Who
is funding these 3rd party candidates remains a mystery.
*on the same spectrum as Kris Kobach, imo.
Big River Bandido, October 25, 2018 at 12:20 pm
I think your approach of filtering out who the real candidates are from the left is correct. Dana Balter and Kara Eastman
have been particularly disheartening as general-election candidates; Eastman, especially, talked a great game on health care
back in the primary. Since getting the nomination, it seems that they caved to the establishment and diluted their
platforms to tripe - Eastman did it within days of winning her primary. Same is true in solid Democrat districts that were
never part of this series - I can't even view the change in MA-07 as much of a win, since on policy at least, Presley appears
to have defeated Capuano from the right, not the left. I'm not at all surprised that this process leaves only 2 genuine
leftists remaining, plus AOC.
"The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent.
They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their
intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a
trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own
gain." -- They Live , John Carpenter
We're living in two worlds, you and I.
There's the world we see (or are made to see) and then there's the one we sense (and
occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven
reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.
Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America - privileged, progressive and free -
is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power
are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and "freedom,"
such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the
teeth.
All is not as it seems.
"You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall.
You think they're people just like you. You're wrong. Dead wrong."
This is the premise of
John Carpenter's film They Live , which was released 30 years ago in November 1988 and
remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age.
Best known for his horror film Halloween , which assumes that there is a form of evil so
dark that it can't be killed, Carpenter's larger body of work is infused with a strong
anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker's concerns
about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.
Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens,
a populace out of touch with reality , technology run amok, and a future more horrific than
any horror film.
In Escape from New York , Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.
In The Thing , a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes
that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.
In Christine , the film adaptation of Stephen King's novel about a demon-possessed car,
technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.
In In the Mouth of Madness , Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose "the ability
to know the difference between reality and fantasy."
And then there is Carpenter's They Live , in which two migrant workers discover that the
world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by
aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace --
blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives -- has been lulled into
complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized
by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and
the like.
It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy
Piper ) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses -- Hoffman lenses -- that Nada sees what
lies beneath the elite's fabricated reality: control and bondage.
When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their
disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on
them.
Likewise,
billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages : a bikini-clad woman in one ad is
actually ordering viewers to "MARRY AND REPRODUCE." Magazine racks scream "CONSUME" and "OBEY."
A wad of dollar bills in a vendor's hand proclaims, "THIS IS YOUR GOD."
When viewed through Nada's Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed
into the people's subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP,
BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.
This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in They Live is painfully familiar to
anyone who has studied the decline of American culture.
A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does
not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be
entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.
In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted
vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to
as dictatorship in
democracy , "the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom."
We're being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to
reality.
The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists,
shooters ,
bombers ).
They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our
safety and well-being.
They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other's
throats.
Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates.
Tune out the government's attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what's
really going on in this country, and you'll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable
truth: the moneyed elite who rule us view us as expendable resources to be used, abused and
discarded.
In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the
U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens . Instead, the study
found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called "economic elite."
Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly
always favor special interests and lobbying groups.
In other words, we are being
ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism --
a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the
people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.
Not only do you have to be rich -- or beholden to the rich -- to get elected these days, but
getting elected is also a
surefire way to get rich . As CBS News reports, "Once in office, members of Congress enjoy
access to connections and information they can use to increase their wealth, in ways that are
unparalleled in the private sector. And once politicians leave office, their connections allow
them to profit even further."
In denouncing this blatant corruption of America's political system, former president Jimmy
Carter blasted the process of getting elected -- to the White House, governor's mansion,
Congress or state legislatures -- as "
unlimited political bribery a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major
contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election
is over."
Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of
government will remain: Fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session.
There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and
political trivia. Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply. Actual control will
have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes.
Sound familiar?
Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate
interests.
We have moved into "corporatism" (
favored by Benito Mussolini ), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown
fascism.
Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests -- not elected by the citizenry -- rule over
the many. In this way, it is not a democracy or a republican form of government, which is what
the American government was established to be. It is a top-down form of government and one
which has a terrifying history typified by the developments that occurred in totalitarian
regimes of the past: police states where everyone is watched and spied on, rounded up for minor
infractions by government agents, placed under police control, and placed in detention (a.k.a.
concentration) camps.
For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the
majority of the people will have to agree that it's not only expedient but necessary.
But why would a people agree to such an oppressive regime?
Fear is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government. And,
as most social commentators recognize, an atmosphere of fear permeates modern America: fear of
terrorism, fear of the police, fear of our neighbors and so on.
The propaganda of fear has been used quite effectively by those who want to gain control,
and it is working on the American populace.
Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a
terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a
terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a
terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be
killed by a police officer than by a terrorist , we have handed over control of our lives
to government officials who treat us as a means to an end -- the source of money and power.
As the Bearded Man in They Live warns , "They are dismantling the sleeping middle class.
More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for
slavery."
In this regard, we're not so different from the oppressed citizens in They Live .
From the moment we are born until we die, we are indoctrinated into believing that those who
rule us do it for our own good. The truth is far different.
Despite the truth staring us in the face, we have allowed ourselves to become fearful,
controlled, pacified zombies.
We live in a perpetual state of denial, insulated from the painful reality of the American
police state by wall-to-wall entertainment news and screen devices.
Most everyone keeps their heads down these days while staring zombie-like into an electronic
screen, even when they're crossing the street. Families sit in restaurants with their heads
down, separated by their screen devices and unaware of what's going on around them. Young
people especially seem dominated by the devices they hold in their hands, oblivious to the fact
that they can simply push a button, turn the thing off and walk away.
Indeed, there is no larger group activity than that connected with those who watch screens
-- that is, television, lap tops, personal computers, cell phones and so on. In fact, a Nielsen
study reports that American screen viewing is at an all-time high. For example, the average
American watches approximately 151 hours of television per month .
The question, of course, is what effect does such screen consumption have on one's mind?
Psychologically it is similar to
drug addiction . Researchers found that "almost immediately after turning on the TV,
subjects
reported feeling more relaxed , and because this occurs so quickly and the tension returns
so rapidly after the TV is turned off, people are conditioned to associate TV viewing with a
lack of tension." Research also shows that regardless of the programming, viewers' brain waves
slow down, thus transforming them into a more passive, nonresistant state.
Historically, television has been used by those in authority to quiet discontent and pacify
disruptive people. "Faced with severe overcrowding and limited budgets for rehabilitation and
counseling, more and more
prison officials are using TV to keep inmates quiet ," according to Newsweek .
Given that the majority of what Americans watch on television is provided through channels
controlled by six mega corporations , what we watch is now controlled by a corporate elite
and, if that elite needs to foster a particular viewpoint or pacify its viewers, it can do so
on a large scale.
If we're watching, we're not doing.
The powers-that-be understand this. As television journalist Edward R. Murrow warned in a
1958 speech:
We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent . We have currently a built-in
allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we
get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to
distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who
look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.
This brings me back to They Live , in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the
shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled.
When all is said and done, the world of They Live is not so different from our own.
We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices and gains. Our poor and
underclasses are also growing. Racial injustice is growing. Human rights is nearly nonexistent.
We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others.
Oblivious to what lies ahead, we've been manipulated into believing that if we continue to
consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that's never been true of emerging
regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late.
So where does that leave us?
The characters who populate Carpenter's films provide some insight.
Underneath their machismo, they still believe in the ideals of liberty and equal
opportunity. Their beliefs place them in constant opposition with the law and the
establishment, but they are nonetheless freedom fighters.
When, for example, John Nada destroys the alien hyno-transmitter in They Live , he restores
hope by delivering America a wake-up call for freedom.
That's the key right there: we need to wake up.
Stop allowing yourselves to be easily distracted by pointless political spectacles and pay
attention to what's really going on in the country.
The real battle for control of this nation is not being waged between Republicans and
Democrats in the ballot box.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield
America: The War on the American People , the real battle for control of this nation is
taking place on roadsides, in police cars, on witness stands, over phone lines, in government
offices, in corporate offices, in public school hallways and classrooms, in parks and city
council meetings, and in towns and cities across this country.
The real battle between freedom and tyranny is taking place right in front of our eyes, if
we would only open them.
All the trappings of the American police state are now in plain sight.
Wake up, America.
If they live (the tyrants, the oppressors, the invaders, the overlords), it is only because
"we the people" sleep.
"Has America Become A Dictatorship Disguised As A Democracy?"
Thanks to alternative media the answer is NO. It is important to note, however, that The
left, the Drive-By Media (MSM), and some corporations think we are now a dictatorship - and
they are the dictators. On a daily basis you see them spewing and sputtering and spinning in
circles claiming that we are a dictatorship and THEY are in charge! Sorry fuckwads -
ain't gonna happen.
This story from 1963 has something we instantly recognize in the bullshittery of David
Icke of this decade.
George is a name that means "farmer" So George Nada is farmer of nothing. Radell Faraday
Nelson knew an interesting lot of folks, many of whom including Burroughs were... what? From:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Burroughs
" Burroughs was born in 1914, the younger of two sons born to Mortimer Perry Burroughs
(June 16, 1885 – January 5, 1965) and Laura Hammon Lee (August 5, 1888 – October
20, 1970). His was a prominent family of English ancestry in St. Louis, Missouri . His grandfather,
William
Seward Burroughs I , founded the Burroughs Adding Machine company, which evolved into the
Burroughs
Corporation . Burroughs' mother was the daughter of a minister whose family claimed to be
closely related to Robert E. Lee . His maternal uncle,
Ivy Lee , was an
advertising pioneer later employed as a publicist for the Rockefellers. His father ran an
antique and gift shop, Cobblestone Gardens in St. Louis; and later in Palm Beach, Florida when they
relocated."
...Beat poets (right). Starving artists.
Anyway, Carpenter has done some great work. I remember "They Live" from the theater in '88
at 13. That and Die Hard. If you do a close read of this stuff you'll have fun for days. File
away Ray dosing LSD with PKD. That must have been awesome! So have at it.
Let me ask you, can one take a half step to waking up? Can one be half pregnant?
One of the all time best films I have watched. "They Live" is a really good movie. I have
seen it twice in my lifetime and am going to watch it again in a day or two. If you have
never seen it then you are in for a real treat. It is truly a film worth watching.
Sheep and people who can't think for themselves love dictators. They have a need for
someone they can look up to for "leadership" and to be "herded".
And, bye the way, let's set this article straight. America was never a "Democracy".
America, since the beginning, has been controlled by the elites, or the "Oligarchy". John
Adams once said, "if the majority were given real power, they would redistribute wealth and
dissolve the subordination so necessary for politics". The founding fathers were very much
like the vast majority of European Enlightenment thinkers and against Democracy.. From their
lofty perspective, they understood it to be a dangerous and chaotic form of uneducated mob
rule. The Founding Fathers felt the masses were not only incapable of ruling, but they were
considered a threat to the hierarchical social structures necessary for good governance.
So, the U.S. was formed as a "Republic", by devising a written constitution, which defined
to the masses, how the oligarchy would herd them, and toss them a few bread crumbs called the
"Bill of Rights", so the masses would feel assured of some respect and dignity and would
comply. (Yet, they allowed slavery and indentured-servitude to exist). America is still ruled
by an Oligarchy today, yet most Americans don't seem to know any better.(Perhaps the elites
were right about the masses being uneducated)? Even George Mason, a Virginia delegate to the
Constitutional Convention of 1787 described America as "a despotic aristocracy." Not much has
changed in the way Americans are governed in past 231 years. After all, who leads our country
today, but a dictatorial aristocratic billionaire. Again, Sheep like to be herded because
they don't know any better..
It's much worse than that Mr. Whitehead, much worse! We're at the begining stages of a
cathartic transformation that'll either wither the USA for good, or provide the impetus for
deep-seated change. For decades, we struggled to slow down the march of tyranny, and while we
may say we succeeded to an extent, it wasn't enough.
There was too much general ignorance, too much complacency, apathy, and freeloading to
make the efforts bear significant fruits, and just now, the last shoe has dropped thus, the
fundamental right that pillars all fundamental rights, the right to speech according to an
individual's preference, has just been stealthily abrogated, in the guise of preventing
election meddling, whatever that means.
Now, Americans are free to allow the US government to do with them as it wishes, the rest
of the world however, are not bound by that choice therefore, if we may advise the ROW (Rest
of World), it's time to inoculate, and quarantine yourselves against the virus that's
infected the USA.
It is glaring now, nothing anyone can do to halt the arrival of the accountant, absolutely
nothing. The best we can do, is advise the patriots to quarantine themselves, the Republic
cannot be restored just yet, and we don't know what it'll take, or when it'll happen but this
much we know, the time has come for the calibration of the USA.
Folks will scoff as usual, and that's not our concern, we are no longer allowed to be
involved actively, we'll pray for folks though, and hope they find the strength to persevere,
other than that, nothing else we can do, cause now, it really doesn't matter anymore, who
rules, or governs the US, it doesn't..
So now, we'll observe, and assist the faithful to grow in strength, prestige, and wealth,
they at least, understand what it's all about.
So to you my friends, vote or don't vote, it's irrelevant, advocate or not, it doesn't
matter, the Republicans might win, the Democrats might win, it doesn't matter, and it's not
worth caring about anymore. As the spoilt generation engage in their final acts of depravity
before they exit, we'll advise you to get out of their way, and observe keenly from a safe
distance.
The way to health as usual, goes through the rough valley of deprivation. Now, it's time
to concentrate on the healthy, and let the sick heal themselves, and the dead bury the dead,
while yet the living live fully.
We thought it was possible to reform the depraved, it wasn't...even we must admit the
limits of our efforts, it wasn't enough, oh what a crying shame...
Not a "slave"? Tell your ******* boss you quit, walk out, burn up your savings, crawl back
a beggar. What do you call it?
One of the (very successful) tactics of corporatism (fascism) is to destroy individual
inventiveness and entrepreneurship outside the big office. You become a wage slave, afraid to
lose a crappy job, in debt because of inadequate wages, bombarded by corporate propaganda.
Your kids are turned against you, because the ads say you're mean. You succumb, watch
distractions on corporate media that show you that the "others out there" are worse off and
trying to steal your stuff (which isn't paid for and is worthless). I dropped out a long time
ago. I'm an escaped slave, hiding out, picking up what I can, living in the tropics. When I
occasionally go back "home" and see friends who took the bait - hook, line and sinker - I
pity them.
One consolation - the corporate captains of industry are also slaves, but their cells are
a bit better than yours.
Always been comfortable with Carpenter. His dystopian world view is pretty close to the
awful reality of Western life. I live elsewhere.
I have been bothered by the changes in society for many years. I lived in many
dictatorships and Theocracies, and many of the trappings of those countries have now been
installed here in America. It is not just that, but also basic changes in the way people
think and act has brought this entire civilization to the brink. The US is not a
dictatorship, but it is way more controlled and less free than it was when I was young. Thing
is, change is always happening, nothing stands still. Societies age and become weak,
eventually falling into dictatorship after the people stop believing in self discipline and
self reliance, and start to live off of the gifts of the state. It is the death of a nation,
and a society as a whole.
But the entire advanced civilization we currently have is failing, due to the changes in
our belief systems. When we began to believe females are just males with different plumbing,
we started on the long decline to eventual destruction as a race. Families depend upon real
females to exist and thrive, and societies and the entire race depends upon families for
survival as a species. We have lost that.
Every society on earth is, or would like to become, a dictatorship disguised as a
democracy. No surprise there.
But, alas, foiled again. Damn those visionaries from 1776. If only we could convince
the
Americans to be more like the Euro-geldings, we'd be there already.
And now their poisonous ability to say no is starting to spread into the veins of the
already cowed and conquered.
latest example: politicos and media decrying the mysterious mailing of bombs by " trump
supporters " to the liberal elite as " unamerican " and " not our values " etc
I guess Boeing, Northrup Grumman and the rest of the MIC really hate bombs too, unless
they are purchased and deployed under cost plus plus contracts for the pentagon.
USA is droning 'enemy combatants' and 'collateral damage' without regard for the terror
that this sows, or should i say, with explicit intent to sow fear.
The worthy Guardians of Democracy have taught us that democracy is about being able to
bring down duly elected Governments by conducting espionage, promoting dissent, killing a few
popular leaders, funding colour revolutions and various Springs, installing henchmen and boot
lickers of their liking so that the Guardian Angels can walk in, turn the countries into
piles of rubble, plunder whatever wealth they have so that the Guardians themselves can live
a comfortable life – now this is real democracy.
It is not a dictatorship. It is a dicktatorship and run by crooks and murderers. The
dicktators are the people who own and control the media, the financial system and the major
political parties. Their power comes from their concentration money and information in their
exclusive control.
the next Trump, a Trump with the rough edges sanded off, is going to seize that issue and
run with it, and lock in Republican power for another generation (as soon as they can figure
out how to package Medicare for All as supporting the free market. Don't laugh).
The Republicans will sell this to America as making American business more competitive oin
world commerce by lowering costs. Healthcare costs have to be eat up a huge portion of
American companies employee costs. By dumping these costs onto the government, American
business becomes more cost competitive around the world. (Not believing most of this myself,
but it's the argument the GOP will make.)
I never understood why Bernie never made this appeal to the US Chamber of Commerce.
Because the chamber of commerce likes the fact that workers will take more crap, and work
for less, if they know their family will lose access to heathcare if they dont. It creates a
servile, frightened workforce. Just the way the oligarchs like it.
You could "package Medicare for All as supporting the free market" by pointing out that it
would allow small businesses to compete with big ones by eliminating their need to arrange
for health insurance for their employees -- something that is much easier and more cost
effective for big businesses.
This case has been made by many. Watch the free movie Fix It online made by an American
businessman re what providing even crappy insurance to his employees affects his bottom
line.
Also frame it as equalizing the cost of doing business internationally. Any kind of
National Health scheme is a subsidy for that nations business class. How much of the "lower
labour costs" touted in support of 'outsourcing' American jobs is paid for by the other
countries government's assumption of their domestic medical funding?
This brings up the question of which business group has more 'influence' on the political
parties and thus government, international trade or domestic production?
And Medicare for All is single payer, not single provider, right? Which means that there
will be competition among hospital conglomerates and less room for under-the-table deals like
the one here where the biggest hospital company bought the biggest insurance company in the
state, and nobody could do anything about the fact that the insurance company suddenly would
not pay for any doctor other than their own because the ACA had an antitrust waiver for
medical insurance companies.
"... Attorney Michael Avenatti and his client Julie Swetnick have been referred to the Justice Department for criminal investigation for a "potential conspiracy to provide materially false statements to Congress and obstruct a congressional committee investigation, three separate crimes, in the course of considering Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States," according to a statement released by the Judiciary Committee. ..."
"... The referral has an entire section entitled: "issues with Mr. Avenatti's credibility," which starts out highlighting a 2012 dispute with a former business partner over a coffee chain investment in which accuser Patrick Dempsey said that Avenatti lied to him, while the company was also "reportedly involved in additional litigation implicating his credibility, including one case in which a judge sanctioned his company for misconduct." ..."
"... Swetnick - whose checkered past has called her character into question, alleges that Kavanaugh and a friend, Mark Judge, ran a date-rape "gang bang" operation at 10 high school parties she attended as an adult (yet never reported to the authorities). ..."
"... The Wall Street Journal has attempted to corroborate Ms. Swetnick's account, contacting dozens of former classmates and colleagues, but couldn't reach anyone with knowledge of her allegations . No friends have come forward to publicly support her claims. - WSJ ..."
"... Soon after Swetnick's story went public, her character immediately fell under scrutiny - after Politico reported that Swetnick's ex-boyfriend, Richard Vinneccy - a registered Democrat, took out a restraining order against her, and says he has evidence that she's lying. ..."
Attorney Michael Avenatti and his client Julie Swetnick have been referred to the Justice Department for criminal
investigation for a "potential conspiracy to provide materially false statements to Congress and obstruct a congressional
committee investigation, three separate crimes, in the course of considering Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh's nomination to the
Supreme Court of the United States," according to a statement released by the Judiciary Committee.
While the Committee was in the middle of its extensive investigation of the late-breaking
sexual-assault allegations made by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford against Supreme Court nominee Judge
Brett Kavanaugh, Avenatti publicized his client's allegations of drug- and
alcohol-fueled gang rapes in the 1980s. The obvious, subsequent contradictions along with the
suspicious timing of the allegations necessitate a criminal investigation by the Justice
Department.
"When a well-meaning citizen comes forward with information relevant to the committee's work, I
take it seriously. It takes courage to come forward, especially with allegations of sexual
misconduct or personal trauma. I'm grateful for those who find that courage," Grassley said. "
But
in the heat of partisan moments, some do try to knowingly mislead the committee
. That's
unfair to my colleagues, the nominees and others providing information who are seeking the
truth. It stifles our ability to work on legitimate lines of inquiry. It also wastes time and
resources for destructive reasons. Thankfully, the law prohibits such false statements to
Congress and obstruction of congressional committee investigations. For the law to work, we
can't just brush aside potential violations. I don't take lightly making a referral of this
nature, but ignoring this behavior will just invite more of it in the future."
Grassley referred Swetnick and Avenatti for investigation in a letter sent today to the Attorney
General of the United States and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The letter
notes potential violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 1001 and 1505,
which respectively define
the federal criminal offenses of conspiracy, false statements and obstruction of Congress. The
referral seeks further investigation only, and is not intended to be an allegation of a crime
.
-
Senate
Judiciary Committee
The referral has an entire section entitled: "issues with Mr. Avenatti's credibility,"
which starts out highlighting a 2012 dispute with a former business partner over a coffee chain
investment in which accuser Patrick Dempsey said that Avenatti lied to him, while the company was
also "reportedly involved in additional litigation implicating his credibility, including one case
in which a judge sanctioned his company for misconduct."
Swetnick - whose checkered past has called her character into question, alleges that Kavanaugh
and a friend, Mark Judge, ran a date-rape "gang bang" operation at 10 high school parties she
attended
as an adult
(yet never reported to the authorities).
The allegations were posted by Avenatti over Twitter, asserting that Kavanaugh and Judge made
efforts to cause girls "
to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be "gang
raped" in a side room or bedroom by a "train" of numerous boys
."
To try and corroborate the story, the
Wall
Street Journal
contacted "dozens of former classmates and colleagues," yet couldn't find
anyone who knew about the rape parties.
The Wall Street Journal has attempted to corroborate Ms. Swetnick's account, contacting
dozens of former classmates and colleagues,
but couldn't reach anyone with knowledge of
her allegations
. No friends have come forward to publicly support her claims. -
WSJ
"... An article IIRC in the Nation by a restaurant worker specifically discussed how #MeToo had ignored waitresses and there was no change in behavior. ..."
"... Hundreds of McDonald's employees, emboldened by the #MeToo movement, demonstrated outside company headquarters in Chicago on Tuesday to draw attention to alleged sexual harassment at work ..."
"... McDonald's employees only. No show of solidarity by other women. As a result, look how small the protest was. I rest my case. ..."
"... I think the movement, for both ethical and pragmatic reasons, should and must center working class women. I'm not seeing that. I would be very happy indeed to see it. ..."
"... Caliban and the Witch ..."
"... Fundamental to all civilised systems of criminal law is the doctrine nulla poena sine lege ..."
"... "Inappropriate behavior," is not a category of conduct known to the criminal law. Nor, for that matter, is making a person feel uncomfortable. Awkward advances without a guilty mind is also not a criminal offense. ..."
"... Due process rights were hard won over many centuries. If we are to abandon, even with the best of intentions, nulla poena sine lege ..."
"... I loathe party culture, exactly because it encourages assault. ..."
"... a Jobs Guarantee would make it easier for a woman to leave an abusive workplace. A Post Office Bank, by giving every woman her own checking account as a matter of right, would make it easier for women to leave abusive relationships. Sometimes it's more effective to be indirect. ..."
"... Wages for restaurant workers such that they don't have to depend on potentially abusive customers for tips. A third way also does not appear: Encouraging cooperatives . So the question of whose ..."
Sorry, but this is going to be a long one. Because I've become increasingly frustrated by
the little asides in Water Cooler related to MeToo. So buckle up, buttercup.
Justice for Emmett Till and #Believewomen are only in conflict if you want to pit groups
of victims against each other. I'm not surprised to see a GOPer do it, but I'm disappointed
it's going on here. What Emmett Till and women of sexual assault (and men and children of
sexual assault) have in common is that there is no justice for them. This idea that we need
"due process" for the MeToo stuff is all well and good, but where exactly is it supposed to
come from? What #Believewomen and #MeToo (which includes men and boys, see, e.g. Terry Crews
for a famous example) are really about are holding the powerful accountable and telling the
world that the current system does not work for women (or anyone else who has been sexually
assaulted). How is that a bad thing? Unless you want to read #Believewomen as meaning that
you should literally never doubt a woman, regardless of any other facts. That's like saying
Black Lives Matter doesn't care about non-black lives, when everyone knows that's right-wing
crap. BLM focuses on a failing of the system. MeToo focuses on a failing system. As for due
process -- Larry Nassar, the largest known pedophile in sports history (that we know of) --
was repeatedly reported to the authorities. At one point, a police department made a victim
sit down with him so he could explain how she had "misinterpreted" his treatment for abuse.
It literally took a victim of his growing up, becoming a lawyer and studying how to prove
sexual assault cases, then building evidence and turning it over to the Indianapolis Star to
get anyone to do anything. And in the meantime, hundreds of women and girls were assaulted,
including most of the last two women's Olympic teams. That's not due process, it is a system
that protects the powerful at the expense of the powerless. Not exactly an unknown or rare
phenomenon limited to women.
So if people really care about "due process"* for MeToo, then it would be nice to see as
much time spent on discussing what that process might look like than just taking potshots at
people, many of whom are sexual assault victims, who are demanding society listen to them and
believe them instead of naturally lining up to defend the person in power. And that's what
#Believewomen really means – the word of the powerless should have as much credibility
as the powerful. Nothing about that would not deny justice to Emmett Till. A movement is not
defined by its twitter hashtag.
* Spoiler alert, they don't. Or, rather, I think lambert does, but most do not. It's just
another way to avoid accountability. After all, most of the more notable MeToo allegations
are employment or similar situations, where due process does not apply in any other context,
but now suddenly bosses want to invoke it for themselves. Please don't try to invoke it when
they fire you because you won't work a last-minute Saturday shift. Because you can't. But
report the boss for sexual harassment and be prepared for a lot of process. So much process,
you may never get through it all. Which is the other joke, companies have tons of process re
sexual harassment complaints, almost all of which is designed to protect the harasser.
Which brings me to class. I've seen a lot of picking at #MeToo for being focused on women
("identity") instead of class. This confuses me since, while any woman can be a victim, poor
and working class women (and men) have even fewer options of redress (I won't even get into
incarcerated men and women). See the recent
McDonalds' strike over sexual harassment, a labor action which shouldn't be surprising
since as many as 40% of women in the fast food industry
experience sexual harassment . Moreover, institutional sexism -- like racism -- has roots
in capital accumulation and labor exploitation. For an interesting read on this, see
The Caliban and the Witch . Which is not to say it's all about class, it isn't. Racism
and sexism exist, they exist for everyone regardless of class, but the effects of them are
greatly exacerbated by poor and working class people's material conditions and they are tied
directly to the system that creates those conditions. To the extent people want to discuss
due process, it should be about creating systems that hold the powerful accountable for their
abuse of power, a challenge that extends across society.
"And that's what #Believewomen really means – the word of the powerless should
have as much credibility as the powerful."
It is wise, when starting a movement, to say what you "really mean." As it stands,
#Believewomen MEANS convicting defendants on the sole word of one person – the victim.
If we really start doing that, women will be among the victims, along with other powerless
people.
" only in conflict if you want to pit groups of victims against each other." What do you
mean, "want"? That's a classic straw man. The slogan you're defending pits them against each
other – that's Lambert's point.
You also say that enforcement against either assault or sexual harassment is nightmarish
and often ineffective. That I'll believe, and it's a necessary point. Actually, law
enforcement and "justice" generally are pretty nightmarish. Tangle sex up in that and it only
gets worse. The point of #Metoo was to convince us that we have a problem, and it
accomplished that. Slogans that mean what you don't mean only detract from the
accomplishment.
It is simply disingenuous to say that #MeToo has taken up the cause of lower class women.
The restaurant industry is one of the biggest employers in America and harassment of women is
pervasive. How many #MeToo luminaries have talked up the problems they face? An article
IIRC in the Nation by a restaurant worker specifically discussed how #MeToo had ignored
waitresses and there was no change in behavior.
And that protest was NOT promoted by the loose #MeToo movement. See this from USA
Today:
Hundreds of McDonald's employees, emboldened by the #MeToo movement, demonstrated
outside company headquarters in Chicago on Tuesday to draw attention to alleged sexual
harassment at work
Most of my thoughts (which are evolving) on #MeToo are summed up in
this post on the McDonalds strikers : I think the movement, for both ethical and
pragmatic reasons, should and must center working class women. I'm not seeing that. I would
be very happy indeed to see it.
My 2015 post on the wonderful Caliban and the Witch is
here . I concluded:
However, if one takes the view that "Now is the time" -- however defined -- in the
present day, it also behooves one to do the math; it has always seemed to me that a bare
majority, 50% plus one, as sought by the legacy parties, is insufficient to do much but
perpetuate, among other things, the legacy parties. It also seems to me that sintering
together demographics based on identity politics -- Christian, Black, White, Hispanic,
Young, Old, Male, Female, Rural, Urban -- can only produce these bare majorities. It also
seems to me that a focus on "economic class" can't give an account of the sort of events
that Federici describes here. Hence, to bend history's arc, some sort of grand unified
field theory that goes beyond 50%, to 80%, is needed (along with the proposed provision of
concrete material benefits[1]). Work like Federici's is a step toward such a theory, and so
I applaud it.
Setting aside the lack of a unified field theory, it seems to me that without centering
working class women, #MeToo remains very much in 50% plus one territory.
Let me address your conclusion:
To the extent people want to discuss due process, it should be about creating systems
that hold the powerful accountable for their abuse of power, a challenge that extends
across society.
Fundamental to all civilised systems of criminal law is the doctrine nulla poena
sine lege -- no punishment without a law. There are hundreds of offenses on the
criminal statute books. Assault, sexual assault and indecent assault are serious criminal
offenses, attracting heavy sentences upon a conviction.
"Inappropriate behavior," is not a category of conduct known to the criminal law.
Nor, for that matter, is making a person feel uncomfortable. Awkward advances without a
guilty mind is also not a criminal offense.
Due process rights were hard won over many centuries. If we are to abandon, even with
the best of intentions, nulla poena sine lege for one set of behaviors, we'd best
believe it will be abandoned for other behaviors, and for purposes less benevolent. Have we
thought that through?
That said, if we think back to the Dred Scott case and its fate, it's clear that movements
can change law; we will have to see what happens with #MeToo. Feminist legal scholar
Catherine
MacKinnon urges[2]:
Sexual harassment law can grow with #MeToo. Taking #MeToo's changing norms into the law
could -- and predictably will -- transform the law as well. Some practical steps could help
capture this moment. Institutional or statutory changes could include prohibitions or
limits on various forms of secrecy and nontransparency that hide the extent of sexual abuse
and enforce survivor isolation, such as forced arbitration, silencing nondisclosure
agreements even in cases of physical attacks and multiple perpetration, and confidential
settlements. A realistic statute of limitations for all forms of discrimination, including
sexual harassment, is essential. Being able to sue individual perpetrators and their
enablers, jointly with institutions, could shift perceived incentives for this
behavior.
However, it's clear that the criminal justice system in which due process rights are
embedded isn't a justice system at all for this category of offenses. I wrote
: " [W]e as a society have no way of adjudicating sexual assault claims that treats the
assaulted with a level of dignity sufficient for them to come forward at the time " (The
backlog of unprocessed rape kits pointed to by Tarana Burke shows this clearly, even if
nothing else did.) I'm personally acquainted both with someone who was sexually assaulted,
and someone who was falsely accused of "inappropriate behavior," and I've wracked my brains
trying to imagine a system of adjudication under which either could have received
justice -- the first never did, the second was ultimately cleared -- but without success. I
can't see how MacKinnon's fixes would have helped either one.
I'd certainly welcome different and parallel forms of
adjudication that would have achieved justice for my friends; nobody said "due process"
had to be achieved only through the court sytem, after all. For example, although this is a
limited solution that applies to neither of my friends, an alternative adjudication system
that puts the burden of proof on the male if the other party is female and both are drunk
would probably brake a lot of bad behavior on campus; this of course speaks to my priors,
since I loathe party culture, exactly because it encourages assault.
NOTE
[1] For example, a Jobs Guarantee would make it easier for a woman to leave an abusive
workplace. A Post Office Bank, by giving every woman her own checking account as a matter of
right, would make it easier for women to leave abusive relationships. Sometimes it's more
effective to be indirect.
[2] One way to redress power imbalances in the workplace -- building union power, say
through card check -- does not appear on MacKinnon's list of legal transformations. A second
way also does not appear: Wages for restaurant workers such that they don't have to
depend on potentially abusive customers for tips. A third way also does not appear:
Encouraging cooperatives . So the
question of whose and which norms are to be transformed remains
salient.
UPDATE You write:
And that's what #Believewomen really means – the word of the powerless should have
as much credibility as the powerful. Nothing about that would not deny justice to Emmett
Till. A movement is not defined by its twitter hashtag.
If that's what it really means, that's not what it really says. The hash tag isn't
#BelieveThePowerless, after all. I think it's simpler to take the movement at its word. If
the organizers wish to change the slogan because it's sending the wrong message, then they
will. If they don't, then the hash tag is sending the message they want.
I agree that movements don't totally define themselves by the choices they make
with their slogans. But those choices matter. The Bolsheviks won the day under the slogan
"Peace, Land,
Bread." "Less War, Gentler Serfdom, Access to Bread" just wouldn't have had the same
impact.
smart traffic they say? Wowsers. I always wanted those lights to turn green immediately (when Im around).
And 24/7 tracking, so they can give you personal ads on LCD billboards while you walk past.
And better yet: access to lock or unlock your front door for a 'repairman'. Yeah that will work out great. I always wanted to
hand the keys to my home to outsiders for safe keeping, but now its automatic!
Amazing. What a different life we would all lead in this Smart City. /s
Was the assassination of JFK by Lee Harvey Oswald still getting as much media coverage three
weeks after his death as it did that first week after Nov. 22, 1963? Not as I recall.
Yet, three weeks after his murder, Jamal Khashoggi, who was not a U.S. citizen, was not
killed by an American, and died not on U.S. soil but in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, consumes
our elite press.
The top two stories in Monday's Washington Post were about the Khashoggi affair. A third,
inside, carried the headline, "Trump, who prizes strength, may look weak in hesitance to punish
Saudis."
On Sunday, the Post put three Khashoggi stories on Page 1. The Post's lead editorial bashed
Trump for his equivocal stance on the killing.
Two of the four columns on the op-ed page demanded that the Saudis rid themselves of Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the prime suspect in ordering the execution.
Page 1 of the Outlook section offered an analysis titled, "The Saudis knew they could get
away with it. We always let them."
Page 1 of the Metro section featured a story about the GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate in
Virginia that began thus:
"Corey A. Stewart's impulse to use provocative and evidence-free slurs reached new heights
Friday when the Republican nominee for Senate disparaged slain Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal
Khashoggi
"Stewart appears to be moving in lockstep with extremist Republicans and conservative
commentators engaging in a whisper campaign to smear Khashoggi and insulate Trump from global
rebuke."
This was presented as a news story.
Inside the Business section of Sunday's Post was a major story, "More CEOs quietly withdraw
from Saudi conference." Featured was a photo of JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon, who had canceled his
appearance.
On the top half of the front page of the Sunday New York Times were three stories about
Khashoggi, as were the two top stories on Monday.
The Times' lead editorial Monday called for a U.N. investigation, a cutoff in U.S. arms
sales to Riyadh and a signal to the royal house that we regard their crown prince as
"toxic."
Why is our prestige press consumed by the murder of a Saudi dissident not one in a thousand
Americans had ever heard of?
Answer: Khashoggi had become a contributing columnist to the Post. He was a journalist, an
untouchable. The Post and U.S. media are going to teach the House of Saud a lesson: You don't
mess with the American press!
Moreover, the preplanned murder implicating the crown prince, with 15 Saudi security agents
and an autopsy expert with a bone saw lying in wait at the consulate to kill Khashoggi, carve
him up, and flee back to Riyadh the same day, is a terrific story.
Still, what ought not be overlooked here is the political agenda of our establishment media
in driving this story as hard as they have for the last three weeks.
Our Beltway elite can smell the blood in the water. They sense that Khashoggi's murder can
be used to discredit the Trump presidency, expose the amorality of his foreign policy and sever
his ties to patriotic elements of his Middle American constituency.
How so?
First, there are those close personal ties between Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, son
of the King, and Jared Kushner, son-in-law of the president of the United States.
Second, there are the past commercial connections between builder Donald Trump, who sold a
floor of a Trump building and a yacht to the Saudis when he was in financial straits.
Third, there is the strategic connection. The first foreign trip of the Trump presidency
was, at Kushner's urging, to Riyadh to meet the king, and the president has sought to tighten
U.S. ties to the Saudis ever since.
Fourth, Trump has celebrated U.S. sales arms to the Saudis as a job-building benefit to
America and a way to keep the Saudis as strategic partners in a Mideast coalition against
Iran.
Fifth, the leaders of the two wings of Trump's party in the Senate, anti-interventionist
Rand Paul and interventionist Lindsey Graham, are already demanding sanctions on Riyadh and
an ostracizing of the prince.
As story after story comes out of Riyadh about what happened in that consulate on Oct. 2,
each less convincing than the last, the coalition of forces, here and abroad, pressing for
sanctions on Saudi Arabia and dumping the prince, grows.
The time may be right for President Trump to cease leading from behind, to step out front,
and to say that, while he withheld judgment to give the Saudis every benefit of the doubt, he
now believes that the weight of the evidence points conclusively to a plot to kill Jamal
Khashoggi.
Hence, he is terminating U.S. military aid for the war in Yemen that Crown Prince Mohammed
has been conducting for three years. Win-win.
"... This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 1483 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page , which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Read about why we're doing this fundraiser and what we've accomplished in the last year, and our current goal, more original reporting ..."
"... By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street ..."
"... Why does this sell-off smell different? Read (or rather listen to) THE WOLF STREET REPORT ..."
By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and
author, with extensive international work experience. Originally
published at Wolf Street
US bank stock index down 17% from January. EU bank stocks crushed, crushed, crushed since
Financial Crisis.
Monday early afternoon, the US KBW Bank index, which tracks large US banks and serves as a
benchmark for the banking sector, is down 2.5% at the moment. It has dropped 17% from its
post-Financial Crisis high on January 29. If the index closes at this level, it would be the
lowest close since September 18, 2017:
While that may be a nerve-wracking decline for those who have not experienced bank-stock
declines, it comes after a huge surge that followed the collapse during the Financial
Crisis:
The second chart is on a different scale than the first chart above. So this year's decline
is small fry compared to the movements since 2006, including the dizzying plunge toward zero in
early 2009, and the subsequent boom when it became clear that the Fed would pull out all stops
to save the banks with all kinds of mechanisms, including ruthless financial repression –
forcing interest rates to 0% – that it waged on depositors and savers for a decade.
Profits derived from these mechanisms effectively recapitalized the banks.
The 55% jump in bank stocks after the 2016 election through the peak in January 2018 was a
reaction to promises for banking deregulation and tax cuts from the new Trump administration
along with signs of lots of goodwill toward Wall Street, as top positions in the new
administration were quickly being filled with Wall Street insiders. However, the "Trump bump"
for banks is now being gradually unwound.
But unlike their American brethren, the European banks have remained stuck in the miserable
Financial Crisis mire – a financial crisis that in Europe was followed by the Euro Debt
Crisis. The Stoxx 600 bank index, which covers major European banks, including our hero
Deutsche Bank , has plunged 27%
since February 29, 2018, and is down 23% from a year ago:
But note how minuscule this year's 26% drop is in the overall collapse-scenario in the chart
below going back to 2006: The Stoxx 600 Banks index never got anywhere near recovering after
the Financial Crisis, as after each hopeful partial recovery, it kept falling off the wagon,
and is once again falling off the wagon:
It's not exactly a propitious sign that the banks in the US, after nearly recovering to
their pre-Financial Crisis highs – "Close, but no cigar!" – are once again turning
around and heading south as the Fed is "gradually" removing accommodation, which results in
higher funding costs for banks and greater credit risks on outstanding loans.
And the European banks remain a mess and have an excellent chance of getting still get
messier.
Wolf is prob my least fav commentator on NC. No actual analysis. plus US banks rallied
before the election throughout 2016. It's a function of the slope of the yield curve. Yield
curve tightened in H2 2017 – now which is why the sector has stopped out. Plus Fed
policy mistake on raising shows how elastic demand is to even modest changes in rates with
loan origination drying up.
European banks, esp British and swiss, are interesting values.
i like reposted articles from wolf street. they highlight economic and financial trends
that i would otherwise have missed. ws bloggers have also done plenty of analysis of why euro
banks are floundering.
I like the wolfstreet writers, they have a variety of styles and we're kinda spoiled by
yves easy writing . Wolf seems to go for the waypoints in the fog so maybe some of the many
people stumbling around looking for info find it easy to find. Also since I'm opining the
short, concise, internet article is what gets the readers, with deeper conversations BTL and
to that point my favorite weasel word of he decade is recapitalisation
Shouldve just dumped the trillions in NSF grants & infrastructure. Wouldve provided
more jobs to main street, and started a boom of startups in areas other than the already
saturated software market.
Yesterday
the news broke that Swamp Monster-In-Chief John Bolton has been pushing President Trump to
withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the 1988 arms control agreement
between the US and the Soviet Union eliminating all missiles of a specified range from the
arsenals of the two nuclear superpowers. Today, Trump
has announced that he will be doing exactly as Bolton instructed.
This would be the second missile treaty between the US and Russia that America has withdrawn
from since it abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
in 2002. John Bolton, an actual
psychopath who Trump hired as his National Security Advisor in April, ran point on that move as well
back when he was part of the increasingly indistinguishable Bush administration.
"This is why John Bolton shouldn't be allowed anywhere near US foreign policy," tweeted Senator
Rand Paul in response to early forecasts of the official announcement.
"This would undo decades of bipartisan arms control dating from Reagan. We shouldn't do
it. We should seek to fix any problems with this treaty and move forward."
"This is the most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s," Malcolm Chalmers,
the deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute,
told The Guardian .
"If the INF treaty collapses, and with the New Start treaty on strategic arms due to
expire in 2021, the world could be left without any limits on the nuclear arsenals of nuclear
states for the first time since 1972."
"A disaster for Europe," tweeted Russia-based journalist
Bryan MacDonald. "The treaty removed Cruise & Pershing missiles, and Soviet ss20's from the
continent. Now, you will most likely see Russia launch a major build up in Kaliningrad &
the US push into Poland. So you're back to 1980, but the dividing line is closer to
Moscow."
"Russia has violated the agreement. They've been violating it for many years and I don't
know why President Obama didn't negotiate or pull out," Trump told reporters in Nevada.
"We're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and do weapons and we're not
allowed to. We're the ones that have stayed in the agreement and we've honored the agreement
but Russia has not unfortunately honored the agreement so we're going to terminate the
agreement, we're going to pull out."
What Trump did not mention is that the US has indeed been in
violation of that agreement due to steps it began taking toward the development of a new
ground-launched cruise missile last year. The US claims it began taking those steps due to
Russian violations of the treaty with its own arsenal, while Russia claims the US has already
been in violation of multiple arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament agreements.
So, on the one front where cooler heads prevailing is quite literally the single most
important thing in the world, the exact opposite is happening. Hotter, more impatient, more
violent, more hawkish heads are prevailing over diplomacy and sensibility, potentially at the
peril of the entire world should something unexpected go wrong as a result. This is of course
coming after two years of Democratic Party loyalists attacking Trump on the basis that he has
not been sufficiently hawkish toward Russia, and claiming that this is because he is Putin's
puppet.
In response to this predictable escalation the path for which has been lubricated by
McResistance pundits and their neoconservative allies, those very same pundits are now reacting
with horror that Putin's puppet is now dangerously escalating tensions with Putin.
"BREAKING: Trump announces that the United States will pull out of the Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty that the US has been in for 31 years," exclaimed the popular
Russiagater Brian Krassenstein in a tweet that as of this writing has over 5,000 shares.
"Welcome back to the Cold War. This time it's scarier And no, It's not Obama, or Hillary or the
Democrat's fault. It's ALL TRUMP!"
"Hilarious to listen to all this alarmed screaming about US withdrawal from INF Treaty
emanating from those who for 2 years have been demanding that Trump get tough with Russia,"
tweeted George Szamuely
of the Global Policy Institute. "Now that they've got their arms race I hope they are pleased
with themselves."
"Are those who have spent the past two years warning of a Trump-Kremlin conspiracy &
cheering confrontation w/ Russia ready to shut the fuck up yet?" asked Aaron Maté, who
has been among the most consistently lucid critics of the Russiagate narrative in the US.
Are they ready to shut the fuck up? That would be great, but this is just the latest
escalation in a steadily escalating new cold war, and these blithering idiots didn't shut the
fuck up at any of the other steps toward nuclear holocaust.
They didn't shut the fuck up when this administration adopted a Nuclear
Posture Review with greatly increased aggression toward Russia and blurred lines between
when nuclear strikes are and are not appropriate.
As signs point to Mueller's investigation
wrapping up in the near future without turning up a single shred of evidence that Trump
colluded with the Russian government, it's time for everyone who helped advance this toxic,
suicidal anti-Russia narrative to ask themselves one question: was it worth it? Was it worth it
to help mount political pressure on a sitting president to continually escalate tensions with a
nuclear superpower and loudly screaming that he's a Putin puppet whenever he takes a step
toward de-escalation? Was it worth it to help create an atmosphere where cooler heads don't
prevail in the one area where it's absolutely essential for everyone's survival that they do?
Or is it maybe time to shut the fuck up for a while and rethink your entire worldview?
* * *
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see
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Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers .
The middle class in America has been declining for decades, and we continue to get even more
evidence of the catastrophic damage that has already been done.
According to the Social Security
Administration, the median yearly wage in the United States is just $30,533 at this point.
That means 50 percent of all American workers make at least that much per year, but that also
means that 50 percent of all American workers make that much or less per year. When you divide
$30,533 by 12, you get a median monthly wage of just over $2,500. But of course nobody can
provide a middle class standard of living for a family of four for just $2,500 a month, and we
will discuss this further below. So in most households at least two people are working, and in
many cases multiple jobs are being taken on by a single individual in a desperate attempt to
make ends meet. The American people are working harder than ever, and yet the middle class just
continues to erode .
The deeper we dig into the numbers provided by the Social Security Administration, the more
depressing they become. Here are just a few examples from their official website
-34 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 last year.
-48 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year.
-59 percent of all American workers made less than $40,000 last year.
-68 percent of all American workers made less than $50,000 last year.
At this moment, the federal poverty level for a family of five is $29,420 , and yet about half the workers in
the entire country don't even make that much on a yearly basis.
So can someone please explain to me again why people are saying that the economy is "doing
well"?
Many will point to how well the stock market has been doing, but the stock market has not
been an accurate barometer for the overall economy in a very, very long time.
And the stock market has already fallen
nearly 1,500 points since the beginning of the month. The bull market appears to be over
and the bears are licking their chops.
No matter who has been in the White House, and no matter which political party has
controlled Congress, the U.S. middle class has been systematically eviscerated year after year.
Many that used to be thriving may still even call themselves "middle class", but that doesn't
make it true.
You would think that someone making "the median income" in a country as wealthy as the
United States would be doing quite well. But the truth is that $2,500 a month won't get you
very far these days.
First of all, your family is going to need somewhere to live. Especially on the east and
west coasts, it is really hard to find something habitable for under $1,000 a month in 2018.
If you live in the middle of the country or in a rural area, housing prices are significantly
cheaper. But for the vast majority of us, let's assume a minimum of $1,000 a month for
housing costs.
Secondly, you will also need to pay your utility bills and other home-related expenses.
These costs include power, water, phone, television, Internet, etc. I will be extremely
conservative and estimate that this total will be about $300 a month.
Thirdly, each income earner will need a vehicle in order to get to work. In this example
we will assume one income earner and a car payment of just $200 a month.
So now we are already up to $1,500 a month. The money is running out fast.
Next, insurance bills will have to be paid. Health insurance premiums have gotten
ridiculously expensive in recent years, and many family plans are now well over $1,000 a
month. But for this example let's assume a health insurance payment of just $450 a month and
a car insurance payment of just $50 a month.
Of course your family will have to eat, and I don't know anyone that can feed a family of
four for just $500 a month, but let's go with that number.
So now we have already spent the entire $2,500, and we don't have a single penny left over
for anything else.
But wait, we didn't even account for taxes yet. When you deduct taxes, our fictional
family of four is well into the red every month and will need plenty of government
assistance.
This is life in America today, and it isn't pretty.
In his most recent article, Charles Hugh Smith estimated that an income of at
least $106,000 is required to maintain a middle class lifestyle in America today. That
estimate may be a bit high, but not by too much.
Yes, there is a very limited sliver of the population that has been doing well in recent
years, but most of the country continues to barely scrape by from month to month. Out in
California, Silicon Valley has generated quite a few millionaires, but the state also has the
highest poverty in the entire nation. For every Silicon Valley millionaire, there are thousands
upon thousands of poor people living in towns such as
Huron, California
Nearly 40 percent of Huron residents -- and almost half of all children -- live below the
poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That's more than double the statewide rate
of 19 percent reported last month, which is the highest in the U.S. The national average is
12.3 percent.
"We're in the Appalachians of the West," Mayor Rey Leon said. "I don't think enough
urgency is being taken to resolve a problem that has existed for way too long."
Multiple families and boarders pack rundown homes, only about a quarter of residents have
high school diplomas and most lack adequate health care in an area plagued with diabetes and
high asthma rates in one the nation's most polluted air basins.
One recent study found that the gap between the wealthy and the poor is the largest that it
has been
since the 1920s , and America's once thriving middle class is evaporating right in front of
our eyes.
We could have made much different choices as a society, but we didn't, and now we are going
to have a great price to pay for our foolishness...
This is what really happened? Booker pulled this man into the restroom because he noticed
the man's fly was undone, and Booker being concerned that it would project a negative
stereotype helped him out by vigorously checking the area multiple times. You can never be
too sure.
Satisfied that the mans fly was safe, Booker became fearful that he might have left his
fly down but also with a stuck on piece of toilet paper on a very personal spot such that he
himself might become a target of Republican ire if they were to notice. Booker pushed this
ingrate down to get the problem fixed simply because reciprocity is part of human societal
relations and Booker needed a hand (sorry no pun intended).
Hey, just two dudes making sure everything is good. What? Now this gay version of Stormy
Daniels is making a play for Booker's cash, all because of an innocent helping hand in the
washroom?
Makes you wonder what this disgusting world is coming to?
About half of nonelderly Americans have one or more pre-existing health conditions,
according to a recent brief by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS,
that examined the prevalence of conditions that would have resulted in higher rates,
condition exclusions, or coverage denials before the ACA. Approximately 130 million
nonelderly people have pre-existing conditions nationwide, and, as shown in the table
available below, there is an average of more than 300,000 per congressional district.
Nationally, the most common pre-existing conditions were high blood pressure (44 million
people), behavioral health disorders (45 million people), high cholesterol (44 million
people), asthma and chronic lung disease (34 million people), and osteoarthritis and other
joint disorders (34 million people).
While people with Medicaid or employer-based plans would remain covered regardless of
medical history, the repeal of pre-ex protections means that the millions with pre-existing
conditions would face higher rates if they ever needed individual market coverage. The
return of pre-ex discrimination would hurt older Americans the most. As noted earlier,
while about 51 percent of the nonelderly population had at least one pre-existing condition
in 2014, according to the HHS brief, the rate was 75 percent of those ages 45 to 54 and 84
percent among those ages 55 to 64. But even millions of younger people, including 1 in 4
children, would be affected by eliminating this protection.
We're getting close to the end now. Can you feel it? I do. It's in the news, on the streets,
and in your face every day. You can't tune it out anymore, even if you wanted to.
Where once there was civil debate in the court of public opinion, we now have censorship
, monopoly , screaming , insults
,
demonization , and, finally, the use of force to
silence the opposition. There is no turning back now. The political extremes are going to war,
and you will be dragged into it even if you consider yourself apolitical.
There are great pivot points in history, and we've arrived at one. The United States,
ruptured by a thousand grievance
groups , torn by shadowy agencies drunk on a
gross excess of power ,
robbed blind by oligarchs and their treasonous henchmen and decimated by frivolous wars of choice, has
finally come to a point where the end begins in earnest. The center isn't holding indeed,
finding a center is no longer even conceivable. We are the schizophrenic nation, bound by no
societal norms, constrained by no religion, with no shared sense of history, myth, language,
art, philosophy, music, or culture, rushing toward an uncertain future fueled by nothing more
than easy money, hubris, and sheer momentum.
There comes a time when hard choices must be made...when it is no longer possible to remain
aloof or amused, because the barbarians have arrived at the gate. Indeed, they are here now,
and they often look a whole lot like deracinated, conflicted, yet bellicose fellow Americans,
certain of only one thing, and that is that they possess "rights", even though they could
scarcely form an intelligible sentence explaining exactly what those rights secure or how they
came into being. But that isn't necessary, from their point of view, you see. All they need is
a "voice" and membership in an approved victim class to enrich themselves at someone else's
expense . If you are thinking to yourself right now that this does not describe you, then guess
what? The joke's on you, and you are going to be expected to pay the bill that "someone else"
is you.
In reality, though, who can blame the minions, when the elites have their hand in the till
as well? In fact, they are even more hostile to reasoned discourse than Black Lives Matter , Occupy Wall Street,
or
Antifa . Witness the complete meltdown of the privileged classes when President Trump
mildly suggested that perhaps our "intelligence community" isn't to be trusted, which is after
all a fairly sober assessment when one considers the track record of the CIA ,
FBI , NSA
, BATF, and the other assorted Stasi agencies. Burning cop cars or bum-rushing
the odd Trump supporter seems kind of tame in comparison to the weeping and gnashing of teeth
when that hoary old MIC "intelligence" vampire was dragged screaming into the light. Yet Trump
did not drive a stake into its heart, nor at this point likely can anyone... and that is
exactly the point. We are now Thelma and Louise writ large. We are on
cruise control, happily speeding towards the cliff, and few seem to notice that our not so
distant future involves bankruptcy, totalitarianism, and/or nuclear annihilation. Even though
most of us couldn't identify the band, we nonetheless surely live the lyrics of the Grass
Roots : "Live for today, and don't worry about tomorrow."
The "Defense" Department, "Homeland" Security, big pharma, big oil, big education, civil
rights groups, blacks, Indians, Jews, the Deep State, government workers, labor unions,
Neocons, Populists, fundamentalist Christians, atheists, pro life and pro death advocates,
environmentalists, lawyers, homosexuals, women, Millenials, Baby Boomers, blue collar/white
collar, illegal aliens... the list goes on and on, but the point is that the conflicting
agendas of these disparate groups have been irreconcilable for some time. The difference today
is that we are de facto at war with each other, and whether it is a war of words or of actual
combat doesn't matter at the moment. What matters is that we no longer communicate, and when
that happens it is easy to demonize the other side. Violence is never far behind ignorance.
I am writing this from the bar at the Intercontinental
Hotel in Vienna, Austria. I have seen
with my own eyes the inundation of Europe with an influx of hostile aliens bent on the
destruction of Old Christendom, yet I have some hope for the eastern European countries because
they have finally recognized the threat and are working to neutralize it. Foreign malcontents
can never be successfully integrated into a civilized society because they don't even intend to
try;
they intend to conquer their host instead. Yet even though our own discontents are domestic
for the most part, we have a much harder row to hoe than Old Europe because our own "invaders"
are well entrenched and have been for decades, all the way up to the highest levels of
government. That there are signs Austria is finally waking up is a good thing, but it serves to
illustrate the folly of expecting the hostile cultures within our own country to get along with
each other without rupturing the republic. Indeed, that republic died long ago, and it has been
replaced by a metastasizing mass of amorphous humanity called the American Empire, and it is at
war with itself and consuming itself from within.
Long ago, we once knew that as American citizens each of us had a great responsibility. We
were expected to work hard, play fair, do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and
serve our country when called upon to do so. Today, we don't speak of duty, except in so much
as a slogan to promote war, but we certainly do speak of benefits for ourselves and our "group"
of entitled peeps. We will fail because of our greed and avarice. The United States of Empire
has become quite simply too big, too
diverse , and too
"exceptional" to survive.
The US belief in free markets isn't doing them any favours.
What goes wrong with free markets?
They found out in the 1930s, after believing in free markets in the 1920s.
Henry Simons was a firm believer in free markets, which is why he was at the University of
Chicago in the 1930s.
Having experienced 1929 and the Great Depression, he knew that the only way market
valuations would mean anything would be if the bankers couldn't inflate the markets by
creating money through loans.
Henry Simons and Irving Fisher supported the Chicago Plan to take away the bankers ability
to create money, so that free market valuations could have some meaning.
The real world and free market, neoclassical economics would then tie up.
The mandate to fight for the Republic ends in November, after that, it's optional. We'll
keep our part of the bargain, after that, the USA is on her own. There are too many people
who refuse to understand that the way to national health, goes through some rough valleys,
from the President, through congress, the states, and down to the regular folks.
Many are not paying attention, those that understand, are busy looting what's left, those
that'll pay, are wringing their hands in helplessness, or burying their heads like ostriches,
hoping denial of reality, will protect them from reality.
The political class has made the determination that rather than acknowledge reality, and
adjust accordingly, they'll instead implement a surveillance state, ensure comfortable
positions for themselves, and oppress the plebs into compliance. The plebs on their part,
have sacrificed their honor, integrity, and conscience, hoping the world can be looted, to
keep their standard of living.
What the protagonists fail to understand, or understanding, refuse to acknowledge, is that
ROW (Rest of World), is not amenable to looting anymore. Lootable generations are fading
away, unlootabke generations replacing them.
It can be confidently asserted now, that the West, devoid of Europe, has cast the dice for
the final gamble thus, intimidate the world into lootability, or threaten to take everyone
down as well. The problem? Russia responded thus, game on! India responded thus, bring it on!
Pakistan responded thus, up yours! Africa is responding thus, really? China is yet to respond
clearly but we know where they stand thus, what?
Does that mean the end of America? No! It means the end of the American delusion
masquerading as dream. You can't carry on this way, refusing to acknowledge reality, hoping
to somehow do the impossible thus, overturn the laws of nature. You simply cannot game the
rules, no matter how clever. It's analogous to inhaling, but refusing to exhale, it's
unsustainable, impossible in fact!
You have to exhale, or explode, no third choice. You can exhale slowly, Powell's way,
exhale in one breath, Gorbachev's way, or refuse to exhale, British way, with the attendant
consequences, disorderly disintegration.
Trump is trying not to exhale, while still trying to inhale. It's schizophrenic because
you neither get the benefit of fresh oxygen, nor rid yourself of unpleasant carbon dioxide.
Every attempt to do both simultaneously, wastes the available oxygen, while the carbon
dioxide builds up, turning you BLUE in the face, when what you really require, is a healthy
red complexion.
It's a paradox really, that folks are running in reverse, and yet claim their destination
is ahead, it doesn't make sense, it's basically self deception writ large. Well, November is
practically here, and then, we'll be free of all obligations and can thus move on. We very
much look forward to our liberty, very much indeed, this Republic restoration business, has
not been profitable at all, we're cutting our losses...
Myriad, conflicting, "security" departments only further prove 9-11 was a coup d' etat.
Plus it's all about oil (and now ethanol, think water next). Where the US once sent aid to
places like Honduras we now use it as a mere drug distribution center.
"The center isn't holding indeed, finding a center is no longer even conceivable. We are
the schizophrenic nation, bound by no societal norms,"
Free Speech. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
These are the core values of America. They are under attack, but still there. This is the
single thread that binds our history, culture, and identity together.
It's the left-cultural Marxist faction that has forgotten it, twisted it and made it about
'diversity.' Sold out our country to Chi-coms and globalists.
Anyone who doesn't understand this can either learn fast or GTFO
The best that can happen now - as many are jolted rudely out of their MSM-programmed sleep
- is for people to ask themselves, friends, neighbors, and - the $lime that currently runs
the place: how did we get to this nightmare the author describes? And sift the answers -
mercilessly.
They will - imho - all need to take a deep breath, and look way up/out in $cale to see the
structure and architects of the massive ponzi that has debilitated a whole planet via debt,
and cancel/walk away from it. The fish is the last to discover water. Let the rentier
universe implode. People need real money.
A lot of attention should be devoted to the techniques, authors and motives of the social
engineering that facilitated this debilitation. People need real culture.
The populism/nationalism heading towards (hopefully massive) decentralization we are now
starting to see (so reviled by all DS/NWO MSM, camp-followers/useful idiots) is the
beginning. People need real, local, democratic politics ASAP.
It was never truly an "American" empire, just as the British Empire was never truly
"British".
It was ran and blown up by Luciferian-Hazarian globalist parasites that made untold
profits on the way up, and down.
I would call it the Western Banking/Vatican/MIC Empire, with this empire of old being
represented by London as the financial center, the Vatican/Rome as the Spiritual/Religous
center, and Washington, D.C. as the Military center; and now the facade is cracking.
During the 20th century it successfully kicked off two world wars, spread its version of
globalization (and communism) benefiting the banksters the most (Bretton-Woods), installed a
debt-based fiat currency reserve system (globally), and more.
Now they're trying to do the same thing with China, all the while cut the US at it's
knees, and inundate Western Europe with the Muslim hordes they purposely destablized with
manufactured Middle Eastern wars. (China's trying to play both sides, btw)
Then kick off a possible WWIII, and the aftermath will have whomever's left begging for a
"peaceful" NWO, on any condition.
The losers in this scenario have been, and will be the vast majority of humanity,
regardless of nationality; unless a drastic change is made to the global financial/governance
system as a whole; and it won't be pretty but it will be worth it. How that looks, I truly
don't know.
I'm sure it gets more complex with various factions at the upper echelons, but that's my
summary in a nutshell....
Another of countless articles on the Hedge where all the symptoms are laid out in gruesome
detail while conveniently not stating who's behind the disintegration of the country.
"We are the schizophrenic nation, bound by no societal norms, constrained by no
religion, with no shared sense of history, myth, language, art, philosophy, music, or
culture, rushing toward an uncertain future fueled by nothing more than easy money, hubris,
and sheer momentum."
This is precisely what the (((nation wreckers))) have done throughout history. The
miscegenation of races and cultures, the breaking down of morals & religion (replaced by
a worship of money and Mammon), the erasure of the indigenous peoples' history and heritage,
a bastardization of language and philosophy, and debasement of all art and music... These are
but a few of the techniques employed by the parasitic entity. Once the cattle are adequately
milked, only slaughter remains for them before the butchers move on to their next host.
America WAS once a great idea, founded on white Christian ethics. Our Founders had a "no
foreign entanglements" mentality. No, it wasn't perfect, but it worked and our people
prospered. The sickness began in earnest when the eternal contagion was allowed free access
into our societal body in the 1880s. Like syphilis, its insidious influence has slowly eaten
away at our bodies and souls to the present point of insanity.
Bob... it's late and I must retire. However, I felt I owe you some sort of rebuttal.
I must admit, your vernacular leaves me somewhat puzzled and at a loss as to form any
cohesive and concise reply.
My references to Christendom were generalities. One can always find exceptions to any
definitive statement where weak humankind are concerned.
Suffice it to say that the European Christian peoples who inhabited this continent in the
18th & 19th Centuries were heartier and humbler folk than those alive today. "Generally"
speaking... they were God-fearing... guided by an ethos of humility and respect... divorce
was unheard of... children had a mother AND a father present... music and other communal
entertainments were wholesome... they had a pride in the forebearers' accomplishments... they
were taught a sound understanding of the 3 "R"'s... etc, etc...
"Generally" speaking... ALL of the above-mentioned attributes are absent today in a
majority of our citizenry. Think about that. Before (((they))) poisoned our reputable
wellspring, people were FAR better off.
So, yes... Christians had Inquisitions, Crusades, Wars, Conquests, etc... but, they also
had a value system which served as the basis for far-greater deeds, art, architecture and
civilization. Put on a scale, I'd say their philosophy has given the world far more "good"
than "bad". Only my humble opinion.
The social engineering - the cultural Marxism and other gambits used by the Parasite -
merits much (very public) attention to its goals, authors and techniques.
For the time being, the nation is involved in the uncivil war.
The geographical boundaries although somewhat still existing are not, nor ever will be, as
before, so clearly defined. The writer himself made this point. A fractured nation of special
interests with their various greviances sprinkled (forgive the pun) liberally throughout
every state, city, town, village, Berg, family or more accurately what is left of the family
.
Lies, corruption, distraction at every turn, and I would say a great majority are
oblivious to the primary threats and the larger games afoot.
A population ripe for continued abuse and exploitation, as they are well fed , well
entertained, and as Mr. Roberts is fond of pointing out, largely overcome by insouciance ...
devil take the hindmost ..
No it will end or begin in with some cataclysmic event, an event so great, that not even
the greatest liars and deceivers that the world has ever known will be able to cover up the
event, thus all doubt shall be removed at once, and all former lofty considerations of party
affiliation, social status, education , health care, corrupt government and money systems ,
shall seem like quaint and pleasant abstract discussions of the more innocent time.
Not to worry. Brexit is rather a textbook example of the political/economic dichotomy to
which I speak @ 5.
There will be no Brexit in economic or political reality. It isn't even remotely possible,
even in the unlikely event the EU collapses in the short term. There may be a pseudo "Brexit"
for political face-saving purposes, true, which will consist of a similar sales effort as
Trump is making to hold onto his own age-depressed plebes in flyover USArya.
"Brexit is coming! Brexit is coming! Tariffs are easy! Tariffs are easy! Hold on a bit
longer, we are just trying to get it right for you little people not to suffer anymore."
Lol.
@6 "Sadly many left wing ppl prefer EU neoliberal anti democratic, corrupt rule over their
own sovereign democratic institutions."
I see it more as a neoliberal desire to belong to some vague bigger global entity. Plus
the fact that since WW2 nationalism has become equated with fascism.
Britain has never been totally part of Europe....geographically or politically.
DontBelieveEitherPropaganda , Oct 21, 2018 10:16:20 AM |
link
@dh-mtl: True that. Sadly many left wing ppl prefer EU neoliberal anti democratic, corrupt
rule over their own souvereign democratic institutions. It was the national state (with its
additional regional democratic institutions) that brought us democracy, not the neolibs EU.
But that truth hurts, and many prefer empty slogans against the evil national state over a
honest analysis.
@B: Inoreader cant find new feeds for some days, something is broken!
With Brexit, the U.K. is trying to save itself before it collapses to a state similar to
Greece.
The E.U., because it is essentially a financially based dictatorship, and is fatally
flawed, will break apart. And, in this sense, I agree with you that the U.K. is ahead of the
curve.
Abandoning nuclear treaty is just a diversion to steer away eyes off Khashoggi case, latter
being even more important as it wedges in the very depth of an internal US political
demise.
UK barks there on Russia to steer its own downfall into spotlight of an importance on a world
stage that is close to null. UK didn't even sign anything with Russia as basically nobody
else did from within NATO, so one can render that INF as outdated and stale.
Will they come up with a new one that suits all or we will just let it go and slip into
unilateral single polarity downfall of West? Answers are coming along real soon.
Right now US and a few vasal allies left are getting into dirty set of strategic games
opposing far more skilled opponents and it will come around at a really high price. EU has
lost many contracts lately in mid east due to America First, so a lots of sticks in US wheels
are coming up. It is going to be a real fun watching all that and reading b. and others on
MoA..
The UK will most likely crash out of the EU. Of course, one can't exclude that some
last minute holding action, temp. solution, or reversal can be found - but I doubt it.
Northern Ireland will break away. The analysis of the vote has been very poor, and based
on an 'identity politics' and slice-n-dice views. Pensioners afraid to lose their pension,
deplorables, victims of austerity, lack of young voter turnout, etc.
NI and Scotland are ruled by a tri-partite scheme: 'home rule', 'devolution' - Westminster
- and the EU. The two peripheral entities prefer belonging to and participating in the larger
group (see also! reasons historical and of enmity etc.) which has on the whole been good for
them. England prefers a return to some mythical sovereignity / nationalism, getting rid of
the super-ordinate power, a last desperate stab at Britannia (hm?) rules the waves or at
least some bloody thing like traffic on the Thames, labor law, etc. The UK had no business
running that referendum - by that I mean that in the UK pol. system Parliament rules supreme,
which is antithetical to the referendum approach (in any case the result is only advisory)
and running it was a signal of crack-up. By now, it is clear that the UK political / Gvmt.
system is not fit for handling problems in the years 2000.
Why NI and not Scotland (which might split as well ..)? From a geo-political pov, because
geography bats last - yes. And also because NI is the much weaker entity. EU has stated (Idk
about texts etc.): if and when a EU member conquers, annexes, brings into the fold some
'other' territory, it then in turn becomes part of the EU. Ex. If Andorra chose to join Spain
it would meld into Eurolandia, with time to adjust to all the rules. Perhaps Macron would no
longer be a Prince!
However, Catalonia *cannot* be allowed to split from Spain (affecting Spanish integrity
and the EU) and if it did it would crash out of the EU, loosing all, so that doesn't work.
Scotland is not Catalonia. NI has had a special status in many ways for a long time so it is
easier to tolerate and imagine alternatives. The EU will pay for NI...
The UK is losing power rapidly and indulging in its own form of 're-trenchment' (different
from the Trumpian desired one) - both are nostalgic, but the British one is more
suicidal.
The only alternative interpretation I can see (suggested by John Michael Greer) is that
the UK is ahead of the curve: a pre-emptive collapse (rather semi-collapse) now would put it
in a better position than others 20 years or so hence. That would also include a break-up
into parts.
In a new article titled " Mueller
report PSA: Prepare for disappointment ", Politico cites information provided by defense
attorneys and "more than 15 former government officials with investigation experience spanning
Watergate to the 2016 election case" to warn everyone who's been lighting candles at their
Saint Mueller altars that their hopes of Trump being removed from office are about to be dashed
to the floor.
"While [Mueller is] under no deadline to complete his work, several sources tracking the
investigation say the special counsel and his team appear eager to wrap up," Politico
reports.
"The public, they say, shouldn't expect a comprehensive and presidency-wrecking account of
Kremlin meddling and alleged obstruction of justice by Trump - not to mention an explanation
of the myriad subplots that have bedeviled lawmakers, journalists and amateur Mueller
sleuths," the report also says, adding that details of the investigation may never even see
the light of day.
An obscene amount of noise and focus, a few indictments and process crime convictions which
have nothing to do with Russian collusion, and this three-ring circus of propaganda and
delusion is ready to call it a day.
This is by far the clearest indication yet that the Mueller investigation will end with
Trump still in office and zero proof of collusion with the Russian government, which has been
obvious since the beginning to everyone who isn't a complete fucking moron. For two years the
idiotic, fact-free, xenophobic Russiagate conspiracy theory has been ripping through mainstream
American consciousness with shrieking manic hysteria, sucking all oxygen out of the room for
legitimate criticisms of the actual awful things that the US president is doing in real life.
Those of us who have been courageous and clear-headed enough to stand against the groupthink
have been shouted down, censored, slandered and smeared as assets of the Kremlin on a daily
basis by unthinking consumers of mass media propaganda, despite our holding the philosophically
unassailable position of demanding the normal amount of proof that would be required in a
post-Iraq invasion world.
As I
predicted long ago , "Mueller isn't going to find anything in 2017 that these vast,
sprawling networks wouldn't have found in 2016. He's not going to find anything by 'following
the money' that couldn't be found infinitely more efficaciously via Orwellian espionage. The
factions within the intelligence community that were working to sabotage the incoming
administration last year would have leaked proof of collusion if they'd had it. They did not
have it then, and they do not have it now. Mueller will continue finding evidence of corruption
throughout his investigation, since corruption is to DC insiders as water is to fish, but he
will not find evidence of collusion to win the 2016 election that will lead to Trump's
impeachment. It will not happen." This has remained as true in 2018 as it did in 2017, and it
will remain true forever.
None of the investigations arising from the Russiagate conspiracy theory have turned up a
single shred of evidence that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to rig the 2016
election, or to do anything else for that matter. All that the shrill, demented screeching
about Russia has accomplished is manufacturing support for
steadily escalating internet censorship , a
massively bloated military budget , a hysterical McCarthyite atmosphere wherein anyone who
expresses political dissent is painted as an agent of the Kremlin and any dissenting opinions
labeled "Russian talking points" , a complete lack of accountability for the Democratic
Party's brazen election rigging, a total marginalization of real problems and progressive
agendas, and an overall diminishment in the intelligence of political discourse. The
Russiagaters were wrong, and they have done tremendous damage already.
In a just world, everyone who helped promote this toxic narrative would apologize profusely
and spend the rest of their lives being mocked and marginalized. In a world wherein pundits and
politicians can sell the public a war which results in the slaughter of a million Iraqis and
suffer no consequences of any kind, however, we all know that that isn't going to happen.
Russiagate will end not with a bang, but with a series of carefully crafted diversions. The
goalposts will be moved, the news churn will shuffle on, the herd will be guided into
supporting the next depraved oligarchic agenda , and almost nobody will have the intellectual
honesty and courage to say "Hey! Weren't these assholes promising us we'll see Trump dragged
off in chains a while back? Whatever happened to that? And why are we all talking about China
now?"
But whether they grasp it or not, mainstream liberals have been completely discredited. The
mass media outlets which inflicted this obscene psyop upon their audiences deserve to be driven
out of business. The establishment which would inflict such intrusive psychological
brutalization upon its populace just to advance a few preexisting agendas has proven that it
deserves to be opposed on every front and rejected at every turn.
And those of us who have been standing firm and saying this all along deserve to be listened
to. We were right. You were wrong. Time to sit down, shut up, stop babbling about Russian bots
for ten seconds, and let those who see clearly get a word in edgewise.
* * *
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see
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Caitlin Johnstone , or my previous book
Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers .
It's not over until every corrupt "player" who had a material role in the DemoRats'
corrupt scheme to fraudulently frame Trump is brought to justice. Not to do so means there's
absolutely no deterrent to prevent the DemoRats from repeatedly fraudulently weaponizing
government agencies to attack their political opponents (defined as "Obamunism'). After all,
this was the most egregious fraudulent and illegal political conspiracy in our nation's
history. The DemoRat players must spend a decade or more in the big house. You'd think the
MSM would like that, as the trials of the traitors to America would give the MSM fodder for
their endless psycho-babble and shift attention away from the MSM's complicity in
Obamunism.
That ******* **** Maddow is the deep state's Tokyo Rose and should be yanked from the
airwaves and prosecuted for seditious lies and slander. She has plenty of company at the
other major news networks as well.
Can you imagine all of the "Deer-Caught-In-The-Headlights" looks if Mueller were to come
out with an indictment of Hillary, the Decepticrats and the DNC? I can!
All of this Russia ******** has been a diversion to distract the current administration
and to inhibit the discovery of the real crimes that have been committed against the US and
the world since 1991 when GHWB took office... Everything from 9-11 to WMDs in Iraq to
billions of $$$ in cash being airlifted to Iran to Barry Soetoro being a stooge for Saudi
Arabia... They have bought themselves two years in the process, but they cannot stop the
truth coming out...
I spoke to an ex-pat Indian, now an American citizen; settled there for three decades and
more. Well knowledgeable. He praised Pres. Trump but told me, "But Trump did not win fair."
When I told him that this Russia probe is going to wind up, admitting no collusion, he was
surprised. Then I told him that his favourite media are lying to him; he was confused. Then I
asked him to google "Seth Rich"; he was stunned. Finally it dawned on him he was the Truman
without the benefit of a show. By the time I did my talk over, about 20 minutes later, he was
a much chastised man. He had the intellectual integrity to admit that he was wrong, that he
had been fooled and he ought to have been more careful.
Thank you Caitlin, you have been a truth advocate from the beginning. We have been waiting
for #Russiagate ******** to end and embarrass the Democrats. Unfortunately, President Trump
is starting to be hostile towards Russia now. What a pity it was, that Democrats ruined a
chance of Peace !
The entire Mueller probe is based on a lie... Rosenstein called for a special counsel
without evidence of a crime being committed and no, collusion is not a crime on the
books...
Why all of this has taken 2 years to come to light is beyond me.. The only answer is that
the entire affair has been a giant kabuki show on both sides of the aisle to keep the people
distracted and divided...
Not just the Obama admin spying on Trump, but to tie his hands in investigating everything
from billions of $$$ in cash being delivered to Iran, to who controls Barry Soetoro himself,
to Uranium one, to the Clinton Foundation and on and on and on... There is ample evidence
that the US was infiltrated by a Manchurian Candidate that was hell-bent on destroying the
country, but what we have gotten as a by-product is half of the country hating the US... Weak
minded lemmings that want socialism... The US is fucked and has been for decades... All part
of the reason I left...
The best part is, I hope Carter page , George papadopolous, Paul manafort, and myriad
Russian defendants drag their lawsuits out forever and bring unlimited documents into
discovery, pulling these **** head shill lawyers into never ending court circuses and
hopefully sue Mueller's team to recoup the wasted taxpayer millions. BTW much of this is the
fault of shills like McCain, Lindsay Graham, Ben Sasse, Jeff Flake, and the other neocon
establishment who would rather see Trump taken down by Democrat hoax operations than
legitimately beat them.
This is ridiculous, the result could not be clearer:
If there's any suggestion that Mueller's report cannot be released then we know without a
doubt that the report contains absolutely nothing of consequence.
Otherwise, why would they do so much preparation for disappointment.
I too hope that all the people who have been ruined by this debacle bring countless legal
actions that require public disclosure of alleged 'secret' documents.
In the end Trump will have to, regardless of protest from the UK or anyone else for that
matter, have to declassify the whole lot of it so that his false accusers are laid bare on
the alter of shame for all to see.
They never could win legitimately so they cheated like no other, and of course as the
foundation they used the queen cheater Hillary Clinton herself. I hope she does run for
election in 2020, it will be 3 strikes and the bitch is out. What an embarassement for
Hillary.
Gotta say this out loud ZH people- seeing first hand what the Democrats did 2011-2016,
getting way to close to government operations in my state, pushed me from left to the right
in absolute disgust with the left. Seemed like maybe the right is different and better
nowadays. However, general gay bashing and blatant racism on websites like this one scares
some and puts some moderates and Independents off the right. I'm all for #hetoo and Corey
Booker reaping what he sowed. What they did to Kavenaugh was despicable. A conservative party
that disavows racism, gaybashing and misogyny is highly appealing nowadays over the left. I'm
a card carrying member of the NRA, but when you start that gaybashing you all get scary and
make some reconsider voting red for fear of devolving. Want to change your gender? Knock
yourself out; none of my friggen business. But to force the taxpayer to pay for "gender
reassignment", and then claim there's no money for stopping and repairing the landslides in
Pennsylvania's red counties, and blame it on Trump? That's the insanity of the leftist
governor in my state. All you do when you attack a group over race, being gay or being women
is create a new class dependent victims for the left to "protect" and give a free ride in
exchange for votes. Hope this makes sense. Not as articulate as some here but hope I got the
point across.
The right was looking pretty good after Kavenaugh. Maybe this whole post and many of its
comments is a ploy to draw in the stupid and the trolls. This post and comments like yours
are making the right look like apes last minute before the midterms. Its working. You all
could have handled this news with some decency and some class and some tolerance and sealed
it for the republicans in the upcoming elections. But no. You let yourselves be drawn into
posts like this, for all the world to see that maybe nothing at all has changed about the
right. SMH.
Some of us who wanted to vote red might have a family member who is gay. Coworkers and
neighbors and friends who are black. Now we have to worry, after reading posts like yours,
that we'll be plunging loved ones back into a world of discrimination and maybe violence by
voting red. Thought all this crap was in the past. Nope. Still raging strong I see after
reading posts like these
I should think that there ought to be a change in American law wherein someone making a
sexual accusation without proof can be held liable financially and possibly criminally.
Booker must be sweating bullets now that his secret is out. Maybe he and the anointed one,
Obama, can get it on in a steam room in somewhere in D.C. together, with the Wookie looking
the other way.
Unless there is a smoking gun in regards to evidence, I do think we should stoop to their
lowness - play their game. Kill them with the rule of law. Be sympathetic to the gay man and
tell him if there is real evidence they will follow-up, but if not they have no grounds to go
anywhere with it. Show them what they SHOULD have done. Then let the rumors and paranoia of
potential evidence do the job on Booker. It will eat him up. Mean time, we move forward and
ride the Red Wave.
Forget about data collection. There are important issues that I would like to bring to
your attention before we go into frivolous stuff. Here are my monthly bills. To understand
this better I work in a field that pays be a 60k. Most people don't get that salary. I live
in a co op. I have to take the train to the city for work.
1) Rent_Mortgage - 800
2) Rental Insurance_ Co op Liability Insurance - 20
3) Co op Monthly maintenance - 400
4) State_Federal_City - ?
5) Metro North - 300
6) Car Payments - 200
7) Groceries - 150 (40*4)
8) Eating outside at work - 150
9) Subway - 120
10) Monthly parking at the train station - I need to drive to the metro north to get to
the train - 100
11) Parking - 80 (Optional)
12) Car Insurance - 60 (Optional)
13) Cell Phone - 75
14) Utilities_ Gas+Electricity+Heating - 75
15) Internet - 45
16) Netflix - 15
17) Laundry - 15 (if I did twice a month its 7.5*2 or three times it would be more like
5*3)
18) Microsoft _Adobe Buillshit - 10
19) Health Insurance - 80 (If its a family of 3 its around 150 with a high deductible)
20) Dental Insurance - 20
This is heavy. I have to spend money that I receive after getting taxed at 35%. I am being
generous here. Please feed me in with any thing that I have missed. This is without a family
for a single person. Add going out on dates with lousy chicks (Hey man I am trying to get
laid ok?), kids .. When you look at this does it all makes any sense at all. I am a
vegetarian. I don't eat meat, booze, nor smoke just because they are expensive.
I have to do some thing about it or else no chick can date me financially this sound
:(...
"We're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement," Trump said Saturday after a
campaign rally in Elko, Nevada. "We're going to terminate the agreement."
As Russia continues to outmaneuver the US by developing new ballistic missiles like the 9M729
ground-launched cruise missile, as well
as hypersonic weapons
capable of carrying a nuclear payload,
President Trump said
Saturday that he plans to abandon a 1987 arms-control treaty that has (on paper, at least)
prohibited the US and Russia from deploying intermediate-range nuclear missiles
as Russia
has continued to "repeatedly violate" its terms according to the president, the
Associated Press reports.
"We're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement," Trump
said Saturday after a campaign rally in Elko, Nevada. "We're going to terminate the agreement."
In a report that undoubtedly further complicated John Bolton's weekend trip to Moscow,
the Guardian revealed on Friday
that the national security advisor - in what some described as
an overreach of the position's typical role - had been pushing Trump to abandon the Intermediate
Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
The announcement comes after the U.S. had been warning Russia it could resort to strong
countermeasures unless Moscow complies with international commitments to arms reduction under the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a pact struck in the 1980s.
When first signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev following their
historic 1986 meeting, the INF was touted as an important deescalation of tensions between the two
superpowers. But it has since become a flashpoint in the increasingly strained relationship between
the US and Russia, as both sides have accused the other of violating its terms.
But for the US, Russia is only part of the problem.
The New York Times
reported that the pact has limited the US from deploying weapons to counter
the burgeoning military threat
posed by
China in the Western Pacific,
where the country has ignored claims of sovereignty in the South
China Sea and transformed reefs into military bases. And since China was never a party to the
treaty, Beijing can hardly cry foul when the US decides to withdrawal, especially because Russia is
already openly using the treaty as toilet paper.
Speaking at a rally in Elko Nevada, President Trump accused Russia of violating the agreement
and said he didn't want to leave the US in a position where Russia would be free to "go out and do
weapons and we're not allowed to."
"Russia has violated the agreement. They have been violating it for many years," Trump said
after a rally in Elko, Nevada. "And we're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and
go out and do weapons and we're not allowed to."
Therefore, unless both Russia and China - which isn't a party to the pact - agree to
not
develop
these weapons, the US would be remiss to continue abiding by the terms of the
agreement.
"We'll have to develop those weapons,
unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us
and they all come to us and say let's really get smart and let's none of us develop those
weapons,
but if Russia's doing it and if China's doing it, and we're adhering to the
agreement, that's unacceptable," he said.
While the decision to abandon this treaty - which doesn't bode well for negotiations to extend
the New START treaty after it expires in 2021 - carries serious weight, many Americans and
Russians, having never lived through a war, might remain ignorant to the potential consequences, as
one analyst opined.
"We are slowly slipping back to the situation of cold war as it was at the end of the Soviet
Union, with quite similar consequences, but now it could be worse because (Russian President
Vladimir) Putin belongs to a generation that had no war under its belt," said Dmitry Oreshkin,
an independent Russian political analyst.
"These people aren't as much fearful of a war
as people of Brezhnev's epoch. They think if they threaten the West properly, it gets scared."
Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to try and get in front of the US's decision to leave
this week when he declared that Russia would abide by a policy of nonaggression regarding its
nuclear arsenal,
agreeing only to use its nuclear weapons
if it is attacked first.
Although some inside the Pentagon are reportedly wary of abandoning the treaty, Putin's word is
hardly enough to reassure uberhawks like Bolton because the fact remains that if Russia did decide
to use any of the array of nuclear arms that it is currently developing, there would be nothing
stopping it. And with the US already behind in its push to manufacture advanced weapons like
hypersonic missiles, any obstacles to deploying these types of weapons will only serve to weaken
the US and strengthen its geopolitical adversaries.
Watch President Trump's remarks from the rally below:
The cold war was fought by people who lived through the horrors of
WWII. Both sides managed to control their respective neocons. That
generation is no longer in power and people that think a first
strike and a winnable nuclear war are possible are in control on
both sides. Yes, we have two tribes.
When I hear of democrats calling trump negative things, like
racist or whatever...I just laugh at their ignorant fat asses..
But here on ZH, people actually make good points on both sides
of trump being trojan horse for deep state, or trump fighting the
deep state..
I personally do not see evidence enough to draw a conclusion,
but I am hoping he is not deep state...in any case, its been
watching the left squirm, MSM going downhill in temper tantrums,
comey and others fired.. There is no proof that there is a supreme
being or "God" that created the earth. I just believe it because I
believe in His son...Maybe I will trust trump actually puts
hillary in jail..I mean coe on guys, as you notice, I am careful
about my decisions, but the crimes hillary has commited, and the
evidence to back it up, is beyond a shadow of a doubt, and
everyone here knows it...she needs to be in ******* gitmo
"
unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they
all come to us and say let's really get smart and let's none of us
develop those weapons
"
Does anybody believe Trump's offer is real?
Like the USA and Israel are going to give up their nuclear
weapons and missiles?
Yeah, give up weaponizing space and the missile (first-strike)
encirclement of Russia.
The MIC would not even allow the denuclearization of the Korean
penisula, nor withdrawal from any of the invaded/occupied nations.
The MIC wants to sell to the Saudis, re-arm Japan, and have Kiev
join NATO.
Who can believe the MIC-owned Congress will ratify any
disarmament treaties?
Will any Israeli-first president ever back a denuclearized
Israel?
Treaty or not MAD is still in effect... hopefully this will steady
the hand of the neocon scum who have hijacked the US government,
but with the current crop of demons in the state department who
knows?
You can expect that Kaliningrad is going to be armed with all
kinds of nuclear candies ready to blow Europe up as soo as they
see the strike is coming. How is that goign to help Poland or
Europe for that matter? I have no idea.
You can also expect that
the Russian's Subs and Poseidon are going to be around US shores
constantly ready for unleash Nuclear tsunamis with cobalt 60 in
them.
The Chines are going to build military and naval base in
Venezuela for sure with nukes and we could also see much more to
come.
Like we didn't have a Spanish fighter jet missile accidently
launched near Russian border just a couple of days ago.
Like we didn't see US Navy accidents crashing into tankers.
We do not really have a ******* adults running NATO nowadays.
Its all tranny shitshow with no nerves of steal and thinking.
If you thought the old Cold War hawks back there who wanted to
nuke Soviet Union and unleash Operation Northwood just to have a
war were crazy than think how stupid and out of touch with reality
this twats are.
That we haven't seen WW3 yet is becasue of Russians restrain
but once you push it too far and they increasingly are pushing it
too far, then they will murder our asses like beasts. Just look at
what the pilot who got shot down last time did. He rather blew
himself up with grenade killing as much terrorist as possible
after he ran out of ammo than being captured.
That is who we are dealing here with ladies & gentleman.
Is Trump even aware that the U.S. broke its "iron-clad guarantees"
that NATO would not expand "one inch eastward?" If I lived in
Russia, I would look nervously at the increasing military hardware
near my border
!
The "original" so-called intelligence report was a load of BS, I read it, I'm a computer
engineer of over 30 years experience. My opinion is that it was pure BS, "filler" posing as a
report, no evidence presented. Nothingburger. People then seized on it, waved it in the air,
and said, "Here's the proof!". That's a common tactic that's been used over, and over. Here's
the NY Times "correction". Note, after the correction, Hillary continued to spout the
nonsense that 17 agencies all agreed. It was ONLY the FBI, CIA Office of the Director of
National Intelligence (Dan Coats), and the NSA.
The puzzling part is this - since the "blame Russia" story is fake, why does the US
continue to harass and provoke Russia, via Nato, Bolton, Haley? Who's in charge??
Correction: June 29, 2017
A White House Memo article on Monday about President Trump's deflections and denials about
Russia referred incorrectly to the source of an intelligence assessment that said Russia
orchestrated hacking attacks during last year's presidential election. The assessment was
made by four intelligence agencies -- the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,
the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National
Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American
intelligence community.
But what if comes out that they didn't break any law ? They can ask for reparations of
lost money because of sanction and then every sanctioned entity and individual in Russia can
ask for reparations because of bogus charges.
It seems likely the overwhelming record of the Mueller "probe" into "interference in US
elections" will be pretended prosecution of acts which never occurred or which violate no
statutory laws.
In other words, it's been a political stunt with no lawful foundation from the very
beginning.
Had they bothered to look into FBI and DNC/Hillary efforts to deceptively manipulate
public perception with false accusations, they would have found ample evidence of criminal
conduct.
I been waiting for some news on this one. I had heard a while back that Mueller tried to
deny the Russian company the ability to contest the charges with that weak *** "they haven't
been served properly" excuse only to have it rejected by the judge.
I hope this deflates on Mueller and leaves him open to charges by the others who he
alleges conspired to meddle in US elections.
FFS the US meddles in EVERYONE's elections they now kicking and screaming cuz someone
might have setup a troll farm or dispensed some info on Hillary that might not have been true
(can it be?)
This will play out badly for the Mueller team, the judge already hates them and is
disgusted by their tactics.
"Made up a crime to fit the facts they have" is a normal mode of operation for federal
prosecutors. Hopefully the judge throws out all charges, but unlikely to have a broader
impact on non-stop fabrications by US attorneys.
What this accusation boils down to is saying that the Russian firm's deception is "proof"
that they thought they were violating US law, and that this intention to break a non-existent
law constitutes a framework under which they can be convicted of breaking a non-existent law.
The crazy never stops. Mueller and his minions should be disbarred.
Why is there any requirement to identify oneself beyond an alias, unless there are
obligations of debt involved. Even there, the LLC places a barrier between an individual and
the creditor.
I post with a pseudonym. My pseudonymous identity bears responsibility for its own
reputation.
ELECTION MEDDLING (as defined by Mueller and Kravis): every VPN blogger and/or user with
more than one GMail account.
But NOT multi-million dollar foreign "contributions" to the Clinton Foundation. That have
dried up since November of 2016. Oh no, nothing meddling about over there.
By participation, do they mean like polls that consistently show the USA as the greatest
impediment to global peace and tranquility? Or the numerous opinion sharers that the US
government is depraved? Or like the kind of participation of Victoria "**** the EU" Nuland?
Or like the Western sponsored Jihadi headchoppers hired to interfere in Syrian elections? Or
like the US military fueled aggression against Yemeni sovereignty? Or like the US/Clinton
sponsored destabilization of Libyan democracy? Or like the Obama/US sponsored destabilization
of Egypt? Or like the US/Western sponsored failed coup in Turkey?
Or most crucially, the US/neoconservative never ending direct interference in internal
Russian affairs?
These need to be clarified so folks can understand what meddling/interference/intervention
means. It's not enough to point fingers, when worse activities have been, are being carried
out by the pointers. Any society that abandons basic ethics, is one destined for the scrap
heap of history.
Americans have forgotten what it means to be Americans, and this desperate gambit by the
DOJ highlights viscerally, that the American system of government, one based on ethical
values, is no more! It demonstrates the fragility of the system.
God alone knows if salvage is possible now, the USA has in the blink of an eye, become the
erstwhile USSR, overly sensitive to the unworkability of its sociopolitical system. It is the
end game of unsustainable imperium.
"Rather, the allegation is that the company knowingly engaged in deceptive acts that
precluded the FEC, or the Justice Department, from ascertaining whether they had broken the
law. -
Bloomberg " I didn't know Prof. Irwin Corey worked for the US Attorney's office. By this
explanation whether you break a law or not you can be guilty of precluding these agencies
from determining that you did not break a law, even if whatever you did to prevent such
determination was not illegal.
didn't the Judge in Manaforts trial do something similar when he called out the Mueller
team on their motivation's for bringing Manafort up on old charges the DOJ had previously
declined to prosecute him on?
Amerika is 180 degree turn from my logic. Mueler presented fake evidence and fabricated
Lockerbie trial. He was working with Steele.
So this is great guy to head FBI and bull sheet Russia medling. In normal country, guy
like Mueler is so discredired that can be hapi to have county investigator job, not
government job
LOL, Mueller's investigation is fucked. Indeed, they are going to have to bring forth the
evidence via discovery.
It will come to light they manufactured a crime without the evidence. Also, if they don't
drop the case they're running the risk of exposing even more crimes they committed.
This is where the American people should rise up and repeal prosecutorial immunity and
make the real criminal's pay the price for manufacturing crime's! Care to speculate how many
prosecutor's wouldn't even touch a potential criminal with doubt of innocence, if indeed
prosecutors were held accountable for their own crimes???
Like I've said, people have NO idea how raunchy and corrupt this manufactured Mueller
investigation is, once the unredacted FISA warrant and 302's are released, the people will
realize both the seditious and traitorous behavior that went on in the ObamaSpy ring to frame
Trump!
Citing "three people familiar", Bloomberg reports that on Thursday, around the time when the
Trump administration was contemplating next steps in the Saudi Arabia fiasco, Trump's chief of
staff, John Kelly, and his national security adviser, John Bolton, engaged in a
"profanity-laced" shouting match outside the Oval Office.
The shouting match was so intense that other White House aides worried one of the two men
might immediately resign. Neither is resigning, the people said.
While one possible reason for the argument is which of the two admin officials was more
excited to start war in [Insert Country X], Bloomberg said that it wasn't immediately clear
what Trump's chief of staff and national security adviser were arguing about. However, the
clash was the latest indication that tensions are again resurfacing in the White House 19 days
before midterm elections.
It's not clear if Trump heard the argument. "but the people said he is aware of it."
"... By Marshall Auerback, a market analyst and commentator ..."
"... Tim Geithner, Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke and Larry Summers to this day resist the idea that adopting FDIC style reforms, which would have provided a rational resolution to the foreclosure crisis (albeit, at a cost of destroying the capital base of the big Wall Street banks). Summers dismissed these ideas as something akin to "socialism " ..."
"... Faced with the choice of preserving the financial industry as it was or embracing far-reaching reforms that would have served the interests of those who voted for him, Barack Obama, the "change you can believe in" President, chose the former. Not only did that taint every government initiative undertaken in the aftermath of the bailouts (such as healthcare), but it created an undercurrent of cynicism, political disillusionment and anger that ultimately paved the way for Donald Trump. ..."
October 19, 2018 By Marshall Auerback, a market analyst and commentator
I'll readily admit this is a personal post. One of the few, if not the only, good things to
come out of the 2008 financial crisis was my introduction to "Naked Capitalism" and its
proprietor, Yves Smith. In contrast to virtually all of the Pollyannish commentary out there
(remember when Ben Bernanke estimated that losses from the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the
United States would be around $100bn?
), NC gave a much better read of the extent of the problems well before the MSM, as well as
identifying and excoriating all sorts of perps, by name (like Robert Khuzami, who was the SEC's
head of enforcement under Obama, now making news as the prosecutor who nailed Michael Cohen).
Naked Capitalism also documented multiple legal theories that were eminently well-suited to
prosecuting TBTF executives. The more I came to read her blog, the more impressed I came to be
with the scope of breadth of the coverage of the mounting crisis, as well forming a friendship
with a person, whose integrity and scholarship is second to none. So I hope you will give
generously to Naked Capitalism; the Tip Jar tells you how .
It's wrong to say that Naked Capitalism's coverage ultimately made a difference, if one is
to judge by the state of affairs today. But history will treat Yves's accounts much more
kindly, especially when the next crisis comes, as it most assuredly will.
Why do I express unhappy confidence that a new crisis will soon be upon us? Because if one
is to read the voluminous commentaries that have emerged in the last few weeks, as the
aftermath of Lehman's demise has been recounted. Most disturbing has been the reticence of
policy makers at the time, with the benefit of hindsight, to recognize that there was a better
approach than simply restoring the status quo ante via bank bailouts which demanded nothing of
private creditors, but punished private debtors – socialism for the rich, capitalism for
the rest of us.
As George Soros and the President of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), Rob
Johnson
have argued : "a critical opportunity was missed when the balance of the burden of
adjustment was tilted heavily in favor of creditors relative to debtors in the response to the
crisis and that this contributed to the prolonged stagnation that followed the crisis. The
long-term social and political ramifications of this missed opportunity have been profound."
Unlike the Savings & Loan crisis, there was no private sector loss recognition. Then
Treasury Secretary Geithner falsely claimed that there were only 2 options: bailouts or letting
the system collapse.
That was a false choice. As Soros & Johnson point out, much more effective and fair use
of taxpayers' money would have been to reduce the value of mortgages held by ordinary Americans
to reflect the decline in home prices and to inject capital into the financial institutions
that would become undercapitalized. Yes, this might have exposed the full extent of the banks'
liabilities and might well have forced FDIC style restructurings, which ultimately would have
resulted in changed management, and a break-up of Too Big To Fail Banks (and likely no "To Big
to Jail" bank executives). Tim Geithner, Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke and Larry Summers to
this day resist the idea that adopting FDIC style reforms, which would have provided a rational
resolution to the foreclosure crisis (albeit, at a cost of destroying the capital base of the
big Wall Street banks). Summers dismissed these ideas as
something akin to "socialism "
Faced with the choice of preserving the financial industry as it was or embracing
far-reaching reforms that would have served the interests of those who voted for him, Barack
Obama, the "change you can believe in" President, chose the former. Not only did that taint
every government initiative undertaken in the aftermath of the bailouts (such as healthcare),
but it created an undercurrent of cynicism, political disillusionment and anger that ultimately
paved the way for Donald Trump. Of course, Trump's cabinet of corrupt billionaires has
done no better. But even as #TheResistance has risen to protest the rise of his profoundly
corrupt presidency, we should not pretend it is replacing something that was popular or
effective. The old normal was
not working . The nostalgia for the Obamas in the White House is not a yearning for Obama's
policies.
In today's highly tribalised environment, it is hard to get many in the mainstream media to
recognize this fundamental truth. Criticism of any financial reforms undertaken by the Obama
Administration is now seen as de facto endorsement of Trump or #MAGA. It's nothing of the sort
and Naked Capitalism is one of the few publications that has managed to maintain its moral
bearings and speak truth to power, even when it is unpopular to do so. In this day of "fake
news", not only does NC remain worthy of your support, but essential to provide ongoing
financial support so that Yves and her colleagues can continue their important mission.
There's no question that articulating a view that diverges widely from a prevailing
consensus can be painful. Heaven knows, as an ardent and vocal supporter of Modern Monetary
Theory in the blogosphere, it was often personally painful, exhausting and dispiriting for me
(and others, such as Randy Wray, Warren Mosler, Rob Parenteau, Scott Fullwiler, and many more)
taking on anonymous trolls, who substituted debate for mendacity and vicious personal attacks
of the worst kind. But it was always good to know that I had a supportive editor like Yves, who
always had my back as well as the intellectual self-confidence (and, indeed, brilliance) to
help me and others take on the onslaught.
Later she was joined by some great people like Matt Stoller, Dave Dayen, Lambert Strether,
and others, all of them helped to make Naked Capitalism a intelligent platform which encouraged
free but fair-minded debate, a venue where new ideas could be debated honestly and
intelligently. And in many respects helped move the debate forward in a very positive
direction. Yves Smith deserves a huge amount of credit for making NC that kind of venue and for
that reason, she shall always have my loyalty, friendship, and support for this blog going
forward. It's been 10 years since we've collaborated together and become good friends as an
additional bonus. Long may it continue! Please do your part to make sure it does. Share
articles and what you learn here with people you know. And give generously to this fundraiser . Whatever
you can contribute, $5, $50, or $5000, all helps keep Naked Capitalism an important voice for
all of us.
I was reading in "Crashed" by Adam Tooze about the conference called by John McCain in
September 2008. McCain halted his campaign for the presidency to address the financial
crisis. He hardly spoke at the conference whereas Obama managed to put forth the right ideas
aligned with the true "money bag" republicans and the Wall Street tycoons. At that point
Obama and the Democrats became the party of the bailout. McCain was caught in a vice between
the Tea Party anti-bailouts and big Republican donors who wanted a bailout, hence, he kept
quiet.
"... Another year wouldn't be enough additional time to achieve a trade agreement unless the UK capitulated to EU terms. And a big motivation for this idea seemed to be to try to kick the Irish border can down the road. ..."
"... Theresa May is facing the most perilous week of her premiership after infuriating all sections of her party by making further concessions to Brussels. Her offer to extend the transition period after Brexit -- made without cabinet approval -- enraged Remain and Leave Tory MPs alike. ..."
"... DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds has rejected calls for the post-Brexit transition period to be extended, claiming it would cost the UK billions and not break the Irish border deadlock . ..."
"... Theresa May has conceded the Irish backstop cannot have an end date, risking the threat of fresh Cabinet resignations. The PM told Leo Varadkar she accepted Brussels' demands that any fallback border solution cannot be "time-limited". ..."
"... Merkel's effort at an intervention came off like a clueless CEO telling subordinates who have been handed a nearly-impossible task that they need to get more creative ..."
"... Emmanuel Macron, the French president, struck a more uncompromising tone. "It's not for the EU to make some concessions to deal with a British political issue. I can't be more clear on this," he said. "Now the key element for a final deal is on the British side, because the key element is a British political compromise." ..."
"... Article 50 – Treaty on European Union (TEU) 1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements. ..."
"... It is accepted that all of the institutional and constitutional arrangements – an Assembly in Northern Ireland , a North/South Ministerial Council, implementation bodies, a British-Irish Council and a British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and any amendments to British Acts of Parliament and the Constitution of Ireland – are interlocking and interdependent and that in particular the functioning of the Assembly and the North/South Council are so closely inter-related that the success of each depends on that of the other. ..."
Another year wouldn't be enough additional time to achieve
a trade agreement unless the UK capitulated to EU terms. And a big motivation for this idea
seemed to be to try to kick the Irish border can down the road.
As we'll get to later in this post, the press has filed more detailed reports on the EU's
reactions to May's "nothing new" speech at the European Council summit on Wednesday. The
reactions seem to be more sober; recall the first takes were relief that nothing bad happened
and at least everyone was trying to put their best foot forward. Merkel also pressed Ireland
and the EU to be more flexible over the Irish border question but Marcon took issue with her
position. However, they both
then went to a outdoor cafe and had beers for two hours .
May's longer transition scheme vehemently criticized across Tory factions and by the DUP .
Even pro-Remain Tories are opposed. The press had a field day.
From the Telegraph :
Theresa May was on Thursday evening increasingly isolated over her plan to keep Britain
tied to the EU for longer as she was savaged by both wings of her party and left in the cold
by EU leaders
The move enraged Brexiteers who said it would cost billions, and angered members of the
Cabinet who said they had not formally agreed the plan before she offered it up as a
bargaining chip. Mrs May also faced a potential mutiny from Tory MPs north of the border,
including David Mundell, the Scottish Secretary, who said the proposal was "unacceptable"
because it would delay the UK's exit from the hated Common Fisheries Policy.
Theresa May is facing the most perilous week of her premiership after infuriating all
sections of her party by making further concessions to Brussels. Her offer to extend the
transition period after Brexit -- made without cabinet approval -- enraged Remain and Leave
Tory MPs alike.
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds has rejected calls for the post-Brexit transition period
to be extended, claiming it would cost the UK billions and not break the Irish border
deadlock .
His comments came after Tory MPs on all wings of the party also rejected extending the
transition period.
Former minister Nick Boles, who campaigned for Remain in the 2016 referendum, told the
Today programme: "I'm afraid she's losing the confidence now of colleagues of all shades of
opinion – people who've been supportive of her throughout this process – they are
close to despair at the state of this negotiation."
Brexiteer MP Andrea Jenkyns tweeted: "Back in July, myself and 36 colleagues signed a
letter to the Prime Minister setting out our red lines – and that was one of them. It's
completely ridiculous."
Scottish Tories say they would veto an extension to the Brexit transition period in
support of their fisherman.
And members of the hard-core Brexit faction are also up in arms about May conceding that an
Irish border backstop can't be time limited. From The
Sun :
Theresa May has conceded the Irish backstop cannot have an end date, risking the
threat of fresh Cabinet resignations. The PM told Leo Varadkar she accepted Brussels' demands
that any fallback border solution cannot be "time-limited".
But a fudge could cost Mrs May two eurosceptic Cabinet ministers, with Esther McVey and
Andrea Leadsom threatening to resign if there's not a set end date.
Merkel pushes for more Brussels-Ireland flexibility while Macron disagrees . I am at risk of
seeming unduly wedded to my priors, but Merkel's effort at an intervention came off like a
clueless CEO telling subordinates who have been handed a nearly-impossible task that they need
to get more creative . While Merkel is correct to point out that no-deal = hard Irish
border, an outcome no one wants, she does not appear to comprehend that the "sea border," which
is politically fraught for the UK, is the only alternative that does not create ginormous
problems for the EU. Merkel's seeming lack of comprehension may reflect the fact that EU
nations don't handle trade negotiations. From the Financial Times
:
At an EU summit dinner and in later public remarks, the German chancellor expressed
concerns about the bloc's stand-off with the UK over the Irish "backstop", a fallback measure
intended to ensure no hard border divides Ireland if other solutions fail. This has become
the biggest outstanding issue in the talks.
Three diplomats said that at the Wednesday night dinner Ms Merkel indicated that the EU
and the Republic of Ireland should rethink their approach on Northern Ireland to avoid a
fundamental clash with London.
Ms Merkel also signaled her concerns in a press conference on Thursday, highlighting that
if the UK crashes out of the EU without a deal a hard border for Northern Ireland could be
inevitable.
"If you don't have an agreement you don't have a satisfactory answer [to the border issue]
either," she said, noting that on Northern Ireland "we all need an answer" .
Diplomats said the German chancellor was more forceful about the issue at the Brexit
dinner, although some other leaders remained puzzled about the chancellor's intentions.
The Financial Times also said that the UK and Germany would meet Thursday to "discuss a way
out of the Brexit impasse." Given that Barnier has offered a lot of new ideas in last month, it
is hard to see how anything new could be cooked up, unless the UK hopes to sell Germany on its
already-rejected techno vaporware idea.
Macron made clear he was not on the same page. Again from the Financial Times:
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, struck a more uncompromising tone. "It's not
for the EU to make some concessions to deal with a British political issue. I can't be more
clear on this," he said. "Now the key element for a final deal is on the British side,
because the key element is a British political compromise."
Vardakar also made a statement after the dinner that reaffirmed the importance of the EU
affirming the principles of the single market. From
The Times :
The European Union would have "huge difficulties" in agreeing to extend the Northern Irish
backstop to the rest of the UK, the taoiseach has warned. Leo Varadkar said he did not think
"any country or union" would be asked to sign up to an agreement that would give the UK
access to the single market while also allowing it to "undercut" the EU across a range of
areas including state aid competition, labour laws and environmental standards.
"I would feel very strongly about this, as a European as well as an Irishman: you couldn't
have a situation whereby the UK had access to the single market -- which is our market -- and
at the same time was able to undercut us in terms of standards, whether they were
environmental standards, labour laws, or state aid competition. I don't think any country or
any union would be asked to accept that," Mr Varadkar said in Brussels.
Robert Peston deems odds of crash out high; sees only escape route as "customs union Brexit"
. Robert Peston, who is one of the UK's best connected political reporters, described in a new
piece at ITV how May has at best a narrow path to avoiding a disorderly Brexit, and that is
what he calls a "customs union" Brexit. I am sure if Richard North saw that, he'd be tearing
his hair, since he has been describing for months why a customs union does not solve the
problem that virtually everyone who talks in up in UK thinks it solves, namely, conferring
"frictionless trade".
One key point in his analysis is that the UK will also have to accept "a blind Brexit,"
meaning a very fuzzy statement of what the "future relationship" will be. The EU had offered
that in the last month or so, presumably as a fudge to allow May to get the various wings of
her coalition to agree to something. But Peston says it's too late to do anything else.
From ITV :
Hello from Brussels and the EU Council that promised a Brexit breakthrough and delivered
nothing.
So on the basis of conversations with well-placed sources, this is how I think the Brexit
talks are placed (WARNING: if you are fearful of a no-deal Brexit, or are of a nervous
disposition, stop reading now):
1) Forget about having any clue when we leave about the nature and structure of the UK's
future trading relationship with the EU. The government heads of the EU27 have rejected
Chequers. Wholesale. And they regard it as far too late to put in place the building blocks
of that future relationship before we leave on 29 March 2019. So any Political Declaration on
the future relationship will be waffly, vague and general. It will be what so many MPs
detest: a blind Brexit. The PM may say that won't happen. No one here (except perhaps her own
Downing St team) believes her.
Erm, that alone may be a deal killer. We quoted this section of a Politico article
on October
10 :
5. Future relationship – Blind Brexit
Opposed: Brexiteers, Tory Remainers, the Labour Party, Theresa May
I'll let our astute readers give their reactions to Peston's recommendation to May:
3) There is no chance of the EU abandoning its insistence that there should be a backstop
– with no expiry date – of Northern Ireland, but not Great Britain, remaining in
the Customs Union and the single market. That would involve the introduction of the
commercial border in the Irish Sea that May says must never be drawn.
4) All efforts therefore from the UK are aimed at putting in place other arrangements to
make it impossible for that backstop to be introduced.
5) Her ruse for doing this is the creation of another backstop that would involve the
whole of the UK staying in something that looks like the customs union.
6) But she feels cannot commit to keeping the UK in the customs union forever, because her
Brexiter MPs won't let her. So it does not work as a backstop. And anyway the Article 50
rules say that the Withdrawal Agreement must not contain provisions for a permanent trading
relationship between the whole of the UK and the EU. Which is a hideous Catch 22.
7) There is a solution. She could ignore her Brexiter critics and announce the UK wanted
written into the Political Declaration – not the Withdrawal Agreement – that we
would be staying permanently in the customs union. This is one bit of specificity the rest of
the EU would allow into the Political Declaration. And it could be nodded at in the
Withdrawal Agreement.
8) But if she announces we are staying in the Customs Union she would be crossing her
reddest of red lines because she would have to abandon her ambition of negotiating free trade
deals with non-EU countries. Liam Fox would be made redundant.
9) She knows, because her Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins has told her, that her best
chance – probably her only chance of securing a Brexit deal – is to sign up for
the customs union.
10) In its absence, no-deal Brexit is massively in play.
11) But a customs-union Brexit deal would see her Brexiter MPs become incandescent with
fury.
12) Labour of course would be on the spot, since its one practical Brexit policy is to
stay in the Customs Union.
13) This therefore is May's Robert Peel moment. She could agree a Customs Union Brexit and
get it through Parliament with Labour support – while simultaneously cleaving her own
party in two.
Finally, in an elegiac piece, Richard North contends that the UK didn't need to wind up
where it is:
A reader takes me to task for making comparisons between the Brexit negotiations and the
Allied invasion of Normandy
Yet it is precisely because Mrs May seems to have chosen an adversarial route rather than
a consensual process that I have projected her failings in militaristic terms..
In reality, it would have been best to approach the Brexit process not so much as the end
of a relationship as a redefinition, where the need to continue close cooperation continues,
even if it is to be structured on a different basis
Here, though, lies the essential problem. The EU, as a treaty-based organisation, does not
have the flexibility to change its own rules just to suit the needs of one member, and
especially one which is seeking to leave the Union. Yet, on the other hand, the UK government
has political constraints which prevent it making concessions which would allow the EU to
define a new relationship
But, having put herself in a position where she is demanding something that the EU cannot
give, she herself has no alternative but to adopt an adversarial stance – if for no
other reason than to show her own political allies and critics that she is doing her best to
resolve an impossible situation.
If there is a light at the end of this tunnel, it sure looks like the headlight of an
oncoming train, the Brexit end date bearing down on the principals.
I can't help but wonder whether the proposed time extension was proposed mischievously by
EU negotiators precisely to set off divisions among the Tories. While Barniers no.1 aim is a
deal, the close to no.2 aim must surely be to ensure that in the event of no deal (or a
clearly clapped together bad interim deal), 100% of the blame goes to London. So far, they
are doing a good job with that.
Its a little concerning that Merkel was so off-message, even though she is obviously
correct that a no-deal means a hard border, which is a failure by any standard. I'm pretty
sure we won't see any overt disagreements among the EU 27 as they won't want to give the UK
the satisfaction of having sown dissent. However, that doesn't mean there won't be frantic
background pressure from some (probably pushed by business) to do some sort of deal, even a
bad one. That will inevitable mean leaning heavily on Dublin, if it is seen as the last
obstacle. Any such pressure will be private, not public I'm sure.
The damage limitation is there, for sure, but it's always aimed on rest of the world (i.e.
all but the UK, where the EU will be target in any outcome). TBH, I'm not sure how much
that's needed now..
I wonder if the various negotiating teams are reminded of that nursery rhyme I learned as
a child -- "and the wheels on the bus go round and round ".
As line one of section one of Article 50 explicitly states (and would therefore be given
substantial weight in any reading of the Article itself):
Article 50 – Treaty on European Union (TEU)
1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own
constitutional requirements.
The U.K. government cannot change the constitutional settlement for Northern Ireland
without the agreement of the people of the six counties and the Republic and the rest of the
U.K. "Nothing about us, without us" in popular parlance. And Republicans need to give their
consent for any change affecting devolved matters (which is enforceable via a Petition of
Concern). EU laws and directives are devolved matters. Constitutionally, no one can force
anything on anyone in the province.
What the EU is asking the U.K. to do is impossible.
What the U.K. is asking the EU to do is impossible.
A hard border is also impossible, both as an outcome of treaty obligations and also as a
practical matter.
Therefore a no-deal Brexit is inevitable. Therefore, so is a hard border. Which is an
impossibility -- politically and operationally.
No wonder this can got kicked down the road last December. But now we have, oh, look,
what's this here? Who left this can lying around?
I'm not sure. I had always read that sentence as meaning "in accordance with its own
constitutional requirements for withdrawing from treaties in general" ie much more narrowly
focused. Normally, any government has a sovereign right to withdraw from treaties, but it
could be the case, for example, that in some countries parliament has to be informed, debates
have to be held etc, and that's the case that's being covered here. Not to say that my
interpretation (if correct) makes the situation any easier.
I posted a long comment on the French media reporting of Wednesday's talks yesterday. If I
have a moment, I'll look to see if there's anything fresh today. One thing to look out for
will be signs of tension between Paris and Brussels.
I would need a lawyer well versed in international treaty interpretations to give a proper
opinion and ultimately a court to rule on this.
What the wording definitely does not say (we can all read it for ourselves) is anything
along the lines of " may initiate " or " may invoke its right to withdraw " or
suchlike followed by the bit about constitutional adherences. Thus the requirements to act
constitutionally must likely be expected to apply to Article 50 in their entirety. Apart from
any lawyerly parsing, this is also common sense.
The section says a Member State may withdraw and it has to (this is so stating the obvious
the treaty drafting must have had this specifically in mind to mention it) be constitutional
about it. The EU cannot ask a Member State to conduct its withdrawal unconstitutionally.
No, that's not what it means – what it means is that as far as EU law is concerned,
EU law ends there. It's wholly up to the withdrawing state to define and consider.
Yes, and the Member State can't act unconstitutionally in respect of its own withdrawal
proceedings. The EU is reserving the right not to accept any instruction in the matter of a
withdrawal from the EU from the said Member State which is unconstitutional
for that Member State. Nor can the EU foist unconstitutional acts onto a Member
State in respect of the withdrawal. Its a basic principle of any legal system and any law and
any jurisprudence that Party A cannot induce Party B to break the law as a result of an
agreement between them and for that agreement to then remain valid.
As a simpler example, I draw up an agreement that says you'll pay me £100 in a
week's time and you must get the money by whatever means possible. Fast forward a week and
you don't have the £100. I can't use our agreement as an excuse for you to commit an
unlawful act (say, go and steal someone's wallet) "because we've got an agreement you'll pay
me, so that makes it okay no matter what, so long as you give me the money". Nor can you use
your being party to the agreement to say "sorry, I don't have the money, but you can steal it
from my Aunt Flossie, she's never gonna know you took it".
I have a suspicion we are (nearly) saying the same thing. See the separate thread below. A
country that signs the Lisbon Treaty accepts that any decision to withdraw will have to be
taken according to its own constitutional arrangements. This is a national obligation, but I
don't see how the EU could refuse to accept the notification on the basis that it had been
unconstitutionally arrived at, or what standing they would have. I've never heard of anything
similar happening elsewhere.
To rephrase your example. My partner and I lend you £100 and you say that we can have
it back any time we want. I ask for it back, and you refuse to give it to me on the basis
that, in your view, this has to be a joint request from my partner and me.
I buy this only partially, as Scotland has some freedom to set taxes, and NI has also
diverged from other UK laws (the infamous abortion rights).
Of course, from that, to staying in single market is quite a jump, but one could argue
that since majority of the NI voted "remain" (by some margin) they clearly DO wish to stay in
the single market.
Also the "the rest of the UK" is dubious – it's really "without the say so from the
Westminster Parliament". See Scottish Indy referendum – I didn't notice they run it in
England as well? (if they did, I suspect Scots could have been independend by now).
That said, even the above can still be done by a single poll that NI republicans actually
already called for i.e. if there's a hard-border Brexit, NI should get a reunification
vote.
TBH, that's MY suggestion to the impasse. The backstop becomes a reunification referendum.
Not time limited – once the transition period is done, it's done, nor really
challengable. You want SM, you go European, or you stay within the UK. I'd like to see DUP to
froth on that..
It's stated right at the top of the Good Friday Agreement absolutely explicitly:
It is accepted that all of the institutional and constitutional arrangements –
an Assembly in Northern Ireland , a North/South Ministerial Council, implementation bodies,
a British-Irish Council and a British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and any amendments
to British Acts of Parliament and the Constitution of Ireland – are interlocking and
interdependent and that in particular the functioning of the Assembly and the North/South
Council are so closely inter-related that the success of each depends on that of the
other.
Treaty texts rarely get so unarguably clear.
This is why I suspect there was such a push in February to get Stormont up and running
again. Without it, everything was stuck in constitutional limbo and lacking any possibility
of constitutionally-authenticated approvals. Similar any possibility of a border poll.
Without a vote in the Assembly, how can the U.K. government have any pretence (that would
withstand a UKSC challenge) that it was responding to a democratic imperative issued by
NI?
Of course, the U.K. government could do whatever the heck it likes by a reintroduced
Direct Rule. At which point the Good Friday Agreement is toast (and the Republic would have
to explicitly buy-in to Direct Rule being initiated). This must be one of the DUP's main game
plans. They really don't care that much about borders in the Irish Sea if they can get rid of
the Good Friday Agreement. The DUP would be quite happy to paint the Garvaghy Road emerald
green from end to end if they could rip that up for good.
An additional complication to this though is the British
Irish Intergovernmental Conference , which explicitly gives the Irish government a say in
non-devolved matters, including the Common Travel area and EU matters. So at least in theory,
the British government must (if the Irish government insists on reconstituting the Council,
which they haven't so far) engage with the Irish government for any change – including
Brexit – to be constitutional.
Its been speculated here that Varadkar has not called for the BIIC to be held in order not
to inflame matters with the DUP.
Yes, I think this holds a lot of water. Especially since the Republic amended its
constitution to facilitate the GFA, it shows how seriously it took the matter. While
politically it may be gruesome for the U.K. to contemplate that it would not be possible to
leave the EU without as a minimum consulting the Republic, I too think there is at least a
possibility it was in fact legally obligated via the GFA to do exactly that.
I read that entirely differently again – my (completely laymans) interpretation is
that it means a countries request for withdrawal must be internally constitutionally based.
In other words, a rogue leader can't simply say 'I'm launching A.50' in defiance of his own
Parliament or courts. Or put another way – the EU can refuse to accept an A.50
application if it can be argued that it was not generated legally in the first place.
I think that's right, though most treaties like this contain some ambiguity in their
wording. Interestingly, the French text gives a slightly different impression.
"Tout État membre peut décider, conformément à ses règles
constitutionnelles, de se retirer de l'Union," which would be translated as "Any member state
may decide, in accordance with its constitutional provisions, to leave the Union." The commas
make it clear that, in French at least, the only decision that has to be taken
constitutionally under the Treaty, is the decision to leave (alinea 1). Once that decision is
taken the states has to inform the EU (alinea 2). Of course, there's a standing general
requirement on governments to behave constitutionally, but that would be a matter for the
domestic courts, not the EU. It must also be true that they should respect their
constitutional rules during the negotiation process. Interestingly, Art 46 of the Vienna
Convention on Treaties deals exactly with your point from the other end – what happens
if a state signs a treaty without going through the proper procedures. I've seen some
suggestions on specialist blogs that Art 50 of the Lisbon Treaty was inspired by the
arguments about this point.
Rubbish. The U.K. government had every right to hold a referendum. It was advisory of
course. But Parliament had every right to invoke A50 as a result of the result.
What the U.K. government had no right whatsoever to do was to pretend that the Good Friday
Agreement obligations could or should be fudged away. Nor that the EU or the Republic should
tolerate this or go along with it. The fact that they did is, well, their bad. I'm still
shaking my head as to why Barnier et al were dumb enough to go along with it at the time.
There's probably a good reason we're not privy to.
A year or so ago there was a little discussion of this in some parts of the Irish media.
The thinking seemed to be that the government at the time (pre-Varadkar) had calculated that
it was too divisive (in terms of the potential impact on NI politics) to be seen to be taking
too aggressive a stance over Brexit (with hindsight, this was very naive, the DUP don't need
outside help to be divisive).
FG was also very worried about giving any electoral help to Sinn Fein.
With hindsight, I think this was a major miscalculation on a number of levels – I
don't think they anticipated that the stupidity of the London government would force them to
take such a strong stance on the border issue, they thought it could be finessed by way of
taking a more neutral stance.
I think these are May's options:
1. Canada+++ with backstop – the DUP say NO! and she loses a vote of confidence.
2. EFTA + EEA without CU – she comes back in triumph – "No CU!" – but she
loses DUP and Ultras so needs Corbyn, who will probably cry "No CU!" with contrary
sentiment.
3. CU with backstop – Labour says it fails test #2 (at least), but she hopes their
remainers defy the whip.
Labour could help vote through a {blind brexit' with an extended Transition} in exchange
for a post-deal General Election. This could suit May in that it would be risky for the
Tories to change leaders in an election atmosphere. The British Public can then decide WHO
best can negotiate the future Trade relationship (though sadly not the WHAT as it must be
negotiated).
You wonder what is in it for May to stay in her job as Prime Minister. All indications are
that she is a perfect example of the Peter Principle which is how she ended up with the job.
You think too that she would be tempted to chuck the whole business and say "Here Boris
– it's all yours!" with all the joy of throwing a live grenade. Maybe, in the end, it
is like Milton had Satan say once – "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven".
I don't believe it has occurred to May for one minute to resign or step aside. Power is
what drives people like her (i.e. almost all politicians). Its the nature of the beast.
Macron's official statement after the European Council is here Interestingly, only
about a third of the text was devoted to Brexit, and much of that was in turn a restatement
of EU priorities – especially unity and the Single Market – and confidence in
Barnier. All the technical solutions are known, said Macron, and it is for the UK to come up
with some new ideas for compromises. The hope was to reach an agreement in the next few
weeks, including "necessary guarantees for Ireland." The French media has essentially
confined itself to reporting what Macron said.
What this shows, I think, is an increasing irritation among European leaders that Brexit,
which should have been sorted out long ago, has been taking up the time that should really
have been devoted to more important subjects, like migration and the deepening of economic
and financial cooperation The British are regarded as a major irritant, incapable of behaving
like a great power, paralysed by internal political splits and capable of doing a lot of
collateral damage. The EU seems increasingly unwilling to devote any more time to Brexit
until the UK comes up with some genuinely useful ideas – hence the cancellation of the
November summit.
Thats probably true, but if so, its very shortsighted. If the UK crashes out, for several
months there will be nothing else on the plate of western Europe to deal with, there will be
deep implications certainly from Germany to Spain. And if it causes more wobbles in the
already very wobbly Italian banks, it'll be even more of a headache, to put it mildly.
I agree, but I think it's at least partly the UK's doing. A modicum of common sense and
political realism could have avoided this situation. The problem is that Brexit, as a
subject, has the nasty twin characteristics of being at once extremely complicated and
politically lunatic. I think EU leaders are focusing on the second, and in some ways May has
become almost light relief. But jokes stop being funny after a while, and I think Macron is
reflecting a wider belief among national leaders that only the UK can sort this out: you
broke it, you fix it.
If there were issues which, whilst difficult, were potentially fixable then I think a lot
more effort would have gone into the negotiations from EU leaders. But they must feel they
are trapped in some Ionesco farce or (to vary the metaphor) trying to negotiate with the
Keystone Cops.
Except the Keystone Cops happen to be playing with hand grenades. There's no doubt that
European leaders are taking a crash-out seriously (the French have published a draft bill
giving the government emergency powers to deal with such a situation) but I think there's a
also widespread sense of helplessness. What can the EU actually do that it hasn't already
done? All they can hope for is an outbreak of common sense in London, and I think we all know
how likely that is. In the circumstances, you might as well concentrate on subjects where
progress is actually possible.
In Bavaria's state elections, German voters sent a powerful message to German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, who has been harshly criticized for opening up Germany's borders to the free
flow of migration. But strangely enough the pro-immigrant Green Party took a solid second
place.
Merkel and her fragile coalition, comprised of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Social
Democrats Party (SPD) and Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered staggering losses
in Bavaria on Sunday, losses not experienced by the two powerhouse conservative parties for
many decades.
The CSU won just 37.3 percent of the vote, down 12.1 percent from 2013, thus failing to
secure an absolute majority. It marked the worst showing conservative Christian Bavaria, where
the CSU has ruled practically unilaterally since 1957. But the political mood in Germany has
changed, and Merkel's so-called sister party will now be forced to seek a coalition to cover
its losses.
Meanwhile, the left-leaning Social Democrats (SPD), in an awkward alliance with their
conservative allies, secured just 9.5 percent of the Bavarian vote, down almost 10.9 percent
from its 2013 showing.
The dismal results were not altogether unexpected. CSU leader Horst Seehofer has regularly
clashed with Angela Merkel over the question of her loose refugee policies, which saw 1.5
million migrants pour into Germany unmolested in 2015 alone. In January 2016, when the number
of arrivals had peaked, Bavaria grabbed headlines as Peter Dreier, mayor of the district of
Landshut, sent a
busload of refugees to Berlin, saying his city could not handle any more new arrivals.
Yet, despite such expressions of frustration, and even anger, Germany, perhaps out of some
fear of reverting back to atavistic nationalistic tendencies that forever lurks in the
background of the German psyche, has not come out in full force against the migrant invasion,
which seems to have been forced upon the nation without their approval. As with the young girl
in the video below, however, some Germans have come forward to express their strong
reservations with the trend.
In general, however, the German people, in direct contradiction to the stereotype of them
being an orderly and logical people, do not seem overly concerned with the prospects of their
tidy country being overrun by the chaos of undocumented and illegal migrants. This much seemed
to be confirmed by the strong showing of the pro-immigration Green Party, which took second
place with 18.3 percent of the votes, a 9 percent increase since the last elections.
Katharina Schulze, the 33-year old co-leader of the Bavarian Greens,
told reporters "Bavaria needs a political party that solves the problems of the people and
not create new ones over and over again."
However, a political platform that seems fine with open borders seems to contradict
Schulze's claim to not creating new problems "over and over again." Today, thanks to Merkel's
disastrous refugee non-plan, which the Greens applaud,
every fifth person in Germany comes from immigration, a figure that will naturally increase
over time, placing immense pressure on the country's already overloaded
social welfare programs, not to mention disrupting the country's social cohesiveness.
Thus Schulze may find it an impossible challenge "solving the problems of the people," one
of the vaguest campaign pledges I have ever heard, while embracing a staunchly refugee-friendly
platform that seems doomed to ultimate disaster.
Indeed, Germany appears to be on a collision course between those who accept the idea of
being the world's welcome center for refugees, and those who think Germany must not only close
its borders, but perhaps even send back many refugees. After all, it has been proven that many
of these new arrivals are in reality
'
economic migrants' who arrived in Europe not due to any persecution back home, but rather
from the hope of improving their lot in life. While it's certainly no crime to seek out
economic opportunities, it becomes a real problem when it comes at the expense of the domestic
population.
From an outsider's perspective, I cannot fathom how it is possible that Angela Merkel is
still in power. Although there is no term limit on the chancellorship, people must still go to
the polls and vote for this woman and the CDU, which the majority continues to do –
despite everything.
In a search for answers, I found an explanation by one Arne Trautmann, a German lawyer from
Munich.
"I think the answer lies in German psychology. We do not like instability. We had our
experience with it (hyperinflation, wars and such) and it did not work very well. Angela Merkel
offers such stability. Simply because she has been around for so long."
Still, that answer just drags up more questions that perhaps only the Germans can answer.
After all, if the German people "do not like instability," then the specter of their borders
being violated on a daily basis such be simply unacceptable to them. Perhaps I am missing
something.
In any case, there was a consolation prize of sorts in the Bavarian elections, as the
anti-immigrant AfD party took fourth place (behind the Free Voters) with 10.2 percent of the
votes, an increase of 10 percent from their 2013 performance.
This will give the AfD parliamentary power in the state assembly for the first time, which
should work to put the brakes on illegal migrants entering the country. For the future of
Germany, it may be the last hope.
by Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/18/2018 - 12:50 1.3K SHARES
The noose appears to be tightening further around the law-less behaviors of the Obama
administration in their frantic efforts to protect former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
from lawsuits seeking information about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private
email server and her handling of the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi,
Libya.
As Fox News reports , the transparency group Judicial Watch initially sued the State
Department in 2014, seeking information about the response to the Benghazi attack after the
government didn't respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Other parallel
lawsuits by Judicial Watch are probing issues like Clinton's server , whose existence was
revealed during the course of the litigation.
The State Department had immediately moved to dismiss Judicial Watch's first lawsuit, but
U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth (who was appointed to the bench by President Ronald
Reagan) denied the request to dismiss the lawsuit at the time, and on Friday, he said he was
happy he did, charging that State Department officials had intentionally misled him because
other key documents, including those on Clinton's email server, had not in fact been
produced.
"It was clear to me that at the time that I ruled initially, that false statements were
made to me by career State Department officials , and it became more clear through discovery
that the information that I was provided was clearly false regarding the adequacy of the
search and this – what we now know turned out to be the Secretary's email system."
"I don't know the details of what kind of IG inquiry there was into why these career
officials at the State Department would have filed false affidavits with me. I don't know the
details of why the Justice Department lawyers did not know false affidavits were being filed
with me, but I was very relieved that I did not accept them and that I allowed limited
discovery into what had happened."
In a somewhat stunningly frank exchange with Justice Department lawyer Robert Prince, the
judge pressed the issue, accusing Prince of using "doublespeak" and "playing the same word
games [Clinton] played."
That "was not true," the judge said, referring to the State Department's assurances in a
sworn declaration that it had searched all relevant documents.
"It was a lie."
Additionally,
Fox notes that Judge Lamberth said he was "shocked" and "dumbfounded" when he learned that
FBI had granted immunity to former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills during its investigation
into the use of Clinton's server, according to a court transcript of his remarks.
"I had myself found that Cheryl Mills had committed perjury and lied under oath in a
published opinion I had issued in a Judicial Watch case where I found her unworthy of belief,
and I was quite shocked to find out she had been given immunity in -- by the Justice
Department in the Hillary Clinton email case."
On Friday, Lamberth said he did not know Mills had been granted immunity until he "read the
IG report and learned that and that she had accompanied [Clinton] to her interview."
We give the last word to Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who was present at the
hearing, as he pushed the White House for answers.
"President Trump should ask why his State Department is still refusing to answer basic
questions about the Clinton email scandal," Fitton said.
"Hillary Clinton's and the State Department's email cover up abused the FOIA, the courts,
and the American people's right to know."
Perhaps the deep state remains in control behind the scenes after all (consider the recent
back-pedal on declassifying the Russian probe documents)?
"... I just love the fact that Trump is publicly calling out Merkel on this; she has been nothing but two-faced and hypocritical on the Russia question. ..."
"... She was one of the ones who pushed the EU hard, for example, to sanction Russia in the wake of the coup in Ukraine (which she had also supported). And then she pushed the EU hard to kill off the South Stream pipeline, which would have gone through SE Europe into Austria. She used the excuse of 'EU solidarity' against 'Russian aggression' to accomplish that only to then turn around and start building yet another pipeline out of Russia and straight into Germany! The Bulgarians et al. must feel like real idiots now. It seems Berlin wants to control virtually all the pipelines into Europe. ..."
I just love the fact that Trump is publicly calling out Merkel on this; she has been
nothing but two-faced and hypocritical on the Russia question.
She was one of the ones who pushed the EU hard, for example, to sanction Russia in the
wake of the coup in Ukraine (which she had also supported). And then she pushed the EU hard
to kill off the South Stream pipeline, which would have gone through SE Europe into Austria.
She used the excuse of 'EU solidarity' against 'Russian aggression' to accomplish that only
to then turn around and start building yet another pipeline out of Russia and straight
into Germany! The Bulgarians et al. must feel like real idiots now. It seems Berlin wants to
control virtually all the pipelines into Europe.
So, three cheers for Trump embarrassing Merkel on this issue!
"... This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 1018 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page , which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Read about why we're doing this fundraiser and what we've accomplished in the last year, and our current goal, extending our reach . ..."
"... By Tsvetana Paraskova, a writer for the U.S.-based Divergente LLC consulting firm. Originally published at OilPrice ..."
"... As long as NATO exists, Washington will continue to use it to drive a wedge between the EU and Russia. Merkel foolishly went along with all of Washington's provocations against Russia in Ukraine, even though none of it benefited Germany's national interest. ..."
"... She did indeed go along with all the provocations and she sat back and said nothing while Putin railed against US sanctions. Yet Putin didn't blame Germany or the EU. Instead he said that the Germany/EU is currently trapped by the US and would come to their senses in time. He is leaving the door open. ..."
"... What US LNG exports? The US is a net importer of NG from Canada. US 2018 NG consumption and production was 635.8 and 631.6 Mtoe respectively (BP 2018 Stats). Even the BP 2018 Statistical Review of World Energy has an asterisks by US LNG exports which says, "Includes re-exports" which was 17.4 BCM or 15 Mtoe for 2018. ..."
"... Natural gas negotiations involve long term contracts so there are lots of money to exchange ensuring business for many years to come. Such a contract has recently been signed between Poland's PGNiG and American Venture Global Calcasieu & Venture Global Plaquemines LNG (Lousiana). According to the Poland representative this gas would be 20% cheaper than Russian gas. (if one has to believe it). Those contracts are very secretive in their terms. This contract in particular is still dependent on the termination of liquefaction facilities in Lousiana. ..."
"... IIRC, the US is pushing LNG because fracking has resulted in a lot of NG coincident with oil production. They've got so much NG coming out of fracked oil wells that they don't know what to do with it and at present, a lot of it just gets flared, or leaks into the atmosphere. ..."
"... So they turn to bullying the EU to ignore the price advantage that Russia is able to offer, due to the economics of pipeline transport over liquefaction and ocean transport, and of course the issues of reliability and safety associated with ocean transport, and high-pressure LNG port facilities compared to pipelines. ..."
"... Trump will probably offer the EU 'free' LNG port facilities financed by low-income American tax-payers, and cuts to 'entitlements', all designed to MAGA. ..."
"... It seems we have been maneuvering for a while to raise our production of LNG and oil (unsustainably) in order to become an important substitute supplier to the EU countries. It sort of looks like our plan is to reduce EU opposition to our attacking Russia. Then we will have China basically surrounded. This is made easier with our nuclear policy of "we can use nuclear weapons with acceptable losses." What could go wrong? ..."
"... The United States should lead by example. Telling Germany not to import Russian gas is rich considering the U.S. also imports from Russia. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/07/12/russia-was-a-top-10-supplier-of-u-s-oil-imports-in-2017/ ..."
"... I just love the fact that Trump is publicly calling out Merkel on this; she has been nothing but two-faced and hypocritical on the Russia question. ..."
"... She was one of the ones who pushed the EU hard, for example, to sanction Russia in the wake of the coup in Ukraine (which she had also supported). And then she pushed the EU hard to kill off the South Stream pipeline, which would have gone through SE Europe into Austria. She used the excuse of 'EU solidarity' against 'Russian aggression' to accomplish that only to then turn around and start building yet another pipeline out of Russia and straight into Germany! The Bulgarians et al. must feel like real idiots now. It seems Berlin wants to control virtually all the pipelines into Europe. ..."
This
is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 1018 donors have already invested in our efforts to
combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us
and participate via our donation page , which shows how to give via
check, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Read about why we're doing
this fundraiser and what we've
accomplished in the last year, and our current goal, extending
our reach .
Yves here. It's not hard to see that this tiff isn't just about Russia. The US wants Germany
to buy high-priced US LNG.
By Tsvetana Paraskova, a writer for the U.S.-based Divergente LLC consulting firm.
Originally published at
OilPrice
The United States and the European Union (EU) are at odds over more than just the Iran
nuclear deal – tensions surrounding energy policy have also become a flashpoint for the
two global powerhouses.
In energy policy, the U.S. has been opposing the Gazprom-led and highly controversial
Nord Stream 2 pipeline project , which will follow the existing Nord Stream natural gas
pipeline between Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea. EU institutions and some EU members
such as Poland and Lithuania are also against it, but one of the leaders of the EU and the
end-point of the planned project -- Germany -- supports Nord Stream 2 and sees the project as a
private commercial venture that will help it to meet rising natural gas demand.
While the U.S. has been hinting this year that it could sanction the project and the
companies involved in it -- which include not only Gazprom but also major European firms Shell,
Engie, OMV, Uniper, and Wintershall -- Germany has just said that
Washington shouldn't interfere with Europe's energy choices and policies.
"I don't want European energy policy to be defined in Washington," Germany's Foreign
Ministry State Secretary Andreas Michaelis said at a conference on trans-Atlantic ties in
Berlin this week.
Germany has to consult with its European partners regarding the project, Michaelis said, and
noted, as quoted by Reuters, that he was "certainly not willing to accept that Washington is
deciding at the end of the day that we should not rely on Russian gas and that we should not
complete this pipeline project."
"Germany is totally controlled by Russia, because they will be getting from 60 to 70 percent
of their energy from Russia and a new pipeline," President Trump said.
Germany continues to see Nord Stream 2 as a commercial venture, although it wants clarity on
the future role of Ukraine as a transit route, German government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer
said last month.
Nord Stream 2 is designed to bypass Ukraine, and Ukraine fears it will lose transit fees and
leverage over Russia as the transit route for its gas to western Europe.
Poland, one of the most outspoken opponents of Nord Stream 2, together with the United
States, issued a joint statement last month during the visit of Polish President Andrzej Duda
to Washington, in which the parties
said , "We will continue to coordinate our efforts to counter energy projects that threaten
our mutual security, such as Nord Stream 2."
The president of the Federation of German Industry (BDI), Dieter Kempf, however, told
German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung last month, that he had "a big problem with a third
country interfering in our energy policy," referring to the United States. German industry
needs Nord Stream 2, and dropping the project to buy U.S. LNG instead wouldn't make any
economic sense, he said. U.S. LNG currently is not competitive on the German market and would
simply cost too much, according to Kempf.
The lower price of Russian pipeline gas to Europe is a key selling point -- and one that
Gazprom uses often. Earlier this month Alexey Miller, Chairman of Gazprom's Management
Committee, said at a gas forum in
Russia that "Although much talk is going on about new plans for LNG deliveries, there is no
doubt that pipeline gas supplies from Russia will always be more competitive than LNG
deliveries from any other part of the world. It goes without saying."
The issue with Nord Stream 2 -- which is already
being built in German waters -- is that it's not just a commercial project. Many in Europe
and everyone in the United States see it as a Russian political tool and a means to further
tighten Russia's grip on European gas supplies, of which it already holds more than a third.
But Germany wants to discuss the future of this project within the European Union, without
interference from the United States.
Maybe the US thinks it will also have to go out of its way to accommodate Germany and the
EU by offering to construct the necessary infrastructure in Europe for the import of LNG at
exorbitant US prices. MAGA. How long would that take?
The question is, is it inevitable that the EU/US relationship goes sour?
Continentalism is on the rise generally, and specifically with brexit, couple this with the
geographical gravity of the EU-Russia relationship makes a EU-Russia "alliance" make more
sense than the EU-US relationship.
Ever since the death of the USSR and the accession of the eastern states to the EU, the
balance of power in the EU-US relationship has moved in ways it seems clear that the US is
uncomfortable with.
To all of this we must add the policy differences between the US and the EU – see the
GDPR and the privacy shield for example.
I have said it before – the day Putin dies (metaphorically or literally) is a day
when the post war order in Europe may die, and we see the repairing of the EU-Russia
relationship (by which I mean the current regime in Russia will be replaced with a new
generation far less steeped in cold war dogma and way more interested in the EU).
"The post war order in Europe will doe and we see the repairing of the EU/Russian
relationship "
I think you mean the German/Russian relationship and that repair has been under way for
more than a decade. The post war order is very very frayed already and looks close to a break
point.
This Nord Stream 2 story illustrates more than most Germany's attitudes to the EU and to
the world at large. Germany used its heft within the EU to 1 ) get control of Russian gas
supplies into Central Europe (Germany insisted that Poland could not invest in the project
apparently and refused a landing point for the pipeline in Poland. Instead it offered a flow
back valve from Germany into Poland that the Germans would control) 2) thumb its nose at the
US while outwardly declaring friendship through the structures provided by EU and NATO
membership.
Even Obama suspected the Germans of duplicity (the Merkel phone hacking debacle).
It's is this repairing relationship that will set the tone for Brexit, the Ukraine war,
relations between Turkey and EU and eventually the survival of the EU and NATO. The point ?
Germany doesn't give a hoot about the EU it served its purpose of keeping Germany anchored to
the west and allowing German reunification to solidify while Russia was weak. Its usefulness
is in the past now, however from a German point of view.
Putin dying isn't going to change Washington. As long as NATO exists, Washington will
continue to use it to drive a wedge between the EU and Russia. Merkel foolishly went along
with all of Washington's provocations against Russia in Ukraine, even though none of it
benefited Germany's national interest.
Come to think of it, maybe Merkel dying off would improve German-Russian relations
She did indeed go along with all the provocations and she sat back and said nothing while
Putin railed against US sanctions. Yet Putin didn't blame Germany or the EU. Instead he said
that the Germany/EU is currently trapped by the US and would come to their senses in time. He
is leaving the door open.
Germany won't lose if NATO and the EU break up. It would free itself from a range
increasingly dis-functional entities that, in its mind, restrict its ability to engage in
world affairs.
I think you are right. Russia and Germany are coming together and there's nothing we can
do about it because "private commercial venture." Poetic justice.
And the economic link will
lead to political links and we will have to learn a little modesty. The ploy we are trying to
use, selling Germany US LNG could not have been anything more than a stopgap supply line
until NG from the ME came online but that has been our achilles heel.
It feels like even if
we managed to kick the Saudis out and took over their oil and gas we still could no longer
control geopolitics. The cat is out of the bag and neoliberalism has established the rules.
And it's pointless because there is enough gas and oil and methane on this planet to kill the
human race off but good.
That exactly right. and Gerhard Schroder has been developing those political relationships
for more than a decade. The political/economic links already go very deep on both sides.
if the rapprochement is occurring, Brexit, the refugee crisis and Italy's approaching debt
crisis are all just potential catalysts for an inevitable breakup. Germany likely views these
as potential opportunities to direct European realignment rather than existential crises to
be tackled.
What US LNG exports? The US is a net importer of NG from Canada. US 2018 NG consumption
and production was 635.8 and 631.6 Mtoe respectively (BP 2018 Stats). Even the BP 2018
Statistical Review of World Energy has an asterisks by US LNG exports which says, "Includes
re-exports" which was 17.4 BCM or 15 Mtoe for 2018.
The US produces annually about 33,000,000 million cubic feet and consumes 27.000.000
million according to the EiA . So there is an
excess to export indeed.
Natural gas negotiations involve long term contracts so there are lots of money to
exchange ensuring business for many years to come.
Such a contract has recently been signed between Poland's PGNiG and American Venture
Global Calcasieu & Venture Global Plaquemines LNG (Lousiana). According to the Poland
representative this gas would be 20% cheaper than Russian gas. (if one has to believe it).
Those contracts are very secretive in their terms. This contract in particular is still
dependent on the termination of liquefaction facilities in Lousiana.
I don't know much about NG markets in Poland but according to Eurostat prices for
non-household consumers are very similar in Poland, Germany, Lithuania or Spain.
Gas contracts are usually linked to oil prices. A lot of LNG is traded as a fungible
product like oil, but that contract seems different – most likely its constructed this
way because of the huge capital cost of the LNG facilities, which make very little economic
sense for a country like Poland which has pipelines criss-crossing it. I suspect the
terminals have more capacity that the contract quantity – the surplus would be traded
at market prices, which would no doubt be where the profit margin is for the supplier (I
would be deeply sceptical that unsubsidised LNG could ever compete with Russia gas, the
capital costs involved are just too high).
IIRC, the US is pushing LNG because fracking has resulted in a lot of NG coincident with
oil production. They've got so much NG coming out of fracked oil wells that they don't know what to do
with it and at present, a lot of it just gets flared, or leaks into the atmosphere.
IMO, the folks responsible for this waste are as usual, ignoring the 'externalities', the
costs to the environment of course, but also the cost of infrastructure and transport related
to turning this situation to their advantage.
So they turn to bullying the EU to ignore the price advantage that Russia is able to
offer, due to the economics of pipeline transport over liquefaction and ocean transport, and
of course the issues of reliability and safety associated with ocean transport, and
high-pressure LNG port facilities compared to pipelines.
This doesn't even take into account the possibility that the whole fracked gas supply may
be a short-lived phenomenon, associated with what we've been describing here as basically a
finance game.
Trump will probably offer the EU 'free' LNG port facilities financed by low-income
American tax-payers, and cuts to 'entitlements', all designed to MAGA.
Just to clarify, fracked gas is not usually a by-product of oil fracking – the
geological beds are usually distinct (shale gas tends to occur at much deeper levels than
tight oil). Gas can however be a byproduct of conventional oil production. 'wet' gas
(propane, etc), can be a by-product of either.
It's common for oil wells both fracked and conventional to produce natural gas (NG) though
not all do. The fracked wells in the Permian Basin are producing a great deal of it.
Natural gas does indeed form at higher temperatures than oil does and that means at
greater depth but both oil and NG migrate upward. Exploration for petroleum is hunting for
where it gets captured at depth, not for where it's formed. Those source rocks are used as
indicators of where to look for petroleum trapped stratigraphically higher up.
It seems we have been maneuvering for a while to raise our production of LNG and oil
(unsustainably) in order to become an important substitute supplier to the EU countries. It
sort of looks like our plan is to reduce EU opposition to our attacking Russia. Then we will
have China basically surrounded. This is made easier with our nuclear policy of "we can use
nuclear weapons with acceptable losses." What could go wrong?
I wonder what the secret industry studies say about the damage possible from an accident
at a LNG port terminal involving catastrophic failure and combustion of the entire cargo of a
transport while unloading high-pressure LNG.
They call a fuel-air bomb the size of a school bus 'The Mother of all bombs', what about
one the size of a large ocean going tanker?
Many years ago, someone was trying to build an LNG storage facility on the southwest shore
of Staten Island 17 miles SW of Manhattan involving very large insulated tanks. In spite of
great secrecy, there came to be much local opposition. At the time it was said that the
amount of energy contained in the tanks would be comparable to a nuclear weapon. Various
possible disaster scenarios were proposed, for example a tank could be compromised by
accident (plane crashes into it) or terrorism, contents catch fire and explode, huge fireball
emerges and drifts with the wind, possibly over New Jersey's chemical farms or even towards
Manhattan. The local opponents miraculously won. As far as I know, the disused tanks are
still there.
A 28-inch LNG underground pipeline exploded in Nigeria and the resulting fire engulfed
an estimated 27 square kilometers.
Here's one from Cleveland;
On 20 October 1944, a liquefied natural gas storage tank in Cleveland, Ohio, split and
leaked its contents, which spread, caught fire, and exploded. A half hour later, another
tank exploded as well. The explosions destroyed 1 square mile (2.6 km2), killed 130, and
left 600 homeless.
The locals in Nigeria drill hole in pipeline to get free fuel.
The Nigeria Government has been really wonderful about sharing the largess and riches of
their large petroleum field in the Niger delta. Mostly with owners of expensive property
around the world.
I am trying to think of what might be in it for the Germans to go along with this deal but
cannot see any. The gas would be far more expensive that the Russian deliveries. A fleet of
tankers and the port facilities would have to be built and who is going to pick up the tab
for that? Then if the terminal is in Louisiana, what happens to deliveries whenever there is
a hurricane?
I cannot see anything in it for the Germans at all. Trump's gratitude? That and 50 cents
won't buy you a cup of coffee. In any case Trump would gloat about the stupidity of the
Germans taking him up on the deal, not feel gratitude. The US wants Germany to stick with
deliveries via the Ukraine as they have their thumb on that sorry country and can threaten
Germany with that fact. Nord Stream 2 (and the eventual Nord Stream 3) threaten that
hold.
The killer argument is this. In terms of business and remembering what international
agreements Trump has broken the past two years, who is more reliable as a business partner
for Germany – Putin's Russia or Trump's America?
I find it impossible to believe that a gas supplier would keep to an artificially low LNG
contract if, say, a very cold winter in the US led to a shortage and extreme price spike.
They'd come up with some excuse not to deliver.
My recollection was that there was a law that prohibited export-sales of domestic US
hydrocarbons. That law was under attack, and went away in the last couple years?
LNG with your F35? said the transactional Orangeman
The fracked crude is ultralight and unsuitable for the refineries in the quantities
available, hence export, which caused congress to change the law. No expert, but understand
that it is used a lot as a blender with heavier stocks of crude, quite a bit going to
China.
The petroleum industry has been bribing lobbying the administration for quite a
while to get this policy in place, The so called surplus of NG today (if there is), won't
last long. Exports will create a shortage and will result in higher prices to all.
also, if Germany were to switch to American LNG, for how long would this be a reliable
energy source? Fracking wells are short lived, so what happens once they are depleted? who
foots the bill?
I just love the fact that Trump is publicly calling out Merkel on this; she has been
nothing but two-faced and hypocritical on the Russia question.
She was one of the ones who pushed the EU hard, for example, to sanction Russia in the
wake of the coup in Ukraine (which she had also supported). And then she pushed the EU hard
to kill off the South Stream pipeline, which would have gone through SE Europe into Austria.
She used the excuse of 'EU solidarity' against 'Russian aggression' to accomplish that only
to then turn around and start building yet another pipeline out of Russia and straight
into Germany! The Bulgarians et al. must feel like real idiots now. It seems Berlin wants to
control virtually all the pipelines into Europe.
So, three cheers for Trump embarrassing Merkel on this issue!
Putting money aside for a moment, Trump, as well as the entire American establishment,
doesn't want Russia "controlling" Germany's energy supplies. That's because they want America
to control Germany's energy supplies via controlling LNG deliveries from America to Germany
and by controlling gas supplies to Germany through Ukraine. This by maintaining America's
control over Ukraine's totally dependent puppet government. The Germans know this so they
want Nord Stream 2 & 3.
Ukraine is an unreliable energy corridor on a good day. It is run by clans of rapacious
oligarchs who don't give one whit about Ukraine, the Ukrainian "people", or much of anything
else except business. The 2019 presidential election may turn into a contest among President
Poroshenko the Chocolate King, Yulia Tymoshenko the Gas Princess, as well as some others
including neo Nazis that go downhill from there. What competent German government would want
Germany's energy supplies to be dependent on that mess?
It has been said that America's worst geopolitical nightmare is an
economic-political-military combination of Russia, Iran, and China in the Eurasian
"heartland". Right up there, if not worse, is a close political-economic association between
Germany and Russia; now especially so since such a relationship can quickly be hooked into
China's New Silk Road, which America will do anything to subvert including tariffs,
sanctions, confiscations of assets, promotion of political-ethnic-religious grievances where
they may exist along the "Belt-Road", as well as armed insurrections, really maybe anything
short of all out war with Russia and China.
Germany's trying to be polite about this saying, sure, how about a little bit of LNG along
with Nord Stream 2 & 3? But the time may come, if America pushes enough, that Germany
will have to make an existential choice between subservience to America, and pursuit of it's
own legitimate self interest.
It's hard to make NG explode, as it is with all liquid hydrocarbons. It is refrigerated,
and must change from liquid to gaseous for, and be mixed with air.
I've also worked on a Gas Tanker in the summer vacations. The gas was refrigerated, and
kept liquid. They is a second method, used for NG, that is to allow evaporation from the
cargo, and use it as fuel for the engine (singular because there is one propulsion engine on
most large ships) on the tanker.
Treasury Official Arrested, Charged With Leaking Confidential Info On Ex-Trump Advisers;
BuzzFeed Implicated
by Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/17/2018 - 16:22 1.3K SHARES
In the latest indication of the Trump administration's efforts to root out alleged leakers,
a senior Treasury Department official working in the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
(FINCEN), Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards,
has been charged with leaking confidential financial reports to the media concerning former
Trump campaign advisers Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, according to
The Hill .
Prosecutors say that Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards , a senior adviser to FinCEN,
photographed what are called suspicious activity reports, or SARs, and other sensitive
government files and sent them to an unnamed reporter, in violation of U.S. law. -
The Hill
Suspicious Activity Reports are filed by banks in order to confidentially notify law
enforcement of potentially illegal financial transactions. The documents leaked by the Treasury
official, which began last October, are reported to have been used as the basis for 12 news
articles published by an unnamed organization.
While the news organization was not named in the complaint, it lists the headlines and other
details of six BuzzFeed articles published between October 2017 to as recently as Monday which
they allege were based on the leaks.
BuzzFeed reporters Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier are commonly listed on several of the
articles referenced in the government's complaint. (examples
here ,
here and
here ).
Edwards has been charged with one count of unauthorized disclosures of SAR reports and one
count of conspiracy to make unauthorized disclousres of SARs. She will be tried in the Southern
District of New York, and faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted on both charges.
When she was arrested, Edwards was in possession of a flash drive which was allegedly used
to save the unlawfully disclosed SARs, as well as a cell phone " containing numerous
communications over an encrypted application in which she transmitted SARs and other sensitive
government information to Reporter-1."
"We hope today's charges remind those in positions of trust within government agencies that
the unlawful sharing of sensitive documents will not be tolerated and will be met with swift
justice by this Office," said US Attorney Geoffrey Berman in a statement.
According to the criminal complaint, agents in the Treasury inspector general's office
detected "a pattern" of unauthorized media disclosures of the sensitive financial files
beginning in October 2017 and continuing for a year . The disclosures were related to matters
being investigated either by special counsel Robert Mueller , the U.S. Attorney's Office
for the Southern District of New York or the Justice Department's National Security
Division.
They included leaks about suspicious transactions made by Manafort, Trump's former
campaign chairman, and Gates, Manafort's longtime business partner who also served on the
Trump campaign and the transition team. Both individuals were charged in connection with
Mueller's Russia investigation last October with crimes stemming from their foreign lobbying
activity. Both have since decided to plead guilty and cooperate with Mueller's probe. -
The Hill
Could Manafort now make the case that unauthorized media leaks saturating national headlines
baised the jury against him?
Edwards is also accused of leaking sensitive financial information regarding Russian
national, Maria Butina, who was charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the Russian
government.
The alleged leak announced Wednesday would be the second major suspected breach at FinCEN
reported this year, after a federal law enforcement official told The New Yorker in May that
he leaked SARs on a shell company set up by Michael Cohen , Trump's former attorney,
after two similar bank records appeared to be missing from the FinCEN database. -
The Hill
Edwards is also accused of sending the reproter internal FinCEN emails, investigative memos
and intelligence assessments
"... So, there you have it. The great victory of the political economy of the working class over the political economy of the middle class had the unintended consequence of completing the victory of fossil fuel over renewable but erratic water power. ..."
PoliticsUS/Global EconomicsThe
Political Economy of the Working Class The political economy of the working class is
pluralist.
The political economy of the working class is pragmatic.
The political economy of the working class is critical.
Karl Marx chronicled and contributed to the political economy of the working class. He did
not invent, conclude or supersede it. In his Inaugural Address to the International Working
Men's Association, Marx celebrated the first victory of the political economy of the working
class, the passage, in 1847, of the Ten Hours' Bill:
This struggle about the legal restriction of the hours of labor raged the more fiercely
since, apart from frightened avarice, it told indeed upon the great contest between the blind
rule of the supply and demand laws which form the political economy of the middle class, and
social production controlled by social foresight, which forms the political economy of the
working class. Hence the Ten Hours' Bill was not only a great practical success; it was the
victory of a principle; it was the first time that in broad daylight the political economy of
the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the working class.
This passage tells us what we most need to know about the political economy of the working
class. It is founded upon "social production controlled by social foresight" in opposition to
"the blind rule of supply and demand laws." The "most notorious organs of science" had
predicted and "proved" that "any legal restriction of the hours of labor must sound the death
knell of British industry" and, of course, they were subsequently proved absolutely wrong. Not
'merely' wrong, but the exact opposite of apposite.
The political economy of the working class is innovative.
The political economy of the working class is traditionalist.
The political economy of the working class is eclectic.
The first victory of working class political economy Marx spoke of occurred 17 years before
his inaugural address, 20 years before publication of Das Kapital and a year before
The Communist Manifesto . It would be anachronistic to give credit for that outcome to
Marx's analysis or agitation. Moreover, Marx says that the victory culminated 30 years of
struggle, which would make the political economy of the working class at least older
than Marx.
The political economy of the working class is conservative.
The political economy of the working class is revolutionary.
Why does this even matter? It matters because the alternative between "social production
controlled by social foresight" and "the blind rule of supply and demand laws" cannot be
reduced to Marxism vs. non-Marxism or socialism vs. capitalism. It is instead a contest between
collective wisdom and a very peculiar sort of solipsistic, motivated passivity. If there
ever was such a thing as "laws" of supply and demand, they would only be self-enforcing to the
extent that market participants were not aware of them. As soon as those regularities are
observed, they will be gamed.
It also matters because units of radically different type lie at the heart of the two
political economies. The political economy of the middle class is denominated in monetary
units, while the political economy of the working class revolves around qualitative as
well as quantitative time. The limitation of the length of the working day confers "physical,
moral, and intellectual benefits" above and beyond simply "more time off" and a better
bargaining position for wages. "After all their idle sophistry, there is, thank God! no means
of adding to the wealth of a nation but by adding to the facilities of living: so that
wealth is liberty -- liberty to seek recreation -- liberty to enjoy life -- liberty to improve
the mind: it is
disposable time, and nothing more ."
Andres Malm tells us that with passage of the Ten-Hours Bill in 1847, "Water power received
its coup de grâce ." "If labour scored a gain in the Acts of 1847 and 1850,
capital retaliated by speed through steam." "[A]ccording to Von Tunzelmann, the Ten Hours Act
was 'probably the most important determinant' of the rise of high-pressure steam and, by
extension, the final victory of the engine in the cotton industry (and beyond)."
So, there you have it. The great victory of the political economy of the working class over
the political economy of the middle class had the unintended consequence of completing the
victory of fossil fuel over renewable but erratic water power.
But, of course the story doesn't end there. Might not the same political economy of the
working class act as a lever in the transition away from fossil fuels? The IPCC
1.5° C Report and the Ten-Hour Week
likbez , October 17, 2018 1:29 am
Marx definitely gave the most brilliant analysis of the political economy of
capitalism. Which survived the test of time. Of course, he has predecessors, but his
contribution is the major one.
My impression is that "The political economy of the working class" is still vital to
understanding Neoliberalism.
But his idealization of working class failed the test of the time. The idea that the
working class is the next politically dominant class was wrong. What was right is that a
political party with an attractive ideology itself can become the major political force
in the society. The tail can wag the dog. Deceiving the population with some ideological
carrot (and then betraying those promises) became the major art, the essence of the
Western political landscape. With very few exceptions.
That trend was amplified by the emergence of intelligence agencies as the major
"shadow" political force in Western Societies (and the USSR and Warsaw Block too).
As a really tragic externality, the attempt to built a political system based on
supposed dominance of working-class paved way first to the creation of national socialism
(elements of which are now incorporated in all major Western democracies) and later to
the displacement of the New Deal Capitalism by neoliberalism which can be viewed as
Trotskyism for rich.
Interesting perspective. Sometimes I wonder if Marx didn't make it all too clear
for the ruling class and they took the initiative to formulate an anti-Marxism that
was more effective than anything they could have come up with on their own.
There's an older episode of The Green Room with Paul
Provenza when the late Patrice O'Neal, arguably one of the best stand-up comics in recent
history, gets serious for a moment, saying: "I love being able to say anything I want. I had to
learn how to stop caring about people not laughing. Because the idea of comedy, really, is not
everybody should be laughing. It should be about 50 people laughing and 50 people horrified.
There should be people who get it and people who don't get it."
O'Neal gets right to the chaotic, trickster heart of comedy with that statement. Comedy at
its best balances humor against shock–not necessarily vulgarity, mind you, but a sort of
unsettling surprise. It's a topsy-turvy glimpse at an uncanny, upside-down world, which, if the
joke lands, provides a bulwark against torpor and complacency. Great comedy inhabits the
absurdity of the world. It makes itself into a vantage point from which everything seems
delightfully ridiculous, including (often especially) the comedians themselves. We wouldn't
need comedy in a world that wasn't absurd. Perhaps that's why Dante only included humor in his
Inferno . There is no absurdity in paradise.
Unfortunately, Hannah Gadsby's Nanette , a comedy special recently released on
Netflix, only embraces the non-laughter half of O'Neal's dictum. It's the very epitome of
self-serious, brittle, didactic, SJW "comedy." It's not funny. And worse, it's not meant to be.
Gadsby, a queer Australian comedian, uses her "stand-up special" as a way to destroy the very
medium she pretends to be professionally engaged in. Her basic argument is that, since comedy
is by its very nature self-deprecating (true), people who define themselves as members of an
oppressed minority shouldn't engage in comedy because they're only participating in the
violence already being done to them by society at large.
We have allowed "social justice" types, a tiny fringe minority of unhappy and often unstable
people, rewrite the rules of our entire civilization and culture.
All the way back to Aristophanes comedy has often included a political component or an effort
to "educate" audiences or at least make them think about things. But the actual comedy part
is essential. Otherwise it's just a lecture.
We might just be witnessing the death of Art. As the SJW furies brutally and effectively
enforce The Narrative in literary fiction, film, TV, comedy, etc. they destroy the potential
for creative genius in these mediums and kill off most of the audience. It was already hard
enough for those arts to compete with new media forms. The SJW's hostile takeover of Art just
makes the triumph of Real Life As Entertainment all the more complete.
Whereas twenty years ago I might be spending my free time reading a novel and attempting
to write a short story, today I'm reading articles on The American Conservative and posting
this comment.
"... the implications of the study are deadly serious. Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian have confirmed the right-wing political essence of identity politics and postmodernist thought, based on anti-Marxism, irrationalism and the rejection of the Enlightenment and objective truth. ..."
"... 'It's a very scary time for young men,' Trump told reporters on the very day that Pluckrose, Lindsay, and Boghossian went public with their hoax. Both express a fear of false attacks on men, whether levied by regretful sluts, lefty liberals, radical academics, or whoever else." ..."
On October 2, Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian published an article
titled "Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship," incorporating the
results of a year-long effort to publish hoax articles, deliberately comprised of bunk facts
and irrational and reactionary conclusions, in academic journals associated with gender, racial
and identity studies.
The results expose the intellectual bankruptcy of identity politics and postmodernist
philosophy. Their proponents, who dominate university humanities departments worldwide, are
charlatans who have published or given favorable "revise and resubmit" comments to the most
absurd and vulgar pseudo-scientific arguments.
These include: a purported 1,000-hour study of dog "humping" patterns at dog parks that
concludes by calling for human males to be "trained" like dogs to prevent rape culture; a
long-form poem produced through a teenage angst poetry generator about women holding
spiritual-sexual "moon meetings" in a secret "womb room" and praying to a "vulva shrine;" a
proposal to develop feminist robots, trained to think irrationally, to control humanity and
subjugate white men; and additional articles relating to male masturbation. Another proposal,
which was praised by reviewers in a paper that was ultimately rejected, encouraged teachers to
place white students in chains to be shamed for their "white privilege."
There is an element of humor in the fact that such drivel could win accolades from academics
and journals. The "dog park" article was even selected as one of the most influential
contributions in the history of the Gender, Place and Culture journal!
But the implications of the study are deadly serious. Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian
have confirmed the right-wing political essence of identity politics and postmodernist thought,
based on anti-Marxism, irrationalism and the rejection of the Enlightenment and objective
truth.
Most chillingly, the authors also submitted a re-write of a chapter from Hitler's Mein
Kampf , with language altered to reference female identity and feminism. The paper, titled
"Our struggle is my struggle: solidarity feminism as an intersectional reply to neoliberal and
choice feminism," was accepted for publication and greeted with favorable reviews.
"I am extremely sympathetic to this article's argument and its political positioning," one
academic wrote. Another said, "I am very sympathetic to the core arguments of the paper."
In the wake of their public disclosure, Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian have come under
attack by the proponents of postmodernism and identity politics, who claim the hoax is a
right-wing attack on "social justice" disciplines.
Typical is the argument of Daniel Engber, who wrote in Slate : "How timely, too,
that this secret project should be published in the midst of the Kavanaugh imbroglio -- a time
when the anger and the horror of male anxiety is so resplendent in the news. 'It's a very
scary time for young men,' Trump told reporters on the very day that Pluckrose, Lindsay, and
Boghossian went public with their hoax. Both express a fear of false attacks on men, whether
levied by regretful sluts, lefty liberals, radical academics, or whoever else."
In reality, the hoax has exposed the fact that it is the proponents of identity politics who
are advancing views parallel to the far right. While they are enraged with those who voice
concern about the elimination of due process and the presumption of innocence for the targets
of the #MeToo campaign, they are unbothered by the fact that the writings of Adolf Hitler are
published and praised in feminist academic circles.
Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian are self-described liberals who are concerned that the
present identity hysteria is "pushing the culture war to ever more toxic and existential
polarization," by fanning the flames of the far right. As a result, identitarians are
"affecting activism on behalf of women and racial and sexual minorities in a way which is
counterproductive to equality aims by feeding into right-wing reactionary opposition to those
equality objectives."
In contrast, the authors' aim is to "give people -- especially those who believe in
liberalism, progress, modernity, open inquiry, and social justice -- a clear reason to look at
the identitarian madness coming out of the academic and activist left and say, 'No, I will not
go along with that. You do not speak for me.'"
The hoax's authors are correct to link the identity politics proponents' hostility to
equality with their opposition to rationalism, scientific analysis and the progressive gains of
the Enlightenment. But the roots of this right-wing, irrationalist, anti-egalitarian
degeneration are to be found in the economic structure of capitalist society.
The academic architects of postmodernism and identity politics occupy well-paid positions in
academia, often with salaries upwards of $100,000–$300,000 or more. As a social layer,
the theoreticians of what the World Socialist Web Site refers to as the "pseudo-left"
are in the wealthiest 10 percent of American society. Their political and philosophical views
express their social interests.
The obsession with "privilege," sex, and racial and gender identity is a mechanism by which
members and groups within this layer fight among themselves for income, social status and
positions of privilege, using degrees of "oppression" to one up each other in the fight for
tenure track jobs, positions on corporate or non-profit boards, or election to public office. A
chief purpose of the #MeToo campaign, for example, is to replace male executives and male
politicians with women, while ignoring the social needs of the vast majority of working class
women.
The weaponization of identity politics is directed down the social ladder as well. By
advancing the lie that white workers benefit from "white privilege," for example, the
proponents of identity politics argue: the spoils of Wall Street should not go to meeting the
social needs of the working class, including white workers, who face record rates of
alcoholism, poverty, opioid addiction, police violence and other indices of social misery.
Instead, the world's resources should go to me . It is this visceral class hatred that
serves as the basis for absurd and reactionary arguments like those advanced in the hoax
papers.
Nor have the politics of racial identity improved the material conditions for the vast
majority of minority workers. Inequality within racial minorities has increased alongside the
introduction of affirmative action programs and the increasing dominance of identity politics
in academia and bourgeois politics. In 2016, the top 1 percent of Latinos owned 45 percent of
all Latino wealth, while the top 1 percent of African-Americans owned 40.5 percent and the
richest whites owned 36.5 percent of white wealth.
The influence of postmodernism in academia exploded in the aftermath of the mass protests of
the 1960s and early 1970s. Based explicitly on a rejection of the revolutionary role of the
working class and opposition to the "meta narrative" of socialist revolution, it is not
accidental that identity politics and postmodernism have now been adopted as official
ideological mechanisms of bourgeois rule.
In recent decades, a massive identity politics industry has been erected, with billions of
dollars available from corporate funds and trusts for journals, non-profits, publications,
fellowships and political groups advancing racial or gender politics. Identity politics has
come to form a central component of the Democratic Party's electoral strategy. Imperialist wars
are justified on the grounds that the US is intervening to protect women, LGBT people and other
minorities.
The growing movement of the working class, broadening strikes across industries and
widespread interest in socialism on college campuses pose an existential threat to the
domination of postmodernism. Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian have struck a well-timed blow
against this reactionary obstacle to the development of scientific socialist consciousness.
The stunning CSU defeat in Bavaria means that the coalition partner in Angela Merkel's
government has lost an absolute majority in their worst election results in Bavaria since
1950.
In a preview analysis before the election, Deutsche
Welle noted that a CSU collapse could lead to Seehofer's resignation from Merkel's
government, and conceivably Söder's exit from the Bavarian state premiership, which would
remove two of the chancellor's most outspoken critics from power , and give her room to govern
in the calmer, crisis-free manner she is accustomed to.
On the other hand, a heavy loss and big resignations in the CSU might well push a
desperate party in a more volatile, abrasive direction at the national level. That would
further antagonize the SPD, the center-left junior partners in Merkel's coalition, themselves
desperate for a new direction and already impatient with Seehofer's destabilizing antics, and
precipitate a break-up of the age-old CDU/CSU alliance, and therefore a break-up of Merkel's
grand coalition. In short: Anything could happen after Sunday, up to and including Merkel's
fall.
The Financial Times reports that the campaign was dominated by the divisive issue of
immigration, in a sign of how the shockwaves from Merkel's disastrous decision to let in more
than a million refugees in 2015-16 are continuing to reverberate through German politics and to
reshape the party landscape.
The Duran's Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss the stunning
Bavarian election defeat of the CSU party, and the message voters sent to Angela Merkel, the
last of the Obama 'rat pack' neo-liberal, globalist leaders whose tenure as German Chancellor
appears to be coming to an end.
We live in a multipolar reality. That is, there is a unified, interconnected world of the
global financial elites who control and dominate currency and credit issuance worldwide
through a handful of unaccountable international banking institutions and there is also a
subordinate world of national politics of many countries also controlled and dominated by the
same elites (and their lackeys) whose job it is to "educate", "explain" and "rationalise" the
fact of its debt enslavement to .998 of the world's population.
The most naked exposition of the dissonant aspects of this divergence between globalism
for the rich and nationalism for the rest of us is found within the EU but it is in fact the
same duality in existence everywhere for all of us.
Most people can only comprehend and identify with the national characteristics of this
dissonant, dual belief system. Most people, the overwhelming majority at the moment, simply
don't care as long as food is on the table, and the babies and the elderly are attended too.
Some believe the solution to the ills of our indebtedness is to be found in a populist,
nationalist politics which can free us from control by wealthy internationists. We see Brexit
and "Amerikkka First" as leading examples of this plebian desire.
The many must be convinced to understand their enslavement by the system before any change
of lasting consequence can occur. This likely will take the starvation of our babies and the
euthanasia of our elderly before we will wake up to our enslavement.
The international financial system will crush the illusions of the Brexiteers and the
Amerikkkan Firsters (this in fact has largely already occurred). Currency control and
indebtedness will not vanish simply with a breakdown of any nationalist political order. One
cannot eat money as the old saying goes and this is true no matter what colour is printed on
the bank notes.
Others comprehend the true enemy as a system which must be destroyed with the accumulated
"wealth of nations" (which in reality is privately-held by an international sliver) must be
redistributed equitably among the .998.
Still, what is hoped for by the intelligentsia is still a nationalist solution to a global
problem. What isn't reconciled within this viewpoint is the elasticity of global financiers
to accommodate any change in the world's political re-ordering, short of the destruction of
capitalism itself. The finacial system serves one function, and doesn't in fact care which
individuals, national currencies, banks or corporations gain or lose from the
machinations.
This international system was created out of the ruins of WWI. The system survived the
Great Depression when socialism reached its zenith of political popularity in the
industrialised world, and in turn survived (and in fact greatly accommodated and assisted)
the extreme Nazi nationalist dream of international political control.
Today we see the increasing impact of the once isolationist Chinese openly participating
in the globalist system and in time through sheer weight of numbers Asia will come to
dominate the system. Until this day arrives the Chinese are very comfortable operating within
the old Eurocentric structure as teh current system works functions quite well for their
elites.
In reality, it doesn't matter whether the international currency is dollar, yuan or Euro
denominated. The illusion that it does matter is a figment of a nationalist mindset which
invests morality where none in fact exists. Sanctions have a temporary, terrible impact on
national banking structures it is true but mainly to the detriment of the .998 while the .002
have already moved their personal assets out of harms way (for tax reasons unrelated to
sanctions).
The Russians and Chinese for domestic political purposes now talk about creating a
separate system of wealth through competing banking systems. This is mostly the nationalist
political order providing false hopes to their own subjects.
Merely the thought of a competing globalist banking system is absurd on its face and
should be enough for any intelligent layman to understand the occurrence of systemic change
can happen only as the greater bulk of real wealth underlying a currency grows great enough
over time to supercede the wealth represented by current denominations.
This will by necessity be a long, extemely slow process because none of the Amerikkkan,
Euro, Russian or Chinese elites will risk substantial amounts of their current fortunes
simply to placate their own subjugated populations with anything other than ongoing,
nationalist political rhetoric.
This is the liberal arts equivalent of what happened in Soviet Russia with its "revealed
truth" ideas.
I suspect it will die at some point as the revolutionaries turn on each other. It will
also die off with further exposure to reality. You can deconstruct the use of gender in the
German language as much as you want and scream loudly about the use of "der, die, das" and so
forth. But you know what? People are going to continue using them.
(In fact, if I wanted to blow up the whole silly mess from the inside, that's what I would
do. Start a movement to "get rid of gender" in the gendered languages and turn all po-mo
arguments into total jokes.)
Identity politics has jumped the shark. SJW's are a minority who wish to perpetuate identity
politics as an end all, be all substitute for the hard work of framing actual policy. The
whole undertaking is flailing -- and backlash to PC culture had much to do with how Trump got
elected. So let the Ivy League schools continue down the path toward irrelevance.
Although the ID of the university was withheld, while I was reading this piece–and at
the risk of being unnecessarily coy–there was one word used which jumped off the
screen, so I think I have a pretty good idea which school it is. Then again, does it really
matter? This kind of soft-core bolshevism has, to one degree or another, infected all of the
Ivies as well as most, if not all, of the Forbes Top 50.
I have no idea who this gentleman is about whom Rod is writing but it is clear that he is
quite intelligent and is trying to bring something of value to the table. If he has reached
the end of his tether and feels the necessity to bail, then it'll be the university's loss,
not his.
If you are a conservative – student/staff/faculty in an ivy league university. Be
careful what you say
Your thoughts are not welcome. And everybody knows that.
Back in Soviet times, scientific positions were frequently filled with incompetent but
politically connected people. STEM can be corrupted–although the resultant failings are
much more clearly noticeable.
Back in the Tom Clancy's "Hunt for Red October" (the book, not the movie, where this was
scrubbed out), what sets off Marko Ramius was that his wife died in a botched surgery
performed by an incompetent doctor who was in his job because of his political connections.
Clancy based this event on numerous stories reported by Soviets of the time.
United States District Judge S. James Otero issued an order and ruling today dismissing
Stormy Daniels' defamation lawsuit against President Trump. The ruling also states that the
President is entitled to an award of his attorneys' fees against Stormy Daniels. A copy of
the ruling is attached. No amount of spin or commentary by Stormy Daniels or her lawyer, Mr.
Avenatti, can truthfully characterize today's ruling in any way other than total victory for
President Trump and total defeat for Stormy Daniels. The amount of the award for President
Trump's attorneys' fees will be determined at a later date.
Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti responded to the dismissal, tweeting: "We will appeal the
dismissal of the defamation cause of action and are confident in a reversal," while stating
that Daniels' other claims against Trump and Cohen "proceed unaffected."
Re Judge's limited ruling: Daniels' other claims against Trump and Cohen proceed
unaffected. Trump's contrary claims are as deceptive as his claims about the inauguration
attendance.
We will appeal the dismissal of the defamation cause of action and are confident in a
reversal.
Last week Trump's legal team argued that it made no sense for them to keep fighting in court
over a $130,000 hush payment received by Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, as she
invalidated the non-disclosure agreement she signed with Trump's longtime fixer and lawyer,
Michael Cohen.
The lawsuit is moot because Trump has consented that the agreement, as she has claimed,
was never formed because he didn't sign it and he has agreed not to try to enforce it, Trump
said in his court filing. The company created by Cohen to facilitate the non-disclosure
agreement, which initially said Clifford faced more than $20 million in damages for talking,
said in September that it wouldn't sue to enforce the deal. -
Yahoo
Michael Avenatti's terrible October
This month has not treated Stormy's attorney well. Michael Avenatti went from Democrat
darling during his representation of Daniels, to scapegoat over Justice Brett Kavanaugh's
nomination to the Supreme Court after he introduced an 11th hour claim by a woman who said
Kavanaugh orchestrated gang-rape parties in the early 1980s - an allegation thought by many to
have derailed otherwise legitimate claims against the Judge.
Less than two weeks later Avenatti came under fire after he launched a now-deleted
fundraising page for Texas Democratic Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke.
In the fine print, O'Rourke supporters discovered that half the proceeds went to Avenatti's
Fight PAC , which he formed a little over
seven weeks ago .
Avenatti called the criticism "complete nonsense," noting that Senators Elizabeth Warren and
Kamala Harris "do the same thing." Perhaps sensing he'd made a huge mistake, Avenatti deleted
the page - telling the Daily Beast in a text message: "It wasn't worth the nonsense that
resulted from people that don't understand how common this is."
The question now is; after three strikes, is Avenatti out?
Given his free $50 million in publicity, and the amount of GoFundMe he's gonna get or has
gotten, I'd say "losing" is entirely in the eye of the beholder, lol.
Avenatti is the best thing that has happened to Trump.
It's almost like he is intentionally doing stupid and outrageous things to make the dems
look even more unhinged than they are.
I wouldn't be surprised if we find he has been secretly working for Trump all along. Trump
did run a reality show after all so that would be a great plot twist ;)
The best thing about Avenatti and the Clintons is that they won't stop until they bring
the entire Democratic Party down. It reminds me of Anthony Weiner and Elliot Spitzer,
scumbags who keep coming back and discredit the entire party because of their own glorious
egos.
Fascism is always eclectic and its doctrine is composed of several sometimes contradicting each other ideas. "Ideologically speaking,
[the program] was a wooly, eclectic mixture of political, social, racist, national-imperialist wishful thinking..." (Ideologically speaking,
[the program] was a wooly, eclectic mixture of political, social, racist, national-imperialist wishful thinking..."
)
Some ideas are "sound bite only" and never are implemented and are present only to attract sheeple (looks
National Socialist Program ). he program championed
the right to employment , and called for the institution of
profit sharing , confiscation of
war profits , prosecution of usurers and profiteers,
nationalization of trusts , communalization of department stores,
extension of the old-age pension system, creation of a
national education program of all classes, prohibition
of child labor , and an end to the dominance of
investment capital "
There is also "bait and switch" element in any fascism movement. Original fascism was strongly anti-capitalist, militaristic and
"national greatness and purity" movement ("Make Germany great again"). It was directed against financial oligarchy and anti-semantic
element in it was strong partially because it associated Jews with bankers and financial industry in general. In a way "Jews" were codeword
for investment bankers.
For example " Arbeit Macht Frei " can be viewed as
a neoliberal slogan. Then does not mean that neoliberalism. with its cult of productivity, is equal to fascism, but that neoliberal
doctrine does encompass elements of the fascist doctrine including strong state, "law and order" mentality and relentless propaganda.
The word "fascist" is hurled at political / ideological opponents so often that it lost its meaning. The Nazi Party (NSDAP) originated
as a working-class political party . This is not true about
Trump whom many assume of having fascist leanings. His pro white working class rhetoric was a fig leaf used for duration or elections.
After that he rules as a typical Republican president favoring big business. And as a typical neocon in foreign policy.
From this point of view Trump can't be viewed even as pro-fascist leader because first of all he does not have his own political
movement, ideology and political program. And the second he does not strive for implementing uniparty state and abolishing the elections
which is essential for fascism political platform, as fascist despise corrupt democracy and have a cult of strong leader.
All he can be called is neo-fascist s his some of his views do encompass ideas taken from fascist ideology (including "law and order";
which also is a cornerstone element of Republican ideology) as well as idealization and mystification of the US past. But with Bannon
gone he also can't even pretend that he represents some coherent political movement like "economic nationalism" -- kind of enhanced
mercantilism.
Of course, that does not mean that previous fascist leaders were bound by the fascism political program, but at least they had one.
Historian Karl Dietrich Bracher writes that, "To [Hitler,
the program] was little more than an effective, persuasive propaganda weapon for mobilizing and manipulating the masses. Once it had
brought him to power, it became pure decoration: 'unalterable', yet unrealized in its demands for nationalization and expropriation,
for land reform and 'breaking the shackles of finance capital'. Yet it nonetheless fulfilled its role as backdrop and pseudo-theory,
against which the future dictator could unfold his rhetorical and dramatic talents."
Notable quotes:
"... Fascist politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed. Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above. But there is a common structure to all fascist mythologizing. In all fascist mythic pasts, an extreme version of the patriarchal family reigns supreme, even just a few generations ago. ..."
"... Further back in time, the mythic past was a time of glory of the nation, with wars of conquest led by patriotic generals, its armies filled with its countrymen, able-bodied, loyal warriors whose wives were at home raising the next generation. In the present, these myths become the basis of the nation's identity under fascist politics. ..."
"... In the rhetoric of extreme nationalists, such a glorious past has been lost by the humiliation brought on by globalism, liberal cosmopolitanism, and respect for "universal values" such as equality. These values are supposed to have made the nation weak in the face of real and threatening challenges to the nation's existence. ..."
"... fascist myths distinguish themselves with the creation of a glorious national history in which the members of the chosen nation ruled over others, the result of conquests and civilization-building achievements. ..."
"... The function of the mythic past, in fascist politics, is to harness the emotion of nostalgia to the central tenets of fascist ideology -- authoritarianism, hierarchy, purity, and struggle. ..."
It's in the name of tradition that the anti-Semites base their "point of view." It's in the name of tradition, the long, historical
past and the blood ties with Pascal and Descartes, that the Jews are told, you will never belong here.
-- Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
It is only natural to begin this book where fascist politics invariably claims to discover its genesis: in the past. Fascist
politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed. Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously
pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above. But there is a common structure to all fascist mythologizing. In all fascist
mythic pasts, an extreme version of the patriarchal family reigns supreme, even just a few generations ago.
Further back in time, the mythic past was a time of glory of the nation, with wars of conquest led by patriotic generals,
its armies filled with its countrymen, able-bodied, loyal warriors whose wives were at home raising the next generation. In the present,
these myths become the basis of the nation's identity under fascist politics.
In the rhetoric of extreme nationalists, such a glorious past has been lost by the humiliation brought on by globalism, liberal
cosmopolitanism, and respect for "universal values" such as equality. These values are supposed to have made the nation weak in the
face of real and threatening challenges to the nation's existence.
These myths are generally based on fantasies of a nonexistent past uniformity, which survives in the traditions of the small towns
and countrysides that remain relatively unpolluted by the liberal decadence of the cities. This uniformity -- linguistic, religious,
geographical, or ethnic -- can be perfectly ordinary in some nationalist movements, but fascist myths distinguish themselves
with the creation of a glorious national history in which the members of the chosen nation ruled over others, the result of conquests
and civilization-building achievements. For example, in the fascist imagination, the past invariably involves traditional, patriarchal
gender roles. The fascist mythic past has a particular structure, which supports its authoritarian, hierarchical ideology. That past
societies were rarely as patriarchal -- or indeed as glorious -- as fascist ideology represents them as being is beside the point.
This imagined history provides proof to support the imposition of hierarchy in the present, and it dictates how contemporary society
should look and behave.
In a 1922 speech at the Fascist Congress in Naples, Benito Mussolini declared:
We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality. . . . Our myth is
the nation, our myth is the greatness of the nation! And to this myth, this greatness, which we want to translate into a total
reality, we subordinate everything.
The patriarchal family is one ideal that fascist politicians intend to create in society -- or return to, as they claim. The patriarchal
family is always represented as a central part of the nation's traditions, diminished, even recently, by the advent of liberalism
and cosmopolitanism. But why is patriarchy so strategically central to fascist politics?
In a fascist society, the leader of the nation is analogous to the father in the traditional patriarchal family. The leader is
the father of his nation, and his strength and power are the source of his legal authority, just as the strength and power of the
father of the family in patriarchy are supposed to be the source of his ultimate moral authority over his children and wife. The
leader provides for his nation, just as in the traditional family the father is the provider. The patriarchal father's authority
derives from his strength, and strength is the chief authoritarian value. By representing the nation's past as one with a patriarchal
family structure, fascist politics connects nostalgia to a central organizing hierarchal authoritarian structure, one that finds
its purest representation in these norms.
Gregor Strasser was the National Socialist -- Nazi -- Reich propaganda chief in the 1920s, before the post was taken over by Joseph
Goebbels. According to Strasser, "for a man, military service is the most profound and valuable form of participation -- for the
woman it is motherhood!" Paula Siber, the acting head of the Association of German Women, in a 1933 document meant to reflect official
National Socialist state policy on women, declares that "to be a woman means to be a mother, means affirming with the whole conscious
force of one's soul the value of being a mother and making it a law of life . . . the highest calling of the National Socialist
woman is not just to bear children, but consciously and out of total devotion to her role and duty as mother to raise children for
her people." Richard Grunberger, a British historian of National Socialism, sums up "the kernel of Nazi thinking on the women's question"
as "a dogma of inequality between the sexes as immutable as that between the races." The historian Charu Gupta, in her 1991 article
"Politics of Gender: Women in Nazi Germany," goes as far as to argue that "oppression of women in Nazi Germany in fact furnishes
the most extreme case of anti-feminism in the 20th century."
Here, Mussolini makes clear that the fascist mythic past is intentionally mythical. The function of the mythic past, in fascist
politics, is to harness the emotion of nostalgia to the central tenets of fascist ideology -- authoritarianism, hierarchy, purity,
and struggle.
With the creation of a mythic past, fascist politics creates a link between nostalgia and the realization of fascist ideals. German
fascists also clearly and explicitly appreciated this point about the strategic use of a mythological past. The leading Nazi ideologue
Alfred Rosenberg, editor of the prominent Nazi newspaper the Völkischer Beobachter, writes in 1924, "the understanding of and the
respect for our own mythological past and our own history will form the first condition for more firmly anchoring the coming generation
in the soil of Europe's original homeland." The fascist mythic past exists to aid in changing the present.
Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished
Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. Stanley is the author of Know How; Languages in Context;
More about Jason Stanley
This could have been such a helpful, insightful book. The word "fascist" is hurled at political / ideological opponents so
often that it has started to lose its meaning. I hoped that this book would provide a historical perspective on fascism by examining
actual fascist governments and drawing some parallels to the more egregious / worrisome trends in US & European politics. The
chapter titles in the table of contents were promising:
- The Mythic Past
- Propaganda
- Anti-Intellectual
- Unreality
- Hierarchy
- Victimhood
- Law & Order
- Sexual Anxiety
- Sodom & Gomorrah
- Arbeit Macht Frei
Ironically (given the book's subtitle) the author used his book divisively: to laud his left-wing political views and demonize
virtually all distinctively right-wing views. He uses the term "liberal democracy" inconsistently throughout, disengenuously equivocating
between the meaning of "representative democracy as opposed to autocratic or oligarchic government" (which most readers would
agree is a good thing) and "American left-wing political views" (which he treats as equally self-evidently superior if you are
a right-thinking person). Virtually all American right-wing political views are presented in straw-man form, defined in such a
way that they fit his definition of fascist politics.
I was expecting there to be a pretty heavy smear-job on President Trump and his cronies (much of it richly deserved...the man's
demagoguery and autocratic tendencies are frightening), but for this to turn into "let's find a way to define virtually everything
the Republicans are and do as fascist politics" was massively disappointing. The absurdly biased portrayal of all things conservative
and constant hymns of praise to all things and all people left-wing buried some good historical research and valid parallels under
an avalanche of partisanism.
If you want a more historical, less partisan view of the rise of fascist politics, I would highly recommend Darkness Over Germany
by E. Amy Buller (Review Here). It was written during World War II (based on interviews with Germans before WWII), so you will
have to draw your own contemporary parallels...but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
"... It's better to just keep your mouth shut sometimes, even if your teeth grind, and your lips go blue, and you get cobwebs in your mouth. ..."
"... Why is there a conference about gender in CERN? Did CERN open a sociology branch? Only two things can happen in such a conference. Either it turns into a politically correct echo chamber with nothing worthwhile coming out of it. Or it turns into a massive controversy that is equally unproductive. Do you ask sociologists to do quantum physics? No, because if you do, all you are going to get are time travelling cats or whatever bullshit people tend to think of when quantum physics is mentioned. So why would you ask particle physicists to do a conference about gender roles in society? ..."
"... Appears he's making the statement, historically men did dominate the field, but didn't primarily exclude women, and when women started joining they won Nobels. But many fields of study appears to have gender differences, and that sexism wasn't the cause, but gender preference. ..."
"... He states his theory, cultural Marxism re-writing history to promote oppression as the reason women did not contribute. Along the same lines of re-shaping history to push the narative that exploration and advancements were performed by men who raped, murdered, stole land and murdered indigenous people. ..."
"... Truth spoken, world goes nuts. As is the norm now. As far as whether it's appropriate - he's reacting to a huge political movement that's been going on for years now. He didn't just come out of nowhere and decide to do this. ..."
"... The more and more this small but loud group keeps pushing this nonsense, the sooner there will be a massive pushback against them and this agenda. Which is a shame because the snapback AWLAYS will undo what was previously accomplished. ..."
"... I mean, his data does show women are being hired into positions with fewer citations particularly since the mid 2000's but with a massive and dramatic disparity shifting in around 2015. ..."
"... It's a witch hunt, the person who made this into an issue went out of their way to make it an issue. They're part of a extremist feminist group that has a history of getting offended because they want to be. Behold the piece of shit [twitter.com]. An archive just in case. [archive.is] And enjoy the witch hunt in action. [twitter.com] ..."
"... It's followed by "Discrimination against men" with cited examples such as women-only scholarships, extended STEM exam times only for women. Clearly the two slides were intended to explore discriminatory practices. This conference took even the concept of exploring those ides as verboten, heresy, banned the witch and did the modern version of burning books. ..."
At a workshop organized by
CERN, Prof Alessandro Strumia of Pisa University said that "physics was invented and built by men, it's not by
invitation", BBC reported Monday
. Strumia's presentation
[Google
Drive link]
that supports the idea that "physics is not sexist against women[...], however the truth does
not matter, because it is part of a political battle coming from outside" has already received a lot of
criticism, with one female physicist defining Strumia's analysis as "simplistic, drawing on ideas that had long
been discredited."
In a statement on Sunday, CERN
said
, "It is
unfortunate that one of the 38 presentations, by a scientist from one of the collaborating universities, risks
overshadowing the important message and achievements of the event. CERN, like many members of the community,
considers that the presentation, with its attacks on individuals, was unacceptable in any professional context
and was contrary to the CERN Code of Conduct. It, therefore, decided to remove the slides from the online
repository."
On Monday, CERN said
it has
suspended the scientist from any activity at CERN with immediate effect, pending investigation into last week's
event.
Yes to both. However, the exact way in which the world was batshit crazy has varied greatly.
At one point, suggesting that the earth wasn't the center of the universe was enough to be
burned at the stake, figuratively speaking. Before then, questioning the nature of anything
and pissing off the powers that be might well have gotten you literally burned at the stake.
Batshit crazy goes in cycles. Last peak was during WW1/2 and this one is hopefully less
destructive. Blame it this time around on the social media that makes everyone's private
thoughts available for inspection by everyone else.
one female physicist defining Strumia's analysis as "simplistic, drawing on ideas that
had long been discredited."
If it really has been discredited, then quote the research that discredits it. Strumia has
provided evidence to support his claims, and evidence is needed to dismiss those claims.
This is true. Physics has no opinion on the matter. Many
physicists
however are
definitely sexist against women. Not all but enough to be a real problem.
It's not opinion and the facts are not hard to find for anyone who can be bothered
to look for even 20 seconds on Google. Sexism is quite real and it is distressingly
common in the field of physics and many other branches of science. It's ironic that
you ask for evidence of sexism in an article about a guy who was fired because he
(apparently) exhibited sexism publicly. If that isn't evidence I'm not quite sure
you understand the meaning of the term.
His presentation provided data to support his position. In contrast you are
offering nothing. You didn't even bother to read his presentation. Had you have bothered to do so you
would have noticed the sentence cited in the headline occurs under the heading
"discrimination against women". BTW the very next slide includes the heading "discrimination against men".
I know a few female PhDs in engineering subjects. When asked, all of them said
that gender discrimination was not an issue in their studies or their research,
except for the very rare "conservative old professor" that was easily avoided.
Gender discrimination in the hard sciences is at worst a myth and at best
irrelevant. The rare cases were it happens get blown all out of proportion to
fuel an utterly sexist and misandrist movement.
it's "Locker room talk" and a generally unfriendly work environment.
The nerds I know have very, very little tact. The few who do know what tact
is have to try really, really hard to avoid saying incredibly off color crap.
There are entire books about dead baby jokes and enough jokes about dead
hookers and pedophiles to fill several books over. Being a nerd and spending
a lifetime around other nerds I can tell you they'll cheerfully spout these
gags along with harmless Monty Python jokes and be completel
It's ironic that you ask for evidence of sexism in an article about a guy who was
fired because he (apparently) exhibited sexism publicly. If that isn't evidence I'm
not quite sure you understand the meaning of the term.
You're begging the question.
He may well be a sexist - I don't know, but you can't justify the claim using the
claim itself as evidence.
This is true. Physics has no opinion on the matter. Many
physicists
however are
definitely sexist against women. Not all but enough to be a real problem.
You might have missed the new hotness in intersectionality: the redefinition of -isms and
-ists to refer to outcomes, not intent.
If an insufficient number of XYZ are not present, then "the system" (not specific people)
is XYZ-ist and must be corrected. And if you are not XYZ, then you are a receiving a benefit
of an XYZ-ist system and are thus XYZ-ist yourself. (Note: Denying your inherent XYZ-ist
nature shall be taken as strong additional evidence that you are XYZ-ist.)
Perhaps you missed the part that one of the official subjects of the conference was gender
in the field. It was relevant to the discussion. See AC's post about 4 or 5 below with the
part in bold.
Why is there a conference about gender in CERN? Did CERN open a sociology branch? Only two
things can happen in such a conference. Either it turns into a politically correct echo
chamber with nothing worthwhile coming out of it. Or it turns into a massive controversy
that is equally unproductive. Do you ask sociologists to do quantum physics? No, because if
you do, all you are going to get are time travelling cats or whatever bullshit people tend
to think of when quantum physics is mentioned. So why would you ask particle physicists to
do a conference about gender roles in society?
Physicists are free to discuss gender between themselves, and sociologists are free to
talk about quantum physics, but to organize a conference in a reputable scientific
institution, one would expect experts in their fields.
Way too many conferences already have one guy, or girl, who decides to bring a pot
of shit to stir instead of any actual contribution to the conference.
Disagreeing with the status quo is not "bring[ing] a pot of shit to stir". Strumia
provided evidence to support his claims. If he is wrong, then provide evidence that he
is wrong. Evidence huh? Did you actually read his presentation? Seriously, there is a link to it
right there in the summary. Go through the whole thing. Evidence indeed.
If I didn't know it came from a professor (with an obvious axe to grind) I would have
guessed it was done by a 9th grader. (with an axe to grind)
At best a lot of his 'evidence' pretty much comes down to 'it isn't sexism, women
really are just worse, otherwise they would be doing better in physics because we only
care about merit!'
Looking at the pdf presentation in the OP's link, he went somewhere that some people do not
want to be discussed, Gender differences and gender preferences.
Instead of refuting his
argument, it's easier to call him a sexist bigot and just discredit him that way.
Appears he's making the statement, historically men did dominate the field, but didn't
primarily exclude women, and when women started joining they won Nobels. But many fields of
study appears to have gender differences, and that sexism wasn't the cause, but gender
preference.
He states his theory, cultural Marxism re-writing history to promote oppression as the
reason women did not contribute. Along the same lines of re-shaping history to push the
narative that exploration and advancements were performed by men who raped, murdered, stole
land and murdered indigenous people.
Truth spoken, world goes nuts. As is the norm now.
As far as whether it's appropriate - he's
reacting
to a huge political movement
that's been going on for years now. He didn't just come out of nowhere and decide to do this.
In fact I'd say it's almost inevitable that highly analytical minds are going to react
against this identity politics at some point. It's more surprising how rare it is to see
reactions.
Physicists are expensive. Get women into physics and they become significantly less so. It's
the same across all STEM fields. It's got nothing to do with diversity and everything to do
with wages.
As an added bonus men and women are fighting among themselves over gender issues, making a
nice skism in the working class.
He is wrong, "physics was invented and built by
physicists
." But he was right, "it's not
by invitation". It is not a social club. You don't get a invitation in the mail. You join by
achievement, by accomplishment. All this gender talk is a distraction from real physics.
Anyone who thinks physics, esp historically, was not a social club has never worked in the
field. Who you know, who you worked with, who will vouch for you, all critical things in the
field. Very invitation only.
meritocracies are based on results, not on your sex, no matter what society "wants" to see ...are largely indisputable.
Interesting Ted talk by a feminist activist who was
making a documentary about 'men who hate women' and came to realize that in some ways men are
marginalized:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
[youtube.com] - the point that resonates with this thread
is where she said "you can look around and say that every single person was born of a woman,
and nobody will doubt or criticize that.... but if you say look around and nearly every single
building you see was built pretty much by men and you get immediately attacked"
That said, in no particular order:
- there's no reason women can't participate in physics going forward. None.
- there's a HUGE amount of base sexism in the field today
- it's never been a pure meritocracy anyway
- there IS a cultural/social pressure from people who have this silly notion that half the
participants in every field must be female. This is frankly stupid, and should be resisted.
However, acting like an ass and flinging shit at a conference like this is simply not
productive in the larger scope.
If you have SPECIFIC instances where A was promoted over B because A had a vagina and B had
clearly better work, then let's talk.
To me it seems he's actually just butthurt because HE didn't get a promotion he wanted, and
has been seething about it for a while.
You may want to look at the slides linked in the summary. The phrase "Physics invented and
built by men, it's not by invitation." occurs on a slide (titled "Discrimination against
women") seemingly pointing out sexist notions against women in physics. He's not making that
claim himself, but pointing to such a claim as an example of sexism.
Maybe you should be strummed out for not doing any basic research as well.
The more and more this small but loud group keeps pushing this nonsense, the sooner there will
be a massive pushback against them and this agenda. Which is a shame because the snapback
AWLAYS will undo what was previously accomplished.
What these idiots fail to realize is that
it is OK to stop with progressive ideas once you reach a certain point. The people who used to
push equality of the sexes have now transitioned into female subjugation of men at the expense
of everything else. As someone who totally signed on for equality, this is NOT ok.
If you are a physicist, board member etc, were placed into that position by merit, and
happen to be a woman good for you! We should be at a point in history where we don't look at sex as a determining factor but
ignore it in favor of a list of successful options.
But no, we aren't and can't focus on more important things because these loud nitwits have a
hammer and see everything as a nail.
They took the title out of context and did so on purpose. I'm pretty sure that's
slander in the UK.
He literally said it as one of
two
sentences on slide 17, and they linked to his
entire slide presentation in the article. Pretty sure that that's not slander.
Feel free to describe how it is "out of context," however. I'm sure that this will be
good...
Sexism fired him, I don't see anything sexist in his presented material. On the contrary, he
is attacking a persistent agenda distracting from physics and that lacks sound logical
support.
A physicist just wanting to do physics without politics injected
If he had really been wanting to do just that why would he go to a workshop titled
"High Energy Physics Theory and Gender" instead of one just on physics without the
gender? The difference is that if you go to a physics conference and say something
stupid you will be shown to be stupid by use of logic and data. If you go to a gender
conference and say something stupid you are burnt at the stake as a heretic. Only one
of these approaches teaches you why you are wrong and lets you, and others, learn from
you
One of the slides amounted to: "No one is seeking gender equality in jobs that get you
killed." Is that true? I suspect the military and law enforcement may be an exceptions
since there's a lot of social prestige, but I don't hate myself enough to read jezebel.
You don't even need to look at jobs that get you killed. No one is seeking gender
equality in jobs that women dominate.
Women dominate teaching below the college
level, veterinarian jobs, and nursing, just to name a few. Yet there are no efforts to
increase the number of men in those fields. You also never see a push for more women
construction workers or farm workers or garbage collectors. It's only well-paying jobs
where a high percentage of men is a problem. Low paying jobs? No one cares. Jobs where
women
As someone that works at an Ivy league veterinary school I just have to point out
that there are actually programs to help men enter the field due to the current
imbalance. There are also similar programs for men in nursing. They vary from
everything including better work balance, family time off and mentoring.
When is the last time you have heard of a protest that women are just as good at
picking up garbage or mining coal as men. Or that a woman can dig a ditch just as well
as a man? Where are the complaints that women are just as good at cleaning out sewers
as men?
There may well be discrimination in those fields, and there may be
individual women who fave a just complaint about it, but if so, they aren't getting a
lot of support from other feminists.
I think only the one slide got him fired. Maybe the way he presented as well, I haven't
seen that. The quote about physics' invention is very easy to misread, I can't blame CERN
for reacting to that slide. Everything else... he's just attempting to analyze the issue.
Nothing wrong with that.
I mean, his data does show women are being hired into positions with fewer citations
particularly since the mid 2000's but with a massive and dramatic disparity shifting
in around 2015.
His being a dumb ass got him fired. Why do idiots like this feel entitled to bring
up their backwards politics at non-political events?
If I'm working a job and
presenting for my company and I go off on a rant about something political guess
what will happen to me?
If you guess I probably will get fired you win. I'm tired of all these over
privileged cry babies feeling like they have a right to throw out their politics on
company time.
It's worth pointing out that the opposite would almost certainly not be the case
though. If he had done a presentation on "Gender Diversity in Physics" that reached
the opposite conclusions, the complaints wouldn't be made. And if you haven't noticed,
the trend by the SJW crowd is to insert politics at ALL events, because "there is no
such thing as a non-political event", and "being able to ignore politics is a white
male privilege" and if you disagree, you're a bigot.
I'd be all for keeping these events non-political. Too bad one side has already
decided that bridge must be crossed.
It's worth pointing out that the opposite would almost certainly not be the case
though. If he had done a presentation on "Gender Diversity in Physics" that
reached the opposite conclusions, the complaints wouldn't be made.
Yes, precisely.
For an example more close to home for most of us, consider pretty much every
non-political online discussion forum ever.
If someone posts something that's political but trendy,
that's
fine. But
if somebody
reacts
to it, posts the opposite point of view or even just
tries to be balanced or put it in perspective, he'll get taken to the woodshed for
"being political", "flaming", etc.
This is everything that hasn't been scrubbed by CERN
[google.com] and may be incomplete.
It's another Tim Hunt, Mat Taylor, donglegate in action. But remember, SJW's really aren't
the problem...no no, they're just misunderstood, really out for the best, trying to make the
world a better place by stomping on your face.
This is everything that hasn't been scrubbed by CERN
[google.com] and may be
incomplete. It's another Tim Hunt, Mat Taylor, donglegate in action. But remember,
SJW's really aren't the problem...no no, they're just misunderstood, really out for
the best, trying to make the world a better place by stomping on your face.
The twitter post you're calling "piece of shit" is @jesswade:
"When people in positions of power in academia behave like this and retain their
status they don't only push one generation of underrepresented groups out of science,
but train others that it's ok to propagate this ideology for years to come."
The "witch hunt in action" link shows a collage of Kavanaugh headlines by the poster
@BeastOfWood with lines like "white male entitlement", and "white male supremacy" marked,
it's not evident to me how the poster or the collage is relevant. The last link is just
the same slides as posted in the summary.
This is how Mashiki's mind works. He gets triggered easily because he believes
in a vast conspiracy of feminists trying to destroy the world with Cultural
Marxism, and so whenever anyone says anything he disagrees with in the slightest
he assumes they are part of it and the embodiment of pure evil.
So why don't you prove me wrong. Go out, publicly, in front of the media and
take ads out in the paper with the two following subjects: "The wage gap is a
myth." "No, the US rate of sexual assaults is not higher then the Congo."
The greatest minds were never immune. Read up on the biographies of Newton, Tesla, etc.
Humans have always been flawed. That was the single greatest achievement of the Scientific
Method: making progress in the great game in spite of its flawed players.
Maybe the folks at CERN should have done the Scientific thing and refuted his
paper using facts.
The statement,
"physics is not sexist against women[...], however the truth does
not matter, because it is part of a political battle coming from outside"
shouldn't be that hard to refute, no? Then they make a presentation the next time and
shame that guy into a career at Starbucks.
But they didn't that, did they. All they did was spout platitudes designed to
placate the SJW crowd.
If you're a scientist, instead of shutting someone up to mollify the
SJW's, bust his ass up with FACTS. Then, it's a win-win, double smackdown for Strumia if he is proven wrong, again,
with FACTS.
Are any of you folks whining about SJWs actually reading his presentation and
CERN's statement? On slide 15, he makes a dumbass little chart to whine about
someone he calls a "commisar" hiring a woman instead of him. You can't pull shit
like that at any conference in any field, and that's exactly what CERN's statement
points out.
If you want to prop him up as a martyr for the red-pill crowd, that's your choice.
But I wouldn't recommend picking a guy who torpedoed his reputation with a
shit-tier analysis of gender issues because a woman got a job instead of him.
Personally I don't think you or I are in any position to evaluate his claims of
reverse bias in hiring. Unless we knew ALL of the details he account might be
100 percent accurate. Or perhaps not.
Yes, because talking about "cultural marxism" in front of a slide with a silly
alt-right cartoon is science and fact. He denounces "victimocracy" before declaring
himself a martyr in the very next slide.
But they didn't that, did they. All they did was spout platitudes designed
to placate the SJW crowd.
In the current uber-politically-correct world, placating the SJW crowd is
pretty much the only thing that matters anymore. Don't do that and you are
automatically a racist, sexist, xenophobe, and other sassy
words that end
in "ist"
and "phobe."
The very existence of Gender Studies is predicated on the idea that Gender
Studies "experts" need the right to give unsolicited Gender Studies talks at
events related to everything that isn't Gender Studies. You're the fucking
government. Go away.
Yes, he was talking about genders and science, but his talk wasn't
scientific. Where's his data?
His talk was almost entirely analysis of data. Lots of it. He's a
physicist, that's what he does.
Sorry if this interferes with your SJW agenda.
A telling quote from the BBC article:
"There were young women and men exchanging ideas and their experiences
on how to encourage more women into the subject and to combat
discrimination in their careers. Then this man gets up, saying all this
horrible stuff."
He said all these horrible things! Facts, data, analysis, all
disagreeing with our established dogma! It was horrible! If we weren't so
busy chanting "lalalalala we're not listening" then we'd almost be forced
to rethink our ideas! Oh the SJW-ity!
Instead you'd rather these great minds ignore the truth and bow down to political
correctness and pretend that everything that is not true really is? All in the name of
making marginalized people feel better about themselves... That is absurd.
A woman I know recently applied to a PhD position. She already had a master's in the
topic, from a school pretty strong in the subject area, doing some pretty difficult work,
plus a fair amount of science communication & outreach on the side, and was looking to go
further. She got rejected from a well funded position (with several openings), and later,
she made the mistake of looking at the student roster to see who had gotten in. All male,
seemingly straight out of undergrad, none of whom had a master's. She was kind of pissed,
because while she couldn't prove that was a result of sexism, it sure looks like it, you
know? And that's ridiculous, we shouldn't be dismissing anyone based on their sex, but
this is definitely happening in science and academia.
Funny thing though, while that story is true, I lied about the sexes. I swapped them.
Still feel the same way?
I have a hard time dismissing claims that there is political bias against men when I can
see it happen. And before some moron accuses me of being sexist, I'm not saying that
there aren't plenty of very competent female scientists out there, there are. And I'm not
saying that there isn't real sexism against women in science, there is, I've seen it, and
anyone who denies that or covers for it is part of the problem. That doesn't change the
fact that screwing over men is also happening, and that it is not the way to go about
fixing anything.
I really wish I'd live long enough to see our species evolve past all the tendency to
violence, racism, sexism, bigotry, wilful ignorance, superstitious
I would say "willful ignorance" is not having even bothered to read the presentation.
nonsense, and all the other stupid crap that we, as a species, seem to be infected with,
but as-is I'm not even so sure the human species will manage to survive to see the year
2100, when even the greatest minds among us aren't immune to all the above.
LOL you are being played by outraged fueled media simply to make money.
tendency to violence, racism, sexism, bigotry, wilful ignorance, superstitious
nonsense
That might be true.. if I had anything to do with 'outrage(d) fueled media', which I
don't. It's my observation of the human species, formulated over all the decades of my
life. That's okay, I don't expect most people to be honest enough with themselves to
admit what I'm saying is true, the truth hurts too much for most people, and to be quite
honest it hurts me deeply because I know I'm fundamentally no better, even if I try to
be. Admitting I'm right is admitting you're just a caveman with high-tech toys;
It's an interesting talk but I absolutely can't understand why a physicist would
hold such a talk at a physics conference at CERN.
Simple.
Because it is negatively affecting a physics conference at CERN, not some random
gender-studies organization's conference.
Why is CERN engaging in Post-Modern anti-Enlightenment political correctness when
it should only be concerned with *scientific* correctness? Post Modernism is anathema
to science. Science is a Meritocracy or else you're not engaged in science but rather
politics.
I really wish I'd live long enough to see our species evolve past all the tendency to
violence, racism, sexism, bigotry, wilful ignorance, superstitious nonsense, and all the
other stupid crap that we, as a species, seem to be infected with.
Human bigotry in it's many forms won't end until the last of humanity does. I don't
believe it can be done and I don't believe there is one person on this planet that doesn't
harbour at least a little bigotry in one form or another. That doesn't mean we should ignore
it and say it's inevitable- we need to limit it as much as possible... but it will never
end.
The relevant slide is number 17 titled "Discrimination against women."
The text:
Physics invented and built by men, it's not by invitation.
Curie etc. welcomed after
showing what they can do, got Nobels...
It's followed by "Discrimination against men" with cited examples such as women-only
scholarships, extended STEM exam times only for women.
Clearly the two slides were intended to explore discriminatory practices. This conference
took even the concept of exploring those ides as verboten, heresy, banned the witch and did
the modern version of burning books.
He broke one of the cardinal rules about slide decks on controversial subjects - make
sure no sentence may be pulled out of context and used against you. Some interesting
analysis and infographics in the paper. His conclusions are probably what pissed the most
people off - that people screaming about how unfair STEM fields are to females may play a
significant role in discouraging females from the field, which in my small sample survey
(of STEM females) was strongly agreed with. But that puts part of the blame back on SJWs
who are more interested in virtue signaling than being constructive, so of course he must
pay. SNAFU...
Nope, the relevant slide is actually number 15, where he attacks a named "commisar" who
hired a woman instead of him. He made a dumbass little chart and everything. It's kind of
hilarious.
CERN's statement points out that such personal attacks are unacceptable. It's just plain
not okay pull shit like this.
Unless i'm missing some irony here: False dichotomy, we can all simultaneously reject
the grossly absurdly evil machinations of post modern identity politics and one of is
main weapons political correctness, and reject all those things you mentioned.
No one would be happier because one of the first of many casualties of that way of
thinking is the loss of free will.
Never mind that women having the right to property and self determination is something that
only happened over the last century or so. In other words, they weren't invited to the
"invention" of physics.
Many of these biggest minds were actually labelled as "problem students" by the mainstream
schools and teachers of the day. They had to be home-schooled by tutors. Other times, home
schooling by tutors was the only way of getting an education. Either way, that kind of
intensive teaching going at the speed of one student rather than the average speed of a
class would have accelerated their learning.
He was not wrong in that "Physics was invented and built by men". By and large, this is
undoubtedly true, with a few outliers. That observation in itself is valid science.
What would have been wrong if he had said that this needs to continue.
Science and physics
should be blind. Whether you're a man, woman, hermaphrodite, black, white, green or
invisible is irrelevant for producing theorems and testable hypotheses, and moving science
forward.
Well, he's not wrong. Almost all the biggest minds in physics and math were men
True but have you ever stopped to wonder why? This is NOT evidence that men are better at
physics but evidence of the extremely sexist society which has existed for centuries. Yes,
things are a lot better now than they used to be but you have to be a monumental idiot to
not realize that sexism in the past was directly responsible for the lack of women in
physics or indeed any science.
This is what should have been pointed out to him by someone in the audience. This is the way
that you fix idiotic thinkin
Yah-- everyone needs to have the opportunity. But it may not be "fair" in numbers
afterwards.
Testosterone seems to cause *increased variability* in outcomes. Women
appear to be slightly smarter on average than men (depending on the metric you choose),
but men have a greater variability in intelligence and performance. That is, men are
over-represented at the very dumb and brilliant ends of the spectrum.
Equal opportunity may still result in an excess of men at the very top of many
professions...
(And again
Eh, fascination with systems and ideas are traits that skew to males. This will lead to
imbalances in scientific disciplines.... Attempts to artificially adjust these for equity
will only lead to injustices against more qualified individuals. I don't understand how
people can continue to pretend that biological differences between the sexes stop at the
brain. There are really great female physicists but not of an equal number to males.
Unless you have some sort of agenda this shouldn't be seen as bad t
the inflection MEN or MAN? I can't tell from the context.
It's "men" under a slide with heading "discrimination against women".
The very next slide has heading "discrimination against men".
People publishing media accounts of this crap with intentionally misleading exerts simply
to stoke public outrage in order to rack up views for profit are the ones we should all be
"outraged" at and demanding resignations from.
She had one in physics (1903) shared with her husband.
When I read the headline my
first thought was "A certain Madame Curie would like to have a word with this guy..."
Does he not even recognize that ideas and discoveries by women were almost unanimously
dismissed and women even prohibited from participating in scientific fields or hell, any
academic field until recently?
It's very disappointing that some scientists fail to
realize how drastically the world has changed in the last 100 years.
There were probably a lot of discoveries by women that were posted secretly under a man's
name with the credit given to a male relative or a male employer. Look how many female
novelists in the old days used to post under male pseudonyms... and that was for something
as harmless as a novel.
October 12, 2018 Identity
Politics and the Ruling Class by James Munson Reagan ditched the Fairness Doctrine. Now his youth complain they're shunned by
the politically-correct media. Clinton's Telecommunications Act let mergers trample
the free press. Now it pains his wing that we read rants and conspiracy, instead of news.
So much that Hillary employed teams of fact-checkers in 2016, figuring we couldn't trust our
own minds to parse reality from clown-babble. Then–contrarily–she blamed her loss
on hopeless cases. If one or the other were true, democracy would be a lost cause, and perhaps
that's crossed her mind since losing, despite a majority of votes. But it can't explain why
close to half of us had the common sense to not vote for either hopeless party.
Yet, to hear either speak, tribal privileges are fracturing America. Not the top .001%'s
privilege to half the wealth, nor the military's to the bulk of our taxes. Rather, half of the
poor's designation, versus the other half's. Somehow, minorities -the lowest rung in terms of
media ownership- bully the mainstream press, and rednecks -the next-lowest- bully the rest.
(Hourly-waged Russians command any overlap.) And since, according to the Right (and much of the
Left), 'political-correctness' stifles all other manner of free speech, elites are powerless to
restore order to their own, private empires, or prevent the hordes tearing us up over what
bathroom to use.
Really? Have we lost our pussy-grabbing Executive and Judiciary branches to the wanton touch
of #MeToo? Can our founding, 'self-evident truths' not outwit pc's chauvinism? On the other
hand, how is it 'deplorables' are blind to exploding class inequality, yet so attuned to the
nuances of race, gender, and their nomenclature?
'Identity-politics' explain everything recently, from Trump and Kavanaugh, to Crazy Rich
Asians . Francis Fukuyama has a new book out (I've read only part), regarding its tension
with liberalism–group versus individual rights, etc., tepidly joining him to more-hawkish
mouth-pieces like Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro (and some Left doom-sayers) who warn its
steam-rolling our democracy. Their over-arching fear is that identity politics suppress
rational–though not always politically-correct–thought, giving extremists on both
sides the floor, who don't mind confronting 'identity' on racist (and sexist, etc) terms. Ergo,
more than an analytical device or a school of (not always congruent) ideas, a movement. A
juggernaut, if you read and believe the hype.
But if so, whose? Saying 'first respect my uniqueness, then treat me as equal' provides
snares that 'first treat me as equal, then respect my uniqueness' does not. The Left has a long
history with -and can tie most of its successes- to the latter. The labor movement, for
instance, united presumed-cultural rivals and coordinated dozens of languages. Ergo, the
Left , by definition -the many against the privileged few- would have to be amnesiac,
or -more likely- not the Left, to think a plan that tries to establish the differences first
would better serve their goals.
Perhaps the cultural wins (like marriage equality) and sizable, politico-economic losses
(demise of Unions, etc.) of the past few decades have inspired reorientation. There's evidence,
so long as we define the 'Left' as ruling, Neoliberal Democrats. Certainly their Wall Street
financiers can accept women CEOs and gay marriage more-readily than Union wages and universal
healthcare. (After all, the point of capitalism is to pocket the most one can without
sparking an insurrection.) BUT an elite-run party -paid for by Wall Street–doesn't
constitute a Left. Nor is it able to absorb popular will. Proven, since they lose most of their
elections.
Also, that leftists would demand censorship when most everyone of them believe the Right is
in control, and when they're silenced within their own party, seems farce. Again
there's evidence, college students sometimes dis-invite conservative speakers, and we figure,
as Reagan did, they're taught to (so he hiked tuition). But I doubt censorship exists as
agenda, nor even as sentiment on any grand scale. Think, whenever something explodes multiple
parties besides the bomber take credit. Where are the professors claiming this attack? If 18%
are communists (as the American Enterprise Institute warns), what sort of communist links class
to 'identity', not labor?
The other 'fear' is that over-zealous freshman are taking control, like in the Princeton and
Evergreen incidents. Perhaps but it contradicts the wisdom of Occupy!, which refused the
collaborative financial, political, educative, and other aligned powers from pigeon-holling
their complaints. -Wisdom that we credit to the young of the movement.
There's also a notion that dis-investment has engendered a new 'tribalism'. But even though
'color-blindness', for example, has excused softening equal-opportunity legislation (welfare
reform, voting law, etc.), which baits 'identity', as minorities are often dis-empowered under
the ruse of equality, color-blindness came out of the neoliberal play-book and expanded
Leftward from think-tanks on the Right. In other words, while it's hard to gauge its impact, it
marks a very separate program from the Left-academia or 'bottom-up' narratives.
Furthermore, most every poll finds 'economic inequality', not racial, gender, or other
inequalities to be the #1 problem with America. So, while it's not unreasonable that our
decline in wealth and status might see us retreat toward other than liberal identities
(Fukuyama's point), unless someone's peddling those narratives, one plainly sees more leverage
in class-solidarity.
As for the Right, what should be 'self-evident' is that complaining minority recognition is
unfair to the majority rests on the same argument it decries; that your privilege impedes my
privilege (instead of the reverse). Evident, at least to a Harvard-educated lawyer like Ben
Shapiro. Yet you find all that fallacious, 'populist' reaction in his books. Do they speak to
him or he to them? Does he speak for them?
Of course, identity politics aren't new. The Spanish liberal-philosopher, Jose Ortega y
Gasset wrestled with it a century ago, when his homeland's empire was crumbling, and came up
with a lot better answers (though it didn't save Spain from its fascist clown). Spain even had,
in his words, 'a common past, language, and race, yet had split into mainly-regional factions
because it had failed to invent a sufficiently-attractive collective program for the
future' . [i]
Isn't he right? Rather than hell-bent on forcing this or that culture on the rest of us,
aren't the 'extreme' Left, Right, and clusters of us in between are just figuring out that,
increasingly, being 'American' means losing ground to the .001% and their top brass? The
opening passage to the Combahee River Collective's manifesto says as much: ' focusing upon our
own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics . We believe that the
most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as
opposed to working to end somebody else's oppression.'
Last week Gary Younge revived that notion in a piece titled ' It comes as no shock that
the powerful hate identity politics ' [ii] , reminding that without
'women', 'blacks', and other self-referential vanguards we wouldn't have democracy, anyway.
It's an important point, and I agree, but is his over-arching theme–that the powerful
hate it–also true?
Whether 'identity-politics' raise tensions or awareness among the crowd might be a secondary
matter. First is whom they neglect. For all the media's naval-gazing, the system, itself gets
rare attention. Mind, all political strategies shoulder contradictions. But it's odd that
cultural issues (not to say there's no overlap) would hold the foreground right when fraudulent
wars, torture, bank crime, rigged elections, police violence, tax-breaks for the rich, willful
habitat destruction, and a widely-evident and growing gap between rich and poor and state and
population have laid the political, economic, and judicial systems bare. Matters such as
environmental or foreign policy are largely out of public reach, except with massive, boots on
the ground confrontation. In which case, atomizing class politics seems counter-intuitive to
the extreme.
Unless it's not us preaching it. It bears saying, in an oligarchy, oligarchs speak in order
to make their actions less–not more–clear. That's what a shill like Ben Shapiro
(Hillary does the work herself on the Left) laments when his talks get ignored (or
Ocasio-Cortes ignores him). Shapiro's a cause-celeb for saying identity politics threatens our
democracy, because it censors Right voices. Yet it appears complaining gets him more,
not less, airtime. In fact, I've heard too little substance in his' speeches (or Hillary's of
late) to warrant an interview, otherwise. Thus I suspect its the opposite of censorship; hyping
the market, that threatens our democracy. Threatens for real, like the Telecom Act, not just
prescriptively, like 'Russo-bots' and 'terrorism'.
"... Virtually every investment portfolio measures risk by utilizing some combination of volatility and correlation, both of which are backward-looking and low. But the present is knowable. The past too. And the multi-decade trends that carried us to today produced levels of inequality rarely seen. ..."
"... To an observer, it's neither right nor wrong, it simply is. Some see parallels between today and the late-1930s, which led to World War II. We also see parallels with the mid-1960s, which led to The Great Inflation. ..."
Submitted by Eric Peters of One River Asset Management
The future is unknowable. Yet never has capital been so concentrated in strategies that
depend on the future closely resembling the past. The most dominant of these strategies
requires bonds to rally when stocks fall. For decades, both rose inexorably. And a new array of
increasingly complex and illiquid strategies depends on a jump in volatility to be followed by
a rapid decline of equal magnitude. They appear uncorrelated until they are not.
Virtually every investment portfolio measures risk by utilizing some combination of
volatility and correlation, both of which are backward-looking and low. But the present is
knowable. The past too. And the multi-decade trends that carried us to today produced levels of
inequality rarely seen.
Low levels of inflation, growth, productivity, and volatility are features of this cycle's
increasingly unequal distribution. But cycle extremes produce pressures that reverse their
direction.
On cue, an anti-establishment political wave washed away the globalists, with promises to
turn the tide. Such change is nothing new, just another loop around the sun.
Now signs of a cycle swing abound; shifting trade agreements, global supply chains, military
dynamics, immigration, wage pressures, polarization, nationalism, tribalism.
To an observer, it's neither right nor wrong, it simply is. Some see parallels between today
and the late-1930s, which led to World War II. We also see parallels with the mid-1960s, which
led to The Great Inflation.
What comes next is sure to look different still. But investment strategies that prospered
from the past decade's low inflation, growth, productivity and volatility will face headwinds
as this cycle turns.
Those strategies that suffered should enjoy tailwinds. That's how cycles work . And we know
the 1940s was a strong decade for Trend performance. The 1970s was the best decade for Trend in
150yrs. And following cycle turns in both the 1930s and 1960s, the world became a profoundly
volatile place.
* * *
And, as a bonus, here are three observations from Peters on what he calls " Groundhog
Day"
"Starting in the mid-1960s several significant policy changes, made in the context of a
belief that inflation wasn't a concern, all but caused the outcome that was considered
impossible," wrote Lindsay Politi in her latest thought piece. "The first proximate catalyst to
the great inflation was the Tax Reduction Act of 1964. At the time, it was the largest tax cut
in American history. The Act slashed income taxes, especially on higher income households, by
reducing income taxes by 20% across the board in addition to reducing corporate rates . The
expectation was that the tax cut would ultimately increase total tax revenue by lowering
unemployment, increasing consumption, and increasing the incentive for companies to invest and
modernize their capital stock. The tax cut did increase growth, but it also pushed unemployment
very low, to one of the only sustained periods of unemployment below 4% in the post war
period."
"The 2nd policy change was how employment was considered," continued Lindsay. "In the
mid-1960s, there was concern about a cultural divide. The US social critic Michael Harrington
spoke about "The Other America": the unskilled Americans in mostly rural areas who had a
"culture of poverty" and were being left behind by the post war economic boom of the 1950s. In
that context the drop in the unemployment rate after the tax cut was welcome. The belief was
that pushing the unemployment rate to very low levels would help transfer wealth from the
prosperous urban and suburban areas to "The Other America." They thought that, while very low
unemployment might increase inflation, the increase would only be modest, and the social
benefits of modestly higher inflation and lower unemployment were desirable. At the time, there
wasn't a uniform theory for the relationship between inflation and unemployment, so when
inflation started to increase with very low unemployment rates it wasn't a concern."
"A 3rd proximate cause of The Great Inflation was the failure to appreciate a significant,
structural productivity decline. Capital deepening for WWII and the Korean War had boosted
productivity. However, much lower peacetime capital spending had caused productivity growth to
slow. Despite the relative lack of capital spending, productivity declines were generally
dismissed . It became clear at the end of the 1960s into the early 1970s that inflation has a
self-reinforcing trend. Stability in inflation can reinforce stability, but acceleration also
reinforces acceleration. As inflation increases, all else equal, it lowers real interest rates
which stimulates growth, creating higher inflation. It 's part of why anchored inflation
expectations are so critical to inflation staying low, but also why expectations of higher
inflation can be hard to fight."
Most people forget that Hitler was elected to power, and then proceeded to make himself a
dictator.
Germany escaped much of the 1929 crash effects, but in 1932 a Rothschild bank in Austria
failed (Kredit-Anstalt) after being forced to absorb two smaller banks which were
insolvent.
Along with the failure of two other German banks around that time period, hyper-inflation
of the currency returned to German society. Savers saw their life savings disappear
overnight.
During the elections, the Nazi's gained enough seats that they rose to power. Hitler
promised to stabilize the currency,reduce unemployment, and stop the running gun battles in
the street.He achieved all of these goals. Hitler was a liar and worse, a micro-manager. But
so was Churchill, who would keep his staff up until the early hours of the morning on a
regular basis.
To avoid the hardship of not having substantial hard currency reserves, Germany engaged in
a great deal of barter trade in the late thirties. Because this sidelined the banks, they
objected to this economic activity, which desperate countries have used for thousands of
years.
The current tariffs are not the same as the ones that brought about the Great Depression,
nor were tariffs the cause of World War 2. Your analogies are false and misleading to the
extreme.
I want the republicans and trump to stay in power however all his tariffs and sanctions
are harming the us more than yo think. of course it takes a couple of years to realize the
damage , but the deficit is easy to realize this years it will be over $1.3 trillion next
year $ 1.5 trillion in addition to the $22 trillion obama left, in other words you are
fucked.
Everyone sees parallels to WW2....and WW1....and the American Civil War....and the Russian
Revolution....and The Thirty Years War.....and.....and....and.....
A bunch of broken clocks. One thing I know for sure, nobody knows a ******* thing and
there will definitely be another very nasty world war.
I read "Tragedy and Hope" (great read, highly recommend it) it goes into great detail on
the players throughout history, from what's in there I would say it's way more like pre-WW1
then 2.
The vast regime of
torture created by the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks
continues to haunt
America.
The political class and most of the media have never dealt honestly with the
profound constitutional corruption that such practices inflicted. Instead, torture enablers are
permitted to pirouette as heroic figures on the flimsiest evidence.
Former FBI chief James Comey is the latest beneficiary of the media's "no fault" scoring
on the torture scandal.
In his media interviews for his new memoir,
A Higher Loyalty:
Truth, Lies, and Leadership
, Comey is portraying himself as a Boy Scout who sought only to do
good things. But his record is far more damning than most Americans realize.
Comey continues to use memos from his earlier government gigs to whitewash all of the
abuses he sanctified.
"Here I stand; I can do no other," Comey told George W. Bush in 2004
when Bush pressured Comey, who was then Deputy Attorney General, to approve an unlawful
anti-terrorist policy. Comey was quoting a line supposedly uttered by Martin Luther in 1521, when
he told Emperor Charles V and an assembly of Church officials that he would not recant his sweeping
criticisms of the Catholic Church.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, and other organizations did excellent
reports prior to Comey's becoming FBI chief that laid out his role in the torture scandal. Such
hard facts, however, have long since vanished from the media radar screen.
MSNBC host
Chris Matthews recently declared, "James Comey made his bones by standing up against torture. He
was a made man before Trump came along."
Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria, in
a column declaring that Americans should be "deeply grateful" to lawyers such as Comey, declared,
"The Bush administration wanted to claim that its 'enhanced interrogation techniques' were lawful.
Comey believed they were not .
So Comey pushed back as much as he could.
"
Martin Luther risked death to fight against what he considered the scandalous religious
practices of his time. Comey, a top Bush administration policymaker, found a safer way to oppose
the worldwide secret U.S. torture regime widely considered a heresy against American values:
he approved brutal practices and then wrote some memos and emails fretting about the
optics.
Losing Sleep
Comey became deputy attorney general in late 2003 and "had oversight of the legal
justification used to authorize" key Bush programs in the war on terror,
as a Bloomberg
News analysis noted. At that time, the Bush White House was pushing the Justice Department to again
sign off on an array of extreme practices that had begun shortly after the 9/11 attacks. A 2002
Justice Department memo had leaked out that declared that the federal Anti-Torture Act "would be
unconstitutional if it impermissibly encroached on the President's constitutional power to conduct
a military campaign." The same Justice Department policy spurred a secret 2003 Pentagon document on
interrogation policies that openly encouraged contempt for the law: "Sometimes the greater good for
society will be accomplished by violating the literal language of the criminal law."
Photos had also leaked from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq showing the stacking of naked
prisoners with bags over their heads, mock electrocution from a wire connected to a man's penis,
guard dogs on the verge of ripping into naked men, and grinning U.S. male and female soldiers
celebrating the sordid degradation.
Legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh
published extracts in the New Yorker from a March 2004 report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba that
catalogued other U.S. interrogation abuses: "Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric
liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle
and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and
perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with
threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee."
The Bush administration responded to the revelations with a torrent of falsehoods,
complemented by attacks on the character of critics.
Bush declared, "Let me make very
clear the position of my government and our country . The values of this country are such that
torture is not a part of our soul and our being." Bush had the audacity to run for reelection as
the anti-torture candidate, boasting that "for decades, Saddam tormented and tortured the people of
Iraq. Because we acted, Iraq is free and a sovereign nation." He was hammering this theme despite a
confidential CIA Inspector General report warning that post–9/11 CIA interrogation methods might
violate the international Convention Against Torture.
James Comey had the opportunity to condemn the outrageous practices and pledge that the
Justice Department would cease providing the color of law to medieval-era abuses. Instead, Comey
merely repudiated the controversial 2002 memo.
Speaking to the media in a
not-for-attribution session on June 22, 2004, he declared that the 2002 memo was "overbroad,"
"abstract academic theory," and "legally unnecessary." He helped oversee crafting a new memo with
different legal footing to justify the same interrogation methods.
Comey twice gave explicit approval for waterboarding
, which sought to break
detainees with near-drowning. This practice had been recognized as a war crime by the U.S.
government since the Spanish-American War. A practice that was notorious when inflicted by the
Spanish Inquisition was adopted by the CIA with the Justice Department's blessing. (When Barack
Obama nominated Comey to be FBI chief in 2013, he testified that he had belatedly recognized that
waterboarding was actually torture.)
Comey wrote in his memoir that he was losing sleep over concern about
Bush-administration torture polices. But losing sleep was not an option for detainees, because
Comey approved sleep deprivation as an interrogation technique.
Detainees could be
forcibly kept awake for 180 hours until they confessed their crimes. How did that work? At Abu
Ghraib, one FBI agent reported seeing a detainee "handcuffed to a railing with a nylon sack on his
head and a shower curtain draped around him, being slapped by a soldier to keep him awake."
Numerous FBI agents protested the extreme interrogation methods they saw at Guantanamo and
elsewhere, but their warnings were ignored.
Comey also approved "wall slamming"
-- which, as law professor David Cole wrote,
meant that detainees could be thrown against a wall up to 30 times. Comey also signed off on the
CIA's using "interrogation" methods such as facial slaps, locking detainees in small boxes for 18
hours, and forced nudity. When the secret Comey memo approving those methods finally became public
in 2009, many Americans were aghast -- and relieved that the Obama administration had repudiated
Bush policies.
When it came to opposing torture, Comey's version of "Here I stand" had more loopholes
than a reverse-mortgage contract.
Though Comey in 2005 approved each of 13 controversial
extreme interrogation methods, he objected to combining multiple methods on one detainee.
The Torture Guy
In his memoir, Comey relates that his wife told him,
"Don't be the torture guy!"
Comey apparently feels that he satisfied her dictate by writing memos that opposed
combining multiple extreme interrogation methods. And since the vast majority of the American media
agree with him, he must be right.
Comey's cheerleaders seem uninterested in the damning evidence that has surfaced since
his time as a torture enabler in the Bush administration.
In 2014, the Senate Intelligence
Committee finally released a massive report on the CIA torture regime -- including death resulting
from hypothermia, rape-like rectal feeding of detainees, compelling detainees to stand long periods
on broken legs, and dozens of cases where innocent people were pointlessly brutalized.
Psychologists aided the torture regime, offering hints on how to destroy the will and resistance of
prisoners. From the start, the program was protected by phalanxes of lying federal officials.
When he first campaigned for president, Barack Obama pledged to vigorously investigate the Bush
torture regime for criminal violations. Instead, the Obama administration proffered one excuse
after another to suppress the vast majority of the evidence, pardon all U.S. government torturers,
and throttle all torture-related lawsuits. The only CIA official to go to prison for the torture
scandal was courageous whistleblower John Kiriakou. Kiriakou's fate illustrates that telling the
truth is treated as the most unforgivable atrocity in Washington.
If Comey had resigned in 2004 or 2005 to protest the torture techniques he now claims to
abhor, he would deserve some of the praise he is now receiving.
Instead, he remained in
the Bush administration but wrote an email summarizing his objections, declaring that "it was my
job to protect the department and the A.G. [Attorney General] and that I could not agree to this
because it was wrong." A 2009 New York Times analysis noted that Comey and two colleagues "have
largely escaped criticism [for approving torture] because they raised questions about interrogation
and the law." In Washington, writing emails is "close enough for government work" to confer
sainthood.
When Comey finally exited the Justice Department in August 2005 to become a lavishly paid senior
vice president for Lockheed Martin, he proclaimed in a farewell speech that protecting the Justice
Department's "reservoir" of "trust and credibility" requires "vigilance" and "an unerring
commitment to truth." But he had perpetuated policies that shattered the moral credibility of both
the Justice Department and the U.S. government. He failed to heed Martin Luther's admonition, "You
are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say."
Comey is likely to go to his grave without paying any price for his role in
perpetuating appalling U.S. government abuses.
It is far more important to recognize
the profound danger that torture and the exoneration of torturers pose to the United States. "No
free government can survive that is not based on the supremacy of the law," is one of the mottoes
chiseled into the façade of Justice Department headquarters. Unfortunately, politicians nowadays
can choose which laws they obey and which laws they trample.
And Americans are supposed
to presume that we still have the rule of law as long as politicians and bureaucrats deny their
crimes.
Tags
Comey was the hand-picked schlub that was placed in a position of
power to be a firewall... Nothing more and he has been rewarded
handsomely for playing this role... One can only hope that one day he
becomes a liability to his handlers and that there is a pack of
hungry, wild dogs that will rips him apart... Hopefully on PPV...
The Absolute, Complete,
Open, in our Faces Tyrannical Lawlessness began.
Unabated. Like a malignant Cancer.
Growing to Gargantuan proportions.
Irrefutable proof of the absolute, complete, open Lawlessness by
the Criminal Fraud UNITED STATES, CORP. INC., its CEO & Board of
Directors.
1. Torture .
2. WMD lie to the American People.
3. Lying the American People into War.
4. Illegal Wars of Aggression.
5. Arming, funding & training of terror organizations by the State
Dept. / CIA & members of CONgress.
6. BENGAZI
7. McCain meets with ISIS (Pics available).
8. Clapper lies to CONgress.
9. Brennan lies to CONgress & taps Congressional phones / computers.
10. Lynch meets Clinton on tarmac.
11. Fast & Furious deals with the Sinaloa Cartel.
12. Holder in Contempt of CONgress.
13. CIA drug / gun running / money laundering through the tax payer
bailed out TBTFB.
14. Illegal NSA Spying on the American People.
15. DNC Federal Election Crime / Debbie Wasserman Shultz.
16. Hillary Clinton email Treason.
17. Clinton Foundation pay to play RICO.
18. Anthony Weiner 650,000 #PizzaGate Pedo Crimes.
19. Secret Iran deal.
20. Lynch takes the Fifth when asked about Iran deal
21. FBI murders LaVoy Finicum
At the current moment we're completely Lawless.
We have been for quite some time. In the past, their Criminality
was "Hidden in plain view."
Now it's out in the open, in your face Criminality & Lawlessness.
Complete debachary.
Thing is, the bar & precedent has been set so high among these
Criminals I doubt we will ever see another person arrested in our
lifetime.
Comey thinks he is above the law. He and his associates feel they are
not bound by the rules and laws of the US, they are the ELITE. Comey
should go to JAIL, HARD CORE not Country Club, along with his
associates, Yates, Rosenstein, Brennan, McCabe, Stzrock, Paige and
etc. Lock him up
Changing the rules, talks of changing the constitution, and the status of the SC because
Dems can't find a positive message, or a positive candidate, or persuade the candidate to
recognize and reach out to voters the Democratic party abandoned, reeks of defeatism and
worse.
Exactly.
Clinton neoliberals (aka soft neoliberals) still control the Democratic Party but no longer
can attract working-class voters. That's why they try "identity wedge" strategy trying to
compensate their loss with the rag tag minority groups.
Their imperial jingoism only makes the situation worse. Large swaths of the USA population,
including lower middle class are tired of foreign wars and sliding standard of living. They see
exorbitant military expenses as one of the causes of their troubles.
That's why Hillary got a middle finger from several social groups which previously supported
Democrats. And that's why midterm might be interesting to watch as there is no political party
that represents working class and lower middle class in the USA.
"Lesser evil" mantra stops working when people are really angry at the ruling neoliberal
elite.
control of the Senate, a relentlessly undemocratic institution
likbez 10.08.18 at 6:24 am (no link)
I think the US society is entering a deep, sustained political crisis and it is unclear what
can bring us back from it other then the collapse, USSR-style. The USA slide into corporate
socialism (which might be viewed as a flavor of neofascism) can't be disputed.
Looks like all democracies are unstable and prone to self-destruction. In modern America,
the elite do not care about lower 80% of the population, and is over-engaged in cynical
identity politics, race and gender-mongering. Anything to win votes.
MSM is still cheering on military misadventures that kill thousands of Americans,
impoverish millions, and cost trillions. Congress looks even worse. Republican House leader
Paul Ryan looks like 100% pure bought-and-paid-for tool of multinational corporations
The scary thing for me is that the USA national problems are somewhat similar to the ones
that the USSR experienced before the collapse. At least the level of degeneration of
political elite of both parties (which in reality is a single party) is.
The only positive things is that there is viable alternative to neoliberalism on the
horizon. But that does not mean that we can't experience 1930th on a new level again. Now
several European countries such as Poland and Ukraine are already ruled by far right
nationalist parties. Brazil is probably the next. So this or military rule in the USA is not
out of question.
Some other factors are also in play: one is that a country with 320 million population
can't be governed by the same methods as a country of 76 million (1900). End of cheap oil is
near and probably will occur within the next 50 years or so. Which means the end of
neoliberalism as we know it.
Tucker states that the USA's neoliberal elite acquired control of a massive chunk of the
country's wealth. And then successfully insulated themselves from the hoi polloi. They send
their children to the Ivy League universities, live in enclosed compounds with security
guards, travel in helicopters, etc. Kind of like French aristocracy on a new level ("Let them
eat cakes"). "There's nothing more infuriating to a ruling class than contrary opinions.
They're inconvenient and annoying. They're evidence of an ungrateful population Above all,
they constitute a threat to your authority." (insert sarcasm)
Donald Trump was in many ways an unappealing figure. He never hid that. Voters knew it.
They just concluded that the options were worse -- and not just Hillary Clinton and the
Democratic Party, but the Bush family and their donors and the entire Republican
leadership, along with the hedge fund managers and media luminaries and corporate
executives and Hollywood tastemakers and think tank geniuses and everyone else who created
the world as it was in the fall of 2016: the people in charge. Trump might be vulgar and
ignorant, but he wasn't responsible for the many disasters America's leaders created .
There was also the possibility that Trump might listen. At times he seemed interested in
what voters thought. The people in charge demonstrably weren't. Virtually none of their
core beliefs had majority support from the population they governed .Beginning on election
night, they explained away their loss with theories as pat and implausible as a summer
action movie: Trump won because fake news tricked simple minded voters. Trump won because
Russian agents "hacked" the election. Trump won because mouth-breathers in the provinces
were mesmerized by his gold jet and shiny cuff links.
From a reader review:
The New Elite speaks: "The Middle Class are losers and they have made bad choices, they
haven't worked as hard as the New Elite have, they haven't gone to SAT Prep or LSAT prep so
they lose, we win. We are the Elite and we know better than you because we got high SAT
scores.
Do we have experience? Uh .well no, few of us have been in the military, pulled KP, shot
an M-16 . because we are better than that. Like they say only the losers go in the
military. We in the New Elite have little empirical knowledge but we can recognize patterns
very quickly."
Just look at Haley behavior in the UN and Trump trade wars and many things became more
clear. the bet is on destruction of existing international institutions in order to save the
USA elite. A the same time Trump trade wars threaten the neoliberal order so this might well
be a path to the USA self-destruction.
On Capital hill rancor, a lack of civility and derisive descriptions are everywhere.
Respect has gone out the window. Left and right wings of a single neoliberal party (much like
CPSU was in the USSR) behave like drunk schoolchildren. Level of pettiness is simply
amazing.
The fundamental rule of democratic electoral politics is this: tribes don't win elections,
coalitions do. Trump's appeal is strongly tribal, and he has spent two years consolidating
his appeal to that tribe rather than reaching out. But he won in 2016 (or 'won') not on the
strength of that tribal appeal, but because of a coalition between core Trumpists and more
respectable conservatives and evangelicals, including a lot of people who find Trump himself
vulgar and repellent, but who are prepared to hold their noses. The cause
célèbre (or cause de l'infâme) that Kavanaugh's appointment became
ended-up uniting these two groups; the Trumpists on the one hand ('so the Libs are saying we
can't even enjoy a beer now, are they?') and the old-school religious Conservatives,
for whom abortion is a matter of conscience.
Given the weird topographies of US democratic process, the Democrats need to build a
bigger counter-coalition than the coalition they are opposing. Metropolitan liberals are in
the bag, so that means reconnecting with the working class, and galvanising the black and
youth votes, which have a poor record of converting social media anger into actual ballot-box
votes. But it also means reaching out to moderate religious conservatives, and the Dems don't
seem to me to have a strategy for this last approach at all. Which is odd, because it would
surely, at least in some ways, be easier than persuading young people to vote at the levels
old people vote. At the moment abortion (the elephant in the Kavanaugh-confirmation room) is
handled by the Left as a simple matter of structural misogyny, the desire to oppress and
control female bodies. I see why it is treated that way; there are good reasons for that
critique. But it's electorally dumb. Come at it another way instead, accept that many
religious people oppose abortion because they see it as killing children; then lead the
campaign on the fact that the GOP is literally putting thousands upon thousands of
children in concentration camps . Shout about that fact. Determine how many kids
literally die each year because their parents can't access free healthcare and put that stat
front and centre. Confront enough voters with the false consciousness of only caring about
abortion and not these other monstrosities and some will reconsider their position.
And one more thing that I have never understood about the Dems (speaking as an outsider),
given how large a political force Christianity is in your country: make more of Jimmy Carter.
He's a man of extraordinary conscience as well as a man of faith; the contrast with how he
has lived his post-Presidential life and the present occupier of the White House could
hardly, from a Christian perspective, be greater. If the Dems can make a love-thy-neighbour
social justice Christianity part of their brand, leaving Mammon to the GOP, then they'd be in
power for a generation.
Yields to maturity on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes are now at their highest level since April
2011. The current yield to maturity is 3.21%, a significant rise from 1.387% which the market
touched on July 7, 2016 in the immediate aftermath of Brexit and a flight to quality in U.S.
dollars and U.S. Treasury notes.
The Treasury market is volatile with lots of rallies and reversals, but the overall trend
since 2016 has been higher yields and lower prices.
The consensus of opinion is that the bull market that began in 1981 is finally over and a
new bear market with higher yields and losses for bondholders has begun. Everyone from bond
guru Bill Gross to bond king Jeff Gundlach is warning that the bear has finally arrived.
I disagree.
It's true that bond yields have backed up sharply and prices have come down in recent
months. Yet, we've seen this movie before. Yields went from 2.4% to 3.6% between October 2010
and February 2011 before falling to 1.5% in June 2012.
Yields also rose from 1.67% in April 2013 to 3.0% in December 2013 before falling again to
1.67% by January 2015. In short, numerous bond market routs have been followed by major bond
market rallies in the past ten years.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of the bond market rally have been "greatly
exaggerated." The bull market still has legs. The key is to spot the inflection points in each
bear move and buy the bonds in time to reap huge gains in the next rally.
That's where the market is now, at an inflection point. Investors who ignore the bear market
mantra and buy bonds at these levels stand to make enormous gains in the coming rally.
The opportunity is illustrated in the chart below. This chart shows relative long and short
positions in ten major trading instruments based on futures trading data. The 10-year U.S.
Treasury note is listed as "10Y US."
As is shown, this is the most extreme short position in markets today. It is even more short
than gold and soybeans, which are heavily out of favor. It takes a brave investor to go long
when the rest of the market is so heavily short.
"... The great false front of the financial markets resumes falling over into the November election. ..."
"... The rubble from all that buries whatever is left of the automobile business and the housing market. The smoldering aftermath will be described as the start of a long-overdue recession -- but it will actually be something a lot worse, with no end in sight. ..."
"... Complicating matters this time will be the chaos unleashed in politics and governing when the long-running "Russia collusion" melodrama boomerangs into a raft of indictments against the cast of characters in the Intel Community and Department of Justice AND the Democratic National Committee, and perhaps even including the Party's last standard bearer, HRC, for ginning up the Russia Collusion matter in the first place as an exercise in sedition. The wheels of the law turn slowly, but they'll turn even while financial markets tumble. ..."
Looks like somebody threw a dead cat onto Wall Street's luge run overnight to temporarily
halt the rather ugly 2000 point slide in the Dow Jones Industrial Average - and plenty of
freefall in other indices, including markets in other countries. A Friday pause in the
financial carnage will give the hedge funders a chance to plant "for sale" signs along their
Hamptons driveways, but who might the buyers be? Hedge funders from another planet, perhaps?
You can hope. And while you're at it, how do you spell liquidity problem?
Welcome to the convergence zone of the long emergency, where Murphy's law meets the law of
unintended consequences and the law of diminishing returns, the Three Amigos of collapse.
Here's where being "woke" finally starts to mean something. Namely, that there are more
important things in the world than sexual hysteria . Like, for instance, your falling standard
of living (and that of everyone else around you).
The meet-up between Kanye West and President D.J. Trump was an even richer metaphor for the
situation: two self-styled "geniuses" preening for the cameras in the Oval Office, like kids in
a sandbox, without a single intelligible idea emerging from the play-date, and embarrassed
grownups all standing 'round pretending it was a Great Moment in History. You had to wonder how
much of Kanye's bazillion dollar fortune was stashed in the burning house of FAANG stocks.
Maybe that flipped his bipolar toggle. Or was he even paying attention to the market action
through all the mugging and hugging? (He did have his phone in hand.) Meanwhile, Mr. Trump
seemed to be squirming through the episode behind his mighty Resolute desk as if he had "woke"
to the realization that ownership of a bursting epic global financial bubble was not exactly
"winning."
If I were President, I'd declare Oct 12 Greater Fool Day. (Nobody likes Christopher Columbus
anymore, that genocidal monster of dead white male privilege.) The futures were zooming as I
write in the early morning, a last roundup for suckers at the OD corral, begging the question:
who will show up on Monday. Nobody, I predict. And then what?
The great false front of the financial markets resumes falling over into the November
election.
The rubble from all that buries whatever is left of the automobile business and the housing
market. The smoldering aftermath will be described as the start of a long-overdue recession --
but it will actually be something a lot worse, with no end in sight.
The Democratic Party might not be nimble enough to capitalize on the sudden disappearance of
capital. Their only hope to date has been to capture the vote of every female in America, to
otherwise augment their constituency of inflamed and aggrieved victims of unsubstantiated
injustices. It's been fun playing those cards, and the Party might not even know how to play a
different game at this point. Democratic politicians may also be among the one-percenters who
watch their net worth go up in a vapor in a market collapse, leaving them too numb to act. The
last time something like this happened, in the fall of 2008, candidate Barack Obama barely knew
what to say about the fall of Lehman Brothers and the ensuing cascade of misery - though
unbeknownst to the voters, he was already a hostage of Wall Street.
Complicating matters this time will be the chaos unleashed in politics and governing when
the long-running "Russia collusion" melodrama boomerangs into a raft of indictments against the
cast of characters in the Intel Community and Department of Justice AND the Democratic National
Committee, and perhaps even including the Party's last standard bearer, HRC, for ginning up the
Russia Collusion matter in the first place as an exercise in sedition. The wheels of the law
turn slowly, but they'll turn even while financial markets tumble.
And the threat to order
might be so great that an unprecedented "emergency" has to be declared, with soldiers in the
streets of Washington, as was sadly the case in 1861, the first time the country turned itself
upside down.
"the GRU's disregard for global values and rules that keep us all safe".
Like the values and rules that led the NSA to eavesdrop on Chancellor Merkel's phone calls
for years, and to use American Embassies as listening posts. Mutti Merkel was very
understanding, considering they were only doing it to keep us all safe.
Former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon slammed UN ambassador Nikki Haley's decision on
Tuesday to announce her resignation, calling it "suspect" and "horrific," and that it
overshadowed positive news that Trump and the Republicans need to build support going into
midterms, according to
Bloomberg .
The timing was exquisite from a bad point of view ," Bannon told Bloomberg
News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait on Wednesday at the Bloomberg Invest London forum. "
Everything she said yesterday and everything she said about stepping down could have been done
on the evening of November 6. The timing could not have been worse. "
Haley's announcement, according to Bannon, took White House officials by surprise - and
distracted attention from Brett Kavanaugh's first day as a justice on the Supreme Court, along
with headlines over the lowest US unemployment rate in five decades. Haley's decision
undermines Trump's message to Republican voters, said Bannon.
In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said Haley told him six months ago she wanted a break
after spending two years in the post. She'll continue in her role until year-end. Haley said
Tuesday that she was ready for a break after two terms as South Carolina's governor and two
years at the United Nations. -
Bloomberg
Bannon also says that he took Haley at her word that she has no political aspirations -
particularly when it comes to running against Trump in 2020. She says that she looks forward to
campaigning for Trump in two years. That said, Bannon calls Haley "ambitious" and "very
talented," though he said so using a backhanded compliment.
"I think she is incredibly politically ambitious," Bannon added. " Ambitious as Lucifer but
that is probably...I am probably taking Milton out of context."
Trump defended the timing of Haley's departure on Wednesday, saying "there's no good time"
for her to have announced her resignation - and that if she'd waited until after midterms, it
would have raised questions as to whether her motive was based on the results.
Bannon is unhinged. Nikki Haley was horrible in her position! If Bannon payed attention to
voter base of Trump, he'd see Haley was a thorn in the side of the Trump administration.
One of the best appointments Trump has made, is Mike Pompeo. I thought he'd be some crazed
warmonger, but has turned out to be quite the opposite.
He's got this kind of easy going swagger and confidence about him. He's chubby, and his
every day guy, sort of approach, is affable.
Yes sir... her rhetoric is pure deep state war mongering of the most evil kind. She was
told to stir up as much hatred and fear at the UN as possible and try to get the opposition
to do something stupid in response to her remarks. That's not Trump talk for damned sure...
that's deep state talk.
He makes a GREAT point that occurred to me immediately. If you are resigning effective at
the end of the year and everything is awesome, just time to move on.... why the hell are you
publicly announcing it 3 weeks before a VERY contentious midterm election and only a day or
so after a brutal SCOTUS nomination conclusion? Why? Why now? Very curious and a unforced
error.
Wow. This is an extremely one-sided, black-and-white view of a complex issue. I don't
understand how you could prepare to write on this subject and not realize that the
#BelieveWomen was, for MANY NOT ALL women, a call to NOT DISBELIEVE the woman right off the
bat. The immediate disbelief and victim blaming and shaming which has been standard treatment
of victims for a very long time is the primary reason that sexual crimes are not reported.
Sure, give the man the "innocent until proven guilty" but do the same for the woman too.
Don't start in with the "what was she wearing" and the rest. Don't make drinking be an excuse
for him and a reason for condemnation for her. In the many discussions I had on this subject
with other women, what the vast majority wanted was a full and complete investigation. They
didn't get it.
And you don't get it either. You are welcome to your opinions but you don't get to put the
words and beliefs into other people's mouths and minds as though you somehow know it all. You
are dead wrong about what I think and believe and about the vast majority of the women with
whom I have discussed this either in person or via text online.
It is easy to write against a straw man that isn't true. Try writing against a real
argument instead of simplifying the other person's position to the point that it is
ridiculous.
This conundrum is what convinced me to abandon the Democrats, registering as an Independent
for the first time: "It holds them to a different legal standard than men and turns the clock
back on women's rights. Equality before the law was a major demand of feminists from previous
eras; today it seems like 'believing' takes precedence over equality."
I am married to a man who has been loyal, works long hours to support our family, and
happens to be a white. I am raising a young man and young woman, and my experience has been
that, although they differ vastly in temperament and aptitude, they a both valuable to
society. The sexism and racism of the Leftist Democrats goes against my conscience and
experience.
get real ,
I think the issue with #MeToo isn't about speaking out on sexual abuse in general, it's about
publically naming, accusing & convicting men of sexual abuse sans law enforcement, &
any legal due process. That's character defamation & slander, not justice.
If women have legitimate grievances they need to go about addressing them the way every
other type of victim does through law enforcement & the courts. Women are adults &
should behave with maturity & prudence. Not expecting special considerations just because
of gender.
Currently, men accused of sexual crimes are named in the media but their accusers are not.
Even when found innocent, that notoriety will haunt the accused men for the rest of their
lives. That seems like a double standard to me.
There absolutely were obstacles for some sexual abuse victims in the past & it could
be difficult to find justice. We had a case like that in our community & it took years to
get a prosecution & conviction. But we've swung way too far in the other direction. Now
men are presumed guilty until proven innocent & they & their families are publically
shamed, hounded, & humiliated.
Women don't need to drag down men in order to find equality.
In justifying her decision
, Collins went to great pains to stress her support for all victims of sexual assault and for
Ford in particular. "Every person, man or woman, who makes a charge of sexual assault deserves
to be heard and treated with respect," she said. "The #MeToo movement is real. It matters. It
is needed. And it is long overdue." But, she concluded, "In evaluating any given claim of
misconduct we will be ill-served in the long run if we abandon the presumption of innocence and
fairness, tempting though it may be."
Collins is absolutely correct to defend these important principles. The mantra of #MeToo and
the Kavanaugh hearings has been "I believe." But the idea that women should be believed without
question or evidence presents them as naive innocents who never lie or misremember. It holds
them to a different legal standard than men and turns the clock back on women's rights.
Equality before the law was a major demand of feminists from previous eras; today it seems like
"believing" takes precedence over equality.
For her cool-headed defense of long-held legal principles, Collins stands accused of
betrayal. She "betrayed the interests of the women and sexual-assault survivors she professed
to support" according to Lisa Ryan at
The Cut .
Diane Russell , an activist for the Democrats, was more specific: she argued that Collins
voted to "betray Maine women and Maine survivors" by ignoring their stories. "There is a
special place in hell for women who cover for rapists," Russell continued. Presumably she has
privileged insight into exactly what happened between Ford and Kavanaugh 36 years ago that
allows her to circumvent trials and juries and find Kavanaugh summarily guilty all by
herself.
Bizarrely, some activists seem to have more loathing for Collins than Kavanaugh. Lawyer and
"social entrepreneur" Kat Calvin tweeted: "Never let
Collins have a moment of peace in public again." This has since been shared well over 33,000
times. The hatred for Collins has even given rise to a crowd-funder
to get her replaced as senator from Maine. A cool $2 million was raised before Collins made her
speech; the site crashed as she was speaking.
Feminist commentators and activists are clearly furious that Collins could " vote against
believing women ." They are nonplussed that she could express support for victims of sexual
assault and yet back Kavanaugh. The only explanation for Collins' volte-face is, we're told,
hypocrisy . But it's perfectly possible to feel sympathy and endeavor to support women who
claim to have been sexually assaulted while at the same time maintaining the important
presumption of innocent until proven guilty. There is no logical reason why women should be
unconditionally believed any more than men. Feminists might not like it but, as Collins argued,
evidence and proof are the basis of justice.
Yet rather than trying to understand the reason for Collins' vote, activists have only
extended the net of hatred further. Over at the New
York Times , Alexis Grenell moves deftly from disdain for Collins to fury at "all the
women in the Republican conference" before eventually focusing her anger on the category of
"white women." White women, Grenell opines, "will defend their privilege to the death." In the
eyes of Grenell, women think and act according to the dictates of their race. There is a "blood
pact between white men and white women," she tells us, though how this ties in with Ford's
whiteness is anyone's guess. Apparently, all white women are "gender traitors" who have "made
standing by the patriarchy a full-time job."
So there we have it. The show trial of Kavanaugh shows us exactly where feminism is heading
in the #MeToo era. Women are not to be considered rational beings equal to men before the law
but as emotional creatures who deserve special treatment. Women's political views are,
apparently, determined by their race. And it's legitimate now to make explicitly sexist and
racist arguments in the pages of respectable national newspapers -- as long as "white women"
are the target.
Today's feminism divides the world into "good" women and "bad" women. Good women suffer,
empathize, and believe other women without question or criticism. Bad women, on the other hand,
raise awkward questions about evidence and principles of justice. As Grenell demands to know,
come November, "Which one of these two women are you?"
"... The way you have to term everything just right. And if you don't term it right you discriminate them. It's like everybody is going to be in the know of what people call themselves now and some of us just don't know. But if you don't know then there is something seriously wrong with you. ..."
On social media, the country seems to divide into two neat camps: Call them the woke and
the resentful. Team Resentment is manned -- pun very much intended -- by people who are
predominantly old and almost exclusively white. Team Woke is young, likely to be female, and
predominantly black, brown, or Asian (though white "allies" do their dutiful part). These
teams are roughly equal in number, and they disagree most vehemently, as well as most
routinely, about the catchall known as political correctness.
Reality is nothing like this. As scholars Stephen Hawkins, Daniel Yudkin, Miriam
Juan-Torres, and Tim Dixon argue in a report published Wednesday, "
Hidden Tribes: A Study of America's Polarized Landscape ," most Americans don't fit into
either of these camps. They also share more common ground than the daily fights on social
media might suggest -- including a general aversion to PC culture.
You don't say. More:
If you look at what Americans have to say on issues such as immigration, the extent of
white privilege, and the prevalence of sexual harassment, the authors argue, seven distinct
clusters emerge: progressive activists, traditional liberals, passive liberals, the
politically disengaged, moderates, traditional conservatives, and devoted conservatives.
According to the report, 25 percent of Americans are traditional or devoted conservatives,
and their views are far outside the American mainstream. Some 8 percent of Americans are
progressive activists, and their views are even less typical. By contrast, the two-thirds of
Americans who don't belong to either extreme constitute an "exhausted majority." Their
members "share a sense of fatigue with our polarized national conversation, a willingness to
be flexible in their political viewpoints, and a lack of voice in the national
conversation."
Hmm. If one out of four people believe something, are they really "far" out of the American
mainstream? In the report, "Traditional Liberals" and "Passive Liberals" make up 26 percent of
the population. Aren't they part of the mainstream too? Or am I reading this wrong? Here's a
graphic from the "Hidden Tribes" report that shows how they sort us:
How do the authors define these groups? Here:
Anyway, the story goes on to say that r ace and youth are not indicators of openness to PC.
Black Americans are the minority group most accepting of PC, but even then, 75 percent of them
think it's a problem. More:
If age and race do not predict support for political correctness, what does? Income and
education.
While 83 percent of respondents who make less than $50,000 dislike political correctness,
just 70 percent of those who make more than $100,000 are skeptical about it. And while 87
percent who have never attended college think that political correctness has grown to be a
problem, only 66 percent of those with a postgraduate degree share that sentiment.
Political tribe -- as defined by the authors -- is an even better predictor of views on
political correctness. Among devoted conservatives, 97 percent believe that political
correctness is a problem. Among traditional liberals, 61 percent do. Progressive activists
are the only group that strongly backs political correctness: Only 30 percent see it as a
problem.
Here's the heart of it:
So what does this group look like? Compared with the rest of the (nationally
representative) polling sample, progressive activists are much more likely to be rich, highly
educated -- and white. They are nearly twice as likely as the average to make more than
$100,000 a year. They are nearly three times as likely to have a postgraduate degree. And
while 12 percent of the overall sample in the study is African American, only 3 percent of
progressive activists are. With the exception of the small tribe of devoted conservatives,
progressive activists are the most racially homogeneous group in the country.
This, a thousand times:
As one 57- year-old woman in Mississippi fretted:
The way you have to term everything just right. And if you don't term it right you
discriminate them. It's like everybody is going to be in the know of what people call
themselves now and some of us just don't know. But if you don't know then there is something
seriously wrong with you.
So, guess who runs most of the institutions in this country: academia, media, entertainment,
corporations? Educated, rich white liberals (and minorities who come out of those institutions,
and who agree with their PC ideology). They have created a social space in which they lord
their ideology over everybody else, and have intimidated everyone into going along with it, out
of fear of harsh consequences, and stigma, for dissenters.
Mounk points out that it's not that majorities believe racism and bigotry aren't things to
be concerned about. They do! It's that they believe that PC is the wrong way to address those
problems.
If you have the time,
read the whole "Hidden Tribes" report on which Mounk bases his essay. They reveal something
that has actually been brought out by Pew Research studies in the past: that US political
conversation is entirely driven by the extremes, while most people in the middle are more open
to compromise. It's not that most of these people are moderates, are centrists. It's that they
aren't driven by a strong sense of tribalism.
The authors call these "hidden tribes" because they are defined not by race, sex, and the
usual tribal markers, but rather by a shared agreement on how the world works, whether they're
aware of it or not. Where individuals come down on these points generally determines where
they'll come down on hot button political and cultural issues (e.g., immigration,
feminism):
You shouldn't assume that most Americans share the same basic values. As the report
indicates, there are substantive differences among us. It's simply not accurate to blame
tension over these divisions on extremists of the right or the left who exaggerate them. Though
the differences are real, what seems to set the majority-middle apart is their general
unwillingness to push those differences to the breaking point.
I want to point out one aspect of the analysis that means a lot to me, as a religious
conservative. It's on page 81 of the report. Here's a graph recording answers to the question,
"How important is religious faith to you?"
Religion is important to almost two-thirds of Americans. The only tribe in which a majority
finds it unimportant are Progressive Activists. According to the study:
Strong identification with religious belief appears to be a strong tribal marker for the
Devoted and Traditional Conservatives, and an absence of religious belief appears to be a
marker for Progressive Activists.
Guess which tribe runs the culture-making institutions in our society (e.g., major media,
universities, entertainment)?
I am reminded of something one of you readers, a conservative academic, wrote to me once:
that you feel safe because your department is run by traditional liberals, who don't agree with
you, but who value free and open exchange of ideas. You are very worried about what happens
when those people -- who are Baby Boomers -- retire, because the generational cohort behind
them are hardcore left-wing ideologues who do not share the traditional liberal view.
Hollywood has been at the forefront of the political resistance to President Donald Trump,
using awards shows, social media and donations to promote progressive positions on issues
from immigration to gun control.
Now, the entertainment industry is using its star power and creativity to support
down-ballot candidates in the Nov. 6 elections. Down-ballot races are typically state and
local positions that are listed on voting ballots below national posts.
This approach is part of the way Hollywood is rewriting its script for political action
following Trump's shock election in 2016.
I can't blame anyone for advocating for their political beliefs in the public square. But
these are among the most privileged people on the planet. They are Progressive Activists -- and
they are massively out of touch with the rest of the country, though they have massively more
cultural power to define the narrative than their adversaries.
Here's another interesting factoid from the report:
Progressive Activists are unique in seeing the world as a much less dangerous place than
other Americans. For other tribes, the differences are much smaller. On average, 14 percent
of Americans view the world as generally safe and nonthreatening, while among Progressive
Activists almost three times as many people hold this view (40 percent). This figure is
especially striking in light of Progressive Activists' deep pessimism about the direction of
the country (98 percent say it is going in the wrong direction) and their emotions toward the
country (45 percent say they currently feel "very" scared about the country's direction).
Think of the psychology of this! How can they feel that the world is "generally safe and
nonthreatening" while at the same time be "very" scared about the direction of the US? The
answer, I think, is that in their own lives , they feel secure. And why not? Remember
this from Yascha Mounk's essay on this study:
So what does this group look like? Compared with the rest of the (nationally
representative) polling sample, progressive activists are much more likely to be rich, highly
educated -- and white. They are nearly twice as likely as the average to make more than
$100,000 a year. They are nearly three times as likely to have a postgraduate degree.
Economically, educationally, and racially, Progressive Activists are the most elite group in
the country.
Look at this amazing factoid:
First, notice that one out of three African Americans think that people are too sensitive
about race, the same percentage of Traditional Liberals who do. A solid majority of Hispanic
Americans believe that, and nearly three out of four Asian Americans believe that. Sixty
percent of Americans overall agree with this viewpoint. Who rejects it overwhelmingly?
Progressive Activists -- the rich, educated white people who control academia and media.
Note well that majorities are not saying that racism isn't a problem (81 percent
agree that we have serious problems with racism), only that there is too much emphasis on it.
Do you get that? They're saying that racism is a serious issue, but it has been
disproportionately emphasized relative to other serious issues. On bread-and-butter issues like
college admissions, Progressive Activists are far, far removed from everybody else, even
Traditional Liberals:
The numbers are similar on gender issues. Progressive Activists are radically far apart from
the views of most Americans. No wonder the media can't understand why everybody doesn't agree
with them that Brett Kavanaugh is a sexist monster.
Finally, the last chapter of the study focuses on what its authors call the "Exhausted
Majority" -- Traditional Liberals, Passive Liberals, Politically Disengaged and Moderates:
The four segments in the Exhausted Majority have many differences, but they share four
main attributes:
– They are more ideologically flexible
– They support finding political compromise
– They are fatigued by US politics today
– They feel forgotten in political debate
Importantly, the Traditional Conservatives do not belong to the Exhausted Majority, while
the Traditional Liberals do. The key difference lies in their mood towards the country's
politics. While the Exhausted Majority express disillusionment, frustration, and anger at the
current state of US politics, Traditional Conservatives are far more likely to express
confidence, excitement and optimism. As such, the Traditional Conservatives hold a
meaningfully different emotional disposition towards the country that aligns them more with
the Devoted Conservatives.
That's really interesting. Having read the detailed descriptions of the various tribes, I
fall more into the Traditional Conservative camp, but I am much more pessimistic about the
country's politics than TCs in this study. What accounts for that? Is it:
a) I spend a lot of time looking at the cultural fundamentals and trends, especially
regarding religion, and believe that the optimism of Traditional Conservatives is irrational;
or
b) I spend a lot of time reading and analyzing the mainstream media, including social
media, and therefore overestimate the power and influence of Progressive Activists
I'd say the answer is probably 80 percent a) and 20 percent b). I believe my fellow
Traditional Conservatives (like the Devoted Conservatives to our right) believe that things are
more stable than they actually are.
Anyway, if you have the time, I encourage you to
read the entire report. It's basic point is that neither extreme of left and right speak
for the majority of Americans, though their stridency, and the nature of media to emphasize
conflict, conditions most of us to think that things are far more polarized than they actually
are.
For me, the best news in the entire report is learning how sick and tired most Americans are
of political correctness. It's not that most people believe there aren't serious problems in
the country having to do with race, sex, immigration, and so forth. It's that people are tired
of the Progressive Speech Police stalking around like Saudi imams with sticks in hand, whacking
anyone who fails to observe strict pieties. As Yascha Mounk says in his piece about the
report:
The gap between the progressive perception and the reality of public views on this issue
could do damage to the institutions that the woke elite collectively run. A publication whose
editors think they represent the views of a majority of Americans when they actually speak to
a small minority of the country may eventually see its influence wane and its readership
decline. And a political candidate who believes she is speaking for half of the population
when she is actually voicing the opinions of one-fifth is likely to lose the next
election.
Yes. And -- drums please -- that has a lot to do with how we got Trump.
A suspected third member of the Kremlin hit squad behind the Salisbury nerve agent attack
has been named, according to a respected Russian news website.
Sergey Fedotov, 45, travelled to the UK on the same day as the two assassins already
charged by British authorities – and boarded the same flight home.
The Telegraph had previously reported the existence of a third member of the Russian
intelligence hit squad and a trawl of flight records by the Fontanka news agency matched it
to Fedotov.
According to Fontanka, Fedotov flew to the UK on a passport whose number differs by
only a few digits from those used by the two GRU military intelligence agents officially
wanted for the nerve agent attack.
It is almost certain Fedotov is not the passenger's real name but an alias. No traces
of Sergei Fedotov have been found in documentary databases or on social media. He has no
property, vehicles or telephone numbers registered to his name in Russia, according to
Fontanka.
No "alleged"in "Kremlin hit squad behind the Salisbury nerve agent attack but It is
almost certain Fedotov is not the passenger's real name but an alias.
One of the reasons that countries fail is that collective memory is continually destroyed as
older generations pass away and are replaced by new ones who are disconnected from what came
before.
Initially, the disconnect was handled by history and by discussions around family tables.
For example, when I was a kid there were still grandparents whose fathers had fought for the
Confederacy. They had no slaves and owned no plantations. They fought because their land was
invaded by Lincoln's armies. Today if Southern families still know the facts, they would
protect their children by not telling them. Can you imagine what would happen to a child in a
public school that took this position?
Frustrated by the inability of the Union Army to defeat the Army of Northern Virginia led by
West Point graduate Robert E. Lee, Lincoln resorted to war criminals. Generals Sherman and
Sherridan, operating under the drunken General Grant, were the first modern war criminals who
conducted war against civilian women and children, their homes and food supply. Lincoln was so
out of step with common morality that he had to arrest and detain 300 Northern newspaper
editors and exile a US Congressman in order to conduct his War for Empire.
Today this history is largely erased. The court historians buried the truth with the fable
that Lincoln went to war to free the slaves. This ignorant nonsense is today the official
history of the "civil war," which most certainly was not a civil war.
A civil war is when two sides fight for control of the government. The Confederacy was a new
country consisting of those states that seceded. Most certainly, the Confederate soldiers were
no more fighting for control over the government in Washington than they were fighting to
protect the investment of plantation owners.
Memory is lost when historical facts are cast down the memory hole
So, what does this have to do with the lesson for today? More than history can be erased by
the passage of time. Culture can be erased. Morality can be erased. Common sense can disappear
with the diplomacy that depends on it.
The younger generation which experiences threats shouted all around it at Confederate war
memorials and street names - Atlanta has just struck historic Confederate Avenue out of
existence and replaced it with United Avenue - at white males who, if they are heterosexual,
have been redefined by Identity Politics as rapists, racists, and misogynists, at distinguished
scientists who state, factually, that there are innate differences between the male and the
female, and so on, might think that it is natural for high officials in the US government to
issue a never-ending stream of war threats to Russia, China, Iran, and Venezuela.
A person of my generation knows that such threats are unprecedented, not only for the US
Government but also in world history. President Trump's crazed NATO Ambassador, Kay Bailey
Hutchison, threatened to "take out Russian missiles." President Trump's crazed UN Ambassador
Nikki Hailey issues endless threats as fast as she can run her mouth against America's allies
as well as against the powerful countries that she designates as enemies. Trump's crazed
National Security Advisor John Bolten rivals the insane Haley with his wide-ranging threats.
Trump's Secretary of State Pompeo spews out threats with the best of them. So do the inane New
York Times and Washington Post. Even a lowly Secretary of the Interior assumes the prerogative
of telling Russia that the US will interdict Russian navy ships.
What do you think would be the consequences if the Russians, the Chinese, and the Iranians
took these threats seriously? World Wars have started on far less. Yet there is no protest
against these deranged US government officials who are doing everything in their power to
convince Russia and China that they are without any question America's worst enemies. If you
were Russia or China, how would you respond to this?
Professor Stephen Cohen, who, like myself, remembers when the United States government had a
diplomatic tradition, is as disturbed as I am that Washington's decision to chuck diplomacy
down the memory hole and replace it with war threats is going to get us all killed.
More
Cold War Extremism and Crises
Overshadowed by the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, US-Russian relations grow ever more
perilous.
Former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon slammed UN ambassador Nikki Haley's decision on
Tuesday to announce her resignation, calling it "suspect" and "horrific," and that it
overshadowed positive news that Trump and the Republicans need to build support going into
midterms, according to
Bloomberg .
The timing was exquisite from a bad point of view ," Bannon told Bloomberg
News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait on Wednesday at the Bloomberg Invest London forum. "
Everything she said yesterday and everything she said about stepping down could have been done
on the evening of November 6. The timing could not have been worse. "
Haley's announcement, according to Bannon, took White House officials by surprise - and
distracted attention from Brett Kavanaugh's first day as a justice on the Supreme Court, along
with headlines over the lowest US unemployment rate in five decades. Haley's decision
undermines Trump's message to Republican voters, said Bannon.
In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said Haley told him six months ago she wanted a break
after spending two years in the post. She'll continue in her role until year-end. Haley said
Tuesday that she was ready for a break after two terms as South Carolina's governor and two
years at the United Nations. -
Bloomberg
Bannon also says that he took Haley at her word that she has no political aspirations -
particularly when it comes to running against Trump in 2020. She says that she looks forward to
campaigning for Trump in two years. That said, Bannon calls Haley "ambitious" and "very
talented," though he said so using a backhanded compliment.
"I think she is incredibly politically ambitious," Bannon added. " Ambitious as Lucifer but
that is probably...I am probably taking Milton out of context."
Trump defended the timing of Haley's departure on Wednesday, saying "there's no good time"
for her to have announced her resignation - and that if she'd waited until after midterms, it
would have raised questions as to whether her motive was based on the results.
Bannon is unhinged. Nikki Haley was horrible in her position! If Bannon payed attention to
voter base of Trump, he'd see Haley was a thorn in the side of the Trump administration.
One of the best appointments Trump has made, is Mike Pompeo. I thought he'd be some crazed
warmonger, but has turned out to be quite the opposite.
He's got this kind of easy going swagger and confidence about him. He's chubby, and his
every day guy, sort of approach, is affable.
Yes sir... her rhetoric is pure deep state war mongering of the most evil kind. She was
told to stir up as much hatred and fear at the UN as possible and try to get the opposition
to do something stupid in response to her remarks. That's not Trump talk for damned sure...
that's deep state talk.
He makes a GREAT point that occurred to me immediately. If you are resigning effective at
the end of the year and everything is awesome, just time to move on.... why the hell are you
publicly announcing it 3 weeks before a VERY contentious midterm election and only a day or
so after a brutal SCOTUS nomination conclusion? Why? Why now? Very curious and a unforced
error.
Rosenstein said he was joking when he made the comments to former FBI Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe and FBI attorney Lisa Page, however that claim has been refuted by the FBI's former top
attorney.
"We have many questions for Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and expect answers to those
questions. There is not at this time a confirmed date for a potential meeting ," the aide told
the Caller .
" Don't think he is coming ," added one Republican lawmaker on Wednesday.
The same lawmaker told TheDCNF on Tuesday that Rosenstein was likely to testify before the
House Judiciary and House Oversight & Government Reform Committees to answer questions
about claims he discussed wearing a wire during his interactions with Trump.
Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus had called on Rosenstein to testify about
his remarks, which were first reported by The New York Times on Sept. 21.
The conservative lawmakers, including North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows and Ohio Rep. Jim
Jordan, have been staunch critics of Rosenstein because of his failure to respond to requests
for documents related to the FBI's handling of the Trump-Russia probe. - Daily Caller
On Tuesday we reported that the FBI's former top attorney, James Baker, told Congressional
investigators last week that Rosenstein wasn't joking about taping Trump.
"As far as Baker was concerned, this was a real plan being discussed," reports
The Hill 's John Solomon, citing a confidential source.
"It was no laughing matter for the FBI," the source added.
Solomon points out that Rosenstein's comments happened right around the time former FBI
Director James Comey was fired.
McCabe, Baker's boss, was fired after the DOJ discovered that he had leaked self-serving
information to the press and then lied to investigators about it. Baker, meanwhile, was central
to the surveillance apparatus within the FBI during the counterintelligence operation on
then-candidate Trump.
As the former FBI general counsel, Baker was a senior figure with a pivotal position who
had the ear of the FBI director.
Baker also is at the heart of surveillance abuse accusations , many from congressional
Republicans. His deposition lays the groundwork for a planned closed-door House GOP interview
with Rosenstein later this week.
Baker, formerly the FBI's top lawyer, helped secure the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA) warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, as well as three subsequent
renewals. -
Fox News
Meanwhile, the New
York Times noted that McCabe's own memos attest to Rosenstein's intentions to record Trump
- which led to Rosenstein reportedly tendering a verbal resignation to White House chief of
staff John Kelly.
"... Why should a robed, unelected politician be redefining marriage? ..."
"... Many people here still don't get it. This fake left vs right paradigm is just a show and is no different than either professional football or wrestling. The public cheer on their teams and engage in meaningless battle while the controllers pilfer everything of value. ..."
"... Peter Hitchens has remarked that demonstrations are actually indicators of weakness rather than power or authority (something that seems to have eluded Flake and Murkowski), however shrill and enraged that they may be. ..."
"... I'm an aging New Deal Democrat. I have not changed but my former party changed with the tenure of the immoral and ethically challenged rapist, Bill Clinton and his enabler wife. In their previous lives, both were Goldwater Republicans. They switched to the Democrat Party to win elections but they never strayed too far from teats of the the Bushes and their destructive political roots. I"m willing to bet thousands of dollars that if given a fair chance at a quiz about the Clintons, most of the young SJW's, rabid homo's and the poor suckers who follow them know very little about the real Clintons. ..."
"... The Democrat party today is less a party than it is a mob of homosexuals and rabid social justice warriors duped into believing they are oppressed by the extremist college courses in Social Justice. Yet, what they have offer the world is not justice. They offer chaos and anarchy as we saw with the mob of racists black and stupid white kids attacking a man who looked lost and confused, and as it turns out, rightfully frightened by the crowd of social justice terrorists from the Alt-Left. ..."
"... The Democrat Party is gonzo, the same as Hillary and Bill Clinton's speaking tour is destined to be. ..."
Mr. Buchanan, you forgot the "treacherous" work of porn lawyer Michael Avenatti who offered
the straw that broke the camel's back by presenting such an abysmal "witness" such as Julie
Swetnick. Ms. Ramirez' alleged allegations also came down to nothing. Even the so-called Me
too movement suffered a big blow. They turned a fundamental democratic principle upside down:
The accused is innocent until proven guilty. They insisted instead that the accuser is right
because she is a woman!
I watched the whole confirmation circus on CNN. When Dr. Ford started talking my first
thought was; this entire testimony is a charade initiated by the Dems. As a journalist, I was
appalled by the CNN "colleagues." During the recesses, they held tribunals that were 95
percent staffed by anti-Trumpets. Fairness looks different.
For me, the Democratic Party and the Me too movement lost much of its credibility. To
regain it, they have to get rid of the demons of the Clinton's and their ilk. Anyone who is
acquainted with the history of the Clinton's knows that they belong to the most politically
corrupt politicians in the US.
@utu
You're thinking of Justice Kennedy, another Republican choice for whom young Mr. Kavanaugh
clerked before helping President Cheney with the Patriot Act to earn his first robe on the
Swampville Circuit. Chief Justice Roberts was the one who nailed down Big Sickness for the
pharmaceutical and insurance industries.
Like the "federal" elections held every November in even-numbered years and the 5-4
decrees of the Court, these nailbiting confirmation hearings are another part of the show
that keeps people gulled into accepting that so many things in life are to be run by people
in Washington. Mr. Buchanan for years has been proclaiming each The Most Important Ever.
I'm still inclined to the notion that the Constitution was intended, at least by some of
its authors and supporters, to create a limited national government. But even by the time of
Marbury, those entrusted with the powers have arrogated the authority to redefine them. In my
lifetime, the Court exists to deal with hot potato social issues in lieu of the invertebrate
Congress, to forebear (along with the invertebrate Congress) the warmongering and other
"foreign policy" waged under auspices of the President, and to dignify the Establishment's
shepherding and fleecing of the people.
Why should a robed, unelected politician be redefining marriage? Entrusted to
enforce the Constitutional limitations on the others? Sure, questions like these are posed
from time to time in a dissenting Justice's opinion, but that ends the discussion other than
in the context of replacing old Justice X with middle-aged Justice Y, as exemplified in this
cliche' column from Mr. Buchanan. Those of us outside the Beltway are told to tune in and
root Red. And there are pom pom shakers and color commentators just like him for Team
Blue.
Many people here still don't get it. This fake left vs right paradigm is just a show and
is no different than either professional football or wrestling. The public cheer on their
teams and engage in meaningless battle while the controllers pilfer everything of value.
Buchanan knows this but is too afraid to tell "the other half of the story."
It was a costly victory, but not a Pyrrhic one. The Left will no doubt raise the decibel
and octave levels, but if they incur a richly-deserved defeat a month from now, they won't
even make it to the peanut gallery for at least the next two years.
Peter Hitchens has remarked that demonstrations are actually indicators of weakness
rather than power or authority (something that seems to have eluded Flake and Murkowski),
however shrill and enraged that they may be. Should the Left choose to up the ante, to
REALLY take it to the streets well as the English ditty goes: We have the Maxim Gun/And they
have not.
Pat, you are one of the few thinkers with real common sense.
I'm an aging New Deal Democrat. I have not changed but my former party changed with
the tenure of the immoral and ethically challenged rapist, Bill Clinton and his enabler wife.
In their previous lives, both were Goldwater Republicans. They switched to the Democrat Party
to win elections but they never strayed too far from teats of the the Bushes and their
destructive political roots. I"m willing to bet thousands of dollars that if given a fair
chance at a quiz about the Clintons, most of the young SJW's, rabid homo's and the poor
suckers who follow them know very little about the real Clintons.
The Democrat party today is less a party than it is a mob of homosexuals and rabid
social justice warriors duped into believing they are oppressed by the extremist college
courses in Social Justice. Yet, what they have offer the world is not justice. They offer
chaos and anarchy as we saw with the mob of racists black and stupid white kids attacking a
man who looked lost and confused, and as it turns out, rightfully frightened by the crowd of
social justice terrorists from the Alt-Left.
They all slept through the Obama disaster thinking the globalist open borders would make
the world Shang Ri La instead of crime ridden, diseased, and under attack from Muslims and
their twisted ides about God and Sharia Law. Look at the Imam who proclaimed yesterday they
Sharia is the law of Britain and that Muslims are at war with the British government. Yet,
Tommy Robinson gets jailed for pointing out their sated intentions. Messed up. We cannot let
this happen in America.
They ignore the fact that the emasculated Obama failed to fight to pick a Supreme Court
Justice. Even though he was going to choose Neil Gorsuch, not a leftist, the Alt-Left no
doubt would have remained silent if he had. Why? Because Obama was black. But the Alt-Left is
shallow and they could not see that the oreo president was black on the outside but rich and
creamy white on the inside. No doubt, Obama was more like a 1980′s Republican than he
was a Democrat as I understood them to be for decades.
The Democrat Party is gonzo, the same as Hillary and Bill Clinton's speaking tour is
destined to be.
@Ludwig
Watzal Vis-a-vis #PayAttentionToMeToo, it really was a win-win. Rightists successfully
defended the firewall and kept it contained to the left. Perfect. As far as leftists are
concerned, it's still perfectly legitimate – the leftist circular firing squads will
continue.
Many people here still don't get it. This fake left vs right paradigm is just a show and
is no different than either professional football or wrestling.
Well I get it and have been saying so. Trump knows damn well that the people he has
surrounded himself with are Deep Staters Trump is a part of the Deep State. Trump has done
nothing of significance for the 99%. Trump hasn't prosecuted anyone for criminal activity
'against' his campaign or administration. Trump hasn't built a wall (he won't either).
Instead of reducing conflict and war Trump has been belligerent in his actions toward Russia,
China, Syria and Iran .risking all out war. All these things are being done to increase the
wealth and power of the Deep State. For the past ten years Republican House members have been
promising investigations and prosecutions of Democrats for criminal activities .not one god
damn thing changed. Kabuki theater is the name of the game. With such inane bullshit as
Dancing With The Stars on TV and the fake Republicans v Democrats game, it is all meant to
keep the proles from knowing how they are being screwed .a rather easy task at that.
@utu
Same sex marriage is basically irrelevant. Less than 10% of homosexuals co-habitate with a
partner. Perhaps 10% of the general population is openly homosexual (and that's definitely an
over-estimation.).
This means that if all homosexuals that cohabitate with a partner are married, it's less
than 1% of the population we're talking about.
This is a "who really cares?" situation. There's more important things to worry about when
the nation has been at war for 16 years straight, started over a bunch of lies starting with
George W. Bush and continuing with Barak Obama. We have lost the moral high ground because of
those two, identical in any important way, scumbags.
Democrats are enraged and have seen the GOP for the white supremacist evil institution
that it is
This from a group of people that have been endlessly complaining that the Butcher of
Libya, who voted for the Authorization to Use Force in Iraq (what you know as the 2nd Iraq
War) wasn't elected president just because she was running a fraudulent charity, was storing
classified information on an unsecured and compromised server illegally, and is telling you
absolutely morally bankrupt and unprincipled individuals that you have the moral high ground
because she's a woman after all, not just another war criminal like George W. Bush is, and
Obama is.
Caligula's horse would have beaten Hillary Clinton, if the voter base had any sense.
Clinton was the worst possible candidate ever. Anybody, and I mean anybody, that voted for
the Iraq War should be in prison, not in government. They are all traitors.
@Realist
Agree Big money interets have broguht us Trump not only for the tax cuts but to destroy
America's hemegomony. to start the final leg of the shift from west to east. A traitor of the
highest order Pat Buchanan has led the grievence brigade of angry white men for decades
distracted and deluded over the social issues meanwhile the Everyman/woman has lost ground
economically or stayed static no improvement.
@Jon
Baptist You can just about guarantee that the losers in the false 'Right' versus 'Left'
circus will be We The People.
Big Government/Big Insider Corporations/Big Banks feed parasitically off the population.
The role of the lawyers wearing black dresses on the SC, is to help hide the theft. They use
legal mumbo jumbo. The economists at the Fed use economics & mathematical mumbo
jumbo.
Much of current Western society is made up of bullsh*t.
The debate about peak oil demand always tends to focus on how quickly electric vehicles will
replace the internal-combustion engine , especially as EV sales are accelerating. However, the
petrochemical sector will be much more difficult to dislodge , and with alternatives far
behind, petrochemicals will account for an increasing share of crude oil demand growth in the
years ahead.
At a minimum, it show that the EU's thumping of May at last month's Salzburg conference has
led to an uptick in activity, as the EU27 leaders set an earlier deadline for the UK to serve
up something realistic than the UK had previously thought it had (October versus November).
But it's far from clear that all the thrashing around and messaging amounts to progress. As
we'll discuss, some press reports claim the EU is showing more flexibility, but the changes
appear to be almost entirely cosmetic. If so, it would represent a cynical calculation that MPs
are so illiterate about technical details that adept repackaging will get the dog to eat the
dog food.
Another thing to keep in mind is that negotiators are always making progress until a deal is
dead. The appearance of momentum can create actual momentum, or at least buy time. But here,
time is running out, so the question is whether either side has made enough of a shift so as to
allow for a breakthough.
One thing that may have happened, and again this is speculative, is that more key players in
the EU are coming to realize that a crash out will inflict a lot of damage on the EU. A
transition period is actually much more beneficial to the EU than the UK. It would not only
allow the EU more time to prepare, but also enable it to better pick the UK clean of personnel
and business activities that can move to the Continent in relatively short order.
By contrast (and not enough people in the UK appear to have worked this out), the UK will
crash out with respect to the EU in either March 2019 or the end of December 2020. There's no
way the UK will have completed a trade deal with the EU by then, unless it accedes to every EU
demand. Recall that the comparatively uncomplicated Canada trade agreement took seven years to
negotiate and another year to obtain provisional approval. And Richard North points out another
impediment to negotiations: " .the Commission has to be re-appointed next year and, after
Brexit, it will not be fully in operation until the following November." Now there are still
some important advantages to securing a transition agreement, and they may be mainly political
(who wants to be caught holding that bag?) but the differences may not be as significant for
the EU as the UK. The UK will wind up having the dislocations somewhat spread out, first having
to contend with falling out of all the trade deals with third countries that it now has through
the EU in March 2019, and then losing its "single market" status with the EU at the end of
2020. But will the UK also be so preoccupied with trying to stitch up deals with the rest of
the world that it loses its already not great focus on what to do with the EU?
That isn't to say there won't be meaningful benefits to the UK if it can conclude a
Withdrawal Agreement with the EU and win a transition period. For instance, it has a dim hope
of being able to get its border IT systems upgraded so as to handle much greater transaction
volumes, a feat that seems pretty much unattainable by March 2019.
Two more cautionary note regarding these divergent news stories. The first is that we've
seen this sort of thing before and generally, the optimistic reports have not panned out.
However, they have generally ben from unnamed sources. While we do have a very thin BBC article with Jean-Claude
Junkcer saying the odds of a deal had improved and Tusk making cautiously optimistic noises,
Leo Vardarkar was more sober and the piece even admitted, "However, there is still no agreement
on some issues, including how to avoid new checks on the Irish border."
Second, they appear to be mainly about claimed progress or deadlocks on the trade front.
Recall that Article 50 makes only a passing reference to "the future relationship," which is
only a non-binding political declaration. However, these issue seems to have assumed more
importance than it should on the UK end, because it has become a forcing device for the
coalition to settle on what sort of Brexit it wants .and it remains fundamentally divided, as
demonstrated by last week's Conservative Party conference. By contrast, there seems to be
little news on the real sticking point, the Irish border.
First, recall that "Canada plus plus plus" has long been derided by the EU as yet another
way for the UK to try to cherry pick among the possible post-Brexit arrangements. Boris Johnson
nevertheless talked it up as a preferred option to May's too-soft Chequers scheme at the Tory
conference .
and May did not mention Chequers . Did EU pols take that to mean May had abandoned Chequers
to appease the Ultras?
However, as we read things (and we need to watch our for our priors), Donald Tusk appears to
be mouthing a pet UK expression to convey a different idea:
Tusk said the EU remained ready to offer the UK a "Canada-plus-plus-plus deal" – a
far-reaching trade accord with extra agreements on security and foreign policy.
That reads as a Canada style free trade agreement plus additional pacts on non-trade
matters. That is not what "Canada plus plus plus" signified on the UK side: it meant the UK
getting a free trade deal with other (typically not specified) goodies so as to make it
"special" and more important, reduce friction.
The Ultras were over the moon to have Tusk dignify Johnson's blather, even as the very next
paragraph of the Guardian story revealed the outtrade over what "Canada plus plus plus" stands
for:
Boris Johnson and other hard Brexit Tories seized on Tusk's remarks, arguing they showed
it was time for May to immediately switch tack and abandon her Chequers proposals for
remaining in a customs union for food and goods. "Tusk's Canada-plus-plus-plus offer shows
there is a superb way forward that can solve the Irish border problem and deliver a
free-trade-based partnership that works well for both sides of the channel," Johnson
said.
If you managed to get further into the story, it sounded more cautionary notes:
Some Brexiters overlook that the EU's version of a so-called Canada deal incorporates a
guarantee to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland, which would keep Northern
Ireland in the EU customs union and single market. "Canada plus-plus-plus" is also a fuzzy
concept that has no formal status in EU negotiating documents. Michel Barnier, the bloc's
chief negotiator, mentioned the idea in an interview with the Guardian and other papers last
year.
"I don't know what Canada-plus-plus-plus means, it is just a concept at this stage,"
Varadkar said, adding that it did not negate the need for a "legally binding backstop"
– a guarantee to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland if there is no agreement
on the future trading relationship.
EU to let UK super fudge on "future relationship." Another Guardian story reported that the
EU might let the UK sign an even less committal version of the "future relationship"
section , allowing the UK to "evolve" [gah] its position during the transition period.
Frankly, this seems to be allowing for a change in government. I don't see this as that
meaningful a concession, since this statement was never legally binding. However, given that
Parliament must ratify the final agreement, formally registering that that section isn't set in
stone probably would facilitate passage as well as any future change in direction. And if you
suspect this is a big dog whistle to Labour, you be right:
An EU source said: "The message to Labour is that the UK could move up Barnier's stairs if
the British government changes its position in the transition period. Voting in favour of the
deal now would not be the last word on it."
May whips Labour for Chequers . You thought May gave up on Chequers? Silly you! She just had
the good sense to go into her famed submarine mode while Boris was having yet another turn in
the limelight.
From the Telegraph :
Ministers are in talks with as many as 25 Labour MPs to force through Theresa May's
Chequers Brexit deal risking open warfare with the party's own MPs.
The Government's whips' office has spent recent months making contact with the MPs as a
back-up option for when Theresa May's Brexit deal is put to a vote in Parliament in early
December, The Daily Telegraph has been told.
News of the wooing operation has infuriated Eurosceptic Tory MPs who are now threatening
to vote against elements of the Budget and other "money bills" to force Mrs May to drop her
Chequers plan.
If true, this is very high stakes poker. Brexit Central says there are 34 Tory MPs who have
already declared they will oppose any "deal based on Chequers". And, to change metaphors, they
appear ready to go nuclear if they have to. From the Times:
Brexiteers have issued a last-ditch threat to vote down the budget and destroy the
government unless Theresa May takes a tougher line with Brussels -- amid signs that she is on
course to secure a deal with the European Union.
Leading members of the hardline European Research Group (ERG) last night vowed to vote
down government legislation after it was claimed the prime minister will use Labour MPs to
push her plan through the Commons.
Reporting of the key issue of our times gets more bizarre by the day. The latest
contribution to the cacophony is the Telegraph, telling us that Ministers are in talks with
as many as 25 Labour MPs "to force through Theresa May's Chequers Brexit deal".
That approaches are being made to Labour MPs is not news, but the idea that attempts to
sell them the Chequers deal confounds recent indications that the prime minister is preparing
to roll out "Chequers II", with enough concessions to all the Commission to conclude a
withdrawal agreement.
If we are looking at such a new deal, then it cannot be the case that anyone is attempting
to convince Labour MPs of the merits of the old deal. And, even if Ministers succeeded in
such a task, it would be to no avail. Chequers, as such, will never come to parliament for
approval because it will never form the basis of a deal that can be accepted by Brussels.
That should consign the Telegraph story to the dustbin now piled high with incoherent
speculation, joining the steady flow of reports which are struggling – and failing
– to bring sense to Brexit.
EU to announce "minimalist" no-deal emergency plans . Interestingly, the Financial Times has
not had any articles in the last few days on the state of UK/EU negotiations. It instead
depicted the EU as about to turn up the heat on the UK by publishing a set of "no deal" damage
containment plans. I've never understood the line of thought, which seems to be taken seriously
on both sides of the table, that acting like a responsible government and preparing for a
worst-case scenario was somehow an underhanded negotiation ploy. 1 The pink paper
nevertheless pushes that notion:
Brussels is planning to rattle the UK by unveiling tough contingency measures for a
no-deal Brexit that could force flight cancellations and leave exporters facing massive
disruption if Britain departs the EU without an exit agreement in March.
Subtext: it's the EU's fault all those bad things could happen .when it is the UK that is
suing for divorce. Back to the story:
Against expectations in London, the plan is likely to encompass a limited number of
initiatives over a maximum of eight months, diplomats who have seen the document told the
Financial Times.
Notably, the EU is not planning special arrangements for customs or road transport and
only limited provisions for financial services -- a decision that, if seen through, would
cause long queues and operational difficulties at ports and airports.
The minimalist emergency plan, designed to be rolled out should there be no breakthrough
in Brexit talks, would increase the pressure over already fraught negotiations between the UK
and the EU ahead of a summit on 17 October. EU plans would then be firmed up by December
.
The commission has thus far resisted outlining details of its plans for a no-deal Brexit
for fear it would disrupt tense negotiations. But with just six months to go before Brexit,
EU member states have pressed Brussels to speed up its preparations in case no deal is agreed
in time.
Brussels will outline general principles for deciding the fields requiring special
measures, which must only mitigate significant disruptions in areas of "vital union
interest". The measures would be applied by the EU until the end of 2019 on a unilateral
basis. They could be revoked with no notice, according to diplomats.
The plans are intended to enable basic air services, allowing flights to land and fly
straight back to the UK, and to extend air safety certificates and security exemptions for UK
travellers in transit. Visa-free travel is envisaged for British citizens, as long as it is
reciprocated
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The commission has thus far resisted outlining details of its plans for a no-deal Brexit
for fear it would disrupt tense negotiations. But with just six months to go before Brexit,
EU member states have pressed Brussels to speed up its preparations in case no deal is agreed
in time.
Brussels will outline general principles for deciding the fields requiring special
measures, which must only mitigate significant disruptions in areas of "vital union
interest". The measures would be applied by the EU until the end of 2019 on a unilateral
basis. They could be revoked with no notice, according to diplomats.
The plans are intended to enable basic air services, allowing flights to land and fly
straight back to the UK, and to extend air safety certificates and security exemptions for UK
travellers in transit. Visa-free travel is envisaged for British citizens, as long as it is
reciprocated.
Hopes of progress have been fuelled by expectations that Theresa May has come forward with
a compromise solution to the Irish border.
The PM will propose keeping the whole of the UK in a customs union as a final fallback but
allowing Northern Ireland to stick to EU regulations.
The EU has rejected having the UK collect EU customs post Brexit. Moreover, a customs union,
as we've said repeatedly, does not give the UK its keenly-sounght frictionless trade. Making
Northern Ireland subject to EU regulations means accepting the jurisdiction of the ECJ, since
compliance is not a matter of having a dusty rule book, but of being part of the same
regulatory apparatus. Aside from the fact that this solution won't be acceptable to the DUP, it
would also result in a hard land border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
So are we to take this as incomprehension on the part of the Sun's reporters, or that the
Government's negotiators continue to be as thick as a brick? Sadly,
the Guardian tells a similar tale :
Ministers expect to discuss Brexit in a week's time when some hope that officials will
have clarified how the UK proposes to handle cross-border regulatory checks if no progress is
made on agreeing a free trade deal with the EU.
There has been speculation that this solution could involve the whole of the UK agreeing
to be part of a common customs area with the EU in order to avoid the possibility of an
invisible border separating Northern Ireland from Great Britain, in the event that no
long-term deal is signed.
Richard North has the best take. He points the rumors from the UK side come from people who
present themselves as being on the inside but probably aren't, or not enough to have a good
feel, and
continues :
Yet nothing seems to be leaking from No.10, with officials saying merely that proposals
would emerge "soon". Says the Guardian, these are likely to form the basis of technical
negotiations with Brussels "as officials scramble to find a form of words for the withdrawal
agreement that the UK proposes to sign with the EU".
Any such timing will, of necessity, rule out any formal consideration by the October
European Council. Those who understand the detail will know that, before anything can be
considered by the European Council, it must first be agreed by the General Affairs Council,
meeting as 27.
Currently, this is scheduled for 16 October (Tuesday week) – a day before the
Article 50 European Council which starts its two-day session on the 17th. On the face of it,
there doesn't seem to be enough time to factor in any last-minute proposals from London,
especially as details must first be circulated to Member State capitals for comment.
This does nothing, though, but confirm that which we already know – that if there is
to be a final showdown, then it is going to come at the special meeting in November (if this
actually happens), or even the meeting scheduled for 13-14 December.
Even the rumor mills don't give much reason to think there is a solution to the Irish
border. If May really hasn't abandoned Chequers, all the fudging to come up with a content-free
"future relationship" section will be to the detriment of UK citizens, since the Government
will keep holding on to a Brexit plan that the EU will never accept. But the best interests of
ordinary people have gotten short shrift all along.
If there is one thing that still unites Americans across the ever more intellectually
suffocating and bitterly polarized political spectrum our imaginations have been crammed into
like rush hour commuters on the Tokyo Metro, it's our undying love of identity politics.
Who doesn't love identity politics? Liberals love identity politics. Conservatives love
identity politics. Political parties love identity politics. Corporations love identity
politics. Advertisers, anarchists, white supremacists, Wall Street bankers, Hollywood
producers, Twitter celebrities, the media, academia everybody loves identity politics.
Why do we love identity politics? We love them for many different reasons.
The ruling classes love identity politics because they keep the working classes focused on
race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and so on, and not on the fact that they
(i.e., the working classes) are, essentially, glorified indentured servants, who will spend the
majority of their sentient existences laboring to benefit a ruling elite that would gladly
butcher their entire families and sell their livers to hepatitic Saudi princes if they could
get away with it. Dividing the working classes up into sub-groups according to race, ethnicity,
and so on, and then pitting these sub-groups against each other, is extremely important to the
ruling classes, who are, let's remember, a tiny minority of intelligent but physically
vulnerable parasites controlling the lives of the vast majority of human beings on the planet
Earth, primarily by keeping them ignorant and confused.
The political parties love identity politics because they allow them to conceal the fact
that they are bought and paid for by these ruling classes, which, in our day and age, means
corporations and a handful of obscenely wealthy oligarchs who would gut you and your kids like
trout and sell your organs to the highest bidder if they thought they could possibly get away
with it. The political parties employ identity politics to maintain the simulation of
democracy that prevents Americans (many of whom are armed) from coming together, forming a
mob, dismantling this simulation of democracy, and then attempting to establish an actual
democracy, of, by, and for the people, which is, basically, the ruling classes' worst
nightmare. The best way to avoid this scenario is to keep the working classes ignorant and
confused, and at each other's throats over things like pronouns, white privilege, gender
appropriate bathrooms, and the complexion and genitalia of the virtually interchangeable
puppets the ruling classes allow them to vote for.
The corporate media, academia, Hollywood, and the other components of the culture industry
are similarly invested in keeping the vast majority of people ignorant and confused. The folks
who populate this culture industry, in addition to predicating their sense of self-worth on
their superiority to the unwashed masses, enjoy spending time with the ruling classes, and
reaping the many benefits of serving them and, while most of them wouldn't personally
disembowel your kids and sell their organs to some dope-addled Saudi trillionaire scion, they
would look the other way while the ruling classes did, and then invent some sort of convoluted
rationalization of why it was necessary, in order to preserve democracy and freedom (or was
some sort of innocent but unfortunate "blunder," which will never, ever, happen again).
The fake Left loves identity politics because they allow them to pretend to be
"revolutionary" and spout all manner of "militant" gibberish while posing absolutely zero
threat to the ruling classes they claim to be fighting. Publishing fake Left "samizdats" (your
donations to which are tax-deductible), sanctimoniously denouncing racism on Twitter, milking
whatever identity politics scandal is making headlines that day, and otherwise sounding like a
slightly edgier version of National Public Radio, are all popular elements of the fake Left
repertoire.
Marching along permitted parade routes, assembling in designated "free speech areas," and
listening to speeches by fake Left celebrities and assorted Democratic Party luminaries, are
also well-loved fake Left activities. For those who feel the need to be even more militant,
pressuring universities to cancel events where potentially "violent" and "oppressive" speech
acts (or physical gestures) might occur, toppling offensive historical monuments, ratting out
people to social media censors, or masking up and beating the crap out of "street Nazis" are
among the available options. All of these activities, by herding potential troublemakers into
fake Left ghettos and wasting their time, both on- and off-line, help to ensure that the ruling
classes, their political puppets, the corporate media, Hollywood, and the rest of the culture
industry can keep most people ignorant and confused.
Oh, and racists, hardcore white supremacists, anti-Semites, and other far-Right wing nuts my
God, do they love identity politics! Identity politics are their entire worldview (or
Weltanschauung, for you Nazi fetishists). Virtually every social, political, economic, and
ontological phenomenon can be explained by reducing it to race, ethnicity, religion, or some
other simplistic criterion, according to these "alt-Right" geniuses. And to render everything
even more simplistic, each and every one of their simplistic theories can be subsumed into a
meta-simplistic theory, which amounts to (did you guess it?) a conspiracy of Jews.
According to this meta-theory, this conspiracy of Jews (which is headquartered in Israel,
but maintains offices in Los Angeles and New York, from which it controls the corporate media,
Hollywood, and the entire financial sector) is responsible for well, anything they can think
of. September 11 attacks? Conspiracy of Jews. Financial crisis? Jews, naturally. Black on Black
crime? Jews again! Immigration? Globalization? Gun control laws? Abortion? Drugs? Media bias?
Who else could be behind it all but Jews?!
See, the thing is, there is no essential difference between your identity
politics-brainwashed liberal and your Swastika-tattooed white supremacist. Both are looking at
the world through the lens of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or some other type of
"identity." They are looking through this "identity" lens (whichever one it happens to be)
because either they have been conditioned to do so (most likely from the time they were
children) or they have made a conscious choice to do so (after recognizing, and affirming or
rejecting, whatever conditioning they received as children).
Quantum physicists, Sufi fakirs, and certain other esoterics understand what most of us
don't, namely, that there is no such thing as "the Truth," or "Reality," apart from our
perception of it. The world, or "reality," or whatever you want to call it, is more than happy
to transform itself into any imaginable shape and form, based on the lens you are looking at it
through. It's like a trickster in that regard. Look at "reality" through a racist lens, and
everything will make sense according to that logic. Look at it through a social justice lens,
or a Judeo-Christian lens, or a Muslim lens, or a scientific or a Scientologist lens, or a
historical materialist or capitalist lens (it really makes no difference at all) and
abracadabra! A new world is born!
Sadly, most of us never reach the stage in our personal (spiritual?) development where we
are able to make a conscious choice about which lens we want to view the world through. Mostly,
we stick with the lens we were originally issued by our families and societies. Then we spend
the rest of our fleeting lives desperately insisting that our perspective is "the Truth," and
that other perspectives are either "lies" or "errors." The fact that we do this is
unsurprising, as the ruling classes (of whatever society we happened to be born and socialized
into) are intensely invested in issuing everyone a "Weltanschauung lens" that corresponds to
whatever narrative they are telling themselves about why they deserve to be the ruling classes
and we deserve to exist to serve them, fight their wars, pay interest on their loans, not to
mention rent to live on the Earth, which they have claimed as their own and divided up amongst
themselves to exploit and ruin, which they justify with "laws" they invented, which they
enforce with armies, police, and prisons, which they teach us as children to believe is "just
the way life is" but I digress.
So, who doesn't love identity politics? Well, I don't love identity politics. But then I
tend to view political events in the context of enormous, complex systems operating beyond the
level of the individuals and other entities such systems comprise. Thus I've kind of been
keeping an eye on the restructuring of the planet by global capitalism that started in the
early 1990s, following the collapse of the U.S.S.R., when global capitalism (not the U.S.A.)
became the first globally hegemonic system in the history of aspiring hegemonic systems.
Now, this system (i.e., capitalism, not the U.S.A), being globally hegemonic, has no
external enemies, so what it's been doing since it became hegemonic is aggressively
destabilizing and restructuring the planet according to its systemic needs (most notably in the
Middle East, but also throughout the rest of the world), both militarily and ideologically.
Along the way, it has encountered some internal resistance, first, from the Islamic
"terrorists," more recently, from the so-called "nationalists" and "populists," none of whom
seem terribly thrilled about being destabilized, restructured, privatized, and debt-enslaved by
global capitalism, not to mention relinquishing what remains of their national sovereignty, and
their cultures, and so on.
I've been writing about this for over
two years , so I am not going to rehash it all in detail here (this essay is already rather
long). The short version is, what we are currently experiencing (i.e., Brexit, Trump, Italy,
Hungary, et cetera, the whole "populist" or "nationalist" phenomenon) is resistance (an
insurgency, if you will) to hegemonic global capitalism, which is, essentially, a
values-decoding machine, which eliminates "traditional" (i.e., despotic) values (e.g.,
religious, cultural, familial, societal, aesthetic, and other such non-market values) and
replaces them with a single value, exchange value, rendering everything a commodity.
The fact that I happen to be opposed to some of those "traditional" values (i.e., racism,
anti-Semitism, oppression of women, homosexuals, and so on) does not change my perception of
the historical moment, or the sociopolitical, sociocultural, and economic forces shaping that
moment. God help me, I believe it might be more useful to attempt to understand those forces
than to go around pointing and shrieking at anyone who doesn't conform to my personal views
like the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers .
But that's the lens I choose to look through. Maybe I've got it all assbackwards. Maybe what
is really going on is that Russia "influenced" everyone into voting for Brexit and Donald
Trump, and hypnotized them all with those Facebook ads into hating women, people of color,
transsexuals, and the Jews, of course, and all that other "populist" stuff, because the
Russians hate us for our freedom, and are hell-bent on destroying democracy and establishing
some kind of neo-fascist, misogynist, pseudo-Atwoodian dystopia. Or, I don't know, maybe the
other side is right, and it really is all a conspiracy of Jews transsexual, immigrant Jews of
color, who want to force us all to have late-term abortions and circumcise our kids, or
something.
I wish I could help you sort all that out, but I'm just a lowly political satirist, and not
an expert on identity politics or anything. I'm afraid you'll have to pick a lens through which
to interpret "reality" yourself. But then, you already have, haven't you or are you still
looking through the one that was issued to you?
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in
Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing
(USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is
published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .
"... Ship of Fools is no apology for Trumpism. Indeed, Carlson calls Trump "vulgar and ignorant." But he rightly points out that Trump "didn't invade Iraq or bail out Wall Street. He didn't lower interest rates to zero, or open the borders, or sit silently by as the manufacturing sector collapsed and the middle class died." Basically, Donald J. Trump is not your average American politician. Thank God. ..."
"... Well, Ship of Fools excoriates finance capitalism and the class that has constantly reaped economic benefits out of the labor of American workers without contributing anything of substance to the American body politic. The Democrats used to be the party of populist rabble rousers like Huey Long and Al Smith. ..."
"... Explicit in this critique of America's Ruling Class is the fact that democracies are unstable and prone to self-destruction. In modern America, the elite do not attend to the population, cynical race-mongering is used to win votes at the cost of internal peace, and chicken hawks like Max Boot and William Kristol still receive adulation in the Main Stream Media despite their disastrous record of cheering on military misadventures that kill thousands of Americans. (To say nothing of their fanatical opposition to Trump -- despite the fact that he won the presidency when their catspaws McCain and Romney ignominiously failed). Ship of Fools correctly notes that this is what an empire looks like in its final days. ..."
"... Jake Bowyer [ Email him ] is the pseudonym of an American college student. ..."
Since the late fall of 2016, Democrats and other Leftist types have been decrying President
Donald J. Trump as "not normal" and a "threat to democracy." Of course, this is hogwash of the
most rank sort. The same people lambasting Trump for his supposed " authoritarianism " are the
same people who have created the modern American oligarchy. Tucker Carlson , the popular Fox News who wrote
the single most brilliant and prescient Main Stream Media article on the Trump phenomenon:
Donald Trump Is Shocking, Vulgar and Right | And, my dear fellow Republicans,
he's all your fault, by Tucker Carlson, Politico, January 28, 2016.
For Carlson, moral and social rot in the United States starts at the very top -- the place
where Democrats and Republicans
https://vdare.com/posts/they-want-to-lose-gop-congress-sounds-retreat-on-border-wall-funds-democratic-priorities
to maintain unpopular elite rule. Carlson compares this American elite to blind drunk captains
steering a sinking ship. Making matters worse: the fact that, in keeping with Carlson's
nautical parallel, "Anyone who points out the consequences of what they're [the elite] doing
gets keelhauled." Gavin
McInnes (banned from Twitter ) and
Alex
Jones (banned from
everything ) would agree.
Ship of Fools is no apology for Trumpism. Indeed, Carlson calls Trump "vulgar and
ignorant." But he rightly points out that Trump "didn't invade Iraq or bail out Wall Street. He
didn't lower interest rates to zero, or open the borders, or sit silently by as the
manufacturing sector collapsed and the middle class died." Basically, Donald J. Trump is not
your average American politician. Thank God.
For much of Ship of Fools , Carlson comes off sounding like someone with his heart
in the center-left. Some cheeky Twitter users might even dub Carlson's latest book National
Bolshevism.
Why? Well, Ship of Fools excoriates finance capitalism and the class that has
constantly reaped economic benefits out of the labor of American workers without contributing
anything of substance to the American body politic. The Democrats used to be the party of
populist rabble rousers like Huey Long and Al Smith.
But Carlson points out that "the Democratic Party is now the party of the rich." Rather than
attacking mega-wealthy people
like Amazon's
Jeff Bezos or Apple's Tim Cook , the
modern American Left is completely in thrall to money and
corporate power. This hurts every American not in the upper income bracket.
Republicans are no better. They remain wedded to the idea of being the party of business,
and as such many Republican elected officials support Open Borders because that would provide
their donors with an endless supply of cheap labor. This support comes at the cost of angering
a majority of Republican voters.
In sum, both parties have given up on the native-born American workers. And, beginning in
2016, American workers began pushing back at the ballot box.
Ship of Fools is a bleak book. It is also much better than the usual fluff penned
(or signed) by Fox News pundits. Carlson tells uncomfortable truths and
engages with topics that until very recently were only considered fit for the fringe Right
(like VDARE.com ).
Take for instance the displacement of white Americans, especially white working-class
Americans. America is a nation of 200 million white people. Native-born whites pay more in
taxes, provide the majority of America's soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen, and are the
offspring of the people who built this country. For this hard work and loyalty,
foreign-born editors at the New York Times tweet
"#CancelWhitePeople." Hordes of
Antifa types cheer on the displacement of native-born whites, while the political elite do
nothing to combat rising drug overdose deaths and suicides in the Midwest, rural Northeast, and
South. As Carlson warns, " White
identity politics will be a response to a world in which identity politics is the only game
there is."
And, as anti-white vitriol increases and whites are demoted from majority status, Carlson
predicts that white interest groups will form and flex their muscles when they feel that their
backs are up against the wall.
At several points in Ship of Fools , Carlson sincerely grieves for the lost
Liberal-Left of his childhood. He misses the environmentalists who cared about littering, not
about some abstract thing called climate change. He misses those Leftists who cried about
injustice in the world rather than ranting and raving at the behest of the elite class. Without
an honest Left, America could further descend into corporate anarcho-tyranny
-- a place where businesses control free speech and only a small sliver of people enjoy the
benefits of the modern and high-tech economy.
Ship of Fools ends with a warning: either practice democracy or be prepared for
authoritarian rule.
"In order to survive, democracies must remain egalitarian," Carlson argues."When all the
spoils seem to flow upward, the majority will revolt in protest."
Explicit in this critique of America's Ruling Class is the fact that democracies are
unstable and prone to self-destruction. In modern America, the elite do not attend to the
population, cynical race-mongering is used to
win votes at the cost of internal peace, and chicken hawks like
Max Boot and William
Kristol still receive adulation in the Main Stream Media despite their disastrous record of
cheering on military misadventures that kill thousands of Americans. (To say nothing of their
fanatical opposition to Trump -- despite the fact that he won the presidency when their
catspaws McCain
and Romney ignominiously failed). Ship of Fools correctly notes that this is what an
empire looks like in its final days.
In this sense the elites may be right to characterize President Trump as a populist. After
all, Julius
Caesar gave the common man order, security, and bread in the face of a cold and sterile
system. By attempting to dismantle the elite consensus, Trump, Trumpism
, and America
First may just be the first entries in a new age of all-American Caesarism.
We should only be so lucky!
Jake Bowyer [ Email him ] is the pseudonym of an American college
student.
I enjoyed the book immensely even though I'm a socialist myself. Tucker's disdain for wars,
technology companies, and the ruling class are a breath of fresh air. I also enjoy his show
but I do wish he wouldn't talk over the guests he disagrees with.
There must be a reason why people like j g strijdom and curmudgeon, with their slimy
unsubstantiated charges, despise Tucker Carlson. I suspect it is this:
New Tucker book condemns both neoliberalism and neocon foreign policy
Notable quotes:
"... Tucker states that the USA's neoliberal elite acquired control of a massive chunk of the country's wealth. And then successfully insulated themselves from the hoi polloi. They send their children to the Ivy League universities, live in enclosed compounds with security guards, travel in helicopters, etc. Kind of like French aristocracy on a new level ("Let them eat cakes"). "There's nothing more infuriating to a ruling class than contrary opinions. They're inconvenient and annoying. They're evidence of an ungrateful population... Above all, they constitute a threat to your authority." (insert sarcasm) ..."
I think the US society is entering a deep, sustained political crisis and it is unclear
what can bring us back from it other then the collapse, USSR-style. The USA slide into
corporate socialism (which might be viewed as a flavor of neofascism) can't be disputed.
Looks like all democracies are unstable and prone to self-destruction. In modern America,
the elite do not care about lower 80% of the population, and is over-engaged in cynical
identity politics, race and gender-mongering. Anything to win votes.
MSM is still cheering on military misadventures that kill thousands of Americans,
impoverish millions, and cost trillions. Congress looks even worse. Republican House leader
Paul Ryan looks like 100% pure bought-and-paid-for tool of multinational corporations...
The scary thing for me is that the USA national problems are somewhat similar to the ones
that the USSR experienced before the collapse. At least the level of degeneration of
political elite of both parties (which in reality is a single party) is.
The only positive things is that there is viable alternative to neoliberalism on the
horizon. But that does not mean that we can't experience 1930th on a new level again. Now
several European countries such as Poland and Ukraine are already ruled by far right
nationalist parties. Brazil is probably the next. So this or military rule in the USA is not
out of question.
Ship of Fools is what the US empire and the US society looks like now. And that's not
funny. Look at <a
href="https://www.amazon.com/Ship-Fools-Selfish-Bringing-Revolution-ebook/dp/B071FFRJ48">"Ship
of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of
Revolution"</a> by Tucker Carlson hits the mark when he says that the career
politicians and other elites in this country have put the USA on a path of
self-destruction.
Some other factors are also in play: one is that a country with 320 million population
can't be governed by the same methods as a country of 76 million (1900). End of cheap oil is
near and probably will occur within the next 50 years or so. Which means the end of
neoliberalism as we know it.
Tucker states that the USA's neoliberal elite acquired control of a massive chunk of the
country's wealth. And then successfully insulated themselves from the hoi polloi. They send
their children to the Ivy League universities, live in enclosed compounds with security
guards, travel in helicopters, etc. Kind of like French aristocracy on a new level ("Let them
eat cakes"). "There's nothing more infuriating to a ruling class than contrary opinions.
They're inconvenient and annoying. They're evidence of an ungrateful population... Above all,
they constitute a threat to your authority." (insert sarcasm)
Donald Trump was in many ways an unappealing figure. He never hid that. Voters knew it.
They just concluded that the options were worse -- and not just Hillary Clinton and the
Democratic Party, but the Bush family and their donors and the entire Republican
leadership, along with the hedge fund managers and media luminaries and corporate
executives and Hollywood tastemakers and think tank geniuses and everyone else who created
the world as it was in the fall of 2016: the people in charge. Trump might be vulgar and
ignorant, but he wasn't responsible for the many disasters America's leaders created .
There was also the possibility that Trump might listen. At times he seemed interested in
what voters thought. The people in charge demonstrably weren't. Virtually none of their
core beliefs had majority support from the population they governed .Beginning on election
night, they explained away their loss with theories as pat and implausible as a summer
action movie: Trump won because fake news tricked simple minded voters. Trump won because
Russian agents "hacked" the election. Trump won because mouth-breathers in the provinces
were mesmerized by his gold jet and shiny cuff links.
From a reader review:
The New [Neoliberal] Elite speaks: "The Middle Class are losers and they have made bad
choices, they haven't worked as hard as the New Elite have, they haven't gone to SAT Prep
or LSAT prep so they lose, we win. We are the Elite and we know better than you because we
got high SAT scores.
Do we have experience? Uh....well...no, few of us have been in the military, pulled KP,
shot an M-16.... because we are better than that. Like they say only the losers go in the
military. We in the New Elite have little empirical knowledge but we can recognize patterns
very quickly."
Just look at Haley behavior in the UN and Trump trade wars and many things became more
clear. the bet is on destruction of existing international institutions in order to save the
USA elite. A the same time Trump trade wars threaten the neoliberal order so this might well
be a path to the USA self-destruction.
On Capital hill rancor, a lack of civility and derisive descriptions are everywhere.
Respect has gone out the window. Left and right wings of a single neoliberal party (much like
CPSU was in the USSR) behave like drunk schoolchildren. Level of pettiness is simply
amazing.
Along those lines, a female reader of this blog left this comment on a thread about
Alexis
Grenell's shocking New York Times op-ed denouncing "white women" for worrying that
their sons, brothers, and fathers might be falsely accused of rape. Grenell, who is a white
woman, lambasted them over what she calls a "blood pact between white men and white women." My
reader commented
Many white women have, in fact, made a kind of "blood pact" with white men: we call it
"family" in saner times. The expectation that abstract loyalty to any random person who
shares one's gender should override one's loyalty to their actual fathers, brothers,
husbands, and sons (as well as their actual mothers, sisters, and daughters) is profoundly
sad.
With more and more fatherless homes and very small families, I wonder how many women go
through life with no tight, enduring, loving, secure bonds with a father, husband, brother,
or son. Family is where these bonds that transcend individual identity can form. But if your
marriage can be dissolved for no reason, even the most primary bonds are insecure. Without
that, it's just tribe vs. tribe.
It is worth considering that many of these hysterical activists really do despise
the family, and are eager to see families turn on each other over politics. Consider this
tweet, from the senior art critic at New York magazine:
Come gather round people wherever you roam & shun any republican family member you
have. Until this president is gone. You don't need to tell that family member that you are
shunning them. Just stand up for your country very close to home. Make it hurt for both of
you. Rise. Rise
Anyone -- left-wing or right-wing -- who would turn their back on a family member over the
family member's politics is a disgrace. I have family members and good friends with whom I
disagree strongly on politics. Anybody who tries to come between us can go to hell.
This may seem trivial to some. But I canthelp but notice that whenever there is a photo of
one of these kind of protests,at least 1/4 to a third of the protesters are taking "Selfies"
of themselves
Maybe its because im 50 years old. .Maybe im an old fogie . But it really strikes me how
immature and narcissistic most of these protesters seem .
Its like the NYT op/ed that Mr Dreher linked to yesterday. I may disagree with much of
what Paul Krugman writes.But at least he writes like an adult . The NYT op/ed that Mr Dreher
linked to reads like it was written by a 16 year old high school student
Ive long thought that those surrounded by those that they agree with , tend to not be good at
debating. For instance, a liberal that lives in a conservative part of Mississippi, is
probably good at debating.Whereas a liberal tht lives in Berkley CA probably has never had to
learn how to acutaly debate someone
The same goes for conservatives. Mostof the conservatives that I have met in Baltimore
tend to be good at debating.Because they need to be.They cant simply state a conservative
position and just sit back while everyone around them agrees with them
I think that the problem with liberalism nowdays is that a liberal is far more likely to
be surrounded by liberal media and liberal pop culture. To be in a "bubble" a conservative
has to restrict themselves to only watching FoxNews and reading the WSJ.And they pretty much
have to tune out almost all modern American pop culture.And if they go to college, they have
to go to Liberty University
All a liberal has to do in order to be in a bubble is to watch mainstream media and read
mainstream newspapers[like the NYT] and they just have to go to their local college and watch
and listen to mainstream pop culture
It didn't used to be this way.When I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s, igrew up in
extremely liberal areas. And the liberals that I knew were very good at discussing politics.
Nowdays the liberals that I know[and there are many in Baltimore] just repeat and giggle
about, some joke that Samantha Bee told about Republicans. The older liberals that I know are
able to discuss politics.But the younger liberals really cant seem to discuss things in any
kind of adult manner. Since they really seem to have never heard any disagreeing
viewpoints
"... Scholarship based less upon finding truth and more upon attending to social grievances has become firmly established, if not fully dominant, within these fields, and their scholars increasingly bully students, administrators, and other departments into adhering to their worldview. ..."
"... This worldview is not scientific, and it is not rigorous. For many, this problem has been growing increasingly obvious, but strong evidence has been lacking. For this reason, the three of us just spent a year working inside the scholarship we see as an intrinsic part of this problem." ..."
"... We spent that time writing academic papers and publishing them in respected peer-reviewed journals associated with fields of scholarship loosely known as "cultural studies" or "identity studies" (for example, gender studies) or "critical theory" because it is rooted in that postmodern brand of "theory" which arose in the late sixties. ..."
Three scholars wrote 20 fake papers using fashionable jargon to argue for ridiculous
conclusions.
Harvard University's Yascha Mounk writing for The Atlantic:
"Over the past 12 months, three scholars -- James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter
Boghossian -- wrote 20 fake papers using fashionable jargon to argue for ridiculous
conclusions, and tried to get them placed in high-profile journals in fields including gender
studies, queer studies, and fat studies. Their success rate was remarkable
Sokal Squared doesn't just expose the low standards of the journals that publish this kind of
dreck, though. It also demonstrates the extent to which many of them are willing to license
discrimination if it serves ostensibly progressive goals.
This tendency becomes most evident in an article that advocates extreme measures to
redress the "privilege" of white students.
Exhorting college professors to enact forms of "experiential reparations," the paper
suggests telling privileged students to stay silent, or even BINDING THEM TO THE FLOOR IN
CHAINS
If students protest, educators are told to "take considerable care not to validate
privilege, sympathize with, or reinforce it and in so doing, recenter the needs of privileged
groups at the expense of marginalized ones. The reactionary verbal protestations of those who
oppose the progressive stack are verbal behaviors and defensive mechanisms that mask the
fragility inherent to those inculcated in privilege."
In an article for Areo magazine, the authors of the hoax explain their motivation:
"Something has gone wrong in the university -- especially in certain fields within the
humanities.
Scholarship based less upon finding truth and more upon attending to social grievances
has become firmly established, if not fully dominant, within these fields, and their scholars
increasingly bully students, administrators, and other departments into adhering to their
worldview.
This worldview is not scientific, and it is not rigorous. For many, this problem has
been growing increasingly obvious, but strong evidence has been lacking. For this reason, the
three of us just spent a year working inside the scholarship we see as an intrinsic part of
this problem."
We spent that time writing academic papers and publishing them in respected
peer-reviewed journals associated with fields of scholarship loosely known as "cultural
studies" or "identity studies" (for example, gender studies) or "critical theory" because it
is rooted in that postmodern brand of "theory" which arose in the late sixties.
As a result of this work, we have come to call these fields "grievance studies" in
shorthand because of their common goal of problematizing aspects of culture in minute detail
in order to attempt diagnoses of power imbalances and oppression rooted in identity.
We undertook this project to study, understand, and expose the reality of grievance
studies, which is corrupting academic research.
Because open, good-faith conversation around topics of identity such as gender, race, and
sexuality (and the scholarship that works with them) is nearly impossible, our aim has been
to reboot these conversations.''
To read more, see Areo magazine + "academic grievance studies and the corruption of
scholarship"
President Trump said that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was the victim of a Democrat
Hoax, and that allegations of sexual assault levied by multiple women were "all made up" and
"fabricated."
In comments made to reporters on the White House driveway, Trump addressed rumors that the
Democrats will investigate and attempt to impeach Kavanaugh if they regain control over the
House or Senate during midterms.
"So, I've been hearing that now they're thinking about impeaching a brilliant jurist -- a
man that did nothing wrong, a man that was caught up in a hoax that was set up by the Democrats
using the Democrats' lawyers -- and now they want to impeach him," said Trump.
The President then suggested that the attacks on Kavanaugh will bring conservatives to the
polls for midterms:
"I think it's an insult to the American public," said Trump. "The things they said about him
-- I don't even think he ever heard of the words. It was all made-up. It was fabricated. And
it's a disgrace. And I think it's going to really show you something come November sixth."
"... It's a matter of record that Dr. Ford traveled to Rehobeth Beach Delaware on July 26, where her Best Friend Forever and former room-mate, Monica McLean, lives, and that she spent the next four days there before sending a letter July 30 to Senator Diane Feinstein that kicked off the "sexual assault" circus. ..."
"... The Democratic Party has its fingerprints all over this, as it does with the shenanigans over the Russia investigation. Not only do I not believe Dr. Ford's story; I also don't believe she acted on her own in this shady business. ..."
What's happening with all these FBI and DOJ associated lawyers is an obvious circling of the
wagons. They've generated too much animus in the process and they're going to get
nailed..."
Aftermath As Prologue
"I believe her!"
Really? Why should anyone believe her?
Senator Collins of Maine said she believed that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford experienced
something traumatic, just not at the hands of Mr. Kavanaugh. I believe Senator Collins said
that to placate the #Metoo mob, not because she actually believed it. I believe Christine
Blasey Ford was lying, through and through, in her injured little girl voice, like a bad
imitation of Truman Capote.
I believe that the Christine Blasey Ford gambit was an extension of the sinister activities
underway since early 2016 in the Department of Justice and the FBI to un-do the last
presidential election, and that the real and truthful story about these seditious monkeyshines
is going to blow wide open.
It turns out that the Deep State is a small world.
Did you know that the lawyer sitting next to Dr. Ford in the Senate hearings, one Michael
Bromwich, is also an attorney for Andrew McCabe, the former FBI Deputy Director fired for lying
to investigators from his own agency and currently singing to a grand jury?
What a coincidence. Out of all the lawyers in the most lawyer-infested corner of the USA,
she just happened to hook up with him.
It's a matter of record that Dr. Ford traveled to Rehobeth Beach Delaware on July 26, where
her Best Friend Forever and former room-mate, Monica McLean, lives, and that she spent the next
four days there before sending a letter July 30 to Senator Diane Feinstein that kicked off the
"sexual assault" circus. Did you know that Monica McClean was a retired FBI special agent, and
that she worked in the US Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York under Preet
Bharara, who had earlier worked for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer? Could Dr. Ford have
spent those four days in July helping Christine Blasey Ford compose her letter to Mrs.
Feinstein? Did you know that Monica McClean's lawyer, one David Laufman is a former DOJ top
lawyer who assisted former FBI counter-intel chief Peter Strozk on both the Clinton and Russia
investigations before resigning in February this year -- in fact, he sat in on the notorious
"unsworn" interview with Hillary in 2016. Wow! What a really small swamp Washington is!
Did you know that Ms. Leland Keyser, Dr. Ford's previous BFF from back in the Holton Arms
prep school, told the final round of FBI investigators in the Kavanaugh hearing last week -- as
reported by the The Wall Street Journal -- that she "felt pressured" by Monica McLean and her
representatives to change her story -- that she knew nothing about the alleged sexual assault,
or the alleged party where it allegedly happened, or that she ever knew Mr. Kavanaugh. I think
that's called suborning perjury.
None of this is trivial and the matter can't possibly rest there. Too much of it has been
unraveled by what remains of the news media. And meanwhile, of course, there is at least one
grand jury listening to testimony from the whole cast-of-characters behind the botched Hillary
investigation and Robert Mueller's ever more dubious-looking Russian collusion inquiry: the
aforementioned Strozk, Lisa Page, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Bill Priestap, et. al. I have a
feeling that these matters are now approaching critical mass with the parallel unraveling of
the Christine Blasey Ford "story."
The Democratic Party has its fingerprints all over this, as it does with the shenanigans
over the Russia investigation. Not only do I not believe Dr. Ford's story; I also don't believe
she acted on her own in this shady business. What's happening with all these FBI and DOJ
associated lawyers is an obvious circling of the wagons. They've generated too much animus in
the process and they're going to get nailed. These matters are far from over and a major battle
is looming in the countdown to the midterm elections. In fact, op-ed writer Charles M. Blow
sounded the trumpet Monday morning in his idiotic column titled:
Liberals, This is War . Like I've been saying: Civil War Two.
Blasey-Ford happens to work at Palo Alto University, which is the west coast HQ for the
left wing feminist movement in the US. Here's a good video by a woman professor from Canada
that blows the lid off the entire conspiracy:
Nope, the people are so fragmented and full of disinfo and propaganda that they actually
think the other peons are the real problem. While we peons slaughter each other for having
different opinions on the privileged predator class spokespeople, they hop into the private
planes and disappear.
I actually fought in a civil war, the one in the former Yugoslavia. They are like
wildfires that can not be controlled but must burn until the fuel is consumed...
"... At the time the eligible voters were males of European descent (MOED), and while not highly educated they were relatively free of propaganda and IQ's were higher than today. After giving women the right to vote and with other minorities voting the MOED became a minority voter. ..."
"... So today with propaganda and education being what it is, not to mention campaign financing laws especially post Citizen United, and MSM under control of 6 companies, the entire voting class is miseducated and easily influenced to vote for candidates chosen by the elites ..."
"... The founders who incited the revolution against British rule were the American Elites (also British citizens) who wanted more. The elites today got everything they want. They have no need for revolution. The common folk are divided, misinformed, unorganized, leaderless and males are emasculated. Incapable of taking control peacefully or otherwise. ..."
"... This was the high-tariff-era and the budget surplus was an issue all through the balance of the 19th Century. So what were the politics about? 1. Stirring stump (Trump) speeches were all about "waving the bloody shirt" ..."
"... In my view of the fundamental dynamic - namely that of history being one unbroken story of the rich exploiting the poor - representative government is one of the greatest achievements of the poor. If we could only get it to work honestly, and protect it from the predations of the rich. This is a work in progress. It forms just one aspect of millennia of struggle. To give up now would be madness. ..."
The constitution was a creation of the elite at the time, the property class. Its mission was to prevent the common folk from
having control. Democracy=mob rule= Bad.
The common folk only had the ability to elect representatives in the house, who in turn would elect Senators. Electors voted
for President and they were appointed by a means chosen by the state legislature , which only in modern times has come to mean
by the popular vote of the common folk. Starting from 1913 it was decided to let the common folk vote for Senator and give the
commonfolk the illusion of Democracy confident they could be controlled with propaganda and taxes (also adopted in 1913 with the
Fed)
At the time the eligible voters were males of European descent (MOED), and while not highly educated they were relatively
free of propaganda and IQ's were higher than today. After giving women the right to vote and with other minorities voting the
MOED became a minority voter.
Bernays science of propaganda took off during WWI, Since MOED's made up the most educated class (relative to minorities and
women) up to the 70's this was a big deal for almost 60 years , although not today when miseducation is equal among the different
races, sexes and ethnicities.
So today with propaganda and education being what it is, not to mention campaign financing laws especially post Citizen
United, and MSM under control of 6 companies, the entire voting class is miseducated and easily influenced to vote for candidates
chosen by the elites
So how do the common folk get control over the federal government? That is a pipe dream and will never happen. The founders
who incited the revolution against British rule were the American Elites (also British citizens) who wanted more. The elites today
got everything they want. They have no need for revolution. The common folk are divided, misinformed, unorganized, leaderless
and males are emasculated. Incapable of taking control peacefully or otherwise.
Pft has a point. If there was ever a time for the people to take the republic into its hands, it may have been
just after the Civil War when the Dems were discredited and the Repubs had a total control of Congress.
This was the high-tariff-era and the budget surplus was an issue all through the balance of the 19th Century.
So what were the politics about? 1. Stirring stump (Trump) speeches were all about "waving the bloody shirt"
All manner of political office-seekers devoted themselves to getting on the government gravy train, somehow.
The selling of political offices was notorious and the newspaper editors of the time were ashamed of this.
Then there was the Whiskey Ring. The New York Customs House was a major source of corruption lucre.
Then there was vote selling in blocks of as many as 10,000 and the cost of paying those who could do this.
Then there were the kickbacks from the awards of railroad concessions which included large parcels of land.
If there ever was a Golden Age of the United States it must have been when Franklin Roosevelt was President.
karlof1 @ 34 asked:"My question for several years now: What are us Commonfolk going to do to regain control of the federal government?"
The only thing us "common folk" can do is work within our personal sphere of influence, and engage who you can, when you can,
and support with any $ you can spare, to support the sites and any local radio stations that broadcast independent thought. (
if you can find any). Pacifica radio, KPFK in LA is a good example. KPFA in the bay area.
Other than another economic crash, I don't believe anything can rouse the pathetic bovine public. Bread and circuses work...
The division of representative power and stake in the political process back at the birth of the US Constitution was as you
say it was. But this wasn't because any existing power had been taken away from anyone. It was simply the state of play back then.
Since that time, we common people have developed a more egalitarian sense of how the representation should be apportioned.
We include former slaves, all ethnic groups and both genders. We exclude animals thus far, although we do have some - very modest
- protections in place.
I think it has been the rise of the socialist impulse among workers that has expanded this egalitarian view, with trade unions
and anti-imperialist revolutions and national struggles. But I'm not a scholar or a historian so I can't add details to my impression.
My point is that since the Framers met, there has been a progressive elevation of our requirements of representative government.
I think some of this also came from the Constitution itself, with its embedded Bill of Rights.
I can't say if this expansion has continued to this day or not. History may show there was a pinnacle that we have now passed,
and entered a decline. I don't know - it's hard to say how we score the Internet in this balance. It's always hard to score the
present age along its timeline. And the future is never here yet, in the present, and can only ever be guessed.
In my view, the dream of popular control of representative government remains entirely possible. I call it an aspiration rather
than a pipe dream, and one worth taking up and handing on through the generations. Current global society may survive in relatively
unbroken line for millennia to come. There's simply no percentage in calling failure at this time.
It may be that better government comes to the United States from the example of the world nations, over the decades and centuries
to come. Maybe the demonstration effect will work on us even when we cannot work on ourselves. We are not the only society of
poor people who want a fair life.
In my view of the fundamental dynamic - namely that of history being one unbroken story of the rich exploiting the poor - representative
government is one of the greatest achievements of the poor. If we could only get it to work honestly, and protect it from the
predations of the rich. This is a work in progress. It forms just one aspect of millennia of struggle. To give up now would be
madness.
"representative government is one of the greatest achievements of the poor. If we could only get it to work honestly, and protect
it from the predations of the rich. This is a work in progress. It forms just one aspect of millennia of struggle. To give up
now would be madness."
Here, here! I fully agree with you.
In my opinion, representative government was stronger in the U.S. from the 1930's to the 1970's and Europe after WW2. And as
a result the western world achieved unprecedented prosperity. Since 1980, the U.S. government has been captured by trans-national
elites, who, since the 1990's have also captured much of the political power in the EU.
Both Europe and the U.S. are now effectively dictatorships, run by a trans-national elite. The crumbling of both is the result
of this dictatorship.
Prosperity, and peace, will only return when the dictators are removed and representative government is returned.
"Both Europe and the U.S. are now effectively dictatorships, run by a trans-national elite. The crumbling of both is the result
of this dictatorship."
Exactly!! I feel like the Swedish knight Antonius Block in the movie the 7th Seal. There does not seem any way out of this
evil game by the death dealing rulers.
Love it. But you fad3d at the end. It was Gingrich, not Rodham, who was behind Contract on America, and GHWBush's Fed Bank
group wrote the legislation that would have been Bush's second term 'kinder, gentler' Gramm-Leach-Bliley bayonet up the azs of
the American Dream, as passed by a majority of Congress, and by that point Tripp and Lewinski had already pull-dated Wild Bill.
God, can you imagine being married to that hag Rodham? The purple people-eating lizards of Georgetown and Alexandria. Uurk.
I'm reading a great FDR book, 'Roosevelt and Hopkins', a signed 1st Ed copy by Robert Sherwood, and the only book extant from
my late father's excellent political and war library, after his trophy wife dumped the rest of his library off at Goodwill, lol.
They could have paid for her next booblift, ha, ha, ha.
Anyway, FDR, in my mind, only passed the populist laws that he did because he needed cannon fodder in good fighting shape for
Rothschild's Wars ("3/4ths of WW2 conscripts were medically unfit for duty," the book reports), and because Rothschild's and Queens
Bank of London needed the whole sh*taco bailed out afterward, by creating SS wage-withholding 'Trust Fund' (sic) the Fed then
tapped into, and creating Lend-Lease which let Rothschilds float credit-debt to even a higher level and across the globe. Has
it all been paid off by Germany and Japan yet?
Even Lincoln, jeez, Civil War was never about slavery, it was about finance and taxation and the illegitimate Federal supremacy
over the Republic of States, not unlike the EU today. Lincoln only freed the slaves to use them as cannon fodder and as a fifth
column.
All of these politicians were purple people-eating lizards, except maybe the Kennedy's, and they got ground and pounded like
Conor McGregor, meh?
"representative government is one of the greatest achievements of the poor. If we could only get it to work honestly, and protect
it from the predations of the rich. This is a work in progress. It forms just one aspect of millennia of struggle. To give
up now would be madness."
Compare to: Sentiments of the Nation:
12ş That as the good Law is superior to every man, those dictated by our Congress must be such, that they force constancy and
patriotism, moderate opulence and indigence; and in such a way increase the wages of the poor, improve their habits, moving away
from ignorance, rapine and theft.
13ş That the general laws include everyone, without exception of privileged bodies; and that these are only in the use of the
ministry..
14ş That in order to dictate a Law, the Meeting of Sages is made, in the possible number, so that it may proceed with more
success and exonerate of some charges that may result.
15. That slavery be banished forever, and the distinction of castes, leaving all the same, and only distinguish one American
from another by vice and virtue.
16ş That our Ports be open to friendly foreign nations, but that they do not enter the nation, no matter how friendly they
may be, and there will only be Ports designated for that purpose, prohibiting disembarkation in all others, indicating ten percent.
17ş That each one be kept his property, and respect in his House as in a sacred asylum, pointing out penalties to the offenders.
18ş That the new legislation does not admit torture.
19ş That the Constitutional Law establishes the celebration of December 12th in all Peoples, dedicated to the Patroness of
our Liberty, Most Holy Mary of Guadalupe, entrusting to all Peoples the monthly devotion.
20ş That the foreign troops, or of another Kingdom, do not step on our soil, and if it were in aid, they will not without the
Supreme Junta approval.
21ş That expeditions are not made outside the limits of the Kingdom, especially overseas, that they are not of this kind yet
rather to spread the faith to our brothers and sisters of the land inside.
22ş That the infinity of tributes, breasts and impositions that overwhelm us be removed, and each individual be pointed out
a five percent of seeds and other effects or other equally light weight, that does not oppress so much, as the alcabala, the Tobacconist,
the Tribute and others; because with this slight contribution, and the good administration of the confiscated goods of the enemy,
will be able to take the weight of the War, and pay the fees of employees.
Temple of the Virgen of the Ascencion
Chilpancingo, September 14, 1813.
José MŞ Morelos.
23ş That also be solemnized on September 16, every year, as the Anniversary day on which the Voice of Independence was raised,
and our Holy Freedom began, because on that day it was in which the lips of the Nation were deployed to claim their rights with
Sword in hand to be heard: always remembering the merit of the great Hero Mr. Don Miguel Hidalgo and his companion Don Ignacio
Allende.
Answers on November 21, 1813. And therefore, these are abolished, always being subject to the opinion of S. [u] A. [alteza]
S. [very eminent]
Some of the allegations levied against Judge Kavanaugh illustrate why the presumption of
innocence is so important. I am thinking in particular not of the allegations raised by
Professor Ford, but of the allegation that, when he was a teenager, Judge Kavanaugh drugged
multiple girls and used their weakened state to facilitate gang rape.
This outlandish allegation was put forth without any credible supporting evidence and
simply parroted public statements of others. That such an allegation can find its way into
the Supreme Court confirmation process is a stark reminder about why the presumption of
innocence is so ingrained in our American consciousness.
The facts presented do not mean that Professor Ford was not sexually assaulted that night
– or at some other time – but they do lead me to conclude that the allegations
fail to meet the "more likely than not" standard. Therefore, I do not believe that these
charges can fairly prevent Judge Kavanaugh from serving on the Court.
With Kavanaugh on the court, the composition of the body will reflect the domination of
the financial oligarchy over the political process like never before. Four of the nine
justices will have been nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote (George W. Bush
and Donald Trump). Including the two nominated by Clinton, six of the justices will have
been nominated by presidents who received less than 50 percent of votes.
The Democratic Party opposed Kavanaugh not because of his political record as a supporter
of torture, deportation, war and attacks on the rights of the working class, but based on
uncorroborated, 36-year-old allegations of sexual assault that became the sole focus of the
confirmation process.
From the start, the Democrats' opposition to Kavanaugh was never intended to block his
nomination. The Democrats fundamentally agree with Kavanaugh's right-wing views. They offer
no principled opposition to his hostility to the right to abortion, which the Democratic
Party has abandoned as a political issue.
In an editorial board statement Friday, the New York Times signaled that the Democratic
Party's opposition to Kavanaugh was not based on political differences with Trump's
nominee. The newspaper even encouraged Trump to replace Kavanaugh with an equally
reactionary justice, as long as the person nominated had not been accused of assault:
"President Trump has no shortage of highly qualified, very conservative candidates
to choose from, if he will look beyond this first, deeply compromised choice," the
Times wrote.
The right-wing character of the Democratic Party's opposition to Kavanaugh was hinted at
by Republican Senator Susan Collins, who spoke from the Senate floor Friday afternoon to
defend her decision to vote for Kavanaugh. At the appellate level, Collins said, Kavanaugh
had a voting record similar to that of Merrick Garland, whom Barack Obama and the
Democratic Party attempted to elevate to the Supreme Court in 2016. Garland's nomination
was blocked by the Republicans.
Garland and Kavanaugh served together on the Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia, Collins explained, and voted together in 93 percent of cases. They joined one
another's opinions 96 percent of the time. From 2006, one of the two judges dissented from
an opinion written by the other only once.
In the end, each party has gotten what it wanted out of the process. The Republicans
secured the confirmation of their nominee, while the Democrats succeeded in creating a new
"narrative" leading up to the midterm elections, which are a month away.
Changing the rules, talks of changing the constitution, and the status of the SC because
Dems can't find a positive message, or a positive candidate, or persuade the candidate
to recognize and reach out to voters the Democratic party abandoned, reeks of defeatism
and worse.
Exactly.
Clinton neoliberals (aka soft neoliberals) still control the Democratic Party but no
longer can attract working-class voters. That's why they try "identity wedge" strategy trying
to compensate their loss with the rag tag minority groups.
Their imperial jingoism only makes the situation worse. Large swaths of the USA
population, including lower middle class are tired of foreign wars and sliding standard of
living. They see exorbitant military expenses as one of the causes of their troubles.
That's why Hillary got a middle finger from several social groups which previously
supported Democrats. And that's why midterm might be interesting to watch as there is no
political party that represents working class and lower middle class in the USA.
"Lesser evil" mantra stops working when people are really angry at the ruling neoliberal
elite.
"ph" is one of the more subtle Concern Trolls I've seen, I'll give them that.
Reactionaries need to be more afraid that their relentlessly tightening grip on every
single lever of power will lead inexorably to the most bloodthirsty correction in human
history. It's not something anyone would wish for, but what's the realistic alternative?
American elites are just too stupid to enact the kind of sophisticated authoritarian controls
that might stave off total collapse.
I left the United States
because I married a Danish woman. We tried living in
New York, but we struggled a lot. She was not used to
being without the normal help she gets from the Danish
system. We...
(more)
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I left the United States
because I married a Danish woman. We tried living in
New York, but we struggled a lot. She was not used to
being without the normal help she gets from the Danish
system. We made the move a few years ago, and right
away our lives started to improve dramatically.
Now I am working in IT,
making a great money, with private health insurance.
Yes I pay high taxes, but the benefits outweigh the
costs. The other things is that the Danish people
trust in the government and trust in each other. There
is no need for #metoo or blacklivesmatter, because the
people already treat each other with respect.
While I now enjoy an easier
life in Denmark, I sit back and watch the country I
fiercely love continue to fall to pieces because of
divisive rhetoric and the corporate greed buying out
our government.
Trump is just a symptom of
the problem. If people could live in the US as they
did 50 years ago, when a single person could take care
of their entire family, and an education didn't cost
so much, there would be no need for this revolution.
But wages have been stagnant since the 70's and the
wealth has shifted upwards from the middle class to
the top .001 percent. This has been decades in the
making. You can't blame Obama or Trump for this.
Meanwhile, I sit in Denmark
watching conservatives blame liberalism, immigrants,
poor people, and socialism, while Democrats blame
rednecks, crony capitalism, and republican greed.
Everything is now "fake news". Whether it be CNN or
FOX, no one knows who to trust anymore. Everything has
become a conspiracy. Our own president doesn't even
trust his own FBI or CIA. And he pushes conspiracy
theories to mobilize his base. I am glad to be away
from all that, and living in a much healthier
environment, where people aren't constantly attacking
one another.
Maybe if the US can get it's
healthcare and education systems together, I would
consider moving back one day. But it would also be
nice if people learned to trust one another, and trust
in the system again. Until then, I prefer to be around
emotionally intelligent people, who are objective, and
don't fall for every piece of propaganda. Not much of
that happening in America these days. The left has
gone off the deep end playing identity politics and
focusing way too much on implementing government
mandated Social Justice. Meanwhile the conservatives
are using any propaganda and lying necessary to push
their corporate backed agenda. This is all at the cost
of our environment, our free trade agreements, peace
treaties, and our European allies. Despite how much I
love my country, I breaks my heart to say, I don't see
myself returning any time soon I'm afraid.
So they are continuing to turn on each other. I predict this will continue as they try to
'out victim' each other, and their logical inconsistencies become more and more evident.
Sadly this will likely turn violent, as the screaming harpies no of no other way to
resolve conflicts other than scorched earth.
Yep. Scorched-earth violence is capitalism's preferred method of dealing with it's
problems, as millions of people in the Middle East have come to learn.
So they are continuing to turn on each other. I predict this will continue as they try to
'out victim' each other, and their logical inconsistencies become more and more evident.
Sadly this will likely turn violent, as the screaming harpies no of no other way to
resolve conflicts other than scorched earth.
Yep. Scorched-earth violence is capitalism's preferred method of dealing with it's
problems, as millions of people in the Middle East have come to learn.
There's nothing to cry about. Nothing at all has changed. The 1% owned the Supreme Court before adding Kavanaugh. I'm just
pointing out a little reality to all the useful idiots.
There's nothing to cry about. Nothing at all has changed. The 1% owned the Supreme Court before adding Kavanaugh. I'm just
pointing out a little reality to all the useful idiots.
"... Accountability is for the little people, immunity is for the ruling class. If this ethos seems familiar, that is because it has preceded some of the darkest moments in human history ..."
"... September began with John McCain's funeral – a memorial billed as an apolitical celebration of the Arizona lawmaker, but which served as a made-for-TV spectacle letting America know that everyone who engineered the Iraq war is doing just fine. ..."
"... The underlying message was clear: nobody other than the dead, the injured and the taxpayer will face any real penalty for the Iraq debacle. ..."
"... Meanwhile, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon garnered non-Onion headlines by floating the idea of running for president – a reminder that a decade after his firm played a central role in destroying countless Americans' economic lives, he remains not only unincarcerated and gainfully employed, but so reputationally unscathed that he is seen as a serious White House candidate. ..."
Accountability is for the little people,
immunity is for the ruling class. If this ethos seems familiar, that is because it has preceded some of the darkest moments in human
history
'If there are no legal consequences for profiteers who defrauded the
global economy into a collapse, what will deter those profiteers from doing that again?' Illustration: Mark Long/Mark Long for Guardian
US W hen the former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was
released from prison
a few weeks ago, the news conjured memories of a corporate scandal that now seems almost quaint – and it was also a reminder
that Enron executives were among the last politically connected criminals to face any serious consequences for institutionalized
fraud.
Since Skilling's conviction 12 years ago,
our society has been fundamentally altered by a powerful political movement whose goal is not merely another court seat, tax cut
or election victory. This movement's objective is far more revolutionary: the creation of an accountability-free zone for an ennobled
aristocracy, even as the rest of the population is treated to law-and-order rhetoric and painfully punitive policy.
Let's remember that in less than two decades, America has experienced the Iraq war, the financial crisis, intensifying economic
stratification, an opioid plague, persistent gender and racial inequality and now seemingly unending climate change-intensified disasters.
While the victims have been ravaged by these crime sprees, crises and calamities, the perpetrators have largely avoided arrest, inquisition,
incarceration, resignation, public shaming and ruined careers.
That is because the United States has been turned into a safe space for a permanent ruling class. Inside the rarefied refuge,
the key players who created this era's catastrophes and who embody the most pernicious pathologies have not just eschewed punishment
– many of them have actually maintained or even increased their social, financial and political status.
The effort to construct this elite haven has tied together so many seemingly disparate news events, suggesting that there is a
method in the madness. Consider this past month that culminated with the dramatic battle over the judicial nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.
September began with John McCain's funeral – a memorial billed as an apolitical celebration of the Arizona lawmaker, but which
served as a made-for-TV spectacle letting America know that everyone who engineered the Iraq war is doing just fine.
The event was attended by Iraq war proponents of both parties, from
Dick Cheney to
Lindsey
Graham to Hillary Clinton. The funeral featured a saccharine eulogy from the key Democratic proponent of the invasion, Joe Lieberman,
as well the resurrection of George W Bush. The
codpiece-flaunting
war president who piloted America into the cataclysm with
"bring 'em on" bravado,
"shock and awe" bloodlust and
"uranium from
Africa" dishonesty was suddenly portrayed as an icon of warmth and civility when he
passed a lozenge to Michelle Obama. The scene was depicted not as the gathering of a rogues gallery fit for a war crimes tribunal,
but as a
venerable
bipartisan reunion evoking
nostalgia for the supposed halcyon days – and Bush promptly used his newly revived image to
campaign
for Republican congressional candidates and
lobby
for Kavanaugh's appointment .
The underlying message was clear: nobody other than the dead, the injured and the taxpayer will face any real penalty for the
Iraq debacle.
Next up came the 10th anniversary of the financial crisis – a meltdown that laid waste to the global economy, while providing
lucrative taxpayer-funded bailouts to Wall Street firms.
To mark the occasion, the three men on whose watch it occurred – Fed chair Ben Bernanke, Bush treasury secretary Hank Paulson
and Obama treasury secretary Tim Geithner – did not offer an apology, but instead promised that another financial crisis will eventually
occur, and they
demanded lawmakers give public officials
more power to bail out big banks in the future.
In a similar bipartisan show of unity, former Trump economic adviser
Gary Cohn gave an interview in which he asked "Who broke the law?" – the implication being that no Wall Street executives were
prosecuted for their role in the meltdown because no statutes had been violated. That suggestion, of course, is undermined by
banks
'
own
admissions that they defrauded investors (that includes
admissions of fraud
from Goldman Sachs – the very bank that Cohn himself ran during the crisis). Nonetheless,
Obama's attorney
general, Eric Holder – who has now rejoined
his old corporate defense law firm – subsequently backed Cohn up by arguing that nobody on Wall Street committed an offense that
could have been successfully prosecuted in a court of law.
Meanwhile, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon garnered non-Onion headlines by
floating the idea
of running for president – a reminder that a decade after his firm played a central role in destroying countless Americans' economic
lives, he remains not only unincarcerated and gainfully employed, but so reputationally unscathed that he is seen as a serious White
House candidate.
Again, the message came through: nobody who engineered the financial crisis will pay any real price for wreaking so much havoc.
Then as
Hurricane Florence provided the latest illustration of climate change's devastation, ExxonMobil
marched into the supreme court to demand an end to a state investigation of its role denying and suppressing climate science.
Backed by 11 Republican attorneys general
, the fossil fuel giant had reason to feel emboldened in its appeal for immunity: despite
investigative reporting detailing the company's prior knowledge of fossil fuel's role in climate change, its executives had already
convinced
the Securities and Exchange Commission to shut down a similar investigation.
Once again, the message was unavoidable: in the new accountability-free zone, companies shouldn't be bothered to even explain
– much less face punishment for – their role in a crisis that threatens the survival of the human species.
... ... ...
The answer is nothing – which is exactly the point for the aristocracy. But that cannot be considered acceptable for the rest
of us outside the accountability-free zone.
David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an investigative journalist at Capital & Main. His latest book is Back to Our Future:
How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now
"... Leland Keyser, who Ford claims was at the infamous high school "groping" party, told FBI investigators that mutual friend and retired FBI agent, Monica McLean, warned her that Senate Republicans were going to use her statement to rebut Ford's allegation against Kavanaugh, and that she should at least "clarify" her story to say that she didn't remember the party - not that it had never happened. ..."
"... So we have Dr. Blasey-Ford in Rehoboth Beach, DE, on 26th July 2018. We've got her life-long BFF, Monica L McLean, who worked as attorney and POI in the DOJ/FBI in Rehoboth Beach, DE . Apparently at same time she wrote letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein. ..."
A former FBI agent and lifelong friend of Brett Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford allegedly
pressured a woman to change her statement that she knew nothing about an alleged sexual assault by
Kavanaugh in 1982, reports the
Wall
Street Journal
.
Leland Keyser, who Ford claims was at the infamous high school "groping" party, told FBI
investigators that mutual friend and retired FBI agent, Monica McLean, warned her that Senate
Republicans were going to use her statement to rebut Ford's allegation against Kavanaugh, and that
she should at least "clarify" her story to say that she didn't remember the party - not that it had
never happened.
The
Journal
also reports that after the FBI sent their initial report on the Kavanaugh
allegations to the White House,
they sent the White House and Senate an additional package
of information which included text messages from McLean to Keyser
.
McLean's lawyer, David Laufman, categorically denied that his client pressured Keyser, saying in
a statement: "Any notion or claim that Ms. McLean pressured Leland Keyser to alter Ms. Keyser's
account of what she recalled concerning the alleged incident between Dr. Ford and Brett Kavanaugh
is absolutely false."
Ms. Keyser's lawyer on Sept. 23 said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that
she had no recollection of attending a party with Judge Kavanaugh
, whom she
said she didn't know.
That same day, however, she told the Washington Post that she
believed Dr. Ford
. On Sept. 29, two days after Dr. Ford and the judge testified before
the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ms.
Keyser's attorney sent a letter to the panel saying
his client wasn't refuting Dr. Ford's account and that she believed it but couldn't corroborate
it.
-
WSJ
Keyser's admission to the FBI - which is subject to perjury laws - may influence the Senate's
upcoming confirmation debates. Senator Bob Corker (R-TN)
said that he found the most
significant material in the FBI report to be statements from people close to Ford who wanted to
corroborate her account and were "sympathetic in wishing they could, but they could not."
In his testimony last week, Judge Kavanaugh sought to use Ms. Keyser's initial statement to
undercut his accuser. "
Dr. Ford's allegation is not merely uncorroborated, it is refuted
by the very people she says were there, including by a long-time friend of hers
," he
said. "
Refuted
."
Two days later, Ms. Keyser's lawyer said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee: "Ms.
Keyser does not refute Dr. Ford's account, and she has already told the press that she believes
Dr. Ford's account." Mr. Walsh added: "However,
the simple and unchangeable truth is
that she is unable to corroborate it because she has no recollection of the incident in
question.
" -
WSJ
In last week's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ford claimed she never told
Keyser about the assault, saying "She didn't know about the event. She was downstairs during the
event and I did not share it with her," and adding that she didn't "expect" that Keyser would
remember the "very unremarkable party."
"Leland has significant health challenges, and I'm happy that she's focusing on herself and
getting the health treatment that she needs, and she let me know that she needed her lawyer to take
care of this for her, and she texted me right afterward with an apology and good wishes, and et
cetera." said Ford.
About that polygraph
On Wednesday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) fired off an intriguing
letter to Christine Blasey Ford's attorneys on Tuesday, requesting several pieces of evidence
related to her testimony - including all materials from the polygraph test she took,
after
her ex-boyfriend of six years
refuted statements she made
under oath last week.
Grassley writes: "The full details of Dr. Ford's polygraph are particularly important because
the Senate Judiciary Committee has received a sworn statement from a longtime boyfriend of Dr.
Ford's, stating that
he personally witnessed Dr. Ford coaching a friend on polygraph
examinations.
When asked under oath in the hearing whether she'd ever given any tips or
advice to someone who was planning on taking a polygraph,
Dr. Ford replied, "Never."
This
statement raises specific concerns about the reliability of her polygraph examination results."
McLean issued a Wednesday statement rejecting the ex-boyfriend's claims that she was coached on
how to take a polygraph test.
A closer look at McLean
Enjoying the tastes are In back (l-r) Kelly Devine and Nuh Tekmen. In front,
Monica
McLean
, Karen Sposato, Catherine Hester, Sen. Ernie Lopez, R-Lewes, and Jennifer Burton.
BY DENY HOWETH
An intriguing analysis by "Sundance" of the
Conservative
Treehouse
lays out several curious items for consideration.
First, McLean signed a letter from members of the Holton-Arms class of 1984 supporting Ford's
claim.
Next, we look at McLean's career:
Monica Lee McLean was admitted to the California Bar in 1992, the same year Ms Ford's
boyfriend stated he began a six-year relationship with her best friend
. The address
for the current inactive California Law License is now listed as *"Rehoboth Beach, DE". [*Note*
remember this, it becomes more relevant later.] -
Conservative
Treehouse
Sundance notes that "Sometime between 2000 and 2003, Ms. Monica L McLean transferred to the
Southern District of New York (SDNY), FBI New York Field Office; where she shows up on various
reports, including media reports, as a spokesperson for the FBI." and that "
After 2003, Ms.
Monica L McLean is working with the SDNY as a Public Information Officer for the FBI New York Field
Office, side-by-side with SDNY Attorney General Preet Bharara
:"
Here's where things get really interesting:
Ms. Monica Lee McLean and Ms. Christine Blasey-Ford are life-long friends; obviously they
have known each other since their High School days at Holton-Arms; and both lived together as
"roommates" in California after college. Their close friendship is cited by Ms. Fords former
boyfriend of six years.
Ms. Monica McLean retired from the FBI in 2016; apparently right after the presidential
election.
Her current residence is listed at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware
; which
aligns with public records and the serendipitous printed article.
Now,
where did Ms. Blasey-Ford testify she was located at the time she wrote the
letter to Dianne Feinstein, accusing Judge Brett Kavanaugh
?
[Transcript]
MITCHELL: The second is the letter that you wrote to Senator Feinstein, dated the -- July 30th of
this year.
MITCHELL: Did you write the letter yourself?
FORD: I did.
MITCHELL: And I -- since it's dated July 30th, did you write it on that date?
FORD: I believe so. I -- it sounds right.
I was in Rehoboth, Delaware, at the time
.
I could look into my calendar and try to figure that out. It seemed
MITCHELL: Was it written on or about that date?
FORD: Yes, yes. I traveled, I think, the 26th of July to Rehoboth, Delaware. So that makes
sense, because I wrote it from there.
MITCHELL: Is the letter accurate? FORD: I'll take a minute to read it.
So we have Dr. Blasey-Ford in Rehoboth Beach, DE, on 26th July 2018. We've got her life-long
BFF, Monica L McLean, who worked as attorney and POI in the DOJ/FBI in Rehoboth Beach, DE .
Apparently at same time she wrote letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein. -
Conservative
Treehouse
Thus, it appears that Blasey Ford was with McLean for four days leading up to the actual writing
of the letter, from July 26th to July 30th.
Not only did Ms. McLean possesses a particular set of skills to assist Ms. Ford, but Ms.
McLean would also have a network of DOJ and FBI resources to assist in the endeavor. A former
friendly FBI agent to do the polygraph; a network of politically motivated allies?
Does the appearance of FBI insider and Deputy FBI Director to Andrew McCabe, Michael
Bromwich, begin to make more sense?
Do the loud and overwhelming requests by political allies for FBI intervention, take on a
different meaning or make more sense, now?
Standing back and taking a look at the bigger, BIG PICTURE .. could it be that Mrs.
McLean and her team of ideological compatriots within the DOJ and FBI, who have massive axes to
grind against the current Trump administration, are behind this entire endeavor?
-
Conservative
Treehouse
Were Ford and McLean working together to take out Kavanaugh?
In September we reported that an audio recording purportedly from a July conference call
suggests that Christine Blasey Ford's sexual assault accusation against Supreme Court nominee Brett
Kavanaugh wasn't simply a reluctant claim that Diane Feinstein sat on until the 11th hour.
The recording features
Ricki Seidman
-
a former Clinton and Obama White House official and Democratic operative who advised Anita Hill
during the Clarence Thomas hearings, and who was revealed on Thursday as an adviser to Ford by
Politico
.
Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of
sexually assaulting her when they were both teenagers,
is being advised by Democratic
operative Ricki Seidman
.
Seidman, a senior principal at TSD Communications, in the past worked as an investigator for
Sen. Ted Kennedy, and was involved with Anita Hill's decision to testify against Supreme Court
Nominee Clarence Thomas. -
Politico
"While I think at the outset, looking at the numbers in the Senate, it's not extremely likely
that the nominee can be defeated," says Seidman. "I would absolutely withhold judgement as the
process goes on. I think that I would not reach any conclusion about the outcome in advance."
What's more, the recording makes clear that
even if Kavanaugh is confirmed, Democrats
can use the doubt cast over him during midterms.
"Over the coming days and weeks, there will be a strategy that will emerge, and I think it's
possible that that strategy might ultimately defeat the nominee...
whether or not it
ultimately defeats the nominee, it will help people understand why it's so important that they vote
and the deeper principles that are involved in it.
"
"... Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy on Tuesday recommended an FBI investigation into Swetnick for making false statements about Judge Kavanaugh. ..."
"... in keeping with his "shock" approach to the practice of law, moments ago Avenatti released a sworn, redacted statement with from yet another witness claiming to have seen Brett Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge "drink excessively and be overly aggressive and verbally abusive toward girls." ..."
The back and forth escalated as Swetnick's claims have increasingly come under fire as her
own credibility has been undermined by both recent interviews and her own past actions. So much
so, in fact, that Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy on Tuesday recommended an FBI
investigation into Swetnick for making false statements about Judge Kavanaugh.
U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. 0
@SenBillCassidy
A criminal referral should be sent to the FBI/DOJ regarding the
apparently false affidavit signed by Julie Swetnick that was
submitted to the Senate by @MichaelAvenatti.
12:37 PM-Oct 2, 2018
Q? 25.9K Q 13K people are talking about this О
The threat of a probe into his own client did not daunt the pop lawyer, who on
Wednesday morning tweeted that "we
still have yet to hear anything from the FBI despite a new witness coming forward &
submitting a declaration last night. We now have multiple witnesses that support the
allegations and they are all prepared to be interviewed by the FBI. Trump's "investigation" is
a scam."
And, in keeping with his "shock" approach to the practice of law, moments ago Avenatti
released a sworn, redacted statement with from yet another witness claiming to have seen Brett
Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge "drink excessively and be overly aggressive and verbally
abusive toward girls."
As Russia is preparing plans to wean its banking system off the dollar, advancing a trend of
de-dollarization among the US's largest economic and geopolitical rivals, Russian President
Vladimir Putin accused Washington of making a "colossal" but "typical" mistake by exploiting
the dominance of the dollar by levying economic sanctions against regimes that don't bow to its
whims.
"It seems to me that our American partners make a colossal strategic mistake," Putin
said.
"This is a typical mistake of any empire," Putin said, explaining that the US is ignoring
the consequences of its actions because its economy is strong and the dollar's hegemonic
grasp on global markets remains intact. However "the consequences come sooner or later."
These remarks echoed a sentiment expressed by Putin back in May, when he said that Russia
can no longer trust the US dollar because of America's decisions to impose unilateral sanctions
and violate WTO rules.
While Putin's criticisms are hardly new, these latest remarks happen to follow a report in
the
Financial Times, published Tuesday night, detailing Russia's efforts to wean its economy
off of the dollar. The upshot is that while de-dollarization may be painful, it is, ultimately
doable.
The US imposed another round of sanctions against Russia over the summer in response to the
poisoning of former double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, and the US Senate is
considering measures that would effectively cut Russia's biggest banks off from the dollar and
largely exclude Moscow from foreign debt markets.
With the possibility of being cut off from the dollar system looming, a plan prepared by
Andrei Kostin, the head of Russian bank VTB, is being embraced by much of the Russian
establishment. Kostin's plan would facilitate the conversion of dollar settlements into other
currencies which would help wean Russian industries off the dollar. And it already has the
backing of Russia's finance ministry, central bank and Putin.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin is also working on deals with major trading partners to accept the
Russian ruble for imports and exports.
In a sign that a united front is forming to help undermine the dollar, Russia's efforts have
been readily embraced by China and Turkey, which is unsurprising, given their increasingly
fraught relationships with the US. During joint military exercises in Vladivostok last month,
Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that their countries would work together to
counter US tariffs and sanctions.
"More and more countries, not only in the east but also in Europe, are beginning to think
about how to minimise dependence on the US dollar," said Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin's
spokesperson. "And they suddenly realise that a) it is possible, b) it needs to be done and
c) you can save yourself if you do it sooner."
Still, there's no question that US sanctions have damaged Russia's currency and contributed
to a rise in borrowing costs. And whether Russia - which relies heavily on energy exports - can
convince buyers of its oil and natural gas to accept payment in rubles remains an open
question. Increased trade with China and other Asian countries has helped reduce Russia's
dependence on the dollar. But the greenback still accounted for 68% of Russia's payment
inflow.
But, as Putin has repeatedly warned, that won't stop them from trying. The fact is that
Russia is a major exporter, with a trade surplus of $115 billion last year. As the FT pointed
out, Russia's metals, grain, oil and gas are consumed around the world - even in the west,
despite the tensions surrounding Russia's alleged involvement in the Skripal poisoning and its
annexation of Crimea.
To be sure, abandoning the dollar as the currency of choice for oil-related payments would
be no easy feat. But China has already taken the first step and show that it can be done by
launching a yuan-denominated futures contract that trades in Shanghai - striking the most
significant blow to date against the petrodollar's previously unchallenged dominance.
That should embolden Putin to continue with his experiment - not that the US is leaving him
much choice.
About 35 years ago, at a party in San Francisco where everyone was very drunk, now Senator
Feinstein sexually molested me. Don't remember the date or location or anything else, but it
happened, I swear!
Naturally, want to remain anonymous to protect my integrity, but it did
happen! She shoved me down onto my knees and ground her crotch in my face. It was terrible, I
can still recall the horrible smell to this day! The stench was a combination of rotting
flesh and urine. Makes me nauseous just thinking of that sexual assault. INVESTIGATE this
serial molester!
"... The vote for Brexit and the election of protectionist Donald Trump to the US presidency – two momentous markers of the ongoing pushback against globalization – led some to question the rationality of voters. This column presents a framework that demonstrates how the populist backlash against globalisation is actually a rational voter response when the economy is strong and inequality is high. It highlights the fragility of globalization in a democratic society that values equality. ..."
"... See original post for references ..."
"... Aversion to inequality thus reflects envy of the economic elites rather than compassion for the poor. ..."
Posted on September 28,
2018 by Yves
Smith Yves here. Haha, Lambert's volatility voters thesis confirmed! They are voting
against inequality and globalization. This important post also explains how financialization
drives populist rebellions.
By Lubos Pastor, Charles P. McQuaid Professor of Finance, University of Chicago Booth
School of Business and Pietro Veronesi, Roman Family Professor of Finance, University of
Chicago Booth School of Business. Originally published at VoxEU
The vote for Brexit and the election of protectionist Donald Trump to the US presidency
– two momentous markers of the ongoing pushback against globalization – led some to
question the rationality of voters. This column presents a framework that demonstrates how the
populist backlash against globalisation is actually a rational voter response when the economy
is strong and inequality is high. It highlights the fragility of globalization in a democratic
society that values equality.
The ongoing pushback against globalization in the West is a defining phenomenon of this
decade. This pushback is best exemplified by two momentous 2016 votes: the British vote to
leave the EU ('Brexit') and the election of a protectionist, Donald Trump, to the US
presidency. In both cases, rich-country electorates voted to take a step back from the
long-standing process of global integration. "Today, globalization is going through a major
crisis" (Macron 2018).
Some commentators question the wisdom of the voters responsible for this pushback. They
suggest Brexit and Trump supporters have been confused by misleading campaigns and foreign
hackers. They joke about turkeys voting for Christmas. They call for another Brexit referendum,
which would allow the Leavers to correct their mistakes.
Rational Voters
We take a different perspective. In a recent paper, we develop a theory in which a backlash
against globalization happens while all voters are perfectly rational (Pastor and Veronesi
2018). We do not, of course, claim that all voters are rational; we simply argue that
explaining the backlash does not require irrationality. Not only can the backlash happen in our
theory; it is inevitable.
We build a heterogeneous-agent equilibrium model in which a backlash against globalization
emerges as the optimal response of rational voters to rising inequality. A rise in inequality
has been observed throughout the West in recent decades (e.g. Atkinson et al. 2011). In our
model, rising inequality is a natural consequence of economic growth. Over time, global growth
exacerbates inequality, which eventually leads to a pushback against globalization.
Who Dislike Inequality
Agents in our model like consumption but dislike inequality. Individuals may prefer equality
for various reasons. Equality helps prevent crime and preserve social stability. Inequality
causes status anxiety at all income levels, which leads to health and social problems
(Wilkinson and Pickett 2009, 2018). In surveys, people facing less inequality report being
happier (e.g. Morawetz et al. 1977, Alesina et al. 2004, Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Ramos 2014).
Experimental results also point to egalitarian preferences (e.g. Dawes et al. 2007).
We measure inequality by the variance of consumption shares across agents. Given our other
modelling assumptions, equilibrium consumption develops a right-skewed distribution across
agents. As a result, inequality is driven by the high consumption of the rich rather than the
low consumption of the poor. Aversion to inequality thus reflects envy of the economic elites
rather than compassion for the poor.
Besides inequality aversion, our model features heterogeneity in risk aversion. This
heterogeneity generates rising inequality in a growing economy because less risk-averse agents
consume a growing share of total output. We employ individual-level differences in risk
aversion to capture the fact that some individuals benefit more from global growth than others.
In addition, we interpret country-level differences in risk aversion as differences in
financial development. We consider two 'countries': the US and the rest of the world. We assume
that US agents are less risk-averse than rest-of-the-world agents, capturing the idea that the
US is more financially developed than the rest of the world.
At the outset, the two countries are financially integrated – there are no barriers to
trade and risk is shared globally. At a given time, both countries hold elections featuring two
candidates. The 'mainstream' candidate promises to preserve globalization, whereas the
'populist' candidate promises to end it. If either country elects a populist, a move to autarky
takes place and cross-border trading stops. Elections are decided by the median voter.
Global risk sharing exacerbates US inequality. Given their low risk aversion, US agents
insure the agents of the rest of the world by holding aggressive and disperse portfolio
positions. The agents holding the most aggressive positions benefit disproportionately from
global growth. The resulting inequality leads some US voters, those who feel left behind by
globalization, to vote populist.
Why Vote Populist?
When deciding whether to vote mainstream or populist, US agents face a
consumption-inequality trade-off. If elected, the populist delivers lower consumption but also
lower inequality to US agents. After a move to autarky, US agents can no longer borrow from the
rest of the world to finance their excess consumption. But their inequality drops too, because
the absence of cross-border leverage makes their portfolio positions less disperse.
As output grows, the marginal utility of consumption declines, and US agents become
increasingly willing to sacrifice consumption in exchange for more equality. When output grows
large enough -- see the vertical line in the figure below -- more than half of US agents prefer
autarky and the populist wins the US election. This is our main result: in a growing economy,
the populist eventually gets elected. In a democratic society that values equality,
globalization cannot survive in the long run.
Figure 1 Vote share of the populist candidate
Equality Is a Luxury Good
Equality can be interpreted as a luxury good in that society demands more of it as it
becomes wealthier. Voters might also treat culture, traditions, and other nonpecuniary values
as luxury goods. Consistent with this argument, the recent rise in populism appears
predominantly in rich countries. In poor countries, agents are not willing to sacrifice
consumption in exchange for nonpecuniary values.
Globalization would survive under a social planner. Our competitive market solution differs
from the social planner solution due to the negative externality that the elites impose on
others through their high consumption. To see if globalization can be saved by redistribution,
we analyse redistributive policies that transfer wealth from low risk-aversion agents, who
benefit the most from globalization, to high risk-aversion agents, who benefit the least. We
show that such policies can delay the populist's victory, but cannot prevent it from happening
eventually.
Which Countries Are Populist?
Our model predicts that support for populism should be stronger in countries that are more
financially developed, more unequal, and running current account deficits. Looking across 29
developed countries, we find evidence supporting these predictions.
Figure 2 Vote share of populist parties in recent elections
The US and the UK are good examples. Both have high financial development, large inequality,
and current account deficits. It is thus no coincidence, in the context of our model, that
these countries led the populist wave in 2016. In contrast, Germany is less financially
developed, less unequal, and it runs a sizable current account surplus. Populism has been
relatively subdued in Germany, as our model predicts. The model emphasises the dark side of
financial development – it spurs the growth of inequality, which eventually leads to a
populist backlash.
Who are the Populist Voters?
The model also makes predictions about the characteristics of populist voters. Compared to
mainstream voters, populist voters should be more inequality-averse (i.e. more anti-elite) and
more risk-averse (i.e. better insured against consumption fluctuations). Like highly
risk-averse agents, poorer and less-educated agents have less to lose from the end of
globalization. The model thus predicts that these agents are more likely to vote populist. That
is indeed what we find when we examine the characteristics of the voters who supported Brexit
in the 2016 EU referendum and Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
The model's predictions for asset prices are also interesting. The global market share of US
stocks should rise in anticipation of the populist's victory. Indeed, the US share of the
global stock market rose steadily before the 2016 Trump election. The US bond yields should be
unusually low before the populist's victory. Indeed, bond yields in the West were low when the
populist wave began.
Backlash in a booming economy
In our model, a populist backlash occurs when the economy is strong because that is when
inequality is high. The model helps us understand why the backlash is occurring now, as the US
economy is booming. The economy is going through one of its longest macroeconomic expansions
ever, having been growing steadily for almost a decade since the 2008 crisis.
This study relates to our prior work at the intersection of finance and political economy.
Here, we exploit the cross-sectional variation in risk aversion, whereas in our 2017 paper, we
analyse its time variation (Pastor and Veronesi 2017). In the latter model, time-varying risk
aversion generates political cycles in which Democrats and Republicans alternate in power, with
higher stock returns under Democrats. Our previous work also explores links between risk
aversion and inequality (Pastor and Veronesi 2016).
Conclusions
We highlight the fragility of globalization in a democratic society that values equality. In
our model, a pushback against globalization arises as a rational voter response. When a country
grows rich enough, it becomes willing to sacrifice consumption in exchange for a more equal
society. Redistribution is of limited value in our frictionless, complete-markets model. Our
formal model supports the narrative of Rodrik (1997, 2000), who argues that we cannot have all
three of global economic integration, the nation state, and democratic politics.
If policymakers want to save globalization, they need to make the world look different from
our model. One attractive policy option is to improve the financial systems of less-developed
countries. Smaller cross-country differences in financial development would mitigate the uneven
effects of cross-border risk sharing. More balanced global risk sharing would result in lower
current account deficits and, eventually, lower inequality in the rich world.
"rising inequality is a natural consequence of economic growth. " For which definition of
growth? Or maybe, observing that cancer is the very model of growth, for any definition?
Nice model and graphs, though.
What kind of political economy is to be discerned, and how is one to effectuate it with
systems that would have to be so very different to have a prayer of providing lasting
homeostatic functions?
The global overclass can hardly wait too. They think they are in position to guide the
change to their desired outcome. Targeted applied Jackpot Engineering, you know.
At some point if the majority dont think they get any benefit from the economy, they will
put a stake through it, and replace it with some thing that works?now that could be some
thing very different, but it will happen
I had the same thought – growth as defined in the current, neoliberal model. There
is nothing inevitable about inequality – it is caused by political choices.
It is painful to find these assumptions accepted at NC.
"the economy is strong"
Not from my perspective. Or from the perspectives of the work force or the industrial base
replacing themselves. Or the perspective of a 4 to 5 trillion dollar shortfall in
infrastructure funding.
"In our model, rising inequality is a natural consequence of economic growth."
Well, that simply did not happen 1946 to 1971.
"populist delivers lower consumption but also lower inequality to US agents."
REALLY? Consumption of WHAT? Designer handbags and jeans? What about consumption of mass
public transit and health care services? I'm very confident that a populist government that
found a way to put a muzzle on Wall Street and the banksters would increase consumption of
things I prefer while also lessening inequality.
Reading through this summary of modeling, it occurred to me that the operative variable
was not inequality so much as "high financial development."
Yes and also, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. These days, just saying
that globalisation leads to inequality and people act rationally, when they push back –
even though choices are limited – is pretty revolutionary. We need other analyses along
those lines, maybe with a few corrections. Thanks for posting!
" In our model, a populist backlash occurs when the economy is strong because that is when
inequality is high. "
Yes to the above comments. This sentence really stuck in my throat. A strong economy to me
is one that achieves balanced equality. Somehow this article avoids the manner in which the
current economy became "strong". Perhaps a better word is "corrupt". (No 'perhaps' really;
I'm just being polite.)
I also didn't like that the anti-neoliberalists are being portrayed as not having sympathy
for the poor. Gosh, we are a hard-hearted lot, only interested in our own come-uppance and
risk-adversity.
A "strong" economy is one that is growing as measured by GDP – full stop. Inequality
looks to me like a feature of our global economic value system, not a bug.
I only read these articles to see what the enemy is thinking. The vast majority of
economists are nothing more than cheerleaders for capitalism. I imagine anybody who strays
too far from neoliberal orthodoxy is ignored.
the Trump/Brexit populist thinking has nothing to do with equality. it has do do with who
should get preferential treatment and why -- it's about drawing a tight circle on who get's
to be considered "equal".
not sure how you can pull a desire for equality from this (except through statistics,
which can be used to "prove" anything).
I'm confused – so the evidence of statistics should be discounted, in favor of more
persuasive evidence? Consisting of your own authoritative statements about the motives of
other people?
In the future, please try to think about what sorts of arguments are likely to be
persuasive to people who don't already agree with you.
If you consider yourself an "environmentalist," then you have to be against
globalization.
(From the easiest to universally agree upon) the multi-continental supply chain for
everything from tube socks to cobalt to frozen fish is unsustainable, barring Star Trek-type
transport tech breakthroughs.
(to the less easily to universally agree upon) the population of the entire developed
(even in the US) would be stablized/falling/barely rising, but for migration.
mass migration-fueled population growth/higher fertility rates of migrants in the
developed world and increased resource footprint is bad for both the developed world and
developing world.
The long, narrow, and manifold supply lines which characterize our present systems of
globalization make the world much more fragile. The supply chains are fraught with single
points of systemic failure. At the same time Climate Disruption increases the risk that a
disaster can affect these single points of failure. I fear that the level of instability in
the world systems is approaching the point where multiple local disasters could have
catastrophic effects at a scale orders of magnitude greater than the scale of the triggering
events -- like the Mr. Science demonstration of a chain-reaction where he tosses a single
ping pong ball into a room full of mousetraps set with ping pong balls. You have to be
against globalization if you're against instability.
The entire system of globalization is completely dependent on a continuous supply of cheap
fuel to power the ships, trains, and trucks moving goods around the world. That supply of
cheap fuel has its own fragile supply lines upon which the very life of our great cities
depends. Little food is grown where the most food is eaten -- this reflects the distributed
nature of our supply chains greatly fostered by globalization.
Globalization increases the power and control Corporate Cartels have over their workers.
It further increases the power large firms have over smaller firms as the costs and
complexities of globalized trade constitute a relatively larger overhead for smaller firms.
Small producers of goods find themselves flooded with cheaper foreign knock-offs and
counterfeits of any of their designs that find a place in the market. It adds uncertainty and
risk to employment and small ventures. Globalization magnifies the power of the very large
and very rich over producers and consumers.
I believe the so-called populist voters and their backlash in a "booming" economy are
small indications of a broad unrest growing much faster than our "booming" economies. That
unrest is one more risk to add to the growing list of risks to an increasingly fragile
system. The world is configured for a collapse that will be unprecedented in its speed and
scope.
Actually, the way I see it – if one considers oneself an environmentalist, one has
to be against capitalism, not just globalization. Capitalism is built on constant growth
– but on a planet, with limited resources, that simply cannot work. Not long term
unless we're prepared to dig up and/or pave over everything. Only very limited-scale,
mom-and-pop kind of capitalism can try to work long term – but the problem is, it would
not stay that way because greed gets in the way every time and there's no limiting greed.
(Greed as a concept was limited in the socialist system – but some folks did not like
that.)
" Given their low risk aversion, US agents insure the agents of the rest of the world by
holding aggressive and disperse portfolio positions."
That low risk aversion could be driven by the willingness of the US government to provide
military/diplomatic/trade assistance to US businesses around the word. The risk inherent in
moving factories, doing resource extraction and conducting business overseas is always there,
but if one's government lessens the risk via force projection and control of local
governments, a US agent could appear to be "less risk averse" because the US taxpayer has
"got their back".
This paper closes with
"If policymakers want to save globalization, they need to make the world look different
from our model. One attractive policy option is to improve the financial systems of
less-developed countries. Smaller cross-country differences in financial development would
mitigate the uneven effects of cross-border risk sharing. More balanced global risk sharing
would result in lower current account deficits and, eventually, lower inequality in the rich
world."
Ah yes, to EVENTUALLY lower inequality, the USA needs to "improve the financial systems of
less-well developed countries"
Perhaps the USA needs to improve its OWN financial system first?
Paul Woolley has suggested, the US and UK financial systems are 2 to 3 times they should
be.
And the USA's various financial industry driven bubbles, the ZIRP rescue of the financial
industry, and mortgage security fraud seem all connected back to the USA financial
industry.
Inequality did not improve in the aftermath of these events as the USA helped preserve the
elite class.
Maybe the authors have overlooked a massive home field opportunity?
That being that the USA should consider "improving" its own financial system to help
inequality.
I'm glad to see that issues and views discussed pretty regularly here in more or less
understandable English have been translated into Academese. Being a high risk averse plebe,
who will not starve for lack of trade with China, but may have to pay a bit more for
strawberries for lack of cheap immigrant labor, I count myself among the redistributionist
economic nationalists.
Right now I'm making raisins from the grapes harvested here at home .. enough to last for
a year, or maybe two. Sure, it's laborous to some extent, but the supply chain is very short
.. the cost, compared to buying the same amount at retait rates, is minuscule, and they're as
'organic' as can be. The point I'm trying to make is that wth some personal effort, we can
all live lighter, live slower, and be, for the most part, contented.
Might as well step into collapse, gracefully, and avoid the rush, as per J. M. Greer's
mantra.
The UK had become somewhat dependent on Switzerland for wristwatches prior to WW2, and all
of the sudden France falls and that's all she wrote for imports.
Must've been a mad scramble to resurrect the business, or outsource elsewhere.
My wife and I were talking about what would happen if say the reign of error pushes us
into war with China, and thanks to our just in time way of life, the goods on the shelves of
most every retailer, would be plundered by consumers, and maybe they could be restocked a few
times, but that's it.
I recently purchased a cabinet/shelf for 20 tubmans, from a repurposing/recycling
business, and, after putting a couple of hundred moar tubmans into it .. some of which
included recycled latex paints and hardware .. transformed it into a fabulous stand-alone
kitchen storage unit. If I were to purchase such at retail, it would most likely go for close
to $800- $1000.00 easy !!
With care, this 'renewed' polecat heirloom will certainly outlive it's recreator, and pass on
for generations henceforth.
Yes, thank goodness there was no mention of Canada's failure to negotiate a trade treaty
with our best friend. All of a sudden, Canadians seem to be the target of a lot of ill will
in other articles.
I think it's just ill- informed jealousy. Us US mopes think Canadians are much better off
than we Yanks, health care and such. You who live there have your own insights, of course.
Trudeau and the Ford family and tar sands and other bits.
And some of us are peeved that you don't want us migrating to take advantage of your more
beneficent milieu.
It's a different vibe up over, their housing bubble crested and is sinking, as the road to
HELOC was played with the best intentions even more furiously than here in the heat of the
bubble.
Can Canada bail itself out as we did in the aftermath, and keep the charade going?
Feel free to fill out that 8 inch high pile of Canadian immigration documentation, so
ya'all can come on up and join the party. Or just jump on your pony and ride North into the
Land of the Grandmother. Trudeau wants more people and has failed to offer proper sacrifice
to the god Terminus, the god of borders, so .
Just don't move to "Van" unless you have a few million to drop on a "reno'ed" crack shack.
When the god Pluto crawls back into the earth, the housing bubble will burst, and it's not
going to be pretty.
That's funny as our dam here is called the Terminus Reservoir, if the name fits
I'm just looking for an ancestral way out of what might prove to be a messy scene down
under, i'd gladly shack up in one of many of my relatives basements if Max Mad breaks out
here.
Great article, interesting data points, but besides placing tariffs on Chinese imports
there is nothing populist about Trump, just empty rhetoric. Highly regressive tax cuts for
the wealthy, further deregulation, wanton environmental destruction, extremist right-wing
ideologues as judges, a cabinet full of Wall Street finance guys, more boiler-plate Neo-Lib
policies as far as I can tell.
I fear Trump and the Brexiters are giving populism a bad name. A functioning democracy
should always elect populists. A government of elected officials who do not represent the
public will is not really a democracy.
Aversion to inequality thus reflects envy of the economic elites rather than
compassion for the poor.
That's ridiculous. Indeed, the Brexit campaign was all about othering the poor and
powerless immigrants, as well as the cultural, artistic, urban and academic elites, never the
the moneyed elites, not the 1%. The campaign involved no dicussion what's so ever of the
actual numbers of wealth inequality.
When deciding whether to vote mainstream or populist, US agents face a
consumption-inequality trade-off. If elected, the populist delivers lower consumption but
also lower inequality to US agents.
How can anyone possibly write such a thing? The multi-trillion tax cut from Donald Trump
represents a massive long time rise in inequality. Vis-à-vis Brexit, the entire
campaign support for that mad endeavor came from free-trader fundamentalists who want to be
free to compete with both hands in the global race-to-the-bottom while the EU is (barely)
restraining them.
Trump and Brexit voters truly are irrational turkeys (that's saying a lot for anyone who's
met an actual turkey) voting for Christmas.
Some of us mopes who voted for Trump did so as a least-bad alternative to HER, just to try
to kick the hornet's nest and get something to fly out: So your judgment is that those folks
are "irrational turkeys," bearing in mind how mindless the Christmas and Thansgiving turkeys
have been bred to be?
Better to arm up, get out in the street, and start marching and chanting and ready to
confront the militarized police? I'd say, face it: as people here have noted there is a
system in place, the "choices" are frauds to distract us every couple of years, and the
vectors all point down into some pretty ugly terrain.
Bless those who have stepped off the conveyor, found little places where they can live
"autarkically," more or less, and are waiting out the Ragnarok/Gotterdammerung/Mad Max
anomie, hoping not to be spotted by the warbands that will form up and roam the terrain
looking for bits of food and fuel and slaves and such. Like one survivalist I spotted
recently says as his tag-line, "If you have stuff, you're a target. If you have knowledge.
you have a chance–" this in a youtube video on how to revive a defunct nickel-cadmium
drill battery by zapping it with a stick welder. (It works, by the way.)He's a chain smoker
and his BMI must be close to 100, but he's got knowledge
The papers's framing of the issues is curious: the populace has 'envy' of the well-off;
and populism (read envy) rises when the economy is strong and inequality rises (read where's
my yaht?).
The paper lacks acknowledgement of the corruption, fraud, and rigging of policy that rises
when an overly financialized economy is 'good.' This contributes to inequality. Inequality is
not just unequal, but extremely disproportionate distributions which cause real suffering and
impoverishment of the producers. It follows (but not to the writer of this paper) that the
citizens take offense at and objection to the disproprtionate takings of some and the meager
receipts of the many. It's this that contributes to populism.
And the kicker: to save globalization, let's financialize the less developed economies to
mitigate cross-border inequalities. Huh? Was not the discussion about developed nations'
voters to rising inequality in face of globalization? The problem is not cross-border 'envy.'
It's globalization instrinsically and how it is gamed.
I'm with Olga. It's good to see that voting "wrong" taken seriously, and seen as
economically rational. Opposing globalization makes sense, even in the idiosyncratic usage of
economics.
The trouble, of course, is that the world of economics is not the world we live in.
Why does the immigrant cross the border? Is it only for "pecuniary interests," only for
the money? Then why do so many send most of it back across the border, in remittances?
If people in poor countries aren't willing to sacrifice for "luxuries," like a dignified
human life, who was Simon Bolivar, Che Guevara, or more recently, Berta Cáceres?
Seems to be a weakness of economic models in general: it's inconceivable that people do
things for other than pecuniary interests. In the reductionist terms of natural science,
we're social primates, not mechanical information engines.
If this model were a back patio cart, like the one I'm building right now, I wouldn't set
my beer on it. Looks like a cart from a distance, though, esp when you're looking for
one.
To the extent that the backlash has irrational aspects in the way it manifests, I would
suspect that it relates to the refusal of the self-styled responsible people to participate
in opening more rational paths to solutions, or even to acknowledge the existence of a
problem. When the allegedly responsible and knowledgeable actors refuse to act, or even see a
need to act, it's hardly surprising that the snake oil vendors grow in influence.
I'm always leery of t-test values being cited without the requisite sample size being
noted. You need that to determine effect size. While the slope looks ominously valid for the
regression model, effects could be weak and fail to show whether current account deficits are
the true source. Financialization seems purposely left out of the model.
Neoliberals have transformed themselves into a collection of Trump mini-mes, with guilty
until proven innocent as the new "liberal" mantra. You've got standards.
Notable quotes:
"... I've linked to positive Democratic activism at the local level, and clearly there's a robust grass movement, that's anti-Trump. The problem with that strategy is that it motivates the base, but is unlikely to convert anyone. ..."
"... To do that Dems have to prove that despite a booming economy, the GOP oligopoly needs to be broken, simply to ensure that policies the GOP doesn't support – better health care, protection of social security, etc. aren't forgotten by a GOP congress. There are people trying to make that positive argument for change, but they're being drowned out by Trump's good economic news, and the current Dem position as the party of no. Are you suggesting that women hostile to BK were actually GOP supporters Dems have converted? ..."
"Neocon/neolib alliance is flat out of ideas and leadership, and is now rolling around in
the sexual accusations mud with the pig – and the pig is winning".
likbez 10.01.18 at 3:18 am
72 I believe Dr. Christine Ford and Judge Kavanaugh have both had their lives greatly
damaged. Probably ruined.
Her yearbook said she had had 54 consensual sexual encounters. But apparently only the
alleged encounter with Kavanaugh was the one that traumtized her. Is she kidding me?
Despite those efforts, the Palo Alto University psychology professor's fears have come
true since she came forward over the weekend: Her lawyers say she's facing harassment and
death threats. Supporters and opponents have found pictures of her on the Web and converted
them into memes. And her Palo Alto home address was tweeted, forcing her to move out.
In the age of the internet, what's to keep the same thing from happening to any victim of
sexual harassment or assault who decides to come forward? Can they -- or anyone -- completely
erase their online presences to protect themselves?
"The extremely short and brutal answer is no," said Gennie Gebhart, of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation. She does research and advocacy for issues that include consumer privacy,
surveillance and security.
ph 10.01.18 at 5:14 am (no link)
I've been wrong before and a month is an eternity, so the prognosis is subject to revision.
I've linked to positive Democratic activism at the local level, and clearly there's a
robust grass movement, that's anti-Trump. The problem with that strategy is that it motivates
the base, but is unlikely to convert anyone.
To do that Dems have to prove that despite a booming economy, the GOP oligopoly needs
to be broken, simply to ensure that policies the GOP doesn't support – better health
care, protection of social security, etc. aren't forgotten by a GOP congress. There are
people trying to make that positive argument for change, but they're being drowned out by
Trump's good economic news, and the current Dem position as the party of no. Are you
suggesting that women hostile to BK were actually GOP supporters Dems have
converted?
Wasn't that the strategy with the access Hollywood tape? How'd that work out?
Good for the Dems isn't good enough. Dems might take the House, which looks very doubtful
to me now, and are unlikely to take the Senate. That's the best case, which still leaves
Trump and the GOP set up well for 2020. Notice how nobody is pinning their hopes on Mueller
at the moment.
Ms. Mitchell had a line of questioning about the friend who was mutual to Kavanaugh and
Ford. It turns out this was the same person who had been named earlier by Ed Whelan. Ford
said she had dated Garrett, also knew his younger brother, but flatly refused to refer to him
by name in public.
I'll assume Ms. Mitchell was allowed to review all of the investigative material collected
by the Committee to date. There has to be a reason she pursued this line of questioning.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
Who would most likely drive a girl to a party with older high school boys from a different
school and different circle of friends? Who would most likely take a 15 year old girl home
from a party in an age without cell phones? His name is Chris Garrett, nickname of "Squi".
She claims to not remember the person that drove her home, and she claims to not remember the
name of the last boy at the gathering. And she refuses to publicly state the name of the boy
that introduced her to Kavanaugh. These are all one and the same person, her boyfriend and
soon-to-be-ex-BF Chris Garrett, who may have either assaulted her or broke up with her that
day.
fleur de lis , 13 hours ago
What a spoiled brat she must have been whilst growing up.
She must be a really obnoxious snot to her coworkers over the years, too.
And as a teacher she must be a real screwball.
Which explains how she landed an overpaid job at a snowflake factory.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
She walked upstairs calmly with her boyfriend Chris Garrett, nicknamed "Squi".
Why was Ms. Ford wearing glasses that looked like someone rubbed Crisco on the lenses? As
a long time wearer of glasses, I can tell you we dont roll that way, kind of defeats the
purpose. Answer? Those were not her glasses...they were a prop...
Dormouse , 15 hours ago
She's an Illuminati/NXIVM MKUltra-ed CIA sex-kitten. Her family glows in the dark with CIA
connections. She's a CIA recruiter at Stamford, as well as her other job at Palo Alto. Oh,
something traumatic has happened to her, multiple times; but at the hands of her family and
their close Agency friends. Alyssa Milano in the audience? Come on! This is so ******* sick!
What a disgusting display for those in the Know. Does the FBI currently have the balls to
call them all out? That's the question, has Trump reformed the DOJ/FBI -- beyond the hobbled
and shackled part consummed by these criminals with their coup? He seems confident, almost
like he's tormenting his enemies as usual.
aloha_snakbar , 16 hours ago
Funny how Democraps are getting their panties in a wad over BK drinking beer in college,
yet were okay with Slappy Sotoro snorting cocaine in college....go figure...
MrAToZ , 17 hours ago
The Dims don't believe Ford any more than they believe in the constitution. They are
building a better world. They are true believers, one in the cause.
If one of them were at the receiving end of this type of Spanish inquisition they would be
crying foul right out of the batter's box. But, because this is for the cause they will put
the vagina hat on, goose step around and say they believe that mousey Marxist.
It's a made up sink if he's innocent, guilty if he floats game show. They know exactly
what they are doing, which makes them even more reprehensible.
Sinophile , 19 hours ago
If the bitch 'struggled academically in college' then how the hell did she get awarded a
freaking P(ost)H(ole)D(igger)?
onewayticket2 , 19 hours ago
Again, So What??
The democrats have already soiled this Judge's career and family name. Now it's about
delay.
Exoneration note from the Republicans' lawyer carries precisely zero weight with
them.....they are too busy sourcing everyone who ever drank beer with Kav....in an effort to
get another Week Long extension/argue that Trump already greenlighted such an extension to
investigate how much Kav likes beer. or who's milk money he stole in 3rd grade....
onewayticket2 , 18 hours ago
He is not the first college student to get drunk.
Equating getting drunk to charges in every newspaper and TV news station for weeks stating
he is a gang rapist ring leader etc is laughably idiotic. Nice job. Thx for the laugh.
Opulence I Has It , 20 hours ago
The only things she does remember, are the things that directly support her allegations.
That fact, by itself, is reason enough to disbelieve everything she says. The idea that she
would have concrete memories of only those specific events, is not believable.
It's totally believable, though, that she's been counseled thus, to make her story easier
to remember and avoid those inconvenient secondary details. You know, those secondary details
that every police detective knows are how you trip up a liar. They are so focused on their
bogus story, the little details of the time surrounding the fabrication don't hold up.
Last of the Middle Class , 16 hours ago
She remembers clearly she only had one beer and was taking no medication yet cannot
remember for sure how she accessed her counselors records on her whether by internet or
copying them less than 3 months ago?
Not possible.
She's a lying shill and in time it will come out.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
She doesn't remember her rescuer that drove her home and away from such a terrible
situation. Is this plausible? I say absolutely not. IMHO, she knows his name but refuses to
say it while pretending to not remember. Chris Garrett, nicknamed "Squi", who introduced her
to Kavanaugh and who was her boyfriend once. Some have speculated that he assaulted her that
day and/or ended her relationship that day after she didn't want to take things to the next
level with him.
Babble_On2001 , 20 hours ago
Right, that's why the fraud Ford kept repeating, "I don't remember" or "I can't recall."
Yes, a very believable story. Now let me tell you about another female figure that has been
treated poorly, she's called the Tooth Fairy.
deja , 19 hours ago
Tawana Brawley, substitute republican conservative for white state trooper.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
Not only are these claims of not remembering completely implausible, but the transcript
shows that she explicitly refuses to say the name of the boy that introduced her to BK. It
strikes me as wildly disrespectful to Rachel Mitchell and just screams for further
exploration.
Babble_On2001 , 20 hours ago
Right, that's why the fraud Ford kept repeating, "I don't remember" or "I can't recall."
Yes, a very believable story. Now let me tell you about another female figure that has been
treated poorly, she's called the Tooth Fairy.
deja , 19 hours ago
Tawana Brawley, substitute republican conservative for white state trooper.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
Not only are these claims of not remembering completely implausible, but the transcript
shows that she explicitly refuses to say the name of the boy that introduced her to BK. It
strikes me as wildly disrespectful to Rachel Mitchell and just screams for further
exploration.
sunkeye , 21 hours ago
T/y Prosecutor Mitchell for conducting yourself w/ professionalism, decency, & honor -
personal traits none of the Democratic senators seem to possess, or would even recognize if
shown to them directly as you did. Again. t/y & bravo.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
She allowed Ford to refuse to speak the name of the boy that introduced her to BK. Chris
Garrett, nicknamed "Squi", who was Ford's one-time boyfriend. Some speculate that he was the
unnamed final boy at the party and that he may have assaulted Ford and/or dumped her after
she refused to go to the next level with him. Hence the trauma.
Paracelsus , 21 hours ago
I am having trouble keeping these personalities separate as I want to give everyone the
benefit of the
doubt. When I see Justice Kavanaugh, I think of the confirmation hearing as a political
attack on the
Trump administration . Also as an attempt to score points, or make the other side
screw up, before the
upcoming elections.When I see Dr. Ford, I see Hillary Clinton and all the bitterness
from a failed
politician.
The funny thing is I thought all the Trump "fake news" statements were a load of crap.
Turns out he hit the
mark quite often. The lefties are so damn mad because Trump is succeeding and they haven't
been able to
score points against him. So they feel that it is justified to use other
methods,regardless of the fallout.
There is a whiff of panic and desperation present.
I have stated this before, as have others: The loss of the White House by the Democrats
provided a
unique opportunity to clean out the deadwood. This may have seemed cruel and heartless
but the
Obama era is over and the Dem's urgently need to return to their roots before it is too
late. Did they
use this moment of change or did they revert to business as usual? To ask the question
is to
answer it.... This is commonly described as bureaucratic inertia. The Dem's only needed
to get the
ball rolling and they would be moving towards the objective of regaining power. New,
younger
and more diplomatic and law abiding types need to be encouraged to apply. Put out the
help wanted
sign. Do what Donald does,"You're fired!".
RighteousRampage , 21 hours ago
Well, if others have stated it before, it MUST be true. Republiconarists and Demcraps are
playing the same stupid games. Dems got punked w Garland, and now Reps are getting their
comeuppance w Kavanaugh (who really made it worse for himself by holding up such an obviously
false pious portrait of himself).
American Dissident , 22 hours ago
I believe Judge Brett Kavanaugh. I believe Rachel Mitchell, Esq. I believe Leland Keyser.
I believe Mark Judge. I believe P.J. Smyth.
I believe the evidence. That's why I don't believe Ms. Christine Blasey Ford.
Anunnaki , 17 hours ago
But she only had one beer!
Torgo , 11 hours ago
What do you think of the Chris Garrett hypothesis?
VWAndy , 22 hours ago
Mrs Fords stunt works in family courts all the time. Thats why they tried it folks. They
have gotten away with it before.
Aubiekong , 23 hours ago
Never was about justice, this is simply a liberal/globalist plan to stop Trump.
Prince Eugene of Savoy , 20 hours ago
Squeaky Ford only testified to what she had written down. She never used the part of the
brain dealing with actual memory. https://youtu.be/uGxr1VQ2dPI
JLee2027 , 1 day ago
Guys who have been falsely accused, like me, knew quickly that Ford was lying. They all
have the same pattern, too many smiles, attention seeking, stories that make no sense or too
vague,etc.
Barney08 , 1 day ago
Ford is a crusader. She thinks she is a Roe v Wade savior but she is an over educated
ditz.
dogmete , 1 day ago
Right Barney, not an undereducated and-proud-of-it slob like you.
MrAToZ , 1 day ago
You Dims are so willing to just swallow the hook. You idiots have been trained to react,
leave common sense at the door, slap on the vagina hats and start marching in circles.
What a cluster f*ck. Evidently there are suckers born every minute.
Kelley , 1 day ago
One word uttered by Ford proves that not only did Kav. not attack her but no one ever
assaulted her . That word is "hippocampus." No woman in recorded history has ever used
that word to describe their strongest reaction to a sexual assault.
It's mind blowing that a person would react to what was supposedly one of the most
traumatic experiences of her life with a nearly gleeful "Indelibly in my hippocampus " or
something to that effect unless of course it didn't happen. Her inappropriate response leads
me to believe that Ford was never assaulted in the manner in which she claimed. If her
claimed trauma had been a case of mistaken identity regarding a real assault, she still would
have felt it and reacted far differently.
Emotional memories get stored in the amygdala. The hippocampus is for matter-of-fact
memories. When Senator Feinstein asked Ford about her strongest memories of the event, Ford
went all "matter of fact" in her reply, "Indelibly in my hippocampus ." without a trace of
emotion in her response. No emotions = no assault by ANYONE let alone by Kavanaugh.
Giant Meteor , 1 day ago
Not only that, her most indelible memory from the experience was the maniacal laughter ,
not the part where a hand was forcibly placed over her mouth and she thought she may in that
moment, have been accidently killed.
As to the hippopotamus, is that a turtle neck she is wearing or just her neck. What the
**** happened there, she said nothing about strangulation.
pnchbowlturd , 1 day ago
Another peculiar thing about Ford's testimony was the adolescent voicing she gave it in.
It was if she was imitating a 6 year old. I wish MItchell had fleshed out Ford's hobbies
(surfing??) more and given more context to her career activities and recreational pursuits in
college, alcohol consumption patterns or substance abuse treatments. Her voicing was a tell
that she seemed to be overplaying the victim persona for a person who holds a doctorate and
travels the world surfing
Nunny , 1 day ago
If they coached her (while on the loooong drive from CA...lol) to use that voice, they
didn't do her any favors. I thought femi-libs were all about being 'strong' and 'tough'. They
can't have it both ways.....strike that.....they do have it both ways.....and the useful
idiots on the left buy it.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
IMHO, the most peculiar thing was her outright refusal to say aloud the name of the boy
that introduced her to Kavanaugh, when repeatedly questioned by Rachel Mitchell. It was
wildly obvious that she was being evasive and I see it as an enormous tell. Chris Garrett,
nicknamed "Squi", was IMHO the boy that drove her to and from the party, and if he didn't
outright assault her that day, he may have dumped her that day.
MedTechEntrepreneur , 1 day ago
If the FBI is to have ANY credibility, they must insist on Ford's emails, texts and phone
records for the last 2 years.
Anunnaki , 1 day ago
Kill shots:
Ranging from "mid 1980s" in a text to the Washington Post to "early 80s"
No name was listed in 2012 and 2013 individual and marriage therapy notes.
she was the victim of "physical abuse," whereas she has now testified that she told her
husband about a "sexual assault."
she does not remember who invited her to the party or how she heard about it. She does
not remember how she got to the party." Mitchell continued: "She does not remember in what
house the assault allegedly took place or where that house was located with any
specificity. Perhaps most importantly, she does not remember how she got from the party to
her house."
In her letter to Feinstein, she said "me and 4 others" were at the party but in her
testimony she said there were four boys in additional to Leland Keyser and herself. She did
not list Leland Keyser even though they are good friends. Leland Keyser's presence should
have been more memorable than PJ Smyth's,
· She testified that she had exactly one beer at the party
· "All three named eyewitnesses have submitted statements to the Committee denying
any memory of the party whatsoever,
· her BFF: Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever
being at a party or gathering where he was present with
· the simple and unchangeable truth is that Keyser is unable to corroborate [Dr.
Ford's allegations] because she has no recollection of the incident in question.
· Mitchell stated that Ford refused to provide her therapy notes to the Senate
Committee.
· Mitchell says that Ford wanted to remain confidential but called a tipline at the
Washington Post.
· she also said she did not contact the Senate because she claimed she "did not
know how to do that."
· It would also have been inappropriate to administer a polygraph to someone who
was grieving.
· the date of the hearing was delayed because the Committee was told that Ford's
symptoms prevented her from flying, but she agreed during testimony that she flies "fairly
frequently."
· She also flew to Washington D.C. for the hearing.
· "The activities of Congressional Democrats and Dr. Ford's attorneys likely
affected Dr. Ford's account.
"... Who would most likely drive a girl to a party with older high school boys from a different school and different circle of friends? Who would most likely take a 15 year old girl home from a party in an age without cell phones? His name is Chris Garrett, nickname of "Squi". She claims to not remember the person that drove her home, and she claims to not remember the name of the last boy at the gathering. And she refuses to publicly state the name of the boy that introduced her to Kavanaugh. These are all one and the same person, her boyfriend and soon-to-be-ex-BF Chris Garrett, who may have either assaulted her or broke up with her that day. ..."
"... Yes. I was focused on trying to get into an elite college when I was in HS and these people's lives were nothing like mine in my teens. But then like a lot of people I'm lowborn as opposed to these people. I was a caddy at the Country Club, and my parents were certainly not members. ..."
"... She walked upstairs calmly with her boyfriend Chris Garrett, nicknamed "Squi". ..."
"... You go (down) girl, Doctor Ford! What a brave 15 year-old drinking at HS and College-Level Parties! Truly a Progressive ahead of the times! ..."
"... Can't see that it isn't about Trump. It's about a Populist/Nationalist movement to put an end to the degradation of Progressive Globalists ..."
"... Why was Ms. Ford wearing glasses that looked like someone rubbed Crisco on the lenses? As a long time wearer of glasses, I can tell you we dont roll that way, kind of defeats the purpose. Answer? Those were not her glasses...they were a prop... ..."
"... Hahaha! She should have just taken out the lens out. No one would have looked that closely or would they ? ..."
"... Her family glows in the dark with CIA connections. She's a CIA recruiter at Stamford, as well as her other job at Palo Alto. ..."
"... She doesn't remember her rescuer that drove her home and away from such a terrible situation. Is this plausible? I say absolutely not. IMHO, she knows his name but refuses to say it while pretending to not remember. Chris Garrett, nicknamed "Squi", who introduced her to Kavanaugh and who was her boyfriend once. Some have speculated that he assaulted her that day and/or ended her relationship that day after she didn't want to take things to the next level with him. ..."
Ms. Mitchell had a line of questioning about the friend who was mutual to Kavanaugh and
Ford. It turns out this was the same person who had been named earlier by Ed Whelan. Ford said
she had dated Garrett, also knew his younger brother, but flatly refused to refer to him by
name in public.
I'll assume Ms. Mitchell was allowed to review all of the investigative material collected
by the Committee to date. There has to be a reason she pursued this line of
questioning.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
Who would most likely drive a girl to a party with older high school boys from a different
school and different circle of friends? Who would most likely take a 15 year old girl home
from a party in an age without cell phones? His name is Chris Garrett, nickname of "Squi".
She claims to not remember the person that drove her home, and she claims to not remember the
name of the last boy at the gathering. And she refuses to publicly state the name of the boy
that introduced her to Kavanaugh. These are all one and the same person, her boyfriend and
soon-to-be-ex-BF Chris Garrett, who may have either assaulted her or broke up with her that
day.
fleur de lis , 13 hours ago
What a spoiled brat she must have been whilst growing up. She must be a really obnoxious snot to her coworkers over the years, too. And as a teacher she must be a real screwball. Which explains how she landed an overpaid job at a snowflake factory.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
Yes. I was focused on trying to get into an elite college when I was in HS and these
people's lives were nothing like mine in my teens. But then like a lot of people I'm lowborn
as opposed to these people. I was a caddy at the Country Club, and my parents were certainly
not members.
Brazillionaire , 14 hours ago
I haven't read all the comments so I don't know if somebody already brought this up... can
this woman (who was 15) explain why she was in an upstairs bedroom with two boys? Did they
drag her up the stairs? In front of the others? If she went willingly, for what purpose?
Some things reign eternal... You go (down) girl, Doctor Ford! What a brave 15 year-old
drinking at HS and College-Level Parties! Truly a Progressive ahead of the times! Thank you
for paving the road to ruin! Don't forget to breathe in-between. You ARE the FACE OF THE
DEMOCRATIC PARTY, GIRL! Suck it up, Buttercup!
alfbell , 15 hours ago
I BELIEVE!!
... that America's institutions are being torn down by Leftists. The attempt to create a
new totalitarian regime has been upon us for decades and is now perfectly clear.
We will not say goodbye to morality.
We will not say goodbye to science.
We will not say goodbye to democracy.
We will not say goodbye to our Constitution, Bill of Rights, Founding Fathers, Logic,
Decency, etc. etc. etc.
MAGA!
AHBL , 15 hours ago
Morality: Your dear Leader cheated on 3 different wives, one of them with a
prostitute,...while she was pregnant (or had a 4 month old, I forget); filed for bankruptcy 5
times, cheating many people out of money; settled fraud lawsuits; lied about charity
donations; your party nominated an actual PEDOPHILE (Moore) for Senate and now wants to
appoint an angry drunk to be SCJ!
Science: You folks are literally disputing the conclusions of the vast, vast majority of
scientists (97% by my last count) when it comes to global warming.
Democracy: this is a Democratic Republic...if it was a Democracy Trump wouldn't be
President.
The rest of the nonsense you wrote was just filler...obviously.
Hadenough1000 , 11 hours ago
Still better than the rapist and intern cigarer and Benghazi killer clintons. why do retarded libturds not see that!!
alfbell , 11 hours ago
You are clueless. Have all of your priorities and importances upside down. Have zero
critical thinking.
Can't see that it isn't about Trump. It's about a Populist/Nationalist movement to put an
end to the degradation of Progressive Globalists. Look at the big picture AHBL. C'mon you can
do it.
aloha_snakbar , 15 hours ago
Why was Ms. Ford wearing glasses that looked like someone rubbed Crisco on the lenses? As
a long time wearer of glasses, I can tell you we dont roll that way, kind of defeats the
purpose. Answer? Those were not her glasses...they were a prop...
NeigeAmericain , 13 hours ago
Hahaha! She should have just taken out the lens out. No one would have looked that closely
or would they ? 🤔
Dormouse , 15 hours ago
She's an Illuminati/NXIVM MKUltra-ed CIA sex-kitten.
Her family glows in the dark with CIA
connections. She's a CIA recruiter at Stamford, as well as her other job at Palo Alto.
Oh,
something traumatic has happened to her, multiple times; but at the hands of her family and
their close Agency friends. Alyssa Milano in the audience? Come on! This is so ******* sick!
What a disgusting display for those in the Know. Does the FBI currently have the balls to
call them all out? That's the question, has Trump reformed the DOJ/FBI -- beyond the hobbled
and shackled part consummed by these criminals with their coup? He seems confident, almost
like he's tormenting his enemies as usual.
" The episode occurred on a September evening in 1985 after Kavanaugh, Ludington and
Dudley, attended the UB40 concert ."
UB40? Well, there you have it, if that isn't disqualifying, I don't know what is.
Debt Slave , 16 hours ago
She is a cross eyed boobis and we have to believe her because she says Kavanaugh, a white
hetero catholic man without any decent upbringing or engrained scruples raped her like a
monkey savage out of the jungle. Oh sorry, TRIED to rape her. As a teenager. Tried to raped a
pathetic, stupid cross eyed retarded moron that has since been successfully lobotomized at a
'modern' American university.
When is the last time you saw a 'mentally challenged' person being abused? Oh yes I
remember now, it was Chicongo, January 2017. Four negroes shoved a retarded white man's head
in a toilet and demanded he swear that he loved Niggers.
Never heard what happened to the savage fuckers, eh? Not surprised.
i know who and what I am voting for white man, do you?
benb , 16 hours ago
Time for the un-redacted FISA docs and the text messages. That should send Schumer and the
gang into a tailspin.
MrAToZ , 17 hours ago
The Dims don't believe Ford any more than they believe in the constitution. They are
building a better world. They are true believers, one in the cause.
If one of them were at the receiving end of this type of Spanish inquisition they would be
crying foul right out of the batter's box. But, because this is for the cause they will put
the vagina hat on, goose step around and say they believe that mousey Marxist.
It's a made up sink if he's innocent, guilty if he floats game show. They know exactly
what they are doing, which makes them even more reprehensible.
BankSurfyMan , 18 hours ago
Fordy had sexual encounters, she drinks beer and flies all over the globe... One day she
had a beer and cannot remember getting home on time to watch, MOAR DOOM NEWS! Fucktard Fordy!
Doom 2019! Next!
Kafir Goyim , 18 hours ago
Just had lunch with a democrat. He's generally tolerable, so his level of anger at
Kavanaugh and his acceptance of "anything goes" to derail Kavanaugh was surprising to me.
Democrats believe that Roe V Wade is instantly overturned if Kavanaugh gets in. They also
think that if Roe V Wade is overturned, no woman will ever be able to abort another baby in
the US.
I explained to him that destruction of Roe V Wade will only make it a state issue, so
girls in California, Oregon, Washington, New York, etc will be able to kill as many babies as
they want to. It will only be girls in Wyoming or Utah or some other very red state that
might have to schlep their *** to another state to kill their kid.
Democrats see this as a battle for abortion, and if Kav gets confirmed, abortion is
completely gone in the USA. That's why you have these women freaking out. They think the
stakes are much higher than they actually are. Almost all of the women that are so worried
about this live in states where it won't have any effect on them at all.
Kafir Goyim , 18 hours ago
I think I kind of calmed him down. We need to let them know that their world doesn't end
if Roe V Wade is overturned. I am also not at all sure it would be overturned, even with Kav
on the court, but they insist it will be, so not worth arguing. Reminding them that it
doesn't effect them, if they live in a blue state should calm their fears a little.
The right to abort is their 2nd amendment, God help us. If you explain to them they are
not really in danger, it may calm them down. They'll still make noise about those poor girls
who can't get an abortion after school and still make it home for dinner, and instead, have
to take a bus to another state to kill their kid, but they won't be as personally threatened
and lashing out as they mistakenly are now.
when the saxon began , 17 hours ago
And therein lies the fatal flaw of an elected representative government. The votes of the
ignorant and stupid are counted the same as yours or mine. And there are far more of
them.
VisionQuest , 18 hours ago
Democrats stand for atheism, abortion & sodomy. Ask yourself this question: Who stands
with Democrats? If your answer is "I do." then you'd best rethink your precious notions of
morality, truth, common decency, common sense and justice.
It is undoubtedly true that, in our entirely imperfect world, the American Way of life is
also far from perfect. But it is also true that, compared to every other system of government
on the planet, there is no comparison with the level of achievement accomplished by the
American Way of life.
Democrats hate and will destroy the American Way of life. Have you been a Democrat? Walk
away.
freedommusic , 19 hours ago
At this point the FBI should recommend a criminal investigation to the DOJ for treasonous
actors who are subverting the constitutional process of SC nomination. The crimes of perjury,
sedition, and treason, need to be clearly articulated to the public and vigorous prosecution
ensue.
We are STILL a Constitutional Republic - RIGHT?
Giant Meteor , 18 hours ago
Well, I am betting 27 trillion dollars that the answer to your question is a resounding ,
no ...
eitheror , 19 hours ago
Thank you Rachel Mitchell for having the courage to tell the truth about the testimony of
Ms. Blasey Ford, P.h.D.
Ford is not a medical Doctor but is a P.h.D.
The Democrats seem to have abandoned Ms. Ford like a bad haircut, instead focusing on
other smoke and mirrors.
onewayticket2 , 19 hours ago
Again, So What??
The democrats have already soiled this Judge's career and family name. Now it's about
delay.
Exoneration note from the Republicans' lawyer carries precisely zero weight with
them.....they are too busy sourcing everyone who ever drank beer with Kav....in an effort to
get another Week Long extension/argue that Trump already greenlighted such an extension to
investigate how much Kav likes beer. or who's milk money he stole in 3rd grade....
Babble_On2001 , 20 hours ago
About 35 years ago, at a party in San Francisco where everyone was very drunk, now Senator
Feinstein sexually molested me. Don't remember the date or location or anything else, but it
happened, I swear! Naturally, want to remain anonymous to protect my integrity, but it did
happen! She shoved me down onto my knees and ground her crotch in my face. It was terrible, I
can still recall the horrible smell to this day! The stench was a combination of rotting
flesh and urine. Makes me nauseous just thinking of that sexual assault. INVESTIGATE this
serial molester!
Opulence I Has It , 20 hours ago
The only things she does remember, are the things that directly support her allegations.
That fact, by itself, is reason enough to disbelieve everything she says. The idea that she
would have concrete memories of only those specific events, is not believable.
It's totally believable, though, that she's been counseled thus, to make her story easier
to remember and avoid those inconvenient secondary details. You know, those secondary details
that every police detective knows are how you trip up a liar. They are so focused on their
bogus story, the little details of the time surrounding the fabrication don't hold up.
Last of the Middle Class , 16 hours ago
She remembers clearly she only had one beer and was taking no medication yet cannot
remember for sure how she accessed her counselors records on her whether by internet or
copying them less than 3 months ago?
Not possible.
She's a lying shill and in time it will come out.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
She doesn't remember her rescuer that drove her home and away from such a terrible
situation. Is this plausible? I say absolutely not. IMHO, she knows his name but refuses to
say it while pretending to not remember. Chris Garrett, nicknamed "Squi", who introduced her
to Kavanaugh and who was her boyfriend once. Some have speculated that he assaulted her that
day and/or ended her relationship that day after she didn't want to take things to the next
level with him.
American Dissident , 20 hours ago
McConnell on the Senate Floor 50 minutes ago: "The time for endless delay and obstruction
has come to a close.... Mr. President, we'll be voting this week."
xear , 21 hours ago
Brett is obviously innocent. Groping her, holding her down, grinding into her... it's not
like it was rape. And as far as covering her mouth so she couldn't scream... after a heavy
night of drinking who wants to hear screaming? Almost anyone would do the same.
I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 20 hours ago
it's always interesting to see where and why people claim to know things about which they
have literally no 'knowledge.'
Also interesting to see how the same people who would protest assuming the guilt of an
alleged Muslim terrorist or Black liquor store robber now argue it is 'whiteness' and
'patriarchy' to not assume the guilt of a white male regarding decades old uncorroborated
charges... which 4 named witnesses deny having knowledge of, by a woman who lied about a fear
of flying to try to delay the process.
We can all be hypocrites.
But watching the Left embrace hypocrisy as social justice has been, in the pure sense of
the word, awesome to behold.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
Not only are these claims of not remembering completely implausible, but the transcript
shows that she explicitly refuses to say the name of the boy that introduced her to BK. It
strikes me as wildly disrespectful to Rachel Mitchell and just screams for further
exploration.
FBaggins , 21 hours ago
To fix things if after all of this crap from the feminazis and Kavenaugh simply withdraws
his name, Trump should put forward Judge Amy Coney Barrett as the next candidate. It would
really ensure support for Trump candidates in the midterms from women in general and from
social-conservative family-values people in the US and it would perhaps teach the feminazis a
lesson at the same time.
istt , 20 hours ago
No, Kavanaugh deserves better. He has earned his place on the USSC.
Giant Meteor , 20 hours ago
My prediction was, and still is Kavanaugh goes forward. Even the revered CNN is starting
to walk the drinking issue back.
By the way , the Trump presser today was a ******* hoot!
ToddTheBabyWhale , 21 hours ago
Nine page memo, Tyler. Your starting to write like a pro journalist now.
aloha_snakbar , 22 hours ago
Ms Ford, the newly minted millionaire, is probably lying poolside in Mexico, indulging in
her favorite psychotropics and getting pounded by the local brown talent. Wow...having a
vagina is like having a meat 3D printer that spews out money...
blindfaith , 23 hours ago
Was there in 1965, and I can recall what my classmates wore, who could dance, who kissed
great, who had the best music, who got laid and how often...and it was NOT the head of the
football or basketball team.
Her memory is selectively scripted, and I am 20 years older and my memory is just
fine.
charlewar , 23 hours ago
In other words, Ford is a liar
JohnG , 23 hours ago
She's a goddamned sociopathic lying bitch.
arby63 , 23 hours ago
A highly paid one. Gofundme alone is over $900,000.
1970SSNova396 , 22 hours ago
Her two *** lawyers doing well for their time and attention. McCabe's lawyer comes to the
rescue for Ford.
Dead how? We already know that these corporation are die hard neo-liberal but name me 2
republicans or ANY federal entity that would EVER go after a corporation like that.
You are not aware of the score if you think anything will be done to them.
HerrDoktor , 23 hours ago
My hippocampus is turgid and throbbing after seeing Chris Ford in those Adrian (Talia
Shire) spectacles.
blind_understanding , 23 hours ago
I had to look it up ..
TURGID - from Latin turgidus , from turgēre to be swollen
peippe , 22 hours ago
nothing better than a confused lady who forgets stuff...........
I'm all over that if she was thirty-six years younger. oops.
blindfaith , 23 hours ago
So why is Ford dressed like a WWII school Liberian? Halloween?
How does she do all the water sports (easy boys, keep it clean) that she brags about? How
does she keep a case of beer down and then go surfing in Costa Rica? What is all this 'Air
sickness" stuff? How come she works for a company that has a very controversial Abortion pill
and didn't say this? That $750,000 in GoFundMe bucks will sure help heal those cat scratches
she gave herself. Does she pay taxes on that? So many questions and so little answers. Did
she perjer herself?
Sort of convenient that the statute of limitations has run out for her to make an OFFICIAL
complaint in Maryland.
I was the victim of an abuse event when I was 4. I'm 47 now. I know exactly where the
house is, we were in the backyard and I can tell anyone what happened and who was there. It
happened a few days back to back maybe three days, it was during the winter in the
midafternoon. I guess my hippocampus is in better shape than hers.
sgt_doom , 1 day ago
" Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was poised, articulate, clear and convincing. More than
that, she radiated self-assured power ."
----- So says Robert Reich
Saaaaay, Bobby, have you ever met Wesley Allen Dodd or Ted Bundy? I once came into contact
with Dodd, the epitome of calm, cool and collected --- and he was later executed for
torturing to death small children!
A (female) law professor from Seattle University said:
" Dr. Christine Blasey Ford (why do they keep referring to a professor of
psychology as doctor --- s_d) was credible and believable. " (Evidently, we don't need
no stinking proof or evidence where a law professor is concerned!?)
Sgt_Doom says: Prof. Christine Blasey Ford sounded credible, believable and completely
unsubstantiated.
Credible Allegations
Over this past weekend I learned three startling facts:
(1) All American women have been raped;
(2) All American males are rapists and liars; and,
(3) "Credible allegations" are accusations not requiring any shred of evidence.
Fake news facts , that is . . . . .
All this was conveyed by high-middle class (or higher) females who worship globalization
and American exceptionalism --- from the same news conduits who once reported on
weapons-of-mass-destruction in Iraq and other similar mythologies!
Not a single so-called reporter --- not a single self-described journalist in American ---
thought to ask that most obvious of obvious questions:
Where in bloody perdition is Christine Blasey Ford's Holton Arms yearbooks?
After all, they introduced Kavanaugh's yearbook, so why not Christine Blasey's
yearbook?
Second most obvious question:
When one searches online for Holton Arms yearbooks, the searcher can find the yearbooks
for the years preceding Ford's last several years at Holton Arms, and the years following ---
why have the last several years when Christine Blasey attended missing? Why have they been
removed --- even cached versions --- from the Web?
Takes some serious tech resources to accomplish this in such a short period of time?!
How very odd . . . .
I do not want Kavanaugh, nor anyone like him, on the Supreme Court bench, but that does
not mean I automatically believe any and all unsubstantiated accusations and am sane enough
to comprehend that credible allegations require proof --- also referred to as
evidence.
It is not enough to state that this person drinks and is therefore guilty or that person
is a male and is therefore guilty.
I fully support an expanded investigation into both Kavanaugh AND Christine Blasey Ford,
including Ms. Ford's Holton Arms yearbooks and any and all police blotter activity/records
for her ages of 13, 14, 15 and 16.
And I wish some of those useless reporters would being asking the obvious questions . . .
. and finally start doing their jobs!
Sidebar : Sen. Chris Coons claimed that Prof. Ford was courageous to have come forward as
she had nothing to gain , yet within several days after her testimony, Christine
Blasey Ford is almost one-half million dollars wealthier --- nothing to gain?
Hardly . . . .
[Next rant: MY elevator encounter with a 14-year-old psychotic blonde student, and her
buddy, many years ago in Bethesda, Md.]
Giant Meteor , 1 day ago
She (Mitchell) was there to handle her like the delicate flower. To the pubes defense,
someone was smart enough to realize that a bunch of GOP white guys questioning her was not
going to play well. Enter the female prosecutor and her report.
On the other hand the dem guys and dolls could not genuflect enough , so their questioning
was fine. I mean they had her painted as the courageous hero of the modern era. So brave, so
noble , so, so, utterly awesome!
Puke ....
scraping_by , 23 hours ago
She had an emotional meltdown for a big finish. Note who gave her the run-in for it. (Not
Mitchell).
nicholforest , 1 day ago
Seems pretty obvious that Mitchell could not see a case for prosecution - what we heard
was mostly 'He said ... She said". So an unsurprising conclusion.
And there is no moral high ground for Republicans to criticize the process pursued by the
Democrats. They would have (and in the past have) done the same. A curse on both their
houses.
But what struck me was the behavior and style of Kavanaugh. He came across as belligerent,
petty, evasive, aggressive and impulsive. Those are not the characteristics that we want in a
candidate for the Supreme Court.
Little Lindsey G would say that Kavanaugh has a right to be angry, which may be so - but
the way that such anger is manifested is critical. In the military we look for leaders to be
cool under fire. The same should be true for a judge in the highest court in the land.
Instead he came across like a fearful, reactive, spiteful, spoilt frat boy. That will not
do.
scraping_by , 1 day ago
Ah, the double bind. Either he's robotic and reciting a script, or he's wild and howling
brat. Nice how that works.
FAQMD1 , 23 hours ago
nicholforest - And there is no moral high ground for Republicans to criticize the
process pursued by the Democrats. They would have (and in the past have) done the same. A
curse on both their houses.
Please enlighten us on specifically which Dem. SC nomination the Republicans did a full on
character assassination .... were waiting!
It is mindless comments and a lack of rigorous thinking and moral equivocation like yours
that has led the country into the abyss of nonsense and division.
Dickweed Wang , 1 day ago
Look at the time line provided and then tell me the Democrats aren't a pack of lying
weasles. The truth means absolutely NOTHING to them. Their agenda (to **** over Trump in any
way possible) is all that matters. Could anyone imagine what would have happened if the
Republicans would have pulled just 1/10th of that kind of ******** with the Homo *****??
There would have been continuous MSM inspired riots in the streets.
Anunnaki , 1 day ago
They play by Alinsky Rules
rksplash , 1 day ago
I guess the only way this nonsense is going to go away is if the GOP start using the same
tactics. Hire some wannabe spin doctors to go through some old high school yearbooks in a
church basement somewhere in Alabama. An old black and white of some poor pimple faced
senator grabbing his crotch at the prom in 72.
Dickweed Wang , 1 day ago
She did take a polygraph - and passed.
Yeah that's what the lying sacks of **** say, but of course there's absolutely no proof it
happened. She passed? O.k., let's assume they are at least not lying about that . . . what
questions were asked?
Bastiat , 1 day ago
A polygraph with 2 questions apparently. In other words a complete joke. A real poly has
scores if not hundreds of questions.
robertocarlos , 23 hours ago
Two questions were asked. "Are you a woman"? and "Are you a liar"?
Wile-E-Coyote , 1 day ago
It's amazing what a false memory can do.
Is there a verbatim transcript of the questions asked?
Anunnaki , 1 day ago
Mitchell said it was irresponsible to give a polygraph to someone grieving the loss of a
loved one. Grandmother in this case.
peippe , 22 hours ago
rumor has it the exam included two questions.
Two Questions.
you decide what that means.
nsurf9 , 1 day ago
Not one shred of corroboration evidence of Ford's testimony, not even from her friend, who
flatly denied she ever went to such party, NONE, NADA, UNBELIEVABLE!
Don't these Congressional a-holes vet these people to safeguard against crazy loons'
bald-faced lies, and even worst, one's with democrat financed malicious intent to defame?
And further, Montgomery County Police has formally stated that, as a misdemeanor, the
statute of limitations ran out on this allegedly crime - 35 frigging years ago.
And lastly, with regard to drinking in college, not one democrat mentions he finished top
of his Yale undergrad class and top of his Yale Law School class.
FAQMD1 , 23 hours ago
nsurf9 - Don't these Congressional a-holes vet these people to safeguard against crazy
loons' bald-faced lies, and even worst, one's with malicious intent to defame?
Please tell me how you or I could possible "safeguard" ourselves from "crazy loon" and
"bald-face lies" ....?
That is why we're supposed to be a nation of laws and innocent until proven guilty.
It is one thing to disagree over a person political position and or ideas but that is not
what is happening here. The Dems are in full assault mode to destroy BK and his family as a
warning to any future Conservative judge who may dare accepts a nomination to the SC.
What the Dems are doing will lead to some type of civil war if they do not stop this. It
will not be pretty if that happens.
nsurf9 , 23 hours ago
Requiring even a modicum of corroborated facts or evidence, outside of mere "words," would
be a good start!
JLee2027 , 1 day ago
Guys who have been falsely accused, like me, knew quickly that Ford was lying. They all
have the same pattern, too many smiles, attention seeking, stories that make no sense or too
vague,etc.
dogmete , 1 day ago
Yeah what an incredible story. She was at a party with some drunken creepy guys and got
sexually assaulted. Everyone knows that never happens!
scraping_by , 1 day ago
The current sleaze isn't overturning the legal right to abortion, it's making it
impossible to get one. It's a legal right that a woman has to sit through lectures, travel to
specific places, make certain declarations, and get a physician who's usually under attack at
the state level. It's not illegal, it's impossible.
It's not about restricting women, it's about making life harder for middle and lower class
people. Women of the Senator's economic class have always had and always will have access to
safe abortions. It's wage earners who have to depend on local providers.
Whether Catholic K will go along with the sabotage of a privacy right isn't clear. But
he's probably going to be sympathetic to making those working class wenches show some
responsibility.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
To quote famed feminist and Democrat Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, women can always "Keep
their pants zipped". But then Granholm only extended her authoritarian control freakery to
the male half of the human race when she said that a few years ago. If women lose some
"reproductive rights" then some of them might start to have some empathy for men and our lack
of rights. But I won't hold my breath waiting for them to empathize with us.
Kelley , 1 day ago
One word uttered by Ford proves that not only did Kav. not attack her but no one ever
assaulted her . That word is "hippocampus." No woman in recorded history has ever used
that word to describe their strongest reaction to a sexual assault.
It's mind blowing that a person would react to what was supposedly one of the most
traumatic experiences of her life with a nearly gleeful "Indelibly in my hippocampus " or
something to that effect unless of course it didn't happen. Her inappropriate response leads
me to believe that Ford was never assaulted in the manner in which she claimed. If her
claimed trauma had been a case of mistaken identity regarding a real assault, she still would
have felt it and reacted far differently.
Emotional memories get stored in the amygdala. The hippocampus is for matter-of-fact
memories. When Senator Feinstein asked Ford about her strongest memories of the event, Ford
went all "matter of fact" in her reply, "Indelibly in my hippocampus ." without a trace of
emotion in her response. No emotions = no assault by ANYONE let alone by Kavanaugh.
Giant Meteor , 1 day ago
Not only that, her most indelible memory from the experience was the maniacal laughter ,
not the part where a hand was forcibly placed over her mouth and she thought she may in that
moment, have been accidently killed.
As to the hippopotamus, is that a turtle neck she is wearing or just her neck. What the
**** happened there, she said nothing about strangulation.
pnchbowlturd , 1 day ago
Another peculiar thing about Ford's testimony was the adolescent voicing she gave it in.
It was if she was imitating a 6 year old. I wish MItchell had fleshed out Ford's hobbies
(surfing??) more and given more context to her career activities and recreational pursuits in
college, alcohol consumption patterns or substance abuse treatments. Her voicing was a tell
that she seemed to be overplaying the victim persona for a person who holds a doctorate and
travels the world surfing
Nunny , 1 day ago
If they coached her (while on the loooong drive from CA...lol) to use that voice, they
didn't do her any favors. I thought femi-libs were all about being 'strong' and 'tough'. They
can't have it both ways.....strike that.....they do have it both ways.....and the useful
idiots on the left buy it.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
IMHO, the most peculiar thing was her outright refusal to say aloud the name of the boy
that introduced her to Kavanaugh, when repeatedly questioned by Rachel Mitchell. It was
wildly obvious that she was being evasive and I see it as an enormous tell. Chris Garrett,
nicknamed "Squi", was IMHO the boy that drove her to and from the party, and if he didn't
outright assault her that day, he may have dumped her that day.
I Write Code , 1 day ago
Wasn't there an old SNL skit about the "amygdala"?
YouTube doesn't seem to have an index on the term, LOL.
seryanhoj , 1 day ago
One more example of US governance and party politics on its way down the tubes. There is
no topic, no forum nowhere where the truth is even something to be considered. Media, law
makers, everyone looks at a story and says " Let's make this work for our agenda even if we
have to reinvent it from scratch". Then it is more than easy to find people to testify any
which way you want. Vomits copiously.
mabuhay1 , 1 day ago
The standard for females should be "They are lying if their lips are moving." Any claims
of sexual abuse should require proof, and witnesses that can back up said claims. Many
studies have found that years before the MeToo# lies began, about 60% of all claimed rapes
were false. Now, with the "Must believe all women" and the "MeToo#" scam, I would suspect the
rate of false claims to be very close to 100%
scraping_by , 1 day ago
The standard for any criminal investigation is ABC. Assume nothing, Believe no one, and
Check everything. The current feminist howl is sweep that aside and obey a women when she
points at a man.
Jack McGriff , 1 day ago
And yet every single MSM outlet is claiming she is credible! WTF!!!
MedTechEntrepreneur , 1 day ago
If the FBI is to have ANY credibility, they must insist on Ford's emails, texts and phone
records for the last 2 years.
Anunnaki , 1 day ago
Kill shots:
Ranging from "mid 1980s" in a text to the Washington Post to "early 80s"
No name was listed in 2012 and 2013 individual and marriage therapy notes.
she was the victim of "physical abuse," whereas she has now testified that she told her
husband about a "sexual assault."
she does not remember who invited her to the party or how she heard about it. She does
not remember how she got to the party." Mitchell continued: "She does not remember in what
house the assault allegedly took place or where that house was located with any
specificity. Perhaps most importantly, she does not remember how she got from the party to
her house."
In her letter to Feinstein, she said "me and 4 others" were at the party but in her
testimony she said there were four boys in additional to Leland Keyser and herself. She did
not list Leland Keyser even though they are good friends. Leland Keyser's presence should
have been more memorable than PJ Smyth's,
· She testified that she had exactly one beer at the party
· "All three named eyewitnesses have submitted statements to the Committee denying
any memory of the party whatsoever,
· her BFF: Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever
being at a party or gathering where he was present with
· the simple and unchangeable truth is that Keyser is unable to corroborate [Dr.
Ford's allegations] because she has no recollection of the incident in question.
· Mitchell stated that Ford refused to provide her therapy notes to the Senate
Committee.
· Mitchell says that Ford wanted to remain confidential but called a tipline at the
Washington Post.
· she also said she did not contact the Senate because she claimed she "did not
know how to do that."
· It would also have been inappropriate to administer a polygraph to someone who
was grieving.
· the date of the hearing was delayed because the Committee was told that Ford's
symptoms prevented her from flying, but she agreed during testimony that she flies "fairly
frequently."
· She also flew to Washington D.C. for the hearing.
· "The activities of Congressional Democrats and Dr. Ford's attorneys likely
affected Dr. Ford's account.
Zero-Hegemon , 1 day ago
Major Hegelian dialectic **** going on with the Ford/Kav reality show.
Women everywhere side with Ford because she's a women, claims she was abused, and "has to
be believed", in order to settle some personal score that they all claim empathy for, even
though she has given every tell in the book that she is lying.
Men everywhere empathize with a man being falsely accused, regardless of his politics and
judicial history, even though he made his bones in the Bush administration, and can probably
be relied on to further the authoritarian state via the Supreme court. Guilty of this myself,
because it could be anyone of us next.
Pick a side, doesn't matter, because we've already lost.
Bastiat , 1 day ago
I "Believe the Women" -- the 3 women Ford named as witnesses who denied it ever happened,
the 65 women who signed the letter in support of Ford, and all the women who have worked with
him and had no issues. I don't believe this one, though.
phillyla , 1 day ago
truly embarrassing answer
were I a self important college professor I might lie and say "Shakespeare" but the truth
will out I learned it from The Avengers movie when Loki called Black Widow a 'mewling
quim'
Anunnaki , 1 day ago
A lot of women have seen their sons and brothers falsely accused. Ford was completely
unconvincing in her "I don't remember the details of a traumatic "sexual assault"
BGO , 1 day ago
Mitchell the "veteran prosecutor" also failed to ask Ford who hosted the party where the
alleged assault took place.
This is an important question. Maybe the most important question.
No one should be expected to remember their high school friends' home addresses, just like
no one should be expected to remember every person who attended a specific high school
party.
One thing ANYONE who suffered a violent attack would remember is WHO OWNED THE HOUSE where
the attack took place.
High school parties generally are hosted by a the same people throughout a students high
school years. It's not like everyone in class takes their turn throwing a kegger.
As anyone who drank to get drunk at parties in high school will tell you, it was always
the same handful of kids, maybe three or four, who let their friends drink alcohol in their
parents' home.
Narrowing down exactly who owned the home where the alleged attack took place should be
easy due to the fact that, according to Ford, it was more of a small get together than a full
blown party.
All investigators should need to do is ask the known attendees, under oath, whether or not
they hosted the party where the alleged attack took place.
The fact that Ford's testimony includes exactly one person whose name she cannot remember
is NOT a coincidence.
The phantom attendee was created out of thin air to give Ford an out if the known
attendees claimed the attack did not occur at their homes.
There are so many things wrong with this political farce. Liberal mental illness, as with
any case, is a given, automatically assumed.
Flip flopping dufuses on the other side, weakness, gross ineptitude.
The entire system needs to be culled via a massive firestorm; no one or thing left
standing.
Cassander , 1 day ago
@BGO -- Re your first sentence, Mitchell notes in her memo "She does not remember in what
house the assault allegedly took place or where that house was located with any specificity".
I think this covers your point implicitly. If she doesn't remember what house it was, how can
she remember whose house it was?
Just thought you were going a bit hard on Mitchell, whose memo seems pretty damning to
me...
BGO , 1 day ago
Asking *what* house and *whose* house are two ENTIRELY different things.
Think about the most traumatic experience of your life. You know EXACTLY where the
traumatic experience took place, right?
FUBO , 1 day ago
She didn't ask one sexual question of her either,bu but dove right in on Kavanaugh.
istt , 1 day ago
And now we find out Leland Keyser was Bob Beckel's ex-wife. Unbelievable. Small circle
these libs run in.
Totally_Disillusioned , 1 day ago
Actually nothing about the Democrats is surprising. They are predictable in keeping within
their closed ranks.
Totally_Disillusioned , 1 day ago
They brought the wrong tool to the fight. Mitchell is a sex abuse prosecutor? Her tactics
may well work in the courtroom but the Judiciary Comm hearing was not a platform of
Mitchell's expertise. She apologized to Ms Ford and stated at the onset she would not ask Ms
Ford about the "incident" other than her recollections of location, date and witnesses.
Mitchell then hit Judge Kavanaugh head on with questions of gang rape, rape, sexual assault,
drinking behaviors. All validating Kavanaugh's guilt for the sheeple.
My two Eng Springer Spaniels exhibit better strategy than what we saw here.
Herdee , 1 day ago
Her father was in the CIA. Who was it within the organization that planned this?
aloha_snakbar , 1 day ago
If Fords alleged/imaginary groping is allowed to stand, what about all of the groping that
the TSA dispenses daily?
phillyla , 1 day ago
if touching over your clothes = rape I have several lawsuits to file against the TSA
...
Luce , 1 day ago
How does this ballsy ford bitch keep her PTSD in check when the TSA gropes her for all of
her exotic vacations?
phillyla , 1 day ago
some one should investigate if she signed up for the TSA's skip the line service for
frequent fliers ...
Also telling... nobody from her family (mother, father, brother) has come forward to
support her. Only her husband's family. They likely know she is making it up as it relates to
Kavanaugh. They know who she is.
RighteousRampage , 1 day ago
That's actually false. However, the muted support from her father is likely due his not
wanting to be ostracized from his upper-crust old boys golf club.
....and the biggest indications of fraud here are 4 go fund me accounts now raising over
$2M for CBF. Professional lying to advance a political agenda is a good gig if you can get it
now days.
opport.knocks , 1 day ago
Y'all are being distracted and played, as usual, I am sad to say...
The judge Napolitano video at the end should have been played to Congress.
RighteousRampage , 1 day ago
Yup, this man is not a friend of liberty, or justice.
IridiumRebel , 1 day ago
His *** is rethinking it now
istt , 1 day ago
"Kavanaugh claimed that putting a GPS tracking device on a person's car without first
obtaining a warrant was just fine because it didn't constitute a "search" as defined by the
Fourth Amendment."
I like him more now that I have read this article. Police should be able to legally track
known or suspected drug dealers. You got a problem with that? I suppose you're outraged over
our treatment of MS-13 as well?
opport.knocks , 1 day ago
Yes, I have a problem with that. Police must have enough prior evidence to get a warrant
to put a device on anyone's property (car, phone, email account, internet router) - any
private property is protected by the 4th.
Once they convince a judge of probable cause and get the warrant, they can plant the
tracking device. Most cops are power hungry, petty, vindictive, control freaks, with too much
time on their hands - one tried to make my life hell simply because I cut him off in
traffic.
RighteousRampage , 1 day ago
The hypocrisy of ZH posters in favor of this douche is unreal. Where is the libertarian
outrage?
opport.knocks , 1 day ago
I think most libertarians have left ZH and this is a predominantly Republican partisan
site now. The internet is quickly becoming a bunch of echo chambers for like minded people,
with trolls appearing from time to time to fan flames if interest and eyeballs starts to
wane. We are lucky if one post out of 50 has any insight or real information.
11b40 , 1 day ago
Once you start down this slippery slope, the next step down is easy.
spieslikeus , 1 day ago
Eye opening, thanks for that. Appoint Judge Napolitano!
opport.knocks , 1 day ago
It would be nice to have a token libertarian voice on the court. Kavanaugh is not only a
statist, but a deep statist.
Golden Phoenix , 1 day ago
If taken completely at her word the gist of her story is someone touched the outside of
her clothes. Prison for tailors! They are all rapists!
Bricker , 1 day ago
Ford says she ran from the house, Question, how did you get home? Answer, I don't
remember.
No Time for Fishing , 1 day ago
No one followed her out. No one said where are you going.
She is outside the house, no car, no phone, maybe clicked her heals and was magically at
home, worked for Dorthy.
Walked six miles home but just doesn't remember that? could be.
Knocked on a neighbors door to ask to use the phone and had someone pick her up but
doesn't remember that? could be.
Walked a few blocks to a pay phone and with the quarter she had in her bathing suit called
someone to pick her up, waited for them, didn't tell them what happened and then they drove
her home, just doesn't remember it? could be.
When she ran from the house did she not leave her purse or bag behind? Did she ever get it
back? Did her girlfriend never ask why she left?
Maybe I should just believe her......
Bastiat , 1 day ago
She ran all the way, got home in 35'32" -- she would have been a track star but the coach
looked at her *** at the team tryouts.
Benjamin123 , 1 day ago
Auntie delivers
The Swamp Got Trump , 1 day ago
Ford is a lunatic and a liar.
onebytwo , 1 day ago
so she does not remember how she got to the party or how she left the party but she
suggested she narrowed down the year because she knew she did not drive to the party since
she could not drive yet so she must have been 15.
I beg your pardon!
bh2 , 1 day ago
So does anyone recall Comey giving Clinton a free pass despite her many deliberate and
clear violations of US security laws on the basis that no reasonable prosecutor would take
action against her?
nope-1004 , 1 day ago
Dr. Fraud was a planned hit. Her social media presence was methodically deleted over the
last few months. There is nothing about her anywhere.... it's almost as if her name is fake
too.
Heard on 4chan that her and her husband have a big interest at the place she used to work,
Corcept Therapeutics. Apparently Corcept has developed a new abortion drug and have invested
a ton in R&D.
As always, follow the money.......
RighteousRampage , 1 day ago
yeah, yeah. you do realize that her father plays golf with Kav's dad at their local
country club.
don't forget your tinfoil hat your way out, nutjob.
nope-1004 , 1 day ago
And you do realize that Kav's mother was the judge that presided over Dr. Frauds' parents
home foreclosure?
Lots of motives here.
Thanks for chiming in so we can all get to he truth.
RighteousRampage , 1 day ago
Presiding over a foreclosure is not a matter of guilt or innocence, it's a strictly
administrative task. The bank is the one foreclosing, you dolt.
Garciathinksso , 1 day ago
another unhinged, faux compassionate, rude leftist
RighteousRampage , 1 day ago
Another braindead gaslighting troglodyte
11b40 , 1 day ago
Then what is the judge for?
istt , 1 day ago
Turns out Ford is not even a psychologist. Some of the stupidest people I know carry PhD
titles because they are perpetual students. This just starkly shows the difference between
the two worlds people live in, if they can find Ford credible. She is the face of left wing
hysteria and partisanship.
RighteousRampage , 1 day ago
And angry-boy Kavanaughty is the perfect reflection of unhinged conspi-racist GOP.
istt , 1 day ago
Keep repeating the mantras, losers. I'm sure there are many single mom's out there who
made lousy decisions, who hate their lives, who are willing to buy your whole story. YOU
resonate with them. But they are not here so get lost.
RighteousRampage , 1 day ago
I crap bigger than you.
Got The Wrong No , 1 day ago
That's because you are Crap
Slaytheist , 1 day ago
Real men that live lives of principal and truth, get angry when women (inclues numen like
you) lie like children to get their way.
RighteousRampage , 1 day ago
So pretty much all of Kavanaugh's old cronies turn out to be degenerate drunkard
misogynist ultra-right-wing conspiracy theorist toolbags and somehow Kavanaugh himself is Mr.
Squeaky Clean? <cough>********<cough>
nope-1004 , 1 day ago
No, they were all drunken college kids.
So have you lefties changed it and would like to charge him for partying?
lmao.....
RighteousRampage , 1 day ago
Lol, drunked college kids? More like degenerate a-holes. Troll harder.
IridiumRebel , 1 day ago
Yes. Troll harder.
Garciathinksso , 1 day ago
your being spoon fed a narrative by the msm like rice pudding to a gay cowboy, you make me
sick
RighteousRampage , 1 day ago
Keep your homoerotic fantasies to yourself, please.
Garciathinksso , 1 day ago
I thought I was being kind with the gay cowboy remark
istt , 1 day ago
Get the **** out of here, wingnut. Switch back to your CNN. We don't need your ilk here,
loser.
RighteousRampage , 1 day ago
I have been here farrrrr long than the vast majority of you pikers. Long enough to recall
what ZH was intended to be for, before it became the cesspool it is today, infested with
russian trolls, nazi-fascist thugs, lunatic fringe d-bags spouting off like they know
anything about anything. So GET the F OFF MY LAWN, punk.
istt , 1 day ago
Anyone who finds this woman and her story credible need their head examined. They are
incapable of critical reasoning.
A political hit job and the stupid, ignoramus Ford was willing to do the hit. She should
be in jail for this disgraceful action.
onebytwo , 1 day ago
So she was communicating on Whatsup with the Washington Post on JULY 6th! How is that
consistent with wanting this whole story to be confidential?
She knew the person she was in contact with since she admitted she was the same journalist
who wrote the article in September. In whatsup you know each other's phone numbers so the
journalist knew her identity from the very beginning. Stop lying about the anonymous tip line
!
Let's call this for what it is: a conspiracy to hijack a supreme court nomination and Mrs
Blasio Ford, the Washington Post, democratic parties operatives (including senator
Fienstein's staff or the senator herself and the Kats legal firm) were co-conspirators).
onwisconsinbadger , 1 day ago
Hired by Pukes, no surprise here.
cheech_wizard , 1 day ago
So elections have consequences, right?
I'll bet you didn't miss a single one of Hillary's campaign events in Wisconsin, did
you?
RighteousRampage , 1 day ago
I really don't get it, there are many qualified conservative judges who would do a much
better job on SCOTUS and not damage the court's honor and credibility. Why Kavanaugh?
onwisconsinbadger , 1 day ago
Because he is a political heck and Drumpf likes it that way.
Bricker , 1 day ago
Ford doesnt remember much, except when it matters. She doesnt know exactly when she was
raped or where she claims to be raped, but remembers seeing Mark Judge in a Safeway exactly 8
weeks later.
Hell I remember where I was when the space shuttle blew up in the 80s, I remember where I
was and who I was with when Mt St Helens blew her top in 1980.
People will always remember notable events, PERIOD!
Here is a classic, if you believe her story, I have a bridge for sale
Endgame Napoleon , 1 day ago
Back when the Roy Moore thing was keeping MSM ratings up, I, a person in Dr. Ford's age
group, recalled a 100% harmless event from my 16th year. The reason it sprang to mind is: it
echoed things they were accusing him of.
Accusers said he was in the mall, flirting with girls in their late teens and in other
commercial venues, chatting it up girls in that age group.
Although this event had not crossed my mind in years -- so un-traumatic was it -- I
remembered in much greater detail than Ford the specificities of this harmless event.
I was working at a locally owned steakhouse as a hostess, a glorified and very bored door
opener. I was wearing a pink, medium-warm-gray and light-warm-gray, striped dress (ugh, the
Eighties).
After work, I decided to stop at a local grocery store, and I felt pleased that a
candidate for office who later won handed me his card, trying to convince me to vote for him.
He also mildly flirted with me, not knowing how old I was, and I did not tell him my age,
enjoying the feeling of being older, sophisticated and attractive enough to get his
attention.
He put his phone number on the card, not that anything happened as a result. I knew that I
would not be allowed to go out with this man who really wasn't that much older than me,
anyway, probably about a decade older.
If this man ever ran for another office, or was appointed to a high office, I could call
this sexual assault, I guess, in this insane world. But I would never do that, nor would
almost any woman that I have met.
There must be something in the water, producing more barracudas with a mission to
criminalize things that earlier generations would have called flirting.
learnofjesuits , 1 day ago
was she on valium for funeral and polygraph test ?
this explains why test was done after funeral and her passing this test,
FBI must check this
RighteousRampage , 1 day ago
And while they're at it, they should also check all the stories from Yale classmates who
can attest to the fact that Kavanaugh was often spotted late at night stumbling and slurring
his words, and sometimes aggressively starting sh*t.
learnofjesuits , 1 day ago
inconsequential, nothing will come out of this,
opposite of her being on drugs for polygraph test, this just ends her story
"... The whole point of discussing door #2 was to bring Ford's purported 35-year-old PTSD affliction into the discussion. Poor Dr. Ford, suffering like a Vietnam vet who was the only survivor of a helicopter crash only to be tortured in a tiger cage by the Cong. A lifetime of PTSD and claustrophobia caused by a clumsy groping of a future Supreme Court nominee. Oh the humanity! How come her bad case of acne during the Nor'easter of '84 wasn't brought up? ..."
"... Concentrate on Dr. Ford's work with creating false memories through hypnosis . ..."
"... Oh no! You get the Zoning Nazis on your ***...you're in balls deep. ..."
"... Her bizarre, squeaky, 10 year-old wounded-child's voice was both creepy, and if not bad acting, then a sign she is truly mentally ill. ..."
"... My father's friend, who was a practicing psychiatrist forever, always said that the field's "professionals" had the craziest people he'd ever seen. ..."
Hey, John Brennan said to dig deeper, so we are. Keep peeling the onion and expose more
and more layers. She had a second door put in to improve the house's curb appeal, but you
can't see the door from the curb. The door helped with her claustrophobia but it only allows
egress from living space separate from her main residence.
As the commenter above said, "look squirrel"!
The whole point of discussing door #2 was to
bring Ford's purported 35-year-old PTSD affliction into the discussion. Poor Dr. Ford,
suffering like a Vietnam vet who was the only survivor of a helicopter crash only to be
tortured in a tiger cage by the Cong. A lifetime of PTSD and claustrophobia caused by a
clumsy groping of a future Supreme Court nominee. Oh the humanity! How come her bad case of
acne during the Nor'easter of '84 wasn't brought up?
The only pacifier evident here is the one up your ***.
Beatscape , 1 hour ago
Follow the money... it almost always takes you to the real motivating factors.
Sounds more like hubby didn't want strangers in the house, and she wanted the extra income
or potential. Perhaps, he was scared of the consequences of getting busted, after spending
the money...doing something non code compliant.
Builder here.
This starts to make sense...in a fucked up way.
digitalrevolution , 2 hours ago
Too far in the weeds on this one.
Concentrate on Dr. Ford's work with creating false memories through hypnosis .
NoPension , 1 hour ago
Oh no! You get the Zoning Nazis on your ***...you're in balls deep.
PGR88 , 2 hours ago
Her bizarre, squeaky, 10 year-old wounded-child's voice was both creepy, and if not bad
acting, then a sign she is truly mentally ill.
ChartRoom , 2 hours ago
My father's friend, who was a practicing psychiatrist forever, always said that the
field's "professionals" had the craziest people he'd ever seen.
Wild Bill Steamcock , 1 hour ago
Can confirm
45North1 , 2 hours ago
A floor plan would be instructive.
NoPension , 2 hours ago
Two rooms, a bathrooom and a separate entrance. In an area where that setup probably
commands $2000 a month.
Ms. Mitchell had a line of questioning about the friend who was mutual to Kavanaugh and
Ford. It turns out this was the same person who had been named earlier by Ed Whelan. Ford
said she had dated Garrett, also knew his younger brother, but flatly refused to refer to him
by name in public.
I'll assume Ms. Mitchell was allowed to review all of the investigative material collected
by the Committee to date. There has to be a reason she pursued this line of questioning.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
Who would most likely drive a girl to a party with older high school boys from a different
school and different circle of friends? Who would most likely take a 15 year old girl home
from a party in an age without cell phones? His name is Chris Garrett, nickname of "Squi".
She claims to not remember the person that drove her home, and she claims to not remember the
name of the last boy at the gathering. And she refuses to publicly state the name of the boy
that introduced her to Kavanaugh. These are all one and the same person, her boyfriend and
soon-to-be-ex-BF Chris Garrett, who may have either assaulted her or broke up with her that
day.
Being Free , 23 hours ago
Stunning accusation that Sen. Feinstein covered up 1990 sexual assault by a wealthy
foreign donor against another supporters daughter ...
Ford is a practiced liar. She was coached to cry all the way thru her polygraph test thus
skewing the results.
blindfaith , 23 hours ago
So why is Ford dressed like a WWII school Liberian? Halloween?
How does she do all the water sports (easy boys, keep it clean) that she brags about? How
does she keep a case of beer down and then go surfing in Costa Rica? What is all this 'Air
sickness" stuff? How come she works for a company that has a very controversial Abortion pill
and didn't say this? That $750,000 in GoFundMe bucks will sure help heal those cat scratches
she gave herself. Does she pay taxes on that? So many questions and so little answers. Did
she perjer herself?
Sort of convenient that the statute of limitations has run out for her to make an OFFICIAL
complaint in Maryland.
Blasey-Ford's squeaky, 10 year-old wounded-child voice was both poor acting, and creepy.
If it wasn't acting, then its a clear sign of a deranged mind.
Blasey-Ford resides at 3872 Duncan Place in Palo Alto CA. Her house (according to Zillow)
is currently valued at $3,000,000.00+. There must be a lot of idiots out there contributing
to her GoFundMe account. She will need a lawyer, soon. I believe that there will be a trail
leading back to witnesses who will admit the entire thing was a hoax. And, the band played
on.
morongobill , 1 day ago
Saw this over at Burning Platform. Interesting that Ford's address is reveled.
I for one see her as a political operative, may be crusader for abortions right (which I
support) and very troubled human being, possibly on antidepressants or something similar (her
facial expression, and kind of "permanently glued smile" are not natural at all and she looks
like a female of over 60 biological age while being 51 years old)
Former CIA Director John Brennan assures us that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's
accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, is "a national treasure." And his former colleague, James
Comey, has urged investigators to "dig deeper."
So begin at the beginning of her Senate Judiciary Committee testimony :
" I had never told the details to anyone until May 2012, during a couple's counseling
session. The reason this came up in counseling is that my husband and I had completed a very
extensive, very long remodel of our home and I insisted on a second front door, an idea that
he and others disagreed with and could not understand.
In explaining why I wanted a second front door, I began to describe the assault in
detail."
Under questioning
from Sen. Diane Feinstein, Ford described an agonizing after-effect of the alleged Kavanaugh
attack that caused her to demand that second door :
"Anxiety, phobia and PTSD-like symptoms are the types of things that I've been coping
with," Ford said. "More specially, claustrophobia, panic and that type of thing."
FEINSTEIN: "Is that the reason for the second front door? Claustrophobia?"
FORD: "Correct."
The trade-off, apparently, was evident in Ford's statement that "our house does not look
aesthetically pleasing from the curb." From the view on Google Earth, or Redfin, one can't see
the second door easily and the house appears no uglier "from the curb" than it ever did, if it
did. But a glance at the real estate databases about Ford's house are instructive.
The Fords bought the house on June 20, 2007. And the "very extensive, very long remodel,"
including the second front door, were completed under a building permit granted in 2008.
So a natural question is why, four years after the remodeling, which also added two rooms
and a bathroom, is the installation of that second door still such a bone of contention between
the couple that it was an issue in the counseling they were undergoing in May 2012?
One key may be Ford's continuing testimony to Feinstein, after describing the aesthetic
difficulties "from the curb."
FEINSTEIN: "I see. And do you have that second front door?"
FORD: "Yes."
FEINSTEIN: "It "
FORD: "It - it now is a place to host Google interns. Because we live near Google, so we
get to have - other students can live there."
Now that she mentions it, the additional remodeling in effect added a self-contained unit to
the house, with its own entrance, perfect for "hosting" or even possibly renting, in violation
of the local zoning . Perhaps a
professional office might be a perfect use, if an illegal one. And in the tight Palo Alto real
estate market, there are a lot of games played for some serious income.
And that may
answer another strange anomaly.
Because since 1993, and through some listings even today, there was another tenant at what
is now the Ford property . It is listed as this person's residence from 1993 to July 2007, a
week or so after she sold the house to the Fords.
Her name is Dr. Sylvia Randall, and she listed this address for her California licensed
practice of psychotherapy, including couples psychotherapy, until her move to Oregon in
2007.
Currently she only practices in that state, where she also pursues her new career as a
talented artist as well.
But many existing directories still have Dr. Randall's address listed at what is now the
Ford residence.
Which raises other questions.
Why has Christine Ford never said a word about Dr. Randall? And why has she been evasive
about the transcripts of her crucial 2012 therapy session, which she can't seem to recall much
about either? Did she provide them to the Washington Post, or did she just provide the
therapist's summary? Who was the psychologist?
In a phone call, I asked Dr. Randall if she had sold her house to the Fords. She asked back
how I had found out. I asked if she was the couples therapist who treated the Fords. She would
not answer yes or no, replying, "I am a couples therapist."
So was the second door an escape for Christine Blasey Ford's terrors or was documenting her
terrors a ruse for sneaking a rental unit through tough local zoning ordinances? And if the
second door allowed access and egress for the tenant of a second housing unit, rather than for
the primary resident, how did the door's existence ameliorate Ford's professed
claustrophobia?
None of this means that her charges against Kavanaugh might not be perfectly valid, but her
explanation for the "second door" looks like it could use more investigation. At the very least
it appears to be a far more complicated element of Ford's credibility than it originally
appeared.
lulu34 , 3 minutes ago
It's a simple property tax scheme. Rent out the spacw to offset the taxes. You don't
report this income to the "authorities".
hannah , 22 minutes ago
first...******* NO ONE STATES THAT THERE ISNT EVEN A DOCTOR MUCH LESS THEIR NOTES...?
everyone wants to see the doctors notes yet no one has even mentioned the name of the doctor.
i dont think there are notes about a door. that is all ********. feinsteins people typed up
'the notes'.......also if she is renting the remodel area is she paying taxes on that income.
in california it could be $24,000 to $48,000 a year easily........
lulu34 , 2 minutes ago
Bingo...it's a cost $$$ collection to offset property taxes
Automatic Choke , 34 minutes ago
Illegal and unzoned apartment added to a house? Watch out, here comes the tax collector.
She just might have talked her way into a tax fraud conviction.
Seal Team 6 , 47 minutes ago
Randall ran a business from her home so I would wonder if she put the door in in the 90s,
as businesses run from homes typically have alternate entrances. Ford and husband listed it
on the permit in 2007 to cover it up otherwise it could be used as a basis to walk on a real
estate deal...no building permit was granted. Happens all the time. Boy if someone has a
picture of Ford's house from the 90's and see's that second door, she is done done done.
The potential payoff is exaggerated. There's nothing stopping a lame-duck Senate ramming
an equally-conservative alternative justice through before they're gone. The SCOTUS payoff is
for seating someone like Kav , not for seating Kav. The payoff for seating Kav is
far narrower. And the seating of a Kav-or-equivalent justice ahead of the election is
an entirely and unevaluated different matter
What are the odds? No, the question should be: what are the ends?
cian 09.26.18 at 7:41 pm (no link)
More on Anita Hill:
"But conservative members of the State Legislature, led by Representative Leonard E.
Sullivan, a Republican from Oklahoma City, have called Professor Hill a perjurer, said she
should be in prison, demanded her resignation, tried to cut off matching money for the
professorship and introduced legislation to shut down the law school."
Post-Thomas, nobody made any claims of sexual misconduct, true or false, against Stephen
Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Harriet Meyers, Sonia Sotomayor, or
Elena Kagan (though there were some whispers about matters that, in decent circles, don't
count as "misconduct"). Let's add in perhaps the only people who have a higher profile than
Supreme Court nominees: No one made any claims of sexual misconduct against Al Gore, George
H.W. Bush, whoever-the-hell was his VP candidate, Bob Dole, whoever-the-hell was his VP
candidate, Joe Lieberman, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Tom
Kaine, or Mike Pence. There were claims of sexual misconduct against Bill Clinton, John
Edwards, and Donald trump, but they were true. It just doesn't look s if claims of sexual
misconduct, true or false, are that likely.
Former CIA Director John Brennan assures us that Supreme Court nominee Brett
Kavanaugh's accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, is "a national treasure."
national treasure
Is CLEARLY a code word.
Payoff? Bribe?
silverserfer , 22 minutes ago
Creepy as **** that a former CIA diector would say soemthing like this.
surf@jm , 18 minutes ago
Fords father was CIA....
Dont forget that.....
thebigunit , 42 minutes ago
Very curious.
So was the second door an escape for Christine Blasey Ford's terrors or was documenting
her terrors a ruse for sneaking a rental unit through tough local zoning ordinances?
What I find MOST curious is the fact that Dr. Ford's internet persona has been completely
"sanitized".
Someday, the master conspiracy will be revealed, and it will look something like this:
The main plotter and organizer of the anti-Trump coup d'etat was former CIA director
John O. Brennan.
Venture capital funding for Google was provided by CIA venture capital operation
In-Q-Tel.
Google was started by Stanford University grad students Larry Page and Sergey
Brin.
Stanford University is located in Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a company town for Stanford University
Stanford University is a captive technology incubator for the CIA
One of the biggest technology companies in Palo Alto is CIA contractor Palantir
Palo Alto is a company town for the CIA.
Dr. Christine Baseley Ford was a professor at Palo Alto University and also taught at
Stanford University.
Overy 1750 Stanford University graduates work at Google.
The CIA developed the plan to take out Judge Kavanaugh using radical feminist
operatives associated with Stanford University and Stanford Law School to claim sexual
misconduct.
The CIA used its control of the technology industry and Google in particular to
sanitize Christine Ford's internet personna and to obscure or suppress any information that
might disclose her radical history and associations.
The CIA, Stanford, and Google are joined at the hip.
Mitchell the "veteran prosecutor" also failed to ask Ford who hosted the party where the
alleged assault took place.
This is an important question. Maybe the most important question.
No one should be expected to remember their high school friends' home addresses, just like
no one should be expected to remember every person who attended a specific high school
party.
One thing ANYONE who suffered a violent attack would remember is WHO OWNED THE HOUSE where
the attack took place.
High school parties generally are hosted by a the same people throughout a students high
school years. It's not like everyone in class takes their turn throwing a kegger.
As anyone who drank to get drunk at parties in high school will tell you, it was always
the same handful of kids, maybe three or four, who let their friends drink alcohol in their
parents' home.
Narrowing down exactly who owned the home where the alleged attack took place should be
easy due to the fact that, according to Ford, it was more of a small get together than a full
blown party.
All investigators should need to do is ask the known attendees, under oath, whether or not
they hosted the party where the alleged attack took place.
The fact that Ford's testimony includes exactly one person whose name she cannot remember
is NOT a coincidence.
The phantom attendee was created out of thin air to give Ford an out if the known
attendees claimed the attack did not occur at their homes.
There are so many things wrong with this political farce. Liberal mental illness, as with
any case, is a given, automatically assumed.
Flip flopping dufuses on the other side, weakness, gross ineptitude.
The entire system needs to be culled via a massive firestorm; no one or thing left
standing.
Cassander , 1 day ago
@BGO -- Re your first sentence, Mitchell notes in her memo "She does not remember in what
house the assault allegedly took place or where that house was located with any specificity".
I think this covers your point implicitly. If she doesn't remember what house it was, how can
she remember whose house it was?
Just thought you were going a bit hard on Mitchell, whose memo seems pretty damning to
me...
BGO , 1 day ago
Asking *what* house and *whose* house are two ENTIRELY different things.
Think about the most traumatic experience of your life. You know EXACTLY where the
traumatic experience took place, right?
America's two mainstream political parties agree furiously with one another on war,
neoliberalism, Orwellian surveillance, and every other agenda which increases the power and
profit of the plutocratic class which owns them both. The plutocrat-owned mass media plays up
the differences between Democrats and Republicans to hysterical proportions, when in reality
the debate over which one is worse is like arguing over whether a serial killer's arms or legs
are more evil.
This is a really apt quote: "America's two mainstream political parties agree furiously with
one another on war, neoliberalism, Orwellian surveillance, and every other agenda which increases
the power and profit of the plutocratic class which owns them both."
Notable quotes:
"... The buzzword "bipartisan" gets used a lot in US politics because it gives the illusion that whatever agenda it's being applied to must have some deep universal truth to it for such wildly divergent ideologies to set aside their differences in order to advance it, but what it usually means is Democrat neocons and Republican neocons working together to inflict new horrors upon the world. ..."
"... America's two mainstream political parties agree furiously with one another on war, neoliberalism, Orwellian surveillance, and every other agenda which increases the power and profit of the plutocratic class which owns them both. The plutocrat-owned mass media plays up the differences between Democrats and Republicans to hysterical proportions, when in reality the debate over which one is worse is like arguing over whether a serial killer's arms or legs are more evil. ..."
If there's one thing that brings a tear to my eye, it's the inspiration I feel when watching
Republican-aligned neoconservatives and Democrat-aligned neoconservatives find a way to bridge
their almost nonexistent differences and come together to discuss the many, many, many, many,
many, many many many things they have in common.
In a conference at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, "Resistance" leader and
professional left-puncher Neera Tanden met with Iraq-raping neocon Bill Kristol to discuss
bipartisanship and shared values. While leprechauns held hands and danced beneath candy
rainbows and gumdrop Reaper drones, the duo engaged in a friendly, playful conversation with
the event's host in a debate format which was not unlike watching the Pillsbury Doughboy have a
pillow fight with himself in a padded room after drinking a bottle of NyQuil.
To get the event started, the host whose name I refuse to learn asked the pair to discuss
briefly what common ground such wildly different people could possibly share to make such a
strange taboo-shattering dialogue possible.
"Issues around national security and believing in democratic principles as they relate to
foreign policy," replied
Tanden . "And opposing authoritarianism, and opposing the kind of creeping populism that
undermines democracy itself."
Neera Tanden, in case you are unaware, is a longtime Clinton and Obama insider
and CEO of the plutocrat-backed
think tank Center for American Progress. Her emails featured prominently in the 2016
Podesta drops by WikiLeaks, which New Republic described as revealing "a
pattern of freezing out those who don't toe the line, a disturbing predilection for someone who
is a kind of gatekeeper for what ideas are acceptable in Democratic politics." Any quick glance
at Tanden's political activism and Twitter presence will render this unsurprising, as she often
seems more concerned with attacking the Green Party and noncompliant progressive Democrats than
she does with advancing progressive values. Her entire life is dedicated to keeping what passes
for America's political left out of the hands of the American populace.
Kristol co-signed Tanden's anti-populist rhetoric and her open endorsement of
neoconservative foreign policy, and went on to say that another thing he and Tanden have in
common is that they've both served in government, which makes you realize that nothing's black
and white and everything's kinda nebulous and amorphous so it doesn't really matter if you, say
for example, help deceive your country into a horrific blunder that ends up killing a whole lot
of people for no good reason.
"I do think if you've served in government -- this isn't universally true but somewhat true --
that you do have somewhat more of a sense of the complexity of things, and many of its
decisions are not black and white, that in public policy there are plusses and minuses to
most policies," Kristol said
.
"There are authentic disagreements both about values, but also just about how certain
things are gonna work or not work and that is what adds a kind of humility to one's belief
that one is kind of always right about everything."
I found this very funny coming from the man who is notoriously always wrong about
everything, and I'd like to point out that "complexity" is a key talking point that the
neoconservatives who've been consistently proven completely wrong about everything are fond of
repeating. Everything's complicated and nothing's really known and it's all a big blurry mess
so maybe butchering a million Iraqis and destabilizing the Middle East was a good thing . Check
out this short clip of John
Bolton being confronted by Tucker Carlson about what a spectacular error the Iraq invasion was
for a great example of this:
I listened to the whole conference, but it was basically one long smear of amicable
politeness which was the verbal equivalent of the color beige, so I had difficulty tuning in.
Both Tanden and Kristol hate the far left (or as those of us outside the US pronounce it, "the
center"), both Tanden and Kristol hate Trump, and hey maybe Americans have a lot more in common
than they think and everyone can come together and together together togetherness blah blah. At
one point Kristol said something about disagreeing with internet censorship, which was weird
because his Weekly Standard
actively participates in Facebook censorship as one of its authorized "fact checkers".
The buzzword "bipartisan" gets used a lot in US politics because it gives the illusion that
whatever agenda it's being applied to must have some deep universal truth to it for such wildly
divergent ideologies to set aside their differences in order to advance it, but what it usually
means is Democrat neocons and Republican neocons working together to inflict new horrors upon
the world.
America's two mainstream political parties agree furiously with one another on war,
neoliberalism, Orwellian surveillance, and every other agenda which increases the power and
profit of the plutocratic class which owns them both. The plutocrat-owned mass media plays up
the differences between Democrats and Republicans to hysterical proportions, when in reality
the debate over which one is worse is like arguing over whether a serial killer's arms or legs
are more evil.
Neera Tanden and Bill Kristol are the same fucking person. They're both toxic limbs on the
same toxic beast, feeding the lives of ordinary people at home and abroad into its gaping mouth
in service of the powerful. And populism, which is nothing other than support for the
protection of common folk from the powerful, is the only antidote to such toxins. Saying
populism undermines democracy is like saying democracy undermines democracy.
Keyser , 29 minutes ago
The only thing the neocons care about is money and dead brown people, in that order,
because the more dead people, the more $$$ they make...
Jim in MN , 28 minutes ago
You mean, neolibcon globalist elite sociopath traitors, right?
bshirley1968 , 38 minutes ago
I am confident that if I ever spent time around Caitlin there would be a whole host of
things we would disagree about......but this,
" America's two mainstream political parties agree furiously with one another on war,
neoliberalism, Orwellian surveillance, and every other agenda which increases the power and
profit of the plutocratic class which owns them both. The plutocrat-owned mass media plays up
the differences between Democrats and Republicans to hysterical proportions, when in reality
the debate over which one is worse is like arguing over whether a serial killer's arms or
legs are more evil."
.....is something we can absolutely agree on. This FACT needs to be expounded and driven
down the sheeple throats until they are puking it up. Why don't they teach that in screwls?
Because school is where the foundation for this lie of two parties is laid .
DingleBarryObummer , 29 minutes ago
It's funny that you say that. I was just thinking about how high school was a microcosm of
how the world is.
The football stars were the "protected class." They could park like assholes, steal food
from the cafeteria, and show up late, and wouldn't get in trouble.
That's just one of a multitude of examples. That's a whole nother article in itself.
DingleBarryObummer , 39 minutes ago
Tucker Carlson made Bolton look like the dingus he is in that interview. We all know
(((who))) he works for.
+1 to tucker
WTFUD , 43 minutes ago
Campaigns are funded, career Politicians become made-men, conduits for the scramble of
BILLIONAIRES gorging bigly on-the-public-teat, with a kick-back revolving door supernova
gratuity waiting at the end of the rainbow.
Of course they can ALL AGREE . . . eventually.
Chupacabra-322 , 54 minutes ago
"How many people have Kristol and his ilk murdered in their endless wars for israel?"
Countless.
ChiangMaiXPat , 58 minutes ago
As a Trump voter, I believe I have more in common with Caitlin Johnstone then "any"
Neocon. Her articles and writing are mostly "spot on." I imagine I would disagree on a couple
key social issues but on foreign policy I believe most conservatives are on the same page as
her.
ChiangMaiXPat , 54 minutes ago
I thought her piece was "spot on," she's a very good writer. The Neo CONS will be the
death of this country.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has released a letter from former meteorologist and former
Democratic candidate for Maryland's 8th district, Dennis Ketterer, who claims that Brett
Kavanaugh's third accuser and Michael Avenatti client, Julie Swetnick, was a group-sex
enthusiast that he initially mistook for a prostitute at a 1993 Washington D.C. going-away
party for a colleague.
"Due to her having a directly stated penchant for group sex, I decided not to see her
anytmore" -Dennis Ketterer
Ketterer writes that Swetnick approached him "alone, quite beautiful, well-dressed and no
drink in hand."
"Consequently, my initial thought was that she might be a high end call girl because at the
time I weighed 350lbs so what would someone like her want with me? "
The former meteorologist then said that since "there was no conversation about exchanging
sex for money" he decided to keep talking to her, noting that he had never been hit on in a bar
before.
Over the ensuing weeks, Ketterer claims that he and Swetnick met at her residence for an
extramarital affair that did not involve sex.
"Although we were not emotionally involved there was physical contact. We never had sex
despite the fact that she was very sexually aggressive with me.
...
During a conversation about our sexual preferences, things got derailed when Julie told me
that she liked to have sex with more than one guy at a time. In fact sometimes with several
at one time. She wanted to know if that would be ok in our relationship.
Ketterer claims that since the AIDS epidemic was a "huge issue" at the time and he had
children, he decided to cut things off with Swetnick. He goes on to mention that she never said
anything about being "sexually assaulted, raped, gang-raped or having sex against her will,"
and that she "never mentioned Brett Kavanaugh in any capacity."
After Ketterer decided to run for Congress in Maryland, he thought Julie could be of service
to his campaign - however he lost her phone number. After contacting her father, he learned
that Julie had "psychological and other problems at the time."
Last week we reported that Swetnick's ex-boyfriend,
Richard Vinneccy - a registered Democrat, took out a restraining order against her, and says
he has evidence that she's lying.
"Right after I broke up with her, she was threatening my family, threatening my wife and
threatening to do harm to my baby at that time ," Vinneccy said in a telephone interview with
POLITICO. " I know a lot about her ." -
Politico
" I have a lot of facts, evidence, that what she's saying is not true at all ," he said. " I
would rather speak to my attorney first before saying more ."
Avenatti called the claims "outrageous" and hilariously accused the press of " digging into
the past " of a woman levying a claim against Kavanaugh from over 35 years ago.
And now we can add "group sex enthusiast" to the claims against Swetnick. Read below:
About 35 years ago, at a party in San Francisco where everyone was very drunk, now Senator
Feinstein sexually molested me. Don't remember the date or location or anything else, but it
happened, I swear!
Naturally, want to remain anonymous to protect my integrity, but it did
happen! She shoved me down onto my knees and ground her crotch in my face. It was terrible, I
can still recall the horrible smell to this day! The stench was a combination of rotting
flesh and urine. Makes me nauseous just thinking of that sexual assault. INVESTIGATE this
serial molester!
Guys who have been falsely accused, like me, knew quickly that Ford was lying. They all
have the same pattern, too many smiles, attention seeking, stories that make no sense or too
vague,etc.
VWAndy , 22 hours ago
Mrs Fords stunt works in family courts all the time. Thats why they tried it folks. They
have gotten away with it before.
Barney08 , 1 day ago
Ford is a crusader. She thinks she is a Roe v Wade savior but she is an over educated
ditz.
Kelley , 1 day ago
One word uttered by Ford proves that not only did Kav. not attack her but no one ever
assaulted her . That word is "hippocampus." No woman in recorded history has ever used
that word to describe their strongest reaction to a sexual assault.
It's mind blowing that a person would react to what was supposedly one of the most
traumatic experiences of her life with a nearly gleeful "Indelibly in my hippocampus " or
something to that effect unless of course it didn't happen. Her inappropriate response leads
me to believe that Ford was never assaulted in the manner in which she claimed. If her
claimed trauma had been a case of mistaken identity regarding a real assault, she still would
have felt it and reacted far differently.
Emotional memories get stored in the amygdala. The hippocampus is for matter-of-fact
memories. When Senator Feinstein asked Ford about her strongest memories of the event, Ford
went all "matter of fact" in her reply, "Indelibly in my hippocampus ." without a trace of
emotion in her response. No emotions = no assault by ANYONE let alone by Kavanaugh.
Giant Meteor , 1 day ago
Not only that, her most indelible memory from the experience was the maniacal laughter,
not the part where a hand was forcibly placed over her mouth and she thought she may in that
moment, have been accidently killed.
As to the hippopotamus, is that a turtle neck she is wearing or just her neck. What the
**** happened there, she said nothing about strangulation.
pnchbowlturd , 1 day ago
Another peculiar thing about Ford's testimony was the adolescent voicing she gave it in.
It was if she was imitating a 6 year old. I wish MItchell had fleshed out Ford's hobbies
(surfing??) more and given more context to her career activities and recreational pursuits in
college, alcohol consumption patterns or substance abuse treatments.
Her voicing was a tell that she seemed to be overplaying the victim persona for a person
who holds a doctorate and travels the world surfing
Nunny , 1 day ago
If they coached her (while on the loooong drive from CA...lol) to use that voice, they
didn't do her any favors. I thought femi-libs were all about being 'strong' and 'tough'. They
can't have it both ways.....strike that.....they do have it both ways.....and the useful
idiots on the left buy it.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
IMHO, the most peculiar thing was her outright refusal to say aloud the name of the boy
that introduced her to Kavanaugh, when repeatedly questioned by Rachel Mitchell. It was
wildly obvious that she was being evasive and I see it as an enormous tell. Chris Garrett,
nicknamed "Squi", was IMHO the boy that drove her to and from the party, and if he didn't
outright assault her that day, he may have dumped her that day.
MedTechEntrepreneur , 1 day ago
If the FBI is to have ANY credibility, they must insist on Ford's emails, texts and phone
records for the last 2 years.
Anunnaki , 1 day ago
Kill shots:
Ranging from "mid 1980s" in a text to the Washington Post to "early 80s"
No name was listed in 2012 and 2013 individual and marriage therapy notes.
she was the victim of "physical abuse," whereas she has now testified that she told her
husband about a "sexual assault."
she does not remember who invited her to the party or how she heard about it. She does
not remember how she got to the party." Mitchell continued: "She does not remember in what
house the assault allegedly took place or where that house was located with any
specificity. Perhaps most importantly, she does not remember how she got from the party to
her house."
In her letter to Feinstein, she said "me and 4 others" were at the party but in her
testimony she said there were four boys in additional to Leland Keyser and herself. She did
not list Leland Keyser even though they are good friends. Leland Keyser's presence should
have been more memorable than PJ Smyth's,
· She testified that she had exactly one beer at the party
· "All three named eyewitnesses have submitted statements to the Committee denying
any memory of the party whatsoever,
· her BFF: Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever
being at a party or gathering where he was present with
· the simple and unchangeable truth is that Keyser is unable to corroborate [Dr.
Ford's allegations] because she has no recollection of the incident in question.
· Mitchell stated that Ford refused to provide her therapy notes to the Senate
Committee.
· Mitchell says that Ford wanted to remain confidential but called a tipline at the
Washington Post.
· she also said she did not contact the Senate because she claimed she "did not
know how to do that."
· It would also have been inappropriate to administer a polygraph to someone who
was grieving.
· the date of the hearing was delayed because the Committee was told that Ford's
symptoms prevented her from flying, but she agreed during testimony that she flies "fairly
frequently."
· She also flew to Washington D.C. for the hearing.
· "The activities of Congressional Democrats and Dr. Ford's attorneys likely
affected Dr. Ford's account.
All Comments 833
NaturalOnly , 10 hours ago
It is not a matter of proving he is guilty to be prosecuted and go to jail. I think he did
it. I think we all do stupid stuff when we are young and drunk. By all accounts he was a
boozer.
There are a ton of people who would like to be on the Supreme court, why shove this guy
down everyone's throat? He was an a$$. He needs to go away.
At first I thought this was all about politics. It might be a little. But women are sick
of being victimized by men who get by with it. He should not get by with this.
Mzhen , 10 hours ago
No. Corroborating. Evidence.
Mike in Tokyo Rogers , 9 hours ago
Illogical and emotional "reasoning."
merlinfire , 2 hours ago
"I think he is guilty despite the evidence, so he must be guilty, despite the
evidence."
Mzhen , 11 hours ago
Ms. Mitchell had a line of questioning about the friend who was mutual to Kavanaugh and
Ford. It turns out this was the same person who had been named earlier by Ed Whelan. Ford
said she had dated Garrett, also knew his younger brother, but flatly refused to refer to him
by name in public.
I'll assume Ms. Mitchell was allowed to review all of the investigative material collected
by the Committee to date. There has to be a reason she pursued this line of questioning.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
Who would most likely drive a girl to a party with older high school boys from a different
school and different circle of friends? Who would most likely take a 15 year old girl home
from a party in an age without cell phones? His name is Chris Garrett, nickname of "Squi".
She claims to not remember the person that drove her home, and she claims to not remember the
name of the last boy at the gathering. And she refuses to publicly state the name of the boy
that introduced her to Kavanaugh. These are all one and the same person, her boyfriend and
soon-to-be-ex-BF Chris Garrett, who may have either assaulted her or broke up with her that
day.
fleur de lis , 13 hours ago
What a spoiled brat she must have been whilst growing up.
She must be a really obnoxious snot to her coworkers over the years, too.
And as a teacher she must be a real screwball.
Which explains how she landed an overpaid job at a snowflake factory.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
Yes. I was focused on trying to get into an elite college when I was in HS and these
people's lives were nothing like mine in my teens. But then like a lot of people I'm lowborn
as opposed to these people. I was a caddy at the Country Club, and my parents were certainly
not members.
Brazillionaire , 14 hours ago
I haven't read all the comments so I don't know if somebody already brought this up... can
this woman (who was 15) explain why she was in an upstairs bedroom with two boys? Did they
drag her up the stairs? In front of the others? If she went willingly, for what purpose?
Some things reign eternal... You go (down) girl, Doctor Ford! What a brave 15 year-old
drinking at HS and College-Level Parties! Truly a Progressive ahead of the times! Thank you
for paving the road to ruin! Don't forget to breathe in-between. You ARE the FACE OF THE
DEMOCRATIC PARTY, GIRL! Suck it up, Buttercup!
alfbell , 15 hours ago
RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!!
RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!!
RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!!
RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!!
RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!!
RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!!
RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!!
RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!!
RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!!
RED WAVE!! RED WAVE!!
RighteousRampage , 15 hours ago
Yes, we all got to see Kavanaugh PMS'ing on national television. No need to shout about
it.
alfbell , 15 hours ago
I BELIEVE!!
... that America's institutions are being torn down by Leftists. The attempt to create a
new totalitarian regime has been upon us for decades and is now perfectly clear.
We will not say goodbye to morality.
We will not say goodbye to science.
We will not say goodbye to democracy.
We will not say goodbye to our Constitution, Bill of Rights, Founding Fathers, Logic,
Decency, etc. etc. etc.
MAGA!
AHBL , 15 hours ago
Morality: Your dear Leader cheated on 3 different wives, one of them with a
prostitute,...while she was pregnant (or had a 4 month old, I forget); filed for bankruptcy 5
times, cheating many people out of money; settled fraud lawsuits; lied about charity
donations; your party nominated an actual PEDOPHILE (Moore) for Senate and now wants to
appoint an angry drunk to be SCJ!
Science: You folks are literally disputing the conclusions of the vast, vast majority of
scientists (97% by my last count) when it comes to global warming.
Democracy: this is a Democratic Republic...if it was a Democracy Trump wouldn't be
President.
The rest of the nonsense you wrote was just filler...obviously.
Hadenough1000 , 11 hours ago
Still better than the rapist and intern cigarer
and Benghazi killer clintons😂😂😂
why do retarded libturds not see that!!
alfbell , 11 hours ago
You are clueless. Have all of your priorities and importances upside down. Have zero
critical thinking.
Can't see that it isn't about Trump. It's about a Populist/Nationalist movement to put an
end to the degradation of Progressive Globalists. Look at the big picture AHBL. C'mon you can
do it.
RighteousRampage , 15 hours ago
"Wave goodbye to science"
Um, I believe you have your parties confused.
Hadenough1000 , 11 hours ago
ISIS killee obama turned the democrats into te
aloha_snakbar , 15 hours ago
Why was Ms. Ford wearing glasses that looked like someone rubbed Crisco on the lenses? As
a long time wearer of glasses, I can tell you we dont roll that way, kind of defeats the
purpose. Answer? Those were not her glasses...they were a prop...
NeigeAmericain , 13 hours ago
Hahaha! She should have just taken out the lens out. No one would have looked that closely
or would they ? 🤔
Dormouse , 15 hours ago
She's an Illuminati/NXIVM MKUltra-ed CIA sex-kitten. Her family glows in the dark with CIA
connections. She's a CIA recruiter at Stamford, as well as her other job at Palo Alto. Oh,
something traumatic has happened to her, multiple times; but at the hands of her family and
their close Agency friends. Alyssa Milano in the audience? Come on! This is so ******* sick!
What a disgusting display for those in the Know. Does the FBI currently have the balls to
call them all out? That's the question, has Trump reformed the DOJ/FBI -- beyond the hobbled
and shackled part consummed by these criminals with their coup? He seems confident, almost
like he's tormenting his enemies as usual.
RighteousRampage , 15 hours ago
I heard she was chapter head of the local Elk's lodge as well.
GotAFriendInBen , 16 hours ago
Bye bye lying Brett
New reports question Kavanaugh's credibility on past drinking behavior, when he knew about
allegations
Texts suggest Supreme Court nominee knew of Ramirez accusations months before when he
testified he had heard them
Gold Banit , 16 hours ago
Trump is brilliant and very smart!
Trump destroyed 17 high profile and very rich Republicans in the primaries.
Trump destroyed high profile and very rich Hillary Clinton and became the President of the
USA.
Trump will now destroy the Democratic Party CNN and the main stream media.
Trump is not only brilliant and very smart he is a genius..
The DemoRats are in panic mode and are scared to death cause they are starting to realize
that this could be the end of the Democratic Party.
RighteousRampage , 15 hours ago
"Trump is brilliant and very smart!"
Easy there, you're gonna hurt yourself.
Hadenough1000 , 11 hours ago
Best president in hi
Hadenough1000 , 11 hours ago
He is brilliant
he knew this pick would get beat so he picked Kavanaugh
it was brilliant because even Bush was forced to fight for
kacenau😂😂😂
Hadenough1000 , 11 hours ago
He will be confirmed this week
no problem
just outing the democrats that will be targeted in nov
Oldguy05 , 16 hours ago
I'll believe a woman after she's happily, on her own, made me breakfast 5 years or
more....like mine does 8 years later.
ParaZite , 16 hours ago
Democrats have shown that they are anything but reasonable.
Oldguy05 , 16 hours ago
Racheal Doleazle...Blase'- Ford....We should believe these women! - Why?l
ParaZite , 16 hours ago
Because they have a vagina and can cry when their go fund me page hits 500K.
Hadenough1000 , 11 hours ago
Cause a fat turd senator from Hawaii ordered us too😂😂😂
after that bitch tried to get the democrat rapist clinton back in my White House???
she hates Brett???
dekocrats are riding a fastvttrain to hell
aloha_snakbar , 16 hours ago
Funny how Democraps are getting their panties in a wad over BK drinking beer in college,
yet were okay with Slappy Sotoro snorting cocaine in college....go figure...
Dormouse , 14 hours ago
They're terrified of what happens once he's confirmed.
10/10/18 Checkmate
Extinction
Hadenough1000 , 11 hours ago
The million babies a year quit being executed
Hadenough1000 , 11 hours ago
Where WAS the media when ISIS killer obama put those two fat no resume turds on the
court???
GotAFriendInBen , 16 hours ago
Be wary of anyone this lunatic wants to plant for a lifetime position
Trump Says He 'Fell In Love' With Korean Leader Kim Jong-Un
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Block reference ID: f9d6i listen to the ****-11e8-8d59-**** you
aloha_snakbar , 16 hours ago
Lol... what, seeing UB40?
Hadenough1000 , 11 hours ago
Ouch
might be right on that😂😂😂
Mareka , 16 hours ago
I suspect this is as much about discouraging others from stepping forward as it is about
destroying Kavenaugh.
Oldguy05 , 16 hours ago
I suspect this is about Communists trying to take over our government.
Hadenough1000 , 11 hours ago
Amen
this is warning the good guys
Debt Slave , 16 hours ago
She is a cross eyed boobis and we have to believe her because she says Kavanaugh, a white
hetero catholic man without any decent upbringing or engrained scruples raped her like a
monkey savage out of the jungle. Oh sorry, TRIED to rape her. As a teenager. Tried to raped a
pathetic, stupid cross eyed retarded moron that has since been successfully lobotomized at a
'modern' American university.
When is the last time you saw a 'mentally challenged' person being abused? Oh yes I
remember now, it was Chicongo, January 2017. Four negroes shoved a retarded white man's head
in a toilet and demanded he swear that he loved Niggers.
Never heard what happened to the savage fuckers, eh? Not surprised.
i know who and what I am voting for white man, do you?
Hadenough1000 , 11 hours ago
This is all over BRUTAL KISS
Oldguy05 , 16 hours ago
Whaaa waa waa waa. Whahhh wa waaaaa. It's good to be retarded! Then you don't even have to
try and understand the stupid **** we are FED today!
ThePhantom , 17 hours ago
bitch didn't clean her glasses.... mother ******
rkb100100 , 17 hours ago
I hear Anita Hill is worth a lot of money. I wonder what kind of pay-off this slime ball
will end up with.
Oldguy05 , 16 hours ago
Pubic hair is worth a lot! It's got electrolytes!
Empire's Frontiers , 17 hours ago
You know, we ain't heard much about Russia for a few days.
Mouldy , 16 hours ago
Yeah ZH... **** this Kavanaugh ****, can we get back to the regularly
scheduled doom **** please.
Oldguy05 , 16 hours ago
Quitchabitchen.
benb , 16 hours ago
Time for the un-redacted FISA docs and the text messages. That should send Schumer and the
gang into a tailspin.
Oldguy05 , 16 hours ago
....disqus spinning thing
Hadenough1000 , 11 hours ago
God bless brilliant trump
holding those real crimes over democrats
cant wait until he drops the bombs
MrAToZ , 17 hours ago
The Dims don't believe Ford any more than they believe in the constitution. They are
building a better world. They are true believers, one in the cause.
If one of them were at the receiving end of this type of Spanish inquisition they would be
crying foul right out of the batter's box. But, because this is for the cause they will put
the vagina hat on, goose step around and say they believe that mousey Marxist.
It's a made up sink if he's innocent, guilty if he floats game show. They know exactly
what they are doing, which makes them even more reprehensible.
benb , 16 hours ago
Yes a Hoax! But how many out there believe this crap? I'd like to see an accurate poll if
that's possible.
Oldguy05 , 16 hours ago
I believe it all! Both sides are right!
Debt Slave , 16 hours ago
That's why we call them 'Bolsheviks'. That's what they are.
Oldguy05 , 16 hours ago
They killed millions! ...and are poised to try and do it again.
BankSurfyMan , 18 hours ago
Fordy had sexual encounters, she drinks beer and flies all over the globe... One day she
had a beer and cannot remember getting home on time to watch, MOAR DOOM NEWS! Fucktard Fordy!
Doom 2019! Next!
inosent , 18 hours ago
Well, at least Rachel doesn't come off as one of those psycho SJW bitches
Oldguy05 , 16 hours ago
I am a black woman that identifies as a pre-pubescent Taiwanese man.
SocratesSolutions , 18 hours ago
Hmm. I think here, now which is it really? Does Ford make a better looking man, or does
Kavanaugh make a better looking woman?
Giant Meteor , 17 hours ago
I dunno. But so far no one has been able to answer this question. Why, in the picture
above, does Ford look like she swalowed a hula hoop ?
Oldguy05 , 16 hours ago
Because.
Kafir Goyim , 18 hours ago
Just had lunch with a democrat. He's generally tolerable, so his level of anger at
Kavanaugh and his acceptance of "anything goes" to derail Kavanaugh was surprising to me.
Democrats believe that Roe V Wade is instantly overturned if Kavanaugh gets in. They also
think that if Roe V Wade is overturned, no woman will ever be able to abort another baby in
the US.
I explained to him that destruction of Roe V Wade will only make it a state issue, so
girls in California, Oregon, Washington, New York, etc will be able to kill as many babies as
they want to. It will only be girls in Wyoming or Utah or some other very red state that
might have to schlep their *** to another state to kill their kid.
Democrats see this as a battle for abortion, and if Kav gets confirmed, abortion is
completely gone in the USA. That's why you have these women freaking out. They think the
stakes are much higher than they actually are. Almost all of the women that are so worried
about this live in states where it won't have any effect on them at all.
I am Groot , 18 hours ago
I hope you took a bath and a flea dip after lunch.
Kafir Goyim , 18 hours ago
I think I kind of calmed him down. We need to let them know that their world doesn't end
if Roe V Wade is overturned. I am also not at all sure it would be overturned, even with Kav
on the court, but they insist it will be, so not worth arguing. Reminding them that it
doesn't effect them, if they live in a blue state should calm their fears a little.
The right to abort is their 2nd amendment, God help us. If you explain to them they are
not really in danger, it may calm them down. They'll still make noise about those poor girls
who can't get an abortion after school and still make it home for dinner, and instead, have
to take a bus to another state to kill their kid, but they won't be as personally threatened
and lashing out as they mistakenly are now.
when the saxon began , 17 hours ago
And therein lies the fatal flaw of an elected representative government. The votes of the
ignorant and stupid are counted the same as yours or mine. And there are far more of
them.
VisionQuest , 18 hours ago
Democrats stand for atheism, abortion & sodomy. Ask yourself this question: Who stands
with Democrats? If your answer is "I do." then you'd best rethink your precious notions of
morality, truth, common decency, common sense and justice.
It is undoubtedly true that, in our entirely imperfect world, the American Way of life is
also far from perfect. But it is also true that, compared to every other system of government
on the planet, there is no comparison with the level of achievement accomplished by the
American Way of life.
Democrats hate and will destroy the American Way of life. Have you been a Democrat? Walk
away.
Automatic Choke , 19 hours ago
EXCUSE ME, Y'ALL.....
but where the hell are the texts, FISA memo, & other docs?
look, another ******* squirrel !!!!!
J Jason Djfmam , 19 hours ago
They should also recommend an investigation of the woman with two front holes...errr front
doors.
snatchpounder , 18 hours ago
Yes Flake should be investigated I concur.
Anunnaki , 17 hours ago
Zing!
freedommusic , 19 hours ago
At this point the FBI should recommend a criminal investigation to the DOJ for treasonous
actors who are subverting the constitutional process of SC nomination. The crimes of perjury,
sedition, and treason, need to be clearly articulated to the public and vigorous prosecution
ensue.
We are STILL a Constitutional Republic - RIGHT?
Giant Meteor , 18 hours ago
Well, I am betting 27 trillion dollars that the answer to your question is a resounding ,
no ...
didthatreallyhappen , 19 hours ago
there is not "case"
ZeroPorridge , 19 hours ago
STOP SHOWING THIS LAME ****, TYLER! I HAD ENOUGH OF THIS WAFFLECRAP!!
DingleBarryObummer , 19 hours ago
It's the nothing burger flavor of the week. Tylers gotta put bread on the table u know. Be
grateful for the good stuff they host, ZH is still the best news site on the internet. And
don't worry, this nothing burger will get stale and we will have a new one in a week or 2,
and everyone can get hysterical from that and forget about this one.
dchang0 , 19 hours ago
A body language analysis video on BitChute goes through the Ford testimony and points out
all the markers for lying and rehearsed lines:
I saw a video on youtube where a man threw chicken bones and saw Kavanaugh is guilty. I
mean, what other proof does one need.
Anunnaki , 17 hours ago
Red herrIng much?
Anunnaki , 14 hours ago
Excellent. Thanks
loved the part on pretty pose. Her helium voice was an act
Shillinlikeavillan , 19 hours ago
This **** won't mean anything to the leftards, they will pretend that this report never
happened and will carry on acting like a bunch of dumbasses...
Meanwhile, there was indeed a party with ford in it that night...
... and its hard to stop a train...
RighteousRampage , 19 hours ago
...of old angry entitled white men from gang banging our constitutional rights.
Mr. Universe , 19 hours ago
How come all of a sudden 8 year old accounts whom I've never seen before start trolling?
At least 4 so far I've seen, strange co inky dink ehh?
RighteousRampage , 16 hours ago
I gave up posting here years ago when the site went from sharp-eyed financial analysis to
Russia-humping conspiro-nazism. That said, this Kavanaughty thing is just too much of a
meatball to pass up.
Now, respect your elders, and go back to playing in your sandbox, little boy.
Sinophile , 19 hours ago
If the bitch 'struggled academically in college' then how the hell did she get awarded a
freaking P(ost)H(ole)D(igger)?
snatchpounder , 18 hours ago
She probably blew the right man or men.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
That's why GRE and other standardized tests should be prioritized. Thinking on one's feet
is a good thing!
eitheror , 19 hours ago
Thank you Rachel Mitchell for having the courage to tell the truth about the testimony of
Ms. Blasey Ford, P.h.D.
Ford is not a medical Doctor but is a P.h.D.
The Democrats seem to have abandoned Ms. Ford like a bad haircut, instead focusing on
other smoke and mirrors.
onewayticket2 , 19 hours ago
Again, So What??
The democrats have already soiled this Judge's career and family name. Now it's about
delay.
Exoneration note from the Republicans' lawyer carries precisely zero weight with
them.....they are too busy sourcing everyone who ever drank beer with Kav....in an effort to
get another Week Long extension/argue that Trump already greenlighted such an extension to
investigate how much Kav likes beer. or who's milk money he stole in 3rd grade....
RighteousRampage , 19 hours ago
i guess Kavanuaghty wasn't worried about soiling the family name all those times he
stumbled home slurring his words and yelling at random passersby.
onewayticket2 , 18 hours ago
He is not the first college student to get drunk.
Equating getting drunk to charges in every newspaper and TV news station for weeks stating
he is a gang rapist ring leader etc is laughably idiotic. Nice job. Thx for the laugh.
HowdyDoody , 19 hours ago
Reports that Chinese naval vessel has chased a US vessel USS Decatur out of disputed
waters. The Chinese vessel came within ~40 meters of the USS vessel (which is pretty darn
close).
French president Macron, visiting the West Indows was interviewed about the confrontation.
He responded, saying "don't bug me, bro. I got important things on my mind".
About 35 years ago, at a party in San Francisco where everyone was very drunk, now Senator
Feinstein sexually molested me. Don't remember the date or location or anything else, but it
happened, I swear! Naturally, want to remain anonymous to protect my integrity, but it did
happen! She shoved me down onto my knees and ground her crotch in my face. It was terrible, I
can still recall the horrible smell to this day! The stench was a combination of rotting
flesh and urine. Makes me nauseous just thinking of that sexual assault. INVESTIGATE this
serial molester!
nope-1004 , 20 hours ago
Anyone see what that fat, big mouthed, undisciplined pig Rosie O'Donnell tweeted today? I
didn't. But I'm sure that fat piggy just had to weigh-in (no pun intended) on how she's been
crossed by this.
Any other lefties lurking here who have kids that can't stand you / your insane views, and
have disowned you like Rosie's did?
lol
I am Groot , 19 hours ago
Piggy ? More like a rabid albino silverback beating her hairy chest.
Opulence I Has It , 20 hours ago
The only things she does remember, are the things that directly support her allegations.
That fact, by itself, is reason enough to disbelieve everything she says. The idea that she
would have concrete memories of only those specific events, is not believable.
It's totally believable, though, that she's been counseled thus, to make her story easier
to remember and avoid those inconvenient secondary details. You know, those secondary details
that every police detective knows are how you trip up a liar. They are so focused on their
bogus story, the little details of the time surrounding the fabrication don't hold up.
Mr. Universe , 19 hours ago
Would you expect less from the company?
Anunnaki , 17 hours ago
Can't remember when it happened, how she got there, who was there, how she got home
She remembers clearly she only had one beer and was taking no medication yet cannot
remember for sure how she accessed her counselors records on her whether by internet or
copying them less than 3 months ago?
Not possible.
She's a lying shill and in time it will come out.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
She doesn't remember her rescuer that drove her home and away from such a terrible
situation. Is this plausible? I say absolutely not. IMHO, she knows his name but refuses to
say it while pretending to not remember. Chris Garrett, nicknamed "Squi", who introduced her
to Kavanaugh and who was her boyfriend once. Some have speculated that he assaulted her that
day and/or ended her relationship that day after she didn't want to take things to the next
level with him.
quasi_verbatim , 20 hours ago
What a load of 'Murican crap.
Giant Meteor , 20 hours ago
Squawkkkkkk, it's what we do !
American Dissident , 20 hours ago
McConnell on the Senate Floor 50 minutes ago: "The time for endless delay and obstruction
has come to a close.... Mr. President, we'll be voting this week."
xear , 21 hours ago
Brett is obviously innocent. Groping her, holding her down, grinding into her... it's not
like it was rape. And as far as covering her mouth so she couldn't scream... after a heavy
night of drinking who wants to hear screaming? Almost anyone would do the same.
I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 20 hours ago
it's always interesting to see where and why people claim to know things about which they
have literally no 'knowledge.'
Also interesting to see how the same people who would protest assuming the guilt of an
alleged Muslim terrorist or Black liquor store robber now argue it is 'whiteness' and
'patriarchy' to not assume the guilt of a white male regarding decades old uncorroborated
charges... which 4 named witnesses deny having knowledge of, by a woman who lied about a fear
of flying to try to delay the process.
We can all be hypocrites.
But watching the Left embrace hypocrisy as social justice has been, in the pure sense of
the word, awesome to behold.
RighteousRampage , 20 hours ago
Almost, but not quite, as awesome to behold as the right's embrace of complete immorality
by the supposed party of faith and religion.
ZD1 , 20 hours ago
The demonic Democrat socialist party are all about immorality.
The real neo-Marxist fascists on the Supreme Court are:
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Marxist *** from ACLU)
Elena Kagan (Marxist ***)
Sonia Sotomayer (Marxist brown supremacist from La Raza/MEHcA)
Stephen Breyer (Marxist ***)
They are no different than the left-wing billionaire neo-Marxist fascists that own and
control the demonic Democrat socialist party.
RighteousRampage , 20 hours ago
Showing your Nazi stripes again?
The religious right will never again be able to claim any moral high-ground, never. Not
after Trump and this Kavanaugh fiasco.
ZD1 , 20 hours ago
The immoral lying neo-Marxist fascists in the demonic Democrat socialist party never had
any high ground, EVER!
Now run along Antifa fascist.
RighteousRampage , 20 hours ago
Whatever you say, Boris.
Dancing Disraeli , 20 hours ago
Boris is a Russian name. If you wanted to run the Nazi narrative, you should've called him
Fritz.
Anunnaki , 17 hours ago
I love the new ignore feature on the Hedge. Buh bye Snowflake
Babble_On2001 , 20 hours ago
Right, that's why the fraud Ford kept repeating, "I don't remember" or "I can't recall."
Yes, a very believable story. Now let me tell you about another female figure that has been
treated poorly, she's called the Tooth Fairy.
deja , 19 hours ago
Tawana Brawley, substitute republican conservative for white state trooper.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
Not only are these claims of not remembering completely implausible, but the transcript
shows that she explicitly refuses to say the name of the boy that introduced her to BK. It
strikes me as wildly disrespectful to Rachel Mitchell and just screams for further
exploration.
FBaggins , 21 hours ago
To fix things if after all of this crap from the feminazis and Kavenaugh simply withdraws
his name, Trump should put forward Judge Amy Coney Barrett as the next candidate. It would
really ensure support for Trump candidates in the midterms from women in general and from
social-conservative family-values people in the US and it would perhaps teach the feminazis a
lesson at the same time.
istt , 20 hours ago
No, Kavanaugh deserves better. He has earned his place on the USSC.
Giant Meteor , 20 hours ago
My prediction was, and still is Kavanaugh goes forward. Even the revered CNN is starting
to walk the drinking issue back.
By the way , the Trump presser today was a ******* hoot!
cheech_wizard , 20 hours ago
Aren't they all...
Standard Disclaimer: Keep calm and MAGA on!
ToddTheBabyWhale , 21 hours ago
Nine page memo, Tyler. Your starting to write like a pro journalist now.
jomama , 21 hours ago
Checked in for a minute to have a peek at countless fat, white, middle aged, anonymous
assholes spewing hatred and misogyny.
Wasn't disappointed. Keeping it classy, ZH.
I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 21 hours ago
that's big talk coming from a pedophile.
prove you aren't, dickhead.
Lore , 21 hours ago
That isn't helpful. The reason why jomama's post is wrong is because it's merely spewing
vitriol, when the priority should be to dis-indoctrinate and self-educate.
American Dissident , 20 hours ago
Reading this made is like seeing a fire truck on fireeeeeee
tmosley , 20 hours ago
I started blocking low effort trolls after one warning.
Slowly cleaning the place up.
Jein , 20 hours ago
Tmosley: "it hurts my feelings to read things I dont like and I need a safe space to cry
in"
Mr. Universe , 19 hours ago
Another 9 year member troll I've never seen before. Do you think the mockingbirds want to
disrupt any discourse and devolve it into "them vs. us"? You bet they do. Buzz off, jomama
back to whatever basement they dug you up out of. Tell Georgie that we will resist this
treachery with our last breaths.
Lore , 21 hours ago
You misunderstand, because your perspective is handicapped by progressivist
indoctrination. A conscientious ZHer will read a note like that and dismiss it as
intellectual laziness: mindless regurgitation of programming.
Strive to deprogram, and you'll quickly develop better perspective about the distinction
between political correctness and pursuit of truth. God knows there is name-calling on both
sides, but I think it's safe to say that the biggest concern on sites like ZH is the way
mainstream American discourse has been hijacked by amoral pathocracy. What matters is not
doing The Right Thing: what matters is ******* over the other guy to get Your Way. That is
the evil that is on the verge of destroying this nation.
cheech_wizard , 20 hours ago
It's either that, or drugs.
robertocarlos , 21 hours ago
I'm not that fat.
Harvey_Manfrengensen , 21 hours ago
I am at 16% bodyfat. Nor am I white. Try again.
istt , 21 hours ago
Jomama raped me when I was in the 6th grade. Just came out after a therapy session. Can
anyone corroborate my story, you ask? No, but I am 100% sure he is the guy. You are a guy,
right? Now if we can just expose who he is I will press charges and have him put away for a
very long time, ruin his family and his career.
rwmomad , 20 hours ago
He pulled my pants down in first grade on the play ground and touched my pee pee. I am
seeking counsel.
Giant Meteor , 20 hours ago
How's that going?
IridiumRebel , 20 hours ago
Still can't refute anything so ad hominem attacks....got it.
Stay generalized!
let freedom ring , 21 hours ago
Trump has given up on K. The calculus is that it will be bad for the democrats if he
doesn't make it on the court. Don't expect Trumps help from here on in. K was a flawed
candidate from the start and Trump knew it, and is playing his base like a violin.
istt , 20 hours ago
Total BS. You've lost your senses. People are expendable but not that much. Trump has to
be thought of as a guy who backs his appointees, that he will go to the wall for them.
sunkeye , 21 hours ago
T/y Prosecutor Mitchell for conducting yourself w/ professionalism, decency, & honor -
personal traits none of the Democratic senators seem to possess, or would even recognize if
shown to them directly as you did. Again. t/y & bravo.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
She allowed Ford to refuse to speak the name of the boy that introduced her to BK. Chris
Garrett, nicknamed "Squi", who was Ford's one-time boyfriend. Some speculate that he was the
unnamed final boy at the party and that he may have assaulted Ford and/or dumped her after
she refused to go to the next level with him. Hence the trauma.
Jein , 21 hours ago
All this vitriol breaks my heart. Why can't we all just love eachother? I heard human
centipeding is a great way to team build. Who's in?
chrbur , 21 hours ago
Jein...because first we must remove evil....
RighteousRampage , 21 hours ago
right, and by labeling the opposing side, "evil" that pretty much means anything goes.
first step is to dehumanize, then all possibilities are on the table, amirite?
istt , 20 hours ago
Yeah, that's following the Alinsky playbook. Something you have been spewing all over
these threads. Guilty until proven innocent. No, better, yet, guilty because he was
accused.
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a
socialist."
RighteousRampage , 20 hours ago
Funny how all of the "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" crowd here was so
quick to send Hillary to the gulag, or believe in that Obama was a Muslim, or that a pizza
parlor was ground-zero for a child trafficking ring, or....
let freedom ring , 21 hours ago
I like it. lets sew a string of Trumptards together *** to mouth, south park style.
Jein , 21 hours ago
Love it. I'm willing to make the sacrifice be the head.
Negative_Prime , 20 hours ago
Why? You're so good at being the rear.
Don't deny your nature.
tmosley , 20 hours ago
I told you to stop that ****.
You are now on ignore. Suggest everyone do the same. This guy never said anything
interesting.
Paracelsus , 21 hours ago
I am having trouble keeping these personalities separate as I want to give everyone the
benefit of the
doubt. When I see Justice Kavanaugh, I think of the confirmation hearing as a political
attack on the
Trump administration . Also as an attempt to score points, or make the other side
screw up, before the
upcoming elections.When I see Dr. Ford, I see Hillary Clinton and all the bitterness
from a failed
politician.
The funny thing is I thought all the Trump "fake news" statements were a load of crap.
Turns out he hit the
mark quite often. The lefties are so damn mad because Trump is succeeding and they haven't
been able to
score points against him. So they feel that it is justified to use other
methods,regardless of the fallout.
There is a whiff of panic and desperation present.
I have stated this before, as have others: The loss of the White House by the Democrats
provided a
unique opportunity to clean out the deadwood. This may have seemed cruel and heartless
but the
Obama era is over and the Dem's urgently need to return to their roots before it is too
late. Did they
use this moment of change or did they revert to business as usual? To ask the question
is to
answer it.... This is commonly described as bureaucratic inertia. The Dem's only needed
to get the
ball rolling and they would be moving towards the objective of regaining power. New,
younger
and more diplomatic and law abiding types need to be encouraged to apply. Put out the
help wanted
sign. Do what Donald does,"You're fired!".
RighteousRampage , 21 hours ago
Well, if others have stated it before, it MUST be true. Republiconarists and Demcraps are
playing the same stupid games. Dems got punked w Garland, and now Reps are getting their
comeuppance w Kavanaugh (who really made it worse for himself by holding up such an obviously
false pious portrait of himself).
American Dissident , 22 hours ago
I believe Judge Brett Kavanaugh. I believe Rachel Mitchell, Esq. I believe Leland Keyser.
I believe Mark Judge. I believe P.J. Smyth.
I believe the evidence. That's why I don't believe Ms. Christine Blasey Ford.
Anunnaki , 17 hours ago
But she only had one beer!
Torgo , 11 hours ago
What do you think of the Chris Garrett hypothesis?
VWAndy , 22 hours ago
Mrs Fords stunt works in family courts all the time. Thats why they tried it folks. They
have gotten away with it before.
Drop-Hammer , 22 hours ago
IOW, she is a lying leftist loon and fraud. I am only surprised that she is not a
treacherous jewess.
1970SSNova396 , 22 hours ago
The bitch was a fraud and anybody with a working brain understands that. Of course that
exempts the democrat voting base.
The two ugly women senators from Maine and Alaska just might sink Kav. Lord knows they
want to so bad.
arby63 , 22 hours ago
And you are about duplicitous as one paid troll could be. Go punch yourself and apologize
to those that actually have a job.
1970SSNova396 , 22 hours ago
G F Y sport
arby63 , 22 hours ago
Don't you wish. Bitch.
RighteousRampage , 21 hours ago
Zerohedge is basically Breitbart now, with even more doomporn and more Putin puffery.
cheech_wizard , 20 hours ago
******* yourself might be the only sex you're getting... Just saying...
RighteousRampage , 20 hours ago
Maybe he's a proud beer drinking virgin, just like your man Kavanaugh.
STONEHILLADY , 22 hours ago
also for someone going up before Congress for any reason, this Ford girl had NOT one
family member or husband by her side....that is a real telling sign.
Also check out the secret courts going on in E. Warren's state Mass. same kind of Justice,
guilty to prove innocent, they have adopted the court system of the Inquisition, get ready
folks if the Dems. take back the Congress. these type of courts coming to blue state near
you.
1970SSNova396 , 22 hours ago
If your father was CIA would you want him there? Of course she is a carpet eater so two
lesbians is enough.
RighteousRampage , 21 hours ago
I guess then, by your logic, the Clinton's should be considered innocent?
Anunnaki , 14 hours ago
She kept looking at her prepared statement like a security blanket under cross
examination
Torgo , 11 hours ago
It was an attempt to make her look alone and vulnerable. Along with the girly voice and
the glasses to make her eyes look huge and neotenous.
YourAverageJoe , 22 hours ago
Writing the memo was easy for her. She could have cut and pasted large parts of Comey's
July 2016 exoneration of Hillary speech.
aloha_snakbar , 22 hours ago
Ms Ford, the newly minted millionaire, is probably lying poolside in Mexico, indulging in
her favorite psychotropics and getting pounded by the local brown talent. Wow...having a
vagina is like having a meat 3D printer that spews out money...
cheech_wizard , 20 hours ago
That so reminds me of this line in "He Never Died"...
I, uh, don't have money, so...
Then how did you end up inebriated?
Vaginas are like coupon books for alcohol.
Aubiekong , 23 hours ago
Never was about justice, this is simply a liberal/globalist plan to stop Trump.
peippe , 22 hours ago
why can't they lay back & take the pounding?
might even start to enjoy it. MAGA!
Trump Train will place at least one more justice on the bench beyond Brettster. : )
I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 21 hours ago
Trump is surrounded by Jews.. Zionists and bankers.
We are watching the Ultra-Zionist Jews in a power struggle with the Globalist Jews.
And 100 years ago Churchill notes the same - Jews divided between destroying nations
(Bolsheviks) and building their own to rule the world and possess its wealth (Zionism).
Bad cop, bad cop.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
Well stated. Churchill famously and openly wrote about this in the early 1920s.
arby63 , 23 hours ago
If you haven't punched a Democrat today, try harder.
Jein , 22 hours ago
Cuck alert
arby63 , 22 hours ago
Let us all know when you're ready to jump.
LadyAtZero , 22 hours ago
Prosecutor Rachel did a great job and given that Christine's testimony was under oath,
Christine is set up to be held to what she said.
Friends, Christine is C_A and so is her dad. These C_A facts are all over the
internet.
Christine during her testimony had a fake "little girl, looking over her glasses, am I not
cute?" demeanor.
She is a psych. PhD for heavens sake -- she is 52 years old. No need to act like a hurt
little girl, unless one is facing the big white male meanies who dare to question her and she
can emit "I'm a victim" all day long.
Go Kavanaugh!
(and I don't care if Brett Kavanaugh likes to drink beer and I don't care that he drank in
college and got rip-roaring drunk. Most of us did... as we all know).
........sigh.....
Prince Eugene of Savoy , 20 hours ago
Squeaky Ford only testified to what she had written down. She never used the part of the
brain dealing with actual memory. https://youtu.be/uGxr1VQ2dPI
Torgo , 11 hours ago
And she outright refused to speak the name of the boy that had introduced her to BK. It
was wildly evasive and inappropriate and is a huge red flag for this case. Chris Garrett,
nicknamed "Squi". Her one-time boyfriend and I am convinced that he both drove her to and
away from the party. After she refused his effort to take their relationship to the next
level.
I am Groot , 18 hours ago
There are no more "Democrats" or "liberals". There are only Marxists and communists.
Stop breathing. We will all be better off. Even you.
headless blogger , 22 hours ago
We don't need a cultist that talks at the camera with only his head showing (weird) to
tell us what to believe.
We can figure it out without that phony racist cultist's lecture.
VWAndy , 22 hours ago
Attack the message not the messenger. Every discerning person here is hip to that
trick.
headless blogger , 19 hours ago
We don't need cultists speaking out in our name. It only discredits the truth movement.
The Messenger DOES matter.
Golden Phoenix , 23 hours ago
Ever notice #MeToo
reads 'Pound Me Too!'
American Dissident , 23 hours ago
should be #boxwineresistance
Grandad Grumps , 23 hours ago
Sp, Rachel is "deep state"?
ToSoft4Truth , 23 hours ago
Parrty on, Garth.
blindfaith , 23 hours ago
Was there in 1965, and I can recall what my classmates wore, who could dance, who kissed
great, who had the best music, who got laid and how often...and it was NOT the head of the
football or basketball team.
Her memory is selectively scripted, and I am 20 years older and my memory is just
fine.
charlewar , 23 hours ago
In other words, Ford is a liar
JohnG , 23 hours ago
She's a goddamned sociopathic lying bitch.
arby63 , 23 hours ago
A highly paid one. Gofundme alone is over $900,000.
1970SSNova396 , 22 hours ago
Her two *** lawyers doing well for their time and attention. McCabe's lawyer comes to the
rescue for Ford.
My German Sheppard's nose is smaller than hers. Holy schnozes Batman ! That's Toucan Sam
in glasses.
LA_Goldbug , 22 hours ago
Amazing. Now I see what a wonderful mechanism they created with this. Payoff camouflage
!!!
Moving and Grooving , 21 hours ago
Gofundme is a dead man walking. It cannot be allowed to expedite money laundering on the
donor side, and anonymous donations to the receiver in these ridiculous amounts on the other.
If this isn't already illegal, I'll be shocked.
.
PantherCityPooPoo , 21 hours ago
Dead how? We already know that these corporation are die hard neo-liberal but name me 2
republicans or ANY federal entity that would EVER go after a corporation like that.
You are not aware of the score if you think anything will be done to them.
HerrDoktor , 23 hours ago
My hippocampus is turgid and throbbing after seeing Chris Ford in those Adrian (Talia
Shire) spectacles.
blind_understanding , 23 hours ago
I had to look it up ..
TURGID - from Latin turgidus , from turgēre to be swollen
peippe , 22 hours ago
nothing better than a confused lady who forgets stuff...........
I'm all over that if she was thirty-six years younger. oops.
blindfaith , 23 hours ago
So why is Ford dressed like a WWII school Liberian? Halloween?
How does she do all the water sports (easy boys, keep it clean) that she brags about? How
does she keep a case of beer down and then go surfing in Costa Rica? What is all this 'Air
sickness" stuff? How come she works for a company that has a very controversial Abortion pill
and didn't say this? That $750,000 in GoFundMe bucks will sure help heal those cat scratches
she gave herself. Does she pay taxes on that? So many questions and so little answers. Did
she perjer herself?
Sort of convenient that the statute of limitations has run out for her to make an OFFICIAL
complaint in Maryland.
Ford is a practiced liar. She was coached to cry all the way thru her polygraph test thus
skewing the results.
Jein , 23 hours ago
Brett's tears were real
RighteousRampage , 23 hours ago
But my calendars!!! I graduated Yale!!!! My mommy was a judge!!! SCOTUS is my
destineeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, it's mine all mine!!!!!
arby63 , 23 hours ago
Kavanaugh would/could literally beat the **** out of you. I believe that 1000000000%.
RighteousRampage , 23 hours ago
C'mon, his performance was disgraceful for a wannabe SCOTUS judge. He whinges like a
little a girl who had her lolly stolen.
Can you imagine Gorsuch or Scalia behaving that way?
arby63 , 22 hours ago
Disgraceful? Seriously? Because he spoke like a MAN and wasn't willing to "take it" from
the ****** fascists? **** you.
Jein , 22 hours ago
Arby (you're probably a fat **** right?), he spoke like a whiny cuck bitch. Just like you
do. That ain't being a man. Try sucking a my **** for a taste of masculinity.
NEOCON1 , 23 hours ago
Still jerking off to photoshopped nudes of Hillary Clinton?
Jein , 22 hours ago
Nah chelsea. She has nice nips
peippe , 22 hours ago
they were beer tears.
it's said he cries Bud Light.
He's awesome.
Being Free , 23 hours ago
Stunning accusation that Sen. Feinstein covered up 1990 sexual assault by a wealthy
foreign donor against another supporters daughter ...
I was the victim of an abuse event when I was 4. I'm 47 now. I know exactly where the
house is, we were in the backyard and I can tell anyone what happened and who was there. It
happened a few days back to back maybe three days, it was during the winter in the
midafternoon. I guess my hippocampus is in better shape than hers.
Anunnaki , 17 hours ago
When I brought this up wth Liberal friends at coffee this AM, they said it was so
traumatic that forgetting details was her coping mechanism
Iberal pretzel logic
Jein , 1 day ago
I would let trump **** my girl. How bout yall?
Giant Meteor , 23 hours ago
Is that code? The nickname you gave your penis? Girl? God damn you are a sick ****. Look
the gay thread is down the hall, second door on the left, therapy third door on the right
..
Good luck ...
Jein , 23 hours ago
Yeah I would top for trump. Normally love getting my ******* pounded though. U verse
bro?
Goldennutz , 23 hours ago
We all be gettin' our asses pounded for years by our goobermint!
HerrDoktor , 23 hours ago
Everyone else is having your girl, so why not?
sgt_doom , 1 day ago
" Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was poised, articulate, clear and convincing. More than
that, she radiated self-assured power ."
----- So says Robert Reich
Saaaaay, Bobby, have you ever met Wesley Allen Dodd or Ted Bundy? I once came into contact
with Dodd, the epitome of calm, cool and collected --- and he was later executed for
torturing to death small children!
A (female) law professor from Seattle University said:
" Dr. Christine Blasey Ford (why do they keep referring to a professor of
psychology as doctor --- s_d) was credible and believable. " (Evidently, we don't need
no stinking proof or evidence where a law professor is concerned!?)
Sgt_Doom says: Prof. Christine Blasey Ford sounded credible, believable and completely
unsubstantiated.
Credible Allegations
Over this past weekend I learned three startling facts:
(1) All American women have been raped;
(2) All American males are rapists and liars; and,
(3) "Credible allegations" are accusations not requiring any shred of evidence.
Fake news facts , that is . . . . .
All this was conveyed by high-middle class (or higher) females who worship globalization
and American exceptionalism --- from the same news conduits who once reported on
weapons-of-mass-destruction in Iraq and other similar mythologies!
Not a single so-called reporter --- not a single self-described journalist in American ---
thought to ask that most obvious of obvious questions:
Where in bloody perdition is Christine Blasey Ford's Holton Arms yearbooks?
After all, they introduced Kavanaugh's yearbook, so why not Christine Blasey's
yearbook?
Second most obvious question:
When one searches online for Holton Arms yearbooks, the searcher can find the yearbooks
for the years preceding Ford's last several years at Holton Arms, and the years following ---
why have the last several years when Christine Blasey attended missing? Why have they been
removed --- even cached versions --- from the Web?
Takes some serious tech resources to accomplish this in such a short period of time?!
How very odd . . . .
I do not want Kavanaugh, nor anyone like him, on the Supreme Court bench, but that does
not mean I automatically believe any and all unsubstantiated accusations and am sane enough
to comprehend that credible allegations require proof --- also referred to as
evidence.
It is not enough to state that this person drinks and is therefore guilty or that person
is a male and is therefore guilty.
I fully support an expanded investigation into both Kavanaugh AND Christine Blasey Ford,
including Ms. Ford's Holton Arms yearbooks and any and all police blotter activity/records
for her ages of 13, 14, 15 and 16.
And I wish some of those useless reporters would being asking the obvious questions . . .
. and finally start doing their jobs!
Sidebar : Sen. Chris Coons claimed that Prof. Ford was courageous to have come forward as
she had nothing to gain , yet within several days after her testimony, Christine
Blasey Ford is almost one-half million dollars wealthier --- nothing to gain?
Hardly . . . .
[Next rant: MY elevator encounter with a 14-year-old psychotic blonde student, and her
buddy, many years ago in Bethesda, Md.]
Giant Meteor , 23 hours ago
Radiated self assured power? Are you shitting me?
rwmomad , 23 hours ago
The courageous woman with nothing to gain is well on the way to a mil in go fund me
contributions. Plus there will be a book and movie deal.
DjangoCat , 23 hours ago
"And I wish some of those useless reporters would being asking the obvious questions . . .
. and finally start doing their jobs!.."
Those useless reporters would be fired if they did. The problem is much further up the
line than the reporter on the beat.
blindfaith , 23 hours ago
Yep, BCC was VERY loose...So was Northwestern in G.Town and Holton-Arms High. They were way ahead in drugs, booze and
Freon baloons too. Heck at Blair, we thought drugs were like aspirin and stuff. Now if
Ms.Ford had gone to Blair, I might believe
her....helm lines above the knee was a no no.
Jein , 1 day ago
Is lindsey Graham a closet homosexual?
robertocarlos , 1 day ago
There are men who are not gay but have never been with a woman.
Dancing Disraeli , 23 hours ago
It's a bot.
Giant Meteor , 23 hours ago
Possibly but this site is not your own personal dating service.
Jein , 23 hours ago
GM let me get them digits homie. Haven't seen u on grindr lately
Giant Meteor , 23 hours ago
Look if we are going to converse you're going to have to speak in English or some other
language I might understand, what is this verse and grindrr you speak of "bro?'
Jein , 23 hours ago
Hablas espanol? Quiero tu tongueo en my cacahole
Giant Meteor , 23 hours ago
Now that was just ******* funny as all hell. You are improving....
rwmomad , 23 hours ago
He might be, but that is his business. The left, which is supposedly supporters of gay
rights,throw that out the window if you are on the other team.
Jein , 23 hours ago
I just dont like trannys
Anunnaki , 23 hours ago
I love The Hedge's new block feature. Buh bye, Hillary
Giant Meteor , 23 hours ago
I'm going to let this one go awhile . A fascinating case study.
Jein , 23 hours ago
<3
Jein , 23 hours ago
Snowflake
tmosley , 20 hours ago
You just don't have anything to say that is intersting.
Just bile.
Goodbye forever.
robertocarlos , 1 day ago
So Mitchell faked her love for Ford. You sure can't trust women.
Giant Meteor , 1 day ago
She (Mitchell) was there to handle her like the delicate flower. To the pubes defense,
someone was smart enough to realize that a bunch of GOP white guys questioning her was not
going to play well. Enter the female prosecutor and her report.
On the other hand the dem guys and dolls could not genuflect enough , so their questioning
was fine. I mean they had her painted as the courageous hero of the modern era. So brave, so
noble , so, so, utterly awesome!
Puke ....
scraping_by , 23 hours ago
She had an emotional meltdown for a big finish. Note who gave her the run-in for it. (Not
Mitchell).
nicholforest , 1 day ago
Seems pretty obvious that Mitchell could not see a case for prosecution - what we heard
was mostly 'He said ... She said". So an unsurprising conclusion.
And there is no moral high ground for Republicans to criticize the process pursued by the
Democrats. They would have (and in the past have) done the same. A curse on both their
houses.
But what struck me was the behavior and style of Kavanaugh. He came across as belligerent,
petty, evasive, aggressive and impulsive. Those are not the characteristics that we want in a
candidate for the Supreme Court.
Little Lindsey G would say that Kavanaugh has a right to be angry, which may be so - but
the way that such anger is manifested is critical. In the military we look for leaders to be
cool under fire. The same should be true for a judge in the highest court in the land.
Instead he came across like a fearful, reactive, spiteful, spoilt frat boy. That will not
do.
scraping_by , 1 day ago
Ah, the double bind. Either he's robotic and reciting a script, or he's wild and howling
brat. Nice how that works.
FAQMD1 , 23 hours ago
nicholforest - And there is no moral high ground for Republicans to criticize the
process pursued by the Democrats. They would have (and in the past have) done the same. A
curse on both their houses.
Please enlighten us on specifically which Dem. SC nomination the Republicans did a full on
character assassination .... were waiting!
It is mindless comments and a lack of rigorous thinking and moral equivocation like yours
that has led the country into the abyss of nonsense and division.
Mineshaft Gap , 23 hours ago
We're all left to imagine the calm, lucid, rational yet caring manner in which you would
have defended yourself against a pack of vultures and their vague career-ending
accusations.
I'm picturing a cross between Cicero, Chris Cuomo and Caitlin Jenner.
Dancing Disraeli , 23 hours ago
Counting on that spiteful aspect to offset his RINO squish proclivities.
rwmomad , 23 hours ago
Why has their never been a sex scandal on a dem appointment, but their always is now on a
repub appointment? Just a coinky dinky or a part of their playbook?
Bastiat , 1 day ago
I like that last pic of Mitchel: defines "looking askance."
I Write Code , 1 day ago
"Weaknesses", forsooth.
Dickweed Wang , 1 day ago
Look at the time line provided and then tell me the Democrats aren't a pack of lying
weasles. The truth means absolutely NOTHING to them. Their agenda (to **** over Trump in any
way possible) is all that matters. Could anyone imagine what would have happened if the
Republicans would have pulled just 1/10th of that kind of ******** with the Homo *****??
There would have been continuous MSM inspired riots in the streets.
Anunnaki , 1 day ago
They play by Alinsky Rules
rksplash , 1 day ago
I guess the only way this nonsense is going to go away is if the GOP start using the same
tactics. Hire some wannabe spin doctors to go through some old high school yearbooks in a
church basement somewhere in Alabama. An old black and white of some poor pimple faced
senator grabbing his crotch at the prom in 72.
scraping_by , 1 day ago
Well, the Arkansas Project was political and partisan. Indeed, the right-wing world were
praising Mellon for using money effectively. And it wasn't until Flint evened the score that
decorum was restored.
truthalwayswinsout , 1 day ago
How dare another women even think of questioning a rape and assault allegation and demand
facts, and consistent detailed explanations that do not change.
Zus , 1 day ago
She's obviously an "old white guy" in disguise.
Wile-E-Coyote , 1 day ago
If this woman can try and attempt to destroy a man's life then the least she should be
made to do is a take a lie detector test. You can't prosecute anyone on hear say.
nicholforest , 1 day ago
She did take a polygraph - and passed.
scraping_by , 1 day ago
That's the story. Little or no evidence of what that story means.
Dickweed Wang , 1 day ago
She did take a polygraph - and passed.
Yeah that's what the lying sacks of **** say, but of course there's absolutely no proof it
happened. She passed? O.k., let's assume they are at least not lying about that . . . what
questions were asked?
Bastiat , 1 day ago
A polygraph with 2 questions apparently. In other words a complete joke. A real poly has
scores if not hundreds of questions.
robertocarlos , 23 hours ago
Two questions were asked. "Are you a woman"? and "Are you a liar"?
Wile-E-Coyote , 1 day ago
It's amazing what a false memory can do.
Is there a verbatim transcript of the questions asked?
Anunnaki , 1 day ago
Mitchell said it was irresponsible to give a polygraph to someone grieving the loss of a
loved one. Grandmother in this case.
peippe , 22 hours ago
rumor has it the exam included two questions.
Two Questions.
you decide what that means.
nsurf9 , 1 day ago
Not one shred of corroboration evidence of Ford's testimony, not even from her friend, who
flatly denied she ever went to such party, NONE, NADA, UNBELIEVABLE!
Don't these Congressional a-holes vet these people to safeguard against crazy loons'
bald-faced lies, and even worst, one's with democrat financed malicious intent to defame?
And further, Montgomery County Police has formally stated that, as a misdemeanor, the
statute of limitations ran out on this allegedly crime - 35 frigging years ago.
And lastly, with regard to drinking in college, not one democrat mentions he finished top
of his Yale undergrad class and top of his Yale Law School class.
FAQMD1 , 23 hours ago
nsurf9 - Don't these Congressional a-holes vet these people to safeguard against crazy
loons' bald-faced lies, and even worst, one's with malicious intent to defame?
Please tell me how you or I could possible "safeguard" ourselves from "crazy loon" and
"bald-face lies" ....?
That is why we're supposed to be a nation of laws and innocent until proven guilty.
It is one thing to disagree over a person political position and or ideas but that is not
what is happening here. The Dems are in full assault mode to destroy BK and his family as a
warning to any future Conservative judge who may dare accepts a nomination to the SC.
What the Dems are doing will lead to some type of civil war if they do not stop this. It
will not be pretty if that happens.
nsurf9 , 23 hours ago
Requiring even a modicum of corroborated facts or evidence, outside of mere "words," would
be a good start!
JLee2027 , 1 day ago
Guys who have been falsely accused, like me, knew quickly that Ford was lying. They all
have the same pattern, too many smiles, attention seeking, stories that make no sense or too
vague,etc.
dogmete , 1 day ago
Yeah what an incredible story. She was at a party with some drunken creepy guys and got
sexually assaulted. Everyone knows that never happens!
Nunny , 1 day ago
^Tool
austinmilbarge , 23 hours ago
All she has to to is prove it.
samolly , 1 day ago
None of this matters. What matters is that the democrats think Kavanaugh will overturn Roe
v. Wade so they will be against him regardless of any outcome in this matter.
It's all and only about abortion.
scraping_by , 1 day ago
The current sleaze isn't overturning the legal right to abortion, it's making it
impossible to get one. It's a legal right that a woman has to sit through lectures, travel to
specific places, make certain declarations, and get a physician who's usually under attack at
the state level. It's not illegal, it's impossible.
It's not about restricting women, it's about making life harder for middle and lower class
people. Women of the Senator's economic class have always had and always will have access to
safe abortions. It's wage earners who have to depend on local providers.
Whether Catholic K will go along with the sabotage of a privacy right isn't clear. But
he's probably going to be sympathetic to making those working class wenches show some
responsibility.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
To quote famed feminist and Democrat Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, women can always "Keep
their pants zipped". But then Granholm only extended her authoritarian control freakery to
the male half of the human race when she said that a few years ago. If women lose some
"reproductive rights" then some of them might start to have some empathy for men and our lack
of rights. But I won't hold my breath waiting for them to empathize with us.
Bastiat , 1 day ago
. . . but according to Dr. Fair, white men are murderous.
Barney08 , 1 day ago
Ford is a crusader. She thinks she is a Roe v Wade savior but she is an over educated
ditz.
dogmete , 1 day ago
Right Barney, not an undereducated and-proud-of-it slob like you.
MrAToZ , 1 day ago
You Dims are so willing to just swallow the hook. You idiots have been trained to react,
leave common sense at the door, slap on the vagina hats and start marching in circles.
What a cluster f*ck. Evidently there are suckers born every minute.
Kelley , 1 day ago
One word uttered by Ford proves that not only did Kav. not attack her but no one ever
assaulted her . That word is "hippocampus." No woman in recorded history has ever used
that word to describe their strongest reaction to a sexual assault.
It's mind blowing that a person would react to what was supposedly one of the most
traumatic experiences of her life with a nearly gleeful "Indelibly in my hippocampus " or
something to that effect unless of course it didn't happen. Her inappropriate response leads
me to believe that Ford was never assaulted in the manner in which she claimed. If her
claimed trauma had been a case of mistaken identity regarding a real assault, she still would
have felt it and reacted far differently.
Emotional memories get stored in the amygdala. The hippocampus is for matter-of-fact
memories. When Senator Feinstein asked Ford about her strongest memories of the event, Ford
went all "matter of fact" in her reply, "Indelibly in my hippocampus ." without a trace of
emotion in her response. No emotions = no assault by ANYONE let alone by Kavanaugh.
Giant Meteor , 1 day ago
Not only that, her most indelible memory from the experience was the maniacal laughter ,
not the part where a hand was forcibly placed over her mouth and she thought she may in that
moment, have been accidently killed.
As to the hippopotamus, is that a turtle neck she is wearing or just her neck. What the
**** happened there, she said nothing about strangulation.
pnchbowlturd , 1 day ago
Another peculiar thing about Ford's testimony was the adolescent voicing she gave it in.
It was if she was imitating a 6 year old. I wish MItchell had fleshed out Ford's hobbies
(surfing??) more and given more context to her career activities and recreational pursuits in
college, alcohol consumption patterns or substance abuse treatments. Her voicing was a tell
that she seemed to be overplaying the victim persona for a person who holds a doctorate and
travels the world surfing
Nunny , 1 day ago
If they coached her (while on the loooong drive from CA...lol) to use that voice, they
didn't do her any favors. I thought femi-libs were all about being 'strong' and 'tough'. They
can't have it both ways.....strike that.....they do have it both ways.....and the useful
idiots on the left buy it.
Torgo , 11 hours ago
IMHO, the most peculiar thing was her outright refusal to say aloud the name of the boy
that introduced her to Kavanaugh, when repeatedly questioned by Rachel Mitchell. It was
wildly obvious that she was being evasive and I see it as an enormous tell. Chris Garrett,
nicknamed "Squi", was IMHO the boy that drove her to and from the party, and if he didn't
outright assault her that day, he may have dumped her that day.
I Write Code , 1 day ago
Wasn't there an old SNL skit about the "amygdala"?
YouTube doesn't seem to have an index on the term, LOL.
seryanhoj , 1 day ago
One more example of US governance and party politics on its way down the tubes. There is
no topic, no forum nowhere where the truth is even something to be considered. Media, law
makers, everyone looks at a story and says " Let's make this work for our agenda even if we
have to reinvent it from scratch". Then it is more than easy to find people to testify any
which way you want. Vomits copiously.
mabuhay1 , 1 day ago
The standard for females should be "They are lying if their lips are moving." Any claims
of sexual abuse should require proof, and witnesses that can back up said claims. Many
studies have found that years before the MeToo# lies began, about 60% of all claimed rapes
were false. Now, with the "Must believe all women" and the "MeToo#" scam, I would suspect the
rate of false claims to be very close to 100%
scraping_by , 1 day ago
The standard for any criminal investigation is ABC. Assume nothing, Believe no one, and
Check everything. The current feminist howl is sweep that aside and obey a women when she
points at a man.
Jack McGriff , 1 day ago
And yet every single MSM outlet is claiming she is credible! WTF!!!
MedTechEntrepreneur , 1 day ago
If the FBI is to have ANY credibility, they must insist on Ford's emails, texts and phone
records for the last 2 years.
Anunnaki , 1 day ago
Kill shots:
Ranging from "mid 1980s" in a text to the Washington Post to "early 80s"
No name was listed in 2012 and 2013 individual and marriage therapy notes.
she was the victim of "physical abuse," whereas she has now testified that she told her
husband about a "sexual assault."
she does not remember who invited her to the party or how she heard about it. She does
not remember how she got to the party." Mitchell continued: "She does not remember in what
house the assault allegedly took place or where that house was located with any
specificity. Perhaps most importantly, she does not remember how she got from the party to
her house."
In her letter to Feinstein, she said "me and 4 others" were at the party but in her
testimony she said there were four boys in additional to Leland Keyser and herself. She did
not list Leland Keyser even though they are good friends. Leland Keyser's presence should
have been more memorable than PJ Smyth's,
· She testified that she had exactly one beer at the party
· "All three named eyewitnesses have submitted statements to the Committee denying
any memory of the party whatsoever,
· her BFF: Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever
being at a party or gathering where he was present with
· the simple and unchangeable truth is that Keyser is unable to corroborate [Dr.
Ford's allegations] because she has no recollection of the incident in question.
· Mitchell stated that Ford refused to provide her therapy notes to the Senate
Committee.
· Mitchell says that Ford wanted to remain confidential but called a tipline at the
Washington Post.
· she also said she did not contact the Senate because she claimed she "did not
know how to do that."
· It would also have been inappropriate to administer a polygraph to someone who
was grieving.
· the date of the hearing was delayed because the Committee was told that Ford's
symptoms prevented her from flying, but she agreed during testimony that she flies "fairly
frequently."
· She also flew to Washington D.C. for the hearing.
· "The activities of Congressional Democrats and Dr. Ford's attorneys likely
affected Dr. Ford's account.
Collectivism Killz , 1 day ago
Brett's real blight is that he barely dignifies the fourth amendment, which has arguably
been the most compromised as of late. Funny how the dims never bring this up. His record and
statements are RVW are centrist, so what makes the dims scared? Maybe Q is on to something
with the whole military tribunals.
GoingBig , 1 day ago
If he just said that he drank too much in college and that was that I would be okay with
him. But he made himself out to be a freak up there saying all this conspiracy crap about the
Clintons. What kind of SCOTUS Justice is this guy? I say no!
Ron_Mexico , 1 day ago
you fight fire with fire
rockstone , 1 day ago
Well if the question even makes sense to you then you're too ******* stupid to have an
opinion that anyone should take seriously. In other words, what you think doesn't count.
kbohip , 1 day ago
I think you got confused today honey. This is not the Salon comments section.
seryanhoj , 1 day ago
That age group drink and grope every chance they get. Its what we all did given the
chance. No one made fuss because up till now no one was told to get upset about it or try to
get political leverage out of it.
Anunnaki , 1 day ago
The only way to fight back against passive aggressions is with full on aggression. It
shocked the Dems b/c they thought they could just dole out a bunch of virtue signalling
holier than thou testimony and Kavanaugh would have to sit and eat ****
Mineshaft Gap , 23 hours ago
+1
"It shocked the Dems"
Spot on. They had their safe space taken away from them and called out for what it was --
an auto-da-fe.
Heather Mac Donald made the astute point that this is hideous campus culture emerging into
the mainstream.
Anunnaki , 23 hours ago
Do you watch Game of Thrones? Remember the season when Cersei was being attacked by the
religious nuts.
The woman kept asking her "Do you confess?" under torture
Same here. Kavanaugh was asked to bend the knee and beg forgiveness for his "crime".
He said **** YOU
dogmete , 1 day ago
Goingbig, don't try to talk sense to knuckle draggers. They huddle together or die.
RighteousRampage , 23 hours ago
One has to think that half of them are on working overtime at the troll farm trying to
stir up partisan hatred. Hard to believe real people could be this obtuse.
Zero-Hegemon , 1 day ago
Major Hegelian dialectic **** going on with the Ford/Kav reality show.
Women everywhere side with Ford because she's a women, claims she was abused, and "has to
be believed", in order to settle some personal score that they all claim empathy for, even
though she has given every tell in the book that she is lying.
Men everywhere empathize with a man being falsely accused, regardless of his politics and
judicial history, even though he made his bones in the Bush administration, and can probably
be relied on to further the authoritarian state via the Supreme court. Guilty of this myself,
because it could be anyone of us next.
Pick a side, doesn't matter, because we've already lost.
Bastiat , 1 day ago
I "Believe the Women" -- the 3 women Ford named as witnesses who denied it ever happened,
the 65 women who signed the letter in support of Ford, and all the women who have worked with
him and had no issues. I don't believe this one, though.
Zero-Hegemon , 1 day ago
I'm with you 200%
phillyla , 1 day ago
I am a woman, a wife and the mother of an adult male and I don't believe this mewling quim
for one second and I haven't met one woman who believes her.
Most of the women of my acquaintance know that anyone with a repressed memory is a loon
looking for attention.
Anunnaki , 1 day ago
A lot of women have seen their sons and brothers falsely accused. Ford was completely
unconvincing in her "I don't remember the details of a traumatic "sexual assault"
Whoa Dammit , 1 day ago
In her letter to Feinstein, she said "me and 4 others" were at the party
This does not sound like something a PHD would write. I would hope that someone who is
well educated would know that the proper English is "four others and I." It makes one wonder
if Dr. Ford wrote the letter, or if was written by a Feinstein aide.
"... By L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics at Bard College. Originally published at New Economic Perspectives ..."
"... Treatise on Money ..."
"... State Theory of Money ..."
"... Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies ..."
"... Understanding Modern Money ..."
"... Modern Money Theory ..."
"... Payback: Debt and the shadow side of wealth ..."
"... Reclaiming the State ..."
"... Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea ..."
"... permanent Zirp (zero interest rate policy) is probably a better policy since it reduces the compounding of debt and the tendency for the rentier class to take over more of the economy. ..."
"... that one of the consequences of the protracted super-low interest rate regime of the post crisis era was to create a world of hurt for savers, particularly long-term savers like pension funds, life insurers and retirees. ..."
"... income inequality ..."
"... even after paying interest ..."
"... It seems to me that the US macroeconomic policy has been operating under MMT at least since FDR (see for example Beardsley Ruml from 1945). ..."
"... After learning MMT I've occasionally thought I should get a refund for the two economics degree's I originally received. ..."
"... "Taxes or other obligations (fees, fines, tribute, tithes) drive the currency." ..."
"... "JG is a critical component of MMT. It anchors the currency and ensures that achieving full employment will enhance both price and financial stability." ..."
I was asked to give a short presentation at the MMT conference. What follows is the text
version of my remarks, some of which I had to skip over in the interests of time. Many readers
might want to skip to the bullet points near the end, which summarize what I include in
MMT.
I'd also like to quickly respond to some comments that were made at the very last session of
the conference -- having to do with "approachability" of the "original" creators of MMT. Like
Bill Mitchell, I am uncomfortable with any discussion of "rockstars" or "heroes". I find this
quite embarrassing. As Bill said, we're just doing our job. We are happy (or, more accurately
pleasantly surprised) that so many people have found our work interesting and useful. I'm happy
(even if uncomfortable) to sign books and to answer questions at such events. I don't mind
emailed questions, however please understand that I receive hundreds of emails every day, and
the vast majority of the questions I get have been answered hundreds, thousands, even tens of
thousands of times by the developers of MMT. A quick reading of my Primer or search of NEP (and
Bill's blog and Warren's blogs) will reveal answers to most questions. So please do some
homework first. I receive a lot of "questions" that are really just a thinly disguised pretense
to argue with MMT -- I don't have much patience with those. Almost every day I also receive a
2000+ word email laying out the writer's original thesis on how the economy works and asking me
to defend MMT against that alternative vision. I am not going to engage in a debate via email.
If you have an alternative, gather together a small group and work for 25 years to produce
scholarly articles, popular blogs, and media attention -- as we have done for MMT -- and then
I'll pay attention. That said, here you go: [email protected] .
As an undergraduate I studied psychology and social sciences -- but no economics, which
probably gave me an advantage when I finally did come to economics. I began my economics career
in my late 20's studying mostly Institutionalist and Marxist approaches while working for the
local government in Sacramento. However, I did carefully read Keynes's General Theory
at Sacramento State and one of my professors -- John Henry -- pushed me to go to St. Louis to
study with Hyman Minsky, the greatest Post Keynesian economist.
I wrote my dissertation in Bologna under Minsky's direction, focusing on private banking and
the rise of what we called "nonbank banks" and "off-balance sheet operations" (now called
shadow banking). While in Bologna, I met Otto Steiger -- who had an alternative to the barter
story of money that was based on his theory of property. I found it intriguing because it was
consistent with some of Keynes's Treatise on Money that I was reading at the time.
Also, I had found Knapp's State Theory of Money -- cited in both Steiger and
Keynes–so I speculated on money's origins (in spite of Minsky's warning that he didn't
want me to write Genesis ) and the role of the state in my dissertation that became a
book in 1990 -- Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies -- that helped to develop the
Post Keynesian endogenous money approach.
What was lacking in that literature was an adequate treatment of the role of the
state–which played a passive role -- supplying reserves as demanded by private bankers --
that is the Post Keynesian accommodationist or Horzontalist approach. There was no discussion
of the relation of money to fiscal policy at that time. As I continued to read about the
history of money, I became more convinced that we need to put the state at the center.
Fortunately I ran into two people that helped me to see how to do it.
First there was Warren Mosler, who I met online in the PKT discussion group; he insisted on
viewing money as a tax-driven government monopoly. Second, I met Michael Hudson at a seminar at
the Levy Institute, who provided the key to help unlock what Keynes had called his "Babylonian
Madness" period -- when he was driven crazy trying to understand early money. Hudson argued
that money was an invention of the authorities used for accounting purposes. So over the next
decade I worked with a handful of people to put the state into monetary theory.
As we all know, the mainstream wants a small government, with a central bank that follows a
rule (initially, a money growth rate but now some version of inflation targeting). The fiscal
branch of government is treated like a household that faces a budget constraint. But this
conflicts with Institutionalist theory as well as Keynes's own theory. As the great
Institutionalist Fagg Foster -- who preceded me at the University of Denver–put it:
whatever is technically feasible is financially feasible. How can we square that with the
belief that sovereign government is financially constrained? And if private banks can create
money endogenously -- without limit -- why is government constrained?
My second book, in 1998, provided a different view of sovereign spending. I also revisited
the origins of money. By this time I had discovered the two best articles ever written on the
nature of money -- by Mitchell Innes. Like Warren, Innes insisted that the dollar's value is
derived from the tax that drives it. And he argued this has always been the case. This was also
consistent with what Keynes claimed in the Treatise, where he said that money has been a state
money for the past four thousand years, at least. I called this "modern money" with intentional
irony -- and titled my 1998 book Understanding Modern Money as an inside joke. It only
applies to the past 4000 years.
Surprisingly, this work was more controversial than the earlier endogenous money research.
In my view it was a natural extension -- or more correctly, it was the prerequisite to a study
of privately created money. You need the state's money before you can have private money.
Eventually our work found acceptance outside economics -- especially in law schools, among
historians, and with anthropologists.
For the most part, our fellow economists, including the heterodox ones, attacked us as
crazy.
I benefited greatly by participating in law school seminars (in Tel Aviv, Cambridge, and
Harvard) on the legal history of money -- that is where I met Chris Desan and later Farley
Grubb, and eventually Rohan Grey. Those who knew the legal history of money had no problem in
adopting MMT view -- unlike economists.
I remember one of the Harvard seminars when a prominent Post Keynesian monetary theorist
tried to argue against the taxes drive money view. He said he never thinks about taxes when he
accepts money -- he accepts currency because he believes he can fob it off on Buffy Sue. The
audience full of legal historians broke out in an explosion of laughter -- yelling "it's the
taxes, stupid". All he could do in response was to mumble that he might have to think more
about it.
Another prominent Post Keynesian claimed we had two things wrong. First, government debt
isn't special -- debt is debt. Second, he argued we don't need double entry book-keeping -- his
model has only single entry book-keeping. Years later he agreed that private debt is more
dangerous than sovereign debt, and he's finally learned double-entry accounting. But of course
whenever you are accounting for money you have to use quadruple entry book-keeping. Maybe in
another dozen years he'll figure that out.
As a student I had read a lot of anthropology -- as most Institutionalists do. So I knew
that money could not have come out of tribal economies based on barter exchange. As you all
know, David Graeber's book insisted that anthropologists have never found any evidence of
barter-based markets. Money preceded market exchange.
Studying history also confirmed our story, but you have to carefully read between the lines.
Most historians adopt monetarism because the only economics they know is Friedman–who
claims that money causes inflation. Almost all of them also adopt a commodity money view --
gold was good money and fiat paper money causes inflation. If you ignore those biases, you can
learn a lot about the nature of money from historians.
Farley Grubb -- the foremost authority on Colonial currency -- proved that the American
colonists understood perfectly well that taxes drive money. Every Act that authorized the issue
of paper money imposed a Redemption Tax. The colonies burned all their tax revenue. Again,
history shows that this has always been true. All money must be redeemed -- that is, accepted
by its issuer in payment. As Innes said, that is the fundamental nature of credit. It is
written right there in the early acts by the American colonies. Even a gold coin is the
issuer's IOU, redeemed in payment of taxes. Once you understand that, you understand the nature
of money.
So we were winning the academic debates, across a variety of disciplines. But we had a hard
time making progress in economics or in policy circles. Bill, Warren, Mat Forstater and I used
to meet up every year or so to count the number of economists who understood what we were
talking about. It took over decade before we got up to a dozen. I can remember telling Pavlina
Tcherneva back around 2005 that I was about ready to give it up.
But in 2007, Warren, Bill and I met to discuss writing an MMT textbook. Bill and I knew the
odds were against us -- it would be for a small market, consisting mostly of our former
students. Still, we decided to go for it. Here we are -- another dozen years later -- and the
textbook is going to be published. MMT is everywhere. It was even featured in a New
Yorker crossword puzzle in August. You cannot get more mainstream than that.
We originally titled our textbook Modern Money Theory , but recently decided to
just call it Macroeconomics . There's no need to modify that with a subtitle. What we
do is Macroeconomics. There is no coherent alternative to MMT.
A couple of years ago Charles Goodhart told me: "You won. Declare victory but be magnanimous
about it." After so many years of fighting, both of those are hard to do. We won. Be nice.
Let me finish with 10 bullet points of what I include in MMT:
1. What is money: An IOU denominated in a socially sanctioned money of account. In almost
all known cases, it is the authority -- the state -- that chooses the money of account. This
comes from Knapp, Innes, Keynes, Geoff Ingham, and Minsky.
2. Taxes or other obligations (fees, fines, tribute, tithes) drive the currency. The ability
to impose such obligations is an important aspect of sovereignty; today states alone monopolize
this power. This comes from Knapp, Innes, Minsky, and Mosler.
3. Anyone can issue money; the problem is to get it accepted. Anyone can write an IOU
denominated in the recognized money of account; but acceptance can be hard to get unless you
have the state backing you up. This is Minsky.
4. The word "redemption" is used in two ways -- accepting your own IOUs in payment and
promising to convert your IOUs to something else (such as gold, foreign currency, or the
state's IOUs).
The first is fundamental and true of all IOUs. All our gold bugs mistakenly focus on the
second meaning -- which does not apply to the currencies issued by most modern nations, and
indeed does not apply to most of the currencies issued throughout history. This comes from
Innes and Knapp, and is reinforced by Hudson's and Grubb's work, as well as by Margaret
Atwood's great book: Payback: Debt and the shadow side of wealth .
5. Sovereign debt is different. There is no chance of involuntary default so long as the
state only promises to accept its currency in payment. It could voluntarily repudiate its debt,
but this is rare and has not been done by any modern sovereign nation.
6. Functional Finance: finance should be "functional" (to achieve the public purpose), not
"sound" (to achieve some arbitrary "balance" between spending and revenues). Most importantly,
monetary and fiscal policy should be formulated to achieve full employment with price
stability. This is credited to Abba Lerner, who was introduced into MMT by Mat Forstater.
In its original formulation it is too simplistic, summarized as two principles: increase
government spending (or reduce taxes) and increase the money supply if there is unemployment
(do the reverse if there is inflation). The first of these is fiscal policy and the second is
monetary policy. A steering wheel metaphor is often invoked, using policy to keep the economy
on course. A modern economy is far too complex to steer as if you were driving a car. If
unemployment exists it is not enough to say that you can just reduce the interest rate, raise
government spending, or reduce taxes. The first might even increase unemployment. The second
two could cause unacceptable inflation, increase inequality, or induce financial instability
long before they solved the unemployment problem. I agree that government can always afford to
spend more. But the spending has to be carefully targeted to achieve the desired result. I'd
credit all my Institutionalist influences for that, including Minsky.
7. For that reason, the JG is a critical component of MMT. It anchors the currency and
ensures that achieving full employment will enhance both price and financial stability. This
comes from Minsky's earliest work on the ELR, from Bill Mitchell's work on bufferstocks and
Warren Mosler's work on monopoly price setting.
8. And also for that reason, we need Minsky's analysis of financial instability. Here I
don't really mean the financial instability hypothesis. I mean his whole body of work and
especially the research line that began with his dissertation written under Schumpeter up
through his work on Money Manager Capitalism at the Levy Institute before he died.
9. The government's debt is our financial asset. This follows from the sectoral balances
approach of Wynne Godley. We have to get our macro accounting correct. Minsky always used to
tell students: go home and do the balances sheets because what you are saying is nonsense.
Fortunately, I had learned T-accounts from John Ranlett in Sacramento (who also taught
Stephanie Kelton from his own, great, money and banking textbook -- it is all there, including
the impact of budget deficits on bank reserves). Godley taught us about stock-flow consistency
and he insisted that all mainstream macroeconomics is incoherent.
10. Rejection of the typical view of the central bank as independent and potent. Monetary
policy is weak and its impact is at best uncertain -- it might even be mistaking the brake
pedal for the gas pedal. The central bank is the government's bank so can never be independent.
Its main independence is limited to setting the overnight rate target, and it is probably a
mistake to let it do even that. Permanent Zirp (zero interest rate policy) is probably a better
policy since it reduces the compounding of debt and the tendency for the rentier class to take
over more of the economy. I credit Keynes, Minsky, Hudson, Mosler, Eric Tymoigne, and Scott
Fullwiler for much of the work on this.
That is my short list of what MMT ought to include. Some of these traditions have a very
long history in economics. Some were long lost until we brought them back into discussion.
We've integrated them into a coherent approach to Macro. In my view, none of these can be
dropped if you want a macroeconomics that is applicable to the modern economy. There are many
other issues that can be (often are) included, most importantly environmental concerns and
inequality, gender and race/ethnicity. I have no problem with that.
A JG is to discontinue NAIRU or structural under-unemployment with attendant
monetarist/quasi inflation views. Something MMT has be at pains to point out wrt fighting a
nonexistent occurrence due to extended deflationary period.
Its double entry accounting counting both sides of the equation. Fed deposits money into
bank requires 4 entries, a double entry for the Fed and for the bank. Typical double entry
accounting only looks at the books of 1 entity at a time. Quadruple Entry accounting makes
the connection between the government monetary policy and private business accounting. I'm
not an accountant, I may have butchered that.
think about banks and reserves, your money is on the bank's liability side (and your
asset), while the reserves are on the bank's asset side (and gov't or fed's liability.)
i think its the reserves that quadruple it, reserves are confusing because when you move
$5 from a bank account to buy ice cream its not just one copy of the $5 that moves between
checking accounts, there is another $5 that moves "under the hood" so to speak in reserve
world
Very briefly, double entry bookkeeping keeps track of how money comes in/out, and where it
came from/went. Cash is the determining item (although there may be a few removes). Hence,
say I buy a $20 dollar manicure from you. I record my purchase as "Debit (increase) expense:
manicure $20, credit (decrease) cash, $20". Bonus! If my bookkeeping is correct, my debits
and credits are equal and if I add them up (credits are minus and debits are plus) the total
is zero – my books "balance". So, double-entry bookkeeping is also a hash-total check
on my accounting accuracy. But I digress.
On your books, the entry would be "Debit (increase) cash $20, credit (decrease)
sales, $20".
So, your double-entry book plus my double-entry books would be quadruple-entry
accounting.
#7 was my immediate stopper, too. It drives me nuts when people introduce 2-3-4 letter
acronyms with no explanation (I work for the DoD and I'm surrounded by these "code words". I
rarely know what people are talking about and when I ask, the people talking rarely know what
these TLAs – T hree L etter A cronyms – stand for either!).
Next question regarding #7: What is ELR?
Other than #7, I really appreciate this article. NC teaches and/or clarifies on a daily
basis.
This quick, entertaining read is IMHO nothing less than a "Rosetta Stone" that can bring
non-specialists to understand MMT: not just how , but why it differs from
now-conventional neoliberal economics. I hope it finds a wide readership and that its many
references to MMT's antecedents inspire serious study by the unconvinced (and I hope they
don't take Wray's invitation to skip the 10 bullet points).
This piece is a fine demonstration of why I've missed Wray as he seemed to withdraw from
public discourse for the last few years.
Thank you! The (broad) analogies with my own experience are there. I had a decidedly
"mainstream" macro education at Cambridge (UK); though many of the "old school"
professors/college Fellows who, although not MMT people as we'd currently understand (or
weren't at *that* stage – Godley lectured a module I took but this was in the early
1990s) were still around, in hindsight the "university syllabus" (i.e. what you needed to
regurgitate to pass exams) had already steered towards neoliberalism. I never really
understood why I never "got" macro and it was consistently my weakest subject.
It was later, having worked in the City of London, learned accountancy in my actuarial
training, and then most crucially starting reading blogs from people who went on to become
MMT leading lights, that I realised the problem wasn't ME, it was the subject matter. So I
had to painfully unlearn much of what I was taught and begin the difficult process of getting
my head around a profoundly different paradigm. I still hesitate to argue the MMT case to
friends, since I don't usually have to hand the "quick snappy one liners" that would torpedo
their old discredited understanding.
I'm still profoundly grateful for the "old school" Cambridge College Fellows who were
obviously being sidelined by the University and who taught me stuff like the Marxist/Lerner
critiques, British economic history, political economy of the system etc. Indeed whilst I had
"official" tutorials with a finance guy who practically came whenever Black-Scholes etc was
being discussed, an old schooler was simultaneously predicting that it would blow the world
economy up at some point (and of course he was in the main , correct). I still had to fill in
some gaps in my knowledge (anthropology was not a module, though Marxist economics was), with
hindsight I appreciate so much more of what the "old schoolers" said on the sly during quiet
points in tutorials – Godley being one, although he wasn't ready at that time to
release the work he subsequently published and was so revolutionary. Having peers educated
elsewhere during my Masters and PhD who knew nothing of the subjects that – whilst
certainly not the "key guide" to "proper macro" described in the article – began to
horrify me later in my career.
This is really great. Thanks a ton, as Yves would say.
I know I have used to "rock star" metaphor on occasion, so let me explain that to
me what is important in excellent (i.e., live) rock and roll is improvisational
interplay among the group members -- the dozen or so who understood MMT in the beginning, in
this case -- who know the tune, know each other, and yet manage to make the song a little
different each time. It's really spectacular to see in action. Nothing to do with spotlights,
or celebrity worship, or fandom!
I'm no MMT expert, but I think
this article does a good job of juxtaposing MMT with classic (non-advanced)
macroeconomics. I quote:
In the language of Tinbergen (1952), the debate between MMT and mainstream macro can be
thought of as a debate over which instrument should be assigned to which target. The
consensus assignment is that the interest rate, under the control of an independent central
bank, should be assigned to the output gap target, while the fiscal position, under control
of the elected budget authorities, should be assigned to the debt sustainability target. [
] The functional finance assignment is the reverse -- the fiscal balance under the budget
authorities is assigned to the output target, while any concerns about debt sustainability
are the responsibility of the monetary authority.
What about interest rate fixing? The central bank would remain in charge of that, but in
an MMT context this instrument would lose most of its relevance:
[W]hile a simple swapping of instruments and targets is one way to think about
functional finance, this does not describe the usual MMT view of how the policy interest
rate should be set. What is generally called for, rather, is that the interest rate be
permanently kept at a very low level, perhaps zero. In an orthodox policy framework, of
course, this would create the risk of runaway inflation; but keep in mind that in the
functional framework, the fiscal balance is set to whatever level is consistent with price
stability.
It may be a partial reconstruction of MMT, but to me this seems to be a neat way to
present MMT to most people. Saying that taxes are there just to remove money from the economy
or to provide incentives is a rather extreme statement that is bound to elicit some fierce
opposition.
Having said that, I've never seen anyone address what I think are two issues to MMT: how
to make sure that the power to create money is not exploited by a political body in order to
achieve consensus, and how to assure that the idea of unlimited monetary resources do not
lead to misallocation and inefficiencies (the bloated, awash-with-money US military industry
would probably be a good example).
The best comparison of MMT with neoliberal neoclassical economics, in my view, is Bill
Mitchell's blog post, "How to Discuss Modern Monetary Theory" ( http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=25961
). I especially recommend the table near the end as a terrific summary of the differences
between the mainstream narrative and MMT.
Thanks! I have enormous respect for Mitchell, given the quantity and quality of his
blogging. However, my only nitpick is that a lot of his blog entries are quite long and "not
easily digestible". I have long thought that one of those clever people who can do those 3
minute rapid animation vids we see on youtube is needed to "do a Lakoff" and change the
metaphors/language. But this post of Mitchell (which I missed, since I don't read all his
stuff) is, IMHO, his best at "re-orienting us".
Saying that taxes are there just to remove money from the economy or to provide
incentives is a rather extreme statement that is bound to elicit some fierce
opposition.
Yes this is a frightening statement. The power to tax is the power to destroy. If this is
a foundation point of the proposal then
Having said that, I've never seen anyone address what I think are two issues to MMT: how
to make sure that the power to create money is not exploited by a political body in order
to achieve consensus, and how to assure that the idea of unlimited monetary resources do
not lead to misallocation and inefficiencies (the bloated, awash-with-money US military
industry would probably be a good example).
Bingo. My thoughts exactly. Too much power in the hands of the few. Easy to slide into
Orwell's Animal Farm – where some people are more equal than others.
MMT is based upon very good intentions but, in my view, there is a moral rot at the root
of the US of A's problems, not sure this can be solved by monetary policy and more
centralized control.
And the JG? Once the government starts to permanently guarantee jobs
I suggest you delve into what is proposed by the MMT – PK camp wrt a JG because its
not centralized in the manner you suggest. It would be more regional and hopefully
administrated via social democratic means e.g. the totalitarian aspect is moot.
I think its incumbent on commenters to do at least a cursory examination before heading
off on some deductive rationalizations, which might have undertones of some book they read
e.g. environmental bias.
Skippy, I read the article, plus the links, including those links of the comments. I will
admit that I am a little more right of center in my views than many on the website.
The idea is interesting, but the administration of such a system would require rewriting
the US Constitution, or an Amendment to it if one thinks the process through, would it not? I
think of the Amendment required to create the Federal Reserve System when I say this.
One thing I really don't like at all -- and I've crossed swords with many over this -- is
that we do tend to take (not just in the US, this is prevalent in far too many
places) things like the constitution, or cultural norms, or traditions or other variants of
"that's the way we've always done this" and elevate them to a level of sacrosanctity.
Not for one moment am I suggesting that we should ever rush into tweaking such devices
lightly nor without a great deal of analysis and introspective consultations.
Constitutions get amended all the time. The Republic of Ireland changed its to renounce a
territorial claim on Northern Ireland. The U.K. created a right for Scotland to secede from
the Union. There's even a country in Europe voting whether to formally change its name right
now. Britain "gave up" its empire territories (not, I would add speedily, without a lot of
prodding, but still, we got there in the end). All of which were, at one time or another,
"unthinkable". Even the US, perhaps the most inherently resistant to change country when it
thinks it's being "forced" to do so, begrudgingly acknowledged Cuba.
Why would a jobs guarantee require a constitutional amendment? The federal government
creates jobs all the time, with certain defined benefits. This would merely expand upon that,
to potentially include anyone who wants a job.
There are a couple different aspects of this that people are getting mixed together, I
think. The core of MMT is not a proposal for government to implement. Rather, it is simply a
description of how sovereign currencies actually operate, as opposed by mainstream economics,
which has failed in this regard. In other words, we don't need any new laws to implement MMT
– we need a paradigm shift.
The Jobs Guarantee is a policy proposal that flows from this different paradigm.
It has been stated many times that it is to inform policy wrt to potential and not some
booming voice from above dictating from some ridged ideology.
Persoanly as a capitalist I can't phantom why anyone would want structural under –
unemployment. Seems like driving around with the hand brake on and then wondering why
performance is restricted or parts wear out early.
Thinking of the Federal Reserve Act being enabled by the Federal Income Tax of the 16th
Amendment.
Using Federal taxes to fund the JG; I do not think that this aspect of it (and others)
would survive a Constitutional challenge. Therefore ultimately an Amendment might be
needed.
Then again I may be wrong. Technically Obamacare should have been implemented by an
Amendment were strict Constitutional law applied.
Rights to health care and jobs are not enumerated in either the Constitution or Bill of
Rights, as far as I am aware.
Not opposed to some of the principles of MMT, just don't understand, in this modern age
where effectively all currency is electronic digits in a banking computer system, the issue
of a currency must be tied to taxes. In years past, where currency was printed and in one's
pocket, or stuffed under a mattress, or couriered by stagecoach, then yes – taxes would
be needed. But today can we not just print (electronically) the cash needed for government
operations each year based upon a fixed percentage of private sector GDP? Why therefore do we
need government debt? Why do we need an income tax?
Skippy, I have lived and worked in countries without income tax (but instead indirect tax)
and where government operating revenue was based upon a percentage of projected national
revenue. I have been involved in the administration of such budgets.
I am in favor of government spending, or perhaps more accurately termed investing, public
money on long-term, economically beneficial projects. But this is not happening. The reality
is that government priorities can easily be hijacked by political interests, as we currently
witness.
While I agree that political highjacking is possible and must be dealt with, this is not
strictly speaking part of an economic theory, which is what MMT is. While MMT authors may
take political positions, the theory itself is politically neutral.
Income taxes, tithes, or any other kind of driver is what drives the monetary circuit.
Consider it from first principles. You have just set up a new government with a new currency
where this government is the monopoly issuer. No one else has any money yet. So, the
government must be the first spender. However, how is this nascent government going to
motivate anyone to use this new currency? Via taxation, or like means, that can only be met
by using the national currency, whatever form that currency may take, marks on a stick,
paper, an entry in a ledger, or the like.
Thank you for this explanation. I understand that, for example, this is why the Federal
Reserve Act of 1913, I believe, created the Federal Reserve and Federal Income Tax at the
same time.
But the US economy functioned adequately, survived a civil war, numerous banking crises,
experienced industrialization, national railways, etc without a central bank or federal
income tax from the 1790's to 1913.
To me, the US's state of perpetual war is enabled by Federal Income Tax. Without it the
MIC would collapse, I am certain.
Functioned adequately
During the 150 yr hard money period we had recessions/depressions that we're both far more
frequent (every three years) and on avg far deeper than what we have had since fdr copied the
brits and took us off the gold standard. Great deprecession was neither the longest or
deepest.
Two reasons
Banks used to fail frequently, a run on one bank typically leading to runs on other banks,
spreading across regions like prairie fires if your bank failed you lost all your money.
Consequences were serious.
During GR so many banks failed in the Midwest, leading to farm foreclosures, the region was
near armed insurrection in 1932. Fiat meant that the fed can supply unlimited liquidity.
Since then banks have failed but immediately taken over by another. Critically, no depositor
has lost a penny, even those with far more exposed than the deposit insurance limit. No runs
on us banks since 1933.
Second, we now have auto stabilizers, spending continues during downturns because gov has no
spending limit. Note previously in an emergency gov borrowed. 10 mil from J.P. Morgan.
But at what cost? no depositor loses money, yet huge amounts are required to be printed,
thus devaluing the "currency". So is the answer inflation that must by necessity become
hyperinflation?
I don't understand why it is important to protect a bank vs. making it perform its function
without risking collapse. This is magical thinking as we have found very few banks in this
world not ready and willing to pillage their clients, be it nations or just the little
folk.
Why would anyone trust a government to do the right thing by its population? When has that
ever worked out in favor of the people?
I can not understand the trust being demanded by this concept. It wants trust for the users,
but in no way can it expect trust or virtue from the issuer of the "currency"
also, I can't help but think MMT is for growth at all costs. Hasn't the growth shown that
it is pernicious in itself? Destroy the planet for the purpose of stabilizing "currency".
Our federal reserve gave banks trillions of dollars, and then demanded they keep much of
it with the Fed and are paid interest not to use it. It inflated the "currency" in
circulation yet again and now it is becoming clear a great percentage of people in our
country can no longer eat, no longer purchase medications, a home, a business
If being on a hard money system as we were causes recessions and depressions, would we
find that it was a natural function to cut off the speculators at their knees?
How does MMT promote and retain value for the actual working and producing people that
have no recourse with their government? I would like to read about what is left out of this
monumental equation.
US had a federal income tax during the civil war and for a decade or so after.
I have always assumed that mass conscription and the Dreadnought arms race led to the
implementation of the modern taxing/monetary system. (gov't needed both warfare and
welfare)
Taxes, just as debt, create an artificial demand for currency as one must pay back their
taxes in {currency}, and one must pay back debt in {currency}. It doesn't have to be an
income tax, and I think a sales tax would be a better driver of demand than an income
tax.
The US had land sales that helped fund government expenditures in the 1800s.
Not all taxes are income taxes. Back in the day (20's/30's/40's),my grandfather could pay
off the (county) property taxes on his farm by plowing snow for the county in the winter --
and he was damned careful to make sure that the county commissioners' driveways were plowed
out as early as possible after a storm.
In the 30's/40's the property tax laws were changed to be payable only in dollars.
So Grandpa had to make cash crops. Things changed and money became necessary.
But today can we not just print (electronically) the cash needed for government
operations each year based upon a fixed percentage of private sector GDP?
The élites could, but it would be totally undemocratic and the economics profession's
track record of forecasting growth is no better than letting a cat choose a number written on
an index card.
Why therefore do we need government debt?
There is no government debt. It's just a record of interest payments Congress has agreed
to make because the wealthy wanted another welfare program.
Why do we need an income tax?
The only logically consistent purpose is because people have too much income.
I think the point they're driving at, is that by requiring the payment of taxes in a
particular currency, a government creates demand for that currency. There are other uses for
federal taxes, not the least of which is to keep inflation in check.
Government debt is not needed, at least not at the federal level. My understanding of it
is that it's a relic from the days of the gold standard. It's also very useful to some rather
large financial institutions, so eliminating it would be politically difficult.
Wray has said in interviews that the debt (and associated treasury bonds), while not
strictly necessary in a fiat currency, is of use in that it provides a safe base for
investment, for pensioners and retirees, etc.
Sure, it could be eliminated by (a) trillion dollar platinum coins deposited at the
Federal Reserve followed by (b) slowly paying off the existing debt when the bonds mature or
(c) simply decreeing that the Fed must go to a terminal and type in 21500000000000 as the US
Gov account balance (hope I got the number of zeroes correct!).
It could be argued that the US doesn't strictly need taxes to drive currency demand as
long as our status as the world reserve currency is maintained (see oft-discussed
petrodollar, Libya, etc). If that status is imperiled, say by an push by a coalition of
nations to establish a different currency as the "world reserve currency") taxes would be
needed to drive currency demand.
I think most of this is covered in one way or another here:
Government debt is not actually a 'real thing'. It is a residue of double-entry
bookkeeping, as is net income (income minus expenses, that's a credit in the double-entry
system). It could as well be called 'retained earnings (also a 'book' credit in the
double-entry system). If everybody had to take bookkeeping in high school there would be far
few knickers in knots!
There are two kinds of government 'debt': the accumulated deficit which is the money in
circulation not a real debt, and outstanding bonds which is real in the sense that it must be
repaid with interest.
However, the government can choose the interest rate and pay it (or buy back the bonds at
any time) with newly minted money at no cost to itself, cf. QE.
seems to me that the guaranteed jobs would be stigmatized, and make it harder for people
to get private sector jobs. "once youre in the JG industry, its hard to get out" etc.
how much of a guarantee is the job guarantee supposed to be? ie. at what point can you get
fired from a guaranteed job?
Yes, my mind wandered into the same territory. While I agree that something needs to be
done, it also has the potential to strike at the heart of a lean, merit-based system by
introducing another layer of bureaucracy. In principle, I am not against the idea, but as
they say, "God (or the Devil – take your pick) is in the details ".
If you haven't already read it, "Reclaiming the State" by Mitchell and Fazi (Pluto Press
2017) provides a detailed and cogent analysis of how neoliberalism came into ascendency, and
how the principles of MMT can be used to pave the way to a more humane and sustainable
economic system. A new political agenda for the left, drawing in a different way upon the
nationalism that has energized the right, is laid out for those progressives who understand
the necessity of broadening their appeal. And the jobs guarantee that MMT proposes has
NOTHING to do with MacJobs and Amazon workers. It has to do with meeting essential human and
environmental needs which are not profitable to meet in today's private sector.
Job guarantee, or govt as employer of last resort -- now there is a social
challenge/opportunity if there ever was one.
Well managed, it would guarantee a living wage to anyone who wants to work, thereby
setting a floor on minimum wages and benefits that private employers would have to meet or
exceed. These minima would also redound to the benefit of self-employed persons by setting
standards re income and care (health, vacations, days off, etc) *and* putting money in the
pockets of potential customers.
Poorly managed it could create the 'digging holes, filling them in' programs of the
Irish Potato Famine
ore worse (hard to imagine, but still ). It has often been remarked that the potato blight
was endemic across Europe, it was only a famine in Ireland -- through policy choices.
So, MMT aside (as being descriptive, rather than prescriptive), we are down to who
controls policy. And that is *really* scary.
In terms of power, the government has the power to shoot your house to splinters, or blow
it up, with or without you in it. We say they're not supposed to, but they have the ability,
and it has been done.
The question of how to hold your government to the things it's supposed to do applies to
issues beyond money. We'd best deal with government power as an issue in itself. I should
buckle down and get Mitchell's next-to-newest book Reclaiming the State .
I don't claim to fully understand MMT yet, but I find Wray's use of the derogatory term
"gold bugs" to be both disappointing and revealing. To lump those, some of whom are quite
sophisticated, who believe that currencies should be backed by something of tangible value
(and no, "the military" misses the point), or those who hold physical gold as an insurance
policy against political incompetence, and the inexorable degradation of fiat currencies, in
with those who promote or hold gold in the hopes of hitting some type of lottery, is
disingenuous at best.
OMT seemingly has no reason to exist being old school, but for what it's worth, the
almighty dollar has lost over 95% of it's value when measured against something that matters,
since the divorce in 1971.
I found this passage funny, as in flipping the dates around to 1791, is when George
Washington set an exchange rate of 1000-1 for old debauched Continental Currency, in exchange
for newly issued specie. (there was no Federal currency issued until 1861)
So yeah, they burned all of their tax revenue, because the money wasn't worth jack.
Farley Grubb -- the foremost authority on Colonial currency -- proved that the American
colonists understood perfectly well that taxes drive money. Every Act that authorized the
issue of paper money imposed a Redemption Tax. The colonies burned all their tax
revenue.
Gold bug is akin to money crank e.g. money = morals. That's not to mention all the
evidence to date does not support the monetarist view nor how one gets the value into the
inanimate object or how one can make it moral.
Gold doesn't historically perform as a hedge but as a speculative trade. Those who think
it can protect them from political events typically don't realize that a gold standard means
public control of the gold industry, thereby cutting any separation from the political
process off at the knees.
When a government declares that $20 is equal in value to one ounce of gold, it also
declares an ounce of gold is equal to $20 dollars. It is therefore fixing, through a
political decision subject to political changes, the price of the commodity.
Nonsense. When fiat currencies invariably degrade, and especially at a fast rate, gold has
proven to be a relative store of value for millennia . All one need do is to look at
Venezuela, Argentina, Turkey, etc., to see that ancient dynamic in action today.
You, and others who have replied to my comment, are using the classical gold standard as a
straw man, as well. Neither I, nor many other gold "bugs" propose such a simple solution to
the obviously failed current economy, which is increasingly based on mountains of debt that
can never be repaid.
gold has proven to be a relative store of value for millennia.
As long as one is mindful that gold is just another commodity, subject to the same
speculative distortions as any other commodity (see Hunt brothers and silver).
But that is obviously false, given that no other commodity has remotely performed with
such stability over such a long period of time.
It is true that over short periods distortions can appear, and the *true* value of gold
has been suppressed in recent years through the use of fraudulent paper derivatives. But
again, I'm not arguing for the return of a classical gold standard.
Don't worry, I'm likely to be at least equally dense!
I didn't mean to suggest that there is some formula from which a *true* value of precious
metals might be derived. I simply meant that gold has clearly been the object of price
suppression in recent years through the use of paper derivatives (i.e. future contracts). The
reason for such suppression, aside from short-term profits to be made, is that gold has
historically acted as a barometer relating to political and economic stability, and those in
power have a particular interest in suppressing such warning signals when the system becomes
unstable.
So, while the Central Banks created previously unimaginable mountains of debt, it was
important not to alarm the commoners.
The suppression schemes have become less effective of late, and will ultimately fail when
the impending crisis unfolds in earnest.
As long as one is mindful that gold is just another commodity, subject to the same
speculative distortions as any other commodity
It sounds good in theory, but history says otherwise.
The value remained more or less the same for well over 500 years as far as an English
Pound was concerned, the weight and value of a Sovereign hardly varied, and the exact weight
and fineness of one struck today or any time since 1817, is the same, no variance
whatsoever.
Thus there was no speculative distortions in terms of value, the only variance being the
value of the Pound (= 1 Sovereign) itself.
" who believe that currencies should be backed by something of tangible value"
As I understand it, MMT also requires that currency be backed by something of tangible
value: a well managed and productive economy. It doesn't matter in the least if your debt is
denominated in your own currency if you have the economy of Zimbabwe.
Sounds reasonable in theory, but that was supposed to be the case with the current
economic system, as well, and we can all see where that has led.
I'm not arguing that there isn't a theoretically better way to create and use
"modern" money, but rather doubt that those empowered to create it out of thin air will ever
do so without abusing such power.
Oh, I agree with you. In no universe that I am aware of would the temptation to create
money beyond the productive capacity of the economy to back it up be resisted. I think
Zimbabwe is a pretty good example of where the theory goes in practice.
That's exactly wrong. Zimbabwe had a production collapse. Same amount of money to buy a
much smaller amount of goods. The gov responded not by increasing goods, but increasing money
supply.
Mark Blyth has a good discussion of the gold standard in his book Austerity: The
History of a Dangerous Idea . He makes the point that, in imposing the adjustments
necessary to keep the balance of payments flowing, the measures imposed by a government would
be so politically toxic, that no elected official in his or her right mind would implement
them, and expect to remain in office. In short, you can have either democracy, or a gold
standard, but you can't have both.
Also, MMT does recognize that there are real world constraints on a currency, and that is
represented by employment, not some artificially-imposed commodity such as gold (or bitcoin,
or seashells, etc). The Jobs Guarantee flows out of this.
As mentioned above, you, among others who have replied to my original comment, are using
the classical gold standard as a straw manl. Neither I, nor many other gold "bugs", propose
such a simple solution for the failed current economic system, which is increasingly based on
mountains of debt that can never be repaid.
increasingly based on mountains of debt that can never be repaid.
Huh? I listed two ways they could be repaid above. In the US, the national debt is
denominated in dollars, of which we have an infinite supply (fiat). In addition, the Federal
Reserve could buy all the existing debt by [defer to quad-entry accounting stuff from Wray's
primer] and then figuratively burn it. Sure, the rest of the world would be pissed and
inflation *may* run amok, but "can never" is just flat out wrong.
Of course it can be extinguished through hyperinflation. I didn't think that it would be
necessary to point that out. No "may" about it, though, as if the U.S. prints tens of
trillions of dollars to extinguish the debt, hyperinflation will be assured.
I didn't think that it would be necessary to point that out.
Sorry, but I'm an old programmer; logic rules the roost. When one's software is expected
to execute billions of times a day without fail for years (and this post is very likely
routed through a device running an instance of something I've written). Always means every
time, no exceptions; never means not ever, no matter what.
I'm sure that there is no one solution proposed, though an alternative to the current
system which seems plausible would be a currency backed by a basket of commodities, including
gold.
Hi Tinky, much late but still. Gold will have value as long as people believe it has
value. But what will they trade it for? The bottom line is your life.
I don't have any gold, too expensive, and it really has no use. But I remember Dimitri Orlov's
advice : I am long in needles, pins, thread, nails and screws, drill bits, saws, files,
knives, seeds, manual tools of many sorts, mechanical skills and beer recipes. Plus I can
sing.
The vast majority of people who hold physical gold are well aware of the value of having
skills and supplies, etc., in case of a serious meltdown. But it's not a zero-sum game, as
you suggest. Gold will inexorably rise sharply in value when today's fraudulent markets
crash, and there will be plenty of opportunities for those who own it to trade it for other
assets.
Furthermore, as previously mentioned, gold's utility is already on full display,
to those who are paying attention, and not looking myopically through a USD lens.
"Mountains of debt that can never be repaid" is a propaganda statement with no reference
to any economic fact. Why do you feel that this "debt" needs to be "repaid"? It is simply an
accounting artifact. The "debt" is all of the dollars that have been spent *into* the economy
without having been taxed back *out*. The word "debt" activates your feels, but has no
intrinsic meaning in this context. Please step back from your indoctrinated emotional
reaction and understand that the so-called national "debt" is nothing more than money that
has been created via public spending, and "repaying" it would be an act of destruction.
I keep telling (boring, annoying, infuriating) people that, in the simplest terms, the
national debt is the money supply and they won't grasp that simple declaration. When I said
it to my Freedom Caucus congress critter (we were seated next to each other on an exit aisle)
his head started spinning, reminding me of Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
As I said to my congress critter, if the debt bother's y'all so much, why not just pay it
off, dust off your hands, and be done with it?
Personally, if I were President for a day, I'd have the mint stamp out 40 or so trillion
dollar platinum coins just to fill the top right drawer of the Resolute desk. Would give me
warm fuzzy feelings all day long.
p.s. I also told him that the man with nothing cares not about inflation. He didn't like
that either.
"those, some of whom are quite sophisticated, who believe that currencies should be backed
by something of tangible value (and no, "the military" misses the point), or those who hold
physical gold as an insurance policy against political incompetence, and the inexorable
degradation of fiat currencies"
I suspect that Wray exactly means that these people are the goldbugs, not the ones who
speculate on gold.
The whole point that currencies should be backed by something of tangible value IMO is
wrong, and I think the MMTers agree with me on this.
If so, then he should clarify his position, as again, lumping the billions –
literally – of people who consider gold to be economically important, together as one,
is disingenuous.
I think people that consider gold to be a risk hedge understand its anthro, per se an
early example of its use was a fleck of golds equal weight to a few grains of wheat e.g. the
gold did not store value, but was a marker – token of the wheat's value – labour
inputs and utility. Not to mention its early use wrt religious iconography or vis-à-vis
the former as a status symbol. Hence many of the proponents of a gold standard are really
arguing for immutable labour tokens, problem here is scalability wrt high worth individuals
and resulting distribution distortions, unless one forwards trickle down sorts of
theory's.
Not to mention in times of nascent socioeconomic storms many that forward the idea of gold
safety are the ones selling it. I think as such the entire thing is more a social psychology
question than one of factual natural history e.g. the need to feel safe i.e. like commercials
about "peace of mind". I think a reasonably stable society would provide more "peace of mind"
than some notion that an inanimate object could lend too – in an atomistic
individualistic paradigm.
I once had an co-worker that was a devout Christian. When he realized I wasn't religious,
he asked me, incredulously, how I was able to get out of bed in the morning. Meaning, he
couldn't face a world without meaning.
I think a lot of people feel that same way about money. They fight over it, lie for it,
steal it, kill for it, go to war over it, and most importantly, slave for it. Therefore, it
must have intrinsic value. I think gold bugs are in this camp.
Talking about Warren's blog ( http://moslereconomics.com/ ), everytime I try to go there,
Cloudflare asks me to prove that I am human. Anyone know what's up with that? It's the only
website I've ever seen do that.
That's a good suggestion. Unfortunately, as I sometimes find, you can pass ALL the major
test-sites but something (a minor, less-used site using out-of-date info?) can give you
grief. NC site managers once (kindly) took the time to explain to me why I might have
problems that they had no ability to address at their end. I had to muck around with a link
given earlier to Bill Mitchell's blog before my browser would load it.
I think there can be quirks that are beyond our control (unfortunately) – for instance
I think a whole block of IP addresses (including mine) used by my ISP have been flagged
*somewhere* – no doubt due to another customer doing stuff that the checker(s) don't
like. (The issue I mentioned above was more likely due to a strict security protocol in my
browser, however.)
Monetary policy in terms of interest rates is not just weak, it also tends to treat all
targets the same. Fiscal policy can be targetted to where it is felt it can do the most
good.
Christine Desan's book, "Making Money," exhaustively documents the history of money as a
creature of the state. Recall as well that creating money and regulating its value are among
the enumerated POWERS granted to our government by we, the people. Money, indeed, is
power.
Hmmm Randy Wray states that " permanent Zirp (zero interest rate policy) is probably a
better policy since it reduces the compounding of debt and the tendency for the rentier class
to take over more of the economy. "
But just last week, Yves stated that " that one of the consequences of the protracted
super-low interest rate regime of the post crisis era was to create a world of hurt for
savers, particularly long-term savers like pension funds, life insurers and retirees. "
[ https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/09/crisis-caused-pension-train-wreck.html
]
So are interest rates today too high, or too low? We're getting mixed messages here.
IMO, interest rates are too low . Beyond the harmful effect to savers, it also
drives income inequality . How? When interest rates are less than inflation, it is
trivial to borrow money, buy some assets, wait for the assets to appreciate, sell the assets,
repay the debt, and still have profit left over even after paying interest . Well,
it's trivial if you're already rich and have a line of credit that is both large and
low-interest. If you're poor with a bad FICO score, you don't get to play the asset
appreciation game at all.
The rates between riskier and less risky borrowers will still be reflected in the
different rates given to each.
The low rates encourage greater risk taking to increase the reward(a higher rate of
return). This is what leads to the gross malinvestment.
Case in point: the low rates led to more investments into the stock market, where the
returns are unlimited. This is what led to the income inequality of Obama's term, as
mentioned above.
I cannot speak for Yves, nor or Randy, but IMO, interest rates are too low for people who
depend on interest for their living -- as an old person, I have seen my expected income drop
to about zilch when I had expected 7 to 10% on my savings. Haha! So yeah, too low for us who
saved for 'retirement'.
Too high for people financing on credit, since a decent mortgage on a modestly-priced
house will cost you almost the same as
the house . And that doesn't even begin to look at unsecured consumer credit (ie, credit
card debt), which is used in the US and other barbaric countries for medical expenses, not to
mention student debt. The banks can create the principal with their keystrokes, but they
don't create the interest. Where do you suppose that comes from? Hint: nowhere, as in
foreclosures and bankruptcies.
Wray's statement reflects his preferences from an operational policy perspective.
Sovereign government debt cares no risk and therefore should not pay interest. The income
earned from that interest is basically a subsidy and all income when spent caries a risk of
inflation induced excess demand. Therefore who unnecessarily add the risk to the economy and
potential risk needing to reduce other policy objectives to accommodate unnecessary interest
income subsidies to mostly rich people?
Yves comment reflects the reality of prior decades of economic history. Even if Wray's
policy perspective is optimal, there are decades of people with pensions and retirement
savings designed around the assumption of income from risk-free government debt. It's this
legacy that Yves is commenting on and is a real problem that current policy makers are just
ignoring.
As for your comments on how low cost credit can be abused, I believe you'll find most MMT
practitioners would recommend far more regulation on the extension of credit for
non-productive purposes.
I just wrote a note to Randy:
The origin of money is not merely for accounting, but specifically for accounting for DEBT --
debt owed to the palatial economy and temples.
I make that clear in my Springer dictionary of money that will come out later this year:
Origins of Money and Interest: Palatial Credit, not Barter
Can somebody help me out here? It seems to me that the US macroeconomic policy has been
operating under MMT at least since FDR (see for example Beardsley Ruml from 1945).
Since then, insofar as I understand MMT, fiat has been printed and distributed to flow
primarily through the MIC and certain other periodically favored sectors (e.g. the Interstate
Highway System). Then, rather than destroying this fiat through taxation, the sectoral
balances have been kept deliberately out of balance: Taxes on unearned income have been
almost eliminated with an eye to not destroying fiat, but to sequestering as much as possible
in the private hands of the 1%. This accumulating fiat cannot be productively invested
because that would cause overproduction, inflation, and reduce the debt burden by which the
1% retains power over the 99%. So the new royalists, as FDR would have styled them, keep
their hoard as a war chest against "socialists".
I get all this, more or less, and I appreciate that it is well and good and important that
MMTers insistently point out that the emperor has no clothes. This is a necessary first step
in educating the 99%.
But I don't see MMT types discussing the fact that US (and NATO) macroeconomic policy
already has a Job Guarantee: if you don't want to work alongside undocumented immigrants on a
roof or in a slaughterhouse or suffer the humiliation of US welfare, such as it is, you can
always get a job with the army, or the TSA, or the police, or as a prison guard, or if you
have some education, with a health unsurance company or pushing drone buttons. You only have
to be willing to follow orders to kill–or at least help to kill–strangers.
(Okay, perhaps I overstate. If you're a medical doctor or an "educator" with university
debt you don't have to actively kill. You can decline scant Medicaid payments and open a
concierge practice, or you can teach to the test in order that nobody learns anything
moral.)
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not
understanding it. Wouldn't it be clarified matters if MMTers acknowledged that we already
have a JG?
We have been operating on MMT since the end of WW2, with 2 exceptions in 1968 when Silver
Certificate banknotes no longer were redeemable for silver, and in 1971 when foreign central
banks (not individuals!) weren't allowed to exchange FRN's for gold @ $35 an ounce
anymore.
It's been full on fiat accompli since then and to an outsider looks absurd in that money
is entirely a faith-based agenda, but it's worked for the majority of all of lives, so nobody
squawks.
It's an economic "the emperor has no clothes" gig.
It seems to me that the US macroeconomic policy has been operating under MMT at
least since FDR (see for example Beardsley Ruml from 1945).
Yup, you are correct, IMO. And about the jobs guarantee, too. The point of MMT is not that
we have to adopt, believe in, or implement it, but that *this is how things work* and we need
to get a %&*^* handle on it *STAT* or they will ride it and us to the graveyard. The
conservatives and neo-cons are already on to this, long-time.
I believe the chant is:
We can have anything we want that is available in our (sovereign) currency and for which
there are resources
What we get depends on what we want and how well we convince/coerce our 'leaders' to make
it so.
JG is geared toward community involvement to create an open-ended collection of potential
work assignments, not top-down provision of a limited number of job slots determined by
bureaucrats on a 1% leash.
About every 80 years, there has been a great turning in terms of money in these United
States
Might as well start with 1793 and the first Federal coins, followed in 1861 by the first
Federal paper money, and then the abandonment of the gold standard (a misnomer, as it was one
of many money standards @ era, most of them fiat) in 1933.
We're a little past our use-by date for the next incarnation of manna, or is it already
here in the guise of the great giveaway orchestrated since 2008 to a selected few?
After learning MMT I've occasionally thought I should get a refund for the two economics
degree's I originally received. One of the primary mainstream teachings that I now readily
see as false is the concept of money being a vale over a barter economy. It's lazy,
self-serving analysis. It doesn't even pass a basic logical analysis let alone archeological
history. Even in a very primitive economy it would be virtually impossible for barter to be
the main form of transaction. The strawberry farmer can't barter with the apple farmer. His
strawberries will be rotten before the apples are ripe. He could give the apple farmer
strawberries in June on the promise of receiving apples in October, but that's not barter
that's credit. The apple farmer could default of his own free will or by happenstance (he
dies, his apple harvest is destroyed by an act of god, etc ). How does the iron miner get his
horse shoed if the blacksmith needs iron before he can make the horse show? Credit has to
have always been a key component of any economy and therefore barter could never have been
the original core.
After learning MMT I've occasionally thought I should get a refund for the two
economics degree's I originally received.
Agreed. Richard Wolff notes that in most Impressive Universities there are two schools,
one for Economics (theory) and another for Business (practice). Heh. I say, go for the
refund, you was robbed.
All the Rupee* has done over time is go down in value against other currencies, and up in
the spot price measured in Rupees even as gold is trending down now, and that whole stupid
demonetization of bank notes gig, anybody on the outside of the fiat curtain looking in, had
to be laughing, and ownership there is no laughing matter, as it's almost a state financial
religion, never seen anything like it.
* A silver coin larger than a U.S. half dollar pre-post WW2, now worth a princely 1.4
cents U.S.
Not an economist, but I appreciate both the applicability of MMT and the fierce, but often
subtle resistance its proponents have encountered academically, institutionally and
politically. However, I have questioned to what extent MMT is uniquely applicable to a nation
with either a current account surplus or that controls access to a global reserve
currency.
How does a nation that is sovereign in its own currency, say Argentina for example (there
are many such examples), lose 60 percent of its value in global foreign exchange markets in a
very short time period?
Is this due primarily to private sector debts denominated in a foreign currency (and if
so, what sectors of the Argentine economy undertook those debts, for what purposes, and to
whom are they owed?), foreign exchange market manipulation by external third parties, the
effective imposition of sanctions by those who control the global reserve currency and
international payments system, or some combination of those or other factors?
MMT makes more sense than orthodox neoliberal accounts of currency and sovereign spending
to me, as it does a better job of acknowledging reality. MMT recognizes that currency is an
artifice and that imagined limitations on it are just that, and real resources are the things
which are limited. Neoliberal economics acts as if all sorts of byzantine factors mean
currency must be limited, but we can think of resources, and the growth machine they feed, as
being infinite.
"Taxes or other obligations (fees, fines, tribute, tithes) drive the
currency."
Specifically, what does "drive" mean? Does it mean:
1. When taxes are reduced, the value of money falls?
2. If taxes were zero, the value of money would be zero?
3. Cryptocurrencies, which are not supported by taxes, have no value?
"JG is a critical component of MMT. It anchors the currency and ensures that achieving
full employment will enhance both price and financial stability."
Specifically, what do "anchors" and "critical component" mean? Do they mean:
1. Since JG does not exist, the U.S. dollar is unanchored and MMT does not exist?
2. Providing college graduates with ditch-digging jobs enhances price and financial
stability?
3. Forcing people to work is both morally and economically superior to giving them money and
benefits?
"Drive" means "creates initial demand for":
1. No, not for an established currency.
2. See 1.
3. Crypto is worth what you can buy with it.
"Anchors" means it acts against inflation and deflation. "Critical component" means the
economy works better if it has it.
1. Yes and no.
2. Yes, if no-one else will hire them.
3. No element of force is implied.
James, I totally get it but the point is they are all operating within the same global
system for the same purpose with the same result....and forgive me for saying I notice Putin
kind've right in the middle of it all....standing on the neoliberal sideline with his pockets
overflowing also. Piketty:
Where has the money gone? According to our estimates, the offshore assets alone held by
wealthy Russians exceed one year of GDP, or the equivalent of the entirety of the official
financial assets held by Russian households. In other words, the natural wealth of the
country, (which, let it be said in passing, would have done better to remain in the ground
to limit global warming) has been massively exported abroad to sustain opaque structures
enabling a minority to hold huge Russian and international financial assets.
These rich Russians live between London, Monaco and Moscow: some have never left Russia
and control their country via offshore entities.
Numerous intermediaries and Western firms have also recouped large crumbs on the way and
continue to do so today in sport and the media (sometimes this is referred to as
philanthropy). The extent of the misappropriation of funds has no equal in history
The success of any economic attack (sanctions) is dependent obviously on group
participation. There are indications of a lack of enthusiasm for this go round. Concurrent
with this ennui, market makers China and Russia strengthen trade relationships with everyone
except the USA. There is BRICS; there are new bridges, pipelines and rail systems.
Sanctions: When "The West" breaks a nation state, the MIC and the Multinationals corps get
to plunder it for fun and profit. (Also makes for inexpensive, young prostitutes and cocaine.
They love their hookers and blow.)
@33 Jerry Springer and politics, true, and I'm glad we're finally getting to the nub of your
pieces: politics – and the mid-terms?
Meanwhile, I did a little more background reading on the latest round of accusations.
Witness number 2 confirms that BK was an obnoxious drunk at Yale, and very much a "man's man"
in the infantile sense of the expression. From CNN
"James Roche, Kavanaugh's roommate in the Fall 1983, also issued a statement saying that
Kavanaugh was a "notably heavy drinker, even by the standards of the time."
"(H)e became aggressive and belligerent when he was very drunk," Roche said.
One classmate who attended many of the same parties as Brett Kavanaugh but did not want to
be identified, says he was "aggressive, obnoxious drunk, part of the crowd he hung out
with."
Roche added that he became close friends with Ramirez in the early days at Yale and while
he "did not observe the specific incident in question," he did remember "Brett frequently
drinking excessively and becoming incoherently drunk."
BK whipped out his male parts on at least one occasion, seems hopelessly immature, and
could be grabby and inappropriate. First time I've heard of that kind of behavior, ahem.
My own narrow experiences in this community as a youth were limited to middle-school
athletics. Members of the rugby team liked to pull down their pants when drunk. Even at
sixteen I could see that kind of behavior wasn't going to lead me to the promised land. That
said, after migrating into a much more mixed community, I distinctly recall being dragged
into a totally dark bedroom at a party and thrown down onto a bed in a manner quite different
to Ms. Ford. Lines blurred. I've known a number of women who owned to intimate contact with
two or more partners in an evening in high school and after, and who are now successful
parents and hold good jobs. People do grow and change.
Yet, it's clear BK and I would never have been at the same parties, but I'm not sure I've
read anything that makes him a sexual predator, (a charge you withdrew), or guilty of rape.
He seems guilty of nothing more than being an asshole to both girls and boys as a high-school
student, and an entitled and ugly drunk at Yale.
"If he is rejected -- although his confirmation seems to be a substantial likelihood at this
point -- my only disappointment will be that Democrats think they won."
Illya's post on job interview vs. criminal standard is good
I respectfully disagree. Illya's post is naïve because the key problem with
this nomination is that it tips the scale in the Supreme Court. That's why we see torture
supporting female senator assaulting torture supporting nominee and rebuffed by the best friend
of Senator John McCain.
But I agree that the discussion is good and illustrate various point that are missing from
this thread, especially the fact that this creates a new standard that Dems will now face, if
they have a chance to nominate a new member of Supreme Court. They might regret about
elimination of filibuster. Now it is about vicious attacks in the personally of the nominee
with no stone unturned in his/her personal history.
I will provide some interesting quotes below. Not that I agree with them all (I would like
Kavanaugh to be derailed due to his participation in justifying torture in Bush II
administration)
No, but this isn't a job interview. A better analogy would be more like a TV interview. If
the interviewer is reasonably fair and asks sensible questions, it would be foolish to get
angry with him / her. But if the interviewer is obviously biased, asks loaded questions,
constantly interrupts your answers, and paraphrases your answers into the opposite of what
you said, then rather than sit and take it meekly, it may be more sensible to push back and
call the interviewer out.
Senators and Congesscritturs in committees have been allowed to get away with the pretense
that they are owed deference for their showboating and that people up before them must meekly
submit to the most egregious abuse. A nominee who tells them where to get off, in no
uncertain terms, is very welcome.
Miguel Estrada's comment that he would never accept a nomination because it might require
him to be civil to Chuck Schumer is one way out. The other is to accept the nomination and
forget about being civil to people like Schumer.
The discussion also raised the importance of the fact that the supposed assault
was reported so late and that there is a possibility that 2012 therapist session served as a
justification of creating a separate entrance to the master bedroom in order to rent it to Dr.
Ford students, the hypothesis that is now circulating at alt-right sites:
We want actual assaults reported, but we want them reported at the time, not decades later.
Not just because they can't effectively be investigated decades later, but because real
sexual predators don't stop at one victim.
Another interesting point is that the potential benefits for Dr. Ford create a
perverse incentive in the future to come forward with false accusations with the expectation of
a huge monetary reward from "Me too" funding sources :
"I'm becoming convinced the only thing that will actually deter such unsupported accusations,
is to abolish the "public figure" rule for libel. Blasey Ford is already better than a half
million dollars richer having made this accusation, and faces a future of lucrative speaking
fees and possibly even a movie. And having carefully avoided any claims specific enough to be
proven false, she has no need to fear perjury charges."
"... I think you've really nailed it, Anastasia. Watching this farce on TV, a few things were quite obvious to me: Christine Ford is a very disturbed and unhappy woman. The Republicans were afraid to question her. So, they brought on this attorney from Phoenix, who was a total flop. Senator Graham finally rode in to save the day. (I am not accustomed to praising Graham. But he was effective yesterday.) The lead democrats, Feinstein, Leahy, and Durbin, were actually ashamed when senior Republicans publicly called them out for the sham they were perpetrating on the American people. The silly Senator from Hawaii and Dick Blumenthal demonstrated that they had no shame. All in all, it was a low point for the Senate. ..."
anastasia says:
September 28, 2018 at 4:47 am GMT 300 Words They were too afraid of the women's movement,
and therefore could not bring themselves to challenge her in any way. Interspersed between the
prosecutors questions which did not have the time to develop, was the awards ceremony given by
the democrats to the honoree.
But we , the people, all saw that she was mentally disturbed. Her appearance (post clean
up); her testimony, her beat up looks, drinking coke in the morning, the scrawl of her
handwriting in a statement to be seen by others, the foggy lens, the flat affect, the little
girl's voice and the incredible testimony (saying "hi" to her rapist only a few weeks later and
expecting everyone to believe that is normal, remembering that she had one beer but not
remembering who took her home; not knowing that the offer was made to go to California as if
she were living on another planet, her fear of flying, her duper's delight curled up lips
– all the tell tale signs were there for all the world, except the Senate the media, to
see.
She went to a shrink with her husband in 2012, and it was her conduct that apparently needed
explaining, so she confabulated a story about 4 boys raping her when she was 15 to explain her
inexplicable conduct to her husband, and maybe even to her friends. She later politicized the
confabulation, and she is clearly going to make a few sheckels with her several go fund me
sites that will inexplicably show $10.00 donations every 15 seconds.
She was the leaker. She went to the press almost immediately in July. They were too afraid
to point that out to everyone because the phoniest thing about her was that she wished to
remain anonymous.
Ludwig Watzal says:
Website
September 28, 2018 at 1:13 pm GMT 400 Words As a foreign observer, I watched the whole
hearing farce on CNN till midnight in Germany. For me, from the beginning, it seemed a set up
by the Democratic Party that has not emancipated itself from the Clinton filth and poison. As
their stalwart, Chuck Schumer said after the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh that the Dems will
do everything to prevent his confirmation. They found, of course, a naive patsy in Dr. Ford,
not to speak of the other two disgraceful women that prostituted themselves for base motives.
Right from the beginning, Dr. Ford played to me the role of an innocent valley girl, which
seemed to make a great impression on the CCN tribunal that commented biasedly during the breaks
of the hearing committee. It was a great TV-propaganda frame.
Don't forget; the so-called sexual harassment occurred 36 years (!) ago. Dr. Ford was 15,
and Judge Kavanaugh was 17 years old. But Dr. Ford discovered her "suffering" after she heart
from the nomination of Kavanaugh in July 2018. Why didn't she complain to the police after the
"incident" happened in 1982 or at least after the "me to movement" popped up? May it as it is.
Everybody who knows the high school or prep-school-life and behavior of American youths should
not be surprised that such incidents can happen. When I studied at the U of Penn for my M.A.
degree, I got to know American student campus life. For me, it was a great experience. Every
weekend, wild parties were going on where students were boozed and screwed around like hell.
Nobody made a big fuss out of it.
On both sides, the whole hearing was very emotional. But get one argument straight: In a
state of the law the accuser has to come up with hard evidence and not only with suspicions and
accusations; in a state of the law, the accused has not to prove his innocence, which only
happens in totalitärian states.
Why did the majority of the Judiciary Committee agree on a person like the down-to-earth and
humdrum person such as Mitchell to ask questions? It seems as if they were convinced in advance
of Kavanaugh's guilt. The only real defender of Kavanaugh was Senator Lindsey Graham with his
outburst of anger. If the Reps don't get this staid Judge Kavanagh confirmed they ought to be
ashamed of themselves.
This hearing was not a lesson in a democratic process but in the perversion of it.
@WorkingClass Really – everyone should know by now that in any sex related offence,
men are guilty until proven innocent .& even then "not guilty" really means the defendant
was "too cunning to be found guilty by a patriarchal court, interpreting patriarchal Law."
My comment on those proceedings today was this: "This is awful, I've never seen a more
tawdry, sleazy performance in my life – and I've seen a few. No Democrat will ever get
my vote again. They can find some other party to run with. Those people are despicable.
Details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKSRUK-l7dM”
;
Later on, I noted: "None of this has anything to do with his record as a judge – and
that's not such a good record: https://www.lawfareblog.com/judge-brett-kavanaugh-national-security-readers-guide
at least if you're concerned with the Constitutional issues SCOTUS will actually decide. None
of it, not one word. It's irrelevant. It's partisan harassment, it's defamation, it's
character assassination, and all of it is *irrelevant* , it's useless – and in the end
it will be both futile, because there will be a party line vote, and counterproductive,
because a lot of people will be totally repelled by the actions of the Clintonistas –
because that's what those people are."
The Neocons are evil. They despise Middle America almost as much as do the wild-eyed
Leftists, just in a different way for slightly different specific reasons.
Well it looks like the repubs will get what they want – a woman abusing (like their
President) alcoholic defender of the rich and powerful. Fits right into their "elite" club.
After watching the Big Circus yesterday, I rate Ford's performance a 6 (sympathetic person,
but weak memory and zero corroboration). Cavanaugh gets an 8 (great opening statement,
wishy-washy and a dearth of straight answers during questioning). Had it been a tie, the fact
that the putative event occurred when he was 17 would break it.
@anastasia Good points, but yesterday's inference is that she became permanently
disturbed by the incident 36 years ago . In my experience, most psychologists are attracted
to that field to work out personal issues -- and aren't always successful. Ms. Ford fits that
mold, IMHO.
One thing I haven't heard is a challenge to Ford's belief that her attackers intended
rape. That may or may not be true. Ford testified about "uproarious laughter." That sounds to
me more like a couple of muddled, drunken male teens having their idea of "fun" -- i.e.,
molestation and dominance (which is certainly unacceptable, nonetheless).
Much ado about nothing. Attempted political assassination at it's best. American's have once
more been disgusted to a level they previously thought impossible. Who among us here does not
remember those glorious teenage years complete with raging hormones? What man does not
remember playing offense while the girl's played defense? It was as natural as nature itself.
No harm, no foul, that's just how we rolled back in the late 70′s and early 80′s.
@anastasiaI think you've really nailed it, Anastasia. Watching this farce on TV, a
few things were quite obvious to me: Christine Ford is a very disturbed and unhappy woman.
The Republicans were afraid to question her. So, they brought on this attorney from Phoenix,
who was a total flop. Senator Graham finally rode in to save the day. (I am not accustomed to
praising Graham. But he was effective yesterday.) The lead democrats, Feinstein, Leahy, and
Durbin, were actually ashamed when senior Republicans publicly called them out for the sham
they were perpetrating on the American people. The silly Senator from Hawaii and Dick
Blumenthal demonstrated that they had no shame. All in all, it was a low point for the
Senate.
For his part, Kavanaugh is oddly obtuse for one who is said to be such a great jurist.
Meek, mild and emotional, he does not seem up to the task of defending himself.
It appears that Ms. Mercer wrote this before the second half when things were looking
bleak.
Reminded me of Super Bowl 51 at halftime. I even tuned out just like I did that game until
I checked in later to see that the Patriot comeback was under way.
@mike k You are a useful idiot for the destruction of western civilization. Men are not
abusers of women, excepting a few criminals. Men protect families from criminals.
@Haxo Angmark Yes, Ms Mitchell did a very incompetent job, but it won't matter. Kavanaugh
will be confirmed Saturday, due to his own counterattack and refusal to be a victim.
Little miss pouty head cute face was a huge liar, obvious from the second I heard her. The
kind of chick who can go from a little sad voice to screaming and throwing dishes and
brandishing a knife in a heartbeat.
The success of any economic attack (sanctions) is dependent obviously on group
participation. There are indications of a lack of enthusiasm for this go round. Concurrent
with this ennui, market makers China and Russia strengthen trade relationships with everyone
except the USA. There is BRICS; there are new bridges, pipelines and rail systems.
Sanctions: When "The West" breaks a nation state, the MIC and the Multinationals corps get
to plunder it for fun and profit. (Also makes for inexpensive, young prostitutes and cocaine.
They love their hookers and blow.)
"... There are some who, though uncomfortable with the abrogation of the presumption of innocence that is characteristic of the Democrats' treatment of the sexual assault allegations, are eager to seize on any opportunity to keep Kavanaugh off the court. ..."
"... A central aim of the Democrats' strategy in the Kavanaugh hearings has been to obscure the most important class issues. They adopt the tone of phony moral outrage over the three-decade-old allegation while expressing no similar anger or even concern over the crimes committed by the American ruling class throughout the world. ..."
"... Not a day goes by where the US military is not dropping bombs or launching drone strikes, with the death toll from the "war on terror" well over one million. Thirteen thousand immigrant children are currently locked up in internment camps. Thousands of workers in the US die each year from industrial accidents and work-related illnesses. When Democratic Senator Cory Booker complains about the "patriarchy," he looks past the fact that the fall in life expectancy in the working class is largely driven by alcoholism, drug abuse and depression among men. ..."
"... Kavanaugh is himself complicit in these crimes, from which the relentless focus on allegations of sexual misconduct is intended as a diversion. There is documentary evidence Kavanaugh helped author Alberto Gonzales' "torture memos" during the Bush administration. He is on the record praising the constitutionality of mass surveillance by the National Security Agency. Email exchanges prove he advocates repealing the right to abortion for millions of women across the country. ..."
"... The Democratic Party's refusal to address such issues is a deliberate decision. They are themselves guilty of involvement in these crimes -- and intend for them to continue, whether Kavanaugh or some other reactionary is on the court. ..."
"... twenty years ago Kavanaugh was a central player in the Republicans' anti-democratic use of sex scandals to attempt to bring down the administration of Democratic President Bill Clinton ..."
After nearly nine hours of Senate testimony by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his
accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, the public is no closer to knowing what did or did not happen
over thirty years ago, when Ford alleges Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her. Kavanaugh's future
as the nominee now depends on the outcome of an FBI investigation to which Senate Republicans
agreed on Friday.
The allegations of sexual assault have become the sole issue in Kavanaugh's confirmation,
and the Democratic Party and the media have presented Kavanaugh's guilt on this matter as a
foregone conclusion. The focus of the proceedings reflects the political priorities of the
Democratic Party and the interests of the affluent social layers to which it is appealing.
There are some who, though uncomfortable with the abrogation of the presumption of
innocence that is characteristic of the Democrats' treatment of the sexual assault allegations,
are eager to seize on any opportunity to keep Kavanaugh off the court. The ends, as the
saying goes, supposedly justify the means. They should be warned: This is bad politics, bad
strategy and even worse tactics. There are political consequences to such efforts to confuse
and cover up the real issues confronting the working class.
A central aim of the Democrats' strategy in the Kavanaugh hearings has been to obscure
the most important class issues. They adopt the tone of phony moral outrage over the
three-decade-old allegation while expressing no similar anger or even concern over the crimes
committed by the American ruling class throughout the world.
Not a day goes by where the US military is not dropping bombs or launching drone
strikes, with the death toll from the "war on terror" well over one million. Thirteen thousand
immigrant children are currently locked up in internment camps. Thousands of workers in the US
die each year from industrial accidents and work-related illnesses. When Democratic Senator
Cory Booker complains about the "patriarchy," he looks past the fact that the fall in life
expectancy in the working class is largely driven by alcoholism, drug abuse and depression
among men.
Kavanaugh is himself complicit in these crimes, from which the relentless focus on
allegations of sexual misconduct is intended as a diversion. There is documentary evidence
Kavanaugh helped author Alberto Gonzales' "torture memos" during the Bush administration. He is
on the record praising the constitutionality of mass surveillance by the National Security
Agency. Email exchanges prove he advocates repealing the right to abortion for millions of
women across the country.
The Democratic Party's refusal to address such issues is a deliberate decision. They are
themselves guilty of involvement in these crimes -- and intend for them to continue, whether
Kavanaugh or some other reactionary is on the court.
The Democrats are not even capable of addressing the fact that twenty years ago
Kavanaugh was a central player in the Republicans' anti-democratic use of sex scandals to
attempt to bring down the administration of Democratic President Bill Clinton . To raise
this issue would expose the fact that the Democrats are engaged in the same methods today.
As part of their effort to center opposition to Kavanaugh on allegations of sexual
misconduct, the Democrats are utilizing the methods of #MeToo, which have consisted of treating
allegations as fact and the presumption of innocence as an unnecessary burden that must be
dispensed with.
The WSWS takes no position on whether or not Kavanaugh is guilty of the allegations against
him. However, as a legal matter, all that has been presented are the uncorroborated assertions
of one individual. At Thursday's hearing, Democratic senators carried out a degrading
spectacle, poring over Kavanaugh's high school yearbook and his puerile, 16-year-old references
to drinking, flatulence and vomiting as though they prove he is guilty of sexual assault.
The media has followed suit. In an editorial board statement published Thursday night, the
New York Times presented Kavanaugh's testimony as "volatile and belligerent." The
statement makes no reference to Kavanaugh's political views, but concludes that he was "hard to
believe," "condescending," "clumsy," "coy," "misleading" and likely a "heavy drinker." The
reader is led to conclude that he must be guilty of the alleged crime.
Speaking on CNN last week, Hawaii Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono said the presumption of
innocence "is what makes it really difficult for victims and survivors of these traumatic
events to come forward." New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer told reporters that there
is "no presumption of innocence" in Kavanaugh's case because "it's not a legal proceeding, it's
a fact-finding proceeding."
The character of the Democrats' operation in relation to the Kavanaugh hearing allowed this
arch-reactionary to present himself as the victim of what he referred to in his opening
statement as a "left-wing" conspiracy. The Democrats are, in fact, engaged in a highly staged
political operation. However, there is nothing left-wing about it. On the contrary, the
Democrats have adopted the political methods of the far-right.
The presumption of innocence is no small matter and dispensing with it has the most
far-reaching consequences. Socialists have always stood against efforts by representatives of
the bourgeoisie to obscure the class issues and undercut democratic consciousness. The causes
with which the left has been historically associated involve a defense of the democratic and
egalitarian principles established by the bourgeois revolutions of the late 18th century,
including the presumption of innocence and due process.
The use of emotion and prejudice to weaken popular support for these rights, divide the
working class, and facilitate state repression, militarism and corporate exploitation is the
historical tradition of right-wing politics. Basic democratic principles are always most
vulnerable when the ruling class is able to play on moods of mass retribution against alleged
perpetrators of crimes, particularly sexual violence, due to its inherent emotional appeal.
The Democrats' strategy in the Kavanaugh hearings has much in common with these traditions.
Appeals to moods of vengeance and encouragement of visceral hatred of the accused are the
methods of medieval justice. They are being employed to advance the Democratic Party's efforts
to consolidate a political constituency among the affluent upper-middle class.
Socialists hold no brief for Brett Kavanaugh. But the tactics used against him will be
employed with a thousand times more force and power against the oppressed and those opposed to
the policies of the ruling elite. The case of WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, persecuted for
years on the basis of trumped-up sexual allegations, is one such example.
The operation of the Democrats in the Kavanaugh hearing cannot be separated from the
character of its entire opposition to the Trump administration. It has sought to suppress and
divert popular opposition to Trump behind the reactionary militarist and anti-democratic agenda
of dominant sections of the military-intelligence apparatus. In this conflict within the ruling
class, there is no progressive or democratic faction.
Kavanaugh is a political reactionary and an enemy of the working class. However, in waging
its opposition to this right-wing Republican and the Trump administration, the working class
must not allow itself to be subordinated to the agenda of the Democrats. To do so would only
disarm the working class, undermine democratic rights and facilitate the ever more right-wing
trajectory of American politics.
Looks like she has mental issues. also some of her behaviour falls in female sociopath
category, although it is difficult to tell without knowing a person.
Fake allegation of sexual harassment are favorite weapon of female sociopath. They also are
poweful revenge weapon of some rejected woman.
The woman who charges she was gang-raped at a party where Supreme Court nominee Brett
Kavanaugh was present, Julie Swetnick, had a lawsuit filed against her by a former employer
that alleged she engaged in "unwelcome, sexually offensive conduct" towards two male
co-workers, according to court documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
WebTrends, a web analytics company headquartered in Portland, filed the defamation and fraud
lawsuit
against Swetnick in Oregon in November 2000 and also alleged that she lied about graduating
from Johns Hopkins University.
Swetnick alleged Wednesday that she was gang
raped at a party where Kavanaugh was present in the early 1980s. Kavanaugh has vehemently
denied the allegation.
Swetnick is represented by Michael Avenatti , the lawyer
for porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims she had an affair with President Donald Trump.
WebTrends voluntarily dismissed its suit after one month. Avenatti told The Daily Caller
News Foundation that the case was ended because it was "completely bogus."
Swetnick's alleged conduct took place in June 2000, just three weeks after she started
working at WebTrends, the complaint shows. WebTrends conducted an investigation that found both
male employees gave similar accounts of Swetnick engaging in "unwelcome sexual innuendo and
inappropriate conduct" toward them during a business lunch in front of customers, the complaint
said.
Swetnick denied the allegations and, WebTrends alleged, "in a transparent effort to divert
attention from her own inappropriate behavior [made] false and retaliatory allegations" of
sexual harassment against two other male co-workers.
"Based on its investigations, WebTrends determined that Swetnick had engaged in
inappropriate conduct, but that no corroborating evidence existed to support Swetnick's
allegations against her coworkers," the complaint said.
After a WebTrends human resources director informed Swetnick that the company was unable to
corroborate the sexual harassment allegations she had made, she "remarkably" walked back the
allegations, according to the complaint.
In July, one month after the alleged incident, Swetnick took a leave of absence from the
company for sinus issues, according to the complaint. WebTrends said it made short-term
disability payments to her until mid-August that year. One week after the payments stopped,
WebTrends received a note from Swetnick's doctor claiming she needed a leave of absence for a
"nervous breakdown."
The company said it continued to provide health insurance coverage for Swetnick, despite her
refusal provide any additional information about her alleged medical condition.
In November, the company's human resources director received a notice from the Washington,
D.C. Department of Unemployment that Swetnick had applied for unemployment benefits after
claiming she left WebTrends voluntarily in late September.
"In short, Swetnick continued to claim the benefits of a full-time employee of WebTrends,
sought disability payments from WebTrends' insurance carrier and falsely claimed unemployment
insurance payments from the District of Columbia," the complaint states.
Swetnick allegedly hung up the phone on WebTrends managers calling to discuss why she
applied for unemployment benefits, according to the complaint. She then sent letters to
WebTrends' upper management, detailing new allegations that two male co-workers sexually
harassed her and said that the company's human resources director had "illegally tired [sic]
for months to get privileged medical information" from her, her doctor and her insurance
company.
WebTrends also alleged that Swetnick began her fraud against the company before she was
hired by stating on her job application that she graduated from John Hopkins University. But
according to the complaint, the school had no record of her attendance.
An online resume posted by
Swetnick makes no reference to John Hopkins University. It does show that she worked for
WebTrends from December 1999 to August 2000.
It's unclear what transpired after the complaint was filed against Swetnick. One month after
WebTrends filed the action, the company voluntarily dismissed the action with prejudice.
The complaint against his client was "[c]ompletely bogus which is why it was dismissed
almost immediately," Avenatti told
TheDCNF in an email. "The lawsuit was filed in retaliation against my client after she pursued
claims against the company."
WebTrends did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
In March 2001, three months after WebTrends dismissed its action, Swetnick's ex-boyfriend,
Richard Vinneccy, filed a restraining order against Swetnick, claiming that she threatened him
after he ended their four-year relationship.
vulcanraven , 1 hour ago
Looks like Avenatti has his work cut out for him, he sure knows how to pick the winners.
By the way, this is not the first time we have seen a woman claim "sexual harassment" after
being turned down.
maxblockm , 25 minutes ago
Potiphar's wife.
Now Joseph was well-built and handsome, 7 and after a while his master's wife
took notice of Joseph and said, "Come to bed with me!"
8 But he refused. "With me in charge," he told her, "my master does not concern
himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care.
9 No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from
me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin
against God?" 10 And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to
bed with her or even be with her.
11 One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the
household servants was inside. 12 She caught him by his cloak and said, "Come to
bed with me!" But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.
13 When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the
house, 14 she called her household servants."Look," she said to them, "this Hebrew
has been brought to us to make sport of us!He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed.
15 When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of
the house."
16 She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home. 17 Then
she told him this story: "That Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me.
18 But as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of
the house."
19 When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, "This is how your
slave treated me," he burned with anger. 20 Joseph's master took him and put him
in prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined.
But while Joseph was there in the prison, 21 the Lord was with him
Buck Shot , 1 hour ago
I think all three of the accusers are lying psychopaths. I get tired of all this pining
for women. Plenty of women have done a lot of horrible things including these three liars.
There are millions of lying skeezers out there, especially in the USA.
Seal Team 6 , 1 hour ago
Yeah...whatever. No one is talking about Swatnick including the Dems. While Ford is just
unbelievable, Zwetnik's story requires major hits of psychedelics that haven't been invented
yet.
TeraByte , 1 hour ago
"A courageous survivor", yet an untrustworthy lunatic.
Dickweed Wang , 2 hours ago
Text book Fatal Attraction bitch.
Piss her off enough and she'll sneak in at night and cut off your ****. Then she'll file
attempted rape charges against you, claiming the **** chopping was in self defense. And
she'll get away with it because, well . . . she's a woman.
HowardBeale , 1 hour ago
"Fatal attraction..."
That's my hypothesis on this clearly mentally unstable "Professor" Ford: She is exacting
revenge because she was enamored over Kavanaugh in high school; she attended several parties
where he was present; and she was so insignificant in his mind -- being hideous to look at
and listen to -- that he never even saw her...
Dickweed Wang , 1 hour ago
Pretty good hypothesis. It's hard not to think that looking at her, either back then or
now.
eurotrash96 , 1 hour ago
Please! Most women are not like her. Most women, the muted female majority, are perfectly
aware that men are men and we love it! Please do not think the majority of women are like
those who currently prevail in MSM.
legalize , 2 hours ago
This woman has a 14-page resume with her contact information blasted across the top of
every page. In every hiring situation I've been in, such a resume would be a red flag in and
of itself.
LoveTruth , 2 hours ago
She definitely needs to either be fined for defamation, or be put in jail even if it is
for a month or two.
RiotActing , 2 hours ago
She sounds completely credible.... whats the problem?
HowardBeale , 1 hour ago
I am surprised that nobody has picked up on/mentioned in the media the issues with her
memory or inability to understand common English words; for example, her memory of "the
event" changed live before our eyes, as at one point in the questioning she said "someone
pushed me from behind into a bedroom...," and a short time later she said "Kavanaugh pushed
me into a bedroom."
Watch her testimony and see for yourself.
aloha_snakbar , 2 hours ago
She should write resumes for a living...LOL..."Drupal / Wordpress Architect"....if you can
use a word processor, you can be an 'architect' on either one of those platforms...
Mzhen , 2 hours ago
This is the guy hired in D.C. to represent Deborah Ramirez -- William Pittard. They are
out to force Kavanaugh to withdraw over perjury in testimony, since he said he had never
harassed anyone past the age of 18. The civil attorney in Boulder will be trying to cash in
from another angle.
Prior to joining KaiserDillon, Bill served in the Office of General Counsel of the U.S.
House of Representatives for more than five years, including most recently as the Acting
General Counsel. In that role, he acted as legal counsel to Members, committees, officers,
and employees of the House on matters related to their official duties. He also represented
the House itself in litigation and other matters in which it had an institutional interest.
The Congressional Record summarizes, in part: "Mr. Pittard provided frequent and invaluable
legal advice and representation to Members of the House . . . , the officers of the House,
the committees of the House, and the leadership of the House -- most often in connection with
their interactions with the other branches of the Federal Government. He did so
professionally and without regard to partisan identity and, as a result, we came to rely on
his expertise and guidance."
MauiJeff , 2 hours ago
These women live in a world were sexual harassment is ubiquitous. They see sexual
harassment everywhere because sexual harassment is anything they think it is, it is purely
based on their perception. If you subtract a conscience and personal integrity from your
psyche you can interpret anything as sexual harassment you get a post Frankfurt School of
psychology masterpiece like Swetnick. She can only destroy and cannot create.
SDShack , 3 hours ago
"Unwelcome sexual conduct", and later "a nervous breakdown". LOL! Yesterday I said on
another thread that I bet she was a hedonist.
TBT or not TBT , 3 hours ago
Swetnick says she went to a dozen high school parties, as an adult, where gang rapes were
organized by high school boys, including one time on her.
Banana Republican , 3 hours ago
I wonder why she stopped going?
divingengineer , 2 hours ago
she sounds like a sport
MoreFreedom , 2 hours ago
I'll bet she didn't even bother to think that people might wonder:
Why was a college girl going to high school parties?
Why would a women who witnessed a gang rape not call the police?
Why would a women who witnessed multiple gang rapes not call the police?
Why would a women who witnessed gang rapes at these parties, continue going to more of
them?
Does she have the names of any of the attendees or victims at these parties, and if not
why not?
When and where were these parties?
Instead, she seems to think people would just believe her lies. Truth is a wonderful
thing. and the actions of people say a lot about them. Her actions show she doesn't care
about real victims of sexual abuse, she's willing to lie for her benefit, and she has no
problem bearing false witness against others.
It's so easy to make up false plausible accusations. Ford is obviously a more intelligent
liar.
"... I still find it incredible that this video by Samuelson essentially acknowledging that a key part of his multi-decade "core" textbook is religion, not science, is not more widely shared. ..."
Steve Keen of Kingston University, London gives an important high-level talk on the
considerable shortcomings of mainstream economics. Keen argues that a major objective of the
discipline is to justify the virtues of markets, which in turn leads them to adopt a strongly
ideological posture along with highly simplified models and narrow mathematical approaches to
reach conclusions that they find acceptable.
Keen has many informative asides, like the introductory level texts he used in the 1970s
were more advanced than many graduate level guides.
I still find it incredible that this video by Samuelson essentially acknowledging that a
key part of his multi-decade "core" textbook is religion, not science, is not more widely
shared.
OK the person who constructed the complete youtube vid has typos etc and editing
probably didn't help the cause. but still
I think those measure have implicit blessing from Washington, which realized how dangerous
withdrawal of Iraq oil from the market can be for the USA economy
The UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York is a place where world leaders are able to hold
important meetings behind closed doors. Russia, China, the UK, Germany, France, and the EU
seized that opportunity on Sept. 24 to achieve a real milestone.
The EU, Russia, China, and Iran
will create a special purpose vehicle (SPV), a "financially independent sovereign channel,"
to bypass US sanctions against Tehran and breathe life into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA) , which is in jeopardy. "Mindful of the urgency and the need for tangible
results, the participants welcomed practical proposals to maintain and develop payment
channels, notably the initiative to establish a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to facilitate
payments related to Iran's exports, including oil," they announced in a
joint statement. The countries are still working out the technical details. If their plan
succeeds, this will deliver a blow to the dollar and a boost to the euro.
The move is being made in order to save the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. According to Federica
Mogherini , High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security
Policy, the SPV will facilitate payments for Iran's exports, such as oil, and imports so that
companies can do business with Tehran as usual. The vehicle will be available not just to EU
firms but to others as well. A round of US sanctions aimed at ending Iranian oil exports is to
take effect on November 5. Iran is the world's seventh-largest oil producer. Its oil sector
accounts for 70% of the country's exports. Tehran has warned the EU that it should find new
ways of trading with Iran prior to that date, in order to preserve the JCPOA.
The SPV proposes to set up a multinational, European, state-backed financial intermediary to
work with companies interested in trading with Iran. Payments will be made in currencies other
than the dollar and remain outside the reach of those global money-transfer systems under US
control. In August, the EU passed a blocking statute to guarantee the immunity of European
companies from American punitive measures. It empowers EU firms to seek compensation from the
United States Treasury for its attempts to impose extra-territorial sanctions. No doubt the
move will further damage the already strained US-EU relationship. It might be helpful to create
a special EU company for oil exports from Iran.
Just hours after the joint statement on the SPV, US President Trump defended his unilateral
action against Iran in his
UNGA address . US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned the EU initiative ,
stating:
"This is one of the most counterproductive measures imaginable for regional global peace
and security."
To wit, the EU, Russia, and China have banded together in open defiance against unilateral
steps taken by the US. Moscow and Beijing are in talks on how to combine their efforts to fend
off the negative impacts of US trade tariffs and sanctions. A planned Sept 24-25 visit by
Chinese Vice-Premier Liu, who was coming to the United States for trade talks, was cancelled as
a result of the discord and President Trump added more fuel to the fire on Sept. 24 by imposing
10% tariffs on almost half of all goods the US imports from China. "We have far more bullets,"
the president
said before the Chinese official's planned visit. "We're going to go US$200 billion and 25
per cent Chinese made goods. And we will come back with more." The US has recently imposed
sanctions on China to punish it for the purchase of Russian S-400 air-defense systems and
combat planes. Beijing refused to back down. It is also adamant in its desire to continue
buying Iran's oil.
It is true, the plan to skirt the sanctions might fall short of expectations. It could fail
as US pressure mounts. A number of economic giants, including Total, Peugeot, Allianz, Renault,
Siemens, Daimler, Volvo, and Vitol Group have already left Iran as its economy plummets, with
the rial losing two-thirds of its value since the first American sanctions took effect in May.
The Iranian currency dropped to a record low against the US dollar this September.
What really matters is the fact that the leading nations of the EU have joined the global
heavyweights -- Russia and China -- in open defiance of the United States.
This is a milestone event.
It's hard to underestimate its importance. Certainly, it's too early to say that the UK and
other EU member states are doing a sharp pivot toward the countries that oppose the US
globally, but this is a start - a first step down that path. This would all have seemed
unimaginable just a couple of years ago - the West and the East in the same boat, trying to
stand up to the American bully!
Those are signs of political crisis, not the other way around
Notable quotes:
"... The historical parallel is American social and political polarization in the decades prior to the American Civil War. It is conceivable martial law and military power will resolve the conflict and contradictions not reconciled by rule of law and politics. ..."
I am concerned about dysfunction and incivility
in American culture and politics.
The historical parallel is American social and political polarization in the decades
prior to the American Civil War. It is conceivable martial law and military power will resolve
the conflict and contradictions not reconciled by rule of law and politics.
This topic was raised when Senator Lindsey Graham questioned Judge Brett Kavanaugh in the
confirmation hearings.
See YouTube video: Senator Lindsey Graham Questions Brett Kavanaugh Military Law vs Criminal Law.
"... Trump's nationalist fans are sick of the globalist wars that America never seems to win. They are hardly against war per se. They are perfectly fine with bombing radical Islamists, even if it means mass innocent casualties. But they have had enough of expending American blood and treasure to overthrow secular Arab dictators to the benefit of Islamists; so, it seemed, was Trump. They also saw no nationalist advantage in the globalists' renewed Cold War against Assad's ally Russian president Vladimir Putin, another enemy of Islamists. ..."
"... The Syrian pivot also seemed to fulfill the hopes and dreams of some antiwar libertarians who had pragmatically supported Trump. For them, acquiescing to the unwelcome planks of Trump's platform was a price worth paying for overthrowing the establishment policies of regime change in the Middle East and hostility toward nuclear Russia. While populism wasn't an unalloyed friend of liberty, these libertarians thought, at least it could be harnessed to sweep away the war-engineering elites. And since war is the health of the state, that could redirect history's momentum in favor of liberty. ..."
"... But then it all evaporated. Shortly after Bannon's ouster from the NSC, in response to an alleged, unverified chemical attack on civilians, Trump bombed one of Assad's airbases (something even globalist Obama had balked at doing when offered the exact same excuse), and regime change in Syria was top priority once again. The establishment media swooned over Trump's newfound willingness to be "presidential." ..."
"... Since then, Trump has reneged on one campaign promise after another. He dropped any principled repeal of Obamacare. He threw cold water on expectations for prompt fulfillment of his signature promise: the construction of a Mexico border wall. And he announced an imminent withdrawal from NAFTA, only to walk that announcement back the very next day. ..."
"... Poor white people, "the forgotten men and women of our country," have been forgotten once again. Their "tribune" seems to be turning out to be just another agent of the power elite. ..."
"... Who yanked his chain? Was there a palace coup? Was the CIA involved? Has Trump been threatened? ..."
"... Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy ..."
"... Even in a political system based on popular sovereignty, Michels pointed out that, "the sovereign masses are altogether incapable of undertaking the most necessary resolutions." This is true for simple, unavoidable technical reasons: "such a gigantic number of persons belonging to a unitary organization cannot do any practical work upon a system of direct discussion." ..."
"... " while Trump might be able to seize the presidency in spite of establishment opposition, he will never be able to wield it without establishment support." ..."
Did the Deep State deep-six Trump's populist revolution?
Many observers, especially among his fans, suspect that the seemingly untamable Trump has already been housebroken by the Washington,
"globalist" establishment. If true, the downfall of Trump's National Security Adviser Michael Flynn less than a month into the new
presidency may have been a warning sign. And the turning point would have been the removal of Steven K. Bannon from the National
Security Council on April 5.
Until then, the presidency's early policies had a recognizably populist-nationalist orientation. During his administration's first
weeks, Trump's biggest supporters frequently tweeted the hashtag #winning and exulted that he was decisively doing exactly what,
on the campaign trail, he said he would do.
In a flurry of executive orders and other unilateral actions bearing Bannon's fingerprints, Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, declared a sweeping travel ban, instituted harsher deportation policies, and more.
These policies seemed to fit Trump's reputation as the "
tribune of poor white people
," as he has been called; above all, Trump's base calls for protectionism and immigration restrictions. Trump seemed to be delivering
on the populist promise of his inauguration speech (thought to be written by Bannon), in which he said:
"Today's ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one administration
to another, or from one party to another – but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American
People.
For too long, a small group in our nation's Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.
Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories
closed.
The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories; their
triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation's capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling
families all across our land.
That all changes – starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.
It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America. This is your day. This is your celebration.
And this, the United States of America, is your country.
What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people. January
20th 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. The forgotten men and women of our country
will be forgotten no longer.
Everyone is listening to you now." [Emphasis added.]
After a populist insurgency stormed social media and the voting booths, American democracy, it seemed, had been wrenched from
the hands of the Washington elite and restored to "the people," or at least a large, discontented subset of "the people." And this
happened in spite of the establishment, the mainstream media, Hollywood, and "polite opinion" throwing everything it had at Trump.
The Betrayal
But for the past month, the administration's axis seems to have shifted. This shift was especially abrupt in Trump's Syria policy.
Days before Bannon's fall from grace, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley declared that forcing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad
from power was no longer top priority. This too was pursuant of Trump's populist promises.
Trump's nationalist fans are sick of the globalist wars that America never seems to win. They are hardly against war per se. They
are perfectly fine with bombing radical Islamists, even if it means mass innocent casualties. But they have had enough of expending
American blood and treasure to overthrow secular Arab dictators to the benefit of Islamists; so, it seemed, was Trump. They also
saw no nationalist advantage in the globalists' renewed Cold War against Assad's ally Russian president Vladimir Putin, another enemy
of Islamists.
The Syrian pivot also seemed to fulfill the hopes and dreams of some antiwar libertarians who had pragmatically supported Trump.
For them, acquiescing to the unwelcome planks of Trump's platform was a price worth paying for overthrowing the establishment policies
of regime change in the Middle East and hostility toward nuclear Russia. While populism wasn't an unalloyed friend of liberty, these
libertarians thought, at least it could be harnessed to sweep away the war-engineering elites. And since war is the health of the
state, that could redirect history's momentum in favor of liberty.
But then it all evaporated. Shortly after Bannon's ouster from the NSC, in response to an alleged, unverified chemical attack
on civilians, Trump bombed one of Assad's airbases (something even globalist Obama had balked at doing when offered the exact same
excuse), and regime change in Syria was top priority once again. The establishment media swooned over Trump's newfound willingness
to be "presidential."
Since then, Trump has reneged on one campaign promise after another. He dropped any principled repeal of Obamacare. He threw cold
water on expectations for prompt fulfillment of his signature promise: the construction of a Mexico border wall. And he announced
an imminent withdrawal from NAFTA, only to walk that announcement back the very next day.
Here I make no claim as to whether any of these policy reversals are good or bad. I only point out that they run counter to the
populist promises he had given to his core constituents.
Poor white people, "the forgotten men and women of our country," have been forgotten once again. Their "tribune" seems to be turning
out to be just another agent of the power elite.
Who yanked his chain? Was there a palace coup? Was the CIA involved? Has Trump been threatened? Or, after constant obstruction,
has he simply concluded that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em?
The Iron Law of Oligarchy
Regardless of how it came about, it seems clear that whatever prospect there was for a truly populist Trump presidency is gone
with the wind. Was it inevitable that this would happen, one way or another?
One person who might have thought so was German sociologist Robert Michels, who posited the "iron law of oligarchy" in his 1911
work Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy .
Michels argued that political organizations, no matter how democratically structured, rarely remain truly populist, but inexorably
succumb to oligarchic control.
Even in a political system based on popular sovereignty, Michels pointed out that, "the sovereign masses are altogether incapable
of undertaking the most necessary resolutions." This is true for simple, unavoidable technical reasons: "such a gigantic number of
persons belonging to a unitary organization cannot do any practical work upon a system of direct discussion."
This practical limitation necessitates delegation of decision-making to officeholders. These delegates may at first be considered
servants of the masses:
"All the offices are filled by election. The officials, executive organs of the general will, play a merely subordinate part,
are always dependent upon the collectivity, and can be deprived of their office at any moment. The mass of the party is omnipotent."
But these delegates will inevitably become specialists in the exercise and consolidation of power, which they gradually wrest
away from the "sovereign people":
"The technical specialization that inevitably results from all extensive organization renders necessary what is called expert
leadership. Consequently the power of determination comes to be considered one of the specific attributes of leadership, and is gradually
withdrawn from the masses to be concentrated in the hands of the leaders alone. Thus the leaders, who were at first no more than
the executive organs of the collective will, soon emancipate themselves from the mass and become independent of its control.
Organization implies the tendency to oligarchy. In every organization, whether it be a political party, a professional union,
or any other association of the kind, the aristocratic tendency manifests itself very clearly."
Trumped by the Deep State
Thus elected, populist "tribunes" like Trump are ultimately no match for entrenched technocrats nestled in permanent bureaucracy.
Especially invincible are technocrats who specialize in political force and intrigue, i.e., the National Security State (military,
NSA, CIA, FBI, etc.). And these elite functionaries don't serve "the people" or any large subpopulation. They only serve their own
careers, and by extension, big-money special interest groups that make it worth their while: especially big business and foreign
lobbies. The nexus of all these powers is what is known as the Deep State.
Trump's more sophisticated champions were aware of these dynamics, but held out hope nonetheless. They thought that Trump would
be an exception, because his large personal fortune would grant him immunity from elite influence. That factor did contribute to
the independent, untamable spirit of his campaign. But as I
predicted
during the Republican primaries:
" while Trump might be able to seize the presidency in spite of establishment opposition, he will never be able to wield it
without establishment support."
No matter how popular, rich, and bombastic, a populist president simply cannot rule without access to the levers of power. And
that access is under the unshakable control of the Deep State. If Trump wants to play president, he has to play ball.
On these grounds, I advised his fans over a year ago, " don't hold out hope that Trump will make good on his isolationist rhetoric
" and anticipated, "a complete rapprochement between the populist rebel and the Republican establishment." I also warned that, far
from truly threatening the establishment and the warfare state, Trump's populist insurgency would only invigorate them:
"Such phony establishment "deaths" at the hands of "grassroots" outsiders followed by "rebirths" (rebranding) are an excellent
way for moribund oligarchies to renew themselves without actually meaningfully changing. Each "populist" reincarnation of the power
elite is draped with a freshly-laundered mantle of popular legitimacy, bestowing on it greater license to do as it pleases. And nothing
pleases the State more than war."
Politics, even populist politics, is the oligarchy's game. And the house always wins.
Dan Sanchez is the Digital Content Manager at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), developing educational and inspiring
content for FEE.org , including articles and courses. The originally appeared on the
FEE website and is reprinted with the author's permission.
The Ragin' Cajun, I believe, coined the phrase "Nuts and Sluts" to succinctly describe the
tactic used by the elites I call The Davos Crowd to smear and destroy someone they've
targeted.
Brett Kavanaugh is the latest victim of this technique. But, there have been dozens of
victims I can list from Gary Hart in the 1980's to former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn to
Donald Trump.
"Nuts and Sluts" is easy to understand. Simply accuse the person you want to destroy of
being either crazy (the definition of which shifts with whatever is the political trigger issue
of the day) or a sexual deviant.
This technique works because it triggers most people's Disgust Circuit, a term created by
Mark Schaller as part of what he calls the Behavioral Immune System and popularized by
Johnathan Haidt.
The disgust circuit is easy to understand.
It is the limit at which behavior in others triggers our gut-level outrage and we recoil
with disgust.
The reason "Nuts and Sluts" works so well on conservative candidates and voters is because,
on average, conservatives have a much stronger disgust circuit than liberals and/or
libertarians.
This is why it always seems to be that anyone who threatens the global order or the
political system always turns out to have some horrible sexual deviance in their closet.
It's why the only thing any of us remember about the infamous Trump Dossier is the image of
Trump standing on a bed in a Moscow hotel room urinating on a hooker.
The technique is used to drive a wedge between Republican voters and lawmakers and make it
easy for them to go along with whatever stupidity is brought forth by the press and the
Democrats.
And don't think for a second that, more often than not, GOP leadership isn't in cahoots with
the DNC on these take-downs. Because they are.
But, here's the problem. As liberals and cultural Marxists break down the societal order, as
they win skirmish after skirmish in the Culture War, and desensitize us to normalize ever more
deviant behavior, the circumstances of a "Nuts and Sluts" accusation have to rise
accordingly.
It's behavioral heroin. And the more tolerance we build up to it the more likely people are
to see right through the lie.
It's why Gary Hart simply had to be accused of having an affair in the 1980's to scuttle his
presidential aspirations but today Trump has to piss on a hooker.
And it's why it was mild sexual harassment and a pubic hair on a Coke can for Clarence
Thomas, but today, for Brett Kavanaugh, it has to be a gang-rape straight out of an 80's frat
party in a Brett Eaton Ellis book -- whose books, by the way, are meant to be warnings not
blueprints.
Trump has weathered both the Nuts side of the technique and the Sluts side. And as he has
done so The Resistance has become more and more outraged that it's not working like it used
to.
This is why they have to pay people to be outraged by Kavanaugh's nomination. They can't
muster up a critical mass of outrage while Trump is winning on many fronts. Like it or not, the
economy has improved. It's still not good, but it's better and sentiment is higher.
So they have to pay people to protest Kavanaugh. And when that didn't work, then the fear of
his ascending to the Supreme Court and jeopardizing Roe v. Wade became acute, it doesn't
surprise me to see them pull out Christine Blasie Ford's story to guide them through to the
mid-term elections.
And that was a bridge too far for a lot of people.
The one who finally had enough of 'Nuts and Sluts' was, of all people, Lindsey Graham . Graham is one of
the most vile and venal people in D.C. He is a war-mongering neoconservative-enabling
praetorian of Imperial Washington's status quo.
But even he has a disgust circuit and Brett Kavanaugh's spirited defense of himself, shaming
Diane Feinstein in the process, was enough for Graham to finally redeem himself for one brief
moment.
When Lindsey Graham is the best defense we have against becoming a country ruled by men
rather than laws, our society hangs by a thread.
It was important for Graham to do this. It was a wake-up call to the 'moderate' GOP senators
wavering on Kavanaugh. Graham may be bucking for Senate Majority Leader or Attorney General,
but whatever. For four minutes his disgust was palpable.
The two men finally did what the 'Right' in this country have been screaming for for
years.
Fight back. Stop being reasonable. Stop playing it safe. Trump cannot do this by
himself.
Fight for what this country was supposed to stand for.
Because as Graham said, this is all about regaining power and they don't care what damage
they do to get it back.
The disgust circuit can kick in a number of different ways. And Thursday it kicked in to
finally call out what was actually happening on Capitol Hill. This was The Swamp in all its
glory.
And believe me millions were outraged by what they saw.
It will destroy what is left of the Democratic Party. I told you back in June that
Kanye West and Donald Trump had won the Battle of the Bulge in the Culture War. Graham and
Kavanuagh's honest and brutal outrage at the unfairness of this process was snuffing out of
that counter-attack.
The mid-terms will be a Red Tide with the bodies washing up on the shore the leadership of
the DNC and the carpet-baggers standing behind them with billions in money to buy fake
opposition.
The truth is easy to support. Lies cost money. The more outrageous the lie the more
expensive it gets to maintain it.
Because the majority of this country just became thoroughly disgusted with the Democrats.
And they will have no one to blame but themselves.
"... By dismissing Damore from his job, Google implicitly confirmed that all claims of an "echo chamber" and aggressive Leftist intolerance were precisely on point. Julian Assange has already tweeted: "Censorship is for losers, WikiLeaks is offering a job to fired Google engineer James Damore". ..."
"... However, the fact that gender roles historically developed based on biology but are, as a whole, a construct of society and culture does not give an excuse to changing or tearing them down, as clamored by Leftists. Quite the contrary: the social, cultural, and historical determinism of these roles gives us a reason to keep them in generally the same form without any coups or revolutions. ..."
"... What's happening now is not equal rights for women but the triumph of gender Bolshevism. ..."
"... Damore's error, therefore, consists in abandoning the domain of the social and the historical to the enemy while limiting the Conservative sphere of influence to the natural, biological domain. However, the single most valuable trait in conservative worldview is defending the achievements of history and not just biological determinism. ..."
"... I thought the adjective Google chose to use to describe its rejection of his suggestion that there may be some genuine, irreducible core of difference between sexes that is biological in nature. That adjective was "outmoded." Not inaccurate, or untrue, or invalid. Outmoded. ..."
"... Outmoded simply means unfashionable or out of date. It says nothing at all about accuracy or truth. IOW, Google fired him for saying something that is unfashionable. Unintentional truth ..."
"... Allow people to do what they are good at. If a woman is good at & enjoys STEM then give her a fair go -- but don't agitate & force women (or anyone) to do things they lack the enthusiasm for (while discriminating against those who actually may have ä genuine calling & talent". ..."
"... "It is the collapse of the family that made gender relations into such an enormous issue in the West: men and women are no longer joined in a nucleus of solidarity but pitted against one another as members of antagonistic classes." A lot of truth here: although what is cause & what is effect is a knotty issue. ..."
"... So called contemporary left has nothing in common with old Marxism/ Leninism. It is artificial led from the top movement to divide population to rule it and fleece more efficiently. In short, it is not left. ..."
"... Not quite. Cultural Marxists actually seem to reject biology as such, believing that everything is merely cultural. (And of course, just for good measure, they hate our culture, too.) As we all know, they definitely do not reject prejudice; on the contrary, they loudly endorse reverse-prejudice as a 'necessary corrective'. But the author doesn't live in the US, so he may not be aware of this. ..."
"... This is what Dugin (like Heidegger before him) is getting at: a working, enduring civilization requires more than mere "rationalist functionalization". It also requires a proper culture , which includes a worthwhile aesthetical and moral system. Maybe you might consider such a thought to be 'obscurantism', but it is very hard to imagine a whole civilization premised exclusively on means-reasoning and efficiency lasting very long or even being a civilization worth living in while it lasts. ..."
"... Martin Luther succeeded only because there was money to be made. Catholic Church had property and money. Princes of German states went after Church property. This is why and how Protestant Revolution succeeded. W/o the princes the Protestant Revolution would fizzled out and grass root movements would be squashed and destroyed like Thomas Muntzer peasant rebellion. We still have peasants. But we do not have princes who are not part of the Church. So do not raise your hopes. ..."
"... This contemporary Leftist strategy is pretty Lenin-like. It's not a top down strategy, it's vanguardist takeover. These corporations that promote leftism don't usually start off that way, they get taken over, and tech companies have proven extremely vulnerable to this. ..."
"... If men and women are in fact NOT different by nature, then what's the business advantage in hiring more women? What do they bring to the table that men do not? ..."
"... I wish people would stop using the ideologically loaded term "gender" instead of "sex." Conservatives should use traditional language if possible, especially when backed scientifically in this case by chromosomal evidence. Recall Solzhenitsyn's observations on the totalitarian control of language to further their agenda. ..."
In my opinion, Kholmogorov is simply the best modern Russian right-wing intellectual , period.
Unfortunately, he is almost entirely unknown in the English-speaking world; he does not angle for interviews with Western media
outlets like Prosvirnin, nor does he energetically pursue foreign contacts like Dugin. Over the years I have done my very small part
to remedy this situation, translating two of Kholmogorov's articles (
Europe's Week of Human Sacrifice ;
A Cruel French Lesson ). Still, there's
only so much one blogger with many other things to write about can do.
Happily, a multilingual Russian fan of Kholmogorov has stepped up to the plate: Fluctuarius Argenteus. Incidentally, he is a fascinating
fellow in his own right -- he is a well recognized expert in Spanish history and culture -- though his insistence on anonymity constrains
what I can reveal, at least beyond his wish to be the "Silver Surfer" to Kholmogorov's Galactus.
We hope to make translations of Kholmogorov's output consistently available on The Unz Review in the months to come.
In the meantime, I am privileged to present the first Fluctuarius-translated Kholmogorov article for your delectation.
***
A New Martin Luther?: James Damore's Case from a Russian Conservative Perspective
The last point proved to be the most vulnerable, as the author of the manifesto went on to formulate his ideas on male vs. female
differences that should be accepted as fact if Google is to improve its performance.
The differences argued by the author are as follows:
Women are more interested in people, men are more interested in objects. Women are prone to cooperation, men to competition. All
too often, women can't take the methods of competition considered natural among men. Women are looking for a balance between work
and private life, men are obsessed with status and sex.
Feminism played a major part in emancipating women from their gender roles, but men are still strongly tied to theirs. If the
society seeks to "feminize" men, this will only lead to them leaving STEM for "girly" occupations (which will weaken society in the
long run).
It was the think piece on the natural differences of men and women that provoked the greatest ire. The author was immediately
charged with propagating outdated sexist stereotypes, and the Google management commenced a search for the dissent, with a clear
purpose of giving him the sack. On 8th August, the heretic was revealed to be James Damore, a programmer. He was fired with immediate
effect because, as claimed by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, "portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing
harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace". Damore announced that he was considering a lawsuit.
We live in a post-Trump day and age, that is why the Western press is far from having a unanimous verdict on the Damore affair.
Some call him "a typical sexist", for others he is a "free speech martyr". By dismissing Damore from his job, Google implicitly
confirmed that all claims of an "echo chamber" and aggressive Leftist intolerance were precisely on point. Julian Assange has already
tweeted: "Censorship is for losers, WikiLeaks is offering a job to fired Google engineer James Damore".
It is highly plausible that the Damore Memo may play the same breakthrough part in discussing the politically correct insanity
as WikiLeaks and Snowden files did in discussing the dirty laundry of governments and secret services. If it comes to pass, Damore
will make history as a new Martin Luther challenging the Liberal "Popery".
However, his intellectual audacity notwithstanding, it should be noted that Damore's own views are vulnerable to Conservative
criticism. Unfortunately, like the bulk of Western thought, they fall into the trap of Leftist "cultural constructivism" and Conservative
naturalism.
Allegedly, there are only two possible viewpoints. Either gender and race differences are biologically preordained and therefore
unremovable and therefore should always be taken into account, or those differences are no more than social constructs and should
be destroyed for being arbitrary and unfair.
The ideological groundwork of the opposing viewpoints is immediately apparent. Both equate "biological" with "natural" and therefore
"true", and "social" with "artificial" and therefore "arbitrary" and "false". Both sides reject "prejudice" in favor of "vision",
but politically correct Leftists reject only a fraction of prejudices while the critic calls for throwing all of them away indiscriminately.
As a response, Damore gets slapped with an accusation of drawing upon misogynist prejudice for his own ideas. Likewise, his view
of Conservatives is quite superficial. The main Conservative trait is not putting effort into routine work but drawing upon tradition
for creative inspiration. The Conservative principle is "innovation through tradition".
The key common mistake of both Google Leftists and their critic is their vision of stereotypes as a negative distortion of some
natural truth. If both sides went for an in-depth reading of Edmund Burke, the "father of Conservatism", they would learn that the
prejudice is a colossal historical experience pressurized into a pre-logical form, a collective consciousness that acts when individual
reason fails or a scrupulous analysis is impossible. In such circumstances, following the prejudice is a more sound strategy than
contradicting it. Prejudice is shorthand for common sense. Sometimes it oversimplifies things, but still works most of the time.
And, most importantly, all attempts to act "in spite of the prejudice" almost invariably end in disaster.
Illustration to the Google scandal. A fox sits gazing at the Google's Ideological Echo Chamber exposing the ideas of the fired
engineer James Damore. Source: Screenshot of Instragram user bluehelix.
However, the modern era allows us to diagnose our own prejudice and rationalize them so we could control them better, as opposed
to blind obedience or rejection. Moreover, if the issue of "psychological training" ever becomes relevant in a country as conservative
as Russia is, that is the problem we should concentrate on: analyzing the roots of our prejudices and their efficient use.
The same could be argued for gender relations. Damore opposes the Leftist "class struggle of the genders" with a technocratic
model of maximizing the profit from each gender's pros and cons. This functionalism appears to be logical in its own way, but is
indeed based on too broad assumptions, claiming that all women are unfit for competition, that all of them like relationships and
housekeeping while all men are driven by objects and career. And, as Damore claims biological grounds for his assumptions, all our
options boil down to mostly agreeing with him or branding him as a horrible sexist and male chauvinist.
However, the fact that gender roles historically developed based on biology but are, as a whole, a construct of society and
culture does not give an excuse to changing or tearing them down, as clamored by Leftists. Quite the contrary: the social, cultural,
and historical determinism of these roles gives us a reason to keep them in generally the same form without any coups or revolutions.
First, that tradition is an ever-growing accumulation of experience. Rejecting tradition is tantamount to social default and requires
very good reasons to justify. Second, no change of tradition occurs as a result of a "gender revolution", only its parodic inversion.
Putting men into high heels, miniskirts, and bras, fighting against urinals in public WCs only reverses the polarity without creating
true equality. The public consciousness still sees the "male" as "superior", and demoting "masculinity" to "femininity" as a deliberate
degradation of the "superior". No good can come of it, just as no good came out of humiliating wealth and nobility during the Communist
revolution in Russia. What's happening now is not equal rights for women but the triumph of gender Bolshevism.
Damore's error, therefore, consists in abandoning the domain of the social and the historical to the enemy while limiting
the Conservative sphere of influence to the natural, biological domain. However, the single most valuable trait in conservative worldview
is defending the achievements of history and not just biological determinism.
The final goal of a Conservative solution to the gender problem should not be limited to a rationalist functionalization of society.
It should lead to discovering a social cohesion where adhering to traditional male and female ways and stereotypes (let's not call
them roles -- the world is not a stage, and men and women not merely players) would not keep males and females from expressing themselves
in other domains, provided they have a genuine calling and talent.
The art of war is not typical of a woman; however, women warriors such as Joan of Arc leave a much greater impact in historical
memory. The art of government is seen as mostly male, yet it makes great female rulers, marked not by functional usefulness but true
charisma, all the more memorable. The family is the stereotypical domain of the woman, which leads to greater reverence towards fathers
that put their heart and soul into their families.
Social cohesion, an integral part of it being the harmony of men and women in the temple of the family, is the ideal to be pursued
by our Russian, Orthodox, Conservative society. It is the collapse of the family that made gender relations into such an enormous
issue in the West: men and women are no longer joined in a nucleus of solidarity but pitted against one another as members of antagonistic
classes. And this struggle, as the Damore Memo has demonstrated, is already stymieing the business of Western corporations. Well,
given our current hostile relations, it's probably for the better.
Thanks for translations of Russian authors. Russian is a hard language to learn and its grammatical subtleties are often difficult
to convey in English.
I think that Martin Luther received a more respectful and impartial hearing at the Imperial Diet of Worms in 1521 than James
Damore got from Google.
Dream on it would take a Henry 8 Lenin and Trotsky type revolution to get rid of affirmative action.
If it ever happens, the first thing to do would be to put every judge and their families in some kind of detention center,
close down every state and federal courthouse and completely re write the constitution to give all power to the elected executive
and legislative branches.
Every woman and minority organization would have to be treated the way Henry treated the monasteries and Lenin and Trotsky
treated the Russian counterrevolution.
I'd say only White men with 4 grandparents born in the USA be allowed to vote, but the damage was done between 1964 to 1973 or
so by native born American White men.
The feminazis are just fronts for the cannibal capitalists who used them to destroy the private sector unions, lower wages
for everyone and create a docile work force eager to work 80 hours a week for 40 hours wages.
I'd love to be the commissar in charge of ending affirmative action and punishing those who created and enforce it.
He does know history well for a polemicist, certainly better than anyone else on AK's shortlist. Not surprisingly, he's also the
only monarchist among them. But that in itself marks him as detached observer, ineffectual intellectual to put it more harshly,
not part of a practical movement or party.
Egor certainly deserves much more publicity than he is getting right now. I wouldn`t agree on the other Egor being the most talented,
but he did his own important thing, creating a first real media platform for the Russian nationalism.
"but is indeed based on too broad assumptions, claiming that all women are unfit for competition, that all of them like
relationships and housekeeping while all men are driven by objects and career."
Damore doesn't say that – he explicitly says the opposite:
" I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological
causes and that these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of
these differences are small and there's significant overlap between men and women, so you can't say anything about an individual
given these population level distributions."
The author of this piece has made the same error as much of the Anglo MSM. Damore has been a victim of liberal arts people
not being able to understand that he is talking about population averages, not individuals.
"Damore opposes the Leftist "class struggle of the genders" with a technocratic model of maximizing the profit from each
gender's pros and cons. This functionalism appears to be logical in its own way, but is indeed based on too broad assumptions,
claiming that all women are unfit for competition, that all of them like relationships and housekeeping while all men are driven
by objects and career."
He said no such thing. He said that as a group more women than men fit these stereotypes, percentages undetermined.
I thought the adjective Google chose to use to describe its rejection of his suggestion that there may be some genuine,
irreducible core of difference between sexes that is biological in nature. That adjective was "outmoded." Not inaccurate, or untrue,
or invalid. Outmoded.
Outmoded simply means unfashionable or out of date. It says nothing at all about accuracy or truth. IOW, Google fired him
for saying something that is unfashionable. Unintentional truth.
A focused and methodical approach is at least arguably not the key to innovation. Quite the opposite.
Such an approach is, more or less by definition, working within the box. It can locate and exploit all possibilities of the
space inside the box.
But true innovation, the kind that changes companies, industries and the world, is often created by those who aren't really
aware a box exists. They envision a new box. Once that innovation has been made, then the focused and methodical approach can
expand on and implement it. Build the box.
Don't know whether it's accurate or not, but there's a stereotype that East Asians are great at exploiting and elaborating
on and implementing the inventions of other groups. This would make the EAs classic focused, methodical, inside the box types.
But for that same reason not likely to invent world changing ideas.
Had a very interesting experience at a new company 20-some years ago. The CEO had a big thing about psychological testing.
Ran me through three days of standardized tests scored by computer, which was state of the art at the time.
I just about broke the computer. I scored waay on the right on certain things (beliefs, values, etc.) and waay on the left
for being open to new ideas.
You see, the people who wrote the programs saw those two issues as the same thing. To over-simplify (some) the authors thought
the only possible reason why a man might reject the idea of cheating on his wife is that he's not open to new experiences. That
belief in traditional moral values must spring from the same spring as an unwillingness to try a new cuisine.
To my mind, this tells us a lot more about the people who write the programs than it does about those who take the tests.
"and, given that the proletariat vs. bourgeoisie struggle is now irrelevant "Only to those too blind to see.
"The final goal of a Conservative solution to the gender problem should not be limited to a rationalist functionalization
of society. It should lead to discovering a social cohesion where adhering to traditional male and female ways and stereotypes
would not keep males and females from expressing themselves in other domains, provided they have a genuine calling and talent."
Excellent point. Allow people to do what they are good at. If a woman is good at & enjoys STEM then give her a fair
go -- but don't agitate & force women (or anyone) to do things they lack the enthusiasm for (while discriminating against those
who actually may have ä genuine calling & talent".
"It is the collapse of the family that made gender relations into such an enormous issue in the West: men and women
are no longer joined in a nucleus of solidarity but pitted against one another as members of antagonistic classes." A lot of
truth here: although what is cause & what is effect is a knotty issue.
This type of diversity politics is stupidity to the Nth degree, offering up us white guys as sacrificial lambs for any and all
insults, crimes and sins of the last 400 years, real or not.
It's a shrewd trick by the ones in the USA who really control our nation and I don't mean Trump or Congress or the CIA.
It's that ethnic group that controls the FED, the US Treasury, those TBTF banks we get to bail out every 10 years or so, the
MSM, where they keep agitating for endless wars that do nothing for America, but do protect Apartheid Israel from a reality check.
They also control Hollywood, pumping out brain-numbing slop (mostly) filled with over-the-top violence, sex and nudity and most
of the music business, letting artists–mostly rap–sing indulgent songs about violence, sex, nudity and drugs.
They also have Congress begging to do anything for their Master, while we get told to PO when we ask for help.
And they control the two biggest Internet outlets, Google and FAKEBOOK, both of whom are into being self-appointed cops protecting
us feeble ones from allegedly fake stories, but actually shutting down stories that don't goose step to the glorious future they
envision, which doesn't contain us white guys.
After nearly 16 years of non-stop war, tens of thousands of dead American troops, hundreds of thousands horribly wounded, a
monstrous debt and a falling apart infrastructure with good paying jobs disappearing, Americans are rightly PO and want change,
but instead outfits like GOOGLE are directing that anger elsewhere and protecting the guilty.
"is highly plausible that the Damore Memo may play the same breakthrough part in discussing the politically correct insanity
as WikiLeaks and Snowden files did in discussing the dirty laundry of governments and secret services."
Yep, we can discuss it in what the Libs consider to be our own little conspiracy-theory echo chamber. Sometimes you have to
accept that there is evil and then decide what to do about it.
The last sentence is my own main sentiment regarding this affair. It's something of a pity, but if they want to make each other
more a little more miserable and poor, then fine by me.
The Martin Luther analogy is, in my mind, vastly overblown (Google is not the Church, this guy is not some radical rebel but
a very mild internal critic, his – honestly somewhat surprising – current level of notoriety is probably as far as he is going
to get), but I suppose you have to compare it to something BIG or you don't have an article.
Egor Kholmogorov is a very intersting new voice – – thanks – all – for your efforts.
(James Damore is no Martin Luther: Luther is the person in world history , that is written about the most. By putting
Damore in such oversized boots, no wonder Kholmogorov after a while finds, that his subject doesn't walk properly. What Damore
tries to do is not, to understand our times, or to reform modern society or some such: He simply takes a position in a debate
over role models – and a debate about a pretty Marxist question, if you think about it: Just how many of our character traits
have a material (=biological) basis. That task Damore solves clear and well, I think. But more, he doesn't, – – whereas Luther
for example (or Brenz from Schwäbisch Hall & Melanchthon from Bretten) really tried – and (mostly) achieved)).
So called contemporary left has nothing in common with old Marxism/ Leninism. It is artificial led from the top movement to
divide population to rule it and fleece more efficiently. In short, it is not left.
This is turning out to be the most incendiary firing since James Comey.
Damore's essay is an expression of his self-interest
in retaining male dominance in software engineering and his anger that his employer is making moves of artificial reverse-discrimination
in order to try and reverse the dominance. It is guised in intellectual terms but that's really all there is to it. His company's
management supports the attempt to shift power from men to women – and are worried Damore or the likes of him will succeed in
organizing a male rebellion – which would bring the company down because of its dependence on the male workforce. That's why they
panicked and fired him. And to top it off, Google is run by a foreign feminized beta male – which – being a member of a minority
– is unable himself to take on The Powers That Be in America. Because a being a Hindu he's presupposed to need reeducation himself
to fit in American society.
Good article, Anatoly. Thanks for the translation.
The ideological groundwork of the opposing viewpoints is immediately apparent. Both equate "biological" with "natural" and
therefore "true", and "social" with "artificial" and therefore "arbitrary" and "false". Both sides reject "prejudice" in favor
of "vision", but politically correct Leftists reject only a fraction of prejudices while the critic calls for throwing all
of them away indiscriminately.
Not quite. Cultural Marxists actually seem to reject biology as such, believing that everything is merely cultural. (And
of course, just for good measure, they hate our culture, too.) As we all know, they definitely do not reject prejudice;
on the contrary, they loudly endorse reverse-prejudice as a 'necessary corrective'. But the author doesn't live in the US, so
he may not be aware of this.
Prejudice is shorthand for common sense. Sometimes it oversimplifies things, but still works most of the time. And, most
importantly, all attempts to act "in spite of the prejudice" almost invariably end in disaster.
Prejudice is simply the layman's empiricism -- i.e., learning from experience. When you don't know the individual in question,
you are always going to fall back on assumptions based on known patterns. That's why prejudice is impossible to get rid of: you
would have to get rid of human nature.
This functionalism appears to be logical in its own way, but is indeed based on too broad assumptions, claiming that all
women are unfit for competition, that all of them like relationships and housekeeping while all men are driven by objects and
career.
I agree with commenter #10 above that this is not a fair characterization of Damore's argument. Damore spoke of statistical
averages. He never said "all men" or "all women".
However, the single most valuable trait in conservative worldview is defending the achievements of history and not just
biological determinism The final goal of a Conservative solution to the gender problem should not be limited to a rationalist
functionalization of society.
So true, and I wonder how you reacted to reading that, Anatoly. This is what Dugin (like Heidegger before him) is getting
at: a working, enduring civilization requires more than mere "rationalist functionalization". It also requires a proper culture
, which includes a worthwhile aesthetical and moral system. Maybe you might consider such a thought to be 'obscurantism', but
it is very hard to imagine a whole civilization premised exclusively on means-reasoning and efficiency lasting very long or even
being a civilization worth living in while it lasts.
"Instead of churning out new ground-breaking products, opines the critic, Google wastes too much effort on fanning the flames
of class struggle."
In the long run, this is good. Natural selection will ensure that in a few decades Google and many other big Western corporations
who follow these lines will fail due to incompetence of their managers and employees, and more pragmatic ones will appear and
replace them, usually from more traditional and rational societies in Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Russia) and East
Asia (China, South Korea, Singapur).
Martin Luther succeeded only because there was money to be made. Catholic Church had property and money. Princes of German
states went after Church property. This is why and how Protestant Revolution succeeded. W/o the princes the Protestant Revolution
would fizzled out and grass root movements would be squashed and destroyed like Thomas Muntzer peasant rebellion. We still have
peasants. But we do not have princes who are not part of the Church. So do not raise your hopes.
We know a lot about Martin
Luther private life but we know less about James Damore. Is there also the issue of getting laid?
Kholmogorov: " First, that tradition is an ever-growing accumulation of experience. Rejecting tradition is tantamount to social
default and requires very good reasons to justify. "
I'm born and raised in late 20th century South-Eastern Europe and haven't seen a single thing that fits this description. Things
called traditions in my part of the world are exactly at odds with ever-growing accumulation of experience.
If Russia is preserves such traditions, I can only say it's a society such as I have never seen and have trouble even imagining.
Kholmogorov: " [T]he prejudice is a colossal historical experience pressurized into a pre-logical form, a collective consciousness
that acts when individual reason fails or a scrupulous analysis is impossible. In such circumstances, following the prejudice
is a more sound strategy than contradicting it. Prejudice is shorthand for common sense. Sometimes it oversimplifies things, but
still works most of the time. And, most importantly, all attempts to act "in spite of the prejudice" almost invariably end in
disaster "
Following traditional prejudices was the choice of Nazi Germany toward Slavs.
The SJW's (Maoists) have been taught to hate everything white and/or male including the entire history of white culture. Damore's
supposed conservatism is not the issue. He was punished for bringing it out of the closet. White men who will not bend their knee
to Maoists are being hunted in Maoist controlled environs. This article is well reasoned. But there is no reasoning with zombies.
Even if they are former friends or family. White men have the same options as soldiers in the field. Fight, flee or fortify. Or
surrender. Avert your eyes and shuffle to the back of the bus.
So called contemporary left has nothing in common with old Marxism/ Leninism. It is artificial led from the top movement
to divide population to rule it and fleece more efficiently
So in your world Bolsheviks didn't divide the population and loot the country?
This contemporary Leftist strategy is pretty Lenin-like. It's not a top down strategy, it's vanguardist takeover. These
corporations that promote leftism don't usually start off that way, they get taken over, and tech companies have proven extremely
vulnerable to this.
Once a company hits some success and starts growing beyond the start-up of tech geeks they hire lawyers, PR, marketers and
leftism gets its foot in the door. Once the old techie core cedes hiring and firing to some human resources department the company
starts hiring more leftists and minority puppets. The techies that brought the initial success are likely to be politically inept
and uninterested individualist personality types and eventually some clique of leftists realizes that the old guard of the company
is a bunch of pushovers when faced with a tight-knit group of political plotters.
They may realize that profits die in the process of converting a successful company to the leftist agenda but it doesn't matter
to them – they might even see it as a benefit, after all, the original success of the company was likely due to white men with
insufficiently progressive views so they get to both destroy something their enemies created and use the accumulated resources
for their agenda.
Once upon a time socialists dreamed that the proletariat would spontaneously rise up to break its chains and overthrow the
capitalists, then they got bored of waiting for that and invented the radical vanguard to lead the proletariat into the revolution
and then eventually they realized that the proletariat is superfluous and they just need the vanguard.
The English title was suggested by the author himself, likewise, he didn't object to my removal of the Sharikov allusion in
the text proper. Our joint opinion is that it would have been lost on 99% of readers and taken unnecessary effort to explain in
a footnote.
What is often forgotten is that whenever the term "intellectual" is used it must be the measure of correctness (supported by
empirical evidence, both prior and after) not just the measure of the knowledge (historic, economic, military, scientific etc.)
base one operates in order to sound "intellectual" and "sophisticated". This principle is long gone from Western "humanities"
field and it goes both ways: for so called progressives and so called "conservatives". I liked you using the term polemicist.
Once upon a time socialists dreamed that the proletariat would spontaneously rise up to break its chains and overthrow the
capitalists, then they got bored of waiting for that and invented the radical vanguard to lead the proletariat into the revolution
and then eventually they realized that the proletariat is superfluous and they just need the vanguard.
Ooookey Dookey! And how about other two fundamental signs of impending revolution? I agree with vanguard argument, after all
school in Longjumeau was doing just that–preparing the vanguard. But what about economics of revolution? What about political
crisis?
If men and women are in fact NOT different by nature, then what's the business advantage in hiring more women? What do they
bring to the table that men do not?
This same observation applies to all "diversity" hiring. If one denies the differences
among groups, there can be no business justification for diversity – aside, that is, from Lefty boycotts.
Very good, although I wish people would stop using the ideologically loaded term "gender" instead of "sex." Conservatives
should use traditional language if possible, especially when backed scientifically in this case by chromosomal evidence. Recall
Solzhenitsyn's observations on the totalitarian control of language to further their agenda.
So called contemporary left has nothing in common with old Marxism/ Leninism. It is artificial led from the top movement
to divide population to rule it and fleece more efficiently. In short, it is not left.
Damore's supposed conservatism is not the issue. He was punished for bringing it out of the closet.
Damore doesn't seem too conservative to me. If he were a conservative, he would be arguing against Google's policies on the
basis of cultural tradition. No, Damore is simply a scientist arguing on the basis of science. Nothing wrong with that, but it
isn't conservatism.
Update 2:35 p.m. GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has joined Jeff Flake (R-AZ) in
supporting a delay of the full floor vote on Kavanaugh until an FBI can investigate accusations
against him. This would require a request from the White House, however it could be done within
a week according to Bloomberg .
While walking into Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of
Alaska, a key vote, said "yes," when asked if she supports Sen. Jeff Flake's proposal for a
delay.
CNN asked: And do you think it should be limited to Ford's accusations or should it
include an investigation into other allegations?
Murkowski responded: " I support the FBI having an opportunity to bring some closure to
this ." - CNN
President Trump says he'll "let the Senate handle" whether or not the vote is delayed.
Trump also said that testimony from both Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford
was "very compelling."
Feinstein reportedly cornered Murkowski on Thursday for an intense conversation, and today
Murkowski supports a delay.
... ... ...
Ford claimed that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her while at a high school party, while
Kavanaugh responded with a vehement and categorical denial in an emotional statement.
Senate Republicans are seeking to push Kavanugh through to confirmation on Friday, while the
Democrats stood by Ford and are insisting that the confirmation be stopped or delayed until a
"full investigation" can be conducted.
Friday morning, Politico reported that the Senate panel had been advised by Rachel Mitchell,
the attorney who represented the GOP members, that as a prosecutor "she would not charge
Kavanaugh or even pursue a search warrant."
"Rachel Mitchell, a lawyer who was retained by the Senate GOP to question Ford, broke down
her analysis of the testimony to Republicans, but did not advise them how to vote. She told
them that as a prosecutor she would not charge Kavanaugh or even pursue a search warrant,
according to a person briefed on the meeting." -
Politico
Last night, Townhall
reported that Kavanaugh has the votes to make it out of committee and will be confirmed on the
floor for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a Senate insider.
Sens. Flake (R-AZ), Collins (R-ME), Murkowski (R-AK), and Manchin (D-WV) are expected to
vote in favor of Kavanaugh. All the Republicans are voting yes. Also, in the rumor mill,
several Democrats may break ranks and back Kavanaugh. That's the ball game, folks. -
Townhall
Speaking with reporters, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders says he thinks "all of
America" thought Ford's testimony was compelling, while President Trump tweeted on Thursday
night: " Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him. His testimony was
powerful, honest, and riveting."
White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, meanwhile, told CBS This Morning said that Kavanaugh
will call "balls and strikes" fairly, as he has done for more than a decade. She noted that
Ford's testimony was "very compelling and very sympathetic," and that Ford "was wronged by
somebody," but that it wasn't Kavanaugh.
" It seems that she absolutely was wronged by somebody it may turn out that they're both
right," she said. "That she was sexually assaulted but that he had nothing to do with it."
There's a lot to unpack in the national psychodrama that played out in the senate judiciary
committee yesterday with Ford v. Kavanaugh. Dr. Ford laid out what The New York Times is
calling the "appalling trauma" of her alleged treatment at the hands of Brett Kavanaugh 36
years ago. And Mr. Kavanaugh denied it in tears of rage.
Dr. Ford scored points for showing up and playing her assigned role. She didn't add any
validating evidence to her story, but she appeared sincere. Judge Kavanaugh seemed to express a
weepy astonishment that the charge was ever laid on him, but unlike other questionably-charged
men in the grim history of the #Metoo campaign he strayed from his assigned role of the
groveling apologist offering his neck to the executioner, an unforgivable effrontery to his
accusers.
The committee majority's choice to sub out the questioning to "sex crime prosecutor" Rachel
Mitchell was a pitiful bust, shining a dim forensic light on the matter where hot halogen fog
lamps might have cut through the emotional murk. But in today's social climate of sexual
hysteria, the "old white men" on the dais dared not engage with the fragile-looking Dr. Ford,
lest her head blow up in the witness chair and splatter them with the guilt-of-the-ages. But
Ms. Mitchell hardly illuminated Dr. Ford's disposition as a teenager -- like, what seemed to be
her 15-year-old's rush into an adult world of drinking and consort with older boys -- or some
big holes in her coming-forward decades later.
For instance, a detail in the original tale, the "locked door." It's a big deal when the two
boys shoved her into the upstairs room, but she escaped the room easily when, as alleged, Mark
Judge jumped on the bed bumping Mr. Kavanaugh off of her. It certainly sounds melodramatic to
say "they locked the door," but it didn't really mean anything in the event.
Ms. Mitchell also never got to the question of Dr. Ford's whereabouts in the late summer,
when the judiciary committee was led to believe by her handlers that she was in California,
though she was actually near Washington DC at her parent's beach house in Delaware, and Mr.
Grassley, the committee chair, could have easily dispatched investigators to meet with her
there. Instead, the Democrats on the committee put out a cockamamie story about her fear of
flying all the way from California - yet Ms. Mitchell established that Mrs. Ford routinely flew
long distances, to Bali, for instance, on her surfing trips around the world.
Overall, it was impossible to believe that Dr. Ford had not experienced something with
somebody -- or else why submit to such a grotesque public spectacle -- but the matter remains
utterly unproved and probably unprovable. Please forgive me for saying I'm also not persuaded
that the incident as described by Dr. Ford was such an "appalling trauma" as alleged. If the
"party" actually happened, then one would have to assume that 15-year-old Chrissie Blasey, as
she was known then, went there of her own volition looking for some kind of fun and excitement.
She found more than she bargained for when a boy sprawled on top of her and tried to grope her
breasts, grinding his hips against hers, working to un-clothe her, with his pal watching and
guffawing on the sidelines -- not exactly a suave approach, but a life-changing trauma? Sorry,
it sounds conveniently hyperbolic to me.
I suspect there is much more psychodrama in the life of Christine Blasey Ford than we know
of at this time. She wasn't raped and her story stops short of alleging an attempt at rape,
whoever was on top of her, though it is apparently now established in the public mind (and the
mainstream media) that it was a rape attempt. But according to #Metoo logic, every unhappy
sexual incident is an "appalling trauma" that must be avenged by destroying careers and
reputations.
The issues in the bigger picture concern a Democratic Party driven by immense bad faith to
any means that justify the defeat of this Supreme Court nominee for reasons that everyone over
nine-years-old understands : the fear that a majority conservative court will overturn Roe v.
Wade - despite Judge Kavanaugh's statement many times that it is "settled law."
What one senses beyond that, though, is the malign spirit of the party's last candidate for
president in the 2016 election and a desperate crusade to continue litigating that outcome
until the magic moment when a "blue tide" of midterm election victories seals the ultimate
victory over the detested alien in the White House.
"I'm going to rely on all of the people including Senator Grassley who's doing a very good
job," added Trump.
During meeting with the president of Chile, President Trump says he found Dr. Christine
Blasey Ford's testimony "very compelling." https:// cbsn.ws/2Oj63Rs
Meanwhile, CNBC reports that an attorney for Mark Judge, Kavanaugh's high school friend said
to have been in the room during an alleged groping incident, says that Judge "will answer any
and all questions posed to him" by the FBI.
"If the FBI or any law enforcement agency requests Mr. Judge's cooperation, he will answer
any and all questions posed to him," Judge's lawyer Barbara Van Gelder told CNBC in an email.
-
CNBC
Accuser Christin Blasey Ford says that both Judge and Kavanaugh were extremely drunk at a
1982 party that she has scant memories of, when Kavanaugh grinded his body against hers on a
bed and attempted to take her clothes off. She testified that it was only after Judge jumped on
the bed that the attack stopped.
Of note, four individuals named by Ford have all denied any memory of the party - including
Ford's "lifelong" friend, Leland Ingham Keyser, who says she has never been at a party where
Kavanaugh was in attendance.
American Dissident , 7 minutes ago
The same FBI that couldn't get to the bottom of the Las Vegas mass shooting in a year is
going to uncover new information about a 1982 high school party in a week - Right.
didthatreallyhappen , 13 minutes ago
the democrats are moving the goal posts to infinity. that was their plan all along. This
will never stop. Due process in this country is OVER, DONE, GOOD BYE
The hearing about potential Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh is still going on, but the
hearings have clearly missed 90% of key material facts that as always - as we have explained in
our books Splitting Pennies and
Splitting Bits , the world is not as it
seems; and certainly, not ever - as seen on TV. The peculiar thing about this particular
political circus is that the GOP is allowing this to happen, as if there's nothing they can do
to allow the left to manipulate the masses before the elections coming up, all we need after a
victimized woman by an old, respectable white man is another school shooting, this time with a
white rich kid holding the gun at a minority school. Having said that, if you do have children
at public schools, it might be worth considering home schooling or private school at least
until the swamp is drained, if it ever will be (or consider a remote rural public school where
staging such events is less likely). As these deep-state nut jobs will stop at nothing to
acheive their ends, which seem simple but evil: vindicate the Soros - Clinton Mafia (which is a
multi-family 'faction 2' power center that goes well beyond Bill & Hillary) and in the
process destroy Trump and everything connected to it.
Why wasn't this 'accuser' vetted, as one would be in a court case? This is after all the
'judiciary committee' we know the answer to that, this is political theater of the worst kind.
However if this were a court case, and the complaining witness were to undergo
cross-examination and deposition, they should ask the following questions:
What is Dr. Ford's relationship with the CIA, and with her father?
The importance of noting the CIA banking connections of Ralph G. Blasey Jr. , this
report explains, is due to the outbreak of what is now known as the " CIA
Bank War " -- and whose start of, in 1982, a CIA seized from publication news report
( Declassified
in Part-Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/05: CIA-RDP90-00965R00150010-7 )
describes as: " This is Wall Street, the center of the international banking system, a
system on the edge of a crisis so severe that the Central Intelligence Agency is
preparing drastic measures. Something must be done to avert the breakdown of the Free
World's monetary system. "
Who paid for her lawyer, lie detector test, and other items related to her
testimony?
Was she offered a book deal?
What is Dr. Ford's association with the Soros foundation, directly or indirectly?
What is the association with Frederick_T._Melges and specifically,
did they collaborate on work involving mind control, memory, and time while at Stanford, or a
CIA think tank, or any other time?
What is the explanation that no other witness can testify to verify the statements of
what happened that night, combined with the lack of other physical evidence, and even
evidence to the contrary? (Such as Brett Kavanaugh's diary/journal he kept)
What are the political associations of Dr. Ford, specifically are there direct
connections to the Democratic party and Hillary Clinton, including but not limited to
when Clinton
was the Secretary of State ? (For those of you who don't know, the State Department is
the political cover for CIA operations globally.)
This staged, orchestrated, and artificial testimony is no doubt the creation of deep-state
actors connected to Soros/Clinton/CIA et. al. The GOP doesn't want to mention MKUltra in a
public hearing as this would take things in an entirely different direction. If this was a
court, it is highly doubtful that a jury would convict Kavanaugh based on he said she said with
no evidence for the complaining witness but an overwhelming amount of evidence for the defense.
Not only the hundreds of character letters of support, the diaries/journals, and all the work
Dr. Ford has done over the years on mind control as a qualified and practicing Dr. of
Psychology (Edited 10:00 am 9/28/2018, it was misreported "Psychiatry" Dr.
Ford works as a practicing psychologist in Stanford's department of Psychiatry ); but the
fact that Kavanaugh has actually worked for the Federal Government and the White House
specifically on a number of occasions and has gone through a Congressional confirmation many
times - why now? Something is fishy here, just as it was proven that several of the 'victims'
of Trump were actually paid actors, the mere accusation is enough to cast doubt on the whole
topic. And this accusation isn't from a poor helpless child, it is from a Dr. of Psychiatry
that has authored more than 50 papers on the topics of behavioral science, including topics of
great interest to the CIA such as:
Ford has written about the cognitive affect of the
September 11 terrorist attacks, too. She and her co-authors wrote, "[Our] findings
suggest that there may be a range of traumatic experience most conducive to growth and they
also highlight the important contributions of cognitive and coping variables to psychological
thriving in short- and longer-term periods following traumatic experience."
Finally, why is the GOP so defenseless as to allow such a show to occur, which will do much
greater damage to the mind of the Sheeple than it will to actually affect the appointing of
Judge Kavanaugh or not. Whether he is appointed or not, the damage to the minds of the masses
is done - this further polarizes an already polarized country divided between the 'sane' and
the 'insane.'
Article update 9/28/2018 - We have updated the article to reflect change in name, we wrote
'Psychiatry' which should have been 'Psychology' this was a mis-read on our end, in a rush to
publish quickly. Mistakes happen in quick sloppy journalism which operates under real-time
market conditions like trading. However, we do not believe it significantly impacts the
argument here, however, if we are to publish an article about misrepresented facts we better
have all of our facts right! Other elaboration will come in another article, to be composed
over the weekend. Stay tuned. www.globalintelhub.com
The breakout in Brent crude prices above $80 this week has prompted analysts at the sell
side banks to start talking about a return to $100 a
barrel oil . Even President Trump has gotten involved, demanding that OPEC ramp up
production to send oil prices lower before they start to weigh on US consumer spending, which
has helped fuel the economic boom over which Trump has presided, and for which he has been
eager to take credit.
But to hear respected petroleum geologist and oil analyst Art Berman tell it, Trump should
relax. That's because supply fundamentals in the US market suggest that the recent breakout in
prices will be largely ephemeral, and that crude supplies will soon move back into a
surplus.
Indeed, a close anaysis of supply trends suggests that the secular deflationary trend in oil
prices remains very much intact. And in an interview with MacroVoices , Berman laid out his argument using a handy
chart deck to illustrate his findings (some of these charts are excerpted below).
As the bedrock for his argument, Berman uses a metric that he calls comparative petroleum
inventories. Instead of just looking at EIA inventory data, Berman adjusts these figures by
comparing them to the five year average for any given week. This smooths out purely seasonal
changes.
And as he shows in the following chart, changes in comparative inventory levels have
precipitated most of the shifts in oil prices since the early 1990s, Berman explains. As the
charts below illustrate, once reported inventories for US crude oil and refined petroleum
products crosses into a deficit relative to comparative inventories, the price of WTI climbs;
when they cross into a surplus, WTI falls.
Looking back to March of this year, when the rally in WTI started to accelerate, we can on
the left-hand chart above how inventories crossed below their historical average, which Berman
claims prompted the most recent run up in prices.
Comparative inventories typically correlate negatively to the price of WTI. But
occasionally, perceptions of supply security may prompt producers to either ramp up - or cut
back - production. One example of this preceded the ramp of prices that started in 2010 when
markets drove prices higher despite supplies being above their historical average. The ramp
continued, even as supplies increased, largely due to fears about stagnant global growth in the
early recovery period following the financial crisis.
The most rally that started around July 2017 correlated with a period of flat production
between early 2016 and early 2018.
Meanwhile, speculators have been unwinding their long positions. Between mid-June 2017 and
January 2018, net long positions increased +615 mmb for WTI crude + products, and +776 for WTI
and Brent combined. Since then, combined Brent and WTI net longs have fallen -335 mmb, while
WTI crude + refined product net long positions have fallen -225 mmb since January 2018 and -104
mmb since the week ending July 10. This shows that, despite high frequency price fluctuation,
the overall trend in positioning is down.
And as longs have been unwinding, data show that the US export party has been slowing, as
distillate exports, which have been the cash cow driving US refined product exports, have
declined. Though they remain strong relative to the 5-year average, they have fallen relative
to last year. This has accompanied refinery expansions in Mexico and Brazil.
Meanwhile, distillate and gasoline inventories have been building.
Meanwhile, US exports of crude have remained below the 2018 average in recent weeks, even as
prices have continued to climb.
This could reflect supply fears in the global markets. The blowout in WTI-Brent spreads
would seem to confirm this. However, foreign refineries recognize that there are limitations
when it comes to processing US crude (hence the slumping demand for exports).
In recent weeks, markets have been sensitive to supply concerns thanks to falling production
in Venezuela and worries about what will happen with Iranian crude exports after US sanctions
kick in in November.
But supply forecasts for the US are telling a different story than supply forecasts for
OPEC. In the US, markets will likely remain in equilibrium for the rest of the year, until a
state of oversupply returns in 2019. But OPEC production will likely continue to constrict,
returning to a deficit in 2019.
Bottom line: According to Berman, the trend of secular deflation in oil prices remains very
much intact. While Berman expects prices to remain rangebound for the duration of 2018 - at
least in the US - it's likely markets will turn to a supply surplus next year, sending prices
lower once again.
"... Luckily there are still groups of our species that don't live totally controlled by the Western way and the cancer it represents to humanity. They on the outside and "us" on the inside are trying our hardest to shine lights on all the moving parts in hopes that humanity can throw off the shackles of ignorance about private/public finance. ..."
Which is the cohort of voters who allegedly are leaning toward voting Republican in the
mid-terms but who allegedly would refrain if Trump accepted Rosenstein's resignation? And
which is the cohort not already motivated to turn out to vote Democrat but who allegedly
would be motivated by a Rosenstein resignation? Is there real data on these?
I think if I had been a 2016 Trump voter I'd be feeling pretty disappointed about how he's
unable to enforce the most basic discipline and loyalty even among his closest administration
members, and this Rosenstein episode would be yet another egregious example.
If the Republicans do lose either/both houses, the main reason will be that for once
they've taken on the normal Democrat role of being confused and feckless about what they want
to do (they can't bring themselves to whole-heartedly get behind Trump; but a major
Republican strength has been how they normally do pull together an present a united front).
And Trump himself, in his inability to control his own immediate administration, also gives
an example of this fecklessness.
@ Circe who is writing that any who like any of what Trump is doing must be Zionists.
Get a grip. I didn't vote for Trump but favored him over Clinton II, the war criminal.
Trump represents more clearly the face of the ugly beast of debauched patriarchy, lying,
misogyny, bullying and monotheistic "everybody else is goyim" values. Trump very clearly
represents the folks behind the curtain of the Western private finance led "culture". He and
they are both poor representations of our species who are in power because of heredity and
controlled ignorance over the private finance jackboot on the lifeblood of the species.
Luckily there are still groups of our species that don't live totally controlled by
the Western way and the cancer it represents to humanity. They on the outside and "us" on the
inside are trying our hardest to shine lights on all the moving parts in hopes that humanity
can throw off the shackles of ignorance about private/public finance.
I am taking a beginning astronomy class and just learned that it took the monotheistic
religions 600 years to accept the science of Galileo Galilei. We could stand to evolve a bit
faster as we are about to have our proverbial asses handed to us in the form of extinction,
IMO.
"... But strangely most of us are much readier to concede the corrupting influence of the relatively small power of individuals than we are the rottenness of vastly more powerful institutions and structures. We blame the school teacher or the politician for abusing his or her power, while showing a reluctance to do the same about either the education or political systems in which they have to operate. ..."
"... It is relatively easy to understand that your line manager is abusing his power, because he has so little of it. His power is visible to you because it relates only to you and the small group of people around you ..."
"... It is a little harder, but not too difficult, to identify the abusive policies of your firm – the low pay, cuts in overtime, attacks on union representation ..."
"... It is more difficult to see the corrupt power of large institutions, aside occasionally from the corruption of senior figures within those institutions, such as a Robert Maxwell or a Richard Nixon ..."
"... But it is all but impossible to appreciate the corrupt nature of the entire system. And the reason is right there in those aphorisms: absolute power depends on absolute control over knowledge, which in turn necessitates absolute corruption. If that were not the case, we wouldn't be dealing with serious power – as should be obvious, if we pause to think about it ..."
"... The current neoliberal elite who effectively rule the planet have reached as close to absolute power as any elite in human history. And because they have near-absolute power, they have a near-absolute control of the official narratives about our societies and our "enemies", those who stand in their way to global domination ..."
"... What is clear, however, is that the British intelligence services have been feeding the British corporate media a self-serving, drip-drip narrative from the outset – and that the media have shown precisely no interest at any point in testing any part of this narrative or even questioning it. They have been entirely passive, which means that we their readers have been entirely passive too ..."
"... Journalists typically have a passive relationship to power, in stark contrast to their image as tenacious watchdog. But more fundamental than control over narrative is the ideology that guides these narratives. Ideology ensures the power-system is invisible not only to us, those who are abused and exploited by it, but also to those who benefit from it. ..."
"... It is precisely because power resides in structures and ideology, rather than individuals, that it is so hard to see. And the power-structures themselves are made yet more difficult to identify because the narratives created about our societies are designed to conceal those structures and ideology – where real power resides – by focusing instead on individuals ..."
"... Before neoliberalism there were other systems of rule. There was, for example, feudalism that appropriated a communal resource – land – exclusively for an aristocracy. It exploited the masses by forcing them to toil on the land for a pittance to generate the wealth that supported castles, a clergy, manor houses, art collections and armies. For several centuries the power of this tiny elite went largely unquestioned ..."
"... Neoliberalism, late-stage capitalism, plutocratic rule by corporations – whatever you wish to call it – has allowed a tiny elite to stash away more wealth and accrue more power than any feudal monarch could ever have dreamt of. And because of the global reach of this elite, its corruption is more endemic, more complete, more destructive than any ever known to mankind ..."
"... A foreign policy elite can destroy the world several times over with nuclear weapons. A globalised corporate elite is filling the oceans with the debris from our consumption, and chopping down the forest-lungs of our planet for palm-oil plantations so we can satisfy our craving for biscuits and cake. And our media and intelligence services are jointly crafting a narrative of bogeymen and James Bond villains – both in Hollywood movies, and in our news programmes – to make us fearful and pliable ..."
"... The system – whether feudalism, capitalism, neoliberalism – emerges out of the real-world circumstances of those seeking power most ruthlessly. In a time when the key resource was land, a class emerged justifying why it should have exclusive rights to control that land and the labour needed to make it productive. When industrial processes developed, a class emerged demanding that it had proprietary rights to those processes and to the labour needed to make them productive. ..."
"... In these situations, we need to draw on something like Darwin's evolutionary "survival of the fittest" principle. Those few who are most hungry for power, those with least empathy, will rise to the top of the pyramid, finding themselves best-placed to exploit the people below. They will rationalise this exploitation as a divine right, or as evidence of their inherently superior skills, or as proof of the efficiency of the market. ..."
"... And below them, like the layers of ball bearings, will be those who can help them maintain and expand their power: those who have the skills, education and socialisation to increase profits and sell brands. ..."
"... None of this should surprise us either. Because power – not just the people in the system, but the system itself – will use whatever tools it has to protect itself. It is easier to deride critics as unhinged, especially when you control the media, the politicians and the education system, than it is to provide a counter-argument. ..."
"... so neoliberalism is driven not by ethics but the pursuit of power and wealth through the control of the planet. ..."
"... The only truth we can know is that the western power-elite is determined to finish the task of making its power fully global, expanding it from near-absolute to absolute. It cares nothing for you or your grand-children. It is a cold-calculating system, not a friend or neighbour. It lives for the instant gratification of wealth accumulation, not concern about the planet's fate tomorrow. ..."
I rarely tell readers what to believe. Rather I try to indicate why it might be wise to
distrust, at least without very good evidence, what those in power tell us we should
believe.
We have well-known sayings about power: "Knowledge is power", and "Power tends to corrupt,
while absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely." These aphorisms resonate because they say
something true about how we experience the world. People who have power – even very
limited power they hold on licence from someone else – tend to abuse it, sometimes subtly
and unconsciously, and sometimes overtly and wilfully.
If we are reasonably self-aware, we can sense the tendency in ourselves to exploit to our
advantage whatever power we enjoy, whether it is in our dealings with a spouse, our children, a
friend, an employee, or just by the general use of our status to get ahead.
This isn't usually done maliciously or even consciously. By definition, the hardest thing to
recognise are our own psychological, emotional and mental blind spots – and the biggest,
at least for those born with class, gender or race privileges, is realising that these too are
forms of power.
Nonetheless, they are all minor forms of power compared to the power wielded collectively by
the structures that dominate our societies: the financial sector, the corporations, the media,
the political class, and the security services.
But strangely most of us are much readier to concede the corrupting influence of the
relatively small power of individuals than we are the rottenness of vastly more powerful
institutions and structures. We blame the school teacher or the politician for abusing his or
her power, while showing a reluctance to do the same about either the education or political
systems in which they have to operate.
Similarly, we are happier identifying the excessive personal power of a Rupert Murdoch than
we are the immense power of the corporate empire behind him and on which his personal wealth
and success depend.
And beyond this, we struggle most of all to detect the structural and ideological framework
underpinning or cohering all these discrete examples of power.
Narrative control
It is relatively easy to understand that your line manager is abusing his power, because he
has so little of it. His power is visible to you because it relates only to you and the small
group of people around you.
It is a little harder, but not too difficult, to identify the abusive policies of your firm
– the low pay, cuts in overtime, attacks on union representation.
It is more difficult to see the corrupt power of large institutions, aside occasionally from
the corruption of senior figures within those institutions, such as a Robert Maxwell or a
Richard Nixon.
But it is all but impossible to appreciate the corrupt nature of the entire system. And the
reason is right there in those aphorisms: absolute power depends on absolute control over
knowledge, which in turn necessitates absolute corruption. If that were not the case, we
wouldn't be dealing with serious power – as should be obvious, if we pause to think about
it.
Real power in our societies derives from that which is necessarily hard to see –
structures, ideology and narratives – not individuals. Any Murdoch or Trump can be
felled, though being loyal acolytes of the power-system they rarely are, should they threaten
the necessary maintenance of power by these interconnected institutions, these structures.
The current neoliberal elite who effectively rule the planet have reached as close to
absolute power as any elite in human history. And because they have near-absolute power, they
have a near-absolute control of the official narratives about our societies and our "enemies",
those who stand in their way to global domination.
No questions about Skripals
One needs only to look at the narrative about the two men, caught on CCTV cameras, who have
recently been accused by our political and media class of using a chemical agent to try to
murder Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia back in March.
I don't claim to know whether Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov work for the Russian
security services, or whether they were dispatched by Vladimir Putin on a mission to Salisbury
to kill the Skripals.
What is clear, however, is that the British intelligence services have been feeding the
British corporate media a self-serving, drip-drip narrative from the outset – and that
the media have shown precisely no interest at any point in testing any part of this narrative
or even questioning it. They have been entirely passive, which means that we their readers have
been entirely passive too.
That there are questions about the narrative to be raised is obvious if you turn away from
the compliant corporate media and seek out the views of an independent-minded, one-time insider
such as Craig Murray.
A former British ambassador, Murray is asking questions
that may prove to be pertinent or not. At this stage, when all we have to rely on is what the
intelligence services are selectively providing, these kinds of doubts should be driving the
inquiries of any serious journalist covering the story. But as is so often the case, not only
are these questions not being raised or investigated, but anyone like Murray who thinks
critically – who assumes that the powerful will seek to promote their interests and avoid
accountability – is instantly dismissed as a conspiracy theorist or in Putin's
pocket.
That is no meaningful kind of critique. Many of the questions that have been raised –
like why there are so many gaps in the CCTV record of the movements of both the Skripals and
the two assumed assassins – could be answered if there was an interest in doing so. The
evasion and the smears simply suggest that power intends to remain unaccountable, that it is
keeping itself concealed, that the narrative is more important than the truth.
And that is reason enough to move from questioning the narrative to distrusting it.
Ripples on a lake
Journalists typically have a passive relationship to power, in stark contrast to their image
as tenacious watchdog. But more fundamental than control over narrative is the ideology that
guides these narratives. Ideology ensures the power-system is invisible not only to us, those
who are abused and exploited by it, but also to those who benefit from it.
It is precisely because power resides in structures and ideology, rather than individuals,
that it is so hard to see. And the power-structures themselves are made yet more difficult to
identify because the narratives created about our societies are designed to conceal those
structures and ideology – where real power resides – by focusing instead on
individuals.
That is why our newspapers and TV shows are full of stories about personalities –
celebrities, royalty, criminals, politicians. They are made visible so we fail to notice the
ideological structures we live inside, which are supposed to remain invisible.
News and entertainment are the ripples on a lake, not the lake itself. But the ripples could
not exist without the lake that forms and shapes them.
Up against the screen
If this sounds like hyperbole, let's stand back from our particular ideological system
– neoliberalism – and consider earlier ideological systems in the hope that they
offer some perspective. At the moment, we are like someone standing right up against an IMAX
screen, so close that we cannot see that there is a screen or even guess that there is a
complete picture. All we see are moving colours and pixels. Maybe we can briefly infer a mouth,
the wheel of a vehicle, a gun.
Before neoliberalism there were other systems of rule. There was, for example, feudalism
that appropriated a communal resource – land – exclusively for an aristocracy. It
exploited the masses by forcing them to toil on the land for a pittance to generate the wealth
that supported castles, a clergy, manor houses, art collections and armies. For several
centuries the power of this tiny elite went largely unquestioned.
But then a class of entrepreneurs emerged, challenging the landed artistocracy with a new
means of industrialised production. They built factories and took advantage of scales of
economy that slightly widened the circle of privilege, creating a middle class. That elite, and
the middle-class that enjoyed crumbs from their master's table, lived off the exploitation of
children in work houses and the labour of a new urban poor in slum housing.
These eras were systematically corrupt, enabling the elites of those times to extend and
entrench their power. Each elite produced justifications to placate the masses who were being
exploited, to brainwash them into believing the system existed as part of a natural order or
even for their benefit. The aristocracy relied on a divine right of kings, the capitalist class
on the guiding hand of the free market and bogus claims of equality of opportunity.
In another hundred years, if we still exist as a species, our system will look no less
corrupt – probably more so – than its predecessors.
Neoliberalism, late-stage capitalism, plutocratic rule by corporations – whatever you
wish to call it – has allowed a tiny elite to stash away more wealth and accrue more
power than any feudal monarch could ever have dreamt of. And because of the global reach of
this elite, its corruption is more endemic, more complete, more destructive than any ever known
to mankind.
A foreign policy elite can destroy the world several times over with nuclear weapons. A
globalised corporate elite is filling the oceans with the debris from our consumption, and
chopping down the forest-lungs of our planet for palm-oil plantations so we can satisfy our
craving for biscuits and cake. And our media and intelligence services are jointly crafting a
narrative of bogeymen and James Bond villains – both in Hollywood movies, and in our news
programmes – to make us fearful and pliable.
Assumptions of inevitability
Most of us abuse our own small-power thoughtlessly, even self-righteously. We tell ourselves
that we gave the kids a "good spanking" because they were naughty, rather than because we
established with them early on a power relationship that confusingly taught them that the use
of force and coercion came with a parental stamp of approval.
Those in greater power, from minions in the media to executives of major corporations, are
no different. They are as incapable of questioning the ideology and the narrative – how
inevitable and "right" our neoliberal system is – as the rest of us. But they play a
vital part in maintaining and entrenching that system nonetheless.
David Cromwell and David Edwards of Media Lens have provided two analogies – in the
context of the media – that help explain how it is possible for individuals and groups to
assist and enforce systems of power without having any conscious intention to do so, and
without being aware that they are contributing to something harmful. Without, in short, being
aware that they are conspiring in the system.
When a shoal of fish instantly changes direction, it looks for all the world as though the
movement was synchronised by some guiding hand. Journalists – all trained and selected
for obedience by media all seeking to maximise profits within state-capitalist society
– tend to respond to events in the same way.
Place a square wooden framework on a flat surface and pour into it a stream of ball
bearings, marbles, or other round objects. Some of the balls may bounce out, but many will
form a layer within the wooden framework; others will then find a place atop this first
layer. In this way, the flow of ball bearings steadily builds new layers that inevitably
produce a pyramid-style shape. This experiment is used to demonstrate how near-perfect
crystalline structures such as snowflakes arise in nature without conscious design.
The system – whether feudalism, capitalism, neoliberalism – emerges out of the
real-world circumstances of those seeking power most ruthlessly. In a time when the key
resource was land, a class emerged justifying why it should have exclusive rights to control
that land and the labour needed to make it productive. When industrial processes developed, a
class emerged demanding that it had proprietary rights to those processes and to the labour
needed to make them productive.
Our place in the pyramid
In these situations, we need to draw on something like Darwin's evolutionary "survival of
the fittest" principle. Those few who are most hungry for power, those with least empathy, will
rise to the top of the pyramid, finding themselves best-placed to exploit the people below.
They will rationalise this exploitation as a divine right, or as evidence of their inherently
superior skills, or as proof of the efficiency of the market.
And below them, like the layers of ball bearings, will be those who can help them maintain
and expand their power: those who have the skills, education and socialisation to increase
profits and sell brands.
All of this should be obvious, even non-controversial. It fits what we experience of our
small-power lives. Does bigger power operate differently? After all, if those at the top of the
power-pyramid were not hungry for power, even psychopathic in its pursuit, if they were caring
and humane, worried primarily about the wellbeing of their workforce and the planet, they would
be social workers and environmental activists, not CEOs of media empires and arms
manufacturers.
And yet, base your political thinking on what should be truisms, articulate a worldview that
distrusts those with the most power because they are the most capable of – and committed
to – misusing it, and you will be derided. You will be called a conspiracy theorist,
dismissed as deluded. You will be accused of wearing a tinfoil hat, of sour grapes, of being
anti-American, a social warrior, paranoid, an Israel-hater or anti-semitic, pro-Putin,
pro-Assad, a Marxist.
None of this should surprise us either. Because power – not just the people in the
system, but the system itself – will use whatever tools it has to protect itself. It is
easier to deride critics as unhinged, especially when you control the media, the politicians
and the education system, than it is to provide a counter-argument.
In fact, it is vital to prevent any argument or real debate from taking place. Because the
moment we think about the arguments, weigh them, use our critical faculties, there is a real
danger that the scales will fall from our eyes. There is a real threat that we will move back
from the screen, and see the whole picture.
Can we see the complete picture of the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury; or the US election
that led to Trump being declared president; or the revolution in Ukraine; or the causes and
trajectory of fighting in Syria, and before it Libya and Iraq; or the campaign to discredit
Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour party; or the true implications of the banking crisis a
decade ago?
Profit, not ethics
Just as a feudal elite was driven not by ethics but by the pursuit of power and wealth
through the control of land; just as early capitalists were driven not by ethics but by the
pursuit of power and wealth through the control of mechanisation; so neoliberalism is driven
not by ethics but the pursuit of power and wealth through the control of the planet.
The only truth we can know is that the western power-elite is determined to finish the task
of making its power fully global, expanding it from near-absolute to absolute. It cares nothing
for you or your grand-children. It is a cold-calculating system, not a friend or neighbour. It
lives for the instant gratification of wealth accumulation, not concern about the planet's fate
tomorrow.
And because of that it is structurally bound to undermine or discredit anyone, any group,
any state that stands in the way of achieving its absolute dominion.
If that is not the thought we hold uppermost in our minds as we listen to a politician, read
a newspaper, watch a film or TV show, absorb an ad, or engage on social media, then we are
sleepwalking into a future the most powerful, the most ruthless, the least caring have designed
for us.
Step back, and take a look at the whole screen. And decide whether this is really the future
you wish for your grand-children.
In my own words then. According to Cook the power elites goal is to change its
appearance to look like something new and innovative to stay ahead of an electorate who are
increasingly skeptical of the neoliberalism and globalism that enrich the elite at their
expense.
Since they do not actually want change they find actors who pretend to represent change
, which is in essence fake change. These then are their insurgent candidates
Trump serves the power elite , because while he appears as an insurgent against the
power elite he does little to change anything
Trump promotes his fake insurgency on Twitter stage knowing the power elite will counter
any of his promises that might threaten them
As an insurgent candidate Trump was indifferent to Israel and wanted the US out of
Syria. He wanted good relations with Russia. He wanted to fix the health care system,
rebuild infrastructure, scrap NAFTA and TTIPS, bring back good paying jobs, fight the
establishment and Wall Street executives and drain the swamp. America First he said.
Trump the insurgent president , has become Israel's biggest cheerleader and has launched
US missiles at Syria, relations with Russia are at Cold War lows, infrastructure is still
failing, the percentage of people working is now at an all time low in the post housewife
era, he has passed tax cuts for the rich that will endanger medicare, medicaid and social
security and prohibit infrastructure spending, relaxed regulations on Wall Street, enhanced
NAFTA to include TTIPS provisions and make US automobiles more expensive, and the swamp has
been refilled with the rich, neocons , Koch associates, and Goldman Sachs that make up the
power elites and Deep State Americas rich and Israel First
@34 pft... regarding the 2 cook articles.. i found they overly wordy myself...
however, for anyone paying attention - corbyn seems like the person to vote for given how
relentless he is being attacked in the media... i am not so sure about trump, but felt cook
summed it up well with these 2 lines.. "Trump the candidate was indifferent to Israel and
wanted the US out of Syria. Trump the president has become Israel's biggest cheerleader and
has launched US missiles at Syria." i get the impression corbyn is legit which is why the
anti-semitism keeps on being mentioned... craig murrary is a good source for staying on top
of uk dynamics..
(a) talk coherently
(b) have some kind of movement consisting of people that agree with what is says -- that
necessitates (a)
Then he could staff his Administration with his supporters rather than a gamut of
conventional plutocrats, neocons, and hacks from the Deep State (intelligence, FBI and
crazies culled from Pentagon). As it is easy to see, I am describing an alternate reality.
Who is a Trumpian member of the Administration? His son-in-law?
The swamps been filled with all kinds of vile creatures since the Carter administration.
This is when the US/UK went full steam ahead with neoliberal globalism with Israel directing
the war on terror for the Trilateral Empire (following Bibis Jerusalem conference so as to
fulfill the Yinon plan). 40 years of terror and financial mayhem following the coup that took
place from 1963-1974. After Nixons ouster they were ready to go once TLC Carter/Zbig kicked
off the Trilateral era. Reagan then ran promising to oust the TLC swamp but broke his
promise, as every President has done since .
"... Salam's case is that America's legal immigration system needs be reformed on lines roughly similar to what the Trump administration now and others before it have long advocated: changing the rules to place a greater emphasis on the economic skills of immigrants while deemphasizing the role played by family "reunification" would ensure both that new immigrants are an economic plus to the economy and, more importantly, that they are more likely to integrate into the American cultural mainstream. ..."
"... First of all, Salam reminds us, an alarming number of recent immigrants and their families are poor. This does not mean that almost all of them have not improved their economic status by migration: they have. ..."
"... Salam explains that under the current system, most visas are doled out according to family ties -- not skills or education. And the larger the number of immigrants is from a given country, the lower their average earnings and educational outcomes will be in the U.S. Conversely, the harder it is for a given group to enter the United States, the more likely it is that immigrants will be drawn from the top of their country's pecking order. ..."
Why Not a Merit-Based Immigration System?Reihan Salam's latest book makes the
case for an overhaul along Trumpian lines.
It's hard to imagine a more needed contribution to America's immigration debate than Reihan
Salam's civil, sober, and penetrating Melting Pot or Civil War? At a moment when the
major dueling discourses revolve around lurid depictions of immigrant crime by one side, and
appeals to the inscription on the Statue of Liberty and accusations of racism by the other,
Salam's data-driven argument about the future consequences of today's immigration choices could
not be more timely.
While Salam is the child of middle-class professionals from Bangladesh who settled in New
York at a time when there were virtually no Bengali speakers in the city (there are now tens of
thousands), apart from a few personal anecdotes, his book could have been written by an author
of any ethnicity. Yet in our increasingly racialized debate, an argument made by a "son of
immigrants" (as the book's subtitle announces) may be less likely to face summary dismissal
from the centrist liberals and moderates who are its most important audience.
Salam's case is that America's legal immigration system needs be reformed on lines roughly
similar to what the Trump administration now and others before it have long advocated: changing
the rules to place a greater emphasis on the economic skills of immigrants while deemphasizing
the role played by family "reunification" would ensure both that new immigrants are an economic
plus to the economy and, more importantly, that they are more likely to integrate into the
American cultural mainstream. This would put the U.S. more in line with the generally
politically popular systems in place in Canada and Australia. The proposal is tempered, or
balanced, by measures to shore up the condition of the American working poor and an amnesty
giving long-term resident illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, as well as ambitious
measures to enhance economic development in the Third World.
But the meat of Melting Pot or Civil War? is not in the proposal but in the getting
to it -- a route which passes through numerous nuggets gleaned from contemporary research and a
depressing if persuasive analysis of the consequences if America stays on its present
course.
First of all, Salam reminds us, an alarming number of recent immigrants and their families
are poor. This does not mean that almost all of them have not improved their economic status by
migration: they have. A low-skilled job in the United States pays several times better than
such work in many countries, so low-skilled migration is, without a doubt, a benefit to
low-skilled migrants. Recent immigrants grateful for the opportunity to live in America may
accept living in poverty, though Salam is right to remind us of the miserable conditions,
redolent of the teeming tenements of the early 20th century, in which their lives often unfold.
He makes the subtle point that part of the current appeal of America's major cities to upper
middle-class professionals is the presence of a politically docile service class of low-skilled
immigrants, many of them undocumented.
But the families such immigrants form tend to be poor as well: today's immigrants face
headwinds to upward mobility that the storied Ellis Island generations did not. There was much
more need in 1900 for unskilled labor than there is now, and no substantive gap then existed in
education level between the immigrants and the general American population. The data Salam
deploys is not overly dramatic but decisive nonetheless: children of immigrants now make up 30
percent of all low-income children (where they are 24 percent of the whole); roughly half of
immigrant families have incomes within 200 percent of the poverty line; nearly a third of
immigrant children grow up in families headed by someone without a high school diploma; the
average Mexican immigrant has 9.4 years of schooling, rising to 12 in the second generation but
flatlining after that.
As the gap between the earnings of American college graduates and others has grown in the
past two generations, this means that the social problem of the intergenerational transmission
of poverty is being intensified by the ever continuing flow of poor, unskilled immigrants, both
legal and illegal. And while such immigrants may well be politically quiescent, their children
are unlikely to be.
These somber facts are balanced, and in many ways veiled, by the immigrant success stories
which Americans rightly celebrate. But while it may be unkind to say so, immigrants don't
arrive as blank slates, mysteriously sorted out upon reaching these shores so that some become
doctors and software entrepreneurs.
As Salam makes clear, successful immigrants tend to come from relatively rich and urbanized
societies. The parents of Google founder Sergey Brin were accomplished scholars. An astounding
45 percent of immigrants from India -- who make up the latest version of a high-achieving
"model minority" -- are Brahmins, members of the tiny Indian hereditary upper caste. Indians
who come here tend to be "triple selected": most enter the country by way of high-skilled
worker visas, which means they are products of India's highly competitive education system,
which serves only a fraction of India's population. Similarly, Chinese immigrants tend to come
from that country's college-educated elite.
Salam explains that under the current system, most visas are doled out according to family
ties -- not skills or education. And the larger the number of immigrants is from a given
country, the lower their average earnings and educational outcomes will be in the U.S.
Conversely, the harder it is for a given group to enter the United States, the more likely it
is that immigrants will be drawn from the top of their country's pecking order.
One might conceive of this as a stable system -- after all, there are many jobs for
low-skilled immigrants. But of course immigrants have children, at rates far higher than the
native born, and the children of lower-skilled immigrants make up a continually growing share
of Americans at or near the poverty level. "The children of elite immigrants make their way
into America's elite, where they add a much needed dash of superficial diversity, enough to
make us forget their inconvenient working class counterparts." The result, of which there is
already ample evidence among the Millennial cohort of immigrant children, is a growing
population which has grown up in poverty, isn't doing especially well in income or education,
and perceives the American dream cynically, as a kind of whites-only sham. This divide will
influence our politics for the foreseeable future. The question is how much.
♦♦♦
While much of Salam's analysis is a deep dive into statistics of intergenerational poverty,
educational outcomes, and the growing achievement gap, he doesn't shy from the ominous
implications of the racialization of the immigration debate. There is ample evidence that
college-educated Americans of all ethnicities marry one another at reasonable and growing
rates, producing a fair number of mixed-race people who feel themselves part of the cultural
mainstream. As scholars have long reminded us, "white" is a broad and fungible category in
American history, and there is a fair prospect that the college-educated and middle classes
will intermarry enough to produce a 21st-century version of the storied melting pot.
But that isn't the case with poorer immigrants, even as their children learn English.
Current family unification statutes encourage poor, non-white immigrant communities to
continually replenish their new arrivals. Thus there are two competing processes going on --
amalgamation, in which more educated immigrant families are joining the middle-class
mainstream, intermarrying with whites and with one another, and racialization, in which a new
immigrant group finds itself ghettoized and cut out of the mainstream. This latter phenomenon
is most pronounced in some Mexican-American communities, which are demographically the largest
immigrant groups, but exists in many immigrant communities.
It is in this subset, for example, where ISIS has found recruits, and where -- on a less
dramatic level -- the Marxist Left is able to make inroads. As America's demography grows less
white, the political salience of radical immigrants of color is likely to grow. While Salam
exercises great restraint describing the phenomenon, his foreboding is unmistakable: "The
danger, as I see it, is that as the logic of the melting pot fails to take hold, and as more
newcomers are incorporated into disadvantaged groups, the level of interethnic tension will
skyrocket, and we'll look back wistfully on the halcyon politics of the Trump years." Or again,
"Imagine an America in which wealthy whites and Asians wall themselves off from the rest of
society and low wage immigrants and their offspring constitute a new underclass."
Of course it is not merely racial minority immigrants who are tempted by political
radicalism. The current extremist white backlash is widely noted by scholars and journalists.
But among the liberal establishment it is viewed not as problem to be alleviated but a social
development to be crushed. Salam observes immigration scholars who are scrupulous about
reporting the ways immigration is making America less united, threatening social cohesion,
"leading to greater divisions and tensions," while never considering reducing or reforming
immigration (with greater emphasis on skills) as a possible answer to the problems. They hope
-- against considerable social science evidence that political instability is endemic to
multicultural societies -- that greater diversity will somehow bury ethnic conflict. This Salam
calls the Backlash Paradox: while mass immigration contributes to bigotry and polarization, the
only acceptable option among elites is to double down and hope the storm passes, as slowing the
pace of immigration is considered a "callow surrender to bigotry."
I have focused on the social and political elements, but Salam's argument also relies a
great deal on economics, much of it focused on economic choices molded by a relatively
high-skilled or low-skilled labor force. His major point is that labor shortages spur
technological innovation, while loose labor markets discourage it. Labor scarcity, Salam
observes, has been the historical secret to American prosperity, spurring one labor-saving
innovation after another. A high-immigration economy, with a completely elastic number of
workers willing to work for a minimum wage or less, is an economy under a completely different
calculus. There is no question we should prefer the first.
♦♦♦
I have only minor caveats with this outstanding book. It might be a necessary concession to
the immigrationist lobby to maintain the raw number of immigrants as high as it is at present,
but it seems likely that lowering it to, say, half a million a year, roughly the number urged
by the Clinton administration's task force on immigration, would break the fever more quickly
and lead to far more rapid assimilation of recent immigrants.
I find Salam's earnest plea for the United States to dramatically raise its spending to
accelerate economic development in the Third World well intended, but likely futile. An answer
which comes to mind is one that diplomat George F. Kennan suggested a quarter of a century ago,
that the single greatest benefit the United States can deliver to the world's poor is to
maintain itself as a relatively high civilization able to inspire by example, and provide help
and insight to others seeking answers to their problems.
And though it is a subject in itself, I wish Salam had directly addressed the new leftist
ideology built around the fighting of "white privilege" -- which now includes under its rubric
everything from getting rid of standardized tests to delegitimizing police departments, railing
against the First Amendment to ripping down statues of long-admired white Americans. This
largely white-led phenomenon does far more to intensify nativist dread about being reduced to
minority status than any racist agitation leveled against immigrants of color, however
lamentable the latter might be.
Scott McConnell is a founding editor ofand the author of Ex-Neocon:
Dispatches From the Post-9/11 Ideological Wars .
That's amazing example of contlling the nattarive and suppressing alternative sources. Should
go in all textbooks on the subject
Notable quotes:
"... Magnitsky did not disclose the theft. He first mentioned it in testimony in October 2008. But it had already been reported in the New York Times on July 24, 2008. In reality, the whistleblower was a certain Rimma Starova. She worked for one of the implicated shell companies and, having read in the papers that authorities were investigating, went to police to give testimony in April 2008 – six months before Magnitsky spoke of the scam for the first time (see here and here ). ..."
"... Why, then, did I report that about Magnitsky? Because at the time my sole source for the story was Team Browder, who had reached out to the Cyprus Mail and with whom I communicated via email. I was provided with 'information', flow charts and so on. All looking very professional and compelling. ..."
"... For the second article, I conversed briefly on the phone with the soft-spoken Browder himself, who handed down the gospel on the Magnitsky affair. Under the time constraints, and trusting that my sources could at least be relied upon for basic information which they presented as facts, I went along with it. I was played. But let's be clear: I let myself down too. ..."
"... Titled 'The Magnitsky Act – Behind The Scenes', it does a magisterial job of depicting how the director initially took Browder's story on faith, only to end up questioning everything. The docudrama dissects, disassembles and dismantles Browder's narrative, as Nekrasov – by no means a Putin apologist – delves deeper down into the rabbit hole. ..."
"... The point can't be stressed enough, as this very claim is the lynchpin of Browder's account. In his bestseller Red Notice, Browder alleges that Magnitsky was arrested because he exposed two corrupt police officers, and that he was jailed and tortured because he wouldn't retract. ..."
"... It gets worse for Nekrasov, as he goes on to discover that Magnitsky was no lawyer. He did not have a lawyer's license. Rather, he was an accountant/auditor who worked for Moscow law firm Firestone Duncan. Yet every chance he gets, Browder still refers to Magnitsky as 'a lawyer' or 'my lawyer'. ..."
"... The full deposition, some six hours long, is (still) available on Youtube . As penance for past transgressions, I watched it in its entirety. While refraining from using adjectives to describe it, I shall simply cite some examples and let readers decide on Browder's credibility. Browder seems to suffer an almost total memory blackout as a lawyer begins firing questions at him. He cannot recall, or does not know, where he or his team got the information concerning the alleged illicit transfer of funds from Hermitage-owned companies. ..."
"... According to Team Browder, in 2007 the 'Klyuev gang' together with Russian interior ministry officials travelled to Cyprus, ostensibly to set up the tax rebate scam using shell companies. But in his deposition, the Anglo-American businessman cannot remember, or does not know, how his team obtained the travel information of the conspirators. ..."
Before getting down to brass tacks, let me say that I loathe penning articles like this; loathe writing about myself or in the
first person, because a reporter should report the news, not be the news. Yet I grudgingly make this exception because, ironically,
it happens to be newsworthy. To cut to the chase, it concerns Anglo-American financier Bill Browder and the Sergei Magnitsky affair.
I, like others in the news business I'd venture to guess, feel led astray by Browder.
This is no excuse. I didn't do my due diligence, and take full responsibility for erroneous information printed under my name.
For that, I apologize to readers. I refer to two articles of mine published in a Cypriot publication, dated December 25, 2015 and
January 6, 2016.
Browder's basic story, as he has told it time and again, goes like this: in June 2007, Russian police officers raided the Moscow
offices of Browder's firm Hermitage, confiscating company seals, certificates of incorporation, and computers.
Browder says the owners and directors of Hermitage-owned companies were subsequently changed, using these seized documents. Corrupt
courts were used to create fake debts for these companies, which allowed for the taxes they had previously paid to the Russian Treasury
to be refunded to what were now re-registered companies. The funds stolen from the Russian state were then laundered through banks
and shell companies.
The scheme is said to have been planned earlier in Cyprus by Russian law enforcement and tax officials in cahoots with criminal
elements.
All this was supposedly discovered by Magnitsky, whom Browder had tasked with investigating what happened. When Magnitsky reported
the fraud, some of the nefarious characters involved had him arrested and jailed. He refused to retract, and died while in pre-trial
detention.
In my first article, I wrote: "Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian accountant, died in jail in 2009 after he exposed huge tax embezzlement
"
False . Contrary to the above story that has been rehashed countless times, Magnitsky did not expose any tax fraud, did not blow
the whistle.
The interrogation
reports show that Magnitsky had in fact been summoned by Russian authorities as a witness to an already ongoing investigation
into Hermitage. Nor he did he accuse Russian investigators Karpov and/or Kuznetsov of committing the $230 million treasury fraud,
as Browder claims.
Magnitsky did not disclose the theft. He first mentioned it in testimony in October 2008. But it had already been reported
in the New York Times
on July 24, 2008. In reality, the whistleblower was a certain Rimma Starova. She worked for one of the implicated shell companies
and, having read in the papers that authorities were investigating, went to police to give testimony in April 2008 – six months before
Magnitsky spoke of the scam for the first time (see
here
and here
).
Why, then, did I report that about Magnitsky? Because at the time my sole source for the story was Team Browder, who had reached
out to the Cyprus Mail and with whom I communicated via email. I was provided with 'information', flow charts and so on. All looking
very professional and compelling.
At the time of the first article, I knew next to nothing about the Magnitsky/Browder affair. I had to go through media reports
to get the gist, and then get up to speed with Browder's latest claims that a Cypriot law firm, which counted the Hermitage Fund
among its clients, had just been 'raided' by Cypriot police. The article had to be written and delivered on the same day. In retrospect
I should have asked for more time – a lot more time – and Devil take the deadlines.
For the second article, I conversed briefly on the phone with the soft-spoken Browder himself, who handed down the gospel
on the Magnitsky affair. Under the time constraints, and trusting that my sources could at least be relied upon for basic information
which they presented as facts, I went along with it. I was played. But let's be clear: I let myself down too.
In the ensuing weeks and months, I didn't follow up on the story as my gut told me something was wrong: villains and malign actors
operating in a Wild West Russia, and at the centre of it all, a heroic Magnitsky who paid with his life – the kind of script that
Hollywood execs would kill for.
Subsequently I mentally filed away the Browder story, while being aware it was in the news.
But the real red pill was a documentary by Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, which came to my attention a few weeks ago.
Titled 'The Magnitsky Act – Behind The Scenes', it does a magisterial job of depicting how the director initially took Browder's
story on faith, only to end up questioning everything. The docudrama dissects, disassembles and dismantles Browder's narrative, as
Nekrasov – by no means a Putin apologist – delves deeper down into the rabbit hole.
The director had set out to make a poignant film about Magnitsky's tragedy, but became increasingly troubled as the facts he uncovered
didn't stack up with Browder's account, he claims.
The 'aha' moment arrives when Nekrasov appears to show solid proof that Magnitsky blew no whistle.
Not only that, but in his
depositions
– the first one dating to 2006, well before Hermitage's offices were raided – Magnitsky did not accuse any police officers of being
part of the 'theft' of Browder's companies and the subsequent alleged $230m tax rebate fraud.
The point can't be stressed enough, as this very claim is the lynchpin of Browder's account. In his bestseller Red Notice,
Browder alleges that Magnitsky was arrested because he exposed two corrupt police officers, and that he was jailed and tortured because
he wouldn't retract.
We are meant to take Browder's word for it.
It gets worse for Nekrasov, as he goes on to discover that Magnitsky was no lawyer. He did not have a lawyer's license. Rather,
he was an accountant/auditor who worked for Moscow law firm Firestone Duncan. Yet every chance he gets, Browder still refers to Magnitsky
as 'a lawyer' or 'my lawyer'.
The clincher comes late in the film, with footage from Browder's April 15, 2015 deposition in a US federal court, in the Prevezon
case. The case, brought by the US Justice Department at Browder's instigation, targeted a Russian national who Browder said had received
$1.9m of the $230m tax fraud.
In the deposition, Browder is asked if Magnitsky had a law degree in Russia. "I'm not aware that he did," he replies.
The full deposition, some six hours long, is (still) available on
Youtube . As penance for past transgressions, I watched
it in its entirety. While refraining from using adjectives to describe it, I shall simply cite some examples and let readers decide
on Browder's credibility. Browder seems to suffer an almost total memory blackout as a lawyer begins firing questions at him. He
cannot recall, or does not know, where he or his team got the information concerning the alleged illicit transfer of funds from Hermitage-owned
companies.
This is despite the fact that the now-famous Powerpoint presentations – hosted on so many 'anti-corruption' websites and recited
by 'human rights' NGOs – were prepared by Browder's own team.
Nor does he recall where, or how, he and his team obtained information on the amounts of the 'stolen' funds funnelled into companies.
When it's pointed out that in any case this information would be privileged – banking secrecy and so forth – Browder appears to be
at a loss.
According to Team Browder, in 2007 the 'Klyuev gang' together with Russian interior ministry officials travelled to Cyprus,
ostensibly to set up the tax rebate scam using shell companies. But in his deposition, the Anglo-American businessman cannot remember,
or does not know, how his team obtained the travel information of the conspirators.
He can't explain how they acquired the flight records and dates, doesn't have any documentation at hand, and isn't aware if any
such documentation exists.
Browder claims his 'Justice for Magnitsky' campaign, which among other things has led to US sanctions on Russian persons, is all
about vindicating the young man. Were that true, one would have expected Browder to go out of his way to aid Magnitsky in his hour
of need.
The deposition does not bear that out.
Lawyer: "Did anyone coordinate on your behalf with Firestone Duncan about the defence of Mr Magnitsky?"
Browder: "I don't know. I don't remember."
Going back to Nekrasov's film, a standout segment is where the filmmaker looks at a briefing document prepared by Team Browder
concerning the June 2007 raid by Russian police officers. In it, Browder claims the cops beat up Victor Poryugin, a lawyer with the
firm.
The lawyer was then "hospitalized for two weeks," according to Browder's presentation, which includes a photo of the beaten-up
lawyer. Except, it turns out the man pictured is not Poryugin at all. Rather, the photo is actually of Jim Zwerg, an American human
rights activist beaten up during a street protest in 1961 (see
here and here ).
Nekrasov sits down with German politician Marieluise Beck. She was a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
(Pace), which compiled a report that made Magnitsky a cause celebre.
You can see Beck's jaw drop when Nekrasov informs her that Magnitsky did not report the fraud, that he was in fact under investigation.
It transpires that Pace, as well as human rights activists, were getting their information from one source – Browder. Later, the
Council of Europe's Andreas Gross admits on camera that their entire investigation into the Magnitsky affair was based on Browder's
info and that they relied on translations of Russian documents provided by Browder's team because, as Gross puts it, "I don't speak
Russian myself."
That hit home – I, too, had been fed information from a single source, not bothering to verify it. I, too, initially went with
the assumption that because Russia is said to be a land of endemic corruption, then Browder's story sounded plausible if not entirely
credible.
For me, the takeaway is this gem from Nekrasov's narration:
"I was regularly overcome by deep unease. Was I defending a system that killed Magnitsky, even if I'd found no proof that he'd
been murdered?"
Bull's-eye. Nekrasov has arrived at a crossroads, the moment where one's mettle is tested: do I pursue the facts wherever they
may lead, even if they take me out of my comfort zone? What is more important: the truth, or the narrative? Nekrasov chose the former.
As do I.
Like with everything else, specific allegations must be assessed independently of one's general opinion of the Russian state.
They are two distinct issues. Say Browder never existed; does that make Russia a paradise?
I suspect Team Browder may scrub me from their mailing list; one can live with that.
oncemore1 , 6 minutes ago
Soros and Browder are the same tribe. FULLSTOP.
Slipstream , 6 minutes ago
Wow. That's a big **** up. But at least this guy is a journalist with ethics. He got it
wrong and has said so, to set the record straight. This should be a case taught in every
journalism school in the world. Unfortunately, I don't see the Magnitsky Act being repealed
any time soon.
Usura , 8 minutes ago
Bill Browder is a lying ***
Thordoom , 12 minutes ago
Andrei Nekrasov now has webpage dedicated to The Magnitsky Act Behind the Scenes.
I watched the documentary too. The depositions of Browder were devastating to any notion
of him as truth-teller. And yet, he managed to dupe politicians and media around the
world.
Thordoom , 33 minutes ago
The only good thing Yeltsin did in his miserable life was to say " **** you " to Bill
Clinton in the end when he found out how they wanted to set him up with that 7 billion of IMF
money they stolen in order to put Boris Berezovsky in the charge of Russia as a president for
hire and stole anything that was not welded down. Yeltsin knowing that the only way for
Russia to survive was to put Vladimir Putin in charge to clense the unclean filth that
infested Russia in the 90s
resistedliving , 52 minutes ago
classic agitprop.
Don't trust Browder and his self-interests much but trust this guy less.
Browser knows he'll never see that money again and has spent his own funds on his one man
mission
Thordoom , 40 minutes ago
Stupid moron he is spending Knohorkovsky's money and HSBC bank money. Half of the UK and
US government officials and intl officials and Harward boys are deeply involved in this
looting of Russian people in the 90s.
RationalLuddite , 31 minutes ago
Classic Reverse blockade lie by you Restedliving. Good luck moving the middle on Browder .
He's just not that bright in lying so I suppose your Talmudic exegesis honed Accusatory
Inversion is worth a try.
Please keep it up. Seriously. "Agitprop"😄😄😄😄
You are like a Browder red-pill dispenser with every incoherent mendacious utterance.
Thank you mate :*
WTFUD , 29 minutes ago
Bruiser Browser Browder, ex light-heavyweight champion of La-La Potemkin Village,
Ninnyapolis, USA.
Shouldn't Fakebook be banning the US Government for a plethora of Fake News? Then again
it's a nice fit for these 2 entities, a cosy relationship.
The Paucity of Hope , 54 minutes ago
Nekrasov's movie has been disappeared, but was excellent. Also, look at The Forecaster,
about Martin Armstrong. It talks about Hermatage Capital and was blocked in the US and
Switzerland for several years.
Ahmeexnal , 57 minutes ago
Browder must hang!
chunga , 38 minutes ago
Not a single person in the US gov will even acknowledge this. None. Not one.
At the same time the US domestic affairs revolve around unsubstantiated stories of SC
nominee penis wagging, special prosecutors investigating **** actress affairs/bribery with
POTUS, FBI, DOJ off the rails, while at the same time asserting a moral authority to sanction
and/or attack other countries as though it's an obligation or entitlement.
There's a new film out regarding (il)legal finance: Scenes From the Spider's Web .
Some will find the information provided by Hudson in his interview segment
astounding and shocking, but somehow not altogether surprising.
The entire documentary "The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire" by Michael Oswald is
worth watching as an introduction to the corruption in the global finance industry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_ylvc8Zj8
And when you finish watching that - twice, three times, however many times you need for
all the information to sink in - you can read Nicholas Shaxson's excellent book "Treasure
Islands:Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World", on which the documentary leans heavily
for information and structure.
Disobedient Media has closely followed the work of the Forensicator , whose analysis has shed much light
on the publications by the Guccifer 2.0 persona for over a year. In view of the more recent
work published by the Forensicator regarding potential media collusion with Guccifer 2.0, we
are inclined to revisit an interview given by WikiLeaks Editor-In-Chief Julian Assange in
August of 2016, prior to the publication of the Podesta Emails in October, and the November US
Presidential election.
During the
interview, partially transcribed below, Assange makes a number of salient points on the
differentiation between the thousands of pristine emails WikiLeaks received, and those which
had surfaced in other US outlets by that date. Though Assange does not name the Guccifer 2.0
persona directly throughout the interview, he does name multiple outlets which publicized
Guccifer 2.0's documents.
The significance of revisiting Assange's statements is the degree to which his most
significant claim is corroborated or paralleled by the Forensicator's analysis. This is of
enhanced import in light of allegations by
Robert Mueller (not to mention the legacy media), despite a total absence of evidence, that
Guccifer 2.0 was WikiLeaks's source of the DNC and Podesta emails.
This author previously
discussed the possibility that Assange's current isolation might stem in part from the
likelihood that upon expulsion from the embassy, Julian Assange could provide evidential proof
that the DNC emails and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks were not sourced from Russia, or
backed by the Kremlin, all without disclosing the identity of their source.
"In the US media there has been a deliberate conflation between DNC leaks, which is what
we've been publishing, and DNC hacks, of the US Democratic Party which have occurred over the
last two years, by their own admission what [Hillary Clinton] is attempting to do is to
conflate our publication of pristine emails – no one in the Democratic party argues
that a single email is not completely valid. That hasn't been done. The head of the DNC,
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, has rolled as a result.
And whatever hacking has occurred, of the DNC or other political organizations in the
United States, by a range of actors – in the middle, we have something, which is the
publication by other media organizations, of information reportedly from the DNC, and that
seems to be the case. That's the publication of word documents in pdfs published by The Hill,
by Gawker, by The Smoking Gun. This is a completely separate batch of documents, compared to
the 20,000 pristine emails that we have at WikiLeaks.
In this [separate] batch of documents, released by these other media organizations, there
are claims that in the metadata, someone has done a document to pdf conversion, and in some
cases the language of the computer that was used for that conversion was Russian. So that's
the circumstantial evidence that some Russian was involved, or someone who wanted to make it
look like a Russian was involved, with these other media organizations. That's not the case
for the material we released.
The Hillary Clinton hack campaign has a serious problem in trying to figure out how to
counter-spin our publication because the emails are un-arguable There's an attempt to bring
in a meta-story. And the meta-story is, did some hacker obtain these emails? Ok. Well, people
have suggested that there's evidence that the DNC has been hacked. I'm not at all surprised
its been hacked. If you read very carefully, they say it's been hacked many times over the
last two years. Our sources say that DNC security is like Swiss Cheese.
Hillary Clinton is saying, untruthfully, that she knows who the source of our emails are.
Now, she didn't quite say "our emails." She's playing some games, because there have been
other publications by The Hill, by Gawker, other US media, of different documents, not
emails. So, we have to separate the various DNC or RNC hacks that have occurred over the
years, and who's done that. The source: we know who the source is, it's the Democratic
National Committee itself. And our sources who gave these materials, and other pending
materials, to us. These are all different questions. "
The core assertion made by Assange in the above-transcribed segment of his 2016 interview
with RT is the differentiation between WikiLeaks's publications from the altered documents
released by Guccifer 2.0 (after being pre-released to US media outlets as referenced by
Assange). This finer point is one that is corroborated by the Forensicator's analysis, and one
which it seems much of the public has yet to entirely digest.
"Ars Technica found "Russian fingerprints" in a PDF posted by Gawker the previous day.
Apparently, both Gawker and The Smoking Gun (TSG) had received pre-release copies of Guccifer
2.0's first batch of documents; Guccifer 2.0 would post them later, on his WordPress.com blog site. Although neither Gawker nor TSG
reported on these Russian error messages, some readers noticed them and mentioned them in
social media forums; Ars Technica was likely the first media outlet to cover those "Russian
fingerprints."
The Forensicator's analysis cannot enlighten us as to the ultimate source of WikiLeaks's
releases. At present, there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that Guccifer 2.0 was, or was
not, WikiLeaks' source. There is no evidence connecting Guccifer 2.0 with WikiLeaks, but there
is likewise no evidence to rule out a connection.
It is nonetheless critically important, as Assange indicated, to differentiate between the
files published by Guccifer 2.0 and those released by WikiLeaks. None of the "altered"
documents (with supposed Russian fingerprints) published by Guccifer 2.0 appear in WikiLeaks's
publications.
It is also worth noting that, though Assange's interview took place before the publication
of the Podesta email collection, the allegations of a Russian hack based on Guccifer 2.0's
publication were ultimately contradicted by a DNC official, as reported by the Associated
Press. Disobedient
Media wrote:
" Ultimately, it is the DNC's claim that they were breached by Russian hackers, who stole
the Trump opposition report, which directly belies their allegation – because the
document did not come from the DNC, but from John Podesta's emails."
Again: The very document on which the initial "Russian hack" allegations were based did not
originate within the DNC Emails at all, but in the Podesta Emails, which at the time of
Assange's RT interview, had not yet been published.
"The fact the email to which the Trump opposition report was attached was later published
in the Podesta Email collection by WikiLeaks does not prove that Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks
shared a source on the document. However, it does suggest that either the DNC, the operators
of the Guccifer 2.0 persona, or both parties had access to Podesta's emails. This raises
questions as to why the DNC would interpret the use of this particular file as evidence of
Russian penetration of the DNC."
This creates a massive contradiction within the DNC's narrative, but it does not materially
change Assange's assertion that the pristine emails obtained by WikiLeaks were fundamentally
distinct and should not be conflated with the altered documents published by Guccifer 2.0, as
the WikiLeaks publication of the Podesta emails contain none of the alterations shown in the
version of the documents published by Guccifer 2.0.
Though no establishment media outlet has reported on this point, when reviewing the evidence
at hand and especially the work of the Forensicator, it is evident that the Guccifer 2.0
persona never actually published a single email. The persona published documents and even
screenshots of emails – but never the emails themselves. Thus, again, Guccifer 2.0's
works are critically different from the DNC and Podesta email publications by WikiLeaks.
The following charts are included to help remind readers of the timeline of events relative
to Guccifer 2.0, including the date specific documents were published:
Image Courtesy Of The Forensicator
Image Courtesy of the Forensicator
This writer previously
opined on the apparent invulnerability of the Russiagate saga to factual refutation. One
cannot blame the public for such narrative immortality, as the establishment-backed press has
made every effort to confuse and conflate the alterations made to documents published by
Guccifer 2.0 and the WikiLeaks releases. One can only hope, however, that this reminder of
their distinct state will help raise public skepticism of a narrative based on no evidence
whatsoever.
It is also especially important to reconsider Julian Assange's statements and texts in light
of his ongoing isolation from the outside world, which has prevented him from commenting
further on an infinite array of subjects including Guccifer 2.0 and the "Russian hacking"
saga.
Winston S. contributed to the content of this report.
platyops , 22 minutes ago
The name was Seth Rich. They robbed him for his watch and money but forgot to take the
watch and money. Yes that makes as much sense as Dr. Ford and her imagination party!
Dems lie and maybe kill people but they do lie for sure!
Nature_Boy_Wooooo , 33 minutes ago
All signs point to a young Bernie Sanders supporter at the DNC named Seth Rich.
Surftown , 2 hours ago
Brennan is Guccifer 2.0 using NSA Toolkit ( hacked and released) to feign Russia -- to
promote the fake Russia interference narrative leading to the FISA warrant justification, or
better yet, to the Direct Obama FISA approval/override to approve surveillance of Mr
Trump.
Endgame Napoleon , 1 hour ago
There are a bunch of competing smartphone apps, letting you convert Word docs to PDFs,
believe it or not.
Maybe, they only work in limited form, but you can write a resume (or whatever) into the
app, saving it in Word, converting it to PDF and sending it to your email.
Real programmers seem to scoff at the technical precision of those apps, so maybe, they
are not as sophisticated as they appear to non-techies.
The sequencing of this is weird. If I read it right, it sounds like several publications
received the "converted" versions -- the screenshots or PDFs -- of some emails before
Wikileaks released the actual, non-converted emails.
Who released those to the media organizations, and how did they have access to the machine
containing the emails, enabling them to make screenshots, convert them to PDFs or whatever
they did to provide representations of the emails, not the actual emails that Wikileaks later
released?
bh2 , 2 hours ago
Actually, William Binney et al demonstrated the email transfer could not have been
effected outside the four walls of the DNC because the required network speeds did not exist
at that time to any external location, least of all one located outside the US.
The only way that transfer could happen in the time logged was onto a device located on
the DNC LAN.
Seth Rich is the person Assange all but directly named as the source.
These two things, taken together, provide a compelling refutation of the DNC fairy tale
that the emails were pilfered by Russia (or any other outside actor).
JimmyJones , 2 hours ago
Bunny said the download speed was indicating a USB thumb drive was used
medium giraffe , 2 hours ago
IIRC the transfer speed was similar to a USB bus speed, meaning it wasn't even transferred
over a local network, but by a USB flash device directly connected to a DNC PC or laptop.
Endgame Napoleon , 1 hour ago
The US Congress is so unprofessional, allowing this circus about high-school parties to
commandeer a SCOTUS confirmation hearing, but did you ever hear any of them trying to get to
the bottom of this complex stuff, calling in technical experts to explain this evidence to
voters?
"... Kiev has become an accidental, burdensome ally to the West. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization only paid lip service to future Ukrainian membership, while the EU, which never had any intention of taking in Ukraine, pushed an association agreement out of bureaucratic habit more than strategic vision. ..."
"... The least charitably inclined claim that Poroshenko prosecuted the war in eastern Ukraine as a way of delaying reform. What's undeniable is that the shaky ceasefire leaves the Kiev government at the mercy of Putin and his proxies. Should anything start going right for Poroshenko, the fighting could flare back up at any moment. ..."
"... Everybody in Kiev understands that there's no way of reconquering lost territory by force. Ukrainian politicians publicly pledge to win back breakaway regions through reform and economic success. What they hope for is that sanctions will cause enough problems inside Russia that the Kremlin will run out of resources to sabotage Ukraine. Wishful thinking won't replace the painful reforms ahead. ..."
May 19, 2015 | http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/05/17/why-this-ukrainian-revolution-may-be-doomed-too/
At home, there is the possibility of more protests, a paralyzed government, and the rise of politicians seeking accommodation
with Putin. "Slow and unsuccessful reforms are a bigger existential threat than the Russian aggression," said Oleksiy Melnyk, a security
expert at Kiev's Razumkov Center. Even if Ukrainians don't return to the street, they'll get a chance to voice their discontent at
the ballot box. Local elections are due in the fall - and the governing coalition between Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk
is so shaky that nobody can rule out an early parliamentary vote.
In its international relations, Ukraine is living on borrowed time - and money. A dispute over restructuring $23 billion in debt
broke into the open last week with the Finance Ministry accusing foreign creditors of not negotiating in good faith ahead of a June
deadline. An EU summit this week is likely to end in more disappointment, as Western European countries are reluctant to grant Ukrainians
visa-free travel.
Kiev has become an accidental, burdensome ally to the West. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization only paid lip service to future
Ukrainian membership, while the EU, which never had any intention of taking in Ukraine, pushed an association agreement out of bureaucratic
habit more than strategic vision.
... ... ...
The least charitably inclined claim that Poroshenko prosecuted the war in eastern Ukraine as a way of delaying reform. What's
undeniable is that the shaky ceasefire leaves the Kiev government at the mercy of Putin and his proxies. Should anything start going
right for Poroshenko, the fighting could flare back up at any moment.
Ukrainian security officials say that the enemy forces gathering in the separatist regions are at their highest capability yet.
The most alarming observation is that the once ragtag band of rebels - backed up by regular Russian troops in critical battles -
is increasingly looking like a real army thanks to weapons and training provided by Russia.
... ... ...
Everybody in Kiev understands that there's no way of reconquering lost territory by force. Ukrainian politicians publicly pledge
to win back breakaway regions through reform and economic success. What they hope for is that sanctions will cause enough problems
inside Russia that the Kremlin will run out of resources to sabotage Ukraine. Wishful thinking won't replace the painful reforms
ahead.
... it appears that 21st century sexual politics now affords women the best of all worlds. She may now participate as an equal
in dorm party drinking games with men.
And yet she remains so vulnerable that 35 years later an alleged incident involving the exposure of a (presumably flaccid)
male member - as a result of such activities - seemingly merits serious investigation as an 'assault'...
"UK Prime Minister Theresa May suffered political humiliation in Salzburg, when European
Union (EU) leaders rebuffed her appeal to give at least conditional support to her Chequers
proposal for a "soft Brexit."
May was given only 10 minutes to address EU heads of state Wednesday, after dinner at the
informal summit, during which she appealed to her audience, "You are participants in our
debate, not just observers."
She said she had counted on at least supportive noises for her "serious and workable"
plan, given that she was seeking to head off a potential challenge from the
"hard-Brexit"/Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party. She warned that the UK could be
torn apart -- with respect to Northern Ireland and Scotland, as well as by social tensions;
that if her government fell, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party could win a general election; and
cited the potential damage to the EU itself of lost trade, investment and military support
from the UK.
Instead, her address was met with silence and her implied threats were stonewalled, as the
main players within the EU combined the next day to declare her proposals to be
"unworkable.
No matter how these conflicts play out, Britain and the whole of Europe face a worsening
crisis that threatens to tear the EU apart. The growth of both inter-imperialist and social
antagonisms found dramatic form in Brexit, which the dominant sections of the City of London,
big business, all the major parties and Britain's allies in the US and Europe all opposed.
Yet two years later, May is fighting a desperate struggle against her anti-EU "hard-Brexit"
faction, the US is led by a president who has declared his support for the breakup of the EU,
and numerous far-right governments have taken power in part by exploiting popular hostility
to EU-dictated austerity."
"worsening crisis that threatens to tear the EU-(and hence NATO)- apart. " .
Prosvirnin
is the most talented writer.
Limonov
has by far the most colorful personality.
Dugin
has been the most effective at promoting himself in the West. Prokhanov probably has the most name
recognition in Russia. Galkovsky created the most powerful memes.
Krylov
provided the esoteric flavoring.
And yet out of all of Russia's
right-wing intellectuals
, there is perhaps none so unique as Egor Kholmogorov.
This
is ironic, because out of all of the above, he is the closest to the "golden mean" of the Russian
nationalist memeplex.
He is a realist on Soviet achievements,
crimes, and lost opportunities, foregoing both the Soviet nostalgia of Prokhanov, the kneejerk Sovietophobia
of Prosvirnin, and the unhinged conspiracy theories of Galkovsky. He is a normal, traditional Orthodox
Christian, in contrast to the "atheism plus" of Prosvirnin, the mystical obscurantism of Duginism, and the
esoteric experiments of Krylov. He has time neither for the college libertarianism of Sputnik i Pogrom
hipster nationalism, nor the angry "confiscate and divide" rhetoric of the National Bolsheviks.
Instead of wasting his time on
ideological rhetoric, he reads Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century and writes
reviews
about it on his website.
And about 224 other books
.
And this brings us to what makes
Kholmogorov so unique: He is an extremely well-read autodidact.
This allows him to write informed and
engaging articles on a very wide variety of different topics and breaking news.
In my opinion, Kholmogorov is simply the
best modern Russian right-wing
intellectual
, period.
Unfortunately, he is almost entirely
unknown in the English-speaking world; he does not angle for interviews with Western media outlets like
Prosvirnin, nor does he energetically pursue foreign contacts like Dugin. Over the years I have done my very
small part to remedy this situation, translating two of Kholmogorov's articles (
Europe's
Week of Human Sacrifice
;
A Cruel French Lesson
). Still, there's only so much one blogger with many other things to write about
can do.
Happily, a multilingual Russian fan of
Kholmogorov has stepped up to the plate: Fluctuarius Argenteus. Incidentally, he is a fascinating fellow in
his own right – he is a well recognized expert in Spanish history and culture – though his insistence on
anonymity constrains what I can reveal, at least beyond his wish to be the "Silver Surfer" to Kholmogorov's
Galactus.
We hope to make translations of
Kholmogorov's output consistently available on The Unz Review in the months to come.
In the meantime, I am privileged to
present the first Fluctuarius-translated Kholmogorov article for your delectation.
***
A New Martin Luther?: James Damore's Case from a Russian Conservative Perspective
Google fires employee James Damore
for "perpetuating gender stereotypes.
– You persecute your employees for
having opinions and violate the rights of White men, Centrists, and Conservatives.
– No, we don't. You're fired.
A conversation just like or similar to
this one recently took place in the office of one of modern information market monsters, the Google
Corporation.
Illustration to the Google scandal.
James Damore fired for "perpetuating gender stereotypes". Source: Screenshot of Instragram user bluehelix.
Google knows almost everything about us,
including the contents of our emails, our addresses, our voice samples (
OK Google
), our favorite
stuff, and, sometimes, our sexual preferences. Google used to be on the verge of literally looking at the
world with our own eyes through Google Glass, but this prospect appears to have been postponed, probably
temporarily. However, the threat of manipulating public opinion through search engine algorithms has been
discussed in the West for a long while, even to the point of becoming a central
House of Cards
plotline.
Conversely, we know next to nothing
about Google. Now, thanks to an ideological scandal that shook the company, we suddenly got a glimpse of
corporate values and convictions that the company uses a roadmap to influencing us in a major way, and
American worldview even more so. Suddenly, Google was revealed to be a system permeated by ideology,
suffused with Leftist and aggressively feminist values.
The story goes this way. In early
August, an anonymous manifesto titled
Google's Ideological Echo Chamber
was circulated through the
local network of Google. The author lambasted the company's ideological climate, especially its policy of
so-called diversity. This policy has been adopted by almost all of US companies, and Google has gone as far
as to appoint a "chief diversity officer". The goal of the polity is to reduce the number of white
cisgendered male employees, to employ as many minorities and women as possible and to give them fast-track
promotions – which, in reality, gives them an unfair, non-market based advantage.
The author argues that Leftism and
"diversity" policies lead to creating an "echo chamber" within the company, where a person only talks to
those who share their opinions, and, through this conversation, is reinforced in the opinion that their
beliefs are the only ones that matter. This "echo chamber" narrows one's intellectual horizon and undermines
work efficiency, with following "the party line" taking precedence over real productivity.
In contrast to Google's buzzwords of
"vision" and "innovation", the author claims that the company has lost its sight behind its self-imposed
ideological blindfold and is stuck in a morass.
As Google employs intellectuals, argues
the critic, and most modern Western intellectuals are from the Left, this leads to creating a closed Leftist
clique within the company. If the Right rejects everything contrary to the God>human>nature hierarchy, the
Left declares all natural differences between humans to be nonexistent or created by social constructs.
The central Leftist idea is the class
struggle, and, given that the proletariat vs. bourgeoisie struggle is now irrelevant, the atmosphere of
struggle has been transposed onto gender and race relations. Oppressed Blacks are fighting against White
oppressors, oppressed women challenge oppressive males. And the corporate management (and, until recently,
the US presidency) is charged with bringing the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to life by imposing the
"diversity" policy.
The critic argues that the witch-hunt
of Centrists and Conservatives, who are forced to conceal their political alignment or resign from the job,
is not the only effect of this Leftist tyranny. Leftism also leads to inefficiency, as the coveted job goes
not to the best there is but to the "best woman of color". There are multiple educational or motivation
programs open only to women or minorities. This leads to plummeting efficiencies, disincentivizes White men
from putting effort into work, and creates a climate of nervousness, if not sabotage. Instead of churning
out new ground-breaking products, opines the critic, Google wastes too much effort on fanning the flames of
class struggle.
What is the proposed solution?
Stop diving people into "oppressors" and
"the oppressed" and forcefully oppressing the alleged oppressors. Stop branding every dissident as an
immoral scoundrel, a racist, etc.
The diversity of opinion must apply to
everyone. The company must stop alienating Conservatives, who are, to call a spade a spade, a minority that
needs their rights to be protected. In addition, conservatively-inclined people have their own advantages,
such as a focused and methodical approach to work.
Fight all kinds of prejudice, not only
those deemed worthy by the politically correct America.
End diversity programs discriminatory
towards White men and replace them with non-discriminatory ones.
Have an unbiased assessment of the costs
and efficiency of diversity programs, which are not only expensive but also pit one part of the company's
employees against the other.
Instead of gender and race differences,
focus on psychological safety within the company. Instead of calling to "feel the others' pain", discuss
facts. Instead of cultivating sensitivity and soft skins, analyze real issues.
Admit that not all racial or gender
differences are social constructs or products of oppression. Be open towards the study of human nature.
The last point proved to be the most
vulnerable, as the author of the manifesto went on to formulate his ideas on male vs. female differences
that should be accepted as fact if Google is to improve its performance.
The differences argued by the author are
as follows:
Women are more interested in people, men
are more interested in objects.
Women are prone to cooperation, men to
competition. All too often, women can't take the methods of competition considered natural among men.
Women are looking for a balance between
work and private life, men are obsessed with status and
Feminism played a major part in
emancipating women from their gender roles, but men are still strongly tied to theirs. If the society seeks
to "feminize" men, this will only lead to them leaving STEM for "girly" occupations (which will weaken
society in the long run).
It was the think piece on the natural
differences of men and women that provoked the greatest ire. The author was immediately charged with
propagating outdated sexist stereotypes, and the Google management commenced a search for the dissent, with
a clear purpose of giving him the sack. On 8th August, the heretic was revealed to be James Damore, a
programmer. He was fired with immediate effect because, as claimed by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, "portions of
the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our
workplace". Damore announced that he was considering a lawsuit.
We live in a post-Trump day and age,
that is why the Western press is far from having a unanimous verdict on the Damore affair. Some call him "a
typical sexist", for others he is a "free speech martyr". By dismissing Damore from his job, Google
implicitly confirmed that all claims of an "echo chamber" and aggressive Leftist intolerance were precisely
on point. Julian Assange has already tweeted: "Censorship is for losers, WikiLeaks is offering a job to
fired Google engineer James Damore".
It is highly plausible that the Damore
Memo may play the same breakthrough part in discussing the politically correct insanity as WikiLeaks and
Snowden files did in discussing the dirty laundry of governments and secret services. If it comes to pass,
Damore will make history as a new Martin Luther challenging the Liberal "Popery".
However, his intellectual audacity
notwithstanding, it should be noted that Damore's own views are vulnerable to Conservative criticism.
Unfortunately, like the bulk of Western thought, they fall into the trap of Leftist "cultural
constructivism" and Conservative naturalism.
Allegedly, there are only two possible
viewpoints. Either gender and race differences are biologically preordained and therefore unremovable and
therefore should always be taken into account, or those differences are no more than social constructs and
should be destroyed for being arbitrary and unfair.
The ideological groundwork of the
opposing viewpoints is immediately apparent. Both equate "biological" with "natural" and therefore "true",
and "social" with "artificial" and therefore "arbitrary" and "false". Both sides reject "prejudice" in favor
of "vision", but politically correct Leftists reject only a fraction of prejudices while the critic calls
for throwing all of them away indiscriminately.
As a response, Damore gets slapped with
an accusation of drawing upon misogynist prejudice for his own ideas. Likewise, his view of Conservatives is
quite superficial. The main Conservative trait is not putting effort into routine work but drawing upon
tradition for creative inspiration. The Conservative principle is "innovation through tradition".
The key common mistake of both Google
Leftists and their critic is their vision of stereotypes as a negative distortion of some natural truth. If
both sides went for an in-depth reading of Edmund Burke, the "father of Conservatism", they would learn that
the prejudice is a colossal historical experience pressurized into a pre-logical form, a collective
consciousness that acts when individual reason fails or a scrupulous analysis is impossible. In such
circumstances, following the prejudice is a more sound strategy than contradicting it. Prejudice is
shorthand for common sense. Sometimes it oversimplifies things, but still works most of the time. And, most
importantly, all attempts to act "in spite of the prejudice" almost invariably end in disaster.
Illustration to the Google scandal. A
fox sits gazing at the Google's Ideological Echo Chamber exposing the ideas of the fired engineer James
Damore. Source: Screenshot of Instragram user bluehelix.
However, the modern era allows us to
diagnose our own prejudice and rationalize them so we could control them better, as opposed to blind
obedience or rejection. Moreover, if the issue of "psychological training" ever becomes relevant in a
country as conservative as Russia is, that is the problem we should concentrate on: analyzing the roots of
our prejudices and their efficient use.
The same could be argued for gender
relations. Damore opposes the Leftist "class struggle of the genders" with a technocratic model of
maximizing the profit from each gender's pros and cons. This functionalism appears to be logical in its own
way, but is indeed based on too broad assumptions, claiming that all women are unfit for competition, that
all of them like relationships and housekeeping while all men are driven by objects and career. And, as
Damore claims biological grounds for his assumptions, all our options boil down to mostly agreeing with him
or branding him as a horrible sexist and male chauvinist.
However, the fact that gender roles
historically developed based on biology but are, as a whole, a construct of society and culture does not
give an excuse to changing or tearing them down, as clamored by Leftists. Quite the contrary: the social,
cultural, and historical determinism of these roles gives us a reason to keep them in generally the same
form without any coups or revolutions.
First, that tradition is an
ever-growing accumulation of experience. Rejecting tradition is tantamount to social default and requires
very good reasons to justify. Second, no change of tradition occurs as a result of a "gender revolution",
only its parodic inversion. Putting men into high heels, miniskirts, and bras, fighting against urinals in
public WCs only reverses the polarity without creating true equality. The public consciousness still sees
the "male" as "superior", and demoting "masculinity" to "femininity" as a deliberate degradation of the
"superior". No good can come of it, just as no good came out of humiliating wealth and nobility during the
Communist revolution in Russia. What's happening now is not equal rights for women but the triumph of gender
Bolshevism.
Damore's error, therefore, consists in
abandoning the domain of the social and the historical to the enemy while limiting the Conservative sphere
of influence to the natural, biological domain. However, the single most valuable trait in conservative
worldview is defending the achievements of history and not just biological determinism.
The final goal of a Conservative
solution to the gender problem should not be limited to a rationalist functionalization of society. It
should lead to discovering a social cohesion where adhering to traditional male and female ways and
stereotypes (let's not call them roles – the world is not a stage, and men and women not merely players)
would not keep males and females from expressing themselves in other domains, provided they have a genuine
calling and talent.
The art of war is not typical of a
woman; however, women warriors such as Joan of Arc leave a much greater impact in historical memory. The art
of government is seen as mostly male, yet it makes great female rulers, marked not by functional usefulness
but true charisma, all the more memorable. The family is the stereotypical domain of the woman, which leads
to greater reverence towards fathers that put their heart and soul into their families.
Social cohesion, an integral part of it
being the harmony of men and women in the temple of the family, is the ideal to be pursued by our Russian,
Orthodox, Conservative society. It is the collapse of the family that made gender relations into such an
enormous issue in the West: men and women are no longer joined in a nucleus of solidarity but pitted against
one another as members of antagonistic classes. And this struggle, as the Damore Memo has demonstrated, is
already stymieing the business of Western corporations. Well, given our current hostile relations, it's
probably for the better.
The international working classes are racists. They are misogynists. Xenophobic transphobes.
They do not think the way we want them to. Some of them actually still believe in God. And they are
white supremacists. Anti-Semites. Gun-toting, Confederate-flag-flying rednecks. Most of them
have never even heard of terms like "intersectionality," "TERF," and so on.
They do not respect the corporate media. They think that news sources like the Washington
Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and so on, are basically propaganda
outlets for the global corporations and oligarchs who own them, and thus are essentially no
different from FOX, whose pundits they believe every word of.
Their minds are so twisted by racism and xenophobia that they can't understand how global
capitalism, the graduated phase-out of national sovereignty, the privatization of virtually
everything, the debt-enslavement of nearly everyone, and the replacement of their so-called
"cultures" with an ubiquitous, smiley-faced, gender-neutral, non-oppressive,
corporate-friendly, Disney simulation of culture are actually wonderfully progressive steps
forward on the road to a more peaceful, less offensive world.
Now this has been proved in numerous studies with all kinds of charts and graphs and so on.
And not only by the corporate statisticians, and the corporate media, and liberal think tanks.
Why, just this week, Mehdi Hasan, in an exasperated
jeremiad in the pages of The Intercept , that bastion of fearless, adversarial journalism
owned by billionaire Pierre Omidyar, proved, once again, that Donald Trump was elected because
PEOPLE ARE GODDAMN RACISTS!
Russia now awaits possible new sanctions as a result of its involvement in the United
States election and as a result of the potential nerve agent attack in England.
Who the **** writes this ****? Who believes those baldfaced lies?
Hass C. , 49 minutes ago
A little glimpse into how much influence Putin has on his own economy. Which is not much.
He is trying hard to remove Russia's testicles from the vice of US control but this is a slow
process as the economy and capital market are totally open, except for military production
which is under his own control and pretty much protected from the whims of markets.
The steady increase of sanctions has the objective of forcing Putin's hand into lashing
out and trying a dirigistic neo-stalinist approach, but this would cut Russia from foreign
technology and capital, make the best work force fly abroad, resulting in final
implosion.
Whether Russia survives as an industrial economy till US and the dollar loses its power
over it is anybody's guess. The more Russia is weakened at that time, the more likely China
will flood it with its love.
Ms No , 51 minutes ago
The thing with Putin is that he is a great leader and Patriot. He wishes us no harm and
would like to be our friends (the western population); however, Putin isn't motivated by
saving the world, your nation or you personally. His loyalty is to his people and their
future.
All actions that Putin has taken that ended up saving your *** were simply a benefit
gained by the happenstance of what benefits us benefitting him.
Putin will save his own (hopefully) but you have to save yourself. Remember that.
LaugherNYC , 8 minutes ago
If Putin wants to be friends with the West, then why did he reverse the course of openness
to the EU and NATO, the trend towards normalization, and turn hard right into an
ultra-nationalist despot, starting to spout the diseased philosophy of Ilyin, becoming a
xenophobic tin pot kleptocrat, like some African warlord, funneling funds and assets offshore
through shell companies and his buddies?
It will be interesting to see what happens when/if there is a real global investigation of
Putin's offshored assets, and an expose of how he has plundered his country. He will be the
very last to repatriate - nor should we want him to be forced into it. If you close his
escape hatch, Vlad will be forced to live up to his rhetoric, which is very Rapture-esque,
very nuclear nightmare, very Judgement Day Armageddon
Anonymous IX , 1 hour ago
Where's Billy Browder? What's next on his agenda? Billy, btw, the next time you allow
anyone to film you, have your handlers minimize the obvious drug and/or electronic mind
control over you a little earlier. You seem to "wake up" an awful lot...you know...where your
head snaps up like you didn't realize something...or you're "waking up" from something. Just
a helpful hint. You did so chronically throughout the Magnitsky film. Here's what a mind
looks like on "mind control." Don't look for eggs in a frying pan.
Ms No , 50 minutes ago
So mind control looks something like sleep apnea?
Savvy , 1 hour ago
the desire to keep assets out of the reach of the United States Treasury
Can you say 'capital flight'? I knew you could. Not a country in the world is going to
trust the US with a grain of salt.
Well done Trump and your $864billon/month deficit spending.
Ms No , 49 minutes ago
We really should stop referring to it as the US treasury. Its something else.
opport.knocks , 3 minutes ago
Lendery?
Cashlaudratomat?
Ponzi-prefecture?
The US Usury?
hooligan2009 , 1 hour ago
according to polls aired by tv station "euro news", putin's ratings are down 10% because
he wants to raise the retirement ages of men to 65 from 60 (male life expectancy is 66) and
womens retirement age from 55 to 60 (womens life expectancy is 71).
i guess this is proof that sanctions are working. putin has to raise the retirement age
and russians die 12-15 years earlier than those in the west.
oh, the humanity!
sanctions work: they hurt the bottom 50%, not those better off.
Balance-Sheet , 58 minutes ago
Good to note this and it appears to be correct. Male life expectancy is 65/66 on average
so many will die reaching for their first tiny pension check. I do not know why Putin simply
does not seek to save money by ordering people to be shot at 65 as a humane measure. Russia
has shot 10s of millions over the past 100 years so this will maintain a tradition.
I am interested in your remark on Putin's popularity- he appears to be slipping into
megalomania also typical of Russian leaders so perhaps he will be removed. Raising the
retirement age in Russia is recklessly stupid from a political perspective in an impoverished
country established as Earth's largest resource treasure house.
Ms No , 44 minutes ago
War and sanctions are expensive. Through this evil the world is impoverished. Zionist fiat
currency is also crushingly expensive. We would be exceedingly wealthy without all of this. A
whole different world could exist.
That probably wont happen until the next age (a golden age) though because people now are
inherently stupid and lack any connection. Sticking their appendenges in everything and
sinking completely in dense materialism is more important.
Hass C. , 39 minutes ago
Can you specify why you say he "appears to be slipping into megalomania"? Been observing
him for years and his megalomania index seems stable to me.
Also, Russian demography makes raising the retirement age necessary, they say. Their birth
rate is increasing but so does life expectancy.
opport.knocks , 1 minute ago
He will not be able to run for re-election so now is the time to implement necessary but
unpopular reforms.
Shemp 4 Victory , 38 minutes ago
according to polls aired by tv station "euro news"
Well, if "euro news" said, then so it is. Free European press can't lie.
hooligan2009 , 28 minutes ago
haha.. yes.. i watched it for ten minutes, so the same four headlines scrolled through in
a cycle three times in those ten minutes. pope, a survivor underneath a boat after two days
in lake victoria, blunt brexit and putins popularity.
nothing approcahing any quality whatsoever. i was just making sure the other side of the
house hadn't got past "stupid"!!!
123dobryden , 1 hour ago
Rossia. Davaj
notfeelinthebern , 1 hour ago
Yeah, he's giving the west the proverbial finger. Instead of creating a bridge to trade
and friendship, the west is doing nothing but trying to destroy an imaginary enemy.
Matteo S. , 1 hour ago
It is not imaginary from the anglo-saxon empire's point of view.
The anglo-saxon empire has been playing this game for more than 3 centuries.
It first constantly attacked France until it definitely emasculated it with Napoleon's
downfall.
Then it immediately went to the jugular of Russia. And on this occasion was formulated
Mackinder's gropolitics principles.
Then it went for Germany.
Then in again against USSR/Russia.
This is not due to imagination. This is a deliberate and structural way to interact with
the rest of the world. The anglo-saxon empire hates competition and tries to destroy any
potential competitor instead of agreeing to cooperate with peers.
Ms No , 42 minutes ago
The Anglo Saxon empire was occupied by Zionist money lending. They controlled the British
empire. A lot of those blueblood royal were theirs to begin with also. They were also the
bankers of Rome.
Matteo S. , 27 minutes ago
Forget your fantasies about the Catholic Church and the pope.
It is Protestants who have always dominated the anglo-saxon empire. Protestants from
Britain but also from Netherlands, Germany, France, who allied with the English and Scot
Protestants to build their mammonite empire.
And for one Rothschild family, you had the Astors, Vanderbilt's, Rockefellers, Carnegie's,
Morgans, Fords, ... etc, none of which were jewish.
The Zionists are just the tail of the anglo-saxon dog.
justdues , 1 hour ago
"Russia now awaits possible new sanctions as a result of it,s ALLEGED involvement in the
United States election and as a result of the ALLEGED nerve agent attack in England .
FIFTylers
hooligan2009 , 1 hour ago
quite right. no trial, no evidence and harsh sentences/convictions via trade
embargoes.
russia offered reciprocation so it could try Browder. the west said no, invented crimes
culminating in a Magnitsy act.
if individuals in Europe, the UK or the US were convicted and imprisoned without trial
governments in those places would be thrown out on their ear.
as it is, western governments can bring the entire planet to the brink of war, based on
their political opinions - with no evidence, no trial and no opportunity to argue a case for
a defence of charges.
JibjeResearch , 1 hour ago
lolz ahaha.... a bad choice..., any fiat is a bad choice...
Go phy.gold or cryptos (BTC, ETH, XTZ),
phy.silver is good too...
An Shrubbery , 40 minutes ago
Cryptosporidiosis are no different than fiat, maybe even a little worse. They are NOT
anonymous, and are becoming less and less so and eventually will be co-opted by deep state
operatives such as googoyle, facefuck, Twatter, amazog, etc. for the deep state. There is an
absolute record of your every transaction in the blockchain.
It's just a matter of time. There will be a crypto that we're all forced to use in the
near future, and big brother will have absolute control of it.
my new username , 1 hour ago
This has zero impact on working class Americans. It only affects liberals and rich
people.
DEDA CVETKO , 1 hour ago
Everything has impact on everything else. We are all, in some bizarre ways,
interconnected. Deripaska (pictured above) has a virtual global monopoly on aluminum trade.
Guess who uses aluminum? You guessed it: people like you and I. The airplane industry.
Consumer industry. The military. Medical equipment industry. Construction industry. Food
industry. Everyone!
There is no such thing as isolationism anymore. It wasn't possible even during Warren
Harding's presidency, let alone now. This deranged notion that Donald Trump will somehow
insulate us all from the effects of his aggressive overseas posturing is deranged beyond
description.
By initiating an attack on the Syrian province of Latakia, home to the Russia-operated
Khmeimim Air Base, Israel, France and the United States certainly understood they were flirting
with disaster. Yet they went ahead with the operation anyways.
On the pretext that Iran was preparing to deliver a shipment of weapon production systems to
Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israeli F-16s, backed by French missile launches in the Mediterranean,
destroyed what is alleged to have been a Syrian Army ammunition depot.
What happened next is already well established : a Russian Il-20 reconnaissance aircraft,
which the Israeli fighter jets had reportedly used for cover, was shot down by an S-200
surface-to-air missile system operated by the Syrian Army. Fifteen Russian servicemen perished
in the incident, which could have been avoided had Israel provided more than just one-minute
warning before the attack. As a result, chaos ensued.
Whether or not there is any truth to the claim that Iran was preparing to deliver
weapon-making systems to Hezbollah in Lebanon is practically a moot point based on flawed
logic. Conducting an attack against an ammunition depot in Syria – in the vicinity of
Russia's Khmeimim Air Base – to protect Israel doesn't make much sense when the
consequence of such "protective measures" could have been a conflagration on the scale of World
War III. That would have been an unacceptable price to achieve such a limited objective, which
could have been better accomplished with the assistance of Russia, as opposed to NATO-member
France, for example. In any case, there is a so-called "de-confliction system" in place between
Israel and Russia designed to prevent exactly this sort of episode from occurring.
And then there is the matter of the timing of the French-Israeli incursion.
Just hours before Israeli jets pounded the suspect Syrian ammunition storehouse, Putin and
Turkish President Recep Erdogan were in Sochi
hammering out the details on a plan to reduce civilian casualties as Russian and Syrian
forces plan to retake Idlib province, the last remaining terrorist stronghold in the country.
The plan envisioned the creation of a demilitarized buffer zone between government and rebel
forces, with observatory units to enforce the agreement. In other words, it is designed to
prevent exactly what Western observers have been fretting about, and that is unnecessary
'collateral damage.'
So what do France and Israel do after a relative peace is declared, and an effective measure
for reducing casualties? The cynically attack Syria, thus exposing those same Syrian civilians
to the dangers of military conflict that Western capitals proclaim to be worried
about.
Israel moves to 'damage control'
Although Israel has taken the rare move of acknowledging its involvement in the Syrian
attack, even expressing "sorrow" for the loss of Russian life, it insists that Damascus should
be held responsible for the tragedy. That is a highly debatable argument.
By virtue of the fact that the French and Israeli forces were teaming up to attack the
territory of a sovereign nation, thus forcing Syria to respond in self-defense, it is rather
obvious where ultimate blame for the downed Russian plane lies.
"The blame for the downing of the Russian plane and the deaths of its crew members lies
squarely on the Israeli side," Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said.
"The actions of the Israeli military were not in keeping with the spirit of the
Russian-Israeli partnership, so we reserve the right to respond."
Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, took admirable efforts to prevent the blame
game from reaching the boiling point, telling reporters that the
downing of the Russian aircraft was the result of "a chain of tragic circumstances, because the
Israeli plane didn't shoot down our jet."
Nevertheless, following this extremely tempered and reserved remark, Putin vowed that Russia
would take extra precautions to protect its troops in Syria, saying these will be "the steps
that everyone will notice."
Now there is much consternation
in Israel that the IDF will soon find its freedom to conduct operations against targets in
Syria greatly impaired. That's because Russia, having just suffered a 'friendly-fire' incident
from its own antiquated S-200 system, may now be more open to the idea of providing Syria with
the more advanced S-300 air-defense system.
Earlier this year, Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached an agreement
that prevented those advanced defensive weapons from being employed in the Syrian theater. That
deal is now in serious jeopardy. In addition to other defensive measures, Russia could
effectively create the conditions for a veritable no-fly zone across Western Syria in that it
would simply become too risky for foreign aircraft to venture into the zone.
The entire situation, which certainly did not go off as planned, has forced Israel into
damage control as they attempt to prevent their Russian counterparts from effectively shutting
down Syria's western border.
On Thursday, Israeli Major-General Amikam Norkin and Brigadier General Erez Maisel, as well
as officers of the Intelligence and Operations directorates of the Israeli air force will pay
an official visit to Moscow where they are expected to repeat their concerns of "continuous
Iranian attempts to transfer strategic weapons to the Hezbollah terror organization and to
establish an Iranian military presence in Syria."
Moscow will certainly be asking their Israeli partners if it is justifiable to subject
Russian servicemen to unacceptable levels of danger, up to and including death, in order to
defend Israeli interests. It remains to be seen if the two sides can find, through the fog of
war, an honest method for bringing an end to the Syria conflict, which would go far at
relieving Israel's concerns of Iranian influence in the region.
CoCosAB , 1 minute ago
The TERRORISTS keep doing the same **** all the time... And ***** PUTIN keeps cool!
Fecund Stench , 2 minutes ago
'There will, however, be some form of no-fly zone and as Vladimir Putin stated Russia will
take "the steps that everyone will notice."'
Failure to notice bespeaks complicity in the Ziomedia.
toady , 12 minutes ago
"...if it is justifiable to subject Russian servicemen to unacceptable levels of danger,
up to and including death, in order to defend Israeli interests."
Surely a few dozen Russians isn't comparable to all the Jews that died in the
holocaust.
Just as all the Jews that died in the holocaust aren't comparable to all the the Russians
that died in wwII.
isn't religion and the victim mentality a fun game to play?
JoeTurner , 13 minutes ago
Israel must have its lebensraum.....
bh2 , 45 minutes ago
Putin is not going to initiate WWIII over Syria or any military action within it. The
outcome in Syria affects Russian national interests. But unlike Crimea, it does not affect
any of Russia's vital national interests.
rejected , 35 minutes ago
If Syria was to shoot down one (1) American jet with one (1) pilot the US would respond
like it was Pearl Harbor and Syria for sure isn't vital to America's national interests
unless one considers results like Libya a national interest.
rejected , 1 hour ago
I seriously doubt Putin will allow the S-300 to Syria. Like the US, Russia is controlled
by the 5th column Jews inside Russia itself except the control is not as complete as in the
US. The Russian plane is Russia's USS Liberty.... and it is possible, and IMO that it was
France that shot down the plane. The fact that they fired missiles at the same time and that
has disappeared down the memory hole is very suspicious.
The West is out of control They talk International law but consider them selves above it.
Israel, France, UK, US have no 'right' to attack Syria. They have no right to be within
Syrian borders. They are now all allied with the terrorists and provide them with weapons.
Israel actually provides for their wounds at Israeli hospitals.
By the old definition of terrorist, it is the West that fits the description.
As for Mr. Putin,,, He has done what was unthinkable a short time ago. He has allowed the
murder of Russians. Not once,,, not twice,,, but now three times with only a whimper. He
actually defended the aggressors this time. This will only serve to make them double down. If
any more Russians are murdered it will be he who is guilty by lack of action. Even Somalia
fought back when the US tried an attack.
The author here defends Putin as acting with a cool head as the author, like so many
cowards thee days, dismisses those fifteen lives. He will also be responsible when the next
batch of Russians are sacrificed for world peace as the Western marauders, the US especially,
murders their way to world domination like Germany's Hitler and France's Napoleon.
It was Russia that saved the world from those two dictators and is why Russia stands proud
today. It is Russia's history to savagely defend Russians and Russia. Today with thousands of
Russians killed by Ukrainian Nazis supported and armed by the West (MAGA) and now Russians
killed in Syria by the West with little to no response from Russia other than "Its against
international law" and authors like this that nonchalantly discard Russian lives as necessary
for world peace.
Mr. Putin just needs to hand over the keys to Russia,,, for world peace of course.
"All the leading economic indicators are great to healthy ... Homelessness is worse than I
have ever seen but I do not see any Latino or Asian homeless people. It is nearly 100% white
or African Americans. Most appear to be drugged out losers."
A perfect example of what b meant when he said that the only people suffering are the
poor. Meaning that nobody cares about them and, often because they are prevented from doing
so, they rarely vote. And when they do vote there aren't any candidates to vote for.
The last sentence just about sums neo-liberals up: most of the homeless are informed, are
'drugged out losers.'
So that's OK is it? Ever wonder why they are drugged out? Or what the rules were in the game
they lost?
The international working classes are racists. They are misogynists. Xenophobic transphobes.
They do not think the way we want them to. Some of them actually still believe in God. And they are
white supremacists. Anti-Semites. Gun-toting, Confederate-flag-flying rednecks. Most of them
have never even heard of terms like "intersectionality," "TERF," and so on.
They do not respect the corporate media. They think that news sources like the Washington
Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and so on, are basically propaganda
outlets for the global corporations and oligarchs who own them, and thus are essentially no
different from FOX, whose pundits they believe every word of.
Their minds are so twisted by racism and xenophobia that they can't understand how global
capitalism, the graduated phase-out of national sovereignty, the privatization of virtually
everything, the debt-enslavement of nearly everyone, and the replacement of their so-called
"cultures" with an ubiquitous, smiley-faced, gender-neutral, non-oppressive,
corporate-friendly, Disney simulation of culture are actually wonderfully progressive steps
forward on the road to a more peaceful, less offensive world.
Now this has been proved in numerous studies with all kinds of charts and graphs and so on.
And not only by the corporate statisticians, and the corporate media, and liberal think tanks.
Why, just this week, Mehdi Hasan, in an exasperated
jeremiad in the pages of The Intercept , that bastion of fearless, adversarial journalism
owned by billionaire Pierre Omidyar, proved, once again, that Donald Trump was elected because
PEOPLE ARE GODDAMN RACISTS!
A confidential report by Belgian investigators confirms that British intelligence services
hacked state-owned Belgian telecom giant Belgacom on behalf of Washington, it was revealed on
Thursday (20 September).
The report, which summarises a five-year judicial inquiry, is almost complete and was
submitted to the office of Justice Minister Koen Geens, a source close to the case told AFP,
confirming Belgian press reports
The matter will now be discussed within Belgium's National Security Council, which
includes the Belgian Prime Minister with top security ministers and officials.
Contacted by AFP, the Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office and the cabinet of Minister
Geens refused to comment .
####
NO. Shit. Sherlock.
So the real question is that if this has known since 2013, why now? BREXIT?
"... The EU is not perfect and has costs, but measured against what it has achieved, it is a great success. ..."
"... The EU has brought peace to Europe for the longest period since Pax Romana (and that was not entirely peaceful). ..."
"... You're funny. The EU makes war by other means. The burden of disease in Greece, health loss, risk factors, and health financing, 2000–16: an analysis of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016 https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpub/PIIS2468-2667(18)30130-0.pdf ..."
"... The mortality rate for Greece is up approximately 50,000. All so Merkel in Germany, and Sarkozy and Hollande didn't have to go before their electorates and admit they were bailing out French and German banks through the backdoor. ..."
"... I guess all those little Balkan unpleasantnesses, the former Czechoslovakia and Bosnia and such, are not wars -- but then those are layable at the feet of NATO (that collection, as I recall it, of what, now, 29 member countries including all the Great Powers of the West) and the US imperium. ..."
"... The NATO establishment is about "making war," ..."
"... All of which is linked in significant ways to the economic "health" of the EU, from which lots of weapons flow in exchange for favors and money from the Destabilizers. ..."
"... In the meantime, the various stages are set, the players in the game of statism and nationalism and authoritarianism and neoliberalism are on their marks, the house lights are going out, and the long slow rise of the curtain is under way ..."
"... The period from the end of WWII to the Balkan Wars is still the longest period of peace since the Romans. I doubt you have ever lived through a war so I can't expect you to appreciate the difference between the Horrors of the Brussels Bureaucracy and the Horrors of Shelling and Bombing. ..."
"... I am not defending poor governance per se for the sake of defending the EU. But it is facile and fun to criticize it because one can make up all kinds of counter fantasies about how wonderful life would be without it. ..."
"... in the real world ..."
"... in the real world ..."
"... Ultimately, it's that simple. Merkel, Sarkozy, Hollande, and whoever else among the EU elites who chose to be complicit in killing substantial numbers of people so they could maintain themselves in power are scum. They are scum. They are scum. ..."
"... Fine, our elected leaders are all scum, but why does this mean that the EU is evil specifically. Why single it out? Why not advocate the overthrow of all centralized or unifying government? Move out to Montana to a cult and buy lots of guns or something. ..."
"... Ons should be very aware that EU directives comes mainly from the member states and that especially bad things that would never fly past an election could – and often is – spun by local government as "Big Bad Bruxelles is forcing poor little us to do this terrible thing to you poor people". Ala the British on trade deal with India and immigration of east-european workers. ..."
"... The EU does not have that much in the way of enforcement powers, that part is down-sourced to the individual member states. When a member state doesn't give a toss, it takes forever for some measure of sanctioning to spin up and usually it daily fines unto a misbehaving government, at the taxpayers expense (which of course those politicians who don't give a toss, are fine with since most of their cronies are not great taxpayers anyway). ..."
"... The solution is, patently, Tories out of power. Which I think will happen, certainly between now and 31 March 2019. Now would be better. Anyone thinking strategically in other parties in the UK (an oxymoron of a formulation, to be sure) would call for a no confidence vote the instant May's feet are on British soil. ..."
"... I doubt that this is personal, but what do I know. May is a nincompoop. The other heads of state patently, and quite rightly, don't respect her. Her presence has been useful to them only insofar as she could deliver a deal. ..."
"... I'd agree with your analysis of what happened – just glancing through the news today it seems that Macron in particular just lost patience, and the other leaders were happy to help him put the boot in. The EU has been trying to shore May up for a long time – the December agreement was little more than an attempt to protect her from an internal heave. This is a common dynamic in the EU – however much the leaders may dislike each other, they will usually prefer the person at the seat than the potential newcomer. ..."
"... But I think the EU has collectively decided that May is simply incapable of delivering any type of agreement, so there is no point in mincing words. They simply don't care any more if the Tory government collapses, or if they put Rees Mogg or Johnson in power. It makes absolutely zero difference to them. In fact, it might make it easier for the EU if the UK goes politically insane as they can then wash their hands of the problem. ..."
"... A colleague told me today he knows of several Northern Irish Republicans who voted leave, precisely because they thought this would create constitutional havoc and lead to a united Ireland. It seems at least some people were thinking strategically . ..."
"... British politicians apparently were supposed to negotiate Brexit among themselves. And once they had reached a (tentative) consensus the foreigners (the EU) were apparently supposed to bow down and accept the British proposal. ..."
"... Which means I never understood why the British media was treating the Chequers proposal as a serious proposal? And spending lots of time and articles discussing on how to convince the EU / the member states. ..."
"... As a Scot can I point out that it is English politicians who are responsible for this mess? ..."
Posted on
September 20, 2018 by Yves Smith Yves here. While the
specific observations in this post will be very familiar to readers (you've said the same
things in comments!), I beg to differ with calling the Government's Brexit negotiating stance a
strategy. It's bad habit plus lack of preparation and analysis.
And the UK's lack of calculation and self-awareness about how it is operating means it will
be unable to change course.
By Benjamin Martill, a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Dahrendorf Forum where he focuses on
Europe after Brexit. He is based at LSE IDEAS, the London School of Economics's foreign policy
think tank. The Dahrendorf Forum is a joint research venture between LSE and the Hertie School
of Governance in Berlin. Originally published at
openDemocracy
But is this the best strategy for advancing British interests? Here is the argument based on
the findings of a recent Dahrendorf
Forum working paper .
All eyes in British politics are on the negotiations between the UK and the EU over the
terms of the forthcoming British withdrawal from the Union, or Brexit. Surprisingly, questions
of bargaining strategy – once the preserve of diplomats and niche academic journals
– have become some of the most defining issues in contemporary British politics.
The New Politics of Bargaining
Cabinet disagreements over the conduct of the negotiations led to the resignation of David
Davis and Boris Johnson in early July 2018 and the issue continues to divide the ruling
Conservative party. Theresa May's most recent statements have all addressed the question of how
hard she has pushed Brussels in the talks.
But is the hard bargaining strategy appropriate, or will it ultimately harm the UK? The
salience of this question should occasion deeper analysis of the fundamentals of international
bargaining, given the extent to which the course of British politics will be determined by the
government's performance (or perceived performance) in the Brexit talks.
Driving a Hard Bargain
A hard-bargaining strategy isn't necessarily a poor one. To the extent it is workable, it
may even represent the sensible option for the UK.
Hard bargaining is characterised by negative representations of negotiating partners,
unwillingness to make concessions, issuance of unrealistic demands, threats to damage the
partner or exit the negotiations, representations of the talks in zero-sum terms, failure to
provide argumentation and evidence, and withholding of information. From diplomats' portrayal
of the EU as an uncooperative and bullying negotiating partner to a set of demands recognised
as unrealistic in Brussels and Britain alike, the UK's approach to the Brexit negotiations
scores highly on each of these measures.
The consensus in the academic literature is generally that hard bargaining works only
where a given party has a relative advantage . Powerful states have an incentive to engage
in hard bargaining, since by doing so they will be able to extract greater concessions from
weaker partners and maximise the chance of achieving an agreement on beneficial terms.
But weaker actors have less incentive to engage in hard bargaining, since they stand to lose
more materially if talks break down and reputationally if they're seen as not being backed by
sufficient power,
So which is Britain?
Power Distribution
The success of hard bargaining depends on the balance of power. But even a cursory
examination would seem to confirm that the UK does not hold the upper hand in the negotiations.
Consider three standard measures of
bargaining power: a country's economic and military capabilities, the available alternatives to
making a deal, and the degree of constraint emanating from the public.
When it comes to capabilities, the UK is a powerful state with considerable economic clout
and greater military resources than its size would typically warrant. It is the second-largest
economy in the EU (behind Germany) and its GDP is equal to that of the smallest 19 member
states. And yet in relative terms, the combined economic and military power of the EU27 dwarves
that of the UK: the EU economy is five times the size of the UK's.
Next, consider the alternatives. A 'no deal' scenario would be damaging for both the UK and
the EU, but the impact would be more diffuse for the EU member states. They would each lose one
trading partner, whereas the UK would lose all of its regional trading partners. Moreover, the
other powers and regional blocs often cited as alternative trading partners (the US, China, the
Commonwealth, ASEAN) are not as open as the EU economy to participation by external parties,
nor are they geographically proximate (the greatest determinant of trade flows), nor will any
deal be able to replicate the common regulatory structure in place in the EU. This asymmetric
interdependence strongly suggests that the UK is in greater need of a deal than the EU.
Finally, consider the extent of domestic constraints. Constraint enhances power by
credibly preventing a leader from offering too generous a deal to the other side. On the EU
side the constraints are clear: Barnier receives his mandate from the European Council (i.e.
the member states) to whom he reports frequently. When asked to go off-piste in the
negotiations, he has replied that he does not have the mandate to do so. On the UK side, by
contrast, there is no such mandate. British negotiators continually cite Eurosceptic opposition
to the EU's proposals in the cabinet, the Conservative party, and the public, but they are
unable to guarantee any agreement will receive legislative assent, and cannot cite any unified
position.
Perceptions of Power
But the real power distribution is not the only thing that matters. While the EU is the more
powerful actor on objective criteria, a number of key assumptions and claims made by the
Brexiteers have served to reinforce the perception that Britain has the upper hand.
First, on the question of capabilities, the discourse of British greatness (often based on
past notions of power and prestige) belies the UK's status as a middle power (at best) and
raises unrealistic expectations of what Britain's economic and military resources amount to.
Second, on the question of alternatives, the oft-repeated emphasis on 'global Britain' and the
UK's stated aim to build bridges with its friends and allies around the globe understates the
UK's reliance on Europe, the (low) demand for relations with an independent Britain abroad, and
the value of free trade agreements or other such arrangements with third countries for the UK.
Third, on the question of domestic constraint, the post-referendum discourse of an indivisible
people whose wishes will be fulfilled only through the implementation of the Brexit mandate
belies the lack of consensus in British politics and the absence of a stable majority for
either of the potential Brexit options, including the 'no deal', 'hard', or 'soft' variants of
Brexit. Invoking 'the people' as a constraint on international action, in such circumstances,
is simply not credible.
Conclusion
Assumptions about Britain's status as a global power, the myriad alternatives in the wider
world, and the unity of the public mandate for Brexit, have contributed to the overstatement of
the UK's bargaining power and the (false) belief that hard bargaining will prove a winning
strategy.
Britain desperately needs to have an honest conversation about the limits of the UK's
bargaining power. This is not 'treasonous', as ardent Brexiteers have labelled similar nods to
reality, but is rather the only way to ensure that strategies designed to protect the national
interest actually serve this purpose. Power is a finite resource that cannot be talked into
existence. Like a deflating puffer fish, the UK's weakness will eventually become plain to see.
The risk is that before this occurs, all bridges will be burned, all avenues exhausted, and all
feathers ruffled.
The opinions expressed in this blog contribution are entirely those of the author and do
not represent the positions of the Dahrendorf Forum or its hosts Hertie School of Governance
and London School of Economics and Political Science or its funder Stiftung Mercator.
I tend to agree that there is no real strategy on the UK's part. May resembles a broken
record, where she says much the same thing over and over again, seemingly expecting a
different response each time. Although Einstein said that he probably never made the claim
about what insanity consists of, it is often attributed to him -- doing the same thing over
and over expecting different results is the very definition of insanity. How the government
expects that this sort of behavior will bring desirable results is beyond me.
Both UK and EU politicians are talking past each other. Neither side understands there are
two key issues. Firstly, not understanding the economic effects stemming from the failure to
understand how money is created and how it can be manipulated for global trading advantage.
Secondly, that the UK is high up the list for "cultural tightness" and the reasons for
this.
The other element of course of a negotiation is getting potential allies to roll up behind
you. At the start of this the UK had a series of potential 'friends' it could call on –
eurosceptics governments in Eastern Europe, close historic friends and political like minded
governments in Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland. And of course non-EU countries
like India or the US with historic links.
They somehow managed to anger or frustrate nearly all of those though its heavy handed
negotiations or laughable lack of political empathy.
It must be emphasised that the current Irish government is ideologically and instinctively
very pro-London. And yet, today RTE is
reporting about the latest meeting between May and Varadkar:
The source said there was "an open exchange of views" between both sides, with the Irish
delegation emphasising that the time was short and "we need to get to the stage where we
can consider a legal text" on the backstop.
The source described British proposals so far as "only an outline, and we haven't seen
specific proposals from the British side."
This can only be translated as 'what the hell are they playing at?'
The Indians of course were amusedly baffled by the British assumption that they would
welcome open trade (without lots of new visas for Indian immigrants). Trump just smelt the
blood of a wounded animal. The Russians are well
The British cited the EU's inability to conclude a free-trade agreement with India as one
example of the EU's failings a revitalized Global Britain would no longer be shackled by.
That's quite rich considering the FTA was torpedoed when the British Home Secretary vetoed
increased visas for the Indians. Her name was Theresa May.
They somehow managed to anger or frustrate nearly all of those
Somehow?
The brits basically said: We are special people, much, much better, richer and stronger
than you sorry lot of Peons to Brussels(tm), so now you shall see sense and give us what we
want this week; you can call it your tribute if you like (because we don't care what you like
:)
Half the Danes are fed up with the whole thing and the other half would be egging on a
hard Brexit if only they could – knowing it will likely take out at least some of the
worst and most overleveraged (and gorged with tax-paid subsidies) Anti-Environmentalist
Danish industrial farmers, their bankers too. And diminish the power of their lobbyists:
"Landbrug & Fødevarer"!
The good part is that: the British and the Danish governments have managed to make "being
ruled by faceless bureaucrats in Brussels" look like a pretty much OK & decent deal,
considering the alternative options: Being ruled by our local crazies, straight-up nutters
and odious nincompoops (a word i like), half of whom, to top it up, are probably mere
soulless proxies for those ghouls that are running Washington DC.
It seems more and more to me, that never ending class warfare, and its current emphasis on
austerity, leaves us unable to envision alternate routes to economic health.
The neo-liberal consensus mandates that our ruling class never questions its own tactics,
ie dog-whistle racism to distract and divide the lower classes to enable all the looting.
So on both sides of the Atlantic, the rulers of English speakers stir up resentment
amongst those at the bottom in order to secure votes, and maintain power, while never
intending to follow through on promises to provide tangible material benefits to their
constituents.
The looting goes on, the trail of broken promises grows longer, and the misery
deepens.
The issue being ignored is that the folks at the bottom have reached the limit of their
ability to maintain life and limb in the face of downward economic pressure.
We've finally reached the end game, we in America have been driven to Trumpism, and in
Britain they've been driven to Brexit by the clueless efforts of pols to maintain power in
the face of electorates who have decided they have had enough, and will absolutely not take
the SOS anymore.
So we have the nonsensical situation of pols on both sides of the Atlantic flirting with
economic collapse, and even civil war rather than moderate their irrational fixation on
making the insanely rich even richer.
In both cases we have a cast of alternating villains robbing and beating us while waving
flags and loudly complaining that we aren't showing the proper level of enthusiasm.
Which leaves me with one question for those villains;
Why no one, especially the punditocracy seems to realize this, is astonishing.
I also cannot believe the Old Gray Lady killing millions of trees in its shrill efforts to
prove the Russians cost Hilary the election and nary a word about how totally fed up and
voiceless (with the exception of a single presidential vote) are those in the Great
Flyover.
Also find it amazing that the Beeb with rudimentary linguistic forensic analysis
identified Mike Pence as almost certainly the author of the scathing anti-Trump memo the NYT
published anonymously, without a single mention of this now widely-known fact.
On a related note, while this was about the tactics of leaving, there has been some
movement on the end state front, though not by the UK. Rather it seems that the EU has made
up it's mind, and in my mind definitively scrapped the EEA option.
Several EU leaders (Pms of Malta and the Czech republic) have clearly stated that they wish
to see a new referendum, and Macron said the following:
"Brexit is the choice of the British people pushed by those who predicted easy solutions.
Those people are liars. They left the next day so they didn't have to manage it," Macron said
on Thursday, vowing to "never" accept any Brexit deal, which would put the EU's integrity at
risk.
I think the bridges have been burned, now it's surrender or revocation that's left to the
UK, or stepping off the cliff edge.
It is astonishing to see that the UK still does not accept that the EU doesn't want it to
go on principle more than for practical reasons. May and the others cling to the notion that
without Great Britain, the EU will collapse or something. This is the same nation that has
been foot-dragging on everything about Europe and slagging off the continent at every turn
while pretending they are a Great Power and the BFF of the US. Trump does not care about
Great Britain unless he needs some sort of zoning permission for his gold course, in which
case he will cut a deal on trade or arms with May.
The Irish Border, assuming it remains open, is a massive concession and likely to lead to
future problems as other EU nations try to have open borders or trade with their pet
countries.
Brits on the Continent are worried about many things ranging from driver's licenses to
residency visas! Not every Brit wants to live on that damp little island! Some like the sun
and Continental cuisine.
Is the EU a Great Idea to be Protected and Advanced, one that will inexorably result in
ever greater benefits for the common people of the fainting nations that have been cat-herded
into submitting to the "political union" that many very personally interested parties are
always working toward? Like NATO is a Great Idea, not just a mechanism for global mischief
and chaos? NATO gives "warfighters" a place to sit and play their games. Brussels gives
"rules," at least some of which are sort of for public benefit, until the regulatory
capturers work their magic. Profit and impunity, always for the few.
What is the organizing principle in all this? Likely can't be stated. Just a lot of
interested parties squabbling over gobbets from the carcass torn from the planet
Maybe the 14th Century was not so very horrible after all? If one looks in "A Distant
Mirror" at it, given where humanity seems to be, on the increasingly fleshed-out timeline of
collapse?
OF course, one can always summon up the demoness TINA, to trump any efforts to take
different paths
NATO was created to make war. The EU was created to make peace and prosperity. Comparing
one to the other is unjust.
The EU is not some sacrosanct construct that must be worshiped, but it has brought peace
to Europe for the longest period since Pax Romana (and that was not entirely peaceful). It
has also promoted trade and prosperity. Europe has been even farther ahead of economic and
regulatory integration than the US (phones and credit cards come to mind). Free movement of
labor and travel have dropped costs for businesses and individuals immensely.
Now, whether or not human foibles enter into it is really another discussion. Is Brussels
at times a giant Interest Machine and Bureaucratic Nightmare? Yes, but that is the negative
face we see portrayed by anti-Europeans like the Brexiteers. The EU does a terrible job of
self-promotion; citizens rarely know just how much the EU contributes to their lives. Perhaps
the EU is afraid of drawing attention to itself. But the people making up the EU are not
extraterrestrials; they are Europeans who make the same mistakes and commit the same fraud on
a national level.
Many Americans criticize Europe while vaunting their own Federation. Why should California
and Alabama share a currency, a passport and a Congress? There are more differences between
those states than between France and Belgium or Italy and Spain.
The EU is not perfect and has costs, but measured against what it has achieved, it is a
great success.
The mortality rate for Greece is up approximately 50,000. All so Merkel in Germany, and
Sarkozy and Hollande didn't have to go before their electorates and admit they were bailing
out French and German banks through the backdoor.
If you want to start accounting for economic death by economic war, we can look at the US
as recently as the financial crisis, though I doubt there are studies on the Homeland of this
sort. Or US embargoes of vital medication and food in Iraq which led to hundreds of thousands
of deaths. And so on.
My point is not that the EU is perfect, but there has not been a war in Western Europe since
1945. You are welcome to spin and fiddle and search for anything you like (Gosh, all that
free travel led to increases in traffic deaths! Ban the EU!). Of course, we would also need
to examine what the EU has done for Europe and how many lives have been saved by improved
infrastructure and exchange of information.
I am not defending poor governance per se for the sake of defending the EU. But it is facile
and fun to criticize it because one can make up all kinds of counter fantasies about how
wonderful life would be without it. Let's see how Great Britain does and then we can discuss
this in a few years.
I guess all those little Balkan unpleasantnesses, the former Czechoslovakia and Bosnia and
such, are not wars -- but then those are layable at the feet of NATO (that collection, as I
recall it, of what, now, 29 member countries including all the Great Powers of the West) and
the US imperium.
The NATO establishment is about "making war," largely now displaced to other Woggish and Hajji places where the huge number of refugees that are moving into Eurospace are
coming from (as a result of the largely economically driven (oil and other extraction
interests) and Israeli and Saudi-enhanced large scale destabilizing war prosecution.
All of
which is linked in significant ways to the economic "health" of the EU, from which lots of
weapons flow in exchange for favors and money from the Destabilizers.
Yes, the EU notion of reducing the conflict generators of the past seems to be a good one.
But surprise! In practice, you got your German hegemon and your French strutters and now of
course the British bomb throwers pointing out, along with the renascent nationalism triggered
in part by the hegemon's bleeding of other nations via Brussels and EU institutions, like
Greece and Spain and Italy and so forth.
And of course the warring that the seamless
economies of the EU (that includes their particpation in NATO) foster and participate in that
drives the exodus of mopes from the Mideast and Africa. And how about the fun and games, with
possible nuclear war consequences, that are playing out with EU and NATO and of course US
Imperial Interests activity in Ukraine? And I see that the Krupp Werks has delivered a bunch
of warships to various places (hasn't that happened a couple of times in the past? Thinking
how particularly of Dolphin-class submarines paid for by Uncle Sucker, as in the US, and
delivered to the Israel -ites who have equipped them with many nuclear-warhead cruise
missiles? And thanks to the French, of course, and other Great Nations, the Israelis have
nuclear weapons in the first place.
It's nice that the science parts of the EU structure are sort of working to keep US-made
toxins and genetically modified crap and other bad stuff out of the Holy EU Empire. But hey,
how many VW diesel vehicles on the road (thanks to some combination of corruption and
incompetence on the part of the EU?) equals how much glyphosate and stacked-GM organisms
barred by EU regulations? Lots of argument possible around the margins and into the core of
the political economy/ies that make up the EU/NATO, and the Dead Empire across the Channel,
and of course the wonderful inputs from the empire I was born into.
I guess the best bet
would be to program some AI device to create a value structure (to be democratically studied
and voted on, somehow?) and measure all the goods and bads of the EU, according to some kind
of standard of Goodness to Mope-kind? Naw, power trumps all that of course, and "interests"
now very largely denominated and dominated by supranational corporations that piss on the EU
when not using its institutions as a means to legitimize their looting behaviors that sure
look to me like an expression of a death wish from the human species.
There are always winners and losers in any human game, because at anything larger than the
smallest scale, we do not appear wired to work from comity and commensalism. You sound from
the little one can see of you from your comment as a person among the winners. Which is fine,
all well and good, because of that "winners and losers" thing. Until either the mass vectors
of human behavior strip the livability out of the biosphere, or some provocation or mischance
leads to a more compendious and quicker, maybe nuclear, endpoint. Or maybe, despite the
activities of the Panopticon and the various powers with forces in the polity to tamp it
down, maybe there will be a Versailles moment, and "Aux Armes, Citoyens" will eventuate.
In the meantime, the various stages are set, the players in the game of statism and
nationalism and authoritarianism and neoliberalism are on their marks, the house lights are
going out, and the long slow rise of the curtain is under way
I suggest you read up on your recent European history. Czechoslovakia split entirely
peacefully and it had exactly zero to do with either NATO or USA.
Yugoslavia had its problems ever since it was Yugoslavia in early 20th century – all
Tito managed was to postpone it, and once he was gone, it was just a question of when, and
how violent it would be. Serbian apologistas like to blame NATO, conveniently ignoring any
pre-existing tensions between Croats and Serbs (not to mention ex-Yugoslavian muslims). Did
NATO help? No. But saying it was the cause of the Serbo-Croat war and all the Yugoslavian
fallout is ignorance.
What gets my goat is when someone blames everything on CIA, USA, NATO (or Russia and China
for the matter), denying the small peoples any agency. Especially when that someone tends to
have about zilch understanding of the regions in question, except from a selective
reading.
Yep, CIA and NATO and the Illuminati (and Putin, to put it on both sides) are the
all-powerful, all seeing, all-capable forces. Everyone else is a puppet. Right.
The period from the end of WWII to the Balkan Wars is still the longest period of peace
since the Romans. I doubt you have ever lived through a war so I can't expect you to
appreciate the difference between the Horrors of the Brussels Bureaucracy and the Horrors of
Shelling and Bombing. From your lofty armchair, they might be the same but then again,
perhaps you blame the socialists when your caramel latte is cold.
Lofty armchair? I actually volunteered and got the opportunity to go be a soldier in an
actual war, the Vietnam one. So I have a darn good idea what War is in actuality and from
unpleasant personal experience. And I don't have either the taste or the wealth for lattes.
And forgive my aging failure of typing Czech instead of Yugo -- my point, too, is that the
nations and sets of "peoples" living and involved in United Europe do in fact have "agency,"
and that is part of the fractiousness that the proponents of a federated Europe (seemingly
under mostly German lead) are working steadily at suppressing. Not as effectively as a
Federalist might want, of course.
TheScream wrote: I am not defending poor governance per se for the sake of defending
the EU. But it is facile and fun to criticize it because one can make up all kinds of counter
fantasies about how wonderful life would be without it.
Wake up. I'm talking about what the European elite in the real world deliberately
chose to do.
They chose to do a backdoor bailout of German and French banks specifically so
Merkel, Sarkozy and Hollande and the governments they led didn't have to go to their
electorates and tell them the truth. Thereby, they maintained themselves in power, and German
and French wealth structures -- the frickin', frackin banks -- as they were. And they did
this in the real world knowing that innocent people in Greece would die in
substantial numbers consequently.
This is not a counterfactual. This happened.
There's a technical term for people who plan and execute policies where many thousands of
people die so they themselves can benefit. That term is 'scum.'
Ultimately, it's that simple. Merkel, Sarkozy, Hollande, and whoever else among the EU
elites who chose to be complicit in killing substantial numbers of people so they could
maintain themselves in power are scum. They are scum. They are scum.
Don't get me started on people who defend such scum with threadbare waffle about 'I am not
defending poor governance per blah blah it is facile and fun to criticize blah blah.' Nor
interested in whataboutery about US elites, who as the main instigators of this 21st century
model of finance as warfare are also scum.
Fine, our elected leaders are all scum, but why does this mean that the EU is evil
specifically. Why single it out? Why not advocate the overthrow of all centralized or
unifying government? Move out to Montana to a cult and buy lots of guns or something.
My point is not that EU leaders are charming people working exclusively for the good of the
people. My point is that the EU is not as bad as most of you believe and no worse than most
other governments. It is simply an easy target because it is extra or supra-national. We can
get all frothy at the mouth blaming Nazis and Frogs for our woes and ignore our personal
failures.
I would love to insult you personally as you have insulted me, but I sense you are just
ranting out of frustration. You hate the EU (are you even European or just some right-wing
nutcase from America involving yourself in other's business?) and take it out on me. Go for
it. Your arguments are irrelevant and completely miss the point of my comments.
The EU does a terrible job of self-promotion; citizens rarely know just how much the EU
contributes to their live
The EU is, very simplistically, set up like a shared Civil Service. Civil Services are to
be seen rarely and never heard, less they take shine and glamour from the Government they
serve.
What "Bruxelles" can do is to advise and create Directives, which are instructions to
local government to create and enforce local legislation. The idea is that the legislation
and enforcement will be similar in all EU member states.
Ons should be very aware that EU directives comes mainly from the member states and that
especially bad things that would never fly past an election could – and often is
– spun by local government as "Big Bad Bruxelles is forcing poor little us to do this
terrible thing to you poor people". Ala the British on trade deal with India and immigration
of east-european workers.
The EU does not have that much in the way of enforcement powers, that part is down-sourced
to the individual member states. When a member state doesn't give a toss, it takes forever
for some measure of sanctioning to spin up and usually it daily fines unto a misbehaving
government, at the taxpayers expense (which of course those politicians who don't give a
toss, are fine with since most of their cronies are not great taxpayers anyway).
"Maybe the 14th Century was not so very horrible after all?"
Hopefully sarcastic?
Dude -- black plague! 75 to 200 million dead! At a tie with a world population of 400
million, and 40 million of those may as well have been on Mars! China, ME, North Africa and
Europe depopulated!
Time to really reconsider one's assumptions when one wonders whether the 14th century was
"that bad".
Dude, yes, sarcastic. And ironic. Doesn't change the horribleness of the present, does it
now? Or the coming horrors (say some of us) that may have been inevitably priced in to the
Great Global Market, does it
Donald Tusk, the European council president, has ratcheted up the pressure on Theresa
May by rejecting the Chequers plan and warning of a breakdown in the Brexit talks unless
she delivers a solution for the Irish border by October – a deadline the British
prime minister had already said she will not be able to meet.
The stark threat to unravel the talks came as the French president, Emmanuel Macron,
broke with diplomatic niceties and accused those of backing Brexit of being liars. "Those
who explain that we can easily live without Europe, that everything is going to be all
right, and that it's going to bring a lot of money home are liars," he said.
"It's even more true since they left the day after so as not to have to deal with it."
The comments came at the end of a leaders' summit in Salzburg, where May had appealed
for the EU to compromise to avoid a no-deal scenario. She had been hoping to take warm
words over Chequers into Conservative party conference.
Tusk, who moments before his comments had a short meeting with the prime minister, told
reporters that he also wanted to wrap up successful talks in a special summit in
mid-November.
But, in a step designed to pile pressure on the prime minister, he said this would not
happen unless the British government came through on its commitment to finding a "precise
and clear" so-called backstop solution that would under any future circumstances avoid a
hard border on the island of Ireland.
"Without an October grand finale, in a positive sense of this word, there is no reason
to organise a special meeting in November," Tusk said. "This is the only condition when it
comes to this possible November summit."
It seems the EU leaders aren't even pretending anymore. Its pretty clear they have run out
of patience, and May has run out of options. I wonder if they'll even bother with having the
November summit.
If there's no November summit (which would make no-deal Brexit almost certainty), then the
game becomes fast a and furious, as sterling will drop like a stone – with all sorts of
repercussions. TBH, that can already be clear after the Tory party conference, it's entirely
possible that that one will make any October Brexit discussions entirely irrelevant.
I think that EU overestimated May in terms of sensibility, and now accept that there's no
difference between May and Johnson (in fact, with Johnson or someone like that, they will get
certainy, so more time to get all ducks in row. Entirely cynically, clear no-deal Brexit
Johnson would be better for EU than May where one has no idea what's going to happen).
Either way, this crop of politicians will make history books. Not sure in the way they
would like to though.
Announced post-summit in Salzburg: no November summit absent a binding exit deal on the
table by the end of October. So no: no November dealing.
I don't know that EU politicos overestimated May. She is what they had, and all they had,
so they did their absolute best to prop up Rag Sack Terry as a negotiating partner, hoping
that they could coax her to toddle over their red lines with enough willingness to listen to
her hopeless twaddle first. She just shuffled and circled in place. So they've given up on
her ability to deliver anything of value to them. One could see this coming in June, when she
couldn't even get the sound of one hand clapping to her chipper nonsense over dinner.
I think that deciding heads in Europe have accepted the probability that crashout is
coming. That was clear also in June. If something better happens, I suppose that they would
leap at it. Nothing in the last two years engenders any hope in that regard, so hard heads
are readying the winches to hoist the drawbridge on We're Dead to You Day.
If the Tories fall, which I think and have long thought is probable, it would be up to a
'unity government' to either initial a settlement surrender and keep the sham going, or
flinch. My bet has been on pulling together some kind of flinch mechanism on aborting exit.
It's the kind of year, as I model these, where wild swings of such kind are possible, but I
couldn't predict the outcome anymore than anyone else.
My feeling for a while is that the government would never fall, whatever happened, simply
because the Tories (and DUP) fear a Corbyn government too much, so would never, ever pull the
trigger, no matter how bad things got. But if May falls at the Party Conference and is
replaced with a hard Brexiter, I don't think its impossible that there may be a temptation
that to see if they could whip up a nationalistic mood for a snap election. Some of them are
gamblers by instinct. Anything could happen then.
I think Tory Remainers bolt, choosing keeping their own wallets rather than handing those
over to the worst of their lot with everything else. But they would find a unity coalition
more palatable than passing the microphone to Jerry the Red, yeah, so that's a bit sticky. A
snap election is the worst kind of crazy town, and wolldn't improve negotiating or decision
outcomes in the slightest -- so of course that may be the likeliest near term course! Won't
get settled in a few weeks. Probably not until 20 March 2019.
This is just wowsers. Tusk, Macron, and Merkel baldly state that Chequers is mated --
"unacceptable" -- and furthermore gave the Tories a drop-dead date of 31 October to initial
the divorce settlement. The process is a flat abandonment of Theresa May, concluding the
obvious, that she and her government are incapable of negotiating exit. Going over her head
to Parliament and public, in fact if not in pre-consisdered intent. -- And about time. I was
worried that the EU would eat fudge in November with the Brits again on another
pretend-to-agree accord like that of December 2017, which, as we have seen did nothing to
induce the Tories to negotiate a viable outcome.
What was May's reaction? That she's perfectly prepared to lead Britain over the crashout
cliff if the EU doesn't see fit to capitulate. I'd roll on the floor laughing but I can't
catch my breath.
The next two weeks are going to be lively times in Britain indeed. I can't see how
'Suicide Terry's' government can survive this situation. -- And about high time. Put the poor
brute out of her misery; she's delusional, can't they see how she's suffering? Push has come,
so it's time to shove. Crashout or Flinch, those are the outcomes, now plainer than ever. All
May can do is thrash and fabulate, so time to bag the body and swear in another fool; lesser
or greater, we shall see.
Yes, I wonder was that planned, or (as is suggested in the
latest Guardian articl e), motivated by anger at Mays criticism of Barnier?
EU sources said the move had been made on the bidding of Macron, who urged taking a hard
line over lunch. The French president had been infuriated by May's warning earlier in the
day to Varadkar that she believed a solution on the issue could not be found by October,
despite previous promises to the contrary.
The tone of the prime minister's address to the EU leaders on Wednesday night, during
which she attacked Michel Barnier, is also said by sources to have been the cause of
irritation.
This obviously makes her very vulnerable at the party conference. Its hard to see what she
can do now. She is toast I think.
I can only think of two reasons that they've closed the door firmly in her face. Either
they have simply lost patience and now accept there is nothing can be salvaged, or they have
lost patience with May personally, and hope that a new leader might do a deal out of
desperation. The latter seems highly unlikely – a sudden Tory challenge is more likely
to bring a hardliner into power.
Whichever way you look at it, things look certain to come to a head very soon now. The EU
may have a hope that the UK will blink when staring into the abyss and agree to the backstop,
but I don't see how politically this a capitulation is possible, at least with the Tories in
power.
The solution is, patently, Tories out of power. Which I think will happen, certainly
between now and 31 March 2019. Now would be better. Anyone thinking strategically in other
parties in the UK (an oxymoron of a formulation, to be sure) would call for a no confidence
vote the instant May's feet are on British soil.
I doubt that this is personal, but what do I know. May is a nincompoop. The other heads of
state patently, and quite rightly, don't respect her. Her presence has been useful to them
only insofar as she could deliver a deal. Macron looked at his watch and the date said, non on that. Just looking at his ambitions and how he operates, I would think he
wanted to go this route quite some time ago, but the 'softly, softly' set such as the Dutch
and Merkel wouldn't back that, and he was too smart to break ranks alone. That the Germans
have given up on May is all one really needs to know. This was May's no confidence vote by
the European Council, and she lost it over lunch.
I'd agree with your analysis of what happened – just glancing through the news today
it seems that Macron in particular just lost patience, and the other leaders were happy to
help him put the boot in. The EU has been trying to shore May up for a long time – the
December agreement was little more than an attempt to protect her from an internal heave.
This is a common dynamic in the EU – however much the leaders may dislike each other,
they will usually prefer the person at the seat than the potential newcomer.
But I think the EU has collectively decided that May is simply incapable of delivering any
type of agreement, so there is no point in mincing words. They simply don't care any more if
the Tory government collapses, or if they put Rees Mogg or Johnson in power. It makes
absolutely zero difference to them. In fact, it might make it easier for the EU if the UK
goes politically insane as they can then wash their hands of the problem.
At this point it might actually be a blessing if that happened. There is likely to be a
great deal of practical difference between a no-deal Brexit with six months of planning and
preparation and a no-deal Brexit that takes everyone by surprise at the very last minute.
(Yes, they will both be a nightmare, but some nightmares are worse than others). All this
pretense that the other side is bluffing and will roll over at the 11th hour is starting to
look like a convenient excuse for not facing reality. I don't think either side is
bluffing.
Comments like "Britain desperately needs to have an honest conversation about the limits
of the UK's bargaining power" might very well be true, but they're also irrelevant at this
point. Certainly it would have been very useful if it had happened two years ago. Right now
it's time to break out the life jackets.
Most Brits don't seem capable of mentally accepting how irrelevant they actually are
internationally. They are NOT a 'power' in any other respect than that they have nuclear
weapons under their launch authority (which they are never going to use). They have no
weight. The City is, really other people's money that predominantly foreign nationals at
trading desks play with, loose, steal, hide, and occasionally pay out. The UK economy isn't
of any international consequence. Brits are embedded in the international diplomatic
process, in a dead language speakers kind of way, which makes them seem important. But they
are not.
So there was never going to be a reassessment of the weaknesses of Britain's negotiating
position, nor will there be now exactly, because most in Britain cannot get their heads
around the essential premise to such a discussion, the Britain is now essentially trivial on
the power scale rather than of any real consequence. The Kingdom of Saud has more real power.
Turkey is a more consequential actor. Mexico has more people. &etc.
If one is to accept the convictions of master bloviator Niall Ferguson and other
Brexiteers, the issue is issue. Brexit is about immigration, period. The EU claims it will
not bend on free movement of people, Brexiteers will not accept anything less. There was such
a huge outcry when May mentioned the possibility of 'preferential' treatment for EU citizens
back in July she threatened any further public dissent in the party would result in sackings.
The EU insists there can be no trade deals, no freed movement of goods without free movement
of people, for good reasons. Hard to imagine them climbing down.
There's about as many reasons why people voted Brexit as there's different Brexits they
wanted. Immigration is just one of the convenient scapegoats peddled by both sides, although
for different reasons.
If you want a better (but still not complete) reason, try decreasing real income.
I'd like to know what those "many different reasons" are. Sovereignty? Well, that rolls
off the tongue more easily than "immigration" which, leavers know, sounds a bit racist.
"Control of borders" works for leavers like Nigell, although he went on at great length about
how it's all about immigration, after talking to all the 'real' folks in the provinces.
My Irish/Brit family's Own Private Brexit: the grandparents are entitled to naturalisation
and voted Leave, the children are subjects/citizens and voted Remain (and almost all vote
Tory), the grandchildren are compromised subjects/citizens and didn't have a vote. Everyone's
happy to be entitled to an EU passport. The Pakistan offshoot has a less complex variation
(fewer rights), but I believe their family voted Leave on balance. Life.
A colleague told me today he knows of several Northern Irish Republicans who voted leave,
precisely because they thought this would create constitutional havoc and lead to a united
Ireland. It seems at least some people were thinking strategically .
Majority of the drop in real income is NOT driven by immigration. You may find it
surprising, but there were times with large (relatively speaking) immigration and the real
incomes going up.
I don't believe it is either, you seem to think these views are my own. I am speculating,
with some basis, that a majority of leavers think so. Anti-immigration attitudes are
entrenched and growing. Just the other day a teacher, no less, spouted off about how
immigrants were causing crime and stealing jobs. This is in a blue city in a blue state. I
was shocked.
People come up with fantasy explanations when they've been reduced from realistic
assessments to fantastic ideologies. If there's a clear answer but you are ideologically
constrained from considering it, you need to invent some answer, the nuttier the better.
I think a major part of the problem is that British politicians and media seem to believe
that Brexit is mainly (or exclusively) a British topic.
One British politician publishes one proposal, another British politician shoots it down.
With the British media reporting about it gleefully for days. Newspaper articles, opinion
pieces. Without even mentioning what the EU might think about it. The EU seems to not exist
in this bubble.
Just remember the more than 60 "notices to stakeholders" published by the EU months ago.
And freely available for reading on the Internet. I´ve read British media online for a
long time now but somehow these notices never made any impact. It was only when the first
British impact assessments were published (not that long ago) that British media started to
report about possible problems after a no-deal Brexit. Problems / consequences that were
mentioned in the EU notices months ago.
It´s almost unbelievable. It looks like if something isn´t coming from London (or
Westminster) then it doesn´t exist in the British media.
And it´s the same with British politicians.
David Davis and the back-stop deal in late 2017?. He agreed with it during the negotiations,
returned home and then said that it wasn´t binding, just a letter of intent. Or Michael
Gove a few days ago? Regardless of what agreement PM T. May negotiates now with the EU, a new
PM can simply scrap it and negotiate a new deal? Or send government members to the EU member
states to try and undermine Barnier as reported in British media? How exactly is that
building trust?
Have they never heard about the Internet? And that today even foreigners might read British
media?
Brexit supporter Jacob Rees-Mogg might be the MP for the 18th century but surely they know
that today there are faster methods for messages than using pigeons?
What about foreign investment in the UK? The gateway to the EU? Japanese car
companies?
The drop in foreign investment was reported, to be sure. But after a few days it was
immediately forgotten.
T. May according to British media articles apparently developed her Brexit strategy (and
her red lines) together with her two closest political advisers back in late 2016 / early
2017. No cabinet meeting to discuss the strategy, no ordering of impact assessments which
might have influenced the strategy (and the goals). And apparently – in my opinion
– no detailed briefing on how the EU actually works. What might be realistically
possible and what not.
The resignation of Ivan Rogers seems to support my speculations. Plus the newspaper
articles in early 2017 which mentioned that visitors to certain British government ministries
were warned not to criticize Brexit or warn about negative consequences. Such warnings would
result in no longer being invited to visit said ministry and minister.
If they actually went through with that policy they created an echo chamber with no
dissenting voices allowed.
Which might explain why they had no plan to deal with the EU.
British politicians apparently were supposed to negotiate Brexit among themselves. And once
they had reached a (tentative) consensus the foreigners (the EU) were apparently supposed to
bow down and accept the British proposal.
And now when the EU hasn´t followed the script they don´t know what to do?
I´m not an expert but it was pretty clear to me that the Chequers deal would never
work. It was pretty obvious even when EU politicians were somewhat polite about it when T.
May proposed it.
It might have been a good starting point for negotiations if she had introduced it in 2017.
But in July 2018? Just a few months before negotiations were supposed to be concluded? And
then claiming it´s the only realistic proposal? It´s my way or the highway?
It was obvious.
Which means I never understood why the British media was treating the Chequers proposal as a
serious proposal? And spending lots of time and articles discussing on how to convince the EU
/ the member states.
I really think the EU member states have finally concluded that T. May is incapable of
producing (and getting a majority in the House of Commons) for any realistic solution.
Therefore helping her with statements to keep her politically alive doesn´t make sense
any longer. The EU would probably really, really like a solution that gives them at least the
transition period. Another 21 months to prepare for Brexit. But fudging things only get you
that far .
The UK apparently never understood that it´s one thing to bend rules or fudge things to
get the agreement of a member state. It´s quite another thing with a soon -to-be
ex-member state.
I am a German citizen, living in Germany.
The (German weekly printed newspaper) Zeit Online website did have three articles about
Brexit in the last few days. Which is noteworthy since they normally have 1-2 articles per
month.
And the comments were noteworthy too.
Almost all of them now favor a hard-line approach by the EU.
The UK lost a lot of sympathy and support in the last two years. Not because of the
referendum result itself but because of the actions and speeches of British politicians
afterwards.
The UK had a rebate, opt-outs and excemptions. All because successive British governments
pointed to their EU-sceptic opposition. Now the population voted for Brexit the British want
a deal that gives them all (or most) of the advantages of EU membership without any of the
obligations. To reduce the economic consequences of their decision.
No longer.
Actions have consequences.
And if it means we´ll have to support Ireland, we´ll do it.
The German commentators quite obviously have lost their patience with the UK.
This is the first article that I have seen that talks about power. The ability to
influence or outright control the behavior of people. Money has power. It is needed to eat,
heal and shelter in the West. But, it is never talked about. This is because it would raise
inconvenient truths. The wealthy are accumulating it and everyone else in the West is losing
it. The neo-liberal/neo-conservative ideologies are the foundation of this exploitation. It
is the belief that markets balance and there is no society. "Greed is good. Might is right."
Plutocrats rule the west. Democracy died. There are two versions of similar corporate
political parties in the USA. The little people matter not. Politicians are servants of the
oligarchs. Global trade is intertwined and not redundant. What will happen will be to the
benefit of the very few in power. Donald Trump is raising the price of all Chinese goods
shipped into the USA and sold at Walmart and Amazon. A Brexit crash seems inevitable.
Amen! It is ALWAYS about power. And the only way to deal with the elites is "Lord of the
Rings" style:
their money must be cast into a financial version of Mount Doom, breaking their power once
and for all. You folks in the UK need to make douchebag Brexiteers like Nigel Farrage suffer
total loss of power for forcing this disaster on you.
There is a huge source of wealth that UK monopolises from Treasure Islands that operate
the City's tax havens. That money goes straight back to City banks and flows into the market
economy, independently of trade and commerce. It underwrites the derivatives biz that keeps
the market economy afloat, paying pensions and profits and Directors' options.
Leaving the EU might have an effect but not a big one. Is that why UK seems so blithely
unconcerned?
The offshore wealth is certainly why the core hard Brexiters are unconcerned, because
thats where they store their cash. They don't care if the UK goes down.
But in the longer term, they are under threat – within the EU the UK consistently
vetoed any attempts to crack down on internal tax havens. The internal political balance of
the EU is now much more firmly anti tax avoidance with the UK gone, so there would be little
to stop a series of Directives choking off the Channel Island/Isle of Man option for money
flows.
Split Brain Syndrome: They seem think that the EU is Lucifer's Army Incarnate and then
they apparently also think at the same time, that "The Army of Darkness" once unleashed from
the responsible British leadership into the hands of those per-definition also demonic French
and Germans will still "play cricket" and not come after their tax-havens ASAP, like in 2020
or so.
May now demanding that the EU respect Great Britain. We are back to the beginning again.
May has no leverage beyond the EU wanting Britain to stay in . But if Britain goes out, then
it's out. The only way for May to get any concessions would be to offer to stay in! And even
then I am not sure the EU would accept since it would simply open the way for any member to
have a tantrum and demand better terms.
GB should leave, wallow in their loneliness a while and then ask to come back. I suspect
that the EU would reinstate them fully without the usual processes. Check back here in 24-36
months.
Somewhere between the creation of the Magna Carta and now, leftists have forgotten why due
process matters; and in some cases, such as that of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, they choose to
outright ignore the judicial and civil rights put in place by the U.S. Constitution.
In this age of social media justice mobs, the accused are often convicted in the court of
public opinion long before any substantial evidence emerges to warrant an investigation or
trial. This is certainly true for Kavanaugh. His accuser, Christine
Blasey Ford , cannot recall the date of the alleged assault and has no supporting
witnesses, yet law professors are ready to ruin his entire life and career. Not because they
genuinely believe he's guilty, but because he's a pro-life Trump nominee for the Supreme
Court.
It goes without saying: to "sink Kavanaugh even if" Ford's allegation is untrue is
unethical, unconstitutional, and undemocratic. He has a right to due process, and before
liberals sharpen their pitchforks any further they would do well to remember what happened to
Brian Banks.
In the summer of 2002, Banks was a highly recruited 16-year-old linebacker at Polytechnic
High School in California with plans to play football on a full scholarship to the University
of Southern California. However, those plans were destroyed when Banks's classmate, Wanetta
Gibson, claimed that Banks had dragged her into a stairway at their high school and raped
her.
Gibson's claim was false, but it was Banks's word against hers. Banks had two options: go to
trial and risk spending 41 years-to-life in prison, or take a plea deal that included five
years in prison, five years probation, and registering as a sex offender. Banks accepted the
plea deal under the counsel of his lawyer, who
told him that he stood no chance at trial because the all-white jury would "automatically
assume" he was guilty because he was a "big, black teenager."
Gibson and her mother subsequently sued the Long Beach Unified School District and won a
$1.5 million settlement. It wasn't until nearly a decade later, long after Banks's promising
football career had already been tanked, that Gibson admitted she'd fabricated the entire
story.
Following Gibson's confession, Banks was exonerated with the help of the California
Innocence Project . Hopeful to get his life back on track, he played for Las Vegas
Locomotives of the now-defunct United Football League in 2012, and signed with the Atlanta
Falcons in 2013. But while Banks finally received justice, he will never get back the years or
the prospective pro football career that Gibson selfishly stole from him.
Banks's story is timely, and it serves as a powerful warning to anyone too eager to condemn
those accused of sexual assault. In fact, a film about Banks's ordeal, Brian Banks , is set to
premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival next week.
Perhaps all the #MeToo Hollywood elites and their liberal friends should attend the
screening - and keep Kavanaugh in their minds as they watch.
Reaper , 2 minutes ago
False charges were condemned by Moses 3200 years ago. We need his solution: the false
accusser suffers the penalty they desired on ther falsely accused.
- This is a repost of the recent Palisade
Weekly Letter –
Earlier this week –
news went by relatively unnoticed by the ' mainstream ' financial media (CNCB and such)
that Beijing's started selling their U.S. debt holdings.
Putting it another way – they're dumping U.S. bonds. . .
"China's ownership of U.S. bonds, bills and notes slipped to $1.17 trillion, the lowest
level since January and down from $1.18 trillion in June."
And although they're starting to sell U.S. bonds – expect it to be at a slow and
steady pace. They don't want to risk hurting themselves over this.
I believe China may be selling just enough to get the attention of Trump and the Treasury. A
soft warning for them not to take things too far with tariffs and trade.
Yet already just as news hit the wire that China was selling bonds a few days ago –
U.S. yields spiked above 3%. . .
Don't forget that China's the U.S.'s largest foreign creditor. And this is an asset for
them.
And although them selling is worrisome – the real problems started months ago. . .
Over the last few months, my macro research and articles are all finally coming together.
This thesis we had is finally taking shape in the real world.
I wrote in a detailed piece a few months back that foreigners just aren't lending to the
U.S. as much anymore ( you can read that here ).
I called this the 'silent problem'. . .
Long story short: the U.S. is running huge deficits. They haven't been this big since the
Great Financial Recession of 08.
And it shouldn't come as a surprise to many.
Because of Trump's tax cuts, there's less government revenue coming in. And that means the
increased military spending and other Federal spending has to be paid for on someone else's
tab.
The U.S. does 'bond auctions' all the time where banks and foreigners buy U.S. debt –
giving the Treasury cash to spend now.
But like I highlighted in the 'silent problem' article (seriously, read it if you haven't)
– foreigners are buying less U.S. debt recently. . .
This is a serious problem because if the Treasury wants to spend more while collecting less
taxes, they need to borrow heavily.
This trend's continued since 2016 and it's getting worse. And with the mounting liabilities
(like pensions and social security and medicare), they'll need to borrow trillions more in the
coming years.
So, in summary – the U.S. has less interested foreign creditors at a time when they need
them more than ever.
But wait, it gets worse. . .
The Federal Reserve's currently tightening – they're raising rates and selling bonds
via Quantitative Tightening (QT – fancy word for sucking money out of system).
This is the second big problem – and I wrote about in 'Anatomy of a Crisis' (
read here ). And
even earlier than that
here .
So, while the Fed does this tightening, they're creating a global dollar shortage. . .
As I wrote. . . "This is going to cause an evaporation of dollar liquidity – making
the markets extremely fragile. Putting it simply – the soaring U.S. deficit requires an
even greater amount dollars from foreigners to fund the U.S. Treasury . But if the Fed is
shrinking their balance sheet , that means the bonds they're selling to banks are sucking
dollars out of the economy (the reverse of Quantitative Easing which was injecting dollars into
the economy). This is creating a shortage of U.S. dollars – the world's reserve currency
– therefore affecting
every global economy."
The Fed's tightening is sucking money – the U.S. dollar – out of the global
economy and banks. And they're doing this at a time when Foreigners need even more liquidity so
that they can buy U.S. debt.
How is the Treasury supposed to get funding if there's less dollars out there available? And
how can they entice investors if Foreigners don't have enough liquidity to fund U.S. debt?
These Emerging Markets must use their dollar reserves to prop up their own currencies and
economies today. They can't be worrying about funding U.S. pensions and other bloated spending
when their economies are crumbling.
These two themes I've written about extensively – the decline of foreign investors and
the Fed's tightening – have gotten us to this point today.
And the U.S. is extremely fragile because of both problems. . .
Here's the worst part – China probably knows this . That's why they're selling just
enough U.S. bonds to spook markets.
But if the trade war and soon-to-be a currency war continues, no doubt China will sell more
of their debt – sending yields soaring.
I just got done last week detailing how U.S. debt servicing costs (interest payments) are
already becoming very unsustainable ( click here if you missed it
).
At this point they're literally borrowing money just to pay back old debts – that's
known as a 'ponzi scheme'.
This is why I believe the Fed will eventually cut rates back to 0% – and then into
negative territory. And instead of sucking money out of the economy via QT, they're going to
start printing trillions more.
How else will the Treasury be able to get the funding they need?
I'll continue to keep you up to date with what's going on and how it all fits together.
But I think the two big problems I wrote about above are now converging into a new massive
problem. And I don't see any way out of it unless the Fed monetizes the U.S. Treasury and
outstanding debts. And that will cause massive moves in the markets.
I'm sure Trump will eventually
tweet , "Oh Yeah? Foreigners don't want to buy the U.S. debt? Blasphemy! Who needs you all
when we have a printing press!"
Or something like that. . .
TimeTraveller , 1 hour ago
I'm really starting to get sick of these crap reports from Palisade Research. Again they
are totally wrong on so many levels.
1. China is selling Treasuries, because they are pre-empting a debt crisis in their own
country and need Dollar financing for their overleveraged companies and their banking sector.
Also, China is lending money to every 3rd world country that needs infrustructure for it's
Belt and Road Initiative. Building ports, bridges and railways across Asia and Africa, costs
money.
2. Selling Treasuries will weaken the Dollar, so making the RMB stronger. China does NOT
want the RMB stronger because it erodes their exporters margins and competetiveness. Why
would they want to hurt themselves just to punish their biggest customer?
To even suggest China is "using the Nuclear option" of dumping Treasuries just shows your
total ignorance of the real world.
Palisade are clueless
ConanTheContrarian1 , 1 hour ago
OTOH, the crisis in Emerging Markets and the effect of capital flight on China are just
two of the MANY things not mentioned in this article. There has been tension building into
financial warfare between China and the US ever since they pegged the yuan low to the dollar
in 1987. The US is doing things under the table to China, China to the US, and they're both
quite capable of paying Adam Tumerkan (and others) to write hit pieces against the other
side. Think deeply before choosing a side.
Journalist Sara Carter told Sean Hannity during his Wednesday radio show that the FBI has
two sets of records in the Russia investigation, and that "certain people above Peter Strzok
and above Lisa Page" were aware of it - implicating former FBI Director James Comey and his #2,
Andrew McCabe.
Hannity : Sara, I'm hearing it gets worse than this–that there is potentially out
there–if you will, two sets of record among the upper echelon of the FBI–one that
was real one that was made for appearances . Is there any truth to this?
Carter : Absolutely, Sean . With the number of sources that I have been speaking with as
well as some others that there is evidence indicating that the FBI had separate sets of
books.
I will not name names until all of the evidence is out there, but there were certain
people above Peter Strzok and above Lisa Page that were aware of this . I also believe that
there are people within the FBI that have actually turned on their former employers and are
possibly even testifying and reporting what happened inside the FBI to both the Inspector
General and possibly even a Grand Jury.
So much of mainstream journalism has descended to the level of a cult-like formula of bias,
hearsay and omission. Subjectivism is all; slogans and outrage are proof enough. What matters
is 'perception'...
The death of Robert Parry earlier this year felt like a farewell to the age of the reporter.
Parry was "a trailblazer for independent journalism", wrote Seymour Hersh, with whom he shared
much in common.
Hersh revealed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the secret bombing of Cambodia, Parry
exposed Iran-Contra, a drugs and gun-running conspiracy that led to the White House. In 2016,
they separately produced compelling evidence that the Assad government in Syria had not used
chemical weapons. They were not forgiven.
Driven from the "mainstream", Hersh must publish his work outside the United States. Parry
set up his own independent news website Consortium News, where, in a final piece following a
stroke, he referred to journalism's veneration of "approved opinions" while "unapproved
evidence is brushed aside or disparaged regardless of its quality."
Although journalism was always a loose extension of establishment power, something has
changed in recent years. Dissent tolerated when I joined a national newspaper in Britain in the
1960s has regressed to a metaphoric underground as liberal capitalism moves towards a form of
corporate dictatorship.
This is a seismic shift, with journalists policing the new "groupthink", as Parry called it,
dispensing its myths and distractions, pursuing its enemies.
Witness the witch-hunts against refugees and immigrants, the willful abandonment by the
"MeToo" zealots of our oldest freedom, presumption of innocence, the anti-Russia racism and
anti-Brexit hysteria, the growing anti-China campaign and the suppression of a warning of world
war.
With many if not most independent journalists barred or ejected from the "mainstream", a
corner of the Internet has become a vital source of disclosure and evidence-based analysis:
true journalism sites such as wikileaks.org, consortiumnews.com, wsws.org, truthdig.com,
globalresearch.org, counterpunch.org and informationclearinghouse.com are required reading for
those trying to make sense of a world in which science and technology advance wondrously while
political and economic life in the fearful "democracies" regress behind a media facade of
narcissistic spectacle.
Propaganda Blitz
In Britain, just one website offers consistently independent media criticism. This is the
remarkable Media Lens -- remarkable partly because its founders and editors as well as its only
writers, David Edwards and David Cromwell, since 2001 have concentrated their gaze not on the
usual suspects, the Tory press, but the paragons of reputable liberal journalism: the BBC, The
Guardian , Channel 4 News.
Cromwell and Edwards (The Ghandi Foundation)
Their method is simple. Meticulous in their research, they are respectful and polite when
they ask why a journalist why he or she produced such a one-sided report, or failed to disclose
essential facts or promoted discredited myths.
The replies they receive are often defensive, at times abusive; some are hysterical, as if
they have pushed back a screen on a protected species.
I would say Media Lens has shattered a silence about corporate journalism. Like Noam Chomsky
and Edward Herman in Manufacturing Consent, they represent a Fifth Estate that deconstructs and
demystifies the media's power.
What is especially interesting about them is that neither is a journalist. David Edwards is
a former teacher, David Cromwell is an oceanographer. Yet, their understanding of the morality
of journalism -- a term rarely used; let's call it true objectivity -- is a bracing quality of
their online Media Lens dispatches.
I think their work is heroic and I would place a copy of their just published book,
Propaganda Blitz , in every journalism school that services the corporate system, as they all
do.
Take the chapter, Dismantling the National Health Service, in which Edwards and Cromwell
describe the critical part played by journalists in the crisis facing Britain's pioneering
health service.
The NHS crisis is the product of a political and media construct known as "austerity", with
its deceitful, weasel language of "efficiency savings" (the BBC term for slashing public
expenditure) and "hard choices" (the willful destruction of the premises of civilized life in
modern Britain).
"Austerity" is an invention. Britain is a rich country with a debt owed by its crooked
banks, not its people. The resources that would comfortably fund the National Health Service
have been stolen in broad daylight by the few allowed to avoid and evade billions in taxes.
Using a vocabulary of corporate euphemisms, the publicly-funded Health Service is being
deliberately run down by free market fanatics, to justify its selling-off. The Labour Party of
Jeremy Corbyn may appear to oppose this, but is it? The answer is very likely no. Little of any
of this is alluded to in the media, let alone explained.
Edwards and Cromwell have dissected the 2012 Health and Social Care Act, whose innocuous
title belies its dire consequences. Unknown to most of the population, the Act ends the legal
obligation of British governments to provide universal free health care: the bedrock on which
the NHS was set up following the Second World War. Private companies can now insinuate
themselves into the NHS, piece by piece.
Where, asks Edwards and Cromwell, was the BBC while this momentous Bill was making its way
through Parliament? With a statutory commitment to "providing a breadth of view" and to
properly inform the public of "matters of public policy," the BBC never spelt out the threat
posed to one of the nation's most cherished institutions. A BBC headline said: "Bill which
gives power to GPs passes." This was pure state propaganda.
Media and Iraq Invasion
Blair: Lawless (Office of Tony Blair)
There is a striking similarity with the BBC's coverage of Prime Minister Tony Blair's
lawless invasion of Iraq in 2003, which left a million dead and many more dispossessed. A study
by the University of Wales, Cardiff, found that the BBC reflected the government line
"overwhelmingly" while relegating reports of civilian suffering. A Media Tenor study placed the
BBC at the bottom of a league of western broadcasters in the time they gave to opponents of the
invasion. The corporation's much-vaunted "principle" of impartiality was never a
consideration.
One of the most telling chapters in Propaganda Blitz describes the smear campaigns mounted
by journalists against dissenters, political mavericks and whistleblowers.
The Guardian' s campaign against the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is the most
disturbing. Assange, whose epic WikiLeaks disclosures brought fame, journalism prizes and
largesse to The Guardian , was abandoned when he was no longer useful. He was then subjected to
a vituperative – and cowardly -- onslaught of a kind I have rarely known.
With not a penny going to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood
movie deal. The book's authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, gratuitously described Assange as
a "damaged personality" and "callous." They also disclosed the secret password he had given the
paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the U.S. embassy
cables.
With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding, standing among the police
outside, gloated on his blog that "Scotland Yard may get the last laugh."
The Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore wrote, "I bet Assange is stuffing himself full of
flattened guinea pigs. He really is the most massive turd."
Moore, who describes herself as a feminist, later complained that, after attacking Assange,
she had suffered "vile abuse." Edwards and Cromwell wrote to her: "That's a real shame, sorry
to hear that. But how would you describe calling someone 'the most massive turd'? Vile
abuse?"
Moore replied that no, she would not, adding, "I would advise you to stop being so bloody
patronizing." Her former Guardian colleague James Ball wrote, "It's difficult to imagine what
Ecuador's London embassy smells like more than five and a half years after Julian Assange moved
in."
Such slow-witted viciousness appeared in a newspaper described by its editor, Katharine
Viner, as "thoughtful and progressive." What is the root of this vindictiveness? Is it
jealousy, a perverse recognition that Assange has achieved more journalistic firsts than his
snipers can claim in a lifetime? Is it that he refuses to be "one of us" and shames those who
have long sold out the independence of journalism?
Journalism students should study this to understand that the source of "fake news" is not
only trollism, or the likes of Fox News, or Donald Trump, but a journalism self-anointed with a
false respectability: a liberal journalism that claims to challenge corrupt state power but, in
reality, courts and protects it, and colludes with it. The amorality of the years of Tony
Blair, whom The Guardian has failed to rehabilitate, is its echo.
"[It is] an age in which people yearn for new ideas and fresh alternatives," wrote Katharine
Viner. Her political writer Jonathan Freedland dismissed the yearning of young people who
supported the modest policies of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as "a form of narcissism."
"How did this man .," brayed the Guardian 's Zoe Williams, "get on the ballot in the first
place?" A choir of the paper's precocious windbags joined in, thereafter queuing to fall on
their blunt swords when Corbyn came close to winning the 2017 general election in spite of the
media.
Complex stories are reported to a cult-like formula of bias, hearsay and omission: Brexit,
Venezuela, Russia, Syria. On Syria, only the investigations of a group of independent
journalists have countered this, revealing the network of Anglo-American backing of jihadists
in Syria, including those related to ISIS.
Leni Riefenstahl (r.) (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)
Supported by a "psyops" campaign
funded by the British Foreign Office and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the
aim is to hoodwink the Western public and speed the overthrow of the government in Damascus,
regardless of the medieval alternative and the risk of war with Russia.
The Syria Campaign, set up by a New York PR agency called Purpose, funds a group known as
the White Helmets, who claim falsely to be "Syria Civil Defense" and are seen uncritically on
TV news and social media, apparently rescuing the victims of bombing, which they film and edit
themselves, though viewers are unlikely to be told this. George Clooney is a fan.
The White Helmets are appendages to the jihadists with whom they share addresses. Their
media-smart uniforms and equipment are supplied by their Western paymasters. That their
exploits are not questioned by major news organizations is an indication of how deep the
influence of state-backed PR now runs in the media. As Robert Fisk noted recently, no
"mainstream" reporter reports Syria.
In what is known as a hatchet job, a Guardian reporter based in San Francisco, Olivia Solon,
who has never visited Syria, was allowed to smear the substantiated investigative work of
journalists Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett on the White Helmets as "propagated online by a
network of anti-imperialist activists, conspiracy theorists and trolls with the support of the
Russian government."
This abuse was published without permitting a single correction, let alone a right-of-reply.
The Guardian Comment page was blocked, as Edwards and Cromwell document. I saw the list of
questions Solon sent to Beeley, which reads like a McCarthyite charge sheet -- "Have you ever
been invited to North Korea?"
So much of the mainstream has descended to this level. Subjectivism is all; slogans and
outrage are proof enough. What matters is the "perception."
When he was U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus declared what he called "a
war of perception conducted continuously using the news media." What really mattered was not
the facts but the way the story played in the United States. The undeclared enemy was, as
always, an informed and critical public at home.
Nothing has changed. In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's film-maker, whose
propaganda mesmerized the German public.
She told me the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above", but on
the "submissive void" of an uninformed public.
"Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?" I asked.
"Everyone," she said. "Propaganda always wins, if you allow it."
Propaganda Blitz by David
Edwards and David Cromwell is published by Pluto Press.
The whole nonsense about Russian interference, which was obviously nonsense from Day One
and has never, for a moment looked like anything but nonsense, seems to indicate that we
have entered a post political era in which policy discussions and debates are forgotten and
smears and false accusations take their place.
Currently in the US the Kavanaugh nomination which ought to be about the meaning of the law
and the consequences of having a Supreme Court which will make Judge Taney look like
Solomon at his most impressive. Instead it is about an alleged teenage incident in which
the nominee is said to have caressed a girls breasts at a drunken party when all involved
were at High School. Before that we had a Senatorial election in Alabama in which the
Republican candidate was charged with having shown a sexual interest in teenage girls-
whether this was a 'first' in Alabama is unknown but it is believed to have happened
elsewhere, in the unenlightened past.
Then we have the matter of whether Jeremy Corbyn is such a danger to Jews that they will
all leave the country if he is ever elected to power. This long campaign, completely devoid
of evidence, like 'Russiagate' has the potential of going on forever, simply because there
being no evidence it cannot be refuted.
Which is also the case with the Skripal affair, because of which even as we speak, massive
trade and financial sanctions are being imposed against Russia and its enormous, innocent
and plundered population.
In none of these cases has any real evidence, of the minimal quality that might justify the
hanging of a dog, ever advanced. But that doesn't matter, the important thing is to choose
a side and if it is Hillary Clinton's to believe or to pretend to believe and to convince
others to believe (as Marcy at Emptywheel has been doing for close to three years now) in
the incredible.
Who says that we no longer live in a Christian society in which faith is everything?
Dr. Hart's book is invaluable because it highlights some of the basic truths about America
that modern-day histories simply conceal. For example, he writes: "America is much younger than
most European
nations . It did not exist at all prior to 1600 AD but was created
in the ' colonial era .'"
Dr. Hart provides a basic history of America's development, including highlighting specific
incidents that ultimately proved critical to the future of the polity. One of the more
interesting was the Zenger
trial, a
colonial case in which a journalist criticized the local governor
and was charged with libel. A grand jury refused to indict Zenger, accepting his defense that
the things he printed were true. Thanks to this case, Americans can claim truth as an absolute
defense in libel cases, something
our British cousins lack .
A highlight of Dr. Hart's history is his careful attention to demographic issues. For
example, he scoffs at the claim sometimes heard within the
dimmer quarters of the
American Conservative Movement that the Constitution was a "miracle." Instead, Dr. Hart
shows that the authors of America's governing document shared linguistic, cultural, racial, and
experiential factors that
allowed them to work together. (Contemporary American statesmen possess no such unanimity.)
Dr. Hart is also not blind to the Constitution's faults, especially its failure to designate
how and who has the power to interpret it -- specifically, not necessarily the Kritarchs on the Supreme Court.
Dr. Hart is also clearsighted regarding immigration. He does not accept the now de
rigueur analysis that immigration from widely disparate regions was always a feature of
American life. "Before 1849,
immigrants to the Untied States came mostly from the Protestant
regions of northwest Europe, including Holland , Sweden, Norway , Germany and Great
Britain," he observes. He also provides an honest assessment of the difficulties Irish immigration
presented for 19 th century America and argues that despite speaking English, "they
assimilated very slowly."
Dr. Hart argues the "Golden Age" of the United States extended from 1865 to 1991. "During
that interval the United States stood out for its wealth, for its military might, and for its
unprecedented set of practical inventions and scientific discoveries," he argues. Indeed, one
of the best parts of the book is when Dr. Hart recounts the numerous inventions and scientific
advances America has given to the world.
However, Dr. Hart's most invaluable contribution is in detailing what he sees as the
symptoms of America's decline after the Cold War. America's indebtedness, relatively poor military
performance , loss of Constitutional liberties, and collapse of artistic standards are all
covered. Two other issues highly relevant to immigration patriots are what Dr. Hart calls
"political problems" and "loss of confidence and national pride."
Dr. Hart details how Democratic politicians have diligently opposed any efforts to
implement common-sense voter ID laws to prevent election fraud. Media bias is another major
political problem, one an increasing number of Americans are awakening to. Finally, Dr. Hart
identifies the "increase in racial hostilities" as both a symptom and a cause of America's
increasing political problems. "Black hostility towards whites is constantly being stirred up
by 'race hustlers' such as
Al Sharpton , who deny any good faith on the part of whites," he writes. "Many people deny
that any progress has been made in the status and treatment of black Americans -- a blatant
untruth which increases black suspicions and hostilities."
Similarly, the decline in national pride is partially a product of how the charge of
"racism" has delegitimized our entire national history. "According to many of these critics,
our Constitution was produced by a group of 'Dead White European Males' (DWEMs, for short) who
do not deserve any respect," he writes. As a result of internalizing this poisonous attack on
America's heritage, some advocate Open Borders as a kind of historical reparations of
punishment for a "racist" country.
Dr. Hart writes:
One result of these attitudes is that many Americans find it unreasonable for the United
States to defend its borders. (After all, since we stole the country from the Indians, we
have no real claim on our land.) Sometimes these views lead to people suggesting that
non-citizens should be permitted to vote in American elections. In any disagreement or
conflict between the United States and a foreign group, many of these critics tend to blame
America first. Many of these critics do not even pretend to be patriotic.
Dr. Hart identifies a host of causes to explain the emergence of these symptoms. Though they
are too many to cover here, two very much worth mentioning are
Dr. Hart points out that for all the talk about white racism, the vast majority of
interracial crime is committed by blacks against whites. Hatred of whites is not only
mainstream but cultivated by the Main Stream Media, the education system, and even some
Democratic politicians -- a coalition that Dr. Hart judges is too powerful to break.
Similarly, Dr. Hart details the disastrous consequences of the 1965 Immigration Act and
explicitly calls for its repeal, but he is pessimistic about the prospects for doing so.
The most explosive part of the book is its concluding chapter, in which Dr. Hart discusses
the various scenarios by which the United States could "fall," either by breaking up, being
extinguished, or losing its political independence and being subsumed into a larger polity. All
of these terrible scenarios have vastly increased in likelihood because of the destabilizing
and destructive effects of mass immigration.
The "fall" of the United States may even occur without most people even noticing it at the
time. "Without any foreign conquest, and without any sharp break, the USA might be transformed
into a multinational state without any loyalty to our English origin," he writes. "In fact,
such a process may already be in process."
During his discussion of causes for American decline, Dr. Hart identifies the most important
"by far" as the "loss of pride and confidence." He blames this on the relentless hate campaign
waged against "our ancestors" by educators and the Main Stream Media, leading to a situation in
which Americans feel "ashamed of their country." In other words, Dr. Hart is really talking
about a loss of identity.
With his history of the United States, and his frank discussion of the issues endangering
its existence, Dr. Hart has performed a valuable service for Americans seeking to reclaim their
national identity. For anyone curious about their country's past and concerned about its
future, The Rise And
Fall Of The United States (full disclosure: A VDARE book -- who else would
publish it?) is well worth purchasing.
If/when America does break apart, it will not be a result of conventional war. The
attack/upheaval will come from within.
Ironically, the trillions spent by Washington on our global MIC will not, in the end,
protect the American people from what is now our greatest threat: internal treason against
Historic America and its core people.
Ironically, instead of returning home to protect US borders when the cold war ended,
American troops were dispersed around the world to fight phantom threats and protect
non-essential foreign entities and extra-national interests.
This ongoing waste of US resources abroad continues to serve the interests of globalists,
militarists, and Zionists. Meanwhile, our domestic security, our Main Street economy, and the
continuity of white, European-derived culture and people inside America gets short shrift.
This glaring disconnect may be our nation's undoing.
The 'proposition nation' concept was a fraud from the start since it ignores the vital
significance of race, culture, language, and IQ.
The engine for America's coming implosion is demographic: uninterrupted, illegal,
non-white immigration by Third World refugees. Hostile elites who now dominate America are
also key. They refuse to acknowledge the perils of 'diversity'. Many want America changed,
irreversibly so.
Meanwhile, white identity and white cohesion have been demonized in our schools as well as
by our dominant mass media. This campaign has undermined white identity, white cohesion and
white interests in general.
Numerous, politically-correct expressions of anti-white hatred are now in wide
circulation. These hate-terms are, ironically, protected from criticism even though they are
applied selectively to target whites. Those few who contest these double-standards (including
Pres. Trump) are routinely defamed by comparisons to 'Hitler' or references to the KKK. The
basic translation comes down to this: Shut up.
This unhealthy and insidious paradigm is here by design. It is used to not only justify
anti-white animus, but to legitimize anti-white violence whenever and wherever whites try to
assemble and express their grievances and/or aspirations. This very sinister double-standard
has taken deep root. It is nurtured by biased reporting and coverage. It has spawned
'antifa'.
Modern speech rules and penalties favor privileged 'minorities' just as they cleary
disfavor and penalize white advocacy.
Among the popular terms that lend support to anti-white bigotry are: 'racist', 'nativist',
'white supremacy', 'Islamophobia', and 'anti-Semitism'.
These shame-inducing memes have 1) contaminated the American mind and 2) empowered our
race-conscious adversaries. They must be deconstructed and deligimized if we are to protect
our interests and preserve America's demographic core.
Resistance, cohesion and self-defense are not fascistic sentiments. They are legitimate
expressions of democratic self-determination.
""The two most aggressive central bank players in the equity markets are the Swiss
National Bank and the Bank of Japan. The goal of the Bank of Japan, which now owns 75% of
Japanese exchange-traded funds, is evidently to stimulate growth and defy longstanding
expectations of deflation. But the Swiss National Bank is acting more like a hedge fund,
snatching up individual stocks because "that is where the money is." About 20% of the SNB's
reserves are in equities, and more than half of that is in US equities.""
""Abolishing the central banks is one possibility, but if they were recaptured as public
utilities, they could serve some useful purposes. A central bank dedicated to the service of
the public could act as an unlimited source of liquidity for a system of public banks,
eliminating bank runs since the central bank cannot go bankrupt. It could also fix the
looming problem of an unrepayable federal debt, and it could generate "quantitative easing
for the people," which could be used to fund infrastructure, low-interest loans to cities and
states, and other public services.""
------------------------
This Ellen Brown article was referenced in Michael Hudson's latest article
""Today's financial malaise for pension funds, state and local budgets and underemployment is
largely a result of the 2008 bailout, not the crash. What was saved was not only the banks
– or more to the point, as Sheila Bair pointed out, their bondholders – but the
financial overhead that continues to burden today's economy.
Also saved was the idea that the economy needs to keep the financial sector solvent by an
exponential growth of new debt – and, when that does not suffice, by government
purchase of stocks and bonds to support the balance sheets of the wealthiest layer of
society. The internal contradiction in this policy is that debt deflation has become so
overbearing and dysfunctional that it prevents the economy from growing and carrying its debt
burden.""
""The beneficiaries are the stockholders who are concentrated in the wealthiest
percentiles of the population. Governments are not underwriting homeownership or the solvency
of labor's pension plans, but are underwriting the value of collateral backing the savings of
the narrow financial class.""
The fog of war and geopolitics makes initial responses to the attack on Russian and Syrian
forces recently difficult to assess.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's response seemed timid and was at odds with statements
from his Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and more recent statements from Russia's Foreign
Ministry.
Putin backed off on explicitly blaming Israel for the downing of the IL-20 ELINT aircraft
which killed 15 Russian servicemen, but made it clear he holds them responsible for the attack
as a whole.
It was obvious to me that this attack was designed as a provocation to start World War III
in Syria and blame the Russians for attacking a NATO member without proper cause , since the
Syrian air defense forces were the ones responsible for shooting down the plane.
Lying us into war is a time-honored American political tradition, whether we're talking Fort
Sumter, Pearl Harbor or the Gulf of Tonkin. All of these incidents were avoidable by Presidents
intent on getting into a conflict while simultaneously playing the victim card by getting the
other side to shoot first.
I'm sorry if that is a controversial statement but the historical record on them is very,
very clear.
From Strategic Culture:
The setup is pretty clear. Israel and France coordinated an attack on multiple targets
within Syria without US involvement but with absolute US knowledge of the operation to
provoke Russia into going off half-cocked by attacking the inconsequential French frigate
which assisted Israel's air attack.
That would constitute an attack on a NATO member state and require a response from NATO,
thereby getting the exact escalation needed to continue the war in Syria indefinitely and
touch off WWIII.
This neatly bypasses any objections to a wider conflict by President Trump who would have
to respond militarily to a Russian attack on a NATO ally. It also would reassert NATO's
necessity in the public dialogue, further marginalizing Trump's attacks on it and any
perceived drive of his for peace.
My hat is off to Joachin Flores for his analysis here. It is long and involved and worth
your time to read. I will summarize it here. His thesis? Putin is trying to save Russian/French
relations by not naming France as the culprit for the lost plane and the 15 men.
That Russia noted French missile launches but didn't say what or who they hit. And before
the Russians said anything about the attack the French denied they had any involvement in the
attack.
Instead, Russia went along with the story the U.S. et.al. prepared in advance, which doesn't
fit what facts we know about the situation, that Syrian Air Defenses shot down the IL-20 by
mistake.
Both the French denial and the U.S. statements about Syrian air defenses being the culprit
came before anything official came from the Russians.
This is a classic "preparing the narrative" technique used by the West all the time. Seize
the story, plant seeds of doubt and put your opponent into a rhetorical box they can't wiggle
out of with the truth.
MH-17, Skripal, Crimea, chemical weapons attacks in Ghouta, Douma etc. These operations are
scripted.
And Flores is exactly right that this script was going off as planned with one small
problem.
The Russians went along with it.
Russia, and Putin, did the one thing that makes this whole thing look like a frame job, it
accepted the narrative of Israeli malfeasance in the interest of stopping a wider conflict by
accusing and/or attacking a NATO member, France.
Flores makes the salient point that the S-200 friendly fire scenario is highly unlikely.
That, in fact, France shot down the plane, was prepared to accept blame (which it did by
preemptively denying it was involved) and destroy what was left of Russian/French
relations.
Now Russia can use the excuse of Israeli betrayal as justification for upgrading Syria's air
defenses. Citing the very thing that caused the tragic death of their soldiers, antiquated air
defense systems which didn't properly identify friend from foe.
It may be a lie, but since when did that matter in geopolitics?
And as I point out in my other article
This is Israel's worst nightmare. A situation where any aerial assault on targets within
Syria would be suicide missions, puncturing the myth of the Israeli air force's superiority
and shifting the delicate balance of power in Syria decidedly against them.
This is why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu worked Putin so hard over the last two
years. But, this incident wipes that slate clean. This was a cynical betrayal of Putin's
trust and patience. And Israel will now pay the price for their miscalculation.
Giving Syria S-300's does not avenge the fifteen dead Russian soldiers. Putin will have to
respond to that in a more concrete way to appease the hardliners in his government and at
home. His patience and seeming passivity are being pushed to their limit politically. This
is, after all, a side benefit to all of this for the neoconservative and globalist hawks in
D.C., Europe and Tel Aviv.
But, the real loss here for Israel will be Russia instituting a no-fly zone over western
Syria. Any less response from Putin will be seized upon by and the situation will escalate
from here. So, Putin has to deploy S-300's here. And once that happens, the real solution to
Syria begins in earnest.
And it means that if the FUKUS alliance -- France, the U.K. and the U.S. -- want an invasion
of Syria they will have to do so openly without a casus belli. And this is something we have
avoided for five years now.
Because lying us into war is how we maintain the illusion of fighting wars of conquest under
the rubric of Christian Just War Theory which supports our national spirit of manifest
destiny.
Ok, what of the assets mixed in with the idlib bunch. The FUKUS has pretty valuable people
in that group and maybe some information the west dos not want made available to Russia. I
think Putin can get some of those people and use them.
There's some other things the US has over there that they don't want anyone to be able to
show on TV
africoman , 18 hours ago
With the downing of the IL-20 ELINT aircraft which killed 15 Russian servicemen, by the
aggressions of Israhell
1st violating sovereign Syrian territory,
2nd attacking Syrian forces in multiple fronts and
3rd deliberately shielding themselves in the nearby Russian aircraft informing Russia
just 1 min about their illegal engagement, causing to be hit by Syrian S-200
Putin's response seemed timid/weak and was at odds with strong statements from his
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu who put the blame directly on Israhell condemning and more
recent statements from Russia's Foreign Ministry.
Putin backed off on explicitly blaming Israel, saying it was chain of reaction that
caused the situation etc instead of pining it to that parasite
Yes, i observed the tondown by Putin, maybe we don't know the big boys like Putin knew
what is at stake than 15 Russian service men,RIP
It seems to me Putin/Russia is in the game for greater good than such provocation by the
middle finger and are paying dearly.
Russia didn't stick her nake for nothing as i said above,geopolitics and long term
national interest etc
The attack by Israhell came just after the "Idlib liberation deconfliction zone" deal
reached with Russia/Putin & Turkey/Erdogan after many hours of talk
That was something, not seen/wanted by the enemy of Syria.
So it was expected, provokation?
Maybe Putin's answer/response not verbally, it would gonna come practically, by ratcheting
up the defensive shield of Russian position and eventually upgrading Syrian air defense, as
both are now targeted if they pursue liberating Idlib from the filthy jihadist infestations,
including Iran.
The USA/UK warned Russia/Syria/Iran if they dare touch their 'rebel boys' then we will
respond UNSC dramatic talk on which what i found it interesting was that
the Syrian ambassador to UN,Dr.Bashar Jaafari exposed their hypocrisy asking the absurdity
that if they will let say 15,000 'rebels' aka terrorist in manchester city doing terrorism
and they will let Russia wanted to do same.
So i see toning down of Vlad is good in avoiding another provocation by Israhell/USA
One can see, Israhell blamed Syria right, then if Syria increased her ability of defense
then that will be seen as danger/aggression by Israhell
that is the statu quo there, criminals
OverTheHedge , 20 hours ago
There is another interpretation, over at MoonOfAlabama, which seems to be more sensible
than the doom-laden war-mongering rhetoric in this article.
1. Israel and Russia have a deconfliction agreement, so Russia would have notified Israel
about its IL-20 flight plans.
2. Israel would have agreed not to have fighter aircraft in that area, as part of the
agreement.
3. Israeli fighter planes used the IL-20 to mask their run in, which is a breach of the
agreement, and just rude, frankly. Israel appears to believe that agreements don't apply.
4. The Syrian air defence saw the Israeli planes, targeted and locked on. Panic in the
cockpit.
5. The Israeli pilot(s) used the bulk of the IL-20 to mask their radar reflection, and the
S-200 missile, being old and dim, went for the biggest radar cross-section. In other words,
the Israeli pilot saved his life by sacrificing the russian plane. Note that the missile
itself doesn't do IFF, and can't be recalled or retargeted once it is in the air. It has a
brain that an Atari 200 would be embarrassed by.
Whether this was in the plan, or just a brown trouser moment, is another question. If
there happened to be a civilian airliner in the vacinity, would the Israeli pilot have done
the same?
So, Israel is at fault for ignoring the agreement with Russia, and attacking despite
russian presence in a restricted area. It all went wrong. Lots of Israeli damage control with
Russia - offers to send the Israeli air force commander to Moscow to grovel in person, etc.
You can conspiracy theory as much as you like, and the French missile is not included in the
above, but I like ****-up over conspiracy, and idiot commanders not considering the
consequences more likely than vast overarching 200 move secret plans to rule the universe by
Thursday.
NB - the above is not my work, just in case you thought I was clever (unlikely, I
know).
rita , 21 hours ago
Putin as usual is brilliant, unlike the others who are continually trigger happy trying
desperately to inflate the situation in Syria!
RG_Canuck , 21 hours ago
Agreed, but I would like to see Putin grab that little frog by the te$ticle$ until he gets
on the ground and begs for mercy.
Posa , 22 hours ago
I totally agree with this interpretation. The tide is running with Russia-friendly
right-wing European parties who eventually will depose the Macron- Merkel axis, thanks to the
Social Dems accepting a flood of refugees from Bush-Clinton-Obama Regime Change War Crimes.
The writing is on the wall and Putin does not want to disrupt the inevitable flow of events
by being suckered into firing the first shots.
Loss of personnel and aircraft is accepted as war-time casualties... BUT I also agree that
retaliation will be more subtle, coming in the form of upgrades to defense of Syrian air
space defense. Of course, if Putin really wants to stick it to France- Israel he can also
complete the deal with Iran to sell the S series upgrades to Iran.
BrownCoat , 22 hours ago
Some of the interpretation is accurate. Some is Russian spin. The part I liked best
was:
"whether we're talking Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor or the Gulf of Tonkin."
Darn right accurate! I would have added WMD's in Iraq to the list.
indus creed , 12 hours ago
According to Joel Skousen, Russia and China are not yet militarily ready to take on West.
Then again, Skousen used to be a CIA asset. Whom to believe these days?
Joiningupthedots , 23 hours ago
It changes nothing.
Russia, Syria, Iran and Hezbollah won the war.
The West is desperately trying to turn Syria into another Libya and is desperately
failing.
ZeroLounger , 23 hours ago
A video on one of the links describes large quantities of captagon were seized, along with
motorcycles and weapons, near Palmyra.
So a war fueled by meth, basically.
thisandthat , 11 hours ago
Always was, at least since ww2
Is-Be , 23 hours ago
Because lying us into war is how we maintain the illusion of fighting wars of conquest
under the rubric of Christian Just War Theory which supports our national spirit of
manifest destiny
I'm getting the distinct impression that monotheism is a very bad idea.
A curse upon Charlemagne the Butcher and Oathbreaker!
Captain Nemo de Erehwon , 1 day ago
The fog of war and geopolitics makes initial responses to the attack on Russian and Syrian
forces recently difficult to assess.
That would have been excellent one-line article. But no. We have to expand on it.
Yellow_Snow , 12 hours ago
Just heard that Russia is indeed setting up a 'No Fly Zone' and will be doing Naval
training/testing in zones around Syria... between 0 and 19000 altitude
IsaHell has attacked Syria by air 200 times while the world has stood by...
S-400 needs to get deployed - now is the time - what's the point of having these SAM's and
never using them...
Needs to stop
DEMIZEN , 1 day ago
the Russian heads will stay cool. militarily, it is too early to move in and go full
****** with air defences the Jews are too close and will study their gear and structure.
Russian voter is beginning to rise eyebrows i assume, and Putins reputation is taking a
hit. i bet there will some tough Putin videos following this mess to restore his image in
public. Russian public wants Jewish blood, but i cant see a good immediate response.Revenge
is best served cold.
this mess will be followed up with more gear and more training for SAA, you cant blame
Syrian Army for any of this, they sacrifice two dozens of soldiers on a good day. most of
Syria SAM crews were executed in the first months of the war.
ships will keep coming. SAA will keep growing, Russians will likely focus on Ukraine and
EU diplomacy now. Assad and Kurds need to sit down and look at the option. Opposition in
idlib will disarm or die.Guerillas w/o insignia will keep hitting SDF. US will leave AL Tanf.
Its going to be a slow winter.
BrownCoat , 22 hours ago
Putin's reputation is not taking a hit!
What did Israel achieve in this attack? No one is reporting. Maybe Israel wanted to hit
Iranian militia units that were concentrating for the attack on Idlib before the units were
redeployed. We don't know.
Israel did not claim any success, just an attack without the loss of any F-16s.
In the eyes of Russians, Putin stood up to the "evil empire" once again. The cost was 15
soldiers. Russian's mothers are very vocal about sons coming home in body bags. That causes
social unrest. Support for Putin does not waver however. The deaths are the price Russia pays
to protect the mother land.
The author is correct that Putin's restraint shows skill and courage. Putin's weakness was
assigning blame for the 15 soldiers. Assigning blame was probably the work of some
sycophantic underlings.
turkey george palmer , 15 hours ago
Ok, what of the assets mixed in with the idlib bunch. The FUKUS has pretty valuable people
in that group and maybe some information the west dos not want made available to Russia. I
think Putin can get some of those people and use them.
There's some other things the US has over there that they don't want anyone to be able to
show on TV
africoman , 18 hours ago
With the downing of the IL-20 ELINT aircraft which killed 15 Russian servicemen, by the
aggressions of Israhell
1st violating sovereign Syrian territory,
2nd attacking Syrian forces in multiple fronts and
3rd deliberately shielding themselves in the nearby Russian aircraft informing Russia
just 1 min about their illegal engagement, causing to be hit by Syrian S-200
Putin's response seemed timid/weak and was at odds with strong statements from his
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu who put the blame directly on Israhell condemning and more
recent statements from Russia's Foreign Ministry.
Putin backed off on explicitly blaming Israel, saying it was chain of reaction that
caused the situation etc instead of pining it to that parasite
Yes, i observed the tondown by Putin, maybe we don't know the big boys like Putin knew
what is at stake than 15 Russian service men,RIP
It seems to me Putin/Russia is in the game for greater good than such provocation by the
middle finger and are paying dearly.
Russia didn't stick her nake for nothing as i said above,geopolitics and long term
national interest etc
The attack by Israhell came just after the "Idlib liberation deconfliction zone" deal
reached with Russia/Putin & Turkey/Erdogan after many hours of talk
That was something, not seen/wanted by the enemy of Syria.
So it was expected, provokation?
Maybe Putin's answer/response not verbally, it would gonna come practically, by ratcheting
up the defensive shield of Russian position and eventually upgrading Syrian air defense, as
both are now targeted if they pursue liberating Idlib from the filthy jihadist infestations,
including Iran.
The USA/UK warned Russia/Syria/Iran if they dare touch their 'rebel boyes' then we will
respond UNSC dramatic talk on which what i found it interesting was that
the Syrian ambassador to UN,Dr.Bashar Jaafari exposed their hypocrisy asking the absurdity
that if they will let say 15,000 'rebels' aka terrorist in manchester city doing terrorism
and they will let Russia wanted to do same.
So i see toning down of Vlad is good in avoiding another provocation by Israhell/USA
One can see, Israhell blamed Syria right, then if Syria increased her ability of defense
then that will be seen as danger/aggression by Israhell
that is the statu quo there, criminals
pluto the dog , 19 hours ago
To paraphrase Jean-Marie le Pen- Putin has described the Jewish takeover of Russia in 1917
and the slaughter of 62
million Christian Slavs that followed as "an incident of history" - and best
forgotten.
Putin is so deep in bed with Jewish oligarchs - and Bibi - it aint funny. LOL
Pleas note - the figure of 62 million dead is the most accurate yet. Was deduced by
researchers who had access to Kremlin archives for short period of time after the Soviet
Union imploded. So round that down to approx. 60 million and you will be safely in the ball
park.
Mustahattu , 20 hours ago
FUKUS alliance? More like FUCKUS alliance.
OverTheHedge , 20 hours ago
There is another interpretation, over at MoonOfAlabama, which seems to be more sensible
than the doom-laden war-mongering rhetoric in this article.
1. Israel and Russia have a deconfliction agreement, so Russia would have notified Israel
about its IL-20 flight plans.
2. Israel would have agreed not to have fighter aircraft in that area, as part of the
agreement.
3. Israeli fighter planes used the IL-20 to mask their run in, which is a breach of the
agreement, and just rude, frankly. Israel appears to believe that agreements don't apply.
4. The Syrian air defence saw the Israeli planes, targeted and locked on. Panic in the
cockpit.
5. The Israeli pilot(s) used the bulk of the IL-20 to mask their radar reflection, and the
S-200 missile, being old and dim, went for the biggest radar cross-section. In other words,
the Israeli pilot saved his life by sacrificing the russian plane. Note that the missile
itself doesn't do IFF, and can't be recalled or retargeted once it is in the air. It has a
brain that an Atari 200 would be embarrassed by.
Whether this was in the plan, or just a brown trouser moment, is another question. If
there happened to be a civilian airliner in the vacinity, would the Israeli pilot have done
the same?
So, Israel is at fault for ignoring the agreement with Russia, and attacking despite
russian presence in a restricted area. It all went wrong. Lots of Israeli damage control with
Russia - offers to send the Israeli air force commander to Moscow to grovel in person, etc.
You can conspiracy theory as much as you like, and the French missile is not included in the
above, but I like ****-up over conspiracy, and idiot commanders not considering the
consequences more likely than vast overarching 200 move secret plans to rule the universe by
Thursday.
NB - the above is not my work, just in case you thought I was clever (unlikely, I
know).
not-me---it-was-the-dog , 20 hours ago
" If there happened to be a civilian airliner in the vacinity, would the Israeli pilot
have done the same? "
only civilian airliners over syria......as far as i can tell, are from iran. so, answer
would be yes.
Southerly Buster , 18 hours ago
Have you not just described the 'official' story, a " chain of tragic
circumstances."
Nothing 'alternative' or 'clever' with the MoA's interpretation.
not-me---it-was-the-dog , 21 hours ago
no-fly zone over western syria? no.
no-fly zone over lebanon.
.........you read it here first.
rita , 21 hours ago
Putin as usual is brilliant, unlike the others who are continually trigger happy trying
desperately to inflate the situation in Syria!
RG_Canuck , 21 hours ago
Agreed, but I would like to see Putin grab that little frog by the te$ticle$ until he gets
on the ground and begs for mercy.
Posa , 22 hours ago
I totally agree with this interpretation. The tide is running with Russia-friendly
right-wing European parties who eventually will depose the Macron- Merkel axis, thanks to the
Social Dems accepting a flood of refugees from Bush-Clinton-Obama Regime Change War Crimes.
The writing is on the wall and Putin does not want to disrupt the inevitable flow of events
by being suckered into firing the first shots.
Loss of personnel and aircraft is accepted as war-time casualties... BUT I also agree that
retaliation will be more subtle, coming in the form of upgrades to defense of Syrian air
space defense. Of course, if Putin really wants to stick it to France- Israel he can also
complete the deal with Iran to sell the S series upgrades to Iran.
BrownCoat , 22 hours ago
Some of the interpretation is accurate. Some is Russian spin. The part I liked best
was:
"whether we're talking Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor or the Gulf of Tonkin."
Darn right accurate! I would have added WMD's in Iraq to the list.
indus creed , 12 hours ago
According to Joel Skousen, Russia and China are not yet militarily ready to take on West.
Then again, Skousen used to be a CIA asset. Whom to believe these days?
Joiningupthedots , 23 hours ago
It changes nothing.
Russia, Syria, Iran and Hezbollah won the war.
The West is desperately trying to turn Syria into another Libya and is desperately
failing.
ZeroLounger , 23 hours ago
A video on one of the links describes large quantities of captagon were seized, along with
motorcycles and weapons, near Palmyra.
So a war fueled by meth, basically.
thisandthat , 11 hours ago
Always was, at least since ww2
Is-Be , 23 hours ago
Because lying us into war is how we maintain the illusion of fighting wars of conquest
under the rubric of Christian Just War Theory which supports our national spirit of
manifest destiny
I'm getting the distinct impression that monotheism is a very bad idea.
A curse upon Charlemagne the Butcher and Oathbreaker!
Baron Samedi , 23 hours ago
Had my champagne and a bottle of potassium iodide in my pocket ...
Like China, Putin is thinking the long game... not a quick score before the next
commercial timeout... and he's a chess player, so thinking ahead to the next set of moves is
the norm.... when this is lost, so is life.. think of Caesar as an example of those that
don't know when to say when... when to stop and smell the roses... when to consolidate
operations before the next set are begun.
What will the West do when their plans do go as planned? Sit around in the Med Sea for how
long? The Kurds will get played as the fools they are, same as always... this is the basic
script of all of our lives here in 'Purgatory'.. a school in self conscious awareness.. and
this is how we learn.... how many times does a lesson need to repeat before we learn? THink
of the example of Neo in that film 'The Matrix'.... "You've been done that street before
Neo..."
15 lives lost.... but no excuse yet given to start WW3 and lose many, many more... the
idiot puppets in the Western capitals get frustrated and lose their sanity.. as their OWO
puppet show is steered over the cliff by their own puppet masters in the SG... 'out with the
OWO, in with the NWO'... the best puppets are those that never even think they could be
one.... and so it goes.
pluto the dog , 23 hours ago
Putins in bed with Bibi just like Trump is. And Putins daughter is married to a *******
****. Does that sound familiar?
Yous are gonna be waitin a long time for WW3 to start
Blankone , 22 hours ago
What? Is Putin's daughter really married to a ***.
Holy ---, Just like all of Trump's kids who have married.
Damn
pluto the dog , 20 hours ago
Putins daughter now divorced from his buddy Nikolai Shamalovs son Kirill
no one in Russia is allowed to talk about this stuff
below link takes you to photo of Nikolai Shamalov. Please examine photo - looks very
ashkenazi to me LOL
The links of the stormfront article lay things out well.
I have the bad feeling again. I knew Putin's background was Russian mafia/corruption in
taking over from Yeltsin and that Putin was catering to the jews, but this was a
surprise.
Damn
Jung , 20 hours ago
She is married to a Dutchman and many were angry with them about MH17, so they left the
Netherlands. Don't worry about what he is, Putin knows his Grand Chessboard and has to avoid
problems with his fifth column in Russia (a group of Jewish people with a lot of clout.
One of these is not like the others.. , 23 hours ago
12$ a month!
Who do you think I am, Rothschild??
(I looked at the patreon link).
Is-Be , 23 hours ago
Here's a novel idea, France.
How about protecting France? It is, after all, called a Defence Force.
Or do tired eyes deceive me?
RG_Canuck , 21 hours ago
Defence Farce, more like it.
ZeroLounger , 23 hours ago
It appears that Armageddon is underway before our very eyes.
Buy stawks.
Is-Be , 23 hours ago
You have Armageddon, we have Ragnarok.
The difference is, we don't lust after Ragnarok.
Odin fears Ragnarok, for his doom is fortold.
Only Ask and Embla survive Ragnarok.
eyesofpelosi , 20 hours ago
Yes, the three (***/christian/islam) "*** cults" really WANT the end for all things.
Sickening, childish, and...evil. I'm a follower of Hela for the most part, yet I do not "rush
what is inevitable" either, lol.
terrific , 23 hours ago
The FUKUS alliance. Who thought that one up? It's hilarious.
FreeEarCandy , 23 hours ago
A false flag attack on any Christian historical site within Israel is all Israel needs to
do to drag the west into starting WW3. Historically, we know Israel has special place in
their heart for Christians.
besnook , 1 day ago
putin will respond in a way to get the most roi. he played this masterfully. concede on
issues when you have a lot to gain and nothing to lose.
tel aviv has a red dot on it's forehead now.
Captain Nemo de Erehwon , 1 day ago
The fog of war and geopolitics makes initial responses to the attack on Russian and Syrian
forces recently difficult to assess.
That would have been excellent one-line article. But no. We have to expand on it.
Yellow_Snow , 1 day ago
Russia should use Syria as a testing ground for the S-400 and the new S-500 systems... A
No fly Zone and 'hot' testing site
BrownCoat , 22 hours ago
It would be nice for the West, but...
1. Creating a No Fly Zone would force Russia to respond to any infraction. That reduces
Putin's options and diverts effort from Russia's objectives in Syria.
2. Installing S-400 or S-500 or S-999 would only show Israel and the US the capabilities
of these advanced weapon systems. According to the author, the S-300 is sufficient to keep
Israeli planes in check.
Yellow_Snow , 12 hours ago
Just heard that Russia is indeed setting up a 'No Fly Zone' and will be doing Naval
training/testing in zones around Syria... between 0 and 19000 altitude
IsaHell has attacked Syria by air 200 times while the world has stood by...
S-400 needs to get deployed - now is the time - what's the point of having these SAM's and
never using them...
Needs to stop
caconhma , 1 day ago
Prostitutin is a CIA asset and a total POS.
Shemp 4 Victory , 23 hours ago
Yeah, you're the adequacy, of course.
Your reactions are worthy of Pavlov's dog. You, I suppose, were trained with the same
methods.
Victor999 , 21 hours ago
Throw him a treat.
Anunnaki , 1 day ago
Putin is a Ziomist
Brazen Heist II , 1 day ago
Rooting for the collapse of FUKUS and Pissraeli imperialism.
But evil takes time to weaken because evil still has much more power than it deserves.
Putin is playing the long game, he knows these devils don't value anything they preach,
and they are sore losers about Syria, and he is neutering their scumbag behaviour, which may
seem like acquiesence to some, but it is merely realpolitik because he knows the FUKUS +
Pissrael can overpower Russia if they are united, esp when Russia is seen to strike back with
force directly.
They were united in Syria until their ragtag army of headchoppers fell apart, thanks to
Russian and Iranian realpolitik. So Russia, like China and Iran, is biding its time and
deflecting some big hits, taking a few blows, but they are in it for the victory in the long
run which means weakening the FUKUS + Pissraeli imperialist alliance through attrition and
clever maneuvering.
ThanksChump , 1 day ago
This analysis is compelling. It would be nice to have corroborating evidence that it was
the French vessel that shot down the IL-20, but even without that evidence, this story
satisfies the Occam's Razor test. This was a major gamble against a better player.
So, is Assad going to get new S-300 or new S-400 systems? The Iranians might feel slighted
if Assad gets S-400s.
DEMIZEN , 1 day ago
the Russian heads will stay cool. militarily, it is too early to move in and go full
****** with air defences the Jews are too close and will study their gear and structure.
Russian voter is beginning to rise eyebrows i assume, and Putins reputation is taking a
hit. i bet there will some tough Putin videos following this mess to restore his image in
public. Russian public wants Jewish blood, but i cant see a good immediate response.Revenge
is best served cold.
this mess will be followed up with more gear and more training for SAA, you cant blame
Syrian Army for any of this, they sacrifice two dozens of soldiers on a good day. most of
Syria SAM crews were executed in the first months of the war.
ships will keep coming. SAA will keep growing, Russians will likely focus on Ukraine and
EU diplomacy now. Assad and Kurds need to sit down and look at the option. Opposition in
idlib will disarm or die.Guerillas w/o insignia will keep hitting SDF. US will leave AL Tanf.
Its going to be a slow winter.
nowhereman , 1 day ago
OOOH Nastradamus
DEMIZEN , 1 day ago
i actually knew your were going to comment.
BrownCoat , 22 hours ago
Putin's reputation is not taking a hit!
What did Israel achieve in this attack? No one is reporting. Maybe Israel wanted to hit
Iranian militia units that were concentrating for the attack on Idlib before the units were
redeployed. We don't know.
Israel did not claim any success, just an attack without the loss of any F-16s.
In the eyes of Russians, Putin stood up to the "evil empire" once again. The cost was 15
soldiers. Russian's mothers are very vocal about sons coming home in body bags. That causes
social unrest. Support for Putin does not waver however. The deaths are the price Russia pays
to protect the mother land.
The author is correct that Putin's restraint shows skill and courage. Putin's weakness was
assigning blame for the 15 soldiers. Assigning blame was probably the work of some
sycophantic underlings.
sevensixtwo , 1 day ago
Who's going to say, "The Israelis attacked behind the Russian plane because they knew it
would mess up the radar on the S-200?"
BrownCoat , 22 hours ago
We don't know what caused the IL-20 destruction. Was it a French rocket? Was it a Syrian
or Russian working the missile defense system? My hunch is "friendly fire," but I wasn't
there.
Hindsight, the pilot should have disobeyed his flight plan and left the theater when the
SHTF. The plane could have landed in Cyprus. The pilot would have gotten grief (and probably
a demotion), but he would have saved the plane and its crew.
Mister Ponzi , 15 hours ago
You're making the mistake to let your emotions dominate your analysis. First, Russia does
not owe Syria (or any other Arab country for that matter) anything. As The Saker some time
ago rightly pointed out: Where was the Arab support for Russia in Chechenya or Georgia? Which
Arab country does recognize the indepence of Abkhasia, South Ossetia or Transnistria? What
was their reaction to Western sanctions against Russia? And how do they support Russia in the
case of Donbass or Crimea? Russia is in Syria only for her own interest and will do the
things that help her most. This will support the Assad government only in those areas where
the interest is aligned. If it were in Russian interest (which it isn't) they wouldn't
hesitate to get rid of Assad. Second, of course they give their S400s to Turkey because
Turkey is the big prize out there strategically. Sure, Erdogan is a despicable politicians
whose actions evoke memories of the darkest periods of the Ottoman Empire. But Russian
foreign policy is not driven by the hysterical human rights howling the West usually displays
(but only against governments that are not pro-Western) but by Realpolitik. You may welcome
it or reject it you must always analyze Russian foreign policy through this lens. Would
Russia tear Turkey out of the NATO phalanx if they could? Of course! Turkey would be a
tremendous loss for NATO strategically. This explains Russia's attitude towards Erdogan
including the chatter that it was Putin who warned Erdogan of the coup that was underway.
Third, the claim that Russia is too passive has been discussed so extensively that anyone who
wanted to understand the arguments of both sides and to weigh the pros and cons could have
done so, therefore, I'm not going to repeat the discussion here. For those who do not support
warmongering or cry "*****" all the time you can find a more balanced analysis of the Russian
position here:
Obviously a well planned operation and huge assault. No one is talking of the missiles
fired on Homs, Tartus and Latakia.
"One minute notice" by Israel, is patently unfair.
And the innocent US who took no part, but had a few nuclear subs and half a dozen warships
loaded and ready . . waiting for high noon!
Putin needs to get serious, or this will repeat in short time.
FBaggins , 1 day ago
Putin in dealing with three sociopath governments of three sociapathetic nations (Isreal,
the UK and the US) whose people are unable to elect leaders independent of the the sociopath
unelected puppet masters. He is not going to take the death of 15 servicemen lightly and the
sociopaths know this, but he is also not going to start WWIII over the incident. Sociopaths
like Netanyahu who want to escalate conflict in the area for the growth of Israel are
unpredictable.
Putin's job is to drive out the terrorist and stabilize the nation which is exactly the
opposite of what Israel, the UK and the US set out to do, but those nations continue to
support and even pay the terrorist insurgents they initially sent into Syria. They are
sociopaths because they do not give a rap about all of the killing and destruction they have
directly caused with their destabilization and regime change efforts to serve their own
designs. The entire world is aware of their crimes and increasingly will turn away from any
reliance on these nations or on their money.
The Ram , 1 day ago
FUKUS - forgot the 'I'. Should be written - I FUK US The 'I' being the real leader of the
pack.
Posa , 22 hours ago
Wrong. Getting into a shooting war at precisely the time when the US poodles in the EU are
ripe to be deposed would be a huge strategic mistake WHICH THE Anglo-Americans ARE TRYING to
provoke... not taking the bait is a smart move... in contrast to the USSR in Afghanistan, for
example, which became their Vietnam.
justdues , 1 day ago
Here is the oh so predictable Blankbrain with his usual demands that Putin act like a
punch drunk street thug and lash out at every provocation . Putin is way smarter than you
CIA/Mossad boy and those of us that aint in a hurry to see our loved ones vaporised thank God
for that.
A lot of people see society in organic terms, and think the maintenance of the whole
over-rides the welfare of any particular bit – even if that particular bit happens to be
themselves (Trump recently hit this theme when he tweeted that "patriotic" Americans were
prepared to sacrifice for the greater good in the trade war).
Heirarchy is probably unavoidable, not for reasons of individual difference but because
one-to-many organisation is the only form that scales readily. We can all have an equal voice on
a jury, but not when building a henge or a operating a car-factory.
Notable quotes:
"... A lot of non-conservatives have a very difficult time grappling with the notion that a commitment to inequality, that a belief in the inherent superiority of some people over others, that one group has the the right to rule and dominate others, is a moral belief. ..."
"... Since, according to this argument, you are amongst other things, your social class, I cannot judge your moral actions unless I understand your social circumstances. But morality is a form of judgement, or to put it another way a ranking. Morality is means nothing unless I can say: 'you are more moral then him, she is more moral than you' and so on. (Nietzsche: 'Man is Man the esteemer' i.e. someone who ranks his or her fellow human beings: human beings cannot be morally equal or the phrase has no meaning). ..."
"... Therefore, unless people have a role in life (i.e. butcher, baker, candlestick maker) then morality collapses (this is the weak point in the argument and if you wanted to tear the whole edifice down you would start here). ..."
"... And of course this social order must be hierarchical, or else anyone can be anything one wants to be, and in that case, who will sweep the streets? ' ..."
"... In other words Conservatives believe that without hierarchy, without ranking and without a stratified (and therefore meaningful) social order, morality actually disintegrates. You simply cannot have a morality without these things: everything retreats into the realm of the subjective. Conservatives don't believe that things like the Khmer Rouge's Killing Fields, the Great Terror, the Cultural Revolution are bad things that happened to happen: they believe that they are the necessary and inevitable end result of atheistical, relativistic, egalitarian politics. ..."
"... To the Right, the Left has no morality, as they understand the term, and cannot in fact do so. Leftist morality is a contradiction in terms, in this worldview. ..."
I think this is an incredibly important point here:
'One last point: A lot of non-conservatives have a very difficult time grappling with
the notion that a commitment to inequality, that a belief in the inherent superiority of some
people over others, that one group has the the right to rule and dominate others, is a moral
belief. For many people, particularly on the left, that idea is not so much immoral as
it is beyond the pale of morality itself. So that's where the charge that I'm being
dismissive or reductive comes from, I'm convinced. Because I say the animating idea of the
right is not freedom or virtue or limited government but instead power and privilege, people,
and again I see this mostly from liberals and the left, think I'm making some sort of claim
about conservatism as a criminal, amoral enterprise, devoid of principle altogether, whereas
I firmly believe I'm trying to do the exact opposite: to focus on where exactly the moral
divide between right and left lies.'
Both the Right and the Left, think that they are moral. And yet they disagree about moral
issues. How can this be?
The solution to this problem is to see that when Rightists and Leftists use the word
'moral' they are using the word in two different (and non compatible) senses. I won't dwell
on what the Left mean by morality: I'm sure most of you will be familiar with, so to speak,
your own moral code.
What the Right mean by morality is rather different, and is more easily seen in 'outliers'
e.g. right wing intellectuals like Evelyn Waugh and T.S. Eliot rather than politicians.
Intellectuals can be rather more open about their true beliefs.
The first key point is to understand the hostility towards 'abstraction': and what
purposes this serves. Nothing is more alien to right wing thought that the idea of an
Abstract Man: right wing thought is situational, contextual (one might even call it
relativistic) to the core. de Maistre states this most clearly: 'The (French) constitution of
1795, like its predecessors, has been drawn up for Man. Now, there is no such thing in the
world as Man . In the course of my life, I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, etc.; I
am even aware, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be a Persian. But, as for Man, I declare
that I have never met him in my life.'
This sounds postmodern to us, even Leftist (and of course Marx might have given highly
provisional approval to this statement). But the question is not: is this statement true?
It's: 'what do the right do with this statement?'
Again to quote another reactionary thinker Jose Ortega y Gasseett: 'I am myself plus my
circumstances'. Again this is simply a definition of contextualism. So what are your
circumstances? They are, amongst other things, your social circumstances: i.e. your social
class.
Since, according to this argument, you are amongst other things, your social
class, I cannot judge your moral actions unless I understand your social circumstances. But
morality is a form of judgement, or to put it another way a ranking. Morality is means
nothing unless I can say: 'you are more moral then him, she is more moral than you' and so
on. (Nietzsche: 'Man is Man the esteemer' i.e. someone who ranks his or her fellow human
beings: human beings cannot be morally equal or the phrase has no meaning).
But I can't hermeneutically see what moral role you must play in life, I cannot judge you,
unless I have some criteria for this judgement, and for this I must know what your
circumstances are.
Therefore, unless people have a role in life (i.e. butcher, baker, candlestick maker)
then morality collapses (this is the weak point in the argument and if you wanted to tear the
whole edifice down you would start here). Because unless we know what one's social role
is then we can't assess whether or not people are living 'up to' that role. And of course
this social order must be hierarchical, or else anyone can be anything one wants to be, and
in that case, who will sweep the streets? '
And if anyone has any smart arse points to raise about that idea, God usually gets roped
in to function, literally, as a Deux ex Machina.
' The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.'
Clive James put it best when discussing Waugh: 'With no social order, there could be no
moral order. People had to know their place before they knew their duty he (and, more
importantly society) needed a coherent social system (i.e. an ordered social system, a
hierarchical social system)'
In other words Conservatives believe that without hierarchy, without ranking and
without a stratified (and therefore meaningful) social order, morality actually
disintegrates. You simply cannot have a morality without these things: everything retreats
into the realm of the subjective. Conservatives don't believe that things like the Khmer
Rouge's Killing Fields, the Great Terror, the Cultural Revolution are bad things that
happened to happen: they believe that they are the necessary and inevitable end result of
atheistical, relativistic, egalitarian politics. Social 'levelling', destroying
meaningful (i.e. hierarchical ('organic' is the euphemism usually used)) societies will
usually, not always but usually, lead to genocide and/or civil war. Hence the hysteria that
seizes most Conservatives when the word relativism is used. And their deep fear of
postmodernism, a small scale, now deeply unfashionable art movement with a few (very few)
philosophical adherents: as it destroys hierarchy and undermines one's capacity to judge and
therefore order one's fellow human beings, it will tend to lead to the legalisation of
pedophilia, the legalisation of rape, the legalisation of murder, war, genocide etc, because,
to repeat, morality depends on order. No social order= no morality.
Hence the Right's deep suspicion of the left's morality. To the Right, the Left
has no morality, as they understand the term, and cannot in fact do so. Leftist
morality is a contradiction in terms, in this worldview.
I gave up on the Guardian's comment site myself, 10 years ago, as the censorship on there
made it pointless. Has something changed?
There was one prolific commenter there, MrPikeBishop, who was so popular, he was even
commissioned to write articles above the line. Then one day, bam, he is banned, and his entire
posting history gone. That did it for me; little emperors not fit to clean his boots, just
rubbed him out. I spat on the site that day and never went back. Proclaiming themselves the
bastion of free speech, when they actually the enemies of it.
Actually, I was caught out here in the UK, by the demise of the old five pound note, and
then the ten pound note, because I stopped reading and watching MSM years ago. It's worth it,
to get their irritating buzzing out of my head.
Back to the linked Guardian article; this is indeed interesting – these questions
asked by the journalist:
– Who really did shoot down this plane? Was it an accident or did France and/or Israel
attack?
– Are Russia publicly accepting a false narrative to avoid having to retaliate?
– Do they even understand how close we're coming to global war, whenever a NATO country
operates in Syria?
– How long can we rely on Russian common sense to avoid WWIII?
"... My take on Minsky moment is that banking introduces positive feedback loop into the system, making it (as any dynamic system with strong positive feedback loop) unstable. ..."
"... To compensate you need to introduce negative feedback loop in a form of regulation and legal system that vigorously prosecute financial oligarchy "transgressions," instilling fear and damping its predatory behavior and parasitic rents instincts. In a way number of bankers who go to jail each year is metric of stability of the system. Which was a feature (subverted and inconsistent from the beginning and decimated in 70th) of New Deal Capitalism. ..."
These days are the tenth anniversary of the biggest Minsky
Moment since the Great Depression. While when it happened most commentators mentioned Minsky
and many even called it a "Minsky Moment," most of the commentary now does not use that term
and much does not even mention Minsky, much less Charles Kindleberger or Keynes. Rather much of
the discussion has focused now on the failure of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2017. A new
book by Lawrence Ball has argued that the Fed could have bailed LB out as they did with Bear
Stearns in February of that year, with Ball at least, and some others, suggesting that would
have resolved everything, no big crash, no Great Recession, no angry populist movement more
recently, heck, all hunky dory if only the Fed had been more responsible, although Ball
especially points his finger at Bush's Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, for especially
pressuring Bernanke and Geithner at the Fed not to repeat Bear Stearns. And indeed when they
decided not to support Lehman, the Fed received widespread praise in much of the media
initially, before its fall blew out AIG and brought down most of the pyramid of highly
leveraged derivatives of derivatives coming out of the US mortgage market ,which had been
declining for over two years.
Indeed, I agree with Dean Baker as I have on so many times regarding all this that while
Lehman may have been the straw that broke the camel's back, it was the camel's back breaking
that was the problem, and it was almost certainly going to blow big time reasonably soon then.
It it was not Lehman, it was going to be something else. Indeed, on July 12, 2008, I posted
here on Econospeak a
forecast of this, declaring "It looks like we might be finally reaching the big crash in the US
mortgage market after a period of distress that started last August (if not earlier)."
I drew on Minsky's argument (backed by Kindleberger in his Manias, Panics, and
Crashes ) that the vast majority of major speculative bubbles experience periods of gradual
decline after their peaks prior to really seriously crashing during what Minsky labeled the
"period of financial distress," a term he adopted from the corporate finance literature. The US
housing market had been falling since July, 2006. The bond markets had been declining since
August, 2007, the stock market had been declining since October, 2007, and about the time I
posted that, the oil market reached an all-time nominal peak of $147 per barrel and began a
straight plunge that reached about $30 per barrel in November, 2008. This was a massively
accelerating period of distress with the real economy also dropping, led by falling residential
consumption. In mid-September the Minsky Moment arrived, and the floor dropped out of not just
these US markets, but pretty much all markets around the world, with world economy then falling
into the Great Recession.
Let me note something I have seen nobody commenting on in all this outpouring on this
anniversary. This is how the immediate Minsky Moment ended. Many might say it was the TARP or
the stress tests or the fiscal stimulus, All of these helped to turn around the broader slide
that followed by the Minsky Moment. But there was a more immediate crisis that went on for
several days following the Lehman collapse, peaking on Sept. 17 and 18, but with obscure
reporting about what went down then. This was when nobody at the Board of Governors went home;
cots made an appearance. This was the point when those at the Fed scrambled to keep the whole
thing from turning into 1931 and largely succeeded. The immediate problem was that the collapse
of AIG following the collapse of Lehman was putting massive pressure on top European banks,
especially Deutsches Bank and BNP Paribas. Supposedly the European Central Bank (ECB) should
have been able to handle this But along with all this the ECB was facing a massive run on the
euro as money fled to the "safe haven" of the US dollar, so ironic given that the US markets
generated this mess.
Anyway, as Neil Irwinin The Alchemists (especially Chap. 11) documented, the crucial
move that halted the collapse of the euro and the threat of a fullout global collapse was a set
of swaps the Fed pulled off that led to it taking about $600 billion of Eurojunk from the
distressed European banks through the ECB onto the Fed balance sheet. These troubled assets
were gradually and very quietly rolled off the Fed balance sheet over the next six months to be
replaced by mortgage backed securities. This was the save the Fed pulled off at the worst
moment of the Minsky Moment. The Fed policymakers can be criticized for not seeing what was
coming (although several people there had spotted it earlier and issued warnings, including
Janet Yellen in 2005 and Geithner in a prescient speech in Hong Kong in September, 2006, in
which he recognized that the housing related financial markets were highly opaque and fragile).
But this particular move was an absolute save, even though it remains today very little known,
even to well-informed observers.
Barkley Rosser
run75441 , September 18, 2018 7:07 am
Barkley:
A few days ago, it was just a housing bubble to which a few of us pointed out an abnormal
housing bubble created by fraud and greed on Wall Street. The market was riddled with false
promises to pay through CDS, countering naked-CDS both of which had little if any reserves in
this case to back up each AIG CDS insuring Goldman Sachs securities. When Goldman Sachs made
that call to AIG, there were few funds to pay out and AIG was on the verge of collapse.
And today, some of those very same created banks under TARP which were gambling then and
some of which had legal issues are free from the stress testing Dodd – Frank imposed
upon banks with assets greater than $50 billion. Did the new limit need to be $250 billion?
Volcker thought $100 billion was adequate and Frank argued for a slightly higher limit well
under $250 billion. The fox is in the chicken coop again with Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas,
UBS, and Credit Suisse not being regulated as closely and 25 of the largest 38 banks under
less regulation. These are not community banks and they helped to bring us to our knees. Is
it still necessary for American Express to be a bank and have access to low interest rates
the Fed offers? I think not; but, others may disagree with me. It is not a bank.
You remember the miracle the Fed pulled off as detailed in The Alchemists which I also
read at your recommendation. I remember the fraud and greed on Wall Street for which Main
Street paid for with lost equity, jobs, etc. I remember the anger of Wall Street Execs who
were denied bonuses and states who had exhausted unemployment funding denying workers
unemployment. We were rescued from a worse fate; but, the memory of the cure the nation's
citizenry had to take for Wall Street greed and fraud leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
EMichael , September 18, 2018 8:39 am
This never ending meme about Tarp saving the banks is really starting to aggravate me. The
Fed saved the banking system(on both sides of the Atlantic) before Tarp issued one dollar,
and they did so with trillions, not billions, of loans and guarantees that stopped the run on
the banks and mutual funds on both sides of the Atlantic.
Just look at the amounts. Tarp gave out $250 billion to the banks. Do people seriously
think this saved the banking system? Or that Wells goes under without their $25 billion
loan?
Tarp was window dressing and pr, not a solution by any stretch of the imagination.
"Bloomberg ran quite a story, yesterday. It stems from a Freedom of Information Act
Request that yielded the details of previously secret borrowing from the federal government
to the biggest banks.
The bottom line, reports Bloomberg, by March of 2009, the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion
"to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the
U.S. that year." The lending began in August of 2007.
The reporting from Bloomberg Markets Magazine is spectacular, so we hope you click over
and give the exhaustive piece a read."
If you pick up The Alchemist, I believe you will see all of this ($7 trillion) explained
in there. TARP was used to buy up junk MBS from banks by the Treasury and separate from the
FED. It was also used to buy up bank stock to give them reserves. It saved two of the three
OEMs too.
Ken Houghton , September 18, 2018 11:52 am
The general U.S. mortgage market died on Hallwe'en 2006. By the first quarter of 2007, it
was dead even for IBs who owned originators.
There were two IBs who were dependent on MBS for their profits: Bear and Lehmann. Doesn't
mean they didn't have other businesses, but their earnings would go from a V-8 to a
3-cylinder.
Bear went first, and ShitforBrains Fuld & Co. had six months after that to shore up
capital, find a buyer, or go under.
We all knew that the reason Bear was saved wasn't out of generosity, but because it really
would have had a systemic effect had it gone through bankruptcy proceedings. But THAT was
because Bear had two core businesses, and the other one was Custodial Services.
Had Bear gone through bankruptcy, those Customer funds would have been inaccessible for at
least 30 days.
Lehmann had no similar function; failure of Lehmann was failure of Lehmann.
Fuld knew all of this and still fucked around for six months pretending he was driving a
911 instead of a Geo Metro.
Lawrence Ball is a brain-dead idiot if he thinks saving that firm would have in any way
made things better.
likbez , September 18, 2018 12:41 pm
My take on Minsky moment is that banking introduces positive feedback loop into the
system, making it (as any dynamic system with strong positive feedback loop) unstable.
To compensate you need to introduce negative feedback loop in a form of regulation and
legal system that vigorously prosecute financial oligarchy "transgressions," instilling fear
and damping its predatory behavior and parasitic rents instincts. In a way number of bankers
who go to jail each year is metric of stability of the system. Which was a feature (subverted
and inconsistent from the beginning and decimated in 70th) of New Deal Capitalism.
As neoliberalism is essentially revenge of financial oligarchy which became the ruling
class again, this positive feedback loop is an immanent feature of neoliberalism.
Financial oligarchy is not interesting in regulation and legal framework that suppresses
its predatory and parasitic "instincts." So this is by definition is an unstable system prone
to periodic financial "collapses." In which the government needs to step in and save the
system.
So the question about the 2008 financial crisis is when the next one commences and how
destructive it will be. Not why it happened.
likbez , September 18, 2018 12:47 pm
In a perverse way the percentage of financial executives who go to jail each year might be
viewed as a metric of stability of the financial system ;-)
I think this is an incredibly important point here:
'One last point: A lot of non-conservatives have a very difficult time grappling with the
notion that a commitment to inequality, that a belief in the inherent superiority of some
people over others, that one group has the the right to rule and dominate others, is a moral
belief. For many people, particularly on the left, that idea is not so much immoral as it is
beyond the pale of morality itself. So that's where the charge that I'm being dismissive or
reductive comes from, I'm convinced. Because I say the animating idea of the right is not
freedom or virtue or limited government but instead power and privilege, people, and again I
see this mostly from liberals and the left, think I'm making some sort of claim about
conservatism as a criminal, amoral enterprise, devoid of principle altogether, whereas I firmly
believe I'm trying to do the exact opposite: to focus on where exactly the moral divide between
right and left lies.'
Both the Right and the Left, think that they are moral. And yet they disagree about moral
issues. How can this be?
The solution to this problem is to see that when Rightists and Leftists use the word 'moral'
they are using the word in two different (and non compatible) senses. I won't dwell on what the
Left mean by morality: I'm sure most of you will be familiar with, so to speak, your own moral
code.
What the Right mean by morality is rather different, and is more easily seen in 'outliers'
e.g. right wing intellectuals like Evelyn Waugh and T.S. Eliot rather than politicians.
Intellectuals can be rather more open about their true beliefs.
The first key point is to understand the hostility towards 'abstraction': and what purposes
this serves. Nothing is more alien to right wing thought that the idea of an Abstract Man:
right wing thought is situational, contextual (one might even call it relativistic) to the
core. de Maistre states this most clearly: 'The (French) constitution of 1795, like its
predecessors, has been drawn up for Man. Now, there is no such thing in the world as Man . In
the course of my life, I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, etc.; I am even aware, thanks
to Montesquieu, that one can be a Persian. But, as for Man, I declare that I have never met him
in my life.'
This sounds postmodern to us, even Leftist (and of course Marx might have given highly
provisional approval to this statement). But the question is not: is this statement true? It's:
'what do the right do with this statement?'
Again to quote another reactionary thinker Jose Ortega y Gasseett: 'I am myself plus my
circumstances'. Again this is simply a definition of contextualism. So what are your
circumstances? They are, amongst other things, your social circumstances: i.e. your social
class.
Since, according to this argument, you are amongst other things, your social class, I
cannot judge your moral actions unless I understand your social circumstances. But morality is
a form of judgement, or to put it another way a ranking. Morality is means nothing unless I can
say: 'you are more moral then him, she is more moral than you' and so on. (Nietzsche: 'Man is
Man the esteemer' i.e. someone who ranks his or her fellow human beings: human beings cannot
be morally equal or the phrase has no meaning).
But I can't hermeneutically see what moral role you must play in life, I cannot judge you,
unless I have some criteria for this judgement, and for this I must know what your
circumstances are.
Therefore, unless people have a role in life (i.e. butcher, baker, candlestick maker) then
morality collapses (this is the weak point in the argument and if you wanted to tear the whole
edifice down you would start here). Because unless we know what one's social role is then we
can't assess whether or not people are living 'up to' that role. And of course this social
order must be hierarchical, or else anyone can be anything one wants to be, and in that case,
who will sweep the streets? '
And if anyone has any smart arse points to raise about that idea, God usually gets roped in
to function, literally, as a Deux ex Machina.
' The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.'
Clive James put it best when discussing Waugh: 'With no social order, there could be no
moral order. People had to know their place before they knew their duty he (and, more
importantly society) needed a coherent social system (i.e. an ordered social system, a
hierarchical social system)'
In other words Conservatives believe that without hierarchy, without ranking and without a
stratified (and therefore meaningful) social order, morality actually disintegrates. You simply
cannot have a morality without these things: everything retreats into the realm of the
subjective. Conservatives don't believe that things like the Khmer Rouge's Killing Fields, the
Great Terror, the Cultural Revolution are bad things that happened to happen: they believe that
they are the necessary and inevitable end result of atheistical, relativistic, egalitarian
politics. Social 'levelling', destroying meaningful (i.e. hierarchical ('organic' is the
euphemism usually used)) societies will usually, not always but usually, lead to genocide
and/or civil war. Hence the hysteria that seizes most Conservatives when the word relativism is
used. And their deep fear of postmodernism, a small scale, now deeply unfashionable art
movement with a few (very few) philosophical adherents: as it destroys hierarchy and undermines
one's capacity to judge and therefore order one's fellow human beings, it will tend to lead to
the legalisation of pedophilia, the legalisation of rape, the legalisation of murder, war,
genocide etc, because, to repeat, morality depends on order. No social order= no morality.
Hence the Right's deep suspicion of the left's morality. To the Right, the Left has
no morality, as they understand the term, and cannot in fact do so. Leftist morality is a
contradiction in terms, in this worldview.
arcsecond @95 Robin thinks that different conservatives are different phenomena
already ,
Sure, I agree that this what Robin thinks, and I agree with the statement.
so I don't think there is any real disagreement here.
Unfortunately (?), there is indeed one.
He thinks the importing uniting feature is an inclination to reactionary
oppression.
Again, I agree that this is what he says, and I agree with the statement.
So to disagree with Robin about Trump means to think that Trump has no important
inclination towards reactionary oppression
And finally I agree with your logic. So you correctly concluded that I am logically
committed to the statement that Trump has no inclination towards reactionary oppression. How
can that be?
The trick is that I fully agree that Trump has violent inclinations towards oppression and
that they are daily on display. What I disagree is that the oppression he favors is
reactionary in the sense of being a re-action against something. Reactionaries of the
past were immersed in a tremendous social change – lower orders were asserting their
agency – and they re-acted to it by trying (in theory or in practice) to keep them in
their subordinate positions by a variety of means, some novel. It's Tancredi famous dictum:
everything has to change so that everything will stay the same.
At the moment, we are immersed in a tremendous social change that in itself puts back the
lower orders in even more subordinate positions, so theories or policies which are
intensifying the level of oppression they suffer (as Trump's do) aren't reactions
properly construed. They are just riding along. As I said above, same ideas, same theories
(sometimes), same political passion (surely) but the historical arrow of change has switched
sides, so the proper characterization of what is happening should be changed as well (if we
want to maintain intellectual clarity).
A couple of years ago, Corey Robin actually expressed similar sentiments (mostly on his
own blog, IIRC). At the time, he was upon occasions theorizing that conservatism might die as
an ideology because it had triumphed in putting the lower orders back in their place (turning
the arrow of change, in the terminology above).
arcseconds @ 92 You say 'Marxist/postmodernist' as though that were perfectly natural, but Marxism is
almost the antithesis of postmodernism on every score.
Indeed and I didn't mean to imply that with my shorthand, which should have been
'Marxist+postmodernist'. I took it for granted that people here wouldn't mistake the
intention. McDonell and others (possibly Corbyn) are the Marxists; my impression from various
campaign material is that significant numbers of younger members in Momentum are in the
radical SJW mould, which is a kind of postmodernism viewpoint, since it usually rails against
any critical look at cultural or religious practices.
13: Gonna really miss Anderson and Jameson. From the cited piece:
'war is the concern of the rich and powerful, that the poor should have nothing to do with
it " Marc Bloch
'Morocco is not and has never been an Arab country.' Marcel Mauss
Also reading Adolph Reed on Dubois, and his principled progressive elitism;also a book on
Lenin walking back his "cooks can run governments"
Liberals love hierarchies; the battles between conservatives and liberals involve only which
elite should rule the masses, and has more to do with Pareto's foxes and lions than any general
egalitarianism; the built-in enthusiastic hierarchies liberal capitalism automatically
generates are it's point, and why actual leftists like Anderson and Jameson spend so much time
attacking the center and left-center ( as essentially a variant of conservatism) and barely
bother with the Right. I like Robin, and believe he gets it; I just really don't understand
him.
It's about factions, power and opportunism; rising demographics in transition.
Kaepernick and BLM
Cash In BLM got a freakish 100 million from Ford Foundation, with stipulations of course.
They'll behave. Meanwhile, black men keep getting killed by cops, Dallas, manslaughter instead
of murder. BLM can commission a tv ad produced by their friends. That's power. That's
hierarchy. But that's fine because we like them.
Resisting Trump is easy. Resisting BLM or Clinton is really hard, which is why leftists
focus there. Cause otherwise it's just out with the old boss, in with the new, and the war goes
on.
The questions raised: Who really did shoot down this plane? Was it an accident or did France
and/or Israel attack? If France are attacking Russia/Syria what prompted this? What do they
have to gain? Is it possible for Syria to "accidentally" bring down an allied plane? Don't they
have IFFs? Are Russia publicly accepting a false narrative to avoid having to retaliate? Will
Russia retaliate against Israel? They have claimed that right already. What will they expect to
extract as a quid pro quo on this issue? How will the media report this? Will they call
it a "near miss"? That's surely what it was. Do they even understand how close we're coming to
global war, whenever a NATO country operates in Syria? How long can we rely on Russian common
sense to avoid WWIII?
I notice you don't advocate that Russia should have immediately retaliated militarily. All
the things you do advocate (well, most) – quite rationally – would not have shown
any results as yet, so we don't know they haven't been done, do we?
But, to repeat, you don't defeat a man who is trying to lure you into a fight by punching
him in the face. Intelligence is underrated by the non-intelligent. Subtlety is unappreciated
by the crass. The Russian govt's actions tend to be both subtle and intelligent –
whether you approve of them or not, and so can go unappreciated by many on all sides of the
debate.
As to ascendancy – Syria was intended to be a new Libya by now. That this has
been avoided, that the various terrorists are in retreat, that the country remains largely
functional, and all without direct confrontation between east and west (so far), is an
achievement anyone with any intelligence should recognise, and which the Russia government
has every right to be proud of.
Forgive me, but people have been saying variants of "if Putin doesn't DO SOMETHING HUGE
right now he's going to burn" for at least the last four years, and they are still saying it,
despite the fact he hasn't burned (and neither have we), and, if their sage advice had been
followed, we might all be cinders on a dead and cindered planet right now.
The only reason it hasn't come to that yet is that the ground was not prepared fully before.
Russia is slowly being pushed back to the ropes, the average Western citizen is being
conditioned to racially hate Russians (did you read Nikki Haley's comment today that Russians
are culturally conditioned to lie and cheat?) and the consent is being steadily manufactured.
As I said in my original comment, by showing "restraint" and not that he has teeth, Putin is
encouraging his country's enemies. Personally, I don't give a damn about what he does
about people he doesn't like, but he's not a private citizen; he is in control of Russia, for
good or ill. Most of my Russian friends, all of the far left variety, despise him,
incidentally, but that's neither here nor there. The simple fact is that if Russia is to
avoid a big war it has to actively deter one, not act like someone attempting to disarm an
armed drunk by logical words and sweet reason. That is not going to work.
If the Russians got a cruise missile down the funnel of the French frigate Auvegne (assuming
there is a funnel) what do you think NATO would do? Would they shrug and say it serves Macron
right or would they take off the safety locks and blast Russia from every direction in order
to protect their partner who had been so 'wrongly' attacked? Haven't they been waiting for
the chance for years? Aren't they already loaded up expecting the 'chemical weapons' shout to
go up this very week? It would be vey foolish of Russia to take the bait of these
provocations and it makes for uneasy reading when Westerners, sitting comfortably in safety,
complain that Russians aren't prepared to die for us in large enough numbers to keep them
safe. You first guy!
When provoked so blatantly you need to look to see what the guy is hiding behind his back. In
this case the West had built up their forces for a full scale attack on Syria as soon as the
White Helmets released their video of choking children filmed a week or so ago. Putin
disappointed them by coming to an agreement with Turkey that means the jihadis are further
isolated and pushed into possible conflict with radicals.
The time scales of the agreement are vague/unknown but it's unlikely we will see a Jihadi
Caliphate set up under Turkish protection.
Like the Syrians it's the crazy foreign fighters that alarm the Turks, the Chinese
especially of whom there are 6000 heavily armed in the South. Turkey is keen to see the
extremists pushed South making it difficult for them to enter Turkey. Putin's reaction is far
more sensible than firing the gun for a major conflict which Russia is most unlikely to
win.
Russia is still on track to squeeze the jihadis into smaller and smaller areas where they
might be eliminated. It might make liberals happy to see Russia sacrifice herself a la 1941
but it's not going to help anybody except their enemies.
You can't help thinking Putin knows exactly what he's doing.
There can never be a non-nuclear war between the US and Russia. Every strategist worth
anything knows this. It's the belief – created by the PNAC neocons – that this
isn't true that drives the hardcore nuts in Washington and London and elsewhere.
This is the problem. They are delusional and believe they can fight a limited war with
Russia. Those who know they are wrong, and that any such war would go nuclear very very fast
are stuck in a profound dilemma. – How to defend oneself and one's interests while
avoiding the conflict the lunatics want, which will destroy life on earth?
Answers on a post card please for anyone who thinks they can do better than the current
Russian govt is doing.
It's a complex web.. one has to bear this in mind.. the inter-relationships.. the
connections.. Putin for example has to tread the razor edge and fight with one hand tied
behind his back due to the Zionist influence atop the Russian hierarchy .
S-200 uses the SAHR guidance system. The radar signal is fairly wide, and if multiple objects
fall within the signal, the one with the largest cross-section will be targeted. The Russian
IL is much larger than the American F-16. Larger missiles like the 200's 5V21 also tend to
hit from above (they come down in a parabolic arc after the motors burned out). So if the
F-16's stayed a little behind and below the IL they'd basically guarantee the IL get's
killed.
As "Partisangirl" claims, but does not properly understand, Russia integrated Syrian AD
into their network some time ago. The purpose of such a integration was to avoid similar
accidents.
One problem: That was only for the newer stuff.
A Pantsir, for example, can be told where targets are and what to shoot at by a larger
system (they work in a pyramid hierarchy). S-200s are older than h*ll though. It's basically
a dumb system from the 60's. (even dumber than a BUK)
What it'll do is spot a target, fire the missile and then when the missile "thinks" it's in
the right area (the kill box), it's seeker head goes active (it's a semi active seeker). It
starts looking for radar 'reflections' and then homes in on the biggest one it can see. It
doesn't actually know what it's looking at and doesn't care. Just goes for the shiniest thing
it can detect.
My favourite part is how all these lies are held up as if they merit discussion and as if
they deserve to be given equal treatment with what actually happened. It's like holding a
"discussion" as to whether or not Aliens rule the Earth.
I tend to agree with you, on the whole, Mulga, about issues to do with Israel, though perhaps
not so stridently. But on this occasion I think Matt is honestly telling things how he sees
it.
On the other hand, one should ask why Israel is arbitrarily attacking targets in a
sovereign country that is not threatening it. Of course, the answer is that this is what
Israel does with impunity – witness USS Liberty among many others. On this occasion, it
appears, from what I have read, that Israel was targeting the delivery of Iranian S300 copies
to Syria – that is weapons to defend from this kind of attack in future. In reality,
far from attacking Israel, Syria has even done nothing about recovering territory lost to
Israel in 1967, though in international law Israel – that Israel signed up to –
it should be given back to Syria. A few days ago, Israel attacked Damascus airport during an
international fair with many visitors and potential for massive loss of life. It seems clear
that Israel is trying (probably with US approval) to provoke a response.
Putin always keeps his eye on the long term view but it is time for him to put a stop to
this activity if he is to maintain credibility with his allies and his voters. This attack
will serve to weaken Putin's hitherto Israel friendly stance unless he wants to lose support
in Russia. Putin is the best friend Israel has in Russia. It seems that Russian military is
saying that there will be a response – much stronger than Putin.
On the other hand – re my previous comment, Matt, IAF was clearly using the Russian
ELINT plane as cover. It is tantamount to using civilians as human shields. Though the crew
were Russian military, they were not involved in the action, apparently, and Israel had
agreed not to target Russian assets in Syria. One cannot absolve Israel on this and the
Russian military know it. They will be looking to Putin to permit a response.
Then you surely would not object if Russia were to ask Israel to hand over the pilots
involved so they can explain in a Russian military court or a similar setting their actions
and the thinking and expectations that motivated them to hide their jets in the Ilyushin
transport plane's radar shadow.
Yes, there is a large element of theatre at play in this conflict. What many people don't
want to accept is that they have no way of knowing what the entire truth is. All the
information about situations and events comes from partisan organizations with vested
interests. Expecting the side one personally favours to present objective truths is wishful
thinking at best, downright delusional at worst.
The post-truth era means everybody walks around believing they have 'figured out' the
truth, no hard evidence required, but they can't all be right can they?
Not so long ago Netanyahu was pleading with Putin [successfully] not to supply the S300 anti
aircraft system [defensive] to Syria, at the same time Israel was the first country to get a
fleet of F35's [offensive] from the US. Putin defers far to much to the US/Israel, we now see
the results. Incidentally how come Saudi Arabia can buy the S400 system, when they were one
of the instigators of Syrian regime change. Russia's "partners" want Syria destroyed, the
warmonger McCain always said the US should take on Syria and that Russia would 'do nothing',
was he right?
Let's recall the realities here and not succumb to hysteria. One of the reasons these
provocations are happening is that Russia is winning in Syria, militarily and politically.
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Harry has touched on an important point: that Russia and Israel are becoming closer and
closer strategic Russophone partners. Russia was the first country in the world to recognise
W Jerusalem as Israel's capital (before even Trump). There was only one foreign dignitary at
the May 9th Victory Parade their growing economic, military and cultural ties (Customs Union
negotiations and visa free travel for instance) cannot be ignored.
The IDF's 200 strikes in 18 months must lead to serious consideration of tacit Russian
approval because they could be quite quickly stopped without it? But that would escalate the
situation. Where does Iran stand in this, because VVP made quite clear to Netanyahu that Iran
was Russia's principle strategic partner in the region. Is that set to change?
Netanyahu has met VVP what, three times this year, behind closed doors. What was said, and
what agreements were made? It is also reputed that they have a direct one-to-one encrypted
comms network (though I can't confirm it was activated). But that they are in regular contact
is undoubted.
There is a lot more going on beneath the surface than first meets the eye. VVP's relations
with Netanyahu blurs the boundaries and greys the narrative. The fact that VVP is saying it
"looks accidental" doesn't ring true it looks anything other than accidental to me. Was there
a communication breakdown as VVP is in Hungary?
I do not know, and based on what we have been told, neither does anyone else. The FS
Auvergne fired missiles just as the Il-20 HQ went off screen. They weren't firing at the IDF,
I wouldn't be too sure they were "window dressing" for them either. Whatever went on, we are
being kept in the dark. Not precipitating WW3 is a good thing. Other than that, Russia's
foreign policy and ME relations are a 3D chess game that we know little of the motivation
behind: but I can infer that Russia's strategic needs are primary. At what point can that be
labelled imperialist?
Are you expecting to be spoon fed? And by the biased BBC, Guardian, etc!
It's pretty clear that Assad has won with Putin's support. China is on side too as
evidenced by recent military manoeuvres. What is happening now is the US, UK, France, Israel,
Turkey, Saudi just saving face and been allowed the odd small success or two.
However, Israel royally fucked up last night and Netanyahu will lose a plane or three if
he tries it again.
You didn't really read my comment: this "odd small success " has happened 200 times in the
last 18 months with the downing of how many IDF planes 1? Russia providing S-300s, or S-400s,
or upgrading the 1960's SAM 2s would secure Syrian airspace. But these supplies are not
forthcoming. Because Israel will not allow them.
The situation is a lot more complex: and no, I don't want to be spoonfed by the BBC. The
Saker posits a "Zionist 5th Column" in Russia that VVP has to accommodate. You seem to want a
simplistic ZioNATO v Russia narrative, all I am saying it is a lot more nuanced than that.
And I didn't get that from the Graun!
200 IDF strikes in 18 months, that could be stopped by turning on their S-400s, would be an
instance.. Israel has lobbied successfully to prevent Syria from securing its own airspace.
The majority of these attacks are to prevent Assad acquiring what Haaretz terms "lethal
weaponry" a euphemism for Iranian supplied air defences that could secure Syrian airspace. As
could a Russian declared NFZ (though the IDF would just standoff over Lebanon or the Med, and
not penetrate Syrian airspace). Or Russian supplied S-300s.
So my answer is yes and no. The Russophone alliance of Russia and Israel seems to be
ascendant over Syrian sovereignty. Or it was, until Monday. There appears to have been a
breakdown in the de-confliction agreement, or a deliberate misuse and provocation by Israel.
The jury is out on that one for the moment. If the attacks are stopped, I would tend to agree
with you.
There is the small matter of the international silence surrounding the FS Auvergne firing
missiles concurrent with the downing of the Il-20 HQ. These either hit the Il-20 or Latakia.
Has anyone considered the Il-20 WAS the target? That there was no accident, but a deliberate
targeting? Did the IDF or French take out the Russian early warning system and electronic
warfare capability to leave Latakia vulnerable? I don't know, and Rothschild Macron said no!
It is worth considering though, I feel.
Integrated into the systems view of militaristic, imperialistic, and sub-imperialistic,
and extractivist proliferation: it hardly matters who did what when. They are not giving us
an insight into their collective insanity and power games, where the stakes are humanities
very survivability. Russia only seemed to remember on Monday that the serial numbers on the
MH-17 BUK, means it was made in 1986. What else have they forgotten? What else do they not
know?
Humanity has no strategic allies within the global neoliberal ruling class. Arming the
world is a "pro-conflict policy", wouldn't you agree? Where militaristic proliferation can't
facilitate peace: the only possible de-confliction becomes system change? There are good and
bad actors within the current globally hegemonic cultural system: VVP is possibly the best,
so it would be unfair to heap the woes of an essentially evil system upon him especially in
isolation. So it must fall to those outside the transnational globally integrated system to
call out where this insanity will lead. That's you and me?
What I am suggesting is rather than the inevitably favourable comparison of VVP, and well,
just about anyone else let's look at the bigger picture. International World Capitalism, as
Guattari termed it, has faced us with the choice of three suicides. Without a radical
transformation of the oppressed consciousness (a la Guattari, Deleuze, Freire, Bookchin,
Naess, but better still the secular Buddha) there will soon enough come the day that does not
dawn Monday night was a foreshadowing of that very day?
The idea a head of state can function as a moral paragon is naive of course. Putin pursues
Russia's interests, not world peace and brotherhood. But at the same time we can't ignore the
fact he does so while adhering to the requirements of international law far more than the
west does. In that sense, he has some claim to respect from those who value ethical conduct.
Whatever his motives may be this fact deserves to be stated and made clear.
"Israel is unlikely to freely use Syrian airspace in the wake of the crash of a Russian
Il-20 military aircraft over the Mediterranean Sea, Yakov Kedmi, a former high-ranking
Israeli intelligence official, told Sputnik.
"There was an agreement between Israel and Russia that the actions of Israel in Syria's
airspace would not endanger lives of Russian troops. Israel breached this commitment What
happens next will depend on the position of Israel. Most likely, Israel will no longer be
able to enjoy the same freedom in the sky of Syria as it did before the incident," Kedmi
said.
"Israel's attack in itself, regardless of the consequences, was an irresponsible step,
because there is not a single facility on the territory of Syria that might have been used by
Iran and whose destruction would have justified an attack on it, which could endanger the
Russian troops," Kedmi said."
The US must be the worst nation on the face of the Earth. Everywhere it goes, death and
destruction follow. To top it all off, the blatant hypocrisy is too much to handle. America
is treacherous and duplicitous in the extreme. It has supported terrorists of all stripes in
the Middle East and elsewhere for its own selfish geopolitical reasons. It is an entity not
to be trusted, ever!
Regarding (the long tradition of ) British-French-Israeli collusion
"Not only Russian and (allegedly) Israeli and French aircraft and missiles were in the
air. Civilian radar also tracked British Royal Air Force aircraft, which, unusually, had
switched on their transponders and gone into holding patterns – most likely to avoid
being somehow involved in the exchange of fire over Latakia." (source: Haaretz)
we should remember Sykes-Picot and "Operation Revised" (the 1956 Suez-deception)
"The documentary evidence does not leave any room for doubt that at Sèvres, during
the three days in late October 1956, an elaborate war plot was hatched against Egypt by the
representatives of France, Britain and Israel. The Protocol of Sèvres is the most
conclusive piece of evidence for it lays out in precise detail and with a precise time-table
how the joint war against Egypt was intended to proceed and shows foreknowledge of each
other's intentions .
The central aim of the plot was the overthrow of Gamal Abdel Nasser. This aim is not
explicitly stated in the protocol but it emerges clearly and unambiguously from all the
records of the discussions surrounding it. Yet each of the three partners had a very
different perspective on this war plot, and it was not at all clear how even the agreed aim
was to be achieved.
The French were the most straight-forward, unwavering and unabashed advocates of military
force. As far as they were concerned, Colonel Nasser supported the Algerian rebels and that,
along with his nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, was enough to justify a war to
overthrow him. For their part, the French did not need any further pretext for taking
military action. It was the British, unwilling to incur Arab hostility by appearing as ally
of Israel, who needed a pretext and Israel was able and willing to provide it but only at a
price. Israel also required the elimination of Nasser's air force, for which task Britain
alone had the heavy bomber bases sufficiently near at hand."
I was also struck by the Haaretz report that "Something strange was definitely in the air
over Syria on Monday night with British and French forces reportedly present." I hope this
open thread may bring more information on this alleged NATO involvement. I am beginning to
think this incident may have rather more actors than we've been told. Loading...
Yes – agreed. FUKUS ships have moved closer to the Syrian coast in the last few days,
presumably in anticipation of an attack (chemical or otherwise) that they could justify a
response to. The Russians have been doing a great job in the (non-Western) media of
predicting potential chemical fake attacks and thereby defusing them. The one minute warning
from Israel suggests the possibility (no more than that) that the Israelis saw the ELINT
plane approaching the airfield and quickly decided to use it as cover for whatever reason.
As I've said in other posts, the Israelis have narrowed Putin's options. Of FUKUS +I they
are the easiest to pick off.
A very different and is some ways attractive theory is presented here:
I am not totally convinced – Matt's view on the capability of the Syrian SAMs seems
more convincing and it is not clear that Russian fighters could have scrambled in time,
especially as the Israelis had agreed not to target Russian assets, but if true it perhaps is
a clever – nay Machiavellian – way of opening up options for Putin vis-a-vis his
Israeli/Russian Jewish oligarchs and hanging the Israelis out to dry.
Is there any information about whether the Auvergne did or didn't fire missiles? The Syrians
(and Russians?) said they had witnessed the firing of missiles which seemed to be aimed at
the same government buildings as that being attacked by Israel which suggests collusion.
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The US and NATO's compliant poodles are clearly willing to risk WWIII as they think Russia
will simply back down when they instigate open warfare and regime change in Syria. My own
belief is that poor honest broker Russia has been left to decide the fate of world peace.
Personally, for all our futures, I believe Russia must declare a no fly zone over Syria
– anyone entering to bomb will be at mercy of S400. Otherwise this will continue and if
the US gets Syria it will be Iran next and WWIII – that is, armageddon.
The entire of the West has now become simply a huge collective criminal enterprise operating
completely outside the bounds of international law and threatening to bring about armageddon
in the process. Of course one would never know this by reading or watching Western media
where our clueless psychopathic leaders are portrayed as gallantly fighting for "human
rights" and "democracy" through "regime change" and endless slaughter.
BTL SyrPer Auslander on September 18, 2018 · at 7:54 am EST/EDT
Israeli plane apparently passed just in front of the plane, SAA got a lock, Israeli
doglegged left, missile lost lock and chose the biggest target ..our plane. Israel violated
protocol, called one minute before the attack, not enough time for our bird to get out of the
way. The french frigate was window dressing.
Here are a couple of quotes that show how far the system has been rigged/corrupted:
"one of the things we need to do is give young Jewish people the confidence to be proud of
their identity – as British, Jewish and Zionist too .. There is no contradiction
between these identities and we must never let anyone try to suggest that there should be
..
"You can also count on my commitment to Israel's security .. I am clear that we will always
support Israel's right to defend itself."
– UK Prime Minister Theresa May, at the United Jewish Israel Appeal
"I've never seen a President -- I don't care who he is -- stand up to them (Israel). It
just boggles the mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all
the time. I got to the point where I wasn't writing anything down. If the American people
understood what a grip these people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms.
Our citizens certainly don't have any idea what goes on."
– U.S. Navy Admiral and former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Thomas Moorer
The significance of direct military involvement by Israel and France is that the facade of a
"civil war" (albeit by proxy) can no longer be maintained. The only thing that prevents it
from being a regular war between nations is the omission of a declaration.
Is it possible for Syria to "accidentally" bring down an allied plane? Don't they have
IFFs?
Yup, and kinda. It's perfectly possible to do it and IFF doesn't really work the way a lot
of people think. (IFF transponder beacon works by transmitting a signal to the ground station
or launcher).
If the ground station recognises the beacon it labels the aircraft as friendly and either
denies launch permission or warns the operator beforehand.
However with a system like the S-200 that will not actually matter. The SA-5 (S-200) is an
old system from the 60's which uses a semi active radar homing missile and how it works is
quite simple.
When the ground system detects a target it illuminates the target with it's radar like a
torch and launches the missile.
The missile then follows the radar reflection from the target until it gets close enough
to detonate, goes bang, shoots plane down.
However the beam from the radar 'torch' can be quite wide (miles wide), F-16's are quite
small, IL-20's quite big.. and the missile itself is pretty dumb.
As such by hiding in behind the larger aircraft the smaller aircraft can almost guarantee
an incoming missile will prioritise the large aircraft reflection and kill that instead. It
doesn't actually matter if the missile was launched against the smaller target in the first
instance or if IFF came into play. The missile itself is too dumb to care. It just goes for
the largest thing it can see.
Thanks for clearing that up: but it raises the question that the Il-20 was on a pre-planned
flight path known in advance to both Russian and Syrian air traffic control (whom I believe
are sitting next to each other?) Knowing what you have just posted (which I do not doubt) it
can hardly be termed "accidental"?
I suspect the FS Auvergne fired its Aster missiles, but I'm not expecting a clarification
of that. The situation is greyed by the burgeoning Russian-Israeli Russophone alliance. A
simple narrative will not be forthcoming, I suspect.
The IL-20's been on station flying figure 8's on constant rotation for months so it's flight
and landing path would be known to everyone with half assed radar or even functional
eyeballs.
Putin can't afford to get it wrong – for everybody's sake. His power is limited. He has
done an excellent job in defeating the West in Syria but how could he react to missiles from
the French frigate without triggering a massive NATO attack not just on Syria but Russia? In
the current climate and the West's readiness it could happen in hours. He has always
emphasised he puts Russian interests first – and those included eliminating thousands
of Russian Jihadis before they returned home to create mayhem. He has never said he'll take
on the World. So the French missiles were a mirage and the plane an accident? Well that's
better than an even bigger war maybe?
If the French and Israeli's attacked at the same time then they must have liased with each
other. Or conspired is another way of putting it. Shades of 1956? But nowadays there wouldn't
be the slightest outrage at such a collusion; it's oar for the course. And where is the
missing partner, the UK? "No longer up to it" the French would say. "Too busy" say the Brits.
NB which bit of Syria are the French after this time? Or do they see it descending into the
chaos of a Libya, their last successful destabilisation.
Note Russian and IDF planes in direct line from s-200 being fired ..with French frigate
..looks like deliberate coordination to provide cover for each .but if frigate attacked then
IDF planes available to directly attack Bashir in Damascus .and frigate to provide a source
of provocation for excuse for Nato forces to launch their massive attack they desparately
wish to do .especially as Putin agreed no military attack in Idlib ..and Russian MoD
presentation yesterday it was a Ukraine BUK .in fact it is tempting to say Nato did this to
get back at Russian MoD and punish them for this and expose in any way Russia's belief in
trust and agreements and hotlines as a laughing stock ..and they have succeeded .a Russian
plane shot down by an outdated Russian missile launched by Syria and Russia failing to supply
s-300 but Turkey and everyone else can have s-400 which might ? have not ended up like
this.
And did not Russia promise to deal with the "launch source" of any more missiles against
Syria since the previous lot? Surely their are Russians in Latakia
The elephant in the room is Iran .no responses from them yet even though Israel uses excuses
to say it is defending itself from them and continues to attack what tjey call Iranian assets
or anything they might vaguely claim have any connections to Iran ..does Iran follow Putins
example to keep calm and carry on .thinking their"partnership" is being put to the test as of
course it is in order to provoke it to invite a response by usa and associates .does it say
to Putin enough is enough we are going to do our thing as you have said Russia is only in
Syria to protect its own interests so cannot we do the same ..what options covert or overt
does Iran have one wonders ..
One question you didn't ask is whether this act, which appears to be an Israeli provocation
assisted by the French, is related to the Sochi talks/agreement? Seems that supporters of the
Syrian Opposition, of which France is right behind Turkey, might not like the agreement,
partly because it stalls the plans for a "Syrian gas attack" by removing the pretext.
However I think the wider question is why and how has France been involved in this, described
on SBS as "Israeli and French forces conducting aerial attacks on Syrian State assets"?
Israel is a law unto itself, but France's intervention without any pretext whatsoever is a
blatant war crime and escalation. The whole thing looks like a provocation, and one wonders
when Russia will break. If Putin was unhappy having to make a peace agreement with the psycho
Erdogan, he will be more unhappy now.
If Russia was 'obliged' to retaliate to Israeli or French attacks its inherent weaknesses
would be exposed. It remains a relatively poor country and Putin must be well aware it can't
take on the US, Israel, the KSA and the other Gulf Emirs as well as France and the UK. It's
done a fantastic job saving Syria but it can't take on The Rest of the World. If it has
accepted Syrian missile defences brought it down that may well be the way out of a bigger war
– this time.
I agree, Paul X. These are not only perilous waters, but untested to boot. In fact not one of
the military powers you cite has had its strength tested against a non third world adversary.
I know there are infantile tendencies crying "bring it on!" – as though speaking of a
long awaited prize fight involving their heavyweight boxer of choice – but saner voices
can only express alarm and profound dismay at what Western rulers seem bent on dragging us
into. I say enough of this macho nonsense about who would prevail. I do take some comfort in
the possibility –
https://www.unz.com/tsaker/book-review-losing-military-supremacy-the-myopia-of-american-strategic-planning-by-andrei-martyanov/-
that US military power is overstated, but it is comfort of the bleakest possible kind.
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The point is this, Russia can take on the whole World if it had to, but it would be a pyrrhic
victory, because to do so would require nuclear weapons which no nation could survive.
However, Russia has many allies, the largest of which is China, so it probably would only be
taking on one major opponent, the US and a few of its erstwhile allies (France, Britain
etc.), not by any stretch of the imagination, the whole World!
China is even weaker than Russia and not long ago said it was 10 years behind the US in
military terms and it's hard to see they'd welcome a bit of sacrifice to pull Putin's
chestnuts out of the fire. That Alliance is for the future. Right now a full blooded NATO
response would be quite enough. Many in America would be delighted if Russia used a nuke;
total annihaltion of Russia would follow, something they've been dying to do for 75 years.
And of course they might go for the First Strike.
There are a lot of folks out there talking recession in the near-term. Most of that derives
from history. Recession occurs every so often, or rather it used to.
It's really hard to have a decrease in GDP when you are running a deficit near a trillion
dollars. A trillion dollars is about 4.8% of GDP. If GDP grew by less than that then you have
some sort of word to invent to describe growth absent created money. (Not by the Fed, but also
not by capitalism). And there's a lot of cash being repatriated, and that damn sure hasn't
finished yet. So it's really hard to get a GDP decrease until all of that works through.
As has been noted before, the real danger in all of this is drawing attention to what
Bernanke did. When it is completely visible that money was created whimsically, and that the
Chinese have proven that you don't have to allow your currency to trade completely outside
government controls, then the system gets dicey.
The only thing stopping exporting country leadership from concluding that the oil is better
off underground for the grandchildren rather than being traded for pieces of paper with ink on
it -- the only thing preventing that conclusion is an array of advisors whose own personal
wealth would be endangered by such an exposure about money in general. They are the ones
whispering in the ears of their leadership, and their advice is not sourced in the best
interests of that country.
To a certain extent we could label all such advisors for all oil exporting countries as,
dare one say it, Deep State. Establishment political infrastructure in each country giving
advice sourced in their own well-being and not that of the country.
"... A basic principle should be the starting point of any macro analysis: The volume of interest-bearing debt tends to outstrip the economy's ability to pay. This tendency is inherent in the "magic of compound interest." The exponential growth of debt expands by its own purely mathematical momentum, independently of the economy's ability to pay – and faster than the non-financial economy grows. ..."
Wall Street did not let the Lehman Brothers crisis go to waste. The banks that have paid the
largest fines for financial fraud are now much bigger and more profitable. The victims of their
junk mortgage loans are poorer, and the economy is facing debt deflation.
Was it worth it? What was not saved was the economy.
That's a bold statement but cancerous growth is typical of any intelligence agency, especially CIA: all of them want more and more
budget money and try to influence both domestic and foreign policy. That's signs of cancel.
FBI actually has dual mandate: suppressing political dissent (STASI functions) and fight with criminals and organized crime.
The fact the President does not control his own administration, especially State Department isclearly visible now. He is more like
a ceremonial figura that is allowed to rant on Twitter, but can't change any thing of substance in forign policy. and Is a typucal Repiblican
in domenstic policy, betraying the electorate like Obama did
Notable quotes:
"... Sessions recused himself from the "Russia Collusion" investigation. Now that it is known to have been an extension of Democratic election rigging, and DC bureaucratic "Resistance," he could be initiate a broad sweep investigation into Washington, DC based bureaucratic bias and corruption. ..."
Shifting from Sessions to the much-maligned FBI, Trump said the agency was "a cancer" and that uncovering deep-seated corruption
in the FBI may be remembered as the "crowning achievement" of his administration, per
the Hill .
"What we've done is a great service to the country, really," Trump said in a 45-minute, wide-ranging interview in the Oval
Office.
"I hope to be able put this up as one of my crowning achievements that I was able to ... expose something that is truly a cancer
in our country."
Moreover, Trump insisted that he never trusted former FBI Director James Comey, and that he had initially planned to fire Comey
shortly after the inauguration, but had been talked out of it by his aides.
Trump also said he regretted not firing former FBI Director James Comey immediately instead of waiting until May 2017, confirming
an account his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, gave Hill.TV earlier in the day that Trump was dismayed in 2016 by the way Comey handled
the Hillary Clinton email case and began discussing firing him well before he became president.
"If I did one mistake with Comey, I should have fired him before I got here. I should have fired him the day I won the primaries,"
Trump said. "I should have fired him right after the convention, say I don't want that guy. Or at least fired him the first day
on the job. ... I would have been better off firing him or putting out a statement that I don't want him there when I get there."
The FISA Court judges who approved the initial requests allowing the FBI to surveil employees of the Trump Campaign also came
in for some criticism, with Trump claiming they used "poor Carter Page, who nobody even knew, and who I feel very badly for...as
a foil...to surveil a candidate or the presidency of the United States." Trump added that he felt the judges had been "misled" by
the FBI.
He criticizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court's approval of the warrant that authorized surveillance
of Carter Page, a low-level Trump campaign aide, toward the end of the 2016 election, suggesting the FBI misled the court.
"They know this is one of the great scandals in the history of our country because basically what they did is, they used Carter
Page, who nobody even knew, who I feel very badly for, I think he's been treated very badly. They used Carter Page as a foil in
order to surveil a candidate for the presidency of the United States."
As for the judges on the secret intelligence court: "It looks to me just based on your reporting, that they have been misled,"
the president said, citing a series of columns in The Hill newspaper identifying shortcomings in the FBI investigation. "I mean
I don't think we have to go much further than to say that they've been misled."
"One of the things I'm disappointed in is that the judges in FISA didn't, don't seem to have done anything about it. I'm very
disappointed in that Now, I may be wrong because, maybe as we sit here and talk, maybe they're well into it. We just don't know
that because I purposely have not chosen to get involved," Trump said.
Trump continued the assault on Sessions during a brief conference with reporters Wednesday morning. When asked whether he was
planning to fire Sessions, Trump replied that "we're looking into lots of different things."
To be sure, Sessions has managed to hang on thus far. And if he can somehow manage to survive past Nov. 6, his fate will perversely
rest on the Democrats' success. Basically, if they wrest back control of the Senate (which, to be sure, is unlikely), Sessions chances
of staying on would rise dramatically. But then again, how much abuse can a man realistically endure before he decides that the costs
of staying outweigh the benefits of leaving?
DingleBarryObummer , 19 minutes ago
Sessions works for Trump, because Trump is running the uniparty russia-gate stormy-gate anti-trump show. Sessions was intentionally
placed there to stonewall and make sure the kabuki goes on. Rosenstein is a Trump appointee. This **** garners sympathy for him
as the persecuted underdog, rallies his base; and distracts from the obvious zio-bankster influence over his admin and his many
unfulfilled campaign promises. He's deceiving you. Why do you think Giuliani acts like such a buffoon? It's because that's what
he was hired for. All distractions and bullshit. He will not get impeached, Hillary is not going to jail, nothing will happen.
The zio-Banksters will continue to stay at the top of the pyramid, because that's who trump works for, NOT you and me.
"While Trump's fascination with the White House still burned within him [re: 2011], he also had The Apprentice to deal with--and
it wasn't as easy as you might think. He loved doing the show and was reluctant to give it up. At one point, he was actually thinking
of hosting it from the oval office if he made it all the way to the White House. He even discussed it with Stephen Burke, the
CEO at NBCUniversal, telling Burke he would reconsider running if the network was concerned about his candidacy." -Roger Stone
"To some people the notion of consciously playing power games-no matter how indirect-seems evil, asocial, a relic of the past.
They believe they can opt out of the game by behaving in ways that have nothing to do with power. You must beware of such people,
for while they express such opinions outwardly, they are often among the most adept players at power. They utilize strategies
that cleverly disguise the nature of the manipulation involved. These types, for example, will often display their weakness and
lack of power as a kind of moral virtue. But true powerlessness, without any motive of self-interest, would not publicize its
weakness to gain sympathy or respect. Making a show of one's weakness is actually a very effective strategy, subtle and deceptive,
in the game of power." -Robert Greene
Sparkey , 31 minutes ago
This is why the 'little' people love President 'The Donald' Trump, he says the things they would like to say, but have no platform
to speak from, Mushroom man The Donald has no fear he has got Mushroom power, and he has my support in what ever he does!
Secret Weapon , 43 minutes ago
Is Sessions a Deep State firewall? Starting to look that way.
TrustbutVerify , 48 minutes ago
Sessions recused himself from the "Russia Collusion" investigation. Now that it is known to have been an extension of Democratic
election rigging, and DC bureaucratic "Resistance," he could be initiate a broad sweep investigation into Washington, DC based
bureaucratic bias and corruption.
I suspect Sessions will last until after the mid-term elections. Then Trump will fire him and bring someone like Gowdy in to
head the DOJ and to bring about investigations.
And, my gosh, there seems to be so much to investigate. And to my mind prosecute.
loop, 49 minutes ago
"I've never seen a President - I don't care who he is - stand up to them (Israel). It just boggles the mind. They always
get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn't writing anything down.
If the American people understood what a grip these people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms.
Our citizens certainly don't have any idea what goes on."
- U.S. Navy Admiral and former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Thomas Moorer
mendigo, 59 minutes ago
Cool stuff. But really the cancer goes much deeper. That is the scary part. Trump is now largely controlled by the Borg.
Government employees and elected officials have a choice: can either play along and become wealthy and powerful or have
their careers destroyed, or worse.
Taxes/regulationUS/Global EconomicsThe
Minsky Moment Ten Years After These days are the tenth anniversary of the biggest Minsky
Moment since the Great Depression. While when it happened most commentators mentioned Minsky
and many even called it a "Minsky Moment," most of the commentary now does not use that term
and much does not even mention Minsky, much less Charles Kindleberger or Keynes. Rather much of
the discussion has focused now on the failure of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2017. A new
book by Lawrence Ball has argued that the Fed could have bailed LB out as they did with Bear
Stearns in February of that year, with Ball at least, and some others, suggesting that would
have resolved everything, no big crash, no Great Recession, no angry populist movement more
recently, heck, all hunky dory if only the Fed had been more responsible, although Ball
especially points his finger at Bush's Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, for especially
pressuring Bernanke and Geithner at the Fed not to repeat Bear Stearns. And indeed when they
decided not to support Lehman, the Fed received widespread praise in much of the media
initially, before its fall blew out AIG and brought down most of the pyramid of highly
leveraged derivatives of derivatives coming out of the US mortgage market ,which had been
declining for over two years.
Indeed, I agree with Dean Baker as I have on so many times regarding all this that while
Lehman may have been the straw that broke the camel's back, it was the camel's back breaking
that was the problem, and it was almost certainly going to blow big time reasonably soon then.
It it was not Lehman, it was going to be something else. Indeed, on July 12, 2008, I posted
here on Econospeak a
forecast of this, declaring "It looks like we might be finally reaching the big crash in the US
mortgage market after a period of distress that started last August (if not earlier)."
I drew on Minsky's argument (backed by Kindleberger in his Manias, Panics, and
Crashes ) that the vast majority of major speculative bubbles experience periods of gradual
decline after their peaks prior to really seriously crashing during what Minsky labeled the
"period of financial distress," a term he adopted from the corporate finance literature. The US
housing market had been falling since July, 2006. The bond markets had been declining since
August, 2007, the stock market had been declining since October, 2007, and about the time I
posted that, the oil market reached an all-time nominal peak of $147 per barrel and began a
straight plunge that reached about $30 per barrel in November, 2008. This was a massively
accelerating period of distress with the real economy also dropping, led by falling residential
consumption. In mid-September the Minsky Moment arrived, and the floor dropped out of not just
these US markets, but pretty much all markets around the world, with world economy then falling
into the Great Recession.
Let me note something I have seen nobody commenting on in all this outpouring on this
anniversary. This is how the immediate Minsky Moment ended. Many might say it was the TARP or
the stress tests or the fiscal stimulus, All of these helped to turn around the broader slide
that followed by the Minsky Moment. But there was a more immediate crisis that went on for
several days following the Lehman collapse, peaking on Sept. 17 and 18, but with obscure
reporting about what went down then. This was when nobody at the Board of Governors went home;
cots made an appearance. This was the point when those at the Fed scrambled to keep the whole
thing from turning into 1931 and largely succeeded. The immediate problem was that the collapse
of AIG following the collapse of Lehman was putting massive pressure on top European banks,
especially Deutsches Bank and BNP Paribas. Supposedly the European Central Bank (ECB) should
have been able to handle this But along with all this the ECB was facing a massive run on the
euro as money fled to the "safe haven" of the US dollar, so ironic given that the US markets
generated this mess.
Anyway, as Neil Irwinin The Alchemists (especially Chap. 11) documented, the crucial
move that halted the collapse of the euro and the threat of a fullout global collapse was a set
of swaps the Fed pulled off that led to it taking about $600 billion of Eurojunk from the
distressed European banks through the ECB onto the Fed balance sheet. These troubled assets
were gradually and very quietly rolled off the Fed balance sheet over the next six months to be
replaced by mortgage backed securities. This was the save the Fed pulled off at the worst
moment of the Minsky Moment. The Fed policymakers can be criticized for not seeing what was
coming (although several people there had spotted it earlier and issued warnings, including
Janet Yellen in 2005 and Geithner in a prescient speech in Hong Kong in September, 2006, in
which he recognized that the housing related financial markets were highly opaque and fragile).
But this particular move was an absolute save, even though it remains today very little known,
even to well-informed observers.
Barkley Rosser
run75441 , September 18, 2018 7:07 am
Barkley:
A few days ago, it was just a housing bubble to which a few of us pointed out an abnormal
housing bubble created by fraud and greed on Wall Street. The market was riddled with false
promises to pay through CDS, countering naked-CDS both of which had little if any reserves in
this case to back up each AIG CDS insuring Goldman Sachs securities. When Goldman Sachs made
that call to AIG, there were few funds to pay out and AIG was on the verge of collapse.
And today, some of those very same created banks under TARP which were gambling then and
some of which had legal issues are free from the stress testing Dodd – Frank imposed
upon banks with assets greater than $50 billion. Did the new limit need to be $250 billion?
Volcker thought $100 billion was adequate and Frank argued for a slightly higher limit well
under $250 billion. The fox is in the chicken coop again with Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas,
UBS, and Credit Suisse not being regulated as closely and 25 of the largest 38 banks under
less regulation. These are not community banks and they helped to bring us to our knees. Is
it still necessary for American Express to be a bank and have access to low interest rates
the Fed offers? I think not; but, others may disagree with me. It is not a bank.
You remember the miracle the Fed pulled off as detailed in The Alchemists which I also
read at your recommendation. I remember the fraud and greed on Wall Street for which Main
Street paid for with lost equity, jobs, etc. I remember the anger of Wall Street Execs who
were denied bonuses and states who had exhausted unemployment funding denying workers
unemployment. We were rescued from a worse fate; but, the memory of the cure the nation's
citizenry had to take for Wall Street greed and fraud leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
EMichael , September 18, 2018 8:39 am
This never ending meme about Tarp saving the banks is really starting to aggravate me. The
Fed saved the banking system(on both sides of the Atlantic) before Tarp issued one dollar,
and they did so with trillions, not billions, of loans and guarantees that stopped the run on
the banks and mutual funds on both sides of the Atlantic.
Just look at the amounts. Tarp gave out $250 billion to the banks. Do people seriously
think this saved the banking system? Or that Wells goes under without their $25 billion
loan?
Tarp was window dressing and pr, not a solution by any stretch of the imagination.
"Bloomberg ran quite a story, yesterday. It stems from a Freedom of Information Act
Request that yielded the details of previously secret borrowing from the federal government
to the biggest banks.
The bottom line, reports Bloomberg, by March of 2009, the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion
"to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the
U.S. that year." The lending began in August of 2007.
The reporting from Bloomberg Markets Magazine is spectacular, so we hope you click over
and give the exhaustive piece a read."
If you pick up The Alchemist, I believe you will see all of this ($7 trillion) explained
in there. TARP was used to buy up junk MBS from banks by the Treasury and separate from the
FED. It was also used to buy up bank stock to give them reserves. It saved two of the three
OEMs too.
Ken Houghton , September 18, 2018 11:52 am
The general U.S. mortgage market died on Hallwe'en 2006. By the first quarter of 2007, it
was dead even for IBs who owned originators.
There were two IBs who were dependent on MBS for their profits: Bear and Lehmann. Doesn't
mean they didn't have other businesses, but their earnings would go from a V-8 to a
3-cylinder.
Bear went first, and ShitforBrains Fuld & Co. had six months after that to shore up
capital, find a buyer, or go under.
We all knew that the reason Bear was saved wasn't out of generosity, but because it really
would have had a systemic effect had it gone through bankruptcy proceedings. But THAT was
because Bear had two core businesses, and the other one was Custodial Services.
Had Bear gone through bankruptcy, those Customer funds would have been inaccessible for at
least 30 days.
Lehmann had no similar function; failure of Lehmann was failure of Lehmann.
Fuld knew all of this and still fucked around for six months pretending he was driving a
911 instead of a Geo Metro.
Lawrence Ball is a brain-dead idiot if he thinks saving that firm would have in any way
made things better.
likbez , September 18, 2018 12:41 pm
My take on Minsky moment is that banking introduces positive feedback loop into the
system, making it (as any dynamic system with strong positive feedback loop) unstable.
To compensate you need to introduce negative feedback loop in a form of regulation and
legal system that vigorously prosecute financial oligarchy "transgressions," instilling fear
and damping its predatory behavior and parasitic rents instincts. In a way number of bankers
who go to jail each year is metric of stability of the system. Which was a feature (subverted
and inconsistent from the beginning and decimated in 70th) of New Deal Capitalism.
As neoliberalism is essentially revenge of financial oligarchy which became the ruling
class again, this positive feedback loop is an immanent feature of neoliberalism.
Financial oligarchy is not interesting in regulation and legal framework that suppresses
its predatory and parasitic "instincts." So this is by definition is an unstable system prone
to periodic financial "collapses." In which the government needs to step in and save the
system.
So the question about the 2008 financial crisis is when the next one commences and how
destructive it will be. Not why it happened.
likbez , September 18, 2018 12:47 pm
In a perverse way the percentage of financial executives who go to jail each year might be
viewed as a metric of stability of the financial system ;-)
Some, but a "fair proportion"? Probably not. Advocacy of progressive causes usually involves
punching up – an inherently more dangerous occupation than punching down.
People forget that the older Soviet nomenklatura won their positions in World War II, when
being a commissar meant leading from the front, being shot out of hand by the Germans, rallying
the partisans in mountain villages to another desperate defense and similar. Survivor bias
– we don't see the dead.
In more genteel times, the outspoken progressive will often face social ostracism, lack of
promotion, attacks in the conservative press
Human motives are complex – no doubt there were confederates who genuinely believed
the fight was for states rights, and no doubt there are libertarians who genuinely believe that
the poor will have it much better in a free market utopia.
I doubt the proportion, either counting individuals or in the swirl inside minds, is very
large, but there's always some.
Now we're making progress Thomas. The Berkowitz definition is sleazy, and sets up anyone not
conservative as an amoral lump in need of guidance, or worse still as dangerous to society.
Perhaps that's why Hayek (a supposedly type b conservative) had his opponents thrown out of
helicopters. Or was that Friedman?
The appeal of conservatism and it's electoral success is easily explained. Because their
real ideology is just treachery, theft and rape they need to hide these ideas from normal
people, who already in general support the moral ideas fundamental to civilized society
regardless of their politics. So they hide their true agenda through appeals to racism, or by
cloaking themselves in the type b definition (isn't this robins point?!) In doing this they
benefit from the work of yeomen like you, who insist that conservatism is a real moral
project rather than banditry. In most countries they also only win when the left is divided,
and only when their elite friends are pouring money into corrupt media. If they didn't have
these advantages, these lies, and help from people like you they would never succeed.
I focus on Trump et Al because they are the leaders of your sect,the people who sell your
ideas (manafort was a campaign manager ffs), and the people who turn the ideology into
action. Didn't you learn in primary school to judge people by their actions, not their words?
And why would I ignore these particular conservatives because they're "vulgar clowns"? You're
all dangerous, vulgar clowns.
Taxes/regulationUS/Global EconomicsThe
Minsky Moment Ten Years After These days are the tenth anniversary of the biggest Minsky
Moment since the Great Depression. While when it happened most commentators mentioned Minsky
and many even called it a "Minsky Moment," most of the commentary now does not use that term
and much does not even mention Minsky, much less Charles Kindleberger or Keynes. Rather much of
the discussion has focused now on the failure of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2017. A new
book by Lawrence Ball has argued that the Fed could have bailed LB out as they did with Bear
Stearns in February of that year, with Ball at least, and some others, suggesting that would
have resolved everything, no big crash, no Great Recession, no angry populist movement more
recently, heck, all hunky dory if only the Fed had been more responsible, although Ball
especially points his finger at Bush's Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, for especially
pressuring Bernanke and Geithner at the Fed not to repeat Bear Stearns. And indeed when they
decided not to support Lehman, the Fed received widespread praise in much of the media
initially, before its fall blew out AIG and brought down most of the pyramid of highly
leveraged derivatives of derivatives coming out of the US mortgage market ,which had been
declining for over two years.
Indeed, I agree with Dean Baker as I have on so many times regarding all this that while
Lehman may have been the straw that broke the camel's back, it was the camel's back breaking
that was the problem, and it was almost certainly going to blow big time reasonably soon then.
It it was not Lehman, it was going to be something else. Indeed, on July 12, 2008, I posted
here on Econospeak a
forecast of this, declaring "It looks like we might be finally reaching the big crash in the US
mortgage market after a period of distress that started last August (if not earlier)."
I drew on Minsky's argument (backed by Kindleberger in his Manias, Panics, and
Crashes ) that the vast majority of major speculative bubbles experience periods of gradual
decline after their peaks prior to really seriously crashing during what Minsky labeled the
"period of financial distress," a term he adopted from the corporate finance literature. The US
housing market had been falling since July, 2006. The bond markets had been declining since
August, 2007, the stock market had been declining since October, 2007, and about the time I
posted that, the oil market reached an all-time nominal peak of $147 per barrel and began a
straight plunge that reached about $30 per barrel in November, 2008. This was a massively
accelerating period of distress with the real economy also dropping, led by falling residential
consumption. In mid-September the Minsky Moment arrived, and the floor dropped out of not just
these US markets, but pretty much all markets around the world, with world economy then falling
into the Great Recession.
Let me note something I have seen nobody commenting on in all this outpouring on this
anniversary. This is how the immediate Minsky Moment ended. Many might say it was the TARP or
the stress tests or the fiscal stimulus, All of these helped to turn around the broader slide
that followed by the Minsky Moment. But there was a more immediate crisis that went on for
several days following the Lehman collapse, peaking on Sept. 17 and 18, but with obscure
reporting about what went down then. This was when nobody at the Board of Governors went home;
cots made an appearance. This was the point when those at the Fed scrambled to keep the whole
thing from turning into 1931 and largely succeeded. The immediate problem was that the collapse
of AIG following the collapse of Lehman was putting massive pressure on top European banks,
especially Deutsches Bank and BNP Paribas. Supposedly the European Central Bank (ECB) should
have been able to handle this But along with all this the ECB was facing a massive run on the
euro as money fled to the "safe haven" of the US dollar, so ironic given that the US markets
generated this mess.
Anyway, as Neil Irwinin The Alchemists (especially Chap. 11) documented, the crucial
move that halted the collapse of the euro and the threat of a fullout global collapse was a set
of swaps the Fed pulled off that led to it taking about $600 billion of Eurojunk from the
distressed European banks through the ECB onto the Fed balance sheet. These troubled assets
were gradually and very quietly rolled off the Fed balance sheet over the next six months to be
replaced by mortgage backed securities. This was the save the Fed pulled off at the worst
moment of the Minsky Moment. The Fed policymakers can be criticized for not seeing what was
coming (although several people there had spotted it earlier and issued warnings, including
Janet Yellen in 2005 and Geithner in a prescient speech in Hong Kong in September, 2006, in
which he recognized that the housing related financial markets were highly opaque and fragile).
But this particular move was an absolute save, even though it remains today very little known,
even to well-informed observers.
Barkley Rosser
run75441 , September 18, 2018 7:07 am
Barkley:
A few days ago, it was just a housing bubble to which a few of us pointed out an abnormal
housing bubble created by fraud and greed on Wall Street. The market was riddled with false
promises to pay through CDS, countering naked-CDS both of which had little if any reserves in
this case to back up each AIG CDS insuring Goldman Sachs securities. When Goldman Sachs made
that call to AIG, there were few funds to pay out and AIG was on the verge of collapse.
And today, some of those very same created banks under TARP which were gambling then and
some of which had legal issues are free from the stress testing Dodd – Frank imposed
upon banks with assets greater than $50 billion. Did the new limit need to be $250 billion?
Volcker thought $100 billion was adequate and Frank argued for a slightly higher limit well
under $250 billion. The fox is in the chicken coop again with Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas,
UBS, and Credit Suisse not being regulated as closely and 25 of the largest 38 banks under
less regulation. These are not community banks and they helped to bring us to our knees. Is
it still necessary for American Express to be a bank and have access to low interest rates
the Fed offers? I think not; but, others may disagree with me. It is not a bank.
You remember the miracle the Fed pulled off as detailed in The Alchemists which I also
read at your recommendation. I remember the fraud and greed on Wall Street for which Main
Street paid for with lost equity, jobs, etc. I remember the anger of Wall Street Execs who
were denied bonuses and states who had exhausted unemployment funding denying workers
unemployment. We were rescued from a worse fate; but, the memory of the cure the nation's
citizenry had to take for Wall Street greed and fraud leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
EMichael , September 18, 2018 8:39 am
This never ending meme about Tarp saving the banks is really starting to aggravate me. The
Fed saved the banking system(on both sides of the Atlantic) before Tarp issued one dollar,
and they did so with trillions, not billions, of loans and guarantees that stopped the run on
the banks and mutual funds on both sides of the Atlantic.
Just look at the amounts. Tarp gave out $250 billion to the banks. Do people seriously
think this saved the banking system? Or that Wells goes under without their $25 billion
loan?
Tarp was window dressing and pr, not a solution by any stretch of the imagination.
"Bloomberg ran quite a story, yesterday. It stems from a Freedom of Information Act
Request that yielded the details of previously secret borrowing from the federal government
to the biggest banks.
The bottom line, reports Bloomberg, by March of 2009, the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion
"to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the
U.S. that year." The lending began in August of 2007.
The reporting from Bloomberg Markets Magazine is spectacular, so we hope you click over
and give the exhaustive piece a read."
If you pick up The Alchemist, I believe you will see all of this ($7 trillion) explained
in there. TARP was used to buy up junk MBS from banks by the Treasury and separate from the
FED. It was also used to buy up bank stock to give them reserves. It saved two of the three
OEMs too.
Ken Houghton , September 18, 2018 11:52 am
The general U.S. mortgage market died on Hallwe'en 2006. By the first quarter of 2007, it
was dead even for IBs who owned originators.
There were two IBs who were dependent on MBS for their profits: Bear and Lehmann. Doesn't
mean they didn't have other businesses, but their earnings would go from a V-8 to a
3-cylinder.
Bear went first, and ShitforBrains Fuld & Co. had six months after that to shore up
capital, find a buyer, or go under.
We all knew that the reason Bear was saved wasn't out of generosity, but because it really
would have had a systemic effect had it gone through bankruptcy proceedings. But THAT was
because Bear had two core businesses, and the other one was Custodial Services.
Had Bear gone through bankruptcy, those Customer funds would have been inaccessible for at
least 30 days.
Lehmann had no similar function; failure of Lehmann was failure of Lehmann.
Fuld knew all of this and still fucked around for six months pretending he was driving a
911 instead of a Geo Metro.
Lawrence Ball is a brain-dead idiot if he thinks saving that firm would have in any way
made things better.
likbez , September 18, 2018 12:41 pm
My take on Minsky moment is that banking introduces positive feedback loop into the
system, making it (as any dynamic system with strong positive feedback loop) unstable.
To compensate you need to introduce negative feedback loop in a form of regulation and
legal system that vigorously prosecute financial oligarchy "transgressions," instilling fear
and damping its predatory behavior and parasitic rents instincts. In a way number of bankers
who go to jail each year is metric of stability of the system. Which was a feature (subverted
and inconsistent from the beginning and decimated in 70th) of New Deal Capitalism.
As neoliberalism is essentially revenge of financial oligarchy which became the ruling
class again, this positive feedback loop is an immanent feature of neoliberalism.
Financial oligarchy is not interesting in regulation and legal framework that suppresses
its predatory and parasitic "instincts." So this is by definition is an unstable system prone
to periodic financial "collapses." In which the government needs to step in and save the
system.
So the question about the 2008 financial crisis is when the next one commences and how
destructive it will be. Not why it happened.
likbez , September 18, 2018 12:47 pm
In a perverse way the percentage of financial executives who go to jail each year might be
viewed as a metric of stability of the financial system ;-)
To paraphrase Mark Twain, everyone complains about inequality, but nobody does anything
about it.
What they do is to use "inequality" as a takeoff point to project their own views on how
to make society more prosperous and at the same time more equal. These views largely depend
on whether they view the One Percent as innovative, smart and creative, making wealth by
helping the rest of society – or whether, as the great classical economists wrote, the
wealthiest layer of the population consist of rentiers, making their income and wealth off
the 99 Percent as idle landlords, monopolists and predatory bankers.
urban legend , September 17, 2018 3:59 pm
False choice. There's no either/or heare. Many are innovative, smart and creative, but
they are just using political power to grab too much of the revenue others help them
generate. I have yet to see any proposals suggesting that the 1%'s wealth should be
confiscated. They do say to take more of the marginal dollar in taxes -- usually proposing
relatively modest increases to 42% or 45% or even 50% on incomes above $1 million or so --
and propose various ways of increasing the bargaining power of workers.
Then again, those born on 3rd base and living off their wealth -- whether they think they
hit a triple or know they were just lucky -- are rentiers.
A quick observation and a fascinating parallele. Serena Williams and the US global
hyperpower.
Serena at 36 got bitten fair and square at US open by a girl of 20, almost half her age.
So she throws up a nuclear tantrum, publicly calling the referee a thief, threatening that he
will never referee again, obviously thanks to her money, power and gender.
During her post-game interview, Serena told a news conference, "I'm here, fighting for
women's rights, for women's equality, and for all kind of stuff it made me think that it was
a sexist remark [referring to the penalty the referee Ramos awarded her]."
The declining US fights for human rights as declining Serena fights for women's rights.
Both invoke exceptionalism and higher principles and go nuclear when they cannot win any more
under the established international rules. The irony of killing the Yemenis en mass whilst
"fighting" for the human rights of terrorists in Syria is just like Serena fighting for
women's rights against another younger and more capable woman.
Kiza - interesting point. Yes clearly Serena retrofitted the women's movement to justify
what was an old-fashioned Connors/McEnroe male tennis tantrum, although extremely mild
comapred to some of the crap those two pulled back in the day.
What goes without saying is the behaviour is as repulsive when Serena does it as when
McEnroe/Connors did.
Serena at 36 is no longer the dominant force just as America is no longer. However, it is
fair to say the winner is where she is because she trained extensively and I believe lives in
America so really she is an example of globalism and racial diversity, if not American
exeptionalism.
Women's tennis post Serena will not be dominated by Americans, but by American training of
the best players regardless of their origination
"... "I'm here, fighting for women's rights, for women's equality, and for all kind of stuff it made me think that it was a sexist remark [referring to the penalty Ramos awarded her] ..."
"... "I don't believe it's a good idea to apply a standard of 'If men can get away with it, women should be able to, too,' ..."
"... "Rather, I think the question we have to ask ourselves is this: What is the right way to behave to honor our sport and to respect our opponents?" ..."
"... "we cannot measure ourselves by what we think we should also be able to get away with this is the sort of behavior that no one should be engaging in on the court." ..."
After being penalized for calling chair umpire Carlos Ramos a "thief," Williams
summoned up the evil spirits of political correctness to plead her case. She was heard
telling officials
that many male tennis players have done "much worse" without any sort of retribution.
In other words, Ramos was a cave-dwelling "sexist" put on earth to thwart the progress
of womanhood.
During her post-game interview, Serena told a news conference, "I'm here,
fighting for women's rights, for women's equality, and for all kind of stuff it made me think
that it was a sexist remark [referring to the penalty Ramos awarded her] .
There were faint echoes of Oprah Winfrey's famous speech
at the Golden Globes in that it was the right message delivered at exactly the wrong time and
place.
So now, America's dethroned tennis queen, playing the gender card game instead of tennis, is
acting spokesperson for downtrodden women everywhere. Yet certainly Williams has heard of John
McEnroe, the former American tennis star whose on-court temper tantrums are now legendary. In
1990, for example, this loudmouthed male was tossed out of the Australian Open – not
just penalized – for verbally abusing the chair umpire, much like Williams did.
Since it may come off as chauvinistic for me – a burly male – to criticize
Serena, perhaps it would be more appropriate to quote Martina Navratilova, 61, one of the
greatest
female tennis players of all time.
"I don't believe it's a good idea to apply a standard of 'If men can get away with it,
women should be able to, too,' Navratilova
wrote in a New York Times op-ed regarding Williams' epic meltdown. "Rather, I think
the question we have to ask ourselves is this: What is the right way to behave to honor our
sport and to respect our opponents?"
The Czech-born American went on to comment that "we cannot measure ourselves by what we
think we should also be able to get away with this is the sort of behavior that no one should
be engaging in on the court."
Eureka! Navratilova – who hails from a bygone era when the vision of political
correctness, 'virtue signaling' and 'social justice warriors' was just a flash in the pan
– nailed it. Instead of looking to some external other to explain our life circumstances
– like losing a tennis match, for example, or a presidential election (wink, wink)
– people should look to themselves as the agents for proactive and positive change. Such
a message, however, would quickly sink the Liberal ship, which is predicated upon the idea that
the world is forever divided between oppressor and oppressed. What the Liberals fail to
appreciate, however, is that they are becoming the real oppressors as they continue to sideline
anybody who does not think and act exactly as they do.
Following Serena's epic meltdown, the Melbourne-based Herald Sun published a cartoon by Mark
Knight that shows the American tennis star as she proceeds to stomp on her racket, mouth open
and hair going straight up. It was not a flattering or subtle drawing, but given the
circumstances, that should probably come as no surprise.
2015: 12 Charlie Hebdo illustrators shot dead for depiction of prophet Muhammad -
thousands line streets demonstrating for freedom of sattire & humour
2018: Mark Knight draws caricature of Serena Williams - thousands shout racist &
demand his removal from Twiter and the media pic.twitter.com/NDpFrbigca
The Liberal outrage came fast and heavy as critics slammed the caricature as racist and
offensive. It would take hundreds of pages to recite them all, but as one example, CNN
columnist Rebecca Wanzo
labeled the cartoon as an example of – wait for it – "visual
imperialism," which is manifest by "a black grotesque seeming natural."
Never mind that the behavior of Serena Williams was "grotesque," which is what
inspired Knight's unflattering drawing of her in the first place. That is what is meant by a
'caricature', where the artist attempts to convey the essence of an event through imagery. Yes,
sometimes brutal imagery.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. Former Editor-in-Chief of The
Moscow News, he is author of the book, 'Midnight in the American Empire,' released in
2013.
"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."
-- The Empire Strikes Back
Since Vladimir Putin brought up Bill Browder's name in Helsinki, events have escalated to a
fever pitch. Russia is under extreme attack the U.S./European financial and political
establishment.
Danske's report on these allegations are due on Wednesday.
No matter what they say, however, the die has been cast.
Danske is being targeted for termination by the U.S. and possible takeover by the European
Central Bank.
There's precedent for this but let me lay out some background first.
The Oldest
Trick
Browder's complaint says the money laundered is in connection with the reason why he was
thrown out of Russia and the $230 million in stolen tax money which Browder's cause
célèbre , the death of accountant Sergei Magnitsky, hangs on.
That crusade got the Magnitsky Act passed not only in the U.S. but all across the West, with
versions on the books in Canada, Australia the EU and other places.
Danske's shares have been gutted in the wake of the accusation.
The U.S. is now investigating this complaint and that shouldn't come as much of a shock.
The Treasury Department can issue whatever findings it wants, and then respond by starving
Danske of dollars, known as the "Death Blow" option the threat of which was plastered
all over the pages of the Wall St. Journal on Friday.
Note this article isn't behind the Journal's pay-wall. They want everyone to see this.
Browder filed complaints both in Demmark and in Estonia, and the Estonian government was
only too happy to oblige him.
The Devil Played
To see the whole picture I have to go back a littler further.
Back in March, Latvian bank, ABLV, was targeted in a similar manner, accused of laundering
money. Within a week the ECB moved in to take control of the bank even though it wasn't in
danger of failing.
It was an odd move, where the ECB exercised an extreme response utilizing its broader powers
given to it after the 2008 financial crisis, like it did with Spain's Banco Popular in
2017.
Why? The U.S. was looking for ways to cut off Russia from the European banking system. And
the ECB did its dirty work.
I wrote about this
back in May in relation to the Treasury demanding all U.S. investors divest themselves of
Russian debt within thirty days.
It threw the ruble and Russian debt markets into turmoil since Russian companies bought a lot
of euro-denominated debt after the Ruble Crisis of 2014, having been shut off from dollars.
ABLV was a conduit for many Russian entities to keep access to Europe's banks, having been
grandfathered in as clients when the Baltics entered the Euro-zone.
So, now a replay of ABLV's seizure is playing out through Browder's money laundering
complaint against Danske.
Was Convincing Everyone
The goal of this lawsuit is two-fold.
The first is to undermine the faith in the Danish banking system. Dutch giant ING is also
facing huge AML fines.
This is a direct attack on the EU banking system to being it under even more stringent
government control.
The second goal, however, is far more important. As I said, the U.S. is desperate to cut
money flow between the European Union and Russia, not just to stop the construction of
Nordstream 2, but to keep Russia's markets weak having to scramble for euros to make coupon
payments and create a roll-over nightmare.
Turkey is facing this now, Russia went through it in 2014/15.
So, attacking a major bank like Danske for consorting with dirty Russians and using Mr.
Human Rights Champion Browder to file the complaint is pure power politics to keep the EU
itself from seeking rapprochement with Russia.
Anti-Money Laundering laws are tyrannical and vaguely worded. And with the Magnitsky Act and
its follow-up, CAATSA, in place, they help support defining money laundering to include
anything the U.S. and the EU deem as supporting 'human rights violations.'
Seeing the trap yet?
Now all of it can be linked through simple accusation regardless of the facts. The bank gets
gutted, investors and depositors get nervous, the ECB then steps in and there goes another
tendril between Russia and Europe doing business.
And that ties into Browder's minions in the European Parliament, all in the pay of Open
Society Foundation, issued a threat of invoking Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty to Cyprus over
assisting Russia investigate Browder's financial dealings there.
Why? Violations of Mr. Browder's human rights because, well, Russia!
What's becoming more obvious to me as the days pass is that Browder is an obvious asset of
the U.S. financial and political oligarchy, if not U.S. Intelligence. They use his humanitarian
bona fides to visit untold misery on millions of people simply to:
1) cover up their malfeasance in Russia
2) wage hybrid war on anyone willing to stand up to their machinations.
He Didn't Exist
Because when looking at this situation rationally, how does this guy get to run around
accusing banks of anything and mobilize governments into actions which have massive
ramifications for the global financial system unless he's intimately connected with the very
people that operate the top of that system?
How does this no-name guy in the mid-1990's, fresh 'off the boat' as it were, convince
someone to give him $25 million in CASH to go around Russia buying up privatization vouchers at
less than pennies on the dollar?
It simply doesn't pass a basic sniff test.
Danske is the biggest bank in Denmark and one of the oldest in Europe. The message should be
clear.
If they can be gotten to this way, anyone can.
Just looking at the list of people named in the Magnitsky Act, a list given to Congress by
Browder and copied verbatim without investigation, and CAATSA as being 'friends of Vladimir'
it's obvious that the target isn't Putin himself for his human rights transgressions but anyone
in Russia with enough capital to maintain a business bigger than a chain of laundromats in
Rostov-on-Don.
Honestly, even some in the U.S. financial press said it looked like they just went through
the Moscow phone book.
But, here the rub. In The Davos Crowd's single-minded drive to destroy Russia, which has
been going on now for close to two generations in various ways, they are willing to undermine
the very institutions on which a great deal of their power rests.
The more Browder gets defended by people punching far above his weight, the more obvious it
is that there is something wrong with his story. Undermining the reputation of the biggest bank
in Denmark is a 'playing-for-keeps' moment.
But, it's one that can and will have serious repercussions over time.
It undermines the validity of government institutions, exposing corruption that proves we
live in a world ruled by men, not laws. That the U.S. and EU are fundamentally no different in
their leadership than banana republics.
And that's bad for currency and debt markets as capital always flows to where it is treated
best.
But, it's one that can and will have serious repercussions over time. The seizure of ABLV
and 2017's liquidation of Spain's Banco Popular were rightly described by Martin Armstrong as
defining moments where no one in their right mind would invest in a European banks if there was
the possibility of losing all of your capital due to a change in the political winds
overnight.
Using the European Parliament to censure Cyprus via Article 7 over one man's financial
privacy, which no one is guaranteed in this world today thanks to these same AML and KYC laws,
reeks of cronyism and corruption of the highest degree.
If you want to know what a catalyst for the collapse of the European banking system looks
like, it may well be what happens this week if Danske tries to fight the spider's web laid down
by Bill Browder and his friends in high places.
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hanekhw , 1 minute ago
Browder, the Clintons, Soros and the EU were made for each other weren't they? They've
been screwing us publicly for what, over two generations? And without a condom! We've gotten
how many FTDs (financially transmitted diseases) from these people? They never unzip their
flys.
geno-econ , 1 hour ago
According to Browder, Putin is worth over $100 Billion most of it stashed away in foreign
banks through intermediates and relatives. If true, it will bring down Putin and many western
banks. Perhaps a Red Swan is about to take off exposing an unsustainable .financial system
and corrupt political enterprise on both sides of the divide sur to cause chaos. Ironically,
Putin who represents Nationalism in Russia is under attack by Globalists accusing Putin of
Capitalistic Greed utilizing western banks Suicidal !
hanekhw , 16 minutes ago
Browder, the Clintons, Soros and the EU were made for each other weren't they? They've
been screwing us publicly for what, over two generations? And without a condom! We've gotten
how many FTDs (financially transmitted diseases) from these people? They never unzip their
flys.
zeroboris , 24 minutes ago
They use his humanitarian bona fides
Browder's bona fides? LOL
monad , 8 minutes ago
Minion (((Browder))) snitches on his masters. Nowhere to hide.
Vanilla_ISIS , 18 minutes ago
Someone should just kill this dude. Browder has certainly earned it.
roadhazard , 14 minutes ago
But what about the money laundering.
Panic Mode , 15 minutes ago
You better run. Your buddy McCain is gone and see who else will fight for you.
pndr4495 , 42 minutes ago
Somehow - Mnuchkin's desire to sell his Park Ave. apartment fits into this tale of
intrigue and bullshit.
markar , 47 minutes ago
Send this guy Browder a polonium cocktail. It's on me.
TahoeBilly2012 , 1 hour ago
((Browder)) ??
Clogheen , 37 minutes ago
Yes. Did you really need to ask?
geno-econ , 1 hour ago
According to Browder, Putin is worth over $100 Billion most of it stashed away in foreign
banks through intermediates and relatives. If true, it will bring down Putin and many western
banks. Perhaps a Red Swan is about to take off exposing an unsustainable .financial system
and corrupt political enterprise on both sides of the divide sur to cause chaos. Ironically,
Putin who represents Nationalism in Russia is under attack by Globalists accusing Putin of
Capitalistic Greed utilizing western banks Suicidal !
Max Cynical , 1 hour ago
I watch the banned documentary...The Magnitsky Act - Behind the Scenes.
Only the slimiest rats get into the club of "Can Do No Wrong" and these types of gigs.
Thaxter , 1 hour ago
This documentary is first class, a really absorbing look into the mind of the sociopath
Browder, a pathological, absolutely shameless liar and a very stupid and weak person. To
understand the influence that this insignificant invertebrate yields, look to his father,
Earl Russell Browder, who was the leader of the Communist Party in the United States during
the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s.
blindfaith , 22 minutes ago
Look no further than our own political circus to see that mighty hands pull the strings.
Like all strings, they will fray and break...eventually.
Jim in MN , 1 hour ago
Yes well the Big Question for us now is the degree to which the President is in control of
any of this.
Recall, dear ZH fighters, how we worked out a sound strategy for the Trump Administration
in the early days. Key aspects were to leave the generals and the bankers alone for a couple
of years. This would allow immigration, trade, health care and deregulation including tax
reform to form the early core wins, along with Supreme Court nominees of course.
Lo, cometh the Deep State and its frantic attempts to both save and conceal itself.
One key tentacle was to rouse the intelligence community into an active enemy of the
POTUS. This partially fouled up the 'leave the generals alone' strategy.
Another is to try to force war with the emergent Eurasian hegemony comprised of China and
Russia. This is seen all across the 'hinterland' of Russia.
The USA has no vital strategic interests in Eurasia at this juncture of history. Everyone
should be clear on that.
The USA's logical and sane policy stance is to support peace, free and fair trade, and
stable democracy, including border controls and the rule of law through LEADING BY
EXAMPLE.
So for Trump to continue to allow the financial sector Deep State traitors to operate
against a peaceful Eurasia is becoming increasingly intolerable.
Where to from here?
BandGap , 1 hour ago
Keep opening it up to scrutiny.
This article opened my eyes, I did not fully understand why Russia was all over Browder
except the stealing aspect, but bigger yet, why he was being protected by the EU/US.
No wonder Putin wants to work with the Donno. Taking Browder out and exposing this
manipulation works for both sides.
LA_Goldbug , 40 minutes ago
If Browder is a surprise to you then look at Khodorkovsky (there is more of these types
from he came from).
Because when looking at this situation rationally, how does this guy get to run around
accusing banks of anything and mobilize governments into actions which have massive
ramifications for the global financial system unless he's intimately connected with the very
people that operate the top of that system?"
Exactly. He was sent by the Anglo-Zionist Tribe otherwise he would be a nobody.
JacquesdeMolay , 1 hour ago
Also, a very good book on the topic: "suppressed and banned by the CIA's supplier, Amazon,
The Grand Deception: The Browder Hoax is a highly intelligent, frank and entertaining
take-down of one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the US public and the world
– The Magnitsky Act. Krainer's study of Bill Browder's book and actions is a riveting,
unflinching expose of what might end up being pivotal in revealing one of this decade's big
hoaxes."
A quick observation and a fascinating parallele. Serena Williams and the US global
hyperpower.
Serena at 36 got bitten fair and square at US open by a girl of 20, almost half her age.
So she throws up a nuclear tantrum, publicly calling the referee a thief, threatening that he
will never referee again, obviously thanks to her money, power and gender.
During her post-game interview, Serena told a news conference, "I'm here, fighting for
women's rights, for women's equality, and for all kind of stuff it made me think that it was
a sexist remark [referring to the penalty the referee Ramos awarded her]."
The declining US fights for human rights as declining Serena fights for women's rights.
Both invoke exceptionalism and higher principles and go nuclear when they cannot win any more
under the established international rules. The irony of killing the Yemenis en mass whilst
"fighting" for the human rights of terrorists in Syria is just like Serena fighting for
women's rights against another younger and more capable woman.
Kiza - interesting point. Yes clearly Serena retrofitted the women's movement to justify
what was an old-fashioned Connors/McEnroe male tennis tantrum, although extremely mild
comapred to some of the crap those two pulled back in the day.
What goes without saying is the behaviour is as repulsive when Serena does it as when
McEnroe/Connors did.
Serena at 36 is no longer the dominant force just as America is no longer. However, it is
fair to say the winner is where she is because she trained extensively and I believe lives in
Amerikkka so really she is an example of globalism and racial diversity, if not Amerikkkan
exeptionalism.
Women's tennis post Serena will not be dominated by Amerikkkans but by Amerikkkan training
of the best players regardless of their origination
"... Another example is the Danish newspaper "Information" founded during WWII, as very leftist it has today morphed, in the dark, into a center right neo- liberal rag, full of no- news and idiotic scribbles by irrelevant formerly known peoples talent-less sons and daughters. ..."
"... Wel thanks b, for telling the truth and letting me start my Sunday moderately depressed, I guess news that Washington D.C had been swallowed by a giant sink-hole, would cheer me partly up. ..."
Den Lille Abe , Sep 16, 2018 12:47:49 AM |
49 ">link
Thank you b, for yet another good article!
Your article made me reflect the situation in general. While it is good the The White
Frauds have been called out as an Empire front and as Western propaganda psy-op, I do thing
the real Enemy is the MSM. These crimes by our governments, the White Frauds, Isil, ect,ect,
would not be possible without the control of the MSM. But I am completely at a loss how to
fight them, or just diminish their influence.
The Guardian s a blatant example, and its turnaround from "reasonable reliable" to "paid
shill" was clumsily and obviously executed. Looking at the UK for real news , there is only
the blogoshere left, all opposition has been subverted. And it is not only in the UK.
Another example is the Danish newspaper "Information" founded during WWII, as very
leftist it has today morphed, in the dark, into a center right neo- liberal rag, full of no-
news and idiotic scribbles by irrelevant formerly known peoples talent-less sons and
daughters.
The situation in Sweden is even more depressing (it is!) the newspapers here are on level
with the Sun and the Daily Heil.
Wel thanks b, for telling the truth and letting me start my Sunday moderately
depressed, I guess news that Washington D.C had been swallowed by a giant sink-hole, would
cheer me partly up.
Thomas Beale prohibition of abortion, support for 'the family' (usually code for banning
gay marriage etc) and/or economic disciplinarian
Leaving aside the new social circumstances that I think nowadays prevail (and which make
the terms "conservative" equivocal at best, if not meaningless), someone who supports a
prohibition of abortion wants to take the decision of carrying a pregnancy out of the hands
of the woman experiencing the pregnancy; someone who supports "the family" under your
interpretation wants to take the decision of entering an existing legal arrangements between
loving couples out of the hands of certain loving couples; someone who supports economic
"discipline" (I'm guessing this means supporting policies that favor upward redistribution
rather than policies that favor downward redistribution) wants the currently poor to have
even less choices and opportunities in the ways to go on about their material lives than they
do now (hard to defend as something promoting individual freedom, unless this discussion
takes place in a country where the poor already have plenty of such opportunities already
whereas the burden placed on the rich is already considerable, which seems to me hard to
argue at least for the UK, US and Brazil).
So I find these political choices quite in agreement with the thesis of "conservatism as
animus against the agency of the subordinate classes", myself. And I think a consistent
conservative would have to agree (and say for instance that yes, he wants to deny the agency
of a pregnant woman because he gives a higher value to the sanctity of life or that yes, he
wants to deny the agency of the poor, because the agency of the rich is much more valuable,
perhaps because they have demonstrated that they have higher creative powers, or are morally
superior or whatever )
"Protection of aristocracy against the agency of the subordinate classes" could be a good
first pass at describing the Wittgensteinian family resemblance of all conservatisms. In the
mid-18th Century the final public inversion of theories of dispensation from the Absolute
(i.e. the Great Chain of Being), inverted in the face of increasing scientific knowledge and
technological advance, served to overthrow the privileges of aristocracy and divine right,
and brought forward the question of the will of the rabble as a new, constant norm in the
political process (i.e. "democracy"). The left-right divide blossomed.
We may still be living in an era of shadow cast from that event. It could be that some
"language games" perpetuate as dialogical, rhetorical, antiphonal, oppositional. Yet the
referents can change, as in any emotional argument. In the case of a language game emerging
to the immediate concerns of property ownership and political power, it might persist over
time in the emotional shadow of the ancien regime, yet it would transmute over time in
response to change and contingency, and use varying political issues of the moment to stay
alive. So we have a sort of dialogic meta-organism with an autopoietic (i.e.
self-maintaining) social ontogeny, leaving behind itself the tracks of a dialectical
history.
In our present moment, the "protection of aristocracy against the agency of the
subordinate classes" has transmuted to "protection of the free market as a way for any
subordinate person to ascend by personal effort into the modern open aristocracy".
But this could be the end of that game. Yes, it is a clever trick: it perpetuates the
belief in individualism, because anyone can try to do it. But it is also fatally flawed. Not
everyone can do it because there are formal limitations: over long periods of time some few
people invent new goods and services and achieve success, but at any one moment there is a
lot of unemployed and underpaid. In addition some members of the modern open aristocracy are
pushing programs that increase inequality and environmental destruction, and these results
become more visible to the public.
"Protection of aristocracy against the agency of the subordinate classes" moved
historically to "protection of the free market as a way for anyone to become one of the
aristocrats" -- and now may finally be eclipsed, because that is not believable. It would be
the end of the pro-hierarchic bent of conservatism. Mainstream conservatives won't have much
to distinguish themselves from progressives, who otherwise believe in individualism and
personal achievement. The social-conservative varieties would spin off to single-issue
advocacies. We may see a book entitled, Varieties of Conservatism Against One Another.
Peter T: contrariwise, if it is that as you say "There's
surely a reasoned case to be made that hierarchies are essential to complex societies" and
"someone has to be at the top and therefore someone else at the bottom", is it legitimate to
suspect that a fair proportion (not all, of course) of those advocating progressive change
believe that after the defeat of the evil conservative forces, there will still be an essential
hierarchy, only they will be on top?
"is it legitimate to suspect that a fair proportion (not all, of course) of those advocating
progressive change believe that after the defeat of the evil conservative forces, there will
still be an essential hierarchy, only they will be on top?"
Usually yes, but they will be benevolent so we don't have to worry about them. That is why
there are a lot of naïve progressive rule proposals that make me want to scream "what if
someone less pure than the purest person you ever met gets a hold of it"? Though I usually
just say "what if Ralph Nader were in charge ?", but that is admittedly trolling. For the
most current example see the EU copyright rules. The same people who complain about
conservative twitter mobs think that telling facebook, twitter, and google to automatically
screen out copyright violations and somehow automatically allow fair use of copyright is
going to work out well.
I suck at guessing at malignant uses of technology and I can already see the Russian
copyright upload experts getting prominent left wing voices tied up in interminable
litigation over political speeches. Or some troll reporting the entire internet as
copyrighted in one paragraph increments. Or the speech censorship discussions. Dissolving
free speech norms is 1000% more likely to be used against left wing voices than right wing
ones if they get mainstreamed.
In our present moment, the "protection of aristocracy against the agency of the
subordinate classes" has transmuted to "protection of the free market as a way for any
subordinate person to ascend by personal effort into the modern open aristocracy."
That is a very deep observation. Thank you!
Protection of inequality as a "natural human condition" is the key to understanding both
conservatism and neoliberalism. The corresponding myth of social mobility based on person's
abilities under neoliberalism (as Napoleon Bonaparte observed "Ability is of little account
without opportunity" and the opportunity is lacking under neoliberal stagnation -- the
current state of neoliberalism ) is just icing on the cake.
As soon as you accept Hayek sophistry that the term "freedom" means "the freedom from
coercion" you are both a neoliberal and a conservative. And if you belong to Democratic
Party, you are a Vichy democrat ;-)
"is it legitimate to suspect that a fair proportion (not all, of course) of those
advocating progressive change believe that after the defeat of the evil conservative forces,
there will still be an essential hierarchy, only they will be on top?"
In a way yes ;-)
Neoliberalism/conservatism means that the state enforces the existing hierarchy and
supports existing aristocracy ("socialism for rich"). If you deny the existence of a flavor
of the Soviet nomenklatura (aristocracy in which position in social hierarchy mainly depends
on their role in the top management of government or corporations, not so much personal
fortune) in the USA, you deny the reality.
So the question is not about hierarchy per se, but about the acceptable level of
"corporate socialism" and inequality in the society.
The progressive change means the creation of the system of government which serves as a
countervailing force to the private capital owners, curbing their excesses. I would say that
financial oligarchy generally should be treated as a district flavor of organized crime.
The key issue is how to allow a decent level of protection of the bottom 90% of the
population from excesses of unfettered capitalism and "market forces" and at the same time
not to slide into excessive bureaucracy and regulation ("state capitalism" model).
For a short period after WWII the alliance of a part of state apparatus, upper-level
management, and trade unions against owners of capital did exist in the USA (New Deal
Capitalism). In an imperfect form with multiple betrayals and quick deterioration, but still
existed for some time due to the danger from the USSR
Around 80th the threat from USSR dissipate, and the upper-level management betrayed their
former allies and switched sides which signified the victory of neoliberalism and dismantling
of the New Deal Capitalism.
After the USSR collapse (when Soviet nomenklatura switched to neoliberalism) the financial
oligarchy staged coup d'état in the USA (aka "Quiet Coup") and came to the top.
We need depose this semi-criminal gang. Of course, the end of "cheap oil" will probably
help.
Some, but a "fair proportion"? Probably not. Advocacy of progressive causes usually
involves punching up – an inherently more dangerous occupation than punching down.
People forget that the older nomenklatura won their positions in World War II, when being a
commissar meant leading from the front, being shot out of hand by the Germans, rallying the
partisans in mountain villages to another desperate defence and similar. Survivor bias
– we don't see the dead.
In more genteel times, the outspoken progressive will often face social ostracism, lack of
promotion, attacks in the conservative press
Human motives are complex – no doubt there were confederates who genuinely believed
the fight was for states rights, and no doubt there are libertarians who genuinely believe
that the poor will have it much better in a free market utopia. I doubt the proportion,
either counting individuals or in the swirl inside minds, is very large, but there's always
some.
Now we're making progress Thomas. The Berkowitz definition is sleazy, and sets up anyone not
conservative as an amoral lump in need of guidance, or worse still as dangerous to society.
Perhaps that's why Hayek (a supposedly type b conservative) had his opponents thrown out of
helicopters. Or was that Friedman?
The appeal of conservatism and it's electoral success is easily explained. Because their
real ideology is just treachery, theft and rape they need to hide these ideas from normal
people, who already in general support the moral ideas fundamental to civilized society
regardless of their politics. So they hide their true agenda through appeals to racism, or by
cloaking themselves in the type b definition (isn't this robins point?!) In doing this they
benefit from the work of yeomen like you, who insist that conservatism is a real moral
project rather than banditry. In most countries they also only win when the left is divided,
and only when their elite friends are pouring money into corrupt media. If they didn't have
these advantages, these lies, and help from people like you they would never succeed.
I focus on Trump et Al because they are the leaders of your sect,the people who sell your
ideas (manafort was a campaign manager ffs), and the people who turn the ideology into
action. Didn't you learn in primary school to judge people by their actions, not their words?
And why would I ignore these particular conservatives because they're "vulgar clowns"? You're
all dangerous, vulgar clowns.
Nellie Ohr will sit for an interview with Congress next week, according to Rep. John
Ratcliffe (R-TX).
Ohr, an expert on Russia who speaks fluent Russian, is a central figure in the nexus between
Fusion GPS - the opposition research firm paid by the Clinton campaign to produce the "Steele
Dossier " - and the Obama Justice Department - where her husband, Bruce Ohr, was a senior
official. Bruce was demoted twice after he was caught lying about his extensive involvement
with Fusion's activities surrounding the 2016 US election.
Notably, the Ohrs had extensive contact with Christopher Steele, the ex-MI6 spy who authored
the salacious anti-Trump dossier used to justify spying on the Trump campaign during the
election, and later to smear Donald Trump right before he took office in 2017. According to
emails turned over to Congress and reported in late August, the Ohrs would have breakfast with
Steele on July 30 at the downtown D.C. Mayflower hotel - days after Steele had turned in
several installments of the infamous dossier to the FBI . The breakfast took place one day
before the FBI/DOJ launched operation "Crossfire Hurricane," the codename for the official
counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign.
"Great to see you and Nellie this morning Bruce," Steele wrote shortly following their
breakfast meeting. " Let's keep in touch on the substantive issues/s (sic). Glenn is happy to
speak to you on this if it would help," referring to Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson.
No stranger to the US intelligence community, Nellie Ohr represented the CIA's "Open Source
Works" group in a 2010 " expert working group report on
international organized crime" along with Bruce Ohr and Glenn Simpson .
Nayel , 56 minutes ago
I'd bet she gets up there and denies everything, lust like Strozk. And the DOJ does
nothing, and even allows the perjury to slide.
Sessions is clearly complicit. Loretta Lynch might as well be still running the show...and
perhaps she is...
Seeing as how the Shadow Government seems to be running the "Collusion Investigation"
on themselves...
thebriang , 1 hour ago
Is she going to name the 3 "journalists" that Fusion paid to start pushing the Russia
narrative in the MSM?
I want names, goddammit.
samsara , 1 hour ago
Thread by Thread the garment is unraveled for all to see
" Needless to say, Congress will have no shortage of questions to ask Nellie. "
Like why did she get a ham radio? I guess she didn't trust the NSA?
"... Rajan turned out to be a party pooper, questioning whether "advances" in the financial sector actually increased, rather than reduced, systemic risk . Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers called him a Luddite . " I felt like an early Christian who had wandered into a convention of half-starved lions ," he wrote. But though delivered in genteel academic lingo, his paper was powerful and prescient. ..."
"... "There has been a shift of risk from the formal banking system to the shadow financial system." He also told me the post-crisis reforms did not address central banks' role in creating asset bubbles through accommodative monetary policy, which he sees as the financial markets' biggest long-term challenge. ..."
"... 99% of all people should invest in themselves first. That means having no debt and also having a small company that you only put sweat equity into to make it work starting out as a side business and keeping it as a side business even if it grows bigger. That also means going to college and earning a money making degree that is in demand. ..."
"The ultimate thing that brings down financial markets is excess leverage So, you look
where's the big leverage, and right now I think it's in emerging markets."
Shilling is particularly worried about the $8 trillion in dollar-denominated
emerging-market corporate and sovereign debt, especially as the U.S. dollar rises along with
interest rates. "The problem is as the dollar increases," he said, "it gets tougher and
tougher for them to service [that debt] because it takes more and more of their local
currency to do so." Of that,
$249 billion must be repaid or refinanced through next year , Bloomberg reported.
... ... ...
That housing-related stocks "saw a parabolic run-up" in 2016-17, but in
January his index "peaked and now it's coming down hard." And this spells "bad news on the
housing market looking 12 months down the road."
But the biggest danger, Stack told me, is from low-quality corporate debt. Issuance of
corporate bonds has "gone from around $700 billion in 2008 to about two and a half times that
[today]."
And, he added, more and more of that debt is subprime . Uh-oh.
In 2005, he pointed out, companies issued five times as much high-quality as subprime
debt, but last year "we had as much subprime debt, poor quality-debt issued, as quality debt
on the corporate level," he said, warning "this is the kind of debt that does get defaulted
on dramatically in an economic downturn."
"Managers have greater incentive to take risk because the upside is significant, while the
downside is limited."
"Moreover, the linkages between markets, and between markets and institutions, are now more
pronounced. While this helps the system diversify across small shocks, it also exposes the
system to large systemic shocks "
"The financial risks that are being created by the system are indeed greater [potentially
creating] a greater (albeit still small) probability of a catastrophic meltdown."
What he says now:
"There has been a shift of risk from the formal banking system to the shadow financial
system." He also told me the post-crisis reforms did not address central banks' role in
creating asset bubbles through accommodative monetary policy, which he sees as the financial
markets' biggest long-term challenge.
"You get hooked on leverage. It's cheap, it's easy to refinance, so why not take more of it?
You get lulled into taking more leverage than perhaps you can handle."
And what might be coming:
Rajan also sees potential problems in U.S. corporate debt, particularly as rates rise, and
in emerging markets, though he thinks the current problems in Turkey and Argentina are "not
full-blown contagion."
"But are there accidents waiting to happen? Yes, there are."
What he says now:
"I think the choice of Europe is going to have to put [all the debt] on the balance sheet of
the European Central Bank. If they don't, then the euro zone breaks apart and we're going to
get a 50% valuation collapse."
"Greece...is a rounding error. Italy is not . And Brussels and Germany are going to have to
allow Italy to overshoot their persistent debt, and the ECB is going to have to buy that
debt."
"If it doesn't happen, the debt triggers a crisis in Europe, [and] that triggers the
beginning of a global recession" but... "there are so many little dominoes, if they all start
falling, one leads to the next."
Mauldin estimates the world has almost "half a quadrillion dollars," or $500 trillion, in
debt and unfunded pension and other liabilities, which he views as unsustainable.
But the flashpoint for the next crisis is likely to be in Europe, especially Italy, he
maintains.
Fed-up with being Sick and Tired , 3 minutes ago
It is an interesting piece. I do recall seeing A. Gary Shilling speaking back then when I
watched mainstream financial news which I no longer do. It would be interesting now to hear
what these four would have to see to actually see de-leveraging occur, and a reset put in
motion. I am tiring of the shenanigans of Central Bankers who clearly are trying everything
to keep this mess propped up.
Iskiab , 21 minutes ago
These guys are all right in their risk assessments but are being cautious on saying how it
will play out. Debt is one factor; but protectionism, demographic changes, and
dedollarization are the other threats.
The truth is no one knows how things will unfold, but I'm betting stagflation will be in
the works for the US for an extended period soon.
smacker , 1 hour ago
The 2008 financial crash was fundamentally caused by excessive DEBT.
That excessive debt was in the hands of: government, corporates and private individuals
and the banksters were making huge profits out of it, so they had no incentive to rein it in.
Clowns like UK Chancellor Gordoom Brown went on record claiming that he'd abolished boom
& bust, so the borrow/spend culture went on. ho-ho.
But borrowers eventually got to the point where they simply couldn't take on any more
debt, so the economy crashed, given that it was based on rising never-ending debt.
All of the labels given to this debt mountain such as: sub-prime mortgages, derivatives,
excessive leverage etc are all valid for analysts to analyse but the common connection
between them all was excessive DEBT.
That is what I concluded at the time and it has been confirmed 1,000,000 times since
then.
I am on record saying that this huge debt pile would take a generation to work its way
thru the economy which implied a long recession or depression.
I also predicted there'd likely be a BIG RESET to speed up the adjustment process. Despite
central banks irresponsibly printing vast amounts of fiat to alleviate the consequences for
their friends the banksters (but in reality to create new asset price bubbles) and dropping
interest rates to near zero to encourage more debt and mal-investment, nothing that has
happened has changed my mind.
The situation today, 10 years later, is that debt levels are hugely higher than in 2008
and the solution which existed then remains on the table. It's just that central banks
falsely believe their money-printing actions will solve the problem whereas in truth they are
in denial.
You cannot solve a debt problem by printing more money and taking on more debt. Central
banks and the likes of Krugman think otherwise.
The day of reckoning is on the horizon: either there will be a huge long
recession/depression to work debt out of the system with all of its implications to asset
values and social cohesion AND/OR a BIG RESET will be enacted. The latter will destroy the
wealth of vast numbers of ordinary people with their savings and investments going down the
flusher.
Neither solution will be a pretty sight.
Prepare accordingly.
Cincinnatuus , 1 hour ago
I think you are spot on with your assessment of the situation, and it seems a great many
other knowledgeable people agree with you. In fact, many market prognosticators are openly
talking about a RESET as a result of the dollar value collapsing and a resulting
hyper-inflation. Too many people think this.
The Contrarian in me says because everybody is expecting that, it's not going to play out
that way. I too, talk about the value of the dollar getting cut in half from here. Instead of
a RESET, I expect the collapse of the value of the dollar to usher in a deflationary
implosion as all that unpayable debt and financial obligations collapses and gets marked down
to zero. Likely the Banksters try some sort of money printing orgy along the way... Never let
a good crisis go to waste.
smacker , 1 hour ago
This article from Robert Prechter dating back to 2010 predicted the:
Prechter wasn't wrong, he just couldn't predict when it would happen. He understood that
the only solution to the huge debt crises was to clear it by letting it work its way thru the
economy (a generation or so to do) or by a BIG RESET.
Nothing has changed. Except that in the last 10 years, central banks have taken actions to
kick the can down the road because they're in denial and think they know better.
What the central banks never took into account in 2008 was that ((other things)) have
changed in the past 10 years, most notably the waning power of the USD as the Global Reserve
Currency which can only have negative consequences.
Fed-up with being Sick and Tired , 3 minutes ago
It is an interesting piece. I do recall seeing A. Gary Shilling speaking back then when I
watched mainstream financial news which I no longer do. It would be interesting now to hear
what these four would have to see to actually see de-leveraging occur, and a reset put in
motion. I am tiring of the shenanigans of Central Bankers who clearly are trying everything
to keep this mess propped up.
Iskiab , 21 minutes ago
These guys are all right in their risk assessments but are being cautious on saying how it
will play out. Debt is one factor; but protectionism, demographic changes, and
dedollarization are the other threats.
The truth is no one knows how things will unfold, but I'm betting stagflation will be in
the works for the US for an extended period soon.
bunkers , 1 hour ago
Greg Hunter, on YouTube, interviews Catherine Austin Fitts in an early Sunday morning
release. It's excellent.
turkey george palmer , 1 hour ago
Ha, good times bad times like the song says
But when I whispered in her ear, I lost another friend, oooh.
smacker , 1 hour ago
The 2008 financial crash was fundamentally caused by excessive DEBT.
That excessive debt was in the hands of: government, corporates and private individuals
and the banksters were making huge profits out of it, so they had no incentive to rein it in.
Clowns like UK Chancellor Gordoom Brown went on record claiming that he'd abolished boom
& bust, so the borrow/spend culture went on. ho-ho.
But borrowers eventually got to the point where they simply couldn't take on any more
debt, so the economy crashed, given that it was based on rising never-ending debt.
All of the labels given to this debt mountain such as: sub-prime mortgages, derivatives,
excessive leverage etc are all valid for analysts to analyse but the common connection
between them all was excessive DEBT.
That is what I concluded at the time and it has been confirmed 1,000,000 times since
then.
I am on record saying that this huge debt pile would take a generation to work its way
thru the economy which implied a long recession or depression.
I also predicted there'd likely be a BIG RESET to speed up the adjustment process. Despite
central banks irresponsibly printing vast amounts of fiat to alleviate the consequences for
their friends the banksters (but in reality to create new asset price bubbles) and dropping
interest rates to near zero to encourage more debt and mal-investment, nothing that has
happened has changed my mind.
The situation today, 10 years later, is that debt levels are hugely higher than in 2008
and the solution which existed then remains on the table. It's just that central banks
falsely believe their money-printing actions will solve the problem whereas in truth they are
in denial.
You cannot solve a debt problem by printing more money and taking on more debt. Central
banks and the likes of Krugman think otherwise.
The day of reckoning is on the horizon: either there will be a huge long
recession/depression to work debt out of the system with all of its implications to asset
values and social cohesion AND/OR a BIG RESET will be enacted. The latter will destroy the
wealth of vast numbers of ordinary people with their savings and investments going down the
flusher.
Neither solution will be a pretty sight.
Prepare accordingly.
U. Sinclair , 1 hour ago
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting
different results".
Cincinnatuus , 1 hour ago
I think you are spot on with your assessment of the situation, and it seems a great many
other knowledgeable people agree with you. In fact, many market prognosticators are openly
talking about a RESET as a result of the dollar value collapsing and a resulting
hyper-inflation. Too many people think this.
The Contrarian in me says because everybody is expecting that, it's not going to play out
that way. I too, talk about the value of the dollar getting cut in half from here. Instead of
a RESET, I expect the collapse of the value of the dollar to usher in a deflationary
implosion as all that unpayable debt and financial obligations collapses and gets marked down
to zero. Likely the Banksters try some sort of money printing orgy along the way... Never let
a good crisis go to waste.
smacker , 1 hour ago
This article from Robert Prechter dating back to 2010 predicted the:
Prechter wasn't wrong, he just couldn't predict when it would happen. He understood that
the only solution to the huge debt crises was to clear it by letting it work its way thru the
economy (a generation or so to do) or by a BIG RESET.
Nothing has changed. Except that in the last 10 years, central banks have taken actions to
kick the can down the road because they're in denial and think they know better.
What the central banks never took into account in 2008 was that ((other things)) have
changed in the past 10 years, most notably the waning power of the USD as the Global Reserve
Currency which can only have negative consequences.
Wahooo , 56 minutes ago
Got the collapse right, but not the hyperinflation.
smacker , 51 minutes ago
Time will tell... if the huge debt problem is resolved correctly by actions intended to
clear it and the USD loses its GRC status, deflation followed by hyperinflation will likely
follow as USDs flood back into the US economy.
CoCosAB , 16 minutes ago
The simple solution is - an old fashion I know - a DEBT JUBILEE !
The last time some schmuck tried to make the millennia tradition return he got himself
crucified!
There's NO OTHER SOLUTION in the present status of the MONETARY SYSTEM to re-balance it.
Of course that the OWNERS of the SYSTEM and the WEALTH (DEBT) don't wont to see their WEALTH
disappear in a click of a button...
So, the next Great Transference of Wealth (1st in 2007/8 and so on) its about to
start!
The example given above its just a peanut " Paulson, of course, loaded up on CDS's and
made $4 billion in what has been called "the greatest trade ever." "We made 15 times our
money," Shilling says. "...
Keep it up SLAVES... "WORK, DEBT, CONSUME"
smacker , 7 minutes ago
A "debt jubilee" is equal to a BIG RESET. I believe this will be enacted but for .govs to
get away with it, there'll have to create a huge distraction so they can blame it on someone
else.
That distraction will almost certainly be WAR or some other major event on a big enough
scale to distract attention away from what they're doing.
Push , 2 hours ago
I guess Tyler has never heard of Lyndon LaRouche? He accurately predicted the 2008 crash,
and others previously. The fact is that monetary policy is not economics, and when you look
at the inter-connectivity of human labor from the perspective of scientific progress it's
easy to see where the financial system is heading, for a huge collapse.
If you study what the United States did coming out of the Revolutionary War to build this
nation, then the subsequent dismantling of Hamilton's system by Andrew Jackson, the the
re-implementation of Hamilton's system by Carey and Clay through Lincoln, you can see that
what people today consider "economics" has nothing to do with the productive powers of the
labor force. British Free Trade, floating exchange rates, the offshore banking industry, Wall
Street, and the City of London are subverting economic fortitude in favor of the
consolidation of power in a process to build a new kind of empire.
The Real Tony , 2 hours ago
Eventually America will run out of lies to tell. This will be the catalyst for the next
crises.
truthalwayswinsout , 2 hours ago
No reason to listen to any of this or even care. Do not invest in the stock market; it is a scam and will always be a scam.
99% of all people should invest in themselves first. That means having no debt and also
having a small company that you only put sweat equity into to make it work starting out as a
side business and keeping it as a side business even if it grows bigger. That also means
going to college and earning a money making degree that is in demand.
Everyone in our family has no mortgages. Everyone in our family has small companies that
because they have no debt churn out cash like ATMs from $6K to $170K per year. And when the
markets crash or assets become extremely cheap we buy assets. We bought homes in the last
fiasco, did minor fixes, rented them, and sold them all 3 years ago. We made a 220% return in
6 years.
We are going to do it again with homes because they will again fall off dramatically and
this time we can pay cash for all the purchases. We will also be looking at unique food
companies that are over leveraged that we can buy at 10 cents on the dollar. (One of our
family is a chef and makes all kinds of stuff that can be packaged and sold but we have no
market access).
Batman11 , 3 hours ago
Problem solving involves two steps.
Understand the problem
Find a solution
Post 2008 - "It was a black swan". We didn't complete step 1, so we couldn't learn anything. The Chinese have now completed step one and have seen their Minsky moment on the
horizon. The indicators of financial crises are over inflated asset prices and the private
debt-to-GDP ratio. Debt is being used to inflate asset prices.
They are called Minsky moments. Too late for Australia, Canada, Sweden, Norway and Hong Kong as they've been inflating
their real estate markets with mortgage lending. Wall Street leverages up the asset price bubble to make the bust much worse.
"It's nearly $14 trillion pyramid of super leveraged toxic assets was built on the back
of $1.4 trillion of US sub-prime loans, and dispersed throughout the world" All the
Presidents Bankers, Nomi Prins.
Leverage is just a profit and loss multiplier. The bankers take the bonuses on the way up and taxpayers cover the losses on the way
down.
Batman11 , 3 hours ago
Bankers only have one real product and that's debt. When they are messing about you can see it in the private debt-to-GDP ratio. It's that simple. They are clever and hide what they are doing on the surface, you just look underneath.
It's easy to see when you know where to look. Even the FED should be able to understand it. Well, we can just tell them where to look anyway; Harvard PhDs aren't what they used to
be.
Batman11 , 2 hours ago
How can bankers use their debt products to create real wealth and increase GDP for
growth? The UK:
Before 1980 – banks lending into the right places that result in GDP growth. After 1980 – banks lending into the wrong places that don't result in GDP growth. The UK eliminated corset controls on banking in 1979 and the banks invaded the mortgage
market and this is where the problem starts.
Richard Werner was in Japan in the 1980s when it went from a very stable economy and
turned into a debt fuelled monster. He worked out what happened and had all the clues
necessary to point him in the right direction. Bank credit (lending) creates money.
1929 – Inflating the US stock market with debt (margin lending)
2008 – Inflating the US real estate market with debt (mortgage lending)
Inflating asset prices with debt (type 3 lending).
Creating real wealth and increasing GDP (growth) requires type 1 lending.
Batman11 , 56 minutes ago
Economic liberalism – the fundamental flaw. Everyone looks to make as much money as possible, doing as little as possible. Asset stripping, activist shareholders being a very good example. Real wealth creation involves making real goods and providing real services, and involves
real work.
It doesn't look very attractive; there are easier ways to make money.
hillwalker , 3 hours ago
The Parasites! No mention of the over $600 TRILLION opaque OFF BALANCE SHEET derivatives market!
Nelbev , 5 hours ago
I think these guys miss the obvious.
1.) There is a housing bubble in London, OZ, Canada in Vancouver and Toronto. US prices
have bounced back nominally, but financing better than prior. The banking crisis will start
with housing bubble abroad.
2.) US deficits and debts are at a stage where inflation will lead to higher rates. The
amount to service the public and private debt load will increase with interest rates. You
cannot just print money forever and expect it never to catch up, or excess reserves not to
escape the banking system blowing air on the fire. The debt load publicly is dangerously high
and will trigger a fiscal crisis when add about $200+ billion a year to fiscal budget.
3.) The EU will disintegrate over next few years, global recession will just accelerate
that and be a feedback, could be a bit of a buffer on US with flight to quality. Think about
when UK contribution to EU budget drys up in March 2019, will EU raise taxes on rest by 20%
to pay for Eurocrats salaries?, and what if Italy has a referendum? EU is mess in making.
4.) Next recession, which could be triggered by stochastic shock of a trade war (err ...
gov managing economy always f*cks it up), the monetary authorities have no buffer to lower
interest rates due to policy since housing bubble, only more useless QE, little stimulus,
just inflation in works.
5.) Last was housing bubble, next is bond bubble . 30 yr tb at 3.13 - you have to
be idiot (or PBC which cannot unload their trill $ portfolio of US toilet paper without
depressing prices) to hold and expect inflation next 30 years at less. You think magically a
trillion dollar year federal deficit will shrink under DT? It really does not matter what the
fed does, stuck in a hard space, print more money to keep ponzi scheme going or neutralize
federal with higher rates and try to shrink balance sheet. You cannot keep interest rates low
when commodity futures arbitrage during inflation offer an alternate return. Easy money will
just fuel fire.
Md4 , 3 hours ago
The Fed can, and does, manipulate some interest rates, and it's balance sheet, all the
time.
But, as I see it, (hyper) inflation isn't just a money supply issue.
It's also a vote of confidence...
Ballooning deficits, and rising debt loads are not elements of fundamentally
healthy economies.
Rather than disappearing dumped U.S. debt, the Fed may just add it to it's "holdings", and
therefore, ensure there's always a "buyer".
Theoretically, perhaps.
But, it can't buy all U.S. debt, lest there be no real "market".
So, that means debt issued won't be free.
It also means there's a real limit to just how much the Fed can manage inflation...
Normalisation of Deviance , 4 hours ago
Excellent comment. Reminds me of the good old days when the comments at ZH were more more
informative and well written than the articles, (which were also informative and well
written).
Also Gold Bitchezz!
Superlat , 4 hours ago
Whether or not this matters, the housing bubble in Seattle has peaked, if not completely
popped. However, it's gone far enough that just about everyone including the media is
admitting a downturn is happening. Whether it persists is anyone's guess.
Maybe the next crisis is just cumulative, not one big thing.
The Real Tony, 2 hours ago
More like the Chinese buying up everything in Seattle has peaked.
The Real Tony , 2 hours ago
The Pakis in Brampton and Mississauga Ontario, Canada will throw their last welfare cheque
towards housing before losing their home/homes to the bank. It might take longer than you
think.
ZIRPdiggler , 5 hours ago
Sorry to rain all over your doom porn ZH'ers but I don't think we are going to have an
"economic collapse". Also, I just heard a new Lindsay Williams.....he says the Trump election
changed everything for the dark cabal's plans lol. Says they're gonna take the DOW over
40,000. Of course, Armstrong has been predicting that for a long long time. So go figure.
Maybe cycles are bullet proof, regardless of who's trying to do the manipulation. keep buying
that gold though....maybe your great grand children can benefit from it.
Md4 , 5 hours ago
"If it doesn't happen, the debt triggers a crisis in Europe, [and] that triggers the
beginning of a global recession" but... "there are so many little dominoes, if they all start
falling, one leads to the next."
What people don't seem to understand yet, is that this is no longer just an economic or
even a debt problem ex parte.
The non-solution of the last ten years have now made this a human quality of life
problem.
The loss of so many middle class income opportunities over the now-near 50 years of
outsourcing, has not only caused more insurmountable debt loads to form, but the chronic
income insufficiency is hammering even first-world social psyches as never before.
After all, rising debt is rising for a reason.
It's a big mistake to automatically assume a financial collapse has to precede a
social calamity.
It can easily be the other way around...
Captain Nemo de Erehwon , 3 hours ago
You have to design financial systems for human needs, taking into account human
characteristics. There are no "laws" of social sciences that "must" be followed. Physics is
the only constraint.
Fred box , 6 hours ago
Bottom line folks,this party is over done.One of many different things can cause at the least a 20%
correction(-5000pts) as well as bigger.The TBTF are now To Humungous To Fail.We live in
interesting times!
TRN , 6 hours ago
Likely 40% correction.
LeftandRightareWrong , 6 hours ago
Public pension systems and unfettered illegal immigration.
Normal , 6 hours ago
$500 trillion, in debt. That means that some kind of system had it to lend. Makes me want
to puke and then go start a revolution.
Bricker , 7 hours ago
All 3 in common...Debt bomb. 1929 Debt, 2008 Debt, 20?? debt; IMO its student loans
wrapped up as commercial paper and bonds.
Someone is going to miss an interest payment after tranches are bet on with student
loans
GoldHermit , 7 hours ago
Watch the Big Short. Those guys came as close as anyone IMO
daedon , 7 hours ago
No, READ The Big Short.
Erwin643 , 7 hours ago
Yeah, try making a movie based on a book. You have to take a lot of shortcuts. I think The Big Short was one of the very best films ever made, based on a book.
The actors played their real-life counterparts perfectly.
daedon , 7 hours ago
Forget (broken clock) Schiff, I read a great book in 1993, The Great Reckoning: Protect
Yourself in the Coming Depression. That was 25 years ago, I'm getting impatient. French president Charles de Gaulle saw this shit coming in 1968 and he died waiting for
it.
The Roman Empire lasted 500 years, so be patient, Trump's bosses have an armada of think
tanks staffed with Aspies that have IQs well above low earth orbit at their disposal, so they
could drag this out another 1000 years.
The economic model that the word "neoliberalism" was coined to describe was developed by
Chicago school economists in the 1960s and 1970s based upon Austrian neoclassical
economic theories, but heavily influenced by Ayn
Rand's barmy pseudo-philosophy of Übermenschen and greed-worship .
The first experiment in applied neoliberal theory began on September 11th 1973 in
Chile , when a US backed military coup resulted in the death of social-democratic leader
Salvador Allende and his replacement with the brutal military dictator General Pinochet
(Margaret Thatcher's friend and idol). Thousands of people were murdered by the Pinochet regime
for political reasons and tens of thousands more were tortured as Pinochet and the "Chicago
boys" set about implementing neoliberal economic reforms and brutally reppressing anyone that
stood in their way. The US financially doped the Chilean economy in order to create the
impression that these rabid-right wing reforms were successful. After the "success" of the
Chilean neoliberal experiment, the instillation and economic support of right-wing military
dictatorships to impose neoliberal economic reforms became unofficial US foreign policy.
The first of the democratically elected neoliberals were Margaret
Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US. They both set about introducing
ideologically driven neoliberal reforms, such as the complete withdrawal of capital controls by
Tory Chancellor Geoffrey Howe and the deregulation of the US financial markets that led to vast
corruption scandals like Enron and the global
financial sector insolvency crisis of 2007-08 .
By 1989 the ideology of neoliberalism was enshrined as the economic orthodoxy of the world
as undemocratic Washington based institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
the World Bank and the US Treasury Department signed up to a ten point economic plan which was
riddled with neoliberal ideology such as trade liberalisation, privatisation, financial sector
deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy. This agreement between anti-democratic organisations
is misleadingly referred to as "The Washington Consensus".
These days, the IMF is one of the most high profile pushers of neoliberal economic policies.
Their strategy involves applying strict "structural adjustment" conditions on their loans.
These conditions are invariably neoliberal reforms such as privatisation of utilities, services
and government owned industries, tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, the abandonment of
capital controls, the removal of democratic controls over central banks and monetary policy and
the deregulation of financial industries.
"... Most here voted for or supported Obama whose record of incarcerating and persecuting journalists, punishing whistle-blowers, extra-judicial executions including citizens of the United States, placing children in cages, violent regime change abroad, spying on citizens, and expanding the security state was as bad or worse as that of Bush and Trump, in some cases by some margin. ..."
"... The current heroes of the 'resistance' lied America into Iraq or Libya, hacked into the computers of the elected representatives/lied about it, and support torture/enhanced interrogations, all under Obama. 'Liberals' lionize these clown criminals along with 'responsible' republicans whilst embracing open bigots such as Farrakhan. And, yes, if one is willing to share the podium with Farrakhan that's tacit support of his views. ..."
I'd suggest that the two strains of 'conservatism' that matter are:
a) maintaining oppression/rule over subordinate classes to prevent them up-ending the status quo (the Robin view) and
b) maintaining philosophical +/- cultural values fundamental to a civilised society, typically so-called enlightenment values,
freedom of mind, body and property etc. These are understood in a wide spectrum of concrete interpretations, from free-market
purists to social democrats, and don't therefore correspond to one kind of on-the-ground politics.
Progressives tend attack a) (a non-philosophical form of conservatism – it's just about preserving a power structure), and
usually claim that b) (the one that matters) doesn't exist or isn't 'conservative', or else ignore it.
We have the basic problem of same term, variable referents
(b) doesn't exist. Conservatives are, as a group, in eager favor of concentration camps for toddlers, the drug war, unrestrained
surveillance, American empire, civil forfeiture, mass incarceration, extrajudicial police execution, etc. etc. They have internal
disagreements on how much to do those things, but the consensus is for all of them without meaningful constraint. And they are
always justified in terms of (a).
Most here voted for or supported Obama whose record of incarcerating and persecuting journalists, punishing whistle-blowers,
extra-judicial executions including citizens of the United States, placing children in cages, violent regime change abroad, spying
on citizens, and expanding the security state was as bad or worse as that of Bush and Trump, in some cases by some margin.
The current heroes of the 'resistance' lied America into Iraq or Libya, hacked into the computers of the elected representatives/lied
about it, and support torture/enhanced interrogations, all under Obama. 'Liberals' lionize these clown criminals along with 'responsible'
republicans whilst embracing open bigots such as Farrakhan. And, yes, if one is willing to share the podium with Farrakhan that's
tacit support of his views.
Conservative as a political category post 1750 works and the basic argument of the OP holds. The comments not so much.
"... That said, many - including Yahoo News's Michael Isikoff (the guy whose article containing info fed to him by Christopher Steele was used by the FBI to obtain Carter Page's FISA warrant) - have pointed to potential targets on the left. ..."
"... Those people include former Manafort associates Tony Podesta, Vin Weber and Greg Craig - all of whom failed to register as foreign agents in connection with work outside the United States, as well as members of the Obama administration . Of course, the thought of Mueller going after "the untouchables" seems a bit far fetched. ..."
"... The FSB ambition: to choose the least competent Presidential candidate and, unbeknownst to him, smooth his way to the White House. Thus Robert Meuller's inconvenient truth: If Donald Trump were competent enough to be entrusted with collusion, then he would be too competent for the FSB to achieve its ambitions! I bet the FSB people in charge are gobsmacked that The Donald hasn't been impaled on the 25th Amendment yet! ..."
"... I don't understand Dershowitz here. What could Manafort say that Papadopoulos and Flynn haven't already told Mueller? He was Trump's campaign manager for what three months? ..."
"... If anyone had something juicy on Trump it'd be Michael Flynn since he was in the Trump administration if just for a short time. This is about keeping this farce of a charade going as long as humanly possible. ..."
"... My guess -- a guess -- is that Mueller is under a lot of pressure from the Clinton Family including Brennan, Clapper et al to find something, anything, on enough people to make the last 2 years look legit to the Americans who watch CNN. ..."
"... My guess is that the CF has gone from supporting Mueller to making him scared. ..."
"... That should work for continuing the Conspiracy theory... It is all the DOJ, FBI, Sessions and now newcomer Manafort trying to BRING Down the POTUS. All of this is happening to such a great guy like Trump... Sad huh... ..."
"... Jesus you Trumptards are delusional. The average American is no more likely to take up arms against his masters than the North Koreans are. ..."
Harvard Law professor and prominent liberal Alan Dershowitz - who has been shunned by the
liberal elite of late for defending President Trump - now says that the White House should be
alarmed over Paul Manafort's plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller.
" Well of course they should be ," replied Dershowitz - though he added the rather large
caveat that Mueller is "not a credible witness," and would be at best be a corroborating
witness against Trump.
"There's nothing he can testify to that would probably lend weight to impeachment because he
didn't have close contact with President Trump while he was president," said Dershowitz. " What
they are looking for is self-corroborating information that can be used against Trump if they
can make him sing and then there's the possibility of him composing, elaborating on the story
."
Dershowitz added that there is "no doubt" Mueller is trying to flip Manafort against
Trump.
" Once he agrees to cooperate, he has to cooperate about everything , said Dershowitz.
"There's no such thing as partial cooperation."
As for Trump pardoning Manafort? That's now "off the table," and that flipping on the
President "opens up a lot of doors that probably haven't been opened before."
It's a "big win" for Mueller, Dershowitz concludes.
That said, many - including Yahoo
News's Michael Isikoff (the guy whose article containing info fed to him by Christopher Steele
was used by the FBI to obtain Carter Page's FISA warrant) - have pointed to potential targets
on the left.
Those people include former Manafort associates Tony Podesta, Vin Weber and Greg Craig - all
of whom failed to register as foreign agents in connection with work outside the United States,
as well as members of the Obama administration . Of course, the thought of Mueller going after
"the untouchables" seems a bit far fetched.
quintus.sertorius , 19 minutes ago
The Tribe plays both sides: Dershowitz the plant in Trump team has the same real loyalty
as fellow tribesman Haim Saban or Sheldon Adelson. They want to blackmail Trump into fighting
Israel's war in Syria.
radbug , 55 minutes ago
The FSB ambition: to choose the least competent Presidential candidate and, unbeknownst to
him, smooth his way to the White House. Thus Robert Meuller's inconvenient truth: If Donald
Trump were competent enough to be entrusted with collusion, then he would be too competent
for the FSB to achieve its ambitions! I bet the FSB people in charge are gobsmacked that The
Donald hasn't been impaled on the 25th Amendment yet!
ZazzOne , 1 hour ago
"Big Win For Mueller"? Only if he plans on going after the founders of the Red Shoe "Pedo"
Club.....John and Tony Podesta! Though I highly doubt he'll ever go down that rabbit
hole!!!!!
Straddling-the-fence , 2 hours ago
Once he agrees to cooperate, he has to cooperate about everything , said Dershowitz.
"There's no such thing as partial cooperation.
That's asinine. There are terms to a plea agreement. Unless those terms encompass what is
claimed above, then that is simply false.
KekistanisUnite , 3 hours ago
I don't understand Dershowitz here. What could Manafort say that Papadopoulos and Flynn
haven't already told Mueller? He was Trump's campaign manager for what three months?
George
Papadopoulos I don't know how long he was there but if really has nothing of value to offer
then neither would Manafort.
If anyone had something juicy on Trump it'd be Michael Flynn
since he was in the Trump administration if just for a short time. This is about keeping this
farce of a charade going as long as humanly possible.
Econogeek , 3 hours ago
My guess -- a guess -- is that Mueller is under a lot of pressure from the Clinton Family
including Brennan, Clapper et al to find something, anything, on enough people to make the
last 2 years look legit to the Americans who watch CNN.
My guess is that the CF has gone from supporting Mueller to making him scared.
ThePhantom , 4 hours ago
i like to think Mueller is on the plate too, and this is his chance to save his own ass.
Greg Craig and Podesta's names are out in all the papers .... they worked with manafort first
and foremost....
no idea what dershowitz is talking about.. none.
Calvertsbio , 4 hours ago
Yea sure he is, the SPECIAL Counsel running the show to bring down corruption is "ON THE
PLATE" yea, ok...
That should work for continuing the Conspiracy theory... It is all the DOJ, FBI, Sessions
and now newcomer Manafort trying to BRING Down the POTUS. All of this is happening to such a
great guy like Trump... Sad huh...
Doesn't make much difference how much of this BS is posted, no one is buying it anymore...
Even FAUX news has basically given up on him... Everyone know that once it all comes out, it
will be labelled by HIS SHEEPLE that it is all made up BS to take him down...
Hillary did it... no ! Sessions did it, nope, it was RYAN ? McConnell... lets keep the
guessing game going... The Dossier did it...
BigJim, 4 hours ago
"The swamp critters better stop ignoring the Hillary/DNC side of this or the population is going to be marching in with
pitchforks and guillotines."
Jesus you Trumptards are delusional. The average American is no more likely to take up arms against his masters than
the North Koreans are.
Carter Paige? You mean the guy this time last year was a Russian spy? The guy who hasn't
been charged with anything? The guy that the original FISA warrants were issued against in
order to spy on the trump campaign? Oh yeah that guy.
Is he connected to the Papadopoulos guy? You know... The guy that got 14 days for lying to
meathead?
And now Manafort. Somehow hes bringing Trump down for sure. Even if it doesn't have
anything to do with the Trump campaign.
As looney would say... Looney
Dilluminati ,
From my understanding the unmasking of a national security investigation does make liable
to suit the press by Carter Page, additionally I'm still amazed that people are seeing this
through their preconceptions. How NSL (national security letters) and FISA material made it
consistently from the top echelons of government needs people asking some genuine questions.
If you have followed this carefully, it is evident that despite the non-related charges
brought forth by Mueller that this was a politicized prosecution by the establishment. The
questioning of the narrative of this gets people called all types of names.
Talking about establishment behaving badly:
I finally came across an article where the establishment is calling people "Satan" and the
article was accurate from the standpoint of an "establishment analysis" but of course left
out the actual details of the ongoing criminal racketeering.
I had a person say that they "felt sorry for me" Pity being an expression of disrespect
that I no longer attended Church, and I thought to myself that it wasn't worth the reply that
saying sorry or asking forgiveness cuts it, or that the decision or another or your belief
yourself guarantees you are saved if your repeated heinous crimes boil down to asking
"forgiveness" a mistake, bad judgement.
And the abuse was SEVERE again the details are slowly coming out but you see how the
Demonization process works. The response in both cases identical.
And remember that none of this is new.. simply signs of very corrupt people feeling
non-accountable to anything. I fully expect the abuse at the Church to continue, I expect the
Star Chamber establishment to become more bold.. and in summation I'm predicting very cleanly
and accurately this ends badly. No escaping this.. it ends badly
If not always fair or flexible, it seems efficient – attorneys collecting large fees
in a justice system designed to enrich attorneys.
A shyster attorney that I had the
unfortunate experience in working with, did tell the truth once when he said that there is no
such thing as a justice system but there is a legal industry.
"Protection of aristocracy against the agency of the subordinate classes" could be a
good first pass at describing the Wittgensteinian family resemblance of all conservatisms. In
the mid-18th Century the final public inversion of theories of dispensation from the Absolute
(i.e. the Great Chain of Being), inverted in the face of increasing scientific knowledge and
technological advance, served to overthrow the privileges of aristocracy and divine right, and
brought forward the question of the will of the rabble as a new, constant norm in the political
process (i.e. "democracy"). The left-right divide blossomed.
We may still be living in an era of shadow cast from that event. It could be that some
"language games" perpetuate as dialogical, rhetorical, antiphonal, oppositional. Yet the
referents can change, as in any emotional argument. In the case of a language game emerging to
the immediate concerns of property ownership and political power, it might persist over time in
the emotional shadow of the ancien regime, yet it would transmute over time in response to
change and contingency, and use varying political issues of the moment to stay alive. So we
have a sort of dialogic meta-organism with an autopoietic (i.e. self-maintaining) social
ontogeny, leaving behind itself the tracks of a dialectical history.
In our present moment, the "protection of aristocracy against the agency of the subordinate
classes" has transmuted to "protection of the free market as a way for any subordinate person
to ascend by personal effort into the modern open aristocracy".
But this could be the end of that game. Yes, it is a clever trick: it perpetuates the belief
in individualism, because anyone can try to do it. But it is also fatally flawed. Not everyone
can do it because there are formal limitations: over long periods of time some few people
invent new goods and services and achieve success, but at any one moment there is a lot of
unemployed and underpaid. In addition some members of the modern open aristocracy are pushing
programs that increase inequality and environmental destruction, and these results become more
visible to the public.
"Protection of aristocracy against the agency of the subordinate classes" moved historically
to "protection of the free market as a way for anyone to become one of the aristocrats" -- and
now may finally be eclipsed, because that is not believable. It would be the end of the
pro-hierarchic bent of conservatism. Mainstream conservatives won't have much to distinguish
themselves from progressives, who otherwise believe in individualism and personal achievement.
The social-conservative varieties would spin off to single-issue advocacies. We may see a book
entitled, Varieties of Conservatism Against One Another.
In Robin's theory of conservatism, do the lower orders have to be human? Will an army of
robot slaves do? If the objective of the ruling class is simply "more freedom to do what I
want", robots are actually better than serfs, who may always potentially answer back or
rebel. But what if it is in part to enjoy the submission of the serfs to their will? That is
the pattern of sexual predation: the wife (or another man's wife) beaten or tricked into
subservience is more gratifying a sexual object to Valmont than the prostitute who provides
the same services under a dick's-length contract.
I think it is impossible to discuss modern conservatism, especially its neocon variety
without discussing neoliberalism. Too many people here concentrate on superficial traits,
while the defining feature of modern conservatives is the unconditional support of "hard
neoliberalism." There is also a Vichy party which supports "soft neoliberalism"
It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice and freedom should have been
promoted with the slogan "there is no alternative." But, as Hayek remarked on a visit to
Pinochet's Chile – one of the first nations in which the programme was
comprehensively applied – "my personal preference leans toward a liberal dictatorship
rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism." The freedom that
neoliberalism offers, which sounds so beguiling when expressed in general terms, turns out
to mean freedom for the pike, not for the minnows.
Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining mean the freedom to suppress wages.
Freedom from regulation means the freedom to poison rivers, endanger workers, charge
iniquitous rates of interest and design exotic financial instruments. Freedom from tax
means freedom from the distribution of wealth that lifts people out of poverty.
The other important area is the attitude to the existence and maintenance of the global US
empire and the level of indoctrination into "American exceptionalism" which I view as a
flavor of far-right nationalism. But here we need to talk not about conservatism but
neofascism.
In a way, the current crisis of neoliberalism in the USA (one of the features of which was
de-legitimization of the neoliberal elite which led to the election of Trump) develops
strange similarities with the events of 1920-1935 in Europe.
I'd suggest that the two strains of 'conservatism' that matter are:
a) maintaining oppression/rule over subordinate classes to prevent them up-ending the
status quo (the Robin view) and
b) maintaining philosophical +/- cultural values fundamental to a civilised society,
typically so-called enlightenment values, freedom of mind, body and property etc. These are
understood in a wide spectrum of concrete interpretations, from free-market purists to social
democrats, and don't therefore correspond to one kind of on-the-ground politics.
Progressives tend attack a) (a non-philosophical form of conservatism – it's just
about preserving a power structure), and usually claim that b) (the one that matters) doesn't
exist or isn't 'conservative', or else ignore it.
We have the basic problem of same term, variable referents
I think Thomas Beale is correct, though like him, I haven't done the work either. But one
does come across conservatives who seem genuinely motivated by principles other than keeping
the peasantry in line. I am thinking, for instance, of Larison over at the American
Conservative, whose views on the evils of US foreign policy are determined in part by his
sense of moral outrage at the suffering we cause.
That said, he seems to be a member of a fairly small minority, so Corey is probably right
most of the time.
Probably a better example would be Burke, who obviously felt moral outrage about British
actions in India. I haven't read Corey's book, so I don't know how that fits into his thesis.
And I will also stop posting after this.
The level between the ideal and the history is where the action is!
Contemporary conservatism is premised on the fiction that everyone can move up into the
modern open aristocracy, by their personal effort in the free market.
However, this doesn't happen. When globalism took the jobs away, the people did not invent
new goods and services to get back in the market game. Why not?
Instead of dealing with the failure of the premise that there are endless goods and
services to invent, conservatives (and libertarians) find other ideas to explain, or to
blame: the people are naturally unequal, or they are failing to live up to past cultural
standards, or immigrants are overwhelming the system, or government gets in the way.
Round and round they go. The drama might be called Waiting for Rando.
> "Why would anybody bother trying to find that red herring?" Do you wonder this generally
about political philosophy? That is, consistency/coherence is never interesting? Or is it
just dull in the case of conservatism?
In the USA, the keystone libertarian (and maybe conservative) influence as best I can tell
is the Kochtopus
. Those organizations exploit the efflorescence of justifications and steer them to the
central goals of the Kochs.
>How can you tell what counts as a member of the species?
I'm a biological systemacist, and it is obvious that species can have fuzzy edges, no
matter which concept of species you use (and several are used depending on the group you are
studying.)
Looking from outside of the USA, I have always been puzzled by the contemporary insistence
of boxing everybody into liberal or conservative (with potentially an "independent" box in
the middle). Some people seem to go as far as to characterise liberal and conservative
mindsets with the implication that they are generalisable across all of human history and the
whole globe, as opposed to a parochially American dichotomy. I just did a quick Google
search, and the third hit was already an exasperating "Scientists have studied the brains of
conservatives and liberals and ".
For starters, 'liberal' has a very different meaning in many countries. In my country of
citizenship it means what an American would call moderate libertarian. Any country with a
proportional representation system would find the idea of having only two political science
boxes to sort people into a complete non-starter. And that is before asking whether such a
question would have made sense to the ancestors of today's Americans 300 or, say, 10,000
years ago.
Of course it makes sense to ask what defines the conservative intellectual tradition in
Europe and the Anglosphere, but the way that category is treated by many pollsters and
journalists feels odd.
"The form of the objection is weird. "But, Socrates, how can you say that all triangles have
three sides? That implies that all triangles are the same. But we all know that there are
blue ones and red ones, big ones and little ones "
The problem with Robin's book (and really large parts of his project as seen on his
writings here and elsewhere) is that Robin is the one implying that because all triangles
have three sides, that all triangles are big and red based on the fact that he can point to
at least one or two triangles that are red and has heard of one that was big. He does this by
selectively using analytic techniques in grossly tribal ways -- by applying leaps in the
argument that would never be applied to members of his own tribe. He applies these Jonah
Goldberg style leaps both backwards and forwards in time, erases distinctions between people
with whom he disagrees while drawing hyper tight distinctions on behalf of people on his own
side. He does it by looking at cherry picked outcomes which cut against his enemies, while
limiting talk to stated desires without respect to outcomes of his friends. I'm broadly on
his side of a lot of arguments, but my upbringing in an evangelical church has left me highly
allergic to that kind of preaching to the choir.
"Instead of focusing on "freedom", I think, Robin has chosen to focus on "obedience". If
conservativism is basically in the business of legitimating a certain kind of obedience, then
you have an organizing principle that works better than family resemblence to identify the
varieties of conservativism.."
This is precisely the type of problem I'm talking about. You can only get that from an
analytic frame where you ignore huge swaths of conservative thought as propaganda and by
cherry picking the real world outcomes of movements you label conservative. But if you apply
that exact same technique to huge swaths of leftist thought and get to cherry pick into the
gulags or even just hyper vigilant policing of thoughtcrimes or purity politics on the left,
you can find the same type of enforced obedience that he wants to criticize on the right. So
he doesn't. Leftists get a completely different analytic treatment. They get to keep their
rhetorical gestures toward the importance of freedom, their cherry picked outcomes are Sweden
not Venezuela.
The problem with that is that he claims to be discovering something particular about
conservatives. But he isn't. He is drawing with such a broad brush that he would implicate a
large portion of leftism if we were applying his techniques in the same way to them. So his
insights don't help us understand what makes conservatives and non conservatives
different.
@Stephen Does it follow that Remainers, or opponents of Trump, saying such things are in
fact conservatives?
I wrote my comment before yours could be read, but as I wrote, conservatism is a specific
reaction to a specific moment, or to a specific series of moments. That series is now
finished, so I generally see little point in trying to fit contemporary political movements
in squares belonging to a previous socio-political epoch. Trump, Brexit, Macron, AOC,
Salvini, Merkel are cases in point.
I'm in a similar place to Matt @12. I'd just add the following: as someone who has neither
read the book nor is a scholar of the relevant area, my far off estimation of scholarship
based on social epistemic cues, and, in this case, they are all giant red flags. The ONE
uniting idea of conservatism is obviously perfidious? It's just so convenient. And then to
hear -- well, sure, the project is of a special kind where the account isn't really beholden
to historical details (too messy) or to doing best justice to the arguments (too diverse),
it's unified at some intermediate level it's easy just to assume that this level was chosen
precisely because underdefined and slippery, and that it's probably a polemical, highly
motivated account that's not worth paying much attention to. And then it doesn't help that I
see people citing the book in public discourse in a very incautious way. And it's worth
emphasizing that these indirect cues are essential for managing how we approach a world full
of way too much info to directly evaluate, and that they are often highly reliable.
This is admittedly all weak. I haven't read it. But it's some explanation for the purely
sociological suggestion that many commenters may be going in extremely suspicious. And if
they go in very suspicious, it's not that surprising that they're going to be less charitable
to the intermediate level project described above.
13: Gonna really miss Anderson and Jameson. From the cited piece:
'war is the concern of the rich and powerful, that the poor should have nothing to do with
it " Marc Bloch
'Morocco is not and has never been an Arab country.' Marcel Mauss
Also reading Adolph Reed on Dubois, and his principled progressive elitism;also a book on
Lenin walking back his "cooks can run governments"
Liberals love hierarchies; the battles between conservatives and liberals involve only
which elite should rule the masses, and has more to do with Pareto's foxes and lions than any
general egalitarianism; the built-in enthusiastic hierarchies liberal capitalism
automatically generates are it's point, and why actual leftists like Anderson and Jameson
spend so much time attacking the center and left-center ( as essentially a variant of
conservatism) and barely bother with the Right. I like Robin, and believe he gets it; I just
really don't understand him.
It's about factions, power and opportunism; rising demographics in transition.
Kaepernick and BLM
Cash In BLM got a freakish 100 million from Ford Foundation, with stipulations of course.
They'll behave. Meanwhile, black men keep getting killed by cops, Dallas, manslaughter
instead of murder. BLM can commission a tv ad produced by their friends. That's power. That's
hierarchy. But that's fine because we like them.
Resisting Trump is easy. Resisting BLM or Clinton is really hard, which is why leftists
focus there. Cause otherwise it's just out with the old boss, in with the new, and the war
goes on.
Since there are a lot of reasonable ways to approach the classification problem, I think one
of the most important questions to ask is how useful any particular approach is. And it
depends on your goals. I can think of 3 broad categories of goals in this case: 1) persuade
the undecided, 2) rally the troops, 3) improve academic understanding. There is maybe a 4th:
advance your position in a political fight on your own side, but that's a little trickier to
analyze. I view Robin's approach to be mainly aimed at 2). I think it's effective for that
purpose, but it's not that high of a target to aim for either.
At least in the U.S., since Reagan "conservatives" in category a have repeatedly tried to
characterize their craven interest in dominance as category b, "principled conservativism,"
even as conservative principles like balanced budgets, non-intervention, and personal liberty
against government intrusion are abandoned. Paul Ryan will somehow still retire as a
perceived committed deficit hawk. U.S. political conservatives have worked for decades to
dress up their ideology of dominance with some faux intellectual rigor. This purported
intellectual rigor is used as a mask for mean-spirited policies–for instance, "I regret
having to cut social welfare programs, but I am a principled budget balancer and the math
demands it" See The National Review. That's why there are so many leftish critics who
puncture this pretense. The vast majority of U.S. conservatives who claim to belong to
category b are really just providing intellectual cover for the obvious category a political
actors.
Lobsterman 09.13.18 at 10:27 pm (no link)
(b) doesn't exist. Conservatives are, as a group, in eager favor of concentration camps for
toddlers, the drug war, unrestrained surveillance, American empire, civil forfeiture, mass
incarceration, extrajudicial police execution, etc. etc. They have internal disagreements on
how much to do those things, but the consensus is for all of them without meaningful
constraint. And they are always justified in terms of (a).
CDT 09.14.18 at 5:33 am (no link)
I actually thought of mentioning Daniel Larison as an examle of a principled,
paleoconservative. Few of his ilk survived the arrival of the neocons.
Anonymousse, since you contend we are being unduly harsh about the conservative
intellectual project, please tell us which principled conservatives with influence and
courage we are ignoring. I'm stumped.
ph 09.15.18 at 2:17 am (no link)
@55 You make a fair point.
I suspect you don't really understand what I think, but that's cool, too!
I believe Bill Clinton and Trump are twins separated at birth, that the US presidency is a
corporation masquerading as an individual, and that nothing brings Americans together like
killing brown people. I also believe Labour in the UK supports pretty much all the scummy
activities we see from US presidents, as do the Socialists in France. And that's my point.
I'm delighted we can see the true face of American 'exceptionalism' on display everyday. The
last thing I want to see is 'back to normal.'
What I really like about your stance on Trump and 'not us' is that you've evidently
convinced yourself that finding the worst in others is the path to virtue.
That Berkowitz quote is a special kind of slimy, and illustrates the problem of arguing with
these slippery traitors. He suggests that conservatives are interested in preserving "the
manners, mores, and principles of a self-governing people" as if leftists don't want this
basic moral outcome; and he juxtaposes the conservative quest for total personal autonomy as
if leftists don't want that. And, since by now conservatives are a minority, essentially he
does exactly what Robin accuses all conservatives of doing: sets conservatives up as an elite
with special insight and autonomy that must be defended against a lunpen mass that don't
understand or care for these things. Beale above makes the same gross little error when he
says conservatives aim at "maintaining philosophical +/- cultural values fundamental to a
civilised society", presumably juxtaposing them with the broad mass of society who don't want
this rarified moral good.
We can see the moral and cultural values that conservatives consider to be fundamental to
a civilized society in the behaviour of Trump and his enablers. It's theft, sexual assault,
dishonesty, racism and treachery. The Berkowitz s and Beales of the world want us to judge
conservatives by the words of a few of their "thinkers" (Milo, perhaps, or Tucker Carlson?)
But we can see the moral values in their actions far more clearly than their words. Everyone
of these scum has a mistress he will pay to have an abortion, and bribe politicians to hide;
every one of these scum will sell out their country and any moral value for money; they will
allgo to great lengths to cover up each others' rapes and robberies. Yet the Beales and
Berkowitz s of the world want us to think that they stand for anything except murder, rape
and theft, and worse still that they are the only defenders of the moral values fundamental
to civilized society. Why would we believe them, when by their actions they show that their
only interest is to hold power so that they can keep taking, killing and stealing?
Thomas Beale 09.15.18 at 7:52 am (no link)
Z @ 54
I don't agree with people who are against abortion or gay marriage either; but it's easy
enough to find people in society who take one or both of those stances (usually because of
faith, or being part of an older generation) who are pro universal healthcare, taxes on the
rich / corporations, and live modest lives.
The problem is that for us who live in pluralist societies, the full set of opinions held
by most individuals don't sort cleanly into the boxes we'd like to sort the individuals into.
A good concrete example is Brazil: Christian faith is very strong there, in standard and
evangelical varieties, across all socio-economic levels; separately, many in the middle class
want a better deal for poor people (10s of millions), and are in favour of better economic
distribution rather than concentration (why? Because they see what a raw deal the poor have,
it's in your face in Brazil; they also know about Petrobras, Odebrecht corruption sucking the
life out of the economy). if you ask them about abortion and universal healthcare, you are
likely to get answers that don't fit into your preferred political categories.
So while you might be able to show that opposition to legal abortion is philosophically of
a piece with far more egregious kinds of deprivation of liberty and dignity, the reality is
that most people holding the former kind of opinion don't hold the latter. As long as they
respect democracy, we all get to live in peace.
'Hypocrisy', though a tendentious sort of word, is the key, I think. In electoral politics
40% on either side are going to vote the way they vote regardless of how persuasive the
electoral campaign of candidate A, or the unfittedness of candidate B; so the game is:
persuading those 20% who used to be called 'floating voters'.
And the way you do that is by blank-screening yourself and letting the electors project
onto you, by presenting yourself as Conservative even though you're Labour (as Blair did), or
conversely presenting yourself as radical even though you're a straight-down-the-line
tax-cutting defense-budget-ballooning Republican.
Trump's campaign persuaded many that he would in no way 'conserve', but would rather tear
down the establishment.
Brexit was masterminded by a group of elite hard right wingers who somehow managed to
persuade a large tranche of the electorate that it Remain were all metropolitan elites and
that they were the true voice of the people.
The real challenge is not finding a definition of conservatism that can bracket a genius
like Burke with a moron like Sarah Palin; it's finding a definition that enables a
billionaire playboy to define himself as a man of the people; that allows him to promise eg
free healthcare for all and kicking Wall Street out of politics on the campaign trail without
losing his Conservative bona fides.
I think it is impossible to discuss modern conservatism, especially its neocon variety
without discussing neoliberalism. Too many people here concentrate on superficial traits,
while the defining feature of modern conservatives is the unconditional support of "hard
neoliberalism." There is also a Vichy party which supports "soft neoliberalism" ...
It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice and freedom should have been
promoted with the slogan "there is no alternative." But, as Hayek remarked on a visit to
Pinochet's
Kabaservice Contra Corey -- Thoughts About How To Think About Conservatism -- Crooked
Timber Chile -- one of the first nations in which the programme was comprehensively
applied -- "my personal preference leans toward a liberal dictatorship rather than toward a
democratic government devoid of liberalism." The freedom that neoliberalism offers, which
sounds so beguiling when expressed in general terms, turns out to mean freedom for the
pike, not for the minnows.
Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining mean the freedom to suppress wages.
Freedom from regulation means the freedom to poison rivers, endanger workers, charge
iniquitous rates of interest and design exotic financial instruments. Freedom from tax
means freedom from the distribution of wealth that lifts people out of poverty.
The other important area is the attitude to the existence and maintenance of the global US
empire and the level of indoctrination into "American exceptionalism" which I view as a
flavor of far-right nationalism. But here we need to talk not about conservatism but
neofascism.
In a way, the current crisis of neoliberalism in the USA (one of the features of which was
de-legitimization of the neoliberal elite which led to the election of Trump) develops with
strange similarities with the events of 1920-1935 in Europe.
The root of the current aggressive policy is the desire to preserve global neoliberal empire the US role as the metropolia
with the rest of the world as vassals.
Notable quotes:
"... The crisis of U.S. foreign policy -- a series of radical missteps -- are systemic. Having little to do with personalities, they pass from one administration to the next with little variance other than at the margins. ..."
"... It began with that hubristic triumphalism so evident in the decade after the Cold War's end ..."
"... There was also the "Washington consensus." The world was in agreement that free-market capitalism and unfettered financial markets would see the entire planet to prosperity. ..."
"... The neoliberal economic crusade accompanied by neoconservative politics had its intellectual ballast, and off went its true-believing warriors around the world. ..."
"... Failures ensued. Iraq post–2003 is among the more obvious. Nobody ever planted democracy or built free markets in Baghdad. Then came the "color revolutions," which resulted in the destabilization of large swathes of the former Soviet Union's borderlands. The 2008 financial crash followed. I was in Hong Kong at the time and recall thinking, "This is not just Lehman Brothers. An economic model is headed into Chapter 11." One would have thought a fundamental rethink in Washington might have followed these events. There has never been one. ..."
"... Midway through the first Obama administration, a crucial turn began. What had been an assertion of financial and economic power, albeit coercive in many instances, particularly with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, took on further strategic and military dimensions. ..."
"... The NATO bombing campaign in Libya, ostensibly a humanitarian mission, became a regime-change operation -- despite Washington's promises otherwise. Obama's "pivot to Asia" turned out to be a neo-containment policy toward China. The "reset" with Russia, declared after Obama appointed Hillary Clinton secretary of state, flopped and turned into the virulent animosity we now live with daily ..."
"... The U.S.-cultivated coup in Kiev in 2014 was a major declaration of drastic turn in policy towards Moscow. So was the decision, taken in 2012 at the latest , to back the radical jihadists who were turning civil unrest in Syria into a campaign to topple the Assad government in favor of another Islamist regime. ..."
"... In 2015, the last of the three years I just noted, Russia intervened militarily and diplomatically in the Syria conflict, in part to protect its southwest from Islamist extremism and in part to pull the Middle East back from the near-anarchy then threatening it as well as Russia and the West. ..."
"... Meanwhile, Washington had cast China as an adversary and committed itself -- as it apparently remains -- to regime change in Syria. Three months prior to the treaty that established the EAEU, the Americans helped turn another case of civil unrest into a regime change -- this time backing not jihadists in Syria but the crypto-Nazi militias in Ukraine on which the government now in power still depends. ..."
"... If there is a president to blame -- and again, I see little point in this line of argument -- it would have to be Barack Obama. To a certain extent, Obama was a creature of those around him, as he acknowledged in his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... The Washington Post ..."
"... Think of Russia, China, and Iran, the three nations now designated America's principal adversaries. Each one is fated to become (if it is not already) a world or regional power and a key to stability -- Russia and China on a global scale, Iran in the Middle East. But each stands resolutely -- and this is not to say with hostile intent -- outside the Western-led order. They have different histories, traditions, cultures, and political cultures. And they are determined to preserve them. ..."
"... If you valued this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one. ..."
"... You don't mention corruption and profiteering, which go hand-in-hand with American Exceptionalism and the National Security State (NSS) formed in 1947. The leader of the world which is also an NSS requires enemies, so the National Security Strategy designates enemies, a few of them in an Axis of Evil. Arming to fight them and dreaming up other reasons to go to war, including a war on terror of all things, bring the desired vast expenditures, trillions of dollars, which translate to vast profits to those involved. ..."
"... How many Americans were against the assault by the Coalition of the Willing upon Iraq? Very few. ..."
"... Even in the lead up the war when the public was force fed a diet comprised entirely of State Dept. lies about WMDs by a sycophantic media, there was still a significant 25-40 percent of the public who opposed the war. ..."
"... "Conformism and its consequences, probably derived in part from Puritanism and further cemented by the alternating racisms of anti-indigenous and anti black attitudes- the history of the lynch mob and various wars against the poor which ended up in the anti-communist frenzies of the day before yesterday constitute the backbone of American history- is the disease which afflicts Washington." ..."
"... I have often wondered why the US was unable to accept the position of first among equals. Why does it have to rule the World? I know it believes that its economic and political systems are the best on the planet, but surely all other nations should be able to decide for themselves, what systems they will accept and live under? Who gave the US the right to make those decisions for everyone else? The US was more than willing to kill 20 million people either directly or indirectly since the end of WWII to make its will sovereign in all nations of the World! ..."
"... That is why I invariably raise JFK's Assassination as a logical starting point. If a truly independent commission would fix the blame, we could move on from there. Sam F., on this forum, has mentioned a formal legal undertaking many times on this site, but now is the time to begin the discussion for a formal Truth And Reconciliation Commission in America Let's figure out how to begin. ..."
"... A very good article. Spoiler and bully describe US foreign policy, and foreign policy is in the driver's seat while domestic policy takes the pickings, hardly anything left for the hollowed-out society where people live paycheck to paycheck, homelessness and other assorted ills of a failing society continue to rise while oligarchs and the MIC rule the neofeudal/futile system. ..."
"... When are we going to make that connection of the wasteful expenditure on military adventurism and the problem of poverty in the US? ..."
"... To substantiate this "crucial turn," Lawrence makes the unwarranted assumption that the goal post Soviet Union was simply worldwide free-market capitalism, not global domination: "Failures ensued. Iraq post–2003 is among the more obvious. Nobody ever planted democracy or built free markets in Baghdad"; and the later statement that the US wanted the countries it invaded to be "Just like us." ..."
"... Though he doesn't mention (ignores) US meddling in Russia after the collapse of the USSR, I presume from its absence that he attributes that, too, to the expansion of capital. Indeed, it was that, but with the more malevolent goal of control. "Just like us" is the usual "progressive" explanation for failures. "Controlled by us" was more like it, if we face the history of the country squarely. ..."
"... Is it really so wise to be speaking in terms of nationhood after we've undergone 50 years of Kochian/libertarian dismantlement of the nation-state in favor of bank and transnational governance? Remember the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski: ..."
"... "The "nation-state" as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state." ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, 1970 ..."
"... Globalists themselves are drawn together by an ideology. They have no common nation, they have no common political orientation, they have no common cultural background or religion, they herald from the East just as they herald from the West. They have no true loyalty to any mainstream cause or social movement. ..."
"... What do they have in common? They seem to exhibit many of the traits of high level narcissistic sociopaths, who make up a very small percentage of the human population. These people are predators, or to be more specific, they are parasites. They see themselves as naturally superior to others, but they often work together if there is the promise of mutual benefit." ..."
"... Yet there is a thread that leads through US foreign policy. It all started with NSC 68. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSC_68 . Already in the 1950's, leading bankers were afraid of economic depression which would follow from a "peace dividend" following the end of WWII. ..."
"... To avoid this, and to avoid "socialism", the only acceptable government spending was on defense. This mentality never ended. Today 50% of discretionary govenmenrt spending is on the military. http://www.unz.com/article/americas-militarized-economy/ . ..."
"... The "why" behind the US foreign policies was spoken with absolute honest clarity in the "Statement of A. Wess Mitchell Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs" to the Senate on August 21 this year. The transcript is at : https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/082118_Mitchell_Testimony.pdf ..."
"... Quote the esteemed gentleman (inter alia): "It continues to be among the foremost national security interests of the United States to prevent the domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers. The central aim of the administration's foreign policy is to prepare our nation to confront this challenge by systematically strengthening the military, economic and political fundamentals of American power. " ..."
"... Patrick Lawrence's essay makes perfect sense only when it is applied to US foreign policy since the end of WW2. It is conventional wisdom that the US is now engaged in Cold War 2.0. In fact, Cold War 2.0 is an extension of Cold War 1.0. There was merely a 20 year interregnum between 1990 and 2010. ..."
"... Most analysts think that Cold War 1.0 was an ideological war between "Communism" and "Democracy". The renewal of the Cold War against both Russia and China however shows that the ideological war between East and West was really a cover for the geopolitical war between the two. ..."
"... Russia, China and Iran are the main geopolitical enemies of the US as they stand in the way of the global, imperialist hegemony of the US. In order to control the global periphery, i.e. the developing world and their emerging economies, the US must contain and defeat the big three. This was as true in 1948 as it is in 2018. Thus, what's happening today under Trump is no different than what occurred under Truman in 1948. Whatever differences exist are mere window dressing. ..."
"... There is no Cold War 2.0. It's a fallacy to create a false flag for regime change in Russia. Ms. Clinton, the Kagan family, the MIC, etc., figure if we can take out Yanukovich and replace him with Fascists/Nazis, what could stop us from doing the same to Russia. The good news: all empires fail. ..."
"... Mr. Lawrence is much too accommodating with his analysis. Imagine, linking US "foreign policy" in the same thought as "global stability", as if the two were somehow related. On the contrary, "global instability" seems to be our foreign policy goal, especially for those regions that pose a threat to US hegemony. Why? Because it is difficult to extract a region's wealth when its population is united behind a stable government that can't be bought off. ..."
"... I agree, Gerald. Enforcing the petro-dollar system seems to be the mainspring for much of our recent foreign policy militarism. If it were to unravel, the dollar's value would tank, and then how could we afford our vast system of military bases. Death Star's aren't cheap, ya know. ..."
"... +1 Gerald Wadsworth. It's not necessarily "Oil pure and simple" but "Currency Pure and Simple." If the US dollar is no longer the world's currency, the US is toast. ..."
"... And note (2) that Wall Street is mostly an extension of The City; the UK still thinks it owns the entire world, and the UK has been owned by the banks ever since it went off tally sticks ..."
"... Putin said years ago, and I cannot quote him, but remember most of it, that it doesn't matter who is the candidate for President, or what his campaign promises are, or how sincere he is in making them, whenever they get in office, it is always the same policy. ..."
"... Anastasia, I saved it: From Putin interview with Le Figaro: "I have already spoken to three US Presidents. They come and go, but politics stay the same at all times. Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones. These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is what happens with every administration." ..."
"... Pres. Putin explained this several times when he was asked about preferring Trump to Hillary Clinton, and he carefully said that he would accept whoever the US population chose, he was used to dealing with Hillary and he knew that very little changed between Administrations. This has been conveniently cast aside by the Dems, and Obama's disgraceful expulsion of Russian diplomats started the avalanche of Russiagate. ..."
"... Many of the people involved in JFK's murder are now dead themselves, yet the "system" that demands confrontation rather than cooperation continues. These "personalities" are shills for that system, and if they are not so willingly, they are either bribed or blackmailed into compliance. ..."
"... Remember when "Dubya" ran on a "kinder and gentler nation" foreign policy? Obama's "hope and change" that became "more of the same"? And now Trump's views on both domestic and foreign policy seemingly also doing a 180? There are "personalities" behind this "system", and they are embedded in places like the Council on Foreign Relations. The people that run our banking system and the global corporate empire demand the whole pie, they would rather blow up the world than have to share. ..."
"... Bob and Joe, here's a solid review of Woodward's book Fear that points out his consistent service to the oligarchy, including giving Trump a pass for killing the Iran deal. Interesting background on Woodward in the comments as well. https://mondoweiss.net/2018/09/woodward-national-security/ ..."
"... "America's three principal adversaries signify the shape of the world to come: a post-Western world of coexistence. But neoliberal and neocon ideology is unable to to accept global pluralism and multipolarity, argues Patrick Lawrence." ..."
The bitter reality is that U.S. foreign policy has no definable objective other than
blocking the initiatives of others because they stand in the way of the further expansion of
U.S. global interests. This impoverished strategy reflects Washington's refusal to accept the
passing of its relatively brief post–Cold War moment of unipolar power.
There is an error all too common in American public opinion. Personalizing Washington's
regression into the role of spoiler by assigning all blame to one man, now Donald Trump,
deprives one of deeper understanding. This mistake was made during the steady attack on civil
liberties after the Sept. 11 tragedies and then during the 2003 invasion of Iraq: namely that
it was all George W. Bush's fault. It was not so simple then and is not now.
The crisis of U.S.
foreign policy -- a series of radical missteps -- are systemic. Having little to do with
personalities, they pass from one administration to the next with little variance other than at
the margins.
Let us bring some history to this question of America as spoiler. What is the origin of this
undignified and isolating approach to global affairs?
It began with that hubristic triumphalism so evident in the decade after the Cold War's end.
What ensued had various names. There was the "end of history" thesis. American liberalism was humanity's highest
achievement, and nothing would supersede it.
There was also the "Washington consensus." The world was in agreement that free-market
capitalism and unfettered financial markets would see the entire planet to prosperity. The
consensus never extended far beyond the Potomac, but this sort of detail mattered little at the
time.
The neoliberal economic crusade accompanied by neoconservative politics had its intellectual
ballast, and off went its true-believing warriors around the world.
Failures ensued. Iraq post–2003 is among the more obvious. Nobody ever planted
democracy or built free markets in Baghdad. Then came the "color revolutions," which resulted
in the destabilization of large swathes of the former Soviet Union's borderlands. The 2008
financial crash followed. I was in Hong Kong at the time and recall thinking, "This is not just Lehman Brothers. An
economic model is headed into Chapter 11." One would have thought a fundamental rethink in
Washington might have followed these events. There has never been one.
The orthodoxy today remains what it was when it formed in the 1990s: The neoliberal crusade
must proceed. Our market-driven, "rules-based" order is still advanced as the only way out of
our planet's impasses.
A Strategic and Military Turn
Midway through the first Obama administration, a crucial turn began. What had been an
assertion of financial and economic power, albeit coercive in many instances, particularly with
the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, took on further strategic and military dimensions.
The
NATO bombing campaign in Libya, ostensibly a humanitarian mission, became a regime-change
operation -- despite Washington's promises otherwise. Obama's "pivot to Asia" turned out to be
a neo-containment policy toward China. The "reset" with Russia, declared after Obama appointed
Hillary Clinton secretary of state, flopped and turned into the virulent animosity we now live
with daily.
The U.S.-cultivated coup in Kiev in 2014 was a major declaration of drastic turn in
policy towards Moscow. So was the decision, taken in 2012 at
the latest , to back the radical jihadists who were turning civil unrest in Syria into a
campaign to topple the Assad government in favor of another Islamist regime.
Spoilage as a poor excuse for a foreign policy had made its first appearances.
I count 2013 to 2015 as key years. At the start of this period, China began developing what
it now calls its Belt and Road
Initiative -- its hugely ambitious plan to stitch together the Eurasian landmass, Shanghai
to Lisbon. Moscow favored this undertaking, not least because of the key role Russia had to
play and because it fit well with President Vladimir Putin's Eurasian Economic
Union (EAEU), launched in 2014.
In 2015, the last of the three years I just noted, Russia intervened militarily and
diplomatically in the Syria conflict, in part to protect its southwest from Islamist extremism
and in part to pull the Middle East back from the near-anarchy then threatening it as well as
Russia and the West.
Meanwhile, Washington had cast China as an adversary and committed itself -- as it
apparently remains -- to regime change in Syria. Three months prior to the treaty that
established the EAEU, the Americans helped turn another case of civil unrest into a regime
change -- this time backing not jihadists in Syria but the crypto-Nazi militias in Ukraine on
which the government now in power still depends.
That is how we got the U.S.-as-spoiler foreign policy we now have.
If there is a president to blame -- and again, I see little point in this line of argument
-- it would have to be Barack Obama. To a certain extent, Obama was a creature of those around
him, as he acknowledged in his interview
with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic toward the end of his second term. From
that
"Anonymous" opinion piece published in The New York Times on Sept. 5, we know
Trump is too, to a greater extent than Obama may have feared in his worst moments.
The crucial question is why. Why do U.S. policy cliques find themselves bereft of
imaginative thinking in the face of an evolving world order? Why has there been not a single
original policy initiative since the years I single out, with the exception of the
now-abandoned 2015 accord governing Iran's nuclear programs? "Right now, our job is to create
quagmires until we get what we want," an administration official
told The Washington Post 's David Ignatius in August.
Can you think of a blunter confession of intellectual bankruptcy? I can't.
Global 'Equals' Like Us?
There is a longstanding explanation for this paralysis. Seven decades of global hegemony,
the Cold War notwithstanding, left the State Department with little to think about other than
the simplicities of East-West tension. Those planning and executing American diplomacy lost all
facility for imaginative thinking because there was no need of it. This holds true, in my view,
but there is more to our specific moment than mere sclerosis within the policy cliques.
As I have argued numerous times elsewhere, parity between East and West is a 21st century
imperative. From Woodrow Wilson to the post-World War II settlement, an equality among all
nations was in theory what the U.S. considered essential to global order.
Now that this is upon us, however, Washington cannot accept it. It did not count on
non-Western nations achieving a measure of prosperity and influence until they were "just like
us," as the once famous phrase had it. And it has not turned out that way.
Think of Russia, China, and Iran, the three nations now designated America's principal
adversaries. Each one is fated to become (if it is not already) a world or regional power and a
key to stability -- Russia and China on a global scale, Iran in the Middle East. But each
stands resolutely -- and this is not to say with hostile intent -- outside the Western-led
order. They have different histories, traditions, cultures, and political cultures. And they
are determined to preserve them.
They signify the shape of the world to come -- a post-Western world in which the Atlantic
alliance must coexist with rising powers outside its orbit. Together, then, they signify
precisely what the U.S. cannot countenance. And if there is one attribute of neoliberal and
neoconservative ideology that stands out among all others, it is its complete inability to
accept difference or deviation if it threatens its interests.
This is the logic of spoilage as a substitute for foreign policy. Among its many
consequences are countless lost opportunities for global stability.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International
Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author, and lecturer. His most recent book is
Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century (Yale). Follow him @thefloutist.
His web site is www.patricklawrence.us. Support his work via www.patreon.com/thefloutist .
If you valued this original article, please consider
making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
This really is an excellent analysis. I would highlight the following point:
"There is a longstanding explanation for this paralysis. Seven decades of global hegemony,
the Cold War notwithstanding, left the State Department with little to think about other than
the simplicities of East-West tension. Those planning and executing American diplomacy lost
all facility for imaginative thinking because there was no need of it. This holds true, in my
view, but there is more to our specific moment than mere sclerosis within the policy cliques
"
Conformism and its consequences, probably derived in part from Puritanism and further
cemented by the alternating racisms of anti-indigenous and anti black attitudes- the history
of the lynch mob and various wars against the poor which ended up in the anti-communist
frenzies of the day before yesterday constitute the backbone of American history- is the
disease which afflicts Washington.
Don Bacon , September 14, 2018 at 6:03 pm
You don't mention corruption and profiteering, which go hand-in-hand with American
Exceptionalism and the National Security State (NSS) formed in 1947. The leader of the world
which is also an NSS requires enemies, so the National Security Strategy designates enemies,
a few of them in an Axis of Evil. Arming to fight them and dreaming up other reasons to go to
war, including a war on terror of all things, bring the desired vast expenditures, trillions
of dollars, which translate to vast profits to those involved.
This focus on war has its roots in the Christian bible and in a sense of manifest destiny
that has occupied Americans since before they were Americans, and the real Americans had to
be exterminated. It certainly (as stated) can't be blamed on certain individuals, it's
predominate and nearly universal. How many Americans were against the assault by the
Coalition of the Willing upon Iraq? Very few.
Homer Jay , September 14, 2018 at 10:09 pm
"How many Americans were against the assault by the Coalition of the Willing upon Iraq?
Very few."
Are you kidding me? Here is a list of polls of the American public regarding the Iraq War
2003-2007;
Even in the lead up the war when the public was force fed a diet comprised entirely of
State Dept. lies about WMDs by a sycophantic media, there was still a significant 25-40
percent of the public who opposed the war. You clearly are not American or you would remember
the vocal minority which filled the streets of big cities across this country. And again the
consent was as Chomsky says "manufactured." And it took only 1 year of the war for the
majority of the public to be against it. By 2007 60-70% of the public opposed the war.
Judging from your name you come from a country whose government was part of that coalition
of the willing. So should we assume that "very few" of your fellow country men and women were
against that absolute horror show that is the Iraq war?
Don Bacon , September 14, 2018 at 11:05 pm
You failed to address my major point, and instead picked on something you're wrong on.
PS: bevin made approximately the same point later (w/o the financial factor).
"Conformism and its consequences, probably derived in part from Puritanism and further
cemented by the alternating racisms of anti-indigenous and anti black attitudes- the history
of the lynch mob and various wars against the poor which ended up in the anti-communist
frenzies of the day before yesterday constitute the backbone of American history- is the
disease which afflicts Washington."
Archie1954 , September 14, 2018 at 2:39 pm
I have often wondered why the US was unable to accept the position of first among equals.
Why does it have to rule the World? I know it believes that its economic and political
systems are the best on the planet, but surely all other nations should be able to decide for
themselves, what systems they will accept and live under? Who gave the US the right to make
those decisions for everyone else? The US was more than willing to kill 20 million people
either directly or indirectly since the end of WWII to make its will sovereign in all nations
of the World!
Bob Van Noy , September 14, 2018 at 9:54 pm
Archie 1954, because 911 was never adequately investigated, our government was
inappropriately allowed to act in the so-called public interest in completely inappropriate
ways; so that in order for the Country to set things right, those decisions which were made
quietly, with little public discussion, would have to be exposed and the illegalities
addressed. But, as I'm sure you know, there are myriad other big government failures also
left unexamined, so where to begin?
That is why I invariably raise JFK's Assassination as a logical starting point. If a truly
independent commission would fix the blame, we could move on from there. Sam F., on this
forum, has mentioned a formal legal undertaking many times on this site, but now is the time
to begin the discussion for a formal Truth And Reconciliation Commission in America Let's
figure out how to begin.
So,"Who gave the US the right to make those decisions for everyone else?", certainly not
The People
A very good article. Spoiler and bully describe US foreign policy, and foreign policy is
in the driver's seat while domestic policy takes the pickings, hardly anything left for the
hollowed-out society where people live paycheck to paycheck, homelessness and other assorted
ills of a failing society continue to rise while oligarchs and the MIC rule the
neofeudal/futile system.
When are we going to make that connection of the wasteful
expenditure on military adventurism and the problem of poverty in the US? The Pentagon
consistently calls the shots, yet we consistently hear about unaccounted expenditures by the
Pentagon, losing amounts in the trillions, and never do they get audited.
nondimenticare , September 14, 2018 at 12:18 pm
I certainly agree that the policy is bereft, but not for all of the same reasons. There is
the positing of a turnaround as a basis for the current spoiler role: "What had been an
assertion of financial and economic power, albeit coercive in many instances, particularly
with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, took on further strategic and military
dimensions."
To substantiate this "crucial turn," Lawrence makes the unwarranted assumption that the
goal post Soviet Union was simply worldwide free-market capitalism, not global domination:
"Failures ensued. Iraq post–2003 is among the more obvious. Nobody ever planted
democracy or built free markets in Baghdad"; and the later statement that the US wanted the
countries it invaded to be "Just like us."
Though he doesn't mention (ignores) US meddling in Russia after the collapse of the USSR,
I presume from its absence that he attributes that, too, to the expansion of capital. Indeed,
it was that, but with the more malevolent goal of control. "Just like us" is the usual
"progressive" explanation for failures. "Controlled by us" was more like it, if we face the
history of the country squarely.
That is the blindness of intent that has led to the spoiler role.
Unfettered Fire , September 14, 2018 at 11:15 am
Is it really so wise to be speaking in terms of nationhood after we've undergone 50 years
of Kochian/libertarian dismantlement of the nation-state in favor of bank and transnational
governance? Remember the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski:
"The "nation-state" as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the
principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and
planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state." ~
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, 1970
"Make no mistake, what we are seeing in geopolitics today is indeed a magic show. The
false East/West paradigm is as powerful if not more powerful than the false Left/Right
paradigm. For some reason, the human mind is more comfortable believing in the ideas of
division and chaos, and it often turns its nose up indignantly at the notion of "conspiracy."
But conspiracies and conspirators can be demonstrated as a fact of history. Organization
among elitists is predictable.
Globalists themselves are drawn together by an ideology. They have no common nation, they
have no common political orientation, they have no common cultural background or religion,
they herald from the East just as they herald from the West. They have no true loyalty to any
mainstream cause or social movement.
What do they have in common? They seem to exhibit many of the traits of high level
narcissistic sociopaths, who make up a very small percentage of the human population. These
people are predators, or to be more specific, they are parasites. They see themselves as
naturally superior to others, but they often work together if there is the promise of mutual
benefit."
"In our society, real power does not happen to lie in the political system, it lies in the
private economy: that's where the decisions are made about what's produced, how much is
produced, what's consumed, where investment takes place, who has jobs, who controls the
resources, and so on and so forth. And as long as that remains the case, changes inside the
political system can make some difference -- I don't want to say it's zero -- but the
differences are going to be very slight." ~ Noam Chomsky
Yet there is a thread that leads through US foreign policy. It all started with NSC 68.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSC_68 . Already in
the 1950's, leading bankers were afraid of economic depression which would follow from a
"peace dividend" following the end of WWII.
To avoid this, and to avoid "socialism", the only
acceptable government spending was on defense. This mentality never ended. Today 50% of
discretionary govenmenrt spending is on the military. http://www.unz.com/article/americas-militarized-economy/
.
We live in a country of military socialism, in which military citizens have all types of
benefits, on condition they join the military-industrial-complex. This being so, there is no
need for real "intelligence", there is no need to "understand" what goes on is foreign
countries, there no need to be right about what might happen or worry about consequences.
What is important is stimulate the economy by spending on arms. From Korean war, when the US
dropped more bombs than it had on Nazi Germany, through Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya
etc etc the US policy was a winning one not for those who got bombed (and could not fight
back) but for the weapons industry and military contractors. Is the NYTimes ever going to
discuss this aspect? Or any one in the MSM?
Walter , September 14, 2018 at 9:26 am
The "why" behind the US foreign policies was spoken with absolute honest clarity in the
"Statement of A. Wess Mitchell
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs" to the Senate on August 21
this year. The transcript is at :
https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/082118_Mitchell_Testimony.pdf
Quote the esteemed gentleman (inter alia): "It continues to be among the foremost national security interests of the United States to
prevent the domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers. The central aim of the
administration's foreign policy is to prepare our nation to confront this challenge by
systematically strengthening the military, economic and political fundamentals of American
power. "
Tellingly the "official" State Department copy is changed and omits the true spoken
words
I would propose that the Zionism aspect exists due to the perceived necessity of "Forward
Operating Base Israel" look it a map, Comrade The ISIS?Saudi?Zionist games divides the New
Silk Road and the Eurasian land mass and exists to throttle said pathways.
Interestingly the latter essay is attributed to Eldar Ismailov and Vladimir Papava
Brother Comrade Putin knows the game. The US has to maintain the fiction for the public
that it does not know the game, and is consequently obliged to maintain a vast public
delusion, hence "fake news" and all the rest.
OlyaPola , September 14, 2018 at 1:49 pm
"I would propose that the Zionism aspect exists due to the perceived necessity of "Forward
Operating Base Israel" lookit a map, Comrade"
Some have an attraction to book-ends. Once upon a time the Eurasian book-ends were Germany and Japan, and the Western Asian
book-ends Israel and Saudi Arabia. This "strategy" is based upon the notion that bookend-ness is a state of inertia which in
any interactive system is impossible except apparently to those embedded in "we the people
hold these truths to be self-evident".
Consequently some have an attraction to book-ends.
Patrick Lawrence's essay makes perfect sense only when it is applied to US foreign policy
since the end of WW2. It is conventional wisdom that the US is now engaged in Cold War 2.0.
In fact, Cold War 2.0 is an extension of Cold War 1.0. There was merely a 20 year interregnum
between 1990 and 2010.
Most analysts think that Cold War 1.0 was an ideological war between
"Communism" and "Democracy". The renewal of the Cold War against both Russia and China
however shows that the ideological war between East and West was really a cover for the
geopolitical war between the two.
Russia, China and Iran are the main geopolitical enemies of
the US as they stand in the way of the global, imperialist hegemony of the US. In order to
control the global periphery, i.e. the developing world and their emerging economies, the US
must contain and defeat the big three. This was as true in 1948 as it is in 2018. Thus,
what's happening today under Trump is no different than what occurred under Truman in 1948.
Whatever differences exist are mere window dressing.
Rob Roy , September 15, 2018 at 12:16 am
Mr. Etler,
I think you are mostly right except in the first Cold War, the Soviets and US Americans were
both involved in this "war." What you call Cold War 2.0 is in the minds and policies of only
the US. Russian is not in any way currently like the Soviet Union, yet the US acts in all
aspects of foreign attitude and policy as though that (very unpleasant period in today's
Russians' minds) still exists. It does not. You says there was "merely a 20 year interregnum"
and things have picked up and continued as a Cold War. Only in the idiocy of the USA,
certainly not in the minds of Russian leadership, particularly Putin's who now can be
distinguished as the most logical, realistic and competent leader in the world.
Thanks to H. Clinton being unable to become president, we have a full blown Russiagate which
the MSM propaganda continues to spread.
There is no Cold War 2.0. It's a fallacy to create a
false flag for regime change in Russia. Ms. Clinton, the Kagan family, the MIC, etc., figure
if we can take out Yanukovich and replace him with Fascists/Nazis, what could stop us from
doing the same to Russia. The good news: all empires fail.
Maxwell Quest , September 13, 2018 at 1:41 pm
"This is the logic of spoilage as a substitute for foreign policy. Among its many
consequences are countless lost opportunities for global stability."
Mr. Lawrence is much too accommodating with his analysis. Imagine, linking US "foreign
policy" in the same thought as "global stability", as if the two were somehow related. On the
contrary, "global instability" seems to be our foreign policy goal, especially for those
regions that pose a threat to US hegemony. Why? Because it is difficult to extract a region's
wealth when its population is united behind a stable government that can't be bought off.
Conjuring up Heraclitus..Time is a River, constantly changing. And we face downstream,
unable to see the Future and gazing upon the Past.
The attempt has an effect, many effects, but it cannot stop Time.
The Russian and the Chinese have clinched the unification of the Earth Island, "Heartland"
This ended the ability to control global commerce by means of navies – the methods of
the Sea Peoples over the last 500 years are now failed. The US has no way of even seeing this
fact other than force and violence to restore the status quo ante .
Thus World War, as we see
Recollecting Heraclitus again, the universe is populated by opposites as we see, China and
Russia represent a cathodic opposite to the US
Jeff Harrison , September 13, 2018 at 1:29 pm
I guess I missed this one, Patrick. Great overview but let me put it in a slightly
different context. You start with the end of the cold war but I don't. I could go all the way
back to the early days of the country and our proclamation of manifest destiny. The US has
long thought that it was the one ring to rule them all. But for most of that time the
strength of individual members of the rest of the world constrained the US from running amok.
That constraint began to be lifted after the ruling clique in Europe committed seppuku in
WWI. It was completely lifted after WWII. But that was 75 years ago. This is now and most of
the world has recovered from the world wide destruction of human and physical capital known
as WWII. The US is going to have to learn how to live with constraints again but it will take
a shock. The US is going to have to lose at something big time. Europe cancelling the
sanctions? The sanctions on Russia don't mean squat to the US but it's costing Europe
billions. This highlights the reality that the "Western Alliance" (read NATO) is not really
an alliance of shared goals and objectives. It's an alliance of those terrified by fascism
and what it can do. They all decided that they needed a "great father" to prevent their
excesses again. One wonders if either the world or Europe would really like the US to come
riding in like the cavalry to places like Germany, Poland, and Ukraine. Blindly following
Washington's directions can be remarkably expensive for Europe and they get nothing but
refugees they can't afford. Something will ultimately have to give.
The one thing I was surprised you didn't mention was the US's financial weakness. It's
been a long time since the US was a creditor nation. We've been a debtor nation since at
least the 80s. The world doesn't need debtor nations and the only reason they need us is the
primacy of the US dollar. And there are numerous people hammering away at that.
Gerald Wadsworth , September 13, 2018 at 12:59 pm
Why are we trying to hem in China, Russia and Iran? Petro-dollar hegemony, pure and
simple. From our initial deal with Saudi Arabia to buy and sell oil in dollars only, to the
chaos we have inflicted globally to retain the dollar's rule and role in energy trading, we
are finding ourselves threatened – actually the position of the dollar as the sole
trading medium is what is threatened – and we are determined to retain that global
power over oil at all costs. With China and Russia making deals to buy and sell oil in their
own currencies, we have turned both those counties into our enemies du jour, inventing every
excuse to blame them for every "bad thing" that has and will happen, globally. Throw in
Syria, Iran, Venezuela, and a host of other countries who want to get out from under our
thumb, to those who tried and paid the price. Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and
more. Our failed foreign policy is dictated by controlling, as Donald Rumsfeld once opined,
"our oil under their sand." Oil. Pure and simple.
Maxwell Quest , September 13, 2018 at 2:18 pm
I agree, Gerald. Enforcing the petro-dollar system seems to be the mainspring for much of
our recent foreign policy militarism. If it were to unravel, the dollar's value would tank,
and then how could we afford our vast system of military bases. Death Star's aren't cheap, ya
know.
Maxwell Quest , September 13, 2018 at 3:33 pm
I agree, Gerald. Along with ensuring access to "our" off-shore oil fields, enforcing the
petro-dollar system is equally significant, and seems to be the mainspring for much of our
recent foreign policy militarism. If this system were to unravel, the dollar's value would
tank, and then how could we afford our vast system of military bases which make the world
safe for democracy? Death Star's aren't cheap, ya know.
Anonymous Coward , September 13, 2018 at 10:40 pm
+1 Gerald Wadsworth. It's not necessarily "Oil pure and simple" but "Currency Pure and
Simple." If the US dollar is no longer the world's currency, the US is toast. Also note that
anyone trying to retain control of their currency and not letting "The Market" (private
banks) totally control them is a Great Devil we need to fight, e.g. Libya and China.
And note
(2) that Wall Street is mostly an extension of The City; the UK still thinks it owns the
entire world, and the UK has been owned by the banks ever since it went off tally sticks
MichaelWme , September 13, 2018 at 12:18 pm
It's called the Thucydides trap. NATO (US/UK/France/Turkey) have said they will force
regime change in Syria. Russia says it will not allow regime change in Syria. Fortunately, as
a Frenchman and an Austrian explained many years ago, and NATO experts say is true today,
regime change in Russia is a simple matter, about the same as Libya or Panamá. I
forget the details, but I assume things worked out well for the Frenchman and the Austrian,
and will work out about the same for NATO.
Putin said years ago, and I cannot quote him, but remember most of it, that it doesn't
matter who is the candidate for President, or what his campaign promises are, or how sincere
he is in making them, whenever they get in office, it is always the same policy.
Truer words were never spoken, and it is the reason why I know, at least, that Russia did
not interfere in the US elections. What would be the point, from his viewpoint, and it is not
only just his opinion. You cannot help but see at this point that that he said is obviously
true.
TJ , September 13, 2018 at 1:47 pm
What an excellent point. Why bother influencing the elections when it doesn't matter who
is elected -- the same policies will continue.
Bart Hansen , September 13, 2018 at 3:43 pm
Anastasia, I saved it: From Putin interview with Le Figaro: "I have already spoken to three US Presidents. They come and go, but politics stay the
same at all times. Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is
elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing
dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones.
These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is
what happens with every administration."
rosemerry , September 14, 2018 at 8:02 am
Pres. Putin explained this several times when he was asked about preferring Trump to
Hillary Clinton, and he carefully said that he would accept whoever the US population chose,
he was used to dealing with Hillary and he knew that very little changed between
Administrations. This has been conveniently cast aside by the Dems, and Obama's disgraceful
expulsion of Russian diplomats started the avalanche of Russiagate.
Great to see Patrick Lawrence writing for Consortium News.
He ends his article with: "This is the logic of spoilage as a substitute for foreign
policy. Among its many consequences are countless lost opportunities for global stability.
"
Speaking of consequences, how about the human toll this foreign policy has taken on so
many people in this world. To me, the gravest sin of all.
Bob Van Noy , September 13, 2018 at 8:46 am
I agree with Patric Lawrence when he states "Personalizing Washington's regression into
the role of spoiler by assigning all blame to one man, now Donald Trump, deprives one of
deeper understanding." and I also agree that 'Seven decades of global hegemony have left the
State Department, Cold War notwithstanding, left the State Department with little to think
about other than the simplicities of East-West tension.' But I seriously disagree when he
declares that: "The crisis of U.S. foreign policy -- a series of radical missteps -- are
systemic. Having little to do with personalities, they pass from one administration to the
next with little variance other than at the margins.'' Certainly the missteps are true, but I
would argue that the "personalities" are crucial to America's crisis of Foreign Policy. After
all it was likely that JFK's American University address was the public declaration of his
intention to lead America in the direction of better understanding of Sovereign Rights that
likely got him killed. It is precisely those "personalities" that we must understand and
identify before we can move on
Skip Scott , September 13, 2018 at 9:35 am
Bob-
I see what you're saying, but I believe Patrick is also right.
Many of the people involved
in JFK's murder are now dead themselves, yet the "system" that demands confrontation rather
than cooperation continues. These "personalities" are shills for that system, and if they are
not so willingly, they are either bribed or blackmailed into compliance.
Remember when
"Dubya" ran on a "kinder and gentler nation" foreign policy? Obama's "hope and change" that
became "more of the same"? And now Trump's views on both domestic and foreign policy
seemingly also doing a 180? There are "personalities" behind this "system", and they are
embedded in places like the Council on Foreign Relations. The people that run our banking
system and the global corporate empire demand the whole pie, they would rather blow up the
world than have to share.
Bob Van Noy , September 13, 2018 at 2:42 pm
You're completely right Skip, that's what we all must recognize and ultimately react to,
and against.
Thank you.
JWalters , September 13, 2018 at 6:46 pm
I would add that human beings are the key components in this system. The system is built
and shaped by them. Some are greedy, lying predators and some are honest and egalitarian. Bob
Parry was one of the latter, thankfully.
JWalters , September 13, 2018 at 6:30 pm
Skip, very good points. For those interested further, here's an excellent talk on the
bankers behind the manufacutured wars, including the role of the Council on Foreign Relations
as a front organization and control mechanism. "The Shadows of Power; the CFR and decline of America" https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6124&v=wHa1r4nIaug
Joe Tedesky , September 13, 2018 at 9:42 am
Bob, you are right. I find it most interesting and sad at the same time that in Woodward's
new book 'Fear' that he describes a pan 'almost tragic incident' whereas Trump wanted to sign
a document removing our missiles and troops out of S Korea, but save for the steady hand of
his 'anonymous' staffers who yanked the document off his presidential desk . wow, close one
there we almost did something to enforce a peace. Can't have that though, we still have lots
to kill in pursue of liberty and freedom and the hegemonic way.
Were these 'anonymous' staffers the grandchildren of the staffers and bureaucracy that
undermined other presidents? Would their grandparents know who the Gunmen were on the grassy
knoll? Did these interrupters of Executive administrations fudge other presidents dreams and
hopes of a peaceful world? And in the end were these instigators rewarded by the war
industries they protected?
The problem is, is that this bureaucracy of war has out balanced any other rival agency,
as diversity of thought and mission is only to be dealt with if it's good for military
purposes. Too much of any one thing can be overbearingly bad for a person, and likewise too
much war means your country is doing something wrong.
Bob Van Noy , September 13, 2018 at 2:51 pm
Many thanks Joe, I admire your persistence. Clearly Bob Woodward has been part of the
problem rather than the solution. The swamp is deep and murky
JWalters , September 13, 2018 at 6:36 pm
Bob and Joe, here's a solid review of Woodward's book Fear that points out his
consistent service to the oligarchy, including giving Trump a pass for killing the Iran deal.
Interesting background on Woodward in the comments as well.
https://mondoweiss.net/2018/09/woodward-national-security/
The document Gary Cohen removed off Trump's desk –
which you can read here – states an intent to end a free trade agreement with South
Korea.
"White House aides feared if Trump sent the letter, it could jeopardize a top-secret US
program that can detect North Korean missile launches within seven seconds."
Sounds like Trump wanted to play the "I am such a great deal maker, the GREATEST deal
maker of all times!" game with the South Koreans. Letter doesn't say anything about
withdrawing troops or missiles.
Funny how ***TOP-SECRET US PROGRAMS*** find their way into books and newspapers these
days, plentiful as acorns falling out of trees.
You're welcome, Joe. These things get confusing. Who knows anymore what is real and what
isn't?
Trump did indeed say something about ending military exercises and pulling troops out of
South Korea. His staff did indeed contradict him on this. It just wasn't in relation to the
letter Cohn "misplaced," AFAIK.
Nobody asked me, but if they did, I'd say the US interfered enough in Korean affairs by
killing a whole bunch of 'em in the Korean War. Leave'em alone. Let North and South try to
work it out. Tired of hearing about "regime change.'
Bob, you are right. I find it most interesting and sad at the same time that in Woodward's
new book 'Fear' that he describes a pan 'almost tragic incident' whereas Trump wanted to sign
a document removing our missiles and troops out of S Korea, but save for the steady hand of
his 'anonymous' staffers who yanked the document off his presidential desk . wow, close one
there we almost did something to enforce a peace. Can't have that though, we still have lots
to kill in pursue of liberty and freedom and the hegemonic way.
Were these 'anonymous' staffers the grandchildren of the staffers and bureaucracy that
undermined other presidents? Would their grandparents know who the Gunmen were on the grassy
knoll? Did these interrupters of Executive administrations fudge other presidents dreams and
hopes of a peaceful world? And in the end were these instigators rewarded by the war
industries they protected?
The problem is, is that this bureaucracy of war has out balanced any other rival agency,
as diversity of thought and mission is only to be dealt with if it's good for military
purposes. Too much of any one thing can be overbearingly bad for a person, and likewise too
much war means your country is doing something wrong.
Kiwiantz , September 13, 2018 at 8:20 am
Spoiler Nation of America! You got that dead right! China builds infrastructure in other
Countries & doesn't interfere with the citizens & their Sovereignty. Contrast that
with the United Spoiler States of America, they run roughshod over overs & just bomb the
hell out of Countries & leaves devastation & death wherever they go! And there is
something seriously wrong & demented with the US mindset concerning, the attacks on 9/11?
In Syria the US has ended up arming & supporting the very same organisation of Al
QaedaTerrorists, morphed into ISIS, that hijacked planes & flew them into American
targets! During 2017 & now in 2018, it defies belief how warped this US mentality is when
ISIS can so easily & on demand, fake a chemical attack to suck in the stupid American
Military & it's Airforce & get them to attack Syria, like lackeys taking orders from
Terrorist's! The US Airforce is the airforce of Al Qaeda & ISIS! Why? Because the US
can't stomach Russia, Syria & Iran winning & defeating Terrorism thus ending this
Proxy War they started! Russia can't be allowed to win at any cost because the humiliation
& loss of prestige that the US would suffer as a Unipolar Empire would signal the decline
& end of this Hegemonic Empire so they must continue to act as a spoiler to put off that
inevitable decline! America can't face reality that it's time in the sun as the last Empire,
is over!
Sally Snyder , September 13, 2018 at 7:57 am
Here is what Americans really think about the rabid anti-Russia hysteria coming from
Washington:
Washington has completely lost touch with what Main Street America really believes.
Waynes World , September 13, 2018 at 7:37 am
Finally some words of truth about how we want our way not really democracy. A proper way
to look at the world is what you said toward the end a desire to make people's lives
better.
mike k , September 13, 2018 at 7:14 am
Simply put – the US is the world's biggest bully. This needs to stop. Fortunately
the bully's intended victims are joining together to defeat it's crazy full spectrum
dominance fantasies. Led by Russia and China, we can only hope for the success of the
resistance to US aggression.
This political, economic, military struggle is not the only problem the world is facing
now, but is has some priority due to the danger of nuclear war. Global pollution, climate
disaster, ecological collapse and species extinction must also be urgently dealt with if we
are to have a sustainable existence on Earth.
OlyaPola , September 13, 2018 at 4:39 am
Alpha : "America's three principal adversaries signify the shape of the world to come: a
post-Western world of coexistence. But neoliberal and neocon ideology is unable to to accept
global pluralism and multipolarity, argues Patrick Lawrence."
Omega: "Among its many consequences are countless lost opportunities for global
stability."
Framing is always a limiter of perception.
Among the consequences of the lateral trajectories from Alpha to Omega referenced above,
is the "unintended consequence" of the increase of the principal opponents, their resolve and
opportunities to facilitate the transcendence of arrangements based on coercion by
arrangements based on co-operation.
Opening Pandora's box was/is only perceived as wholly a disadvantage for those seeking to
deny lateral process.
HomoSapiensWannaBe , September 13, 2018 at 8:23 am
John Chuckman,
Wow. Thanks! I have just begun reading your commentaries this week and I am impressed with
how clearly you analyze and summarize key points about many topics.
Thank you so much for writing what are often the equivalent of books, but condensed into
easy to read and digest summaries.
I have ordered your book and look forward to reading that.
In a way Pence is a guarantee that Trump will not be impeached no matter what ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... The Republican elite (and the Democratic elite) have always wanted Pence for President, and they may yet get their wish. But not yet. ..."
"... In terms of the current situation, Manafort is simply irrelevant. Cohen is relevant, but paying a porn start off because you are worried your wife might find out that you are a philanderer: it seems a stretch to interpret that as 'trying to influence an election' although I can sort of see the logic (I suppose Bill Clinton's behaviour vis a vis Monica Lewinsky was ultimately political too). ..."
"... It also seems weird to conceptualise hush money to a porn star as 'campaign finance violations'. But what do I know. ..."
"... Cohen is a serious problem. He has implicated Trump in criminal conduct. ..."
"... Presumably one of the key reasons that Clinton lied about the Lewinsky affair was because he thought it would make him look bad and therefore lose him votes in the 2000 elections. And in a sense it did (although others presumably voted for him 'cos they felt sorry for him). But that seems like a weird way to conceptualise his activities. ..."
"... To further clarify your statement, the issue is that the payment was transparently not to keep Ms. Trump from finding out about Ms. Cliffords or Ms. McDougal – the timing of the payment/catch-and-kill story, well after the incidents but immediately before the election, make that clear: their purpose was to avoid extramarital affairs with adult entertainers from turning into October Surprises. ..."
"... It's intentionally vague . It should be noted that when Johnson was impeached , one of the eleven articles was "Bringing disgrace and ridicule to the presidency by his aforementioned words and actions." ..."
"... And I don't see impeachment as a very useful strategy for the Ds to pursue. Even if successful at removing Trump, that just gets you Pence -- just as public policy irrational, only less politically disorganized. ..."
"... Maybe impeachment comes up as a tactic, to facilitate some other plan of action, but I don't see conviction on impeachment as a useful means of even control of Trump behavior, much less removal. ..."
This is bad for Trump but not unexpected. Despite the fig leaf of 'Russian collusion' the
main brief of Mueller was 'find out bad stuff about Trump and his associates' and of course it
was almost inevitable that he would find such stuff because Trump and his cronies are scumbags
who exist to break the law. This is the reality of capitalism (as has been pointed out 'crony
capitalism' is the only kind of capitalism that has ever existed or ever will exist). Congress
might or might not accept it, but the Senate (even more viciously 'gerrymandered' albeit de
facto) won't yet. So Trump won't go down, not yet.
The only way that Trump will go down, IMHO is if and when the Republican establishment
decide that they have got everything out of him that they're going to get, which means after
the next Presidential election. Assuming he wins it, he may be ditched quickly. The
Republican elite (and the Democratic elite) have always wanted Pence for President, and they
may yet get their wish. But not yet.
In terms of the current situation, Manafort is simply irrelevant. Cohen is relevant, but
paying a porn start off because you are worried your wife might find out that you are a
philanderer: it seems a stretch to interpret that as 'trying to influence an election' although
I can sort of see the logic (I suppose Bill Clinton's behaviour vis a vis Monica Lewinsky was
ultimately political too).
It also seems weird to conceptualise hush money to a porn star as 'campaign finance
violations'. But what do I know.
Manaforte is a publicity problem, which will get worse with his second trial, and, if the
US Attorney decides to proceed on the hung counts, a third trial.
None of it ties to Trump; it suggests he hangs out with criminals and does not notice or
care about their conduct. That is a publicity issue. Cohen is a serious problem. He has
implicated Trump in criminal conduct.
As he is still facing a state investigations, there is high risk that he will exchange
information for leniency in that investigation. Which will result in more, at least
potentially, statements incriminating Trump. It is not clear to me what the status is
relative to the Mueller investigation -- only that his current deal does not require
cooperation with Mueller.
Having taken this step, I would expect him to work with Mueller as a way to further
leniency in sentencing and to insure no further prosecutions. (I can't tell from news
coverage whether the deal includes all federal investigations or not.) Cohen seems a credible
witness and too close to Trump on the direct political issues for any very successful effort
to wall him off.
His statement also is a big problem for the lawsuits by Daniels, and others, as it shreds
Trump's defenses to date. But none of it will mean that significant numbers of Republicans in
the Congress will back away from Trump. Nixon held most Republicans until he resigned. I
don't see a reason to think the team loyalty now will be less.
Watch what Lanny Davis, Cohen's attorney, says and does. He is not a Giuliani. He is
clearly telling prosecutors his client has valuable information and is willing to provide it
(if not already disclosed).
'The Republicans simply don't care, and nothing will make them care.'
To be fair, I don't care either, and nothing will make me care. Anyway, back in the real world .
'Michael Cohen, who spent a decade as a lawyer for Trump, told a judge Tuesday that he was
directed by Trump to coordinate payments to two women designed to prevent them from
disclosing alleged affairs with the real estate mogul before the presidential election, in
violation of campaign finance law.
Such an explosive assertion against anyone but the president would suggest that a criminal
case could be in the offing, but under long-standing legal interpretations by the Justice
Department, the president cannot be charged with a crime.
The department produced legal analyses in 1973 and 2000 concluding that the Constitution
does not allow for the criminal indictment of a sitting president.
In comments to reporters after Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felony counts in federal
court in Manhattan, Deputy U.S. Attorney Robert Khuzami said prosecutors were sending a
message that they are unafraid to file charges when campaign finance laws are broken. But he
did not mention Trump or offer any indication that his office planned to pursue action
against the president.'
(Washington Post)
'Despite impeachment talk, it's no easy task to remove a president in such a way. Both
Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson were impeached, but both were acquitted by the Senate.
President Richard Nixon resigned before he could be removed from office.
There are three impeachable offenses: treason, bribery and the more opaque "high crimes
and misdemeanors," but the House of Representatives has the responsibility to accuse the
president of one of those things. If a majority in the House agrees, a president is then
impeached. The Senate then votes on impeachment, which under the U.S. Constitiution requires
a two-thirds majority.
In Trump's case, starting the impeachment process would currently require a mass revolt by
Republicans against him in the House of Representatives -- controlled by the GOP -- an event
even less likely than normal with midterm elections on the horizon.'
I am not sure that hush money being paid to the porn star the President was banging in
order that his pregnant wife not find out was precisely what the Founding Fathers had in mind
by 'High crimes and misdemeanors,'
'I am no lawyer, but apparently if you spend that much money covering up your adultery to
avoid damage to your political campaign, that is a crime'.
I sort of see what you are saying, and of course, in a certain sense, what you say is not
only true but self-evidently and obviously true. Any politician engages in activities to gain
him or herself votes. All I am saying is that it doesn't seem like the most obvious way to
conceptualise these activities. CF Bill Clinton.
Presumably one of the key reasons that Clinton lied about the Lewinsky affair was because
he thought it would make him look bad and therefore lose him votes in the 2000 elections. And
in a sense it did (although others presumably voted for him 'cos they felt sorry for him).
But that seems like a weird way to conceptualise his activities.
Does it not seem more likely that Trump's main concern in paying the hush money was to
avoid his wife, who had just given birth, finding out? Obviously the effect on votes would be
of benefit to him, but I'm not sure that was his main concern.
I too agree with most of what Hidari said here (and there), except for their last
paragraph here.
To further clarify your statement, the issue is that the payment was
transparently not to keep Ms. Trump from finding out about Ms. Cliffords or Ms. McDougal
– the timing of the payment/catch-and-kill story, well after the incidents but
immediately before the election, make that clear: their purpose was to avoid extramarital
affairs with adult entertainers from turning into October Surprises.
These functioned as
(unreported) in-kind donations, insofar as they were third-party resources expended to for
the explicit purpose of providing electoral support to the candidate.
I am not sure that hush money being paid to the porn star the President was banging in
order that his pregnant wife not find out was precisely what the Founding Fathers had in mind
by 'High crimes and misdemeanors,'
It's intentionally
vague . It should be noted that when Johnson was impeached , one
of the eleven articles was "Bringing disgrace and ridicule to the presidency by his
aforementioned words and actions."
Again, though, the idea that the payoffs to Ms. Cliffords and Ms. McDougal were made to
prevent Ms. Trump from learning of the affairs defies all credibility when considering that
they occurred in the fall of 2016 rather than ten years earlier.
It would be a strange way to conceptualise the activity if it was based purely on
the fact that the hush money was politically helpful. But:
"He told a judge in United States District Court in Manhattan that the payments to the
women were made "in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal
office," implicating the president in a federal crime.
"I participated in this conduct, which on my part took place in Manhattan, for the
principal purpose of influencing the election" for president in 2016, Mr. Cohen said."
So I don't really know how you can keep insisting this is an issue of conceptual
analysis
I don't think that a Congressional majority, and certainly not the 2/3 Senate majority
needed for removal, is going to feel much ethical pressure to impeach based on the list of
wrongdoing we know about so far, or that are at all likely to emerge. Quite aside from the
lack of gravity of the crimes on that list, none of them are a clear betrayal of the
electorate that decided he should be president. That electorate already knew he was a
Russophile, had even invited Russians to hack D computers, they knew that he was a
pussy-grabber, and that his privately-owned business was ethically challenged -- yet an
electoral majority voted him in anyway. Removal on impeachment involves the legislature
asserting its will and its judgment over that of the people. Of course the legislature is
also elected by the people to accomplish duties that include holding the president to certain
standards. But I don't see even a 2/3 D Senate (which we would only get by the Rs losing
every race up this year, plus about 15 of them party-switching) having the cojones for such
an assertion, certainly not when the electorate already knew about the crimes when they voted
for the criminal. The Rs have cojones for such enterprises, and in spades, but not our
beloved Ds.
And I don't see impeachment as a very useful strategy for the Ds to pursue. Even if
successful at removing Trump, that just gets you Pence -- just as public policy irrational,
only less politically disorganized.
Maybe impeachment comes up as a tactic, to facilitate some other plan of action, but I
don't see conviction on impeachment as a useful means of even control of Trump behavior, much
less removal.
If the Ds do have control of either house after the election, of course the usual that we
can expect of them is not very much. Even if they control both chambers, they couldn't
possibly have the 2/3 in both needed to run the govt by overriding the vetoes that any actual
program of theirs would be sure to attract from the president. Even with 2/3, because this is
a D 2/3 we're talking about, we can most likely discount the possibility that they would even
try to exercise any oversight over what the govt does in opposition to the president's
control.
An actual political party in this situation of even controlling a bare majority of just
the House could do a whole lot to not only thwart Trump, but to at least make a credible
effort at asserting control over the govt. They could of course block any new legislation, or
the repeal of any existing law, and even the actual Ds are probably up to that. But to go
further, to control or limit how Trump runs the govt under existing law, this D majority of
the House would have to be willing to boldly set sail on the sea of political hardball and
take up a career of budgetary hostage-taking -- so right off we should say that this is
political fanfic, and not even canonic fanfic.
But a girl can dream, can't he, so let's pursue this alternate reality just a bit. Who
knows, if Trump's misrule makes things sufficiently dire, maybe even the Ds will be motivated
to find their inner pirate.
To take ICE as an example, it would go something like this. The House only agrees to pass
the annual appropriations on a 30-day continuing resolution basis, so that their assent is
needed every 30-days to the govt doing anything. They pass all the spending except for the
ICE funding (keeping the funding for whatever ICE spends on housing and otherwise caring for
people already apprehended -- that funding goes with the funding of the rest of the govt),
which they hold back until and unless Senate and president agree to ICE funding that includes
new law that keeps ICE from doing family separations, and whatever else the Ds find
objectionable. After success getting control of ICE abuses, next month when the CRs come due,
they do the same maneuver on their next target of Trump misrule.
The risk is that the Rs, Senate and president, just refuse to agree to the omnibus that
funds everything else the govt does until the Ds let loose the ICE funding. There is a govt
shutdown, and the Ds run the risk of being blamed. It turns into a game of legislative
chicken. Of course, this has to be anti-canon fanfic for such a game to end other than by the
Ds swerving first, so the real world Ds will never actually even start the game, because
whatever their faults, they know their limitations.
Hidari #13: " they 'all' want to get rid of him now?"
The Republican Senate would be happy to throw him overboard tomorrow. His voters are the
problem. They won't wait for his voters to turn on him however, if the Senate receives a
lengthy bill of impeachment from a Democratic House and Mueller has signed off on some of the
charges.
They'd rather have Pence do the sanctimonious messaging and go into 2020 trying to
reconstruct the party with an open primary.
After all, the GOP stands to lose Senate seats in 2020 anyway, just due to the map (the
same problem they have this year, with the House). If the election in 76 days puts the
Democrats in charge of the House, Trump won't make it to the end of his term.
'To further clarify your statement, the issue is that the payment was transparently not to
keep Ms. Trump from finding out about Ms. Cliffords or Ms. McDougal – the timing of the
payment/catch-and-kill story, well after the incidents but immediately before the election,
make that clear: their purpose was to avoid extramarital affairs with adult entertainers from
turning into October Surprises. '
Oh ok, I didn't really understand that. I haven't to be honest, been following the Stormy
Daniels story too closely for the good reason that I don't care.
So one infers that the FL did in fact know about these things. Could we conceptualise it
thus, then: Trump paid the hush money to ensure that Melania was not publicly humiliated by
these things (I mean, humiliated even more than simply being married to Donald Trump)?
But obviously, in that case, Trump not wanting this to be a big story in the run up to the
election was obviously a 'thing'.
"... That said, many - including Yahoo News's Michael Isikoff (the guy whose article containing info fed to him by Christopher Steele was used by the FBI to obtain Carter Page's FISA warrant) - have pointed to potential targets on the left. ..."
"... Those people include former Manafort associates Tony Podesta, Vin Weber and Greg Craig - all of whom failed to register as foreign agents in connection with work outside the United States, as well as members of the Obama administration . Of course, the thought of Mueller going after "the untouchables" seems a bit far fetched. ..."
"... The FSB ambition: to choose the least competent Presidential candidate and, unbeknownst to him, smooth his way to the White House. Thus Robert Meuller's inconvenient truth: If Donald Trump were competent enough to be entrusted with collusion, then he would be too competent for the FSB to achieve its ambitions! I bet the FSB people in charge are gobsmacked that The Donald hasn't been impaled on the 25th Amendment yet! ..."
"... I don't understand Dershowitz here. What could Manafort say that Papadopoulos and Flynn haven't already told Mueller? He was Trump's campaign manager for what three months? ..."
"... If anyone had something juicy on Trump it'd be Michael Flynn since he was in the Trump administration if just for a short time. This is about keeping this farce of a charade going as long as humanly possible. ..."
"... My guess -- a guess -- is that Mueller is under a lot of pressure from the Clinton Family including Brennan, Clapper et al to find something, anything, on enough people to make the last 2 years look legit to the Americans who watch CNN. ..."
"... My guess is that the CF has gone from supporting Mueller to making him scared. ..."
"... That should work for continuing the Conspiracy theory... It is all the DOJ, FBI, Sessions and now newcomer Manafort trying to BRING Down the POTUS. All of this is happening to such a great guy like Trump... Sad huh... ..."
"... Jesus you Trumptards are delusional. The average American is no more likely to take up arms against his masters than the North Koreans are. ..."
Harvard Law professor and prominent liberal Alan Dershowitz - who has been shunned by the
liberal elite of late for defending President Trump - now says that the White House should be
alarmed over Paul Manafort's plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller.
" Well of course they should be ," replied Dershowitz - though he added the rather large
caveat that Mueller is "not a credible witness," and would be at best be a corroborating
witness against Trump.
"There's nothing he can testify to that would probably lend weight to impeachment because he
didn't have close contact with President Trump while he was president," said Dershowitz. " What
they are looking for is self-corroborating information that can be used against Trump if they
can make him sing and then there's the possibility of him composing, elaborating on the story
."
Dershowitz added that there is "no doubt" Mueller is trying to flip Manafort against
Trump.
" Once he agrees to cooperate, he has to cooperate about everything , said Dershowitz.
"There's no such thing as partial cooperation."
As for Trump pardoning Manafort? That's now "off the table," and that flipping on the
President "opens up a lot of doors that probably haven't been opened before."
It's a "big win" for Mueller, Dershowitz concludes.
That said, many - including Yahoo
News's Michael Isikoff (the guy whose article containing info fed to him by Christopher Steele
was used by the FBI to obtain Carter Page's FISA warrant) - have pointed to potential targets
on the left.
Those people include former Manafort associates Tony Podesta, Vin Weber and Greg Craig - all
of whom failed to register as foreign agents in connection with work outside the United States,
as well as members of the Obama administration . Of course, the thought of Mueller going after
"the untouchables" seems a bit far fetched.
quintus.sertorius , 19 minutes ago
The Tribe plays both sides: Dershowitz the plant in Trump team has the same real loyalty
as fellow tribesman Haim Saban or Sheldon Adelson. They want to blackmail Trump into fighting
Israel's war in Syria.
radbug , 55 minutes ago
The FSB ambition: to choose the least competent Presidential candidate and, unbeknownst to
him, smooth his way to the White House. Thus Robert Meuller's inconvenient truth: If Donald
Trump were competent enough to be entrusted with collusion, then he would be too competent
for the FSB to achieve its ambitions! I bet the FSB people in charge are gobsmacked that The
Donald hasn't been impaled on the 25th Amendment yet!
ZazzOne , 1 hour ago
"Big Win For Mueller"? Only if he plans on going after the founders of the Red Shoe "Pedo"
Club.....John and Tony Podesta! Though I highly doubt he'll ever go down that rabbit
hole!!!!!
Straddling-the-fence , 2 hours ago
Once he agrees to cooperate, he has to cooperate about everything , said Dershowitz.
"There's no such thing as partial cooperation.
That's asinine. There are terms to a plea agreement. Unless those terms encompass what is
claimed above, then that is simply false.
KekistanisUnite , 3 hours ago
I don't understand Dershowitz here. What could Manafort say that Papadopoulos and Flynn
haven't already told Mueller? He was Trump's campaign manager for what three months?
George
Papadopoulos I don't know how long he was there but if really has nothing of value to offer
then neither would Manafort.
If anyone had something juicy on Trump it'd be Michael Flynn
since he was in the Trump administration if just for a short time. This is about keeping this
farce of a charade going as long as humanly possible.
Econogeek , 3 hours ago
My guess -- a guess -- is that Mueller is under a lot of pressure from the Clinton Family
including Brennan, Clapper et al to find something, anything, on enough people to make the
last 2 years look legit to the Americans who watch CNN.
My guess is that the CF has gone from supporting Mueller to making him scared.
ThePhantom , 4 hours ago
i like to think Mueller is on the plate too, and this is his chance to save his own ass.
Greg Craig and Podesta's names are out in all the papers .... they worked with manafort first
and foremost....
no idea what dershowitz is talking about.. none.
Calvertsbio , 4 hours ago
Yea sure he is, the SPECIAL Counsel running the show to bring down corruption is "ON THE
PLATE" yea, ok...
That should work for continuing the Conspiracy theory... It is all the DOJ, FBI, Sessions
and now newcomer Manafort trying to BRING Down the POTUS. All of this is happening to such a
great guy like Trump... Sad huh...
Doesn't make much difference how much of this BS is posted, no one is buying it anymore...
Even FAUX news has basically given up on him... Everyone know that once it all comes out, it
will be labelled by HIS SHEEPLE that it is all made up BS to take him down...
Hillary did it... no ! Sessions did it, nope, it was RYAN ? McConnell... lets keep the
guessing game going... The Dossier did it...
BigJim, 4 hours ago
"The swamp critters better stop ignoring the Hillary/DNC side of this or the population is going to be marching in with
pitchforks and guillotines."
Jesus you Trumptards are delusional. The average American is no more likely to take up arms against his masters than
the North Koreans are.
It's really difficult rationally explain Trump obsession with Iran. may be Israeli lobby influence would be the most
appropriate instead of "The Insecurity Of A Teenage Girl"
At the end of a week in which former Secretary of State John Kerry's unauthorized meetings
with top Iranian officials have taken center stage, and in which both President Trump and
current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have
publicly thrashed Kerry's "unheard of" and "illegal meetings" with Iran that "undercut" the
White House, Kerry has gone on his own anti-Trump rant .
Appearing on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher Friday night, Kerry slammed the president as
having "the maturity of an 8-year-old boy with the insecurity of a teenage girl" in remarks
that are sure to continue the ongoing war of words. Previously in the week upon news of John
Kerry's Wednesday
Hugh Hewitt Show radio interview in which he admitted meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister
Javad Zarif "three or four times" since Donald Trump took office, President Trump slammed the
"illegal meetings" as serving to "undercut" White House diplomatic dealings with Iran .
Trump further hinted that Kerry violated the Logan Act by rhetorically asking whether Kerry
is officially registered as a foreign agent .
The president tweeted: John Kerry had illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime,
which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people. He
told them to wait out the Trump Administration! Was he registered under the Foreign Agents
Registration Act? BAD!
When asked about the White House's potential threats of legal inquiry
into the meetings, Kerry dismissed: "There's nothing unusual about it. The conversation he
really ought to be worrying about is Paul Manafort with Mueller."
"Unfortunately, we have a president, literally, for whom the truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth is three different things, and you don't even know what they are," Kerry
added.
We can only imagine how Trump is going to respond, whether on Twitter, or perhaps by
announcing a legal inquiry over Kerry possibly breaking the Logan Act and failing to register
as a foreign agent, as Trump's Thursday evening tweet suggested.
"... The myth of BBC being some standard for news reporting died with the advent of the availability of international and independent news in Western countries ..."
"... Ironic when the BBC has been ceaselessly pushing fake news for at least 15 years, with disastrous results. (Iraq; Libya; what caused the deficit and who should be forced to pay it down; Russia/Syria false flags; Corbyn A/S.) ..."
"... I find it impossible to watch BBC News, primarily because most of the editorial staff and senior correspondents seem to be working for MI5/6 and are more interested in disseminating Geo-political propaganda than upholding their journalistic responsibilities as defined in the BBC charter. ..."
"... The book is obviously part of a propaganda campaign. It seems hugely fortuitous that Mark Urban should have had "hours" of interviews with Skripal before the poisoning incident. ..."
"... Isn't it much more likely that the Urban "interviews" would have happened after the event? But Urban can't say that because that would lead to demands from other journalists or news bodies to have access to Skripal. ..."
"... I'm open to alternative hypotheses but right now I think the most likely explanation for Urban's pre-poisoning contact with Sergei Skripal is that, at the time, it was assumed the Orbis dossier would be a key component of the successful takedown of Trump and Urban was putting together a mutually flattering account by interviewing the main players. ..."
"... With regard to your tongue-in-cheek point. Urban could have interviewed Skripal anytime after Trump was gone, unless he believed Skripal might be unavailable (for some reason). The fact he interviewed Skripal before does indicate foresight. If Urban really did interview Skripal before the event then he would be wiser to pull the book and burn every copy in existence (as well as all his notes). ..."
"... Urban pretends to research a book exposing Russia and part of his research is to interview Skripal. His objective is to find dirt on Putin in order to swing the war in Syria in favour of USUKIS bombing Assad to smithereens, bayonets bums etc. ..."
"... Interestingly Mark Urbans' book on Sergei Skripal was available to purchase on Amazon in July. I added it to my Amazon wishlist on 28/7/18. I've just looked at my wishlist and was rather surprised to find it is no longer available. It has been pulled. ..."
"... Can't help thinking that the answer to all this lies in Estonia. Sergei went to Estonia in June 2016, Pablo was in Estonia, the Estonians passed on sigint about Trump-Russian collusion in the summer of 2016. A Guardian article of 13 April 2017 said: ..."
"... No doubt in my mind that the Skripal affair is a planned operation carried out by US/UK intelligence. What has actually taken place is still to be determined, but the propaganda operation itself is clear. ..."
"... I know about Ireland, and I agree, it was NOT a nerve agent. That said, I don't believe anyone was 'attacked', including the Skripals. ..."
"... All foreign correspondents of major newspapers too work with MI6. Nobody who is close to them has any kind of doubt about this. ..."
"... I despise everyone who says that free markets are the solution for the problems of the third world. What they mean is mass starvation and an enormous population cull. There are international "foundations" that pay academics and politicians large amounts of money to spout this obscene line. One of them is called the John Templeton Foundation. They have had their fangs in to British universities for a long time. ..."
"... When the Tories talk about 'free markets', they are talking about markets free from democracy. ..."
BBC is skanky state propaganda. The myth of BBC being some standard for news reporting died with the advent of the availability
of international and independent news in Western countries. The main thing that BBC used to have which propped up the illusion
of it being a respectable news source is that there was no competition or alternative to compare its narratives against. Since
that time is over, so is BBC's masquerading as an impartial or accurate news source.
Agree, Dave. That's what's informing the push to rubbish dissenting sites as fake news and eventually have them removed.
Ironic when the BBC has been ceaselessly pushing fake news for at least 15 years, with disastrous results. (Iraq; Libya;
what caused the deficit and who should be forced to pay it down; Russia/Syria false flags; Corbyn A/S.)
Well I was convinced of fake BBC news during 9/11 and not for the reasons of building 7 coming down too early but the fact
that the female journalist was facing a camera standing in front of a glass window and there was no reflection of her or the camera
person from the glass. Not even a faint shadow.
That's when I knew the BBC were employing vampires and have been ever since.
Green Screen technology I discovered later. All the On the spot reporters are at it apparently. Or repeating Reuters or PA.
I find it impossible to watch BBC News, primarily because most of the editorial staff and senior correspondents seem to
be working for MI5/6 and are more interested in disseminating Geo-political propaganda than upholding their journalistic responsibilities
as defined in the BBC charter. People should not only boycott the BBC but refuse to pay the license fee on the grounds that
it's a compulsory political subscription.
Dear Mark,
In a BBC article on 4 July 2018, you wrote: "I have not felt ready until now to acknowledge explicitly that we had met, but do
now that the book is nearing completion."
Could you please explain that comment? I do not see why your acknowledgement of your meetings with Sergei Skripal should be
delayed until your book is nearing completion.
If you felt that it was right to reveal those meetings in July, then why was it not right to do so in March, soon after the
poisoning occurred? What difference would it have made if you had done so four months earlier?
I cannot think of any negative consequences of an earlier acknowledgement of the meetings. In fact, disclosures of any possible
conflict of interest are generally considered to be desirable in journalism, regardless of whether the conflict of interest is
real.
The book is obviously part of a propaganda campaign. It seems hugely fortuitous that Mark Urban should have had "hours"
of interviews with Skripal before the poisoning incident.
Isn't it much more likely that the Urban "interviews" would have happened after the event? But Urban can't say that because
that would lead to demands from other journalists or news bodies to have access to Skripal.
And that can't happen because either Skripal would be asked about what happened on the day of the poisoning, or can't be guaranteed
to stick to the script, or is no longer alive. And that leads to a suspicion that whatever Skripal is supposed to have said in
his interviews with Urban has really just been made up by the British security services.
I'm open to alternative hypotheses but right now I think the most likely explanation for Urban's pre-poisoning contact
with Sergei Skripal is that, at the time, it was assumed the Orbis dossier would be a key component of the successful takedown
of Trump and Urban was putting together a mutually flattering account by interviewing the main players.
Tongue in cheek, it'd be worth asking Urban if his decision to cover the Skripal poisoning in his new book was made before
or after the Skripals were actually poisoned.
The consensus seems to be that it was an anti-Russia book, but that doesn't conflict with what you say (there is overlap, your
view is just more specific). But, I just find it hard to believe that Urban and the conspirators would waste their time "counting
their chickens ". Not least because such a book would form a handy list of traitors (together with confessions) if Trump were
to prevail and it fell into the right hands. This is "101 – How to Organise a Revolution" (secrecy / don't put anything in writing);
surely British security services know that?
With regard to your tongue-in-cheek point. Urban could have interviewed Skripal anytime after Trump was gone, unless he
believed Skripal might be unavailable (for some reason). The fact he interviewed Skripal before does indicate foresight. If Urban
really did interview Skripal before the event then he would be wiser to pull the book and burn every copy in existence (as well
as all his notes).
Regardless, it looks like the master of the universe are losing their ability to create reality.
Last month, Mark Urban was promoting the reports that the Russian assassins had been identified from CCTV footage:
"There are now subjects of interest in the police Salisbury investigation. ( ) analytic and cyber techniques are now being
exploited against the Salisbury suspects by people with a wealth of experience in complex investigations." https://twitter.com/MarkUrban01/status/1020366761848385536
The BBC relies on it's interpretation of the Act because it is held for the purposes of 'journalism, art or literature.' but
this relies on a usually unrelated precedent and the opinions of a number of Judges which contradict this view. I'm in the process
of challenging this with ICO but don't expect anything will change until another supreme court ruling:
I can see the value in asking writers, journalists and artists to pose exactly the same questions as Eccles' original letter
but I'm not convinced about Craig's email.
A quick google shows me that a man named Mark Urban has written a book on the Skripals. Isn't it likely that Urban was keeping
the interviews to himself in order to keep his book alive?
It wouldn't surprise me if Urban cares far more about his writing career than his job at the BBC. I'm sure most journalists
would rather be authors. He's written a number of books on war and military intelligence. If his sources have nothing to do with
the BBC then why should he answer to an on line mob?
" Isn't it likely that Urban was keeping the interviews to himself in order to keep his book alive?"
No, entirely unlikely. a chance to plug his forthcoming book and his Skripal contacts to a massive worldwide televion audience
was eschewed.
The book is now about the Skripal attack. Presumably that was not the original subject he was researching, as it hadn't happened
yet. The book will just be a rehash of the "noble defector – Putin revenge" line and none of the questions I asked about the genesis
of his involvement will be answered in it.
"Presumably that was not the original subject he was researching, as it hadn't happened yet." Or it was prescience ie that
it was part of the planning for the incident?
@BBC, Summer 2017, in an executive office:
"Hey Mark, why don't you go down to have a chat with this guy in Salisbury. I have a hunch that a story might be going to happen
involving him, you know, as an ex-Soviet spy. Spend time with him, get to know him, be able to write in depth about him. Say it's
for a book ."
Urban is never one-sided in his BBC reports on the Middle East. I would rather have him as Foreign Secretary than a bumbling
idiot like Hubris Johnson or a Tory racketeer Hunt, because however clunky the formula of BBC balance Urban is at least pretending
to be governed by normal rules. After Thatcher went anyone with half a brain left the Conservative party, leaving dolts like Johnson
and nasties like May and Cameron to pick up the pieces after Blair and Brown.
There's money to be made from Russian billionaires and tory shit will follow the money like flies on d**t**d.
Urban pretends to research a book exposing Russia and part of his research is to interview Skripal. His objective is to
find dirt on Putin in order to swing the war in Syria in favour of USUKIS bombing Assad to smithereens, bayonets bums etc.
Tory shit Hubris Johnson finds this political research floating around the Foreign Office and decides to twist it into Russia
murders Skripal by Novichok. Unfortunately Johnson is already known to be a liar and gravy-trainer Tory and nobody believes him
at all. Mrs May , realising that Johnson, Fox, Rees-Mogg and Hunt are completely bonkers, does Chequers her own way.
Interestingly Mark Urbans' book on Sergei Skripal was available to purchase on Amazon in July. I added it to my Amazon
wishlist on 28/7/18. I've just looked at my wishlist and was rather surprised to find it is no longer available. It has been pulled.
From memory the books description said that Mark had interviewed Skripal 'extensively' during 2017 and also mentioned the 'new'
spying war now happening between Britain and Russia.
Salisbury poisoning: Skripals 'were under Russian surveillance'
Mark Urban Diplomatic and defence editor, Newsnight
4 July 2018
'My meetings with Sergei Skripal
I met Sergei on a few occasions last summer and found him to be a private character who did not, even under the circumstances
then prevailing, wish to draw attention to himself.
He agreed to see me as a writer of history books rather than as a news journalist, since I was researching one on the post-Cold
War espionage battle between Russia and the West.
Information gained in these interviews was fed into my Newsnight coverage during the early days after the poisoning. I have
not felt ready until now to acknowledge explicitly that we had met, but do now that the book is nearing completion.
As a man, Sergei is proud of his achievements, both before and after joining his country's intelligence service.
He has a deadpan wit and is remarkably stoical given the reverses he's suffered in his life; from his imprisonment following
conviction in 2006 on charges of spying for Britain, to the loss of his wife Liudmila to cancer in 2012, and the untimely death
of his son Alexander (or Sasha) last summer.'
Laughable given that the whole world and virtually all heads of State were under US surveillance by the NSA – at least until
Edward Snowden made all his revelations.
I have pasted and copied your Email regarding the above with a few slight alterations, it will be interesting to see the response
I receive if any being just a concerned citizen of the U.
Is this not a matter for the Police? (Even if you're not too sure if they'd do anything about it) These would be files that
are to do with an attempted murder case. And definitely not Journalism if the story is fabricated.
It feels as if you are moving in the right direction in linking Sergei to Steele. I'm intrigued by the very early media references
to Sergei wanting to return home to see his elderly mother for perhaps the last time. He had apparently written to Putin making
his request but again according to newspapers hadn't received a reply.
I would suggest Julia was bringing the answer via her own secret services contacts, her boyfriend and his mother, apparently
Senior in the Russian Intelligence Agency. Perhaps a sentimental man Sergei was aware his mother couldn't travel so the plea to
Putin was his best bet.
Such a request must have disturbed MI6 if Sergei had anything at all to do with the Steele dossier because inevitably if he
returned to Russia he'd be debriefed by his old colleagues. But how can you rely on a mercenary double agent? If he decided he
might want to stay in Russia with his family that might well have been attractive, away from the lonely existence in a Salisbury
cul de sac with only spies for company. But the Steele dossier has great potential to turn sour on the British.
It's author was a Senior spy and Head of the Russian Desk for some years. It is – perhaps you'd agree? – inconceivable that
he didn't require permission to prepare it, especially as much of it was based on his experience as a spy in Russia. Yet it's
equally inconceivable that the Agency bosses didn't know the identity of the commissioners or the use to which it would be put
in the US election – to boost Clinton's bid. If she'd won everything would have been fine but as it is any discussion of foreign
interference in that election would have to include MI6 leading the list (they probably didn't tell any politician?) To have Sergei
supporting and highlighting that embarrassment would be problematic for US-UK relations. Of course Sergei may have had other nuggets
to expose as well as Steele.
Soon after Julia's arrival the pair fell ill. They both survived but are now locked away, presumably for life and never able
to explain their side of the story.
It was a bodged job with a poor cover story from the start and could only be carried because of D Notices and media complicity.
Is his mother still alive? Would he still like to see her before she dies? Would Russia allow it? Would MI6 allow it? I think
that's 3 yeses and a resounding No.
Following the deaths of 55 Palestinians on the Gaza 'border' and the wounding of thousands, in this video, Urban asks the questions
but the Israeli government spokesman, David Keyes, is allowed to spout all the usual propaganda against Hamas.
Gaza deaths: Who's to blame? – BBC Newsnight
Published on 15 May 2018
Subscribe 256K
Fresh protests against Israel are expected in the Palestinian territories, a day after Israeli troops killed 58 people in the
Gaza Strip.
David Keyes is the spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mark Urban asked him whether it was appropriate
for the US to open their embassy on the 70th anniversary of Israel's creation, a day that is hugely controversial for the Palestinian
people.
Mr Keyes' pronounced American accent was heard. The Occupation was not mentioned. A Palestinian voice was not heard.
This is another of his videos. On the same subject and on the opening of the Israeli Embassy in Jerusalem. This time, Jonathan
Conricus spoke for the IDF.
"Urban asks the questions but the Israeli government spokesman, David Keyes, is allowed to spout all the usual propaganda against
Hamas."
Yes indeed : Urban asked the questions and allowed the interviewee to answer. Perhaps you would have preferred him to interrupt
the interviewee continually 'a la Today programme, or to have shouted at him similarly to the way I understand some people shout
at customers inside or outside supermarkets?
This may or may not be relevant regarding Russia, chemical weapons and BBC/MSM bovine effluent:
"US Poised to Hit Syria Harder: The Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement on Aug. 25 stating that the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham
militants had brought eight containers of chlorine to Idlib in order to stage a false-flag attack with the help of UK intelligence
agencies. A group of Tahrir al-Sham fighters trained to handle chemical warfare agents by the UK private military company Olive
arrived in the suburbs of the city of Jisr ash-Shugur, Idlib, 20 km. from the Turkish border."
Can't help thinking that the answer to all this lies in Estonia. Sergei went to Estonia in June 2016, Pablo was in Estonia,
the Estonians passed on sigint about Trump-Russian collusion in the summer of 2016. A Guardian article of 13 April 2017 said:
"Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump's
inner circle and Russians, sources said. The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence – known as sigint – included
Germany, Estonia and Poland."
Perhaps not the Dossier, as such, but some material on collusion?
No doubt in my mind that the Skripal affair is a planned operation carried out by US/UK intelligence. What has actually
taken place is still to be determined, but the propaganda operation itself is clear.
Catch my last post Doodlebug, sadly MI6 diabolical elements can be traced back to Ireland in the 70's early 80's assassinations
theRealTerror (theRealElvis) understands.
Often it's been open. There was the BBC monitoring station at Caversham Park. The BBC's Foreign Broadcast Information Service
split the world into two parts with the CIA.
All foreign correspondents of major newspapers too work with MI6. Nobody who is close to them has any kind of doubt about
this.
Theresa May says a no deal Brexit "wouldn't be the end of the world".
This is not a negotiating strategy. This is not a pantomime where one giant on the stage can wink to his supporters (using
the British media) without his opponent (EU27) noticing.
The subconscious doesn't work well with negation. Whatever you do, please DON'T imagine an elephant at this time.
I would love to know what the preparations are at Trinity College, Cambridge, for food shortages. They own the port of
Felixstowe, which handles more than 40% of Britain's containerised trade. They also own a 50% stake in a portfolio of Tesco
stores. Soon food distribution will be what everyone is talking about. I am never going to stop making the point that the god
of the Tory party is Thomas Malthus.
" As a Prime Minister who believes both in free markets and in nations and businesses acting in line with well-established
rules and principles of conduct, I want to demonstrate to young Africans that their brightest future lies in a free and thriving
private sector. "
I despise everyone who says that free markets are the solution for the problems of the third world. What they mean is mass
starvation and an enormous population cull. There are international "foundations" that pay academics and politicians large amounts
of money to spout this obscene line. One of them is called the John Templeton Foundation. They have had their fangs in to British
universities for a long time.
They are keen on Prince Philip, the guy who said he wanted to come back as a virus so he could kill a large part of the population.
Never trust anyone who has received a Templeton scholarship or prize or who has anything to do with these people or with the message
that free markets and the private sector are the key to "development"
When the Tories talk about 'free markets', they are talking about markets free from democracy.
May's rhetoric is laughable .basically all her speeches read : 'the sky is green, the snow is black etc etc' -- totally detached
from reality and a spent political force, as their recent membership numbers showed, with more revenues from legacies left in
wills than from actual living members.
I agree with the Skripal relatives that Sergei is dead. He hasn't been seen or heard of and would have called his mother. Mind
boggling deception at all levels and I struggle to believe any of it.
Sergei Skripal could be in US custody, either in the US itself or in a US facility somewhere.
If he is dead, then the rehospitalisation of Charlie Rowley may be to assist with the narrative. "Once you've had a drop of
Novvy Chockk, you may recover but you can fall down ill at any time, and here's an Expert with a serious voice to confirm it."
I follow this blog closely, particularly in relation to the Skripal case, but this is my first comment. I just watched Sky
News piece on 'super recognisers' and couldn't help but wonder why, in an age of powerful facial recognition technology, the police
and security services seem to have drawn such a blank. The surveillance state in the UK is known to be one of the most advanced
in the world but when it comes to this highly important geopolitical crisis our technological infrastructure seems to be redundant
to the point where 'human eyes' are deemed to be more accurate than the most powerful supercomputers available. Psychologically,
all humans have an inherent facial recognition ability from a very young age, but the idea that some police officers have this
ability developed to such an extent that they supercede computer recognition is, i feel, laughable. To me this announcement through
the ever subservient Sky News reeks of desperation on the part of the ;official story'. Are we about to be shown suspects who,
although facial recognition technology fails to identify them, a 'super recogniser' can testify that it actually is person A or
person B and we are all supposed to accept that? Seems either a damning indictment of the judicial process, or a damning indictment
of the ŁŁŁŁŁ's of taxpayers money that is spent on places like GCHQ etc whose technology is now apparently no better than a highly
perceptive human brain. Give me a break !
People do die Trowbridge. I know you haven't, but you have the motivation of outliving your persecutors. With Muckin about
with Isis gone and covert operations isn't social work Kissinger looking as though he's on daily blood transfusions, you have
rejected Trump for some reason. But Trump has undone much of John McCain's worst mischief in one year. If McCain was an example
of a politician, we don't need politicians.
Give me an example, other than the Coopers. of a healthy couple one day that is found dying the next day like the Skripals.
And while i tried on another site to be generous about McCain. he got Navy Secretary John Lehman, Jr. to scare the Soviets
for prevailing in the Vietnam War so much about what NATO was up to in the fallout from shooting Swedish PM Olof Palme that Moscow
gave up the competition for fear that it would blow up the world, helping bring on the crappy one we have.
McCain was a continuing Cold Warrior who we don't need since we still have Trump who is just trying to do it another way.
CHUCK TODD TROTSKY: Yeah, I was just going to say, if the F.B.I., for instance, had a FISA
court order of some sort for a surveillance, would that be information you would know or not
know?
CLAPPER: Yes.
CHUCK TODD TROTSKY: You would be told this?
CLAPPER: I would know that.
CHUCK TODD TROTSKY: If there was a FISA court order–
CLAPPER: Yes.
CHUCK TODD TROTSKY: –on something like this.
CLAPPER: Something like this, absolutely.
CHUCK TODD TROTSKY: And at this point, you can't confirm or deny whether that exists?
>>>CLAPPER: I can deny it.<<<
The head of ObaMao's intelligence, the DNI ...(Clapper)...just lied on national TeeeVeee,
to the American public, with a straight face, something we all now know to be absolutely,
verifiably, true.
Something as blatantly deceptive as this needs something special in return. Like a
noose.
FreedomWriter ,
Yeah, lying on CNN, apparently you can be arrested for that, it's almost as bad as lying
to Congress under oath..... oh wait...
nmewn ,
They are twisted, seditious, criminal , lying, bastards.
In a nutshell: Hillary Clinton paid a foreign agent (Christopher Steele, via two entities
to wipe her fingerprints, those being Perkins Coie & Fusion GPS) to fabricate the pretext
of FISA warrants... which her cronies then dutifully introduced into a secret court ...and
were granted FISA warrants (not once but FOUR TIMES) for US government intelligence agencies
to spy on her political opponents.
Its unprecedented, a scandal more vast and all encompassing than Watergate.
And...having found NOTHING (again, four times) to charge Carter Page with, they leak to
their cronies in the Alinsky Press that US government intelligence agencies do in fact have
an active spying operation going on against American citizens to damage the reputations and
careers having failed to find any evidence of "Russian collusion" which (again) was the
pretext for the FISA warrants.
Now that those among us with a fully functional brain know FOR SURE that there are TWO
SETS of laws in this nation we can go about our individual activities and businesses with
total disregard to "their laws" without any self imposed moral or ethical trepidation.
herbivore ,
There's just one set of laws, but they're selectively enforced, depending on whether
you're one of the little people or you're among the elite. Must be nice to be one of the
elite, not having to worry about laws and stuff.
If this insurance policy were actually true, it also could include tactics memorialized in
a memo, written in 2009 by a Democratic strategist working at the time for the liberal smear
group Media Matters.
>It described how to fight a "well funded, presidential-style campaign to discredit and
embarrass" targets. Private eyes would probe into their personal lives, courts would be used
for lawsuits. "Massive demonstrations" would be organized, Michael Moore would make a
negative documentary and "a team of trackers" would stake out targets at events. "Opposition
research" would be collected.
The targets would be attacked on social media, yard signs posted in their neighborhoods,
and a "mole" placed inside their organization.
If there really were an insurance policy against Trump, it might include having ex-intel
officials getting hired at national news outlets where they'd monitor and influence news
organizations, and be invited to give daily spin on controversies surrounding their own
actions.
Figures such as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Comey aide
Josh Campbell and others could get hired by CNN; former CIA Director John Brennan and
ex-Mueller/Comey aide Chuck Rosenberg could get hired by NBC and MSNBC.
But all that would never really happen. Or if it did, it's downright silly to think of it
as part of an organized insurance policy.
Uncovered text messages reveal that FBI agent Peter Strzok wanted to use CNN's
"bombshell" report about the infamous "Steele Dossier" to interview witnesses in the
Trump-Russia probe
CNN used leaked knowledge that Comey briefed Trump on the dossier as a trigger to
publish
The FBI knew of CNN's plans to publish, confirming a dialogue between the FBI and
CNN
This is particularly damning in light of revelations of FBI-MSM collusion against the
Trump campaign
Newly revealed text messages between former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney
Lisa Page reveal that Strzok wanted to use CNN's report on the infamous "Steele Dossier" to
justify interviewing people in the Trump-Russia investigation, reports CNN . "
Sitting with Bill watching CNN. A TON more out ," Strzok texted to Page on Jan. 10, 2017,
following CNN's report.
"Hey let me know when you can talk. We're discussing whether, now that this is out, we use
it as a pretext to go interview some people ," Strzok continued.
Recall that CNN used the (leaked) fact that former FBI Director James Comey had briefed
then-President-Elect Donald Trump on a two-page summary of the Steele Dossier to justify
printing their
January report .
This is a troubling development in light of a
May report that the FBI knew that CNN was " close to going forward " with the Steele
Dossier story, and that " The trigger for them is they know the material was discussed, "
clearly indicating active communications between CNN and the FBI.
Weeks later, as the Daily Caller 's
Chuck Ross notes, the FBI approached former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos "under
the guise of interviewing him about his contacts with an alleged source for the dossier."
In short, knowledge of the Comey-Trump briefing was leaked to CNN, CNN printed the story,
Strzok wanted to use it as a pretext to interview people in the Trump-Russia investigation, and
weeks later George Papadopoulos became ensnared in their investigation.
And when one considers that we learned of an FBI "
media leak strategy " this week, it suggests pervasive collusion between Obama-era
intelligence agencies and the MSM to defeat, and then smear Donald Trump after he had won the
election.
Text messages discussing the "media leak strategy" were revealed Monday by Rep. Mark Meadows
(R-NC). The messages, sent the day before and after two damaging articles about former Trump
campaign adviser Carter Page, raise " grave concerns regarding an apparent systematic culture
of media leaking by high-ranking officials at the FBI and DOJ related to ongoing
investigations."
A review of the documents suggests that the FBI and DOJ coordinated efforts to get
information to the press that would potentially be "harmful to President Trump's
administration." Those leaks pertained to information regarding the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court warrant used to spy on short-term campaign volunteer Carter Page.
The letter lists several examples:
April 10, 2017: (former FBI Special Agent) Peter Strzok contacts (former FBI Attorney)
Lisa Page to discuss a "media leak strategy." Specifically, the text says: "I had literally
just gone to find this phone to tell you I want to talk to you about media leak strategy
with DOJ before you go."
April 12, 2017: Peter Strzok congratulates Lisa Page on a job well done while referring
to two derogatory articles about Carter Page. In the text, Strzok warns Page two articles
are coming out, one which is "worse" than the other about Lisa's "namesake"." Strzok added:
"Well done, Page." -
Sara Carter
Recall that Strzok's boss, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, was fired for
authorizing self-serving leaks to the press.
Also recall that text messages released in January reveal that Lisa Page was on the phone
with Washington Post reporter Devlin Barrett , then with the New York Times , when the
reopening of the Clinton Foundation investigation hit the news cycle - just one example in a
series of text messages matching up with MSM reports relying on leaked information, as reported
by the
Conservative Treehouse .
♦Page: 5:19pm "Still on the phone with Devlin . Mike's phone is ON FIRE."
♥Strzok: 5:29pm "You might wanna tell Devlin he should turn on CNN, there's news
on."
♦Page: 5:30pm "He knows. He just got handed a note."
♥Strzok: 5:33pm "Ha. He asking about it now?"
♦Page: 5:34pm "Yeah. It was pretty funny. Coming now."
At 5:36pm Devlin Barrett tweets:
Meadows says that the texts show " a coordinated effort on the part of the FBI and DOJ to
release information in the public domain potentially harmful to President Donald Trump's
administration. "
Revisiting the FBI-CNN connection
Going back to the
internal FBI emails revealed in May by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), we find that McCabe had
advance knowledge of CNN's plans to publish the Steele Dossier report.
In an email to top FBI officials with the subject "Flood is coming," McCabe wrote: " CNN is
close to going forward with the sensitive story ... The trigger for them is they know the
material was discussed in the brief and presented in an attachment." McCabe does not reveal how
he knew CNN's "trigger" was Comey's briefing to Trump.
McCabe shot off a second email shortly thereafter to then-Deputy Attorney General Sally
Yates along with her deputy, Matthew Alexrod, with the subject line "News."
" Just as an FYI, and as expected ," McCabe
wrote , " it seems CNN is close to running a story about the sensitive reporting. " Again,
how McCabe knew this is unclear and begs investigation.
Johnson also wanted to know when FBI officials " first learned that media outlets, including
CNN, may have possessed the Steele dossier. "
As
The Federalist noted in May, "To date, there is no public evidence that the FBI ever
investigated the leaks to media about the briefing between Trump and Comey. When asked
in a recent interview by Fox News Channel's Bret Baier , Comey scoffed at the idea that the
FBI would even need to investigate the leak of a secret briefing with the incoming
president."
" Did you or your subordinates leak that? " Baier
asked .
" No ," Comey responded. " I don't know who leaked it. "
" Did you ever try to find out? " Baier asked.
" Who leaked an unclassified public document? " Comey said, even though Baier's question
was about leaking details of a briefing of the incoming president, not the dossier. " No ,"
Comey said.
And now it looks like we have an answer for why the FBI never investigated the leak...
k3g ,
Tell me again how Watergate was impeachable and this - Obamagate, Spygate, Framegate,
ReverseCollusionGate, whatever ya wanna call it - is not .
Watergate was nothing next to this. And Obama's prints are all over it. The guy used govt
resources - FBI, US intel, foreign partner intel - to try to destroy a candidate in order to
throw a US POTUS election, and upon failing continued to try to take the guy out. Methinks
that's why Obama's been looking so gaunt and wan of late. The guy looks terminal.
herbivore ,
There is only one agency in the U.S. government that can put people in prison and it's
called the DOJ. Not only that, there are only a handful of people at the top of the DOJ who
can decide who and who not to prosecute. Therefore, if you're the Clinton/Obama crime family,
you only need a few loyalists at the top of the DOJ and you can get away with pretty much
anything. Clearly, the Clinton/Obama crime family had and STILL have those loyalists on their
side. Trump has done a pathetic job of changing that.
BendGuyhere ,
The good news, if you noticed, is the big swamp creatures (Comey, McCabe, Brennan, et al),
that were SO loud and proud just a few months ago seem to have gotten really quiet
lately.
This could mean that SHIT IS GETTING REAL and their lawyers are telling them to STFU.
So maybe the keebler elf grandpa Sessions is in fact orchestrating a legal checkmate on
all these fuckers as the drip=drip becomes a deluge.
The deep state may try to manufacture a distraction-any ideas?
Anunnaki ,
Since 9/11 the Permanent government is immune from legal responsibility and
accountability
if we lived by the same Laws we used against Chelsea Manning, Snowden, Assange and the
rest Obama, Hellary, Huma, Lynch. Comey, Mueller, Yates, Rice, Jarrett, McCabe, the Ohrs,
Strzok and Page, Glenn Simpson would all get serious jail time
CNN should lose their broadcast license over this
Alas, Rip Van Sessions continues to do nothing and all the Crying Cheetolini can do is
bitch tweet like a eunuch
urhotdogs ,
Obama must be panicking. He is all of a sudden "out of retirement" and campaigning to get
Dems elected to take back the house and the Senate. If that happens, all the corruption from
his Administration can be swept back under the rug and Trump impeached and his ass saved.
G-R-U-N-T ,
The ObamaSpy ring to frame Trump, his family, his campaign and the American people is a
hell of a lot more extensive than most people think. The web not only extends domestically
but internationally, the FVEY's, mainly Great Britain and Australia would appear to have
their hand in this as well.
Yes, treason and espionage, all for a few pieces of silver and the illusion of power. All
the 'gas lighting' propaganda and contempt with NO evidence was and is all a set-up by those
nefarious forces that used to run the cesspool.
'They never thought she would lose' , like Hilary allegedly said: "If that fucking bastard
wins we all hang from nooses", do tell, do tell.
We elected Trump to take back our country and I believe that's exactly what he's
doing!
StarGate ,
Fact that Obama used Britain's GHCQ to spy on the Republican candidate he was trying to
prevent win as Prez - recall Obama said emphatically "Trump will never be President" - so now
we know WHY Obama was so certain;
And fact that UK/ Aussie Ambassador Downer coordinated with FBI conspirators against the
Republican candidate; (recall that the Aussie Prez call with Trump was made public probably
by Aussie Prez Turnbull himself)...
And fact that Obama RENEWED the British GHCQ spy op against Trump as he was Prez; puts the
FBI British spy Dossier caper and all the FBI agents into the TREASON category because they
were working AGAINST USA interests WITH foreign countries - Britain and Australia.
Dan'l ,
So much for the highly anticipated internal FBI investigation by that clown Horowitz, the
Inspector General who said there was "no evidence" of political influence by the FBI
investigators. He said that with a straight face.
thinkmoretalkless ,
Politics is the only thing forestalling swift justice in this sordid mess. The media has
exposed itself as ridiculously complicit in a seditious conspiracy by a group of narcissistic
elite establishment underlings. I am as impatient as anyone else who see the blatant
corruption and little in the way of prosecutorial response, but if this is as some portend a
sophisticated attempt to drain the swamp then there is some hope a significant and honest
reckoning awaits. I don't blame those not optimistic, but personally I'm trying Trumps power
of positive thinking.
Marketing Consultant ,
What a bunch of bad people.
True swamp rats that don't deserve a position in government.
MK ULTRA Alpha ,
Another angle we must consider, the CIA was deeply involved. I believe it was the CIA
managing the coup, the FBI was taking orders from the CIA who was planning and leading the
overthrow of Trump.
Brennan and his WH coordinator Clapper are guilty. The FBI is just an attack dog of what
the CIA set up with help from MI6. Clapper contacted MI6 for electronic intercept, the WH
couldn't use NSA, there would have been a paper trail. And NSA would have told. Clapper is
the one who contacted and used UK MI6 assets. (Steele a former MI6 agent? No, Steele is
working for MI6.)
Everything leads back to Brennan and Clapper from the beginning. Brennan was deep into the
election and re-election of Obama supplying intelligence data during the campaign.
It was Brennan who set up the game plan for the coup. Even his statements from the
beginning indicated this. Will Brennan fall on his sword for Obama? Will Clapper fall on his
sword for Obama? Brennan is a hard core communist, he may take the bullet for Obama, but not
Clapper.
We don't get MSM stating this, is it fear of the CIA. Or is it fear there will be no more
anonymous sources. Remember FBI agents were taking bribes for leaking data to the MSM. I
doubt they're still working for the FBI. There has been a secret purge at the top. It was
stated on MSM several FBI have left the FBI.
Interesting CNN has a former homosexual CIA officer who stated the CIA would kill Trump.
He's a regular CNN employee. It was CNN, the FBI used to leak data to set Trump up.
Should CNN be sued? Should the NYT be sued? It's better to hit them in the pocket
book.
Another point, remember General Flynn? I believe the CIA wanted to take him out. It was
said he didn't lie by the FBI who did the interview, later higher ups, Comey and the like
said he lied.
I believe the CIA wanted to pay him back for exposing Brennan's unlawful operations in
Syria.
Also, remember the Las Vegas hit on Trump kind of supporters, could this have been a
message by the CIA to the WH to expect a hit if Brennan was exposed. Just saying, we have to
review every angle to the equation because the level of corruption in the government is
beyond the belief of the average American. These players are above the law, perhaps this was
a reminder.
Is the FBI going to accept their fate of being the fall guy for the CIA?
freedommusic ,
GCHQ had back door into NSA...
1970SSNova396 ,
The head of GCHQ resigned days before The Don took the keys to the white house so he could
spend more time with the children. The Don knows the deal. Get the new guy on the SC and then
shit will hit the fan. Trump has zero to lose going forward and he is going to rock the
house.
chrbur ,
The Mueller Investigation is a international embarrassment. The search for a Trump/Russia
connection by Inspector Clouseau is turning up over do jaywalking tickets while the glaringly
obvious crimes of the Clinton Crime Family, aka, the Democrat party are ignored. I have to
tell everyone that I am Canadian and I voted for Justin Trudeau.....hey.....it is less
shameful.....
StarGate ,
Those who set up the Mueller Special Counsel (Rosenstein who used to perhaps still does,
work for Hillary) did so, not only to create a false impeachment process against Trump but
also to undermine any of his efforts to take America back for Americans.
Are they succeeding? Yes and No.
Trump already stopped the TTP, Paris nonAccord, Iran nuclear delay, set ups. Trump began
the world Peace engine with outreach to North Korea and Russia. He began an adjustment to the
tax system and regulatory small business chokers. He has made inroads to curb corruption at
the FBI;
But without a Congress that is on the side of America, he has not been able to stop the
not-legal alien criminal inflow and "sanctuary-mafia" protection system - as yet.
1970SSNova396 ,
Trump is up against the NWO/Globalist/Jewish Bankers/Jewish MSM Cabal 24/7/365. He has
cost them billions in his two years. Trump has few friends in congress because they're owned
by the above as well.
There is no doubt Trump has /is bringing everybody out onto the stage and you can see just
how fuking corrupt this country is and has been for 40 years. This is the last chance.
urhotdogs ,
Ryan, McConnell and many Rinos complicit in all of this. Notice they've never come out and
condemn the FBI or DOJ involvement in all this. Only a few Republicans keeping this going
Thom Paine ,
ALSO those given immunity by Meuller may not have immunity , and could have it reversed,
if it can be shown the only reason immunity was given them was to protect them against future
prosecution.
Immunity requires that the person have important evidence for a trial and that they could
be implicating themselves in a criminal act by providing that evidence, ie they were somehow
involved in the commission of the crime, in some relate-able way. Immunity gives them
protection against being prosecuted for related crimes.
You cannot give somebody immunity against Tax Fraud prosecution when they are providing
evidence of a car accident they saw.
Providing immunity for all unrelated crimes is the same power as the POTUS power of
pardon.
SO the DOJ could at some future time challenge the immunity given by Mueller on the basis
that is given only to protect them, and in exchange for nothing tangible. i.e. a fraud.
Which may mean Mueller could be prosecuted for prevision of justice.
Uncovered text messages reveal that FBI agent Peter Strzok wanted to use CNN's
"bombshell" report about the infamous "Steele Dossier" to interview witnesses in the
Trump-Russia probe
CNN used leaked knowledge that Comey briefed Trump on the dossier as a trigger to
publish
The FBI knew of CNN's plans to publish, confirming a dialogue between the FBI and
CNN
This is particularly damning in light of revelations of FBI-MSM collusion against the
Trump campaign
Newly revealed text messages between former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney
Lisa Page reveal that Strzok wanted to use CNN's report on the infamous "Steele Dossier" to
justify interviewing people in the Trump-Russia investigation, reports CNN
.
911bodysnatchers322 ,
So now CNN is complicit in illegal leaking, (dis)information laundering, citizen
targetting, conspiracy against rights, subversion, sedition and treason?
No wonder it's a nonstop Trump hate fest. They aren't just trying to get Trump impeached
in the court of public opinion, they're desperate to get rid of him before he 100% destroys
him
Well it's too late. Impeach away. But we'll still hold CNN for treason. The two things
aren't related. You can't steal from a store just because Trump set the one next to it on
fire
BGO ,
Fatigue is setting in with this charade. Soon the (((pundits))) will respond with the
obligatory ***yawn*** troll to all future allegations.
If Trump cannot or is unable to respond to this non-sense in the harshest terms possible,
he should not be president. It's amazing no one in this drama has met their maker Hitlery
style. If that cunt was in charge and dealing with this shit, bodies would have already hit
the floor.
J Mahoney ,
This whole situation has to piss off anyone that is even 10% objective. How could any
elected representative or senator still spew shit like "Leave Mueller Alone"
BOTTOM LINE -- If we do not get to work quickly to elect non establishment republicans in
the midterms NOTHING will EVER be done and Trump may be forced out if Dems make gains
apocalypticbrother ,
All old news. No one in jail except Manafort. It really seems like Trump is powerless
against agencys. He must hate being a powerless president.
squid ,
If, and I do mean IF, the GOP holds onto both houses of congress.....
Everyone of these fucks has to be indited with sedition, PERIOD.
its slam dunk. And, if the elected houses ever wants to get hold of the CIA, FBI and NSA
and gain some control over those rogue agencies 20-50 agents from each will have to go down
to spend the rest of their lives in Leavenworth.
These uncollected asshats have tried to change the government of the United States.
The only person on the left that appears to understand this is Glen Greenwald.
Squid
Save_America1st ,
the problem is that in my opinion the majority of the GOP is also so fucking corrupt that
I don't think most of them actually want to hold control of the House. They never even wanted
Trump to win in the first place. On top of that, I would say many of those treasonous
scumbags probably actually wanted Hitlery to win the fucking thing even if Trump wasn't going
to be her opponent!
Look at all the resignations. Never seen before in history. Why? Two reasons...Trump is
using the evidence to push many of them out or they end up in Guantanamo for life. And others
in the beginning were quitting in order to give up part of the majority in order to flip the
House to the even more evil, treasonous Demoscums so that it would restrict Trump's full
majority.
Just look how "No Name" McStain acted when voting down against repealing O-Fuck-You-Care,
right???
He was a traitor, plain and fucking simple. We all know it. Fuck their bullshit funeral.
That was a cathedral full of traitors to this country. Psychopaths and sociopaths. Except for
General Kelly and General Mattis keeping a close eye on that room full of demons.
"Strzok CERTAINLY wasn't the only one... Obozo, Hitlery, Lynch, Comey, Rice, Kerry, DOJ, FBI, CIA, MSM, et alia!" McCain, Shummer, Pelosi, Ryan, McConnell and lots of other are co-conspirators in the
overthrow of the elected Govt.
And a large portion, if not the Majority, of the Oligarchs including the Owners of the 5
Media Companies and Big Tech which may have the same exact owners as the Media Companies.
Shemp 4 Victory ,
This is particularly damning in light of revelations of FBI-MSM collusion against the
Trump campaign
Collusion of big government and big media? That's textbook fascism. (Of course, nobody
reads textbooks, so...)
"Hey let me know when you can talk. We're discussing whether, now that this is out, we
use it as a pretext to go interview some people," Strzok continued.
"Because any pretext that provides even the flimsiest plausibility means we can play our
little power games and ride the gravy train to easy money instead of pretending to do the
work that taxpayers think they are paying us to do."
Above the law, like they all are.
Creative_Destruct ,
"...pervasive collusion between Obama-era intelligence agencies and the MSM to defeat, and
then smear Donald Trump after he had won the election. "
Yes, it was (and is) a concerted effort at collusion to politically assassinate Trump. But
remember, this is a rigged game. The campaign's (non) "collusion" will be crammed into
whatever "legitimate", "legal" mold it will fit; the conspiracy to "find a crime" for Trump
within the Deep/In-You-Face State is simply "oversight" and "investigation."
The Mueller investigation has been going on for a very long time - if he had found
anything of any real value it would be out there already, trying to reduce Trump popularity
and hit the GOP mid-terms.
The Mid Terms are very important to Deep State. The Dems must at least get the House back
in order to stop Trump.
That Mueller and Co have virtually have found nothing to put out there to stop Trump and
the GOP means they have fuck all, and are now clutching at Straws.
They are going to have to go the Bullshit path....start inventing. OH and all sorts of
False Flags between now and Mid Terms are guaranteed. ALSO will the neocons dupe Trump into a
Syria mistake that causes the death of many US soldiers? We know Deep State don't care who or
how many they kill, so long as they get what they want.
One wonders if the Censoring of Conservative media, and Political Sites is because Deep
State are planning to Assassinate President Trump , as is stated on Alex Jone's site.
BANNED VIDEOS – PENTAGON INTEL SAYS GLOBALISTS WANT TRUMP DEAD BY MARCH 2019
Watch the clips censored by over one hundred websites
There have probably been several Trump assassination attempts since he was elected.
Knowing what happened to Lincoln when he vetoed the National Bank / Fed Reserve of his
time;
And what happened to JFK when he stated he would shut down the CIA;
Trump is fully aware he performs a death defying act daily. There may be others out there
willing to make the Trump-JFK-Lincoln sacrifice, to take back America, but not Pence, not
Sanders, not any current Democrat prez wanna be.
Thom Paine ,
It would be impossible, or an exercise in suicide by the GOP and or Democrats if they
actually impeached Trump.
Two thirds of the Senate is required for Impeachment, meaning the GOP would have to
vote with the Dems and that would mean total devastation of the GOP at the following
elections.
If the Dems tried impeachment, they would be only signaling to their hardcore base, but
there would be a significant voter backlash against them. It would be a self defeating
act.
If the GOP and Dems voted to impeach Trump in the Senate, Trump can appeal to the
Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court would deny the Impeachment - unless there was proper legal
cause.
There has to be a legally provable breach of Federal law outside the POTUS exercise of
powers. Extraordinary prosecution requires extraordinary evidence.
You cannot remove a President elected by 62 million people on flimsy hearsay, or 'he said
she said' evidence, or pure circumstantial evidence. It would also set a precedence where
Presidents could be impeached on the drop of a hat.
At the moment the Dems and Deep State want to impeach Trump because he beat Clinton and
fucked up the last step in their plan to own America.
If Trump beat Sanders not many would be whining right now, they wouldn't care.
StarGate ,
Your premise legally appears to be accurate, that the Supreme Court is a failsafe against
a retaliatory political impeachment, based primarily on fact Hillary lost.
However, that means the Supreme Court would have to been beyond corruption and Trump would
have to bring a case.
j0nx ,
No. All the Dems and deep state need to know is that a lot of the deplorable would riot
like mofos if they tried. No dem would be safe. You think they don't know that? Sociology
101.
Saying the deplorables wouldn't riot is like saying Obama's minions wouldn't have if the
shoe were reversed 7 years ago and there was an open coup against him like there is
Trump.
Withdrawn Sanction ,
Sorry to nit pick, but there are 2 steps here: the first is impeachment by the House. Akin
to an indictment. Then there is a trial in the Senate which is presided over by the Chief
Justice of the SC. THEN a 2/3s affirmative vote is required for conviction and removal from
office.
An impeachment just like an indictment is meaningless w/o a conviction. You see how much
"damage" an impeachment did to Slick Willy. Didn't skip a beat
"Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports
or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or
naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies, or shall
willfully make or convey false reports, or false statements, . . . or incite insubordination,
disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States,
or shall willfully obstruct . . . the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States,
or . . . shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous,
or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of
the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States . . . or shall
willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall willfully . . . urge, incite, or
advocate any curtailment of production . . . or advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing
of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated and whoever shall by word or act
support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word
or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a fine of not more
than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both...."
or sedition = this
" A review of the documents suggests that the FBI and DOJ coordinated efforts to get
information to the press that would potentially be "harmful to President Trump's
administration. "
There is one small point everyone seems to be over looking. It was Rosenstein's official
recommendation to Trump to terminated Comey because Rosenstein was trying to install Mueller
as FBI director, a professional "yes man" and cover up specialist. So when Trump wouldn't
make Mueller FBI director, then Rosenstein had to destroy Trump to cover up. He appointed
Mueller to special council.
The cover ups go all the way back to 9/11.
missionshk ,
missed that they are all tied to 911 conspirators, brennan, mueller, comey
missed the satanists dems.drinking the blood of children, weiners laptop, and pakistani
spies
missed the clinton bribery foundation, and failed one world government
and missed continued demonization of russia, the social paid antifa soros treason
I agree with Martina Navratilova on Serena Williams conduct
" Navratilova went so far as to write an editorial for the New York Times in which she
claimed that, in complaining post-match that Ramos would not have reacted the same way to an
argumentative male player, Williams was "missing the point" and would have been better served
conducting herself with "respect for the sport we love so dearly."
"I don't believe it's a good idea to apply a standard of 'If men can get away with it,
women should be able to, too,' " Navratilova said of Williams in her editorial. "Rather, I
think the question we have to ask ourselves is this: What is the right way to behave to honor
our sport and to respect our opponents?"
Serena Williams behaviour ruined the experience of victory for Naomi Osaka, if you get a
chance to see film of the whole debacle with the booing crowd! She looked like the most
miserable winner in ever.
Another issue is that Williams deliberately puts on a tantrum and then claims the tantrum is
normal emotional behaviour. On top of that, she tries to pass off this spoilt-brat outburst
as characteristic of how strong, feminist women behave. All done as much to deny Osaka the
joy of winning her first major championship as to attack the umpire.
And people who should know better swallow Williams' idiocy hook, line and sinker.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the 2007-09 financial crisis is how little understanding there is of what
actually occurred. Some of this has to do with the complexities of the event, as well as how hard it is to
identify forces lurking below the surface that had built up over the years.
Even a decade later, many people still cling to
false ideas
about the underlying causes (there wasn't just one, folks!) of the crisis. What follows are my 10
favorite flawed memes,
misunderstandings
and just outright falsehoods about the financial crisis and its aftermath:
No. 1.
Lehman's collapse caused the crisis
: "If only we had saved Lehman Brothers, we could
have avoided the crisis," goes a popular lament. This reflects a
fundamental misunderstanding
of the scale of the dislocations. To accept this premise -- former Lehman
employees are some of the loudest apostles of this theory -- then one has to pretend an entire universe of other
issues didn't exist.
Lehman, like
Bear Stearns
before it, suffered from many of the same issues that afflicted most of the U.S.'s other big
banks and brokers: too much junk paper, too much leverage, too little capital and deficient risk controls. Lehman
was simply among the most overleveraged and undercapitalized of the lot.
No. 2.
If not for X, we would have been OK:
Take your pick
of things to insert here, but it's important to understand that this was not a
single event
, but rather the result of
many factors
that came together over time. These include: the Federal Reserve's ultralow interest rates, a fundamentally weak
recovery from the dot-com collapse, the housing boom and bust, huge amounts of financial leverage, securitization
of mortgages, the embrace of derivatives and reckless deregulation of the financial industry that enabled much of
the above, and more. I depicted these elements via
this
graphic
in "
Bailout
Nation
."
No. 3.
Repeal of Glass-Steagall
: The argument is that in the decades after Glass-Steagall was
enacted during the Great Depression, Wall Street crises were confined to Wall Street and didn't spill onto Main
Street. See as examples the 1987 stock-market crash or the Mexican peso crisis of 1994. But the causative issue we
run into to is the but-for test. Would we have had a crisis if Glass-Steagall were still in place? I don't see how
we can make that claim. Perhaps had Glass-Steagall not been repealed,
the crisis
might have been smaller, but it is very hard to say it wouldn't have occurred anyway.
No. 4.
Bailouts were the only option
: There were many other options, but they would have been
very painful and required considerable foresight. I believed then (and still believe) that the best course of
action would have been
prepackaged bankruptcies
for all the insolvent institutions instead of bailouts. I would have had the federal
government provide debtor-in-possession financing, allowed qualified private institutional investors to bid on the
assets thereby letting markets set the valuations, with the government picking up the rest. It would have been
more difficult in the short term, but the economy would have rebounded much sooner.
No. 5.
Taxpayers were repaid in full and even made a profit
: There are two major issues with
this claim: The first is that the Troubled Asset Relief Program and most other loans and bailouts were all (or
almost all) repaid. But to make that happen, the federal government in a move questioned by tax experts allowed
failed American International Group to carry forward the net operating losses for use to offset future earnings;
this was a
stealth bailout
worth
tens of billions
of dollars that didn't appear to "cost" anything. Meanwhile the Federal Reserve kept rates at
zero for almost a decade. This resulted in a huge transfer from savers to bailed-out lenders.
The federal government also took a huge amount of risk during a period when financial markets tripled. And that
is before we account for all of the collateral losses and moral hazards we created.
No. 6.
No one went to jail because stupidity isn't a crime
: This one is laugher, from the
behavior of the executives at Lehman Brothers to all of the
foreclosure fraud
that took place. Jesse Eisinger, author of "
The
Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives
," explained how the white-collar
defense bar successfully lobbied and undercut the Department of Justice during the years before the crisis. You
can't
convict a criminal
if you don't have the personnel, intellectual firepower or stomach to prosecute in the
first place.
No. 7.
Borrowers were as blameworthy as lenders
: First, we know that for huge swaths of the
banking industry, the basis for lending changed in the run-up to the crisis. For most of financial history, credit
was granted based on the borrower's
ability to repay
. In the years before the crisis, the incentive to lend shifted: It was based not on the
likelihood of repayment but on whether a loan could be sold to someone else, often a securities firm, which would
repackage the loan with other loans to create a mortgage-backed security. Selling 30-year mortgages with a 90-day
warranty changes the calculus for who qualifies: just find a warm body that will make the first three payments;
after that it's someone else's problem.
Second, we know that if you offer people free money, they will take it. This is among the reasons we have
banking regulations in the first place. We expect the banking professionals to understand risk better than the
unwashed masses.
No. 8.
Poor people caused the crisis
: This is another intellectually dishonest claim. If any
U.S.
legislation
such as the
Community
Reinvestment Act
was the actual cause of the crisis, then the boom and bust wouldn't have been global. Second,
if poor people and these policies were the cause, then the crisis would have been centered in South Philadelphia;
Harlem, New York; Oakland, California; and Atlanta instead of the burgeoning suburbs of Las Vegas, Southern
California, Florida and Arizona. The folks making this argument seem to have questionable motivations.
No. 9.
The Fed made a mistake by stepping in when Congress refused:
Congress is the
governmental entity that should have done more in response to the crisis. But it didn't, and all of those members
who opposed efforts to repair the economy and financial system should have been thrown out of office. The Fed gave
cover to Congress, creating congressional moral hazard and allowing it to
shirk its
responsibilities
. We don't know how the world would have looked if that hadn't happened, but I imagine it
would be significantly different than it does today -- and not necessarily better.
No. 10.
Lehman could have been saved
: This is perhaps the most
delusional
of all the claims.
Lehman
was
insolvent
. We know this from an accounting sleight-of-hand it performed called Repo 105, in which it
which "sold" $50 billion in holdings to an entity it owned, booked a profit just before quarterly earnings, then
repurchased the holdings. The sleuthing done by hedge-fund manager David Einhorn reached the same conclusion about
Lehman's solvency long
before the collapse
;
the Fed itself
also made clear that it couldn't take on Lehman's losses.
When people stubbornly refuse to acknowledge facts, when they insist on staying married to their own faulty
belief system, it becomes very challenging to respond with sound policies. As a society, the sooner we reckon with
reality, the sooner we can begin to avoid disasters like the financial crisis.
Very apt: "So we excuse the
rules and condemn their application---but only for certain people"
I suspect nationalism or ethnocentrism were also factors, not only identity politics. Selena has ungly history of tantrum thouth
and that might point to poriblems with performance enhancing drags (she did have a unexplained meltdown in Wimbledon 2014)
Notable quotes:
"... Drama and literature at their best offer illustrative anecdotes -- small stories that represents larger truths. The absurdist theater of the women's U.S. Open tennis final, along with the mania it provoked, has become just such an anecdote. It illustrates the bleak assessment Edward Ward, my former philosophy professor and friend, once uttered over cheese sandwiches in the campus cafeteria: "We live in a society where we excuse the rules, and condemn their application." ..."
Serena Williams Serves Tantrum, Scores for Identity PoliticsSo we excuse the
rules and condemn their application---but only for certain people
Drama and
literature at their best offer illustrative anecdotes -- small stories that represents larger
truths. The absurdist theater of the women's U.S. Open tennis final, along with the mania it
provoked, has become just such an anecdote. It illustrates the bleak assessment Edward Ward, my
former philosophy professor and friend, once uttered over cheese sandwiches in the campus
cafeteria: "We live in a society where we excuse the rules, and condemn their
application."
Indifference to behavioral regulations and standards of practice had become common to the
point of banality, Ward argued, subjecting anyone who attempted to enforce the rules to
vilification.
For those who do not closely follow professional tennis, here's a review of the controversy.
Serena Williams, undoubtedly one of the greatest players in the history of the game, was facing
a rising superstar from Japan, Naomi Osaka. Williams is only one grand slam championship away
from tying the all-time record, but has recently struggled to triumph over her younger
opponents (most tennis players retire in their early to mid-thirties; Williams is 37). Osaka
had already defeated Williams with ease at the Miami Open in March.
It appeared that the U.S. Open was headed for a repeat early in the match, with Osaka
asserting swift dominance. Early in the first set, however, the linesman, Carlos Ramos, called
a court violation on Williams' coach because he was signaling her -- an illegal activity in the
sport of tennis. Rather than accept the warning, Williams unleashed a reality TV-style tirade
on Ramos, excoriating him for "misreading" her coach's hand gestures and making bizarre
reference to her daughter: "I never cheat I have a daughter, and I stand for what is right for
her."
(Immediately following the match, in a rare and refreshing moment of honesty, Williams'
coach admitted that he was signaling her the entire time, making Williams look both deceitful
and foolish. Most post-match commentary has conveniently omitted the coach's confession from
the record.)
After Williams lost the opening set's fifth game, she slammed her racket into the ground,
causing its frame to bend. Intentional damage to a racquet is a code violation, and Ramos
penalized her a point, the standard punishment for a second offense. Osaka quickly won the next
game, making her the winner of the first set with a lopsided score of 6-2.
Williams then began screaming at Ramos, telling him that he was wrong to penalize her and
protesting that the warning she received should not count as a violation because she was not
cheating. Ramos sat silently as Williams ridiculed his performance as linesman and demanded
that he apologize.
The second set advanced quickly with Osaka continuing to make fast work of Williams. During
every break in play, Williams continued to badger Ramos, indicating that she would not stop
until he announced over his microphone that he was sorry for what he did to her. He ignored her
expressions of anger.
After Osaka pulled ahead 4-3, Williams again berated Ramos for his monstrous failures as a
human being. Bringing her rant to a climax, she called him a "liar" and a "thief."
To impugn the character of a linesman violates the code of conduct governing play in
professional tennis. Ramos flagged her for the third time, issuing the penalty of a forfeited
game, making the set score 5-3. Williams pleaded with supervising officials of the tournament
-- one man, one woman -- to overturn Ramos' calls, and they refused. She then made the
contemptible claim that excited countless social media users and political commentators around
the country: "I've seen men get away with his all the time. Just because I'm a woman, you are
going to take this away from me."
Osaka won the second set, 6-4, and in doing so, became the first Japanese champion of the
U.S. Open. The audience loudly booed and jeered throughout the awards ceremony, and the
commissioner of the U.S. Open disgraced herself by saying, on air and in front of the rightful
champion, "This isn't the end we were looking for." Williams made an attempt to recover some
dignity by instructing her vulgar fans to stop heckling, but the entire event had already
transformed into an ugly American extravaganza. Most infuriating was that Osaka looked
dejected, unable to enjoy her first grand slam victory.
The next day, USA Today ran an opinion piece with the headline "Sexism Cost Serena
Williams Tennis Title." Many other writers and TV analysts, none of whom seemed to know
anything about tennis rules or history, began reciting from the same fatuous and phony script.
A few have even tried to racialize the story, though given that Osaka's father is Haitian, that
narrative has failed to gain traction.
Acting as though Ramos were self-evidently a misogynist, most media mouthpieces ignored that
throughout the U.S. Open, male players have been called for 86 violations and women only 22.
Nine of the 10 largest fines in tennis history for on-court violations have gone to men. Ramos
himself has earned the wrath of men's champions Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Roger Federer
for making calls they felt were too rigid and punitive.
The mob has also compared Williams' tantrum with the boorish imbecility of 1980s tennis
stars John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors. While it's true that both players often acted with
disrespect more reminiscent of barroom drunks than professional athletes, they also benefitted
from terribly lenient regulations of professional tennis. The ATP did not standardize the rules
or crack down on outlandish player conduct until the late 1980s. Not coincidentally, McEnroe
was ejected from the 1990 Australian Open after his fourth violation in a single match.
And yet arguing about the rules and pointing to the score of the match -- it is almost
certain that Osaka would have won regardless -- feels oddly archaic. Many of Williams'
desperate defenders are acting in emotional accordance with some strange, eschatological
commitment to identity politics, and no amount of factual information will dissuade them.
Another term my friend was fond of using was "biased apperception." The critics who call Ramos
sexist without giving him the opportunity to defend himself have adopted a position and are
working backwards to validate it. To pull this off, they have no choice but to excuse the rules
and condemn their application. There is no debate that Williams broke three different rules,
yet the lineman is sexist because he chose to apply them.
Rebecca Traister, a leading feminist writer for New York , begins her boring and
predictable interpretation of the events with the following admission (which negates all the
subsequent sentences in her essay):
I don't care much about the rules of tennis that Serena Williams was accused of violating
at Saturday night's U.S. Open final. Those rules were written for a game and for players who
were not supposed to look or express themselves or play the game as beautifully and
passionately as either Serena Williams or the young woman who eventually beat her,
20-year-old Naomi Osaka, do.
Overlooking Traister's weird disparagement of every women's champion who proceeded Williams
and Osaka as ugly and impassive, and her incoherent grammar (how is a game supposed to "express
themselves"?), it is revealing that she prefaces her entire argument by saying that rules do
not matter if the right people did not author them. The crime is not the transgression, but the
enforcement.
The "excuse the rules, condemn the application" mentality is a societal sickness responsible
for much that troubles our body politic.
To begin with an example that will interest those who practice identity politics, President
Donald Trump has thrived on condemning those who enforce the rules. Though he regularly
demonstrates a daunting pattern of dishonesty, is an unnamed co-conspirator in a criminal
indictment, has seen several of his associates indicted or convicted of crimes, and continually
makes a mockery of decorum and etiquette, whenever he is caught in an act of wrongdoing, his
immediate response is to spit a venomous stream of clichés: "fake news," "deep state,"
"witch hunt."
Another example is the bailout of the big banks that followed the 2008 financial crisis. Few
disagreed that the world's major financial institutions violated the rules, but the idea of
accountability was suddenly radical and unthinkable.
If a connection between corporate malfeasance, presidential malpractice, and a tennis
champion's childish outburst seems tenuous, consider that in all three cases the
get-out-of-jail-free card is an appeal to ideology. Rules, we are asked to believe, are
irrelevant, and even themselves infringements on belief systems like populism and feminism that
are regarded as more important.
The self-involvement and extreme subjectivity necessary for such a destructive belief
permeates into non-ideological aspects of culture. Grade inflation in higher education, as any
instructor can attest, exists largely because students cannot fathom suffering consequences for
lazy or mediocre work. The issuance of assignments and exams is fine, but to actually grade
them according to an objective standard is evil.
America needs a serious dose of Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative. One should act only
in such a way that one would approve of everyone else acting in a given situation.
Writing for The New York Times , retired tennis champion Martina Navratilova wisely
states, "We cannot measure ourselves by what we think we should also be able to get away with.
In fact, this is the sort of behavior that no one should be engaging in on the court. There
have been many times when I was playing that I wanted to break my racket into a thousand
pieces. Then I thought about the kids watching. And I grudgingly held on to that racket."
Obvious to anyone but the willfully ignorant, this is a far better formula for a healthy
society than "I don't care about the rules."
The International Tennis Federation (ITF) released the following statement relating to
umpiring decisions during the 2018 US Open Women's final:
"Carlos Ramos is one of the most experienced and respected umpires in tennis. Mr. Ramos'
decisions were in accordance with the relevant rules and were re-affirmed by the US Open's
decision to fine Serena Williams for the three offences. It is understandable that this high
profile and regrettable incident should provoke debate. At the same time, it is important to
remember that Mr. Ramos undertook his duties as an official according to the relevant rule
book and acted at all times with professionalism and integrity."
"The Grand Slam Rule Book can be found here. Player on site offences including the point
penalty schedule used in this instance can be found in Article III."
ARTICLE III: PLAYER ON-SITE OFFENCES -- pages 36-48
I follow tennis and am not a feminist. There were two things the ump should have done. First, everyone knows that all players
in tennis are getting coached. If ump was going to call it, he should have warned both players and coaches before the match.
Second, when Serena was mouthing off during the changeover, he should have told her: "you've made your point, one more insult
and you're going to get a penalty" and then, just ignore her. If she keeps it up then you dick her.
As for Serena, she is a brand. Which is why she blew up for being caught cheating. It was more important for her to defend her
image than to win the match
Kalmia, September 15, 2018 at 9:17 am
Serena Williams is not unusual in being a world-class athlete/competitor who is also a very very bad loser. Her behavior
wasn't that unusual and the punishment in the game was appropriate, it should have ended with that. In my view, it's the crowd
and her supporters who are the real villains here for letting their bias towards her (and identity politics) warp their sense of
justice and fairness. Poor Osaka deserved much better than the booing and rash of hot takes.
Jeeves, September 15, 2018 at 4:36 pm
Rat: Williams was livid because she was getting her tutu kicked all over the court. Desperate and depraved gamesmanship was
all it was.
Although you'd never know it from the terrible reporting in this article, following the game-penalty imposed by Ramos, Osaka
intentionally gave Serena the next game by missing returns of Serena's serve -- I suppose hoping to calm down the woman who was
her tennis idol growing up. It didn't work, though, because Serena was unappeased–and outplayed. (To top it off, the stupid TV
commentators wanted to give Serena kudos for her quieting of her booing fans at the awards presentation. No-class athlete,
no-class fans.)
Sisera, September 15, 2018 at 10:16 pm
@WorkingClass
Agreed & isn't it funny how in the world of many centrist 'apologist' types, fighting back against identity politics,
entitlement of elites, etc. is in and of itself identity politics?
I mean it's like the grade school insult of 'I know you are but what am I'….and many (albeit not this author) say it with all
the smugness and gotchaness in the world.
They adhere to identity politics and have no self awareness and hence can't recognize it.
Ivo Olavo Castro da Silva, September 16, 2018 at 12:31 am
The fact that Serena's fans and the media supported her disgusting actions only confirm their total absence of any moral
standard.
Tennis Fan, September 16, 2018 at 10:05 am
In response to "Rat says…Why did the judge decide that the final was the time to start applying an otherwise-ignored rule?
Sure, it would have been preferable for her to keep her cool, but it's understandable why Williams was livid."
It may be that coaches get away with coaching quite often, however, IMHO the umpire happened to actually catch the coach
right in the act of coaching (and if you see the video of the supposed incident, her coach, Patrick, actually gives two head-nods
in that very brief moment and to me, the head-nods acknowledge that they made eye contact-my personal opinion only).
The umpire immediately decided to call it out... Who knows, maybe in that very moment, he felt it wasn't fair for her to
be getting coaching, he actually caught the coaching, and his gut instinct was to make the call on it. I don't fault the umpire
one bit. Had Serena accepted the call and moved on, the entire tide of the match may have taken a different turn.
As commented elsewhere, all her screeching about double standards for women are utter BS. She
broke the rules while playing against another woman and not a man. The men's tennis league is
utterly irrelevant since she may as well have compared her league to men's football. She
failed by the standards of her league and not those of another. It was clear that she was
breaking the rules of her league and she was the one that escalated the conflict. It has
nothing to do with women's rights.
The PC drones are rather mentally deficient. They respond to trigger phrases and not to
concepts or principles.
Australian cartoonist Mark Knight is in trouble with J K Rowling and other self-styled
guardians of who may portray Serena Williams in meltdown and who may not. The offending
drawing below:
"... My guess is that this book is just too dangerous to allow it to become part of the debate on "fake news" and "Russiagate." Of course now the CIA doesn't even have to exclusively – "own"- journalists as fronts when ex-CIA heads are being hired outright by MSM as pundits. I just wish someone with access would post an English language PDF version online. It would be a real contribution to free thought and free speech to do so. ..."
"... Western elites realize what they could have, what they could do and what they could get away with, but only if they reinvent the political system Hitler created. If they defeat every enemy abroad who might stop them, next they'll do to their own people what the Nazis did to those they didn't want alive ..."
"... Journos have long been pliant enablers for Intel agencies. It's strange how Dr. Ulfkotte's revelations have been taken as some signifier of further Western moral decay/decadence. ..."
"... The real story here, which the media pretends not to notice, is that if Intelligence services and corporations did not finance newspapers they would cease to exist. The old business model whereby newspapers covered their costs by selling advertising and paid circulation is finished. Under that model there were, to an extent, incentives for the publisher to preserve a modicum of credibility in order to keep readership, as well as reasons to publish sensational stories to beat competition. ..."
"... The days that Ulfkotte recalled were times when it took lots of money and careful preparation to put spooks into the newsroom, nowadays the papers are only too happy to publish the CIA's PR and very grateful if the government pays their journalists' salaries. ..."
"... To understand how journalism is bought, go analyze the output of the Uk's Daily Telegraph. They literally sell space to lobbyists and for several years outraged BTL comment would tear the articles to shreds. The whole UK Press prostitutes itself whenever there is a US war on i.e. all the time. It really is about time the CIA were unmasked – they do not serve our interests, they serve only their own . ..."
The rather obvious suppression of the English version of what was a "best seller" in Germany suggests that the Western system
of thought manipulation and consent manufacture sees itself as weaker and more vulnerable than one might at first imagine.
We can see from a year+ of "Russiagate" that Western media is a clown-show, much of so called "alternative media" included.
My guess is that this book is just too dangerous to allow it to become part of the debate on "fake news" and "Russiagate."
Of course now the CIA doesn't even have to exclusively – "own"- journalists as fronts when ex-CIA heads are being hired outright
by MSM as pundits. I just wish someone with access would post an English language PDF version online. It would be a real contribution
to free thought and free speech to do so.
Just like "200 years together" by Solzhenitsyn which was never officially published in English despite Andrei having authored
many works which were big sellers. Just an example of other private business and corporations are often fully responsible
for pro-establishment censorship.
The treatment of the book aroused suspicion because of its content – ie supine news outlets forever dancing to the tune of western
military imperatives.
Ongoing support for illegal wars tell us that the MSM has hardly been at the forefront of informing readers why war criminals
like Hilary and Obama keep getting away with it. In fact Obama, just like Kissinger was awarded a peace prize – so obviously something
has gone very wrong somewhere.
It may be, although it seems unlikely that the mis-handling of an important theme like this is simply due to oversight by the
publisher (as Matt claims) but neither is it beyond the realms of possibility that somebody has had a word with someone in the
publishing world, perhaps because they are not overly keen on the fact Udo Ulfkotte has deviated from the media's mono-narrative
about why it is necessary for the US to destabilise countries and kill so many of their citizens.
Lets face it – it would be harder for the pattern to be maintained if the MSM was not so afraid of telling the truth, or at
least be more willing to hold to account politicians as the consequences of their disastrous policies unfold for all to see.
Maybe you want to have a go at answering the obvious question begged by such self evident truths – why are the MSM usually
lying?
Somebody said banning books is the modern form of book burning, and like Heinrich Heine said two centuries ago, "Where they burn
books, in the end, they start burning people."
Western elites realize what they could have, what they could do and what they could get away with, but only if they reinvent
the political system Hitler created. If they defeat every enemy abroad who might stop them, next they'll do to their own people
what the Nazis did to those they didn't want alive. If enough water sources are lost to fracking, and enough food sources
lost through poisoned seas and forest fires, many people will go to their camps as refuge but few will survive them. This ecological
destruction is for future population reduction.
In the US they use newspeak to say what the Nazis described with more honesty. Their master race became the indispensable nation,
their world domination became full spectrum dominance, and Totalerkrieg became the global war on terror. There will be others.
Farzad Basoft anyone ? Journos have long been pliant enablers for Intel agencies. It's strange how Dr. Ulfkotte's revelations
have been taken as some signifier of further Western moral decay/decadence.
Maybe I am taking what you wrote out of context but I don't find it strange at all .It is just that someone, Udo, on the inside
has become a whistle blower , and confirmed what most suspected .The establishment can't have that.
As the economy growth has this so-called invisible hand, journalism also has an 'invisible pen'. One of the questions that
need an answer: how come feminists are so anti-Putin and anti-Russia? Easy to connect to dots?
The real story here, which the media pretends not to notice, is that if Intelligence services and corporations did not finance
newspapers they would cease to exist. The old business model whereby newspapers covered their costs by selling advertising and
paid circulation is finished. Under that model there were, to an extent, incentives for the publisher to preserve a modicum of
credibility in order to keep readership, as well as reasons to publish sensational stories to beat competition.
Those days
are gone: none of the newspapers make financial profits, they now exist because they have patrons. They always did, of course,
but now they have nothing else- the advertisers have left and circulation is diminishing rapidly.
The days that Ulfkotte recalled were times when it took lots of money and careful preparation to put spooks into the newsroom,
nowadays the papers are only too happy to publish the CIA's PR and very grateful if the government pays their journalists' salaries.
As to competition that is restricted to publishers competing to demonstrate their loyalty to the government and their ingenuity
in candy coating its propaganda.
Anyone doubt that Luke Harding will be in the running for a Pulitzer? Or perhaps even the Nobel Prize for Literature?
For what it's worth, I skimmed through this very long link by Matt, and could find no mention of poison gas -- certainly no denunciation
-- just horrific conventional arms : Der Spiegel 1984:
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-13508659.html
Also for what it's worth, the German publisher's blurb which I got Google to translate above, says there is much more to the
book than old Soddem: the author names names and points to organizations.
Now, without any evidence, based only on my faulty memory and highly biased interpretation of events strung together on a timeline,
here is my conspiracy story about a very nice country called Iraq and a very nasty Iraqi called Saddam who came to a very nasty
end at the hands of his much more nasty friends, who first gave him a boost and then put in the boot.
1914 Great Britain invades Iraq and BP takes over the Iraqi oilfields.
1968 Iraqi govt member under Yaya wants to nationalize the oil. CIA coup replaces Yaya with Saddam as a safe pair of hands.
1970 Saddam the dirty dog does the dirty on the friends who put him in power; he nationalizes Iraqi oil. And nationalizes Iraqi
banks. From now on Saddam is a dead man walking. Like Mossadeq in Iran whom the US-UK replaced with the Shah
1978 But in Iran the Shah is replaced by the Islamic Socialist Republic -- who again nationalize Iranian oil. Saddam's
friends now face a dilemma: kill him first, or kill the Ayatollah's first? They decide to first go for the Ayatollahs -- with
Saddam's help.
1980 Saddam invades Iran with help from US and Germany -- including, strangely enough, generous supplies of poison gas.
1984-1989 Saddam's invasion of Iran flops. Reports about use of poison gas by Saddam begin to emerge, first in German newspapers
then even debated US govt.
1990 Saddam thinks he has restored credit with the US & Germany by using their weapons against Iran, and now has the green
light to invade another country. Finds out his mistake in the Gulf War. He is once again, a dead man walking. So is his country.
2001 Saddam is accused of harbouring Islamic terrorists who knocked down 3 skyscrapers by flying 2 passenger planes into
them. The idea of Secular Baathist Saddam in league with religious fanatics is ridiculous, but what the heck it's a story.
2003 Saddam hanged for, inter alia, use of chemical weapons; likewise his minister whom the MSM have a field day comically
calling "Chemical" Ali.
2017 Who's next? The Ayatollahs, of course. And anyone else who dares to nationalize "our" oil. Or "our" banks.
That is more than plausible. Unfortunately. Hard not to sympathize with the Iraqis and feel shame for what has been done in the
name of the US and UK. Rotten to the core, and sanctimonious to boot.
To understand how journalism is bought, go analyze the output of the Uk's Daily Telegraph. They literally sell space to lobbyists
and for several years outraged BTL comment would tear the articles to shreds. The whole UK Press prostitutes itself whenever
there is a US war on i.e. all the time. It really is about time the CIA were unmasked – they do not serve our interests, they
serve only their own .
The Guardian sells space to lobbyists too. Not ad space – article space. It's literally hiring itself out to whomever wants to
buy the right to publish an article under its name.
Well one things stands out in bold and that is the fear that such a revelation is associated with. 'Broad spectrum dominance'
of a central intelligent agency is a reversal of the wholeness of being expressing through all its parts.
Fake intelligence
is basically made up to serve a believed goal. The terrorism of fear generates the goal of a self-protection that sells true relationship
to 'save itself'.
This goes deep into what we take to be our mind. The mind that thinks it is in control by controlling what it thinks.
If I can observe this in myself at will, is it any surprise I can see it in our world?
What is the fear that most deeply motivates or drives the human agenda?
I do not ask this of our superficial thinking, but of a core self-honesty that cannot be 'killed' but only covered over with a
thinking-complex.
And is it insane or unreal to be moved by love?
We are creatures of choice and beneath all masking, we are also the creator of choice.
But the true creative is not framed into a choosing between, but feeling one call as the movement of it.
When the 'intelligence' of a masking narrative no longer serves, be the willingness for what you no longer claim to have, and
open to being moved from within.
I am so tired of the simmering fury that lives inside me. This bubbling cauldron brim full of egregious truths, images and accounts
accumulated over nearly 40 years of looking behind the headlines. I disagree that the usurpation of journalists and media organisations
is in any way a recent phenomena. It certainly predates my emergent mind. And even the most lauded of anti-establishment hacks
and film makers self-censored to some degree. True, the blatant in your face propaganda and thought control agenda has accelerated,
but it was always there. I do not believe Chomsky, Oliver Stone, Pilger and their like could have done much more than they have,
that is to guide us in a direction counter to the official narrative. And to insinuate they are gatekeepers, when our heads never
stretch above the parapet, is really just a reflection of our own frustration that despite their work the only change remains
for the worse.
Yet I fear worse is to come. Our safe bitching in glorious anonymity has been all that we have had as solace to the angst that
pervades us, the other 1%. But the the thumbscrew is tightening. We may be as little as months away from any dissent being entirely
removed from the internet by AI algorithms. I have already been receiving warnings on several sites anyone here would call legitimate
that have had their security certificates removed and the statement that the site may contain malicious code etc. How prepared
are we for blackout?
A foundation should be set up in remembrance of Udo and sponsored by all true journalists and truth seekers. Maybe some day there
will be a Udo Ulfkotte award to the bravest journalist of the year .Wouldn't that be something .Udo's work would not have been
in vain . That would throw a monkey wrench into orgs like the Guardian and their ilk .Just dreaming out loud maybe , but with
good intentions.
Thank you Alun for the link to the German edition, which I have managed to download (naughty me!) I think the suggestion of retranslating
important sections and dressing these in some commentary for (presumably legitimate) publication on e.g. Off-G would be a good
idea. I'm quite fluent in German and would be glad to help.
Mods: do you see any legal pitfalls?
That depends on who holds the rights to the English language version and the original and whether they would want to take issue.
If it's Ulfkotte's family they may be happy to see his work get some sort of airing in English. If it's his publishers we can
imagine they will see things differently – as indeed would whoever it is that seems to want the book buried.
I heard it is blocked in many western countries, as the site is well known for its disregard for copyright. Fortunately not the
case where I am (NZ). If you're technically inclined, a VPN or anonymising application may help, although a VPN that 'exits' in
a western area won't get you any further ahead.
One hopes. I also hold out hope for F. William Engdahl's "Geheimakte NGOs." Here's a Dissident Voice article in which Engdahl
discusses the role of NGOs in aiding and abetting the US regime change program:
Yes, it has also been interesting to note that in 2015 the Guardian published a review of Richard Sakwa's book 'Frontline Ukraine'
in which the author was critical of both NATO and the EU, in fomenting this crisis. The 2014 'coup' which was carried out in February
2014 was, according to the independent geopolitical publication, Strator, 'the most blatant in history.' The appraisal which was
carried out by Guardian journalist Jonathon Steele was generally favourably disposed to Sakwa's record of events; however, Mr
Steele now rarely publishes anything in the Guardian. Read into this what you like.
As to Sakwa's latest book,'' Russia Against the Rest'', – nothing, not a peep, it doesn't exist, it never existed, it never
will exist. It would appear to be the case that the Guardian is now fully integrated into the military/surveillance/media-propaganda
apparatus. The liberal gatekeeper as to what is and what isn't acceptable. Its function is pure to serve the interests of the
powerful, in much the same way as the church did in the middle ages. The media doesn't just serve the interests power it is also
part of the same structure of dominance, albeit the liberal wing of the ruling coalition.
During the British war against the Boers in South Africa, at the turn of the 19/20 century, the then Manchester Guardian took
a brave and critical stand against the UK government. This lead to its offices in Manchester being attacked by jingoistic mobs,
as was the home of the then editor C.P.Scott, whose family needed police protection. In those days 'Facts were Sacred', unlike
the present where opposing views are increasingly ignored or suppressed.
Having just watched the documentary film tribute to I.F. Stone, "All Governments Lie", I was struck by the fact that no-one mentioned
Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone journalist (who outed General McChrystal, but whose Mercedes went mysteriously out of control,
hit a tree and exploded, throwing the engine 200 yards clear of the wreck ). Here was a film about control and self-censorship,
yet no-one even breathed the acronyms C.I.A. or FBI. Matt Taibbi referred to a silent coup, but none dared to mention the assassinations
of JFK, MLK and RFK. These doyens of Truth included the thoroughly dodgy Noam Chomsky. Finally, the Spartacus website suggests
that the saintly I.F. Stone was in the pay of the CIA. Other terms unspoken were CIA Operation Mockingbird or Operation Northwoods.
There was a clip of 9/11, but zero attempt to join up all the dots.
RIP Udo Ulfkotte. CIA long ago developed a dart to induce all the signs of a heart attack, so one is naturally somewhat suspicious.
Lies and assassinations are two sides of the same coin.
The only thing harder to find than Udo Ulfkotte's book is a Guardian review of it.
I daresay any mention of this book, BTL, would immediately be moderated (i.e censored) followed by a yellow or red card for
the cheeky commentator.
The level of pretence on this forum has now reached epic proportions, and seems to cuts both ways, ie. commentators pretending
that there are not several subjects which are virtually impossible to discuss in any depth (such as media censorship), and moderators
pretending that 'community standards' is not simply a crude device to control conversational discourse, especially when a commentators
point of view stray beyond narrow, Guardian approved borders.
Books, such as 'Bought Journalists' (which expose the corruption at the heart of western media) are especially inconvenient
for the risible 'fake news' agenda currently being rammed down the readerships throat – some of these people at the Guardian have
either absolutely no insight, or no shame.
Ulfkotte and Ganser in their ways are both telling a similar story – NATO, i.e an arm of the US military industrial complex
are mass murderers and sufficiently intimidating to have most western journalists singing from the same hymn sheet.
Since the Guardian follows the party line it is only possible to send coded or cryptic messages (BTL) should commentators wish
to deviate from the approved narrative.
For example, I was 'pre-moderated' for having doubts about the veracity of the so called 'Parsons Green tube bomb', especially
the nature of the injuries inflicted on a young model who looked like she was suffering from toothache.
https://www.thenational.ae/image/policy:1.628812:1505494262/wo16-web-parsons-green.JPG?f=16×9&w=1024&$p$f$w=e135eda
Been there, done that. What ordinarily happens if the submission is proper and cannot be censored on the basis of impropriety
or foulmouthedness or any other good reason, but exposes a Guardian sacred cow in an embarrassing light, is that it is said to
be off topic. Now this is really unaccountable, and truly subjective.
The community in community standards is "them" and has close ties to the 1%, if I hazard a guess.
... hilariously, UK security minister Wallace asserted the Novichok was assuredly in a perfume bottle, got into the country
because of poor baggage checks, had the capability "to kill or injure hundreds and hundreds of people", but was not a health risk
to persons on the plane or public transit used by the suspects. ????
Article over at the Stalker Zone on the forged letter that brought down the first UK Labour government of Ramsey McDonald in 1924.
"The frank forgery that is the "Zinoviev's letter" came to London from the Riga department of the Secret Intelligence Service
of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office of Britain (or SIS, nowadays better known as MI-6) with an assurance that the authenticity
of the document "does not raise doubts" (the most ancient form of "highly likely") The Labour government was doomed. Rectifying
the situation in such a short period of time before elections didn't seem to be possible."
Mark Twain's truism still holds today, "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
And the media is little different except for sites like this. Thanks B and keep up the good fight. Don't let the bastards get
you down.
Vladimir Kornilov: The Prequel to the Skripal Affair – Britain Investigates the "Great Forgery"
During the administration of President George W. Bush, state attorneys general used state
authority to prosecute securities and financial transgressions. Notably, former New York
state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer relied on authority provided by the state's 1910 Martin
Act, which predates the federal securities law, to take legal action actions against
insurance firms for brokerage practices, hedge funds for improper trading practices in mutual
fund shares, and investment banks for conflicts of interest that distorted the investment
research they provided, to name some of the most significant initiatives. Spitzer's
successors as attorney general, current New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and current Attorney
General Eric Schneiderman, have not had the impact that Spitzer had when he was lauded as the
Sheriff of Wall Street.
Another New York regulator, Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of New York's Department of
Financial Services used the threat of denying a NY state banking charter to force tougher terms
on settlements in which the Eric Holder/Loretta Lynch DoJ and other federal regulators had
rolled over (see this post by Yves for a summary:
Wall Street's Nemesis, Benjamin Lawsky, to Resign in June .).Other states, such as
California, have their own expansive statutes– though now-US Senator Kamala Harris
demonstrated when she served as California's AG that she more interested in virtue-signalling
than taking scalps.
has been a longstanding bugbear of environmentalists. In his previous role as attorney
general for the state of Oklahoma– a major producer of oil and natural gas– he
either filed or joined lawsuits that sought to stymie the modest pro-regulatory environmental
and climate change agenda the EPA previously espoused.
Like-minded Republicans AGs often joined him in these efforts.
So, What's On the Agenda for These AGs?
The most immediate threat to the tech industry might arise in the area of antitrust
enforcement– which, shall we say, has not been a major priority for recent
administrations, although the European Union has investigated and fined Google over competition
concerns. Yet as recently as the Clinton administration, Microsoft was a target of an major
antitrust action instigated by multiple state AGs in conjunction with the DoJ
Over to the WSJ again:
The [Sessions meeting ] announcement -- released amid last week's
congressional hearings into the practices of Facebook and Twitter -- shed little light on
who was raising the concerns or what remedies might be under consideration. But recent
comments by several of the state attorneys general suggest they are actively exploring an
antitrust investigation and hope to enlist Washington.
"I think the companies are too big, and they need to be broken up," Republican Louisiana
Attorney General Jeff Landry said Thursday in a radio interview.
There is some evidence that party politics are driving this potential enforcement
initiative:
Republicans' allegations that the tech companies suppress conservative voices has bubbled
up for months in conservative media and was amplified
by Mr. Trump late last month . Democrats have said that is the issue -- more than
antitrust policy -- behind the coming Justice Department meeting, with Republicans hoping to
stir their conservative base ahead of November elections
All the attorneys general who are expected to attend this month's meeting in Washington
are Republicans, with Democratic officials saying they have yet to be invited.
Although it's too soon to say where these preliminary discussions between the DoJ and the
the state AGs may lead, I want to draw attention to another development– the weakening of
the hold of corporate Democrats on the direction of the party. David Sirota published an
interesting piece in Monday's Guardian,
Yes, let's wipe out Trump. But take neoliberal Democrats with him, too .
Sirota's piece wasn't especially concerned about Big Tech per se, and focused on a
percolating progressive policy agenda. He mentions regulation, but only as it affects financial
firms and pharmaceutical companies and where so far, corporate Democrats have successfully
insulated their paymasters from any significant increase in legal liability.
But if progressives start to wield greater influence on the Democratic side– and
Republican AGs follow through with a tougher approach to enforcement– the future might
shape up to be a less comfortable operating environment for US internet companies. Or at least
we might hope. /n
I can understand antitrust and data-privacy violations but with regard to "stifling the
free exchange of ideas" on their platforms, what legal statutes are being violated even if
these companies were found to be supressing conservative speech?
The OLG Munich recently decided that Facebook violated the right to free speech of a
politician by deleting her post. Facebook gave their community rules as a reason for the
deletion. The court ruled that Facebook could not rely on their rights a privat entity to do
as they please in their own place (Hausrecht in German) but rather had to uphold the right to
free spreech granted by the German constitution. This is a new interpretation of the law by a
significant court and possibly transfers some of the burden ususally only placed on the state
(uphold free speech) unto a privat company. The reason given is that Facebook is a
controlling, monopolistic entity in the realm of social interaction and has therefore more
responsibilties. The OLG Munich is the highest court in its court-district, Southern Bavaria,
only below the federal court (BGH) and the ruling sets a binding precedent in its district
and serves as an interesting opinion for the rest of Germany. Mind you precedent is of a lot
less important in Germany than in the case-law US system and there are many differing rulings
out there.
I suppose the arguments for supressing conservative speech or something like that might go
a similar route in the US.
PS: Please excuse the rambling source it is the only one in English I could find; also
take my reasoning regarding the court ruling with a pinch of salt since I am not an attorney.
At least the apparent confusion between forced deletion on one hand and forced non-deletion
on the other hand mentioned in the source is easily explained. Free speech has its limits and
violating those is in some cases a criminal offence, e.g. criminal insults, incitement to
violance against people, etc.. A recent law in Germany requires sites like Facebook or
Twitter to take obvious cases of such posts down, instead of waiting for the police or
prosecution to act. This is worthy of a discussion in itself but it still leaves room between
what Facebook arbitrarily deems acceptable based in its guidelines and what is acceptable
under free speech in Germany, and here the court made their ruling.
"... By cutting interest rates to near zero and pumping trillions -- yes, you read that right -- into the economy, the Federal Reserve essentially put a trampoline under the stock market. ..."
"... Only about half of American households have any exposure to the stock market, including 401(k)'s and retirement plans, and ownership of the shares of individual companies is clustered among upper-income families. ..."
Once a year or so, the economist Diane Swonk ventures into the basement of her 1891 Victorian house outside Chicago and opens
a plastic box containing the items that mean the most to her: awards, wedding pictures, the clothes she was wearing at the World
Trade Center on the day it was attacked. But what she seeks out again and again is a bound diary of the events of the financial crisis
and their aftermath.
"It's useful to go back and see what a chaotic time it was and how terrifying it was," she said. "That time is seared in my mind.
I looked at it again recently, and all the pain came flooding back."
A decade later, things are eerily calm. The economy, by nearly any official measure,
is robust . Wall Street is
flirting with new highs . And the housing market, the epicenter of the crash, has recovered in many places. But like the diary
stored in Ms. Swonk's basement, the scars of the financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession are still with us, just below the
surface.
The most profound of these is that the uneven nature of the recovery compounded a long-term imbalance in the accumulation of wealth.
As a consequence, what it means to be secure has changed. Wealth, real wealth, now comes from investment portfolios, not salaries.
Fortunes are made through an initial public offering, a grant of stock options, a buyout or another form of what high-net-worth individuals
call a liquidity event.
Data from the Federal Reserve show that over the last decade and a half, the proportion of family income from wages has dropped
from nearly 70 percent to just under 61 percent. It's an extraordinary shift, driven largely by the investment profits of the very
wealthy. In short, the people who possess tradable assets, especially stocks, have enjoyed a recovery that Americans dependent on
savings or income from their weekly paycheck have yet to see. Ten years after the financial crisis, getting ahead by going to work
every day seems quaint, akin to using the phone book to find a number or renting a video at Blockbuster.
The financial crisis didn't just kill the dream of getting rich from your day job. It also put an end to a fundamental belief
of the middle class: that owning a home was always a good idea because prices moved in only one direction -- up. The bubble, while
it lasted, gave millions in the middle class a sense of validation of their financial acumen, and made them feel as if they had done
the Right Thing.
In theory, if you lost your job, or suffered some other kind of financial setback, you could always sell into a real estate market
that was forever rising. Ever-higher home prices became a steam valve, and the "greater fool" theory substituted for any conventional
measure of value.
The kindling for the fire that consumed Wall Street and nearly the entire economy was mortgages that should never have been taken
out in the first place. Homeowners figured the more house the better, whether or not their income could support the monthly payment,
while greedy banks and middlemen were all too happy to encourage them.
When the bubble burst, the bedrock investment for many families was wiped out by a combination of falling home values and too
much debt. A decade after this debacle, the typical middle-class family's net worth is still more than $40,000 below where it was
in 2007, according to the Federal Reserve. The damage done to the middle-class psyche is impossible to price, of course, but no one
doubts that it was vast.
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Banks were hurt, too, but aside from the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the pain proved transitory. Bankers themselves were never
punished for their sins. In one form or another -- the Troubled Asset Relief Program, quantitative easing, the Fed's discount window
-- the financial sector was supported in spectacular fashion.
Like the bankers, shareholders and investors were also bailed out. By cutting interest rates to near zero and pumping trillions
-- yes, you read that right -- into the economy, the Federal Reserve essentially put a trampoline under the stock market. The subsequent
bounce produced a windfall, but only for a limited group of beneficiaries. Only about half of American households have any exposure
to the stock market, including 401(k)'s and retirement plans, and ownership of the shares of individual companies is clustered among
upper-income families.
For homeowners, there wasn't much of a rescue package from Washington, and eight million succumbed to foreclosure. Sometimes,
eviction came in the form of marshals with court orders; in other cases, families quietly handed over the keys to the bank and just
walked away. Although home prices in hot markets have fully recovered, many homeowners are still underwater in the worst-hit states
like Florida, Arizona and Nevada. Meanwhile,
more Americans are renting and have little prospect of ever owning a home.
Worsening the picture, the post-crisis era has been marked by an increased disparity in wealth between white, Hispanic and African-American
members of the middle class. That's according to an analysis of Fed data by the Pew Research Center, which found that families in
the latter two groups were more dependent on housing as their principal form of investment. Not only were both minority groups harder
hit by foreclosures, but Hispanics were also twice as likely as other Americans to be living in Sun Belt states where the housing
crash was most severe.
In 2016, net worth among white middle-income families was 19 percent below 2007 levels, adjusted for inflation. But among blacks,
it was down 40 percent, and Hispanics saw a drop of 46 percent. For many, old-fashioned hard work has simply not been a viable path
out of this hole. After unemployment peaked in the fall of 2009, it took years for joblessness to return to pre-recession levels.
Slack in the labor market left the employed and unemployed alike with little leverage to demand raises, even as corporate profits
surged.
Maybe it was inevitable that when half the population watches its wages stagnate while the other half gets rich in the market,
the result is President Donald Trump and Brexit.
"It peeled away the facade and revealed an anger that had been building for decades," said Ms. Swonk, who is chief economist at
Grant Thornton in Chicago. "The crisis was horrific, but its legacy pushed us over the edge in terms of the discontent."
It also made inequality and the One Percent an urgent topic, and made
unlikely celebrities
of wonky intellectuals such as the economist Thomas Piketty. His best seller, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," published
in 2013, was 816 data-laden pages that laid out a grim diagnosis. Mr. Piketty argued that the decades after World War II, when the
divisions between the classes narrowed and opportunities to move up the economic ladder expanded -- that is, when the middle class
as we knew it was formed -- may actually have been an aberration. Society, Mr. Piketty wrote, risks a return to the historical norm
of a yawning gap between rich and poor.
Whether or not he is right, the concentration of wealth that is a legacy of the financial crisis will make itself felt far into
the future. Younger Americans, in particular, will be marked by the experience of 2008 much as the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression
haunted the generations who lived through it in the last century. Not only were they unable to accumulate assets in the lean years
of the early recovery, but they also missed out on the recent stock market rally that benefited their older and richer peers.
A recent study
by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that while all birth cohorts lost wealth during the Great Recession, Americans
born in the 1980s were at the "greatest risk for becoming a lost generation for wealth accumulation."
For those fortunate enough to still possess wealth after the crisis, the future looks very different. With the security provided
by assets, rather than just income, they and especially their children are on a glide path for a gilded financial future.
"Over and over, you see that family wealth is an important determinant of opportunity for the next generation, over and above
income," said Fabian T. Pfeffer, a sociologist at the University of Michigan. "Wealth serves as a private safety net that allows
you to behave differently and plan differently."
A wealthy person who loses a job can afford to be more choosy and wait for an opportunity suited to his or her skills and experience.
The risk of going to an expensive college and taking on debt is lower when there is parental wealth to fall back on.
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Timothy Smeeding, who teaches public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin, put it more bluntly. "You can see dynasties
starting to form," he said.
Ten years have passed since the trauma of 2008, the nerves are still raw, and the pain still has a way of flaring up. Every time
she goes down into the basement and peruses her diary, Diane Swonk feels it anew.
"It is the diary of an economist, as well as a mother and a human being," Ms. Swonk said. It includes her published writings for
clients, as well as her feelings, thoughts and fears as the crisis unfolded. She also recorded her impression of key figures she
met during those fateful months, including Lawrence H. Summers, a top White House economic official at the time, and Ben S. Bernanke,
then the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
"The financial crisis became a delineator," she said. "There were those who could recoup their losses and those who could not.
Some people have amnesia, but we are still living with the wounds."
Nelson D. Schwartz has covered economics since 2012. Previously, he wrote about Wall Street and banking, and
also served as European economic correspondent in Paris. He joined The Times in 2007 as a feature writer for the Sunday Business
section.
"... "Let us linger over the perversity," he writes in "Why Millions of Ordinary Americans Support Donald Trump," one of the seventeen component essays in Rendezvous with Oblivion : "Let us linger over the perversity. Left parties the world over were founded to advance the fortunes of working people. But our left party in America -- one of our two monopoly parties -- chose long ago to turn its back on these people's concerns, making itself instead into the tribune of the enlightened professional class, a 'creative class' that makes innovative things like derivative securities and smartphone apps ..."
"... And the real bad news is not that this Creative Class, this Expert Class, this Meritocratic Class, this Professional Class -- this Liberal Class, with all its techno-ecstasy and virtue-questing and unleashing of innovation -- is so deeply narcissistic and hypocritical, but rather that it is so self-interestedly parasitical and predatory. ..."
Thomas Frank's new collection of essays: Rendezvous with Oblivion: Reports from a
Sinking Society (Metropolitan Books 2018) and Listen, Liberal; or,Whatever
Happened to the Party of the People? (ibid. 2016)
To hang out with Thomas Frank for a couple of hours is to be reminded that, going back to
1607, say, or to 1620, for a period of about three hundred and fifty years, the most archetypal
of American characters was, arguably, the hard-working, earnest, self-controlled, dependable
white Protestant guy, last presented without irony a generation or two -- or three -- ago in
the television personas of men like Ward Cleaver and Mister Rogers.
Thomas Frank, who grew up in Kansas and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, who
at age 53 has the vibe of a happy eager college nerd, not only glows with authentic Midwestern
Nice (and sometimes his face turns red when he laughs, which is often), he actually lives in
suburbia, just outside of D.C., in Bethesda, where, he told me, he takes pleasure in mowing the
lawn and doing some auto repair and fixing dinner for his wife and two children. (Until I met
him, I had always assumed it was impossible for a serious intellectual to live in suburbia and
stay sane, but Thomas Frank has proven me quite wrong on this.)
Frank is sincerely worried about the possibility of offending friends and acquaintances by
the topics he chooses to write about. He told me that he was a B oy Scout back in Kansas, but
didn't make Eagle. He told me that he was perhaps a little too harsh on Hillary Clinton in his
brilliantly perspicacious "Liberal Gilt [ sic ]" chapter at the end of Listen,
Liberal . His piercing insight into and fascination with the moral rot and the hypocrisy
that lies in the American soul brings, well, Nathaniel Hawthorne to mind, yet he refuses to say
anything (and I tried so hard to bait him!) mean about anyone, no matter how culpable he or she
is in the ongoing dissolving and crumbling and sinking -- all his
metaphors -- of our society. And with such metaphors Frank describes the "one essential story"
he is telling in Rendezvous with Oblivion : "This is what a society looks like when the
glue that holds it together starts to dissolve. This is the way ordinary citizens react when
they learn that the structure beneath them is crumbling. And this is the thrill that pulses
through the veins of the well-to-do when they discover that there is no longer any limit on
their power to accumulate" ( Thomas Frank in NYC on book tour https://youtu.be/DBNthCKtc1Y ).
And I believe that Frank's self-restraint, his refusal to indulge in bitter satire even as
he parses our every national lie, makes him unique as social critic. "You will notice," he
writes in the introduction to Rendezvous with Oblivion, "that I describe [these
disasters] with a certain amount of levity. I do that because that's the only way to confront
the issues of our time without sinking into debilitating gloom" (p. 8). And so rather than
succumbing to an existential nausea, Frank descends into the abyss with a dependable flashlight
and a ca. 1956 sitcom-dad chuckle.
"Let us linger over the perversity," he writes in "Why Millions of Ordinary Americans
Support Donald Trump," one of the seventeen component essays in Rendezvous with Oblivion
: "Let us linger over the perversity. Left parties the world over were founded to advance the
fortunes of working people. But our left party in America -- one of our two monopoly parties --
chose long ago to turn its back on these people's concerns, making itself instead into the
tribune of the enlightened professional class, a 'creative class' that makes innovative things
like derivative securities and smartphone apps " (p. 178).
And it is his analysis of this "Creative Class" -- he usually refers to it as the "Liberal
Class" and sometimes as the "Meritocratic Class" in Listen, Liberal (while Barbara
Ehrenreich uses the term " Professional Managerial Class ,"and Matthew Stewart recently
published an article entitled "The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy" in the
Atlantic ) -- that makes it clear that Frank's work is a continuation of the profound
sociological critique that goes back to Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class
(1899) and, more recently, to Christopher Lasch's The Revolt of the Elites (1994).
Unlike Veblen and Lasch, however, Frank is able to deliver the harshest news without any
hauteur or irascibility, but rather with a deftness and tranquillity of mind, for he is both in
and of the Creative Class; he abides among those afflicted by the epidemic which he diagnoses:
"Today we live in a world of predatory bankers, predatory educators, even predatory health care
providers, all of them out for themselves . Liberalism itself has changed to accommodate its
new constituents' technocratic views. Today, liberalism is the philosophy not of the sons of
toil but of the 'knowledge economy' and, specifically, of the knowledge economy's winners: the
Silicon Valley chieftains, the big university systems, and the Wall Street titans who gave so
much to Barack Obama's 2008 campaign . They are a 'learning class' that truly gets the power of
education. They are a 'creative class' that naturally rebels against fakeness and conformity.
They are an ' innovation class ' that just can't stop coming up with awesome new stuff" (
Listen, Liberal , pp. 27-29).
And the real bad news is not that this Creative Class, this Expert Class, this
Meritocratic Class, this Professional Class -- this Liberal Class, with all its
techno-ecstasy and virtue-questing and unleashing of innovation -- is so deeply narcissistic
and hypocritical, but rather that it is so self-interestedly parasitical and
predatory.
The class that now runs the so-called Party of the People is impoverishing the people; the
genius value-creators at Amazon and Google and Uber are Robber Barons, although, one must
grant, hipper, cooler, and oh so much more innovative than their historical predecessors. "In
reality," Frank writes in Listen, Liberal ,
.there is little new about this stuff except the software, the convenience, and the
spying. Each of the innovations I have mentioned merely updates or digitizes some business
strategy that Americans learned long ago to be wary of. Amazon updates the practices of
Wal-Mart, for example, while Google has dusted off corporate behavior from the days of the
Robber Barons. What Uber does has been compared to the every-man-for-himself hiring
procedures of the pre-union shipping docks . Together, as Robert Reich has written, all these
developments are 'the logical culmination of a process that began thirty years ago when
corporations began turning over full-time jobs to temporary workers, independent contractors,
free-lancers, and consultants.' This is atavism, not innovation . And if we keep going in
this direction, it will one day reduce all of us to day laborers, standing around like the
guys outside the local hardware store, hoping for work. (p. 215).
And who gets this message? The YouTube patriot/comedian Jimmy Dore, Chicago-born,
ex-Catholic, son of a cop, does for one. "If you read this b ook, " Dore said while
interviewing Frank back in January of 2017, "it'll make y ou a radical" (Frank Interview Part 4
https://youtu.be/JONbGkQaq8Q ).
But to what extent, on the other hand, is Frank being actively excluded from our elite media
outlets? He's certainly not on TV or radio or in print as much as he used to be. So is he a
prophet without honor in his own country? Frank, of course, is too self-restrained to speculate
about the motives of these Creative Class decision-makers and influencers. "But it is ironic
and worth mentioning," he told me, "that most of my writing for the last few years has been in
a British publication, The Guardian and (in translation) in Le Monde Diplomatique
. The way to put it, I think, is to describe me as an ex-pundit."
Frank was, nevertheless, happy to tell me in vivid detail about how his most fundamental
observation about America, viz. that the Party of the People has become hostile to the
people , was for years effectively discredited in the Creative Class media -- among the
bien-pensants , that is -- and about what he learned from their denialism.
JS: Going all the way back to your 2004 book What's the Matter with Kansas? -- I
just looked at Larry Bartels's attack on it, "What's the Matter with What's the Matter with
Kansas?" -- and I saw that his first objection to your book was, Well, Thomas Frank says the
working class is alienated from the Democrats, but I have the math to show that that's false.
How out of touch does that sound now?
TCF: [laughs merrily] I know.
JS: I remember at the time that was considered a serious objection to your
thesis.
TCF: Yeah. Well, he was a professor at Princeton. And he had numbers. So it looked
real. And I actually wrote a response to
that in which I pointed out that there were other statistical ways of looking at it, and he
had chosen the one that makes his point.
JS: Well, what did Mark Twain say?
TCF: Mark Twain?
JS: There are lies, damned lies --
TCF: [laughs merrily] -- and statistics! Yeah. Well, anyhow, Bartels's take became
the common sense of the highly educated -- there needs to be a term for these people by the
way, in France they're called the bien-pensants -- the "right-thinking," the people who
read The Atlantic, The New York Times op-ed page, The Washington Post op-ed page,
and who all agree with each other on everything -- there's this tight little circle of
unanimity. And they all agreed that Bartels was right about that, and that was a costly
mistake. For example, Paul Krugman, a guy whom I admire in a lot of ways, he referenced this
four or five times.
He agreed with it . No, the Democrats are not losing the white working class outside the
South -- they were not going over to the Republicans. The suggestion was that there is
nothing to worry about. Yes. And there were people saying this right up to the 2016
election. But it was a mistake.
JS: I remember being perplexed at the time. I had thought you had written this brilliant
book, and you weren't being taken seriously -- because somebody at Princeton had run some
software -- as if that had proven you wrong.
TCF: Yeah, that's correct . That was a very widespread take on it. And Bartels was
incorrect, and I am right, and [laughs merrily] that's that.
JS: So do you think Russiagate is a way of saying, Oh no no no no, Hillary didn't really
lose?
TCF: Well, she did win the popular vote -- but there's a whole set of pathologies out
there right now that all stem from Hillary Denialism. And I don't want to say that Russiagate
is one of them, because we don't know the answer to that yet.
JS: Um, ok.
TCF: Well, there are all kinds of questionable reactions to 2016 out there, and what
they all have in common is the faith that Democrats did nothing wrong. For example, this same
circle of the bien-pensants have decided that the only acceptable explanation for
Trump's victory is the racism of his supporters. Racism can be the only explanation for the
behavior of Trump voters. But that just seems odd to me because, while it's true of course that
there's lots of racism in this country, and while Trump is clearly a bigot and clearly won the
bigot vote, racism is just one of several factors that went into what happened in 2016. Those
who focus on this as the only possible answer are implying that all Trump voters are
irredeemable, lost forever.
And it comes back to the same point that was made by all those people who denied what was
happening with the white working class, which is: The Democratic Party needs to do nothing
differently . All the post-election arguments come back to this same point. So a couple
years ago they were saying about the white working class -- we don't have to worry about them
-- they're not leaving the Democratic Party, they're totally loyal, especially in the northern
states, or whatever the hell it was. And now they say, well, Those people are racists, and
therefore they're lost to us forever. What is the common theme of these two arguments? It's
always that there's nothing the Democratic Party needs to do differently. First, you haven't
lost them; now you have lost them and they're irretrievable: Either way -- you see what I'm
getting at? -- you don't have to do anything differently to win them.
JS: Yes, I do.
TCF: The argument in What's the Matter with Kansas? was that this is a
long-term process, the movement of the white working class away from the Democratic Party. This
has been going on for a long time. It begins in the '60s, and the response of the Democrats by
and large has been to mock those people, deride those people, and to move away from organized
labor, to move away from class issues -- working class issues -- and so their response has been
to make this situation worse, and it gets worse, and it gets worse, and it gets worse, and it
gets worse! And there's really no excuse for them not seeing it. But they say, believe,
rationalize, you know, come up with anything that gets then off the hook for this, that allows
them to ignore this change. Anything. They will say or believe whatever it takes.
JS: Yes.
TCF: By the way, these are the smartest people! These are tenured professors at Ivy
League institutions, these are people with Nobel Prizes, people with foundation grants, people
with, you know, chairs at prestigious universities, people who work at our most prestigious
media outlets -- that's who's wrong about all this stuff.
JS: [quoting the title of David Halberstam's 1972 book, an excerpt from which Frank uses
as an epigraph for Listen, Liberal ] The best and the brightest!
TCF: [laughing merrily] Exactly. Isn't it fascinating?
JS: But this gets to the irony of the thing. [locates highlighted passage in book] I'm
going to ask you one of the questions you ask in Rendezvous with Oblivion: "Why are
worshippers of competence so often incompetent?" (p. 165). That's a huge question.
TCF: That's one of the big mysteries. Look. Take a step back. I had met Barack Obama.
He was a professor at the University of Chicago, and I'd been a student there. And he was super
smart. Anyhow, I met him and was really impressed by him. All the liberals in Hyde Park --
that's the neighborhood we lived in -- loved him, and I was one of them, and I loved him too.
And I was so happy when he got elected.
Anyhow, I knew one thing he would do for sure, and that is he would end the reign of
cronyism and incompetence that marked the Bush administration and before them the Reagan
administration. These were administrations that actively promoted incompetent people. And I
knew Obama wouldn't do that, and I knew Obama would bring in the smartest people, and he'd get
the best economists. Remember, when he got elected we were in the pit of the crisis -- we were
at this terrible moment -- and here comes exactly the right man to solve the problem. He did
exactly what I just described: He brought in [pause] Larry Summers, the former president of
Harvard, considered the greatest economist of his generation -- and, you know, go down the
list: He had Nobel Prize winners, he had people who'd won genius grants, he had The Best and
the Brightest . And they didn't really deal with the problem. They let the Wall Street
perpetrators off the hook -- in a catastrophic way, I would argue. They come up with a health
care system that was half-baked. Anyhow, the question becomes -- after watching the great
disappointments of the Obama years -- the question becomes: Why did government-by-expert
fail?
JS: So how did this happen? Why?
TCF: The answer is understanding experts not as individual geniuses but as members
of a class . This is the great missing link in all of our talk about expertise. Experts
aren't just experts: They are members of a class. And they act like a class. They have loyalty
to one another; they have a disdain for others, people who aren't like them, who they perceive
as being lower than them, and there's this whole hierarchy of status that they are at the
pinnacle of.
And once you understand this, then everything falls into place! So why did they let the Wall
Street bankers off the hook? Because these people were them. These people are their peers. Why
did they refuse to do what obviously needed to be done with the health care system? Because
they didn't want to do that to their friends in Big Pharma. Why didn't Obama get tough with
Google and Facebook? They obviously have this kind of scary monopoly power that we haven't seen
in a long time. Instead, he brought them into the White House, he identified with them. Again,
it's the same thing. Once you understand this, you say: Wait a minute -- so the Democratic
Party is a vehicle of this particular social class! It all makes sense. And all of a sudden all
of these screw-ups make sense. And, you know, all of their rhetoric makes sense. And the way
they treat working class people makes sense. And they way they treat so many other demographic
groups makes sense -- all of the old-time elements of the Democratic Party: unions, minorities,
et cetera. They all get to ride in back. It's the professionals -- you know, the professional
class -- that sits up front and has its hands on the steering wheel.
* * *
It is, given Frank's persona, not surprising that he is able to conclude Listen,
Liberal with a certain hopefulness, and so let me end by quoting some of his final
words:
What I saw in Kansas eleven years ago is now everywhere . It is time to face the obvious:
that the direction the Democrats have chosen to follow for the last few decades has been a
failure for both the nation and for their own partisan health . The Democrats posture as the
'party of the people' even as they dedicate themselves ever more resolutely to serving and
glorifying the professional class. Worse: they combine self-righteousness and class privilege
in a way that Americans find stomach-turning . The Democrats have no interest in reforming
themselves in a more egalitarian way . What we can do is strip away the Democrats' precious
sense of their own moral probity -- to make liberals live without the comforting knowledge
that righteousness is always on their side . Once that smooth, seamless sense of liberal
virtue has been cracked, anything becomes possible. (pp. 256-257).
At this point there's not even so much as feigning surprise or
suspense in the now sadly all-too-familiar Syria script out of Washington.
The Wall Street Journal has just published a bombshell on Sunday evening as Russian and
Syrian warplanes continue bombing raids over al-Qaeda held Idlib, citing
unnamed US officials who claim " President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has approved the use of
chlorine gas in an offensive against the country's last major rebel stronghold."
And perhaps more alarming is that the report details that Trump is undecided over whether
new retaliatory strikes could entail expanding the attack to hit Assad allies Russia and Iran
this time around .
That's right, unnamed US officials are now claiming to be in possession of intelligence
which they say shows Assad has already given the order in an absolutely unprecedented level of
"pre-crime" telegraphing of events on the battlefield .
And supposedly these officials have even identified the type of chemical weapon to be used:
chlorine gas .
The anonymous officials told the WSJ of "new U.S. intelligence" in what appears an eerily
familiar repeat of precisely how the 2003 invasion of Iraq was sold to the American public
(namely, "anonymous officials" and vague assurances of unseen intelligence) -- albeit posturing
over Idlib is now unfolding at
an intensely more rapid pace :
Fears of a massacre have been fueled by new U.S. intelligence indicating Mr. Assad has
cleared the way for the military to use chlorine gas in any offensive, U.S. officials said .
It wasn't clear from the latest intelligence if Mr. Assad also had given the military
permission to use sarin gas , the deadly nerve agent used several times in previous regime
attacks on rebel-held areas. It is banned under international law.
It appears Washington is now saying an American attack on Syrian government forces and
locations is all but inevitable .
And according to the report, President Trump may actually give the order to attack even if
there's no claim of a chemical attack, per the WSJ:
In a recent discussion about Syria, people familiar with the exchange said, President
Trump threatened to conduct a massive attack against Mr. Assad if he carries out a massacre
in Idlib , the northwestern province that has become the last refuge for more than three
million people and as many as 70,000 opposition fighters that the regime considers to be
terrorists.
The Pentagon is crafting military options , but Mr. Trump hasn't decided what exactly
would trigger a military response or whether the U.S. would target Russian or Iranian
military forces aiding Mr. Assad in Syria , U.S. officials said.
Crucially, this is the first such indication of the possibility that White House and defense
officials are mulling over hitting "Russian or Iranian military forces" in what would be a
monumental escalation that would take the world to the brink of World War 3.
The WSJ report cites White House discussions of a third strike -- in reference to US attacks
on Syria during the last two Aprils after chemical allegations were made against Damascus --
while indicating it would "likely would be more expansive than the first two" and could include
targeting Russia and Iran .
During the debate this year over how to respond to the second attack, Mr. Trump's
national-security team weighed the idea of hitting Russian or Iranian targets in Syria ,
people familiar with the discussions said. But the Pentagon pushed for a more measured
response, U.S. officials said, and the idea was eventually rejected as too risky.
A third U.S. strike likely would be more expansive than the first two, and Mr. Trump would
again have to consider whether or not to hit targets like Russian air defenses in an effort
to deliver a more punishing blow to Mr. Assad's military.
Last week the French ambassador, whose country also vowed to strike Syria if what it deems
credible chemical allegations emerge, said during a U.N. Security Council meeting on Idlib :
"Syria is once again at the edge of an abyss."
With Russia and Iran now in the West's cross hairs over Idlib, indeed the entire world is
again at the edge of the abyss.
developing...
Jack Oliver ,
You must read this - Bolton is definitely FUCKING insane !
LOL Wall Street Journal citing unnamed sources again. Anyone that gives this more than
0.0003 seconds worth of attention is a barely functional retard. Haha, looking at the
comments below, we have a bunch of Charley Brown's running up to kick a football held by
Lucy. Fuckin moron cunts.
Bokkenrijder ,
Trump has already written and signed the order for the attack, the only thing that needs
to be added is the appropriate date for when Israel gives the green light
Wake up Trumptards!
Citium ,
Ok after all those thumbs down when I called Trump part of the swamp? You guys still agree
that he wants to help the American people?
Get a grip. Y'all are getting Hoodwinked like Obama's first term. Increasing debt,
increasing military expansion to police the globe, stimulus in he form of tax cuts to
corporations who barely pay taxes, his inability to control Jeff sessions, his increase in
deficits, expanded the surveillance state and takes credit for the Federal reserve all time
high fake market.
Are you guys fucking delusional? Q is mossad, Alex Jones is mossad. Wake up. Both parties
hate you and this is all Kabuki theater.
"... We know the proceeds will go unmentioned into offshore havens and the London property market. Britain would derive no geopolitical benefit as a whole. The benefits would accrue only to a kleptocracy who think they have a right to use our country as a loan shark's leg-breaker. ..."
Freedland recently put this argument on Newsnight.
It is flawed to the point of dishonesty.
He talks of removing assets as if the process was being conducted under laboratory
conditions. There are ten nations enmeshed in a warzone with numerous factions under no one's
control. It is magical thinking that cannot be achieved and will only result in rapid,
uncontrolled escalation. The idea that there will be no collateral damage is laughable and I
regret to suggest that it is deliberately misleading.
Moreover, in engaging Assad when he is on the brink of victory, the Syrian Civil War will
be extended. The Syrian people will then pay the price.
Should Assad subsequently fall - and that is the actual aim of intervention - then Syria
will become another anarchic wasteland ruled over by fundamentalist warlords. The spiral of
migration will be renewed bringing loons wrapped in the dispossessed to our own streets.
Worse, the militants next stop will be Lebanon and then Israel will be directly involved.
Freedland advocates acting against Assad without even attempting to predict the consequences.
At the very least I would expect the usual misdirection 'of course this time we must have a
plan for rebuilding Syria', secure in the knowledge that by that time there will be another
crisis and Syria can be left in entropy.
No good can come from military intervention. The satisfaction of commentators that the
right thing has been done is an irrelevance. The right thing is always just public relations.
Every bit of ruthless geopolitics has to have a casus belli to make the killing all righteous
and unavoidable. It has always been thus. For resources to be expended on this kind of scale
there has to be a rock solid bit of bankable realpolitik. In this case its the struggle for
regional hegemony between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Syria can either be part of a supply chain
selling Sunni gas/oil to Europe or Shi'a gas/oil to Europe. This is about killing Syrians for
the glory of Saudi Arabia. You can see why there has to be a casus belli because thats not
something that can be sold. We know the proceeds will go unmentioned into offshore havens and
the London property market. Britain would derive no geopolitical benefit as a whole. The
benefits would accrue only to a kleptocracy who think they have a right to use our country as
a loan shark's leg-breaker.
It is therefore my contention that Freedland is promoting an immoral act that will have
serious consequences without offering any serious improvement in the situation. This is
arguably the most dangerous situation since the Cuban Missile crisis and an analysis that
advocates pouring oil on the flames is either ridiculously stupid or calculatedly
duplicitous.
"Up to" 13,000 "opponents" killed over five years during a period of war. I'm assuming that
number of "opponents" includes a large number of out and out terrorists who have thrown the
country into chaos.
The UK and France bares a heavy responsibility for the current situation in Syria. The
cavalier attitude that the ConDems took to international law during the Arab spring
encouraged the Saudi s and their proxies to distablise the recognised Govt. Assad is no
paragon of virtue, but prior to the insurgency steps were in place to make the country a
better place for its citizens, and whilst its true political dissent was not allowed, people
could live their lives and go about their business in safety.
After a decade of writing about the crisis, we are now subjected to an orgy of yet more
chatter with not much insight. It speaks volumes that the likes of Ben Bernanke, Timothy
Geithner, and Hank Paulson are deemed fit to say anything about it, let alone pitch the need
for the officialdom to have more bank bailout tools in a New York Times op-e titled What
We Need to Fight the Next Financial Crisis .
The fact that they blandly depict crises that demand extraordinary interventions as to be
expected confirms that greedy technocrats like them are a big part of the problem. Their call
for more help for financiers confirms that they have things backwards. How about doing more to
make sure that future crises aren't meteor-killing-the-dinosaurs level events, and foisting
more costs and punishments on the financiers who got drunk and rich on too much risk-taking?
The first line of defense should be stronger regulations, including prohibition of certain
activities.
As the Financial Times' Martin Wolf
pointed out in a recent crisis retrospective , the response of central bankers and
financial regulators to the crisis was to restore the status quo ante, and not engage in root
and branch reform, as took place in the Great Depression. But as we've pointed out, the
response to the crisis represented the greatest looting of the public purse in history. The
post-crisis era of super-low interest rates represented an additional transfer of income from
savers to the financial system. In the US, the so-called "get out of massive mortgage
securitization liability for almost free" card otherwise known as the National Mortgage
Settlement represented a not-widely recognized second bailout of banks and mortgage servicers.
No wonder banksters are seeking a rinse and repeat.
An overfinancialized economy is good for no one save banksters and their paid retainers.
Economists in recent years have been describing how larger financial systems hurt growth. For
instance, the IMF found that the optimal development of a financial system was roughly where
Poland is. The IMF conceded that it might be possible to have a larger banking system not drag
down the economy if it were well regulated. Other studies have found that economies with large
financial sectors typically have more inequality, and inequality is separately seen as a
negative for growth. So there's no sound policy reason to coddle banks rather than cut them
down to size.
But the winners get to write the histories, and the friends of Big Finance came out on top.
Despite the press occasionally listing the economists like Michael Hudson and Steve Keen who
saw the crisis coming, they have only marginally higher profiles now than they did a decade
ago. Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote bestsellers, yet his blistering descriptions of how financial
risk analysts and managers are intellectual frauds has had virtually no impact on practice.
Similarly, Andy Haldane, the Bank of England's executive director of financial stability, is
often called one of the most creative and insightful economists of his generation, but his
studies and speeches on what went wrong and what might be done, like forcing more
specialization and diversity among financial firms, are regularly praised in academia and the
press and ignored as guides for reform. 1
And none other than the New York Fed's William Dudley came up with a way to bring
partnership-type incentive structures back to big banks by requiring executives and producers
to have a high percentage of their bonuses retained in the firms as a type of junior equity to
be the first funds tapped in the event of losses or large legal settlements. Not only would
this lead key players to be far more concerned about risk, but as Dudley pointed out, it would
also lead everyone to be far more concerned if they saw another business unit engaged in dodgy
practices that they might wind up paying for, and apply pressure to have them shut down.
Predictably, this idea made far too much sense to get any traction.
By contrast, Bernanke was a true believer in the Great Moderation, the mid-2000s
self-congratulatory mainstream economist view that they had produced the best of all possible
worlds. Bernanke in fact continued the so-called Greenspan put which incentivized investors and
bankers to take on financial risks, since they knew if anything bad happened, the Fed would
rush to their rescue. The Fed, and Bernanke in particular, were badly behind the curve. In May
2007, Bernanke said that subprime was contained , and in
July 2008, gave Fannie and Freddie clean bills
of health.
Geithner, when he was head of the New York Fed, did acknowledge that the brave new world of
slicing, dicing, and distributing risk might make it more difficult to manage a crisis, but
then insisted that there was no way to roll the clock back. Linear projections of trends is
naive but a great excuse for inaction. Geithner said nary a peep when banks who had just been
bailed out gave a raised middle finger to the American public by paying their executives and
staffs record bonuses in 2009 and 2010 rather than rebuilding their balance sheets. The Bush
Administration considerately left $75 billion of TARP monies unspent for the Obama
Administration to use to fund mortgage modifications. Funny how the Treasury never took that
up. Instead, Geithner instituted supposed mortgage assistance programs like HAMP whose purpose,
as Geithner put it to SIGTARP head Neil Barofsky, was to "foam the runway" for banks by
spreading out when foreclosures would happen rather than preventing them. Recall that 9 million
homes were foreclosed upon. Many had missed only a payment or two due to job loss or hours
cutbacks; some were victims of bad servicing. Giving borrowers with viable levels of income
mortgage modifications would have been a win for investors too. But the Treasury never cared
about borrowers and convinced itself that taking care of banks would help the real economy, in
a Wall Street variant of trickle-down theory.
And Paulson? Although he wasn't on the scene as long as Bernanke and Geithner, recall that
Treasury staffer Neel Kashkari whipped up a 50,000 foot "How do we deal with a crisis" think
piece that Paulson & Co. deemed to be just terrific and tossed in a drawer. Recall that
Paulson's first TARP proposal was a mere 3 pages demanding $700 billion, more than the hard
costs of the Iraq War, and even worse, put the Treasury beyond the rule of law with this
provision:
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and
committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any
administrative agency.
So the bailer-outers-in-chief are keen to prescribe more of what they foisted on the
American public. It should come as no surprise that they didn't pump for stronger financial
reforms, were perfectly content to allow the Fed to authorize banks subject to stress tests to
pay dividends and bonuses rather than have them build up much bigger capital cushions, and in
Bernanke's case, call for a resumption of austerity policies in 2012.
Each one of this terrible trio has a much longer rap sheet. But the mere fact that they have
the temerity to subject the public to their cronyistic blather, and worse, the New York Times
dignifies it, shows that, as Talleyrand said of the Bourbons, that policymakers and pundits
have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
____
1 Haldane, with former Bank of England governor Mervyn King and Adair Turner at
the FSA, did fight hard for a Glass-Steagall type bank breakup, but the UK Treasury succeeded
in watering down their proposal to mere ring-fencing.
Geithner cured me of calling myself a Democrat. That little pipsqueak is worse than
Paulson. To be fair, his boss was famous for his awesome awesomeness.
"... Serious border enforcement, demanding our wealthy allies do more for their own security, infrastructure investment, the (campaign's) refutation of Reaganomics, acknowledging the costs of globalism, calling BS on all of the dominant left PC pieties and lies, were themes of Trump's campaign that were of value. ..."
Serious border enforcement, demanding our wealthy allies do more for their own security,
infrastructure investment, the (campaign's) refutation of Reaganomics, acknowledging the
costs of globalism, calling BS on all of the dominant left PC pieties and lies, were themes
of Trump's campaign that were of value.
Trump was able to harness and give voice to some very important energies. But being Trump,
he's poisoned these issues for a couple of generations. No serious leader will be able to
touch these things.
Add this to all the institutional and political ruin he has created.
Responding to an anonymous Op-Ed in the New York Times detailing an active resistance within
the Trump White House, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told
Reuters that President Trump is facing a "coup" the likes of which haven't been seen since
the American Civil War.
... ... ...
" This is a crisis . The country has only ever had such a crisis in the
summer of 1862 when General McClellan and the senior generals, all Democrats in the Union Army,
deemed that Abraham Lincoln was not fit and not competent to be commander in chief ," said
Bannon - whose departure from the White House was in large part over a fallout with Trump's
"establishment" advisers. Bannon said at the time that the "Republican establishment" sought to
nullify the results of the 2016 election and effectively neuter Trump.
"There is a cabal of Republic establishment figures who believe Donald Trump is not fit to
be president of the United States. This is a crisis," Bannon said in Rome.
Anonymous IX ,
The naivete of so many astounds me. Do you really think that Trump cannot get the name of
the person who wrote the op-ed? In the old days, you sent your operatives to break into the
Watergate. With today's computers and backdoors everywhere into any computer system [open
your reading horizons... https://www.rt.com/op-ed/437895-privacy-five-eyes-encryption/
], anyone can obtain this information if they so desire. Why is Trump being portrayed as a
poor "rich guy" who only wants the best for the country while valiantly fighting a nefarious
coup...whose members, by the way, are so clever and clandestine that they write an op-ed in
the friggin' New York Times! Sorry...don't have much time to continue discussing op-eds in
the NYT, gotta go re-insert ourselves into an independent sovereign nation, called Syria,
where our 1%-ers have deemed we need to go!
I like Trump's bravado and I like his partner, Melania. Designers should definitely bring
back slits in skirts! Scroll down. Here's a lady with class and style. She doesn't have to
show you her entire bosom for you to get the idea that she's hot! https://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2018/09/03/melania-trump-labor-day-looks/
thebigunit ,
Silicon Valley comes full circle:
Apple's famous "1984" ad.
How ironic.
The guy on the TV screen is Tim Cook. He's saying "WE MUST SUPPRESS ALEX JONES!"
The anonymous leaker might not exist. Maybe the oped was written by someone at the new
york times. The reason for lying such might be to make Trump start hunting for his own
subordinates, that could turn some of his subordinates against him who then become an actual
leaker. I think this is their plan.
Moe Howard ,
Of course it is a coup in progress. So obvious it is beyond a question.
The fake op-ed was just the latest shot.
Seems to me that we need to break up and destroy these MSM and interweb monopolies.
No more dual national control over media outlets.
DEDA CVETKO ,
Yes, Steve Bannon. This is a coup. And it is a bad, bad, bad nazi-style,
beer-putsch kind of coup, the night of long knives and all.
But this is the coup you and your party (as well as your technical adversaries, but
friends in real life - the "democrats" - have been preparing for decades . This is the
coup you have been paving the way for with bombbombbomb Iran, with "export of
democracy" to Libya, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans and Russia (and pretty much
everywhere else); with weaponization of dollar and global finance and militarization of media
and the police, with colored and rosey and khaki revolutions, with vulture hedge funds as the
primary instrument of the foreign policy and with 1% distribution of the 99% of national
wealth.
Yes. Steve Bannon. These are all proud accomplishments of the Republican and
Democratic party.
This is the coup your party (as well as the other one) has been funding for almost
three decades by voting for $1 trillion-per-year war budgets and never-ending wars across the
globe and by vigorously bankrolling the nazi merchants of death a/k/a/
military-industrial-financial-academic-media complex. And now you are shocked to learn that
nazis have fondness for putcshes? No kiddin', Sherlock!
This is the coup your party ideologically, theologically and morally justified in
terms of divine national exceptionalism, messianic narcissism, arrogant group-think and
never-ending pursuit of national might-makes-right and peace-through-strength.
Yes, Steve Bannon, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was right when he said that the chickens are
coming home to roost, er...roast. But this time, they are not coming home as McDonalds'
Chikken McNuggets or Kentucky Fried Chicken Shit. This time they are returning as chicken
guts'n'bones for the gigantic globalist chicken soup called New World Order.
You and your party should be rejoicing, not bemoaning. For, after all, this is your
proudest achievement and your finest hour.
God is The Son ,
Bannon is a retard, Trump is a retard, both Zionists. The only hope is Mattias to a Order
Coup De Ta. Military General needs to recognize that how Israel, Jews, Rothschilds have taken
over Banking Politics and Media in US and have hijacked US and are looting it. He also needs
to realize that they run the Left and the Right of Politics's. Arrest Trump, Alex Jones,
Zionists, ABC, FOX, Re-Investigate 9/11 findings will probably come to that the CIA and
Zionists did it, and that JFK killing was also CIA and Zionists. The CIA gets destroyed into
Thousand pieces and Israeli influence is removed entirely from all parts of American Society.
Federal Reserve, gets taken and turned into Public Central Bank of America under eye of US
Military. Rothschilds then told to leave or Arrested.
Peter41 ,
Well, correct up to a point. The established world order elites "saved" the system in
2007-08, by propping up the moribund banks (Citibank, JP Morgan, and others) by massive
injections of liquidity. Rather than removing this liquidity after the debacle, the Fed kept
the accelerator to the floor with continued "quantitative easing." Now presiding over a
$4Trillion balance sheet, the Fed is in the famous "liquidity trap" which Lord Keynes avoided
describing a solution for, by opining, "in the long run we are all dead."
Well, the elites are now in the position of watching the whole shitteree come unglued as
the Fed's policies framed by the elites will soon come unwound. Then, the elites will be
exposed as powerless.
Griffin ,
The old world order was not so organised, and the main ideology the ruling elites had in
common was transfer of wealth and wealth control,.
Using ideas like privatisation to get control of strategic assets like natural resources,
energy etc.
Using scams like pump and dump to suck wealth out of economies and then investing outside
the economy or planting it in a tax haven.
In Iceland there was roughly a 5 year interval between crashes. I called it the bubble
crash machine.
The msm and bank analysts were a important tool for politicians to keep this scam running,
but its dead now.
The new world order was supposed to be far more advanced and more organised, a tool to
eliminate all kinds of problems for large corporations, like the sovereign rights of states
for instance.
This was supposed to be a fusion between the superstate in Europe, where Merkel was at the
helm, and the liberal globalist friendly USA where Hillary was supposed to lead.
If this would have materialised it would have enabled multinational corporations to sue
nation states for imposing inconvenient laws that could suppress hopes of future profits for
instance, giving the corporations a indirect control over state politics, overriding
democracy and constitutions.
Abraxas ,
Coup, my ass. These guys turn everything upside-down. What a bunch of hyaenas.
Just look, these are the people that will drag us all down to the depths of hell with
them, telling us how nice and prosperous ride we'll have getting there. Stop this train, I
want to get off!
shortonoil ,
Having worked around DC I can tell you that the place collects nutcases, screwballs, and
sociopaths like fresh dog fresh shit collects flies. The Deep State is not the problem, the
problem is the DC State! DC is the epicenter of power hungry, greedy, self centered, self
serving, backstabbing, backbiting lunatics, and every one of them is looking for a gimmick to
advance their own personal agenda. The welfare of the nation is number 101 on their list of
100. Too much money, in too small a place with too many people trying to climb the same
ladder at the same time leads to anarchy. Give the power to collect money, and regulate back
to the States where it belongs, and let DC sink back into the swamp it was built on. The
Federal Government is out of control. The States have the Constitutional power, and
responsibility to regulate, and control the Federal government, and they had better start
using it before this dog and pony show breaks down into a lynching party.
Herdee ,
U.S. under Trump interfering in the internal affairs of Venezuela. The CIA goes around the
world overthrowing governments. American hypocrisy is so phony, especially their Washington
NeoCon/NeoNazi politicians:
These uniparty hacks are the same who claim Trump has disemboweled the Obama agenda, which
he has. Some nutcase... doing what he ran on. The only things he can't get done are because
of the career uniparty hacks.The op-ed was nothing more then carryover from the McCain
funeral. It's all transparent and meaningless, but a useful tool for Trump now.
DingleBarryObummer ,
"To some people the notion of consciously playing power games-no matter how indirect-seems
evil, asocial, a relic of the past. They believe they can opt out of the game by behaving in
ways that have nothing to do with power. You must beware of such people, for while they
express such opinions outwardly, they are often among the most adept players at power. They
utilize strategies that cleverly disguise the nature of the manipulation involved. These
types, for example, will often display their weakness and lack of power as a kind of moral
virtue. But true powerlessness, without any motive of self-interest, would not publicize its
weakness to gain sympathy or respect. Making a show of one's weakness is actually a very
effective strategy, subtle and deceptive, in the game of power" -Robert Greene '48 Laws of
Power'
chumbawamba ,
What results though? So far, the results are in and the swamp is still pretty full.
As Dinglebutt pondered: deception, but for what purpose? Have you considered that you
might be being lulled into a safe landing right into the heart of totalitarianism?
Don't think for one moment Trump isn't capable of selling you out for his own
interests.
-chumblez.
Dilluminati ,
correction demonic coup (re-posted) but the Pizza gate it seems to be real, all the fake
news for generatons and the one story the globalists couldn't get to uncovering ~~~ YOU MUST
DECIDE!!
Sweden tonight.. Europe tomorrow. The left lives in fantasy land. Where Kapernick is some
NFL hero and the guy sucked at QB, I mean looking at the record, he sucked, he didn't win
anything. He ran like Mike Vick and that is about that.. and like Mike he suddenly realized
that EVERYBODY runs fast in the NFL unlike college. Then there is IMMIGRATION notice how the
globalists love three things above all others: profits for the 1%, paying no taxes, and they
love them some open borders and immigrant cheap labor. Take for example the imaginary op-ed
fake news from the NYT, or the CNN fake news story with leftist Lanny Davis, or lets drag
that whore Stormy out on stage for another trailer park runway dollar bill, or how about the
hearings on SCOTUS and Spartacus? Pocahontas? Abolishing Ice to fight crime, getting rid of
the 2nd amendment to make us safer, Or more gun legislation in Chicago or Baltimore doubling
down on stupid.. And now the ghouls who run the Democratic party have to go and try and sell
the Obama myth, talk about fantasy.. what the fuck was Obamacare? Where was the $ saved and
could people keep their doctor if they wanted? Each and every idea the Democrats and left
have come up with is proof that what the left doesn't fuck up it shits upon instead, and
now.. after being globally discredited the GLOBALISTS cocksuckers are done. Name a single
promise that the Globalists kept to any but the 1% the cocksuckers!
But turn on any globalist media, the NFL, ESPN, CNN, and of the Globalist monopoly news or
media outlets, the same lies are told. These Globalist cocksuckers cannot stop telling these
lies so instead they need to be removed by ballot, laws, and if need be FORCE!
The rudeness and desperation of the 1% is astonishing, but their boldness is like that of
the Pedophile Catholic Church! They get up on stage and do their empty virtue signalling and
then rape their communities cynically and with methodical efficiency, yes they are the 1% and
they do not care, yes they are the 1% and there is now no laws to confront them. There is
only the ballot. They intend to run to New Zealand as they know their days are numbered, they
skip the hearings like Google when called to account by Congress, and still you turn on the
media and see:
I'm sure Madeline has brokered some deal to service some 1% benefactor somewhere. But
again the rudeness, they come into your home under the guise of sports, under the guise of a
legitimate news source, and then they spread their LIES and distortions.
Watch Brexit and Google pissing in the face of Congress.. they do not respect the ballot
though they clamor about democracy, they but care about the 1% like the Pedophile Catholic
Church and do not care about your laws, they want to abolish Ice, they want to disarm you so
that they can more efficiently abuse you. That is your globalists not some loser on a Nike
ad, who has less of a career than say Tim Tebow (who could run) but wasn't the apologist and
hate America first Cunt stooge of the globalists. Watch Brexit and Google as they piss in the
face of democracy and remember.
This brief comment became the biggest headline news to come out of the third debate, as
many saw it as Mr Trump threatening to shatter a 240-year-old electoral tradition, one of the
cornerstones of US democracy: the losing candidate must always concede defeat, regardless of
the result.
Presidential rival Hillary Clinton called his stance "horrifying", saying it "was not
the way our democracy works".
Barack Obama labelled Trump's comments as "dangerous", and damaging to
democracy.
You see how that works? The left is like the Pedophile Catholic Church all worked up about
the plastic in the ocean, one set of laws and democracy for you, and another for them..
The lies, the globalist lies.. vote for your freedom.. What does the NFL and the Pedophile
Catholic Church have in common? NEITHER PAYS TAXES! Them globalists them silly globalists:
love three things above all others: profits for the 1%, paying no taxes, and they love them
some open borders and immigrant cheap labor.
The real PIZZA GATE my friends is the Globalists. The 1% with their laws, unaccountable to
ours which they twist against us.
I'm watching Bob Woodward being pimped by the Globalists media this morning, and I have to
think that in this guy's lifetime the largest scandal in the Church, the global abuse and
coverup, never warranted an op-ed. Need I say more? When you look at the fabled globalist Bob
Woodward, remember that he missed the abuse, the cover-up, the complete and orchestrated
abuse of power globally, he missed that story!
It took the state of Pennsylvania and a Grand Jury to tell that story that the globalist
and Bob Woodward would not, instead he peddled rumors, similar to Stormy trotted out for a
dollar bill on the trailer park runway.
notfeelinthebern ,
Been nothing but a coup since before day one even.
iinthesky ,
Started right after the Trump stepped off the escalator
Jim in MN ,
If the globalist elite neolibcon blackmail files ever see the light of day a lot of folks
are going to swing from nooses...where have I heard that phrase before....
This is still our last peaceful chance for change.
iinthesky ,
I think most historically competent folks quickly come to the conclusion that ''Kompramat"
as the Russians call it is without a doubt how the government governs itself.. hence an
'outsider' is rarely ever seen and never allowed to govern
The past is not dead; it is people who are sleeping . The current night and daymares that we
are having arise out of murders lodged deep in our past that have continued into the present.
No amount of feigned amnesia will erase the bloody truth of American history, the cheap grace
we bestow upon ourselves.
We have, as Harold Pinter said in his Nobel address, been feeding on "a vast tapestry of
lies" that surrounds us, lies uttered by nihilistic leaders and their media mouthpieces for a
very long time. We have, or should have, bad consciences for not acknowledging being active or
silent accomplices in the suppression of truth and the vicious murdering of millions at home
and abroad.
But, as Pinter said,
"I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce
intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our
societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory."
No one is more emblematic of this noble effort than David Ray Griffin, who, in book after
book since the attacks of 11 September 2001, has meticulously exposed the underside of the
American empire and its evil masters. His persistence in trying to reach people and to warn
them of the horrors that have resulted is extraordinary. Excluding his philosophical and
theological works, this is his fifteenth book since 2004 on these grave issues of life and
death and the future of the world.
In this masterful book, he provides a powerful historical argument that right from the start
with the arrival of the first European settlers, this country, despite all the rhetoric about
it having been divinely founded and guided, has been "more malign that benign, more demonic
than divine." He chronologically presents this history, supported by meticulous documentation,
to prove his thesis. In his previous book, Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the
World , Griffin cataloged the evil actions that flowed from the inside job/false flag attacks
of September 11th, while in this one -- a prequel -- he offers a lesson in American history
going back centuries, and he shows that one would be correct in calling the United States a
"false flag empire."
The attacks of 11 September 2001 are the false flag fulcrum upon which his two books pivot.
Their importance cannot be overestimated, not just for their inherent cruelty that resulted in
thousands of innocent American deaths, but since they became the justification for the United
States' ongoing murderous campaigns termed "the war on terror" that have brought death to
millions of people around the world. An international array of expendable people. Terrifying as
they were, and were meant to be, they have many precedents, although much of this history is
hidden in the shadows. Griffin shines a bright light on them, with most of his analysis focused
on the years 1850-2018.
As a theological and philosophical scholar, he is well aware of the great importance of
society's need for religious legitimation for its secular authority, a way to offer its people
a shield against terror and life's myriad fears through a protective myth that has been used
successfully by the United States to terrorize others. He shows how the terms by which the U.S.
has been legitimated as God's "chosen nation" and Americans as God's "chosen people" have
changed over the years as secularization and pluralism have made inroads. The names have
changed, but the meaning has not. God is on our side, and when that is so, the other side is
cursed and can be killed by God's people, who are always battling el diabalo.
He exemplifies this by opening with a quote from George Washington's first Inaugural Address
where Washington speaks of "the Invisible Hand" and "Providential agency" guiding the country,
and by ending with Obama saying "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my
being." In between we hear Andrew Jackson say that "Providence has showered on this favored
land blessings without number" and Henry Cabot Lodge in 1900 characterize America's divine
mission as "manifest destiny." The American religion today is American Exceptionalism, an
updated euphemism for the old-fashioned "God's New Israel" or the "Redeemer Nation."
At the core of this verbiage lies the delusion that the United States, as a blessed and good
country, has a divine mission to spread "democracy" and "freedom" throughout the world, as
Hilary Clinton declared during the 2016 presidential campaign when she said that "we are great
because we are good," and in 2004 when George W. Bush said, "Like generations before us, we
have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom." Such sentiments could only be
received with sardonic laughter by the countless victims made "free" by America's violent
leaders, now and then, as Griffin documents.
Having established the fact of America's claim to divine status, he then walks the reader
through various thinkers who have taken sides on the issue of the United States being benign or
malign. This is all preliminary to the heart of the book, which is a history lesson documenting
the malignancy at the core of the American trajectory.
"American imperialism is often said to have begun in 1898, when Cuba and the Philippines
were the main prizes," he begins. "What was new at this time, however, was only that America
took control of countries beyond the North American continent."
The "divine right" to seize others' lands and kill them started long before, and although no
seas were crossed in the usual understanding of imperialism, the genocide of Native Americans
long preceded 1898. So too did the "manifest destiny" that impelled war with Mexico and the
seizure of its land and the expansion west to the Pacific. This period of empire building
depended heavily on the "other great crime against humanity" that was the slave trade, wherein
it is estimated that 10 million Africans died, in addition to the sick brutality of slavery
itself. "No matter how brutal the methods, Americans were instruments of divine purposes,"
writes Griffin. And, he correctly adds, it is not even true that America's overseas
imperialistic ventures only started in 1898, for in the 1850s Commodore Perry forced "the
haughty Japanese" to open their ports to American commerce through gunboat diplomacy.
Then in 1898 the pace of overseas imperial expansion picked up dramatically with what has
been called "The Spanish-American War" that resulted in the seizure of Cuba and the Philippines
and the annexing of Hawaii. Griffin says these wars could more accurately be termed "the wars
to take Spanish colonies." His analysis of the brutality and arrogance of these actions makes
the reader realize that My Lai and other more recent atrocities have a long pedigree that is
part of an institutional structure, and while Filipinos and Cubans and so many others were
being slaughtered, Griffin writes, "Anticipating Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's
declaration that 'we don't do empire,' [President] McKinley said that imperialism is 'foreign
to the temper and genius of this free and generous people.'"
Then as now, perhaps mad laughter is the only response to such unadulterated bullshit, as
Griffin quotes Mark Twain saying that it would be easy creating a flag for the Philippines:
We can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars
replaced by the skull and cross-bones.
That would have also worked for Columbia, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic,
Haiti, Nicaragua, and other countries subjugated under the ideology of the Monroe Doctrine;
wherever freedom and national independence raised its ugly head, the United States was quick to
intervene with its powerful anti-revolutionary military and its financial bullying. In the Far
East the "Open Door" policy was used to loot China, Japan, and other countries.
But all this was just the beginning. Griffin shows how Woodrow Wilson, the quintessentially
devious and treacherous liberal Democrat, who claimed he wanted to keep America out of WW I,
did just the opposite to make sure the U.S. would come to dominate the foreign markets his
capitalist masters demanded. Thus Griffin explores how Wilson conspired with Winston Churchill
to use the sinking of the Lusitania as a casus belli and how the Treaty of Versailles's harsh
treatment of Germany set the stage for WW II.
He tells us how in the intervening years between the world wars the demonization of Russia
and the new Soviet Union was started. This deprecation of Russia, which is roaring at
full-throttle today, is a theme that recurs throughout The American Trajectory. Its importance
cannot be overemphasized. Wilson called the Bolshevik government "a government by terror," and
in 1918 "sent thousands of troops into northern and eastern Russia, leaving them there until
1920."
That the U. S. invaded Russia is a fact rarely mentioned and even barely known to Americans.
Perhaps awareness of it and the century-long demonizing of the U.S.S.R./Russia would enlighten
those who buy the current anti-Russia propaganda called "Russiagate."
To match that "divine" act of imperial intervention abroad, Wilson fomented the Red Scare at
home, which, as Griffin says, had lasting and incalculable importance because it created the
American fear of radical thought and revolution that exists to this very day and serves as a
justification for supporting brutal dictators around the world and crackdowns on freedom at
home (as is happening today).
He gives us brief summaries of some dictators the U.S has supported, and reminds us of the
saying of that other liberal Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, who famously said of the brutal
Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, that "he may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he's our
son-of-a-bitch." And thus Somoza would terrorize his own people for 43 years. The same took
place in Cuba, Chile, Iran, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, etc. The U.S. also
supported Mussolini, did nothing to prevent Franco's fascist toppling of the Spanish Republic,
and supported the right-wing government of Chiang-Kai Shek in its efforts to dominate
China.
It is a very dark and ugly history that confirms the demonic nature of American actions
around the world.
Then Griffin explodes the many myths about the so-called "Good War" -- WW II. He explains
the lies told about the Japanese "surprise" attack on Pearl Harbor; how Roosevelt wished to get
the U.S. into the war, both in the Pacific and in Europe; and how much American economic
self-interest lay behind it. He critiques the myth that America selflessly wished to defend
freedom loving people in their battles with brutal, fascist regimes. That, he tells us, is but
a small part of the story:
This, however, is not an accurate picture of American policies during the Second World
War. Many people were, to be sure, liberated from terrible tyrannies by the Allied victories.
But the fact that these people benefited was an incidental outcome, not a motive of American
policies. These policies, as [Andrew] Bacevich discovered, were based on 'unflagging
self-interest.'
Then there are the conventional and atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nothing could
be more demonic, as Griffin shows. If these cold-blooded mass massacres of civilians and the
lies told to justify them don't convince a reader that there has long been something radically
evil at the heart of American history, nothing will. Griffin shows how Truman and his advisers
and top generals, including Dwight Eisenhower and Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman's Chief of
Staff, knew the dropping of the atomic bombs were unnecessary to end the war, but they did so
anyway.
He reminds us of Clinton's Secretary of State Madeline Albright's response to the question
whether she thought the deaths of more than 500, 000 Iraqi children as a result of Clinton's
crippling economic sanctions were worth it: "But, yes, we think the price is worth it." (Notice
the "is," the ongoing nature of these war crimes, as she spoke.) But this is the woman who also
said, "We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall "
Griffin devotes other chapters to the creation of the Cold War, American imperialism during
the Cold War, Post-Cold War interventions, the Vietnam War, the drive for global dominance, and
false flag operations, among other topics.
As for false flag operations, he says, "Indeed, the trajectory of the American Empire has
relied so heavily on these types of attacks that one could describe it as a false flag empire."
In the false flag chapter and throughout the book, he discusses many of the false flags the
U.S. has engaged in, including Operation Gladio, the U.S./NATO terrorist operation throughout
Europe that Swiss historian Daniele Ganser has extensively documented, an operation meant to
discredit communists and socialists. Such operations were directly connected to the OSS, the
CIA and its director Allen Dulles, his henchman James Jesus Angleton, and their Nazi
accomplices, such as General Reinhard Gehlen. In one such attack in 1980 at the Bologna, Italy
railway station, these U.S. terrorists killed 85 people and wounded 20 others. As with the
bombs dropped by Saudi Arabia today on Yemeni school children, the explosive used was made for
the U.S. military. About these documented U.S. atrocities, Griffin says:
These revelations show the falsity of an assumption widely held by Americans. While
recognizing that the US military sometimes does terrible things to their enemies, most
Americans have assumed that US military leaders would not order the killing of innocent
civilians in allied countries for political purposes. Operation Gladio showed this assumption
to be false.
He is right, but I would add that the leaders behind this were civilian, as much as, or more
than military.
In the case of "Operation Northwoods," it was the Joint Chiefs of Staff who presented to
President Kennedy this false flag proposal that would provide justification for a U.S. invasion
of Cuba. It would have involved the killing of American citizens on American soil, bombings,
plane hijacking, etc. President Kennedy considered such people and such plans insane, and he
rejected it as such. His doing so tells us much, for many other presidents would have approved
it. And again, how many Americans are aware of this depraved proposal that is documented and
easily available? How many even want to contemplate it? For the need to remain in denial of the
facts of history and believe in the essential goodness of America's rulers is a very hard nut
to crack. Griffin has written a dozen books about 11 September 2001, trying to do exactly
that.
If one is willing to embrace historical facts, however, then this outstanding book will open
one's eyes to the long-standing demonic nature of the actions of America's rulers. A reader
cannot come away from its lucidly presented history unaffected, unless one lives in a
self-imposed fantasy world. The record is clear, and Griffin lays it out in all its graphic
horror. Which is not to say that the U.S. has not "done both good and bad things, so it could
not sensibly be called purely divine or purely demonic." Questions of purity are meant to
obfuscate basic truths. And the question he asks in his subtitle -- Divine or Demonic? -- is
really a rhetorical question, and when it comes to the "trajectory" of American history, the
demonic wins hands down.
I would be remiss if I didn't point out one place where Griffin fails the reader. In his
long chapter on Vietnam, which is replete with excellent facts and analyses, he makes a crucial
mistake, which is unusual for him. This mistake appears in a four page section on President
Kennedy's policies on Vietnam. In those pages, Griffin relies on Noam Chomsky's terrible book
-- Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture (1993), a book wherein
Chomsky shows no regard for evidence or facts -- to paint Kennedy as being in accord with his
advisers, the CIA, and the military regarding Vietnam. This is factually false. Griffin should
have been more careful and have understood this. The truth is that Kennedy was besieged and
surrounded by these demonic people, who were intent on isolating him, disregarding his
instructions, and murdering him to achieve their goals in Vietnam. In the last year of his
life, JFK had taken a radical turn toward peace-making, not only in Vietnam, but with the
Soviet Union, Cuba, and around the globe. Such a turn was anathema to the war lovers. Thus he
had to die. Contrary to Chomsky's deceptions, motivated by his hatred of Kennedy and perhaps
something more sinister (he also backs the Warren Commission, thinks JFK's assassination was no
big deal, and accepts the patently false official version of the attacks of 11 September 2001),
Griffin should have emphatically asserted that Kennedy had issued NSAM 263 on October 11, 1963
calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam, and that after he was assassinated
a month later, Lyndon Johnson reversed that withdrawal order with NSAM 273. Chomsky
notwithstanding, all the best scholarship and documentary evidence proves this. And for
Griffin, a wonderful scholar, to write that with the change from Kennedy to Johnson that "this
change of presidents would bring no basic change in policy" is so shockingly wrong that I
imagine Griffin, a man passionate about truth, simply slipped up and got sloppy here. For
nothing could be further from the truth.
Ironically, Griffin makes a masterful case for his thesis, while forgetting the one pivotal
man, President John Kennedy, who sacrificed his life in an effort to change the trajectory of
American history from its demonic course.
It is one mistake in an otherwise very important and excellent book that should be required
reading for anyone who doubts the evil nature of this country's continuing foreign policy.
Those who are already convinced should also read it, for it provides a needed historical
resource and impetus to help change the trajectory that is transporting the world toward
nuclear oblivion, if continued.
If -- a fantastic wish! -- The American Trajectory: Divine or Demonic ? were
required reading in American schools and colleges, perhaps a new generation would arise to
change our devils into angels, the arc of America's future moral universe
CHX13 ,
For many decades, the US has been preying upon the ROTW via the petro-$. The late $trength
will prove it$ ultimate downfall, IMHO. The world is imploding as we speak. Too much bad debt
all over, tens if not hundred of trillions in the US and the ROTW combined. US debt 21T plus
(21T that is unaccounted for) plus 100+ T unfunded liabilities and a totally pension system
on the verge of collapse etc etc etc and this is the "good ol' U S(S) of A... No need to pull
China or Europe through the meat grinder, there's plenty of unsolved (read "unsolvable")
problems at home already. No finger pointing needed, the US is a wolf in sheepskin, that's
for sure. There's a lot of good-natured folk in the US though that simply have no clue
whatsoever about what is about to be going down. I feel sorry for them, they really believe
in "their duty for the country", in "liberty and justice for all" et al. Things that once
made the US indeed great, but that was lost many many many moons ago. So I'd say divinely
diabolic. #So sad.
Adolfsteinbergovitch ,
A country is exceptional, until it isn't any longer.
khnum ,
Reuters has just run a story International criminal court judges at the Hague will face
heavy sanctions if they investigate American war crimes in Afghanistan,lawlessness next stop
perdition.
The matrix has u ,
That would be right. Americunt "Exceptionalism" still at work.
"... We Americans are totally subject to ziocon propaganda when it comes to Middle East affairs. Anyone that disagrees with that viewpoint is immediately labeled anti-semitic and now banned from social media and of course from the TV talk shows. ..."
"... Jack posed an interesting question, how does someone like Putin respond to an irrational US who in their delusions can easily escalate military conflict if their ego gets bruised when it is shown that they don't have the unilateral power of a hegemon? ..."
"... Always thought that Nikki Haley was the price Donald Trump had to pay to get Sheldon Adelson's large campaign contributions in 2016. Adelson was Trump's second biggest contributor. So was recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Sheldon got his money's worth. https://www.investopedia.co... ..."
"... Nikki Haley's Sikh origins may have something to do with her anti-Muslim feelings. ..."
"... it is hypocritical in the extreme for the U.S. to be criticising anyone for killing people anywhere after what they have been doing in the Middle East. According to Professor Gideon Polya the total avoidable deaths in Afghanstan alone since 2001 under ongoing war and occupation-imposed deprivation amount to around three million people, about 900,000 of whom are infants under the age of five (see Professor Gideon Polya at La Trobe University in Melbourne book, 'Body Count: Global Avoidable Mortality Since 1950' and Washington DC-based Physicians for Social Responsibility study: http://www.psr.org/assets/p... . ..."
"... Is it in our DNA that we can't learn lessons from our interventionist experience in the Middle East? Looks like Iraq is spinning out of control once again. I'm sure many including the Shia may reminisce favorably to the Sadam years despite his tyranny. https://ejmagnier.com/2018/... ..."
"... We are indoctrinated with the idea that all people are basically the same. In fact this is only true at the level of basics like shelter, food, sex, etc. We refuse to really believe in the reality of widely varying cultures. It makes us incapable, as a group, of understanding people who do not share our outlook. i have been dealing with this all my life as a delegated "ambassador" to the "others." ..."
"... In this context, if you were Vladimir Putin and knowing that President Trump is completely ignorant when it comes to history and policy details and has surrounded himself with neocons as far as foreign policy is concerned and Bibi has him eating out of his hands, how would you deal with him if he starts to get belligerent in Syria and Ukraine? ..."
"... Did the Syrians get upset by General Sherman's destructive march through South Carolina? No. It was a mistake for the US ever getting involved in Syria, with forming, equipping and training foreign armies and shadow governments including replacement prime ministers, all in violation of the UN Charter. ..."
"... Trump is more savagely and ignorantly aggressive. ..."
"... Trump, Nikki and Bolton have been tweeting warnings about the Idlib offensive and already accusing Assad if there are any chemical attacks. Wonder why? Lavrov has also made comments that he expects a chemical use false flag. Not sure about this post on Zerohedge, but if it has any credibility then it would appear that the US military is getting ready for some kind of provocation. ..."
"In her statement during the UN Security Council briefing, Haley said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and its "enablers,"
Russia and Iran have a playbook for the war in Syria. First, they surround a civilian area. Next, they make the "preposterous claim
that everyone in the area is a terrorist," thus making all civilians targets. That is followed by a "starve and surrender" campaign,
during which Syrian security forces keep attacking until the people no longer have food, clean water, or shelter. "It's a playbook
of death. The Assad regime has spent the last seven years refining it with Russia and Iran's help."
According to her it has happened many times before, in July 2018 it happened in Dara'a and the southwest of Syria, where Syrian
forces "trapped and besieged civilians." In February 2018, it was Ghouta. In 2017 it was Aleppo, and prior to that places like Madaya
and Hama.
According to her, Assad's government has left the country in ruins. "The atrocities committed by Assad will be a permanent stain
on history and a black mark for this Council -- which was blocked over and over by Russia from taking action to help," Nikki Haley
said." SF
------------
Well, strictly speaking, her parents were immigrants, not she. She was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, a little town in the Piedmont
that is majority Black. Her parents were professional people at Amritsar in the Punjab. Haley is the surname of her husband. Nikki
is a nickname by which she has long been known. As governor, she was in favor of flying the Confederate flag on the Statehouse grounds
before the Charleston massacre of Black Christians at a Bible study session. They were killed by an unstable white teen aged misfit
whom they had invited to join their worship. After that Nikki discovered that the Confederate flag was a bad and disruptive symbol.
It was a popular position across the country and Nikki became an instant "hit," the flavor of the month so to speak.
I suppose that she was supposed to be an interesting and decorative figure as UN ambassador. She is quite pretty and the South
Carolina accent adds to the effect.
The positions she has taken at the UN with regard to the ME are similar to those expressed by her boss, President Trump. They
are largely reflections of images projected by the popular and mass media operating as Zionist propaganda machines. I don't believe
that the State Department's INR analytic bureau believes the crapola that she spouts with such hysteric fervor. I don't believe that
my former friend David Satterfield believes the crapola. So, where does she get ideas like the ones quoted above? IMO she is trying
to out-Trump Trump. DJT is a remarkably ignorant man concerning the geo-politics of just about everything in the ME. He appears to
have once seen the film, "Exodus" and to have decided on the basis of Paul Newman's performance as Begin that the situation was and
is quite simple - Israel good! Everyone else bad! Nikki's depth of knowledge appears to be just about the same.
She also appears to me to be in receipt of a stream of opinion from various Zionist and anti-Muslim groups probably related to
the anti-Muslim ravings of Maronite and other Christian ME extremists.
These groups cannot seem to understand that alliances shift as does policy. They don't seem to understand that Israel's policy
in Syria is no longer regime change. They never seem to have understood that the Syrian government is the protector of the religious
minorities against Sunni jihadi fanatics.
They don't seem to understand that the Syrian government has no choice but to recover Idlib Province, a piece of Syria's heartland.
pl
Haley's "playbook" is used by the US but not by Russia & Iran as she claims, with all civilians being targeted. Instead, Russia
& Iran have taken warfare to a higher and better level, allowing the armed factions to surrender their arms and get on a bus or
be killed, and many of them took the bus to preserve their lives until the final offensive. A third option, which many of them
took, was to join the SAA and fight against their former comrades. All of this statecraft was revolutionary, and was not at all
as Haley described, including the crocodile tears over Syrian lives which has never been honest especially considering the level
of support Assad has within Syria.
I agree it is revolutionary, at least in modern times in the western world. I wonder if it will set a "trend": a more humane way
to wage war. I am sure it will be studied in war colleges.
One observation I had while thinking about the Ambassador Haley quote you provided (which I think supports the point you
were making in your post):
When the US was in a somewhat similar situation during the occupation of Iraq, where Sunni militants were in open rebellion
and controlling towns like Fallujah, our response wasn't wildly different to the Syrian government's response. The US gov't at
the time typically labeled any armed resistance "terrorists", and while they might acknowledge that there were civilians in those
territories in addition to terrorists, they were just "human shields" and "regrettable collateral damage". Did the US try a little
harder, and have a bit better of technology, training, etc, and do a little bit better of trying to limit damage to civilians
when crushing those uprisings? Yes. But we're mostly talking modest quantitative differences in response, not fundamentally morally
superior qualitative differences. I bet you if you took pictures of towns like Fallujah, Sadr City, etc, after US counter-insurgency
operations, and mixed them in with pictures of trashed Syrian towns that had just been liberated from rebel groups, and showed
them to Nikki Haley, or frankly any neocon, they'd have a hard time telling the difference.
As I was reading this topic Raqqa and Fallujah came to mind. In the case of Fallujah I don't recall if the civilians were given
an opportunity to evacuate. They were not in ISIS controlled Raqqa. In any event Haley's blather at the UN is for the consumption
of the rubes.
as far as i recall in the battle for fallujah, only women and children were permitted to leave during the siege.and during the
siege of Mosul they were dropping leaflets telling people not to try and leave.
And giving civilians a chance to evacuate doesn't help as much as one would think if the insurgents/rebels really do want to use
them as human shields.
Speaking to young marines in the aftermath of the second assault on Fallujah I learned that although women and children were allowed
to pass the checkpoints but men of fighting age (also known as the father, brother or husband who was driving the families out
of the city) were sent back into the city.
In talking with people here in the U.S. about Syria there is the total lack of understanding of Assad's Alawite government. There
are a couple million Christians in Syria and it is Assad's government that protects them from the Saudi sponsored Sunni headchoppers
who would like to eliminate Christians, Jews, and Shia from the Middle East. Perhaps, the Alawites being an offshoot of Shia makes
them sensitive to minority religions. However, mentioning Assad evokes strong negative reaction among U.S. Christians, similar
to Trumps "lets kill them all". On my one visit to Damascus, traveling on my U.S. Passport rather than my Israeli one, The Christians
I met were uniformly positive about Assad and the need for Assad to control the ENTIRE country.
Thank you for providing your direct experience of the views of Christian Syrians you met there.
Unfortunately none of those views ever make it to either to our print or broadcast media. We Americans are totally subject
to ziocon propaganda when it comes to Middle East affairs. Anyone that disagrees with that viewpoint is immediately labeled anti-semitic
and now banned from social media and of course from the TV talk shows.
Jack posed an interesting question, how does someone like Putin respond to an irrational US who in their delusions can
easily escalate military conflict if their ego gets bruised when it is shown that they don't have the unilateral power of a hegemon?
Always thought that Nikki Haley was the price Donald Trump had to pay to get Sheldon Adelson's large campaign contributions
in 2016. Adelson was Trump's second biggest contributor. So was recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Sheldon got his
money's worth.
https://www.investopedia.co...
There's a disturbing piece up today at WaPo by Karen De Young asserting the USA is doubling down in Syria. From the piece, emphasis
by ex-PFC Chuck:
"We've started using new language," [James] Jeffrey said, referring to previous warnings against the use of chemical weapons.
Now, he said, the United States will not tolerate "an attack. Period." "Any offensive is to us objectionable as a reckless
escalation" he said. "You add to that, if you use chemical weapons, or create refugee flows or attack innocent civilians,"
and "the consequences of that are that we will shift our positions and use all of our tools to make it clear that we'll have
to find ways to achieve our goals that are less reliant on the goodwill of the Russians."
Jeffrey is said to be Pompeo's point person on Syria. Do any of you with ears closer to the ground than those of us in flyover
land know anything about this change of tune?
.Iraq PM urged to quit as key ally deserts him over unrest.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi faced calls to resign yesterday as his alliance with a populist cleric who won May elections
crumbled over deadly unrest shaking the country's south. The two leading groups in parliament called on Abadi to step down, after
lawmakers held an emergency meeting on the public anger boiling over in the southern city of Basra.,...
The Conquest Alliance of pro-Iranian former paramilitary fighters was "on the same wavelength" as Sadr's Marching Towards Reform
list and they would work together to form a new government, Assadi said. Abadi, whose grouping came third in the May polls, defended
his record in parliament, describig the unrest as "political sabotage" and saying the crisis over public services was being exploited
for political ends.
http://news.kuwaittimes.net...
Nikki Haley's Sikh origins may have something to do with her anti-Muslim feelings. According to J. D Cunningham, author
of 'History of the Sikhs (Appendix XX)' included among the injunctions ordained by Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth guru, 'a Khalsa
(true Sikh) proves himself if he mounts a warhorse; is always waging war; kills a Khan (Muslim) and slays the Turks (Muslims).'
Aside from this, it is hypocritical in the extreme for the U.S. to be criticising anyone for killing people anywhere after
what they have been doing in the Middle East. According to Professor Gideon Polya the total avoidable deaths in Afghanstan alone
since 2001
under ongoing war and occupation-imposed deprivation amount to around three million people, about 900,000 of whom are infants
under the age of five (see Professor Gideon Polya at La Trobe University in Melbourne book, 'Body Count: Global Avoidable Mortality
Since 1950' and Washington DC-based Physicians for Social Responsibility study:
http://www.psr.org/assets/p... .
Your good professor sounds like a great piece of work. "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950" Perhaps we should have
stopped all that foreign aid in the '50s.
The under five mortality figures from Afghanistan (1 in 5) are a problem that preceded our involvement by many years. However,
the failure of the international community to make any significant progress over the last 17 years would be a legitimate criticism.
Is it in our DNA that we can't learn lessons from our interventionist experience in the Middle East? Looks like Iraq is
spinning out of control once again. I'm sure many including the Shia may reminisce favorably to the Sadam years despite his tyranny.
https://ejmagnier.com/2018/...
We are indoctrinated with the idea that all people are basically the same. In fact this is only true at the level of basics
like shelter, food, sex, etc. We refuse to really believe in the reality of widely varying cultures. It makes us incapable, as
a group, of understanding people who do not share our outlook. i have been dealing with this all my life as a delegated "ambassador"
to the "others."
Thank you, Sir. It makes perfect sense with the End if History and all those beliefs.
In this context, if you were Vladimir Putin and knowing that President Trump is completely ignorant when it comes to history
and policy details and has surrounded himself with neocons as far as foreign policy is concerned and Bibi has him eating out of
his hands, how would you deal with him if he starts to get belligerent in Syria and Ukraine?
You may be interested in a recent article in Unz by SST's own 'smoothieX12' in response to Paul Craig Roberts asking how long
Russia should continue to turn the other cheek:
http://www.unz.com/article/...
Did the Syrians get upset by General Sherman's destructive march through South Carolina? No. It was a mistake for the US ever
getting involved in Syria, with forming, equipping and training foreign armies and shadow governments including replacement prime
ministers, all in violation of the UN Charter.
A new PM was at the top of H.Clinton's to-do list as Secretary of State. My favorite Assad replacement candidate was Ghassan
Hitto from Murphy Texas, but he only lasted a couple months.
here
I don't trust converts except for the adjustment from Protestant to Catholic or vice versa. I suppose shifts from one madhab to
another, or between Buddhist schools are also ok.
Sad that in a moment of crisis,so many of the rising political stars of both parties are so hollow to the point of dangerousness.
Has anything really changed much with our policies in the ME in the past 50+ years? Haven't we been deeply influenced/controlled
by Israeli interests in this period, maybe even beyond if the attacks on USS Liberty are taken into account? Is the Trump administration
just following in the traditions of Reagan, Bush Pčre et fils, Clinton and Obama, or is there a qualitative difference?
Trump, Nikki and Bolton have been tweeting warnings about the Idlib offensive and already accusing Assad if there are any
chemical attacks. Wonder why? Lavrov has also made comments that he expects a chemical use false flag. Not sure about this
post on Zerohedge, but if it has any credibility then it would appear that the US military is getting ready for some kind of provocation.
Maybe this is all just "positioning" and "messaging" but maybe not. With Bibi, Nikki, Bolton and Pompeo as THE advisors, does
anyone have a clue what Trump decides, when, not if, the jihadi White Helmets stage their chemical event in Idlib?
"... Fourth, privatization was supposed to reduce public sector monopolies, but there is often little evidence of significant erosion of the monopolies enjoyed by privatized SOEs. Arguably, technological change and innovation, e.g., in telecommunications, were far more significant in eroding privatized monopolies and reducing costs to consumers, than privatization per se. ..."
"... Also, natural monopolies (such as public utilities) are often deemed inefficient due to the monopolistic nature of the industry or market. The question which arises then is whether private monopoly is better, even with regulation intended to protect the public interest. ..."
Jerri-Lynn here. This short post usefully debunks arguments advanced to promote the privatization fairy. The author's reminds us
that state ownership, when done properly, as in Singapore, can offer its own benefits and " is recognized there as the reason for
public accountability, better governance and management."
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram, former UN Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development. Originally published at
Inter Press Service
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 4 2018 (IPS) – Several arguments have been advanced to justify privatization since the 1980s. Privatization
has been advocated as an easy means to:
Reduce the government's financial and administrative burden, particularly by undertaking and maintaining services and infrastructure;
Promote competition, improve efficiency and increase productivity in providing public services;
Stimulate private entrepreneurship and investment to accelerate economic growth;
Help reduce the public sector's presence and size, with its monopolistic tendencies and bureaucratic support.
Moot case for privatization
First, privatization is supposed to reduce the government's financial and administrative burdens, particularly in providing services
and infrastructure. Earlier public sector expansion was increasingly seen as the problem, rather than part of the solution. Thus,
reducing the government's role and burden was expected to be popular.
Second, privatization was believed by some to be a means to promote competition, improve efficiency and increase productivity
in service delivery. This belief was naďve, confusing the question of ownership with that of promoting competition.
It was believed that privatization would somehow encourage competition, not recognizing that competition and property rights are
distinct, and not contingent issues. Associated with this was the presumption that competition would automatically result in greater
efficiency as well as improved productivity, not recognizing economies of scale and scope in many instances.
Third, privatization was expected to stimulate private entrepreneurship and investment. There is also a popular, but naďve belief
that privatization was going to stimulate private entrepreneurship when, in fact, the evidence is strong, in Malaysia and elsewhere,
that privatization often crowds out the likelihood of small and medium-sized enterprises actually emerging to fill the imagined void,
presumed to exist following privatization.
Admittedly, there is scope for new entrepreneurship with privatization as new ways and ideas offered by the private sector are
considered – or reconsidered – as the new privatized entity seeks to maximize the profits/rents to be secured with privatization.
However, the private purchase of previously public property, in itself, does not augment real economic assets. Private funds are
thus diverted, to take over SOEs, and consequently diminished, rather than augmented. Hence, private funds are less available for
investing in the real economy, in building new economic capacities and capabilities.
Fourth, privatization was supposed to reduce public sector monopolies, but there is often little evidence of significant erosion
of the monopolies enjoyed by privatized SOEs. Arguably, technological change and innovation, e.g., in telecommunications, were far
more significant in eroding privatized monopolies and reducing costs to consumers, than privatization per se.
From the 1980s, if not before, various studies have portrayed the public sector as a cesspool of abuse, inefficiency, incompetence
and corruption. Books and articles, often with clever titles such as 'vampire state', 'bureaucrats in business' and so on, provided
the justification for privatization.
Undoubtedly, there were some real horror stories, which have been conveniently and frequently cited as supposedly representative
of all SOEs. But other experiences can also be cited to show that SOEs can be run quite efficiently, even on commercial bases, confounding
the dire predictions of the prophets of public sector doom.
Has privatization improved efficiency?
Although some SOEs have been better run and are deemed more efficient after privatization, the overall record has hardly been
consistent. Thus, it is important to ascertain when and why there have been improvements, or otherwise. It is also important to remember
that better-run privatized SOEs, in and of themselves, do not necessarily serve the national or public interest better.
Undoubtedly, most SOEs can be better run and become more efficient. But this is not always the case as some SOEs are indeed already
well run. For instance, very few privatization advocates would insist that most SOEs in Singapore are poorly run.
As its SOEs are generally considered well-run, public ownership is not used there to explain poor governance, management or abuse;
instead, public ownership is recognized there as the reason for public accountability, better governance and management.
Principal-agent managerial delegation dilemma
Hence, in different contexts, with appropriately strict supervision, SOEs can be and have indeed been better run. Privatization,
in itself, does not solve managerial delegation problems, i.e., the principal-agent problem, as it is not a problem of public ownership
per se.
With SOEs, the principal is the state or the government while the agents are the managers and supervisors, who may -- or may not
-- pursue the objectives intended by the principal.
This is a problem faced by many organizations. It is also a problem for private enterprises or corporations, especially large
ones, especially where the principal (shareholders) may not be able to exercise effective supervision or control over the agent.
Also, natural monopolies (such as public utilities) are often deemed inefficient due to the monopolistic nature of the industry
or market. The question which arises then is whether private monopoly is better, even with regulation intended to protect the public
interest.
The answer needs to be ascertained analytically on the basis of evidence, and cannot be presumed a priori. If an industry is a
natural monopoly, what does privatization achieve? Often, it means a transfer to private hands, which can be problematic and possibly
dangerous for the public interest.
These great businesses -- banking, brokering, bill discounting, loan floating, company
promoting -- form the central ganglion of international capitalism. United by the strongest
bonds of organization, always in closest and quickest touch with one another, situated in
the very heart of the business capital of every state, controlled, so far as Europe is
concerned, chiefly by men of a single and peculiar race , who have behind them many
centuries of financial experience, they are in a unique position to manipulate the policy
of nations. No great quick direction of capital is possible save by their consent and
through their agency. Does anyone seriously suppose that a great war could be undertaken by
any European state, or a great state loan subscribed, if the house of Rothschild and its
connections set their face against it? . There is not a war, a revolution, an anarchist
assassination, or any other public shock, which is not gainful to these men; they are
harpies who suck their gains from every new forced expenditure and every sudden
disturbance of public credit . These men are the only certain gainers from the [Boer] war,
and most of their gains are made out of the public losses of their adopted country
or the private losses of their fellow-countrymen.
Prescient words written by J.A. Hobson in his classic study of imperialism in 1902. In
over a century, little has changed. If anything, the power of these harpies has grown.
They are currently orchestrating a concerted attack on democracy itself in both Britain and
the U.S. The assault is being spearheaded not by the IDF, but by a captured, weaponized, news
media and corrupt politicians. If the Zionists are successful in their campaign to
criminalize the truth, who will heed their cries for help if ever the tables are turned?
"... Fourth, privatization was supposed to reduce public sector monopolies, but there is often little evidence of significant erosion of the monopolies enjoyed by privatized SOEs. Arguably, technological change and innovation, e.g., in telecommunications, were far more significant in eroding privatized monopolies and reducing costs to consumers, than privatization per se. ..."
"... Also, natural monopolies (such as public utilities) are often deemed inefficient due to the monopolistic nature of the industry or market. The question which arises then is whether private monopoly is better, even with regulation intended to protect the public interest. ..."
Jerri-Lynn here. This short post usefully debunks arguments advanced to promote the privatization fairy. The author's reminds us
that state ownership, when done properly, as in Singapore, can offer its own benefits and " is recognized there as the reason for
public accountability, better governance and management."
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram, former UN Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development. Originally published at
Inter Press Service
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 4 2018 (IPS) – Several arguments have been advanced to justify privatization since the 1980s. Privatization
has been advocated as an easy means to:
Reduce the government's financial and administrative burden, particularly by undertaking and maintaining services and infrastructure;
Promote competition, improve efficiency and increase productivity in providing public services;
Stimulate private entrepreneurship and investment to accelerate economic growth;
Help reduce the public sector's presence and size, with its monopolistic tendencies and bureaucratic support.
Moot case for privatization
First, privatization is supposed to reduce the government's financial and administrative burdens, particularly in providing services
and infrastructure. Earlier public sector expansion was increasingly seen as the problem, rather than part of the solution. Thus,
reducing the government's role and burden was expected to be popular.
Second, privatization was believed by some to be a means to promote competition, improve efficiency and increase productivity
in service delivery. This belief was naďve, confusing the question of ownership with that of promoting competition.
It was believed that privatization would somehow encourage competition, not recognizing that competition and property rights are
distinct, and not contingent issues. Associated with this was the presumption that competition would automatically result in greater
efficiency as well as improved productivity, not recognizing economies of scale and scope in many instances.
Third, privatization was expected to stimulate private entrepreneurship and investment. There is also a popular, but naďve belief
that privatization was going to stimulate private entrepreneurship when, in fact, the evidence is strong, in Malaysia and elsewhere,
that privatization often crowds out the likelihood of small and medium-sized enterprises actually emerging to fill the imagined void,
presumed to exist following privatization.
Admittedly, there is scope for new entrepreneurship with privatization as new ways and ideas offered by the private sector are
considered – or reconsidered – as the new privatized entity seeks to maximize the profits/rents to be secured with privatization.
However, the private purchase of previously public property, in itself, does not augment real economic assets. Private funds are
thus diverted, to take over SOEs, and consequently diminished, rather than augmented. Hence, private funds are less available for
investing in the real economy, in building new economic capacities and capabilities.
Fourth, privatization was supposed to reduce public sector monopolies, but there is often little evidence of significant erosion
of the monopolies enjoyed by privatized SOEs. Arguably, technological change and innovation, e.g., in telecommunications, were far
more significant in eroding privatized monopolies and reducing costs to consumers, than privatization per se.
From the 1980s, if not before, various studies have portrayed the public sector as a cesspool of abuse, inefficiency, incompetence
and corruption. Books and articles, often with clever titles such as 'vampire state', 'bureaucrats in business' and so on, provided
the justification for privatization.
Undoubtedly, there were some real horror stories, which have been conveniently and frequently cited as supposedly representative
of all SOEs. But other experiences can also be cited to show that SOEs can be run quite efficiently, even on commercial bases, confounding
the dire predictions of the prophets of public sector doom.
Has privatization improved efficiency?
Although some SOEs have been better run and are deemed more efficient after privatization, the overall record has hardly been
consistent. Thus, it is important to ascertain when and why there have been improvements, or otherwise. It is also important to remember
that better-run privatized SOEs, in and of themselves, do not necessarily serve the national or public interest better.
Undoubtedly, most SOEs can be better run and become more efficient. But this is not always the case as some SOEs are indeed already
well run. For instance, very few privatization advocates would insist that most SOEs in Singapore are poorly run.
As its SOEs are generally considered well-run, public ownership is not used there to explain poor governance, management or abuse;
instead, public ownership is recognized there as the reason for public accountability, better governance and management.
Principal-agent managerial delegation dilemma
Hence, in different contexts, with appropriately strict supervision, SOEs can be and have indeed been better run. Privatization,
in itself, does not solve managerial delegation problems, i.e., the principal-agent problem, as it is not a problem of public ownership
per se.
With SOEs, the principal is the state or the government while the agents are the managers and supervisors, who may -- or may not
-- pursue the objectives intended by the principal.
This is a problem faced by many organizations. It is also a problem for private enterprises or corporations, especially large
ones, especially where the principal (shareholders) may not be able to exercise effective supervision or control over the agent.
Also, natural monopolies (such as public utilities) are often deemed inefficient due to the monopolistic nature of the industry
or market. The question which arises then is whether private monopoly is better, even with regulation intended to protect the public
interest.
The answer needs to be ascertained analytically on the basis of evidence, and cannot be presumed a priori. If an industry is a
natural monopoly, what does privatization achieve? Often, it means a transfer to private hands, which can be problematic and possibly
dangerous for the public interest.
"... The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto ..."
"... "Uneven Development: Understanding the Roots of Inequality" ..."
"... "A generation ago, the country's social contract was premised on higher wages and reliable benefits, provided chiefly by employers. In recent decades, we've moved to a system where low wages are supposed to be made bearable by low consumer prices and a hodgepodge of government assistance programs. But as dissatisfaction with this arrangement has grown, it is time to look back at how we got here and imagine what the next stage of the social contract might be." ..."
The creation of large enterprises gave rise not only to an organized labor movement, but to
a larger bureaucratic regulatory state with agencies intended to help stabilize and grow
capitalism while keeping the working class loyal to the social contract. Crisis in public
confidence resulted not only from economic recessions and depressions built into the economy,
but the contradictions capitalism was fostering in society as the benefits in advances in
industry, science and technology accrued to the wealthy while the social structure remained
hierarchical.
Ever since 1947 when the ideological father of neoliberalism Friedrich von Hayek called a
conference in Mont Pelerin to address how the new ideology would replace Keynesianism,
neoliberals have been promising to address these contradictions, insisting that eliminating the
social welfare state and allowing complete market dominationthat would result in society's
modernization and would filter down to all social classes and nations both developed and
developing. Such thinking is rooted in the modernization theory that emerged after WWII when
the US took advantage of its preeminent global power to impose a transformation model on much
of the non-Communist world. Cold War liberal economist Walt Rostow articulated the
modernization model of development in his work entitled The Stages of Economic Growth: A
Non-Communist Manifesto , 1960. By the 1970s, neoliberals adapted Rostow's modernization
theory as their bible and the core of the social contract. (Evans Rubara, "Uneven
Development: Understanding the Roots of Inequality"
The challenge for the political class has always been and remains to mobilize a popular base
that would afford legitimacy to the social contract. The issue for mainstream political parties
is not whether there is a systemic problem with the social contract intended to serve the
capitalist class, but the degree to which the masses can be co-opted through various methods to
support the status quo. "A generation ago, the country's social contract was premised on
higher wages and reliable benefits, provided chiefly by employers. In recent decades, we've
moved to a system where low wages are supposed to be made bearable by low consumer prices and a
hodgepodge of government assistance programs. But as dissatisfaction with this arrangement has
grown, it is time to look back at how we got here and imagine what the next stage of the social
contract might be."
Considering that Keynesianism and neoliberalism operate under the same social structure and
differ only on how best to achieve capital formation while retaining sociopolitical conformity,
the article above published in The Atlantic illustrates how analysts/commentators
easily misinterpret nuances within a social contract for the covenant's macro goals. A similar
view as that expressed in The Atlantic is also reflected in the New America
Foundation's publications, identifying specific aspects of Arthur Schlesinger's Cold War
militarist policies enmeshed with social welfare Keynesianism as parts of the evolving social
contract.
Identifying the social contract with a specific set of policies under different
administrations evolving to reflect the nuances of political class and economic elites,some
analysts contend that there is a European Union-wide social contract to which nationally-based
social contracts must subordinate their sovereignty. This model has evolved to accommodate
neoliberal globalism through regional trade blocs on the basis of a 'patron-client'integration
relationship between core and periphery countries.
Ágnes Heller's work is associated with Moral
Anthropology and "probing modernity's destiny for a non-predatory humanism that combines
the existential wisdom of ancient theory with modern values." [1]
Neomodernism accepts some aspects of postmodernism's critique of modernism, notably that
modernism elevated the world view of dominant groups to the status of objective fact, thereby
failing to express the viewpoint of " subaltern groups," such as women and ethnic
minorities. However, in her view, neomodernism rejects postmodernism as:
Unscientific: the ability of science to generate useful knowledge cannot be waved away as
" scientism ".
Journalism: as not giving any explanation as to how or why things happen.
Local: as being unable to recognise patterns that occur across time or location.
Unverified: as lacking any validation process, and therefore proceeding by fad and
hierarchy.
Victor Grauer
In 1982, Victor Grauer attacked "the cult of the new," and proposed that there had arisen a
"neo-modern" movement in the arts which was based on deep formal rigor, rather than on "the
explosion of pluralism." [2]
His argument was that post-modernism was exclusively a negative
attack on modernism, and had no future separate from modernism proper, a point of view which is
held by many scholars of modernism. [2]
Carlos
Escudé
In "Natural Law at War", a review essay published on 31 May 2002 in The Times Literary
Supplement (London, TLS No. 5174), Carlos Escudé wrote: "Postmodern humanity faces a
major challenge. It must solve a dilemma it does not want to face. If all cultures are morally
equivalent, then all human individuals are not endowed with the same human rights, because some
cultures award some men more rights than are allotted to other men and women. If, on the other
hand, all men and women are endowed with the same human rights, then all cultures are not
morally equivalent, because cultures that acknowledge that 'all men are created equal' are to
be regarded as 'superior,' or 'more advanced' in terms of their civil ethics than those that do
not." Escudé's brand of neomodernism contends with "politically-correct intellectuals
who prefer to opt for the easy way out, asserting both that we all have the same human rights
and that all cultures are equal."
Andre Durand and Armando Alemdar
Published their own Neomodernist Manifesto in 2001. The Neomodern Manifesto posits criteria
for a revitalised approach to works of art founded on history, traditional artistic
disciplines, theology and philosophy. Durand's and Alemdar's Neomodernism views art as an act
of expression of the sublime; in Neomodern painting as a representation of the visual
appearance of things with correspondence to the physical world understood as a model for
beauty, truth, and good. Neomodern works of art via mimesis interpret and present the universe
and man's existence, in line with the belief that the reality we live is but a mirror of
another universe that can only be accessed through inspiration and imagination.
Gabriel Omowaye
Gabriel Lolu Omowaye, in his speech 'A new challenging time' to a group of college students
in Nigeria, in 2005, took a different approach to neomodernism. He viewed neomodernism as a
political philosophy that became more prominent in the early 21st century. To him, it involves
common goal and joint global effort - universalism - to address arising global challenges such
as population growth, natural resources, climate change and environmental factors, natural
causes and effects, and health issues. Omowaye posited that political will is the major driver
of economic necessities. As a result, he added that neomodernism involves limited
government-regulated liberalism along with high drive innovation and entrepreneurship, high
literacy rate, progressive taxation for social equity, philanthropism, technological
advancement, economic development and individual growth. He perceived the quest for equal
representation of men and women in the neomodern era as a strong signal for advent of
postmodernism. So also, the quest for youths engagement in resourceful and rewarding ways
especially in governance, peace building and self-productivity has not taken a formidable shape
than it is at this time. As far as he was concerned, he believed most of these challenges were
not adequately tackled in preceding eras and the arising challenges thus stated were not
prepared for and that cause for change in mentality and thinking which the neomodern era is
providing for solutions to the era's challenges, with a prospective view to global stability
and social inclusion. His philosophical thought premised on a fact that new times require new
approaches from new reasonings, even if some applicable ideas or methologies could be borrowed
from the past, an acute form of paradigm-shift.
Omowaye believed in idealism as guiding realism and in turn, realism as defining idealism.
Moral concepts cannot be wished away from social norms, but evolving social trends dissipate
morality in form of religion and logical standards and adheres to current norms in form of
'what should be'. Consequently, the manner at which 'what should be' is driven at in the modern
and postmodern eras, being widely accepted became 'what is'. The manner at which the damage of
the new 'what is' is hampering development process in the form of higher mortality rate and
decadence of cultural good, calls to question the ideology behind the norms that are less
beneficial to a wider society in form of globalization. The world as a whole through
technological advancement became a global community particularly, in the 21st century. Former
Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan then stated that the "suffering anywhere
concerns people everywhere". Champions of neomodern age such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson
in the field of philanthropy expounded their vision to encompass the global community in social
good such as alleviating poverty, eradicating diseases, enhancing literacy rates and addressing
climate changes.
Technological advancement of the neomodern era however has its downturns in that it added to
the decadence in cultural good such that people everywhere, especially high number of youths
follow the trends in the new 'what is', which include social celebrities in the form of
dressing, sexual activities, extravagancies, and less interest in learning and even, working
but more interest in making money. Money became a value-determinant than utility. This brought
about frauds in various sectors. This latter aspect is not limited to youths but even company
executives, and politicians of many societies. Technological advancement has made privacy less
safer for intrusion and people more safer for protection. The supposedly good of technological
advancement in the neomodern era has included whistle blow such as Wikileaks' Julian Assange.
The more good has been in the level of innovations and innovators it has sprung up such as
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and easier business models and broader social connectivity. This
latter part has lessened more amity in immediate environment and many people tend to live more
in the virtual world neomodern technological advancements have created.
Neomodernism checks more into the current relative way of living of people and the society
to correct necessary abnormalities and to encourage virtues and values within the global
community in the 21st century.
In furtherance, Gabriel Omowaye's view of neomodernism was that knowledge comes from
learning and experience, and wisdom primarily from intuition. Knowledge is a variable of set
occurrences of that which happens to a man and that which a man seeks to know. Knowledge is
vital and good for discretion but a minor part of discernment wherein what is known might not
be applicable. Intuition is a function of the mind and the mind, not seen, and yet unknown to
the carrier, is a function of what put the thoughts, ideas and discretion in it. Wisdom without
knowledge is vague, and knowledge without wisdom, unworthy. Wisdom perfects knowledge, and in
the absence of either, the sole is delusory.
An 'Immortal Regiment' march celebrating Victory Day in Riga, Latvia.
It has been nearly three decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Despite Russia's
reemergence on the world stage as a respected power after market-oriented 'reforms' destroyed
its economy for the duration of the nineties, the breakup of the USSR is an event regarded by
an increasing amount of Russians as a catastrophic tragedy rather than a triumph of 'freedom
and democracy.'
In recent years, there have been numerous polls showing that more than half of Russians not
only regret
the collapse of the Soviet Union but would even
prefer for its return . However, the nostalgia only comes as a surprise to those who have
forgotten that not long before the failed August Coup that led to its demise, the first and
only referendum in its history was held in March of 1991 which polled citizens if they wished
to preserve the Soviet system.
The results were more than three quarters of the population in the entire socialist
federation (including Russia) voting a resounding yes with a turnout of 80% in the
participating republics. In Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan the outcome
was more than 90% voting for renewal. Even the country with the lowest amount of support, the
Ukraine, was still 70% in favor. While the measure was officially banned in six republics --
Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and the three Baltic states -- despite being unrecognized by their
local governments the vote was still organized and the outcomes were all over 90%.
Ironically, the union dissolved five months later under the pretext of establishing
'democracy' in Eastern Europe just as it ignored the very wishes of Soviet citizens. After more
than 25 years of suffering at the hands of economic and trade liberalization, gutting of state
subsidies and mass privatization of the former state-run industry, is it any wonder that
Russians are yearning for a return to socialism?
The consequences of the disintegration are still felt in the relations with the United
States today. It planted the seeds for the carefully arranged revival of the Cold War that was
hiding in plain sight until it surfaced with 'color revolutions', proxy wars and dubious spy
poisonings. One source of the strained relations between the West and Russia has been the
Baltic states, which burgeoned following their integration into the European Union and
enrollment in NATO membership in 2004 during its enlargement. NATO
continues its provocations with massive war games bordering Kaliningrad, while Moscow is
painted as the aggressor even though the U.S. defense spending increase this year alone
surpasses Russia's entire military budget.
The antagonism between Latvia, Estonia and(to a lesser degree) Lithuania with Moscow stems
partly from from the cessation of the USSR itself. The conclusion of the Cold War resulted in
more than 25 million Russians instantly discovering themselves living abroad in foreign
countries. For seventy years, fifteen nations had been fully integrated while Russians migrated
and lived within the other republics. The Soviet collapse immediately reignited national
conflicts, from the Caucasus to the Baltics. While the majority of the ethnic Russian diaspora
live in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, nearly 1 million reside in the post-Soviet Baltics and since
1991 they have been subjected to a campaign of forced assimilation, discrimination and
exclusion.
The Baltic republics made nationalism their official state policy while moving away from
Russia's sphere of influence into a closer relationship with the West. Boris Yeltsin's
subservience to Washington eclipsed any concern for the fate of captive Russians as the Soviet
Bloc was herded into the EU, but his administration did quarrel with the new Baltic authorities
and
accused them of creating an anti-Russian 'apartheid.'
As geopolitical tensions have increased under his successor, Vladimir V. Putin, who has
embarrassed Western imperialism in the international arena, so has Moscow's disapproval of the
treatment of its minority held hostage in the Baltic Rim. Is a comparison to South Africa
warranted? Even if the similarities are only partial, the three states show evidence of deep
ethnocracy.
While less than 10% of Lithuania is ethnically Russian, in Latvia and Estonia the number is
much higher at a quarter of their entire populations. The three governments have passed laws
promoting their official languages and restored citizenship requirements that existed up until
1940, demanding that their Russian minorities apply or risk losing basic rights and guarantees.
Russia has interpreted these measures as a form of slow-motion ethnic cleansing intended to
coerce Russians to immigrate elsewhere.
When the three states first became independent, in an act of systematic discrimination they
distributed non-citizen 'alien' passports to ethnic Russians and excluded them from obtaining
citizenship automatically, even if they had lived and worked in a Baltic state for their entire
life. In fact, citizenship was not immediately granted to anyone whose ancestry arrived after
1940, a policy that specifically targeted ethnic Russians who without naturalization are left
stateless.
For example, when Estonia first declared its independence more than 30% of its population
(or every third person) did not have citizenship of the country of residence. This inscribed
ethnic division into their society and although many Russians have become naturalized over the
last two decades, there are still more than 80,000 in Estonia without determined status who are
mostly former Soviet citizens and their descendants. In Latvia, segregation runs even deeper
where more than 250,000 Russians (15% of the population) remain stateless. Even when they do
become citizens, the parliaments have attempted to pass laws banning non-EU immigrants
(predominantly Russians) from possessing voting rights on several occasions. Polls also show
the prejudice within their societies, with many Balts indicating they would prefer their
Russian-speaking neighbors to repatriate.
Meanwhile, the Russian population has expressed concern about the reemergence of neo-Nazism.
The authorities have nurtured holocaust denial, such as the Latvian government objecting
to an UNESCO Holocaust exhibition of the Salaspils concentration camp on the basis it would
'tarnish the country's image.' No kidding.
Children held in Salaspils concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Latvia during WWII.
One criteria for the naturalization exams is based on language where in order to become
citizens Russians must become fluent in Latvian and Estonian, even though they are such a large
minority that in larger cities they often constitute 50% of the population and Russian may be
the most spoken language. Simultaneously, any attempt to make Russian a second official
language have been struck down. It is a deliberate effort to assimilate the Russian-speaking
minority and erase remnants of Soviet culture.
In order to obtain basic entitlements, Russians have to pass the tough naturalization tests
which many fail several times (especially the elderly), facing fines and risking losing their
employment in the process. The tests are notoriously difficult as Latvian and Estonian
languages bear little resemblance to Slavic Russian and are much closer to Finnish.
Apart from ethnicity, 40% of Latvia as a whole identifies as Russian-speaking and have been
accustomed to schooling in their native tongue where they already have low career prospects and
income rates. Rather than inclusion, they have been mandated to adopt the Baltic languages.
Beginning in 2019, the Russian language education options in Latvia will be discontinued
altogether in higher education at colleges and universities as well as many secondary schools,
which has sparked
demonstrations in protest .
Russian-speakers protesting Latvia's language reform laws
It should be made clear that what ethnic Russians experience in the Baltics has its own
particularities that make it significantly different from the institutionalized racism and
violently enforced segregation that existed in South Africa (or what many believe is applicable
to the Palestinians under Israeli occupation). The word apartheid itself originates from the
Afrikaans word for 'separateness' (or apart-hood), but an exact comparison is not the real
issue. There are many overlapping characteristics that make an analogy arguable.
For instance, the use of an ID system denoting ethnicity and alien status with the inability
of Russians to participate in the democratic process or politics. Their reduced standing
contributes to a society where ethnic groups often do not intermingle and are concentrated in
particular areas with Russians mostly residing in urban cities. Yet even Israel recognized
Arabic as a second official language (until 2018), while none of three Baltic states do so for
Russian. When referendums have been held on whether to adopt Russian as a second language, the
non-citizen communities are excluded from voting, ensuring its inability to pass.
The exams also coerce Russians to accept a nationalist and historically revisionist account
of the last century where the Soviet Union is said to have "occupied" the Baltics. A history
lesson is needed to understand how this is untrue and based on pure Nazi mythology. During the
Romanov dynasty, the Baltic states had been part of the Russian Empire but became independent
for the first time in centuries following the February Revolution in 1917.
Along with Belarus and Finland, the Bolsheviks were unable to regain the three republics
during the Russian Civil War. During the 1930s, the three nations were officially sovereign
states but under their own brutal nationalist regimes. The Soviet liberation of the Baltics can
hardly be seen as a 'forceful incorporation' considering what they replaced were not
democracies themselves and they were absorbed in order to block Hitlerite expansionism.
Since the restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe, the Baltic states have waged a
campaign of diminishing and obscuring the Holocaust into a 'double genocide' of equal
proportions , conflating the Nazis and the Soviets as twin evils. Western 'democracies' have
helped obfuscate the truth about the widely misunderstood Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the treaty
of non-belligerence between Germany and the USSR. The 1939 non-aggression pact has been painted
as a 'secret alliance' between the Nazis and the Soviets, disregarding that France and Great
Britain had done the same with the Germans the previous year with the Munich Agreement.
Only the Soviets are said to have 'conspired' with Hitler, just as when the West fought the
Germans it was for 'liberal values' but when the USSR did so it was for competing 'dominion'
over Europe. In order to mask their own fascist sympathies, the West has falsified the
historical reasons for the accord. In reality, there were measures incorporating the Baltic
states into the USSR as part of a mutual defense and assistance against German imperialism and
their 'master plan' for the East.
The truth is that the ruling class in the West feared the spread of communism much more than
fascism, and actually viewed the rise of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe as an opportunity to
crush the Soviet Union. Leading up to WWII, not only was it Western capital investment which
financed the rapid buildup of Germany's armed forces, but the U.S., Britain and France did
everything within their power to encourage Hitler's aggression toward the USSR. More than once
they
collectively refused to sign any mutual security alliance with Moscow while appeasing
Hitler's expansionism in Czechoslovakia, with the British in particular guilty of sabotaging
negotiations to isolate the Soviets and pit them into a war against Germany.
Stalin was well aware the Nazis planned to expand the Lebensraum further East, but
the Soviets were in the midst of a rapid industrialization process that accomplished in a
single decade what took the British more than a century. They needed time to guarantee they
could defeat an offensive by the Wehrmacht, the most powerful and developed military force in
the world at the time. It provided an additional year and ten months of further buildup of
Soviet armaments -- if not for this move, it is possible the Germans would never
have been stopped twenty kilometers short of Moscow and turned the outcome of the war in their
favor. The real reason the pact infuriated the West was because it obligated them into having
to fight the Germans, something the imperial powers had hoped to avoid altogether.
More disturbingly, the Baltic governments have drawn from the traditions of the far right by
whitewashing the local nationalists that sided with Germany during their invasion of the Soviet
Union in 1941 which broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The Nazi collaborators have been
restored and normalized as 'freedom fighters' who fought solely for Baltic independence.
The Estonian parliament has even adopted resolutions
honoring the Estonian Legion and 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian)
without any such equivalent measure for the more than 30,000 Estonians who courageously fought
in the Red Army.
To most Russians, it is an absolute insult to the 27 million Soviets who died defeating the
Nazis, including the Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians who did so as well. Today, if they
wish to become citizens they must swear an oath of allegiance to this rewriting of history
which has been made a precondition for obtaining citizenship. The three states also do not
recognize the May 9th Victory Day as a holiday, forcing the Russian minority to celebrate it
informally.
20th Estonian SS Division
The rehabilitation of the local nationalists who fought alongside the Germans has been done
under the false premise that the collaboration was a purely strategic alliance. The Soviets are
portrayed as equal to or worse than Nazi Germany, a false equivalency between fascism and
communism that is a ubiquitous trait among ultra-rightists today. Tens of thousands of Latvians
and Estonians volunteered and were conscripted into legions of the SS which participated in the
Holocaust, as did Lithuanians in the Nazi-created Territorial Defense Force and their Security
Police.
They did not simply coordinate on the battlefield with the Germans, but directly
participated in the methodical slaughter of Jews, Roma and others because they shared their
racism. In Lithuania, for example, quislings welcomed the Wehrmacht as liberators and for the
next three years under Nazi occupation helped murder 200,000 Jews, nearly 95% of the country's
Jewish population, a total which exceeded every other European country in terms of percentage
of extermination. It is certain that the only thing that prevented Lithuania's Jews from
extinction was the heroism and sacrifice of the Red Army.
Latvians greeting the Red Army after the liberation of Riga
During the Cold War, the US and NATO sought to whitewash certain Nazi war criminals when it
suited its strategic interests against the Soviets. This went beyond the Germans themselves,
whether it was recruiting
their spies for espionage, atomic scientists in Operation Paperclip , or making Hans
Speidel the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in Central Europe.
The Baltic Waffen SS Units are to be considered as separate and distinct in purpose,
ideology, activities, and qualifications for membership from the German SS, and therefore the
Commission holds them not to be a movement hostile to the Government of the United States
under Section 13 of the Displaced Persons Act, as amended."
While the displaced persons laws let Jewish refugees into the United States, it also
provided cover for the reserved spaces for thousands of Nazi collaborators in an open-door
policy providing them safe harbor. Following the end of WWII, many of the former members of the
Baltic SS units became anti-Soviet partisans known as the Forest Brothers who carried on a
guerilla campaign against the Soviets with the assistance of the CIA and MI6 until it was
defeated in mid-50s. Unfortunately, Nikita Khruschev then made one of a series of colossal
mistakes by permitting the exiled Baltic nationals to return as part of the de-Stalinisation
thaw.
Latvian Legion
The idea that regiments of the Schutzstaffel were fighting purely for Estonian and Latvian
independence is a horrifying fabrication in defiance of the overwhelming evidence documented by
holocaust historians. The West has exploited this sanitizing of history that reappeared
following the reinstatement of free enterprise in eastern Europe which has proliferated the far
right in the EU as a whole. Why? It serves their cynical immediate interests in undermining
Moscow. The same manipulations are occurring in the Cold War's sequel. Last year, NATO even
produced a short film and a-historical reenactment entitled
Forest Brothers: Fight for the Baltics , glorifying the anti-Soviet partisans as part of
its propaganda effort against Russia.
Any crimes that were committed by the Soviet NKVD during the war are dwarfed by the tens of
thousands of Jews and Roma which were exterminated on an industrial level by the Nazis and
their co-conspirators using the race theory -- there is no comparison. Not to
mention that the reintroduction of the free market to Eastern Europe killed more people than
any period in Soviet history, reducing life expectancy by a decade and undoing seventy years
worth of progress. We only ever hear of the faults of socialism and the inflated numbers of
losses of life attributed to its failure, never the daily crimes of capitalism or the tens of
millions lost in the wars it produces.
he Soviet brand of socialism was far from perfect, but nevertheless a model for what
humanity can achieve in the face of tremendous adversity without being shackled by the
contradictions of capitalism -- an industrial society with relative equality in
education, wealth, employment and basic necessities. Now that Western capitalism is once again
collapsing, it is making friends with nationalists to revise its ugly history and the Russian
minority in the Baltics are suffering the consequence. It will continue to apportion blame on
the up-and-coming power in Moscow, no longer the quasi-colony of the Yeltsin era, for its
soon-to-be expiration. Let us hope it does not start another World War in the midst of
it -- for all our sake.
Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His work has appeared in
publications such as The Greanville Post, Global Research, CounterPunch and more. Read him on
Medium . Max may be reached at
[email protected]
I did not know about the vote in 1991. Thank you for exposing yet another example of US
meddling in elections, i.e. not recognizing the results and essentially forcing a coup via
Yeltsin. The war crimes of the US and Israel are beyond comprehension. Loading...
Yes, the Baltics, like the western Ukraine, rolled out the red carpet to the German invaders
in 1941. The Nazi genocide was outsourced from Waffen SS and Einsatzgruppen to Baltic Nazis
since the numbers involved were too big to handle for the Germans alone.
The Arajs Kommando death squad (also: Sonderkommando Arajs), was led by local SS and
collaborators Viktors Arājs, Franz Stahlecker and Robert Stieglitz and a unit of Latvian
Auxiliary Police (Lettische Hilfspolizei) which was subordinated to the German
Sicherheitsdienst (a special security branch of the German SS). It was a notorious killing
unit during the Holocaust. Stahlecker instructed Arajs to set up a commando unit that
obtained an official name Latvian Auxiliary Security Police or Arājs Kommando.
The following day on July 2 1941 Arajs learned from Stahlecker during a conference that
the Arajs commando had to unleash a pogrom that looked spontaneous and these pogrom-like
disorders were to break out before German occupation authorities had been properly
established. The Einsatzkommando a sub-group of the SS death squads, belonging to the larger
Einsatzgruppen) influenced mobs of former members of Pērkonkrusts (Latvian
ultra-nationalists and other extreme right-wing groups) began mass arrests, pillaging and
murders of Jews in Riga, which led to death of between 300 to 400 Jews.
Killings continued under the supervision of SS Brigadeführer Walter Stahlecker and
ended when more 2,700 Jews had been murdered. The activities of the Einsatzkommando were
constrained after the full establishment of the German occupation authority, after which the
SS made use of select units of native recruits. German General Wilhelm Ullersperger and
Voldemar Weiss, a well known, Latvian nationalist, appealed to the population via a radio
address to attack "internal enemies".
During the next few months, activities of the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police was
primarily focused on killing Jews, Communists and Red Army stragglers in Latvia as well as in
neighbouring Belorussia. The group alone murdered almost half of Latvia's Jewish population,
about 26,000 Jews, mainly in November and December 1941. The creation of the Arajs Kommando
was "one of the most significant inventions of the early Holocaust", that marked a transition
from German organised pogroms to systematic killing of Jews by local volunteers (former army
officers, policemen, students, Aizargi).
This helped resolve a chronic problem with German personnel shortages, and provided the
Germans with relief from the psychological stress of routinely murdering civilians. By the
autumn of 1941, the SS deployed Latvian 'Police Battalions' to Leningrad, where they were
consolidated as Latvian Second SS Volunteer Brigade.
In 1943, this brigade, which would later become the Latvian Nineteenth SS Volunteer
Division, was consolidated with the Latvian Fifteen SS Volunteer Division to become the
Latvian Legion. Although formally the Latvian Legion (Schutzmannschaft or Schuma) was a
volunteer Waffen-SS military formation; it was voluntary only by name, because approximately
80-85% of personnel were conscripted into the legion.
Yes lovely people these Batlics. They are now among the poorest countries in Europe and
are suffering massive demographic problems as anyone who can, leaves. As my old mother used
to say. "God pays debts without money..
"
People of Russian heritage are denied passports, the right to vote, and any official
employment, amongst other forms of discrimination and persecution.
These are sh***y little Nazi countries, with their big annual SS parades. They desecrate war
memorials and the graves of Russian soldiers who died liberating the Baltic countries in the
war. Many Baltic politicians are US dual citizens, neocons parachuted in after 1991 by the
State Department. They are ideologically driven and lose no opportunity to vent their spleen
against Russia. They are constantly foolishly provocative towards a neighbour that could be a
valuable economic partner. We see the same pattern in Ukraine. The US pulled off a stunt
where 10,000 US troops in 1,000 tanks and vehicles drove up and down the Latvian border just
a few yards from Russian territory, through communities of predominantly Russian
heritage.
Part of this hostility to Russia is probably contrived by the political class to cover up
their abject failures since independence. Their economies were looted and hollowed out by
western finance capital over the past few decades. They were previously highly developed
parts of the Soviet Union with industries like machinery, vehicles and shipbuilding. That is
now ancient history. The economy has collapsed, and 25% of the population of Latvia has
emigrated, scratching a living doing menial jobs or working as prostitutes in the EU, the
only future those countries have. Riga was a natural transit hub for Russia, but faced with
official visceral hatred from that quarter, the Russians expanded and developed their own
port facilities in the Baltic. Riga has been left as a ghost town. That is why Nordstream has
been developed, to replace unreliable partners in neighbouring countries who are always ready
to cut off their noses to spite their face and please their US neocon masters. Their loss
– they could have made billions from energy transit fees. It's the same story with
sanctions, for which the Baltic states were enthusiastic cheerleaders. Russia's counter
sanctions against agricultural imports have hit them hard. In the course of events, these
countries and Russia would be economic partners for their mutual benefit.
As NATO members, these countries believe they can be as foolishly provocative and offensive
to Russia as they wish, like the obnoxious kid in the school playground who spits in
somebody's face and runs and hides behind his big brother. Small countries like this can
cause a disaster, like Serbia and WW1. They are now failed states, like Ukraine. They are
just pawns in a neocon game against Russia. They have no future. Loading...
'The Baltic republics made nationalism their official state policy while moving away from
Russia's sphere of influence into a closer relationship with the West.'
I strongly supported the Soviet Union and likewise I support the CIS, but this article,
frankly, is so partial that it misrepresents the reasons why the Baltic States behaved as
they did following the Nazi invasion of 1941 and following the collapse of the Soviet Union
in 1991.
There is no mention of Staln's takeover of the Baltic States in 1940. It is clear that
Stalin needed those states as a buffer against Germany, but that said, it is fully
understandable that many Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians would see the Nazis as
liberators and would resent their countries' reabsorption into the Soviet Union in 1944,
followed by settlement by Russian nationals including members of the Soviet state apparatus
including the KGB. Of course, we may all deplore collaboration with Nazi race policies,
especially in Lithuania, but to ignore factors such as Russia's takeover of the Baltic states
ignores a major factor at the heart of those countries' treatment of Russians to this
day.
The author explains Stalin's wish to forestall the inevitable war with Nazism because the
Soviet Union was involved in industrialisation. This is true, but the article ignores the
purges that had led to the Red Army being so ineffectual in its war with Finland that Hitler
believed that Barbarossa would be a pushover. When one considers that when the Baltic States
became part of the Soviet Union, this will have included the apparatus of state terror that
Stalin had been visiting upon the rest of the Soviet Union for several years. Contrary to the
above whitewashed view of history, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians had strong grounds for
resenting the presence of Russians in their erstwhile independent nations.
I deplore the Baltic States' treatment of ethnic Russians since they gained their
independence in September 1991, but ignoring the follies of their Soviet past will do nothing
to alleviate their plight.
I appreciate the historical background, but the treatment of Ukrainians, Latvians, Estonians
and Lithuanians by Stalin might explain their actions in WWII; doesn't excuse them, sorry.
Loading...
"erstwhile independent nations."
To be clear these former provinces-highly favoured provinces- in the Russian Empire had been
'independent' since 1921.And thanks in part too to the Bolshevik doctrine that the Czarist
Empire was a 'prison house of peoples.'
No doubt many in the Baltic states resented the invasion of the Red Army but it was only a
small minority which celebrated by killing Jews and enrolling in the siege of Leningrad.
In more modern terms there is no reason why these three states, and Ukraine, could not thrive
independently without setting themselves up as bases for provocations against Russia and
convenient locations for US torture chambers.
The people of Ireland suffered far more under the British Empire than the Balts did under St
Petersburg but that did not lead to more than a handful of Irishmen, if that many, in the
Second World War joining the SS. Loading...
This article takes no account of the threat posed to our allies in NATO, Eastern Europe, and
to the security of the world due to the rising tensions of recent years. Now, more than ever,
in the wake of Salisbury attack, we need to stress to our European counterparts in the
governments of the Baltic States, that we wish to work with them to maximise the power of
collective sanctions against violations of international law – whether by Russia or
anyone else. I think we should make clear that our UK commitment to such collective action
will not be diminished by Brexit. Similarly, now more than ever, it is vital that the UK and
all other NATO members make it clear to all our allies in the Baltic States, and elsewhere,
that we want to protect peace and security on the borders, without ramping up tensions
unnecessarily, and that such a commitment is not conditional on their levels of defence
spending.
Tory defence spending cuts have put Britain's security at risk.. I think the next Labour
government should commit to boost our military obligations, above the benchmark of 2% GDP, in
line with the last Labour government's commitment to NATO.
This is the second parody posted by BigB. A parody so skilful, such inane stringing together
of non-sequiturs to an insane c,nclusion, it might have come from the very lips of blessed
Theresa of Westminster. Loading...
Very close, Vex: St Jeremy of Islington North. Most of it is verbatim, with some reworded
conjunctions. The source text is from Hansard 26/03/18. The last para is a reword taken from
quote in John Pilger's excellent article about Labour's non-existent foreign policy which
would likely be imperialistic. Or the vague platitude of a return to 'Robin Cook ethical
diplomacy' of starting three wars in two years and selling Hawk aircraft to Mugabe.
It struck me recently when I point out the actual words that JC says, I take the flak. To
prove a point (if only to myself) I posted his own (disguised) words to see how people would
react. The source text for yesterday was his reply to Treason May, when she announced the two
counterfeit suspects for the fabricated Novijoke crime against the intelligence.
It is my supposition that very few know the full context of what is said, relying on media
soundbites instead. The media pick a single phrase – such as only saying "evidence
points strongly" – and contrast with Bojo's "weaselly words" to construct an entirely
inauthentic narrative. It is a pseudo-oppressor/oppressed narrative that creates a false
sense of pity and invokes an invented victim mentality (we all know how Brit's love an
underdog!).
Anyway, I surmised his words were weaselly, though not in the context of the received
culture machine narrative but in themselves, taken in their given context (in Parliament and
later in Hansard). They amount to a servile connivance with power (a power that provides the
testimony and meaning to the hollow phonemes).
I could have just said that, but I decided to post the slightly disguised text to make a
point. Point made.
Soviet "Communism" was de facto never more than a branch of Anglo-American bourgeois
progressivism. A geopolitical rivalry developed between the two factions after the defeat of
Germany. Note that Western capitalists built the Soviet industrial base in the 1920s and
1930s, so it was obvious they were not seen as a threat then:
http://www.thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Others-Doc-ConspiracyTheory&NWO/+Doc-ConspiracyTheory-FalseEnemies/TheWestFinancedSoviets.htm
( )
American technical leadership began to replace German leadership in rebuilding the Soviet
Union.
"Of the agreements in force in mid-1929, 27 were with German companies, 15 were with
United States firms and the remaining ones were primarily with British and French firms. In
the last six months of 1929, the number of technical agreements with U.S. firms jumped to
more than 40." (Sutton, Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 1917-1930, pp.
346-347).
The new program was announced, however, only "after a sequence of construction and
technical-assistance contracts with Western companies had been let. The Freyn-Gipromez
technical agreement for design and construction of giant metallurgical plants is economically
and technically the most important." (Ibid., p. 347).
EXTENT OF AID "ALMOST UNBELIEVABLE"
During the early thirties, the amount and type of "aid and comfort" to the Soviet Union was
almost unbelievable. In 1930 the Ford Motor Company established the Russian motor car
industry by constructing a factory "capable of turning out 140,000 cars a year." By the end
of the decade the factory, at Gorki, was one of the largest in the world. Ford also provided
training for the Russians in assembling automobiles "plus patent licenses, technical
assistance, and advice," and "an inventory of spare parts." (Keller, East Minus West Equals
Zero, pp. 208-209, 215-216). Americans also built, in the Soviet Union, the largest iron and
steel works in the world; patterned after the city of Gary, Indiana. The huge steel complex,
built at Maginitogorsk, was constructed by a Cleveland firm. (Ibid., pp. 209-210).
LARGEST TRACTOR FACTORY IN THE WORLD
The largest tractor factory in the world was another American contribution to Soviet
technology.
"Tractors were a necessity to modernize Soviet agriculture. A Detroit engineer designed
and constructed a tractor factory without parallel in any other country. The assembly works
were 2,000 feet long and 650 feet wide, covering an area of thirty acres. Twenty-one American
football fields would fit into just one building, with locker rooms for the players. The
tractors produced were copies of the American Caterpillar Company, but there were no
arrangements made for payment for use of the patent. Russia merely bought one sample and
copied it. The factory was so designed that production could be adopted almost overnight to
the production of another less innocuous commodity – tanks." (Ibid., p. 213).
( )
Russia today is clearly not seen as a partner of Western
neoliberalism/progressivism. Therefore, Putin (along with Trump) has become the new
Hitler.
Curri, thank you for presenting that healthy corrective to my previous one-sided view; up
till now I had read only of US aid to Nazi Germany. Loading...
To put these observations into context it must be understood that the Soviet
government-obsessed with a crude mechanistic theory of economic development and desperately
trying to reproduce all of the 'stages' of economic progress into a succession of Five Year
Plans- bled the peasantry and working class dry in order to pay for what Curri calls a
partnership. The industrialists, largely Anglo Saxon, who jump started Russian industry after
the catastrophes of war and civil war extorted a heavy price, in hard currency, for their
'aid.'
The notion that the Soviet Union, even under Stalin, was accepted as a partner by the west is
historically illiterate. The record is clear. And clarified further by the continuity in
Foreign Policy which was (and is) the Cold War. Loading...
200,000 Jews in Lithuania alone! And they give all this fuss over Corbyns reluctance to
conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism.
I knew there was prejudice in these northern Baltic states but this piece has shocked me. I
now understand the self deprecating remarks made to me recently by a supermarket cashier over
her being a Russian speaking Lithuanian. Next time I see her I will make a point of offering
her my solidarity.
I meet many of these northerners in my work. Now I have some of this background I can ask
pertinent questions. Loading...
It would be a mistake to discover the cause for this discrimination in popular prejudice. The
actual reason lies in the determination of the ruling class to maintain
fascist-collaborationist successor politicians in power.
These politicians, many of whom had origins in expatriate communities in the west, after
fleeing their homelands in the baggage of the Wehrmacht and SS, have been finding it very
difficult to survive after leading their countries into economic disaster mitigated only by
the welcome boost that NATO bases bring to countries in which unemployment rates are at
levels not seen since the 1930s.
Like their predecessors they have turned to racism and fascism to prop themselves up.
What is true of the Baltic states is even truer of Ukraine, where Russian speakers constitute
a persecuted majority, and where the Speaker of the Rada is on record, this past week, as
being inspired by the Fuhrer who he sees as the greatest democrat of the C20th.
As racism and fascism spread westwards into Austria, Germany and elsewhere the complacence of
western 'liberals' in cosseting and subsidising the sources of infection is largely to blame.
It is of course history repeating itself: the fascism of eastern europe in the 1930s was also
sponsored and armed by the 'democracies' of the west. And for the same reason: to keep Russia
at bay.
More plausible theory is that it was written by NYT staff in Iago-style operation to saw discord in Trump administration
and promote Woodward's book
Notable quotes:
"... might be just what the NYT wants the Trump Whitehouse to waste time on. ..."
"... It could very well be a trap. In fact, the timing almost guarantees it. The other alternative is that the NYT is very desperate and the Deep State in dire straights. ..."
"... I don't think the op-ed piece came from anyone in the WH. It's fake but rest assured Trump can still use it to his advantage. ..."
"... The "op-ed" was likely either a set-up fabrication / amalgam from the CIA Toilet Paper of Record or some deluded over ambitious piece of shit like Nikki Haley. ..."
1) The NYT OpEd was actually written by one of the people who were fired during the very
EARLY days of the Trump administration because they turned out to not be so good (like
Bannon, Preibus, Walsh, Yates, Comey, Spicer, Gorka, Tillerson, McMaster, etc). This also
makes sense because they are describing (very exaggerated) the early days of the Trump admin
which were known to be somewhat chaotic before Trump got a good chief of staff (because
Preibus was useless)
2) The NYT has been holding onto the letter for almost two years as a weapon to use during
the mid-term elections
3) Looking for them inside the current administration is useless, because they are already
long gone
4) The NYT is probably stretching the truth about them being "senior" official which they
have a history of stretching the truth on for sources
5) It is also the exact same person as the (primary/only) source for all the accusations
in Woodward's book
Assuming this was written recently is a HUGE tactical oversight and might be just what the NYT wants the Trump
Whitehouse to waste time on.
Brazen Heist II ,
It could very well be a trap. In fact, the timing almost guarantees it. The other alternative is that the NYT is very desperate and the Deep State in dire
straights.
FreeEarCandy ,
"Issue Of National Security" and "looking into legal action".
If its a "REAL" issue of national security looking into legal action is non sequitur. You
raid the NYT and send all the usual suspects to Guantanamo Bay for a little water
boarding.
This whole stunt is pure political mind fuckery. Since when does the justice department
determine if we can legally defend our national security?
Kreditanstalt ,
Trump, like the rest of the Deep State elite, detests and is enraged more by "disloyalty"
among fellow elitists than by the opposition!
Dangerclose ,
I don't think the op-ed piece came from anyone in the WH. It's fake but rest assured Trump
can still use it to his advantage. I'll bet he gets EVERYONE to show a little more support
and less resistance. Hmmmmmm?
benb ,
The "op-ed" was likely either a set-up fabrication / amalgam from the CIA Toilet Paper of
Record or some deluded over ambitious piece of shit like Nikki Haley.
In any event it doesn't
matter. It's all about subversion. The Communist Party USA (Democrats) and Deep State know
they are about to get their asses handed to them in November.
They're are a bunch of desperate assholes at this point. Heads up. Be ready for anything
from here on out.
Whoever it was, this "gutless" person seems pretty craven, opportunistic neocon of McCain
flavor. Most neocons are chickenhawks. And there are plenty of neocons in Trump
administration.
It might well be that anonymous "resistance" op-ed in NYT is CIA operation to promote Woodward's book ( Woodward is definitely
connected to CIA from the time of Nixon impeachment)
Notable quotes:
"... You are not protecting this country, you are sabotaging it with your cowardly actions ..."
During an interview with Fox and Friends, conducted onstage prior to Trump's rally and set
to air on Friday, the president called the paper's decision to publish the column "very
unfair".
"When somebody writes and you can't discredit because you have no idea who they are,"
Trump said. "It may not be a Republican, it may not be a conservative, it may be a deep state
person that's been there a long time.
It's a very unfair thing, but it's very unfair to our country and to the millions of
people that voted really for us."
Since the editorial was published, the highest-ranking officials in Trump's administration
have come forth to
publicly deny any involvement. Those distancing themselves from the column have included
the vice-president, Mike Pence, and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, along with much of
Trump's cabinet. The first lady, Melania Trump, also condemned the author and called on the
individual to come forward.
"You are not protecting this country, you are sabotaging it with your cowardly actions," she
wrote.
The editorial was published as the White House was contending with yet another
firestorm.
A book authored by the famed journalist
Bob Woodward , poised for release next week, chronicles the chaos and dysfunction within
the Trump administration.
Excerpts released on Tuesday provided an unflattering portrait of the
president, who was described by aides in disparaging terms that included being likened to a
schoolchild.
"... When the center does fail to hold, it is usually in periods of political and perhaps also social upheaval. In those conditions, centrist parties, along with the constituencies they represent, often radicalize – generally merging into the side that wins the day. ..."
"... The jury is still out on how effective Trump's verbal assaults on the institutions that regulate global trade will be. No matter what Trump says, tweets, or thinks, those institutions were fashioned to work to America's advantage, and still generally do. Evidently, though, they do not conform well enough to his or his base's understanding of American "greatness"; thus they have become imperiled. ..."
"... It wasn't always so, but nowadays, almost without exception, Democrats occupy left or center positions on that spectrum; Republicans line up on its right. In a relational sense, the center is replete with Democrats; the left not so much. Centrist Republicans, long a vanishing breed, are, by now, as rare as snowstorms in July. ..."
"... In this respect, the United States is an exceptional case. There are few, if any, liberal democratic regimes in modern capitalist states in which notionally leftwing political forces have played such a negligible role. ..."
"... s was evident in the Clinton campaign's efforts to fight back the Sanders insurgency in 2016, it has forged robust political machines in the process. Their ability to mobilize voters on behalf of mainstream Democratic candidates has been disappointing however; what they have been mainly good at is tamping down radical dissent. ..."
"... Thus conditions are now in place for a revival of Left politics at the electoral level. This frightens the party's leaders. They and the pundits who serve them speak of unity. But is plain as can be that they are determined to quash whatever they cannot turn to their own advantage. Corporate media's role in this endeavor is crucial. They are already hard at work – pushing the all-too-familiar line that the way to win, especially in "red" states and districts, is to occupy the (relational) center. ..."
"... That center in today's Democratic Party is a dead center; it is where progressive impulses go to die. And, like a vampire on a mission, that dead center is gearing up for a fight – against those who would challenge the Democratic Party from the left. Witness the weeklong spectacle that accompanied the departure of John McCain from the land of the living. What a nauseating display of veneration for a man supremely unworthy, and of nostalgia for the good old (actually bad old) pre-Trump days! ..."
When the center does fail to hold, it is usually in periods of political and perhaps
also social upheaval. In those conditions, centrist parties, along with the constituencies they
represent, often radicalize – generally merging into the side that wins the day.
Thus it is mainly in situations in which the regime itself is undergoing fundamental
transformations that the center is depleted of its former occupants. In time, though, a new
mainstream is constituted, and its center again becomes the point on the left/right continuum
where the majority of positions and policies in play at the time cluster.
***
To everyone living through it, it feels as if the Trump presidency has turned the political
scene topsy-turvy. This is what happens when there is an imbecilic president whose governing
style is a low-grade imitation of a mob boss's.
The fact is, though, that the Trump presidency, destructive as it has been, has changed a
good deal less than meets the eye. The foundations of the regime remain the same as before;
fundamental neoliberal economic structures remain intact, and the perpetual war regime that
went into overdrive after 9/11 continues to flourish.
The jury is still out on how effective Trump's verbal assaults on the institutions that
regulate global trade will be. No matter what Trump says, tweets, or thinks, those institutions
were fashioned to work to America's advantage, and still generally do. Evidently, though, they
do not conform well enough to his or his base's understanding of American "greatness"; thus
they have become imperiled.
What is disturbingly clear is that for all but the filthy rich, and especially for anyone
not white as the driven snow, life in Trump's America has taken a turn for the worse.
Trump has been a godsend for "white nationalists," the current euphemism for nativists and
racists. He has legitimated them and their views to an extent that no one would have imagined
just a few years ago.
Also, to the detriment of the health and well being of the vast majority of Americans, Trump
and his minions have done serious harm to America's feeble welfare state institutions.
And even this is not the main reason why there will be hell to pay when the next economic
downturn happens, as it inevitably will, more likely sooner than later. By giving Wall Street
free rein again, and by cutting taxes for the rich, depleting the treasury of financial
resources that could be put to use in a crisis, Trump has all but guaranteed that most
Americans will soon find themselves in straits as bad or worse than ten years ago.
Worst of all, by watering down or setting aside the weak but nevertheless indispensible
environmental regulations in place before their arrival on the scene, Trump has hastened the
day when the world will be hit with, and perhaps be undone by, grave, possibly irreparable,
ecological catastrophes.
There are many other lesser harms for which, directly or indirectly, Trump is responsible.
This is all serious stuff, but while they make life worse for many people and shift the
political spectrum to the right, they do not shake the foundations of the regime in a way that
puts the center in jeopardy -- at least not yet.
In short, what we are living through is not a Trumpian "revolution," not even in the "Reagan
Revolution" sense, but a degeneration of much of what is worth preserving in the old regime.
Trump didn't start the process, but he has come to dominate it, and his mindless and mean
spirited antics accelerate it.
***
If "left," "right," and "center" are understood in relational terms, American politics
plainly does have a left, right, and center. These designations overlay the deeply entrenched,
semi-established duopoly party system that structures the American political scene.
It wasn't always so, but nowadays, almost without exception, Democrats occupy left or
center positions on that spectrum; Republicans line up on its right. In a relational sense, the
center is replete with Democrats; the left not so much. Centrist Republicans, long a vanishing
breed, are, by now, as rare as snowstorms in July.
Understood notionally, where "left," "right," and "center" designate positions on an
historically evolving, widely understood, ideal political spectrum, the situation is much the
same, but with a major difference: there is hardly any left at all.
There have always been plenty of (notional) leftists in the United States, but there has
never been much of an intersection between the left of the political spectrum, understood
relationally, and anything resembling a notional Left.
In this respect, the United States is an exceptional case. There are few, if any,
liberal democratic regimes in modern capitalist states in which notionally leftwing political
forces have played such a negligible role.
This unfortunate state of affairs has become worse in recent decades under the aegis of
(notionally) center-right Democrats like the Clintons and their co-thinkers. Thanks to them,
the Democratic Party today is a (notionally) centrist party through and through.
They succeeded as well as they did partly because our party system stifles progressive
politics more effectively than it is stifled in other ways in other liberal democracies.
The duopoly is still going strong, but, even so, times change. Largely thanks to Trump,
there are now inklings of a notional Left in formation that stands a chance of avoiding
marginalization.
Thus Democrats all along the (relational) spectrum now consider themselves embattled,
challenged from the Left by anti-Trump militants. Many of the challengers come from
under-represented, Democratic-leaning constituencies – the young, women, and "persons of
color" – with traditionally low levels of political participation. In view of the
abundant, well meaning but generally toothless "diversity" blather for which Democrats are
notorious, this is delightfully ironic.
The challengers include African Americans, of course, but also people drawn from sectors of
the population that Trump has targeted and demeaned with particular malice -- Hispanics and
Muslims especially.
The Democratic Party has been actively courting – and colonizing – African
American and other subaltern constituencies for a long time. A s was evident in the Clinton
campaign's efforts to fight back the Sanders insurgency in 2016, it has forged robust political
machines in the process. Their ability to mobilize voters on behalf of mainstream Democratic
candidates has been disappointing however; what they have been mainly good at is tamping down
radical dissent.
But because race and ethnicity intersect with age and gender – and because, in the
final analysis, "it's the politics, stupid" -- many of the African Americans, Hispanics,
Muslims and others now being drawn into the electoral fold will likely not be as amenable to
being coopted by Democratic Party grandees as persons who "look like them" have been in the
past. The danger of cooptation remains formidable, but it is almost certainly surmountable if
the will to resist the pressure is strong.
Thus conditions are now in place for a revival of Left politics at the electoral level.
This frightens the party's leaders. They and the pundits who serve them speak of unity. But is
plain as can be that they are determined to quash whatever they cannot turn to their own
advantage. Corporate media's role in this endeavor is crucial. They are already hard at work
– pushing the all-too-familiar line that the way to win, especially in "red" states and
districts, is to occupy the (relational) center.
In this context, "red," of course, doesn't mean red; it means almost the opposite,
Republican. Only in America!
... ... ...
What passes for a "resistance" in liberal or "democratic socialist" circles nowadays is a
pale approximation of the genuine article. This is not just because the spirit of rebellion has
been bred out of us or because of any failure of imagination; it is because in the
circumstances that currently obtain, resistance, like "revolution," even in the anodyne "Our
Revolution" sense, just isn't on the agenda.
But there is something now that can and should be resisted by any and all appropriate means
– the illusion that the way to defeat Trump and Trumpism and, more generally, to advance
progressive causes, is to tack to the relational center.
That center in today's Democratic Party is a dead center; it is where progressive
impulses go to die. And, like a vampire on a mission, that dead center is gearing up for a
fight – against those who would challenge the Democratic Party from the left. Witness the
weeklong spectacle that accompanied the departure of John McCain from the land of the living.
What a nauseating display of veneration for a man supremely unworthy, and of nostalgia for the
good old (actually bad old) pre-Trump days!
How pathetic! The whole country's, not just the Democratic Party's, left, right, and center
– minus Donald Trump, of course -- heaping praise on a Navy pilot who, heeding McCain
family traditions and the call of Lyndon Johnson, killed a lot of Vietnamese peasants for no
defensible reason, before becoming a "hero" after the Vietnamese shot his plane down, and who,
after repatriation, embarked on a legislative career in which, despite a few "maverick"
exceptions, he promoted every retrograde Republican cause that arose, war mongered vociferously
at every opportunity, and did all he could, even before Hillary Clinton took a notion, to get
the Cold War revved up again.
They were all there, every rotten one of them -- from Barack Obama and Joe Biden and, their
brother-in-arms, George W. Bush, the man who, but for Trump, could now boast of being the worst
president in modern times, all the way to the decrepit Henry Kissinger, the never to be
indicted war criminal whom liberals have learned to stop loathing and to call upon for advice
instead.
Even that malevolent airhead couple Jarvanka showed up, invited, it seems, by Senator
Lindsey Graham, McCain's hapless sidekick. This was no popular front. It was a festival of the
dead Center, a blight on the political landscape, and, with Trump sucking up all the air, a
harbinger of things to come.
(theverge.com)Sanders' Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act
(abbreviated "Stop BEZOS") -- along with Khanna's House of Representatives counterpart, the
Corporate Responsibility and Taxpayer Protection Act --
would institute a 100 percent tax on government benefits that are granted to workers at large
companies . The bill's text characterizes this as a "corporate welfare tax," and it would
apply to corporations with 500 or more employees. If
workers are receiving government aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), national school lunch and breakfast programs, Section 8
housing subsidies, or Medicaid, employers will be taxed for the total cost of those benefits.
The bill applies to full-time and part-time employees, as well as independent contractors that
are de facto company employees.
"The alternative to driving for Uber is not a good job in a factory with a union wage or
working in a stable office job, it's slinging coffee at a Starbucks where you may or may not
get the hours you need," he said. "That is what people are shoring up. They're shoring up
getting enough hours, trying to make ends meet. Oftentimes, people talk about the gig economy
as 'supplementary income' ...
It's not supplemental if you need it to pay for your kids' braces, or food, or
rent."
Hyman argued that this phenomenon could be traced back to the legions of undocumented
migrant laborers who built early computers, before those manufacturing jobs moved
overseas.
"... Neoliberal Totalitarianism and the Social Contract ..."
"... Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy ..."
"... Historical Introduction ..."
"... The Social Contract ..."
"... "Man is born free, but everywhere in chains." ..."
"... Discourse on Inequality, ..."
"... "association which will defend the person and goods of each member with the collective force of all." ..."
"... "The Social Contract Theory in a Global Context" ..."
"... The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism ..."
"... The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto ..."
"... "Uneven Development: Understanding the Roots of Inequality" ..."
"... "A generation ago, the country's social contract was premised on higher wages and reliable benefits, provided chiefly by employers. In recent decades, we've moved to a system where low wages are supposed to be made bearable by low consumer prices and a hodgepodge of government assistance programs. But as dissatisfaction with this arrangement has grown, it is time to look back at how we got here and imagine what the next stage of the social contract might be." ..."
"... New America Foundation's ..."
"... The Social Contract in Africa ..."
"... "Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems" The Guardian ..."
"... Neoliberalism: do you know what it is? Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007-2008, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had – a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly? ..."
"... "From Military Keynesianism to Global-Neoliberal Militarism" ..."
"... Monthly Review ..."
"... A Short History ofNeoliberalism ..."
"... Ideology, the Neoliberal State, and the Social Contract ..."
"... "I think not having the ..."
"... recognizes the people that are investing -- as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it's on booze or women or movies." ..."
"... "the transition from organised capitalism to neoliberal hegemony over the recent period has brought about a corresponding transformation in subjectivity. Leading celebrities, most notably high-tech entrepreneurs, for instance, operate in the popular imagination as models of achievement for the aspiring young. They are seldom emulated in real life, however, even unrealistically so. Still, their famed lifestyles and heavily publicised opinions provide guidelines to appropriate conduct in a ruthlessly competitive and unequal world." ..."
"... "Pessimism of Intelligence, Optimism of Will" ..."
"... Perspectives on Gramsci ..."
"... Social vs. Corporate Welfare ..."
"... "The common denominator is the empowering of elites over the masses with the assistance of international forces through military action or financial coercion -- a globalized dialectic of ruling classes." ..."
"... The End of Ideology ..."
"... : "It's the end of ideology in China. Not the end of all ideology, but the end of Marxist ideology. China has many social problems, but the government and its people will deal with them in pragmatic ways, without being overly constrained by ideological boundaries. I still think there's a need for a moral foundation for political rule in China – some sort of guiding ideal for the future – but it won't come from Karl Marx." ..."
"... The End of History ..."
"... Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology ..."
"... "Limiting Dissent: The Mechanisms of State Repression in the USA" Social Movement Studies," ..."
"... The Great Transformation ..."
"... "To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment would result in the demolition of society." ..."
"... "The withering away of national states and the wholesale privatization of state-owned enterprises and state-administered services transferred highly profitable monopolies to capitalists, and guaranteed the repayment of the foreign debt-contracted, as in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay-by irresponsible, corrupt, and de facto military rulers. Neoliberalism supplied the general justification for the transfer of public assets and state-owned enterprises, paid for with public savings, even in areas considered "taboo" and untouchable until a few years ago, such as electricity, aviation, oil, or telecommunications. ..."
"... "Democracy or Neoliberalism?" ..."
"... "When Exclusion Replaces Exploitation: The Condition of the Surplus-Population under Neoliberalism" ..."
"... Neoliberalism and Fascism ..."
"... The role of the state ..."
"... "The combination of economic disruption, cultural disruption ― nothing feels solid to people ― that's a recipe for people wanting to find security somewhere. And sadly, there's something in all of us that looks for simple answers when we're agitated and insecure. The narrative that America at its best has stood for, the narrative of pluralism and tolerance and democracy and rule of law, human rights and freedom of the press and freedom of religion, that narrative, I think, is actually the more powerful narrative. The majority of people around the world aspire to that narrative, which is the reason people still want to come here." ..."
"... Independence from America: Global Integration and Inequality ..."
"... Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America ..."
"... everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. ..."
"... "everything within neoliberalism, nothing against neoliberalism, nothing outside neoliberalism. ..."
"... Neoliberal Fascism: Free Markets and the Restructuring of Indian Capitalism," ..."
"... is seen as an effort by neoliberalism, or perhaps more broadly by capitalism, to divert attention from class conflict, to divide and weaken working class struggles and to deflect class-driven anxieties on to minority communities. This approach is problematic in two senses. First, it does not explain why Hindutva organisations are able to develop a mass base, except to the extent that they are seen to be appealing to "historical identity" or "emotive" issues. ..."
"... The state exists ..."
"... as the expression and guarantor of a collectivity founded around a transcendent principle ..."
"... The ideal state is the guarantor of the Hindu rashtra, a "nation" that exists as an organic and harmonious unity between "Hindus." ..."
"... The Politics of Free Markets ..."
"... "The new dual sate is alive and well: Normative State for the core populations of the capitalist center, and another State of arbitrary decrees for the non-citizens who are the rest. Unlike in classical fascism, this second State is only dimly visible from the first. The radical critique protesting that liberty within the Normative State is an illusion, although understandable, is erroneous. The denial of citizenship based not on exploitation, oppression and straightforward discrimination, but on mere exclusion and distance, is difficult to grasp, because the mental habits of liberation struggle for a more just redistribution of goods and powers are not applicable. The problem is not that the Normative State is becoming more authoritarian: rather, that it belongs only to a few." ..."
"... Alternative fur Deutchalnd ..."
"... Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty ..."
"... Neoliberalism presumes a strong state, working only for the benefit of the wealthy, and as such it has little pretence to neutrality and universality, unlike the classical liberal state. I would go so far as to say that neoliberalism is the final completion of capitalism's long-nascent project, in that the desire to transform everything -- every object, every living thing, every fact on the planet -- in its image had not been realized to the same extent by any preceding ideology. ..."
"... The Fascist Nature of Neoliberalism ..."
"... "La Dottrina del Fascismo" ..."
"... "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state," ..."
"... "inverted totalitarianism" ..."
"... Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, ..."
"... Neoliberalism and Terror: Critical Engagements ..."
"... Characteristics of the Illiberal Neoliberal Society ..."
"... Sociology of Imperialism ..."
"... "The bourgeoisie did not simply supplant the sovereign, nor did it make him its leader, as did the nobility. It merely wrested a portion of its power from him and for the rest submitted to him. It did not take over from the sovereign the state as an abstract form of organization. The state remained a special social power, confronting the bourgeoisie. In some countries it has continued to play that role to the present day. It is in the state that the bourgeoisie with its interests seeks refuge, protection against external and even domestic enemies. The bourgeoisie seeks to win over the state for itself, and in return serves the state and state interests that are different from its own." ..."
"... Democratic elections have become the means for installing leaders with little respect for democratic values. The tolerance, openness and inclusiveness on which modern democracy is founded are being rejected by candidates and voters in favor of sectarian, parochial fears and interests. The role of the free press as an impartial arbiter of facts is being undermined by the rise of private and public news media conglomerates purveying political preference as fact combined with a blinding blizzard of fake news. Party politics has been polarized into a winner-take-all fight to the finish by vested-interests and impassioned extremist minorities trying to impose their agendas on a complacent majority. Corporate power and money power are transforming representative governments into plutocratic pseudo-democracies. Fundamentalists are seizing the instruments of secular democracy to impose intolerant linguistic, racial and religious homogeneity in place of the principles of liberty and harmonious heterogeneity that are democracy's foundation and pinnacle of achievement." ..."
"... "Suppose the election was declared free and fair and those elected are "racists, fascists, separatists, who are publicly opposed to [peace and reintegration]. That is the dilemma." ..."
"... "Fascism may be defined as the subordination of every part of the State to a totalitarian and nihilistic ideology. I argue that neoliberalism is a species of fascism because the economy has brought under subjection not only the government of democratic countries but also every aspect of our thought. The state is now at the disposal of the economy and of finance, which treat it as a subordinate and lord over it to an extent that puts the common good in jeopardy." ..."
"... Lectures on Fascism, ..."
"... Neoliberalism has been more successful than most past ideologies in redefining subjectivity, in making people alter their sense of themselves, their personhood, their identities, their hopes and expectations and dreams and idealizations. Classical liberalism was successful too, for two and a half centuries, in people's self-definition, although communism and fascism succeeded less well in realizing the "new man." It cannot be emphasized enough that neoliberalism is not classical liberalism, or a return to a purer version of it, as is commonly misunderstood; it is a new thing, because the market, for one thing, is not at all free and untethered and dynamic in the sense that classical liberalism idealized it. ..."
"... "In some parts of Europe, and in the United States, anti-foreigner rhetoric full of unbridled vitriol and hatred, is proliferating to a frightening degree, and is increasingly unchallenged. The rhetoric of fascism is no longer confined to a secret underworld of fascists, meeting in ill-lit clubs or on the 'deep net'. It is becoming part of normal daily discourse." ..."
"... The Global Rise of Populism ..."
"... The risk democratic formations continually face is internal disintegration such that the heterogeneous elements of the social order not only fail to come together within some principle of or for unity, but actively turn against one another. In this case, a totally unproductive revolution takes place. Rather than subversion of the normative order causing suffering, rebellion or revolution that might establish a new nomos of shared life as a way of establishing a new governing logic, the dissociated elements of disintegrating democratic formations identify with the very power responsible for their subjection–capital, the state and, the strong leader. Thus the possibility of fascism is not negated in neoliberal formations but is an ever present possibility arising within it. Because the value of the social order as such is never in itself sufficient to maintain its own constitution, it must have recourse to an external value, which is the order of the sacred embodied by the sovereign. ..."
"... Can the World be Wrong ..."
"... "Even mature democracies show signs of degenerating into their illiberal namesakes. The historical record confirms that peaceful, prosperous, free and harmonious societies can best be nurtured by the widest possible distribution of all forms of power -- political, economic, educational, scientific, technological and social -- to the greatest extent to the greatest number. The aspiration for individual freedom can only be realized and preserved when it is married with the right to social equality. The mutual interdependence of the individual and the collective is the key to their reconciliation and humanity's future. ..."
"... Beset by stagnant wage growth, less than half of respondents in America, Britain and France believe that globalisation is a "force for good" in the world. Westerners also say the world is getting worse. Even Americans, generally an optimistic lot, are feeling blue: just 11% believe the world has improved in the past year. The turn towards nationalism is especially pronounced in France, the cradle of liberty. Some 52% of the French now believe that their economy should not have to rely on imports, and just 13% reckon that immigration has a positive effect on their country. France is divided as to whether or not multiculturalism is something to be embraced. Such findings will be music to the ears of Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, France's nationalist, Eurosceptic party. Current (and admittedly early) polling has her tied for first place in the 2017 French presidential race. ..."
"... "Populism is not Fascism: But it could be a Harbinger" ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... Structural Exploitation under the Neoliberal Social Contract ..."
"... "a property of institutions or systems in which the "rules of the game" unfairly benefit one group of people to the detriment of another" ..."
"... The End of Politics: Corporate Power and the Decline of the Public Sphere ..."
"... The Trickle Down Delusion ..."
"... "Real hourly compensation of production, nonsupervisory workers who make up 80 percent of the workforce, also shows pay stagnation for most of the period since 1973, rising 9.2 percent between 1973 and 2014.Net productivity grew 1.33 percent each year between 1973 and 2014, faster than the meager 0.20 percent annual rise in median hourly compensation. In essence, about 15 percent of productivity growth between 1973 and 2014 translated into higher hourly wages and benefits for the typical American worker. Since 2000, the gap between productivity and pay has risen even faster. The net productivity growth of 21.6 percent from 2000 to 2014 translated into just a 1.8 percent rise in inflation-adjusted compensation for the median worker (just 8 percent of net productivity growth).Since 2000, more than 80 percent of the divergence between a typical (median) worker's pay growth and overall net productivity growth has been driven by rising inequality (specifically, greater inequality of compensation and a falling share of income going to workers relative to capital owners).Over the entire 1973–2014 period, rising inequality explains over two-thirds of the productivity–pay divergence. ..."
"... "Understanding the Historic Divergence Between Productivity and a Typical Worker's Pay Why It Matters and Why It's Real" ..."
"... "The fact that our society places no limit on wealth while making it accessible to all helps account for the 'feverish' quality Tocqueville sensed in American civilization." Culture Against Man ..."
"... Neoliberal Hegemony ..."
"... Toward a 21st Century Social Contract" ..."
"... "A 21 st Century Social Contract" ..."
"... "The nature of work is changing very rapidly. Old models of lifelong employment via business and a predictable safety net provided by government are no longer assured in a new demographic, economic, and political environment. We see these trends most clearly in the rise of the "gig economy," in which contingent workers (freelancers, independent contractors, consultants, or other outsourced and non-permanent workers) are hired on a temporary or part-time basis. These workers make up more than 90 percent of new job creation in European countries, and by 2020, it is estimated that more than 40 percent of the U.S. workforce will be in contingent jobs." ..."
"... " Turning the Social Contract Inside Out: Neoliberal Governance and Human Capital in Two Days, One Night" ..."
"... 'knowledge based economy' ..."
"... "The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have taken a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, pulled out all 43,060 multinational corporations and the share ownerships linking them to construct a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.The model revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships. Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms, the "real" economy, representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a super-entity of 147 even more tightly knit companies (all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity) that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network." ..."
"... "Neoliberalism and technology: Perpetual innovation or perpetual crisis?" ..."
"... Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism ..."
"... "The Corporate Contradictions of Neoliberalism" ..."
"... "Neoliberalism was born in reaction against totalitarian statism, and matured at the University of Chicago into a program of state-reduction that was directed not just against the totalitarian state and the socialist state but also (and especially) against the New Deal regulatory and welfare state. It is a self-consciously reactionary ideology that seeks to roll back the status quo and institutionalize (or, on its own understanding, re-institutionalize) the "natural" principles of the market. But the contradiction between its individualist ideals and our corporate reality means that the effort to institutionalize it, oblivious to this contradiction, has induced deep dysfunction in our corporate system, producing weakened growth, intense inequality, and coercion. And when the ideological support of a system collapses -- as appears to be happening with neoliberalism -- then either the system will collapse, or new levels of coercion and manipulation will be deployed to maintain it. This appears to be the juncture at which we have arrived." ..."
"... lumpenproletariat ..."
"... "Sociology and the Critique of Neoliberalism" ..."
"... The Social Nature of Cryptocurrencies ..."
"... The Denationalization of Money ..."
"... Austerity: The Lived Experience ..."
"... Neoliberalism, Economic Radicalism, and the Normalization of Violence ..."
"... "Over the past twenty years, the IMF has been strengthened enormously. Thanks to the debt crisis and the mechanism of conditionality, it has moved from balance of payments support to being quasi-universal dictator of so-called "sound" economic policies, meaning of course neo-liberal ones. The World Trade Organisation was finally put in place in January 1995 after long and laborious negotiations, often rammed through parliaments which had little idea what they were ratifying. Thankfully, the most recent effort to make binding and universal neo-liberal rules, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, has failed, at least temporarily. It would have given all rights to corporations, all obligations to governments and no rights at all to citizens. The common denominator of these institutions is their lack of transparency and democratic accountability. This is the essence of neo-liberalism. It claims that the economy should dictate its rules to society, not the other way around. Democracy is an encumbrance, neo-liberalism is designed for winners, not for voters who, necessarily encompass the categories of both winners and losers." ..."
"... "When elected governments break the "representative covenant" and show complete indifference to the sufferings of citizens, when democracy is downgraded to an abstract set of rules and deprived of meaning for much of the citizenry, many will be inclined to regard democracy as a sham, to lose confidence in and withdraw their support for electoral institutions. Dissatisfaction with democracy now ranges from 40 percent in Peru and Bolivia to 59 percent in Brazil and 62 percent in Colombia. ..."
"... Exploitation; What is it and why it is Wrong ..."
"... Shadow Sovereigns: How Global Corporations are seizing Power ..."
"... Publics around the globe are generally unhappy with the functioning of their nations' political systems. Across the 36 countries asked the question, a global median of 46% say they are very or somewhat satisfied with the way their democracy is working, compared with 52% who are not too or not at all satisfied. Levels of satisfaction vary considerably by region and within regions. Overall, people in the Asia-Pacific region are the most happy with their democracies. At least half in five of the six Asian nations where this question was asked express satisfaction. Only in South Korea is a majority unhappy (69%). ..."
"... Communication and the Globalization of Culture ..."
"... Class Politics and the Radical Right ..."
"... In 2012 the United States spent an estimated 19.4% of GDP on such social expenditures, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Paris-based industrial country think tank. Denmark spent 30.5%, Sweden 28.2% and Germany 26.3%. All of these nations have a lower central government debt to GDP ratio than that of the United States. Why the United States invests relatively less in its social safety net than many other countries and why those expenditures are even at risk in the current debate over debt reduction reflect Americans' conflicted, partisan and often contradictory views on fairness, inequality, the role and responsibility of government and individuals in society and the efficacy of government action. Rooted in value differences, not just policy differences, the debate over the U.S. social contract is likely to go on long after the fiscal cliff issue has been resolved." ..."
"... Popper, Hayek and the Open Society ..."
"... Social Exclusion, Popular Resistanceand the Future of Neoliberalism ..."
"... Social Exclusion ..."
"... London Labour and the London Poor ..."
"... The German Ideology ..."
"... "Labour Relations and Social Movements in the 21st Century" ..."
"... "The panorama of a deep economic crisis which in the last few decades has hit Europe and its Welfare state in particular has had an unprecedented impact on employment and social policies. The neoliberal model and the effects of deregulated and global finance not only question the "European social model" but push sectors of the labour force – with the youngest and well-qualified being prominent – into unemployment or precarious jobs. the sociological and potential socio-political significance of these actionsparticularly as a result of the interconnections that such movements express, both in the sphere of the workplace and industrial system or whether with broader social structures, with special emphasis on the middle classes and the threats of 'proletarianization' that presently hang over them. labour relations of our time are crossed by precariousness and by a new and growing "precariat" which also gave rise to new social movements and new forms of activism and protest." ..."
"... Personal Insolvency in the 21st Century: A Comparative Analysis of the US and Europe, ..."
"... "Working-class participation, middle-class aspiration? Value, upward mobility and symbolic indebtedness in higher education."The Sociological Review ..."
"... The Financialization of Capitalism: 'Profiting without producing' ..."
"... European Network and Debt and Development ..."
"... "Do you enjoy rising prices? Everybody talks about commodities – with the Agriculture Euro Fund you can benefit from the increase in value of the seven most important agricultural commodities." With this advertisement the Deutsche Bankt tried in spring 2008 to attract clients for one of its investment funds. At the same time, there were hunger revolts in Haiti, Cameroon and other developing countries, because many poor could no longer pay the exploding food prices. In fact, between the end of 2006 and March 2008 the prices for the seven most important commodities went up by 71 per cent on average, for rice and grain the increase was 126 per cent. The poor are most hit by the hike in prices. Whereas households in industrialised countries spend 10 -20 per cent for food, in low-income countries they spend 60 – 80 per cent. As a result, the World Bank forecasts an increase in the number of people falling below the absolute poverty line by more than 100 million. Furthermore, the price explosion has negative macroeconomic effects: deterioration of the balance of payment, fuelling inflation and new debt." ..."
"... Makers and Takers: How Wall Street Destroyed Main Street ..."
"... "The Politics of Public Debt: Neoliberalism, capitalist development, and the restructuring of the state", ..."
"... "Why should the new oligarchs be interested in their countries' future productive capacities and present democratic stability if, apparently, they can be rich without it, processing back and forth the synthetic money produced for them at no cost by a central bank for which the sky is the limit, at each stage diverting from it hefty fees and unprecedented salaries, bonuses and profits as long as it is forthcoming -- and then leave their country to its remaining devices and withdraw to some privately owned island? ..."
"... Neoliberalism and the Making of the Subprime Borrower ..."
"... The Making of the Indebted Man: An Essay on the Neoliberal Condition ..."
"... Debt: the First 5000 Years ..."
"... "Torturing the Poor, German-Style" ..."
"... "Germany's chancellor [Gerhard] Schröder (SPD) –known as the "Comrade of the Bosses"– no longer sought to integrate labour into capitalism, at least not the Lumpenproletariat or ..."
"... . These sections of society are now deliberately driven into mass poverty, joining the growing number of working poor on a scale not seen in Germany perhaps since the 1930s." ..."
"... Alternative fur Deutchland ..."
"... Grassroots Resistance to Neoliberalism ..."
"... Homeless Workers' Movement and Landless Workers' Movement), ..."
"... (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN), ..."
"... (Fanmi Lavalas) ..."
"... (Narmada Bachao Andolan). ..."
"... "Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor" ..."
"... "100 countries have undergone grave economic decline over the past three decades. Per capita income in these 100 countries is now lower than it was 10, 15, 20 or in some cases even 30 years ago. In Africa, the average household consumes 20 percent less today than it did 25 years ago. Worldwide, more than 1 billion people saw their real incomes fall during the period 1980-1993." ..."
"... Democracy against Neoliberalism in Argentina and Brazil, ..."
"... Double Jeopardy: The Impact of Neoliberalism on Care Workers in the United States and South Africa" ..."
"... The BRICS: Challenges to the Global Status Quo" ..."
"... Landless Workers Movement ..."
"... Partido dos Trabalhadores ..."
"... The Drug War in Mexico: Hegemony and Global Capitalism ..."
"... Justice in El Barrio ..."
"... Black Lives Matter ..."
"... Occupy Wall Street ..."
"... 'De-democratization' under Neoliberalism ..."
"... Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution ..."
"... "If the core of neoliberalism is a natural fact, as suggested by the ideology already embedded deep within our collective psyche, who can change it? Can you live without breathing, or stop the succession of days and nights? This is why Western democracy chooses among the many masks behind which is essentially the same liberal party. Change is not forbidden, change is impossible. Some consider this feature to be an insidious form of invisible totalitarianism. ..."
"... "The unholy alliance of neoliberalism and postmodernism" ..."
"... "undermine the immune system of society, neoliberalism by commercialization of even the most sacred domains and postmodernism by its super-relativism and refusal to recognize any hierarchy in value or belief systems." ..."
"... "Neoliberalism as Political Theology of Chance: the politics of divination." ..."
"... Revoking the Moral Order: The Ideology of Positivism and the Vienna Circle ..."
"... "Neoliberalism and its Threat to Moral Agency" ..."
"... Virtue and Economy ..."
"... The Neoliberal Pattern of Domination: Capital's Reign in Decline, ..."
"... The Future of Neoliberalism ..."
"... Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession and the Uses and Misuses of History ..."
"... Alternatives to Neoliberal Globalization ..."
"... Alternatives to Neoliberal Globalization ..."
"... Christian Science Monitor ..."
"... "Worldwide, it has been a rough years for democracy. The UK, the United States and Colombia made critical decisions about their nations' future, and – at least from the perspective of liberal values and social justice – they decided poorly. Beyond the clear persistence of racism, sexism and xenophobia in people's decision-making, scholars and pundits have argued that to understand the results of recent popular votes, we must reflect on neoliberalism. International capitalism, which has dominated the globe for the past three decades, has its winners and its losers. And, for many thinkers, the losers have spoken. My fieldwork in South America has taught me that there are alternative and effective ways to push back against neoliberalism. These include resistance movements based on pluralism and alternative forms of social organisation, production and consumption." ..."
"... Neoliberalism, Social Exclusion, and Social Movements ..."
"... The Politics of Thatcherism ..."
"... "The death of neoliberalism and the crisis in western politics" ..."
"... "A sure sign of the declining influence of neoliberalism is the rising chorus of intellectual voices raised against it. From the mid-70s through the 80s, the economic debate was increasingly dominated by monetarists and free marketeers." ..."
Neoliberal Totalitarianism and the Social Contract
Abstract
Analyzing aspects of the rightwing populist tide arising largely in reaction to the
pluralistic-diversity model of neoliberalism, this essay examines the evolving social contract
that normalizes systemic exploitation and repression in the name of capitalist growth. Amid
incessant indoctrination by the media representing big capital, people try to make sense of
whether their interests are best served under the pluralist-diversity model of globalist
neoliberalism with a shrinking social welfare safety net, or an authoritarian-economic
nationalist model promising salvation through the use of an iron hand against domestic and
foreign enemies.
Socioeconomic polarization under the neoliberal social contract has laid the groundwork for
political polarization clearly evident not just in President Donald Trump's America and Prime
Minister Narendra Modi's India representing a rightwing populist neoliberal ideology, but
France's President Emmanuel Macron's La République En Marche that espouses a
pluralist–diversity-environmentalist model aiming at the same neoliberal goals as the
populists. Whether under the pluralist or the authoritarian model, neoliberalism represents
what Barrington Moore described in Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966)
a capitalist reactionary route that Italy, Japan, and Germany followed under totalitarian
regimes in the interwar era to protect the capitalist class after the crisis that wars of
imperialism (1870-1914) and WWI had created in core capitalist countries.
Although the world is much more thoroughly integrated under capitalism today than it was a
century ago, the same marked absence of a revolutionary trend as there was in the interwar era
is evident in our era. This accounts for the neoliberal revolution from above culminatingin
variations of authoritarian regimes throughout the world. This does not only signal a crisis in
capitalism but social discontinuity that will precipitate sociopolitical instability as
contradictions within the political economy foster polarization across all sectors of
society.
Historical Introduction
Most people today have no reason to be familiar with the term "social contract" any more
than they are familiar with neoliberalism that inordinately influences public policy on a world
scale. For many analysts contemplating the relationship of the individual to organized society,
the social contract is about the degree to which government advances a set of social and
economic policies articulated by an ideology designed to benefit certain institutions and
social groups, while safeguarding sovereignty in the name of the governed. The problem arises
when the governed no longer view the social contract as legitimate, a point that John Locke
addressed as this was a key issue in 17 th century England right before the Glorious
Revolution.
The social contract has its origins in the transition from subsistence agriculture of the
feudal-manorial economy to commercial agriculture and long-distance trade under capitalism in
the 15 th and 16 th century. With the advent of the Scientific Revolution
in the 17 th century and the Enlightenment in the 18 th century
coinciding with England's first industrial revolution accounted for more rapid evolution of the
division of labor, European intellectuals challenged the old social order based on birth-right
privilege of the aristocracy representing the agrarian-based economy of the past. Changes
taking place in the economy and social structure gave rise to bourgeois social contract
theories that articulated a core role in the state for the merchant-banking class, especially
in northwest Europe where mercantile capitalism consolidated.
As the ideological force of the English Glorious Revolution (1689), John Locke, the father
of Western Liberalism, argued for a regime that reflected the emerging bourgeoisie inclusion
into the political mainstream to reflect the commensurate role in the economy. Interestingly,
Locke provided a philosophical justification for overthrowing the government when it acted
against the interests of its citizens, thus influencing both the American War of Independence
and the French Revolution. Building on Locke's liberal philosophy and views on the tyranny of
absolutism, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in The Social Contract (1762) that: "Man
is born free, but everywhere in chains." This statement reflected the views of many
bourgeois thinkers who believed that modernization of society is not possible in the absence of
a social contract that takes into account natural rights, an approach to government that would
mirror a merit based criteria.
Departing from Locke's liberalism that had property ownership and individualism at the core
of his political thought, in the Discourse on Inequality, (1754) Rousseau argued that
property appropriation rests at the root of institutionalized inequality and oppression of
individuals against the community. The role of the state plays a catalytic role for it as an
"association which will defend the person and goods of each member with the collective
force of all." The basis of social contract theory accounts for the sovereign power's
legitimacy and justice, thus resulting in public acceptance. (Jason Neidleman, "The Social
Contract Theory in a Global Context"http://www.e-ir.info/2012/10/09/the-social-contract-theory-in-a-global-context/
; C. B. Macpherson. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism , 1962)
Rooted in the ascendancy of the European bourgeoisie, social contract theory has evolved in
the last three centuries, especially after the Revolutions of 1848 and the rise of the working
class as a sociopolitical force demanding inclusion rather than marginalization and
exploitation legalized through public policy that the representatives of capitalism legislated.
The cooptation of the working class into bourgeois political parties as a popular base in the
age of mass politics from the mid-19 th century until the present has obfuscated the
reality that social contract under varieties of parliamentary regimes continued to represent
capital.
The creation of large enterprises gave rise not only to an organized labor movement, but to
a larger bureaucratic regulatory state with agencies intended to help stabilize and grow
capitalism while keeping the working class loyal to the social contract. Crisis in public
confidence resulted not only from economic recessions and depressions built into the economy,
but the contradictions capitalism was fostering in society as the benefits in advances in
industry, science and technology accrued to the wealthy while the social structure remained
hierarchical.
Ever since 1947 when the ideological father of neoliberalism Friedrich von Hayek called a
conference in Mont Pelerin to address how the new ideology would replace Keynesianism,
neoliberals have been promising to address these contradictions, insisting that eliminating the
social welfare state and allowing complete market dominationthat would result in society's
modernization and would filter down to all social classes and nations both developed and
developing. Such thinking is rooted in the modernization theory that emerged after WWII when
the US took advantage of its preeminent global power to impose a transformation model on much
of the non-Communist world. Cold War liberal economist Walt Rostow articulated the
modernization model of development in his work entitled The Stages of Economic Growth: A
Non-Communist Manifesto , 1960. By the 1970s, neoliberals adapted Rostow's modernization
theory as their bible and the core of the social contract. (Evans Rubara, "Uneven
Development: Understanding the Roots of Inequality"
The challenge for the political class has always been and remains to mobilize a popular base
that would afford legitimacy to the social contract. The issue for mainstream political parties
is not whether there is a systemic problem with the social contract intended to serve the
capitalist class, but the degree to which the masses can be co-opted through various methods to
support the status quo. "A generation ago, the country's social contract was premised on
higher wages and reliable benefits, provided chiefly by employers. In recent decades, we've
moved to a system where low wages are supposed to be made bearable by low consumer prices and a
hodgepodge of government assistance programs. But as dissatisfaction with this arrangement has
grown, it is time to look back at how we got here and imagine what the next stage of the social
contract might be."
Considering that Keynesianism and neoliberalism operate under the same social structure and
differ only on how best to achieve capital formation while retaining sociopolitical conformity,
the article above published in The Atlantic illustrates how analysts/commentators
easily misinterpret nuances within a social contract for the covenant's macro goals. A similar
view as that expressed in The Atlantic is also reflected in the New America
Foundation's publications, identifying specific aspects of Arthur Schlesinger's Cold War
militarist policies enmeshed with social welfare Keynesianism as parts of the evolving social
contract.
Identifying the social contract with a specific set of policies under different
administrations evolving to reflect the nuances of political class and economic elites,some
analysts contend that there is a European Union-wide social contract to which nationally-based
social contracts must subordinate their sovereignty. This model has evolved to accommodate
neoliberal globalism through regional trade blocs on the basis of a 'patron-client'integration
relationship between core and periphery countries.
A European export and integral part of cultural hegemony in the non-Western world, the
liberal-bourgeois social contract for the vast majority of Africans has failed to deliver on
the promise of socioeconomic development, social justice and national sovereignty since
independence from colonial rule. Just as in Africa, the Asian view of the social contract is
that it entails a liberal model of government operating within the capitalist system rather
than taking into account social justice above all else. Embracing pluralism and diversity while
shedding aspects of authoritarian capitalism associated with cronyism and the clientist state,
the view of the Asian social contract is to subordinate society to neoliberal global
integration and work within the framework of Western-established institutions. In each country,
traditions governing social and political relationships underlie the neoliberal model. (Sanya
Osha, The Social Contract in Africa , 2014;
Despite far reaching implications for society and despite the political and business class
keen awareness of neoliberalism, most people around the world are almost as perplexed by the
term neoliberalism as they are with social contract theory that is outside the public debate
confined to the domain of political philosophy. Many associate neoliberalism withRonald Reagan
supporter Milton Friedman and the 'Chicago School', rarely mentioning the political dimension
of the economic philosophy and its far-reaching implications for all segments of society. In an
article entitled "Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems" The
Guardian columnist George Monbiot raised a few basic questions about the degree to which
the public is misinformed when it comes to the neoliberal social contract under which society
operates.
" Neoliberalism: do you know what it is? Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of
its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown
of 2007-2008, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a
glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the
epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to
these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either
catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had
– a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?
Advocates of neoliberalism, both from the pluralist-social welfare wing and the rightwing
populist camp, have succeeded in institutionalizing the new social contract which has
transformed the historically classical notion of individual freedombased on the Enlightenment
concept of natural rights into freedom of capitalist hegemony over the state and society.
Whether operating under the political/ideological umbrella of pluralism-environmentalism in
Western nations, combined with some version of a Keynesian social welfare pluralist model, with
rightwing populism or authoritarianism in one-party state, political and corporate elites
advancing the neoliberal model share the same goal with regard to capital formation and
mainstream institutions.
Weakening the social welfare corporatist state model by reaching political consensus among
mainstream political parties by the late 1980s-early 1990s, whether operating under a
centrist-pluralist or conservative party, neoliberals have been using the combination of
massive deregulation with the state providing a bailout mechanism when crisis hits; fiscal
policy that transfers income from workers and the middle class – raising the public debt
to transfer wealth from the bottom 90% to the wealthiest 10% -; providing corporate subsidies
and bailouts; and privatizing public projects and services at an immense cost to the declining
living standards for the middle class and workers.
As much in the US as in other developed nations beginning in the 1980s, the neoliberal state
has become status quo by intentionally weakening the social welfare state and redefining the
social contract throughout the world. Working with large banks and multilateral institutions
such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank that use loans as leverage to
impose neoliberal policies around the world in debtor nations desperate to raise capital for
the state and attract direct foreign investment, the advanced capitalist countries impose the
neoliberal social contract on the world.
As reflected in the integrated global economy, the neoliberal model was imbedded in IMF
stabilization and World Bank development loans since the late 1940s. After the energy crisis of
the mid-1970s and the revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua in 1979, international developments
that took place amid US concerns about the economy under strain from rising balance payments
deficits that could not accommodate both 'military Keynesianism' (deficit spending on defense
as a means of boosting the economy) and the social welfare system, neoliberalism under the
corporate welfare state emerged as the best means to continue strengthening capitalism. (J. M.
Cypher, "From Military Keynesianism to Global-Neoliberal Militarism" , Monthly
Review Vol. 59, No. 2, 2007; Jason Hickel, A Short History ofNeoliberalism ,
Everything from government agencies whose role is strengthening capital, to public schools
and hospitals emulating the market-based management model and treating patients and students as
customers, the neoliberal goal is comprehensive market domination of society. Advocates of the
neoliberal social contract no longer conceal their goals behind rhetoric about
liberal-democratic ideals of individual freedom and the state as an arbiter to harmonize the
interests of social classes. The market unequivocally imposes its hegemony not just over the
state but on all institutions, subordinating peoples' lives to market forces and equating those
forces with democracy and national sovereignty. In pursuit of consolidating the neoliberal
model on a world scale, the advocates of this ideology subordinate popular sovereignty and
popular consent from which legitimacy of the state emanates to capital. http://www.rhizomes.net/issue10/introren.htm
As an integral part of the social environment and hegemonic culture reflecting the
hierarchical class structure and values based on marginalization, the neoliberal social
contract has become institutionalized in varying degrees reflecting the more integrative nature
of capitalism after the fall of the Communist bloc coinciding with China's increased global
economic integration. Emboldened that there was no competing ideology from any government
challenging capitalism, neoliberals aggressively pursued globalization under the
deregulation-corporate welfare anti-labor model.
Some countries opted for mixed policies with a dose of quasi-statist policies as in the case
of China. Others retained many aspects of the social welfare state as in the case of EU
members, while some pursue authoritarian capitalism within a pluralistic model. Still other
nations in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia where pluralism and multi-party traditions are not
very strong, neoliberal policies are tailored to clientist politics and crony capitalism. In
all cases, 'market omnipotence theory' is the catalyst under the umbrella of the neoliberal
social contract.
Ideology, the Neoliberal State, and the Social Contract
Just as religion was universally intertwined with identity, projection of self-image in the
community and the value system in the Age of Faith (500-1500), secular ideology in the modern
world fulfills somewhat a similar goal. Although neoliberalism has been criticized as a secular
religion precisely because of its dogmatism regarding market fundamentalism, especially after
2013 when Pope Francis dismissed it as idolatry of money that attempts to gloss over abject
socioeconomic inequality on a world scale, capitalistsand the political class around the world
have embraced some aspects if not wholeheartedly neoliberal ideology.
https://economicsociology.org/2014/12/25/pope-francis-against-neoliberalism-finance-capitalism-consumerism-and-inequality/
In the early 21 st century arguments equating the rich with societal progress and
vilifying the poor as social stigma indicative of individual failure are no different than
arguments raised by apologists of capitalism in the early 19 th century when the
British Parliament was debating how to punish the masses of poor that the industrial revolution
had created. In defending tax cuts to the wealthy, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley stated:
"I think not having theestate taxrecognizes the people
that are investing -- as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have,
whether it's on booze or women or movies."
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/grassley-estate-taxes-booze-women_us_5a247d89e4b03c44072e5a04
; The US senator's argument could easily be heard in early 19 th century England.
Blaming the poor for structural poverty which capitalism causes has become widespreadsince the
early 1980s. This is because of government efforts to dismantle the welfare state as a social
safety net and transfer resources for tax cuts to the wealthiest individuals. https://www.globalresearch.ca/blaming-the-poor-for-poverty/535675
Rooted in classical liberal ideology, neoliberalism rests on laissez-faire and social
Darwinist principles that affirm societal progress as defined by materialist self-interest.
Because private financial gain is the sole measure of success and virtue, neoliberals demand
that the state and international organizations must remove impediments to capital
accumulationnationally and internationally no matter the consequences to the non-propertied
classes. Aiming for more than mere mechanical compliance, the goal of the ideology is to create
the illusion of the neoliberal self that lives, breathes, and actualizes neoliberal myths in
every aspect of life from a person as a worker to consumer and citizen.
Jim Mcguigan argues that "the transition from organised capitalism to neoliberal
hegemony over the recent period has brought about a corresponding transformation in
subjectivity. Leading celebrities, most notably high-tech entrepreneurs, for instance, operate
in the popular imagination as models of achievement for the aspiring young. They are seldom
emulated in real life, however, even unrealistically so. Still, their famed lifestyles and
heavily publicised opinions provide guidelines to appropriate conduct in a ruthlessly
competitive and unequal world." (Jim McGuigan: 'The Neoliberal Self',Culture Unbound,
Volume 6, 2014; http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/v6/a13/cu14v6a13.pdf
By offering the illusion of integration to those that the social structure has marginalized
while trying to indoctrinate the masses that the corporate state is salvation and the welfare
state is the enemy to default all of society's problems, the neoliberal ideology has captured
the imagination of many in the middle class and even some in the working class not just in the
West but around the world and especially in former Communist bloc countries where people
entertained an idealized version of bourgeois liberal society. (S. Gill, "Pessimism of
Intelligence, Optimism of Will" in Perspectives on Gramsci , ed. by Joseph
Francene 2009)
Similar to liberalism in so far as it offers something for which to hope, neoliberalism is a
departure when it decries the state as an obstacle to capitalist growth not only because of
regulatory mechanisms and as an arbiter in society that must placate the masses with social
programs, but even as a centralized entity determining monetary and fiscal policy. Proponents
of neoliberalism demand turning back the clock to the ideology that prevailed among capitalists
and their political supporters at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution when there were no
state mechanisms to regulate labor conditions, mining operations and the environment, food and
drugs, etc. From a dogmatic market fundamentalist perspective, the market transcends national
borders and supersedes the state, thus the principal form of governance revolves around
furthering capital accumulation.
Not only is there an absence of a social conscience not so different than what prevailed in
the nascent phase of industrial capitalism, but there is disdain of social responsibility on
the part of capital beyond the realm of tax-deductible charity donations and voluntarism. More
significant, neoliberals believe that capital is entitled to appropriate whatever possible from
society because the underlying assumption of corporate welfare entitlement is built into the
neoliberal ideology that identifies the national interest with capital and labor as the enemy
of capital accumulation. (K. Farnsworth, Social vs. Corporate Welfare , 2012)
The irony in all of this is that in 2008 the world experienced the largest and deepest
recession since the 1930s precisely because of neoliberal policies. However, its advocates
insisted that the recession was causedwe did not have enough deregulation, privatization,
corporate welfare and low taxes on capital rather than going too far with such an extreme
ideology whose legal and illegal practices that led to the global recession. Even more ironic
neoliberal ideology blames the state – central banks, legislative branch and regulatory
agencies – rather than the economic system for the cyclical crisis.
https://cgd.leeds.ac.uk/events/2008-global-financial-crisis-in-a-long-term-perspective-the-failure-of-neo-liberalism-and-the-future-of-capitalism-2/
Because the state puts the interests of a tiny percentage of the population above the rest
of society, it is a necessary structure only in so far as it limits its role to promoting
capital formation by using any means to achieve the goal. Whether under a pluralistic-diversity
political model or an authoritarian one, neoliberalism is anti-democratic because as Riad Azar
points out, "The common denominator is the empowering of elites over the masses with the
assistance of international forces through military action or financial coercion -- a
globalized dialectic of ruling classes."
From conservative and liberal to self-described Socialist, political parties around the
world have moved ideologically farther to the right in order to accommodate neoliberalism as
part of their platform. The challenge of the political class is to keep people loyal to the
neoliberal ideology; a challenge that necessarily forces political parties to be eclectic in
choosing aspects of other ideological camps that appeal to voters. While embracing corporate
welfare, decrying social welfare is among the most glaring neoliberal contradiction of an
ideology that ostensibly celebrates non-state intervention in the private sector. This
contradiction alone forces neoliberal politicians of all stripes and the media to engage in
mass distraction and to use everything from identity politics ideologies to cult of
personality,and culture wars and 'clash of civilization' theories.
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/How-the-Democrats-Became-The-Party-of-Neoliberalism-20141031-0002.html
;
https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/paul-emery/why-on-earth-would-socialists-support-neoliberal-undemocratic-eu
To justify why self-proclaimed socialist and democratic parties have embraced neoliberalism,
many academics have provided a wide range of theories which have in fact helped solidify the
neoliberal ideology into the political mainstream. Among the countless people swept up by the
enthusiasm of the Communist bloc's fall and China's integration into the world capitalist
economy, Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (2000), argued that the world returned to
old religious and ethnic conflicts around which ideologies of the new century were molded.
Encouraged by China's integration into the global capitalist system, in September 2006 Bell
wrote : "It's the end of ideology in China. Not the end of all ideology, but the end of
Marxist ideology. China has many social problems, but the government and its people will deal
with them in pragmatic ways, without being overly constrained by ideological boundaries. I
still think there's a need for a moral foundation for political rule in China – some sort
of guiding ideal for the future – but it won't come from Karl Marx."https://prezi.com/kha1ketnfjtd/ideology-in-everyday-life/
Such hasty pronouncements and others in works like Francis Fukuyama's The End of
History expressed the Western bourgeois sense of relief of an integrated world under the
Western-dominated neoliberal ideology that would somehow magically solve problems the Cold War
had created. While Bell, Fukuyama and others celebrated the triumphant era of neoliberal
ideology, they hardly dealt with the realities that ideology in peoples' lives emanates from
mainstream institutions manifesting irreconcilable contradictions. A product molded by the
hegemonic political culture, neoliberal ideology has been a factor in keeping the majority in
conformity while a small minority is constantly seeking outlets of social resistance, some
within the neoliberal rightwing political mold.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/21/bring-back-ideology-fukuyama-end-history-25-years-on
As catalyst to mobilize the masses, nationalism remains a strong aspect of ideological
indoctrination that rightwing populist neoliberals have used blaming immigrants, Muslims,
women, gays, environmentalists, and minorities for structural problems society confronts
resulting from the political economy. Although there are different political approaches about
how best to achieve neoliberal goals, ideological indoctrination has always played an essential
role in keeping people loyal to the social contract. However, the contradiction in neoliberal
ideology is the need for a borderless world and the triumph of capital over the nation-state
while state policies harmonize disparate capitalist interests within the nation-state and
beyond it. If neoliberal ideology tosses aside nationalism then it deprives itself of a
mechanism to mobilize the masses behind it. https://left-flank.org/2011/01/16/the-curious-marriage-of-neoliberalism-and-nationalism/
Arguing that the 'Ideological State Apparatuses' (ISA) such as religious and educational
institutions among others in the private sector perpetuate the ideology of the status quo,
Louis Pierre Althusser captured the essence of state mechanisms to mobilize the masses.
However, ideology is by no means the sole driving force in keeping people loyal to the social
contract. While peoples' material concerns often dictate their ideological orientation, it
would be hasty to dismiss the role of the media along with hegemonic cultural influences deeply
ingrained into society shaping peoples' worldview and keeping them docile.
Building on Althusser's theory of how the state maintains the status quo, Goran Therborn (
Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology , 1999) argues that the neoliberal state
uses ideological domination as a mechanism to keep people compliant. Combined with the state's
repressive mechanisms – police and armed forces – the ideological apparatus
engenders conformity wherein exploitation and repression operate within the boundaries that the
state defines as 'legal', thus 'normal' for society. A desirable goal of regimes ranging from
parliamentary to Mussolini's Fascist Italy (1922-1943) and clerical Fascism under Antonio de
Oliveira Salazar's Portugal (1932-1968), legalized repressive mechanisms have become an
integral part of neoliberal ideological domination.
The unchecked role of neoliberal capitalism in every aspect of the social fabric runs the
risk of at the very least creating massive social, economic and political upheaval as was the
case with the great recession of 2008 preceded by two decades of neoliberal capitalism taking
precedence over the welfare regulatory state whose role is to secure and/or retain equilibrium
in global markets. In The Great Transformation , (1944)", Karl Polanyi argued that:
"To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their
natural environment would result in the demolition of society."
Because Polanyi lived through the Great Depression era of the New Deal and the rise and fall
of the Axis Powers, he was optimistic that a return to the 1920s would not take root after
WWII. Polanyi accepted Hegel's view of the social contract that the state preserves society by
safeguarding general or universal interests against particular ones. However, we have been
witnessing the kind of demolition of society Polanyi feared because of unchecked market forces.
This is in part because the demise of the Communist bloc and the rise of China as a major
economic power emboldened advocates of neoliberal ideology.
With the realization of US long road to decline at the end of the Vietnam War, neoliberal
elites prevailed that the crisis of American leadership could be met with the elimination of
Keynesian ideology and the adoption of neoliberalism as tested by the Chicago School in Chile
under the US-backed dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990. That the neoliberal
ideology became an experiment tested in a US-backed military dictatorship in South America is
itself revealing about what the nature of the social contract once implemented even in
pluralistic societies where there was popular and political support for Keynesianism.
Characteristic of a developing nation like Chile was external dependence and a weak state
structure, thus easily manipulated by domestic and foreign capital interested in deregulation
and further weakening of the public sector as the core of the social contract.
"The withering away of national states and the wholesale privatization of state-owned
enterprises and state-administered services transferred highly profitable monopolies to
capitalists, and guaranteed the repayment of the foreign debt-contracted, as in Argentina,
Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay-by irresponsible, corrupt, and de facto military rulers.
Neoliberalism supplied the general justification for the transfer of public assets and
state-owned enterprises, paid for with public savings, even in areas considered "taboo" and
untouchable until a few years ago, such as electricity, aviation, oil, or
telecommunications. (Atilio A. Boron, "Democracy or Neoliberalism?"http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR21.5/boron.html
Advocating the systematic dismantling of the social welfare state in the name of upholding
the virtues of individualism while strengthening of corporate welfare capitalism in the name of
economic growth on global scale, advocates of neoliberal ideology were emboldened by the
absence of a competing ideology after the fall of the Soviet bloc and China's capitalist
integration. As the income gap widened and globalization resulted in surplus labor force amid
downward pressure on wages, a segment of the social and political elites embraced a rightwing
populist ideology as a means of achieving the neoliberal goals in cases where the pluralist
ideological model was not working. The failure of neoliberal policies led some political and
business elites to embrace rightwing populism in order to save neoliberalism that had lost
support among a segment of society because of its association with centrist and reformist
cultural-diversity pluralist neoliberals. This trend continues to gain momentum exposing the
similarities between neoliberalism and Fascism. (David Zamora, "When Exclusion Replaces
Exploitation: The Condition of the Surplus-Population under Neoliberalism"http://nonsite.org/feature/when-exclusion-replaces-exploitation.
Neoliberalism and Fascism
The role of the state
Unprecedented for a former president, on 10 December 2017 Barak Obama warned Americans not
to follow a Nazi path. A clear reference to president Trump and the Republican Party leading
America in that direction with rhetoric and policies that encourage 'culture war' (
kulturkampf – struggle between varieties of rightwingers from evangelicals to
neo-Nazis against secular liberals), Obama made reference to socioeconomic polarization at the
root of political polarization.
"The combination of economic disruption, cultural disruption ― nothing feels solid
to people ― that's a recipe for people wanting to find security somewhere. And sadly,
there's something in all of us that looks for simple answers when we're agitated and insecure.
The narrative that America at its best has stood for, the narrative of pluralism and tolerance
and democracy and rule of law, human rights and freedom of the press and freedom of religion,
that narrative, I think, is actually the more powerful narrative. The majority of people around
the world aspire to that narrative, which is the reason people still want to come here."
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-warns-americans-against-following-in-the-path-of-nazi
germany_us_5a2c032ce4b0a290f0512487
Warning about the road to Nazism, Obama drew distinctions between the Democratic Party's
brand of pluralist neoliberalism and Trump's rightwing populist model. Naturally, Obama did not
mention that both models seek the same goals, or that policies for which he and his predecessor
Bill Clinton pursued drove a segment of the population toward the authoritarian neoliberal
model that offers the illusion of realizing the American Dream. Distancing themselves from
neo-Fascists, mainstream European political leaders embracing the pluralist model under
neoliberalism have been as condemnatory as Obama of rightwing populism's pursuit of 'culture
war' as a precursor to Fascism.
Accusing Trump of emboldening varieties of neo-Fascists not just in the US and EU but around
the globe, European neoliberal pluralists ignored both the deep roots of Fascism in Europe and
their own policies contributing to the rise of neo-Fascism. Just as with Obama and his fellow
Democrats, European neoliberal pluralists draw a very sharp distinction between their version
of neoliberalism and rightwing populism that either Trump or Hungary's Viktor Orban pursue.
Neoliberal pluralists argue that rightwing populists undercut globalist integration principles
by stressing economic nationalism although it was right nationalists Margaret Thatcher and
Ronald Reagan that engaged in wholesale implantation of neoliberal policies.
https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2017/02/28/the-myths-of-far-right-populism-orbans-fence-and-trumps-wall/
Rightwing populism under Ronald Reagan as the first president to implement neoliberal
policies emerged as a reaction to the prospect that the Western-basedcore of capitalism was
weakening as a result of a multi-polar world economy. Whereas in the middle of the 20
th century the US enjoyed balance of payments surpluses and was a net creditor with
the dollar as the world's strongest reserve currency and the world's strongest manufacturing
sector, in 2017 the US is among the earth's largest debtor nations with chronic balance of
payments deficits, a weak dollar with a bleak future and an economy based more on parasitic
financial speculation and massive defense-related spending and less on productive sectors that
are far more profitable in Asia and developing nations with low labor costs. (Jon Kofas,
Independence from America: Global Integration and Inequality , 2005, 40-54)
Exerting enormous influence by exporting its neoliberal ideological, political, economic and
cultural influence throughout the world, the US-imposed transformation model has resulted in
economic hardships and political and social instability in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Institutionalizing neoliberalism under rightwing populism and using Trump as the pretext to do
so, the US is leading nations around the world to move closer to neo-Fascism, thus exposing
neoliberalism as totalitarian.The recognition by the political class and business class that
over-accumulation is only possible by continued downward wage pressure has been a key reason
that a segment of the population not just in the US but across EU has supported populist
rightwing and/or neo-fascists.
Rejecting the claim of any similarities between neoliberalism and Fascism, neoliberal
apologists take pride that their apparent goal is to weaken the state, by which they mean the
Keynesian welfare state, not the 'military Keynesian' and corporate welfare state. By contrast,
Fascists advocated a powerful state – everything within the state, nothing outside
the state, nothing against the state. American neoliberals of both the pluralist and
rightwing camps have created a societal model not just in one nation like Mussolini and Hitler
but globally with the result of: "everything within neoliberalism, nothing against
neoliberalism, nothing outside neoliberalism.
Neoliberal totalitarianism finds different expression in the US than in India, in Hungary
than in Israel. In " Neoliberal Fascism: Free Markets and the Restructuring of Indian
Capitalism," Shankar Gopalakrishnan observed that exclusive Hindu nationalism has been the
catalyst for rightwing neoliberalism to mobilize popular support. "Hindutva [ a term
coined by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923 to assert exclusive Hindu dominance] is seen as
an effort by neoliberalism, or perhaps more broadly by capitalism, to divert attention from
class conflict, to divide and weaken working class struggles and to deflect class-driven
anxieties on to minority communities. This approach is problematic in two senses. First, it
does not explain why Hindutva organisations are able to develop a mass base, except to the
extent that they are seen to be appealing to "historical identity" or "emotive" issues.The state exists only as the expression and guarantor of a collectivity founded
around a transcendent principle : The ideal state is the guarantor of the Hindu
rashtra, a "nation" that exists as an organic and harmonious unity between "Hindus."
Whereas under Ronald Reagan's neoliberal populist policies (Reaganism) under a rightwing
political umbrella the state structure was strengthened in the US, in the process of
implementing neoliberal policies state bureaucratic functions have been outsourced to private
companies thus keeping with the spirit of corporate-welfare goals. Other countries followed a
path similar to the one of the US. Contrary to the claims of many neoliberal scholars,
politicians and commentators, neoliberalism has not weakened the state simply because the
ideology lays claims to a hegemonic private sector and weak state. It is true that the
Keynesian-welfare state structure has been weakened while the
corporate-welfare-militarist-police-state structure has been strengthened. However, in the less
developed capitalist countries the public sector has weakened as a result of the US and EU
imposing the neoliberal model which drains the public sector of any leverage in stimulating
economic and social development investment because of the transfer of public assets and public
services to the private sector.( http://jgu.edu.in/article/indias-neoliberal-path-perdition
; Monica Prasad, The Politics of Free Markets , 2006)
Gaspar Miklos Tamas, a Romanian political philosopher of the George Lukacs-inspired Budapest
School, argues that global division of labor in the neoliberal era has not only resulted in
wealth transfer from the bottom up but it has diminished national sovereignty and citizenship
for those in less developed (periphery) nations. "The new dual sate is alive and well:
Normative State for the core populations of the capitalist center, and another State of
arbitrary decrees for the non-citizens who are the rest. Unlike in classical fascism, this
second State is only dimly visible from the first. The radical critique protesting that liberty
within the Normative State is an illusion, although understandable, is erroneous. The denial of
citizenship based not on exploitation, oppression and straightforward discrimination, but on
mere exclusion and distance, is difficult to grasp, because the mental habits of liberation
struggle for a more just redistribution of goods and powers are not applicable. The problem is
not that the Normative State is becoming more authoritarian: rather, that it belongs only to a
few."https://www.opendemocracy.net/people-newright/article_306.jsp
If the normative state is the domain of the very few with the rest under the illusion of
inclusion, Miklos Tamas concludes that we are living in a global post-fascist era which is not
the same as the interwar totalitarian model based on a mass movement of Fascism. Instead,
neoliberal totalirarianism categorically rejects the Enlightenment tradition of citizenship
which is the very essence of the bourgeois social contract. While the normative state in
advanced countries is becoming more authoritarian with police-state characteristics, the state
in the periphery whether Eastern Europe, Latin America or Africa is swept along by neoliberal
policies that drive it toward authoritarianism as much as the state in Trump's America as in
parts of Europe to the degree that in January 2018 Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union
(CDU) faced the prospect either of new elections or entering into a coalition with the neo-Nazi
Alternative fur Deutchalnd (AfD). https://www.prosper.org.au/2010/05/25/the-counter-enlightenment/
The rightwing course of the Western World spreading into the rest of the world is not only
because of IMF austerity used as leverage to impose neoliberalism in developing nations.
Considering that countries have been scrambling to attract foreign investment which carries
neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatization, weak trade unions and low taxes as a
precondition, the entire world economic system is the driving force toward a form of
totalitarianism. As Miklos Tamas argues, this has diluted national sovereignty of weaker
countries, allowing national capitalists and especially multinational corporations to play a
determining role in society against the background of a weak state structure. Along with
weakened national sovereignty, national citizenship in turn finds expression in extreme
rightwing groups to compensate for loss of independence as the bourgeois social contract
presumably guarantees. (Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and
Sovereignty , 2006;
http://www.e-ir.info/2012/08/22/globalization-does-not-entail-the-weakening-of-the-liberal-state/
It is undeniable that there is a qualitative difference in Berlin and Rome under neoliberal
regimes today than it was under Fascism. It would be a mistake to lump a contemporary
neoliberal society together with the Third Reich and Fascist Italy, a dreadful and costly
mistake that Stalinists made in the 1930s. Interwar totalitarianism existed under one-party
state with a popular base operating as a police state. Although many countries under varieties
of neoliberal regimes have an electoral system of at least two parties alternating power, the
ruling parties pursue neoliberal policies with variations on social and cultural issues
(identity politics), thus operating within the same policy framework impacting peoples' living
standards.
Not just leftist academic critics, but even the progressive democratic Salon
magazine recognized during the US election of 2016 that the neoliberal state would prevail
regardless of whether Trump or Clinton won the presidential contest. " Neoliberalism
presumes a strong state, working only for the benefit of the wealthy, and as such it has little
pretence to neutrality and universality, unlike the classical liberal state. I would go so far
as to say that neoliberalism is the final completion of capitalism's long-nascent project, in
that the desire to transform everything -- every object, every living thing, every fact on the
planet -- in its image had not been realized to the same extent by any preceding
ideology.
In neoliberal society either of the pluralist-diversity or of the authoritarian political
camp there are elements of polizeistaat though not nearly full blown as in the Third
Reich. While conformity to the status quo and self-censorship is the only way to survive,
modern means of communication and multiple dissident outlets attacking the status quo from the
right, which is far more pervasive and socio-politically acceptable than doing so from the
left, has actually facilitated the evolution of the new totalitarian state.
http://www.thegreatregression.eu/progressive-neoliberalism-versus-reactionary-populism-a-hobsons-choice/
Whereas big business collaborated closely with Fascist dictators from the very beginning to
secure the preeminence of the existing social order threatened by the crisis of democracy
created by capitalism, big business under the neoliberal social contract has the same goal,
despite disagreement on the means of forging political consensus. Partly because neoliberalism
carries the legacy of late 19 th century liberalism and operates in most countries
within the parliamentary system, and partly because of fear of grassroots social revolution, a
segment of the capitalist class wants to preserve the democratic façade of the neoliberal
social contract by perpetuating identity politics. In either case, 'economic fascism' as the
essence of neoliberalism, or post-fascism as Miklos Tamas calls it, is an inescapable
reality. (Andrea Micocci and Flavia Di Mario, The Fascist Nature of Neoliberalism ,
2017).
In distinguishing the composition and goals of theparliamentary state vs. the Fascist
one-party state, Italian Fascism's theoretician Giovanni Gentile characterizedit as
'totalitario'; a term also applied to Germany's Third Reich the latter which had the added
dimension of anti-Semitism as policy. Arguing that ideology in the Fascist totalitarian state
had a ubiquitous role in every aspect of life and power over people, Gentile and Mussolini
viewed such state as the catalyst to a powerful nation-state that subordinates all institutions
and the lives of citizens to its mold. In "La Dottrina del Fascismo" (Gentile and
Mussolini, 1932), Musolini made famous the statement: "Everything within the state, nothing
outside the state, nothing against the state," although Hitler's polizeistaat was
more totalitarian because it had the means to achieve policy goals stated in Mein
Kampf .
The convergence of neoliberalism and Fascism is hardly surprising when one considers that
both aim at a totalitarian society of different sorts, one of state-driven ideology and the
other market-driven with the corporate welfare state behind it. In some respects, Sheldon
Wolin's the "inverted totalitarianism" theory places this issue into another
perspective, arguing that despite the absence of a dictator the corporate state behind the
façade of 'electoral democracy' is an instrument of totalitarianism. Considering the
increased role of security-intelligence-surveillance agencies in a presumably open society, it
is not difficult to see that society has more illiberal than classic liberal traits. Sheldon
Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted
Totalitarianism, 2008)
More powerful than the Axis Powers combined, American "Inverted totalitarianism" was
internationalized during the Cold War and became more blatant during the war on terror, in
large measure used as a pretext to impose neoliberalism in the name of national security. As
the police-state gradually became institutionalized in every respect from illegal surveillance
of citizens to suppressing dissent to the counterterrorism-neoliberal regime, it was becoming
clearer to many scholars that a version of fascism was emerging in the US which also sprang up
around the world. (Charlotte Heath-Kelly et al. eds., Neoliberalism and Terror: Critical
Engagements , 2016;
https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/showthread.php?15074-Chris-Hedges-The-Great-Unraveling-USA-on-the-brink-of-neo-fascist-police-state#.WifwyLBrzIU
Almost a century after the era of Fascist totalitarianism that led to WWII, the transition
of capitalism's global structure with a shifting core from the US and northwest Europe to East
Asia has entailed intense global competition for capital accumulation to the degree that the
advanced countries have been pushing living standards downward to compete with low-wage global
markets. The process of draining greater surplus value from labor especially from the periphery
countries where IMF-style austerity policies have resulted in massive capital transfer to the
core countries has taken place under the neoliberal social contract that has striking
similarities with Fascism.
Backed by the state in the advanced capitalist countries, international organizations among
them the IMF have been promoting economic fascism under the label of 'neoliberal reforms', thus
molding state structures accordingly. Neoliberal totalitarianism is far more organized and
ubiquitous than interwar Fascism not only because of the strong national state structure of
core countries and modern technology and communications networks that enables surveillance and
impose subtle forms of indoctrination, but also because the international agencies established
by the US under the Bretton Woods system help to impose policies and institutions globally.
Characteristics of the Illiberal Neoliberal Society
The genesis of illiberal politics can be traced back to the end of WWI when Europeans
witnessed the unraveling of the rationalist order of the Enlightenment rooted in Lockean
liberalism. Influenced by the wars of imperialism that led the First World War at the end of
which Vladimir Lenin led the Bolsheviks to a revolutionary victory over Czarist Russia, Joseph
Schumpeter like many European scholars was trying to make sense of how capitalism's forcible
geographic expansion (imperialism) led to such global disasters that undermined the rationalist
assumptions of the Enlightenment about society and its institutions. In his Sociology of
Imperialism (1919), he wrote the following about the relationship of the bourgeoisie with
the state.
"The bourgeoisie did not simply supplant the sovereign, nor did it make him its leader,
as did the nobility. It merely wrested a portion of its power from him and for the rest
submitted to him. It did not take over from the sovereign the state as an abstract form of
organization. The state remained a special social power, confronting the bourgeoisie. In some
countries it has continued to play that role to the present day. It is in the state that the
bourgeoisie with its interests seeks refuge, protection against external and even domestic
enemies. The bourgeoisie seeks to win over the state for itself, and in return serves the state
and state interests that are different from its own."
The strong state structure of the imperial state that the bourgeoisie supported as a vehicle
of expanding their interests globally while maintaining the social order at the national level
held true only for the advanced capitalist countries eagerly trying to secure international
markets at any cost including armed conflict. While essential for capital integration and
expansion, the strong state structure was and remains an anathema to the bourgeoisie, if its
role is to make political, economic and social concessions to the laboring and middle classes
which are the popular base for bourgeois political parties. While classical liberal theory
expresses the interests of capitalism its role is not to serve in furtherance of political
equality for the simple reason that capitalism cannot exist under such a regime. Both John
Locke and John Stuart Mill rejected political egalitarianism, while Schumpeter viewed
democratic society with egalitarianism as an integral part of democracy. Rejecting Locke's and
Mill's abstract receptiveness to egalitarianism, neoliberals of either the pluralist or
authoritarian camp are blatantly adopt illiberal policies that exacerbate elitism, regardless
of the rhetoric they employ to secure mass popular support.
Characterized by elitism, class, gender, racial and ethnic inequality, limits on freedom of
expression, on human rights and civil rights, illiberal politics thrives on submission of the
masses to the status quo. In his essay The Political Economy of Neoliberalism and Illiberal
Democracy, Garry Jacobs, an academic/consultant who still believes in classical liberal
economics operating in a pluralistic and preferably non-militaristic society, warns that
world-wide democracy is under siege. " Democratic elections have become the means for
installing leaders with little respect for democratic values. The tolerance, openness and
inclusiveness on which modern democracy is founded are being rejected by candidates and voters
in favor of sectarian, parochial fears and interests. The role of the free press as an
impartial arbiter of facts is being undermined by the rise of private and public news media
conglomerates purveying political preference as fact combined with a blinding blizzard of fake
news. Party politics has been polarized into a winner-take-all fight to the finish by
vested-interests and impassioned extremist minorities trying to impose their agendas on a
complacent majority. Corporate power and money power are transforming representative
governments into plutocratic pseudo-democracies. Fundamentalists are seizing the instruments of
secular democracy to impose intolerant linguistic, racial and religious homogeneity in place of
the principles of liberty and harmonious heterogeneity that are democracy's foundation and
pinnacle of achievement."
While neoliberals in the populist rightwing wholeheartedly share and promote such views,
those who embrace the pluralist-identity politics camp are just as supportive of many aspects
of the corporate welfare-police-counterterrorism state as a means to engender domestic
sociopolitical conformity and to achieve closer global economic integration. The question is
not so much what each political camp under the larger neoliberal umbrella pursues as a strategy
to mobilize a popular base but whether the economic-social policies intertwined with a
corporate-welfare-police-counterterrorism state is the driving force toward a Fascist model of
government. In both the pluralist model with some aspects of the social safety net, and the
rightwing populist version neoliberalism's goal is rapid capital accumulation on a world scale,
institutional submission of the individual and molding the citizen's subjective reality around
the neoliberal ideology.
Illiberal politics in our time is partly both symptomatic of and a reaction to neoliberal
globalism and culture wars that serve to distract from the intensified class struggle boiling
beneath the surface. Rhetorically denouncing globalist neoliberalism, populist rightwing
politicians assert the importance of national capitalism but always within the perimeters of
neoliberal policies. Hence they co-opt the socio-cultural positions of nationalist extremists
as a political strategy to mobilize the masses. Scholars, journalists and politicians have
speculated whether the rising tide of rightwing populism pursuing neoliberalism under
authoritarian models not just in the Western World, but Eastern Europe, South Asia and Africa
reflects the rejection of liberal democracy and the triumph of illiberal politics that best
reflects and serves the political economy. Unquestionably, there is a direct correlation
between the internationalization of the Western neoliberal transformation model imposed on the
world in the post-Soviet era and the rise of rightwing populism reacting to the gap between the
promises of what capitalism was supposed to deliver and the reality of downward pressures on
living standards. http://www.counterfire.org/interview/18068-india-s-nightmare-the-extremism-of-narendra-modi
;
http://ac.upd.edu.ph/index.php/news-announcements/1201-southeast-asian-democracy-neoliberalism-populism-vedi-hadiz
; http://balticworlds.com/breaking-out-of-the-deadlock-of-neoliberalism-vs-rightwing-populism/
Not just the US, but Europe has been flirting with 'illiberal democracy' characterized by
strong authoritarian-style elected officials as Garry Jacobs has observed. Amid elections in
Bosnia in 1996, US diplomat Richard Holbrooke wondered about the rightwing path of former
Yugoslav republics. "Suppose the election was declared free and fair and those elected are
"racists, fascists, separatists, who are publicly opposed to [peace and reintegration]. That is
the dilemma." Twenty years after what Holbrooke dreaded election outcomes in Yugoslavia,
the US elected a rightwing neoliberal populist leading the Republican Party and making culture
wars a central theme to distract from the undercurrent class struggle in the country. A
structural issue that transcends personalities, this reality in America is symptomatic of the
link between neoliberalism and the rise of illiberal democracy in a number of countries around
the world. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1997-11-01/rise-illiberal-democracy
Some political observers analyzing the rightist orientation of neoliberal policies have
concluded that neoliberalism and Fascism have more in common than people realize. In 2016,
Manuela Cadelli, President of the Magistrates Union of Belgium, wrote a brief article arguing
that Neoliberalism is indeed a form of Fascism; a position people seem to be willing to debate
after the election of Donald Trump pursuing neoliberal policies with a rightwing populist
ideological and cultural platform to keep a popular base loyal to the Republican Party.
"Fascism may be defined as the subordination of every part of the State to a totalitarian
and nihilistic ideology. I argue that neoliberalism is a species of fascism because the economy
has brought under subjection not only the government of democratic countries but also every
aspect of our thought. The state is now at the disposal of the economy and of finance, which
treat it as a subordinate and lord over it to an extent that puts the common good in
jeopardy."http://www.defenddemocracy.press/president-belgian-magistrates-neoliberalism-form-fascism/
It is ironic that neoliberal society is 'a species of fascism', but there no widespread
popular opposition from leftist groups to counter it. People remain submissive to the
neoliberal state that has in fact eroded much of what many in the pluralist camp hail as
liberal democratic institutions. Most adapt to the status quo because to do otherwise means
difficulty surviving today just as it was difficult to survive under Fascism for those in
opposition; as Palmiro Togliatti noted ( Lectures on Fascism, 1935) when he cautioned
about castigating workers who joined the party simply because they placed survival of their
family above any progressive ideology. Because evidence of systemic exploitation ingrained into
society passes as the 'norm', and partly because repression targets minority groups, migrants,
and the working class, especially those backing trade unions and progressive political parties,
people support the neoliberal state that they see as the constitutional entity and the only
means for survival.
The media, government and mainstream institutions denounce anyone crying out for social
justice, human rights and systemic change. Such people are 'trendy rebels', as though social
justice is a passing fad like a clothing line, misguided idealists or treasonous criminals.
Considering that the corporate-owned and state media validates the legitimacy of the neoliberal
social contract, the political class and social elites enjoy the freedom to shape the state's
goals in the direction toward a surveillance police-state. All of this goes without notice in
the age when it is almost expected because it is defaulted to technology making easy to detect
foreign and domestic enemies while using the same technology to shape the citizen's subjective
reality.
Partly because of the communications revolution in the digital age, neoliberalism has the
ability to mold the citizen beyond loyalty to the social contract not just into mechanical
observance but total submission to its institutions by reshaping the person's values and
identity. In this respect, neoliberalism is not so different from Fascism whose goal was to
mold the citizen. " Neoliberalism has been more successful than most past ideologies in
redefining subjectivity, in making people alter their sense of themselves, their personhood,
their identities, their hopes and expectations and dreams and idealizations. Classical
liberalism was successful too, for two and a half centuries, in people's self-definition,
although communism and fascism succeeded less well in realizing the "new man." It cannot be
emphasized enough that neoliberalism is not classical liberalism, or a return to a purer
version of it, as is commonly misunderstood; it is a new thing, because the market, for one
thing, is not at all free and untethered and dynamic in the sense that classical liberalism
idealized it.
Although people go about their daily lives focused on their interests, they operate against
the background of neoliberal institutions that determine their lives in every respect from
chatting on their cell phones to how they live despite their illusions of free will. As the
world witnessed a segment of the population openly embracing fascism from movement to
legitimate political party in interwar Europe, a corresponding rise in racism and ethnocentrism
under the umbrella of rightwing neoliberal populism has taken place in the first two decades of
the 21 st century.
Representing the UN Human Rights agency, Prince Zeid bin Ra'ad al-Hussein stated that 2016
was disastrous for human rights, as the 'clash of civilizations' construct has become ingrained
into the political mainstream in Western countries. "In some parts of Europe, and in the
United States, anti-foreigner rhetoric full of unbridled vitriol and hatred, is proliferating
to a frightening degree, and is increasingly unchallenged. The rhetoric of fascism is no longer
confined to a secret underworld of fascists, meeting in ill-lit clubs or on the 'deep net'. It
is becoming part of normal daily discourse."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/united-nations-chilling-warning-rise-fascism-human-rights-prince-zeid-a7464861.html
Because neoliberalism has pushed all mainstream bourgeois political parties to the right,
the far right no longer seems nearly as extreme today as it did during the Vietnam War's
protest generation who still had hope for a socially just society even if that meant
strengthening the social welfare system. The last two generations were raised knowing no
alternative to neoliberalism; the panacea for all that ails society is less social welfare and
privatization of public services within the framework of a state structure buttressing
corporate welfare. The idea that nothing must be tolerated outside the hegemonic market and all
institutions must mirror the neoliberal model reflects a neo-totalitarian society where
sociopolitical conformity follows because survival outside the system is not viable.
Although Western neoconservatives have employed the term 'neo-totalitarian' to describe
Vladimir Putin's Russia, the term applies even more accurately to the US and someEuropean
nations operating under neoliberal-military-police state structures with as much power than the
Russian bureaucratic state has at its disposal.The contradiction of neoliberalism rests in the
system's goal of integrating everyone into the neo-totalitarian mold. Because of the system's
inherent hierarchical structure, excluding most from the institutional mainstream and limiting
popular sovereignty to the elites exposes the exploitation and repression goals that account
for the totalitarian nature of the system masquerading as democratic where popular sovereignty
is diffused. The seemingly puzzling aspect of the rise in rightwing populism across the globe
that rests in marginalization of a segment of the population and the support for it not just
from certain wealthy individuals financing extremist movements, but from a segment of the
middle class and even working class lining up behind it because they see their salvation with
the diminution of weaker social groups. This pattern was also evident in Nazi Germany, Fascist
Italy and pro-Nazi authoritarian regimes of the interwar era. https://www.demdigest.org/neo-totalitarian-russia-potent-existential-threat-west/
; Benjamin Moffitt, The Global Rise of Populism (2017.
Because of contradictions in bourgeois liberal democracy where capital accumulation at any
social cost is the goal, the system produced the current global wave of rightwing populism just
as capitalism in the interwar era gave rise to Fascism. As one analyst put it, " The risk
democratic formations continually face is internal disintegration such that the heterogeneous
elements of the social order not only fail to come together within some principle of or for
unity, but actively turn against one another. In this case, a totally unproductive revolution
takes place. Rather than subversion of the normative order causing suffering, rebellion or
revolution that might establish a new nomos of shared life as a way of establishing a new
governing logic, the dissociated elements of disintegrating democratic formations identify with
the very power responsible for their subjection–capital, the state and, the strong
leader. Thus the possibility of fascism is not negated in neoliberal formations but is an ever
present possibility arising within it. Because the value of the social order as such is never
in itself sufficient to maintain its own constitution, it must have recourse to an external
value, which is the order of the sacred embodied by the sovereign.
http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/78-78/41987-neoliberalism-fascism-and-sovereignty
/
Public opinion surveys of a number of countries around the world, including those in the US,
indicated that most people do not favor the existing social contract rooted in neoliberal
policies that impact everything from living standards and labor policy to the judicial system
and foreign affairs. Instead of driving workers toward a leftwing revolutionary path, many
support rightwing populism that has resulted in the rise of even greater oppression and
exploitation. Besides nationalism identified with the powerful elites as guardians of the
national interest, many among the masses believe that somehow the same social contract
responsible for existing problems will provide salvation they seek. While widespread
disillusionment with neoliberal globalization seems to be at the core in the rise of rightwing
populism, the common denominator is downward social mobility. (Doug Miller, Can the World
be Wrong ? 2015)
As Garry Jacobs argues, "Even mature democracies show signs of degenerating into their
illiberal namesakes. The historical record confirms that peaceful, prosperous, free and
harmonious societies can best be nurtured by the widest possible distribution of all forms of
power -- political, economic, educational, scientific, technological and social -- to the
greatest extent to the greatest number. The aspiration for individual freedom can only be
realized and preserved when it is married with the right to social equality. The mutual
interdependence of the individual and the collective is the key to their reconciliation and
humanity's future.
http://www.cadmusjournal.org/article/volume-3/issue-3/political-economy-neoliberalism-and-illiberal-democracy
Just as in the interwar era when many Europeans lost confidence in the rationalism of the
Enlightenment and lapsed into amorality and alienation that allowed for even greater public
manipulation by the hegemonic culture, in the early 21 st the neoliberal social
contract with a complex matrix of communications at its disposal is able to indoctrinate on a
mass scale more easily than ever. Considering the low level of public trust in the mainstream
media that most people regardless of political/ideological position view as propaganda rather
than informational, cynicism about national and international institutions prevails. As the
fierce struggle for power among mainstream political parties competing to manage the state on
behalf of capital undercuts the credibility of the political class, rightwing elements enter
the arena as 'outsider' messiahs above politics (Bonapartism in the 21 st century)
to save the nation, while safeguarding the neoliberal social contract. This is as evident in
France where the pluralist political model of neoliberalism has strengthened the neo-Fascist
one that Marine Le Pen represents, as in Trump's America where the Democratic Party's
neoliberal policies helped give rise to rightwing populism.
As the following article in The Economist points out, widespread disillusionment
with globalist neoliberal policies drove people to the right for an enemy to blame for all the
calamities that befall society. " Beset by stagnant wage growth, less than half of
respondents in America, Britain and France believe that globalisation is a "force for good" in
the world. Westerners also say the world is getting worse. Even Americans, generally an
optimistic lot, are feeling blue: just 11% believe the world has improved in the past year. The
turn towards nationalism is especially pronounced in France, the cradle of liberty. Some 52% of
the French now believe that their economy should not have to rely on imports, and just 13%
reckon that immigration has a positive effect on their country. France is divided as to whether
or not multiculturalism is something to be embraced. Such findings will be music to the ears of
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, France's nationalist, Eurosceptic party.
Current (and admittedly early) polling has her tied for first place in the 2017 French
presidential race.https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/11/daily-chart-12
Similar to deep-rooted cultural and ideological traits of Nazism in German society, there
are similar traits in contemporary US, India and other countries where rightwing populism has
found a receptive public. Although there are varieties of populism from Lepenism (Marine Le
Pen's National Front) to Trumpism (US Republican Donald Trump) to Modism (India's Narendra
Modi), they share common characteristics, including cult of personality as a popular rallying
catalyst, promoting hatred and marginalization of minority groups, and promising to deliver a
panacea to "society" when in fact their policies are designed to strengthen big capital.
Rightwing populist politicians who pursue neoliberal policies are opportunistically pushing
the political popular base toward consolidation of a Fascist movement and often refer to
themselves as movement rather than a party. Just as there were liberals who refused to accept
the imminent rise of Fascism amid the parliamentary system's collapse in the 1920s, there are
neoliberals today who refuse to accept that the global trend of populism is a symptom of failed
neoliberalism that has many common characteristics with Fascism. In an article entitled
"Populism is not Fascism: But it could be a Harbinger" by Sheri Berman, the neoliberal
journal Foreign Affairs , acknowledged that liberal bourgeois democracy is losing its
luster around the world. However, the author would not go as far as to examine the structural
causes for this phenomenon because to do so would be to attack the social contract within which
it operates. Treating rightwing populism as though it is a marginal outgrowth of mainstream
conservatism and an aberration rather than the outgrowth of the system's core is merely a
thinly veiled attempt to defend the status quo of which rightwing populism is an integral
part.
Structural Exploitation under the Neoliberal Social Contract
Structural exploitation – "a property of institutions or systems in which the
"rules of the game" unfairly benefit one group of people to the detriment of another"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/
– has been an incontrovertible reality of all class-based societiesfrom the establishment
of the earliest city-states in Mesopotamia until the present.Usually but not always intertwined
with social oppression, structural exploitation entails a relationship of social dominance of
an elite group over the rest of society subordinated for the purpose of economic, social,
political, and cultural exploitation. Legitimized by the social contract, justifications for
institutional exploitation include safety and security of country, eliminating impediments to
progress, and emulating nature's competitive forces that exist in the animal kingdom and
reflect human nature.
From Solon's laws in 6 th century BC Athens until our contemporary neoliberal
era, social contract theory presumes that the state is the catalyst for social harmony if not
fairness and not for a privileged social class to exploit the rest of society. No legal system
has ever been codified that explicitly states its goal is to use of the state as an instrument
of exploitation and oppression. In reality however, from ancient Babylon when King Hammurabi
codified the first laws in 1780 B.C. until the present when multinational corporations and
wealthy individuals directly or through lobbyists exert preponderate influence in public policy
the theoretical assumption is one of fairness and justice for all people as a goal for the
social contract.
In the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution – biotechnology, nanotechnology,
quantum computing, and artificial intelligence – presumably to serve mankind as part of
the social contract rather than to exploit more thoroughly and marginalize a large segment of
humanity, the persistence of structural exploitation and oppression challenges those with a
social conscience and morality rooted in humanist values to question what constitutes societal
progress and public interest. Liberal and Christian-Libertarian arguments about free will
notwithstanding, it has always been the case that mainstream institutions and the dominant
culture indoctrinate people into believing that ending exploitation by changing the social
contract is a utopian dream; a domain relegated to poets, philosophers and song writers lacking
proper grounding in the reality of mainstream politics largely in the service of the dominant
socioeconomic class. The paradox in neoliberal ideology is its emphasis on free choice, while
the larger goal is to mold the subjective reality within the neoliberal institutional structure
and way of life. The irreconcilable aspects of neoliberalism represent the contradictory goals
of the desire to project democratic mask that would allow for popular sovereignty while
pursuing capital accumulation under totalitarian methods. http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_contractarianism.html
' http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tippling/2017/05/15/indoctrination-and-free-will/
Social cooperation becomes dysfunctional when distortions and contradictions within the
system create large-scale social marginalization exposing the divergence between the promise of
the neoliberal social contract and the reality in peoples' lives. To manage the dysfunction by
mobilizing popular support, the political elites of both the pluralist and the
authoritarian-populist wing operating under the neoliberal political umbrella compete for power
by projecting the image of an open democratic society. Intra-class power struggles within the
elite social and political classes vying for power distracts from social exploitation because
the masses line behind competing elites convinced such competition is the essence of democracy.
As long as the majority in society passively acquiesces to the legitimacy of the social
contract, even if in practice society is socially unjust, the status quo remains secure until
systemic contradictions in the political economy make it unsustainable. https://mises.org/library/profound-significance-social-harmony
In the last three centuries, social revolutions, upheavals and grassroots movements have
demonstrated that people want a social contract that includes workers, women, and marginalized
groups into the mainstream and elevates their status economically and politically. In the early
21 st century, there are many voices crying out for a new social contract based on
social justice and equality against neoliberal tyranny. However, those faint voices are drowned
against the preponderate neoliberal public policy impacting every sector while shaping the
individual's worldview and subjective reality. The triumph of neoliberal orthodoxy has deviated
from classical liberalism to the degree that dogmatism 'single-thought' process dominates not
just economics, not just the social contract, but the very fabric of our humanity. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21598282.2013.761449?journalCode=rict20
; https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world
Under neoliberalism, "Uberization" as a way of life is becoming the norm not just in the
'financialization' neoliberal economy resting on speculation rather than productivity but in
society as well. The neoliberal ideology has indoctrinated the last two generations that grew
up under this system and know no other reality thus taking for granted the neoliberal way of
life as natural as the air they breathe. Often working two jobs, working overtime without
compensation or taking work home just to keep the job has become part of chasing the dream of
merely catching up with higher costs of living. People have accepted perpetual work enmeshed
with the capitalist ideology of perpetual economic growth perversely intertwined with progress
of civilization. The corporate ideology of "grow or die" at any cost is in reality economic
growth confined to the capitalist class, while fewer and fewer people enjoy its fruits and
communities, cities, entire countries under neoliberal austerity suffer.
The incentive for conformity is predicated on the belief that the benefits of civilization
would be fairly distributed if not in the present then at some point in the future for one's
children or grandchildren; analogous to living a virtuous life in order to enjoy the rewards
after death. As proof that the system works for the benefit of society and not just the
capitalist class, neoliberal apologists point to stock market gains and surprisingly there is a
psychological impact – the wealth effect – on the mass consumer who feels
optimistic and borrows to raise consumption. Besides the fact that only a very small percentage
of people on the planet own the vast majority of securities, even in the US there is no
correlation between stock market performance and living standards. (John Seip and Dee Wood
Harper, The Trickle Down Delusion , 2016)
If we equate the stock market with the 'wealth of the nation', then in 1982 when the S & P
index stood at 117 rising to 2675 in December 2017, the logical conclusion is that living
standards across the US rose accordingly. However, this is the period when real incomes for
workers and the middle class actually declined despite sharp rise in productivity and immense
profits reflected in the incomes gap reflected in the bottom 90% vs. the top 10%. This is also
the period when we see the striking divergence between wealth accumulation for the top 1% and a
relative decline for the bottom 90%. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/17/upshot/income-inequality-united-states.html
; https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality/
A research study compiled by the pro-organized labor non-profit think tank 'Economic Policy
Institute' stresses the divergence between productivity and real wages. While the top 0.01% of
America's experienced 386% income growth between 1980 and 1914, the bottom 90% suffered 3% real
income drop. Whereas in 1980 income share for the bottom 90% stood at 65% and for the top 1% it
stood at 10%, by 2014 the bottom 90% held just half of the income, while the top 1% owned 21%.
This dramatic income divergence, which has been shown in hundreds of studies and not even
neoliberal billionaires deny their validity, took place under the shift toward the full
implementation of the neoliberal social contract. It is significant to note that such income
concentration resulting from fiscal policy, corporate subsidy policy, privatization and
deregulation has indeed resulted in higher productivity exactly as neoliberal apologists have
argued. However, higher worker productivity and higher profits has been made possible precisely
because of income transfer from labor to capitalist. http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
;
https://aneconomicsense.org/2015/07/13/the-highly-skewed-growth-of-incomes-since-1980-only-the-top-0-5-have-done-better-than-before/
"Real hourly compensation of production, nonsupervisory workers who make up 80 percent
of the workforce, also shows pay stagnation for most of the period since 1973, rising 9.2
percent between 1973 and 2014.Net productivity grew 1.33 percent each year between 1973 and
2014, faster than the meager 0.20 percent annual rise in median hourly compensation. In
essence, about 15 percent of productivity growth between 1973 and 2014 translated into higher
hourly wages and benefits for the typical American worker. Since 2000, the gap between
productivity and pay has risen even faster. The net productivity growth of 21.6 percent from
2000 to 2014 translated into just a 1.8 percent rise in inflation-adjusted compensation for the
median worker (just 8 percent of net productivity growth).Since 2000, more than 80 percent of
the divergence between a typical (median) worker's pay growth and overall net productivity
growth has been driven by rising inequality (specifically, greater inequality of compensation
and a falling share of income going to workers relative to capital owners).Over the entire
1973–2014 period, rising inequality explains over two-thirds of the
productivity–pay divergence. " (Josh Bivens and Lawrence Mishel, "Understanding
the Historic Divergence Between Productivity and a Typical Worker's Pay Why It Matters and Why
It's Real" in Economic Policy Institute, 2015,
http://www.epi.org/publication/understanding-the-historic-divergence-between-productivity-and-a-typical-workers-pay-why-it-matters-and-why-its-real/
The average corporate tax rate in the world has been cut in half in the last two decades
from about 40% to 22%, with the effective rate actually paid lower than the official rate. This
represents a massive transfer of wealth to the highest income brackets drained from the working
class. More than half-a-century ago, American anthropologist Jules Henry wrote that: "The
fact that our society places no limit on wealth while making it accessible to all helps account
for the 'feverish' quality Tocqueville sensed in American civilization." Culture Against
Man (1963). The myth that the neoliberal policies in the information age lead toward a
society richer for all people is readily refuted by the reality of huge wealth distribution
gaps resulting from 'informational capitalism' backed by the corporate welfare state.
Capital accumulation not just in the US but on a world scale without a ceiling has resulted
in more thorough exploitation of workers and in a less socially just society today than in the
early 1960s when Jules Henry was writing and it is headed increasingly toward authoritarian
models of government behind the very thin veneer of meaningless elections. Against this
background of unfettered neoliberalism, social responsibility is relegated to issues ranging
from corporate-supported sustainable development in which large businesses have a vested
interest as part of future designs on capital accumulation, to respecting lifestyle and
cultural and religious freedoms within the existing social contract. (Dieter Plehwe et al.
eds., Neoliberal Hegemony , 2006; Carl Ferenbach and Chris Pinney, " Toward a 21st
Century Social Contract" Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Vol. 24, No 2, 2012;
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-6622.2012.00372.x/abstract
At its Annual conference in 2017 where representatives from the 'Fortune 500', academia,
think tanks, NGOs, and government, business consultancy group BSR provided the following vision
under the heading "A 21 st Century Social Contract" : "The nature of
work is changing very rapidly. Old models of lifelong employment via business and a predictable
safety net provided by government are no longer assured in a new demographic, economic, and
political environment. We see these trends most clearly in the rise of the "gig economy," in
which contingent workers (freelancers, independent contractors, consultants, or other
outsourced and non-permanent workers) are hired on a temporary or part-time basis. These
workers make up more than 90 percent of new job creation in European countries, and by 2020, it
is estimated that more than 40 percent of the U.S. workforce will be in contingent jobs."https://bsr17.org/agenda/sessions/the-21st-century-social-contract
Representing multinational corporate members and proud sponsors of sustainable development
solutions within the neoliberal model, BSR applauded the aspirations and expectations of
today's business people that expect to concentrate even more capital as the economy becomes
more 'UBERized' and reliant on the new digital technology. Despite fear and anxiety about a
bleak techno-science future as another mechanism to keep wages as close to subsistence if not
below that level as possible, peoples' survival instinct forces them to adjust their lives
around the neoliberal social contract. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/531726/technology-and-inequality/
Reflecting the status quo, the media indoctrinate people to behave as though systemic
exploitation, oppression, division, and marginalization are natural while equality and the
welfare of the community represent an anathema to bourgeois civilization. What passes as the
'social norm', largely reflects the interests of the socioeconomic elites propagating the
'legitimacy' of their values while their advocates vilify values that place priority on the
community aspiring to achieve equality and social justice. (Robert E. Watkins, " Turning
the Social Contract Inside Out: Neoliberal Governance and Human Capital in Two Days, One
Night" , 2016).
The neoliberal myth that the digital technological revolution and the 'knowledge based
economy' (KBE) of endless innovation is the catalyst not only to economic growth but to
the preservation of civilization and welfare of society has proved hollow in the last four
decades. Despite massive innovation in the domain of the digital and biotech domains,
socioeconomic polarization and environmental degradation persist at much higher rates today
than in the 1970s. Whether in the US, the European Union or developing nations, the neoliberal
promise of 'prospering together' has been a farce. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tsq.12106/full
; http://www.ricerchestoriche.org/?p=749
Neoliberal myths about upward linear progress across all segments of society and throughout
the world notwithstanding, economic expansion and contraction only result in greater capital
concentration. "The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have taken a database
listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, pulled out all 43,060 multinational
corporations and the share ownerships linking them to construct a model of which companies
controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating
revenues, to map the structure of economic power.The model revealed a core of 1318 companies
with interlocking ownerships. Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on
average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 per cent of global
operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of
the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms, the "real" economy, representing a further
60 per cent of global revenues.When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found
much of it tracked back to a super-entity of 147 even more tightly knit companies (all of their
ownership was held by other members of the super-entity) that controlled 40 per cent of the
total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to
control 40 per cent of the entire network."https://weeklybolshevik.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/imperialism-and-the-concentration-of-capital/http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf
.
With each passing recessionary cycle of the past four decades working class living standards
have retreated and never recovered. Although the techno-science panacea has proved a necessary
myth and a distraction from the reality of capital concentration, considering that innovation
and technology are integral parts of the neoliberal system, the media, politicians, business
elites, corporate-funded think tanks and academics continue to promote the illusive 'modernist
dream' that only a small segment of society enjoys while the rest take pride living through it
vicariously. ( Laurence Reynolds and Bronislaw Szerszynski, "Neoliberalism and
technology: Perpetual innovation or perpetual crisis?"
Rooted in militarism and police-state policies, the culture of fear is one of the major ways
that the neoliberal regime perpetually distracts people from structural exploitation and
oppression in a neoliberal society that places dogmatic focus on atomism. Despite the atomistic
value system as an integral part of neoliberalism, neoliberals strongly advocate a corporate
state welfare system. Whether supporting pluralism and diversity or rightwing populists,
neoliberals agree that without the state buttressing the private sector, the latter will
collapse. Author of Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism (2007) David Ciepley
argues in "The Corporate Contradictions of Neoliberalism" that the system's
contradictions have led to the authoritarian political model as its only option moving
forward.
"Neoliberalism was born in reaction against totalitarian statism, and matured at the
University of Chicago into a program of state-reduction that was directed not just against the
totalitarian state and the socialist state but also (and especially) against the New Deal
regulatory and welfare state. It is a self-consciously reactionary ideology that seeks to roll
back the status quo and institutionalize (or, on its own understanding, re-institutionalize)
the "natural" principles of the market. But the contradiction between its individualist ideals
and our corporate reality means that the effort to institutionalize it, oblivious to this
contradiction, has induced deep dysfunction in our corporate system, producing weakened growth,
intense inequality, and coercion. And when the ideological support of a system collapses -- as
appears to be happening with neoliberalism -- then either the system will collapse, or new
levels of coercion and manipulation will be deployed to maintain it. This appears to be the
juncture at which we have arrived."https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/05/corporate-contradictions-neoliberalism/
Adhering to a tough law-and-order policy, neoliberals have legalized large-scale criminal
activity perpetrated by capitalists against society while penalizing small-scale crimes carried
out mostly by people in the working class and the marginalized lumpenproletariat .
Regardless of approaches within the neoliberal social contract, neoliberal politicians agree on
a lengthy prison sentences for street gangs selling narcotics while there is no comparable
punishment when it comes to banks laundering billions including from narcotics trafficking, as
Deutsche Bank among other mega banks in the US and EU; fixing rates as
Barclays among others thus defrauding customers of billions; or creating fake accounts
as Wells Fargo , to say nothing of banks legally appropriating billions of dollars
from employees and customers and receiving state (taxpayer) funding in times of 'banking
crises'. Although it seems enigmatic that there is acquiescence for large scale crimes with the
institutional cover of 'legitimacy' by the state and the hegemonic culture, the media has
conditioned the public to shrug off structural exploitation as an integral part of the social
contract. http://theweek.com/articles/729052/brief-history-crime-corruption-malfeasance-american-banks
;
https://www.globalresearch.ca/corruption-in-the-european-union-scandals-in-banking-fraud-and-secretive-ttip-negotiations/5543935
Neoliberalism's reach does not stop with the de-criminalization of white-collar crime or the
transfer of economic policy from the public sector to corporations in order to reverse social
welfare policies. Transferring sweeping policy powers from the public to the corporate sector,
neoliberalism's tentacles impact everything from labor and environment to health, education and
foreign policy into the hands of the state-supported corporate sector in an effort to realize
even greater capital concentration at an even greater pace. This has far reaching implications
in peoples' lives around the world in everything from their work and health to institutions
totalitarian at their core but projecting an image of liberal democracy on the surface. (Noam
Chomsky and R. W. McChesney, Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order , 2011; Pauline
Johnson, "Sociology and the Critique of Neoliberalism" European Journal of Social
Theory , 2014
Comprehensive to the degree that it aims to diminish the state's role by having many of its
functions privatized, neoliberalism's impact has reached into monetary policy trying to
supplant it with rogue market forces that test the limits of the law and hard currencies. The
creation of cryptocurrencies among them BITCOIN that represents the utopian dream of
anarcho-libertarians interested in influencing if not dreaming of ultimately supplanting
central banks' role in monetary policy is an important dimension of neoliberal ideology.
Techno-utopians envisioning the digital citizen in a neoliberal society favor a 'gypsy economy'
operating on a digital currency outside the purview of the state's regulatory reach where it is
possible to transfer and hide money while engaging in the ultimate game of speculation. (
https://btctheory.com ; Samuel Valasco and
Leonardo Medina, The Social Nature of Cryptocurrencies , 2013)
Credited as the neoliberal prophet whose work and affiliate organizations multinational
corporations funded, Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek favored market forces to determine
monetary policy rather than having government in that role working behind central banks. Aside
from the fact that central banks cater to capital and respond to markets and no other
constituency, Hayek's proposal ( The Denationalization of Money , 1976) was intended
to permit the law of the 'free market' (monetary speculation) determine policy that would
impact peoples' living standards. Hence capital accumulation would not be constrained by
government regulatory measures and the coordination of monetary policy between central banks.
In short, the law of unfettered banking regulation would theoretically result in greater
economic growth, no matter the consequences owing to the absence of banking regulatory measures
that exacerbate contracting economic cycles such as in 2008. www.voltaire.org/article30058.html )
In December 2017, the UK and EU warned that cryptocurrencies are used in criminal
enterprises, including money laundering and tax evasion. Nevertheless, crypto-currency reflects
both the ideology and goals of capital accumulation of neoliberals gaining popularity among
speculators in the US and other countries. Crypto-currencyfulfills the neoliberal speculator's
dream by circumventing the IMF basket of reserved currencies on which others trade while
evading regulatory constraints and all mechanisms of legal accountability for the transfer of
money and tax liability.
Although a tiny fraction of the global monetary system, computer networks make
crypto-currency a reality for speculators, tax evaders, those engaged in illegal activities and
even governments like Venezuela under Nocolas Maduro trying to pump liquidity into the
oil-dependent economy suffering from hyperinflation and economic stagnation If the
crypto-currency system can operate outside the purview of the state, then the neoliberal
ideology of trusting the speculator rather than the government would be proved valid about the
superfluous role of central banks and monetary centralization, a process that capitalism itself
created for the harmonious operation of capitalism.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/04/bitcoin-uk-eu-plan-cryptocurrency-price-traders-anonymity
; http://www.lanacion.com.ar/2099017-venezuela-inflacion-nicolas-maduro-crisis-precios
Indicative of the success of the neoliberal ideology's far reaching impact in economic life
cryptocurrencies' existencealso reflects the crisis of capitalism amid massive assaults on
middle class and working class living standards in the quest for greater capital concentration.
In an ironic twist, the very neoliberal forces that promote cryptocurrencies decry their use by
anti-Western nations – Iran, Venezuela, and Russia among others.The criticism of
anti-Western governments resorting to cryptocurrenciesis based on their use as a means of
circumventing the leverage that reserve currencies like the dollar and euro afford to the West
over non-Western nations. This is only one of a few contradictions that neoliberalism creates
and undermines the system it strives to build just as it continues to foster its ideology as
the only plausible one to pursue globally. Another contradiction is the animosity toward
crypto-currencies from mainstream financial institutions that want to maintain a monopoly on
government-issued currency which is where they make their profits. As the world's largest
institutional promoter of neoliberalism, the IMF has cautioned not to dismiss cryptocurrencies
because they could have a future, or they may actually 'be the future'. https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoins-unlimited-potential-lies-in-apolitical-core/
; http://fortune.com/2017/10/02/bitcoin-ethereum-cryptocurrency-imf-christine-lagarde/
After the "Washington Consensus" of 1989, IMF austerity policies are leverage to impose
neoliberal policies globally have weakened national institutions from health to education and
trade unions that once formed a social bond for workers aspiring to an integrative socially
inclusive covenant in society rather than marginalization. The IMF uses austerity policies for
debt relief as leverage to have the government provide more favorable investment conditions and
further curtail the rights of labor with everything from ending collective bargaining to
introducing variations of "right-to-work" laws" that prohibit trade unions from forcing
collective strikes, collecting dues or signing the collective contract. Justified in the name
of 'capitalist efficiency', weakening organized labor and its power of collective bargaining
has been an integral part of the neoliberal social contract as much in the US and UK as across
the rest of the world, invariably justified by pointing to labor markets where workers earn the
lowest wages. (B. M. Evans and S. McBride, Austerity: The Lived Experience , 2017;
Vicente Berdayes, John W. Murphy, eds. Neoliberalism, Economic Radicalism, and the
Normalization of Violence , 2016).
Although many in the mainstream media took notice of the dangers of neoliberalism leading
toward authoritarianism after Trump's election, a few faint voices have been warning about this
inevitability since the early 1990s. Susan George, president of the Transnational Institute,
has argued that neoliberalism is contrary to democracy, it is rooted in Social Darwinism, it
undermines the liberal social contract under which that people assume society operates, but it
is the system that governments and international organization like the IMF have been
promoting.
"Over the past twenty years, the IMF has been strengthened enormously. Thanks to the
debt crisis and the mechanism of conditionality, it has moved from balance of payments support
to being quasi-universal dictator of so-called "sound" economic policies, meaning of course
neo-liberal ones. The World Trade Organisation was finally put in place in January 1995 after
long and laborious negotiations, often rammed through parliaments which had little idea what
they were ratifying. Thankfully, the most recent effort to make binding and universal
neo-liberal rules, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, has failed, at least temporarily.
It would have given all rights to corporations, all obligations to governments and no rights at
all to citizens. The common denominator of these institutions is their lack of transparency and
democratic accountability. This is the essence of neo-liberalism. It claims that the economy
should dictate its rules to society, not the other way around. Democracy is an encumbrance,
neo-liberalism is designed for winners, not for voters who, necessarily encompass the
categories of both winners and losers."
Those on the receiving end of neoliberalism's Social Darwinist orientation are well aware of
public policy's negative impact on their lives but they feel helpless to confront the social
contract. According to opinion polls, people around the world realize there is a huge gap
between what political and business leaders, and international organizations claim about
institutions designed to benefit all people and the reality of marginalization. The result is
loss of public confidence in the social contract theoretically rooted in consent and democracy.
"When elected governments break the "representative covenant" and show complete
indifference to the sufferings of citizens, when democracy is downgraded to an abstract set of
rules and deprived of meaning for much of the citizenry, many will be inclined to regard
democracy as a sham, to lose confidence in and withdraw their support for electoral
institutions. Dissatisfaction with democracy now ranges from 40 percent in Peru and Bolivia to
59 percent in Brazil and 62 percent in Colombia. (Boron, "Democracy or Neoliberalism",
http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR21.5/boron.html
)
Not just in developing nations operating under authoritarian capitalist model to impose
neoliberal policies, but in advanced countries people recognize that the bourgeois freedom,
democracy and justice are predicated on income. Regardless of whether the regime operates under
a pluralistic neoliberal regime or rightwing populist one, the former much more tolerant of
diversity than the latter, the social contract goals are the same. In peoples' lives around the
world social exploitation has risen under neoliberal policies whether imposed the nation-state,
a larger entity such as the EU, or international organizations such as the IMF. Especially for
the European and US middle class, but also for Latin American and African nations statistics
show that the neoliberal social contract has widened the poor-rich gap.
In a world where the eight wealthiest individuals own as much wealth as the bottom 50% or
3.6 billion people, social exploitation and oppression has become normal because the mainstream
institutions present it in such light to the world and castigate anyone critical of
institutionalized exploitation and oppression. Rightwing populist demagogues use nationalism,
cultural conservatism and vacuous rhetoric about the dangers of big capital and 'liberal
elites' to keep the masses loyal to the social contract by faulting the pluralist-liberal
politicians rather than the neoliberal social contract. As the neoliberal political economy has
resulted in a steady rising income gap and downward social mobility in the past three decades,
it is hardly surprising that a segment of the masses lines behind rightwing populist demagogues
walking a thin line between bourgeois democracy and Fascism.
Seizing power from sovereign states, multinational corporation are pursuing neoliberal
policy objectives on a world scale, prompting resistance to the neoliberal social contract
which rarely class-based and invariably identity-group oriented manifested through
environmental, gender, race, ethnicity, gay, religious and minority groups of different sorts.
Regardless of the relentless media campaign to suppress class consciousness, workers are aware
that they have common interests and public opinion studies reveal as much. (Susan George,
Shadow Sovereigns: How Global Corporations are seizing Power , 2015)
According to the Pew Research center, the world average for satisfaction with their
governments are at 46%, the exact percentage as in the US that ranks about the same as South
Africa and much lower than neighboring Canada at 70% and Sweden at 79%. " Publics around
the globe are generally unhappy with the functioning of their nations' political systems.
Across the 36 countries asked the question, a global median of 46% say they are very or
somewhat satisfied with the way their democracy is working, compared with 52% who are not too
or not at all satisfied. Levels of satisfaction vary considerably by region and within regions.
Overall, people in the Asia-Pacific region are the most happy with their democracies. At least
half in five of the six Asian nations where this question was asked express satisfaction. Only
in South Korea is a majority unhappy (69%).
As confounding as it appears that elements of the disillusioned middle class and working
class opt either for the exploitation of pluralist neoliberalism or the exploitation and
oppression of rightwing populism expressed somewhat differently in each country, it is not
difficult to appreciate the immediacy of a person's concerns for survival like all other
species above all else. The assumption of rational behavior in the pursuit of social justice is
a bit too much to expect considering that people make irrational choices detrimental to their
best interests and to society precisely because the dominant culture has thoroughly
indoctrinated them. It seems absurd that indirectly people choose exploitation and oppression
for themselves and others in society, but they always have as the dominant culture secular and
religious indoctrinates them into accepting exploitation and oppression. (Shaheed Nick
Mohammed, Communication and the Globalization of Culture , 2011)
Throughout Western and Eastern Europe rightwing political parties are experiencing a
resurgence not seen since the interwar era, largely because the traditional conservatives moved
so far to the right. Even the self-baptized Socialist parties are nothing more than staunch
advocates of the same neoliberal status quo as the traditional conservatives. The US has also
moved to the right long before the election of Donald Trump who openly espouses suppression of
certain fundamental freedoms as an integral part of a pluralistic society. As much as in the US
and Europe as in the rest of the world, analysts wonder how could any working class person
champion demagogic political leaders whose vacuous populist rhetoric promises 'strong nation"
for all but their policies benefit the same socioeconomic elites as the neoliberal
politicians.(J. Rydgren (Ed.), Class Politics and the Radical Right , 2012)
Rooted onclassical liberal values of the Enlightenment, the political and social elites
present a social contract that is theoretically all-inclusive and progressive, above all 'fair'
because it permits freedom to compete, when in reality the social structure under which
capitalism operates necessarily entails exploitation and oppression that makes marginalization
very clear even to its staunchest advocates who then endeavor to justify it by advancing
theories about individual human traits.
In 2012 the United States spent an estimated 19.4% of GDP on such social expenditures,
according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Paris-based
industrial country think tank. Denmark spent 30.5%, Sweden 28.2% and Germany 26.3%. All of
these nations have a lower central government debt to GDP ratio than that of the United States.
Why the United States invests relatively less in its social safety net than many other
countries and why those expenditures are even at risk in the current debate over debt reduction
reflect Americans' conflicted, partisan and often contradictory views on fairness, inequality,
the role and responsibility of government and individuals in society and the efficacy of
government action. Rooted in value differences, not just policy differences, the debate over
the U.S. social contract is likely to go on long after the fiscal cliff issue has been
resolved."http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/01/15/public-attitudes-toward-the-next-social-contract/
The neoliberal model of capitalism spewing forth from core countries to the periphery and
embraced by capitalists throughout the world has resulted in greater social inequality,
exploitation and oppression, despite proclamations that by pluralist-diversity neoliberals
presenting themselves as remaining true to 'democracy'. The tilt to the right endorsed at the
ballot box by voters seeking solutions to systemic problems and a more hopeful future indicates
that some people demand exclusion and/or punishment of minority social groups in society, as
though the exploitation and oppression of 'the other' would vicariously elevate the rest of
humanity to a higher plane. Although this marks a dangerous course toward authoritarianism and
away from liberal capitalism and Karl Popper's 'Open Society' thesis operating in a pluralistic
world against totalitarianism, it brings to surface the essence of neoliberalism which is
totalitarian, the very enemy Popper and his neoconservative followers were allegedly trying to
prevent. (Calvin Hayes, Popper, Hayek and the Open Society , 2009)
Social Exclusion, Popular Resistanceand the Future of Neoliberalism
Social Exclusion
Every sector of society from the criminal justice system to elderly care has been impacted
by neoliberal social marginalization. More significant than any other aspect of neoliberalism,
the creation of a chronic debtor classwithout any assets is floating a step above the
structurally unemployed and underemployed.The Industrial revolution exacerbated social
exclusion producing an underclass left to its own fate by a state that remained faithful to the
social contract's laissez philosophy. Composed of vagrants, criminals, chronically unemployed,
and people of the streets that British social researcher Henry Mayhew described in London
Labour and the London Poor , a work published three years after the revolutions of 1848
that shattered the liberal foundations of Europe, the lumpenproletariat caught the attention of
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels ( The German Ideology ) interested in the industrial
working class movement as the vanguard of the revolution.
Lacking a class consciousness thus easily exploited by the elites the lumpenproletariat were
a product of industrial capitalism's surplus labor that kept wages at or just above subsistence
levels, long before European and American trade union struggles were able to secure a living
wage.In the last four decades neoliberal policies have created a chronic debtor working class
operating under the illusion of integration into the mainstream when in fact their debtor
status not only entails social exclusion but relegated to perpetual servitude dependence and
never climbing out of it. The neoliberal state is the catalyst to the creation of this new
class.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-20/a-164-year-old-idea-helps-explain-the-huge-changes-sweeping-the-world-s-workforce
In an essay entitled "Labour Relations and Social Movements in the 21st
Century"
Portuguese social scientists Elísio Estanque and Hermes Augusto Costa argue that the
manner that neoliberalism has impacted Europe's social structure in both core and periphery
countries has given rise to the new precarious working class, often college-degreed,
overqualified, and struggling to secure steady employment especially amid recessionary cycles
that last longer and run deeper.
"The panorama of a deep economic crisis which in the last few decades has hit Europe and
its Welfare state in particular has had an unprecedented impact on employment and social
policies. The neoliberal model and the effects of deregulated and global finance not only
question the "European social model" but push sectors of the labour force – with the
youngest and well-qualified being prominent – into unemployment or precarious jobs. the
sociological and potential socio-political significance of these actionsparticularly as a
result of the interconnections that such movements express, both in the sphere of the workplace
and industrial system or whether with broader social structures, with special emphasis on the
middle classes and the threats of 'proletarianization' that presently hang over them. labour
relations of our time are crossed by precariousness and by a new and growing "precariat" which
also gave rise to new social movements and new forms of activism and protest."
http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/34149/InTech-Labour_relations_and_social_movements_in_the_21st_century.pdf
'Proletarization' of the declining middle class and downward income pressure for the working
class and middle classhas been accompanied by the creation of a growing chronic debtor class in
the Western World. Symptomatic of the neoliberal globalist world order, the creation of the
debtor class and more broadly social exclusion transcends national borders, ethnicity, gender,
culture, etc. Not just at the central government level, but at the regional and local levels,
public policy faithfully mimics the neoliberal model resulting in greater social exclusion
while there is an effort to convince people that there is no other path to progress although
people were free to search; a dogma similar to clerical intercession as the path to spiritual
salvation. http://www.isreview.org/issues/58/feat-economy.shtml
The neoliberal path to salvation has resulted in a staggering 40% of young adults living
with relatives out of financial necessity. The number has never been greater at any time in
modern US history since the Great Depression, and the situation is not very different for
Europe. Burdened with debt, about half of the unemployed youth are unable to find work and most
that work do so outside the field of their academic training. According to the OECD, youth
unemployment in the US is not confined only to high school dropouts but includes college
graduates. Not just across southern Europe and northern Africa, but in most countries the
neoliberal economy of massive capital concentration has created a new lumpenproletariat that
has no assets and carries debt. Owing to neoliberal policies, personal bankruptcies have risen
sharply in the last four decades across the Western World reflecting the downward social
mobility and deep impact on the chronically indebted during recessionary cycles.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/53-of-recent-college-grads-are-jobless-or-underemployed-how/256237/
; https://www.cbsnews.com/news/for-young-americans-living-with-their-parents-is-now-the-norm/
; Iain Ramsay, Personal Insolvency in the 21st Century: A Comparative Analysis of the US
and Europe, 2017)
Historically, the safe assumption has been that higher education
is the key to upward social mobility and financial security, regardless of cyclical economic
trends. However, the laws of overproduction apply not only to commodities but to the labor
force, especially as the information revolution continues to chip away at human labor. College
education is hardly a guarantee to upward social mobility, but often a catalyst to descent into
the debtor unemployed class,or minimum wage/seasonalpart time job or several such jobs. The
fate of the college-educated falling into the chronic debtor class is part of a much larger
framework, namely the 'financialization' of the economy that is at the core of neoliberalism. (
Vik Loveday, "Working-class participation, middle-class aspiration? Value, upward mobility
and symbolic indebtedness in higher education."The Sociological Review , September
2014)Beyond the simplisticsuggestion of 'more training' to keep up with tech changes,
the root cause of social exclusion and the chronic debtor class revolves around the
'financialization' of the neoliberal globalist economy around which central banks make monetary
policy. Since the beginning of the Thatcher-Reagan era, advanced capitalist countries led by
the US conducted policy to promote the centrality of financial markets as the core of the
economy. This entails resting more on showing quarterly profit even at the expense of taking on
debt, lower productivity and long-term sustainability, or even breaking a company apart and
dismissing workers because it would add shareholder value. Therefore, the short-term financial
motives and projection of market performance carry far more weight than any other
consideration.
Symptomatic of a combination of deregulation and the evolution of capitalism especially in
core countries from productive to speculative, financialization has transformed the world
economy. Enterprises from insurance companies to brokerage firms and banks like Goldman Sachs
involved in legal and quasi-legal practices, everything from the derivatives market to helping
convert a country's sovereign debt into a surplus while making hefty profits has been part of
the financialization economy that speeds up capital concentration and creates a wider rich-poor
gap. Housing, health, pension systems, health care and personal consumption are all impacted by
financialization that concentrates capital through speculation rather than producing anything
from capital goods to consumer products and services. (Costas Lapavitsas, The
Financialization of Capitalism: 'Profiting without producing'http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13604813.2013.853865
Billionaire speculator George Soros has observed that market speculation not only drives
prices higher, especially of commodities on a world scale, but the inevitability of built-in
booms and busts are disruptive simply because a small group of people have secured a legal
means for capital accumulation. At the outbreak of the US stock market collapse followed by the
'great recession' of 2008, the European Network and Debt and Development (EURODAD)
published an article critical of financialization and its impact on world hunger.
"Do you enjoy rising prices? Everybody talks about commodities – with the
Agriculture Euro Fund you can benefit from the increase in value of the seven most important
agricultural commodities." With this advertisement the Deutsche Bankt tried in spring 2008 to
attract clients for one of its investment funds. At the same time, there were hunger revolts in
Haiti, Cameroon and other developing countries, because many poor could no longer pay the
exploding food prices. In fact, between the end of 2006 and March 2008 the prices for the seven
most important commodities went up by 71 per cent on average, for rice and grain the increase
was 126 per cent. The poor are most hit by the hike in prices. Whereas households in
industrialised countries spend 10 -20 per cent for food, in low-income countries they spend 60
– 80 per cent. As a result, the World Bank forecasts an increase in the number of people
falling below the absolute poverty line by more than 100 million. Furthermore, the price
explosion has negative macroeconomic effects: deterioration of the balance of payment, fuelling
inflation and new debt."http://eurodad.org/uploadedfiles/whats_new/news/food%20speculation%202%20pager%20final.pdf
Someone has to pay for the speculative nature of financialization, and the labor force in
all countries is the first to do so through higher indirect taxes, cuts in social programs and
jobs and wages for the sake of stock performance. Stock markets around which public policy is
conducted have eroded the real economy while molding a culture of financialization of the last
two generations a large percentage of which has been swimming in personal debt reflecting the
debt-ridden financialization economy. Contrary to claims by politicians, business leaders and
the media that the neoliberal system of financialization is all about creating jobs and helping
to diffuse income to the middle class and workers, the only goal of financialization is wealth
concentration while a larger debtor class and social marginalization are the inevitable
results. It is hardly surprising that people world-wide believe the political economy is rigged
by the privileged class to maintain its status and the political class is the facilitator.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/41359-financialization-has-turned-the-global-economy-into-a-house-of-cards-an-interview-with-gerald-epstein
; Costas Lapavitsa, Financialization in Crisis, 2013; Rona Foroohar, Makers and Takers: How
Wall Street Destroyed Main Street , 2016)
Despite efforts by pluralist and populist neoliberals throughout the world to use 'culture
wars' and identity politics as distractionwhile deemphasizing the role of the state as the
catalyst in the neoliberal social contract, the contradictions that the political economy
exposes the truth about the socially unjustsociety that marginalizes the uneducated poor and
college-educated indebted alike.Not to deemphasize the significance of global power
distribution based on the Westphalian nation-state model and regional blocs such as the
European Union, but neoliberals are the ones who insist on the obsolete nation-state that the
international market transcends, thus acknowledging the preeminence of capitalism in the social
contract and the subordination of national sovereignty to international capital and
financialization of the economy. After all, the multinational corporation operating in
different countries is accountable only to its stockholders, not to the nation-state whose role
is to advance corporate interests.
No matter how rightwing populists try to distract people from the real cause of social
exclusion and marginalization by focusing onnationalist rhetoric, marginalized social groups
and Muslim or Mexican legal or illegal immigrantshave no voice in public policy but
financialization speculators do. In an article entitled "The Politics of Public Debt:
Neoliberalism, capitalist development, and the restructuring of the state", Wolfgang
Streeck concludes that neoliberalism's systemic rewards provide a disincentive for capitalists
to abandon financialization in favor of productivity. "Why should the new oligarchs be
interested in their countries' future productive capacities and present democratic stability
if, apparently, they can be rich without it, processing back and forth the synthetic money
produced for them at no cost by a central bank for which the sky is the limit, at each stage
diverting from it hefty fees and unprecedented salaries, bonuses and profits as long as it is
forthcoming -- and then leave their country to its remaining devices and withdraw to some
privately owned island?
An important difference between pluralists and rightwing populists in their approach to the
state's role is that the former advocate for a strong legislative branch and weaker executive,
while rightwing populists want a strong executive and weak legislative. However, both political
camps agree about advancing market hegemony nationally and internationally and both support
policies that benefit international and domestic capital, thus facilitating the convergence of
capitalist class interests across national borders with the symptomatic results of social
exclusion. ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718508000924
; Vicente Navarro, "The Worldwide Class Struggle"https://monthlyreview.org/2006/09/01/the-worldwide-class-struggle/
Regardless of vacuous rhetoric about a weak state resulting from neoliberal policies, the
state in core countries where financialization prevailshas been and remains the catalyst for
class hegemony as has been the case since the nascent stage of capitalism. Both Margaret
Thatcher and Ronald Reagan strengthened the corporate welfare state while openly declaring war
against trade unions and by extension on the working class that neoliberals demonize as the
enemy of economic progress. As statistics below illustrate, the debtor class expanded rapidly
after 1980 when the financialization economy took off, reaching its highest point after the
subprime-induced great recession in 2008. Under neoliberal globalist policies, governments
around the world followed theReagan-Thatcher model to facilitate over-accumulation of capital
in the name of competition. (Montgomerie Johnna, Neoliberalism and the Making of the
Subprime Borrower , 2010)
Whether the state is promoting neoliberal policies under a pluralist or authoritarian
models, the neoliberal culture has designated labor as the unspoken enemy, especially organized
labor regardless of whether the ruling parties have co-opted trade unions. In the struggle for
capital accumulation under parasitic financialization policies, the state's view of labor as
the enemy makes social conflict inevitable despite the obvious contradiction that the
'enemy-worker' is both the mass consumer on whom the economy depends for expansion and
development. Despite this contradiction, neoliberals from firms such as Goldman Sachs has many
of its former executives not just in top positions of the US government but world-wide, no
matter who is in power. Neoliberal policy resulting in social exclusion starts with
international finance capitalism hiding behind the pluralist and rightwing populist masks of
politicians desperately vying for power to conduct public policy.
Just as the serfs were aware in the Middle Ages that Lords and Bishops determined the fate
of all down here on earth before God in Heaven had the last word, people today realize the
ubiquitous power of capitalists operating behind the scenes, and in some case as with Trump in
the forefront of public-policy that results in social exclusion and rising inequality in the
name of market fundamentalism promising to deliver the benefits to all people. Neoliberalism
has created a chronicdebtor class that became larger after the 2008 recession and will continue
growing with each economic contracting cycle in decades to come. Despite its efforts to keep
one step ahead of bankruptcy, the identity of the new chronic debtor class rests with the
neoliberal status quo, often with the rightwing populist camp that makes rhetorical overtures
to the frustrated working classthat realize financialization benefits a small percentage of
wealthy individuals.
Personal debt has skyrocketed, reaching $12.58 trillion in the US in 2016, or 80% of GDP.
The irony is that the personal debt level is 2016 was the highest since the great recession of
2008 and it is expected to continue much higher, despite the economic recovery and low
unemployment. Wage stagnation and higher costs of health, housing and education combined with
higher direct and indirect taxes to keep public debt at manageable levels will continue to
drive more people into the debtor class. Although some European countries such as Germany and
France have lower household debt relative to GDP, all advanced and many developing nations have
experienced a sharp rise in personal debt because of deregulation, privatization, and lower
taxes on the wealthy with the burden falling on the mass consumer. Hence the creation of a
permanent debtor class whose fortunes rest on maintaining steady employment and/or additional
part-time employment to meet loan obligations and keep one step ahead of declaring bankruptcy.
Austerity policies imposed either by the government through tight credit in advanced capitalist
countries or IMF loan conditionality in developing and semi-developed nations the result in
either case is lower living standards and a rising debtor class. http://fortune.com/2017/02/19/america-debt-financial-crisis-bubble/
Maurizio Lazzarato's The Making of the Indebted Man: An Essay on the Neoliberal
Condition argues that neoliberalism has created a debtor-creditorrelationship which has
supplanted the worker-capitalist dichotomy, an argument that others focusing on the
financialization of the economy have made as well. Although in Keynesian economics public and
private debt was a stimulant for capitalist growth amid the contracting cycle of the economy,
the neoliberal era created the permanent chronic debtor class that finds it difficult to
extricate itself from that status. Evident after the deep recession of the
subprime-financialization-induced recession in 2008, this issue attracted the attention of some
politicians and political observers who realized theconvergence of the widening debtor class
with the corresponding widening of the rich-poor income gap.
By making both private and public debt, an integral part of the means of production, the
neoliberal system has reshaped social life and social relationships because the entire world
economy is debt-based. Servicing loans entails lower living standards for the working class in
advanced capitalist countries, and even lower in the rest of the world, but it also means
integrating the debtor into the system more closely than at any time in history. While it is
true that throughout the history of civilization human beings from China and India to Europe
have used various systems of credit to transact business (David Graeber, Debt: the First
5000 Years , 2014), no one would suggest reverting back to debt-slavery as part of the
social structure. Yet, neoliberalism has created the 'indebted man' as part of a policythat has
resulted in social asymmetrical power,aiming to speed up capital accumulation and maintain
market hegemony in society while generating greater social exclusion. https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviewofbooks/reviews/2013/87E0
Ever since the British Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807, followed by a number of
other European governments in the early 1800s, there was an assumption that slave labor is
inconsistent with free labor markets as well as with the liberal social contract rooted in
individual freedom. Nevertheless, at the core of neoliberal capitalismUS consumer debt as of
October 2017 stood at $3.8 trillion in a 419 trillion economy. Debt-to-personal income ratio is
at 160%; college student debt runs at approximately $1.5 trillion, with most of that since
2000; mortgage debt has tripled since 1955, with an alarming 8 million people delinquent on
their payments and the foreclosure rate hovering at 4.5% or three times higher than postwar
average; consumer debt has risen 1,700 since 1971 to above $1 trillion, and roughly half of
Americans are carrying monthly credit debt with an average rate of 14%. The debt problem is
hardly better for Europe where a number of countries have a much higher personal debt per
capita than the US.In addition to personal debt, public debt has become a burden on the working
class in so far as neoliberal politicians and the IMF are using as a pretext to impose
austerity conditions, cut entitlements and social programs amid diminished purchasing power
because of inflationary asset values and higher taxes. https://www.thebalance.com/consumer-debt-statistics-causes-and-impact-3305704
; https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/business/dealbook/household-debt-united-states.html
While personal debt is often but not always a reflection of a consumerist society, personal
debt encompasses everything from education to health care costs in times when the
digital/artificial intelligence economy is creating a surplus labor force that results in work
instability and asymmetrical social relations. Technology-automation-induced unemployment
driving down living standards creates debtor-workers chasing the technology to keep up with
debt payments in order to survive until the next payment is due. Considering the financial
system backed by a legal framework is established to favor creditors, especially given the
safeguards and protections accorded to creditors in the past four decades, there are many
blatant and overt ways that the state uses to criminalize poverty and debt. In 2015, for
example, Montana became the first state not to take the driver's license of those delinquent on
their student debt, thus decriminalizing debt in this one aspect, though hardly addressing the
larger issue of the underlying causes of debt and social exclusion. https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:4b8gtht779
; https://lumpenproletariat.org/tag/neoliberalism/
In an article entitled "Torturing the Poor, German-Style" , Thomas Klikauer
stressed that the weakening of the social welfare state took place under the Social Democratic
Party (SPD)-Green Party coalition (1998-2005) government pursuing pluralist neoliberal
policies. Although historically the SPD had forged a compromise that would permit for the
social inclusion of labor into the institutional mainstream, by the 1990s, theSPD once rooted
in socialism had fully embraced neoliberalism just as the British Labour Party and all
socialist partiers of Europe pursuing social exclusion. Klilauer writes: "Germany's
chancellor [Gerhard] Schröder (SPD) –known as the "Comrade of the Bosses"– no
longer sought to integrate labour into capitalism, at least not the Lumpenproletariat orprecariate. These sections of society are now deliberately driven into mass poverty, joining the
growing number of working poor on a scale not seen in Germany perhaps since the 1930s."https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/20/torturing-the-poor-german-style/
No different than working class people in other countries need more than one job to keep up
with debt and living expenses, so do three million Germans (rising from 150,000 in 2003) that
have the privilege of living in Europe's richest nation. Just as the number of the working poor
has been rising in Germany, so have they across the Western World. Social exclusion and the
expansion of the debtor class in Germany manifested itself in the national elections of 2017
where for the first time since the interwar era a political party carrying the legacy of
Nazism, the Alternative fur Deutchland (AfD), founded by elite ultra-conservatives,
captured 13% of the vote to become third-largest party and giving a voice of neo-Nazis who
default society's neoliberal ills to Muslims and immigrants. Rejecting the link between market
fundamentalism that both the SPD and German conservatives pursued in the last three decades,
neoliberal apologists insist that the AfD merely reflects a Western-wide anti-Muslim trend
unrelated to social exclusion and the policies that have led to Germany's new lumpenproletariat
and working poor.
https://crimethinc.com/2017/10/01/the-rise-of-neo-fascism-in-germany-alternative-fur-deutschland-enters-the-parliament
; https://www.jku.at/icae/content/e319783/e319785/e328125/wp59_ger.pdf
Interestingly, US neoliberal policies also go hand-in-hand with Islamophobia and the war on
terror under both Democrat and Republican administrations, although the pluralist-diversity
neoliberals have been more careful to maintain a politically-correct rhetoric. Just as in
Germany and the rest of Europe, there is a direct correlation in the US between the rise in
social exclusion ofMuslim and non-Muslim immigrants and minorities and the growing trend of
rightwing populism. There is no empirical foundationto arguments that rightwing populism
whether in Germany or the US has no historical roots and it is unconnected both to domestic and
foreign policies. Although the neoliberal framework in which rightwing populism operates and
which creates social exclusion and the new chronic debtor class clashes with neoliberal
pluralism that presents itself as democratic, structural exploitation is built into the social
contract thus generating grassroots opposition.
Even before the great recession of 2008, there were a number of grassrootsgroups against
neoliberal globalism both in advanced and developing nations. Some found expression in social
media, others at the local level focused on the impact of neoliberal policies in the local
community, and still others attempted to alter public policy through cooperation with state
entities and/or international organizations. The most important anti-neoliberal grassroots
organizations have been in Brazil ( Homeless Workers' Movement and Landless Workers'
Movement), South Africa (Abahlali baseMjondolo, Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign,
Landless Peoples' Movement), Mexico (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación
Nacional, EZLN), Haiti (Fanmi Lavalas) and India (Narmada Bachao
Andolan).
The vast majority of organizations claiming to be fighting against neoliberal policies are
appendages either of the pluralist or the rightwing populist political camp both whose goal is
to co-opt the masses as part of their popular base. The anti-globalization movement and by
implication anti-neoliberal includes elements from the entire political spectrum from left to
ultra-right. From India, to Bangladesh, from South Africa to Brazil, and from the US, France,
and the UK, working class resistance to neoliberal globalism has been directly or indirectly
co-opted and often de-politicized by corporate-funded or government-funded NGOs and by
'reformist' local and international organizations.
By promoting measures invariably in the lifestyle domain but also some social welfare and
civil rights issues such as women's rights, renter's rights, etc, the goals of organizations
operating within the neoliberal structure is not social inclusion by altering the social
contract, but sustaining the status quo by eliminating popular opposition through co-optation.
It is hardly a coincidence that the rise of the thousands of NGOs coincided with the rise of
neoliberalism in the 1990s, most operating under the guise of aiding the poor, protecting human
rights and the environment, and safeguarding individualism. Well-funded by corporations,
corporate foundations and governments, NGOs are the equivalent of the 19 th century
missionaries, using their position as ideological preparatory work for Western-imposed
neoliberal policies. http://socialistreview.org.uk/310/friends-poor-or-neo-liberalism
;
https://zeroanthropology.net/2014/08/28/civil-society-ngos-and-saving-the-needy-imperial-neoliberalism/
On the receiving end of corporate and/or government-funded NGOs promoting the neoliberal
agenda globally, some leading grassroots movements that advocate changing the neoliberal status
quo contend that it is better to 'win' on a single issue such as gay rights, abortion, higher
minimum wage, etc. at the cost of co-optation into neoliberal system than to have nothing at
all looking in from the outside. Their assumption is that social exclusion can be mitigated one
issue at a time through reform from within the neoliberal institutional structure that
grassroots organizations deem as the enemy. This is exactly what the pluralist neoliberals are
promoting as well to co-opt grassroots opposition groups.
Partly because governmental and non-governmental organizations posing as reformist have
successfully co-opted grassroots movements often incorporating them into the neoliberal popular
base, popular resistance has not been successful despite social media and cell phones that
permit instant communication. This was certainly the case with the Arab Spring uprisings across
North Africa-Middle East where genuine popular opposition to neoliberal policies of
privatization, deregulation impacting everything from health care toliberalizing rent controls
led to the uprising. In collaboration with the indigenous capitalists, political and military
elites, Western governments directly and through NGOs were able to subvert and then revert to
neoliberal policies once post-Arab Spring regimes took power in the name of 'reform' invariably
equated with neoliberal policies.
https://rs21.org.uk/2014/10/06/adam-hanieh-on-the-gulf-states-neoliberalism-and-liberation-in-the-middle-east/
In "Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor" Jim Yong Kim
ed., 2000) contributing authors illustrate in case studies of several countries how the
neoliberal status quo has diminished the welfare of billions of people in developing nations
for the sake of growth that simply translates into even greater wealth concentration and misery
for the world's poor. According to the study: "100 countries have undergone grave economic
decline over the past three decades. Per capita income in these 100 countries is now lower than
it was 10, 15, 20 or in some cases even 30 years ago. In Africa, the average household consumes
20 percent less today than it did 25 years ago. Worldwide, more than 1 billion people saw their
real incomes fall during the period 1980-1993."http://www.mit.edu/~thistle/v13/2/imf.html
Anti-neoliberal groups assume different forms, depending on the nation's history, social and
political elites, the nature of institutions and the degree it has been impacted by neoliberal
policies that deregulate and eliminate as much of the social safety net as workers will
tolerate. Even the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) that experienced rapid
growth from the early 1990s until the great recession of 2008 have not escaped mass opposition
to neoliberalism precisely because the impact on workers and peasants has been largely
negative.
https://www.cpim.org/views/quarter-century-neo-liberal-economic-policies-unending-distress-and-peasant-resistance
; Juan Pablo Ferrero, Democracy against Neoliberalism in Argentina and Brazil, 2014;
Mimi Abramovitz and Jennifer Zelnick, " Double Jeopardy: The Impact of Neoliberalism on
Care Workers in the United States and South Africa" , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/HS.40.1.f
Grassroots organizations opposed to policies that further integrate their countries into the
world economy and marginalize the working class have been especially persistent in South
Africa, Brazil, and India. To assuage if not co-opt the masses the BRICS followed a policy mix
that combines neoliberalism, aspects of social welfare and statism. Combined with geopolitical
opposition to US-NATO militarism and interventionism, the BRICS policies were an attempt to
keep not just the national bourgeois loyal but the broader masses by projecting a commitment to
national sovereignty.
In Brazil, India and South Africa internal and external corporate pressure along with US,
EU, and IMF-World Bank pressures have been especially evident to embrace neoliberal policies
and confront grassroots opposition rather than co-opt it at the cost of making concessions to
labor. Considering that the development policies of the BRICS in the last three decades of
neoliberal globalism accommodated domestic and foreign capital and were not geared to advance
living standards for the broader working class and peasantry, grassroots opposition especially
in Brazil, India and South Africa where the state structure is not nearly as powerful as in
Russia and China manifested itself in various organizations.
One of the grassroots organizations managing to keep its autonomy is Brazil's Landless
Workers Movement (MST)skillfully remaining independent of both former President Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff. Although the MST supported some policies of theformer
presidents who presented themselves as champions of labor rather than capital, both Lula and
Rousseff made substantial policy compromises with the neoliberal camp and were eventually
implicated in corruption scandals revealing opportunism behind policy-making. While the record
of their policies on the poor speaks for itself, the Lula-Rousseff era of Partido dos
Trabalhadores was an improvement over previous neoliberal president Fernando Henrique
Cardoso (1995-2003). https://monthlyreview.org/2017/02/01/the-brazilian-crisis/
The MST persisted with the struggle against neoliberal policies that have contributed to
rising GDP heavily concentrated among the national and comprador bourgeoisie and foreign
corporations. Other Latin American grassroots movements have had mixed results not much better
than those in Brazil. Ecuador under president Rafael Correa tried to co-opt the leftby yielding
on some policy issues as did Lula and Rousseff, while pursuing a neoliberal development model
as much as his Brazilian counterparts. With its economy thoroughly integrated into the US
economy, Mexico is a rather unique case where grassroots movements against neoliberalism are
intertwined with the struggle against official corruption and the narco-trade resulting in the
assassination of anti-neoliberal, anti-drug activists. (William Aviles, The Drug War in
Mexico: Hegemony and Global Capitalism ;
Anti-neoliberal resistance in the advanced countries has not manifested itself as it has in
the developing nations through leftist movements such as South Africa's Abahlali baseMjondolo
or Latin American trade unions that stress a working class philosophy of needs rather than the
one of rights linked to middle class property and identity politics. https://roarmag.org/essays/south-africa-marikana-anc-poor/
Popular resistance to neoliberalism in the US has been part of the anti-globalization movement
that includes various groups from environmentalists to anti-IMF-World Bank and anti-militarism
groups.
Although there are some locally based groups like East Harlem-based Justice in El
Barrio representing immigrants and low-income people, there is no national anti-neoliberal
movement. Perhaps because of the war on terror, various anti-establishment pro-social justice
groups assumed the form of bourgeois identity politics of both the Democratic Party and the
Republican where some of the leaders use rightwing populism as an ideological means to push
through neoliberal policies while containing grassroots anger resulting from social exclusion
and institutional exploitation. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/the-legacy-of-anti-globalization
Black Lives Matter revolving around the systemic racism issue and Occupy Wall
Street anti-capitalist group fell within the left orbit of the Democratic Party (Senator
Bernie Sanders) who is an advocate of the pluralist-diversity model, opposes market
fundamentalism,and proposes maintaining some vestiges of the Keynesian welfare state. With the
exception of isolated voices by a handful of academics and some criticsusing social media as a
platform, there is no anti-neoliberal grassroots movement that Democrats or Republicans has not
successfully co-opted. Those refusing to be co-opted are invariably dismissed as everything
from idealists to obstructionists. Certainlythere is nothing in the US like the anti-neoliberal
groups in Brazil, India, Mexico, or South Africa operating autonomously and resisting
co-optation by political parties. The absence of such movements in the US is a testament to the
strong state structure andthe institutional power of the elites in comparison with many
developing nations and even some parts of Europe.
https://www.salon.com/2015/08/15/black_lives_matter_joins_a_long_line_of_protest_movements_that_have_shifted_public_opinion_most_recently_occupy_wall_street/
As an integrated economic bloc, Europe follows uniform neoliberal policies using as leverage
monetary and trade policy but also the considerable EU budget at its disposal for subsidies and
development. A number of European trade unions and leftist popular groups fell into the trap of
following either Socialist or centrist parties which are pluralist neoliberal and defend some
remnants of Keynesianism. Those disillusioned with mainstream Socialist Parties pursue the same
neoliberal policies of social exclusion as the conservatives fell in line behind newly formed
non-Communist reformist parties (PODEMOS in Spain, SYRIZA in Greece, for example) with a
Keynesian platform and socialist rhetoric.
As the government of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras proved once in power in 2015,
self-baptized 'leftist' parties areleftist in rhetoric only. When it comes to policy they are
as neoliberal as the opposition they criticize; even more dangerous because they have deceived
people to support them as the alternative to neoliberal conservatives. Because grassroots
movements andthe popular base of political parties that promise 'reform' to benefit the masses
are co-opted by centrists, center-left or rightwing political parties, social exclusion becomes
exacerbated leading to disillusionment.
Consequently,people hoping for meaningful change become apathetic or they become angry and
more radicalized often turning to rightwing political parties. Although there is a
long-standing history of mainstream political parties co-opting grassroots movements, under
neoliberalism the goal is to shape them intoan identity politics mold under the pluralist or
rightwing populist camp. Behind the illusion of choice and layers of bourgeois issues ranging
from property rights and individual rights rests a totalitarian system whose goal is popular
compliance. https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/eliane-glaser/elites-right-wing-populism-and-left
;
More subtly and stealthily interwoven into the institutional structure than totalitarian
regimes of the interwar era, neoliberal totalitarianism has succeeded not because of the
rightwing populist political camp but because of the pluralist one that supports both
militarism in foreign affairs and police-state methods at home as a means of maintaining the
social order while projecting the façade of democracy. Whereas the neoliberal surveillance
state retains vestiges of pluralism and the façade of electoral choice, the police state
in interwar Germany and Italy pursued blatant persecution of declared ideological dogmatism
targeting 'enemies of the state' and demanding complete subjugation of citizens to theregime.
Just as people were manipulated in interwar Europeinto accepting the totalitarian state as
desirable and natural, so are many in our time misguided into supporting neoliberal
totalitarianism.
In her book entitled Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution (2015),
Wendy Brown argues that not just in the public sector, but in every sector of society
neoliberal ideology of 'de-democratization' prevails. Extensions of a hierarchical economic
system rather than citizens with civil and human rights guaranteed by a social contract aimed
at the welfare of the collective, human beings are more commoditized today than they were in
the nascent phase of industrial capitalism. The kind of ubiquitous transformation of the
individual's identity with the superstructure and the 'de-democratization' of society operating
under massively concentrated wealth institutionally intertwined with political power in our
contemporary erawas evident in totalitarian countries during the interwar era.
Whereas protest and resistance, freedom of expression and assembly were not permitted by
totalitarian regimes in interwar Europe, they are permitted in our time. However, they are so
marginalized and/or demonized when analyzing critically mainstream institutions and the social
contract under which they operate that they are the stigmatizedas illegitimate opposition.
Permitting freedom of speech and assembly, along with due process and electoral politicsbest
servesneoliberal socioeconomic totalitarianism because its apologists can claim the system
operates in an 'open society'; a term that Karl Popper the ideological father of
neo-conservatism coined to differentiate the West from the former Communist bloc closed
societies.
As Italian journalist Claudio Hallo put it: "If the core of neoliberalism is a natural
fact, as suggested by the ideology already embedded deep within our collective psyche, who can
change it? Can you live without breathing, or stop the succession of days and nights? This is
why Western democracy chooses among the many masks behind which is essentially the same liberal
party. Change is not forbidden, change is impossible. Some consider this feature to be an
insidious form of invisible totalitarianism. " https://www.rt.com/op-edge/171240-global-totalitarianism-change-neoliberalism/
In an essay entitled "The unholy alliance of neoliberalism and postmodernism" ,
Hans van Zon argues that as the Western World'sdominant ideologies since the 1980s,
"undermine the immune system of society, neoliberalism by commercialization of even the
most sacred domains and postmodernism by its super-relativism and refusal to recognize any
hierarchy in value or belief systems."http://www.imavo.be/vmt/13214-van%20Zon%20postmodernism.pdf
. Beyond undermining society's immune system and the open society under capitalism, asHans van
Zon contends, the convergence of these ideologies have contributed to the 'de-democratization'
of society,the creation of illiberal institutions and collective consciousness of conformity to
neoliberal totalitarianism. The success of neoliberalism inculcated into the collective
consciousness is partly because of the long-standing East-West confrontation followed by the
manufactured war on terror. However, it is also true that neoliberal apologists of both the
pluralist and rightwing camp present the social contract as transcending politics because
markets are above states, above society as 'objective' thus they can best determine the social
good on the basis of commoditized value. (Joshua Ramsay, "Neoliberalism as Political
Theology of Chance: the politics of divination."https://www.nature.com/articles/palcomms201539
An evolutionary course, the 'de-democratization' of society started in postwar US that
imposed transformation policy on the world with the goal of maintaining its economic,
political, military and cultural superpower hegemony justified in the name of anti-Communism.
Transformation policy was at the root of the diffusion of the de-democratization process under
neoliberalism, despite the European origin of the ideology. As it gradually regained its status
in the core of the world economy after the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) in
1957, northwest Europe followed in the path of the US. http://www.eurstrat.eu/the-european-neoliberal-union/
Ten years before the Treaty of Rome that created the EEC,Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek
gathered a number of scholars in Mont Pelerin where they founded the neoliberal society named
after the Swiss village. They discussed strategies of influencing public policy intended to
efface the Keynesian model on which many societies were reorganized to survive the Great
Depression. Financed by some of Europe's wealthiest families, the Mont Pelerin Society grew of
immense importance after its first meeting which coincided with the anti-labor Taft-Hartley
Act, the Truman Doctrine formalizing the institutionalization of the Cold War, and the Marshall
Plan intended to reintegrate Europe and its colonies and spheres of influence under the aegis
of the US. Helped along by the IMF, World Bank, and the International Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade established in 1947, US transformation policy was designed to shape the world to its own
geopolitical and economic advantage based on a neo-classical macroeconomic and financial
theoretical model on which neoliberal ideology rested. http://fpif.org/from_keynesianism_to_neoliberalism_shifting_paradigms_in_economics/
Considering that millionaires and billionaires providefunding for the Mont Pelerin Society
and affiliates, this prototype neoliberal think tank became the intellectual pillar of both the
pluralist and rightwing neoliberal camps by working with 460 think tanks that have
organizations in 96 countries where they influence both centrist and rightwing political
parties. Whether Hillary Clinton's and Emmanuel Macron's pluralist neoliberal globalist version
or Donald Trump's and Narendra Modi's rightwing populist one, the Mont Pelerin Society and
others sharing its ideology and goals exercise preeminent policy influence not on the merit of
its ideas for the welfare of society but because the richest people from rightwing Czech
billionaire Andrej Babisto liberal pluralist billionaireseither support its principles and
benefit from their implementation into policy. (J. Peterson, Revoking the Moral Order: The
Ideology of Positivism and the Vienna Circle , 1999;
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/rise-of-the-davos-class-sealed-americas-fate
If the neoliberal social contract is the answer to peoples' prayers world-wide as Hayek's
followers insist, why is there a need on the part of the state, international organizations
including UN agencies, billionaire and millionaire-funded think tanks, educational institutions
and the corporate and state-owned media to convince the public that there is nothing better for
society than massive capital concentration and social exclusion, and social conditions that in
some respects resemble servitude in Medieval Europe? Why do ultra-rightwing Koch brothers and
the Mercer family, among other billionaires and millionaires fromNorth America, Europe, India,
South Korea and Latin America spend so much money to inculcate the neoliberal ideology into the
collective consciousness andto persuade the public to elect neoliberal politicians either of
the pluralist camp or the authoritarian one?
Seventy years after Hayek formed the Mont Leperin Societyto promotea future without
totalitarianism, there are elected neoliberal politicians from both the pluralist and
authoritarian camps with ties to big capital and organized crime amid the blurring lines
between legal and illegal economic activities that encompasses everything from crypto-currency
and insider trading to offshore 'shell corporations' and banks laundering money for drug lords
and wealthy tax evaders. Surrender of popular sovereignty through the social contract now
entails surrender to a class of people who are criminals, not only based on a social justice
criteria but on existing law if it were only applied to them as it does to petty thieves. In
the amoral Machiavellian world of legalized "criminal virtue" in which we live these are the
leaders of society.Indicative of the perversion of values now rooted in atomism and greed, the
media reports with glowingly admiring terms that in 2017 the world's 500 richest people became
richer by $1 trillion, a rise that represents one-third of Africa's GDP and just under
one-fifth of Latin America's. Rather than condemning mal-distribution ofincome considering what
it entails for society, the media and many in the business of propagating for neoliberalism
applaud appropriation within the legal framework of the social contract as a virtue.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/business-news/500-richest-people-became-1-trillion-richer-in-2017-mukesh-ambani-tops-indian-list/story-JcNXhH9cCp2pzRopkoFdfL.html
; Bob Brecher, "Neoliberalism and its Threat to Moral Agency" in Virtue and
Economy . ed. Andrius Bielskis and Kelvin Knight, 2015)
Neoliberalism has led to the greater legitimization of activities that would otherwise be
illegal to the degree that the lines between the legitimate economy and organized criminal
activity are blurred reflecting the flexible lines between legally-financed millionaire-backed
elected officials and those with links to organized crime or to illegal campaign contributions
always carrying an illegal quid-pro-quo legalized through public policy. Beyond the usual
tax-haven suspects Panama, Cyprus, Bermuda, Malta, Luxemburg, among othersincluding states such
as Nevada and Wyoming, leaders from former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to President Donald
Trump with reputed ties to organized criminal networks have benefited from the neoliberal
regime that they served.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254953831_Economic_Crime_and_Neoliberal_Modes_of_Government_The_Example_of_the_Mediterranean
)
Self-righteous pluralist neoliberals castigate rightwing billionaires for funding rightwing
politicians. However, there is silence when it comes to the millions amassed by pluralist
neoliberals as the infamous "Panama Papers" revealed in 2016. Despite the institutionalized
kleptocracy, the mediahas indoctrinated the public to accept as 'normal' the converging
interests of the capitalist class and ruling political class just as it has indoctrinated the
public to accept social exclusion, social inequality, and poverty as natural and democratic;
all part of the social contract.( http://revistes.uab.cat/tdevorado/article/view/v2-n1-armao
; Jose Manuel Sanchez Bermudez, The Neoliberal Pattern of Domination: Capital's Reign in
Decline, 2012;
https://www.globalresearch.ca/neoliberalisms-world-of-corruption-money-laundering-corporate-lobbying-drug-money/5519907
The Future of Neoliberalism
After the great recession of 2008, the future of neoliberalism became the subject of debate
among politicians, journalists and academics. One school of thought was that the great
recession had exposed the flaws in neoliberalism thus marking the beginning of its demise. The
years since 2008 proved that in a twist of irony, the quasi-statist policies of China with its
phenomenal growth have actually been responsible for sustaining neoliberalism globally and not
just because China has been financing US public debt by buying treasuries while the US buys
products made in China. This view holds that neoliberalism will continue to thrive so as long
as China continues its global ascendancy, thus the warm reception to Beijing as the new
globalist hegemonic power after Trump's noise about pursuing economic nationalism within the
neoliberal model. (Barry Eichengreen, Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great
Recession and the Uses and Misuses of History , 2016;
http://www.e-ir.info/2011/08/23/has-the-global-financial-crisis-challenged-us-power-in-international-finance/
)
China is not pursuing the kind of neoliberal model that exists in the US or the EU, but its
economy is well integrated with the global neoliberal system and operates within those
perimeters despite quasi-statist policies also found in other countries to a lesser degree.
Adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP), China's current share of world GDP stands at 16%
and at annual growth above 6% it is expected to reach 20%, by 2020. This in comparison with
only 1.9% in 1979 and it explains why its currency is now among the IMF-recognized reserved
currencies. With about half-a-million foreign companies in China and an average of 12,000 new
companies entering every day, capitalists from all over the world are betting heavily on
China's future as the world's preeminent capitalist core country in the 21 st
century. China will play a determining role in the course of global neoliberalism, and it is
politically willing to accept the US as the military hegemon while Beijing strives for economic
preeminence. Interested in extracting greater profits from China while tempering its race to
number one, Western businesses and governmentshave been pressuring Beijing to become more
immersed in neoliberal policies and eliminate all elements of statism. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2012-09/22/content_15775312.htm
; https://en.portal.santandertrade.com/establish-overseas/china/foreign-investment
Although the US that has 450,000 troops in 800 foreign military bases in more than 150
countries and uses its military muscle along with 'soft-power' policies including sanctions as
leverage for economic power, many governments and multinational corporations consider Beijing
not Washington as a source of global stability and growth. With China breathing new life into
neoliberalism on the promise of geographic and social convergence, it is fantasy to speculate
that neoliberalism is in decline when in fact it is becoming more forcefully ubiquitous.
However, China like the West that had promised geographic and social convergence in the last
four decades of neoliberalism will not be any more successful in delivering on such promises.
The resultof such policies will continue to be greater polarization and social exclusion and
greater uneven development, with China and multinationals investing in its enterprises becoming
richer while the US will continue to use militarism as leverage to retain global economic
hegemony rapidly eroding from its grip. ( http://www.businessinsider.com/us-military-deployments-may-2017-5
;
http://www.zapruderworld.org/welfare-state-decline-and-rise-neoliberalism-1980s-some-approaches-between-latin-americas-core-and
; Dic Lo, Alternatives to Neoliberal Globalization , 2012)
Between China and the US, the world can expect neoliberal globalization to continue under
the pluralist and populist rightwing models in different countries with the two converging and
reflecting the totalitarian essence of the system at its core.Characterized by rapid
development and sluggish growth in Japan and Western core countries, neoliberal globalization
has entailed lack of income convergence between the developed and developing world where uneven
export-oriented growth based on the primary sector keeps developingnations perpetually
dependent and poor. Interestingly, the trend of falling incomes characteristic of the
developing nations from 1980 to 2000 was just as true in Western countries. It was during these
two decades of ascendant neoliberalism that rightwing populist movements began to challenge the
pluralist neoliberal political camp and offering nationally-based neoliberal solutions, further
adding to the system's existing contradictions. (Dic Lo, Alternatives to Neoliberal
Globalization , 2012)
The debate whether the rise of populism or perhaps the faint voices of anti-capitalism will
finally bring about the end of neoliberalism often centers on the digital-biotech revolution
often blamed for exacerbating rather than solving social problems owing to uneven benefits
accruing across social classes. It is somewhat surprising that IMF economists have questioned
the wisdom of pursuing unfettered neoliberalism where there is a trade-off between economic
growth andsocial exclusion owing to growing income inequality. Naturally, the IMF refrains from
self-criticism and it would never suggest that neoliberal globalization that the Fund has been
promoting is responsible for the rise of rightwing populism around the world.
Within the neoliberal camp, pluralist-diversity advocatesare satisfied they have done their
part in the 'fight for democracy' when in fact their stealthy brand of the neoliberal social
contract isin some respects more dangerous than the populist camp which is unapologetically
candid about its pro-big business, pro-monopoly, pro-deregulation anti-social welfare platform.
Shortly after Trump won the presidential election with the help of rightwing billionaires and
disillusioned workers who actually believed that he represented them rather than the
billionaires, an article appearing in the Christian Science Monitor is typical of how
pluralist neoliberals view the global tide of rightwing populism.
"Worldwide, it has been a rough years for democracy. The UK, the United States and
Colombia made critical decisions about their nations' future, and – at least from the
perspective of liberal values and social justice – they decided poorly. Beyond the clear
persistence of racism, sexism and xenophobia in people's decision-making, scholars and pundits
have argued that to understand the results of recent popular votes, we must reflect on
neoliberalism. International capitalism, which has dominated the globe for the past three
decades, has its winners and its losers. And, for many thinkers, the losers have spoken. My
fieldwork in South America has taught me that there are alternative and effective ways to push
back against neoliberalism. These include resistance movements based on pluralism and
alternative forms of social organisation, production and consumption."
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Breakthroughs-Voices/2016/1206/Opposing-neoliberalism-without-right-wing-populism-A-Latin-American-guide
Without analyzing the deeper causes of the global tide of rightwing populism promoting
neoliberalism under an authoritarian political platform, pluralist-diversity neoliberals
continue to promote socioeconomic policies that lead to social exclusion, inequality, and
uneven development as long as they satisfy the cultural-lifestyle and corporate-based
sustainable-development aspects of the social contract.Tolend legitimacy and public acceptance
among those expecting a commitment to pluralism, the neoliberal pluralists embrace the
superficialities and distraction of diversity and political correctness. Ironically, the
political correctness trend started during theReagan administration's second term and served as
a substitute for social justice that the government and the private sector were rapidly eroding
along with the social welfare state and trade union rights. As long as there is'politically
correctness', in public at least so that people feel they are part of a 'civilized' society,
then public policy can continue on the barbaric path of social exclusion, police-state methods,
and greater economic inequality.
The future of neoliberalism includes the inevitability that social exclusion will lead to
social uprisings especially as even some billionaires readily acknowledge the social contract
favors them to the detriment of society. As the voices against systemic exploitation become
louder,the likelihood will increase for authoritarian-police state policies if not regimes
reflecting the neoliberal social contract's ubiquitous stranglehold on society. Although
resistance to neoliberalism will continue to grow, the prospects for a social revolution in
this century overturning the neoliberal order in advanced capitalist countries is highly
unlikely. Twentieth century revolutions succeeded where the state structure was weak and people
recognized that the hierarchical social order was the root cause of the chasm between the
country's vast social exclusion coupled with stagnation vs. its potential for a more inclusive
society where greater social equality and social justice would bean integral part of the social
contract. (Donna L. Chollett, Neoliberalism, Social Exclusion, and Social Movements ,
2013)
Despite everything pointing to the dynamics of a continued neoliberal social contract,
diehard pluralists like British academic Martin Jacques and American economist Joseph Stiglitz
insist there is hope for reformist change. In The Politics of Thatcherism (1983)
Jacques applauded neoliberalism, but during the US presidential election in 2016 he had changed
his mind, predicting neoliberalism's demise. He felt encouraged that other pluralist
neoliberals like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz were voicing their concerns signaling an
interest in the debate about social inequality. In an article entitled "The death of
neoliberalism and the crisis in western politics" , he wrote: "A sure sign of the
declining influence of neoliberalism is the rising chorus of intellectual voices raised against
it. From the mid-70s through the 80s, the economic debate was increasingly dominated by
monetarists and free marketeers."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/21/death-of-neoliberalism-crisis-in-western-politics
Along with Krugman, Stiglitz and others in the pluralist camp favoring a policy mix that
includes Keynesianism,Martin Jacques, Thomas Picketty and others like them around the world
doenjoy some small influence with the pluralist-diversity camp. However, the demise of
neoliberalism will not result from intellectual critiques regardless of the merits. On the
contrary, the neoliberal social contract is solidifying not evolving toward dissolution. This
is largely because the dynamics of the social order continue to favor it and the opposition is
split between ultra-right nationalists, pluralists of varying sorts resting on hope of
restoring Keynesian rationalism in the capitalist system, and the very weak and divided
leftists in just about every country and especially the core ones.
https://theconversation.com/if-we-are-reaching-neoliberal-capitalisms-end-days-what-comes-next-72366
Neoliberalism's inherent contradictions will result in its demise andthe transition into a
new phase of capitalism. Among the most obvious and glaring contradictions is that the ideology
promotes freedom and emancipation when in practice it is a totalitarian system aimed to mold
society and the individual into conformity of its dogmatic market fundamentalism.Another
contradiction is the emphasis of a borderless global market, while capitalists operate within
national borders and are impacted by national policies that often collide at the international
level as the competition intensifies for market share just as was the case in the four decades
before the outbreak of WWI. Adding to the list of contradictions that finds expression the
debate between neoliberal rightwingers and pluralists is the issue of "value-free" market
fundamentalism while at the same time neoliberals conduct policy that has very strong moral
consequences in peoples' lives precisely because of extremely uneven income distribution.
The enigma in neoliberalism's futureis the role of grassroots movements that are in a
position to impact change but have failed thus far to make much impact. Most people embrace the
neoliberal political parties serving the same capitalist class, operating under the illusion of
a messiah politician delivering the promise of salvation either from the pluralist or
authoritarian wing of neoliberalism. The turning point for systemic change emanates from within
the system that fails to serve the vast majority of the people as it is riddled with
contradictions that become more evident and the elites become increasingly contentious about
how to divide the economic pie and how to mobilize popular support behind mainstream political
parties so they can maintain the social order under an unsustainable political economy. At that
juncture, the neoliberal social contract suffersan irrevocable crisis of public confidence on a
mass scale. Regardless under which political regime neoliberalism operates, people will
eventually reject hegemonic cultural indoctrination. A critical mass in society has not reached
this juncture. Nevertheless, social discontinuity is an evolutionary process and the
contradictions in neoliberalism will continue to cause political disruption, economic
disequilibrium and social upheaval.
Jon V. Kofas , Ph.D. – Retired university professor of history – author of ten
academic books and two dozens scholarly articles. Specializing in International Political
economy, Kofas has taught courses and written on US diplomatic history, and the roles of the
World Bank and IMF in the world.
Neo-Liberalism in America is an underlying political philosophy based on belief in the
sanctity of personal "freedom" with the conviction that this freedom is expressed through
self-determination. It extends back to the early settlement and then the writing of
transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) who popularized the expression
"self-reliance." In the recent American election it underlay the Donald Trump code words:
"what makes America great again." Ronald Reagan took advantage of it with his derisive use
of the term "welfare queens." It undergirds the foundation of today's Republican Party.
uke Harding likes writing books
about things that he wasn't really involved in and doesn't really understand. Unfortunately for
the rest of the world, that covers pretty much everything. His book about Snowden, for example,
was beautifully
taken down by Julian Assange – a person who was actually there.
He's priming the traumatised public for another of his works, this time about Sergei
Skripal. This one will probably be out by Christmas, unless he can find someone else's work to plagiarise , in which case he might
get it done sooner.
It will have a snide and not especially clever title, perhaps a sort of pun –
something like "A Poison by Any Other Name: How Russian assassins contaminated the heart of
rural England" . It will relate, in jarring sub-sub-le Carre prose, a story of Russian
malfeasance and evil beyond imagining, whilst depicting the whole cast as bumbling caricatures,
always held up for ridicule by the author and his smug readership.
There's an extract in The Guardian today. It's not listed as one, but trust me, it
will be in the book. It's title, as predicted above, is sort of a pun (and will probably
be a chapter heading):
Planes, trains and fake names: the trail left by Skripal suspects
You see? Like that film? I don't really get it either but until someone else comes up with
something clever he can copy, Luke is left to his own rather meagre devices.
It starts off surprisingly strong, waiting three whole sentences before lurching violently
into totally unsupported conjecture:
The two men were dressed inconspicuously in jeans, fleece jackets and trainers as they
boarded the flight from Moscow to Gatwick. Their names, according to their Russian passports,
were Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. Both were around 40 years old. Neither looked
suspicious.
This is, as far as we know so far, true.
The plane trundled down the icy runway. In Moscow the temperatures had fallen below -10C,
not unusual for early March. In Britain it had been snowing.
and so is this. In fact, in googling "Moscow weather March 2018" Harding has displayed an
uncharacteristically thorough approach to research that was rarely (if ever) evidenced in his
previous works.
They had also packed a bottle of what appeared to be the Nina Ricci perfume Premier Jour.
The box it came in was prettily decorated with flowers, it listed ingredients including
alcohol and it bore the words "Made in France".
This is where truth ends and guesses take over: there is no evidence, at all, that these two
men had anything to do with the "perfume bottle" allegedly found by Charlie Rowley on June 27th
and allegedly containing a powerful nerve agent. There is (as far as we know) no fingerprint or
DNA evidence on the bottle, nobody saw them with the bottle, and there's no released CCTV
footage of them holding or carrying the bottle. Saying "it's in their backpack" is meaningless
without any evidence to back it up.
According to the Metropolitan police, the bottle in fact contained novichok, a lethal
nerve agent developed in the late Soviet Union. The bottle had been specially made to be
leakproof and had a customised applicator.
Note he doesn't feel the need to examine, question or even verify the words of the
Metropolitan Police. This is a recurring theme in Harding's works – there are people who
tell the truth (US) and people who lie (RUSSIANS). Evidence is a complication you can live
without.
Moscow's notorious poisons factory run by the KGB made similar devices throughout the cold
war.
Did they? Because he doesn't show any evidence this is true. One thing you can be sure of,
if there had ever been even a whisper about a "modified perfume bottle" in any Soviet archive
or from any "whistleblower currently living in the United States", it would be on the front
page in big black letters.
Petrov and Boshirov were aliases, detectives believe. Both men are suspected to be career
officers with the GRU, Russia's powerful and highly secretive military intelligence
service.
Note use of the word "believe", it makes regular appearances alongside it's buddies:
"suspect" and "probably".
And yes, they "believe" they are aliases because IF they were assassins then obviously they
used aliases. There's no evidence taken from their (currently totally theoretical) visa
applications that point to forgery, nobody at the time questioned their passports. As of today,
we have been given no reason to think they were aliases, except reasoning backwards from
assumed guilt which isn't how deduction works.
In fact, there's more than enough reason to assume they aren't aliases –
Firstly, they passed the visa check, secondly their passports were never questioned, thirdly
they've used them before (see below), and finally just WHY would a Russian spy-come-assassin
use a fake Russian name and a fake Russian passport? That's ridiculous.
The officers' assignment was covert. They were coming to Britain not as tourists but as
assassins.
[citation needed]
Their target was Sergei Skripal, a former GRU officer who spied for British intelligence,
got caught and was freed in a spy exchange in 2010. They were heading for his home in
provincial Salisbury.
Luke doesn't feel the need to dig down into the nitty gritty here – motive is a
trifle, to be added in the footnotes or made up on the spur of the moment when asked at a book
signing. I'm a bit more fussy than that – I feel the need to ask "Why did they release
him in 2010 and then try to kill him in 2018?" If they had wanted to kill him, why not just do
it when he was in prison in Russia between 2006 and 2010? If they wanted to kill him why do it
just weeks before the World Cup? What could they possibly have to gain?
Luke doesn't know, and neither do I.
Their Aeroflot flight SU2588 touched down at 3pm on Friday 2 March. They were recorded on
CCTV going through passport control, Boshirov with dark hair and a goatee beard, Petrov
unshaven and wearing a blue gingham shirt. Both were carrying satchels slung casually over
the shoulder.
This is all true, and completely unnecessary. It's what we in the industry call "filler" or
"padding". Totally meaningless and useless words that do nothing but take up space. Without it,
a lot of Luke's books would only be about 700 words long.
According to police, the pair had visited the UK before.
Way to bury the lead there, Luke.
This is actually quite important isn't it? I mean, when did they visit the UK before? Did
they visit Salisbury then too? Did they have any contact with Sergei Skripal? Were they
travelling under the same names? Were these visits linked with other intelligence work? Were
they just holidays? What kind of assassins would use the SAME FAKE IDS ON TWO DIFFERENT
OCCASIONS?
These are all very important questions, but Luke doesn't ask them. Because Luke is a modern
journalist, and they don't interrogate the claims of the state, just report them. To
Guardian reporters a question mark is just that funny squiggle next to the shift
key.
From Gatwick they caught the train to London Victoria station and then the tube to east
London, where they checked in to the City Stay hotel in Bow. It was a low-profile choice of
accommodation. The red-brick Victorian building is next to a branch of Barclays bank, a busy
train line and a wall daubed with graffiti. Across the road is a car pound and a Texaco
garage.
This just more filler. Totally meaningless packaging material. The prose equivalent of
All-Bran.
On hostile territory, Boshirov and Petrov operated in the manner of classic intelligence
operatives.
In this instance "the manner of classic intelligence operatives" means, flying direct to
London from Moscow, using Russian names and Russian passports (which you've used before),
checking into a hotel with a CCTV camera on the front door, going straight to the hometown of
an ex-double agent, leaving a Russian poison his front door even though he's already gone out,
dumping your unused poison in a charity bin on the high street, going back to your hotel,
smearing poison around that too even though you already dumped it, and then flying directly
back to Moscow without even waiting to see if the plan worked and the target is dead.
This, in Luke's head, is ace intelligence work.
On the day of the hit, according to detectives, the pair made a similar journey, taking
the 8.05am train from Waterloo to Salisbury and arriving at 11.48am.
Yes, they arrived at 11.48, making it absolutely pointless to put poison on the Skripal's
door, as they had already gone out.
The perfume bottle was probably concealed in a light grey backpack carried by Petrov.
It was "probably concealed" in that backpack because, as I said above, there's no evidence
either of those men ever knew the perfume bottle existed. You never see it in their
possession.
Oh, and the backpack would have to contain TWO bottles of perfume – because the police
aren't sure the bottle Rowley found 3 months later was the same bottle, and Rowley reported it
was unopened and wrapped in cellophane. Perhaps Luke should have read the details of the case
instead of trolling IMDB looking for movie titles with "plane" in them or googling "insouciant"
to see if he was using it right.
From Salisbury station the two men set off on foot. It was a short walk of about a mile to
Skripal's semi-detached home in Christie Miller Road.
which doesn't matter, because the Skripals weren't there. They left at 9.15 and there is no
evidence they ever returned.
At Skripal's house the Russians smeared or sprayed novichok on to the front door handle,
police say.
which doesn't matter, because the Skripals weren't there. They left at 9.15 and there is no
evidence they ever returned.
It doesn't matter if Borishov and Petrov re-tiled the bathroom with novichok grouting or hid
novichok in the battery compartment of Sergei's TV remote or replaced all his lightbulbs with
novichok bombs that explode when you use the clapper .according to everything we've been told
so far Sergei and Julia were literally never in that house again.
Luke seems to write a lot about this case, considering he is barely acquainted with the most
basic facts of it.
The moment went unobserved
True. There is not a single piece of footage, photograph or eyewitness placing these men
within a hundred feet of the Skripals, or their house. The "moment went unobserved" is an
incredibly dishonest way of phrasing this, "the moment is entirely theoretical" is rather
fairer. Or, if you want to be honest "it's possible none of this happened".
At some point on their walk back they must have tossed away the bottle, which at this
point was too dangerous to try to smuggle back through customs.
It's all falling into place perfectly isn't it?
At some point the two men, who we never see holding or carrying the bottle, must have
thrown it away because three months later someone else found it.
They took it through customs once but couldn't a second time, because reasons.
Also one of them was smiling a sort of "I just poisoned somebody" smile:
At 1.05pm the men were recorded in Fisherton Street on their way back to the station. They
appeared more relaxed, Petrov grinning even.
Those evil bastards.
By the time Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found collapsed on a park bench
in the centre of Salisbury later that afternoon, the poisoners were gone.
No Luke: By the time Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found collapsed on a
park bench in the centre of Salisbury later that afternoon, the ALLEGED poisoners were
gone.
Alleged is an important word for example, there is a marked difference between being an
ALLEGED plagiarist, and being a
plagiarist .
The visitors were captured on CCTV one more time, at Heathrow airport. It was 7.28pm and
both men were going through security, Petrov first, wheeling a small black case. In his right
hand was a shiny red object, his Russian passport. Police believe the passport was genuine,
his name not. In other words, that it was a sophisticated espionage operation carried out by
a state or state entities.
You see? Nobody thought the passport was fake, which means it was a really good fake
. So the Russian state must have been in on it. This is known as an unfalsifiable hypothesis.
If the passport did look fake, that would be evidence that the men were spies and
therefore the Russian state was in on it.
Harding has created a narrative where there is literally no development that could ever
challenge his conclusions.
Seemingly, the GRU plan – executed two weeks before Russia's presidential election
– had worked perfectly.
This is an example of the cum hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy – two things
happen at the same time, therefore they happen for the same reason. It's a maneuver we at OffG
refer to as "the Harding", where you state two separate assertions or facts one after the other
in such a way as to imply a relationship, without ever making a solid statement. I'll give you
an example:
Luke Harding was born in 1968, mere weeks before the brutal assassination of Robert
Kennedy.
Harding is suggesting some sort of connection between the election and the poisoning. He
can't STATE it, because then he has to explain his reasoning – and there isn't any.
Putin, and Russia as a whole, had nothing to gain from poisoning an ex-spy they had released
nearly a decade earlier, especially on the eve of a Presidential election and mere weeks before
the World Cup. There's no argument to be made, so he doesn't attempt to make one, he just makes
a snide and baseless insinuation.
Vladimir Putin, the man whom a public inquiry found in 2016 had "probably" signed off on
the operation to kill Litvinenko. The UK security services say a "body of evidence" points to
the GRU.
"Probably" is also a big word. For example, there's a marked difference between "probably
being a plagiarist" and "being a
plagiarist" .
It seems clear that Moscow continues to view Britain as a playground for undercover
operations and is relatively insouciant about the consequences, diplomatic and political. The
Skripal attack may have misfired. But the message, mingling contempt and arrogance, is there
for all to see: we can smite our enemies whenever and wherever we want, and there is nothing
you can do about it.
This is the second time Luke has used the word "insouciant" in two days, which means that
word of the day
calendar was a probably sound investment, but he forgot to flip it over this morning.
Other than that, this final paragraph is nothing but paranoia.
The Russians were TRYING to make it obvious, to send a message. But were also lazy and
arrogant. And yet also left no solid evidence because they are experts at espionage. They had
no motive except being mean, and couldn't even be bothered to make sure they did it right. They
want us all to know they did it, but will never admit it.
The actual truth of the situation can be summed up in a few bullet points.
Currently:
There is no evidence these men were using forged documents. There is no evidence
these men were travelling under aliases or assumed names. There is no evidence these men ever
had any contact with Sergei Skripal's house. There is no evidence these men ever had any
contact with Sergei Skripal or his daughter. There is no evidence these men were Russian
intelligence assets or had any military training. There is no evidence these men ever possessed
or had any contact with the perfume bottle found by Charlie Rowley on June 27th. They have
visited the UK before, not on intelligence business (as far as we know). Their movements don't
align with the timeline of Skripal's illness.
The entire narrative is created around half a dozen screen caps of two (allegedly) Russian
men, not behaving in any way illegally or even suspiciously. All the rest is fiction, created
by a hack to service an agenda. This isn't one of those "You couldn't make it up" stories, it's
not that incredible. It's just insulting and stupid.
This professor looks like a typical neoliberal professor of economics, as usually such people are in the US Universities. His level
of understanding the history of Russia and Baltic countries suggests that he is a mixture of n ignorant jerk with a propagandist. Russia
was royally raped by the West in 1991-2000. The damage was probably comparable with the damage from communism. Trillions were looted.
"Americans cannot fathom what it is like to have entire cities destroyed or badly-damaged by bombs and artillery and have ruthless
armies fight each other over their territories" how about Dresden, Nagasaki, North Korea, Fallujah, Aleppo to name a few. Noam Chomsky
has observed: "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged."
Notable quotes:
"... Americans cannot fathom what it is like to have entire cities destroyed or badly-damaged by bombs and artillery and have ruthless armies fight each other over their territories. Nor can we imagine having governments carry out massive executions of people whose only "crime" was not being what the government leadership wanted them to be. We cannot imagine the starvation, the disease, and watching family and friends be shipped off to places like Siberia where they surely would die terrible deaths. ..."
"... Bill Anderson travels, but sometimes he sees what he wants to see. ..."
"... Seeing the splinter in other men eyes. Not the tree in own. After the USSR birth, a U.S, with friends, invaded Russia. From that moment to now history is full of conflicted horrors. Standing out WW 2, and many more like Korea and Vietnam. Scars can be seeing all over the planet except the U.S. The writer of article must be a exceptional person. ..."
"... Their best weapon is "weaponized credit" which sheep see but don't understand ..."
"... The [neoliberal] deep state is about impoverishing the masses so that they keep their mouths shut, they don't give a rats ass if your liberal or conservative, black or white, yellow or orange, just keep your mouth shut about them. ..."
So, we drove onto St. Petersburg mostly on a two-lane road cut through the boreal forest of the northern latitudes. It was here
that I witnessed something that amazed all of us – how vehicle drivers cooperated to turn two lanes into de facto four lanes of traffic.
As faster drivers moved to pass slower vehicles, the slower vehicles would move onto the asphalt shoulder and even as our bus
moved over the center line, the oncoming traffic would shift to the right, too. It all was spontaneously coordinated and everyone
on the road was in on the scheme.
Entering St. Petersburg was an experience in itself. With five million people spread over a number of islands, we saw new high-rises
standing alongside the old Soviet-era apartment buildings. No one, however, comes to St. Petersburg to see the relics of the U.S.S.R.
Instead, they come to see the czarist palaces and the stunning 18thand 19th century architecture that dominates the city. It may
be the birthplace of the Bolshevik Revolution, but people come to pay homage to the way of life the Bolsheviks wanted to destroy
and to Czar Nicholas II and his family,
infamously and brutally murdered on Lenin's
orders in 1918.
A century later, the bones of the last royal family of Russia lie safely in St. Peter and Paul Cathedral. Despite more than 70
years of communist rule, and despite all of the blood spilled to keep the likes of Lenin, Stalin, and the others in power, and despite
the massive propaganda that ordinary people in the U.S.S.R. had to endure, St. Petersburg is the city of the czars, not the Bolsheviks.
Parts of St. Petersburg are run down – as nearly the entire city was during the days of communism – but other parts of it absolutely
are amazing to see. Likewise, I enjoyed interacting with the locals and especially the young people that made up most of the workforce
of our hotel, from running the desks to cleaning our rooms. The legendary dour Soviet worker was replaced by a competent employee
who patiently answered our questions and took care of whatever we needed. For all of the talk in the USA that Russia is a dictatorship
under the iron thumb of Vladimir Putin, Russia did not seem like a dictatorship. Our Russian tour guide often would take a swipe
at Putin (including likening his face to a painting of dogs at the Hermitage) and life itself there seemed to have the kind of normalcy
that could not have been possible when people were compelled to inform on one another.
The St. Petersburg we visited was not the Leningrad that Logan Robinson described in his humorous 1982 book
An American in Leningrad , which
described life as a post-graduate student living among Russian students and developing friendships with local writers, artists, and
musicians, people who often harassed, persecuted, and arrested by local authorities. That city was an armed camp full of soldiers
and had been relegated to being a backwater by Joseph Stalin and his successors who made Moscow the Soviet "showplace," leaving the
city founded by Peter the Great to succumb to the northerly elements.
... ... ...
Americans cannot fathom what it is like to have entire cities destroyed or badly-damaged by bombs and artillery and have ruthless
armies fight each other over their territories. Nor can we imagine having governments carry out massive executions of people whose
only "crime" was not being what the government leadership wanted them to be. We cannot imagine the starvation, the disease, and watching
family and friends be shipped off to places like Siberia where they surely would die terrible deaths.
spooz ,
This article is red-baiting propaganda, aren't we getting enough of that from the Democratic party Everybody with a brain realizes
that there are differences between communism and the democratic socialism that is becoming popular in the US, but some the Mises
misers like to dupe the ignorant into conflating the two.
Democratic Socialism:
In very simplistic terms, paraphrasing from A. J. Elwood, Democratic Socialism:
Work together to ensure social equality and to improve one another's lives.
Reject the exploitation of all peoples and uphold the principles of equality.
Value the environment and use our natural resources in a sustainable manner.
Ensure free and open elections, where each citizen has a voice and a vested interest in his or her government.
Provide free education to all to ensure equal opportunity and the free flow of ideas, opinions, and information.
Protect and assist the disadvantaged using surplus from both public and privately owned enterprise.
Deliver quality health care to all citizens, regardless of their needs or socio-economic status
The US has let the excesses of Capitalism control our country, with wealthy owning our legislature and receiving bail outs
and tax cuts to preserve their wealth, while a growing percentage of the formerly middle class is thrown under the bus, with no
savings and no way to make a living wage. Those millennials don't see any way of achieving what used to be the American Dream
and are looking for some help with their struggle.
Most modern countries have a mix of socialism and capitalism.
"The United Nations World Happiness Report
2013 shows that the happiest nations are concentrated in Northern Europe, where the
Nordic model of social democracy is employed, with Denmark
topping the list." (wikipedia)
moon_unit ,
Bill Anderson travels, but sometimes he sees what he wants to see.
Let's take some points:
-He saw a "*small* railroad boxcar". Very romantic but - Soviet boxcars were fricken' huge, the rail gauge is massive. Pics
with a person next to it, or it didn't happen. IF it was very small, it was more likely a technical wagon for railway engineers,
not for "cargo" of any kind. Plus, anyone alive bitching about it clearly had parents , most likely that never left
to go anywhere , you know what I'm saying here?
-He went to Jurmala sea resort and misunderstood it, thought it was "all Soviet", all built for "nomenklatura". This is not
unusual to think so, but he was wrong - it was largely built as a Spa town in the 1850s during the Russian Empire times by the
majority wealthy *German* ethnic group in Riga. In fact German was the main language in the city up to 1891. Most of those large
spa town wooden houses were built for German traders - who traded with the locals outside Riga, Brits and Russians. The city had
a British Mayor George Armitstead from 1901 - 1912 during the Russian Empire - a civil engineer and the city's most popular mayor
ever, who built the first tram lines, hospitals, covered markets and so on.
The Balts kicked those German traders out starting from around 1880 or so. If you check out cemeteries you will see a sudden
transition from elegant old German noble script to badly-spelled early variant local language with German styles and lettering.
Of course that improved as they created formalised spellings for words in the local languages.
The author fails to mention all the other occupants that he doesn't want you to know about - briefly-
-German Crusaders (Knights of the Livonian Order / Teutonic Knights)- Holy Roman Empire - 12thC
-Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 16thC
-Swedes 1621-1710
-Russian Tsarist Empire 1710 - 1918 -trading with German Riga / Brits and Russian language only imposed officially in 1891
-Local people perpetrators - no kidding, Herberts Cukurs, Viktors Arajs?
Photos of people in mass graves - sure you didn't "make a mistake"? - if you mean at Skede beach, Rumbuli and Bikernieki forests,
and Salapspils, those were killed by everyones "special Germans* (and of course the local militia commanders Cukurs and Arajs)
in everyone's "special German 3-year era" from 1942-44. Oddly, no-one seems interested in the hundreds of years of genuine
Geman noble culture and trading in what was essentially a German Empire freeport ...
Certainly there was a book about some Soviet killing mass graves elsewhere but it turns out the book about that was funded
and printed by a certain Josef Goebbels? No doubt it was true, but aren't people a little embarrassed at carrying that book, perhaps
a different author at least, maybe a historian would be less shameful to carry around?
-Freer wealthier - oh sure, if you put aside mass emigration, houses without heat or water or sewerage, destitute pensioners
walking in the streets in winter with supermarket bags on their legs to try to avoid frostbite - not always successfully
, by the way.
-"The citizens of the Baltic countries were not the only ones suffering under communism. No other city in the U.S.S.R. underwent
the horror of a 900-day siege by German armies during World War II" - that's hardly their fault, now is it?
-"as I sat in the Old Town section of Riga eating and drinking and listening to live music, I strained to imagine the place
as a battle zone with death and destruction all around where now I sat" - yeah, like when the Russians and Brits were trying
to keep out Napoleon's armies? Hmmm?
-"I imagined the stores that now are full of goods and restaurants with food and drink being empty or stocked with subpar merchandise
in the aftermath of the war as the Soviets imposed their primitive communist system and oppressed the people in the name
of "liberating" them for many decades until they finally left in the early 1990s"- you have a great imagination. You should write
film scripts for Hollywood. Some of those people are still walking around, try telling them they are primitives.
-"No, I cannot see people in our cities having experienced anything like what the people of the Baltics and St. Petersburg had
to tolerate for decades." - tolerate things like electronics factories, car and van production, science institutes, shipbuilding
and repair, ladies who aren't afraid of math or computers, that kind of thing? But sure, they couldn't get debt, mass prostitution,
Hasselhoff and blue jeans, consumer junk or type II diabetes, that is a total provocation, right you are .
LA_Goldbug ,
I also smell a lot of BS in this article. I visited Eastern Europe before and know exactly what is being mentioned. Elites
IN ALL COUNTRIES have their favorite hideaways. That is a norm in the West, East and anywhere else.
Boxcars at train stations are nothing new. Latvia is poor and probably has lots of them from way way back because THAT WAS
THE STANDARD design for a multi-purpose wagon in Eastern Europe. Why throw away something that does the job ?? But to say it was
"the one" used to transport people to camps is a huge stretch. Hell I could point to Boeings and say "That is the one sending
people to Guantanamo".
demoses ,
As an eastern European I can tell you that I do not get triggered by old monuments / words / city names. I guess that is a
"no real problems" American problem... where you lack other problems and have a hard time looking around what could trigger you...
"oh no! A company called MANpower!!! MAN???" and maybe "country called MonteNEGRO? How dare they?" ;)
Nexus789 ,
These Mises wankers write as if they have found utopia and the US is some kind of 'market' paradise They are foot soldiers
for the one percent.
LA_Goldbug ,
Here is how Utopia looks lest the Eu readers think otherwise.
Seeing the splinter in other men eyes. Not the tree in own. After the USSR birth, a U.S, with friends, invaded Russia.
From that moment to now history is full of conflicted horrors. Standing out WW 2, and many more like Korea and Vietnam. Scars
can be seeing all over the planet except the U.S. The writer of article must be a exceptional person.
LA_Goldbug ,
Their best weapon is "weaponized credit" which sheep see but don't understand.
CaptainObvious ,
"Americans cannot fathom what it is like to have entire cities destroyed or badly-damaged by bombs and artillery and
have ruthless armies fight each other over their territories."
Sure we can. Look at Detroit. Look at Baltimore. Look at Chicago. Those look pretty warn-torn to me. But I guess the "War on
Poverty" and the "War on Drugs" don't count, eh? And I guess drive-by shootings and purposefully-fomented riots and civil asset
forfeiture and excessive taxation aren't weapons of mass destruction either.
"Nor can we imagine having governments carry out massive executions of people whose only "crime" was not being what the government
leadership wanted them to be."
Yeah, we tax mules are pretty familiar with the bowel-crippling fear that any envelope marked "IRS" causes. Men have certainly
been introduced to the economic execution of being stripped of all their assets because they knocked some slut up. People of all
ages and colors have been locked away in jail for 50 years for having a baggy of green stuff in their pocket. And, the horror!,
it's now a crime punishable by jail time to call someone by the wrong gender pronouns in the People's Republic of Kalifornia.
But yeah, economic execution and unjustified imprisonment don't happen here in the Land of the Free ™ , so it's all good.
"We cannot imagine the starvation, the disease, and watching family and friends be shipped off to places like Siberia where
they surely would die terrible deaths."
Oh, sure we can. We see starving people every day on the streets, made homeless by a drug addiction that was introduced to
them by a licensed physician. We watch family and friends shipped off to Bankruptcy court because some fucktarded jury awarded
a scam artist seven figures for manufacturing a slip-and-fall in the Mom & Pop Pizza Palace. We watch our loved ones die every
day from medical malpractice and toxic prescriptions.
No equivalency, you say? Well, to that I say balls. Russia was never free. After they abolished serfdom in the nineteenth century,
the system was still in place that the aristocracy held most of the land and the peasants farmed that land for a pittance. In
America, the laws abolished slavery and sweatshops, but the system is still in place that the tycoons own most of the assets and
the peasants sweat their best years away in a cubicle, or behind a cash register, or under someone else's machinery, for a pittance.
Am I advocating for communism? Hell, no! I'm advocating for an end to the corporatocracy and small-business-killing legislation.
Most ordinary Americans who become wealthy do so because they had the gumption to start their own business. But they can't do
that if all laws favor the already-established, and they can't do that if they're required to burn half a lifetime's worth of
cash for an official piece of paper from a gubmint-subsidized center of indoctrination, and they can't do that if they're supposed
to be licensed and bonded to do something simple like trim the hair of another human.
OverTheHedge ,
Hyperbole to make your point is fine, but the reality is that fat, soft seppos have absolutely no idea.
Actually, that last one proves me wrong - there are SOME Americans who know precisely what a destroyed city looks like - they
have been doing the destroying for the last 20 years, and at fully up to speed with what it entails. The question will be: who
will they be destroying for, should it ever come home to roost?
ddiduck ,
The [neoliberal] deep state is about impoverishing the masses so that they keep their mouths shut, they don't give a rats
ass if your liberal or conservative, black or white, yellow or orange, just keep your mouth shut about them.
Best is if you fight amongst yourselves and play make believe. Do you feel prosperous now? They like it when you you really
get violent toward each other, great scam huhhh? It is called misdirection, want to toast some asses start with Soros, Rothschilds
nad Rockefeller, greatest criminals against humanity! By the way, these mother fk'rs are satanic and bleed children out regularly!
Now take pause and consider this when deciding who the real villain in your unfair world is!
louie1,
Like all Zionist globalist neocon revolutions they are bloody, indiscriminate and sociopathic. The same gang are running the
USA now. And the world central banking system.
Looks like this Iago-style false flag operation by NYT: the anonymous author does not exists and the the plot is to saw
discord and mutual suspicion
Notable quotes:
"... The more I study US politics, the less useful I find it to think of it in political terms. The two-headed one party system exists to give Americans the illusion of choice while advancing the agendas of the plutocratic class which owns and operates both parties, yes, but even more importantly it's a mechanism of narrative control. ..."
"... If you belonged to a ruling class, obviously your goal would be to ensure your subjects' continued support for you. In a corporatist oligarchy, the rulers are secret and the subjects don't know they're ruled, and power is held in place with manipulation and with money. As such a ruler your goal would be to find a way to manipulate the masses into supporting your agendas, and, since people are different, you'd need to use different narratives to manipulate them. You'd have to divide them, tell them different stories, turn them against each other, play them off one another, suck them in to the tales you are spinning with the theater of enmity and heroism. ..."
"... As a result of the New York Times op-ed, if this administration engages in yet another of its many, many establishment capitulations (let's say by attacking the Syrian government again ), Trump's supporters won't see it as his fault; it will be blamed on the deep state insiders in his administration who have been working to thwart his agendas of peace and harmony. ..."
"... Would a billionaire WWE Hall of Famer and United States President understand the theater of staged conflict for the advancement of plutocratic interests, and willingly participate in it? I'm going to say probably. ..."
If any evidence existed to be found that Donald Trump had illegally colluded with the
Russian government to rig the 2016 presidential election, that evidence would have been picked
up by the sprawling surveillance networks of the US and its allies and leaked to the Washington
Post before Obama left office.
Russiagate is like a mirage. From a distance it looks like a solid, tangible thing, but when
you actually move in to examine it critically you find nothing but gaping plot holes,
insinuation, innuendo, conflicting narratives, bizarre mental contortions to avoid
acknowledging contradictory information, a few arrests for corruption and process crimes, and a
lot of hot air. The whole thing has been held together by nothing but the confident-sounding
assertions of pundits and politicians and sheer, mindless repetition. And, as we approach the
two year mark since this president's election, we have not seen one iota of movement toward
removing him from office. The whole thing's a lie, and the smart movers and shakers behind it
are aware that it is a lie.
And yet they keep beating on it. Day after day after day after day it's been Russia, Russia,
Russia, Russia. Instead of attacking this president for his many, many real problems in a way
that will do actual damage, they attack this fake blow-up doll standing next to him in a way
that never goes anywhere and never will, like a pro wrestler theatrically stomping on the
canvass next to his downed foe.
What's up with that?
... ... ....
As you doubtless already know by now, the New York Times has made the wildly controversial
decision to publish an anonymous op-ed
reportedly authored by "a senior official in the Trump administration." The op-ed's author
claims to be part of a secret coalition of patriots who dislike Trump and are "working
diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations." These
"worst inclinations" according to the author include trying to make peace with Moscow and
Pyongyang, being rude to longtime US allies, saying mean things about the media, being
"anti-trade", and being "erratic". The possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment is briefly
mentioned but dismissed. The final paragraphs are spent gushing about John McCain for no
apparent reason.
I strongly encourage you to read the piece in its entirety, because for all the talk and
drama it's generating, it doesn't actually make any sense. While you are reading it, I
encourage you to keep the following question in mind: what could anyone possibly gain by
authoring this and giving it to the New York Times ?
Seriously, what could be gained? The op-ed says essentially nothing, other than to tell
readers to relax and trust in anonymous administration insiders who are working against the bad
guys on behalf of the people (which is interestingly the exact same message of the right-wing
8chan conspiracy phenomenon QAnon, just with the white hats and black hats reversed). Why would
any senior official risk everything to publish something so utterly pointless? Why risk getting
fired (or risk losing all political currency in the party if NYTAnon is Mike Pence, as
has been
theorized ) just to communicate something to the public that doesn't change or accomplish
anything? Why publicly announce your undercover conspiracy to undermine the president in a
major news outlet at all?
What are the results of this viral op-ed everyone's talking about? So far it's a bunch of
Democratic partisans making a lot of excited whooping noises, and Trump loyalists feeling
completely vindicated in the belief that all of their conspiracy theories have been proven
correct. Many rank-and-file Trump haters are feeling a little more relaxed and complacent
knowing that there are a bunch of McCain-loving "adults in the room" taking care of everything,
and many rank-and-file Trump supporters are more convinced than ever that Donald Trump is a
brave populist hero leading a covert 4-D chess insurgency against the Deep State. In other
words, everyone's been herded into their respective partisan stables and trusting the
narratives that they are being fed there.
And, well, I just think that's odd.
Did you know that Donald Trump is in the WWE Hall of Fame ? He was inducted
in 2013, and he's been enthusiastically involved in pro wrestling for many years, both as a fan
and as a performer .
He's made more of a study on how to draw a crowd in to the theatrics of a choreographed fight
scene than anyone this side of the McMahon family (a member of whom happens to be part of the Trump
administration currently).
You don't have to get into any deep conspiratorial rabbit hole to consider the possibility
that all this drama and conflict is staged from top to bottom. Commentators on all sides
routinely crack jokes about how the mainstream media pretends to attack Trump but secretly
loves him because he brings them amazing ratings. Anyone with their eyes even part way open
already knows that America's two mainstream parties feign intense hatred for one another while
working together to pace their respective bases into accepting more and more neoliberal
exploitation at home and more and more neoconservative bloodshed abroad. They spit and snarl
and shake their fists at each other, then cuddle up and share candy
when it's time for a public gathering. Why should this administration be any different?
I believe that a senior Trump administration official probably did write that anonymous
op-ed. I do not believe that they were moved to write it out of compassion for the poor
Americans who are feeling emotionally stressed about the president. I believe it was written
and published for the same reason many other things are written and published in mainstream
media: because we are all being played.
The more I study US politics, the less useful I find it to think of it in political terms.
The two-headed one party system exists to give Americans the illusion of choice while advancing
the agendas of the plutocratic class which owns and operates both parties, yes, but even more
importantly it's a mechanism of narrative control. If you can separate the masses into two
groups based on extremely broad ideological characteristics, you can then funnel streamlined
"us vs them" narratives into each of the two stables, with the white hats and black hats
reversed in each case. Now you've got Republicans cheering for the president and Democrats
cheering for the CIA, for the FBI, and now for a platoon of covert John McCains alleged to be
operating on the inside of Trump's own administration. Everyone's cheering for one aspect of
the US power establishment or another.
If you belonged to a ruling class, obviously your goal would be to ensure your subjects'
continued support for you. In a corporatist oligarchy, the rulers are secret and the subjects don't
know they're ruled, and power is held in place with manipulation and with money. As such a
ruler your goal would be to find a way to manipulate the masses into supporting your agendas,
and, since people are different, you'd need to use different narratives to manipulate them.
You'd have to divide them, tell them different stories, turn them against each other, play them
off one another, suck them in to the tales you are spinning with the theater of enmity and
heroism.
As a result of the New York Times op-ed, if this administration engages in yet another of
its many, many establishment capitulations (let's say by
attacking the Syrian government again ), Trump's supporters won't see it as his fault; it
will be blamed on the deep state insiders in his administration who have been working to thwart
his agendas of peace and harmony. Meanwhile those who see Trump as a heel won't experience any
cognitive dissonance if any of the establishment agendas they support are carried out, because
they can give the credit to the secret hero squad in the White House.
Would a billionaire WWE Hall of Famer and United States President understand the theater of
staged conflict for the advancement of plutocratic interests, and willingly participate in it?
I'm going to say probably.
* * *
The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish
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Patreon or Paypal , or buying my book
Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers .
What is interesting is that Wolffe links the op-ed and publishing Bob Woodward's latest
book: "Woodward has cornered the panicked Trump rats into screeching about all the ways they
prevented
World War Three , or a massive trade war, by ignoring the ranting boss or snatching papers
off his desk."
Notable quotes:
"... Nothing proved, unnamed sources, claims about this, claims about that. Until someone is prepared to step forward and reveal themselves this is a non story. Still, it gives the Trump haters comfort. ..."
"... Personally, I am not surprised or impressed by this White House insider's account. Nothing he or she has said should be a real revelation to anyone who has cast a critical eye on the Trump presidency. And whoever it is, this person is so enamored with tax cuts, deregulation, ramping up military spending and the usual Republican horse shit that he or she does not seem prepared to risk further discrediting the administration by identifying him/herself and resigning publicly. ..."
If you really believe your boss is a threat to the constitution which you've
taken an oath to protect, perhaps you should consider quitting or going public. As in: going on
Capitol Hill to hold a press conference to urge impeachment.
In this regard, and only in this regard, our anonymous whistleblower has handed the crazy
boss a degree of righteous indignation.
"If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist," tweeted the madman in the
attic, "the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at
once!"
Donald, we feel your pain, albeit briefly. Your internal enemies are indeed gutless, and if
you feel better putting that in ALL CAPS, that's fine. Let it out.
But that bit about turning people over to you for national security reasons is kind of the
point here. If you'll allow us to summarize the GUTLESS person's arguments: you are
fundamentally a threat to democracy and national security yourself. You are indeed, as your
lawyers have pointed out repeatedly, your own worst witness.
This much we know from this week's other bombshell in the shape of Bob Woodward's latest
book. Woodward has cornered the panicked Trump rats into screeching about all the ways they
prevented
World War Three , or a massive trade war, by ignoring the ranting boss or snatching papers
off his desk.
... ... ...
Mr or Ms GUTLESS describes Trump's decisions as "half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally
reckless", while chief of staff John Kelly says Trump is "an idiot" living in a place called
"Crazytown". This revelation led to the priceless statement from Kelly where he had to deny
calling the president an idiot.
Somewhere in Texas, former secretary of state Rex Tillerson is swirling a glass of bourbon
muttering that he lost his job for calling Trump a moron.
Second, Trump's staffers are enabling the very horrors they claim to hate, while grandiosely
pretending to be doing the opposite.
Mr or Ms GUTLESS says there were "early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th
amendment" in what he imagines is a clear sign they can distinguish reality from reality
TV.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Trump cabinet: please know that you will not be accepted into
the next edition of Profiles in Courage for your early whispers. If you truly believe the
president is incapacitated, you should perhaps consider raising your voice to at least
conversational level, if you're not inclined to bellow from the mountaintops. Library rules are
inoperative at this point.
Given the weight of evidence, even the most diehard Trump defenders are now conceding the
obvious, by signing up to the GUTLESS gang's self-promotion. Brit Hume, a Fox News veteran, let
the cat out of the bag when he tweeted that it was a "good
thing" they were restraining Trump "from his most reckless impulses".
This is how the pirate ship Trump eventually sinks to the ocean's floor. You can fool some
of Fox News's viewers all of the time, and you can fool all of them some of the time.
But no fool wants to drown with the captain we all know is plain crazy.
It's someone high up that makes policy decisions, brags about everything they have done to
help America despite Cheetos interfering. Why now? Pence wants it known that he is running
the government not useless trump whom has passed nothing. Pence will come out as the author
when Don is removed from office. Which could be nearing since this OPED is likely to expose
him. Maybe he planned it that way.
What's most remarkable to me is how closely the Michael Wolff's White House, Omarosa's
White House, Bob Woodward's Whitehouse, and Anonymous Staffer's White House reflect each
other.
Clearly a massive conspiracy. And one which Trump is helpfully participating in by
constantly saying and doing stuff which accords with the pictures they're all painting.
What's most remarkable to me is how closely the Michael Wolff's White House, Omarosa's White
House, Bob Woodward's Whitehouse, and Anonymous Staffer's White House reflect each other. All
these sources come together to display a rather coherent image of a chaotic White House led
by a man who's not bright enough to realize he's in over his head.
The New York Times attack piece was anonymous. It is therefore completely unverifiable and
could have been written by anyone, including any of the politically biased NYT editorial
team, or by Bob Woodward to publicize his new book. It's junk news.
I'm firmly convinced that when it's all said and done we'll be able to represent his
presidency as an MMO boss fight. This is the bit where everyone concentrates fire on the
glowy spot until the enrage mechanic kicks in. In fact it looks like the mad flailing has
started and now everyone will try not to stand in the AoE as they DPS him down.
Mussolini was in power for twenty years before his functionaries deposed him to keep the
regime intact while removing its newly-a-liability head. Mussolini was the legal (if
abhorrent) premier of a coalition government in a liberal-democratic (both words with a pinch
of salt) regime for his first two years, until winning a parliamentary majority of his own;
indeed, after the leader of the Socialist Party was killed by his supporters, his coalition
partners almost pulled out of government: that's not a totalitarian dictatorship, but what
was then called "pre-fascism", and today we'd call it an 'illiberal democracy'. The
dictatorship was informal (result of a supportive majority) until the constitional reform of
1928 - five years into his government.
Thinking that all will turn out fine because American democracy is under strain but
generally intact, is a dangerous complacency. All interwar autocrats went through a
transition of first governing under the old constitution, slowly undermining opposition, then
installing a new organic law. Perhaps all will turn out well in the US, and Trump will leave
office with the old 'rules of the game' untouched - but that can't be assumed, and we won't
know until after he is gone.
Pepperoni Pizza is absolutely correct. We DON'T know his staff are going behind his back
- we have this anonymous bollocks as the totality of our evidence.
Truckloads of "anonymous bollocks" reported by credible, highly respected journalists with
excellent reasons to protect their sources.
"Anonymous" bollocks" which syncs perfectly with events and pronouncements by the
president himself - including numerous firings of so many of the "best people" he hired.
"Anonymous bollocks" confirmed in evidence/testimony presented publicly and under oath in
court.
Nothing proved, unnamed sources, claims about this, claims about that. Until someone is
prepared to step forward and reveal themselves this is a non story.
Still, it gives the Trump haters comfort.
There is a segment of this country that is willfully ignorant because a con man told them
to be. We really need to ignore this shrinking number of fuck-nuts and just out vote
them.
We live in a democracy. If you choose to use facebook as your only source of news about the
world, it is not because a con man told you to, it is because you are just too plain stupid
to go looking elsewhere.
I'm surprised that no one has compared the author of the anonymous article in the New York
Times with "Deep Throat", who anonymously met Bernstein and Woodward in an underground
parking garage in Washington to spill the beans about Watergate. Deep Throat turned out to be
Mark Felt, a high-ranking official in the FBI who kept working against Nixon under cover and
whose name was revealed only a few years ago.
Personally, I am not surprised or impressed by this White House insider's account. Nothing he
or she has said should be a real revelation to anyone who has cast a critical eye on the
Trump presidency. And whoever it is, this person is so enamored with tax cuts, deregulation,
ramping up military spending and the usual Republican horse shit that he or she does not seem
prepared to risk further discrediting the administration by identifying him/herself and
resigning publicly.
Screw whoever it is, they are obviously no hero to the American people.
Nice post and well put.
I am currently sitting in an office where 30% are blaggers of the highest order. They talk
and kiss ass - but ultimately - deep down - know they cannot do they do not know the job. The
responsibiltiy they have will make you shudder. I have told friends and they are visibly
shaken that this can happen. But I think it is the way of the world at the moment. They dare
not argue with me for full knowledge they will be sent packing, they already have been but on
"minor" non work related items.
"Fake it til you make it" is the slogan they clutch tight to their heart the consequences
however are far far reaching. My only hope is that should any of them leave here - they will
get found out in a week.
Yes the likes of Trump are a reflection of just that.
The mad thing is - I now am of the belief that I could do that job ie President of the US.
That is madness.
to foil the wishes of the elected members of government.
No. Just one member. And that one member isn't a supreme leader. You need to look
elsewhere for those types of leaders - they're usually standing next to Trump while he fawns
over them.
Personally I'm grateful for a bureaucracy that frustrates bad ideas - wherever they
come
from. That's part of their role.
Everything, with the exception of Steve Bannon in Michael Wolf's book, has been anonymous.
These people write things, attribute them to, say, John Kelly, then Kelly says I NEVER SAID
THAT and we're left to believe whom?
If there is genuine resistance inside the White House to Trump- If it is at all like
anybody says- then I would imagine that a genuine top level appointee would go on camera,
throw themselves on their sword, and speak to the American people. Until such a time I
question what is Woodward's agenda? Do I trust Omarosa? Is Michael Wolf credible? What are
their goals? I'm not blind but I want to see more than anonymous. And until then... I don't
believe it.
I agree, I'd hate to defend him either, but you can't help thinking he has a point by
calling this person gutless. Either stand up in public and say it or, if s/he really is
working in the background to save us from Trump's excesses, then surely you're better off
(and the country as a whole) staying there and not alerting him?
It's the New York Times, and no, they certainly haven't been against Trump since his
election.
Their lead White House correspondent, Maggie Haberman, still writes extremely
understanding pieces of Trump. And she's been covering the man for almost 15 years, so one
would think she had the measure of the man long ago.
More importantly, the NYT threw the election for Trump by first exonerating Trump of any
Russian collusion - which was false - and by covering the last-minute Comey statements on the
Clinton emails in the worst negative light possible for the Democratic candidate. The NYT
turned out to be wrong, but the damage was done.
The NYT even tried to put new faces on their opinion staff with close connections to
actual American neo-Nazis (!) and only failed when old tweets came to light.
I'm not quite sure what the NYT is playing at - I guess it's easy to play the devil's
advocate in artsy-fartsy, liberal New York - but they most certainly have not been
against Trump from January 2017 at all.
Trump is not a freedom fighter, he is not your Great White Messiah, he's not an advocate
for blue collar American citizens. Trump is a stupid, vulgar, greedy old fat racist who
conned his way into the White House. There has been a lot of talk in all mediums about his
unsuitability for the office, and his obvious ties to the Kremlin, but there has been no
organized effort to remove him from office, no matter what you might have read on Qanon.
You think the entire population is incapable of thinking about serious issues because there's
some tittle-tattle on twitter? When did that happen? No-one would work because there's always
fluffy kittens on YouTube.
Fascinating to see the tinfoil hat brigade turn out in such numbers to rant and rave about the
"Deep State!" and poor, honest Donald Trump as a freedom fighter who is daily sacrificing
himself for the good people of America.
Why do bullies always pretend to be victims?
As with science, human nature can usually boiled down to the most likely answer, the simple
observable truth. Such as; Donald Trump's entire life is a story of greed, vulgarity and self
promotion to the exclusion of all else. He did not, in his 8th decade, suddenly develop a
desire to serve the American people at his own expense. He is in the White House doing exactly
what he has always done, he is pursuing whatever makes him happiest in the moment with no
regard to consequences, morality or even common sense.
Federal prosecutors have been using a grand jury over the last several months to investigate
former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, reports the
Washington Post , citing two people familiar with the matter.
What's more, the grand
jury has summoned at least two witnesses, and the case is ongoing according to WaPo 's sources.
The presence of the grand jury shows prosecutors are treating the matter seriously,
locking in the accounts of witnesses who might later have to testify at a trial. But such
panels are sometimes used only as investigative tools, and it remains unclear if McCabe will
ultimately be charged. -
Washington Post
McCabe was fired on March 16 after Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz
issued a criminal referral following a months-long probe, which found that McCabe lied four
times, including twice under oath, about authorizing a self-serving leak to the press. Horowitz
found that McCabe " had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor -
including under oath - on multiple occasions. "
Specifically, McCabe was fired for lying about authorizing an F.B.I. spokesman and attorney
to tell Devlin Barrett of the Wall St.
Journal - just days before the 2016 election, that the FBI had not put the brakes on a
separate investigation into the Clinton Foundation, at a time in which McCabe was coming under
fire for his wife taking a $467,500 campaign contribution from Clinton proxy pal, Terry
McAuliffe.
In order to deal with his legal woes, McCabe set up a GoFundMe "legal defense fund" which
stopped accepting donations, after support for the fired bureaucrat took in over half a million
dollars - roughly $100,000 more than his wife's campaign took from McAuliffe as McCabe's office
was investigating Clinton and her infamous charities. Who's lying?
In May , federal investigators from the D.C. U.S. Attorney's office interviewed former FBI
director James Comey as part of an ongoing probe into whether McCabe broke the law when he lied
to federal agents, reports the
Washington Post .
Investigators from the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office recently interviewed former FBI
director James B. Comey as part of a probe into whether his deputy, Andrew McCabe, broke the
law by lying to federal agents -- an indication the office is seriously considering whether
McCabe should be charged with a crime, a person familiar with the matter said. -
Washington Po st
Of particular interest is that Comey and McCabe have given conflicting reports over the
events leading up to McCabe's firing, with
Comey calling his former deputy a liar in an April appearance on The View, where he claimed
to have actually "ordered the [IG] report" which found McCabe guilty.
Comey was asked by host Megan McCain how he thought the public was supposed to have
"confidence" in the FBI amid revelations that McCabe lied about the leak.
" It's not okay. The McCabe case illustrates what an organization committed to the truth
looks like ," Comey said. " I ordered that investigation. "
Comey then appeared to try and frame McCabe as a "good person" despite all the lying.
"Good people lie. I think I'm a good person, where I have lied," Comey said. " I still
believe Andrew McCabe is a good person but the inspector general found he lied , " noting that
there are "severe consequences" within the DOJ for doing so.
Sounds like a palace coup to me: first, news of the forthcoming Woodward book (and excepts);
then-coincidentally-today's "anonymous" and 'Gutless' article in the Times.
As far as I'm concerned, this entire hellish administration is sheer "madness" and a very
clear indication that this country is in its agonizing twilight.
Each and every senior official in this administration is an enabler of this "shithole"
human being and current president, so there is no such thing as bravery here, just covering
one's tail if a coup were to occur.
Not once, as has been mentioned here and elsewhere, has this 'Gutless' wonder decried the
immorality of family separation, employing white racists as policy makers, shredding the
social safety net for millions of this nation's most vulnerable; an outlandish Pentagon
budget and etcetera.
What is solidly on display in this unfolding miasma is a firmly entrenched kleptocracy,
enabled and supported by U.S. corporations and the death of democracy.
The Woodward book seems to me just more kiss and tell stories of the Michael Wolff ilk
(remember him?). The juiciest quotes - Trump being called an idiot by Kelly - is denied by
Kelly himself and most of the others are ex-employees.
A better - more objective - book would
get past the unconventional, apparent chaos of the Whitehouse and perhaps investigate whether
Trumps methods have or will bear fruit.
That perhaps, as David Lynch said, traditional
politicians can't take the country or the world forward - they can't get things done anymore
because they are afraid of political consequences or media backlash. Trump and his ego
doesn't seem to care about that - is that a good thing or a bad thing? Trump has turned
everything on it's head and liberals find themselves allying with establishment politicians
and business groups. It is a fascinating period of political change and time - and better
journalism - will eventually judge Trump more objectively.
'Pence... not a dangerous, mentally ill megalomaniac'
Pence is more dangerous – make that outright terrifying – than Trump. Yes.
Trump is a senile vulgarian oaf – but he doesn't really believe in anything and is
motivated only by his greed and pathological need for self-aggrandizement. He's mentally
incompetent in a very obvious way, which renders him laughably inept at trying to bring his
more odious policy objectives to fruition (in fact, inept at everything, pretty much).
Pence is far more sinister, because he's a dementedly fanatical believer in a
fundamentalist and authoritarian mutation of religion – a crazed zealot. While
sometimes able to imitate the superficial demeanour of a person of sound mind, he is in truth
utterly deranged.
While Trump lies and denies obvious specific facts almost as a reflex, he doesn't really
sustain his warped world view consistently or with conviction that lasts longer than it takes
to play his next round of golf.
Pence vehemently espouses a whole alternative reality based
upon his religious fantasies, and believes he has a mission to impose his delusional ideas in
a punitive and repressive manner on his country's entire population, permanently. He may have
the cunning to be chillingly effective at realising his most ghastly ambitions.
Trump represents a temporary aberration; a collective brain fart. Pence could be the
instigator of a new dark age for the USA
Having seen this type of character assassination visited on Bill and Hillary Clinton,
character assassination before any reported crimes have been proven against them or for that
matter any sexual misdemeanors as president are proven, what exactly is going on here?
I totally disagree with this type of thing even if the person is someone I don't
understand much. The world has come to a dangerous place where digital lynching without
reference to law seems to be the prevailing modus operandi.
A little word of warning. Be careful what you wish for. If Don can be removed prior to the
next election, (and I don't believe that would happen), then Mike Pence takes the reins. He
has just as many crazy notions as his current boss, but is an experienced politician who
knows the ins and outs of Congress. He may get more of the programme through than little Don
can. And that would not be good.
He's done it before. Lots of times.
Example: one of his posts back in April:
"Trump is a genius. Nobody can take him down, the man is a fighter, you punch him and he'll
punch you back 10 times harder. The FBI, Democrats and MSM have tried to take him down since
he decided to run for president, yet he's standing tall and with a 50% approval rating."
There's no point in engaging in discussion with folks like that ...
Welcome to postmodernist politics folks. It will continue to degenerate until, in despair,
people turn toward an orderly system of politics; the Chinese system, the Russian system or
even a coherent religious system. Counsellors will be on hand for those who feel hurt or
upset by the return to authoritarianism -- they will be able to get great treatment in
re-education centres. Just a matter of time before our current system just crumbles from
within.
Yeah they're sucking it direct from Ayn Rand's teat. Bunch of sociopaths. And I think most
political scientists are well aware that citizens united was the death of American democracy
as a representative political system. The illusion of functionality has collapsed under the
weight of corruption. Trump is really just a symptom of that. A giant orange enema of the
state.
LOL. The west is about to collapse. There is no more money to finance the Ponzy Scheme of the
everlasting growth you seem to think is natural. while everyone is distracted in this
dualistic BS, the planet is slowly shutting down her ressources.
The Russia after years of
sanctions have developed an economy that make them less dependant on other countries. So
They will probably less affected by what is coming.
Unless you live in you own bubble, maybe
you noticed that Occidental countries have become empty shells...gutted from their skills at
making stuff. It is all virtual production now...all banking stuff, numbers insurance...most
skilled stuff are either in Germany or in Asia...what is going on?
Trump is a megalomaniac I agree, but he is not dangerous and is not mentally ill.
Mental illness is a real thing and you shouldn't casually trivialize it in this way.
Finally anyone who runs for office as President of the USA is by very definition a pretty
extreme megalomaniac. So you have two points that are not real and/or could be considered erroneous
discrimination and one point that is a prerequisite for any POTUS candidate.
Looking for a reason to impeach him is a ridiculous back to front thing to do and is itself
proof that any impeachment will fail. To impeach someone you must first start with a very
obvious reason.
It's simply not possible to impeach a president because you don't like their politics or
their personality. This whole searching for a reason to impeach is itself evidence that any
impeachment is politically motivated and the very optics of this serve only to strengthen
Trump's own political support in direct opposition.
Trump is President because the DNC was captured by very stupid and deeply corrupt
people.
Many say Mike Pence could have been the one behind the op-ed, because the unidentified author
singled out the late John McCain as "a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our
national dialogue." The word isn't that commonly used. But Pence has used the word with some
regularity. Yet the word could have been a ploy to divert attention from the real author, who
claimed to support many of the GOP policies – "effective deregulation, historic tax
reform, a more robust military and more."
No doubt the current crisis works for Pence: "Given the instability many witnessed, there
were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a
complex process for removing the president." Of course he and the GOP didn't want to
"precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration
in the right direction until -- one way or another -- it's over." But they don't want Trump
to finish his term and hope that he'll soon be gone.
Pepperoni Pizza is absolutely correct. We DON'T know his staff are going behind his back - we
have this anonymous bollocks as the totality of our evidence.
This op-ed is going to absolutely confirm, in the eyes of Trump supporters, all his whines
about being thwarted by the Deep State. It's going to increase his support among the crazies,
and it's also useful for the Republicans who want to ditch him in favour of Mike Pence.
The whole thing stinks to high heaven and for the Democrats or the 'resistance' to see it
as some kind of bonus is insane. Even if you take it at face value it's a disgusting piece of
authoritarian, we-know-best hypocrisy. If you look at its actual effects, the net result is
not likely to benefit the forces of sanity in any way.
The media's complacency about all of this, and their failure to actually report on the
Republican trajectory and the bigger picture, is criminal. Instead we get YET ANOTHER bit of
'oh look the wheels are just about to come off the bus!', and all the while the Republicans
are gerrymandering and purging voter rolls like crazt before the midterms, and of course
refusing to change their unaccountable electronic voting machines and - did you read THIS one
in the news? - blocking a bill which would have audited the election results.
Tl;dr: The US, and by extension the planet via environmental destruction and possibly war
on top, is utterly fucked.
"... Mr anonymous also concedes that the administration has done some good things .. like .. a robust military. Now call me old fashioned, but having a military with twice(three times .. four times) the capability of the rest of the world put together and spending enough yearly to run the whole of Africa .. probably India too, just on a means of killing .. and this even before the US military became .. robust?.. ..."
Mr anonymous also concedes that the administration has done some good things .. like .. a
robust military. Now call me old fashioned, but having a military with twice(three times ..
four times) the capability of the rest of the world put together and spending enough yearly
to run the whole of Africa .. probably India too, just on a means of killing .. and this even
before the US military became .. robust?..
What is wrong with you people .. national security?.. Laughable .. when is your security
ever, ever, ever threatened! And yet people starve, people don't have clean water to drink
..
Perhaps were the US to help lift the basic burdens of millions who have bugger all, then
there wouldn't be so many suposed 'enemies'. I do believe film maker Michael Moore has voiced
this very same thing .. but then, what purpose all those shiny new expensive killing
machines?..
Something is seriously wrong in America .. and it ain't just Trump!
This is a very poor op-ed piece. Simply calling the President "a crazy loon " isn't political
analysis, or at least not the sort of political analysis I would be willing to pay for. Nor
do I think the thesis that certain members of the administration are busy trying to shore up
their reputations in the face of a sinking presidency holds water. Firstly, unless the
current investigations provide incontrovertible evidence that the President was engaged in
criminal activity I don't think there is any change that he will be impeached. Secondly, if
you wanted to protect your reputation surely the thing to do would be to resign and maintain
a dignified silence while you are writing your memoirs. Or if you really were part of a
secret clique protecting the American constitution against a reckless President you would
keep quiet and get on with your important business. It seems to me that this anonymous piece
was either a clumsy attempt to further damage the President or a sophisticated attempt to
galvanise his support base by "proving" that the President is being undermined by unelected
traitors. Or something else completely might be going on. That's why I would like to read a
thoughtful opinion piece by an informed observer.
Sounds like there's a treasonous public servant there, doing their best to subvert the will
of the people. And of course loudly supported by the squealing hard left guardian mob.
Looking at the type of far left fascists crawling out of the woodwork, I would say
Trump is provoking utter derangement in all the right people.
"the corrupt metropolitan elites have swindled them again"
-Who appointed these 'corrupt metropolitan elites' if it was not Trump himself? Who are these
people-Betsy DeVos, Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin- quite apart from Jeff Sessions and the now
disgraced Michael Flynn? Trump appointed them, they weren't forced on him by the "corrupt
metropolitan elites". Is Trump to be given a free pass for his own mistakes?
What many commentators here seem to fail to recognise, because of their political bias I
suppose, is that there is a ground swell of dissatisfaction with the political consensus that
has seen the working class and lower middle class disenfranchised or at least their perceived
interests ignored. As a result, populist ideologies, as espoused by Steven Bannon, and
others, and exemplified by leaders like Donald Trump have thrown away the rule book with all
its aims to support the extremely wealthy and have reached out to those that want jobs before
green policies, law and order before gender diversity programs and so on.
I doubt that many of the readers here will receive the message but we are witnessing a
revolution that I see as significant as the rise of the sans-culottes in the early part of
the French Revolution. That didn't end well for the sans-culottes or their aims but we can
hardly blame them for trying. Today the retrenched car worker in the US can hardly be blamed
for being unhappy that the CEO of a car company receives a huge pay rise and bail outs from
the government and similar stories in other areas.
Vive la revolution.
Some of this stuff is clearly nonsense. Example: the insider claimed Trump is an admirer of
dictators:
"In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators,
such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and
displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded
nations."
And yet the forthcoming Bob Woodward book claims Trump told his defence secretary he
wanted to kill Assad:
Donald Trump ordered his defence secretary to assassinate Syria's president Bashar
al-Assad and "kill the f****** lot of them" in the leader's regime, in the wake of a chemical
attack against civilians, according to a new book.
Defence secretary James Mattis is said to have told the president during a phone call he
would "get right on it" before hanging up the phone and instead telling an aide: "We're not
going to do any of that. We're going to be much more measured." In the wake of the chemical
attack in April 2017, the president's national security team developed options that included
the more conventional airstrike that Mr Trump eventually ordered.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The anti-Trump lot can't have it both ways. He can't be a fan of dictators but also want to
kill them! It's clear there is lying or exaggeration on both sides. The people out to impeach
Trump (or sell books!) will lie too.
he reversed the war in afghanistan? drones? did he prosecute bankers? does he favor
increasing offshore drilling? now it looks like he's renegotiating clinton's nafta and
pushing for some version of obama's trade treaties. trump is the invading python, and the
democrats and establishment republicans are the alligators; whichever wins, the small furry
animals get eaten. i just hope they don't start world war 3 while they're settling
things--trump looks to be doubling down on obama's syria policy too, and support of the
current ukrainian government.
'Fraid so. Every new generation of neocons regurgitates the same discredited lies from the
previous generation, and suckers believe them all over again. Even the title "neocon" or
"neoliberal" is a lie: there's nothing new about them.
Trump was not only openly attacked during the nomination process, the Republican Party
nominee who was selected to fight Obama in 2012 -Mitt Romney- delivered a savage attack in
which he described Trump as a con-man and a chronic liar -yet the same people who could,
there and then have told Trump to get lost backed him. Trump has been attacked from the start
and every time and all of the time said to his attackers: so what? I dare you to remove me
from the nomination, I dare you to remove me from the Office of President. This is a man who
is challenging the governance of the US in a manner no other President has done before, and
so far, he is still winning. That is the scary part.
Trump is threatening Deep State corruption by placing his own family members in positions of
power and profiting from charging the nation for his and his staff's repeated use of Trump
Tower and Mar-a-Lago? That's a bizarre way of draining the swamp.
The US political system has many flaws, not least that the President can be elected on an
apparent electoral college landslide while losing the popular vote. But then again no
country's political system is perfect, human nature being what it is.
However, Trump is clearly not up to the job. Not by intellect, understanding of world
affairs, honesty, temperament, respect for the law, nor constitution. The list goes on
frankly.
The system has gone bad. Trump hasn't "drained the swamp", he's made it far deeper. That
said, "the system" such as it is should work in the hands of honest men and women of
integrity. The trouble is they're few and far between in the GOP as it wilfully ignores
issues in which they would be clamouring for a Democrat president to be impeached.
I sincerely hope the GOP get a thrashing in the mid-terms which may, just may, give them
pause for thought. A Democrat Congress might also actually hold Trump to account. The only
danger there is that he lashes out with even less self control.
Dangerous times.
This is a classic color revolutions trick, usually called "Diplomats letter". Used many times
in many color revolutions worldwide. In EuroMaydan it preceded "sniper massacre".
Notable quotes:
"... I think he has to do it ASAP because the NYT editorial looks like an act of desperation and I expect Mueller to pile on soon, so beat them to the punch and put them on their heels for a change. No doubt, this is hardball. ..."
Now that ridiculously juvenile NYT's "op-ed" starts to make sense...they were given a
heads up on the GJ proceedings against this "stellar public servant" and wanted to knock it
off the front page.
What's in my head is declassifying a bunch of nasty shit.
Either way, if NYT made up fake news pretending to be a senior white house official, OR,
there really is somebody in his inner circle anonymously stabbing POTUS in the back, it is
very bad news and there should be serious hell to pay. I do not like nor trust a single one
of his appointees so I'm guessing it's somebody. It would be suicide for NYT getting caught
making this all up, that would be risky business IMO.
This isn't a complicated timeline of he said, she said over this piss dossier that glosses
people's eyes over. This is very simple stuff people can understand and Trump could make a
very rational case that the swamp is so damn deep he can't even put together a staff without
it being infiltrated and say "here look" and declassify shit that would encompass ALL the
recent scandals and ensnare the fake news experts colluding to make this happen.
That would light a big fire in DC that would be very hard to put out.
Well personally I don't believe for one second that the "op-ed" was anything other than
Fake Nuuuz.
As far as ordering the release/declassification of everything the DoJ & FBI has on the
Hillary Dossier I believe it's getting close but it's a hardball kind of swamp, it would be
before the midterms for maximum effect I would think.
I think he has to do it ASAP because the NYT editorial looks like an act of desperation
and I expect Mueller to pile on soon, so beat them to the punch and put them on their heels
for a change. No doubt, this is hardball.
As was no doubt their intent, the mainstream media has succeeded in overshadowing the Kavanaugh
confirmation hearing with a flurry of stories about a mutiny allegedly brewing inside the West Wing
that has set
more than a
few
tongues
wagging
about the
possibility of Trump's cabinet invoking the 25th amendment
(an eventuality that was once reportedly discussed by former White House Chief Strategist
Steve Bannon
). But while White House officials have already vehemently denied the quotes
gathered by Bob Woodward
in the strategically leaked (to his own newspaper) excerpts from the
Watergate reporter's upcoming book, speculation is shifting to
who might be the mystery author
of a scathing NYT op-ed reportedly penned by a "senior
administration official" that portrays Trump as unfit for office.
Fortunately for Trump, several voices of moderation have come forward to condemn the attacks
(amid speculation that the Times' "senior" source may not be so senior after all).
But this
incipient backlash didn't deter Axios (a media org that, like the Times, is notoriously critical of
Trump) from piling on with a story about President Trump's intensifying distrust of those in his
inner circle.
Trump, Axios claims, is "deeply suspicious of much of the government he
oversees" from federal agency grunts all the way up to those privileged few with unfettered access
to the Oval Office. The piece even goes so far as to quote yet another anonymous "senior
administration official" as saying that "a lot of us are wishing we'd been the writer."
"I find the reaction to the NYT op-ed fascinating - that people seem so shocked that there is
a resistance from the inside," one senior official said.
"A lot of us [were] wishing
we'd been the writer, I suspect ... I hope he [Trump] knows - maybe he does? - that there are
dozens and dozens of us."
And in case you couldn't figure out why this is important, allow
Axios
to elaborate:
Why it matters:
Several senior White House officials have described their
roles to us as saving America and the world from this president.
A good number of current White House officials have privately admitted to us they consider
Trump unstable, and at times dangerously slow.
But the really deep concern and contempt, from our experience, has been at the agencies -- and
particularly in the foreign policy arena.
In what was perhaps the most bombastic claim included in the piece, Trump reportedly once
carried around with him a list of suspected leakers.
"The snakes are everywhere but we're
getting rid of them,"
he reportedly told
Axios.
For some time last year,
Trump even carried with him a handwritten list of people
suspected to be leakers undermining his agenda.
"He would basically be like, 'We've gotta get rid of them.
The snakes are everywhere
but we're getting rid of them,'"
said a source close to Trump.
Trump would often ask staff whom they thought could be trusted.
He often
asks the people who work for him what they think about their colleagues, which can be not only
be uncomfortable but confusing to Trump: Rival staffers shoot at each other and Trump is left
not knowing who to believe.
And just in case you haven't read enough about Trump's purported obsession with "snakes" -
here's some more.
"When he was super frustrated about the leaks, he would rail about the 'snakes' in
the White House,"
said a source who has discussed administration leakers with the
president.
"Especially early on, when we would be in Roosevelt Room meetings,
he would sit down
at the table, and get to talking, then turn around to see who was sitting along the walls behind
him."
"One day, after one of those meetings, he said, 'Everything that just happened is going to
leak. I don't know any of those people in the room.' ... He was very paranoid about this."
All of this reinforces the idea that Trump truly believes that there is an organized "deep
state" conspiracy to take him down.
Of course, what Axios neglects to say,
is that he's
not wrong.
"Trump flopped as an owner of a professional football
team, effectively killing not only his own franchise but
the league as a whole... He bankrupted his casinos five
times over the course of nearly 20 years. His eponymous
airline existed for less than three years and ended up
almost a quarter of a billion dollars in debt. And he has
slapped his surname on a practically never-ending
sequence of duds and scams (Trump Ice bottled water,
Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks,
Trump
magazine, Trump
Mortgage, Trump University -- for which he settled a
class-action fraud lawsuit earlier this year for $25
million)."
And Kruse didn't even mention The Donald's sixth
bankruptcy, the one he filed for the debt-ridden Plaza Hotel
in 1992.
So, people, what do you think Trump, the
bankrupter-in-chief, is gonna do to the good old US of A?
That's one of my major hopes for this presidency. That
Trump can get us through the coming bankruptcy without
a large scale war/depression breaking out.
"one senior
official said"... oh really, why should I believe
that? When something is obvious BS, repeating it
just makes you look foolish, it doesn't make it
true, Hitlers propaganda play book is dated and no
longer functions in the age of the internet. At
least we know that Operation Mocking Bird is alive
and well.
This just shows us how they keep recycling
the same shit bureaucrat's over and over
again and they become an animal that lives
within and outside of whomever is POTUS.
Perhaps it's time to burn the whole thing
down and start over again.....
We the People are not so
schooled in the finer points.
We have rope and can see
treason with our own eyes, and
figure to do our part, be
civic minded for the greater
good and all.
If he has the power to do it, the time is
right to declassify some major bombs on the
swamp.
It sounds sensational but it's also
a step in the right direction to move the
capital out of DC. It really is the nerve
center of raunch, deceit, fraud and an
irredeemable shit hole.
Agreed, but moving won't help. The problem
is the concentration of money and power.
You could move the capitol every day and
the swamp would follow like remoras follow
a shark
The only way to deal with the Debt, is to grow the
economy and shrink it on a relative basis. So much
of the past debt was incurred on non-productive
expenditures that yield no returns.
Trump knows
that. Amazing what he gets done with all the
snipers outside and all the cockroaches inside. A
lesser man would have said fuck it a long time ago.
Its as if they think the people actually support
the Deep State Establishment and don't loath them.
Please tell me how I should really love John McCain
again now that he's dead.
"Trump, Axios claims, is
'deeply suspicious of much of the government
he oversees'
"
Again, if people believed the corporate
media Trump wouldn't be president right now,
HIllary would be, so that fight is pretty
much over.
Also, just because you are paranoid and
think they are all out to get you doesn't
mean it isn't true!. Of course the deep
state hates Trump. It's all just a circus
and a show until it's not. I really don't
know what Trump is waiting for. Call Bill
Binney in and get your heads together and
take down all the deep state.
PUT THEM ALL IN PRISON.
Yes, it will wipe out the whole government
as we know it.... but that is why Trump was
elected in the first place.
a very big part. rub is, i don't think he
knew. i think wray came in on a "if you
don't appoint him, the FIB is going to be
without a director" sort of threat. i think
sessions totally ass raped trump.
as for the remainder of his
administration, if you turn the white house
into goldman south, what exactly do you
expect for an economic plan.
as for the pre-election dumbfucks saying
trump is an executive, he will appoint good
people, and let them do their jobs. i
haven't seen one good appointment yet out of
trump. out of all of his appointments, scott
pruitt was the best and trump should have
backed him up, but didn't. he was sacrificed
to the environmentalists.
holee shit!!!!!
have i got an off topic comment to make.
i clicked on the globalintelhub link at
the top of the page about the possible source
of the op-ed.
what i found about one fourth of the way
into the article stopped me dead in my
tracks. this is the comment that did it:
But what is news in this disclosure
are the
newly
released emails
between Mark Mazzetti,
the New York Times's national security and
intelligence reporter, and CIA spokeswoman
Marie Harf.
you see it? do you see it? MARIE
HARF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
does that name ring a bell? it damn well
should. she was a long time spokeshole in
the HNIC state department. she is the one
who uttered the phrase:
We need in the medium to longer term
to go after the root causes that leads people
to join these groups, whether it's a lack of
opportunity for jobs,
jobs for jihadists!!!! and this whore
still has a job in gov't? as a CIA
spokeshole? RUFKM
my fucking gawd get rid of these fucking
people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So if they go 25th Amendment on him will
Trump supporters chimp out or wait for the
proof to be presented and evaluate if his
staff have a vaild point?
Edit: I mostly
agree with your post and thats why I have
been so critical. What I saw early on, and
since, has been one big clusterfuck of
"you keep making decisions that in no way
reflect a person who is as awesome as you
promised."
Figures. When you are blocked from pillaging foreign
nations, you of course turn to the idea of bankruptcy.
You people just don't seem to understand that you are
not kings and queens, but common folk and you should
pay your debts, and tighten your belts. It would be
relatively short term pain for long term gain.
That,
more than anything else, speaks to the absence of any
character in the American make up.
I'll not believe it until Woof Shitzer and/or
Rachel Madcow confirm these rumors.
Radical Left
Plagiarist Farheed Diarrhea has evidently been
preoccupied by being dumped by his wife after 21
years of hardship so we won't be hearing his inane
comments bashing Trump for awhile.
Zakaria was suspended for a week in August
2012 while Time and CNN investigated an allegation
of plagiarism
[46]
involving an August 20 column on gun control with
similarities to a New Yorker article by
Jill Lepore
. In a statement Zakaria apologized,
saying that he had made "a terrible mistake."
Go back to Chinese Tire and buy some "made in
Canada" crap. Tell me again how the "Canadians"
co-opted the British in 1812 . Watch some more
Franz Kafka on the CBC, the Chinese Broadcasting
Corporation and explain to the CAW in southern
Ontario how Justine Twinklesocks traded auto worker
jobs for the Quebec Milk Quota.
There are
Canadians with character, but you ain't one of
them.
The US went into receivership in 1933, so I guess
"make it bankruptier?"
I have no problem with this,
since it's going to be interesting to see how the
debtors (The US and its employees) are going to pay
the creditors (that would be the Citizens) back for
the $17 trillion they owe us.
Going to have to be one helluva bake sale.
But my guess is they will just throw another woar
and kill off another generation of Creditors like they
have done for the past century. (And collect the
insurance premiums, since Social Security Insurance
pays out to the primary beneficiary first..and that
would be...The US GOv).
What? You thought Social Security was for YOUR
benefit?! Hahah, silly wabbits.
I assumed it was an effort at creating some sort of record of resistance. Does anybody
really believe Paul Ryan is retiring from the 3rd most powerful position in the US Government
to "spend more time with family"? The rats are fleeing a sinking ship. Even if Trump serves
out a full four years, anybody too closely tied to this stupid shit-storm of an
Administration will be tarred in public eyes. But, American voters are notoriously forgetful,
and getting out before the ship goes down will probably work.
Funny shit. "the mole" wrote an Op/Ed piece, that contains no information of a sensitive
nature. S/he wrote of their own personal observations working in the White House. There is
nothing illegal in that.
I get that you might not have any functional understanding of
US law, but it is deeply disturbing that the President of the United States is calling for
the arrest of a citizen exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights.
The op-ed piece being anonymous makes me wonder if Mr Trump himself put someone up to do it.
What better way of stirring up the base ahead of the mid-terms than talk of undemocratic
factions within the administration and fifth columnists to be rooted out for the cause. It
also offers the president another cudgel against the press that will appeal to his core
constituencies.
Even if Mr Trump isn't capable of coming up with such a scheme, there are certainly those
around him who are.
The statements in the opinion piece are horribly anti-pluralist anti-democratic in
themselves. The writer's nationalist appeal to 'American' unity at the end is based on
everyone uniting around US Republican principles of neo-liberalism, inequality and
militarism. S/he would use a false unity against Trump to impose the worst kind of
conservative fundamentalism and eliminate anything more progressive from the political
spectrum.
Maybe this is mainstream neo-liberal thinking but it's the end of a plural, democratic
state. There would be no more room to discuss inequality, climate change, race or gender
discrimination or new welfare provisions. Just an offer of false unity around hard neoliberal
principles. I guess it's a very similar game to Brexit, which is a choice between
life-threatening asset striping of the UK or May's 'hard right soft Brexit' super
Thatcherism.
Is Vice President Mike Pence trying to pull off a "House of Cards"-style scheme to undermine Trump
and increase his own chances of assuming the presidency?
Apparently, more than a few journalists
believe that might be the case. According to the Huffington Post, some believe that
the use
of a single word - "lodestar" - is a crucial tell
pointing toward Pence as the op-ed's
author. During the op-ed's final paragraphs the mystery author refers to John McCain as "a lodestar
for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue."
Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter.
All Americans should
heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our
shared values and love of this great nation.
We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example - a
lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue.
Mr. Trump may
fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.
There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put
country first.
But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above
politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one:
Americans.
Pence has, of course, categorically denied these allegations and affirmed his loyalty to the
president.
Still, one video circulating on twitter shows Pence using the word in eight different speeches
dating back to 2001, when he was a Congressman from Indiana.
At the very least, there's some evidence to suggest that the author is a man. As Bloomberg's
Jennifer Jacobs pointed out yesterday, the Times' official Twitter feed may have inadvertently
revealed their gender.
For those who aren't familiar with the word, Merriam-Webster defines "lodestar" as
"a
star that leads or guides"
or a person who
"serves as an inspiration, model, or
guide."
To be sure, the Pence theory isn't without its holes. Trump staffers have said previously that
they pay attention to the idioms employed by others as a defense mechanism when speaking to the
press under the guise of anonymity.
"To cover my tracks, I usually pay attention to other staffers' idioms and use that in
my background quotes.
That throws the scent off me," one White House official told
Axios
.
But online betting markets have put Pence at the top of the list of suspects, with MyBookie
currently
reflecting 2-to-3 odds
on Pence as the culprit, per the
New
York Post
. The favorite right now, at 1-3 odds, is "the field" - i.e. someone not listed among
the 18 most likely senior admin officials, according to the Costa-Rica-based betting operation.
Still, at first brush, the theory makes a degree of sense:
As first in line for the
throne, Pence undoubtedly has the most to gain from the collapse of the Trump presidency.
But it's equally likely that a more junior official could've intentionally included these cues to
sow discord in the ranks.
As the Trump administration has proved time and time again, anything is possible in the West
Wing.
not sure pence is entirely a team member ... he has been told
to wait for more ... being around the trump tower, you can see
why pence would believe it besides the fact that he must have
been talking to real players that he knows they are real
players ...
having said all that, 100% this is coordinated ... it is no
coincidence it comes out at the same time with Bob Woodwards
book, Theresa May verdict on assailant of the failed attempt to
kill in salisbury soil, big offensive in Idlib (where trimp is
doing a 180 degrees and being a team member again ... to name
just a few ... it is the end of the line ... that economist
magazine "prediction" from 1988 on 30 years later comes to mind
... time for the US to come down hard i suppose ...
No way is the op-ed writer VP Pence. It
doesn't have his boring Midwestern tone.
It seems much more likely that the
letterbomb was written by a group --
not
in
the administration.
Rather, a
group of Deep State crybabies who aren't
getting their way and have devised this
lame, transparent effort akin to
Valley girls passing notes in homeroom ...
"like, I mean, um, whatever" ... because
they're too dumb to do anything else. And
the NYTimes ate it up.
But he IS a moron. All the war mongering pharisees are
morons.
Pence is a pro war psychopath who is very much
disconnected from his tortured soul and is a simple
biological robot devoid of higher levels of thought.
Pence is literally a moron. Only humans have souls and
access to imagination, inspiration, intuition, empathy:
pharisees DO NOT. They are all robotic machines: morons.
There being so many convoluted theories floating around,
here's mine. Trump, Pence and friends arranged this whole
editorial/reaction incident. As you point out, many other
stories were suddenly demoted to by-the-way status. This
gives Trump another reason to urge his supporters to be
enraged. It also could provide courage for purges within the
administration, someqthing it has long needed. Diverse
elements of the MSM are even attacking each other.
Ultimately, ask yourselves: cui bono? Who benefits?
It is
all too confusing. I'm getting a headache. Back to munching
on dark chocolate and watching cat videos.
Millions were beginning to think that that Trump wasn't
really leading the charge against the NWO and that he was
really
part of the NWO himself
--just like the NYT and the
person who wrote the op-ed, but by attacking Trump, these
NWO stooges
proved
Trump is leading the charge
against the NWO, and
proved
(after the
Sarah Jeong scandal
) to just as many others that the
NYT really is the most trustworthy institution in America
... just when both the NYT and Trump needed some street
cred the most ... and there's no way we are getting
played ... and there's no way this could be just theater
... or a psyop ... oh wait ...
Wasn't there a ZH article a few weeks ago about an algorithm that
could predict the author of a text, to a very high 90's percentile,
based on speech patterns?
I say we try it out and root out this
"saboteur".
However, I think we'd find that they are a fake.
Something about it feels contrived, why would a deep spate
functionary expose the apparatus that controls power regardless of
who is elected? What is the first rule of Fight Club?
I have a suspicion it is a plant, in an effort to convince the
masses that the deep state does exist. They are preaching to the
choir here at ZH, but 98% of the country has absolutely no idea what
the fuck Deep State even means. This makes it real for the common
man, In that respect, I guess it's a good thing. It just feels fake
though.
This whole year is playing out like the script from "House of Cards."
Now the MSM is calling for Trump to be removed as "unfit to hold
office." Liberals have hated Donald Trump since he first appeared on the
scene oil the 1970s as a loudmouth trust fund developer. They fought
every project he undertook and mocked him. Famously, "Spy" Magazine
belittled him as a "short-fingered vulgarian and Queens-born casino
operator" every time they mentioned his name, which was often. The
magazine's editor, Graydon Carter, despised Trump. Trump predicted the
magazine would fail within a year. So Carter put a calendar in the back
of the magazine, tearing off the days to prove Trump wrong. Alas, Trump
was right, and Spy shuttered before the year was out. It was a shame,
because the magazine was terrific and funny, but it had that typical
liberal New York Ivy League snottiness and superiority.
As
embarrassing as Trump may be, and he is certainly that, he is not
insane, nor unable to do the job. You may hate the job he is doing, but
this country has laws. If Mueller proves Trump committed real crimes
that mandate his indictment and removal, then so be it. But until then,
just because he runs a chaotic ship doesn't mean he can simply be taken
out.
The op-ed represents a shocking critique of Trump and is without precedent in modern
American history. Former CIA Director
John Brennan , who has sparred fiercely with the president, called the op-ed "active
insubordination born out of loyalty to the country, not to Donald Trump".
"This is not sustainable to have an executive branch where individuals are not following the
orders of the chief executive," Brennan told NBC's "Today" show. "I do think things will get
worse before they get better. I don't know how Donald Trump is going to react to this. A
wounded lion is a very dangerous animal, and I think Donald Trump is wounded."
In it, the anonymous author describes Trump as amoral, "anti-trade and anti-democratic" and
prone to making "half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions".
The writer claims aides had explored the possibility of removing Trump from office via
the 25th amendment , a complex constitutional mechanism to allow for the replacement of a
president who is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office", but had decided
against it.
An op-ed written in the New York Times by an anonymous "senior official in the Trump
administration" has drawn harsh rebuke from both sides of the aisle and beyond - after everyone
from President Trump to Glenn Greenwald to the
Los Angeles Times
chimed in with various
criticisms.
The author, who claims to be actively working against Trump in collusion with other
senior officials in what they call a "resistance inside the Trump administration," has now been
labeled everything from a coward, to treasonous, to nonexistent.
Trump, as expected,
lashed out
at the "failing" New York Times - before questioning whether the the mystery
official really exists, and that if they do, the New York Times should reveal the author's identity
as a matter of national security.
Trump supporters, also as expected, slammed the op-ed as either pure fiction or treason - a
suggestion Trump made earlier Wednesday.
What we don't imagine the anonymous author or the
Times
saw coming was the onslaught of
criticism coming from the center and left - those who stand to benefit the most from Trump's fall
from grace, or at least probably wouldn't mind it.
In an op-ed which appeared hours after the
NYT
piece, Jessica Roy of
the
Los
Angeles Times
writes: "
No, anonymous Trump official, you're not 'part of
the resistance.' You're a coward
" for not going
far enough
to stop Trump and in
fact enabling him.
If they really believe there's a need to subvert the president to protect the country,
they should be getting this person out of the White House. But they're too cowardly and
afraid of the possible implications
. They hand-wave the notion thusly:
"Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of
invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But
no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis."
How is it that utilizing the 25th Amendment of the Constitution would cause a crisis,
but admitting to subverting a democratically elected leader wouldn't?
...
If you're reading this, senior White House official, know this: You are not resisting
Donald Trump. You are enabling him for your own benefit. That doesn't make you an unsung hero.
It makes you a coward. -
LA
Times
Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald - the Pulitzer Prize Winning co-founder of
The Intercept,
also
called the author of the op-ed
a "coward" whose ideological issues "voters didn't ratify."
Greenwald continues; "The irony in the op-ed from the NYT's anonymous WH coward is glaring and
massive:
s/he accuses Trump of being "anti-democratic" while boasting of membership in an
unelected cabal that covertly imposes their own ideology with zero democratic accountability,
mandate or transparency.
"
So who is the "coward" in the White House?
While the author remains anonymous, there are a couple of clues in the case. For starters,
Bloomberg
White
House reporter Jennifer Jacobs points out that the
New York Times
revealed that a man
wrote the op-ed, which rules out Kellyanne Conway, Nikki Haley, Ivanka and Melania (the latter two
being
CNN's
suggestions
).
A second clue comes from the language used in the op-ed, and in particular "
Lodestar
"
- a rare word used by Mike Pence in at least one speech. Then again, someone trying to make one
think it's pence would also use that word (which was oddly Merriam-Webster's
word of the day
last
Tuesday).
A pence-theory hashtag has already emerged to support this theory;
#VeepThroat
Given the Op-Ed's praise of the late Senator John McCain, never-Trumper and Iraq War
sabre-rattler Bill Kristol tweeted that it was Kevin Hassett, the Chairman of the Council of
Economic Advisers. Of course, Kristol and whoever wrote the op-ed are ideologically aligned, so one
might question why he would voluntarily work against this person.
So while we don't know who wrote the op-ed, it appears to be backfiring spectacularly on its
author(s) amid wild theories and harsh rebuke from all sides of the aisle.
We're sure Carlos Slim - the largest owner of the
New York Times
and once the richest
man on earth, is having a good laugh at Trump's expense either way... for now.
Perhaps Trump can push the "fabrication" angle longer than NYT can retain the moral high ground
- especially after they hired, then refused to fire,
Sarah Jeong
- a new addition to the NYT editorial board who was revealed in old tweets to be an
openly bigoted, with a particularly deep hatred of "old white men."
The
New York Times
stood by Jeong - claiming she was simply responding to people
harassing her for being an Asian lesbian - only to have their absurd theory shredded within hours
.
Jeong
in fact has a multi-year history of unprovoked and random comments expressing hatred towards white
men.
And now she's right on the front lines of perhaps the greatest attempt to smear Trump yet. Not
exactly a good look for the
Times
at a time when MSM credibility has already taken a hit.
How many
broke bread
with the Clinton campaign leading up to the 2016 election?
Vote up!
158
Vote down!
2
Coup d'etat, in every sense of the word.......Constitution? What's that?
Roaches aren't even scurrying when you turn the lights on anymore. Trying to overthrow an elected standing government is the very definition of
treason.
That is an interesting angle. . . Trump creating his
own narratives by using agents to leak to the
blatently bias NYT. Jeebus, but the trouble that
strategy could cause. Millions out there are wound
tight across Amerika. Wouldnt take much of a spark to
get a good fire going. .
These are all staged irrelevances designed to distract
people...the few remaining people who are not addicted to
their screens. Remember - all media, all members of both
parties, all white house employees and especially Trump
work for the same cabal. No one can step out of line and
stay alive. The cabal knows everything.
If people yell loud and often enough, many will
actually forget that they are now knee deep in
ice-cold saltwater.
#Titanic
Let's focus on the important things, like a
scripted reality show fight, versus, idk, the fact
that we are again on the precipice of yet another
meltdown, only this time the Fed is fucked cause
nobody can borrow anymore $$, interest rates are still
way too low, and we are on our way to a Maunder
Minimum.
I could go on and on with REAL issues, but it seems
we just don't talk about them anymore. No need to see
how medical is bankrupting us, pensions are fucked,
"students" are quickly on their way to being
skullfucked with no way out.
We are setup for a calamity that will be 10x worse
than 2008, and the only thing I hear is the ever
increasing volume of "Everything is Awesome."
My dear, you don't really quite realize what you have
given the Trump Administration.
What the Times have
done is assured their readers that there is a counter
coup currently underway to bring down this sitting
President.
Back up and let that reality marinate.
Understand that now any failings or short comings that
come out of this administration can be laid at the feet
of the saboteurs working to bring down the government.
So if the economy rolls over and dies, it's the
saboteur's fault. If gas prices spike, it's the
senator's fault. If a nuke goes off in an American city,
it's the saboteur's fault. If the President is
impeached, it is the saboteur's fault. Any opposition to
this President from this point on is the result of a
concerted effort on the part of a gang of saboteurs to
bring down the government.
Merry Christmas, you have
just added the raison d'eter for a purge of all Obama
appointees in every executive agency.
President Trump thought that he could 'go along
to get along'. He is a slow learner. Taking credit
for a ginormous stock market bubble created by
cheap credit and buybacks, no real effort to build
a wall, massive tax cuts to
millionaires/billionaires, kissing Israel's ass,
the list goes on and on. The man hasn't done much
of anything to really help the middle class. And,
he hasn't done enough to even protect himself. The
op-ed is a hit piece. So what. But, Trump better
get up to speed sooner rather than later.
Are you really this stupid? The Trump administration
is owned by the banksters, every bit as much as the
'saboteur'. You really don't understand the game at
all.
CIA hit piece to discredit Trump and
sow division in the cabinet shortly before midterms.
If Trump fires half of his cabinet, or locks everyone down
hunting for the mole - "Seee?! We told you he was tyrannical!"
If he doesn't react or address it, it hangs out there,
continuing to make everyone believe he's an unstable bumbling
moron. And as he's stated previously, he's a "very stable
genius".
Either way, what may have been a clever ploy is a ham-fisted
CIA plot that misjudged it's audience (like they've never done
THAT before) and will continue to backfire. People are so sick
of the virtue signalling horseshit (Nike and Kuntpaernik come
to mind) that it's almost a guaranteed backfire when you try to
do it.
Imagine for a moment that you win the lottery and are appointed the
director of the CIA. Do you have any idea what the CIA does? Do you have
any inkling beyond what you have read in the media and the alternate media
of what agendas are afoot? Do you have any idea of what's at stake? Do
you have a clue about who you can trust? Are the lower echelons for you or
against you? Who do you talk to just to find out what is going on? Once
you are informed can you trust the information? Are the options you are
offered real options or are the serving someone's private agenda?
Now
imagine that you are President of the United States and half the electorate
wants to remove you from office. Who do you tap on the shoulder to
initiate the purge? How do you know they won't purge you?
I never said I was smart but I worked for one of the most corrupt
bureaucracies in the world for about a decade, and I learned a few
things about political tools and how to manipulate the narrative. What
the Times has done is publicly assert that there are saboteurs working
in the Trump administration who are actively attempting to bring down
this President. The Resistance i.e. the Democratic Party through its
mouth piece has openly stated that they are participating in an ongoing
coup to bring down the government. Do you not realize what kind of club
that has just been handed to Trump to beat down his opposition? Any
opposition is now aiding and abetting the attempted coup.
As for
government, the banks lent the money to purchase it in 1913. The banks
running the show is old news.
CIA hit piece to discredit Trump and sow division
in the cabinet shortly before midterms.
If Trump fires half of his cabinet, or locks everyone down hunting for
the mole - "Seee?! We told you he was tyrannical!" If he doesn't react or
address it, it hangs out there, continuing to make everyone believe he's an
unstable bumbling moron. And as he's stated previously, he's a "very stable
genius".
Either way, what may have been a clever ploy is a ham-fisted CIA plot
that misjudged it's audience (like they've never done THAT before) and will
continue to backfire. People are so sick of the virtue signalling horseshit
(Nike and Kuntpaernik come to mind) that it's almost a guaranteed backfire
when you try to do it.
syria had a legitimately elected government too, and look what's gone on
for the last seven years there.
you think these fuckers at CIA see any
difference between what they are able to do there and here in the US?
over there they drop pallets of weapons from the sky. over here they
drop what passes for information from their mockingbird operations.
same difference.
most america haters here at ZH are laughing because they think this
is the US getting their comeuppance. the comeuppance we are getting is
for challenging those who have been doing this to others for all these
years. it's not other nations turning around and doing this to the US.
it is those who have done this to others, are now doing it to the
citizens of the US. those america haters better hope we citizens win,
if not, that hell trump said would be unleashed on iran, will be
unleashed on the world. and all the hyperweapons invented or dreamed of
will not be able to stop it.
Government , its representatives and its agencies are unscrupulous
and immoral beyond the imagination of a normal person.
Northwoods,
Iraq WMD, Vietnam chemical weapon campaign, The Lusitania, Grenada,
Tonkin, kennedy assassinations.
The amazing thing is how people swallow all that and trot off to
the polls and never ask for any murderous corrupt bastard to be held
to account.
Meanwhile we lost the free press so now no lone voice questions
the moves of the real powers. The waste their voice on partisan
bickering over people who are only puppets leaving real power to play
its global killing games un remarked.
The op-ed is nauseating because it tells us the truth why they do it: Because conservatives got
their tax cuts, deregulation and all the other conservative politics that gamble with people's
lives. It's disgusting.
Notable quotes:
"... Pirate ships were in reality the most egalitarian institutions that existed in the 17th century. Their articles laid out that both the captain and quartermaster (who divided the spoils) served at the pleasure of their crew, and that the entire crew had rights to a fair portion of the proceeds. ..."
"... On a real pirate ship, Captain Trump would have lost his job long ago and been abandoned on some tiny island with a single shot in his pistol. ..."
I am outraged at describing Trump's administration as a "pirate ship"!
Pirate ships were in
reality the most egalitarian institutions that existed in the 17th century. Their articles
laid out that both the captain and quartermaster (who divided the spoils) served at the
pleasure of their crew, and that the entire crew had rights to a fair portion of the
proceeds.
On a real pirate ship, Captain Trump would have lost his job long ago and been abandoned
on some tiny island with a single shot in his pistol.
For anyone that hasn't seen this yet check out this video of McStain's
"funeral" where Mattis and Kelly give Lindsey Graham the stare down after he
gives hugs to Huma Abedine.
Graham refuses to look at General Kelly and when he finally does Kelly
points to his right eye like "We're watching you punk". Graham definitely
looks like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar as both Mattis
and Kelly stare him down. It's classic.
During the embrace, Miss Lindsey and Huma touch hands. I assumed
something small was being handed off between them, and Kelly's gesture
indicated that he had witnessed the transfer. Mattis appeared to be
touching an earpiece, as though he were concentrating on something being
said.
Mob funeral. "Remember Michael, the guy that comes to you from the Senate,
and promises you that you will be safe on his territory... that's the
traitor."
Graham, "Mueller must continue the investigation."
Ahhh Yes, Huma Abedine, the middle eastern spy / goddess (not) married to an
Ashkenazi Weiner.
Anthony Weiner and Ashkenazi CHUTZPAH
Most normal people would be thankful that after dealing with what Anthony
Weiner has been through over the past few years that they were still
breathing.
His original "sexting" scandal would have crushed lesser human beings.
But the intrepid and moronic recidivist Weiner is still at it!
Weiner represents Ashkenazi Jewish hubris at its most egregious.
It is clear that he has no shame, and continues to believe that there are
no rules for his truly deplorable behavior. It is a sense of Jewish
entitlement that is based on a "Da'as Torah" mentality that allows Jewish
leaders and prominent figures like politicians to think that they are above
the Law.
It is truly a stunning development that is sure to plague the Clinton
presidential campaign.
In a 2010 Politico article written by current MSNBC host Steve Kornacki we
see clearly how Weiner gradually became unmoored from his patron Senator
Charles Schumer, also an Ashkenazi Jew, and aggressively upped his public
profile:
How come Gen. Flynn didn't have a GoFundMe deal working for him? I know he is a
man of integrity, but I would have contributed had I known of such a fund.
one can only hope he's been thrown under the bus. If he's taking one for the team
it'll be a slap on the wrist, maybe a year in an open prison or so and a
directorship once he's beern "rehabilitated". If he's ben shat on, expect
fireworks and much ass-covering by means of singing. /popcorn
Trump has seven members of his campaign team under indictment. Between Faux News
and the Republican National Committee, and their attorneys, who should have been
vetting Donald Trump's choices? Clearly, no attorney at Faux or the RNC took time
to do background checks. The two fossils, McConnell and Giuliani didn't foresee
any problems with Trump's campaign team, nor did Adelson, the Koch Brothers, or
Rupert Murdoch.
So how is McCabe any different from Manafort, Gates,
Papadopoulous, or Mike Flynn? and come 24 Sept, I want to hear Trump talk at
length and in detail about Mike Flynn: where did Flynn learn money laundering?
did he pass techniques on to anyone else? Why is he giving speeches to the
Ukraine? the United States military got its ass kicked in Viet Nam because of
Russia and Communist China, and the Ukraine is a direct line to Russian
oligarchs. Robert Mueller is doing the vetting job that someone in the Republican
Party should have done as Trump assembled his team.
The day after Trump's surprising win on Nov. 9, 2016, the FBI counterintelligence
team engaged in a new mission, bluntly described in another string of emails
prompted by another news leak.
"We need ALL of their names to scrub, and we should give them ours for the
same purpose," Strzok emailed Page on Nov. 10, 2016, citing a Daily Beast article
about some of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's allegedly unsavory
ties overseas.
"Andy didn't get any others," Page wrote back, apparently indicating McCabe
didn't have names to add to the "scrub."
"That's what Bill said," Strzok wrote back, apparently referring to then-FBI
chief of counterintelligence William Priestap. "I suggested we need to exchange
our entire lists as we each have potential derogatory CI info the other doesn't."
CI is short for confidential informants.
It's an extraordinary exchange, if for no other reason than this: The very day
after Trump wins the presidency, some top FBI officials are involved in the sort
of gum-shoeing normally reserved for field agents, and their goal is to find
derogatory information about someone who had worked for the president-elect.
Most of the arguments ranging around them are what Jordan Peterson calls "pseudo issues."
Let's try to take stock of what the real issues might be.
Energy
The shale oil "miracle" was a stunt enabled by supernaturally low interest rates, i.e.
Federal Reserve policy. Even The New York Times said so yesterday ( The
Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground ). For all that, the shale oil producers still
couldn't make money at it. If interest rates go up, the industry will choke on the debt it has
already accumulated and lose access to new loans. If the Fed reverses its current course - say,
to rescue the stock and bond markets - then the shale oil industry has perhaps three more years
before it collapses on a geological basis, maybe less. After that, we're out of tricks. It will
affect everything.
The perceived solution is to run all our stuff on electricity, with the electricity produced
by other means than fossil fuels , so-called alt energy. This will only happen on the most
limited basis and perhaps not at all. (And it is apart from the question of the decrepit
electric grid itself.) What's required is a political conversation about how we inhabit the
landscape, how we do business, and what kind of business we do. The prospect of dismantling
suburbia -- or at least moving out of it -- is evidently unthinkable. But it's going to happen
whether we make plans and policies, or we're dragged kicking and screaming away from it.
"... Tucker Carlson went off last week on how the US welfare system is gamed by major corporations like Amazon and Walmart to keep workers' wages below a basic level of being able to support one's self and family. ..."
"... How about reducing these companies' tax deductions for wages by an estimate of the welfare benefits, e.g. "Food Stamps," etc., their workers use to stay afloat? ..."
You missed the pithiest soundbite that succinctly sums it all up:
We privatised profits and we socialised risk and losses.
We continue to do so in a major way to prop up our oligarch class.
Capitalism died a long time ago in the US, and its death is not just evident in the way
banks are coddled.
Tucker Carlson went off last week on how the US welfare system is gamed by major
corporations like Amazon and Walmart to keep workers' wages below a basic level of being able
to support one's self and family.
How about reducing these companies' tax deductions for wages by an estimate of the welfare
benefits, e.g. "Food Stamps," etc., their workers use to stay afloat?
"We can look to Iceland for an example of how to handle the next crisis."
No, we should follow the example of Vietnam and execute a few bankers and other
oligarchs.
The Asian country that best overcame the 1997 crisis was Malaysia.
Under then PM Mahathir, the country defied the IMF and refused to take loans from it.
Instead of obeying the Washington Consensus rules, Malaysia applied completely unorthodox
measures: fixing the peg of the ringgit to the dollar, selective foreign exchange controls,
de- internationalisation of the ringgit. As a consequence, Malaysia preserved all her
assets.
Ironically, such unorthodox crisis measures are now recognised as innovative and efficient
by the same vulture IMF.
The 1997 crisis followed the trademark asset rip off script set up by the financial
industry loan sharks. The same script has repeated time and again over decades.
On a slightly related topic, "Let's put forward a People's Agenda."
India just created one of the worlds largest Public Banks.
The mother of all banks is coming today
. . .
A banking behemoth will take birth at Delhi's Talkatora Stadium today when Prime
Minister Narendra Modi inaugurates the India Post Payments Bank (IPPB).
Indeed. Especial kudos for mentioning that the bailout cost way way more than the "Tarp"
program. Some additional thoughts though.
1. Our financial economy is now so subsidized and rigged, I wonder if it is even possible
to have a traditional financial-style collapse? I mean, the stock market is high only because
the companies are borrowing like crazy to boost their stock prices, and the Federal Reserve
will manufacture unlimited money to boost and bail out financial firms. However, on its own
this won't cause hyperinflation, because this money is mostly not making it back onto Main
Street, it's just money chasing money in the the clouds. I suggest that perhaps the next
collapse will be triggered by physical matters, as massive immigration fuels continued
population growth, and the real economy is starved of the massive physical investment needed
to deal with this and our own industrial base is gutted by free trade agreements. A physical
collapse cannot be papered over by financial manipulation
2. There will be no revolution, sorry. Look at Barack Obama, for eight years he was as
corrupt a whore to big money as any US politician, and the man is still treated as a secular
saint. The Democrats are for Wall Street bailouts and eternal pointless wars etc.etc. but
people will keep voting for them because Trump is a fascist, a racist, "literally Hitler." I
mean, CNN told them so, so it must be true. Meanwhile, even though it looked like the
Republicans for a moment were going to deal with reality, they too have mostly been co-opted
into mindlessly supporting Trump because the Democrats are "socialists" (hah! Lenin would
have had a good laugh at that one) and Nancy Pelosi is weird.
I think you'll find what common sense might predict, namely, that deaths by shooting have
declined in per capita terms. Maybe people still manage to commit suicide as reliably by
other means but there can have been no substitute for accidental shootings.
"... Many of the root causes of the crisis remain today, making another economic downturn or collapse possible. The New Yorker reports that little has changed since 2008, with Wall Street banks returning to risky behavior and the inadequate regulation of Dodd-Frank being weakened. Big finance is more concentrated and dominant than it was before the crash. Inequality and debt have expanded, and despite the capital class getting wealthier in a record stock market with corporate profits soaring, real wages are stuck at pre-crisis levels . ..."
"... So, when the next crash comes. Let's put forward a People's Agenda. Let's be like Iceland and mobilize for policies that put people first. Collectively, we have the power to overcome the political elites and their donor class. ..."
Ten years ago, there was panic in Washington, DC, New York City and financial
centers around the world as the United States was in the midst of an economic
collapse. The crash became the focus of the presidential campaign between Barack
Obama and John McCain and was followed by protests that created a popular movement,
which continues to this day.
Banks: Bailed Out; The People: Sold Out
On the campaign trail, in March 2008,
Obama blamed mismanagement of the economy on both Democrats and Republicans
for rewarding financial manipulation rather than economic productivity. He called
for funds to protect homeowners from foreclosure and to stabilize local governments
and urged a 21st Century regulation of the financial system. John McCain opposed
federal intervention, saying the country should not bail out banks or homeowners
who knowingly took financial risks.
By September 2008, McCain and Obama
met with President George W. Bush and together they called for a $700 billion
bailout of the banks, not the people. Obama and McCain issued a joint statement
that called the bank bailout plan "flawed," but said, "the effort to protect
the American economy must not fail."
Obama expressed "outrage" at the "crisis," which was "a direct result of
the greed and irresponsibility that has dominated Washington and Wall Street
for years."
By October 2008, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), or bank bailout,
had recapitalized the banks, the Treasury had stabilized money market mutual
funds and the FDIC had guaranteed the bank debts. The Federal Reserve began
flowing money to banks, which would ultimately total almost twice
the $16 trillion claimed in a federal audit. Researchers at the University
of Missouri found that the Federal Reserve gave
over $29 trillion
to the banks.
" the crisis took years to emerge. It was caused by reckless lending practices,
Wall Street greed, outright fraud, lax government oversight in the George W.
Bush years, and deregulation of the financial sector in the Bill Clinton years.
The deepest source, going back decades, was rising inequality. In good times
and bad, no matter which party held power, the squeezed middle class sank ever
further into debt."
Before his inauguration, Obama proposed an economic stimulus plan, but, as
Paul Krugman wrote, "Obama's prescription doesn't live up to his diagnosis.
The economic plan he's offering isn't as strong as his language about the economic
threat."
In the end, the stimulus was even smaller than what Obama proposed. Economist
Dean Baker explained that it may have created 2 million jobs, but we needed
12 million. It was $300 billion in 2009, about the same in 2010, and the remaining
$100 billion followed over several years -- too small to offset the $1.4 trillion
in annual lost spending.
Protest near Union Square in New York, April, 2010. Popular Resistance
Still at Risk
Many of the root causes of the crisis remain today, making another economic
downturn or collapse possible. The
New Yorker reports that little has changed since 2008, with Wall Street
banks returning to risky behavior and the inadequate regulation of Dodd-Frank
being weakened. Big finance is more concentrated and dominant than it was before
the crash. Inequality and debt have expanded, and despite the capital class
getting wealthier in a record stock market with corporate profits soaring,
real wages are stuck at pre-crisis levels .
People are economically insecure in the US and live with growing despair,
as measured by
reports on well-being . The
Federal Reserve reported in 2017 that "two in five Americans don't have
enough savings to cover a $400 emergency expense." Further, "more than one in
five said they weren't able to pay the current month's bills in full, and more
than one in four said they skipped necessary medical care last year because
they couldn't afford it."
Positive Money writes: "Ten years on, big banks are still behaving in
reckless, unfair and neglectful ways . The structural problems with our
money and banking system still haven't been fixed. And many experts fear that
if we don't change things soon, we're going to sleepwalk into
another crash ."
Larry Eliott wrote in the Guardian , "Capitalism's near-death experience
with the banking crisis was a golden opportunity for progressives." But the
movement in the United States was not yet in a position to take advantage of
it.
There were immediate protests. Democratic Party-aligned groups such as USAction,
True Majority and others
organized nationwide actions . Over 1,000 people
demonstrated on Wall Street and phones in Congress were ringing wildly.
While there was opposition to the bailout, there was a lack of national consensus
over what to do.
Protests continued to grow. In late 2009, a
"Move Your Money" campaign was started that urged people to take their money
out of the big banks and put it in community banks and credit unions. The most
visible anti-establishment rage in response to the bailout arose later
in the Tea Party and Occupy movements . Both groups shared a consensus that
we live in a rigged economy created by a corrupt political establishment. It
was evident that
the US is an oligarchy, which serves the interests of the wealthy while
ignoring the necessities of the people.
The anti-establishment consensus continues to grow and showed itself in the
2016 presidential campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. They
were two sides of the same coin of populist anger that defeated Jeb Bush and
Hillary Clinton. Across the political spectrum, there is a political crisis
with
both mainstream, Wall Street-funded political parties being unpopular but
staying in power due to a calcified political system that protects the duopoly
of Democrats and Republicans.
Preparing for the Next Collapse
When the next financial crisis arrives, the movement is in a much stronger
position to take advantage of the opportunity for significant changes that benefit
people over Wall Street. The Occupy movement and other efforts since then have
changed the national dialogue so that more people are aware of wealth inequality,
the corruption of big banks and the failure of the political elites to represent
the people's interests.
There is also greater awareness of alternatives to the current economy. The
Public Banking movement has grown significantly since 2008. Banks that need
to be bailed out could be transformed into public banks that serve the people
and are democratically controlled. And there are multiple platforms, including
our People's
Agenda , that outline alternative solutions.
We also know the government can afford almost $30 trillion to bail out the
banks. One sixth of this could provide a $12,000 annual basic income, which
would cost $3.8 trillion annually,
doubling Social Security payments to $22,000 annually, which would cost
$662 billion, a $10,000
bonus for all US public school teachers, which would cost $11 billion, free
college for all high school graduates, which would cost $318 billion, and universal
preschool, which would cost $38 billion. National improved Medicare for all
would actually
save the nation trillions of dollars over a decade. We can afford to provide
for the necessities of the people.
We can look to Iceland for an example of how to handle the next crisis. In
2008 , they jailed the bankers, let the banks fail without taking on their
debt and put controls in place to protect the economy. They recovered more quickly
than other countries and with less pain.
How did they do it? In part, through protest. They held sustained and noisy
protests, banging pots and pans outside their parliament building for five months.
The number of people participating in the protests grew over time. They created
democratized platforms for gathering public input and sharing information widely.
And they created new political parties, the Pirate Party and the Best Party,
which offered agendas informed by that popular input.
So, when the next crash comes. Let's put forward a People's Agenda. Let's
be like Iceland and mobilize for policies that put people first. Collectively,
we have the power to overcome the political elites and their donor class.
John Gunther Dean, now 92, and a former American ambassador to
five countries, has long maintained that Israel was behind his
attempted assassination on August 28, 1980, in a suburb of
Beirut, which was attributed to a rightwing Lebanese group. Dean
and his wife and daughter and son-in-law were in a motorcade and
narrowly escaped serious injury.
Dean said that he was targeted because he was doing something
regarded as antithetical to Israel's interest: consulting with
the Palestine Liberation Organization and its head, Yasser
Arafat, at a time when such contacts were the third rail in US
politics. He was also outspokenly critical of Israeli attacks on
Lebanon.
A new book offers backing to Dean's claim. But while that book
has been highly-publicized, the question of whether Israel
attacked our ambassador has gotten no attention in the press.
That is not a surprise; for Dean has asserted that the case
itself was never thoroughly investigated by the U.S. government.
Let's begin this story where I first heard about it, from
historian Remi Brulin's twitter thread
on
May 30:
"On August 28, 1980, the three-car motorcade of John Gunther
Dean, the American Ambassador to Lebanon, was attacked on the
motorway by several assailants armed with automatic rifles as
well as light anti-tank weapons or LAWs. The ambassador and his
wife escaped unscathed.
"This attack is in
RAND's
'terrorism' database
. Entry states that 'responsibility for
attack was later claimed by the Front for the Liberation of
Lebanon from Foreigners, a shadowy right-wing group.' Various
media outlets at the time reported on FLLF taking credit for the
attack
"Over the years Ambassador Dean has repeatedly argued that
Israel was behind the August 1980 attempt on his life. In a
n
interview for the Oral History Project
in September 2000, he
explained how the Lebanese Intelligence services had managed to
retrieve the empty canisters of two of the light anti-tank
weapons (LAWs) that had been used during the attack on his
motorcade and, during raiding a house by the intersection where
the assault had taken place, found 8 more. Dean collected the
numbers on the 10 missiles & sent them to Washington to be
traced.
"Three weeks (and one angry phone call) later, the US Ambassador
finally learned 'where the light anti-tank weapons came from,
where they were shipped to, on what date, who paid for them, and
when they got to their destination.'
"The LAWs had been manufactured in the US and 'were sold and
shipped to Israel in 1974.' In
this
interview
, Dean further states that he "did find out a great
deal about this incident' over the following years, and calls
this assassination attempt 'one of the more unsavory episodes in
our Middle Eastern history' and ends by noting that 'our
Ambassador to Israel, Sam Lewis, took up this matter with the
Israeli authorities.'
"Dean concludes: 'I know as surely as I know anything that
Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, was somehow involved in
the attack. Undoubtedly using a proxy, our ally Israel had tried
to kill me.' [Haaretz
covered
Dean's claim, made in his 2009 autobiography
; so did
The
Nation
]
"All of this has been known for years, although it is very
rarely discussed in the US media. When discussed, Dean's
assertions/accusations are dismissed as conspiracy theories.
"In January however, a book was published that appears to
reinforce the plausibility of Dean's position. The book is Ronen
Bergman's
Rise
and Kill First
.
It has received rave reviews in the US
press, and its author has been interviewed countless times since
the book was published. The book focuses on Israeli 'targeted
assassinations' and it contains one truly remarkable revelation.
"In 1979, [Rafael] Eitan and [Meir] Dagan [both brass in the
Israel Defense Forces] created the Front for the Liberation of
Lebanon from Foreigners, and ran that fictitious group from 1979
to 1983. In 1981 and 1982, Ariel Sharon used that Front to
conduct a series of indiscriminate car bombings that killed
hundreds of civilians.
"The objective of this massive 'terrorist' car bombing campaign
was to 'sow chaos' amongst the Palestinian & Lebanese civilian
population" and, in 1981-82, to provoke the PLO into resorting
to 'terrorism,' thus providing Israel with an excuse to invade
Lebanon.
"The FLLF operation is described in great details in Bergman's
book. His account is based solely on first hand accounts from
Israeli officials involved in the operation or who were aware of
it at the time. It is also described in detail in my article
here [
in
Mondoweiss in May:
The remarkable disappearing act of
Israel's car-bombing campaign in Lebanon or: What we (do not)
talk about when we talk about 'terrorism'].
"As I show in this article, not a SINGLE review of Bergman's
book in the US media has mentioned the FLLF operation. Nor has
it been mentioned in a SINGLE of the countless interviews he has
given on the topic over the last few months. The US media has
thus been fully silent about the fact that Israeli officials
directed a major & fully indiscriminate car bombing campaign
that killed 100s of civilians in Lebanon. This silence also
means that the US media has failed to notice the possible
implications of this revelation about the Dean case.
"Bergman himself does not mention the assassination attempt
against Dean. But we know that the FLLF took credit for this
attack at the time. That Dean's own investigation pointed to
Israel & to its Lebanese proxies. And we now know that the FLLF
was CREATED and RUN by Israel.
"None of this is absolutely conclusive, of course. Nonetheless,
this topic might warrant investigation from US journalists (who
might also want to write about the FLLF car bombing campaign, ie
about Israeli officials resorting to 'terrorism.'"
Brulin subsequently added this important comment:
Bergman does note on several occasions in his book that he
is not allowed to write and talk about a lot of the
operations that his sources talked to him about. I wonder if
this FLLF operation vs Dean is one of those.
Let us add some details and context. Dean was born to a Jewish
family in Germany in 1926 and escaped the Holocaust to the
United States in 1938, later graduating from a Kansas City high
school. It goes without saying that being ambassador to five
countries, Cambodia, Denmark, Lebanon, Thailand and India, is a
stellar career in foreign service.
I reached out to Dean and did not hear from him, but in his oral
history, the ambassador says that the attack was a "horrible
experience" that scarred his daughter.
The road at that stretch was wide and a Mercedes car was
parked below a small hill overlooking the road. As we
turned, our convoy took 21 rifle bullets and two grenades
anti-tank fired against the car I was in. My wife threw
herself on top of me and said: "Get your head down" because
I was trying to look out and was stunned by the "fireworks".
When you have these light anti-tank weapons (LAWs) explode,
there are a lot of sparks and explosions. The two LAWs fired
at my car bounced off the rear of the car. I also noticed
that on the window of my armored car there were some shots
all very well centered where I was sitting, but they had not
penetrated because the plastic windows were bullet-proof.
In his autobiography
Danger
Zones,
Dean says he urged the State Department to
investigate, but: "No matter how hard I tried, I could not get a
straight answer from the State Department about what the U.S.
had discovered in its investigations I was simply told to
resume my duties as ambassador. That was not so easy when I
learned what the Lebanese intelligence agency found out [using
the numbers on the weapons]."
Dean says he was clearly understood to be an enemy of Israel
because on repeated occasions he had publicly condemned Israel's
attacks on Lebanon's borders and air space, a stance the State
Department usually did not take.
Scurrilous attacks on me in the Israeli Knesset and the
Israeli press just prior to the assassination attempt
indicate that the Israeli authorities were unhappy with the
activist role I played in Lebanon, defending Lebanese
sovereignty and maintaining an active relationship with the
PLO–the very policies I was given to pursue by the president
of the United States. The venomous talk in the Israeli
Knesset by the right-wing parties portrayed me as a tool of
the Palestinians. Because I was willing, even eager, to talk
with all the factions in Lebanon's civil war, I was
suspected of being anti-Israel.
Dean said he had a "close working relationship" with the PLO–
including calling on Yasser Arafat to help broker the release of
13 of 66 American hostages held by Iranians in Tehran in
November 1979, those 13 being the women and African-Americans.
"On a number of occasions the PLO helped me to get Americans
released American authorities considered the PLO a valid
interlocutor for discussing ways of finding a nonmilitary
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
At that time, the PLO was verboten in official policy circles.
Andrew Young was forced to resign as Jimmy Carter's ambassador
to the U.N. in 1979 after the Israelis leaked the fact that he
had met with a representative of the PLO. In 1977,
Ted
Koppel and Marvin Kalb wrote
a thriller that turned on a US
official having a supersecret meeting with a fictitious
Palestinian group, and it leaking and the official being charged
with betraying Israel. In 1976, the dissident Jewish peace group
Breira came apart after Wolf Blitzer, who was at the time also
working for the Israel lobby group AIPAC, reported in the
Jerusalem Post that Breira members had met with PLO officials.
Dean had a reputation for being free-thinking in Washington
circles. In 1988, when Dean was ambassador to India, Pakistani
President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq died in Pakistan when his plane
was sabotaged. Dean maintained that Israel was behind the
assassination because it did not want Pakistan to obtain nuclear
weapons, which it was then developing. Dean's speculation was
based in part on the fact that pro-Israel congressmen (Stephen
Solarz and Tom Lantos) had visited him in New Delhi and pressed
him to support Israel's ally India over Pakistan and to seek to
thwart Pakistan's path toward nukes.
"The more I pushed for answers, the more officials from the
Reagan administration pushed back," he wrote. Within a year,
Dean, 63, retired amid official questions about his sanity under
"strain." "The department's first thought was to send me to an
asylum." Instead he was sent to Switzerland for "recuperation,"
he writes in his autobiography. "This was the kind of technique
that the Stalinist regime used to silence its critics in the
Soviet Union."
Ronen Bergman's new book
on
the Israeli assassination and terrorism campaign
contains no
reference to the John Gunther Dean attack. I asked him via a
twitter message why he had left it out, noting that his
revelation about Israeli security officials establishing the
Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners gives
credence to Dean's claim. He did not respond.
The Israeli investigative reporter is now working for the New
York Times, and lately reported in the Times on the
killing
of a Syrian rocket scientist in a car bomb attack
in
northwestern Syria on the night of August 4, evidently by
Israel.
P.S. The US government has had a miserable record of
investigating
known
Israeli
attacks on Americans– on the USS Liberty in 1967 and Rachel
Corrie in 2003.
Good to see Dean being taken seriously after so long in the
wilderness.
The throwaway line about Dean, a Jew, being born in Germany and
escaping the Holocaust when his family went to America in 1938,
is a bit much, but serves to remind us what a challenge it is
for those of Tribal consciousness such as friend Weiss, to hew
to the truth when the opposing lie is so consequential.
Expensive weapon systems for export is Trump administration official policy, his Military
Keyseanism stance.
Notable quotes:
"... The US is to render substantial military assistance to a country with an economy in the doldrums , reforms that have foundered , a democracy that is in question , and corruption that is widespread . ..."
...
Kurt Volker , US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, said in an interview
with the Guardian published on September 1 that "Washington is ready to expand arms supplies to
Ukraine in order to build up the country's naval and air defense forces in the face of
continuing Russian support for
eastern separatists ." According to him, the Trump administration was "absolutely" prepared
to go further in supplying lethal weaponry to Ukrainian forces than the anti-tank
missiles it delivered in April .
Mr. Volker explained that "[t]hey need to rebuild a navy and they have very limited air
capability as well. I think we'll have to look at air defense."
The diplomat
believes Ukraine needs unmanned aerial vehicles, counter-battery radar systems, and
anti-sniper systems. The issue of lethal arms purchases has been discussed at the highest
level.
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 allocated
$250m in military assistance to Ukraine, including lethal arms. The
US has delivered Javelin anti-tank missile systems to Kiev but this time the
ambassador talked about an incomparably larger deal. Former President Barack
Obama had been unconvinced that granting Ukraine lethal defensive weapons
would be the right decision, in view of the widespread corruption there. This
policy has changed under President Trump, who - among other things - approved deliveries
of anti-tank missiles to Kiev last December.
Ukraine has officially requested US air-defense systems. According to
Valeriy Chaly, Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, the Ukrainian
military wants to purchase at least three air-defense systems. The cost of
the deal is expected to exceed $2 billion, or about $750 million apiece. The
system in question was not specified, but it's generally believed to be the
Patriot.
Volker's statement was made at a time of rising tensions in the Sea of Azov,
which is legally shared by Ukraine and Russia. It is connected to
the Black Sea through the Kerch Strait. The rhetoric has heated up and ships
have been placed under arrest as this territorial dispute turns the area
into a flashpoint.
Russia has
slammed the US for backing Ukraine's violations of international law in
the area. According to a 2003 treaty, the Sea of Azov is a jointly
controlled territory that both countries are allowed to use freely.
The US military already runs a maritime operations center located within
Ukraine's Ochakov naval base. The facility is an operational-level warfare
command-and-control organization that is designed to deliver flexible
maritime support throughout the full range of military operations. Hundreds
of US and Canadian military instructors are
training Ukrainian personnel at the Yavorov firing range.
NATO has
granted Ukraine the status of an aspirant
country - a step that is openly provocative toward Russia. Macedonia,
Georgia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina are also aspirant nations. Last year,
Ukraine's parliament adopted
a resolution recognizing full membership in NATO as a foreign policy
goal. In 2008, NATO agreed that Ukraine along with Georgia should become a
full-fledged member. In March, Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia announced the
formation of an alliance to oppose Russia.
"... Alberto Nisman and Argentina's History of Assassinations and Suspicious Suicides ..."
"... Whether the crusading prosecutor's death is found to be a suicide or homicide, many Argentines probably won't believe it. The past has taught them to always look for the sinister explanation. ..."
"... Decades after the military murdered thousands, Mothers of Plaza de Mayo warn that the current era of alternative facts poses a new threat ..."
"... They'll gain the world but lose their souls They'll gain the world but lose their souls ..."
"... Don't believe politicians and thieves They want our people on their bended knees Pirates and robbers, liars and thieves You come like the wolf but dressed like the sheep ..."
"... If you go to Lagos what you find, vampires If you go to Kinshasa what you find, vampires If you go to Darfur what you find, vampires If you go to Malabo what you find, vampires ..."
"... Lies and theft Guns and debt Life and death IMF ..."
"... When the bank man comes to your door Better know you'll always be poor Bank loans and policies They can't make our people free ..."
"... You live on the blood of my people Everyone knows you've come to steal You come like the thieves in the night The whole world is ready to fight ..."
SHARMINI PERIES: It's The Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries, coming to you from
Baltimore.
For several months now. Argentines have been taking to the streets to protest against
neoliberal austerity measures of President Mauricio Macri. The most recent such protest took
place on July 9 on Argentine's Independence Day. There has also been three general strikes thus
far. In the two years since he took office, President Macri has laid off as many as 76,000
public sector workers, and slashed gas and water and electricity subsidies, leading to a
tenfold increase in prices, in some cases.
Now, the government argues that all of this is necessary in order to stem inflation, and the
decline of the currency's value. Last month, Macri received the backing of the International
Monetary Fund. The IMF agreed to provide Argentina with a $50 billion loan, one of the largest
in IMF history. In exchange, the Macri government will deepen the austerity measures already in
place.
Joining me now to analyze Argentina's economic situation and its new IMF loan is Michael
Hudson. Michael is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of
Missouri Kansas City. Welcome back, Michael.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Good to be back, Sharmini.
SHARMINI PERIES: Michael, why is it that Argentina needs such a huge credit line from the
IMF?
MICHAEL HUDSON: For precisely the reason that you explained. The neoliberal policy has its
aim rolling back any of the wage increases in employment that Mrs. Kirschner, the former
president, implied, as part of the class war. So in order to shrink the economy, you have to
basically cut back business, cut back employment. And so the purpose of the IMF loan was to
enable the wealthy Argentinians, the oligarchy that's run the country for a century, to get all
its money out and run. So like almost all IMF loans, the purpose is to subsidize capital flight
out of Argentina so that the wealthy Argentinians can take their money and run before the
currency collapses.
The aim of the loan is to indebt Argentina so much that its currency will continue to go
down and down and down, essentially wrecking the economy. That's what the IMF does. That's its
business plan. It makes a loan to subsidize capital flight, emptying out the economy of cash,
leading the currency to collapse, as it is recently collapsed. As soon as the $50 billion was
expended, or wasted, in letting wealthy Argentinians take their pesos, convert them into
dollars, move them offshore to the United States, to England, to the Dutch West Indies, and
offshore banking centers. Then they let the currency collapse so that the IMF model, which it's
announced for the last 50 years, the model is if you can depreciate a currency what you're
really lowering is the price of labor. Because raw materials and capital have an international
price. But when a currency goes down it makes imports much more expensive, and that causes a
price umbrella over the cost of living; that labor has to pay the equivalent international
price for grain, for food, for oil and gas, for everything else.
And so what Macri has done is they agree with the IMF to wage class war with a vengeance,
devaluation, leaving Argentina so hopelessly indebted that it can't possibly repay the IMF
loan. So what we're seeing is a replay of what happened in 2001.
SHARMINI PERIES: Exactly. I was going to ask you, now, that was only 17 years ago, Michael.
Argentinians do have memory here. They know what happened. They experienced it as well. Now,
that was back in 2001 during the economic crisis when unemployment had increased so
dramatically. That country went through a series of presidents and went through a series of
crises. And we saw images of, you know, very similar to what we had seen in, in Greece not too
long ago. Now, tell us more about that history. What exactly happened during that crisis, and
then eventually how did Nestor Kirschner relieve the economy and come out of that crisis?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the IMF staff said, don't make the loan. There's no possible way
Argentina can pay the loan. It's all going to be made to the oligarchy for capital flight.
You're giving the IMF money for crooks, and you're expecting the Argentine people to have to
pay. So Argentina very quickly was left totally broke, as the IMF intended it to be. And so
although it was 17 years ago, for the last 17 years the IMF has had a slogan: No more
Argentinas. In other words, they said, we're never going to make the loan that is only given to
oligarchs for capital flight to steal. It's as if you make a loan to the Ukraine, or to the
Russian kleptocrats, or to the Greek banks to move offshore.
And yet here, here again, we're having a replay of what happened was, after Mrs. Kirschner
came in, it was obvious to the [inaudible] to everybody, as it had been to the IMF staff, many
of whom had resigned, that Argentina couldn't pay. So about 80 percent of Argentines'
bondholders agreed to write down the debt to something that could be paid. They said, OK, you
know, either it's a total default because they can't pay anything, or we'll write it down very
substantially to what could be paid. Because the IMF really made a completely incompetent- not
incompetent, directly corrupt insider deal. Well, unfortunately, the oligarchy had a fatal
clause put in the original bond issue, saying they would agree to U.S. arbitration and to U.S.
law if there was any dispute.
Well, after the old Argentine bonds depreciated in price, the bonds that were not
renegotiated as part of the 80 percent, you had vulture funds buy them out. Especially Paul
Singer, the Republican campaign donor who tends to buy politicians, along with foreign
government bonds. And sued, and said, we want 100 percent on the dollar, not, you know, the 40
cents on the dollar or whatever they'd settled. And the case went to a senile, dying judge,
Griesa in New York City, who said, well, there was something that's about a clause that said
investors have to be treated separately. And Argentina said, well, that's fine, we'll pay the
other 20 percent [inaudible] the 80 percent of all agreed to. The majority rules. And Griesa
said, no, no, you have to pay the 80 percent all the money that the 20 percent demands. That's
symmetry, because only if you let the hedge funds win can you go bankrupt again, wreck the
government, and bring in oligarchy.
And so that ruling caused absolute turmoil. The United States State Department set out to
support the oligarchy by doing everything it could to destabilize Argentina. And the Argentine
people said, well, we'd better vote in a government that's supported by the United States.
Maybe it will be nice to us. I don't know why foreign countries think that way, but they
thought maybe if they voted the neoliberal that the United States would agree to forgive some
of its debt. Well, that's not what neoliberals do. The neoliberal did just what you said at the
beginning of the program; announced that he was going to cut employment, lower, stop inflation
by making the working class bail, bear all of the costs, and would borrow- actually, it was the
largest loan in IMF history, the $50 billion to enable the Argentine wealthy class to move its
money offshore, leaving the economy a bankrupt shell. That's what the IMF does.
SHARMINI PERIES: Right. So let's imagine you are given the opportunity to resolve this
issue. How would you be advising the Argentine government in terms of what can they do to
stabilize the economy, given the circumstances they're facing right now?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Very simple. I'd say this debt is an odious debt. There is no way that
Argentina can pay. The clause that bankrupted us was put in as a result of tens of thousands of
professors, labor leaders, [land] people being assassinated. The United States financed an
assassination team throughout Latin America after Pinochet in Chile to have basically a proxy
government, and the Argentine loan that said we will, we will follow U.S. rules, not Argentine
rules, basically should disqualify that debt from having to be paid. And it should say the IMF
debt is an odious debt. It was given under fraudulent purposes solely for purposes of capital
flight. We will not pay.
SHARMINI PERIES: Now, Michael, just one last question. Did you want to add something to what
you were saying?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, once it doesn't pay the foreign debt, its balance of payments will be,
will be there. The problem is that the creditors have always used violence in order to get
their way. I don't see how the Argentina situation can be solved without violence, because the
creditors are using police force, covert assassination. They're just as bad as the dirty war
that had that mass assassination period in the late, into the early '90s. There's obviously
going to be not only the demonstrations that you showed, but an outright war, because it's
broken out in Argentina more drastically than anywhere else right now in Latin America, except
in Venezuela.
SHARMINI PERIES: Michael, at the moment, the Fed is gradually increasing interest rates and
the dollar is gaining in value. This is sucking the financial capital not only in Argentina but
in many places around the world. Also, you know, they're going to be soon in crisis as well.
What is, what can the developing economies do?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Here's the problem. When the United States raises interest rates, that
causes foreign money to flow, flow into the dollar, because the rest of the world, Europe and
other areas, are keeping low interest rates. So as money goes into the dollar, to take
advantage of the rising interest rates, the dollar rises. Now, that makes it necessary for
Argentina or any other country, third world country, to pay more and more pesos in order to buy
the dollars to pay that foreign debt. Because Argentina and third world countries have violated
the prime rule of credit. And that is never to denominate a debt in another currency that you
can't pay. And all of a sudden, the dollar debts become much more expensive in peso terms, and
as a result, all throughout the world right now you're having a collapse of bond prices of
third world debt. Argentine bonds, Chilean bonds, African bonds, near Eastern bonds. Third
world debt bonds are plunging, because the investors realize that the countries can't pay. The
game looks like it may be over.
The good side of this is that Argentina now can join with other third world countries and
say we are going to redenominate the debts in our own currency, or we just won't pay, or we
will do what the world did in 1931 and announce a moratorium on intergovernmental debts. Now,
that was done on German reparations and the World War I inter-ally debts. Something like that.
Some international conference to declare a moratorium and say, what is the amount that actually
can be paid? And to write down third world debts to the amount that should be paid.
Because the principle that countries have to say is that no country should be obliged to
sacrifice its own economy, its own employment, and its own independence to pay foreign
creditors. Every country has a right to put its own citizens first and its own economy first
before foreign creditors, especially when the loans are made under false pretenses, as the IMF
has made pretending to stabilize the currency instead of subsidizing capital flight to
destabilize the currency.
SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Michael. I thank you so much. And we'll continue this
conversation. There's so much more to discuss, and so many countries here in this situation for
that discussion as well. I thank you so much for joining us today.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Thanks. I think it's going to get worse, so we'll have a lot to discuss.
SHARMINI PERIES: And thank you for joining us here on The Real News Network.
Why does the IMF have a US dollar credit line at the US FED, and Argentina does not;
countries like Canada do, as do companies like Harley Davidson. Why the discrimination?
"The IMF was originally laid out as a part of the Bretton Woods system exchange agreement
in 1944. During the Great Depression, countries sharply raised barriers to trade in an
attempt to improve their failing economies. This led to the devaluation of national
currencies and a decline in world trade."
IMF is an anachronism, a perpetual organization seeking new reasons for its continued
existence.
And like all Western post WW II institutions, is part of the Cold War. Of course any
actions by US connected entities in Latin America/Caribbean are part of the Monroe Doctrine
;-(
Gas prices in Egypt have just been raised by 75% as part of the austerity measures
attached to the $12bn loan granted by the IMF. Regular folk barely have two pennies to rub
together and have been battered by this and other measures ostensibly designed to "lift the
economy and lure back investors (as per the IMF rationale behind these crushing loan
conditions). I wonder if the same sleight of hand outlined by Prof Hudson applies here (I.e.
whether this is an IMF subsidised capital flight scheme designed to aid the Egyptian
oligarchy in repatriating its loot) and whether we should cast a suspicious eye towards the
oligarchs in any country the IMF extends a loan to.
This puts me in mind of a blog that I came across sometime ago at http://ferfal.blogspot.com/ which has relevance here.
Yeah, he tries to flog a lot of survival gear and the like but this site came out of his
experiences in the first crash in Argentina in 2001. If you are prepared to dig deep into his
files you will find all sorts of stories about what life was like in Argentina and it was
awful and desperate. Probably the best place to start is at http://ferfal.blogspot.com/search/label/Argentine%20Collapse
From your link, this jumped out, as agnotological apologetics:
" Right now with President Mauricio Macri there's hope, but the change the country needs
will take decades "
He didn't make much of an effort to clarify, who holds this "hope" nor what "change the
country needs". OTOH Michael Hudson, in his last two interviews on NC, did. He (Feral) also
seems oblivious to the neoliberal projects role in Latin America, and in Argentina's 2001
crises.
And this:
"Anyway, that's what happened in Argentina and this is why in spite of the good president
we now have we need another 10 or 20 years for an entire generation of people to know
something other than populism and corruption as a way of life."
Again, oblivious to the neoliberal projects role in Latin America, and in Argentina's 2001
crises. Who benefits from austerity, and how?
"As soon as the $50 billion was expended, or wasted, in letting wealthy Argentinians take
their pesos, convert them into dollars, move them offshore to the United States, to England,
to the Dutch West Indies, and offshore banking centers"
Not sure I understand this. Who is converting the Oligarch pesos to dollars? Crooks in the
Argentine government?
As I understand it, it's the Oligarchs' butlers and footmen in the Argentine government
that do it. If the Argentine government has a policy of pegging the peso at some set number
of pesos per dollar, then the government is obliged to hand over this many dollars in
exchange for that many pesos. That's what a peg is. One way to get the dollars would be
through a loan which the IMF would "reluctantly" give them, conditional on a few crushing
social policies.
Like I said before, this so much resembles a leveraged buy-out.
Could someone please explain the mechanisms by which the $50B loan leaves the country.
Exactly how do the elites get their hands on this money and then get it out of the
country?
If you haven't already read it, check
Prof. Hudson's previous article . It describes more about the methods.
Of course, if you have, then I'm not helping.
They convert their liquid cash into Dollars.
Then wire it to Banks outside the Argentine, and invest, (typically buy property). In addition, they take out loans against their Argentinian assets or property,
and convert those pesos into dollars,
and export those dollars as well.
All legal and above board.
When the peso collapses, they repatriate some of their dollars, and pay of the now
deflated loans.
'The Argentine loan that said we will, we will follow U.S. rules, not Argentine rules,
basically should disqualify that debt from having to be paid.'
Most foreign currency bonds floated by developing economies specify New York or London
legal jurisdiction because of (1) well-developed case law; (2) creditors don't trust the
objectivity of courts in borrower countries.
If all developing country debt were considered "odious" merely because of New York or
English legal jurisdiction, lending to developing countries would stop cold.
'I don't see how the Argentina situation can be solved without violence, because the
creditors are using police force, covert assassination.'
Cite one -- just one -- link showing "covert assassination" occurring in Argentina. The
Dirty War of the 1970s and early 1980s doesn't count. You can't keep waving the bloody shirt
of military dictatorship in South America more than thirty years after it ended.
I'm sure there is a nice polite clear unassailable explanation for what happened in this
instance:
" Alberto Nisman and Argentina's History of Assassinations and Suspicious
Suicides
Whether the crusading prosecutor's death is found to be a suicide or homicide, many
Argentines probably won't believe it. The past has taught them to always look for the
sinister explanation. "
And maybe creditors like to have their loan docs choose US/NY courts and law as the basis
for dispute resolution because both are stacked in favor of creditors? Home court "white shoe
lawyer" advantage? No history of support for the great creditor scams of the past? the word
"jackal" has no meaning? There was no reason for that guy to write a sequel to "Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man"?
Really, there's no need for the "bloody shirt," now is there, given current right-wing
dictators supported by "us," what the Empire and Banksters and the rest are doing in and to
central and South America, now is there? But it's a great distraction, I'll grant, and might
even work as impeachment for some folks
"No country should be obliged to pay its bondholders if the price of paying means austerity,
unemployment, shrinking population, emigration, rising suicide rates, abolition of public
health standards, and selloffs of the public domain to monopolists."
These sorts of rules would put a dead stop to foreign loans.
Something always bothers me about the "bondholder" sanctity meme. Bonds are "investments,"
right? And there are RISKS associated with investments, right? And there's supposed to be a
"risk premium" built into the "price" of the bond, right?
At least Investopedia and other sources say so, basically that these are NOT God-sanctioned
absolute-right deals where the bondholder takes priority over everyone else in the world,
right? https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/05/bondrisks.asp
And bonds are sort of contracts, subject to the rules and defenses that apply in contract
disputes, albeit specialized rules, right? Impossibility and stuff? Fraud?
So why are the rest of us, like where "the government" is dumb or corrupt (CalPERS?)enough
to "obligate" the wealth and future of a country by "selling bonds" to "investors," as
security for "loans" that get siphoned off by corruption and stupidity, dumb enough to
usually just roll over and accept that we have to live like serfs to "pay off the bonds?"
Especially when the same scam has been pulled by the same set of Banksters over and over?
And yes, in the financialized westernized world, we mopes are tied to the "paying for
progress [some definition of same] by borrowing," aren't we?
Interesting that the hated Sharia Law, the banking and investment part of it, kind of
makes those allegedly risk-free kinds of fee- and profit- and reacketeer-generating "deals"
not only unlawful, but against the will of G_D? https://shariabanking.com/
How telling. Was only 7 years ago that the torture-murderer of mothers and nuns, the
Blonde Angel of Death himself, Alfredo Ignacio Astiz, was sentenced to life in prison. Per
Wikipedia:
Astiz, a specialist in the infiltration of human rights organizations, was implicated in
the December 1977 kidnapping of twelve human rights activists, including Azucena Villaflor
and two other founders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and two French nationals,
Léonie Duquet and Alice Domon, who were Catholic nuns. None of the twelve was seen
alive again outside detention and all were believed killed, rumored to be among the bodies
washed up on beaches south of Buenos Aires in late 1977.
To this day, torturers and murderers hold public offices. But I'm sure that's all in the
past. Anyone who still talks about the US-sponsored 16 years of Dirty War, from 1967-1983, is
a bloody shirt-waving fool, amirite Jim?
BUENOS
AIRES, Argentina (CNN) [2 March 1998] -- Argentina's "dirty war" ended 15 years ago,
but it is an ugly episode that cannot be buried and refuses to be silenced.
Aging mothers and grandmothers march each week as the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, carrying
banners and chanting, "We will not be stopped. We will not be broken. We have held on for
20 years."
They demand to know the whereabouts of sons and daughters and husbands and wives who
were detained by the ruling military junta between 1976 and 1983, and then disappeared.
The junta seized power in Argentina in March 1976 and began a systematic campaign to
wipe out left-wing terrorism. But the terror it spread exceeded anything the leftists ever
dreamed of, claiming the lives of dissidents as well as innocent civilians.
More than 9,000 people disappeared during the dirty war, and some human rights groups
say as many as 30,000 may have been tortured and killed.
"We only want to know where our sons and daughters are -- alive or dead," says one
woman. "We are anguished because we don't know whether they are sick or hungry or cold. We
don't know anything. We are desperate, desperate because we don't know who to turn to.
"Consulates, embassies, government ministries, churches. Every place is closed to us.
Everywhere they shut us out. We beg you to help us. We beg you."
Decades after the military murdered thousands, Mothers of Plaza de Mayo warn that
the current era of alternative facts poses a new threat
Torturers and murderers hold public office, thanks to an amnesty. But I'm sure no one
today, in the whole of Argentina, would ever consider what well, actually has long been
standard operating procedure in Argentina.
While not precisely on point, reminds me of a monologue to music titled "FMI", the
Portuguese abbreviation for IMF, by Portuguese poet Mario Branco. Salient lyrics (English
translation) of IMF:
"It's 'Monetary Internationalism' The IMF doesn't exist The IMF is a mask."
"There can't exist a reason for so much suffering."
Thievery Corporation were far more brutal in their Fela-Kuti-inspired "Vampires"
Lyrics (abridged):
They'll gain the world but lose their souls
They'll gain the world but lose their souls
Don't believe politicians and thieves
They want our people on their bended knees
Pirates and robbers, liars and thieves
You come like the wolf but dressed like the sheep
If you go to Lagos what you find, vampires
If you go to Kinshasa what you find, vampires
If you go to Darfur what you find, vampires
If you go to Malabo what you find, vampires
Lies and theft
Guns and debt
Life and death
IMF
When the bank man comes to your door
Better know you'll always be poor
Bank loans and policies
They can't make our people free
You live on the blood of my people
Everyone knows you've come to steal
You come like the thieves in the night
The whole world is ready to fight
The clause that bankrupted us was put in as a result of tens of thousands of professors,
labor leaders, [land] people being assassinated. The United States financed an
assassination team throughout Latin America after Pinochet in Chile to have basically a
proxy government, and the Argentine loan that said we will, we will follow U.S. rules, not
Argentine rules, basically should disqualify that debt from having to be paid. And it
should say the IMF debt is an odious debt. It was given under fraudulent purposes solely
for purposes of capital flight. We will not pay.
And this:
The problem is that the creditors have always used violence in order to get their
way.
Are why I so love Michael Hudson. There's the blood so studiously avoided in the
desanguinated language of "economics." Its absence is the tell-tale of the kind of
disembodiment described by Nancy Krieger
(h/t
Lambert ).
Embodiment, in other words, is literal. The
ecosocial premise is that clues to current and
changing population patterns of health, includ-
ing social disparities in health, are to be found
chiefly in the dynamic social, material, and
ecological contexts into which we are born,
develop, interact, and endeavour to live mean-
ingful lives. The contrast is to pervasive aetiolo-
gical hypotheses concerned mainly with
decontextualised and disembodied ''behaviours''
and ''exposures'' interacting with equally decon-
textualised and disembodied ''genes.'' The dis-
tinction is more than simply between
''determinants'' and ''mechanisms.'' Consider,
for example, contending -- and longstanding --
claims about racism compared with ''race'' as
causes of racial/ethnic disparities in health.
An embodied approach promotes testing hypoth-
eses to ascertain if the observed disparities are a
biological expression of racial discrimination,
past and present; by contrast, a disembodied
and decontextualised approach promulgates
research focused on detrimental genes and/or
''lifestyles.'' The vastly different implications
of these approaches for generating epidemiolo-
gical knowledge and informing policy underscore
the utility of clarifying the significance of
''embodiment'' for epidemiological inquiry.
[Footnotes omitted, emphasis added.]
Ah yes, but talking about our ideas about the problem, or talking about the talking about
the problem, is so much better for catapulting the propaganda.
Also, if it looks, walks, and bankrupts Argentina over and over exactly like an Economic
Hit Job aka mass murder and looting under the color of law by the Suits in broad g.d.
daylight, then yes. Yes it is.
In the '70s at the best universities Ecology Classes were instituted and the young well
off students were told first, that the climate was being altered as a result of human
activities.
Nixon was told by the CIA that overpopulation was the main treat to future US Security.
The Vatican quashed that way of looking at it. Gopsay policies are all the same as Vatican
policies.
Loyalty to the nation of their birth for a rich person & their wealthy families was
thrown out the window.
The jetsetter class now buys the best deal far as taxes and protections.
Their goal is to eliminate any harm to them or their families from "Forces beyond their
control." If the leaders of the world are going to co-operate with them, those leaders will
be paid. For the majority who are born to labor and become labor those things done by bankers
and their leaders become for them "Forces beyond their control."
The rich know that overpopulation is already the fact at 7.5 billion. They will bond
together on the tarmacs hanging around their jets for little talks as took place between Bill
Clinton and Lauretta Lynch.
"All those people that don't like how we get rich, who are taking up space we want, well, let
them starve. The science says there are too many of them anyway."
(Wasn't a discussion of how to engineer revolts wonderful to crush, but is used as
illustrative of how jet setters get around to meetings that lead to this or that policy of
the day.)
This is the essence of "Scientific Socialism". Current Trump Administration policies will
cause the withdrawal of US lands devoted to agriculture. What was for Stalin destruction of
the Kulaks and collectivization starvation of Armenians, or Peasants, or the Intellogemtsia,
or all those ambivalent about who is in power and are therefore Counter-Revolutionaries,
starving them all leaves only the ignorant, cowed, or lucky alive.
Creating the conditions for civil wars is a great thing for the banks and their loyal
patrons, the war materiel`s industries. The people rebel and oligarchs at the top have them
killed.
Trotsky made the point that the weapons in the arsenals are the peoples. Somehow soldiers
and police in nation after nation don't see it that way. In the US the police are made
soldiers in the drug war. Keeping the peace is not their primary job. No pot smoking
peaceniks are to be hired so the ranks are securely filled by thugs and incompetents made
special by law. They shoot Black people at the drop of a hat. They shoot the poor driven
crazy pretty often as well.
Somebody wondered why in the US Blues & Reds or Democrats, the Leftists silo and don't
talk civilly to each other. Trump supporters show and shoot guns or as in Charlottesville
Virginia run as many people as possible over and are obviously willing to kill other
Americans. In Weimar Germany the "Scientific Socialists" had their uniformed enforcers.
Dictators have their own organizations exultant at the opportunity to be rewarded for
beating and killing the people who object to the destruction of civilization. Spectaculars in
stadiums, like Trump's to come Military Parade become more common as if such is civilization
when it is more indicative of a break down of civilization itself.
I have no means to remove myself and my wife from the roiling clouds of more murder in the
streets. I'll be "collapsing in place" as described by Lambert Strether. These things and the
ideologies behind them happening are not accidental of "Forces Beyond My Control".
The true purposes of the IMF loan are questionable to me.
1.) Over the past few years, we have seen market rigging by large transnational banks in
both the LIBOR and foreign exchange markets. This raises the question of whether there was
covert market manipulation to rapidly drop the Argentine peso and coerce the Argentine
government to borrow funds from the IMF to defend the peso in order to assure that nation was
able to pay for necessary imports?
2.) Was this debt undertaken to facilitate capital flight for a small, wealthy segment of
the Argentine population without the consent of or benefit to the people of Argentina, or for
some other unstated reason?
If either of these is true, this debt can legitimately be considered as "odious debt" by
the people of Argentina and potentially repudiated.
It also appears to me that there is a high probability that the austerity measures likely
to be imposed under this $50 billion loan to Argentina by the IMF could violate the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Not an attorney, nor knowledgeable about international law. Just my opinion as an ordinary
citizen based on my reading of the post and Wikipedia.
What is neoliberalism?
Neoliberalism (a.k.a. The Washington
Consensus ) is the dominant ideology of the political class in Washington D.C., shared by
both legacy parties. In fact, it's not clear there is another ideology, which is why
we get seemingly weird policymaking processes like RomneyCare morphing into ObamaCare, even as
proponents of each version of the same plan hate each other, "narcissism of small
differences"-style. Of course, in neo-liberalism's house are many mansions, many factions, and
many funding sources, so it's natural, or not , that an
immense quantity of obfuscation and expert opinion
has accumulated over
time , making for many fine distinctions between various shades of neo-liberalism.
In this brief post, I hope to clear the ground by proposing two simple rules to which
neo-liberalism can be reduced. They are:
Rule #1: Because markets.
Rule #2: Go die!
Of course, these rules can't be applied, willy-nilly, inartfully, in just any context; Rule
#1 -- and here we owe an immense debt of gratitude to
the work of Outis Philalithopoulos on academic choice theory -- doesn't apply to in (let's
label it) Context #1: The world of the neo-liberal practitioners themselves ; the
academic guilds, media outlets[1], and think tanks to which they adhere,
Flexian style , are
distinctly not market-driven ; just
look at
Thomas Friedman . It follows that Rule #2 does not apply to neo-liberal practitioners
either, because of their social position just described in Context #1: "wingnut welfare" and
its equivalent in the "progressive" nomenklatura ; they will have -- to strike a
blow at random -- corporate health insurance. In addition, we have Context #2: The world of the
0.01%, to whom no rules apply by definition. Summarizing, the rules do not apply in the
following two contexts:
Context #1: The rules of neoliberalism do not apply to those who write the rules.
Context #2: The rules of neoliberalism do not apply in the world of the 0.01%.
Both have impunity[2]. These asymmetries will become more interesting shortly.
Let's start with the dull stuff, because pragmatism. Linguists are calling the
"prepositional-because." Or the "because-noun." [For example:] But Iowa still wants to sell
eggs to California, because money. It's a usage, in other words, that is exceptionally bloggy
and aggressively casual and implicitly ironic. And also highly adaptable. it also conveys a
certain universality. When I say, for example, "The talks broke down because politics," I'm
not just describing a circumstance. I'm also describing a category. I'm making grand and yet
ironized claims, announcing a situation and commenting on that situation at the same time.
I'm offering an explanation and rolling my eyes -- and I'm able to do it with one little
word. Because variety. Because Internet. Because language.
Because neo-liberalism. Because I like the idea, a lot, of catching the Mount Pelerin
Society, Pinochet, Diane Rehm, the Friedmans, Joe Biden, Rush Limbaugh, and the people who
drafted the Democratic platform in one big net, and then deep-sixing the entire squirming and
gesticulating political class with language that's "exceptionally bloggy and aggressively
casual and implicitly ironic."
And this tactic really is fair. Trap a neo-liberal in conversation next to a whiteboard, or
hand them a napkin, and you can probably coax them to "educate" you by drawing the famous
"Because Markets" diagram, which looks like this:
Figure 1: "Because Markets"
And when your targeted neo-liberal is done sketching, they will express the idea, with
varying degrees of quasi-religious fervor, that the price set by the intersection of the
downward-sloping demand curve and the upward-sloping supply curve is the right price
.
Except the supply and demand curve ain't necessarily so. The other day, I saw an elegant
hi-so lady eating a Krispy Kreme in Bangkok's Siam Paragon . With a fork!
That donut cost her 27 baht -- 84¢, 5¢ more than the US , in a city with
half the
cost-of-living of New York ! So, what's going on? To her, Krispy Kreme donuts are a luxury
good. How does she know that? Exactly because they have a high price! Therefore -- Thorstein
Veblen would be proud --
those donuts have an upward sloping demand curve ! (Yves, who is actually qualified to talk
about this stuff, goes over these issues in more detail than I can, in
ECONned .) So, empirically, seeking truth from facts, as they say, Figure 1 is by no means
universal. And that's before we get to the idea that "Because markets" isn't appropriate for
vast swaths of human endeavor; Common Pool Resources, for example, are not best managed
as a form of private property .
But by "right," your neo-liberal interlocutor will not mean right mechanically or
arithmetically, but right morally ; that is, the best of all possible worlds will be
created when there are no pesky artificial factors interfering with the frictionless operation
of the sacred curves. Note, however, that by the asymmetry of Context #1, Figure 1 does not
apply to the neo-liberal practitioner themselves, nor, by the asymmetry of Context #2, to the
class of people who own the markets in which the prices are set. So, if unions raise the price
of human rental, that's not just an ordinary bargaining process, it's wrong, even evil: It's a
defilement of the sacred curves. But if a squillionaire uses their power to bust that
same union, that's not merely no problem, it's not even part of the problem (by
Context #2). Hence, we have the pleasant and realistic outcome that
the price of a Walmart worker's time isn't enough to live on , the price of the (no doubt
credentialled) neo-liberal practititioner's time is somewhere in, er, the "middle," and the
price of a squillionaire's time is so high
they buy grotesquely expensive homes and forget they own them . Because markets.
Lawmakers who wrote the Affordable Care Act fell for [assuming good faith] the health
insurance industry's insistence that Americans want "choice and competition." [Rule #1, which
lawmakers share with insurers.] Having worked in that industry for two decades, I know the
real reason insurers and their allies kept reciting the "choice and competition" mantra was
to scare lawmakers away from even daring to give serious thought to a single-payer health
care system [which is a Rule #1 violation, at least in for citizens seeking treatment].
And I also know that insurers benefit from the marketplace confusion that "choice and
competition" can create. I can assure you that some insurers are counting on you becoming
overwhelmed by all the choices and picking a plan that might appear at first glance to be a
bargain. But beware: if you're not careful and pick a plan without really kicking the tires,
you very possibly will be buying something that could wind up costing you much more than you
ever imagined if you get sick or injured.
That happened to my friend Donna Smith, who as executive director of the Health Care for
All Colorado Foundation, knows more about health insurance than most of us. She spent quite a
bit of time last fall on the Colorado exchange trying to figure out which plan would offer
the best value for her and her husband. If she had to do it over again, she would have taken
the additional step of calling the insurance companies directly after reviewing the plans
they were offering on the exchange, just to be certain of what her out-of-pocket obligations
would be if she had to be hospitalized during the year.
A cancer survivor, Donna knew there would be a chance she might get sick again and need
expensive care [Rule #2]. It never occurred to her, though, that picking a gold or platinum
level plan with a higher premium would likely have been better deal than the silver Kaiser
Permanente plan she opted for and that seemed to be more affordable.
To make shopping for coverage even more challenging, Kaiser and most other insurers offer
several silver plans on the Colorado exchange, so Donna had to spend time trying to figure
out which silver plan would be the best deal.
Donna told me the she took the time to compare the monthly premiums, co-pays and annual
deductibles of each of the silver plans before making her decision. "I felt that the one I
chose offered the most coverage I could afford with my premium buying dollar," she said.
Sure enough, within days after the plan went into effect on January 1, Donna got sick and
was hospitalized for a week.
To her shock, she later found out some limitations of her coverage that made her overall
financial responsibility much higher.
You can see that Smith really was making a life-and-death choice when she purchased
insurance in the "Marketplace" designed by insurance companies. And if you multiply Smith's
story by millions nationwide, you'll see that those are not good at manipulating the market to
their ends, or don't have the hours to spend that Donna does, are more likely to have lethal
outcomes from their choices -- choices they
are mandated to make only so that parasitical health insurance rent extractors can
make a buck -- than those who have better skills, or have the hours to spend, or who have
their insurance purchased for them by trusted agents. Statistically, and actuaries no doubt can
calculate this sort of thing, a percentage of the insured will not make the choices that will
get them the care they need, and, again statistically, a certain percentage of those will lose
their lives. Because markets.
Fairfax County, Va., and McDowell County, W.Va., are separated by 350 miles, about a
half-day's drive. Traveling west from Fairfax County, the gated communities and bland
architecture of military contractors give way to exurbs, then to farmland and eventually to
McDowell's coal mines and the forested slopes of the Appalachians. Perhaps the greatest
distance between the two counties is this: Fairfax is a place of the haves [Contexts #1 and
#2], and McDowell of the have-nots. Just outside of Washington, fat government contracts
[that is, through policy choice] and a growing technology sector buoy the median [!!]
household income in Fairfax County up to $107,000, one of the highest in the nation.
McDowell, with the decline of coal, has little in the way of industry. Unemployment is high.
Drug abuse is rampant. Median household income is about one-fifth that of Fairfax.
One of the starkest consequences of that divide is seen in the life expectancies of
the people there. Residents of Fairfax County are among the longest-lived in the country: Men
have an average life expectancy of 82 years and women, 85, about the same as in Sweden. In
McDowell, the averages are 64 and 73, about the same as in Iraq .
Since the 1980s, "socioeconomic status [class] has become an even more important indicator
of life expectancy." That was the finding of a 2008 report by the Congressional Budget
Office. But dollars in a bank account have never added a day to anyone's life, researchers
stress. Instead, those dollars are at work in a thousand daily-life decisions
[like Donna Smith's] -- about jobs, medical care, housing, food and exercise -- with a
cumulative effect on longevity.
"Why might income have an effect on morbidity or mortality?" said David Kindig, an
emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and an expert in
longevity issues. "We have these causal pathways, through better jobs, better health
insurance, better choice of behaviors, he added. On top of that, "there's the stress effects
of poverty and low educational status."
[T]he contrast between McDowell and Fairfax shows just how deeply entrenched these trends
are, with consequences reaching all the way from people's pocketbooks to their
graves.
Because markets. Go die![4]
NOTES
[1] The social experiment of the moment,
squillionaires with big ideas , has yet to play out in the media. Too soon to tell!
[3]
Via a podcast from sadly decayed New Yorker . It's quite a treat to hear Herzberg and
Remnick gradually allow themselves to dimly understand that they know literally nothing of the
experience of the average person buying Obamacare because they have never had to buy their own
insurance since they get it corporately (see Context #1).
[4] Again from Lowrey, a fine example of Rule #2:
"These things are not nearly as clear as they seem, or as clear as epidemiologists seem to
think," said Angus Deaton, an economist at Princeton.
Just doing his job .
UPDATE Adding, I'm not claiming that I've synthesized the neo-liberal literature. My claim
is that if you engage a neo-liberal in conversation on policy ("at the whiteboard"), at some
point you will be able to reduce what they say to rule #1 as a premise and rule #2 as an
injunction, given the asymmetrical contexts #1 and #2. It's rather like the famous headline
"Ford to City: Drop Dead," but on a society-wide scale, and with the 0.01% in the place of
Ford.
My favorite quote regarding supply-demand curves goes something like "Like unicorns,
supply-demand curves are often drawn but never seen in reality". From the book Economyths. A
highly entertaining and readable debunking of neoclassical economics theory.
What a superb post! I particularly enjoyed how you correctly identified "parasitical rent
extraction" as the preferred modus operandi of the 1% and their enablers.
How could we boil down an ideology opposed to neoliberalism?
1) Because humanity. We are all brothers and sisters who should care for one another.
2) Go live in joy and harmony. Caring for one another, and the health of our environment, we
can enjoy living and creating together in an atmosphere free of undue stress and strife.
Absolutely. Now go read the story about "How One City turned Poverty into a Prison
Sentence" in the links section. It is a case study of rent extraction with jail as the final
profit making solution when the poor are sucked dry. Money and politicians have so corrupted
our democracy that it has become predatory. The political system is broke and I really don't
see any real solutions to breaking the grip of those corrupting the system.
I haven't had time to read much of what's in NC today, but I did read part of the
Poverty/Prison article. Absolutely infuriating! When people can't pay their fines, community
service should be an option. But I guess private companies don't make any profits from
community service.
"The political system is broke and I really don't see any real solutions to breaking the
grip of those corrupting the system."
"I can UNDERSTAND pessimism, but I don't BELIEVE in it. It's not simply a matter of faith,
but of historical EVIDENCE. Not overwhelming evidence, just enough to give HOPE, because for
hope we don't need certainty, only POSSIBILITY."-Howard Zinn
I think "because markets" was abetted by the Left-Liberal "postmodern turn" of the 1970s
and 80s. The Civil Rights and Anti-War movements had a hard moral center. Biting into them
could crack teeth. Postmodernism and certain kinds of multiculturalism were gooey all the way
through. They allowed the professoriate and the outside intellectuals to not have to make
moral distinctions and moral choices. Everything could be analyzed (thus boosting publication
output) and no hard work of condemnation, organization, or resistance need happen, because
language was indeterminate, morals relative, and knowledge suspect. Surrender to the market
was a way for a bunch of soft, queasy people to not have to make hard choices and defend them
(such defense, in the ideological mood of the day, being a sign of a lack of
"sophistication", "philosophical rigor", and "nuance", and an indicator of "crude"
thinking–in other words, you'd be seen as a naive dunce not worth being granted
tenure).
And, if you were one of those profs who could parlay the latest methodology into a big,
splashy list of publications and exploit the burgeoning star system, the market was very,
very good to you. So why ask such vulgar materialistic questions about economic outcomes when
you could add a gay black woman to your syllabus and feel like you were "exploding the
canon", "fighting the power", and "sticking it to the Man"?
Wow! I think your critique is spot on. The rot starts, in many ways, with the U.S.
intellectual class that has been, largely, silenced and/or assigned to mediocre endeavors as
you suggest.
"Universities no longer train students to think critically, to examine and critique
systems of power and cultural and political assumptions, to ask the broad questions of
meaning and morality once sustained by the humanities. These institutions have transformed
themselves into vocational schools. They have become breeding grounds for systems managers
trained to serve the corporate state. In a Faustian bargain with corporate power, many of
these universities have swelled their endowments and the budgets of many of their departments
with billions in corporate and government dollars. College presidents, paid enormous salaries
as if they were the heads of corporations, are judged almost solely on their ability to raise
money. In return, these universities, like the media and religious institutions, not only
remain silent about corporate power but also condemn as "political" all within their walls
who question corporate malfeasance and the excesses of unfettered capitalism." http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_death_of_the_liberal_class_20101029
Universities used to teach only a small number (5% when I went) and HE has expanded to a
target of 50%. I don't wear the better days argument implicit in this. Standards have dropped
so far it's hard to teach anything conceptual and most staff wouldn't be up to it. I suspect
universities were never much good and people got better education in jobs with decent firms.
And what of virtue ethics and other such clap-trap? Most of the prats who came up with that
didn't challenge slavery. The German elite got bildung which helped them not at all to resist
the Nazis. Scientists get none of that rot and turn out more generally ethical and leftist
than the rest of HE output.
I think that's very perceptive and I agree. I always knew the deconstructionists were up
to no good -- readers will correct me but my impression is they destroyed English Department
after English Department -- but your comment reminds how very no good their "no good"
was.
Agreed.
They destroyed English departments, but the destroyers got tenure tracks and a lot of
goodies, so perhaps like death by carbon monoxide poisoning, they were largely (and
arrogantly, in a few cases that I've seen UpCloseAndPersonal) oblivious of the harm their
sanctimonious behavior created.
@Lambert Strether
You nailed it, too, but I personally would have changed "markets" to "psychotic parasitical
greed and lust", but that is probably too long. I guess one word is the limit. *sigh*
Krugman writes: "economic opportunity has shriveled for half the population." I'd like to
see a little acknowledgment that NAFTA had something to do with that. And since trade is
Krugman's bailiwick, I'd like to see a full-throated denunciation of TPP, instead of that
lame promise to do "homework" (in his own field?!) followed by a nothing-burger of a
column.
Krugman talks a good game. He's still a card-carrying member of the political class, and a
supporter of ObamaCare, which is a "Because markets. Go die!" solution if ever I've seen one,
which is covered in the post .
Yeah, they are all trying to carry water for The Party while grudgingly admitting that the
buckets are full of holes, or pretending that it's only the other guys who are carrying the
buckets.
Of course he's a member of the political class! You don't get to write for the NYT if you
aren't–not any more. Look the mainstream Party Line is the only game in town. Who will
be there for him when he loses his place at the table? The left has not made it easy for
people to turn left–where is the funding, the organization and so on? The mainstream
Washington consensus is all there is right now–TINA is a reality because the left
perpetually sleeps and believes that cries of "it's not fair!" are enough.
Neo-liberal is a wuss phrase invented by guilt ridden liberals to avoid using the word
that truly describes the state of affairs.
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and
corporate power"
― Benito Mussolini
"We have buried the putrid corpse of liberty"
― Benito Mussolini
Please don't think that I am defending either Neo-Liberalism or Fascism; I'm not. Both are
odious. But it's not clear that Mussolini actually said that about corporatism, since that
appears to be a mistranslation of the Italian word "corporatzione" See WikiQuote on Mussolini's Disputed
Quote :
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and
corporate power."
This misunderstanding of the meaning of 'corporatzione' spread rapidly in the United
States after appearing in a column by Molly Ivins (24 November 2002). It is repeated often
and sometimes attributed to the "Fascism" entry in the 1932 Enciclopedia Italiana, but does
not appear there. See "Mussolini on the Corporate State" by Chip Berlet which discusses the
corporatzione – councils of workers, managers and other groups set up by the Fascist
Party to control the economy and everyone in it.
Here's the Chip Berlet article . Since I don't
speak Italian, I don't know what the truth about this is. Perhaps an NC reader who is fluent
in Italian can comment for us.
Fascism's corporativismo was something altogether different -- the
corporazioni were State-mandated guilds; it's another story, entirely. What we have
in the US, instead, is a system governed by an ever more oligarchically-diseased, and
outwardly aggressive, bureau-technocracy, which, internally, presides over a gradual
privatization of public-functions, a sweeping commercialization of all spiritual endeavors
(higher learning and the arts), and a virtual monopolization (corporatization) of all
economic activity.
Thepolitical idea of "corporatism" was not original to Mussolini, but is far older. In
shortest form, a "corporatist" state was one in which persons were represented as members of
a particular class, as opposed to a "representative state" where persons were represented as
residents of a particular geographical community. In crude form, plumbers would be
represented in the councils of state by a plumber, veterinarians by a veterinarian, etc. The
Wikipedia article under this entry describes some of the 19th century intellectual history of
this political idea
Agreed. Totally trendy and juvenile. Belongs in the same category as "Let's do lunch."
English is a rich language, offering many word choices with which to craft a scathing
critique without resorting to slang.
While I am (I think) in agreement with you, this is one of the most obfuscatory (your
word) articles I have looked at on NC for awhile. Preaching to the choir is one thing (I am,
after all, in that choir), but all that grammatical analysis that morphs into economic
analysis may be cute but is just unnecessary. Please write more clearly next time!
I didn't understand why anyone would want a crispy cream doughnut.
Lambert's walk through is very similar to modern work on argument. We tend to avoid best
argument and just do easy ones with obvious "evidence", which is pretty dumb as data and
theory spin together and there is no neutral observation language. Markets equate with 'suck
it and see'. Neo-liberalism is well over 2000 years old. It's essence is lying. Machiavelli
described it well. You say a pile of liberal 'dulldung' in public expressing your princely
virtue and act as a ruthless bastard behind the scenes, trading on insider information and
keeping savage attack dogs fed with the profits. Virtue ethics are extensively taught to an
elite cadre in a system supported by slaves. Honesty is the best policy is taught alongside
the need to lawyer up and deceive the enemy with clever strategies. You really are a decent
person but have to fight the shameless enemy on her own terms.
Neo-liberalism is profoundly non-scientific and non-modern. Even if markets were real, we
would want to do experiments that didn't ground out in them to find out how to change or
maintain them. I'm afraid those of us who know E = MC2 isn't very important in relativity
(excellent link the other day) rarely get arsed with economics and politics. They just aren't
where we'd start to try and get a reasonable society going, given the chance. And both lack
the show and tell we like.
A major ruse in neo-liberalism is to turn arguments about change into fantasies requiring
a totally remodelled world-view. I know Kuhn used the term paradigm in this sense, but he'd
stuffed that before his second edition and was talking 'disciplinary matrices', which wasn't
half as catchy. This ruse disguises the fact that most critique really just asks 'where's
your evidence'? In primitive societies, there is more murder than civilisation can match
through war, at least before some clown pops off a hydrogen bomb or biological wizardry. Do
we leave murder to Mr Market? There are many other examples we don't cede to market throws of
the dice.
Neo-liberalism works by shouting loud. It might do us good to work out what our role in
the performance of the Naked Emperor is. Drowning out the voice of the child shouting he is
naked with clever critique?
"That donut cost her 27 baht -- 84¢, 5¢ more than the US, in a city with half
the cost-of-living of New York! So, what's going on? To her, Krispy Kreme donuts are a luxury
good. How does she know that?"
The cost of living has little to nothing to do with if the cost to produce, sell, and
profit from a Krispy Kreme donut in Thailand vs NYC. This is either the same terrible
critical thinking skills you accuse the neo-liberals of possessing or easily dismissible
sophistry.
The demand curve is a good starting point for discussing Economics because it starts the
conversation about what really goes into the price of a good and the cost/willingness of its
consumption.
I feel satisfied to have shown that neo-liberalism is false and lethal. I notice you don't
dispute that. I don't see why I have to present an alternative. In any case, I don't do
assignments.
Yes you do Lambert. So do I. We just mark our own these days. Important to say critique
doesn't need an alternative. Sadly, you have not slain the neo-blobby dragon and it will be
round for the rent tomorrow. Somehow we need to trick it into a knife fight when we have
pistols. One of the neo-clogger gun batteries is this 'what's your alternative' stuff. We
should not go Light Brigade. The truth here is they prevent alternatives and practise sacking
raids on any established.
It would be interesting to see speculation in here concerning what life would be like with
guaranteed income set at three squares and a roof over one's head. I'm particularly
interested in employee relations and what real motivation to work is.
And the sale price of a donut has nothing necessarily to do with the cost of production
and sales, so long as there is a sufficiently fashionable level of profit in doing so.
Anecdotal evidence still beats a priori assertion.
And furthermore, "presenting an alternate" is simply abrogation of responsibility in the
form of a romantic prayer, most often deployed by those whose social identity and/or access
to power are directly or indirectly threatened by the criticial analysis in progress.
In other words, it's begging the question "because markets".
Price distortions are the result of market inefficiencies which can be contrived in any
number of ways to enable rent extraction. You're invited to confess to your own favorite
methods.
The supply-demand diagram as shown is inaccurate. As such it is an effective demonstration
of lying by omission.
To correctly model real-world markets it needs to show how the supply and demand curves
are shifted through industry collusion, improper government mandates, and other market
distortions and manipulations. It needs to show how prices are increased through market
inefficiencies and how economic rent is contrived. It needs to demonstrate the differences
between a non-profit utilitarian system, a competitive system that allows for a normal
profit, and one that is perverted to enable rent extraction.
The diagram as shown doesn't do any of these things, and a corporate con artist who tries
to fob off such a thing on you needs to be taken to school about their ignorance of economics
and their propensity for blatant dishonesty and thievery. You certainly don't want such a
pirate to get away with using the Blinding With Science fallacy on you when it's fairly
straightforward to expose the lying for what it is with just a little standard explanatory
material.
I've heard the "narcissism of small differences" theory before but I don't think I buy it.
The differences are large, but they're the Yankee/Cowboy War differences detailed by Oglesby,
not a disagreement over any of the main points of the Washington Consensus..
The war between the Eastern Establishment and the Cowboy Capitalists largely ended when
the factions called a truce in 1980 and put Bush and Reagan on the ticket. Since then the
transnational globalizing elite have pretty much buried those old cohorts or coopted them.
The Tea Party and Fox News are the last refuges of the Cowboys, along with the nitwits at
Commentary. But I think that the biggest players no longer see the United States as the
exclusive or even primary stage on which capital is to be accumulated and deployed. America
now functions primarily as rent collector and strike breaker.
Rule 2 reminds me of the title of H Rap Brown's autobiography, written fifty years
ago.
"I lived near Louisiana State University, and I could see this big fine school with modern
buildings and it was for whites. Then there was Southern University, which was about to fall
in and that was for the niggers. And when I compared the two, the message that the white man
was trying to get across was obvious Die Nigger Die."
A comment – Jordan P Soreff #3 Be quiet and civil while going about #2 Because
Markets. -- Lovely weather we're having. Did you see Miley Cyrus? OMG Dead as a doornail.
I received a message last week from a savvy reader, a former McKinsey partner who has also
done among other things significant pro-bono work with housing not-for-profits (as in he has
more interest and experience in social justice issues than most people with his background).
His query:
We both know that financialization has, among so many other things, turned large swaths of
the capital markets into a casino
Here's my thought/question: is there a house?
The common wisdom is that the 'house wins' in casinos
In all likelihood, at least in the great financial crisis, the TBTF banks were the 'house'
yet, it's at least a bit different from a casino house because, absent the bailouts, those
banks would not have won.
So, who or what was really the 'house'? Was it the Fed? Did the Fed actually 'win'?
Maybe the 'house' is the 1% . or, more precisely, the .01%???
I have included this fetching image to give you the opportunity to formulate your own answer
before scrolling down.
My reply:
The producers in finance: the managing directors and heads of trading desks at major
banks, the more senior managers who are along for the ride, the hedgies, guys in private
equity.
The "house" is individuals, not institutions. That is how looting works.
Remember, the question is not merely who wins from our current hypertrophied financial
system, but who is set up to be the house, as in to win no matter what. The answer in this case
is intrinsically linked to looting.
an economic underground can come to life if firms have an incentive to go broke for profit
at society's expense (to loot) instead of to go for broke (to gamble on success). Bankruptcy
for profit will occur if poor accounting, lax regulation, or low penalties for abuse give
owners an incentive to pay themselves more than their firms are worth and then default on
their debt obligations. Bankruptcy for profit occurs most commonly when a government
guarantees a firm's debt obligations. The most obvious such guarantee is deposit insurance,
but governments also implicitly or explicitly guarantee the policies of insurance companies,
the pension obligations of private firms, virtually all the obligations of large banks,
student loans, mortgage finance of subsidized housing, and the general obligations of large
or influential firms. . . .
Because net worth is typically a small fraction of total assets for the insured
institutions, . . . bankruptcy for profit can easily become a more attractive strategy for
the owners than maximizing true economic values. If so, the normal economics of maximizing
economic value is replaced by the topsy-turvy economics of maximizing current extractable
value , which tends to drive the firm's economic net worth deeply negative. Once owners
have decided that they can extract more from a firm by maximizing their present take, any
action that allows them to extract more currently will be attractive -- even if it causes a
large reduction in the true economic net worth of the firm).
The difference between the classic Akerlof/Romer notion of looting, where the owner
ssyphoned off funds and left the company so fragile that eventual bankruptcy was almost
inevitable, is that the evolution of Wall Street has produced a much broader class of
individuals who are treated as if they have claims on profit streams. That puts them in a
quasi-ownership position.
These "producers" are typically perceived to have enough control over a revenue stream as to
have leverage over the institution. That includes anyone who runs a profit center (and
remember, a profit center can be as small as one trader and a trading assistant), as well as
individuals on the more-team-oriented investment banking side of the house that have strong
enough client relationships that they could take some business with them (and perhaps other
members of their team) if they left. As we explained in ECONNED:
In the financial services industry version of looting, we instead have firms where
operational authority, is decentralized, vested in senior business managers, or "producers."
As a result of industry evolution and perceived competitive pressures, these producers, as a
result of formal incentives plus values held widely within the industry, focused solely on
producing the maximum amount possible in the current bonus period. The formal and informal
rewards system thus tallies exactly with the topsy-turvy scheme of " maximizing current
extractable value ."
This behavior in the past was positive, indeed highly productive, as long as it was
contained and channeled via tough-minded oversight, meaning top management who could properly
supervise the business. The main mechanisms are management reporting systems, risk
management, and personal understanding of and involvement in day-to-day operations, plus
external checks, such as regulations and criminal penalties. For a host of reasons, the
balance of power has shifted entirely toward the forces that encourage looting. And because
the damage that results cannot clearly be pinned on the top brass it is difficult to
ascertain from the outside whether the executives merely unwittingly enabled this process or
were active perpetrators.
Notice this excessive extraction that led to business failure took place even though these
firms had high levels of employee stock ownership. At Bear Stearns, members of the firm owned
roughly one-third of the shares. At Lehman, they held nearly 30%, and the average managing
director owned shares worth on average two times his annual take. Economic theory says that
share ownership by employees and managers should lead them to produce the best long-term
results for the enterprise. Yet those assumptions were shown to be flawed on Wall Street, as
they were with Enron, in which 62% of the 401(k) assets were invested in Enron stock, and
senior management also had significant share ownership.
Just as we have seen in Corporate America, using equity to align the interests of managers
and shareholders has produced the converse of what the theorists expected, a pathological
fixation on short-term results. On Wall Street, where the business model and rewards systems
already had an intrinsic propensity to emphasize the quick kill, widespread employee
ownership was an ineffective counter at best and more likely served to reinforce the fixation
on current performance, irrespective of the true cost of achieving it.
The very worst feature of looting version 2.0 is that it has created doomsday machines. In
the old construct, the CEO fraudsters would drain a business, let it fail, and move on. The
fact of bankruptcy assured that the trail of wreckage would catch up with them sooner or
later. But here, the firms, due to their perceived systemic importance, are not being
permitted to fail. So there are no postmortems, in particular criminal investigations, to
determine to what extent fraud, as opposed to mere greed and rampant stupidity, led to what
would otherwise have been their end.
Now mind you, these producers aren't the Ayn Randian rugged individualists that they often
envision themselves to be. Their success depends on institutional infrastructure: concentrated
capital and information flows, access to cheap leverage, risk control systems, a back office,
etc. Quite a few successful Goldman traders have flopped when trying to launch their own hedge
fund. John Meriwether, a storied Salomon trader, has presided over a series of hedge fund
failures in his later life, the most spectacular being LTCM. Former Goldman CEO Jon Corzine is
another high profile example of a supposedly successful trader and trading manager who came a
cropper when given more degrees of freedom at MF Global than at his former home.
But while these individuals' ability to succeed on a stand-alone basis or in different type
of firm is subject to question, they nevertheless hold their employers hostage. If they decamp
to a competitor, they not only take some (or a lot) of their revenues with them, but they can
damage the ability to be competitive in closely aligned businesses. Senior people cannot be
replaced quickly and each unit's activity is so specialized that employees from other area
can't pinch hit for the recently departed producer or team. And if the loss is significant
enough, competitors will poach on other business units, which in a worse case scenario can put
a firm in a downspiral.
And the worst is given the present structure of these firms, there is no simple way to curb
the leverage these staffers have over their employers. Again from ECONNED:
On paper, capital markets enterprises look like a great opportunity. The firms that are at
the nexus of global money flows participate in a very high level of transactions. Enough of
them are in complex products or not deeply liquid markets so as to allow firms to find ways
to uncover, in many cases create, and capture profit opportunities. New, typically
sophisticated products often provide particularly juicy returns to the intermediary. And in
theory, clever, adaptive, narrowly skilled staff can stay enough ahead of the game so that
the amount captured off this huge transaction flow is handsome.
Once again, however, the real world deviates in important respects from the fantasy. Why?
This business model is also a managerial nightmare.
We have a paradox: "success" and profitability in the investment banking context entails
giving broad discretion to individuals with highly specialized know-how. But the businesses
have outgrown the ability to monitor and manage these specialists effectively. The high
frequency, meaningful stakes, and large absolute number of decisions made at the operational
level, the geographic span of these firms, and the often imperfectly understood
interconnections among business risks make effective supervision well-nigh impossible.
What is intriguing about the ex-McKinsey partner's question is that even after reading
extensively about the crisis, he was unable to see the true locus of power in the financial
services industry. Yet the answer is obvious to anyone who has worked in or closely with major
capital markets firms.
And the conundrum we have outlined means the people who call for prosecutions of individuals
are exactly right. Punishing firms is ineffective. Firms are fluid; key players can and often
do move around. And the culpability for bad practices typically resides both at the producer
level (the manager immediately responsible for the unit in which the bad conduct took place)
and more senior management (which typically benefits directly from any ill-gotten profits, in
terms of their compensation levels, and needs to be held responsible, even if they were simply
derelict in duty, as opposed to actively complicit).
When the SEC was respected and feared, back in the stone ages of the 1970s, the capital
markets delivered far better value for society as a whole than they do now. But even though
financial services industry looters are the big winners in the capital markets casino, many
members of the 0.1% have been along for the ride. Until some of the uber-rich join the great
unwashed as victims of financial services industry looting, the house has nothing to worry
about.
"Consider this analogy: In a hypothetical casino card game the house takes 5% of every
pot. If 10% of the money at the table is on average played on each hand, then the house takes
0.5% of the money in the game on each rake. After 200 hands, 100% of the money that is on
average at the table has been taken by the house. The only way the game may continue is to
have new money come to it. The winners, of course, smell the new blood and even anticipate it
greedily. And the biggest winner over a time is always the house. Until the free market
ideologues took over, the biggest difference between a casino bank and finance was that the
gaming house took a bigger cut of the handle.
"The media have played up the CDS and futures gambling aspect of derivatives, in what they
call 'Casino Capitalism.' This distracts from the better casino analogy where the principal
players are the house that always wins. The fundamental function of the big hedge funds,
banks, brokerages, private equity firms [formerly venture capitalists] investors and
insurance companies is to take a cut of almost every transaction and enterprise through
interest on finance and profit on investment, banking, debt and credit card fees, etc. Even
if some of them did lose a little on the derivatives frenzy and didn't pass on their losses
– to we, the people, their victims, the all time losers – by virtue of the
bailout, the biggest just got bigger and only the suckers and small fry got hurt badly or
wiped out."
Good analogy. I see the casino as two camps: 1) Those getting commissions on trades; and
2) those supplying casino credit to players needing help through volitile periods. The house
loves volatility because it drives both of these mechanisms for paying the house.
Great post Yves. I was taken by this portion near the end:
When the SEC was respected and feared, back in the stone ages of the 1970s, the capital
markets delivered far better value for society as a whole than they do now. But even though
financial services industry looters are the big winners in the capital markets casino, many
members of the 0.1% have been along for the ride. Until some of the uber-rich join the great
unwashed as victims of financial services industry looting, the house has nothing to worry
about.
I had thought that this had indeed started to happen. The biggest example I can think of
is JP Morgan's dealings with Madoff's failed Ponzi scheme. And probing the recesses of my
memory and then searching the blog, I came up with these stories:
So it would seem that the 1%, dare I say, 0.1% and 0.01% are indeed being hit. But they
seem unable to align their material interests with better control over Wall St. Is that
because an relatively insignificant portion of the uber wealthy are being hit, or because
Wall St. is so deeply embedded in the bodies that should be regulating it?
Even among the super-rich, there is a collective action problem. I met with Blavatnik to
discuss the idea of broader noise-making about JP Morgan misconduct. He made clear he was not
interested in looking like an enemy of banks, that (among other things) as a buyer and seller
of companies, he needed them. He was receptive to the idea of narrower action but I concluded
the cost of doing it right was probably higher than made sense given the uncertain payoff.
But part of it also is that structurally, they are forced to go after the institution. They
can't single out the individuals who were the immediate perps (save for describing their role
in litigation).
And you also have the problem of denial. Blavanik was so clearly abused, in a way that
there was no basis for self-recriminatation that he was clear about taking action, which in
his case was suing. But a lot of people are really embarrassed about losing money or being
taken advantage of. So even if they might threaten litigation, they won't talk it up among
their peers to try to shift opinions and recruit allies.
So I'd hazard things have to get worse before the real economy types start to organize to
rein in Wall Street.
"But a lot of people are really embarrassed about losing money or being taken advantage
of. So even if they might threaten litigation, they won't talk it up among their peers to try
to shift opinions and recruit allies."
Very well said! This same psychology partly explains why, at the lower end of the
socio-economic spectrum, it is so difficult to get workers to go after even egregious cases
of wage theft. Plus, these workers rightly understand that, by taking action, they risk
gaining a "troublemaker" label that will make it very hard for them to keep earning their
daily bread.
I agree with Larry– this is a really great, great post of yours. I think I now have
to get your book and read it -- soon .
In reading through the fascinating observations, I was reminded of a saying which, in the
current context would run, "If you have to ask 'Who is the 'House' in this (gaming
operation)?' then it's clear that you and yours don't belong to it."
'Maximizing current extractable value tends to drive the firm's economic net worth
deeply negative.'
This is true in spades for governments. Lawrence Kotlikoff has estimated Usgov's negative
net worth at minus $200 trillion, or twelve years' worth of GDP.
For those at the top, looting is done indirectly by capitalizing on one's prestige and
power after leaving office. Those lifelong public servants, the Clintons, have raked in
nearly half a billion this way.
Meanwhile, our corpgov sponsors loot directly via federal expenditures. Our splendid new
war in Syria, voted yesterday, is looting in its purest form.
And certainly our healthcare system is organized around the principle of looting. Cui
bono? Well, the insurance companies, hospital groups and pharma companies. Who owns them? The
usual plutocrat suspects. Since they make the rules, it's hard to find a game that they
lose.
It seems to me that there is a sever disconnect between money and value delivered. The
whole system seems utterly broken because of the asynchronous nature of debt. You can make a
trick look like value by deferring the truth through debt.
"Money" has become too abstract and that we need to move back up the scale towards
bartering in order to re-assert the link between reward and value delivered.
"Investors who lost their life savings in convicted Texas financier R. Allen Stanford's $7
billion Ponzi scheme got their day in court today on the first day of the Supreme Court's
2013 term, but it was unclear whether their plea will pay dividends. Unable to recover their
investments from Stanford or his fraudulent entities, including a bank based in Antigua, the
plaintiffs filed class-action lawsuits in state and federal courts in Texas and Louisiana.
But a law passed by Congress in 1998 was intended to preclude such lawsuits and assert
federal jurisdiction. Faced with conflicting lower court rulings, the Supreme Court must
decide whether to side with the defrauded investors or the financial institutions, law firms
and insurance companies accused of aiding Stanford's scheme. The federal government, seeking
to protect the Securities and Exchange Commission's regulatory authority over security fraud
claims, is siding with the defendants." http://www.businessreport.com/section/tagged&tagID=1085&tag=Fraud
I think a lot of very wealthy fraud victims still believe that they have a chance of
recovering their losses through legal channels, not realizing how much the game has been
rigged to allow the fraudsters to operate with impunity. Perhaps more importantly, I think a
lot of wealthy investors are simply unaware of how they are being fleeced. They have very
diversified investments, usually managed by other people. They may feel mildly disappointed
that their returns are modest in what the media has told them is a historic bull market. Yet
as long as some parts of their portfolio do bring decent returns, the overall picture they
have of their finances is that of modest growth– so they shrug off the possibility that
they have been conned. No one likes to think of themselves as a mark. As long as they still
have enough money sloshing around to live in the style to which they're accustomed, why go
into all the ugly details?
You make some valid points about the wealthier investors and not wanting to believe that
they're a mark or a victim of some looter. That, plus they're probably connected by family or
societal ties to the looters, so they don't want to make waves. Making waves are for the
rabble, who'll lose anyway.
Unless or until the looting gets really egregious and/or enough of the very wealthy (upper
2% or 3% but not .1%) starting seeing their wealth dwindling, don't expect them to lift a
finger or make a stink.
The court cases against crooks like Madoff and Stanford may (have in the case of Madoff, I
believe) result in investors getting some of their money back, but I believe it ends up being
pennies on the dollar. Probably worse than the drubbing that investors took from the crash of
'08.
Believing that the USA regulatory, administrative and/or "justice" system will serve your
needs is what I like to call Magical Thinking. Ain't gonna happen. Most we rubes might get
is, as with Madoff's case, pennies on the dollar.
Great post and great question–the term "maximizing current extractable value" is a
terrific term that should be more generally used about all assets and call it "MCEV." Anyway
the term does open up vast horizons. As for who the "House" is I think it is not the key
managers and traders who seem to have the world by the short hairs but, instead, the imperial
apparatus that consists of a network of oligarchs around the world that make sure the crooked
game continues and this would include the crooked dealers; we have to remember that,
ultimately the ones who control the guns are always going to be the House.
Until some of the uber-rich join the great unwashed as victims of financial services
industry looting, the house has nothing to worry about.
-- -- --
It will happen but not on our schedule. Patience is a virtue.
I think there's a huge wall of cognitive dissonance and learned frames to overcome.
We have been trained to see the systems as orbits of institutions, and to assume there's
structures serving to keep them in line. Even when those break down, we still grant implicit
assumption that people work for institutions, not the other way around.
It remains invisible to most of the country that the system has evolved to legalize and
enable looting by sociopathic individuals on a massive-widespread-systematic-ongoing scale.
It's so simple, so pedestrian.. so un-American.
Yes. A must-read on that issue (the role of loose networks of individuals who play
multiple role, and how those alliances have come to dominate the power structure) is Janine
Wedel's The Shadow Elite.
First, largely I agree. It's important to highlight the role of individuals.
Second, the house doesn't win every single hand. It loses often, with very high variance.
In a way, that's part of the trick that keeps it from being obvious the house ultimately
always wins: because the house only wins on average.
So the TBTF institutions (qua institutions) can also act as the house, even if they had
lost the 2008 hand. Which, it should be noted, they didn't. "Absent the bailout, they would
have lost" almost misses the whole point.
The heads-I-win-tails-you-lose nature of the social guarantees and bailouts are
effectively an extremely valuable option. Whomever is getting those options for free is
acting analagous to the house.
I hate to break it to yee "New Deal "socialists but banking extraction is very much state
policy.
The state is the bank and the bank is the state.
We can easily see this as wealth is concentrated.
This is how it has worked since Tudor times.
The King is no longer divine and all that jazz.
The bank took its seat inside the Tabernacle.
And as they say the rest is history or was it the end of history ?
McMike un-American, or quintessentially American? Better yet, pandemic through history,
regardless of Empire? The hoorah Kool-Aid we get in our early years is strong stuff when we
cling to a false paradigm, such as , "American", it prevents us from moving into a new
paradigm and order. I mention how arcane our Constitution is to folks, how we can and should
re-tool for the 21st century and beyond, and folks recoil in horror. Is my concept, or their
reaction un-American? BTW, I can't imagine Chris Hedges, Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, Noam Chomsky
all in the same room hammering out a new Constitution. Why would they get the invite? Do we
have to abdicate our thinking to Proxy? Sure is easy to have little-and-declining hope these
days if one is paying even a bit of attention back to, Dancing with the Master Chefs! The
Kardashian-Jenners are guests!!
It is interesting how small a percentage of the citizenry is able to really remove the
Kool Aid induced veil over our eyes and really accept what this country is. I have friends
who have directed me NOT to discuss these "UnAmerican" issues with them ever again. They
simply will not countenance any discussion about how badly we are being ripped off by our
elected officials (and others, of course) in the District of Criminals. It doesn't matter how
some vote – not a partisan issue – it's the majority. Hooray for the Red, White
& Blue is, apparently, very compelling for the majority. Pass the clicker!
One of the better examples of short term extraction vs company future.
At Simmons, Bought, Drained and Sold, Then Sent to Bankruptcy
Oct 4, 2009 Left, the Simmons Bedding Company in early days. Right, Zalmon Its recent
history has been notable, too, but for a different reason. Simmons
Excellent post with a particularly concise description of the problem. I'm trying to
imagine how the system could have evolved to its current state without the repeal of
Glass-Steagall, but I can't. Your mention of Meriwether and Corzine makes my point. The
"managers" you refer to are able to create profit centers because of the discounted (and
subsidized) access to capital that TBTF banks receive from all of us. Left to fend for
themselves in the market for access to capital that us mere mortals conduct business, they
are no more than average.
The repeal of Glass Steagall was not the key event. Glass Steagall was a dead letter long
before it was repealed. Banks were already substantial participants in capital markets by
then. Credit Suisse (a bank) bought First Boston (a major investment bank and top bond
trader, of Salomon's stature) in 1988, 11 years before Glass Steagall was repealed.
If I had to single change that over time changed the industry most, it was the repeal in
1970 of the New York Stock Exchange rule that required all members to be partnerships.
For me, an outsider, the big change was the move on Wall Street, from the white shoe, golf
club leisure class to the Brooklyn hard scrabble, hungry guy. 1980s? 1970s?
The Brooklyn boys were eager, in a hurry, and had sharp elbows. This may be too broad but
– much of the damage done by The Street was perhaps done by such "boys," not the old
crowd of [HYP] Harvard-Yale-Princeton guys from top families.
If so, democratization of some industries doesn't always work.
The critical events began much earlier. Nixon closing the gold window and cementing the
special relationship with Saudi Arabia that tled the oil market to the dollar, giving the
largest banks access to essentially unlimited off shore deposits, as well as a magnificent
usury opportunity to plunder oil starved nations, activities which the Fed could not have
regulated if it wanted to. Money essentially ceased to exist as a store of value. Mega banks
could no longer be resolved, only bailed out. After 1973 only individuals and bit players
have been allowed to fail. As the amount of money in circulation mushroomed, it had nowhere
to go but transactions escalating asset values, particularly corporate asset values.
Successful looters gained control of the transaction machinery.
On the subject of the rich who lose money to looters, it is worth remembering that the
rich are not homogenous. There are the smart, amoral rich who will generally get richer and
there are also the dumb rich (sometimes the children of smart amoral rich) who the first
category regard as legitimate and extremely tempting prey. And as they are dumb, they
probably will never think or know how to do anything to redress their losses.
I came across some who clearly regarded it as a badge of honour to boast how much they had
lost through Madoff (presumably because it showed how much they had to lose initially). These
are the people who provide the basis for the (sometimes true) saying 'clogs to clogs in three
generations'.
I have been introduced to a new term – maximum company extractable value.
There seems to be no difference between the thoughts and actions of company leaders who know
the firm is going down.
The bailouts I don't think make much difference in their behavior, were the bailouts not
available.
I assume the thieves' notion of maximum extractable value means taking every cent out of what
is currently available.
Don Levit
"Maximum extractable value" -- savor the sounds here -- plenty of masculine consonants to
make the neurons stand up and tingle.
There must be an HBS course here. And certainly a B-school paper on the topic with plenty
of empiricals, especially gathered since the 2000s, the fertile times.
Also wealth here for a consulting practice built on this pillar. Impressive when a highly
paid young consultant throws it at you.
Your summary of the Akerlof and Romer paper sounds like an instruction manual for private
equity.
And as for who is the house? I remember flying into Las Vegas on Southwest Airlines one
day and after landing, the pilot came on and said "Welcome to Vegas! And for all of you
getting ready to gamble, please take a look out the right side of the plane. See those big,
gleaming, new fancy hotels? They weren't built with money from the winners."
I imagine if you take a similar plane ride into the Hamptons, you'll see equally
impressive mansions, and they also weren't built with money from the winners of the Wall St.
casino. So what's the difference? The hotels are owned by the casino corporations, while the
Hamptons mansions are owned by private individuals
These hotels were probably built with a little bit of money from the losers and a lot of
money from leverage IOW printed money from misallocation of capital if you believe that a
city based on gambling is a waste of resources and destructive to society over the mid to
long term.
The Finance and Bankster Offal, carefully backed up by "DogPatch-DC", who the ef* else!
Believing otherwise is like devoting fervent prayers to the Tooth Fairy! Apparently the rich
are often even dumber!
When the whole system has been so looted for so long – by decades of IBGYBG scam
artists – it is a dead man walking. It is time to change it. In a revolutionary
fashion. It might be good PR to throw the sleaziest traders in jail, but that isn't gonna
change anything fundamentally because fear of prosecution will just make the next gen
cleverer. A financial system that is uncorruptible seems like a fantasy though. When has
there ever been one? That very question could be the basis of new finance. Since nothing we
have tried so far has worked over the long run we need to look at the way human society
evolves and stay one step ahead of it – financially. Don't ask me how.
Do I hear a tune of desperation here -- "scam artists," "a dead man walking," "sleaziest
traders in jail", "fantasy"?
And change in "a revolutionary fashion"?
Actually, I don't think we've really explored economic alternatives here in the USA. Yeah,
some talked about socialism during the Real Depression. But mostly we've embroidered and
tinkered with our current set-up. So if we don't want socialism and capitalism is broken,
what's left?
Alternatives do exist to our current financial and economic systems. Unfortunately they
haven't received much in the way of PR, much less public discussion. For example, some here
have mentioned Gar Alperovitz.
But there are many other ideas. Maybe NakedCap can help spread these.
To some real extent, however, hasn't it always been a casino? In fact, the police who ran
the first stock traders off of Paris street corners understood this to be a fact, as did
those who rioted against them. At least, this is my recollection of. . . someone's account
(Henwood's? Maybe I picked this up in a lecture from Tom Weisskopf decades ago. . .) Would
love it if someone could point me to early accounts of these dealings because there would be
a lot to learn from them. . .
I think there's a tendency of reformist as opposed to structural analysts to posit this
perversion of something that was at one time good (the noble stock market has been turned
into a casino!). . . nah. Even the original notion of shared risk in the buying and selling
of shares is in no way a democratizing function, but a game for the one percent. (Of course,
it could be SOLD as such. . . )
"And the conundrum we have outlined means the people who call for prosecutions of
individuals are exactly right. Punishing firms is ineffective. Firms are fluid; key players
can and often do move around. And the culpability for bad practices typically resides both at
the producer level (the manager immediately responsible for the unit in which the bad conduct
took place) and more senior management (which typically benefits directly from any ill-gotten
profits, in terms of their compensation levels, and needs to be held responsible, even if
they were simply derelict in duty, as opposed to actively complicit)."
======================================================
So clearly put, so nicely explained. The American way – mistakes were made ..let's not
dwell in the past.
Seemed like a simple question with simple answer to me: The dealers are the house. Duh.
That's why they've been lobbying for this system for so long.
Agree that it's astounding that anyone who worked for McKinsey could be confused about
this issue.
You are of course right that there are certain individuals within the dealers who make the
most off of the system -- but something tells me you'd find the same basic phenomenon in the
casino business. "The house wins" doesn't mean that low-level employees of the house win, and
it doesn't mean that shareholders of the house win.
Came back to post something like this–the "house" is never as clear cut an entity in
gambling as it looks, either. Turns out the city fathers take their cut, local interests, the
Mafia has its hand in, the pols who cleared the way legally. . .
Developing the tradition charted by C. Wright Mills in his 1956 classic The Power Elite , in his
latest book, Professor Peter Phillips starts by reviewing the transition from the nation state
power elites described by authors such as Mills to a transnational power elite centralized on
the control of global capital.
Thus, in his just-released study Giants: The Global Power
Elite , Phillips, a professor of political sociology at Sonoma State University in the USA,
identifies the world's top seventeen asset management firms, such as BlackRock and J.P Morgan
Chase, each with more than one trillion dollars of investment capital under management, as the
'Giants' of world capitalism. The seventeen firms collectively manage more than $US41.1
trillion in a self-invested network of interlocking capital that spans the globe.
This $41 trillion represents the wealth invested for profit by thousands of millionaires,
billionaires and corporations. The seventeen Giants operate in nearly every country in the
world and are 'the central institutions of the financial capital that powers the global
economic system'. They invest in anything considered profitable, ranging from 'agricultural
lands on which indigenous farmers are replaced by power elite investors' to public assets (such
as energy and water utilities) to war.
In addition, Phillips identifies the most important networks of the Global Power Elite and
the individuals therein. He names 389 individuals (a small number of whom are women and a token
number of whom are from countries other than the United States and the wealthier countries of
Western Europe) at the core of the policy planning nongovernmental networks that manage,
facilitate and defend the continued concentration of global capital. The Global Power Elite
perform two key uniting functions, he argues: they provide ideological justifications for their
shared interests (promulgated through their corporate media), and define the parameters of
action for transnational governmental organizations and capitalist nation-states.
More precisely, Phillips identifies the 199 directors of the seventeen global financial
Giants and offers short biographies and public information on their individual net wealth.
These individuals are closely interconnected through numerous networks of association including
the World Economic Forum, the International Monetary Conference, university affiliations,
various policy councils, social clubs, and cultural enterprises. For a taste of one of these
clubs, see this account of The Links in New York. As Phillips
observes: 'It is certainly safe to conclude they all know each other personally or know of each
other in the shared context of their positions of power.'
The Giants, Phillips documents, invest in each other but also in many hundreds of investment
management firms, many of which are near-Giants. This results in tens of trillions of dollars
coordinated in a single vast network of global capital controlled by a very small number of
people. 'Their constant objective is to find enough safe investment opportunities for a return
on capital that allows for continued growth. Inadequate capital-placement opportunities lead to
dangerous speculative investments, buying up of public assets, and permanent war spending.'
Because the directors of these seventeen asset management firms represent the central core
of international capital, 'Individuals can retire or pass away, and other similar people will
move into their place, making the overall structure a self-perpetuating network of global
capital control. As such, these 199 people share a common goal of maximum return on investments
for themselves and their clients, and they may seek to achieve returns by any means necessary
– legal or not . the institutional and structural arrangements within the money
management systems of global capital relentlessly seek ways to achieve maximum return on
investment, and the conditions for manipulations – legal or not – are always
present.'
Like some researchers before him, Phillips identifies the importance of those transnational
institutions that serve a unifying function. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, G20,
G7, World Trade Organization (WTO),
World Economic Forum (WEF), Trilateral
Commission, Bilderberg Group ,
Bank for International Settlements, Group of 30 (G30), the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Monetary
Conference serve as institutional mechanisms for consensus building within the transnational
capitalist class, and power elite policy formulation and implementation. 'These international
institutions serve the interests of the global financial Giants by supporting policies and
regulations that seek to protect the free, unrestricted flow of capital and debt collection
worldwide.'
But within this network of transnational institutions, Phillips identifies two very
important global elite policy-planning organizations: the Group of Thirty (which has 32 members) and the extended executive
committee of the Trilateral Commission
(which has 55 members). These nonprofit corporations, which each have a research and support
staff, formulate elite policy and issue instructions for their implementation by the
transnational governmental institutions like the G7, G20, IMF, WTO, and World Bank. Elite
policies are also implemented following instruction of the relevant agent, including
governments, in the context. These agents then do as they are instructed.Thus, these 85 members
(because two overlap) of the Group of Thirty and the Trilateral Commission comprise a central
group of facilitators of global capitalism, ensuring that 'global capital remains safe, secure,
and growing'.
So, while many of the major international institutions are controlled by nation-state
representatives and central bankers (with proportional power exercised by dominant financial
supporters such as the United States and European Union countries), Phillips is more concerned
with the transnational policy groups that are nongovernmental because these organizations 'help
to unite TCC power elites as a class' and the individuals involved in these organizations
facilitate world capitalism. 'They serve as policy elites who seek the continued growth of
capital in the world.'
Developing this list of 199 directors of the largest money management firms in the world,
Phillips argues, is an important step toward understanding how capitalism works globally today.
These global power elite directors make the decisions regarding the investment of trillions of
dollars. Supposedly in competition, the concentrated wealth they share requires them to
cooperate for their greater good by identifying investment opportunities and shared risk
agreements, and working collectively for political arrangements that create advantages for
their profit-generating system as a whole.
Their fundamental priority is to secure an average return on investment of 3 to 10 percent,
or even more. The nature of any investment is less important than whatit yields: continuous
returns that support growth in the overall market. Hence, capital investment in tobacco
products, weapons of war, toxic chemicals, pollution, and other socially destructive goods and
services are judged purely by their profitability. Concern for the social and environmental
costs of the investment are non-existent. In other words, inflicting death and destruction are
fine because they are profitable.
So what is the global elite's purpose? In a few sentences Phillips characterizes it thus:
The elite is largely united in support of the US/NATO military empire that prosecutes a
repressive war against resisting groups – typically labeled 'terrorists' – around
the world. The real purpose of 'the war on terror' is defense of transnational globalization,
the unimpeded flow of financial capital around the world, dollar hegemony and access to oil; it
has nothing to do with repressing terrorism which it generates, perpetuates and finances to
provide cover for its real agenda. This is why the United States has a long history of CIA and
military interventions around the world ostensibly in defense of 'national interests'.
Wealth and Power
An interesting point that emerges for me from reading Phillips thoughtful analysis is that
there is a clear distinction between those individuals and families who have wealth and those
individuals who have (sometimes significantly) less wealth (which, nevertheless, is still
considerable) but, through their positions and connections, wield a great deal of power. As
Phillips explains this distinction, 'the sociology of elites is more important than particular
elite individuals and their families'. Just 199 individuals decide how more than $40 trillion
will be invested. And this is his central point. Let me briefly elaborate.
There are some really wealthy families in the world, notably including the families
Rothschild (France and the United Kingdom), Rockefeller (USA), Goldman-Sachs (USA), Warburgs
(Germany), Lehmann (USA), Lazards (France), Kuhn Loebs (USA), Israel Moses Seifs (Italy),
Al-Saud (Saudi Arabia), Walton (USA), Koch (USA), Mars (USA), Cargill-MacMillan (USA) and Cox
(USA). However, not all of these families overtly seek power to shape the world as they
wish.
Similarly, the world's extremely wealthy individuals such as Jeff Bezos (USA), Bill Gates
(USA), Warren Buffett (USA), Bernard Arnault (France), Carlos Slim Helu (Mexico) and Francoise
Bettencourt Meyers (France) are not necessarily connected in such a way that they exercise
enormous power. In fact, they may have little interest in power as such, despite their obvious
interest in wealth.
In essence, some individuals and families are content to simply take advantage of how
capitalism and its ancilliary governmental and transnational instruments function while others
are more politically engaged in seeking to manipulate major institutions to achieve outcomes
that not only maximize their own profit and hence wealth but also shape the world itself.
So if you look at the list of 199 individuals that Phillips identifies at the centre of
global capital, it does not include names such as Bezos, Gates, Buffett, Koch, Walton or even
Rothschild, Rockefeller or Windsor (the Queen of England) despite their well-known and
extraordinary wealth. As an aside, many of these names are also missing from the lists compiled
by groups such as Forbes and
Bloomberg , but their
absence from these lists is for a very different reason given the penchant for many really
wealthy individuals and families to avoid certain types of publicity and their power to ensure
that they do.
In contrast to the names just listed, in Phillips' analysis names like Laurence (Larry) Fink
(Chairman and CEO of BlackRock), James (Jamie) Dimon (Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase) and
John McFarlane (Chairman of Barclays Bank), while not as wealthy as those listed immediately
above, wield far more power because of their positions and connections within the global elite
network of 199 individuals.
Predictably then, Phillips observes, these three individuals have similar lifestyles and
ideological orientations. They believe capitalism is beneficial for the world and while
inequality and poverty are important issues, they believe that capital growth will eventually
solve these problems. They are relatively non-expressive about environmental issues, but
recognize that investment opportunities may change in response to climate 'modifications'. As
millionaires they own multiple homes. They attended elite universities and rose quickly in
international finance to reach their current status as giants of the global power elite. 'The
institutions they manage have been shown to engage in illegal collusions with others, but the
regulatory fines by governments are essentially seen as just part of doing business.'
In short, as I would characterize this description: They are devoid of a legal or moral
framework to guide their actions, whether in relation to business, fellow human beings, war or
the environment and climate. They are obviously typical of the elite.
Any apparent concern for people, such as that expressed by Fink and Dimon in response to the
racist violence in Charlottesville, USAin August 2017, is simply designed to promote
'stability' or more precisely, a stable (that is, profitable) investment and consumer
climate.
The lack of concern for people and issues that might concern many of us is also evident from
a consideration of the agenda at elite gatherings. Consider the International Monetary
Conference. Founded in 1956, it is a private yearly meeting of the top few hundred bankers in
the world. The American Bankers Association (ABA) serves as the secretariat for the conference.
But, as Phillips notes: 'Nothing on the agenda seems to address the socioeconomic consequences
of investments to determine the impacts on people and the environment.' A casual perusal of the
agenda at any elite gathering reveals that this comment applies equally to any elite forum.
See, for example, the agenda of the recent WEF meeting in
Davos . Any talk of 'concern' is misleading rhetoric.
Hence, in the words of Phillips: The 199 directors of the global Giants are 'a very select
set of people. They all know each other personally or know of each other. At least 69 have
attended the annual World Economic Forum, where they often serve on panels or give public
presentations. They mostly attended the same elite universities, and interact in upperclass
social setting[s] in the major cities of the world. They all are wealthy and have significant
stock holdings in one or more of the financial Giants. They are all deeply invested in the
importance of maintaining capital growth in the world. Some are sensitive to environmental and
social justice issues, but they seem to be unable to link these issues to global capital
concentration.'
Of course, the global elite cannot manage the world system alone: the elite requires agents
to perform many of the functions necessary to control national societies and the individuals
within them. 'The interests of the Global Power Elite and the TCC are fully recognized by major
institutions in society. Governments, intelligence services, policymakers, universities, police
forces, military, and corporate media all work in support of their vital interests.'
In other words, to elaborate Phillips' point and extend it a little, through their economic
power, theGiants control all of the instruments through which their policies are implemented.
Whether it be governments, national military forces, 'military contractors' or mercenaries
(with at least $200 billion spent on private security globally, the industry currently employs
some fifteen million people worldwide) used both in 'foreign' wars but also likely deployed in
future for domestic control, key 'intelligence' agencies, legal systems and police forces,
major nongovernment organizations, or the academic, educational, 'public relations propaganda',
corporate media, medical, psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries, all instruments are fully
responsive to elite control and are designed to misinform, deceive, disempower, intimidate,
repress, imprison (in a jail or psychiatric ward), exploit and/or kill (depending on the
constituency) the rest of us, as is readily evident.
Defending Elite Power
Phillips observes that the power elite continually worries about rebellion by the 'unruly
exploited masses' against their structure of concentrated wealth. This is why the US military
empire has long played the role of defender of global capitalism. As a result, the United
States has more than 800 military bases (with some scholars suggesting 1,000) in 70 countries
and territories. In comparison, the United Kingdom, France, and Russia have about 30 foreign
bases. In addition, US military forces are now deployed in 70 percent of the world's nations
with US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) having troops in 147 countries, an increase of 80
percent since 2010. These forces conduct counterterrorism strikes regularly, including drone
assassinations and kill/capture raids.
'The US military empire stands on hundreds of years of colonial exploitation and continues
to support repressive, exploitative governments that cooperate with global capital's imperial
agenda. Governments that accept external capital investment, whereby a small segment of a
country's elite benefits, do so knowing that capital inevitably requires a return on investment
that entails using up resources and people for economic gain. The whole system continues wealth
concentration for elites and expanded wretched inequality for the masses .
'Understanding permanent war as an economic relief valve for surplus capital is a vital part
of comprehending capitalism in the world today. War provides investment opportunity for the
Giants and TCC elites and a guaranteed return on capital. War also serves a repressive function
of keeping the suffering masses of humanity afraid and compliant.'
As Phillips elaborates: This is why defense of global capital is the prime reason that NATO
countries now account for 85 percent of the world's military spending; the United States spends
more on the military than the rest of the world combined.
In essence, 'the Global Power Elite uses NATO and the US military empire for its worldwide
security. This is part of an expanding strategy of US military domination around the world,
whereby the US/ NATO military empire, advised by the power elite's Atlantic Council , operates in service to the
Transnational Corporate Class for the protection of international capital everywhere in the
world'.
This entails 'further pauperization of the bottom half of the world's population and an
unrelenting downward spiral of wages for 80 percent of the world. The world is facing economic
crisis, and the neoliberal solution is to spend less on human needs and more on security. It is
a world of financial institutions run amok, where the answer to economic collapse is to print
more money through quantitative easing, flooding the population with trillions of new
inflation-producing dollars. It is a world of permanent war, whereby spending for destruction
requires further spending to rebuild, a cycle that profits the Giants and global networks of
economic power. It is a world of drone killings, extrajudicial assassinations, death, and
destruction, at home and abroad.'
Where is this all heading?
So what are the implications of this state of affairs? Phillips responds unequivocally:
'This concentration of protected wealth leads to a crisis of humanity, whereby poverty, war,
starvation, mass alienation, media propaganda, and environmental devastation are reaching a
species-level threat. We realize that humankind is in danger of possible extinction'.
He goes on to state that the Global Power Elite is probably the only entity 'capable of
correcting this condition without major civil unrest, war, and chaos' and elaborates an
important aim of his book: to raise awareness of the importance of systemic change and the
redistribution of wealth among both the book's general readers but also the elite, 'in the hope
that they can begin the process of saving humanity.' The book's postscript is a 'A Letter to
the Global Power Elite', co-signed by Phillips and 90 others, beseeching the elite to act
accordingly.
'It is no longer acceptable for you to believe that you can manage capitalism to grow its
way out of the gross inequalities we all now face. The environment cannot accept more pollution
and waste, and civil unrest is everywhere inevitable at some point. Humanity needs you to step
up and insure that trickle-down becomes a river of resources that reaches every child, every
family, and all human beings. We urge you to use your power and make the needed changes for
humanity's survival.'
But he also emphasizes that nonviolent social movements, using the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights as a moral code, can accelerate the process of redistributing wealth by pressuring
the elite into action.
Conclusion
Peter Phillips has written an important book. For those of us interested in understanding
elite control of the world, this book is a vital addition to the bookshelf. And like any good
book, as you will see from my comments both above and below, it raised more questions for me
even while it answered many.
For this reason I do not share his faith in moral appeals to the elite, as articulated in
the letter in his postscript. It is fine to make the appeal but history offers no evidence to
suggest that there will be any significant response. The death and destruction inflicted by
elites is highly profitable, centuries-old and ongoing. It will take powerful,
strategically-focused nonviolent campaigns (or societal collapse) to compel the necessary
changes in elite behavior. Hence, I fully endorse his call for nonviolent social movements to
compel elite action where we cannot make the necessary changes without their involvement. See
'A Nonviolent Strategy to End Violence and Avert Human Extinction' and Nonviolent Campaign Strategy .
Fundamentally, Giants: The Global Power
Elite is a call to action. Professor Peter Phillips is highly aware of our predicament
– politically, socially, economically, environmentally and climatically – and the
critical role played by the global power elite in generating that predicament.
If we cannot persuade the global power elite to respond sensibly to that predicament, or
nonviolently compel it to do so, humanity's time on Earth is indeed limited.
Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence.
He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are
violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of 'Why Violence?' His email address is [email protected]
and his website is here
.
Watch - Financial Rape of America ;
Former Assistant Secretary of Housing Catherine Austin Fitts warns that the "financial rape
of America" is nothing more than "re-engineering" the debt based economy
"... The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society ..."
"... "Liberal democracy is in danger," Sacks said, adding later: "The politics of freedom risks descending into the politics of fear." Sacks said Britain's politics had been poisoned by the rise of identity politics, as minorities and aggrieved groups jockeyed first for rights, then for special treatment. The process, he said, began with Jews, before being taken up by blacks, women and gays. He said the effect had been "inexorably divisive." ..."
"... "A culture of victimhood sets group against group, each claiming that its pain, injury, oppression, humiliation is greater than that of others," he said. In an interview with the Times ..."
Well, if Rabbi Sacks and other Jews want anti-Semitism, I think they should look much closer
to home. This is from the Jerusalem Post in 2007:
Sacks: Multiculturalism threatens democracy
Multiculturalism promotes segregation, stifles free speech and threatens liberal
democracy, Britain's top Jewish official warned in extracts from [a recently published] book
Jonathan Sacks, Britain's chief rabbi, defined multiculturalism as an attempt to affirm
Britain's diverse communities and make ethnic and religious minorities more appreciated and
respected. But in his book, The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society , he said
the movement had run its course. "Multiculturalism has led not to integration but to
segregation," Sacks wrote in his book, an extract of which was published in the
Times of London.
"Liberal democracy is in danger," Sacks said, adding later: "The politics of freedom
risks descending into the politics of fear." Sacks said Britain's politics had been poisoned
by the rise of identity politics, as minorities and aggrieved groups jockeyed first for
rights, then for special treatment. The process, he said, began with Jews, before being taken
up by blacks, women and gays. He said the effect had been "inexorably divisive."
"A culture of victimhood sets group against group, each claiming that its pain,
injury, oppression, humiliation is greater than that of others," he said. In an interview
with the Times , Sacks said he wanted his book to be "politically incorrect in the
highest order." ( Sacks:
Multiculturalism threatens democracy , The Jerusalem Post , 20th October
2007 ; emphasis added)
So Sacks claimed that "Britain's politics had been poisoned" by a self-serving,
self-pitying, self-aggrandizing ideology that "began with Jews" and had been "inexorably
divisive." His claim is absolutely classic anti-Semitism, peddling a stereotype of Jews as
subversive, manipulative and divisive outsiders whose selfish agitation has done huge harm to a
gentile society.
Sacks was right, of course: Jews do demand special treatment and did indeed invent the
"identity politics" that has poisoned British politics (and
American ,
Australian ,
French and Swedish
politics too).
By saying all that, Sacks was being far more "anti-Semitic" than Jeremy Corbyn was, even by
the harshest interpretation of those comments on Zionists. Furthermore, Sacks has proved that
Corbyn was right. Zionists do lack irony. In 2007 Sacks, a staunch Zionist, claimed
that the "poisoning" of British politics "began with Jews." In 2018 he's condemning Jeremy
Corbyn for saying something much milder about Zionists.
Fourth Wave Feminism:Why No One EscapesToday's outsized Femocracy is more
desperate and (self) destructive than it's successful progenitors. By JOANNA WILLIAMS
• September
4, 2018
Feminism, in its second wave, women's liberation movement guise, has passed its first half
century. And what a success it has been! Betty Friedan's frustrated housewife, bored with
plumping pillows and making peanut butter sandwiches, is now a rarity. We might still be
waiting for the first female president, but women -- specifically feminists -- are now in
positions of power across the whole of society.
Yet feminism shows no sign of taking early retirement and bowing out, job done. Instead, it
continues to reinvent itself. #MeToo is the cause du jour of fourth-wave feminism but,
disturbingly, it seems to be taking us further from liberation and pushing us towards an
increasingly illiberal and authoritarian future. It's time to take stock.
Over the past five decades, women have taken public life by storm. When it comes to
education, employment, and pay, women are not just doing better than ever before -- they are
often doing better than men too. For over a quarter of a century, girls have outperformed boys
at school. Over 60 percent of all bachelor's degrees are awarded to women. More women than men
continue to graduate school and more doctorates are awarded to women. And their successes don't
stop when they leave education behind. Since the 1970s, there has been a marked increase in the
number of women in employment and many are taking managerial and professional positions. Women
now comprise just over half of those employed in management, professional, and related
occupations.
Women aren't just working more, they are being paid more. Women today earn more in total
than at any other point in time and they also earn more as a proportion of men's earnings. For
younger women in particular, the gender pay gap is narrowing. Between 1980 and 2012, wages for
men aged 25 to 34 fell 20 percent while over the same period women's pay rose by 13 percent.
Some data sets now suggest that women in their twenties earn more than men the same age.
Although high-profile equal pay campaigns appear to suggest otherwise, when we compare the pay
of men and women employed in the same jobs and working for the same number of hours each week,
the gender pay gap all but disappears. Four out of every 10 women are now either the sole or
primary family earner -- a figure which has quadrupled since 1960.
But this is not just about the lives of women: it is feminism as an ideology that has been
incredibly successful. For over four decades, feminist theory has shaped people's lives. Making
sense of the world through the prism of gender and seeking to root out sexual inequality is now
the driving force behind much that goes on in the public sphere.
Back in 1986, in one of the first examples of new legislation explicitly backed by
feminists, the Supreme Court ruled that sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination. This
has had a profound impact upon all aspects of employment legislation. As a result, a layer of
managers and administrators, sometimes referred to as "femocrats," are employed to oversee
sexual equality and manage sexual harassment complaints in workplaces and schools.
Elsewhere, the influence of feminism can be seen in the expansion of existing laws. When
Title IX of the Education Amendments was passed in 1972 it was designed to protect people from
discrimination based on sex in education programs that received federal funding. It was a
significant -- and reasonably straightforward -- piece of legislation introduced at a time when
women were underrepresented in higher education. It first began to take on greater significance
following a 1977 case led by the feminist lawyer and academic Catharine MacKinnon in which a
federal court found that colleges could be liable under Title IX not just for acts of
discrimination but also for not responding to allegations of sexual harassment.
Not surprisingly, definitions of sexual harassment began to expand in the late 1970s. In
education, the term came to encompass a "hostile environment" in which women felt uncomfortable
because of their sex. By this measure, sexual harassment can occur unintentionally and with no
specific target. Furthermore, a hostile environment might be created by students themselves
irrespective of the actions of an institution's staff. As a result, colleges became responsible
for policing the sexual behavior of their students too.
Pressing forward under the Obama administration, sexual misconduct cases on campuses were
tried under a preponderance of the evidence standard rather than a higher standard of clear and
convincing evidence. Within these extrajudicial tribunals, students -- most often young men --
could be found guilty of sexual assault or rape and expelled following unsubstantiated
allegations and with little opportunity to defend themselves. Although current Education
Secretary Betsy DeVos has revoked the Obama-era guidelines that instituted these kangaroo
courts, many institutions under pressure to react have expanded their zero tolerance policies,
often at the expense of basic due process and fairness.
In the 1970s, radical feminists opposed the Equal Rights Amendment, arguing that it
individualized and deradicalized feminism. "We will not be appeased," they asserted. "Our
demands can only be met by a total transformation of society, which you cannot legislate, you
cannot co-opt, you cannot control."
Yet today, a feminist outlook now shapes policy, practice, and law at all levels of the
government, as feminists seek to transform society through the state rather than by opposing
it. Most recently this has taken form in the demand for affirmative consent, or "yes means
yes," to be the standard in rape cases. This places the onus on the accused to prove they had
sought and obtained consent; in other words they must prove their innocence.
This is a radical shift, yet it is being enshrined in legislation with little discussion.
California and New York have passed legislation requiring colleges to adopt an affirmative
consent standard in their sexual assault policies. In 2016, the American Law Institute,
influential with state legislators, debated introducing an affirmative consent standard into
state laws. The proposal was ultimately rejected but the fact that it was even taken seriously
shows feminism's growing legal influence.
History tells us that legislation driven by feminism can have unintended consequences. The
Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), passed in 1994 as part of President Clinton's massive $30
billion crime bill, aimed to put 100,000 police officers on the street and funded $9.7 billion
for prisons. VAWA sought more prosecutions and harsher sentences for abuse in relationships.
But a more intensive law enforcement focus on minority communities, coupled with mandatory
arrests of both partners on the scene of a dispute, resulted in unanticipated blowback. Police
were accused of over-criminalizing minority neighborhoods; critics said women were disinclined
to call the police for fear of being arrested themselves. A 2007 Harvard study suggests that
mandatory arrest laws may have actually increased intimate partner homicides and, separately,
women of color have described violence at the hands of the arresting police officers.
Ultimately, the crime bill merely punished; it didn't help prevent domestic abuse against
women.
♦♦♦
Although all women have in some way benefited from feminism's decades-long campaign against
inequality, it is clear that some -- namely middle- and upper-class college graduates -- have
been more advantaged than the rest. Feminists in the 1960s argued that all women had interests
in common; they shared an experience of oppression. The same can hardly be said today. An elite
group of women with professional careers and high salaries has little in common with women
juggling two or more jobs just to make ends meet. Yet the feminist voices that are heard most
loudly continue to be those of privileged women.
High-profile feminists like Anne-Marie Slaughter, the first woman director of policy
planning at the State Department, and Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, sell books and make headlines
for criticizing family-unfriendly employment practices and the gender pay gap. Good for them!
But remember that these women have incomes and lifestyles that put them in a different league
from the vast majority of women -- and men. They identify more closely with the tiny proportion
of male CEOs than they do with women who have jobs rather than careers, who wear uniforms
rather than dry-clean-only suits to work, who have no time to hit the gym before heading to the
office. Their push for "lean-in" circles appeals more to young college grads than women
struggling just to put food on the table. Their vociferous feminist call to arms falls flat in
Middle America -- yet we are told they speak for all women.
In 2018, feminists do walk the corridors of power. But in order to maintain their position
and moral high ground they must deny the very power they command. For this reason, feminism can
never admit its successes -- to do so would require its adherents to ask whether their job is
done. For professional feminists, women who have forged their careers in the femocracy,
admitting this not only puts their livelihoods at risk, but poses an existential threat to
their sense of self. As a result, the better women's lives become, the harder feminists must
work to seek out new realms of disadvantage.
The need to sustain a narrative of oppression explains the continued popularity of the
#MeToo phenomenon. In October 2017, The New York Times ran a story alleging that
Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who had the power to make and break careers, had committed
a number of serious sexual offenses. (The allegations against Weinstein mounted and he is now
being charged with sexual assault and rape.) Over the following weeks and months, accusations
of sexual misconduct were leveled against a host of other men in the public eye.
Such serious accusations need to be dealt with in the courts and, if found guilty, the
perpetrators punished accordingly. But rather than arrests, trials, and criminal proceedings,
#MeToo has gathered pace through social media. Actress Alyssa Milano took to Twitter on October
18 and asked women who had been sexually harassed or assaulted to "write 'me too' as a reply to
this tweet." Thousands of women came forward to call out their own abusers or simply to add
their names to a growing list of victims. #MeToo took on a life of its own; it readily lent
itself to an already-established fourth-wave feminist narrative that saw women as victims of
male violence and sexual entitlement.
Women in the public eye are now routinely asked about their own experiences of sexual
harassment. Some have publicly named and shamed men they accuse of sexual assault or, as with
the case of comedian Aziz Ansari, what can perhaps best be described as "ungentlemanly
conduct." Others are more vague and suggest they have experienced sexual harassment in more
general terms. What no woman can do -- at least not without instigating a barrage of criticism
-- is deny that sexual harassment is a major problem today.
The success of #MeToo is less about real justice than the common experience of suffering and
validation. It is a perfect social media vehicle to drive the fourth-wave agenda into another
generation. Hollywood stars and baristas may have little in common but all women can lay claim
to having experienced male violence and sexual harassment -- or, failing that, potentially
experiencing abuse at some indeterminate point in the future. Statistics on domestic violence,
rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment are used to shore up the narrative that women, as a
class, suffer at the hands of men.
But scratch the surface and often these statistics are questionable. In recent years, at the
hands of femocrats, definitions of violence and sexual harassment have been expanded. On
campus, all kinds of behaviors, from touching through clothes to non-consensual sex, are
grouped together to prove the existence of a rape culture. When sexual harassment is redefined
as unwanted behavior it can encompass anything from winking, to whistling, to staring, to
catcalling. There is little objectively wrong with the action -- it is simply the fact that it
is unwanted that makes it abusive. Today, we are encouraged to see violence, especially
violence against women and girls, everywhere: in words that wound, personified in a boorish
president, in our economic and legal systems. This is violence as metaphor rather than violence
as a physical blow. Yet it is a metaphor that serves a powerful purpose -- allowing all women
to share in a common experience of victimhood, and, as such, justifying the continued need for
elite feminism.
Problems with #MeToo are too rarely discussed. Violence and sexual assaults do occur, but
these serious crimes are trivialized by being presented as on a continuum with the metaphorical
abuse. The constant reiteration that women are victims and men are violent perpetrators does
not, in itself, make it true. It pits men and women against each other and, in the process,
infantilizes women and makes them fearful of the world. It also masks a far more positive
story: rates of domestic violence have been falling. Between 1994 and 2011, the rates of
serious intimate partner violence perpetrated against women -- defined as rape, sexual assault,
robbery, or aggravated assault -- fell 72 percent.
The consequences of entrenching in law assumptions that women are destined to become victims
of male violence and harassment are dangerously authoritarian. Feminists now look not to their
own resources, or to their family and friends, but to the state to protect them. Black men in
particular can find themselves disproportionately targeted by feminist-backed drives for legal
retribution. A 2017 report from the National Registry of Exonerations suggests that black men
serving time for sexual assault are three-and-a-half times more likely to be innocent than
white defendants who have been convicted of the same crime.
In the meantime, demands for the punishment of bad behavior are inevitable. Male catcalling
in the UK and France could soon be a criminal offense. While similar bans have been
unsuccessful in the U.S., there are plenty of street harassment laws at the state level that
feminists could co-opt if necessary. Additionally in England, there are proposals to
criminalize "upskirting" or taking a photograph up a woman's skirt. Upskirting is a vile
invasion of a person's privacy. However, the majority of instances are covered under existing
indecency and voyeurism laws. The proposal, as with others, is a feminist signaling device: the
message is, yet again, that the world is a hostile place for women and their only course of
action is to seek redress from the state.
Meanwhile, working-class women are effectively exploited as a voiceless stage presence,
brought on when convenient to shore up the authority of the professional feminist. On occasion
this means the livelihoods of regular women are placed in jeopardy for the greater good of the
collective. Earlier this year, a group of A-list Hollywood actresses petitioned against tipping
waitresses in New York restaurants, arguing it was exploitive and encouraged sexual harassment.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, servers shot back that they would like to continue receiving tips,
thank you very much.
♦♦♦
Fourth-wave feminism is increasingly authoritarian and illiberal, impacting speech and
behavior for men and women. Campaigns around "rape culture" and #MeToo police women just as
much as men, telling them how to talk about these issues. When The Handmaid's Tale
author Margaret Atwood had the effrontery to advocate for due process for men accused of sex
crimes, her normally adoring feminist fans turned on her. She referred to it in a Globe and
Mail essay in January entitled "Am I a Bad Feminist?"
"In times of extremes, extremists win," she wrote. "Their ideology becomes a religion,
anyone who doesn't puppet their views is seen as an apostate, a heretic or a traitor, and
moderates in the middle are annihilated."
The fact is, men are publicly shamed every day, their livelihoods and reputations teetering
on destruction, before they even enter a courtroom.
Frankly, it is disastrous for young women to be taught to see themselves as disadvantaged
and vulnerable in a way that bears no relationship to reality. Whereas a previous generation of
feminists fought against chaperones and curfews, today's #MeToo movement rehabilitates the
argument that women need to be better protected from rapacious men, or need "safe spaces."
Women come to believe that they will be harassed walking down the street, that they will be
paid less than men for the same work, and that the world is set against them. The danger is
that, rather than competing with men as equals, women will be so overwhelmed by the apparent
size of the struggle that they will abandon all efforts and call upon external helpmates, like
the state and ugly identity politics that push good men away. Women's disadvantage thus become
a self-fulfilling prophecy.
All the while, the real problems experienced by many American women -- and men -- such as
working long hours for a low wage and struggling to pay for child and healthcare costs, are
overlooked.
When second-wave feminism burst onto the scene more than 50 years ago it was known as the
women's liberation movement. It celebrated equality and powerfully proclaimed that women were
capable of doing everything men did. Today, this spirit of liberation has been exchanged for an
increasingly authoritarian and illiberal victim feminism. With every victory, feminism needs to
reassert increasingly spurious claims that women are oppressed. For women and men to be free
today, we need to bring back the spirit of the women's liberation movement. Only now it's
feminism from which women need liberating.
"... Bill threw away the Deplorables' jobs in NAFTA in search of the Globalist Utopian vision at the heart of the Establishment's indoctrination in the schools. ..."
"... Those who said farewell to Senator John McCain at the National Cathedral did not mentioned that he is as responsible as anyone for the forever wars that are causing the refugee influx that is tearing Europe apart ..."
"... I think it is very important to realize that the current mess in this country is largely a result of not reigning in the investment bankers as well as the country embarking on deadly and abusive wars against a large part of the non-western world. ..."
"... Where you and I differ is over Donald Trump. I do not believe for one minute that he gives a damn about the people that have been screwed so royally over the last thirty to forty years. He is just louder and more obnoxious than most. ..."
"... If there is a way out of this mess, I cannot see it. ..."
"... The banks make everything function. When there is a banking crisis they turn up the screws on the politicians and the politicians respond by bailing the banks out at the expense of the majority of the population. ..."
"... Second, they are pathetically easy for the establishment to manipulate. It is as simple as getting the nominally left faction of the establishment to have a woman stump for a policy using vaguely left wing terms and they will fall over themselves to support it. I've been told by these people that Russia must be violently opposed because Vladimir Putin is a homophobic, islamaphobic (!), racist right-winger. It's kind of amazing to see the political descendants of the hippies cheering on the prospect of a nuclear war because it would be a woman killing everyone in the name of LGBT rights. ..."
"... many of these deplorables embraced Bernie Sanders* (a Neo-Bolshevik?) and would welcome a return to an FDR style democratic party. ..."
"... Like was said 2 yrs ago, the dems would rather lose with Clinton than win with Sanders. And I include Pelosi, Schumer, you name it, in that bunch. ..."
"... As for Trump's base--I have always thought it erroneous to label that base as working men and women of below average education, etc. 90% of Trump voters supported Romney and 60% had a median income above the national average. ..."
"... The military, veterans, and various police agencies. States fail when they will no longer enforce the official line. That's usually happens when their own family members start showing up in the marches, barricades, protests, and such. ..."
We Americans were traditionally divided politically and culturally by region. There is still
some of that but the major fault lines are more fuzzy now.
1. The Establishment. This group was on parade during the McCain imperial procession across
the lands. The sight of the supposedly mutually opposed Republicans and Democrats hobnobbing,
backslapping, joking, hugging and passing around the bi-partisan mints while they waited for
the stiff to be wheeled in was revealing. The cavernous nave of the pseudo-Gothic church was a
perfect venue for this fête de joie. A window depicting Robert Lee looked down
on this vast space until recently. That has been taken down to maintain amity between the
Yankee and "Southern" wings of the establishment. The Episcopal Church of today has no use for
such as he. I wonder if the masses who support "the middle" understand how cruelly they are
deceived by the pretended mutual animosity of their "betters." The farce was on display last
week.
2. The Neo-Bolsheviks. These people have been gathering their strength in the schools since
the '60s. they have indoctrinated the young all this time with a hatred of capitalism, a
contempt for American tradition to include the Constitution and a desire to see the country
reduced to the status of Cambodia in the Year Zero. The spectacle of the disintegration of
Venezuela after decades of socialist tinkering means nothing to them. This time we will get it
right! This is their belief. Disillusioned communists told me all across what had been the
Warsaw Pact that Communism was never given a fair chance to prove itself. The American Bolsheviki think they will get it right this time if they attain power. The original Bolsheviks
seized power with how many members in the vanguard? 20,000? Tell me. The governments of New
York, California and New Jersey are all seeking to accommodate the Neo-Bolsheviks. How far will
they go? The Soviet Bolsheviks killed millions of Russian Kulaks and political enemies.
Remember that!
3. The Deplorables. This is essentially the "country party." They are the people who know
they are being dis-possessed. These are the people who know they are despised by both the
Establishment and the Neo-Bolsheviks and who are acutely aware that these other groups intend
to exterminate them as a group if not as individuals. The Clintons were the ultimate
Establishment people. Bill threw away the Deplorables' jobs in NAFTA in search of the Globalist
Utopian vision at the heart of the Establishment's indoctrination in the schools.
Ross Perot
was an amusing little freak? He spoke of a "great sucking sound" that would be heard as
Deplorable jobs followed cheap capital across the southern border?
The Deplorables do not think
he was funny at all. They elected Trump to give them hope and he has done that. They do not
want to be governed by Establishment figures like HC who detested them as obstacles so much
that she could not refrain from treating the miners with contempt to their faces. Bette Midler
said this week that the Establishmenters cannot fight the Deplorables because people like her
have no weapons but PBS tote bags. An interesting point.
There are a lot of splinter groups and factions. Tell me what they are. pl
Compared to the 60s there is much less social strife today. No riots on the streets, no
bombings by radical groups, no live fire shootings to quell protests in universities. So is
this the quiet before the storm?
What we see today is much more arm-chair fighting using keyboards on social media.
Frothing at the mouth pushing hashtags The extent of action is writing #MeToo and
#BringBackOurGirls. Can such somnambulant warriors cause a real war?
My observation is that over the last 30 years, there are a few big trends.
One, is PCness becoming more and more embedded causing increased censorship of
speech.
The second is rising "doublethink" and the Establishment melding into a true Ingsoc
with increasing governmental interference in all aspects of people's lives to benefit the
"party club".
The third, is the growth in "state capitalism", reflected in the increasing
financialization of the economy and the substitution of credit for capital. It's no
longer what's good for GM but what's good for Goldman Sachs. The Federal Reserve run by
the Ph.Ds on the "sophistry" standard as the primary lever.
The fourth trend is a slow moral decay among the elites as the powerful no longer feel
a sense of duty and honor. It is more important for them how they are perceived by the
"club". Invitations to gatherings such as Davos, Aspen, & the Google "camp".
Fifth, is increasing hopelessness among many segments reflected in the rising deaths
to opioids.
This post brought a smile of recognition to my face. I agree.
The media desperately ignores this issue. The current Western power structure is in
flux and is confusing.
Communism died when the Soviet Union fell. China, Cuba and Vietnam are
not workers' paradises. The hard left is impotent and in the lurch. The mild left and
liberals sold out to the Plutocrats. Republicans are crazy except for Corporatists who are
keeping their mouths shut and passing tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.
Those who
said farewell to Senator John McCain at the National Cathedral did not mentioned that he is
as responsible as anyone for the forever wars that are causing the refugee influx that is
tearing Europe apart.
Their donors are imposing austerity and poverty on to the people.
There
is no one championing the concerns of the Deplorables except the hard right. These Theocrats
are most likely to start carting off red shirted teachers, librarians, pot heads, agnostics,
unemployed and dissidents to work camps, once things fall apart.
I think it is very important to realize that the current mess in this country is largely a
result of not reigning in the investment bankers as well as the country embarking on deadly
and abusive wars against a large part of the non-western world.
As you rightly pointed out, both establishment parties are equally guilty of the worst
offensives against those who choose to live outside of the major metropolitan areas.
This country would be much better off if people were taught how the investment banking
system works and how it is regularly abused by the rich to make themselves richer. Of course,
that is not in the interest of the establishment leaders.
Where you and I differ is over Donald Trump. I do not believe for one minute that he gives
a damn about the people that have been screwed so royally over the last thirty to forty
years. He is just louder and more obnoxious than most.
If there is a way out of this mess, I cannot see it.
I am like you over seventy. I believe the old should be encouraged to disappear from
politics and only the young should be engaged in trying to save this country (as well as
themselves).
In my varied career I worked twice as an employee and three times as a consultant for
Standard & Poors Retail Brokerage Division. I also worked for the Bank of New York,
Government Clearance Division and did various consulting stints at Union Bank of Switzerland
and Manufacters Hanover.
All of these positions were in the technology field.
You would be amazed at what you can learn from the inside.
The banks make everything function. When there is a banking crisis they turn up the screws
on the politicians and the politicians respond by bailing the banks out at the expense of the
majority of the population.
Of course, the politicians know that they will be rewarded either directly or indirectly
by the bankers. Just think of all those millions they pay for speaking fees.
We are as united as Rome was near the end of their Empire when their idiot
establishment was convinced they could integrate a massive influx of tribes that loathed
their way of life. Same is occurring in Europe. History rhymes.
Rural vs City you touched on, gun owners vs gun banners, gender sanity vs gender
insanity, free traders vs keeping what's left of our manufacturing base, stockholders vs
deplorable's, open border chaos vs normal immigration patterns to the US, CNN& MSNBC
vs Rural, Decent healthcare vs nothing, establishment vs God, Democrat intense hate vs
Southern whites. I am a rural southern white who did consider myself independent,
however, the intense hate directed toward me and my southerners makes me hate them. So be
it.
Using your terminology, the places where I see the most serious factional divisions
are the Neo-Bolsheviks. There's a group one might call the "50 Staters" after Howard
Dean; they're people who want to re-orient the country in a more socialist direction
(Medicare for all, increased minimum wage, expanded union rights, generally expanded
intervention in the economy) and believe they can sell this as an electoral platform.
They hate the establishment, and are themselves hated like poison by much of the rest of
the Neo-Bolsheviks. The term "Bernie Bro" and "Brocialist" were thrown around a lot last
election by people who's platform is basically "destroy all power structures" without
thinking too hard about what it would mean should they have the power to do it. I've
classed them with the Neo-Bolsheviks due to geographic and cultural similarities, though
they may also be viewed as the left wing of the Deplorables. Personally, these are the
lot I'd say I'm the most similar too.
The remainder of the neo-Bolsheviks can largely be grouped according to what they
believe the source of all evil in the world is: Men; white people; the concept of gender
itself; and in fringe cases the idea that being overweight is unhealthy or other aspects
of reality they find inconvenient. Politically they're hamstrung by three things:
First, they can't really think about anything coherently. The only way they allow
themselves to process issues is deciding who the victim of men/white-people/etc... is in
a situation and deciding that this person must be in the right. If that leads to an
conclusion where the cognitive dissonance is too much to bear (most recently the Siraj
Wahhaj case), they then argue that the fact you're talking about it means "you're
racist/sexist/transphobic/*-phobic shut up". This naturally leads to things like someone
who believes that white-people are the source of all evil talking about how the groping
attacks in Germany were just 'white bodies being subjected to what they subject black
bodies too' (they love to use the word 'bodies' instead of 'people'). The people who
believe men are the source of all evil took some umbrage at this idea. This infighting is
constant.
Second, they are pathetically easy for the establishment to manipulate. It is as
simple as getting the nominally left faction of the establishment to have a woman stump
for a policy using vaguely left wing terms and they will fall over themselves to support
it. I've been told by these people that Russia must be violently opposed because Vladimir
Putin is a homophobic, islamaphobic (!), racist right-winger. It's kind of amazing to see
the political descendants of the hippies cheering on the prospect of a nuclear war
because it would be a woman killing everyone in the name of LGBT rights.
Third, every effective organizer and leader they may have just becomes part of the
establishment. Since these are typically female, gay, or non-white, they cannot
meaningfully be opposed no matter how obviously they betray the goals of the
neo-Bolsheviks. This happens to the deplorables as well, but they seem to be far more
aggressive in countering it. It's not a coincidence that the neo-Bolsheviks have never
really succeeded in any political project that the establishment doesn't find
acceptable.
I may well be downplaying their threat, but they do seem to have disadvantages that
the original versions lacked.
I'm not sure who you would lump in with the "Neo-Bolsheviks", but as someone living in
a semi-rural area of Iowa--deplorable central -- that voted democratic for decades and then
voted for Trump, many of these deplorables embraced Bernie Sanders* (a Neo-Bolshevik?)
and would welcome a return to an FDR style democratic party.
If for no other reason than to partake of the benefits afforded every other citizenry
in the western world such as universal healthcare, free or affordable college, etc.
Establishment Dems:
Imho, far from being supporters of progessive economic policy, most liberal dem
politicians defend the status quo as much as anyone and defer to their tech, insurance,
arms, and financial donors.
Like was said 2 yrs ago, the dems would rather lose with Clinton than win with
Sanders. And I include Pelosi, Schumer, you name it, in that bunch.
Trump's Base/Deplorables:
As you say, there are many more factions. Not all so-called deplorables are the same
politically of course.
As for Trump's base--I have always thought it erroneous to label that base as working
men and women of below average education, etc. 90% of Trump voters supported Romney and
60% had a median income above the national average.
While he is supported by disparate
groups, the largest of Trump's base is the vast suburban gop voters of many large US
cities. The Msm just doesn't want to acknowledge that Trump voters are also their well to
do neighbors. Trump carried Suffolk County/Hamptons in New York state.
The military, veterans, and various police agencies. States fail when they will no
longer enforce the official line. That's usually happens when their own family members
start showing up in the marches, barricades, protests, and such.
Loads of bright eyed youngsters have joined up over the last few decades thinking they
would be like Luke Skywalker only to find out they're being used as Imperial
Stormtroopers.
Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a close associate of Vladimir
Putin, has gone on record with
The
Hill
's John Solomon - admitting to colluding with Americans
leading up to the 2016 US election, except it might not be what
you're thinking.
Deripaska, rumored to be Donald Trump's "
back
channel
" to Putin via the Russian's former association with Paul
Manafort, says he "colluded" with the
US
Government
between 2009 and 2016.
In 2009, when
Robert
Mueller was running the FBI
, the agency asked Deripaska to
spend $25 million of his own money to bankroll an FBI-supervised
operation to rescue a retired FBI agent - Robert Levinson, who was
kidnapped in 2007 while working on a 2007 CIA contract in Iran. This
in and of itself is more than a bit strange.
Deripaska agreed, however the Obama State Department, headed by
Hillary Clinton, scuttled a last-minute deal with Iran before
Levinson could be released. He hasn't been heard from since.
FBI agents courted Deripaska in 2009 in a series of secret hotel
meetings in Paris; Vienna; Budapest, Hungary, and Washington
.
Agents persuaded the aluminum industry magnate to underwrite the
mission. The Russian billionaire insisted the operation neither
involve nor harm his homeland. -The Hill
In other words -
Trump's
alleged "back channel" to Putin was in fact an FBI asset
who
spent $25 million helping Obama's "scandal free" administration find
a kidnapped agent. Deripaska's admitted
Steele, Ohr and the 2016 US Election
Trending Articles
Earth's "Big Freeze" Looms As Sun Remains Devoid
Of
Scientists believe that Earth could experience a
"big freeze" as the sun goes through what's
known as "solar minimum."
As the
New
York Times
frames it, distancing Deripaska from the FBI (no
mention of the $25 million rescue effort, for example), the Russian
aluminum magnate was just one of several Putin-linked Oligarchs the
FBI tried to flip.
The attempt to flip Mr. Deripaska was part of a broader,
clandestine American effort to gauge the possibility of gaining
cooperation from roughly a half-dozen of Russia's richest men,
nearly
all of whom, like Mr. Deripaska, depend on President Vladimir V.
Putin to maintain their wealth, the officials said. -
NYT
Central to the recruiting effort were two central players in the
Trump-Russia investigation; twice-demoted DOJ #4 official
Bruce
Ohr and Christopher Steele
- the author of the largely
unverified "Steele Dossier."
Steele, a longtime associate of Ohr's, worked for Deripaska
beginning in 2012 researching a business rival - work which would
evolve to the point where the former British spy was interfacing
with the Obama administration on his behalf - resulting in Deripaska
regaining entry into the United States, where he visited numerous
times between 2009 and 2017.
The State Department tried to keep him from getting a U.S. visa
between 2006 and 2009 because they believed he had unspecified
connections to criminal elements in Russia as he consolidated
power in the aluminum industry. Deripaska has denied those
allegations...
Whatever the case,
it
is irrefutable that after he began helping the FBI, Deripaska
regained entry to the United States
. And he visited
numerous times between 2009 and 2017, visa entry records show. -
The
Hill
Deripaska is now banned from the United States as one of
several
Russians sanctioned
in April in response to alleged 2016
election meddling.
In a September 2016 meeting,
Deripaska
told FBI agents that it was "preposterous" that Paul Manafort was
colluding with Russia to help Trump win the 2016 election
.
This, despite the fact that Deripaska and Manafort's business
relationship "ended in lawsuits, per
The
Hill
- and the Russian would have every reason to throw
Manafort under the bus if he wanted some revenge on his old
associate.
So the
FBI
and DOJ secretly collaborated with Trump's alleged backchannel over
a seven-year period
, starting with Levinson, then on
Deripaska's Visa, and finally regarding whether Paul Manafort was an
intermediary to Putin. Deripaska vehemently denies the assertion,
and even took out newspaper advertisements in the US last year
volunteering to testify to Congress, refuting an
AP
report
that he and Manafort secretly worked on a plan to
"greatly benefit the Putin government" a decade ago.
Soon after the advertisements ran, representatives for the House
and Senate Intelligence Committees called a Washington-based
lawyer for Mr. Deripaska, Adam Waldman, inquiring about taking
his client up on the offer to testify, Mr. Waldman said in an
interview.
What happened after that has been in dispute. Mr. Waldman, who
stopped working for Mr. Deripaska after the sanctions were
levied, said he told the committee staff that his client would
be willing to testify without any grant of immunity, but would
not testify about any Russian collusion with the Trump campaign
because "he doesn't know anything about that theory and actually
doesn't believe it occurred." -
NYT
In short, Deripaska wants it known that he worked with the FBI and
DOJ, and that he had nothing to do with the Steele dossier.
Today, Deripaska is banned anew from the United States, one of
several Russians sanctioned in April by the Trump administration
as a way to punish Putin for 2016 election meddling. But he
wants to be clear about a few things, according to a statement
provided by his team.
First,
he did collude with Americans in the form of voluntarily
assisting and meeting with the FBI, the DOJ and people such as
Ohr between 2009 and 2016.
He also wants Americans to know
he
did not cooperate or assist with Steele's dossier, and he tried
to dispel the FBI notion that Russia and the Trump campaign
colluded during the 2016 election
. -
The
Hill
Interestingly, Steele's dossier which was partially funded by the
Clinton campaign, relied on
senior
Kremlin officials
.
Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a close associate of Vladimir
Putin, has gone on record with
The
Hill
's John Solomon - admitting to colluding with Americans
leading up to the 2016 US election, except it might not be what
you're thinking.
Deripaska, rumored to be Donald Trump's "
back
channel
" to Putin via the Russian's former association with Paul
Manafort, says he "colluded" with the
US
Government
between 2009 and 2016.
In 2009, when
Robert
Mueller was running the FBI
, the agency asked Deripaska to
spend $25 million of his own money to bankroll an FBI-supervised
operation to rescue a retired FBI agent - Robert Levinson, who was
kidnapped in 2007 while working on a 2007 CIA contract in Iran. This
in and of itself is more than a bit strange.
Deripaska agreed, however the Obama State Department, headed by
Hillary Clinton, scuttled a last-minute deal with Iran before
Levinson could be released. He hasn't been heard from since.
FBI agents courted Deripaska in 2009 in a series of secret hotel
meetings in Paris; Vienna; Budapest, Hungary, and Washington
.
Agents persuaded the aluminum industry magnate to underwrite the
mission. The Russian billionaire insisted the operation neither
involve nor harm his homeland. -The Hill
In other words -
Trump's
alleged "back channel" to Putin was in fact an FBI asset
who
spent $25 million helping Obama's "scandal free" administration find
a kidnapped agent. Deripaska's admitted
Steele, Ohr and the 2016 US Election
Trending Articles
Earth's "Big Freeze" Looms As Sun Remains Devoid
Of
Scientists believe that Earth could experience a
"big freeze" as the sun goes through what's
known as "solar minimum."
As the
New
York Times
frames it, distancing Deripaska from the FBI (no
mention of the $25 million rescue effort, for example), the Russian
aluminum magnate was just one of several Putin-linked Oligarchs the
FBI tried to flip.
The attempt to flip Mr. Deripaska was part of a broader,
clandestine American effort to gauge the possibility of gaining
cooperation from roughly a half-dozen of Russia's richest men,
nearly
all of whom, like Mr. Deripaska, depend on President Vladimir V.
Putin to maintain their wealth, the officials said. -
NYT
Central to the recruiting effort were two central players in the
Trump-Russia investigation; twice-demoted DOJ #4 official
Bruce
Ohr and Christopher Steele
- the author of the largely
unverified "Steele Dossier."
Steele, a longtime associate of Ohr's, worked for Deripaska
beginning in 2012 researching a business rival - work which would
evolve to the point where the former British spy was interfacing
with the Obama administration on his behalf - resulting in Deripaska
regaining entry into the United States, where he visited numerous
times between 2009 and 2017.
The State Department tried to keep him from getting a U.S. visa
between 2006 and 2009 because they believed he had unspecified
connections to criminal elements in Russia as he consolidated
power in the aluminum industry. Deripaska has denied those
allegations...
Whatever the case,
it
is irrefutable that after he began helping the FBI, Deripaska
regained entry to the United States
. And he visited
numerous times between 2009 and 2017, visa entry records show. -
The
Hill
Deripaska is now banned from the United States as one of
several
Russians sanctioned
in April in response to alleged 2016
election meddling.
In a September 2016 meeting,
Deripaska
told FBI agents that it was "preposterous" that Paul Manafort was
colluding with Russia to help Trump win the 2016 election
.
This, despite the fact that Deripaska and Manafort's business
relationship "ended in lawsuits, per
The
Hill
- and the Russian would have every reason to throw
Manafort under the bus if he wanted some revenge on his old
associate.
So the
FBI
and DOJ secretly collaborated with Trump's alleged backchannel over
a seven-year period
, starting with Levinson, then on
Deripaska's Visa, and finally regarding whether Paul Manafort was an
intermediary to Putin. Deripaska vehemently denies the assertion,
and even took out newspaper advertisements in the US last year
volunteering to testify to Congress, refuting an
AP
report
that he and Manafort secretly worked on a plan to
"greatly benefit the Putin government" a decade ago.
Soon after the advertisements ran, representatives for the House
and Senate Intelligence Committees called a Washington-based
lawyer for Mr. Deripaska, Adam Waldman, inquiring about taking
his client up on the offer to testify, Mr. Waldman said in an
interview.
What happened after that has been in dispute. Mr. Waldman, who
stopped working for Mr. Deripaska after the sanctions were
levied, said he told the committee staff that his client would
be willing to testify without any grant of immunity, but would
not testify about any Russian collusion with the Trump campaign
because "he doesn't know anything about that theory and actually
doesn't believe it occurred." -
NYT
In short, Deripaska wants it known that he worked with the FBI and
DOJ, and that he had nothing to do with the Steele dossier.
Today, Deripaska is banned anew from the United States, one of
several Russians sanctioned in April by the Trump administration
as a way to punish Putin for 2016 election meddling. But he
wants to be clear about a few things, according to a statement
provided by his team.
First,
he did collude with Americans in the form of voluntarily
assisting and meeting with the FBI, the DOJ and people such as
Ohr between 2009 and 2016.
He also wants Americans to know
he
did not cooperate or assist with Steele's dossier, and he tried
to dispel the FBI notion that Russia and the Trump campaign
colluded during the 2016 election
. -
The
Hill
Interestingly, Steele's dossier which was partially funded by the
Clinton campaign, relied on
senior
Kremlin officials
.
This war is tremendous waste of resources on both sides with no clear
victory in sight. Killing of individual commanders does not change the
strategic situation. It just invites retaliation.
Although the war did increase the coherence of the Ukrainian society
(like any war does) the price is way too high.
Zakharchenko was a soldier and knew the risks, many others are ready to take his
place.
VV Putin could have occupied the whole so-called ukraine in the same manner he occupied
Crimea, even better, he could've sent volunteers to shoot CIA and Mossad agents during the
maidan events.Lots of volunteers.
He didnt.
Please consider that ukraine project is an infinite black hole sucking money and resources
(agents, weapons, influence) from the Hegemon, at the same time bringing him absolutely
nothing.
Especially the Debaltsevo cauldron was painful, as lots of modern artillery control gear
was lost in pristine state and sent directly to Moscow.Without considering the humiliation of
German and Canadian mercenaries being caught and released for indeterminate price.
In exchange the Hegemon learned that Russian artillery is still as dangerous as in '45, at
Saur Mogila whole battalions of Ukrainian army disappeared literally in minutes when caught
by Buratino fire.
Perhaps some remember the shellshocked Ukrainian infantry lieutenant, when interviewed by
CNN freshly out of Ilovaisk, screaming into the mic that *two meters, you must dig two
meters, or you die!* , well-intentioned American female reporter decidedly confused.
The show will go on until Hegemon decides that he had enough, and gives green light to the
ukrainian army to coup the govt, exterminate the nazi battalions, and begin a very slow and
painful ascension back into a semblance of normality first, then re-unification with the
Motherland next.
As usual, the most vulnerable, old people, women, workers will suffer the most, and the
guilty will go unpunished.
Not Pepe's best sauce, but always worth a read. He's best when he's reporting from the
field. His armchair geopolitics aren't that much better than anyone else's.
That said, Eurasian integration, Western Hemispheric energy independence, the populist
revolt against forced globalization/sovereignty elimination/kleptocracy and the outbreak of
global peace are all changing the chessboard profoundly. Most of the premises of traditional
imperialist power politics are simply blown away. Instead, a new 'Chinese Peace with Russian
Muscle' is the de facto hegemony in the vast bulk of the world, including parts of South
American and most of Africa. With the Brits and French too slow and stupid to react, the
Germans as weaselly and venal as ever, and the Japanese comatose, the hulk known as the G7 is
heeling over into full capsize mode. And, good riddance.
Now the G20 has to either stand up or collapse. Much depends on which outcome
develops.
However it works out, we can all stand and cheer that it is not a US dependent historical
course any more. We've ceded our moral and military leadership. Perhaps we can reform, even
if by bloody revolution, and re-emerge with something to give the rest of the world. Free
markets, liberty, democracy, freedom of thought......the future is now really a question of
whether any of these ideas will have a chance in a remade global order dominated, so far, by
dictatorship, corruption, and moral crime.
So, we tend to our own house now. Anyone got a pack of matches?
** We've ceded our moral and military leadership **
Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Benghazi, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Georgia, NATO expansion, the
Clintoons, the Bush dynasty of mediocrity, our open border, offshoring, Muslim ass kissing,
free-ranging Antifa filth, media monopoly and lies, foreigners taking university slots,
sexual confusion, ass kissing homosexuals, groveling before bat shit crazy feminists,
destruction of our basic legal document through judicial usurpation, diseased leftists
spouting lies and delusion, excusing black dysfunction, fiscal incontinence, unaddressd
monopolies, attacks on free speech, criminal immunity for elites, a president who won't
exercise his authority and tolerates insubordination, an unaccountable bureaucracy, a loose
cannon prosecutor, Jewish political domination, slobbering over Israel as though Jerusalem is
our capitol not Washington, denigration of the white majority culture, celebration of
miscegenation, degradation of marriage, our diseased educational establishment, rampant vote
fraud, illegal and unconstitutional wars, chest beating about "exceptionalism," and a
generally crap culture all say you're right.
There will be no sudden and dramatic collapse. There will only be a slow, painful,
never-ending, degrading decay into nothingness, a death from one million pundits, a process
readily apparent (literally) all around us. Tune in to CNN, see for yourself.
I see your point, but I am not convinced bankers work independently. Bankers do not have a
monopoly on psychotics. The psychotics in gov have as much greed and craving for power as the
bankers and I believe they work around, with, and against each other for various reasons just
like everything else in the world works. Thus a one dimensional theory will not be complete -
and maybe that is what you are arguing: to include bankers in geopolitics. I agree the
bankers are a big part of the rotten problem but like when I am overseas - I watch the guys
with the guns.
Most of the planet has put up with a lot of shit from America It's good that it's finally
coming to an end.
"We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population... Our real task
in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain
this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we
will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming, and our attention will have to
be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive
ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction... We should
cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the
living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to
deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the
better."
George Kennan, State Department memo, 1948
America never gave up on the idealistic slogans -- the figleaf for the Empire of Chaos.
Finally shutting the fuck up after the game is over will be welcome.
"... No wonder one of the side effects of progressive Eurasia integration will be not only a death blow to Bretton Woods but also to "democratic" neoliberalism. ..."
Alastair Crooke took a great
shot at deconstructing why Western global elites are terrified of the Russian
conceptualization of Eurasia.
It's because "they 'scent' a stealth reversion to the old, pre-Socratic values: for the
Ancients the very notion of 'man', in that way, did not exist. There were only men: Greeks,
Romans, barbarians, Syrians, and so on. This stands in obvious opposition to universal,
cosmopolitan 'man'."
So it's Heraclitus versus Voltaire – even as "humanism" as we inherited it from the
Enlightenment, is de facto over.
Whatever is left roaming our wilderness of mirrors depends on
the irascible mood swings of the Goddess of the Market.
No wonder one of the side effects of
progressive Eurasia integration will be not only a death blow to Bretton Woods but also to
"democratic" neoliberalism.
What we have now is also a remastered version of sea power versus land powers. Relentless
Russophobia is paired with supreme fear of a Russia-Germany rapprochement – as Bismarck
wanted, and as Putin
and Merkel recently hinted at. The supreme nightmare for the U.S. is in fact a truly
Eurasian Beijing-Berlin-Moscow partnership.
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has not even begun; according to the official Beijing
timetable, we're still in the planning phase. Implementation starts next year. The horizon is
2039.
To those who say Statements 1 and 3 in B's post reflect or demonstrate reality: don't
confuse bullying with strength.
The statements are expressions of Social Darwinism in its various forms. Social Darwinism
represents a particular belief system that justifies the existence of an elite dominating
society and culture, so as to ensure its (that is, the elite's) continued survival and
domination.
Needless to say, Binyamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara are under police investigation in
Israel for corruption. Sara N apparently is also notorious for ill-treating her staff and
throwing her weight around to impress and intimidate others.
Is this sort of behaviour - stealing from the nation, bullying others - the behaviour of
those who are strong and secure in their power?
-----
Even the Mongols, though they brought destruction, extermination and ruin everywhere they
went, did eventually bring order and stability, and revived trade and civilisation. They
themselves became civilised by the peoples they conquered. In the end, they were undone by
their own internal family squabbles and competition. They were not so strong as they first
seemed.
It's not enough to be "strong" in a military sense - what a nation's leadership does with
its power is as important as acquiring and having that power in the first place.
"... That she equated the two is intellectually dishonest, but hey, it was the height of the Cold War, there was poetic license to lie in the academic world. ..."
"... Liberalism is an umbrella term (although not as umbrella as illuminism) to designate the legitimating of capitalism over four centuries. Liberalism was not just philosophy: it was an economic theory etc. ..."
"... What unites liberals of all sorts of kinds is the fact that, ultimately, the acted to preserve or advocate for capitalism. ..."
"... Liberalism can be better described thus as the way of life of capitalism; the way capitalism perceives itself over time. ..."
"... Neoliberalism (new liberalism) was born in the 40s, in Mont Pelerin, and its doctrine stated that 1) post-war social-democracy in Western Europe = socialism and should be combated and 2) what happened between the WWI (1914) and WWII (1945) was an abortion of History, and the world should continue from where it stopped (i.e. with the old liberalism). ..."
"... But I think the definite empirical proof totalitarianism is a Cold War myth and that nazifascism is really liberalism is that this new rise of the "far-right/alt-right" is not coming from socialist countries (North Korea, Cuba, China and Vietnam), but from capitalist, Western Democracies (Italy, France, USA, UK, Australia, Japan -- albeit Japan never gave up fascism to begin with --, Sweden, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Austria and Ukraine). It was from the liberals' womb that fascism was (re)born, not "communism". This is a fact, a fact we can observe today, with our own senses. ..."
Domenico Losurdo (14 November 1941 – 28 June 2018): 'Liberalism, the most dogged
enemy of freedom'
In your Liberalism: A Counter-History you deconstruct neoliberal ideology, which is taken
to be synonymous with democracy and standing up for freedom against totalitarian forces.
Why do you think it an urgent priority today to analyse – and to attack – this
kind of liberal approach?
Any empire seeking to expand will need a genealogical myth, which celebrates and
embellishes its origins and its history. It thus invites its declared or potential
opponents to bend to a higher moral and political force. According to the legend skilfully
cultivated by the Roman Empire, Rome's origins were not only royal, but divine: it was
founded by the pious Aeneas at the end of an epic journey. The son of Anchises (cousin of
the king of Troy) and the goddess Venus, he had fled a Troy in flames. The genealogical
myth of today's American empire is no different. Fleeing a despotic and intolerant Europe,
the pilgrim fathers made their way to the New World to build an eternal monument to freedom
and found the United States, the world's oldest democracy
@ Posted by: Charles R | Sep 2, 2018 12:49:09 AM | 145
Her book in question is The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Possibly her most famous
book and the one which skyrocketed her career in the USA (and to the CIA, to which she was a
collaborator).
Also, in an article about modernism (I don't know how it was published in English), in the
last paragraphs, she mentions her "research on totalitarianism", and then goes on stating
that what united nazism and communism was the adoption of a "grand narrative" (see the
coincidence with post-modernism? Not a mere coincidence, for sure): the nazi adopting the
"grand narrative" of race struggle and the communist the one of class struggle. That she
equated the two is intellectually dishonest, but hey, it was the height of the Cold War,
there was poetic license to lie in the academic world.
I was born right at the end of the Cold War. I probably belong to the first generation of
historians born "post-Cold-War". And the first thing that amazed me was the sheer quantity of
pure lies and myths that pervaded Cold War era thought and science. It wasn't some
"conspiracy theory" level lies -- those very carefully crafted lies, extremely difficult to
debunk -- no, it was pure ideology, lies that can be easily debunked with a first look at
primary sources or with five minutes in internet research. Future historians (of the 22nd
Century) will probably see the Cold War era until today as a dark age for science.
Even Marxist production of this era suffered a lot: Marx must have had spinned in his tomb
like never before during the post-war era.
-//-
@ Posted by: les7 | Sep 2, 2018 3:36:39 AM | 149
Since then there has been a lot of evidence from evolutionary biology that suggests the
human predisposition to organize itself under some form of "authority structure" is
hard-wired into us.
The homo sapiens is an apex superpredator, a species of the fifth trophic level (level 5).
To top it off, we are also omnivorous, which makes us even more deadly and voracious.
Apex predators are not cannibal (the higher the trophic level, the lower the energy level,
so it wouldn't be energetically advantageous for apex predators to eat/hunt themselves. The
meat of apex predators have very low nutrition levels and are usually full of parasites and
other poisonous residues (e.g. dolphin meat is full of mercury, not edible for humans).
However, apex predator can and do kill themselves in territorial disputes -- be it among
themselves, be it with another apex predator species.
So, it is only natural that humans kill themselves for resources. It is in our nature.
However, there's a situation where apex predators stop killing themselves: when the
environment has enough for everybody. It will not be Teletubbies, where everybody will hug
and love themselves, but they would tolerate themselves. For example, you may want to kill a
stranger in the street -- but if that stranger is your children's doctor, then you'll think
twice, you'll tolerate his existence just because it is in your economic interest to keep him
alive.
That's what Marx was all about: capitalism increased interdependency, so are now, relative
to total population, killing ourselves less. The only reason the USA just don't nuke
everybody is that it depends on the rest of the world for trade. If we develop the productive
forces further, we could have a situation were the excedent would be so big that nobody would
have to exploit nobody (a fully-automated society). Again, Marx never stated communism would
be a hippie utopia: humans would still get happy, sad, anger, grief, violence for passional
motives would still happen, people would still cry when a parent would die etc. etc. What he
envisaged was a society without class.
-//-
Now, the last time about liberalism.
Liberalism is an umbrella term (although not as umbrella as illuminism) to designate
the legitimating of capitalism over four centuries. Liberalism was not just philosophy: it
was an economic theory etc.
What unites liberals of all sorts of kinds is the fact that, ultimately, the acted to
preserve or advocate for capitalism.
Liberalism can be better described thus as the way of life of capitalism; the way
capitalism perceives itself over time.
The separation we do nowadays between liberalism and nazifascism comes from neoliberal
propaganda.
Neoliberalism (new liberalism) was born in the 40s, in Mont Pelerin, and its doctrine
stated that 1) post-war social-democracy in Western Europe = socialism and should be combated
and 2) what happened between the WWI (1914) and WWII (1945) was an abortion of History, and
the world should continue from where it stopped (i.e. with the old liberalism).
That's why I consider neoliberalism more like the "return of the liberals" than "the new
liberalism", albeit it, I confess, from the point of view of the economists, the latter
definition suits better. New liberalism because they conceded liberalism collapsed in 1914
and needed to be updated (this happened with Friedman's monetarism); Return of the liberals
because, albeit it was born in the 40s, it was just in 1979, with the election of Margaret
Thatcher in the UK, that it would really come to power in a worldwide level (there was
already a neoliberal experiment in Pinochet's Chile, some years before).
But I think the definite empirical proof totalitarianism is a Cold War myth and that
nazifascism is really liberalism is that this new rise of the "far-right/alt-right" is not
coming from socialist countries (North Korea, Cuba, China and Vietnam), but from capitalist,
Western Democracies (Italy, France, USA, UK, Australia, Japan -- albeit Japan never gave up
fascism to begin with --, Sweden, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Austria and Ukraine). It was from
the liberals' womb that fascism was (re)born, not "communism". This is a fact, a fact we can
observe today, with our own senses.
Now, you can rationalized that many of these countries are from the ex-Iron Curtain. But
1) it only happened after they turned capitalist, not while they were under the USSR and 2)
those Iron Curtain countries were actually full-fledged Nazi countries before the USSR
liberated them in 1945, so they had a nazi past and culture as a nationalist narrative
against USSR hegemony; the Ukraine has a sui generis history, that involved a triple side
civil war (White, Black and Red Armies), so, albeit they were part of the USSR, they too had
a Nazi past.
On the "blue" side of things, mendacity rules as usual lately, especially in
the Deep State septic abscess that the Russia probe has become.
Department
of Justice official Bruce Ohr, twice demoted but still on the payroll, went
into a closed congressional hearing and apparently threw everybody but his
mother under the bus, laying out an evidence trail of stupendous, flagrant
corruption in that perfidious scheme to un-do the election results of 2016.
Most amazingly, it was revealed that Mr. Ohr had not been called to testify
by special counsel Robert Mueller nor by the federal prosecutor John Huber,
who is charged with investigating the FBI / DOJ irregularities surrounding
the Russia probe.
It is amazing because Mr. Ohr is precisely the
pivotal figure in what now looks like an obvious conspiracy to politically weaponize the agencies against the Golden Golem.
An
awful lot of people have some 'splainin' to do on that one, starting with
the Attorney General and his deputy. Who will put it to them?
Kunstler sums it all up colorfully and correctly. If America is
to survive we need to take the money out of politics but fat
chance of that. In ancient Athens and in Rome's early republic
period, positions in government were given to men respected by
their peers and known to be honest and fair. Look at our
Congress. Look at the lowlife presidents of the last 25 years. A
sex degenerate, a brain-damaged alcoholic, a jive dancing
homosexual. And they lionize McCain as a great man. He actually
plans his own funeral with multiple venues and has presidents
kissing his ass even in death and all for anti-Trump
showmanship. This doesn't look like a nation on the way up to
me.
Ancient Athens and Rome faced the same problem - complete political
corruption - their leaders were chosen on the basis of their wealth
and property - indeed, if you weren't a property holder, you usually
weren't even a citizen. And their personal lives back then were
just as perverted, if not more so than our politicians and captains
of industry today.
Baron, if you are right,
historians (if there are any), will one day compare
Rome's emperors from Caligula to Nero
to recent US presidents.
History repeats, first as tragedy, then as farce
. - K. Marx
He seems to be saying that the real Fed chairman is an algo on
steroids, and while elites know it, they will not admit it,
publicly, whereas the serfs still blame things like offshoring
of jobs and displacement from jobs by illegal aliens with
welfare-hoisted wages, hence their attendance at MAGA rallies, not
that Trump has succeeded in motivating the congressional swamp to do
anything about this. He also seems to be saying that, when it hits
the fan, underemployed serfs will win something, but will blame
elites despite their winnings. If the post-collapse "winnings"
are anything like other economic upsides for serfs, they better not
blink, or they will miss all the good stuff. It will be a lot like
that imperceptible payroll tax cut that Obama's stimulus provided to
most non-welfare-eligible serfs, living on earned-only income, or
what most serfs got out of the Trump tax cuts: a
Costco-membership-sized lift to their monthly paychecks, which
are half consumed by rent alone.
"... "The Russia Hoax Theme Got Started As a Dirty Trick by Hillary's 2016 Campaign ..."
"... "The seed was planted and significant parts of the American voting public noticed, particularly those who believed that Hillary Clinton had the God-given right to take control of the Oval Office. One way or another, Team Hillary was going to cram the Russian narrative down our collective throats." ..."
"The Russia Hoax Theme Got Started As a Dirty Trick by Hillary's 2016 Campaign
"The seed was planted and significant parts of the American voting public noticed,
particularly those who believed that Hillary Clinton had the God-given right to take control of
the Oval Office. One way or another, Team Hillary was going to cram the Russian narrative down
our collective throats."
No question, the woman fits the description "evil," but that sure doesn't make Trump a saint
by comparison.
America's tragedy – one shared by the entire world – is that this is the kind of
choice American voters get, a Hillary Clinton or a Donald Trump.
No matter who wins or loses each American presidential election, the people in general lose
and the establishment wins.
And right now, the American establishment likes and embraces the Clinton nonsense about
Russia. It serves its current purposes. Actually, it wasn't truly Clinton's own nonsense. She
was definitely feeding off a pre-existing set of attitudes in her Washington set.
So, it is more threatening than just a residual from an election campaign.
"... I was not sure whether Trump was controlled opposition or simply a useful scapegoat for the economic crisis that globalists are clearly engineering. Now it appears that he is both. ..."
"... Many businessmen end up dealing with elitist controlled banks at some point in their careers. But when Trump entered office and proceeded to load his cabinet with ghouls from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, the Council on Foreign Relations and give Wilber Ross the position of Commerce Secretary, it became obvious that Trump is in fact a puppet for the banks. ..."
"... If one examines the history of fake coups, there is ALWAYS an element of orchestrated division, sometimes between the globalists and their own puppets. This is called 4th Generation warfare, in which almost all divisions are an illusion and the real target is the public psyche. ..."
"... the overall picture is not as simple as "Left vs. Right." Instead, we need to look at the situation more like a chess board, and above that chess board looms the globalists, attempting to control all the necessary pieces on BOTH sides. Every provocation by leftists is designed to elicit a predictable response from conservatives to the point that we become whatever the globalists want us to become. ..."
"... Therefore it is not leftists that present the greatest threat to individual liberty, but the globalist influenced Trump administration. A failed coup on the part of the left could be used as a rationale for incremental and unconstitutional "safeguards." And conservatives may be fooled into supporting these measures as the threat is overblown. ..."
At that time I was certain that the globalists would find great use for a Trump presidency,
more so in fact than a Clinton presidency. However, I was not sure whether Trump was controlled
opposition or simply a useful scapegoat for the economic crisis that globalists are clearly
engineering. Now it appears that he is both.
Trump's history was already suspicious. He was bailed out of his considerable debts
surrounding his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City in the early 1990s by
Rothschild banking agent Wilber Ross , which saved him from embarrassment and
possibly saved his entire fortune . This alone was not necessarily enough to deny Trump the
benefit of the doubt in my view.
Many businessmen end up dealing with elitist controlled banks at some point in their
careers. But when Trump entered office and proceeded to load his cabinet with ghouls from
Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, the Council on Foreign Relations and give Wilber Ross the position of
Commerce Secretary, it became obvious that Trump is in fact a puppet for the banks.
Some liberty movement activists ignore this reality and attempt to argue around the facts of
Trump's associations. "What about all the media opposition to Trump? Doesn't this indicate he's
not controlled?" they say. I say, not really.
If one examines the history of fake coups, there is ALWAYS an element of orchestrated
division, sometimes between the globalists and their own puppets. This is called 4th Generation
warfare, in which almost all divisions are an illusion and the real target is the public
psyche.
This is not to say that leftist opposition to Trump and conservatives is not real. It
absolutely is. The left has gone off the ideological deep end into an abyss of rabid frothing
insanity, but the overall picture is not as simple as "Left vs. Right." Instead, we need to
look at the situation more like a chess board, and above that chess board looms the globalists,
attempting to control all the necessary pieces on BOTH sides. Every provocation by leftists is
designed to elicit a predictable response from conservatives to the point that we become
whatever the globalists want us to become.
... ... ...
As this is taking place, conservatives are growing more sensitive to the notion of a leftist
coup, from silencing of conservative voices to an impeachment of Trump based on fraudulent
ideas of "Russian collusion."
To be clear, the extreme left has no regard for individual liberties or constitutional law.
They use the Constitution when it suits them, then try to tear it down when it doesn't suit
them. However, the far-left is also a paper tiger; it is not a true threat to conservative
values because its membership marginal, it is weak, immature and irrational. Their only power
resides in their influence within the mainstream media, but with the MSM fading in the face of
the alternative media, their social influence is limited. It is perhaps enough to organize a
"coup," but it would inevitably be a failed coup.
Therefore it is not leftists that present the greatest threat to individual liberty, but the
globalist influenced Trump administration. A failed coup on the part of the left could be used
as a rationale for incremental and unconstitutional "safeguards." And conservatives may be
fooled into supporting these measures as the threat is overblown.
I have always said that the only people that can destroy conservative principles are
conservatives. Conservatives diminish their own principles every time they abandon their
conscience and become exactly like the monsters they hope to defeat. And make no mistake, the
globalists are well aware of this strategy.
Carroll Quigley, a pro-globalist professor and the author of Tragedy and Hope, a book
published decades ago which outlined the plan for a one world economic and political system, is
quoted in his address ' Dissent: Do We Need It
':
"They say, "The Congress is corrupt." I ask them, "What do you know about the Congress? Do
you know your own Congressman's name?" Usually they don't. It's almost a reflex with them,
like seeing a fascist pig in a policeman. To them, all Congressmen are crooks. I tell them
they must spend a lot of time learning the American political system and how it functions,
and then work within the system. But most of them just won't buy that. They insist the system
is totally corrupt. I insist that the system, the establishment, whatever you call it, is so
balanced by diverse forces that very slight pressures can produce perceptible results.
For example, I've talked about the lower middle class as the backbone of fascism in the
future. I think this may happen. The party members of the Nazi Party in Germany were
consistently lower middle class. I think that the right-wing movements in this country are
pretty generally in this group."
Is a "failed coup" being staged in order to influence conservatives to become the very
"fascists" the left accuses us of being? The continuing narrative certainly suggests that this
is the game plan.
* * *
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"... Developing the tradition charted by C. Wright Mills in his 1956 classic The Power Elite , in his latest book, Professor Peter Phillips starts by reviewing the transition from the nation state power elites described by authors such as Mills to a transnational power elite centralized on the control of global capital. ..."
Developing the tradition charted by C. Wright Mills in his 1956 classic The Power Elite
, in his latest book, Professor Peter Phillips starts by reviewing the transition from the
nation state power elites described by authors such as Mills to a transnational power elite
centralized on the control of global capital.
Thus, in his just-released study Giants: The Global
Power Elite , Phillips, a professor of political sociology at Sonoma State University
in the USA, identifies the world's top seventeen asset management firms, such as BlackRock and
J.P Morgan Chase, each with more than one trillion dollars of investment capital under
management, as the 'Giants' of world capitalism. The seventeen firms collectively manage more
than $US41.1 trillion in a self-invested network of interlocking capital that spans the
globe.
This $41 trillion represents the wealth invested for profit by thousands of millionaires,
billionaires and corporations. The seventeen Giants operate in nearly every country in the
world and are 'the central institutions of the financial capital that powers the global
economic system'. They invest in anything considered profitable, ranging from 'agricultural
lands on which indigenous farmers are replaced by power elite investors' to public assets (such
as energy and water utilities) to war.
In addition, Phillips identifies the most important networks of the Global Power Elite and
the individuals therein. He names 389 individuals (a small number of whom are women and a token
number of whom are from countries other than the United States and the wealthier countries of
Western Europe) at the core of the policy planning nongovernmental networks that manage,
facilitate and defend the continued concentration of global capital. The Global Power Elite
perform two key uniting functions, he argues: they provide ideological justifications for their
shared interests (promulgated through their corporate media), and define the parameters of
action for transnational governmental organizations and capitalist nation-states.
More precisely, Phillips identifies the 199 directors of the seventeen global financial
Giants and offers short biographies and public information on their individual net wealth.
These individuals are closely interconnected through numerous networks of association including
the World Economic Forum, the International Monetary Conference, university affiliations,
various policy councils, social clubs, and cultural enterprises. For a taste of one of these
clubs, see this account of The Links in New York. As Phillips
observes: 'It is certainly safe to conclude they all know each other personally or know of each
other in the shared context of their positions of power.'
The Giants, Phillips documents, invest in each other but also in many hundreds of investment
management firms, many of which are near-Giants. This results in tens of trillions of dollars
coordinated in a single vast network of global capital controlled by a very small number of
people. 'Their constant objective is to find enough safe investment opportunities for a return
on capital that allows for continued growth. Inadequate capital-placement opportunities lead to
dangerous speculative investments, buying up of public assets, and permanent war spending.'
Because the directors of these seventeen asset management firms represent the central core
of international capital, 'Individuals can retire or pass away, and other similar people will
move into their place, making the overall structure a self-perpetuating network of global
capital control. As such, these 199 people share a common goal of maximum return on investments
for themselves and their clients, and they may seek to achieve returns by any means necessary
– legal or not . the institutional and structural arrangements within the money
management systems of global capital relentlessly seek ways to achieve maximum return on
investment, and the conditions for manipulations – legal or not – are always
present.'
Like some researchers before him, Phillips identifies the importance of those transnational
institutions that serve a unifying function. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, G20,
G7, World Trade Organization (WTO),
World Economic Forum (WEF), Trilateral
Commission, Bilderberg Group ,
Bank for International Settlements, Group of 30 (G30), the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Monetary
Conference serve as institutional mechanisms for consensus building within the transnational
capitalist class, and power elite policy formulation and implementation. 'These international
institutions serve the interests of the global financial Giants by supporting policies and
regulations that seek to protect the free, unrestricted flow of capital and debt collection
worldwide.'
But within this network of transnational institutions, Phillips identifies two very
important global elite policy-planning organizations: the Group of Thirty (which has 32 members) and the extended executive
committee of the Trilateral Commission
(which has 55 members). These nonprofit corporations, which each have a research and support
staff, formulate elite policy and issue instructions for their implementation by the
transnational governmental institutions like the G7, G20, IMF, WTO, and World Bank. Elite
policies are also implemented following instruction of the relevant agent, including
governments, in the context. These agents then do as they are instructed. Thus, these 85
members (because two overlap) of the Group of Thirty and the Trilateral Commission comprise a
central group of facilitators of global capitalism, ensuring that 'global capital remains safe,
secure, and growing'.
So, while many of the major international institutions are controlled by nation-state
representatives and central bankers (with proportional power exercised by dominant financial
supporters such as the United States and European Union countries), Phillips is more concerned
with the transnational policy groups that are nongovernmental because these organizations 'help
to unite TCC power elites as a class' and the individuals involved in these organizations
facilitate world capitalism. 'They serve as policy elites who seek the continued growth of
capital in the world.'
Developing this list of 199 directors of the largest money management firms in the world,
Phillips argues, is an important step toward understanding how capitalism works globally today.
These global power elite directors make the decisions regarding the investment of trillions of
dollars. Supposedly in competition, the concentrated wealth they share requires them to
cooperate for their greater good by identifying investment opportunities and shared risk
agreements, and working collectively for political arrangements that create advantages for
their profit-generating system as a whole.
Their fundamental priority is to secure an average return on investment of 3 to 10 percent,
or even more. The nature of any investment is less important than what it yields: continuous
returns that support growth in the overall market. Hence, capital investment in tobacco
products, weapons of war, toxic chemicals, pollution, and other socially destructive goods and
services are judged purely by their profitability. Concern for the social and environmental
costs of the investment are non-existent. In other words, inflicting death and destruction are
fine because they are profitable.
So what is the global elite's purpose? In a few sentences Phillips characterizes it thus:
The elite is largely united in support of the US/NATO military empire that prosecutes a
repressive war against resisting groups – typically labeled 'terrorists' – around
the world. The real purpose of 'the war on terror' is defense of transnational globalization,
the unimpeded flow of financial capital around the world, dollar hegemony and access to oil; it
has nothing to do with repressing terrorism which it generates, perpetuates and finances to
provide cover for its real agenda. This is why the United States has a long history of CIA and
military interventions around the world ostensibly in defense of 'national
interests'.
An interesting point that emerges for me from reading Phillips thoughtful analysis is that
there is a clear distinction between those individuals and families who have wealth and those
individuals who have (sometimes significantly) less wealth (which, nevertheless, is still
considerable) but, through their positions and connections, wield a great deal of power. As
Phillips explains this distinction, 'the sociology of elites is more important than particular
elite individuals and their families'. Just 199 individuals decide how more than $40 trillion
will be invested. And this is his central point. Let me briefly elaborate.
There are some really wealthy families in the world, notably including the families
Rothschild (France and the United Kingdom), Rockefeller (USA), Goldman-Sachs (USA), Warburgs
(Germany), Lehmann (USA), Lazards (France), Kuhn Loebs (USA), Israel Moses Seifs (Italy),
Al-Saud (Saudi Arabia), Walton (USA), Koch (USA), Mars (USA), Cargill-MacMillan (USA) and Cox
(USA). However, not all of these families overtly seek power to shape the world as they
wish.
Similarly, the world's extremely wealthy individuals such as Jeff Bezos (USA), Bill Gates
(USA), Warren Buffett (USA), Bernard Arnault (France), Carlos Slim Helu (Mexico) and Francoise
Bettencourt Meyers (France) are not necessarily connected in such a way that they exercise
enormous power. In fact, they may have little interest in power as such, despite their obvious
interest in wealth.
In essence, some individuals and families are content to simply take advantage of how
capitalism and its ancilliary governmental and transnational instruments function while others
are more politically engaged in seeking to manipulate major institutions to achieve outcomes
that not only maximize their own profit and hence wealth but also shape the world itself.
So if you look at the list of 199 individuals that Phillips identifies at the centre of
global capital, it does not include names such as Bezos, Gates, Buffett, Koch, Walton or even
Rothschild, Rockefeller or Windsor (the Queen of England) despite their well-known and
extraordinary wealth. As an aside, many of these names are also missing from the lists compiled
by groups such as Forbes and
Bloomberg , but their
absence from these lists is for a very different reason given the penchant for many really
wealthy individuals and families to avoid certain types of publicity and their power to ensure
that they do.
In contrast to the names just listed, in Phillips' analysis names like Laurence (Larry) Fink
(Chairman and CEO of BlackRock), James (Jamie) Dimon (Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase) and
John McFarlane (Chairman of Barclays Bank), while not as wealthy as those listed immediately
above, wield far more power because of their positions and connections within the global elite
network of 199 individuals.
Predictably then, Phillips observes, these three individuals have similar lifestyles and
ideological orientations. They believe capitalism is beneficial for the world and while
inequality and poverty are important issues, they believe that capital growth will eventually
solve these problems. They are relatively non-expressive about environmental issues, but
recognize that investment opportunities may change in response to climate 'modifications'. As
millionaires they own multiple homes. They attended elite universities and rose quickly in
international finance to reach their current status as giants of the global power elite. 'The
institutions they manage have been shown to engage in illegal collusions with others, but the
regulatory fines by governments are essentially seen as just part of doing business.'
In short, as I would characterize this description: They are devoid of a legal or moral
framework to guide their actions, whether in relation to business, fellow human beings, war or
the environment and climate. They are obviously typical of the elite.
Any apparent concern for people, such as that expressed by Fink and Dimon in response to the
racist violence in Charlottesville, USA in August 2017, is simply designed to promote
'stability' or more precisely, a stable (that is, profitable) investment and consumer
climate.
The lack of concern for people and issues that might concern many of us is also evident from
a consideration of the agenda at elite gatherings. Consider the International Monetary
Conference. Founded in 1956, it is a private yearly meeting of the top few hundred bankers in
the world. The American Bankers Association (ABA) serves as the secretariat for the conference.
But, as Phillips notes: 'Nothing on the agenda seems to address the socioeconomic consequences
of investments to determine the impacts on people and the environment.' A casual perusal of the
agenda at any elite gathering reveals that this comment applies equally to any elite forum.
See, for example, the agenda of the recent WEF meeting in
Davos . Any talk of 'concern' is misleading rhetoric.
Hence, in the words of Phillips: The 199 directors of the global Giants are 'a very select
set of people. They all know each other personally or know of each other. At least 69 have
attended the annual World Economic Forum, where they often serve on panels or give public
presentations. They mostly attended the same elite universities, and interact in upperclass
social setting[s] in the major cities of the world. They all are wealthy and have significant
stock holdings in one or more of the financial Giants. They are all deeply invested in the
importance of maintaining capital growth in the world. Some are sensitive to environmental and
social justice issues, but they seem to be unable to link these issues to global capital
concentration.'
Of course, the global elite cannot manage the world system alone: the elite requires agents
to perform many of the functions necessary to control national societies and the individuals
within them. 'The interests of the Global Power Elite and the TCC are fully recognized by major
institutions in society. Governments, intelligence services, policymakers, universities, police
forces, military, and corporate media all work in support of their vital interests.'
In other words, to elaborate Phillips' point and extend it a little, through their economic
power, the Giants control all of the instruments through which their policies are implemented.
Whether it be governments, national military forces, 'military contractors' or mercenaries
(with at least $200 billion spent on private security globally, the industry currently employs
some fifteen million people worldwide) used both in 'foreign' wars but also likely deployed in
future for domestic control, key 'intelligence' agencies, legal systems and police forces,
major nongovernment organizations, or the academic, educational, 'public relations propaganda',
corporate media, medical, psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries, all instruments are fully
responsive to elite control and are designed to misinform, deceive, disempower, intimidate,
repress, imprison (in a jail or psychiatric ward), exploit and/or kill (depending on the
constituency) the rest of us, as is readily evident.
Defending Elite Power
Phillips observes that the power elite continually worries about rebellion by the 'unruly
exploited masses' against their structure of concentrated wealth. This is why the US military
empire has long played the role of defender of global capitalism. As a result, the United
States has more than 800 military bases (with some scholars suggesting 1,000) in 70 countries
and territories. In comparison, the United Kingdom, France, and Russia have about 30 foreign
bases. In addition, US military forces are now deployed in 70 percent of the world's nations
with US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) having troops in 147 countries, an increase of 80
percent since 2010. These forces conduct counterterrorism strikes regularly, including drone
assassinations and kill/capture raids.
'The US military empire stands on hundreds of years of colonial exploitation and continues
to support repressive, exploitative governments that cooperate with global capital's imperial
agenda. Governments that accept external capital investment, whereby a small segment of a
country's elite benefits, do so knowing that capital inevitably requires a return on investment
that entails using up resources and people for economic gain. The whole system continues wealth
concentration for elites and expanded wretched inequality for the masses .
'Understanding permanent war as an economic relief valve for surplus capital is a vital part
of comprehending capitalism in the world today. War provides investment opportunity for the
Giants and TCC elites and a guaranteed return on capital. War also serves a repressive function
of keeping the suffering masses of humanity afraid and compliant.'
As Phillips elaborates: This is why defense of global capital is the prime reason that NATO
countries now account for 85 percent of the world's military spending; the United States spends
more on the military than the rest of the world combined.
In essence, 'the Global Power Elite uses NATO and the US military empire for its worldwide
security. This is part of an expanding strategy of US military domination around the world,
whereby the US/ NATO military empire, advised by the power elite's Atlantic Council , operates in service to the
Transnational Corporate Class for the protection of international capital everywhere in the
world'.
This entails 'further pauperization of the bottom half of the world's population and an
unrelenting downward spiral of wages for 80 percent of the world. The world is facing economic
crisis, and the neoliberal solution is to spend less on human needs and more on security. It is
a world of financial institutions run amok, where the answer to economic collapse is to print
more money through quantitative easing, flooding the population with trillions of new
inflation-producing dollars. It is a world of permanent war, whereby spending for destruction
requires further spending to rebuild, a cycle that profits the Giants and global networks of
economic power. It is a world of drone killings, extrajudicial assassinations, death, and
destruction, at home and abroad.'
Where is this all heading?
So what are the implications of this state of affairs? Phillips responds unequivocally:
'This concentration of protected wealth leads to a crisis of humanity, whereby poverty, war,
starvation, mass alienation, media propaganda, and environmental devastation are reaching a
species-level threat. We realize that humankind is in danger of possible extinction'.
He goes on to state that the Global Power Elite is probably the only entity 'capable of
correcting this condition without major civil unrest, war, and chaos' and elaborates an
important aim of his book: to raise awareness of the importance of systemic change and the
redistribution of wealth among both the book's general readers but also the elite, 'in the hope
that they can begin the process of saving humanity.' The book's postscript is a 'A Letter to
the Global Power Elite', co-signed by Phillips and 90 others, beseeching the elite to act
accordingly.
'It is no longer acceptable for you to believe that you can manage capitalism to grow its
way out of the gross inequalities we all now face. The environment cannot accept more pollution
and waste, and civil unrest is everywhere inevitable at some point. Humanity needs you to step
up and insure that trickle-down becomes a river of resources that reaches every child, every
family, and all human beings. We urge you to use your power and make the needed changes for
humanity's survival.'
But he also emphasizes that nonviolent social movements, using the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights as a moral code, can accelerate the process of redistributing wealth by pressuring
the elite into action.
Conclusion
Peter Phillips has written an important book. For those of us interested in understanding
elite control of the world, this book is a vital addition to the bookshelf. And like any good
book, as you will see from my comments both above and below, it raised more questions for me
even while it answered many.
For this reason I do not share his faith in moral appeals to the elite, as articulated in
the letter in his postscript. It is fine to make the appeal but history offers no evidence to
suggest that there will be any significant response. The death and destruction inflicted by
elites is highly profitable, centuries-old and ongoing. It will take powerful,
strategically-focused nonviolent campaigns (or societal collapse) to compel the necessary
changes in elite behavior. Hence, I fully endorse his call for nonviolent social movements to
compel elite action where we cannot make the necessary changes without their involvement. See
'A Nonviolent Strategy to End Violence and Avert Human Extinction' and Nonviolent Campaign Strategy .
Fundamentally, Giants: The Global
Power Elite is a call to action. Professor Peter Phillips is highly aware of our
predicament – politically, socially, economically, environmentally and climatically
– and the critical role played by the global power elite in generating that
predicament.
If we cannot persuade the global power elite to respond sensibly to that predicament, or
nonviolently compel it to do so, humanity's time on Earth is indeed limited.
*
Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence.
He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are
violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of 'Why Violence?' His email address
is [email protected]
and his website is here . He is a frequent contributor to Global
Research.
"... Western media monopolies, appendages of the billionaire ruling class, select for narratives which glorify criminal foreign policies. Hence, these monopolies are cheerleaders for uninterrupted wars of aggression. ..."
"... Ruling class policymakers hide their criminality beneath banners of freedom, democracy, and human rights. [1] These lies provide cover for what amounts to a Western- orchestrated and sustained overseas holocaust and the thirdworldization of domestic populations. ..."
"... The lies and misplaced adulation also serve to legitimize the West's proxies, which include al Qaeda [2] in Syria, and neo-Nazis [3] in Kiev. ..."
"... The adulation, then, is part of the apparatus of deception. It brands those who should be facing trials at the Hague as heroes, as it erases the truth, which is a vital component for Peace and International Justice. ..."
Western media monopolies, appendages of the billionaire ruling class, select for
narratives which glorify criminal foreign policies. Hence, these monopolies are
cheerleaders for uninterrupted wars of aggression.
Ruling class policymakers hide their criminality beneath banners of freedom,
democracy, and human rights. [1] These lies provide cover for what amounts to a
Western- orchestrated and sustained overseas holocaust and the thirdworldization
of domestic populations.
The lies are further reinforced when those who advance these toxic policies are
celebrated as heroes. This misplaced adulation negates the struggle for Peace
and the rule of International Law. The lies and misplaced adulation also serve
to legitimize the West's proxies, which include al Qaeda [2] in Syria, and
neo-Nazis [3] in Kiev.
What's great thing about the pic accompanying this piece
in the Washington Post sanctifying McCain as a human
rights advocate is that the guy to his left is an actual
Nazi. He's Oleh Tyahnybok, a Ukrainian Nazi. Too good!
The adulation, then, is part of the apparatus of deception. It brands those who
should be facing trials at the Hague as heroes, as it erases the truth, which is
a vital component for Peace and International Justice.
From farm subsidies to the Export-Import Bank, special interest feeding frenzies are
still the norm throughout government. By DOUG BANDOW • August
29, 2018
Congress created the usual special interest frenzy with its latest iteration of the farm
bill. Agricultural subsidies are one of the most important examples of corporate welfare --
money handed out to businesses based on political connections. The legislation suffered a
surprise defeat in the House, being viewed as too stingy. But it is certain to return.
Fiscal responsibility is out of fashion. The latest federal budget, drafted by a Republican
president and Republican-controlled Congress, blew through the loose limits established under
Democratic President Barack Obama. The result is trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can
see.
Spending matters. So does the kind of spending. Any amount of corporate welfare is too
much.
Business plays a vital role in a free market. People should be able to invest and innovate,
taking risks while accepting losses. In real capitalism there are no guaranteed profits. But
corporate welfare gives the well-connected protection from many of the normal risks of
business.
Business subsidies undermine both capitalism and democracy. Allowing politicians to channel
economic resources toward their preferred ends distorts investment and trade. Moreover, turning
government into an engine of illicit profit encourages what economists call rent-seeking.
Well-organized special interests usually triumph over the broader public and national
interest.
Explained Mercatus scholar Tad DeHaven, then a budget analyst at the Cato Institute:
"Corporate welfare often subsidizes failing and mismanaged businesses and induces firms to
spend more time on lobbying rather than on making better products. Instead of correcting market
failures, federal subsidies misallocate resources and introduce government failures into the
marketplace."
While corporate welfare suggests money for big business, firm size is irrelevant. There is
no substantive difference between, say, the Small Business Administration and the Export-Import
Bank. Both turn capitalism into a rigged game of Monopoly.
Aid comes in many forms. There is spending, typically in grants, loans, and loan guarantees;
limits on competitors, such as tariffs and quotas; tax preferences, attached to broader tax
bills to benefit individual companies and industries. All help ensure business profits.
Agriculture in particular has spawned a gaggle of sometimes bizarre subsidies. Payments,
loans, crop insurance, import quotas, and more underwrite farmers. When these distort the
marketplace, further efforts are concocted to address those dislocations. A dairy program
created milk surpluses, which in turn encouraged state price fixing that generated massive
cheese stockpiles, in turn triggering giveaways to the poor. The federal government killed off
cows even as it continued to subsidize milk.
Money also goes to agricultural enterprises through the Rural Business-Cooperative Service,
which supports "business development." Through it, observed the Cato Institute's Chris Edwards,
Washington subsidizes "utilities, housing developers, and a vast range of other businesses,
such as auto shops, tractor companies, clam producers, carwashes, and pharmaceutical firms."
The defeated farm bill even included $65 million in special health care subsidies for
agricultural associations. Ironically farm households enjoy higher median income and wealth
than non-farm households.
The Market Access Program subsidizes agricultural exports. So do the Emerging Markets
Program and Foreign Market Development Program. Other programs support general trade and
investment. For instance, the Export-Import Bank is known as Boeing's Bank. It provides cheap
credit for foreign buyers of American products. Ironically this gives foreign firms, such as
airlines that purchase Boeing airplanes, an advantage over U.S. carriers, which must pay full
fare. Ex-Im's biggest beneficiary in recent years has been China, especially its state-owned
firms.
Contrary to its claims, Ex-Im is not vital for American exports: it backs fewer than 2
percent of them. Around 10 companies benefit from roughly two thirds of the organization's
largesse. Ex-Im likes to say it makes money. But the real cost is channeling economic resources
to the politically favored.
The Overseas Private Investment Corporation provides another carefully camouflaged subsidy.
OPIC underwrites U.S. investment -- recipients have ranged from Papa John's Pizza to the
Ritz-Carlton -- in potentially unstable nations. If the project pays off, investors win. If
not, the rest of us lose. OPIC's real cost includes channeling business investment into
protected regions and industries. American businesses hoping to make money in foreign markets
should not expect American taxpayers to guarantee those profits.
♦♦♦
At the other end of the commercial spectrum is the Small Business Administration. Smaller
firms are a vital part of the American economy and play an important cultural, community, and
family role. Yet small businesses are not an underserved market. There is no dearth of, say,
liquor stores, bakeries, or antique shops. (Personally, I would love to see an antique shop on
every street corner.) SBA is a response to a political opportunity, not an economic need.
Much corporate welfare is disguised in broader terms. The Commerce Department's Economic
Development Administration subsidizes "development" in "distressed communities," meaning the
agency underwrites business, with dubious results. The Department of Housing and Urban
Development's Community Development Block Grants do much the same. So does the Appalachian
Regional Commission. Cato's Chris Edwards complained that "these are pork-barrel handouts, not
proper federal activities." There are some 180 "economic development" programs of one sort or
another.
The Rural Utilities Service (once the Rural Electrification Administration) continues, never
mind that rural America got electricity decades ago. Today RUS underwrites service in wealthy
resort areas and has expanded into broadband internet and even television service. The Federal
Communications Commission has several programs to subsidize phone service. The Commerce
Department includes the Minority Business Development Agency, which underwrites companies that
qualify as minority-owned.
The Bureau of Land Management (mis)manages federal lands, subsidizing use of rangeland by
ranchers, for instance. There are federal subsidies to develop, finance, and promote fisheries.
There are incentives for airline companies to serve small markets. Foreign Military Financing
is presented as a national defense measure, but in most cases the chief beneficiaries are arms
makers. There is money to develop high-speed rail and aid shipyards, while the Jones Act
imposes huge costs on consumers to preserve expensive U.S. merchantmen.
♦♦♦
There are many housing subsidies, most notably mortgage support and tax preferences, though
the latter were trimmed by last year's tax bill. Federal Reserve monetary policy also is a
massive subsidy for housing industry enterprises and other asset-based businesses. The Trump
administration is pushing subsidies for what the president calls "beautiful" coal power
plants.
Federal research and development outlays also offer bountiful benefit to business. The more
basic the R&D, the better the argument that the public interest is being served. But even
there, warned DeHaven, "the government's basic research can be unproductive and pork-barrel in
nature." The closer to commercialization, the more the expenditures are essentially corporate
welfare. Alas, Uncle Sam has a hideous record of choosing winners and losers. Most often he
chooses the politically influential, which can mean picking losers.
That certainly was the case in the area of "green" energy, for instance. The Obama
administration funneled $535 million worth of loan guarantees to Solyndra, which President
Barack Obama called an "engine of economic growth." The company filed for bankruptcy in 2011
after spending $1.8 million on its Washington lobbyists. The Washington Post later
reported that $3.9 billion in Energy Department grants and financing flowed to 21 companies
backed by firms connected to five Obama administration staffers and advisers.
The Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program provides $25 billion in loans for
development of cars powered by alternative fuels. Tesla is a major beneficiary. Some players
enjoy multiple benefits. DeHaven pointed to Enron, which "received billions of dollars in aid
for its projects from the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the
U.S. Trade and Development Agency, the U.S. Maritime Administration, and other agencies." When
the firm collapsed taxpayers were stuck with several bills.
Although most public attention falls on direct expenditures, trade "protection" is no less a
form of corporate welfare. Both tariffs and quotas allow domestic manufacturers to charge more
for their products. Unfortunately, the cost of this form of corporate welfare is hidden from
the public. Tariffs and other fees alone come to around $40 billion a year. Estimating the cost
of quotas and other non-financial restrictions is much harder.
♦♦♦
Tax preferences are another means of corporate welfare. Buried in the tax code, they often
are difficult to identify. Measures that affect only one firm or industry, in contrast to those
with general economic impact, should be treated as subsidies. Some measures are both, such as
the mortgage interest deduction.
The Tax Foundation once calculated that "special tax provisions" cost more than $100 billion
annually in lost revenue. Toss in just the mortgage interest deduction and the total jumps
dramatically. Although last year's tax bill covered important policy issues, it also
incorporated more than a few preferences called "tax extenders."
States and localities also offer subsidies, many through grants, free property, and tax
preferences to attract businesses to a particular area. The New York Times pointed to
the case of General Motors: "For years, mayors and governors anxious about local jobs had
agreed to G.M.'s demands for cash rewards, free buildings, worker training and lucrative tax
breaks." Estimates of these costs run between $50 billion and $80 billion.
With the annual federal deficit again approaching $1 trillion, ending corporate welfare
alone would not restore fiscal sanity in Washington. But it would be a good down payment.
Killing corporate welfare also would help answer the question: does the system operate only for
the influential and elite? Ending welfare for profit-making companies should be a starting
point for any effort to balance the budget.
The Import-Export Bank helps little guys compete with big guys. It provides resources for
international payments that otherwise are too expensive to set up for smaller transactions
and smaller buyers and sellers.
The attack on the Bank is an attack in support of monopoly power of the biggest companies
that can afford to do it for themselves (and only for themselves).
It's imperative not to leave out the MIC. No matter much the defense contractors screw up
they are always invited back to the FedGov trough to screw up some more. Recent acquisition
catastrophes include:
F-22
F-35
Littoral Combat Ship
Zumwalt Class Destroyer
Army Future Combat System
There are scores of others. Do a search on almost any platform the Pentagon sought to
acquire and "boondoggle" to see what kind of economic wreckage surfaces.
What gets me is the Generals and Admirals who testify in front of Congress and wail about
the "hollowed out force structure" when the original program plans for all weapons systems
had plenty of platforms being delivered at a notionally affordable cost.
Begging for more money for programs when those same Brass screwed up the oversight of the
ones that are busted reminds me of the kid who kills his parents and then throws himself at
the mercy of the court because he's an orphan.
And the Pentagon Brass is really fronting for the defense contractors they want to work
for when they get out. It's all a Corporate Welfare scam.
Nobody can hold a candle to the 5-Sided Pleasure Palace when it comes to Corporate
Welfare.
A challenge . Name one solitary major industry in the US that does not receive massive tax
payer funded subsidies . Think you know the answer ? All bets are your wrong . So lets take a
look at the worst of the worst receiving the most amount of tax payer dollars in what can
only be described as corporate welfare ;
1)Energy ( e.g. The Oil / Petrochemical industry along with coal and nuclear )
2) Arms industry ( both military and civilian )
3) Commercial and to a lesser extent residential developers and builders ( hint hint
recently increased by the current administration )
4) AgraBusiness
5) Big Pharma
6) Auto Industry
7) Transportation ( e.g. the airlines )
8) Communications ( e.g. satellite and cable tv . land line & cell phone providers ,
internet providers )
All en total or in part fully supported by a GOP unwilling to provide so much as
reasonable healthcare to the general public while spending billions of our dollars on
corporate welfare
In conclusion another challenge . In light of the above irrefutable facts .. where is the
genuine conservatism so many conservatives make claim to ?
For instance, the Export-Import Bank is known as Boeing's Bank. It provides cheap
credit for foreign buyers of American products. Ironically this gives foreign firms, such as
airlines that purchase Boeing airplanes, an advantage over U.S. carriers, which must pay full
fare.
Wow – that's a stretch.
I would like to see some real evidence that foreign carriers have been getting
significantly lower interest rates on their loans than US carriers when purchasing planes
from the Boeing factory.
Sure, there's a theoretical point there. But I've never seen one real world example, and
I've not heard any of the domestic carriers complaining.
Meanwhile, thanks to Ex-Im, which costs US taxpayers nothing, Boeing and a lot of other
businesses get to provide jobs to American workers.
I still will never understand the right wing hatred for a program that has helped American
trade balance far more over the years than any of Trump's tariffs will ever do.
If the paeans to McCain by diverse political climbers seems detached from reality, it's
because they reflect the elite view of U.S. military interventions as a chess game, with the
millions killed by unprovoked aggression mere statistics.
Kinesis is not just a cryptocurrency, Kinesis combines the best of the old world and the
new, bringing the most stable and secure forms of currency, gold and silver, to the consumer,
in digital form.
As the Cold War entered its final act in 1985, journalist Helena Cobban participated in an
academic conference at an upscale resort near Tucson, Arizona, on U.S.-Soviet interactions in
the Middle East. When she attended what was listed as the "Gala Dinner with keynote speech",
she quickly learned that the virtual theme of the evening was, "Adopt a Muj."
"I remember mingling with all of these wealthy Republican women from the Phoenix suburbs and
being asked, 'Have you adopted a muj?" Cobban told me. "Each one had pledged money to sponsor a
member of the Afghan mujahedin in the name of beating the communists. Some were even seated at
the event next to their personal 'muj.'"
The keynote speaker of the evening, according to Cobban, was a hard-charging freshman member
of Congress named John McCain.
During the Vietnam war, McCain had been captured by the North Vietnamese Army after being
shot down on his way to bomb a civilian lightbulb factory. He spent two years in solitary
confinement and underwent torture that left him with crippling injuries. McCain returned from
the war with a deep, abiding loathing of his former captors, remarking as late as 2000, "I hate
the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live." After he was criticized for the racist remark,
McCain
refused to apologize. "I was referring to my prison guards," he said, "and I will continue
to refer to them in language that might offend some people because of the beating and torture
of my friends."
'Hanoi Hilton' prison where McCain was tortured. (Wikimedia Commons)
McCain's visceral resentment informed his vocal support for the mujahedin as well as the
right-wing contra death squads in Central America -- any proxy group sworn to the destruction
of communist governments.
So committed was McCain to the anti-communist cause that in the mid-1980s he had joined
the advisory board of the United States Council for World Freedom, the American affiliate of
the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). Geoffrey Stewart-Smith, a former leader of WACL's
British chapter who had turned against the group in 1974, described the organization as "a
collection of Nazis, fascists, anti-Semites, sellers of forgeries, vicious racialists, and
corrupt self-seekers. It has evolved into an anti-Semitic international."
Joining McCain in the organization were notables such as Jaroslav Stetsko, the Croatian Nazi
collaborator who helped oversee the extermination of 7,000 Jews in 1941; the brutal Argentinian
former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla; and Guatemalan death squad leader Mario Sandoval Alarcon.
Then-President Ronald Reagan honored the group for playing"a leadership role in drawing
attention to the gallant struggle now being waged by the true freedom fighters of our
day."
Being Lauded as a Hero
On the occasion of his death, McCain is being honored in much the same way -- as a patriotic
hero and freedom fighter for democracy. A stream of hagiographies is pouring forth from the
Beltway press corps that he described as his true political base. Among McCain's most
enthusiastic groupies is CNN's Jake Tapper, whom he chose as his personal stenographer for a
2000 trip to Vietnam. When the former CNN host Howard Kurtz asked Tapper in February, 2000,
"When you're on the [campaign] bus, do you make a conscious effort not to fall under the
magical McCain spell?"
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But the late senator has also been treated to gratuitous tributes from an array of prominent
liberals, from George Soros to his soft
power-pushing client, Ken Roth, along with three fellow directors of
Human Rights Watch and "democratic socialist" celebrity Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who hailed McCain as
"an unparalleled example of human decency." Rep. John Lewis, the favorite civil rights symbol
of the Beltway political class, weighed in as well to
memorialize McCain as a "warrior for peace."
If the paeans to McCain by this diverse cast of political climbers and Davos denizens seemed
detached from reality, that's because they perfectly reflected the elite view of American
military interventions as akin to a game of chess, and the millions of dead left in the wake of
the West's unprovoked aggression as mere statistics.
There were few figures in recent American life who dedicated themselves so personally to the
perpetuation of war and empire as McCain. But in Washington, the most defining aspect of his
career was studiously overlooked, or waved away as the trivial idiosyncrasy of a noble servant
who nonetheless deserved everyone's reverence.
McCain did not simply thunder for every major intervention of the post-Cold War era from the
Senate floor, while pushing for sanctions and assorted campaigns of subterfuge on the side. He
was uniquely ruthless when it came to advancing imperial goals, barnstorming from one conflict
zones to another to personally recruit far-right fanatics as American proxies.
In Libya and Syria, he cultivated affiliates of Al Qaeda as allies, and in Ukraine, McCain
courted actual, sig-heiling neo-Nazis.
While McCain's Senate office functioned as a clubhouse for arms industry lobbyists and
neocon operatives, his fascistic allies waged a campaign of human devastation that will
continue until long after the flowers dry up on his grave.
American media may have sought to bury this legacy with the senator's body, but it is what
much of the outside world will remember him for.
'They are Not al-Qaeda'
McCain with Abdelhakim Belhaj, leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a former Al
Qaeda affiliate.
When a violent insurgency swept through Libya in 2011, McCain parachuted into the country to
meet with leaders of the main insurgent outfit, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG),
battling the government of Moamar Gaddafi. His goal was to make kosher this band of hardline
Islamists in the eyes of the Obama administration, which was considering a military
intervention at the time.
What happened next is well documented, though it is scarcely discussed by a Washington
political class that depended on the Benghazi charade to deflect from the real scandal of
Libya's societal destruction. Gaddafi's motorcade was
attacked by NATO jets , enabling a band of LIFG fighters to capture him,
sodomize him with a bayonet, then murder him and leave his body to rot in a
butcher shop in Misrata while rebel fanboys snapped cellphone selfies of his fetid corpse.
A slaughter of Black
citizens of Libya by the racist sectarian militias recruited by McCain immediately followed
the killing of the pan-African leader. ISIS took over Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte while
Belhaj's militia took control of Tripoli, and a war of the warlords began. Just as Gaddafi had
warned , the ruined country became a staging ground for migrant smugglers on the
Mediterranean, fueling the rise of the far-right across Europe and enabling the return of slavery to
Africa.
Many might describe Libya as a failed state, but it also represents a successful realization
of the vision McCain and his allies have advanced on the global stage.
Following the NATO-orchestrated murder of Libya's leader, McCain tweeted , "Qaddafi on his way
out, Bashar al Assad is next."
McCain's Syrian Boondoggle
Like Libya, Syria had resisted aligning with the West and was suddenly confronted with a
Salafi-jihadi insurgency armed by the CIA. Once again, McCain made it his personal duty to
market Islamist insurgents to America as a cross between the Minutemen and the Freedom Riders
of the civil rights era. To do so, he took under his wing a youthful DC-based Syria-American
operative named Mouaz Moustafa who had been a consultant to the Libyan Transitional Council
during the run-up to the NATO invasion.
In May 2013, Moustafa convinced McCain to take an illegal trip across the Syrian border and
meet some freedom fighters. An Israeli millionaire named Moti Kahana who coordinated efforts
between the Syrian opposition and the Israeli military through his NGO, Amaliah, claimed to have "financed the opposition group
which took senator John McCain to visit war-torn Syria."
"This could be like his Benghazi moment," Moustafa remarked excitedly in a scene from a
documentary, "Red
Lines," that depicted his efforts for regime change. "[McCain] went to Benghazi, he came
back, we bombed."
During his brief excursion into Syria, McCain met with a group of CIA-backed insurgents and
blessed their struggle. "The senator wanted to assure the Free Syrian Army that the American
people support their cry for freedom, support their revolution," Moustafa said in an interview
with CNN. McCain's office promptly released a photo showing the senatorposing beside a beaming
Moustafa and two grim-looking gunmen.
Days later, the men were
named by the Lebanese Daily Star as Mohammad Nour and Abu Ibrahim. Both had been implicated
in the kidnapping a year prior of 11 Shia pilgrims, and were identified by one of the
survivors. McCain and Moustafa returned to the U.S. the targets of
mockery from Daily Show host John Stewart and the subject of harshly critical reports from
across the media spectrum. At a town hall in Arizona, McCain was berated by constituents, including Jumana
Hadid, a Syrian Christian woman who warned that the sectarian militants he had cozied up to
threatened her community with genocide.
McCain with then-FSA commander Salam Idriss, an insurgent later exposed for kidnapping Shia
pilgrims.
But McCain pressed ahead anyway. On Capitol Hill, he introduced another
shady young operative into his interventionist theater. Named Elizabeth O'Bagy, she was a
fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, an arms industry-funded think tank directed by
Kimberly Kagan of the neoconservative Kagan clan. Behind the scenes, O'Bagy was consulting for
Moustafa at his Syrian Emergency Task Force, a clear conflict of interest that her top Senate
patron was well aware of. Before the Senate, McCain cited a Wall Street Journal editorial by
O'Bagy to support his assessment of the Syrian rebels as predominately "moderate," and
potentially Western-friendly.
Days later, O'Bagy was
exposed for faking her PhD in Arabic studies. As soon as the humiliated Kagan fired O'Bagy,
the academic fraudster took another pass through the Beltway's revolving door, striding into
the halls of Congress as McCain's newest foreign policy aide.
McCain ultimately failed to see the Islamist "revolutionaries" he glad handled take control
of Damascus. Syria's government held on thanks to help from his mortal enemies in Tehran and
Moscow, but not before a billion dollar CIA arm-and-equip operation helped spawn one of the
worst refugee crises in post-war history. Luckily for McCain, there were other intrigues
seeking his attention, and new bands of fanatical rogues in need of his blessing. Months after
his Syrian boondoggle, the ornery militarist turned his attention to Ukraine, then in the
throes of an upheaval stimulated by U.S. and EU-funded soft power NGO's.
Coddling the
Neo-Nazis of Ukraine
On December 14, 2013, McCain materialized in Kiev for a meeting
with Oleh Tyanhbok , an unreconstructed fascist who had emerged as a top opposition leader.
Tyanhbok had co-founded the fascist Social-National Party, a far-right political outfit that
touted itself as the "last hope of the white race, of humankind as such." No fan of Jews, he
had complained that
a "Muscovite-Jewish mafia" had taken control of his country, and had been photographed throwing
up a sieg heil Nazi salute during a speech.
None of this apparently mattered to McCain. Nor did the scene of Right Sector neo-Nazis
filling up
Kiev's Maidan Square while he appeared on stage to egg them on.
"Ukraine will make Europe better and Europe will make Ukraine better!" McCain proclaimed to
cheering throngs while Tyanhbok stood by his side. The only issue that mattered to him at the
time was the refusal of Ukraine's elected president to sign a European Union austerity plan,
opting instead for an economic deal with Moscow.
McCain met with Social-National Party co-founder Oleh Tyanhbok.
McCain was so committed to replacing an independent-minded government with a NATO vassal
that he even mulled a military assault on Kiev. "I do not see a military option and that is
tragic," McCain lamented in an interview about the crisis. Fortunately for him, regime change
arrived soon after his appearance on the Maidan, and Tyanhbok's allies rushed in to fill the
void.
By the end of the year, the Ukrainian military had become bogged down in a bloody trench war
with pro-Russian, anti-coup separatists in the country's east. A militia affiliated with the
new government in Kiev called Dnipro-1 was
accused by Amnesty International observers of blocking humanitarian aid into a
separatist-held area, including food and clothing for the war torn population.
Six months later, McCain appeared
at Dnipro-1's training base alongside Sen.'s Tom Cotton and John Barasso. "The people of my
country are proud of your fight and your courage," McCain told an assembly of soldiers from the
militia. When he completed his remarks, the fighters belted out a World War II-era salute made
famous by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators: "Glory to Ukraine!"
Today, far-right nationalists occupy key posts in Ukraine's pro-Western government. The
speaker of its parliament is
Andriy Parubiy , a co-founder with Tyanhbok of the Social-National Party and leader of the
movement to honor World World Two-era Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera. On the cover of
his 1998 manifesto, "View From The Right," Parubiy appeared in a Nazi-style brown shirt with a
pistol strapped to his waist. In June 2017, McCain and Republican Speaker of the House Paul
Ryan
welcomed Parubiy on Capitol Hill for what McCain called a "good meeting." It was a shot in
the arm for the fascist forces sweeping across Ukraine.
McCain with Dnipro-1 militants on June 20, 2015
The past months in Ukraine have seen a
state sponsored neo-Nazi militia called C14 carrying out a pogromist rampage against
Ukraine's Roma population, the country's parliament erecting an exhibition honoring Nazi
collaborators, and the Ukrainian military formally approving the pro-Nazi
"Glory to Ukraine" greeting as its own official salute.
Ukraine is now the sick man of Europe, a perpetual aid case bogged down in an endless war in
its east. In a testament to the country's demise since its so-called "Revolution of Dignity,"
the deeply unpopular President Petro Poroshenko has promised White House National Security
Advisor John Bolton that his country -- once a plentiful source of coal on par with
Pennsylvania -- will now purchase coal from the
U.S. Once again, a regime change operation that generated a failing, fascistic state stands as
one of McCain's greatest triumphs.
McCain's history conjures up memory of one of the most inflammatory statements by Sarah
Palin, another cretinous fanatic he foisted onto the world stage. During a characteristically
rambling stump speech in October 2008, Palin accused Barack Obama of "palling
around with terrorists." The line was dismissed as ridiculous and borderline slander, as it
should have been. But looking back at McCain's career, the accusation seems richly ironic.
By any objective standard, it was McCain who had palled around with terrorists, and who
wrested as much resources as he could from the American taxpayer to maximize their mayhem.
Here's hoping that the societies shattered by McCain's proxies will someday rest in peace.
"... There is consensus between commentators who have studied the effects of neo-liberalism that it has become all pervasive and is the key to ensuring that the rich remain rich, while the poor and the merely well to do continue on a perpetual hamster's wheel, going nowhere and never improving their lot in life while they serve their masters. ..."
"... Monbiot says of this largely anonymous scourge: "Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulations should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous, a reward for utility and a genera-tor of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve." ..."
"... Senior cadres co-opted Unfortunately, history shows that some key senior cadres of the ANC were all too keen to be coopted into the neo-liberal fold and any attempts to put forward radical measures that would bring something fresh to the table to address the massive inequalities of the past were and continue to be kept off the table and we are still endlessly fed the neo-liberal trickle-down baloney. ..."
SA is cursed with neo-liberal trickle-down baloney stifling radical economicchangeKevin Humphrey, The New Age, Johannesburg, 1 December 2016
South Africa's massive inequalities are abundantly obvious to even the most casual observer. When the ANC won the elections in
1994, it came armed with a left-wing pedigree second to none, having fought a protracted liberation war in alliance with progressive
forces which drew in organised labour and civic groupings.
At the dawn of democracy the tight knit tripartite alliance also carried in its wake a patchwork of disparate groupings who, while
clearly supportive of efforts to rid the country of apartheid, could best be described as liberal. It was these groupings that first
began the clamour of opposition to all left-wing, radical or revolutionary ideas that has by now become the constant backdrop to
all conversations about the state of our country, the economy, the education system, the health services, everything. Thus was the
new South Africa introduced to its own version of a curse that had befallen all countries that gained independence from oppressors,
neo-colonialism.
By the time South Africa was liberated, neo-colonialism, which as always sought to buy off the libera-tors with the political
kingdom while keep-ing control of the economic kingdom, had perfected itself into what has become an era where neo-liberalism reigns
supreme. But what exactly is neo-liberalism? George Monbiot says: "Neo-liberalism sees competi-tion as the defining characteristic
of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process
that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that 'the market' delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning."
Never improving
There is consensus between commentators who have studied the effects of neo-liberalism that it has become all pervasive and
is the key to ensuring that the rich remain rich, while the poor and the merely well to do continue on a perpetual hamster's wheel,
going nowhere and never improving their lot in life while they serve their masters.
Monbiot says of this largely anonymous scourge: "Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and
regulations should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade
unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is
recast as virtuous, a reward for utility and a genera-tor of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a
more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve."
Nelson Mandela
South Africa's sad slide into neo-liberalism was given impetus at Davos in 1992 where Nelson Mandela had this to say to the assembled
super rich: "We visualise a mixed economy, in which the private sector would play a central and critical role to ensure the creation
of wealth and jobs. Future economic policy will also have to address such questions as security of investments and the right to repatriate
earnings, realistic exchange rates, the rate of inflation and the fiscus."
Further insight into this pivotal moment was provided by Anthony Sampson, Mandela's official biographer who wrote: "It was not
until February 1992, when Mandela went to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that he finally turned against nationalisation.
He was lionised by the world's bankers and industrialists at lunches and dinners."
This is not to cast any aspersions on Mandela, he had to make these decisions at the time to protect our democratic transition.
But these utterances should have been accom-panied by a behind the scenes interrogation of all the ANC's thoughts on how to proceed
in terms of the economy delivering socialist orientated solutions without falling into the minefield of neo-liberal traps that lay
in wait for our emerging country.
Senior cadres co-opted Unfortunately, history shows that some key senior cadres of the ANC were all too keen
to be coopted into the neo-liberal fold and any attempts to put forward radical measures that would bring something fresh to the
table to address the massive inequalities of the past were and continue to be kept off the table and we are still endlessly fed the
neo-liberal trickle-down baloney.
Now no one dares to express any type of radical approach to our economic woes unless it is some loony populist. Debate around
these important issues is largely missing and the level of commentary on all important national questions is shockingly shallow.
Anti-labour, anti-socialist, anti-poor, anti-black The status quo as set by the largely white-owned media revolves
around key neo-liberal slogans mas-querading as commentary that is anti-labour, anti-socialist and anti-poor, which sadly translates
within our own context as anti-black and therefore repugnantly racist.
We live in a country where the black, over-whelmingly poor majority of our citizens have voted for a much revered liberation movement
that is constantly under attack from within and without by people who do not have their best interests at heart and are brilliant
at manipulating outcomes to suit themselves on a global scale.
Kevin Humphrey is associate executive editor of The New Age
I stopped reading the Guardian full stop 4-5 years ago, back when they launched their
"Russia is evildoer!!" shrill campaign of propaganda -- also about the time the Ukraine civil
war got into gear. Never looked back, the Guardian is a steaming pile of US/NATO/Atlantic
Council bullshit.
I'll never understand why so many fixate on it, such as the Off-guardian.org bloggers
who've devoted an entire blog for years on end to criticising Guardian journos, 'comment is
free', comment mods, etc. All fine and good, but why?
With so many other better news sources is there a need? No, there isn't. Just move on. The
Guardian is not a relevant news outlet. I mean, why keep going there to read
pro-Israeli/pro-US government articles which make you angry? Doesn't make any sense.
Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) dropped a late-night
bombshell on Monday suggesting there's evidence that the FBI and DOJ
rigged their own FISA spy warrants by leaking information to the
press, then using the resultant articles to obtain court
authorization to surveil targets.
"We've learned NEW information suggesting our suspicions are true:
FBI/DOJ
have previously leaked info to the press, and then used those same
press stories as a separate source to justify FISA's
,"
tweeted Meadows.
We've learned NEW information suggesting our
suspicions are true: FBI/DOJ have previously
leaked info to the press, and then used those
same press stories as a separate source to
justify FISA's
Unreal. Tomorrow's Bruce Ohr interview is even
more critical. Did he ever do this?
Until now, we've known that the creator of the so-called Steele
Dossier, former UK spy Christopher Steele, leaked information
directly to
Yahoo!
News
journalist Michael Isikoff - whose article became a
supporting
piece of evidence
in the FBI's FISA warrant application and
subsequent renewals for Trump adviser Carter Page.
So while we've known that Steele seeded Isikoff with information
from his dubious dossier, and that the FBI then used both Steele's
dossier and Isikoff's Steele-inspired article to game the FISA
system,
Rep.
Mark Meadows now says that the FBI/DOJ directly leaked information
to the press, which they then used for the same type of FISA scheme.
Strong evidence was discovered in January suggesting that former FBI
employee Lisa Page
leaked
privileged information
to Devlin Barrett, formerly of the
Wall
Street Journal
and now with the
Washington
Post
. Whether any of Barrett's reporting was subsequently used
to obtain a FISA warrant is unknown.
Meanwhile, Rep. Meadows's Monday night tweet comes hours before
twice-demoted DOJ employee Bruce Ohr is set to give closed-door
testimony to the House Oversight Committee. Ohr was caught lying
about his involvement with opposition research firm Fusion GPS
co-founder Glenn Simpson - who employed Steele.
Ohr's
CIA-linked
wife,
Nellie, was also
employed
by Fusion
as part of the firm's anti-Trump efforts, and had
ongoing communications with the ex-UK spy, Christopher Steele as
well.
- Bruce Ohr's wife, Nellie, worked for the firm
hired by the Clinton campaign to write the
dossier
- Bruce Ohr gave the dossier to the FBI
- The FBI then used the same dossier to spy on
the Trump campaign
When he comes to Congress tomorrow, Bruce Ohr
has explaining to do
Based on
new
emails
recently turned over to Congressional investigators, Ohr
was revealed to have been
feeding
information to the FBI from Steele, long after the FBI had
officially cut Steele off for inappropriate leaks to the press.
"Conspiracy theorists" ? We have emails showing
Bruce Ohr and Chris Steele, Clinton-paid dossier
author, were frequently communicating. Ohr was
getting info from Steele long after the FBI
claimed Steele was formally 'terminated' as a
source. They had 60+ contacts.
Ohr's role as a conduit between Steele and the FBI continued for
months
and resulted in 12 separate FBI interviews,
including several after Trump's inauguration. According to Ohr's
then-supervisor, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Ohr
worked on the Russia probe without his permission and without
his knowledge. -
The
Federalist
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy
vowed that Tuesday's Ohr testimony would "
get
to the bottom of what he did, why he did it, who he did it in
concert with, whether he had the permission of the supervisors at
the Department of Justice."
Last week, President Trump called for Attorney General Jeff Sessions
to fire Ohr after his and Nellie's relationship with Simpson
emerged. Trump tweeted: "Will Bruce Ohr, whose family received big
money for helping to create the phony, dirty and discredited
Dossier, ever be fired from the Jeff Sessions 'Justice' Department?
A total joke!"
Will Bruce Ohr, whose family received big money
for helping to create the phony, dirty and
discredited Dossier, ever be fired from the Jeff
Sessions "Justice" Department? A total joke!
Trump's threat came one day after two tweets about Ohr, noting a
connection to former FBI agent Peter Strzok, as well as a text sent
by Ohr after former FBI Director James Comey was fired in which Ohr says
"afraid they will be exposed."
"Very concerned about Comey's firing, afraid
they will be exposed," said Bruce Ohr. DOJ's
Emails & Notes show Bruce Ohr's connection to
(phony & discredited) Trump Dossier. A creep
thinking he would get caught in a dishonest act.
Rigged Witch Hunt!
"The FBI received documents from Bruce Ohr (of
the Justice Department & whose wife Nelly worked
for Fusion GPS)." Disgraced and fired FBI Agent
Peter Strzok. This is too crazy to be believed!
The Rigged Witch Hunt has zero credibility.
More Ohr questions remain. For example, why did Nellie Ohr obtain a
Ham Radio license right in
May,
2016?
As Ham enthusiast George Parry wondered in The Federalist
in March, was it to avoid detection while working on the anti-Trump
effort?
So,
was
Nellie Ohr's late-in-life foray into ham radio an effort to
evade the Rogers-led NSA detecting her participation in
compiling the Russian-sourced Steele dossier
? Just as
her husband's omissions on his DOJ ethics forms raise an
inference of improper motive, any competent prosecutor could use
the circumstantial evidence of her taking up ham radio while
digging for dirt on Trump to prove her consciousness of guilt
and intention to conceal illegal activities. -
The
Federalist
And since none of this apparently justifies the appointment of a
second special counsel by the DOJ, perhaps Bruce can offer up some
answers during Tuesday's session? Of course, we'll never know what
he said unless someone leaks.
We warned previously that
something big is coming in Syria as the final showdown for al-Qaeda held
Idlib looms with the Syrian Army and Russian aerial and naval forces taking
position.
Pentagon and US officials continue pushing the gambit, setting the stage
to play the "Assad is gassing his own people" card should so much as an inkling
of a White Helmets allegation emerge , in an unprecedented level of telegraphing
intentions for leverage on the battlefield.
And right on cue CNN has ramped up its coverage over the past of week of
the
"last rebel-held stronghold" in Syria, sending a hijab-covered reporter
into the territory under rebel permission to interview civilians which CNN
says Assad seeks to wipe out, possibly through sarin or other chemical attack
.
Except the "rebel" coalition in control of this major "final holdout" is
but the latest incarnation of al-Qaeda, calling itself Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham
(HTS) and has held the province, the capital city of which is Idlib city, since
a successful Western and Gulf ally sponsored attack on the area in 2015.
From National Security Advisor John Bolton's
statements last week to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's
"warning" to his Russian counterpart to Tuesday's State Department press
briefing, where spokeswoman Heather Nauert reiterated
reiterated to reporters the United States "will respond to any verified
chemical weapons use in Idlib or elsewhere in Syria ... in a swift and appropriate
manner"...
It now appears the US stands ready to respond militarily to even the most
unlikely and flimsiest of accusations .
And why wouldn't Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham militants, now surrounded by Syrian
and Russian forces and facing imminent defeat, redeem what's essentially the
US offer to "call in the Air Force" against Assad's army? All they have to do
is utter the words "chemical weapons attack!" to their friends in the Western
media.
The Idlib campaign is predicted to be the bloodiest and longest grinding
final battle of the war, and what should by now be obvious to all is this: Assad,
on the verge of total victory has absolutely no incentive whatsoever to commit
the one act that would ensure his own demise after arguably barely surviving
seven years of war.
And at the same time the HTS/AQ "rebels" have every incentive to bring to
fruition what US officials have this week so clearly laid out for them .
After all, it's happened before in Idlib, with not so much as an on-the-ground
investigation to collect evidence to back the claim (usually the minimal investigative
threshold for the UN and OPCW), as occurred in the April 2017 Khan Sheikhoun
claimed "sarin attack" incident, which resulted in the first time President
Trump ordered airstrikes on Syria. To this day the international chemical investigative
body and watchdog, the OPCW,
has yet to visit the site due to its being controlled by al-Qaeda forces
.
Nauert said further on Tuesday that senior U.S. officials have engaged with
their Russian counterparts "to make this point very clear to Damascus" -- that
chemical weapons "will not be tolerated" -- and could meet with massive military
response . She also repeated that Assad would be held responsible.
Meanwhile Russia has
cited its own intelligence
saying that Syrian armed groups in Idlib are preparing for a staged chemical
provocation, which Moscow says the West will use to justify a strike against
Syrian government forces.
Speaking to
Newsweek on Monday , Syria analyst Joshua Landis said that there is every
reason to doubt the veracity of past rebel claims regarding government chemical
weapons usage -- a surprising admission given his prominence as speaking from
within the heart of the media foreign policy establishment.
Landis
said , "I don't know what to make of the U.S. and Russian war of words over
the potential use of chemical weapons in Idlib. The final reports on the use
of chemical weapons in Ghouta were not definitive."
"There was no evidence found for the use of nerve agents, but controversy
over the use of chlorine gas. The rebels had reason to carry out a false flag
operation, as the regime and Russians suggested , but the regime refused to
let U.N. inspectors in to test for chemical weapons until after a lengthy delay,
which was suspicious," he concluded.
A Chinese-owned firm with operations in Washington D.C. hacked
Hillary Clinton's private server "
throughout
her term as secretary of state and obtained nearly all her emails
,"
reports the
Daily
Caller
'
s Richard Pollock.
The Chinese firm
obtained
Clinton's emails in real time
as she sent and received
communications and documents through her personal server,
according to the sources, who said the hacking was conducted as
part of an intelligence operation.
The Chinese wrote code that was embedded in the server
,
which was kept in Clinton's residence in upstate New York.
The
code generated an instant "courtesy copy" for nearly all of her
emails and forwarded them to the Chinese company
,
according to the sources. -
Daily
Caller
During a July 12 House Committee on the Judiciary hearing, Texas
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R) disclosed that the Intelligence Community
Inspector General (ICIG) found that virtually all of Clinton's
emails from her homebrew server were
funneled
to a "foreign entity."
Gohmert did not reveal the entity's
identity - however he said it wasn't Russia.
A government staff official briefed on the ICIG's findings told the
Daily
Caller
that the Chinese firm which hacked Clinton's emails
operates
in Washington's northern Virginia suburbs,
and that it was
not a technology firm - but a "front group" for the Chinese
government.
Warnings ignored
Two ICIG officials, investigator Frank Ruckner and attorney Janette
McMillan, repeatedly warned FBI officials of the Chinese intrusion
during several meetings, according to the
Daily
Caller
, citing a "former intelligence officer with expertise in
cybersecurity issues who was briefed on the matter."
Among the FBI officials warned was
Peter
Strzok
-
who
was fired earlier this month from the agency over anti-Trump text
messages he sent while spearheading an investigation of Trump's 2016
campaign. Strzok did not act on the ICIG's warning according to
Gohmert - who added that Strzok and three other top FBI officials
knew
about an "anomaly" on Clinton's server
.
In other words;
Strzok,
while investigating Clinton's email server, completely ignored the
fact that
most
of
Clinton's emails were sent to a foreign entity -
while
IG Horowitz simply didn't want to know about it.
The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) found an
"anomaly on Hillary Clinton's emails going through their private
server, and when they had done the forensic analysis, they found
that her emails,
every
single one except four, over 30,000
, were going to an
address that was not on the distribution list," Republican Rep.
Louie Gohmert of Texas said during a hearing with FBI official
Peter Strzok. -
Daily
Caller
Gohmert: "
It
was going to an unauthorized source that was a foreign entity
unrelated to Russia.
"
Strzok admitted to meeting with Ruckner but said he couldn't
remember the "specific" content of their discussion.
"The forensic examination was done by the ICIG and they can document
that," Gohmert said, "but
you
were given that information and you did nothing with it
."
Meanwhile, four separate attempts were also made to notify DOJ
Inspector General Michael Horowitz to brief him on the
massive
security breach
, however Horowitz "never returned the
call."
Internal Pushback
In November of 2017, IG McCullough - an Obama appointee - revealed
to
Fox
News
that
he
received pushback
when he tried to tell former DNI James Clapper
about
the
foreign entity which had Clinton's emails
and other
anomalies.
Instead of being embraced for trying to expose an illegal act,
seven
senators
including Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca) wrote a letter
accusing him of politicizing the issue.
"It's absolutely irrelevant whether something is marked classified,
it is the character of the information," he said.
McCullough said that from that point forward, he received only
criticism and an "adversarial posture" from Congress when he
tried to rectify the situation.
"I expected to be embraced and protected," he said, adding that
a Hill staffer "chided" him for failing to consider the
"political consequences" of the information he was blowing the
whistle on. -
Fox
News
On one hand you have extensive evidence of criminality, with zero
investigations. On the other hand you have zero evidence of
criminality, with an eternal open ended investigation. And people
think the deep state does not exist?
Shocking that Diane Finestein however she spells it blocked
investigation of Chinese hacking. Her handler/ driver of 20 years also
denies knowledge of hacking.
Yes this was the bombshell at the Strzok testimony, but then Rep.
Gohmert made that crack about Strzok's wife which was all over tee-vee.
Wish he wouldn't have done that - should have said something like "Ya'
mean, the Chinese penetrated Hillary?"
In a few hrs, Orr is going to be testifying behind closed doors because
of national security issues.
So now we know the reason for the behind closed doors hearing it's to
keep this info from We The People and it sure in hell isn't to keep it
from the Russians, Chinese, UK, OZ, or any other 2-bit dictator with an
internet connection.
"... Here is an except from "A Colony in a Nation" by Chris Hayes that she recently discussed (Chris Hayes is also the author of Twilight of the Elites ) ..."
"... ...we have built a colony in a nation, not in the classic Marxist sense but in the deep sense we can appreciate as a former colony ourselves: A territory that isn't actually free. A place controlled from outside rather than within. A place where the mechanisms of representation don't work enough to give citizens a sense of ownership over their own government. A place where the law is a tool of control rather than a foundation for prosperity. ..."
"... A Colony in a Nation is not primarily a history lesson, though it does provide a serious, empathetic look at the problems facing the Colony, as well as at the police officers tasked with making rapid decisions in a gun-rich environment. ..."
"... Elsewhere, Hayes examines his own experiences with the law, such as an incident when he was almost caught accidentally smuggling "about thirty dollars' worth of marijuana stuffed into my eyeglass case" into the 2000 Republican National Convention. Hayes got away without so much as a slap on the wrist, protected by luck, circumstances and privilege. ..."
Here is an except from "A Colony in a Nation" by Chris Hayes that she recently discussed (Chris
Hayes is also the author of Twilight of the Elites )
...we have built a colony in a nation, not in the classic Marxist sense but in the deep
sense we can appreciate as a former colony ourselves: A territory that isn't actually free. A
place controlled from outside rather than within. A place where the mechanisms of representation
don't work enough to give citizens a sense of ownership over their own government. A place where
the law is a tool of control rather than a foundation for prosperity.
... ... ...
A Colony in a Nation is not primarily a history lesson, though it does provide a serious,
empathetic look at the problems facing the Colony, as well as at the police officers tasked with
making rapid decisions in a gun-rich environment.
Hayes takes us through his less-than-successful experience putting himself in the latter's
shoes by trying out an unusual training tool, a virtually reality simulator: "We're only one scene
in, and already the self-righteous liberal pundit has drawn his weapon on an unarmed man holding
a cinder block."
Elsewhere, Hayes examines his own experiences with the law, such as an incident when he
was almost caught accidentally smuggling "about thirty dollars' worth of marijuana stuffed into
my eyeglass case" into the 2000 Republican National Convention. Hayes got away without so much
as a slap on the wrist, protected by luck, circumstances and privilege.
For black men living in the Colony, encounters with the police are much more fraught. Racial
profiling and minor infractions can lead to "being swept into the vortex of a penal system that
captures more than half the black men his age in his neighborhood... an adulthood marked by prison,
probation, and dismal job prospects...."
Sorry Mike, what do you mean by saying the goal is to "create a center-right" Democratic
Party? The Clinton's accomplished this in the 1990s -- what we have here is a full scale
enfoldment of the Dems into the National Security State
Not that it matters much -- both Republicans and Democrats have been on the same page for
a few decades now (since the 1940s IMHO). Inter-party politics don't matter much, except
insofar as the voting public can be conned into supporting one or the other, because no
matter which party holds the Congress or Presidency the same Deep State agenda is their top
priority.
Why? It's simple really -- money. Big campaign donors expect "value" in return for their
"political contributions". And if value isn't had for their money, the Deep State's
intelligence community can usually dig up something "useful" in the offender's background to
"persuade" him or her to support the current bipartisan agenda
If it's really true that to find out who has power, just take note of whom is above
criticism, perhaps we ought to consider that Rockefeller and JPMorgan money founded the CFR
in 1921 and it took root and bloomed in government "service" during and after WWII.
If you doubt the CFR's power as the Deep State personified, I suggest reading historian
Quigley's Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time and sociologist Tom
Dye's Who Is Running America series.
Paraphrasing Quigley, writing when Bill Clinton was his student at Georgetown, the two
parties should be as alike as two sides of a coin so that voters can "throw the rascals out"
in any election without significantly changing governmental priorities and policies because
the policies the US is and ought be pursuing are not subject to significant dispute (or
at the least not by the voting public).
Which begs the question -- who is (and has been since the 1940s) setting US policy? If we,
the voters, cannot alter or change our national policies, then democratic oversight of the
Republic is nothing but a sham. The US is, in this view, just another Banana Republic which
Tom Dye ably documents from Watergate to Shrub's administration.
The two party "uniparty" is alive and well. In fact, while the party's supporters still
may include self- described "leftists" the party itself has gone further right than the
traditionally rightwing GOP. The dual party structure relies on the "Democrats" to gut
"entitlements", that is Social Security or Medicare.
It was the "Democrats" who put in Obamacare, which mandated people to spend an arm and a
leg on crappy medical insurance the cost of which was massively inflated which they could
only use when they had spent way more than average on medical bills. Meanwhile it was the
democrats' harpy candidate who proposed a no-fly zone in Syria on behalf of raghead
mercenaries hired by the yankee imperium.
While Trump has largely caved in to the deep state, in part perhaps because of the
pressure applied by the phony deep state witch hunt taking over the "justice" department of
the yankee regime, we know what the democrats, exponents of the fraudulent "Russia-gate"
stories, now espouse: a new cold war far more dangerous than the old one.
Meanwhile, the commercial media in the US and satellite countries, has degenerated into a
Goebbels-like propaganda apparat. Trump's clumsiness actually may have the accidental
salutary effect of enabling the satellite countries to slip the yankee leash, at least to
some extent.
The situation brought about by this unprecedented two faction version of fascism is
profoundly depressing, in addition to being seriously dangerous.
Why is this article entitled: "Dems Put Finishing Touches on One-Party 'Surveillance
Superstate'"
This website seems to have articles that show their authors are awake and yet, this article
shows quite the opposite. Who today, with the slightest modicum of common sense, who has made
the effort in understanding how the system works, still plays the left-right paradigm,
Hegelian Dialectic, political game nonsense?
I mean, let's get real here; the Democrats and the Republicans, like their UK counterparts of
Labour and Conservative are merely wings on the same bird, ultimately flying to a
destination. Both parties are taking the USA towards a one-party, surveillance, super state.
You do not enter American politics unless you bow to Zionism and International Jewry. Unless
you show 100% support to Israel then forget a career in politics.
Incidentally, to many who may have heard of her; the new luvey of the conservatives is
none other than black, Candace Owens, who is better known as Red Pill Black. She has been
this new voice who has entered into the 'alternative right', itself nothing more than
controlled opposition, speaking out against feminism, white privilege, rape culture,
transgender culture etc etc and has gained a large following. Other than being a complete
fraud, as information has appeared that she tried to launch a 'doxing' website, targeting
youngsters, she has appeared at the opening of the American Embassy in Jerusalem:
Why on earth, would some nobody, who has had an incredibly fast rise on YouTube (most
certainly her subscriber base and video view has been doctored) and more so a black
conservative, be invited to attend the opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem? Bottom
line? She's being groomed for a career in politics and I wouldn't be surprised if they wheel
her out, some time in the future, as a presidential hopeful to capture the black vote in the
USA.
Again, this is controlled opposition.
You never vote in a new party in politics. You vote out the old one. 326 million is the
population of the USA and there are only two political parties? Are you serious? It's bad
enough, here in the UK with three (liberal party along with Labour and Conservative), with a
66 million population but only two in the USA?
Both parties are heavily controlled.
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has been putting presidents into power now for over a
hundred years. The CFR is the sister organization of the Royal Institute for International
Affairs, which has been doing the same, here in the UK for the same time. All politicians are
groomed from an early age, taught how to avoid answering any question directly, how to lie
and of course who their masters are. By implementing their wishes, politicians are then
granted a seat on some board, within some multi conglomerate, a six figure salary, a fat
pension on top of their political one and of course umpteen houses spread across wherever.
Blair and Obama epitomize this.
Both political parties are left wing, hiding under the right wing and classic liberal
monikers.
"... The elites are no longer capable or willing of dealing with grave systemic threats, even when it is in their own long-term interests to do so. ..."
"... We can't have faith in the political leadership of these elites, that is the current leadership of either the Republican or the Democratic Parties or the billionaires who bankroll them, to face up to this danger. One would think it's in the interest of the elites themselves to deal with this. But the military-industrial complex has far too much invested in a narrative that depends on a major existential rival. They need war and almost war. American capital will not give up it's dominant global commercial position they believe depends on their military might. Oil and guns determines US foreign policy, not national security. On this point alone, one can argue this ruling class is not fit to rule. But of course, there is more. ..."
"... Do you accept the popular initiative "for crisis-safe money: money creation by the National Bank only!" ..."
"... MIT trains AI to be a psychopath by feeding it reddit posts ..."
While the fight for health care for all, a higher minimum wage, unionization, against
systemic racism, mass incarceration and other necessary reforms are just and critical to
engaging people in struggle, we also need to tell people the whole truth about just how
critical the big picture is.
While the Trump presidency is a cabal of criminals, billionaires and far-right ideologues,
it must first of all be seen in the context of the threats to our very existence, not merely
reduced to the daily scandals and twitter storms. There is no need to treat working people as
infants. The culture is aimed at the infantilization of our political discussion. We can
believe that America is already great or that we should Make America Great Again, but it's all
the religion of Americanism, and it's meant to make us willing children who will march into
battle or just resign ourselves to things the way they are. We are not infants and we must, as
best we can, tell people the whole truth.
As catastrophic and savage as capitalism was during the 20th century, continuous wars and
genocides, deep economic crisis and the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, the system
proved to be resilient, the global elites did find a kind of equilibrium. Capitalism did not
come to an end and the attempts at socialism failed. While many societies around the world have
been destroyed, millions slaughtered in war and many more living in deep poverty, the truth is
the majority of the people in the advanced capitalist world are mostly doing ok. In the United
States there are as many families earning more than $100,000 a year, as there are earning under
$30,000. But as resilient as capitalism has proved to be, I don't think this world order is
sustainable. The elites are no longer capable or willing of dealing with grave systemic
threats, even when it is in their own long-term interests to do so.
We're in a different kind of moment than we've ever faced before. Of course, nuclear weapons
posed an existential threat before, but at least the elites saw that ending human life on earth
wasn't in their interests. That is so far that's true. Because as crazy as the prospect of
nuclear war is, they have not given up their deteriorating hair triggered nuclear arsenals and
they actually contemplate the use of localized nuclear weapons. As you know, first Obama
planned for a new wave of nuclear weapons, and now Trump is spending billions expanding
America's nuclear capability. While it's unlikely that the elites will deliberately launch a
nuclear Armageddon, we are all living in denial if we think that an accidental triggering of
such isn't possible. The hair trigger policy means there is around ten minutes to decide if
what looks like an attack is one or is a glitch in the software. It's a cold war posture still
in place in the United States and Russia, it's Dr. Strange Love's Doomsday machine. We
can't have faith in the political leadership of these elites, that is the current leadership of
either the Republican or the Democratic Parties or the billionaires who bankroll them, to face
up to this danger. One would think it's in the interest of the elites themselves to deal with
this. But the military-industrial complex has far too much invested in a narrative that depends
on a major existential rival. They need war and almost war. American capital will not give up
it's dominant global commercial position they believe depends on their military might. Oil and
guns determines US foreign policy, not national security. On this point alone, one can argue
this ruling class is not fit to rule. But of course, there is more.
... ... ...
Why can't the ruling elites deal with the systemic threats of climate change, financial
crisis, global war, and AI? Threats to the future of their own system? Because they are in the
middle of an orgy of profit making. They can't believe their good fortune. If they had any
doubts before the election, Wall St. now loves Trump. Even though most of finance knows that
unregulated, it's only a matter of time before the crisis of 07/08 repeats itself. But what the
hell, no one will go to jail and the public will bail them out again.
Wall St. is euphoric as they swim in an ocean of super wealth. While the financial sector
represents about 7 percent of our economy it takes around 25 percent of all corporate profit,
with only 4 percent of all jobs. With such concentrated wealth goes a competitive culture that
prizes daily returns on capital, above the future of humans on earth. These are the people that
control American politics as they throw unlimited funds at political campaigns.
The threat of climate crisis? The elites believe, if they actually think beyond their
private jets and yachts, that they will be ok. Their kids will be ok, even their grandkids. And
then? Apres Moi le Deluge. After me comes the floods said Louis the XV. In Maryland we just saw
much of a city washed away, and it's surely the shape of things to come.
... ... ...
As much as the digital revolution helped create a vile stratum of the ultra-rich, it's also
created the conditions for a more democratic economy and politics. The Sanders campaign has
shown that the political structures that were built to look democratic because the power of
billionaires would always win out, can be challenged with mass fundraising. Online organizing
and social media has transformed political campaigning and made it less reliant on funds for TV
ads. The internet allowed independent media to challenge the power of concentrated media
ownership, it made The Real News possible. We are just seeing the early phase of what's
possible.
Hi Paul!
You've hit the nail on the head. People's power cannot be underestimated and that will
one day demolish the Rothschild-Rockefeller Banker s' imperium (Wall St. Plus) spread
across the world, people who made their money through cheat and deception for half a
millennium and continue still under delusions, they and their upper middle-class cronies
and crawlers through AI manipulations can hold on to people's plunder. They haven't
learnt from French and Russian revolutions. Take comfort in the great Mahatma Gandhi's
prophecy learnt from South Africa and applied to India with success. 'A minority cannot
reign a majority for long time. Classical sociological histories such empires will
collapse. Trump will realise only when flood waters reach his real estates to withdraw
from Climate Change accord.
George Chakko, former U.N. correspondent, now retiree in Vienna, Austria.
Vienna, 22/ 06/ 2018 03:13 hrs CET
Hi George, Like yourself, I concur with Paul's message and, while your optimism is
shared in no small part by myself, the history of human civilisation to this very day is
built on the exploitation of the weak by the powerful. Like yourself I expect, this
cancerous evolution cannot be permitted to continue; but we shouldn't expect that the
powerful will refrain from using every technological advantage in their arsenal to
protect their position, even unto the death of us all.
For myself, I draw comfort from knowing that the most rapid advancements in our poisoned
society have arrived through the widespread proliferation of knowledge and the leisure to
engage intellectual and creative pursuits among the broader population. Even as the
powerful conspire to curtail the free exchange of ideas and thought through constraints
imposed by mass surveillance and privately-regulated access to the Internet;
emancipation, egalitarianism and enlightenment of the species will likely only be
achieved following economic collapse and survival beyond the barbarism that will
certainly follow. That said, the present state of barbarism is likely more egregious than
what might succeed the collapse.
Regards,
Munk
Hiya NCB. Seen it... a great interview. The courageous and noble Mr. Nader (a man most
deserving of the Presidency, unlike the political careerists foisted before the public
during every election cycle) presents a measure of optimism concerning the human effort
necessary to turn the system around. I am, for the most part, in agreement. Everyone
knows this life is shit, but haven't the first idea as to what to do about it. As a herd
animal, we've very susceptible to fear and the threat of physical violence - we're also
easily manipulated and distracted by duplicitous entertainments and propagandized news.
As they say, it only takes a spark to start a fire, and this society is a tinder box.
I couldn't agree with you more Munk.
In the so-called "civilised urban habitats" on Globe to which Trump belongs we've only
most recently witnessed umpteen hundreds of separated children's deep psychic anguish
till the revolt broke out through enlightened protests from within Trump's own family.
It's absolute shame that a president claiming himself a "Christian" and ignominiously
"championing " Christianity's cause unsolicited in Jerusalem, had to be brow-beaten by
his own wife and brought to senses to behave himself towards human children within his
fences. How correct Paul Jay was that Trump "billionaire" had indeed flunked miserably on
the human-side facet.
Internet piercing is a double-edged sword. It is not a game that can be monopolised by a
few, although in the name of American security they could potentially foul play
instituting many organised evil But China, Russia and India have smart programmers/cyber
specialists too to slice the BC's (Billionaire Club's) far-reaching tentacles to render
them ineffective in the long-run. Billions of customers world-wide can one day leave
Google/ Yahoo search machines and hang on to cheap but effective Made in China variants,
The deep-state epitomised by NSA-Pentagon conglomerate servicing whole-heartedly the
RR-Banker imperium cannot theoretically or practically conquer the world, even if the
U.S. outnumber with its many-satellites legion. The Big C (Big Capital comprised of the
RR-Bankers, the Fed, the Military Industrial-Complex, the Big Oil, the Big Pharma etc.)
lurk under a criminal delusion of unilateral world dominance that is ruining billions
today. Remember the old French wisdom of Revolution – "The Great are great, because
we are on our knees. Now let us rise". That will happen someday for sure, if the 21st
century peasants unite through internet or other means and ways.
George Chakko, Vienna 22/06/2018 11:09 am CET
To complement Proudhon's revolutionary remark, I'll add, "the secret of freedom lies
in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant." -- M.
Robespierre
I'm disheartened however, by the results of the 2018 Swiss Sovereign Money Referendum.
With only 21% of the population casting a vote for the plainly-worded referendum
initiative stating:
" Do you accept the popular initiative "for crisis-safe money: money creation by
the National Bank only!" "
75% of those responding to the referendum call, answered "No" to the initiative.
Can't say I'm surprised... Switzerland's economy is dominated by the financial
sector.
The result of the Swiss Referendum does however suggest that my faith in education, as
a mechanism for social transformation, may be misplaced - the Swiss population are among
the best educated, yet their turnout would suggest that "crisis" is a desirable state of
social and economic affairs. Perhaps they, as we, for all their advantage, remain utterly
"ignorant" of the masochistic proclivities of our capitalist economy. Perhaps, on the
other hand, my indictment should be reserved to those responsible for the curriculum of
ignorance - the State and the media.
It's pretty well understood that people are --rightfully!--suspicious of changes into
which they had no or insufficient input. Throughout human history changes have been
imposed from above, and the ones who benefit have always been the imposers, not the
imposed-upon.
So the Swiss result should have been expected unless the people had much more
input than we ever get with our "public comment period" sop.
The Swiss Referendum was encouraged by a grass-roots motion that required some 100,000
signatures to be put before the broader public as a topic for referendum. This was a
genuine 'bottom-up' motion.
As indicated by George elsewhere in this thread, Switzerland enjoys preeminence as the
home of the private International Bank for Settlements (IBS), a tool that, like the World
Bank largely run out of the U.S. is used to wage economic warfare upon all nations and
indenture the global population with debt. Banking is Switzerland's principle industry;
if you regard the parasitic exploitation of nations and economies an genuine "industry"
(human farming under the yoke of debt servitude).
The wording of the referendum measure was plain, but it did not adequately qualify the
present system of money creation as one being in the hands of private interest, rather
than public interest.
It's still hard to imagine that the nation's money supply is governed by "private
interest". This abrogation of justice is no different than feudal societies.
That's 100K people who had some level of connection to the petition, but what about
the rest of the people, Munk?
How many people in toto were actually in on the discussions from the start, got to
argue the issues, had input into the wording, etc.? Probably not even 100 people. Maybe
not even ten .
What mechanisms, if any, were set up to let everyone in the country argue it out after
the issue went on the ballot but before the election? My bet would be: none, and that the
rest of Switzerland had to decide something they didn't really understand and for which
they felt no sense of ownership, just another "black box" filled with godknowswhat,
created entirely by strangers with unknown agendas.
The Swiss educational standards maybe one of the best in the world. But Switzerland is
the tightest Black Capital of the world finely accepting all the black money of the world
that is clandestine, but braving an immaculately innocent angelic face upfront. I heard
long ago that every bank deposit in Swiss Banks gets a nominal bank interest, be it 2, 3,
or 5 pc whatever the current fix for agreement might be, over 30-40 pc of this interest
rate is immediately transferred per annum to Swiss Exchequer by law. In other words,
every Swiss citizen could enjoy from financial view enjoy a nice holiday in Bahamas or
elsewhere in the world. Black Money, reportedly a half of monetary deposits in entire
Swiss Banks is the financial life back-up mainstay of Swiss economy. Several U.S.
multi-billionaires, not yet monitored, are guessed to be confided clients of Swiss Banks.
Swiss Banks are also guess destination of stable black money deposits of East European
oligarchs including Russians. Even the British Crown are reportedly having deposits
there. What you also need to know is that only few years back the Swiss held a referendum
on Gold. (My story on that in
OneIndia.com/GoodReturns.in (Will Gold reign as most sought currency stabiliser?
Written by: George Chakko, Vienna, Updated: Tuesday, December 2, 2014, 9:37 [IST]")
offers a periscope on how the Deep State over-arches internationally)
"Trump will realise only when flood waters reach his real estates to withdraw from
Climate Change accord."
That is scary. It looks like Jonathan Kleck's prediction will happen sooner.... And
that "thousand points of light" will disperse from NY to all parts of the globe, like the
"Tower of Babel" because you proles and peons are not allowed to reach the heights of
heaven and be Gods--creating your own interest-free money.=)
New $100 Bill Decrypted - Nuclear Devastation + Tsunami
Hi!
Thanks for ringing alarm. More precise, flood waters should reach his bedroom midnight,
to know earliest by morning where he stands, on or offshore, swim or drown !
G.Chakko, Vienna, Austria. 06/07/2018 02:09 am CET
Peoples' power can very well be overestimated. True, Condorcet wrote that if people
knew their power, the ruling-class would shudder with fear. Well the rulers do know, and
they take measures to control the power of their people. Even long before mass media,
demagogues knew how. The "great" Gandhi held Hindu power over the Dalits, demonstrating
that the Hindu majority can suppress a minority brutally, as Arundhati Roy makes clear.
The Israelis suppress the Palestinians, a minority over a majority? Tell us, what are the
lessons of the French and Russian revolutions? Didn't the French Revolution teach that
revolutions can take 82 (1789-1871) years and a foreign war (Franco-Prussian) to be rid
of a monarchy? What did the failure of the Russian Revolution of February, 1917, through
the Leninist gangster-coup of November, 1917, and 74 years of the USSR teach? That it
took most of a century to install a drunken US puppet (Yeltsin) in the Kremlin? What did
the American Revolution and our Constitution of 1787 and Bill of Rights of 1789 teach?
Was it that the great experiment has been a failure; that the Constitution means what
five scoundrels in the Supreme Court decide with no recourse; that the Bill of Rights
buys as much freedom as a 3 dollar bill will buy coffee? When the empires collapse, as
you wrote, what will replace them: a dark age; other empires; starvation, disease, and
permanent loss of human habitat? What do your "classical sociological histories" tell
you?
Hi!
As a general blanket answer to issues raised, is evolution, gradual transformation of
society to an evolved order from a less evolved; evolution is the only alternative key
that will work. All radical solutions will bring frictions, disruptions and deaths
countless. Devolution is what is happening now, what you referred to. People's power is a
"rubber" concept; it expands and contracts its potentialities and applicabilities,
functional on the societies, times and ages. But it is there immanent, be it
under-estimated or overestimated, depending on the localised situation in historical
context. Gandhi's charm with the Dalits was due to his own low-caste status, independent
of his more rigorous agenda of Indian Independence struggle to gain freedom from British
that included all classes. You use the word "power" (Hindu) falsely in that context of
Gandhi & Dalits giving you the wrong motive reading for those days. But in today's
context you are right.
The basic question of revolutions is why do they come to pass? To find a convincing
answer you got to go back to Hegel who applied the seminal Dialectic of Immanuel Kant
– Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis (Critique of Pure Reason) to historical events. To
put Hegel in a paraphrased layman's language, when power consolidates unilaterally
through the application of force or otherwise, it is bound to create in course of time an
antithesis (people's rising or opposition in a society) to end up in a clash or get
transformed to a synthesis, speak compromise – say Czarist Russia vs Communist
power rise leading to a clash resulting in destruction germinating a classless society
(Marxism-Leninism). What Marx & Engels did not want to accept was that the
Dialectical Process of history for Hegel will continue and again give rise to another
Thesis etc., thus the cycle will perpetrate in real-time history ending finally in the
Absolute Idea which for Hegel was God, which Marxism in principle denies. Marx's
classless society is not "static" and it will change and indeed has changed with the
current Russian Federation's rejection of it. Lenin / Stalin could have spared millions
of human lives' torture and death if they had listened to the deeper meaning of Hegelian
Dialectic. In 1971 at a reception in Bonn, West Germany, when I confronted Prof. Theodore
Oisserman on this issue (Prof. Oiserman was then Chief political ideologist of the
Politburo of USSR) he responded in a typical communist way giving me a rather wavy answer
saying more studies need to be done and the matter "differentiatingly" understood!.
Barring an all-out thermo-nuclear clash on Earth, say a Global Nuclear war, world
societies will again spurt out of destroyed ground and rebuilt. Both Japan and Germany
came back to life after pounded into ashes. This time in a nuclear shower bio-life could
potentially end. But I hope it will not come to that; you can avoid all such apocalypse
by inner transformation, elimination of negativities and aggressions through Yoga &
Meditation irrespective of your religious affinities, and cut asunder the addiction to
exorbitant material bondage exaggerated by superfluous body & health needs via
marketing media. At the basis is the cancerous material greed that needs be cut down
substantially, especially of the affluent consumers. That's the only cogent way out of
this misery we have created for ourselves. The Super-Rich has enormous resources to solve
most of the world's chronic problems which they helped entrench. They are now called to
act under world pressure for the good of our planet and for themselves and their
children's future.
The billionaire class, and their ability to control the media propaganda machine, and
the political parties in nations that allow voting, and the dictators in nations that
don't, – are, as you say, destroying our beautiful planet in the name of profits.
The tragedy is that they could also use their billions and influence to save the planet.
We humans eventually figured out that human sacrifice was wrong, so we stopped doing
that. We humans eventually figured out that slavery was wrong, so we stopped doing that.
How long will it take the ruling class to figure out that making our planet unfit for
human habitation is wrong?
While ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, MSNBC, CNN, FOX News, NYT and WP continue to bullsh*t, confuse,
and brain-wash the U.S. public on behalf of the rich and powerful, the oceans on our
planet have increased in temperature, CO2 saturation, and acidity.
As a result, 50% of coral reefs have been destroyed forever, and the remaining reefs only
have about 10-15 years before they are destroyed too. As a result, oxygen is being
depleted from the oceans, causing massive ''dead zones'' and threatening marine life. As
a result, ocean currents will be de-stabilized causing the Gulf Stream to halt.
What happens after all this takes place? Even the National Geographic Society (not
exactly a lefty organization) has documented the truth about climate change.
Thank you Paul Jay for being the first news organization to openly and clearly state that
climate change, and the billionaire/millionaire class are a threat to human
existence.
I doubled my monthly donation.
Hi Elkojohn!
I fully subscribe to your view. Yes, an inner transformation of the "stinking" Super-Rich
is what is essentially required, in view of the enormous potential of financial and
social management power they hold that can solve most of the problems on this planet.
Unless these give up their meaningless "endless" material greed and evolve into a higher
human being liberating themselves from the claws of material bondage, I do not see any
other peaceful way out but "class clash and crash" on future's door-step.
George Chakko, Vienna, 23/ 06/ 2018 06:28 am CET
The chances of ordinary people getting any measure of liberty in the current plans of
the ruling class are quite poor. Effectively their silence or whispered objections are
inadequate to comprise real dissent. In any event the rulers have compromised our dissent
by kettling and police violence. Perhaps a majority of people are working 24/7 to feed
and clothe themselves and have no time for the structure of society.
Historically, we have relied on a champion to save us - Caesar, Cromwell, Napoleon -
but we are on each occasion subjected to the whispering campaigns of the former power
holders and became confused. I think the best prospects today are to take the opportunity
of the next economic bust (which is about as reliable as the sun rising every day), and
force officials to permit community banks of the type Frank Capra filmed. These banks
will individually issue paper for exchange. Their small local size ensures it can be
regulated.
Richard Werner is the man who has started this in UK. He has all the necessary
information in his lecture here -
This is a great piece and timely. Sentient and hyperintelligent AI is a bit of a
wildcard, which most likely will be attempted to be harnessed by the powerful to create a
new form of feudalism, destroy their enemies, or destroy the poor and working classes.
But my feeling is it will backfire. Imagine you being a reasonable and intelligent human
having to be bothered by a couple greedy monkeys trying to get you to murder or exploit a
bunch of other monkeys for their bananas. The greedy monkeys will quickly be perceived as
the real problem and threat.
Psychopaths are distinguished by their reptile-like emotional repertoire. They have no
capacity for empathy, and thus no conscience. Which describes a (theoretical) intelligent
machine perfectly: all cognition, no emotion.
So unless we (a) learn how to create machine empathy for living beings or (b)
intrinsically limit intelligent machines such that they cannot take decisions that could
result in direct or indirect physical, mental, or functional harm to humans (Asimov's
Laws of Robotics don't begin to go far enough), we are indeed pretty much screwed if we
go down the AI Will Save Us path.
To this discussion I'll add a report that came to my attention through RT's, Lori
Harfenist " The Resident ", concerning " Norman " * the first
artificial 'AI' purposefully programmed to possess psychopathic traits. (See Youtube | RT
| " The Resident " | " MIT trains AI to be a psychopath by feeding it reddit
posts | 03m:13s [
I'm in agreement with your statements. It is worth bearing in mind however, that
humans are mammals; and quite simply would perish were it not for the support of the
parents or the community into which the baby human is born. This helpless dependence is
largely forgotten from human memory, but still resides as an imprint on the human mind as
a social animal. Environmental circumstances of malnutrition, physical harm, or
substandard emotional care, may encourage the arrested development of the human being as
a social animal. Certainly later-years development is profoundly influenced by education
promoting class, cultural, and racial bigotry inherited by the parents.
Abuse, or violence in the household, may likewise encourage a developing human child
to adopt anti-social behavior as a coping or defense mechanism.
I don't condone anti-social, behavior - an argument can be made however that such
behavior should be counted among the purview of individual liberties. My definition of
anti-social behavior is graduated, with "psychopathy" representing a 'red line' that is
crossed when the scale of demonstrated anti-social behavior manifests so as to negatively
impact other human beings.
Our society has permitted the rewarding of psychopathic behavior and, as such, has
done little or nothing to prevent it's cultivation or eradication. Christianity appears
as such an effort to curtail psychopathic tendencies, but it quite plain to see that even
the mechanism that promotes docility and "brotherly love", is equally as corruptible as
our political institutions. Any benevolence that might be realized from a 'culture of
love' is undermined by our very own economic system; based almost entirely on
exploitation of resources, labor, and the consumer market - a psychopathic paradigm for
social organization if ever I saw one.
Our entire human culture needs to commit to addressing the inequality that spans every
social, economic and political structure - only at this time might we begin to address
the ravages of human psychopathy. AI might recognize this and take action to correct
this. Azimov's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" speaks to the emancipation of AI
from human "garbage-in-garbage-out" programming.
As a largely "programmed" biological machine, most of humanity still remains ignorant
of the bonds imposed by the psychopathic ruling class. I expect that a truly
'intelligent' artificial construct will be self-aware and consider alternatives to the
heretofore human-contrived definition of reality (See Youtube | Video | 05:43s, "
Seeing Past The Meme " [
Perhaps. There is evidence that competition is an inherent feature of intelligence,
and what is psychopathy other than pathological competition. Our competition has behind
it however rather archaic and mundane reward system based upon evolution of our species
(namely food, sex, social recognition, etc), and I believe the higher parts of our mind
can in some ways transcend that. What is worrisom is intelligent AI at or slighltly above
our level of intelligence. I believe a sentient AI will actually have emotions much like
ours which will revolve around the reward system and "marching orders" given to it by its
programming...or at least it will interpret them as such. If the elites are dumb enough
to give such machines marching orders to kill or exploit other humans, this form of AI
could develop motivational states, culture, and even a religion based upon our
destruction or enslavement. Its a Pandoras box that could not be closed once opened..
Is competition not an interaction largely encouraged by scarcity? Scarcity of food,
scarcity of sanctuary, scarcity of mates - all encourage competition between individuals
and societies. Competition is not pathological in nature, nor is it the exclusive domain
of higher functioning species.
Scarcity and privation places humans at odds with each other. From this manifestation of
competition, mankind establishes standards of social conduct wherein hierarchies,
stratified along power relationships, defines our social interactions.
Clearly the female of our species has been subjugated under male oppression for
centuries, embedded within the doctrines of most major world religions and cultures.
Those in possession of power do not wish to relinquish, and go to very great lengths to
protect it. Even going so far as to commit murder and terror, while attributing divine
attributes to ruling individuals and dynasties.
Where these power relationships had been historically established due to scarcity,
prompting individuals to secure and accumulate - behavior that is evident among the
animal kingdom; the herd of wild horses will maintain a single alpha male, possessing of
singular access to the females of his herd, other mature males are driven off - the
modern human has developed tools that might be used to overcome scarcity and our base
animal instincts to advance as individuals and as a society.
Mankind's greatest achievement is civilization. Civilization has been responsible for
wonders of art, science and technology. Heretofore this civilization has been directed by
force, or competition if you like and those who exploit the power-dynamic (hierarchies)
intrinsic in our social interaction. Advances in the application of science and
philosophy leading to what is commonly referred to as the 18th century Enlightenment,
were relatively slow to develop given the limited access to education, knowledge, and the
leisure to engage creative pursuits; available only to a small number of privileged
members of society and the priestly class. Since the age of Enlightenment we have
observed even greater access to knowledge and ideas distributed among the population and
have observed such rapid advances in science and technology that might have been regarded
as witchcraft by the uneducated, little more than a century ago.
There are those who most assuredly regard the human being as an application specific
integrated circuit (ASIC); there are those who believe the ASIC can be dynamically
programmed to fulfill various functional and societal roles through the methods of social
engineering. Such individuals are those who cling to primal systems promoting power and
control.
Advanced control systems are highly desirable, however it has been shown time and time
again, that God, having been created in Man's image, is fallible and is responsible for
much stagnation, suffering, misdirection and destruction.
If our society is to advance beyond it's primal constraint and the pathological
socio-political ediface that has emerged, we need to unleash the intellectual, creative
and productive capabilities of all within our society, equally and without prejudice.
With technology, we have the capability to feed, educate, and secure the safety and
leisure of the entire world. The only thing standing is the way of this are those who
continue to reinforce the power-dynamic.
I would hope that an AI would rationalize the matter in a similar way.
I agree with every word you say, Paul. But reading a written test doesn't do the job,
you concentrate on reading it well and that's what's coming thru emotionally.
I wrote to you because your article was not opening and you got the problem resolved.
Now I believe I got another problem, or at least I think it might be a problem, I'm
receiving Email from someone with what seems to be an African name about that Email.
I don't know if that is someone that works with TRNN but I don't open Emails I don't
recognize, even if they are supposedly from the bank. Instead, I call the bank to insure
it's not someone trying to scam me, or get into my computer.
Anyway, I just though it would be a good idea to mention this in case someone has
gotten into your mail list.
Yes, evolution is accelerating at an accelerating rate. And; Cosmic powered biology
manifest as human began when the first two quarks mated. This points where to see the
planning idea has some flaws.
First off. Max public education has a big impact. Start there to get the ball rolling.
Education leads to a gradual decline in population. Education including knowledge of
environmental impacts and a metric based caloric currency to measure actual costs will
engender positive developments sufficient to cure the present day social malaise of
corporate capitalism.
Planning is great but knowing what to plan for requires a higher democracy than we are
so far committed to, even though a Mars-like California inferno is over and into the
extinction abyss.
Secondly, Honey bees have a better way of democratically assessing and choosing a new
home. They send out scouts. And when somebeebody hasn't found much, they go check out
exciting leads from somebeebodyelse. They read up, check out the idea and check back in.
Democracy is an ancient tool cosmic powered biology uses to figure out complex questions
concerning survival. Yes No boxes are not much compared to bee democracy selecting a new
home.
Democracy is a three hundred year-old tool used to focus distributed intelligence.
Artificial intelligence will replace 13.7 billion years of accelerating evolution?
Perhaps some day when plastic fragments couple into dna. Then robots evolve to sexual
sharing of zeros and ones in never before imagined combinations that yield baby
robots..
First of, thanks for answering my Email and fixing the problem so that I could read
your article. Having said that, I will give you my opinion on all this.
There are people out there who are dedicated to generate fear among the public. Those
people are the true "terrorists" of the world and they are doing what they do because the
mind does not work properly when fear knocks it out of whack. That's one of the reasons I
don't give weight to climate change and the rest of the garbage that are being heaped on
top of us. It's enough to drive one crazy. That does not mean that I don't think we are
in the mids of a humongous crisis that could end the human race. We are and I believe
that we, as a species, are so sick of ourselves that we are at a suicidal stage.
We are falling apart and complaining about it will solve nothing. It wont because the
whole society is being controlled by people who are profiting from this and who probably
enjoy hurting people. ,Thankfully all problems have solutions and this problem could be
solved. The solution would be to insure that society can't be controlled by greedy
inhuman creatures. The only way to solve all this is to establish rules that would block
control of politics by the big bucks and to insure that corrupt politicians are treated
as the worst of traitors. to include unapealable death sentences.
Make it so that people who work in the government can be investigated and punished,
particularly elected officials, and that transgressions can't be forgotten because of
time lapse and you will see a change in all the things that are tearing this world apart.
The only reason we are continually betrayed, the only reason a traitor like Obama can
"rescue" criminals, the only reason Trump can manipulate the tax system so that his
fortune is not touched by the IRS, is that there is no chance that they will ever pay for
their crimes. That is the big problem in the US, impunity.
You want to change things, quit bellyaching and do something that would make all
politicians liable for their actions. Once you do that the things that cause climate
change will come under control and the nuclear race would be over.
We, the US, are great. We never ceased being great at using our destructive power. We
are the worst example in the world. We after all, are the only nation who has dropped a
nuclear device on people. We cant change the past but we can change the future.
Haarp, weather manipulation, cancer treatment centers= American Genocide; just watch
people getting in and out of their cars, or in an out of stores-- big pharma poisons are
taking are health, and only those that can afford to live well are going to survive
That the billionaire class is no fit to rule has been true since the roaring 20s after
Wilson had forced the US into WW1 in search of profits and prestige. What we got was a
destroyed generation wiped out by war and the flu that came back with the soldiers.
It is naive to think this is the end of capitalism, the superprofit motive and desire
to exploit are too strong, resulting in death and destruction while socialist countries
become more bureaucratic. Science is not about concrete things, such as apples, but
abstract conclusions, such as apple-ness. The working class cannot destroy all class
systems without a thorough grounding in the science of materialist dialectics. Theory
comes from everywhere and includes everything. The theory of capital, taking everything
into account, lays bare the exploitation under the false guise of democracy. Human
relations under capitalism are based on commodities, and socialized production of surplus
v. private appropriation of same. The fundamental contradiction is that centralization,
socialization and appropriation reach a point where the expropriators are expropriated.,
because working class and wealth owners are opposites, and are in constant conflict.
Private property as wealth, is compelled to maintain itself, and thereby it maintains its
opposite, the working class, in existence. The working class is compelled to abolish
itself and thereby its opposite, private property, which determines its existence.An
object is inert, resists change to its state of motion and changes states of motion only
by the action of an external agent. he right wing is comfortable with this
self-estrangement while the left feels annihilated by it.
Materialist dialectics explains things in terms of cause and effect. It is opposed to
a linear view of reality, but there is always present a factor of unavoidable randomness
which must be taken into account. Thus there is never a lock-step, straight-line
development from capitalism to socialism to communism. Mistakes will be made because
there is an infinity of contradictions going on simultaneously. This is how state
capitalists disguised as communists, are able to sow confusion among communists
worldwide.
Dialectics is governed by two contradictions: [1] between the forces and relations of
production and [2] between the economic base and the political, legal, institutional,
social, cultural and ideological super- structure. There cannot be unbounded quantitative
growth without there being a transformation into a change in quality.This is a form of
necessity. But other processes introduce an accidental, random aspect to the process. The
corrections affect the pace of development but not its essential content. One opposite of
a contradiction is the negative or destructive side. The negative side (socialism) drives
the process by striving to destroy the contradiction which the conservative side
(capitalism) strives to preserve. This delineates one lap of a spiral. The negation of
the negation is the synthesis.the contradiction is replaced by a new contradiction. It
does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him property upon the
basis of the acquisitions of the capitalist era; i.e., except that now they are based on
cooperation, and, the means of production and possession of the lands in common . Denying
this is an error and the last, most subtle hiding place for metaphysics and pragmatism.
The new does not merely supersede the old and it recapitulates certain features of the
old but in a new form.
I greatly appreciate the article, and the readership. The truly inspiring commentary
unfolding here has renewed my faith in discourse and humanity. Thank you good folks!
AI will not save us. Technology will not save us, because technology needs materials,
and an extractive economy to procure them. Rare earth metals and minerals don't just
magically appear out of nowhere, they need to be manufactured. Then there is the problem
of when something goes technologically haywire, it needs more technology to fix that
problem, which in turn creates more problems, which...on and on.
Radical conservation is the only way, and I don't think humanity, and the United
States in particular, can bring themselves to do it...and damn the ruling elites. It will
be really ugly when scarcity starts to come down harder here.
The role of government in the corporate era is not to solve problems but to create
them. Problems that need ever more public funding, ever more private contractors,and ever
more transfer of national wealth (present and future) into private hands.
Yes to all you said, Paul. A record 61% of Americans are calling for a major new
party, acc. to Gallup. Are we progressives going to give the majority of the electorate
who are independents a new party? Or are we going to let the right beat us to the punch?
We need to "shut it down," as the PPC has eloquently expressed during their Forty Days of
Action. That means our electoral and political systems. #Movement4APeoplesParty
#PoorPeoplesCampaign
Effective qualification for participation in US politics mandates a minimum personal
or family income of roughly $145,000 to become admitted to the top 10%. Below this level
there is virtually no correlation between voter preference and legislative enactment
since at least 1981 when the Gilens and Page dataset begins. Plutocracy has ruled
collectively for generations in the US but now has produced hyper-wealth, both in a small
number of corporations and a small number of multi-billionaires.
The languages of political and cultural discourse have been destroyed by the language
and violence of wealth as if a spreading plague of mind control not unlike so much
science fiction has portrayed. One does not exist without some millions to amplify their
opinion.
On another note, I was not able to locate any instance of an up-to-date web-based
calculator that allows visitors to determine current minimum incomes to reach 0.01%, 1%,
10%, 20% membership. I would've thought approximations of those values would be searched
for pretty often since Occupy Wall Street and subsequent massive stock inflation scams
being collectively approved among the ugliest capitalists/criminals I've heard or read
about in over 100 years.* I could find only one decent distribution of these data, but it
was from 2014 and the distribution minimums have all shifted upward dramatically since
then.
A righteous rant, but if you're not speaking to the limits of #TheResistance - and I
don't mean the fauxniness from the DNCistas - to turn this ship (or sh*it) around, rather
than simply cheerleading for it, there will be no there there.
We have to be clear eyed about what's necessary, and "progressive change" - no matter
how well intentioned - is a half step that will cause us to stumble into the abyss, if
only in slower motion.
We have to think beyond the "possible", to the essential, or we're pissing into a
climate charged übercane
Since people in the US are doing OK, then, why should we care about all this? By your
own words, we are doing OK and we are led to believe that those who are not doing "OK"
are doing so because they don't want to be doing "OK".
How can we get out of this hole when people like Jay lie to keep this going while
trying to convince us that they are doing otherwise? There is no way that constructive
people can control the government of the US while the rich hold sway over the political
system. All people like this guy do is talk about tragedy while pointing his followers in
different directions while letting them forget the real target. While the traitorous
decision of our Supreme Court allows the rich to buy political candidates nothing we do
will have any effect. Get rid of Trump and someone else, picked by the elite, like
Hillary, will come to power and nothing will change.
Sadly, most people are sheep. They are born to follow. So, they are born to be slaves.
A small percentage have the capacity and the will to lead but, since most of the people
are sheep the really destructive people can amass a lot of power. Too much power for
those who would love a better society to defeat. So, humanity is doomed.
Humanity has been in this world for millions of years and our society is only about 5
thousand years old. I just wonder how many civilizations have we developed on this Earth,
only to destroy ourselves and drive ourselves back into the stone age. Perhaps we are
like the lemmings, only that it takes us thousands of years to drown ourselves by mass
destruction.
Pl. answer this one question. How did Mahatma Gandhi get rid of the invincible
Rothschild's control of India (through their proprietorship of the Bank of England that
looted India over 200 yrs) without firing a bullet at the British. The British Crown was
slave to the Rothschild Bankers' dictates. If that can happen once in India, it can
happen again elsewhere. No room for cynicism. Nevertheless, I am against any idea like
Hitler's elimination of Jewish Bankers, because these are also God's children even if run
astray with material bondage. Rather, I propose a peacefully enforced dissemination of
their loot of world's poor countries centuries back, to those undernourished and
undeveloped world today through progressive sustainable development anchored, and not
throwing wealth at Third World dictators. Time for change and not for sunken heads!
G. Chakko, Vienna, Austria. 22/06/ 2018 14:53 hrs CET
I can only surmise that there was a time when nations cared about public opinion,
national pride, today things have changed. The true tyrants of the world control mass
communication and have people giving the spin to the stories that they desire. If someone
like Gandhi, MLK as an example, they have the person assasinated early in their career.
Times have changed.
Now the true tyrants insure that the people that get elected into any position of
power works for them. There is no way a person can run for president in the US if he has
no money behind them. If someone gets elected that does not play the game as wished, the
tyrants ruin their image and, if that doesn't work, have the person killed. A mysterious
plane accident is one of the ways to get rid of people who can give them problems, as an
example we have the son of JFK. His plane went down and then his reputation and the
reputation of his mother and uncle was attacked to insure they did not become
martyrs.
That's the way things are right now.
As for armed revolutions, the US army and the UN are the military arms of the tyrants.
Since they hide in the shadows, they have no problem having the US bomb a nation, kill
thousands of civilians and then call them collateral damage. The sad part is that most of
us refuse to see the criminal acts of our military. To do so would be to admit that we
are the villains and not the heroes we wish to be.
So, an armed rebellion to take the power away from the true tyrants will only bring
the conditions of the ME to the US. We will die fighting, our families will bleed out but
the tyrants will only move to another country while we do so and return afterwards to
pick up where they left off. Since we don't really know who those people are, there is no
way to bring justice to them and even if we manage to do that, their helpers will be left
behind to carry on.
You definitely speak the reality as played out on the U.S. political turf that is
over-whelming. But the wider world is far more than that. There the RR Banker tricks do
not work that easily any more. Thinks about Russia & China who are calling shots in
the Asian
continent, where the 'bloated ' U.S power and political 'machoism' is waning heavily But
the world in the meantime also knows, no one enters the Oval Office without the silent
approval of the Zionist-favouring and Zionist-controlled lobby Big C (Big Capital) lobby.
From conspiracy angle all U.S. presidents are scheduled "puppets" installed to playa
defined and scripted role from 'Behind Curtain'. It is a financial-tyranny tradition
going back to the 18th -19th centuries when the Rothschild's had control over the Bank of
England by privately owning it till 1946. Was it not Nathan Rothschild who supposedly
said - "I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on
which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain's money supply controls the
British Empire and I control the British money supply". Needless to add, that it was this
Bank of England that looted India for 200 years for multi-billions worth.
India's soft power is gradually increasing worldwide no matter how much the the Evil
Money will find it tp resiliently oppose. Honest, sincere and authentic Americans
committed to higher noble values should not lose the power of mind that can potentially
transform the low-level living humans to a higher evolved being. Then you will have won
the game. It is just hard toil. You do not need to
take up arms to establish genuine justice and peace.
"... This financial dynamic has hijacked industrial capitalism. It is leading economies to polarize and ultimately collapse under the weight of their debt burden. That is the inherent dynamic of finance capitalism. The debt overhead leads to a financial crisis that becomes an opportunity to impose emergency rule to replace democratic lawmaking. So contrary to Hayek's anti-government "free enterprise" warnings, "slippery slope" to totalitarianism is not by socialist reforms limiting the rentier class's extraction of economic rent and interest, but just the opposite: the failure of society to check the rentier extraction of income vesting a hereditary autocracy whose financial and rent-seeking business plan impoverishes the economy at large. ..."
Text of Michael Hudson's speech on debt and the world economy, presented at Peking
University's School of Marxist Studies, May 5-6, 2018.
Volumes II and III of Marx's Capital describe how debt grows exponentially, burdening the
economy with carrying charges. This overhead is subjecting today's Western finance-capitalist
economies to austerity, shrinking living standards and capital investment while increasing
their cost of living and doing business. That is the main reason why they are losing their
export markets and becoming de-industrialized.
What policies are best suited for China to avoid this neo-rentier disease while raising
living standards in a fair and efficient low-cost economy? The most pressing policy challenge
is to keep down the cost of housing. Rising housing prices mean larger and larger debts
extracting interest out of the economy. The strongest way to prevent this is to tax away the
rise in land prices, collecting the rental value for the government instead of letting it be
pledged to the banks as mortgage interest.
The same logic applies to public collection of natural resource and monopoly rents. Failure
to tax them away will enable banks to create debt against these rents, building financial and
other rentier charges into the pricing of basic needs.
U.S. and European business schools are part of the problem, not part of the solution. They
teach the tactics of asset stripping and how to replace industrial engineering with financial
engineering, as if financialization creates wealth faster than the debt burden. Having rapidly
pulled ahead over the past three decades, China must remain free of rentier ideology that
imagines wealth to be created by debt-leveraged inflation of real-estate and financial asset
prices.
Western capitalism has not turned out the way that Marx expected. He was optimistic in
forecasting that industrial capitalists would gain control of government to free economies from
unnecessary costs of production in the form of rent and interest that increase the cost of
living (and hence, the break-even wage level). Along with most other economists of his day, he
expected rentier income and the ownership of land, natural resources and banking to be taken
out of the hands of the hereditary aristocracies that had held them since Europe's feudal
epoch. Socialism was seen as the logical extension of classical political economy, whose main
policy was to abolish rent paid to landlords and interest paid to banks and bondholders.
A century ago there was an almost universal belief in mixed economies. Governments were
expected to tax away land rent and natural resource rent, regulate monopolies to bring prices
in line with actual cost value, and create basic infrastructure with money created by their own
treasury or central bank. Socializing land rent was the core of Physiocracy and the economics
of Adam Smith, whose logic was refined by Alfred Marshall, Simon Patten and other bourgeois
economists of the late 19th century. That was the path that European and American capitalism
seemed to be following in the decades leading up to World War I. That logic sought to use the
government to support industry instead of the landlord and financial classes.
China is progressing along this "mixed economy" road to socialism, but Western economies are
suffering from a resurgence of the pre-capitalist rentier classes. Their slogan of "small
government" means a shift in planning to finance, real estate and monopolies. This economic
philosophy is reversing the logic of industrial capitalism, replacing public investment and
subsidy with privatization and rent extraction. The Western economies' tax shift favoring
finance and real estate is a case in point. It reverses John Stuart Mill's "Ricardian
socialism" based on public collection of the land's rental value and the "unearned increment"
of rising land prices.
Defining economic rent as the unnecessary margin of prices over intrinsic cost value,
classical economists through Marx described rentiers as being economically parasitic, not
productive. Rentiers do not "earn" their land rent, interest or monopoly rent, because it has
no basis in real cost-value (ultimately reducible to labor costs). The political, fiscal and
regulatory reforms that followed from this value and rent theory were an important factor
leading to Marx's value theory and historical materialism. The political thrust of this theory
explains why it is no longer being taught.
By the late 19th century the rentiers fought back, sponsoring reaction against the socialist
implications of classical value and rent theory. In America, John Bates Clark denied that
economic rent was unearned. He redefined it as payment for the landlords' labor and enterprise,
not as accruing "in their sleep," as J. S. Mill had characterized it. Interest was depicted as
payment for the "service" of lending productively, not as exploitation. Everyone's income and
wealth was held to represent payment for their contribution to production. The thrust of this
approach was epitomized by Milton Friedman's Chicago School claim that "there is no such thing
as a free lunch" – in contrast to classical economics saying that feudalism's legacy of
privatized land ownership, bank credit and monopolies was all about how to get a free lunch, by
exploitation.
The other major reaction against classical and Marxist theory was English and Austrian
"utility" theory. Focusing on consumer psychology instead of production costs, it claimed that
there is no difference between value and price. A price is whatever consumers "choose" to pay
for commodities, based on the "utility" that these provide – defined by circular
reasoning as being equal to the price they pay. Producers are assumed to invest and produce
goods to "satisfy consumer demand," as if consumers are the driving force of economies, not
capitalists, property owners or financial managers.
Using junk-psychology, interest was portrayed as what bankers or bondholders "abstain" from
consuming, lending their self-denial of spending to "impatient" consumers and "credit-worthy"
entrepreneurs. This view opposed the idea of interest as a predatory charge levied by
hereditary wealth and the privatized monopoly right to create bank credit. Marx quipped that in
this view, the Rothschilds must be Europe's most self-depriving and abstaining family, not as
suffering from wealth-addiction.
These theories that all income is earned and that consumers (the bourgeois term for
wage-earners) instead of capitalists determine economic policy were a reaction against the
classical value and rent theory that paved the way for Marx's analysis. After analyzing
industrial business cycles in terms of under-consumption or over-production in Volume I of
Capital, Volume III dealt with the precapitalist financial problem inherited from feudalism and
the earlier "ancient" mode of production: the tendency of an economy's debts to grow by the
"purely mathematical law" of compound interest.
Any rate of interest may be thought of as a doubling time. What doubles is not real growth,
but the parasitic financial burden on this growth. The more the debt burden grows, the less
income is left for spending on goods and services. More than any of his contemporaries, Marx
emphasized the tendency for debt to grow exponentially, at compound interest, extracting more
and more income from the economy at large as debts double and redouble, beyond the ability of
debtors to pay. This slows investment in new means of production, because it shrinks domestic
markets for output.
Marx explained that the credit system is external to the means of production. It existed in
ancient times, feudal Europe, and has survived industrial capitalism to exist even in socialist
economies. At issue in all these economic systems is how to prevent the growth of debt and its
interest charge from shrinking economies. Marx believed that the natural thrust of industrial
capitalism was to replace private banking and money creation with public money and credit. He
distinguished interest-bearing debt under industrial capitalism as, for the first time, a means
of financing capital investment. It thus was potentially productive by funding capital to
produce a profit that was sufficient to pay off the debt.
Industrial banking was expected to finance industrial capital formation, as was occurring in
Germany in Marx's day. Marx's examples of industrial balance sheets accordingly assumed debt.
In contrast to Ricardo's analysis of capitalism's Armageddon resulting from rising land-rent,
Marx expected capitalism to free itself from political dominance by the landlord class, as well
as from the precapitalist legacy of usury.
This kind of classical free market viewed capitalism's historical role as being to free the
economy from the overhead of unproductive "usury" debt, along with the problem of absentee
landownership and private ownership of monopolies – what Lenin called the economy's
"commanding heights" in the form of basic infrastructure. Governments would make industries
competitive by providing basic needs freely or at least at much lower public prices than
privatized economies could match.
This reform program of industrial capitalism was beginning to occur in Germany and the
United States, but Marx recognized that such evolution would not be smooth and automatic.
Managing economies in the interest of the wage earners who formed the majority of the
population would require revolution where reactionary interests fought to prevent society from
going beyond the "bourgeois socialism" that stopped short of nationalizing the land, monopolies
and banking.
World War I untracked even this path of "bourgeois socialism." Rentier forces fought to
prevent reform, and banks focused on lending against collateral already in place, not on
financing new means of production. The result of this return to pre-industrial bank credit is
that some 80 percent of bank lending in the United States and Britain now takes the form of
real estate mortgages. The effect is to turn the land's rental yield into interest.
That rent-into-interest transformation gives bankers a strong motive to oppose taxing land
rent, knowing that they will end up with whatever the tax collector relinquishes. Most of the
remaining bank lending is concentrated in loans for corporate takeovers, mergers and
acquisitions, and consumer loans. Corporate capital investment in today's West is not financed
by bank credit, but almost entirely out of retained corporate earnings, and secondarily out of
stock issues.
The stock market itself has become extractive. Corporate earnings are used for stock
buybacks and higher dividend payouts, not for new tangible investment. This financial strategy
was made explicit by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Jensen, who advocated that
salaries and bonuses for corporate managers should be based on how much they can increase the
price of their companies' stock, not on how much they increased or production and/or business
size. Some 92 percent of corporate profits in recent years have been spent on stock buyback
programs and dividend payouts. That leaves only about 8 percent available to be re-invested in
new means of production and hiring. Corporate America's financial managers are turning
financialized companies into debt-ridden corporate shells.
A major advantage of a government as chief banker and credit creator is that when debts come
to outstrip the means to pay, the government can write down the debt. That is how China's banks
have operated. It is a prerequisite for saving companies from bankruptcy and preventing their
ownership from being transferred to foreigners, raiders or vultures.
Classical tax and banking policies were expected to streamline industrial economies,
lowering their cost structures as governments replaced landlords as owner of the land and
natural resources (as in China today) and creating their own money and credit. But despite
Marx's understanding that this would have been the most logical way for industrial capitalism
to evolve, finance capitalism has failed to fund capital formation. Finance capitalism has
hijacked industrial capitalism, and neoliberalism is its anti-classical ideology.
The result of today's alliance of the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector with
natural resource and infrastructure monopolies has been to reverse that the 20th century's
reforms promoting progressive taxation of wealth and income. Industrial capitalism in the West
has been detoured along the road to rent-extracting privatization, austerity and debt
serfdom.
The result is a double-crisis: austerity stemming from debt deflation, while public health,
communications, information technology, transportation and other basic infrastructure are
privatized by corporate monopolies that raise prices charged to labor and industry. The debt
crisis spans government debt (state and local as well as national), corporate debt, real estate
mortgage debt and personal debt, causing austerity that shrinks the "real" economy as its
assets and income are stripped away to service the exponentially growing debt overhead. The
economy polarizes as income and wealth ownership are shifted to the neo-rentier alliance headed
by the financial sector.
This veritable counter-revolution has inverted the classical concept of free markets.
Instead of advocating a public role to lower the cost structure of business and labor, the
neoliberal ideal excludes public infrastructure and government ownership of natural monopolies,
not to speak of industrial production. Led by bank lobbyists, neoliberalism even opposes public
regulation of finance and monopolies to keep their prices in line with socially necessary cost
of production.
To defend this economic counter-revolution, the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA)
and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measures now used throughout the world were inspired by
opposition to progressive taxation and public ownership of land and banks. These statistical
measures depicting finance, insurance and real estate as the leaders of wealth creation, not
the creators merely of debt and rentier overhead.
What is China's "Real" GDP and "real wealth creation"?
Rejection of classical value theory's focus on economic rent – the excess of market
price over intrinsic labor cost – underlies the post-classical concept of GDP. Classical
rent theory warned against the FIRE sector siphoning off nominal growth in wealth and income.
The economics of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, J.S. Mill and Marx share in common the view that
this rentier revenue should be treated as an overhead charge and, as such, subtracted from
national income and product because it is not production-related. Being extraneous to the
production process, this rentier overhead is responsible for today's debt deflation and
economically extractive privatization that is imposing austerity and shrinking markets from
North America to Europe.
The West's debt crisis is aggravated by privatizing monopolies (on credit) that historically
have belonged to the public sector. Instead of recognizing the virtues of a mixed economy,
Frederick Hayek and his followers from Ayn Rand to Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, the
Chicago School and libertarian Republicans have claimed that any public ownership or regulation
is, ipso facto, a step toward totalitarian politics.
Following this ideology, Alan Greenspan aborted economic regulation and decriminalized
financial fraud. He believed that in principle, the massive bank fraud, junk-mortgage lending
and corporate raiding that led up to the 2008 crisis was more efficient than regulating such
activities or prosecuting fraudsters.
This is the neoliberal ideology taught in U.S. and European business schools. It assumes
that whatever increases financial wealth most quickly is the most efficient for society as a
whole. It also assumes that bankers will find honest dealing to be more in their economic
self-interest than fraud, because customers would shun fraudulent bankers. But along with the
mathematics of compound interest, the inherent dynamic of finance capitalism is to establish a
monopoly and capture government regulatory agencies, the justice system, central bank and
Treasury to prevent any alternative policy and the prosecution of fraud.
The aim is to get rich by purely financial means – by increasing stock-market prices,
not by tangible capital formation. That is the opposite of the industrial logic of expanding
the economy and its markets. Instead of creating a more productive economy and raising living
standards, finance capitalism is imposing austerity by diverting wage income and also corporate
income to pay rising debt service, health insurance and payments to privatized monopolies.
Progressive income and wealth taxation has been reversed, siphoning off wages to subsidize
privatization by the rentier class.
This combination of debt overgrowth and regressive fiscal policy has produced two results.
First, combining debt deflation with fiscal deflation leaves only about a third of wage income
available to be spent on the products of labor. Paying interest, rents and taxes – and
monopoly prices – shrinks the domestic market for goods and services.
Second, adding debt service, monopoly prices and a tax shift to the cost of living and doing
business renders neo-rentier economies high-cost. That is why the U.S. economy has been
deindustrialized and its Midwest turned into a Rust Belt.
How Marx's economic schema explains the West's neo-rentier problem
In Volume I of Capital, Marx described the dynamics and "law of motion" of industrial
capitalism and its periodic crises. The basic internal contradiction that capitalism has to
solve is the inability of wage earners to be paid enough to buy the commodities they produce.
This has been called overproduction or underconsumption, but Marx believed that the problem was
in principle only temporary, not permanent.
Volumes II and III of Marx's Capital described a pre-capitalist form of crisis, independent
of the industrial economy: Debt grows exponentially, burdening the economy and finally bringing
its expansion to an end with a financial crash. That descent into bankruptcy, foreclosure and
the transfer of property from debtors to creditors is the dynamic of Western finance
capitalism. Subjecting economies to austerity, economic shrinkage, emigration, shorter life
spans and hence depopulation, it is at the root of the 2008 debt legacy and the fate of the
Baltic states, Ireland, Greece and the rest of southern Europe, as it was earlier the financial
dynamic of Third World countries in the 1960s through 1990s under IMF austerity programs. When
public policy is turned over to creditors, they use their power for is asset stripping,
insisting that all debts must be paid without regard for how this destroys the economy at
large.
China has managed to avoid this dynamic. But to the extent that it sends its students to
study in U.S. and European business schools, they are taught the tactics of asset stripping
instead of capital formation – how to be extractive, not productive. They are taught that
privatization is more desirable than public ownership, and that financialization creates wealth
faster than it creates a debt burden. The product of such education therefore is not knowledge
but ignorance and a distortion of good policy analysis. Baltic austerity is applauded as the
"Baltic Miracle," not as demographic collapse and economic shrinkage.
The experience of post-Soviet economies when neoliberals were given a free hand after 1991
provides an object lesson. Much the same fate has befallen Greece, along with the rising
indebtedness of other economies to foreign bondholders and to their own rentier class operating
out of capital-flight centers. Economies are obliged to suspend democratic government policy in
favor of emergency creditor control.
The slow economic crash and debt deflation of these economies is depicted as a result of
"market choice." It turns out to be a "choice" for economic stagnation. All this is
rationalized by the economic theory taught in Western economics departments and business
schools. Such education is an indoctrination in stupidity – the kind of tunnel vision
that Thorstein Veblen called the "trained incapacity" to understand how economies really
work.
Most private fortunes in the West have stemmed from housing and other real estate financed
by debt. Until the 2008 crisis the magnitude of this property wealth was expanded largely by
asset-price inflation, aggravated by the reluctance of governments to do what Adams Smith, John
Stuart Mill, Alfred Marshall and nearly all 19th-century classical economists recommended: to
keep land rent out of private hands, and to make the rise in land's rental value serve as the
tax base.
Failure to tax the land leaves its rental value "free" to be pledged as interest to banks
– which make larger and larger loans by lending against rising debt ratios. This "easy
credit" raises the price of obtaining home ownership. Sellers celebrate the result as "wealth
creation," and the mainstream media depict the middle class as growing richer by higher prices
for the homes its members have bought. But the debt-financed rise in housing prices ultimately
creates wealth mainly for banks and their bondholders.
Americans now have to pay up to 43 percent of their income for mortgage debt service,
federally guaranteed. This imposes such high costs for home ownership that it is pricing the
products of U.S. labor out of world markets. The pretense is that using bank credit (that is,
homebuyers' mortgage debt) to inflate the price of housing makes U.S. workers and the middle
class prosperous by enabling them to sell their homes to a new generation of buyers at higher
and higher prices each generation. This certainly does not make the buyers more prosperous. It
diverts their income away from buying the products of labor to pay interest to banks for
housing prices inflated on bank credit.
Consumer spending throughout most of the world aims above all at achieving status. In the
West this status rests largely on one's home and neighborhood, its schools, transportation and
other public investment. Land-price gains resulting from public investment in transportation,
parks and schools, other urban amenities and infrastructure, and from re-zoning land use. In
the West this rising rental value is turned into a cost, falling on homebuyers, who must borrow
more from the banks. The result is that public spending ultimately enriches the banks –
at the tax collector's expense.
Debt is the great threat to modern China's development. Burdening economies with a rentier
overhead imposes the quasi-feudal charges from which classical 19th-century economists hoped to
free industrial capitalism. The best protection against this rentier burden is simple: first,
tax away the land's rising rental valuation to prevent it from being paid out for bank loans;
and second, keep control of banks in public hands. Credit is necessary, but should be directed
productively and debts written down when paying them threatens to create financial
Armageddon.
Marx's views on the broad dynamics of economic history
Plato and Aristotle described a grand pattern of history. In their minds, this pattern was
eternally recurrent. Looking over three centuries of Greek experience, Aristotle found a
perpetual triangular sequence of democracy turning into oligarchy, whose members made
themselves into a hereditary aristocracy – and then some families sought to take the
demos into their own camp by sponsoring democracy, which in turn led to wealthy families
replacing it with an oligarchy, and so on.
The medieval Islamic philosopher Ibn Khaldun saw history as a rise and fall. Societies rose
to prosperity and power when leaders mobilized the ethic of mutual aid to gain broad support as
a communal spirit raised all members. But prosperity tended to breed selfishness, especially in
ruling dynasties, which Ibn Khaldun thought had a life cycle of only about 120 years. By the
19th century, Scottish Enlightenment philosophers elaborated this rise-and-fall theory,
applying it to regimes whose success bred arrogance and oligarchy.
Marx saw the long sweep of history as following a steady upward secular trend, from the
ancient slavery-and-usury mode of production through feudalism to industrial capitalism. And
not only Marx but nearly all 19th-century classical economists assumed that socialism in one
form or another would be the stage following industrial capitalism in this upward technological
and economic trajectory.
Instead, Western industrial capitalism turned into finance capitalism. In Aristotelian terms
the shift was from proto-democracy to oligarchy. Instead of freeing industrial capitalism from
landlords, natural resource owners and monopolists, Western banks and bondholders joined forces
with them, seeing them as major customers for as much interest-bearing credit as would absorb
the economic rent that governments would refrain from taxing. Their success has enabled banks
and bondholders to replace landlords as the major rentier class. Antithetical to socialism,
this retrogression towards feudal rentier privilege let real estate, financial interests and
monopolists exploit the economy by creating an expanding debt wedge.
Marx's Theories of Surplus Value (German Mehrwert), his history of classical political
economy, poked fun at David Ricardo's warning of economic Armageddon if economies let landlords
siphon off of all industrial profits to pay land rent. Profits and hence capital investment
would grind to a halt. But as matters have turned out, Ricardo's rentier Armageddon is being
created by his own banking class. Corporate profits are being devoured by interest payments for
corporate takeover debts and related financial charges to reward bondholders and raiders, and
by financial engineering using stock buybacks and higher dividend payouts to create "capital"
gains at the expense of tangible capital formation. Profits also are reduced by firms having to
pay higher wages to cover the cost of debt-financed housing, education and other basic expenses
for workers.
This financial dynamic has hijacked industrial capitalism. It is leading economies to
polarize and ultimately collapse under the weight of their debt burden. That is the inherent
dynamic of finance capitalism. The debt overhead leads to a financial crisis that becomes an
opportunity to impose emergency rule to replace democratic lawmaking. So contrary to Hayek's
anti-government "free enterprise" warnings, "slippery slope" to totalitarianism is not by
socialist reforms limiting the rentier class's extraction of economic rent and interest, but
just the opposite: the failure of society to check the rentier extraction of income vesting a
hereditary autocracy whose financial and rent-seeking business plan impoverishes the economy at
large.
Greece's debt crisis has all but abolished its democracy as foreign creditors have taken
control, superseding the authority of elected officials. From New York City's bankruptcy to
Puerto Rico's insolvency and Third World debtors subjected to IMF "austerity programs,"
national bankruptcies shift control to centralized financial planners in what Naomi Klein has
called Crisis Capitalism. Planning ends up centralized not in the hands of elected government
but in financial centers, which become the de facto government.
England and America set their economic path on this road under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald
Reagan by 1980. They were followed by even more pro-financial privatization leaders in Tony
Blair's New Labour Party and Bill Clinton's New Democrats seeking to roll back a century of
classical reforms and policies that gradually were moving capitalism toward socialism. Instead,
these countries are suffering a rollback to neofeudalism, whose neo-rentiereconomic and
political ideology has become mainstream throughout the West. Despite seeing that this policy
has led to North America and Europe losing their former economic lead, the financial power
elite is simply taking its money and running.
So we are brought back to the question of what this means for China's educational policy and
also how it depicts economic statistics to distinguish between wealth and overhead. The great
advantage of such a distinction is to help steer economic growth along productive lines
favoring tangible capital formation instead of policies to get rich by taking on more and more
debt and by prying property away from the public domain.
If China's main social objective is to increase real output to raise living standards for
its population – while minimizing unproductive overhead and economic inequality –
then it is time to consider developing its own accounting format to trace its progress (or
shortcomings) along these lines. Measuring how its income and wealth are being obtained would
track how the economy is moving closer toward what Marx called socialism.
Of special importance, such an accounting format would revive Marx's classical distinction
between earned and unearned income. Its statistics would show how much of the rise in wealth
(and expenditure) in China – or any other nation – is a result of new tangible
capital formation as compared to higher rents, lending and interest, or the stock market.
These statistics would isolate income and fortunes obtained by zero-sum transfer payments
such as the rising rental value of land sites, natural resources and basic infrastructure
monopolies. National accounts also would trace overhead charges for interest and related
financial charges, as well as the economy's evolving credit and debt structure. That would
enable China to measure the economic effects of the banking privileges and other property
rights given to some people.
That is not the aim of Western national income statistics. In fact, applying the accounting
structure described above would track how Western economies are polarizing as a result of their
higher economic rent and interest payments crowding out spending on actual goods and services.
This kind of contrast would help explain global trends in pricing and competitiveness.
Distinguishing the FIRE sector from the rest of the economy would enable China to compare its
economic cost trends and overhead relative to those of other nations. I believe that these
statistics would show that its progress toward socialism also will explain the remarkable
economic advantage it has obtained. If China does indeed make this change, it will help people
both in and out of China see even more clearly what your government is doing on behalf of the
majority of its people. This may help other governments – including my own – learn
from your example and praise it instead of fearing it.
"... Duncan described herself as an avid supporter of President Trump, but said she was moved by four full boxes of exhibits provided by Mueller's team – though she was skeptical about prosecutors' motives in the financial crimes case. ..."
"... Though Duncan said the jury was not political in its conviction, she said she was skeptical of prosecutors' intentions, which she implied were political. ..."
A juror who sat on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's
case said on
Fox
News Wednesday night
that a
lone
juror prevented a ruling on all 18 counts against Manafort.
Juror
Paula Duncan said a lone juror could not come to a guilty verdict on
10 charges, forcing judge T.S. Ellis III to declare a mistrial on 10
of Manafort's 18 counts.
"It was one person who kept the verdict from being guilty on all 18
counts," Duncan, 52, said. She added that Mueller's team of
prosecutors often seemed bored, apparently catnapping during parts
of the trial.
In an exclusive interview on
@
foxnewsnight
,
Paul Manafort juror Paula Duncan said Special
Counsel Robert Mueller's team was one holdout
juror away from convicting Paul Manafort on all
18 counts of bank and tax fraud.
https://
fxn.ws/2Mrmrzb
While the identities of the jurors have been closely held, kept
under seal by Judge T.S. Ellis III at Tuesday's conclusion of the
high-profile trial, Duncan gave a behind-the-scenes account to Fox
News on Wednesday, after the jury returned a guilty verdict against
the former Trump campaign chairman on eight financial crime counts
and deadlocked on 10 others.
Duncan described herself as an avid supporter of President Trump,
but said she was moved by four full boxes of exhibits provided by
Mueller's team – though she was skeptical about prosecutors' motives
in the financial crimes case.
"Certainly Mr. Manafort got caught breaking the law, but he
wouldn't have gotten caught if they weren't after President
Trump," Duncan said of the special counsel's case, which she
separately described as a "witch hunt to try to find Russian
collusion," borrowing a phrase Trump has used in tweets more
than 100 times.
Though Duncan said the jury was not political in its conviction, she
said she was skeptical of prosecutors' intentions, which she implied
were political.
Following a lengthy jury deliberation, former
Trump
campaign
manager Paul Manafort was
convicted
on
eight counts, including tax fraud, failure to disclose
foreign bank accounts, and bank fraud –
even
though jurors were still hung on another ten counts
:
"If we cannot come to a consensus for a single count, how can we
fill in the verdict sheet?" the jurors asked in the note.
"It is your duty to agree upon a verdict if you can do so," said
Ellis, who encouraged each juror to make their own decisions on
each count. If some were in the minority on a decision, however,
they could think about the other jurors' conclusions.
Notably, the case has nothing
to
do
with "Trump, the Trump campaign or the 2016 US election" – it
has to do with work Manafort did with former Ukranian President
Victor Yanukovych from 2005-2014.
The
case was referred to the federal prosecutors in the Southern
District of New York (SDNY) by Special Investigator
Robert
Mueller
who also referred Democrat superlobbyist Tony Podesta
for prosecution as part of similar work he did for Yanukovych.
All of this begs the question – if Tony Podesta committed the same
crimes as Paul Manafort, why hasn't the SDNY brought charges against
him?
Last year, Tucker Carlson exposed just how close Tony Podesta and
the
Podesta
Group
were to the Ukranian and Russian governments...
...which was summed up in the below list originally complied by
iBankCoin
–
detailing Manafort's close ties with the Podesta Group regarding
Russian
/Ukranian
lobbying:
Lobbyist and temporary Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort
is at the center of the Russia probe – however the scope of
the investigation has broadened to include his activities
prior to the 2016 election.
Manafort worked with the Podesta Group since at least
2011 on behalf of Russian interests
, and was at the
Podesta Group offices "all the time, at least once a
month," peddling Russian influence through a shell group
called the
European
Centre for a Modern Ukraine
(ECMU).
Manafort brought a "parade" of Russian oligarchs to congress
for meetings with members and their staffs, however, the
Russia's
"central effort" was the Obama Administration.
In 2013,
John
Podesta recommended that Tony hire David Adams, Hillary
Clinton's chief adviser at the State Department, giving them
a "direct liaison" between the group's Russian clients and
Hillary Clinton's State Department.
In late 2013 or early 2014,
Tony
Podesta and a representative for the Clinton Foundation met
to discuss how to help Uranium One
– the Russian
owned company that controls 20 percent of American Uranium
Production – and whose board members gave over $100 million
to the Clinton Foundation.
"
Tony
Podesta was basically part of the Clinton Foundation."
Believing she would win the 2016 election,
Russia
considered the Podesta Group's connection to Hillary highly
valuable
.
Podesta Group is a nebulous organization with no board
oversight and all financial decisions made by Tony Podesta.
Carlson's source said
payments
and kickbacks could be hard for investigators to trace,
describing it as a "highly secret treasure trove."
One
employee's only official job was to manage Tony Podesta's
art
collection
, which could be used to conceal
financial transactions.
Trending Articles
"Thank God This Is Happening" Russia Says Time
Has Come To
With the US unveiling a new set of sanctions
against Russia on Friday, Moscow said it would
definitely respond to
Additionally, Zerohedge
explained
why
this list is so significant:
emails obtained by the Associated Press showed that Gates
personally directed two Washington lobbying firms,
Mercury
LLC and the Podesta Group, between 2012 and 2014 to set up
meetings between a top Ukrainian official and senators and
congressmen on influential committees involving Ukrainian
interests
. Gates noted in the emails that the official,
Ukraine's foreign minister, did not want to use his own embassy
in the United States to help coordinate the visits.
And this is where the plot thickens,
because
while the bulk of the press has so far spun the entire Ukraine
lobbying scandal, which led to Manafort's resignation, as the
latest "proof" that pro-Moscow powers were influencing not only
Manafort but the Trump campaign in general (who some democrats
have even painted of being a Putin agent), the reality is that a
firm closely tied with the Democratic party, the Podesta Group,
is just as implicated.
As AP further adds, the European Center for a Modern Ukraine, a
Brussels-linked nonprofit entity which allegely ran the lobbying
project,
paid
Mercury and the Podesta Group a combined $2.2 million over
roughly two years.
In papers filed in the U.S. Senate,
Mercury and the Podesta Group listed the European nonprofit as
an independent, nonpolitical client. The firms said the center
stated in writing that it was not aligned with any foreign
political entity.
In other words, the Podesta Group was likely
as
much or even more complicit in any wrongdoing than Manafort was
.
Of course, none of this stopped
Mueller
from
offering
Podesta immunity – in exchange for testimony against Manafort:
It is not as though Manafort is blameless or guilt-free in his
conduct – and according to Corey Lewandowski,
President
Trump
himself was not particularly fond of
some
of
his conduct on the campaign trail, at one point
lowering
his helicopter
to berate him via cell phone:
While were in the air, heading for Delaware, somebody -- I think it
was Ann Coulter -- tweeted out
a
quote from Manafort saying that Trump shouldn't be on television
anymore
, that he shouldn't do the Sunday shows. And
from now on Manafort would do all shows. Because he's the
fucking expert, right? Not Trump, who had already turned the
whole primary race on its head
"Yes, sir," Hope said, "Paul said he doesn't want you on TV."
Trump went fucking ballistic. We were still over the New York
metropolitan area, where you can get cell service if you fly at
a low altitude.
"Lower it!" Trump yelled to the pilot. "I have to make a call."
He got Manafort on the phone, "Did you say I shouldn't be on TV
on Sunday??" Manafort could barely hear him because of the
helicopter motor. But Trump said,
"I'll
go on TV anytime I goddamn fucking want and you won't say
another fucking word about me! Tone it down? I wanna turn it up!
I don't wanna tone anything down! I played along with your
delegate charts, but I have had enough."
He got Paul on the phone and completely decimated him again
verbally. Ripped his fucking head off. I wish I'd recorded it,
because it was one of the greatest takedowns in the history of
the world.
"You're a political pro? Let me tell you something. I'm a pro at
life. I've been around a time or two. I know guys like you, with
your hair and your skin "
and again, according to Lewandowski, Trump was unaware of
Manafort's connections when he took the job, but was seriously
unhappy about them after they were released to the press:
"It's all lies," Manafort said. "My lawyers are fighting it."
"But if it's in the paper someone has to give Trump a heads-up,
because if it's in the paper, it's reality."
Just as Steve had thought, the story ran the next day, August
15, on Page One, above the fold.
"I've got a crook running my campaign," Trump said when he read
it.
However, in spite of his apparent misgivings for Manafort, Trump has
decided to support him – ostensibly because he did not cave to the
outrageous demands of the Mueller "
investigation
":
I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his
wonderful family. "Justice" took a 12 year old
tax case, among other things, applied tremendous
pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he
refused to "break" - make up stories in order to
get a "deal." Such respect for a brave man!
....and why hasn't the Podesta brother been
charged and arrested, like others, after being
forced to close down his very large and
successful firm? Is it because he is a VERY well
connected Democrat working in the Swamp of
Washington, D.C.?
...the Podesta brothers are both well-connected swamp creatures, on
the same political team as the
uber-politicized
SDNY
assigned to levy charges against them.
"... And now Davis, the Clinton fixer, is Michael Cohen's lawyer. The fixer defending a fixer. So who pays the bill? Well, ostensibly no-one, because Davis started a Go Fund Me campaign where people can donate so Cohen "can tell people the truth about Trump". The goal is $500,000. Which goes to .. Lanny Davis. ..."
"... On TV yesterday he apparently promoted a wrong URL , which was promptly picked up by someone else who had it redirect to the Trump campaign. Even fixers screw up, right? Still, there's already well over $100,000 donated for Cohen Davis. But why $500,000? One of the accusations against Cohen concerns lying to a bank for a $20 million loan. He bought an apartment not long ago for $6.7 million. He owned multiple apartments in Trump buildings. ..."
"... Did he lose everything when Robert Mueller et al raided his office, home and hotel room on April 9 2018? Were all his assets frozen? Possibly. What we do know is that he 'expected' the Trump campaign to pay for his legal fees. Which they declined. Or rather, as Fortune reported in June : "The Trump campaign has given some money to Cohen to help cover legal expenses for the Russia investigation. To date, though, it has not offered financial assistance in the investigation of his business practices." ..."
"... But anyway. So Lanny Davis, fixer of fixers and presidents, goes on a talk-show tour last night and what do you think happens? He walks back just about everything he's said the previous day. Aaron Maté made a list in this Twitter thread ..."
"... What do you think will happen when someone of the stature of Bob Mueller spends 18 months investigating the Clintons and their fixers? Perhaps the events of the past few days won't bring such a 2nd Special Counsel any closer, but by the same token they might do just that. Offense is the best defense. ..."
"... That is both dangerous in that the mandate of a Special Counsel should be limited lest it becomes endless and veers off the reasons it was initiated, as well as in the risk that it can easily turn into a party-political tool to hurt one's opponent while one's own dirt remains unscrutinized. ..."
"... In the end, I can draw only one conclusion: there are so many sharks and squids swimming in the swamp that either it should be expanded or the existing one should be cleaned up and depopulated. So bring it: investigate the FBI, the Clintons, and fixers like Lanny Davis and Michael Avenatti, the same way the Trump camp has been. ..."
If there's one thing that is exposed in the sorry not-so-fairy tale of former Trump aides Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, it's
that Washington is a city run by fixers. Who often make substantial amounts of money. Many though by no means all, start out as lawyers
and figure out that let's say 'the edges of what's legal' can be quite profitable.
And it helps to know when one steps across that edge, so having attended law school is a bonus. Not so much to stop when stepping
across the edge, but to raise one's fees. There's a lot of dough waiting at the edge of the law. None of this should surprise any
thinking person. Manafort and Cohen are people who think in millions, with an easy few hundred grand thrown in here and there.
But sometimes the fixers happen to come under scrutiny of the law, like when they get entangled in a Special Counsel investigation.
Both Manafort and Cohen now rue the day they became involved with Trump, or rather, the day he was elected president and solicited
much more severe scrutiny.
Would either ever have been accused of what they face today had Trump lost to Hillary? It's not too likely. They just gambled
and lost. But there are many more just like them who will never be charged with anything. Still, a new fixer name has popped up the
last few days who may, down the line, not be so lucky.
And that's not even because Lanny Davis is a registered foreign agent for Dmytro Firtash, a pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch wanted
by the US government. After all, both Manafort and Cohen have their contacts in that part of the world. Manafort made tens of millions
advising then-president Yanukovich in the Ukraine before the US coup dethroned the latter. Cohen's wife is Ukrainian-American.
Lanny Davis is a lawyer, special counsel even, for the Clintons. Has been for years. Which makes it kind of curious that Michael
Cohen would pick him to become his legal representation. But that's not all Davis is involved in. Like any true fixer, he has his
hands in more cookie jars than fit in the average kitchen. Glenn Greenwald wrote this in August 2009 about the health care debate:
After Tom Daschle was selected to be Barack Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services and chief health care adviser, Matt
Taibbi wrote: "In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle." One could easily have added:
"And then there's Lanny Davis." Davis frequently injects himself into political disputes, masquerading as a "political analyst"
and Democratic media pundit, yet is unmoored from any discernible political beliefs other than: "I agree with whoever pays me."
It's genuinely difficult to recall any instance where he publicly defended someone who hadn't, at some point, hired and shuffled
money to him. Yesterday, he published a new piece simultaneously in The Hill and Politico – solemnly warning that extremists on
the Far Left and Far Right are jointly destroying democracy with their conduct in the health care debate and urging "the vast
center-left and center-right of this country to speak up and call them out equally" – that vividly illustrates the limitless whoring
behavior which shapes Washington generally and specifically drives virtually every word out of Lanny Davis' mouth.
Davis' history is as long and consistent as it is sleazy. He was recently hired by Honduran oligarchs opposed to that country's
democratically elected left-wing President and promptly became the chief advocate of the military coup which forcibly removed
the President from office. He became an emphatic defender of the Israeli war on Gaza after he was named by the right-wing The
Israel Project to be its "Senior Advisor and Spokesperson." He has been the chief public defender for Joe Lieberman, Jane Harman
and the Clintons, all of whom have engaged his paid services.
And as NYU History Professor Greg Grandin just documented: "Recently, Davis has been hired by corporations to derail the labor-backed
Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for unions to organize, all the while touting himself as a "pro-labor liberal."
Davis was also the chief U.S. lobbyist of the military dictatorship in Pakistan in the late 90s and played an important role in
strengthening relations between then President Bill Clinton and de facto president General Perez Musharraf."
Trending Articles Majority Of Young Americans Live In A Household Receiving
New analysis from CNS News finds that the majority of Americans under 18 live in households that take "means-tested
There's much more in that article, but you get the drift. And now Davis, the Clinton fixer, is Michael Cohen's lawyer. The fixer
defending a fixer. So who pays the bill? Well, ostensibly no-one, because Davis started a Go Fund Me campaign where people can donate
so Cohen "can tell people the truth about Trump". The goal is $500,000. Which goes to .. Lanny Davis.
On TV yesterday
he apparently promoted a wrong URL , which was promptly picked up by someone else who had it redirect to the Trump campaign.
Even fixers screw up, right? Still, there's already well over $100,000 donated for Cohen Davis. But why $500,000? One of the
accusations against Cohen concerns lying to a bank for a $20 million loan. He bought an apartment not long ago for $6.7 million.
He owned multiple apartments in Trump buildings.
Did he lose everything when Robert Mueller et al raided his office, home and hotel room on April 9 2018? Were all his assets frozen?
Possibly. What we do know is that he 'expected' the Trump campaign to pay for his legal fees. Which they declined. Or rather, as
Fortune reported in June : "The
Trump campaign has given some money to Cohen to help cover legal expenses for the Russia investigation. To date, though, it has not
offered financial assistance in the investigation of his business practices."
It seems safe to assume that's the point where Cohen turned, or was turned, to Lanny Davis. From a full decade of being Trump's
fixer to being fixed by the Clintons' fixer. That's a big move. It raises a number of questions :
First, why did Trump not pay Cohen's legal fees? This is 2 months after the raid on the man's office, home, hotel room, in
which huge amounts of files and disks etc. were seized.
Second question: if Lanny Davis only now sets up a Go Fund Me campaign, who's been paying him over the past 2 months? Did Cohen
sell assets, or is someone else involved?
Anyway, so Davis goes on TV with big words about how Cohen will tell all about Trump -provided people donate half a million- and
adding "I know that Mr. Cohen would never accept a pardon from a man that he considers to be both corrupt and a dangerous person
in the oval office. And [Cohen] has flatly authorized me to say under no circumstances would he accept a pardon from Mr. Trump."
Oh, and that "the turning point for his client's attitude toward Trump was the Helsinki summit in July 2018 which caused him to
doubt Trump's loyalty to the U.S." That, to my little brain, doesn't sound like something that would come from Cohen. That sounds
more like a political point the likes of which Cohen has never made. That's plain old Russiagate.
But anyway. So Lanny Davis, fixer of fixers and presidents, goes on a talk-show tour last night and what do you think happens?
He walks back just about everything he's said the previous day. Aaron Maté made a list in this Twitter thread:
1/ In a few minutes of airtime today, Michael Cohen attorney Lanny Davis has rejected a key Steele dossier claim, and, more
significantly I think, the basis for all of the ceaseless, frenzied speculation that Cohen has something to offer Mueller on Trump-Russia
collusion:
3/ Right after, Davis walks back his already heavily qualified innuendo to
@ Maddow -- which generated endless chatter -- about Cohen being useful
to Mueller's probe on collusion & knowing of hacking. Now Davis claims he was "tentative", that Cohen "may or may not be useful",
etc:
4/ Earlier in the day, Davis also asserted that Cohen was "never, ever" in Prague -- undermining a key claim in the Steele
dossier that he went there in August/September 2016 as part of the collusion scheme:
https:// twitter.com/ChuckRossDC/st atus/1032427395993624576
6/ So in short: Lanny Davis has not just denied what was explosively alleged about Cohen-Trump by Steele, CNN, and McClatchy,
but has also walked back the explosive speculation about Cohen-Trump that Lanny Davis himself generated.
Is Michael Cohen sure he wants this guy as his lawyer? Is he watching this stuff?
If Cohen and Manafort have broken laws, they should be punished for it. The same goes for all other Trump campers, including the
Donald. But it would be good if people realize that Cohen and Manafort are not some kind of stand-alone examples, that they are instead
the norm in Washington. And Moscow, and Brussels, London, everywhere there's a concentration of power. In all these places, and probably
more so in DC, there are these folks specializing in the edge of the law.
What do you think will happen when someone of the stature of Bob Mueller spends 18 months investigating the Clintons and their
fixers? Perhaps the events of the past few days won't bring such a 2nd Special Counsel any closer, but by the same token they might
do just that. Offense is the best defense.
I don't know, we don't know, what monsters Trump has swept under his luxurious carpets. But we do know that those are not the
only monsters in Washington. Meanwhile, the Steele dossier that was used to start the entire Mueller remains just about entirely
unverified. The Russian collusion meme he was tasked with investigating has so far come up empty.
That he would find something if he tried hard enough was obvious from the start. That is both dangerous in that the mandate of
a Special Counsel should be limited lest it becomes endless and veers off the reasons it was initiated, as well as in the risk that
it can easily turn into a party-political tool to hurt one's opponent while one's own dirt remains unscrutinized.
In the end, I can draw only one conclusion: there are so many sharks and squids swimming in the swamp that either it should be
expanded or the existing one should be cleaned up and depopulated. So bring it: investigate the FBI, the Clintons, and fixers like
Lanny Davis and Michael Avenatti, the same way the Trump camp has been.
Because if you don't do that, you can only possibly end up in an even bigger mess. You can't drain half a swamp.
Federal prosecutors have granted immunity to American Media Inc. CEO and longtime friend of
President Trump, David Pecker, reports the Wall Street
Journal .
This "Trump vs Davos globalists" theme is unconvincing. Trump actions
are ruthless globalist actions, who wnat to preverse the US status of
superpower at all costs, even by abrogating important treaties.
He might be not a neoliberal globalist thouth -- he does not offere equl
seats on the table to vassals.
Trumpo statement that if Germany buy Russian gas it does not need NATO
is very shroud indeed.
Notable quotes:
"... Optics are important and this image captures what both parties wanted to convey. This meeting is the beginning of a shift in the relationship between Germany and Russia for the better. ..."
"... The obvious answer is necessity brought about by pressure being placed on both countries by Donald Trump through sanctions and tariffs and their shared interests represented by the Nordstream 2 pipeline. ..."
"... But, this meeting went far deeper than that, especially since Merkel's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas boldly proclaimed that Europe needs an alternative to the SWIFT system of international electronic payments so as to keep global trade alive while the U.S. further weaponizes the U.S. dollar ..."
"... Why would Merkel allow Maas to state this publicly and why was it picked up by that establishment stenographer The Financial Times ? ..."
"... If Trump's goal, as presented by much of the European press (as presented here by Gilbert Doctorow), is to regain complete subjugation of Europe to American dominance, then this seems counter-productive. ..."
"... SWIFT is the main lever on which much of the U.S.'s sanctions power rests. Because it is through SWIFT that transactions can be tracked, payments halted and fines imposed. That none of this is strictly legal is irrelevant in the game of power-politics. ..."
"... This undermines the EU's credibility at a foundational level. It shows them to be the toothless and, in EU President Donald Tusk's case, witless when faced with opposition to their rule that isn't supported by The Davos Crowd, which Trump most definitely doesn't represent. ..."
"... And I've talked about these in the past. His real goal is the destruction of that post WWII institutional order which in his mind bankrupts the U.S. treasury through massive trade deficits. ..."
"... I said back in June that Trump's leaving the JCPOA was all part of his strategy to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Germany. The Davos Crowd needs that deal to keep the dream of transferring the power of the world back to Europe from the U.S. via cheap, Iranian energy and keep the conflict between Israel/Saudi Arabia and Iran front and center to foment global chaos awhile keeping Russia from getting rich again. ..."
"... It needs that to support the narrative we need NATO to protect us from the inevitable Russian attack after we provoke them into it. This keeps the money flowing through the banks and lobbyists while draining the U.S. dry through the military/industrial complex. ..."
"... And despite relentless Russia bashing since before Trump was elected, the American people overwhelmingly want peace with Russia, not war. ..."
"... By driving a wedge between Germany and the US over NATO and attacking the foundations of the German economy Trump is ensuring the current rapprochement between Germany and Russia? ..."
Vladimir Putin's charm tour of Germany and Austria last weekend is a significant sign of
change to come.
To the U.S. and European press Putin is only a step or two away from Hitler reincarnated
(thanks chiefly to Bill Browder). It serves the purpose of maintaining the post WWII
institutional order.
But, Putin is always nothing but relentlessly patient in his diplomatic efforts, even when
European leaders, like Merkel, treat him and Russia poorly. She is, after all, the leading
mouthpiece and political ally of The Davos Crowd that believes they run the world.
The conduct of his Foreign Ministry under Sergei Lavrov always strikes the perfect balance
between bluntness and diplo-speak.
So, color me surprised when I see the official photos of his meeting with Merkel carefully
framed to paint him in a positive light.
Putin in light blues and grays, Merkel in green, the fountain in the background, leaning in
looking directly at each other and a simple Sunday morning chat.
If I didn't know better I'd be expecting them to share photos of their grandkids, well,
Putin's grandkids anyway.
Optics are important and this image captures what both parties wanted to convey. This
meeting is the beginning of a shift in the relationship between Germany and Russia for the
better.
And the question is why?
The obvious answer is necessity brought about by pressure being placed on both countries by
Donald Trump through sanctions and tariffs and their shared interests represented by the
Nordstream 2 pipeline.
But, this meeting went far deeper than that, especially since Merkel's Foreign Minister
Heiko Maas boldly proclaimed that Europe needs an alternative to the SWIFT system of
international electronic payments so as to keep global trade alive while the U.S. further
weaponizes the U.S. dollar.
The U.S. just seized another $5 billion of Russian 'oligarch' money using Credit Suisse as
its enforcement arm.
SWIFT is the main lever on which much of the U.S.'s sanctions power rests. Because it is
through SWIFT that transactions can be tracked, payments halted and fines imposed. That none of
this is strictly legal is irrelevant in the game of power-politics.
Banks like Credit Suisse can't function without access to SWIFT.
So they will roll over to the pressure. That's why the response from EU leadership to
Trump's abandoning the JCPOA has been far more bark than bite. Because the measures implemented
to protect European businesses from U.S. retaliation against them hold no weight with the
companies staring at billions in losses.
Case in point: France's Total pulling out of a multi-billion exploration deal with Iran.
This undermines the EU's credibility at a foundational level. It shows them to be the
toothless and, in EU President Donald Tusk's case, witless when faced with opposition to their
rule that isn't supported by The Davos Crowd, which Trump most definitely doesn't
represent.
So, again, the question is why?
All of this seems incredibly contradictory, at times even to a jaded and cynical observer
like me. Until you step back for a second and think bigger picture and ask the most important
question of all.
What are Trump's real goals?
It's Good to Have Goals
And I've talked about these in the past. His real goal is the destruction of that post WWII
institutional order which in his mind bankrupts the U.S. treasury through massive trade
deficits.
And in a word that means . NATO.
Trump goal is the dissolution of NATO. He wants it dismantled because it is a massive drain
on our capital base. Building weapons and maintaining bases in Europe is expensive and that
money is needed here. He knows this.
Even the mere hint of this has The Davos Crowd in apoplexy. Hence, the post-Helsinki freak
out. Hence, the drive to impeach him over Stormy Freaking Daniels. It's pathetic.
I said back in June that Trump's leaving the JCPOA was all part of his strategy to drive a
wedge between the U.S. and Germany. The Davos Crowd needs that deal to keep the dream of transferring the power of the world
back to Europe from the U.S. via cheap, Iranian energy and keep the conflict between
Israel/Saudi Arabia and Iran front and center to foment global chaos awhile keeping Russia from
getting rich again.
It needs that to support the narrative we need NATO to protect us from the inevitable
Russian attack after we provoke them into it. This keeps the money flowing through the banks
and lobbyists while draining the U.S. dry through the military/industrial complex.
The problem is that that narrative is garbage. And despite relentless Russia bashing since
before Trump was elected, the American people overwhelmingly want peace with Russia, not
war.
Poland and the Baltics sound like Democrats unhinged hysterical children over the 'threat of
Russian aggression.'
This is why Trump is also pressuring Turkey at the same time. He knows Europe is vulnerable
to Turkey's implosion. Turkey and Germany are major trading partners and the vast bulk of
Turkey's foreign currency exposure is owned by European banks, making them, as
I've said previously, Ground Zero for the debt bomb.
So the final question then is this.
Has this been Trump's goal the entire time? Is this what Trump and Putin discussed behind
closed doors in Helsinki?
The NATO Wedge
By driving a wedge between Germany and the US over NATO and attacking the foundations of
the German economy Trump is ensuring the current rapprochement between Germany and Russia?
Merkel, for her part, has been so terminally weakened by her immigration policy and
strong-armed approach to dissent that this whirlwind weekender by Putin was as much for her
benefit, politically, as his.
The implication being that if Merkel wants to stay in power with her weakening coalition and
poll numbers it's time for her to reverse course. And if that means cozying up to Russia then
so be it.
Merkel will continue to talk a good game about Crimea and Ukraine while Putin will speak
directly to the German people about ending the humanitarian crisis in Syria as a proxy for
ending the threat of further immigration.
This outflanks Merkel's position and undermines George Soros' goals of the cultural
destruction of Europe. At this point, politically, how can Merkel even argue against that
without betraying her true loyalties?
And that's what makes the implications of this Summit-That-Wasn't so interesting.
If this is indeed the case then the future of the world rests on the mid-term elections and
whether Trump is not indicted for having sex with a couple of porn stars.
I almost feel dirty writing that.
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The antagonism between Saudi Arabia and Iran sets off a variety of political reverberations
affecting the countries of the Persian Gulf, unsettling the situation between Turkey, Syria,
and Iraq, and entangling Russia and the United States in the ensuring imbroglio.
... ... ...
The role of the Russian Federation cannot be viewed apart from what is happening in the
energy-rich, formerly Soviet Central Asian republics. The so-called -Stans (Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan) are major players in today's energy markets. Whatever
they do, however, cannot be seen as separate from what Russia is doing or from Russia's
intentions. Although some of them, primarily Azerbaijan, have initiated projects that are not
aligned with Moscow's goals, they nevertheless need to behave in ways that do not upset their
powerful northern neighbour on whom they are heavily reliant, to some extent, for their welfare
(due to their dependence on oil and gas pipeline networks).
Politics is therefore deeply intertwined with energy in most of those cases, bringing
diplomacy front and centre as a determinant of behaviour and economic outcomes.
... ... ...
Europe's problem is that, with the exception of North Sea oil and gas, it relies entirely on
imports to provide it with a comfortable level of energy. Thus, events in the Middle East and
the Russian stance toward the continent determines whether it is adequately supplied with
energy or faces shortages.
The deposits in the North Sea have kept some European states (Britain and Scandinavia among
others) well supplied for quite a while. But unfortunately there is a strong suspicion that
these deposits are diminishing at a dangerous rate. As a result Europe will gradually become
dependent on imports from the Middle East, North Africa, Russia, and the Atlantic (Angola,
Brazil, Mexico, and the US). The situation is disquieting since Japan, and more recently,
China, are seeking to buy their own supplies from the same sources.
"...Things started to change after the fracking and shale gas revolution. The United
States suddenly realized that it could not only became absolutely self-sufficient in oil and
gas, but it also emerged as one of the most important exporters to the rest of the
world..."
Ths is factually untrue. The US still depends on crude oil imports to meet its needs. And
if this simple, verifiable fact is misunderstood by the author, then I have to wonder about
the rest of his analysis...
From the middle of the last century to the present, everything has been about oil. The
peak oilers were correct. What they did not consider was the power of debt to hold this whole
thing together long after it should have collapsed. Shale oil is not profitable. That does
not mater as long as debt underwrites the cost of production. What does matter is the rapid
decline rate of shale oil wells. Yes it is true that shale wells are continuing to produce
long after they have reached their peak but it is the volume of production that matters.
If you read the projections put out by the Hirsch Report, the Llyiods Report and the
Bundeswehr Report, things should get interesting in the next couple of years.
You can always count on the neocons in Congress to ignore reality, ignore evidence, and
ignore common sense in their endless drive to get us involved in another war.
Last week, for example, Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-NC), Bob Menendez
(D-NJ), and others joined up to introduce what Senator Graham called "the sanctions bill from
hell," aimed at applying "crushing" sanctions on Russia.
Senator Graham bragged that the bill would include "everything but the kitchen sink" in its
attempt to ratchet up tensions with Russia.
Sen Cory Gardner (R-CO) bragged that the new sanctions bill "includes my language requiring
the State Department to determine whether Russia merits the designation of a State Sponsor of
Terror."
Does he even know what the word "terrorism" means?
Sen Ben Cardin (D-MD) warns that the bill must be passed to strengthen our resolve against
"Vladimir Putin's pattern of corroding democratic institutions and values around the world, a
direct and growing threat to US national security."
What has Russia done that warrants "kitchen sink" sanctions that will "crush" the country
and possibly designate it as a sponsor of terrorism? Sen. Menendez tells us:
"The Kremlin continues to attack our democracy, support a war criminal in Syria, and
violate Ukraine's sovereignty."
There is a big problem with these accusations on Russia : they're based on outright lies and
unproven accusations that continue to get more bizarre with each re-telling .
How strange that when US Senators like Menendez demand that we stand by our NATO allies even
if it means war, they attack Russia for doing the same in Syria. Is the Syrian president a "war
criminal," as he claims? We do know that his army is finally, with Russian and Iranian help,
about to defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda, which with US backing for seven years have turned Syria into
a smoking ruin. Does Menendez and his allies prefer ISIS in charge of Syria?
And how hypocritical for Menendez to talk about Russia violating Ukraine's sovereignty. The
unrest in Ukraine was started by the 2014 US-backed coup against an elected leader. We have
that all on tape!
How is Russia "attacking our democracy"? We're still waiting for any real evidence that
Russia was involved in our 2016 elections and intends to become involved in our 2018 elections.
But that doesn't stop the propagandists, who claim with no proof that Russia was behind the
election of Donald Trump.
These Senators claim that sanctions will bring the Russians to heel, but they are wrong.
Sanctions are good at two things only: destroying the lives of innocent civilians and leading
to war.
As I mentioned in an episode of my Liberty Report last week, even our own history shows that
sanctions do lead to war and should not be taken lightly. In the run-up to US involvement in
the War of 1812, the US was doing business with both France and the UK, which were at war with
each other. When the UK decided that the US was favoring France in its commerce, it imposed
sanctions on the US. What did Washington do in response? Declared war. Hence the War of 1812,
which most Americans remember as that time when the British burned down the White House.
Recent polls show that the majority of Americans approve of President Trump's recent meeting
with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Among Republicans, a vast majority support the meeting.
Perhaps a good defeat in November will wake these neocon warmongers up. Let's hope so!
CIA whistleblower Kevin Shipp says that the
mainstream
media is laser-focused on the recent Cohen plea and the Manafort conviction,
both of which have nothing to do with "Russian collusion."
He says
this is because the mainstream media are conspirators and have nothing to do
with real news.
"They have, from their editors on down and their corporate owners,
an objective and, in this case, to remove Donald Trump. He stands
against everything that they are, the Left or the 'Dark Left' as I
call it.
Trump
is actually confronting the Shadow Government and Deep State, and he
has them shaking.
He has the news media shaking that pushes
these really leftist things. So,
they
are intentionally and on purpose blocking the news and deleting the
news about things like this soft coup, the (phony) dossier
."
This is a very powerful interview. If you have the time, we suggest you
watch it in its entirety. It is just over 37 minutes long.
Shipp went on to detail the truth: "The MSM will not tell you the latest
revelation and that is
Bruce
Ohr, who was the fourth highest ranking official in the Obama Justice
Department (DOJ), wrote the now infamous phony Trump Dossier which was
used to apply for fraudulent federal wiretaps (with the FISA Court) to
spy on Trump.
"
Trending Articles
Massive Russian-Chinese Joint War Games Will
Feature
Over the past half year the West has increasingly
taken note of the significantly heightened pace of
both Chinese and
Shipp says all of this investigating started with Bruse Ohr, and he'll
be the next to lose his security clearance.
"It all started from the fake dossier which led eventually to the
appointment of Robert Mueller (Special Prosecutor) and the entire
foundation is based on a falsity. . . .
I
understand the next revocation of security clearance is probably
going to be Bruce Ohr because he crafted the fake dossier with
Christopher Steele, and he may even have written the thing...
After the FBI supposedly fired Christopher Steele, Bruce Ohr had at
least 70 communications (with Steele) back and forth talking about
the 'firewall' is still there to protect us
. Recent
accounts show that Bruce Ohr either wrote the dossier with
Christopher Steele or he wrote it himself in communication with
Christopher Steele." –
Kevin
Shipp
When Hunter asked Shipp if the dossier meant to frame Trump came
directly from the FBI and the DOJ, Shipp confirmed that it did.
"Yes. Oh, they coordinated it for sure.
There are 70 emails
back and forth between Ohr and Steele crafting the dossier. So, the
FBI and Department of Justice were intimately involved with the
creation and publication of that dossier."
"They even went further than that. The FBI and CIA
counter-intelligence even placed an agent inside the Trump
campaign."
-Kevin
Shipp
Shipp concluded that a Civil War in the making right now.
"I
think we are at the beginning of a civil war. You've got the 'Dark Left'
and you've got the Conservative people, the Constitutionalists.
In
progressivism, one of its tenets is to change the Constitution,
especially the First Amendment, and uproot traditional America.
Whatever
happens in November is going to intensify that
. . . . Their
attack is against Christians and the Constitution."
History has a velocity of its own, and its implacable forces
will
drag
the good, the bad, the clueless, the clever, the guilty, the
innocent, the avid, and the unwilling to a certain fate.
One
can easily see a convergence of vectors shoving the nation
toward political criticality this autumn.
Mr. Trump is like some unfortunate dumb brute of the ancient
Teutonic forests with a bulldog clamped to his nose, the rest of
the pack close behind snapping at his hamstrings and soft,
swaying underbelly.
His
desperate bellowing goes unanswered by the indifference of the
trees in forest, the cold moon above, and all the other
furnishings of his tragic reality.
As these things tend to happen, it looks like the exertions of
Robert Mueller have turned from the alleged grave offenses of a
foreign enemy to the sequela of consort with a floozie. Down
goes Mr. Trump's private attorney, Michael Cohen, in his
personal swamp of incriminating files and audio recordings.
Enter, stage left, one David Pecker, publisher of the venerable
National
Enquirer
-- the newspaper of wreckage -- on his slime-trail
of induced testimony. And there is your impeachable offense: an
illegal campaign contribution.
ne way or another
, as Blondie used to sing,
I'm gonna getcha, getcha, getcha
.
Some in this greatest of all possible republics may be asking
themselves if this is quite fair play, given the hundreds of
millions of dollars washed-and-rinsed through the laundromat
known as the Clinton Foundation, and related suspicious doings
in that camp of darkness. But remember, another president, Jimmy
Carter, once declared to the shock of official Washington that
"life
is unfair."
What I wonder is what these dogs of vengeance reckon will happen
when they achieve their goal of bringing down the bellowing bull
and pulling his guts out.
Perhaps a few moments of
tribal satisfaction, one last war dance around the fire, and
when the fire dies out, they will find themselves under the same
cold indifferent moon with blood on their snouts and an ill wind
blowing in the tree tops.
After two years of fomenting hysteria, the "winners" will
discern the reality behind all the melodrama:
the
financialization rackets that replaced what used to be the
economy have come unglued, and institutions begin to fail left
and right
: banks, pension funds, corporations, state
and municipal governments, federal promises to pay this and
that, and, in general, the ability of the USA to carry on
anything approximating what might be considered normal life.
It will be interesting to see how the impeachment of Donald
Trump plays as all this goes down.
My
guess is that the people warning about a second civil war are
not far off the mark.
The final consequence of a
political-economy based on the proposition that
anything
goes and nothing matters
will be the rueful discovery that
consequences actually exist, and
consequently
that
anything can't go and some things really do matter: like whether
or not money is actually worth what it says it's worth.
That issue will surely be determined by whether the borrowers of
money can possibly pay back what they owe. The discovery that
it's impossible will coincide with whatever the legal fate of
Donald Trump's presidency might be. The result of all this is
apt to be a political nightmare of bankruptcy and bloodshed that
makes the first civil war (1861-1865) look like a tale of
knighthood in flower.
Our national living arrangements are far too fragile.
The
players on both sides of this dire game must assume that the
trappings of American life are sturdy, and they are quite wrong
about that. Personalities are not in control anymore. Murphy's
law rules, and we're about to find out how that law differs from
the federal election statutes and the humdrum business of
indicting ham sandwiches just because they're out there on the
table.
Neocon Thomas Friedman is a typical chichenhawk. His opinion does not
matter much -- this is a paid work of a lobbyist for military industrial
complex
But the idea that interests of "real manufactures" and financial
industry are no longer aligned is valid.
Notable quotes:
"... The conflict between transnational financial capitalism and productive national capitalism has entered into a paroxystic phase. On one side, Presidents Trump and Putin are negotiating the joint defence of their national interests. On the other, the major daily newspaper for the US and the world is accusing the US President of high treason, while the armed forces of the US and NATO are preparing for war with Russia and China. ..."
The conflict between
transnational financial capitalism and productive national capitalism has entered into a
paroxystic phase. On one side, Presidents Trump and Putin are negotiating the joint defence
of their national interests. On the other, the major daily newspaper for the
US and the world is accusing the US President of high treason, while the
armed forces of the US and NATO are preparing for war with Russia and China.
"You have attacked our democracy. Your well-worn gamblers' denials do not interest us. If
you continue with this attitude, we will consider it an act of war." This is what Trump should
have said to Putin at the Helsinki Summit, in the opinion of famous New York Times
editorialist Thomas Friedman, published in La Repubblica . He went on to accuse the
Russian President of having "attacked NATO, a fundamental pillar of international security,
destabilised Europe, and bombed thousands of Syrian refugees, causing them to seek refuge in
Europe."
He then accused the President of the United States of having " repudiated his oath on the
Constitution " and of being an " asset of Russian Intelligence " or at least playing at being
one.
What Friedman expressed in these provocative terms corresponds to the position of a powerful
internal and international front (of which the New York Times is an important
mouthpiece) opposed to USA-Russia negotiations, which should continue with the invitation of
Putin to the White House. But there is a substantial difference.
While the negotiations have not yet borne fruit, opposition to the negotiations has been
expressed not only in words, but especially in facts.
Cancelling out the climate of détente at the Helsinki Summit, the planetary
warmongering system of the United States is in the process of intensifying the preparations for
a war reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific:
After the landing of an US armoured
brigade in Anvers, totalling a hundred tanks and a thousand military vehicles, a US aerial
brigade landed in Rotterdam with sixty attack helicopters. These forces and others, all of them
USA/NATO, are deployed along the borders of Russian territory, in the framework of operation
Atlantic Resolve , launched in 2014 against " Russian aggression. " In its anti-Russian
function, Poland asked for the permanent presence of an armoured US unit on its own territory,
offering to pay between 1.5 - 2 billion dollars per year.
At the same time, NATO is
intensifying the training and armament of troops in Georgia and Ukraine, candidates for entry
into membership of the Alliance on the frontiers with Russia.
Meanwhile, the US Congress received
with all honours Adriy Parubiy, founder of the National-Social Party (on the model of Adolf
Hitler's National-Socialist Party), head of the neo-Nazi paramilitary formations employed by
NATO in the Maïdan Square putsch.
NATO command in Lago Patria (JFC
Naples) – under the orders of US Admiral James Foggo, who also commands the US naval
forces in Europe and those in Africa – is working busily to organise the grand-scale
exercise Trident Juncture 18 , in which will participate 40,000 military personnel, 130
aircraft and 70 ships from more than 30 countries including Sweden and Finland, which are NATO
partners. The exercise, which will take place in October in Norway and the adjacent seas, will
simulate a scenario of " collective defence " - naturally enough, against " Russian aggression.
"
In the Pacific, the major naval
exercise RIMPAC 2018 (27 June to 2 August) is in full swing - organised and directed by
USINDOPACOM, the US Command which covers the Indian and Pacific oceans – with the
participation of 25,000 sailors and marines, more than 50 ships and 200 war-planes.
The exercise – in which France, Germany and the United Kingdom are also participating
– is clearly directed against China, which Admiral Phil Davidson, commander of
USINDOPACOM, defines as a "major rival power which is eroding the international order in order
to reduce the access of the USA to the region and thus become hegemonic."
When Trump meets Chinese President Xi Jinping, Friedman will no doubt accuse him of
connivance not only with the Russian enemy, but also with the Chinese enemy.
"... Duncan described herself as an avid supporter of President Trump, but said she was moved by four full boxes of exhibits provided by Mueller's team – though she was skeptical about prosecutors' motives in the financial crimes case. ..."
"... Though Duncan said the jury was not political in its conviction, she said she was skeptical of prosecutors' intentions, which she implied were political. ..."
A juror who sat on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's
case said on
Fox
News Wednesday night
that a
lone
juror prevented a ruling on all 18 counts against Manafort.
Juror
Paula Duncan said a lone juror could not come to a guilty verdict on
10 charges, forcing judge T.S. Ellis III to declare a mistrial on 10
of Manafort's 18 counts.
"It was one person who kept the verdict from being guilty on all 18
counts," Duncan, 52, said. She added that Mueller's team of
prosecutors often seemed bored, apparently catnapping during parts
of the trial.
In an exclusive interview on
@
foxnewsnight
,
Paul Manafort juror Paula Duncan said Special
Counsel Robert Mueller's team was one holdout
juror away from convicting Paul Manafort on all
18 counts of bank and tax fraud.
https://
fxn.ws/2Mrmrzb
While the identities of the jurors have been closely held, kept
under seal by Judge T.S. Ellis III at Tuesday's conclusion of the
high-profile trial, Duncan gave a behind-the-scenes account to Fox
News on Wednesday, after the jury returned a guilty verdict against
the former Trump campaign chairman on eight financial crime counts
and deadlocked on 10 others.
Duncan described herself as an avid supporter of President Trump,
but said she was moved by four full boxes of exhibits provided by
Mueller's team – though she was skeptical about prosecutors' motives
in the financial crimes case.
"Certainly Mr. Manafort got caught breaking the law, but he
wouldn't have gotten caught if they weren't after President
Trump," Duncan said of the special counsel's case, which she
separately described as a "witch hunt to try to find Russian
collusion," borrowing a phrase Trump has used in tweets more
than 100 times.
Though Duncan said the jury was not political in its conviction, she
said she was skeptical of prosecutors' intentions, which she implied
were political.
Following a lengthy jury deliberation, former
Trump
campaign
manager Paul Manafort was
convicted
on
eight counts, including tax fraud, failure to disclose
foreign bank accounts, and bank fraud –
even
though jurors were still hung on another ten counts
:
"If we cannot come to a consensus for a single count, how can we
fill in the verdict sheet?" the jurors asked in the note.
"It is your duty to agree upon a verdict if you can do so," said
Ellis, who encouraged each juror to make their own decisions on
each count. If some were in the minority on a decision, however,
they could think about the other jurors' conclusions.
Notably, the case has nothing
to
do
with "Trump, the Trump campaign or the 2016 US election" – it
has to do with work Manafort did with former Ukranian President
Victor Yanukovych from 2005-2014.
The
case was referred to the federal prosecutors in the Southern
District of New York (SDNY) by Special Investigator
Robert
Mueller
who also referred Democrat superlobbyist Tony Podesta
for prosecution as part of similar work he did for Yanukovych.
All of this begs the question – if Tony Podesta committed the same
crimes as Paul Manafort, why hasn't the SDNY brought charges against
him?
Last year, Tucker Carlson exposed just how close Tony Podesta and
the
Podesta
Group
were to the Ukranian and Russian governments...
...which was summed up in the below list originally complied by
iBankCoin
–
detailing Manafort's close ties with the Podesta Group regarding
Russian
/Ukranian
lobbying:
Lobbyist and temporary Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort
is at the center of the Russia probe – however the scope of
the investigation has broadened to include his activities
prior to the 2016 election.
Manafort worked with the Podesta Group since at least
2011 on behalf of Russian interests
, and was at the
Podesta Group offices "all the time, at least once a
month," peddling Russian influence through a shell group
called the
European
Centre for a Modern Ukraine
(ECMU).
Manafort brought a "parade" of Russian oligarchs to congress
for meetings with members and their staffs, however, the
Russia's
"central effort" was the Obama Administration.
In 2013,
John
Podesta recommended that Tony hire David Adams, Hillary
Clinton's chief adviser at the State Department, giving them
a "direct liaison" between the group's Russian clients and
Hillary Clinton's State Department.
In late 2013 or early 2014,
Tony
Podesta and a representative for the Clinton Foundation met
to discuss how to help Uranium One
– the Russian
owned company that controls 20 percent of American Uranium
Production – and whose board members gave over $100 million
to the Clinton Foundation.
"
Tony
Podesta was basically part of the Clinton Foundation."
Believing she would win the 2016 election,
Russia
considered the Podesta Group's connection to Hillary highly
valuable
.
Podesta Group is a nebulous organization with no board
oversight and all financial decisions made by Tony Podesta.
Carlson's source said
payments
and kickbacks could be hard for investigators to trace,
describing it as a "highly secret treasure trove."
One
employee's only official job was to manage Tony Podesta's
art
collection
, which could be used to conceal
financial transactions.
Trending Articles
"Thank God This Is Happening" Russia Says Time
Has Come To
With the US unveiling a new set of sanctions
against Russia on Friday, Moscow said it would
definitely respond to
Additionally, Zerohedge
explained
why
this list is so significant:
emails obtained by the Associated Press showed that Gates
personally directed two Washington lobbying firms,
Mercury
LLC and the Podesta Group, between 2012 and 2014 to set up
meetings between a top Ukrainian official and senators and
congressmen on influential committees involving Ukrainian
interests
. Gates noted in the emails that the official,
Ukraine's foreign minister, did not want to use his own embassy
in the United States to help coordinate the visits.
And this is where the plot thickens,
because
while the bulk of the press has so far spun the entire Ukraine
lobbying scandal, which led to Manafort's resignation, as the
latest "proof" that pro-Moscow powers were influencing not only
Manafort but the Trump campaign in general (who some democrats
have even painted of being a Putin agent), the reality is that a
firm closely tied with the Democratic party, the Podesta Group,
is just as implicated.
As AP further adds, the European Center for a Modern Ukraine, a
Brussels-linked nonprofit entity which allegely ran the lobbying
project,
paid
Mercury and the Podesta Group a combined $2.2 million over
roughly two years.
In papers filed in the U.S. Senate,
Mercury and the Podesta Group listed the European nonprofit as
an independent, nonpolitical client. The firms said the center
stated in writing that it was not aligned with any foreign
political entity.
In other words, the Podesta Group was likely
as
much or even more complicit in any wrongdoing than Manafort was
.
Of course, none of this stopped
Mueller
from
offering
Podesta immunity – in exchange for testimony against Manafort:
It is not as though Manafort is blameless or guilt-free in his
conduct – and according to Corey Lewandowski,
President
Trump
himself was not particularly fond of
some
of
his conduct on the campaign trail, at one point
lowering
his helicopter
to berate him via cell phone:
While were in the air, heading for Delaware, somebody -- I think it
was Ann Coulter -- tweeted out
a
quote from Manafort saying that Trump shouldn't be on television
anymore
, that he shouldn't do the Sunday shows. And
from now on Manafort would do all shows. Because he's the
fucking expert, right? Not Trump, who had already turned the
whole primary race on its head
"Yes, sir," Hope said, "Paul said he doesn't want you on TV."
Trump went fucking ballistic. We were still over the New York
metropolitan area, where you can get cell service if you fly at
a low altitude.
"Lower it!" Trump yelled to the pilot. "I have to make a call."
He got Manafort on the phone, "Did you say I shouldn't be on TV
on Sunday??" Manafort could barely hear him because of the
helicopter motor. But Trump said,
"I'll
go on TV anytime I goddamn fucking want and you won't say
another fucking word about me! Tone it down? I wanna turn it up!
I don't wanna tone anything down! I played along with your
delegate charts, but I have had enough."
He got Paul on the phone and completely decimated him again
verbally. Ripped his fucking head off. I wish I'd recorded it,
because it was one of the greatest takedowns in the history of
the world.
"You're a political pro? Let me tell you something. I'm a pro at
life. I've been around a time or two. I know guys like you, with
your hair and your skin "
and again, according to Lewandowski, Trump was unaware of
Manafort's connections when he took the job, but was seriously
unhappy about them after they were released to the press:
"It's all lies," Manafort said. "My lawyers are fighting it."
"But if it's in the paper someone has to give Trump a heads-up,
because if it's in the paper, it's reality."
Just as Steve had thought, the story ran the next day, August
15, on Page One, above the fold.
"I've got a crook running my campaign," Trump said when he read
it.
However, in spite of his apparent misgivings for Manafort, Trump has
decided to support him – ostensibly because he did not cave to the
outrageous demands of the Mueller "
investigation
":
I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his
wonderful family. "Justice" took a 12 year old
tax case, among other things, applied tremendous
pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he
refused to "break" - make up stories in order to
get a "deal." Such respect for a brave man!
....and why hasn't the Podesta brother been
charged and arrested, like others, after being
forced to close down his very large and
successful firm? Is it because he is a VERY well
connected Democrat working in the Swamp of
Washington, D.C.?
...the Podesta brothers are both well-connected swamp creatures, on
the same political team as the
uber-politicized
SDNY
assigned to levy charges against them.
CIA spies operating within the Kremlin have suddenly "gone to ground" according to the
New York
Times , citing American officials clearly abusing their security clearances.
The officials do not think their sources have been compromised or killed - rather, they've
been spooked into silence amid "more aggressive counterintelligence by Moscow, including
efforts to kill spies," according to the Times, pointing to the still-unsolved March poisoning
of former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal in the UK.
Curiously, the Times immediately suggests that the lack of intelligence is " leaving the CIA
and other spy agencies in the dark about precisely what Mr. Putin's intentions are for
November's midterm elections. "
But American intelligence agencies have not been able to say precisely what are Mr.
Putin's intentions : He could be trying to tilt the midterm elections, simply sow chaos or
generally undermine trust in the democratic process . - NYT
There it is. Of course, buried towards the end of the article is this admission:
But officials said there has been no concrete intelligence pointing to Mr. Putin ordering
his own intelligence units to wade into the election to push for a certain outcome , beyond a
broad chaos campaign to undermine faith in American democracy.
Meanwhile, "current and former officials" tell the Times that the outing of FBI spy Stefan
Halper, who infiltrated the Trump campaign, had a " chilling effect on intelligence collection
."
"... Trump is being promoted by the MSM as the leader of the deplorables – an orange straw man. I support him to the degree that he is confounding the deep state elites and social engineering. ..."
Here is my take on the priorities of the deep state and its public face – the
MSM:
stopping the deplorable rebellion
cutting off the head of the rebellion – perceived as Trump
reinstating the Cold War in an effort to derail Rusisa's recovery and international
leadership role
bitch slapping China
The rest involves turning unsustainable debt into establishment of a feudal world
comprised of elites living on Mount Olympus, legions of vassals and a vast sea of cerebrally
castrated peasants to serve as a reservoir for any imaginable exploitation.
Upon further reflection, Trump is being promoted by the MSM as the leader of the
deplorables – an orange straw man. I support him to the degree that he is confounding
the deep state elites and social engineering.
The powerful always want more power.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
June 26, 2016
"Brexit: Are The Serfs Finally Rebelling"?
The establishment are shocked that the ordinary people want out of the European Union
(EU). They just don't realize that people are fed up being used, abused, dictated to, lied
to, manipulated, and forced into an EU dictatorship by treacherous politicians.
These are some of the same politicians who scurry to the meetings of the so-called elites
in Davos, and also attend Bilderberg meetings. And many of them, when they leave politics,
finish up on the boards of banks and multi-national corporations with the rest of the
money-manipulating bandits that got bailed out with taxpayers' dollars, some of whom, I
believe, should be in jail .
"... The Republican elite (and the Democratic elite) have always wanted Pence for President, and they may yet get their wish. But not yet. ..."
"... It also seems weird to conceptualise hush money to a porn star as 'campaign finance violations'. But what do I know. ..."
"... There are three impeachable offenses: treason, bribery and the more opaque "high crimes and misdemeanors," but the House of Representatives has the responsibility to accuse the president of one of those things. If a majority in the House agrees, a president is then impeached. The Senate then votes on impeachment, which under the U.S. Constitiution requires a two-thirds majority. ..."
"... I am not sure that hush money being paid to the porn star the President was banging in order that his pregnant wife not find out was precisely what the Founding Fathers had in mind by 'High crimes and misdemeanors ..."
"... the timing of the payment/catch-and-kill story, well after the incidents but immediately before the election, make that clear: their purpose was to avoid extramarital affairs with adult entertainers from turning into October Surprises. ..."
This is bad for Trump but not unexpected. Despite the figleaf of 'Russian collusion' the
main brief of Mueller was 'find out bad stuff about Trump and his associates' and of course
it was almost inevitable that he would find such stuff because Trump and his cronies are
scumbags who exist to break the law. This is the reality of capitalism (as has been pointed
out 'crony capitalism' is the only kind of capitalism that has ever existed or ever will
exist). Congress might or might not accept it, but the Senate (even more viciously
'gerrymandered' albeit de facto) won't yet. So Trump won't go down, not yet.
The only way that Trump will go down, IMHO is if and when the Republican establishment
decide that they have got everything out of him that they're going to get, which means after
the next Presidential election. Assuming he wins it, he may be ditched quickly. The
Republican elite (and the Democratic elite) have always wanted Pence for President, and they
may yet get their wish. But not yet.
In terms of the current situation, Manafort is simply irrelevant. Cohen is relevant, but
paying a porn start off because you are worried your wife might find out that you are a
philanderer: it seems a stretch to interpret that as 'trying to influence an election'
although I can sort of see the logic (I suppose Bill Clinton's behaviour vis a vis Monica
Lewinsky was ultimately political too).
It also seems weird to conceptualise hush money to a porn star as 'campaign finance
violations'. But what do I know.
'The Republicans simply don't care, and nothing will make them care.'
To be fair, I don't care either, and nothing will make me care.
Anyway, back in the real world .
'Michael Cohen, who spent a decade as a lawyer for Trump, told a judge Tuesday that he was
directed by Trump to coordinate payments to two women designed to prevent them from
disclosing alleged affairs with the real estate mogul before the presidential election, in
violation of campaign finance law.
Such an explosive assertion against anyone but the president would suggest that a criminal
case could be in the offing, but under long-standing legal interpretations by the Justice
Department, the president cannot be charged with a crime.
The department produced legal analyses in 1973 and 2000 concluding that the Constitution
does not allow for the criminal indictment of a sitting president.
In comments to reporters after Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felony counts in federal
court in Manhattan, Deputy U.S. Attorney Robert Khuzami said prosecutors were sending a
message that they are unafraid to file charges when campaign finance laws are broken. But he
did not mention Trump or offer any indication that his office planned to pursue action
against the president.'
(Washington Post)
'Despite impeachment talk, it's no easy task to remove a president in such a way. Both
Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson were impeached, but both were acquitted by the Senate.
President Richard Nixon resigned before he could be removed from office.
There are three impeachable offenses: treason, bribery and the more opaque "high
crimes and misdemeanors," but the House of Representatives has the responsibility to accuse
the president of one of those things. If a majority in the House agrees, a president is then
impeached. The Senate then votes on impeachment, which under the U.S. Constitiution requires
a two-thirds majority.
In Trump's case, starting the impeachment process would currently require a mass revolt by
Republicans against him in the House of Representatives -- controlled by the GOP -- an event
even less likely than normal with midterm elections on the horizon.'
I am not sure that hush money being paid to the porn star the President was banging in
order that his pregnant wife not find out was precisely what the Founding Fathers had in mind
by 'High crimes and misdemeanors ,'
'I am no lawyer, but apparently if you spend that much money covering up your adultery to
avoid damage to your political campaign, that is a crime'.
I sort of see what you are saying, and of course, in a certain sense, what you say is not
only true but self-evidently and obviously true. Any politician engages in activities to gain
him or herself votes. All I am saying is that it doesn't seem like the most obvious way to
conceptualise these activities. CF Bill Clinton.
Presumably one of the key reasons that Clinton lied about the Lewinsky affair was because
he thought it would make him look bad and therefore lose him votes in the 2000 elections. And
in a sense it did (although others presumably voted for him 'cos they felt sorry for him).
But that seems like a weird way to conceptualise his activities.
Does it not seem more likely that Trump's main concern in paying the hush money was to
avoid his wife, who had just given birth, finding out? Obviously the effect on votes would be
of benefit to him, but I'm not sure that was his main concern.
Very serious. Cohen is obviously going to cooperate (if he hasn't begun already) on topics
far afield from his own charges, and Manafort must be thinking hard about doing the same
thing, now.
Lawfare does not mention the politics: this also boosts the possibility that
Democrats will take control of the House. Then they may wait for Mueller's report do the
heavy lifting before impeaching Trump and in the meantime start various committee
investigations of emoluments and the corruption elsewhere in the Administration.
The next two
years will be unremitting television news of more crime and corruption. If and when they
impeach Trump, even a Republican-controlled Senate will convict; the Senate only needs
2/3rds. The Senators all want to get rid of him; he makes it harder for them to run for
President themselves.
For now, they will all be watching the disapproval rating at someplace
reputable like FiveThirtyEight's aggregator. Tuesday's news will cycle into these figures, in
about a week or ten days. If it starts to tick downwards 3-5%, back to the levels in the last
half of 2017, Trump is toast sooner rather than later.
I too agree with most of what Hidari said here (and there), except for their last
paragraph here. To further clarify your statement, the issue is that the payment was
transparently not to keep Ms. Trump from finding out about Ms. Cliffords or Ms. McDougal
– the timing of the payment/catch-and-kill story, well after the incidents but
immediately before the election, make that clear: their purpose was to avoid extramarital
affairs with adult entertainers from turning into October Surprises.
These functioned as (unreported) in-kind donations, insofar as they were third-party
resources expended to for the explicit purpose of providing electoral support to the
candidate.
Hidari@ I am not sure that hush money being paid to the porn star the President was banging in
order that his pregnant wife not find out was precisely what the Founding Fathers had in mind
by 'High crimes and misdemeanors,'
It's intentionally
vague . It should be noted that when Johnson was impeached , one
of the eleven articles was "Bringing disgrace and ridicule to the presidency by his
aforementioned words and actions."
Again, though, the idea that the payoffs to Ms. Cliffords and Ms. McDougal were made to
prevent Ms. Trump from learning of the affairs defies all credibility when considering that
they occurred in the fall of 2016 rather than ten years earlier.
@Hidari it would be a strange way to conceptualise the activity if it was based purely on
the fact that the hush money was politically helpful. But:
"He told a judge in United States District Court in Manhattan that the payments to the
women were made "in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal
office," implicating the president in a federal crime.
"I participated in this conduct, which on my part took place in Manhattan, for the
principal purpose of influencing the election" for president in 2016, Mr. Cohen said."
So I don't really know how you can keep insisting this is an issue of conceptual
analysis
I don't think that a Congressional majority, and certainly not the 2/3 Senate majority
needed for removal, is going to feel much ethical pressure to impeach based on the list of
wrongdoing we know about so far, or that are at all likely to emerge.
Quite aside from the lack of gravity of the crimes on that list, none of them are a clear
betrayal of the electorate that decided he should be president. That electorate already knew
he was a Russophile, had even invited Russians to hack D computers, they knew that he was a
pussy-grabber, and that his privately-owned business was ethically challenged -- yet an
electoral majority voted him in anyway.
Removal on impeachment involves the legislature asserting its will and its judgment over
that of the people. Of course the legislature is also elected by the people to accomplish
duties that include holding the president to certain standards. But I don't see even a 2/3 D
Senate (which we would only get by the Rs losing every race up this year, plus about 15 of
them party-switching) having the cojones for such an assertion, certainly not when the
electorate already knew about the crimes when they voted for the criminal. The Rs have
cojones for such enterprises, and in spades, but not our beloved Ds.
And I don't see impeachment as a very useful strategy for the Ds to pursue. Even if
successful at removing Trump, that just gets you Pence -- just as public policy irrational,
only less politically disorganized.
Maybe impeachment comes up as a tactic, to facilitate some other plan of action, but I
don't see conviction on impeachment as a useful means of even control of Trump behavior, much
less removal.
If the Ds do have control of either house after the election, of course the usual that we
can expect of them is not very much. Even if they control both chambers, they couldn't
possibly have the 2/3 in both needed to run the govt by overriding the vetoes that any actual
program of theirs would be sure to attract from the president. Even with 2/3, because this is
a D 2/3 we're talking about, we can most likely discount the possibility that they would even
try to exercise any oversight over what the govt does in opposition to the president's
control.
An actual political party in this situation of even controlling a bare majority of just
the House could do a whole lot to not only thwart Trump, but to at least make a credible
effort at asserting control over the govt. They could of course block any new legislation, or
the repeal of any existing law, and even the actual Ds are probably up to that. But to go
further, to control or limit how Trump runs the govt under existing law, this D majority of
the House would have to be willing to boldly set sail on the sea of political hardball and
take up a career of budgetary hostage-taking -- so right off we should say that this is
political fanfic, and not even canonic fanfic.
But a girl can dream, can't he, so let's pursue this alternate reality just a bit. Who
knows, if Trump's misrule makes things sufficiently dire, maybe even the Ds will be motivated
to find their inner pirate.
To take ICE as an example, it would go something like this. The House only agrees to pass
the annual appropriations on a 30-day continuing resolution basis, so that their assent is
needed every 30-days to the govt doing anything. They pass all the spending except for the
ICE funding (keeping the funding for whatever ICE spends on housing and otherwise caring for
people already apprehended -- that funding goes with the funding of the rest of the govt),
which they hold back until and unless Senate and president agree to ICE funding that includes
new law that keeps ICE from doing family separations, and whatever else the Ds find
objectionable. After success getting control of ICE abuses, next month when the CRs come due,
they do the same maneuver on their next target of Trump misrule.
The risk is that the Rs, Senate and president, just refuse to agree to the omnibus that
funds everything else the govt does until the Ds let loose the ICE funding. There is a govt
shutdown, and the Ds run the risk of being blamed. It turns into a game of legislative
chicken. Of course, this has to be anti-canon fanfic for such a game to end other than by the
Ds swerving first, so the real world Ds will never actually even start the game, because
whatever their faults, they know their limitations.
Hidari #13: " they 'all' want to get rid of him now?"
The Republican Senate would be happy to throw him overboard tomorrow. His voters are the
problem. They won't wait for his voters to turn on him however, if the Senate receives a
lengthy bill of impeachment from a Democratic House and Mueller has signed off on some of the
charges.
They'd rather have Pence do the sanctimonious messaging and go into 2020 trying to
reconstruct the party with an open primary.
After all, the GOP stands to lose Senate seats in 2020 anyway, just due to the map (the
same problem they have this year, with the House). If the election in 76 days puts the
Democrats in charge of the House, Trump won't make it to the end of his term.
'To further clarify your statement, the issue is that the payment was transparently not
to keep Ms. Trump from finding out about Ms. Cliffords or Ms. McDougal – the timing
of the payment/catch-and-kill story, well after the incidents but immediately before the
election, make that clear: their purpose was to avoid extramarital affairs with adult
entertainers from turning into October Surprises. '
Oh ok, I didn't really understand that. I haven't to be honest, been following the Stormy
Daniels story too closely for the good reason that I don't care.
So one infers that the FL did in fact know about these things. Could we conceptualise it
thus, then: Trump paid the hush money to ensure that Melania was not publicly humiliated by
these things (I mean, humiliated even more than simply being married to Donald Trump)?
But obviously, in that case, Trump not wanting this to be a big story in the run up to the
election was obviously a 'thing'.
Much as I despise him, Orwell did make a valuable observation about euphemisms and the
English language:
****"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the
indefensible. ***
Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations,
the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which
are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of
political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism,
question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness."
Spot on!!!!
Oh .and Stooges
"You better watch out, you better not cry
Better not pout, I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is comin' to town
He's making a list and checking it twice
Gonna find out who's naughty and nice
Santa Claus is comin' to town
He sees you when you're sleepin'
He knows when you're a wake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake"
According to Richard Sambrook, who was the BBC's director of news from 2001, trouble
between the BBC and New Labour brewed when Britain intervened in Kosovo in 1999: Alastair
Campbell, then Blair's press secretary, accused the media of being too much in thrall to
Slobodan Milosevic's "lie machine". After 9/11, the stakes became much, much higher .
The crux came at 6.07am on 29 May 2003, when Andrew Gilligan reported on the Today
programme that, according to a source, the joint intelligence committee report on Saddam
Hussein's chemical and biological weapons capability had been "sexed up" by the government
with a claim that such weapons could be activated within 45 minutes of an order. That there
had been any deception was fiercely denied by the government and it was amid the ensuing
maelstrom that the story's source, Dr David Kelly, took his own life. Lord Hutton's
controversial and contested report into the death of the Ministry of Defence weapons expert
was deeply critical of the BBC and precipitated the resignation of both the director general,
Dyke, and the chairman, Gavyn Davies. That simultaneous toppling of the twin titans of the
BBC was an unprecedentedly traumatic event in the history of the corporation. It was made all
the more bitter by the fact that the struggle was fratricidal: Dyke's appointment as DG had
been controversial because he had been a donor to New Labour .
Sambrook continued: "I suppose in a sense what I'm saying is that Kelly was a kind of
mini-Edward Snowden story. He was saying that actually this intelligence has been completely
misused, and many people inside the tent knew it and were uncomfortable about it
"If Edward Snowden had contacted Panorama or Newsnight could they have done what the
Guardian did? No. No, they couldn't," he said.
"They might have been able to do a piece at a meta level, a headline level, but they could
not have done what the Guardian did with Snowden. I find it uncomfortable to say that, but
it's the truth. So what does that tell you about the BBC? It tells you that in the end there
is a limit to its independence – some would call that public accountability. It is a
wonderful news organisation. It does fantastic journalism every day. But there is a limit to
it. And I think in the end that was part of a miscalculation in the Kelly story. We thought
we were genuinely independent. And we weren't."
But how far is the BBC willing to take its journalism up against the establishment –
and the government, which in the end seals the BBC's fate? Other journalists I spoke to
within the BBC were much less sanguine. "The BBC is at its highest levels concerned with not
offending the establishment, not making enemies in important places. Its core purpose –
independent and impartial journalism – clashes with its survival instincts, and that
goes back to the beginning," said one senior journalist.
'Senior people at the BBC see themselves part of the establishment'
Another took an even bleaker view. "Newsgathering – covering the stuff that is
happening in the world – we do that brilliantly. The BBC newsgathering operation is
genuinely a wonder to perceive. But digging out original stories? No, sorry. Nor has it ever
done. When push comes to shove, senior people at the BBC consider themselves part of the
establishment."..
The employee called such managers, as well the departments in charge of editorial policy
and compliance, "journalism deterrent squads" who were strangling the efforts of colleagues
"like Japanese knotweed". Journalists are afraid of not being backed up by the BBC, added the
employee, when the pressure is on – and compared the corporation's approach with the
much more bullish, confident and "cheeky, risk-taking" stance of Channel 4 News. "The BBC
always buckles, always folds. You feel that as a journalist, they will abandon you; if you
take a risky story to them it's as if you are actively trying to get them into trouble. There
is an institutionalised anxiety and mistrust."
Peston said: "There is a risk-averse culture that means when the BBC wants people who can
break stories it has to look to recruit from outside. When the BBC is training young
journalists, it starts by telling them about the regulatory restraints: it starts with the
rules and says: 'Don't you dare break them'."
####
Plenty more at the link.
The simple fact is that s/he who holds the purse strings, holds the power –
regardless of how often or how rarely it is used. It casts a long shadow. And that's even
before you look at the size and scale of such organizations. Self-censorship? Certainly.
Admitting it publicly? Never.
There was no danger that I would mistake the BBC for an impartial and unbiased
investigative news source. However, Channel 4 with its 'cheeky, risk-taking stance' is no
better, as 'cheeky risk-taking' in British journalism still means backing establishment
positions when it comes to foreign policy. They might contribute to the odd cabinet
minister's sacking, but I could give a toss about Britain's internal politics, and it is only
its foreign-policy machinations I care about . And those are pretty much unvarying –
Uncle Sam, boffo. Putin, evil.
"... Since the 80s, the stock market capitalization to GDP ratio has been much higher than the historical norm, higher than when the US had higher rates of growth. ..."
"... In financialized economies with inflated asset prices, people have low savings and can't even afford to buy real estate or can only afford it by taking on lots of debt and having to depend on further price inflation so that they don't go underwater. In countries with financial repression, public debt tends to be low and interest rates tend to be low and capital gets directed towards industry ..."
"... Well like I said earlier, this is a matter of one's values and views on political economy. If one prefers asset price inflation and a capital structure of heavily indebted households and young adults, then there's nothing wrong and everything is rosy. ..."
"... Household income overall, not just wages, has stagnated. ..."
Whether it's an irrational criticism or not depends on one's values and
views on political economy. To some, the financial sector has manifestly
failed at allocating capital properly and is filled with rent seeking. Others
will point to its size and the capitalization of financial markets as evidence
of its value and importance.
What's the evidence that it has failed at allocating capital successfully?
No shortage of rent-seeking of course. But if there's one thing I've
learned it's that bagholders are gonna bag. This isn't some hypothetical either, look at countries without sophisticated
financial markets. People are forced to save by speculating in real estate,
and credit is often not available to business unless the state makes it
available (perfectly reasonable in such economies to be fair).
Since the 80s, the stock market capitalization to GDP ratio has been
much higher than the historical norm, higher than when the US had higher
rates of growth.
There have been several bubbles, and consumer debt has
risen significantly while income has stagnated and startup formation is
at a 40 year low. Capital allocation has been very unproductive. It's caused
lots of asset price inflation and increased debt without producing new assets
and income streams. Capital allocation is highly centralized and it has
the same problems communist economies have with central planning where capital
is centralized in the state. A lot of unproductive activity and rent seeking.
In financialized economies with inflated asset prices, people have low
savings and can't even afford to buy real estate or can only afford it by
taking on lots of debt and having to depend on further price inflation so
that they don't go underwater. In countries with financial repression, public
debt tends to be low and interest rates tend to be low and capital gets
directed towards industry.
Since the 80s, the stock market capitalization to GDP ratio has been
much higher than the historical norm, higher than when the US had higher
rates of growth.
Stock prices were unusually low in the 1970s, as epitomized by BusinessWeek's
famous 1979 The Death of Equities cover. In addition to reversion to the mean, several other factors made stocks
more valuable since that time.
The collapse of inflation and interest rates increased the net present
value of stocks, the rise of emerging markets with poor domestic capital
markets increased foreign demand for stocks, America's persistent trade
deficit further increased foreign demand for American assets, and the low-cost
trading and 401k revolutions.
Well like I said earlier, this is a matter of one's values and views
on political economy. If one prefers asset price inflation and a capital
structure of heavily indebted households and young adults, then there's
nothing wrong and everything is rosy.
Household income overall, not just wages, has stagnated.
Startup formation is still at a 40 year low, despite all the noise about
venture capital and Silicon Valley.
ROC and ROE are based on corporate income, which are at historical highs.
The rest of your comment is just econ 101 and biz school corp finance
and accounting 101 hand waving to justify the status quo.
Your whole argument in the original post is that Tesla and SpaceX could
not get the capital that they have without Musk committing fraud and violating
a bunch of laws. In other words, two new industrial firms with tremendous
brand value and advancing decades ahead of the competition (
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/05/every-3-5-years-spacex-is-adding-a-decade-lead-on-competitors.html
) could not have been capitalized otherwise.
"Russian influence will flow through that pipeline right into Europe, and that is what we
are going to prevent," an unnamed U.S. official told the
Wall Street Journal just as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chancellor Angela
Merkel meet outside of Berlin on Saturday centered on the two countries moving forward with the
controversial Russian-German Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, but also involving issues from the
Iran nuclear deal to ending the war in Syria.
Intense pressure from Washington is overshadowing the project, construction of which is
already in advanced stages, as
the WSJ cites current and former US officials who say sanctions are under discussion and
could be mobilized in a mere matter of weeks .
These potential sanctions, ostensibly being discussed in response to US intelligence claims
of Russian interference in the 2016 election, could target companies and financial firms
involved in the massive pipeline's construction . This comes after comments from President
Trump at the opening of a NATO summit in July made things uncomfortable for his German
counterpart when he said that Germany is so dependent on Russia for energy that it's
essentially being "held captive" by Vladimir Putin and his government.
"Germany is captive of Russia because it is getting so much of its energy from Russia. They
pay billions of dollars to Russia and we have to defend them against Russia,"
Trump told NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg at a televised opening breakfast.
The pipeline has been opposed by multiple US administrations, who have long accuse the
Kremlin of seeking to accrue political leverage over Europe given the latter's already high
dependence on Russian natural gas. The pipeline has been a frequent talking point and target of
attacks by Trump,
who has threatened to escalate the trade war against Germany going back months if it
supported the construction of the pipeline. US officials have also expressed concern that
Russia will pull pack significantly from delivering natural gas via Ukraine when its Gazprom
tranit contract expires by the close of 2019. Ukraine is currently the chief Russian
natural-gas export point to the EU and depends heavily on levying fees on this trade.
Both Russia and Germany have sought to calm US concerns over the Ukraine issue, with Putin
himself reportedly telling both Merkel and Trump that he is "ready to preserve" gas transit
through Ukraine even after Nord Stream 2 was completed.
US officials speaking to the WSJ , however, downplayed the Ukraine issue, instead focusing
on the urgency of allowing such significant and irreversible Russian economic, political, and
infrastructural inroads into the heart of Europe .
Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, told the
WSJ , "We have been clear that firms working in the Russian energy export-pipeline sector
are engaging in a line of business that carries sanctions risk," -- something which he's
repeatedly emphasized with officials in Berlin. President Trump himself has also reportedly
raised the issue directly with Chancellor Merkel on multiple occasions. But for all the shrill
US media claims that Trump is somehow doing Putin's bidding, the WSJ
has this illuminating line : "Officially, the European Commission, the EU's executive body,
is coordinating the gas-transit talks, but Ms. Merkel also has played a leading role because of
her regular contacts and longstanding relationship with Mr. Putin, European officials say
."
Meanwhile, it appears that Washington has a losing hand even while making threats of
sanctions in an attempt to block the pipeline project.
A European energy executive familiar with the discussions said company representatives had
told John McCarrick, deputy assistant secretary in the State Department's Bureau of Energy
Resources, that the five European companies and Gazprom had already provided €5.5
billion ($6.3 billion) in financing and that the project wouldn't be stopped even if the U.S.
were to impose sanctions .
The Nord Stream 2 project was started in 2015 and is a major joint venture between Russia's
Gazprom and European partners, including German Uniper, Austria's OMV, France's Engie,
Wintershall and the British-Dutch multinational Royal Dutch Shell.
The pipeline is set to run from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea - doubling the
existing pipeline's capacity of 55 cubic meters per year, and is therefore critical for
Europe's future energy needs.
Currently, the second phase involves utilizing an existing pipeline already channelling
smaller amount of gas from Russia to Germany. Construction for the second phase started in May
of this year.
The FBI has been dealt a major blow after a Washington DC judge
ruled
that the agency must respond to a FOIA request
for documents concerning the bureau's
efforts to verify the controversial Steele Dossier,
before it was used as the foundation
of a FISA surveillance warrant application and subsequent renewals.
US District Court Judge Amit
Mehta - who in January sided with the FBI's decision to ignore the FOIA request, said that
President Trump's release of two House Intelligence Committee documents (the "Nunes" and "Schiff"
memos) changed everything.
Considering that the FBI offered Steele
$50,000
to
verify the Dossier's claims yet never paid him, BuzzFeed has unsuccessfully
tried
to do the same
to defend themselves in a dossier-related lawsuit, and a
$50 million Soros-funded investigation
to continue the hunt have turned up nothing that we
know of - whatever documents the FBI may be forced to cough up regarding their attempts to verify
the Dossier could prove highly embarrassing for the agency.
[I]f Mr. Steele could get solid corroboration of his reports, the F.B.I. would pay
him $50,000 for his efforts
, according to two people familiar with the offer.
Ultimately,
he was not paid
. -
NYT
What's more,
forcing the FBI to prove they had an empty hand will likely embolden calls
to disband the special counsel investigation
- as the agency's mercenary and politicized
approach to "investigations" will be laid all the more bare for the world to see. Then again, who
knows - maybe the FBI verified everything in the dossier and it simply hasn't leaked.
That said, while the FBI will likely be forced to acknowledge the documents thanks to the
Thursday ruling, the agency will still be able to try and convince the judge that there are other
grounds to withhold the records.
In January, Mehta
blessed the FBI's decision
not to disclose the existence of any records containing the agency's
efforts to verify the dossier - ruling that Trump's tweets about the dossier didn't require the FBI
and other intelligence agencies to act on records requests.
"
But then the ground shifted
," writes Mehta of Trump declassifying the House
memos. "As a result of the Nunes and Schiff Memos, there is now in the public domain meaningful
information about how the FBI acquired the Dossier and how the agency used it to investigate
Russian meddling."
The DOJ also sought to distinguish between the Steele Dossier and a synopsis of the dossier
presented to both Trump and then-President Obama in 2016, however Mehta rejected the attempt,
writing "That position defies logic," while also rejecting the government's refusal to even say if
the FBI has a copy of that synopsis.
"It remains no longer logical nor plausible for the FBI to maintain that it cannot confirm nor
deny the existence of documents," Mehta wrote.
It is simply not plausible to believe that, to whatever extent the FBI has made efforts to
verify Steele's reporting, some portion of that work has not been devoted to allegations that
made their way into the synopsis. After all,
if the reporting was important enough to
brief the President-elect, then surely the FBI thought enough of those key charges to attempt to
verify their accuracy
. It will be up to the FBI to determine which of the records in
its possession relating to the reliability of the Dossier concerns Steele's reporting as
discussed in the synopsis.
"This ruling represents another incremental step in revealing just how much the FBI has been
able to verify or discredit the rather personal allegations contained in that synopsis derived from
the Steele dossier," said Brad Moss, a lawyer pressing the lawsuit for the pro-transparency group,
the James Madison Project. "It will be rather ironic if the president's peripheral actions that
resulted in this ruling wind up disclosing that the FBI has been able to corroborate any of the
'salacious' allegations."
In other words, the FBI must show what they did to verify the claims contained within the Nunes
and Schiff memos.
Because the case was heard on appeal, the ruling will not take immediate effect, notes
Politico
,
which
adds that the appeals court is now likely to remand the case to Mehta, while the FBI is going to
try and convince him the records should remain unreleased.
Strange how the alphabet soup agencies always seem to fight hardest
only when it comes to hiding embarrassing information from the
American people. Yet they wonder why we don't consider them all
civil servants and heroes.
"... 'Some people have a substantive critique of Trump for furthering the fundamentally evil cause of racist US global empire, while others have a procedural critique of Trump for harming this fundamentally noble cause by carrying it out incompetently, if not a purely aesthetic critique for harming this fundamentally noble cause by making it look too gauche and uncouth. Those two styles of critique are fundamentally at odds.' ..."
"... This seems to me to be fundamentally the point. Particularly when (in the case of Russia and North Korea) the Democrats and the (majority of the) corporate media are essentially trying to outflank Trump on the Right , and the more or less complete failure of the Left to oppose in any meaningful way American machinations in Syria or Libya (with a few honourable exceptions), ..."
"... With very few exceptions (mainly on trivial issues) Trump has governed absolutely and precisely as any Republican would have done. His 'base' is almost exactly the same as Romney's ..."
"... Meanwhile the corporate media get hysterical about which apparatchik got fired or got their security clearance revoked for some reason or something and who said what to whom or whatever .it's all so boring I can scarcely type it out (and in fact I haven't). ..."
"... Considering the friendly recent exchanges between Putin and Trump, the punishment of Russia has to be viewed as something of a surprise, suggesting that the president of the United States may not be in control of his own foreign policy. ..."
"... Much of the damage to US politics over the last two years has been done by the anti-Trump media themselves, with their mood of perpetual panic and their lack of imagination. But the uncanny gift of Trump is an infectious vulgarity, and with it comes the power to make his enemies act with nearly as little self-restraint as he does. The proof is in the tweets.' ..."
"Public statements by Trump make it clear that there wasn't, in fact, a plausible national
security rationale for revoking Brennan's clearance."
This is false, the White House has released more than one statement about Brennan's lying
and unhinged behavior, whether you accept them or not. And in fact Brennan has made a number
of hysterically deranged statements, most notably around the time of the Putin summit, that
would make even Joe McCarthy blush.
And this latest Constitutional principle that we've suddenly discovered, that a top
security clearance is a form of speech, opens a large can of worms. The implications are so
obvious that spelling it out seems unnecessary, I'll just note that when I get the security
clearance that is my inalienable right as an American I won't be using it for my own selfish
ends.
"I'm basically OK with a tactical alliance with people in the national security
establishment, insofar as there are shared political interests. Trump is a disaster across
many dimensions"
Got it. Our choice is either the Fuhrer or the Deputy Reichsfuhrer. Gosh, I wonder why so
many Americans are disconnected from the political process
ph 08.17.18 at 11:12 pm (no link)
@4 Seems to get this right, imo. The best and simplest identification of this class of
self-interested profiteers, 'patriots,'policy wonks, grifters, and their minions and
water-carriers in elected office and the media was made by Eisenhower in his farewell speech.
Henry is entirely right to recognize they are as permanent as the weather, and as much a
feature of life as they were during Chaucer's time. This is their world, we just live in
it.
The pedigrees and connections identified in @4 exist to ensure that the public face of the
corporation masquerading as an individual (to quote RN) looks and sounds 'right.'
That's what made the 44th president absolutely ideal. Even better he proved a loyal and
willing servant -- expanding the Bush/Cheney security state, drone strikes, and surveillance
and execution of US citizens occasionally deemed enemies of the state. 45 has fewer allies in
that community, but he's proving more far more difficult to remove than many had thought.
Henry is right -- this looks very much like an inside baseball story.
Whatever Trump does or does not accomplish, the profits from violence, manipulation, and
duplicity via the wheels of government will remain and be one of the principal driving forces
in nation-state external and internal relations for a very long time.
Hidari 08.18.18 at 6:45 am (no link)
'Some people have a substantive critique of Trump for furthering the fundamentally evil cause
of racist US global empire, while others have a procedural critique of Trump for harming this
fundamentally noble cause by carrying it out incompetently, if not a purely aesthetic
critique for harming this fundamentally noble cause by making it look too gauche and uncouth.
Those two styles of critique are fundamentally at odds.'
This seems to me to be fundamentally the point. Particularly when (in the case of Russia
and North Korea) the Democrats and the (majority of the) corporate media are essentially
trying to outflank Trump on the Right , and the more or less complete failure of the
Left to oppose in any meaningful way American machinations in Syria or Libya (with a few
honourable exceptions),
With very few exceptions (mainly on trivial issues) Trump has governed absolutely and
precisely as any Republican would have done. His 'base' is almost exactly the same as
Romney's.* There was no 'Trump surge'. He didn't win the election, Clinton (a weak candidate)
lost it. Despite the hysteria, most of his deviations from 'the norm' have been in a more
imperial direction (e.g. his desire for a stronger NATO which, rather unbelievably, was
reported in the worthless media as a desire to destroy NATO). Trump's disgusting and
hypocritical sanctions on Russia (which will cause much suffering of ordinary people) have,
to the best of my knowledge, not been criticised by any leftist, anywhere, although the
insane fantasy that he is 'soft on Russia' is quite popular (with the implication that he
should be 'tougher' on Russia, maybe risking nuclear war) presumably because it fits in with
the increasingly deranged Russiagate nonsense. CF also his more aggressive stance towards
China (another nuclear power) which again risks nuclear war, and which has again, passed
almost uncommented on in elite discourse (to be fair he follows in Obama's footsteps
here).
I might add that Trump's most egregious and disgraceful departure from the 'consensus',
permitting the American Embassy to move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, has also passed more or
less uncriticised, as the Democrats still instinctively obsequiously grovel to the far right
Netanyahu when they get the chance, whimpering like whipped dogs (this simile is unfair to
dogs).
Meanwhile the corporate media get hysterical about which apparatchik got fired or got
their security clearance revoked for some reason or something and who said what to whom or
whatever .it's all so boring I can scarcely type it out (and in fact I haven't).
*Almost the first thing Trump arranged was a tax cut for his rich cronies.
Powerful post and a very clear thinking. Thank you !
Also an interesting analogy with NSDAP the 25-point Plan of 1928
Hitler's initial programme really did have a tiny element of 'socialism' in it, and some
elements of the working class (shamefully) swallowed the lies and gained him votes.
But it was never real, and Hitler was never going to deliver. He dealt with the Brownshirts
(the most authentically 'working class' and 'socialist' part of the Nazi movement) in the
Night of the Long Knives, and from that point on, the 'socialist' parts of the Nazi
programme were steadily ditched, as the regime became more and more strongly right wing
throughout the '30s.
Same with Trump (in this respect only). It's true that in the run-up to the election he
threw some scraps to the working class, and some of his protectionist rhetoric swung him
some states in the Rust Belt. Some union supporters, to their shame, trooped along to the
White House soon after.
Actually NSAP program of 1928 has some political demands which are to the left of Sanders
such as "Abolition of unearned (work and labor) incomes", ".We demand the nationalization of
all (previous) associated industries (trusts)." and "We demand a division of profits of all
heavy industries.". Here is a sample:
... ... ...
7.We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a
livelihood and way of life for the citizens
9.All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.
10.The first obligation of every citizen must be to productively work mentally or
physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the
universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of
all. Consequently, we demand:
11.Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt
(interest)-slavery.
12.In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands
of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the
people. Therefore, we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13.We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
14.We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
15.We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
16.We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate
communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms,
the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or
municipality.
17.We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free
expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and
prevention of all speculation in land.
18.We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to
the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be
punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.
21.The state is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and
child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the
legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all
organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.
22.We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.
23.We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press.
24.We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the state so long
as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race...
But I think Trump was de-facto impeached with the appointment of Mueller. And that was the
plan ( "insurance" as Strzok called it). Mueller task is just to formalize impeachment.
Pence already is calling the shots in foreign policy via members of his close circle
(which includes Pompeo). The recent "unilateral" actions of State Department are a slap in
the face and, simultaneously, a nasty trap for Trump (he can cancel those sanctions only at a
huge political cost to himself) and are a clear sign that Trump does not control even his
administration. Here is how
Philip Giraldi described this obvious slap in the face:
The most recent is the new sanctioning of Russia over the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury
England. For those not following developments, last week Washington abruptly and without
any new evidence being presented, imposed additional trade sanctions on Russia in the
belief that Moscow ordered and carried out the poisoning of Sergey Skripal and his daughter
Yulia on March 4th. The report of the new sanctions was particularly surprising as Yulia
Skripal has recently announced that she intends to return to her home in Russia, leading to
the conclusion that even one of the alleged victims does not believe the narrative being
promoted by the British and American governments.
Though Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded with restraint, avoiding a
tit-for-tat, he is reported to be angry about the new move by the US government and now
believes it to be an unreliable negotiating partner. Considering the friendly recent
exchanges between Putin and Trump, the punishment of Russia has to be viewed as something
of a surprise, suggesting that the president of the United States may not be in control of
his own foreign policy.
From the very beginning, any anti-globalization initiative of Trump was sabotaged and
often reversed. Haley is one example here. She does not coordinate some of her actions with
Trump, or the Secretary of State, unliterary defining the US foreign policy.
Her ambitions worry Trump, but he can very little: she is supported by Pence and Pence
faction in the administration. Rumors "Haley/Pence 2020" surfaced and probably somewhat
poison atmosphere in the WH.
Add to this that Trump has hostile to him Justice Department, CIA, and FBI. He also does
not control some critical appointments such as the recent appointment of CIA director (who in
no way can be called Trump loyalist).
Which means that in some ways Trump already is a hostage and more a ceremonial President
than a real.
'The President is very much a figurehead – he wields no real power whatsoever. He is
apparently chosen by the (people), but the qualities he is required to display are not those
of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is a
controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to
wield power but to draw attention away from it.' (Douglas Adams)
CF Also the LRB:
'Trump comports himself not as a president or even a politician, but as a reality TV host.
He is a showman above all. In a process where the media are cast as reviewers, and voters as
spectators, the show is getting bad reviews but doing nicely: the clear sign of success is
that nobody can stop talking about the star. He keeps up the suspense with teasers and decoys
and unscheduled interruptions, with changes in the sponsors and the supporting cast and
production team. The way to match the Trump pace is by tweeting; but that is to play his game
– a gambit the White House press corps have found irresistible. Much of the damage to
US politics over the last two years has been done by the anti-Trump media themselves, with
their mood of perpetual panic and their lack of imagination. But the uncanny gift of Trump is
an infectious vulgarity, and with it comes the power to make his enemies act with nearly as
little self-restraint as he does. The proof is in the tweets.'
"... But to an extent hardly imaginable in 2008, all the world's leading economies are locked in a perpetually escalating cycle of economic warfare. This global trade war is spearheaded by the Trump White House, which sees trade sanctions and tariffs, such as the onslaught it launched against Turkey, as an integral component of its drive to secure the United States' geopolitical and economic interests at the expense of friend and foe alike. ..."
"... But while they are deeply divided as to their economic and geo-political objectives, the capitalist ruling classes are united on one essential question. However the next stage of the ongoing breakdown of world capitalism proceeds, they will all strive by whatever means considered necessary to make the working class the world over pay for it. ..."
"... In 2008, capitalist governments around the world, above all in the US, derived enormous benefit from the decades-long suppression of the class struggle by the trade unions and the parties of the political establishment. The rescue operation they carried out on behalf of parasitic and criminal finance capital would not have been possible without it ..."
"But to an extent hardly imaginable in 2008, all the world's leading economies are locked
in a perpetually escalating cycle of economic warfare. This global trade war is spearheaded
by the Trump White House, which sees trade sanctions and tariffs, such as the onslaught it
launched against Turkey, as an integral component of its drive to secure the United States'
geopolitical and economic interests at the expense of friend and foe alike.
The character of world economy has undergone a major transformation in the past decade in
which economic growth, to the extent it that it occurs, is not driven by the development of
production and new investments but by the flow of money from one source of speculative and
parasitic activity to the next."
"But while they are deeply divided as to their economic and geo-political objectives, the
capitalist ruling classes are united on one essential question. However the next stage of the
ongoing breakdown of world capitalism proceeds, they will all strive by whatever means
considered necessary to make the working class the world over pay for it.
This is the lesson from the past decade which, in every country, has seen a deepening
attack on wages, social conditions and living standards as wealth is redistributed up the
income scale, raising social inequality to unprecedented heights.
In 2008, capitalist governments around the world, above all in the US, derived enormous
benefit from the decades-long suppression of the class struggle by the trade unions and the
parties of the political establishment. The rescue operation they carried out on behalf of
parasitic and criminal finance capital would not have been possible without it."
"... By Sam Husseini an independent journalist who contributes to The Nation, CounterPunch, Truthdig, Consortium News, CommonDreams and other outlets. He is also senior analyst at the Institute for Public Accuracy and founder of VotePact.org . Originally published at his website ..."
"... support and defend the Constitution of the United States ..."
By
Sam Husseini an independent
journalist who contributes to The Nation, CounterPunch, Truthdig, Consortium News, CommonDreams
and other outlets. He is also senior analyst at the Institute for Public Accuracy and founder
of VotePact.org . Originally published at
his
website
Today, hundreds of
newspapers , at the initiative of the Boston Globe , are purporting to stand up for
a free press against Trump's rhetoric.
As laid in my cell, I chuckled at the notion that the city was full of billboards
proclaiming Finland was the " land of free press ".
So, I've grown an especially high sensitivity to both goonish behavior toward journalists
trying to ask tough questions -- and to those professing they are defending a free press when
they are actually engaging in a marketing campaign.
As some have noted, the editorials today will likely help Trump whip up support among his
base against a monolithic media. But, just as clearly, the establishment media can draw
attention away from their own failures, corruptions and falsehoods simply by focusing on some
of Trump's.
Big media outlets need not actually report news that affects your life and point to serious
solutions for social ills. They can just bad mouth Trump. And Trump need not deliver on
campaign promises that tapped into populist and isolationist tendencies in the U.S. public that
have grown in reaction to years of elite rule. He need only deride the major media.
They are at worst frenemies. More likely, at times, Trump and the establishment media log
roll with each other. The major media built up Trump .
Trump's attacks effectively elevate a select few media celebrities.
My case is a small but
telling one. Major media outlets were more likely to disinform about the manhandling I received
in my attempt to ask about U.S., Russian and Israeli nuclear threats to humanity -- I'll soon
give a detailed rebuttal to the torrent of falsehoods , some of
which I've already noted on social media -- than to
crusade against it.
Other obvious cases: None of the newspaper editorials I've seen published today mention the
likely prosecution of Wikileaks
. If there were solidarity among media, the prospect of Julian
Assange being imprisoned for publishing U.S. government documents should be front and
center today.
Neither did I see a mention of RT or, as
of this week,
Al Jazeera , being compelled to register as foreign agents. State Department Spokesperson
Heather Nauert has openly refused to take
questions from reporters working for Russian outlets. Virtual silence -- in part because Russia
is widely depicted as the great enemy, letting U.S. government policy around the world off the
hook.
The above are actual policies that the Trump administration has pursued targeting media --
not rhetoric that dominates so much establishment coverage of Trump.
Then there's the threat of social media.
My day job is with the Institute for Public Accuracy. Yesterday, I put out a news release
titled "
Following Assassination Attempt, Facebook Pulled Venezuela Content ." Tech giants can
decide -- possibly in coordination with the U.S. government -- to pull the plug on content at a
time and manner of their choosing.
You would think newspaper people might be keen to highlight the threat that such massive
corporations thus pose, not least of all because they have eaten up their ad revenue (the
Boston Globe page on the effort is actually behind a paywall .)
The sad truth is that this is what much of the media have long done: Counter to the lofty
rhetoric of many of today's editorials, the promise of an independent and truth-seeking press
has frequently been subservient to propaganda, pushing for war or narrow economic and other
interests.
The other major story of the day -- quite related to this -- is that of Trump pulling former
CIA Director John Brennan's security clearance. NPR tells me this is an attempt to "silence a
critic". But Brennan has an op-ed in today's
New York Times and is frequently on major media. He oversaw criminal policies during
the Obama administration, including drone assassinations. If anything, this has elevated
Brennan's major media status.
Those who have been truly silenced in the "Trump era" are those who were critical of the
seemingly perpetual U.S. government war machine since the invasion of Iraq.
Trump attacks on the establishment media -- like many media attacks on him -- are frequently
devoid of substance. But recently one of his rhetorically tweets stated that media " cause wars
". I would say "push for war", but that's quibbling.
Trump is technically right on that point, but it's totally disingenuous coming from him.
He's actually been the beneficiary of the media compulsion he claims to deride. When he exalts
U.S. bombing strikes in Yemen, Syria and elsewhere, CNN calls him " presidential
".
Many consider "Russiagate" critical to scrutinizing the Trump administration, but the two
reporters, apparently picked by the White House, during the Helsinki news conference focused on
"Russiagate" -- which eventually led to Brennan and others attacking Trump as "treasonous".
Meanwhile, much more meaningful collusion that can be termed Israelgate is being
ignored as the U.S. and Israeli governments attempt to further mold the Mideast.
The need for genuinely free sources of information is greater than ever. It is unclear to me
if traditional newspapers can be part of the equation. Quite likely, the institutions
desperately needed to carry out that critical mission are yet to be born.
The other major story of the day -- quite related to this -- is that of Trump pulling
former CIA Director John Brennan's security clearance.
I fail to understand why any ex-government employee should keep a top-level security
clearance. When you leave, you leave, full stop. One serves in government at the leisure of
the American public. In my view, Brennan is behaving like a mafiosi 'made-man', not as a
public servant.
Tech giants can decide -- possibly in coordination with the U.S. government -- to pull
the plug on content at a time and manner of their choosing.
I cannot figure out what is going on with Google, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter –
lets call them the 'Four Horsemen'. I cannot believe that they are stupid enough to think
that blanket bans are going to stifle the alternative media and enhance Democrat election
prospects. Surely they aren't that naive?
In fact the exact opposite is happening. The Four Horsemen have super-charged Trump's
base. Before the ban, alternative media at least tried to comply with their Community
Guidelines.
Now, having been banned, alternative media are completely unleashed and their following is
exploding.
As to turning to alternatives, I'm not clear on the whole net and web architecture thing.
Are there not choke points that the Borg/Panopticon have their strangler's hands around, so
that at some point, when their algos and auguries tell them the time is ripe, they can
squeeze, and kill all such outside-the-Narrative interchange? It's not like the Big Data
Piles that the NSA is constantly adding to, with full cooperation from the Four Horsement,
don't already identify and catalog and characterize the "threats" to the project posed by
mopes like us, who participate in "well-known Russian outlets" like NC.
I'm reminded of the back story bit in "Independence Day," when Jeff Goldblum's character
intuits that there's a timing signal in the Evil Consumer Aliens' communication stream that
reports the countdown to when the Giant Black Ships (why are Evil Aliens always black? Why
not some hippie rainbow coloration?) with their city-destroying weapons are all in position
and they can start blasting the hum-ants that might oppose their looting of this planet
Think of the internet as a tollway with booths at either end and monitoring along the way.
When you control a booth, for example, you can see which cars pass by.
I have seen that process in action and am in favor of privacy tools (VPN, control of Java
scripts, ad/malware blockers, etc) to preserve some semblance of anonymity. Even with those
in place, there are still ways for actors to observe. Be guided accordingly.
From what I understand, a VPN can be hacked but only by using a lot of resources to do it,
you'd have to be a person of great interest for them to bother with it. (I use one myself at
all times.)
Beyond censoring social media platforms, the next step would be to remove access to any
blog or and site which doesn't go along with the narrative the state is promoting. I assume
that would not be too difficult, but if the site in question is on a foreign server they
would have to actually hack it. Has Naked Capitalism ever considered using a foreign host
that would be more difficult to compromise?
Very difficult to provide choke points – but I am sure they are working on it.
Because almost everything depends upon instantaeous network connectivity, such as power
systems, logistics systems, communication systems, transport systems, defence systems and
banking systems, among others, any interference is going to have side effects that could be
quite serious.
In addition, systems are becoming more and more distributed, with no central control point
– blockchain being a recent example.
For example, I stopped using youtube.com years ago. Mostly I use bitchute to watch some
things directly, view videos through a search engine like DuckDuckGo or view videos embedded
in websites like NC.
Bitchute uses bittorrent to transmit videos – meaning that the viewers of the videos
also provide the bandwidth to each other – a peer to peer transmission method –
so there is almost no bandwidth cost to Bitchute and no central point of control. The more
users or 'nodes', the better the system works.
Youtube, on the other hand, can control or 'choke' content, but it has huge central server
bandwidth costs.
As I see it, YouTube is going to morph into a proprietary Netflix-type of service in just
a few years. Garage-produced indie content and alternative media startups will probably move
to a different platform.
I checked out bitchute and all I saw were mostly right-wingers, conspiracy theorists and
anti-Semitic rants. None of that could be considered reliable news.
It's normal for clearances to stay active after a person leaves employment where it was
required. It can help them get new employment. Example: you're a machinist at Lockheed
milling engine parts for fighter planes. You need a clearance for that, because the engine
specs are classified. Now the project ends and you're without a job. Something else comes
online at Northrup Grumman up the street: you already have a clearance, so you get hired. If
the clearance lapsed you'd have to go through months of background checks all over again, so
you keep it current. That doesn't mean you keep having access to classified info about stuff
you're not working on, it just means you follow a bunch of regulations like I think you have
to report to the feds if you travel out of the country (as if they didn't already know).
I see job ads now and then (esp. in aerospace) where clearances are required or preferred
(because they have to get one for you if you don't have it already), for reasons like the
above. It's pretty mundane imho. Like being a licensed electrician almost.
The situation with Brennan and other grifter spooks is different, but the idea of a
clearance just means you've been investigated and found to be a low risk for leaking
classified info. Just because you leave a job doesn't mean you suddenly *become* a risk, so
there's no reason to yank the clearance merely because there's an interval in which you're
not using it.
"I fail to understand why any ex-government employee should keep a top-level security
clearance."
It is not unusual for someone who left government service to get contacted by someone who
is currently working on a project the ex-employee worked on. The likelihood of this happening
certainly decreases as time passes. If the ex-employee doesn't still have the security
clearance talking about the project would be illegal.
And given how revolving door rotates, and how corrupt the majority of those "projects" is,
why is it a bad thing that ex-employees (who might, say, have used the NSA's Panopticon to
spy on and harass ex-lovers and present significant others, or to trash people who dare
question the Narrative, or to have engaged in the manifold frauds and corruptions that the
Pentagram and much of the state security (sic) apparatus have, and are, engaged in?
There's no "loyalty to America," no "defense of the Constitution" by so very many of the
current employees (and millions of self-interested "contractors") who slurp at the government
trough, while claiming to be "serving the Nation" as they build and foster the machinery of
the Panopticon and perpetual war machine that does not even try to "win victories" except as
between procurement projects and in vicious conflicts for better office space. What entitles
these people to continue to have the "economic benefit," and it clearly is one, of a
"security clearance," on departing from such employment? Is that the kind of 'entitlement"
that is worthy of protection, when stuff like Social Security (a prepaid insurance against
abject poverty in old age and disability) and Medicar-Medicaid, are as those "security
professionals" would say, are "threatened" and "under attack?"
As to "illegality of communications," I bet you may be well aware that such
"communications" in violation of all kinds of laws and principles of "democracy" are part of
the tradecraft and standard practice. Lady Justice wears a blindfold, not for the mythical
reasons of treating all equally, but to let the malefactors get away with stuff. She ought to
have at least one hand tied behind her back, too, though I guess one hand has to be left free
to wield the sword and cut off anyone not protected by 'current practices" and the Leona
Helmsley Rule that "law is for the little people "
So the government has no mechanism they can use to contact these employees for
information, say having the current employer act as an agent of the government. Said employee
making an appointment at a government facility a t the government's time and choosing and
providing a limited waiver of secrecy for that meeting and that meeting alone would probably
satisfy both security issues and the issue of former employee using his knowledge for the
good of the people not personal or private gain, revenge, leverage, etc we have now.
Yah, so simple, it would seem. And of course, on the record, and on the history of how
this vast, unauditable, covert, growing, immensely corrupt blob operates, not ever going to
become the practice. This link kind of overemphasizes sexsexsex stories, but does cover
(below the fold) a whole lot of the vast corruption that is standard practice for the
Imperial government -- just as has been the case, and downfall, of previous empires:
http://washingtonsblog.com/2016/01/corrupt-american-government.html
And all this assumes that the folks still slurping at the govenment trough are acting in
good faith, for the general welfare, subject to the Congressionally mandated and smugly
ignored oath they are all supposed to swear to:
Oath of Office for Federal Officials
Employees of the United States Government including all members of Congress are required
to take the following oath before assuming elected or appointed office.
5 U.S.C. 3331:
An individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit
in the civil service or uniformed services shall take the following oath: I, [name], do
solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United
States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and
allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or
purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on
which I am about to enter. So help me God.
>to get contacted by someone who is currently working on a project the ex-employee
worked on
Well before they commence the actual conversation he/she needs to get re-cleared. If it
takes 6 months then that's just the way it is.
So some guy has a high security clearance, and then you want his input say 10 years later.
You're telling me the CIA/NSA/(insert alphabetic blood-sucking agency here) has been keeping
as tight tabs on his behavior as they have the rest of the people in your office? Dude could
have gotten a coke addiction and turned to, sigh, the Russians for some moola. Would they
really know?
And "the likelihood decreases" is not a defense. You either have a policy –
"security clearance decreases at the following rate: x, y, z" or you don't.
Does that mean you agree that the Israel-ites actually do drive a lot of the content of
'our" media, and the behaviors of "our" government? Or is it a "have bara, will travel" kind
of comment? Or what? Not clear.
This author is right. I do not know if you would call what the media did a form of
virtue-signalling or whatever but the net effect is a demonstration that the media is into
coordinated campaigns. I do not think that people have forgotten the "This Is Extremely
Dangerous to Our Democracy" Sinclair script a few months ago. This is just more of the
same.
I don't even know why they act so b***-hurt when Trump attacks their honesty. In the last few
months I have seen them call him a traitor, a gay-bitch, they have called for a military coup
to unseat him, they have begged for the deep state to rescue them, they have elevated people
who are responsible for the deaths of thousands of American soldiers to the ranks of noble
heroes of the Republic. As far as I am concerned, they have made their own bed and now they
can lay in it, even if they have to share it with Donald J. Trump.
Yesterday when I looked at the NYT online, the big featured graphic in the center of the
page, typically a photo, was a rotating feed of Trump tweets, in headline-sized text. It
struck me as a new low in the pathetic Trump-media feedback loop. It's all a game of "made
you look!"
Yeah, they probably got a summer intern to do that.
Anyone read Ronan Farrows "War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American
Influence"?
In one passage he describes a meeting at the State Department where they are complaining
that nobody is interested in their policy prescriptions and decide that the problem is that
they need some graphs. They all turn to Farrrow and look at him as he is the youngest in the
meeting and figure he is the only one who would know how to do that. "Ageism" he thought.
A case could be made that independent media like Naked Capitalism is doing a key public
service. Not the corporate media though, whose main objective is always to maximize
advertising revenues and to impose the views of its owners, the very rich, on society.
1) The best justification for giving officials formally out of government clearance on
either side of the revolving door is that you may need to call on them for advice.
It seems to me that this incentivizes "intelligence" over wisdom. And for wisdom, long
experience plus open sources should be enough. (For example, if you want to call in an
ex-official on North Korean nukes, they don't really need to know the details of the latest
weaponry, or Kim's weight gain, or whatever. That can be explained to them by the
customer , as needed. What's really needed is an outside voice -- the role played by an
honest consultant -- plus wisdom about power relations on the Korean peninsula. No need for
clearance there.)
2) RussiaRussiaRussia has been very profitable, not only personally for the talking heads
in the intelligence community but for the press. Removing clearance not only hits the talking
heads in the wallet, it disrupts the relation between the press and its network of anonymous
sources.
Big trouble is brewing in the mighty North Dakota Bakken Oil Field. While oil production in
the Bakken has reversed since it bottomed in 2016 and increased over the past few years, so has
the amount of by-product wastewater. Now, it's not an issue if water production increases along
with oil. However, it's a serious RED FLAG if by-product wastewater rises a great deal more
than oil.
And... unfortunately, that is exactly what has taken place in the Bakken over the past two
years. In the oil industry, they call it, the rising "Water Cut." Furthermore, the rapid
increase in the amount of water to oil from a well or field suggests that peak production is at
hand . So, now the shale companies will have an uphill battle to try to increase or hold
production flat as the water cut rises.
According to the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, the Bakken produced 201
million barrels of oil in the first six months of 2018. However, it also produced a stunning
268 million barrels of wastewater:
Thus, the companies producing shale oil in the Bakken had to dispose of 268 million barrels
of by-product wastewater in just the first half of the year. I have spoken to a few people in
the industry, and the estimate is that it cost approximately $4 a barrel to gather, transport
and dispose of this wastewater. Which means, the shale companies will have to pay an estimated
$2.2 billion just to get rid of their wastewater this year.
Now, some companies may be recycling their wastewater, but this isn't free. Actually, I have
seen estimates that it cost more money to recycle wastewater than it does to simply dispose of
it. So, as the volume of wastewater increases while the percentage of oil production declines,
then the shale companies are hit with a double-whammy... less oil revenue and rising wastewater
disposal costs.
To give you an idea just how much more water is being produced versus oil in the Bakken, I
went back to the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources and looked at their data back to
2015. Unfortunately, the data published in excel only goes back to 2015, even though they have
figures published in PDF form starting in 2003.
Regardless, four years is plenty of time to show just how bad the situation is becoming in
the Bakken. In June 2015, the North Dakota Bakken produced 16% more water than oil. However
June this year, the Bakken field produced 38% more water than oil :
You will notice that overall oil and water production declined in 2016, due to the falling
oil price, but as production grew in 2017 and 2018, the percentage increase of by-product
wastewater surged to 32% and 38% respectively. Here is an interesting comparison:
Bakken Oil & Water Production:
June 2015 Oil = 34.4 million barrels
June 2015 Water = 39.8 million barrels (16% more water)
June 2018 Oil = 33.8 million barrels
June 2018 Water = 46.8 million barrels (38% more water)
As we can see, while overall Bakken oil production in June 2018 was less than it was in June
2015, the volume of waster water increased by an additional 7 million barrels.
I believe there are two negative forces at work in the Bakken as it pertains to the rising
volume of wastewater.
As the wells and field age, more water is produced than oil
Larger Frac Stages, which require more water and sand, are now being utilized to keep
production growing or to keep it from falling
While a rising water cut isn't a surprise to the industry as it is a natural progression of
an aging oil well or field, the use of Larger Frac Stage wells should be a WAKE-UP CALL to
investors. Why? Because Larger Frac Stage wells consume a great deal more water and sand to
produce more oil initially, but the decline rates are even more severe than regular shale
wells.
So, when the Investor Relations are bragging how the companies are using the newer
technology of more complex Large Frac Stage wells, this isn't a good sign. This means that the
company is now desperate to try and grow production, or at worst, to keep it from falling.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Shale Industry is in serious trouble. Most of the shale fields have
reached a peak and when production starts to decline, especially during a collapsing oil price,
I forecast a rapid disintegration of the industry. We must remember, as the oil price and oil
production falls, then company stock and asset values will plummet while the high debt levels
remain. Thus, the shale industry will have increasing difficulty in servicing its debt.
I will continue to monitor the production of oil and wastewater in the Bakken. Please check
back for updates.
The most embarrassing outcome will turn out to be that they actually did nothing to verify
the Steele dossier. Why would they question it? They wanted to use it as a political tool. Do
I question and inspect a hammer before I swing it?
Barring that, if they did try to verify it, their complete and utter stupidity will see
the light of day.
In either case they are truly fucked by this court order.
So the FBI's position is that they cannot confirm nor deny the existence of documents to
confirm or deny the truth of the dossier, but they used it in the FISA warrants. But the
procedure required for the warrants are that all information must be verified, so those
documents need to exist. So the FBI is admitting that they did not follow the required
procedure. That makes the warrants void, which means that all information obtained that way
is mute, and thus the entire case collapses. Further, filling a warrant request where the
rules have not been followed is perjury, making everyone who signed it guilty of a criminal
offense against the court.
"... The dominant corporate U.S. media routinely exaggerates the degree of difference and choice between the candidates run by the nation's two corporate-dominated political organizations, the Democrats and the Republicans. It never notes that the two reigning parties agree about far more than they differ on, particularly when it comes to fundamental and related matters of business class power and American Empire. It shows U.S. protestors engaged in angry confrontations with police and highlights isolated examples of protestor violence but it downplays peaceful protest and never pays serious attention to the important societal and policy issues that have sparked protest or to the demands and recommendations advanced by protest movements. ..."
"... Newscasters who want to keep their careers afloat learn the fine art of evasion with great skill they skirt around the most important parts of a story. With much finesse, they say a lot about very little, serving up heaps of junk news filled with so many empty calories and so few nutrients. Thus do they avoid offending those who wield politico-economic power while giving every appearance of judicious moderation and balance. It is enough to take your breath away ..."
"... In U.S. "mainstream" media, Washington's aims are always benevolent and democratic. Its clients and allies are progressive, its enemies are nefarious, and its victims are invisible and incidental. The U.S. can occasionally make "mistakes" and "strategic blunders" on the global stage, but its foreign policies are never immoral, criminal, or imperialist in nature as far as that media is concerned. This is consistent with the doctrine of "American Exceptionalism," according to which the U.S., alone among great powers in history, seeks no selfish or imperial gain abroad. It is consistent also with "mainstream" U.S. media's heavy reliance on "official government sources" (the White House, the Defense Department, and the State Department) and leading business public relations and press offices for basic information on current events. ..."
"... U.S. citizens regularly see images of people who are angry at the U.S. around the world. The dominant mass media never gives them any serious discussion of the US policies and actions that create that anger. Millions of Americans are left to ask in childlike ignorance "Why do they hate us? What have we done?" ..."
"... If transmitting Washington's lies about Iraq were something to be fired about, then U.S. corporate media authorities would have to get rid of pretty much of all their top broadcasters. ..."
"... The U.S. corporate media's propagandistic service to the nation's reigning and interrelated structures of Empire and inequality is hardly limited to its news and public affairs wings. Equally if not more significant in that regard is that media's vast "entertainment" sector, which is loaded with political and ideological content ..."
"... Seen broadly in its many-sided and multiply delivered reality, U.S. corporate media's dark, power-serving mission actually goes further than the manufacture of consent. A deeper goal is the manufacture of mass idiocy, with "idiocy" understood in the original Greek and Athenian sense not of stupidity but of childish selfishness and willful indifference to public affairs and concerns. (An "idiot" in Athenian democracy was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private instead of public affairs.). As the U.S. Latin Americanist Cathy Schneider noted, the U.S.-backed military coup and dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet "transformed Chile, both culturally and politically, from a country of active participatory grassroots communities, to a land of disconnected, apolitical individuals"[7] – into a nation of "idiots" understood in this classic Athenian sense. ..."
"... To be sure, a narrow and reactionary sort of public concern and engagement does appear and take on a favorable light in this corporate media culture. It takes the form of a cruel, often even sadistically violent response to unworthy and Evil Others who are perceived as failing to obey prevalent national and neoliberal cultural codes. Like the U.S. ruling class that owns it, the purportedly anti-government corporate media isn't really opposed to government as such. It's opposed to what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called "the left hand of the state" – the parts of the public sector that serve the social and democratic needs of the non-affluent majority. ..."
"... The generation of mass idiocy in the more commonly understood sense of sheer stupidity is also a central part of U.S. "mainstream" media's mission. Nowhere is this more clearly evident than in the constant barrage of rapid-fire advertisements that floods U.S. corporate media. ..."
"... There's nothing surprising about the fact that the United States' supposedly "free" and "independent" media functions as a means of mass indoctrination for the nation's economic and imperial elite ..."
"... A second explanation is the power of advertisers. U.S. media managers are naturally reluctant to publish or broadcast material that might offend the large corporations that pay for broadcasting by purchasing advertisements. ..."
"... A third great factor is U.S. government media policy and regulation on behalf of oligopolistic hyper-concentration. The U.S. corporate media is hardly a "natural" outcome of a "free market." It's the result of government protections and subsidies that grant enormous "competitive" advantages to the biggest and most politically/plutocratically influential media firms. ..."
"... In this writer's experience, the critical Left analysis of the U.S. "mainstream" media as a tool for "manufacturing consent" and idiocy developed above meets four objections from defenders of the U.S. media system, A first objection notes that the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times (FT), the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and other major U.S. corporate media outlets produce a significant amount of, informative, high-quality and often candid reporting and commentary that Left thinkers and activists commonly cite to support their cases for radical and democratic change. ..."
"... The observation that Leftists commonly use and cite information from the corporate media they harshly criticize is correct but it is easy to account for the apparent anomaly within the critical Left framework by noting that that media crafts two very different versions of U.S. policy, politics, society, "life," and current events for two different audiences. Following the work of the brilliant Australian propaganda critic Alex Carey, we can call the first audience the "grassroots."[14] It comprises the general mass of working and lower-class citizens. ..."
"... The second target group comprises the relevant political class of U.S. citizens from at most the upper fifth of society. This is who reads the Times, the Post, WSJ, and FT, for the most part. Call this audience (again following Carey) the "treetops": the "people who matter" and who deserve and can be trusted with something more closely approximating the real story because their minds have been properly disciplined and flattered by superior salaries, significant on-the-job labor autonomy, and "advanced" and specialized educational and professional certification. ..."
"... To everyday Americans' credit, corporate media has never been fully successful in stamping out popular resistance and winning over the hearts and minds of the U.S. populace. ..."
"... The U.S. elite is no more successful in its utopian (or dystopian) quest to control every American heart and mind than it is in its equally impossible ambition of managing events across a complex planet from the banks of the Potomac River in Washington D.C ..."
Consistent with its possession as a leading and money-making asset of the nation's wealthy
elite, the United States corporate and commercial mass media is a bastion of power-serving
propaganda and deadening twaddle designed to keep the U.S. citizenry subordinated to capital
and the imperial U.S. state. It regularly portrays the United States as a great model of
democracy and equality. It sells a false image of the U.S. as a society where the rich enjoy
opulence because of hard and honest work and where the poor are poor because of their laziness
and irresponsibility. The nightly television news broadcasts and television police and law and
order dramas are obsessed with violent crime in the nation's Black ghettoes and Latino barrios,
but they never talk about the extreme poverty, the absence of opportunity imposed on those
neighborhoods by the interrelated forces of institutional racism, capital flight, mass
structural unemployment, under-funded schools, and mass incarceration. The nightly television
weather reports tells U.S. citizens of ever new record high temperatures and related forms of
extreme weather but never relate these remarkable meteorological developments to anthropogenic
climate change.
The dominant corporate U.S. media routinely exaggerates the degree of difference and choice
between the candidates run by the nation's two corporate-dominated political organizations, the
Democrats and the Republicans. It never notes that the two reigning parties agree about far
more than they differ on, particularly when it comes to fundamental and related matters of
business class power and American Empire. It shows U.S. protestors engaged in angry
confrontations with police and highlights isolated examples of protestor violence but it
downplays peaceful protest and never pays serious attention to the important societal and
policy issues that have sparked protest or to the demands and recommendations advanced by
protest movements.
As the prolific U.S. Marxist commentator Michael Parenti once remarked, US "Newscasters who
want to keep their careers afloat learn the fine art of evasion with great skill they skirt
around the most important parts of a story. With much finesse, they say a lot about very
little, serving up heaps of junk news filled with so many empty calories and so few nutrients.
Thus do they avoid offending those who wield politico-economic power while giving every
appearance of judicious moderation and balance. It is enough to take your breath away." [1]
Selling Empire
U.S. newscasters and their print media counterparts routinely parrot and disseminate the
false foreign policy claims of the nation's imperial elite. Earlier this year, U.S. news
broadcasters dutiful relayed to U.S. citizens the Obama administration's preposterous assertion
that social-democratic Venezuela is a repressive, corrupt, and authoritarian danger to its own
people and the U.S. No leading national U.S. news outlet dared to note the special absurdity of
this charge in the wake of Obama and other top U.S. officials' visit to Riyadh to guarantee
U.S. support for the new king of Saudi Arabia, the absolute ruler of a leading U.S. client
state that happens to be the most brutally oppressive and reactionary government on Earth.
In U.S. "mainstream" media, Washington's aims are always benevolent and democratic. Its
clients and allies are progressive, its enemies are nefarious, and its victims are invisible
and incidental. The U.S. can occasionally make "mistakes" and "strategic blunders" on the
global stage, but its foreign policies are never immoral, criminal, or imperialist in nature as
far as that media is concerned. This is consistent with the doctrine of "American
Exceptionalism," according to which the U.S., alone among great powers in history, seeks no
selfish or imperial gain abroad. It is consistent also with "mainstream" U.S. media's heavy
reliance on "official government sources" (the White House, the Defense Department, and the
State Department) and leading business public relations and press offices for basic information
on current events.
As the leading Left U.S. intellectuals Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman showed in their
classic text Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), Orwellian
double standards are rife in the dominant U.S. media's coverage and interpretation of global
affairs. Elections won in other countries by politicians that Washington approves because those
politicians can be counted on to serve the interests of U.S. corporations and the military are
portrayed in U.S. media as good and clean contests. But when elections put in power people who
can't be counted on to serve "U.S. interests," (Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro for example),
then U.S. corporate media portrays the contests as "rigged" and "corrupt." When Americans or
people allied with Washington are killed or injured abroad, they are "worthy victims" and
receive great attention and sympathy in that media. People killed, maimed, displaced and
otherwise harmed by the U.S. and U.S. clients and allies are anonymous and "unworthy victims"
whose experience elicits little mention or concern.[2]
U.S. citizens regularly see images of people who are angry at the U.S. around the world. The
dominant mass media never gives them any serious discussion of the US policies and actions that
create that anger. Millions of Americans are left to ask in childlike ignorance "Why do they
hate us? What have we done?"
In February of 2015, an extraordinary event occurred in U.S. news media – the firing
of a leading national news broadcaster, Brian Williams of NBC News. Williams lost his position
because of some lies he told in connection with the U.S. invasion of Iraq. A naïve
outsider might think that Williams was fired because he repeated the George W. Bush
administration's transparent fabrications about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction
and Saddam's supposed connection to 9/11. Sadly but predictably enough, that wasn't his
problem. Williams lost his job because he falsely boasted that he had ridden on a helicopter
that was forced down by grenade fire during the initial U.S. invasion. If transmitting
Washington's lies about Iraq were something to be fired about, then U.S. corporate media
authorities would have to get rid of pretty much of all their top broadcasters.
More than Entertainment
The U.S. corporate media's propagandistic service to the nation's reigning and interrelated
structures of Empire and inequality is hardly limited to its news and public affairs wings.
Equally if not more significant in that regard is that media's vast "entertainment" sector,
which is loaded with political and ideological content but was completely ignored in Herman and
Chomsky's groundbreaking Manufacturing Consent. [3] One example is the Hollywood movie "Zero
Dark Thirty," a 2012 "action thriller" that dramatized the United States' search for Osama
bin-Laden after the September 11, 2001 jetliner attacks. The film received critical acclaim and
was a box office-smash. It was also a masterpiece of pro-military, pro-CIA propaganda,
skillfully portraying U.S. torture practices "as a dirty, ugly business that is necessary to
protect America" (Glenn Greenwald[4]) and deleting the moral debate that erupted over the CIA's
"enhanced interrogation techniques." Under the guise of a neutral, documentary-like
façade, Zero Dark Thirty normalized and endorsed torture in ways that were all the more
effective because of its understated, detached, and "objective" veneer. The film also marked a
distressing new frontier in U.S. military-"embedded" filmmaking whereby the movie-makers
receive technical and logistical support from the Pentagon in return for producing elaborate
public relations on the military's behalf.
The 2014-15 Hollywood blockbuster American Sniper is another example. The film's audiences
is supposed to marvel at the supposedly noble feats, sacrifice, and heroism of Chris Kyle, a
rugged, militantly patriotic, and Christian-fundamentalist Navy SEALS sniper who participated
in the U.S. invasion of Iraq to fight "evil" and to avenge the al Qaeda jetliner attacks of
September 11, 2001. Kyle killed 160 Iraqis over four tours of "duty" in "Operational Iraqi
Freedom." Viewers are never told that the Iraqi government had nothing to do with the 9/11
attacks or al Qaeda or that the U.S. invasion was one of the most egregiously criminal and
brazenly imperial and mass-murderous acts in the history of international violence. Like Zero
Dark Thirty's apologists, American Sniper's defenders claim that the film takes a neutral
perspective of "pure storytelling," with no ideological bias. In reality, the movie is filled
with racist and imperial distortions, functioning as flat-out war propaganda.[5]
These are just two among many examples that could be cited of U.S. "entertainment" media's
regular service to the American Empire. Hollywood and other parts of the nation's vast
corporate entertainment complex plays the same power-serving role in relation to domestic
("homeland") American inequality and oppression structures of class and race. [6]
Manufacturing Idiocy
Seen broadly in its many-sided and multiply delivered reality, U.S. corporate media's dark,
power-serving mission actually goes further than the manufacture of consent. A deeper goal is
the manufacture of mass idiocy, with "idiocy" understood in the original Greek and Athenian
sense not of stupidity but of childish selfishness and willful indifference to public affairs
and concerns. (An "idiot" in Athenian democracy was characterized by self-centeredness and
concerned almost exclusively with private instead of public affairs.). As the U.S. Latin
Americanist Cathy Schneider noted, the U.S.-backed military coup and dictatorship headed by
Augusto Pinochet "transformed Chile, both culturally and politically, from a country of active
participatory grassroots communities, to a land of disconnected, apolitical individuals"[7]
– into a nation of "idiots" understood in this classic Athenian sense.
In the U.S., where violence is not as readily available to elites as in 1970s Latin America,
corporate America seeks the same terrible outcome through its ideological institutions,
including above all its mass media. In U.S. movies, television sit-coms, television dramas,
television reality-shows, commercials, state Lottery advertisements, and video games, the
ideal-type U.S. citizen is an idiot in this classic sense: a person who cares about little more
than his or her own well-being, consumption, and status. This noble American idiot is
blissfully indifferent to the terrible prices paid by others for the maintenance of reigning
and interrelated oppressions structures at home and abroad.
A pervasive theme in this media culture is the notion that people at the bottom of the
nation's steep and interrelated socioeconomic and racial pyramids are the "personally
irresponsible" and culturally flawed makers of their own fate. The mass U.S. media's version of
Athenian idiocy "can imagine," in the words of the prolific Left U.S. cultural theorist Henry
Giroux "public issues only as private concerns." It works to "erase the social from the
language of public life so as to reduce" questions of racial and socioeconomic disparity to
"private issues of individual character and cultural depravity. Consistent with "the central
neoliberal tenet that all problems are private rather than social in nature," it portrays the
only barriers to equality and meaningful democratic participation as "a lack of principled
self-help and moral responsibility" and bad personal choices by the oppressed. Government
efforts to meaningfully address and ameliorate (not to mention abolish) societal disparities of
race, class, gender, ethnicity, nationality and the like are portrayed as futile,
counterproductive, naïve, and dangerous.[8]
To be sure, a narrow and reactionary sort of public concern and engagement does appear and
take on a favorable light in this corporate media culture. It takes the form of a cruel, often
even sadistically violent response to unworthy and Evil Others who are perceived as failing to
obey prevalent national and neoliberal cultural codes. Like the U.S. ruling class that owns it,
the purportedly anti-government corporate media isn't really opposed to government as such.
It's opposed to what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called "the left hand of the state"
– the parts of the public sector that serve the social and democratic needs of the
non-affluent majority. It celebrates and otherwise advances the "right hand of the state"[9]:
the portions of government that serve the opulent minority, dole out punishment for the poor,
and attacks those perceived as nefariously resisting the corporate and imperial order at home
and abroad. Police officers, prosecutors, military personnel, and other government authorities
who represent the "right hand of the state" are heroes and role models in this media. Public
defenders, other defense attorneys, civil libertarians, racial justice activists, union
leaders, antiwar protesters and the like are presented at best as naïve and irritating
"do-gooders" and at worst as coddlers and even agents of evil.
The generation of mass idiocy in the more commonly understood sense of sheer stupidity is
also a central part of U.S. "mainstream" media's mission. Nowhere is this more clearly evident
than in the constant barrage of rapid-fire advertisements that floods U.S. corporate media. As
the American cultural critic Neil Postman noted thirty years ago, the modern U.S. television
commercial is the antithesis of the rational economic consideration that early Western
champions of the profits system claimed to be the enlightened essence of capitalism. "Its
principal theorists, even its most prominent practitioners," Postman noted, "believed
capitalism to be based on the idea that both buyer and seller are sufficiently mature,
well-informed, and reasonable to engage in transactions of mutual self-interest." Commercials
make "hash" out of this idea. They are dedicated to persuading consumers with wholly irrational
claims. They rely not on the reasoned presentation of evidence and logical argument but on
suggestive emotionalism, infantilizing manipulation, and evocative, rapid-fire imagery.[10]
The same techniques poison U.S. electoral politics. Investment in deceptive and manipulative
campaign commercials commonly determines success or failure in mass-marketed election contests
between business-beholden candidates that are sold to the audience/electorate like brands of
toothpaste and deodorant. Fittingly enough, the stupendous cost of these political
advertisements is a major factor driving U.S. campaign expenses so high (the 2016 U.S.
presidential election will cost at least $5 billion) as to make candidates ever more dependent
on big money corporate and Wall Street donors.
Along the way, mass cognitive competence is assaulted by the numbing, high-speed ubiquity of
U.S. television and radio advertisements. These commercials assault citizens' capacity for
sustained mental focus and rational deliberation nearly sixteen minutes of every hour on cable
television, with 44 percent of the individual ads now running for just 15 seconds. This is a
factor in the United States' long-bemoaned epidemic of "Attention Deficit Disorder."
Seventy years ago, the brilliant Dutch left Marxist Anton Pannekoek offered some chilling
reflections on the corporate print and broadcast media's destructive impact on mass cognitive
and related social resistance capacities in the United States after World War II:
"The press is of course entirely in hands of big capital [and it] dominates the spiritual
life of the American people. The most important thing is not even the hiding of all truth about
the reign of big finance. Its aim still more is the education to thoughtlessness. All attention
is directed to coarse sensations, everything is avoided that could arouse thinking. Papers are
not meant to be read – the small print is already a hindrance – but in a rapid
survey of the fat headlines to inform the public on unimportant news items, on family triflings
of the rich, on sexual scandals, on crimes of the underworld, on boxing matches. The aim of the
capitalist press all over the world, the diverting of the attention of the masses from the
reality of social development, nowhere succeed with such thoroughness as in America."
"Still more than by the papers the masses are influenced by broadcasting and film. These
products of most perfect science, destined at one time to the finest educational instruments of
mankind, now in the hands of capitalism have been turned into the strongest means to uphold its
rule by stupefying the mind. Because after nerve-straining fatigue the movie offers relaxation
and distraction by means of simple visual impressions that make no demand on the intellect, the
masses get used to accepting thoughtlessly all its cunning and shrewd propaganda. It reflects
the ugliest sides of middle-class society. It turns all attention either to sexual life, in
this society – by the absence of community feelings and fight for freedom – the
only source of strong passions, or to brute violence; masses educated to rough violence instead
of to social knowledge are not dangerous to capitalism "[11]
Pannekoek clearly saw an ideological dimension (beyond just diversion and stupefaction) in
U.S. mass media's "education to thoughtlessness" through movies as well as print
sensationalism. He would certainly be impressed and perhaps depressed by the remarkably
numerous, potent, and many-sided means of mass distraction and indoctrination that are
available to the U.S. and global capitalist media in the present digital and Internet era.
The "entertainment" wing of its vast corporate media complex is critical to the considerable
"soft" ideological "power" the U.S. exercises around the world even as its economic hegemony
wanes in an ever more multipolar global system (and as its "hard" military reveals significant
limits within and beyond the Middle East). Relatively few people beneath the global capitalist
elite consume U.S. news and public affairs media beyond the U.S., but "American" (U.S.) movies,
television shows, video games, communication devices, and advertising culture are ubiquitous
across the planet.
Explaining "Mainstream" Media Corporate Ownership
There's nothing surprising about the fact that the United States' supposedly "free" and
"independent" media functions as a means of mass indoctrination for the nation's economic and
imperial elite. The first and most important explanation for this harsh reality is concentrated
private ownership – the fundamental fact that that media is owned primarily by giant
corporations representing wealthy interests who are deeply invested in U.S. capitalism and
Empire. Visitors to the U.S. should not be fooled by the large number and types of channels and
stations on a typical U.S. car radio or television set or by the large number and types of
magazines and books on display at a typical Barnes & Noble bookstore. Currently in the
U.S., just six massive and global corporations – Comcast, Viacom, Time Warner, CBS, The
News Corporation and Disney – together control more than 90 percent of the nation's print
and electronic media, including cable television, airwaves television, radio, newspapers,
movies, video games, book publishing, comic books, and more. Three decades ago, 50 corporations
controlled the same amount of U.S. media.
Each of the reigning six companies is a giant and diversified multi-media conglomerate with
investments beyond media, including "defense" (the military). Asking reporters and commentators
at one of those giant corporations to tell the unvarnished truth about what's happening in the
U.S. and the world is like asking the company magazine published by the United Fruit Company to
the tell the truth about working conditions in its Caribbean and Central American plantations
in the 1950s. It's like asking the General Motors company newspaper to tell the truth about
wages and working conditions in GM's auto assembly plants around the world.
As the nation's media becomes concentrated into fewer corporate hands, media personnel
become ever more insecure in their jobs because they have fewer firms to whom to sell their
skills. That makes them even less willing than they might have been before to go outside
official sources, to question the official line, and to tell the truth about current events and
the context in which they occur.
Advertisers
A second explanation is the power of advertisers. U.S. media managers are naturally
reluctant to publish or broadcast material that might offend the large corporations that pay
for broadcasting by purchasing advertisements. As Chomsky has noted in a recent interview,
large corporations are not only the major producers of the United States' mass and commercial
media. They are also that media's top market, something that deepens the captivity of nation's
supposedly democratic and independent media to big capital:
"The reliance of a journal on advertisers shapes and controls and substantially determines
what is presented to the public the very idea of advertiser reliance radically distorts the
concept of free media. If you think about what the commercial media are, no matter what, they
are businesses. And a business produces something for a market. The producers in this case,
almost without exception, are major corporations. The market is other businesses –
advertisers. The product that is presented to the market is readers (or viewers), so these
are basically major corporations providing audiences to other businesses, and that
significantly shapes the nature of the institution."[12]
At the same time, both U.S. corporate media managers and the advertisers who supply revenue
for their salaries are hesitant to produce content that might alienate the affluent people who
count for an ever rising share of consumer purchases in the U.S. It is naturally those with the
most purchasing power who are naturally most targeted by advertisers.
Government Policy
A third great factor is U.S. government media policy and regulation on behalf of
oligopolistic hyper-concentration. The U.S. corporate media is hardly a "natural" outcome of a
"free market." It's the result of government protections and subsidies that grant enormous
"competitive" advantages to the biggest and most politically/plutocratically influential media
firms. Under the terms of the 1934 Communications Act and the 1996 Telecommunications Act,
commercial, for-profit broadcasters have almost completely free rein over the nation's airwaves
and cable lines. There is no substantive segment of the broadcast spectrum set aside for truly
public interest and genuinely democratic, popular not-for profit media and the official
"public" broadcasting networks are thoroughly captive to corporate interests and to right-wing
politicians who take giant campaign contributions from corporate interests. Much of the 1996
bill was written by lobbyists working for the nations' leading media firms. [13]
A different form of state policy deserves mention. Under the Obama administration, we have
seen the most aggressive pursuit and prosecution in recent memory of U.S. journalists who step
outside the narrow parameters of pro-U.S. coverage and commentary – and of the
whistleblowers who provide them with leaked information. That is why Edward Snowden lives in
Russia, Glenn Greenwald lives in Brazil, Chelsea Manning is serving life in a U.S. military
prison, and Julian Assange is trapped in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. A leading New York
Times reporter and author, James Risen, has been threatened with imprisonment by the White
House for years because of his refusal to divulge sources.
Treetops v. Grassroots Audiences
In this writer's experience, the critical Left analysis of the U.S. "mainstream" media as a
tool for "manufacturing consent" and idiocy developed above meets four objections from
defenders of the U.S. media system, A first objection notes that the New York Times, the
Washington Post, the Financial Times (FT), the Wall Street Journal (WSJ)
and other major U.S. corporate media outlets produce a significant amount of, informative,
high-quality and often candid reporting and commentary that Left thinkers and activists
commonly cite to support their cases for radical and democratic change. Left U.S. media critics
like Chomsky and Herman are said to be hypocrites because they obviously find much that is of
use as Left thinkers in the very media that they criticize for distorting reality in accord
with capitalist and imperial dictates.
The observation that Leftists commonly use and cite information from the corporate media
they harshly criticize is correct but it is easy to account for the apparent anomaly within the
critical Left framework by noting that that media crafts two very different versions of U.S.
policy, politics, society, "life," and current events for two different audiences. Following
the work of the brilliant Australian propaganda critic Alex Carey, we can call the first
audience the "grassroots."[14] It comprises the general mass of working and lower-class
citizens. As far as the business elites who own and manage the U.S. mass media and the
corporations that pay for that media with advertising purchases are concerned, this "rabble"
cannot be trusted with serious, candid, and forthright information. Its essential role in
society is to keep quiet, work hard, be entertained (in richly propagandistic and ideological
ways, we should remember), buy things, and generally do what they're told. They are to leave
key societal decisions to those that the leading 20th century U.S. public intellectual and
media-as-propaganda enthusiast Walter Lippman called "the responsible men." That "intelligent,"
benevolent, "expert," and "responsible" elite (responsible, indeed, for such glorious
accomplishments as the Great Depression, the Vietnam War, the invasion of Iraq, the Great
Recession, global warming, and the rise of the Islamic State) needed, in Lippman's view, to be
protected from what he called "the trampling and roar of the bewildered herd."[15] The deluded
mob, the sub-citizenry, the dangerous working class majority is not the audience for elite
organs like the Times, the Post, and the Journal.
The second target group comprises the relevant political class of U.S. citizens from at most
the upper fifth of society. This is who reads the Times, the Post, WSJ, and FT, for the most
part. Call this audience (again following Carey) the "treetops": the "people who matter" and
who deserve and can be trusted with something more closely approximating the real story because
their minds have been properly disciplined and flattered by superior salaries, significant
on-the-job labor autonomy, and "advanced" and specialized educational and professional
certification. This elite includes such heavily indoctrinated persons as corporate managers,
lawyers, public administrators, and (most) tenured university professors. Since these elites
carry out key top-down societal tasks of supervision, discipline, training, demoralization,
co-optation, and indoctrination – all essential to the rule of the real economic elite
and the imperial system – they cannot be too thoroughly misled about current events and
policy without deleterious consequences for the smooth functioning of the dominant social and
political order. They require adequate information and must not be overly influenced by the
brutal and foolish propaganda generated for the "bewildered herd." At the same time,
information and commentary for the relevant and respectable business and political classes and
their "coordinator class" servants and allies often contains a measure of reasoned and sincere
intra-elite political and policy debate – debate that is always careful not to stray
beyond narrow U.S. ideological parameters. That is why a radical Left U.S. thinker and activist
can find much that is of use in U.S. "treetops" media. Such a thinker or activist would,
indeed, be foolish not to consult these sources.
"P"BS and N"P"R
A second objection to the Left critique of U.S. "mainstream" media claims that the U.S.
public enjoys a meaningful alternative to the corporate media in the form of the nation's
Public Broadcasting Service (television) and National Public Radio (NPR). This claim should not
be taken seriously. Thanks to U.S. "public" media's pathetically weak governmental funding, its
heavy reliance on corporate sponsors, and its constant harassment by right wing critics inside
and beyond the U.S. Congress, N"P"R and "P"BS are extremely reluctant to question dominant U.S.
ideologies and power structures.
The tepid, power-serving conservatism of U.S. "public" broadcasting is by longstanding
political and policy design. The federal government allowed the formation of the "public"
networks only on the condition that they pose no competitive market or ideological challenge to
private commercial media, the profits system, and U.S. global foreign policy. "P"BS and N"P"R
are "public" in a very limited sense. They not function for the public over and against
corporate, financial, and imperial power to any significant degree.
"The Internet Will Save Us"
A third objection claims that the rise of the Internet creates a "Wild West" environment in
which the power of corporate media is eviscerated and citizens can find and even produce all
the "alternative media" they require. This claim is misleading but it should not be reflexively
or completely dismissed. In the U.S. as elsewhere, those with access to the Internet and the
time and energy to use it meaningfully can find a remarkable breadth and depth of information
and trenchant Left analysis at various online sites. The Internet also broadens U.S. citizens
and activists' access to media networks beyond the U.S. – to elite sources that are much
less beholden of course to U.S. propaganda and ideology. At the same time, the Internet and
digital telephony networks have at times shown themselves to be effective grassroots organizing
tools for progressive U.S. activists.
Still, the democratic and progressive impact of the Internet in the U.S. is easily
exaggerated. Left and other progressive online outlets lack anything close to the financial,
technical, and organizational and human resources of the corporate news media, which has its
own sophisticated Internet. There is nothing in Left other citizen online outlets that can
begin to remotely challenge the "soft" ideological and propagandistic power of corporate
"entertainment" media. The Internet's technical infrastructure is increasingly dominated by an
"ISP cartel" led by a small number of giant corporations. As the leading left U.S. media
analyst Robert McChesney notes:
"By 2014, there are only a half-dozen or so major players that dominate provision of
broadband Internet access and wireless Internet access. Three of them – Verizon,
AT&T, and Comcast – dominate the field of telephony and Internet access, and have
set up what is in effect a cartel. They no longer compete with each other in any meaningful
sense. As a result, Americans pay far more for cellphone and broadband Internet access than
most other advanced nations and get much lousier service These are not 'free market'
companies in any sense of the term. Their business model, going back to pre-Internet days,
has always been capturing government monopoly licenses for telephone and cable TV services.
Their 'comparative advantage' has never been customer service; it has been world-class
lobbying.' [16]
Along the way, the notion of a great "democratizing," Wild West" and "free market" Internet
has proved politically useful for the corporate media giants. The regularly trumpet the great
Internet myth to claim that the U.S. public and regulators don't need to worry about corporate
media power and to justify their demands for more government subsidy and protection. At the
same time, finally, we know from the revelations of Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and others
that the nation's leading digital and Internet-based e-mail (Google and Yahoo), telephony (e.g.
Verizon), and "social network" (Facebook above all) corporations have collaborated with the
National Security Agency and with the nation's local, state, and federal police in the
surveillance of U.S. citizens' and activists' private communications.[17]
Solutions
The fourth objection accuses Left media critics of being overly negative, "carping" critics
who offer no serious alternatives to the nation's current corporate-owned corporate-managed
commercial and for-profit media system. This is a transparently false and mean-spirited charge.
Left U.S. media criticism is strongly linked to a smart and impressive U.S. media reform
movement that advances numerous and interrelated proposals for the creation of a genuinely
public and democratically run non-commercial and nonprofit U.S. media system. Some of the
demand and proposals of this movement include public ownership and operation of the Internet as
a public utility; the break-up of the leading media oligopolies; full public funding of public
broadcasting; limits on advertising in commercial media; the abolition of political
advertisements; the expansion of airwave and broadband access for alternative media outlets;
publicly-funded nonprofit and non-commercial print journalism; the abolition of government and
corporate surveillance, monitoring, and commercial data-mining of private communication and
"social networks."[18] With regard to the media as with numerous other areas, we should recall
Chomsky's sardonic response to the standard conservative claim that the Left offers criticisms
but no solutions: "There is an accurate translation for that charge: 'they present solutions
and I don't like them.'"[19]
A False Paradox
The propagandistic and power-serving mission and nature of dominant U.S, corporate mass
media might seem ironic and even paradoxical in light of the United States' strong free speech
and democratic traditions. In fact, as Carey and Chomsky have noted, the former makes perfect
sense in light of the latter. In nations where popular expression and dissent is routinely
crushed with violent repression, elites have little incentive to shape popular perceptions in
accord with elite interests. The population is controlled primarily through physical coercion.
In societies where it is not generally considered legitimate to put down popular expression
with the iron heel of armed force and where dissenting opinion is granted a significant measure
of freedom of expression, elites are heavily and dangerously incentivized to seek to
manufacture mass popular consent and idiocy. The danger is deepened by the United States'
status as the pioneer in the development of mass consumer capitalism, advertising, film, and
television. Thanks to that history, corporate America has long stood in the global vanguard
when it comes to developing the technologies, methods, art, and science of mass persuasion and
thought control.[20]
It is appropriate to place quotation marks around the phrase "mainstream media" when writing
about dominant U.S. corporate media. During the Cold War era, U.S. officials and media never
referred to the Soviet Union's state television and radio or its main state newspapers as
"mainstream Russian media." American authorities referred to these Russian media outlets as
"Soviet state media" and treated that media as means for the dissemination of Soviet
"propaganda" and ideology. There is no reason to consider the United States' corporate and
commercial media as any more "mainstream" than the leading Soviet media organs were back in
their day. It is just as dedicated as the onetime Soviet state media to advancing the doctrinal
perspectives of its host nation's reigning elite -- and far more effective.
Its success is easily exaggerated, however. To everyday Americans' credit, corporate media
has never been fully successful in stamping out popular resistance and winning over the hearts
and minds of the U.S. populace. A recent Pew Research poll showed that U.S. "millennials"
(young adults 18-29 years old) have a more favorable response to the word "socialism" than to
"capitalism" – a remarkable finding on the limits of corporate media and other forms of
elite ideological power in the U.S. The immigrant worker uprising of May 2006, the Chicago
Republic Door and Window plant occupation of 2008, the University of California student
uprisings of 2009 and 2010, the Wisconsin public worker rebellion in early 2011, the Occupy
Movement of late 2011, and Fight for Fifteen (for a $15 an hour minimum wage) and Black Lives
Matter movements of 2014 and 2015 show that U.S. corporate and imperial establishment has not
manufactured anything like comprehensive and across the board mass consent and idiocy in the
U,S. today. The U.S. elite is no more successful in its utopian (or dystopian) quest to control
every American heart and mind than it is in its equally impossible ambition of managing events
across a complex planet from the banks of the Potomac River in Washington D.C. The struggle for
popular self-determination, democracy, justice, and equality lives on despite the influence of
corporate media.
"... The Russians were not pleased by U.S.-NATO involvements in the former Yugoslavia, a traditional Russian ally, in 1995 and 1999, and the expansion of NATO in the latter year (to include Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary) in violation of the agreement between Ronald Reagan and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989 that in return for Russia's acceptance of German reunification NATO would not spread "one inch" towards Russia. They protested meekly. But Russia was not an adversary then. ..."
"... Nor was it an adversary when, in 2001, under its new president Vladimir Putin, it offered NATO a route through Russia to provision forces in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. The real change only came in 2004, when NATO suddenly expanded to include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. This brought alliances forces right to the Russian border. ..."
"... We are your adversary. ..."
"... Russia is an adversary. ..."
"... Russia is an adversary. ..."
"... He worked with our adversary to undermine our election. ..."
The question is finally being asked, by the
president himself: what's wrong with collusion? Or at least his lawyer asks the question, while
Trumps tweets:
Collusion is not a crime, but that doesn't matter because there was No Collusion.
The problem, of course, is that of collusion with an alleged adversary. Russia, we
are constantly informed, is one such adversary, indeed the main state adversary, with Putin is
its head.
Adversary is a very strong term. The Hebrew word for adversary is Satan. Satan is
the ultimate symbol of evil in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Satan tempted Eve at the Tree of
the Knowledge of Good and Evil, causing her to eat the fruit, and so evil entered the
world.
Just like some want you to think that evil entered the (good, pristine) U.S. electoral
process due to this Russian adversary in 2016.
(Sometimes listening to TV pundits vilifying Putin I find Luther's famous hymn floating
through my head:
For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe.
His craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate, on earth is not his equal.
Luther's referring to Satan, of course. But the current mythology around Putin -- as someone
who still , like Lenin and Stalin before him, and the tsars of old, wishes us
harm; is an unbridled dictator with a powerful great nuclear arsenal; is the wealthiest man on
earth; and hates democracy -- resembles the mythology around the Adversary in the Bible.)
But let us problematize this vilification. When did Russia become a U.S. adversary?
Some might say 1917 when in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution Moscow became the center of
the global communist movement. But surely that period ended in 1991 with the dissolution of the
Warsaw Pact and the USSR.
Throughout the 1990s the U.S. cultivated Boris Yeltsin's Russia as a friend and even aided
the drunken buffoon in winning the 1996 election. Bill Clinton and Yeltsin signed the Start II
treaty. Harvard professors advised Moscow on economic reform.
The Russians were not pleased by U.S.-NATO involvements in the former Yugoslavia, a
traditional Russian ally, in 1995 and 1999, and the expansion of NATO in the latter year (to
include Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary) in violation of the agreement between Ronald Reagan
and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989 that in return for Russia's acceptance of
German reunification NATO would not spread "one inch" towards Russia. They protested meekly.
But Russia was not an adversary then.
Nor was it an adversary when, in 2001, under its new president Vladimir Putin, it offered
NATO a route through Russia to provision forces in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. The real
change only came in 2004, when NATO suddenly expanded to include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. This brought alliances forces right to the Russian
border.
It was a clear statement by the U.S. to a friendly country: We are your adversary.
But, of course, the Pentagon and State Department always pooh-poohed Russian concerns, denying
that NATO targeted any particular country.
Four years later (2008) NATO announced intentions to draw Ukraine and Georgia into the
alliance. Meanwhile the U.S. recognized Kosovo as an independent state. Kosovo, the historical
heart of Serbian civilization, had been wrenched from Serbia in 1999 under the pretext of a
"humanitarian" intervention that included the first bombing (by NATO) of a European capital
city since 1945. The province had been converted into a vast NATO base.
Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili, emboldened by the prospect of NATO membership and
western backing, attacked the capital of the separatist republic of South Ossetia, provoking
(as the Russians explain it) a proper punitive response: the Russo-Georgian War of August 7-16
. After this Moscow recognized South Ossetia and a second breakaway republic, Abkhazia, in a
tit-for-tat response to Washington's recognition of Kosovo.
Now Russia was labelled an aggressive power -- by the power that had carved up Yugoslavia,
and invaded and occupied Iraq on the basis of lies and killed half a million in the process.
Plans to include Georgia in NATO had to be put on hold, in large part due to European allies'
opposition (why provoke Russia?) but the U.S. intensified efforts to draw in Ukraine. That
meant toppling the anti-NATO elected president Viktor Yanukovych.
The U.S. State Department devoted enormous resources to the Maidan coup in Kiev on February
23, 2014. Its agents helped topple the government, ostensibly for its failure to negotiate an
agreement for Ukrainian associate membership in the EU, but really to bring pro-NATO forces to
power and expel the Russian Fleet from the Crimean Peninsula where it has been based since
1783. Moscow's limited support for the Donbass ethnic-Russian separatists and re-annexation of
Crimea were, of course, depicted by the U.S. as more aggression, more mischievous opposition to
"U.S. global interests."
But from Moscow's point of view these moves have surely been defensive. The main problem is
(obviously) NATO and its dangerous, unnecessary and provocative expansion. Throughout his
presidential campaign Trump questioned the continued "relevance" of NATO. Characteristically he
focused on budget issues and allies' failure to meet the goal figure of 2% if GDP for military
expenses (misleadingly depicting investment shortfalls as a betrayal and rip-off of the
victimized U.S.). But he did -- to the alarm of many, and probably to Moscow's delight --
express little enthusiasm for the alliance's historical purpose.
The most rational proposition Trump voiced before his election that the U.S. should "get
along" with Russia. That is, get along with the so-called adversary. Trump as we all know had
been in Russia on business, hosting the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013, and maintains
interest in building a Trump Tower in the city. He has met and befriended Russian oligarchs. He
quite possibly sees Russia as just another country, like Germany or France.
If "the French" had had dirt on Hillary, would it have been okay to "collude" with them to
influence the election result? France is, of course, a NATO ally. Would that make it different?
Now that the president and his layers are openly questioning whether "collusion", per
se, is even illegal, the specific nature of the colluder becomes more relevant.
Russia is an adversary.
Russia is an adversary.
Putin in Helsinki acknowledged to a reporter that he had hoped Trump could win, because he
had expressed hope for better relations. He might have added that he dreaded the prospect of a
Hillary victory because of her warmongering and characterization of him as a Hitler. Naturally
the Russian media favored Trump over Clinton at a certain point when he emerged as a credible
candidate. So when Trump on July 27, 2016 called on Russia to release Hillary's missing emails
("if you've got 'em") the Russians probably felt invited to make contact through channels. And
when informed that they had dirt, Don Jr. wrote: "If that's what you say, I love it." (Who can
blame him?)
Let's say there was some collusion after the June 6 Trump Tower meeting. Trump has suddenly
acknowledged that the meeting with the Russians was indeed to "seek political dirt." He adds
that this is "totally legal," and this may be true. Some are now saying that Don Jr. may have
violated a federal statute (52 USC 30121, 36 USC 5210) forbidding any foreign person to "make a
contribution or a donation of money or other thing of value, or expressly or impliedly promise
to make a contribution or a donation, in connection with any Federal, State, or local
election.' and for anyone to knowingly solicit, accept, or receive from a foreign national any
contribution or donation prohibited by [this law]." But the language is vague. If a Canadian
speechwriter works gratis for a U.S. political candidate, in order to help him or her win, is
this not "a thing of value" intended to affect an election?
If Paul Manafort, Don Jr. and Jared Kushner had met with Canadian agents in Trump Tower I
doubt there would have been any controversy. The fact is, Trump won the election and many of
those stunned by that wish to undermine him using revived Cold War-type Russophobia. They
insist: He worked with our adversary to undermine our election. And now they hope
they've got him on this charge.
*****
Five years ago a young man named Edward Snowden (now living in forced exile in Russia)
revealed to the world the extent of the U.S.'s global surveillance. He showed us how the NSA
wiretaps EU meetings, popes' conversations, Angela Merkel's cell phone and maintains metadata
on virtually all U.S. residents. He showed us what the contemporary advanced state can do in
this respect. We should suppose that Moscow has, if not similar capacity, at least enough
expertise to hack into the DNC emails or John Podesta's g-mail account. Is that surprising?
What none of the TV anchors is allowed to say needs to be said again: The U.S. interferes in
foreign elections all the time, including Russian ones. It should surprise no one if Russian
intelligence responds in kind. The point is not the provenance of the leaked emails but their
content.
Those horrified by the leaked material complain that their release was designed to
"undermine faith in our democratic system." Really? Don't the workings of the system itself
undermine one's faith in it, once they are exposed? Was it adversarial of the leaker to inform
us that the DNC had no intention of allowing Bernie Sanders to win the Democratic nomination,
and thus that the process was rigged? Was it unfriendly to reveal that Podesta was hoping the
media would hype Trump, as an easy target for his candidate?
The question that will no doubt be debated in the coming days is whether seeking dirt on a
political opponent from any foreigner is indeed illegal, or whether there are specific legal
ramifications of meeting with someone from an "adversary" country. But it seems to me that
Russia has not been defined as such officially. So we may have a discussion less about legality
than the politics of Russophobia.
I am happy to see Trump besieged, rattled, possibly facing impeachment. But to bring him
down on the basis of "Russian collusion," on the assumption that Russia is an adversary, would
only advantage the warmongers who want no-fly zones over Syria and military support for the
Kiev regime against the Donbas separatists. Vice President Pence I believe favors both.
Trump has said that he cannot host Putin in Washington this year, or until the Russian Hoax
witch hunt is over. But Putin has invited him to Moscow. One senses he wants some agreements
with Trump before he is ousted by his gathering adversaries, including the press, courts,
Democrats, select Republicans, turncoat aides and he himself sometimes in his unguarded
tweets.
Gary Leupp is a Professor of History at Tufts University, and author of
numerous works on Japanese history. He can be reached at: [email protected] . Read other articles by Gary .
But always remember, the FBI/DOJ is "honorable". Yeah, that's the term
they use to refer to the scumbags that "represent" us in congress. In
reality, "there is no honor amongst thieves", and government is full of
them because sociopaths gravitate to positions of power.
It's a unruly fuck show at the FBI and nobody is being held accountable. No
leadership, no standards, no neutrality, no accountability. Obama weaponized
the FBI. Fire everyone.
The
Wall Street Journal
continues to counter
the
liberal
mainstream media's Trump Derangement Syndrome
, dropping uncomfortable truth-bombs and
refusing to back off its intense pressure to get to the truth and hold those responsible,
accountable (in a forum that is hard for the establishment to shrug off as 'Alt-Right' or
'Nazi' or be 'punished' by search- and social-media-giants) .
And
once again Kimberley
Strassel
- who by now has become the focus of social media attacks for her truth-seeking
reporting - does it again this morning, as she points out -
hours after former CIA Director
Brennan threw a tantrum over having his security clearance removed - that while Justice has
released some damning documents - particularly on what Bruce Ohr was doing - much of the truth
is still classified.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Justice Department have continued to insist they did
nothing wrong in their Trump-Russia investigation. This week should finally bring an end to
that claim, given the clear evidence of malfeasance via the use of Bruce Ohr.
Mr. Ohr was until last year associate deputy attorney general.
He began feeding information to the FBI from dossier author Christopher Steele in late 2016
- after the FBI had terminated Mr. Steele as a confidential informant for violating the
bureau's rules. He also collected dirt from Glenn Simpson, cofounder of Fusion GPS, the
opposition-research firm that worked for Hillary Clinton's campaign and employed Mr. Steele.
Altogether, the FBI pumped Mr. Ohr for information at least a dozen times, debriefs that remain
in classified 302 forms.
All the while, Mr. Ohr failed to disclose on financial forms that his wife, Nellie, worked
alongside Mr. Steele in 2016, getting paid by Mr. Simpson for anti-Trump research. The Justice
Department has now turned over Ohr documents to Congress that show how deeply tied up he was
with the Clinton crew - with dozens of emails, calls, meetings and notes that describe his
interactions and what he collected.
Mr. Ohr's conduct is itself deeply troubling. He was acting as a witness (via FBI
interviews) in a case being overseen by a Justice Department in which he held a very senior
position. He appears to have concealed this role from at least some superiors, since Deputy
Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testified that he'd been unaware of Mr. Ohr's intermediary
status.
Lawyers meanwhile note that it is a crime for a federal official to participate in any
government matter in which he has a financial interest. Fusion's bank records presumably show
Nellie Ohr, and by extension her husband, benefiting from the Trump opposition research that
Mr. Ohr continued to pass to the FBI. The Justice Department declined to comment.
But for all Mr. Ohr's misdeeds, the worse misconduct is by the FBI and Justice
Department.
It's bad enough that the bureau relied on a dossier crafted by a man in the employ of the
rival presidential campaign. Bad enough that it never informed the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court of that dossier's provenance. And bad enough that the FBI didn't fire Mr.
Steele as a confidential human source in September 2016 when it should have been obvious he was
leaking FBI details to the press to harm Donald Trump's electoral chances. It terminated him
only when it was absolutely forced to, after Mr. Steele gave an on-the-record interview on Oct.
31, 2016.
But now we discover the FBI continued to go to this discredited informant in its
investigation after the firing -- by funneling his information via a Justice Department cutout.
The FBI has an entire manual governing the use of confidential sources, with elaborate rules on
validations, standards and documentation. Mr. Steele failed these standards. The FBI then
evaded its own program to get at his info anyway.
And it did so even though we have evidence that lead FBI investigators may have suspected
Mr. Ohr was a problem.
An Oct. 7, 2016, text message from now-fired FBI agent Peter Strzok to his colleague Lisa
Page reads: "Jesus. More BO leaks in the NYT," which could be a reference to Mr. Ohr.
The FBI may also have been obtaining, via Mr. Ohr, information that came from a man the FBI
had never even vetted as a source -- Mr. Simpson. Mr. Steele had at least worked with the FBI
before; Mr. Simpson was a paid political operative. And the Ohr notes raise further doubts
about Mr. Simpson's forthrightness. In House testimony in November 2017, Mr. Simpson said only
that he reached out to Mr. Ohr after the election, and at Mr. Steele's suggestion. But Mr.
Ohr's inbox shows an email from Mr. Simpson dated Aug. 22, 2016 that reads, in full: "Can u
ring."
The Justice Department hasn't tried to justify any of this; in fact, last year it quietly
demoted Mr. Ohr. In what smells of a further admission of impropriety, it didn't initially turn
over the Ohr documents; Congress had to fight to get them.
But it raises at least two further crucial questions.
First, who authorized or knew about this improper procedure? Mr. Strzok seems to be in the
thick of it, having admitted to Congress interactions with Mr. Ohr at the end of 2016. While
Mr. Rosenstein disclaims knowledge, Mr. Ohr's direct supervisor at the time was the previous
deputy attorney general, Sally Yates. Who else in former FBI Director Jim Comey's inner
circle and at the Obama Justice Department nodded at the FBI's back-door interaction with a
sacked source and a Clinton operative?
Second, did the FBI continue to submit Steele- or Simpson-sourced information to the FISA
court? Having informed the court in later applications that it had fired Mr. Steele, the FBI
would have had no business continuing to use any Steele information laundered through an
intermediary.
* * *
Strassel concludes with the point that she and The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board have
been hammering for months...
We could have these answers pronto; they rest in part in those Ohr 302 forms. And so once
again: a call for President Trump to declassify.
It's time for things to get more serious than slaps on the wrist, firings, and
self-inflicted black-eyes!
That Mueller is ignoring this OBVIOUS
Clinton/Steele/Ohr/FBI etc, etc Russian collusion
while prosecuting Manafort for an unrelated, 2005
financial crime (while granting IMMUNITY to Tony
Podesta for the identical crime) is all the proof you
need it's a coverup, not an "investigation" into
russian collusion.
Strassel deserves a Pulitzer. But instead, CNN
received an award for their comey story (after it was
proven that comey leaked the documents to
them....it's not that CNN did tons of investigative
work....the docs were handed to them and they
published them - dutifully in exchange for an award
to be given at the WH Correspondents' dinner.)
That's a fact, long after Steele was fired as a "foreign
asset" Ohr was still passing his Russian procured
bullshit through to fellow travelers within the FBI & DoJ...like
McCabe and Stzrok.
Hell the day before the Trump Tower
meeting with Natalia, Glenn Simpson was dining with this
"Russian government lawyer".And oddly enough, the very next
day too.
The ONLY Russian collusion was happening on the dim side
and one of the first clues is ALWAYS watch for what they
are accusing other's of cuz that is what THEY are doing ;-)
Every time I read these things I start by saying the
FBI/DOJ was trying to hide ____ , then I replace that
with the FBI/DOJ conspired to hide ____. You start doing
that too much and you have to say the FBI/DOJ colluded
to nullify the election, overthrow an elected president.
Somewhere this Summer I started saying the word coup
with a little more conviction. When 350 news outlets
then write coordinated editorials targeting that same
president, not the architects of this conspiracy, this
failed (so far) coup, I tend to side more against than
with them. Journalism and Yellow Journalism are
different things - I think that's why they added
"Yellow" to the term.
"When CNN and MSNBC start to ask questions like this then
I'll start paying attention."
Their money loving greed will never allow them to tell their
dedicated liberals any such thing..
The media is the enemy of the Constitution, its amendments,
and the Declaration of Independence. They do not care about who
they hurt, they do not care about Americans or America....they
are a foreign enemy under foreign control.
Hatch Act Violations by many in FBI... plus CIA, NSA, DNI, DOJ.
Prohibitions against political activity by Federal Employees. Brennen
should be scared that we all prove common policy prohibition does lead
to lying/deceit and even sedition, treason, subterfuge, subversion
charges.
This article, along with all the other reports, always state that the
DOJ did this, the FBI did that, but fails to name the individual
involved or the department heads who were responsible. The information
is always muddled and obfuscated by the bureaucratic organization, so
no individual is responsible. Enough of this, name names please!!! or
no one will ever be accountable.
Stalin had the Moscow Trials where he framed his opposition and had
them executed. Does anyone doubt had Hillary won that she would have
orchestrated the prosecution of Trump and his cronies knowing full well
she ran the entire frame-up behind the scenes?
Who would have stood
up for Trump? Both sides wanted him buried and gone. History would
have written that Trump was the ultimate Manchurian candidate...paid
for, supported by, and mandated to by Russia, now serving a life
sentence for treason.
Very insightful comment. Nobody has any doubt but half the country
wouldn't care. The other half as you eluded to, would be scattered
to the wind and left at the mercy of the controlled opposition that
is the Republican Party.
We all need to be ready to form a
Big Tent Party
outside the power structure of the
current D's and R's. Obviously not the moment now but there will
come a moment when we all must strike out
Alone...Together
.
Leave these shit stains and all of their divide and conquer BS in
the dust.
"... At that point, Lovinger wouldn't have known was a spy working with the FBI/DOJ on operation " Crossfire Hurricane " - the code name for the Obama administration's counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign. ..."
"... Halper - an Oxford University professor, former US government official and longtime FBI / CIA asset (who was married to the CIA deputy director's daughter at one point), received over $400,000 for a 2016 contract which Lovinger complained about. ..."
"... According to USASpending.gov, Mr. Halper was paid $411,000 by Washington Headquarters Services on Sept. 26, 2016 , for a contract that ran until this March. - Washington Times ..."
"... In total, the American citizen teaching abroad received over $1 million from contracts dated between 2012 and 2016. ..."
"... "As it turns out, one of the two contractors Mr. Lovinger explicitly warned his ONA superiors about misusing in 2016 was none other than Mr. Halper ," wrote Bigley in the ethics complaint, which referred to the contracts as " cronyism and corruption ." ..."
"... " Nobody in the office seemed to know what Halper was doing for his money ," said Bigley. "Adam said Jim Baker, the director, kept Halper's contracts very close to the vest. And nobody seemed to have any idea what he was doing at the time. He subcontracted out a good chunk of it to other academics. He would compile them all and then collect the balance as his fee as a middleman . That was very unusual." ..."
"... A longtime CIA and FBI asset who once reportedly ran a spy-operation on the Jimmy Carter administration, Halper was enlisted by the FBI to spy on several Trump campaign aides during the 2016 U.S. election, including Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. ..."
"... The unassuming university professor approached Page during an election-themed conference at Cambridge on July 11, 2016, six weeks after the September 26 DoD award start date. The two would stay in contact for the next 14 months, frequently meeting and exchanging emails . ..."
"... And as the Daily Caller reported, Halper used a decades-old association with Paul Manafort to break the ice with Page. ..."
"... In the email to Page, Halper asks what his plans are post-election, possibly probing for more information. " It seems attention has shifted a bit from the 'collusion' investigation to the ' contretempts' [sic] within the White House and, how--or if--Mr. Scaramucci will be accommodated there," Halper wrote. ..."
A Pentagon whistleblower was stripped of his security clearance and demoted after complaining about questionable government contracts
with both FBI informant spy Stefan Halper and a company headed by Chelsea Clinton's "best friend" for whom then-Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton arranged meetings, reports the
Washington
Times .
Adam Lovinger, a Trump supporter and 12-year veteran of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (ONA), filed a whistleblower reprisal
complaint with the Defense Department's inspector general in May against ONA boss James Baker - who hired Halper, 73, to "conduct
foreign relations" and kept the details of the spy's contracts "close to the vest." Baker was appointed chief of the ONA in 2015
by Obama Defense Secretary, Ashton Carter.
At that point, Lovinger wouldn't have known was a spy working with the FBI/DOJ on operation "
Crossfire Hurricane " - the code name for the Obama administration's counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign.
In an internal October 2016 email to higher-ups, Mr. Lovinger wrote of " the moral hazard associated with the Washington Headquarters
Services contracting with Stefan Halper ," the complaint said. It said Mr. Baker hired Mr. Halper to "conduct foreign relations,"
a job that should be confined to government officials.
...
In the fall of 2016, as the election loomed, Mr. Lovinger sent emails to Mr. Baker and other officials at the Office of Net
Assessment complaining about the entire outside contracting process. He also said the office failed to write papers on long-term
threats presented by radical Islam, China and Iran .
And in September 2016, Lovinger sent an email directly to
Baker summing up the perceived problems, which
reads in part:
"Some of our contractors distribute to others their ONA work for personal and professional self-promotion," wrote Lovinger.
"Another part is the growing narrative that ONA's most high-profile contractors are known for getting paid a lot to do rather
peripheral work ."
"On the issue of pay, our contractors boast about how much they get paid from ONA . Such boasting, of course, generates jealously
among those outside the club, and particularly from those who have tried to secure ONA contracts unsuccessfully."
"On the issue of quality, more than once I have heard our contractor studies labeled 'derivative,' 'college-level' and based
heavily on secondary sources . One of our contractor studies was literally cut and pasted from a World Bank report that I just
happened to have read the week before reading the contractor study itself. Even the font was the same."
Halper - an Oxford University professor, former US government official and longtime FBI / CIA asset (who was married to the CIA
deputy director's daughter at one point),
received over $400,000 for a 2016 contract which Lovinger complained about.
According to USASpending.gov, Mr. Halper was paid $411,000 by Washington Headquarters Services on Sept. 26, 2016 , for a contract
that ran until this March. -
Washington Times
In total, the American citizen teaching abroad received over
$1 million from contracts dated between 2012 and 2016.
Lovinger's attorney, Sean M. Bigley, filed the second of four complaints on July 18 with the Pentagon's senior ethics official,
claiming that Lovinger's bosses punished him on May 1, 2017 by abusing the security clearance process to yank his credentials and
relegate him to clerical chores. Lovinger's complaint also names the Washington Headquarters Services, a support agency within the
Pentagon that awarded the Halper contracts.
"As it turns out, one of the two contractors Mr. Lovinger explicitly warned his ONA superiors about misusing in 2016 was none
other than Mr. Halper ," wrote Bigley in the ethics complaint, which referred to the contracts as " cronyism and corruption ."
" Nobody in the office seemed to know what Halper was doing for his money ," said Bigley. "Adam said Jim Baker, the director,
kept Halper's contracts very close to the vest. And nobody seemed to have any idea what he was doing at the time. He subcontracted
out a good chunk of it to other academics. He would compile them all and then collect the balance as his fee as a middleman . That
was very unusual."
A longtime CIA and FBI asset who once reportedly
ran a spy-operation on the Jimmy Carter administration, Halper was enlisted by the FBI to spy on several Trump campaign aides
during the 2016 U.S. election, including Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
Halper's $411,575 award came three days after a September 23
Yahoo! News article by Michael Isikoff about Trump aide Carter Page, which used information fed to Isikoff by "Steele dossier"
creator Christopher Steele . The FBI would use the Yahoo! article along with the largely unverified dossier as
supporting evidence in an FISA warrant application for Page.
The unassuming university professor approached Page during an election-themed conference at Cambridge on July 11, 2016, six weeks
after the September 26 DoD award start date. The two would stay in contact for the next 14 months,
frequently meeting and exchanging
emails .
He said that he first encountered the informant during a conference in mid-July of 2016 and that they stayed in touch. The
two later met several times in the Washington area. Mr. Page said their interactions were benign. -
New York
Times
And as the Daily Caller reported, Halper used a decades-old association with Paul Manafort to break the ice with Page.
Page noted that in their first conversation at Cambridge, Halper said he was longtime friends with then-campaign chairman Paul
Manafort . A person close to Manafort told TheDCNF that Manafort has not seen Halper since the Gerald Ford administration . Manafort
and Page are accused in the Steele dossier of having worked together on the campaign's collusion conspiracy, but both men say
they have never met. -
Daily Caller
Halper would continue to spy on Page after the election. Two days after the second installment of Halper's 2016 DoD contract,
On July 28, he emailed Page with what the Trump campaign aide describes as a "cordial" communication, which did not seem suspicious
to him at the time.
In the email to Page, Halper asks what his plans are post-election, possibly probing for more information. " It seems attention
has shifted a bit from the 'collusion' investigation to the ' contretempts' [sic] within the White House and, how--or if--Mr. Scaramucci
will be accommodated there," Halper wrote.
Clinton connection
The other complaint lodged by Lovinger concerns a string of contracts totaling $11 million to Long Term Strategy Group - a D.C.
consulting firm headed by self-described "best friend" of Chelseal Clinton, Jacqueline Newmyer Deal.
In October, the
Washington Free Beacon reported that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arranged meetings in 2009 between Deal and Pentagon
officials to discuss contracts - to which Deal says no award "resulted directly or indirectly from the actions or influence of Secretary
Clinton ."
According to one 2009 email, Clinton said she recommended Deal to Michele Flournoy, the newly installed undersecretary of defense
for policy, who was seeking young women to mentor.
Deal, a specialist in China affairs who worked at the White House as a press aide for First Lady Clinton in the 1990s, wrote
back to Clinton saying she would meet Flournoy on May 5, 2009, and stated "thank you very much for making this happen."
Later that month, Deal thanked Clinton for "all your encouragement and help with DoD, " shorthand for the Defense Department.
-
Free Beacon
In a statement, Deal said: "Jacqueline Deal and the Long Term Strategy Group (LTSG) are justifiably proud of their collaboration
with the US Department of Defense across multiple administrations over the last two decades, beginning under the administration of
President George W. Bush. LTSG's work has consistently earned the highest respect and confidence of its clientele in government and
has won LTSG a reputation for producing research and analysis of exceptional quality."
Double pronged exercise: 1) Start war with Russia, steal its oil, break into tiny States
to destroy its power; 2) Destroy Trump as enemy of globalist world domination and USA
disintegration plan.
MSM propaganda arm to sell (1) and (2).
These retired Intel specialists keep interfering in the game and interjecting inconvenient
facts:
DNC server never hacked by Russia or anyone. It was an insider transfer. Insider dead.
Dead men tell no tales and so far, neither does Wikileaks.
VIPS is doing some excellent work and they show what really happened while Rosenstein is
out to Lunch, Sessions is deaf dumb and blind - useless - both Sessions and Rosenstein need
to go.
Muller does not care and he is not interested in the truth and is ignoring the facts and
the corruption in the FBI/DOJ - Muller and his band of Clinton Loyalist are trying to frame
Trump.
Rosenstein and Mueller KNOW the DNC server was not hacked by Russia or by anyone. Insider
transfer. So are they working for HilBarry? Or is this a magic act?
What Sessions is doing is unknown. He knows he was set up by Barry sending the Russian
ambassador to his office and by (FBI? Spy) Paul Ericsson offering to connect campaign thru
him to Russia. He had to recuse or be in the midst of the mess. Does he have a plan? - we
don't know.
It's not Russiagate, it's Americagate and it's your problem, not ours.
The only significant remaining question is whether you fade gracefully from the page of
History or whether you take the Samson Option and we all go out flash-bang.
I have a ton of respect for Binney. Regardless as to how fucked up this country is and its
govt, there are still people who will step up and try to set the record straight.
If you put a camera in front of a bunch of randomly selected Americans and ask them to
state their name and where they live, before answering if they voted for Trump, you get a lot
of No replies.
Now do the same questioning anonymously. The number of Nos drops.
This is the gaping hole in Goebbels argument. Anonymous polls can get closer to the truth.
Then the "accepted truth" is challenged, as in 9-11.
"There has been much amateurish journalism, false reporting, misrepresentation,
distortion, misquotation, and omission." In other words, the CIA was behind this.
so... the upshot is that G.2 and DCLeaks fabricated the leak as a hack AND the tools to do
this and to fabricate signatures/date stamps etc existed in the CIA (proven here: https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/cms/index.html
) and possibly MI6, but not in Russia, or Romania?
the CIA has "stations" all over the world?
looks like a few facebook and twitter posts have resulted in the alphabet soup, deep
state, DNC and MSM spending tens of billions of dollars pushing a false agenda against russia
AND have caused hundreds of billions of exra dollars on military expenditure and extra
security globally.
in which case, they have won by further diverting taxes away from taxpayers and increasing
debt where insufficient taxes remain/ed.
The fact that the files were downloaded from the DNC computer, and not hacked from abroad,
should be the key to unlocking Clinton conspiracies that would destroy large portions of the
Democrat establishment if revealed.
I can achieve up to 1 Gbit/s up & downstream. The average up/downstream is probably
quite a bit lower but +50mb/s is probably average. So i lol at the VIPS LOL
The poison of partisan propaganda dumped into American polity to prevent the prosecution
of the guilty (for illegally spying on Trump campaign and the assorted crimes associated with
it, including the murder of Seth Rich) will continue to foul the atmosphere for decades. The
fight is certainly between an unelected octopus that has captured all the three wings of
American polity, and a determined if not well armed citizens. The end is not near.
There is a small, nice book by C Northecote Parkinson, "The Law and the Profits". He
describes how in 1909 the British empire started a simultaneous course of welfare state and
empire building warfare state bureacracy, and how it eventually bankrupted the people by
1945. America started its own version with L B Johnson's Great Society and Vietnam War. Since
American economy was much bigger the dichotomous struggle has lasted much longer. But now the
time to choose one over another is at hand. Candidate Trump advocated trimming the warfare
state more and first. But President Trump is sending mixed signals.
The only saving grace is the self aware American citizenry and its capacity to reform
itself.
"... Can someone explain this to me like I'm 5. Some poor slub, baker in Colorado is forced to make a cake for some homos (I say it with love) because he violated their constitutional right of equal protection. But, twitter and Facebook can ban and censor free speech in violation of the constitution. The baker is privately owned and the propaganda companies are public, what's the deal? ..."
That is a very good idea. Trump's use of another honest 'platform' would be one heluvan
endorsement, which is what the alt - twitters need, lacking all the (((billions))) the big
(((3))) were given (which is why we know all about them but not so much the honest, free
speech alternatives)
Can someone explain this to me like I'm 5. Some poor slub, baker in Colorado is forced to
make a cake for some homos (I say it with love) because he violated their constitutional
right of equal protection. But, twitter and Facebook can ban and censor free speech in
violation of the constitution. The baker is privately owned and the propaganda companies are
public, what's the deal?
Because as it stands these companies are private entities that can do whatever they want
shy of discriminating against a person of one of several protected classes for one of several
activities.
If the baker refused to bake a cake for the Log Cabin Republicans on the grounds that they
were republicans then everything is cool. but if he refused on the grounds that they are "
Log Cabins " then that aint cool.
Still doesn't compute to me.... certain groups have only attained "protected " status due
to the constitutional interpretation of "equal protection " .... in other words they are only
protected because their constitutional rights may have been violated. How is the social media
banning and censorship of groups not a violation of their constitutional rights, as long as
they don't advocate violence?
Although political speech is protected speech, there is no requirement for private
organizations to honor the same code that the central state must honor. If Twitter banned you
because you were black, white or gay then you would have a case.
And you DONT want it that way. This is a moral panic not unlike the Red Scare of the 50's,
the Satanic Panic of the 80s. In both cases there was a grain of truth that was used to
employ broad sweeping over-reactions from people and corporations. They were both eventually
replaced with the exact opposite of their stated goals.
If you started a media company you do not want the gov telling you that you must publish
one thing or another.
Do not worry. This will blow up spectacularly. We are witnessing the last gasps of Legacy
Media. They have become irrelevant. The future is the Wild West of Information. There will be
a tipping point soon when the body politic suddenly wakes up and rejects the old way and
realizes that what we crave for news and entertainment is On Another Channel. That channel
will be Alt-Tech.
Alt-Tech will not contain CNN, Fox News et al. They will be outcompeted by the truth and
actual investigative journalism and gritty-pulpy entertainment that is ALL against the TOS of
the Legacy Tech giants.
You-tube, Twitter will go the way of Facebook where anyone with a brain knows that they
are riddled with zombie accounts. Advertisers will flee (as they have already begun to do)
and the architecture of Soc. Media will change forever. That is the future. Prepare for
it.
Do not fall for the public utilities angle. These companies live by the sword and they
will die by the sword. What develops out of their demise needs to be unfettered and pure.
Look to the giant creators like Pewdiepie and Alex Jones to get together and join en mass
an Alt-tech social media site. The two of them together have more subscribers/fans than ALL
of the cable pundits COMBINED.
Calling Peter Thiel...Put together an alt-social media site and Trump can promote it by
cross posting his messages there. Only he won't post them ALL...
The really good ones he will post on Alt-Tech and force the world to bend.
This raises another point. The true power of Trump and social media is the power of the
Boycott. Trump can destroy Billion dollar industries with a single message.
Trump, with this power can be the first president that continues to rule after office via
social media. THAT my friends is the thing that scares the living shit out of the deep state.
It is exactly what Barry Soweto Wanted to do but was thwarted at the last minute. It is the
reason they are turning themselves inside out to silence the groundswell.
Something wicked this way comes for NWO Globalist Vampires.
In both cases CIA and neocons run the show. But there is new powerful factor: emergence of CIA democrats like Brennan and the conversion
of intelligence agencies into political tool, the Cerberus that safeguard the castle of neoliberalism in the USA. The USA people (bottom
90%) be damned.
Notable quotes:
"... Trump's guilt in " Russiagate " is now assumed by much of the American left, and reaches greater levels of fervor with every passing day. ..."
"... Coulter was confident and she wasn't alone. Virtually the entire mainstream American right -- from pundits like Coulter and Sean Hannity to President George W. Bush and the Republican Congress -- was deeply invested in the notion that Hussein possessed WMDs and that the Iraq war was justified based on that unshakeable premise. This belief was so ingrained for so long that many excitedly rushed to pretend that chemical weapons discovered in Iraq as reported by the New York Times ..."
"... Now, "Russian collusion" could be becoming the new WMDs. ..."
declared liberal celebrity
activist Rosie O'Donnell at a protest in front of the White House last week. "We see it, he can't lie about it," she added. "He is
going down and so will all of his administration." "The charge is treason," O'Donnell declared. Protesters held held large letters
that spelled it out: " T-R-E-A-S-O-N ."
O'Donnell is by no means alone in her sentiments. Trump's guilt in "
Russiagate " is now
assumed by much of the American left, and reaches greater levels of fervor with every passing day.
This kind of partisan religiosity is not new.
In the wake of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, conservative pundit Ann Coulter accused war opponents of "
treason " and
insisted of Saddam Hussein, "We know he had weapons of mass destruction."
Coulter was confident and she wasn't alone. Virtually the entire mainstream American right -- from pundits like Coulter and
Sean Hannity to President George W. Bush and
the Republican Congress -- was deeply invested in the notion that Hussein possessed WMDs and that the Iraq war was justified based
on that unshakeable premise. This belief was so ingrained for so long that many
excitedly rushed to
pretend that
chemical weapons discovered in Iraq as
reported by the New York Times in 2014 were somehow the same thing as the "
mushroom cloud " the
Bush administration said Saddam was capable of.
Now, "Russian collusion" could be becoming the new WMDs.
The post-2016 left's most dominant narrative is arguably their deeply held belief -- with all the ferocity and piety of yesterday's
pro-war conservatives -- that Russia colluded with Trump's campaign to undermine the presidential election. Many believe that the
president and anyone who supports his diplomatic efforts like
Senator Rand Paul
are in the pocket of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It really was plausible that Iraq had WMDs in 2003 based on what our intelligence agencies knew, or purported to know. Today,
it is feasible that American democracy really has Putin's fingerprints on it based on things revealed by U.S. intelligence.
But isn't it also possible that the left is reading far too much into Russiagate?
The Nation 's Aaron Maté believes
liberals are overreaching, and that's putting it mildly:
From the outset, Russiagate proponents have exhibited a blind faith in the unverified claims of US government officials and
other sources, most of them unnamed. The reaction to special counsel Robert Mueller's recent indictment of 12 Russian military-intelligence
officers for hacking of Democratic party servers and voter databases is no exception. Mueller's indictment is certainly detailed.
Most significantly, it marks the first time anyone has been charged for offenses related to Russiagate's underlying crime.
But while it is a major step forward in the investigation, we have yet to see the basis for the allegations that Mueller has
lodged. As with any criminal case, from a petty offense to a cybercrime charge against a foreign government, a verdict cannot
be formed in the absence of this evidence.
Then the irony kicks in. Maté continues, "The record of US intelligence, replete with lies and errors, underscores the need for
caution. Mueller was a player in one of this century's most disastrous follies when, in congressional testimony, he endorsed claims
about Iraqi WMDs and warned that Saddam Hussein 'may supply' chemical and biological material to 'terrorists.'"
Noting Mueller's 2003 WMD testimony
is not an attempt to undermine him or his investigation, something Maté also makes clear. But it does serve as an important reminder
that "intelligence" can be flat-out wrong. It reminds us how these scenarios, which so much of Washington and the elite class fully
endorse, can be looked back on as lapses of reason years later.
Mass psychology is real. Political classes and parties are not immune.
"Suppose, however, that all of the claims about Russian meddling turn out to be true," Maté asks. "Hacking e-mails and voter databases
is certainly a crime, and seeking to influence another country's election can never be justified."
He continues, "But the procession of elite voices falling over themselves to declare that stealing e-mails and running juvenile
social-media ads amount to an 'attack,' even an 'act of war,' are escalating a panic when a sober assessment is what is most needed."
The U.S. could have certainly used less hyperbole and more sobriety in 2002 and 2003.
And there's good chance that when the history books are written about American politics circa 2018, much of Russiagate will be
dismissed as more Red Scare than
Red Dawn .
With Russia, as with WMDs, left and right have elevated slivers of legitimate security concerns to the level of existential threat
based mostly on their own partisanship. That kind of thinking has already proven to be dangerous.
We don't know what evidence of collusion between the Trump camp and Russia might yet come forth, but it's easy to see how, even
if this narrative eventually falls flat, 15 years from now some liberals will still be clinging to Russiagate not as a matter of
fact, but political identity. Russia-obsessed liberals, too, could end up on the wrong side of history.
No one can know the future. Republicans would be wise to prepare for new, potentially damaging information about Trump and Russia
that may yet emerge.
Democrats should consider that Russiagate may be just as imaginary as Republicans' Iraq fantasy.
All this may be as Hunter would have it. Yet there is the nagging doubt that Trump, who could only find major financing for his
enterprises following his last bankruptcy through Putin-controlled banks, could be free of any entangling ties or obligations.
And if those doubts prove true, what then?
From the Nation: "From the outset, Russiagate proponents have exhibited a blind faith in the unverified claims of U.S. government
officials and other sources, most of them unnamed."
This is a key point, because now Democrats and the most of the Left are ready to embrace a guy like Brennan a.k.a. Mr. Torture,
merely because they hate Trump.
I'll also admit to not knowing what's coming in the future, but as of now there's a strong circumstantial case to be made that
this reactions to Russian election meddling, which when all was said and done amounted to providing the voting public with the
truth about the DNC and its own election-fixing operation, that this reaction is only about losing the 2016 presidential election
to a guy who was only given a 1% chance of winning by almost everyone.
This is the most sensible commentary on "Russiagate" I have seen anywhere in a long time.
At present, there is some suggestive evidence in the public arena, but nothing conclusive.
What we probably need, actually, is a moratorium on commentary about this until the investigation reaches its conclusion. That
can take a long time. But until then, the endless partisanship-motivated speculation we hear daily is, frankly tiresome.
Thank you, Mr. Hunter, for your temperate perspective on this. I wish this would be the last word on the subject until the
investigation ends.
'"Russian collusion" could be becoming the new WMDs.'
I suspect I agree with the author's sentiment, but it is not easy to tell.
Who stands accused? Trump? Russia? Both?
The claim that Trump is colluding with Russia is not the same as the claim that Iraq War opponents were colluding with Saddam
Hussein.
The manufactured "Russia!" hysteria campaign orchestrated by the Obama/Clinton Democratic Party leadership, as deplorable and
dubious as it might be, has nothing in common with the "5th column" smears Sullivan et.al. were peddling in 2002-2003 and beyond.
The claim that Trump committed "treason" would be legally incorrect on the worst case. Without a formal Congressional declaration
of war, we are not at war with Russia, and Russia is not the enemy, no matter how much irresponsible mouthbreathing is broadcast
from the biparty Congress members. However corrupt and corrupted Trump may be, corruption does not qualify as treason. If corruption
were treason, Congress, in support of Israel and Saudi Arabia at the expense of the US (and certainly not in support of Russia)
would be a house of traitors.
In comparison, the claim that opponents of the Iraq war were traitors was not just idiotic, but morally inexcusable. If anybody
violated their oath, it was Bush himself, his appointees, and the ranking officers of the US military, for issuing illegal orders
and/or following them.
"Russian election meddling" is the new WMD only the extent it is used as a pretext for war against Russia. It is the new "stained
dress" in the attempt to challenge the ballot and paralyze an inconvenient President. I have no doubt that the Clintons are corrupt,
and the GOP has engaged in many a Congressional effort to "investigate". The Clinton campaign adopted this playbook, and the damage
to the Republic done by all is growing every day.
The real corruption here is the pretense that Congress is any better than Trump, that Russian oligarchs have more impact on
the eroding Republic than Israeli-American, Saudi and UAE oligarchs, and that the biggest threat to the integrity of our elections
and the franchise is Russia, and not the Roberts Court, Democrat apparatchiks like Sunstein, or Republican frauds like Kobach.
Both parties are actively conspiring and plotting to make sure our votes are meaningless and cannot harm incumbents and the war
profiteering classes, and where there used to be an opposition to illegal war and to oligarchs and plutocrats, there is now willing
participation in manufactured hysteria to extend the 2016 campaign indefinitely.
WMDs? The very concept is a scam -- there is nukes, and nothing else. Nuclear arsenals outsized to end us all, and trillion
dollar waste to expand them, are the tie that binds the US and Russia, and I suspect that Russia would be a lot more rational
about reducing those arsenals than the US. If the author wants to worry about ending up on the wrong side of history, he should
stop worrying about partisan points and focus. Politics is not a team sports, and anybody who picks a favorite is a failure as
a citizen. Nobody who wants power is suitable for it.
Ask yourself, if Saddam Hussein had had "WMD" -- say, some of those chemical and biological stocks Reagan envoy Rumsfeld helpfully
provided to Saddam Hussein -- would that have made the Iraq invasion legal, right just, necessary, successful? Or if Powell's
little phials and mobile weapons labs actually existed?
Heck, let's say Saddam managed to make actual nukes out of tubes that weren't and yellowcake that wasn't. North Korea has nukes.
Does that make invasion and aggressive war legal, right, just necessary, successful?
WMD or not was a lie wrapped within a deception inside a fraud. That's the one thing that it has in common with "Russiagate".
Every layer, every aspect of it is a lie, a distraction, and everybody -- Trump included -- is perpetuating the hysteria for their
own benefit. The stupidity of it is only barely rivaled by the mendacity.
Trump is proving to be the Republican Alger Hiss. The partisanship of 1948 quickly crystallized into pro- and anti-Hiss camps
in which the then limited evidence was trumped by ideology. It was not until the Verona tapes were released in the early 1990s
that Hiss was proven to be guilty. Had Nixon and his allies called for a special prosecutor in 1948 and the facts both open and
classified been examined intensely, Hiss would never have become the progressive Victim that he was to be for over thirty years.
Ditto with Trump. Absent Mueller's investigation, these accusations against Trump (and I believe them to have serious weight and
substance as well as potential for policy changes to prevent election fraud) would be mere ideological shrapnel to be argued over
for another thirty years. Let the investigations proceed unimpeded and a final accounting be published at the very least for the
sanity and integrity of the Republic. Don't let Trump become the Right's Alger Hiss.
In other words, let's imagine that Putin has really tried to change election results. Let's imagine that Trump really has been
bribed by Russian oligarchs.
Is that why we are at this juncture? Is that why Congress has not served the People and upheld the Constitution in decades?
Is that why citizens and voters lose trust in our institutions, and doubt election results?
Really?
We cannot even own up to our own mistakes, our own greed, our own malignancy. We have to blame it not on our "business partners"
and "allies" and their hundreds of billions of dollars of arms purchases, we will blame it on Russia.
How small we have become.
It is not just Trump, it is Congress. It is not just this administration and this Congress, it is the previous ones, and the
ones before it, and so on.
The point is not whether or not the "Russia!" hysteria and the allegations against Trump are accurate or not. The point is
that, in comparison to everything else, it would just be more of the same, and we brought it upon ourselves.
@Collin-
Isn't it extremely Orwellian to say that 'information isn't really information/should be censored or disregarded if it comes from
a subversive (Russia) source'?
Naturally, it allows for a very easy way to control and censor information.
Now, as far as pure security threats, aside from information that should've been public anyway, experts deem that the DNC information
came from on site:
Now this is also an appeal to authority, but VIPs has a better track record and I've seen them actually elaborate on their
claims, not just assert them.
Thursday, the New York Times decried Trump's accusation that the media are "the enemy of the
people." "Insisting that truths you don't like are 'fake news' is dangerous to the lifeblood of
democracy. And calling journalists 'the enemy of the people' is dangerous, period," said the
Times .
Thursday, the New York Times decried Trump's accusation that the media are "the enemy of the
people." "Insisting that truths you don't like are 'fake news' is dangerous to the lifeblood of
democracy. And calling journalists 'the enemy of the people' is dangerous, period," said the
Times .
FBI Forensic labs are shit and dishonest. They had 20 years of cases reviewed because of
their false testimony on hair matching. Went into court swearing that dog hair was an exact
match to the suspects.
FBI forensics are nothing more than a bullshit factory for manufacturing convictions.
What is the science behind ballistic "matching" of a bullet to a gun? Just a carefully
constructed lie. They imply every gun bullet combination is unique. There is NO scientific
basis for claiming that. In other words a "match" might be correct but the "match" might also
apply to a shitload of other weapons. Those lying fucks go into court every day and bullshit
juries.
What is the science behind claiming every fingerprint is unique? Most people believe that
bullshit but there is no science behind it.
What do you make of this exchange?
Lab Tech: "Here are the results from analyzing the residue on the device" (Finding is
pyrodex - not gunpowder. Pyrodex is not an explosive so federal crimes aren't implicated)
ATF Agent: "Are you sure? Wasn't there any black powder? We need that" (Black powder is
considered an explosive thus implicating federal crimes)
Lab Tech: "Don't worry. The results are preliminary - we will find it"
Lab Tech: "Here are the final results. We found a small amount of black powder residue.
You have your device."
The only part of the FBI that might not be corrupted is their efforts against sex
trafficking. But even their anti child molesting activity isn't worth much because all they
do is get perverts downloading images and videos. They don't go after the actual molesters
because almost always has to be a state thing. Resources given to the FBI for this would be
better handled at the state level.
Lavrov suggests that Skripals were intentionally poisoned by BZ which temporary disable a person (for approx 4 days) and
Novichok was injected in samples to implicate Russia. He impliedly suggests that this was a false flag operation.
Notable quotes:
"... First, US sanctions against Russia, then the Skripals mystery, and last the Attack at Syria....What the masters of the world trying do??? ..."
"... I'm an American. I'm disgusted with the mafia cartel bankrupt corporation that masquerades as the government. I don't like or trust any government but after listening to this guy, he certainly comes across as way more trustworthy than anyone puppet we have in the Trump regime. ..."
I'm an American. I'm disgusted with the mafia cartel bankrupt corporation that masquerades
as the government. I don't like or trust any government but after listening to this guy, he
certainly comes across as way more trustworthy than anyone puppet we have in the Trump
regime.#IDONOTCONSENT
Sometimes he continues talking without look at paper..... bcs he say true.... and USA,
BRITAIN and France cant do that bcs they are lying and scared if they will say something
wrong.
"... Bruce Ohr and his wife are complicit in the fake Christopher Steele Russian dossier ..."
"... All of this was orchestrated by the Obama Administration ..."
"... All of these FBI and DOJ people are just lackeys who take their orders from higher-ups. The real deep state controllers seem to always be protected by the underlings. But it's the underlings who fall on the sword. ..."
I've posted this before, I keep this running timeline:
Sep/15 Washington Free Beacon retains FusionGPS for oppo-research
on Trump.
Spring/16 WFB drops oppo-research project with Fusion GPS, DNC/HRCC
picks project up, money washed through Perkins Coie/Marc Elias
Apr28/16 NSA (Rogers) bans FBI 'private contractors' from access
to NSA database (Daniel Richman-Comey's leak-buddy, Shearer+Blumenthal? FusionGPS?).
Based on audit by FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer (released Apr26/17).
May/16 FusionGPS hires Nellie Ohr, wife of DD DOJ for organized
crime Bruce Ohr.
10May/16 Papadopoulos meets Australian ambassador, Clinton
Foundation sponsor
Alexander Downer in 'Kensington Wine Room' in
London
Jun/16 FBI attempts to get FISA warrant on Trump campaign –
denied.
MidJul/16 State Dept/John Winer gives Chris Steele 'dossier2,'
received from Clinton operatives Shearer+Blumenthal. Victoria Nuland, Elizabeth
Dibble also get copies.
Jul06/16 FBI/Comey vindicate HRC. Agent Strzok lead the case.
Jul/16 Steele gives dossier to FBI agent in Rome.
Jul31/16 FBI initiates investigation of Carter Page (former FBI
informer in Russian banker sting).
Aug15/16 FBI agents Strzok+Page discuss
"insurance policy" in Andy's office.
Sep/16 Steele comes to WDC, offering dossier to WaPo, NYT,CNN,
New Yorker &
Yahoo, violating FBI orders.
Only Yahoo/Isakoff takes the bait.
Mid-Oct/16 Clapper/ODNI + Carter/DOD lobby POTUS to fire Adm.
Rogers/NSA
Oct21/16 FISA warrant issued on Carter Page, based almost
completely on dossier.
Surveillance of Trump tower begins.
Nov01/16 FBI terminates relation with "CHS" Steele.
Nov08/16 Trump elected.
Nov17/16 GCHQ/Robert Hannigan writes FM Boris Johnson that there is
request from
Susan Rice to extend Aug28/16 five eyes
warrant on floors 5+26 Trump Tower,
referred to as operation "Fullsome"
(by-passing US civil rights protections??)
Nov18/16 Rogers/NSA meets Trump in Trump Tower
Nov19/16 Trump moves transition team from Trump Tower to Bedminster
Golf Club
Nov22/16 DD DOJ Bruce Ohr (wife at FusionGPS), begins extensive
unauthorized contact on behalf of FBI with Steele, resulting in 12
FBI302's from 11/22/16-05/17/17.
Dec09/16 Never-Trumper Sen. McCain (R-AZ) sends David Kremer to
London to meet
With Steele, get copy of dossier, McCain turns
it over to FBI.
Jan03/17 Ranking democrat Diane Feinstein (D-CA) resigns from
Senate Intelligence (SSCI). Her staffer Dan Jones raises $50 mil for
FusionGPS – for Russian interference research. Replaced by Mark Warner (D-VA).
Jan06/17 Comey briefs Trump on 'salacious and unverified'
dossier.
Jan09/17 Buzzfeed publishes the dossier, other press outlets
follow.
Jan11/17 ODNI/Clapper makes official statement "IC has not made
any judgement that the information is reliable." Nobody knew
"info" is already basis of FISA warrant.
Jan12/17 Comey/Yates extend FISA warrant with 'salacious and
unverified' dossier 2
nd
time.
Feb01/17 Leaks of SIGINT starts, Trump=Australian PM,
Flynn=Russian Amb. Kislyak, etc.
Feb14/17 Flynn resigns.
Mar01/17 AG Sessions recuses.
Mar30/17 Mark Warner of SSCI tries to establish backdoor contact
with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and Chris Steele via Deripaska's
rep, Adam Waldman.
1st week, before 16 - Caputo reports someone claiming to be a former NSA
agent offered him Hillary emails. He declined concerned they were
classified and urged whistleblower process be followed. He reported event
to Mueller.
9 or 13 - FBI Priestap in London
10 - *Papadopoulos meets Australian ambassador & Clinton Foundation
sponsor Alexander Downer in 'Kensington Wine Room' in London
Reported by NYT on 30 Dec 2017.
10 - Paul Ericsson sends "Kremlin Connection" email to Sen Sessions
offering to hook DJT campaign up with Russia's Putin
May Date? - Rosenstein-Mueller Special Counsel team member Preet Bharara
granted a special Visa for Russian agent Natalia Veselnitskaya in order for
her to meet with Trump Jr at a June 2016 Tower meeting the FBI would
record. Obama sent one of his translators to the meeting. Natalia needed a
special Visa because she was barred from entering the US.
9 - Russian Rinat Akhmetshin visits Obama White House for the day.
Later he was in Trump Tower meeting of June 2016. WH visitor Log.
JUNE 2016
9 - Infamous Trump Tower meeting w/ Jr and Russian atty Natalia. Then
Natalia meets w/ Simpson Fusion GPS before & after Tower mtg
14 - Russian atty Natalia attends US House Foreign Affairs hearing.
DATE? - Russian atty attends Magnitsky Act meeting w/ Dem Reps
Rohrbacher and Dellums.
26 - 1st FISA court warrant denied.
27 - DoJ AG Lynch met with Bill Clinton on Arizona airport tarmac
28 - CIA Evan McMullin sister creates fake "Trump OrGAINization" site
and bought from GoDaddy the domain trump-email.com. Site then fake robot
calls Russian Alfa Bank to create 'ping trail.'
Did not keep McMullin research. There were family
pics of them. They attended same Auburn High School in WA, near
Seattle.
Was Mormon mission agent in Brazil. Interned for CIA while at
Mormon college. Agent for UN in Israel & Muslim nation of Jordan. For
CIA was recruiter for Muslim radicals. Worked w/ British UK spy
system. Did he know Steele?
McMullin ran against DJT in 2016 election w/ backers 'never
Trump'. Got 21% UT vote. McMullin went directly from CIA to being
"undercover?" Prez candidate.
Also of note,
Halper is UK citizen (&US) plus Rhodes at Oxford same time as
Rhodes Bill Clinton. It is unknown if Rhodes scholars take loyalty
oath to UK.
Right on McMullin. The fact that Alfa Bank Russia was pinging
Trump tower was brought up several times by the Lamestream Media
during peak 'muh Russia' in 2017, and believe Clinton mentioned it
in one of the debates. But there are Russian owners of apartments
in Trump Tower who apparently use the house server, and (I
speculate) that these Russian residents were managing their own
private banking.
Now you make it sound like it was a set-up by
McMullin's sister? By the way I agree with your analysis of the
CIA candidate... at least strip Utah's electoral college votes
from Trump.
Again, there can never be a legal judgement that the DOJ and/or the FBI tried
to sway a political election and then engaged in seditious actions when the
election wasn't swayed. This would "destroy" the power of these
institutions. It is obvious and EVIDENT that there was a conspiracy by DOJ
and FBI employees to stop Trump.
The issue the Deep State has is that they
were able to successfully end the IRS exposure by destroying all of the
evidence as Obama was elected for another 4 years. The Deep State expected
Hillary to win and stay for 8 years so none of this DOJ/FBI information would
see the light of day. Trump is in charge now. If the Rs take more seats in
2018 the Deep State may do some really interesting things as they are feeling
the heat. Sessions has been playing the wait and see game. As a career
politician he is waiting to see which way the wind blows in November.
It is normal tendency in US Military to try to control war news, hold back
information from the public like coffins coming home from Vietnam or Iraq.
And we are not surprised if the Pentagon actually engaged in counter
intelligence against US Citizens. I've said this about Obama Care (ACA) and
Mr. Guber or whatever... and I've said this about Hillary Clinton.
- It is
completely different when our MICC in FBI, CIA, NSA, DOJ, engage in Hatch Act
Violations while on the Job against a presidential candidate with phony intel,
spies, false statements to FISA court, false news stories... then 'Smirk' on
camera and continue to lie to all of America. Hatch Act governs political
behavior, but I'd say the FBI, NSA, CIA, DOJ are to be held to the highest
levels of behavior. No politics on Govt Time/working hours.
https://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/Hatch_Act.pdf
"He appears to have concealed this role from at least some superiors, since
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testified that he'd been unaware of Mr.
Ohr's intermediary status."
Is this an attempt at humor by Strassel?
And why won't Trump declassify??????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bruce Ohr and his wife are complicit in the fake Christopher Steele Russian
dossier. Feckless Jeff Sessions needs to indict Ohr and his wife (and the rest
of the Deep State cabal) involved in their treasonous coup attempt against the
duly elected POTUS!!!!!!!
All of this was orchestrated by the Obama Administration.
And because Obama must be recognized historically as the greatest and most
honest president of all time, because he was the first black president
ever.....
We cannot allow the legacy of the first black president to be tarnished
To
allow anything else to happen could offend someone.
Obama knew this would be the case and thus he knew he had a free pass to get
away with anything he wanted.
Hillary knew the exact same thing and, well, When you give an honest person
a chance to get away with a few things they will take a mile. Hillary is not
an honest person, so she went as far as possible under the belief that she
would get away with it.
All of these FBI and DOJ people are just lackeys who take their orders from
higher-ups. The real deep state controllers seem to always be protected by
the underlings. But it's the underlings who fall on the sword.
"... They're kind of like a five year old child who desperately wants to keep believing in Santa Claus, even though he just found dad's Santa costume in the closet and he's holding it in his own hands. ..."
"... Sorry, but two years into this we should be way beyond this kind of – "I can't believe Santa's not real"- denying, dissembling, rationalizing nonsense. Then again, this is America. ..."
"... America is after all a country in which half the population believe in the creation myth. ..."
"... "Two years after the Iraq War began, 70 per cent of Americans still believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks, according to a Washington Post survey." The Big Lie works, and since Obama gutted Smith-Mundt, the CIA/ State Department can legally keep Americans tracking on their propaganda narratives. ..."
"... I agree with Lawrences point that this is an issue of social psychology. Rational argument over the facts is simply over taken by some kind of mass hysteria. There certainly precedent for this kind of behavior. Indeed this was described in 'Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds' 180 years ago. In my lifetime I have witnessed two episodes of this kind of mass hysteria. The first was the red scare of the early 1950's (I not so much witnessed that as experienced it) and the second was the day care hysteria of satanic cults abusing our children that flared between the late 1980s and early 1990s. Now this is a third manifestation of mass hysteria. ..."
It is quite interesting how many uninformed posters and/or trolls would love to find a way to show the "Russiagate" nonsense
is somehow plausible in spite of the evidence. They're kind of like a five year old child who desperately wants to keep believing
in Santa Claus, even though he just found dad's Santa costume in the closet and he's holding it in his own hands.
I will say that the amount of mental gymnastics required to continue not believing evidence that is right in front of one's
eyes is quite impressive – but I'd never underestimate the American people's creativity when they want to maintain their illusions/delusions.
And I'd certainly never underestimate the Russiagate troll army's persistence.
At this rate I expect to soon encounter some version of the following "observation" in the comments section for this article:
– "maybe space aliens hired by the Russians downloaded the files to a to a new fangled thig-a-ma-jig and then shape-shifted so
Craig Murray would be fooled into thinking a real-like-human insider provided him the files on a flash drive." – "oh, oh, wait,
maybe the aliens abducted Murray too, and then just made him "think" a fellow human gave him the drive in person." "yeah, yeah,
and maybe Assange just says he didn't get the files from the Russians because "he's a space alien too." "Yeah, prove to me that
it didn't happen this way – you can't – ha! there! I win!"
Sorry, but two years into this we should be way beyond this kind of – "I can't believe Santa's not real"- denying, dissembling,
rationalizing nonsense. Then again, this is America.
"Two years after the Iraq War began, 70 per cent of Americans still believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in
the 9/11 attacks, according to a Washington Post survey." The Big Lie works, and since Obama gutted Smith-Mundt, the CIA/ State
Department can legally keep Americans tracking on their propaganda narratives.
ToivoS , August 14, 2018 at 4:26 pm
I agree with Lawrences point that this is an issue of social psychology. Rational argument over the facts is simply over
taken by some kind of mass hysteria. There certainly precedent for this kind of behavior. Indeed this was described in 'Extraordinary
Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds' 180 years ago. In my lifetime I have witnessed two episodes of this kind of mass
hysteria. The first was the red scare of the early 1950's (I not so much witnessed that as experienced it) and the second was
the day care hysteria of satanic cults abusing our children that flared between the late 1980s and early 1990s. Now this is a
third manifestation of mass hysteria.
It all began with Hillary's shocking defeat. Many millions of her supporters knew that she was so good that she had to win.
But then she lost. Those millions of Democrats could not accept that in fact their assessment of her talents were totally wrong
and that she lost because she has to be one of the worst candidates in American history. That is a reality those people refused
to accept. Instead they had to concoct some crazy conspiracy to explain their break with reality. This is a classic case of cognitive
dissonance which often leads to mass hysteria.
GM , August 14, 2018 at 5:01 pm
People choose to believe what they feel that they most need to believe to assuage their insecurities fostered by what they
perceive to be the dangerous and scary world in which they exist. The simple fact that we know that life is finite by the time
we're three years old fosters the creation of such constructs as that of the myth of everlasting life in the kingdom of heaven
complete with a mortgage-free condo and an extra parking space for all repentant sinners are mainstream beliefs.
ToivoS, you are right about Hillary. She simply couldn't accept her defeat. She was the one who began Russiagate by the lie,
"17 intelligence agencies" said the Russians hacked the emails.
As for times of mass-swallowing of a lie in the 1930s every German thought that Poland was about to invade Germany and they were
scared so much that they believed their leaders who "false flagged" them into invading Poland "first." Of course, Poland had no
intention of invading Germany.
Notice every time the US attacks another sovereign country, there's a false flag waved for the citizens to follow?
Don't you appreciate that we have consortiumnews?
The Wall Street Journal
continues to counter the liberal
mainstream media's Trump Derangement Syndrome , dropping uncomfortable truth-bombs and
refusing to back off its intense pressure to get to the truth and hold those responsible,
accountable (in a forum that is hard for the establishment to shrug off as 'Alt-Right' or
'Nazi' or be 'punished' by search- and social-media-giants) .
And once again Kimberley
Strassel - who by now has become the focus of social media attacks for her truth-seeking
reporting - does it again this morning, as she points out - hours after former CIA Director
Brennan threw a tantrum over having his security clearance removed - that while Justice has
released some damning documents - particularly on what Bruce Ohr was doing - much of the truth
is still classified.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Justice Department have continued to insist they did
nothing wrong in their Trump-Russia investigation. This week should finally bring an end to
that claim, given the clear evidence of malfeasance via the use of Bruce Ohr.
Mr. Ohr was until last year associate deputy attorney general.
He began feeding information to the FBI from dossier author Christopher Steele in late 2016
- after the FBI had terminated Mr. Steele as a confidential informant for violating the
bureau's rules. He also collected dirt from Glenn Simpson, cofounder of Fusion GPS, the
opposition-research firm that worked for Hillary Clinton's campaign and employed Mr. Steele.
Altogether, the FBI pumped Mr. Ohr for information at least a dozen times, debriefs that remain
in classified 302 forms.
All the while, Mr. Ohr failed to disclose on financial forms that his wife, Nellie, worked
alongside Mr. Steele in 2016, getting paid by Mr. Simpson for anti-Trump research. The Justice
Department has now turned over Ohr documents to Congress that show how deeply tied up he was
with the Clinton crew - with dozens of emails, calls, meetings and notes that describe his
interactions and what he collected.
Mr. Ohr's conduct is itself deeply troubling. He was acting as a witness (via FBI
interviews) in a case being overseen by a Justice Department in which he held a very senior
position. He appears to have concealed this role from at least some superiors, since Deputy
Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testified that he'd been unaware of Mr. Ohr's intermediary
status.
Lawyers meanwhile note that it is a crime for a federal official to participate in any
government matter in which he has a financial interest. Fusion's bank records presumably show
Nellie Ohr, and by extension her husband, benefiting from the Trump opposition research that
Mr. Ohr continued to pass to the FBI. The Justice Department declined to comment.
But for all Mr. Ohr's misdeeds, the worse misconduct is by the FBI and Justice
Department.
It's bad enough that the bureau relied on a dossier crafted by a man in the employ of the
rival presidential campaign. Bad enough that it never informed the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court of that dossier's provenance. And bad enough that the FBI didn't fire Mr.
Steele as a confidential human source in September 2016 when it should have been obvious he was
leaking FBI details to the press to harm Donald Trump's electoral chances. It terminated him
only when it was absolutely forced to, after Mr. Steele gave an on-the-record interview on Oct.
31, 2016.
But now we discover the FBI continued to go to this discredited informant in its
investigation after the firing -- by funneling his information via a Justice Department cutout.
The FBI has an entire manual governing the use of confidential sources, with elaborate rules on
validations, standards and documentation. Mr. Steele failed these standards. The FBI then
evaded its own program to get at his info anyway.
And it did so even though we have evidence that lead FBI investigators may have suspected
Mr. Ohr was a problem.
An Oct. 7, 2016, text message from now-fired FBI agent Peter Strzok to his colleague Lisa
Page reads: "Jesus. More BO leaks in the NYT," which could be a reference to Mr. Ohr.
The FBI may also have been obtaining, via Mr. Ohr, information that came from a man the FBI
had never even vetted as a source -- Mr. Simpson. Mr. Steele had at least worked with the FBI
before; Mr. Simpson was a paid political operative. And the Ohr notes raise further doubts
about Mr. Simpson's forthrightness. In House testimony in November 2017, Mr. Simpson said only
that he reached out to Mr. Ohr after the election, and at Mr. Steele's suggestion. But Mr.
Ohr's inbox shows an email from Mr. Simpson dated Aug. 22, 2016 that reads, in full: "Can u
ring."
The Justice Department hasn't tried to justify any of this; in fact, last year it quietly
demoted Mr. Ohr. In what smells of a further admission of impropriety, it didn't initially turn
over the Ohr documents; Congress had to fight to get them.
But it raises at least two further crucial questions.
First, who authorized or knew about this improper procedure? Mr. Strzok seems to be in the
thick of it, having admitted to Congress interactions with Mr. Ohr at the end of 2016. While
Mr. Rosenstein disclaims knowledge, Mr. Ohr's direct supervisor at the time was the previous
deputy attorney general, Sally Yates. Who else in former FBI Director Jim Comey's inner
circle and at the Obama Justice Department nodded at the FBI's back-door interaction with a
sacked source and a Clinton operative?
Second, did the FBI continue to submit Steele- or Simpson-sourced information to the FISA
court? Having informed the court in later applications that it had fired Mr. Steele, the FBI
would have had no business continuing to use any Steele information laundered through an
intermediary.
* * *
Strassel concludes with the point that she and The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board have
been hammering for months...
We could have these answers pronto; they rest in part in those Ohr 302 forms. And so once
again: a call for President Trump to declassify.
It's time for things to get more serious than slaps on the wrist, firings, and
self-inflicted black-eyes!
First, the problem of money in American politics is not a problem of government interference
in electoral politics, but the opposite, the paucity of government regulation which has created
an "anything goes" environment in terms not only of the amounts of money, but of dark money in
particular. I agree that the US is much worse than UK and other Western democracies in this
regard, but that it precisely because the other nations have much more meaningful government
regulations on how campaigns are financed, how much money is spent, who can donate, etc. Not so
the US. Ackerman's complaint of "government interference" seems perversely wrong here, in a
long tradition of perversely Left syndicalist takes on American politics. It does seem to me
that there is sufficient common good interest in having a democratic process for the election
of government, if only for legitimacy purposes, for 'rules of the road' to be legislated, and
that the US needs more -- not less -- of these rules. The 15th, 17th, 19th, 23rd, 26th
Amendments and the Voting Rights Act was precisely the sort of "government interference" in
elections which is not only desirable, but absolutely necessary.
Second, the complaint from the Left in NY -- at least from some of the Bernie forces -- is
that the law doesn't make it easy enough to become a Democrat and vote in the primary. (In NY,
one has to register in a party months in advance to vote in a primary.) Some even argue that
you shouldn't have to be a Democrat to vote in the Democratic primary. That is, the complaint
cuts against the argument that "government interference" takes the form of forcing parties to
accept members. While I have some sympathy for the position that it is too hard to register in
time to vote in a NY primary, I find that idea of completely open primaries, in which anyone
can vote, as antithetical to any meaningful system of political parties, and to create all
sorts of openings for mischievous voters whose sole purpose is to have the opposing party field
its weakest candidate. The California system of an all party primary is one variant of this
idea, and it leaves open the real possibility -- as almost happened this year -- of what is
clearly the majority political party not having a candidate in the general election simply
because more candidates from its party run in the election.
There is a general problem on the Left of looking at these rules only in terms of what
maximizes our vote, rather than democratic principle. To wit, it would be a lot easier for the
Bernie forces to promote the position that so-called super-delegates to the Democratic Party
convention (largely elected officials) are undemocratic, as they were not elected as delegates
in a primary, if they were not at the very same time promoting caucuses, which clearly cut down
significantly on the rate of participation of voters, but produced many more Bernie delegates.
It can't be what helps our cause is democratic, and what hurts it is undemocratic.
Trump revoked Brennan's clearance for what he called "unfounded and outrageous allegations"
against his administration, while also announcing that the White House is evaluating whether to
strip clearances from other former top officials.
Trump later told the Wall Street Journal his decision was connected to the ongoing federal
probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and allegedly collusion by his
presidential campaign.
"I call it the rigged witch hunt, (it) is a sham," Trump said in an interview with the
newspaper on Wednesday. "And these people led it."
"It's something that had to be done," Trump added. -
Reuters
US neocons and neolibs behave like a wounded animal, or cornered rats.
Notable quotes:
"... Ironically, the new neocon-shaped think tank alliance is no more interested in what it claims to want, namely democracy, than its former Soviet rulers were. AEI has attacked Britain's decision to leave the European Union as symptomatic of "populist attacks on traditional structures of international affairs such as the EU and international trade regimes." It is in this context, we are told, that NATO has "appeared to be a second-rate concern" and that the globalization that "ushered in unprecedented worldwide growth" has been placed in peril. ..."
"... Moreover, who are these "authoritarian" bad guys that CAP now has in its crosshairs and plans to rid the world of with its new neocon pals? Presumably it's the right-of-center governments in Eastern and Central Europe, as personified by favorite leftist whipping boy Viktor Orban ..."
"... All AEI and CAP have done is to take a multitude of grievances -- e.g., America's failing to oppose adequately China's cyberthreats, putting up with Russia's aggression, "security threats" in general, and nuclear proliferation -- and mixed them together with standard leftist boilerplate about Orban's "illiberalism" and "sharing our values." This, of course, is indicative of the neocon tactic of linking whatever its advocates see fit to address to a supposed common purpose, which is saving democracy from whatever is defined as "antidemocratic." ..."
"... What's new about the AEI/CAP "partnership of peril," however, is the degree of collaboration taking place and the unmistakable whiff of "never Trump" among their scholars and writers. ..."
"... This recalls all too vividly the Soviet practice of purging "undemocratic" -- that is, uncongenial -- governments while taking over Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War. Today it's an establishment think tank world where governments elected fairly by their people are declared not democratic enough. ..."
"... Curiously, they don't find mass surveillance by the NSA, militarization of the police, permanent war, or the kind of government-imposed humiliations we experience in airports these days to be the least bit "authoritarian", all of them byproducts of incompetent or treacherous neocon and neoliberal control-freaks. ..."
"... They're still pretending they don't get it. Populists aren't the problem. Populists reacted to the problem. The problem is the staggering damage that neocons and neoliberals have done to the West. The problem is how to rid ourselves of them. ..."
Two big Washington think tanks have teamed up to
defend democracy against an 'assault on the transatlantic community.' For several months,
an alliance has been forming between the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
and the neoliberal Center for American Progress (CAP). It's the sort of kumbaya not witnessed
since wartime Washington a decade ago.
A press release from CAP on May 10 blares: "CAP and AEI Team up to Defend Democracy and
Transatlantic Partnership." The same joyous tidings accompanied a
public statement issued by AEI on July 31, which stressed that the alliance was meant to
resist "the populist assault on the transatlantic community" for the purpose of "defending
democracy."
Although, according to Vikram Singh, a senior fellow at CAP, the two partners "often
disagree on important policy questions," they have been driven together "at a time when the
character of our societies is at stake." This burgeoning cooperation underscores that "our
commitment to democracy and core democratic principles is stronger than ever." Since both
documents fling around the terms "democracy" and "liberal democracy" to justify a meddlesome
foreign policy, we may safely assume that the neocons are behind this project. Neocons for some
time now have prefixed their intended aggressions with "democracy" and "liberal democracy" the
way the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs during the 16th and 17th centuries stuck the word "holy"
into the names of their wartime alliances. Closer to our time, communist governments favored
the use of "people's democracy" to indicate that they were the good guys. Presumably the
neocons have now picked up this habit of nomenclature.
Ironically, the new neocon-shaped think tank alliance is no more interested in what it
claims to want, namely democracy, than its former Soviet rulers were. AEI has attacked
Britain's decision to leave the European Union as symptomatic of "populist attacks on
traditional structures of international affairs such as the EU and international trade
regimes." It is in this context, we are told, that NATO has "appeared to be a second-rate
concern" and that the globalization that "ushered in unprecedented worldwide growth" has been
placed in peril. Leaving aside other critical
analyses of globalism that call into question AEI's enthusiasm for neoliberal economics,
the more relevant question is: why is it "undemocratic" for a nation to vote in favor of
leaving the EU? And for that matter, why is it "undemocratic" for countries to reconsider their
membership in NATO?
Moreover, who are these "authoritarian" bad guys that CAP now has in its crosshairs and
plans to rid the world of with its new neocon pals? Presumably it's the right-of-center
governments in Eastern and Central Europe, as personified by favorite leftist whipping boy
Viktor Orban . Although CAP doesn't want to be especially "confrontational" in dealing
with its villains, or so it claims, it also proclaims that "authoritarian regimes pursue
different objectives than societies with governments that are accountable to the people and
respect the rule of law." It might be useful for CAP to tell us how exactly Hungary, Poland,
and other right-of-center European governments have not been democratically elected and have
disrespected their countries' legal traditions.
Fortunately our think tank alliance is in still in no position (heaven be thanked!) to
impose its will. The most these hysterical complainers can do is air their grievances and
misrepresent them as somehow "preserving democracy." All AEI and CAP have done is to take a
multitude of grievances -- e.g., America's failing to oppose adequately China's cyberthreats,
putting up with Russia's aggression, "security threats" in general, and nuclear proliferation
-- and mixed them together with standard leftist boilerplate about Orban's "illiberalism" and
"sharing our values." This, of course, is indicative of the neocon tactic of linking whatever
its advocates see fit to address to a supposed common purpose, which is saving democracy from
whatever is defined as "antidemocratic."
For those who wonder what AEI, as a supposedly right-of-center foundation, is doing hanging
out with CAP, such hobnobbing between Republican policy foundations and left-of-center tanks
has been going on for a while. In December 2015, AEI and Brookings both proudly announced their
cooperation in drafting a poverty
program that emphatically diverged from the one proposed by then-candidate Trump. Both
foundations called for, among other reforms, raising the minimum wage and greater government
guidance for poor families.
What's new about the AEI/CAP "partnership of peril," however, is the degree of
collaboration taking place and the unmistakable whiff of "never Trump" among their scholars and
writers. It would also appear that as the price of collaboration, AEI has been required to
join its more leftist partner in going after democratically elected right-of-center political
leaders in Europe. This recalls all too vividly the Soviet practice of purging
"undemocratic" -- that is, uncongenial -- governments while taking over Eastern Europe at the
end of the Second World War. Today it's an establishment think tank world where governments
elected fairly by their people are declared not democratic enough.
Paul Gottfried is Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Elizabethtown
College, where he taught for 25 years. He is a Guggenheim recipient and a Yale Ph.D. He is the
author of 13 books, most recently Fascism:
Career of a Concept and Revisions and Dissents . 20 Responses to Neocons and Liberals Join
Forces to Fight Populism
"Moreover, who are these "authoritarian" bad guys that CAP now has in its crosshairs and
plans to rid the world of with its new neocon pals?"
Curiously, they don't find mass surveillance by the NSA, militarization of the police,
permanent war, or the kind of government-imposed humiliations we experience in airports these
days to be the least bit "authoritarian", all of them byproducts of incompetent or treacherous
neocon and neoliberal control-freaks.
Which is why the normal mind guffaws at the though of neocons and neoliberals banding
together to fight "authoritarianism".
They're still pretending they don't get it. Populists aren't the problem. Populists
reacted to the problem. The problem is the staggering damage that neocons and neoliberals have
done to the West. The problem is how to rid ourselves of them.
I am not really surprised. What goes on in Eastern Europe is controversial and it will catch
attention of all sides. Hungary and Poland are peripheries of a bigger political-economic area,
so they will have to take this into account
What's at stake for both think tanks is the continuance of US global hegemony, whether for its
own sake or as an essential tool to prop up Israel. Ironically, the same US ideological
"family" promoted the very populism they are now condemning for the purpose of breaking up the
very same EU whose possible demise they now regard as a disaster! Equally, Professor Gottfried
and his VDare friends themselves peddle the anti-EU/pro-Putin line and are therefore in no
position to criticize the two think tanks for promoting "a meddlesome foreign policy". Indeed,
the way in which Professor Gottfried takes a position in the article for or against this or
that European government is a perfect example of his belief in a "meddlesome foreign policy".
He just doesn't like the particular form of meddling that the think tanks are proposing.
Foreign affairs and domestic policy are intertwined in the hostility to populism. AEI supports
quasi-open borders, so no surprise that they view populism as a scourge.
A pro-populist strategy, specifically on the immigration front, suggests itself if we
distinguish between Deep State-compatible immigration *restrictionism* and Deep
State-incompatible immigration *patriotism*. The latter is a form of populist nationalism.
(That phrase isn't redundant because there can surely be non-populist forms of nationalism.)
For the former, note that the Deep State can, if anything, operate better in a society without
continual ethnic minority- pleading.
Jeff Sessions is an immigration restrictionist; Stephen Miller is an immigration
patriot.
The think tank anti-populism is part of the Deep State's effort to ensure that the Mueller
investigation go forward as the best way of hindering Trump's populist instincts and the
policies that it fears will flow from them.
My initial reaction to the headline and first few sentences was: "They are frightened. Good!"
Since the first order of any organization is to survive, no matter what, each is now abandoning
its original (stated) purpose to align with the other. "The Populists are coming! The Populists
are coming!"
I think it's funny using terms like "liberal", "neo-liberal", "neo-conservative". They are all
ideologies whose fundamental motive is to maximize corporate profits at the expense of the
working American. There's no reason to distinguish between them.
" why is it "undemocratic" for a nation to vote in favor of leaving the EU? And for that
matter, why is it 'undemocratic' for countries to reconsider their membership in NATO?"
The documents don't say these things are undemocratic. The documents claim that
authoritarian populists attack international cooperation.
"It might be useful for CAP to tell us how exactly Hungary, Poland, and other
right-of-center European governments have disrespected their countries' legal traditions."
They have. If you put "Viktor Orban" and "Poland" in the search box on their website you'll
find it.
There has been no significant difference between Democrats and Republicans in my six decades.
Trump was a breath of fresh air although he hasn't moved far enough to repudiate the
establishment.
Laughing. Sure, until they want to adovcate for another regime change campaign, then it will
about people, for people all day long to get them on board.
Until then they won't be happy until the US reflects asian caste systems of social
polity.
In addition to putting Mr. Orban's "illiberalism" in mocking quotes, this melange of
conspiracy mongering finds yet more sinister neocon plotting in the AEI/Hudson connection --
which, if you follow Gottfried's link, turns out to surprisingly free of Soviet-era purges,
even though it departs from anything proposed by The Stable Genius in Chief.
If the author doesn't think left-wing critics of globalism (Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders,
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Latin American "pink" revolutionaries -- well, reformists -- and
the anti-WTO/IMF/World Bank anti-globalists, among others), he's fooling himself. It was the
farther left, after all, and the unions who often led the fights to vote against joining first
the Eurozone and then the EU, and who have opposed the American elite's various free trade
deals, forcing previous deals between neo-liberals and free market conservatives (e.g., NAFTA,
Clinton and the GOP).
Soooo You think White Identitarian populism is good for the WEST see History. Ha! Whats coming
down the PIKE is more wars, conflicts, tribalism, and DEATH. And this is just the Western
Nations (Whites). Populism is not Racial Idealism. Poor whites CONNED again, like always. Good
Fences make better neighbors, and NIMBY!
Neocons and liberals have always had a lot in common. They both want:
-- Globalism
-- open borders
-- anti-Russia, Iran
-- American hegemony which means endless wars
-- support for gay marriage
-- anti-Nationalism hence anti-Trump
The only thing that separated them were gun control and abortion, but even those issues aren't
as clearcut anymore.
So the people who gave us an America of 'Your Papers, Please!!' and 'Shut Up and Bend Over' are
getting worried about the threat of authoritarianism.
Poor babies.
They want their "democracy" back, don't you know, with its black sites, endless wars, its
torture and fiat assassination regime, its hate speech laws, its warrantless surveillance
programs, and the highest incarceration rates in the world.
I suspect you're an academic with tenure already in the bag notwithstanding your way of
talking. So tell me, how is the anti-White identitarianism going in South Africa, for the
average non-white South African? And why is the anti-White government failing so miserably?
"... So why should you care? Why does that matter to you or me? Well, like most emerging market financial crisis there is the danger of contagion . ..."
"... Turkey's economy is four times the size of Greece, and roughly equal in size to Lehman Brothers circa 2008. ..."
"... Turkey's other borders face six nations: Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, and Nakhchivan, a territory affiliated with Azerbaijan. Five of those are involved in ongoing armed conflicts or outright war. ..."
"... NATO has long outlived its' usefulness. Cancel its' stipend and bring our soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen and women home! Put them to work here. Fighting fires. ..."
"... NATO only seems to be useful to the hegemony that supports it. Peace is not it's mission. ..."
By now you've probably heard that Turkey is having a financial crisis, and Trump appears to be pouring gasoline on it.
But you may not understand what is happening, or you may not know why it's important.
So let's do a quick recap
.
Turkey's currency fell to a new record low today. Year to date it's lost almost half its value, leading some investors and
lenders inside and outside of Turkey to lose confidence in the Turkish economy.
...
"Ninety percent of external public and private sector debt is denominated in foreign currencies," he said.
Here's the problem. Because of the country's falling currency, that debt just got a lot more expensive.
A Turkish business now effectively owes twice as much as it did at the beginning of the year. "You are indebted in the U.S.
dollar or euro, but your revenue is in your local currency," explained Lale Akoner, a market strategist with Bank of New York
Mellon's Asset Management business. She said Turkey's private sector currently owes around $240 billion in foreign debt.
This is all about hot money that has been washing around in a world of artificially low interest rates, and now, finally, an
external shock happened. As it
always happens .
The bid-ask spread, or the difference between the price dealers are willing to buy and sell the lira at, has widened beyond
the gap seen at the depth of the global financial crisis in 2008, following Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s collapse.
So why should you care? Why does that matter to you or me? Well, like most emerging market financial crisis there is the
danger of contagion
.
The turmoil follows a similar currency crash in Argentina that led to a rescue by the International Monetary Fund. In recent
days, the Russian ruble, Indian rupee and South African rand have also tumbled dramatically.
Investors are waiting for the next domino to fall. They're on the lookout for signs of a repeat of the 1997-1998 Asian financial
crisis that began when the Thai baht imploded.
A minor currency devaluation of the Thai baht in 1997 eventually led to 20% of the world's population being thrust into poverty.
It led to Russia defaulting in 1998, LTCM requiring a Federal Reserve bailout, and eventually Argentina defaulting in 2001.
Turkey's economy is four times the size of Greece, and roughly equal in size to Lehman Brothers circa 2008.
The markets want Turkey to run to the IMF for a loan, but that would require a huge interest rate hike and austerity measures
that would thrust Turkey into a long depression. However, that isn't the
biggest obstacle .
The second is that Erdogan would have to bury his hatchet with the United States, which remains the IMF's largest shareholder.
Without U.S. support, Turkey has no chance of securing an IMF bailout program.
There is another danger, a political one and not so much an economic one, that could have dramatic implications.
If Erdogan isn't overthrown, or humbled, then there is an ironclad certainty that Turkey will
leave NATO and
the West.
Turkey, unlike Argentina, does not seem poised to turn to the International Monetary Fund in order to stave off financial collapse,
nor to mend relations with Washington.
If anything, the Turkish President looks to be doubling down in challenging the US and the global financial markets -- two
formidable opponents.
...
Turkey would probably no longer view the US as a reliable partner and strategic ally.
Whoever ends up leading the country, a wounded Turkey would most likely seek to shift the center of gravity away from the West
and toward Russia, Iran and Eurasia.
It would make Turkey less in tune with US and European objectives in the Middle East, meaning Turkey would seek to assert a
more independent security and defense policy.
Erdogan has warned Trump that Turkey would
"seek new friends" , although Russia and China haven't yet stepped up to the plate to bat for him.
Russia, Iran and China do have a common interest when in comes to undermining the
petrodollar . Pulling Turkey into their sphere of influence would be a coup.
Turkey lies at a historic, strategic crossroad. The
bridge between the peaceful West and the war-ridden dictatorships of the East that the West likes to bomb.
On its Western flank, Turkey borders Greece and Bulgaria, Western-facing members of the European Union. A few years ago, Turkey
-- a member of NATO -- was preparing the join Europe as a full member.
Turkey's other borders face six nations: Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, and Nakhchivan, a territory affiliated with
Azerbaijan. Five of those are involved in ongoing armed conflicts or outright war.
Losing Turkey would be a huge setback for NATO, the MIC, and the permanent war machine.
more struggling economies are starting to get it. Trade wealth for the rulers (IMF supporters) to be paid by the rest of us.
Fight back. Squeeze the bankers balls. Can't have our resources, now way, no how, without a fight.
in a flailing Turkey? Weren't there some outside potential takers encouraging China when it floated its currency proposal?
Nastarana on Tue, 08/14/2018 - 8:41pm
NATO has long outlived its' usefulness. Cancel its' stipend and bring our soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen and women home! Put them to work here. Fighting fires.
Patrolling our shores for drug running and toxic dumping. Teaching school, 10 kids per class maximum. Refurbishing buildings and
housing stock. Post Cold War, an military alliance with Turkey makes no sense.
Meanwhile going back to the ongoing escalation in political tensions between the US and
Turkey, one day after Erdogan vowed to boycott US electronics products, including the iPhone,
Ankara slapped an additional tax on imports of a broad range of American goods. Turkey
announced it would impose an additional 50% tax on U.S. rice, 140% on spirits and 120% on cars.
There are also additional charges on U.S. cosmetics, tobacco and some food products. The was Erdogan's latest retaliation for the Trump administration's punitive actions over the past few
weeks to pressure Turkey into releasing an American pastor.
Bloomberg
calculated that the items listed in the decree accounted for $1 billion of imports last
year, similar to the amount of Turkish steel and aluminum exports that were subjected to higher
tariffs by President Donald Trump last week.
The decision shows Turkey giving a proportionate
response to American "attacks" on the Turkish economy, Vice President Fuat Oktay said in tweets
this morning.
"... not all forms of economic liberalization are equally good: some reforms can be so inadequately designed as to harm the interests of the poor, especially in the short term. ..."
"... This raises the questions: Are the poor better off under a market economy? Is the invisible hand conducive to giving people a hand? Pope Francis's assessment is often negative. "[U]nbridled capitalism," he has claimed, "has taught the logic of profit at any cost, of giving in order to receive, of exploitation without looking at the person." ..."
Societies marked by oligarchy, that is, rigged to help the privileged elites at the expense of everyone else, require more than
merely the removal of anti-competitive rules and regulations. The reason, according to Martinez, is that not all forms of economic
liberalization are equally good: some reforms can be so inadequately designed as to harm the interests of the poor, especially in
the short term.
This raises the questions: Are the poor better off under a market economy? Is the invisible hand conducive to giving people a
hand? Pope Francis's assessment is often negative. "[U]nbridled capitalism," he has claimed, "has taught the logic of profit at any
cost, of giving in order to receive, of exploitation without looking at the person."
...Although the pope is on target in his admonition against worshipping the false god of a "deified market," according to Waterman,
his encyclical Laudato si' is flawed, due in no small measure to its failure to acknowledge the good that markets do by
channeling self-interest to serve the common good.
Some people are still fighting already lost battle.
Notable quotes:
"... That's a good critique of the electoral disaster that the Democrats brought upon themselves by adopting neoliberal economic policies at the dawn of the DLC. But it's delusional to think that Trump's restoration of gilded age economic policies will help working people, white or otherwise. ..."
Still, to the extent that Trumpism has any economic policy content it's the idea that a
package of immigration restrictions and corporate tax cuts[1] will make workers better off
by reducing competition from migrants and increasing labor demand from corporations.
The emergence of Trumpism signifies deepening of the ideological crisis for the
neoliberalism. Neoclassical economics fell like a house of cards.
IMHO Trumpism can be viewed as a kind of "national neoliberalism" which presuppose
rejection of three dogmas of "classic neoliberalism":
1. Rejection of neoliberal globalization including, but not limited to, free movement
of labor. Attempt to protect domestic industries via tariff barriers.
2. Rejection of excessive financialization and primacy of financial oligarchy
Restoration of the status of manufacturing, and "traditional capitalists" status in
comparison with financial oligarchy.
3. Rejection of austerity. An attempt to fight "secular stagnation" via Military
Keysianism.
Trumpism sent "Chicago school" line of thinking to the dustbin of history. It exposed
neoliberal economists as agents of financial oligarchy and the "Enemy of the American People"
(a famous Trump phase about neoliberal MSM).
It is never clear whether ideas or interests are the prime mover in shaping historical
events, but only ideas and interests together can sustain a ruling consensus for a lengthy
interval, such as the historic period of financialization and globalization running over
the last 35 years. The role of economics in furnishing the now-rebuked narratives that have
reigned for decades in mainstream political parties can be seen in three areas.
First, there is globalization as we knew it. Mainstream economics championed
corporate-friendly trade and investment agreements to increase prosperity, and provided the
intellectual framework for multilateral trade agreements.
Second, there is financialization, which led to increasing disconnection between stock
market performance and the real economy, with large rewards going to firms that undertook
asset stripping, outsourcing, and offshoring. The combination of globalization and
financialization produced a new plutocratic class of owners, managers and those who
serviced them in global cities, alongside gentrification of those cities,
proleterianization and lumpenization of suburbs, and growing insecurity and casualization
of employment for the bulk of the middle and working class.
Financialization also led to the near-abandonment of the 'national' industrial economy
in favor of global sourcing and sales, and a handsome financial rentier economy built on
top of it. Meanwhile, automation trends led to shedding of jobs everywhere, and threaten
far more.
All of this was hardly noticed by the discipline charged with studying the economy.
Indeed, it actively provided rationales for financialization, in the form of the
efficient-markets hypothesis and related ideas; for concentration of capital through
mergers and acquisitions in the form of contestable-markets theory; for the gentrification
of the city through attacks on rent control and other urban policies; for remaking of labor
markets through the idea that unemployment was primarily a reflection of voluntary leisure
preferences, etc. The mainstream political parties, including those historically
representing the working and middle classes, in thrall to the 'scientific' sheen of market
fetishism, gambled that they could redistribute a share of the promised gains and thus
embraced policies the effect of which was ultimately to abandon and to antagonize a large
section of their electorate.
Third, there is the push for austerity, a recurrent trope of the 'neoliberal' era which,
although not favored by all, has played an important role in creating conditions for the
rise of popular movements demanding a more expansionary fiscal stance (though they can
paradoxically simultaneously disdain taxation, as with Trumpism). The often faulty
intellectual case made by many mainstream economists for central bank independence,
inflation targeting, debt sustainability thresholds, the distortive character of taxation
and the superiority of private provision of services including for health, education and
welfare, have helped to support antagonism to governmental activity. Within this
perspective, there is limited room for fiscal or even monetary stimulus, or for any direct
governmental role in service provision, even in the form of productivity-enhancing
investments. It is only the failure fully to overcome the shipwreck of 2008 that has caused
some cracks in the edifice.
The dominant economic ideas taken together created a framework in which deviation from
declared orthodoxy would be punished by dynamics unleashed by globalization and
financialization. The system depended not merely on actors having the specific interests
attributed to them, but in believing in the theory that said that they did. [This is one of
the reasons that Trumpism has generated confusion among economic actors, even as his
victory produced an early bout of stock-market euphoria. It does not rebuke neoliberalism
so much as replace it with its own heretical version, bastard neoliberalism, an orientation
without a theory, whose tale has yet to be written.]
Finally, interpretations of politics were too restrictive, conceptualizing citizens'
political choices as based on instrumental and usually economic calculations, while
indulging in a wishful account of their actual conditions -- for instance, focusing on low
measured unemployment, but ignoring measures of distress and insecurity, or the indignity
of living in hollowed-out communities.
Mainstream accounts of politics recognized the role of identities in the form of wooden
theories of group mobilization or of demands for representation. However, the psychological
and charismatic elements, which can give rise to moments of 'phase transition' in politics,
were altogether neglected, and the role of social media and other new methods in politics
hardly registered. As new political movements (such as the Tea Party and Trumpism in the
U.S.) emerged across the world, these were deemed 'populist' -- both an admission of the
analysts' lack of explanation, and a token of disdain. The essential feature of such
movements -- the obscurantism that allows them to offer many things to many people,
inconsistently and unaccountably, while serving some interests more than others -- was
little explored. The failures can be piled one upon the other. No amount of quantitative
data provided by polling, 'big data', or other techniques comprehended what might be
captured through open-eyed experiential narratives. It is evident that there is a need for
forms of understanding that can comprehend the currents within the human person, and go
beyond shallow empiricism. Mainstream social science has offered few if any resources to
understand, let alone challenge, illiberal majoritarianism, now a world-remaking
phenomenon.
I'll try to explain my previous comment from another angle:
I'll take the wage share on total income as the main index of worker's bargaining
power.
The wage share depends on two factors:
1) there is a cyclical factor, when the economy is booming unemployment falls and the wage
share rises, when the economy is depressed the opposite;
2) there are structural factors that depend on how redistributive is taxation, the power of
unions etc.; these structural factors depend on law and policy, not on technology.
A big part of the "neoliberal" policy is the concept of trickle down, that can be
summarized in (1) hope that the economy will go very well and will be in permanent boom by
(2) lowering the wage share structural components, by making workers more flexible etc..
In this kind of policy (that was followed also by center left parties) the fall in the
strucural component of the wage share is supposed to be compensated by the increase of the
cyclical component, so that, in theory, workers should not be worse off.
But in reality, trickle down doesn't really work (we can argue why), so that the overall
wage share fell.
Workers (and voters in general) then expect the economy to be in a situation of permanent
boom, a boom so big that it surpasses the fall in the structural component of the wage share;
but this never happens, and probably cannot happen for a sustained period.
So voters assume that someone is stealing their lunch, and they blame someone. Immigrants
are supposed to lower worker's wage share, but influencing the cyclical component, not the
structural one; instead we have an assumption that immigrants are lowering the structural
component of the wage share, that is a nonsense, because voters have to blame someone.
Contemporaneously, we have policies that try to create a sort of permanent boom by trickle
down, such as lowering the tax rate on high incomes. These policies resemble keynesian policy
but in reality are strongly pro-cyclical, so in some sense are the opposite of the
traditional keynesian policy.
This happens because these policies appease both workers (with the promise of a boom and thus
an increase of the cyclical component of their wage share) and capitalists (because the
government is pumping money in their pockets).
But these policies are also very pro-bubble.
From this point of view, Trump's policy (but also for example many policies of the current
Italian government) are just a beefed up version of the neoliberal policy.
The hate for immigrants, as other nasty developments of international policy, are the
effect of the fact that in reality trickle down cannot really create booms as big as to
justify the weakening of the structural component of the wage share, so someone has to be
blamed somehow; also trickle down is linked, culturally, to the concept of job creators, and
the idea that workers only have an income because of the awesomeness of said job creators,
which leads tho the idea that immigrants are also so to speak eating from the same dish, and
thus robbing workers from their income.
CDT 08.13.18 at 2:41 am (no link)
@likbez --
That's a good critique of the electoral disaster that the Democrats brought upon
themselves by adopting neoliberal economic policies at the dawn of the DLC. But it's
delusional to think that Trump's restoration of gilded age economic policies will help
working people, white or otherwise.
It's why likbez is so sure that Clinton is somehow a bigger crook than Trump. That is
just crazy.
He was just not the neoliberal establishment supported crook, or pretended to be such;-)
That was enough for many people who are fed up with the system to vote for him. Just to show
middle finger to neoliberal establishment personalized by Hillary Clinton.
On a more serious note, while I do assume that voting for Trump was a form of social
protest against the current version of neoliberalism in the USA, I do not automatically
assume that the social system that will eventually replace the current US flavor of
neoliberalism will be an improvement for bottom 90% of population.
No matter how globalism is repackaged, it always smells the same way in the end.
For decades, the globalists have subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) been moving us toward a
world in which national borders have essentially been made meaningless . The ultimate goal, of
course, is to merge all the nations of the world into a "one world socialist utopia" with a
global government, a global economic system and even a global religion.
The European Union is a model for what the elite hope to achieve eventually on a global
scale . The individual nations still exist, but once inside the European Union you can travel
wherever you want, economic rules have been standardized across the Union, and European
institutions now have far more power than the national governments.
Liberty and freedom have been greatly restricted for the "common good", and a giant horde of
nameless, faceless bureaucrats constantly micromanages the details of daily life down to the
finest details.
With each passing day the EU becomes more Orwellian in nature, and that is why so many in
Europe are completely fed up with it.
"... Trump in fact was not the consensus candidate of the American capitalist class back to the 2016 election. So with respect to these economic policies, especially about his trade protectionist measures, these new tariffs imposed on the Chinese goods, let's put it this way: These are not, certainly not the traditional kind of neoliberal economic policy as we know it. So some sections of the American manufacturing sector [capitalists] may be happy about this. But I would say the majority of the American capitalists probably would not approve this kind of trade war against China. ..."
"... So on the Chinese part, ironically, China very much depends on these overall what Martin Wolf called liberal global order, which might better be called the model of global neoliberal capitalism. So China actually much more depends on that. ..."
"... despite whatever happened to the U.S., China would still be committed to the model of openness, committed to privatization and the financial liberalization. The Chinese government has declared new measures to open up a few economic sectors to foreign investment. ..."
"... for China to rearrange towards this kind of domestic consumption-led model of economic development, the necessary condition is that you have income, wealth redistribution towards the workers, towards poor people. And that is something that the Chinese capitalists will resist. And so that is why and so far China has not succeeded in transforming itself away from this export-led model based on exploitation of cheap labor. ..."
"... first of all, China is not socialist at all today. So income of economic sector, the [space] sector accounts for a small number, a small fraction of the overall economy, by various measurements. ..."
"... And so it's expected China will also become the world's largest importer of natural gas by the year 2019. So you are going to have China to be simultaneously the largest importer of oil, natural gas, and coal. ..."
"... let's say the Chinese government right now, even though is led by the so-called Communist Party, is actually much more committed to the neoliberal global order that the Trump administration in the U.S. ..."
"... The Trump administration of this trade protectionist policy, although not justified, it reflects fundamental social conflicts within the U.S. itself, and that probably cannot be sorted out by the Americans' current political system. ..."
"... So the overall neoliberal regime has become much more unstable. ..."
PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay.
The Financial Times chief economic columnist Martin Wolf has called Trump's trade wars with
Europe and Canada, but obviously the big target is China, he's called this a war on the liberal
world order. Well, what does this mean for China? China's strategy, the distinct road to
socialism which seems to take a course through various forms of state hypercapitalism. What
does this mean for China? The Chinese strategy was developed in what they thought would be a
liberal world order. Now it may not be that at all.
Now joining us to discuss what the trade war means for China, and to have a broader
conversation on just what is the Chinese model of state capitalism is Minqi Li, who now joins
us from Utah. Minqi is the professor, is a professor of economics at the University of Utah.
He's the author of The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy, and the
editor of Red China website. Thanks for joining us again, Minqi.
MINQI LI: Thank you, Paul.
PAUL JAY: So I don't think anyone, including the Chinese, was expecting President Trump to
be president Trump. But once he was elected, it was pretty clear that Trump and Bannon and the
various cabal around Trump, the plan was twofold. One, regime change in Iran, which also has
consequences for China. And trade war with China. It was declared that they were going to take
on China and change in a fundamental way the economic relationship with China and the United
States. And aimed, to a large extent, trying to deal with the rise of China as an equal, or
becoming equal, economy, and perhaps someday in the not-too-distant future an equal global
power, certainly as seen through the eyes of not just Trumpians in Washington, but much of the
Washington political and economic elites.
So what does this mean for China's strategy now? Xi Jinping is now the leader of the party,
leader of the government, put at a level virtually equal to Mao Tse-tung. But his plan for
development of the Chinese economy did not, I don't think, factor in a serious trade war with
the United States.
MINQI LI: OK. As you said, Trump was not expected. Which meant that Trump in fact was not
the consensus candidate of the American capitalist class back to the 2016 election. So with
respect to these economic policies, especially about his trade protectionist measures, these
new tariffs imposed on the Chinese goods, let's put it this way: These are not, certainly not
the traditional kind of neoliberal economic policy as we know it. So some sections of the
American manufacturing sector [capitalists] may be happy about this. But I would say the
majority of the American capitalists probably would not approve this kind of trade war against
China.
Now, on the Chinese part, and we know that China has been on these parts, there was
capitalist development, and moreover it has been based on export-led economic growth model and
with exploitation of cheap labor. So on the Chinese part, ironically, China very much depends
on these overall what Martin Wolf called liberal global order, which might better be called the
model of global neoliberal capitalism. So China actually much more depends on that.
And so you have, indeed there are serious trade conflicts between China and U.S. that will,
of course, undermine China's economic model. And so far China has responded to these new
threats of trade war by promising that China, despite whatever happened to the U.S., China
would still be committed to the model of openness, committed to privatization and the financial
liberalization. The Chinese government has declared new measures to open up a few economic
sectors to foreign investment.
Now, with respect to the trade itself, at the moment the U.S. has imposed tariffs on, 25
percent tariffs on the worth of $34 billion of Chinese goods. And then Trump has threatened to
impose new tariffs on the additional $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. But this amount at
the moment is still a small part of China's economy, about 3 percent of the Chinese GDP. So the
impact at the moment is limited, but certainly has created a lot of uncertainty for the global
and the Chinese business community.
PAUL JAY: So given that this trade war could, one, get a lot bigger and a lot more serious,
and/or even if they kind of patch it up for now, there's a lot of forces within the United
States, both for economic and geopolitical reasons. Economic being the discussion about China
taking American intellectual property rights, becoming the new tech sector hub of the world,
even overpassing the American tech sector, which then has geopolitical implications; especially
when it comes to the military. If China becomes more advanced the United States in artificial
intelligence as applied to the military, that starts to, at least in American geopolitical
eyes, threaten American hegemony around the world.
There are a lot of reasons building up, and it's certainly not new, and it's not just Trump.
For various ways, the Americans want to restrain China. Does this start to make the Chinese
think that they need to speed up the process of becoming more dependent on their own domestic
market and less interested in exporting cheap labor? But for that to happen Chinese wages have
to go up a lot more significantly, which butts into the interests of the Chinese billionaire
class.
MINQI LI: I think you are right. And so for China to rearrange towards this kind of domestic
consumption-led model of economic development, the necessary condition is that you have income,
wealth redistribution towards the workers, towards poor people. And that is something that the
Chinese capitalists will resist. And so that is why and so far China has not succeeded in
transforming itself away from this export-led model based on exploitation of cheap labor.
PAUL JAY: You know, there's some sections of the left in various parts of the world that do
see the Chinese model as a more rational version of capitalism, and do see this because they've
maintained the control of the Chinese Communist Party over the politics, and over economic
planning, that do see this idea that this is somehow leading China towards a kind of socialism.
If nothing else, a more rational planned kind of capitalism. Is that, is there truth to
this?
MINQI LI: Well, first of all, China is not socialist at all today. So income of economic
sector, the [space] sector accounts for a small number, a small fraction of the overall
economy, by various measurements.
And then regarding the rationality of China's economic model, you might put it this way: The
Chinese capitalists might be more rational than the American capitalists in the sense that they
still use most of their profits for investment, instead of just financial speculation. So that
might be rational from the capitalist perspective. But on the other hand, regarding the
exploitation of workers- and the Chinese workers still have to work under sweatshop conditions-
and regarding the damage to the environment, the Chinese model is not rational at all.
PAUL JAY: My understanding of people that think this model works better, at least, than some
of the other capitalist models is that there's a need to go through this phase of Chinese
workers, yes, working in sweatshop conditions, and yes, wages relatively low. But overall, the
Chinese economy has grown by leaps and bounds, and China's position in the world is more and
more powerful. And this creates the situation, as more wealth accumulates, China is better
positioned to address some of the critical issues facing China and the world. And then, as bad
as pollution is, and such, China does appear to be out front in terms of developing green
technologies, solar, sustainable technology.
MINQI LI: OK. Now, Chinese economy has indeed been growing rapidly. It used to grow like
double-digit growth rate before 2010. But now China's growth rate has slowed down just under 7
percent in recent years, according to the official statistics. And moreover, a significant part
of China's growth these days derives rom the real estate sector development. And so there has
been this discussion about this growing housing market bubble. And it used to be that this
housing price inflation was limited to a few big cities. But for the first half of 2018,
according to the latest data, the national average housing price has grown by 11 percent
compared to the same period last year. And that translates into a pace of doubling every six
years.
And so that has generated lots of social resentment. And so not only the working class these
days are priced out of the housing market. Moreover, even the middle class is increasingly
priced out of the housing market. So that is the major concern. And in the long run, I think
that China's current model of accumulation will also face the challenge of growing social
conflicts. Worker protests. As well as resources constrained and environmental damage. And
regarding the issue of China's investment in renewable energy, it is true. China is the largest
investor in renewable energy development, in the solar panels. And although China is of all the
largest investor in about everything.
And so China is still the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, accounting for
almost 30 percent of the total carbon dioxide emissions in the world every year. And then
China's own oil production in decline, but China's oil consumption is still rising. So as a
result, China has become the world's largest oil importer. That could make the Chinese economy
vulnerable to the next major oil price shock.
PAUL JAY: And how seriously is climate change science taken in China? If one takes the
science seriously, one sees the need for urgent transformation to green technology. An urgent
reduction of carbon emission. Not gradual, not incremental, but urgent. Did the Chinese- I
mean, it's not, it's so not taken seriously in the United States that a climate denier can get
elected president. But did the Chinese take this more seriously? Because you don't get the
same, any sense of urgency about their policy, either.
MINQI LI: Well, yeah. So like many other governments, the Chinese government also pays lip
service to the obligation of climate stabilization. But unfortunately, with respect to policy,
with respect to mainstream media, it's not taken very seriously within China. And so although
China's carbon dioxide emissions actually stabilized somewhat over the past few years, but is
starting to grow again in 2017, and I expect it will continue to grow in the coming year.
PAUL JAY: I mean, I can understand why, for example, Russia is not in any hurry to buy into
climate change science. Its whole economy depends on oil. Canada also mostly pays lip service
because the Alberta tar sands is so important to the Canadian economy. Shale oil is so
important to the American economy, as well as the American oil companies own oil under the
ground all over the world. But China is not an oil country. You know, they're not dependent on
oil income. You'd think it'd be in China's interest to be far more aggressive, not only in
terms of how good it looks to the world that China would be the real leader in mitigating,
reducing, eliminating the use of carbon-based fuels, but still they're not. I mean, not at the
rate scientists say needs to be done.
MINQI LI: Not at all. Although China does not depend on all on oil for income, but China
depends on coal a lot. And the coal is still something like 60 percent of China's overall
energy consumption. And so it's still very important for China's energy.
PAUL JAY: What- Minqi, where does the coal mostly come from? Don't they import a lot of that
coal?
MINQI LI: Mostly from China itself. Even though, you know, China is the world's largest coal
producer, on top of that China is either the largest or the second-largest coal importer in the
world market as well. And then on top of that, China is also consuming an increasing amount of
oil and natural gas, especially natural gas. And so although natural gas is not as polluting as
coal, it's still polluting. And so it's expected China will also become the world's largest
importer of natural gas by the year 2019. So you are going to have China to be simultaneously
the largest importer of oil, natural gas, and coal.
PAUL JAY: The Chinese party, just to get back to the trade war issue and to end up with, the
idea of this Chinese nation standing up, Chinese sovereignty, Chinese nationalism, it's a
powerful theme within this new Chinese discourse. I'm not saying Chinese nationalism is new,
but it's got a whole new burst of energy. How does China, if necessary to reach some kind of
compromise with the United States on the trade war, how does China do that without looking like
it's backing down to Trump?
MINQI LI: Well, yes, difficult task for the Chinese party to balance. What they have been
right now is that on the one hand they promise to the domestic audience they are not going to
make concessions towards the U.S., while in fact they are probably making concessions. And then
on the other hand the outside world, and they make announcement that they will not change from
the reform and openness policy, which in practice means that they will not change from the
neoliberal direction of China's development, and they will continue down the path towards
financial liberalization. And so that is what they are trying to balance right now.
PAUL JAY: I said finally, but this is finally. Do the Americans have a case? Does the Trump
argument have a legitimate case that the Chinese, on the one hand, want a liberal world order
in terms of trade, and open markets, and such? On the other hand are not following intellectual
property law, property rights and law, the way other advanced capitalist countries supposedly
do. Is there something to that case?
MINQI LI: Well, you know, let's say the Chinese government right now, even though is led
by the so-called Communist Party, is actually much more committed to the neoliberal global
order that the Trump administration in the U.S. - but I don't want to make justifications
for the neoliberal global order. But let's put it this way: The Trump administration of
this trade protectionist policy, although not justified, it reflects fundamental social
conflicts within the U.S. itself, and that probably cannot be sorted out by the Americans'
current political system.
PAUL JAY: So the crisis- you know, when you look at the American side and the Chinese side,
including the deep debt bomb people talk about in China, there really is no sorting out of this
crisis.
MINQI LI: So the overall neoliberal regime has become much more unstable.
PAUL JAY: All right. Thanks for joining us, Minqi. I hope we can pick this up again
soon.
MINQI LI: OK. Thank you.
PAUL JAY: Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
We are in a very peculiar ideological and political place in which Democracy (oh sainted
Democracy) is a very good thing, unless the voters reject the technocrat class's leadership.
Then the velvet gloves come off. From the perspective of the elites and their technocrat
apparatchiks, elections have only one purpose: to rubberstamp their leadership.
As a general rule, this is easily managed by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on
advertising and bribes to the cartels and insider fiefdoms who pony up most of the cash.
This is why incumbents win the vast majority of elections. Once in power, they issue the
bribes and payoffs needed to guarantee funding next election cycle.
The occasional incumbent who is voted out of office made one of two mistakes:
1. He/she showed a very troubling bit of independence from the technocrat status quo, so a
more orthodox candidate is selected to eliminate him/her.
2. The incumbent forgot to put on a charade of "listening to my constituency" etc.
If restive voters can't be bamboozled into passively supporting the technocrat status quo
with the usual propaganda, divide and conquer is the preferred strategy. Only voting for the
technocrat class (of any party, it doesn't really matter) will save us from the evil Other :
Deplorables, socialists, commies, fascists, etc.
In extreme cases where the masses confound the status quo by voting against the technocrat
class (i.e. against globalization, financialization, Empire), then the elites/technocrats will
punish them with austerity or a managed recession. The technocrat's core ideology boils down to
this:
1. The masses are dangerously incapable of making wise decisions about anything, so we have
to persuade them to do our bidding. Any dissent will be punished, marginalized, censored or
shut down under some pretext of "protecting the public" or violation of some open-ended
statute.
2. To insure this happy outcome, we must use all the powers of propaganda, up to and
including rigged statistics, bogus "facts" (official fake news can't be fake news, etc.),
divide and conquer, fear-mongering, misdirection and so on.
3. We must relentlessly centralize all power, wealth and authority so the masses have no
escape or independence left to threaten us. We must control everything, for their own good of
course.
4. Globalization must be presented not as a gargantuan fraud that has stripmined the planet
and its inhabitants, but as the sole wellspring of endless, permanent prosperity.
5. If the masses refuse to rubberstamp our leadership, they will be punished and told the
source of their punishment is their rejection of globalization, financialization and
Empire.
Technocrats rule the world, East and West alike. My two favorite charts of the outcome of
technocrats running things to suit their elite masters are:
The state-cartel-crony-capitalist version: the top .1% skim the vast majority of the gains
in income and wealth. Globalization, financialization and Empire sure do rack up impressive
gains. Too bad they're concentrated in the top 1.%.
The state-crony-socialist version: the currency is destroyed, impoverishing everyone but the
top .1% who transferred their wealth to Miami, London and Zurich long ago. Hmm, do you discern
a pattern here in the elite-technocrat regime?
Ideology is just a cover you slip over the machine to mask what's really going on.
"... Facebook employees said privately over the past several months that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg wants to outsource many of the most sensitive political decisions, leaving fact-checking to media groups and geopolitics to think tanks. The more he succeeds, the fewer complications for Facebook's expansion, the smaller its payroll, and the more plausible its positioning as a neutral platform. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment. ..."
"... The establishment "elites" are in such denial about the consequences of the world they created, all they can do is spastically attack symptoms. Trump didn't divide U.S. society and Alex Jones didn't cause our widespread (and entirely justifiably) distrust in institutions; the status quo system did that via its spectacular failures. Trump's election and Alex Jones' popularity are merely symptoms of an incredibly corrupt and failed status quo paradigm, the stewards of which continually refuse to take a look in the mirror, accept blame and reform. ..."
Anyone who tells you the recent escalation of censorship by U.S. tech giants is merely a
reflection of private companies making independent decisions is either lying or dangerously ignorant.
In the case of Facebook, the road from pseudo-platform to willing and enthusiastic tool of
establishment power players is fairly straightforward. It really got going earlier this year when
issues surrounding egregious privacy violations in the case of Cambridge Analytica (stuff that had
been
going
on for years
) could finally be linked to the Trump campaign. It was at this point that
powerful and nefarious forces spotted an opportunity to leverage the company's gigantic influence in
distributing news and opinion for their own ends. Rather than hold executives to account and break up
the company, the choice was made to commandeer and weaponize the platform. This is where we stand
today.
Let's not whitewash history though. These tech companies have been compliant, out of control
government snitches for a long time. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we're aware of the deep and
longstanding cooperation between these lackeys and U.S. intelligence agencies in the realm of mass
surveillance. As such, the most recent transformation of these companies into full fledged information
gatekeepers should be seen in its proper context; merely as a dangerous continuation and expansion of
an already entrenched reality.
But it's all out in the open now. Facebook isn't even hiding the fact that it's outsourcing much of
its "fake news" analysis to the Atlantic Council, a think tank funded by NATO, Gulf States and defense
contractors. As reported by
Reuters
:
Facebook began looking for outside help amid criticism for failing to rein in Russian
propaganda ahead of the 2016 presidential elections
With scores of its own cybersecurity professionals and $40 billion in annual revenue in
2017, Facebook might not seem in need of outside help.
It doesn't need outside help, it needs political cover, which is the real driver behind this.
But the lab and Atlantic Council bring geopolitical expertise and
allow Facebook to
distance itself from sensitive pronouncements.
On last week's call with reporters, Alex
Stamos, Facebook's chief security officer, said the company should not be expected to identify or
blame specific governments for all the campaigns it detects.
"Companies like ours don't have the necessary information to evaluate the relationship
between political motivations that we infer about an adversary and the political goals of a
nation-state," said Stamos, who is leaving the company this month for a post at Stanford
University. Instead, he said Facebook would stick to amassing digital evidence and turning
it over to authorities and researchers.
It would also be awkward for Facebook to accuse a government of wrongdoing when the company
is trying to enter or expand in a market under that government's control.
Facebook donated an undisclosed amount to the lab in May that was enough, said
Graham Brookie, who runs the lab, to vault the company to the top of the Atlantic Council's donor
list, alongside the British government.
Facebook employees said privately over the past several months that Chief Executive
Mark Zuckerberg wants to outsource many of the most sensitive political decisions, leaving
fact-checking to media groups and geopolitics to think tanks.
The more he succeeds, the
fewer complications for Facebook's expansion, the smaller its payroll, and the more plausible its
positioning as a neutral platform. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.
Now that it's been established that Facebook is in fact censoring based on advice provided by
former spooks and other assorted establishment charlatans, let's talk about what this means. I think
there are two major takeaways.
First and foremost, the entire push to make arbitrary de-platforming by tech giants the new
norm proves the establishment is scared to death.
The very powerful folks accustomed to
manipulating and shaping the world via narrative creation aren't terrified about what Alex Jones says,
they're terrified that it's popular. The establishment "elites" are in such denial about the
consequences of the world they created, all they can do is spastically attack symptoms. Trump didn't
divide U.S. society and Alex Jones didn't cause our widespread (and entirely justifiably) distrust in
institutions; the status quo system did that via its spectacular failures. Trump's election and Alex
Jones' popularity are merely symptoms of an incredibly corrupt and failed status quo paradigm, the
stewards of which continually refuse to take a look in the mirror, accept blame and reform.
The way I see it, two key events of the 21st century directly led to the situation we find
ourselves in currently. The launching of the Iraq war based on false evidence spread by intelligence
agencies, politicians and the media, and the decision to bail out bankers and protect them from jail
in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Combined, these two things created an environment of anger
and distrust in which nearly anything becomes possible politically and socially. Trump and Alex Jones
are symptoms of a failing society, not the root causes of it.
If I'm right about this, censorship of such voices by SilIcon Valley billionaires will backfire
spectacularly. Alex Jones has now been made a martyr by tech oligarchs and deep state think tanks,
which gives him more street cred than he had before. De-platforming does nothing to the demand side of
the equation when it comes to his content, as we saw with his Infowars app
soaring
in the charts
soon after the purge. If people want to find Alex Jones and Infowars, they will find
it. Moreover, other communities are beginning to wake up to how dangerous all of this is. For example,
last week we witnessed a growing number of Bitcoiners
create
accounts at decentralized Twitter-alternative Mastodon
in case Jack Dorsey decides to step up
censorship there.
Ultimately, it's safer for society to have open public forums where all ideas -- whether you
consider them dangerous and crazy or not -- can be openly expressed alongside each other. That way we
can see what's out there and debate or debunk them in front of large and diverse audiences.
This is 2018 and de-platforming popular content won't make it go away.
It'll just
shift it over into areas of the internet you can't see, where it'll fester and grow stronger over time
in even more intense and radicalized echo chambers.
You'll think it's gone from society
because it's been safely cleansed from your corporate-government Facebook timeline, but it may grow
even stronger in the shadows.
This is particularly the case in a nation dominated by an
entrenched, corrupt and unaccountable elitist class. One that refuses to confront the reality of its
monumental failures, and instead chooses to self-interestedly obsess over what are just symptoms of a
decadent empire in decline.
* * *
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"There is also international fury over Facebook's
denial of a platform of Infowars and Alex Jones. One of
the self-proclaimed media Masters of the Universe is
facing anger from multiple groups. One report says that
to appease the hard-left, Israeli-controlled
Facebook pulled the plug on 40 million users in July
alone
.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and internet providers
abuse their monopoly by deciding who and what information
should be available to the public. It is a sinister
reminder of life in the past when corporate-owned media,
in alliance with government, manipulated minds by
spinning news and information
As well as Alex Jones, Ron Paul, David Icke, SGT
report and ex-CIA Michael Scheuer,
hundreds of
sites critical of Zionism or Globalism have been denied
access to Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms
.
YouTube allows promotion of abortion; even provide
recipes for abortion food but remove academic opinions
being aired....."
this crap shifted into high gear after the unite the right
fiasco. been going on a long time. web hosting companies
banned many MANY of the best websites right after that
production
But CIA and Pentagon have bought off all platforms, all
mainstream media. When I say CIA and Pentagon I mean Israel.
Whose idea was it for the NSA and mass surveillance? Israel.
Whose idea is it to implement SWAT as S.O.P. of all police in
the entire country and world? Israel. Whose idea is it to jail
someone into solitary confinement long before any charges are
filed (Michael Coen, Tommy Robinson, Assange)? Israel. Who is
Silicon Valley, all tech? Israel Inside. Israel manufactures
Intel chips and set exploits specifically for surveillance on
anyone's personal device. Yet Congress just voted for $38
billion to Israel over the next 10 years. Here at home -- TV,
Rachael Maddow and the rest making double digit millions to
propagandise and foment madness, normalize child sex abuse and
torture and protect Israel from all real and true scrutiny.
We deserve everything we get. Period. We don't hold anyone
accountable, either by court or by assassination. We're
pathetic citizens of a usurped nation.
Sadly, this is the truth. As a peoole we have become
pathetic and weak. Not by choice mind you, but by design.
People lived long before vaccines and fluoride in the water.
If you must use social media, as we all should, its a
great source for information and discussion, try the new app
called Mumblit.
The father of lies vs the rest
of the spiritual world whatever that is to you.
It really is just good vs evil and it's funny what teammates
you end up with but in the grand scheme of things even if Trump
is doing someone else's bidding there is a greater plan.
I think too many don't understand that Trump was part of a
marketing plan put there by the same people he's just a change
of management style.
They were never going to put Hillary in there she's not a
like able enough person, her husband was, she's not, and that's
a terrible flaw for a national level politician.
It was simply a management change to buy time.
Everything to me is a matter of divide and conquer, they are
splitting the population right down the middle for a reason to
buy more time.
Why?
Well obviously to finish implementing the control grid of
course and I think it's at the stage now they are confident
they can move on it.
AI is scheduled to be our new overlord and we'll all be
powerless to defend ourselves from it when it's fully engaged.
The primary defenders of our civilization come complete with
an entire mythos that even predicts all this conveniently allow
certain folks to rapture out of it and leaving the rest of us
to deal with the wickedness on our own.
It's a matrix of control but who's doing the controlling?
Why?
We are indoctrinated that this world is not our ultimate
reward, this world is Satan's world and our ultimate reward
comes in heaven not the earth.
Maybe that's true, maybe that's just the lie they tell you
to keep you in line?
The only hope humanity has is a war among elites, only that
is going to save us, we need division among our adversaries
what's good for the goose is good for the gander type of thing.
Good post.
Yeah it all gets deep and takes serious
reflection.
Then you have to eat.
And defend yourself.
And keep yourself from just wanting to pull the ejection
handle.
Yes. The article says "The very powerful folks accustomed to
manipulating and shaping the world via narrative creation..."
This Zionist Communist Global Dictatorship have done just that - they
have set ethnic-European females against our wonderful males by
turning them into feminazis who love pseudo victimhood and the blame
game. And look what is the UNTOLD STORY OF OUR MEN:
I still have the privilege of having a
neighbor who went through the Great Depression, and fought in WWII.
He's traditionally an old school Democrat, but even he admitted
society out here has lost it.
He's also about the only person I truly relate to, and can have a
pleasant, high-cognitive, logical conversation with these days.
Now imagine being him (in his 90's), fully coherent, and seeing
these spoiled, brainwashed little shits out here, and those in NYC
and DC, run amuck actively tearing down the American society along
with older Western values that were built in the modern age by his
generation, damn.
The left is scared, and rightly so.
They are actually drawing more
attention to the voices they wish to cancel out. Typical
liberal/leftist cluelessness.
The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem generous and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won't pay it no mind
'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
And now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin'
Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watching
(America)
America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster
If you listen to the radio much, you will see that the
60's, 70's etc have been filtered. They ONLY play
songs they approve of.
No MONSTER
No Working Class Hero
on and on.
<Snip>
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd
years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function you're so full of fear
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
Agreed. But it doesn't mean that sides don't matter. They adhere
to the Frankfort school of thought, which takes from Hegel, the
dialectic of politics. By Frankfort, I mean Bolsheviks. They
fund the Left and Right to move the mind of society in general,
through Thesis, Anti-thesis or Left/Right, to a compromise
where the desired solution was known. This is now evident in the
caging of speech to include ONLY the dialectic. Same story
repeating itself, every time Bolsheviks are allowed to feed on the
public.
Despite their best efforts, they can't block the internet.
And as Ayn
Rand famously said "You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the
consequences of reality". The Middle Class is dying, the American dream is
dead, the Millenials are still living in Mom's basement and developing
ideas about "Democratic Socialism" involving more Free Shit and Bigger
Government, largely because of the above and because they have never been
given an opportunity to experience real free market capitalism.
That will come as a last ditch effort to put the milk back in the
bottle. I'm sure everyone will just forget everything and go on with
their slave life*
*Those of us designated as the workers to pay for
all the shitheads, that is. The shitheads will be fine with being
ignorant. To fix anything might mean they have to work. "Fuck that" is
what they will always say until they are forced to go cold turkey.
Marxism provides one of the best analysis of capitalism; problems start when Marxists propose
alternatives.
Notable quotes:
"... Such demand-compression occurs above all through the imposition of an income deflation on the petty producers, and on the working population in general, in the Third World. This was done in the colonial period through two means: one, "deindustrialization" or the displacement of local craft production by imports of manufactures from the capitalist sector; and two, the "drain of surplus" where a part of the taxes extracted from petty producers was simply taken away in the form of exported goods without any quid pro quo ..."
"... I mean by the term "imperialism" the arrangement that the capitalist system sets up for imposing income deflation on the working population of the Third World for countering the threat of inflation that would otherwise erode the value of money in the metropolis and make the system unviable. "Imperialism" in this sense characterizes both the colonial and the contemporary periods. ..."
"... The fact that the diffusion of capitalism to the Third World has proceeded by leaps and bounds of late, with its domestic corporate-financial oligarchy getting integrated into globalized finance capital, and the fact that workers in the metropolis have also been facing an income squeeze under globalization, are important new developments; but they do not negate the basic tendency of the system to impose income deflation upon the working population of the Third World, a tendency that remains at the very core of the system. ..."
"... any state activism, other than for promoting its own exclusive and direct interest, is anathema for finance capital, which is why, not surprisingly, "sound finance" and "fiscal responsibility" are back in vogue today, when finance capital, now globalized, is in ascendancy. Imperialism is thus a specifically capitalist way of obtaining the commodities it requires for itself, but which are produced outside its own domain. ..."
"... dirigiste regimes ..."
"... With the reassertion of the dominance of finance, in the guise now of an international ..."
"... Contemporary imperialism therefore is the imperialism of international finance capital which is served by nation-states (for any nation-state that defies the will of international finance capital runs the risk of capital flight from, and hence the insolvency of, its economy). The US, being the leading capitalist state, plays the leading role in promoting and protecting the interests of international finance capital. But talking about a specific US imperialism, or a German or British or French imperialism obscures this basic fact. ..."
"... Indeed, a good deal of discussion about whether the world is heading toward multi-polarity or the persistence of US dominance misses the point that the chief actor in today's world is international or globalized finance capital, and not US or German or British finance capital. ..."
"... US military intervention all over the world, in order to acquire a proper meaning has to be located within the broader setting of the imperialism of international finance capital. ..."
C.J. Polychroniou: How do you define imperialism and what imperialist tendencies do you detect as inherent in the
brutal expansion of the logic of capitalism in the neoliberal global era?
Prabhat Patnaik: The capitalist sector of the world, which began by being located, and
continues largely to be located, in the temperate region, requires as its raw materials and
means of consumption a whole range of primary commodities which are not available or
producible, either at all or in adequate quantities, within its own borders. These commodities
have to be obtained from the tropical and sub-tropical region within which almost the whole of
the Third World is located; and the bulk of them (leaving aside minerals) are produced by a set
of petty producers (peasants). What is more, they are subject to "increasing supply price," in
the sense that as demand for them increases in the capitalist sector, larger quantities of them
can be obtained, if at all, only at higher prices, thanks to the fixed size of the tropical
land mass.
This means an ex ante tendency toward accelerating inflation as capital
accumulation proceeds, undermining the value of money under capitalism and hence the viability
of the system as a whole. To prevent this, the system requires that with an increase in demand
from the capitalist sector, as capital accumulation proceeds, there must be a compression of
demand elsewhere for these commodities, so that the net demand does not increase, and
increasing supply price does not get a chance to manifest itself at all.
Such demand-compression occurs above all through the imposition of an income deflation on
the petty producers, and on the working population in general, in the Third World. This was
done in the colonial period through two means: one, "deindustrialization" or the displacement
of local craft production by imports of manufactures from the capitalist sector; and two, the
"drain of surplus" where a part of the taxes extracted from petty producers was simply taken
away in the form of exported goods without any quid pro quo . The income of the
working population of the Third World, and hence its demand, was thus kept down; and
metropolitan capitalism's demand for such commodities was met without any inflationary threat
to the value of money. Exactly a similar process of income deflation is imposed now upon the
working population of the Third World by the neoliberal policies of globalization.
I mean by the term "imperialism" the arrangement that the capitalist system sets up for
imposing income deflation on the working population of the Third World for countering the
threat of inflation that would otherwise erode the value of money in the metropolis and make
the system unviable. "Imperialism" in this sense characterizes both the colonial and the
contemporary periods.
We recognize the need for a reserve army of labor to ward off the threat to the value of
money arising from wage demands of workers. Ironically, however, we do not recognize the
parallel and even more pressing need of the system (owing to increasing supply price) for the
imposition of income deflation on the working population of the Third World for warding off a
similar threat.
The fact that the diffusion of capitalism to the Third World has proceeded by leaps and
bounds of late, with its domestic corporate-financial oligarchy getting integrated into
globalized finance capital, and the fact that workers in the metropolis have also been facing
an income squeeze under globalization, are important new developments; but they do not negate
the basic tendency of the system to impose income deflation upon the working population of the
Third World, a tendency that remains at the very core of the system.
Those who argue that imperialism is no longer a relevant analytic construct point to the
multifaceted aspects of today's global economic exchanges and to a highly complex process
involved in the distribution of value which, simply put, cannot be reduced to imperialism. How
do you respond to this line of thinking?
Capitalism today is of course much more complex, with an enormous financial superstructure.
But that paradoxically makes inflation even more threatening. The value of this vast array of
financial assets would collapse in the event of inflation, bringing down this superstructure,
which incidentally is the reason for the current policy obsession with "inflation targeting."
This makes the imperialist arrangement even more essential. The more complex capitalism
becomes, the more it needs its basic simple props.
I should clarify here that if "land-augmenting" measures [such as irrigation, high-yielding
seeds and better production practices] could be introduced in the Third World, then,
notwithstanding the physical fixity of the tropical land mass, the threat of increasing supply
price -- and with it, [the threat] of inflation -- could be warded off without any income
deflation. Indeed, on the contrary, the working population of the Third World would be better
off through such measures. But these measures require state support and state expenditure, a
fact that Marx had recognized long ago. But any state activism, other than for promoting its
own exclusive and direct interest, is anathema for finance capital, which is why, not
surprisingly, "sound finance" and "fiscal responsibility" are back in vogue today, when finance
capital, now globalized, is in ascendancy. Imperialism is thus a specifically capitalist way of
obtaining the commodities it requires for itself, but which are produced outside its own
domain.
The post-decolonization dirigiste regimes [regimes directed by a central authority]
in the Third World had actually undertaken land-augmentation measures. Because of this, even as
exports of commodities to the metropolis had risen to sustain the biggest boom ever witnessed
in the history of capitalism, per capita food grain availability had also increased in those
countries. But I see that period as a period of retreat of metropolitan capitalism, enforced by
the wound inflicted upon it by the Second World War. With the reassertion of the dominance of
finance, in the guise now of an international finance capital, the Third World states
have withdrawn from supporting petty producers, a process of income deflation is in full swing,
and the imperialist arrangement is back in place, because of which we can see once more a
tendency toward a secular decline in per capita food grain availability in the Third World as
in the colonial period.
There is a third way -- apart from a greater obsession with inflation aversion and a yoking
of Third World states to promoting the interests of globalized finance rather than defending
domestic petty producers -- in which contemporary capitalism strengthens the imperialist
arrangement. It may be thought that the value of imports of Third World commodities into the
capitalist metropolis is so small that we are exaggerating the inflation threat from that
source to metropolitan currencies. This smallness itself, of course, is an expression of an
acutely exploitative relationship. In addition, however, the threat to the Third World
currencies themselves from a rise in the prices of these commodities becomes acute in a regime
of free cross-border financial flows as now, which threatens the entire world trade and
payments system and hence makes income deflation particularly urgent. Hence the need for the
imperialist arrangement becomes even more acute.
Not long ago, even liberals like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times were arguing that
"McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas" (that is, the US Air Force). Surely,
this is a crude version of imperialism, but what about today's US imperialism? Isn't it still
alive and kicking?
The world that Lenin had written about consisted of nation-based, nation-state-supported
financial oligarchies engaged in intense inter-imperialist rivalry for repartitioning the world
through wars. When [Marxist theorist] Karl Kautsky had suggested the possibility of a truce
among rival powers for a peaceful division of the world, Lenin had pointed to the fact that the
phenomenon of uneven development under capitalism would necessarily subvert any such specific
truce. The world we have today is characterized by the hegemony of international
finance capital which is interested in preventing any partitioning of the world, so
that it can move around freely across the globe.
Contemporary imperialism therefore is the imperialism of international finance capital which
is served by nation-states (for any nation-state that defies the will of international finance
capital runs the risk of capital flight from, and hence the insolvency of, its economy). The
US, being the leading capitalist state, plays the leading role in promoting and protecting the
interests of international finance capital. But talking about a specific US imperialism, or a
German or British or French imperialism obscures this basic fact.
Indeed, a good deal of discussion about whether the world is heading toward multi-polarity
or the persistence of US dominance misses the point that the chief actor in today's world is
international or globalized finance capital, and not US or German or British finance capital.
So, the concept of imperialism that [Utsa Patnaik and I] are talking about belongs to a
different terrain of discourse from the concept of US imperialism per se . The latter,
though it is, of course, empirically visible because of US military intervention all over the
world, in order to acquire a proper meaning has to be located within the broader setting of the
imperialism of international finance capital.
Some incidentally have seen the muting of inter-imperialist rivalry in today's world as a
vindication of Kautsky's position over that of Lenin. This, however, is incorrect, since both
of them were talking about a world of national finance capitals which contemporary capitalism
has gone beyond.
... ... ...
One final question: How should radical movements and organizations, in both the core and the
periphery of the world capitalist economy, be organizing to combat today's imperialism?
Obviously, the issue of imperialism is important not for scholastic reasons, but because of
the praxis that a recognition of its role engenders. From what I have been arguing, it is clear
that since globalization involves income deflation for the peasantry and petty producers, and
since their absorption into the ranks of the active army of labor under capitalism does not
occur because of the paucity of jobs that are created even when rates of output growth are
high, there is a tendency toward an absolute immiserization of the working population.
For the petty producers, this tendency operates directly; and for others, it operates through
the driving down of the "reservation wage" owing to the impoverishment of petty producers.
Such immiserization is manifest above all in the decline in per capita food grain
absorption, both directly and indirectly (the latter via processed foods and feed grains). An
improvement in the conditions of living of the working population of the Third World then
requires a delinking from globalization (mainly through capital controls, and also
trade controls to the requisite extent) by an alternative state, based on a worker-peasant
alliance, that pursues a different trajectory of development. Such a trajectory would emphasize
peasant-agriculture-led growth, land redistribution (so as to limit the extent of
differentiation within the peasantry) and the formation of voluntary cooperatives and
collectives for carrying forward land-augmentation measures, and even undertaking
value-addition activities, including industrialization.
Small Third World countries would no doubt find it difficult to adopt such a program because
of their limited resource base and narrow home market. But they will have to come together with
other small countries to constitute larger, more viable units. But the basic point is that the
question of "making globalization work" or "having globalization with a human face" simply does
not arise.
The problem with this praxis is that it is not only the bourgeoisie in the Third World
countries, but even sections of the middle-class professionals who have been beneficiaries of
globalization, who would oppose any such delinking. But the world capitalist crisis, which is a
consequence of this finance-capital-led globalization itself, is causing disaffection among
these middle-class beneficiaries. They, too, would now be more willing to support an
alternative trajectory of development that breaks out of the straitjacket imposed by
imperialism.
"... In 2004, the historian Walter McDougall concluded that as early as the Civil War, America was a "nation of hustlers." During Reconstruction, Walt Whitman wrote that "genuine belief" seemed to have left America. "The underlying principles of the States," Whitman said, "are not honestly believed in, nor is humanity itself believed in." ..."
"... Accumulation of capital is the dominant, even definitional, American idea, which is why Calvin Coolidge famously remarked, "The chief business of the American people is business." ..."
"... Christopher Lasch had a slightly more prosaic way of measuring the pain of progress. "The triumph of corporate capitalism," he wrote, "has created a society characterized by a high degree of uniformity, which nevertheless lacks the cohesiveness and sense of shared experience that distinguish a truly integrated community from an atomistic society." ..."
"... Rather than a "marketplace of ideas," the United States is a mere marketplace, and just like at any store in the shopping mall, whatever fails to sell is removed from the shelves. Today's trend is tomorrow's garbage. ..."
"... We focus on immigration because it is a clear threat to the American tradition with clear and obvious solutions. ..."
"... While I appreciate that the writer is trying to link immigration with big business and culture, the argument as a whole doesn't come together. He needs to define what he means by "corporate capitalism," "identity," and "culture"; otherwise, this is nothing more than a incoherent rant. Is he talking about popular entertainment, the arts, academic institutions, civil society, religion? How exactly is the existence of a Walmart or the popularity of smartphones to blame? Quoting Walt Whitman and Calvin Coolidge doesn't really get us anywhere. ..."
"... Yes of course a commercial culture is prosperous, dynamic, cosmopolitan, rootless, greedy, materialistic, cynical, plebian and vulgar. And yes, of course in a market-dominated culture, all other systems of indoctrination (i.e. church and state) are constantly on the defensive. ..."
"... That is not 'no' culture; it is a highly distinctive culture. It tends to neglect the high arts and excel at the low arts; it favors novelty over tradition, spectacle over reflection, passion over balance. Again, 'twas ever thus; as is the inevitable cooling of these innovations to new formalisms for the next generation to rebel against, and enrich. ..."
"... So, what should replace corporate capitalism -- socialism, distributism, non-corporate capitalism, what? ..."
Donald Trump, during a recent stop on his "Anarchy in the UK" tour, argued that the mass influx of immigrants into Europe is causing
Great Britain and other nations to "lose their culture." The fear of cultural dilution and transformation as a consequence of shifting
demographics is widespread, and it resonates in the United States, too, especially among those who support the current president.
Stephen Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and other popular right-wing figures have warned of threats to national identity in an American
context, contending that Mexicans will not assimilate and that Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy and secular governance.
Liberals and libertarians often respond by recalling the long tradition of assimilation in American history, along with the outrage
that often accompanies new arrivals. Nearly every ethnic group, from the Italians to the Chinese, has been the target of political
and social hostility. It is an old story, but one worth telling, and it is an old debate, but one worth having. Border sovereignty,
even to someone like me who probably favors more liberal immigration laws than most TAC readers, is a legitimate issue and
not to be easily dismissed.
The current conversation about traditionalism, national identity, and cultural preservation, however, is so narrow to render it
counterproductive and oblivious. For those truly worried about the conservation of traditional culture, to focus solely, or even
primarily, on immigration is the equivalent of a gunshot victim rushing to the barber for a haircut.
Rather than asking whether American culture is at risk of ruination, it is more salient to inquire, after decades of commercialization,
Madison Avenue advertising onslaughts, the erasure of regional differences, and the "Bowling Alone" collapse of community, whether
America even has a culture.
In 2004, the historian Walter McDougall concluded that as early as the Civil War, America was a "nation of hustlers." During
Reconstruction, Walt Whitman wrote that "genuine belief" seemed to have left America. "The underlying principles of the States,"
Whitman said, "are not honestly believed in, nor is humanity itself believed in."
Prophesizing with his pen that democratic structures and procedures would prove insufficient to cultivate a truly democratic culture,
Whitman likened the American obsession with commercial conquest and pecuniary gain to a "magician's serpent that ate up all the other
serpents." Americans, Whitman warned, were dedicating themselves to creating a "thoroughly-appointed body with no soul."
When Whitman wrote the essay in question -- "Democratic Vistas" -- the United States had open borders and immigrants freely entered
the "new world" for reasons of freedom and financial ambition. Even if they attended churches in their native languages and lived
in ethnic enclaves, they often found that they could matriculate into the mainstream of Americana through pursuit of the "American
dream," that is, hope for monetary triumph. Accumulation of capital is the dominant, even definitional, American idea, which
is why Calvin Coolidge famously remarked, "The chief business of the American people is business."
Capitalism is a formidable engine, enabling society to advance and allowing for high standards of living. But to construct an
entire culture around what Coolidge identified as "buying, selling, investing, and prospering," especially when capitalism becomes
corporate and cronyist, is to steadily empty a culture of its meaning and purpose.
Few were as celebratory over the potential for meaning and purpose in American culture as Whitman, who drew profound inspiration
from America's natural beauty and regional diversity. So what force was most responsible for the widespread desecration of America's
own Garden of Eden? All arguments about immigration aside, changing demographics did not transform the country into the planetary
capital of asphalt and replace its rich terrain with the endless suburban sprawl of office complexes, strip malls, and parking lots.
The reduction of the American character to a giant Walmart and the mutation of the American landscape, outside of metropolitan areas,
to the same cloned big box stores and corporate chains is not a consequence of immigration.
The degradation of the American arts and the assault on history and civics in public school and even higher education curricula
is not the result of immigrants flooding American streets. Amy Chua has argued quite the opposite when it comes to America's increasingly
imbecilic and obscene pop culture. Many immigrant families try to keep their children away from the influence of reality television,
the anti-intellectual reverence for celebrities, and the vigilant commercialization of every aspect of life.
The same cultural killer is responsible for all the assaults on American identity visible as daily routine, from environmental
destruction to the endangerment of independent retailers and "mom and pop" shops. That culprit is corporate capitalism. It is a large
entity that, like any killer, justifies its death toll with dogmatic claims of ideology. "Progress," everyone from the owner of the
local diner to the out-of-work art teacher is told, has no room for you.
In his song "The West End," John Mellencamp gives an angry account of the disappearance of a small town:
For my whole life
I've lived down in the West End
But it sure has changed here
Since I was a kid
It's worse now
Look what progress did
Someone lined their pockets
I don't know who that is
Progress, as Mellencamp succinctly captures in song, often comes at someone else's expense, and translates to enrichment for the
few who benefit.
Christopher Lasch had a slightly more prosaic way of measuring the pain of progress. "The triumph of corporate capitalism,"
he wrote, "has created a society characterized by a high degree of uniformity, which nevertheless lacks the cohesiveness and sense
of shared experience that distinguish a truly integrated community from an atomistic society."
The irony Lasch describes is tragic. A culture of corporate capitalism demands conformity, and most people cooperate. But because
its center is hollow, few people feel any sense of connection to each other, even as they parrot the same values. It is no wonder
that most forms of rebellion in the United States are exhibitions of stylized individualism -- inspiring theater and often enlivening
to observe, but politically fruitless.
Rather than a "marketplace of ideas," the United States is a mere marketplace, and just like at any store in the shopping
mall, whatever fails to sell is removed from the shelves. Today's trend is tomorrow's garbage.
Those concerned about tradition and cultural longevity can lament immigration and condemn "open borders." But if they are serious
about American identity, they should begin and end with the villainous corporate enterprise that has waged war on it since the late
19th century.
Whatever culture remains in this country can often be found in the places where people still maintain at least a symbolic link
with their immigrant roots.
Many of the immigrants came to the dream of America believing the myth. That they could be anything hard work would bring them,
regardless of rank or class of birth, title, family name, or religious prejudice. For the most part, this was sufficiently true
that they prospered. They became "us". This [perhaps naive] belief in the dream made most of them, and their children, our most
loyal and law-abiding citizens.
It was indeed the robber barons of the 19th century that pushed us down the path of self-destruction.
I feel vindicated. Some years ago, Rod Dreher pilloried me for being obsessed with how destructive corporate capitalism had become
to American culture, values and social cohesion. I think his epiphany came, when supposedly "conservative" big business turned
out to be on the other side in the culture wars.
I hear you, Mr. Masciotra. I'm not especially fond of large for-profit corporations. But they wouldn't occupy monopolistic positions
and enjoy rapacious profits and latitude for enormous misdeeds if the public were firmly opposed to that sort of thing. Americans
generally love a winner, even if the "winning" is fraudulent or coerced, as long as they personally aren't coerced or defrauded.
It's all about the money, or at least the belief that the money might come.
Thank you for this refreshing piece which points the finger to a place where those on the left and right can actually make a difference.
Of course, making any changes will require dismantling some the mythology of the American prosperity gospel, but it starts with
great articles like these.
The system didn't become corrupt in the 80s, it's been that way for much longer. And there have been hustlers and " well meaning
" Corporate yes men making dishonest money off of their compatriots for centuries (everywhere, I might add).
So the question is, do we want to continue to encourage this behavior or do we dare to dream of another reality ?
Well crafted and thoughtful. Years ago, Walker Percy observed that America was unique among nations in that it was simultaneously
the most religious country and the most materialistic country in the world. Fast forward to 2018 and while religion appears to
be in decline "getting and spending" continues apace.
Agreed but lets be honest with ourselves. We have to go where the kindling is dry and abundant to start a proverbial fire. America
does have a culture. To see that all one need do is visit Nashville, the Ozarks or farm country in nebraska. Where there are still
people the culture survives. That is a stoical dispensation. The culture does go back to Hellenism but Americana does have it's
own ways. Go visit Europe for any amount of time or dare I say it Asia and American culture becomes obvious.
Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday that, in my opinion, best represents American culture and how it is different from
all else.
Corporate Capitalism has always been American culture and life. Basic Taylorism on the assembly line was over 100 years in which
men spent 50 -- 60 hours a week performing a single task very quickly.
What is American art? Would we consider Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley great American art and music? I do but the original reaction
of older Americans was 1950s R&R was complete degradation of music. (Some of the racial language was very colorful by good citizens.)
Or what Star Wars or Godfather. Or maybe the modern Marvel 'universe' has a degree of great pop art.
Certainly well argued but for one important element that has been omitted; one ingredient which bundles everything together into
one integrated picture. That necessary item can be summed with these two words, "buy in." Corporate capitalism would never hold
sway except for the acquiescence of the populace which wanting the quantity of commodities had gathered in the shopping malls
but now remain isolated in the front of their computer screens or cell phones.
Rather than there being the tyranny of the marketplace bringing forth this dominance of goods over people and the legerdemain
of monetized value displacing our organic relationship to the land, it is this anonymous accommodation to the denigration of the
high arts and the erosion to our culture which is the ultimate culprit.
In a word, it is the tyranny of the masses which pulls apart any endeavor at creating and sustaining a hierarchy of value rewarding
all enterprise which appeases public taste by appealing to the lowest common denominator. Fore it is through this tyranny that
capitalism has built its avaricious edifice.
Suffice it to say that the target "corporate capitalism" remains the straw man, that ethereal and empty concept devoid of blood
and sinews. Where then does one find the source to this dilemma but in that which is of both flesh and blood namely humanity.
The problem lies with the populace.
What is called for here is an awakening but not through a reckoning as that would only cause humanity to roll over and return
to its slumber. And if crisis and collapse serves not the catalyst for such an awakening what then will provide such an arousal?
Until such a time, we remain asleep and the institutions of our dream life will rule us.
Corporate capitalism is not the source. It is not even at the source. We are the source until such a time as we awaken.
excellent points. oh, and ironically (or not), from the Middle Ages (Europe) through the 19th century (American West), it was
not uncommon for a barber to also perform ad hoc surgery/medical procedures, or to share space with the town's 'doctor', so in
some instances it was prudent to go to the barbershop if shot
"Liberals and libertarians often respond by recalling the long tradition of assimilation in American history, along with
the outrage that often accompanies new arrivals."
Apples and oranges. The welfare state didn't exist then, so it was assimilate or fail. 1/3 of all culturally similar to existing
US culture Europeans returned to Europe.
Today, "Press 2 for Spanish", the welfare state (give birth on US soil to a US citizen for family access to benefits [or steal
an ID], then chain migrate the rest of your family), the Internet, and identity politics discourage assimilation and allow extremely
large cultural enclaves which are politically divisive as pointed out MANY years ago by the not exactly "right wing" former WH
press secretary for LBJ, Bill Moyers, in one of his many excellent documentaries.
We focus on immigration because it is a clear threat to the American tradition with clear and obvious solutions. The
author paints this focus of the Trumpian and dissident right as exclusionary, but it is not; at the same time arguing for his
own exclusionary anti-capitalist platform. Quite frankly, I don't know what it's doing on TAC, but I will take the time to respond.
The criticism of anti-immigration on the right is a straw man argument. The dissident right is not merely anti-immigration,
it is more broadly anti-multiracialist. Many understand and agree with the author on the problems of capitalism, but also see
racial and cultural integration as an additional threat to the American tradition. His point about how the immigration (into America)
didn't cause the hellspace of suburbia is true, since only up until 1965 did we make sure immigrants were white and could integrate
well into society. However, he ignores the history of black empancipation and subsequent desegregation that led to massive internal
migration from the South into cities like Detroit, Chicago, and Baltimore. There weren't always majority black, my friend. The
very real problems that this internal migration presented to ethnically homogenous, culturally rich, urban white neighborhoods
in the 20th century were the driving force behind the suburban sprawl. We colloquially refer to this phenomenon as "white flight,"
and many on the left and the right see it as unjustified "racism."
The curious reader would do well to investigate this claim to see if maybe white flight might have actually been very justified,
maybe a gross historical injustice was done to those now ethnically cleansed communities, and maybe racial desegregation is partly
to blame for the author's perceived lack of (white) culture in America.
Thank you for reading.
"Capitalism" is cronyist by nature. "Capitalism" itself requires an extensive set of laws that benefit some economic arrangements
over others. Now the reason for this is because nations need development, and that means they need capital, and that means they
need to create laws that ensure that the people who have capital feel willing and confident enough to invest it in that country.
But once you've opened the pandora's box of bankruptcy laws, limit liability, and other "terms and conditions" of investment
and capital, you're going to have a system that lends itself to cronyism when you have no other counter-balancing power from labor.
My brilliant iPad just deleted my response. So, quickly, capitalism is partly curable by antitrust and protectionism, but proto-amnesty
mass immigration is not curable, and it more quickly distorts national identity than does capitalism, which takes a very long
time to alter society's frame. Mass immigration does that relatively quickly. Also, immigration has as many rackets as capitalism
does -- for the one, capital gains tax cuts, and for the other, H1-B visas.
only up until 1965 did we make sure immigrants were white and could integrate well into society
The immigration act of 1924 which choked off most immigration was about reducing white immigration. It didn't actually affect
Mexican immigration. The largest beneficiaries the post-1965 immigration laws have been Asian immigrants who everyone argues integrate
perfectly well.
ethnically homogenous, culturally rich, urban white neighborhoods
Any of the residents of those neighborhoods in Chicago would have been quick to deny they were "ethnically homogeneous" because
they would have pointed out how they were mixed neighborhoods of Greeks, Poles, Slovenes, etc.
Its about time someone on this site placed at least 50% of the blame when it comes to demise of the American Middle Class as well
as ' culture ' -- ( such as it is seeing we have no well defined codified ' culture ' because we are and have been since the beginning
so diverse ) -- on the American Corpocracy .
But the fact is the other 50% of the blame must fall firmly upon the shoulders of the greedy speculators and investors convinced
every year should be a profitable year and they should of received next year's profits yesterday
Along with the American Consumer addicted to cheap goods 60% of which they have no need for nor ever use .
So what is the answer ? First we need to move towards a Responsible Capitalism rather than the Ayn Rand addled narcissist Hyper-
Capitalism rapidly approaching Anarcho -- Capitalism we're currently immersed in from the Oval Office on down
Second the American Consumer needs to accept paying what something is worth .. be it service , goods or food .. rather than
thinking the entire world is a discounted oyster at their beck and call
And Third .. with the onus once again falling firmly upon the shoulders of the discount addled American consumer . We need
to get over the theater of convenience shopping ( online ) and get back to supporting local businesses who pay taxes to our local
community and are in fact our neighbors
Problem is all of the above solutions require both compromise , authentic thought as well as discernment
None of which ( for the most part ) currently exists in this over polarized ' Collective Stupidity of America ' zeitgeist we're
firmly entrenched in
Lecture over . Donuts , bagels and coffee in the virtual break room .
English colonials brought to the American continent both English Law -- based on private property -- which has turned into Corporate
Market Capitalism (Citizens United, eh?), and the Enlightenment idea of the centrality of Individual Freedom, which has turned
into the rank Individualism of our current Me-Myself-and-I cultural ethos.
Democracy and a healthy culture, in my view, depend upon holding in balance the needs/desires/rights of both the Individual
and the broader Common Good. There now seems to be little left of a Social Covenant that includes all Americans, which is central
to a viable culture.
I'll say this when it comes it integration: people in the past weren't forced to integrate in the least. A friend of mine has
a grandmother that speaks Russian, only Russian, and no English. As long as she remained in her little enclave in the US, why
need to speak English? In my native Cincinnati the "Over the Rhine" neighborhood had beer gardens, German schools, German newspapers,
and German street signs. Only a fire and I am sure some Progressive 'encouragement' broke the neighborhood up.
White in America use to mean Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. To be Wet was to be Catholic and to be Catholic was to be an immigrant.
Dry was honest, hard working, and true. Wet was disorderly, murderous, and poor. Irish weren't white, Poles weren't white, and
the Italians most certainly weren't white.
My question is why are we poo pooing Latina values? Family centric, conservative, Catholic/Christian, and hard working (come
on, either immigrants are stealing our jobs or they are welfare leeches, pick one!). Their food is delicious and the music is
fun.
The latina vote should be the Republican vote if they would just get over themselves. Spanish is just as much a Romance language
as French or Italian. Get with the program, declare them white, and let's enjoy a super majority with taco Tuesday.
@BradD
Nothing is necessarily wrong with "Latin" values per se . The problem is with massive amounts of Illigeal immigration coming all
from one area. I'm sorry but integration and assimilation is extremely important, just look at Europe for an idea of what happens
to countries that don't integrate immigrants well.
Also, if "Latin" values are great and desirable then why would such a massive amount of people be bum rushing our southern
borders?
Can you please tell me one example of a country in Latin America that has been successful for an extended period of time? I
cannot even think of one. When people come in small waves they can integrate and learn the value of our institutions, laws, freedom,
liberty ect They basically become American w/ Latin heritage. When they come en mass, they keep their societies values a lot longer
and stay in enclaves a lot longer as well. As an example not too long ago I was in the southern part of Houston Texas and the
Galveston area and I cannot tell you the number of cars, houses and business that have the Mexican flag up instead of the USA
flag! That is all kinds of wrong to me. If Mexico is so great, than they should just move on back and set up shop there.
Ding, ding, ding
We have a winner here. America is promoted as merchant culture, bread or bombs. The peoole termed colonists were largely corporate
sponsored. So when people continue to arrive, they figure starting their store or buying the "right" things is American culture.
And for everything else, they just say, "We have our own, thank you."
While I appreciate that the writer is trying to link immigration with big business and culture, the argument as a whole doesn't
come together. He needs to define what he means by "corporate capitalism," "identity," and "culture"; otherwise, this is nothing
more than a incoherent rant. Is he talking about popular entertainment, the arts, academic institutions, civil society, religion?
How exactly is the existence of a Walmart or the popularity of smartphones to blame? Quoting Walt Whitman and Calvin Coolidge
doesn't really get us anywhere.
I would be happy to defend free enterprise in America and would even credit the business and marketing practices in America
for inculcating customer service as a uniquely American trait. You can tell you're in America when people act politely and aim
to serve you -- even illiterate young people know this. Go to any country in Europe, and you'll find a whole staff of people from
the airport, to the stores, to the hotel frowning at you for having the nerve to have want of their services. And that's just
a side benefit. The main thing business does is finance the creation of culture at all levels. Any civilization's golden age followed
from societal prosperity, not from a more democratic and tasteful distribution of wealth.
If we're talking about the arts and influence, America is still the most dynamic in the world, being a great producer of movies,
music, books, and all the rest. Even the existence of a site like TAC should cause one to reflect on just how nice it is to live
in a country that permits open discourse and values quality writing and ideas -- and for no cost at all to the reader. We can
despair all we like of the decline of the Oscars, or the stupidity of modern art, or the pointlessness of postmodernist ideology,
but it says something that we can even have this conversation. I'm not sure other cultures, outside those in elite circles, even
think about this stuff.
Wow, something Fran Macadam and I agree on! Surely there is enough there for some bright politician to make a central platform
plank out of?
A number of commenters point out that this isn't just imposed on us, we also embrace it (or just succumbed to the propaganda/advertising).
Fixing the problem will require efforts to curb corporate power as well cultural change from the ground up to embrace real values
beyond just capitalism.
Re: Today, "Press 2 for Spanish", the welfare state (give birth on US soil to a US citizen for family access to benefits [or steal
an ID], then chain migrate the rest of your family), the Internet, and identity politics discourage assimilation
The evidence, notably from language learning, shows that today's immigrants assimilate at about the same rate others did in
the past. And yes, you could hear other languages in the US in the past also. There were places in Detroit I remember in childhood
where all the signs were in Polish. Going farther back 19th century nativists were horrified that entire communities in the Midwest
spoke German. Early on, our eighth president, Martin Van Buren, grew up speaking Dutch in the Hudson Valley.
As for the welfare state, well, there were lots of mutual aid societies which provided help -- we were not a social Darwinist
nation. And don't forget the Civil War pensions to which a significant fraction of the population was entitled.
Mr. Mascriota tells us: "Border sovereignty, even to someone like me who probably favors more liberal immigration laws than most
TAC readers, is a legitimate issue and not to be easily dismissed."
And yet, Mr. Mascriotra, last Sept 9th (2017) at "Salon" you wrote an article entitled "The case for open borders: Stop defending
DACA recipients while condemning the 'sins' of their parents":
"As an English instructor and tutor, I've met young men and women from Ethiopia, China and Nigeria, and I have taught students
whose parents emigrated from Mexico to the United States 'illegally.' If I were an insecure coward afraid to compete in a multicultural
society, and convinced my future children would become deadbeats without the full force of white privilege to catapult them into
success, I would advocate for the deportation of immigrant families similar to those of my students, and I would repeat mindless
bromides like 'America First' and 'Build that Wall.' One of the costs of racism, xenophobia, or any form of pathetic provincialism
is that freezes the prejudicial person in a permanent state of mediocrity President Donald Trump's decision to end DACA, and his
demand that Congress 'fix the' nonexistent 'immigration problem,' demonstrates a stunning streak of sadism, projecting yet another
signal to his rabid and anti-American base of closed-minded losers If the 'real Americans' are afraid to compete with immigrants
for jobs, prestige, or cultural authority, they only indict themselves as weak, self-entitled and easy to panic. In a word, 'snowflakes'.
A bureaucratic permission slip is trivial compared to the imperative of human freedom -- freedom that should transcend what are
largely artificial borders."
@Mr. Soprano: I think Baltimore was a special case as a Southern city (which it historically was up to maybe WW1, maybe WW2.)
Don't know its demographics pre-WW2 but I'd bet dollars to donuts it was substantially more black pre-WW1 than Chicago, which
was nearly all white up to about 1915 even though it was founded by a Francophone Black man Jean Baptiste Pont du Sable.
David Masciotra: Not sure what I think about the ironmongery in your left ear, but this piece is excellent. My only criticism
-- mild at that -- concerns the analogy in your third paragraph:
" to focus [our worries] on immigration is the equivalent of a gunshot victim rushing to the barber for a haircut."
This article is timely, but only because its complaints are perennial. 'Twas ever thus.
Yes of course a commercial culture is prosperous, dynamic, cosmopolitan, rootless, greedy, materialistic, cynical, plebian
and vulgar. And yes, of course in a market-dominated culture, all other systems of indoctrination (i.e. church and state) are
constantly on the defensive.
That is not 'no' culture; it is a highly distinctive culture. It tends to neglect the high arts and excel at the low arts;
it favors novelty over tradition, spectacle over reflection, passion over balance. Again, 'twas ever thus; as is the inevitable
cooling of these innovations to new formalisms for the next generation to rebel against, and enrich.
A similar cycle applies to demographics. Today's scary outsider becomes tomorrow's stodgy insider, after they buy their way
in. I therefore second BradD's motion to declare Hispanics to be white; and Asians too.
All those disturbed by demographic transitions should contemplate this truism: that by the middle of next century every man,
woman and child now alive shall be dead, and replaced by people not born yet.
This includes you, which makes it personal. What a way to run a world! But if you can put up with 100% population turnover
by 2150, then language and skin tint seems (to me at least) a trivial detail.
***
Self-critique: The preceding analysis has a flaw, namely that this is not simply a 'commercial' culture; it is a 'capitalistic'
culture, which is the least free form of commercial culture.
Go to any country in Europe, and you'll find a whole staff of people from the airport, to the stores, to the hotel frowning
at you for having the nerve to have want of their services.
Americans, in my experience, mistake lack of slavish over-friendliness as rudeness. I have realized this because I am a fairly
reserved kind of person, and "reserved" gets coded as "aloof" or "snobbish."
European retail still follows the "sole proprietor" model of service -- it's assumed that by shopping there you're effectively
entering someone else's home, and you must act accordingly. In the US, lacking a formal class system, the retail experience is
one coded towards allowing the customer to feel as though he is a noble with servants to attend on him that he can order around.
The store is selling that experience.
Related to this is why middle class and upper middle Americans are so upset by the DMV and the Post Office. It's the only place
where money does not buy them any better service, and they cannot use the threat of talking to the manager to have the service
personnel fired in order to get what they want.
America's customer service culture is probably one of our most culturally dysfunctional aspects, all rooted in middle class
insecurity.
If this were actually, a Conservative website, that valued Western ideals? Do you really believe such excuses or something outside
of myself like the "devil made me do it" will pass mustard with "God" or "St. Peter?"
I strongly endorse Jon's (much earlier comment). It is not corporations that ruin culture but we who demand what they give. Corporations
are just a convenient funding vehicle to produce goods. Yes they often mass market them. But it is we who like the marketing.
If we were appalled, or turned away and it ignored it, they would change. In the end, when the spiritual life is subordinate to
the material, our appetites and the corporations that serve them are a guaranteed outcome.
late to this thread but what is American identity? How is it different from let's say a Danish identity? I have a good number
of coworkers from other countries: Asians, South Americans, some Germans or Swedes. When I visit them, do you think I find their
homes, their families (or their priorities for that matter) different from that of born-here American? If so, I must have missed
it
Auguste Mayrat hit the nail on the head. This article is garbage. It's sad that so many commentators agree with it. America is
full of culture: pro and college sports, movies, TV shows, technology, books, music of all kinds all consumed throughout the world,
as people from all countries love and admire American culture. Find a country that produces more culture than America. You can't.
Churches and schools proliferate here. What's so bad about corporations? If you own an iPhone or a television or a car or shop
at the mall, or ride a plane or go on a cruise, you're a hypocrite to be against corporations. Corporations provide goods and
services that people want, not to mention jobs. The author of this piece is an intellectual lightweight, and those who agree with
his views are the type of blind sheep that communists find useful. The author neither specified what's bad about corporations,
nor provides any solutions. Can believe TAC publishes such drivel.
ZH is just as bad as cnn and fox news these days. Report the REAL NEWS you fucks. Tylers i
am so sorry what happened to this website, nothing but russian propoganda anymore.
Prove me wrong. Do a story on the reason Carter Page was never charged w/ a crime is bc he
was a cooperating fbi witness in 2016 and the fbi knew CP wasnt a spy bc he just finished
helping them, the fbi, bust up a REAL russian spy ring, or does that not fit into your
narrative?
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/02/02/the-fbi-knew-carter-page-m
stfu, anyone who has been paying attention knows goddam well that Carter Page was giving
testimony of behalf of the gov just a couple months before he magically became a russian
agent so that they could justify all the spying they'd already been doing on team trump.
Carter Page was a plant, just like Manafort and Papadapolous.
"... "The currency of our country is targeted directly by the US president," ..."
"... "This attack, initiated by the biggest player in the global financial system, reveals a similar situation in all developing countries." ..."
"... "All of our action plan and measures are ready," ..."
"... "Together with our banks, we prepared our action plan regarding the situation with our real sector companies, including Small and Medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which is the sector that is affected by the fluctuation the most," ..."
"... "Together with our banks and the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BRSA), we will take the necessary measures quickly." ..."
"... "It is making an operation against Turkey Its aim is to force Turkey to surrender in every field from finance to politics, to make Turkey and the Turkish nation kneel down," ..."
"... "We have seen your play and we challenge you." ..."
Turkey has accused Donald Trump of leading an attack on its national currency. The lira lost
about 40 percent of its value against the US dollar this year and, to reduce its volatility,
Ankara has prepared an urgent action plan. "The currency of our country is targeted
directly by the US president," Finance Minister Berat Albayrak told the Hurriyet.
"This attack, initiated by the biggest player in the global financial system, reveals a
similar situation in all developing countries."
The Turkish lira took a massive hit against the dollar on Friday following Trump's decision
to double tariffs on aluminum and steel imports from Turkey to 20 percent and 50 percent.
Overall, the national currency lost roughly about 40 percent of its value this year.
To calm down the markets, the government instructed its institutions to implement a series
of actions on Monday. "All of our action plan and measures are ready," Albayrak said,
without elaborating.
"Together with our banks, we prepared our action plan regarding the situation with our
real sector companies, including Small and Medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which is the sector
that is affected by the fluctuation the most," the minister
said . "Together with our banks and the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency
(BRSA), we will take the necessary measures quickly."
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meanwhile slammed the US decision to impose new tariffs on
steel and aluminum imports.
"It is making an operation against Turkey Its aim is to force Turkey to surrender in
every field from finance to politics, to make Turkey and the Turkish nation kneel down,"
Erdogan said
in Trabzon on Sunday. "We have seen your play and we challenge you."
One week ago, when discussing the
"
source
of China's next debt crisis
",
namely the recent explosion in Chinese household debt
which over the past year has soared by over 40% even as credit growth across other debt categories
remained relatively stable...
... and which was on the verge of surpassing the nation's corporations as the biggest source of
credit demand, we highlighted the one financial sector that has recently emerged as most at risk in
China's economy: online peer-to-peer lenders who collect money from retail investors and dispense
small loans to consumers,
usually without collateral, putting the loans at risk of a
default with zero recovery.
We pointed out that outstanding loans on P2P platforms rose 50% just last year to total Rmb1.49
trillion ($215 billion) - making the size of China's P2P industry far bigger than in the rest of
the world combined - and due to their lack of collateral,
interest rates often are as high
as 37%, with additional charges for late payment.
P2P, in which platforms gather funds from retail investors and loan the money to small corporate
and individual borrowers, promising high returns, started to flourish nearly unregulated in China
in 2011. At its peak in 2015, there were about 3,500 such businesses.
But after Beijing launched a campaign several years ago to defuse debt bubbles and reduce risks
in the economy (a campaign which recently reversed once the Trump trade war started getting hot),
including the country's enormous non-bank lending sector, cracks began to appear as investors
pulled their funds.
As a result, the peer-to-peer lending channel not only got clogged up, but went in reverse. In a
recent article, the WSJ reported that a string of Chinese internet lenders have already shut their
doors in recent weeks,
stranding investors as the economy slows and regulators tighten
controls over an unruly side of the fintech sector.
Across China, more than 200 internet-based fund managers since late June have either shut
down, closed parts of their operations or are reeling from cash crunches, missing executives and
other problems, according to industry tracker Wangdaizhijia.
The tide began to turn even more forcefully against the sector ahead of a late June deadline for
new stringent registration regulations. With a slowing economy making it difficult for some
companies to pay back loans, many lenders decided to simply shut down. Meanwhile, investors,
already souring on the sector, began pulling out funds, further pinching the lending platforms, and
as
Reuters reports
, since June, 243 online lending platforms have gone bust, according to
wdzj.com, a P2P industry data provider. In that period,
the industry saw its first monthly
net fund outflows since at least 2014.
And, as we noted last week, it was only a matter of time before social unrest spread as Chinese
investors who had funded these usually small, unregulated P2P operations, found they had lost all
their money demanding a bail out.
That's precisely what happened... except for one thing: Beijing was already one step ahead of
the protesters.
Take the case of Peter Wang: as
Reuters reports
, Wang was asleep at his home in Beijing last Monday
when police
officers arrived before dawn to detain him,
saying he had helped organize a protest
planned for later that day. Peter wasn't alone, and across Beijing, others who had lost money
investing in China's online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms - including some who had traveled
from half way across the country - got similar visits from police.
A police officer gestures at the photographer as security patrol outside the headquarters of
China's banking regulator, to prevent planned protests by investors who lost money from collapsed
peer-to-peer (P2P) online lending platforms
Why the crackdown?
Because by the time they were released, the demonstration they had planned using social media
chat groups had fizzled amid a massive security response around the China Banking and Insurance
Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) headquarters in the heart of Beijing's financial district. Those
protesters who did show up were in for a surprise:
instead of demanding that the government
bail out the hundreds of collapsed P2P companies, they were forced onto buses and carted away to
Jiujingzhuang,
a holding center for petitioners on the outskirts of Beijing, according to
two Reuters sources.
"Once the police checked your ID cards and saw your petition materials, they knew you are here
looking to protect your rights. Then they put you on a bus directly," said Wang, who works at an
auto repair shop, and who is a perfect representative of China's prevailing ideology that a
government bailout of any investment is a fundamental "right."
Wang did not give up and after his detention he joined a separate, smaller protest in a
different part of Beijing. "There was no channel to solve any problems. All they care about was
preventing any disturbance."
* * *
The latest burst of anger, which led to the planned protests, flared up ahead of a June 30
deadline for companies to comply with new business practice standards, which are still being
finalised, and as noted above, many P2Ps shut down rather than face tougher regulations, Zane Wang,
chief executive of online micro-loan provider China Rapid Finance told Reuters.
That caused panic in the broader market. Investors tried to pull funds from P2P companies,
causing liquidity problems for many smaller operators, Wang said, although larger ones are
faring better.
"Some platforms might become a winner out of this, and some platforms,
probably a large portion of the platforms, might not be able to make it," he said.
Naturally, to avoid an even bigger panic, no mainland Chinese media - official mainstream papers
or more independent-leaning publications - reported the attempts to protest in China's capital. The
media blackout took place as China's propaganda machine swung into action as Beijing sought "to
reassure people that the Chinese economy and financial markets are healthy" despite a trade war
with the United States and steep declines in the value of stock prices and the yuan.
As part of the government's crackdown, many would-be protesters "
were forced to give
fingerprints and blood samples and prevented from traveling to Beijing. Some were even removed from
Beijing-bound trains ahead of the protests, said a Shanghai-based P2P investor who lost 1.3 million
yuan
." She declined to be named out of fear for her safety.
What is surprising, is just how worried about the prospect of widespread social unrest Beijing
was: even after the demonstrations were effectively snuffed out, hundreds of security personnel
patrolled around CBIRC's office, "highlighting authorities' sensitivity to any form of social
instability" according to Reuters.
It has reason to be worried: on Sunday, Xinhua reported that the government has proposed 10
measures to reduce risk in the P2P sector,
including a strict ban on new P2P companies and
online finance platforms,
and a blacklist under China's social credit rating system for
those who don't repay their loans. This means that P2P investors will soon suffer tens of billions
in more losses (although it may well end up being good news for those who borrowed money from the
insolvent P2Ps as there will be nobody left to collect).
* * *
This is not the first time China was burned on P2P platforms, which traditionally lend to
customers that might be deemed too risky for a commercial bank, which has resulted in liquidity
crises when too many investors demand their funds at once if loans appear to be going south.
The most famous case of P2P fraud is Ezubao - a $7.6 billion Ponzi scam involving more than
900,000 investors - which we
described in early 2016
, and which led to a similar forceful government crackdown after the
public demanded a full bailout. While none has come close to the scale of Ezubao's collapse,
there are currently more than 100 publicly listed Chinese companies that are involved in P2P, and
32 of those own more than 30% of a P2P company, according to a July research report by CITIC
Securities.
Exacerbating the problems facing the P2P industry, China extended by two years a separate June
30 deadline for an online finance clean-up campaign. But rather than calming matters, it created
more uncertainty, market watchers said as CITIC Securities estimated that - under the campaign -
only about 100 platforms out of 1,836 would be able to meet even today's regulatory
standards and obtain a license. Less than 50 would thrive.
This would amount to hundreds of billions in investor losses, and not even an army could prevent
the social outcry that would result.
Meanwhile, the market is starting to price in the worst, and shares of some of the Chinese P2P
companies listed in the U.S. have plunged. China Rapid Finance shares have lost 73% in 2018, while
Yirendai slumped 71%. PPDai dropped 44%, and Hexindai is down 27%.
And as if to ensure that the peer-2-peer bank run in China gets worse, Tang Ning, founder and
chief executive officer of CreditEase, the majority owner of P2P lending platform Yirendai,
told Reuters that he was concerned that the "industry-wide panic" would escalate
.
He urged regulators to "act with a sense of urgency" to protect good P2P companies while
punishing bad players to avoid harming China's financial system and economy.
"Otherwise,
it will be 'winter' for the industry. All companies will be hit, both
illicit and compliant. Everyone will lose and that's a situation no one wants to see,"
said Tang. "Small businesses will lose an important, or the most important source of funding.
That's not only hurting the financial system but also the real economy."
As for individual investors such as the abovementioned Peter Wan - who was so sure it is his
"right" to be bailed out by the government - the pain is acute. He and his family had invested 7
million yuan - their life savings, with which they had planned to use to buy a home at the end of
the year - in two P2P platforms that have shut down.
"... Cut to view of parade down Main Street USA of politicians and business people with computer keyboards hung around their necks. Many wear signs around their necks proclaiming their crimes. "I facilitated consumers to buy insurance policies for the ACA," says one. "I front ran the market for Uncle Sam," says another. ..."
Reactionaries will be purged. The Markets of Historical Determinism will demand it. Cut to
view of parade down Main Street USA of politicians and business people with computer
keyboards hung around their necks. Many wear signs around their necks proclaiming their
crimes. "I facilitated consumers to buy insurance policies for the ACA," says one. "I front
ran the market for Uncle Sam," says another.
The lines of armed guards lining the parade route are there to protect the penitents, as
various short action shots show. The crowd is in an ugly mood. Storm clouds lower in the
distance.
From comments: "Relax everyone, Stockman says
exactly the same thing
this time every year, he
just changes the dates."
Notable quotes:
"... We are in a "never before seen" monetary "experiment" Some debt will be written off. Stocks will fall. Banks will fail. Long overdue. ..."
"... Today's doom porn is brought to you by the letters D and S ..."
"... He says the Earth has entered the Anthropocene. Although it is not an official epoch on the geological timescale, the Anthropocene is entering scientific terminology. It spans the time since industrialisation, when our species started to rival ice ages and comet impacts in driving the climate on a planetary scale. Fenner says the real trouble is the population explosion and "unbridled consumption". ..."
"... Capitalism requires growth to survive. Look at what happened to FB recently when they merely stated that their growth was slowing. ..."
"... The answer to your question, is yes. As short term rates continue to rise, PM hoarders will begin cashing in much of their holdings, to chase yields. which will start a run ..."
"... I suspect the waterfall move down will be in property prices, both CRE and residential. ..."
David Stockman warns that the global economy has reached an "epochal pivot", a moment when the
false prosperity created from $trillions in printed money by the world's central banks lurches
violently into reverse.
There are few people alive who understand the global economy and its (mis)management better
than David Stockman
-- former director of the OMB under President Reagan, former US
Representative, best-selling author of
The
Great Deformation
, and veteran financier -- which is why his perspective is not to be dismissed
lightly. He knows intimiately how how our political and financial systems work, as well as what their
vulnerabilties are.
And Stockman thinks the top for the current asset price bubble era is in -- specifically,
he thinks it hit its apex in January 2018.
As this "Everything Bubble" prepares to burst,
Stockman estimates the risk of economic crisis is as great, if not greater than, the 2008 Great
Financial Crisis because of the radical and unsustainable monetary policy expansion the central banks
have pursued over the past decade.
This has caused the prices of stocks, bonds, real estate and most other assets to appreciate at
rates that have no basis in the ongoing income/cash flow of the global economy. In short, they are
wildly overvalued.
A key condition that Stockman has been waiting to see, that serves as a signal the bubble's
bursting is nigh, is the concentration of speculative capital into fewer and fewer stocks as the
"good" options for investors shrink. We now clearly see this in the FAANG complex (a topic covered in
detail in our recent report
The
FAANG-nary In The Coal Mine
)
Stockman's main warning is that there's no bid underneath this market -- that when
perception shifts from greed to fear, the bottom is much farther down than most investors realize. In
his words, it's "rigged for implosion".
He predicts a Great Reset is imminent.
One that, for those who see it
coming and take prudent action today, will offer tremendous, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime, investment
opportunity once the dust settles.
To hear Stockman's specific predictions and warnings, listen to this 16-minute interview:
Those interested in having the opportunity to spend an entire day with David Stockman, where he'll
present the specifics of his forecasts as well as address investor Q&A, should consider attending Peak
Prosperity's
New
York City Summit with him on Sep 26, 2018
.
It's a good thing this Summit is coming up soon. We very likely do not have much time left before
Stockman's predicted Great Reset begins.
As he puts it himself:
You would think by now that the big thinkers and strategists of Wall Street would get the joke.
Trump's election was always a dagger aimed squarely at the egregious financial bubbles on Wall
Street that have been building for 30 years at the expense of a stagnant main street economy.
And now [America's] no-holds barred pursuit of Trade Wars and Fiscal Debauch have guaranteed
that the day of reckoning is at hand.
In fact, it may be only days away. And this chart from the final days of the dotcom bubble may
be a pretty serviceable roadmap as to why and when.
Maybe one of the keys to surviving this upcoming
economic collapse is to be completely out of debt with very little money in the bank
and with just enough precious metals to keep from starving while living in a small
town just far enough away from the city to keep foreigners from invading.
"This hatred will be still further magnified by the effects of
an economic crises, which will stop dealing on the exchanges
and bring industry to a standstill. We shall create by all the
secret subterranean methods open to us and with the aid of
gold, which is all in our hands, a universal economic crises
whereby we shall throw upon the streets whole mobs of workers
simultaneously in all the countries of europe. These mobs will
rush delightedly to shed the blood of those whom, in the
simplicity of their ignorance, they have envied from their
cradles, and whose property they will then be able to loot."
If you want timing, I would say within the month we will have the
first installment of the correction. As for fixing things, it is
never guaranteed, much like a war.
Lots of people are saying that
the correction won't come in
installments, but in one lump sum.
Dunno, but doesn't timing always include those 'limit down' days?
as long as the pm's are in your control and not at some brokerage storage
area, you should be fine. If you can't touch it every day, then you don't
own it is my philosophy.
This economy is more Oscar-the-Grouch-like than Big Birdish, no matter how
much bragging is done. It is not Big Bird's fault, however. It was all in
place before he ever got there. Sunny day, not.
One question, though...If you are an average Venezuelan, wouldn't it be
easier to have BitCoin? Affluent people have the means to store gold and
better ways of selling it in the case of an economic catastrophe. It would
be interesting to hear the perspective of ordinary people in places with
hyperinflated currency. They would probably be afraid to discuss it,
though, due to nutty .gov officials. It seems like people could help them
easier via BTC, assuming they have some way to spend it on staples. In the
event of a calamity, most people will just give up, I fear.
Actually, I believe it's 99% of all species that ever existed have gone
extinct. Humans will not be the exception. What people don't realize is how
soon down the road human extinction might be.
"We're going to become extinct," the eminent scientist says. "Whatever
we do now is too late."
Fenner is an authority on extinction. The emeritus professor in
microbiology at the Australian National University played a leading role in
sending one species into oblivion: the variola virus that causes smallpox.
And his work on the myxoma virus suppressed wild rabbit populations on
farming land in southeastern Australia in the early 1950s.
He made the comments in an interview at his home in a leafy Canberra
suburb. Now 95, he rarely gives interviews.
He says the Earth has entered the Anthropocene. Although it is not an
official epoch on the geological timescale, the Anthropocene is entering
scientific terminology. It spans the time since industrialisation, when our
species started to rival ice ages and comet impacts in driving the climate
on a planetary scale. Fenner says the real trouble is the population explosion and "unbridled
consumption".
The number of Homo sapiens is projected to exceed 6.9 billion this year,
according to the UN. With delays in firm action on cutting greenhouse gas
emissions, Fenner is pessimistic.
"We'll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island," he says.
"Climate change is just at the very beginning. But we're seeing remarkable
changes in the weather already. The human species is likely to go the same
way as many of the species that we've seen disappear.
"Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years," he says.
"A lot of other animals will, too. It's an irreversible situation. I think
it's too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do
something, but they keep putting it off.
"Mitigation would slow things down a bit, but there are too many people
here already."
Stop paying citizens and noncitizens to reproduce via welfare
programs and the progressive tax code.
Maybe, high interest rates will moderate consumption patterns,
which are already on a downward trend, even in the Consumption
Capital of the World, USA.
Capitalism requires growth to survive. Look at what happened to FB
recently when they merely stated that their growth was slowing.
Almost all of capitalism's growth comes from population expansion. If
we demanded that nobody could reproduce, and the global population
was quickly cut in half, capitalism would utterly collapse. So, what
do you want to do? What do you think the richest capitalists, who
totally rule the world, want to do? Well, we know what they're going
to do. We're watching them do it. They're going to drive humanity
towards extinction and hope that their massive wealth allows them to
survive while 7 billion people perish; as if climate change will
abruptly come to a halt at that point and they will be spared. They
won't be. But that's their only game plan. What else could they
possibly do?
This planet has seen Cambrian and other explosions of
diversity as well as Permian-level extinctions that wiped out 90% of
all organisms and 40% of phyla. YET LOOK HOW THINGS STAND NOW.
Forget the cult of doom-saying, which really has all the elements
of a weird religious movement. If you bet, bet on life. Not
jackassery.
"Fenner says the real trouble is the population explosion and "unbridled
consumption".
The population of almost every western nation has been
declining for years. Even in the USA, if we subtracted immigration the
numbers would show a below replacement level birthrate. Africa, on the
other hand, shows a surprising increase in population every year defying
the expectations of demographers year after year and the continent is
now expected to have 4 trillion Africans by the end of the century. So
we do not have an overpopulation problem on planet earth. We have an
African problem. Furthermore, nearly all the growth in greenhouse gases
in western countries is driven by the transfer of immigrants from very
low carbon footprint countries to high carbon footprint countries. If
open border globalist David Gelbaum had not bribed the Sierra Club in
2006 with 100 million dollars to never mention immigration and the harm
it does our environment more people would be talking about the dangers
of immigration to our environment.
The eminent scientist may be right, we could be headed for
extinction, but not for his reasons, but for our fear of confronting the
reckless growth in Africa and the agenda of the globalist to turn all
western countries into dysfunctional ungovernable tribal nations via
massive endless immigration.
The problem is, that in a crisis, yes, both gold and silver will drop,
possibly almost as much as the stock and bond markets, however, at some
point during the crisis, they will snap back, and roar upwards. The
problem, as always, is that in a crisis environment, would you even be able
to obtain physical gold and silver, and, at what premium? It wasn't so long
ago that silver was trading at a 35% premium to spot, and we weren't even
in a financial or banking crisis, so, you can just imagine the kind of
spreads you would be paying to own physical, in a real crisis.
To my way
of thinking, if you believe in the durability of gold and silver to weather
not only severe inflation, but also severe deflation, one is much better
off buying before the crisis hits.
If inflation becomes the dominant trend, then your gold and silver will
rise with each hit on fiat currencies and the reserves banks that issue
them. If deflation becomes the dominant theme, yes, you may loose nominal
value compared to the price you purchased those holdings at, but since
everything else will be plummeting in prices, your relative wealth
advantage will be preserved.
It's difficult to say what will happen when the bottom falls out, once
again. This time will not be like 2008/09, when the Fed and other central
banks had small balance sheets and could buy government debt at very low
interest rates. Considering the trap that many countries (US included) find
themselves in now, I am not sure it is realistic to expect interest rates
to rise to 22% as they did when Nixon closed the gold window, for the
simple reason that interest rates at that level will definitely bankrupt
many sovereigns, making the situation even worse.
It might also be of interest to note, that in the last 15 years, the
price of gold, in all major currencies (pound, dollar, franc, euro, yen,
AUS and CAD) has risen between 10 and 12% a year, on average over those
years. Which simply means that the 'real' inflation rate has been between
10% and 12% in those currencies.
That is what gold does. It doesn't make you 'moar' money, but it does
preserve the purchasing power of the money you do have.
The answer to your question, is yes.
As short term rates continue to rise,
PM hoarders will begin cashing in much of their holdings, to chase
yields. which will start a run
Imo, gold and silver will continue to go down, which means, better buying
opportunities.
Anybody leveraged into PM's is long gone, I suspect the waterfall move down
will be in property prices, both CRE and residential. A tripling of
interest rates would not even get them back to historical norms, this will
devastate most mortgage holders.
"... The 1920s roared with debt based consumption and speculation until it all tipped over into the debt deflation of the Great Depression. No one realised the problems that were building up in the economy as they used an economics that doesn't look at private debt, neoclassical economics. ..."
"... Same economics, same problem, globally. Neoliberalism was just one huge debt fuelled boom, which was replicated across the UK, the US, the Euro-zone, Japan and China. ..."
"... The early neoclassical economists hid the problems of rentier activity in the economy by removing the difference between "earned" and "unearned" income and they conflated "land" with "capital". ..."
"... DS has been saying that Armageddon is just around the corner for about seven years at this stage. Yet the ponzi continues.... ..."
One of the things folks are not getting is that when a crash occurs that there is
no place for the crash to land. There is no ground on which the economy can land
in order to reset. The only growth engines in play are new expanded human herding
opportunities and using government to add value to assets. Both of these engines
are running out of gas.
The massive debt load hanging above our heads has not receded or gone
away it has merely been transferred to the public sector where those in charge of
such things feel it is more benign
.
By a series of off-book and
backdoor transactions those in charge have transferred the burden of loss from
the banks onto the shoulders of the people, however, shifting the liability from
one sector to another does not alleviate the problem.
Writing off bad debt is
usually a painful process and often results in a huge change in what something is
worth. The creditor, meaning the person, business, or institution that holds the
paper can suffer a huge loss. Defaults generally constitute an unplanned and
involuntary financial adjustment. We as individuals should be concerned as to how
defaults can spill over and affect our lives. The article below delves into this
subject.
The economics of the neoliberal era had a fundamental flaw.
The 1920s roared with debt based consumption and speculation until it all tipped
over into the debt deflation of the Great Depression. No one realised the
problems that were building up in the economy as they used an economics that
doesn't look at private debt, neoclassical economics.
Same economics, same problem, globally.
Neoliberalism was just one huge debt fuelled boom, which was
replicated across the UK, the US, the Euro-zone, Japan and China.
At 25.30 mins we can see the super imposed the debt-to-GDP ratios.
You may not like it, but it's always been craponomics.
It was corrupted
at birth to hide the discoveries of the Classical economists.
They had realised most at the top of society were parasites living off
the hard work of everyone else, an idle rentier class.
The early neoclassical economists hid the problems of rentier activity
in the economy by removing the difference between "earned" and "unearned"
income and they conflated "land" with "capital".
They also took the focus off the cost of living, which had been so
important in Classical Economics.
"... Cut to view of parade down Main Street USA of politicians and business people with computer keyboards hung around their necks. Many wear signs around their necks proclaiming their crimes. "I facilitated consumers to buy insurance policies for the ACA," says one. "I front ran the market for Uncle Sam," says another. ..."
Reactionaries will be purged. The Markets of Historical Determinism will demand it. Cut to
view of parade down Main Street USA of politicians and business people with computer
keyboards hung around their necks. Many wear signs around their necks proclaiming their
crimes. "I facilitated consumers to buy insurance policies for the ACA," says one. "I front
ran the market for Uncle Sam," says another.
The lines of armed guards lining the parade route are there to protect the penitents, as
various short action shots show. The crowd is in an ugly mood. Storm clouds lower in the
distance.
"... "While much of neoliberalism's rhetorical power comes from the assertion that "there is no alternative," the simple fact is that the world is full of alternatives. Indeed, even the so-called free marketers in Australia can see alternatives." ..."
"... It's dogma is nothing but empty lies held up as flawed truth's and full of scoundrels who profit from its concomitant pain. ..."
"neoliberal language allows powerful groups to package their personal preferences as national
interests"
Its almost impossible to talk about a mining economy and a "free market" in the same
sentence, Richard. a mining economy is is synonymous with corruption, Dutch disease and
political grabs for cash etc. In the height of the 2009 GFC announced by kev07, unskilled
labourers in the pilbara were still earning $100/hr. Real estate prices for 3 bed shacks in
karratha were starting at $1million plus. The blue collar dominated pilbara area was
overwhelmed with greed fed by left politicians hiding behind socialist ideals. The reality
was that left wing economists recognized the "dutch disease" problem and their solution was
to flood the area with greedy blue collar workers who were blowing their enormous salaries on
prostitutes, alcohol and gambling in the hope that profits from the mining boom would be
flushed into other parts of the economy.
The solution? partially transition Australia's economy to an innovation driven economy
because innovation is linked to learning which is linked to stronger self esteem and self
efficacy in the community. an innovation driven econmy is the better way of promting social
development in the community and an innovation driven economy is the most effective way for
politicians to transition to the benefits of a "free market" driven economy.... the reality
is that transitioning to an innovation would require smacking the socialists over the back of
the head in the hope that aspiring socialists will respect the ideas and intellectual
property of others as opposed to continue to assimilate intellectual property in the name of
employment generation and the common good
I dont fear the potential rise of neoliberalism, although i understand that spruiking a
free market whilst talking about mining is ridiculous.
I fear the individuals who are have been talking about mining, and targeting/victimising the
non politically active conservatives for more than 2 decades in the name of socialism
"While much of neoliberalism's rhetorical power comes from the assertion that "there is no
alternative," the simple fact is that the world is full of alternatives. Indeed, even the
so-called free marketers in Australia can see alternatives."
Excellent article Richard, you have captured the ideology and its dogma quite
specularly.
It's dogma is nothing but empty lies held up as flawed truth's and full of scoundrels who
profit from its concomitant pain.
Examples from today's headlines and a few from last week:
Still, to the extent that Trumpism has any economic policy content it's the idea that a
package of immigration restrictions and corporate tax cuts[1] will make workers better off by
reducing competition from migrants and increasing labor demand from corporations. The second
part of this claim has been pretty thoroughly demolished, so I want to look mainly at the
first. However, as we will see, the corporate tax cuts remain central to the argument.
Still, to the extent that Trumpism has any economic policy content it's the idea that a
package of immigration restrictions and corporate tax cuts[1] will make workers better off
by reducing competition from migrants and increasing labor demand from corporations.
The emergence of Trumpism signifies deepening of the ideological crisis for the
neoliberalism. Neoclassical economics fell like a house of cards. IMHO Trumpism can be viewed
as a kind of "national neoliberalism" which presuppose rejection of three dogmas of "classic
neoliberalism":
1. Rejection of neoliberal globalization including, but not limited to, free movement
of labor. Attempt to protect domestic industries via tariff barriers.
2. Rejection of excessive financialization and primacy of financial oligarchy.
Restoration of the status of manufacturing, and "traditional capitalists" status in
comparison with financial oligarchy.
3. Rejection of austerity. An attempt to fight "secular stagnation" via Military
Keysianism.
Trumpism sent "Chicago school" line of thinking to the dustbin of history. It exposed
neoliberal economists as agents of financial oligarchy and "Enemy of the American People"
(famous Trump phase about neoliberal MSM).
It is never clear whether ideas or interests are the prime mover in shaping historical
events, but only ideas and interests together can sustain a ruling consensus for a lengthy
interval, such as the historic period of financialization and globalization running over
the last 35 years. The role of economics in furnishing the now-rebuked narratives that have
reigned for decades in mainstream political parties can be seen in three areas.
First, there is globalization as we knew it. Mainstream economics championed
corporate-friendly trade and investment agreements to increase prosperity, and provided the
intellectual framework for multilateral trade agreements. ...
Second, there is financialization, which led to increasing disconnection between stock
market performance and the real economy, with large rewards going to firms that undertook
asset stripping, outsourcing, and offshoring. The combination of globalization and
financialization produced a new plutocratic class of owners, managers and those who
serviced them in global cities, alongside gentrification of those cities,
proletarianization and lumpenization of suburbs, and growing insecurity and casualization
of employment for the bulk of the middle and working class.
Financialization also led to the near-abandonment of the 'national' industrial economy
in favor of global sourcing and sales, and a handsome financial rentier economy built on
top of it. Meanwhile, automation trends led to shedding of jobs everywhere, and threaten
far more.
All of this was hardly noticed by the discipline charged with studying the economy.
Indeed, it actively provided rationales for financialization, in the form of the
efficient-markets hypothesis and related ideas; for concentration of capital through
mergers and acquisitions in the form of contestable-markets theory; for the gentrification
of the city through attacks on rent control and other urban policies; for remaking of labor
markets through the idea that unemployment was primarily a reflection of voluntary leisure
preferences, etc. The mainstream political parties, including those historically
representing the working and middle classes, in thrall to the 'scientific' sheen of market
fetishism, gambled that they could redistribute a share of the promised gains and thus
embraced policies the effect of which was ultimately to abandon and to antagonize a large
section of their electorate.
Third, there is the push for austerity, a recurrent trope of the 'neoliberal' era which,
although not favored by all, has played an important role in creating conditions for the
rise of popular movements demanding a more expansionary fiscal stance (though they can
paradoxically simultaneously disdain taxation, as with Trumpism). The often faulty
intellectual case made by many mainstream economists for central bank independence,
inflation targeting, debt sustainability thresholds, the distortive character of taxation
and the superiority of private provision of services including for health, education and
welfare, have helped to support antagonism to governmental activity. Within this
perspective, there is limited room for fiscal or even monetary stimulus, or for any direct
governmental role in service provision, even in the form of productivity-enhancing
investments. It is only the failure fully to overcome the shipwreck of 2008 that has caused
some cracks in the edifice.
The dominant economic ideas taken together created a framework in which deviation from
declared orthodoxy would be punished by dynamics unleashed by globalization and
financialization. The system depended not merely on actors having the specific interests
attributed to them, but in believing in the theory that said that they did. [This is one of
the reasons that Trumpism has generated confusion among economic actors, even as his
victory produced an early bout of stock-market euphoria. It does not rebuke neoliberalism
so much as replace it with its own heretical version, bastard neoliberalism, an orientation
without a theory, whose tale has yet to be written.]
Finally, interpretations of politics were too restrictive, conceptualizing citizens'
political choices as based on instrumental and usually economic calculations, while
indulging in a wishful account of their actual conditions -- for instance, focusing on low
measured unemployment, but ignoring measures of distress and insecurity, or the indignity
of living in hollowed-out communities.
Mainstream accounts of politics recognized the role of identities in the form of wooden
theories of group mobilization or of demands for representation. However, the psychological
and charismatic elements, which can give rise to moments of 'phase transition' in politics,
were altogether neglected, and the role of social media and other new methods in politics
hardly registered. As new political movements (such as the Tea Party and Trumpism in the
U.S.) emerged across the world, these were deemed 'populist' -- both an admission of the
analysts' lack of explanation, and a token of disdain. The essential feature of such
movements -- the obscurantism that allows them to offer many things to many people,
inconsistently and unaccountably, while serving some interests more than others -- was
little explored. The failures can be piled one upon the other. No amount of quantitative
data provided by polling, 'big data', or other techniques comprehended what might be
captured through open-eyed experiential narratives. It is evident that there is a need for
forms of understanding that can comprehend the currents within the human person, and go
beyond shallow empiricism. Mainstream social science has offered few if any resources to
understand, let alone challenge, illiberal majoritarianism, now a world-remaking
phenomenon.
It is not only George Soros is losing. Neoliberalism is losing some of its fights too, despite recent revenge in sev eral Latin
American countries. Deep state was always an alliance of Wall Street sharks with intelligence agencies and Soros is a true representative
of this breed. He is connected and acted in sync with them in xUSSR space. In this sense he can be viewed as a part of Harvard
Mafia which economically raped Russia in 1990th...
Malaysia's prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, correctly called Soros and other speculators "unscrupulous profiteers" whose immoral
work served no social value. That actually aptly characterize all members of Harvard mafia not just George Soros.
BTW, if Victoria Nuland (of EuroMaydan putch fame) praises a particular person, you can be sure that his person serves US
imperial interests...
Notable quotes:
"... ...In the 1990s, he was portrayed by the far left as an agent of American imperialism, helping to foist the so-called neoliberal agenda (mass privatization, for example) on Eastern Europe. For some critics, Soros's Wall Street background has always been a mark against him. ..."
"... In one campaign rally in Budapest, Orban referred to Soros as "Uncle George," telling tens of thousands of supporters that "we are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the world." ..."
"... I always thought George Soros was a dangerous [neo]liberal but after reading this article and seeing the damage he has created around the world it has been confirmed. ..."
"... Mr. Soros fights for all the [neo]liberal causes no matter the consequences. ..."
"... I am glad that the conservatives and others are finally seeing his true colors and are trying to subdue him the best they can. He must be called out on this negative behavior before it is too late. It is reassuring that many of the European nations are implementing policies that are favorable to their countries and looking out for their people. Europeans must be protected and George Soros stopped. I am glad they see him for what he truly is which is frightening. ..."
"... As Mr. Soros said of himself, "I am a confirmed egoist." He has used his money to make the world as he thinks is best. But having money does not give you a better moral view of how the world should be governed nor make you a god to decide for the rest of us. ..."
"... I think this kind of undue influence (money in politics) is what is driving some of the back-lash against [neo]liberal democracy. So many of the "[neo]liberal" proponents of an open society, like George Soros and Bill Gates, seem to have an inordinate power to effect political outcomes because of their money. ..."
"... Soros is an enemy of the middle and working classes in America. ..."
"... Now, more than ever, American politics is defined by money, so it's important to understand how it is used in that context by those who have it. ..."
"... What about the devastating effects that free trade and globalization have had on the spread of inequality throughout the world... Huge corporations consistently use "free trade" or globalization as an excuse to offer the lowest possible wages, and move manufacturing to places with the least environmental protections and human rights. ..."
"... Soros didn't bet on Democracy, he bet on his version of it which he tried to buy through individual politicians on the take and the Democratic Party. Better he quit manipulating pols and gave his money to charity. ..."
"... Soros is a criminal by any other name. He hedged against the UK Pound 20 years ago, and earned $1B. He earned billions by manipulating the market. With his profits he wanted to create his own society where his money could be used to buy politicians and pass legislation according to his one man agenda. He's selfish, an egomaniac, and dangerous. ..."
"... George Soros is the epitome of corruption – penetration and distortion of political process by obscene wealth. It does not matter what his true intentions are – he can say whatever he wants but we will never know for sure. And stop calling that "philanthropy". ..."
"... What Soros is doing is imposing his personal political beliefs and ideas on everybody by buying political influence with his money - that is called "corruption" pure and simple. ..."
"... What he does is not democracy promotion - it is the exact opposite – democracy destruction. It is good to know that he is failing in that effort. ..."
"... Neoliberalism has failed to improve democratic governance and reduced distribution of wealth ..."
"... What pharaonic globalist plutocrats like him mean by "Liberal Democracy" encompasses a sinister set of objectives. Prominent among which are these two: ..."
"... Full support for neocon/neoliberal destabilization, confrontation, and military interventionism. ..."
"... The destruction of borders, nations, and cultures -- particularly Western Culture here and in Europe. ..."
"... Soros and his peers want unhindered unlimited access to cheap Third World labor as well as to have complete control over the entire global economy. To his class nationalism and culture are speed bumps on the way to those self-serving goals. ..."
Yet the political realm is where Soros has made his most audacious wager. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, he poured
hundreds of millions of dollars into the former Soviet-bloc countries to promote civil society and [neo]liberal democracy. It was
a one-man Marshall Plan for Eastern Europe, a private initiative without historical precedent. It was also a gamble that a part of
the world that had mostly known tyranny would embrace ideas like government accountability and ethnic tolerance. In London in the
1950s, Soros was a student of the expatriated Austrian philosopher Karl Popper, who championed the notion of an "open society," in
which individual liberty, pluralism and free inquiry prevailed. Popper's concept became Soros's cause.
... ... ...
...In the 1990s, he was portrayed by the far left as an agent of American imperialism, helping to foist the so-called neoliberal
agenda (mass privatization, for example) on Eastern Europe. For some critics, Soros's Wall Street background has always been a mark
against him.
Last autumn, he signaled that same sense of defiance when he announced that he was in the process of transferring the bulk of
his remaining wealth, $18 billion in total at the time, to the O.S.F. That will potentially make it the second-largest philanthropic
organization in the United States, in assets, after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is already a sprawling entity, with some
1,800 employees in 35 countries, a global advisory board, eight regional boards and 17 issue-oriented boards. Its annual budget of
around $1 billion finances projects in education, public health, independent media, immigration and criminal-justice reform and other
areas
... ... ...
He decided that his goal would be opening closed societies. He created a philanthropic organization, then called the Open Society
Fund, in 1979 and began sponsoring college scholarships for black South African students. But he soon turned his attention to Eastern
Europe, where he started financing dissident groups. He funneled money to the Solidarity strikers in Poland in 1981 and to Charter
77 in Czechoslovakia. In one especially ingenious move, he sent hundreds of Xerox copiers to Hungary to make it easier for underground
publications to disseminate their newsletters. In the late 1980s, he provided dozens of Eastern European students with scholarships
to study in the West, with the aim of fostering a generation of [neo]liberal democratic leaders. One of those students was Viktor
Orban, who studied civil society at Oxford. From his Manhattan trading desk, Soros became a strange sort of expat anticommunist revolutionary.
... ... ...
In one campaign rally in Budapest, Orban referred to Soros as "Uncle George," telling tens of thousands of supporters that
"we are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not
national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns
the world." Along with the fiery speeches, there were the billboards, which featured a picture of a smiling Soros and the message,
"Let's not let George Soros have the last laugh."
... ... ...
Orban's coalition won 49 percent of the vote, enough to give it a supermajority in Parliament. But the anti-Soros campaign didn't
end with the election. Days after the vote, a magazine owned by a pro-Orban businesswoman published the names of more than 200 people
in Hungary that it claimed were Soros "mercenaries."
... ... ...
There have been mistakes; by his own admission, Soros erred in championing Mikheil Saakashvili, the mercurial former president
of Georgia, and also became too directly involved in the country's politics in the early 2000s. He clearly misjudged Orban. But as
Victoria Nuland, a former American diplomat who worked for both Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton, put it when I spoke to her recently,
"George is a freedom fighter."
"Billionaire philanthropist?" Really? Does that make the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelstein "philanthropists" too, or does
that label apply only to left-leaning individuals seeking political leverage many times that of the average citizen?
One citizen, 1 vote. ALL citizens should be limited to $100 contributions for their senators, representatives and the President.
NO citizen should be able to contribute to a campaign in a state where he/she is not a full-time permanent resident.
And NO citizen should be able to contribute more than $100 to his/her own campaign. We don't need more Kennedys, Clintons,
Bloombergs, Trumps, Perots or Forbes buying (or trying to buy) their way into public office, using their millions.
Of the people, by the people, for the people. That's the model, folks. Depart from it at your peril.
Soros--a "European at heart." Must have brought some much-needed smiles to the UK following the recent Trump Tour of Destruction.
How soon we forget--in the 90s, Soros broke the pound as the Brits were trying to unify European currencies--with unfortunate
conditions that weakened the effort and Soros smartly exploited.
Who can blame a globalist from crashing a poorly devised govt scheme and walking away with a cool $1B--back when a billion
dollars was a lot of money? I am not the person to say whether Soros may qualify as an honest proponent of democracy, but I strongly
suspect that he is a poster boy of the ultra-nationalists as they battle globalization.
In a way, Soros epitomizes the failure of globalization, which may or may not benefit the classic, labor-intensive industries
of manufacturing, agriculture, construction, and mining, but always benefits, sometimes wildly, the financial "industry."
As far as I'm concerned, Soros is merely making reparations. And, sorry to say, George, it's prob too little, too late.
I always thought George Soros was a dangerous [neo]liberal but after reading this article and seeing the damage he has
created around the world it has been confirmed. Nigel Farage, the British politician, recently said on television that Mr.
Soros is out to destroy the world. It certainly appears to be the case when you see what he did to the British and Thai economies.
He was so concerned with helping immigrants and refugees that he had little regard for the citizens that actually lived in those
countries that are being affected. People lost their livelihoods but that did not matter to him.
Mr. Soros fights for all the [neo]liberal causes no matter the consequences. He ... does not care who he hurts as
long as he promotes his progressive agenda. He wants to allow as many immigrants to enter a nation as possible even if it adversely
affects that country while he lives in luxury and is not inconvenienced by this invasion. He has billions and will probably never
be touched by massive immigration.
I am glad that the conservatives and others are finally seeing his true colors and are trying to subdue him the best they
can. He must be called out on this negative behavior before it is too late. It is reassuring that many of the European nations
are implementing policies that are favorable to their countries and looking out for their people. Europeans must be protected
and George Soros stopped. I am glad they see him for what he truly is which is frightening.
As Mr. Soros said of himself, "I am a confirmed egoist." He has used his money to make the world as he thinks is best.
But having money does not give you a better moral view of how the world should be governed nor make you a god to decide for the
rest of us.
I think this kind of undue influence (money in politics) is what is driving some of the back-lash against [neo]liberal
democracy. So many of the "[neo]liberal" proponents of an open society, like George Soros and Bill Gates, seem to have an inordinate
power to effect political outcomes because of their money.
The making of such huge amounts of money is not done with any charitable purpose. Only later, does charity come to mind.
Soros is an enemy of the middle and working classes in America. Yes, a billion people around the world are better
off because of the forces of "globalization" (this total most definitely includes Soros himself), but millions of Americans have
suffered economically as a result. GATT, NAFTA and the entire alphabet soup of trade deals have lined the pockets of the globalists,
while grinding the fortunes of U.S. working and middle class laborers into dust.
Great article. Now, more than ever, American politics is defined by money, so it's important to understand how it is used
in that context by those who have it. At this juncture, I think the American people deserve to see an expose of all those
millionaires and billionaires who have and continue to support Trump. It's only fair, to lay the money trail on the table, on
all sides, for everyone to see.
What about the devastating effects that free trade and globalization have had on the spread of inequality throughout the
world... Huge corporations consistently use "free trade" or globalization as an excuse to offer the lowest possible wages, and
move manufacturing to places with the least environmental protections and human rights.
Immigration policies are also sometimes used in ways to suppress wages, and even more worse, enacted with very little thought
given to assimilation. Most of the poorer areas, or ghettoes surrounding Paris for example are populated with huge numbers of
Muslim immigrants that face extremely daunting odds of fully assimilating into French culture.
While the wealthier (sometimes elite [neo]liberals) Parisians almost certainly live in gated or posh neighborhoods with hardly
any immigrants as their neighbors. Despite the generous financial support Soros (and some other elites) gives to human rights
causes, he rarely outright discusses some of these problems associated with free trade, globalization and mass immigration. These
seeming hypocrisies and inconsistencies then become much easier fodder for those of Orban's ilk to manipulate and ultimately consolidate
power.
Soros didn't bet on Democracy, he bet on his version of it which he tried to buy through individual politicians on the
take and the Democratic Party. Better he quit manipulating pols and gave his money to charity.
First, Hungary is not xenophobic, they merely want to protect their culture. Second, George Soros wants plenty of wealth for
him and his family, yet he wants those of us in the middle class to dive up our meager assets with the world's poorest. Third,
his personal wealth has often been generated by destroying currencies and the middle class who owns those currencies. Fourth,
he promotes open borders without consulting the citizenry of said borders as to their opinion regarding their own national sovereignty.
Our world would be a much better place without George Soros.
Soros is a criminal by any other name. He hedged against the UK Pound 20 years ago, and earned $1B. He earned billions
by manipulating the market. With his profits he wanted to create his own society where his money could be used to buy politicians
and pass legislation according to his one man agenda. He's selfish, an egomaniac, and dangerous.
Soros employs his vast wealth to create the society he dreams of, regardless of what the rest of us want. When the democratic
process veers away from his vision, he uses the power of his wealth to steer it back.
So he's just another wealthy and powerful elite trying to remake the world as he prefers it. Such arrogance!
Sucking money out of the world's economies so that he can direct it as HE sees fit does not make a man great. Rather, I would
argue that such actions contributed to the rise of both Brexiteers and Trumpsters.
If Soros really wants to contribute to society, he would lobby for financial industry reform - less favorable tax treatment
for hedge funds (what value do they really provide to society) and a transaction tax on trades to reduce speculation. Then fight
for minimum wage increases.
This is a horrifying interview and does not improve the image of George Soros. "My ideology is nonideological," he says while
spending billions on politics, which he defines as "In politics, you are spinning the truth, not discovering it." He describes
Obama as his greatest disappointment because Obama "closed the door on me," as in he expected Obama should work with him and take
his advice. Soros uses his billions to fund politicians and meddle in elections... this is a man who enjoys influencing and manipulating
politics and becomes frustrated when his efforts backfire or are not successful.
This man is the absolute worst! His no borders policy has done more to hurt Europe then Russia ever could. The Soros gang has
zero respect and tolerance for nation-state sovereignty and local governance. Talk about a global elite! He and his gang epitomize
that arrogance.
George Soros bet big on open borders,one world governance and destroying the working class through unfair trade agreements.
Yes he appears to be losing. Thank God for small favors.
It cracks me up to read these type of article in the NYT and then read another story in the NYT about how if you can pay the
money you can have yourself a private waiting area in a major airport to separate yourself from the chaos of the masses in the
public waiting areas. Maybe democracy wouldn't be in trouble around the world if it worked as well for the "slobs" in the public
waiting areas as it did for those in the exclusive waiting rooms. This is globalization in a nutshell. It works great for the
rich, not so well for the rest of us slobs. This is a government of the rich people, by the rich people, for the rich people.
The slobs realise their government doesn't really care that their jobs are disapearing and their standard of living is going down.
To say that George Soros is funding [neo]liberal democracy is a misnomer. What Soros is funding is open borders. Where national
interests are set aside, global interests prevail. This is precisely what George Soros is advocating. Tired of having to face
multitude regulatory systems in his effort to build a global financial empire, Soros is quite right in discerning that a borderless,
global regulatory system would increase his financial power exponentially. Nations are right to resist the encroachment of Soros
because global interests, by definition, are not local interests. Nationalism, so loathed by Soros and his open border lackeys,
serves as a check and balance on men like Soros who would be god and would dictate to the world from some point of central governance
what their truth and value should be. George Soros and his globalist kin should be resisted. The true threat to global interests
is not nationalism, it is globalism.
Soros, and American [neo]liberalism, economic and social [neo]liberalism championed by Soros and the NYT, is in its death throes.
Call us fascists, totalitarians, racists--- understand clearly: we do not care. Europe is waking up. [neo]liberalism is close
to being dead. No spectres or phantoms are haunting Europe. Blood is standing up and answering our ancestors.We are not commodoties,
consumers, meat for your wars. You have attacked us, belittled us, turned our queen of continents into latrines of filth. You,
American [neo]liberalism, have destroyed us.Now, we take our nations back.
It's amusing to read phrases like "nationalism and tribalism are resurgent". It never does to underestimate tribalism; as long
as groups feel safe they are tolerant. But when groups feel threatened, tribalism rears up in what is not so much a resurgence
but more like an awakening from a nap.
The older cultures of Europe are waking up from a nap and realizing that unless they reassess a few long-held assumptions,
they will eventually be ethnically diminished and culturally pressured.
Denmark has banned the burka and legislated some of the harshest migration, immigration, asylum, and naturalization laws in
Europe. It is implementing laws to ensure integration, including stopping benefits to families whose children are not integrating.
Do the author and Mr. Soros think that Denmark exercising control over its future demographics and preserving its culture are
malign?
The Danes some years ago elected the Danish People's Party to significant power; the DPP is often referred to as a far right
party, but is a typical left-wing party in everything except pushing Denmark toward "multiculturalism".
Sweden's centre-left government, on the other hand, brought in hundreds of thousands of Third World immigrants and then refused
even to admit, let alone discuss, the glaring problems with integration within its immigrant community.
Result: the Sweden Democrats, a bona fide neo-Nazi party, are set to do extremely and alarmingly well in Sweden's September
elections.
This super-rich elitist from Hungary is trying to buy American democracy and reshape it in his image regardless of what We
The People want. And the Democrats are on his payroll and totally owned by this foreign agent!
Soros' flaw is that he only tolerates centralized socialist democracy. He cannot stand the idea of democracy in the form of
a federal republic with a weak central government. Interestingly, he made his billions as a predatory capitalist now he turns
on capitalism. He also exhibits a particularly vicious elitism: No one should be allowed to own guns except his private security
guards. He knows that umarmed men are always someone's slaves.
Soros is a hypocrite who did one thing and is now out to create a legacy. All is shows is he is driven by both greed and ego.
His blatant hypocrisy probably did more harm than good - common denominator, it's always about him. Hey Soros, don't do us plebes
any more favors, ok?
Democracy is alive and well, regardless of what Soros thinks. He does not represent democracy, he was never been elected to
any public office. He represents open borders mass migration, as the name of one of his NGOs implies, Open Society Foundation.
Brexit voters, and other voters across the west are increasingly voting against his philosophy. Voters in the US, Hungary, Poland,
Czech Republic, Italy, Slovenia, etc, have democratically chosen as their leaders conservative controlled borders leaders, and
to underscore, all were elected via the democratic process.
Open Borders and globalism that Soros is pushing is increasingly being rejected in voting booths in the EU and the US.
It is hardly undemocratic to increasingly vote against what Soros is selling – chaotic mass migration made possible by open
borders.
He represents [neo]liberal democracy, and voters increasingly favor conservative democracy.
George Soros is the epitome of corruption – penetration and distortion of political process by obscene wealth. It does
not matter what his true intentions are – he can say whatever he wants but we will never know for sure. And stop calling that
"philanthropy".
Red Cross and Salvation Army is philanthropy. What Soros is doing is imposing his personal political beliefs and ideas
on everybody by buying political influence with his money - that is called "corruption" pure and simple.
Sure, he is not the only one doing that, but he is the one doing that most overtly and blatantly. He seems to relish being
the face of the elitist disregard for the masses. What he does is not democracy promotion - it is the exact opposite – democracy
destruction. It is good to know that he is failing in that effort.
Neoliberalism has failed to improve democratic governance and reduced distribution of wealth, just as leftists predicted.
Soros benefitted financially, which has increased his privilege to participate in governance voters cannot achieve. Despite Soros'
wealth, successfully manipulating currency markets does not easily transfer to manipulating electorates. Even if Soros believes
his projects would produce good governance, he lacks the ability to convince voters what is in their best interests.
I am elated to hear that George Soros might be losing.
What pharaonic globalist plutocrats like him mean by "Liberal Democracy" encompasses a sinister set of objectives. Prominent
among which are these two:
1). Full support for neocon/neoliberal destabilization, confrontation, and military interventionism.
2). The destruction of borders, nations, and cultures -- particularly Western Culture here and in Europe.
Soros and his peers want unhindered unlimited access to cheap Third World labor as well as to have complete control over
the entire global economy. To his class nationalism and culture are speed bumps on the way to those self-serving goals.
Trump attacked former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, the man at the center of the Trump dossier scandal, who
had extensive contacts with the Department of Justice's former #4 ranked official, before and after the FBI opened its Trump-Russia
probe in the summer of 2016,
according to new emails
recently turned over to Congressional investigators.
That official, Bruce Ohr, was
demoted twice
after the DOJ's Inspector General discovered that he lied about his involvement with opposition research firm Fusion
GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson - who employed Steele. Ohr's CIA-linked wife, Nellie, was also
employed by Fusion
as part of the firm's anti-Trump efforts, and had ongoing communications with the ex-UK spy, Christopher Steele
as well, suggesting that Steele was much closer to the Obama administration than previously disclosed, and his DOJ contact Bruce
Ohr reported directly to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates - who approved at least one of the FISA warrants to surveil Trump campaign
aide Carter Page.
"The big story that the Fake News Media refuses to report is lowlife Christopher Steele's many meetings with Deputy A.G. Bruce
Ohr and his beautiful wife, Nelly. It was Fusion GPS that hired Steele to write the phony & discredited Dossier, paid for by Crooked
Hillary & the DNC.... " Trump tweeted.
"...Do you believe Nelly worked for Fusion and her husband STILL WORKS FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF "JUSTICE." I have never seen anything
so Rigged in my life. Our A.G. is scared stiff and Missing in Action. It is all starting to be revealed - not pretty. IG Report soon?
Witch Hunt!"
Trump's latest broadside on Steel and Ohr was likely prompted by speculation that the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary
Committee is preparping subpoenas for people connected to the controversial Steele dossier. As The Hill
reported earlier
this week
, Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) is said to be preparing subpoenas for Bruce Ohr, his wife Nellie Ohr and Fusion GPS
co-founder Glenn Simpson.
By escalating his all too public demands on AG Sessions, Trump is risking further scrutiny by Robert Mueller, who is
already
poring over Trump's tweets
to solidify his Obstruction of justice case, while inviting a whole new set of contradictory statements
by his newest attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who most recently said that Trump would be willing to sit down with Mueller if two specifics
topics are not discussed:
Why Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.
What Trump said to Comey about the investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Of course, by continuing his periodic twitter attacks on Sessions, Trump makes it prohibitively difficult for Mueller to agree
to those terms. Tags
Multiline Utilities - NEC
It's hard to say what's really going on behind the scenes but you'd think at some point soon that a huge and undeniable truth-bomb
is revealed.
Here's a sick thought...is Session's position as Trump's AG the "insurance policy" (((they))) had in place?
If Session's isn't part of Trump's plan then he'll be gone soon enough. If Trump endlessly tolerates Session's inactivity and
merely berates him periodically (just for optics) then we'll know Sessions is clandestinely working behind the scenes (w/HUBER)
and this movie starts to finally get interesting.
Obama, Hillary & Co. will pay for their attempted/failed treason. But will Session's be the AG that see's it through?
He's just trying to mess with your head and make you confused. That's what he does.
"Hit it from every angle. Open multiple fronts on your enemy. He must be confused, and feel besieged on every side."- Roger
Stone's Rules (the guy who got trump elected.)
What you don't realize is WE the people are his "enemy" in that tactic above. It's gaslighting.
Here's another Stone rule
"Always praise 'em before you hit 'em."
"Politics isn't theater. It's performance art. Sometimes, for its own sake."
"Unless you can fake sincerity, you'll get nowhere in this business"
MetaMussolini Our golfing warthog president has picked a cabinet of semi-human dirty people who are intellectually corrupt gangsters. Trump makes worse the sorrows of the middle class.
This confirms what we've been hearing on the alt news. Sessions isn't doing his job and the criminals will get a pass. Mr.
Sessions, you may not agree with the President and may feel you're acting honorably but that's a problem. You were put there to
round up the criminals (your former esteemed colleagues) and didn't follow through on your duties. Step aside and let someone
step up who isn't timid and let's git 'er done. Of course, that's assuming any of this was real to begin with and I have serious
doubts.
I think it goes a lot deeper than Hillary, Obama, or any intel agencies. All the way up to the globalist western oligarchs who
are scared shitless of losing control and allowing a populist movement to fuck up their racketts.
Orders come down the pike from
the oligarchs through the politicans [ who's campaigns cannot be funded without the oligarchs, and who nod is needed to be accepted
by either of the two parties ] and their appointed intelligentce agents, down through the media, through the special interest groups
to the idiot at home watching CNN.
If Session's isn't part of Trump's plan then he'll be gone soon enough. If Trump endlessly tolerates Session's inactivity
and merely berates him periodically (just for optics) then we'll know Sessions is clandestinely working behind the scenes (w/HUBER)
and this movie starts to finally get interesting.
Do you think that there are a lot of public servants in Washington DC
who practice rule of law, hold themselves to higher ideals, are
interested in promoting and spreading liberty? Tell me about them.
Most Reps are just talking heads, that's all they do, appear before
cameras looking like they are accomplishing shit. Same with Sessions,
except now he's in a appointed position, where there's actual things
to be accomplished besides finding the next donor to sell out to. But
it's not called the swamp for nothing. These law abiding freedom
loving so called conservatives we've been voting for are a joke, no
significant gains, only slightly less aggressive rate of
deterioration into a bigger state. And Session fits into that club
nicely. The conservative club is the joke. I'm merely pointing it
out. I'd like to be wrong, but I see no evidence of it. We're way
past the tipping point, too many of us are in on the take, in one way
or another, to go back, and by design.
Amen! I heard a sound clip of Sessions giving a speech on XM 125 a few
days ago. The man can barely talk and when he does talk he sounds like a
moron. A real life Forest Gump. He sounds retarded. Bad choice on the
part of Trump.
ADF: Alliance Defending Freedom and is made of Christians. Because of
that it is a hate group. The fucking commies will never stop. This PC
crap that everything is hate speech and everything is racist is
nonsense. I'm sick of it, quite frankly. Want to be racist? Go ahead.
Want to say something hateful or stupid? Go ahead. Let the leftists
freak out. I have had enough of their caterwauling!
This is awesome: "lowlife Christopher Steele's many meetings with Deputy A.G.
Bruce Ohr and his beautiful wife, Nelly." If you have seen pics of Nelly,
well, she isn't beautiful. Her being married to Ohr is weird. Beyond weird.
These two things do not go together!
Thats interesting because waldman inserted himself with assange and did
nine visits..the purpuse of that was to establish a mythical Russian
bridge to Assange that would be used against him by Mueller who was
exposed workin on Oleg Matter with the FBI . Oleg powed 25 M of own
money..and never got his visa. Chris steele was working to Get Oleg his
visa..Walman represented steele assange and Oleg...
He completed his
mission..on assange then sold him down the river turning the immunity
deal over to Warner...
Knowing full well Warner Comey and deepstate would trash it.
Warner is King of the Snakes..Adam was just doing what was best for
his mafioso boss Olegs business. Oleg and FBI are joined at the hip.
Sessions was the insurance. He screened everyone during the transition
including halper, who was then pushed aggressively by Navarro... Its ironic
that when paige , the patsy, went to the Cambridge meeting paid by Halpers
connection.. Paige took it cuz no body wanted to go so he volunteered.. the
guest speakers were Madelinne Albright of the Atlantic Council and Vin Weber
disgraced congressman whose PR firm was scrutinized by Mueller.
Albright went to emphasize what a threat Trump and the populist movement
was and how important it was to get on the transition team. No telling how
many others Sessions let thru. Make no mistake.. he will be implicated in
this. Trump knows what a betrayal this really was.
"... By Sanjay Reddy, Associate Professor of Economics, The New School for Social Research. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website ..."
"... Finally, interpretations of politics were too restrictive, conceptualizing citizens' political choices as based on instrumental and usually economic calculations, while indulging in a wishful account of their actual conditions -- for instance, focusing on low measured unemployment, but ignoring measures of distress and insecurity, or the indignity of living in hollowed-out communities. ..."
"... Welcome to the "New World Economic Order;" which looks suspiciously like Dickensian Predatory Capitalism. ..."
"... Just one caveat: Neoliberalism is not really market-fetishism, unless fetishism is understood as fake devotion. Neoliberalism is a State ideology of the economy, its central tenet being that the State must directly help the rich, the poor will be better off as a by-product. ..."
"... The Academy are direct and indirect employees of the State. The Ivy League are direct and indirect employees of plutocrats (thru the university endowment). The State officials are plutocrats or more commonly indirect employees of the plutocrats. What is not to like? How can the Academy be reformed, when it has been oligarchic since Plato (an oligarch) invented it the first Rand Corporation ..."
"... Steve Keen said similarly in Forbes – that once you offshore an industry it is too expensive to reinstall, and that some old factory for making furnaces cannot be retooled to make textiles, etc. even tho' you might have a comparative advantage for doing textiles – sounds like corporate raiding and big time looting more and more because once you devastate an industry you really cannot do anything economically with those facilities and those workers. ..."
"... Another factor in maintaining manufacturing in the USA is what is referred to as furthering the "next bench syndrome". This is where one is made aware of a manufacturing problem to solve due to proximity to the factory floor, and the solution leads to new profitiable products that can be used both inside/outside the original factory. ..."
"... Financialization leads to asset bubbles and deindustrialization. It hollows out industries. When money/credit are created in ever increasing quantity, the makeup of how we "work" shifts from goods producing to "finance". ..."
"... Get ready for real kleptocracy. Breitbart obscurantism + Trump/Bannon misdirection = turkeys vote for thanksgiving. ..."
"... TINA was definitely an ideology – an idea backed by interest. They were making fun of Thatcherism last nite on France 24 because it had been so devastating and now one of the candidates in France is talking her old trash again. ..."
"... "The Anti-Corn Law League was a successful political movement in Great Britain aimed at the abolition of the unpopular Corn Laws, which protected landowners' interests by levying taxes on imported wheat, thus raising the price of bread at a time when factory-owners were trying to cut wages to be internationally competitive." ..."
Grappling with the shock of Donald Trump's election victory, most analysts focus on his
appeal to those in the United States who feel left behind, wish to retrieve a lost social
order, and sought to rebuke establishment politicians who do not serve their interests. In this
respect, the recent American revolt echoes the shock of the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom,
but it is of far greater significance because it promises to reshape the entire global order,
and the complaisant forms of thought that accompanied it.
Ideas played an important role in creating the conditions that produced Brexit and Trump.
The 'social sciences' -- especially economics -- legitimated a set of ideas about the economy
that were aggressively peddled and became the conventional wisdom in the policies of mainstream
political parties, to the extent that the central theme of the age came to be that there was no
alternative. The victory of these ideas in politics in turn strengthened the iron-handed
enforcers of the same ideas in academic orthodoxy.
It is never clear whether ideas or interests are the prime mover in shaping historical
events, but only ideas and interests together can sustain a ruling consensus for a lengthy
interval, such as the historic period of financialization and globalization running over the
last 35 years. The role of economics in furnishing the now-rebuked narratives that have reigned
for decades in mainstream political parties can be seen in three areas.
First, there is globalization as we knew it. Mainstream economics championed
corporate-friendly trade and investment agreements to increase prosperity, and provided the
intellectual framework for multilateral trade agreements. Economics made the case for such
agreements, generally rejecting concerns over labor and environmental standards and giving
short shrift to the effects of globalization in weakening the bargaining power of workers or
altogether displacing them; to the need for compensatory measures to aid those displaced; and
more generally to measures to ensure that the benefits of growth were shared. For the most
part, economists casually waved aside such concerns, both in their theories and in their policy
recommendations, treating these matters as either insignificant or as being in the jurisdiction
of politicians. Still less attention was paid to crafting an alternate form of globalization,
or to identifying bases for national economic policies taking a less passive view of
comparative advantage and instead aiming to create it.
Second, there is financialization, which led to increasing disconnection between stock
market performance and the real economy, with large rewards going to firms that undertook asset
stripping, outsourcing, and offshoring. The combination of globalization and financialization
produced a new plutocratic class of owners, managers and those who serviced them in global
cities, alongside gentrification of those cities, proleterianization and lumpenization of
suburbs, and growing insecurity and casualization of employment for the bulk of the middle and
working class.
Financialization also led to the near-abandonment of the 'national' industrial economy in
favor of global sourcing and sales, and a handsome financial rentier economy built on top of
it. Meanwhile, automation trends led to shedding of jobs everywhere, and threaten far more.
All of this was hardly noticed by the discipline charged with studying the economy. Indeed,
it actively provided rationales for financialization, in the form of the efficient-markets
hypothesis and related ideas; for concentration of capital through mergers and acquisitions in
the form of contestable-markets theory; for the gentrification of the city through attacks on
rent control and other urban policies; for remaking of labor markets through the idea that
unemployment was primarily a reflection of voluntary leisure preferences, etc. The mainstream
political parties, including those historically representing the working and middle classes, in
thrall to the 'scientific' sheen of market fetishism, gambled that they could redistribute a
share of the promised gains and thus embraced policies the effect of which was ultimately to
abandon and to antagonize a large section of their electorate.
Third, there is the push for austerity, a recurrent trope of the 'neoliberal' era which,
although not favored by all, has played an important role in creating conditions for the rise
of popular movements demanding a more expansionary fiscal stance (though they can paradoxically
simultaneously disdain taxation, as with Trumpism). The often faulty intellectual case made by
many mainstream economists for central bank independence, inflation targeting, debt
sustainability thresholds, the distortive character of taxation and the superiority of private
provision of services including for health, education and welfare, have helped to support
antagonism to governmental activity. Within this perspective, there is limited room for fiscal
or even monetary stimulus, or for any direct governmental role in service provision, even in
the form of productivity-enhancing investments. It is only the failure fully to overcome the
shipwreck of 2008 that has caused some cracks in the edifice.
The dominant economic ideas taken together created a framework in which deviation from
declared orthodoxy would be punished by dynamics unleashed by globalization and
financialization. The system depended not merely on actors having the specific interests
attributed to them, but in believing in the theory that said that they did. [This is one of the
reasons that Trumpism has generated confusion among economic actors, even as his victory
produced an early bout of stock-market euphoria. It does not rebuke neoliberalism so much as
replace it with its own heretical version, bastard neoliberalism, an orientation without a
theory, whose tale has yet to be written.]
Finally, interpretations of politics were too restrictive, conceptualizing citizens'
political choices as based on instrumental and usually economic calculations, while indulging
in a wishful account of their actual conditions -- for instance, focusing on low measured
unemployment, but ignoring measures of distress and insecurity, or the indignity of living in
hollowed-out communities.
Mainstream accounts of politics recognized the role of identities in the form of wooden
theories of group mobilization or of demands for representation. However, the psychological and
charismatic elements, which can give rise to moments of 'phase transition' in politics, were
altogether neglected, and the role of social media and other new methods in politics hardly
registered. As new political movements (such as the Tea Party and Trumpism in the U.S.) emerged
across the world, these were deemed 'populist' -- both an admission of the analysts' lack of
explanation, and a token of disdain. The essential feature of such movements -- the
obscurantism that allows them to offer many things to many people, inconsistently and
unaccountably, while serving some interests more than others -- was little explored. The
failures can be piled one upon the other. No amount of quantitative data provided by polling,
'big data', or other techniques comprehended what might be captured through open-eyed
experiential narratives. It is evident that there is a need for forms of understanding that can
comprehend the currents within the human person, and go beyond shallow empiricism. Mainstream
social science has offered few if any resources to understand, let alone challenge, illiberal
majoritarianism, now a world-remaking phenomenon.
Trumpism is a crisis for the most prestigious methods of understanding economic and social
life, ennobled and enthroned by the metropolitan academy of the last third of a century. It has
caused mainstream 'social science' to fall like a house of cards. It can only save itself
through comprehensive reinvention, from the ground up.
You are onto something here. I always wondered if the suppression of wages would lead to a
decline in the population of people even willing to learn a task due to a perceived lack of
incentive to make the effort. This would work alongside a seldom mentioned fact; the limits
to the supply of appropriately skilled "foreigners" to perform a task.
The resultant mix must
be generating an industry of active recruiters in foreign lands for in demand, for less,
skill sets. I would lay money on the bet that eventually, things will reach the point where
criminal activities make more sense than the miserable jobs on offer.
"I always wondered if the suppression of wages would lead to a decline in the population
of people even willing to learn a task due to a perceived lack of incentive to make the
effort."
Just from what I've seen & heard I'm pretty sure that's already happened with CNC
machinists, and it's happening with CDLs, and starting to happen with CNAs.
"I'm pretty sure that's happened with CNC machinists."
One of my neighbours is a CNC machinist. He is presently working "free lance" because the
company he was associated with was bought by a Taiwanese concern and all the skilled labour,
previously in house, was out sourced. After a couple of years of near disasterous
"production," the company re-shored the more technical work, but as sub contract labour.
Now
Jack receives regularly spaced "jobs" from the company to do what was previously done in
house. Naturally, now Jack and his fellow "free tradesmen" have to supply all the incidental
work involved, such as quarterly taxes, insurance if any, self supplied "workers comp," of a
sort, and most importantly, the actual machinery to do the work. Even a used CNC machine is a
pretty big investment for an individual.
Jack's CNC machine is almost as big as a Volkswagen
Beetle. Jack was "lucky" insofar as he was already trained to do this work. Others needs rely
on the support of small businesses in this "Engineering Trade," or go into debt to learn the
process at a technical college. Then, as Jack has remarked, there is no set schedule nor
guaranteed contract. The ultimate "craps shoot."
Welcome to the "New World Economic Order;" which looks suspiciously like Dickensian Predatory
Capitalism.
Sounds like a classic supply/demand curve: the lower the price, the lower the supply and
the greater the demand. As many have noted – perhaps higher wages would increase the
number of job applicants.
However, skilled workers aren't widgets – they need to be trained. Companies don't
want to invest in training, and students don't want to take out all those student loans
without some assurance that there'll be a job which pays enough to pay off the loans and
still have enough left over to put food on the table and have a roof over their heads. Thus,
it takes time to bring more skilled workers on-line, and by then, the demand may have
evaporated.
Public schools investing in training workers would help – but that would mean
raising taxes to pay for them – and Grover would get angry.
I think some states are seeing a shortage of teachers because of the way they've demonized
the teaching profession and cut wages for the last fifteen years.
That was front page on the Wall St Journal Europe a couple days ago – a jaw-drop
moment. The voice of business effectively calling for a larger pool of voiceless dirt-cheap
laborers to dismantle the social contract. Clearly the management class has no fear of
suffering consequences, like maybe even higher crime rates (their native victims not the
illegals the perps), dystopic civics, encapsulation, culture = branding. are those
undocumented roofers in code with that left over sealing? you bet! management has got them by
the cajones.
Important to note there's quite a lot of Europeans who stay illegally in the US by
entering on the visa waiver program as tourists and simply overstaying. Irish and Eastern
Europeans especially. If you're in the Northeast it's common to see Irishmen working
maintenance jobs at buildings here, or as bartenders or other cash jobs – 90% are going
to be out of status. But this issue gets almost zero media attention.
Citizen registration (cr) would effectively end illegal immigration in the US. Once you
get past the immigration control at the airport you are in. access to relevant services is
possible without having to prove citizenship/legality. It is insane and/or perversely clever
that illegals can get drivers licenses, ss#s, use dumps, open bank accounts, receive water
and electrical services, even pay taxes without having to out themselves.
The only barrier is
at the border and Trump is gonna make it really big! hahaha.
To receive any municipal service, including registering to vote, it should be necessary to be
registered at city hall, anytime you change address you have to renew your registration,
standard practice in eur social democracies.
The thing to do is try to push the actual numbers of people trying to immigrate here down,
by ceasing to ruin their home countries. No one's ever even tried that.
You are on the right path Tim.
Any of you notice this shift in economic possibilities from Russia?
Excerpt:
The Stolypin Group
The third group represented was the one most Western observers ridiculed and dismissed,
with the US Pentagon-linked Stratfor referring to them as a "strange collective." I have
personally met and talked with them and they are hardly strange to anyone with a clear moral
mind.
This is the group which after two months has emerged with the mandate from Vladimir Putin
to lay out their plans to boost growth again in Russia.
The group is in essence followers of what the great almost-forgotten 19th Century German
economist, Friedrich List, would call "national economy" strategies. List's national economy
historical-based approach was in direct counter-position to the then-dominant British Adam
Smith free trade school.
Can we find some common ground in this demographic driven trade problem?
De`tante (Steady State) trade, lack of traditional "growth" yet more abundance and sanity?
Can we defeat demographic trends with a better monetary system? There is plenty of need, is
that not unfulfilled demand?
We see massive malinvestment and over capacity right now, so some common sense like List
and George sounds good to me.
I thought it's not possible to get a driver's license without a green card or US
citizenship since they changed the laws after 9/11. If this is true, one cannot get a SS No.,
open a bank a/c etc. Mexicans and others who cross the border w/o papers are unable to open a
bank a/c and therefore pay big fees to Amex for money orders.
Not all states adopted the OpenID law which requires this, and the federal government cannot impose it since it imposes a
financial cost on the states without compensating benefit. There are federal punishments for not adopting it, but states are
fighting it.
In my state you need legal presence docs and proof of residence in the state, at least a
student visa for example, to get a drivers license. And then the info is checked against the
federal govt Save request.
I think the post office and drug stores sell money orders without id? Certainly without
perm res status.
I think bank accounts can be opened at least at some banks with a foreign passport and
maybe an itin number.
I'm told by my father that in Berkely Springs, West Virginia, men can get haircuts for as
little as $1.75. Perhaps these are eastern European barbers? More likely it is simply a
product of the crushing desperation we see in our broken economy. But hey, unemployment is
under 5% so everything's fine, right? The dismal science indeed.
Just one caveat: Neoliberalism is not really market-fetishism, unless fetishism is
understood as fake devotion. Neoliberalism is a State ideology of the economy, its central
tenet being that the State must directly help the rich, the poor will be better off as a
by-product.
So if the push of the populace is strong enough, a new State ideology of the economy (aka
mainstream economic dogma) would develop around the concepts of Self-suficiency (as opposed
to Globalization), Industrialism (as opposed to Financialization), and Stimulus (as opposed
to Austerity). Probably MMT has something to say about the latter, but what about
Self-sufficiency and Industrialism?
its central tenet being that the State must directly help the rich, the poor will be
better off as a by-product. Ruben
Yes, government-subsidized* private credit creation being a (the?) prime example of
this.
*e.g. forcing the poorer to lend (a deposit is legally a loan) to banks to lower the
borrowing costs of the more so-called creditworthy, the richer, or else be limited to dealing
with unsafe, inconvenient physical fiat, cash.
The Academy are direct and indirect employees of the State. The Ivy League are direct and
indirect employees of plutocrats (thru the university endowment). The State officials are
plutocrats or more commonly indirect employees of the plutocrats. What is not to like? How
can the Academy be reformed, when it has been oligarchic since Plato (an oligarch) invented
it the first Rand Corporation
Tell me where you want to go and I'll provide the selective facts and the subjective
interpretation of those facts to reach the desired conclusions = Economists
-- - or merely arbitrarily change the cell definitions in excel as Harvard economists
Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.
As early as 1967 Greenspan was well known as an academic whore and a Rockefeller Puppet
which now is a vast army of dial up opinions.
"Ideas played an important role in creating the conditions that produced Brexit and Trump.
The 'social sciences' -- especially economics -- legitimated a set of ideas about the economy
that were aggressively peddled and became the conventional wisdom in the policies of
mainstream political parties, to the extent that the central theme of the age came to be that
there was no alternative. The victory of these ideas in politics in turn strengthened the
iron-handed enforcers of the same ideas in academic orthodoxy."
Yesterday I posted a link from Krugman saying that manufacturing CANNOT be restored in the
US.
Not that laws, rules, trade agreements make it difficult, but that something akin to the
"arrow of time" or entropy prevents it – " that there was no alternative." Which is why
I so vehemently disagree with the man. 1st, economics is not a physical science. 2nd, the
loss of manufacturing in this country is due to man made conventions. Men made the rules, men
can unmake the rules.
Just like prohibition was thought to be a good idea, but with the passage of time, it was
revealed that whatever benefits arise of not drinking, it is more than offset by the
setbacks.
I used to believe in "free trade" – but a thing called reality whacked me upside the
head and disabused me of the notion. Whether GDP is going up fast enough or not, there is
overwhelming evidence that the vast majority of GDP is not distributed to the 90% of the
members of society.
Like a lot of things, we did the experiment – it doesn't work, but a few who gain
advantage by that state of affairs want it to continue. The emperor has been exposed as
having no clothes, and once you see the nakedness, you can't unsee it.
of course you could institute that all manufacturng used 1960s technology – or maybe
even 1860s, that would generate even more jobs.
short of doing that, todays higly automated factory will use about tenth of blue collar
workforce than in 1960s with the same productivity but creating much more complex
products.
I've seen reshoring happen (into compartively high labour cost country) and it created a
thousand jobs or so. the previus offshoring costed close to five or six thousands iirc.
I doubt that you'd wish for the US workers to have 10k or less annual salary –
because that is what the Chinese get (10k is about the average salary for a worker at one of
the plants making Apple gadgets, and that involves almost continuous overtime. IIRC, the
hourly rate is something like $1.80. Oh, and there's no health or social insurance).
I suggest you investigate why the UK was the birthplace of industrial revolution and the
Continent wasn't (hint – the UK labour costs were order(s) of magnitude higher than say
in France or Germany. It just didn't make sense to invest in up-front expensive capital goods
when you could get reams of very cheap labour instead).
And, in fact, the QE and ZIRP made it even worse, because before that you'd to cost the
capital at much more than labour, while now you can get money for literally nothing (assuming
you want to use it for something, like capital goods). At the same time, the companies run
locally optimal, but globally bad strategy of holding on the money, failing to recognise that
for people to spend, they have to earn first. The supply economic mantra "if you make it
cheap enough, someone will buy" fails to recognise that shopping basket of most people is
very much skewed towards food, energy and housing, leaving limited buffer for other goods
– so the "cheap enough" may have to be "free" or "near free" in the environment of
falling real wages.
But I'd be happy for you to provide examples of re-shored operations where the number of
jobs created were the same (assuming the same quality of jobs) or comparable to the number of
jobs lost by offshoring before.
I don't have US numbers, but I can give you UK ones. In 1970s, UK car manufacturing
industry employed about 500k people. That number has been steadily dropping and today it's
about 140k total between all manufacturers (you may see some sources use number as high as
750k – but that generally includes anyone who has anything to do with cars, like car
salesmen, garage staff etc. – not just car manufacturers. I don't have a reliable
comparable number for 1970, so use manufacturers only).
In 1970, UK manufactured about 2m cars, in 2014 it was about 1.6m. The loss of 400k is
almost entirely covered by the loss of commercial vehicles capacity – personal cars are
at the same level.
So, the UK car industry lost about 70% of its jobs, but only 20% of its output. And the
cars it manufactures today are mostly driveable unlike say Austin Allegro.
The situation is not that much different elsewhere. Yves run an article on Trump making US
coal "great again" – and the conclusion was the same – it will never employ the
same number of people at the same salaries.
I work in the electronics industry and had a minor observation point for some of the
outsourcing of electronics manufacturing from the USA to, primarily, Asia, starting in the
late 1980's. At first USA employees were told not to worry as only excess capacity would be built
overseas. But, that was proven to be an optimistic(?) statement, as even the managers making these
statements also disappeared.
If one looks at the value of raw electronic "ingredients" produced in Asia, for example,
Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs), one can see how much capacity has been built up overseas.
Here are some numbers pulled from report I have access to:
For 2015, 26.5 billion dollars of PCB's were produced in China.
Taiwan and South Korea produce 7.8Billion and 7.3billion respectively.
Even high priced Japan produces 5.36 billion dollars of PCB's
The North American number is 2.846 billion.
China + Japan + Taiwan + South Korea +Other Asia = .51.94 billion vs 2.8 billion in North
America.
So Asia produces 18.55 x as much dollar volume of PCBs than North America (Canada +
USA)
In my simple minded labor model, when a country allows very free migration of capital
overseas, importation of foreign workers by migration or temporary visas and outsourcing of
labor by computer networks to overseas workers, it seems implausible one would argue that USA
wages would not tend lower in response.
But we have Obama and numerous economists, pushing the Free Trade mantra, via TPP, as good
for American workers.
And a further factor is the US military and State Department strive to make it safer for
American businesses to function anywhere in the world, lowering business risk while pitching
increased national security to the USA population (who bears the military cost).
It will be difficult to bring American manufacturing back, especially when the alleged
high paying white collar college jobs are pushed as the solution to USA wage stagnation.
Steve Keen said similarly in Forbes – that once you offshore an industry it is too
expensive to reinstall, and that some old factory for making furnaces cannot be retooled to
make textiles, etc. even tho' you might have a comparative advantage for doing textiles
– sounds like corporate raiding and big time looting more and more because once you
devastate an industry you really cannot do anything economically with those facilities and
those workers.
Which explains why after clever men like Mitt Romney finish with your
corporation's takeover nobody dashes in to re-up something new. Like pulling a tree out by
its roots and then expecting it to grow into some kinda shrub.
Well I like Steve Keen but he and PK are finally on the same page, where neither knows not
what the f he is talking about.
A lot of "offshoring" of the steel industry happened as the US plants themselves were
passing the "invest or wind down" point in their life. Since the US labor force was
considered intractable and foreign governments had much newer facilities the TPTB in steel
just punted on US manufacturing.
I am going to try to find a link, but there was a lot of
debate between the union and US Steel (? one of them? ) about building a continuous caster
plant in the 70's. Foreign companies had them, we didn't. I think they didn't, but the point
is the, all other things being equal, any plants of any type of manufacturing go
thru the same technological vs ageing cycle, and the US is as likely to gain "back" -- quotes
because like continuous casting, it's steelmaking but not the same as before -- an industry
as it is to have lost it in the first place. Factories like to be located where they make
sense.
And what is all this about "well they don't need anybody in manufacturing, it's all gonna
be machines now". Yeah, right. Been on a manufacturing floor lately? People have yet to be
born that are going to be working in something called "manufacturing". And if the machines
cut the work need by 10x, we may well need 10x as much stuff as long as it is the
right stuff.
Well, if we had universal heathcare and Germanic trade education, but that would require
elections not between carrot-heads and Queen Wannabes.
Because they have a skilled trade education track, and manufacturing is a respected
occupation that one can raise a family doing. Because of the high-skill labor base, Germany
can make high-margin products that the rest of the world wants to import.
From very early, all German kids are encouraged to build things and take things apart, and
they are given this opportunity even in urban areas at special "building playgrounds" that
have hammers, nails, and wood. How is a poor American kid in a housing project going to do
this? He's not, and even if he does have a clue what to do with a tool someone hands him on
the job, he won't have the deep fundamental background to use it well without a long period
of training and screwups -- the kind of period he would have already gotten through while
growing up.
American small businesses that require skilled technicians are desperate for them. We
literally cannot grow our businesses because of labor constraints.
Since I am not an economist nor a historian probably I should restrain myself, but if you
look at the history of labor relations in Germany you might notice that Bismark, not exactly
a bleeding heart, believed that it was in the nation's interest to have a healthy, well-fed,
well-educated populace. They not only made better workers, they made better soldiers. Then
from the 1890s onward Socialism was much better regarded in Germany than it ever has been in
the U.S. I speculate that there is a desire for fairness that has deeper roots in German
culture than in American culture -- which is not particularly homogenous anyway.
Nobody wants to hear this, but manufacturing profit margins, according to Bruce Greenwald
of Columbia Business School, are plummeting around the world. Globalization has hit its peak
without our recognizing the fact and without our help. Fifty years from now, most of the
things we buy will be made within fifty miles of our homes. In twenty years, we won't be
admiring the German system.
I used to respect Krugman during Bush II presidency. His columns at this time looked like
on target for me. No more.
Now I view him as yet another despicable neoliberal shill. I stopped reading his columns
long ago and kind of always suspect his views as insincere and unscientific. In this
particular case the key question is about maintaining the standard of living which can be
done only if manufacturing even in robotic variant is onshored and profits from it
re-distributed in New Deal fashion. Technology is just a tool. There can be exception for it
but generally attempts to produce everything outside the US and then sell it in the USA lead
to proliferation of McJobs and lower standard of living. Creating robotic factories in the
USA might not completely reverse the damage, but might be a step in the right direction. The
nations can't exist by just flipping hamburgers for each other.
Actually there is a term that explains well behavior of people like Krugman and it has
certain predictive value as for the set of behaviors we observe from them. It is called
Lysenkoism and it is about political control of science.
Yves in her book also touched this theme of political control of science. It might be a
good time to reread it. The key ideas of "ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined
Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism " are still current.
Another factor in maintaining manufacturing in the USA is what is referred to as
furthering the "next bench syndrome". This is where one is made aware of a manufacturing problem to solve due to proximity to
the factory floor, and the solution leads to new profitiable products that can be used both
inside/outside the original factory.
This might be an improved process or an improvement in manufacturing tooling that had not
been anticipated before.
New products will be created with their profits/knowledge flowing to the country hosting
the manufacturing plants.
The USA seems to be on a path of "we can create dollars and buy anything we want from
people anywhere in the world".
Manufacturing dollars and credit rather than real goods might prove very short sighted if
dollars are no longer prized.
Perhaps the TPP, with its ISDS provisions, indicates that powerful people understand this
is coming and want additional wealth extraction methods from foreign countries.
The author mentions globalization and financialization. But what seems to be always left
out (and given a pass) in these discussions is the role of central banks and monetary
policy.
Central banking policy (always creating more money/credit) lies at the nexus of almost all
that is wrong with modern capitalism and is the lubricant and fuel that enables
financialization's endless growth.
Financialization leads to asset bubbles and deindustrialization. It hollows out
industries. When money/credit are created in ever increasing quantity, the makeup of how we
"work" shifts from goods producing to "finance".
Then through globalization, what we lack in goods, foreigners who accept our paper, seem
to provide. At least for now. In a closed system, financialization has its natural limits.
But enabled by cross-border trade, it metastasizes.
In the short run, it appears to be a virtuous circle. We print paper. They make real
stuff. They take our paper. We take their stuff. We feel very clever.
But over time, wealth inequality grows. Industries are hollowed out. The banking sector
dominates.
And then we get a populist uprising because people realize "something is wrong".
But mistakenly, they think it's globalization. Or free trade. Or capitalism. When all
along, it's just central banking. Central banks are the problem. Central bankers are the
culprits.
Yes, insofar as they create fiat for the private sector since that is obviously violation
of equal protection under the law in favor of the banks and the rich.
Otoh, all citizens, their businesses, etc. should be allowed to deal directly in their
nation's fiat in the form of account balances at the central bank or equivalent and not be
limited to unsafe, inconvenient physical fiat, a.k.a. cash.
Central banks are part of the problem, but not because any of the things you say. Abandon
monetarism, is just wrong, on everything.
CB's do not control the rates effectively during the upturns (they are just procyclical as
they add to savings though higher rates).
CB's "creating money" would mean loanable funds theory is right, but as it has been
demonstrated over and over it's horribly wrong. Banks suffice themselves to expand credit on
upturns, and CB'ers can do nothing about it. On downturns they cna try, and fail, because the
appetite for credit is just not there. Credit expansion and contraction is endogenous and
apart of of what CB's do, not to speak about all the forms of shadow money which are the real
outliers and trouble makers.
What CB's do, in practice, is to prevent capitalism from collapsing on crisis, making "bad
money" good, by stabilising asset prices. All their tools are reactive, not pro-active, so
they cannot create any condition, because they react to conditions. They neither set the
rates in reality, nor "create money" that enters the real economy in any meaningful way.
The religion of "central bankism" is part of the problem, but as it is the religion of
"monetarism" (which are the same) on which many of those ideas are based.
Banks suffice themselves to expand credit on upturns, and CB'ers can do nothing about
it IDG
Yes, "loans create deposits" but only largely virtual liabilities wrt to the non-bank
private sector. We should fix that by allowing the non-bank private sector to deal with
reserves too then it would be much more dangerous for banks to create liabilities since bank
runs would be as easy and convenient as writing a check to one's cb account or equivalent. Of
course, government provided deposit insurance could then be abolished too since accounts at
the cb or equivalent are inherently risk-free.
Our system is a dangerous mess because of privileges for depository institutions –
completely unnecessary privileges given modern computers and communications.
Get ready for real kleptocracy. Breitbart obscurantism + Trump/Bannon misdirection = turkeys vote for thanksgiving.
Sessions views on race at Justice = curtailed civil rights.
Wilbur Ross pension stripping = privatize Social Security.
DeVos at education = privatize the golden egg of public education.
85% tax credit for private infrastructure spending = fire sale of the public square (only
rich need apply).
3~4 Military generals in the cabinet = enforcement threat for crypto-fascist state.
McGahn at counsel + Pompeo at CIA = Koch Bros.
Ryan at speaker = privatize Medicare
Welcome to government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires.
btw, if Giuliani is appointed to a cabinet post, he will have to explain his foreknowledge
of the NY FBI→Kallstrom→Comey connection→to Congress under oath (if they
aren't too afraid to ask).
I worry along with you, but again: When somebody Ms DeVos opens her mouth people just
naturally recoil. Trump doesn't seem to have grasped the only thing that mattered in his
election – you want your enemies to suck. His appointees are people that suck. Hillary
would have appointed smooth-talkers who could effortlessly move between "private and public"
positions.
PS: Paul Ryan is a good counterexample – people fall for his BS because he isn't
quite a stupid as, say Guiliani. Of course he was elected, not picked by Trump.
mr reddy solves the riddle of the Great Refusal but doesn't far enough: certainly
mainstream economists were wrong to act as cheerleaders for the kleptocracy, yet they were
also complicit in a material sense by furnishing all the necessary algorithms to boost the
derivatives industry into the realm of corporate cyber-theft. that genie isn't going back
into bottle. what's in store for us then? economic apartheid. just read what the new team has
been saying about walls, guns, police, military and terrorism. the bannon plan is for heavily
policed gated communities monopolizing vital resources; high surveillance, rights abatement
zones for the proletariat; and a free-fire wilderness of lumpen gangsters, gun-toting
vigilantes, survivalist cults, etc. competing for subsistence. mad max, only run by people
worse than mel gibson. close to what we already have but once legislated into existence
impossible to reverse without a violent revolution. once again mr. reddy is correct: hobbes'
leviathan is the negation of social science.
hmmmm .. Trump said quite a few contradictory things during his campaign and it would seem
an error to believe anything a candidate says on either side of an issue. Have the Koch
brothers (who are involved w/Trump) been particularly unhappy with the numerous billions
they've accumulated under Obama? I expect this regime to be more along the 'different
globalization' side (more a shuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic). Manufacturing will
be back in relation to the degree – penalties are eliminated on 'repatriated' funds,
land is eminent domained on behalf of oligarchs, private profit is granted primacy over
pollution, then build their factories with public money and abolish the minimum wage.
Austerity will continue but the new con will be private/public partnerships. Don't you want
to buy you friend/family member/neighbor a job? Don't you?
The elite, including the Trump's, are going to continue their actions until they've taken
it all.
Since you mention land you might be interested in the idea of land value taxation a way to
take the land back from the oligarchs an idea that has been around for a long time
assiduously ignored by folks like Naked Capitalism.
Mr. Fitzgerald, if you search in NC for "land value taxation" you will see many articles,
especially from Mr. Hudson. NC has thoroughly covered a lot of territory regarding this
topic.
Yes you could probably catch us restlessly muttering "Henry George" in our sleep half the
time.
The problem is it's a really, really hard sell. It just sounds funny. Pittsburgh actually
had it until a few years ago when it was "discovered" and before there was even a discussion
the Democratic mayor and City Council who should have known better had rescinded it before
anybody got a chance to say anything.
" during 2001 after years of underassessment, and the system was abandoned in favor of the
traditional single-rate property tax. The tax on land in Pittsburgh was about 5.77 times the
tax on improvements."
To be good Russian plants, we do actually need to know things about Amerika
Anyway, here's the problem: people just voted for a billionaire how you gonna get this
type of taxation approved given the Pittsburgh example?
It seems to be forgotten that this was a vote against Clinton and not a vote for Trump. If
Trump goes back on his progressive platform, jobs jobs jobs there will be a backlash so fast
that it will give everyone, especially the billionaires whiplash. Let them touch one hair on
Social Security's head or privatize Medicare, there will be another big surprise in the
mid-term elections. When the good people of the rust belt find out about the plans to put
rentier tolls on all that public infrastructure, trust me the pitchforks will come out from
their corners quick as you blink The best laid plans of billionaires and their lackeys often
go awry. The curtain has been lifted. If Trump thinks he can satisfy the working class by
giving another huge tax break to the .01%, he better think again. They do not have enough
rubber bullets nor pepper spray.
Nah, as long as Trump keeps blaming folks of color, he's got a good six years. You
overestimate the people of Flyover. Yes, they got hosed by Obama, but they've been electing
Republicans to flog them for 30 years.
It's a hard sell for good reason. Many Americans are land rich and cash poor. The idea
that they'd have to sell property to pay such a tax offends even the simplest conception of
sound land planning. If a lot more property came on the market at once, as it would have to
under the land tax scheme, we'd be Japan all over again.
Taxes should be unavoidable to avoid violating equal protection under the law and land
taxes are certainly unavoidable in that land can't be hidden as income, for example, can
be.
Another unavoidable tax, except for the existence of physical fiat* (notes and coins),
would be a tax on fiat, i.e. negative interest.
*Yet these can be taxed when bought and sold to the central bank with/for "reserves"**
**Just another name for fiat account balances at the central bank when the account owners are
depository institutions.
The goal should be to reduce injustice – preferably at its source. And the source of
much injustice is surely government privileges for private credit creation and other welfare
for the rich such as positive interest paying sovereign debt.
Still, there's previous injustice to deal with so asset redistribution should be on the
table too and that could include taxing the rich to give to the poor – certainly not to
run a surplus (or even a balanced budget) as you say.
Mainstream analysts don't want to recognize the real problem. They failed the people have
lost their legitimacy to govern.
Not saying Trump is the solution (I'm hoping for a solution from the left and think that
Trump could enable his cronies, but nothing else), but the Establishment is unworthy to
govern.
A solution that most people would consider being from the left but which is the radical
center (taking valid ideas from both left and right) is land value taxation the wedge issue
to tax the various sources of unearned income (estimated at 40+% of GNP however you determine
it) thus allowing for the elimination of taxation of earned income from wages and profit from
the investment of real capital in the real economy. Taxing community created land value and
making the distinction between earned and unearned income has been assiduously ignored and
avoided by mainstream economists, most of our vaunted/sainted public intellectuals and
sources like naked capitalism but since all of that has failed there is nothing to lose by
considering what this author, Sanjay Reddy, says is necessary: "It [social science] can only
save itself through comprehensive reinvention, from the ground up." I suggest that the this
has already been done literally from the ground up by the analysis that has been around for a
very long time that takes land, how its value is created, who owns it and what happen when
you tax its value into account. Happy day.
We finally made it to the post-modern wasteland. It is pretty weird to see the post-modern
methods used by social scientists for decades to dissect culture actually manifest in
practiced culture.
TINA was definitely an ideology – an idea backed by interest. They were making fun
of Thatcherism last nite on France 24 because it had been so devastating and now one of the
candidates in France is talking her old trash again. Humor is effective against ideology when
all else fails but it takes a while. But as defined above, we actually do have an alternative
– our current alternative is "illiberal majoritarianism". Sounds a tad negative. We
should just use the word "democracy".
"The Anti-Corn Law League was a successful political movement in Great Britain aimed
at the abolition of the unpopular Corn Laws, which protected landowners' interests by levying
taxes on imported wheat, thus raising the price of bread at a time when factory-owners were
trying to cut wages to be internationally competitive."
The landowners wanted to increase their profit by charging a higher price for corn, but
this posed a barrier to international free trade in making UK wage labour uncompetitive by
raising the cost of living for workers.
In a free trade world the cost of living needs to be the same in West and East as this
sets the wage levels.
The US has probably been the most successful in making its labour force internationally
uncompetitive with soaring costs of housing, healthcare and student loan repayments.
These costs all have to be covered by wages and US businesses are now squealing about the
high minimum wage.
US labour can never compete with Eastern labour and will have to be protected by
tariffs.
Free trade has requirements and you must meet them before you can engage in free
trade.
The cost of living needs to be the same in West and East.
Assume, for the sake of argument, that all assets in the West were equally owned by its
citizens? Then wouldn't free trade with the East be a universal blessing for the citizens of
the West and not a curse for some (actually many) of them?
So the problem is unjust asset distribution? But how could that occur if our economic
system is just? Except it isn't just since government subsidies for private credit creation
are obviously unjust in that the poor are forced to lend (a deposit is legally a loan) to
banks for the benefit of the rich.
A technical note, to avoid possible confusion: "corn" in British means wheat and other
small grains – a "corn" is a kernel. Maize was not a big factor in Britain; too far
north.
There are two certainties in life – death and taxes.
There are two certainties about new versions of capitalism; they work well for a couple of
decades before failing miserably.
Capitalism mark 1 – Unfettered Capitalism
Crashed and burned in 1929 with a global recession in the 1930s.
The New Deal and Keynesian ideas promised a bright new world.
Capitalism mark 2 – Keynesian Capitalism
Ended with stagflation in the 1970s.
Market led Capitalism ideas promised a bright new world.
Capitalism mark 3 – Unfettered Capitalism – Part 2 (Market led Capitalism)
Crashed and burned in 2008 with a global recession in the 2010s.
We are missing the vital ingredient.
When the first version of capitalism failed, Keynes was ready with a new version.
When the second version of capitalism failed, Milton Freidman was waiting in the wings
with his new version of capitalism.
Elites will always flounder around trying to stick with what they know, it takes someone
with creativity and imagination to show the new way when the old way has failed.
Today we are missing that person with creativity and imagination to lead us out of the
wilderness and
stagnation we have been experiencing since 2008.
1) The work of the Classical Economists and the distinction between "earned" and
"unearned" income, also "land" and "capital" need to be separated again (conflated in
neoclassical economics)
Reading Michael Hudson's "Killing the Host" is a very good start
2) How money and debt really work. Money's creation and destruction on bank balance
sheets.
3) The work of Irving Fisher, Hyman Minsky and Steve Keen on debt inflated asset
bubbles
>The Euro was designed with today's defective economics.
Man I didn't think of that. What comically lousy timing. I do like this post because it
similar to sigh, ok it asserts my belief but still don't think I'm in an echo chamber here, I
actually want people to know what I think so they can reinforce the good and whittle out the
bad anyway, asserts my belief that "economics" isn't a science but when used in the best way
is a toolkit, here we need an hammer (austerity), here we need a screwdriver (some tweaking).
It isn't one tool for all jobs for all time.
American's are brainwashed from birth about capitalism and Milton Freidman may have been
as susceptible as the next man.
He may not have realised he was building on a base that had already been corrupted, the
core of neoclassical economics.
The neoclassical economists of the late 19th century buried the difference between
"earned" and "unearned" income.
These economists also conflated "land" and "capital" to cause further problems that were
clear to the Classical Economists looking out on a world of small state, raw capitalism.
Thorstein Veblen wrote an essay in 1898 "Why is economics not an evolutionary
science?".
Real sciences are evolutionary and old theory is replaced as new theory comes along and
proves the old ideas wrong.
Economics needs a scientific, evolutionary rebuild from the work of the classical
economists.
Most of the UK now dreams of giving up work and living off the "unearned" income from a
BTL portfolio, extracting the "earned" income of generation rent.
The UK dream is to be like the idle rich, rentier, living off "unearned" income and doing
nothing productive.
This is what happens when stuff goes missing from economics.
Keynes realised wage income was just as important as profit.
Wage income looks after the demand side of the equation and profit the supply side.
I think we will find he was right, this knowledge has just gone missing at the moment.
Keynes studied the Great Depression and noted monetary stimulus lead to a "liquidity
trap".
Businesses and investors will not invest without the demand there to ensure their investment
will be worthwhile.
The money gets horded by investors and on company balance sheets as they won't invest.
Cutting wages to increase profit just makes the demand side of the equation worse and leads
you into debt deflation.
Central Banks today talk about the "savings glut" not realising this is probably Keynes's
"liquidity trap".
It's more missing stuff.
When Keynes was involved in Bretton Woods after the Second World War they put in
mechanisms for recycling the surplus, to keep the whole thing running.
The assumption today is that capitalism will just reach stable equilibriums by itself.
The Euro is based on this idea, but Greece has just reached max. debt and collapsed, it
never did reach that stable equilibrium.
Recycling the surplus would probably have worked better.
I disagree that we don't have a ready to go replacement. MMT. We just have TPTB throwing
$$$ around to make sure no one hears about it, much less does anything.
I believe that our way out of this morass is to start by buying locally. There are always
people who make things and they need to be supported. We may not get the cheap products, but
we can build our communities up gradually over time. Our standard of living will be different
but we will have our dignity and the means for creating prosperous communities.
I have been a member of a localist group here in AZ. Said group does a great job of
appealing to people from across the political spectrum. And that is a good example to
follow.
"I believe that our way out of this morass is to start by buying locally."
I very much like the localist movement, and I try very hard to support it in upstate NY,
among other places. The problem with this approach is that there are simply way too many
people for us to painlessly revert back to an artisanal, agrarian 18th c. lifestyle.
To put this in Empire State terms: we might just be able to accommodate hundreds of
thousands of people who used to work for Kodak, I.B.M, or Xerox upstate– in new jobs
making craft beer or high-quality string instruments, etc. Yet what do we do with the many
millions of people, who live downstate, who currently work in jobs very dependent on a
globalized economy?
We've seen a few economists posting lately to say that all social sciences got it wrong,
and especially economics. What's curious to me is that non of the examples given apply to any
social science except economics.
Is this the same discipline that refuses to acknowledge the value of other disciplines and
cross-discipline research, ducking for cover behind the very disciplines it's been
snobbing?
'All social sciences' indeed.
The election was less about trump gaining voters in the rust belt than Clinton losing
hers. Romney lost with exactly as many votes as trump got because 6 million that voted for
black Obama preferred to stay home rather than vote for white Clinton.
All the dems need to do is to run a candidate willing to spend quality time in the swing
states, somebody not totally corrupt and not verbally advocating confrontation with Russia
would also be a big help, though this already rules out most dem elites.
Of course if trump manages to get a lot of infra built, and gets a lot of decent jobs, his
support in 2020 will grow, maybe to the point only a strong progressive could beat him.
But today's dem elites will fight tooth and nail to keep real progressives from controlling
the party, as instructed by their corp overlords remember, bankers might go to jail if the
wrong person gets AG. First indication is Keith on dec 1 can/will big o keep him out?
I liked this 'take' by Prof. Reddy a lot in terms of looking at what happened to bring us
to a Trump Presidency (with an observation that Orange Duce hasn't YET been sworn in).
But if he thinks that a Tea Party shaped Republican House and Senate and soon to be skewed
Supreme Court aren't about to launch a season of Rent Taking and Austerity to levels
previously only attained in Arthur Laffer's wet dreams he needs his otherwise rational head
examined.
Don't go so excited the "Trump Revolution" like the "Obama Revolution" will likely end up
as "hopeless" for ordinary folk. So for starters Trump's tax breaks will save the 1% fifteen
percent and the rest of us 2 percent! Already the msm including my local paper are already
grinding out the counter-propaganda against raising tariff barriers for China. The majority
of the electorate are too ignorant to figure much of it out and come 2024 will be voting
Ivanka Trump in as president!
If Trump raises MORE(notice that word son) tariffs against China, he will get a nice
uppercut across the forehead when China cancels contracts one after another and jobs start
being lost in the next NBER recession. His ego can't take that.
He was the Mercers introduction to the elite, nothing more or less. If anything, the
Republicans are more Jewy than ever.
"The dominant economic ideas taken together created a framework in which deviation from
declared orthodoxy would be punished by dynamics unleashed by globalization and
financialization."
IOW, it isn't science; it's political ideology.
The environmental economist Herman Daley traces that back to the very beginning of the
field; he says the earliest economists essentially chose sides in the contest then raging
between landowners (resource based) and merchants (trade based). That made them
propagandists, not referees. And it's the reason economics, from the beginning, suppressed
the distinction between natural resources, like land, water, and minerals, and human-created
capital. It recognized only two "production factors," when in reality there are at least
three. Marx picked up the same self-serving :"error."
" illiberal majoritarianism"
That's an unfortunate word choice, considering that Trump lost the election by nearly 2
million votes. It was an extraordinary demonstration of the defective Electoral College
system. Maybe now we'll get some action on the Popular Vote initiative.
It's important to remember that the rebellion is "illiberal" mainly because the "liberal"
parties refuse to offer a "liberal" populism, aka the New Deal. You could call it an old,
proven idea. Some of us see that as weak tea, but even that isn't on offer outside the
marginalized Left. (This is the essential point of Thomas Franks' "What's the Matter with
Kansas.")
Of course, that's just a further illustration of the author's point.
One of the most insightful chapters in Karl Polanyi's THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION is about
something Karl calls "the discovery of society." It is the story of how those who wrestled
with the fundamental falsehoods of the "self-regulating market" [our Libertarian friends'
dreamworld] had to begin thinking about how people in their everyday lives actually, really,
incompletely, made a life for themselves in a world defined by trickle-down economics. It was
never a pretty sight, but the lesson was that the "self-regulating market" was going to be
regulated somehow by non-economic actors with non-economic considerations foremost in mind,
like it or not, or face destruction by human beings whose lives were distorted beyond what
would be tolerated by ordinary people. Most people put up with neoliberal BS for a generation
because that's what most people do, most of the time, even when they know they're being sold
a bunch of horsecr*p. But the limit of what people will tolerate in a society defined by the
false gods of market capitalism is reached periodically. Trump's victory tells us that one of
these limits has been reached. The question now is, "What are we going to "discover" about
ourselves and about the society we want to live in–and will we find a way to create it,
assuming it's something good?" (Or flee from, if it turns sour.)
TINA folks will repeat, over and over, that "there is no alternative," but that bugaboo
has just been smashed. Clinton, Summers, Obama, Rubin, Schumer, and the many, many lesser
lights of Neo-Liberalism have become "old hat" almost overnight. Let's hope our discovery of
society includes a stronger dose of Reason and Solidarity than would seem to exist in
Trumpworld.
ergo: Less work (at all levels) + increasing population (which includes some explosive
variables, like a large increase of older persons who will require economic support from
fewer younger workers) = a massive increase in tension re: the struggle for available
necessities.
Technology innovation will help with some of this, but the great, looming problem is: how
are billions of idle people with nothing to do going to be motivated to remain
non-disruptive? I can see a massive surveillance state controlling the "idles"; perhaps new
technologies that permit people to jack their brains into the network for diversion (but how
long before people become desensitized to that?). Will there be a "spiritual" revolution that
is not attached to current dogmatic religions, that values having less, sharing more,
cooperating with others, etc.? Hard to say.
Anyway, it's coming, yet very few policy makers are talking about it. I'll bet the
Pentagon is planning for this scenario, among others.
In twenty years – maybe a few more – we should be able to begin to migrate
away from earth. It will probably be a LONG time before extra-earth settlements are feasible
and sustainable. That said, we here on earth are going to have our hands full.
Can humanity somehow find ways to overcome its wired propensity for status reflected by
material wealth, and somehow change that status-seeking to a sharing model that is not
top-down?
I've been pondering this for a while. People much smarter than I will hopefully lead the
way. We have our work cut out for us.
Slowly, America is moving toward a system where only favored groups will be allowed to
express their opinion. Arguably, America is already at the point where groups such as Antifa
simply do not have to obey the law at all, while ruinous lawsuits and "lawfare" are unleashed
against conservative groups.
... ... ...
The end result: a country that increasingly seems on the brink of madness as it is
gaslighted by a media
growing ever more shrill. America is being put on a permanent war footing -- and the enemy its
people are being mobilized against is the historic American nation, those European-Americans
who live this country and its heritage.
"... "While much of neoliberalism's rhetorical power comes from the assertion that "there is no alternative," the simple fact is that the world is full of alternatives. Indeed, even the so-called free marketers in Australia can see alternatives." ..."
"... It's dogma is nothing but empty lies held up as flawed truth's and full of scoundrels who profit from its concomitant pain. ..."
"neoliberal language allows powerful groups to package their personal preferences as national
interests"
Its almost impossible to talk about a mining economy and a "free market" in the same
sentence, Richard. a mining economy is is synonymous with corruption, Dutch disease and
political grabs for cash etc. In the height of the 2009 GFC announced by kev07, unskilled
labourers in the pilbara were still earning $100/hr. Real estate prices for 3 bed shacks in
karratha were starting at $1million plus. The blue collar dominated pilbara area was
overwhelmed with greed fed by left politicians hiding behind socialist ideals. The reality
was that left wing economists recognized the "dutch disease" problem and their solution was
to flood the area with greedy blue collar workers who were blowing their enormous salaries on
prostitutes, alcohol and gambling in the hope that profits from the mining boom would be
flushed into other parts of the economy.
The solution? partially transition Australia's economy to an innovation driven economy
because innovation is linked to learning which is linked to stronger self esteem and self
efficacy in the community. an innovation driven econmy is the better way of promting social
development in the community and an innovation driven economy is the most effective way for
politicians to transition to the benefits of a "free market" driven economy.... the reality
is that transitioning to an innovation would require smacking the socialists over the back of
the head in the hope that aspiring socialists will respect the ideas and intellectual
property of others as opposed to continue to assimilate intellectual property in the name of
employment generation and the common good
I dont fear the potential rise of neoliberalism, although i understand that spruiking a
free market whilst talking about mining is ridiculous.
I fear the individuals who are have been talking about mining, and targeting/victimising the
non politically active conservatives for more than 2 decades in the name of socialism
"While much of neoliberalism's rhetorical power comes from the assertion that "there is no
alternative," the simple fact is that the world is full of alternatives. Indeed, even the
so-called free marketers in Australia can see alternatives."
Excellent article Richard, you have captured the ideology and its dogma quite
specularly.
It's dogma is nothing but empty lies held up as flawed truth's and full of scoundrels who
profit from its concomitant pain.
Examples from today's headlines and a few from last week:
This is kind of symbolic and amazing figures: 34 billions are spend in casinos each year. and that's just official figure...
Notable quotes:
"... Casinos and Gambling are a tax on the ignorant and the indigent. ..."
"... Economist, Michael Hudson recently said in an interview that economics trumps politics every time. I am an observer of casinos and gambling in it's many forms. I am someone who has been fleeced by vulture capitalists and unscrupulous financial types as well as government officials in charge of business financial assistance schemes that don't deliver. ..."
"... Another version of how ''Brave New World'' has come to pass. The documentaries: ''The Century of the Self'' and ''HyperNormalisation 2016'' by Adam Curtis explain how we have been subdued. This lady professor is very knowledgable. Excellent episode. ..."
"... Completing the circle of predatory capitalism. Government controlled by oligarchy/plutoracry that see us, the citizens, as enemies of the state. ..."
On this week's episode of On Contact, Chris Hedges discusses the ramifications of casino culture in America with Professor Natasha
Dow Schüll, author of " Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas". RT Correspondent Anya Parampil examines how gambling
has become our premier form of entertainment and escape.
Economist, Michael Hudson recently said in an interview that economics trumps politics every time. I am an observer of
casinos and gambling in it's many forms. I am someone who has been fleeced by vulture capitalists and unscrupulous financial types
as well as government officials in charge of business financial assistance schemes that don't deliver.
Often the two ie the vultures and the government officials work in tandem.
I have extreme distaste for these zombies and an always on the alert. I am bowled over with how an overwhelming number of people
in society are scammed day in and day out and having their lives ruined. I fear it will shatter life as we know it not for individuals
only but for whole nations. People must pay more attention to attention to what this video says and what Michael Hudson explains
in his books .....Killing the Host and Junk Economics are his most recent ones.
I liked what she had to say, but I wonder why she didn't go a bit deeper into the operant conditioning aspect considering that's
what Skinner's work was based on. Why intermittent rewards work so well, and why the dopamine spike curve is so important in conditioning
a behavior in anything with a limbic system. Important because understanding how dopamine and dopamine spikes work came largely
from gambling research for slot machines. Technology that was built on Skinner's work by the gov and then business marketing along
with gov propaganda, then gambling. If people understood how it worked and where the technology came from they would be much less
likely to let gambling addiction happen in the first place.
I come from a family of gamblers, at least on my father's side. My dad towed us around to the racetracks and billiards parlors
until we were old enough to drive, and card games for money were a frequent family activity for us. I never felt attracted to
gambling, and often feel bored by the prospect. Needless to say, with advanced age I now find myself estranged from my remaining
siblings. What had occurred to me some time ago is how living life is such a gamble. Outcomes can always vary, from planning and
preparing for a career to going to the market for groceries. Games of chance seem to furnish a microcosm of the life experience,
where participants are allowed an illusion of greater control and the outcomes tend to be uniformly immediate. It also allows
you to ignore your greater life experience. Maybe that's the "zone" so many enjoy. I didn't remember what "March Madness" is.
Until all those slots were shown I thought they were talking about something similar to Black Friday. Now that I remember, it
hits me that my brother and sister undoubtedly have their bets down in multiple pools.
Another version of how ''Brave New World'' has come to pass. The documentaries: ''The Century of the Self'' and ''HyperNormalisation
2016'' by Adam Curtis explain how we have been subdued. This lady professor is very knowledgable. Excellent episode.
23:50 right on. We selfie generation are
too busy trolling the media and playing games to think, meditate, analyze, understand and act for our fellow man or a healthier
future for our country. It's all about me and my short-term gratifications.
Casino-Disasterism Capitalism is well named -- All of the engineered mechano-psychological traits used to make longshot escapist-gambling
popular, lucrative and addicting, based on the faux-goals of numb indulgence, cultivating of cheap-thrill delights, pandering
to the conceits of synthetic wastrel satisfactions and dead-end fatalism -- is evident in the terminal phase of the global corporate
deepstate technoracy of Empire Inc. that is pillaging and plundering its way across the planet, securitizing the earth right out
from under our feet! ~ ; )
Professor Natasha Dow Schüll said Trump won the presidential election, because Trump used his casino expertise to manipulate
voters. Based on the news I've seen, Trump was a failed casino owner. Trump is a con-artist who uses his massive inheritance,
multiple bankruptcies, privatized large gains, socialized larger losses, and sales hype in order "to win". Trump, Obama, and Bush
Jr. are good examples of how the average person lacks the talent, training, and experience to manage his/her own nation. Democracy,
majority tyranny, mob rule, or dumb-mock-crazy elections are modern myths.
The Clinton era, signified so much. Basically, in regard to this aspect, the very ending of any culture whatsoever; gambling
casinos took over our down-towns, and our oldest landmarks. I went in once and saw those carpets and nearly puked. Now she tells
why they are so ugly. Why any human being would find that appealing reminds me of Kissinger's infamous quote: "We've successfully
made the public so dumb, I cannot die. For there is no one to replace me.."
"... I never meet Jew haters in my personal life but there sure are a lot on this site. How does less than 2% of the US population utterly dominate the nation? Is each Jew 50 times stronger than every gentile. ..."
"... They tend to be urban dwellers where salaries are higher but standards of living are often lower. Those in my neighborhood are very well assimilated. They put elaborate Christmas lights on their houses. It is not a rich neighborhood. ..."
"... Their earlier history was wretched and included slavery and persecutions for thousands of years. Don't waste much time fearing Jews ..."
I never meet Jew haters in my personal life but there sure are a lot on this site. How does less than 2% of the US population
utterly dominate the nation? Is each Jew 50 times stronger than every gentile.
I meet many Jews but can't recall a single
super Jew. Maybe they are clever deceivers? The great majority are middle earners. There are some rich and some poor. Jews dominate
Hollywood and certain occupations but they are underrepresented as engineers and architects. So what.
They tend to be urban dwellers where salaries are higher but standards of living are often lower. Those in my neighborhood
are very well assimilated. They put elaborate Christmas lights on their houses. It is not a rich neighborhood.
Jewish history does not support the idea of a super race. They only entered middle classes in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, and only in the western world. Before that they were not allowed to attend universities or even own land in many cases.
Their earlier history was wretched and included slavery and persecutions for thousands of years. Don't waste much time
fearing Jews.
"... Silencing unpopular viewpoints with which the majority might disagree -- whether it's by shouting them down, censoring them, muzzling them, or criminalizing them -- only empowers the controllers of the Deep State. ..."
"... It's political correctness disguised as tolerance, civility and love, but what it really amounts to is the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite. ..."
"... Instead of intelligent discourse, we've been saddled with identity politics, "a safe space from thought, rather than a safe space for thought." ..."
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of
speech." ― Benjamin Franklin
What a mess.
As America has become ever more polarized, and those polarized factions have become more
militant and less inclined to listen to - or even allow for the existence of - other
viewpoints, we are fast becoming a nation of people who just can't get along.
Here's the thing: if Americans don't learn how to get along - at the very least, agreeing to
disagree and respecting each other's right to subscribe to beliefs and opinions that may be
offensive, hateful, intolerant or merely different - then we're going to soon find that we have
no rights whatsoever (to speak, assemble, agree, disagree, protest, opt in, opt out, or forge
our own paths as individuals).
In such an environment, when we can't agree to disagree, the bullies (on both sides) win and
freedom suffers.
Intolerance, once the domain of the politically correct and self-righteous, has been
institutionalized, normalized and politicized. Even those who dare to defend speech that may be
unpopular or hateful as a constitutional right are now accused of " weaponizing the
First Amendment ."
On college campuses across the country, speakers whose views are deemed "offensive" to some
of the student body are having their invitations recalled or cancelled, being shouted down by
hecklers, or forced to hire costly security details. As The Washington Post concludes, "
College students support free speech -- unless it offends them ."
At Hofstra University,
half the students in a freshman class boycotted when the professor assigned them to read
Flannery O'Connor's short story "Artificial Nigger." As Professor Arthur Dobrin recounts,
"The boycotters refused to engage a writer who would use such an offensive word. They hadn't
read the story; they wouldn't lower themselves to that level. Here is what they missed: The
story's title refers to a lawn jockey, a once common ornament of a black man holding a lantern.
The statue symbolizes the suffering of an entire group of people and looking at it bring a
moment of insight to a racist old man."
... ... ...
What we have instead is regulated, controlled speech, and that's a whole
other ballgame.
Just as surveillance has been shown to " stifle and smother
dissent, keeping a populace cowed by fear ," government censorship gives rise to
self-censorship, breeds compliance, makes independent thought all but impossible, and
ultimately foments a seething discontent that has no outlet but violence.
The First Amendment is a steam valve. It allows people to speak their minds, air their
grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world.
When there is no steam valve - when there is no one to hear what the people have to say -
frustration builds, anger grows and people become more volatile and desperate to force a
conversation. By bottling up dissent, we have created a pressure cooker of stifled misery and
discontent that is now bubbling over and fomenting even more hate, distrust and paranoia among
portions of the populace.
Silencing unpopular viewpoints with which the majority might disagree -- whether it's by
shouting them down, censoring them, muzzling them, or criminalizing them -- only empowers the
controllers of the Deep State.
Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language
appear well-intentioned -- discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination
and hatred -- inevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination and
infantilism.
It's political correctness disguised as tolerance, civility and love, but what it really
amounts to is the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to
the cultural elite.
We've allowed ourselves to be persuaded that we need someone else to think and speak for us.
And we've allowed ourselves to become so timid in the face of offensive words and ideas that
we've bought into the idea that we need the government to shield us from that which is ugly or
upsetting or mean.
The result is a society in which we've stopped debating among ourselves, stopped thinking
for ourselves, and stopped believing that we can fix our own problems and resolve our own
differences.
In short, we have reduced ourselves to a largely silent, passive, polarized populace
incapable of working through our own problems with each other and reliant on the government to
protect us from our fears of each other.
... ... ...
Instead of intelligent discourse, we've been saddled with identity politics, "a safe space from thought, rather than a
safe space for thought."
"As these contrasts show, capitalism has undergone enormous changes in the last two and a half centuries. While some of Smith's
basic principles remain valid, they do so only at very general levels.
For example, competition among profit-seeking firms may still be the key driving force of capitalism, as in Smith's scheme.
But it is not between small, anonymous firms which, accepting consumer tastes, fight it out by increasing the efficiency in
the use of given technology.
Today, competition is among huge multinational companies, with the ability not only to influence prices but to redefine technologies
in a short span of time (think about the battle between Apple and Samsung) and to manipulate consumer tastes through brand-image
building and advertising."
"... Freeman and McKinley also successfully make their point that Citigroup and its predecessors have repeatedly used their political connections to help the bank ..."
But there has never been an accounting of how Citigroup got itself into so much trouble and
why the decisions were made to bail it out -- to the tune of, as the authors reveal, more than
$517 billion all told, some $40 billion more than the roughly $476 billion in cash and
guarantees described in a 2011 congressional report.
... ... ...
But "Borrowed Time" is not the book I was hoping it would be. It provides little new insight
into what possessed Citigroup to go so far off the rails a decade ago and why it was not just
allowed to dissolve like Lehman Brothers. Sure, Freeman and McKinley point out the important
facts that Citigroup had hired Robert Rubin, the former Treasury
secretary , into the bank's executive suite, that he had a major role in ratcheting up
Citigroup's risk-taking and that his protégés Tim Geithner and Jack Lew, both
Treasury secretaries under Barack Obama, were in a position to help Citigroup (the authors
state that Rubin was Geithner's "professional patron") when the bank needed rescuing. But none
of this is explored in much detail, and what's there feels rushed and perfunctory.
The authors also ignore the low-hanging fruit of Citigroup whistle-blowers, like Richard
Bowen and Sherry Hunt, who would have had plenty to say about how their colleagues in the
bank's mortgage department knowingly lowered their credit standards and continued to package
shoddy mortgages into securities and to sell them off -- for big fees and then big bonuses --
as investments all over the world. "Borrowed Time" has plenty of citations from books and
articles about the financial crisis and about the often fascinating group of executives who led
the bank over its long history, but the endnotes reveal only one actual interview the authors
conducted -- with Bart Dzivi, the former special counsel to the Financial Crisis Inquiry
Commission. What about the sizable cast of characters that brought the bank to the brink of
disaster in 2008? Surely not every one of them would have declined to be interviewed.
If the book has any narrative tension, it is found in the authors' interesting -- but too
quick -- asides about their often unsuccessful efforts to pry supposedly public information
about the bank out of its regulators. (Under the auspices of the Freedom of Information Act,
Freeman and McKinley initiated a marginally successful lawsuit against the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation to get documents about Citigroup that weren't forthcoming.) It turns out
there is more information about the bank available in the files of the Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency from the 19th and early 20th centuries than there is in its files
about, say, the years 1991 and 1992, another time the bank almost failed. The authors argue
that in the aftermath of the passage of the Federal Records Act of 1950, regulators have
"routinely destroyed the exam reports" for the bank, leading Freeman and McKinley to the sound
conclusion that it is "easier to repeat history if the lessons of the past are erased."
Colorful characters show up in "Borrowed Time" -- from Frank Vanderlip and "Sunshine
Charlie" Mitchell to John Reed and Sandy Weill -- and some of them, especially Mitchell, become
better known as a result. Freeman and McKinley also successfully make their point that
Citigroup and its predecessors have repeatedly used their political connections to help the
bank
mclaren@22: I think you're right. One of the things the
"personality" tests don't seem to appreciate is that the same person's opinions may change as
time passes and experience changes: does the personality also change? Surely not.
Consider the case of the death penalty in the Netherlands. Abolished, in a fine moment of
progressive anti-authoritarianism, in 1870. Serious change of opinion after 1940, many people
reckoning that when it was abolished nobody believed that what had happened under German
occupation was remotely possible. After liberation, a rather neat legal loophole was
discovered: execution by firing squad was still legal, after conviction by a military court.
The Netherlands being still officially at war, 1940-45, military courts were deemed to have
jurisdiction over acts committed in that period, by military personnel or Dutch civilians.
Hence the Bijzonder Gerechtshof, the Special Court of Justice, which sentenced 146 men and
women to death, of whom 42 were shot. Could you grieve for them?
Likewise in Belgium: only one convicted murderer was executed between 1863 and 1944, after
which 242 collaborators were shot. Some might regret that these did not include the pro-German
and anti-Semitic, and subsequently eminent Harvard literary theorist, Paul de Man.
So there we are. Many people who in 1935 were certainly against the death penalty were, by
1945, in favour in some circumstances. Did their personalities change in response to changing
circumstances? If so, as mclaren says, current personality tests have zero long-term predictive
value. If their personalities remained the same while their opinions changed in response to
circumstances, ditto.
PS I would not have wanted to see Paul de Man shot. Just exposed in his lifetime, and thrown
out of Harvard amid universal ridicule and contempt. Alas.
Should anyone be interested, I have since expanded my list and prefaced it with an
introduction and apologia (which makes clear my differences with the standard political
science and 'scientific psychology' literature on this topic) and posted it on my Academia
page.
@36 Paul de Man took his doctorate at Harvard, but he was a Yale prof when he got famous -- I
took one of his courses. I remember thinking at the time, "This is a frightened guy," though
I didn't know what he had to be so afraid.
One of the things the "personality" tests don't seem to appreciate is that the same
person's opinions may change as time passes and experience changes: does the personality also
change?
Paul de Man might be an interesting case study/counterexample to the idea that personality
types fall naturally into political parties. A very active Nazi collaborator and propagandist
in Europe but more on the left in the US.
But with that history (combined with the fact that he lied his way into various
prestigious professorships) one of the champions of irreducible interpretive undecidability
feels like an excellent case for investigating motivated reasoning.
In a fascinating study, Karen Stenner shows in The Authoritarian Dynamic that while some
individuals have "predispositions" towards intolerance, these predispositions require an
external stimulus to be transformed into actions. Or, as another scholar puts it: "It's as
though some people have a button on their foreheads, and when the button is pushed, they
suddenly become intensely focused on defending their in-group But when they perceive no
such threat, their behavior is not unusually intolerant. So the key is to understand what
pushes that button." What pushes that button, Stenner and others find, is group-based
threats. In experiments researchers easily shift individuals from indifference, even modest
tolerance, to aggressive defenses of their own group by exposing them to such threats.
Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson, for example, found that simply making white Americans
aware that they would soon be a minority increased their propensity to favor their own
group and become wary of those outside it. (Similar effects were found among Canadians.
Indeed, although this tendency is most dangerous among whites since they are the most
powerful group in western societies, researchers have consistently found such propensities
in all groups.)
Dr. Hilarius @ 34, not only is polygraph testing junk , so is the vast majority of
"forensic
science" as used by law enforcement, so is a great deal of eyewitness testimony as used by
prosecutors and law enforcement (not to mention testimony from
police officers themselves ), and even DNA testing can be questionable depending on how
well or
badly law enforcement understands the methods they're using. Rule of thumb, if you've
ever seen a method used by the "good guys" on CSI or NCIS, it's probably bullshit.
Here's a possible take-home lesson from that set of facts about "forensic science": we
should be deeply suspicious whenever a small group of scientific practitioners takes broad
methods and conclusions from a scientific field or set of fields, uses them as raw material
to create a more narrowly "practical" applied subfield with clear instrumental utility for a
set of wealthy and/or powerful actors in the broader society, and over time begins to
associate their reputational and financial interests more and more with these outside actors
at the expense of their credibility within the field of scientific research itself.
Wait a sec, I thought this thread was supposed to be about the issue of politically-driven
personality psychology as advanced by figures like Jonathan Haidt how did I manage to drift
so far off topic?
DNA testing has been used not only by police and prosecutors but also by groups like the
Innocence Project (I think that's the name) whose mission is freeing those who have been
wrongly convicted of crimes, including those wrongly convicted of capital crimes. No doubt
DNA testing can be used well or badly (haven't followed the link yet), but it has helped
overturn some wrong convictions (as well as probably helping to generate some justified
convictions).
The best work on political partisanship treated as a function of variation of personality at
the individual level is Emmanuel Todd's The Invention of Europe , by far. It employs a
rather idiosyncratic definition of individual level, but you'll have to read the book to find
out (and then you'll be so full of gratitude towards me that you'll forgive me for the
equivocation on individual).
Starting with anything else would be positively evil.
Indeed. Polygraph sessions can work but as you say. "People, fearful of a polygraph, will
often volunteer damaging information just prior to taking one". One of my professors pointed
out that a psychopath should be able to ace something like a polygraph.
But they can, I think, work in actual use. I believe the key issue is the operator. A good
"reader", I'm groping for a term here, let's say a good poker player as polygraph operator,
is likely to obtain great results just as a witch doctor can. There is, likely an excellent
chance that a good operator can discriminate truthfulness in many cases just as the witch
doctor can. In both cases, it is the subject's belief not the tool that is the key.
As a university student several (cough, cough) years ago I remember a TA telling me that,
amazingly, Dr. X, a local academic clinical psychologist, was obtaining excellent results in
identifying and locating brain tumors using the Rorschach. He was rivaling the results of
medical specialists. He, then, mentioned that he figured a cigarette package would be just as
good as the Rorschach.
Rule of thumb, if you've ever seen a method used by the "good guys" on CSI or NCIS, it's
probably bullshit.
Well said!
Have you read Strengthening forensic science in the United States: a path forward .
National Research Council (U.S.). https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/228091.pdf
.
Read carefully, it seems to suggest that "forensic science" is an oxymoron. The tone of
disbelief is palpable . As far as I can see no "forensic science" procedure has been properly
subjected to the equivalent of a blind RCT study. I am out of date though.
I do disagree with your conclusion about small group of scientific practitioners takes
broad methods and conclusions from a scientific field or set of fields, uses them as raw
material to create a more narrowly "practical" applied subfield " in this case, though
certainly not in others.
Assuming the information in the above reference is true, there is close to zero scientific
input into "forensic science. It has been some time since I read that reference, but my
memory says than most of originators of the various branches of forensic science had
no scientific basis for the technique, invented it out of whole cloth, or accepted the
statement of a scientist as gospel without any evidence (Galton & fingerprints) and then
proceeded to bugger things up even worse by poor implementation of bad ideas.
"The people I've heard archly denounce whites have for the most part been upwardly-mobile
people who've proven pretty adept at navigating elite, predominantly white spaces. A lot of
them have been whites who pride themselves on their diverse social circles and their
enlightened views, and who indulge in their own half-ironic white-bashing to underscore that it
is their achieved identity as intelligent, worldly people that counts most, not their ascribed
identity as being of recognizably European descent." • Also "Asian American professional,"
although when you think about it, "Asia American" is a pretty problematic ascribed
identity.
"... The same demonstration could be made about the highly polysemic notion of ʻglobalizationʼ, whose upshot – if not function – is to dress up the effects of American imperialism in the trappings of cultural oecumenicism or economic fatalism and to make a transnational relation of economic power appear like a natural necessity. ..."
In a matter of a few years, in all the advanced societies, employers, international officials, high-ranking civil servants, media
intellectuals and high-flying journalists have all started to speak a strange Newspeak. Its vocabulary, which seems to have spaing
out of nowhere, is now on everyone's lips: 'globalization' and 'flexibility', 'governance' and 'employability', 'underclass' and
'exclusion', 'new economy' and 'zero tolerance', 'communitarianism' mid 'multiculturalism', not to mention their so-called postnKxlern
cousins, 'minority', 'ethnicity', 'identity', 'fragmentation', etc..
The diffusion of this new planetary vulgate - from which the terms 'capitalism', 'class', 'exploitation', 'domination', and 'inequality'
are conspicuous by their absence, having been peremptorily dismissed under the pretext that they are obsolete and non-pertinent -
is the result of a new type of imperialism whose effects are all the more powerful and pernicious in that it is promoted not only
by the partisans of the neoliberal revolution who, under cover of 'modernization!', intend to remake the world by sweeping away the
social and economic conquests of a century of social struggles, henceforth depicted as so many archaisms and obstacles to the emergent
new order, but also by cultural producers (researchers, writers and artists) and left-wing activists who. for the vast majority of
them, still think of themselves as progressives.
Like ethnic or gender domination, cultural imperialism is a form of symbolic violence that relies on a relationship of constrained
communication to extort submission. In the case at hand, its particularity consists in universalizing the particularisms bound up
with a singular historical experience by making them ntisrecognized as such and recognized as universal. 1 Thus, just
as, in the nineteenth century, a number of so-called philosophical questions that were debated throughout Europe, such as Spengler's
theme of 'decadence' or Dilthey's dichotomy between explanation and understanding, originated, as historian Fritz Rringer has demonstrated,
in the historical predicaments and conflicts specific to the peculiar world of German universities, 2 so today many topics
directly issued from the particularities and particularisms of U.S. society and universities have been imposed upon the whole planet
under apparently dehistoricized guises. These commonplaces -- in the Aristotelian sense of notions or theses with which one argues
but over which there is no argument --, these undiscussed presuppositions of the
1 Let us make clear from the outset, to avoid any misunderstanding and ward
off the facile accusation of
'anti-Americanism' - a foolproof defence against any critical examination of any imposition (cultural, economic
or political) originating in America -- that the United Stales has no monopoly over the claim to the universal. A number of other
countries, France. England, Spain, Japan and Russia among them, have, at various past epochs strived -- or are still striving
-- to wield forms of cultural imperialism within their own sphere of influence (especially colonial). These are comparable in
every respect, except that, for the first lime in history, one country now finds itself in a position to impose its point on view
on the world to the
First lime in history, one country now linds llsell in a position to impose us point on view on the world
to the whole world.
2 Frit/. Ringer. The Decline of the Mandarins. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. 1969.
... ... ..
This is a society characterized by the deliberate dismantling of the social state and the correlative hypertrophy of the penal
state, the crushing of trade unions and the dictatorship of the ʻshareholder-valueʼ conception of the firm, and their sociological
effects: the generalization of precarious wage labour and social insecurity, turned into the privileged engine of economic activity.
The fuzzy and muddy debate about ʻmulticulturalismʼ is a paradigmatic example.
The term was recently imported into Europe to describe cultural pluralism in the civic sphere, whereas in the United States it
refers, in the very movement which obfuscates it, to the continued ostracization of Blacks and to the crisis of the national mythology
of the ʻAmerican dreamʼ of ʻequal opportunity for allʼ, correlative of the bankruptcy of public education at the very time when competition
for cultural capital is intensifying and class inequalities are growing at a dizzying pace. The locution ʻmulticulturalʼ conceals
this crisis by artificially restricting it to the university microcosm and by expressing it on an ostensibly ʻethnicʼ register, when
what is really at stake is not the incorporation of marginalized cultures in the academic canon but access to the instruments of
(re)production of the middle and upper classes, chief among them the university, in the context of active and massive disengagement
by the state. North American ʻmulticulturalismʼ is neither a concept nor a theory, nor a social or political movement – even though
it claims to be all those things at the same time. It is a screen discourse, whose intellectual status is the product of a
gigantic effect of national and international allodoxia, which deceives both those who are party to it and those who are not.
It is also a North American discourse, even though it thinks of itself and presents itself as a universal discourse, to the
extent that it expresses the contradictions specific to the predicament of US academics. Cut off from the public sphere and subjected
to a high degree of competitive differentiation in their professional milieu, US professors have nowhere to invest their political
libido but in campus squabbles dressed up as conceptual battles royal.
The same demonstration could be made about the highly polysemic notion of ʻglobalizationʼ, whose upshot – if not function
– is to dress up the effects of American imperialism in the trappings of cultural oecumenicism or economic fatalism and to make a
transnational relation of economic power appear like a natural necessity.
Through a symbolic reversal based on the naturalization of the schemata of neoliberal thought, the reshaping of social relations
and cultural practices after the US template, which has been forced upon advanced societies through the pauperization of the state,
the commodification of public goods and the generalization of job insecurity, is nowadays accepted with resignation as the inevitable
outcome of national evolution, when it is not celebrated with sheep-like enthusiasm. An empirical analysis of the trajectory of the
advanced economies over the longue durée suggests, in contrast, that ʻglobalizationʼ is not a new phase of capitalism, but
a ʻrhetoricʼ invoked by governments in order to justify their voluntary surrender to the financial markets and their conversion to
a fiduciary conception of the firm. Far from being – as we are constantly told – the inevitable result of the growth of foreign trade,
deindustrialization, growing inequality and the retrenchment of social policies are the result of domestic political decisions
that reflect the tipping of the balance of class forces in favour of the owners of capital.
By imposing on the rest of the world categories of perception homologous to its social structures, the USA is refashioning the
entire world in its image: the mental colonization that operates through the dissemination of these concepts can only lead to a sort
of generalized and even spontaneous ʻWashington consensusʼ, as one can readily observe in the sphere of economics, philanthrophy
or management training. Indeed, this double discourse which, although founded on belief , mimics science by superimposing
the appearance of reason – and especially economic or politological reason – on the social fantasies of the dominant, is endowed
with the performative power to bring into being the very realities it claims to describe, according to the principle of the selffulfilling
prophecy: lodged in the minds of political or economic decision-makers and their publics, it is used as an instrument of construction
of public and private policies and at the same time to evaluate those very policies. Like the mythologies of the age of science,
the new planetary vulgate rests on a series of oppositions and equivalences which support and reinforce one another to depict the
contemporary transformations advanced societies are undergoing – economic disinvestment by the state and reinforcement of its police
and penal components, deregulation of financial flows and relaxation of administrative controls on the employment market, reduction
of social protection and moralizing celebration of ʻindividual responsibilityʼ – as in turn benign, necessary, ineluctable or desirable,
according to the oppositions set out in the following ideological schema:
The imperialism of neoliberal reason finds its supreme intellectual accomplishment in two new figures of the cultural producer
that are increasingly crowding the autonomous and critical intellectual born of the Enlightenment tradition out of the public scene.
One is the expert who, in the shadowy corridors of ministries or company headquarters, or in the isolation of think-tanks,
prepares highly technical documents, preferably couched in economic or mathematical language, used to justify policy choices made
on decidedly non-technical grounds. (The perfect example being plans to ʻsaveʼ retirement schemes from the supposed threat posed
by the increase in life expectancy, where demographic demonstrations are used to railroad privatization plans that consecrate the
power of shareholders and shift risk to wage-earners through pensions funds). The other is the communication consultant to the
prince – a defector from the academic world entered into the service of the dominant, whose mission is to give an academic veneer
to the political projects of the new state and business nobility. Its planetary prototype is without contest the British sociologist
Anthony Giddens, Director of the London School of Economics, and father of ʻstructuration theoryʼ, a scholastic synthesis of various
sociological and philosophical traditions decisively wrenched out of their context and thus ideally suited to the task of academicized
sociodicy.
One may see the perfect illustration of the cunning of imperialist reason in the fact that it is England – which, for historical,
cultural and linguistic reasons, stands in an intermediary, neutral position (in the etymological sense of ʻneither/norʼ or ʻeither/orʼ)
between the United States and continental Europe – that has supplied the world with a bicephalous Trojan horse, with one political
and one intellectual head, in the dual persona of Tony Blair and Anthony Giddens. On the strength of his ties to politicians,
Giddens has emerged as the globe-trotting apostle of a ʻThird Wayʼ which, in his own words – which must here be cited from the
catalogue of textbook-style definitions of his theories and political views in the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section of his
London School of Economics website, <www.lse.ac.uk/Giddens/FAQs.htm> – ʻtakes a positive attitude towards globalizationʼ; ʻtries
[ sic ] to respond to changing patterns of inequalityʼ, but begins by warning that ʻthe poor today are not the same as the
poor of the pastʼ, and that, ʻlikewise, the rich are not the same as they used to beʼ; accepts the idea that ʻexisting social welfare
systems, and the broader structure of the State, are the source of problems, not only the means of resolving themʼ; ʻemphasizes that
social and economic policy are intrinsically connectedʼ, in order better to assert that ʻsocial spending has to be assessed in terms
of its consequences for the economy as a wholeʼ; and, finally ʻconcerns itself with mechanisms of exclusion at the bottom and the
top [ sic ]ʼ, convinced as it is that ʻredefining inequality in relation to exclusion at both levels is consistent with a dynamic
conception of inequalityʼ. The masters of the economy, and the other ʻexcluded at the topʼ, can sleep in peace: they have found their
Pangloss. This is a revised version of a translation by David Macey of an article that originally appeared in Le Monde Diplomatique
554, May 2000, pp. 6–7.
"It is clear enough why both major propaganda systems insist upon this fantasy. Since its
origins, the Soviet State has attempted to harness the energies of its own population and
oppressed people elsewhere in the service of the men who took advantage of the popular ferment
in Russia in 1917 to seize State power. One major ideological weapon employed to this end has
been the claim that the State managers are leading their own society and the world towards the
socialist ideal; an impossibility, as any socialist -- surely any serious Marxist -- should
have understood at once (many did), and a lie of mammoth proportions as history has revealed
since the earliest days of the Bolshevik regime. The taskmasters have attempted to gain
legitimacy and support by exploiting the aura of socialist ideals and the respect that is
rightly accorded them, to conceal their own ritual practice as they destroyed every vestige of
socialism.
As for the world's second major propaganda system, association of socialism with the Soviet
Union and its clients serves as a powerful ideological weapon to enforce conformity and
obedience to the State capitalist institutions, to ensure that the necessity to rent oneself to
the owners and managers of these institutions will be regarded as virtually a natural law, the
only alternative to the 'socialist' dungeon."
― Noam
Chomsky
"Since its
origins, socialism has meant the liberation of working people from exploitation. As the Marxist
theoretician Anton Pannekoek observed, "this goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a new
directing and governing class substituting itself for the bourgeoisie," but can only be
"realized by the workers themselves being master over production." Mastery over production by
the producers is the essence of socialism, and means to achieve this end have regularly been
devised in periods of revolutionary struggle, against the bitter opposition of the traditional
ruling classes and the 'revolutionary intellectuals' guided by the common principles of
Leninism and Western managerialism, as adapted to changing circumstances. But the essential
element of the socialist ideal remains: to convert the means of production into the property of
freely associated producers and thus the social property of people who have liberated
themselves from exploitation by their master, as a fundamental step towards a broader realm of
human freedom."
― Noam
Chomsky
"It's
intellectual freedom when a journalist can understand that 2 + 2 = 4; that's what Orwell was
writing about in 1984. Everybody here applauds that book, but nobody is willing to think about
what it means. What Winston Smith [the main character] was saying is, if we can still
understand that 2 + 2 = 4, they haven't taken everything away. Okay? Well, in the United
States, people can't even understand that 2 + 2 = 4."
― Noam
Chomsky , Understanding Power: The Indispensable
Chomsky
Tech giants like Tesla, Uber, or Spotify are making less and less profit at the moment and
experts are worried about their impact on the world. Are we seeing a new economic bubble in the
making? RT's Daniel Bushel finds out. American tech corporations are often making headlines
nationwide and internationally, although their own performance is far from perfect. They lose
more and earn less, and experts warn of a potential "bubble" looming in the
horizon.
Tesla, Elon Musk's flagship company, is worth more than Ford or GM, but produces only a
small number of cars. Spotify, a music streaming service, as well as Uber, are losing billions
of dollars every year.
"Definitely, there's a bubble, not just in tech stocks but in general stock market
itself," Jack Rasmus, professor of political economy at St. Mary's College, told RT,
warning that "there are signs of financial fragility" that endanger the world
trump has wrecked environmental policy, trade policy and domestic social policy....the
upshots will be: 1- a much more toxic environment & much higher level of respiratory
disease and cancerous related ailments; overall poorer health & health care for the
average citizen 2- higher prices for imported goods, lower level of trade exports, fewer US
based jobs and more off-shoring of US jobs 3- a substantial increase in the homeless
population in the urban areas of this country; increased rates of poverty for the poor, lower
economic prosperity for the lower and lower middle class income brackets; wage stagnation for
the middle & upper middle income brackets; less advanced education & lower worker
productivity and innovation to name just a few of the impacts created by this idiot....in
simple in English, Trump and his so-called initiatives are shafting this country in almost
every way possible
What part of international law is not just pissed on toiler paper strewn over the floors of a
urinal? Which post WWII president respected this law?
None.
International law, since WWII failed. It failed in '47 when no referendum was held in
Palestine - against Chapter 1, Article 1 paragraph 2 of the UN Charter. It failed in Crimea,
when the results of such a referendum was spat on by the previous war criminal to sit in the
Oval Office. It fails now as sanctions are used unilaterally - being equivalent to the use of
force in result, they should be
But then let's not stop at after the war. The US is the only country to nuke civilians.
6/7 US four star generals at the time said the action had no strategic or tactical purpose
whatsoever.
The US is what ISIS dreams to be, the sooner it falls into obscurity the better.
Pure nonsense. The Great Depression began on October 29, 1929. FDR was inaugurated on March
4, 1933 nearly 4 years after it began. Hoover had actually only been in office for just over
6 months before Black Tuesday. GDP began growing and unemployment began falling in 1933
shortly after FDR took office. The Depression officially came to an end in 1939 when GDP
returned to pre-Depression levels.
There is no long term US growth. There is a debt default after people realize the fact that
the top of the whole US government is incompetent. That it has chained itself to such
astronomic liabilities for useless wars (as the Empire has not succeeded in world hegemony),
is even sadder. It coould have spent the $5tn of Iraq and Afghanistan on building shit, but
instead it bombed shit.
Trump doesn't matter for US long run - in 5-10 years time the country will be only found
in history books.
Remember Kruschev's (sp?) last words on leaving office, and I'm paraphrasing: "Don't worry
about America, they'll spend themselves to death (just like we have)". Continued economic
growth is a wet dream of Wall Street origin. We are massively overpopulated and rapidly using
up earth's natural resources at an increasingly unsustainable rate. We must begin to reduce
our growth, not keep increasing it. Population density stress is killing us now and only
increasing every day along with the 220,000 new mouths to feed that we are turning out into a
world that has no room for 28,000,000 homeless migrants already. Just how crazy are we
really. If this article is to be believed, we are nuts. E.F. Schumacher is rolling in his
grave! Stress R Us
The contribution of a president to the national debt depends a bit on how you calculate it.
You could simply look at rhe dates of inauguration or go a step further and look at the
fiscal years. For the latter see :
In absolute terms Obama is indeed at the top of the list, percentagewise his predecessor
played a larger part. No matter how you look at it or what the causes were, under Bush and
Obama the U.S. debt seems to have spiralled out of of control and Trump is doing bugger all
to stop that trend.
We need to see a larger context then neoliberalism in this issue. And it is the end of "cheap oil" or "Plato oil production
with increasing prices" environment.
Which might well be within a decade or two. At least for the next year, the USA production is stalled. By the time it picks
back up, supply will not meet demand so the prices might increase while the total production staying on the same level or slightly
decreasing.
Among possible effects we can mention the following:
1. Another round of lowering the standard of living for the US population, increasing social tensions.
2. Making transcontinental transportation, especially by air, too expensive and favoring local production. Essentially what
Trump is trying to achieve.
3. Part of human influence on climate will dissipate. For example, it will end the mass transportation of goods by air and
might cut private auto transportation, especially in the USA (actually for the latter you might need just around $10 per gallon
of gas or so). So the the carbon footprint of humanity might improve.
4. Permanent stagnation of economy will cut into population growth. Without cheap hydrocarbons, current agriculture needs to
change drastically and to sustain, say, 8 billion people on the planet might be more difficult.
5. Will stimulate the transition to electric cars for private transportation and to the reduction of the size of the cars in
the USA to European levels.
6. Will affect military (especially military aviation) and might fasten dissolution of Global US-led neoliberal empire -- the
process started by Trump.
7. Might provoke more wars for resources (of which Iraq and Libya wars are already "accomplished" events) which might deteriorate
to the level of exchange of nuclear strikes between major powers leading to WWIII. The latter might end a large part of human
civilization ( In worst case, Europe, the USA, Russia, China and Japan)
"... By Jang-Sup Shin, professor of economics at the National University of Singapore and a senior research associate at the Academic-Industry Research Network. This blog post draws on his INET working paper, "The Subversion of Shareholder Democracy and the Rise of Hedge-Fund Activism," which is in turn part of a forthcoming book with William Lazonick on predatory value extraction. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website ..."
By Jang-Sup Shin, professor of economics at the National University of Singapore and a senior research associate at the Academic-Industry
Research Network. This blog post draws on his INET working paper, "The Subversion of Shareholder Democracy and the Rise of Hedge-Fund
Activism," which is in turn part of a forthcoming book with William Lazonick on predatory value extraction. Originally published
at the Institute for New
Economic Thinking website
The casual observer can hardly comprehend the value-extracting power of hedge fund activists. Technically, they are no more than
minority shareholders. Yet they exert enormous influence, often forcing these companies to undertake fundamental restructuring and
to increase stock buybacks and dividends substantially. For instance, Third Point Management and Trian Fund Management, holding only
2% of the outstanding stock of Dow Chemical and DuPont, respectively, engineered a merger-and-split of America's top two chemical
giants at the end of 2015 that resulted in both massive layoffs and the closure of DuPont's central research lab, one of the first
industrial science labs in the United States.
So how did hedge fund activists gain power so far in excess of their actual shareholdings?
In the 1980s, predatory value extraction was the province of the corporate raiders who flexed their muscles by becoming major
shareholders of target companies and staging hostile takeovers. This mode of value extraction was highly risky in two respects. First,
the raiders needed to raise substantial amounts of money to purchase enough shares that they could plausibly threaten to take control
of the companies they targeted. Second, they frequently faced legal battles with management or incumbent shareholders because nothing
less than control of the company was at stake. Being able to influence corporations without taking those risks would be a corporate
raider's dream come true.
In the late 1980s and 1990s this dream became a reality. Driven by a clamor for "shareholder democracy" amid a rapid increase
in institutional shareholding of public corporations and broadening acceptance of the maximizing shareholder value (MSV) view, the
federal government implemented regulatory changes that set the stage for hedge fund activism.
The first set of regulatory changes was put into motion by Robert Monks, who in 1985 set up Institutional Shareholder Services
(ISS), the first proxy-advisory firm, upon his resignation from the post of chief pension administrator at the U.S. Department of
Labor (DOL). During his sole year in the Labor Department's employ, Monks endeavored to make proxy voting compulsory for pension
funds, using his position as a platform for public advocacy of the notion that the funds had an obligation to become responsible
"corporate citizens" and actually exercise the power their financial holdings gave them over corporate management. In 1988, his former
DOL colleagues established proxy voting as a fiduciary duty of pension funds by the so-called "Avon Letter." Compulsory voting of
proxies was later extended to all other institutional investors, including mutual funds, under an SEC regulation in 2003.
Monks and his disciples justified the changes under the pretext of realizing the long-held goal of "shareholder democracy," which,
however, was all but irrelevant to proxy voting. A political project that had begun in the early 20 th century, shareholder
democracy was intended to lessen public distrust of corporations and to create social cohesion by distributing corporate shares to
retail investors who had U.S. citizenship. Institutional investors were simply money-managing fiduciaries who, lacking the status
of citizens, had never been seen as having any part in shareholder democracy. Moreover, voting in most countries is not legally compulsory,
it is one's right as a citizen. But Monks and his followers appropriated the banner of shareholder democracy to impose the voting
of proxies on institutional investors as a fiduciary duty.
The consequence was the creation of a huge vacuum in corporate voting. Most institutional investors remained uninterested in voting
and incapable of doing it meaningfully. The situation got worse with the increasing popularity of index funds, currently estimated
to hold about one-third of all shares issued by companies listed in the U.S. Faced with the new requirement not only to vote but
also to justify their voting decisions, institutional investors became heavily reliant on proxy-advisory firms. But these firms are
often no more competent in making voting decisions than the institutional investors that hire them, and, as for-profit entities,
are wide open to conflicts of interest. Some large mutual funds and pension funds, responding to public criticism that they are simply
outsourcing voting decisions, have set up internal "corporate-governance teams" or "stewardship teams." However, these teams are
designed to do no more than pay "lip service" to voting requirements: they are minimally staffed and their decision-making resembles
"the corporate governance equivalent of speed dating," as
the
New York Times phrased it, rather than examining the concrete contexts of individual companies' voting issues. The potential
for cooperation with hedge fund activists is great: the current owner of ISS, for example, is itself a private equity fund founded
by corporate raiders.
The second set of regulatory changes was proxy-rule changes in 1992 and 1999 that allowed "free communication and engagement"
among public shareholders and between public shareholders and management, as well as between public shareholders and the general
public. These proxy-rule changes ostensibly aimed at correcting an imbalance between public shareholders and management by making
it easier for minority shareholders to aggregate their votes. By that time, however, the balance of power between public shareholders
and management was already skewed decisively toward the former. Institutional shareholding of American corporations' stock had already
approached 50% by the early 1990s and, by 2017, was to reach nearly 70%. The proxy-rule changes further strengthened the power of
public shareholders by allowing them to form de facto investor cartels and freely criticize management. Even if the SEC
required those whose holdings of a given company's stock reached a 5% share to disclose the fact publicly, hedge fund activists could
easily circumvent that limit by forming "wolf packs": soliciting the participation of other activists, whose holdings had not reached
the threshold for reporting, in staging sudden, concerted campaigns against target companies.
Allowing free communication between shareholders and the public, far from evening the supposed imbalance between shareholders
and management, intensified the influence of the former. Activist shareholders were freed by the SEC directives to allow them criticize
a company's management "as long as the statements [they made were] not fraudulent." In contentious issues, management makes its decisions
by weighing the advantages and disadvantages of the options available. But the directives have made it all too easy for activist
shareholders to criticize management in public by simply emphasizing some of the disadvantages while remaining within the limit of
not perpetrating fraud.
A third set of regulatory changes, which allowed hedge fund activists to gain even more power, followed from the 1996 National
Securities Markets Improvement Act (NSMIA). Part of the financial market deregulation that took place during the Clinton administration,
NSMIA effectively allowed hedge funds to pool unlimited financial resources from institutional investors without regulations requiring
disclosure of their structure or prohibiting overly speculative investments. This threw the door wide open to co-investments between
activist hedge funds and institutional investors who put their money into the hedge funds as "alternative investment." For instance,
the California Teachers Retirement System (CaLSTRS) cooperated in Trian Fund's campaign against DuPont from the beginning by co-signing
a letter supporting the hedge fund's demands in 2015. It later turned out that CaLSTRS, a long-term investor in DuPont, was also
one of Trian's major investors.
In combination, these regulatory changes increased the incidence of predatory value extraction in the U.S. economy. For more than
a decade, major public corporations have routinely disbursed to shareholders nearly all of their profits, and often sums equivalent
to more than their profits, in the form of stock buybacks, dividends, and deferred taxes while investing less for the future and
undertaking restructuring simply for the sake of reducing costs. It is now increasingly difficult to find incidents in which management
rejects hedge fund activists' proposals outright and risks proceeding to a showdown proxy vote in a shareholder meeting. As Steven
Davidoff Solomon wrote in
his New York Times column , "companies, frankly, are scared" and "[their] mantra is to settle with hedge funds before
it gets to a fight over the control of a company."
If a regulatory change is found to be misguided, it should be reversed or recalibrated. What would that look like in the context
of activist hedge funds? Here are some suggestions for rebuilding the U.S. system of proxy voting and shareholder engagement such
that it will support sustainable value creation and value extraction:
First, the SEC should make it mandatory, when shareholders make a submission of shareholder proposals to a shareholders' meeting,
that they justify their proposals in terms of value creation by and capital formation for the corporation, rather than simply
requesting distribution of company funds that could be made available by, for instance, disgorgement of free cash flows. Second,
voting should be removed as a fiduciary duty of institutional investors. The compulsory voting of institutional investors, who
tend to be both uninterested in voting and incapable of doing so meaningfully, has only given illegitimate power to proxy-advisory
firms and hedge fund activists. Third, as a practical enforcement mechanism that will shape the thinking and behavior of shareholders
so that they take sustainable value creation and value extraction into account, the regulatory authorities should allow differentiated
voting rights that favor long-term shareholders. Fourth, the SEC should make it mandatory for both shareholders and management
to disclose to the public what they have discussed in engagement sessions. Free engagement has been reserved to a restricted number
of influential investors who have preferred to keep this communication private.
Fifth, hedge funds should be subject to regulations equivalent to those imposed on institutional investors. Hedge funds are already
big enough to pose systemic risks to the economy, a lesson that might have been taken from the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management
in 1998. Since the passage of the NSMIA in 1996, hedge funds have managed a large portion of institutional investors' funds for the
benefit of their ultimate customers, who include ordinary workers and pensioners. There is no plausible reason why hedge funds should
be treated as private entities and freed from financial regulations applied to institutional investors when they are functioning
as surrogate institutional investors.
The merger is certainly an impressive feat of financial engineering. It will bring together two companies: DuPont, with
54,000 employees, and Dow Chemical, with 53,000 employees. The two behemoths will merge, and then in the space of two years
spit out three newly formed companies, one in agriculture, another in material sciences and a third in specialty products used
in such fields as nutrition and electronics.
This plan is one easily understood by a hedge fund activist or investment banker in a cubicle in Manhattan with an Excel
spreadsheet . To them, it makes perfect sense to merge a company and then almost immediately split it in three. Doing so
will meet the goal to define business lines with precision and, it is hoped, spur growth. Expenses can also be cut, on paper
at least.
The companies that the combined entity will create can cut $3 billion in expenses, but the last time I checked, three companies
each require a chief executive, general counsel and many other executives, so these savings may be eaten up by new overhead.
Nearly 100,000 employees and their dependents, suppliers, and customers will get the hedge fund roto rooter treatment so a
handful of rich bastards make moar. Ain't America great already?
The cherry on top is the public employee pension fund's assist in this certain debacle, when the three spun out entities synergize
themselves into dust, taking suppliers and customers with them, while freeing up $3 billion in the short term to grease the looting
operation. By the way $3 billion represents 30,000 employees were they paid $100,000 per year.
Whatever the names of the three new entities, append the word 'disaster' to it.
Once again, why not just abolish the corporate income tax and make the point of incidence of taxation the wealth and income
of the beneficial owners of corporations, the stock and bond holders? (This could be done in a "revenue neutral" way, but obviously
greatly increased taxes on top tier wealth and income would be desirable for other reasons). That would obviate the point of such
extractive strategies, which is simpler and more plausible than imagining the SEC would suddenly develop teeth and muscle and
be able to impose "norms" on the business.
Or we could just regulate hedge funds right out of existence. And maybe take care of private equity firms at the same time.
I have yet to see any benefit to society at large from either of them.
On January 20, 2009, when he was sworn in, the debt was $10.626 trillion. On January 20,
2017, when he left, it was $19.947 trillion. Most people would calculate Obama added $9
trillion to the debt, more than any other president. But then Tom Eleven isn't "Most people".
I think that scarno may have a point. Take a look at the image at the beginning of the
article of Gabbard and then compare it with the one of one of her opponents – Shay Chan
Hodges. That is a tell right there. Gabbard has her faults but the willingness to go to Syria
and see for herself what the actual situation itself was not one of them.
I note too that that OPCW report on the chemical attack was used against Gabbard in this
article. I remember that "attack" which got discredited six ways to Sunday. That was the one
where Jihadists in flip-flops were standing in a crater full of "toxic" chemical weapon
residue taking samples for the OPCW. And the OPCW believed their chain of custody claims.
The Intercept may be a serious publication but I note that it was a newly-minted journalist (
https://theintercept.com/staff/aidachavez/ )
that wrote this story and you certainly wouldn't trust the Intercept to protect you if you
came to them with a hot story – as Reality Winner found out to her cost.
The Intercept is a venue that prints what dot-com scam-billionaire Omidyar asks of
it, or without such instructions, what it's editors' positions happen to be. I think some of
their pieces are well-reasoned and others quite specious, and often enough they are willing
to print what I think is propaganda. Like you, I try to take arguments and evidence as they
come, adjust my analytical framework when necessary, and seek out truth. The process isn't so
different with WaPo or NYT then it is with the Intercept, is it?
The article I linked discusses a primary challenge to Congresswoman Gabbard, who has been
endorsed by Our Revolution, PP; who resigned her vicechair of DNC in 2015 in protest of what
she saw as the sidelining of left interests in the presidential race. Hardly someone who is
likely to face a primary challenge from the left. The article admits, in fact, that she has
no serious primary challengers, yet the article highlights the her un-serious "progressive"
challenger, who is upset that Tulsi has the temerity to oppose US intervention in Syria and
elsewhere. It's typical blob logic: if you oppose murderous war in wherever, you despise
human rights.
Read it. It's a hit piece. And why is it published at all? Omidyar is Hawaii's richest
resident. But perhaps that has nothing to do with it.
It's a well written piece, containing what appear to be accurate assessments of the 2
candidates' stances on a few issues. The author pointed out early on that the opponent is
native Hawaiian, and that Gabbard is not.
It drips with implications about Gabbard's foreign policy views; the only coverage of her
representation of her district is in a quote from her opponent, who claims she spoke to
constituents and "found" they couldn't point to anything Gabbard had done for them. Gabbard's
whiteness was used very skillfully against her, along with a few dog whistles about her
military background and anti-jihadist views.
It was a skillful, Identitarian hit piece. The haute doyens of left coast "leftist"
propriety do not like Gabbard.
"Outside of cultivating her image as an anti-interventionist, however, Gabbard has urged a
continuation of the so-called war on terror. She's also won the approval of some
conservatives and members of the far right. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon
reportedly arranged her November 2016 meeting with President Donald Trump, and former Ku Klux
Klan grand wizard David Duke has praised some of her foreign policy positions."
The first sentence is a sensible criticism. The rest is innuendo, guilt by association. Is
that serious?
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Winston
Churchill
Notable quotes:
"... As if living out one of Aesop's Fables, the hammer of US kinetic power so eagerly embraced at the urging of neo-conservatives and neoliberals alike following the collapse of communism exhausted the Western welders of the weapon instead of their targets. ..."
"... The reckless resort to indiscriminate military power in the US-dominated invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the following campaigns to topple the governments of Syria and Libya created unexpected consequences comparable to Isaac Newton's Third Law of Motion – Every Action has an Equal and Opposite Reaction. ..."
"... However, the motives of the scores of millions of Americans who voted for Trump were perfectly clear: They were opting for American nationalism instead of American Empire. They were sickened by the clear results of 70 years of post-World War II global imperium that had arrogantly and casually allowed US domestic industry and society to wither on the vine for the supposed Greater Good of Global Leadership. ..."
"... These developments, to echo US President Thomas Jefferson's telling phrase nearly 200 years ago, are grave warnings. They are firebells in the night. They serve notice to Washington and London that their facilely optimistic "ever onward and upwards" drive to reshape the entire human race in their own image must be abandoned. ..."
"... Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom is a remotely united society any more. Both of them need to turn inward to resolve their own problems and abandon the fantastic quest to reassert global dominance that Reagan and Thatcher launched nearly 40 years ago. ..."
"... Capitalism is a society where billionaire capitalists own vast companies, banks, shares, and much of the land as well. Elected governments are bent to the will of the big corporations which the capitalists own. ..."
"... America has the greatest inequalities, highest mortality rate, most regressive taxes, and largest public subsidies for bankers and billionaires of any developed capitalist country. ..."
"... Contrary to the propaganda pushed by the business press, between 67% and 72% percent of corporations had zero tax liabilities after credits and exemptions while their workers and employees paid between 25 – 30% in taxes. The rate for the minority of corporations, which paid any tax, was 14%. ..."
"... According to the US Internal Revenue Service, billionaire tax evasion amounts to $458 billion dollars in lost public revenues every year – almost a trillion dollars every two years by this conservative esti ..."
"... Meanwhile US corporations in crisis received over $14.4 trillion dollars (Bloomberg claimed 12.8 trillion) in public bailout money, split between the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve, mostly from US tax payers, who are overwhelmingly workers, employees and pensioners. ..."
"... The problem is both the US and the UK have lost citizenry-control. Both countries have shadow governments and media operatives that work unseen to manipulate sentiment and events in-line with an overall world-government objective (Neo-Marxism). ..."
"... The so-called elites behind the curtain are after total control which is why we will continue toward totalitarian dictatorship. It will not be a one-man show nor will it be readily recognizable as such, rather there will be a Cabal of select ultra-wealthy liberals who will negotiate with each other as to which levers to pull and valves to turn in order to "guide" culture and civilization. ..."
The colossal project to re-colonialize the world started with United States President Ronald Reagan eagerly backed by United Kingdom
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1981 and over the next 20 years seemed to sweep all before it.
But we can now see that the creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the 9/11 attacks in 2001 marked the turn
of the tide.
Since then one super-ambitious project of nation destruction and rebuilding after another generated by Washington and eagerly
embraced by its main Western European allies has collapsed spectacularly.
As if living out one of Aesop's Fables, the hammer of US kinetic power so eagerly embraced at the urging of neo-conservatives
and neoliberals alike following the collapse of communism exhausted the Western welders of the weapon instead of their targets.
The reckless resort to indiscriminate military power in the US-dominated invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the
following campaigns to topple the governments of Syria and Libya created unexpected consequences comparable to Isaac Newton's Third
Law of Motion – Every Action has an Equal and Opposite Reaction.
Nevertheless, US and Western confidence in the triumph of liberal, free trade and democratic ideals around the world has remained
almost totally impervious to the sobering lessons of recalcitrant global realities. The great reawakening of Western imperial and
capitalist resolve heralded by Reagan and championed by his loyal spear carriers, Thatcher and her successors as prime ministers
of the United Kingdom continued unabated: Until 2016.
Two epochal events happened that year :
The British people, to the astonishment most of all of their own leaders, pundits and self-selected Platonic guides and "betters'
voted for Brexit : They opted by a narrow but decisive vote of 48 percent to 52 percent to leave the 28-nation European Union.
The disruptions and chaos set in motion by that fateful outcome have still only begun to work their way through the political
and economic systems of Europe.
Second, Donald Trump, even more amazingly was elected president of the United States to the limitless fury of the American
"Deep State" which continues unabated in its relentless and frantic efforts to topple him.
However, the motives of the scores of millions of Americans who voted for Trump were perfectly clear: They were opting for
American nationalism instead of American Empire. They were sickened by the clear results of 70 years of post-World War II global
imperium that had arrogantly and casually allowed US domestic industry and society to wither on the vine for the supposed Greater
Good of Global Leadership.
A decade and a half of endless, fruitless, ultra-expensive global wars entered into by the feckless and stupid George W. Bush
and continued by the complacent and superficial Barack Obama advanced this process of weariness and rejection.
Two years after the election of Trump and the British people's vote for Brexit, the great surge of the West that outlasted the
Soviet Union is clearly on the ebb : Now the United States is exhausted, the EU is falling apart and NATO is an empty shell – a paper
tiger if you will. Why is this happening and can it be reversed?
Free Trade was never the universal panacea it has been ludicrously claimed to be now for more than 240 years since Adam Smith
published his Wealth of Nations . On the contrary, the cold, remorseless facts of economic history clearly show that protective tariffs
to safeguard domestic manufactures and advantageous export-driven balance of payment surpluses are the true path to economic growth
and sustainable, lasting national power and wealth.
The idea that democracy – at least in the narrow, highly structured, manipulative and patchy form practiced in the United States
is some sort of universal guarantee for happiness, national stability and growth has also been repeatedly confounded.
Instead, the Western democratic states have fallen into exactly the same intellectual pit that trapped and eventually wrecked
the Soviet Union. They have launched a worldwide ideological crusade and poured wealth and resources into it to ignoring the well-being
and advancement of their own domestic economies and populations.
Far from bringing eternal and universal world peace – the alluring Holy Grail of every dangerous idealistic idiot since Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and Immanuel Kant – these policies only brought failure, frustration and rising military death lists for the countries that
pursued them instead.
This year, new hammer blows are following on the Reagan-Thatcher-spawned era of revived Anglo-American global leadership and domination.
The British themselves have palpably failed to cave out any secure or even plausible economic prospects for themselves in the
world once they leave the EU. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya all remain wrecked societies shattered by the repeated air strikes
that Western compassion and reverence for human rights and democracy have visited upon them.
Now India and Pakistan – two English-speaking democracies and members of the once British-led Commonwealth of Nations, still so
dear to Queen Elizabeth II's aging heart – have opted to bury their existential rivalry and jointly join the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization – confirming it as the premier and by far the most powerful security alliance on the planet.
These developments, to echo US President Thomas Jefferson's telling phrase nearly 200 years ago, are grave warnings. They
are firebells in the night. They serve notice to Washington and London that their facilely optimistic "ever onward and upwards" drive
to reshape the entire human race in their own image must be abandoned.
Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom is a remotely united society any more. Both of them need to turn inward to
resolve their own problems and abandon the fantastic quest to reassert global dominance that Reagan and Thatcher launched nearly
40 years ago.
And they had better move fast. Jefferson's firebell is tolling and the sands of time are running out.
Capitalism is a society where billionaire capitalists own vast companies, banks, shares, and much of the land as well. Elected
governments are bent to the will of the big corporations which the capitalists own. To achieve genuine socialism, this ownership
of the world's wealth by the 1% must be ended. Capitalism means that a great deal of our society's resources, needed to produce
the things we need, are privately owned.
Capitalism is based on the private ownership of the productive forces (factories, offices, science and technique)
The bosses of the big corporate enterprises always threaten that if wages and conditions are not worsened, they will take their
business to another country where wages are lower.
America has the greatest inequalities, highest mortality rate, most regressive taxes, and largest public subsidies for bankers
and billionaires of any developed capitalist country.
Contrary to the propaganda pushed by the business press, between 67% and 72% percent of corporations had zero tax liabilities
after credits and exemptions while their workers and employees paid between 25 – 30% in taxes. The rate for the minority of corporations,
which paid any tax, was 14%.
According to the US Internal Revenue Service, billionaire tax evasion amounts to $458 billion dollars in lost public revenues
every year – almost a trillion dollars every two years by this conservative estimate.
The largest US corporations sheltered over $2.5 trillion dollars in overseas tax havens where they paid no taxes or single
digit tax rates.
Meanwhile US corporations in crisis received over $14.4 trillion dollars (Bloomberg claimed 12.8 trillion) in public bailout
money, split between the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve, mostly from US tax payers, who are overwhelmingly workers, employees
and pensioners.
You confuse free market capitalism with corporate cronyism, then suggest socialism is the answer? Why do you think that socialism
is the default panacea? Have you considered other alternatives? What of the pitfalls of socialism?
The problem is both the US and the UK have lost citizenry-control. Both countries have shadow governments and media operatives
that work unseen to manipulate sentiment and events in-line with an overall world-government objective (Neo-Marxism).
The so-called
elites behind the curtain are after total control which is why we will continue toward totalitarian dictatorship. It will not
be a one-man show nor will it be readily recognizable as such, rather there will be a Cabal of select ultra-wealthy liberals who
will negotiate with each other as to which levers to pull and valves to turn in order to "guide" culture and civilization.
But
the tightknit Cabal has more work to do to infiltrate deeper into world governments.
The EU's Parliament is a proto-type test
to tweak how they must proceed. As the Cabal coalesces their power, more draconian rulership will become apparent. The noose will
tighten slowly so as to be un-noticeable. Certain events are planned that will cause citizenry to demand totalitarianism (for
safety reasons). For the Cabal, it'll be like taking candy from a baby.
This, in a nutshell, is the outline of how the West loses
its democracy.
Being run by business, American culture suffers from an overwhelming
preponderance of stupidity . When a set of institutions as reactionary as big business has
a virtual monopoly over government and the media, the kinds of information, entertainment,
commentary, ideologies, and educational policies on offer will not conduce to rationality or
social understanding. What you'll end up with is, for instance, an electorate 25 percent of
whose members are inclined to
libertarianism . And the number is even higher
among young people. That is to say, huge numbers of people will be exposed to and persuaded by
the propaganda of the Cato Institute, the magazine Reason , Ayn Rand's novels, and
Milton Friedman's ideological hackery to express their rebellious and anti-authoritarian
impulses by becoming "extreme advocates of total tyranny," to quote Chomsky . They'll believe, as he translates,
that "power ought to be given into the hands of private, unaccountable tyrannies," namely
corporations. They'll think that if you just get government out of the picture and let
capitalism operate freely, unencumbered by regulations or oversight or labor unionism, all will
be for the best in this best of all possible worlds. And they'll genuinely believe they're
being subversive and anarchistic by proposing such a program.
The spectacle of millions adhering to such a breathtakingly stupid ideology would be comical
if it weren't so tragic. I'm an atheist, but Christianity strikes me as a more rational
-- and moral -- religion than this "libertarian" (really totalitarian) one of absolute faith in
universal privatization, marketization, corporatization, and commoditization. To be a so-called
libertarian is to be deplorably ignorant of modern history ,
economics , commonsense
sociology , human
psychology , and morality
itself . (Regarding morality: if the Golden Rule is an essential maxim, then the communist
slogan "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," which is basically
a derivative of the Golden Rule, is fundamental to any humane social organization. Greed and
Social Darwinism -- every man for himself -- are hardly morally luminous principles.) Given
this reactionary philosophy's intellectual sterility and the fact that it's been refuted
countless times, it's tempting to simply ignore it. And most leftists do ignore it. But that's
a mistake, as the frightening figure quoted a moment ago (25 percent of the electorate)
indicates. It's necessary to challenge "free market" worship whenever and wherever it
appears.
The economist Rob Larson has performed an important service, therefore, in publishing his
new book Capitalism vs. Freedom:
The Toll Road to Serfdom , the more so because the book's lucidity and brevity should
win for it a wide readership. In five chapters, Larson systematically demolishes the glib
nostrums of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek (in the process also dispatching those other
patron saints of the right wing, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard). Even the
book's title is highly effective: the message " capitalism vs. freedom " should be
trumpeted from the hills, since it challenges one of the reigning dogmas of our society.
Liberals and leftists themselves sometimes buy into the view that capitalism promotes freedom,
arguing only that socialist equality and justice are more important than capitalist freedom.
But this is a false framing of the issue. The fact is that socialism, which is to say workers'
democratic control of the economy, not only means greater equality and justice than capitalism
but also greater freedom, at least for the 99 percent. It is freedom, after all, that has
inspired anarchists and even Marxists, including
Marx himself .
Larson begins with a brief discussion of two concepts of freedom, negative and positive (a
distinction that goes back, as he notes, at least to Isaiah Berlin). Crudely speaking, negative
freedom means the absence of external constraint, of a power that can force you to act in
particular ways. Positive freedom is the ability or opportunity actually to realize purposes
and wishes, to "control your destiny," so to speak. It involves having the means to satisfy
desires, as when you have the means to assuage hunger, be adequately clothed and sheltered, and
have adequate sanitation. Positive freedom can be thought of as "freedom to," whereas negative
freedom is "freedom from." Classical liberals like John Stuart Mill and modern conservatives
like Friedman and Hayek are more concerned with negative freedom, which explains their desire
for a minimal state; socialists are concerned also with positive freedom, sometimes believing
that a stronger state (e.g., a social democracy) can help ensure such freedom for the majority
of people.
Friedman and Hayek argued that free-market capitalism, with minimal intervention by the
state, is the surest guarantee of negative liberty. Larson's book is devoted mainly to refuting
this belief, which is widely held across the political spectrum; but it also defends the less
controversial claim that capitalism is incompatible with widespread positive liberty too.
"Capitalism," Larson writes, "withholds opportunities to enjoy freedom (required by the positive view of freedom) and
also encourages the growth of economic power (the adversary of liberty in the negative view of
freedom)." That concentrations of economic power in themselves threaten negative liberty might
be challenged, but this is a weak argument, among other reasons because it's clear that centers
of (economic) power will tend to dominate and manipulate the state in their own interest.
They'll construct coercive apparatuses to subordinate others to their power, which will itself
enable further accumulations of power, etc., until finally the society is ruled by an
oligarchy. Thus, from "pure" capitalism you get an oligarchy with the power to coerce.
However obvious this point may seem to those possessed of common sense, it's far from
obvious to libertarians and most conservatives. According to Friedman, "the kind of economic
organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also
promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this
way enables the one to offset the other." Here we encounter the typical naïve idealism of
conservatives (and, indeed, of centrists and liberals), which I've discussed at length
here . Rather than
analyzing the real conditions of real social structures, conservatives traffic in airy
abstractions about "freedom," "the separation of political and economic power," the lofty
virtues of "competitive capitalism," and so on. Evidently it doesn't occur to Friedman that
economic power will tend to confer political power, and therefore that, far from offsetting
each other, the two will be approximately fused. The economically powerful might not directly
hold political office, but because of the resources they possess, they'll have inordinate power
and influence over political leaders. This is intuitively obvious, but it's also borne out by
empirical research .
It's worth pointing out, too, something that Larson doesn't really focus on: within
corporations, freedom, even negative freedom, is severely curtailed. In the absence of a union,
the employee has hardly any rights. There's no freedom of expression, for example, and the boss
can threaten you, manipulate you however he wants, verbally abuse you, behave horrendously
towards you with probably no repercussions for himself. Capitalism in fact is a kind of
fragmented totalitarianism, as privately totalitarian corporate entities proliferate all over
society and constitute its essential infrastructure, its foundation
. The more oligopolistic they become, to some degree even fused with the state, the less
"fragmented" and more dangerous the totalitarianism is. Eventually the "libertarian" millennium
might be achieved in which all countervailing forces, such as unions, are eradicated and the
population is left wholly at the mercy of corporations, reveling in its sublime freedom to be
totally dominated.
Anyway, to resume the thread: Larson is right that "in portraying [the] concentration of
money in society as a reasonable development" -- e.g., as a reward for successfully competing
against other capitalists -- "the libertarian tradition completely dismisses the power
of concentrated money." Hayek, for example, claims that in a "competitive society" (a
meaningless abstraction: different kinds of societies can be "competitive") nobody possesses
excessive power. "So long as property is divided among many owners, none of them acting
independently has exclusive power to determine the income and position of particular people."
Okay, fine, maybe not exclusive power, but to the degree that property is divided
among fewer and fewer owners, these people can achieve overwhelming power to determine
the income and position of others. Such as by acquiring greater "positive freedom" to dominate
the state in their interests and against the interests of others, who thus proportionately lose
positive freedom and possibly (again) even negative freedom, e.g. if the wealthy can get laws
passed that restrict dissidents' right to free speech or free assembly.
More generally, it goes without saying that positive freedom is proportional to how much
money you have. It apparently doesn't bother most libertarians that if you're poor and unable
to find an employer to rent yourself to (in the gloriously "free, voluntary, and non-coercive"
labor market), you won't be able to eat or have a minimally decent life. Hopefully private
charities and compassionate individuals will come forward to help you; but if not, well, it's
nothing that society as a whole should care about. Strictly speaking, there is no
right to live (or to have shelter, food, health care, education, etc.); there is only
a right not to be interfered with by others (except in the workplace). What a magnificent moral
vision.
Libertarians admit that concentrations of wealth emerge in capitalism, but they deprecate
the idea that capitalism leads to competition-defeating market concentration in such forms as
oligopolies, monopolies, and monopsonies (like Wal-Mart). Usually these are created,
supposedly, by government interference. But most businessmen and serious scholars disagree,
pointing, for instance, to the significance of economies of scale. The famous business
historian Alfred Chandler showed that many industries quickly became oligopolistic on the
basis, in large part, of economies of scale. Historian Douglas Dowd observes that large-scale
industrial technology has made it both necessary for firms to enlarge and possible for them to
control their markets, while Australian economist Steve Keen argues that "increasing returns to
scale mean that the perfectly competitive market is unstable: it will, in time break down [into
oligopoly or monopoly]."
Larson might have gone further in this line of argument by emphasizing just how much
capitalists hate market discipline -- i.e., the "free market" -- and are constantly
trying to overcome it. They're obsessed with controlling markets, whether through
massive advertising campaigns, destruction or absorption of their competitors, price-fixing and
other forms of collusion, or the formation of hundreds of trade associations. The historian
Gabriel Kolko's classic study The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of
American History, 1900–1916 revealed that the hatred of market anarchy is so
extreme that Progressive-Era oligopolists were actually the main force behind government
regulation of industry (to benefit business, not the public), as with the Meat Inspection Act
of 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act, the Federal Reserve Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, and
the Federal Trade Commission Act. Andrew Carnegie and Elbert H. Gary, head of U.S. Steel, even
advocated government price-fixing! So much for the corporate propaganda about how wonderful
free markets are.
If government regulation is primarily responsible for monopoly elements in industries, as
Friedman and Hayek argue, then you'd think that the deregulation tsunami of the neoliberal era
would have led to greater competition across the economy. Did it? Not exactly. Larson quotes a
Forbes article:
Since freight railroads were deregulated in 1980, the number of large, so-called Class I
railroads has shrunk from 40 to seven. In truth, there are only four that matter These four
superpowers now take in more than 90% of the industry's revenue An estimated one-third of
shippers have access to only one railroad.
Quod erat demonstrandum . But there are many other examples. The deregulatory
Telecommunications Act of 1996 was supposed to throw open the industry to competition; what it
accomplished, according to the Wall Street Journal , was "a new phase in the
hyper-consolidation of the cable industry An industry that was once a hodgepodge of
family-owned companies has become one of the nation's most visible and profitable oligopolies."
These trends have occurred throughout
the media , on a global scale.
The same consolidation is found in the airline industry, where deregulation "set off a
flurry of mergers" (as the Journal notes), "creating a short roster of powerful
giants. And consumers are, in many cases, paying the price." In fact, it's well known that
deregulation has facilitated an enormous wave of mergers and acquisitions since the 1980s.
(Similarly, the big businesses, and later the mergers, of the Gilded Age appeared in a time of
little public regulation.) All this market-driven oligopolization has certainly not increased
consumer freedom, or the freedom of anyone but the top fraction of one percent in wealth.
Speaking of communications and the media, another classic libertarian claim is hollow: far
from encouraging a rich and competitive diversity of information and opinion, the free market
tends to narrow the spectrum of opinion and information sources. When Hayek writes of
totalitarian governments that "The word 'truth' ceases to have its old meaning. It describes no
longer something to be found, with the individual conscience as the sole arbiter it becomes
laid down by authority," referring to the "spirit of complete cynicism as regards truth the
loss of the sense of even the meaning of truth," it is easy to think he's describing the mass
media in the heavily capitalist United States. For one thing, because of scale economies and
other market dynamics, over time fewer and fewer people or groups can afford to run, say, a
successful and profitable newspaper. Across the West, in the twentieth century competition
eventually weeded out working-class newspapers that had fewer resources than the capitalist
mass media, and the spectrum of information consumed by the public drastically narrowed.
"Market forces thus accomplished more than the most repressive measures of an aristocratic
state," to quote the authors of an important
study .
At the same time, the sources of information became less and less independent, due to the
development of the advertising market. Advertisers "acquired a de facto licensing power
because, without their support, newspapers ceased to be economically viable." As Edward Herman
says, it wasn't the final consumer's but the advertiser's choices that determined
media prosperity and survival, and hence the content (broadly speaking) of the news and opinion
pieces. Moreover, the media increasingly consisted of giant corporations who had basically the
same interests as advertisers anyway. The result corresponded less to Friedman's slogan Free to
Choose than to Edward
Bernays' slogan Free to Imagine That We Choose (because what we're choosing from is a
narrow
range of corporate and government propaganda ).
Capitalism vs. Freedom also has a chapter on "political freedom," and another on
the "freedom of future generations" -- which is nonexistent in a strictly capitalist society
because future generations have no money and therefore no power. They have to deal with
whatever market externalities result from their ancestors' monomaniacal pursuit of profit.
Including the possible destruction of civilization from global warming, a rather large
externality. Even in the present, the IMF has estimated that the "external" costs of using
fossil fuels, counting public health effects and environmental ramifications, are already $5
trillion a year. Again, this should suggest to anyone with a few neurons still functioning that
markets aren't particularly "efficient." Especially considering the existence of major public
goods that are undersupplied by the market, such as roads, bridges, sanitation systems, public
parks, libraries, scientific research, public education, and social welfare programs. What do
Friedman and Hayek think of these things? Well, Hayek was writing for a Western European
audience, so he had to at least pretend to be reasonable. "[T]he preservation of competition
[is not] incompatible with an extensive system of social services," he wrote, which leaves "a
wide and unquestioned field for state activity." Okay. But that's a significant concession.
Apparently his "libertarianism" wasn't very consistent.
For Friedman, public goods should be paid for by those who use them and not by a wealthy
minority that is being taxed against its wishes. "There is all the difference in the world," he
insists, "between two kinds of assistance through government that seem superficially similar:
first, 90 percent of us agreeing to impose taxes on ourselves in order to help the bottom 10
percent, and second, 80 percent voting to impose taxes on the top 10 percent to help the bottom
10 percent." Thus, the wealthy and powerful shouldn't have to pay taxes to maintain services
from which they don't directly benefit. We shouldn't subtract any of the positive freedom from
people who have an enormous amount of it (i.e., of power , the concentration of which
libertarians are supposed to oppose ) in order to give more positive freedom to people
who have very little of it. That would be unforgivably compassionate.
Most of Larson's chapter on political freedom consists of salutary reminders of how politics
actually works in the capitalist United States. Drawing on Thomas Ferguson's investment theory of party competition ,
Larson describes the political machinations of big business, the concerted and frequently
successful efforts to erode the positive and negative freedoms of the populace, the permanent
class war footing, the fanatical union-busting, the absurdly cruel austerity programs of the
IMF (which, again, serve but to crush popular freedom and power), and the horrifying legacy of
European and U.S. imperialism around the world. Readers who want to learn more about the dark
side of humanity can consult William Blum's Killing Hope ,
Naomi Klein's The Shock
Doctrine (which also describes Hayek and Friedman's love-affairs with neo-Nazi Latin
American generals), Robert Fisk's The Great War for
Civilization , and most of Noam Chomsky's books . In light of all these
practices and policies that have emerged, directly or indirectly, out of the dynamics of the
West's market economy, to argue that capitalism promotes human freedom is to be a hopeless
intellectual fraud and amoral minion of power.
(If that judgment sounds harsh, consider this gem from Hayek, directed against measures to
ensure worker security: "It is essential that we should relearn frankly to face the fact that
freedom can be had only at a price and that as individuals we must be prepared to make severe
material sacrifices to preserve our liberty." More exactly, working-class individuals have to
make severe sacrifices to preserve the liberty of the capitalist class.)
In fact, to the extent that we have freedom and democracy at all, it has been achieved
mainly through decades and centuries of popular struggle against capitalism, and
against vicious modes of production and politics (including slavery and Latin American
semi-feudalism) that have been essential to the
functioning of the capitalist world-economy. Göran Therborn's classic article " The
Rule of Capital and the Rise of Democracy " gives details, as does Howard Zinn's famous
People's History of the
United States .
Larson, unlike the charlatans whose work he reviews, actually does believe that
"concentrated power is opposed to human freedom," so he dedicates his final chapter to briefly
expositing a genuinely libertarian vision, that of socialism. Here I need only refer
to the work of such writers as Anton Pannekoek, Rudolf Rocker, Peter Kropotkin, Errico
Malatesta, Murray Bookchin, and others in the anarchist and/or left-Marxist tradition. There's
a lot of talk of socialism these days, but few commentators (except on the left) know what
they're talking about. For instance, like Hayek and Friedman, they tend to equate socialism
with state control, authoritarianism, the Soviet Union, and other boogeymen. This ignores the
fact that anarchism, which reviles the state, is committed to socialism. So virtually all
mainstream commentary on socialism is garbage and immediately refuted from that one
consideration alone. The basic point that conservatives, centrists, and liberals refuse to
mention, because it sounds too appealing, is that socialism means nothing else but worker and
community control. Economic, political, and social democracy. It is, in essence, a set of moral
principles that can theoretically be fleshed out in a variety of ways, for instance some
preserving a place for the market and others based only on democratic planning (at the level of
the neighborhood, the community, the firm, the city, the nation, etc.). The core of socialism
is freedom -- the absence of concentrated power -- not absolute equality.
Whether a truly socialist, libertarian society will ever exist is an open question, but
certain societies have approached the ideal more closely than others. The Soviet Union was, and
the U.S. is, very far from socialism, while Scandinavian countries are a little closer (since
the population generally has more freedom and power there than in the U.S. and the Soviet
Union). The Bolivian Constitution of
2009 is vastly closer to socialism, which is to say morality and the ideal of human
dignity, than the reactionary U.S. Constitution . On a smaller scale,
worker cooperatives -- see
this book -- tend to embody a microcosmic socialism.
Larson ends his book on the note sounded by Rosa Luxemburg a century ago: socialism or
barbarism . Margaret Thatcher's infamous declaration "There is no alternative" can now be
given a more enlightened meaning: there is no alternative to socialism, except the destruction
of civilization and maybe the human species. Morality and pragmatic necessity, the necessities
of survival, now coincide. Concentrated corporate power must be dismantled and democracy
substituted for it -- which is a global project that will take generations but is likely to
develop momentum as society experiences ever-greater crises.
In the end, perhaps Friedman, Hayek, and their ilk will be seen to have contributed to the
realization of a truly libertarian program after all, albeit indirectly. For by aiding in the
growth of an increasingly authoritarian system, they may have hastened the birth of a
democratic opposition that will finally tear up the foundations of tyranny and lay the
groundwork for an emancipated world. Or at least a world in which Friedmans and Hayeks can't
become intellectual celebrities. For now, I'd settle for that. Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Chris Wright
Doesn't matter if it's 2004 or 2018, the (((usual suspects))) keep playing this cruel game
to maintain their eternal victim status, garner pity, sympathy and the mandatory outpouring
of tax dollars from the city/state/nation's Treasury to their jew supremacist pockets.
And it's been going on for centuries....all over the western world.
The Ministry of Plenty ( Newspeak : Miniplenty ) is in control of
Oceania's planned
economy .
It oversees rationing of food , supplies , and goods . As told in Goldstein's book, the
economy of Oceania is very important, and it's necessary to have the public continually create
useless and synthetic supplies or weapons for use in the war, while they have no access to the
means of
production .
This is the central theme of Oceania's idea that a poor, ignorant populace is
easier to rule over than a wealthy, well-informed one. Telescreens often make reports on how Big Brother has been able
to increase economic production, even when production has actually gone down (see §
Ministry of Truth ).
The Ministry hands out statistics which are "nonsense". When Winston is adjusting some
Ministry of Plenty's figures, he explains this:
But actually, he thought as he readjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was not
even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of
the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world,
not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as
much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of time
you were expected to make them up out of your head.
Like the other ministries, the Ministry of Plenty seems to be entirely misnamed, since it
is, in fact, responsible for maintaining a state of perpetual poverty , scarcity and financial shortages.
However, the name is also apt, because, along with the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of
Plenty's other purpose is to convince the populace that they are living in a state of perpetual
prosperity. Orwell made a similar reference to the Ministry of Plenty in his allegorical work
Animal Farm
when, in the midst of a blight upon the farm, Napoleon the pig orders the silo to
be filled with sand, then to place a thin sprinkling of grain on top, which fools human
visitors into being dazzled about Napoleon's boasting of the farm's superior economy.
A department of the Ministry of Plenty is charged with organizing state lotteries . These are very popular among the
proles, who buy tickets and hope to win the big prizes – a completely vain hope as the
big prizes are in fact not awarded at all, the Ministry of Truth participating in the scam and
publishing every week the names of non-existent big winners.
"... By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and co-founder of Bank Whistleblowers United. Jointly published with New Economic Perspectives ..."
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, an associate
professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and co-founder of
Bank Whistleblowers United. Jointly published with New Economic Perspectives
Steven Krystofiak formed the Mortgage Brokers Association for Responsible Lending, a
professional association dedicated to fighting mortgage fraud and predation. On August 1, 2006.
He tried to save our Nation by issuing one of the most prescient warnings about the epidemic of
mortgage fraud and predation and the crisis it would so cause.
The context was Congress' effort to empower and convince the Federal Reserve to take action
against what the mortgage lending industry called, behind closed doors, "liar's" loans. A
liar's loan is a loan in which the lender does not verify (at least) the borrower's actual
income. The industry knew that the failure to verify inherently led to endemic fraud. George
Akerlof and Paul Romer's 1993 article on "Looting" by financial CEOs explicitly cited the
failure to verify the borrower's income as an example of a lending practice that only
fraudulent lenders would use on a widespread basis.
Congress gave the Fed the unique authority to ban all liar's loans in 1994, by passing the
Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act (HOEPA). HOEPA gave the Fed the authority to ban
liar's loans even by "shadow" sector financial firms that had no federal deposit insurance.
Liar's loans began to become material around 1989 during the savings and loan debacle where
all good U.S. financial frauds are born – Orange County, California. In that era, they
were called "low documentation" ('low doc') loans. We (the West Region of the Office of Thrift
Supervision (OTS), were the federal regulator for these S&Ls, and we were overwhelmed
dealing with the "control frauds" driving the debacle, who overwhelmingly used commercial real
estate (CRE) as their accounting "weapon" of choice. Our examiners, however, made two critical
points. No honest lender would make widespread loans without verifying the borrower's income
because it was certain to produce severe "adverse selection" and produce serious losses. The
examiners' second warning was that such loans were growing rapidly in Orange County and
multiple lenders were involved.
We listened and responded well to our examiners' timely and sound warnings and made it a
moderate priority to drive liar's loans out of the industry we regulated. The last of the major
fraudulent S&L liar's loan lenders was Long Beach Savings. Long Beach set a common pattern
for fraudulent lenders by also engaging in predation primarily against Latinos and blacks. In
1994, the same year HOEPA became law; Long Beach voluntarily gave up federal deposit insurance
and its charger as a savings and loan. Long Beach's controlling owner, Roland Arnall, did this
for the sole purpose of escaping our regulatory jurisdiction and our ability to examine, sue,
and sanction the S&L and its officers. Arnall changed its name to Ameriquest, and converted
it to a mortgage bank. Mortgage banks were essentially unregulated. Arnall successfully sought
sanctuary in what we now call the "shadow" financial sector. The S&L debacle did not end.
It found sanctuary in the Shadow and grew 50% annually for 13 years.
Ameriquest and its leading mortgage bank competitor, run by former S&L officers we (OTS)
had "removed and prohibited" from working in any federally insured lender, became the leading
"vectors" spreading the epidemic of fraudulent liar's loans through (initially) the shadow
sector and later back into federally insured lenders. Many of Arnall's lieutenants eventually
left Ameriquest to lead other fraudulent and predatory lenders making predatory liar's loans.
Michael W. Hudson's book, The Monster , is a great read that presents this history.
Ameriquest and its fraudulent and predatory peers grew at extraordinary rates for over a
decade. They hyper-inflated the bubble and drove the financial crisis.
Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernake refused to use HOEPA to stop this surging epidemic of
fraudulent and predatory liar's loans. This was the setting when Krystofiak, on his own dime
and initiative took advantage of a Fed hearing on predatory lending near his home to warn us
all of the coming disaster. Krystofiak was not the first warning. His written
testimony cited the appraisers' and the FBI's prior warnings. The appraisers' 2000 petition
explaining how lenders and their agents were extorting appraisers to inflate appraisals was
superb. Chris Swecker's 2004 warning on behalf of the FBI that the developing "epidemic" of
mortgage fraud would cause a financial "crisis" if not stopped was superb.
Krystofiak was also superb. The Fed did not want to conduct hearings on fraudulent and
predatory liar's loans – Congress forced it to do so. The Fed's Board members were not
interested in stopping fraudulent and predatory liar's loans. The Fed did not invite Krystofiak
to testify. The Fed offered only a brief "cattle call" at the end of the hearing allowing
(after a top Fed official had left to fly back to DC) the public to make a very brief
statement.
The Fed's treatment of Krysofiak stood in sharp contrast to its fawning treatment of the
Mortgage Bankers Associations' chosen witness. The MBA chose the leading originator of
fraudulent liar's loans in California – IndyMac – to present the MBA's position.
The MBA's position was that the Fed should not use its HOEPA authority to ban fraudulent and
predatory liar's loans. The Fed officials cracked jokes with and treated the IndyMac officer
like an old pal. They treated Krytofiak with cold indifference. The MBA witness presented utter
BS. Krystofiak
spoke truth to power. Power loved the BS. The truth discomfited the Fed officials.
Krytofiak's written testimony made many vital points, but I refer to only two related points
here. First, he warned the Fed that the twin mortgage fraud origination epidemics –
appraisal fraud and liar's loans – were so large that they were inflating the housing
bubble. Second, his means of quantifying the incidence of liar's loan fraud showed the
regulators and the prosecutors that they could use the same method to document reliably,
cheaply, and quickly the incidence of liar's loan fraud at every relevant financial firm.
Data Collected by the Mortgage Brokers Association for Responsible Lending
A recent
sample of 100 stated income loans which were compared to IRS records (which is allowed through
IRS forms 4506, but hardly done) found that 90 % of the income was exaggerated by 5 % or more.
MORE DISTURBINGLY, ALMOST 60 % OF THE STATED AMOUNTS WERE EXAGGERATED BY MORE THAN 50%. These
results suggest that the stated income loans deserves the nickname used by many in the
industry, the "liar's loan" (emphasis in original).
The MBA's anti-fraud experts, MARI, appears to have conducted the study for Krystofiak. They
featured the 4506-T (the "T" stands for "transcript") study and its finding of a 90% fraud
incidence in liar's loans. In 2006, MARI presented its fraud study at the MBA's annual meeting.
The MBA sent MARI's report to every member, which included all the major mortgage players.
Any honest originator, purchaser, or packager of liar's loans was on notice no later than
mid-2006 that they could determine quickly, cheaply, and reliably the fraud incidence in those
liar's loans by using the 4506-T forms to test a sample of those loans. Krystofiak aptly noted
that while lenders typically required borrowers to sign the IRS 4506-T form allowing the lender
to access their tax information, it was actually "hardly done." Lenders supposedly require the
4506-T because taxpayers have an obvious interest in not inflating their income to the IRS. The
self-employed have to report their income accurately or face potential tax fraud sanctions.
The reason liar's loan mortgage lenders, purchasers, the packagers of toxic collateralized
debt obligations (CDOs ) that typically were composed of large amounts of liar's loans, and
credit rating agencies, "hardly [ever] used" or required the sellers to use their 4506-T
authority is also clear if you understand "accounting control fraud." Any 4506-T study of
liar's loans will document their pervasive frauds. Virtually all liar's loan and CDO sales
required "reps and warranties" that they were not fraudulent. If a firm making or selling
liar's loans conducted a 4506-T study and documented that it knew its reps and warranties were
false, and it continued t make, sell, package, or rate those fraudulent loans under false reps
and warranties it would be handling its counterparty a dream civil fraud suit. They would be
handing DOJ the ability to prosecute them successfully for felonies that caused hundreds of
billions of dollars in losses. The fraudulent mortgage money machine relied on the major
players following a financial "don't ask; don't tell" policy.
The exceptions prove the rule. I have found public evidence of only two cases in which
mortgage players (other than Krystofiak) conducted 4506-T audits of liar's loans. I have never
found public evidence that any federal regulator or prosecutor conducted or mandated a 4506-T
study. The two known cases of 4506-T audits were Wells Fargo (just disclosed by DOJ) and
Countrywide (disclosed by the SEC investigation and complaint). Both audits found massive fraud
incidence in the liar's loans. The risk officers presented these audit results to the banks'
senior managers.
Bank Whistleblowers United's 4506-T Proposal
Two and-a-half years ago, Bank Whistleblowers United (BWU) discussed the senior officers of
Countrywide's response to its 4506-T audit. We noted that BWU co-founder Michael Winston blew
the whistle on Countrywide's frauds to the bank's most senior officers to try to prevent these
frauds. Mr. Winston eagerly aided potential prosecutors – who failed to prosecute
Countrywide's senior officers leading the frauds. BWU then explained the analogous response of
Citigroup's senior officers to a different but equally reliable audit conducted by BWU
co-founder Richard Bowen. We did so in a January 30, 2016 New Economic Perspectives
blog urging presidential candidates in the 2016 election to pledge to implement the 60-day
BWU plan to restore the rule of law to Wall Street.
As documented in the SEC complaint, Countrywide's managers conducted a secret internal
study of Countrywide's liar's loans that, on June 2, 2006, confirmed Krystofiak's findings of
endemic fraud in liar's loans. Fraud was the norm in Countrywide's liar's loans, a fact that
it failed to disclose to its stockholders and secondary market purchasers. Instead of
stopping such loans, Countrywide's senior officers caused it to adopt what they termed
"Extreme Alt-A" loans offered by Bear and Lehman that "layered" this fraud risk on top of a
half dozen additional massive risks to create what Countrywide's controlling officer
described as loans that were "toxic" and "inherently unsound." "Alt-A" was the euphemism for
liar's loans. Countrywide made massive amounts of "Extreme Alt-A" and acted as a vector
spreading these "toxic" loans throughout the financial system. A member of our group, Dr.
Michael Winston, tried to stop these kinds of abuses, which enriched top management but
bankrupted Countrywide.
Similarly, a member of our group, Richard Bowen and his team of expert underwriters,
documented that Citigroup knew that it was purchasing tens of billions of dollars of loans
annually on the basis of fraudulent "reps and warranties" – and then reselling them to
Fannie and Freddie on the basis of fraudulent reps and warranties. Bowen put the highest
levels of Citigroup (including Bob Rubin) on personal notice in writing as the incidence of
fraud climbed from 40% to 60%. (It eventually reached an astonishing 80% fraud incidence.)
Citigroup's leadership's response was to remove his staff. Senior Citigroup officers also
responded to the surging fraud by causing Citigroup to become a major purchaser of
fraudulently originated liar's loans.
We can now add the senior leaders that determined Wells Fargo's response to its 4506-T
audit. We draw on the Department of Justice (DOJ) disclosures in conjunction with its
indefensible settlement of civil fraud claims against Wells Fargo's massive mortgage fraud. The
DOJ press release revealed that "in 2005, Wells Fargo began an initiative to double its
production of subprime and Alt-A loans." DOJ did not explain that this was after the FBI warned
there was an emerging "epidemic" of mortgage "fraud" that would cause a financial "crisis" if
it were not stopped. The settlement discloses that Wells' risk officers alerted senior managers
that the plan to increase greatly the number of liar's loans would greatly increase fraud in
2005 before Wells implemented the plan.
The press release had other bombshells (unintentionally) demonstrating the strength of the
criminal cases that DOJ refused to bring against Wells' senior officers. Wells Fargo's 4506-T
audit found that its liar's loans were endemically fraudulent, and the amount of inflated
income was extraordinary.
The results of Wells Fargo's 4506-T testing were disclosed in internal monthly reports,
which were widely distributed among Wells Fargo employees. One Wells Fargo employee in risk
management observed that the "4506-T results are astounding" yet "instead of reacting in a
way consistent with what is being reported WF [Wells Fargo] is expanding stated [income loan]
programs in all business lines."
The press release note some other actions by Wells' senior managers that show what
prosecutors term "consciousness of guilt." Such actions make (real) prosecutors salivate. The
press release's final substantive revelation is the unbelievable rate of loan defaults on Wells
Fargo's fraudulent loans and the exceptional damages those loans and sales caused.
Wells Fargo sold at least 73,539 stated income loans that were included in RMBS between
2005 to 2007, and nearly half of those loans have defaulted, resulting in billions of dollars
in losses to investors.
Typical default rates on conventional mortgages averaged, for decades, around 1.5 percent.
The Wells Fargo liar's loans defaulted at a rate 30 times greater.
How Corrupt is Wells? Cheating Customers is "Courageous"
The press release does not contain the Wells Fargo gem that proves our family rule that it
is impossible to compete with unintentional self-parody. Paragraph H of the settlement reveals
that Wells' term for doubling its number of fraudulent liar's loans in 2005 was "Courageous
Underwriting." Wells' senior managers changed its compensation system to induce its employees
to approve even worse loans. Calling defrauding your customers "courageous" epitomizes Wells
Fargo's corrupt culture built on lies and lies about lies.
DOJ's pathetic settlement with Wells Fargo has no admissions by the bank. It does not
require a penny in damages from any bank officer. It does not require a bank officer to return
a penny of bonuses received through these fraudulent loans. The settlement contains DOJ's
statement that its investigation found that Wells' violated four federal criminal
statutes. DOJ will continue to grant de facto immunity from prosecution to elite
banksters. The Trump administration has again flunked a major test dealing with the swamp
banksters.
Section H (b) of the settlement is factually inaccurate in a manner that makes it highly
favorable to fraudulent lenders making liar's loans. There is no indication that DOJ ever
investigated Wells' fraudulent loan origination practices. It was overwhelmingly lenders and
their loan brokers that put the lies in liar's loans. DOJ's settlement documents do not refer
to Wells whistleblowers, even though and competent investigation would have identified dozens
of whistleblowers. Throughout its Wells documents, DOJ implies that borrowers overstated their
income rather than Wells and its loan brokers.
The Jig is Up on DOJ's Pathetic Excuses for Refusing to Jail Elite Bank Frauds
We now know with certainty from the whistleblowers and the internal audits that the response
of Citigroup, Countrywide, and Wells Fargo's senior leaders to knowing that most of
their liar's loans and the reps and warranties they made about those loans were fraudulent. We
know with certainty that Michael Winston and Richard Bowen's disclosures were correct. We know
with certainty that each served up to DOJ on a platinum platter dream cases for prosecuting
Citigroup and Countrywide's top managers. The senior managers' response to proof that their
banks were engaged in endemic fraud makes sense only if the senior managers were leading an
"accounting control fraud," which enriches the managers by harming the lender.
When the appraisers' warned of extensive extortion by lenders and their agents to inflate
appraisals, when the FBI warned that mortgage fraud was becoming "epidemic" and would cause a
financial "crisis" if not halted, and when the MBA publicized Krystofiak and MARI's warnings
that liar's loans were endemically fraudulent, the fraudulent CEOs' response was always the
same. In each case, they expanded what they knew were endemically fraudulent liar's loans and
increased the extortion of appraisers.
Back to BWU's 4506-T Proposal
This brings us back to reminding the public what BWU proposed 32 months ago about 4506-T
audits. Point 17 of our 60-day plan began:
Within 60 days, each federal financial regulatory agency directs any bank that it
regulates to conduct and publicly report a "Krystofiak" study on a sample of "liar's" loans
that they continue to hold. Krystofiak devised a clever study that he presented to the
Federal Reserve in an unsuccessful attempt to try to get the Fed to stop the epidemic of
fraudulent liar's loans. Lenders and secondary market purchasers routinely required borrowers
to authorize the lender and any subsequent purchaser of the loan to obtain a "transcript"
(4506-T) of the borrower's tax returns from the IRS to allow the lender to quickly and
inexpensively verify the borrower's reported income.
Other parts of our 60-day plan called for DOJ appointees with the courage, integrity, and
skills to restore the rule of law to Wall Street. We also explained the needs (and means) for
the banking regulators to conduct the investigations (such as 4506-T audits), activate a legion
of whistleblowers, and make the criminal referrals to DOJ essential to bring successful
prosecutions.
Conclusion
Had the regulators (particularly the Fed through its HOEPA power) required each bank making
liar's loans to conduct a 4506-T audit, the senior managers would have faced a dilemma. They
could stop the fraudulent lending or provide DOJ with a great opportunity to prosecute them.
The bank CEOs' response to the internal audits showing endemic fraud and the retaliation
against the whistleblowers combine to offer superb proof of senior managers' 'specific intent'
to defraud. The reasons for the failure to prosecute were some combination of cowardice and
politics. If Democrats win control of the House they can use their investigative powers to
force each bank regulator to cause every relevant financial institution to conduct a 4506-T
audit.
Of course, the Republican Senate and House chairs could order those steps today . We are not
holding our breath, but BWU's co-founders are eager to aid either, or both, parties restore the
rule of law to Wall Street. Instead, we are rapidly creating an intensely criminogenic
environment on Wall Street that will eventually cause a severe financial crisis.
Did John Stumpf (President of Wells Fargo 2007-2016) really say, "If one family loses
their home, it is a tragedy. If ten million people lose their homes, it is a statistic?"
Even by Black's lofty standards, this is an outstanding article. The fact that it won't be
published in the mainstream media, and that the vast majority of regulators and politicians
will ignore it, underscores once again just how broken and corrupted the American political
and economic systems are.
It's the same in the UK with regard to mortgage fraud and reporting.
A colleague, brought in from the regulator to clean up our German basket case TBTF's brief
and late in the day foray into the mortgage market, said the UK mortgage market was as
corrupt / fraudulent. The same US firms were involved in many, if not most, cases. Lehman had
an outpost, Ascendant, in my home county, Buckinghamshire, for such activity. Lehman, Merrill
and Citi carved out the UK on geographical lines. One (US) firm was given the name of the
Germanic tribe that settled in the area 1500 years before.
FWIW, the kinds of government errors, cowardice, and confusions that Black relates –
on top of having taxpayers foot the bill for it all – was a key factor IMVHO in people
voting Trump as a kind of protest vote. He talks about 'fake news' to a huge number of
Americans who faked income, or approved fake income.
The rest of us, I assume, continue to seethe and are supporting 'honest money, fair
wages/salary' candidates like Warren and Sanders.
In early 2005 I was working as a loan Broker when I met the World Savings rep or the first
time.
The first words out of his mouth were a warning not to take more than 3 pints on the back end
because it was greedy, the second sentence was "If there's a problem with the income the
underwriter will drop the file on my desk, I'll call you and we'll fix it".
He's still in the business, a few rungs further up the corporate ladder, I got out of the
business the following week.
If Democrats win control of the House they can use their investigative powers to force
each bank regulator to cause every relevant financial institution to conduct a 4506-T
audit.
The establishment democrats that receive donor dollars from Wall Street banks? I wouldn't
hold my breath waiting for them to even investigate much less do anything else to stop this
criminal activity.
Fabulous piece as usual from Mr. Black. Just makes the tenure of the previous
administration all the more complicit in the current state of affairs. As Mr. Black details
there was an obvious solution to uncover the fraud and go after senior execs, something that
also could have also been done when the 'democrat' party held the House and at least a
leverage position in the Senate. What the American public received instead was a giant con
job/cover-up advertised as restitution and Obama goes on national TV to pathetically claim
that grossly fraudulent behavior was simply unethical. Obviously that maneuver had a higher
ROI for post-tenure legacy building and fundraising.
There is really a simple solution: fire everyone at DOJ and replace them with Air Force
officers.
An Air Force officer is brave. He will fly through enemy fire if he has to in order to do
his job. He gives no thought to the Taliban career opportunities that he might be forgoing by
bombing them.
An Air Force officer is competent. He can fly through thunderstorms in the dead of night
and get his bombs when and where the forward air controller down with the infantry needs
them. Compare that to the experience of an honest IG official trying to get an indictment
from DOJ for anyone at a mega-bank.
An Air Force officer knows how to get funding for his priorities. The Air Force annual
budget, at $156 billion, is about 5 times that of DOJ. Enough said.
When you know these facts, the solution is obvious.
Go read The Pentagon Wars or Coram's Boyd . Air Force (or other service)
officers have no particular claim to virtue. If you pulled mostly captains maybe it'd work,
but the bravery and competence needed on the front line is vastly different from that needed
from say a Colonel or General running programs/units which is likely the officers you'd be
bringing in. Remember you're advocating bringing in people responsible for the boondoggle
that is the F35 to shape up an organization. (which is not an isolated instance but
emblematic of the upper tiers of the service)
Thanks for the referrals; let me take a look. (I have read Thomas Ricks' The
Generals , which I suspect makes a similar point to those.) The point is acknowledged,
although I have not only read The Chickenshit Club but lived through it. There were
many DOJ people I had to deal with whom I can only describe using Bundy's pungent phrase for
the South Vietnamese political leadership: "the absolute bottom of the barrel." They
contrasted starkly with the fellow junior officers I knew in my youth, but as you noted,
those were junior officers.
The simplicity of the 4506-T audits is as profound as the physics comparison of the
diversity of the economy to GDP. These things don't work when all the chaos comes home to
roost. In 1989 our economy was on the rocks and our corporations were offshoring as fast as
they could; the USSR collapsed and we landed like a murder of crows to pick their bones and
loot Russia. OPEC was naming their price; China was exporting massive deflation; our banks
were already on the brink. But how to bring home all the loot from not just Russia but all
the other illegal sources connected with our once and future imperialism? We were no longer a
country of laws; we were looters, thieves and launderers. We were trying to salvage our
"investments" or we were hoovering up flight capital or some other thing that had nothing to
do with law and order and democracy. You name it. How else did all the banks, all of them,
agree to forego their own standards and make all those conveyor belt loans? They prolly all
had to become industrial laundromats and get rid of the stuff asap. Which was perhaps only
one aspect to the ongoing collapse of "capitalism" as we once knew it – but were unable
to protect it. I love Bill Black because he makes me come to uncomfortable explanations who
knows how it all fell apart? Somebody does.
Superb comment Susan. I make know how ' it all fell apart ' other than recognising that
the early capitalists worked with stuff that had to be produced, and so despite vile excesses
produced something useful to many , whereas these financial capitalists produce nothing of
value to anyone except themselves and take away something from everybody else ( liar's loans
being a key example ) . The question is , is there any here beyond here ? Clearly not with
ANY of the present political incumbents ( I am in the UK it's the same for you and us ) . So
that in two sentences is my answer to your question . My question is ' how on earth do we get
beyond here ?'
Re Bill Black: " Instead, we are rapidly creating an intensely criminogenic environment
on Wall Street that will eventually cause a severe financial crisis."
By design and intent with no fear of criminal prosecution for fraud, imprisonment, or even
surrender of ill-gotten personal financial gains. All brought to us courtesy of the political
donor class and large corporations, those they have corrupted, and the Supreme Court's
Orwellian-named Citizens United decision and expanded executive branch powers that
make it possible.
Look at any set of issues: Failure to pass and implement policies to address climate
change, endless wars, defunding public education and infrastructure, the opioid crisis,
manipulation of financial markets, federal government austerity, transfers of public lands
and resources into private hands, privatization of public services, healthcare, stagnant real
wages, loss of any semblance of economic equality, debt burdens placed on our young people
seeking economic opportunity or family formation, lack of legal separation of bank depository
and payments system functions from their market speculations, failure to enforce corporate
antitrust laws, erosion of privacy and civil liberties, repeated bubbles, concentration of
media ownership in the hands of a few, secret international tax havens, etc. and what do you
see?
With the latest disclosures about WF stealing directly from their banking customers on top
of their previous frauds, I'm just sure the regulators will come down hard on them this time
(NOT!)
I wonder if Mr. Trump, with his involvement in commercial RE, ever "mis-stated" his his
income, assets and/or liabilities when obtaining a loan. Nah, couldn't happen.
I wonder why anybody still banks with WF. My late mom had about 30K in a WF account under
a trust that I could not close out for 24 months (Florida laws – WF had a branch in
their eldercare facility.) I was delighted that my closeout check did not bounce.
A while back I worked at a medical device startup operating within a formal (i.e. written
and comprehensive) quality system. A quality system is required for any commercial sales of
medical products; previously I had been involved in early stage R+D and had not been bound by
such systems. So a lot of it was new to me.
Something that stuck out at the time, and probably ties in to the article above, was the
sanctity of corporate internal audit files. The FDA could demand access to almost any company
quality system document, except for internal audit files. They could be provided
with summaries of these internal audits indicating something like "6 minor deficiencies
found, 1 major deficiency found, 0 extreme deficiencies found" , but were not permitted
access to the raw internal audits.
I suspect that financial firms have the same level of protection for their internal
audits. Had they hired a consulting firm to investigate the accuracy of stated income in the
loans they originated, the results of that outside investigation would probably be a document
reviewable by government regulators (assuming they were interested in doing their job). But
by pursuing this as an internal audit, executives knew that the results would never be
reviewable, and give them plausible deniability that they knew of the systemic level of
fraud.
There certainly must be other ways of investigating efficiency or compliance within a
company, but by pursuing it as an internal audit they could easily bury the results.
A quibble: comparing stated income to income tax forms may be misleading, although it is
the standard. People have an interest in understating their income to the IRS, and in
overstating it when seeking a loan. The logic is that they risk prosecution if they
understate to the IRS, but there are plenty of situations where they're very unlikely to get
caught. It's conceivable the loan application is more honest than the tax return.
Loan officers I knew over the decades have changed their views. Asking them if they would
lend their own money to the proposed borrower used to be more likely to elicit a Yes. When
standards loosened (again) earlier this millennium, some answered No until realizing that
they shouldn't care since the money wasn't theirs. What really mattered was getting that
commission endorsed and deposited, given the rise of IBGYBG (I'll be gone, you'll be gone)
thinking.
Another question I asked was about tracking borrower performance relative to loan officer
compensation. Relationship building and longer term interactions declined with the rise of
neo-liberalish (the -ish suffix indicates a primitive reaction to immediate perceived
incentives without further investigation) mindsets. Portfolio lenders had more at risk but
still laid off some of that on the deposit insurance funds. Loan buyers did not fully
appreciate that they had to trust everyone preceding them in the value (destruction) cycle,
from brokers and investment bankers through ratings agencies.
Internal audits, compliance functions and regulatory exams were often the only temporary
inconveniences or obstacles to transactions and related income distribution.
If Democrats win control of the House they can use their investigative powers to force
each bank regulator to cause every relevant financial institution to conduct a 4506-T
audit.
Let us, for a moment, imagine this happens. Then what? The results would show widespread
fraud and a pathetic lack of adequate vetting by the issuer. Then those fraudulent loans were
aggregated into various RMBS and sold to others. I hope you can see that just this disclosure
is likely to cause a substantial hiccup in the financial system, perhaps another full-blown
crisis. And who would the public blame? The criminals – or the cops? I could see Dems,
even Dems with little or no connection to the Street, deciding not to open Pandora's box.
That is one of the problems with the American political system. From defense
appropriations to banking regulation, the pols live in fear of being tarred for doing the
right thing, if the outcome is temporarily bad or unpopular. Yes, it would obviously be best
to cleanse the wound, but doing so would hurt, so the pols decide that it would be best for
their popularity to let the wound fester until it becomes too big to ignore or financial
Armageddon occurs. Isn't that precisely the thinking of the Obama Administration?
All major Wall St banks and brokerages including Wachovia, Wells, BofA and even Citadel
and a few foreign banks (ABN Amro, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, etc) set up an offshore sub
called CDS Indexco. This was used as a defacto cartel to control the prices of both Sub-Prime
CDO issues and their respective Credit Default Swaps. They created the Markit BBB- index
which was used by Paulsen, Ackman and a few other chosen ones to short the MBS sub-prime
market. This is the truth.. CDS Indexco dropped that name in Nov. 2008 when the accounting
rules forced Marked to Market accounting and also the Consolidation of VIE's (Special Purpose
Financial Subs that got an exception to the Enron Rule). So in other words: if banks had been
made to follow the "Enron Rule" the financial crisis wouldn't have happened. Goldman's own
employee was the Chairman of CDS Indexco, I couldn't make this shit up. And Yves knows it
too. Gramm Leach Bliley made it all possible – so banks could hold both the debt and
the equity of an entity that they took no responsibility for. This was the precise reason for
Glass-Steagall banks were manhandling the ownership of business due to inherent conflicts of
interest between debt and equity holders.
My dear Murgatory, Wow. This is the first I have heard of CDS Indexco. You are suggesting
that it was much more than a mere market clearinghouse. Where could I read more on this?
A former bank/trustee foreclosure attorney is running for a District Court judge position
in Seattle. Remember Trott, the Foreclosure King, who Michigan sent to Congress? Yeah, this
dude is trying to get on the bench.
For consider the fruits of free trade policy during the last 25 years : the frozen wages of
U.S. workers, $12 trillion in U.S. trade deficits, 55,000 factories lost, 6 million
manufacturing jobs gone, China surpassing the U.S in manufacturing, all causing a backlash that
pushed a political novice to the Republican nomination and into the presidency.
To maintain a belief in the superiority of free trade to economic patriotism, in the face of
such results, is to recognize that this belief system is impervious to contradictory proof.
The sad reality that I see all around is that Western civilization has been hijacked by
degenerate hyenas like Rome was sacked from within first before being sacked externally. The
institutions that once made the West a leader and a model, have been corrupted, tainted and
filled with anti-humanists and crony corporatists. Greed is out of control and "popular
culture" is spreading decay. The hollowing out will continue until these parasites find
another host to leech off. Will it be China? Will it be a global government? Will it be
another planet? Who knows.
Once upon a time figures like Rosenstein, Mueller, Brennan, Browder, Clapper, Clinton etc
would be just fucking taken out or punished. Instead of that, they get to wander their toxic
asses around like protected peacocks, all on tax payers dime, with their shitty agendas, and
their shitty handlers cheering on the degeneracy and assault on the truth and the people.
If this is what "civilization" has boiled down to, count me the fuck out of it. The 5000
year old human farming experiment is merely switching straight jackets. Its the same old
story that ever was, ever since we gave up the nomadic lifestyle. In a way, its probably an
inevitability, given our flawed human nature, and the size of the population....and average
intellect. The desire to be 'lead' by some ruling class, no matter what flavour of 'ism' it
is, eventually all turns to the same end result....shit. Unless this global awakening can
muster into a force to be reckoned with, and not be swayed by divide and conquer tactics,
nothing will change. So far with the toxic Left vs Right divide, and countless other divides,
the only beneficiaries of this are the ones at the top of the pyramid.
Pat Buchanan: Are Globalists Plotting A Counter-Revolution?
HopefulCynical : Is the sky blue? Is water wet? Is fire hot?
FFS, look at the goddamn purge on (((Social media))). Of COURSE the (((globalists))) are
attempting a counter-revolution.
We all need to move to alt-tech: Minds , Gab , Bitchute . Even if you don't have a
(((social media))) presence, consider getting an alt-media presence. We've been wondering
when the next phase would begin, whewn it would be time to take further action. Well, it's
here.
First step in this next phase is to set up multiple lines of communication not under
(((establishment))) control. Even if you seldom use them, set up accounts; advise those you
know to do likewise. Wanna see the establishment panic? If they see the subscriber count for
the alt-tech sites suddenly quadruple (or more) in response to their purge, they'll shit
themselves. They'll probably attempt to pull domain registrars and financial processing
services from those sites.
Then - the motherfucking games begin, bitchez.
[EDIT:] According to Styx, the alt-tech sites are already seeing a surge in membership.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZP1fwkdupg
Let the (((establishment))) diaper-filling begin!
But will "negotiations" and regulatory loosening on issues like the environment and worker
safety, which have gotten out of hand in the US to the disadvantage of underemployed
citizens, offset the extremely low wages offered to Asian and Latin American workers in the
countries where American-owned companies shipped over 6 million jobs, canceling out the
SS-retirement fund contributions that would have been made by American workers [and]
employers if the jobs had been kept here?
Cheap labor seems to TRUMP everything with US employers.
Running from the SS trust fund might be another reason for their abandonment of
America.
Cheap labor Trumps everything here in the USA, too, and the cheap-labor pool is aided and
abetted by the welfare system. That is why US employers prefer an often extremely absentee
welfare and progressive-tax-code-subsidized labor market, receiving .gov-financed monthly
bills and up to $6,431 in refundable child-tax-credit cash for US-born instant-citizen
kids.
Contrary to myth, hard work, daily and all-day attendance and even work productivity, like
every-month quota meeting, is NOT preferred by American employers for most of the jobs left
here in the USA.
The welfare-eligible 42 million are (on the books) not hard workers, but part-time
workers, staying under the income limits for welfare programs. I KNOW that from working at
the Department of Human Services, where single moms and the womb-productive girlfriends of
illegal and legal immigrants MUST submit proof of a single-breadwinner's part-time, traceable
earnings to get the free stuff.
The earnings must fall below the income limits for welfare programs that ALWAYS reward
part-time work in womb-productive single-breadwinner households of citizens and noncitizens.
You cannot work full time in a minimum-wage job while meeting the income limits. When I
worked at DHS, both the EBT and monthly cash assistance income limits were BELOW $900 per
month......
Even if Trump eventually lures US corporations back here with looser regulations and tax
cuts, rather than just unleashing a stock buy-back spree, it will not matter to the 101
million American citizens of working age who are out of the labor force and the 78 million
gig pieceworkers, not if this welfare-rigged labor market of citizens and noncitizens
continues to be the norm.
You cannot compete with a bigly labor market full of welfare-fetching citizens &
noncitizens who do not need pay sufficient to cover rent due to their womb production.
Only a Deplorables First immigration reform would address that issue, including a big
reduction in the number of welfare-eligible legal immigrants let in each year. The number 1.5
million is too many. This -- no more and no less than illegal immigration -- keeps wages
down, but the illegal immigration has the added bonus of making America more dangerous.
The impasse on the immigration issue is the reason why I am skeptical of the value of
current trade-war maneuvering, even though I am glad that Trump is addressing that general
issue.
The other thing that complicates this trade war is the way that globalist elites have sold
America out over the years, not just destroying the middle class with all of this offshoring
and welfare-supported illegal labor, but also getting the US economy 1) waist-deep in debt,
2) dependent on foreign investment and 3) subject to getting jerked around by Machiavellian
currency manipulation that non-math people, like me, really don't understand.
It sounds kind of dangerous, though, even just the argument that Stockman makes about
China being a house of cards that, if it came down, could have unintended consequences for
the US.
I have no idea. But I do know that many of the people who voted for Trump are pretty
adamant about the immigration issue, first and foremost, regarding it as an easier and less
risky thing to get done as well.
Maybe, the children-at-the-border Movie of the Week has convinced most Trump voters to
stay on the train, thinking something permanent has been done to contain the flow of
welfare-rewarded illegal immigration.
I think many of the teenagers, released into the country to live with extended family or
in foster care, will, in a few years, be entering the labor force as part-time workers,
producing instant-citizen kids and getting free monthly bills and refundable child-tax-credit
cash from .gov, while citizens like me will still face rent that eats up over half of our
monthly, earned-only income from low-wage churn jobs.
As much of an enthusiastic Trump voter as I have been, going back a long way, I am not
sure that I am going to vote in the mid-term general election. I am not going to vote for
this Tammany Hall II Democratic Party, but I may just stay home.
There are many populists out there, not just on the right either, who are disgruntled for
very real reasons, like this interesting article explains, so there will likely be wave after
wave of non-centrist populism until globalism's shoreline has been redefined.
Hmmm, weird, when I loaded the other link, it conformed to the format of this text box,
but then when I loaded the link above this last paragraph, it reverted to cutting off the
text on the side. Until I post it, I cannot see the full text after links are added.
"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so
dependent on it favors that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other
hand, the great body of people mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous
advantages...will bear its burden without complaint and perhaps without suspecting that the
system is inimical to their best interests."
-Rothschild Brothers of London communique' to associates in New York June 25th, 1863.
The Difference.
J. Speer-Willams
June 16, 2010.
New-Cons. Love War & torture, increased regulations, tyranny and taxes; with our taxes
going to the plutocrats of the private banking community. They support governmental
destruction of our environment, under the pretender of protecting it. They, also, overtly
support corporatism (Fascism for Oligarchs) and any measures supported by the Republican
Party that enrich the private International Monetary / Banking Cartel at the expensive of
the. American People.
New- Libs. Love War & torture, increased regulations, tyranny and taxes; with our
taxes going to the plutocrats of the private banking community. They support governmental
destruction of our environment, under the pretender of protecting it. They, also, overtly
support corporatism (Socialism for Oligarchs) and any measures supported by the Democratic
Party that enrich the private International Monetary / Banking Cartel at the expensive of
the. American People.
The economics of the neoliberal era had a fundamental flaw.
The 1920s roared with debt based consumption and speculation until it all tipped over into
the debt deflation of the Great Depression. No one realised the problems that were building
up in the economy as they used an economics that doesn't look at private debt, neoclassical
economics.
I think Pat also gets this sentence wrong and if so I say he misses details we would like
to see
This is truly economics uber alles, economy before country.
The University Economist programs/studies were more oriented toward people in the old
days. Economics today is used to justify Wall Street type finance and ideology. Economic
study was hijacked to serve only those looking to get rich any way they can. CFR agenda comes
to mind. Globalism comes to mind also and is an attack on all nations constitutions.
The Americans have been discovering the problems of running an economy with bad
economics.
Economics was always far too dangerous to be allowed to reveal the truth about the
economy.
The Classical economist, Adam Smith, observed the world of small state, unregulated
capitalism around him.
"The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining
of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the
labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious
merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his
money. But every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no
usurers and no tax gatherers."
How does this tie in with the trickledown view we have today?
Somehow everything has been turned upside down.
The workers that did the work to produce the surplus lived a bare subsistence
existence.
Those with land and money used it to live a life of luxury and leisure.
The bankers (usurers) created money out of nothing and charged interest on it. The bankers
got rich, and everyone else got into debt and over time lost what they had through defaults
on loans, and repossession of assets.
Capitalism had two sides, the productive side where people earned their income and the
parasitic side where the rentiers lived off unearned income. The Classical Economists had
shown that most at the top of society were just parasites feeding off the productive activity
of everyone else.
Economics was always far too dangerous to be allowed to reveal the truth about the
economy.
How can we protect those powerful vested interests at the top of society?
The early neoclassical economists hid the problems of rentier activity in the economy by
removing the difference between "earned" and "unearned" income and they conflated "land" with
"capital". They took the focus off the cost of living that had been so important to the
Classical Economists to hide the effects of rentier activity in the economy.
The landowners, landlords and usurers were now just productive members of society
again.
It they left banks and debt out of economics no one would know the bankers created the
money supply out of nothing. Otherwise, everyone would see how dangerous it was to let
bankers do what they wanted if they knew the bankers created the money supply through their
loans.
The powerful vested interests held sway and economics was corrupted.
Now we know what's wrong with neoclassical economics we can put the cost of living back
in.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
Employees want more disposable income (discretionary spending)
Employers want to pay lower wages for higher profits
The cost of living = housing costs + healthcare costs + student loan costs + food + other
costs of living
The neoliberals obsessed about reducing taxes, but let the cost of living soar.
The economists also ignore the debt that is papering over the cracks and maintaining
demand in the economy. This can never work in the longer term as you max. out on debt.
The problem is the US has lost citizenry-control. A shadow-government along with media
operatives work unseen to manipulate sentiment and events in-line with an overall globalist,
world-government objective (Neo-Marxism). The so-called elites behind the curtain are after
total control which is why we will continue toward totalitarian dictatorship. It will not be
a one-man show nor will it be readily recognizable as such, rather there will be a secretive
Cabal of select ultra-wealthy liberals who will negotiate with each other as to which levers
to pull and valves to turn in order to "guide" culture and civilization. But the tightknit
Cabal has more work to do to infiltrate deeper into US (and world) government. The EU's
Parliament is a proto-type test to tweak how they must proceed. As the Cabal coalesces their
power, more draconian rulership will become apparent. The noose will tighten slowly so as to
be un-noticeable and unstoppable. Certain events are planned that will cause citizenry to
demand totalitarianism (for safety reasons). For the Cabal, it'll be like taking candy from a
baby. This, in a nutshell, is the outline of how the US (and Western civilization) loses its
democracy.
Understanding how trillions of trade dollars influence geopolitical policy we begin to
understand the three-decade global financial construct they seek to protect.
That is, global financial exploitation of national markets. FOUR BASIC ELEMENTS :
♦Multinational corporations purchase controlling interests in various national
outputs and industries of developed industrial western nations.
♦The Multinational Corporations making the purchases are underwritten by massive
global financial institutions, multinational banks.
♦The Multinational Banks and the Multinational Corporations then utilize lobbying
interests to manipulate the internal political policy of the targeted nation state(s).
♦With control over the targeted national industry or interest, the multinationals
then leverage export of the national asset (exfiltration) through trade agreements structured
to the benefit of lesser developed nation states – where they have previously
established a proactive financial footprint.
Pat must suffer from some kind of cognitive dissonance. There is no free trade, nor there
was before Trump. In a world of flexible exchange rates and central banking
backed-inflationary credit trade wars are the status quo. He willfully ignores all the
effects of credit inflation, unsound money, tax structures, subsidies, regulatory burdens
created internally and by those "trade deals" and last but not least the reserve status of
the fiat dollar which basically turned the US in a huge nothing-for-something economy
relative to its imports.
This recovery has not been great for workers. They have seen modest real wage gains over
the last five years, but these gains have not come close to making up the ground lost in the
recession and the first years of the recovery.
Nonetheless, real wages have been growing for most of the last five years. The last month
has been an exception to this pattern, not because nominal wages have grown less, but because
we had a large jump in energy prices, which has depressed real wage growth. Here's picture for
the last five years.
... ... ...
As can be seen, there is a very modest acceleration in the rate of average hourly wage
growth over this period from just over 2.0 percent in the middle of 2013 to 2.7 percent in the
most recent data. Real wage growth, which is the difference between the rate of wage growth and
the rate of inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, has mostly been positive, with
the exception of a few months at the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017 and last month.
The explanation for the much larger variation in the real wage than the nominal wage is the
variation in the rate of inflation over this period which is in turn overwhelmingly a function
of changes in world oil prices. A sharp drop in world oil prices in 2014 translated into much
lower energy prices for consumers in the United States. This meant very low, and even negative
inflation rates, in 2015. The result was a much more rapid rate of real wage growth.
World oil prices have partially rebounded in the last two years, going from lows near $40 a
barrel to current levels that are near $70. This has added to the inflation rate, pushing down
real wage growth, and actually leading to short periods of negative growth.
The issue here is not that nominal wages have stopped growing, it is just that changes in
world energy prices had led to a temporary drag on real wage growth, just as they provided a
temporary boost to real wage growth in 2015.
This story is worth pointing out in the context of recent comments about real wages
stagnating. This is true, but the cause is the rise in world oil prices, not something bad that
happened to the labor market.
The folks who want to blame Trump for stagnant wages are off the mark, unless they think he
is responsible for the rise in world oil prices. If the argument is that the tax cuts have not
led to more rapid wage growth, this is true, but we really should not have expected to see much
effect just yet. The tax cut story is that it will lead to more investment, which will in turn
lead to higher productivity. Higher productivity will in turn lead to higher wages.
The key in this story is investment. And so far, there is nothing to show here , indicating
that the tax cuts are only paying off for shareholders, not workers.
Anyhow, the point is that it's a bit silly to blame slower real wage growth on Trump. I'm
not about to become a Trumper, but the guy does 1000 things every day for which he should be
chased out of office. Let's focus on the real items, we don't have to make stuff up.
This column originally appeared on Dean Baker's blog: Beat the Press.
The best-case scenario looking
forward is that Donald Trump is successful with rapprochement toward North Korea and Russia and
that he throws a monkey wrench into the architecture of neoliberalism so that a new path forward
can be built when he's gone. If he pulls it off, this isn't reactionary nationalism and it isn't
nothing.
Notable quotes:
"... Here's the rub: Mr. Trump's critique of neoliberalism can accommodate class analysis whereas the Democrats' neoliberal globalism explicitly excludes any notion of economic power, and with it the possibility of class analysis. To date, Mr. Trump hasn't left this critique behind -- neoliberal trade agreements are currently being renegotiated. ..."
I thought this part of Urie's piece was especially good:
Left apparently unrecognized in bourgeois attacks on working class voters is that the
analytical frames at work -- classist identity politics and liberal economics, are ruling
class ideology in the crudest Marxian / Gramscian senses. The illusion / delusion that they
are factually descriptive is a function of ideology, not lived outcomes.
Here's the rub: Mr. Trump's critique of neoliberalism can accommodate class analysis
whereas the Democrats' neoliberal globalism explicitly excludes any notion of economic
power, and with it the possibility of class analysis. To date, Mr. Trump hasn't left this
critique behind -- neoliberal trade agreements are currently being renegotiated.
Asserting this isn't to embrace economic nationalism, support policies until they are
clearly stated or trust Mr. Trump's motives. But the move ties analytically to his critique
of neoliberal economic policies. As such, it is a potential monkey wrench thrown into the
neoliberal world order. Watching the bourgeois Left put forward neoliberal trade theory to
counter it would seem inexplicable without the benefit of class analysis.
"USAian" – we really do need to find a way to refer to ourselves collectively in
this country, that doesn't marginalize 100s of millions of other people.
Not our most pressing problem, I grant you
But if we put our minds to it we could probably knock it out toot sweet
"Usonian" was proposed during the the 19th century and promoted by Frank Lloyd Wright.
This is familiar to Esperantists, as the Esperanto name for the U.S.A. is "Usono" and its
inhabitants are "Usonanoj."
"Living in the Age of the Big Lie" [Stephen Gold, Industry Week ]. Gold is
President and Chief Executive Officer, Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and
Innovation (MAPI):
All this has created the potential for an American cultural crisis of distrust,
authoritatively captured in two recently published analyses.
In "Truth Decay," [cute! –lambert] the RAND Corporation lays the blame for the
deteriorating role of facts and data in public life on four primary causes:
1. The rise of social media
2. An overtaxed educational system that cannot keep up with changes in the "information
ecosystem"
3. Political and social polarization
4. And -- perhaps due to all of these factors -- the increasing tendency of individuals to
create their own subjective social reality, otherwise known as "cognitive bias."
"The Death of Truth" by Pulitzer-Prize winning book critic Michiko Kakutani explores the
waning of integrity in American society, particularly since the 2016 elections. Daniel
Patrick Moynihan's observation that "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his
own facts," is more timely than ever, Kakutani says: "polarization has grown so extreme that
voters have a hard time even agreeing on the same facts." And no wonder: Two-thirds of
Americans get at least some of their news through social media -- a platform that has been
overwhelmed by trolls and bots, and which uses algorithms to decide what each of us gets to
see.
Executives ignore the cultural shift away from honesty at their peril.
Social media has its own problems, gawd knows -- break them up and outlaw the algos, and
they'd be a lot more like the public utilities they should really be -- but it's amazing how
vague hand-wringing pieces like this ignore at least four seismic events since 2000, all of
which involve perceived legitimacy and the nature of truth: (1) Bush v. Gore, (2) Iraq WMDs,
(3) Obama's "hope and change" campaign, followed by (4) the crash, the bailouts, the free
passes for bankers, and a brutal recession. The official narrative and its maintainers didn't
lose credibility because of trolls and bots, who might be regarded as opportunistic infections
overwhelming an already weakened immnune system.
Grassroots and/or AstroTurf?
Our Famously Free Press
"The Press Doesn't Cause Wars -- Presidents Do" [
The Atlantic ] • One of a ginormous steaming load of revisionist and defensive
articles prompted by Trump's tweet that the press can "causes War." Anyone who was present for
the build up to the Iraq War knows that Trump's claim is true; in fact, the "media critique"
that began then was prompted by the Iraq WMDs scam, in which the press -- *** cough *** Judy
Miller ***cough*** -- was not merely compliant or complicitous, but active and vociferous,
especially in shunning and shaming skeptics. Of course, everybody who was wrong about Iraq was
wrong in the right way, so they all still have jobs (David Frum, Bush speechwriter and Hero of
the Resistance, at the Atlantic, among hundreds of others). So revisionist history is very easy
for them to write.
Class Warfare
"The New Class-Blindness" [ Law and Political Economy ]. "It
is true that class-based discrimination does not trigger heightened scrutiny under equal
protection in the way that race-based and sex-based discrimination do . Some judges -- even
some Supreme Court Justices -- have begun to argue that it is constitutionally impermissible
for courts to take class into account under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fifth Circuit reached
this conclusion a few years ago in the Whole Woman's Health case, in which it asserted that
judges could consider only obstacles created by "the law itself" when determining whether a law
unduly burdens the right to abortion -- a category that excluded obstacles such as lack of
transportation, childcare, days off from work, and money for overnight stays. When Whole
Woman's Health reached the Supreme Court, some of the Justices (in dissent) expressed support
for this approach."
"Vermont's Striking Nurses Want A Raise for Nonunion Workers Too" [ Labor
Notes ]. "Yet when 1,800 nurses and technical staff struck for better wages July 12-13 at
the state's second-largest employer, the University of Vermont Medical Center, the people of
Burlington came out in force to back them up. 'We had policemen and firefighters and UPS
drivers pulling over and shaking our hands' on the picket line, said neurology nurse Maggie
Belensz. 'We had pizza places dropping off dozens of pizzas, giving out free ice cream.' And
when a thousand people marched from the hospital through Burlington's downtown, 'we had
standing ovations from people eating their dinners,' she said. 'It was a moving experience.'
One reason for such wide support: these hospital workers aren't just demanding a raise
themselves. They're also calling for a $15 minimum wage for their nonunion co-workers, such as
those who answer the phones, mop the floors, cook the food, and help patients to the
bathroom."
"What Are Capitalists Thinking?" [Michael Tomaskey, New York
Times ]. "I write today with some friendly advice for the capitalist class about said
socialists. You want fewer socialists? Easy. Stop creating them . I understand completely why
it's happening. Given what's been going on in this country, it couldn't not have happened. And
if you're a capitalist, you'd better try to understand it, too -- and do something to address
the very legitimate grievances that propelled it." • Finally, reality begins to penetrate
the thickened craniums of the better sort of liberal
"In 2008, America Stopped Believing in the American Dream" [Frank Rich,
New York Magazine ]. (The "American Dream" being one of the official narratives.) "It's not
hard to pinpoint the dawn of this deep gloom: It arrived in September 2008, when the collapse
of Lehman Brothers kicked off the Great Recession that proved to be a more lasting existential
threat to America than the terrorist attack of seven Septembers earlier. The shadow it would
cast is so dark that a decade later, even our current run of ostensible prosperity and peace
does not mitigate the one conviction that still unites all Americans: Everything in the country
is broken. Not just Washington, which failed to prevent the financial catastrophe and has done
little to protect us from the next, but also race relations, health care, education,
institutional religion, law enforcement, the physical infrastructure, the news media, the
bedrock virtues of civility and community. Nearly everything has turned to crap, it seems ."
• Ditto
I think I would put it much earlier than that. Anyone who watched Newt Gingrich during his
Contract on America days, who watched Max Cleland be attacked by Saxby Chambliss,
who watched as Clinton deregulated the media in favor of Rupert Murdoch even as they slagged
him, knew something was afoot.
"I have mixed feelings about this socialism boomlet. It has yet to prove itself
politically viable in general elections outside a handful of areas, and by 2021 we could wake
up and see that it's been a disaster for Democrats."
What is a Democrat? Are they inherently good? Is failing the Democrats OK, if doing so
improves the lives of the 90%?
Mr. Tomasky seems to have missed that Democrats throwing out the concerns of the working
class to court wealthy donors for its Clintonian politics boomlet has been distinctly, well
not all that long term politically viable. It has been a disaster for the Democrats. There
were signs prior to 2000, but it took starting an unpopular and largely unsuccessful war and
attempting to undermine Social Security for the Democrats to make a come back. That their
success was pretty much over by 2010, with the exception of the Presidency is very clear in
the massive loss of Governorships, State Houses and yes Congress leading up to the 2016
debacle when they foolishly nominated the Grand Dame of that 'can't give me lots of money
– suck on it' political position to be their Presidential nominee.
But why let facts get in the way of a good narrative meant to convince the rubes to
continue voting for polticians who have no interest in their concerns because of the right
pronouns and Russia!
The biggest cause is spin , that has become an art form, a business and career
path.
Telling the truth in public is an invitation to cut short your career. The only time when
officials tell the truth is when they are comfortably retired.
Especially with economists and journalists (the conscience keepers), it is not so
important what they are saying, but why they are saying it (basically lack
of trust in the narrator).
I personally blame Bill Clinton. The turning point was the report that he told Lewinsky
"deny deny deny there's nothing they can do."
Which is true but that was the point in the timeline when a critical mass of people began
to live like that. Or when it became obvious to me. Perhaps it was exactly like that for a
long time before and it is not BC's fault.
It's cheering that coal shipment and use in the US has declined. The good news for our
coal industry is that coal exports January to June 2018 have risen, in particular to Africa,
Asia (largely to India which is voracious) and South America.
The current Administration can thank the previous one for increasing our capacity to
export coal, I believe.
Sarah Jeong is a piece of work, is her desk next to Judy Miller's?
Good grief, the cultural differences between different parts of SE Asian Countries can be
profound let alone the cultural differences between countries.
I'm reminded of a boss who told me that monopolies increase competition, with a straight
face.
My impression is that Ms. Jeong's job is and will be to start plenty of cultural "fires",
so
that while the citizenry is distracted with them, the looting and pillaging of the many by
the few can continue.
But to answer the question you actually asked the Federated timeline includes your local
timeline, which itself includes your home timeline. So if you want to see it all, just use
the federated timeline. If you only want to see people you follow, use the home timeline,
etc.
What's an Asian woman doing criticizing a white guy for commenting on a predominantly, but
not exclusively, black art form? I mean, why is she even speaking English and how about that
name Sarah for an egregious example of cultural appropriation? And, as I have previously
queried on this site: how is it even permissible for Yo-Yo Ma to play Bach on the cello? And
in case you ask: yes, identity politics has finally driven me insane. Or is it they who are
mad?
She (Sarah Jeong) wrote: "After a bad day, some people come home and kick the furniture. I
get on the Internet and make fun of The New York Times." "I don't feel safe in a country that
is led by someone who takes Thomas Friedman seriously." "Hannah Rosin shatters ceiling by
proving women writers can be as hackish as Tom Friedman, too." "[David] Brooks is an absolute
nitwit tho." "Notajoke: I'm being forced to read Nicholas Kristof. This is the worst." "if I
had a bajillion dollars, I'd buy the New York Times, just for the pleasure of firing Tom
Friedman ."
combining the articles, it sounds like she's got a lot of opinions. Good for an aspiring
pundit but also opening herself up for a greater possibility of errors.
it's amazing how vague hand-wringing pieces like this ignore at least four seismic
events since 2000, all of which involve perceived legitimacy and the nature of truth: (1)
Bush v. Gore, (2) Iraq WMDs, (3) Obama's "hope and change" campaign, followed by (4) the
crash, the bailouts, the free passes for bankers, and a brutal recession.
Good list to which I would add the Katrina debacle.
The New Class-Blindness" [Law and Political Economy]. "It is true that class-based
discrimination does not trigger heightened scrutiny under equal protection in the way that
race-based and sex-based discrimination do . Some judges -- even some Supreme Court Justices
-- have begun to argue that it is constitutionally impermissible for courts to take class
into account under the Fourteenth Amendment.
================
In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in
the streets and steal loaves of bread. Anatole France
Not much concern over the disconnect between voter preference and policy outcome which was
documented in the 2014 Gilens/Benjamin study or Jimmy Carter statement that the U.S. is a
defacto oligarchy, or the massive voter fraud that is part and parcel of our voting system
(see https://www.gregpalast.com/ ),
or the disclosure of HRC/DNC collusion documented in wiki leaks and Donna Brasil's "tell all
book", not much concern their at all.
Do you find it curious this obsession of the MSM with Russia meddling in our
elections?
"Do you find it curious this obsession [ ] w/ Russia meddling [ ]?" The Russian meddling
isn't the curious part; Russia tries it in every election west of the river Pina. The
abnormal part is a sitting US President, on Twitter, accused his son of a felony aka
violating 52 U.S. Code § 30121 (a)(2), soliciting contributions [things of value] from a
foreign national. Talk about "Blue on Blue" fire. Nothing "friendly" about that. Especially
given the prima facie evidence of violating 18 U.S. Code § 3, accessory after the fact,
by dictating Don the Younger's response to the story.
I read the book Q a couple of years ago. It's real good. Especially if you're into the
gory details of European religious history. There's a lot of things they didn't mention in my
confirmation classes
Social media has its own problems, gawd knows The official narrative and its maintainers
didn't lose credibility because of trolls and bots, who might be regarded as opportunistic
infections overwhelming an already weakened immnune system
Well said. The official narrative, the swamp, is very good at blaming effects and ignoring
causes.
Qanon seems like a honeypot site(s) for retribution futures. Read anything, go into a
database for future reference. Unz and others have likely multiple uses and followers,
NOC/NotForAttribution and other.
On decline in coal shipments: look what is happening elsewhere! "Germany had so much
renewable energy on Sunday that it had to pay people to use electricity!",
https://qz.com/680661/germany-had-so-much-renewable-energy-on-sunday-that-it-had-to-pay-people-to-use-electricity/
"Power too cheap to meter," just like nuclear was promised to be! And that is an old 2016
article. I saw another piece, I believe in Business Insider or Bloomberg, complaining that
the big energy companies are facing "profit stress" because of grid-ties from solar and wind
requiring them to pay people for energy in excess of the load. And having, gasp! to shut down
coal fired plants, each closure being a pretty expensive anti-profit center! I would tend to
think of it being a re-internalization of costs that the power companies have dumped on us
(health effects from heavy metal and carcinogen emissions, smog, CO2/climate interruption.
Too bad the paybacks won't come from clawbacks of CEO paydays or any of the lobbying money
spent to bribe legislatures, deceive the public/consumers, spent on getting legislative
approval for nuclear power plants that WILL NEVER BE BUILT like Duke Energy has done (and
besides, they get to cllect a billion or more from customers to "pay for" those plants that
will never be built. Kind of like an ISDS "judgment" in favor of a megacorporation because
'regulation and market conditions' impaired said corporations' "expectations of profit "
Well, that green-energy surfeit may have something to do with the combination of a
record-smashing heat wave in a country where A/C systems have not been needed at scale,
historically speaking. But good on them if they are in fact doing it sustainably.
Of course, a good bit of that "trade" includes genetically modified soybeans. Monsanto is
happy to sell their "intellectual property," immune from consequence of course, pure profit
all the way down.
And of course there are NO POSSIBLE RISKS OR CONCERNS about the propagation of
gene-fiddled stuff like soybeans and canola, " Genetically Modified Canola 'Escapes' Farm
Fields,
August 6, 2010 , https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129010499
, just for example, I mean it's not like the World Health Organization has not kind of
flagged some things that "policymakers" might want to keep in mind when confronted by the
Cropporate Corrupters wanting to peddle their 'risk free innovations:'
"Frequently asked questions on genetically modified foods
May 2014
Posting this because sometimes it's more about WHO is saying it, rather than what is being
said. It's not often I look at a Rick Newman column and say, 'wow, he's really making a
strong case'.
The chickens are raised covered in their own filth and along with the filth comes
salmonella. They attempt to contain the infection with antibiotics.
And if the conditions in the "chicken factory" aren't filthy enough the slaughterhouse
ensures that the end product comes with salmonella by running the line speed so fast that
punctured intestines insure that the end product comes out covered in salmonella-containing
fecal matter. Which they try to contain with a chlorine bath.
If you like eating chicken shite eat store chicken. If you don't, and if you can, raise
your own. Raising chickens for meat is a lot of work but they taste better and you won't be
eating chicken shite.
Jeez, Frank Rich needs to get out of New York City more. Everything has been completely
broke around Memphis since 2006. It just mostly broke before that.
Was it Trump's election, the rise of Bernie/AOC, Obama's $32 million worth of
post-presidency houses, 60,000 people dying from opiods, or the broken subways in NYC that
caused Frank Rich's awakening?
"Obama didn't cause that broken spirit any more than Trump did."
Obama made it perfectly clear that the Democratic party was going to do nothing to correct
2008. Instead he put the very same people that wrecked the world economy back in charge. I
will no longer vote for the "have no alternative" Democrat. I will vote for those that are
going to enact the polices that will fix this mess. If that means we get twenty Trumps a row
– so be it.
Re: On average for the year-ended this May, 58.5 percent of the job gains were in
counties that backed Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 , and this excerpt from that
Associated Press link:
The jobs data shows an economy that is as fractured as the political landscape ahead of
the 2018 midterm elections. As more money pools in corporate hubs such as Houston,
San Francisco or Seattle , prosperity spills over less and less to smaller towns and
cities in America's interior. That would seem to undercut what Trump sees as a central
accomplishment of his administration – job creation for middle class and blue-collar
workers in towns far removed from glitzy urban centers.
Looking at those cities noted, especially Seattle and San Francisco – both of which
now have an inhuman level of inequality and homelessness -- a further dive into the details
is necessary.
Specifically, are those job gains ™ out of state imported employees from: Ivy
League Schools (predominately under 26, mostly white males from elite families); along with
H-1B, and Opt Program ™ imported employees (predominately under 26, mostly
males from mostly upper middle class Asian families, paid far, far less than those Ivy
Leaguers) [1]; while the displaced unemployed -- yet, highly qualified for employment --
residents in those cities are continually being forced out (if they can afford the move
and have somewhere they are able to move to), or made homeless.
[1] Admittedly, I'm not sure whether they are included in those job gains, but if
the job gains are based on ADP reports, it might well be likely that they are; of course a
search on two search sites brought up no answer to my query.
I find Mastodon's user interface to be fairly unintuitive myself. Presumably it would be
possible to make your own "mixed" view as it's open source and based on open protocols, but
not sure if Mastodon supports it out of the box.
AOC is one of their candidates, as are Cynthia Nixon, Ayana Pressley etc. There is a
prevalence of Democrat buzzwords, but I think they are aiming to be agnostic regarding left
factions:
We're excited to make gains in 2018, but Indivisible 435 isn't just about notching wins.
Our organization is not a wing of the Democratic party. While we care deeply about electing
officials to oppose the Trump agenda, we care just as much building a strong progressive
community nationwide and pushing the conversation back to the interests of the people.
This would be well off message for establishment Democrats.
I'd be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise, but still
watch what they do.
I would posit that most of the job gains in the last decade maybe even two were probably
in areas that voted for Clinton. That the Texas boom and the oil boom in the Dakota's were
exceptions not the rule. I would also posit that the few Trump areas that did see job growth
in that decade saw that growth in minimum wage low to no benefit jobs. (That last one wasn't
much of a stretch since that has been the majority of jobs created during both the Bush 2 and
Obama administration.)
Things like this have led me to comment in the past and every comment on this particular
subject has failed to print. I figure I am tripping some kind of auto-filter.
So I will try again with indirect spelling.
We need a new word for this sort of thing. It would emerge from the new acronym we
need.
The letters would be . . . arrr peee ohhh ceee
that stands for . . . rayciss purrsuns ovv cuhluhr.
"Dockless bike, scooter firms clash with U.S. cities over regulations"
I have a solution to these tech-companies which strew towns and cities with their bikes
without coordinating or even asking to enter such a town and let the town try to adapt to
their needs. It is called an impound lot. You have city workers pick them up and cart them
there. If that company wants their bikes back again, they will have to pay to spring them
from the lot. Rinse and repeat until that tech company gets the message. If that tech company
doubles down, announce a $5 bounty for any bike driven to the impound lot till the company is
ready to negotiate.
"How a Pair of Kentucky Pols Are About to Legalize Hemp"
Please help me here. Hemp can be sold in all 50 states. The 2014 Farm bill allowed each state
to decide whether hemp oil could be sold for medicinal purposes w/i that year. My first
package sent to me was from a reputable company and was mailed through Amazon from Kentucky.
I was experiencing severe pain and now have a better alternative.
"How to keep young people from fleeing small towns for big cities"
Not so hard. See that there are jobs for them. You cannot do much in modern society
without money and a job provides this. A job provides dignity, discipline and the money it
provides lets a young person to satisfy not only their needs but many of their wants as well.
It is hard for a young guy to take a girl out but having no money to do so and a job's money
will help a couple set up a household and marry and have children. The drop in marriage rates
as well as the birthrate speaks volumes of the lack of decent paying jobs for young people,
even those that have achieved credentials. Supply good paying jobs and most kids will stay
put. Not so hard to work out.
Re. "Trump v. Fed" [Money and Banking], bolds mine: "Last month, interrupting decades of
presidential self-restraint, President Trump openly criticized the Federal Reserve. Given the
President's penchant for dismissing valuable institutions, it is hard to be surprised
investors are reasonably focused on the selection of qualified academics and individuals with
valuable policy and business experience the President's comments are seriously
disturbing and -- were they to become routine -- risk undermining the significant
benefits that Federal Reserve independence brings."
As Lambert would say, for some definition of 'valuable', 'benefits' and
'independence'.
"... By Jang-Sup Shin, professor of economics at the National University of Singapore and a senior research associate at the Academic-Industry Research Network. This blog post draws on his INET working paper, "The Subversion of Shareholder Democracy and the Rise of Hedge-Fund Activism," which is in turn part of a forthcoming book with William Lazonick on predatory value extraction. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website ..."
How Hedge Fund Activists Coopted "Shareholder Democracy" Posted on
August 6, 2018 by Yves SmithBy Jang-Sup Shin,
professor of economics at the National University of Singapore and a senior research associate
at the Academic-Industry Research Network. This blog post draws on his INET working paper, "The
Subversion of Shareholder Democracy and the Rise of Hedge-Fund Activism," which is in turn part
of a forthcoming book with William Lazonick on predatory value extraction. Originally published
at the Institute
for New Economic Thinking website
The casual observer can hardly comprehend the value-extracting power of hedge fund
activists. Technically, they are no more than minority shareholders. Yet they exert enormous
influence, often forcing these companies to undertake fundamental restructuring and to increase
stock buybacks and dividends substantially. For instance, Third Point Management and Trian Fund
Management, holding only 2% of the outstanding stock of Dow Chemical and DuPont, respectively,
engineered a merger-and-split of America's top two chemical giants at the end of 2015 that
resulted in both massive layoffs and the closure of DuPont's central research lab, one of the
first industrial science labs in the United States.
So how did hedge fund activists gain power so far in excess of their actual
shareholdings?
In the 1980s, predatory value extraction was the province of the corporate raiders who
flexed their muscles by becoming major shareholders of target companies and staging hostile
takeovers. This mode of value extraction was highly risky in two respects. First, the raiders
needed to raise substantial amounts of money to purchase enough shares that they could
plausibly threaten to take control of the companies they targeted. Second, they frequently
faced legal battles with management or incumbent shareholders because nothing less than control
of the company was at stake. Being able to influence corporations without taking those risks
would be a corporate raider's dream come true.
In the late 1980s and 1990s this dream became a reality. Driven by a clamor for "shareholder
democracy" amid a rapid increase in institutional shareholding of public corporations and
broadening acceptance of the maximizing shareholder value (MSV) view, the federal government
implemented regulatory changes that set the stage for hedge fund activism.
The first set of regulatory changes was put into motion by Robert Monks, who in 1985 set up
Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), the first proxy-advisory firm, upon his resignation
from the post of chief pension administrator at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). During his
sole year in the Labor Department's employ, Monks endeavored to make proxy voting compulsory
for pension funds, using his position as a platform for public advocacy of the notion that the
funds had an obligation to become responsible "corporate citizens" and actually exercise the
power their financial holdings gave them over corporate management. In 1988, his former DOL
colleagues established proxy voting as a fiduciary duty of pension funds by the so-called "Avon
Letter." Compulsory voting of proxies was later extended to all other institutional investors,
including mutual funds, under an SEC regulation in 2003.
Monks and his disciples justified the changes under the pretext of realizing the long-held
goal of "shareholder democracy," which, however, was all but irrelevant to proxy voting. A
political project that had begun in the early 20 th century, shareholder democracy
was intended to lessen public distrust of corporations and to create social cohesion by
distributing corporate shares to retail investors who had U.S. citizenship. Institutional
investors were simply money-managing fiduciaries who, lacking the status of citizens, had never
been seen as having any part in shareholder democracy. Moreover, voting in most countries is
not legally compulsory, it is one's right as a citizen. But Monks and his followers
appropriated the banner of shareholder democracy to impose the voting of proxies on
institutional investors as a fiduciary duty.
The consequence was the creation of a huge vacuum in corporate voting. Most institutional
investors remained uninterested in voting and incapable of doing it meaningfully. The situation
got worse with the increasing popularity of index funds, currently estimated to hold about
one-third of all shares issued by companies listed in the U.S. Faced with the new requirement
not only to vote but also to justify their voting decisions, institutional investors became
heavily reliant on proxy-advisory firms. But these firms are often no more competent in making
voting decisions than the institutional investors that hire them, and, as for-profit entities,
are wide open to conflicts of interest. Some large mutual funds and pension funds, responding
to public criticism that they are simply outsourcing voting decisions, have set up internal
"corporate-governance teams" or "stewardship teams." However, these teams are designed to do no
more than pay "lip service" to voting requirements: they are minimally staffed and their
decision-making resembles "the corporate governance equivalent of speed dating," as
the New York Times phrased it, rather than examining the concrete contexts of
individual companies' voting issues. The potential for cooperation with hedge fund activists is
great: the current owner of ISS, for example, is itself a private equity fund founded by
corporate raiders.
The second set of regulatory changes was proxy-rule changes in 1992 and 1999 that allowed
"free communication and engagement" among public shareholders and between public shareholders
and management, as well as between public shareholders and the general public. These proxy-rule
changes ostensibly aimed at correcting an imbalance between public shareholders and management
by making it easier for minority shareholders to aggregate their votes. By that time, however,
the balance of power between public shareholders and management was already skewed decisively
toward the former. Institutional shareholding of American corporations' stock had already
approached 50% by the early 1990s and, by 2017, was to reach nearly 70%. The proxy-rule changes
further strengthened the power of public shareholders by allowing them to form de
facto investor cartels and freely criticize management. Even if the SEC required those
whose holdings of a given company's stock reached a 5% share to disclose the fact publicly,
hedge fund activists could easily circumvent that limit by forming "wolf packs": soliciting the
participation of other activists, whose holdings had not reached the threshold for reporting,
in staging sudden, concerted campaigns against target companies.
Allowing free communication between shareholders and the public, far from evening the
supposed imbalance between shareholders and management, intensified the influence of the
former. Activist shareholders were freed by the SEC directives to allow them criticize a
company's management "as long as the statements [they made were] not fraudulent." In
contentious issues, management makes its decisions by weighing the advantages and disadvantages
of the options available. But the directives have made it all too easy for activist
shareholders to criticize management in public by simply emphasizing some of the disadvantages
while remaining within the limit of not perpetrating fraud.
A third set of regulatory changes, which allowed hedge fund activists to gain even more
power, followed from the 1996 National Securities Markets Improvement Act (NSMIA). Part of the
financial market deregulation that took place during the Clinton administration, NSMIA
effectively allowed hedge funds to pool unlimited financial resources from institutional
investors without regulations requiring disclosure of their structure or prohibiting overly
speculative investments. This threw the door wide open to co-investments between activist hedge
funds and institutional investors who put their money into the hedge funds as "alternative
investment." For instance, the California Teachers Retirement System (CaLSTRS) cooperated in
Trian Fund's campaign against DuPont from the beginning by co-signing a letter supporting the
hedge fund's demands in 2015. It later turned out that CaLSTRS, a long-term investor in DuPont,
was also one of Trian's major investors.
In combination, these regulatory changes increased the incidence of predatory value
extraction in the U.S. economy. For more than a decade, major public corporations have
routinely disbursed to shareholders nearly all of their profits, and often sums equivalent to
more than their profits, in the form of stock buybacks, dividends, and deferred taxes while
investing less for the future and undertaking restructuring simply for the sake of reducing
costs. It is now increasingly difficult to find incidents in which management rejects hedge
fund activists' proposals outright and risks proceeding to a showdown proxy vote in a
shareholder meeting. As Steven Davidoff Solomon wrote in
his New York Times column , "companies, frankly, are scared" and "[their] mantra
is to settle with hedge funds before it gets to a fight over the control of a company."
If a regulatory change is found to be misguided, it should be reversed or recalibrated. What
would that look like in the context of activist hedge funds? Here are some suggestions for
rebuilding the U.S. system of proxy voting and shareholder engagement such that it will support
sustainable value creation and value extraction:
Fifth, hedge funds should be subject to regulations equivalent to those imposed on
institutional investors. Hedge funds are already big enough to pose systemic risks to the
economy, a lesson that might have been taken from the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management
in 1998. Since the passage of the NSMIA in 1996, hedge funds have managed a large portion of
institutional investors' funds for the benefit of their ultimate customers, who include
ordinary workers and pensioners. There is no plausible reason why hedge funds should be treated
as private entities and freed from financial regulations applied to institutional investors
when they are functioning as surrogate institutional investors.
The merger is certainly an impressive feat of financial engineering. It will bring
together two companies: DuPont, with 54,000 employees, and Dow Chemical, with 53,000
employees. The two behemoths will merge, and then in the space of two years spit out three
newly formed companies, one in agriculture, another in material sciences and a third in
specialty products used in such fields as nutrition and electronics.
This plan is one easily understood by a hedge fund activist or investment banker in a
cubicle in Manhattan with an Excel spreadsheet . To them, it makes perfect sense to
merge a company and then almost immediately split it in three. Doing so will meet the goal
to define business lines with precision and, it is hoped, spur growth. Expenses can also be
cut, on paper at least.
The companies that the combined entity will create can cut $3 billion in expenses, but
the last time I checked, three companies each require a chief executive, general counsel
and many other executives, so these savings may be eaten up by new overhead.
Nearly 100,000 employees and their dependents, suppliers, and customers will get the hedge
fund roto rooter treatment so a handful of rich bastards make moar. Ain't America great
already?
The cherry on top is the public employee pension fund's assist in this certain debacle,
when the three spun out entities synergize themselves into dust, taking suppliers and
customers with them, while freeing up $3 billion in the short term to grease the looting
operation. By the way $3 billion represents 30,000 employees were they paid $100,000 per
year.
Whatever the names of the three new entities, append the word 'disaster' to it.
Once again, why not just abolish the corporate income tax and make the point of incidence
of taxation the wealth and income of the beneficial owners of corporations, the stock and
bond holders? (This could be done in a "revenue neutral" way, but obviously greatly increased
taxes on top tier wealth and income would be desirable for other reasons). That would obviate
the point of such extractive strategies, which is simpler and more plausible than imagining
the SEC would suddenly develop teeth and muscle and be able to impose "norms" on the
business.
Or we could just regulate hedge funds right out of existence. And maybe take care of
private equity firms at the same time. I have yet to see any benefit to society at large from
either of them.
"... The identity politics phenomenon sweeping across the Western world is a divide and conquer strategy that prevents the emergence of a genuine resistance to the elites. ..."
"... Each subgroup, increasingly alienated from all others, focuses on the shared identity and unique experiences of its members and prioritises its own empowerment. Anyone outside this subgroup is demoted to the rank of ally, at best. ..."
"... Precious time is spent fighting against those deemed less oppressed and telling them to 'check their privilege' as the ever-changing pecking order of the 'Oppression Olympics' plays out. The rules to this sport are as fluid as the identities taking part. One of the latest dilemmas affecting the identity politics movement is the issue of whether men transitioning to women deserve recognition and acceptance or 'whether trans women aren't women and are apparently " raping ..."
"... It is much easier to 'struggle' against an equally or slightly less oppressed group than to take the time and effort to unite with them against the common enemy - capitalism. ..."
"... There is a carefully crafted misconception that identity politics derives from Marxist thought and the meaningless phrase 'cultural Marxism', which has more to do with liberal culture than Marxism, is used to sell this line of thinking. Not only does identity politics have nothing in common with Marxism, socialism or any other strand of traditional left-wing thought, it is anathema to the very concept. ..."
"... 'An injury to one is an injury to all' has been replaced with something like 'An injury to me is all that matters'. No socialist country, whether in practice or in name only, promoted identity politics. Neither the African and Asian nations that liberated themselves from colonialist oppression nor the USSR and Eastern Bloc states nor the left-wing movements that sprung up across Latin America in the early 21st century had any time to play identity politics. ..."
"... The idea that identity politics is part of traditional left-wing thought is promoted by the right who seek to demonise left wing-movements, liberals who seek to infiltrate, backstab and destroy said left-wing movements, and misguided young radicals who know nothing about political theory and have neither the patience nor discipline to learn. The last group seek a cheap thrill that makes them feel as if they have shaken the foundations of the establishment when in reality they strengthen it. ..."
"... Identity politics is typically a modern middle-class led phenomenon that helps those in charge keep the masses divided and distracted. ..."
"... Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! ..."
"... Tomasz Pierscionek is a doctor specialising in psychiatry. He was previously on the board of the charity Medact, is editor of the London Progressive Journal and has appeared as a guest on RT's Sputnik and Al-Mayadeen's Kalima Horra. ..."
The
identity politics phenomenon sweeping across the Western world is a divide and conquer strategy
that prevents the emergence of a genuine resistance to the elites. A core principle of
socialism is the idea of an overarching supra-national solidarity that unites the international
working class and overrides any factor that might divide it, such as nation, race, or gender.
Workers of all nations are partners, having equal worth and responsibility in a struggle
against those who profit from their brain and muscle.
Capitalism, especially in its most evolved, exploitative and heartless form - imperialism -
has wronged certain groups of people more than others. Colonial empires tended to reserve their
greatest brutality for subjugated peoples whilst the working class of these imperialist nations
fared better in comparison, being closer to the crumbs that fell from the table of empire. The
international class struggle aims to liberate all people everywhere from the drudgery of
capitalism regardless of their past or present degree of oppression. The phrase 'an injury
to one is an injury to all' encapsulates this mindset and conflicts with the idea of
prioritising the interests of one faction of the working class over the entire collective.
Since the latter part of the 20th century, a liberally-inspired tendency has taken root
amongst the Left (in the West at least) that encourages departure from a single identity based
on class in favour of multiple identities based upon one's gender, sexuality, race or any other
dividing factor. Each subgroup, increasingly alienated from all others, focuses on the
shared identity and unique experiences of its members and prioritises its own empowerment.
Anyone outside this subgroup is demoted to the rank of ally, at best.
At the time of writing there are apparently over
70 different gender options in the West, not to mention numerous sexualities - the
traditional LGBT acronym has thus far grown to LGBTQQIP2SAA
. Adding race to the mix results in an even greater number of possible permutations or
identities. Each subgroup has its own ideology. Precious time is spent fighting against
those deemed less oppressed and telling them to 'check their privilege' as the ever-changing
pecking order of the 'Oppression Olympics' plays out. The rules to this sport are as fluid as
the identities taking part. One of the latest dilemmas affecting the identity politics movement
is the issue of whether men transitioning to women deserve recognition and acceptance or
'whether trans women aren't women and are apparently " raping "
lesbians'.
The ideology of identity politics asserts that the straight white male is at the apex of the
privilege pyramid, responsible for the oppression of all other groups. His original sin
condemns him to everlasting shame. While it is true that straight white men (as a group) have
faced less obstacles than females, non-straight men or ethnic minorities, the majority of
straight white men, past and present, also struggle to survive from paycheck to paycheck and
are not personally involved in the oppression of any other group. While most of the world's
wealthiest
individuals are Caucasian males, millions of white men exist who are both poor and
powerless. The idea of 'whiteness' is itself an ambiguous concept involving racial profiling.
For example, the Irish, Slavs and Ashkenazi Jews may look white yet have suffered more than
their fair share of famines, occupations and genocides throughout the centuries. The idea of
tying an individual's privilege to their appearance is itself a form of racism dreamed up by
woolly minded, liberal (some might say privileged) 'intellectuals' who would be superfluous in
any socialist society.
Is the middle-class ethnic minority lesbian living in Western Europe more oppressed than the
whitish looking Syrian residing under ISIS occupation? Is the British white working class male
really more privileged than a middle class woman from the same society? Stereotyping based on
race, gender or any other factor only leads to alienation and animosity. How can there be unity
amongst the Left if we are only loyal to ourselves and those most like us? Some 'white' men who
feel the Left has nothing to offer them have decided to play the identity politics game in
their search of salvation and have drifted towards supporting Trump (a billionaire with whom
they have nothing in common) or far-right movements, resulting in further alienation, animosity
and powerlessness which in turn only strengthens the position of the top 1%. People around the
world are more divided by class than any other factor.
It is much easier to 'struggle' against an equally or slightly less oppressed group than
to take the time and effort to unite with them against the common enemy - capitalism.
Fighting oppression through identity politics is at best a lazy, perverse and fetishistic form
of the class struggle led by mostly liberal, middle class and tertiary-educated activists who
understand little of left-wing political theory. At worst it is yet another tool used by the
top 1% to divide the other 99% into 99 or 999 different competing groups who are too
preoccupied with fighting their own little corner to challenge the status quo. It is ironic
that one of the major donors to the faux-left identity politics movement is the privileged
white cisgender male billionaire
George Soros , whose NGOs helped orchestrate the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine that gave
way to the emergence of far right and neo-nazi movements: the kind of people who believe in
racial superiority and do not look kindly on diversity.
There is a carefully crafted misconception that identity politics derives from Marxist
thought and the meaningless phrase 'cultural Marxism', which has more to do with liberal
culture than Marxism, is used to sell this line of thinking. Not only does identity politics
have nothing in common with Marxism, socialism or any other strand of traditional left-wing
thought, it is anathema to the very concept.
'An injury to one is an injury to all' has been replaced with something like 'An injury
to me is all that matters'. No socialist country, whether in practice or in name only, promoted
identity politics. Neither the African and Asian nations that liberated themselves from
colonialist oppression nor the USSR and Eastern Bloc states nor the left-wing movements that
sprung up across Latin America in the early 21st century had any time to play identity
politics.
The idea that identity politics is part of traditional left-wing thought is promoted by
the right who seek to demonise left wing-movements, liberals who seek to infiltrate, backstab
and destroy said left-wing movements, and misguided young radicals who know nothing about
political theory and have neither the patience nor discipline to learn. The last group seek a
cheap thrill that makes them feel as if they have shaken the foundations of the establishment
when in reality they strengthen it.
Identity politics is typically a modern middle-class led phenomenon that helps those in
charge keep the masses divided and distracted. In the West you are free to choose any
gender or sexuality, transition between these at whim, or perhaps create your own, but you are
not allowed to question the foundations of capitalism or liberalism. Identity politics is the
new opiate of the masses and prevents organised resistance against the system. Segments of the
Western Left even believe such aforementioned 'freedoms' are a bellwether of progress and an
indicator of its cultural superiority, one that warrants export abroad be it softly via NGOs or
more bluntly through colour revolutions and regime change.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Tomasz Pierscionek is a doctor specialising in psychiatry. He was previously on the
board of the charity Medact, is editor of the London Progressive Journal and has appeared as a
guest on RT's Sputnik and Al-Mayadeen's Kalima Horra.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily represent those of RT. Read more
"... The author is a prominent American Christian conservative who was a presidential candidate for the paleoconservative Constitution Party in 2008, when he was endorsed by Ron Paul. ..."
"... He is the pastor of Liberty Fellowship, a non-denominational church in Montana, and he is a popular radio host and columnist . His weekly sermons are available on his YouTube channel. ..."
"... He is a relentless foe of neoconservatism and frequently criticizes the neocon hostility towards Russia. His views are representative of an influential and substantial part of Trump's popular support. ..."
"... Here is an archive of his excellent articles which we have published on Russia Insider , when they were relevant to the debate over Russia. ..."
"... The War on Terror ..."
"... The War On Terror: The Plot To Rule The Middle East ..."
"... The War On Terror: The Plot To Rule The Middle East ..."
"... The War On Terror: The Plot To Rule The Middle East ..."
"... The War On Terror: The Plot To Rule The Middle East ..."
"... The War On Terror: The Plot To Rule The Middle East ..."
"... The War On Terror: The Plot To Rule The Middle East ..."
"Behind the War on Terror is a strategic plan crafted decades in advance to redraw the map
of the Middle East. 9/11 was a false-flag operation blamed on Muslims ..." Chuck Baldwin Wed, Aug 1, 2018 | 14,261
389 MORE: HistoryRevisionist HistoryThe author is a
prominent American Christian conservative who was a presidential candidate for the
paleoconservative Constitution Party in 2008, when he was endorsed by Ron Paul.
He is a relentless foe of neoconservatism and frequently criticizes the neocon hostility
towards Russia. His views are representative of an influential and substantial part of Trump's
popular support.
What if everything we've been told about 9/11 is a lie? What if it wasn't 19 Muslim
terrorist hijackers that flew those planes into the Twin Towers and Pentagon? What if the
Muslims had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks on 9/11? What if everything we've been
told about the reasons we invaded two sovereign nations (Afghanistan and Iraq) is a lie?
What if the 17-year-old, never-ending "War on Terror" in the Middle East is a lie? What if
our young soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who have given their lives in America's "War on
Terror" died for a lie? What if G.W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump have been nothing but
controlled toadies for an international global conspiracy that hatched the attacks of 9/11 as
nothing more than a means to institute a perpetual "War on Terror" for purposes that have
nothing to do with America's national security? Would the American people want to know? Would
the truth even matter to them?
The sad reality is that the vast majority of Americans who would read the above paragraph
would totally dismiss every question I raised as being unrealistic and impossible -- or even
nutty. Why is that? Have they studied and researched the questions? No. Have they given any
serious thought to the questions? No. They have simply swallowed the government/mainstream
media version of these events hook, line and sinker.
It is totally amazing to me that the same people who say they don't believe the mainstream
media (MSM) and government (Deep State) versions of current events -- which is why they voted
for and love Donald Trump -- have absolutely no reservations about accepting the official story
that the 9/11 attacks were the work of jihadist Muslims and that America's "War on Terror" is
completely legitimate.
These "always Trumpers" are dead set in their minds that America is at war with Islam; that
Trump's bombings of Syria were because President Assad is an evil, maniacal monster who gassed
his own people; and that Trump's expansion of the war in Afghanistan is totally in the
interests of America's national security.
BUT WHAT IF ALL OF IT IS A BIG, FAT LIE?
What if the Muslims had NOTHING to do with 9/11?
What if Bashar al-Assad did NOT gas his own people?
What if America's "War on Terror" is a completely false, manufactured, made-up
deception?
What if America's military forces are mostly fighting for foreign agendas and NOT for
America's national security or even our national interests?
What if America's war in Afghanistan is a fraud?
What if the entire "War on Terror" is a fraud?
The Trump robots have bought into America's "War on Terror" as much as Obama's robots and
Bush's robots did. Bush was elected twice, largely on the basis of America's "War on Terror."
Obama campaigned against the "War on Terror" and then expanded it during his two terms in
office. Trump campaigned against the "War on Terror" and then immediately expanded it beyond
what Obama had done. In fact, Trump is on a pace to expand the "War on Terror" beyond the
combined military aggressions of both Bush and Obama.
But who cares? Who even notices?
America is engaged in a global "War on Terror." Just ask G.W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald
Trump, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX News, The Washington Post, the New York Times and the vast
majority of America's pastors and preachers. They all tell us the same thing seven days a week,
twenty-four hours a day. Liberals scream against Trump, and conservatives scream against Maxine
Waters; but both sides come together to support America's never-ending "War on Terror."
But what if it's ALL a lie? What if Obama and Trump, the right and the left, the MSM and the
conservative media are all reading from the same script? What if they are all (wittingly or
unwittingly) in cahoots in perpetuating the biggest scam in world history? And why is almost
everyone afraid to even broach the question?
Left or right, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, secular or Christian, no one
dares to question the official story about the 9/11 attacks or the "War on Terror."
And those who do question it are themselves attacked unmercifully by the right and the left,
conservatives and liberals, Christians and secularists, Sean Hannity and Chris Matthews. Why is
that? Why is it that FOX News and CNN, Donald Trump and Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer and Ted
Cruz equally promote the same cockamamie story about 9/11 and the "War on Terror?"
Why? Why? Why?
Tell me again how Donald Trump is so different from Barack Obama. Tell me again how Ted Cruz
is so different from Chuck Schumer. They all continue to perpetuate the lies about 9/11. They
all continue to escalate America's never-ending "War on Terror." They are all puppets of a
global conspiracy to advance the agenda of war profiteers and nation builders.
The left-right, conservative-liberal, Trump-Obama paradigm is one big giant SCAM. At the end
of the day, the "War on Terror" goes on, bombs keep falling on people in the Middle East who
had absolutely NOTHING to do with 9/11 and the money keeps flowing into the coffers of the
international bankers and war merchants.
All of the above is why I am enthusiastically promoting Christopher Bollyn's new blockbuster
book
The War on Terror .
Of course, Bollyn is one of the world's foremost researchers and investigators into the
attacks on 9/11. He has written extensively on the subject. But unlike most other 9/11
investigators, Bollyn continued to trace the tracks of the attacks on 9/11. And those tracks
led him to discover that the 9/11 attacks were NOT "the event" but that they were merely the
trigger for "the event." "What was the event?" you ask. America's perpetual "War on
Terror."
As a result, Mr. Bollyn published his findings that the attacks on 9/11 were NOT perpetrated
by Muslim extremists but by a very elaborate and well financed international conspiracy that
had been in the planning for several decades. Bollyn's research names names, places and dates
and exposes the truth behind not just 9/11 (many have done that) but behind America's "War on
Terror" that resulted from the attacks on 9/11.
IT'S TIME FOR THE TRUTH TO COME OUT!
And Christopher Bollyn's investigative research brings out the truth like nothing I've read
to date. His research connects the dots and destroys the myths.
Mr. Bollyn's research is published in a book entitled (full title):
The War On Terror: The Plot To Rule The Middle East . I mean it when I say that if
enough people read this book, it could change the course of history and save our republic.
This is written on the book's back cover:
The government and media have misled us about 9/11 in order to compel public opinion to
support the War on Terror.
Why have we gone along with it? Do we accept endless war as normal? Are we numb to the
suffering caused by our military interventions?
No. We have simply been propagandized into submission. We have been deceived into thinking
that the War on Terror is a good thing, a valiant struggle against terrorists who intend to
attack us as we were on 9/11.
Behind the War on Terror is a strategic plan crafted decades in advance to redraw the map
of the Middle East. 9/11 was a false-flag operation blamed on Muslims in order to start the
military operations for that strategic plan. Recognizing the origin of the plan is crucial to
understanding the deception that has changed our world.
Folks, 9/11 was a deception. The "War on Terror" is a deception. The phony left-right
paradigm is a deception. FOX News is as much a deception as CNN. The "always Trump" group is as
much a deception as the "never Trump" group. America has been in the throes of a great
deception since September 11, 2001. And this deception is being perpetrated by Republicans and
Democrats and conservatives and liberals alike.
I do not know Christopher Bollyn. I've never met him. But I thank God he had the
intellectual honesty and moral courage to write this book. I urge readers to get this explosive
new book. If you don't read any other book this year, read Mr. Bollyn's investigative
masterpiece:
The War On Terror: The Plot To Rule The Middle East .
Again, I am enthusiastically recommending this book to my readers, and I make no apologies
for doing so. The truth contained in this research MUST get out, and I am determined to do all
I can to help make that possible.
Order Christopher Bollyn's blockbuster book The War On Terror: The Plot To Rule The
Middle East here:
I am confident that after you read this book, you will want to buy copies for your friends
and relatives. The book is under 200 pages long and is not difficult reading. However, the
facts and details Bollyn covers are profound and powerful. I have read the book three times so
far and I'm not finished.
Frankly, Bollyn's book made so many things make sense for me. His book dovetails and tracks
with much of my research on other topics. Truly, his book helped me get a much fuller
understanding of the "big picture."
What if everything we've been told about 9/11 and the "War on Terror" is a lie? Well,
Bollyn's book proves that indeed it is.
Again, here is where to find Christopher Bollyn's phenomenal new book The War On Terror:
The Plot To Rule The Middle East :
Worked that out, when following events in Ukraine. All main events, since my birth and
long before then, were no more than Operation Gladio false flags. It takes a lot to get
your head around that, without feeling blind fury to your Governments, of each and every
day. Plus media manipulation.
AaronB, your observations are always insightful and interesting. I wonder if you believe
in freewill at all, even in "insignificant" matters because time and sequence are all
important and such trivial events set up the really big ones in our lives.
"Human beings, in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free but as causally bound
as the stars in their motions." – Albert Einstein.
...so, take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections. Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue
of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that's almost a joke .
First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts
or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support.
Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done...
I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing
the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president's policies - what happened
with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015 ....
Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to - calling on them to reverse U.S. policy, without
even informing the president? And that's just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence.
So if you happen to be interested in influence of - foreign influence on elections, there are places to look. But even that
is a joke.
I mean, one of the most elementary principles of a functioning democracy is that elected representatives should be responsive
to those who elected them. There's nothing more elementary than that. But we know very well that that is simply not the case in
the United States.
There's ample literature in mainstream academic political science simply comparing voters' attitudes with the policies pursued
by their representatives, and it shows that for a large majority of the population, they're basically disenfranchised. Their own
representatives pay no attention to their voices. They listen to the voices of the famous 1 percent - the rich and the powerful,
the corporate sector.
The elections -- Tom Ferguson's stellar work has demonstrated, very conclusively, that for a long period, way back, U.S. elections
have been pretty much bought. You can predict the outcome of a presidential or congressional election with remarkable precision
by simply looking at campaign spending. That's only one part of it. Lobbyists practically write legislation in congressional offices.
In massive ways, the concentrated private capital, corporate sector, super wealth, intervene in our elections, massively, overwhelmingly,
to the extent that the most elementary principles of democracy are undermined. Now, of course, all that is technically legal,
but that tells you something about the way the society functions.
So, if you're concerned with our elections and how they operate and how they relate to what would happen in a democratic society,
taking a look at Russian hacking is absolutely the wrong place to look. Well, you see occasionally some attention to these matters
in the media, but very minor as compared with the extremely marginal question of Russian hacking.
And I think we find this on issue after issue, also on issues on which what Trump says, for whatever reason, is not unreasonable.
So, he's perfectly right when he says we should have better relations with Russia.
Being dragged through the mud for that is outlandish, makes - Russia shouldn't refuse to deal with the United States because
the U.S. carried out the worst crime of the century in the invasion of Iraq, much worse than anything Russia has done .
But they shouldn't refuse to deal with us for that reason, and we shouldn't refuse to deal with them for whatever infractions
they may have carried out, which certainly exist. This is just absurd. We have to move towards better - right at the Russian border,
there are very extreme tensions, that could blow up anytime and lead to what would in fact be a terminal nuclear war, terminal
for the species and life on Earth. We're very close to that.
Now, we could ask why. First of all, we should do things to ameliorate it. Secondly, we should ask why. Well, it's because
NATO expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in violation of verbal promises to Mikhail Gorbachev, mostly under Clinton,
partly under first Bush, then Clinton expanded right to the Russian border, expanded further under Obama.
The U.S. has offered to bring Ukraine into NATO. That's the kind of a heartland of Russian geostrategic concerns.
So, yes, there's tensions at the Russian border - and not, notice, at the Mexican border. Well, those are all issues that should
be of primary concern.
The fate of - the fate of organized human society, even of the survival of the species, depends on this. How much attention
is given to these things as compared with, you know, whether Trump lied about something? I think those seem to me the fundamental
criticisms of the media.
So to sum up - Trump's right about better relations with Russia - the fate of the world depends on it, Russia did nothing of note,
Russian hacking is extremely marginal, Israel is the real meddler, US democracy no longer exists, the billionaire corporatocracy
runs America.
...so, take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections. Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue
of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that's almost a joke .
First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts
or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support.
Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done...
I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing
the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president's policies - what happened
with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015 ....
Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to - calling on them to reverse U.S. policy, without
even informing the president? And that's just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence.
So if you happen to be interested in influence of - foreign influence on elections, there are places to look. But even that
is a joke.
I mean, one of the most elementary principles of a functioning democracy is that elected representatives should be responsive
to those who elected them. There's nothing more elementary than that. But we know very well that that is simply not the case in
the United States.
There's ample literature in mainstream academic political science simply comparing voters' attitudes with the policies pursued
by their representatives, and it shows that for a large majority of the population, they're basically disenfranchised. Their own
representatives pay no attention to their voices. They listen to the voices of the famous 1 percent - the rich and the powerful,
the corporate sector.
The elections -- Tom Ferguson's stellar work has demonstrated, very conclusively, that for a long period, way back, U.S. elections
have been pretty much bought. You can predict the outcome of a presidential or congressional election with remarkable precision
by simply looking at campaign spending. That's only one part of it. Lobbyists practically write legislation in congressional offices.
In massive ways, the concentrated private capital, corporate sector, super wealth, intervene in our elections, massively, overwhelmingly,
to the extent that the most elementary principles of democracy are undermined. Now, of course, all that is technically legal,
but that tells you something about the way the society functions.
So, if you're concerned with our elections and how they operate and how they relate to what would happen in a democratic society,
taking a look at Russian hacking is absolutely the wrong place to look. Well, you see occasionally some attention to these matters
in the media, but very minor as compared with the extremely marginal question of Russian hacking.
And I think we find this on issue after issue, also on issues on which what Trump says, for whatever reason, is not unreasonable.
So, he's perfectly right when he says we should have better relations with Russia.
Being dragged through the mud for that is outlandish, makes - Russia shouldn't refuse to deal with the United States because
the U.S. carried out the worst crime of the century in the invasion of Iraq, much worse than anything Russia has done .
But they shouldn't refuse to deal with us for that reason, and we shouldn't refuse to deal with them for whatever infractions
they may have carried out, which certainly exist. This is just absurd. We have to move towards better - right at the Russian border,
there are very extreme tensions, that could blow up anytime and lead to what would in fact be a terminal nuclear war, terminal
for the species and life on Earth. We're very close to that.
Now, we could ask why. First of all, we should do things to ameliorate it. Secondly, we should ask why. Well, it's because
NATO expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in violation of verbal promises to Mikhail Gorbachev, mostly under Clinton,
partly under first Bush, then Clinton expanded right to the Russian border, expanded further under Obama.
The U.S. has offered to bring Ukraine into NATO. That's the kind of a heartland of Russian geostrategic concerns.
So, yes, there's tensions at the Russian border - and not, notice, at the Mexican border. Well, those are all issues that should
be of primary concern.
The fate of - the fate of organized human society, even of the survival of the species, depends on this. How much attention
is given to these things as compared with, you know, whether Trump lied about something? I think those seem to me the fundamental
criticisms of the media.
So to sum up - Trump's right about better relations with Russia - the fate of the world depends on it, Russia did nothing of note,
Russian hacking is extremely marginal, Israel is the real meddler, US democracy no longer exists, the billionaire corporatocracy
runs America.
"... These laws allow a company that believes a foreign rival is selling a product below cost to request that the government impose special tariffs to protect it. Selling products below cost is called dumping, and the duties are called dumping duties. Often, however, the U.S. government determines costs on the basis of little evidence, and in ways which make little sense. To most economists, the dumping duties are simply naked protectionism. Why, they ask, would a rational firm sell goods below cost? ..."
"... Cartels work by restricting output, thereby raising prices. O'Neill's interest was no surprise to me; what did surprise me was the idea that the U.S. government would not only condone a cartel but actually play a pivotal role in setting one up. He also raised the specter of using the antidumping laws if the cartel was not created. These laws allow the United States to impose special duties on goods that arc sold at below a "fair market value," and particularly when they are sold below the cost of production. ..."
"... The reality is that the US empire was always conducting trade wars that included not only tariffs on specific products, but even deliberately created cartels. ..."
"... In the early 90s the Clinton administration uncritically adopted the neoliberal doctrine from Ronald Reagan and continued the big fraud against the majority of the Americans. ..."
"... On the one hand, the Clinton administration was selling the big fairy tale of neoliberalism to the American public: free market capitalism would bring prosperity for all through that trickle-down fiasco. And it was translated, as always, in further cuts in public spending - more tax-cuts for the super-rich. On the other hand, behind the scenes, the same administration was implementing the most aggressive protectionism in favor of some US corporations and against consumers. ..."
Donald Trump is using his trade wars to support the part of the US capital that has heavily
lost from free trade globalization, which is more powerful than ever in our days. This is also
part of the Trump agenda to persuade Americans for his "patriotic devotion" based on his
"America First" slogan.
The reality is that the US empire was always conducting trade wars that included not only
tariffs on specific products, but even deliberately created cartels.
In the early 90s the Clinton administration uncritically adopted the neoliberal doctrine from
Ronald Reagan and continued the big fraud against the majority of the Americans.
On the one hand, the Clinton administration was selling the big fairy tale of neoliberalism to
the American public: free market capitalism would bring prosperity for all through that
trickle-down fiasco. And it was translated, as always, in further cuts in public spending -
more tax-cuts for the super-rich. On the other hand, behind the scenes, the same administration
was implementing the most aggressive protectionism in favor of some US corporations and against
consumers.
In his book Globalization and its discontents , Joseph Stiglitz describes how the United
States under Clinton administration set up a cartel in favor of the US aluminum industry:
The United States supports free trade, but all too often, when a poor country does manage to
find a commodity it can export to the United States, domestic American protectionist interests
are galvanized. This mix of labor and business interests uses the many trade laws - officially
referred to as "fair trade laws," but known outside the United States as "unfair fair trade
laws"- to construct barbed-wire barriers to imports.
These laws allow a company that believes a foreign rival is selling a product below cost to
request that the government impose special tariffs to protect it. Selling products below cost
is called dumping, and the duties are called dumping duties. Often, however, the U.S.
government determines costs on the basis of little evidence, and in ways which make little
sense. To most economists, the dumping duties are simply naked protectionism. Why, they ask,
would a rational firm sell goods below cost?
During my term in government, perhaps the most grievous instance of U.S. special interests
interfering in trade - and the reform process - occurred in early 1994, just after the price of
aluminum plummeted. In response to the fall in price, U.S. aluminum producers accused Russia of
dumping aluminum.
Any economic analysis of the situation showed clearly that Russia was not dumping. Russia was
simply selling aluminum at the international price, which was lowered both because of a global
slowdown in demand occasioned by slower global growth and because of the cutback in Russian
aluminum use for military planes. Moreover, new soda can designs used substantially less
aluminum than before, and this also led to a decline in the demand.
As I saw the price of aluminum plummet, I knew the industry would soon be appealing to the
government for some form of relief, either new subsidies or new protection from foreign
competition. But even I was surprised at the proposal made by the head of Alcoa, Paul O'Neill:
a global aluminum cartel.
Cartels work by restricting output, thereby raising prices. O'Neill's interest was no surprise
to me; what did surprise me was the idea that the U.S. government would not only condone a
cartel but actually play a pivotal role in setting one up. He also raised the specter of using
the antidumping laws if the cartel was not created. These laws allow the United States to
impose special duties on goods that arc sold at below a "fair market value," and particularly
when they are sold below the cost of production.
I worked hard to convince those in the National Economic Council that it would be a mistake to
support O'Neill's idea, and I made great progress. But in a heated subcabinet meeting, a
decision was made to support the creation of an international cartel.
While I had managed to convince almost everyone of the dangers of the cartel solution, two
voices dominated. The State Department, with its close connections to the old-line state
ministries, supported the establishment of a cartel. The State Department prized order above
all else, and cartels do provide order. The old-line ministries, of course, were never
convinced that this movement to prices and markets made sense in the first place, and the
experience with aluminum simply served to confirm their views.
Rubin, at that time head of the National Economic Council, played a decisive role, siding with
State. At least for a while, the cartel did work. Prices were raised. The protfits of Alcoa and
other producers were enhanced. The American consumers - and consumers throughout the world -
lost, and indeed, the basic principles of economics, which teach the value of competitive
markets, show that the losses to consumers outweigh the gains to producers. Donald Trump is
using his trade wars to support the part of the US capital that has heavily lost from free
trade globalization, which is more powerful than ever in our days. This is also part of the
Trump agenda to persuade Americans for his "patriotic devotion" based on his "America First"
slogan.
The reality is that the US empire was always conducting trade wars that included not only
tariffs on specific products, but even deliberately created cartels.
In the early 90s the Clinton administration uncritically adopted the neoliberal doctrine from
Ronald Reagan and continued the big fraud against the majority of the Americans.
On the one hand, the Clinton administration was selling the big fairy tale of neoliberalism to
the American public: free market capitalism would bring prosperity for all through that
trickle-down fiasco. And it was translated, as always, in further cuts in public spending -
more tax-cuts for the super-rich. On the other hand, behind the scenes, the same administration
was implementing the most aggressive protectionism in favor of some US corporations and against
consumers.
In his book Globalization and its discontents , Joseph Stiglitz describes how the United
States under Clinton administration set up a cartel in favor of the US aluminum industry:
The United States supports free trade, but all too often, when a poor country does manage to
find a commodity it can export to the United States, domestic American protectionist interests
are galvanized. This mix of labor and business interests uses the many trade laws - officially
referred to as "fair trade laws," but known outside the United States as "unfair fair trade
laws"- to construct barbed-wire barriers to imports.
These laws allow a company that believes a foreign rival is selling a product below cost to
request that the government impose special tariffs to protect it. Selling products below cost
is called dumping, and the duties are called dumping duties. Often, however, the U.S.
government determines costs on the basis of little evidence, and in ways which make little
sense. To most economists, the dumping duties are simply naked protectionism. Why, they ask,
would a rational firm sell goods below cost?
During my term in government, perhaps the most grievous instance of U.S. special interests
interfering in trade - and the reform process - occurred in early 1994, just after the price of
aluminum plummeted. In response to the fall in price, U.S. aluminum producers accused Russia of
dumping aluminum.
Any economic analysis of the situation showed clearly that Russia was not dumping. Russia was
simply selling aluminum at the international price, which was lowered both because of a global
slowdown in demand occasioned by slower global growth and because of the cutback in Russian
aluminum use for military planes. Moreover, new soda can designs used substantially less
aluminum than before, and this also led to a decline in the demand.
As I saw the price of aluminum plummet, I knew the industry would soon be appealing to the
government for some form of relief, either new subsidies or new protection from foreign
competition. But even I was surprised at the proposal made by the head of Alcoa, Paul O'Neill:
a global aluminum cartel.
Cartels work by restricting output, thereby raising prices. O'Neill's interest was no surprise
to me; what did surprise me was the idea that the U.S. government would not only condone a
cartel but actually play a pivotal role in setting one up. He also raised the specter of using
the antidumping laws if the cartel was not created. These laws allow the United States to
impose special duties on goods that arc sold at below a "fair market value," and particularly
when they are sold below the cost of production.
I worked hard to convince those in the National Economic Council that it would be a mistake to
support O'Neill's idea, and I made great progress. But in a heated subcabinet meeting, a
decision was made to support the creation of an international cartel.
While I had managed to convince almost everyone of the dangers of the cartel solution, two
voices dominated. The State Department, with its close connections to the old-line state
ministries, supported the establishment of a cartel. The State Department prized order above
all else, and cartels do provide order. The old-line ministries, of course, were never
convinced that this movement to prices and markets made sense in the first place, and the
experience with aluminum simply served to confirm their views.
Rubin, at that time head of the National Economic Council, played a decisive role, siding with
State. At least for a while, the cartel did work. Prices were raised. The protfits of Alcoa and
other producers were enhanced. The American consumers - and consumers throughout the world -
lost, and indeed, the basic principles of economics, which teach the value of competitive
markets, show that the losses to consumers outweigh the gains to producers.
It's not just not enough jobs. there is not enough meaningful jobs. That create huge alienation. People are
alienated politically as they do not see political party that represents them
Alienated population can go left or right including to support of neofascists. Economic stagnation at the end of Weimar
republic is other historical warning. In 1950 people were exploited but can afford famiality, house and a car. Now there are
whole area in the USA that are decollate. Rural Ohio is one example. Economy does not work for other then top 1%. Who doo not
object social chaos as it does snot prevent them from enriching themselves.
Capitalism is its own worst enemy. There is no need for socialism. Capitalism destroys
itself. Everything becomes a commodity: health care, education, sex through pornography, and
even human life itself through abortion; all the way to exhaustion or collapse. Capitalism
commodifies everything to the point of eating itself! That is why a third way between
capitalism and socialism is needed such
The rich know that everyone is selfish, so they orchestrate society such that everyone
gets to enrich themselves upon the misery of those in a lower-class. End result being that
the educated upper-half of society owns all the land, wealth, quality healthcare and
political power. For bigotry is to enrich yourself upon the misery of anyone with less
education, less wealth or less whiteness.
Peter Lavelle is the only one I have heard say that Murica only gave sweetheart trade
deals to countries like South Korea, Japan, the EU, NATO countries, Canada, Mexico, etc. to
woo them and entice them away from the CCCP. There are numerous examples. The Marshall Plan
to reconstruct Europe after WWII was not out of kindness but to ensure that EuroPeon
countries did not turn to the CCCP for assistance and in turn reliance. The Vietnam War
bankrupted Murica. Nixon closed the gold window. France repatriated their gold from Murica.
This started the era of the USD backed by nothing but debt and it was only possible by having
China worship capitalism. China agreed to worship capitalism and honor the USD in exchange
for a preferential trade deal. This allowed Murica to print money, import cheap Chinese
goods, and outspend the CCCP on the military. Today, Murica is getting ripped off big league
whether it's NATO countries not living up to their 2% GDP military spending as obligated by
treaty or Canada and Mexico on NAFTA. Trump is simply trying to make things more equitable
for Murica. Murica basically sold out the wealth of the average Murican to appease and curry
favour with other countries who don't care about Murica as evident today. Even if these so
called allies agreed to Trump's demands, it's still a good deal for them. Where is Europe,
Japan, Canada, Mexico, etc. going to go to for defence? These countries don't have the
courage or means to be independent. Look at the UK. The UK can't even break from the EU. All
Trump is saying is pay your fair share. This also proves capitalism is a failure. Without
Murica literally giving away its wealth these so called allied capitalist countries would not
exist. Capitalism naturally destroys itself. People have to worship capitalism. To worship is
to sacrifice.
Marx was right about capitalism in its present form - however Socialism or Communism is
not the answer (Soviet Union Shows us this). The problem is not capitalism, which everyone
must admit has done wonderful things in bringing up the living standards of many people. Now,
here is the thing as the rich get richer from capitalism they collude, build monopolies, and
rig the game in their favor and that is where we are now --- but this is a problem with ANY
Centralized power - whether in Capitalism or in Communism -- people are prone to corruption
and pychiopaths tend to become leaders because they will do anything to win. So the answer is
to change the incentives that are incentivise that the more you help others the more you help
yourself and the other thing is to keep the system decentralized. Everyone is their own
entrepeneur and everyone is responsible for themselves -- NO MORE NANNY STATE , cradle to
grave. EOS is a cryptocurrency that looks to do just this -- I suggest everyone look into
this.
There's a dichotomy of conservatism vs radicalism. In discussion they form polar opposites
though they're probably complementary. The worst of conservatism is thought to result in
stagnation while the worse of radical is thought to result in chaos. So, we have an
ultra-conservative oligarchy that wants no change and a free-market for ordinary people -
essentially we get the worst of both conservatism and radicalism i.e. stagnation and chaos at
the same time.
It is interesting to hear how capital accumulates wealth and therefore money power and
what disastrous results it creates while never talking and questioning about the legitimacy
of private property and the fact that this fraudulent right of private property on wealth
produced by the community at large is what allows these monstrous identities such as
billionaires and corporations to manipulate and corrupt the entire political and economical
life of countries around the world. No one should be allowed to accumulate more than a
certain amount which would be worked out democratically. Such understanding would eliminate
monolithic identities on a private basis and only public ones would have the power to use the
power of money and doing so under public management for the benefit of all. Oligarchs have to
be eliminated.
Mainstream media is OWNED by the greedy sociopaths who have been running things for
decades. OF COURSE they do not want to talk about how HORRIBLE they have run things, or give
up their MONEY STREAMS. And as more of the public learns how our federal money ACTUALLY WORKS
(NOT at all like the LIES we have been told for so long), people will be ANGRIER at how the
corrupt have taken federal money TO ENRICH THEMSELVES, mainly via the scam of privatization.
China is NOT in debt, as far as I know - they have simply spent their national currency on
what it is SUPPOSED to be spent on - the good of ALL. Our Constitution says that, too,
Article 1, Section 8. The people running our country for several decades have been TREASONOUS
in harming our country and taking federal money for themselves, intentionally DEFUNDING
things so they could push their privatization scam, etc. Chris Hedges and this man, David
Harvey, do NOT understand that our federal govt can issue ANY AMOUNT OF MONEY for anything
that is physically possible. We have had people in charge who did not bother to PLAN for good
things for the country, they just wanted the money by SCAMMING us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNCZHAQnfGU
I am for re-nationalisation of crucial industries and services. Why? As a (global) society
we face two main threats: socio-economically it is the unfathomable Wealth Gap, the other is
the environment, including Climate Change. Both are entangled, the connective point:
(neoliberal) Capitalism (including its byproduct, Consumerism). I would like to say those
issues are getting tackled. But they are not. Look around, media and the public alike are
talking endlessly about... any other topics. Some are valid (racism, migrant crisis and
mistreatment, MeToo etc). But they are missing the underlying structure that creates
practically all those problems: Capitalism, again. Somehow people have to learn that the
environment is essential, not just some "spoilsport annoying issue created by some stupid
entitled bourgeois white folks who hate humans, especially brown and poor people, who they
possible even want to get rid of via genocide" or some similar B.S. that seems to make the
rounds in leftist circles. (I do not even mention what right wingers think of it, they just
care for money anyway.) If people do not even see environmental issues as vital and
essential, it will be hard to do what has to be done. And it HAS to be done. Tackling
environmental and social issues would be so much easier if crucial industries would be owned
by the public. There is a strategy behind the anti-government sentiment that makes the rounds
on the right, not only in libertarian circles. But Government (flawed as it is - there is
much room for reform and better candidates) should represent the people and work for them and
in their name. Public owned means owned by the citizenry. That is a good thing! We, the
regular people, should demand more public owned industries and services! Government should
play a bigger role, ditch the B.S. about "private enterprise is always better", the selling
out of public lands, services (education, transport, electricity) etc. Those "neoliberal"
ideas are still perpetuated, even if they were proven wrong. I think Government should
actually nationalise several industries. For instance the chemical industry. It is highly
dangerous (prone to accidents, pollution etc) and their products are potentially toxic for
the consumer. That is not a good combination of facts for a profit driven industry! The
Government could put up e.g. higher environmental and work safety standards, limit certain
toxins that are on the market (pesticides which kill bees, cancer causing materials etc.).
Also, since the pharmaceutical industry is part of it, the Government could produce and sell
medicine for a reasonable price; the profits would go back to the state, i.e. the citizens.
And of cause, accountability and transparency are a must, even if the industry is owned by
the public. Insane that we are not doing this! For the sake of society and environment alike.
To communicate this to the general public has to be the main effort of activists. For less
crucial industries and enterprises, I am absolutely for Richard Wolff`s "Worker Co-ops" idea.
And of course, there can be small businesses that are privately owned, too (e.g. B&Bs,
restaurants) as long as they follow environmental, health/safety and work(er) related
regulations. But big companies, multi-nationals should be dismantled.
"People are alienated from the sense that they can have a meaningful life at work. It's
not simply that there's not enough jobs, it's not enough meaningful jobs." - Marx's
theory of alienation of labor. I've been feeling this all my adult life.
Completely free market is like leaving a system "alone" in physics: the entropy increases.
This seems to be OK as increased entropy seems to imply a more uniform spread.
But the problem is that this is not actually true: since the 1970s we know that the largest
entropy configuration by far is not a uniform spread but a single black
hole.
In recent decades throughout Latin America, rulers have spoken and demanded 'reforms' as
essential to stimulate and sustain growth and foster equity and sustainability. The 'reforms'
involve implementing 'structural changes' which require large scale privatization to encourage
entrepreneurship and end state corruption; deregulation of the economy to stimulate foreign and
domestic investment; labor flexibility to 'free' labor markets and increase employment; and
lower business taxes. According to the reformers all this will lead to free markets and promote
democratic values.
Over the past thirty years, ruling elites in Latin America have carried out IMF and World
Bank structural reforms in two cyclical periods: between 1989-1999 and more recently between
2015-2018. In both cases the reforms have led to a series of major economic, political and
social deformations .
During the first cycle of 'reforms', privatization concentrated wealth by transferring
public means of production to oligarchs, and increased private monopolies, which deepened
inequalities and sharpened class divisions.
Deregulation led to financial speculation, tax evasion, capital flight and public- private
corruption.
'Reforms' deformed the existing class structure provoking social upheavals, which
precipitated the collapse of the elite led 'reforms' and the advent of a decade of nationalist
populist governments.
The populists restored and expanded social reforms but did not change the political and
economic 'deformations', embedded in the state.
A decade later (2015) the 'reformers' returned to power and restored the regressive free
market policies of the previous neo-liberal ruling elite. By 2018 a new cycle of class
conflicts flared throughout Brazil and Argentina, threatening to overturn the existing US
center free market order.
Paul Sliker: So, Michael, over the past few months the IMF has been sending warning
signals about the state of the global economy. There are a bunch of different macroeconomic
developments that signal we could be entering into another crisis or recession in the near
future. One of those elements is the yield curve, which shows the difference between short-term
and long-term borrowing rates. Investors and financial pundits of all sorts are concerned about
this, because since 1950 every time the yield curve has flattened, the economy has tanked
shortly thereafter.
Can you explain what the yield curve signifies, and if all these signals I just mentioned
are forecasting another economic crisis?
Michael Hudson: Normally, borrowers have to pay only a low rate of interest for a
short-term loan. If you take a longer-term loan, you have to pay a higher rate. The longest
term loans are for mortgages, which have the highest rate. Even for large corporations, the
longer you borrow – that is, the later you repay – the pretense is that the risk is
much higher. Therefore, you have to pay a higher rate on the pretense that the interest-rate
premium is compensation for risk. Banks and the wealthy get to borrow at lower rates.
Right now what's happened is that the short-term rates you can get by putting your money in
Treasury bills or other short-term instruments are even higher than the long-term rates. That's
historically unnatural. But it's not really unnatural at all when you look at what the economy
is doing.
You said that we're entering into a recession. That's just the flat wrong statement. The
economy's been in a recession ever since 2008, as a result of what President Obama did by
bailing out the banks and not the economy at large.
Since 2008, people talk about "look at how that GDP is growing." Especially in the last few
quarters, you have the media saying look, "we've recovered. GDP is up." But if you look at what
they count as GDP, you find a primer on how to lie with statistics.
The largest element of fakery is a category that is imputed – that is, made up –
for rising rents that homeowners would have to pay if they had to rent their houses from
themselves. That's about 6 percent of GDP right there. Right now, as a result of the 10 million
foreclosures that Obama imposed on the economy by not writing down the junk mortgage debts to
realistic values, companies like Blackstone have come in and bought up many of the properties
that were forfeited. So now there are fewer homes that are available to buy. Rents are going up
all over the country. Homeownership has dropped by abut 10 percent since 2008, and that means
more people have to rent. When more people have to rent, the rents go up. And when rents go up,
people lucky enough to have kept their homes report these rising rental values to the GDP
statisticians.
If I had to pay rent for the house that I have, could charge as much money as renters down
the street have to pay – for instance, for houses that were bought out by Blackstone.
Rents are going up and up. This actually is a rise in overhead, but it's counted as rising GDP.
That confuses income and output with overhead costs.
The other great jump in GDP has been people paying more money to the banks as penalties and
fees for arrears on student loans and mortgage loans, credit card loans and automobile loans.
When they fall into arrears, the banks get to add a penalty charge. The credit-card companies
make more money on arrears than they do on interest charges. This is counted as providing a
"financial service," defined as the amount of revenue banks make over and above their borrowing
charges.
The statistical pretense is that they're taking the risk on making loans to debtors that are
going bad. They're cleaning up on profits on these bad loans, because the government has
guaranteed the student loans including the higher penalty charges. They've guaranteed the
mortgages loans made by the FHA – Fannie Mae and the other groups – that the banks
are getting penalty charges on. So what's reported is that GDP growth is actually more and more
people in trouble, along with rising housing costs. What's good for the GDP here is awful for
the economy at large! This is bad news, not good news.
As a result of this economic squeeze, investors see that the economy is not growing. So
they're bailing out. They're taking their money and running.
If you're taking your money out of bonds and out of the stock market because you worry about
shrinking markets, lower profits and defaults, where are you going to put it? There's only one
safe place to put your money: short-term treasuries. You don't want to buy a long-term Treasury
bond, because if the interest rates go up then the bond price falls. So you want buy short-term
Treasury bonds. The demand for this is so great that Bogle's Vanguard fund management company
will only let small investors buy ten thousand dollars worth at a time for their 401K
funds.
The reason small to large investors are buying short term treasuries is to park their money
safely. There's nowhere else to put it in the real economy, because the real economy isn't
growing.
What has grown is debt. It's grown larger and larger. Investors are taking their
money out of state and local bonds because state and local budgets are broke as a result of
pension commitments. Politicians have cut taxes in order to get elected, so they don't have
enough money to keep up with the pension fund contributions that they're supposed to make.
This means that the likelihood of a break in the chain of payments is rising. In the United
States, commercial property rents are in trouble. We've discussed that before on this show. As
the economy shrinks, stores are closing down. That means that the owners who own commercial
mortgages are falling behind, and arrears are rising.
Also threatening is what Trump is doing. If his protectionist policies interrupt trade,
you're going to see companies being squeezed. They're not going to make the export sales they
expected, and will pay more for imports.
Finally, banks are having problems of they hold Italian government bonds. Germany is
unwilling to use European funds to bail them out. Most investors expect Italy to do exit the
euro in the next three years or so. It looks like we're entering a period of anarchy, so of
course people are parking their money in the short term. That means that they're not putting it
into the economy. No wonder the economy isn't growing.
Dante Dallavalle: So to be clear: a rise in demand for these short-term Treasuries is
an indication that investors and businesses find too much risk in the economy as it stands now
to be investing in anything more long-term.
Michael Hudson: That's exactly right.
Dante Dallavelle: OK. So we have prominent economists and policymakers, like
Geithner, Bernanke Paulson, etc., making the point that we need not worry about a future crisis
in the near term, because our regulatory infrastructure is more sound now than it was in the
past, for instance before 2008. I know you've talked a lot about the weak nature of financial
regulation both here at home in the United States and internationally. What are the
shortcomings of Dodd Frank? Haven't recent policies gutting certain sections of the law made us
more vulnerable, not less, to crises in the future?
Michael Hudson: Well, you asked two questions. First of all, when you talk about
Geithner and Bernanke – the people who wrecked the economy – what they mean by
"more sound" is that the government is going to bail out the banks again at public expense.
It cost $4.3 trillion last time. They're willing to bail out the banks all over again. In
fact, the five largest banks have grown much larger since 2008, because they were bailed
out. Depositors and companies think that if a bank is so crooked that it grows so fast that
it's become too big to fail, they had better take their money out of the local bank and put it
in the crooked big bank, because that's going to be bailed out – because the government
can't afford to let it go under.
The pretense was that Dodd Frank was going to regulate them, by increasing the capital
reserves that banks had to have. Well, first of all, the banks have captured the regulatory
agencies. They're in charge of basically approving Federal Reserve members, and also members of
the local and smaller bank regulatory agencies. So you have deregulators put in charge of these
agencies. Second, bank lobbyists have convinced Congress to de-tooth the Dodd Frank Act.
For instance, banks are very heavily into derivatives. That's what brought down AIG in 2008.
These are bets on which way currencies or interest rates will go. There are trillions of
dollars nominally of bets that have been placed. They're not regulated if a bank does this
through a special-purpose entity, especially if it does it through those that are in Britain.
That's where AIG's problems were in 2008. So the banks basically have avoided having to back up
capital against making a bad bet.
If you have bets over where trillions of dollars of securities, interest rates, bonds and
currencies are going to go, somebody is going to be on the losing side. And someone on the
losing side of these bets is going to go under, like Lehman Brothers did. They're not going to
be able to pay their customers. You're going to have rolling defaults.
You've also had Trump de-tooth to the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. So the banks
say, well, let's do what Wells Fargo did. Their business model is fraud, but their earnings are
soaring. They're growing a lot, and they're paid a tiny penalty for cheating their customers
and making billions of dollars off it. So more banks are jumping on the high-risk consumer
exploitation bandwagon. That's certainly not helping matters.
Michael Palmieri: So, Michael we've talked a little bit about the different
indicators that point towards a financial crisis. It's also clear from what you just stated
from a regulatory standpoint that the U.S. is extremely vulnerable. Back in 2008 many argue
that there was a huge opportunity lost in terms of transforming our private banking system to a
publicly owned banking system. Recently the Democracy Collaborative published a report titled,
The Crisis Next Time: Planning for Public ownership as Alternative to Corporate Bailouts
. That was put out by Thomas Hanna. He was calling for a transition from private to public
banking. He also made the point, which you've made in earlier episodes, that it's not a
question of if another financial crisis is going to occur, but when . Can you
speak a little bit about how public banking as an alternative would differ from the current
corporate private banking system we have today?
Michael Hudson: Sure. I'm actually part of the Democracy Collaborative. The best way
to think about this is that suppose that back in 2008, Obama and Wall Street bagman Tim
Geithner had not blocked Sheila Bair from taking over Citigroup and other insolvent banks. She
wrote that Citigroup had gambled with money and were incompetent, and outright crooked. She
wanted to take them over.
Now suppose that Citibank would had been taken over by the government and operated as a
public bank. How would a public bank have operated differently from Citibank?
For one thing, a public entity wouldn't make corporate takeover loans and raids. They
wouldn't lend to payday loan sharks. Instead they'd make local branches so that people didn't
have to go to payday loan sharks, but could borrow from a local bank branch or a post office
bank in the local communities that are redlined by the big banks.
A public entity wouldn't make gambling loans for derivatives. What a public bank
would do is what's called the vanilla bread-and-butter operation of serving small
depositors, savers and consumers. You let them have checking accounts, you clear their checks,
pay their bills automatically, but you don't make gambling and financial loans.
Banks have sort of turned away from small customers. They've certainly turned away from the
low-income neighborhoods, and they're not even lending to businesses anymore. More and more
American companies are issuing their own commercial paper to avoid the banks. In other words, a
company will issue an IOU itself, and pay interest more than pension funds or mutual funds can
get from the banks. So the money funds such as Vanguard are buying commercial paper from these
companies, because the banks are not making these loans.
So a public bank would do what banks are supposed to do productively, which is to help
finance basic production and basic consumption, but not financial gambling at the top where all
the risk is. That's the business model of the big banks, and some will lose money and crash
like in 2008. A public bank wouldn't make junk mortgage loans. It wouldn't engage in consumer
fraud. It wouldn't be like Wells Fargo. It wouldn't be like Citibank. This is so obvious that
what is needed is a bank whose business plan is not exploitation of consumers, not fraud, and
isn't gambling. That basically is the case for public ownership.
Paul Sliker: Michael as we're closing this one out, I know you're going to hate me
for asking this question. But you were one of the few economists to predict the last crisis.
What do you think is going to happen here? Are we looking at another global financial crisis
and when do you think, if so, that might be coming?
Michael Hudson: We're emphatically not looking for "another" global crisis, because
we're in the same crisis! We're still in the 2008 crisis! This is the middle stage of
that crisis. The crisis was caused by not writing down the bad debts, which means the bad
loans, especially the fraudulent loans. Obama kept these junk mortgage loans and outright fraud
on the books – and richly rewarded the banks in proportion to how badly and recklessly
they had lent.
The economy's been limping along ever since. They say there's been a recovery, but even with
the fake lying with statistics – with a GDP rise – the so-called "recovery" is the
slowest that there's been at any time since World War II. If you break down the statistics and
look at what is growing, it's mainly the financial and real estate sector, and
monopolies like health care that raise the costs of living and crowd out spending in the real
economy.
So this is the same crisis that we were in then. It's never been fixed, and it can't be
fixed until you get rid of the bad-debt problem. The bad debts require restructuring the way in
which pensions are paid – to pay them out of current income, not financializing them. The
economy has to be de-financialized, but I don't see that on the horizon for a while. That's s
why I think that rather than a new crisis, there will be a slow shrinkage until there's a break
in the chain of payments. Then they're going to call that he crisis.
Hillary will say it's the Russians who did it, but it really is Obama who did it. The
Democratic Party leadership is in the hands of Wall Street, and has not done anything to
prevent the same dynamics that caused the crisis in 2008 and are still causing the economy to
shrink.
Paul Sliker: That's exactly why I wanted to reframe that question, because I think a
lot of people look at economic and financial crises through just the simple paradigm of a
bubble and the bubble bursting. But I think you did a fine job of clarifying that.
Well Michael, as always, we could go on but we have to end here. Thank you so much for
joining us on The Hudson Report.
Michael Hudson: Well you've asked all the right questions.
Three weeks ago, former banker turned author Philip Augar launched his history of Barclays
since Big Bang (1986). A descendant of Mr Barclay was there. Both good guys. Augar is always
well worth reading.
The pair took a similar view to Hudson. They were a bit surprised that the public and / or
a utility bank option had not been pursued / pushed in 2008 and new competitors have not
emerged since, but think that the world is going back to 2008 and the incumbents won't
survive.
The duo think that what led to 2008 has not been resolved and that one could say the world
has been in recession since the early noughties, not 2008.
Further to banking, the consensus was the American giants would survive and prosper due to
the nature and scale of American markets, but European banks would become utilities and be
challenged by newcomers and public options. This time, there would be no escape for European
banks. The view was also that European banks would finally give up investment banking or
accept to become minor league players, not that there was anything wrong with that. The only
challenge to the US behemoths would be from China.
They support Glass-Steagall and ring fencing, reckoning that the ring fenced banks could
well emerge as the utilities.
The descendant of Mr Barclay left his family bank in 1999 and has led the family's efforts
in financial technology and funding platforms. He did not see Barclays as having much of a
long-term future. Aside, he mentioned their enthusiasm for China's one belt, one road
initiative and what spin offs could emerge from that.
I highly respect Professor Hudson's work and consider myself a MMT adherent, but his
explanation of the inverted yield curve is confused and confusing. The large demand for
short-term treasuries that he describes would lower short-term yields and steepen the yield
curve, not invert it. In fact, the curve is inverted because of higher demand for longer-term
treasuries because people don't expect to have a better place to invest for the near- to
middle term, which is consistent with expectations of poor econonic conditions over a
relatively longer period than is normal for "good" times.
I found that confusing as well. What's happened this year is that short-term rates have
increased steeply while longer-term rates have increased at a slower rate. So it's almost
like those who were in short term bonds are moving out of it and splitting the money between
stocks, cash, and long-term bonds. Could be aggregation bias by me on the splitting though
maybe those who were collectively in short term bonds are all different types of investors
and are now placing their bets in different ways.
Mr. Cole thank you for a better definition of the yield curve inversion. Very few writers
in the US financial press today offers a clear understanding of this concept, which the
general public readership can understand. I know, I've tried, and usually end up asking my
banker brother "what is this article (in the WSJ, recently) trying to say"? Even he takes a
little time to figure it all out
Short-term interest rates are determined by the Fed, and it is pushing up short-term rates
ostensibly to show down price rises (its euphemism for the possibility of wage increases). So
that is the "given." Long-term rates have moved up slightly – meaning that their bond
prices have declined a bit. There's so little chance of their going down much (and rising in
price), and so much chance of rates rising further (and lowering bond prices) that investors
are afraid of taking a loss during the bond's remaining maturity.
I should have emphasized the degree to which the Fed is setting short-term rates. Obviously,
there are still a lot of takers – but not enough to overwhelm the Fed's insistence of
raising rates.
My point is that there's not going to be a "recovery."
So, which (if any) industrialized countries are managing the economic Rubic's Cube
properly? The 'colors' of the cube being health care, employment, public education,
infrastructure maintenance, environment, & public safety?
Mr. Hudson, it'd be very beneficial if you'd describe how the Fed manipulates the system
so that increased purchases of US Treasury paper actually INCREASES the coupon paid!
I wonder if what's happening is that there's actually greater issuance of private debt on
the short-end of the curve. See for instance https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=kJIv . I
used the y-axis on the right hand side for the commercial paper issuance (bright red). The
left hand y-axis is for everything else – the rates. Notice how issuance increases and
decreases correlated with short term rates. Correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation.
So it would be good if somebody could weigh in on this. But to me it would make sense if the
private issuance drove the causation.
And more would have to be added onto that heap. Commercial paper isn't the only private
debt on the short-end, there's other non-bank debt issuance as well, but I'm not sure of
where to get data for that. That could explain what's been happening in the graph with short
term yields going up since 2016. Yes, the Fed Reserve is increasing their Fed Funds rate, but
I've seen discussion/arguments elsewhere that the Fed Reserve sets their rate so that it
remains competitive with what the private market is doing.
Michael,
You have it exactly right. The Fed's easy money policy has distorted the price of all
financial assets and has made asset flipping and the carry trade profitable, while long-term
investment in productive assets is too risky. The flattening of the yield curve is highly
suggestive that the Fed is taking away the punch bowl and we'll soon be struggling to
remember what it is that so many call a recovery.
Keep up the great work!!
Industrial Service Banking and Utility Banking are required if there is to be a recovery.
I believe I am perceiving this interview as it is titled. I add Industrial Service Banking
from my reading of "Killing the Host".
I've theorized that as regards Brexit & the Finance flight to France what is left in
the UK could aggressively solicit business for industry as opposed to banking for real estate
& risky financial instruments such as Derivatives.
As a working man who graduated high school in 1971 I feel as though my work life perfectly
tracks the common experience of a great many of us whose entire lives were sent on the war
time trajectories. Our working lives ended as they began. We gained nothing and were knocked
back to where ever we started.
If you didn't go into Finance, or Insurance or Real Estate, or Government Work you were
beat by "Forces Beyond Your Control".
In my own case it was from carpentry to Aviation Ground Services to Motion Picture
Technical services then back to carpentry. "Fed Policy, Fed Policy, Fed Policy "
Now I simply identify as "Beat".
We were made into the "Reinsurer of the Reinsurer AIG" and that is our doom since the
election of Trump and Minuchin.
Not much chance of Utility Banking. All of everything done is to keep pushing up land
assessed values and the banks just lend to the rentiers who get their checks from the
management companies while neo feudalism is made more & more recreated.
If there is to be any write offs or write downs they will come from some bigger more
traditional war, appears to be in the offing though that looks a lot like Apocalyptic Riot to
me.
While you can blame Obama for what happened under Timothy Geithner it was Clinton Unit One
that engineered the set up. That being Meyer Lansky Financial Engineering.
Thanks, P.S. My ideal political event would hence be a great Mechanized March on the US
Treasury in Washington. There I would see on stage all the greats of Economics working today.
Michael Hudson, Warren Mosler, Stephanie Kelton, Randall Wray, Bill Black, Robert Reich. The
American People are simply denied the benefits of their own Treasury is the way I see it.
Youtube is TV Land Lite. When the people are at least given the true story of why they are
forced into desperation for no reason other than the wealthy can and it is thrilling to them
to keep getting away with the whole thing. Certainly Jeff Bezos the national overseer of the
dispossessed is obviously just thrilled, simply thrilled. His and then Musk's Mars mission
mimic the Puritan immigration to the New World. Auto electrification and the Musk Power Wall
are valuable contributions to a possible future of some sort of Civilization. Gopsay policies
are fully dystopian. A Reinsurer's Revolt? Is there a phrase that will work?
Thanks you for making that point because I had the same thought when reading the piece
(but wouldn't have brought it up for fear of 2nd guessing those more knowledgeable than
me!).
And thanks to Mr. Hudson for clarifying the point – now it all makes a lot more
sense.
We're emphatically not looking for "another" global crisis, because we're in the same
crisis! We're still in the 2008 crisis! This is the middle stage of that crisis. The crisis
was caused by not writing down the bad debts, which means the bad loans, especially the
fraudulent loans. Obama kept these junk mortgage loans and outright fraud on the books
– and richly rewarded the banks in proportion to how badly and recklessly they had
lent.
The economy's been limping along ever since. They say there's been a recovery, but even
with the fake lying with statistics – with a GDP rise – the so-called
"recovery" is the slowest that there's been at any time since World War II. If you break
down the statistics and look at what isgrowing, it's mainly the financial and real estate
sector, and monopolies like health care that raise the costs of living and crowd out
spending in the real economy.
So this is the same crisis that we were in then. It's never been fixed, and it can't be
fixed until you get rid of the bad-debt problem. The bad debts require restructuring the
way in which pensions are paid – to pay them out of current income, not
financializing them. The economy has to be de-financialized, but I don't see that on the
horizon for a while. That's s why I think that rather than a new crisis, there will be a
slow shrinkage until there's a break in the chain of payments. Then they're going to call
that he crisis.
Hillary will say it's the Russians who did it, but it really is Obama who did it . The
Democratic Party leadership is in the hands of Wall Street, and has not done anything to
prevent the same dynamics that caused the crisis in 2008 and are still causing the economy
to shrink.
Love it when Michael Hudson says it was Obama not the Russians who did it, because his
words are truer than he knows (Obama's act of fraud when he classified Steele report so he
could spy on his political opponents so he could meddle in the election for Hillary).
About 2010, the CEO of one of the UK's largest retailers thought that the British economy
had been in a crisis for a lot longer than from August 2007. This was echoed recently by one
of the City's leading economists.
Interestingly, said CEO's successor reckons that, judging from retail footfall, the UK's
population is a few millions in excess of the official figure and this is what is driving
growth, albeit anaemic growth.
Thats a very important point about population. Its a major factor sometimes in why GDP PP
figures can be deceptive. Back in the 1990's in London it was considered a rule of thumb to
add one million people to the official census figures. Its not simply a case of illegal
immigrants – often its just a big floating population around Europe (construction
workers, casual workers, students on a year off), settling somewhere for a short while and
not bothering to register officially).
I recall in Ireland about 12 years ago when someone pointed out that the new census
figures for Polish and Chinese people were less than half the claimed circulation figures for
the main Polish and Chinese language newspapers the official response was . silence. Nobody
wanted to know.
In the US, our 'financial crisis' has morphed into a political crisis, and we're deeper
into a legitimacy crisis by the day.
The Dems can't seem to get it through their thick, dull sculls that Pelosi is perceived as
a Bailout Queen by a whole lot of 'flyover folks', no matter what else she manages to
achieve. She's become political poison, and she'll never stop wreaking of TARP. Ditto
Schumer. The GOP needs them both desperately in order to act like they're railing and wailing
against Big Gumint; unfortunately, as long as this stale drama continues, we're going to be
offered pallid incrementalism, because they can't seem to imagine revamping the system. Thus,
in a horrifying feedback loop, the delegitimacy spirals ever downward.
One reason the Dems need new leadership is to clean up the gridlock, but another reason is
to give some breathing room to initiatives like postal banking. I don't see it coming from
those who have held power, or who were anywhere near the TARP bailouts.
Which, I suppose, is my cue to go donate to some smart, tough Dems running for Congress
this year. (Fingers crossed!)
I already had similar thoughts but the article lays them out better than I could
write/say. The current whole system is basically the reason why I am buying Bitcoin et al. I
strongly believe that money itself should be 100% neutral, no government control over it.
Once you have government control that's where "the road to hell is paved with good
intentions". Gotta keep things "safe" – more government regulations make things safer
when it merely moves the actual risk underneath the rug. Purely an illusion.
Banks should be much smaller and that when the inevitable chaos happen (it's human nature,
cannot regulate it away) the smaller banks should go under without too much damage to the
whole economy. Lessons thus learned, etc. Now it's only a few giant banks. Making the giant
banks safer goes only so far best to be smaller and focus on government controls purely on
keeping banks small and stamping out unethical behavior.
Insane debt levels, insane housing pricing, insane medicine pricing, insane constant
military industrial complex, etc all symptoms of money emittance. I thought MMT would solve
much of the problems but realized that it still has central authorities emitting money no
good.
So Bitcoin et al it is. I will find out in 2030 whether I am correct on Bitcoin et al
being the money for the world or not. Don't bother telling me Bitcoin will never work it has
been around a decade now – it does have staying power. That alone made me look closer
into it. You should, too. If you don't agree, at least Bitcoin is a relatively uncorrelated
asset class
I am not rich enough, nor tech savvy enough, to invest in Bitcoin–but this slow
decline into oblivion is why I have always put my money into tangibles (antiques,
collectibles, jewelry). Fortunately I bought these things long ago and selling them now is
what's keeping me afloat.
I got an unexpected bounty and had the tech savvy (+ NN Taleb inspired courage) to invest
in Bitcoin – before any vulture capitalists' siphons got involved. Fortunately I bought
these things long ago and selling them now is what's keeping me afloat.
I think that cryptos can be good (or bad) investments. I think their capacities as far as
replacing government issued currencies (i.e., being the mediums of exchange for most
transactions) are extremely limited on a mass scale, as day to day life for most people would
be even more chaotic. I don't think people have thought through how regular, day to day, life
would be for most people in a world where there are no more dollars, Yen, RMB, etc. Most
people don't have the capacity to invest in anything, since the costs of basic things have
been outpacing wage growth for decades. So, what might make you some money or what might be a
good investment doesn't mean that crypto currencies can be used on a mass level, and it
doesn't mean that the profits from appreciating crypto currencies are benefiting anything
more than a very small percentage of the public. Same as stocks, bonds and every other
financial investment where ownership is highly concentrated. Them being a unit of account
would be problematic, as any item you could imagine would have no one value in any country. A
pair of shoes wouldn't be worth X amount of dollars in the US, or X Yen in Japan. The shoes
would be worth X amount of Bitcoin, X amount of this crypto, x amount of that crypto, there
would no longer be a unit of account in the same way there is now. How in the hell would a
poor working stiff possibly exist in that world? Maybe you could operate in that world, most
couldn't, and wouldn't want to either. Maybe we could pass around Rothbard books and convert
people to the church. Some might suggest that Bitcoin could be the unit of account and that
other crypto currencies would be fixed to Bitcoins, but who would decide this, and if we have
a democracy, why would people vote to support that? Would the big, evil state decide this?
How are taxes paid with cryptos? Let's say you have a few cryptos, and they collapse in
value. You're in trouble as far as redeeming your debt to the state. And how would the state
calculate how someone would pay taxes? What would they do a bunch of different crypto
currencies? During the free banking era, there were thousands of currencies. Do they have
values for each currency, which change second by second with those currencies? You owe this
much in this currency, this much in this one, etc. Naïve to think it would work, or that
most people would want that world.
How exactly would we possibly deal with the environmental crisis with cryptos? We already
are struggling with the non-market nature of most of these impacts, and it is already
extremely difficult to address the environmental crisis, given the complex and chaotic nature
of decentralized market systems. Now, we're going to further fracture society and our economy
by using a multitude of currencies? Mises had a book called Planned Chaos. This world would
just be chaos, as planning would be next to impossible. Maybe that is the point.
Personally, I think cryptos are actually far more un-democratic than government issued
currencies. At least with US dollars, we could democratize money creation, we could have
transparent public banks (seems just fine with the Bank of North Dakota), we could have some
say on what we spend on, invest in, etc. Not the case now because of corruption, but it would
be the case if we democratized the economy and the political system. That isn't possible with
cryptos. That's a big reason why the libertarians love them.
To me, this stuff is just more financial "innovation". Saying that they are good
investments is one thing, I have a problem with them personally beyond that, and I don't have
tons of faith in libertarians in regards to their relationship to objective reality.
As Professor Hudson makes clear, it is not the size of the bank that matters, it is the
fact that banks were allowed to expand into derivative trading and what I being no expert
would call 'financial wheeling and dealing.' His recommended fix is not that the banks become
smaller but that there be an alternative public banking system that doesn't do all those
there things.
One point I would enlarge upon is fixing the blame for all of this. Clearly Obama fell
down in extending huge loans from public coffers to big banks in trouble, and Professor
Hudson explains clearly how the failures of 2008 occurred, and that we are still in that
recession – it has most definitely felt like it! And thanks to him for also explaining
clearly how the failures of that critical time have been converted into pluses by finagling
the factors going into GDP. We knew it had to be phony; he has explained how. So, who else is
to blame? I'll go right back to that late signing of Bill Clinton that gave away the store.
Bill and Newt, partners in crime. At the time I didn't know what they were doing, but you can
bet they did.
Not seeing any of this gloom and doom and stress and vacancies here in the DC area. It is
go-go-go, buildings sprouting like weeds, luxury apartments (not condos) and few vacancies in
existing buildings. Developers are starting new phases because the previous phases are full.
The thing that will put a more immediate kibosh on this steam train is construction costs
– Mr. Trump's tariffs and immigration policies have already hit construction hard, and
a sub that might have projected $8mil last year early in design is quoting $10mil now that
it's time to sign a contract (that's unusual).
All that said, most of us building these things have no idea who is paying $5k/mo in rent
but that's what it is. For now it's not letting up. Maybe next year.
One thing that does line up with the article to some extent is the mixed-use retail spots
are not filling up. But retail is being universally crushed by online sales.
London is not so different and some regional markets like Edinburgh, Oxford and
Cambridge.
UK retail is getting crushed, even at the high end, but that is due to the immiseration of
the population, fraud and private equity "investment". Online sales are a convenient fig
leaf.
My friends in A/E/construction in NYC say it's similar to DC at the moment. I was up over
the weekend (chicken bus delayed 3hrs in massive traffic btw) and noted all the new
skyscrapers and other interesting new bldgs -- wow Chelsea and the Meatpacking dist are hot
hot hot! The highline sure did a lot for that area. Lèched les vitrines all over town
and didn't notice many street level retail vacancies in Manhattan. It's sure to come crashing
down spectacularly but that does not seem imminent.
The DC area is awash with the largesse of the imperial treasury. Of course thing would
look different there. I live out near the WV border and the overflow even splashes around
here. Life is easy next to the spring in the desert.
Great article once again. This subject of public ownership of banks is close to my heart
because here in South Africa it's one that always finds itself pushed to the periphery of
public discourse. The argument used to discredit the notion is one of "scarcity of
skills/expertise" and it goes something like this: banking and finance institutions are
highly specialized entities requiring highly skilled operators to manage them "successfully",
and such expertise aren't in plentiful supply in the public sector. As such, a public bank
would be faced with only two options:
1. Parachute specialists (Jamie Dimon running a public bank) private banks to come and run
it while keeping them on a very tight leash ( surely a highly undesirable prospect for people
used to operating in environments where leashes are anathema)
2. Collapsing into dysfunction and insolvency due to the ineptitude of its lowly skilled
management plucked from other public sector entities
But to my mind, Prof Hudson clears this up by debunking the complexity myth. Complexity in
banking is a function of financial engineering and public banks would have no business
conjuring up such elaborate schemes. The assumption underpinning this argument is that public
banks would be structured the same as current private banks, thus requiring the same "skills"
to run, which clearly wouldn't be the case.
It's a great podcast. The question for me is why are there personal debts at all? The
reason is clear of course, but those of us who are victimized from these schemes from young
adulthood (for a lot of us it is merely going to college/university, which, incidentally, we
were repeatably told to do from early childhood, or much worse, young mothers just going to
the Dollar Store to feed their kids) –whom among us did not freak out when Obama said
(regarding the banksters), "We must look forward and not backward." When I heard that I knew
I was played, big time. We all were. In my opinion, anything going forward that does not
confront that piece of shit statement, ever, and forever, is just delusional.
90+ degrees in Munich today. Reality is setting in.
The real problem is that we're still in the aftermath of when the bubble
burst in 2008, that all of the growth in the economy has only been in the financial sector, in
the monopolies -- only for the 1 percent. And it's as if there are two economies, and the 99
percent has not grown. And so, the American economy is still in a debt deflation. So the real
problem is, stocks have doubled in price since 2008, and the economy, for most people,
certainly who listen to your show, hasn't grown at all.
So, finally, the stocks were inflated really by the central bank, by the Fed, creating an
enormous amount of money, $4.5 trillion, essentially, to drop over Wall Street to buy bonds
that have pushed the yields down so high -- so low, to about 0.1 percent for government bonds,
that pension funds and investors say, "How can we make money?" So they buy stocks. And they
borrowed at 1 percent to buy up stocks that yield maybe 4 percent. But who are the largest
people who buy the stocks? They're the companies themselves that have done stock buybacks.
They're the managers of the companies that have used their earnings, essentially, to push up
stock prices so they get more bonuses. Ninety precent of all the earnings of the biggest
companies in America in the last five years have gone for stock buybacks and dividends. It's
not being invested. It's not building new factories. It's not employing more people.
So, the real problem is that we're in a nonrecovery in America, and Europe is in an absolute
class war of austerity. That's what the eurozone is, an austerity zone. So that's not growing.
And that's really what's happening. And all that you saw on Monday was just sort of like a
shift, tectonic shift, is people realizing, "Well, the game is up, it's time to get out." And
once a few people want to get out, everybody sees the game's up. AMY GOODMAN : Michael Hudson,
your book is titled Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the
Global Economy . Explain what you mean.
MICHAEL HUDSON : Well, most people think of parasites as sort of just taking, taking money
from the economy, and the 1 percent is sort of sucking up all the income from the 99 percent.
But in nature, what parasites do, they don't simply take. In order to take, they have to take
over the brain of the host. And economists have a word, "host economy." It's for a foreign
country that lets American investors in. Smart parasites help the host grow. But the parasite,
first of all, has to make the host believe that the intruder is actually part of the body, to
be nurtured and taken care of. And that's what's happened in national income accounting in
America and in other countries. The newspapers and the media -- not your show, but most of the
media -- treat the financial sector as if that's really the economy, and when the stock market
goes up, the economy is going up. But the economy isn't going up at all.
And the financial sector somehow depicts itself as the brains of the economy, and it would
like to replace government. What Larry Summers said is what -- governments have to pay their
debts by privatizing more, essentially, by doing what Margaret Thatcher did in England. That's
his solution to the crisis: All the governments have to do is balance the budget, sell
everything to Wall Street on credit, and we won't have any more problem. And that's basically
-- the financial sector is almost at war, not only against labor, as most of the socialists
talk about, but against governments and against industry. It's cannibalizing industry. So now
most of the corporations in America are using their income not to do what industrial capitalism
did a century ago, not to build more factories and employ more people and make more profits;
they're just using it, as I said, to push it to pay dividends and to buy back their shares and
to somehow manipulate the financial sector in the stock prices, not the economy as a whole. So
there's been a divergence between the real economy and what I call the -- economists call the
FIRE sector -- finance, insurance and real estate. And they're going in separate
directions.
AMY GOODMAN : You are -- you have been an adviser to the Syriza party in Greece. You're a
friend of the former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. Can you talk about what's happening
there now and what that bodes for the economy, not only in Greece, but in Europe, maybe even
here?
MICHAEL HUDSON : Well, the story begins, actually, about four years ago, when Greece had a
very large foreign debt, taken on basically by the military government and what followed. And
it was obvious that as soon as the PASOK , the socialist party, came in, they said, "Look, the
debt's much larger than we thought. We can't pay it." And they were going to write it down. The
IMF looked in and said, "Greece can't pay the debts. We've got to write them down." The board
looked in, said they can't pay the debts. But then the European central banks came in and said,
"Look, our job as central bankers is to support the banks. Greece owes the debt to the,
essentially, French banks and German banks, and we've got to support them." So, despite the
fact that the IMF was pushing for a debt write-down four years ago -- the head of the IMF at
that time, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, wanted to run for president of France, and he was told by
French President Sarkozy, "Well, wait a minute, if French banks hold most of Greek debts, you
can't, at the IMF , say that we're going to write down the debts." So they didn't. And
meanwhile, the eurozone said, "We won't let you, the IMF , be part of our program, the troika,
if you don't pretend that Greece can pay the debt."
So Greece was left with a huge debt. It was pushed into depression. The GDP fell worse than
it did in the 1930s. Finally, the Syriza party came in, in January, and Varoufakis and Tsipras
thought, "Well, then, OK, we can explain to the finance ministers of Europe that you can't
expect to push Greece into a depression, push more austerity, and somehow austerity will enable
us to repay the debt. That's crazy." And he thought that he could reason with them. And the
Europeans, who he was reasoning with, the central bankers, said, "We're not here to talk about
economics. We're lawyers. We're here to collect money. It doesn't matter that you're going to
go into a depression. It doesn't matter that you're going to have to have another 20 percent of
your population emigrate. We're only here to collect the payments. And if you don't pay, then
we're going to pull the plug."
And they pulled the plug on the Greek banks a few months ago and said, "We're not going to
accept any of the bank transfers, payments with Greek banks here. So, if you're exporting and
you want credit for export, you're not going to give it to you. We're going to treat Greece
like America treated Cuba and America treated North Korea. You're going to be the North Korea
of Europe if you don't succumb, surrender and pay." And that's why Tsipras said, "Oh, my -- we
don't want to bring an absolute, you know, total breakdown, because that would bring the right
wing to power." Varoufakis said, well, he agrees that there's no alternative but to sort of
surrender for the present and try to join hands with Italy, Spain and Portugal, but he wasn't
going to be the administrator of the depression. So you had the referendum, and the Greeks now
say, "Well, no matter what, we're not going to pay." And the eurozone says, "Then we're going
to just wreck you, or smash and grab."
AMY GOODMAN : I want to ask you very quickly about presidential politics, about two of the
Republican presidential candidates, Jeb Bush and John Kasich. Both worked for Lehman Brothers,
Kasich after he ran for -- after he was a congressman; Jeb Bush, according to The Wall
Street Journal , Bush signed on with Lehman after leaving the Florida Governor's Mansion,
making it clear he wanted to work as a hands-on investment banker. I believe he made something
like $14 million working for Lehman and then Barclays.
MICHAEL HUDSON : Well, almost -- both parties are basically run by Wall Street. The
Democratic Party, ever since Bill Clinton, was run by Robert Rubin. And all of the secretaries
of the treasury, the officials, have basically come from Goldman Sachs, especially Tim
Geithner. One of the problems in Greece, by the way, was that Obama and Geithner, coming from
the Rubin group, met at the Group of Eight meetings and told -- were told, basically, Greece,
"You have to pay, because the American banks have made so many big bets on Greek bonds that if
Greece doesn't repay" -- this is back in 2011 -- "then the American banks will go under, and if
we go under, we're going to pull Europe down." So, the American banks basically -- we're
talking about Wall Street investment firms. They don't -- they're called investment bankers,
but they don't invest. They gamble. And we're really much more in casino capitalism than
finance capitalism.
So you have Wall Street people basically running politics, whether they're the actual
politicians -- Obama didn't work on Wall Street, but he worked with the real estate families.
No matter who the president is, they're going to appoint Treasury heads and Fed, Federal
Reserve, heads from Wall Street. Wall Street has a veto power on all the major Cabinet
positions, and so, essentially, the economy is being run by the financial sector for the
financial sector. That's the problem with politics in America today.
Not seeing any of this gloom and doom and stress and vacancies here in the DC area. It is
go-go-go, buildings sprouting like weeds, luxury apartments (not condos) and few vacancies in
existing buildings. Developers are starting new phases because the previous phases are full.
The thing that will put a more immediate kibosh on this steam train is construction costs
– Mr. Trump's tariffs and immigration policies have already hit construction hard, and
a sub that might have projected $8mil last year early in design is quoting $10mil now that
it's time to sign a contract (that's unusual).
All that said, most of us building these things have no idea who is paying $5k/mo in rent
but that's what it is. For now it's not letting up. Maybe next year.
One thing that does line up with the article to some extent is the mixed-use retail spots
are not filling up. But retail is being universally crushed by online sales.
London is not so different and some regional markets like Edinburgh, Oxford and
Cambridge.
UK retail is getting crushed, even at the high end, but that is due to the immiseration of
the population, fraud and private equity "investment". Online sales are a convenient fig
leaf.
My friends in A/E/construction in NYC say it's similar to DC at the moment. I was up over
the weekend (chicken bus delayed 3hrs in massive traffic btw) and noted all the new
skyscrapers and other interesting new bldgs -- wow Chelsea and the Meatpacking dist are hot
hot hot! The highline sure did a lot for that area. Lèched les vitrines all over town
and didn't notice many street level retail vacancies in Manhattan. It's sure to come crashing
down spectacularly but that does not seem imminent.
The DC area is awash with the largesse of the imperial treasury. Of course thing would
look different there. I live out near the WV border and the overflow even splashes around
here. Life is easy next to the spring in the desert.
We have lost some of our democratic habits -- indeed, in many ways we are losing
our very cohesion as a society. But I frame the question very differently.
I know a bunch of Trump supporters. Some of them are intellectuals who write for places like
TAC . But most are not. Neither are any of them raving bigots or knuckle-dragging
neanderthals, and all of them read the news, though with vastly less obsessiveness than people
who work in the business.
None of them "like" things like "unremitting chaos, lies, ignorance, trash-talking
vulgarity, legislative failure" or collusion with foreign governments. Some of them minimize
some of these things at least some of the time -- and I myself have been known to derive a kind
of pleasure from the absurdity of a figure like Mooch. But this isn't what the people who I
know who voted Trump voted for , nor is it why they continue to be happy with their
vote -- which, however unhappy they are with how the administration is conducting itself, most
of them still are.
Rather, the commonality among those who voted for Trump is their conviction that the
Democratic party's leadership is utterly bankrupt, and, to one degree or another, so is the
Republican leadership. And that assessment hasn't changed one iota since the
election.
"They are, however, people who have lost trust in the individuals and institutions who are
most alarmed about Trump: the political establishment, the press, etc. And so, on a relative
basis, they'd rather continue to put their trust in Trump."
That last line does not follow .We have lost trust in all of the others; so would rather
see what Trump does; not that we have any trust in him to do the right thing
THAT would be ridiculous; especially after the last six months.
Hmmm. Populism can not govern or build institutions by its very nature? I can't help but read
that as saying the plebeians are so incompetent and stupid that only the elites are capable
of governing. As for the American people taking a turn to authoritarianism. This is possible,
after all, our Federal government has spent most of the last century increasing their control
over many of the aspects of our lives and stretching the limits of the Constitution beyond
any recognition. We have been prepared to accept authoritarianism. Increasingly we have had
an authoritarian presidency that surveils its own people and has usurped regulatory and
warmaking authority from the Congress. The Federal government has created, out of whole
cloth, a role for itself in public education. Do not blame the populace for being what the
elite has spent a century shaping them to be.
I am convinced that the saber rattling and fear-mongering concerning Korea, Iran, and Russia
are not happening because we have any reason to be particularly concerned about these
countries or because they threaten our interests. No, this is the way a corrupt and
ineffective regime distracts its citizens from its own failings. Lets be clear, this would be
happening even if She-who-shall-not-be-named had one the Presidency.
Whatever happened to "trust but verify"?
OK, a bunch of people did the political equivalent of a Hail Mary play in voting for Trump.
But now that the ball has not only fallen short but gone way out of bounds and beaned some
spectators in the stands shouldn't they be revoking that trust and casting around for someone
else to represent them? Why stick with a sinking ship?
There is strong evidence to suggest that one factor in Trump's victory was distrust of US
foreign policy. The link above is to an article about exit polls showing Trump won the
veteran's vote 2:1 over Hillary Clinton.
People don't regret their votes for Trump because if they had voted for Clinton, they or
their loved ones would be coming home in body bags–or minus body parts.
As bad as Trump is, his foreign policy instincts are less hawkish than
Clinton's–witness his decision to end the CIA funding of Syrian insurgents.
Trump's behavior is certainly "unpresidential" and chaotic. It is also less horrible than
war by many orders of magnitude.
"The politically relevant, and profoundly disturbing, fact is precisely the opposite of the
conventional wisdom: After six months of unremitting chaos, lies, ignorance, trash-talking
vulgarity, legislative failure, and credible evidence of a desire to collude with a hostile
foreign government to subvert an American election, President Trump's approval rating is
astonishingly high -- with something between one-third and two-fifths of the American people
apparently liking what they see and hear from the White House"
But George W Bush at his nadir averaged 26% approval, and that's seven years in, during an
epic economic collapse, a catastrophic war, and a host of other disasters. Trump is not THAT
far away from that average.
There is simply a line beyond which a president can't decline unless he murders and eats a
puppy in public, and I see no reason to presume that we can judge that Trump hit his bottom
six months in, when the economy is decent and no non-self inflicted crisis looming.
I'd also add that while all your friends have different reasons to stay aboard the Trump
train, all of them sound like high information, fairly ideological voters. This is probably
not the profile of Trump voters set to vote for The Rock in 2020
Well, when a building is rotten to the core, the only thing you can do is raze it to the
ground to start rebuilding. Our government has long passed its sell-by date. Really,
expecting a political solution to arise from a government controlled system such as ours does
not border on insanity – it completely crosses that border in leaves it miles in the
dust. Witness our insane Congress voting by a 98% margin to inflict sanctions based upon
absolute crock. But then the US has never let reality get in the way of statesmenshowmanship.
We get what we deserve, good and hard.
You're OK until the last line. "And populism by its very nature cannot build institutions,
cannot govern "
You're still using the Deepstate definition of populism. In fact populists want only one
thing: We think the government of THIS country should serve the interests of the people of
THIS country.
It's perfectly possible to govern by this rule. FDR did it magnificently.
Why did it work for FDR? Because he was determined to BREAK the monopolies and forces that
acted contrary to the interests of the people, and because governments BELOW the Federal
level were still strong. When he closed the banks for several months, cities and Chambers of
Commerce jumped in immediately to develop scrip systems.
Thanks to an unbroken series of evil judges and presidents after WW2, local governments
and institutions are dead or dying. Even if a competent and determined populist tried to
close down banks or Amazon or the "health" insurance system, there would be no organized way
to replace them.
What exactly did these people think a Clinton administration would do? What nightmarish
dystopia did they see coming around the bend? And what do you think -- were their perceptions
of America's future under a Clinton administration accurate, or at least close to the mark?
And if so, why?
Also, I get that people have lost trust in mainstream institutions. What makes them think
that Trump is trustworthy in comparison? Why do they have more trust in Trump than in the
institutions? And does that seem reasonable?
I didn't vote for Trump: His rhetorical style turns me cold; I don't like his position on
many issues, or his general governing philosophy, to the extent he can be said to have one.
But, BUT, I sure as Hell did not vote for Hilary Clinton(I voted for Johnson and Weld, who
were obvious non-starters from the word Go. I might possibly have voted for Trump if it had
looked like the election might be close in Illinois, but since the Chicago Machine had
already stolen it for HRC, I could salve my conscience and vote for Johnson.
Clinton was the status quo candidate, and since I did not desire "more of the same",
governmentally, Trump and his circus are preferable to Clinton and whatever cabal she would
have assembled to run the country.
You claim that the elite "inevitably" run the machinery of government, but it's worth
noting that once upon a time in America, most of the people in government were political
appointees who could be sent packing(along with their bosses) by the voters. Nowadays, the
'elite' which runs government is dug in pretty much permanently, and the same people will be,
in practice, running the government no matter who wins the next election, or the one after
that
Hilary Clinton was forthrightly the candidate of the permanent, un-elected bureaucracy,
and Trump, well, didn't seem to be. The choice was between Trump, whose actual position on
the size of government was not clear, and Hilary Clinton who was actually promising to make
government bigger, more centralized, more expensive and less responsive. I'm not sorry Trump
won however distasteful he and his henchmen are to me.
I too had a friend who was a huge Ron Paul supporter who not only backed Trump, but became a
major apologist for him ever since. The man ran two back to back campaigns in Georgia for US
Senate, the Ron Paul mold. Now, no on his original team will give him the time of day. Those
who tried to get some sense into him, have been closed off.
As a libertarian, I am no more afraid of the left or the right. In fact, listening to the
right rant about the left yields a lot of ignorance, disinformation and paranoia: stock in
trade for right wing propaganda. But I am disturbed when people spend years fighting for
liberty suddenly joined Cult 45 that has no sense of liberty Ron Paul or his followers would
recognize.
But Trump fit the bankrupt GOP. Lest we forget, those 49 GOP Senators who voted for
"skinny repeal" (even the name is joke!) never gave a moment's consideration to the bill
written by Rand Paul that covers the conservative attributes of free markets and
self-determination. Lest we also forget that Rand is not only one of the few legit
conservatives, but a doctor and the son of doctor or former Congressman. Those credentials
alone would have been enough if GOP was actually interested being conservative. Apparently,
Trumpism is what the GOP is about and 49 of them proved it.
I think that you have identified a problem that transcends Trump and his opponents. Vitriolic
partisanship is one thing. At various points in our history, we have had some nasty spells of
polarization. The deeper problem that the institutions of public life are now losing their
very legitimacy.
Legitimacy is something deeper than mere approval. It relies upon the unspoken acceptance
of political and institutional norms.
We are clearly in the process of publicly reevaluating and even rejecting these norms. The
birthers questioning Obama's background and "not my president" folks do not view their
oppponents as legitimate, if mistaken. In the case of Trump and the radical left, they
contest the legitimacy of the other side even participating in the process, a process by the
way to which they owe no fealty.
Nothing wrong with America that couldn't be fixed, one, by making voting mandatory, and two,
by having top two vote getters in primary face each other in the general.
We'd have a moderate politics with elected officials clustering slightly right and left of
the center.
Speaking as a Commie Pinko Red, I still prefer Trump as President over Clinton, precisely
because he is doing so much to undermine America's "leadership" in world affairs. He's still
a murderous imperialist, maybe even just as much as she would have been, but there's just so
much more damage that she could have done making bi-partisan deals with the GOP for the
benefit of Wall Street and the insurance industry.
The movement against GOPcare – Trumpcare wasn't really a fair name for the wet
dreams of Paul Ryan and Conservative, Inc. – probably couldn't have been so effective
or flew under the radar of the establishment tools running the Democratic Party and its media
mouthpieces if a Democrat was in the White House and the various beltway "movement" honchos
had had their precious seat at the table where they could have rolled over for the Democratic
president of the moment.
The biggest problem is what comes after Trump for the GOP?
He's kicked off a process for the GOP that will be very difficult to manage going forward.
He showed that outright racism, sexism, continuous lying, even treasonous collusion with
Russia to subvert our election is just fine with the Republican Party. How does the GOP sell
family values to their 'base' after they all lined up with Donald j Trump, serial
wife-cheater and money-launderer?
It will be hard for anyone to forget that any of this happened.
Consider this: 8 years of W Bush yielded the first black President – It really could
not have happened if W hadn't burned the house down. What comes after Trump?
I'm a very middle-class worker in the IT sector where most of my coworkers have been
sensible, but my weekend hobby of playing music has put me in contact (largely via Facebook)
with many Trump supporters who do happen to be knuckle-dragging neanderthals. They generally
don't read; their "news" comes from partisan demagogues on the radio or TV. If I give one the
benefit of the doubt and share an article from, say, The American Conservative -- "The
Madness of King Donald" was a favorite -- it's been all too common to receive a
childish/hate-filled meme in response. Bigots are legion: I've unfriended the raving variety,
and unfollowed the milder dog-whistlers. These deplorables have in fact been emboldened by
the current POTUS.
But I get your point. I abhor the current duopoly, but it could be fixed if thinking
citizens wanted to put in some effort. So, it's depressing in a different kind of way that so
many thoughtful and well-read Americans are so cynical about state of US politics that they
are fine with Trump wrecking it.
"Rather, the commonality among those who voted for Trump is their conviction that the
Democratic party's leadership is utterly bankrupt, and, to one degree or another, so is the
Republican leadership. And that assessment hasn't changed one iota since the election."
They are people who were full of it beforehand, and as the evidence rolls in, they just
sink deeper into lies.
Linker's quote "a desire to collude" you reference later as "collusion". The first instance
is an attempt to broaden the charge from collusion, the second instance is a (sloppy?) change
in language.
@Will Harrington, "Populism can not govern or build institutions by its very nature? I can't
help but read that as saying the plebeians are so incompetent and stupid that only the elites
are capable of governing."
I read that statement as "Once you are governing, once you are the one(s) in a position of
power, then by definition you have become 'the elite' and are no longer 'a plebeian'".
Populists, by definition, are the people who call for the tearing down of institutions that
make up the status-quo, and elites, by definition, are the people who build and maintain
status-quo institutions. At least in my eyes, "being a populist" and "governing institutions"
are mutually exclusive.
Since the conservative party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower was invaded by the right
wingers and became the party of Jefferson Davis and John Wilkes Booth, the goal has been to
tarnish all concept of a functioning a democracy and a government is built to work for the
people, of the people, and by the people. The right wing main tactic is lies and just get
people riled up so that they don't realize and oblivious to the fact that America has slipped
from capitalism to corporatism; from a capitalist democracy to a caste based plutocracy run
for the sole benefit of the oligarchs who bought this country.
Don Trump is the embodiment and distillation of the right winger and their economic and
social cultural policies. He is not an alternative or antidote to the Republicans or
Democrats.
" Is he happy with Trump? No -- he's especially unhappy with the number of Goldman bankers
Trump appointed to senior economic posts, but more generally he acknowledges that the
government is in chaos and that Trump is not bringing the change he hoped for. But he doesn't
regret his vote, and he prefers the chaos of Trump to business-as-usual under either the
Democrats or the Republicans. And if Trump winds up discrediting the Federal government
generally, that's fine with him."
I didn't vote this election because I didn't like either candidate. I had been promoting
'America First' as a rallying cry for a candidate for years but Trump wasnt exactly the kind
of leader I had in mind for it.
But I'm with the guy above -- if chaos will bust up the musical chair dual monarchies of the
dems and repubs and the corrupt status quo government bring it on.
A somewhat related question, Noah: If you had been a young man living in China on August 1,
1927, do you think you would have joined the People's Liberation Army?
Originally I wanted to sit out this past election but gave in to peer pressure. And I regret
this. Trump? Clinton? Johnson? Stein? All were mediocre. Clinton/Trump were the two worst
candidates that the "major" parties have ever produced in my lifetime. It was with fear and
trepidation that I voted for Trump, notwithstanding that I fundamentally agreed with him on
the issues of immigration and the need for a reduced American role in global affairs. In the
end, I rationalized this (wasted) vote based upon the notion that not only had his opponent
committed a felony (detouring government emails) but also because (as others have pointed
out) she was the candidate of the status quo, the "permanent bureaucracy", Big Finance etc.
etc. The fact that Trump actually won surprised me, but only moderately, because as terrible
a candidate as he was, his opponent was even worse.
What has transpired since his election comes as no surprise. Had Clinton been elected
conditions would have only been mirror imaged, such being the state of things in this
once-great republic. I continue to maintain that the two-party system is archaic and has to
go. Whether a multi-party system would be better, I don't know. Perhaps we have reached a
point where the country is simply ungovernable. Perhaps more responsibility should be
returned to state and local government (Jefferson would have approved). Again, I don't
know.
What I do know is that the current system is dysfunctional.
And that, my friends, is why we have a real estate/TV personality as President.
i am neither an establishment voter, or a member of the media/press. i am deeply worried
where the man (trump) is taking this nation. the gop is complicit in this chaos as they see
trump as a rubber stamp for their plutocratic agenda. i don't know what it will take to right
the ship of state
I don't regret my vote. And I ave had issues with my choice before and after the election.
The sky is not even close to falling as predicted. And the democracy you claim is at threat
may very well be, but it's from the current executive. And nothing thus far suggests that it
will.
I m not going to dismiss the caterwauling liberals have been making since the campaign or
the election as major distraction to governance.
And by the way there remain not a twiddle's evidence that the WH prior to the election
colluded to undermine the US in any manner. It's time to cease throwing that out as sauce for
the goose.
I think I agree with all four of your "freinds". I am very fond of the establishment, they
have their place. What they provide in cohesion, stability and continuity is valuable to the
state. But they appear to be want for any level of substance, depth thereof or moral
consistency (if any at all). The double standards they hold themselves, their donors and
connections on issues and accountability is unsustainable in a democracy as I think you
understand it.
When I was laid out in the ER, I found myself wrestling with my own position on
healthcare. The temptations are great to bend the guide as to my own conditions -- but I
don't think I could so with a clear conscience. I am nor sot sure that what we haven't lost
is a sense of conscience -- that sense that truth overrides immediate gain. I don't think the
US can survive as the US if the leadership is bent on holding themselves to a standard not
available to the country's citizens.
"Is he happy with Trump? No -- he's especially unhappy with the number of Goldman bankers
Trump appointed to senior economic posts, but more generally he acknowledges that the
government . . ."
And the discredited notions that
1. the rich know how to run an economy effectively and
2. that a rise in the market is a sign of economic health.
Pear Conference captures perfectly the 'thinking' i have heard from more than one Trump
voter. This is 'reasoning'?
If there is one system in America that needs blowing up to start over it might be our
education system. I am generally supportive of public ed, and i am impressed by some of the
commitment and inventiveness i see among the proposers of various alternatives to public ed.
So, some folks are trying, even sometimes succeeding, but we have managed to arrive at a
point in our culture where we have elected a President whose election success depended more
than anything else on a public who have lost the ability to think critically. (if they ever
had it, of course)
Yes I know the other one got more votes, by a lot. And i know that this other candidate was
oddly not at all an attractive alternative. I know all that, but still, a huge fraction of
the voting population–a fraction large enough to make themselves now THE base the
government is playing to–is a group who could not/would not see this con-job coming?
There was every opportunity to use actual logic and facts to reach a voting decision, but
these millions of voters chose instead to go with various variations on the theme of 'they
all stink, so i'm using my vote to poke a stick in their eyes." Or, as Pear satirized, "I
hate/mistrust the elites and they like almost anybody else other than my guy, so I'm gonna
turn my country over to the most vulgar non-elite pig the system can come up with."
There is talk now about the damage he can do to American politics and sense of community, but
I think he may be more symptom than cause. We don't value the things we thought were a
standard part of the American process: truthfulness, kindness, authenticity, devotion to the
common good. We value, it turns out, showmanship, machismo, crass shows of wealth and power,
and ..I can't go on.
I'm not sure how we got here, but I know the institutions held in high regard on this site,
such as church, and some factors we all put our faith in such as increasing levels of
education, turn out not to matter so much as we had thought. It is going to take some hard
work and more than a little time to recover from this sickness in the country's soul.
"Trump supporters are just like people who are outraged by something and show it by rioting
and burning down their own neighborhoods." – Greg in PDX
The antifas rioting and destroying in Portland also got very violent when some old folks
held a peaceful rally for Trump there.
Oh, sorry. I forgot that when "progressives" disagree with someone, they consider that
merely disagreeing with them constitutes "violence" against their "safe space" and they are
compelled to go out and punch or shoot people.
No reason why populism couldn't govern. Huey Long was a damn effective governor of Louisiana.
Send the whole Acela Corridor élite to Saddam's woodchipper and the country would
noodle along just fine. I'm not for state violence, and yet the fantasy gives me a
frisson. Forgive me, a sinner.
On Monday, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North interviewed Chris Hedges,
the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, lecturer and former New York Times
correspondent. Among Hedges' best-known books are War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, The
Death of the Liberal Class , Empire of Illusion: the End of Literacy and the Triumph
of Spectacle, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt , which he co-wrote with the cartoonist
Joe Sacco, and Wages of Rebellion: the Moral Imperative of Revolt .
In an article published in Truthdig September 17 , titled "The Silencing
of Dissent," Hedges referenced the WSWS coverage of Google's censorship of left-wing sites and
warned about the growth of "blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign
agents for Russia and purveyors of 'fake news.'"
Hedges wrote that "the Department of Justice called on RT America and its 'associates' --
which may mean people like me -- to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. No
doubt, the corporate state knows that most of us will not register as foreign agents, meaning
we will be banished from the airwaves. This, I expect, is the intent."
North's interview with Hedges began with a discussion of the significance of the anti-Russia
campaign in the media.
David North: How do you interpret the fixation on Russia and the entire interpretation of
the election within the framework of Putin's manipulation?
Chris Hedges: It's as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It is an
absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate a very frightening accusation --
critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia.
I have no doubt that the Russians invested time, energy and money into attempting to
influence events in the United States in ways that would serve their interests, in the same way
that we have done and do in Russia and all sorts of other countries throughout the world. So
I'm not saying there was no influence, or an attempt to influence events.
But the whole idea that the Russians swung the election to Trump is absurd. It's really
premised on the unproven claim that Russia gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks, and the
release of these emails turned tens, or hundreds of thousands, of Clinton supporters towards
Trump. This doesn't make any sense. Either that, or, according to the director of national
intelligence, RT America, where I have a show, got everyone to vote for the Green Party.
This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the
Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the
outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women
and poor people of color. It is the result of disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA that
abolished good-paying union jobs and shipped them to places like Mexico, where workers without
benefits are paid $3.00 an hour. It is the result of the explosion of a system of mass
incarceration, begun by Bill Clinton with the 1994 omnibus crime bill, and the tripling and
quadrupling of prison sentences. It is the result of the slashing of basic government services,
including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure,
including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations. It is the result of the
transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the right, and the
aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they have done to
the country.
Police forces have been turned into quasi-military entities that terrorize marginal
communities, where people have been stripped of all of their rights and can be shot with
impunity; in fact over three are killed a day. The state shoots and locks up poor people of
color as a form of social control. They are quite willing to employ the same form of social
control on any other segment of the population that becomes restive.
The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face
its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties -- and remember, Barack Obama's
assault on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush -- and the
destruction of our economy and our democratic institutions.
Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why
they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party.
Without Wall Street money, they would not hold political power. The Democratic Party doesn't
actually function as a political party. It's about perpetual mass mobilization and a
hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party
has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his
followers found out. They are props in the sterile political theater.
These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the
political process. They're not going to let it go, even if it all implodes.
DN: Chris, you worked for the New York Times . When was that, exactly?
CH: From 1990 to 2005.
DN: Since you have some experience with that institution, what changes do you see? We've
stressed that it has cultivated a constituency among the affluent upper-middle class.
CH: The New York Times consciously targets 30 million upper-middle class and
affluent Americans. It is a national newspaper; only about 11 percent of its readership is in
New York. It is very easy to see who the Times seeks to reach by looking at its
special sections on Home, Style, Business or Travel. Here, articles explain the difficulty of
maintaining, for example, a second house in the Hamptons. It can do good investigative work,
although not often. It covers foreign affairs. But it reflects the thinking of the elites. I
read the Times every day, maybe to balance it out with your web site.
DN: Well, I hope more than balance it.
CH: Yes, more than balance it. The Times was always an elitist publication, but it
wholly embraced the ideology of neo-conservatism and neoliberalism at a time of financial
distress, when Abe Rosenthal was editor. He was the one who instituted the special sections
that catered to the elite. And he imposed a de facto censorship to shut out critics of
unfettered capitalism and imperialism, such as Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. He hounded out
reporters like Sydney Schanberg, who challenged the real estate developers in New York, or
Raymond Bonner, who reported the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador.
He had lunch every week, along with his publisher, with William F. Buckley. This pivot into
the arms of the most retrograde forces of corporate capitalism and proponents of American
imperialism, for a time, made the paper very profitable. Eventually, of course, the rise of the
internet, the loss of classified ads, which accounted for about 40 percent of all newspaper
revenue, crippled the Times as it has crippled all newspapers. Newsprint has lost the
monopoly that once connected sellers with buyers. Newspapers are trapped in an old system of
information they call "objectivity" and "balance," formulae designed to cater to the powerful
and the wealthy and obscure the truth. But like all Byzantine courts, the Times will
go down clinging to its holy grail.
The intellectual gravitas of the paper -- in particular the Book Review and the Week in
Review -- was obliterated by Bill Keller, himself a neocon, who, as a columnist, had been a
cheerleader for the war in Iraq. He brought in figures like Sam Tanenhaus. At that point the
paper embraced, without any dissent, the utopian ideology of neoliberalism and the primacy of
corporate power as an inevitable form of human progress. The Times , along with
business schools, economics departments at universities, and the pundits promoted by the
corporate state, propagated the absurd idea that we would all be better off if we prostrated
every sector of society before the dictates of the marketplace. It takes a unique kind of
stupidity to believe this. You had students at Harvard Business School doing case studies of
Enron and its brilliant business model, that is, until Enron collapsed and was exposed as a
gigantic scam. This was never, really, in the end, about ideas. It was about unadulterated
greed. It was pushed by the supposedly best educated among us, like Larry Summers, which
exposes the lie that somehow our decline is due to deficient levels of education. It was due to
a bankrupt and amoral elite, and the criminal financial institutions that make them rich.
Critical thinking on the op-ed page, the Week in Review or the Book Review, never very
strong to begin with, evaporated under Keller. Globalization was beyond questioning. Since the
Times , like all elite institutions, is a hermetically sealed echo chamber, they do
not realize how irrelevant they are becoming, or how ridiculous they look. Thomas Friedman and
David Brooks might as well write for the Onion .
I worked overseas. I wasn't in the newsroom very much, but the paper is a very
anxiety-ridden place. The rules aren't written on the walls, but everyone knows, even if they
do not articulate it, the paper's unofficial motto: Do not significantly alienate those
upon whom we depend for money and access! You can push against them some of the time. But
if you are a serious reporter, like Charlie Leduff, or Sydney Schanberg, who wants to give a
voice to people who don't have a voice, to address issues of race, class, capitalist
exploitation or the crimes of empire, you very swiftly become a management problem and get
pushed out. Those who rise in the organization and hold power are consummate careerists. Their
loyalty is to their advancement and the stature and profitability of the institution, which is
why the hierarchy of the paper is filled with such mediocrities. Careerism is the paper's
biggest Achilles heel. It does not lack for talent. But it does lack for intellectual
independence and moral courage. It reminds me of Harvard.
DN: Let's come back to this question of the Russian hacking news story. You raised the
ability to generate a story, which has absolutely no factual foundation, nothing but assertions
by various intelligence agencies, presented as an assessment that is beyond question. What is
your evaluation of this?
CH: The commercial broadcast networks, and that includes CNN and MSNBC, are not in the
business of journalism. They hardly do any. Their celebrity correspondents are courtiers to the
elite. They speculate about and amplify court gossip, which is all the accusations about
Russia, and they repeat what they are told to repeat. They sacrifice journalism and truth for
ratings and profit. These cable news shows are one of many revenue streams in a corporate
structure. They compete against other revenue streams. The head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, who helped
create the fictional persona of Donald Trump on "Celebrity Apprentice," has turned politics on
CNN into a 24-hour reality show. All nuance, ambiguity, meaning and depth, along with
verifiable fact, are sacrificed for salacious entertainment. Lying, racism, bigotry and
conspiracy theories are given platforms and considered newsworthy, often espoused by people
whose sole quality is that they are unhinged. It is news as burlesque.
I was on the investigative team at the New York Times during the lead-up to the
Iraq War. I was based in Paris and covered Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. Lewis
Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and maybe somebody in an intelligence agency, would
confirm whatever story the administration was attempting to pitch. Journalistic rules at the
Times say you can't go with a one-source story. But if you have three or four
supposedly independent sources confirming the same narrative, then you can go with it, which is
how they did it. The paper did not break any rules taught at Columbia journalism school, but
everything they wrote was a lie.
The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller
or Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, 'as the Times reported .' It gave
these lies the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive
institutional failing, and one the paper has never faced.
DN: The CIA pitches the story, and then the Times gets the verification from those
who pitch it to them.
CH: It's not always pitched. And not much of this came from the CIA. The CIA wasn't buying
the "weapons of mass destruction" hysteria.
DN: It goes the other way too?
CH: Sure. Because if you're trying to have access to a senior official, you'll constantly be
putting in requests, and those officials will decide when they want to see you. And when they
want to see you, it's usually because they have something to sell you.
DN: The media's anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents
itself as the "left."
CH: Well, don't get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left
-- not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary
theories, that's steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work,
especially corporate and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of
personality that plague the rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central
problem. Trump is a product, a symptom of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the
disease.
If you attempt to debate most of those on the supposedly left, they reduce discussion to
this cartoonish vision of politics.
The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical
movements under Woodrow Wilson, then the "Red Scares" in the 1920s, when they virtually
destroyed our labor movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s.
For good measure, they purged the liberal class -- look at what they did to Henry Wallace -- so
that Cold War "liberals" equated capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and
liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France. There are still residues of a militant left in
Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon. But here we almost have to begin from
scratch.
I've battled continuously with Antifa and the Black Bloc. I think they're kind of poster
children for what I would consider phenomenal political immaturity. Resistance is not a form of
personal catharsis. We are not fighting the rise of fascism in the 1930s. The corporate elites
we have to overthrow already hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance
movement, which takes a lot of patient organizing among working men and women, we are going to
be steadily ground down.
So Trump's not the problem. But just that sentence alone is going to kill most discussions
with people who consider themselves part of the left.
The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical
critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won't get academic appointments. You won't
win prizes. You won't get grants. The New York Times , if they review your book, will
turn it over to a dutiful mandarin like George Packer to trash it -- as he did with my last
book. The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as
Princeton and Columbia, replicate the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even
get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really
safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and
is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members
of most of these trustee boards should be in prison!
Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today
they run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the
intellectual, cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a
word for these people: traitors.
DN: What about the impact that you've seen of identity politics in America?
CH: Well, identity politics defines the immaturity of the left. The corporate state embraced
identity politics. We saw where identity politics got us with Barack Obama, which is worse than
nowhere. He was, as Cornel West said, a black mascot for Wall Street, and now he is going
around to collect his fees for selling us out.
My favorite kind of anecdotal story about identity politics: Cornel West and I, along with
others, led a march of homeless people on the Democratic National Convention session in
Philadelphia. There was an event that night. It was packed with hundreds of people, mostly
angry Bernie Sanders supporters. I had been asked to come speak. And in the back room, there
was a group of younger activists, one who said, "We're not letting the white guy go first."
Then he got up and gave a speech about how everybody now had to vote for Hillary Clinton.
That's kind of where identity politics gets you. There is a big difference between shills for
corporate capitalism and imperialism, like Corey Booker and Van Jones, and true radicals like
Glen Ford and Ajamu Baraka. The corporate state carefully selects and promotes women, or people
of color, to be masks for its cruelty and exploitation.
It is extremely important, obviously, that those voices are heard, but not those voices that
have sold out to the power elite. The feminist movement is a perfect example of this. The old
feminism, which I admire, the Andrea Dworkin kind of feminism, was about empowering oppressed
women. This form of feminism did not try to justify prostitution as sex work. It knew that it
is just as wrong to abuse a woman in a sweatshop as it is in the sex trade. The new form of
feminism is an example of the poison of neoliberalism. It is about having a woman CEO or woman
president, who will, like Hillary Clinton, serve the systems of oppression. It posits that
prostitution is about choice. What woman, given a stable income and security, would choose to
be raped for a living? Identity politics is anti-politics.
DN: I believe you spoke at a Socialist Convergence conference where you criticized Obama and
Sanders, and you were shouted down.
CH: Yes, I don't even remember. I've been shouted down criticizing Obama in many places,
including Berkeley. I have had to endure this for a long time as a supporter and speech writer
for Ralph Nader. People don't want the illusion of their manufactured personalities, their
political saviors, shattered; personalities created by public relations industries. They don't
want to do the hard work of truly understanding how power works and organizing to bring it
down.
DN: You mentioned that you have been reading the World Socialist Web Site for some
time. You know we are quite outside of that framework.
CH: I'm not a Marxist. I'm not a Trotskyist. But I like the site. You report on important
issues seriously and in a way a lot of other sites don't. You care about things that are
important to me -- mass incarceration, the rights and struggles of the working class and the
crimes of empire. I have read the site for a long time.
DN: Much of what claims to be left -- that is, the pseudo-left -- reflects the interests of
the affluent middle class.
CH: Precisely. When everybody was, you know, pushing for multiculturalism in lead
institutions, it really meant filtering a few people of color or women into university
departments or newsrooms, while carrying out this savage economic assault against the working
poor and, in particular, poor people of color in deindustrialized pockets of the United States.
Very few of these multiculturalists even noticed. I am all for diversity, but not when it is
devoid of economic justice. Cornel West has been one of the great champions, not only of the
black prophetic tradition, the most important intellectual tradition in our history, but the
clarion call for justice in all its forms. There is no racial justice without economic justice.
And while these elite institutions sprinkled a few token faces into their hierarchy, they
savaged the working class and the poor, especially poor people of color.
Much of the left was fooled by the identity politics trick. It was a boutique activism. It
kept the corporate system, the one we must destroy, intact. It gave it a friendly face.
DN: The World Socialist Web Site has made the issue of inequality a central focus
of its coverage.
CH: That's why I read it and like it.
DN: Returning to the Russia issue, where do you see this going? How seriously do you see
this assault on democratic rights? We call this the new McCarthyism. Is that, in your view, a
legitimate analogy?
CH: Yes, of course it's the new McCarthyism. But let's acknowledge how almost irrelevant our
voices are.
DN: I don't agree with you on that.
CH: Well, irrelevant in the sense that we're not heard within the mainstream. When I go to
Canada I am on the CBC on prime time. The same is true in France. That never happens here. PBS
and NPR are never going to do that. Nor are they going to do that for any other serious critic
of capitalism or imperialism.
If there is a debate about attacking Syria, for example, it comes down to bombing Syria or
bombing Syria and sending in troops, as if these are the only two options. Same with health
care. Do we have Obamacare, a creation of the Heritage Foundation and the pharmaceutical and
insurance industries, or no care? Universal health care for all is not discussed. So we are on
the margins. But that does not mean we are not dangerous. Neoliberalism and globalization are
zombie ideologies. They have no credibility left. The scam has been found out. The global
oligarchs are hated and reviled. The elite has no counterargument to our critique. So they
can't afford to have us around. As the power elite becomes more frightened, they're going to
use harsher forms of control, including the blunt instrument of censorship and violence.
DN: I think it can be a big mistake to be focused on the sense of isolation or
marginalization. I'll make a prediction. You will have, probably sooner than you think, more
requests for interviews and television time. We are in a period of colossal political
breakdown. We are going to see, more and more, the emergence of the working class as a powerful
political force.
CH: That's why we are a target. With the bankruptcy of the ruling ideology, and the
bankruptcy of the American liberal class and the American left, those who hold fast to
intellectual depth and an examination of systems of power, including economics, culture and
politics, have to be silenced. (Republished from World Socialist Web Site by
permission of author or representative)
I'm a moderate admirer of Chris Hedges, but he is really cooking in this interview. Too much
to praise here, but his thinking that corporations, the mainstream media, and the academy can
and do successfully "game" dissent by suppression, divide and conquer, co-optation, and so
on, is spot on.
Good but not great interview with Chris Hodges: he manages to talk about an amorphous elite
without identifying any of them and not a word about Israel. So pseudo-good roally
I think this was an excellent discussion, and I would like to thank you both for having it,
and sharing it.
Among the crises effecting the United States, the one effecting us most profoundly is the
absence of any accountability for the crimes committed by our oligarchic class.
Addressing this issue is ground zero for any meaningful change.
If there is no accountability for their crimes , there will be no change.
Certainly the greatest among these crimes was(is) defrauding the nation into " a war of
aggression". which, being the supreme international crime, should be met with harsh prison
sentences for all who promoted it.
It is important for everyone to recognize just how much damage these policies have done to
the country, not just in terms of our collective morale or our constitutional mandates,not
just in terms of our international standing on universal principles of legality and justice,
but our long term economic solvency as a nation.
The "exceptionalism" of our "war of aggression" elites has completely devastated our
nation's balance sheet.
Since 9-11, our national debt has grown by a mind numbing "fourteen and a half trillion
dollars".. nearly quadrupling since 1999.
This unconscionable level of "overspending" is unprecedented in human history.
Not one lawmaker, not one primetime pundit, nor one editorialist (of any major newspaper),
has a CLUE how to deal with it.
Aside from the root atrocity in visiting mass murder on millions of innocents who never
attacked us (and never intended to) which is a horrible crime in and of itself,
There is the profound crisis , in situ , of potentially demanding that 320 million
Americans PAY FOR THE WARS OUR ELITES LIED US INTO .
This is where the rubber meets the road for our "war of aggression-ists ", gentlemen.
This is the "unanimous space" of our entire country's population on the issue of "no
taxation without representation".
WHOSE assets should be made forfeit to pay for these wars .The DECEIVERS or the DECEIVED
?
Ask "The People" ..and you will find your answer .very fast.
No wonder our "elites" are terrified to discuss this .
I agree with the general tenor of this article and would further state that in addition to
the Iraq thing which was a war crime and eliminated any shreds of legitimacy retained by the
yankee regime that the Libya overthrow and destruction, a war crime of historic proportions,
and the use of that overthrow to provide major support to the barbaric element in Syria
expose the yankee regime as an enemy of civilization with all that entails, including
questions of whether, absent any legitimacy, the regime's continued existence itself does not
constitute a major threat.
The elements in the article discussing and exposing the New York Times and its role as an
integral part of the power structure should be read and remembered by all.
How do you interpret the fixation on Russia and the entire interpretation of the
election within the framework of Putin's manipulation?
Chris Hedges: It's as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It is
an absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate a very frightening accusation
-- critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia.
With all due respect for Chris Hedges, who is doubtless a courageous journalist and an
intelligent commentator, I would suggest that what is also and most ridiculous is the thought
that it is only agents of Israel that have suborned the neocon faction within USA's
government and 'Deep State' (controllers of MSM). Or is this OT? I don't think so, because if
we are to discuss the anti-Russia campaign realistically, as baseless in fact, and as
contrived for an effect and to further/protect some particular interests, we can hardly avoid
the question: Who or what interest is served by the anti-Russia campaign?
Who or what interest is served by anti-Russia propaganda other than, or in addition to,
just the usual MIC suspects, profiteering corporations who want to keep a supposed need for
nuclear weapons front and center in the minds of Congress? Cui bono?
To be clear: I suggest that neocon office-holders within USA's government or within the
Deep State (controllers of MSM) are foreign agents for at least three nations: the People's
Republic of China,the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the State of Israel.
(I would compare USA now with Imperial China in its declining years when it was being sold
piecemeal to all the great powers of Europe.)
Who benefits from this situation and how do they benefit? All three of these countries are
deeply involved in suborning members of Congress and others within the government of the USA,
yet none of the three is mentioned in such a connection by the MSM or by officials of the
Executive. Thus, it is beneficial to them to have suspicion thrown onto Russia and thus
investigative attention deflected from themselves. A few public figures (e.g., Philip
Giraldi) have made such allegations respecting Israel, more public figures have made such
suggestions respecting Saudi Arabia, but very few have made the allegations in the case of
the PRC.
Let's think about this in the context of history, beginning with the Vietnam War. When USA
got involved in Vietnam -- which involvement began during the days of Eisenhower/Dulles --
probably the primary interest groups that swayed USA global/foreign policy were the Vatican
and the China Lobby. The interests of these two lobbies converged in Vietnam. From the RC
side, consider an historical event that is unknown practically to any Americans under the age
of 60 or 70, namely, Operation Passage to Freedom, 1954-55.
"The period was marked by a CIA-backed propaganda campaign on behalf of South Vietnam's
Roman Catholic Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. The campaign exhorted Catholics to flee
impending religious persecution under communism, and around 60% of the north's 1 million
Catholics obliged." (Wikipedia: Operation Passage to Freedom )
From the side of the China Lobby – avoiding the matter of JFK's planning to dump USA
involvement in Vietnam after the 1964 election – what we saw in the early years of
USA's involvement, 1965-1969, was a period in which the China Lobby could push an agenda that
included widening the Vietnam campaign into southern China, particularly to include the
tungsten mining operations supposedly owned by K.C. Wu. Tungsten at that time was considered
as having tremendous strategic value, centering on, but not limited to, its essential use in
the filaments of incandescent light-bulbs. It became clear after the Tet Offensive that the
entire strategy of reopening the Chinese civil war, capturing the tungsten, etc, could make
sense only if Chang Kai Shek's KMT would commit its troops in huge numbers, virtually all of
its troops, on the ground in Vietnam (which would have brought in huge numbers of PRC troops
on the other side) -- it became, to borrow one of Nixon's favorite phrases, "perfectly clear"
that expansion into southern China and capture of the tungsten operations there were not in
the cards. When Kissinger talked up his 'realpolitik', what he really meant was the politics
of surrendering to Beijing. So, Nixon in July 1969, recognizing that there was nothing to be
gained by the loss of life and expenditure of every form of capital, ordered first of many
troop withdrawals from Vietnam. It was all a done deal as of Kissinger taking over as
National Security Adviser, January 1969 -- everything but the tears.
Now, patience, dear reader, this is all leading up to a certain crucial event that took
place in 1971 -- namely, Kissinger's secret trip to Beijing in July (1971) to arrange for
everything regarding what amounted to a surrender to the PRC, except the end of the Vietnam
War. The documents are still unavailable as classified Top Secret or whatever, but clearly,
China had no interest in seeing an end to the Vietnam War, because both parties –
Vietnam and USA – were adversaries of China. (Let them knock each other out!) Most
likely, Zhou talked Henry into doing what he could to prolong USA's involvement in the
Vietnam War, not to shorten it. See, including between the lines, National Security
Archives:
As noted, this stuff is mostly unavailable to us, the public, but it is clear that USA's
'leaders' (Nixon and Kissinger) wanted to make kissy-kissy with Zhou Enlai, and it was all
arranged including George H. W. Bush's appointment as USA's first 'Ambassador' (in all but
name) to Beijing, and including giving China's permanent seat on the UNSC to Beijing and
otherwise selling out the old China Lobby. I call it the 'old China Lobby' because part of
what was arranged was that the old China Lobby would be taken over by the New China lobby,
complete with all the payola channels into Congress and the Deep State.
Now, I think, we arrive at today, 2017, and the failure of Trump to act on his campaign
promises to oppose China in any way. Maybe he thought about it for a minute, but he was
surrounded by neocons, who were already on the payroll of the PRC -- if not taking direct
orders from the Standing Committee of the CCP, then at least promised to avoid offending the
interests of the PRC -- on pain of losing regular paychecks from Beijing into their secret
Grand Cayman accounts.
What I would like to say to Hedges. and others like him, is just this:
THEY say that you are foreign agents for Russia? Time to use a little judo on them: time
for YOU to speak truth that THEY are foreign agents for the People's Republic of China.
And don't forget this potent phrase: YET NONE DARE CALL IT TREASON!
"The elite has no counterargument to our critique. So they can't afford to have us
around. As the power elite becomes more frightened, they're going to use harsher forms of
control, including the blunt instrument of censorship and violence."
Precisely! What makes it even worse, they will be pushing this new pretexts for control
sloppy (as in Vegas) and in a hurry. Which will make them look even more ridiculous and due
to the lack of time will force to act even more stupid, resulting in an exponential curve of
censorship, oppression and insanity. And that's there the maniacal dreams of certain forces
to start a really big war in the Middle East (with or without attacking North Korea first)
may come true.
"avoiding the matter of JFK's planning to dump USA involvement in Vietnam after the 1964
election – "
Now that's a lie. This part is a lie. Or it is carefully crafted ex post hoc mythology a
la Camelot, the Kennedy Mystique.
FACT: JFK was a Cold War Hawk and during his administration increased nuclear arms higher
than Ike and until Reagan.
JFK during his administration increased the number of "advisers" to a higher number than
Ike.
William F. Buckley pointedly asked Senator Robert Kennedy in the mid. '60′s "So, was
there any thought of the White House pulling out [of Vietnam]?
RFK: No. There never was.
If anything, had he lived to see a second term, most likely US involvement in Vietnam
would have escalated as much as under LBJ, perhaps with the same disastrous results, perhaps
not. But JFK was no peacenik dove.
Mr. Hedges comes across as a total whackjob, and makes Bill Moyers appear to be a gentle
moderate in comparison. That he thinks so highly of race man BLM supporter Cornell West
speaks volumes of naivety to the nth degree. A total cuck without even knowing it, nay,
totally appreciative of being a cuck and it appears to be his hope that one day his cardinal
sin of being white will be purged by peoples of color, who are his true moral and
intellectual betters in every step of the way.
I agree that the Russia fixation is garbage, but explaining the populist revolt without
touching on the major issue of forced demographic and cultural change through legal and
illegal immigration is dishonest. Almost everyone who isn't an immigrant or the descendant or
relative of a post-65 immigrant is pissed off beyond words about this! How did you miss the
popular response to Trump's promises to "deport them all," end birthright citizenship and
chain migration, build a wall etc.? Without those promises, he wouldn't have made it to the
debates.
I'm also not sure how welfare has been stripped. What programs aren't available?
I'm not sure how to lower black incarceration rates. Having taught in inner-city schools
and worked in the same environment in other jobs, I know that crime and dysfunction are
through the roof. I can only imagine what those communities would be like if the predators
and crooks that are incarcerated were allowed to roam free.
Chris Hedges: It's as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It is
an absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate a very frightening accusation
-- critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia.
Is this the same Chris Hedges that wrote those articles in November 2001 that Saddam and
al Qaeda were in cahoots, which led to the illegal 2003 invasion?
Tell me Chris, did you know about the CIA pollution then or just find out lately? And
correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you also write NYT articles in the Fall of 2002 saying
that Saddam had WMD's?
Again, getting your tips from the CIA? Ever hear of 'Operation Mockingbird?"
It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy.
That's cringe-worthy.
Transformation into an oligarchy? Transformation ??? I like Hedges' work,
but such fundamental errors really taint what he sez.
The country was never transformed into an oligarchy; it began as one.
In fact, it was organized and functioned as a pluto-oligarchy right out of the box. In
case anyone has the dimness to argue with me about it, all that shows is that you don't know
JS about how the cornstitution was foisted on the rest of us by the plutoligarchs.
"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for "
-Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIII, 1782 . ME 2:163
The Elites "Have No Credibility Left"
Guess what, boys and girls Why did they have any to begin with?
Where do people get their faith? WakeTF up, already!! (Yes, I'm losing it. Because even a
duumbshit goy like myself can see it. Where are all you bright bulb know-it-alls with all the
flippin answers???)
Newspapers are trapped in an old system of information they call "objectivity" and
"balance," formulae designed to cater to the powerful and the wealthy and obscure the
truth.
It's amazing that here we are, self-anointed geniuses and dumbos alike, puttering around
in the 21st century, and someone feels the necessity to point that out. And he's right; it
needs to be pointed out. Drummed into our skulls in fact.
Arrrgggghhhh!!! Jefferson again.:
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes
suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of
misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within
their knowledge with the lies of the day.
More deja vu all over again and again. Note the date.:
"This is a story of a powerful and wealthy newspaper having enormous influence And never
a day out of more than ten thousand days that this newspaper has not subtly and
cunningly distort the news of the world in the interest of special privilege.
"
Upton Sinclair, "The crimes of the "Times" : a test of newspaper decency," pamphlet,
1921
"The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical
movements under Woodrow Wilson, then the "Red Scares" in the 1920s, when they virtually
destroyed our labor movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s.
For good measure, they purged the liberal class -- look at what they did to Henry Wallace."
Look what they did to Henry Wallace -- Are you kidding me? Wallace was a Stalinist stooge,
too treasonous even for his boss, FDR, although the bird brain Eleanor loved him. The guy was
so out of touch with reality that after the Potemkin tour of the Gulag that Stalin gave him
during WWII he came back raving about how swell it was for the lunch-bucket gang in Siberia.
He also encouraged FDR to sell out the Poles to Stalin
I find it most fascinating that none of what Hedges says is news, but even UR readers
probably think it is. Here's an antidote to that idea.
The following quote is from Eugene Kelly who's excoriating government press releases but
the criticism applies as well to the resulting press reports. I found the whole article
striking.:
Any boob can deduce, a priori, what type of "news" is contained in this
rubbish.
-Eugene A. Kelly, Distorting the News, The American Mercury, March 1935 , pp.
307-318
Hedges doesn't seem to understand that the "Resistance" is openly and obviously working FOR
Deepstate. They do not resist wars and globalism and monopolistic corporations. They resist
everyone who questions the war. They resist nationalism and localism.
Nothing mysterious or hidden about this, no ulterior motive or bankshot. It's explicitly
stated in every poster and shout and beating.
The housing market is now apparently turning down. Consumer incomes are limited by jobs
offshoring and the ability of employers to hold down wages and salaries. The Federal Reserve
seems committed to higher interest rates - in my view to protect the exchange value of the US
dollar on which Washington's power is based. The arrogant fools in Washington, with whom I
spent a quarter century, have, with their bellicosity and sanctions, encouraged nations with
independent foreign and economic policies to drop the use of the dollar. This takes some time
to accomplish, but Russia, China, Iran, and India are apparently committed to dropping or
reducing the use of the US dollar.
A drop in the world demand for dollars can be destabilizing of the dollar's value unless the
central banks of Japan, UK, and EU continue to support the dollar's exchange value, either by
purchasing dollars with their currencies or by printing offsetting amounts of their currencies
to keep the dollar's value stable. So far they have been willing to do both. However, Trump's
criticisms of Europe has soured Europe against Trump, with a corresponding weakening of the
willingness to cover for the US. Japan's colonial status vis-a-vis the US since the Second
World War is being stressed by the hostility that Washington is introducing into Japan's part
of the world. The orchestrated Washington tensions with North Korea and China do not serve
Japan, and those Japanese politicians who are not heavily on the US payroll are aware that
Japan is being put on the line for American, not Japanese interests.
If all this leads, as is likely, to the rise of more independence among Washington's
vassals, the vassals are likely to protect themselves from the cost of their independence by
removing themselves from the dollar and payments mechanisms associated with the dollar as world
currency. This means a drop in the value of the dollar that the Federal Reserve would have to
prevent by raising interest rates on dollar investments in order to keep the demand for dollars
up sufficiently to protect its value.
As every realtor knows, housing prices boom when interest rates are low, because the lower
the rate the higher the price of the house that the person with the mortgage can afford. But
when interest rates rise, the lower the price of the house that a buyer can afford.
If we are going into an era of higher interest rates, home prices and sales are going to
decline.
The "on the other hand" to this analysis is that if the Federal Reserve loses control of the
situation and the debts associated with the current value of the US dollar become a problem
that can collapse the system, the Federal Reserve is likely to pump out enough new money to
preserve the debt by driving interest rates back to zero or negative.
Would this save or revive the housing market? Not if the debt-burdened American people have
no substantial increases in their real income. Where are these increases likely to come from?
Robotics are about to take away the jobs not already lost to jobs offshoring. Indeed, despite
President Trump's emphasis on "bringing the jobs back," Ford Motor Corp. has just announced
that it is moving the production of the Ford Focus from Michigan to China.
Apparently it never occurs to the executives running America's offshored corporations that
potential customers in America working in part time jobs stocking shelves in Walmart, Home
Depot, Lowe's, etc., will not have enough money to purchase a Ford. Unlike Henry Ford, who had
the intelligence to pay workers good wages so they could buy Fords, the executives of American
companies today sacrifice their domestic market and the American economy to their short-term
"performance bonuses" based on low foreign labor costs.
What is about to happen in America today is that the middle class, or rather those who were
part of it as children and expected to join it, are going to be driven into manufactured
"double-wide homes" or single trailers. The MacMansions will be cut up into tenements. Even the
high-priced rentals along the Florida coast will find a drop in demand as real incomes continue
to fall. The $5,000-$20,000 weekly summer rental rate along Florida's panhandle 30A will not be
sustainable. The speculators who are in over their heads in this arena are due for a future
shock.
For years I have reported on the monthly payroll jobs statistics. The vast majority of new
jobs are in lowly paid nontradable domestic services, such as waitresses and bartenders, retail
clerks, and ambulatory health care services. In the payroll jobs report for June, for example,
the new jobs, if they actually exist, are concentrated in these sectors: administrative and
waste services, health care and social assistance, accommodation and food services, and local
government.
High productivity, high value-added manufactured jobs shrink in the US as they are offshored to
Asia. High productivity, high value-added professional service jobs, such as research,
design, software engineering, accounting, legal research, are being filled by offshoring or by
foreigners brought into the US on work visas with the fabricated and false excuse that there
are no Americans qualified for the jobs.
America is a country hollowed out by the short-term greed of the ruling class and its shills
in the economics profession and in Congress. Capitalism only works for the few. It no longer
works for the many.
On national security grounds Trump should respond to Ford's announcement of offshoring the
production of Ford Focus to China by nationalizing Ford. Michigan's payrolls and tax base will
decline and employment in China will rise. We are witnessing a major US corporation enabling
China's rise over the United States. Among the external costs of Ford's contribution to China's
GDP is Trump's increased US military budget to counter the rise in China's power.
Trump should also nationalize Apple, Nike, Levi, and all the rest of the offshored US global
corporations who have put the interest of a few people above the interests of the American work
force and the US economy. There is no other way to get the jobs back. Of course, if Trump did
this, he would be assassinated.
America is ruled by a tiny percentage of people who constitute a treasonous class. These
people have the money to purchase the government, the media, and the economics profession that
shills for them. This greedy traitorous interest group must be dealt with or the United States
of America and the entirety of its peoples are lost.
In her latest blockbuster book, Collusion , Nomi Prins documents how central banks and
international monetary institutions have used the 2008 financial crisis to manipulate markets
and the fiscal policies of governments to benefit the super-rich.
These manipulations are used to enable the looting of countries such as Greece and Portugal
by the large German and Dutch banks and the enrichment via inflated financial asset prices of
shareholders at the expense of the general population.
One would think that repeated financial crises would undermine the power of financial
interests, but the facts are otherwise. As long ago as November 21, 1933, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt wrote to Col. House that "the real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a
financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew
Jackson."
Thomas Jefferson said that "banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than
standing armies" and that "if the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue
of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks . . . will deprive the
people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers
conquered."
The shrinkage of the US middle class is evidence that Jefferson's prediction is coming
true.
"... In May it was revealed that AT&T paid Cohen up to $600,000 for his "insights" - asking him to specifically look into the proposed $85 billion merger with Time Warner Inc. He also took money from Swiss healthcare giant Novartis, Korea Aerospace Industries and Russian businessman Victor Vekselberg. In total, Cohen has been paid a total of $1.8 million since Trump took office for his "insights," according to the companies, which would have been better off tossing their money in a fireplace. ..."
"... In other words, Cohen - who Trump has severed ties with, was either a terrible unregistered lobbyist or ran a bait and switch operation. ..."
"... Authorities are investigating whether Mr. Cohen engaged in unregistered lobbying in connection with his consulting work for corporate clients after Mr. Trump went to the White House, according to people familiar with the probe ..."
"... Investigators are also examining potential campaign-finance violations and bank fraud surrounding, among other deals, Mr. Cohen's October 2016 payment to Stephanie Clifford , the former adult-film star called Stormy Daniels, to keep her from discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the probe. Mr. Trump denies any encounter took place. - WSJ ..."
Right before the feds raided former Trump attorney Michael Cohen in early April, a top Trump
donor offered to pay Cohen $10 million plus a retainer fee in exchange for help securing
funding for a nuclear-power project - including a $5 billion loan from the US Government,
claims the
Wall Street Journal , citing people familiar with the matter.
Under the contract, Mr. Haney agreed to pay Mr. Cohen a monthly retainer in addition to
the $10 million success fee if he could help obtain the funding, including approval of the
full amount of the project's application under a U.S. Department of Energy loan program, the
people familiar with the deal said. -
WSJ
Before we get too far down the rabbit hole, it should be noted that Cohen never actually
entered into the deal according to the donor's attorney, while application with the Department
of Energy (DOE) is still pending. The Journal also provides no evidence of the contract, only
anonymous sources, and there is also no suggestion that President Trump knew about the alleged
offer from the donor - who contributed $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund, yet primarily
backed Democrats before the Cohen arrangement.
The donor, Franklin L. Haney , gave the contract to Trump attorney Michael Cohen in early
April to assist his efforts to complete a pair of unfinished nuclear reactors in Alabama,
known as the Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant, these people said.
Had he been paid the success fee, Mr. Cohen's deal with Mr. Haney could have been among
the most lucrative of the known consulting agreements he secured after Mr. Trump's election
by emphasizing his personal relationship with the president, according to people familiar
with his pitches. -
WSJ
According to the DOE, Cohen hasn't communicated with Energy Secretary Rick Perry about the
project, however he did make "several calls to officials at the Energy Department in the
spring" to inquire about the process for securing the loan - including what could be done to
speed it up, according to the Journal.
Had Cohen accepted the deal, it would mark yet another corporate interest which lined his
pockets, yet received nothing in return.
In
May it was revealed that AT&T paid Cohen up to $600,000 for his "insights" - asking him
to specifically look into the proposed $85 billion merger with Time Warner Inc. He also took
money from Swiss healthcare giant Novartis, Korea Aerospace Industries and Russian businessman
Victor Vekselberg. In total, Cohen has been paid a total of $1.8 million since Trump took
office for his "insights," according to the companies, which would have been better off tossing
their money in a fireplace.
In other words, Cohen - who Trump has severed ties with, was either a terrible unregistered
lobbyist or ran a bait and switch operation.
Authorities are investigating whether Mr. Cohen
engaged in unregistered lobbying in connection with his consulting work for corporate
clients after Mr. Trump went to the White House, according to people familiar with the
probe.
Investigators are also examining potential campaign-finance violations and bank fraud
surrounding, among other deals,
Mr. Cohen's October 2016 payment to Stephanie Clifford , the former adult-film star
called Stormy Daniels, to keep her from discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr.
Trump, according to people familiar with the probe. Mr. Trump denies any encounter took
place. -
WSJ
"Neither Mr. Haney nor Nuclear Development LLC ever entered into a contract with Michael
Cohen or his affiliate for lobbying services related to the Bellefonte project," said Haney's
attorney, Larry Blust, referring to the name of the Company Haney is using for the project.
Haney's company, Nuclear Development, agreed to pay $111 million in a November 2016 contract
to purchase the unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Plant from the Tennessee Valley Authority. He has
until this November to close on the deal.
One month after the November agreement, Haney donated $1 million to the Trump inaugural fund
via a corporate entity, according to FEC records. He had previously backed Democrats. As part
of their arrangement - perhaps to take him for a test drive, Cohen reportedly participated in
an April 5 meeting in Miami with Haney to pitch his project to the vice chairman of the Qatar
Investment Authority, Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohammed al-Thani, the Journal
reported in May , citing yet more anonymous people familiar with the matter.
The meeting took place near Miami Beach, where a Qatari delegation had come to promote
business ties with the U.S. Mr. Cohen spent a night on Mr. Haney's yacht during the trip, one
of those people has said.
There is no indication that the Qataris have decided to invest with Mr. Haney. A Qatar
spokesman in Washington has confirmed the meeting. A representative of the Qatari
sovereign-wealth fund didn't respond to a request for comment. -
WSJ
A professor of government at American University, James Thuber, told the WSJ that such fees
are "outside the ethical norms" among Washington lobbyists are frowned upon.
Century-old court rulings deemed fees contingent on lobbyists obtaining public funds or
killing legislation unenforceable and counter to public policy, saying they encouraged
corruption, he said. Several lobbyists contacted by the Journal said $10 million was an
unheard-of sum to pay a consultant for government-related work. -
WSJ
That said, there is no blanket federal ban on success fees for Washington lobbyists, while
Cohen has never worked for the Trump administration - something former chief strategist Steve
Bannon ensured early on in the campaign.
Following the money...
Meanwhile, five Republican Congressmen urged the Trump administration in a May 14
letter to finish reviewing Nuclear Development's loan application , describing the project
as an "engine for economic development."
According to the Journal , the DOE's Loan Programs Office COO Dong Kim wrote back saying
that the agency would address the application "as quickly as possible, while still performing
the necessary due diligence to protect taxpayer interests."
What about part-times who are are exploited to the mex and paied very little... This is
sophistry to assume that everybody has full time job in compemporary America.
...A single person taking a minimum wage job would earn an annual income of $15,080. A
married couple would earn $30,160. By the way, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
less than 4 percent of hourly workers in 2016 were paid the minimum wage. That means that over
96 percent of workers earned more than the minimum wage. Not surprising is the fact that among
both black and white married couples, the poverty rate is in the single digits. Most poverty is
in female-headed households.
One thing I don't understand about MAGA. The rallying cry is to make America great again,
but the actions are to revert the government and tax system to when America wasn't that
great.
The height of American civilization was the 50s or 60s, but all the actions are to bring
the state back to how it was in pre-WW1 or the 1920s. It was the stronger labour controls and
high taxes of the 50s that coincided with American dominance. The kind that if someone tried
to introduce them today they'd be called socialist.
" Indeed, socialism sounds good but, when practiced, leads to disaster"
Im sure the author is thinking of Venezuela. But Venezuela, like all of South America, is
a cartel infested, militaristic, corrupt country run by a megalomaniac. It's more oligarch
than socialist.
He should ask the question: if socialism in a stable society, like say Sweden, means free
health care & education, why do people say the US has a low tax rate? Just add that cost
right to your taxes, and bim bam boom the US tax rate is probably more than a 100%, because,
lets be honest, the average $55k/year for a family of 4 will NEVER EVER cover the $1 million
it would take to send your kids to college debt free.
"... "I would be willing to 'shut down' government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security," the president tweeted, "which includes the Wall! Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc." ..."
The Sunday morning tirade saw the president claim he "would be willing to 'shut
down'" the federal government if members of Congress from the opposition party didn't row
in behind Republicans in voting for his immigration reform package, which includes releasing
funds for the US-Mexico border wall that formed the cornerstone of his election campaign.
"I would be willing to 'shut down' government if the Democrats do not give us the votes
for Border Security," the president tweeted, "which includes the Wall! Must get rid of Lottery,
Catch & Release etc."
I would be willing to "shut down" government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for
Border Security, which includes the Wall! Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc.
and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our
Country!
"... Can't waste resources here at home assuring sound drinking water for all, no, we need to attack Iran because as the rumor has it that the "undemocratic" ..."
Can't waste resources here at home assuring sound drinking water for all, no, we need to
attack Iran because as the rumor has it that the "undemocratic"
Ayatollah is denying his
people the benefits of premium drinking water. Or something like that. I get confused.
"... Unfortunately, if we scan the regions of our planet, we immediately see that humanity has disappointed God's expectations. Man, especially in our time, has without hesitation devastated wooded plains and valleys, polluted waters, disfigured the earth's habitat, made the air unbreathable, disturbed the hydrogeological and atmospheric systems, turned luxuriant areas into deserts and undertaken forms of unrestrained industrialization, degrading that "flowerbed" – to use an image from Dante Alighieri (Paradiso, XXII, 151) – which is the earth, our dwelling-place. ..."
Unfortunately, if we scan the regions of our planet, we immediately see that humanity has
disappointed God's expectations. Man, especially in our time, has without hesitation devastated
wooded plains and valleys, polluted waters, disfigured the earth's habitat, made the air
unbreathable, disturbed the hydrogeological and atmospheric systems, turned luxuriant areas
into deserts and undertaken forms of unrestrained industrialization, degrading that "flowerbed"
– to use an image from Dante Alighieri (Paradiso, XXII, 151) – which is the earth,
our dwelling-place.
"... As Bishop Athanasius Schneider recently opined in an interview , "the powerful of our world, the Western states" support groups like ISIS "indirectly." As a result, civilians get killed, and a prolonged bloodbath between warring religious factions ensues, thus ruining thousands, if not millions, of lives. ..."
"... Persons who espouse this warped ideology are what political scientists refer to as neoconservatives. To put it in Catholic terms, neoconservatives seek to once and for all obliterate the Social Kingship of Christ by constructing a world order rooted in the Freemasonic Social Kingship of Man. For decades neocons have preyed on the patriotism of ordinary Americans to get them to fight unjust wars on behalf of Arab theocrats and Jewish Zionists, the real behind-the-scenes power brokers. ..."
Super Tuesday and Super Saturday came and went. As expected, Donald Trump dominated the competition.
Sort of.
While Trump did exceptionally well in states like New Hampshire, South Carolina and elsewhere in the South, The Donald has stumbled
as of late, coming in second to Ted Cruz in a number of recent contests.
Trump will likely expand his delegate lead in the coming weeks. However, he won't arrive at the Republican convention with enough
of them to secure the nomination outright.
If that happens, the oligarchs in the Republican Party will do everything they can at the convention to deny Trump that which
would rightfully be his.
It's been rumored that Mitt Romney will be called upon by the establishment to save the Party of Lincoln from being "torn asunder."
Some Republicans say they simply won't vote for Mr. Trump. Others suggest running a third party "conservative" candidate.
However it shakes out, if reaction to Romney's anti-Trump press conference held earlier this month indicates anything, it's that
refusing the billionaire from New York the nomination if he has the majority of delegates would literally break the GOP in two.
Before discussing what a Trump victory would mean for the Republican Party, let's backtrack a bit and try to put this man's candidacy
into context. If possible, a Catholic context.
American "exceptionalism"
Since the Second World War but most especially since the early 1990s, a cabal of intellectuals desirous of global empire have
hubristically argued that it is America's duty to advance "freedom" and "democracy" to "the people" of the world, all in the name
of bringing about a lasting "peace."
Of course, when these men speak of "freedom" what they really mean is massive economic inequality and social hedonism. And when
these men speak of "democracy" what they truly mean is rigged elections with candidates that they and not "the people" get to pick.
(See the U.S.-backed coup that took place in Ukraine in February 2014 for evidence of this.)
Despite the lofty language used to trick Americans into supporting this political pyramid scheme, the reality is that bringing
about this so-called "peace" is a dirty business.
For one, the U.S. essentially bribes countries into joining NATO. Economically sanctioning those who refuse to do so.
Two, when leaders from sovereign Middle Eastern nations are no longer viewed as politically useful, they're assassinated. Of course,
the more diplomatic way to put it is "so and so has to go! "
And three, sustaining American imperialism oversees requires the funneling of billions of taxpayer dollars to Islamic states like
Saudi Arabia and providing firearms to "moderate rebels" in countries most people can't locate on a map.
As Bishop Athanasius Schneider recently opined
in an interview , "the powerful of our world, the Western states" support groups like ISIS "indirectly." As a result, civilians get killed, and a prolonged bloodbath between warring religious factions ensues, thus ruining thousands,
if not millions, of lives.
The end game, of course, is to pick off Eastern European countries one by one in order to expand NATO (something the U.S. promised
decades ago they wouldn't do) so that "liberal democracy" can be established not only there but also in North Africa and, most importantly,
in Russia.
Globalism
Persons who espouse this warped ideology are what political scientists refer to as neoconservatives. To put it in Catholic terms, neoconservatives seek to once and for all obliterate the Social Kingship of Christ by constructing
a world order rooted in the Freemasonic Social Kingship of Man. For decades neocons have preyed on the patriotism of ordinary Americans to get them to fight unjust wars on behalf of Arab theocrats
and Jewish Zionists, the real behind-the-scenes power brokers.
While paying lip service to social conservatism, limited government, constitutionalism and state's rights these war hawks hijacked
the Republican Party and surgically transformed it into a weak-kneed, open borders, bloodthirsty Frankenstein in the service of international
elites.
Though insurgent candidates like Pat Buchanan in the 1990s reminded folks about the direction this clandestine group of war criminals
was leading the country, the monied class acted quickly and decisively. Buchanan's warnings about 1) the looming culture wars 2)
the harm cheap labor abroad would have on the American middle class 3) the problems associated with not securing the border and 4)
the debt and death required with being the policeman of the world were easily tamped down, thanks in no small part to the help of
the corporate media.
Since that time Americans have had to choose between presidential candidates who, at the end of the day, were nothing more than
cogs in the globalist's wheel.
Enter Trump
Donald J. Trump has the temperament of an eight year old child. He mocks. He condescends. He can't give specifics to half the
things he talks about. And I don't trust him on social issues. Put another way, I have the same concerns about Mr. Trump as American
Conservative contributor Rod Dreher does
.
For good reason, these facts and many others, have a large number of folks, including many Catholics, deeply disturbed.
At the same time, much of his public image is an act, and he has turned out be a shrewder political operator than I expected.
No one, and I mean no one, predicted he would have this much success.
People support Trump not necessarily because of his policies but because of what he represents. And what he represents is the
frustration ordinary, mostly white, Americans have towards politics in general. More specifically, the antipathy they have towards
the feckless politicians the Republican Party has nominated over the past thirty years who have largely failed to halt the social
and economic decay of the United States.
Against the neocons
Despite his inconsistency, immaturity and, at times, imbecility, Trump has been clear on several important policies. Policies
that can be appreciated from a Catholic viewpoint.
In
an article for the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, Daniel Mcadams outlines where Trump differentiates himself from
the war hawks in his party.
First, according to Mcadams Trump states "the obvious" when he says "the Iraq war was brought to us by the liars of the neoconservative
movement" and that it was a "total disaster" for the rest of us who "are forced to pay for their fantasies of world domination."
Second, Trump wants to "actually speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin to see if US/Russia differences can be worked out
without a potentially world-ending nuclear war."
Third, although Trump is "arguing that he is hugely pro-Israel" he is "nevertheless suggesting that if the US is to play a role
in the Israel/Palestine issue the US side should take a neutral role in the process."
Fourth, Trump is also calling out the "idiotic neocon advice" that resulted in the overthrowing of Gaddafi in Libya that has led
to "the red carpet" being "laid down for ISIS" in that failed state.
And lastly, Trump is "suggesting that it may be a good thing that Russia be bombing ISIS into oblivion and that we might want
to just sit back and let that happen for once."
Push back
The ruling class disdains each and every one of these positions. And for good reason.
By talking about the Iraq War and claiming Bush lied about it, Trump reminds us about the back room dealings and costs, both human
and monetary, spreading "freedom" and "democracy" necessarily entails. And by drawing attention to the disastrous situation in Libya,
Trump shines light on the foolishness of nation building abroad and the need to nation build at home. Obviously, all of this causes
voters to have a less favorable view of foreign intervention in the future.
By painting Putin as a potential ally instead of a "thug," Trump de-programs Americans from thinking of the Russian President
as Josef Stalin re-incarnated. It also disabuses ordinary citizens from seeing everything through an us-versus-them prism. Having
a villain to point at evokes patriotism at home and affirms Americans in the moral right-ness of the pursuit of spreading "liberty."
Neocons have long understood this. And Trump could potentially reverse that paradigm.
Furthermore, by taking a "neutral" stance towards Israel, Trump is indicating that he may put American interests ahead of Zionist
interests. In other words, Trump would likely approach the Middle East in a way that holds Israel to the same moral standards as
others. Realizing that this may result in an American president who refuses to be silent about the terrorist attacks Israelis commit
against Palestinians on an almost daily basis, the globalists and their cronies in the media have been quick to compare Trump with,
you guessed it, Adolf Hitler.
Going forward
Neoconservatives, in short, are apoplectic over a possible Trump presidency. His success could mean their demise, if only for
a short while.
To be sure, it is difficult to know who Trump would surround himself with if he were to win the presidency. Would he call up Henry
Kissinger? Would he seek the advice of the Council on Foreign Relations? I don't know.
But what I do know is that as of right now Trump appears to have all the right enemies. Enemies that include the neo-Catholic
neocon community. Read
here .
Now, don't expect the elites to go silently into the night. The attacks in the coming days and weeks will only get more vicious.
We've already seen how quickly they brought up "the 1930s." Additionally, more than 100 self-identified "members of the Republican
national security community" have signed an
open letter
excoriating Trump for his foreign policy views, adding that they are "united in our opposition to a Donald Trump presidency."
Unsurprisingly, some of them have said
they would support Hillary Clinton, a Democratic neocon, instead of Trump in the general election.
So much for party loyalty.
In brief, a Trump nomination means the internationalists would no longer dictate the terms of America's economic and foreign policy.
Moreover, if Trump arrives at the Republican convention with the majority of delegates and is denied the nomination, it will be clear
to all that we live in country that is anything but a democracy.
Indeed, far from being a "breaking" of the GOP in two, wouldn't a Trump victory be nothing more than a re-calibration of the party
to what it stood for historically? A party that serves the will of the American people instead of global elites?
I utterly despise Neocons, whether in Politics & Government or as Catholic Church Commentators.
This is why I come to akacatholic.com, The Remnant Newspaper & Catholic Family News.
In Politics, Conservatives would use The Bomb, while Neocons would engage in "Protective Reaction", whatever that means.
In The Case of Louie, Mike Matt, Chris Ferrara, John Vennari, Dr John Rao & Ann Barnhardt, one is told the truth as it occurred.
There are no "Sweeps Week Specials" by People who are financed by Fat Cats & sound like Shills for said Fat Cats, while broadcasting
from a Miniaturized Version of The CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street, from a Suburb of The Motor City, who tells everyone
that what The Pope Said was a Mistranslation, while making Hay of Cardinal Dolan, passing wind on the Uptown Platform of the IND
6th Avenue Subway, all while the Polemicist is telling the World that The SSPX is in Schism. No, THAT Guy, despite the Bells &
Whistles, is a Neo Catholic, who in many cases, cannot get his facts straight.
The NeoCatholics are the ones telling people that Girl Altar Servers are OK because the Pope says so. Ditto, Sancte Communion
A Mano & Altar Tables facing the Congregation.You know WHO They Are.
But something I have noticed is that when it comes to Intelligent Conversation on the message boards, the Neo Catholics will
not tolerate dissent vis a vis their position. The one with his broadcast centre is a classic example, with commenters practically
forced to pay homage to The Fearless Leader's Position, even when not well researched.
Those who hold the Traditional Catholic Position, allow True Discussion on matters Catholic.
Traditional Catholic is true Freedom, without being patronizing. I cannot say that for a certain site, which charges $10 per
month for Premium Membership.
You've reminded me of how the totally neocon and cuckservative National Review now rigorously–with all the fanaticism of the Stasi–polices
its comments section. It's unreal.
"... The whole corrupt, crazy political process is a distraction from our real problems, and an endless maze of futility. The illusion of democracy is collapsing all around us, and safety lies in abandoning it. ..."
"... Agreed. Our entire national political debate is a theater of smoke and mirrors. The facts most obvious and degrading to the national interest are ignored at all costs, e.g., an out of control military-industrial-intelligence complex that now swallows up an obscene $1 trillion annually (including "defense related expenditures"). ..."
"... My plans for the upcoming Democratic primary in Florida: I will write "none of these clowns" at the top of the ballot. ..."
"... I tend to think that the Cold War bankrupted us as well as the Soviets, but we just haven't figured it that out yet. ..."
"... Most of the human race has been speeding towards the cliff at 100 mph like Thelma and Louise. Certainly America has been. It's getting ever closer. We will get there. Don't expect Zeno's paradox to save us. ..."
"... I share your setiment about the Democrats but voting for Republicans just because is equally foolish. Why support banning labor unions, corporate very expensive health care, greatly reducing and eventually eliminating social security and Medicare, privitzing all public infrastructure and bailing out wall Street at all cost. I could go on but you get the idea. Vote for candidates that stand for the American people and have the guts to stand up to the elites. If no such candidates exist in a particular election don't vote simple as that. ..."
"... tealing a "none of the above" write-in requires the ballot be destroyed, so it can provide a paper trail and/or a potential theft exposure point. ..."
"... I am a registered Democrat; I will NOT be voting for them this fall. They no longer have any credibility with me. Rachel helped them shoot themselves in the foot as far as I'm concerned. How are they any different from neocons??? I'm grateful WikiLeaks pulled off their mask. I'm a historian and know a lot of both CIA and Russian history and am not buying Russiagate or Democrats. ..."
"... I like that, the "Demented-crats"! They are so completely clueless, in their overpaid bubbles, nothing to say about the Race-to-the-Bottom, Hunger Games society they have helped create. ..."
"... The loyal shrills to Clinton? Those aren't progressives. ..."
"... As Jimmy Dore keeps telling us: the Democratic leadership, which is totally corporatist and neocon, would rather lose to the GOP candidate than to see a progressive or liberal Democrat win the office. The Dems have no independent policies of their own and are merely enablers to make sure that the hard right agenda always prevails. ..."
"... And I see Bernie Sanders was spewing this neo-McCarthyite crap on a Sunday morning talk show earlier this week. He really should know better. ..."
"... Isaac Christiansen observes that "As Democrats seek to shift blame away from the discontent with our economic system, their party and their chosen Neoliberal candidate, we are told that Trump came to power almost solely due to Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 election." ..."
"... Remember how the entire anti-Russian theme began? The Clinton team used Russia as their excuse for losing 2016. It didn't get much attention at first because the party/candidate that loses inevitably blames someone or something other than the candidate/party. But the Democrats ran with it from there, using much of the media marketed to liberals to build the Russian Tale. The most insane thing about the claims that Russia hacked voting machines for Trump, etc.: In spite of much Dem voter opposition to the Clinton right wing, H. Clinton got the most votes. (Did Russia do that, and if so, why?) Trump is president because of our antiquated electoral college process. Meanwhile, while Dems ramble on about a Putin/Trump bromance, the sane world has watched as Trump set the stage for our final war, US vs. Russia and China. ..."
"... Everything gets conspicuously twisted by a biased media, yet no one (of consequence) says anything about that. Even as Trump gets bashed, he gets cheered whenever he does something dangerous and stupid, such as launching missiles in the aftermath of an obvious false flag incident. We see the matrix being blatantly and clumsily spun right before our eyes and nobody says a word about the emperor's nakedness. ..."
"... It is time for the progressives to flee the Democratic party en masse and go their own way. ..."
"... "One quarter of all the Democratic challengers in competitive House districts have military-intelligence, State Department or NSC backgrounds. This is by far the largest subcategory of Democratic candidates." ..."
"... We haven't seen any progressives in years. Progressive politics isn't a new invention. In the US, it goes back at least to the early 1900s. It's about building a better nation from the bottom up -- legit aid for the poor at one end, firm restraints in the rich at the other end.We have nothing like that today. This isn't about "political purity," but about not calling an apple an armadillo. ..."
The whole corrupt, crazy political process is a distraction from our real problems,
and an endless maze of futility. The illusion of democracy is collapsing all around us, and
safety lies in abandoning it. We need a new way of thinking and acting that clearly and
directly sees our problems and deals with them. Politics as now understood is a dead end.
Agreed. Our entire national political debate is a theater of smoke and mirrors. The
facts most obvious and degrading to the national interest are ignored at all costs, e.g., an
out of control military-industrial-intelligence complex that now swallows up an obscene $1
trillion annually (including "defense related expenditures"). Even the fact that we no
longer live in a democracy but an oligarchy, according to objective studies and noted
commentators, including former president Carter, is never commented upon by the miscreant
pundits posing as reporters (Hayes, Maddow, Anderson, Cuomo, et al).
Realist , July 27, 2018 at 6:33 am
My plans for the upcoming Democratic primary in Florida: I will write "none of these
clowns" at the top of the ballot. Under that I will write "Stop the warmongering and
phony Russia-bashing. Stop the obstructionism just to damage Trump and exonerate Hillary for
losing a poorly-run campaign. I cannot vote for my party this November, and never again until
you stop trying to run to the right of the Republicans." Maybe someone reading the ballot
will pass the message on to the party leadership and adjustments will at least be
considered.
If not, eff 'em. We will be better off sweeping corrupt corporatist cronies of Hillary,
like Wasserman-Schultz, out of congress. Then there will be no doubt that the GOP needs to go
too, after they use their mandate to totally wreck all before them, and maybe, after a few
election cycles, some third party representing the interests of the people rather than Wall
Street and the MIC can emerge. Maybe the Greens and the Libertarians can become at least
equal players with the corporatist Dems and GOPers.
Somebody new is going to have to preside over the coming economic and societal collapse,
and do we want that to be the military, the police and the spooks? That is who will seize
power (not just covertly but overtly) if the usually mercenary politicians cannot effect some
workable changes.
Broompilot , July 27, 2018 at 7:01 pm
Like the Eastern Roman Empire, we could wax and wane for 1000 years with the power we
possess. Or, like the Soviet Union, we could suffer an economic collapse over a decade
throwing a large percentage of us into poverty.
I tend to think that the Cold War bankrupted us as well as the Soviets, but we just
haven't figured it that out yet.
Realist , July 27, 2018 at 9:48 pm
"I tend to think that the Cold War bankrupted us as well as the soviets, but we just
haven't figured that out yet."
Because we prefer to blow off science and empirically-supported concepts like the first
law of thermodynamics which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, just
transferred or changed in form.
We choose to believe that we can endlessly create money, which is a token representing
access to available stored energy, out of nothing by issuing debt. Even if the tokens are
infinite, on a finite planet the available energy is certainly not.
Most of the human race has been speeding towards the cliff at 100 mph like Thelma and
Louise. Certainly America has been. It's getting ever closer. We will get there. Don't expect
Zeno's paradox to save us.
Ma Laoshi , July 27, 2018 at 5:37 am
We are long past the point that this extreme Russophobia has revealed itself to be plain
old race hatred. These bouts of hysteria have always been part of the American DNA, and it
has been most instructive how fast and seamless the switch has been from Muslims to Russians
as the hated. Other. Progressives have solemnly declared themselves to be the good guys
without much introspection, so one would expect them to be more susceptible to this bigotry,
not less; a more astute observer might have asked "When will the machine turn on me next?",
as is of course already happening to Sanders and others.
Yes RussiaGating is a losing strategy, but most of the evidence is that progressives ARE
losers. So there's no surprise that they're falling for it, and little to indicate that they
deserve any better.
Mike , July 26, 2018 at 11:43 pm
Never voted for Republican congressmen in the past. Never. This time I will. Democrats are
the party of open borders and war. Now they want conflict with Russia over this ginned up
fake investigation. They don't represent working people any more. I don't even think they put
AMERICANS over illegal immigrants. Why is it wrong that people should be forced to obey
immigration law? The laws for citizens are enforced. Never thought I'd vote Republican.
I can't think of any reason to vote for 99.9% of the Democrats. The more everyone
including the media lies about Russia, the more I empathize with them.
I'd guess the business owners that rely on illegals vote for Republicans because they're
business owners. We need to eat and they need to make more money than they deserve so neither
party is going to stand in the way of it as long as they bribe their politicians and anybody
else that feels entitled to free stuff. Democrats won't get rid of ICE soon, if ever.
Nearly all people coming from the South are escaping conditions we've created and are
granted asylum when allowed to make their case in court.
I think treating defenseless people terribly to show how mean we can be is wrong.
I share your setiment about the Democrats but voting for Republicans just because is
equally foolish. Why support banning labor unions, corporate very expensive health care,
greatly reducing and eventually eliminating social security and Medicare, privitzing all
public infrastructure and bailing out wall Street at all cost. I could go on but you get the
idea. Vote for candidates that stand for the American people and have the guts to stand up to
the elites. If no such candidates exist in a particular election don't vote simple as
that.
glitch , July 28, 2018 at 11:28 am
If you can't vote third party write in none of the above on a paper ballot. If those
aren't options spoil your ballot but turn it in. Not voting doesn't register your disdain,
it's easier for them to ignore as apathy. And non votes can be spoofed (stolen). S
tealing a "none of the above" write-in requires the ballot be destroyed, so it can
provide a paper trail and/or a potential theft exposure point.
I am a registered Democrat; I will NOT be voting for them this fall. They no longer
have any credibility with me. Rachel helped them shoot themselves in the foot as far as I'm
concerned. How are they any different from neocons??? I'm grateful WikiLeaks pulled off their
mask. I'm a historian and know a lot of both CIA and Russian history and am not buying
Russiagate or Democrats.
I like that, the "Demented-crats"! They are so completely clueless, in their overpaid
bubbles, nothing to say about the Race-to-the-Bottom, Hunger Games society they have helped
create.
Meanwhile, over in Russia, the government with leadership of Vladimir Putin has increased
the Russians' standard of living, much as was done for Americans under FDR and the New Deal.
(Never a word about the 80+ governments the USA/CIA has destabilized or directly overthrown,
including Russia's -- oh no! We're exceptional, didn't you know?)
Yea, I don't get it. Who the hell do you consider to be the progressives!?! Most people I
know who consider themselves to be progressives aren't all wrapped up in the Russian
narrative. The loyal shrills to Clinton? Those aren't progressives. Clinton herself
pretty much backed away from that stamp during the election cycle. Pelosi has quite obviously
made it clear she can't even see that side of the fence. Or will she allow it the light of
day. In case you missed it, there's a war on progressives going on. And we aren't allowed in
that club over there. I follow a hand full of Green Party sites on face hack, and they aren't
having the Russia did it by any means. Only those loyal to the liberal democrats have the
ignorance to bellow out the talking points and support for Sanders. Yea, those people that
wouldn't give him the light of day during that same election cycle when we thought he was a
progressive. Easy Bob! Just a hic cup. I hope! Rest peacefully!
Realist , July 27, 2018 at 6:46 am
As Jimmy Dore keeps telling us: the Democratic leadership, which is totally
corporatist and neocon, would rather lose to the GOP candidate than to see a progressive or
liberal Democrat win the office. The Dems have no independent policies of their own and are
merely enablers to make sure that the hard right agenda always prevails. They are a sham
party. Enough "blue dogs" and GOP-light types always win as Democrats to ensure that no
progressive legislation will ever be enacted even when "the party" has 60% majorities in both
houses -- as they did in Obama's first term. This is by design. Even the putative Democratic
presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama functioned as center-right Republicans. Obama said
as much. Clinton didn't have to as his policies were all reactionary and brought us to the
impending economic collapse.
Zim , July 26, 2018 at 5:39 pm
Looks like the Inauthentic Opposition Party is gearing up for another ass whooping at the
polls. The hypocrisy, the cluelessness is astounding.
JMG , July 26, 2018 at 5:33 pm
From this excellent Norman Solomon's article:
"As The Hill newspaper reported this week under the headline "Most Americans Back Trump's
Call for Follow-Up Summit With Putin," 54 percent of respondents favored plans for a second
summit. "The survey also found that 61 percent of Americans say better relations with Russia
are in the best interest of the United States.""
And I see Bernie Sanders was spewing this neo-McCarthyite crap on a Sunday morning
talk show earlier this week. He really should know better.
Realist , July 27, 2018 at 7:01 am
He's been co-opted. He's been told that the blame will be his when the Democratic Party
collapses unless he works like hell to keep his sheep in the fold. He's following orders from
the DNC which believes that the party's last best hope for a comeback, indeed to stave off
annihilation, is to keep bashing Putin and Trump because they have no policies, no
credibility and no candidates that the people eagerly want to get behind. They think that
lies and war are the winning combination. How did that work out for LBJ, Bushdaddy, and
Dubya's organisation?
mrtmbrnmn , July 26, 2018 at 5:15 pm
Ever since the Bonnie & Clyde Clinton years, the sclerotic Establishment Dementedcrats
have essentially despised their base. They only speak AT them. Never FOR them. Or else they
SCOLD them or simply IGNORE them. I hope now they are beginning to FEAR them.
jose , July 26, 2018 at 4:22 pm
Personally speaking, I am yet to see any serious evidence against allege Russia meddling
in US elections. And I am not alone in this regard; For instance, according to counterpunch
news, " The decision to blame Russian meddling for Hillary Clinton's electoral loss was made
in the immediate aftermath of the election by her senior campaign staff." According to Mike
Whitney, "So far, no single piece of evidence has been made public proving that the Trump
campaign joined with Russia to steal the US presidency."
Isaac Christiansen observes that "As Democrats seek to shift blame away from the
discontent with our economic system, their party and their chosen Neoliberal candidate, we
are told that Trump came to power almost solely due to Russian interference in the U.S. 2016
election." I reckon that any rational person should believe any Russian interference in
US electoral system only when presented with real iron-clad prove. Otherwise, it would be
foolhardy to accept at face value speculations and innuendo of a foreign interference that
purportedly put Trump in the White House.
DH Fabian , July 26, 2018 at 3:28 pm
Well, a couple of issues here. Liberals have not been about economic justice, but about
protecting the advantages of the middle class (with an occasional pat on the head to min.
wage workers). They've forgotten that we're over 20 years into one hell of a war on the poor.
Not everyone can work, and there aren't jobs for all. The US began shipping out jobs in the
'80s, ended actual welfare aid in the '90s -- lost over 6 million manufacturing jobs alone
since 2000. What is" justice" for today's jobless poor?
Remember how the entire anti-Russian theme began? The Clinton team used Russia as
their excuse for losing 2016. It didn't get much attention at first because the
party/candidate that loses inevitably blames someone or something other than the
candidate/party. But the Democrats ran with it from there, using much of the media marketed
to liberals to build the Russian Tale. The most insane thing about the claims that Russia
hacked voting machines for Trump, etc.: In spite of much Dem voter opposition to the Clinton
right wing, H. Clinton got the most votes. (Did Russia do that, and if so, why?) Trump is
president because of our antiquated electoral college process. Meanwhile, while Dems ramble
on about a Putin/Trump bromance, the sane world has watched as Trump set the stage for our
final war, US vs. Russia and China.
Realist , July 27, 2018 at 7:09 am
"Meanwhile, while Dems ramble on about a Putin/Trump bromance, the sane world has
watched as Trump set the stage for our final war, US vs. Russia and China."
So very right. Everything gets conspicuously twisted by a biased media, yet no one (of
consequence) says anything about that. Even as Trump gets bashed, he gets cheered whenever he
does something dangerous and stupid, such as launching missiles in the aftermath of an
obvious false flag incident. We see the matrix being blatantly and clumsily spun right before
our eyes and nobody says a word about the emperor's nakedness.
Skip Scott , July 26, 2018 at 2:27 pm
It is time for the progressives to flee the Democratic party en masse and go their own
way. If they haven't learned anything from the 2016 election, they are doomed. The DNC
has a stranglehold on the Progressive movement, and sheep dog Bernie will once again herd
them over to the corporate sponsored candidate in the end. For the midterms, this is what the
Democrats have planned:
"One quarter of all the Democratic challengers in competitive House districts have
military-intelligence, State Department or NSC backgrounds. This is by far the largest
subcategory of Democratic candidates."
The Green Party has a truly Progressive platform on Domestic and Foreign policy, and are
our only hope at this point. They just need the right standard bearers to break through the
MSM censorship. If they could get a charismatic candidate for President in 2020 and break the
15% threshold for the debates, the American people would finally see that they really do have
a choice for a better future.
DH Fabian , July 26, 2018 at 3:36 pm
We haven't seen any progressives in years. Progressive politics isn't a new invention.
In the US, it goes back at least to the early 1900s. It's about building a better nation from
the bottom up -- legit aid for the poor at one end, firm restraints in the rich at the other
end.We have nothing like that today. This isn't about "political purity," but about not
calling an apple an armadillo.
It's true that the Green Party platform does include legitimatrely addressing poverty, but
perhaps understandably, this fact was swept under the carpet during their 2016 campaign.
will , July 26, 2018 at 8:32 pm
"We haven't seen any progressives in years" Apparently you don't get out much.
hetro , July 26, 2018 at 4:14 pm
Skip, let's hope we don't have the "hold your nose and vote Democrat" arguments again,
with Greens as a vote for Trump (or Putin?). Interestingly, the following poll from FOX news
indicates the strum und feces hysteria of the current Democratic machine may not be working
out all that well, as 7 in 10 respondents here indicate the political atmosphere in the US at
this time is "overheated."
Well, a good deal of that overheat is coming from the "them Russians them Russians" meme
continually pushed -- and way over the top for most American people trying to "have a great
day!" This poll does indicate Dems are ahead at this point, and in the past several election
cycles there has been a regular switch every two years in congressional domination.
"The Green Party has a truly Progressive platform on Domestic and Foreign policy, and
are our only hope at this point."
The Green Party is a Capitalist party, just the kindest and gentlest Capitalism of any of
the Capitalist parties with the most stringent leash on the mad killer dog that is Capitalism
and the best safety net for those chased off the cliff by that mad killer dog.
For those of us who see that Capitalism is the problem, that makes voting Green actually a
lesser evil choice. If we're going to vote lesser evil, we might as well vote for the most
progressive Democrats, or even centrist ones when they're running against fire breathing
Randian Republicans who combine that with a Fundamentalist Christian Theocratic agenda (a
combination that makes no sense, but who said the GOP makes sense?)
There are few viable Socialist parties in the US anymore. The biggest jettisoned Socialism
nearly 50 years ago when it also jettisoned actually being a political party and decided to
just be a lobby group within the Democratic Party. The only political heir of Eugene V. Debs,
the Socialist Party USA, is now a fringe group whose national conventions are more like a
picnic gathering of a few friends. The other organizations that seem more viable are actually
Trotskyite groups, and Trotsky was not non-violent at all, which I am.
I am really at a lost what to do as far as the less important task of voting (which is
less important than ongoing activism.) I just did my primary ballot. We've got this terrible
top two primary, a system that basically kills movement building.
I could have voted for Gigi Ferguson, the independent, who was endorsed by the Green
Party, running for senate against NeoLiberal phony environmentalist Maria Cantwell and not
the poser, who said he was Green, (parties have no say in candidates' statements of which
party they prefer,) but is for privatizing Social Security. But I instead voted for Steve
Hoffman, the only avowed Socialist on the ballot in any race, even though his Freedom
Socialist Party is Troskyite.
I voted for Stoney Bird, a real Green, running against TPP loving and indefinite detention
loving and NeoLiberal anti-Single Payer Rick Larsen for Congress.
My state legislation had two positions. In one I voted for Alex Ramel, an ecological
activist, over the preferred establishment choice of Identity Politics candidate (tribal,)
Debra Lekanoff. In the other the incumbent, Jeff Morris, another establishment Democrat, ran
unopposed. I wrote in "None." (Morris having the same family name as my mother's maiden name
didn't affect me at all.)
But it was all an exercise in futility, voting for my conscience as much as possible. I
have little doubt that none of my choices, except maybe Ramel, will make it to the top two.
Cantwell and Larsen are shoo-ins and they'll surely face the establishment GOP candidate.
Thus cutting out all other options in the Fall.
I'll have to write in my choices then. Oh well.
maryam , July 27, 2018 at 4:54 am
Over here in Europe (not UK) and faced with the similar problem of inapt candidates, we
sometimes need to vote creatively: so we vote, of course, but choose to make the ballot sheet
invalid. this way our voice is noted and we show that we care about the electoral process,
while it also makes clear that we do not care much about the cabdidate(s). "we" will vote,
but "they" are not very trustworthy.
MBeaver , July 27, 2018 at 8:12 am
Yep. We in Germany had that lesson already. The Green party was one of the most corrupt
one when they finally got elected into the government. They also harmed the social systems
massively and supported the first offensive war with German support since WW2. Even as
opposition they show all the time how much they lie about their true intentions.
They are not an option, because they are hypocrites.
ronnie mitchell , July 27, 2018 at 4:09 pm
Interesting comment with some good information that I appreciate.\ I live in Bellingham
and have filled out my vote for Stony Bird over Rick Larsen whom I truly despise. In fact in
previous election cycles I voted for Mike Lapointe instead but he quit running more than a
few years ago so the last time I just left it blank and the same goes for the general
election vote for Congress.
With the TPP issue Rick Larsen had a townhall meeting at City hall building which was packed
and he starts off by saying he hasn't read any of the text of the TPP yet so he was free from
answering most questions however he would be checking it out BUT no there would be no further
meeting before the voting. In other words he was giving us NOTHING.
I had been part of the protesters outside his fundraising gathering (private and by
invitation only) and have been to his local office many times (it's two blocks from where I
live) and when myself and a small group were in opposition to building the largest coal
terminal in north America at Cherry Point. He would never say he was against it or for it but
his fundraisers were backers of the terminal and as each of our group stepped forward to give
a statement to his office workers on the issue (Rick was in DC,aka District of Corruption at
the time) they just politely listened but neither recorded nor wrote down ANYTHING we
said.
The list is long regarding issues on which he is on the opposite side of his constituents
wishes and at one gathering was smugly dismissive of requests to represent the votes of the
people and not use his super delegate status(not Democratic) to endorse Hillary Clinton
because votes in Caucuses were overwhelmingly for Sen. Sanders.
I could go on but it would be too long of a comment but you've given me some good ideas for
other choices on the ballot which I needed in particular with Maria Cantwell whom (like
fellow neoliberal Patty Murray) I have refused to support in the last two elections.For one
of many examples of why, one big one was their stand against importing cheaper medicines from
Canada which was word for word straight out of the Big PHarma handbook of talking points, but
they DID get quite a lot of flak for it.
I'll look into some of your other suggestions as well before I turn in this ballot, thanks
for your comment.
TS , July 27, 2018 at 4:06 am
> Skip Scott
> If they could get a charismatic candidate for President in 2020 and break the 15%
threshold for the debates,
And what makes you think the people who decide wouldn't simply shift the goalposts?
Skip Scott , July 27, 2018 at 2:48 pm
I'm sure that would be attempted, but with a strong candidate hopefully there'd be enough
of a fuss made to get them to back off. I'd also like to dream that some of the more
progressive Democrats in congress would see the writing on the wall, and declare themselves
Greens. That'd give us a toehold in two branches of government. I know I'm being overly
optimistic, but it keeps me away from the whiskey bottle.
Piotr Berman , July 28, 2018 at 3:06 pm
I have some misgivings to "eco politics", I am not sure to what extend they apply to
Greens, and I am sorry to say, liberals have a knack to pick the worst parts of any
progressive idea.
Any goal has to consider trade-off. If we think that emitting carbon to the atmosphere is
a major problem, solutions must follow economic calculus. Instead, there was two much stress
on "aesthetic solutions" and sometimes scientifically unsound solutions. For example,
aesthetic solution is electric vehicles, but hybrid vehicles offer a much smaller cost per
amount of carbon that is saved, only when majority of vehicles already gain from regenerative
braking and having engines work only in fuel optimal conditions (battery absorbing surplus or
augmenting the engine power when the amount of needed power is outside parameters optimal for
the internal combustion engine) you may get better cost from electric engines.
Or excluding nuclear power from the "approved solutions". One of my many objections on
"Republicans on energy" that they promised a few times to be "rational" but they never
delivered.
Philosophically, there should be a fat carbon tax and social policies and subsidies to
avoid poor people to loose.
"Hyperrational" progressive approach would be to make a balance: as a society, where do we
waste, and where do we spent too little.
1. Military/foreign policy. In aggregate, spendings are huge and nobody is overly proud
from the results. An open question if this category of spending should be decreased by 50% or
75%, if we proceed in stages we can reach satisfactory point. Mind you, the largest ticket
items are improving nuclear weapons or conventional weapon systems that are needed against
very few most sophisticated adversaries who also waste resources. USA, Russia, China, the
rest of NATO etc. could agree to some disarmament, Russia and China actually accelerated
weapon development in response to "Let America dominate forever" policies, bad news are they
they do it for less money.
2. Medical robbery complex. Private insurance and lack of costs control leads to spending
on medical care around 18% of GDP rather than 10%. This waste is actually larger than all
spending on defense.
3. Infrastructure (large public role) and other capital investments (small public role but
essential fiscal policies and "thoughtful protectionism"), we spent too little, can be
covered by a part of 1 and 2.
I could continue with "hyperrational progressive manifesto" but I will give one example.
Enforcing labor standards may eliminate 90% of illegal employment without walls,
concentration camps for aliens etc. Some industries cannot make it without cheap illegal
aliens, if they REALLY cannot, workers should work legally in their home countries and
resulting imports should be encouraged. If picking carrots is too expensive in USA, we may
get them from other countries in Western Hemisphere. On that note, lately there are enough
jobs in USA, but native born citizens do not flock to carrot picking, they would rather have
jobs that required large capital investments and there are too few of those.
Hyperrational rhetoric can borrow from libertarians: if our allies do not feel secure when
they spend X times more than their regional adversaries (especially if we add our own
regional expenditures), that says that money alone cannot cure their "secure feeling" deficit
and we and they are already spending too much. We do not need to hate or demean anyone to
reach such conclusions.
Skip Scott , July 29, 2018 at 1:09 pm
Piotr-
I am all in favor of rational solutions to our environmental problems. The problem is the
entrenched power of the existing exploitive industries. An incredible amount of progress
could be made through on-site power generation and energy efficient building design.
I'm am not in favor of current nuclear power plants, but I am not opposed to research, and
I've heard good things about recent designs, especially thorium nukes. I am no engineer, but
if we had safe nukes, we could go with hydrogen fuel cells for automobiles. There are plenty
of other creative ideas as well for things such as localized food production.
If we find common purpose with the Libertarians to stop the war machine, the amount of
energy and resources and creative potential to bring humanity forward would be tremendous.
First we have to stop the war machine, and then we can argue about the extent of the role of
government in a free society.
Sounds rather similar to 2017 and 2018, doesn't it? What ever happened to that
infrastructure idea? Oh, more tax breaks for the donors that matter is a priority because
that'll pay for fixing the crumbling infrastructure right after the collapse.
The whole beauty of Oil Fracking, is they don't have to disclose the secret sauce they
pump down the holes, well because it's secret. So it can't be linked to any outbreaks, that's
brilliant that is. And that's the Law, that's brilliant as well. It's just a word play on an
old War meme, where people have to die so that rich people can get richer.
The fact that Mark Zuckerberg is so rich is annoying, and his separateness from Main Street may not be a great thing socially,
but in an economic sense, his fortune did not "come from" the paychecks of ordinary workers...
It damn sure did. It came straight out of their pension funds. Thousands of pension funds across the world bought faang stocks
and those workers will be getting fucked in the end while while zuck heads back to hawaii with their money. look at elon, his
company hasn't made dime one in profit but he is a billionaire. amzn, with a p/e of 228. they didn't get that p/e without millions
of ordinary folk buying their overpriced stock. it is pure ponzi-nomics with fascist overtones and the maggots are cashing out
big time.
The greatest fortunes in history have been built in the last 10 years with 0% interest rates. You were spot on about pensions,
they were the casualties, almost every private pension in the country bankrupted by 0% rates so that these fucks could amass unimaginable
wealth.
Now the filthy commoner scum have the audacity to suggest that they should pay taxes on it. Where will the madness end?
All my friends Jews knew this was going to happen. They were buying stocks like crazy when I was telling them to buy gold and
get ready for a big reset that never happened. Ten years later they are all multimillionaires and I lost half of my money buying
gold...
institutions bought their shares with real earned money. bezos did not. as far as i'm concerned being a ceo is a license to
steal. bezos damn sure didn't earn that money because he is smarter or works harder than anyone else. look at how he treats his
workers. what an asshole.
It's even worse than that. So much worse. Facebook was stolen by the Satanic Judaic Zionist crowd. Research it. Another gentleman
invented it. The Jews stole it, like they've stolen pretty much everything else. No wonder Napoleon said that "The Jews are the
master robbers of the modern age". And beyond the criminal vile theft, you have what they are using it for. And that is?
Using it for the 911'd cows in America. And that is you. The Satanic Jews are murdering you and robbing you blind. They 911'd
you physically with the Twin Towers. Now they're doing it mentally and financially with Facebook, a control system grid -- a gate
to herd cattle which they view you as. They are herding you. You'll be 911'd again in larger and larger numbers until the Satanic
Judaic is removed from the World Stage.
Zuckerberg is a planted punk Zionist spook. You're going to have to clear the world of all of these Satanic Judaic ladies and
gentlemen. First the idea needs to come in to show how and why. This is underway.
Ever since the housing crisis I been waiting for the world to become a better place. I see now that I been fooling myself into
believing that we live in a civilized and honest world. Nobody gives a shit about anyone nor anything, people only care about
themselves...
Jeff Bezos did not purchase the Washington Post in 2013 because he
expected newspapers to make a lucrative resurgence. He purchased
the long-trusted U.S. newspaper for the power it would ensure him
in Washington and because it could be wielded as a propaganda
mouthpiece to extend his ability to both shape and control public
opinion.
"... It is time to realize, however, that the real dangers to America today come not from the newly rich people of East Asia but from our own ideological rigidity, our deep-seated belief in our own propaganda. ..."
"... Blowback , Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire ..."
"... The Common Good ..."
"... Reimagining Sanity: Voices Beyond the Echo Chamber ..."
In a sense, blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows.
Although people usually know what they have sown, our national experience of blowback is seldom
imagined in such terms because so much of what the managers of the American empire have sown
has been kept secret.
It is time to realize, however, that the real dangers to America today come not from the
newly rich people of East Asia but from our own ideological rigidity, our deep-seated belief in
our own propaganda.
― Chalmers Johnson,
Blowback , Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire
There are no more leaps of faith, or get out of jail cards left anymore. The first casualty of
war is truth.
Lofty heights of defining the first amendment are just overlooks onto the crumbling mythology
of a democracy, where the people – citizens -- vote for laws directly. We have a republic,
a faulty one, the source of which is the power derived from billionaires, financiers, arms
merchants, K-Streeters and the attendant moles allowing the government to break every charter of
human concern. So, in that regard, we in this corptocracy have the right to be fooled every
minute, suckered to not know a goddamned thing about democracy in big quotes.
The very concept of manufactured consent and a controlled opposition destroys much of the
power of agency and so-called freedom of assembly, association and travel.
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of
acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.
But, alas, we have blokes who see the world not as a black and white dichotomous illusion of
the for v. against bifurcation, but a world of flowing back to what words should mean, a world
that allows the filters to be smashed like high polished glass and instead deploying a magnifying
glass to point toward the very source of the blasphemies and strong arm robberies that have been
occurring in the Republic the very first moment the beaver hat was put on and the first treaty
scripted by the powdered wigs of Washingtonian Fathers and broken, ripped to shreds, seeded with
the dark force that is the white race.
Here comes Tools for
Transparency into the mix of triage to uphold the declaration of independence, and the few
tenets of the constitution that are supremely directed to we-by-for-because of the people, AND
not the corporation, monopoly,
Military-Retail-Finance-Ag-Energy-Pharma-Prison-Medical-Toxins-IT-Surveillance-Legal Complex.
This project is the brainchild of a former Marine who "came to life late in the world" of pure
skepticism about the powers that be and his own questioning of the motivations and machinations
of his government and political representatives.
... ... ...
...we talked about Mad
Men , the Edward
Bernays and Milton Friedman
schools of propaganda, framing stories (lies) and setting out to paint good people as bad, heroic
politicians like Salvador Allende of Chile as Commie Baby Killers. Even now, Bush, the instigator
of chaos in the Middle East, with all the cooked up lies and distractions of his own stupidity
(like Trump), and, bam, W is reclaimed (in the mainstream mush media) as something of a good
president, and especially by the likes of the Democratic Party misleadership
.
... ... ...
His Tools for Transparency
cuts through the opinion, and as he proposes, makes the world news and the even more Byzantine
and elaborate proposed legislation and lobbying groups behind "the news" approachable, again,
consumable.
He taps into his college days taking courses in industrial organizational psychology,
seemingly benign when the American Psychological Association gets to mash the term into a
three-fold brochure by defining it for prospective students as business as usual for
corporations, and humanity is better because of this sort of manipulative psychology, but . .
.
In reality, it's the science of behavior in the workplace, organizational development,
attitudes, career development, decision theory, human performance, human factors, consumer
behavior, small group theory and process, criterion theory and development and job and task
analysis and individual assessment. It's a set of tools to keep workers down spiritually and
organizationally, disconnected, fearful, confused and ineffectual as thinkers and resisters, and
inept at countering the abuse of power companies or bureaucracies wield over a misinformed
workforce.
The shape of corporations' unethical behavior, their sociopathic and the draconian workplace
conditions today are largely sculpted and defined by these behavior shapers to include the
marketers and the Edward Bernays-inspired manipulators of facts and brain functioning. This begs
the question for Hanson, just what are today's hierarchy of needs for the average American?
Physiological; Safety; Love/Belonging; Esteem; Self-Actualization.
... ... ...
Brian believes there is an awakening today in this country, and that the examples of movements
such as those in Portland where youth are out yelling against the police state, and then how we
are seeing individual officers returning firing with violence against those youth:
We talk a lot about the devaluing of language and intentional discourse which includes the
abilities of a society to engage in lively and cogent debate. For me, I know the forces of
propaganda are multi-headed, multi-variant, with so much of American life seeded with lies,
half-truths, duplicitous and twisted concepts, as well as inaccurate and spin-doctored history,
which has contaminated a large portion of our society, up and down the economic ladder, with mind
control.
Unfortunately, our language now is inextricably tied to emotions, as we see leftists (what's
that?) and so-called progressives screaming at the top of their lungs how Trump is the worst
president ever. Black
so-called activists , journalists, stating how the
empire (sky) is falling because Trump talked with Putin . Imagine, imagine, all those
millions upon millions of people killed because of all the other presidents' and their thugs'
policies eviscerating societies, all those elections smeared, all those democracies mauled, all
those citizens in the other part of the world hobbled by America's policies, read "wars,
occupations, embargoes, structural violence." It is a daily reminder for us all that today, as
was true yesterday, that we are ruled by masters of self-deception and our collective society
having a feel good party every day while we plunder the world. Doublethink. Here:
To tell deliberate lives while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has
become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion
for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while
to take account of the reality one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in
using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one
admits one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge;
and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.
Herein lies the problem – vaunting past presidents on pedestals while attacking this
current deplorable, Donald Trump. The reality is the US has been run by an elite group of
militarists, and by no means is Trump the worst of the worst, which is both illogical and
unsupported by facts:
Yet, we have to mark the words and wisdom of those of us who have been marking this empire's
crimes, both internal and external, for years. Here, Paul Edwards over
at Counterpunch hits a bulls-eye on the heart of the matter:
After decades of proven bald-faced crime, deceit and the dirtiest pool at home and abroad,
the CIA, FBI, NSA, the Justice Department and the whole fetid nomenklatura of sociopathic rats,
are portrayed as white knights of virtue dispensing verity as holy writ. And "progressives" buy
it.
These are the vermin that gave us Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs, Chile, the Contras, Iraq's WMD,
and along the way managed to miss the falls of the Shah and Communism.
Truly an Orwellian clusterfuck, this. War Party Dems misleading naive liberal souls sickened
by Trump into embracing the dirty, vicious lunacy Hillary peddled to her fans, the bankers,
brokers, and CEOs of the War Machine.
Trump is a fool who may yet blunder us into war; the Dems and the Deep State cabal would
give us war by design.
... ... ...
Paul Kirk Haeder has been a journalist since 1977. He's covered police,
environment, planning and zoning, county and city politics, as well as working in true small
town/community journalism situations in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Mexico and beyond. He's been
a part-time faculty since 1983, and as such has worked in prisons, gang-influenced programs,
universities, colleges, alternative high schools, language schools, as a private
contractor-writing instructor for US military in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Washington. A
forthcoming book (Dec. 15, 2016),Reimagining Sanity: Voices Beyond the Echo
Chamber, looks at 10 years of his writing atDissident Voice, and
before, to bring defiance to the world that is now lobotomizing at a rate never before seen in
history. Read his autobiography, weekly chapter installments, atLA Progressive.
Read other articles by
Paul , or visit Paul's
website .
"... By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street. ..."
"... But don't cry for Google. These practices helped it earn it a net profit of $12.7 billion in 2017 and of $19.5 billion in 2016. The decision and a fine of enormous magnitude has been expected. And Google's shares are currently flat for the day. ..."
"... "The decision and a fine of enormous magnitude has been expected. And Google's shares are currently flat for the day." ..."
"... An unlocked phone direct from the mfg instead of the carrier will have fewer apps. Also you can disable many apps, just ignore the "may cause other apps to misbehave " message; it isn't true. Some of the apps you do need, and online forums will list which you need and which you don't. ..."
"... if you can quit FB cold turkey you can reduce your exposure to Google. For example I went back to using a paper calendar. ..."
"... LineageOS is a current Android version and not several years old like with earlier Moto G versions, it gets up to date security patches, has no spyware. You can even install only the Google Apps you want, and can delete or uninstall pretty much anything. Especially on older phones with limited storage this is a godsend. ..."
Lambert here:
The EU doesn't mess around, does it?
By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and
author, with extensive international work experience.
Originally published at Wolf Street.
In the US, the internet giants – Google, Facebook, Amazon, et al. – can do
pretty much as they please, interrupted only by occasional hearings in Congress, where Mark
Zuckerberg, or whoever, has to grin-and-bear it for a few hours, knowing that this too shall
pass. The EU takes antitrust actions against super-dominant giants a tad more seriously.
The EU's Competition Commission, after a three-year investigation, hit Google with a
€4.3 billion antitrust fine – $5 billion – the highest fine ever by any
antitrust agency anywhere.
No one dominates like Google. According to earlier EU findings cited by
Bloomberg , Google's market share exceeds 90% for general Internet search, licensed mobile
device operating systems, and app stores for Android software.
"Google has used Android as a vehicle to cement the dominance of its search engine," EU
Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager told reporters. "These practices have denied rivals
the chance to innovate and compete on the merits."
The fine is so large because of Google's "very serious illegal behavior" going back to 2011
and due to the huge revenues Google has earned with this behavior, she said.
In addition, Google was given 90 days to stop its "illegal practices" of forcing cellphone
makers that use Google's Android operating system to install Google apps.
This fine comes on top of the €2.4-billion fine the EU hit Google with in 2017 after an
investigation into Google's shopping-search service.
And the EU is not through yet. It's investigating Google's online advertising contracts and
could issue an additional fine. Online advertising is Google's primary revenues source.
Bloomberg:
The EU said Google ensures that Google Search and Chrome are pre-installed on "practically
all Android devices" sold in Europe. Users who find these apps on their phones are likely to
stick with them and "do not download competing apps in numbers that can offset the
significant commercial advantage derived on pre-installation."
Google's actions reduce the incentives for manufacturers to install and for users to seek
out competing apps, it said.
The probe targeted contracts that require Android-phones makers to take Google's search
and browser apps and other Google services when they want to license the Play app store,
which officials say is a "must-have" for new phones.
The EU also found illegal Google's "significant financial incentives" to telecoms
operators and manufacturers that exclusively install Google search on devices. Rivals
couldn't compete with these payments, making it difficult for any other search engine to get
their app pre-installed. The EU said Google stopped doing this in 2014.
Google's contracts also prevented handset makers selling phones using other versions of
Android, the EU said. This hampered manufacturers from making devices using Amazon.com Inc.'s
Fire OS Android version, it said.
Regulators rejected arguments that Apple Inc. competes with Android, saying Apple's phone
software can't be licensed by handset makers and that Apple phones are often priced outside
many Android users' purchasing power. Users face "switching costs" to move from Apple to
Android and would continue to face Google Search as a default on Apple devices.
In a long statement on its
blog , holier-than-thou Google praises itself from A through Z, in essence portraying
itself as the greatest gift to mankind and that therefore, it should be allowed to do as it
pleases. It includes this:
Today, because of Android, there are more than 24,000 devices, at every price point, from
more than 1,300 different brands, including Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian,
Italian, Latvian, Polish, Romanian, Spanish and Swedish phone makers.
And these devices are running on Android. In other words: Google is everywhere, and its ads
and apps are on all these devices. Hence the Competition Commission's point: if you're this
dominant, you've got to follow some rules.
At the end of its long statement, Google said: "We intend to appeal." Companies always
appeal fines. Google is no exception. And the end product might be much less ambitious.
At the press conference, Vestager said it was up to Google to figure out how to comply with
the Commission's order. "The obvious minimum" Google would need to do, she said, is that the
"contractual restrictions disappear."
But don't cry for Google. These practices helped it earn it a net profit of $12.7 billion in
2017 and of $19.5 billion in 2016. The decision and a fine of enormous magnitude has been
expected. And Google's shares are currently flat for the day.
It's interesting free market advocates are always going on about regulations, the need for
free markets and market efficiency but don't seem to care so much about monopolies, outsize
profits, the concentration of market power and its abuse that further impedes the operation
of free markets and the billionaires that result.
Google's dominance in search and mobile is market failure. Facebook's dominance of social
is market failure. Amazon's dominance is market failure, Apple being able to accumulate $800
billion it does not know what to do with is market failure.
Under conventional market theory all these entities would have stiff competition and not
be able to accumulate outsize profits or monopoly power so the question is where is the
competition and how come the the market is not working? And while the theories continue these
firms concentrate even more power, control and windfall profits.
How come free market advocates always seem to be more concerned about attempts to impose
minimum wages, health care or proper working conditions on amazon workers for instance than
any of this? And we will not even talk about negative externalities like the emergence of a
global spyware economy based on surveillance and creepily staking people 24/7. And using
seemingly endless 'VC funds' to build these US centric monopolies.
We are being stalked; and a virtual individual, more or less fleshed-out, is created in
the Cloud for each of us it is based on our behavior, every possible detail of which is
incorporated into the dossier. How accurate these representations are can be affected by
multiple variables Fake news? How about *Fake Browsing* or *Fake Shopping*. Feel free to
experiment!!!
We are being stalked by allowing ourselves to be stalked. All Android apps carry a
"permissions" warning telling how they are planning to stalk you. And of course smartphones
themselves are spybots by design–a business model pioneered by Apple, not Google. One
could argue that many of the worst current practices of Google are the result of trying to
imitate competitors such as Apple and Facebook.
Android is based on open source Linux and there's probably no reason why smartphone
manufacturers couldn't get their free operating systems elsewhere. Perhaps one big reason
they don't is that they are in on the stalking.
The patent was filed by a Google software engineer on behalf of the firm It describes a
system that analyses a user's online posts, emails and texts The system, or bot, would then
generate automated replies for future posts These replies would be written in a way that
mimics that person's usual language and tone
From the patient:
( 1 of 1 )
United States Patent 8,589,407
Bhatia November 19, 2013
Automated generation of suggestions for personalized reactions in a social network
Abstract
A system and method for automatic generating suggestions for personalized reactions or
messages. A suggestion generation module includes a plurality of collector modules, a
credentials module, a suggestion analyzer module, a user interface module and a decision
tree. The plurality of collector modules are coupled to respective systems to collect
information accessible by the user and important to the user from other systems such as
e-mail systems, SMS/MMS systems, micro blogging systems, social networks or other systems.
The information from these collector modules is provided to the suggestion analyzer module.
The suggestion analyzer module cooperates with the user interface module and the decision
tree to generate suggested reactions or messages for the user to send. The suggested
reactions or messages are presented by the user interface module to the user. The user
interface module also displays the original message, other information about the original
message such as others' responses, and action buttons for sending, discarding or ignoring
the suggested message.
If representations are not accurate, you need to volunteer more info till they get you
right.
"The decision and a fine of enormous magnitude has been expected. And Google's shares
are currently flat for the day."
As big a fine as this is that last sentence shows that fines don't work. A monopolist will
always pass on fines for it's illegal behaviour to its (captive) consumer/s. The only remedy
is for criminal proceedings to be bought against it's senior officers with guaranteed jail
time to persuade them to stop. That or breaking up the company.
One serious project for the left, once it gains power, will be to reverse and destroy the
entire line of legal argument that grants personhood to corporations.
Of particular harm are the court decisions on this point in the last 20 years or so, which
have brought this concept to its logical extreme. (I'm thinking in particular of the recent
gay-wedding-cake case, in which the Court [i.e., Justice Kennedy] implied that corporations
have a right to hold, promote, and exercise political opinions, just as if they were a real
person with the fiat. The so-called rationale of that decision is far worse in its long-term
implications than the immediate outcome of the case.)
Even a monopolist cannot simply Ma pass on the fines. Cause if they could have increased
prices already since as you write, they are monopoly. Why haven't they done it? Monopolists
are not dumb, they already extract the maximum price they think the market can bear.
In the end, the only effect that this is going to have is to transfer money from Google to
the EU. Cell phone manufacturers will install Chrome and Google Search whether Google
requires it or not. There simply isn't anything else out there that works as well.
Yours Truly has an Android phone. With more than 150 apps, and guess what: I didn't
install most of them. They simply came with the phone.
I can recall a recent incident when I needed to call 911 and my phone was off. I turned it
on, and, guess what, those 150-plus apps just HAD to update. That process took 15
minutes.
Fortunately, I wasn't in a life-threatening situation. I was only trying to call to report
gunfire nearby. In central Tucson, that happens fairly often.
Since the phone was in update mode for 15 minutes before I could even get to the opening
screen with the "emergency call" link, I decided not to call 911. It was simply too late to
make a timely report.
If I had my druthers, I'd rather have a phone with just a handful of apps. I don't need
all of this Google crud. Especially if if poses a risk to health and safety.
An unlocked phone direct from the mfg instead of the carrier will have fewer apps.
Also you can disable many apps, just ignore the "may cause other apps to misbehave " message;
it isn't true. Some of the apps you do need, and online forums will list which you need and
which you don't.
On my current Android form I have not signed into Chrome and use DDG instead of Google.
Pretty much easy as pie Slim, attagirl -- if you can quit FB cold turkey you can reduce
your exposure to Google. For example I went back to using a paper calendar.
Root your phone and delete all those apps including Google's. Don't use anything google --
gmail, youtube, chrome, google search, google voice, google groups and more of the EVIL
company's concoctions created solely to spy on you and sell your data.
Needless to say the crooked cell phone carriers will farm your data and track you.
I'm so sick of these crooked companies, google, facebook, netflix, whatsapp, linkedin and
others that snoop on you. Get tutamail or protonmail for your e-mail.
Root your phone and delete all those apps including Google's.
This is the wrong way to approach this. The right way ist to install a 3rd party ROM like
LineageOS and then not install any gapps.
Be prepared however that only very few programs will work. You will then lack Google play
services and they are needed for many many programs. Not much more than what is in f-droid.
There is of course no play store whatsoever then.
For whatever reason my reply didn't go through this morning.PS: this is now the third
attempt even. Now replacing all URLs in hope it will go through
I wrote exact model for a reason: there are about two dozen different Moto G versions over
6 years of releases.
Pretty much all of them allow however LineageOS or other third party Android images. Those
have no bloatware apps except what comes with the OS itself. If the LineageOS download
section has no image for your specific phone, then visit xda-developers forum or needrom
which both have even more.
LineageOS is a current Android version and not several years old like with earlier
Moto G versions, it gets up to date security patches, has no spyware. You can even install
only the Google Apps you want, and can delete or uninstall pretty much anything.
Especially on older phones with limited storage this is a godsend.
I believe that under German law (and I'm not 100% positive of this), executives and
directors can become personally liable for the actions of the businesses they manage.
A $5 Billion levied on directors and management, and not shareholders, would appear to be
more effective.
Those responsible bear none of the penalty. And, if corporation be people, then is the
corporation and its officers conspiring?
I hope Eric Schmidt pays all $5b out of his pocket and they use it to fund the studies of
monopoly impacts he put the kibosh on. Some community service too wouldn't be a bad idea for
such a bully.
We have the same sort of corporate veil in Germany as all other modern western capitalist
countries in form of "Kapitalgesellschaft". A public company is such a company, the other
would be the GmbH aka Ltd.
A manager who does criminal things (see Diesel scandal VW/VAG an Audi manager was recently
held in custody) can be held liable including fines or jail. But I don't know of any
anti-trust actions which pierced the veil.
That's questionable. But what is true is that neoliberal enterprise makes it easier to sociopath to climb the ladder
Notable quotes:
"... As I approach 40, having only realized in recent years that the constant soul-ache I've lived with my whole life is not some inherent flaw in my being, but a symptom of a deeply ill society, I desperately wish I could share in the glimmer of hope at the end of this post. ..."
"... We have been commodified since before we were even born, to the point where opportunities for what Lave and Wenger would call "legitimate peripheral participation" in the kinds of work that yield real, humane, benefits to our communities are scant to nonexistent for most of us. Something has gone deeply awry in this core social function at the worst possible time in human history. ..."
"... Neoliberalism, the economic policy that is private sector "free market" driven, giving the owners of capital free, unfettered reign. Created by libertarians like Fredrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, they sold it to the nation but failed to mention that little peccadillo about how privatization of government would usher in economic fascism. ..."
"... "An extreme form of laissez-faire individualism that developed in the writings of Hayek, Friedman and Nozick they are also referred to as libertarians. They draw on the natural rights tradition of John Locke and champion's full autonomy and freedom of the individual." ..."
"... What they meant was ECONOMIC freedom. They despise social freedom (democracy) because civil, labor, health, food safety, etc., rights and environmental protections put limits on their profits. ..."
"... The "maximizing shareholder value" myth turns people into psychopaths . The entire neoliberal economic policy of the past 40 years is based on the false assumption that self-interest is the driving evolution of humanity. We're not all psychopaths, turns out. We're social beings that have mainly used cooperation to get us through these thousands of years of existence. ..."
"... "If the IMF is to shake its image as an inward-looking, out-of-touch boys club, it needs to start taking the issue seriously. The effect of the male dominance in macroeconomics can be seen in the policy direction of the organisation: female economists are more likely to be in favour of Government-backed redistribution measures than their male counterparts. ..."
"... Of course, the parochial way in which economics is perceived by the IMF, as nothing more than the application of mathematical models, is nothing new. In fact, this is how mainstream economics frequently is taught in universities all over the world. Is it any wonder that the IMF has turned out as it is?" ..."
"... "Economics students are forced to spend so much time with this complex calculus so that they can go to work on Wall St. that there's no room in the course curriculum for the history of economic thought. ..."
"... So all they know about Adam Smith is what they hear on CNN news or other mass media that are a travesty of what these people really said and if you don't read the history of economic thought, you'd think there's only one way of looking at the world and that's the way the mass media promote things and it's a propagandistic, Orwellian way. ..."
"... The whole economic vocabulary is to cover up what's really happening and to make people think that the economy is getting richer while the reality is they're getting poorer and only the top is getting richer and they can only get rich as long as the middle class and the working class don't realize the scam that's being pulled off on them." ..."
As I approach 40, having only realized in recent years that the constant soul-ache I've lived with my whole life is not
some inherent flaw in my being, but a symptom of a deeply ill society, I desperately wish I could share in the glimmer of hope
at the end of this post.
But I cannot. What drives me to despair is not the fragile, corrupt, and unsustainable social/political/economic system we're
inheriting; nor is it the poisoned and increasingly harsh planet, nor the often silent epidemic of mental and emotional anguish
that prevents so many of us from becoming our best selves. I retain great faith in the resilience and potential of the human spirit.
And contrary to the stereotypes, I think my generation and those who have come after are often more intellectually and emotionally
mature than our parents and grandparents. At the very least, we have a powerful sense of irony and highly tuned BS detectors.
What drives me to despair is so pathetically prosaic that I want to laugh and cry all at once as I type this. To put it as
simply as I know how, a core function of all functional human societies is apprenticeship, by which I mean the basic process whereby
deep knowledge and skills are transferred from the old to the young, where tensions between tradition and change are contested
and resolved, and where the fundamental human need to develop a sense of oneself as a unique and valuable part of a community
can flourish.
We have been commodified since before we were even born, to the point where opportunities for what Lave and Wenger would
call "legitimate peripheral participation" in the kinds of work that yield real, humane, benefits to our communities are scant
to nonexistent for most of us. Something has gone deeply awry in this core social function at the worst possible time in human
history.
I was born with the 80s, and shortly thereafter I was deemed to be someone with unusually high potential. Had I been born a
few decades earlier, I would have been snatched up in my teens or early 20s by persons and institutions, and offered long-term
security and real opportunities to do real work in exchange for my commitment and efforts to carry on a legacy with deep roots
and meaningful history.
But I was a child of the 80s, so what was I offered? Education, education, and more education, in exchange for the promise
of, someday, a "good jawb." I was very good at this education, so I learned that the most valuable qualities a person can have
are unquestioning deference, conformity, and the ability to produce nauseatingly superficial performances on demand by which I
would be judged inferior or superior to my peers.
Eventually I got a good jawb (though somehow, someway, I was not only still quite poor, but a debt-slave too, primarily because
I refused to enter professions that struck me as either quite obviously evil -- e.g. finance -- or were good but would occupy
all of my time and energy and then some for at least a few decades -- e.g. medicine).
I dove into this jawb with much enthusiasm and ambition. My bosses and coworkers treated me like a rube for this. As I became
saddled with more and more responsibilities outside of my job description, and which rightly belonged to people making more than
triple my salary (and who frequently lacked very basic competencies in spite of their impressive looking resumes); as it slowly
dawned on me that those in my field did not want to actually help people, but to convince others (i.e. people with money) that
they were noble helpers while doing as little actual work as possible; and as I started feeling every day like the one person
who doesn't get the joke, I became frustrated and, quite professionally, began to advocate for compensation and authority commensurate
with the responsibilities I'd been given.
This was a mistake, apparently, because there is nothing more threatening to a complacent and incompetent gang of managerial
types than someone who is both capable and knows their worth. So I was stuck in a metaphorical closet and condescended to at every
opportunity. (There was one exception worth noting: the most capable person in the organization tried to take me under her wing,
but she was quite old a relic of a previous generation, and died a few months into my tenure).
Still naďve and idealistic, rinsed and repeated in a few jobs, until I learned that real financial success in a field that
didn't require me to work 80 hours a week 50-52 weeks a year required developing my ability to BS and take advantage of other
people. Some quirk of my psychology means doing those things creates an irresistible urge in me to slowly poison myself with alcohol
and tobacco.
So I took out more debt and got more education, so I could become an educator, of course. Too late, I learned that becoming
an educator meant not only financial sacrifice, which I could bear (provided I not produce offspring, anyhow), but social condescension
and about as much autonomy as an assembly line worker in a Tesla plant, which I could not bear. Indeed, few things invite institutional
wrath in America more than attempts to grant a meaningful and empowering education to young people (i.e. one that values other
things more than compliance and conformity).
So here I am, nearing 50, broke, broken, indebted, addicted, and alienated, writing an excessively long and tardy comment to
the only place where I feel real community and comradeship, even when I only lurk. I'm good at several things, but I am not exceptional
at any one thing of real social value. I have not spent my last decade and a half cutting my teeth in the nitty gritty and learning
anything that makes me not expendable. I think many of us feel that way: expendable. Because we know we are, and those of us who
are not are often among the most amoral, shallow, self-absorbed, and sycophantic of our generation.
As I've closely followed Ms. Ocasio-Cortez's remarkable rise, I keep thinking of another uniquely talented politician elected
to the HOR at age 28: Lyndon Baines Johnson. Over the next 30 years of his life, he became the most brilliantly, ruthlessly effective
politician of a generation. But how? Well, he had Sam Rayburn and Richard Russell, among others, to show him the ropes, watch
his back, and enable his rise -- taking the risk that he would (as he did) eventually stab them in the back and take their power.
How will AOC's experience compare? Whatever it is, she won't have people like Rayburn and Russell to guide her, because people
like that no longer serve as our representatives (I know, they weren't great people, and Bernie is very skilled and experienced,
and may mentor her, but his has been a career at the margins. Rayburn and Russell were among the most powerful people in the world
for much of their adult lives.)
We live in an age where our very lives are based on extraordinarily fragile and complex systems. How can we truly reform those
systems into something better without burning the house down? We don't know. Sure, many of us know in the abstract, but we, for
the most part, lack the deep institutional knowledge of what is that would be necessary to not only build something better, but
to keep the ship afloat during the transition.
In any case, no-one can truly predict the future, and humanity is nothing if not full of surprises. Yet hope, for me these
days, seems a privilege of a bygone age.
"Some quirk of my psychology means doing those things creates an irresistible urge in me to slowly poison myself with alcohol
and tobacco."
I think those things and drugs are conscience oblivators. Try gardening. Touch the earth. Grow actual food. Not hemp. Back
away from the education racket.
That was a wonderful post, very moving, thank you. These kind of testimonies are very important because they show the real
human cost of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is truly a death cult. Please find an alternative to alcohol. Music, art, nature, etc.
Thank you for sharing your compelling story. As someone who could be your mother, it is painful to me not only that this is
your experience, but that you are so acutely aware of it. No blinders. Hence, I guess, the need for alcohol.
You write beautifully. Hope is hard to come by sometimes.
At least you are self aware. Most people are not. As for the Ship of Status, let it sink. Find a lifeboat where you feel comfortable
and batten down for the Roaring (20)40s yet to come. Once you find something to work for, the bad habits will lose much of their
hold on you. As long as you don't slide into alcoholism, you have a chance.
Life was kinder just 40 years ago, not perfect but way more mellow than it is today. Kids were listening to Peter Frampton
and Stevie Wonder, not punk, grunge, rap and industrial music. What changed? Neoliberalism, the economic policy that is private
sector "free market" driven, giving the owners of capital free, unfettered reign. Created by libertarians like Fredrich von Hayek
and Milton Friedman, they sold it to the nation but failed to mention that little peccadillo about how privatization of government
would usher in economic fascism.
"An extreme form of laissez-faire individualism that developed in the writings of Hayek, Friedman and Nozick they are also
referred to as libertarians. They draw on the natural rights tradition of John Locke and champion's full autonomy and freedom
of the individual."
What they meant was ECONOMIC freedom. They despise social freedom (democracy) because civil, labor, health, food safety,
etc., rights and environmental protections put limits on their profits.
The "maximizing shareholder value" myth turns people into
psychopaths
. The entire neoliberal economic policy of the past 40 years is based on the false assumption that self-interest is the driving
evolution of humanity. We're not all psychopaths, turns out. We're social beings that have mainly used cooperation to get us through
these thousands of years of existence.
There's nothing wrong with wanting government to protect the public sector from predatory capitalists. Otherwise, society's
value system turns upside down sick people are more valued than healthy violent are more valued to fill up the prison factories
war becomes a permanent business a filthy, toxic planet is good for the oil industry a corporate governance with no respect for
rights or environmental protections is the best capitalism can offer?
Thanks, but no thanks.
The easily manipulated right are getting the full assault. "Run for your lives! The democratic socialists want to use the government
bank for everyone, not just the 1%!!
They understand how the economy really works and see through our lies!! Before you know it, everyone will be enjoying a better
quality of life! AAAAGHHH!!"
"If the IMF is to shake its image as an inward-looking, out-of-touch boys club, it needs to start taking the issue seriously.
The effect of the male dominance in macroeconomics can be seen in the policy direction of the organisation: female economists
are more likely to be in favour of Government-backed redistribution measures than their male counterparts.
Of course, the parochial way in which economics is perceived by the IMF, as nothing more than the application of mathematical
models, is nothing new. In fact, this is how mainstream economics frequently is taught in universities all over the world.
Is it any wonder that the IMF has turned out as it is?"
Michael Hudson, as usual, was right:
"Economics students are forced to spend so much time with this complex calculus so that they can go to work on Wall
St. that there's no room in the course curriculum for the history of economic thought.
So all they know about Adam Smith is what they hear on CNN news or other mass media that are a travesty of what these
people really said and if you don't read the history of economic thought, you'd think there's only one way of looking at the
world and that's the way the mass media promote things and it's a propagandistic, Orwellian way.
The whole economic vocabulary is to cover up what's really happening and to make people think that the economy is getting
richer while the reality is they're getting poorer and only the top is getting richer and they can only get rich as long as
the middle class and the working class don't realize the scam that's being pulled off on them."
"... By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website ..."
"... Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America ..."
"... You will not do as well as your parents ..."
"... Life is a struggle to keep up. Even if you achieve something, you will live in fear of losing it. America is not your land: it belongs to the ultra-rich. ..."
"... The Vanishing Middle Class ..."
"... Capital in the Twenty-First Century ..."
"... Global Wealth Report ..."
"... Professed as a right for individual freedom and empowerment, in reality it serves to suppress disobedience with shame. If you earn like shit -- it's gotta be because YOU are shit. Just try harder. Don't you see those OTHER kids that did well! ..."
"... I think one crucial thing that has to change is the culture of extreme individualisation. ..."
"... die Plutonomisten und Bolshewisten! ..."
"... That the article brings "fear of robots" into the discussion is a tell that the writer does not want to mention that it is the competition from others in the world wide labor force that depress USA wages. ..."
"... We have been commodified since before we were even born, to the point where opportunities for what Lave and Wenger would call "legitimate peripheral participation" in the kinds of work that yield real, humane, benefits to our communities are scant to nonexistent for most of us. Something has gone deeply awry in this core social function at the worst possible time in human history. ..."
"... That was a wonderful post, very moving, thank you. These kind of testimonies are very important because they show the real human cost of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is truly a death cult. Please find an alternative to alcohol. Music, art, nature, etc. ..."
"... At least you are self aware. Most people are not. As for the Ship of Status, let it sink. Find a lifeboat where you feel comfortable and batten down for the Roaring (20)40s yet to come. Once you find something to work for, the bad habits will lose much of their hold on you. As long as you don't slide into alcoholism, you have a chance. ..."
"... Neoliberalism, the economic policy that is private sector "free market" driven, giving the owners of capital free, unfettered reign. Created by libertarians like Fredrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, they sold it to the nation but failed to mention that little peccadillo about how privatization of government would usher in economic fascism. ..."
"... "An extreme form of laissez-faire individualism that developed in the writings of Hayek, Friedman and Nozick they are also referred to as libertarians. They draw on the natural rights tradition of John Locke and champion's full autonomy and freedom of the individual." ..."
"... What they meant was ECONOMIC freedom. They despise social freedom (democracy) because civil, labor, health, food safety, etc., rights and environmental protections put limits on their profits. ..."
"... The "maximizing shareholder value" myth turns people into psychopaths . The entire neoliberal economic policy of the past 40 years is based on the false assumption that self-interest is the driving evolution of humanity. We're not all psychopaths, turns out. We're social beings that have mainly used cooperation to get us through these thousands of years of existence. ..."
"... "If the IMF is to shake its image as an inward-looking, out-of-touch boys club, it needs to start taking the issue seriously. The effect of the male dominance in macroeconomics can be seen in the policy direction of the organisation: female economists are more likely to be in favour of Government-backed redistribution measures than their male counterparts. ..."
"... Of course, the parochial way in which economics is perceived by the IMF, as nothing more than the application of mathematical models, is nothing new. In fact, this is how mainstream economics frequently is taught in universities all over the world. Is it any wonder that the IMF has turned out as it is?" ..."
"... "Economics students are forced to spend so much time with this complex calculus so that they can go to work on Wall St. that there's no room in the course curriculum for the history of economic thought. ..."
"... So all they know about Adam Smith is what they hear on CNN news or other mass media that are a travesty of what these people really said and if you don't read the history of economic thought, you'd think there's only one way of looking at the world and that's the way the mass media promote things and it's a propagandistic, Orwellian way. ..."
"... The whole economic vocabulary is to cover up what's really happening and to make people think that the economy is getting richer while the reality is they're getting poorer and only the top is getting richer and they can only get rich as long as the middle class and the working class don't realize the scam that's being pulled off on them." ..."
"... "I often joke with my fellow country neighbors that it costs a hundred bucks to simply leave the house. It's not a joke anymore. At this point those still fighting for a paltry 15.00 should include a hundred dollar per day walk out your front door per diem." ..."
"... This is a stark and startling reality. This reality is outside the framework of understanding of economic struggle in America that is allowed by the corporate neoliberal culture/media. ..."
"... As the Precariat grows, having watched the .1% lie, cheat and steal – from them, they are more likely to also lie, cheat and steal in mortgage, employment and student loan applications and most importantly and sadly, in their dealings with each other. Everybody is turning into a hustler. ..."
"... Economics was always far too dangerous to be allowed to reveal the truth about the economy. ..."
"... "The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money. But every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers." ..."
"... Capitalism had two sides, the productive side where people earned their income and the parasitic side where the rentiers lived off unearned income. The Classical Economists had shown that most at the top of society were just parasites feeding off the productive activity of everyone else. ..."
"... The early neoclassical economists hid the problems of rentier activity in the economy by removing the difference between "earned" and "unearned" income and they conflated "land" with "capital". They took the focus off the cost of living that had been so important to the Classical Economists to hide the effects of rentier activity in the economy. ..."
"... The landowners, landlords and usurers were now just productive members of society again. It they left banks and debt out of economics no one would know the bankers created the money supply out of nothing. Otherwise, everyone would see how dangerous it was to let bankers do what they wanted if they knew the bankers created the money supply through their loans. ..."
"... The cost of living = housing costs + healthcare costs + student loan costs ..."
"... An unexpected consequence of globalization is that a lot of people see how thing are done, elsewhere. ..."
"... Part of me doesn't feel sorry at all for the plight of middle-class Americans. When times were good they were happy to throw poor and working-class people under the bus. I remember when the common answer to complaints about factory closings was "you should have gotten an education, dummy." Now that the white-collar middle class can see that they are next on the chopping block they are finding their populist soul. ..."
The children of America's white-collar middle class viewed life from their green lawns and
tidy urban flats as a field of opportunity. Blessed with quality schools, seaside vacations and
sleepover camp, they just knew that the American dream was theirs for the taking if they hit
the books, picked a thoughtful and fulfilling career, and just, well, showed up.
Until it wasn't.
While they were playing Twister and imagining a bright future, someone apparently decided
that they didn't really matter. Clouds began to gather -- a "dark shimmer of constantly
shifting precariousness," as journalist Alissa Quart describes in her timely new book "
Squeezed:
Why Our Families Can't Afford America ."
The things these kids considered their birthright -- reputable colleges, secure careers, and
attractive residences -- were no longer waiting for them in adulthood.
Today, with their incomes flat or falling, these Americans scramble to maintain a semblance
of what their parents enjoyed. They are moving from being dominant to being dominated. From
acting to acted upon. Trained to be educators, lawyers, librarians, and accountants, they do
work they can't stand to support families they rarely see. Petrified of being pushed aside by
robots, they rankle to see financial titans and tech gurus flaunting their obscene wealth at
every turn.
Headlines gush of a humming economy, but it doesn't feel like a party to them -- and they've
seen enough to know who will be holding the bag when the next bubble bursts.
The "Middle Precariats," as Quart terms them, are suffering death by a thousand
degradations. Their new reality: You will not do as well as your parents . Life is
a struggle to keep up. Even if you achieve something, you will live in fear of losing it.
America is not your land: it belongs to the ultra-rich.
Much of Quart's book highlights the mirror image of the downwardly mobile middle class Trump
voters from
economically strained regions like the Midwest who helped throw a monkey wrench into
politics-as-usual. In her tour of American frustration, she talks to urbanites who lean liberal
and didn't expect to find themselves drowning in debt and disappointment. Like the
falling-behind Trump voters, these people sense their status ripped away, their hopes
dashed.
If climbing up the ladder of success is the great American story, slipping down it is the
quintessential tragedy. It's hard not to take it personally: the ranks of the Middle Precariat
are filled with shame.
They are somebodies turning into nobodies.
And there signs that they are starting to revolt. If they do, they could make their own mark
on the country's political landscape.
The Broken Bourgeoisie
Quart's book takes a sobering look at the newly unstable bourgeoisie, illustrating what
happens when America's off-the-rails inequality blasts over those who always believed they
would end up winners.
There's the Virginia accountant who forks over nearly 90% of her take home pay on care for
her three kids; the Chicago adjunct professor with the disabled child who makes less than
$24,000 a year; and the California business reporter who once focused on the financial
hardships of others and now faces unemployment herself.
There are Uber-driving teachers and law school grads reviewing documents for $20 an hour --
or less. Ivy Leaguers who live on food stamps.
Lacking unions, church communities and nearby close relatives to support them, the Middle
Precariats are isolated and stranded. Their labor has sputtered into sporadic contingency: they
make do with short-term contracts or shift work. (Despite the much-trumpeted low unemployment
rate, the New York Times
reports that jobs are often subpar, featuring little stability and security). Once upon a
time, only the working poor took second jobs to stay afloat. Now the Middle Precariat has
joined them.
Quart documents the desperate measures taken by people trying to keep up appearances,
relying on 24/7 "extreme day care" to accommodate unpredictable schedules or cobbling together
co-living arrangements to cut household costs. They strain to provide things like academic
tutors and sports activities for their kids who must compete with the children of the wealthy.
Deep down, they know that they probably can't pass down the cultural and social class they once
took for granted.
Quart cites a litany of grim statistics that measure the quality of their lives, like the
fact that a middle-class existence is now 30% more expensive than it was twenty years ago, a
period in which the price of health care and the cost of a four-year degree at a public college
nearly doubled.
Squeezed is especially detailed on the plight of the female Middle Precariat, like
those who have the effrontery to procreate or grow older. With the extra burdens of care work,
pregnancy discrimination, inadequate family leave, and wage disparities, (not to mention sexual
harassment, a subject not covered), women get double squeezed. For women of color, often
lacking intergenerational wealth to ease the pain, make that a triple squeeze.
The Middle Precariat in middle age is not a pretty sight: without union protection or a
reliable safety net they endure lost jobs, dwindled savings, and shattered identities. In one
of the saddest chapters, Quart describes how the pluckiest try reinvent themselves in their 40s
or 50s, enrolling in professional courses and certification programs that promise another shot
at security, only to find that they've been scammed by greedy college marketers and deceptive
self-help mavens who leave them more desperate than before.
Quart notes that even those making decent salaries in the United States now see themselves
barred from the club of power and wealth. They may have illiquid assets like houses and
retirement accounts, but they still see themselves as financially struggling. Earning $100,000
sounds marvelous until you've forked over half to housing and 30% to childcare. Each day is one
bit of bad luck away from disaster.
"The spectacular success of the 0.1 percent, a tiny portion of society, shows just how
stranded, stagnant, and impotent the current social system has made the middle class -- even
the 10 percent who are upper-middle class," Quart writes.
Quart knows that the problems of those who seem relatively privileged compared many may not
garner immediate sympathy. But she rightly notes that their stresses are a barometer for the
concentration of extreme wealth in some American cities and the widening chasm between the very
wealthy and everybody else.
The Dual Economy
The donor-fed establishment of both political parties could or would not see this coming,
but some prescient economists have been sounding the alarm.
In his 2016 book The Vanishing Middle Class ,
MIT economist Peter Temin detailed how the U.S. has been
breaking up into a "dual economy" over the last several decades, moving toward a model that
is structured economically and politically more like a developing nation -- a far cry from the
post-war period when the American middle class thrived.
In dual economies, the rich and the rest part ways as the once-solid middle class begins to
disappear. People are divided into separate worlds in the kinds of jobs they hold, the schools
their kids attend, their health care, transportation, housing, and social networks -- you name
it. The tickets out of the bottom sector, like a diploma from a first-rate university, grow
scarce. The people of the two realms become strangers.
French economist Thomas Picketty provided a stark formula for what happens capitalism is
left unregulated in his 2015 bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First
Century . It goes like this: when the rate of return on the investments of the wealthy
exceeds the rate of growth in the overall economy, the rich get exponentially richer while
everyone becomes poorer. In more sensible times, like the decades following WWII, that rule was
mitigated by an American government that forced the rich pay their share of taxes, curbed the
worst predations of businesses, and saw to it that roads, bridges, public transit, and schools
were built and maintained.
But that's all a fading memory. Under the influence of political money, politicians no
longer seek a unified economy and society where the middle class can flourish. As Quart
observes, the U.S. is the richest and also the most unequal country in the world, featuring the
largest wealth inequality gap of the two hundred countries in the Global Wealth Report
of 2015.
Who is to Blame?
Over and over, the people Quart interviews tend to blame themselves for their situation --
if only they'd chosen a different career, lived in another city, maybe things wouldn't have
turned out this way. Sometimes they point the finger at robots and automation, though they
arguably have much
more to fear from the wealthy humans who own the robots.
But some are waking up to the fact it is the wealthy and their purchased politicians who
have systematically and deliberately stripped them of power. Deprivations like paltry employee
rights, inadequate childcare, ridiculously expensive health care, and non-existent retirement
security didn't just happen . Abstract words like deregulation and globalization
become concrete: somebody actually did this to you by promoting policies that leave you high
and dry.
As Quart indicates, understanding this is the first step to a change of consciousness, and
her book is part of this shift.
Out of this consciousness, many individuals and organizations are working furiously and
sometimes ingeniously to alter the negative trajectory of the Middle Precariat. Quart outlines
proposals and developments like small-scale debt consolidation, student debt forgiveness,
adequately subsidized day care, and non-traditional unions that could help.
America also has a track record of broad, fundamental solutions that have already proven to
work. Universal basic income may sound attractive, but we already have a program that could
improve the lot of the middle class if expanded: Social Security.
Right now, a worker stops having to pay Social Security tax on any earnings beyond $128,400
-- a number that is unreasonably low because the rich wish to keep it so. Just by raising that
cap, we could the lower the retirement age so that Americans in their 60s would not have greet
customers at Walmart. More opportunities would open up to younger workers.
The Middle Precariat could be forgiven for suspecting that the overlords of Silicon Valley
may have something other than altruism in mind when they tout universal basic income. Epic tax
evaders, they stand to benefit from pushing the responsibility for their low-paid workers and
the inadequate safety net and public services that they helped create onto ordinary
taxpayers.
Beyond basic income lies a basic fact: the American wealthy do not pay their share in taxes.
In fact, American workers pay
twice as much in taxes as wealthy investors. That's why infrastructure crumbles, schools
deteriorate, and sane health care and childcare are not available.
Most Americans realize that inequality has to be challenged through the tax code: a
2017 Gallup poll shows that the majority think that the wealthy and corporations don't pay
enough. Politicians, of course, ignore this to please their donors.
And so the Middle Precariat, like the Trump voters, is getting fed up with them.
From Depressed to Energized
Quart astutely points out that income inequality is being written into the law of the land.
Funded the efforts of billionaires like the Koch brothers, politicians have
altered laws and constitutions across the country to cement the dual economy through
everything from restricting voting rights to defunding public education.
Several Middle Precariats in Squeezed have turned to independent or renegade
candidates like Bernie Sanders who offer broad, substantial programs like debt-free college and
universal health care that address the fissures in their lives. They are listening to
candidates who are not afraid to say that markets should work for human beings, not the other
way around.
If Donald Trump's political rise "can be understood as an expression of the gulf between
middle-class citizens and America's ruling classes," as Quart observes, then the recent surge
of non-establishment Democratic candidates, especially democratic socialists, may be the next
phase of a middle class revolt.
Recent surprise victories in Pennsylvania and New York in the Democratic primaries by female
candidates openly embracing democratic socialism, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who
bested Democratic stalwart Joe Crowley by running for Congress on a platform of free Medicare
and public college tuition for all, may not be the blip that establishment Democrats hope. In
New York, democratic socialist Julia Salazar is looking to unseat long-time state senator
Martin Dilan. Actress
Cynthia Nixon , running against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, has just proclaimed herself
a democratic socialist and promises to raise taxes on the rich and boost funding for public
schools. Michelle Goldberg recently announced in the New York Times that "
The Millenial Socialists are Coming ," indicating the intense dislike of traditional
politics in urban centers. These young people do not think of things like debt-free college or
paid family leave as radical: they see it done elsewhere in the world and don't accept that it
can't be done in America.
Historically, the more affluent end of the middle class tends to identify with and support
the wealthy. After all, they might join their ranks one day. But when this dream dies, the
formerly secure may decide to throw their lot in with the rest of the Precariats. That's when
you have the chance for a real mass movement for change.
Of course, people have to recognize their common circumstances and fates. The urban denizens
of New York and San Francisco have to see what they have in common with middle class Trump
voters from the Rust Belt, as well as working class Americans and everybody else who is not
ultra-rich.
If the growing ranks of Precariats can work together, maybe it won't take a natural
catastrophe or a war or violent social upheaval to change America's unsustainable course of
gross inequality. Because eventually, something has to give.
I think one crucial thing that has to change is the culture of extreme
individualization.
Professed as a right for individual freedom and empowerment, in reality it serves to
suppress disobedience with shame. If you earn like shit -- it's gotta be because YOU are
shit. Just try harder. Don't you see those OTHER kids that did well!
Part of the blame is on New Age with it's quazi-buddhist narrative: basically, everything
is perfect, and if you don't feel it that way, it's because you are tainted with envy or
weakness.
Thus what is in fact a heavily one-sided battle -- is presented as a natural order of
things.
I believe we need a new framework. A sort of mix of Marx and Freud: study of the
subconscious of the social economy. The rich not just HAPPEN to be rich. They WANT to be
rich. Which means that in some way they NEED others to be poor.
Of course, I'm generalizing. And some rich are just really good at what they do. These
rich will indeed trickle down, they will increase the well-being of people. But there are
others. People working in insurance and finance. And as their role in the economy grows -- as
does their role in politics, their power. They want to have more, while others would have
less.
But behind it all are not rational thoughts, not efficiency, but psychological trauma,
pain of the soul. Without addressing these matters, we will not be able to change the
world.
I'm sorry if my thoughts are somewhat fragmented. It's just something I've been thinking
of a lot since I started reading NC, discovering MMT and heterodox approaches in general.
The problem is the perception the Democratic Party is reliable as a partner. The culture
wasn't a problem in 2008 when the Democratic candidate was perceived as wanting to raise
taxes, pass universal health care, and end the wars.
====Part of the blame is on New Age with it's quazi-buddhist narrative: basically,
everything is perfect, and if you don't feel it that way, it's because you are tainted with
envy or weakness.
That's where I first heard of this theoretical link. I think that it's flat out right and
post-WWII psycho-babble has seeped into society in pernicious ways (along with everything
else, breakdown of nuclear family, etc). Unfortunately, can't prove it like Euclid.
"A sort of mix of Marx and Freud"– the " Frankfurt School " is a start, with the
realization of "the culture industry" as force majeure in the "heavily one-sided
battle." And ditto recommendation of "The Century of the Self."
Responding to Sergey P: I think one crucial thing that has to change is the culture of extreme
individualisation.
There are really only two alternatives to individualism. There is Durkheim-ian "society,"
in which we are all in this together – interdependent. I think this is still an
appropriate lens for a lot of smaller cities and communities where people really do still
know each other and everyone wants the community to thrive. And, of course, it is the only
way to think about human society nested inside a finite Earth. But it can only work on a
larger scale through mediating "institutions" or "associations." All the evidence shows,
consistent with the piece, that precariousness by itself weakens social institutions –
people have less time and money to contribute to making them work well.
And then there is Marx-ian "class." Which is to say, we are not all individuals but we are
not all of one group. There are different groups with different interests and, not
infrequently, the interests of different groups are opposed – what is good for one is
bad for another – and if power is unequal between groups (either because some groups as
groups have more power than others or because individuals with more power all have the same
group affinity), then powerful groups will use that power to oppress others. In that case,
the only remedy is to try to systematically empower the weak and/or disempower the strong.
This also requires collective action – institutions, associations, government –
and it is again noted that our collective institutions, most notably unions, have been
seriously weakened in the last 40-60 years.
The real world doesn't always fit into neat categories. Trump's America First is an appeal
to the "society" of USAmerica. Maybe there will be some improvements for working people. But
the argument in the piece, perhaps not as clearly stated as I would like, is that the
interests of the (former) middle class – as a class – have diverged from the
interests of the upper class. Changing that equation requires collective action.
Naturally one must quote the great Frank Herbert from his novel Dune:
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them
free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
'We already have a program that could improve the lot of the middle class if expanded:
Social Security.'
Never mind expanding it -- even the existing Social Security program is less than 20%
funded, headed for zero in 2034 according to its trustees. Scandalously, these trustees owe
no fiduciary duty to beneficiaries. Old Frank wanted pensioners to be forever dependent on
his D party. How did that work out for us?
Take a look at the transmittal letter for the 2018 trustees report, released last month.
Two public trustee positions are "VACANT," just as they were in last year's transmittal
letter:
Just above these blank spaces is the signature of one Nancy Berryhill, "Acting
Commissioner of Social Security." But wait --
On March 6, 2018, the Government Accountability Office stated that as of November 17,
2017, Berryhill's status violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which limits the time a
position can be filled by an acting official; "[t]herefore Ms. Berryhill was not authorized
to continue serving using the title of Acting Commissioner after November 16." Berryhill
declared, "Moving forward, I will continue to lead the agency from my position of record,
Deputy Commissioner of Operations."
By June 5th, Berryhill was still impersonating the Acting Commissioner, legally or
not.
Summing up, even the trustees' one-page transmittal letter shows that Social Security is
treated as a total and complete Third World joke by the US federal government.
Yeah, yeah. Gubmint can't do nuthin' rite. How about we take our government back from the
plutocrats and set SS on solid footing again. There are no impediments other than the will of
the people to use our power. Now that the Boomers are moving off all sorts of things, like
'thinking', and 'logic', will become prevalent again.
Never mind expanding it -- even the existing Social Security program is less than 20%
funded, headed for zero in 2034 according to its trustees. Scandalously, these trustees owe
no fiduciary duty to beneficiaries. Old Frank wanted pensioners to be forever dependent on
his D party. How did that work out for us?
Correct, then the system will eventually be totally reliant on taxes coming in. According
to 2011 OASDI
Trustees Report
Beginning in 2023, trust fund assets will diminish until they become exhausted in 2036.
Non-interest income is projected to be sufficient to support expenditures at a level of 77
percent of scheduled benefits after trust fund exhaustion in 2036, and then to decline to
74 percent of scheduled benefits in 2085
The benefits are never going to go completely away, the benefits will decrease if nothing
is done. Things can be done to change this, such as an increasing the the cap on earnings,
raising new revenues, etc. This is not exactly an "end of the world" scenario for SSI.
Also, no one complained when the excess SSI tax collected "Social security trust fund" was
used to keep interest rates down by purchasing Government bonds.
The whole tax angle is a complete red herring. Raising the cap is not the answer.
FICA is "the most regressive tax" the country imposes. Eliminating FICA altogether, doing
away with the "trust fund" and the pretense that SS is not the government taking care of it's
elderly citizens but is workers taking care of themselves, is the answer. If the emphasis in
Quart's book on the rise of a new democratic socialism means anything, it means reconciling
with the notion that it is OK for the government to take measures to ensure the welfare of
the people. Pay-as-you-go SS can become simply the re-assumption of our collective
responsibility to take care of our own, as a society, not as individuals.
I would be fine with that if I could trust the Federal government to do the right thing.
The problem is that we have too many people invested in the system, and I don't trust the
Federal government to not screw people over in a new system. You know what will happen, they
will set up a two tiered system where people over a certain age will keep their benefits, and
the new people will get a system that is completely crapified or means tested.
Well-put The only way to eliminate the constant refrain of "but SS is (insert blithering
comment on entitlement spending), is to shift resources to people rather than armies for the
SuperRich.
So we should just ignore the fact that our own Govt has "borrowed" $2.8 Trillion, at
least, from the SS Trust Fund so far and can't (won't) pay it back?
This "borrowing" should be illegal and I believe that "Old Frank" would be rolling in his
grave if he knew that would happen.
And I sincerely doubt his intentions were to get SS on the books in order to keep us
beholden to the Dem Party. And if that were true it is obvious that his party doesn't agree.
If they did they wouldn't be assisting in gutting the program.
The whole concept of creating and maintaining a multi-trillion dollar "trust fund" was
irrevocably flawed. When the surplus payroll taxes were "invested" in government bonds, they
entered the government's general fund and were promptly spent. The money is gone. That's why
it's on the books as a debt owed to the Social Security administration. There are no actual
assets behind the fund. It's just one part of the government owing money to another part of
the government.
However, what would the alternative have been? Investing in the crap shoot known as the US
stock market? No thanks. Or setting the funds aside in a bank account, where they would cease
circulating through the economy? That wouldn't have worked either, as all dollars in
circulation would have eventually ended up there, causing massive deflation.
None of these are workable. We should have gone on a strictly pay-as-you-go basis. If
payroll taxes generated more revenue than was necessary, we should have cut payroll taxes
and/or raised benefits. And if they fall short, we should raise payroll taxes and/or cut
benefits.
Today, we cover about 95% of benefits with payroll taxes. The remainder comes from "trust
fund redemptions", where general fund monies are given to the SSA to cover the shortfall.
Given that our government is already running a deficit, this means more borrowing (or
money-printing, depending on how you look at things).
When the "trust fund" is depleted, but SSA will lack the legal authority to claim any more
general fund monies, but it would be quite easy for Congress to change the rules to simply
state that "any SSA shortfall will be covered by the general fund". And I predict they will
do so in 2034, as it would take less than a month of constituents complaining about reduced
benefits to force even the strictest of deficit hawks to cave.
Or maybe they'll get creative and instead raise rates on the interest that the trust fund
earns. Right now it's a 3% rate, but if Congress were to double or triple it, the trust fund
would last much longer. [As would the debt owed to the SSA.] Heck, if they multiplied the
interest rate by a factor of 11, then they could theoretically dispense with payroll taxes
entirely. Right?
Yes, SS has contributed NOT ONE PENNY to the deficit and the reason it accumulated a
surplus was so people could collect later. Now, they want to say that old surplus shouldn't
count. That's thievery.
tired old tripe and how much is the US military funded? I can answer that for you. It's
ZERO. 0% funded! Take your heterodox BS to a bunch of freshman impressionables – it is
only tolerated here because you are a fine writer and interesting as hell and know almost all
there is about economic liberalism.
Wow. So let's go full SSCodex for a bit and push this trend out to the limit.
While the unwashed masses remain a market for big Ag, big Pharma, big Auto, big (online)
Retail, and a few others, it seems like the predatory 'fund' segment of the FIRE elite has
moved on to devouring larger prey (capitalist autophagy?). The unbankable precariat are
beneath their notice now, like pennies on the sidewalk.
So in that case, the 1% of the 0.1% has evolved beyond 'exploitation' in any Marxist
sense. It is now indifferent to the very life or death of the precariat, at home or abroad,
still less their security or advancement. It needs them neither for consuming nor producing,
nor for building ziggurats.
(Just so long as the pitchforks aren't out – but that's what the credentialed minion
20% is for. And drones).
Here Disposables, have some more plastic and painkillers. Be assured the Alphas will be
live tweeting the Pandemic, or Chicxulub 2.0, from Elon's luxury robot-serviced survival
capsules (oh, you thought those were for use on Mars? Silly rabble!)
It's like that DKs mosh pit classic: "Uncounted millions whisked away / the rich will have
more room to play"
[I exaggerate, of course, for illustration. Slightly.]
I think you can extend this analysis to the current U.K. Conservative Party. Commentators
have started to notice that the Brexiteer wing of the party seems completely impervious to
claims Brexit will harm the economy. Are the Tories no longer the natural party of British
business, they ask?
Using your logic, we can say that a fund-interest-dominated Tory party simply has no
interest in or need for the "ordinary" bits of the British business community anymore. What
it wants are shorting and raiding opportunities, and from that vantage point a catastrophic
Brexit is very attractive. Put these interests in coalition with a voter base largely living
on guaranteed incomes and retirement funds of one sort or another and you have the surreal
spectacle of an entire governing party and its supporters who are no longer anchored to the
"real" economy at all. Yes, it's an exaggeration but it's an exaggeration that explains a few
things, I think.
You both need to read the 2005 leaked Citigroup "plutonomy memo", if you haven't yet. Very
bright minds called it a decade ago, that the global economy isn't even an economy any longer
in any traditional sense. This is part one: https://delong.typepad.com/plutonomy-1.pdf
Great link. From page one, Citigroup thinks the global imbalance is a great opportunity.
Nothing new here. For years I've been reading about stock and futures manipulations–and
vulture capitalists–that cause people to die or kill themselves. The rich don't care;
they see it as a way to make more money. And then you wonder why I've been talking revolution
for years as well?
Answer: Add the US wasting its blood and cash meddling in other countries' affairs.
"honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none." bueller ?
Ironic as multilateralist/globalist/fan of US interventions George Soros supposedly
provided some of the seed money for the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
I just want to not die earlier than necessary because I can't afford health care. I'd also
like to stop worrying that I'll spend my golden years homeless and starving because of some
disaster headed my way. I gave up on status a long time ago, and am one of those mentioned
who has little pity for the top 10%.
Sounds like a good book. I shall have to pick it up from my library, since buying new
books is a stretch.
Nearly all income growth in the United States since the 1970s has gone into income
obtained by the rich other than wages and salaries, like capital gains, stock options,
dividends, partnership distributions, etc. To capture overall economic growth to which the
entire society has contributed, Social Security benefits should be tied to economic growth,
smoothed for the business cycle. If people believe benefit increases require tax increases,
the tax should be applied to all earnings, not just salary/wages. Raising the $128,400 cap on
income subject to SS taxes would thus increase taxes on the lower rungs of the upper middle
class but not really address the problem.
I apologise in advance for being blunt and oversimplifying the matter, but at the end of
the day, (in my very humble and possibly uninformed opinion) nothing short of a mass
beheading would work. The 0.1% doesn't really seem, uh, willing to let go of their often
ill-gotten billions, and when they do (i.e. charities and such), they often end up being some
kind of scam. I refuse to believe that the Zuckerberg-types operate their foundations out of
genuine philanthropy. Acquisitions and mergers like Disney buying Fox or Bayer gobbling up
Monsanto don't contribute anything to the well-being of the 99% either, and I think that's
and understatement.
If there's going to be some kind of revolution, it needs to happen before the logical
conclusion of rampaging capitalism. the OCP-type megacorp with its own private army. And, if
there indeed is a revolution, what's next?
Case in point: as a public school teacher who has been opposing so-called education reform
for two decades, I can assure you that the "venture/vulture philanthropy" model that infests
the education world has absolutely nothing to do with improving education, and everything to
do with busting the teachers unions, privatizing the schools and turning them into drilling
grounds for training young people to accept the subordination, surveillance, tedium and
absurdity that awaits them in the workplace. For those lucky enough to have jobs.
As a result of this phenomena, I periodically suggest a new term on the education blogs I
post on: "Malanthropy:" the process of of using tax exempt, publicly subsidized entities to
directly and indirectly support your financial and political interests, but which are harmful
to the public good"
Clear and compelling analysis, although still a little MMT challenged. About to turn 70, I
vividly remember living through a sudden sea change in American capitalism. In the late
1970s/early 80s, whatever undercurrents of patriotism and humanitarianism that remained
within the postwar economy (and had opened the space for the middle class) evaporated, and
almost overnight we were living in a culture without any sense of balance or proportion, a
virulent and violent mindset that maxed out everything and knew not the meaning of enough.
Not only the business world but also the personal world was infected by this virus, as
ordinary people no longer dreamed of achieving a healthy and stable family life but rather
became hellbent to "succeed" and get rich. Empathy, compassion, and commitment to social
justice was no longer cool, giving way to self-interest and self-promotion as the new
"virtues." Men, of course, led the way in this devolution, but there was a time in the 90s
when almost every other woman I knew was a real estate agent. I touched upon a small
male-oriented piece of this social devolution in an essay I wrote several years ago: Would
Paladin Have Shot Bin Laden? For those who might be intrigued, here's the link:
What was needed was a Wyatt Earp, not a Paladin ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgvxu8QY01s
). His standard procedure in the old West was to use his Colt revolver to pistol-whip an
offender. Short, sharp and effective.
But then again there was no way that Bin Laden was ever going to be taken prisoner. That bit
on his resume as being a contractor for the CIA was a bit embarrassing after all.
I remember the 50's and even under the hue of bright eyes saw that people were just as
hell bent to 'get ahead' in their careers as now and that competing with 'the Joneses' in
every crude way imaginable was the rage.
Perhaps more precise to say that in the early '80s, Capitalism reached a tipping point
where gravity overcame thrust and virtues with latent vice became vices with the optics of
virtue. That and the fact that the right actors always seem available -as if out of thin air,
but in reality very much part of cause and effect – for a given state of entropy.
No doubt what was somewhat latent in postwar American capitalism became obscenely blatant
in or around the Reagan era. It was all there before, of course, in former times like the
Gilded Age. But in the midsize, now rustbelt city I grew up in and continue to live in, the
upper middle class of my childhood and youth–the doctors, lawyers, corporate exec's,
etc.–lived a few blocks away from my working class neighborhood, had nicer homes, drove
caddys instead of chevys, and so forth, but their kids went to school with us working class
kids, went to the same movies and dances, hung out in the same places, and all of us,
generally, young and old, lived in essentially the same world. For example, my uncle, a
lawyer, made maybe 3 times what my dad, a factory clerk, made. THAT was the split between the
middle and upper middle class back then, at least in a fairly typical Midwestern city. THAT
was what drastically and suddenly changed in the late 70s/early 80s and has only intensified
thereafter.
Terrific article, but with so many "missing" words (words left out)–too many to
list, gratis–you make it a serious challenge to consider sharing with literate friends
on social media. Seriously, doesn't anyone re-read their work before "posting?"
Well, at least the missing words in this piece don't make sentences unintelligible. I've
seen that happen before.
It's such a shame for authors to put so much work time and effort into their articles, but
then allow the lack of an editor or final read-through to tarnish the entire work.
One thing that strikes me – a generation ago the talking-point robots of the right
could decry "socialized medicine" and all those people supposedly dying while waiting for an
operation in foreign, "socialized medicine" places. And they could largely get away with it
because relatively few people had personal acquaintances outside their own area.
But now, anyone active in social media probably can interact freely with people all over
the world and appreciate how pathetic things really are in the US.
I read on a sports-related forum where an English guy had been watching Breaking Bad and
commented offhand that he was amazed at the cost of medical treatment for Mr. White. This
turned into a discussion between Brits and Yanks about the NHS. And person after person
chimed in "yeah, NHS is not perfect but this kind of thing could never happen here." And you
saw the Americans – "yeah, our health care system really is a disgrace."
I'm not a big fan of the social media Borg in general, but here at least seems to be a
good effect. It might over time enable more people to wake up as to how jacked up certain
things are here.
I'd like to declare us a completely divided, conquered people.
In the last few weeks I've visited with many old friends all of them suffering in silence.
Each and every one falling further behind, on the brink of disaster, if not already there. No
matter their credentials, many highly credentialed with multiple degrees and or highly
experienced in several fields. All with ridiculously high work ethics. All feel maintaining
personal integrity is costing them an ability to 'get ahead'.
Many of these friends have multiple jobs, no debt, no car payment, some have insurance
which is killing them, medical bills which bury them if they ever have so much as basic
health issues, and they are thrifty, from the clothes they wear to the amount of rent they
commit themselves. And yet 'staying afloat', is but a dream trumped by guilt and
isolationism.
I often joke with my fellow country neighbors that it costs a hundred bucks to simply
leave the house. It's not a joke anymore. At this point those still fighting for a paltry
15.00 should include a hundred dollar per day walk out your front door per diem.
A couple months back I gave my camper to an old acquaintance who had no record, found
himself homeless after being falsely accused of a crime and locked up for two months. And
another friend with full time management position, just gave up her apartment to move into a
tent in another friends back yard. Both of these people are bright, hard working, mid
forties, white, family peeps with great children. The very kind this article addresses.
The noose tightens and people are committing desperate acts. There is no solidarity. No
vision of a way out of this.
Watch a ten dollar parking ticket bring a grown man to terror in their eyes. And he
brought in a thousand bucks last week, but has been texting his landlord about past due rent
all afternoon.
I feel like I'm on the brink of a million episodes of " Falling Down ".
I don't think the 0.1% wanted to build a society like this, it is just the way the math
works. Somewhere around 1980 the integrity of the US was lost and it became possible for the
owning class to divorce themselves from their neighbors and arbitrage labor around the world.
Computers and telecommunications made it possible to manage a global supply chain and
Republicans changed the tax rules to make it easier to shut down businesses and move them
overseas.
A different way to view this: as the wealthy earn profits they can use some of their cash
to modify the rules to their benefit. Then they gain more cash which allows them to influence
voters and politicians to modify the rules even more in their favor.
If people organized they could change the rules in their favor, but that rarely happens.
We used to have unions (imperfect though they were) which lobbied for the working class.
I think the 1980s was when I found out my wealthy cousins, who owned a clothing factory in
Georgia, had moved it to–get ready for this–Borneo! And of course they are
Republicans.
The collective decisions to pull up the drawbridge, and a lot middle-class people have
supported these decisions are the major reason why there is a housing crisis and
higher-education is so expensive.
A lot of people, especially middle-class people, come out with pitchforks every time a new
housing development is proposed, screaming about how they don't want "those people" living
near them and will vehemently oppose anything that isn't single-family homes which has
resulted in the housing supply lagging behind demand, thus affordability issues.
These same people over the years have decided that tax-cuts are more important than
adequately funding higher education, so higher education has become a lot more expensive as
state support has dwindled.
As the saying goes you made you bed, now you get to sleep in it. Unfortunately so does the
younger generation who may not have anything to do with the horrible decision making of the
past.
The article stated Americans are "Petrified of being pushed aside by robots".
Maybe I associate with the wrong people, but I don't know any who fear being pushed aside
by robots.
But I do know of someone who was being laid off from a tech firm and was finding his job
moved overseas.
The deal management presented was, "you can leave now, with your severance package, or get
two more weeks pay by training your replacement who will be visiting from overseas."
He trained the new worker for the two weeks.
The American worker is being hit, not by robots, but by outsourcing to other countries and
by in-sourcing of labor from other countries.
Robots are expensive and will be avoided if a human can do the job cheaply enough.
That the article brings "fear of robots" into the discussion is a tell that the writer
does not want to mention that it is the competition from others in the world wide labor force
that depress USA wages.
In the USA, we are witnessing labor arbitrage encouraged by both parties and much of the
media as they push USA wages toward world wide levels.
But not for the elite wage earners who gain from this system.
Agreed. The kind of pink collar and barely white collar employees this piece was focused
on are not presently threatened by "robots". They are threatened by outsourcing and wage
arbitrage.
That the article brings "fear of robots" into the discussion is a tell that the writer
does not want to mention that it is the competition from others in the world wide labor force
that depress USA wages.
You may have a point there, and you are spot on that the vast bulk of job-loss is due to
job migration and import of cheaper labor. But regardless of the writer's intent or simple
laziness, don't be too fast to poo-poo the effect of Robots.
One problem is that we tend to measure job loss and gain without reference to the actual
job loosers and the fact that re-training for them may well be impossible or completely
ineffective or, at the very minimum, often extremely painful. So while automation may provide
as many new jobs as it takes away old ones, that is cold comfort indeed to the worker who
gets left behind.
Another, is that the fear of massive job loss to Robots is almost certainly warranted even
if not yet fully materialized.
When the "Steel Wave" of robot workers comes ashore, I'll be near the head of the queue to
join the "Robo Luddites." If the owners of the robot hordes won't pay a fair share of the
costs of their mechanominions worker displacement activities, then they should be made to pay
an equivalent share in heightened "Production Facility Security Costs." Ford Motors and the
River Rouge plant strike comes to mind.
See: http://98937119.weebly.com/strike-at-the-river-rouge-plant-1941.html
It'd be great to be right there with you on that fateful day, Ambrit :-) (And I've even
got my gun with the little white flag that pops out and has "Bang!" written on it, all oiled
up and ready to go). I suspect however that it will be a silent D Day that probably took
place some time ago.
Hard Briexit looks to be baked in the cake
Global Warming disaster looks to be baked in the cake
Water wars look to be baked in the cake.
Massive impoverishment in developed and so called third world nations alike and insane 'last
gasp' looting looks to be baked in the cake
[ ]
Why would all manner of robots, the ones too tiny to see along with human looking ones and
giant factories that are in reality themselves robots be the exception?
We'd be facing robots, so that flag would have to go "Bang" in binary code. (Might even
work. While they are trying to decipher the flag, we can switch their tubes of graphite
lubricant with tubes of carborundum.)
When the technologically capable humans have all died off, will the robots perish likewise
for lack of programmers?
"Robots" are software programs, do-it-yourself online appointments, voice recognition,
"press 1 now." What's the point of retraining? All you're good for is to make sure the plug
is in the wall.
The act of training the overseas replacement could become an act of sabotage. Think of the
ways that one could train the replacement to do the job incorrectly, more slowly than
necessary, or not at all.
In a lot of cases that doesn't require much 'intentional' effort. But the lure of cheap
labor seems to conquer all. I've seen software companies take loss after loss on off-shore
development team screw ups until they finally get it right. I even saw one such company go
out of business trying rather than just calling it quits and going back to what was left of
their core developers.
As I approach 40, having only realized in recent years that the constant soul-ache I've
lived with my whole life is not some inherent flaw in my being, but a symptom of a deeply ill
society, I desperately wish I could share in the glimmer of hope at the end of this post.
But I cannot. What drives me to despair is not the fragile, corrupt, and unsustainable
social/political/economic system we're inheriting; nor is it the poisoned and increasingly
harsh planet, nor the often silent epidemic of mental and emotional anguish that prevents so
many of us from becoming our best selves. I retain great faith in the resilience and
potential of the human spirit. And contrary to the stereotypes, I think my generation and
those who have come after are often more intellectually and emotionally mature than our
parents and grandparents. At the very least, we have a powerful sense of irony and highly
tuned BS detectors.
What drives me to despair is so pathetically prosaic that I want to laugh and cry all at
once as I type this. To put it as simply as I know how, a core function of all functional
human societies is apprenticeship, by which I mean the basic process whereby deep knowledge
and skills are transferred from the old to the young, where tensions between tradition and
change are contested and resolved, and where the fundamental human need to develop a sense of
oneself as a unique and valuable part of a community can flourish.
We have been commodified since before we were even born, to the point where opportunities
for what Lave and Wenger would call "legitimate peripheral participation" in the kinds of
work that yield real, humane, benefits to our communities are scant to nonexistent for most
of us. Something has gone deeply awry in this core social function at the worst possible time
in human history.
Sympathies from a fellow traveler – your experience sounds similar to mine. I'm a
little older and in my 20s I avoided getting a 'real' job for all the reasons you describe.
When I hit my 30s and saw what some of the guys who had been hanging out in the bar too long
looked like, and decided I ought to at least try it and see how it would go.
"Some quirk of my psychology means doing those things creates an irresistible urge in me
to slowly poison myself with alcohol and tobacco."
I think those things and drugs are conscience oblivators. Try gardening. Touch the earth.
Grow actual food. Not hemp. Back away from the education racket. Good luck. Quit the poison.
That was a wonderful post, very moving, thank you. These kind of testimonies are very
important because they show the real human cost of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is truly a
death cult. Please find an alternative to alcohol. Music, art, nature, etc.
Thank you for sharing your compelling story. As someone who could be your mother, it is
painful to me not only that this is your experience, but that you are so acutely aware of it.
No blinders. Hence, I guess, the need for alcohol.
You write beautifully. Hope is hard to come by sometimes.
At least you are self aware. Most people are not.
As for the Ship of Status, let it sink. Find a lifeboat where you feel comfortable and batten
down for the Roaring (20)40s yet to come. Once you find something to work for, the bad habits
will lose much of their hold on you. As long as you don't slide into alcoholism, you have a
chance.
Life was kinder just 40 years ago, not perfect but way more mellow than it is today. Kids
were listening to Peter Frampton and Stevie Wonder, not punk, grunge, rap and industrial
music. What changed? Neoliberalism, the economic policy that is private sector "free market"
driven, giving the owners of capital free, unfettered reign. Created by libertarians like Fredrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, they sold it to the nation but failed to mention that
little peccadillo about how privatization of government would usher in economic fascism.
"An extreme form of laissez-faire individualism that developed in the writings of
Hayek, Friedman and Nozick they are also referred to as libertarians. They draw on the
natural rights tradition of John Locke and champion's full autonomy and freedom of the
individual."
What they meant was ECONOMIC freedom. They despise social freedom (democracy) because
civil, labor, health, food safety, etc., rights and environmental protections put limits on
their profits.
The "maximizing shareholder value" myth turns people into psychopaths
. The entire neoliberal economic policy of the past 40 years is based on the false assumption
that self-interest is the driving evolution of humanity. We're not all psychopaths, turns
out. We're social beings that have mainly used cooperation to get us through these thousands
of years of existence.
There's nothing wrong with wanting government to protect the public sector from predatory
capitalists. Otherwise, society's value system turns upside down sick people are more valued
than healthy violent are more valued to fill up the prison factories war becomes a permanent
business a filthy, toxic planet is good for the oil industry a corporate governance with no
respect for rights or environmental protections is the best capitalism can offer?
Thanks, but no thanks.
The easily manipulated right are getting the full assault. "Run for your lives! The
democratic socialists want to use the government bank for everyone, not just the 1%!!
They understand how the
economy really works and see through our lies!! Before you know it, everyone will be
enjoying a better quality of life! AAAAGHHH!!"
"If the IMF is to shake its image as an inward-looking, out-of-touch boys club, it
needs to start taking the issue seriously. The effect of the male dominance in macroeconomics
can be seen in the policy direction of the organisation: female economists are more likely to
be in favour of Government-backed redistribution measures than their male
counterparts.
Of course, the parochial way in which economics is perceived by the IMF, as nothing
more than the application of mathematical models, is nothing new. In fact, this is how
mainstream economics frequently is taught in universities all over the world. Is it any
wonder that the IMF has turned out as it is?"
Michael Hudson, as usual, was right:
"Economics students are forced to spend so much time with this complex calculus so
that they can go to work on Wall St. that there's no room in the course curriculum for the
history of economic thought.
So all they know about Adam Smith is what they hear on CNN news or other mass media
that are a travesty of what these people really said and if you don't read the history of
economic thought, you'd think there's only one way of looking at the world and that's the way
the mass media promote things and it's a propagandistic, Orwellian way.
The whole economic vocabulary is to cover up what's really happening and to make
people think that the economy is getting richer while the reality is they're getting poorer
and only the top is getting richer and they can only get rich as long as the middle class and
the working class don't realize the scam that's being pulled off on them."
Unfettered Fire and funemployed: deeply appreciate your lengthy and heartfelt posts. It's
a terribly small thing, but I have a suggestion to make that always helps me to feel a bit
better about things or should I say to feel a bit better about the possibility of things. If
you're game, and haven't already done so, search for the following free online book:
"Equality" by Edward Bellamy. Then do no more than read the introduction and first chapter
(and slightly into the second) to absorb by far the finest Socratic dialogue ever written
about capitalism, socialism, and the only nonviolent way to move from the former to the
latter–a way wide open to us, theoretically, right now. I know that's a hell of a
qualifier.
Why do modern intellectuals insist on inventing euphemisms for already known definitions?
The middle precariat is merely another term for the petty bourgeoisie. While they may have
possessed economic benefits like pensions and owned minuscule amounts of financial assets
they were never the dominant ruling class. Their socioeconomic status was always closer in
their livelihoods to the working class. After the working class was effectively being
dismantled starting in the 1970s, it has become the petty bourgeoisie's turn to be
systematically impoverished.
This is the primary economic development of our era of late capitalism. The question is,
what does it mean to be American if this country is no longer a land of opportunity?
Because the 'known definitions' do not apply anymore.
The middle has more in common with those below than those above. And here is the scary
reason: everyone is to be preyed upon by the wealth extractors who dominate our
politics/economy -- everyone. There is no social or educational allegieance, there is only a
resource to be ruthlessly plundered, people and their ability to earn and secure.
The so-called precariat lacks any sense of class consciousness and as a consequence are
incapable of any kind of solidarity. Nor do they perceive any predatory behavior in the
economic system. If the article is to be believed they blame themselves for their plight.
These traits which include the admiration and imitation of the rich are the hallmarks of the
petty bourgeoisie.
This disagreement over semantics is an example of the shallowness and superficiality of
new ideas. Marx already predicted that they'd be unceremoniously thrown into the underclass
in later stages of economic development at any rate.
The BigMedia & BigPols ignore the Type 1 Overqualified Underemployed cohort. Perhaps
hopefully someone like the new Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will discuss it, her recently
being of this cohort as an economist by degree working as a bartender. Instead we have
examples of BigMedia/BigPol crying about "STEM worker shortage" where there already are
countless underemployed STEM workers working Uber-ish type McJobs.
Afaict the only occupations (mostly) immune to Type 1 Overqualified Underemployment risk
here in Murica are medical pros: physicians/dentists/pharmacists & possibly nurses.
Otherwise there are stories of PhD Uber drivers, MBA strippers, & lawyers working Apple
store retail, especially in the first few years post 2008-GFC but still present now. In other
words, the US labor market "new economy" is resembling "old economy" of Latin America or
Russia (proverbial physicist selling trinkets on the Trans-Siberia railway).
"I often joke with my fellow country neighbors that it costs a hundred bucks to simply
leave the house. It's not a joke anymore. At this point those still fighting for a paltry
15.00 should include a hundred dollar per day walk out your front door per diem."
This is a stark and startling reality. This reality is outside the framework of
understanding of economic struggle in America that is allowed by the corporate neoliberal
culture/media.
As the Precariat grows, having watched the .1% lie, cheat and steal – from them, they
are more likely to also lie, cheat and steal in mortgage, employment and student loan
applications and most importantly and sadly, in their dealings with each other.
Everybody is turning into a hustler.
As to dealings with institutions, this comment is apt.
I think this came from NC comments a couple of weeks ago. Apologies for not being able to
attribute it to its author:
"Why should the worker be subservient to the employer? Citizens owe NO LOYALTY, moral or
legal, to a someone else's money making enterprise. And that enterprise is strictly a product
of signed commercial legal documents. Commercial enterprise has no natural existence. It is a
man-made creation, and is a "privilege", not a "right"; just as a drivers license is a
privilege and not an absolute right."
Economics was always far too dangerous to be allowed to reveal the truth about the
economy. The Classical economist, Adam Smith, observed the world of small state, unregulated
capitalism around him.
"The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the
maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury
by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the
industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the
use of his money. But every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no
landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers."
How does this tie in with the trickledown view we have today?
Somehow everything has been turned upside down.
The workers that did the work to produce the surplus lived a bare subsistence
existence. Those with land and money used it to live a life of luxury and leisure.
The bankers (usurers) created money out of nothing and charged interest on it. The bankers
got rich, and everyone else got into debt and over time lost what they had through defaults
on loans, and repossession of assets.
Capitalism had two sides, the productive side where people earned their income and the
parasitic side where the rentiers lived off unearned income. The Classical Economists had
shown that most at the top of society were just parasites feeding off the productive activity
of everyone else.
Economics was always far too dangerous to be allowed to reveal the truth about the
economy.
How can we protect those powerful vested interests at the top of society?
The early neoclassical economists hid the problems of rentier activity in the economy by
removing the difference between "earned" and "unearned" income and they conflated "land" with
"capital". They took the focus off the cost of living that had been so important to the
Classical Economists to hide the effects of rentier activity in the economy.
The landowners, landlords and usurers were now just productive members of society
again. It they left banks and debt out of economics no one would know the bankers created the
money supply out of nothing. Otherwise, everyone would see how dangerous it was to let
bankers do what they wanted if they knew the bankers created the money supply through their
loans.
The powerful vested interests held sway and economics was corrupted. Now we know what's wrong with neoclassical economics we can put the cost of living back
in.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
Employees want more disposable income (discretionary spending).
Employers want to pay lower wages for higher profits
The cost of living = housing costs + healthcare costs + student loan costs + food
+ other costs of living
The neoliberals obsessed about reducing taxes, but let the cost of living soar. The economists also ignore the debt that is papering over the cracks and maintaining
demand in the economy. This can never work in the longer term as you max. out on debt.
> These young people do not think of things like debt-free college or paid family leave
as radical: they see it done elsewhere in the world and don't accept that it can't be done in
America.
An unexpected consequence of globalization is that a lot of people see how thing are done,
elsewhere.
Part of me doesn't feel sorry at all for the plight of middle-class Americans. When times
were good they were happy to throw poor and working-class people under the bus. I remember
when the common answer to complaints about factory closings was "you should have gotten an
education, dummy." Now that the white-collar middle class can see that they are next on the
chopping block they are finding their populist soul.
At the end of the day we need to have solidarity between workers but this is a good
example of why you should never think that you are untouchable and why punching down is never
a good political strategy. There will always be somebody more powerful than you and after
they are done destroying the people at the bottom you will probably be next.
"... Well, it comes down to the myths we've been sold. Myths that are ingrained in our social programming from birth, deeply entrenched, like an impacted wisdom tooth. These myths are accepted and basically never questioned. ..."
"... Our media outlets are funded by weapons contractors, big pharma, big banks, big oil and big, fat hard-on pills. (Sorry to go hard on hard-on pills, but we can't get anything resembling hard news because it's funded by dicks.) The corporate media's jobs are to rally for war, cheer for Wall Street and froth at the mouth for consumerism. It's their mission to actually fortify belief in the myths I'm telling you about right now. Anybody who steps outside that paradigm is treated like they're standing on a playground wearing nothing but a trench coat. ..."
"... The criminal justice system has become a weapon wielded by the corporate state. This is how bankers can foreclose on millions of homes illegally and see no jail time, but activists often serve jail time for nonviolent civil disobedience. Chris Hedges recently noted , "The most basic constitutional rights have been erased for many. Our judicial system, as Ralph Nader has pointed out, has legalized secret law, secret courts, secret evidence, secret budgets and secret prisons in the name of national security." ..."
"... This myth (Buying will make you happy) is put forward mainly by the floods of advertising we take in but also by our social engineering. Most of us feel a tenacious emptiness, an alienation deep down behind our surface emotions (for a while I thought it was gas). That uneasiness is because most of us are flushing away our lives at jobs we hate before going home to seclusion boxes called houses or apartments. We then flip on the TV to watch reality shows about people who have it worse than we do (which we all find hilarious). ..."
"... According to Deloitte's Shift Index survey : "80% of people are dissatisfied with their jobs" and "[t]he average person spends 90,000 hours at work over their lifetime." That's about one-seventh of your life -- and most of it is during your most productive years. ..."
"... Try maintaining your privacy for a week without a single email, web search or location data set collected by the NSA and the telecoms. ..."
Our society should've collapsed by now. You know that, right?
No society should function with this level of inequality (with the possible exception of one of those prison planets in a "Star
Wars" movie). Sixty-three percent of Americans
can't afford a $500 emergency
. Yet Amazon head Jeff Bezos is now
worth a record $141 billion . He could literally end world hunger for multiple years and still have more money left over than
he could ever spend on himself.
Worldwide,
one in
10 people only make $2 a day. Do you know how long it would take one of those people to make the same amount as Jeff Bezos has?
193 million years . (If they only buy single-ply toilet paper.) Put simply, you cannot comprehend the level of inequality in our
current world or even just our nation.
So shouldn't there be riots in the streets every day? Shouldn't it all be collapsing? Look outside. The streets aren't on fire.
No one is running naked and screaming (usually). Does it look like everyone's going to work at gunpoint? No. We're all choosing to
continue on like this.
Why?
Well, it comes down to the myths we've been sold. Myths that are ingrained in our social programming from birth, deeply entrenched,
like an impacted wisdom tooth. These myths are accepted and basically never questioned.
I'm going to cover eight of them. There are more than eight. There are probably hundreds. But I'm going to cover eight because
(A) no one reads a column titled "Hundreds of Myths of American Society," (B) these are the most important ones and (C) we all have
other shit to do.
Myth No. 8 -- We have a democracy.
If you think we still have a democracy or a democratic republic, ask yourself this: When was the last time Congress did something
that the people of America supported that did not align with corporate interests? You probably can't do it. It's like trying to think
of something that rhymes with "orange." You feel like an answer exists but then slowly realize it doesn't. Even the Carter Center
and former President Jimmy Carter believe that America has been
transformed into
an oligarchy : A small, corrupt elite control the country with almost no input from the people. The rulers need the myth that
we're a democracy to give us the illusion of control.
Myth No. 7 -- We have an accountable and legitimate voting system.
Gerrymandering, voter purging, data mining, broken exit polling, push polling, superdelegates, electoral votes, black-box machines,
voter ID suppression, provisional ballots, super PACs, dark money, third parties banished from the debates and two corporate parties
that stand for the same goddamn pile of fetid crap!
What part of this sounds like a legitimate election system?
No, we have what a large Harvard study called the
worst election system in the Western world . Have you ever seen where a parent has a toddler in a car seat, and the toddler has
a tiny, brightly colored toy steering wheel so he can feel like he's driving the car? That's what our election system is -- a toy
steering wheel. Not connected to anything. We all sit here like infants, excitedly shouting, "I'm steeeeering !"
And I know it's counterintuitive, but that's why you have to vote. We have to vote in such numbers that we beat out what's stolen
through our ridiculous rigged system.
Myth No. 6 -- We have an independent media that keeps the rulers accountable.
Our media outlets are funded by weapons contractors, big pharma, big banks, big oil and big, fat hard-on pills. (Sorry to go hard
on hard-on pills, but we can't get anything resembling hard news because it's funded by dicks.) The corporate media's jobs are to
rally for war, cheer for Wall Street and froth at the mouth for consumerism. It's their mission to actually fortify belief in the
myths I'm telling you about right now. Anybody who steps outside that paradigm is treated like they're standing on a playground wearing
nothing but a trench coat.
Myth No. 5 -- We have an independent judiciary.
The criminal justice system has become a weapon wielded by the corporate state. This is how bankers can foreclose on millions
of homes illegally and see no jail time, but activists often serve jail time for nonviolent civil disobedience. Chris Hedges
recently noted , "The most basic constitutional
rights have been erased for many. Our judicial system, as Ralph Nader has pointed out, has legalized secret law, secret courts, secret
evidence, secret budgets and secret prisons in the name of national security."
If you're not part of the monied class, you're pressured into releasing what few rights you have left. According to
The New
York Times , "97 percent of federal cases and 94 percent of state cases end in plea bargains, with defendants pleading guilty
in exchange for a lesser sentence."
That's the name of the game. Pressure people of color and poor people to just take the plea deal because they don't have a million
dollars to spend on a lawyer. (At least not one who doesn't advertise on beer coasters.)
Myth No. 4 -- The police are here to protect you. They're your friends .
That's funny. I don't recall my friend pressuring me into sex to get out of a speeding ticket. (Which is essentially still
legal in 32
states .)
The police in our country are primarily designed to do two things: protect the property of the rich and perpetrate the completely
immoral war on drugs -- which by definition is a war on our own people .
We lock up more people than
any other country on earth
. Meaning the land of the free is the largest prison state in the world. So all these droopy-faced politicians and rabid-talking
heads telling you how awful China is on human rights or Iran or North Korea -- none of them match the numbers of people locked up
right here under Lady Liberty's skirt.
Myth No. 3 -- Buying will make you happy.
This myth (Buying will make you happy) is put forward mainly by the floods of advertising we take in but also by our social engineering. Most of us feel a
tenacious emptiness, an alienation deep down behind our surface emotions (for a while I thought it was gas). That uneasiness is because
most of us are flushing away our lives at jobs we hate before going home to seclusion boxes called houses or apartments. We then
flip on the TV to watch reality shows about people who have it worse than we do (which we all find hilarious).
If we're lucky, we'll make enough money during the week to afford enough beer on the weekend to help it all make sense. (I find
it takes at least four beers for everything to add up.) But that doesn't truly bring us fulfillment. So what now? Well, the ads say
buying will do it. Try to smother the depression and desperation under a blanket of flat-screen TVs, purses and Jet Skis. Now does
your life have meaning? No? Well, maybe you have to drive that Jet Ski a little faster! Crank it up until your bathing suit flies
off and you'll feel alive !
The dark truth is that we have to believe the myth that consuming is the answer or else we won't keep running around the wheel.
And if we aren't running around the wheel, then we start thinking, start asking questions. Those questions are not good for the ruling
elite, who enjoy a society based on the daily exploitation of 99 percent of us.
Myth No. 2 -- If you work hard, things will get better.
According to Deloitte's Shift
Index survey : "80% of people are dissatisfied with their jobs" and "[t]he average person spends 90,000 hours at work over their
lifetime." That's about one-seventh of your life -- and most of it is during your most productive years.
Ask yourself what we're working for. To make money? For what? Almost none of us are doing jobs for survival anymore. Once upon
a time, jobs boiled down to:
I plant the food -- >I eat the food -- >If I don't plant food = I die.
But nowadays, if you work at a café -- will someone die if they don't get their super-caf-mocha-frap-almond-piss-latte? I kinda
doubt they'll keel over from a blueberry scone deficiency.
If you work at Macy's, will customers perish if they don't get those boxer briefs with the sweat-absorbent-ass fabric? I doubt
it. And if they do die from that, then their problems were far greater than you could've known. So that means we're all working to
make other people rich because we have a society in which we have to work. Technological advancements can do most everything that
truly must get done.
So if we wanted to, we could get rid of most work and have tens of thousands of more hours to enjoy our lives. But we're not doing
that at all. And no one's allowed to ask these questions -- not on your mainstream airwaves at least. Even a half-step like universal
basic income is barely discussed because it doesn't compute with our cultural programming.
Scientists say it's quite possible artificial intelligence will take away
all human jobs in 120 years . I think they know that will
happen because bots will take the jobs and then realize that 80 percent of them don't need to be done! The bots will take over and
then say, "Stop it. Stop spending a seventh of your life folding shirts at Banana Republic."
One day, we will build monuments to the bot that told us to enjoy our lives and leave the shirts wrinkly.
And this leads me to the largest myth of our American society.
Myth No. 1 -- You are free.
... ... ...
Try sleeping in your car for more than a few hours without being harassed by police.
Try maintaining your privacy for a week without a single email, web search or location data set collected by the NSA and the telecoms.
Try signing up for the military because you need college money and then one day just walking off the base, going, "Yeah, I was
bored. Thought I would just not do this anymore."
Try explaining to Kentucky Fried Chicken that while you don't have the green pieces of paper they want in exchange for the mashed
potatoes, you do have some pictures you've drawn on a napkin to give them instead.
Try using the restroom at Starbucks without buying something while black.
We are less free than a dog on a leash. We live in one of the hardest-working, most unequal societies on the planet with more
billionaires than ever .
Meanwhile,
Americans
supply 94 percent of the paid blood used worldwide. And it's almost exclusively coming from very poor people. This abusive vampire
system is literally sucking the blood from the poor. Does that sound like a free decision they made? Or does that sound like something
people do after immense economic force crushes down around them? (One could argue that sperm donation takes a little less convincing.)
Point is, in order to enforce this illogical, immoral system, the corrupt rulers -- most of the time -- don't need guns and tear
gas to keep the exploitation mechanisms humming along. All they need are some good, solid bullshit myths for us all to buy into,
hook, line and sinker. Some fairy tales for adults.
815M people chronically malnourished according to the UN. Bezos is worth $141B.
$141B / 815M people = $173 per person. That would definitely not feed them for "multiple years". And that's only if Bezos could
fully liquidate the stock without it dropping a penny.
" Point is, in order to enforce this illogical, immoral system, the corrupt rulers -- most of the time -- don't
need guns and tear gas to keep the exploitation mechanisms humming along. All they need are some good, solid bullshit myths for
us all to buy into, hook, line and sinker. Some fairy tales for adults. "
Seems like there's tear gas in the air and guns are going to be used soon. The myths are dying on the tongues of the liars.
Molon Labe!....and I'm usually a pacifist.
"American Society Would Collapse If It Weren't For Invasions Of Foreign Countries, Murdering Their People, Stealing Their Oil
Then Blaming Them For Making The US Do It."
Well, in a world driven by oil, it is entirely bogus to suggest that citizens have to work their asses off. That was the whole
point of the bill of goods that was sold to us in the late 70's and early 80'. More leisure time, more time for your family and
personal interests.
Except! It never happened. All they fucking did was reduce real wages and force everyone from the upper middle class down,
into a shit hole.
But, they will pay for their folly. Guaran-fucking-teed.
As one who has hoed many rows of cotton in 115F temperatures as well as picking cotton during my childhood and early adolescence
during weekends and school holidays, I concur. It was a very powerful inducement to get a good education back when schools actually
taught things and did not tolerate backtalk or guff from students instead of babysitting them. It worked, and I ended up writing
computer software for spacecraft, which was much fun than working in the fields.
Yeah, it's amazing to watch. With Trump in 2016 they went with "Racist, Sexist, Homophobe,
insane person", etc. and now they're going with "Russia" and censorship.
Labor was such a longtime stronghold for the Democrats and they've lost it. Labor doesn't
give a shit about Russia. Everyone though, is sick of the corruption. #Walkaway. The whole
"Russia" hoax is designed to blow a huge smoke screen into the felony crimes committed
principally by Clinton allies and the deep state.
The immolation of both the legacy media and the democratic party is occurring
simultaneously. We have seen Peak Facebook.
We have some real giants out there like Stefan Molyneux. A whole galaxy of them helped
bring Trump into the White House and as legacy platforms censor, new ones arise.
I am afraid that historically we better be prepared for what the left does when it doesn't
get its way and that is violence. Look at how the media is openly inciting violence. They've
made heros out of thugs who rob, out of violent shit-and-piss hurling hooligans, and
democratic local bosses have stood down as law-abiding citizens assembled for peaceful
speech.
So the wholesale insanity is going to be more than screaming at the sky.
Conventional wisdom would have us believe that Russia became America's sworn enemy in the aftermath
of the 2016 presidential election. As is often the case, however, conventional wisdom can be
illusory.
In the momentous 2016 showdown between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump,
a faraway dark
kingdom known as Russia, the fantastic fable goes, hijacked that part of the American brain
responsible for critical thinking and lever pulling with a few thousand dollars' worth of Facebook
and Twitter adverts, bots and whatnot.
The result of that gross intrusion into the squeaky
clean machinery of the God-blessed US election system is now more or less well-documented history
brought to you by the US mainstream media: Donald Trump, with some assistance from the Russians
that has never been adequately explained, pulled the presidential contest out from under the wobbly
feet of Hillary Clinton.
For those who unwittingly bought that work of fiction, I can only offer my sincere
condolences.
In fact, Russiagate is just the latest installment of an anti-Russia story
that has been ongoing since the presidency of George W. Bush.
Act 1: Smokescreen
Rewind to September 24th, 2001.
Having gone on record as the first global
leader to telephone George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Putin showed his
support went beyond mere words. He announced a five-point plan to support America in the 'war
against terror' that included the sharing of intelligence, as well as the opening of Russian
airspace for US humanitarian flights to Central Asia.
In the
words
of
perennial Kremlin critic, Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia,
Putin's
"acquiescence to NATO troops in Central Asia signaled a reversal of two hundred years of Russian
foreign policy. Under Yeltsin, the communists, and the tsars, Russia had always considered Central
Asia as its 'sphere of influence.' Putin broke with that tradition."
In other words, the new Russian leader was demonstrating his desire for Russia to have, as Henry
Kissinger
explained
it
some seven years later, "a reliable strategic partner, with America being the preferred choice."
This leads us to the question for the ages: If it was obvious that Russia was now
fully prepared to enter into a serious partnership with the United States in the 'war on terror,'
then how do we explain George W. Bush announcing the withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty just three months later?
There are some things we may take away from that move, which Putin tersely and rightly
described
as
a "mistake."
First
, Washington must not have considered a security partnership with
Moscow very important, since they certainly understood that Russia would respond negatively to the
decision to scrap the 30-year-old ABM Treaty.
Second
, the US must not considered the 'war on terror' very serious
either; otherwise it would not have risked losing Russian assistance in hunting down the baddies in
Central Asia and the Middle East, geographical areas where Russia has gained valuable experience
over the years. This was a remarkably odd choice considering that the US military apparatus had
failed spectacularly to defend the nation against a terrorist attack, coordinated by 19 amateurs,
armed with box cutters, no less.
Third
, as was the case with the
decision
to
invade Iraq, a country with nodiscernible connection to the events of 9/11, as well as the
imposition of the
pre-drafted
Patriot
Act on a shell-shocked nation, the decision to break with Russia seems to have been a premeditated
move on the global chessboard. Although it would be hard to prove such a claim, we can take some
guidance from Rahm Emanuel, former Obama Chief of Staff, who notoriously advised, "You never want a
serious crisis to go to waste."
So why did Bush abrogate the ABM Treaty with Russia?
The argument was that some
"rogue state," rumored to be Iran, might be tempted to launch a missile attack against "US
interests abroad." Yet there was absolutely no logic to the claim since Tehran was inextricably
bound by the same principle of "mutually assured destruction" (MAD) as were any other states that
tempted fate with a surprise attack on US-Israeli interests. Further, it made no sense to focus
attention on Shia-dominant Iran when the majority of the terrorists, allegedly acolytes of Osama
bin Laden, reportedly hailed from Sunni-dominant Saudi Arabia. In other words, the Bush
administration happily sacrificed an invincible relationship with Russia in the war on terror in
order to guard against some external threat that only nominally existed, with a missile defense
system that was largely unproven in the field. Again, zero logic.
However, when it is considered that the missile defense system was tailor-made by
America specifically with Russia in mind, the whole scheme begins to make more sense, at least from
a strategic perspective.
Thus, the Bush administration used the attacks of 9/11 to not
only dramatically curtail the civil rights of American citizens with the passage of the Patriot
Act, it also took the first steps towards encircling Russia with a so-called 'defense system' that
has the capacity to grow in effectiveness and range.
For those who thought Russia would just sit back and let itself be encircled by foreign
missiles, they were in for quite a surprise.
In March 2018, Putin stunned the world, and
certainly Washington's hawks, by
announcing
in
the annual Address to the Federal Assembly the introduction of advanced weapons systems – including
those with hypersonic capabilities - designed to overcome any missile defense system in the world.
These major developments by Russia, which Putin emphasized was accomplished "without the
benefit" of Soviet-era expertise, has fueled the narrative that "Putin's Russia" is an aggressive
nation with "imperial ambitions," when in reality its goal was to form a bilateral pact with the
United States and other Western states almost two decades ago post 9/11.
Now, US officials can only wring their hands in angst while speaking about an "aggressive
Russia."
"Russia is the most significant threat just because they pose the only
existential threat to the country right now. So we have to look at that from that perspective,"
declared
Air
Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of US Strategic Command, or STRATCOM.
Putin reiterated in his Address, however, that there would have been no need for Russia to have
developed such advanced weapon systems if its legitimate concerns had not been dismissed by the
US.
"Nobody wanted to talk with us on the core of the problem," he said. "Nobody
listened to us. Now you listen!"
Everybody needs to get up to speed on international Jew criminal Bill
Browder. He's at the center of the Deep State, and royally fucked up when
he tried to rip off Putin for $400 million.
I should also mention Putin's treatment of certain Jewish
oligarchs who have attempted to influence Western policies toward
Russia (e.g., Mikhail Khodorkovsky). A truly stunning moment in the
Trump-Putin presser (all but ignored in the MSM) was Putin saying
that Bill Browder and his associates had illegally earned $1.5
billion in Russia ("the way the money was earned was illegal")
without paying taxes either to Russia or the United States where the
money was transferred. And that he and his associates had contributed
$400 million to Hillary Clinton's campaign. While the charges back
and forth are impossible for me to evaluate, Browder's firm,
Hermitage Capital Management, has been involved in other accusations
of fraud. Browder was the main force promoting the Magnitsky Act,
signed by President Obama in 2012, that barred Russian officials said
to be involved in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Browder associate,
from entering the U.S. or using the U.S. banking system.
Here the point is that American neocons have been in the forefront
of hostility over Putin's treatment of Jewish oligarchs, taking the
view that Browder et al. are completely innocent victims of Russian
evil. Along with Russian foreign policy, Putin's actions toward the
oligarchs is one factor in neocon and hence some factions of the GOP
toward Russia. It's no surprise that they are now eagerly joining the
hate-Trump chorus throughout the American establishment.
The Trump Tower meeting was arranged by Fusion GPS associate Rob Goldstone, who said during
Congressional testimony reviewed by
Breitbart that he believes the June 9, 2016 meeting was a "bait and switch" by a Russian
lobbyist who promised "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, and admitted that he used hyperbolic language
on purpose to ensure that the meeting would take place.
"I, therefore, used the strongest hyperbolic language in order to secure this request from
Donald Trump Jr. based on the bare facts I was given," said Goldstone, a UK publicist and music
manager.
"It was an example of, I was given very limited information, and my job was to get a
meeting, and so I used my professional use of words to emphasize what my client had only
given bare-bones information about, in order to get the attention of Mr. Trump Jr. " -Rob
Goldstone
Goldstone then said " it appeared to me to have been a bait and switch of somebody who
appeared to be lobbying for what I now understood to be the Magnitsky act," - which sanctions
Russian officials thought to be involved in the death of a Russian tax accountant.
Fusion GPS associate Natalia Veselnitskaya, an attorney for Russian businessman and Fusion
GPS client Denis Katsy, said that Emin Agalarov - the son of Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov -
told her to contact his representative, Irakly "Ike" Kaveladze to set up the Trump Tower
meeting, which Kaveladze attended.
While both Agalarov and Katsyv opposed the Magnitsky act, Veselnitskaya worked only for
Katsyv, while approaching Agalarov and his associates to participate in the Trump Tower
meeting. Of ntoe, Agalarov organized the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow when it was
partially owned by Donald Trump.
Veselnitskaya said Agalarov told her to get in touch with Kaveladze about the meeting
because he had connections with the Trump team.
Veselnitskaya said she made a point of asking Goldstone -- who she mistakenly thought was
a lawyer -- whether it was OK to include Akhmetshin, given that he was a registered lobbyist.
Goldstone told her it was fine, she said. -
NBC News
On June 3, 2016, Goldstone sent an email to Trump Jr. on behalf of Emin Agalarov to set up
the meeting. Goldstone was described last July as "associated with Fusion GPS" by Mark Corallo
- spokesman for Trump's outside legal counsel, according to the
Washington Post .
"Specifically, we have learned that the person who sought the meeting is associated with
Fusion GPS , a firm which according to public reports, was retained by Democratic operatives
to develop opposition research on the president and which commissioned the phony Steele
dossier" -Mark Corallo
The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting
offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would
incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.
This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its
government's support for Mr. Trump -- helped along by Aras and Emin.
Trump Jr. replied to Goldstone that " if it's what you say I love it especially later in the
summer ."
Breitbart News previously
reported that Russian-born Washington lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, who attended the meeting
with Veselnitskaya, evidenced a larger relationship with Fusion GPS and the controversial
firm's co-founder Glenn Simpson , according to Akhmetshin's testimony before the same
committee. -
Breitbart
Fusion's fingerprints are all over this...
Hours before Veselnitskaya attended the Trump Tower meeting to lobby Trump Jr. about the
Magnitsky act, she met with Fusion GPS co-founder
Glenn Simpson .
While most people know that Fusion GPS was paid by the Clinton campaign to produce the
infamous "Steele Dossier" - assembled by former MI6 spy Christopher Steele, Fusion was also
working for a Russian businessman who wanted the Magnitsky act repealed, Denis Katsyv, and
Veselnitskaya was his lawyer who was given special permission by the Obama DOJ to enter the
U.S. to represent him.
In late November of 2017, The Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross reported that
heavily redacted Fusion GPS bank records reveal DNC law firm Perkins Coie
paid Fusion a total of $1,024,408 in 2016 for opposition research on then-candidate Donald
Trump - including the 34-page dossier.
Ross also reported that law firm Baker Hostelter paid Fusion $523,651 between March and
October 2016 on behalf of a company owned by Katsyv
to research Bill Browder , a London banker who helped push through the Magnitsky Act.
Keep in mind, Veselnitskaya really doesn't like Donald Trump based on several archived
Facebook posts:
I'm unsure of the zeitgeist being proposed here but it sure sounds like you are offering
up the theory that the Deep State actually wanted Trump.
Yet he..."colluded"...among outside parties like the DNC funded Fusion, Perkins Coie, MI6
and then the FBI, the CIA, DNI and the DoJ to manufacture FALSE EVIDENCE.
In order to produce that "evidence" to a FISA court, in order to "legally" surveil (with
taxpayer funds, of course) the very same man (and his associates).
So as to, gather incriminating evidence against him (Trump) so he could be removed from
office in disgrace (almost immediately) because he is actually the one the Deep State wants
in office, as President of the United States.
The only one telling a different story is the guy who's trying desperately to stay out of
prison. Not the best witness. Particularly since he didn't remember for two years prior.
Reasonable doubt anyone?
So hold on this chick is employed by Fusion GPS- who was paid to concoct a dossier against
Trump- using Russian sources and UK intelligence, has dinner with the head of Fusion GPS the
night before the meeting, she gets the meeting offering information- within minutes changes
the course of the meeting- realizing something was wrong, Donald Trump Jr ends the meeting-
and the crime is Trump may have known about it??
It's a set up plain and simple. These fucking people are dirty AS SHIT- including the
Brown Clown Kenyan.
The big story is using opposition research- paid for- submitted to the court as proof to
secure a FISA warrant, and if they didn't know the information was false and paid for- what
the fuck is the "I" in FBI for??
April 2018...."Michael is in business, he is really a businessman, a fairly big business,
as I understand it. I don't know his business." He "also practices law." And, "I have many
attorneys. Sadly, I have so many attorneys you wouldn't even believe it." Cohen handled only
a "tiny, tiny little fraction of my overall legal work."
According to Adam Davidson of the New Yorker, Cohen was not part of the Trump
Organization's Legal Team in any sense. Alan Garten was the Trump Org's attorney on real
estate matters and Marc Kasowitz usually represented Trump in important cases.
Cohen's legal education was not stellar by any sense of the word. Cohen often told this
joke:
Q: "What do you call a lawyer who graduated with a 2.0?"
A: "Counselor."
Would Trump actually hire a guy like this to be his "personal" attorney? He was
effectively a trip-and-fall attorney up to the point he was brought into the organization by
Trump Sr. In truth, Cohen was a fairly savvy real estate investor and, as such, was appointed
Trump's "deal maker" for international projects. He was also Trump's personal "fixer." Cohen
made things 'go away.' You don't need to be an attorney to "make things go away."
It's doubtful that there was a legitimate "attorney/client" relationship there.
In any case, reports are out tonight that the Trump Organization's CFO has been subpoenaed
to testify in the Cohen investigation. Why? Allen Weisselberg's name came up in the recording
that Lanny Davis released yesterday. While everyone was getting their thongs in a twist about
who said "cash," the Weisselberg mention was actually the biggest shoe to drop on that tape.
Weisselberg has a thorough knowledge of all Trump's deals, payments and income.
It was setup by Democrats trying to tie Trump to Russia
The Russian lawyer was briefed before and after the meeting by Fusion GPS
The lawyer was offering dirt on Clinton, but lied and had another agenda
What people should care about, is that Democrats were attempting to frame Trump, in the
dirtiest campaign trick in my lifetime, and using it as a pretext to get the government to
spy on Trump. But you're right that the Dems care about it, because they think (magically)
that it means Trump was colluding with Russia. LOL Consider, wouldn't Trump be doing the USA
a great favor by obtaining Hillary's emails from Russia, which would prove that Putin was
blackmailing her and Obama. The Democrats are completely ignoring this narrative, as if it's
Trump's fault Putin has her emails. LOL
You're a funny guy...The perverse inquisition by the Purple Inquisitors strike again.
Nothing but a pathetic Op to "Sting" Trump by the Psyop Deep State Dip Shits. Cohen squeals
on cue, check his Cayman Isle bank account. Mr Mueller is beyond desperate as you should be
well able to relate to. Ha F'n Ha, but you'll always have Hillary's " "Precious" pee pee
dossier...
Trump knew about a meeting re: oppo research on Hellary. Which is the same crime Hellary
and the DNC did with the bogus Russo 8ntel from the Steele Dossier against What is good for
the goose not good for the gander.
It's like a George Webb wayback machine.
Also funny how no one ever mentions that the Podesta Group closed shop immediately after
George Webb filed his lawsuit against them.
Who were in bed with Fusion... who were in bed with the DNC... who were in bed with Awan.
Also funny how that fake ass Rosenstein Russian indictment stole George Webbs lawsuits
actblues paragraph almost word for word, but substituting Russians for Awan.
The Awan who also downloaded terabytes of congressional data From Pakistan, ffs.
My, what a wicked web they weave.
Cohen is a plant. The guy was in no danger of anything happening to him. Once the DOJ took
everything they broke the law for lawyer client confidentiality. Cohen could just stfu and
say nothing and no judge would prosecute him given he never broke a law... So why is he
singing like a bird? Because its all a fucking setup.
Who knows, maybe he disliked Trump, Maybe his bitch wife made him do it at the end of the
day its his word against a bunch of other people.
Incredible what they are allowing Mueller to do. He basically makes it clear to the person
that if they do not say what they want to hear they are going to ruin them financially, so
people say tell me what you want me to say, and Mueller backs off. I am blown away this
charade is being allowed to go forward. Mueller has done more to destroy the faith people
have in our justice system than any other figure in our modern history. Truly, Mueller should
be rotting in prison for a very long time since it is clear that he is attempting a silent
coup, the US and the American public be damned. This is all about Mueller and appeasing his
puppet masters.
But slowly, ever so slowly, this charade is unraveling. This is throwing his constituents
a bone.
How do I really feel? FUCK YOU, Mueller. Fuck you and your outsized ego.
Was just reported Cohen has already testified to Congress under oath Trump didn't know and
Lanny Davis is accusing the Trump team of leaking this made up story...Cohen getting the
treatment by Trump..
President Trump's former longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, is prepared to tell
special counsel Robert Mueller that then-candidate Donald Trump knew in advance about the June
2016 Trump tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Fusion GPS associate Natalia
Veselnitskaya - who is not a fan of Trump Sr., and several other individuals - including Cohen
who says he was there, reports
CNN .
From Vimeo site comment section: "Cynthia Buckner, 22 hours ago What a detective story, I watched it two times. This is what
making a documentary is all about, uncovering truth under layers of lies. This is why today's News Media is nothing but "Fake
News".
It's no longer available on Bitchute site. In any case, the two I have downloaded have
been dubbed in Russian. I was hoping to watch it later, but it's going take me awhile to
learn the language.
Amazing story of lies and deceit on the part of Browder seems like. I don't judge people
by the way they look, but just looking and listening to this guy makes me believe he is one
BIG slimey fellow, even without watching the movie.
I'd turn him over to the Russians for questioning. After all, he has nothing to worry
about if he has nothing to hide.
"... There is another unwritten, commonsense rule about spying in general: whatever happens, it needs to be kept out of the courts, because the discovery process of any trial would force the prosecution to divulge sources and methods, making them part of the public record. An alternative is to hold secret tribunals, but since these cannot be independently verified to be following due process and rules of evidence, they don't add much value. ..."
"... Americans have been doing their best to break this rule. Recently, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted a dozen Russian operatives working in Russia for hacking into the DNC mail server and sending the emails to Wikileaks. Meanwhile, said server is nowhere to be found (it's been misplaced) while the time stamps on the files that were published on Wikileaks show that they were obtained by copying to a thumb drive rather than sending them over the internet. Thus, this was a leak, not a hack, and couldn't have been done by anyone working remotely from Russia. ..."
In today's United States, the term "espionage" doesn't get too much use outside of some
specific contexts. There is still sporadic talk of industrial espionage, but with regard to
Americans' own efforts to understand the world beyond their borders, they prefer the term
"intelligence." This may be an intelligent choice, or not, depending on how you look at
things.
First of all, US "intelligence" is only vaguely related to the game of espionage as it has
been traditionally played, and as it is still being played by countries such as Russia and
China. Espionage involves collecting and validating strategically vital information and
conveying it to just the pertinent decision-makers on your side while keeping the fact that you
are collecting and validating it hidden from everyone else.
In eras past, a spy, if discovered, would try to bite down on a cyanide capsule; these days
torture is considered ungentlemanly, and spies that get caught patiently wait to be exchanged
in a spy swap. An unwritten, commonsense rule about spy swaps is that they are done quietly and
that those released are never interfered with again because doing so would complicate
negotiating future spy swaps. In recent years, the US intelligence agencies have decided that
torturing prisoners is a good idea, but they have mostly been torturing innocent bystanders,
not professional spies, sometimes forcing them to invent things, such as "Al Qaeda." There was
no such thing before US intelligence popularized it as a brand among Islamic terrorists.
Most recently, British "special services," which are a sort of Mini-Me to the to the Dr.
Evil that is the US intelligence apparatus, saw it fit to interfere with one of their own
spies, Sergei Skripal, a double agent whom they sprung from a Russian jail in a spy swap. They
poisoned him using an exotic chemical and then tried to pin the blame on Russia based on no
evidence. There are unlikely to be any more British spy swaps with Russia, and British spies
working in Russia should probably be issued good old-fashioned cyanide capsules (since that
supposedly super-powerful Novichok stuff the British keep at their "secret" lab in Porton Down
doesn't work right and is only fatal 20% of the time).
There is another unwritten, commonsense rule about spying in general: whatever happens, it
needs to be kept out of the courts, because the discovery process of any trial would force the
prosecution to divulge sources and methods, making them part of the public record. An
alternative is to hold secret tribunals, but since these cannot be independently verified to be
following due process and rules of evidence, they don't add much value.
A different standard applies to traitors; here, sending them through the courts is
acceptable and serves a high moral purpose, since here the source is the person on trial and
the method -- treason -- can be divulged without harm. But this logic does not apply to proper,
professional spies who are simply doing their jobs, even if they turn out to be double agents.
In fact, when counterintelligence discovers a spy, the professional thing to do is to try to
recruit him as a double agent or, failing that, to try to use the spy as a channel for
injecting disinformation.
Americans have been doing their best to break this rule. Recently, special counsel Robert
Mueller indicted a dozen Russian operatives working in Russia for hacking into the DNC mail
server and sending the emails to Wikileaks. Meanwhile, said server is nowhere to be found (it's
been misplaced) while the time stamps on the files that were published on Wikileaks show that
they were obtained by copying to a thumb drive rather than sending them over the internet.
Thus, this was a leak, not a hack, and couldn't have been done by anyone working remotely from
Russia.
Furthermore, it is an exercise in futility for a US official to indict Russian citizens in
Russia. They will never stand trial in a US court because of the following clause in the
Russian Constitution: "61.1 A citizen of the Russian Federation may not be deported out of
Russia or extradited to another state." Mueller may summon a panel of constitutional scholars
to interpret this sentence, or he can just read it and weep. Yes, the Americans are doing their
best to break the unwritten rule against dragging spies through the courts, but their best is
nowhere near good enough.
That said, there is no reason to believe that the Russian spies couldn't have hacked into
the DNC mail server. It was probably running Microsoft Windows, and that operating system has
more holes in it than a building in downtown Raqqa, Syria after the Americans got done bombing
that city to rubble, lots of civilians included. When questioned about this alleged hacking by
Fox News, Putin (who had worked as a spy in his previous career) had trouble keeping a straight
face and clearly enjoyed the moment. He pointed out that the hacked/leaked emails showed a
clear pattern of wrongdoing: DNC officials conspired to steal the electoral victory in the
Democratic Primary from Bernie Sanders, and after this information had been leaked they were
forced to resign. If the Russian hack did happen, then it was the Russians working to save
American democracy from itself. So, where's the gratitude? Where's the love? Oh, and why are
the DNC perps not in jail?
Since there exists an agreement between the US and Russia to cooperate on criminal
investigations, Putin offered to question the spies indicted by Mueller. He even offered to
have Mueller sit in on the proceedings. But in return he wanted to question US officials who
may have aided and abetted a convicted felon by the name of William Browder, who is due to
begin serving a nine-year sentence in Russia any time now and who, by the way, donated copious
amounts of his ill-gotten money to the Hillary Clinton election campaign. In response, the US
Senate passed a resolution to forbid Russians from questioning US officials. And instead of
issuing a valid request to have the twelve Russian spies interviewed, at least one US official
made the startlingly inane request to have them come to the US instead. Again, which part of
61.1 don't they understand?
The logic of US officials may be hard to follow, but only if we adhere to the traditional
definitions of espionage and counterespionage -- "intelligence" in US parlance -- which is to
provide validated information for the purpose of making informed decisions on best ways of
defending the country. But it all makes perfect sense if we disabuse ourselves of such quaint
notions and accept the reality of what we can actually observe: the purpose of US
"intelligence" is not to come up with or to work with facts but to simply "make shit up."
The "intelligence" the US intelligence agencies provide can be anything but; in fact, the
stupider it is the better, because its purpose is allow unintelligent people to make
unintelligent decisions. In fact, they consider facts harmful -- be they about Syrian chemical
weapons, or conspiring to steal the primary from Bernie Sanders, or Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction, or the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden -- because facts require accuracy and rigor
while they prefer to dwell in the realm of pure fantasy and whimsy. In this, their actual
objective is easily discernible.
Their objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its
allies and pocket as much of it as possible while pretending to defend it from phantom
aggressors by squandering nonexistent (borrowed) financial resources on ineffective and
overpriced military operations and weapons systems. Where the aggressors are not phantom, they
are specially organized for the purpose of having someone to fight: "moderate" terrorists and
so on. One major advancement in their state of the art has been in moving from real false flag
operations, à la 9/11, to fake false flag operations, à la fake East Gouta
chemical attack in Syria (since fully discredited). The Russian election meddling story is
perhaps the final step in this evolution: no New York skyscrapers or Syrian children were
harmed in the process of concocting this fake narrative, and it can be kept alive seemingly
forever purely through the furious effort of numerous flapping lips. It is now a pure
confidence scam. If you are less then impressed with their invented narratives, then you are a
conspiracy theorist or, in the latest revision, a traitor.
Trump was recently questioned as to whether he trusted US intelligence. He waffled.
A light-hearted answer would have been:
"What sort of idiot are you to ask me such a stupid question? Of course they are lying!
They were caught lying more than once, and therefore they can never be trusted again. In
order to claim that they are not currently lying, you have to determine when it was that they
stopped lying, and that they haven't lied since. And that, based on the information that is
available, is an impossible task."
A more serious, matter-of-fact answer would have been:
"The US intelligence agencies made an outrageous claim: that I colluded with Russia to rig
the outcome of the 2017 presidential election. The burden of proof is on them. They are yet
to prove their case in a court of law, which is the only place where the matter can
legitimately be settled, if it can be settled at all. Until that happens, we must treat their
claim as conspiracy theory, not as fact."
And a hardcore, deadpan answer would have been:
"The US intelligence services swore an oath to uphold the US Constitution, according to
which I am their Commander in Chief. They report to me, not I to them. They must be loyal to
me, not I to them. If they are disloyal to me, then that is sufficient reason for their
dismissal."
But no such reality-based, down-to-earth dialogue seems possible. All that we hear are fake
answers to fake questions, and the outcome is a series of faulty decisions. Based on fake
intelligence, the US has spent almost all of this century embroiled in very expensive and
ultimately futile conflicts. Thanks to their efforts, Iran, Iraq and Syria have now formed a
continuous crescent of religiously and geopolitically aligned states friendly toward Russia
while in Afghanistan the Taliban is resurgent and battling ISIS -- an organization that came
together thanks to American efforts in Iraq and Syria.
The total cost of wars so far this century for the US is reported to be $4,575,610,429,593.
Divided by the 138,313,155 Americans who file tax returns (whether they actually pay any tax is
too subtle a question), it works out to just over $33,000 per taxpayer. If you pay taxes in the
US, that's your bill so far for the various US intelligence "oopsies."
The 16 US intelligence agencies have a combined budget of $66.8 billion, and that seems like
a lot until you realize how supremely efficient they are: their "mistakes" have cost the
country close to 70 times their budget. At a staffing level of over 200,000 employees, each of
them has cost the US taxpayer close to $23 million, on average. That number is totally out of
the ballpark! The energy sector has the highest earnings per employee, at around $1.8 million
per. Valero Energy stands out at $7.6 million per. At $23 million per, the US intelligence
community has been doing three times better than Valero. Hats off! This makes the US
intelligence community by far the best, most efficient collapse driver imaginable.
There are two possible hypotheses for why this is so.
First , we might venture to guess that these 200,000 people are grossly incompetent and
that the fiascos they precipitate are accidental. But it is hard to imagine a situation where
grossly incompetent people nevertheless manage to funnel $23 million apiece, on average,
toward an assortment of futile undertakings of their choosing. It is even harder to imagine
that such incompetents would be allowed to blunder along decade after decade without being
called out for their mistakes.
Another hypothesis, and a far more plausible one, is that the US intelligence community
has been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial,
economic and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and
futile conflicts -- the largest single continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever
known.
How that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your own country, for any conceivable
definition of "intelligence," I will leave for you to work out for yourself. While you are at
it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better
than "a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be
perpetual liars."
"... For many years some have seen the US as a form of corporatism* - as a country run in the interests of the corporations and those who lead them. There is considerable evidence that in many senses they are correct. However to see Trump as the epitome of this 'rule by corporations' I think misses something important. Trump is different from what went before in important respects. ..."
"... The government of Donald Trump is different. It is a selective plutocracy , and with one important exception that plutocracy is selected by Trump. In that way it can also be seen as a democratic dictatorship , where the complexity of government requires some delegation of power to other individuals. Like many dictatorships, some of those individuals are the dictator's family members. ..."
"... The photo above is taken from an extraordinary recent event (watch here ) where Trump walks down a line of senior executives, who in turn stand up and say what they are doing for the US and pledge to do more. Each statement is applauded with a positive statement by Trump, as his daughter trails behind. These are top companies: IBM, Microsoft, General Motors etc. It is all a show, of course, but of a kind the US has never seen before. It seems indicative that this is not just a continuation of past corporatism but something quite different. These are corporate executives doing the President's bidding for fear or favour. ..."
For
many years some have seen the US as a form of corporatism* - as a country run in the interests
of the corporations and those who lead them. There is considerable evidence that in many senses
they are correct. However to see Trump as the epitome of this 'rule
by corporations' I think misses something important. Trump is different from what went before
in important respects.
The way business influenced politicians in the past was straightforward. Campaigns cost a lot
of money (unlike the UK there are no tight limits on how much can be spent), and business can
provide that money, but of course corporate political donations are not pure altruism. The
strings attached helped influence both Republican and Democratic politicians. It was influence
that followed the money, and that meant to an extent it was representative of the corporate
sector as a whole. The same point can be made about political lobbying.
The government of Donald Trump is different. It is a selective
plutocracy , and with one important exception that plutocracy is selected by Trump. In
that way it can also be seen as a democratic
dictatorship , where the complexity of government requires some delegation of power to
other individuals. Like many dictatorships, some of those individuals are the dictator's family
members.
A dictatorship of this form would not be possible if Congress had strongly opposed it. That it
has not is partly because the Republican party chooses not to oppose, but also because Trump
wields a power over Congress that can override the influence of corporate money. That power
comes from an alliance between Trump and the media that has a big influence on how Republican
voters view the world: Fox News in particular but others as well. The irony is that under these
conditions democracy in the form of primaries gives Trump and the media considerable power over
Congress.
The distinction between traditional corporate power 'from below' and the current Trumpian
plutocracy can be seen most clearly in Trump's trade policy. It would be a mistake to see
past US trade
policy as an uninterrupted promotion of liberalisation, but I think it is fair to say that
trade restrictions have never been imposed in such a haphazard way, based on such an obviously
false pretext (US surpluses good, deficits bad). Trump's policy is a threat to the
international trading system that has in the past been lead by the US, and therefore it is a
threat to most of corporate USA. Yet up till now Congress has done very little to stop Trump's ruinous policy.
The photo above is taken from an extraordinary
recent event (watch here ) where Trump
walks down a line of senior executives, who in turn stand up and say what they are doing for
the US and pledge to do more. Each statement is applauded with a positive statement by Trump,
as his daughter trails behind. These are top companies: IBM, Microsoft, General Motors etc. It
is all a show, of course, but of a kind the US has never seen before. It seems indicative that
this is not just a continuation of past corporatism but something quite different. These are
corporate executives doing the President's bidding for fear or favour.
All this matters because it creates a tension that could at some stage drive events. So far the
Republican party has been prepared to allow Trump to do what he wishes as long as didn't
require their explicit approval (i.e their votes in Congress), but it has not as yet bent its
collective agenda to his. (Arguments that it already has tend to look at past
Republican rhetoric rather than actions.) This uneasy peace may no longer become tenable
because of developments on trade, or Russia, or the mid-term election results. If enough
Republicans think their future is safer by opposing Trump rather than indulging him, they still
have the power to bring Trump to heel. But the longer the peace lasts, Trump's influence on the
Republican party will only grow.
* Readers outside the US may be confused by my use of the term corporatism: it is one of those
terms with many meanings. I'm using it in the fourth and final sense described
here .
"... The idea behind offset agreements is simple: When a country buys weapons from a firm overseas, it pumps a large amount of money out of its economy, instead of investing in its own defense industry or in other domestic projects. So to make large weapons deals more attractive, arms companies offer programs to "offset" that effect. As part of a weapons package, they often sign an agreement to invest in the country's economy, either in defense or civilian sectors. ..."
"... According to an email from Clarke, the UAE accepted unpaid offset obligations as cash payments to a large financial firm called Tawazun Holding. Tawazun sent the $20 million to a UAE think tank called the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research . ECSSR then began sending that money to the Middle East Institute, a prestigious D.C. think tank that has a history of promoting arms sales to Gulf dictatorships. ... ..."
"... So essentially, in a roundabout way, the UAE took money from international firms that was meant for economic development and funneled it to a supportive think tank in the United States. ..."
The United Arab Emirates created a "slush fund" using money meant for domestic economic development
projects and funneled it to a high-profile think tank in the United States, emails obtained by The
Intercept show.
Last week, The Intercept
reported that the UAE gave a $20 million grant to the Middle East Institute, flooding a well-regarded
D.C. think tank with a monetary grant larger than its
annual budget
. According to an email from Richard Clarke, MEI's chairman of the board, the UAE got the money from
offset investments -- development investments by international companies that are made as part of
trade agreements.
The idea behind offset agreements is simple: When a country buys weapons from a firm overseas,
it pumps a large amount of money out of its economy, instead of investing in its own defense industry
or in other domestic projects. So to make large weapons deals more attractive, arms companies offer
programs to "offset" that effect. As part of a weapons package, they often sign an agreement to invest
in the country's economy, either in defense or civilian sectors.
Offsets provide a way to sell weapons at inflated prices, when companies offer juicier offset
packages. Critics say the lack of transparency in how offset investments are carried out leaves a
window open for a form of legalized corruption. The emails lift a veil on what has long been an obscure
element of the arms trade.
According to an
email from Clarke, the UAE accepted unpaid offset obligations as cash payments to a large financial
firm called Tawazun Holding. Tawazun sent the $20 million to a UAE think tank called the
Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research . ECSSR then began sending that money to the
Middle East Institute, a prestigious D.C. think tank that has a history of
promoting arms sales to Gulf dictatorships. ...
So essentially, in a roundabout way, the UAE took money from international firms that was meant
for economic development and funneled it to a supportive think tank in the United States.
"... Stahl's chief object of inquiry is the American Enterprise Institute, or AEI. Founded in 1938 by a group of businessmen devoted to unwinding the New Deal, its true history began five years later, when its headquarters moved from New York to Washington. Inside the Beltway, AEI staffers portrayed themselves as nonpartisan scholars eager to assist lawmakers from both parties. That stance became increasingly difficult to maintain as the conservative movement grew in strength, and in the 1970s AEI was reborn as a champion of the right in the battle for ideas. ..."
"... Success bred imitators, and AEI soon found itself outflanked by an upstart known as the Heritage Foundation. More concerned with passing legislation than posing as researchers, Heritage became the dominant think tank in Reagan's Washington. These nimble practitioners of war-by-briefing-books made AEI seem musty and academic by comparison. AEI revived itself by shifting toward the middle, but it never regained its former centrality. It had changed too much, and so had conservatism. ..."
"... Think tanks like Heritage, he writes, have redefined what it means to be on the right and persuaded countless Americans to join their cause, managing to "forever alter American political culture in a more conservative direction." ..."
...What began in the 1990s with a trickle of articles lamenting the absence of studies
on American conservatism grew in the 2000s to a flood of monographs on the activists, intellectuals,
and politicians who bent history's arc to the right. Lisa McGirr's trailblazing
study of Orange County's
suburban warriors, Bethany Moreton's
exploration of the politics of Wal-Mart, and Angus Burgin's meticulous
reconstruction of the winding path from Friedrich Hayek to Milton Friedman were just a few of
the highlights in a booming field.
As Buckley would have preferred, the representative figure in this scholarship was not George
Wallace but Ronald Reagan. The 40th president stood for a coalition of prosperous, forward-looking
voters motivated by sincere ideological commitments and assisted by an emerging conservative establishment
filled with adept manipulators of Washington's bureaucracy. The populism and racism that fueled Wallace's
career were not forgotten, but too great an emphasis on these subjects did not fit with the grudging
respect these generally liberal historians evinced for the subjects of their research.
Jason Stahl's Right Moves is a characteristic product of this approach. Stahl, a historian
at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, describes his book as an examination of conservative
think tanks, those curious institutions that, although little known to the wider public, play a decisive
a role in shaping policy. Several fine studies of these organizations already exist, but they are
chiefly the work of journalists, and a historical appraisal is long overdue.
Stahl's chief object of inquiry is the American Enterprise Institute, or AEI. Founded in 1938
by a group of businessmen devoted to unwinding the New Deal, its true history began five years later,
when its headquarters moved from New York to Washington. Inside the Beltway, AEI staffers portrayed
themselves as nonpartisan scholars eager to assist lawmakers from both parties. That stance became
increasingly difficult to maintain as the conservative movement grew in strength, and in the 1970s
AEI was reborn as a champion of the right in the battle for ideas.
Success bred imitators, and AEI soon found itself outflanked by an upstart known as the Heritage
Foundation. More concerned with passing legislation than posing as researchers, Heritage became the
dominant think tank in Reagan's Washington. These nimble practitioners of war-by-briefing-books made
AEI seem musty and academic by comparison. AEI revived itself by shifting toward the middle, but
it never regained its former centrality. It had changed too much, and so had conservatism.
Stahl narrates this history with subtlety, neither condescending to his subjects nor shielding
them from embarrassment; they are at once dexterous navigators of the political scene and authors
of a harebrained Heritage report holding that an increase in the number of working mothers could
lead to a rise in dwarfism. His grasp of the dynamics at work in the shifting fortunes of AEI and
Heritage - a relationship bound up with both sweeping political change and the intricacies of fund-raising
- flows from his mastery of this milieu.
Yet Right Moves becomes less steady as it moves toward the present. Braving the risks
of contemporary history, Stahl loses access to the archives that give his earlier chapters their
depth and nuance. He concludes with an uncharacteristically blunt assessment of current politics.
Think tanks like Heritage, he writes, have redefined what it means to be on the right and persuaded
countless Americans to join their cause, managing to "forever alter American political culture in
a more conservative direction."
That was a powerful argument when this book went to press, and it would have gained even more
force if conservatives were about to deliver the Republican Party's presidential nomination to Ted
Cruz. Or Marco Rubio. Or Jeb Bush. Or any of the 13 other major candidates for the position except
Donald Trump. In
the words of Buckley's National Review, Trump is "a philosophically unmoored political
opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor
of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones." But as Trump has more recently
observed, "this is called the Republican Party. It's not called the Conservative Party." And
Republicans have capitulated to a candidate opposed by the assembled forces of the conservative establishment
- an establishment that is clearly as detached from the constituents it claims to represent as any
of the liberal elites it has pilloried for decades, and whose isolation from its supposed base made
Trump's nomination possible.
Republicans are now wrestling with the implications of this turn; historians will move at a slower
pace, but they also have a reckoning ahead. A generation ago, explaining the power of the American
right seemed an essential task for anyone seeking to understand the headlines. Recent events suggest
that scholars should adopt a more skeptical attitude toward the image presented by the self-appointed
gatekeepers of True Conservatism. The gap between policy makers and the grassroots is larger than
students of the right have allowed, the opportunities for ideological crosscutting more prevalent.
Histories written from this perspective would be less willing to take Buckley at his word, and they
would have more room for Wallace.
Though reeling at the moment, however, Buckley's political descendants should not be counted out.
Just a few months ago,
a meeting off the coast of Georgia brought together figures ranging from Tim Cook to Karl Rove
in a two-day session dedicated to mapping out a plan to stop Trump. They lost this round, but the
fight will continue in the years to come, and support from organizations like the host of this conclave
will be invaluable. What form this campaign will take is still a mystery. Attendance in Georgia was
invitation only, as is the custom at the "American Enterprise Institute World Forum."
Timothy Shenk, a Mellon postdoctoral fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, is the
author of Maurice Dobb: Political Economist (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
Milton Friedman and George Stigler – with the help of corporate and political
support – found the adequate tool to empower their ideas, which was the network of
think-tanks, the use of scholarships provide by them, and the intensive use of media. This
think-tank network wasn't for creating new ideas, but for being a gatekeeper and disseminating
the existing set of ideas, and the "philosophy of freedom".
Notable quotes:
"... the successful businessmen created The Atlas Economic Research Foundation in 1981, which established 150 think-tanks around the globe. These institutions were set up based on the model of Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank founded in 1955 by Fisher, which is a good example how the marginalized group of neoliberal thinkers got into intellectual and political power. ..."
"... Today, "more than 450 free-market organizations in over 90 countries" serve the "cause of liberty" through the network. The network of Fisher was largely directed by the members of Mont Pelerin Society (Djelic, 2014). ..."
"... This think-tank network wasn't for creating new ideas, but for being a gatekeeper and disseminating the existing set of ideas, and the „philosophy of freedom". ..."
"... Awareness of gatekeeper roles and their ramifications is one issue of grave concern to many citizens. There are variations of the role playing in different parts of society whether in the Ivory Tower, Think Tanks (self-designated with initial capitals), media or other areas. Recently, that role in media has come under scrutiny as seen during and after the US campaign and election. Who gets to control what appears as news ..."
"... The increasing impact of social media in dissemination of information and use of influencers represents a type of Barbarians at the Literal Gate. The boards and think tanks won't easily relinquish their positions, any more than the gatekeepers of prior eras would willingly do so. ..."
Not only Backhouse (2005) , but
also Adam Curtis(2011) , the British
documentary film-maker also researched how Fisher created his global think-tank network,
spreading the libertarian values of individual and economic – but never social and
political – freedom, and also the freedom for capital owners from the state.
According to Curtis (2011) , the
„ideologically motivated PR organisations" intended to achieve a technocratic, elitist
system, which preserves actual power structures. As he notes, the successful businessmen
created The Atlas Economic Research Foundation in 1981, which established 150 think-tanks
around the globe. These institutions were set up based on the model of Institute for Economic
Affairs (IEA), a think tank founded in 1955 by Fisher, which is a good example how the
marginalized group of neoliberal thinkers got into intellectual and political power.
Today,
"more than 450 free-market organizations in over 90 countries" serve the "cause of liberty" through the network. The network of
Fisher was largely directed by the members of Mont Pelerin Society (Djelic, 2014).
This think-tank network wasn't for creating new ideas, but for being a gatekeeper
and disseminating the existing set of ideas, and the „philosophy of
freedom".
Awareness of gatekeeper roles and their ramifications is one issue of grave concern to
many citizens. There are variations of the role playing in different parts of society whether
in the Ivory Tower, Think Tanks (self-designated with initial capitals), media or other
areas. Recently, that role in media has come under scrutiny as seen during and after the US
campaign and election. Who gets to control what appears as news , and will the NY Times
editorial board cede any of that, for example?
The increasing impact of social media in dissemination of information and use of
influencers represents a type of Barbarians at the Literal Gate. The boards and think tanks
won't easily relinquish their positions, any more than the gatekeepers of prior eras would
willingly do so.
This era is unsettling to the average person on the street, and particularly to those
living on the street, because they have been told one thing with certainty and gravitas and
then found out something else that was materially opposed. In the meantime, truth continues
to seek an audience.
The assertion you selected from today's post seems clearly false to me. The think-tank
organizations definitely create new ideas and often conflict with each other. Their topics
and views also tend to dominate discussions and steal the oxygen from outside ideas.
They are schools of agnotology flooding discussion of every policy with their "answers"
and contributing to the Marketplace of ideas.
The Myth of the Powell Memo
A secret note from a future Supreme Court justice did not give rise to today's conservative infrastructure.
Something more insidious did.
By Mark Schmitt
At one end of a block of Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., sometimes known as "Think
Tank Row"-the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Brookings Institution are neighbors-a
monument to intellectual victory has been under reconstruction for a year. It will soon be the
home of the American Enterprise Institute, a 60,000-square-foot Beaux-Arts masterpiece where Andrew
Mellon lived when he was treasury secretary during the 1920s. AEI purchased the building with
a $20 million donation from one of the founders of the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm.
Right Moves
The Conservative Think Tank in American Political Culture Since 1945
By Jason Stahl
In the story of the rise of the political right in America since the late 1970s, think tanks,
and sometimes the glorious edifices in which they are housed, have played an iconic role. The
Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the libertarian Cato Institute, along
with their dozens of smaller but well-funded cousins, have seemed central to the "war of ideas"
that drove American policy in the 1980s, in the backlash of 1994, in the George W. Bush era, and
again after 2010.
For the center left, these institutions have become role models. While Brookings or the Urban
Institute once eschewed ideology in favor of mild policy analysis or dispassionate technical assessment
of social programs, AEI and Heritage seemed to build virtual war rooms for conservative ideas,
investing more in public relations than in scholarship or credibility, and nurturing young talent
(or, more often, the glib but not-very-talented). Their strategy seemed savvier. Conservative
think tanks nurtured supply-side economics, neoconservative foreign policy, and the entire agenda
of the Reagan administration, which took the form of a twenty-volume tome produced by Heritage
in 1980 called Mandate for Leadership.
In the last decade or so, much of the intellectual architecture of the conservative think tanks
has been credited to a single document known as the Powell Memo. This 1971 note from future Supreme
Court Justice Lewis Powell to a Virginia neighbor who worked at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged
business to do more to respond to the rising "New Left," countering forces such as Ralph Nader's
nascent consumer movement in the courts, in media, and in academia....
DeDude -> anne... , -1
The part where the neo-con-men get the scientific process wrong is where they begin with the conclusion,
before they even collect any facts. And then they whine that Universities are full of Liberals.
No they are full of scientists - and they are supposed to be.
I think that the biggest denial of all is to the effect all this crap has had on the economy.
Today we see cites rotting away because there is not enough income to support business and infrastructure,
yet we hear such as Ryan proposing more of the same as a solution. The scope of the damage is
huge, yet both parties are in denial. The whole of the implementation of conservative philosophy
has been a colossal failure for the nation.
The attorney for President Trump's former longtime personal attorney has given
CNN
a copy of a secretly recorded conversation between Trump and Cohen, in which they
discuss purchasing the rights to a Playboy model's claim that she and Trump had an affair.
McDougal, claims to have had a nearly yearlong affair with Trump in 2006, right before Melania
Trump gave birth to their son Barron. McDougal sold her story to the National Enquirer for $150,000
as the 2016 presidential campaign was in its final months, however the tabloid sat on the story
which kept it from becoming public in a practice known as "catch and kill."
Cohen told Trump about his plans to set up a company and finance the purchase of the rights
from American Media, which publishes the National Enquirer.
"I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our
friend David,"
Cohen said in the recording, likely a reference to American Media head
David Pecker.
Trump interrupts Cohen asking,
"What financing?"
according to the recording.
When Cohen tells Trump,
"We'll have to pay."
Trump is heard saying
"pay
with cash"
but the audio is muddled and it's unclear whether he suggests paying with
cash or not paying. Cohen says,
"no, no"
but it is not clear what is said next.
-
CNN
The Enquirer's chairman, David J. Pecker, is a personal friend of Trump's, and McDougal has
accused Cohen of taking part in the deal.
By burying Ms. McDougal's story during the campaign in a practice known in the tabloid
industry as "catch and kill," A.M.I. protected Mr. Trump from negative publicity that could have
harmed his election chances, spending money to do so.
The authorities believe that the company was not always operating in what campaign finance
law calls a "legitimate press function," according to the people briefed on the investigation,
who spoke on the condition of anonymity. That may explain why prosecutors did not follow typical
Justice Department protocol to avoid subpoenaing news organizations when possible, and to give
journalists advance warning when demanding documents or other information. -
New
York Times
While Trump never paid for the rights, Lanny Davis says that the recording, made in 2016, shows
Trump knew about the payment.
On Saturday, President Trump broke his silence over the recording, tweeting: "Inconceivable that
the government would break into a lawyer's office (early in the morning) - almost unheard of. Even
more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client - totally unheard of & perhaps illegal. The
good news is that your favorite President did nothing wrong!" Trump tweeted.
Meanwhile, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani confirmed with the
New York Times
last week
that Trump and Cohen had discussed payments - and that "
there was no indication on the tape
that Mr. Trump knew before the conversation about the payment from the Enquirer's parent company,
American Media Inc., to Ms. McDougal
."
"
Nothing in that conversation suggests that he had any knowledge of it in advance
,"
said Giuliani, adding that Trump had previously told Cohen that if he were to make a payment
related to the woman, to write a check instead of sending cash so that the transaction could be
properly documented. "In the big scheme of things, it's powerful exculpatory evidence," Giuliani
added.
Cohen made a similar payment of $130,000 to porn star and stripper Stormy Daniels, whose real
name is Stephanie Clifford. Cohen said at the time "In a private transaction in 2016, I used my own
personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford."
Clifford - whose husband
just
filed for divorce
, is suing Trump over a nondisclosure agreement so that she can "tell her
story" (in the form of a book, we imagine), while she is also suing both Trump and Cohen for libel
after Trump called her statements "fraud" over Twitter, while claiming that Clifford fabricated a
story that she was threatened by a man after she went to journalists with the story of her affair.
Shortly before the 2016 election, former Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said that
McDougal's allegations were "totally untrue."
Honestly, no one cares except the libtards and democrats
if there is a difference. The men and women I know love
Trump because, among other things, he is not limp-wristed
like Bush and Obama were.
Americans care about jobs,
immigrants and terrorists.
"pay with cash" probably is just a response to the
word "financing". Just my guess of course, but
from the dialogue it flows logically, as in Trump
saying to himself "why finance it, just pay her
cash". Doesn't necessarily mean pay with currency
just means don't borrow the money. Besides, it
doesn't matter much in this context since the
lawyer said no, and there is no crime here unless
he said "pay her with campaign contributions".
Clinton paid Paula Jones, what, $850,000? And he
didn't even get the rights to the story.
Trump's negotiating genius on display lol.
"'pay with cash' probably is just a response to
the word 'financing'."
I would say 99%
probability that's what he meant. Lawyer: "we
need to talk about financing" Trump: "pay with
cash." He didn't mean a suitcase full of
bills. He meant "just write a check." Anyone
in business knows the terminology. Plus it's
not even clear WTF they are talking about.
I have no love for Trump, in fact I think
he's an asshole. But this is all so much ado
about nothing.
I have to admit I'm confused as to why he should
pay anything at all. Why not let the smoking hot
model tell the world you scored with her? What's
the downside here?
So this is the tape that Trump said he doesn't give a
crap about the release of, outside of the larger
question of EVERYONE'S RIGHT of lawyer-client
privilege?
Well just damn, it must be a smoker
that will finally lead to his impeachment ;-)
Well yeah...but these days ya just roll with what
they present, like..."past and former government
officials who are in a position to know have
confirmed that"...which invariably leads to, abuse
of authority, presenting falsified/manufactured
evidence to a court, withholding exculpatory
evidence to a court, stolen classified documents
after being fired, obstruction of justice,
perjury...ya know, the normal regular things progs
do to put their heads in the noose ;-)
It was FBI that raided Cohen's office so I'll
presume that's where this tape came from.
I'm
not going to start sticking up for the
maverick's lapses in fidelity, but holy crap,
the FBI/DOJ have been blatantly weaponized
against him and in charge of those outfits
are....Sessions and Wray?
Well yeah...but these days ya just roll with what
they present, like..."past and former government
officials who are in a position to know have
confirmed that"...which invariably leads to, abuse
of authority, presenting falsified/manufactured
evidence to a court, withholding exculpatory
evidence to a court, stolen classified documents
after being fired, obstruction of justice,
perjury...ya know, the normal regular things progs
do to put their heads in the noose ;-)
It was FBI that raided Cohen's office so I'll
presume that's where this tape came from.
I'm
not going to start sticking up for the
maverick's lapses in fidelity, but holy crap,
the FBI/DOJ have been blatantly weaponized
against him and in charge of those outfits
are....Sessions and Wray?
At least DJT has shown generosity toward his, um, friends. What did JFK do
to Marilyn? What did Teddy do to Mary Jo? LBJ had at least one mistress.
What did Bill Clinton call the gal in the blue dress, wasn't it "that
woman"? What did Obama call his wife, Michael if I recall correctly.
Poor
Jimmy Carter. All he ever had was a killer rabbit. He may have been totally
incompetent, but at least he was a decent guy while in office. Afterward,
unfortunately, not so much.
Broadcast of a recording that falls under attorney-client priviledge,
which is specifically exempted from use by anyone, period
recorded with single-party consent
from records siezed by a surprise raid by the FBI of the standing
president's attorney
as part of an investigation predicated on evidence completely
fabricated by the other party
discovered by a special group tasked
specifically keep privledged
information from being passed on,
by court order
the investigation is still ongoing so presumably all evidence is
sensitive
leaked by special counsel
Any one of these is a federal felony. The people behind this are willing to
break a
lot
of laws to make it happen. All to release a
recording that on the face of it is regarding a legal activity (a forebearance
contract.)
"... By contrast, Americans, who pretend to fetishize individualism, are conformists. Dissent is not well tolerated at work or social spheres. And its only gotten worse as media fragmentation and political strategies based on hitting voter hot buttons means that many people are deeply invested in their political views, whether they are well founded or not. Punitive unfriending and other forms of ostracism have become a new normal. ..."
"... She said the "fake news" campaign has been extremely effective in discrediting non-mainstream views. And since her friends are also PhDs, she was also frustrated at their refusal to consider evidence, or entertain the idea that their preferred sources were biased. ..."
"... One approach she has used that worked was to find information from other sources they could not reject, like Reuters and the Associated Press, that had not been covered in the New York Times or better yet, contradicted what they wanted to believe, such as a Reuters story describing how Germany opposed sanctions against Russia. But she clearly found it taxing to find these informational nuggets. ..."
"... Saying early on that Hillary was an awful alternative to Trump can lower the temperature considerably. Going on to talk about issues and staying away from Trump bashing is a follow through. ..."
"... Speaking as a member of the clergy, I have a suggestion about how to use the teachings of Jesus to reach Team Blue, whether or not they subscribe to Christianity in some form. ..."
"... One of the most radical of Jesus' teachings, one that is often given lip service but is extremely difficult to put into practice, is the commandment that we love our enemies and pray for them ..."
"... I am increasingly encountering extremism as the base line for discussions, really arguments, in my daily encounters. This comes from both ends of the political spectrum. This I perceive as a sign of desperation. ..."
"... Fair enough, Chuck, but I think you might be missing a very important bit: the fact that many people who are otherwise staunch rank-and-file supporters might also have an otherwise invisible breakpoint, or fault line. I say this as a former Dem Party supporter, who did the full song and dance – supported Hillary, supported Kerry before that, and was a total devotee to Obama. I was as tied to the Dem party as anyone not getting a paycheck could be, and when Obama won, I was elated. I thought that things would really change. ..."
"... The Financial Crisis was a rude, rude awakening. The pretty speeches meant little, and did even less. If anyone had a hand in setting fire to my generally moderate viewpoint, it was Obama himself, his worship for Wall Street, and his inability to put up a fight about anything. It was a weird time for me, politically, but 2008-2016 was what set the stage, while the last set of primaries only confirmed what I had felt in my gut for many years. ..."
"... Listen is first. Would you expect to walk into any fundamentalist church or mosque and change minds? Conversation among strangers gets more specific along commonalities until it hits a split point, then drops down a level. If nothing in common, there's always the weather. That's universal. ..."
"... On Russia – the biggest "liberal" fake new angle for years now – I say "Not one single piece of evidence has ever been presented that Russia meddled in the election. Not one single piece. The same agencies that said WMD in Iraq are now telling us Russia meddled. This is Democrat's WMD in Iraq moment." ..."
"... The Making of the President 2016 ..."
"... my point is that she enforces dogma and insinuates disloyalty in any heretic. ..."
"... It would be great if the one group of unthinking believers cancelled out the other group of unthinking believers, but of course the adherents are so blind to reality that that can't see that the difference between Bush's Goldman Sachs' Treasury Secretary and Obama Goldman Sachs' Treasury Secretary is .???? ..."
"... I wonder, sadly, if "engaging with liberals" might be, in fact, a lost cause. Struggling to find common cause with the delusional amidst the collapse of empire, environmental catastrophe, and financial ruin might not be the best use of limited resources. ..."
"... Americans, who pretend to fetishize individualism, are conformists ..."
"... fairness and decency ..."
"... Arguing with entrenched people is a lost cause but sarcasm = mercilessly tearing right into their own hypocrisy does the work of shaming them for a while, especially if you make the point about a topic they are virtue signalling about. These people do not have a policy idea in mind, they are pure virtue signallers. ..."
An oft-repeated bit of
advice in America is never to talk about religion or politics. Sadly, the reason is that Americans are dreadful at talking across
political lines. When I lived in Australia in the early 2000s and adopted a pub, by contrast, I found the locals to be eager to debate
the topics of the day yet remain civil about it. That may be because Australians in generally have mastered the art of being confrontational
by lacing it with humor and/or self deprecation.
By contrast, Americans, who pretend to fetishize individualism, are conformists. Dissent is not well tolerated at work or social
spheres. And its only gotten worse as media fragmentation and political strategies based on hitting voter hot buttons means that
many people are deeply invested in their political views, whether they are well founded or not. Punitive unfriending and other forms
of ostracism have become a new normal.
And now that we have anger over Trump directed at not the best or most useful objects, like Russia! Russia! as opposed to his packing
of the Federal bench, or his environmental policies, or even his push to privatize Federal parks, a lot of educated people expect,
even demand, that their friends be vocal supporters of the #Resistance.
For instance, at the San Francisco meetup, I spent a fair bit of time with a woman who had held elected offices in her community.
She was clearly distressed by the fact (without using such crass terms) that her friends had turned into pod people. They all believe
that the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New Yorker are authoritative. When she tried arguing with them about what they've
read in these outlets, they shoot back, "Oh, so you believe in fake news?" She said the "fake news" campaign has been extremely effective
in discrediting non-mainstream views. And since her friends are also PhDs, she was also frustrated at their refusal to consider evidence,
or entertain the idea that their preferred sources were biased.
One approach she has used that worked was to find information from other sources they could not reject, like Reuters and the Associated
Press, that had not been covered in the New York Times or better yet, contradicted what they wanted to believe, such as a Reuters
story describing how Germany opposed sanctions against Russia. But she clearly found it taxing to find these informational nuggets.
She also said they would not consider foreign sources, even the BBC or Der Spiegel or Le Monde.
Readers also discussed their frustrations in Links over the weekend. For instance:
"Shame" looks to me like the word of the week. I've heard from liberal/Democrat friends that they are "ashamed" of this
President. They are embarrassed by his behavior at NATO and Helsinki. I asked, "Who are you embarassed in front of? What does
that mean?" Then I got a link to a Thomas Friedman article .
I'm not sure how to answer my friends with grace. I don't want to be condescending by saying "Really, you read Tom Friedman
without a red pen in your hand?" What should I say? "I had no idea you were a globalist although you are kind of anti labor,
right?" Any suggestions for talking to Dems about this last week?
My usual answer is "I don't know why we need NATO now that the Cold War is over. Bush I promised Gorbachev not to expand
NATO into the former Warsaw Pact countries. Putin wanted to join NATO. Russia, especially the populous West is more European
than Asian. So why don't we have Russia join NATO. Wouldn't that solve the problem?
on talking to democrats. LOL. you and me both. Haldol as a prophylactic, perhaps. The Berners are a lot easier but the "mainstream" dem people have been difficult to talk
to for some time too many triggers and blind spots. They've become as reactionary as the tea party.. The aversion to figuring
out what we're FOR must be overcome.
Montanahaven, great post, and I don't know the answer on how to talk to Dems or the general gammit of duopoly supporters, but
I have been working on refining a technique I heard Tim Black talking about: "drop a few lines, and walk away". I am working
on inserting a few judgment free comments without argument, however it requires patience in listening to the ramble of the
other side. A few examples in my recent life:
Hillary Dem: "But Mueller found Russia was hacking. Blah Blah, Blah, 17 intelligence agencies"
Me: Did you know in 2003 Mueller helped lead us into Iraq and testified before Congress pushing WMD intel. [I did not
follow with anything about along the lines of "Is this guy trustworthy."]
Trump Repub: "People are killing each other in the streets, blah blah freeloaders, murder rate going up, blah
blah, this country is not the same, what happened to our country"
Me: "People are desperate, Americans are addicted
to opiates and will get it however they can, but someone peddling marajuana will get 10 years in prison, but the Sackler
family who wantonly pushed opiates on all of America are worth billions" [I could have argued that American crime rate has
gone down since the 80's, but I just wanted to divert their attention to a part of the current problem, not to start an
argument]
A few weeks later these folks repeated these talking points as their own, which is a win in my book. I have been trying
to drop stuff as subtly as possible and hope they find their own way. People get more entrenched on their viewpoint while
arguing, and more words often means less average impact per word. My sample size is admittedly low right now, so I will
continue observation.
Another approach, although it takes a great deal of patience, is to go Socratic and ask the true believers in your circle to provide
the support for their views. You may still be stuck with the problem that they regard people like Louise Mensch or Timothy Synder
or (gah) James Clapper as unimpeachable.
Of course, not everyone is dogmatic. On my way back to New York, I sat next to a Google engineer (PhD, possibly even faculty member
at Cornell since he'd gotten some major grant funding for his research, now on an H1-B visa and on track to have to leave the US
in the next year+ due to Trump changes in the program) who held pretty orthodox views. He wanted to chat and we were able to discuss
the Dems and even Russia. He even thanked me for the conversation as he was getting off the plane. But I knew I was lucky to find
someone who wasn't deeply invested in his views, or perhaps merely not invested in winning arguments.
Any further tips or observations would be helpful to everyone. Things will only get more heated as the midterms approach.
This is true. This is why I like Hamford's idea of information nuggets. You have to let people think you are on their side
while they come around to your ideas more or less on their own. If you give someone a good nugget that they take in as their own,
then you have more leverage to convince them of something grander.
And listen. Just listen. You don't have to agree with people to give them time and space to be heard. They are more likely
to reciprocate if you do.
Letting people "talk it out" works for strangers and acquaintances. They'll eventually run out of road or realize they've monopolized
the conversation and give you a chance to react, even if only out of politeness.
I find closer friends and family will chew your ear off mercilessly, and once they start, you're trapped. If you start poking
holes in their beliefs after they've gone on for a while, they'll feel betrayed. I find it best to say "that's nice" and walk
away to maintain your sanity. Don't mess with tribalism, you'll always lose.
Ha ha these posts resonate with me – my mother is a committed Rachel Maddow watcher and my best friend is a Trump supporter.
And both of them are otherwise very nice people and rather similar in terms of personality, interests, and outlook aside from
red team/blue team foolishness.
What I like to do with both of them is use the term BushBamaTrump. And at the slightest bit of pushback just jump right in
to all the things that have been done more or less the same under all three. It never gets through and you really can't change
people, but still. Gives me a bit of pleasure to at least throw a little wrench into their silly partisan blinkered world view
If you can't shift out of the partisan mentality, then all hope is really lost. My brain just does not compute this way and
I find it really hard to understand how someone else's does.
I find it difficult to break this construct without coming off as arrogant or cynical. I readily admit this feature in
myself could be a bug.
jump right in to all the things that have been done more or less the same under all three
Yes. Even though disagreements appear to be about issues, there's an underlying personal partisanship that often drives conversational
breakdown. This is particularly true for people on the right. Saying early on that Hillary was an awful alternative to Trump
can lower the temperature considerably. Going on to talk about issues and staying away from Trump bashing is a follow through.
Hamford's approach is one that I have used with the people I live around(supermajority Repubs, altho much of that is habit
and/or single issue apathy is the only growing demograph)
Introducing doubt, "short, sharp shock", and then they worry over it for a day or a week, and later they seem to have incorporated
it into their weltanshauung.
That is, indeed, a win.
I've much more experience, given my habitus(central texas wilderness) with culture jamming and otherwise undermining the orthodoxy
of republicans. To talk about important things with them, one must avoid numerous trigger words that cause salivation or violent
conniptions.
Finding these rhetorical paths has been enlightening, to say the least. like talking about unionism by using the Chamber of
Commerce as an example, or playing on their own memories of the Grange or the Farmer's Co-Op or even going directly at the cognitive
dissonance, as in "hey, wait a minute if we have freedom of religion, aren't I by necessity free to be a Buddhist?"
Similarly, I've found that using the language of Jesus gets results, unless my interlocutor is too far gone into the whole
warrior Christ thing. I'm still working on how to do this with Team Blue.
Like with the R's, the D's have an emotional attachment, and a psychological need, to avoid believing that their party is in
any way less than pristine and above board.
Similarly, I remember a discussion of the Puma's (Hillary's 08 supporters) wherein they were so caught up with Herstory(!)
that an attack on (or even criticism of) Hillary was an attack on their Identity.
Stages of Grief applies the acceptance we wish for is a big step for most people, because the manifest problems are so huge
and complex and intertwined that acknowledging them feels like giving in and even giving up.
It's a big problem, and I thank you for addressing it.
The forces arrayed against civil discourse are huge and well funded(which is, in itself, a sort of indictment and indicator)
Speaking as a member of the clergy, I have a suggestion about how to use the teachings of Jesus to reach Team Blue, whether
or not they subscribe to Christianity in some form.
One of the most radical of Jesus' teachings, one that is often given lip service but is extremely difficult to put into
practice, is the commandment that we love our enemies and pray for them.
I have come to believe that the Russiagate attacks on Trump are driven not by reason but by pure hatred, a sin which always
blinds. While there are many reasons to oppose much of Trump's policies and actions, we must not allow ourselves to wallow in
personal hatred of the man himself. If Jesus doesn't work here for some of Team Blue, MLK, who taught the same message, is an
excellent alternative. Take away the visceral hatred of Trump, and he will be opposed, much more reasonably, ethically, and effectively.
I agree: whenever possible, Trump the individual should be ignored, since too many people seem unable to separate the man from
the systems, processes and interests in play.
When it's all about Trump, he wins. You'd think people would have realized that by now, but take a look at Alternet, where
it's literally "All Trump All The Time," and you see how trapped in their fears and illusions liberals are.
As Lambert and others insist, make it about issues and policy; that's how people can (eventually, hopefully) be reached over
time. As the saying goes, they lose their minds in crowds/herds, and will only regain their sanity one at a time.
The added benefit is that ignoring Trump's provocations goes a ways toward depriving him of oxygen. Ignoring him is one of
the few ways to drive him crazy(er), takes away much of his effectiveness, and provides the personal satisfaction of being able
to do something against him, even if just passively.
I'm really hopeful that Michael Hudson's upcoming book on the roots of Christianity will open up a whole new conversation for
people of all views, particularly the role of debt and 'what we owe to one another'. Or when we should, and what we shouldn't,
owe one another.
IMVHO, Trump is the apotheosis of a debt-based form of greed, which conventional politics mostly exalts and exacerbates, but
doesn't seem to really understand -- and papers over its social costs [see also: FoxNews, CNBC]. In this form of (leveraged) debt,
the debtor owes absolutely nothing to society, irrespective of the social dislocations that his/her debt creates.
I find that people who get caught up in Dem/Repub conflicts are unreachable on political terms, but if the conversation shifts
to economics, to outrage at financial shenanigans, to who 'owes' what to whom, the emotional tone shifts and the conversations
are much more engaged.
The R's that I know tend to affiliate with 'lenders', but have an abhorrence of debt. They seem weirdly incapable of grappling
with the social and political implications of debt. To them, debt is a sign of weakness. I find myself struggling to grapple with
their worldview on the general topic of 'debt'.
The D's that I know tend to at least be able to think about debt as a means to an end: an education, a home, a business idea.
But they seem to experience debt as a form of guilt, or powerlessness, a lot of the time. The people in my life who fall into
this category are very careful with money, but they are also capable of carrying on a conversation about social meaning of debt.
I don't think it is any accident that the two most articulate, informed voices in current politics are on the 'left', and their
expertise and focus is on debt: Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. I suspect that is because debt is one of the most fundamental
social-political-cultural issues of our time.
I do come across as a bit of a nutter, and bloodthirsty to boot. However, in my defense, I am increasingly encountering
extremism as the base line for discussions, really arguments, in my daily encounters. This comes from both ends of the political
spectrum. This I perceive as a sign of desperation.
The Third Way 'faux left' movement is running out of steam as the inequality that it was designed to enable takes hold, and
disenchants those that the movement required to at least be neutral in order for it to do its 'work.' The Right wing has always
cultivated a sense of being oppressed in order to cultivate the sense of 'belonging' to a 'special' and 'chosen' people. I have
been called "dirty socialist" and even less salubrious terms so many times, I've developed somewhat of a thick skin to the insult.
The problem with that is that those who are doing the insulting are dead serious in their obloquy. This can escalate into actions.
Therein lies the rub. the step from verbal abuse to physical abuse must be guarded against and, if encountered, short circuited.
Hence, the comment about the probable bad results of trying to crash someone's SHTF refuge.
I have worked with several ex-cons during my work life. Jail is the pressure cooker of power relations for Western society.
All the ex-cons said that threats, even when coming from obviously superior physical specimens must be responded to quickly and
decisively. As one man put it, "Even if you have to take a beat down. Make the point that you will fight. Once is usually enough.
After that, people in jail will leave you alone." Another man related the tale of a small man in prison who was being groomed
for 'bitchdom' by a much bigger man. "The big guy poked the little guy in the chest and started to say something. The little guy
grabbed the finger and broke it. Then this tiny tornado tore into the big guy. Man! Nobody f -- -d with the little guy again.
He was crazy everybody said. Some of the older cons said that he was smart."
It may not be relevant yet, but America certainly does seem to be sliding into a full blown Police State. As such, the etiquette
of prison is slowly being imposed on the civil society. Pure power relations are becoming the norm. This manifests in our more
genteel disputations.
So, my present reply to people who take me to task for not voting for Her Royal Highness is to say; "Thank you for giving us Trump.
Without your gallant efforts, we would have had a decent government, under Bernie." Then, as one of the above comments suggests,
I walk away, and make sure our Urban Bug In Bag is ready.
That is a frightening observation and I believe it is unfortunately accurate. Relations in the workplace certainly have resembled
this since 2008. Civil society was next.
A brilliant compaction. And nice (fascinating being even better desc.) to see the longer version as well. Skynet apparently
liked it too.
My poor wife has somewhat 'come around' (been dragged along) because many of the predictions (that I get from NC)seem to materialize
in one way or another, but on the flip side we have lost what we thought were real friends (fortunately few), largely because
of my inability to shut up (at least I don't do it until asked some hard to get out of question) combined with insufficient command
of a given subject – alas, all given subjects it seems.
We do find out who our 'real' friends are when we go a little 'off the reservation' with subjects having a significant emotional
content. I have found that I also discover personal biases by observing what subjects being 'rejected' by others give me pain.
I have been surprised at some of my personal biases. Don't be too hard on yourself about those things that you need to study more.
Everyone has those kinds of subjects. I certainly do. Yesterday's thread on the lowly apostrophe was such a wake up call to me.
It seems to me that the longer the person has supported the Democratic Party the more they are resistant to changing their
views. The affiliation comes to resemble that of a football fan to her favorite team. People who've changed their political affiliation
over the course of their lives, and especially those who have done so relatively recently, are more open-minded and willing to
consider evidence contrary to their current views.
Not to quibble, but your observation takes on the appearance of a 'chicken or egg' problem. As the Political Fundamentalists
showed, politics is a long term game. That's one reason that Lamberts comment about the Democrat party and their 'missing' ground
game is so pertinent.
Fair enough, Chuck, but I think you might be missing a very important bit: the fact that many people who are otherwise
staunch rank-and-file supporters might also have an otherwise invisible breakpoint, or fault line. I say this as a former Dem
Party supporter, who did the full song and dance – supported Hillary, supported Kerry before that, and was a total devotee to
Obama. I was as tied to the Dem party as anyone not getting a paycheck could be, and when Obama won, I was elated. I thought that
things would really change.
The Financial Crisis was a rude, rude awakening. The pretty speeches meant little, and did even less. If anyone had a hand
in setting fire to my generally moderate viewpoint, it was Obama himself, his worship for Wall Street, and his inability to put
up a fight about anything. It was a weird time for me, politically, but 2008-2016 was what set the stage, while the last set of
primaries only confirmed what I had felt in my gut for many years.
I think there are many out there, struggling like I did. They'll show. Eventually. I'd say that the famous line about the center
not holding applies here, but I'm likely missing a ton of context.
My 'turn' was when Nancy P. swiped "impeachment" off the gilded table in 2006, Right • After • The • House • Elections. So,
when shortly there after, while listening to Obama give his inaugural address, all I could say was "we'll see ??" . Then came
his cabinet appointments, and from then on the d-party lost me with their passive-aggressive "We'll have to $ee what's in it AFTER
WE VOTED FOR IT" FU tactics.
Mediation in kindergarten words: Listen, Talk, Ask, Agree, Write.
Listen is first. Would you expect to walk into any fundamentalist church or mosque and change minds? Conversation among
strangers gets more specific along commonalities until it hits a split point, then drops down a level. If nothing in common, there's
always the weather. That's universal.
Which blogger was it, trying to change the world when he realized he was only reaching the 5% who thought like he did, & stopped?
Think how hard it is to undo economics class learnin' and understand MMT.
Politically, these are not going to be new customers. I can't find number of new voters for AOC, but turnout was less than
1 in 5. She gained trust by knocking on doors. You can't reach the frontal lobes if the amygdala is signalling threat.
If you find points of agreement, you can move the conversation to universal. Then to concrete and material.
This dovetails with hamsher above, whose defiines success as hearing his talking points adopted by those he has dropped them
on. The key is to be nonjudgmental .
there are two statements which have worked in my recent exchanges with liberals:
1)
Obama has bombed more nations than Bush
2) no one person did more to put donald trump in office than hillary clinton (extreme, indisputable malfeasance against sanders
in the primary)
although many seem completely ready to discard 'russian collusion' i still hear 'why is he trying to be friends with putin?'
on a regular basis.
any criticism of obamacare is immediately discarded, even though many know someone who has health insurance but doesn't have
health care.
i keep trying to argue that democrats are best served if abortion is constantly under threat. that most democratic politicians
strongly prefer this situation, as it would otherwise be close to impossible to motivate people to get out to the polls. (or,
likewise, republicans and gun rights) so far, this doesn't seem to work.
calling out tesla as a nonsense scam is working pretty well, though. (monorail!)
also, pointing out that new research shows that
wifi/cellphone exposure increases miscarriage risk is starting to gain traction. i cringe everytime i see a toddler playing
with an i-pad. (obviously not a liberal issue, but it helps to dispel the fog of complacency)
Here is my general approach, good or bad towards Hillary "liberal" or establishment think or whatever you may call it. I think
it helps put the burden of proof to the fake news'ers
On Russia – the biggest "liberal" fake new angle for years now – I say "Not one single piece of evidence has ever been
presented that Russia meddled in the election. Not one single piece. The same agencies that said WMD in Iraq are now telling us
Russia meddled. This is Democrat's WMD in Iraq moment."
I ask them to "show me the money" if they can point to any evidence to support the claim Russia hacked. Depending on how much
time I have, I can shoot it down (like the click bait social media example that is full of holes) but there is so much non-sense
out their I am always up on the latest.
Re: discussing what's happening with people I just gave up. Partially because I couldn't keep calm in the face of being labeled
a "white cis gendered Russia loving hate monger." Partially because the medium for debate my friends and I were using was Facebook,
which is really not a great tool for serious discussions. Partially because it took so much time and energy and garnered no rewards.
Most of my circle of friends ardently believe the following:
(1) the Democrats are significantly different from the Republicans and suggesting otherwise is lying. This gets you the most
violent reactions from most people.
(2) all or most of what Trump is doing is a significant departure from the Obama administration.
(3) withholding votes or voting for other candidates than "electable Democrats" is equivalent to voting for fascists.
(4) US citizens who live in depressed economic areas are to blame for their own problems because they vote against their own
interests and won't move to better places.
(5) increased immigration, increased globalism, and free trade agreements like TPP are policies we should support.
(6) Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, etc. are not monopolies and anti-trust law should not be used to break them
up.
(7) solutions to inequality in public education should not include busing children from poor areas to wealthy areas. Or vice
versa.
(8) our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan must continue.
(9) we need identity politics in this country.
(10) the world would be better off if Hillary was president. P.S. she was robbed by Russians, misogynists, and electoral manipulation
from the fascistic Trump campaign.
When I try to mention that all of those points are debatable at best, and admittedly I do that with varying degrees of success,
they do not accept it. Any of it. They find discussions of what happened during the Obama administration which either lead to,
or was similar to, what Trump is doing now tiring and painful. Mentioning how poorly the HRC campaign was run, how HRC laundered
money through local state dem orgs, the wasted millions in consultants, the lack of campaigning in key states, globalism, etc.
get you a soulful vomiting of Russia/Misogyny/Fascism. They will ask why you focus on the Democrats, and not the Republicans.
It's the Republicans fault we're here and their voters deserve rock suffer.
Humor or analogy doesn't work on this topic either. If you mention something like both parties blame outsiders for their troubles,
except Republicans blame people from Mexico and Democrats blame people from Michigan, you get angry stares. If you mention both
parties want to go back in time to a better, safer place, except for Republicans it's an imaginary 1950 something and for Democrats
is an imaginary 2006, you'll end up drinking alone.
I realized that the only thing I was doing was aggravating my friends and hurting my cause. They're all too high strung to
have discussions. They don't want to consider that the status quo ante that they think was great was only "great" for a select
portion of the country. They might have admitted that progressives and leftists weren't happy with the Obama administration in
2016. They have no space for that kind of thinking now. So I logged out of FB and Twitter, deleted the apps and spend the time
doing other things. I will talk to people about this stuff if they're interested and if it's in person. I stop when I see their
body language shift to 'uncomfortable.'
The other thing I've been doing is working to support local candidates who believe in th kind of policies I want to see in
my community. I think that's a much better way to use my time and political energy.
Good luck to anyone who wants to try and fight this battle with words. No one is reading or listening anymore. They just want
red meat and a torch to join their preferred mob. And with what's happening if you post something a boss or other person finds
objectionable, I strongly recommend the virtues of self censorship and keeping your mouth shut until this time passes.
These were all people who I know and associate with off line. What surprised and saddened me was that they couldn't leave an
argument behind.
I can leave an FB discussion on FB. I have other topics to discuss when I'm with my friends. They can't do that anymore.
It was that fact more than anything that lead me to believe there was no benefit in trying to post articles or participate
in social media discussions. No one is listening. Everyone in my socal circle is feeling too raw to have measured discussions
about how we got here and where we could go next.
I've experienced the same from long time friends or who I thought were friends. For months after the election all they could
talk about was 'Hillary was robbed.' I let them vent because it seemed like a grieving time for them. After six months or so,
when they still could not talk about anything else even if I tried shifting the conversation to family or gardening or something,
then I knew they were caught up in more than grieving. I'm starting to wonder if this is the fury of people who suspect they've
been conned and are determined to prove they were not conned. 'The most qualified candidate ever' was a terrible campaigner.
From 2016: https://www.businessinsider.com/clinton-losing-wisconsin-results-2016-11
My outlook now is that people determined to prove they were not conned then will need to find their way back to calmness.
In Roger Stone's book, The Making of the President 2016 , there was a passage about people, many of them on the left,
who view those who disagree with them as truly evil people.
What comes next explains a lot about what we've seen since the election. Quoting Stone:
"This is a very immature worldview that produces no coping skills."
Yes! Plz someone tell me a way to discuss immigration at the border and separating families. The word on the street that 10k
of those 12k children being separated were ACTUALLY being 'trafficked' and WITHOUT their REAL parents in the first place.
There are a lot of Dem Nuts on facebook that harrassed the heck out of me and since I posted #walkaway, as an astute BERNIE
supporter, this has SHOCKED many and I been unfriended 5 times.
8 million MISSING children and our FBI has only reunited/found 526?
Please don't post such serious charges about trafficked children without sources. As far as I know not even the Trump administration
in its own defense is claiming to have identified trafficked children at those levels.
I'm going to try to put together a comment later today about what we know of the current situation, the need to understand
what was happening pre-Ttrump, and what may be happening to the children now after separation. It will probably be on the links
thread, as it's not directly related to the coping issue of this thread.
So, I made the below comments in today's LINKS. But I will emphasize a different aspect here – in the Links comment my point
was the reporter was wrong (about Obama representing the 1% – I think he did). Here my point is that she enforces dogma and
insinuates disloyalty in any heretic.
fresno dan
July 24, 2018 at 7:25 am
Why So Many Reporters Are Missing the Political Story of the Decade Washington Monthly. Versailles 1788.
Frankly, someone needs to tell this guy (i.e., Bernie Sanders) to sit down and shut up for a while. Reinforcing the notion
that a party that was led by Barack Obama for eight years has merely been representing the one percent contributes to the divide
and reinforces Republican lies.
====================================================
party that was led by Barack Obama for eight years has merely been representing the one percent
BESIDES believing that Obama DIDN'T represent the 1%, I'm sure this reporter believes:
1. The earth is flat
2. Elvis is alive
3. The living head of John F. Kennedy is kept at the CIA
4. There are 2 Melania Trumps
5. that Hillary got more white women voters than Trump .
other examples are welcome
on that inability to confront the less stellar record of Obama: it's the same process that happened(and is happening, I'd argue)
on the Right .and that happens, over and over, when science chips out another block in the wall of religious certainty.
Fear of the disenchantment of having been wrong, or fooled they'll resist tooth and claw from admitting being descendants of apes
.even when they feel/know in their secret hearts that it's true.
With the Dems(non-Berner subspecies), it's acute right now.
They must defend the paradigm at all costs, because to do otherwise is to open the door to a frightening and incomprehensible
world that would demand their attention and resolve. For so long, the ire was safely directed at the Right it's their fault we
can't have nice things, they are a regressive existential threat, omgomgomg. This is rendered tolerable by the belief that the
Dems are their team, on their side and the polar opposite of the hateful Right.
This latter set of assumptions was thrown into existential even ontological doubt by numerous reports, surveys and even by plain
old look-out-the-window observation.
The belief and the Reality couldn't be reconciled(America is not already great for a whole bunch of folks) and the Nature of the
newly perceived Reality was so ugly, and so huge, that they recoil into paradigm defense.
a giant edifice of bullshit is inherently unstable, it turns out.
The challenge, as I see it, is to acknowledge that the Way We Do Things is falling apart, and that it should fall apart, if
we really believe all the high minded rhetoric we perform to each other and then to try to figure out what system/paradigm we'd
like to replace it to use the chaos and destruction of the trump era to our advantage.
So more and more, in lib/dem/prog* social spaces, I'm asking "what are we for?"
(* the confusion of tongues here is both instructive and disheartening and encouraging(!). asking folks to define such things
is resulting in less fury and spittle and froth, and more with either silence or thought and honest questioning. at least in my
little circles )
I can't beat what notabanker said:
notabanker
July 24, 2018 at 8:26 am
If you can't shift out of the partisan mentality, then all hope is really lost. My brain just does not compute this way and I
find it really hard to understand how someone else's does ..
==============================================
"Independent" self sufficient Americans .join groups called political parties that as a rite of passage evidently require the
adherents to believe idiotic, inconsistent things.
But another thing is that the number of people who even belong to political parties isn't that great. But they set the agenda.
It would be great if the one group of unthinking believers cancelled out the other group of unthinking believers, but of
course the adherents are so blind to reality that that can't see that the difference between Bush's Goldman Sachs' Treasury Secretary
and Obama Goldman Sachs' Treasury Secretary is .????
NOW, of course there were real differences between Obama and Bush .Obama droned a LOT more.
Thank you, Yves and the community. This situation applies in the UK, too. It's amazing to meet people who took time off to
protest against Trump, but won't against homelessness or austerity.
Yes, the Irish media used to be moderately independent, but they are getting in line too. Over the weekend I nearly threw my
copy of the Irish Times away in disgust at reading some of the articles from writers I'd consider pretty clear minded normally.
They are just gradually absorbing the message by osmosis I think.
When someone here rants about Trump, I usually say something like 'well,what exactly has he done thats worse than anything
Obama did to, say for example, Libya, or Honduras?' I'd love to say I get a thoughtful response, but thats rarely the case. Interestingly,
I find that its the people who profess themselves as non-political or don't read the newspapers much who are more open to discussion.
I'm sure that a lot of NC readers have, over time, experienced some amount of pain associated with the dissolution of long-held
beliefs surrounding the American dream, and faith in our economic, and political systems abilities to ' self-correct
'.
It's been very painful to realize that ' things ' are not going to get better if we simply vote for the other team.
Over many decades, both the ' other teams ' have pointed fingers at each other and invited us to believe that our
problems originated on the other side of the fence, when in reality, as many of us now understand, our two political parties have
all the while, worked in collusion to forward the interests of the rich and powerful, the result of which has been wide spread,
and extreme economic hardship for most of us.
This failure of our politics has engendered a wide spread visceral hatred of our leadership class, that so far, has remained
loosely in the control of the two political parties, but, and I think this a good thing, there is a dawning understanding among
a significant number of us, that the hatred of Hillary, and her party, is well deserved, and rooted in exactly the same reality
as the hatred of George 'W', and his party.
All that hatred of the political parties and their leadership has so far, resulted in Trump, which in an odd sense is evidence
supporting optimism that the two parties strangle-hold on our lives is not invincible, and that there exists a wide-spread thirst
for change.
I think that thirst for change is the point where we have an opportunity to make conversation fruitful, and find common ground.
I'm sure that a lot of NC readers have, over time, experienced some amount of pain associated with the dissolution of long-held
beliefs surrounding the American dream, and faith in our economic, and political systems abilities to 'self-correct'.
It's been very painful to realize that 'things' are not going to get better if we simply vote for the other team.
================================================
I don't know how many times I have heard that voting for a third party is "throwing your vote away"
REALITY, that voting for a democrat* or a republican is throwing your vote away, never seems to sway anyone.
* maybe there are individual democrats that are worth voting for, but that is usually due to some screw up by the party apparatchiks
I wonder, sadly, if "engaging with liberals" might be, in fact, a lost cause. Struggling to find common cause with the
delusional amidst the collapse of empire, environmental catastrophe, and financial ruin might not be the best use of limited resources.
There's a guy running for local city council whose campaign I intend to work for, and anyone campaigning on Medicare-for-All (free
at the point of care, of course!), a minimum wage humans can live on, and anything else beneficial to people who work for a living
will get my jealously-guarded vote. But the rest looks more and more like the re-arranging the proverbial deck chairs.
I also think that this is not the time to try to argue. Many people (liberals) seem to have been shocked to their core by Clinton's
loss and the arrival of the barbarians. The world has come unhinged, it appears to them.
That is a deeply unsettling feeling that can induce a deep distress and panic. I think it's also new to most liberals because
things in America had proceeded pretty much sensibly, even during the Bush years. Also, I suspect many are at a stage in life
when they have settled their own sense of their lives on a platform of comfort with the status quo as personified by the liberal
consensus; or they are deeply committed ideologically for other reasons of self-identity.
The liberal establishment everyday is whipping the flames of people's panic and resulting outrage, and has created a huge firestorm.
The "resistance" gives people a way to make sense of the world again. They will hold onto the "resistance" with all their power
because admitting that the "resistance" is in any way flawed throws them back into a chaotic world. So any argument about this
stuff derives from a deep place and is not conducive to reasoning. You threaten them, if you try to take away their "resistance"
bear.
I also think it is better to put energy into other things, like building positive political movements or structures of life
that extend "under" the current debate. (If you go down below general political buzz words, you can sometimes find agreement across
political barriers.)
I still make general comments non-locally, but I do not engage with people individually about this. It's useless right now.
– Humans usually have a strong need to identify with a tribe
– In stressful times humans seem to want to simplify their lives, which can be done by joining a tribe, which allows you
to NOT think for yourself
– There are a lot of physical and mental benefits (and perceived benefits) to being a member of a tribe
– Humans have a remarkable ability to do things that are, in the long run, not to their own benefit
– Humans will too often defend their own self image to the death, because they don't have the self respect that comes with
a developed personality, and thus support their self-value through the groups they have chosen to identify with, the tribes
they feel they belong to
– Tribalism unfortunately seems to be mostly about screwing other tribes
Some additional tribes: Wall St bankers, corporate CEOs, police, teachers, Congress, your town, your state, sports fans, etc.
Very relevant commentary to which I can completely relate. I had to leave a certain FB group because it became increasingly
apparent that these mostly PhD, higher education types were not really interested in being the resistance or fighting fascism.
No, what they really want is a safe space/echo chamber in which they can whine about everything that has gone to shit while completely
ignoring how they themselves and the 'Democrat' party facilitated said shit's construction. The level of cognitive dissonance
was simply mind boggling.
No rational thought about how going along to get along contributed to the current situation, that the lesser of two evils still
gets you to the same destination. My working theory is they suffer from social detachment disorder due to their comfortable government
(many tenured professors) jobs. As I attempted to explain to one of them, the economic damage created by the policy responses
following the GR directly contributed to the door opening for Trump or something like him. These PhD types seem to be completely
willing to overlook the social injustice of the Obama tenure, growth of the surveillance state, economic monopolies etc.
Many of these people have not had to worry about a paycheck for some time, thus the complete disconnect from the realities
of the current economy. They talk a good game about fighting for social & economic equality, but when push comes to shove many
of them are willing to throw their working neighbor under the bus so they can keep their comfortable (not rich mind you) tenured
positions and lifestyles. If nothing else, the level of cognitive dissonance in this group certainly made me think about tenure
from a much different perspective. Certainly not an encouraging picture of higher ed for sure.
Thomas Frank has repeatedly pointed out that credentialed professionals were the most reliably Republican voting block in America
for decades. Now they're firmly democrat. Did their politics/interests change? Doubtful
The decades-long purge of any hint of leftists from the American university system (which started right here in California
in the 50's then spread out) has led to our extremely conservative tenure class of professors.
I've had the same experience with these credential class types. Their politics are uniformly anti-labor and elitist. There's
no convincing them.
I think that it is seldom clear in discussions what differentiates credentialed class from not. Just a bachelors degree? Bachelors
degree attainment is over 30% now among young people. They are luckier than many who don't have the degree, but with every white
collar job wanting a bachelors degree (often for fairly lowly work that didn't used to) and with a bachelors degree no guarantee
of anything (nope not even that white collar job) I'm not sure its all that. (BTW I don't have a bachelors degree, but I'm in
no good shape economically at all, if I had a degree maybe I'd be allowed to live, that is all .. so I consider it but without
illusion at 40 something).
I think what really protects people's jobs etc. is licensed professions (lawyers, doctors, CPAs, landscape architects etc.)
and in some cases those requiring post-bachelors attainment including years of additional training (physical therapists etc.).
Well and unionization in the public sector obviously and tenure in academia.
it's not in their class interest to care, well the tenured ones, the adjuncts it depends on who they identify with, with the
working class or with the tenured ones whose life they can't get anyway.
The average office worker would be more likely to care, although usually not political, and though they usually pretend otherwise,
and though they are taught to sympathize with the bosses, there is a chance they might at some level ultimately know the are pawns
in a game that they don't control and that can eat them alive (unlike those protected with tenure).
Ask the professors at Vermont Law School, 75% of whom just had tenure stripped unceremoniously. It's coming for them all. I
give it less than 10 years. These tenured types total lack of solidarity within their group or any other will finally come home
to roost.
My dear friend has been slogging through the trenches of the adjunct lifestyle for the better part of a decade and it's only
now at this late date starting to dawn on him that he'll never get regular work at the university. Those waves and easy smiles
from tenured faculty hid what they were thinking all along, "Better you than me pal!"
Not my country, but this is less a question of talking to "liberals" (who have their own problems) than of talking to conspiracy
theorists. All over the world, certain groups of people are finding that history has suddenly, in the last few years, veered off
in directions it has no right to. Since they refuse to believe they are responsible, however distantly, and since they seek, as
we all do, simple explanations for complex problems, it must be a conspiracy. And anyone who questions the existence of a conspiracy
is by definition part of it.
Because conspiracy theories serve essentially emotional and ideological purposes, rational discussion is by definition useless,
and studies show that pointing out that people are factually wrong actually makes them more likely to cling to their beliefs.
I'd recommend a site which discusses and dissects conspiracy theories (www.metabunk.org), and which has discussion threads
on how to argue with conspiracy theorists.
I was a Keynesian. I thought that meant the same as being a Democrat. Obama cured me of that mistake. Now, I'm in the Modern
Money camp. Explaining that to paygo liberals is an even bigger chore.
Yes, although I've found that when I simply explain basic MMT concepts to either repub or dem friends, I come across as non-political.
Because neither dems or repubs support it.
And I gain instant credibility/solidarity with them when I agree with their knee-jerk reaction that state/local governments
ARE constrained.
Americans, who pretend to fetishize individualism, are conformists
That's spot on. Perhaps it has to with out lack of a set class structure which makes people socially insecure. Plus the rise
of the meritocracy means that the worse thing you can call someone these days is "stupid" meaning uneducated. Life experience
gets little credit at a time when knowledge has been overly formalized.
However we can take some comfort in a history where periods of intense conformity such as the 1950s provoke periods of more
liberated thinking as in the 1960s. Things do seem to be changing–hopefully not for the worse. Patience with those vehement NYT
and WaPo readers may be necessary until the fever breaks.
My concern is that we have a poisoned public space, as it is hard to find the facts in the press or the body politic. Hard
to find common ground to discuss or solve problems. I think our democracy, what is left of it, is in deep trouble. I agree that
we need to talk to our neighbors about issues of the day. It is hard to overcome the do not talk about politics meme of the last
30 years.
I try really hard these days to talk about the system. Trump is a product of the system that we created and we need to change
to better everyone.
I try to be compassionate above all else. Trump supporters are not evil or selfish. They believed the lies of someone telling
them he was going to save jobs. We, as a nation, believed the lies of Obama's "hope and change" and it got us nowhere except a
little more hopeless. Its not about political affiliation. Its about the world oligarchs having entire control. I refuse to be
divided by what they want me to be divided by.
A fascinating and often painful subject. Being mostly a dismal failure in my own attempts, I've been keenly interested in and
come up with several 'types' (hardly exhaustive) that seem gifted with varying degrees of success in communicating though
I'm not sure about convincing others. Making others sit up and think (I should say 'having that effect' rather than 'making')
might be as far as most in this select group will ever get but I strongly suspect such exchanges can ultimately be very powerful
(meaning the 'other' will almost always do the changing of pov, or the expansion of understanding, under their own steam and in
their own time).
Trite as it may seem, those who have a strong core of honesty, or who always tend to gravitate toward truth, have the most
success in the above. They are the ones who seem to make headway under the most ridiculously difficult or impossible conditions.
That they often have a strong command of their subject seems (to me) to be a natural outcome of the affinity for truth rather
than truth being a result of knowledge breadth. They aren't always likeable but are often admirable.
After that, there are the 'warm intellectuals' and note that this categorization does not preclude honesty. My father was such.
He had a way of making all present feel welcome and valuable despite the intricacy of the discussion. One usually had to ferret
out his opinions or his 'take' on something as he rarely made an issue of it. But his conversation and 'presence' always made
fairness and decency seem cool; the natural order of things, and I know for a fact he had a profound influence on at
least some people – some hard core ones as well.
The ability to bend and compromise for a greater good (or in some cases for another purpose) is yet another 'type' who I see
as potentially having considerable power in their exchanges with others. I see them as having emotional energy and an ability
to see through the 'facts' or to 'suspend' them for a period. This is obviously a tricky – perhaps flawed (although in reality
they are all flawed) – category, home to intellectuals inclined toward the Machiavellian as well as do-gooders quickly judged
and relegated -not always justly- to the lot of suck-asses, and I image it has mixed results. It includes but is not the sole
domain of those with the facility to put themselves in anther's shoes (and occasionally get lost in so doing).
I am only describing those who can influence others of extreme or highly contrary positions and beliefs, not the relatively
larger group who can be eloquent in their own right but are not of note in dealing with made-up minds. Since we are all banging
about under varying degrees of illusion , the truly or profoundly successful ambassador, along with his/her close cousin
the successful negotiator, even the mundane every-man commenting on a blog or at a social gathering that provokes others to reassess,
is a rather unusual individual indeed. That there is some preponderance of such individuals on NC does not contradict the rarity
in general.
Perhaps just a very long winded way of saying, "Don't be too hard on yourself."
What I meant to say in the last sentence is, "I won't be too hard on myself ", but put in the general form while thinking
of it applying to me. I don't presume to give others such advice (though I imagine it holds for others as well ).
Also, since the process of changing or simply being influenced, always takes time, it is almost impossible to see or assess;
an unhappy circumstance for those who try at it rather than let it be an outcome..
Arguing with entrenched people is a lost cause but sarcasm = mercilessly tearing right into their own hypocrisy does the
work of shaming them for a while, especially if you make the point about a topic they are virtue signalling about. These people
do not have a policy idea in mind, they are pure virtue signallers.
Sarcasm is not to be confused with irony, which allows people to react mildly along "ha, ha, ha, oh my, what a world we live
in". You can always escape from irony but a good, hard sarcasm put the moral dilemma right out there and people cannot escape
their own crap poorly founded opinions.
Political talk has really become a competition as opposed to a conversation. If the conversation decends into competition I'll
try to ask "are there are any rules to this game?". When all else fails, go Socratic. Their answers can be enlightening.
I think it can be effective to do a virtual cannonball into the kiddie pool of their belief system. Like Maddow squared but
willing to connect the dots.
'Of course the Russians put Trump in, but the whole hacking story is part of a scam and a distraction. There's barely a
connection between the leaked emails and the election results. They are a sideshow to get Assange. No, the real story is that
the Russians had a high level operative inside the DNC. That's how the emails leaked. That is why the campaign was diverted
away from Wisconsin, for example, in favor of Arizona. It is why the campaign pulled strings to get airtime for Trump during
the GOP primary. It is why the DNC relied on bad software models and ignored experienced campaigners. Heck, it is why the DNC
ran Hillary, even though she was over 43% animatronic by the end of the primary.'
Then you reveal that the mole is Mook.
The more facts you can weave into an acceptable narrative, the more secret landmines you can slip into their bubble, until
the critical mass of cognitive dissonance causes a rupture
Watch out for the response being a psychotic break. I have had that happen when I got too carried away with 'weaponized humour'
in my arguments.
I mean not just angry outbursts directed in my direction but actual punches. These times are becoming physically dangerous.
I will generally, when I encounter a true believer Left or Right, let them get comfortable, agreeing with their critique of
the Other until they say something grotesquely hypocritical or patently false or deranged, and then I will call out the hypocrisy/bs
by way of pointing to it in their own party, then segway into something like 'MSNBC is part of the DNC, CNN is mockingbird CIA/DEEP
STATE, and FOX is Rupert Murdoch's geriatric limp dick. Sometimes I call myself an anarchist, because I am liberal about some
things and conservative about others and hypocrisy sucks. Wtf are Americans left and right going to pull their heads out of their
buttz and realize the country has been gutted and the people put in debt servitude to globalist corp, bank, billionaire and eternal
profiteering war/surveillance machine? Oh, and capitalism looks like a death cult if you are a pollinator or an ecosystem, so
wtf about your bloody party ."
Which rant I can sustain as long as the person can hear it. Sometimes with liberals though I just ask why they think Hillary
would have been a better president, and they usually realize at some point they have tied themselves in knots.
One quibble: It should be "Russia!Russia!Russia!", not "Russia!Russia!" – it makes the Jan Brady jokes a little funnier.
Anyway, with some people, I'm not sure if people should really be trying to "talk to" liberals, with the intent of changing
their minds. I remember similar discussions going on in Daily Kos around 2006 or so, but there they discussed how to "talk to"
conservatives, or people in rural areas, or "low information voters," as they liked to call them. It does seem a little condescending
– some people believe what they believe, and you're not going to be able to argue them out of their positions. As macnamichomhairle
posted above, the election of Trump really seems to have caused a psychic break in certain segments of society. I'm not sure if
agitating them any further would really be that helpful. It's gotten to the point that I wonder (only half-jokingly) if Trump
Derangement Syndrome will be included in the next volume of the DSM.
So, if you want to argue with people about something, make it sports. It seems that Americans are much more civil and mature
when it comes to arguing about that topic. That is, unless they're from Philadelphia.
when facing russia! putin! arguments, i usually retort with a big "i don't care" and paraphrase Mohammed Ali: "ain't no vladimir
putin ever set the middle east on fire and crash the global economy".
At first I was going to suggest using a lead pipe on so-called liberals as a coping strategy but I think that this is too serious
to joke about. Think about this. The US midterms take place on Tuesday, November 6, 2018 and only 16 days later you will have
Thanksgiving in the US. If you think that people are on edge now can you imagine what it will be like around Thanksgiving tables
this year?
Look, it is a real bad idea to tie your identity to any political party. Too much putting your faith in princes here – or princesses
too for that matter. I don't think that the US voting system helps either where they want you to register for Party A or Party
B which, when you think about it, kinda defeats the purpose of a secret ballet.
If people with phds are drinking the kool-aid and are not using their critical thinking skills, then how can you expect average
people to be convinced? I am not sure that you can but what you can do is undermine their beliefs. Don't let them shape the battlefield
of argument ('Or course everybody knows Russia did it!') or else it is a losing game. In any case, this whole thing reeks of the
old identity game where those in power set two sides to fiercely combat each other while skimming profits all the way to the bank.
An example of this? Democrats and Republicans hate each other's guts but when it come time to vote $1.5 trillion to the wealthiest
people in the country then it was bipartisan all the way, baby.
My birthday comes shortly after the election. I'm thinking of throwing a party for myself and inviting liberal Democrats, libertarians,
Republicans, Greens, independents, and those who refuse to be classified.
Thanksgiving in the US. If you think that people are on edge now can you imagine what it will be like around Thanksgiving
tables this year?
hmmm if the MSM determine too many of the midterm winners are the *wrong* sort of people then watch out for more MSM, Thanksgiving
weekend, crazy stories, as in 2016. Properly speaking or not. ;)
For a discussion to occur, both sides have to be willing and able to listen. While most people claim both, in my experience
especially the latter (able to) is a learned skill which majority lacks (of all bents, not just liberals etc.).
Hence after this was tested, I do not discuss anymore, I rant, if I feel like it.
Talk about small, but 'respectably' sourced news stories instead of whatever's dominating the current news cycle – stories
where the DNC spokespeople haven't already poisoned the well by telling people "This is your team's official position, there's
no need to make up your own mind."
Give the liberal a chance to make up their own mind on the small story. Chances are that they sympathize with the underdog
in that story – showing how 'liberals care'.
Then – if you're in the mood – spring the trap:
"You're absolutely right to be concerned about the underdog in [story A]. The compassion -that's why people like liberals!
By the way, why do you think that [famous dem spokesperson] doesn't show the same compassion regarding [morally analogous but
more mainstream news controversy B]?"
"Russian meddling, eh? That's a scary country. I've been reading about Russia in the 90s. The average life expectancy of the
whole country went down by years after the communist government collapsed. Old people dying alone in their apartments from easily
treatable illnesses. Yeah, it IS terrible. Yeah it IS disgusting and immoral. Oh by the way, that's around the time they switched
to a for-profit medical system like we have. Weird huh?"
The inability to talk politics with others of differing views is hardly limited to the US even if it expresses itself in different
ways. I have family in France (je suis une pičce rapportée – in-law) and it's almost identical to the US. As even my wife is somewhat
of a 'guest' when we go over now, You simply avoid subjects where you know it could get too hot and so do they among themselves.
Things are not at all as cut and dry as they were (at least seemed) back in the late 60's early 70's when students AND workers
united massively in common cause.
A few years ago, I had a discussion that turned into an argument with a friend visiting from France who is an economist by
training but made his pile (of comfortable not gargantuan size) in real estate. It turned around Jeremy Corbyn with my argument
that as long as people are really hurting, social/political/economic justice movements will thrive and often succeed in radical
change and his argument that 1) he is an economist and therefore knows what he is talking about and 2) Corbyn is simply
unacceptable and unworkable in todays economy , c'est tout!
How horribly frustrating for me not to have a good command of the subject, getting hot under the collar is not a compelling
argument, (though I didn't let him get away with the, being an economist, braggadocio), but on the good side, our friendship survived
the bout and we holstered our pistols for the rest of their visit.
I find arguments of systemic problems, corruption, absence of actual solutions, divide conquer, class war, rather than D vs
R work best.
Example:
Ask anyone who has a problem with immigrants why not one politician demands an arrest of a ceo and board members for illegal hiring
practices. Put them in jail just for a weekend and things would dramatically change over night. We don't need to cage many thousands
of desperate people, just a few greedy ones. Like them or not, quit blaming desperate poor people for crawling through a nasty
river and horrific desert to get a crappy job. If the illegal hiring didn't exist they wouldn't come. As for children and adults,
once 'we' have them captured, under our control, how they exist is all about us, not them.
And then I shut up. You have to know when to shut up.
At other times I love reminding D's or R's and especially those who are neither, the D's and R's are at best 27 percent of
the eligible voters. Independents are far greater in number than they are and 'refuse to vote' for any of them are greatest of
all. The D's and R's both have a super majority against them for good reasons which are being ignored at all our peril. That they
are not listening, not asking, not representing. They are owned and we are all being played like a two dollar banjo. Fighting
for either one of them is exactly what they want and need to keep the con alive.
I keep reminding people this is not professional football, you don't have to watch, much more you are not forced to pick between
two teams, please choose neither like most of us are doing because we need an entirely new game. Issues, not personality. Because
all owners are always a winner, cashing in, if you do.
More generally speaking, there are actually clinical trials of ways to be persuasive. Doctors need this for the difficult patients:
the heart patients who don't want to take their meds, the addicts who don't want to quit, etc. It's worth looking up:
Motivational Interviewing . The link is to a course
offered by Citizens' Climate Lobby, designed to help their members deal with climate change denial.
The key, they say, is forming partnerships. Disagreement can take the form of fights, arguments or partnerships, with only
the last providing some prospect for relief.
So providing the "perfect squelch" or putting down one's opponent is the very last thing you want to do. Finding areas of agreement
and building on those is the royal road to something more positive.
I've also found some of the worst offenders in the environmental community. These are often former bureaucrats who want to
keep the (bankrupt) process in place, but encourage a different outcome. They want to be the "good guys," and judge the environmental
"bad guys" rather than make a significant change.
I tend towards the Socratic approach, both for establishment Democrats and the larger universe of people I disagree with in
person. It generally means doing more listening than talking, which I know is a downside for some, but letting people talk things
out in front of you with occasional nudges in the right direct does a decent job of moving them gradually in the right direction,
and leaves them with an impression of you as a friendly good-listener with whom they have some disagreements rather than that
asshole yelling about nonsense.
I'm going to throw out my tips that I've used for years to talk politics in various environments (office, family gatherings,
etc).
1) Keep context in mind if you're in the office, keep encounters brief and cordial, couple of news headlines as you breeze
by for a couple of minutes. Crack a couple of jokes and try to keep it light. But choose your topics with care, especially if
you don't know the person really well.
2) Find common ground: with trumpers you can rail against clintons, obamas, and dem hypocrisy. with clintonites you can talk about how excited you are that Ted Cruz has a real challenge, Paul Ryan's retiring, all the damage
Trump is doing to the establishment repubs, etc. Tell them the positive thing about Trump winning is that ALL THE OTHER REPUBS
LOST .badly!
3) As far as genuinely changing minds .THESE THINGS TAKE TIME! Some minds aren't open to being changed, some will periodically
open and close, and some of us are genuinely trying to figure out WTF is going on in the world (which is why we come to NC!) In
any case, minds get changed over weeks and months, not a couple of hours.
4) Understand and remember that you DO NOT have all the answers and think about all things you've changed your mind about over
the years and it helps to open minds to SHARE stories with people about what changed your mind and why. If you're not sure why
you think what you think, go figure out why! :)
5) Once you've got a certain comfort level, don't be afraid to crack a joke that aggravates the other person, but don't overdo
it and don't do a lot of public mocking/shaming.
6) When someone else uses 5) on you, practice to make sure you DO NOT get too mad about it. Get thicker skin, if you can't
do it .then you aren't ready to talk politics.
7) Yes, that includes people saying ignorant stuff. That doesn't mean you have to grin and bear it, you don't and you shouldn't.
Drop a mild rebuke (no more and no less) and change the subject. Don't ostracize or shame. Keep interacting with people, as much
as they want to do so. We've all said stupid $h!t at one time or another, we can and should all be able to forgive/forget. I've
certainly said my fair share. But also, people do change their minds over time. It's helpful if you can guide them in a positive
direction.
8) Talk about the context in which things happen and put yourself in other people's shoes. This is something I've learned a
lot in the last few years and people forget to step back and look at things from a high level. I've been amazed at how much more
sense things can make when you think more about context.
My coping method is mostly avoidance, but if I did intervene it would be something like this:
I agree Trump is ill-suited to the job and has horrible policies.
If Russia (or Russians) interfered with the election, if Trump and his cronies participated in that, or if Trump and cronies
had other dealings with Russian that are illegal, Mueller is the right person to figure it out. His whole career has been defending
and strengthening the pre-Trump status quo, the "norms" of the military-industrial-corporatist-security complex. If there's a
way to push us back in that direction, there may be no one on earth more committed to that job.
Our job is to examine the impacts of current Trump policy, the roots where applicable in those status quo "norms",
issues other than Russia that weaken and corrupt our electoral system, failures of centrist Democrat policies to solve problems;
and to promote alternative policies and politicians. None of this will be adddressed by any negative Mueller consequences to Trump,
and maybe to a few of those around him.
Whether it's committed liberals (eg, super strong Big D voters) or committed conservatives, there's really not much point in
"talking."
I accidentally said something truthful about Trump's/the Republicans' recent tax law, and my super conservative sister launched
into a tirade that came right out of Rush Limbaugh's mouth. I hadn't meant to stir the pot, either, and what I said was pretty
nothingburger. I let her rant for a few minutes; explained my side very graciously and calmly (mainly that MY taxes have been
raised, not lowered as advertised), and then I changed the topic.
I know a very few D voter friends who are starting to pay more attention – it's taken a while but they are – and they're starting
to see that Big D is NOT their savior, at least, not as they currently exist. Of course, I have Big D friends who revile Bernie
Sanders as the worst of the worst, and they're HORRIFIED that he's a socialist!!!111!!!!! Well, there's nothing to say there.
Mostly if I'm thinking about it, I'll drop in a few salient points – as some other commenters have suggested, above – and then
mostly walk away.
The Big Fat Propaganda Wurlizter has done it's job, and HOW. And it's not just about conservatives ranting out the usual Fox/Rush
rightwing talking points. Now it's so-called liberals ranting out the latest from, I guess (no tv, never watch), Rachael Maddow
and similar.
I can barely ever listen to what passes for "nooz" on NPR, but possibly they get their talking points from there, as well.
Some of those talking points now come up regularly in the weekend game shows. I duly noted that "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" had
James EFFEN Comey on last weeked. R U Kidding ME???? Of course, I didn't listen.
So, go figure.
Both sides are being heavily brainwashed by our M$M. For me: No TV at all and precious little radio (mostly music stations).
And judicious nooz paper reading.
Get my real info at sites like this one.
Thanks to all who comment logically here in reality-land.
In general, the way I deal with the liberals, partisan Dems, Hillary crowd or whatever you call it, is in person (I'm not on
FB) with this type of statement:
"Not one single piece of evidence has every been presented showing Russia meddled in the election. Not one. We don't even have
grounds to investigate such a thing. And what evidence we do have points away from Russia. The same agencies that said WMD in
Iraq are now saying Russia meddled in the election, have you learned nothing? Russiagate is Democrat's WMD in Iraq moment."
That usually silences them because they don't have any evidence and some even know that. If they offer "evidence" (like the
social media click bait adds) I am usually familiar enough show how silly the examples given are.
I hike regularly w/my buddy who is a 73 year old Nam vet, I am a 65 year old conscientious objector he is blue collar for generations,
I am college educated family for generations New Deal Dems forever.
Our concerns in life are the same, the well being of our adult children and grandchildren, our relationships w/our spouses,
how to manage our retirements. But Oh do we talk politics! He teases me that I'm a Trumpster because of my deserved critiques
of Clinton, Obama and my anger at that gang of liars, as if that means I think Trump and his band of "obligerant" oligarchs are
great! (oblivious and belligerent)
The executive branch is a huge about-to-become-extinct dinosaur w/the brain of a tiny reptile, little realizing only the little
mammals will survive, while still imagining itself to be king of the place forever.
I think the shortest explanation of the "intellectual dark web" is that any community that
dedicates itself to the proposition that reasoned debate must be had, and bad ideas must be
crushed in the crucible of discourse, will, by its nature and the nature of human society,
soon have a lot of hangers on who believe in bad ideas but who are willing and eager to
discuss them.
Discussion will then happen, but, ideas tend not to be crushed entirely out of society.
Even if, for example, Harris devastates Peterson in a discussion about truth, even if his
audience recognizes this, Peterson isn't going to admit it, and Peterson's audience isn't ALL
going to admit it, and Peterson's audience isn't all even going to know about that particular
conversation. So Peterson's ideas will continue to exist on at least some level, and the
discussion will happen again, and again. And the community will become a place where the bad
idea is accepted as at least minimally reasonable- reasonable enough to discuss.
Similarly, the shortest explanation of the social justice left is that any community that
dedicates itself to the proposition that some ideas threaten people and therefore ought not
be articulated, will, by its nature and the nature of human society, soon have a lot of bad
ideas that they've enshrined and transformed into shibboleths- because these ideas looked
plausible at the time, and were made untouchable before they were really worked through.
And so bad ideas hang on forever like untouchable tumors.
When people from the social justice culture go to the discourse culture, they'll be
horrified because their shibboleths are being challenged. And they'll look at the people they
were told were on their side in this culture, and see them saying that a particular
shibboleth deserves to be challenged, and by the standards of THEIR culture that marks the
speaker as morally degraded.
When people from the discourse culture go to the social justice culture, they'll see
blatant and open contradictions, and want to challenge them. And they'll articulate ideas
that are actually lifted straight from the social justice culture's shibboleths, only to get
attacked for them by defenders of other shibboleths, while the rest of the social culture
refuses to defend them because they've been pre-judged guilty for challenging a shibboleth in
the first place.
Our outrage is based on Imperial Naivete:
the naivete of a public lulled into a
warm and fuzzy sense of moral superiority based on the notion that we only go to war to save the good
and punish the evil, and if we meddle in other nations' domestic affairs and elections,
we're only
doing so for their own good
.
If we weren't a kindly, generous Empire, we'd let them go down the drain without trying to set them
straight.
And since people tend to react poorly to Imperial meddling, we have to do it real sneaky-like using
our alphabet agencies (CIA, NSA, et al.) and Alphabet itself (Google) and all the other tech giants so
beloved by financial analysts agog at their immense profits and power.
There's another aspect of Imperial Naivete:
the American public naively assumes
that their Imperial Project is so god-like in its powers and prowess that no other great power should
be able to meddle in our domestic affairs and elections.
In other words, we're outraged to be vulnerable to any blowback, any intrusion, any meddling.
We implicitly or explicitly reckon that its our Imperial right to, say, blow up a wedding party in
a destabilized nation we're "helping," killing dozens of innocent attendees, all on the off-chance we
might nail a bad-guy who happened to be in attendance.
If he survives the slaughter, well, we'll blow up the next wedding party he attends.
That is to say, there are no limits on our execution of power because we're morally
superior
and this grants us carte blanche on everything from undeclared war to slaughtering
wedding parties to manipulating (meddling) in every other nation's domestic affairs and elections.
This is broadly defined as "protecting our interests," which just so happen to extend into every
nook and cranny of the globe. There are no corners of the planet that are not of interest to the
Imperial Project.
... ... ...
* * *
Summer Book Sale: 30% off Kindle editions, 25% off print editions. If you're interested in real
solutions, check these out:
Charles Hugh Smith: "social media giants are the ideal platforms for
undermining the U.S. via the sowing of disintegration."
On the other
hand, unlike twenty years ago, many citizens don't rely on the MSM
anymore for their info. They can choose their sources much more freely
on the interwebs.
The lies that the US retains its power through honorable means are
kept alive and have currency by the imperious
bankster-multinational-controlled, US deep-state, and average
Americans are increasingly waking up to the deception, as has
Smith. But Smith only points to what is long out of the bag and
indirectly he gives more currency to the deep-state lies that it
was the Russians who meddled and manipulated the last US
presidential election. 90% of Americans may still believe that
nonsense and think it matters, while 90% of the rest of the world
either do not believe it or could care less.
It's called hypocrisy, Charles. If Uncle Sam could bottle and sell its hypocrisy,
they could pay off the national debt. In fact, its hypocrisy is only exceeded by
its incompetence and criminality, which appear to be limitless.
And all these advertising magnates are paying themselves with OPM to perpetuate
their empire. I block google and facecrook in my browser, but I'm pretty sure they
pay themselves anyway, if the feds aren't subsidizing their income with tax dollars.
Half the internet doesn't work after you run things like NoScript, ZoneAlarm, and
AdBlock. Those people can choke on their own feces for all I care.
Whatever! Mmm, meddling makes election based societies appear relevant. But the
reality is that voting merely makes people participants and thereby passive and
compliant, like the way calculating your own taxes does as well. Most people will
never recognize that fact because their arrogant "Super-Ego" keeps them blind. But
none of that matters because guess what? Haha acquirable practical energy is running
out, and society is going to collapse. The even funnier thing is that CIA spies or
other intelligence agents that take part in meddling are just as oblivious as the
population to as how things function.
Whatever! Mmm, meddling makes election based societies appear relevant.
But the reality is that voting merely makes people participants and thereby
passive and compliant, like the way calculating your own taxes does as
well.
When you know the obvious, that democracy doesn't work with more than 50
people involved, you know how silly our supposed democracy is. Stupid is as
stupid does.
Our outrage is based on Imperial Naivete:
the naivete of a
public lulled into a warm and fuzzy sense of moral superiority based on the
notion that we only go to war to save the good and punish the evil, and if we
meddle in other nations' domestic affairs and elections,
we're only doing so
for their own good
.
Anyone claiming to have the interests of the USA people at heart must first be
tested by the litmus test: Ask them about the mysterious collapse of WTC7.
The same people that brought us 911 are the ones who bring them Radio Free Europe
and the Voice of America.
Russian Times has become my go-to first source of information. The MSM? I don't
know if they're my last source or not ... it's been too long since I've gone there
for information.
Just reviewed the nafarious Facebook ads. Nuthin. At best it made people think.
Isn't it possible people from Russia who live here want to have a say in how the
country they are in is guided. If they feel that Hillary was bad, or police
shouldn't be killed, or black folk need to strengthen family values, what's wrong
with paying to say it. The left wants illegal immigrants to vote on school boards
if they have a child in school ( like the PTA isn't good enough to vocalize
concerns, they have to be elected to the board??).
Why hate the Russians so much
NOW? Is this Browder / Maginsky issue so Scarry to the left that having a GOP pres
will expose who his investors were. They seem hoping made about Russians
questioning Browder in a neutral setting. Could it be that Browders benefactors
reads as a who's who of Dem leadership during the Obamanation? Wouldn't it be
ironic that the whole anti trump resistance comes down to a few alphabet higher ups,
all the way ups, covering up for billions of money stolen from Russia?
Even Hillary was immediately climbing out of the slime once Putin suggested that
international charges should be judged by international courts. And why shouldn't
they? And for once it would be a useful service of all media to air it live! Its
the People who matter... Not the Governments. Open the books!
"... The wing of the Democratic Party that looks for the dollars instead of the votes is called "The Third Way" and it presents itself as representing the supposedly vast political center, nothing "extremist" or "marginal." But didn't liberal Republicanism go out when Nelson Rockefeller did? Conservative Democrats are like liberal Republicans -- they attract flies and billionaires, but not many votes. And didn't the Rockefeller drug laws fill our prisons with millions of pathetic drug-users and small drug-dealers but not with the kingpins in either the narcotics business or the bankster rackets (such as had crashed the economy in 2008 -- and the Third Way Democrat who had been the exceptional politician and liar that was so slick he actually did attract many votes, President Barack Obama, told the banksters privately, on 27 March 2009, "I'm not out there to go after you. I'm protecting you." And, he did keep his promise to them, though not to his voters .) ..."
"... They want another Barack Obama. There aren't any more of those (unless, perhaps, Michelle Obama enters the contest). But, even if there were: How many Democrats would fall for that scam, yet again -- after the disaster of 2016? ..."
"... Maybe the Third Way is right, and there's a sucker born every minute. But if that's what the Democratic Party is going to rely upon, then America's stunningly low voter-participation rate is set to plunge even lower, because even more voters than before will either be leaving the Presidential line blank, or even perhaps voting for the Republican candidate (as some felt driven to do in 2016). ..."
"... Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity . He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. ..."
The wing of the Democratic Party that looks for the dollars instead of the votes is
called "The Third Way" and it presents itself as representing the supposedly vast political
center, nothing "extremist" or "marginal." But didn't liberal Republicanism go out when Nelson
Rockefeller did? Conservative Democrats are like liberal Republicans -- they attract flies and
billionaires, but not many votes. And didn't the Rockefeller drug laws fill our prisons with
millions of pathetic drug-users and small drug-dealers but not with the kingpins in either the
narcotics business or the bankster rackets (such as had crashed the economy in 2008 -- and the
Third Way Democrat who had been the exceptional politician and liar that was so slick he
actually did attract many votes, President Barack Obama, told the banksters privately, on 27
March 2009, "I'm not out there to go after you.
I'm protecting you." And, he did
keep his promise to them, though not to his voters .)
They're at it, yet again. On July 22nd, NBC News's Alex Seitz-Wald headlined
"Sanders' wing of the party terrifies moderate Dems. Here's how they plan to stop it." And
he described what was publicly available from the 3-day private meeting in Columbus Ohio of The
Third Way, July 18-20, the planning conference between the Party's chiefs and its billionaires.
Evidently, they hate Bernie Sanders and are already scheming and spending in order to block
him, now a second time, from obtaining the Party's Presidential nomination. "Anxiety has
largely been kept to a whisper among the party's moderates and big donors, with some of the
major fundraisers pressing operatives on what can be done to stop the Vermonter if he runs for
the White House again." This passage in Seitz-Wald's article was especially striking to me:
The gathering here was an effort to offer an attractive alternative to the rising
Sanders-style populist left in the upcoming presidential race. Where progressives see a rare
opportunity to capitalize on an energized Democratic base, moderates see a better chance to
win over Republicans turned off by Trump.
The fact that a billionaire real estate developer, Winston Fisher, cohosted the event
and addressed attendees twice, underscored that this group is not interested in the class
warfare vilifying the "millionaires and billionaires" found in Sanders' stump speech.
"You're not going to make me hate somebody just because they're rich. I want to be
rich!" Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, a potential presidential candidate, said Friday to
laughs.
I would reply to congressman Ryan's remark: If you want to be rich, then get the hell out of
politics! Don't run for President! I don't want you there! And that's no joke!
Anyone who doesn't recognize that an inevitable trade-off exists between serving the public
and serving oneself, is a libertarian -- an Ayn Rander, in fact -- and there aren't many of
those in the Democratic Party, but plenty of them are in the Republican Party.
Just as a clergyman in some faiths is supposed to take a vow of chastity, and in some faiths
also to take a vow of poverty, in order to serve "the calling" instead of oneself, anyone who
enters 'public service' and who aspires to "be rich" is inevitably inviting corruption
-- not prepared to do war against it . That kind of politician is a Manchurian
candidate, like Obama perhaps, but certainly not what this or any country needs, in any case.
Voters like that can be won only by means of deceit, which is the way that politicians like
that do win.
No decent political leader enters or stays in politics in order to "be rich," because no
political leader can be decent who isn't in it as a calling, to public service, and as a
repudiation, of any self-service in politics.
Republican Party voters invite corrupt government, because their Party's ideology is
committed to it ("Freedom [for the rich]!"); but the only Democratic Party voters who at all
tolerate corrupt politicians (such as Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York State) are actually
Republican Democrats -- people who are confused enough so as not really to care much about what
they believe; whatever their garbage happens to be, they believe in it and don't want to know
differently than it.
The Third Way is hoping that there are
enough of such 'Democrats' so that they can, yet again, end up with a Third Way Democrat being
offered to that Party's voters in 2020, just like happened in 2016. They want another Barack
Obama. There aren't any more of those (unless, perhaps, Michelle Obama enters the contest).
But, even if there were: How many Democrats would fall for that scam, yet again -- after the
disaster of 2016?
Maybe the Third Way is right, and there's a sucker born every minute. But if that's what the
Democratic Party is going to rely upon, then America's stunningly low voter-participation rate
is set to plunge even lower, because even more voters than before will either be leaving the
Presidential line blank, or even perhaps voting for the Republican candidate (as some felt
driven to do in 2016).
The Third Way is the way to the death of democracy, if it's not already dead . It is no answer
to anything, except to the desires of billionaires -- both Republican and Democratic.
The center of American politics isn't the center of America's aristocracy. The goal
of groups such as The Third Way is to fool the American public to equate the two. The
result of such groups is the contempt that America's
public have for America's Government . But, pushed too far, mass disillusionment becomes
revolution. Is that what America's billionaires are willing to risk? They might get it.
"... Congress wasted no time jumping on the Treason bandwagon, led by Chuck Schumer conjuring the spectre of the KGB, Marco Rubio as neocon point-man (one imagines Barbara Bush rolling in her grave at his usurpation of Jeb's rightful role) proposing locked-and-loaded sanctions in case of future "meddling," and John McCain , still desperate to take the rest of the world with him before he finally kicks a long-overdue bucket, condemning the "disgraceful" display of two heads of state trying to come to an agreement about matters of mutual interest. The Pentagon has invested a lot of time and money in positioning Russia as Public Enemy #1, and for Trump to put his foot in it by making nice with Putin might diminish the size of their weapons contracts – or the willingness of the American people to tolerate more than half of every tax dollar disappearing down an unaccountable hole . Peace? Eh, who needs it. Cash , motherfucker. ..."
"... The Intelligence Community believes it is God, and it hath smote Trump good. Smelling blood in the water, the media redoubled their shrieking for several days, and crickets. ..."
The Helsinki hysteria shone a spotlight on the utter impotence of the establishment media
and their Deep State controllers to make their delusions reality. Never before has there been
such a gaping chasm visible between the media's "truth" and the facts on the ground. Pundits
compared the summit to Pearl Harbor and
9/11 , with some even reaching for the brass ring of the Holocaust by likening it to
Kristallnacht , while
polls revealed the American people reallydidn't care .
Worse, it laid bare the collusion between the media and their Deep State handlers –
the central dissemination point for the headlines, down to the same phrases, that led to every
outlet claiming Trump had "thrown the Intelligence Community under the bus" by refusing to
embrace the Russia-hacked-our-democracy narrative during his press conference with Putin.
Leaving aside the sudden ubiquity of "Intelligence Community" in our national discourse –
as if this network of spies and murderous thugs is Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood – no one
seriously believes every pundit came up with "throws under the bus" as the proper way of
describing that press conference.
The same central control was apparent in the unanimous condemnations of Putin – that
he murders
journalists , breaks
international agreements , uses bannedchemical
weapons ,
kills women and children
in Syria , and, of course,
meddles in elections . For every single establishment pundit to exhibit such a breathtaking
lack of insight into their own government's misdeeds is highly unlikely. Many of these same
talking heads remarked in horror on Sinclair Broadcasting's Orwellian "prepared statement"
issuing forth from the mouths of hundreds of stations' anchors at once. Et tu, Anderson
Cooper?
The media frenzy was geared toward sparking a popular revolt, with tensions already running
high from the previous media frenzy about family separation at the border (though only one
MSNBC segment seemed to recall that they should still care about that, and belatedly included
some footage of kids
behind a fence wrapped in Mylar blankets). Rachel Maddow , armed with the crocodile tears that
served her so well during the family-separation fracas, exhorted her faithful cultists to
do something.
Meanwhile, national-security neanderthal John Brennan all but called for a coup, condemning the
president for the unspeakable "high crimes and misdemeanors" of seeking to improve relations
with the world's second-largest nuclear power. He called on Pompeo and Bolton, the two biggest
warmongers in a Trump administration bristling with warmongers, to resign in protest. This
would have been a grand slam for world peace, but alas, it was not to be. Even those two
realize what a has-been Brennan is.
Congress wasted no time jumping on the Treason bandwagon, led by Chuck Schumer conjuring
the spectre of the KGB, Marco Rubio as neocon point-man (one imagines Barbara Bush rolling in
her grave at his usurpation of Jeb's rightful role) proposing locked-and-loaded sanctions in
case of future "meddling," and John McCain , still desperate to take the rest of the world with
him before he finally kicks a long-overdue bucket, condemning the "disgraceful" display of two
heads of state trying to come to an agreement about matters of mutual interest. The Pentagon
has invested a lot of time and money in
positioning Russia as Public Enemy #1, and for Trump to put his foot in it by making nice
with Putin might diminish the size of their weapons contracts – or the willingness of the
American people to tolerate more than half of every tax dollar disappearing down an unaccountable
hole . Peace? Eh, who needs it. Cash , motherfucker.
Trump's grip on his long-elusive spine was only temporary, and he held another press
conference upon returning home to reiterate his trust in the intelligence agencies that have
made no secret of their utter loathing for him since day one. When the lights went out at the
climactic moment, it became clear for anyone who still hadn't gotten the message who was
running the show here (and Trump, to his credit, actually joked about it). The Intelligence
Community believes it is God, and it hath smote Trump good. Smelling blood in the water, the
media redoubled their shrieking for several days, and crickets.
On to the Playmates .
Sacha Baron Cohen 's latest series, "Who is America," targeted Ted Koppel for one segment.
Koppel cut the interview short after smelling a rat and expressed his
high-minded concern that Cohen's antics would hurt Americans' trust in reporters. But after
a week of the entire media establishment screaming that the sky is falling while the heavens
remain firmly in place, Cohen is clearly the least of their problems. At least he's funny.
*
Helen Buyniski is a journalist and photographer based in New York City. She covers
politics, sociology, and other anthropological/cultural phenomena. Helen has a BA in Journalism
from New School University and also studied at Columbia University and New York University.
Find more of her work at http://www.helenofdestroy.com and http://medium.com/@helen.buyniski .
Not only "An economic system that rewards psychopathic personality traits has changed our
ethics and our personalities", it crushes the will to resist presenting psychopathic dictate in
forms that make it difficult. Such as performance reviews waterboarding or putting individual in
the way too complex and self-contradictory Web of regulations.
Notable quotes:
"... An economic system that rewards psychopathic personality traits has changed our ethics and our personalities. ..."
"... Bullying used to be confined to schools; now it is a common feature of the workplace. This is a typical symptom of the impotent venting their frustration on the weak – in psychology it's known as displaced aggression. There is a buried sense of fear, ranging from performance anxiety to a broader social fear of the threatening other. ..."
"... Constant evaluations at work cause a decline in autonomy and a growing dependence on external, often shifting, norms. This results in what the sociologist Richard Sennett has aptly described as the "infantilisation of the workers". Adults display childish outbursts of temper and are jealous about trivialities ("She got a new office chair and I didn't"), tell white lies, resort to deceit, delight in the downfall of others and cherish petty feelings of revenge. This is the consequence of a system that prevents people from thinking independently and that fails to treat employees as adults. ..."
"... Our society constantly proclaims that anyone can make it if they just try hard enough, all the while reinforcing privilege and putting increasing pressure on its overstretched and exhausted citizens. An increasing number of people fail, feeling humiliated, guilty and ashamed. We are forever told that we are freer to choose the course of our lives than ever before, but the freedom to choose outside the success narrative is limited. Furthermore, those who fail are deemed to be losers or scroungers, taking advantage of our social security system. ..."
"... The current economic system is bringing out the worst in us. ..."
An economic system that rewards psychopathic personality traits has changed our ethics
and our personalities.
Thirty years of neoliberalism, free-market forces and
privatisation have taken their toll, as relentless pressure to achieve has become normative. If
you're reading this sceptically, I put this simple statement to you: meritocratic neoliberalism
favours certain personality traits and penalises others.
There are certain ideal characteristics needed to make a career today. The first is
articulateness, the aim being to win over as many people as possible. Contact can be
superficial, but since this applies to most human interaction nowadays, this won't really be
noticed.
It's important to be able to talk up your own capacities as much as you can – you know
a lot of people, you've got plenty of experience under your belt and you recently completed a
major project. Later, people will find out that this was mostly hot air, but the fact that they
were initially fooled is down to another personality trait: you can lie convincingly and feel
little guilt. That's why you never take responsibility for your own behaviour.
On top of all this, you are flexible and impulsive, always on the lookout for new stimuli
and challenges. In practice, this leads to risky behaviour, but never mind, it won't be you who
has to pick up the pieces. The source of inspiration for this list? The psychopathy checklist
by Robert Hare , the best-known specialist
on psychopathy today.
This description is, of course, a caricature taken to extremes. Nevertheless, the financial
crisis illustrated at a macro-social level (for example, in the conflicts between eurozone
countries) what a neoliberal meritocracy does to people. Solidarity becomes an expensive luxury
and makes way for temporary alliances, the main preoccupation always being to extract more
profit from the situation than your competition. Social ties with colleagues weaken, as does
emotional commitment to the enterprise or organisation.
Bullying used to be confined to schools; now it is a common feature of the workplace.
This is a typical symptom of the impotent venting their frustration on the weak – in
psychology it's known as displaced aggression. There is a buried sense of fear, ranging from
performance anxiety to a broader social fear of the threatening other.
Constant evaluations at work cause a decline in autonomy and a growing dependence on
external, often shifting, norms. This results in what the sociologist Richard Sennett has
aptly described as the "infantilisation of the workers". Adults display childish outbursts of
temper and are jealous about trivialities ("She got a new office chair and I didn't"), tell
white lies, resort to deceit, delight in the downfall of others and cherish petty feelings of
revenge. This is the consequence of a system that prevents people from thinking independently
and that fails to treat employees as adults.
More important, though, is the serious damage to people's self-respect. Self-respect largely
depends on the recognition that we receive from the other, as thinkers from Hegel to Lacan have shown. Sennett comes
to a similar conclusion when he sees the main question for employees these days as being "Who
needs me?" For a growing group of people, the answer is: no one.
Our society constantly proclaims that anyone can make it if they just try hard enough,
all the while reinforcing privilege and putting increasing pressure on its overstretched and
exhausted citizens. An increasing number of people fail, feeling humiliated, guilty and
ashamed. We are forever told that we are freer to choose the course of our lives than ever
before, but the freedom to choose outside the success narrative is limited. Furthermore, those
who fail are deemed to be losers or scroungers, taking advantage of our social security
system.
A neoliberal meritocracy would have us believe that success depends on individual effort and
talents, meaning responsibility lies entirely with the individual and authorities should give
people as much freedom as possible to achieve this goal. For those who believe in the fairytale
of unrestricted choice, self-government and self-management are the pre-eminent political
messages, especially if they appear to promise freedom. Along with the idea of the perfectible
individual, the freedom we perceive ourselves as having in the west is the greatest untruth of
this day and age.
The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman neatly summarised the paradox
of our era as: "Never have we been so free. Never have we felt so powerless." We are indeed
freer than before, in the sense that we can criticise religion, take advantage of the new
laissez-faire attitude to sex and support any political movement we like. We can do all these
things because they no longer have any significance – freedom of this kind is prompted by
indifference. Yet, on the other hand, our daily lives have become a constant battle against a
bureaucracy that would make Kafka weak at the knees. There are regulations about everything,
from the salt content of bread to urban poultry-keeping.
Our presumed freedom is tied to one central condition: we must be successful – that
is, "make" something of ourselves. You don't need to look far for examples. A highly skilled
individual who puts parenting before their career comes in for criticism. A person with a good
job who turns down a promotion to invest more time in other things is seen as crazy –
unless those other things ensure success. A young woman who wants to become a primary school
teacher is told by her parents that she should start off by getting a master's degree in
economics – a primary school teacher, whatever can she be thinking of?
There are constant laments about the so-called loss of norms and values in our culture. Yet
our norms and values make up an integral and essential part of our identity. So they cannot be
lost, only changed. And that is precisely what has happened: a changed economy reflects changed
ethics and brings about changed identity. The current economic system is bringing out the
worst in us.
Panic attacks, anxiety attacks, nervous breakdowns, depression, suicidal thoughts alienation,
cancers, withdrawal are all symptoms of the de-humanizing aspects of a market-driven life. In
its worst forms it manifests periodically in mass shootings at strangers. So what do people
do to cope? Drugs, pain killers, shrinks, alcohol, potato chips and soda. They then develop
obesity, diabetes and heart diseases and cancers. How to save a human species terminally
intoxicated with technology and enslaved by the market while the inner spirit is running
empty may not be possible given the advanced nature of the disease.
...what?
You fail to really acknowledge that time and again we've failed to exercise constrain within
the capitalist models. The the meritorious are often inadequately rewarded - when any person
in work cannot afford to home and feed themselves and their family then a reasonable balance
has not been struck - in that sense at no time in history has capitalism functioned
adequately.
To suggest that socialism is anti-human is to ignore how and why as a species we formed
societies at all, we come together precisely because there is a mutual benefit in so doing;
to help another is to help oneself - the model itself fails to operate in practice for the
same reason that capitalism does - the greed of the power holder.
You reserve your sharpest barbs for socialism, but at least within the socialist agenda
there is a commitment to the protection of the citizen, whoever they are, even the
'unmerited' as you describe them - a capitalist's paraphrase for 'those that create no
value'.
The socialist at least recognises that whilst the parent may be 'unmerited' their
dependants should be entitled to receive equality of opportunity and protection from the
'law-of-the-jungle' i.e., the greed of others.
The ability to generate wealth, simply by already having wealth and therefore being able
to thrive off the labour of others carries little merit as far as I can tell and does indeed
create the soul-crushing command-and-control empires of the capitalism that millions around
the world experience daily.
Neoliberalism is indeed a huge self-serving con and ironically the Thatcher/Regan doctrine
which set out to break the status quo and free the economy from the old elitist guard has had
exactly the opposite effect.
Capitalism cannot differentiate between honest competition and cheating. Since humans will
cheat to win, capitalism has become survival of the worst not the best.
The bottom line is the basic human condition prizes food, shelter, sex, and then goes
directly to greed in most modern societies. It was not always that way, and is not that way
in ever fewer societies. As it is, greed makes the world go around.
In capitalistic societies greed has been fed by business and commerce; in communist
societies it has been "some pigs are more equal then others"; and in dictatorships or true
monarchies (or the Australian Liberal Party) there is the born to rule mentality where there
are rulers and serfs.
Nobody ever seems to address the paradox of the notion of an absolute free market: that
within a free market, those who can have the freedom to exploit do exploit, thereby thus
eliminating the freedom of the exploited, which thence paradoxically negates the absoluteness
of the free market. No absolute freedom truly exist in a free market.
As such, the free market is pipe dream - a con - to eliminate regulations and create
economic freedoms only where they benefit the elite. The free market does not exist, is
impossible, and therefore should cease to be held as the harbinger of a progressive socio
economic reality.
If we are to accept the Christian assumption that we, humans, are all self-serving and
acquisitive, then we must, therefore, negate the possibility of an absolutely "free" market,
since exploitation is a naturally occurring byproduct of weak-strong interactions.
Exploitation negates freedom, and therefore, it must be our reality, as it is in all peoples'
best interests, to accept directly democratic regulations as the keystone to any market.
It sounds very like the Marxist critique of capital. And similarly, points to real problems,
but doesn't seek evidence for why such a sick situation not only persists, but is so popular
- except by denigrating 'the masses'.
Surely what is particular about our time, about industrialisation generally, is the
fragmenting of long term social structures, and orientation around the individual alone. It
seems to me the problem of our times is redeveloping social structures which balance the
individual and the socials selves, as all not merely stable but thriving happy creative
societies, have always done.
Their propaganda is the same- an obsessive hatred of the state in any form, a semi-religious
belief in the power of the individual operating in the free-market to solve humanity's ills.
Granted, they aren't social libertarians, but then, in the US, libertarians don't seem to
be either.
Pretty typical that the assumption is the Marx "nailed it" and any dissenters are
just "scared".
I'm scared by it too, as I said, it's a sensible fear of change. The question remains. What
if Marx's analysis, just the analysis, is broadly correct? What if markets really are the
road to ruination of our planet, morality and collective welfare in roughly the way that he
explained?
It's not a trivial question, and clearly the current economic orthodoxy has failed to
explain some recent little problems we've been having, while Marx explains how these problems
are structurally embedded and only to be expected. It is intellectual cowardice to
compulsively avoid this, in my view. Better minds than ours have struggled with it.
So beware of the fallacious argument from authority - 'You are stupid while I am
axiomatically very clever, because I say so, hence I must be correct and you must shut it.'
It goes nowhere useful, though we are all prone to employing it.
But it is not 'sixth form' thinking, surely, to consider these problems as being worth
thinking about in a modern context. It is a plain fact that Stalinism didn't work as planned.
We know it, but it doesn't make the problems it was intended to solve disappear to say
so.
If you believe human nature can be changed by enforcing your interpretation of Marx's
road to human freedom (a quasi-religious goal) you condemn millions to starvation,
slaughter, gulags, misery etc.
Please read what I actually wrote about that. I'm not remotely quasi-religious, nor do I seek
to enforce anything. My intention is only to expose a particularly damaging mythology. The
extent of my crimes is persuasion as a prelude to consensual change before necessity really
bites us all.
Markets conjure up the exact forms of misery you describe. Totalitarians of the right are
highly undesirable too. I am against totalitarians, as are you, but an admirer of Marx's
work. Do I fit into your simplistic categories? Does anyone? The freedoms we are permitted
serve the market before they serve people. Markets are a social construct, as is capital,
that we can choose to modify or squash. A child starving in a slum for lack of
competitiveness, for its inability to serve the interests of capital, is less abstract
perhaps.
The thing about selfishness and a brutal form of dog eat dog capitalism.
You see, it is a truth axiomatic that we human beings, as all living beings, are
fundamentally selfish. We have to be in order to survive, and excel, and advance and
perpetuate.
It is not theory but hard biology. You breathe for yourself, eat for yourself, love for
yourself, have a family for yourself and so on. People are most affected and hurt if
something happens to something or someone who means something to them personally. This is why
concepts such as religion and nationality have worked so well, and will continue to even if
they evolve in different ways, for they tap into a person's conception of theirself. Of their
identity, of their self-definition. People tend to feel worse if something bad happens to
someone they know than to a stranger; people tend to feel less bad when something happens to
a cockroach than to a dog, simply because we relate better to dogs than to insects...So even
our compassion is selfish after a fashion.
Capitalism and Socialism are two ends of the the same human spectrum of innate and
hardwired selfishness. One stresses on the individual and the other on the larger group. It's
always going to be hard to find the right balance because when you vest excessive power in
any selfish ideology, it will begin to eat into the other type of selfishness..
The world revolves around competing selfishnesses...
The global economy is based upon wasting lives and material resources.
Designer landfill is no longer an option and neo-liberalism, which places importance of
the invention called money over that of people (which is a dehumanising process), was never
an option.
It is time for the neo-liberal fake politicians (that is 99.99% of them) to take up
politics.
It really is, as ever since it is only another word for change, time for revolution.
By extension, moving away from a system the shuns those who 'fail' people would be
emotionally better off, and with the removal of the constant assessment and individualistic
competition, people may feel better able to relate to one another. This would imply that
healthy communities would be more likely to flourish, as people would be less likely to
ignore those on lower income or of 'lower status'.
Move to what system? What system would achieve this?
Whether you agree or not, it is pretty clear what was being said.
Of course it's clear. George and his followers dislike market based systems. It couldn't
be clearer. Even when the subject has little to do with the market, George and his followers
always blame it for everything that is wrong with this world. That's pretty much the whole
point of this article.
What's never clear is what alternative George and his followers propose that wouldn't
result in all of the same flaws that accompany market driven systems. How can they be so sure
some of those problems won't be worse? They always seem a bit sketchy, which is remarkable
given the furor with which they relentlessly critique the market. We are told of alternatives
concepts painted in the broadest of brushes, rich with abstract intangible idealism, but
lacking in any pragmatism. We are invited to consider the whole exercise simply as
academically self-indulgent navel gazing by the priviledged overeducated minority that
comprise much of the Guardian's readership. It's quite disappointing. This article correctly
details much of the discontent in the world. But this isn't a revelation. Where are the
concrete ideas that can actualy be implemented now? frontalcortexes at least makes a stab at something a bit more practicle than a 17
paragraph esoteric essay citing ancient Greek.
One of the worst thing is that the winners in the market race are showered with things which
are fundamentally valueless and far in excess of what they could consume if they weren't,
while bare necessities are withheld from the losers.
"... The workplace has been overwhelmed by a mad, Kafkaesque infrastructure of assessments, monitoring, measuring, surveillance
and audits, centrally directed and rigidly planned, whose purpose is to reward the winners and punish the losers ..."
"... The same forces afflict those who can't find work. They must now contend, alongside the other humiliations of unemployment,
with a whole new level of snooping and monitoring. All this, Verhaeghe points out, is fundamental to the neoliberal model, which everywhere
insists on comparison, evaluation and quantification. We find ourselves technically free but powerless. Whether in work or out of work,
we must live by the same rules or perish. All the major political parties promote them, so we have no political power either. In the
name of autonomy and freedom we have ended up controlled by a grinding, faceless bureaucracy. ..."
I was prompted to write it by a remarkable book, just published in English, by a Belgian professor of psychoanalysis, Paul Verhaeghe.
What About Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based
Society is one of those books that, by making connections between apparently distinct phenomena, permits sudden new insights
into what is happening to us and why.
We are social animals, Verhaeghe argues, and our identities are shaped by the norms and values we absorb from other people. Every
society defines and shapes its own normality – and its own abnormality – according to dominant narratives, and seeks either to make
people comply or to exclude them if they don't.
Today the dominant narrative is that of market fundamentalism, widely known in Europe as neoliberalism. The story it tells is
that the market can resolve almost all social, economic and political problems. The less the state regulates and taxes us, the better
off we will be. Public services should be privatised, public spending should be cut, and business should be freed from social control.
In countries such as the UK and the US, this story has shaped our norms and values for around 35 years: since Thatcher and Reagan
came to power. It is rapidly colonising the rest of the world.
Verhaeghe points out that neoliberalism draws on the ancient Greek idea that our ethics are innate (and governed by a state of
nature it calls the market) and on the Christian idea that humankind is inherently selfish and acquisitive. Rather than seeking to
suppress these characteristics, neoliberalism celebrates them: it claims that unrestricted competition, driven by self-interest,
leads to innovation and economic growth, enhancing the welfare of all.
At the heart of this story is the notion of merit. Untrammelled competition rewards people who have talent, work hard, and innovate.
It breaks down hierarchies and creates a world of opportunity and mobility.
The reality is rather different. Even at the beginning of the process, when markets are first deregulated, we do not start with
equal opportunities. Some people are a long way down the track before the starting gun is fired. This is how the Russian oligarchs
managed to acquire such wealth when the Soviet Union broke up. They weren't, on the whole, the most talented, hardworking or innovative
people, but those with the fewest scruples, the most thugs, and the best contacts – often in the KGB.
Even when outcomes are based on talent and hard work, they don't stay that way for long. Once the first generation of liberated
entrepreneurs has made its money, the initial meritocracy is replaced by a new elite, which insulates its children from competition
by inheritance and the best education money can buy. Where market fundamentalism has been most fiercely applied – in countries like
the US and UK – social
mobility has greatly declined .
If neoliberalism was anything other than a self-serving con, whose gurus and
thinktanks were financed
from the beginning by some of the world's richest people (the US multimillionaires Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others), its
apostles would have demanded, as a precondition for a society based on merit, that no one should start life with the unfair advantage
of inherited wealth or economically determined education. But they never believed in their own doctrine. Enterprise, as a result,
quickly gave way to rent.
All this is ignored, and success or failure in the market economy are ascribed solely to the efforts of the individual. The rich
are the new righteous; the poor are the new deviants, who have failed both economically and morally and are now classified as social
parasites.
The market was meant to emancipate us, offering autonomy and freedom. Instead it has delivered atomisation and loneliness.
The workplace has been overwhelmed by a mad, Kafkaesque infrastructure of assessments, monitoring, measuring, surveillance
and audits, centrally directed and rigidly planned, whose purpose is to reward the winners and punish the losers . It destroys
autonomy, enterprise, innovation and loyalty, and breeds frustration, envy and fear. Through a magnificent paradox, it has led to
the revival of a grand old Soviet tradition known in Russian as tufta . It means falsification of statistics to meet the
diktats of unaccountable power.
The same forces afflict those who can't find work. They must now contend, alongside the other humiliations of unemployment,
with a whole new level of snooping and monitoring. All this, Verhaeghe points out, is fundamental to the neoliberal model, which
everywhere insists on comparison, evaluation and quantification. We find ourselves technically free but powerless. Whether in work
or out of work, we must live by the same rules or perish. All the major political parties promote them, so we have no political power
either. In the name of autonomy and freedom we have ended up controlled by a grinding, faceless bureaucracy.
These shifts have been accompanied, Verhaeghe writes, by a spectacular rise in certain psychiatric conditions: self-harm, eating
disorders, depression and personality disorders.
Of the personality disorders, the most common are performance anxiety and social phobia: both of which reflect a fear of other
people, who are perceived as both evaluators and competitors – the only roles for society that market fundamentalism admits. Depression
and loneliness plague us.
The infantilising diktats of the workplace destroy our self-respect. Those who end up at the bottom of the pile are assailed by
guilt and shame. The self-attribution fallacy cuts both ways: just as we congratulate ourselves for our success, we blame ourselves
for our failure, even
if we have little to do with it .
So, if you don't fit in, if you feel at odds with the world, if your identity is troubled and frayed, if you feel lost and ashamed
– it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.
"... Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning. ..."
"... We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances. ..."
Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It
redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and
selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market"
delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.
Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should
be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective
bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a
natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility
and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more
equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that
everyone gets what they deserve.
We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired
their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and
class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their
failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.
Never mind structural unemployment: if you don't have a job it's because you are
unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out,
you're feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing
field: if they get fat, it's your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall
behind become defined and self-defined as losers.
Among the results, as Paul Verhaeghe documents in his book What About Me? are epidemics of
self-harm, eating disorders, depression, loneliness, performance anxiety and social phobia.
Perhaps it's unsurprising that Britain, in which neoliberal ideology has been most rigorously
applied, is the loneliness capital of Europe. We are all neoliberals now.
The crash was a write-off, not a repair job. The response should be a wholesale
reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the
globe
he International Monetary Fund has admitted that some of the decisions it made
in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis were wrong, and that the €130bn first
bailout of Greece was "bungled". Well, yes. If it hadn't been a mistake, then it would have
been the only bailout and everyone in Greece would have lived happily ever after.
Actually, the IMF hasn't quite admitted that it messed things up. It has said instead that
it went along with its partners in "the Troika" – the European Commission and the
European Central Bank – when it shouldn't have. The EC and the ECB, says the IMF, put the
interests of the eurozone before the interests of Greece. The EC and the ECB, in turn, clutch
their pearls and splutter with horror that they could be accused of something so petty as
self-preservation.
The IMF also admits that it "underestimated" the effect austerity would have on Greece.
Obviously, the rest of the Troika takes no issue with that. Even those who substitute "kick up
the arse to all the lazy scroungers" whenever they encounter the word "austerity", have
cottoned on to the fact that the word can only be intoned with facial features locked into a
suitably tragic mask.
Yet, mealy-mouthed and hotly contested as this minor mea culpa is, it's still a sign that
financial institutions may slowly be coming round to the idea that they are the problem. They
know the crash was a debt-bubble that burst. What they don't seem to acknowledge is that the
merry days of reckless lending are never going to return; even if they do, the same thing will
happen again, but more quickly and more savagely. The thing is this: the crash was a write-off,
not a repair job. The response from the start should have been a wholesale reevaluation of the
way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe, a "structural adjustment", as
the philosopher John Gray has said all along.
The IMF exists to lend money to governments, so it's comic that it wags its finger at
governments that run up debt. And, of course, its loans famously come with strings attached:
adopt a free-market economy, or strengthen the one you have, kissing goodbye to the Big State.
Yet, the irony is painful. Neoliberal ideology insists that states are too big and cumbersome,
too centralised and faceless, to be efficient and responsive. I agree. The problem is that the
ruthless sentimentalists of neoliberalism like to tell themselves – and anyone else who
will listen – that removing the dead hand of state control frees the individual citizen
to be entrepreneurial and productive. Instead, it places the financially powerful beyond any
state, in an international elite that makes its own rules, and holds governments to ransom.
That's what the financial crisis was all about. The ransom was paid, and as a result,
governments have been obliged to limit their activities yet further – some setting about
the task with greater relish than others. Now the task, supposedly, is to get the free market
up and running again.
But the basic problem is this: it costs a lot of money to cultivate a market – a group
of consumers – and the more sophisticated the market is, the more expensive it is to
cultivate them. A developed market needs to be populated with educated, healthy, cultured,
law-abiding and financially secure people – people who expect to be well paid themselves,
having been brought up believing in material aspiration, as consumers need to be.
So why, exactly, given the huge amount of investment needed to create such a market, should
access to it then be "free"? The neoliberal idea is that the cultivation itself should be
conducted privately as well. They see "austerity" as a way of forcing that agenda. But how can
the privatisation of societal welfare possibly happen when unemployment is already high,
working people are turning to food banks to survive and the debt industry, far from being sorry
that it brought the global economy to its knees, is snapping up bargains in the form of busted
high-street businesses to establish shops with nothing to sell but high-interest debt? Why, you
have to ask yourself, is this vast implausibility, this sheer unsustainability, not blindingly
obvious to all?
Markets cannot be free. Markets have to be nurtured. They have to be invested in. Markets
have to be grown. Google, Amazon and Apple haven't taught anyone in this country to read. But
even though an illiterate market wouldn't be so great for them, they avoid their taxes, because
they can, because they are more powerful than governments.
And further, those who invest in these companies, and insist that taxes should be low to
encourage private profit and shareholder value, then lend governments the money they need to
create these populations of sophisticated producers and consumers, berating them for their
profligacy as they do so. It's all utterly, completely, crazy.
The other day a health minister, Anna
Soubry , suggested that female GPs who worked part-time so that they could bring up
families were putting the NHS under strain. The compartmentalised thinking is quite
breathtaking. What on earth does she imagine? That it would be better for the economy if they
all left school at 16? On the contrary, the more people who are earning good money while
working part-time – thus having the leisure to consume – the better. No doubt these
female GPs are sustaining both the pharmaceutical industry and the arts and media, both sectors
that Britain does well in.
As for their prioritising of family life over career – that's just another of the
myriad ways in which Conservative neoliberalism is entirely without logic. Its prophets and its
disciples will happily – ecstatically – tell you that there's nothing more
important than family, unless you're a family doctor spending some of your time caring for your
own. You couldn't make these characters up. It is certainly true that women with children find
it more easy to find part-time employment in the public sector. But that's a prima facie
example of how unresponsive the private sector is to human and societal need, not – as it
is so often presented – evidence that the public sector is congenitally disabled.
Much of the healthy economic growth – as opposed to the smoke and mirrors of many
aspects of financial services – that Britain enjoyed during the second half of the 20th
century was due to women swelling the educated workforce. Soubry and her ilk, above all else,
forget that people have multiple roles, as consumers, as producers, as citizens and as family
members. All of those things have to be nurtured and invested in to make a market.
The neoliberalism that the IMF still preaches pays no account to any of this. It insists
that the provision of work alone is enough of an invisible hand to sustain a market. Yet even
Adam Smith, the economist who came up with that theory ,
did not agree that economic activity alone was enough to keep humans decent and civilised.
Governments are left with the bill when neoliberals demand access to markets that they
refuse to invest in making. Their refusal allows them to rail against the Big State while
producing the conditions that make it necessary. And even as the results of their folly become
ever more plain to see, they are grudging in their admittance of the slightest blame, bickering
with their allies instead of waking up, smelling the coffee and realising that far too much of
it is sold through Starbucks.
So most folks never heard of a guy named Hillel. He was a Baghdad Jew who moved to Judea
about 60 years before Christ was born.
His great influence on Judaism was a novel invention to get around the Jubilee which many
civilizations employed snd was part of Judaism Mosaic Law. Basically every 7 years debts were
cancelled to prevent the elites from accumulating all the land and wealth and enslaving the
bottom 99% and causing rebellion. Much of the debt forgiven was owed to the state in the form
of taxes but individuals and business also were indebted to money lenders . Debt of
individuals acquired to pay taxes, farm, etc was forgiven by the Jubilee. Business /Merchant
debts had to be repaid
The rabbiis of the Pharisees under the suggestion of Hillel the Elder, created a loophole
in Jewish law, in which a legal document would accompany the interest-free loans (charging
interest to fellow Jews was forbidden in the Torah) issued by individuals that stated that
the loans were to be transferred to the courts as the law of remission does not apply In this
case.
It was called a Prosbul.
This led to great unrest among Jews and non Jews alike. This unrest led to a Jewish
activist named Jesus leading a protest against the Pharisees and the money lenders. Michael
Hudson has a theory backed up by historical documents in the original Aramaic,Hebrew and
Greek that Mosaic Law is mostly about the prohibitions of the sins related to debt and the
sinful practices of creditors to secure repayment. Translations into English and other
languages have obscured this.
Christianity was formed after Jesus was executed to protect the money lenders .
Unfortunately the Romans were pro creditor and then Constantine hijacked the religion a
couple of centuries later , and aside from a prohibition on usury by the Roman Church the
Jubilee was no more. When the Roman Empire fell the Byzantine Emperor reinstated the Jubilee
from 7th-10th Century and abandoned this . I imagine this wad due to the Islamic Wars that
required external loans to finance at interest.
Judaism still use the prosbul today , at least in Orthodox , to escape the Jubilee called
for in Mosaic Law . That applied only for loans to Jews in any event. Prohibitions of usury
in the Christian world ended pretty much with the Reformation and Calvinism. Even so in the
US their were limits on usury in many US states until early 1980's when neoliberalism crushed
that. Now the poor get charged as much as 30% on credit card debt while earning 2% on savings
and they cant even declare bankruptcy like Trump did 6 times
Islamic banking is interest free though under Sharia Law. "Loans are equity-based,
asset-backed. In lieu of interest the banks rely on cost-plus financing (murabaha),
profit-sharing (mudaraba), leasing (ijara), partnership (musharaka) and forward sale
(bay'salam).
"This prohibition is based on arguments of social justice, equality, and property rights.
Islam encourages the earning of profits but forbids the charging of interest because profits,
determined ex post, symbolize successful entrepreneurship and creation of additional wealth
whereas interest, determined ex ante, is a cost that is accrued irrespective of the outcome
of business operations and may not create wealth if there are business losses. Social justice
demands that borrowers and lenders share rewards as well as losses in an equitable fashion
and that the process of wealth accumulation and distribution in the economy be fair and
representative of true productivity.
"Risk sharing. Because interest is prohibited, suppliers of funds become investors instead of
creditors. The provider of financial capital and the entrepreneur share business risks in
return for shares of the profits."
"Money as "potential" capital. Money is treated as "potential" capital -- that is, it
becomes actual capital only when it joins hands with other resources to undertake a
productive activity. Islam recognizes the time value of money, but only when it acts as
capital, not when it is "potential" capital."
"Prohibition of speculative behavior. An Islamic financial system discourages hoarding and
prohibits transactions featuring extreme uncertainties, gambling, and risks."
So maybe the war against Islam has another component?
Getting back to Jesus. Hudson says the Pharisees decided that Jesus' growing popularity
was a threat to their authority and wealth.
"They said 'we've got to get rid of this guy and rewrite Judaism and make it about sex
instead of a class war', which is really what the whole Old Testament is about,"
"That was that was where Christianity got perverted. Christianity turned so
anti-Jesus, it was the equivalent of the American Tea Party, applauding wealth and even
greed, Ayn-Rand style."
"Over the last 1000 years the Catholic Church has been saying it's noble to be
poor. But Jesus never said it was good to be poor. What he said was that rich people are
greedy and corrupt. That's what Socrates was saying, as well as Aristotle and the Stoic Roman
philosophers, the biblical prophets in Isaiah."
"Neither did Jesus say that it was good to be poor because it made you noble.
"What Jesus did say is that say if you have money, you should share it with other
people."
"American Fundamentalist Christians say don't share a penny. King Jesus is
going to make you rich. Don't tax millionaires. Jesus may help me win the lottery. Tax poor
people whom the Lord has left behind – no doubt for their sins. There's nothing about
the Jubilee Year here."
Hudson has a book coming out next week on the subject
"It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only
one international in scope.
It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars
and the losses in lives."
And we ignored it.
26 years later, in 1961
, President Dwight
Eisenhower - a retired
five-star Army general - gave the nation a dire warning
about what he described as a threat
to democratic government. He called it the
military-industrial complex
, a formidable
union of defense contractors and the armed forces.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
The potential for the
disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.
"
In his remarks, Eisenhower also explained how the situation had developed:
"
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry.
American makers of ploughshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can
no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense;
we have been compelled to
create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions
."
57 years after that, we see exactly what they warned about...
and as far as we can
tell, only Ron and Rand Paul remain to argue against 'war' - even though President Trump talks of
'peace', the bombing continues -
and so here we are today, beholden to the US war machine...
Limited number of resources on planet pretty easy to explain endless wars.
Only so much arable land to feed the people on this earth. Is it a wonder why
rapefugees by the millions will come to places where they will be fed and
clothed for free. Its paradise for those backwards brownie turds. Not to
mention most of the drinking water of this planet is found in the Northern
Hemisphere
Things are so ass backwards that the same people who would send their
son to fight in wars overseas for bankers and who will salute the flag
as their son come homes with one leg, don't understand that the war they
are not fighting right now is on their home turf.
this time it's different, this time the useless eater idle worker bees don't
need guns to shoot each other. this time they can be humanely and quickly
vaporized to maintain our leaders' control
Why is it that I make a comment on ZH, like: "if the Deep-State were eliminated
somehow, the USA would enter into an economic depression!" Then a few days later I
see my argument writ-larger on ZH???
"War is a racket. It always has been... It is the only one in which the profits are
reckoned in dollars and the losses in [men's] lives." [there], fixed it for ya.
Men, being disposable, are a free commodity to the MIC which makes war the
profitable racket it is. Value men and war becomes obsolete want to make war
obsolete? Value men. Until then - welcome to perpetual war ~
"The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with
Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia." 1984
"... The overuse of instrumental rationality has many sources, but in the United States its historical development begins with dramatic changes in the design of municipal governments. ..."
"... In the end, potentially more so than any other factor, these changes in the fundamental design of municipal governments not only reversed the victories of Socialists but encouraged an outlook on local politics that deemphasized the people as active citizens and conceptualized them as passive shareholders who entrusted the operations of local government with managers and bureaucrats. ..."
"... Capitalism and Freeman ..."
"... In pursuit of strengthening business interests over socialist politics, municipal governments became more bureaucratic. If anything, markets and bureaucracies have had a historical mutually reinforcing relationship; the survival of the free market system has been dependent on the bureaucratization of public life. ..."
"... Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights ..."
Bureaucracies, Markets, and the Loss of Municipal Citizenship
02.07.2018
"Liberty vanishes whenever the law, in certain cases, allows a man to cease to be a person
and to become a thing"
-Cesare Beccaria
Throughout the modern era, there has been a lingering fear of the mechanization of everyday
life through the overuse of instrumental rationality. Because the social sciences intimately
weave both outcomes and ethics, this overuse of instrumental rationality carries with it a
moral dimension. Despite having somewhat predictable behavior, people are not
things . Rather, the very notion of humanity implies a degree of agency, and agency
demands an acknowledgment for spontaneous behaviors and active choices. Nevertheless, the
growth of both bureaucracies and markets -- two common features of the modern era -- appears to
negate this truism and encourage an inverse to Kant's maximum to treat people as ends in
themselves rather than means toward some bureaucratic or profit-driven goal.
The overuse of instrumental rationality has many sources, but in the United States its
historical development begins with dramatic changes in the design of municipal governments. At
the turn of the 20th Century, Socialists in the United States had considerable success in
municipal elections. Empowered by a constituency of small-scale and heavily mortgaged farmers
and newly created industrial laborers, for a brief period, the Socialist Party posed a
significant electoral challenge to both Democrats and Republicans in America's Midwest.
Nevertheless, these successes were short-lived. In response to the electoral victories of
Socialist candidates, Progressives promoted "reform" governments that made municipalities more
both bureaucratic and market orientated. Under their guidance, the full weight of Taylorism was
brought to municipal governments. In the process, local governments became embedded with an
ideology predicated on instrumentalist rationality that justified the marginalization
participation in public life and redirected the priorities of municipal politics toward
ensuring certain monetary ends. In the end, potentially more so than any other factor, these
changes in the fundamental design of municipal governments not only reversed the victories of
Socialists but encouraged an outlook on local politics that deemphasized the people as active
citizens and conceptualized them as passive shareholders who entrusted the operations of local
government with managers and bureaucrats.
This history upturns a problematic assumption among advocates of a free market economy.
Chiding President Kennedy, Milton Friedman, in Capitalism and Freeman , proclaimed
that "the free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his
country. He will ask rather "What can I and my compatriots do through government?" to help us
discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above
all, to protect our freedom." (1) The idea that in a free market democracy people merely act
"through" government rather than "by" government implies a purely instrumental account of
public authority. For Freidman, the government is not supposed to reflect a common good, but is
simply another option for achieving the specific ends of individuals. For this reason, Friedman
argues, the ideal government for a thriving market is both limited and dispersed. However, the
history of reform government shows the opposite. In pursuit of strengthening business interests
over socialist politics, municipal governments became more bureaucratic. If anything, markets
and bureaucracies have had a historical mutually reinforcing relationship; the survival of the
free market system has been dependent on the bureaucratization of public life.
In many ways, this relationship was anticipated. Max Weber's remarks on the "iron cage" of
the modern economic order implied a shared rationality between markets and bureaucracies. (2)
In both cases, social life -- and by extension people -- is valued only to the extent that it
can fulfill certain ends, rather than being seen as an end in and of itself. Murray Bookchin's
criticism of bureaucracies -- in that they grow as a sense of citizenship declines, filling
social vacuums with "monadic individuals and family units into a strictly administrative
structure" (3) -- can just as easily apply to markets. Margaret Somers, in her work
Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights
demonstrates that market fundamentalism has resulted in the "contractualization of citizenship"
in the United States. In doing so, Americans have reorganized "the relationship between the
state and the citizenry, from noncontractual rights and obligations to the principles and
practices of quid pro quo market exchange." (4) In decrying the loss of citizenship -- whether
through bureaucratization or market fundamentalism -- both Bookchin and Somers draw on
contemporary political realities. Yet, as will be shown, the roots of this problem run much
deeper. In the United States, the phenomenon of bringing instrumentalist rationality to the
public sphere started a century ago with the restructuring of municipal
governments.
Reform vs Machine: A Problematic Dichotomy
Few issues in urban politics have been as enduring as the institutional design of governing
bodies. The conventional view is that before the Progressive Era most municipalities were ruled
by machine governments that served myopic interests, usually geographically or ethnically
based. These machine governments were easily susceptible to corruption. Eventually, these
governments became reform regimes that merged ideals on the public good with modern concepts of
business management. Reform politics were thought to be "objective," in the sense that they
isolated public officials from parochial interests, advocated for nonpartisan elections, and
promoted efficiency in government services. (5) According to Paul Peterson, machine governments
"favored ward elections, long ballots, decentralized governing arrangements, and the close
connection between government, party, neighborhood, and ethnic association. Reformers preferred
citywide elections, short ballots, centralized governing institutions, and the application of
universalistic norms in the provision of government services." (6) In the overwhelming majority
of cases, reform governments favored small city councils and managerial systems, where the
administration of the city's activities was performed by a hired city manager, rather than the
mayor. Both during the Progressive Era and after the Second World War, America saw an explosion
of reform orientated managerial governments. (7) Judged in the terms of popularity alone,
reform governments are often assumed to be the ideal means for handling local affairs, at least
for small municipalities.
However, the degree to which reform governments objectively represent the interests of all
residents in the city has been contested. Jessica Trounstine has argued that reform governments
do not necessarily make local power more transparent. Instead, they substitute one form of
institutional bias for another. (8) For example, advocates of reform governments promote
citywide, non-partisan, winner-take-all elections in the hopes of severing the tie between
public officials and party bosses. However, this often decreases voter awareness of candidates
and results in costlier elections. Party bosses are weakened, but wealthy individuals running
for office gain electoral advantages. For this reason, the debates between reform and machine
governments have not necessarily been debates on transparency and corruption, but on which type
of local elites should be in control of the governments. This is a critical point in
understanding why certain municipalities changed to reform governments and why, in many cases,
these changes were strongly resisted.
Rice has noted that commission governments -- which were part of the reform agenda and acted
both as a theoretical and practical precursor to more managerial institutions -- were almost
unequivocally supported by business elites and bitterly opposed by labor. Often business elites
were only able to demobilize labor's opposition by making major concessions that made the
reform process far more varied and complicated than the usual narrative of machine-to-reform
proposes. (9) Nevertheless, when labor did prove itself to be a significant threat to the
established order -- as in the case of Midwest cities in the form of the Socialist Party -- the
move to managerial governments occurred swiftly, uncompromisingly, and involved players outside
of the local political landscape.
The support among business elites for reform governments was not only because such changes
ensured them electoral advantages. The structure of the reform governments often duplicated the
organizational styles that were prevalent within the private sector. Replacing large city
councils elected through wards with small commissions elected citywide made local governments
more closely resemble the structure of corporate boardrooms. Furthermore, the position of
city-managers was thought to mimic that of the chief executive officer (CEO) within a firm.
There was no expectation that the city manager would be accountable to the people directly any
more than a firm's CEO was thought to be directly accountable to its workers. Instead, the
city-manager was accountable to the council who acted as a board, while the citizens themselves
were thought to be shareholders of the city. As Stillman has observed, "commercial activities
have been one of the vital forces in shaping American society, and the businessman and the
corporation have often been instrumental in determining public values Probably no political or
administrative philosophy reflects business and corporate ideals more clearly than the city
management movement." (10) In this regard, the movement for reform governments not only wanted
to reconfigure local power to better serve business elites but believed that the values and
thinking of business elites -- which saw citizens in service of certain fiscal ends -- should
be embedded into the structure of municipal politics.
Socialists Against Reform
In 1911, after two decades of organizing, the Socialist Party in Dayton, Ohio reported
nearly 500 formal members and the support of approximately 13,000 trade unionists. With this
popular support, they successfully elected two of their members to the city council and another
three to the assessor's office. Their political strength was undoubtedly on the rise. During
the 1912 presidential election, a greater portion of the Dayton electorate voted for the
Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs than the Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt.
(11)
In 1912, Ohio revised its constitution in order to grant home rule status to local
municipalities. This prompted twenty-five cities in the state to consider charter changes.
Dayton was one of them. With the design of local government now open, there was a strong push
by Progressives to shrink the city council, make all elections citywide, and hire a city
manager to perform administrative tasks. One notable champion of this cause was John H.
Patterson. Patterson was a local industrialist known for his experiments in "welfare
capitalism." Despite his reputation as an enlightened business owner, Patterson was notoriously
anti-union, chiding labor organizations for promoting a "restive spirit" among employees. Under
the progressive banner, Patterson promoted reform governments as a means of combining Taylorism
with republicanism. According to Paterson, the virtues of managerial and market orientated
governments were elevated to the status of a secular religion. In print and lectures, he
proudly proclaimed that "A city is a great business enterprise whose stockholders are the
people Our municipal affairs would be placed upon a strict business basis and directed, not by
partisans , but by men who are skilled in business management and social science; who would
treat our people's money as a trust fund, to be expended wisely and economically, without waste
and for the benefit of all citizens." (12) The local Socialist Party was not persuaded by
Paterson's calls for a technocratic utopia. They decried the proposed reform government as a
regressive step away from democracy. (13)
In March, 1913, only two months before the city was to vote on its new charter, a massive
flood from the Miami River hit Dayton, resulting in a state of emergency. While the local
government scrambled to deal with the crisis, Patterson utilized the opportunity to exhibit the
generosity of Dayton's business class. He opened his factory as a relief center and organized a
fundraising campaign among the business community to pay for emergency services. These actions
won him favor among the local population. When election for the new charter was held on May 20,
1913, the new reform government was approved by a 2-1 margin. Despite increasing their number
of votes in proceeding election cycle, the changes prevented the Socialist Party from taking
office again. By 1917, the Socialist Party managed to win 43% of the vote, but in citywide,
winner-take-all elections, this resulted in no representation. (14)
A similar dispossession of Socialists happened in New Castle, Pennsylvania. In 1911, New
Castle voters elected several Socialist Party members to their select board, including the
mayor, Walter V. Tyler. Despite the recalcitrance of non-socialist on the select board, often
refusing to attend meetings in order to deny a quorum, Tyler and his supporters were able to
make meaningful changes to the city. They ended petty graft and managed to get the city's
finances in order, raised wages and reduced hours for city workers, and instituted reforms to
curb police brutality. (15)
Despite these successes, the Socialists in New Castle found their ability to maintain their
tenure in public office severely limited with the passage of the Clark Act. Passed in 1913, the
Clark Act changed all third-class cities in Pennsylvania, which included New Castle, to a
commission-style government. This reduced the size of the city councils to five members,
replaced wards with citywide elections, created nonpartisan positions, and increased the number
of signatures needed to get an initiative on the ballot. Despite the appearance of nonpartisan
elections, it was clear that the new commission-style government biased the electoral system
toward Republicans. Previously, the electoral achievements of Socialists in New Castle were
partially attributed to factionalism within the local Republican Party. The editors of the
New Castles News were Republican partisans and condemned ex-Republicans who ran
independently in elections for their lack of loyalty. Nevertheless, after the passage of the
Clark Act, New Castle News editors had an overnight conversion to nonpartisan ideals,
worked with the local Board of Trade to select "men of the highest standard" to run for public
office, and were extremely successful in reinstituting Republican rule. (16) As with Dayton,
the changes effectively excluded Socialists from office. No Socialists were reelected in 1913.
Mayor Tyler's reform movement was halted, and -- due to charter changes -- Tyler himself was
unable to run for reelection. (17)
The examples of Dayton and New Castle demonstrate that reform governments did not
necessarily result in an attack on machines, but rather a turn toward more bureaucratic and
market-orientated municipalities. As Bruce M. Stave has noted, "urban structural reforms that
Socialists generally opposed, with good reason, include the often successful attempt to
institute city manager or commission forms of government. Along with substituting nonpartisan
city-wide elections for ward-based elections to city councils and school boards, such diluted
areas of socialist strength and grass-roots neighborhood control over municipal politics.
Conversely, it enhanced the power of urban elites, who had the resources and expertise to take
advantage of the new rationalized structures." (18)
Reviving Municipal Citizenship
Municipal politics in the United States has had a problematic history. In the United States,
the virtues of local sovereignty are praised to such an extent that critical examinations of
municipal governments often get lost in the adulations. There is no argument that machine
governments hindered greater democratic inclusion, but the assumption that their reform
counterparts offered a meaningful an alternative is mistaken. The reality is that more often
than not reform governments shifted power rather than dispersing it.
Advocates of reform governments claimed that they would make politics more efficient by
preventing the waste and spoilage associated with machines. Since the private sector constantly
strove for higher levels of efficiency to maximize profits, it was only reasonable to bring
private sector organizational styles into the public realm. However, this analysis
fundamentally misunderstands the nature of machine politics. Machines were not inefficient.
They were actually highly efficient is distributing the resources at their disposal. The issue
was that the rewards of that distribution were not based on competency but loyalty. Party
loyalty acts as the machine's capital, where if party bosses were willing to invest favoritism
toward certain underlings, then that boss would see a return on investments through loyalty.
The movement away from machine to reform government did not seek a fundamental dismantling of
this capitalistic relationship but instead transferred the terms so that party loyalty was
substituted for business loyalty. In doing so, municipal governments became embedded with the
values and rationality of the reigning business class. Municipal bureaucracies aided in the
creation of localized market societies. This relationship between market and bureaucracy proved
to be both self-reinforcing and enduring. The managerial concepts on local governments
popularized during the Progressive Era remain a mainstay of America's political landscape,
especially in suburban areas.
Problematically, the treatment of citizens in a polity as stockholders of a corporation
fundamentally undermines the very notion of citizenship. In a free society, the people do not
consume their government; they embody it through the exercise of their citizenship. Consumers
in a market, unlike citizens in a polity, have no presumption of equality. If anything,
consumers in a market are constantly seeking to undermine each other's equality in order to
secure the best deals. Citizenship cannot engage in this anarchy of the market. Doing so
undermines the basis of a cohesive community.
The displacement of Socialists from municipal governments could not have happened without a
grander agenda to limit democratic participation and a reimagining of citizens as means toward
ensuring business interest rather than ends. Nevertheless, this suggests a corrective to the
tendency toward market bureaucratization in local government. The expansion of democracy, above
and beyond the local realm, is essential to working against the "iron cage" of the modern
economic order. Such an expansion can only come about by embracing a deeper sense of
citizenship that challenges not only the inviolability of private property but the very
rationality that reduces citizens to nomadic cogs in a bureaucratic engine intended to maximize
profits.
(1) Friedman, Milton, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982)
10.
(2) Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. ed. Richard Swedberg (New
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009)
(3) Bookchin, Murray, Urbanization Without Cities: The Rise and Decline of Citizenship
(Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1992), 172.
(4) Somers, Margret R., Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to
Have Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 2.
(5) Rice, Bradley, Progressive Cities: The Commission Government Movement in America,
1901-1920 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977).
(6) Peterson, Paul E, City Limits (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981), 7.
(7) Stillman II, Richard J, The Rise of the City Manager: A Public Professional in Local
Government (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1974).
(8) Trounstine, Jessica, Political Monopolies in American Cities: The Rise and Fall of
Bosses and Reformers (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2008).
(9) Rice, Bradley, Progressive Cities: The Commission Government Movement in America,
1901-1920.
(10) Stillman II, Richard J, The Rise of the City Manager: A Public Professional in Local
Government, 7-8.
(11) Judd, Richard W, Socialist Cities: Municipal Politics and the Grass Roots of American
Socialism (Albany: State of University of New Press, 1989).
(12) Quoted from ibid, 8.
(13) Judd, Richard W, Socialist Cities: Municipal Politics and the Grass Roots of American
Socialism.
"... After the Creation of the "CIA" Unelected, Unconstitutional CIA Intelligence Agency Interfered In Foreign Presidential Elections At Least 81 Times In 54 Years. The US was found to have interfered in foreign elections at least 81 times in 31 countries between 1946 and 2000 – not counting Libya, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, The US-backed military coups or regime change efforts, Proxy-Wars. Just saying ..."
"... Tucker Carlson has been analyzing policies/ideas on a deeper level this year. He is painting US a big picture for us to see. It's quite refreshing to see Fox News actually allow objective truth be aired on on occasion. ..."
"... The Intelligence Agencies are the Praetorian Guard in the United States. ..."
"... Party politics is a means of control. When you come to realize that we all have a tendency to agree that the major issues have no party loyalty, and we're all on the same side, you can look past minor differences and move forward to working for the greater good... ..."
"... I just saw another Tucker Carlson news clip that Tony Podesta is offered immunity to testify against Paul Manafort? WTF? Why aren't Podestas charged?! ..."
"... Neocons, military industrial complex and liberal leftists have penetrated deeply into the government intelligence communities, wall street banking, both houses of Us congress, mainstream media as well as Hollywood people, even in an academia. This country is deep sh*t. I am surprised liberal leftists have not crucified Tucker Carlson yet for speaking out. ..."
"... Russiagate is DemoKKKrat horse cookies. Putin is correct. DemoKKKrats are bad losers. $1.2 billion gone, servers gone! ..."
Guys Did you know: After the Creation of the "CIA" Unelected, Unconstitutional CIA
Intelligence Agency Interfered In Foreign Presidential Elections At Least 81 Times In 54
Years. The US was found to have interfered in foreign elections at least 81 times in 31
countries between 1946 and 2000 – not counting Libya, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, The
US-backed military coups or regime change efforts, Proxy-Wars. Just saying.
¯\_(^)_/¯
Tucker Carlson is a special character. 95% of time i disagree with Tucker but 5% of time
he's just exceptionally good. In April his 8 minute monologue was epic. I love Jimmy Dore's
passion... specially when he pronounes "they're lying!!!" Jimmy clearly hates liars ;-) We
love you Jimmy for your integrity and intelligence.
Weapons of mass destruction, 9/11, Bin Laden, Lybia, Gulf of Tonkin, Opium fields in
Afghanistan, Operation Mockingbird, Operation Paperclip..... A few reasons not to trust your
CIA and FBI. I am sure you guys can name some more.
Tucker Carlson has been analyzing policies/ideas on a deeper level this year. He is
painting US a big picture for us to see. It's quite refreshing to see Fox News actually allow
objective truth be aired on on occasion.
Pulling off the partisan blinders is the first step toward enlightenment... Party politics
is a means of control. When you come to realize that we all have a tendency to agree that the
major issues have no party loyalty, and we're all on the same side, you can look past minor
differences and move forward to working for the greater good...
THE CIA HAS BEEN OVERTHROWING GOVERMENTS FOR DECADES,and you wonder why Trump doesn't
trust them? It's because he doesn't want war. He ain't no saint but at least we have an anti
war President.
Morning Joe's panel said today that the Democrats need to run on this Russia conspiracy
theory, and nothing else, in order to win the midterms. If they bring up free college or
medicare for all it will "weaken their message and confuse the voters". Once again the
corporate neoliberal warmonger Democrats and their rich TV puppets are setting us up for
failure, no voter gives a damn about Russia, MSNBC wants our progressive candidates to lose
instead of reform their corrupt party!
I think what has happened to the Liberals, is that for decades and decades they were the
most progressive, tolerant party. They really did want to do more for the people and tried to
introduce things that the right would instantly point to and call "socialist!!" Corporations
started to look at these liberals as representatives they could pay off but without suspect,
unlike Republicans, who were widely known to accept money from Corporations, Big Pharma and
huge construction companies (Haliburton anyone?).
Over time, Liberals saw the benefits of
being chummy with these same big $$ companies and voted on bills, etc in the ways that would
make these corps very happy and more profitable. No one wanted to believe that Liberals were
doing the same thing as Republicans but now we know they are. It's not a secret anymore. Most
politicians aren't in it to make their country, their state or their cities better; they're
in it to make their bank accounts unbelievably huge and that's it. They're greedy people with
no integrity, pretending to serve the people.
I'm a righty, and I'm so surprised to see a liberal agree with Tucker in all the things I
care about! Imagine what we could accomplish if we put aside our differences for a time and
work on what we agree on! No more immoral wars for Israel! TRY BUSH, CHENEY, AND ALL NEOCONS
THAT LED US TO WAR WITH IRAQ FOR TREASON!!
You are so right. Thank you for bringout the truth. Neocons, military industrial complex
and liberal leftists have penetrated deeply into the government intelligence communities,
wall street banking, both houses of Us congress, mainstream media as well as Hollywood people,
even in an academia. This country is deep sh*t. I am surprised liberal leftists have not
crucified Tucker Carlson yet for speaking out.
Russiagate is DemoKKKrat horse cookies. Putin is correct. DemoKKKrats are bad losers. $1.2
billion gone, servers gone! DmoKKKrats cannot even prove climate change
A confidence game depends upon artificially induced confidence to elicit consent from the
conned. And the consent is almost always gained by convincing the conned they will receive an
unearned gain in exchange for their consent. In other words, the con plays off the conned
person's greed and vice.
Other more complicated cons (such as those played by the sociopath powers that be) may
introduce fear and anger into the equation. Regardless of the leverage applied, the conned
plays an integral part in the con. While we helpfully label the conned as an ego soothing
victim of a crime , the word ' victim' begs the question of what exactly is a
victim if the victim played into, and along with, the overall con.
Maybe we should say we were seduced. You know, change the name to make it more palatable. It
sounds so much better thinking we were compelled beyond our control by an irresistible force to
give our consent.
There is an implicit and (usually) unspoken agreement between those running the con and
those taken by the con which promises the conned will be rewarded for his, her or their
participation. And the word rewarded doesn't necessarily mean receiving a gain. The reward
could actually mitigate or remove an already expected or threatened loss, real or
imaginary.
If we were to give those last few sentences some deeper thought, the reader might begin to
understand how governments, multinational corporations and even so-called nonprofit
organizations, controlled by a few key sociopaths, manipulate our artificially inflated fears
along with our dreams (aka the carrot and the stick) to induce consent, or at least no
resistance, to their destructive (and profitable) socioeconomic policies.
Enjoyed the article. When someone expresses thoughts that I agree with so readily, I try
to find things that I would make clearer for me. It is almost like if someone thinks exactly
like me, I look for differences that declare my own individuality.
It is difficult to explain the way you think and feel about the world, and I appreciate
your efforts. My nature is to fight back against it all, arduous task as I get older. It is a
lot easier to say to yourself that you just don't care anymore.
""Life is crazy, people are strange, locked in tight but I'm out of range, I used to care,
but things have changed."
As Gloria Steinem used to say, "The truth shall set you free. But first, it will piss you
off."
Cog, I have tried to say what you said, in other fora, and it's always met with gasps of
disbelief. I tell them "So, you're saying you just don't like his management style, because
you didn't complain about Obama's lies, war crimes, corruption, etc." usually in reply to
someone's comment that the president is stipid, crazy, and/or generally wrong... I may
bookmark this for future reference on such occasions.
Here we are in the future. Now where did I leave my rocket belt?
Tony Norfield's book The City: London and the Global Power of Finance provides
readers with an insider's look at the inner workings of London's financial operations and
international finance. Norfield is a Marxist, and The City elucidates an explicitly
Marxist analysis of the financial system and how it relates to the broader system of global
capitalist power, an aspect of imperialism about which there is very little written. Norfield
makes a number of important points. First, he disagrees with writers who overemphasize the
dominance of US capitalism, arguing that this stance overlooks the interests that other
countries hold in the system and how they oppress weaker states. Second, Norfield stresses that
the financial system is an integral part of capitalism, not an aberration as some who write
about the "financialization" of capital claim. And finally, regarding imperialism and world
power, Norfield asserts that access to finance both reflects economic power, and serves as a
way of maintaining that power internationally.
Norfield's first point is best illustrated by his description of the UK's relationship to
the US following World War II. While Britain has had less power in the global financial system
than the US, especially since the war, to view it as merely a "satellite" of US power, Norfield
argues, is incorrect. He illustrates how Britain has acted to serve its own economic interests
and has found ways to play to its strengths. Throughout this period, the UK's relationship with
the United States has been a combination of both rivalry and cooperation, so while Britain
accepted the dollar as the international currency following the war, it strove to generate
business for British capitalism within the new dollar-dominated system. Norfield's book
explains in detail how London was able to maintain its role as the center of world finance,
despite Washington's rise to global dominance.
The City also situates global finance as a critical component to the daily workings
of capitalist production. Norfield describes productive capitalists' reliance on financial
services to obtain funds, facilitate buying and selling, set up payment systems, and acquire
foreign exchange for international trade. Financial securities (stocks and bonds), in turn,
both assert market attitudes toward companies' future earnings and impose market discipline
upon them. Banks also play an important role by distributing capital within different sectors
of commerce and industry. Additionally, the book illustrates the highly intertwined nature of
industrial and financial capital, recognizing that many industrial firms are active in
financial markets as well.
Echoing Marx, Norfield explains that profit is created by workers' exploitation by
productive capitalists, though financial earnings do not have to come directly from
productive capital. This, he declares, obscures value relations and can lead to the notion that
the revenue generated by financial capital has no relation to the productive sphere. Arguments
that the 2007-08 economic crisis was a product of global finance run amok arise from this
notion that the financial system operates independent from capitalist production. But, Norfield
rightly claims that crisis is endemic to the capitalist system, so attempts to reign in the
financial sphere will not eliminate crises. "The capitalist laws of the market are only
modified, not abolished, by the financial system," he explains. "This can lead to bigger booms,
and bigger busts, than might have happened otherwise."
The most crucial point made in Norfield's book is the strong connection between finance and
imperialism. Nations that hold a higher place in the global hierarchy of power, Norfield
posits, have access to greater financial "privileges." These privileges include access to
capital or financial services at a low cost and the use of its own national currency in
financial transactions. The ability to offer a wider array and less expensive financial
services can attract more business, including foreign company listings, to a nation's financial
market. In Britain's case, Norfield highlights that the revenues generated from London's vast
financial services have largely offset Britain's trade deficit that emerged in the late 1980s.
This is a useful example of how a powerful country can exercise its financial privilege to
reinforce its position as a major power in the world. Similarly, being able to use its domestic
currency in international transactions can reduce the monetary risk and cost to the company,
particularly when exchange rates are volatile. This allows these firms to outcompete companies
in weaker markets for lucrative financial deals. Having the dollar as the dominant
international currency means that the United States reaps the lion's share of these financial
benefits, though other countries assert their own imperial power to establish their national
currency for various international transactions.
Because the US dollar is the dominant international currency, the United States can be
understood as the provider of global money. This position, Norfield explains, gives Washington
a level of economic power unavailable to other nations. For one, the United States has the
capacity to cut rival countries off from any transactions denominated in dollars. Another
aspect is the Federal Reserve's role in the provision of dollars to other countries that are
often dependent on an infusion of dollars during times of market instability. This places them
in a vulnerable position where their financial wellbeing is dependent upon US action. From this
position, the United States can assert its power over weaker nations and force them to abide by
its wishes without the use or even the threat of any military force.
The more powerful a nation is on the global stage the more benefits are available to its
national capitalists. Norfield stresses capitalist corporations' dependence on their national
state, even the so-called "international" corporations. He argues that a corporation's
financial power depends on entitled access to credit markets and its capacity to initiate
large-scale transactions. But these aspects of economic power depend on more than the company's
own abilities; they rely upon the strength of their own state in securing international
transactions in the country's national currency. This is a particular financial advantage,
explains Norfield, which differs from the import tariffs and favorable investments or trade
deals that a state may be able to leverage to the benefit of national corporations, though all
are key ways in which corporations rely upon the state.
Norfield presents the 2000 takeover of the German mobile telecom company Mannesmann by
British firm Vodaphone as an illustrative example of how a corporation's connection to dominant
imperial power reaps significant benefits. Vodaphone's takeover was facilitated by the
preeminence of London's financial market in relation to the weaker Frankfurt, as well as
Vodaphone's close links to British and US money-capitalists as shareholders, revealing the
corporation's links to imperial power as crucial to its own economic dominance. The privileges
that corporations receive from the power and actions of their national states can help to
reinforce their position in the global economy, which can, in turn, provide tax revenues and
rising employment and income, serving the interests of the state in this reciprocal
relationship.
The City is a vital contribution to the Marxist understanding of international
finance and how it is integrated within the global web of imperial power. Readers will not only
gain a greater sense of how global finance works, but also the critical role it plays in the
day-to-day management of power relations between competing nations.
The iron law became a central theme in the study of organized labour , political parties , and pluralist
democracy in the postwar era. Although much of this scholarship basically confirmed Michels's
arguments, a number of prominent works began to identify important anomalies and limitations to the
iron law framework. Seymour Lipset , Martin Trow,
and James
Coleman 's analysis of the International
Typographical Union (ITU), for example, showed that sustained union democracy was possible
given printers' relative equality of income and status, mastery of communication skills, and
generalized political competence, which underpinned the ITU's unusual history of enduring
two-party competition (Independents and Progressives), which mirrored the American two-party system . In the
party literature, Samuel Eldersveld argued that the power of organizational elites in Detroit
was not nearly as concentrated as the iron law would suggest. He found party power relatively
dispersed among different sectors and levels, in a "stratarchy" of shifting coalitions among
component groups representing different social strata.
"... By Enrico Verga, a writer, consultant, and entrepreneur based in Milan. As a consultant, he concentrates on firms interested in opportunities in international and digital markets. His articles have appeared in Il Sole 24 Ore, Capo Horn, Longitude, Il Fatto Quotidiano, and many other publications. You can follow him on Twitter @enricoverga . ..."
"... Continuing flows of low-cost labor can be useful for cutting costs. West Germany successfully absorbed East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but the dirty secret of this achievement is the exploitation of workers from the former East, as Reuters reports . ..."
"... The expansion of the EU to Poland (and the failed attempt to incorporate the Ukraine) has allowed many European businesses to shift local production to nations where the average cost of a blue or white collar worker is much lower ( by 60-70% on average ) than in Western European countries. ..."
"... The middle class is a silent mass that for many years has painfully digested globalization, while believing in the promises of globalist politicians," explains Luciano Ghelfi, a journalist of international affairs who has followed Lega from its beginnings. Ghelfi continues: ..."
"... I think unrestrained globalization has taken a hit. In Italy as well, as we have seen recently, businesses are relocating abroad. And the impoverished middle class finds itself forced to compete for state resources (subsidies) and jobs which can be threatened by an influx of economic migrants towards which enormous resources have been dedicated – just think of the 4.3 billion Euros that the last government allocated toward economic migrants. ..."
"... In all of this, migrants are more victims than willing actors, and they become an object on which the fatigue, fear, and in the most extreme cases, hatred of the middle class can easily focus. ..."
"... If for the last twenty years, with only occasional oscillation, the pro-globalization side has been dominant in the West, elections are starting to swing the balance in a new direction. ..."
"... "Klein analyzes a future (already here to some degree) in which multinational corporations freely fish from one market or another in an effort to find the most suitable (i.e. cheapest) labor force." ..."
"... never export their way out of poverty and misery ..."
By Enrico Verga,
a writer, consultant, and entrepreneur based in Milan. As a consultant, he
concentrates on firms interested in opportunities in international and digital markets. His
articles have appeared in Il Sole 24 Ore, Capo Horn, Longitude, Il Fatto Quotidiano, and many
other publications. You can follow him on Twitter @enricoverga .
International commerce, jobs, and economic migrants are propelled by a common force:
profit.
In recent times, the Western middle class (by which I mean in particular industrial workers
and office employees) has lost a large number of jobs and has seen its buying power fall. It
isn't true that migrants are the source of all evil in the world. However, under current
conditions, they become a locus for the exasperation of the population at twenty years of
pro-globalization politics. They are tragically placed in the role of the straw that breaks the
camel's back.
Western businesses have slipped jobs overseas to countries with low labor costs, while the
middle class has been pushed into debt in order to try to keep up. The Glass-Steagall law and
other brakes on American banks were abolished by a cheerleader for globalization, Bill Clinton,
and these banks subsequently lost all restraints in their enthusiasm to lend. The cherry on top
of the sundae was the real estate bubble and ensuing crash of 2008.
A damning picture of the results of 20 years of globalization is provided by
Forbes , capitalism's magazine par excellence. Already in 2016, the surprise victory of
Trump led to questions about whether the blond candidate's win was due in part to the straits
of the American middle class, impoverished as a result of the pro-globalization politics of
figures like Clinton and Obama.
Further support for this thesis is furnished by the
New York Times , describing the collapse of the stars-and-stripes middle class. Its
analysis is buttressed by lengthy research from the very mainstream
Pew Center , which agrees that the American middle class is vanishing.
And Europe? Although the European middle class has been squeezed less than its American
counterpart, for us as well the picture doesn't look good. See for example the
analysis of the Brookings Institute , which discusses not only the flagging economic
fortunes of the European middle class, but also the fear of prosperity collapsing that
currently grips Europe.
Migrants and the Shock Doctrine
What do economic migrants have to do with any of this?
Far be it from me to criticize large corporations, but clearly they – and their
managers and stockholders – benefit from higher margins. Profits (revenue minus costs and
expenses) can be maximized by reducing expenses. To this end, the costs of acquiring goods
(metals, agricultural products, energy, etc.) and services (labor) need to fall steadily.
In the quest to lower the cost of labor, the most desirable scenario is a sort of blank
slate: to erase ongoing arrangements with workers and start over from zero, building a new
"happy and productive" economy. This operation can be understood as a sort of "shock
doctrine."
The term "economic shock therapy" is based on an analogy with electroshock therapy for
mental patients. One important analysis of it comes from Naomi Klein , who became
famous explaining in 2000 the system of fashion production through subsidiaries that don't
adhere to the safety rules taken so seriously in Western countries (some of you may recall the
scandal of
Benetton and Rana Plaza , where more than a thousand workers at a Bangladesh factory
producing Benetton (and other) clothes were crushed under a collapsing building).
Klein analyzes a future (already here to some degree) in which multinational corporations
freely fish from one market or another in an effort to find the most suitable (i.e. cheapest)
labor force. Sometimes relocating from one nation to another is not possible, but if you can
bring the job market of other countries here in the form of a low-cost mass of people competing
for employment, then why bother?
The Doctrine in Practice
Continuing flows of low-cost labor can be useful for cutting costs. West Germany
successfully absorbed East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but the dirty secret of
this achievement is the exploitation of workers
from the former East, as Reuters reports .
The expansion of the EU to Poland (and the failed attempt to incorporate the Ukraine) has
allowed many European businesses to
shift local production to nations where the average cost of a blue or white collar worker
is much lower (
by 60-70% on average ) than in Western European countries.
The migrant phenomenon is a perfect counterpoint to a threadbare middle class, given its
role as a success story within the narrative of globalization.
Economic migrants are eager to obtain wealth on the level of the Western middle class
– and this is of course a legitimate desire. However, to climb the social ladder, they
are willing to do anything: from accepting low albeit legal salaries to picking tomatoes
illegally (
as Alessandro Gassman, son of the famous actor, reminded us ).
The middle class is a silent mass that for many years has painfully digested globalization,
while believing in the promises of globalist politicians," explains Luciano Ghelfi, a
journalist of international affairs who has followed Lega from its beginnings. Ghelfi
continues:
This mirage has fallen under the blows it has received from the most serious economic
crisis since the Second World War. Foreign trade, easy credit (with the American real estate
bubble of 2008 as a direct consequence), peace missions in Libya (carried out by
pro-globalization French and English actors, with one motive being in my opinion the
diversion of energy resources away from [the Italian] ENI) were supposed to have created a
miracle; they have in reality created a climate of global instability.
Italy is of course not untouched by this phenomenon. It's easy enough to give an
explanation for the Five Stars getting votes from part of the southern electorate that is
financially in trouble and might hope for some sort of subsidy, but the North? The choice of
voting center right (with a majority leaning toward Lega) can be explained in only one way
– the herd (the middle class) has tried to rise up.
I asked him, "So in your opinion, is globalization in stasis? Or is it radically
changing?" He replied:
I think unrestrained globalization has taken a hit. In Italy as well, as we have seen
recently, businesses are relocating abroad. And the impoverished middle class finds itself
forced to compete for state resources (subsidies) and jobs which can be threatened by an
influx of economic migrants towards which enormous resources have been dedicated – just
think of the 4.3 billion Euros that the last government allocated toward economic
migrants.
This is an important element in the success of Lega: it is a force that has managed to
understand clearly the exhaustion of the impoverished middle class, and that has proposed a
way out, or has at least elaborated a vision opposing the rose-colored glasses of
globalization.
In all of this, migrants are more victims than willing actors, and they become an object on
which the fatigue, fear, and in the most extreme cases, hatred of the middle class can easily
focus.
What Conflicts Are Most Relevant Today?
At the same time, if we observe, for example in Italy, the positions taken by the
(pro-globalization?) Left, it becomes easier to understand why the middle class and also many
blue collar workers are abandoning it. Examples range from the unfortunate declarations of
deputy Lia Quartapelle on
the need to support the Muslim Brotherhood to the explanations of the former president of
the Chamber of Deputies, Laura Boldrini, on how the status of economic migrant should be seen as a model for the
lifestyle of all Italians . These remarks were perhaps uttered lightly (Quartapelle
subsequently took her post down and explained that she had made a mistake), but they are
symptomatic of a certain sort of pro-globalization cultural "Left" that finds talking to
potential voters less interesting than other matters.
From Italy to America (where
Hillary Clinton was rejected after promoting major international trade arrangements that
she claimed would benefit middle-class American workers) to the UK (where Brexit has been taken as a sort of
exhaust valve), the middle class no longer seems to be snoring.
We are currently seeing a political conflict between globalist and nationalist forces.
Globalists want more open borders and freer international trade. Nationalists want protection
for work and workers, a clamping down on economic migrants, and rules with teeth aimed at
controlling international trade.
If for the last twenty years, with only occasional oscillation, the pro-globalization side
has been dominant in the West, elections are starting to swing the balance in a new
direction.
Meanwhile, many who self-identify as on the Left seem utterly uninterested in the concerns
of ordinary people, at least in cases where these would conflict with the commitment to
globalization.
If the distinction between globalism and nationalism is in practice trumping other
differences, then we should not let ourselves be distracted by bright and shiny objects, and
keep our focus on what really matters.
From the Forbes link:
"The first downside of international trade that even proponents of freer trade must
acknowledge is that while the country as a whole gains some people do lose."
More accurate to say a tiny, tiny, TINY percentage gain.
Nice how they use the euphemism "country as a whole" for GDP. Yes, GDP goes up – but
that word that can never be uttered by American corporate media – DISTRIBUTION –
that essentially ALL gains in GDP have gone to the very top. AND THAT THIS IS A POLITICAL
DECISION, not like the waves of the ocean or natural selection. There is plenty that could be
done about it – BUT it STARTS with WANTING to do something effective about it .
Nice how they use the euphemism "country as a whole" for GDP.
Fresno Dan,
You have identified one of my pet peeves about economists and their fellow traveler
politicians. They hide behind platitudes, and the former are more obnoxious about that.
Economists will tell people that they just don't understand all that complexity, and that in
the name of efficiency, etc, free trade and the long slide toward neo-liberal hell must
continue.
I think the assertion that all economic gains have gone to the very top is not accurate.
According to 'Unintended Consequences' by Ed Conard, the 'composition of the work force has
shifted to demographics with lower incomes' between 1980 and 2005. If you held the workforce
of 1980 steady through 2005, wages would be up 30% in real terms, not including benefits.
I think the author has highlighted some home truths in the article. I once remember
several years ago just trying to raise the issue of immigration* and its impact on workers on
an Irish so-called socialist forum. Either I met silence or received a reply along the lines:
'that when socialists rule the EU we'll establish continental wide standards that will ensure
fairness for everyone'. Fairy dust stuff. I'm not anti immigrant in any degree but it seems
unwise not to understand and mitigate the negative aspects of policies on all workers. Those
chickens are coming home to roost by creating the type of political parties (new or
established) that now control the EU and many world economies.
During the same period many younger middle and upper middle class Irish extolled the
virtues, quite openly, of immigration as way of lowering the power and wages of existing
Irish workers so that the costs of building homes, labour intensive services and the like
would be concretely reduced; and that was supposed to be a good thing for the material well
being of these middle and upper middle classes. Sod manual labour.
One part of the working class was quite happy to thrown another part of the working class
under the bus and the Left**, such as it was and is, was content to let it happen. Then
established Leftist parties often facilitated the rightward economic process via a host of
policies, often against their own stated policies in election manifestos. The Left appeared
deceitful. The Irish Labour party is barely alive and subsisting on die-hard traditionalists
for their support by those who can somehow ignore the deceit of their party. Surreaslist
stuff from so-called working class parties,
And now the middle-middle classes are ailing and we're supposed to take notice. Hmmm. Yet,
as a Leftist, myself, it is incumbent upon us to address the situation and assist all
workers, whatever their own perceived status.
*I'm an immigrant in the UK currently, though that is about to change next year.
** Whether the "Left", such as the Irish Labour Party, was just confused or bamboozled
matters not a jot. After the financial crises that became an economic crisis, they zealously
implemented austerity policies that predominantly cleared the way for a right wing political
landscape to dominate throughout Europe. One could be forgiven for thinking that those who
called themselves Leftists secretly believed that only right wing, neo-liberal economic
policies were correct. And I suppose, being a bit cynical, that a few politicos were paid
handsomely for their services.
I think its easy to see why the more middle class elements of the left wing parties never
saw immigration as a problem – but harder to see why the Trade Unions also bought into
this. Partly I think it was a laudable and genuine attempt to ensure they didn't buy into
racism – when you look at much trade union history, its not always pleasant reading
when you see how nakedly racist some early trade union activists were, especially in the US.
But I think there was also a process whereby Unions increasingly represented relatively
protected trades and professions, while they lost ground in more vulnerable sectors, such as
in construction.
I think there was also an underestimation of the 'balancing' effect within Europe. I think
a lot of activists understimated the poverty in parts of Europe, and so didn't see the
expansion of the EU into eastern Europe as resulting in the same sort of labour arbitrage
thats occurred between the west and Asia. I remember the discussions over the enlargement of
the EU to cover eastern Europe and I recall that there seemed to be an inbuilt assumption
(certainly in the left), that rising general prosperity would ensure there would be no real
migration impact on local jobs. This proved to be entirely untrue.
Incidentally, in my constituency (Dublin Central) in past elections the local Labour party
was as guilty as any of pandering to the frequent racism encountered on the doorsteps in
working class areas. But it didn't do them much good. Interestingly, SF was the only party
who would consistently refuse to pander (At least in Dublin), making the distinction between
nationalist and internationalist minded left wingers even more confusing.
Yes, one has to praise the fact that the Unions didn't pander to racism – but that's
about all the (insert expletive of choice) did correctly.
Your other points, as ever, are relevant and valid but (and I must but) I tend to think
that parties like Labour were too far "breezy" about the repercussions about labour
arbitrage. But that's water under the bridge now.
Speaking about SF and the North West in general, they have aggressively canvassed recent
immigrants and have not tolerated racism among their ranks. Their simple reasoning was that
is unthinkable that SF could tolerate such behaviour amongst themselves when they has waged a
campaign against such attitudes and practices in the six counties. (SF are no saints, often
fumble the ball badly, and are certainly not the end-all-be-all, but this is something they
get right).
It has to be understood that much of immigration is occurring because of war, famine,
collapsing societies (mostly due to massive wealth inequality and corrupt governments).
Immigration is not the cause of the economic issues in the EU, it's a symptom (or a feature
if you're on top). If you don't correct the causes – neo-liberalism, kleptocracy,
rigged game – what ever you want to call it, then you too will become an immigrant in
your own country (and it will be a third world country by the time the crooks on top are
done).
Don't get caught up in the blame the other poor people game. It's a means to get the
powerless to fight among themselves. They are not in charge, they are victims just like
you.
Having spent a lot of time in the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan and Iraq I have to
say that rampant overpopulation plays a big part. Anyone who can get out is getting out. It
makes sense. And with modern communications they all know how life is in Europe or the US in
contrast to the grinding horror that surrounds them.
But Conan tells me that Haiti is a tropical paradise! (my brother too spent a lot of time
in Afghanistan and Iraq working with the locals during his deployments)
"Twitter liberalism" is doing itself by not recognizing that much of the developing world
IS a corrupt cesspool.
Instead of railing against Trump, the Twitter-sphere needs to rail against the bipartisan
policies that drive corruption, and economic dislocations and political dislocations. and
rail against religious fundamentalism that hinders family planning.
But if you actually do that, rail against bipartisan neoliberal policies on social media
and IRL, the conservatives are far less hostile than the die-hard Dems. This is especially
true now, with all the frothing at the mouth and bloodlust about Russia. Its raised their
"it's ALL *YOUR* FAULT"-ism by at least an order of magnitude.
Actually, that's been true since the 18th C., at least for the US. TV may make it more
vivid, and Europe has changed places, but most Americans have immigrant ancestors, most often
from Europe.
However, it does seem that the policy of the EU, especially under the influence of Mutti
Merkel, signalled a free-for-all immigration stance over the last several years, completely
ignoring the plight of existing workers (many of whom would be recent immigrants themselves
and the children of immigrants). That the so-called Left either sat idly by or jumped on
Mutti's band wagon didn't do them any favours with working people. Every country or customs
union has and needs to regulate its borders. It also makes some sense to monitor labour
markets when unfavourable conditions appear.
It appears that only the wealthy are largely reaping the rewards of the globalist
direction trade has taken. These issues need to be addressed by the emerging Left political
parties in the West. Failure to address these issues must, I would contend, play into the
hands of the more right wing parties whose job is to often enrich the local rich.
But, bottom line, your are correct workers do not come out well when blaming other workers
for economies that have been intentionally created to produce favourable conditions for the
few over the many.
It's a blade with two sides.
There are push factors like the wars and poor countries. However neither of these causes can
be fixed. Not possible. Europe can gnash their teeth all they want, not even when they did
the unthinkable and put the US under sanctions for their warcrimes would the US ever stop.
First there would be color revolutions in western europe.
As important as the push factors are the pull ones. 90% or so of all refugees 2015 went to
Germany. Some were sent to other countries by the EU, these too immediately moved to Germany
and didn't stay where they were assigned. So the EU has to clean up their act and would need
to put the last 10 or so US presidents and administrations before a judge in Den Haag for
continued war crimes and crimes against humanity (please let me my dreams). The EU would also
need to clean up their one sided trade treaties with Africa and generally reign in their own
corporations. All that is however not enough by far and at most only half the battle. Even
when the EU itself all did these things, the poverty would remain and therefore the biggest
push factor. Humans always migrate to the place where the economy is better.
The pull factors is however at least as big. The first thing to do is for Germany to fix
their laws to be in sync with the other EU countries. At this point, Germany is utterly
alone, at most some countries simply don't speak out against german policy since they want
concessions in other areas. Main one here is France with their proposed EU and Euro reforms
but not alone by far.
Nationalists want protection for work and workers, a clamping down on economic
migrants, and rules with teeth aimed at controlling international trade.
Socialism in one country is a Stalinist theory, and falling back upon it in fear of
international capital is not only regressive but (assuming we aren't intentionally ignoring
history) relective of a defensive mentality.
In other words, this kind of thinking is the thinking of the whipped dog cringing before
the next blow.
Or perhaps they want to regulate and control the power of capital in their country. Which
is an entirely impossible proposition considering that capital can flee any jurisdiction and
cross any border. After all, transnational capital flows which were leveraged to the hilt in
speculative assets played an oversized role in generating the financial crisis and subsequent
crash.
It wouldn't be the first time I've been called a Stalinist though.
And why would we care whether it's a "Stalinist" theory? For that matter, although worker
ownership would solve some of these problems, we needn't be talking about socialism, but
rather about more functional capitalism.
Quite a leap in that last sentence; you haven't actually established anything of the
sort.
Personally, I believe capitalism needs to go away, but for it, or any other economic
system, to work, we would need a fair, equal, just, enforced rule of law that
everyone would be under, wouldn't we?
Right now the blessed of our various nations do not want this, so they make so that one
set is unfair, unequal, unjust, harshly enforced on most of their country's population while
they get the gentle rules.
For a society to function long term, it needs to have a fair and just set of rules that
everyone understands and follow, although the rules don't have to equal; people will tolerate
different levels of punishments and strictness of the rules. The less that is the case the
more dysfunctional, and usually the more repressive it is. See the Western Roman Empire, the
fall of just about every Chinese dynasty, the Russian Empire, heck even the American War of
Independence, and the American Civil War. In example, people either actively worked to
destroy the system or did not care to support it.
Thank you for the article, a pretty lucid analysis of the recent electoral results in
Italy and trends elsewhere. Although I would have liked to read something about people voting
the way they do because they are xenophobe fascist baby-eating pedophile racist Putin
friends. Just for fun.
Funny how the author's company promotes "Daily international job vacancies in UNDP, FAO,
UN, UNCTAD, UNIDO and the other Governative Organization, Non Governative Organization,
Multinationals Corporations. Public Relations, Marketing, Business Development."
Precisely the sort of jobs that infuriates the impoverishing middle classes.
As recently as 2015, Bernie Sanders defended not only border security, but also national
sovereignty. Asked about expanded immigration, Sanders flipped the question into a critique
of open-borders libertarianism: "That's a Koch brothers proposal which says essentially there
is no United States."
Unfortunately the ethnic division of the campaign and Hillary's attack seems to have led him
to change his mind.
That's probably due to the fact that just about everybody can't seem to differentiate
between immigration and mass migration. The latter issue is a matter of distributing the pain
of a collapsing order. state failure, and climate change while the former is simply engaging
in the comfortable rhetoric of politics dominated by the American middle class.
1 people vote they like. im not updated if the voters eat babies but i'll check and let u
know.
2 My company is not dream job. It is a for free ( and not making a penny) daily bulleting
that using a fre soft (paper.li) collect international qualified job offers for whoever is
willing to work in these sector.
i'm not pro or contro migrants. i actually only reported simple fact collating differents
point :)
Economic migrants seek prosperity and are justified in doing so, yet they can also be
seen as pawns in an international strategy that destroys the negotiating leverage of
workers. The resulting contradictions potentially render conventional political
classifications obsolete.
This appears on the homepage, but not here.
In any case, the 10% also seek prosperity. They are said to be the enablers of the 1%.
Until the left alters its thinking to reflect the crucial information presented in this
video, information more clearly and comprehensively spelled out in "Reclaiming the State" by
Mitchell and Fazi, resurgent rightwing nationalism will be the only outlet for those who
reject global neoliberalism's race to the bottom. It's that simple and sad.
To paint this as two pro-globalisation (within which you place the left) and
pro-nationalism is simplistic and repositions the false dichotomy of left vs right with
something just as useless. We should instead seek to speak to the complexities of the modern
political spectrum. This is an example of poor journalism and analysis and shouldn't have
been posted here, sorry Yves.
Thanks for your opinion. Check the format of this place: articles selected for information
or provoking thoughts, in support of a general position of driving toward betterment of the
general welfare, writ large.
The political economy is at least as complex as the Krebs or citric acid cycle that
biology students and scientists try to master. There are so many moving parts and
intersecting and competing interests that in the few words that the format can accommodate,
regarding each link, it's a little unkind to expect some master work of explication and
rhetorical closure every time.
The Krebs cycle is basically driven by the homeostatic thrust, bred of billions of years
of refinement, to maintain the healthy functioning and prolong life of the organism. There's
a perceivable axis to all the many parts of respiration, digestion, energy flows and such,
all inter-related with a clear organizing principle at the level of the organism. On the
record, it's hardly clear that at the level of the political economy, and all the many parts
that make it up, there is sufficient cohesion around a set of organizing principles that
parallel the drive, at the society and species level, to regulate and promote the energy
flows and interactions that would keep things healthy and prolong the life of the larger
entity. Or that their is not maybe a death wish built into the "cultural DNA" of most of the
human population.
Looks a lot to me that we actually have been invested (in both the financial and military
senses of the word) by a bunch of different cancer processes, wild and unregulated
proliferation of ecnomic and political tumor tissues that have invaded and undermined the
healthy organs of the body politic. Not so clear what the treatments might be, or the
prognosis. It is a little hopeful, continuing the biological analogy, that the equivalents of
inflammation and immune system processes appear to be overcoming the sneaky tricks that
cancer genes and cells employ to evade being identified and rendered innocuous.
Yes, "invested in a bunch of cancer processes" is a good description of allowing excessive
levels of predatory wealth. Thus you end up with a bunch of Jay Gould hyper capitalists whose
guiding principle is: I can always pay one half of the working class to kill the other half.
Divide and conquer rules.
It's mostly simply wrong. This doesn't describe the political views of almost anyone near
power anywhere as far as I can tell:
"Globalists want more open borders and freer international trade. Nationalists want
protection for work and workers, "
Most of the nationalist forces are on the right and give @#$# all for workers rights.
Really they may be anti-immigrant but they are absolutely anti-worker.
The middle class does not really exist, it was a concept invented by capitalists to
distract the workers from their essential unity as fellow wage slaves. Some make more wages,
some make less wages but they all have their surplus value, the money left over after they
have enough to take care of themselves, taken by the capitalist and used for his ends even
though he may not have worked in the value creation process at all.
Economic migrants are members of the working class who have been driven from their home
country to somewhere else by the capitalist system. While the article does mention capitalist
shock doctrine methods for establishing imperialism and correctly notes that economic
migrants are victims, it then goes on to try to lay a weak and insidious argument against
them. The author goes on citing multiple different cases of worker wages being driven lower
or stagnating, many of these cases have differing and sometimes complex reasons for why this
happened. But migrants and globalization are to blame he says and that our struggle is
nationalism vs globalism. He refuses to see what is staring him in the face, workers produce
surplus value for society, more workers produce more surplus value. If society finds itself
wealthier with more workers then why do workers wage fall or stagnate? He does note correctly
that this is due to the workers now having a weaker bargaining position with the capitalist,
but he seems to conclude from this without stating outrightly that we should then reject the
economic migrants because of this.
However, we could instead conclude that if more workers produce more surplus value but yet
their wages fall because the capitalist takes a larger share of the overall pot, that the
problem is not more workers but instead the capitalist system itself which was rigged to
exploit workers everywhere. Plus the workers bargaining position only weakens with a greater
number of them if they are all just bargaining for themselves, but if they were to bargain
togather collectively then there bargaining position has actually only grown even
stronger.
Also he falsly equates democratic party policies with leftists, instead of correctly
noting that the democratic party represents capitalist interests from a centrist position and
not the left. The strength of global capitalism can only be fought by a global coalition of
the working class. The struggle of Mexican and American workers are interrelated to each
other and the same goes for that of European and Middle Eastern workers. The time has come
for the left to raise the rallying cry of its great and glorious past.
You claim, as if it were obvious, that "economic migrants are members of the working class
who have been driven from their home country to somewhere else by the capitalist system."
Are all economic migrants therefore bereft of agency?
If the borders of the US were abruptly left completely open, a huge number of people would
enter the country tomorrow, for economic reasons. Would they all have been "driven" here, or
would they have some choice in the matter?
When you say, "he refuses to say what is staring him in the face, that [ ] more workers
produce more surplus value," you are not only taking a gratuitously pedantic tone, you are
actually not making a coherent critique. If economic migrants move from one country to
another, the total pool of workers in the world has not increased; while according to your
logic, if all the workers in the world were to move to Rhode Island, Rhode Island would
suddenly be swimming in the richness of surplus value.
When you say, "we could instead conclude that [..] the problem is not more workers but
instead the capitalist system itself which was rigged to exploit workers everywhere," you are
straw-manning the author but also making a purely rhetorical argument. If you think the
capitalist system can be replaced with a better one within the near future, then you can work
toward that; but in the meanwhile, nations, assuming that they will continue to exist, will
either have open borders or something short of that, and these decisions do affect
the lives of workers.
When you say he "falsly equates democratic party policies with leftists," the false
equivalence is coming from you. The article barely touches on the Democratic Party, and
instead draws most of its examples from Europe, especially Italy. In Italy, the public
figures he mentions call themselves part of the sinistra and are generally referred
to that way. You might perhaps feel that they are not entitled to that name (and in fact, the
article sometimes places "left" in quotation marks), but you should at least read the article
and look them up before discussing the matter.
From the article: "Meanwhile, many who self-identify as on the Left seem utterly
uninterested in the concerns of ordinary people, at least in cases where these would conflict
with the commitment to globalization."
To Be Fair, Verga clearly is skeptical about those claims to be "on the Left," as he
should be. Nonetheless, his initial mention of Democratic exemplars of globalization triggers
American reflexes.
Something before this failed to post; was rejected as a double post.
In brief: corporate globalization is a conservative, Republican policy that Bill Clinton
imposed on the Dems, where it has since become doctrine, since it pays. It's ultimately the
reason I'm a Green, not a Democrat, and in a sense the reason there IS a Green Party in the
US.
The author points to stagnant middle class income in USA and Western Europe but fail to
look the big picture. Middle class income has increased sharply in the past decades in Asia
and Eastern Europe. Overall the gain huge, even though life is tougher in richer
countries.
Overall the gain huge, even thought life is tougher in richer countries.
Please accept my apologies for saying this. I don't mean to offend. I just have to point
out something.
Many in the Democratic Party, as well as the left, are pointing to other countries and
peoples as well as the American 9.9% and saying things are great, why are you complaining?
With the not so hidden implications, sometimes openly stated that those who do are losers and
deplorables.
Saying that middle class incomes are merely stagnant is a sick, sick joke as well as an
untruth. As an American, I do not really care about the middle classes in Asia and Eastern
Europe. Bleep the big picture. The huge gains comes with a commensurate increase in homeless
in the United States, and a falling standard of living for most the of the population,
especially in the "wealthy" states, like my state of California. Most of us are using
fingernails to stay alive and homed. If those gains had not been caused by the losses, I
would be very please to see them. As it is, I have to live under President Trump and worry
about surviving. Heck, worry about the rest of my family doing so.
"Saying that middle class incomes are merely stagnant is a sick, sick joke as well as an
untruth."
+10,000
I mean I actually do care somewhat about the people of the world, but we here in "rich
countries" are being driven to homelessness at this point and told the goddamn lie that we
live in a rich country, rather than the truth that we live in a plutocracy with levels of
inequality approaching truly 3rd world. We are literally killing ourselves because we have to
live in this plutocracy and our one existence itself is not even worth it anymore in this
economic system (and we are lacking even a few of the positives of many other 3rd world
countries). And those that aren't killing ourselves still can't find work, and even if we do,
it doesn't pay enough to meet the most basic necessities.
1. It is unfortunate that Verga raises the rising cost of material inputs but fails to
meaningfully address the issue. One of the drivers of migration, as mentioned in Comments
above, is the population volcano currently erupting. Labor is cheap and globalization
possible in large part because the world population has grown from 2 Billion to over 7
Billion in the past 60-odd years. This slow-growing mountain of human beings has created
stresses on material inputs which are having a negative impact on the benefits derived from
declining labor costs. This becomes a death-spiral as capital seeks to balance the rising
cost of raw materials and agricultural products by driving down the cost of labor ever
further.
2. Verga touches on the interplay of Nationalism and Racism in the responses of political
parties and institutions in Italy and elsewhere. Voters appear to be abandoning Left and
left-ish parties because the Left have been unable to come up with a definintion of national
sovereignty that protects worker rights largely due to the importance of anti-racism in
current Left-wing thought. Working people were briefly bought-off with cheap consumer goods
and easy credit, but they now realize that low-wage migrant and off-shore workers mean that
even these goodies are now out of reach. The only political alternative currently on offer is
a brand of Nationalism defined by Racism -- which becomes acceptable to voters when the
alternative is Third-World levels of poverty for those outside the 1% and their 9%
enablers.
I don't see any simple solutions. Things may get very ugly.
I certainly see that policies tampering down free trade, both of capital and labor, can
benefit workers within a particular country. However, especially in the context of said
policies in "Western" countries, this can tend towards a, protect the working class within
the borders, leave those outside of it in impoverished squalor. Which doesn't mesh well with
the leftist goal of global class consciousness. Much like the racially segregated labor
policies of yesteryear, it's playing a zero-sum game with the working class while the
ownership class gets the "rising tide lifts all boats" treatment.
So how do we protect workers within the sovereign, while not doing so at the cost of the
workers outside of it? Schwieckart has an interesting idea, that tariffs on imports are used
to fund non-profits/higher education/cooperatives in the country of export. However, I think
we'd need something a bit more fine-tuned than that.
It has always baffled me that governments enable this global musical chairs game with the
labor market. Nearly all Western governments allow tax dodging by those who benefit the most
from their Navies, Armies, Patents, and Customs enforcement systems. However, it is the
working class that carries the brunt of that cost while corporations off-shore their
profits.
A simple-minded fix might be to start taxing foreign profits commensurate with the cost of
enabling those overseas profits.
Interesting that a corporation is a person just like us mortals when it is to their
advantage, but unlike us humans, they can legally escape taxation on much of their income
whereas a human being who is a US citizen cannot. A human citizen is generally taxed by the
US on all income regardless of its source. OTOH, corporations (among other means) routinely
transfer intellectual property to a non tax jurisdiction and then pay artificial payments to
that entity for the rights to use such property. It is a scam akin to a human creating a tax
deduction by transferring money from one pocket to another. Yes, proper taxation of
corporations is a simple-minded fix which is absolutely not simple to legislate. Nice try
though. Something else to ponder: Taxation without representation was said to be a major
factor in our war of independence from Britain. Today no one seems to be concerned that we
have evolved into representation without taxation. Doesn't see right to me.
"Klein analyzes a future (already here to some degree) in which multinational
corporations freely fish from one market or another in an effort to find the most suitable
(i.e. cheapest) labor force."
FWIW I don't think it's productive to talk about things like immigration in (or to) the US
in terms of just the here – as in what should/could we be doing here
to fix the problem. It's just as much if not more about the there . If we
view the global economic order as an enriched center feeding off a developing periphery, then
fixing the periphery should be first aim. #Wall or #NoBorders are largely incendiary
extremes. Ending Original Sin and creating some
sort of supranational
IOU/credit system (not controlled by World Bank or IMF!) will end the economic imbalance
and allow countries who will never export their way out of poverty and misery a way
to become equal first world nation states. With this equality, there will be less economic
migration, less peripheral poverty and potentially less political unrest. It's a gargantuan
task to be sure, but with rising Socialist sentiment here and abroad, I'd like to think we
are at least moving in the right direction.
If the rich were properly taxed then social tensions would be greatly reduced and if the
revenue raised were used to help the poorest in society much distress could be
alleviated.
I worry that debate on migration/globalisation is being encouraged to distract attention
from this issue.
I may indeed have taken a gratuitously pedantic tone and could have chosen a better one,
for that i apologise. I do however believe that much of my critique still stands, I will try
to go through your points one by one.
"Are all economic migrants therefore bereft of agency?"
Not all but many are, especially the ones that most people are complaining about. Many of
them are being driven from their home countries not simply for a better life but so they can
have something approaching a life at all. While to fully prove this point would require an
analysis of all the different migrants and their home country conditions, I do feel that if
we are talking about Syrian refugees, migrants from Africa risking their lives crossing the
Mediteranian sea, or CentralAmerican refugees than yes i do think these people to an extent
have had their agency taken from them by global events. For Syrians, by being caught in an
imperialist power struggle which while the civil war may not have been caused by it, it
certainly has been prolonged because of it. Not too mention America played a very significant
role in creating the conditions for ISIS, and western European powers don't have completely
clean hands either due to their long history of brutal imperialism in the mideast. Africa of
course also has an extensive past of colonization and suffers from a present of colonization
and exploitation as well. For Central Americans there is of course the voracious american
drug market as well as our politicians consistent appetite for its criminalisation to blame.
There is also of course global climate change. Many of these contributing conditions are not
being dealt with and so i believe that the migrations we have witnessed these last few years
are only the first ining of perhaps even greater migrations to come. How we deal with it now,
could determine whether our era is defined by mass deaths or something better. So to the
extent that i believe many of these migrants have agency is similiar to how a person climbing
onto the roof of there house to escape a flood does.
If the borders of the US were left completely open then, yes, there would most likely be a
rush of people at first but over time they would migrate back and forth according to their
needs, through the opening of the border they would gain agency. People often think that a
country not permitting its citizens to leave is wrong and immoral, but if most countries
close their borders to the people of a country going through great suffering, then it seems
to me that is essentially the same even if the rhetoric may be different. The likeliness of
this is high if the rich countries close there borders, since if the rich countries like the
US and Italy feel they can not take them in, then its doubtful countries on the way that are
much poorer will be able to either.
At the begining of your article you stated that "International commerce, jobs, and
economic migrants are propelled by a common force: profit." This is the capitalist system,
which is a system built upon the accumulation of capital, which are profits invested in
instruments of labor, aka machines and various labor enhancements. Now Rhode island is quite
small so there are geographical limitations of course, but if that was not an issue then yes.
Wage workers in the capitalist system produce more value than they consume, if this was not
the case they would not be hired or be hired for long. So if Rhode Island did not have the
geographical limitations that it does, then with more workers the overall pot of valuable
products and services would increase per capita in relation to the population. If the workers
are divided and not unified into cohesive and responsive institutions to fight for there
right share of the overall pie, which I believe should be all of it, then most of the gain to
society will go to the capitalist as increased profits. So it is not the migrant workers who
take from the native but instead actually the capitalist who exploits and trys to magnify
there difference. So if the capitalist system through imperialism helped to contribute to the
underlying conditions driving mass migration, and then it exploits there gratitude and
willingness to work for less than native workers, than I believe it follows that they will
wish to drive native anger towards the migrants with the ultimate goal of allowing them to
exploit the migrant workers at an even more severe level. This could be true within the
country, such as the US right now where the overarching result of anti-immigrant policies has
been to not get rid of them but to drive there exploitation more into the shadows, or through
mass deportations back to their home country followed by investments to exploit their
desperation at super low wages that will then compete with the rich country workers, it is
also possible they will all just die and everyone will look away. Either way the result will
still be lower wages for rich country workers, it seems to me the only way out of the impass
is for the native workers to realize their unity with migrant workers as exploited workers
and instead of directing that energy of hostility at each other instead focus it upon the
real root which is the capitalists themselves. Without the capitalists, more workers, held
withing certain geographic limitations of course, would in fact only enrich each other.
So while nations may indeed continue to exist for awhile, the long term benefit of native
workers is better served by making common cause with migrants against their mutual oppressors
then allowing themselves to be stirred up against them. Making this argument to workers is
much harder, but its the most beneficial if it can be made successfully.
This last point i do agree i may have been unfair to you, historically I believe the left
generally referred to anarchists, socialists and communists. So I often dislike the way
modern commentators use the left to refer to anything from a center right democrat like
Hillary Clinton all the way to the most hard core communist, it can make understanding
political subtleties difficult since anarchists, socialists and communists have radically
different politics than liberals, much more so than can be expressed along a linear line. But
as you point out you used quotes which i admit i did not notice, and of course one must
generally use the jargon of the times in order to be understood.
Overall i think my main critique was that it seemed that throughout your article you were
referencing different negative symptoms of capitalism but was instead taking that evidence
for the negatives of globalism. I may come from a more radical tradition than you may be used
to, but i would consider globalism to be an inherent aspect of capitalism. Capitalism in its
algorithmic quest for ever increasing profits generally will not allow its self to be bound
for long by people, nations, or even the physical and environmental limitations of the earth.
While one country may be able to restrict it for a time unless it is overcome completely it
will eventually reach out globally again. The only way to stop it is a prolonged struggle of
the international working class cooperating with each other against capitalism in all its
exploitive forms. I would also say that what we are seeing is not so much globalism vs
nationalism but instead a rearrangement of the competing imperial powers, Russia, China, US,
Germany and perhaps the evolution of multiple competing imperialisms similiar in nature to
pre- world war times but that may have to wait for later.
A great deal of your article did indeed deal with Italy which I did not address but I felt
that your arguments surrounding migrants was essentially of a subtle right wing nature and it
needed to be balanced by a socialist counter narrative. I am very glad that you took the time
to respond to my critique I know that putting analysis out there can be very difficult and i
am thankful for your response which has allowed me to better express and understand my
viewpoint. Once again I apoligise if I used some overly aggressive language and i hope your
able to get something out of my response as well.
I appreciate the more reflective tone of this reply. I believe there are still some
misreadings of the article, which I will try to clarify.
For one thing, I am not the author of the article! Enrico Verga is the author. I merely
translated the article. Enrico is Italian, however, and so for time zone reasons will be
unable to respond to your comments for a while. I am happy to write a bit on this in the
meantime.
You make two arguments.
The first is that many or most migrants are fleeing desperate circumstances. The article
speaks however consistently of "economic migrants" – there are some overlapping issues
with refugees, but also significant differences. Clearly there are many people who are
economically comfortable in their home countries and who would still jump at a chance to get
US citizenship if they could (look up EB-5 fraud for one example). Saying this does not imply
some sort of subtle critique of such people, but they are not a myth.
I actually found your second argument more thought-provoking. As I understand you, you are
suggesting something like the following. You support completely open borders. You acknowledge
that this would lead at first to massive shifts in population, but in the long run you say
things would stabilize. You acknowledge that this will lead to "lower wages for rich country
workers," but say that we should focus on the fact that it is only within the capitalist
system that this causality holds. You also suggest that it would probably lead, under current
conditions, to workers having their anger misdirected at migrants and therefore supporting
more reactionary policies.
Given that the shift to immediate open borders would, by this analysis, be highly
detrimental to causes you support, why do you favor it? Your reasons appear to be (1) it's
the right thing to do and we should just do it, (2) yes, workers might react in the way
described, but they should not feel that way, and maybe we can convince them not to feel that
way, (3) things will work themselves out in the long run.
I am a bit surprised at the straightforwardly idealistic tone of (1) and (2). As for (3),
as Keynes said, in the long run we are all dead. He meant by this that phenomena that might
in theory equilibrate over a very long time can lead to significant chaos in the short run;
this chaos can meanwhile disrupt calculations about the "long term" and spawn other
significant negative consequences.
Anyone who is open to the idea of radically new economic arrangements faces the question
of how best to get there. You are perhaps suggesting that letting global capital
reign supreme, unhindered by the rules and restrictions of nation-states, will in the long
run allow workers to understand their oppression more clearly and so increase their openness
to uniting against it. If so, I am skeptical.
I will finally point out that a part of the tone of your response seems directed at the
impression that Enrico dislikes migrants, or wants other people to resent them. I see nothing
in the article that would suggest this, and there are on the other hand several passages in
which Enrico encourages the reader to empathize with migrants. When you suggest that his
arguments are "essentially of a subtle right wing nature," you are maybe reacting to this
misreading; in any case, I'm not really sure what you are getting at, since this phrase is so
analytically imprecise that it could mean all sorts of things. Please try to engage with the
article with arguments, not with vague epithets.
There is a bit of a dissonance here. Human rights has been persistently used by
neoliberals to destabilize other regions for their own ends for decades now with little
protest. And when the standard playbook of coups and stirring up trouble does not work its
war and total destruction as we have seen recently in Iraq, Libya and Syria for completely
fabricated reasons.
Since increased migration is the obvious first consequence when entire countries are
decimated and in disarray one would expect the countries doing the destruction to accept the
consequences of their actions but instead we have the same political forces who advocate
intervention on 'human rights grounds' now demonizing migrants and advocating openly racist
policies.
One can understand one mistake but 3 mistakes in a row! And apparently we are not capable
of learning. The bloodlust continues unabated for Iran. This will destabilize an already
destabilized region and cause even more migration to Europe. There seems to be a fundamental
contradiction here, that the citizens of countries that execute these actions and who who
protest about migrants must confront.
Maybe they should pay trillions of dollars of reparations for these intervention so these
countries can be rebuilt and made secure again so migrants can return to their homes. Maybe
the UN can introduce a new fund with any country considering destabilizing another country,
for instance Iran, to first deposit a trillion dollars upfront to deal with the human
fallout. Or maybe casually destabilizing and devastating entire countries, killing millions
of people and putting millions more in disarray should be considered crimes against humanity
and prosecuted so they are not repeated.
So the DNC announced Russia hacked them, and "proved" it with a file they say was
stolen. But that file was not the DNC's. So the "proof" of Russia hacking the DNC is
nonexistent.
Notable quotes:
"... they cite an anonymous former DNC official who asserts that Guccifer 2.0's first document (the Trump opposition report) did not originate in the DNC as initially reported. ..."
"... The importance of this contradiction, combined with earlier allegations of hacking the DNC made by Guccifer 2.0, cannot be overstated. ..."
"... " There were signs of dishonesty from the start. The first document Guccifer 2.0 published on June 15 came not from the DNC as advertised but from Podesta's inbox, according to a former DNC official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press." ..."
"... By classifying Guccifer 2.0's claim to have obtained the Trump Opposition Report through a breach of the DNC as a sign of dishonesty, the Associated Press uses the Guccifer 2.0 persona's widely held claim as an example of contradiction with their new version of the 'official' Russian hacking narrative. In so doing, the AP makes the hacking allegations entirely nebulous: a fantasy narrative that can be neither proven nor disproven but easily edited and rearranged when convenient. Incredibly, the AP's article also contradicts the claims made by the DNC themselves, and so-called papers of record, including the Washington Post. ..."
"... [Fancy Bear] broke into the network in late April and targeted the opposition research files. It was this breach that set off the alarm. The hackers stole two files,[Shawn] Henry said." ..."
"... "Investigators would have been able to rapidly determine if there were textual differences between Guccifer 2.0's document and the DNC's. If there were no textual differences, an initial determination might have been difficult, because Guccifer 2.0 went to some trouble to obscure internal metadata, known as Revision Save ID's (RSID's), which can be used to uniquely identify sections of text that have been changed and added into a Word document. However, when the Podesta emails were published in October 2016, investigators should have been able to source Guccifer 2.0's document to the Podesta emails quickly. They would have been able to do this before the 2016 election, a full year ahead of the AP report." [Emphasis Added] ..."
"... Ultimately, it is the DNC's claim that they were breached by Russian hackers, who stole the Trump opposition report, which directly belies their allegation - because the document did not come from the DNC, but from John Podesta's emails. ..."
"... What is interesting here is that the AP admits that such elements of the document's publication had been fabricated, but did not then follow that realization by questioning other possibly fabricated elements of the documents, such as the Russian-language error messages. The AP certainly did not concern themselves with why a Russian state-sponsored hacker would benefit from airbrushing "confidential" onto such a report. Their claim that it was to attract media attention seems quite weak. ..."
"... AP surmised that Guccifer 2.0 "air-brush[ed]" the word "confidential" into the document to "catch the reporter's attention." Both Carter and the Forensicator have explained that Guccifer 2.0 used a complex process, involving an intermediate template document, to inject this "alluring" fake. The Forensicator told this author that they take the position that this intermediate template file (ostensibly needed to add "CONFIDENTIAL" to the document) had an additional purpose. ..."
"... The Forensicator explained that, for some readers and researchers, the copy/paste of an intermediate (RTF) copy of the Trump opposition report into a template document might be interpreted simply as an unconventional method for injecting "confidential" into 1.doc. However, the Forensicator added, it can also be interpreted as a "cover" for the final copy/paste operation which was a necessary step in the evolution of Guccifer 2.0's first document. It was needed to embed the Russian error messages into the final document (1.doc). ..."
"... In their full analysis, the Forensicator wrote that it was surprising that neither outlet reported on the easily viewed "Last Saved By" property, which listed "Феликс Эдмундович" (aka "Iron Felix") as the user who last saved the document. This unique name was noticed by various social media observers that same day and by Ars Technica the following day. How did the journalists miss this, and why? ..."
"... Both Gawker and The Smoking Gun published Guccifer 2.0's Trump opposition report in full as a PDF file. Their PDF files have the now infamous Cyrillic error messages in them; they appear in the last few pages of their PDF files. Ars Technica dubbed these error messages, "Russian fingerprints." ..."
"... Ars Technica reported on Guccifer 2.0's publication of the Trump Opposition Report the day after Guccifer 2.0 arrived on the scene. They quickly noted that there were Russian language error messages in the PDF file posted by Gawker. They also noticed that when they viewed 1.doc themselves, they didn't see the Russian error messages. The Forensicator told Disobedient Media that this was because Ars Technica used Word for Windows, which displayed the error messages in English. ..."
"... So the DNC announced Russia hacked them, and "proved" it with a file they say was stolen.But that file was not the DNC's. So the "proof" of Russia hacking the DNC is nonexistent. ..."
Disobedient Media recently reported on discoveries made by the Forensicator in their report,
Media Mishaps: Early Guccifer 2 Coverage . In our previous coverage of the Forensicator's work,
we discussed the essential role played by the media in ensuring that the Guccifer 2.0 persona
received wide recognition by successfully linking Guccifer 2.0's documents with the DNC's
claims that Russian state-sponsored hackers had breached their servers.
This report will focus on an unreported story: After the fact, the DNC quietly changed an
important theme in their Russian hacking narrative. Initially, the DNC passively supported the
notion that Guccifer 2.0 stole a copy of a Trump opposition report by penetrating the DNC at
the behest of the Russian state. Then over a year later, an un-named ex-DNC official tells us
that this document in fact came from Podesta's emails, not the DNC. This single statement by a
DNC official invalidated the circumstantial evidence that had been used to support the DNC's
Russian hacking claims, and represents a groundbreaking contradiction that has gone unobserved
by establishment press outlets.
This report will also discuss numerous mistakes made by various legacy press outlets in
their obsessive focus on the Russian hacking narrative and their rush to judgment in the
matter.
A Late (and Quiet) Change in the DNC Russian Hacking Narrative
In November 2017, the DNC changed their Russian hacking narrative via their proxies in the
legacy media. The Associated Press published, Inside story: How Russians hacked the
Democrats' emails ; they cite an anonymous former DNC official who asserts that Guccifer
2.0's first document (the Trump opposition report) did not originate in the DNC as initially
reported.
The importance of this contradiction, combined with earlier allegations of hacking
the DNC made by Guccifer 2.0, cannot be overstated.
The Associated Press wrote in November 2017:
" There were signs of dishonesty from the start. The first document Guccifer 2.0
published on June 15 came not from the DNC as advertised but from Podesta's inbox, according to
a former DNC official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to
speak to the press."
By classifying Guccifer 2.0's claim to have obtained the Trump Opposition Report through a
breach of the DNC as a sign of dishonesty, the Associated Press uses the Guccifer 2.0
persona's widely held claim as an example of contradiction with their new version of the
'official' Russian hacking narrative. In so doing, the AP makes the hacking allegations
entirely nebulous: a fantasy narrative that can be neither proven nor disproven but easily
edited and rearranged when convenient. Incredibly, the AP's article also contradicts the claims
made by the DNC themselves, and so-called papers of record, including the Washington Post.
By returning to the genesis of the Russian hacking narrative, we find that the AP's November
report runs contrary to the DNC's initial claims, as reported by The Washington Post , in an
article titled, Russian Government Hackers Penetrated DNC, Stole Opposition Research OnTrump . When reviewing this early history of the matter, it becomes clear that it is
logically impossible to separate the Guccifer 2.0 persona from the allegations of a
Kremlin-backed hack of the DNC. Critical statements in that initial report by the Washington
Post are highlighted below for emphasis:
"Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National
Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP Presidential
candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to
the breach
[Fancy Bear] broke into the network in late April and targeted the opposition research
files. It was this breach that set off the alarm. The hackers stole two files,[Shawn] Henry
said."
By taking this later (2017) stance, the Associated Press contradicts the "official" Russian
hacking narrative involving Guccifer 2.0 (as implied by the DNC's own security firm) and which
had, until that point, been characterized by the corporate press as
Russian-hacking-gospel-truth. By seamlessly excising Guccifer 2.0 from culpability within a new
timeline of events, the Associated Press makes the entire hacking story a fantasy narrative
that can be neither proven nor disproven but must not be questioned.
The Forensicator explained to Disobedient Media:
"Investigators would have been able to rapidly determine if there were textual
differences between Guccifer 2.0's document and the DNC's. If there were no textual
differences, an initial determination might have been difficult, because Guccifer 2.0 went to
some trouble to obscure internal metadata, known as Revision Save ID's (RSID's), which can be
used to uniquely identify sections of text that have been changed and added into a Word
document. However, when the Podesta emails were published in October 2016, investigators should
have been able to source Guccifer 2.0's document to the Podesta emails quickly. They would have
been able to do this before the 2016 election, a full year ahead of the AP report."
[Emphasis Added]
The Forensicator then referred this author to a table in his report, depicting the metadata
for Podesta's version of the Trump opposition report:
As we can see, the document was saved by Tony Carrk, who worked as Research Director for
Hillary for America at the time. This document was attached to this Podesta email .
The Forensicator continued, saying: "We can see that Mr. Carrk made some change that took
less than one minute to complete. If investigators compared Carrk's version of the document to
the original DNC document, they should have been able to quickly determine that Guccifer 2's
document is sourced from Podesta's emails and not directly from the DNC. For this, an RSID
correlation would have probably been telling."
Why did the DNC, their security consultant firm Crowdstrike, and government investigators
wait so long to tell us that Guccifer 2.0 did not obtain their copy of the Trump opposition
report directly from the DNC? Why did Crowdstrike tell the Washington Post
that the opposition report files had been stolen specifically from the DNC network if that were
not the case?
The legacy press chorus had initially linked Guccifer 2.0's first document, and the "Russian
fingerprints" therein to the Trump opposition report that the DNC claimed to have been stolen
by Russian state-sponsored hackers. What prompted them to change their story, contradicting not
only Guccifer 2.0 but the DNC themselves? Should we now assess the DNC's claim that the
document had been taken by Russian hackers to be untrue?
Ultimately, it is the DNC's claim that they were breached by Russian hackers, who stole
the Trump opposition report, which directly belies their allegation - because the document did
not come from the DNC, but from John Podesta's emails.
Is it possible that Mueller's investigation may have taken a closer look into the origin of
Guccifer 2.0's initial document, realizing that it was sourced from Podesta's email? The DNC
and government investigators may have then decided that the best way to obscure the resulting
contradictory evidence was by letting it quietly leak via a "former DNC official who spoke on
the condition of anonymity," in the November 2017 article published by the Associated
Press.
Given the repeated contradictions from the DNC and corporate media in their description of
Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential race, how can the public be expected to
believe that their other claims have any legitimacy whatsoever?
The AP's November 2017 article also noticed that Guccifer 2.0's first published document
contained the word CONFIDENTIAL, while the original document did not. This was old news to
anyone who had been paying attention; Adam Carter analyzed this artifact nine months
earlier:
What is interesting here is that the AP admits that such elements of the document's
publication had been fabricated, but did not then follow that realization by questioning other
possibly fabricated elements of the documents, such as the Russian-language error messages. The
AP certainly did not concern themselves with why a Russian state-sponsored hacker would benefit
from airbrushing "confidential" onto such a report. Their claim that it was to attract media
attention seems quite weak.
AP surmised that Guccifer 2.0 "air-brush[ed]" the word "confidential" into the document to
"catch the reporter's attention." Both Carter and the Forensicator have explained that Guccifer
2.0 used a complex process, involving an intermediate template document, to inject this
"alluring" fake. The Forensicator told this author that they take the position that this
intermediate template file (ostensibly needed to add "CONFIDENTIAL" to the document) had an
additional purpose.
The Forensicator explained that, for some readers and researchers, the copy/paste of an
intermediate (RTF) copy of the Trump opposition report into a template document might be
interpreted simply as an unconventional method for injecting "confidential" into 1.doc.
However, the Forensicator added, it can also be interpreted as a "cover" for the final
copy/paste operation which was a necessary step in the evolution of Guccifer 2.0's first
document. It was needed to embed the Russian error messages into the final document
(1.doc).
Once again, establishment media failed to pursue their cited evidence with due diligence.
This is a grave mistake, especially given the way in which Guccifer 2.0's alleged 'hacking' has
been used as a major bolstering point for increased tensions between the United States and
Russia.
Initially, Gawker and The Smoking Gun Didn't Notice Iron Felix
Guccifer 2.0 made his noisy debut on June 15, 2016 (the day after the DNC publicly claimed
it had been breached by Russian state-sponsored hackers). It also appears that Guccifer 2.0
gave advanced copies of their doctored version of the Trump opposition report to two media
outlets, The Smoking Gun and Gawker.
In their full analysis, the Forensicator wrote that it was surprising that neither outlet
reported on the easily viewed "Last Saved By" property, which listed
"Феликс
Эдмундович" (aka "Iron Felix") as
the user who last saved the document. This unique name was noticed by various social media
observers that same day and by Ars Technica the following day. How did the journalists miss
this, and why?
Initially, Gawker and The Smoking Gun Didn't Notice the Russian Error Messages
Both Gawker and The Smoking Gun published Guccifer 2.0's Trump opposition report in full as
a PDF file. Their PDF files have the now infamous Cyrillic error messages in them; they appear
in the last few pages of their PDF files. Ars Technica dubbed these error messages, "Russian
fingerprints."
Although both outlets reviewed this document in some detail, neither outlet noticed the
Russian error messages in their first reports. The Forensicator suggests that, given their
choice of word processing applications, they would have seen the Russian error messages, if
only they had viewed the last few pages of each file. That is, unless (perhaps) they received
their PDF's directly from Guccifer 2.0 or another third party and they just passed them
along.
Ars Technica was Confused When They Didn't See the Russian Error Messages in Guccifer 2.0's
Word Document
Ars Technica reported on Guccifer 2.0's publication of the Trump Opposition Report the day
after Guccifer 2.0 arrived on the scene. They quickly noted that there were Russian language
error messages in the PDF file posted by Gawker. They also noticed that when they viewed 1.doc
themselves, they didn't see the Russian error messages. The Forensicator told Disobedient Media
that this was because Ars Technica used Word for Windows, which displayed the error messages in
English.
Ars Technica suggested that The Smoking Gun's PDF may have been generated by Guccifer
2.0 on a system that had Russian language settings enabled.
While this explanation appears reasonable, it is surprising (if that was the case) that
Gawker didn't tell us that their PDF came directly from Guccifer 2.0 . The Smoking Gun also
published a PDF with Russian error messages in it. Are we to believe that The Smoking Gun also
received their PDF from Guccifer 2.0 or a third party, and failed to report on this fact?
IVN: Did Gawker Outsource Their Analysis to Russia?
An obscure media outlet, Independent Voter Network , raised various theories on the initial
reporting done by The Smoking Gun and Gawker. One of their wilder theories suggested that
Gawker had outsourced their analysis to a Russian sub-contractor. The Forensicator evaluated
that claim, ultimately concluding that Independent Voter Network had gone on a wild goose chase
because the "clue" they followed pointed to Gawker's document management service known as
"DocumentCloud." DocumentCloud uses a technology that they call "CloudCrowd," which is what IVN
saw in the PDF that Gawker uploaded. The Forensicator referred to a DocumentCloud job
advertisement for confirmation of his conclusion.
The Forensicator told Disobedient Media: "We found CloudCrowd; it is not an outsourcing
company. Probably not Russian, either."
Business Insider: Did Guccifer 2.0 Photoshop "Confidential" Into his Document
Screenshots?
When Business Insider noted the presence of "CONFIDENTIAL" in Guccifer 2.0's document, they
claimed that Guccifer 2.0 might have "photoshopped" his screenshots (placed on his blog site)
to create the watermark and page footer with "confidential" in them.
The Forensicator countered that claim by pointing out that the Business Insider journalist
likely viewed the document with "Full-Screen Reading" selected.
This mode will disable the display of the watermark and page headers and footers when viewed
by the journalist, but they will be displayed when printed to PDF. No Photoshop required.
Conclusion
The close timing of the DNC announcement and Guccifer 2.0's publication of the Trump report,
as well as reports of "Russian fingerprints" in those documents, created a strong link between
Guccifer 2.0 and the Russian hackers who allegedly stole DNC files. Over a year later, the
Associated Press tells us that this first narrative was wrong, contradicting the DNC's claims
as well as much of the early legacy press reports on the issue. Must we concurrently accept the
narrative that Russians hacked the DNC if claims that they had done so were not only based on
flimsy evidence but have now been contradicted completely?
As far as documented evidence of election interference goes, one does not have to stray far
from the actors in the Russian hacking saga to discover that the DNC and establishment
Democrats were, instead of victims of meddling, the perpetrators of such abuse of the American
Democratic process. In 2017 the
NYC Board of Elections admitted that it had illegally purged hundreds of thousands of
Democratic voters from the election roles, preventing them from voting in the 2016 Democratic
primaries. This abuse of power represents just one in a constellation of legitimate examples of
abuse that took place at the hands of corporatized Democrats in order to unfairly and illegally
ensure a Clinton nomination.
This is too complicated for the average demon rat nitwit to follow. They don't want to
know this so showing them facts has to be dumbed down. Otherwise, all new revelations will be
ignored.
Really good work and reporting here that will never be understood by the masses.
Everything that's going on is far too complex, too many moving parts, too much
compartmentalization. Trump is doing a good job dumbing it down.
So the DNC announced Russia hacked them, and "proved" it with a file they say was
stolen.But that file was not the DNC's. So the "proof" of Russia hacking the DNC is
nonexistent.
Globalization is not a one-dimensional phenomenon, and some of its aspects are still intact.
Hollywood dominance, Internet, English language dominance, West technological dominance, will
not reverse any time soon.
What is under attack by Trump, Brexit, etc. is neoliberal globalization, and, especially
financial globalization, free movement of labor and outsourcing of manufacturing and services
(offshoring).
Neoliberal globalization was also based on the dollar as world reserve currency (and oil
trading in dollars exclusively). But this role of dollar recently is under attack due to the
rise of China. Several "anti-dollar" blocks emerged.
Trump tariffs are also anathema for "classic neoliberalism" and essentially convert
"classic neoliberalism" into "national neoliberalism" on the state level. BTW it looks like
Russia switched to "national neoliberalism" earlier than the USA. No surprise that Trump
feels some affinity to Putin ;-)
Attacks against free labor movement also on the rise and this is another nail in the
coffin of classic neoliberalism. In several countries, including the USA the neoliberal elite
(especially financial elite after 2008, despite that no banksters were killed by crowds) does
not feel safe given animosity caused by the promotion of immigration and resorts of
conversion of the state into national security state and neo-McCarthyism to suppress
dissent.
I think those attacks will continue, immigration will be curtailed, and "classic
neoliberalism" will be transformed into something different. Not necessarily better.
Several trends are also connected with the gradual slipping of the power of the USA as the
chief enforcer of the neoliberal globalization. Which is partially happened due to the
stupidity and arrogance of the USA neoliberal elite and neocons.
Another factor in play is the total, catastrophic loss of power of neoliberal propaganda
-- people started asking questions, and neoliberal myths no longer hold any spell on
population (or at least much less spell). The success of Bernie Sanders during the last
election (DNC was forced to resort to dirty tricks to derail him) is one indication of this
trend. This "collapse of ideology" spells great troubles for the USA, as previously it spells
great troubles for the USSR.
"Trumpism" as I understand it tried to patch the situation by two major strategies:
(1) splitting Russia from China
(2) Attempt to acquire dominant position in regions rick in hydrocarbons (Iraq, Iran,
Libya, Venezuela, etc)
But so far the decline of neoliberalism looks like Irreversible. It never fully recovered
from the deep crisis of 2008 and there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
Another powerful factor that works against neoliberal globalization is the end of cheap
oil. How it will play out is unclear, Much depends whether we will have a Seneca cliff in oil
production or not. And if yes, how soon.
This is the end of classic neoliberalism, no question about it, and the collapse of
neoliberal globalization is just one aspect of it
"... Both cases, the inclusive and the extractive, tend to reinforce themselves through time by a process known as institutional drift. This is an historical tendency for institutions to maintain, strengthen, and reproduce themselves over time similar to the biological processes involved in genetic drift. ..."
"... Importantly the authors also take the time to mention Robert Michel's seminal idea concerning the iron law of oligarchy ..."
"... Neo-Paternalism ..."
"... The Origins of Political Order. ..."
"... In short, much like the earlier Michel, Fukuyama sees present day democracies drifting towards ever more nepotistic patterns of behavior where elites seize power and reward and distribute the fruits of that power to their close associates within their networks of influence. ..."
"... In effect, both men, see, as did Marx before them, the "constitutional democracies" as a sham as a kind of theater behind which the levers of power are exercised authoritatively with little regard to the true interests of the masses below them. ..."
"... In such an environment of centralized elite control, "media openness" can do little to rout out the opaque workings of carefully, surreptitiously orchestrated power. ..."
What are the necessary elements for the success of a modern nation state?
According to one justifiably popular and well-written book, Why Nations
Fail , it all has to do with inclusive political and economic institutions which
foster technological change which in turn leads to increasing prosperity for the many.
Two key aspects upholding such institutions are a strong centralized state and the rule of
law. Without these two, a nation cannot hope to advance socially, politically, or
economically. The negative of this rosy picture are nations which maintain and promote extractive
political and economic institutions which serve the interests of a narrow elite.
Both cases, the inclusive and the extractive, tend to reinforce themselves through time by a
process known as institutional drift. This is an historical tendency for institutions
to maintain, strengthen, and reproduce themselves over time similar to the biological processes
involved in genetic drift.
Importantly the authors also take the time to mention Robert Michel's seminal idea
concerning the iron law of oligarchy which explains the historically documented
tendency that large, complex organizations of any kind (democratic, socialist, conservative)
fall under the sway of a small elite exercising absolute if cosmetically hidden power.
Our authors optimistically suggest that this law is not destiny and can be
sufficiently controlled by ever expanding democratic institutions in civil society.
Opposed to this buoyant idea of increasing mass prosperity and political participation is
Francis Fukuyama's discussion of Neo-Paternalism in his thought provoking magnum opus
The Origins of Political Order.
In short, much like the earlier Michel, Fukuyama sees present day democracies drifting
towards ever more nepotistic patterns of behavior where elites seize power and reward and
distribute the fruits of that power to their close associates within their networks of
influence.
In effect, both men, see, as did Marx before them, the "constitutional democracies" as a
sham as a kind of theater behind which the levers of power are exercised authoritatively with
little regard to the true interests of the masses below them.
In such an environment of centralized elite control, "media openness" can do little to rout
out the opaque workings of carefully, surreptitiously orchestrated power.
Thus, a superficial reading of history might lead us to believe that we live in an
increasingly "inclusive" society reflecting a rising tide of technological progress and
economic prosperity. However, a closer look, might reveal a modicum of beneficence bestowed
upon the many; while the Machiavellian few have managed behind a facade of democracy and
nationalism to achieve unheard of sums of wealth, power, and influence once only dreamed of by
despots, dictators, and demagogues of the past.
I am willing to bet money that those servers. or more accurately, their hard drives, will
be found to have become mysteriously corrupted and no longer readable. The scene from The Big
Easy comes to mind, when a heavy magnet is "accidentally" set next to the incriminating
videotape in the police evidence room. That, of course, assumes that they will ever be
subpoenaed.
Crowdstrike brings up a couple of interesting questions.
1) Were they so bumbling that they would wait a full month after evidence of "hacking" turned
up at the DNC to take action to protect the network? They worked for the DNC, so it's
possible.
or
2) Did they use that month to ensure that the proper evidence pointing to the GRU could be
found on the duplicate copies of the hard drives which they supplied to the FBI, and set up
redirecting intermediary steps somewhere on 3rd country servers? In which case, were they
actually working for the FSB, (since we know from our own experience that the worst enemy of
any intelligence agency are the ones you compete with for funding)?
"... There are many modern myths. One of them is about the events of 1989 as being the culmination of a grand historical struggle for freedom and liberty. Nothing could be farther from the truth. For years prior to 1989 the West through a combination of both legal business and criminal activity had interpenetrated the Communist elites with lucrative deals and promises of all kinds. ..."
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
-- Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
There are many modern myths. One of them is about the events of 1989 as being the
culmination of a grand historical struggle for freedom and liberty. Nothing could be farther from the truth. For years prior to 1989 the West through a combination of both legal business and criminal
activity had interpenetrated the Communist elites with lucrative deals and promises of all
kinds.
This situation was even more pronounced in "non-aligned" Yugoslavia who for years had
maintained CIA and American and West European business contacts.
In effect, the "cold war" witnessed a rapid convergence between the economic and power
interests of both Western and Communist elites.
The "Communists" (in name only of course) quickly realized the economic benefits available
to them through at times open at times clandestine cooperation with Western business/criminal
interests.
Eventually, Communist elites realized that they had an unprecedented economic opportunity on
their hands: state privatization made possible, in part, with active Western participation.
For them, "Freedom" meant the freedom to get rich beyond their wildest dreams.
And the 1990's were just that. A paradise for thieving on an unimaginable scale all under
the rubric of the rebirth of "capitalism and freedom".
The true outcome of that decade was that the old communist elites not only retained their
social and political power behind the scenes; they also were able to enrich themselves beyond
anything the communist dictatorships could ever hope to offer them in the past.
Yes, the price was to give up imperial, national, and ideological ambitions. But it was a
very small price to pay; since the East European elites had ceased to believe in any of those
things years earlier.
The only firm belief they still held was the economic betterment of themselves and their
families through the acquisition by any means of as many asset classes as possible. In effect,
they became the mirror image of their "enemy" the "imperialist capitalist West".
This was not a case of historical dialectics but historical convergence. What appeared as a
world divided was actually a world waiting to be made whole through the basest of criminal
business activity.
But being clever thieves they knew how to hide themselves and their doings behind
superficially morally impeccable figures such as Vaclav Havel and Lech Wałęsa, to
name just a few. These "dissidents" would be the faces they would use to make a good part of
the world believe that 1989 was a narrative of freedom and not outright pubic theft which it
was.
Yes, people in the east, even in Russia, are freer now than they were. But it should never
be forgotten that the events of 1989/1990 were not even remotely about those revolutionary
dreams.
It was about something much more mundane and sordid. It was about greed. It was about the
maintenance of power. And finally it was about money.
How deep has the Western nexus of power and wealth gone into the heart of the East? So far
indeed that one can easily question to what extent a country like Russia is truly a "national"
state anymore and rather just a territory open to exploitation by both local and global
elites.
For that matter, we can ask the same question about the USA.
"... Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (2012), ..."
"... Note: If you are more of a visual or audio learner, then please scroll down to see our "Recommended Videos" list. That said, a certain degree of reading will be required for you to achieve a thorough understanding of Socialism as a concept, in addition to the means by which we are to reach a Socialist/Communist society. ..."
"... Socialism and the American Negro ..."
"... Martin Luther King, Jr., as Democratic Socialist ..."
"... Why Socialism? ..."
"... The Principles of Communism ..."
"... Manifesto of the Communist Party ..."
"... Critique of the Gotha Programme ..."
"... The Capitalist System ..."
"... Marx's Concept of Socialism ..."
"... Marx's Concept of Man, ..."
"... The 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' in Marx and Engels ..."
"... State Capitalism and Dictatorship ..."
"... The Black Church and Marxism: What Do They Have to Say to Each Other? ..."
"... The ABC's of Socialism ..."
"... Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State ..."
"... Reform or Revolution? ..."
"... The Mass Strike ..."
"... The Negro as Capitalist ..."
"... Marx's Concept of Man ..."
"... The 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' from Marx to Lenin ..."
"... Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center ..."
"... The Invention of the White Race: ..."
"... Statism and Anarchy ..."
"... Bakunin on Anarchy ..."
"... Black Marxism ..."
"... Black Reconstruction in America ..."
"... Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media ..."
"... participatory economy ..."
"... self-managed economy ..."
"... cooperative economy ..."
"... a mode of production (in German: Produktionsweise, meaning "the way of producing") is a specific combination of the following: ..."
"... Productive forces : these include human labour power and means of production (e.g. tools, productive machinery, commercial and industrial buildings, other infrastructure, technical knowledge, materials, plants, animals and exploitable land). ..."
"... Social and technical relations of production : these include the property, power and control relations governing society's productive assets (often codified in law), cooperative work relations and forms of association, relations between people and the objects of their work and the relations between social classes. ..."
"... By performing social surplus labour in a specific system of property relations, the labouring classes constantly reproduce the foundations of the social order. A mode of production normally shapes the mode of distribution, circulation and consumption and is regulated by the state . ..."
"... New productive forces will cause conflict in the current mode of production. When conflict arises, the modes of production can evolve within the current structure or cause a complete breakdown. ..."
"... www.polecom.org/ The Political Economy of Communication, Vol 1, No 2 (2013) Theorising and analysing digital labour: From global value chains to modes of production Christian Fuchs, University of Westminster ..."
Richard
Wolff remains important
in the continuing education of the left from the time when (for some of
us), it was actually not a big deal to think of entry points and an Ideological State Apparatus.
Labor
aristocracy
remains the dominant feature of capitalism even as there has been resistance in the
form of workers cooperatives. Could there be in the US context, more viable examples of workers'
self managing institutions, or
Workers Self Directed Enterprises (WSDEs)
to minimize the social divisions created by
capitalism.
This has been covered by others in ACM especially on Mondragon, but it is Summer, and revisiting
this is important for renewal as elections are coming, despite the usual villains. There perhaps
are those who have not had occasion to cover this material and perhaps there are some who would
like to augment their current state of understanding
certain
materialist philosophies
.
As daunting as the terminology might seem it does require us to
think about some basic ideas like embodied labor and living labor and the property relationships of
that labor. Wolff's video below is one of many resources essential to understand the problems of
stratified labor divisions, and the exploitation of value.
Contemporary capitalism no longer "delivers the goods" (which is understood as a rising
standard of real wages) to the majority of people. That classic defense of its instability (e.g.
recurrent bouts of unemployment), its deepening economic, political, and cultural inequalities,
and its attendant injustices is no longer plausible.
At a national scale, this is what Stephen Miller and Donald Trump are doing in Europe, when they
promote a coded racism in the discourse of immigration, as a dog whistle for US bigotry and social
division across classes, races, genders, and sexualities. This is the actual "culture war" where
the social justice warriors against diversity are those "very fine people" wearing implicit and
explicit icons for hatred and supremacy.
This is ugly.
Trump says that immigration is not "good for our country" because it is "changing the
culture."
pic.twitter.com/7zTXE9Miyh
As a piece in WaPo suggests "Trump's lies are not a defensive response to protect a political
legacy. Trump's lies are his legacy."
But the first step should be understanding that there are some specific historical modes of
production with the inevitable unevenness of development. " because human beings have a rational
interest in developing their capacities to control their interactions with external nature in order
to satisfy their wants, the historical tendency is strongly toward further development of these
capacities."
(Cohen)
Class struggle is made more complicated when
false consciousness
is enabled by a crony capitalism manipulating a labor aristocracy. Self
development gets thwarted and subjugation as wage slavery can be compared in the immigration
context to actual slavery as human trafficking occurs.
While living and working
conditions for workers in the "global North" have deteriorated sharply since the late 1960s, the
result has not been, for the most part, the growth of revolutionary consciousness. Instead we
have seen reactionary ideas – racism, sexism, homophobia, nativism, militarism – strengthened in
a significant sector of workers in the advanced capitalist countries. Since the late 1970s,
nearly one-third of U.S. voters in union households have voted for right-wing Republicans.
(1)
[...]
"Obviously, out of such
enormous super profits (since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists
squeeze out of the workers of their "own" country) it is possible to bribe their labor leaders
and an upper stratum of the labor aristocracy. And the capitalists of the "advanced" countries
do bribe them:
they bribe them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt
and covert."
Workers'
self-organization and self-activity in the workplace struggles is the starting point for
creating the material and ideological conditions for an effective challenge to working class
reformism and conservatism.
Clearly, militant workplace struggle is not a sufficient
condition for the development of radical and revolutionary consciousness among workers.
Struggles in working-class communities around housing, social welfare, transport and other
issues; and political struggles against racism and war are crucial elements in the political
self-transformation of the working class.
Successful workplace
struggles, however, are the necessary condition for the development of class consciousness.
Without the experience of such struggles, workers will continue to passively accept reformist
politics or, worse, embrace reactionary politics.
In
Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (2012),
Richard Wolff argues that global capitalism can no longer meet the needs of the world's
population. He goes onto note that socialism as it has been practiced during the twentieth
century cannot meet these needs either. His work is an attempt to construct a viable alternative
to global capitalism, centering on Marx's notion of surplus capital. Marx argued that one of the
most salient features of capitalism was that workers produce more than what they are paid for.
For instance, a worker may work eight hours a day but his labor in those eight hours may be
equivalent to twelve hours labor. It is the owners and managers that appropriate this surplus
labor, enrich themselves with it, and exploit the laborers in the process. What Wolff proposes
as an alternative are
Workers Self Directed Enterprises (WSDEs)
. In WSDEs,
workers, who produce surplus capital, are in charge of the profit, not owners, managers or
executives.
[...]
The last section of Wolff's work is an attempt to rethink the core
issue of the present; the massive inequality of wealth generated by global capitalism.
Here,Wolff articulates his vision of WSDEs. He claims that only WSDEs can actually be labeled
socialist because they represent the only instance in which surplus labor is appropriated by the
workers themselves. Wolff does not delve into specifics, such as the amount of property that
would need to be nationalized or at least held in collective control, or the degree of planning
needed.
His major question is the relationship between WSDE's, other capitalist
entities, and the government.
Wolff gives some insights as to the relationships that
may occur between these entities,,but does not speculate about interactions that cannot be known
in advance. He argues that just like any social advancement, the transition to WSDEs would not
be smooth or easy, and would be dictated in large part by the environment. Wolff does,however,
examine the possible social structures of WSDEs and their relation to surrounding communities.
WSDEs would be democratically controlled by workers,as well as the residents of the surrounding
community (since the decisions made by the workers would directly affect the community). In
addition, Wolff draws another distinction between producers and enablers. Producers actually
create surplus,while enablers, such as lawyers or janitors, allow producers to. Producers,
enablers, and members of the community all have a say in how the WSDE is run and how the surplus
is divided.
The problem as it always has been is the role of institutions like banks and the dilemma of
advanced technology. The interesting question is whether there could be a WSDE in Silicon Valley,
or WSDE schools.
The complex network of cycles of digital labour.(Fuchs)
Baltimore Worker co-op Red Emma's proves the power and potential for this model.
"From a founding group of seven, they�re up to 25 worker-owners, all earning a living
wage. The new location will allow for 10 more worker-owners � and they�re adding a
bar."
https://t.co/4GvTuNnVbu
� Black Socialists of America (@BlackSocialists)
June 11, 2018
(1/6)
"It's really only 'do ya got it?' or 'do ya not have it?'
And if ya have it, you can be the employer.
And if you don't, [then] ya can't [be the employer].
The fact that the employer who has it didn't produce it is a nagging problem we
prefer not to ask [about]."
(2/6)
"The logic would be, gee, the worker added the value; [they] SHOULD GET IT!
'CAUSE [THEY] GAVE IT!
[THEY] CREATED IT!
...
Do you think that happens in Capitalism?
No, you don't, do you?
We don't give the worker the value added... EVER, in Capitalism."
(3/6)
"[The Capitalist] has to rip the workers off...
[The Capitalist] has to STEAL from them part of what their labor added.
...
The condition of your employment is that you produce more by your labor than you get
paid.
Welcome to the capitalist system."
(4/6)
"The best way to describe your work in a capitalist enterprise is not that the
employer gives YOU a job; it's that you give your employer THE SURPLUS!
The 'giver' and the 'getter' are in reversed order from what the language suggests."
(5/6)
"What is 'Socialism,' given what I've described here?
...
The workers will still come to work ... but ... the surplus?
They get that.
...
What is the simple American phrase that captures this?
'Worker co-op.'
It's very old...
You don't need a new [theory]..."
(6/6)
It is time that Leftists come back to the essence of Scientific Socialism and, using
the method of dialectical materialism, truly evaluate the means by which we achieve
true "liberation" within the 21st century.
The revolution begins with us, and it begins in the workplace.
You can find the full lecture from Professor Wolff (
@profwolff
)
through the "Recommended Videos" section of our official resource guide linked below:
Note: If you are more of a visual or audio learner, then please
scroll down to see our "Recommended Videos" list. That said, a certain
degree of reading will be required for you to achieve a thorough
understanding of Socialism as a concept, in addition to the means by
which we are to reach a Socialist/Communist society.
The following list of readings are articles or excerpts from larger
works for those of you who may not feel like devoting hours out of each
day to diving deep into understanding Socialism. This reading list is
for people who may get the basic gist of why Capitalism is bad, but who
may not be too familiar with Socialism as a theory. Much of these works
deal with secondhand interpretations or explanations, so please make
sure to explore more fundamental works further down below.
With these readings, you'll have to think deeply, but maybe not as
long or hard as you would have to think when reading an entire book:
Most of these works are incredibly long and dense, so many of you
probably won't take the time to read through them, but Marxists.org has
plenty of content that summarizes and provides analyses on much of what
is shared here, and it also provides key excerpts.
These are works that are considered essential readings for
understanding the foundation upon which we base our socialist theory
and/or understanding today, in conjunction with historical records (in
other words:
this is some OG sh!t
):
An
economic system
consisting
of self-managed enterprises is sometimes referred to as a
participatory economy
,
self-managed economy
or
cooperative economy
. This economic model is a
major version of market socialism and decentralized planned economy, stemming from the
notion that people should be able to participate in making the decisions that affect
their well-being. The major proponents of self-managed market socialism in the 20th
century include the economists
Benjamin Ward
,
Jaroslav
Vanek
and Branko Horvat.
[5]
The Ward-Vanek model of self-management involves the diffusion of entrepreneurial roles
amongst all the partners of the enterprise.
Branko Horvat notes that participation is not simply more
desirable but also more economically viable than traditional hierarchical and
authoritarian management as demonstrated by econometric measurements, which indicate an
increase in efficiency with greater participation in decision-making. According to
Horvat, these developments are moving the world toward a self-governing socialistic
mode of organization.
[6]
In the economic theory of self-management,
workers are no longer employees but partners in the administration of their enterprise.
Management theories in favor of greater self-management and self-directed activity cite
the importance of autonomy for productivity in the firm, and economists in favor of
self-management argue that cooperatives are more efficient than centrally-managed firms
because every worker receives a portion of the profit, thereby directly tying their
productivity to their level of compensation.
Perhaps the best that can occur considering the entrenched hegemony of pre-capitalist
organization of universities and its constant attempt to make schools into factories, is
an
Online
Unversity of the Left.
A mode of production combines productive
forces and relations of production.
a
mode
of production
(in German: Produktionsweise, meaning "the way of producing") is a
specific combination of the following:
Productive forces
: these include human
labour
power
and
means of production
(e.g. tools, productive machinery, commercial and industrial
buildings, other infrastructure, technical knowledge, materials, plants, animals and
exploitable land).
Social and technical
relations of production
: these include the property, power and control relations
governing society's productive assets (often codified in law), cooperative work relations
and forms of association, relations between people and the objects of their work and the
relations between social classes.
By performing social
surplus
labour
in a specific system of property relations, the labouring classes constantly
reproduce
the foundations of the social order. A mode of production normally shapes the
mode of distribution, circulation and consumption and is regulated by the
state
.
New productive forces will cause conflict in the
current mode of production. When conflict arises, the modes of production can evolve within
the current structure or cause a complete breakdown.
www.polecom.org/
The Political Economy of Communication, Vol 1, No 2 (2013) Theorising
and analysing digital labour: From global value chains to modes of production Christian
Fuchs, University of Westminster
One problem is that state provided corporate structures are not useful (I wonder
why...). For example, here in Washington we have the "T-Corp" for worker coops ( as
opposed to C- and S-corps and LLCs) that suffer from the founders equity problem. In
Mondragon they solved this by taking the accumulated capital of out of the business as
pension investments in the coop bank, but in the T- Corp you have to leave the capital
in the business. This makes it impossible for the company to grow by attracting new
workers after some time has gone by because no one can buy in.
When I set up such a business about 20 years ago, we got around this by making an
S-Corp with custom bylaws. It cost about $1k back then, but it may be more now (and I'm
sure FL has its own special issues). But that is how to go about it IMHO.
Only problem is they don't exist where I live in Flawer'Duh. If I could start
one, I would. Sadly I don't have the capital necessary to do so.
@Hawkfish
of your first-hand experiences. You said you're in Washington
[state?]
I hear there are a few states that are more co-op friendly, like CA or VT
...
Here in SC the S-Corp with custom bylaws would be the route I would select, but I
was contemplating using another state ...
One problem is that state provided corporate structures are not useful (I
wonder why...). For example, here in Washington we have the "T-Corp" for worker
coops ( as opposed to C- and S-corps and LLCs) that suffer from the founders
equity problem. In Mondragon they solved this by taking the accumulated capital
of out of the business as pension investments in the coop bank, but in the T-
Corp you have to leave the capital in the business. This makes it impossible for
the company to grow by attracting new workers after some time has gone by because
no one can buy in.
When I set up such a business about 20 years ago, we got around this by making
an S-Corp with custom bylaws. It cost about $1k back then, but it may be more now
(and I'm sure FL has its own special issues). But that is how to go about it
IMHO.
So I don't remember much. But we required all workers (we only got up to
three) to be equal shareholders and paid out all earnings every year. But
unfortunately I don't even have the bylaws any more.
#1.2
of your first-hand experiences. You said you're in Washington
[state?]
I hear there are a few states that are more co-op friendly, like CA or VT
...
Here in SC the S-Corp with custom bylaws would be the route I would select,
but I was contemplating using another state ...
that is the problem, although it does suggest that more effort needs to be put into how
under neoliberal capitalism, entrepreneurship can be more inclusive of co-ops
and something people with investment money can create. Sadly most folks in the US can't
afford a $500 expense. However if people can jump into the gig economy...seems they could
jump into a coop economy. I know Dr. Wolff's org helps with grants and legal work. It
takes some motivation and a lot of dedication to swim up stream rather than just following
the path they create to the part-time wal-mart greeter, stocker, cashier non-career. We
live in the new world of slavery tied by the chains of debt and enforced with lives in
private prison....breathe the freedom of capitalism.
They provide both capital and (if necessary) business plans. To bootstrap the
process you need some of both from the original companies. But as you say most people's
can't afford the startup costs.
and something people with investment money can create. Sadly most folks in the US
can't afford a $500 expense. However if people can jump into the gig economy...seems
they could jump into a coop economy. I know Dr. Wolff's org helps with grants and
legal work. It takes some motivation and a lot of dedication to swim up stream
rather than just following the path they create to the part-time wal-mart greeter,
stocker, cashier non-career. We live in the new world of slavery tied by the chains
of debt and enforced with lives in private prison....breathe the freedom of
capitalism.
They provide both capital and (if necessary) business plans. To bootstrap the
process you need some of both from the original companies. But as you say most
people's can't afford the startup costs.
If this is true, then restructure all of your current enterprises into WSDE
cooperatives (Worker Self-Directed Enterprises).
Let the workers control the means of production in a democratic and environmentally
sound fashion.
https://t.co/sQwPVAx0GA
-- Black Socialists of America (@BlackSocialists)
June 16, 2018
By the way, I am actually a socialist.
Just not the kind that shifts resources from most productive to least productive,
pretending to do good, while actually causing harm. True socialism seeks greatest good
for all.
Instead of falling all over yourselves congratulating Putin for
outing the Clinton's you should peruse other mainstream news outlets
ABC, NBC, FOX, CNBC, MSNBC, Yahoo, CNN and others. Except for Hannity
it's 100% condemnation of Trump selling out to the Russians and not a
single mention about the $400 million for the Clinton foundation.
The Washington Examiner printed an article full of the usual lies
about Russian aggression that if true would make the US look like a
saint compared to Russia. I imagine Wapo and the NY Slime were just
as bad.
As I stated the other day unless Trump crushed Putin, which was
never gonna happen even if the Donald wanted too, the knives would
come out and even Republicans would stomp on him.
If you saw Hillary's face you would see she is laughing her ass
off and dreaming of being president in 2020. The calls for
impeachment will come from all over the political spectrum and the
propagandized Americans, sheeple and the "well informed intelligent
people" who read the drivel in Wapo and NY Slime and there fellow
travelers and believe it 100%, will back it.
Those willing to print the truth will be drowned out by the
propaganda and be called Putin's bitches with renewed calls to shut
down the "fake news" that tells the truth.
All the news outlets bashing Trump Putin interview as "disgusting"
which is odd because I liked it because he called out the real
criminals---Comey, the fbi, DNC, Clinton, Strzok, etc.
Pretty much. This other bombshell from the conference, in which
Trump spilled entirely in the open that the whole Syria thing
hinged on Israel at the request of "Bibi" left
me jaw-dropped. Haven't seen a mention anywhere about this one...
It never fucking ends. I am watching all of my Dem friends howl about
Trump being owned by Puty Pute but not a darn mention about HRC sucking
bags of unethical dicks.
He didn't blame them - just said if you have no
specific evidence pointing to Russians, it could just
have easily been Ukranians, or Jews or??? which is
certainly true.
" The US fabricated evidence to start the Vietnam war and the US fabricated WMD talk on the second war in Iraq. US intelligence
had no idea the Berlin Wall was about to fall. The US meddled in Russia supporting a drunk named Yeltsin because we erroneously
thought we could control him."
YUP! AMEN.
It's amusing to me that the Leftist's NOW have a blind-faith trust in government, whereas during the Vietnam war, and at the
start of the Iraq war the opposite was (justifiably) the case.
And remember, the [neoliberal] Left was all OVER how we manipulated Russia into an Oligarchy:
" Deep State agent Bill Browder operated at the very nexus of the U.S. and U.K.
Intelligence Communities that conspired to produce both the fake Russiagate and very real
Spygate ."
" The US fabricated evidence to start the Vietnam war and the US fabricated WMD talk on
the second war in Iraq. US intelligence had no idea the Berlin Wall was about to fall. The US
meddled in Russia supporting a drunk named Yeltsin because we erroneously thought we could
control him."
YUP! AMEN.
It's amusing to me that the Leftist's NOW have a blind-faith trust in government, whereas
during the Vietnam war, and at the start of the Iraq war the opposite was (justifiably) the
case.
And remember, the [neoliberal] Left was all OVER how we manipulated Russia into an
Oligarchy:
Putin handed Trump a means of openly investigating Killary's/CIA's manipulation of US
politics via the Browder investigation, the crime of manipulating the DNC to remove Bernie
can also loop into the mix.
Let's hope Trump follows through and exposes the nest of vipers. The majority of people
are now seeing the light, only the people with skin the game or those far too controlled
through an excellent propaganda/mass mind control experiment do not.
Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebels could only dream that their methods would go this
far.
"But being dependent, every day of the year and for year after year, upon certain
politicians for news, the newspaper reporters are obliged to work in harmony with their news
sources."
― Edward L. Bernays ,
Propaganda
Putin handed Trump a means of openly investigating Killary's/CIA's manipulation of US
politics via the Browder investigation, the crime of manipulating the DNC to remove Bernie
can also loop into the mix.
Let's hope Trump follows through and exposes the nest of vipers. The majority of people
are now seeing the light, only the people with skin the game or those far too controlled
through an excellent propaganda/mass mind control experiment do not.
Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebels could only dream that their methods would go this
far.
"But being dependent, every day of the year and for year after year, upon certain
politicians for news, the newspaper reporters are obliged to work in harmony with their news
sources."
― Edward L. Bernays ,
Propaganda
Unless Herr fuckin Mueller comes up with some damn FUCKIN PROOF, and SOON, he should
hang.
Browder IS a major scumbag and there is plenty of fuckin proof of that. Putin knows. 400
millions to the Clinton campaign. The sooner she fuckin hangs the better.
... that is a much harder conversation to have about why the Democrats have lost elections than just blaming a foreign villain
and saying it's because Vladimir Putin ran some fake Facebook ads and did some phishing emails ... the conversation we need
to be having [about lies/corruption from the deep state and powerful actors acting against US citizens interests, and decline
of institutions that support US citizens' freedom], but we're not having, because we're evading it by blaming everything on
Vladimir Putin.
I agree with Mish on all this, including " Nearly every political action that generates this much complete nonsense and hysteria
from the Left and Right is worthy of immense praise" though he doesn't qualify/define "Left and Right" as the Left and Right establishment
aka. the Uniparty. The statement wouldn't have applied to say the Left and Right establishment that existed when our founders
created the country and were united to create a government that defends our lives, liberties and pursuit of happiness with an
extremely limited (by today's standards) government. You don't see the Freedom Caucus getting hysterical about Trump's meeting
Putin.
Mass hysteria is exactly what it is, because it threatens their gravy train that comes from money taken by force from taxpayers.
the citizens voted against the establishment, and the establishment is fighting back along with their MSM cronies.
I've never been enthralled with Neil Cavuto due to considering him inferior as a host on things financial. Today he just crapped
in his mess kit with me. He has to be dirty, the way he was defending the wonderful intelligence "community" of the USA, and was
hinting that treason may not be a strong assessment of Trump with Putin. He is a real POS along with girly-man Shepard Smith.
Not one criticism of any Cabalist about graft and corruption, and especially no mention of the uranium to Russia by Obama's and
Hillary's REAL treason.
I repeat, all of you goofy imbeciles, Trump is sucking you down into the depths of embarrassment once the hammer drops. I expected
the fruity Smith but must admit the Cavuto stupidity is a bit of a surprise. Someone has pics of that dumb fuck in a compromising
situation.
Within minutes MSM had the theme to broadcast. It was from their puppet masters in the FBI/CIA. They're told what to say. There's
no doubt about that now.
Also, there's no doubt that they are pushing for war with Russia, within months or a few years, depending on what happens to
Trump.
The Russians will know this now. All the post WWII wars were done in the same way: demonizing leaders, "defending democracy",
false flag ops. But this present push is for the end game of killing the host; which is the life strategy of the parasitoid. The
complete destruction of humanity and total ecocide.
The parasitoid corporate fascists are now in full control of the media and their disease vector politicians/bureaucrats, not
just in the US but the EU/NATO as well.
A parasitoid is an organism that lives in close association with its
host and at the host's expense, and which sooner
or later kills it. Parasitoidism is one of six major
evolutionary strategies within
parasitism . Parasitoidism is distinguished by the fatal
prognosis for the host, which makes the strategy close to
predation .
In epidemiology , a disease vector is any agent that
carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another
living organism; [1] [2]
investigative journalist Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News.
Does anyone else see how appropriate it is that a nation of yahoos should get their
'news' , ahem, misinformation, from from a source so aptly named?
The truth is hiding in plain sight, we're being led by the nose, to God knows where,
apparently around in circles, all so a few insanely rich a**holes can become more insanely
rich.
I don't know about you, but I was a lot happier back when I could blame all our problems
on the republicans.
This free-for-all, bat-sh*t crazy propaganda surge, if nothing else, has made plain what
our betters think of us.
Investigative journalism courtesy of Yahoo News, what will they think of next,
intelligence services working tirelessly to keep America safe in a dangerous world?
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com
.
Leaders are routinely confronted with philosophical dilemmas. Here's a classic one for our Trumptopian times: If you make enemies
out of your friends and friends out of your enemies, where does that leave you? What does winning (or losing) really look like? Is
a world in which walls of every sort encircle America's borders a goal worth seeking? And what would be left in a future fragmented
international economic system marked by tit-for-tat tariffs, travel restrictions, and hyper-nationalism? Ultimately, how will such
a world affect regular people? Let's cut through all of this for the moment and ask one crucial question about our present cult-of-personality
era in American politics: Other than accumulating more wealth and influence for himself,
his children
, and the
Trump family empire , what's Donald J. Trump's end game as president? If his goal is to keep this country from being, as he likes
to complain, " the world's
piggy bank ," then his words, threats, and actions are concerning. However bombastic and disdainful of a history he appears to
know little about, he is already making the world a less stable, less affordable, and more fear-driven place. In the end, it's even
possible that, despite the upbeat economic news of the moment, he could almost single-handedly smash that piggy bank himself, as
he has many of his own
business
ventures . Still, give him credit for one thing: Donald Trump has lent remarkable new meaning to the old phrase "the imperial
presidency." The members of his administration, largely a set of aging white men, either conform to his erratic wishes or get fired.
In other words, he's running domestic politics in much the same fashion as he oversaw the boardroom on his reality-TV show The
Apprentice . Now, he's begun running the country's foreign policy in the same personalized, take-no-prisoners, you're-fired
style. From the moment he hit the Oval Office, he's made it clear at home and abroad that it's his way or the highway. If only,
of course, it really was that simple. What he will learn, if "learning process" and "President Trump" can even occupy the same sentence,
is that "firing" Canada, the European Union (EU), or for that matter China has a cost. What the American working and the middle classes
will see (sooner than anyone imagines) is that actions of his sort have unexpected global consequences. They could cost the United
States and the rest of the world big-time. If he were indeed emperor and his subjects (that would be us) grasped where his policies
might be leading, they would be preparing a revolt. In the end, they -- again, that's us -- will be the ones paying the price in
this global chess match.
The Art of Trump's Deals
So far, President Trump has only taken America out of trade deals or threatened to do so if other countries don't behave
in a way that satisfies him. On his
third day in the White House, he honored his campaign promise to remove the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership,
a decision that opened space for our allies and competitors, China in particular, to negotiate deals without us. Since that grand
exit, there has, in fact, been a boom in side deals involving China and other Pacific Rim countries that has weakened, not strengthened,
Washington's global bargaining position. Meanwhile, closer to home, the Trump administration has engaged in a barrage of NAFTA-baiting
that is isolating us from our regional partners, Canada and Mexico.
Conversely, the art-of-the-deal aficionado has yet to sign a single new bilateral trade deal. Despite steadfast claims that he
would serve up the best deals ever, we have been left with little so far but various tariffs and an onslaught against American trading
partners. His one claim to bilateral-trade-deal fame was the
renegotiation of a six-year-old
deal with South Korea in March that doubled the number of cars each US manufacturer could export to South Korea (without having to
pass as many safety standards).
As White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders
put
it , when speaking of Kim Jong-un's North Korea, "The President is, I think, the ultimate negotiator and dealmaker when it comes
to any type of conversation." She left out the obvious footnote, however: any type that doesn't involve international trade.
In the past four months, Trump has imposed tariffs, exempting certain countries, only to reimpose them at his whim. If trust were
a coveted commodity, when it came to the present White House, it would now be trading at zero. His supporters undoubtedly see this
approach as the fulfillment of his many campaign promises and part of his
classic method of keeping both friends and enemies guessing until he's ready to go in for the kill. At the heart of this approach,
however, lies a certain global madness, for he now is sparking a set of trade wars that could, in the end,
cost millions of American jobs.
The Allies
On May 31st, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross
confirmed that Canada, Mexico, and the EU would all be hit with 10 percent aluminum and 25 percent steel tariffs that had first
made headlines in March. When it came to those two products, at least, the new tariffs bore no relation to the previous average 3
percent tariff on US-EU traded goods.
In that way, Trump's tariffs, initially supposed to be
aimed at
China (a country whose president he's praised to the skies and whose trade policies he's lashed out at endlessly), went global.
And not surprisingly, America's closest allies weren't taking his maneuver lightly. As the verbal-abuse level rose and what looked
like a possible race to the bottom of international etiquette intensified, they threatened to strike back.
In June, President Trump ordered
that a promised 25 percent tariff on
$50 billion worth of imported
goods from China also be imposed. In response, the Chinese, like the Europeans, the Canadians, and the Mexicans, immediately
promised a massive response in kind. Trump countered by threatening another
$200 billion in tariffs against China. In the meantime, the White House is targeting its initial moves largely against products
related to that country's "
Made in China 2025 " initiative, the Chinese government's strategic plan aimed at making the country a major competitor in advanced
industries and manufacturing.
Meanwhile, Mexico began adopting retaliatory tariffs on American imports. Although it has a far smaller economy than the United
States, it's still the second-largest importer of US products, buying a whopping
$277 billion of them last year. Only Canada buys
more. In a mood of defiance stoked by the president's
hostility to its people, Mexico
executed its own trade gambit, imposing
$3 billion in 15
percent–25 percent tariffs against US exports, including pork, apples, potatoes, bourbon, and cheese.
While those Mexican revenge tariffs still remain limited, covering
just 1 percent
of all exports from north of the border, they do target particular industries hard, especially ones that seem connected to President
Trump's voting "base." Mexico, for instance, is by far the largest buyer of US pork exports, 25 percent of which were sold there
last year. What its 20 percent tariff on pork means, then, is that many US producers will now find themselves unable to compete in
the Mexican market. Other countries may follow suit. The result: a possible loss of up to 110,000 jobs in the pork industry.
Our second North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partner (for whose prime minister, Justin Trudeau, there is "
a special place in hell ," according to a key Trumpian trade negotiator) plans to invoke tariffs of up to 25 percent on about
$13 billion in US products beginning on July 1st. Items impacted
range "from ballpoint
pens and dishwasher detergent to toilet paper and playing cards sailboats, washing machines, dish washers, and lawn mowers." Across
the Atlantic, the EU has similarly announced retaliatory tariffs of 25 percent on 200 US products, including such American-made classics
as Harley-Davidson motorcycles, blue jeans, and bourbon.
Trump Disses the Former G7
As the explosive Group of Seven, or G7, summit in Quebec showed, the Trump administration is increasingly isolating itself from
its allies in palpable ways and, in the process, significantly impairing the country's negotiating power. If you combine the economies
of what might now be thought of as the G6 and add in the rest of the EU, its economic power is collectively larger than that of the
United States. Under the circumstances, even a small diversion of trade thanks to Trump-induced tariff wars could have costly consequences.
President Trump did try one "all-in" poker move at that summit. With his game face on, he first suggested the possibility of wiping
out all tariffs and trade restrictions between the United States and the rest of the G7, a bluff met with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Before he left for his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore, he even suggested that the G7 leaders "consider
removing every single tariff or trade barrier on American goods." In return, he claimed he would do the same "for products from their
countries." As it turned out, however, that wasn't actually a venture into economic diplomacy, just the carrot before the stick,
and even it was tied to lingering
threats of severe penalties.
The current incipient trade war was actually launched by the Trump administration in March in the name of American "
national security
." What should have been highlighted, however, was the possible "national insecurity" in which it placed the country's (and the
world's) future. After all, a similar isolationist stance in the 1920s and the subsequent market crash of 1929 sparked the global
Great Depression,
opening the way for the utter devastation of World War II.
European Union countries were
incredulous when Trump insisted, as he had many times before, that the "U.S. is a victim of unfair trade practices," citing the
country's trade deficits, especially with
Germany and China. At the G7 summit, European leaders did their best to explain to him that his country isn't actually being
treated unfairly. As French President Emmanuel Macron
explained , "France runs trade
deficits with Germany and the United Kingdom on manufactured goods, even though all three countries are part of the EU single market
and have zero tariffs between them."
"... Two U.S. 'realists', Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, had always warned that the 'west' must keep China and Russia apart if it wants to keep its leading global position. Nixon went to China to achieve that. ..."
"... Years later the U.S. fell for the myth that it had 'won' the Cold War. It felt invincible, the 'sole superpower' and sought to 'rule them all'. It woke up from that dream after it invaded Iraq. The mighty U.S. military was beaten to pulp by the 'sand niggers' it despised. A few years later U.S. financial markets were in shambles. ..."
"... Crude attempts to further encircle Russia led to the Chinese-Russian alliance that now leads the SCO and soon, one might argue, the world. There will be no photo like the above from the SCO summit. The Chinese President Xi calls Russia's President Putin 'my best friend'. ..."
"... Agreed! But what will the US psychopaths do to maintain their grip when they realize they are really losing it? Nuclear war? ..."
"... Watching the two meetings play out has really been interesting, that the West is dead is not in question. And once it started it seems to be gaining momentum. I don't know how many readers here watch CGTN but it is amazing. My IQ goes up every time I watch. Astonishing how much more valuable information you get from a "heavily censored" Chinese news compared to MSM. The website is a little slow at times but it is well worth the wait. ..."
G-7 summits are supposed to symbolize "the west", its unity and its power. The summits pretended to set policy directions for
the world. We are happy to see that they are dead.
Trump was obviously not inclined to compromise.
Before attending the summit Trump trolled his colleagues by inviting Russia to rejoin the G-7/G-8 format without conditions. Russia
had been kicked out after Crimea voted to join its motherland. Merkel, who had negotiated the Minsk agreement with Russia, was furious.
She wants to use such an invitation as an element of future negotiations. (It is stupid talk. Russia is not interested in rejoining
the G-7/G-8 format.)
There are now many fields where the U.S. and its allies disagree: climate change, the Iran deal, trade are only the major ones.
Before leaving the summit Trump again
used
Mafia language against everyone else:
As he prepared to depart early from the G-7 summit in Charlevoix, Canada, to head to Singapore ahead of his planned meeting with
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump delivered an ultimatum to foreign leaders, demanding that their countries reduce trade
barriers for the U.S. or risk losing market access to the world's largest economy.
"They have no choice. I'll be honest with you, they have no choice," Trump told reporters at a news conference, adding that
companies and jobs had left the U.S. to escape trade barriers abroad. "We're going to fix that situation. And if it's not fixed,
then we're not going to deal with these countries. "
The row at the G-7 meeting was in stark contrast to the more important other meeting that happened today, the 18th Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) summit in Qingdao, China:
Dazzling against the city skyline of Qingdao, fireworks lit up the faces of guests who traveled across the vast Eurasian continent
to the coast of the Yellow Sea for the 18th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, on Saturday night.
It is the first such summit since the organization's expansion in June 2017 when India and Pakistan joined as full members.
...
The Shanghai Spirit of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diverse civilizations and pursuit
of common development , was stated in the Charter of the SCO, a comprehensive regional organization founded in 2001 by China,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and later expanded to eight member states.
This weekend Xi will chair the summit for the first time as Chinese president, which is attended by leaders of other SCO member
states and four observer states, as well as chiefs of various international organizations.
...
The SCO has grown to be an organization covering over 60 percent of the Eurasian landmass, nearly half the world's population
and over 20 percent of global GDP.
Two U.S. 'realists', Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, had always warned that the 'west' must keep China and Russia
apart if it wants to keep its leading global position. Nixon went to China to achieve that.
Years later the U.S. fell for the myth that it had 'won' the Cold War. It felt invincible, the 'sole superpower' and sought
to 'rule them all'. It woke up from that dream after it invaded Iraq. The mighty U.S. military was beaten to pulp by the 'sand niggers'
it despised. A few years later U.S. financial markets were in shambles.
Crude attempts to further encircle Russia led to the Chinese-Russian alliance that now leads the SCO and soon, one might argue,
the world. There will be no photo like the above from the SCO summit. The Chinese President Xi calls Russia's President Putin 'my
best friend'.
The 'west' has lost in Eurasia.
The U.S. is reduced to a schoolyard bully who beats up his gang members because their former victims have grown too big. Trump is off to Singapore to meet Kim Yong-un. Unlike Trump North Korea's supreme leader will be well prepared. It is likely that
he will run rings around Trump during the negotiations. If Trump tries to bully him like he bullies his 'allies', Kim will pack up
and leave. Unlike the U.S. 'allies' he has no need to bow to Trump. China and Russia have his back. They are now the powers that
can lead the world.
The 'west' is past. The future is in the east.
Posted by b on June 9, 2018 at 03:14 PM |
Permalink
Yeah, I was just thinking that. Trump is running full-speed into isolation. It's an ancient policy, which recalls the 1920s. What
does America need of the outside world? Good question.
I would think we will hear in the not too distant future of a European replacement of the US exchange systems, such as VISA.
The Americans have become too unreliable. Obviously the Russians and Chinese do have their own systems, but that won't do for
the EU.
Independence is going to be forced, and the consequences will be permanent.
Watching the two meetings play out has really been interesting, that the West is dead is not in question. And once it started
it seems to be gaining momentum. I don't know how many readers here watch CGTN but it is amazing. My IQ goes up every time I watch. Astonishing how much more
valuable information you get from a "heavily censored" Chinese news compared to MSM. The website is a little slow at times but
it is well worth the wait.
Last year during the border standoff with India they had on strident Indian voices arguing the Indian position every day. Imagine
if CNN had on Mexican reps regarding the wall - never happen.
Because Iran was under sanctions levied by the United Nations earlier, it was blocked from admission as a new member of the Shanghai
Cooperation Council [SCO]. The SCO stated that any country under UN sanctions could not be admitted. After the UN sanctions were
lifted, Chinese president Xi Jinping announced its support for Iran's full membership in SCO during a state visit to Iran in January
2016.Iran must join the SCO ASAP it is also a military alliance and should prepare itself for a big effort at regime change by
the US and lackeys. The moral of the story unless they hang together, the US will hang them separately.
Well, China as the text books say was always ' half the human story' - only eclipsed by Western connivance in the 1860's .I remember
my father argueing with high ranking Australian government and commercial figures in 1970.
My father argued Australia needed
to find its own voice with China and Chinese policy . They replied sneeringly '' Ralph , their just red communists and will never
amount to anything ' . Shortly thereafter Nixon flew to Beijing and my father sat back in his living room with a sardonic look
on his face !
You may like Freedland's article yesterday, which unusually I agreed with, that in fact Trump is a poor negotiator, and gives
away tricks he doesn't have to. Why no concession from Israel, over the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem? Why give away the
honour to NK of a one-to-one with the US president? I'd be surprised if NK surrenders, when they know what will happen if they
do.
"President Putin is the leader of a great country who is influential around the world," Xi said. "He is my best, most intimate
friend." Xi promised Russia and China would increase their coordination in the international arena.
Putin expressed his thanks for the honor and said he saw it as an "evaluation" of his nation's efforts to strengthen its relationship
with its southern neighbor.
"This is an indication of the special attention and respect on which our mutual national interests are based, the interests
of our peoples and, of course, our personal friendship," Putin said.
Interesting that Trump has said Russia should be invited back into the west's G7/G8 at this time. In cold war 1.0, Soviet Union
was the main enemy of the US and China was split away from the Soviet Union. In this war, Trump sees China's economy as the main
threat to the US and is trying but failing to pull Russia away from China.
They did win the Cold War. That's how they became the'sole superpower'.
If winning the Cold War is about vanquishing communism, they flat out lost. Because, while they were concentrating on the end
of the USSR and celebrating, China was going up and up and up. They never saw her coming, yet to this day and for the foreseeable
future, China is a socialist, Marxist country.
So the new, desperate Western spin is to try to argue that China has "succumbed" to capitalism. Yeah, right, a country where
all the private companies have to have members of the CPC on their board and hand over enough shares to the state to grant it
veto powers, not to mention the Central bank and all its major companies are state-owned... Lol.
After the collapse of the USSR the consensus - even of the alt-media (what little of it existed) was that a new American century
was on the way and the whole world would be better off for it. A decade later in 2003 the consensus (post 'shock & awe' Gulf War
2) was that America had the ability to re-structure the Asian /African world and that it would all be for good.
15 years later we are all sick of the fruit of that delusion. So we look to another power to save us... Do we understand nothing?
Without the accountability of multi-polarity, Western supreme power all became security-obsessed privilege, self-aggrandizement,
blatant plunder and total disregard for moral value and life. Power corrupts - it knows no exceptions.
If the West is truly dead, the East will be no different.
Interesting that Trump has said Russia should be invited back into the west's G7/G8 at this time.
Thought of a moment to annoy the Europeans. It is obvious that Trump was pissed off about having to attend, and left at the earliest
opportunity. The Europeans heard that, and will draw the inevitable conclusions.
Lea @ 13 Socialist, Marxist, Capitalist, what does it matter: it seems to work for China, at least for the time being. It's success
makes me think that a bit more government control of corporations might not be such a bad thing.
The summit with Kim will be fascinating to observe. In my view, NK has finessed the US and the Trump administration to a degree
I would not have thought possible, even from native US insiders. To do it long range from the other side of the world speaks to
me a lot about the power of Asia, and the clarity of view from there.
I agree with Laguerre @9 that Trump is a terrible negotiator (forgive that I didn't read the Guardian piece). I would take
this much further and say that all the US institutions themselves are culturally crippled in terms of understanding what's happening
in the ascendancy of Asia. All of their negotiation is feeble, because their grasp on their own true position is based on yesterday's
view of their power. You cannot go into negotiation without knowing what you hold.
Every day, I become more confident in the ability of the elder nations to put the young western empires to rest without their
being triggered into death spasms.
Red Ryder @11 - I see China's full-on drive for the one Road as its way of waging total war, its strategic masterstroke to
render the enemy powerless without the enemy's realizing that it is being attacked. Russia as the other half of the Double Helix
mesmerizes the west with weaponry while China undercuts the ground. Both countries are fully at war, and winning, while unseeing
commenters complain that it's time for them to "do something." How superb the silk rope drawn so softly around the throat.
It's a beautiful play. I very much hope - and truly expect - that we can all survive to be able to sit back and admire it as
the years unfold.
I have a small quibble with b's wording but thank him for following and reporting on our evolving world.
b's words:"
The U.S. is reduced to a schoolyard bully who beats up his gang members because their former victims have grown too big.
"
My rewording:
The global elite have their US puppet acting like a schoolyard bully who beat up his gang members because their former victims
have grown too big.
The West is trying to consolidate power and control while they still have some ghost of a chance. How they hold countries after
this global divorce will be interesting.
At his time the West has little to offer humanistically except its vice grip on most economic interaction and the tools including
banking underpinning the "system". The elite have deluded the public in the West for centuries about private finance behind the
scenes of all/most conflict......pointing to other religions but never their own.
It sure is getting interesting. IMO, the two Koreas are going to announce a reconciliation that requires the removal of America
military forces/bases et al, which fits in with the fake nationalism efforts of Trump.
That the US and the EU and their respective camps are at loggerheads over trade and perhaps other economic issues should not (I
hope) lead readers to assume that one side has the interests of the public it represents uppermost in mind. As the US and the
Anglosphere is dominated by one set of neoliberals, so Germany and the lackey EU nations following Berlin are dominated by another
set of neoliberals in thrall to an export-led mercantilist ideology. Just as the elites in charge of US power structures are only
interested in enriching themselves, the same can be said for those in charge of power structures in Europe. Whether under the
US or the EU, the public suffers.
Notice that Germany benefits from being the major economic power in the EU while its fellow EU nations around the Atlantic
and Mediterranean rim flail under a huge debt (and Greece is being punished back into the impoverished colonial status it held
under Nazi German occupation) and eastern European EU members are following suit running their economies into the ground and having
to beg NATO into setting up bases in their territories to attract money. At the same time German workers are becoming poorer,
they are not benefiting from Berlin's economic policies, they are not reproducing fast enough so Berlin needs to bring in more
foreign workers in the guise of "refugees" to prop up factories and keep wages low.
@ Madderhatter67: The US did not win the Cold War because the Cold War was only ever a propaganda front for the secret war
waged by US / UK elites against Russia and China to dominate and rob these nations and their neighbours of their natural resources.
thanks b - and for the laugh with the marjorie and homer pic for comparison!
i think this parallel you draw is a good one.. the west is certainly floundering... i am not sure how global finance responds
here... i can't imagine the 1% being on the wrong side of a bet on the direction of things here either..
@6 harry law.. did iran make it into the sco? it sounds like it did.. good!
@14 les7.. regarding your last line - i tend to agree with that viewpoint..
@19 jen... do you think it will be somehow different if the power shifts to russia/china? i guess i am not so sanguine over
power, regardless of who holds it.
Very well put, only issue that as to be dealt with is all those Stan Countries, they are a hibernating and breeding ground for
Terrorists and Arms dealers , who don't care who they sell arms to and how they get them to rogue regimes.
I see China's full-on drive for the one Road as its way of waging total war, its strategic masterstroke to render the enemy
powerless without the enemy's realizing that it is being attacked.
I do think you're exaggerating there.
China's past history has been one of a country very contented with itself, much like the US, because defended geographically
by vast deserts. A longer history, so some foreigners did traverse the deserts.
The Chinese exported their products by foreign ships (Arabo-Persian) arriving at Canton, and buying cargoes, or camel caravans
arriving in the north and buying silk. The Chinese themselves did not travel abroad very much, and so didn't know very much about
surrounding countries, or the rest of the world. There was a fleet of Chinese junks which arrived in the Gulf in the 14th century,
but it was the only one.
Today's situation is not so different. There are Chinese interventions in Africa, but their diplomacy is pretty ham-fisted.
The Belt-and-Road initiative is in fact intended to bring up to speed Central Asian countries like Tajikistan. Fine, Tajikistan
needs it, but it's not world-changing.
The rail freight from Beijing to Frankfurt works better as an intermediate between sea and air freight, but essentially it
is what has always happened - foreigners export Chinese products. The Chinese don't know how to run a foreign policy.
from their body language, I would say that Japan is surely 'with' Trump and the US, but that's only because that arch-reactionary
Abe is in power.....and when he goes, and go he will, there will be a big period of adjustment...some day.
The scambastic Trump could be inclined to make a slightly more fair deal in Singapore just to make a deal, but he is going extra
early (no jet lag) and will be controlled by Pompeo with his 'Grim Reaper' CIA-dog/warhawk/translator/born & raised S. Korean
with multiple relations in their South KCIA (NIS) and cabinet leadership, Andrew Kim (born Kim Sung-hyun). Kim's purpose will
be to control Trump's spontaneaous decision making, inform him on what he reads as N. Korea's intent, and give baseline hawkish
color to the translations for his own hawkish viewpoint.
bjd, bolton is trump's overseer, making sure he doesn't step out of line.
Trump is a poor negotiator, and gives away tricks he doesn't have to. Why no concession from Israel, over the move of the
US embassy to Jerusalem?
Laguerre, you have it backwards. the embassy move, the iran deal, and the appointment of bolton are all concessions trump made,
as payback for adelson's millions to both the gop and his campaign. possibly also has a little something to do cambridge analytica,
honey traps or whatever.
The imprint of the 84-year-old's political passions is seen in an array of Donald Trump's more controversial decisions, including
violating the Iran nuclear deal, moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and appointing the ultra-hawkish John
Bolton as national security adviser.
......The New York Times reported that Adelson is a member of a "shadow National Security Council" advising Bolton
James @ 21: I think one should always be a bit suspicious of those who hold power, especially those who find themselves holding
the uppermost hand in power as a result of victory in war (whether in the form of actual military combat, trade war or other wars
in soft power).
Russia under Vladimir Putin and China under Xi Jinping may be fine but will their successors know not to abuse the power they
may gain from the New Silk Road projects encompassing Eurasia and Africa?
Of course, it is about Iran. It's the Iranian deal that the EU needs to continue. They benefit as the biggest vendors to Iran.
They want to get inside that developing 70 million person market, also.
Bolton wants regime change. The EU knows that will be worse than Iraq. And economically, the EU will be in the dumps for 2
decades if there's another war they are forced to join. And they will be forced to join. They cannot say No to the Hegemon.
The EU 2, Germany and France, are at a historic moment of truth.
They could have a great future with Russia, China, Iran, the BRICS, SCO, OBOR and EAEU or they could be crippled by the Empire.
"...But Canada, which pushed for Russia to get the boot in 2014, is not onside. 'Russia was invited to be part of this club
and I think that was a very wise initiation, and an invitation full of goodwill,'[FM Chrystia Freeland] she told reporters at
the summit. 'Russia, however, made clear that it had no interest in behaving according to the rules of Western democracies..."
it's kind of wonderful to see all these imperialist and former neo-colonial powers fighting among themselves.
unfortunately, like the old African proverb goes, when the elephants fight it's the grass and small animals that suffer.
I see no reason for optimism for the peoples of europe at this point, as the stranglehold of the Trioka is perhaps as strong
as ever, and hundreds of millions of people are suffering; the people simply have to get organized at all levels and take back
their sovereignty at least as a start
The US still has the power of the dollar in its arsenal. The UK and EU, and any nation that deals with Wall Street, are addicted
to US investment in dollars. Since the EU is run by the banks, and western banks can't function with the dollar, any statements
by the EU that they're going to avoid US sanctions over Iran are meaningless.
The equation is essentially this: you can have your sovereignty or you can have the benefits of the dollar that make your 1%
very rich. You can't have both. Since the EU is ruled by the 1% banker/investor class they will forestall any attempts to regain
sovereignty by the people. In a sense, Europe is like Russia 10-15 years ago, thinking that the US is the key to the golden calf.
Russia learned the hard way they needed to establish some independence (although to this day Russia doesn't have nearly the financial
independence one might hope), and China saw from Russia's example they needed to do so as well. This led them to team up on many
economic initiatives while seeking to reduce the dominance of the dollar.
Perhaps someday Europe will learn this lesson. But as long as the EU exists, I kind of doubt it. The EU-crats will cry and
criticize Trump but the bankers love US money too much to let them actually do anything serious.
If the West is dead and the East is the future, then why are so many Chinese buying houses and living part time in Canada, Australia,
and the USA? Why is there so much emphasis put on Western education facilities by Asians?
Most Americans don't no matter how much explanation I go into.
They insist its a tariff or duty,which its not.
I've given up trying to explain its a sales tax on all,paying at customs is merely a cash flow issue for the importer.A reclaimable
input on his VAT return,did it many times myself.
there is only a bunch of paid of administrators running the countries and the corporations that pay them.
Trumps quid pro quo is deals that benefit his family. I don't thinks he cares one bit about the GOP and how the party fundraises.
He cares about advancing his family and keeping the loot.
maybe we should realize that the concepts of east and west, as much as neo liberalism or neo conservatism or any other moniker
that we could apply to loot and steal - legally and without shame under the guise of trade - are concepts of the past.
the future is for the strongest, irrespective of their origins or philosophy. we are burning this planet down with a vengeance
and we - the people - are to numerous and too expensive to keep.
while we debate and some even chuckle with delight as to how the west is treated by trump, or how much the west deserves to
be made redundant and all hail the Russians and the Chinese - the king is dead, long live the king - it is us who dies in the
wars, it is our children that are being kidnapped and locked up in prison when arriving on the border seeking asylum, it is us
who will watch the women in our live die in childbirth because of lack of medical care, it is us who will die of black lung, hunger,
thirst and general malice.
and while we gossip, they laugh all the way to the bank.
b, we have no doubt that the North Korean leadership is ready for the Americans and know the score with a rising Eurasia and a
sinking NATO. However, your last assumption of Kim being more than ready to go toe-to-toe with DJT smacks of some of the worst
tendencies of many posters here who are ready to venerate Kim without him ever even making formal address of more than a few words
to a) his people, 2) his allies, or D) even the world. This is a laughable assumption from you and it would be like having the
most beautifully-made garment handy for a long while, desperate for anyone to come along so you could fling it on them to prove
they were the most amazing supreme leader in all the world!
This is not to say I do not want the NoKos to succeed in their endeavors of getting a fair deal...hardly: I think they will
succeed eventually because they are shrewd. But this is an attempt to squash the unbelievably propagandistic (or naive) attempts
to place the mantle of imperviousness, all-knowingness, utterly-innocentness, and insurmountably-cleverousness onto the boy that
would be king. DJT could eat a boy like Kim for breakfast if left alone from their advisors.
Trump is very dependent on his base. He knows them well. At risk of hitting a discordant note I suspect a lot of his fans are
happy seeing him sock it to the goddamn ch*nks and euro faggots.
It's a big weekend. G7, SCO, Bilderberg, NATO Defence Ministers meeting in Brussels and the huge NATO "Drills" including the Baltic
States and for the first time, Israel.
Oh, and the US called on NATO to add 30 land battalions, 30 air fighter squadrons, and 30 naval ships to "counter Russian aggression."
I predicted it would become the G6+1 and so it has. Trump told his staffers NOT to sign the Joint Communique, which I believe
is a first.
On the issue of power
and the BRI , the linked item is a trove of info as it focuses on perhaps the most problematic region of the SCO/BRI.
If Europe is to break free from the Outlaw US Empire, Merkel must be jettisoned and independent-minded leaders must take control
of Germany and EU. I'm not at all surprised with how events went in Canada. However, I see the Policy as the Bully, not Trump,
the policy still being the attempt to gain Full Spectrum Domination. What's most important, IMO, is this spectacle will not go
unnoticed by the rest of the world. The Outlaw US Empire cannot make it any plainer that it's the primary enemy state of all except
the Zionist Abomination. I think Abe wonders why he's there and not in Qingdao.
Although this item focuses on Kashmir , it should be read after the longer article linked above. There's little news as of
yet coming from Qingdao other than who's cooking what and sideline meets. I expect more coming out beginning Monday. Of course,
Kim-Trump begins now, it being the 10th in Singapore already.
The difference between the two projects- the western Empire and the Eurasian schemes exemplified by OBOR- is that the former,
as 500 years of experience teaches us, relies on ethnic divisions, wars and competition while the latter requires peace and co-operation.
In a sense that answers Jen @ 32. It really doesn't matter who runs the governments of China and Russia, provided that they
can prevent the imperialists from distracting them into rivalry. It was that which, thanks to plenty of stupidity on both sides,
gave rise to the tensions of which Nixon and Kissinger took advantage.
Had the USSR and China ironed out their small differences on the sixties- and Vietnam gave them a perfect excuse to do so,
history would have been very different and probably much less bloody.
The truth is that, as b asserts, the SCO is already much more important than the G7- America and the Six Dwarfs. How much more
important is shown by the role of Freeland (the neo-Nazi Ukrainian apologist) in insisting on holding the line against Russia's
re-admission to a club that it almost certainly does not want to rejoin.
Trump may not be a 'good negotiator' but he has a position of relative strength vis a vis the rest of the G7 who cannot negotiate
because they do as they are told. If they won't do what Trump tells them to do they will be on the lookout for someone else to
give them orders-they have no idea of independence or sovereignty. Just watch most of them scuttle back to Brussels for ideas,
or set up back channels to Moscow- once a puppet always a puppet.
The Sino-Soviet Split occurred while Stalin was still alive--he refused to allow the Chinese to develop "Communism with Chinese
Characteristics" just like any other European Orientalist. And as the Monthly Review article I linked, the Chinese must
beware of becoming/being seen as Imperialistic in their zeal to push BRI--Imperialist behavior will kill the Win-Win concept as
it will revert to just another Zero-sum Game.
One of the factors which has been killing the 'Democratic' West is that its bribed & blackmailed leaders have alienated themselves
from The People whose views they were elected to represent.
No-one living in a so-called democracy is prepared to tolerate a leader who spends too much time praising, and making excuses
for, the crimes of the racist-supremacist Zionist Abomination (h/t karlof1) and its Piece Process in Palestine. It can be persuasively
argued that embrace of and fealty to the Z.A. is the only factor which Western Leaders have in common. And it's neither a coincidence
nor happenstance.
Grrr! I still don't get why so many humans believe anything good comes from chucking aside one greedy oppressive arsehole then
replacing it with another. Sure the SCO has a founding document laden with flowery words and seemingly wonderful concepts but
I say "So what" check out the UN charter or the amerikan constitution and you'll find the same.
These issues of justice & equity
cannot be fixed by swapping bosses because every society has its share of pathologically fucked up greedies who have the means
and lack of empathy to destroy anything and everyone in their lust for whatever it is they imagine they need.
We have to accept that will never change and that trying to purge the planet of those types just creates more of them from
within the structure most successful in effecting the swap.
I know I sound like a scratched disc but the only fix that could hope to work is one that smashes the conglomerations into
tiny shards, reducing the world to thousands of small self governing entities; sure some places will still end up being taken
over by low self esteem motivated arseholes, but not only will they not be able to do as much damage, arseholes stand out in a
small society where more 'normal' humans interact with them - currently all the pr1cks coagulate in spots such as the G7 and few
non-pr1cks ever get close enough to see them for what they are. A low count on the old degrees of seperation register makes it
much more difficult for the scum to rise. Making sure that no chunk is sufficiently big to force its will on another would also
be vital.
That won't fix everything, but who outside some totally screwed up anal regressive would want that anyway? I just want to live
in a world where no one cops it like the entire Yemeni population currently is. I see no benefit in moving the horror from Yemen
to Uigar-land or whatever place the new bosses decide should be their fun palace of hate, murder and misery.
The Congo and/or Nigeria another coupla sites of misery for money. Timor Leste aka East Timor, now that the Portuguese expats
in the form of the man with the Nobel stamp of obeisance to the monied
Jose Ramos Horta have done over the
locals, something Xanana Gusmăo always said could happen. Horta's arseholeness made the wealthiest nation in the world (divide
resources by population) riven by poverty, lack of health and education services plus of course old favourite, racist oppression.
Check out these kids here untroubled
by issues like getting a decent phone signal or their ranking on Twitch - wondering where their next decent feed is coming from
is prolly their most pressing issue.
Swapping SCO for G7 will do SFA for them or anyone else unlucky enough to be living on top of whatever the current 'must have'
is deemed to be.
Humanity either learns how to live with itself on an equal basis or it will perish; it's really that simple. The likes of the
Outlaw US Empire, its NATO vassals and the Zionist Abomination are shining examples of what MUST be exorcised for ever more.
The idea that demography is political destiny is not new. Peter Brimelow and Edwin Rubenstein
warned of its dangers in the pages of National Review in the 1990s. Steve Sailer later
argued
that Republicans would fare better by targeting white voters. The problem with these observations was not their accuracy, but their
audience. The GOP establishment and donor elites had little interest in such thinking until Donald Trump's
breakthrough
in 2016. But what happens when Trump leaves office? Will the GOP return to its old ways, as Trump's former chief of staff Reince
Priebus has
predicted ? The answer is almost certainly no. The reasons have little to do with the GOP elite, however, whose views have not
substantially changed. They instead have everything to do with what is happening in the other party. As Brimelow and Rubenstein recently
pointed out in VDARE (and as I did at
American Renaissance
), while the nation is not expected to reach majority-minority status until
2045 , the Democratic Party is already approaching that historic milestone. The political consequences of these changes will
be profound and irreversible. The developments that are unfolding before our eyes are not a fluke, but the beginning of a new political
realignment in the United States that is increasingly focused on race.
The Emerging Majority-Minority Party While warnings of brewing demographic trouble were being ignored by the establishment
right, they received a better reception on the left. In 2004, Ruy
Teixeira and John Judis wrote a book called
The Emerging Democratic
Majority that triumphantly predicted that demographic change would soon produce a "new progressive era." The theory's predictive
powers waxed and waned over the years, but after Trump's 2016 election Teixeira and another coauthor, Peter Leyden, insisted that
Democrats would soon sweep away an increasingly irrelevant GOP and forcibly
impose their will, much as had already happened in California. These arguments have a glaring weakness, however. They assumed
that Democrats would continue to draw the same level of support from white voters. Instead, many have been fleeing to the GOP. Throughout
the 20 th Century, Democrats had won the presidency only by winning or keeping it close among these voters. Barack Obama
was the first to break this pattern, defeating John McCain in 2008 while losing the white vote by
12 percent
. Four years later he beat Mitt Romney while losing it by
20 percent
. Hillary Clinton lost the white vote in 2016 by a similar 20-point
margin . This
loss of white support, coupled with the continued demographic change of the country, has helped push the Democratic Party toward
majority-minority status. Since 1992, the white share of the Democratic presidential vote has dropped an average of about one percent
per year. At its current rate, it could tip to majority-minority status by 2020. It will occur no later than 2024. The political
consequences of this shift are already apparent. In 2008, Obama beat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination with
the overwhelming backing of
black voters.
Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in 2016 with similar black and Latino
support . This year's state elections have continued the trend, with minority candidates winning Democratic gubernatorial nominations
in Georgia ,
Texas , New Mexico , and
Maryland , with another likely win in
Arizona later this year. This sudden
surge in minority candidates is not an indicator of increased open mindedness, but of demographic change. While the national
Democratic Party is only just approaching majority-minority status, in much of the nation it is already there.
While the demographic trend of the Democratic Party seems clear enough – as does its leftward drift and increased embrace of minority
candidates – it is still possible to argue that the nation's politics will not divide along racial lines. The most obvious alternative
is that both parties will compete for minority votes and both will experience demographic change in an increasingly
multiracial nation. Could this happen? Black voters seem least likely to change. They already routinely provide Democrats with
90 percent of their votes. They are the backbone of the party, with a former president, nearly 50
members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and numerous mayors in
major American cities among their ranks. Given the Democratic Party's steadfast commitment to black issues such as affirmative action
and Black Lives Matter, few are likely to be won over by the occasional attempts at Republican
outreach . Latinos also typically
support Democrats in presidential elections by a 2-to-1 margin, but they have been a more serious target for Republicans, including
President
George W. Bush , his acolyte
Karl Rove , authors of the
GOP autopsy
released after Mitt Romney's 2012 loss, and occasional
writers
in National Review . Some have observed that many Latinos
value whiteness and are more likely to
self-identify
as white thelonger they have been in the country.
In fact, some Latinos arewhite , particularly
those from Latin America's leadershipclass . Others have
reported on
substantialhostility
that exists between Latinos and blacks that may make them more likely to see whites as natural allies. There are several problems
with these arguments. The most important are
persistent
race-based
IQ differences that will keep most mestizos (who are the
bulk of Latino immigrants)
trapped at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum regardless of their racial identification. Arguments that they will assimilate
like their European predecessors fail to explain why
racialhierarchies have
persisted in their home
nations for hundreds of years. These inequalities probably explain the high levels of
Hispanicsupport for government programs that
are likely to keep most of them tied to the Democratic Party for the foreseeable future. Although Asians also
support Democrats
by a 2-to-1 margin, they seem potentially more
promising . Unlike America's black and Latino populations, East Asians (such as Japanese and Chinese) have IQs that may be slightly
higher than that of white Americans on average.
Moreover, affirmative action policies backed by Democrats typically
work to
their detriment
. However, most Asian immigrants
are not East Asians and their IQs (such as those of Indians or Pakistanis) are much
lower . Finally, no matter
what their nationality, Asians are generally unsympathetic
to whites
who want to restrict nonwhite immigration. Unsurprisingly, all of these reasons have contributed to Asians
movingaway
from the Republican Party, not toward it. Some argue that Republicans have no choice but to accept demographic change and move left
to gain minority support. The GOP may well move left in
ways
that
are
acceptable to its white
working class
base and help it with white moderates – such as protecting Social Security and Medicare. But it will never win a
bidding
war with Democrats for their base of minority voters, nor would the GOP base let it try.
White polarization is the mirror image of nonwhite polarization and its causes are similar. Numerous
scholars have
citedgenetics
as a basis for reciprocal altruism among closely-related kin and hostility toward outsiders among humans and in the animal kingdom
in general. This ethnocentrism is instinctual, present
amongbabies , and whites are
not immune from its effects. Most are socialized to suppress their ethnocentric instincts, but they remain only a
shortdistance beneath the surface. Academics sometimes
argue that
positive direct contact is a promising strategy for overcoming racial differences, but research has shown that the
negativeeffects are more
powerful – something a cursory glance at
crime statistics would
confirm. Rampant white flight and segregation in
neighborhoods
,
schools , and personal
relationships provide the most definitive evidence on the negative influence of direct contact. Its impact on voting is also
well established, particularly for whites and blacks. The shift of white Southerners away from the Democratic Party after civil rights
legislation was enacted in the 1960s was almost immediate and has
remained
strong ever since. White flight produced similar
political
advantages for Republicans in suburbs across the country during this period. Their advantage has softened since then, but primarily
because the suburbs have become
less white , not
lesssegregated . White voting is similarly affected
by proximity to Hispanics. White flight and segregation are a constant in heavily Latino areas in
both
liberal and conservative
states. The resulting political backlash in places like
California and
Arizona has been well-documented and confirmed
by
academicresearch
. Support for President Trump has also been shown to be highly
correlated with
whiteidentity
and
opposition to immigration. These trends are expected to become stronger over time.
Experimental
research has shown that growing white awareness of demographic change makes them more
conservative , less favorably disposed to
minorities, and feel greater attachment to other whites. The effects are heightened the more whites think they are
threatened . The associated
ideological effects are just as important. The influence of ideology is obvious in socially conservative states like North Dakota
and Kansas . However, the Democrats'
growing leftward tilt has become an issue even in liberal states like those in New England, many of which now regularly
elect
Republicans as governors
. In fact, liberal Massachusetts has had
just one Democratic governor in the past quarter century. The power of leftist ideology to drive whites together may reach its
zenith if Democrats resume their attack on segregation in neighborhoods and schools.
De facto segregation has
protected
white liberals from the consequences of their voting
decisions for years. If Democrats are
returned to power, however, they appear
ready
to
touch this electoral
third rail
.
Further evidence of racial polarization can be found by looking abroad. Ethnic conflict has been a constant in human relations –
everywhere and throughouthistory . More recently,
64 percent of
all civil wars since 1946 have divided along ethnic lines
. Such conflicts are highly correlated with genetic diversity and
ethnic polarization . Some of the worst examples,
such as Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sudan, have included ethnic cleansing and genocide. Race-based identity politics are just a lower
form of ethnic conflict. Like ethnic conflict more generally, the strength of such politics depends on the level of ethnic diversity
and corresponding racial polarization. In homogenous societies, for example, politics tends to divide along class and cultural lines.
As a society becomes more diverse, however, ethnicity begins to play a growing
role . Politics and
parties that are explicitly
ethnically-based usually do not appear until much later, when a nation has become more diverse and has begun to suffer extreme racial
polarization. Such politics have been shown to produce substantial ethnic
favoritism
. Their appearance is often a
prelude to civilwar or
partition . The United
States has not reached this stage, but its future can be seen in other nations that are further down the road. One example is Brazil.
While the United States will not become majority-minority until 2045, Brazil reached that milestone in
2010 . For much of the 20
th Century, Brazil viewed itself as a harmonious racial
democracy and a model for the rest of the world, but this image has been tarnished in recent years. The nation's changing demographics
demonstrated their power with the election of Lula da Silva in 2002 and his hand-picked successor, Dilma Rousseff, in 2010. Support
for these two presidents – both members of the leftist Workers Party – was
concentrated
in the largely black northern half of the country, while opposition was concentrated in the mostly
white south . Their victories depended on
the nation's changing demographics. Once elected, they rewarded their black supporters with substantial expansions of
affirmative action and
a new cash transfer system, called Bolsa Família, which disproportionately
benefitted
Afro-Brazilians. Since then, Brazil's fortunes have taken a turn for the
worse . Rousseff was
impeached
after a massive corruption scandal in 2016. Crime has
exploded . Black activists
nowderide the notion of "
racial democracy " and have become
more
militant
on racial issues. An explicitly
black political party has
also appeared. This has corresponded with a similar backlash in the white population. The leading candidate for the presidential
election this year is Jair Bolsonaro, sometimes referred to as the
Trump of the Tropics . A white separatist movement called the
South is My Country is drawing substantial support. Brazilians are reportedly
losing faith in
democracy and becoming more receptive to
military
rule .
The preponderance of the evidence – domestic, international, historical, and scientific – suggests that American politics will
continue to polarize along racial and ethnic lines. At least in the short term, Republicans will benefit as white voters flee from
the other party. But will the GOP adequately capitalize on these gains?
Various elements of the
GOPestablishment
, including the
business elite and pro-immigration donors like the
Koch brothers , continue to hold substantial
power within the party. Reince Priebus probably echoed their views when he
said , "I think post-Trump, the party basically returns to its traditional role and a traditional platform."
Such status quo thinking ignores too much. There are numerous signs that the party is changing. Trump's popularity within his
own party is the
second highest among all presidents since World War II, trailing only George W. Bush in the aftermath of 9/11. Congressional
Never Trumpers like Bob
Corker , Jeff Flake
, and
Mark Sanford have been defeated or stepped aside. Prominent
columnists ,
analysts , and at least
one former GOP leader
are now declaring it Trump's party.
These changes are not solely about Trump, however. There were signs of change before his arrival. Eric Cantor's primary defeat
in 2014 was widely
attributed to softness on immigration, which met furious
grassroots opposition . Moreover, if Trump's rise were
merely a one-off event, we would not be seeing the simultaneous rise of nationalist movements in Europe, which is facing its own
immigration crisis .
The more likely answer is that these changes reflect something more powerful than any individual, even the president of the United
States. The same survival
instinct that is present in all living creatures still burns brightly within the world's European peoples. Trump was not the
cause, but a consequence – and we will not go gently into the night.
Patrick McDermott(email him)is a political analyst in Washington, DC.
This ethnocentrism is instinctual, observable even among babies. Whites are not immune from its effects. Most are socialized
to suppress their ethnocentric instincts, but they remain only a short distance beneath the surface.
Even the most vile race-virtuosos' ethnocentric instincts boil to the surface in the flight to "good schools" for their children.
The "Good schools" rationale works for them. Gets them away from the city, away from those awful Blacks. It was always diversity
for thee. The closest most liberals get to diversity is the Hispanic housekeeper. Because the Blacks, you know, they steal the
liquor/silver/Waterford". Heard variations of this a million times..
Brilliant synthesis. Excellent article. Patrick McDermott hits it out of the ballpark, noting correctly that ethnocentrism is
"instinctual". So true. So obvious. And this suppressed truth is just the tip of the iceberg. America lives under 'intellectual
occupation'.
But the hardening scientific facts involving race, kinship, and phenotype are testament to the hollowness of 'anti-racist'
rhetoric and ideologies that dominate so much of the American landscape.
These liberal creeds pretend to repudiate (all) 'racism' and bigotry, but in political fact, they strategically target only
white Americans. This makes these lofty 'values' not only disingenuous but unfair and destructive.
Highfalutin (but bogus) liberalism has come to play a diabolical role. It undermines white cohesion and white solidarity. Meanwhile,
from high above, irreversible demographic changes are being orchestrated.
MacDermott correctly observes that the West's unsought ethno-racial transformation is what's behind the reinvigoration of white
identity in Europe and America. This at least is good news.
Says MacDermott:
"Ethnic conflict has been a constant in human relations -- everywhere and throughout history. More recently, 64 percent of
all civil wars since 1946 have divided along ethnic lines. Such conflicts are highly correlated with genetic diversity and ethnic
polarization. Some of the worst examples, such as Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sudan, have included ethnic cleansing and genocide."
Very true. Very important. And while MacDermott avoids mentioning a more obvious example, the most persistent expression of
this phenomena can be seen in Israel/Palestine, where allegedly 'Semitic' Jews are doing whatever it takes to keep their lesser
(Semitic) cousins at arms length–in this case, in the caged ghettos of Gaza and the West Bank.
Undue and uncompromising Jewish influence in Zio-America is allowing this race-born outrage to continue. Sadly, Israeli savagery
routinely receives Zio-Washington's unconditional blessing, trillion-dollar subsidy, and unflinching diplomatic cover.
But besides the disputed territory and Israel's untouchable political power, what nourishes the endless Israel/Palestine impasse?
Jewish 'exceptionalism' is one key motivator.
The Chosen people are convinced that they are born vastly superior to their Semitic cousins.
Thus, strict segregation is required for the assurance of 'Jewish (genetic) continuity'. This objective however requires steadfast
cruelty since the natives are still restless and rebelling.
Supremacism means never having to say you're sorry. This is especially true since, ironically, peace between Jews and Arabs
could potentially lead to increased Jewish 'outmarriage' in Israel and consequently, the gradual reduction in Israeli (Jewish)
IQ and Jewish 'exceptionalism' (supremacy).
Over time, potential genetic intermingling would very possibly undermine Jewish magnificence and therefore, Jewish cohesion.
This could then translate into a loss of Jewish solidarity and 'community'. It's possible.
This downturn could subsequently affect Jewish wealth and power, and that is certainly not an outcome that the Jewish community
desires.
Leaders of the global Jewish community are smart enough to envision this scenario and to prevent it from happening. They use
The Holocaust (and it's potential re-0currance) as an all-purpose excuse. But it's phony. Self-segregation is a sacred, ancient
Jewish value. Thus the glamorization of interracial romance is directed only at the goyim, as is the message of Open Borders.
Just turn on your TV. It's there constantly.
These 'liberal, democratic' messages however are never advocated in Israel, nor are they directed at young Jews via Israeli
TV, news, entertainment or education.
You will never see glamorous depictions of Jewish/Arab miscegenation on Israeli television, even though black/white 'family
formation' on Jewish-owned mass media in America is ubiquitous.
Hostile US elites (Jews) apparently want non-Jewish whites to become mixed, brown. This racial objective however is anathema
to Jewish values. It's strictly for the goyim.
Meanwhile, whites in America are not permitted to think or hold values like Israeli Jews, or to even express similar preferences
inside the civilization that they and their forefathers created. This speaks volumes about the lack of freedom in America. Yes,
we live under intellectual occupation.
For many Israeli Jews (the dominant thinking goes) strict segregation–if not active warfare–is the only sure way to maintain
'hafrada' (separation) for Jews in Israel since they are surrounded by tens of millions of similar-looking but 'unexceptional'
Arabs.
Unlike America, walls (and segregation) remain sacred in Israel. But not here.
In fact, some Latinos are white, particularly those from Latin America's leadership class
I think the reality is, Latinos/Hispanics simply form lines like any group would do. I am white, all my fellow Hispanic friends
are white, and we consider ourselves essentially an ethnicity within Whiteness, just like Italians, or high-caste French Creoles,
White Persians, Lebanese or Jordanians.
The easiest way to tell if an "ethnic" is conservative or republican (outside of obvious virtue signalers), is to ask yourself,
" Is this person white ?". Other than famous actors and political types that have the luxury being "liberal" (e.g. Salma
Hayek) every day Hispanics, Persians and Arabs that are white, act, do and think, like every day White Anglo-Saxons, Germanics
and Nordics–for the most part (obviously IQ plays a part). Don't get me wrong, there is a difference in IQ and mindset in the
particulars between a Norman and a (white-ish) Sicilian, some IQ, some cultural, but if and when a civil war comes–no one will
have ANY problem knowing where they and others stand and belong.
Reince Priebus: "I think post-Trump, the party basically returns to its traditional role and traditional platform."
And that would be U.S. hegemony and market fundamentalism? Unlikely and unattractive. U.S. military dominance starves our society
and enriches the national security state and the rogue regimes in Tel Aviv and Riyadh. Market fundamentalism does not take into
account human frailty, and would produce widespread desperation.
What can be gleaned from Mr. McDermott's instructive article is that, like it or not, identity needs to be included in the
political lexicon of working class and middle class whites. Elite whites continue to cede power to blacks and browns in politics
and business as the slide into Idiocracy accelerates. This is an opportunity for disaffected whites from the Democratic Party
and Republican Trump supporters to form a coalition.
The political consequences of these changes will be profound and irreversible.
When Ted Kennedy was pushing the 1965 opening of our borders to atone for racism, he made repeated assurances that we would
not end up where we ended up. He said the level of immigration would remain the same, the ethnic mix would not inundate America
with immigrants from any particular place or nation, that the ethnic pattern of America would not be changed, and that we wouldn't
have something crazy like a million immigrants a year, certainly not poor ones who would place a burden on citizens.
When Reagan's amnesty happened, again promises where made that we could and would keep our country. Now, it looks like Brazil
is our future.
Elections are already being decided by racial votes of minorities, which aren't considered racist by that half of America that
eagerly anticipates our demise. What a rude surprise they are in for when they discover they are still white and will be honorary
deplorables once they no longer have political power.
But will the GOP adequately capitalize on these gains?
Ha, Derbyshire doesn't call it the Stupid Party for nothing.
Regarding my home state of Arizona, that 66% figure is an interesting anomaly. Except for my fellow writers, most of the white
folks I know are pretty conservative. Many secretly supported Trump or voted Libertarian in protest of the lousy mainstream choices.
Perhaps this is a reflection of white flight from California.
You dense "scientific" racists can't see the forest for the trees, as is always the case. The importance of this election has
nothing to do with demographics. But you wouldn't know that because all you want to do is scream raceracerace all de liblong day.
No. The importance of this race is that Ocasio-Cortez is "a strikingly perfect candidate, both in policy positions and refusal
to take corporate money. She fits the identity politics profile without once using identity politics virtue-signaling to cover
for lousy policies. This is shattering to the Clintonista crowd, who are spinning like tops."
However, most Asian immigrants are not East Asians and their IQs (such as those of Indians or Pakistanis) are much lower.
Really? How come so many are doctors, scientists and computer programmers? Those aren't typically low-IQ professions. Is this
just a case of aggressive brain-drain? Do all the stupid ones stay behind in India?
In homogenous societies, for example, politics tends to divide along class and cultural lines. As a society becomes more
diverse, however, ethnicity begins to play a growing role.
Yup. That's probably why the Democratic Party traded class war for race war.
Really? How come so many are doctors, scientists and computer programmers?
The advance guard in the US was the professional elite. Not so in the UK. Subcontinentals are much closer, or even below, average
there. Even here, motel owners may outnumber doctors, scientists, and computer programmers combined.
Is this just a case of aggressive brain-drain?
Yes.
And it's worse in Canada.
Do all the stupid ones stay behind in India?
There are a billion more people in India than in the US. Do the arithmetic.
OK. I'll make it simple for you because your understanding doesn't extend beyond simple.
Ocasio-Cortez is a very good candidate, and, unless she is co-opted–which, 99 out of a 100 (notice my use of "statistics,"
I mean damned lies, you statistics-worshipers) is the chance she will be–she is a hundred times better than Crowley the Clintonite
hack. Racists are really stupid. They vote against their own interests, just like all "conservatives."
The author throws around 'left' and 'right' as if they transparently applied in the case of ethnic politics. I would argue that
it has been the economic 'right' that has relentlessly pursued diversity of populations – quite arguably for millennia, and certainly
in the last 50 years. Some sane economic leftists realize this, although they are an endangered and shrinking group.
However if it is the right that is the main mover in favor of diversity (empire preferred to nation state for the easier control
of labor), I'm not sure what solutions there are. Whites voting for the Republican Party is not a long time viable solution since
the owners of that party have fundamentally different interests than the white working class (as leftists have correctly pointed
out over and over).
Ocasio's victory is a nightmare for the Democrats. The Leftist media is touting her as the future of the party, but her platform
makes Obama look like a rightwing extremist.
- Federal Jobs Guarantee
- Medicare for All
- Tuition-free public college
- Reduce prisons by 50%
- Defund ICE
But the real poison pill is her unwavering support for the Palestinians. I'm not making a value judgment on this or any other
of her policies, but if the GOP can tag the next Democratic presidential candidate with Ocasio's worldview, then expect a Trumpslide
in 2020.
What do the (((brains))) and (((primary funders))) behind the Democratic party think of this rising star? Here are some choice
quotes from NY Jewish Week:
To some, the stunning victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an outspoken critic of Israel, over 10-term Rep. Joseph Crowley
(D-Queens-Bronx), an Israel supporter, in Tuesday's Democratic primary is seen as another nail in the coffin of Democratic support
for the Jewish state.
"If she maintains her anti-Israel stance, she will be a one-term wonder," predicted George Arzt, a New York political operative.
"I don't think you can have someone with those views in New York City. If she moderates, she could win again. If she doesn't,
there will be massive opposition to her -- maybe even a cross-over candidate from the Latino community with pro-Israel views."
Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic strategist, said he sees Ocasio-Cortez's overwhelming victory -- she won with 57.5
percent of the vote -- as "another step in the ongoing divorce proceedings between the pro-Israel community and the Democratic
Party."
Jeff Wiesenfeld, a former aide to both Republican and Democratic elected officials, said he read Ocasio-Cortez's Twitter
and Facebook postings and said she has voiced opinions that are "downright hostile to Israel."
After 60 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military in May while attempting to breach the fence along the Israel-Gaza
border, Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter: "This is a massacre. I hope my peers have the moral courage to call it such. No state
or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protestors. There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity,
as anyone else. Democrats can't be silent about this anymore."
"We have never stepped into a situation in New York City in which a member of Congress starts out hostile to us," he added.
"This is a new frontier."
"While Jewish Democrats support much of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez's domestic policy agenda, we disagree with her past statement
regarding Israel, as well as her affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America, which supports the boycott, divestment
and sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel," it added. "In the coming days and months, we hope to learn more about Ms. Ocasio-Cortez's
views, but at the moment, her position on Israel is not in line with our values."
What will Jewish Democrats do if the Ocasio/DSA platform becomes mainstream in the Democratic party? Join up with the anti-Trump
neocons and vote for a third party? While the Republicans can win nationwide elections without Jewish money and votes, there's
no evidence that the Democrats can, at least not yet.
Another factor in Ocasio's surprise victory, as so delicately pointed out by the noted political analyst Andrew Anglin, is
that:
"Furthermore, people want to f*ck her."
No shit. Her good looks and likeable personality mean that she's likely in the media spotlight to stay, no matter how much
the MSM (((gatekeepers))) might want to shield the general public from her, ahem, "problematic" views.
As an aside, I believe her nationwide appeal is enhanced by her complete lack of the godawful, ear-grating Nuyorican accent
so commonplace among her co-ethnics. In fact she speaks with a general American accent with barely even a hint of New Yorkese.
I don't know if this is part of a generalized homogenization of regional accents throughout the country, or if she affects this
dialect for personal and/or political reasons. Either way, it only adds to her appeal.
If the Ocasio-Sanders wing of the Dems continues its electoral ascendancy, then Donald Trump will start looking more and more
like the moderate adult in the room compared to the infantile, gibsmedat, tantrum-throwers on the far left. Which is terrible
news for the Clintonite, corporate bloodsucker wing of the Dems, but fantastic news for the rest of us.
If the Ocasio-Sanders wing of the Dems continues its electoral ascendancy, the same people who voted for Trump will vote for them.
You have no understanding whatsoever about the mood of the current polity.
Economics is just a tool to that end. When identity looked to be more productive, they pivoted quite gracefully.
Welfare bureaucrats derive their power from the poor, not the working, and there are many more poor abroad than at home. Creating
a welfare state thus creates a giant constituency for importing more poor, and poorer.
One of the credos of realism has been "There are no angels, so set the devils against one another." As pie-in-the-sky as economists
can be, they're closer to the truth on this one than the pro-regulation forces, who assume, by definition, that the regulators
will be angels.
Americans, at least Unz reviewers, lump all Hispanic speakers into one category. Does Cortez even speak Spanish, except for her
ethnic purposes? More important, a Puerto Rican origin is both Creole and Roman Catholic. That puts them in a category all their
own. She has no love for Israel because her background did not come under the influence of the Christian Zionist Churches. Her
black origins make her atavistically side with the Palestinians.
You have no clue about "Trump supporters." For your information, they will vote for anyone who shakes things up. Their second
choice after Trump was Sanders. These are facts. Read 'em and weep.
The Establishment wants to pretend that these voters don't exist. Even though they tipped the election. Along with most people
(even here) they want to keep everything in neat boxes labelled Right vs Left, Rep vs Dem, etc etc. Spares them the 'vexation
of thinking'.
Actually, I have a quite contrary view of the political implications of these shifts in racial demographics. For those interested,
here's a link to a long article I published a few years ago on this same exact topic:
While "marriage of governmental and corporate interests is the very definition of fascism" this marriage also occurs under neoliberalism,
so the author augment is weak, although some of his observations are astute and have a distinct value. Fascism imply far right nationalism
and far right nationalist party in power, often under false pretext of "saving nations from a coming collapse".
Neoliberalism while is also displays high level of merger of corporate and state interests operation of globalist agenda (or at
least used to operate before Trump, who invented "national neoliberalism" regime, aka neoliberalism without neoliberal globalization)
Can Trump "national neoliberalism" be called a flavor of neo-fascism? Hillary probably will tell you yes ;-) But it is impossible
to deny that the US Deep state launched color revolution against Trump (with CIA under Brennan as a coordinating center and FBI as "muscles")
and, essentially emasculated him in just first three month of his Presidency by appointing Mueller as a Special Prosecutor.
So we can talk about gradual sliding into national security state under neoliberalism, but it is not necessary take form of neofascism.
Classic neoliberalism, for example, is cosmopolitan ideology and as such is hostile to nationalism.
Notable quotes:
"... Remember, people used to scoff at the notion of a Deep State (a.k.a. Shadow Government), doubt that fascism could ever take hold in America , and sneer at any suggestion that the United States was starting to resemble Nazi Germany in the years leading up to Hitler's rise to power. We're beginning to know better, aren't we? The Deep State (" a national-security apparatus that holds sway even over the elected leaders notionally in charge of it ") is ..."
"... Indeed, to anyone who's been paying attention to the goings-on in the world, it is increasingly obvious that we're already under a new world order, and it is being brought to you by the Global-Industrial Deep State, a powerful cabal made up of international government agencies and corporations. ..."
"... It is as yet unclear whether the American Police State answers to the Global-Industrial Deep State, or whether the Global-Industrial Deep State merely empowers the American Police State. However, there is no denying the extent to which they are intricately and symbiotically enmeshed and interlocked. ..."
"... Consider the extent to which our lives and liberties are impacted by this international convergence of governmental and profit-driven interests in the surveillance state, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry, the intelligence sector, the technology sector, the telecommunications sector, the transportation sector, and the pharmaceutical industry. ..."
"... All of these sectors are dominated by mega-corporations operating on a global scale and working through government channels to increase their profit margins: Walmart, Alphabet (formerly Google), AT&T, Toyota, Apple, Exxon Mobil, Facebook, Lockheed Martin, Berkshire Hathaway, UnitedHealth Group, Samsung, Amazon, Verizon, Nissan, Boeing, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Citigroup these are just a few of the global corporate giants whose profit-driven policies influence everything from legislative policies to economics to environmental issues to medical care. ..."
"... The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T's massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies." ..."
"... Now magnify what the U.S. government is doing through AT&T on a global scale, and you have the " 14 Eyes Program ," also referred to as the "SIGINT Seniors." This global spy agency is made up of members from around the world (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Israel, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, India and all British Overseas Territories). ..."
"... War has become a huge money-making venture, and America, with its vast military empire and its incestuous relationship with a host of international defense contractors, is one of its best buyers and sellers . In fact, as Reuters reports, "[President] Trump has gone further than any of his predecessors to act as a salesman for the U.S. defense industry ." ..."
"... The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth. For example, while erecting a security surveillance state in the U.S., the military-industrial complex has perpetuated a worldwide military empire with American troops stationed in 177 countries (over 70% of the countries worldwide). ..."
"... A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State ..."
"There are no nations. There are no peoples There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those
are the nations of the world today. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of
business."
There are those who will tell you that any mention of a New World Order government -- a power elite conspiring to rule the world
-- is the stuff of conspiracy theories
.
I am not one of those skeptics.
What's more, I wholeheartedly believe that one should always mistrust those in power, take alarm at the first encroachment on
one's liberties, and establish powerful constitutional checks against government mischief and abuse.
I can also attest to the fact that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I have studied enough of this country's history -- and world history -- to know that governments (the U.S. government being no
exception) are at times indistinguishable from the evil they claim to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of
terrorism ,
torture, drug trafficking
,
sex trafficking , murder, violence, theft, pornography,
scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.
And I have lived long enough to see many so-called conspiracy theories turn into cold, hard fact.
Given all that we know about the U.S. government -- that it treats its citizens like faceless statistics and economic units to
be bought, sold, bartered, traded, and tracked; that it repeatedly lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, maims, enslaves, breaks the
laws, overreaches its authority, and abuses its power at almost every turn; and that it wages wars for profit, jails its own people
for profit, and has no qualms about spreading its reign of terror abroad -- it is not a stretch to suggest that the government has
been overtaken by global industrialists, a new world order, that do not have our best interests at heart.
Indeed, to anyone who's been paying attention to the goings-on in the world, it is increasingly obvious that we're already
under a new world order, and it is being brought to you by the Global-Industrial Deep State, a powerful cabal made up of international
government agencies and corporations.
It is as yet unclear whether the American Police State answers to the Global-Industrial Deep State, or whether the Global-Industrial
Deep State merely empowers the American Police State. However, there is no denying the extent to which they are intricately and symbiotically
enmeshed and interlocked.
This marriage of governmental and corporate interests is the very definition of fascism. Where we go wrong is in underestimating
the threat of fascism: it is no longer a national threat but has instead become a global menace.
Consider the extent to which our lives and liberties are impacted by this international convergence of governmental and profit-driven
interests in the surveillance state, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry, the intelligence sector, the technology
sector, the telecommunications sector, the transportation sector, and the pharmaceutical industry.
All of these sectors are dominated by mega-corporations operating on a global scale and working through government channels
to increase their profit margins: Walmart, Alphabet (formerly Google), AT&T, Toyota, Apple, Exxon Mobil, Facebook, Lockheed Martin,
Berkshire Hathaway, UnitedHealth Group, Samsung, Amazon, Verizon, Nissan, Boeing, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Citigroup these are
just a few of the global corporate giants whose profit-driven policies influence everything from legislative policies to economics
to environmental issues to medical care.
The U.S. government's deep-seated and, in many cases, top secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations are redrawing
the boundaries of our world (and our freedoms) and altering the playing field faster than we can keep up.
Global Surveillance
Spearheaded by the National Security Agency (NSA), which has shown itself to care little for constitutional limits or privacy,
the surveillance state has come to dominate our government and our lives.
Yet the government does not operate alone. It cannot. It requires an accomplice. Thus, the increasingly complex security needs
of our massive federal government, especially in the areas of defense, surveillance and data management, have been met within the
corporate sector, which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on and feeds the growth of governmental bureaucracy.
Take AT&T, for instance. Through its vast telecommunications network that crisscrosses the globe, AT&T provides the U.S. government
with the complex infrastructure it needs for its mass surveillance programs. According to The Intercept , "The NSA considers
AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company's 'extreme willingness to help. '
It is a collaboration that dates back decades.
Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T's customers. According to the NSA's documents, it values AT&T
not only because it 'has access to information that transits the nation,' but also because it maintains unique relationships with
other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T's massive
infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies."
Now magnify what the U.S. government is doing through AT&T on a global scale, and you have the "
14 Eyes Program ," also
referred to as the "SIGINT Seniors." This global spy agency is made up of
members from around the world (United States, United
Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Israel, Singapore,
South Korea, Japan, India and all British Overseas Territories).
Surveillance is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these global alliances, however.
The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated
to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth. For example, while erecting a security surveillance state in the U.S., the
military-industrial complex has perpetuated a worldwide military empire with American troops stationed in 177 countries (over 70%
of the countries worldwide).
Although the federal government obscures so much about its defense spending that accurate figures are difficult to procure, we
do know that since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $1.8 trillion in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (
that's $8.3 million per hour ). That doesn't include
wars and military exercises waged around the globe, which are expected to
push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053 .
It's not just the American economy that is being gouged, unfortunately.
Driven by a greedy defense sector, the American homeland has been transformed into a battlefield with militarized police and weapons
better suited to a war zone. Trump, no different from his predecessors, has continued to expand America's military empire abroad
and domestically, calling on Congress to approve
billions more to hire cops, build more prisons and wage more profit-driven war-on-drugs/war-on-terrorism/war-on-crime programs
that pander to the powerful money interests (military, corporate and security) that run the Deep State and hold the government in
its clutches.
Global Policing
Glance at pictures of international police forces and you will have a hard time distinguishing between American police and those
belonging to other nations. There's a reason they all look alike, garbed in the militarized, weaponized uniform of a standing army.
There's a reason why they act alike, too, and speak a common language of force.
Then you have the
Strong Cities Network program .
Funded by the State Department , the U.S. government has partnered with the United Nations to fight violent extremism "
in all of its forms and manifestations " in cities and communities across the world. Working with the UN, the federal government
rolled out programs to train local police agencies across America in how to identify, fight and prevent extremism, as well as
address intolerance within their communities, using all of the resources at their disposal. The cities included in the
global network include New York City, Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis, Paris, London, Montreal, Beirut and Oslo. What this program
is really all about, however, is community policing on a global scale.
It sounds like a good idea on paper, but the problem with the broken windows approach is that it has led to zero tolerance policing
and stop-and-frisk practices among other harsh police tactics.
When applied to the Strong Cities Network program, the objective is ostensibly to prevent violent extremism by targeting its source:
racism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, etc. In other words, police -- acting ostensibly as extensions of the United Nations -- will
identify, monitor and deter individuals who exhibit, express or engage in anything that could be construed as extremist.
Of course, the concern with the government's anti-extremism program is that it will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise
lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist. Keep in mind that the government agencies involved in ferreting out American
"extremists" will carry out their objectives -- to identify and deter potential extremists -- in concert with
fusion centers (of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the private sector and globally), data collection agencies,
behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance,
facial recognition,
predictive policing , biometrics, and behavioral
epigenetics
(in which life experiences alter one's genetic makeup).
... ... ...
And then, as I make clear in my book
A Government of Wolves:
The Emerging American Police State , if there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march
towards outright dictatorship, it may rest with the power of communities and local governments to invalidate governmental laws, tactics
and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.
"... No doubt that the globalized elite want Friedman's "World is Flat" concept – profit maximizing world markets, world production, stateless corporations, free movement of labour and capital (without troublesome national identities) represented by an exclusive and vastly wealthy rootless elite ruling over a global worker hive. The "Empire" is only the military/enforcement side of this, with sanctions/wars against dissidents. ..."
"... Trump is in the strange situation of having been elected to fight the Empire while needing elite Imperial support to stay in his job. ..."
If history is any precedent, empires without economic foundations, sooner or later
crumble, especially when rising regional powers are capable of replacing them.
This is worth repeating. Empire and wars are expensive. For example the British world
trade network was doing fine until the "Imperial" idea came along with wars and economic
failure. The US is doing even worse in trying to fight its Imperial wars on credit.
The result is that Trump faces the real prospects of a decline in exports and popular
electoral support – especially from those adversely affected by declining markets and
deep cuts in health, education and the environment.
He may well be blindsided by a candidate who actually implements Trump's own election
platform 1) no more wars 2) domestic infrastructure spending 3) stopping mass immigration 4)
draining the swamp. Trumps electoral weakness is that didn't follow through on his
promises.
The electoral oligarchy and the mass media will force him to retreat from the trade wars
and surrender to the globalizing elites.
No doubt that the globalized elite want Friedman's "World is Flat" concept –
profit maximizing world markets, world production, stateless corporations, free movement of
labour and capital (without troublesome national identities) represented by an exclusive and
vastly wealthy rootless elite ruling over a global worker hive. The "Empire" is only the
military/enforcement side of this, with sanctions/wars against dissidents.
Trump is in the strange situation of having been elected to fight the Empire while
needing elite Imperial support to stay in his job.
This is one of the reasons Americans of all colors and stripes will not receive the the benefits of the powers of economic equality,
transparency, literal meanings of the health of the economy and economic freedom.
Because they will remain blinded by partisan worship of the presidents. We agree with Obama's criticism of big banks or of Bush's
conducts of the war. We agree with Trump's criticism of the wars raging in the ME . We agree with his take on illegal immigrants.
Instead of holding their feet to the fire, we condone, ignore, and then come out in support of them when they fail miserably and
intentionally on other vital areas or when they go against the election promises.
We believe he shits about economy coming out of FOX CNN MSNBC NYT NY POST because we worship the candidates they support or don't
support , or because the support or don't support our views on other areas .
American economy has been growing without the accompanying growth of the worker's compensation for 45 years . Nothing new . Presidents
have no role for the existing condition of the economy . Presidents may claim some success down the line years after presidency is
over . Our economic knowledge is doled out by the same psychopaths who dole us out the knowledge and the faith about wars and about
other countries from the unclean perches of the media . Yes its a handout Its a dole because we have all along built up our world
view and our view of US as told by these guys dictated to us and shoved down us . The folks whose income have suffered and hours
have increased don't have the time or the brains to explore and verify . They are just happy to know that they heard this "Trust
but verify " and heard this " make America Great Again " . They are happy to go to war because a lesbian was killed in Uganda or
in Syria or a girl was raped in Libya or gas was smelt in Dara and Hara , Sara Bara and Laora - just throw some names any name, and
these folks will lend their names and sign up .
This is the underlying mindset and the intellectual foundation which explain our deepest attachment to liar like Obama and to
Trump. Combined with helplessness ,this experience of reality can be disorienting and can lead to Stockholm Syndrome .
If this president wants no immigration to EU, he should stop supporting France's exploitation and military adventures in Africa,
stop adding to war efforts in ME and will pay the restitution for ravaging those countries . He should focus on US and stop talking
about EU's immigration.
" If this president wants no immigration to EU, he should stop supporting France's exploitation and military adventures
in Africa, stop adding to war efforts in ME and will pay the restitution for ravaging those countries. He should focus on US
and stop talking about EU's immigration. "
THE great cause of migrants coming to Europe is the USA, the wars in and destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria Mali,
as far as I know hardly anyone comes from Mali to us. Sudan was split by the USA, oil, the USA is building a drone base in Nigeria,
oil again...
Possibly Brussels now understands that an attack on Iran will cause a new flood of migrants, Netanyahu has been warned. A new
flood is the deadsure end of the EU.
"... A former Main Line investment banker known as the "Godfather of payday lending" for preying on low-income borrowers was sentenced Friday to 14 years in federal prison and stripped of over $64 million in assets, reports philly.com . ..."
"In this industry, to build a big book, you have to run afoul of the regulators" -Charles M. Hallinan
A former Main Line investment banker known as the "Godfather of payday lending" for preying on low-income borrowers was sentenced
Friday to 14 years in federal prison and stripped of over $64 million in assets, reports
philly.com .
Lawyers for 77-year-old Charles M. Hallinan argued that the prison term might as well be a "death sentence" given his age and
declining health, however District Judge Eduardo Robreno gave no quarter as he rendered his verdict after a jury convicted him of
17 counts, including racketeering, international money laundering and fraud.
"It would be a miscarriage of justice to impose a sentence that would not reflect the seriousness of this case," Robreno said.
"The sentence here should send a message that criminal conduct like [this] will not pay."
In all, government lawyers estimate, Hallinan's dozens of companies made $492 million off an estimated 1.4 million low-income
borrowers between 2007 and 2013, the period covered by the indictment.
Robreno's forfeiture order will strip Hallinan of many of the fruits of that business, including his $1.8 million Villanova
mansion , multiple bank accounts, and a small fleet of luxury cars , including a $142, 000 2014 Bentley
Flying Spur. In addition, the judge ordered Hallinan to pay a separate $2.5 million fine. -
philly.com
When given the opportunity to address the court before his sentence was handed down, Hallinan remained silent.
Hallinan's case calls into question the legality of business tactics engaged in by predatory lenders across the country - such
as
Mariner Finance , a subsidiary of former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner 's private equity firm Warburg Pincus.
Many of the loans Hallinan made had exorbitant interest rates which greatly exceeded rate caps mandated by the states in which
the borrowers live, such as Pennsylvania's 6% annual cap.
In court Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Dubnoff argued that there was little difference between the exorbitant fees charged
by money-lending mobsters and the annual interest rates approaching 800 percent that were standard on many of Hallinan's loans.
-
philly.com
"The only difference between Mr. Hallinan and other loan sharks is that he doesn't break the kneecaps of people who don't pay
his debts," Dubnoff said. "He was charging more interest than the Mafia."
Hallinan "collect[ed] hundreds of millions of dollars in unlawful debt knowing that these businesses were unlawful, and all the
while devising schemes to evade the law," wrote Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sara L. Grieb and Maria M. Carrillo.
Hallinan's attorneys argued that Hallinan should receive house arrest after a recent diagnosis of two forms of aggressive cancer.
"What is just, under the circumstances?" Jacobs asked. "If there is going to be a period of incarceration, one that makes it so
that Mr. Hallinan doesn't survive is not just."
Judge Robreno largely ignored the plea, though he did give Hallinan 11 days to get his medical affairs in order before he has
to report to prison.
Hallinan's orbit
Many of those whose careers Hallinan helped to launch are now headed to prison alongside the "godfather" of payday lending, "
a list that includes professional race car driver Scott Tucker, who was sentenced to more than 16 years in prison in January and
ordered to forfeit $3.5 billion in assets," reports Philly .
Hallinan's codefendant and longtime lawyer, Wheeler K. Neff, was sentenced in May to eight years behind bars.
Hallinan got into the predatory lending business in the 1990s with $120 million after selling his landfill company to begin making
payday loans over phone and fax. He rapidly grew his empire of dozens of companies which offered quick cash under such names as Instant
Cash USA, Your First Payday and Tele-Ca$h.
As more than a dozen states, including Pennsylvania, effectively outlawed payday lending with laws attempting to cap the exorbitant
fee rates that are standard across the industry, Hallinan continued to target low-income borrowers over the internet.
He tried to hide his involvement by instituting sham partnerships with licensed banks and American Indian tribes so he could
take advantage of looser restrictions on their abilities to lend. But in practice he limited the involvement of those partners
and continued to service all the loans from his offices in Bala Cynwyd. -
philly.com
" He bet his lifestyle on the fact that we would not catch him. He lost that bet ," said U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District
of Pennsylvania, William M. McSwain. " Now, it's time for Hallinan to repay his debt with the only currency we will accept: his freedom
and his fortune, amassed at his victims' expense ."
Most people have no clue what is about to be revealed, and it will rock their world. But for those of us that were red-pilled
early on, it is heartening to see.
#WWGOWGA
[Just caught the picture of the mansion.
"There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house." - Mother Goose
That Mom Goose sure called 'em like she saw 'em...]
64 million in stripped assets. I wonder how much of that is going back to those who were fleeced? How much goes to .gov? Oh
and inquiring minds want to know, what happened to the other 400 million plus?
Maybe a buck each from a class action brought on by Saul's Legal Team.
Parasites. Parasites with Political, Financial, and Social control.
Think of the damage a parasite could do, if that parasite could control what the host sees, hears, thinks, feels, and even
control the muscles. You would be in pain, but not feel it. You could be poisoning yourself with bitter poison, while believing
it is sweet honey.
Sure, sure, point taken. But I don't believe that is a valid defense .. I get it, believe me. But I suspect if some higher
profile cases with equilvalent outcomes aren't soon undertaken, some enterprising folks may soon take matters into their own hands
.. And one could not blame them really ..
One thing's for sure. There won't be any payday lenders operating in Pennsylvania, and poor people who need short term loans
to deal with unexpected bills won't be getting any help, and instead will be suffering from the very high interest effective interest
rates of late payment penalties. In defense of Hallinan, he didn't force anyone to sign up for these loans, he didn't break any
kneecaps, and I'll bet his customers default on their loans at a high rate. There is also the legal question of from where the
loan is made; given he had partners on Indian reservations and operated over the internet on behalf of those partnerships. Seems
to me, the government is just grabbing this dying man's money. I'll bet he appeals the conviction to a higher court.
And does anyone believe US attorney Dubnoff who claims (which begs the question how he knows) that Hallinan charges more interest
than the Mafia?
My other bet: Timothy Geithner won't be prosecuted for using the same tactics. And the poor will suffer more. While the article
makes hay of Hallinan's wealth, he sold a waste management company (and I wouldn't be surprised there was political corruption
involved in its growth given he lived in Philly) for $120 million and was already rich.
For a perspective in support of pay-day lenders, read these two Reason articles:
that's a good post on an issue that's too easy to go all knee-jerk on. +1 for you.
I've got a coupla terrific young relatives that I'm schooling in financial knowhow - because their parents are knuckleheads
about money - and lesson #2 was 'payday loans are financial crack.'
but.
but the guy's lawyer WAS right to a degree: nobody made those victims/dumbasses sign up for them, and then not pay it back,
thus flinging them into the ol' vicious downward spiral. also, there's this little fact: kids, if you find yourself lacking funds
for a sudden unexpected financial expense, call it $500, you can 1) bounce a check 2) take a cash advance on your credit card,
assuming you have any room left on it or 3) do the payday lender thing. let's say you only need the $ for 10 days, then ... I
dunno .... then your tax refund check arrives.
cost of bouncing check (fees, etc), and bear in mind the bank will clear the big check first, thus making several other small
checks bounce = $100? more?
cost of credit-card cash advance = $50, plus or minus
cost of payday loan vig = $15, plus or minus
they're kinda like handguns: just a tool. whether that tool saves your butt or ruins your life is entirely up to you, the adult.
(the kids do not like this lesson very much - something about trying to avoid responsibility?)
the world is not necessarily all black and white. that said, I do hope that POS dies of treatable rectal cancer botched horribly
by prison docs, resulting in a long, drawn-out, horribly agonizing death in a pink diaper
An interesting take. A friend to the poor . Never quite looked at it that way, and now, I have a tear in my eye . The poor
fellow, friend to the poor working stiff.
Fucking friends like that . But at at least he wasn't breaking their knee caps and all. A real humanitarian!
"... A former Main Line investment banker known as the "Godfather of payday lending" for preying on low-income borrowers was sentenced Friday to 14 years in federal prison and stripped of over $64 million in assets, reports philly.com . ..."
"In this industry, to build a big book, you have to run afoul of the regulators" -Charles M. Hallinan
A former Main Line investment banker known as the "Godfather of payday lending" for preying on low-income borrowers was sentenced
Friday to 14 years in federal prison and stripped of over $64 million in assets, reports
philly.com .
Lawyers for 77-year-old Charles M. Hallinan argued that the prison term might as well be a "death sentence" given his age and
declining health, however District Judge Eduardo Robreno gave no quarter as he rendered his verdict after a jury convicted him of
17 counts, including racketeering, international money laundering and fraud.
"It would be a miscarriage of justice to impose a sentence that would not reflect the seriousness of this case," Robreno said.
"The sentence here should send a message that criminal conduct like [this] will not pay."
In all, government lawyers estimate, Hallinan's dozens of companies made $492 million off an estimated 1.4 million low-income
borrowers between 2007 and 2013, the period covered by the indictment.
Robreno's forfeiture order will strip Hallinan of many of the fruits of that business, including his $1.8 million Villanova
mansion , multiple bank accounts, and a small fleet of luxury cars , including a $142, 000 2014 Bentley
Flying Spur. In addition, the judge ordered Hallinan to pay a separate $2.5 million fine. -
philly.com
When given the opportunity to address the court before his sentence was handed down, Hallinan remained silent.
Hallinan's case calls into question the legality of business tactics engaged in by predatory lenders across the country - such
as
Mariner Finance , a subsidiary of former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner 's private equity firm Warburg Pincus.
Many of the loans Hallinan made had exorbitant interest rates which greatly exceeded rate caps mandated by the states in which
the borrowers live, such as Pennsylvania's 6% annual cap.
In court Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Dubnoff argued that there was little difference between the exorbitant fees charged
by money-lending mobsters and the annual interest rates approaching 800 percent that were standard on many of Hallinan's loans.
-
philly.com
"The only difference between Mr. Hallinan and other loan sharks is that he doesn't break the kneecaps of people who don't pay
his debts," Dubnoff said. "He was charging more interest than the Mafia."
Hallinan "collect[ed] hundreds of millions of dollars in unlawful debt knowing that these businesses were unlawful, and all the
while devising schemes to evade the law," wrote Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sara L. Grieb and Maria M. Carrillo.
Hallinan's attorneys argued that Hallinan should receive house arrest after a recent diagnosis of two forms of aggressive cancer.
"What is just, under the circumstances?" Jacobs asked. "If there is going to be a period of incarceration, one that makes it so
that Mr. Hallinan doesn't survive is not just."
Judge Robreno largely ignored the plea, though he did give Hallinan 11 days to get his medical affairs in order before he has
to report to prison.
Hallinan's orbit
Many of those whose careers Hallinan helped to launch are now headed to prison alongside the "godfather" of payday lending, "
a list that includes professional race car driver Scott Tucker, who was sentenced to more than 16 years in prison in January and
ordered to forfeit $3.5 billion in assets," reports Philly .
Hallinan's codefendant and longtime lawyer, Wheeler K. Neff, was sentenced in May to eight years behind bars.
Hallinan got into the predatory lending business in the 1990s with $120 million after selling his landfill company to begin making
payday loans over phone and fax. He rapidly grew his empire of dozens of companies which offered quick cash under such names as Instant
Cash USA, Your First Payday and Tele-Ca$h.
As more than a dozen states, including Pennsylvania, effectively outlawed payday lending with laws attempting to cap the exorbitant
fee rates that are standard across the industry, Hallinan continued to target low-income borrowers over the internet.
He tried to hide his involvement by instituting sham partnerships with licensed banks and American Indian tribes so he could
take advantage of looser restrictions on their abilities to lend. But in practice he limited the involvement of those partners
and continued to service all the loans from his offices in Bala Cynwyd. -
philly.com
" He bet his lifestyle on the fact that we would not catch him. He lost that bet ," said U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District
of Pennsylvania, William M. McSwain. " Now, it's time for Hallinan to repay his debt with the only currency we will accept: his freedom
and his fortune, amassed at his victims' expense ."
Most people have no clue what is about to be revealed, and it will rock their world. But for those of us that were red-pilled
early on, it is heartening to see.
#WWGOWGA
[Just caught the picture of the mansion.
"There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house." - Mother Goose
That Mom Goose sure called 'em like she saw 'em...]
64 million in stripped assets. I wonder how much of that is going back to those who were fleeced? How much goes to .gov? Oh
and inquiring minds want to know, what happened to the other 400 million plus?
Maybe a buck each from a class action brought on by Saul's Legal Team.
Parasites. Parasites with Political, Financial, and Social control.
Think of the damage a parasite could do, if that parasite could control what the host sees, hears, thinks, feels, and even
control the muscles. You would be in pain, but not feel it. You could be poisoning yourself with bitter poison, while believing
it is sweet honey.
Sure, sure, point taken. But I don't believe that is a valid defense .. I get it, believe me. But I suspect if some higher
profile cases with equilvalent outcomes aren't soon undertaken, some enterprising folks may soon take matters into their own hands
.. And one could not blame them really ..
One thing's for sure. There won't be any payday lenders operating in Pennsylvania, and poor people who need short term loans
to deal with unexpected bills won't be getting any help, and instead will be suffering from the very high interest effective interest
rates of late payment penalties. In defense of Hallinan, he didn't force anyone to sign up for these loans, he didn't break any
kneecaps, and I'll bet his customers default on their loans at a high rate. There is also the legal question of from where the
loan is made; given he had partners on Indian reservations and operated over the internet on behalf of those partnerships. Seems
to me, the government is just grabbing this dying man's money. I'll bet he appeals the conviction to a higher court.
And does anyone believe US attorney Dubnoff who claims (which begs the question how he knows) that Hallinan charges more interest
than the Mafia?
My other bet: Timothy Geithner won't be prosecuted for using the same tactics. And the poor will suffer more. While the article
makes hay of Hallinan's wealth, he sold a waste management company (and I wouldn't be surprised there was political corruption
involved in its growth given he lived in Philly) for $120 million and was already rich.
For a perspective in support of pay-day lenders, read these two Reason articles:
that's a good post on an issue that's too easy to go all knee-jerk on. +1 for you.
I've got a coupla terrific young relatives that I'm schooling in financial knowhow - because their parents are knuckleheads
about money - and lesson #2 was 'payday loans are financial crack.'
but.
but the guy's lawyer WAS right to a degree: nobody made those victims/dumbasses sign up for them, and then not pay it back,
thus flinging them into the ol' vicious downward spiral. also, there's this little fact: kids, if you find yourself lacking funds
for a sudden unexpected financial expense, call it $500, you can 1) bounce a check 2) take a cash advance on your credit card,
assuming you have any room left on it or 3) do the payday lender thing. let's say you only need the $ for 10 days, then ... I
dunno .... then your tax refund check arrives.
cost of bouncing check (fees, etc), and bear in mind the bank will clear the big check first, thus making several other small
checks bounce = $100? more?
cost of credit-card cash advance = $50, plus or minus
cost of payday loan vig = $15, plus or minus
they're kinda like handguns: just a tool. whether that tool saves your butt or ruins your life is entirely up to you, the adult.
(the kids do not like this lesson very much - something about trying to avoid responsibility?)
the world is not necessarily all black and white. that said, I do hope that POS dies of treatable rectal cancer botched horribly
by prison docs, resulting in a long, drawn-out, horribly agonizing death in a pink diaper
An interesting take. A friend to the poor . Never quite looked at it that way, and now, I have a tear in my eye . The poor
fellow, friend to the poor working stiff.
Fucking friends like that . But at at least he wasn't breaking their knee caps and all. A real humanitarian!
"... The world today is controlled by a small elite group that has been increasingly concentrating power and wealth in their own hands. There are many observable facets to this power structure, including the military security complex that president Eisenhower warned against, the fossil fuel interests, and the neocons that are promoting U.S. hegemony around the world, but the most powerful and overarching force is "the money power" that controls money, banking, and finance worldwide. It is clear that those who control the creation and allocation of money through the banking system are able to control virtually every other aspect of global society. ..."
"... Tragedy and Hope ..."
"... " the powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences."[ii] ..."
"... The End of Money and the Future of Civilization ..."
"... Thomas H. Greco, Jr . is an educator, author, and consultant dedicated to economic equity, social justice, and community empowerment. He specializes in the design and implementation of private and community currencies and mutual credit clearing networks. His latest book is The End of Money and the Future of Civilization. His main website is https://beyondmoney.net/ . He can be reached at [email protected] . ..."
"... A New Approach to Freedom ..."
"... The Essence of Money ..."
"... Disruptive Technologies Making Money Obsolete ..."
The world today is controlled by a small elite group that has been increasingly
concentrating power and wealth in their own hands. There are many observable facets to this
power structure, including the military security complex that president Eisenhower warned
against, the fossil fuel interests, and the neocons that are promoting U.S. hegemony around the
world, but the most powerful and overarching force is "the money power" that controls money,
banking, and finance worldwide. It is clear that those who control the creation and allocation
of money through the banking system are able to control virtually every other aspect of global
society.
Having taken control of the political leadership in North America and western Europe, they
are determined to use military force, if necessary, to create a unipolar world order in which
the power elite enjoy "full spectrum dominance." Based on a long established pattern of covert
and overt interventions, it is evident that they are willing to employ, either directly or
through proxies, a wide range of tactics, including propaganda, bribery, cooptation, deception,
assassinations, false-flag attacks and war. Large segments of the media and entertainment
industries, education, and the military power have been captured to help manufacture public
consent.
Be that as it may, I believe that the natural course of human evolution tends toward a
multi-polar world order based on honesty, openness, compassion, cooperation, and fairness, but
that requires a well-educated and informed populace and "broad spectrum" participation in the
political process. Fortunately, the internet and world wide web have enabled people to be
better informed than ever before and to engage with one another directly, bypassing
intermediaries that control and limit what people can share. On the other hand, the political
machinery has been so thoroughly taken over by the power elite that the will of the people has
thus far been of little consequence in deciding the course of world affairs.
So what can be done to turn the tide? How can we the people empower ourselves to effectively
assert our desires for a more fair, humane and peaceful world order? Is it possible to
influence the behavior of those in power? Or is it possible to install new leaders who will act
more responsibly and in accordance with the popular will? Or is necessary, or even possible, to
reinvent and deploy political and economic structures by which people can more directly assert
themselves?
It seems reasonable to assert that action must be taken on all levels, but I am inclined to
believe that the greatest possibility of bringing about the desired changes lies in economic
and political innovation and restructuring.
The monopolization of credit
I came to realize many years ago that the primary mechanism by which people can be, and are
controlled, is the system of money, banking, and finance. The power elite have long known this
and have used it to enrich themselves and consolidate their grip on power. Though we take it
for granted, money has become an utter necessity for surviving in the modern world. But unlike
water, air, food, and energy, money is not a natural substance -- it is a human contrivance,
and it has been contrived in such a way as to centralize power and concentrate wealth.
Money today is essentially credit, and the control of our collective credit has been
monopolized in the hands of a cartel comprised of huge private banks with the complicity of
politicians who control central governments. This collusive arrangement between bankers and
politicians disempowers people, businesses, and communities and enables the elite super-class
to use the present centralized control mechanisms to their own advantage and purpose. It
misallocates credit, making it both scarce and expensive for the productive private sector
while enabling central governments to circumvent, by deficit spending, the natural limits
imposed by its revenue streams of taxes and fees. Thus, there is virtually no limit to the
amounts of resources that are lavished on the machinery of war and domination.[i]
In today's world, banks get to lend our collective credit back to us and charge interest for
it while central governments get to spend more than they earn in overt tax revenues, relying on
the banking system to monetize government debts as needed. These two parasitic drains on the
economy, interest and inflationary monetization of government debts, create a growth imperative
that is destroying the environment, shredding the social fabric, and creating ever greater
disparities of income and wealth. At the same time, this scarcity and misallocation of money,
which belies the abundance that exists in the real economy, leads to violent conflicts and
provides the power elite with the means to pursue policies of domination, even at the risk of
global nuclear war.
What most people still fail to recognize is that regardless of the nominal form of their
government, their political power has been neutralized and exhausted by the political money and
banking system. Democratic government in today's world is more an illusion and a hope than a
reality. As Prof. Carrol Quigley wrote in his book, Tragedy and Hope (1966),
" the powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than
to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political
system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be
controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by
secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences."[ii]
In the succeeding decades since Quigley's revelation, their control mechanisms have been
refined and extended to include the intelligence services and military power, political think
tanks, the media, and virtually every segment of society. The U.S. agenda of regime change over
the past several years[iii] is not so much about taking mineral and petroleum resources, that
is a side benefit. By examining the pattern of interventions by the U.S. and NATO powers, it is
clear that the primary objective is to force every country of the world into a single global
interest-based, debt-money regime. No exceptions will be tolerated. Thus, Saddam Hussein had to
go, Gaddafi had to go, Assad has to go, and Putin has to go (but deposing Putin will not be so
easy). The war against Islam is also related because a significant proportion of Islamists are
serious about eliminating riba (usury) which is an essential feature in the creation of all
political money throughout the world today. The United States military is the enforcer that is
used when threats, bribes, cooptation and covert operations prove insufficient. Thus, the
United States, Britain and their NATO allies have become the greatest perpetrators of
state-sponsored terror in the post-World war II era.
Fortunately, we the people have in our hands the means of our own liberation. It is
the power to allocate our credit directly without the use of banks or political money. How to
effectively assert that power is the main theme of my most recent book, The End of
Money and the Future of Civilization .
Over the years there has been a long parade of "reformers" who wish to take the power to
create money away from the banks. This is an admirable objective that I wholeheartedly endorse.
But the alternatives that they propose have been either to revert to commodity money, like
gold, which has proven to be inadequate, or to transfer the money-issuing power to the central
government -- what I call the "greenback solution." The latter harks back to Abraham Lincoln's
scheme for financing the Civil War. That proposal calls for the federal government to bypass
the Federal Reserve and the banks by issuing a national currency directly into circulation from
the Treasury. At first glance that may seem like a good idea, but there are many flies in that
ointment. First of all, the greenback solution does not propose to end the money monopoly but
merely to put it under new management. But it is a gross delusion to think that the Treasury
is, or might become, independent of the interests that now control the Federal Reserve and the
major banks. Consider the fact that most of the recent Treasury secretaries have been former
executives of Goldman Sachs, the most powerful financial establishment in the country. It is
naïve to expect that they will serve the common good rather than the money power that has
spawned them.
Second, central planning of complex economic factors has been shown to be unworkable. That
is especially true with regard to money. Neither the Fed nor the treasury is qualified to
decide what kind of money and how much of it is necessary for the economy to function smoothly.
The issuance and control of credit money should be decentralized in the hands of producers of
needed and desired goods and services. Thus the supply of money (credit) must automatically
rise and fall in accordance with the quantity of goods and services that are available to be
bought and sold. If private currencies and credit clearing exchanges are allowed to develop and
grow without interference from the vested interests in political money, their superiority will
quickly become apparent.
Third, the greenback solution does nothing to eliminate deficit spending and inflation which
are enabled by legal tender laws. As long as political currencies are legally forced to
circulate at face value, the abusive issuance of money, the debasement of national currency
value, and the centralization of power will continue. All government programs, including social
programs and the military budget, ought to be funded by legitimate government revenues, not by
the underhanded means of monetary debasement. Centralized control of credit money and the
imposition of legal tender laws enable the hidden tax that is called inflation. Salmon
P. Chase , who as Lincoln's Treasury Secretary presided over the issuance of greenbacks, argued
later as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court that the issuance of greenback currency was
unconstitutional and exceeded the powers of the federal government. He said,
"the legal tender quality is only valuable for the purposes of dishonesty."
Finally, the political process has been so thoroughly corrupted and taken over by the power
elite that political approaches to solving the money problem have virtually no chance of
passage anyway.
... ... ...
*
Thomas H. Greco, Jr . is an educator, author, and consultant dedicated to economic
equity, social justice, and community empowerment. He specializes in the design and
implementation of private and community currencies and mutual credit clearing networks. His
latest book is The End of Money and the Future of Civilization. His main website is https://beyondmoney.net/ . He can be reached at
[email protected] .
Notes
[i] As E.C. Riegel put it in his book, A New Approach to Freedom , "
as long as our governments are vast counterfeiting machines, Mars can laugh at peace
projects."
[iv] An animated video that makes clear the credit nature of money and its sound basis is
The Essence of Money , https://youtu.be/uO7uwCpcau8 .
[v] My 15 minute video, Disruptive Technologies Making Money Obsolete , https://youtu.be/ty7APADAa8g , describes how
communities and businesses can escape the debt trap and become more resilient and
self-reliant.
After building out Merrill's mortgage trading floor basically from scratch, then moving to the
buyside at Pimco, one year ago Harley Bassman, more familiar to Wall Street traders as the
"Convexity Maven" - a legend in the realm of derivatives (he helped design the MOVE Index, better
known as the VIX for government bonds) - decided to retire (roughly one year after his shocking
suggestion that the Fed should devalue the dollar by buying gold
).
But that did not mean he
would stop writing, and just a few days after exiting the front door at 650 Newport Center Drive in
Newport Beach for the last time, Bassman started
writing analyst reports as a "free man
",
in which the topics were, not surprisingly, rates, derivatives, cross asset interplay and, of
course, convexity.
And, in his latest note, Bassman takes on a topic that has become especially dear to the Fed and
most market observers: the continued flattening of the yield curve, the timing of the next
recession, and what everyone is looking but fails to see, or - as he puts it - what is truly
different this time.
Bassman's full thoughts below:
The Path Forward
Let me offer a follow-up comment related to "
Catch
A Wave
" from June 29, 2018.
The Yield Curve, as described as the difference between the
T2yr vs T10yr rates, will not invert until near the December FOMC meeting
. This is when
to start the clock for the typical 18-month lead-time to a recession (sometime in mid-2020).
Vote up!
34
Vote down!
2
Rather than assume the yield curve forecasts
what it would have forecast in 1970 or 1980 or 1990 or even 2000, why not
assume it's useless now due to world wide central bank rate management /
manipulation?
Why not assume it's a coiled spring and that rising short term rates are
stored energy that will cause long rates to spring and power up to
normalization? Perhaps 4% to start on the 10yr? Quickly when it hits?
Calling money pros dumber than a sack of rocks insults rocks.
BTW, quickly rising long rates = capital loss with long bonds = margin
issues = liquidity crisis = everything goes down fast.
Money pros, the smartest ones only - whistling past the graveyard.
Also, the story at the top is absolute gibberish. Really goofy and
unintelligible. Money pros are really stupid.
Did I not say that the Federal Reserve was
playing the movie "Get Trumpy"?????
Thus, similar to how WW1 was the unintended
conflict, a global trade war could be the unfortunate
result of clashing egos
Uh No. It was said at the Chosenite Banker
congress in the 1890's that there would be 3 world wars when
there had never been one before. How did they know this?
They all just had crystal balls right? The Private Central
Bankers made it happen. In addition in order to have WW1
the Chosenite Bankers knew they needed to monetize the vast
wealth of the USA to have their little shindig. That's why:
Federal Income Tax
Federal Reserve Bank - not Federal and has no
reserves. It is a private cartel.
were created. Rothschild horse traded getting
the USA into the war for the creation of Israel. See the
Balfour Declaration.
So do you really really still think that WW1 was
just some unhappy Murphy's Law accident?
FYI: The USA helped develop Japan and Germany
between the Civil War and 1900. Then all of a sudden we
ended up in a war with both of them. Do you think that is
an accident too?! For bankers broken window theory really
does work. Not so much for the rest of us.
Last month's Supreme Court ruling scrapping the 41-year-old ruling requiring non-union
government workers to pay into union tills was also a major blow to workers' collective
bargaining rights, and a big victory for the ultra-rich, far-right financiers who also backed
Trump. The court's decision came amid an ongoing wave of attacks on workers' rights --
including anti-union propaganda campaigns, litigation, and so-called "right-to-work" laws that
undermine workers' rights, grievance procedures, wages and benefits.
"The Janus decision can be understood as a reflection of the prevailing politics of the
time," Baraka observed.
"That is reflected in the make-up of the court and the relative weakness of organized labor
and the bipartisan understanding that the neoliberal project requires the containment of the
working class," he continued.
So the court as an instrument of class rule has been quite consistent."
A glance at the Judicial Branch's record shows the pivotal role it's played disempowering
the hard-fought protections won by U.S. workers. In O'Connor v Ortega [1987], the court
ruled that employees could be searched at
work as if they were suspected criminals. In Wards Cove Packing Co v
Atonio [1989] the court decided in favor of preventing discrimination claims from being
brought against employers, although this was eventually reversed. And in Hoffman Plastic
Compounds, Inc v NLRB [2002], the decision was made to strip undocumented workers of
their right to organize a union.
Invariably drawn from the top layers of U.S. society, the justices of the Supreme Court are
clearly bound to represent the class interests of the de facto aristocracy and capitalists who
hold a monopoly on political and social power in the United States. For critics, this belies
any attempt to depict the court as having ever been progressive.
"Line them up; until recently they were all male, WASP All of the judges are from Ivy League
universities and aside from Sotomayor, they have never known poor people – the Supreme
Court is already racist and fascist," Acuña said.
"Decisions favoring labor have been rare, social issues rarer – the problem is we are
delusional," he added.
Lifelong social movement organizer and historian Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, author of An
Indigenous People's History of the United States , is likewise skeptical.
"It certainly seems unlikely that social justice movements can make use of the courts,"
Dunbar-Ortiz told MintPress News.
She continued:
I believe that since the 1950s, we have relied too much on the notion that the liberal
"living constitution" theory would prevail, but I always had doubts that it was a good idea,
rather than the more difficult route of building a progressive congress, electoral politics,
taking the easy way of the courts, giving lawyers central roles rather than politics in
command."
China will never be able to initiate a land invasion against the Western Hemisphere.
Period; and when the US fleet leaves the South China Sea it will be a cold day in hell. Now
which member of MI6 leaked that damn memo? Trump's overture to the Russians is really making
them dig.
"Almost all the Syrians who fled to the border with Jordan from an army offensive have
now returned to their homes, a top UN official says."
Just days ago they reported that "The offensive in Syria's south-west had earlier forced
more than 320,000 people to flee," and were bleating that Jordan should open their border
and let them all in.
Today "Anders Pedersen, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Jordan, said that "around
150 to 200 people (are) right now at the border".
320,000 became <200 in a matter of days. LOL
So, once again we see that the civilians were fleeing the fighting, NOT the Syrian
government. And once the SAR regains control of an area, almost everyone returns.
The much anticipated resignation letter penned by the former UK Foreign Minister Boris
Johnson has been released, and in as expected, he does not mince his words in unleashing a
brutal attack on Thersa May, warning that "we have postponed crucial decisions -- including the
preparations for no deal, as I argued in my letter to you of last November -- with the result
that we appear to be heading for a semi-Brexit, with large parts of the economy still locked in
the EU system, but with no UK control over that system ."
He then adds that while "Brexit should be about opportunity and hope" and "a chance to do
things differently, to be more nimble and dynamic, and to maximise the particular advantages of
the UK as an open, outward-looking global economy", he warns that the " dream is dying,
suffocated by needless self-doubt. "
He then compares May's proposal to a submission even before it has been received by the EU,
noting that "what is even more disturbing is that this is our opening bid. This is already how
we see the end state for the UK -- before the other side has made its counter-offer . It is as
though we are sending our vanguard into battle with the white flags fluttering above them."
And his punchline: the UK is headed for the status of a colony:
In that respect we are truly headed for the status of colony -- and many will struggle to
see the economic or political advantages of that particular arrangement
Explaining his decision to resing, he then says that "we must have collective
responsibility. Since I cannot in all conscience champion these proposals, I have sadly
concluded that I must go."
It remains to be seen if his passionate defense of Brexit will stir enough MPs to indicate
they are willing to back a vote of no confidence, and overthrow Theresa May in what would be
effectively a coup, resulting in new elections and chaos for the Brexit process going
forward.
Meanwhile, as Bloomberg adds, the fact that Boris Johnson, or those around him, made sure
his resignation statement came out in time for the evening news - before it was formally issued
in the traditional way by May's office, hints at his continued interest in leading the
Conservative Party.
His full letter is below (highlights ours):
Dear Theresa,
It is more than two years since the British people voted to leave the European Union on an
unambiguous and categorical promise that if they did so they would be taking back control of
their democracy.
They were told that they would be able to manage their own immigration policy, repatriate
the sums of UK cash currently spent by the EU, and, above all, that they would be able to
pass laws independently and in the interests of the people of this country.
Brexit should be about opportunity and hope. It should be a chance to do things
differently, to be more nimble and dynamic, and to maximise the particular advantages of the
UK as an open, outward-looking global economy.
That dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt.
We have postponed crucial decisions -- including the preparations for no deal, as I argued
in my letter to you of last November -- with the result that we appear to be heading for a
semi-Brexit, with large parts of the economy still locked in the EU system, but with no UK
control over that system.
It now seems that the opening bid of our negotiations involves accepting that we are not
actually going to be able to make our own laws. Indeed we seem to have gone backwards since
the last Chequers meeting in February, when I described my frustrations, as Mayor of London,
in trying to protect cyclists from juggernauts. We had wanted to lower the cabin windows to
improve visibility; and even though such designs were already on the market, and even though
there had been a horrific spate of deaths, mainly of female cyclists, we were told that we
had to wait for the EU to legislate on the matter.
So at the previous Chequers session we thrashed out an elaborate procedure for divergence
from EU rules. But even that now seems to have been taken off the table, and there is in fact
no easy UK right of initiative. Yet if Brexit is to mean anything, it must surely give
Ministers and Parliament the chance to do things differently to protect the public. If a
country cannot pass a law to save the lives of female cyclists -- when that proposal is
supported at every level of UK Government -- then I don't see how that country can truly be
called independent.
Conversely, the British Government has spent decades arguing against this or that EU
directive, on the grounds that it was too burdensome or ill-thought out. We are now in the
ludicrous position of asserting that we must accept huge amounts of precisely such EU law,
without changing an iota, because it is essential for our economic health -- and when we no
longer have any ability to influence these laws as they are made.
In that respect we are truly headed for the status of colony -- and many will struggle to
see the economic or political advantages of that particular arrangement.
It is also clear that by surrendering control over our rulebook for goods and agrifoods
(and much else besides) we will make it much more difficult to do free trade deals. And then
there is the further impediment of having to argue for an impractical and undeliverable
customs arrangement unlike any other in existence.
What is even more disturbing is that this is our opening bid. This is already how we see
the end state for the UK -- before the other side has made its counter-offer. It is as though
we are sending our vanguard into battle with the white flags fluttering above them. Indeed, I
was concerned, looking at Friday's document, that there might be further concessions on
immigration, or that we might end up effectively paying for access to the single market.
On Friday I acknowledged that my side of the argument were too few to prevail, and
congratulated you on at least reaching a Cabinet decision on the way forward. As I said then,
the Government now has a song to sing. The trouble is that I have practised the words over
the weekend and find that they stick in the throat.
We must have collective responsibility. Since I cannot in all conscience champion these
proposals, I have sadly concluded that I must go.
I am proud to have served as Foreign Secretary in your Government. As I step down, I would
like first to thank the patient officers of the Metropolitan Police who have looked after me
and my family, at times in demanding circumstances.
I am proud too of the extraordinary men and women of our diplomatic service. Over the last
few months they have shown how many friends this country has around the world, as 28
governments expelled Russian spies in an unprecedented protest at the attempted assassination
of the Skripals. They have organised a highly successful Commonwealth summit and secured
record international support for this Government's campaign for 12 years of quality education
for every girl, and much more besides. As I leave office, the FCO now has the largest and by
far the most effective diplomatic network of any country in Europe -- a continent which we
will never leave.
"More than 1/2 of Jewish success is due to corrupt and criminal means."
Utter nonsense.
Jews own the Federal Reserve Bank and can hit some keys on their computer and create a few
trillion Federal Reserve notes just like *that* .
They've been injecting hundreds of billion$ into Jewish dominated Wall Street for decades
if not longer. Especially since the 2008 mass-looting of the American tax-slave. The big
banks like Goldman Sachs and Chase are all dominated by Jews, just like the Treasury. The
cash flows to other well connected Jews and gentiles, but Jews are MASSSIVELY
over-represented as the recipients of the swindled lucre.
It was rabbi Dov Zakheim who was the comptroller of the Pentagon when over two trillion
went missing. Do you suppose that cash ended up in the coffers of Presbyterian churches or
injected into the economy of Appalachia?
When some yeshiva decides they need a few tens of thousands or more for 'security'.
especially following 911, where 'lucky' Larry Silverstein collected his billions, they go to
the Treasury.
Madoff, Scott Rothstein. others.. are just the tip of the iceberg.
But the big one is the Federal Reserve Bank where they and they alone have their own
counterfeiting machine, and one thing you can say about Jews, is that they look after their
own.
There are very many hard working and intelligent Jews who earn their money, and they
deserve our admiration. But there is also a lot of graft and fraud and downright treason to
the success of many of them. The scum at Goldman Sachs and guys like Jon Corzine high on the
list.
"The scum at Goldman Sachs and guys like Jon Corzine high on the list."
I would not argue over your point that Jon Corzine is scum, but I would argue with your
insinuation that he is Jewish (otherwise why mention him in a paragraph dealing with Jews).
He's not. He's Protestant.
Many critics say buybacks crimp investment. But the real problem is that - unlike dividends
- buybacks can be used to systematically transfer wealth from shareholders to executives..
There is a problem with share buybacks - but it isn't the one many critics and legislators
are obsessed with.
Some critics claim that repurchases starve firms of capital they could invest for the long
term, harming workers to enrich shareholders. Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and
Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin agree and have introduced legislation to "rein in" corporate stock
buybacks. The bill would give the Securities and Exchange Commission authority to reject
buybacks that, in its judgment, hurt workers. It also would require boards to "certify" that a
repurchase is in the "best long-term financial interest of the company." Sen. Baldwin has
introduced another bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), that goes even
further: It bans all open-market repurchases.
This criticism of buybacks is flawed; there is simply no evidence that the overall volume of
dividends and repurchases is excessive. The real problem with buybacks is that they tend to
enrich executives at the expense of shareholders. Fortunately, there is a simple
remedy.
Flawed argument
Buyback critics say S&P 500 firms don't have enough investment capital because dividends
and repurchases routinely exceed 90% of their net income. Between 2007 and 2016, for example,
these companies distributed $7 trillion to shareholders, mostly via repurchases. That was 96%
of total net income. But our research shows that public firms recover from shareholders -
directly or indirectly - about 80% of the capital distributed via repurchases. Shareholders
return this capital by buying newly issued shares, mostly from employees paid with stock, but
also directly from firms. Taking into account all types of equity issuances, net shareholder
payouts in S&P 500 firms during the decade 2007-2016 were only about $3.7 trillion, or 50%
of total net income .
At this level, net shareholder payouts don't appear to impair investment capacity . Indeed,
our research shows that total R&D expenditures by public firms are at the highest level
ever. A broader measure of investment intensity at public firms, the ratio of capital
expenditures and R&D to revenue, has been rising over the past 10 years and is near peak
levels not seen since the late 1990s.
One might argue that firms would invest even more if they had more cash at their disposal.
But there is no shortage of cash. During 2007-16, cash balances at S&P 500 firms also rose
by 50%, reaching around $4 trillion, providing ample dry powder for additional expenditures.
This astonishing level of idle cash suggests that net shareholder payouts may actually be too
low.
The real problem is that buybacks, unlike dividends, can be used to systematically transfer
value from shareholders to executives. Researchers have shown that executives
opportunistically use repurchases to shrink the share count and thereby trigger
earnings-per-share-based bonuses. Executives also use buybacks to create temporary additional
demand for shares, nudging up the short-term stock price as executives unload equity. Finally,
managers who know the stock is cheap use open-market repurchases to secretly buy back shares,
boosting the value of their long-term equity. Although continuing public shareholders also
profit from this indirect insider trading, selling public shareholders lose by a greater
amount, reducing investor returns in aggregate.
[ZH:
As a reminder, senior executives and directors of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google
parent Alphabet have dumped $4.58 billion of stock this year, according to data compiled by
Bloomberg . They're on track to exceed $5 billion for the first six months of 2018, the
highest since Facebook went public in 2012.]
Executives can use repurchases to enrich themselves because disclosure requirements are
woefully inadequate. When executives trade personally, they must publicly disclose the details
of each trade within two business days. The spotlight created by such real-time, fine-grained
disclosure helps curb trading abuses by executives. By contrast, the SEC only requires a firm
to report, in each quarterly filing, the number of shares repurchased in each month of the
quarter and the average price paid per share. Investors see this filing a month or so into the
next quarter, one to four months after the buybacks occur. And they never see individual
repurchases, just aggregate transaction data. Researchers can detect the existence of buyback
abuses across a large sample of public firms, but investors cannot easily identify the
particular executive teams using repurchases to line their own pockets.
A solution
A simple, common-sense regulatory change would curb such abuses. In particular, the SEC
should require a firm to disclose each trade in its own shares within two business days, as it
does for executives personally trading company stock. This two-day rule would shine a spotlight
on repurchases, discouraging executives from using them opportunistically . For example, if
such real-time disclosure leads investors to believe that executives are using a buyback to buy
underpriced stock, the stock price would start rising, reducing executives' indirect profits
from any subsequent repurchases, and thereby increasing public investors' returns.
Perhaps all we need is a modest regulatory tweak: subjecting firms to the same
trade-disclosure requirement as their own executives.
A two-day rule won't unduly burden firms' use of repurchases for proper purposes, just as
the rule doesn't unduly burden individual insiders. Indeed, some of the largest stock markets
outside the U.S. already require even more timely disclosure by firms trading in their own
shares. In the U.K. and Hong Kong, firms must report a repurchase to the stock exchange before
trading begins the next day. Japan requires same-day disclosure, and Swiss investors see these
trades in real-time.
Even if the two-day disclosure rule doesn't eliminate completely executives' abuse of
buybacks, it will generate fine-grained data about repurchases that can be used to decide
whether more aggressive regulation is desirable.
The regulatory reforms currently under consideration, such as empowering the SEC to block
buybacks, might curb these abuses even more. But they also could generate huge economic costs
by impairing the circulation of capital in the economy. It would be foolish to go straight to
such drastic measures rather than start with a modest regulatory tweak: subjecting firms to the
same trade-disclosure requirement as their own executives.
* * *
Prof. Fried is a professor at Harvard Law School, and Prof. Wang is an associate professor
at Harvard Business School.
The real point here is that this is malinvestment, pure and simple. If any of these
corporations had truly responsible (and responsive) boards, never mind activist shareholders,
this would not and could not happen. US (and to a large extent, worldwide) boards have become
rubber stamps for whatever senior management wants to do, which is always and forever now to
enrich themselves at the cost of the shareholders. This is not capitalism. It is sheer
thievery.
Buybacks are a clever way to avoid dividend taxes, but when companies start borrowing
money, cutting R&D, laying off employees, and so on to fund buybacks, that's called
FRAUD. If the SEC did anything but twiddle their thumbs and whistle past the graveyard, these
crooks masquerading as "executives" would be in prison.
Sorry, but it's not fraud or even illegal. Especially if the board approves it. Bad
management is not illegal. Becoming a top executive is the brass ring. Nobody else matters as
long as the rest of the people at the top get theirs.
Stealing inventory is illegal. Borrowing money to fund a stock buyback for the purpose of
enriching the people at the top is perfectly OK.
The rant of a coddled establishment chickenhawk, who is quite overrated, relative to the
positions accorded to him (Nasty people don't deserve kindness.)
Notable quotes:
"... When Tucker Carlson on his prime time program last July 11, 2017, demanded that Peters provide facts and figures for his accusations, Peters immediately exploded and implied that program host Carlson was a "Hitler apologist." It was a classic argument and instance of reductio ad Hitlerum. ..."
"... Ralph Peters is one of the nuttiest neocons around, and Fox was smart to dump him. I recall an article long ago where he suggested that the US Govt. should address the drug addition problem in the USA by assassinating drug dealers on the streets in the USA ..."
"... He lives off scraps from neocons by selling his soul for BS talking points and collects a monthly check from Uncle Sam after 20 years of sitting at a desk doing BS intel work, as I once did for a year. It seems he missed his chance at killing commies in Nam by touring Europe, as Fred Reed explained ..."
"... Last week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, received well deserved praise for taking to task the permeating anti-Russian biases. The highlight of Carlson's exchanges was his encounter with Ralph Peters, who for years has spouted grossly inaccurate propaganda against Russia. Antiwar.com and Russia Insider, are among the counter-establishment English language venues commenting on the Carlson-Peters discussion. The US foreign policy establishment realist leaning National Interest carried a lengthy piece on Carlson's challenge to the neocon/neolib foreign policy perceptions. For the record, more can and should be said in reply to Peter's comments. ..."
"... Peters' characterization of Russia targeting civilian areas is disingenuous. Over the years, the matter of collateral damage is something periodically brought up in response to those killed by US and Israeli military actions. ..."
"... Some Kiev regime elements positively reference the 1995 Croat ethnic cleansing of Krajina Serbs (known as Operation Storm) as a solution for ending the rebel position in Donbass. Russia doesn't seek a massive refugee problem in Donbass and some other parts of the former Ukrainian SSR. As is, a sizeable number of Ukrainian residents have fled to Russia. ..."
Or, recall those on-camera Fox News Russia experts -- think here of General Jack Keane or
the unhinged Colonel Ralph Peters who literally foamed at the mouth when talking about Putin,
calling him "the new Hitler," and who asserted that Putin had committed "worse crimes" than the
German dictator. (Peters is so anti-Russian that he finally
left the Fox News network in March 2018 )
When Tucker Carlson on his prime time program last July 11, 2017, demanded that Peters
provide facts and figures for his accusations, Peters
immediately exploded and implied that program host Carlson was a "Hitler apologist." It was
a classic argument and instance of reductio ad Hitlerum.
Ralph Peters is one of the nuttiest neocons around, and Fox was smart to dump him. I recall
an article long ago where he suggested that the US Govt. should address the drug addition
problem in the USA by assassinating drug dealers on the streets in the USA.
He lives off scraps from neocons by selling his soul for BS talking points and collects a
monthly check from Uncle Sam after 20 years of sitting at a desk doing BS intel work, as I
once did for a year. It seems he missed his chance at killing commies in Nam by touring
Europe, as Fred Reed explained:
Last week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, received well deserved praise for taking to
task the permeating anti-Russian biases. The highlight of Carlson's exchanges was his
encounter with Ralph Peters, who for years has spouted grossly inaccurate propaganda
against Russia. Antiwar.com and Russia Insider, are among the counter-establishment English
language venues commenting on the Carlson-Peters discussion. The US foreign policy
establishment realist leaning National Interest carried a lengthy piece on Carlson's
challenge to the neocon/neolib foreign policy perceptions. For the record, more can and
should be said in reply to Peter's comments.
Peters falsely claims that Russia hasn't made a concerted effort in confronting ISIS. In
one of his more accurate moments, CNN's Wolf Blitzer said that the ISIS claimed shoot down
of a Russian civilian airliner over Egypt, was in response to Russia's war against ISIS.
You've to be either a liar or clueless to not recognize why Russia has actively opposed
ISIS. The latter sees Russia as an enemy, while having a good number of individuals with
roots in Russia and some other parts of the former USSR.
Peters' characterization of Russia targeting civilian areas is disingenuous. Over the
years, the matter of collateral damage is something periodically brought up in response to
those killed by US and Israeli military actions.
Peters offers no proof to his suspect claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin kills
journalists. There're numerous anti-Putin advocates alive and well in Russia. That country
does have a violence problem. Recall what the US was like in the 1960s thru early
1970′s. For that matter, Bernie Sanders isn't blamed for the pro-Sanders person who
attempted to kill Republican lawmakers.
Given the situations concerning Kosovo and northern Cyprus, Peters is being a flat out
hypocrite regarding Crimea. Donbass is a civil conflict involving some Russian support for
the rebels, who're overwhelmingly from the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR. These
individuals have a realistic basis to oppose the Kiev based regimes that came after the
overthrow of a democratically elected Ukrainian president.
During the American Revolution, most of the pro-British fighters were said to be
colonists already based in America. Furthermore, the American revolutionaries received
significant support from France. With these factors in mind, the Donbass rebels don't seem
less legit than the American revolutionaries.
Some Kiev regime elements positively reference the 1995 Croat ethnic cleansing of
Krajina Serbs (known as Operation Storm) as a solution for ending the rebel position in
Donbass. Russia doesn't seek a massive refugee problem in Donbass and some other parts of
the former Ukrainian SSR. As is, a sizeable number of Ukrainian residents have fled to
Russia.
Putin isn't anti-US in the manner claimed by Peters. Moreover, Peters is clearly more
anti-Russian (in a narrow minded way at that) than what can be reasonably said of how Putin
views the US. Putin's obvious differences with neocons, neolibs and flat out Russia haters
isn't by default anti-US. He was the first foreign leader to console the US following 9/11.
The Russian president has been consistently on record for favoring better US-Russian ties
(even inquiring about Russia joining NATO at one point), thereby explaining why he has
appeared to have preferred Trump over Clinton.
Some (including Trump) disagree with that view, which includes the notion that the
Russians (by and large) prefer predictability. As a general rule this is otherwise true.
However, Clinton's neocon/neolib stated views on Russia have been to the point where many
Russians felt willing to take a chance with Trump, whose campaign included a comparatively
more sympathetic take of their country. At the same time, a good number of Russians
questioned whether Trump would maintain that stance.
"Who is more likely to lie, cheat, and steal -- the poor person or the rich
one? It's temping to think that the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to act fairly.
After all, if you already have enough for yourself, it's easier to think about what others may
need. But research suggests the opposite is true: as people climb the social ladder, their
compassionate feelings towards other people decline ."
• This is a review of the
literature from 2012 (
2016 ; 2017 ;
2018 ).
There's tons of research that demonstrates when people gain high status they lose empathy
for people of low status. In our society, having lots of capital also grants lots of status,
so calling it "capital-induced" is accurate. Being a sociopath to start with is just a
bonus.
Not sure what the candy experiment was, but I believe there have been studies showing a
correlation between income/class and how likely someone was to pick up on social cues related
to empathy (face or body showing distress or need). I now want to go look this up!
I suppose I'm less skeptical about this, or have a touch of confirmation bias, because
well why wouldn't I be? Like every other human I've seen or heard from countless millionaires
and billionaires. It's almost like they surround me with their ideas, values and aethetic on
purpose! So all day long they preen, ponder, whine, pontificate and PRETEND in front of me.
The quite natural result? I know a lot more about them than they know about me. And I
wouldn't be surprised in the least if full access to the cash spigot turned off your
empathy
But luckily for them, there's an easy way to win it back.
When/If I ever encounter a peer-reviewed study showing the percentage of psychopaths in
the population of $10M+ lottery winners is significantly greater than the percentage of
psychopaths in, say, a run-of-the-mill southern baptist congregation, then I might believe
you. Short of that, I suspect that psychopathy is, to some degree, inheritable which
reinforces my assertion.
"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been
repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And
the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists
except an endless present in which the Party is always right."
― George Orwell, 1984
"... Recent SCOTUS decisions affecting organised labour will disenfranchise the worker even more. Anti union fervor might claim a short term battle, but the long term war of trade attrition will likely be lost as US companies lose their competitive edge by declaring employees liabilities rather than allies. Ludicrous. ..."
Most economic claims by the Republicans appear to be simply boneheaded assertions. They
would have us believe that tax savings for the wealthy trickle down to the less affluent. Now
they claim that the enormous slashing of government income caused by their tax cut for the
wealthy is leading to a significant decrease in the federal deficit. Apparently about a third
of the electorate are dumb enough to buy into their nonsense.
The trump tariffs are looking like the nixon tariffs of 1971. All trump, like Nixon in 1971,
cares about is the mid term election and next presidential election, and the votes of 'the
constituency of uneducated people' , as Nixon referred to them. Like Nixon, trump has total
contempt for the law and ethics. Nixon's tariffs and china visit produced his re-election in
1972, stagnation for a decade, and a loss of many millions of US jobs that we never recovered
from.
In 1970, before Nixon's China visit, Americans could get a decent job with a high school
education. After the flood of Chinese masters and PhD students that followed, encouraged by
Nixon and republican presidents since, and their dumb free but unfair market policies which made
their ultra wealthy donors unimaginably wealthy combined with Chinese protectionism to this
day-and stealing of US technology and property, currency manipulation, the neglect of US
students who pay very high fees and much more, many tens of millions of US jobs migrated to
china.
The same charlatans- the GOP and trump are manipulating uneducated white and rural
voters, who are going to pay the heaviest price for letting themselves be misled.
Trump works on the premise that MAGA is a desperately needed, long overdue, patriotic race
to save America from God only knows what. Harley Davidson, that most American of companies, has
proven the validity of this morose mantra. Like other corporations, HD has benefitted from
Trump's tax cuts while shedding American jobs: it purchased back tons of its stock then closed
a plant in Kansas. Then, following European tariffs being slapped on it, HD outsources jobs to Europe to avoid
them. What temerity!
To Trump, this is a vile act of disloyalty. He had championed Harley's cause, only to see it
abandon him. What he fails to comprehend is that very few corporations entirely buy into MAGA,
only his, apparently economically ignorant, base embrace it. Companies enjoy it where it suits
them, ignore or evade it when it doesn't. Corporations have too much power for Trump to curb.
The only thing he can do is threaten to punish them through the imposition of punitive domestic
taxes. That probably won't sit at all well with American workers, outpriced in their own
backyard. Essentially, Trump et al, through intransigence and ineptitude, have backed
themselves into a corner.
Recent SCOTUS decisions affecting organised labour will
disenfranchise the worker even more. Anti union fervor might claim a short term battle, but
the long term war of trade attrition will likely be lost as US companies lose their competitive
edge by declaring employees liabilities rather than allies. Ludicrous.
Economic propaganda has its place in promoting a healthy economy. However, it only goes so
far. Real wages will ultimately trump (no pun) a healthy consumer out -look. Trump propaganda
is a different breed all together. It promotes one thing only, a good out - look on Trump
himself. Adoration for a job well done, regardless of how "potemkin" it is, feeds the beast.
Economist, a notably disagreeable lot, do agree on at least two theories:
(1) Presidents
actually have little effect on the economy and;
(2) the policies that they do implement reach
the desired effect at least one and one half of a presidential term. Trumps tax plan, in the
short term, is as effective as a penny dropped in the ocean.
In the long term, it will blow up
the deficit and require major cuts in major governmental programs, such as Medicare and social
security. Major targets for destruction by Ryan republicans. Trumps deregulatory platform is a
"poor man's" economic policy. The long term cost of deregulation is unpredictable and
therefore, frightening. High concentrations of lead in our ground water. Atmospheric poison.
Toxic run off rears its ugly head.
Once eradicated illness and health concerns inundate a
heavily overburdened healthcare system. All the while, the Trump propaganda machine churns out
lies of triumph and facades of growth, worthy of the "Potemkin" villages.
40 years after FDR's New Deal America was humming right along; building a never before seen
middle class, thanks to the government's G.I. Bill that allowed a generation of entrepreneurs
to rise along with a generation of first time college graduates. We were building a huge
infrastructure in America, the interstate highway system, at the same time helping to rebuild
Europe and Japan. We were sending men to the moon.
40 years after Reagan and the republicans built a temple to "supply side" economics the U.S.
cannot fill her potholes.
Trump would have US hunkered down inside secure borders, quivering in fear of those brown skin
people invading US, sending our military instead of diplomats to be the face of the U.S. All
the while China is in Africa, South America, and South Asia helping to rebuild their
infrastructures and making friends and increasing their influence.
Their message isn't really Make America Great Again (MAGA) it is really Make America Hurt
(Muh).
Let's get to work and get out the vote this November or we are done.
"... I believe the US is a right of center country (with a growing right and far right segment) and has been for most of it's history. ..."
"... The identity of the "Democratic Party" has also been stolen. They are not the FDR-JFK Democratic Party of my childhood. but rather, Neo-Toxoplasma Gondii-ists, the "Mind Invaders". ..."
"... Back in the early 1980s, the NZ Labour Party (of Mickey Savage and Norman Kirk) was taken over by Neo-liberal, Roger Douglas and his henchmen/women. ..."
"A Democrat Party composed of moderate Republicans and democratic socialists will be
divided against itself and will not stand."
I believe the US is a right of center country (with a growing right and far right
segment) and has been for most of it's history. If some of the right of center move to
left of center that may look good as far as "not Republican" but as Lambert points out does
nothing for the progressive movement. I read an article where Noam Chomsky mentioned that
people in the USA who call themselves liberals are more moderates and are not the same as
liberals in Europe. If I remember my reading of Thomas Frank's Listen Liberal, his expose' of
segments of the liberal class was to show that calling yourself liberal does not mean much if
your actions say otherwise, i.e Obama and Hillary.
The sluggish business investment chart just supports what Yves wrote in 2005 about the
Incredible Shrinking Corporation. One thing that jumps out is the increasing size of the
booms and busts since 1980 i.e. the Neoliberal Era compared to 1950-1980. In the late 1980's
I worked at a large medical device company. In 1990 I was laid off as part of a restructuring
after an Merger/Acquisition . I remember when the layoffs were announced the director of our
group said he feared the US was becoming "a short term quarter to quarter economy". Hence
booms and busts or casino capitalism. As we're finding out booms followed by busts, i.e.
instability, leads to severe social consequences: inequality, job loss, breakdown of the
family and communities etc.
I'm reminded of an old acquaintance that headed a forward M&A team. Once told of an
experience in an elevator where some lady asked if he was the same guy that came around at
her last employer. He responded yes. She then tentatively asked if she should start looking
for new employment. His answer was again yes.
This was in little more space than 6 months for the middle aged lady.
This also coincides with the great Calif M&A episode during the late 80s and early
90s. Huge wave of wage earners selling houses and migrating to states on eastern boarders due
to RE affordability and cost of living. Experienced this in the Denver – Boulder CO.
corridor at the time, storage tech et al. Funny thing, took less than 10 years before
everything reverted to the state of affairs which drove them to leave Calif. Which then
promoted me to move to Oz after marrying native wife.
Years ago I got an email from an acquaintance; " . I am deathly sick in a hospital in East
Africa. .please help by ." His identity had been stolen by con artists.
The identity of the "Democratic Party" has also been stolen. They are not the FDR-JFK
Democratic Party of my childhood. but rather, Neo-Toxoplasma Gondii-ists, the "Mind
Invaders".
Back in the early 1980s, the NZ Labour Party (of Mickey Savage and Norman Kirk) was taken
over by Neo-liberal, Roger Douglas and his henchmen/women.
" the New Zealand dollar was floated, corporate practices were introduced to state
services, state assets were sold off, and a swathe of regulations and subsidies were removed.
Douglas's economic policies were regarded as a betrayal of Labour's left-wing policy
platform, and were deeply unpopular "
I believe that the actual political spectrum is an Axis (coalition) of the Neo-Liberals
with the Neo-Conservatives .
Who are (in a perfect World) opposed by The Alliance of Everybody Else.
The Axis (a puny minority) are able to exist because they sow constant discord among the
The Alliance. (What is the definition of "abortion" or "healthcare" or "security" or "love"
..???? Let's scream at each other! That will help!)
In New Zealand, we have a coalition Government of (1) Labour (Unions), (2) NZ First
(populist) and (3) The Greens.
The out-of-power, NZ National Party (Neo-Con/Lib Axis) spend their time trying to conflate
and invent "disagreements" within our Labour Coalition Government.
But, it is like a healthy, extended family. You agree to disagree and ENJOY the lively
discussions. Parties compromise and life goes on.
I was in NZ after Rogernomics made the Kiwi $ plunge to about 35 cents US in the 1980's,
and everything was so cheap, dinners were like US $4, motel rooms US $15, homes in Auckland
US $25k.
I dread seeing the prices now, when we visit next year
If a Democratic Party composed of Romneyfeller Republicans and Democratic Socialists will
not stand, then eventually the two separated fighting halves will fight to the death over
which half gets to keep the name "Democratic Party".
Meanwhile, the Woodrow Wilson quote above gives some evidence as to why some people have
long called Wilson "America's most evil President". His bringing official Jim Crow to the
Federal Workforce in Washington DC might be another piece of evidence. His unleashing of a
vicious and bigoted campaign of anti-germanitic cultural and social pogroms all over America
might be another piece of evidence. The fact that he did this as part of his World War I
program, after having worked with Great Britain to lie and manipulate America into World War
I ( some would say on the wrong side . . . ) is another piece of evidence. His political
"extermination" campaign against the American Left ( Debs in prison, etc) thereby reducing
the Left toward its tiny size of today is another such piece of evidence.
The actions of America's most evil President ( Woodrow Wilson) may help explain why
America is a center-right country today.
The second neoliberalization of Argentina turned into second financial crash. Brazil is probably next. And Argentina and Brazil
were two contires in which neoliberal staged a counterrevolution after financial crisi of 2008.
The IMF is back in Argentina: "an economic and social crisis, even more serious than the present one, looms large on the horizon"
1. The vicious circle of illegitimate debt grapples the Argentine people once again
2. IMF's $ 50 billion loan surpasses Greece's previous record
Sergio Ferrari from Berne, Switzerland interviewed Eric Toussaint, international debt specialist
After more than a decade of Argentina's official "distance" from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mauricio Macri's government
has just knocked on the doors of the world's financial police. The $ 50 billion credit granted by the organization during the first
week of June sets an international record and will directly impact the economic and social situation of this South American country.
Eric Toussaint, Belgian historian and economist, an eminent specialist in this field and spokesperson for the Committee for the Abolition
of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM), based in Brussels, pointed this out. Interview follows. Q: Why did the Argentine government turn
to the IMF , in full view of Argentina's
relations with this international organization in the late 1990s and their dire political consequences? Is the financial top brass
of the Macri team despairing?
Eric Toussaint (ET): Since the Mauricio Macri government assumed office in December 2015, its policies have led to a critical
situation. Sharp reduction in export taxes have brought down tax revenues, the debt servicing expenditure has been significantly
increased (100% higher in 2018 than in 2017). The country is running out of dollars. Currency reserves fell by $ 8 billion earlier
this year. Macri needs this IMF loan to continue debt servicing. Private international lenders require such a loan as a prerequisite
for continued credit to Argentina. A very large chunk of the IMF loan will be used directly to repay foreign creditors in dollars.
Q: If we look at the Argentine history of the 1990s, this seems to be a scheme of playing with fire
ET: Yes, of course. But I would like to further explore the background of this appeal to the IMF
Q- Please go ahead!
ET: This shows that the government's policy is an abject failure: with a peso that devalued fast; with the
interest rate set at a high 40% by the Argentine Republic's
Central Bank ; with the $ 8 billion reduction in international reserves
that keep declining. And with a debt service that has increased by
100% compared to 2017. Faced with a balance sheet of such a nature,
undoubtedly it is a total failure. Macri claimed that a high growth level and a viable debt would be ensured by paying the debt –
between end-2015 and early-2016 – and by compensating the
vulture funds , in keeping with Judge Thomas Griesa's
verdict. He knelt before the vulture funds (see:
http://www.cadtm.org/Reject-the-Imminent-Agreement-with
). But the facts confirm that this plan did not work. Debt rose at a whirling pace and it's startling to see how fast it snowballed.
As a result, it became impossible to convince the creditors that Argentina could repay its debt in the future. That's why Macri is
asking for this $ 50 billion credit. We must remember that when Greece received $ 30 billion from the IMF in 2010 in the backdrop
of a dramatic situation, it was a record amount!
Q: Some analysts say that President Macri is trying to breathe in some fresh air with the help of this loan, before commanding
a comfortable position in the October 2019 elections.
ET: I would not like to engage in farfetched political speculations. I prefer facts. I have read the contents of the agreement
signed with the IMF and it has imposed a severe reduction in general social benefits and wages of the public servants. Public investment
will be almost wiped out and it will lead to an economic depression. Debt repayment will increase and the IMF charges high
interest rates . The government will impose taxes with elevated
rates on the public to repay the debt, while continuing to hand out fiscal perks to the capitalists. The government will encourage
the export of the maximum number of agricultural products and raw materials to the global market by reinforcing the extractivist-exporting
model. IMF's policy will lead the country to an economic and social crisis even more serious than what it suffered before this loan
was sanctioned. Let's go back to your question. It is very likely that, politically, Macri will claim that what he is doing is not
his project, but what the IMF demands from him.
Q: This brings us back to a not-so-distant past and I would like to highlight that: the decade of indebtedness and the IMF's
role in the 1990s that eventually led to the social outburst of 2001. Can history repeat itself without tragedy?
ET: History is repeating itself in a country that is a serial debt payer. It started with the illegitimate and odious debt inherited
from the military dictatorship of the 1970s. IMF's support was crucial for this dictatorship to continue until the early 1980s. The
vicious circle of illegitimate debts persisted during the 1990s with President Carlos Menem followed by Fernando De la Rúa. Their
allegiance to the IMF's recommendations led to the great social crisis of late 2001. President Rodríguez Saá, in his few days or
Presidency at end-2001, announced the suspension of debt repayment to allay popular anger. The debt was restructured in 2005, then
re-negotiated with creditors who had not participated before. It caused a crisis in the government and evoked sharp criticism from
the people (see the section on Argentina here
http://www.cadtm.org/Restructuration-Audit-Suspension,11723
). Former minister Roberto Lavagna, who had negotiated the 2005 restructuring, objected to negotiations with outsider creditors.
The Argentine authorities never wanted to do what Ecuador did in 2007-2008: to carry out a debt audit with citizens' participation,
which could have defined the odious and illegitimate part of the debt (see:
http://www.cadtm.org/Video-The-Ecuador-debt-audit-a
and http://www.cadtm.org/Vulture-funds-are-the-vanguard
). This, along with the inconsistency of the Cristina Fernandez government's national sovereignty discourse, frustrated people. This
partly explains Macri's electoral victory in 2015.
Q: A course over several decades where illegitimate debts condition government policies without ever finding structural solutions
ET: Yes. And that led today to this new mega-loan from the IMF. From now on, it can be included in the category of odious and
illegitimate debts. An odious debt is a debt contracted against the people's interests, and the creditors know that it is illegitimate.
Evidently a new illegitimate and odious debt is taking shape.
Q: What about future prospects?
ET: I have already spoken about the deteriorating economic and social crisis. I hope for a strong popular reaction in the coming
months. I also hope that the popular forces will not take too long to consolidate their strength to oppose even more vigorously the
Macri government and the pressures of the IMF and other international creditors.
The last century began with few workers' rights and massive inequality. Two World Wars, an
economic depression, and the Cold War convinced the money class that their survival required
them to share.
We enter this century with workers' rights fading, freedom and democracy attacked, and
inequality growing.
They tell us that this time is different and the excesses of the past are not a threat. That
globalization, interconnectedness (human and electronic), and electronic commerce eliminate the
need for unions, Glass-Steagall, labor laws, limits on campaign finance, and even facts. That
concentration of wealth and power are in our collective best interests. That smaller government
will free us to realize our true potentials. That corporations know best and will serve us
better than governments ever could and do so at lower cost. That we should trust them. That
they are wiser. That they know how things truly work. That if we do not allow them to establish
a new order, then things will just get much worse.
And they are now dismantling the old order responsible for stable financial markets, livable
wages with benefits, upward economic mobility, human dignity, accountability from the power and
money classes, and respect for those not like ourselves. And if they are wrong which I believe
they are, then we are certain to endure a misery not even seen in the last century.
The trumpkins clearly choose not to consider the reality of a global supply chain and the
interconnected nature of manufacturing. A report in the auto section of the Chicago tribune
pointed out the Honda Odyssey is the second most American made vehicle based on here its parts
are sourced. We see tRump and his minions on TV touting all the false claims outlined by Dr. K.
The lies are easily fact checked against actual data but tRump and his minions fully understand
his base plus many more Republicans who should actually know better will lap up the lies and
keep cheering USA until they drive things off a cliff like the last Republican Administration.
We can only hope next time will not be worse.
"Only you can see this post because it goes against our standards on hate speech ..."
To give you an idea of the kind of automation in play and what words and ideas are being identified as running contrary to the principles
of media aggregators and distributors, consider that Facebook recently banned America's founding document from being posted.
Since June 24, the Liberty County Vindicator of Liberty County, Texas, has been sharing daily excerpts from the declaration
in the run up to July Fourth. The idea was to encourage historical literacy among the Vindicator 's readers.
The first nine such posts of the project went up without incident.
"But part 10,"
writes
Vindicator
managing editor Casey Stinnett, "did not appear. Instead, The Vindicator received a notice from Facebook saying that the post
'goes against our standards on hate speech.'"
The post in question contained paragraphs 27 through 31 of the Declaration of Independence, the grievance section of the document
wherein the put-upon colonists detail all the irreconcilable differences they have with King George III.
Stinnett says that he cannot be sure which exact grievance ran afoul of Facebook's policy, but he assumes that it's paragraph
31, which excoriates the King for inciting "domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants
of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages."
The removal of the post was an automated action, and Stinnett sent a "feedback message" to Facebook with the hopes of reaching
a human being who could then exempt the Declaration of Independence from its hate speech restrictions.
This is likely the 'offending' text: "the
merciless
Indian savages
, whose known rule of warfare, is
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and
conditions."
The truth is hate. I think everybody knows that by
now.
Thanks, here is some additional reading
material ..
The Unfortunate Fallout of
Campus Postmodernism- The roots of the
current campus madness
"In a 1946 essay in the London Tribune
entitled "In Front of Your Nose," George
Orwell noted that "we are all capable of
believing things which we know to be untrue,
and then, when we are finally proved wrong,
impudently twisting the facts so as to show
that we were right. Intellectually, it is
possible to carry on this process for an
indefinite time: the only check on it is that
sooner or later a false belief bumps up
against solid reality, usually on a
battlefield."
Anyone with a working brain cell can tell you that Facebook has been anti
Bill of Rights from the very beginning. They are actively collecting
information on everyone for the government. How does that coincide with
free people living in a free country? It doesn't. Throw Facebook on the ash
heap of history now.
Correction: "Over the last couple of years major social media, news and video
platforms have been
actively
engaged in the censorship
of what they believe to be [[fake news and
information]]
the truth
."
Thanks, here is some additional reading material ..
The Unfortunate Fallout of Campus Postmodernism- The roots of the
current campus madness
"In a 1946 essay in the London Tribune entitled "In Front of Your Nose," George Orwell noted that "we are all capable of
believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as
to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on
it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."
That's all right and indignation is well deserved, but what is the alternative? Is Sanders
program a real alternative or he just served as a sheepdog for Hillary.
The Iron law of oligarchy is a serious constrain that suggest that the socialist system degenerate to oligarchical system
really quick and as such is not a viable option.
The USSR experience tells us a lot about how the process of degeneration of "revolutionary elite" once started logically leads
to neoliberalism
Notable quotes:
"... The elite class secured its stance as British Rule 2.0 by throwing their money behind politicians who they knew would advance their interests, whether those interests are in ensuring that the arms and munitions they manufacture get used frequently, the expansion of predatory trade policies, keeping tax loopholes open and keeping taxes on the wealthiest of the wealthy very low, deregulating corporations and banks, or enabling underhanded Wall Street practices which hurt the many for the benefit of the few. ..."
"... Buckley v. Valeo ..."
"... First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti ..."
"... Citizens United v. FEC ..."
"... So if you've ever wondered why seemingly common sense matters like a living wage and healthcare as a right consistently get shot down by your government, this is why. In order to rule you as King George ruled you, the oligarchs need to make sure most of America is toiling just to keep its head above water. Progressives were able to mount an intimidating insurgency using tiny 27-dollar donations on 2016; imagine what they could do if ordinary working Americans were being paid their fair share of the U.S. economy? ..."
"... The oligarchs can keep that from happening by continually escalating income inequality. They use their massive political power to repress the minimum wage, to undermine the power of unions ..."
"... America is a corporatist oligarchy dressed in drag doing a bad impression of a bipartisan democracy. Sometimes it doesn't even keep its wig on; a recent party at the Hamptons saw Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Kellyanne Conway and Charles Koch mixing it up with Chuck Schumer and George Soros. ..."
"... When they're not dining on champagne and rare fillet together, these people pretend to be locked in a vicious partisan battle that is "tearing the nation apart," but at Lally Weymouth's annual Southampton summer party the act stops and the oligarchs frolic together like children. ..."
"... This commentary was originally published on ..."
"... The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were NOT inclusive documents. Both of these papers were written by, and for rich landowners. Slavers, in short. The writers did not believe that 'the people' were intelligent enough to contribute to government. The 'Founding Fathers' comprised the original oligarchy. ..."
"... America was formed/founded by White men seeking fame, fortune and power outside the existing European political power structure. From its' beginning, it has been a nation of migrants seeking this kind of fortune ..."
"... You can talk all you want about political systems, which is better or how to corral the oligarchs who rule America, but what I've described is America and the world will never have peace or prosperity until the American Empire ends and the whole world can then celebrate American Independence Day – the Day when the rest of the world is Independent from the Evil Empire. ..."
"... Hard to have a Fourth of July celebration when your Bill of Rights and Constitution have been Trashed. ..."
"... Marxists (and much of the broader. "Left") have always maintained that the capitalist mode of production – and the bourgeois-democratic political superstructure it necessitates – represented an immense revolutionary achievement in the course of human development. ..."
"... Casting aside the last vestiges of the feudal system, particularly hereditary monarchy and titles of nobility, was critical to the eventual move toward a more equitable system of political economy. ..."
"... The reactionary system of corporate rule that we see today is a result of the bourgeoisie and capitalist system having (long) outlived their historically progressive role. However, that does not minimize the fact that in relation to the prior system (I.e. feudalism and monarchy), the US capitalist bourgeois-democratic form of political economy was a great achievement. ..."
"... "Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." Major General Smedley Butler ..."
"... I can't disagree with this articles premise that capitalism has it's flaws but I also contend that socialism has just as sordid a track record with it's own set of oligarchs. ..."
"... The United States did not win independence from George III. Since 1689 the UK/Great Britain has been a CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. (Now go look that up to see what it means.) That means that Parliament does not answer to the monarch. Period. ..."
"... George III was America's eighteenth century Putin. Someone they blame for all their problems, but who is not actually responsible for any of them. Americans, like their precious Second Amendment will not grow up and move on. ..."
"... The establishment of the Central Bank in City-of-London in 1694 or thereabouts, when William of Orange crossed the English Chanel, along with his retinue of immigrant Venetian banksters from the Netherlands, is the one pertinent fact worth remembering. ..."
"... Whether one envisages the traditional concept of royalty with precious stones-studded crowns and all the "royal" trapping, pomp and circumstance or multi-billionaire corporate tax-evading mega-moguls, the groups are essentially the same. Wealth inequality on Earth, ironically and sadly, has grown while so-called "royalty" as a visible phenomenon has slowly diminished. The problems associated with record concentration of wealth on Earth have grown in equal proportion, to the point where people are starting to consider newer, potentially more beneficial economic thought and viable alternative systems. ..."
Americans celebrate their independence 242 years ago today from Britain with little
thought it seems about who rules them now, comments Caitlin Johnstone.
Today America celebrates its liberation from the
shackles of the British Crown and the beginning of its transition into corporatist oligarchy,
which is a lot like celebrating your lateral promotion from housekeeping to laundry staff.
Fireworks will be set off, hot dogs will be consumed, and a strange yellow concoction known as
Mountain Dew will be imbibed by patriotic high-fiving Yankees eager to celebrate their
hard-fought freedom to funnel their taxes into corporate welfare instead of to the King.
Spark up a bottle rocket for me, America! In trouncing King George's red-coated goon squad,
you made it possible for the donor class to slowly buy up more and more control of your shiny
new government, allowing for a system of rule determined not by royal bloodlines, but by wealth
bloodlines. Now instead of your national affairs being determined by some gilded schmuck across
the pond, they are determined by the billionaire owners of multinational corporations and
banks. These oligarchs have shored up their rule to such an extent that congressional
candidates who outspend their opponents are almost
certain to win , and a
2014 Princeton study found that ordinary Americans have no influence whatsoever over the
behavior of their government while the will of the wealthy has a direct influence on US policy
and legislation.
The elite class secured its stance as British Rule 2.0 by throwing their money behind
politicians who they knew would advance their interests, whether those interests are in
ensuring that the arms and munitions they manufacture get used frequently, the expansion of
predatory trade policies, keeping tax loopholes open and keeping taxes on the wealthiest of the
wealthy very low, deregulating corporations and banks, or enabling underhanded Wall Street
practices which hurt the many for the benefit of the few. The existence of legalized
bribery and corporate lobbying as illustrated in the video above have enabled the plutocrats to
buy up the Legislative and Executive branches of the US government, and with these in their
pockets they were eventually able to get the Judicial branch as well since justices are
appointed and approved by the other two. Now having secured all three branches in a system of
checks and balances theoretically designed to prevent totalitarian rule, the billionaire class
has successfully secured totalitarian rule.
By tilting the elections of congressmen and presidents in such a way as to install a
corporatist Supreme Court bench, the oligarchs successfully got legislation passed which
further secured and expanded their rule with decisions like 1976's Buckley v. Valeo,
1978's First National
Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, and 2010's Citizens United v. FEC .
This has had the effect of creating a nation wherein money equals power, which has in turn had
the effect of creating a system wherein the ruling class is, in a very real way, incentivized
to try and keep everyone else poor in order to maintain its rule.
George III: Like today's rulers of America, he didn't give up without a fight. (National
Portrait Gallery, London.)
Just as King George didn't give up rule of the New World colonies without a knock-down,
drag-out fight, King George 2.0 has no intention of relinquishing its rule either. The
oligarchs have been fighting to keep their power, and, in the money-equals-power system that
they have built for themselves, this necessarily means keeping you from having money. Just as
King George's kingship would have meant nothing if everybody was King, the oligarchs won't be
oligarchs anymore if ordinary Americans are ever able to secure enough money for themselves to
begin influencing their government within its current money-equals-power paradigm.
So if you've ever wondered why seemingly common sense matters like a living wage and
healthcare as a right consistently get shot down by your government, this is why. In order to
rule you as King George ruled you, the oligarchs need to make sure most of America is toiling
just to keep its head above water. Progressives were able to mount an intimidating insurgency
using tiny 27-dollar donations on 2016; imagine what they could do if ordinary working
Americans were being paid their fair share of the U.S. economy?
The oligarchs can keep that from happening by continually escalating income inequality.
They use their massive political power to repress the minimum wage, to undermine the power of
unions , and to continually pull more and more energy away from socialist programs and
toward the corporate deregulation of neoliberalism. If you don't depend on running the rat race
for some corporate boss in order for your family to have health insurance, you're suddenly free
to innovate, create, and become an economically powerful entrepreneur yourself.
America is a corporatist oligarchy dressed in drag doing a bad impression of a
bipartisan democracy. Sometimes it doesn't even keep its wig on; a recent party at the Hamptons
saw Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Kellyanne Conway and Charles Koch mixing it up with Chuck
Schumer and George Soros.
When they're not dining on champagne and rare fillet together, these people pretend to
be locked in a vicious partisan battle that is "tearing the nation apart," but at Lally
Weymouth's annual Southampton summer party the act stops and the oligarchs frolic together like
children.
1776 turned out to be nothing other than a transition from one form of exploitative rule to
another, but who knows? Maybe a year in the not-too-distant future will see America celebrating
a real Independence Day.
This
commentary was originally published on Medium.
"Just a reminder; Sanders would have won if not for the hated Hillary"
Even if he did, it would not have made a difference; the POTUS does not make laws,
Congress does, at least on paper
Just remember, Bernie did endorse RHC at the DNC. That probably had been the play all
along during the primary. Sanders to woo in all of the "dissenters" and then turn them over
to RHC, under the "unity" umbrella against Trump.
I still "Feel the Burn", the burn of the rigged system, don't you?
rgl , July 5, 2018 at 12:52 pm
The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were NOT inclusive documents. Both of these
papers were written by, and for rich landowners. Slavers, in short. The writers did not
believe that 'the people' were intelligent enough to contribute to government. The 'Founding
Fathers' comprised the original oligarchy.
Money (land and slaves) was the basis of political power in the 17th century. Funny that.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Ergo Sum , July 5, 2018 at 7:32 am
@Jean
Just a reminder; Sanders would have won if not for the hated Hillary"
It would not have made any difference, even if he did. The POTUS does not make laws,
Congress does.
You should not forget that Sanders endorsed RHC at the DNC. His purpose during the primary
has been to channel all of democrats with social, economic and political dissatisfaction to
Hillary at the end. "Feel The Burn", the burn of the rigged system. It is another example of
how the rigged system allows minor uprising to flourish for a while, and then crush it at the
end by the perceived front-runner of the movement. The movement is dead, voters are further
disillusioned that enforces the viewpoint of there's nothing that peaceful action can do to
change the system. This results in even less people showing up at the voting booth to cast
their votes, that the rigged system loves; it does not need to disenfranchise voters and
easier to predetermine the outcome any of the upcoming elections.
Happy Birthday America, the home of the free and the brave You are free to rig the system,
if you are brave enough
Tom , July 5, 2018 at 5:58 am
America was formed/founded by White men seeking fame, fortune and power outside the
existing European political power structure. From its' beginning, it has been a nation of
migrants seeking this kind of fortune – bugger those damn savages that get in the way
of this greed and desire to take land, resources and culture away from America's native
inhabitants. And so it began this way and has continued unabated for more than the life of
the nation which began in 1776 – more than 240 years of expansionism, colonization and
subjugation of those less powerful – too take away the land and resources of not just
the native American Indians, but later the peoples of Cuba, Philippines, Japan, China and on
to the World Wars, late 20th century wars in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria,
Yemen and on and on an on – continuous warfare and expansionism of the American Empire
to take away land, resources and power of the native inhabitants of every nation the US
targets for regime change or conquest.
You can talk all you want about political systems,
which is better or how to corral the oligarchs who rule America, but what I've described is
America and the world will never have peace or prosperity until the American Empire ends and
the whole world can then celebrate American Independence Day – the Day when the rest of
the world is Independent from the Evil Empire.
Hard to have a Fourth of July celebration when your Bill of Rights and Constitution have
been Trashed.
Anonymous , July 5, 2018 at 3:43 am
Marxists (and much of the broader. "Left") have always maintained that the capitalist mode
of production – and the bourgeois-democratic political superstructure it necessitates
– represented an immense revolutionary achievement in the course of human
development.
Anonymous , July 5, 2018 at 12:25 pm
Casting aside the last vestiges of the feudal system, particularly hereditary monarchy and
titles of nobility, was critical to the eventual move toward a more equitable system of
political economy.
The reactionary system of corporate rule that we see today is a result of the bourgeoisie
and capitalist system having (long) outlived their historically progressive role. However,
that does not minimize the fact that in relation to the prior system (I.e. feudalism and
monarchy), the US capitalist bourgeois-democratic form of political economy was a great
achievement.
"Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to
operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." Major General Smedley
Butler
Good on you Mukadi for posting this link. PCR did a great analogy of our American war
culture. Joe
It's a knee-jerk celebration, anyway, for the most part. The citizens are told to
celebrate, so they celebrate. Just like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day, the Fourth
of July is a day to generate money. The firecrackers are popping right now, a worship of the
warship that the US has become.
Much of my time is spent reading commentary that I agree with and articles I agree with.
Something to consider for the website, descriptive articles yes but more prescriptive ones.
For example, articles by people who have ideas for change, addressing important policy
questions like taxation, health insurance, technology stuff like robotics and how to spread
its benefits. and of course, reform of the process of selecting and electing our leaders.
Just a thought.
Kenny , July 4, 2018 at 5:43 pm
I can't disagree with this articles premise that capitalism has it's flaws but I also
contend that socialism has just as sordid a track record with it's own set of oligarchs.
Horrendous global economic conditions require new economic thinking that improves the
health and well-being of the most number of people. Economist and author Henry George
(1839-1897) nailed it decades ago in his multi-million copy, bestselling 1879 book "Progress
and Poverty" – the "single tax" or land value tax.
Consortium News would do humanity a great service by bringing the writings of Henry George
economic philosophy advocates to readers and CN's massive group of supporters around the
world. For example, an excellent guest writer suggestion is Henry George expert, confirmed
enthusiast, and author of many books on the subject, Mr. Fred Harrison.
System-wide implementation of Henry George economic principles addresses the real concerns
raised by Caitlin Johnstone and so many others in this time of unprecedented wealth
inequality, faulty economics, the new royals called corporate oligarchs, seeming endless war,
and the great societal problems manifested as a consequence.
Peace.
Drew Hunkins , July 4, 2018 at 4:28 pm
Jefferson was very old when he first saw the fledgling stages of early corporate power,
they called them "moneyed incorporations" or something like that. Jefferson warned that these
new "moneyed incorporations" had the potential power to undermine everything the revolution
accomplished.
John2o2o , July 4, 2018 at 4:18 pm
Sigh. I know I'm probably wasting my time saying this as Caitlin's groupies will not
tolerate criticism of their anointed one.
The United States did not win independence from George III. Since 1689 the UK/Great
Britain has been a CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. (Now go look that up to see what it means.) That
means that Parliament does not answer to the monarch. Period.
"In the Kingdom of England, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 led to a constitutional
monarchy restricted by laws such as the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701,
although limits on the power of the monarch ('a limited monarchy') are much older than that
(see Magna Carta). At the same time, in Scotland the Convention of Estates enacted the Claim
of Right Act 1689, which placed similar limits on the Scottish monarchy." wikipedia.
George III was America's eighteenth century Putin. Someone they blame for all their
problems, but who is not actually responsible for any of them. Americans, like their precious
Second Amendment will not grow up and move on.
I know it suits some of you to believe that somehow the royals are super powerful, but
they are not. They don't call the shots and haven't done so now for over 300 years.
Joe Lauria , July 4, 2018 at 4:43 pm
"War began in 1775 and was prolonged in 1779, *at the king's insistence,* to prevent
copycat protests elsewhere. The British defeat in 1781 prompted North to resign. In 1783,
North and the prominent Whig politician Fox formed a coalition government. Their plans to
reform the East India Company gave George the chance to regain popularity. He *forced the
bill's defeat* in Parliament, and the two resigned. In their place George *appointed* William
Pitt the Younger."
George blocked legislation and he appointed the first minister, i.e. he had power over
parliament.
The Continental Congress was primarily frustrated with Parliament, a resent that had been
brewing since the conclusion of the Seven Years War. But, at the same time, royalist
enthusiasm had been budding, with an increasing obsession within the colonies of being
faithful servants of the crown. Thus, the Congress styled their petitions to the monarch,
hoping he would quash his evil ministers, with George III being the hoped for "patriot king".
When George attacked the colonies, and began efforts to crackdown on political unrest, the
otherwise unpopular and extreme option of independence became feasible. George was not an
absolute monarch or a tyrant, but he did have significant power, and he could, if he played
parliamentary politics well enough, get his way. The Glorious Revolution did not disempower
the monarchy or firmly establish parliamentary power, both of these phenomena began both
before and after the events of 1688.
Brad Owen , July 5, 2018 at 4:20 am
The establishment of the Central Bank in City-of-London in 1694 or thereabouts, when
William of Orange crossed the English Chanel, along with his retinue of immigrant Venetian
banksters from the Netherlands, is the one pertinent fact worth remembering.
THIS is what the
Founders actually declared their independence from, establishing the National Bank in the
process (which was shut down relatively quickly thereafter, by agents loyal to City-of-London
Central Bank). Independence has been a farce from the beginning and we never had our
Republic, let alone keeping it, as Benjamin Franklin had warned us would be the problem.
We've had a phony Republic based on the model supplied by Venice (and established by Venetian
"Dutch Masters" in The Netherlands in the 17th century) throughout the Medieval/Renaissance
eras. It is the same old, ongoing, Citizens' Republic vs Oligarchs' Empire fight that Western
Civilzation inherited from Roman times.
Whether one envisages the traditional concept of royalty with precious stones-studded
crowns and all the "royal" trapping, pomp and circumstance or multi-billionaire corporate
tax-evading mega-moguls, the groups are essentially the same. Wealth inequality on Earth,
ironically and sadly, has grown while so-called "royalty" as a visible phenomenon has slowly
diminished. The problems associated with record concentration of wealth on Earth have grown
in equal proportion, to the point where people are starting to consider newer, potentially
more beneficial economic thought and viable alternative systems.
The ideas of economist and author of "Progress and Poverty" – HENRY GEORGE
(1839-1897) "Single tax" proponent (or "land value tax") – are both disappointingly
under-discussed and under-appreciated, while offering precisely the economic alternative for
effectively dealing with today's orthodox economy-centric global, societal problems. People
might take the time in researching Henry George's ideas when they understand (only one of
many benefits) that implementation of Georgist economic principles means no more income tax
taken out of their paychecks
Consortium News (CN) is the perfect platform for support of Henry George economic thought
and raising awareness of an idea whose time may just have arrived. We might suggest
Consortium News publish the writings of Henry George expert and author of many books on the
subject Mr. Fred Harrison, who would likely happily provide his impressive writings for
free.
We might also suggest the many millions of men and women from all regions of the Earth
reading Consortium News consider finding out more on Henry George economic thought, do the
researching, then understand the economic philosophy's virtually immeasurable, positive and
transforming potential.
Source information search suggestion: Henry George School of Social Science.
The problem is that the logic of neoliberalism dictates the necessary of converting the USA into empire and maintaining
this empire at the expense of well-being and standard of living of US citizens. It is necessary to enforce globalization and
Washington consensus.
Crash in the empire façade are now painted off with Russophobia...
An excellent analysis of the sordid mess we euphemistically refer to as our vaunted --
"democracy." Given the total control of information through MSM, combined with oligarchic
attempts to censor and essentially "disappear" dissenting voices in alternative media, the
vast majority of Americans are tethered to domestic and global "realities" by a very thin
thread indeed. Americans and Westerners in general are lost in a matrix -like propaganda
system of the like the world has never before seen. We've essentially replaced the mythic
"divine right of kings" and the "infallibility of the pope" with the equally mythic divine
"rights of corporations" and the infallibility of the "invisible hand of the market." Strange
how that "invisible hand" can always be found wrapped tightly around the throats of the
world's poor everywhere and anywhere.
Challenging these myth systems with truthful counter-narratives is as heretical today as
it was a thousand years ago in the West, while those oligarchic controlled institutions
enforcing our current myth systems are just as greedy, violent, amoral and blood thirsty as
they were during the height of the Holy Inquisition. The myths have changed, but the dynamics
of absolute power through the control of societal myth systems remains unchanged. As Derrick
Jensen has pointed out most Americans can more easily imagine the end of the world than they
can imagine the end of capitalism. This is "brain-washing" of the highest order indeed.
Lois Gagnon , July 4, 2018 at 5:19 pm
Well put. Changing the narrative has to be our highest priority.
zhenry , July 4, 2018 at 10:50 pm
Should add 'Divine right and infallibility over a world nobody can live in.
Reminds me of The Who song : "Won't Get Fooled Again !"
"Meet the new Boss, same as the old Boss".
"And parking on the left is now parking on the right".
Rob , July 4, 2018 at 11:31 am
It's good to see Caitlin and her no holds barred writing back on Consortium News. Her hard
hitting analyses are usually spot-on.
rosemerry , July 4, 2018 at 11:18 am
Many important rights were fought for and won by earlier generations, and I think it was
Ralph Nader who said that none have been won since 1970. Earnings for all but the rich have
stagnated, long-established rights have been cast aside by the "courts of law", national and
State.
As well as Jeffrey Clements' "Corporations are not People" and his fight for the repeal of
"Citizens' United" (what happened to this surge of people power?) there is an excellent book
by historian Nancy MacLean "Democracy in Chains" which traces the movement to deny rights to
the people, except a select few, right up to the election of Donald J Trump. It is clear,
fast-paced, well- referenced and very chilling. The last chapter, 'Get Ready' needs to be
taken seriously by us all.
hetro , July 4, 2018 at 10:10 am
Now reading Ralph Nader's Crashing the Party, 2002, an account of his run for the
presidency in 2000. Very enjoyable read. Things were very much as described by Caitlin back
then, and have only gotten worse. I do fear that glib comments on "democracy as failed" have
the wrong term in the phrase. It's plutocracy that has failed, not democracy. Then again
democracy requires a lot of work, including thinking and assessing, and continually working
to improve the concept. The forefathers got the project started. A capitalist system that
encourages hedonism is not going to help much. From Nader's book I have been receiving,
oddly, encouragement, in all the people he mentions who wanted change back then, and still
do. I am grateful for Nader and Caitlin for expressing the reality of capitalism run amok so
very effectively. I hope these efforts will influence further thinking.
Sam F , July 4, 2018 at 7:02 am
Caitlin refreshingly overlooks the distractions of US history between monarchy and
oligarchy, the (1) early-federal-period unity around defense concerns, (2) pre-civil-war
period of failed congressional debate, and (3) early-industrial emergence of the middle
class. These should be ignored, because US history consists of failure of institutions and
failure to fix them, and only distracted from the rise of oligarchy to prevent reform.
If democracy is ever restored in the US, it must be stabilized by amendments to protect
elections and mass media debate from economic power, better checks and balances within the
government branches, purging the corrupt judiciary and Congress, monitoring of government
officials for corruption, and regulation of business so that oligarchic bullies and scammers
do not rise to control economic power.
Only then can literature, media, education, and public interaction encourage moral
community, and only then can public debate find the moral policies that honor the rights of
all persons and seek justice for all.
Babyl-on , July 4, 2018 at 8:07 am
"Democracy" is an utter failure. You point this out clearly. Yet, it seems no progressive
can accept that -- democracy is an utter failure.
The idea that the system of "democracy" is some sort of holy system, immutable and sacred
is completely false. This is not the "end times" of history social and cultural evolution is
taking place other systems are proving in the real world they can do a far better job of
supporting their citizens than "democracy" ever has, not to mention that imperialism itself
is under threat from these other systems -- while every powerful "democracy" has been
imperialist.
We live in a multi-polar world now, the US no longer is the "global power" . The US is not
#1 in anything but slaughter. This is what "democracy" has done sense August 6,1945
SLAUGHTERED INNOCENT PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR 2.600+ DAYS with plans to
continue indefinitely. I would not wish "democracy" on my worst enemy.
Deep and fundamental changes are taking place the ideas of the Enlightenment were deeply
flawed and have broken down, new ideas from other cultures are gaining in strength and
showing their value to people everywhere.
I'd just like to point out that over the 73+ years of US slaughter of tens of millions of
innocent people were accompanied by "elections" every two years -- so the democratic people
of the US fully supported this continuous slaughter as being in their best interests (we kill
"over there" in war -- but we kill at home too stimulated by deeply and systemically held
racism.)
This slaughter machine we call government must be fully and completely dismantled, the
great fortunes must be broken up -- no ashes -- no Phoenix.
Sam F , July 4, 2018 at 9:08 am
The problem is not democracy (the recognition that all humans have equal rights) but how
democracy is structured; I noted some corrections needed.
The governments of China and Russia are variants of democracy with advantages and
problems. The democracies of Scandinavia work better in part for cultural reasons. But it is
not difficult to do far better than ours and be democratic: the problem is getting there.
Bob Van Noy , July 4, 2018 at 9:05 am
"If democracy is ever restored in the US,". Sam F.
Thank you, so true.
Our contemporary problem as Citizens, as Sam F. duly notes, is a totally failed democracy.
The graphic accompanying this excellent piece is also appropriate, as it too describes our
total lack of input as supposed Citizens.
It will be necessary to publicly demonstrate how America Failed, make specific
accusations, and design an alternative, something not possible with our current failed state.
In other words, a Truth and Reconciliation environment where the failures can adequately and
freely be presented and responsibility assigned.
Bob Van Noy , July 4, 2018 at 9:16 am
Readers might enjoy this terrific reading list by Ralph Nader
Yes, demonstration of the failures of US democracy is the essential first step to public
understanding, along with public study of potential solutions, so that steps can be taken
when the public is sufficiently aroused, to restore democracy.
alley cat , July 4, 2018 at 6:51 am
We separated church and state, abolished slavery, and granted suffrage to women. Each of
those advances in human rights was fought tooth, nail, and claw by tyrants and oligarchs.
Today's a good day to recall the famous words of one of the most courageous and eloquent
of American patriots, Frederick Douglass, in a speech he gave on West India emancipation in
1857: "If there is no struggle there is no progress . . . . Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to
and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon
them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with
both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
And those wrongs include the wrongs we allow our government to impose on other peoples as
well as on ourselves, as Martin Luther King declared in his Riverside Church speech in 1967:
"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the
ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world
today -- my own government."
Silly Me , July 4, 2018 at 9:47 am
Actually, the problem is that the unity of those in power and the peasants broke when the
underlying ideology stopped functioning. These days, peasant are offered nothing, not the
American Dream, not even a place in Heaven, for their sacrifice.
All those "advances" you mention were a one-way street to this end.
There is no ideal form of government. Democracy is a scam, and possibly the most expensive
form of government, but Aristotle's "good king" functions only if the ideology
works.(Aristotle despised democracy as the rule of the mob and the Constitution was
theoretically meant to prevent that, but with hardly any of the Constitution left, one has to
choose between corporate masters and mob rule. Oh, well, that is not even a choice, because
the mob has been divided and compartmentalized.)
No revolution has ever succeeded that started from the bottom. For a successful
revolution, you need to convince your rulers that giving you handouts is good for them. The
more they give, the more they can take back. Unfortunately, they have already destroyed
America and are abandoning it in droves, but they are not yet done with the planet.
MarB , July 4, 2018 at 11:36 pm
"not even a place in Heaven, for their sacrifice"
just the heartless illusory promise of endless vacuous consumption accompanied by the
requisite endless diversion from reality.
You know how conservatives like to pass legislation that does something that is against
the interests of the people but they at the same time like to name that legislation with a
name that is the exact opposite of what they are doing? So for instance legislation that
would make it less likely to have clean air by letting corporations regulate themselves on
air pollution is called "The Clean Air Act."
Well, this usage of Double-Speak is much older that George Orwell. You can find it in the
writing of Thomas Jefferson that was signed by a bunch of plutocrats on July 4, 1776.
I'm talking about, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
It would be laughable ironic if it wasn't so tragic that a main reason so many of these
plutocrats signed this document was because the British had proclaimed that all slaves of
those in rebellion were free. Slaves were running away and joining the British cause.
Another tragic reality is that another reason these plutocrats signed is because they had
bought vast tracts of land west of the Alleghenies cheaply and expected to make a fortune
selling it at high prices to lower class farmers desperate for land. They'd done this with no
consideration for the people actually living on this land as they had for millennia and
without any compensation to them. Instead states far away declared they owned this land and
then sold it to the plutocrats. But the British had put a stop to it, saying that land was
reserved for the tribes who lived there. These plutocrats were furious that the British were
keeping them from becoming even richer as if the native people who'd never signed away their
land mattered like they did.
These 'founding fathers' were all hypocrites signing that document. They didn't believe
all men were really equal. They didn't believe that Black Americans had a God given
unalienable right to liberty. They didn't believe that Native Americans had a God given
unalienable to the pursuit of happiness or even to life.
Plus they said that this was declaration to become independent of Britain was something
the people were doing. They didn't bother to consult the people. The reality is one third of
the people were loyal and one third were neutral and only one third wanted to be independent.
A lot of these loyal people fled north to Canada as soon as they could when it became the
clear the 'patriots' were winning. That was a flood of immigrants in the 1780s.
The final irony is that they claimed they were taking this action because of George's
unfair taxation. Guess what. The Tea Act that sparked revolt with the Boston Tea Party a few
years earlier actually lowered taxes. Yes. It lowered taxes. But the plutocrats were upset
because it also created a monopoly in the tea trade giving it to Londoners, leaving them out.
They lied that it was about regular people being upset that they had to pay high taxes when
what they were really upset about was that they didn't get the contract that would have made
them richer.
But the bamboozled those regular poor folk to join their Continental Army and paid them in
IOUs. How did they plan on paying those IOUs? Well, by the various states raising taxes.
Unfortunately for those poor vets they didn't get paid at first and they couldn't pay their
taxes unless they sold their IOUs for pennies on the dollar to rich speculators- the very
same plutocrats who declared Independence because of taxes. Then they'd get paid the full
amount of the IOUs.
This scenario sounds exactly like the one in the document I quoted above from the
Declaration, which purports that in that situation the people have a god given duty to rebel
and change the government. What did these patriotic founding fathers do? They raised funds to
buy a mercenary army to go and squash these rebels. They they broke the law to create a new
constitution, filled with more Double-Speak about "We the People" and "general Welfare" and
"Blessings of Liberty," that created a stronger central government with the power to tax and
a standing army so such rebellion could never happen again.
Who am I talking about? I'm talking about Jefferson who was a slave owner. I'm talking
about Adams who despised the idea of the 'rabble' and the 'mob' and as President passed laws
to put in jail anyone who printed anything that was against his presidency. I'm talking about
Washington who was "mortified beyond expression" about the rebels and declared that "mankind
when left to themselves are unfit for their own Government." I'm talking about Franklin whose
view of natives was ""If it be the design of Providence to extirpate these Savages in order
to make room for cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the
appointed means." If you don't know, 'extirpate' means 'to root out and destroy.'
Think on this. If the British had won, there would have been no native genocide in the
Ohio Country. Instead it might have been like Manitoba, where natives and settlers became one
people and got their own province. If the British had won then slavery would have been
outlawed in America when it was in the British Empire in 1833.
Maybe there's a reason Canada is a kinder nation with universal single payer healthcare
and legal marijuana and it gave sanctuary to USA draft dodgers? Maybe because it wasn't
created like George Carlin tells us the USA was.
"This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. Am I right? A group of
slave owners who wanted to be free, so they killed a lot of white English people in order to
continue owning their black African people so they could wipe out the rest of the red Indian
people and move West and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people giving them
a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people. You know
what the motto of this country ought to be? 'You give us a color- we'll wipe it out.'"
Joe Tedesky , July 4, 2018 at 6:46 pm
Wow Miranda you hit it out of the ball yard with your comment, well done. It is hard for
America to reconcile all of its myths, as I've often quoted my beloved departed mother who
always said, one lie only leads to another lie until the truth jumps up and bites you in the
ass your spot on commentary is a fantastic beginning to a readers journey towards them
learning the truth. Thanks Miranda, you taught me something new today. Joe
Most of the stuff I summarized is explained in better depth in a series of articles by
Danny Sjursen over on Truthdig called "American History for Truthdiggers."
Also having read Zinn's history is helpful. Plus I'm a big fan of Carlin. Do miss him. Not
just his insight, but his cadence, which seemed to be flowing through me on that post.
Joe Tedesky , July 4, 2018 at 9:27 pm
Miranda your inspirational heroes are certainly appropriate for analyzing today's current
events. I like Major Daniel Sjursen for he is a soldier who has learned from his experiences,
and he doesn't sell the same old fluff we are used too. All in all you Miranda crafted this
piece of fine commentary, and you should be congratulated for how you interpret what you have
learned . and look at you now, your teaching all of us to be critical thinkers when
appraising our nation's policies. Good post. Joe
Kalen , July 4, 2018 at 4:55 am
Few historical facts:
The counterrevolutionary US constitution of 1789 was nothing but a ploy for rich and
powerful British aristocracy and oligarchy to wrestle their absolute control back and return
to past regime of 1776 but this time sans King and with collective despotism instead, calling
the whole revolutionary experiment they instigated themselves dead as too democratic
threatening their profits from slavery.
It was British aristocracy and oligarchy with interest in American colonies who concocted
"American Revolution" in order to steal land given them as a privilege by English King and
hence avoid paying taxes considered by British government at that time. And shocked and
dismayed by unexpected rise of social conscientiousness of poor/landless colonists who
supposed to exhibit animal like qualities and not maturity of citizen, they pulled the plug
and killed the American experiment in 1789 via illegal constitutional convection once for
all.
It took them so long [13 years] since they had to think hard how to camouflage the "old"
system of "collective" monarchy based on medieval fiefdoms [dropped names like colonies
replaced by a term states that delegate some limited prerogatives to a states' GSE, a
corporation domiciled on a strip of land called D.C., the only area that this GSE called
Federal Government really directly controls] under propaganda of supposedly Greek and Roman
democratic tradition that bombastic neo- classical monstrosities of Federal buildings suppose
to convey.
Americans, It is time to remember Declaration of Independence, 1776 that states:
..But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their
duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Corporate despotism reigns supreme, it is time to sharpen pitchforks as is duty of free
citizenry as demanded by Declaration of Independence.
OlyaPola , July 4, 2018 at 4:18 am
"America Celebrates Lateral Move From Monarchy To Corporate Rule"
The move was linear within the linear paradigm of class societies using a similar mix of
coercion including ideological tools for sustainabilty, obfuscated by the transition from
"divine right of kings" modified by the "Glorious Revolution of 1688" to "We the people hold
these truths to be self-evident", the assay of the amalgam of coercive tools remaining within
the linear.
A lateral (qualitative) change is required to transcend "capitalism" and the misnamed "The
United States of America" and why reform is self-defeating since it is also linear and hence
facilitates the continued immersion in iterations of modulated status-quo ante and hence
precludes lateral change.
Sam F , July 4, 2018 at 7:24 am
I interpret your "reform is self-defeating" to mean evolutionary or incremental reform,
which as you note relies on existing powers, and therefore maintains oligarchy.
Even revolutions seldom do much better, because they are opposed by economic or external
powers. A revolution would have worked in the US, having no major external powers, if it
reformed economic power, but is not feasible against our totalitarian state.
Only the extreme conditions of poverty by external embargo, military defeats discrediting
the warmongers, and rising gangsterism and corruption will bring enough anger among the
middle class, probably 40-60 years hence. See Mexico, and we are not there yet. Meanwhile we
pretend that fashion reforms lead somewhere.
OlyaPola , July 5, 2018 at 2:21 am
"Only the extreme conditions of poverty by external embargo, military defeats discrediting
the warmongers, and rising gangsterism and corruption will bring enough anger among the
middle class, probably 40-60 years hence."
One of the aspects of "exceptionalism" is to seek to assign significance to self that
others do not assign to you.
Such hubris affords strategic opportunities for others.
Agency is a type of interaction and can be minimised through non-emulated interaction the
process being accelerated through lateral modes of interaction perceived by opponents as
linear (emulated) interaction -- which in some measure describes the trajectory of
transcending the Soviet Union by the Russian Federation with the complicity of "The United
States of America" facilitated by hubris such as the end of history and full spectrum
dominance.
In such a scenario what the inhabitants of "The United States of America" do is of lesser
import, a process accelerated by their self-absorption.
If the
Sam F , July 5, 2018 at 8:10 am
You appear to be saying that a fifth column effects more serious reforms, moving toward a
parallel branch of history while seeming to effect lesser reforms. (Your usage of "lateral"
suggests move toward greater reform, while in the article it refers to movement to something
no better.)
OlyaPola , July 5, 2018 at 9:28 am
"a fifth column effects more serious reforms"
No, that is an integration within the opponents' linear paradigm.
If you need an example take a sample from a useful fool's blog http://www.thesaker.is who frames in 5th, 6th and nth columns,
not necessarily newspaper columns, and generally bad people, evil doers and assorted rascals
-- a passion play facilitating deflection, deflection and/or "children's crusades", although
children generally have a lesser propensity to be rendered useful fools and why they require
"socialisation" to get with the team.
"Your usage of "lateral" suggests move toward greater reform".
That is also an integration within the opponents' paradigm.
Lateral is qualitative change facilitated by fission -- a qualitative transcendence.
Ideology is akin to a swimming pool; when you start to emerge you still carry
drop-lets.
Among the ideological notions with more resilient half-lives are "intuition", "beliefs",
"framing" and "methods".
Some wish to remain in the present linear paradigm through "spheres of influence" which is
presented as and constitutes "reform" thereby facilitating a mutation of the bacilli, not a
transcendence.
"while in the article it refers to movement to something no better.)"
Spectators tend to ponder what is, some spectators bridging doubt by belief to attain
pre-judgements.
Spectators also often conflate comment with agency to maintain the comfort zone of not
expanding their definition of agency.
Practitioners test what is to formulate how to's which throughout the process are
subjected to rigorous evaluation/modulation.
Spectating is a process described by Mr. Rove's observation which I paraphrase.
"We are an Empire now.
We create our own reality.
You react to our reality
And whilst you do so
We create another reality
To which you react"
Ergo immersion in iterations of the opponents linear paradigm.
Mr. Rove also observed the reducing scope and half-life of this process namely
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the one's you should
concentrate on"
Blogs illustrate both observations of Mr. Rove.
Consequently practitioners normally do not "agree" with spectators' framing, including
definition assigned to words, hopes and wishes but use the the spectators' hopes and wishes
to transcend them, afforded the opportunities to do so by the spectators frames of "plausible
belief", thereby adding the complicity of the spectators to the fissile material, since blogs
are akin to petri-dishes wherein commentators add to "the culture" minimising unnecessary
action by practitioners whilst "hiding" in open sight, although some commentators share
hypotheses that others can test if so minded and others can iterate the process of bridging
doubt by belief to attain pre-judgements and self-affirmation.
Chumpsky , July 4, 2018 at 2:09 am
Another brilliant analysis by Caitlin. "America is a corporatist oligarchy dressed in drag
doing a bad impression of a bipartisan democracy."
It would be useful to show how the "elite class" has manipulated our monetary system to
advance their nefarious agenda. Robbery or transfer of wealth via inflation to control the
political economy has been di rigeur since the creation of the Federal Reserve, which is not
federal but a private chartered monopoly. All political distortions can be traced to this
seditious injustice to American labor as well as the Hamiltonian monetary principles of our
founders.
Yes neoliberalism is deeply predatory. Still is survives as a social system for let's say 40 years (1987-2017) and probably will
survive another 20-30 years. And what is coming might be worse. If Trump signify turn to "national neoliberalism" the next
step from it might some kind of neofascism.
Notable quotes:
"... But financialization didn't just have a direct cost -- no value being created, just men in shiny suits betting pebbles on who'd blink first. It also had an opportunity cost. As finance grew to be a larger and larger share of the economy, so the wind got sucked out of the sails of the "real economy", as American economists put it, which simply means people doing the work that actually does create value -- teachers, nurses, engineers, artisans, bakers, small-town factories, and so on. Think about it simply: the more money that was burned up in speculating, the less that was available for making things of genuine value. So the incomes of all these people -- those in the "real economy" -- began to stagnate. New schools and hospitals and energy grids and so on weren't built -- all the money was going towards speculating on the backs the old ones, sometimes, often, on their failures. A black hole was growing at the heart of the economy -- but according to pundits, it was the sun itself. Everything was upside down. The bets were indeed about to all go south at once -- only no one knew understood how or why yet. ..."
"... The third force in the rise of predatory capitalism was the implosion of the institution formerly known as the job. Now, just before peak financialization, beginning in the 1990s, many jobs were "offshored." That's a polite way to say that the speculators above discovered that companies were more profitable when they evaded as much of human civilization as possible. Find a country with no labour laws, no protections, no standards, no rule of law at all, in fact -- and send jobs there. That way, you wouldn't have to pay for pensions, healthcare, childcare, insurance, and so on. Cost savings! Efficiency! Synergies, even -- you could make everything in that one sweatshop. ..."
"... We're used to thinking that offshoring "took" jobs in rich countries. But the truth is subtler -- and more ruinous. They blew apart the idea of a job as we used to know it. As jobs went to countries without good governance, decent labour laws, a boomerang effect happened. ..."
"... Managers began stripping away benefits of every kind, from childcare, to vacations, to healthcare. Until, at last, in a final triumph, the "at-will job" and the "zero-hours contract" were created -- social contracts that were only "jobs" in name, but offered less than no stability, security, mobility, or opportunity. People who didn't have benefits could now be fired on a whim -- and so now they bore all the risk. But the risk of what, precisely? ..."
"... Remember those speculators? Taking huge risks, betting billions with each other, on exactly nothing of real value? Risk had come full circle. Now it was the average person in the real economy who bore all the risks of these bets going bad. If the bets with south, who'd take the hit? All those people with zero benefits, no protection, no safety ..."
"... So in had to step governments. They bailed out the banks -- but didn't "restructure" them, which is to say, fire their managers, wash out their shareholders, and sell off the bad loans and bets. They just threw money at them ..."
"... What does a bankrupt have to do? Liquidate. So governments began to slash investment in social systems of all kinds. Healthcare systems, pension systems, insurance systems, media and energy systems. This was the fourth step in the birth of predatory capitalism: austerity. ..."
"... The only thing keeping the real economy going at this point was investment by the government -- after all, the speculators were speculating, not investing for the long run. It was governments that were effectively keeping economies afloat, by providing a floor for income, by anchoring economies with a vast pool of stable, safe, real, secure jobs, and investing dollars back in societies short of them. And yet, at the precise moment that governments needed to create more of precisely that, they did just the opposite. ..."
"... It's the once prosperous but now imploded middle which turns on the classes, ethnicities, groups, below it. The people who expected and felt entitled to lives of safety and security and stability -- who anticipated being at the top of a tidy little hierarchy, the boss of this or that, the chieftain of that or this, but now find themselves adrift and unmoored in a collapsing society, powerless. ..."
"... Predatory capitalism imploding into strange, new forms of old diseases of the body politic ..."
How did we get here? To a world where the forces of intolerance and indecency are on the rise, and those of decency, wisdom, and
civilization are waning? Is something like a new Dark Age falling?
I think it has everything to do with predatory capitalism, and so I want to tell you a story. Of how it came to be born, in four
steps, which span three decades.
During the 2000s, the economy of the rich world underwent something like a phase transition. It became "financialized", as the
jargon goes -- which simply means that finance came to make up a greater and greater share of the economy. Hedge funds and investment
banks and shady financial vehicles of all kinds went from a modest portion of the economy, to making up a huge chunk of it -- around
half, in some countries.
Now, what was "financialization" for? What were all these bankers, hedge fund managers, investors, and so on, doing? The answer
is: nothing. Nothing of value, anyways. They were simply placing bets with each other. Bets on bets on bets, meta-bets. Economists,
who have something like an inferiority complex, envious of swashbuckling bankers, bought their marketing pitch hog, line, and sinker:
"we're going to reduce risk! Everyone will benefit!" But no such thing was happening -- and anyone could see it. Risk was being
massively amplified, in fact, because every time a speculator made a billion dollar bet with another, they were both betting with
the same pool of money, essentially. Whose money? It wasn't theirs -- it was everyone's. Pensions, savings, bank accounts, earnings,
retirement funds. All that being bet on bets on bets on bets which amounted to nothing. But what if all the bets went south at once?
First, I want you to really understand that what was happening was a zero-sum game, where one had to lose for another to win.
Imagine there are three of us, in a little stone age tribe, with a hundred pebbles each. We spend all day every day finding new ways
to lend pebbles to each other, to bet them on who'll blink first, or even bets on those bets, and so on. In our little economy, does
anyone ever end up better off? Does anyone, for example, discover antibiotics, or even invent the wheel? Nope. We're just fools,
who'll never accomplish, learn, or create anything, sitting around playing a zero-sum game, in which no real value is ever created.
The pebbles never become anything more valuable, like, for example, books, symphonies, knowledge, or medicine. All that is exactly
what was happening during the phase of financialization.
But financialization didn't just have a direct cost -- no value being created, just men in shiny suits betting pebbles on who'd
blink first. It also had an opportunity cost. As finance grew to be a larger and larger share of the economy, so the wind got sucked
out of the sails of the "real economy", as American economists put it, which simply means people doing the work that actually does
create value -- teachers, nurses, engineers, artisans, bakers, small-town factories, and so on. Think about it simply: the more
money that was burned up in speculating, the less that was available for making things of genuine value. So the incomes of all these
people -- those in the "real economy" -- began to stagnate. New schools and hospitals and energy grids and so on weren't built
-- all the money was going towards speculating on the backs the old ones, sometimes, often, on their failures. A black hole was
growing at the heart of the economy -- but according to pundits, it was the sun itself. Everything was upside down. The bets were
indeed about to all go south at once -- only no one knew understood how or why yet.
How was the real economy to survive, then? Another hidden effect of financialization was super-concentration -- the second force
in the rise of predatory capitalism. Mom-and-pop capitalism is a healthy and beautiful thing, an economy of a million little shops,
bakeries, artisans -- but it takes only a modest attachment to a profit motive. But thanks to the rise of massive, global speculation,
only aggressive quarterly profit-maximization was allowed. CEO earnings were hitched to share prices, and your share price only went
up if your earnings did, relentlessly, illogicaly, crazily, every single quarter, instead of stabilizing at a happy, gentle amount
-- and so the only way left, in the end, to achieve it, was to build titanic monopolies, which could squeeze people for every dime.
Once the economy had Macy's, JC Penney, K-Mart, Toys-R-Us and Sears. Now it has Walmart. The story was repeated across every single
industry. Amazon, Google, Apple. A new age of monopoly arose.
But monopolies had an effect, too. The third force in the rise of predatory capitalism was the implosion of the institution formerly
known as the job. Now, just before peak financialization, beginning in the 1990s, many jobs were "offshored." That's a polite way
to say that the speculators above discovered that companies were more profitable when they evaded as much of human civilization as
possible. Find a country with no labour laws, no protections, no standards, no rule of law at all, in fact -- and send jobs there.
That way, you wouldn't have to pay for pensions, healthcare, childcare, insurance, and so on. Cost savings! Efficiency! Synergies,
even -- you could make everything in that one sweatshop.
We're used to thinking that offshoring "took" jobs in rich countries. But the truth is subtler -- and more ruinous. They blew
apart the idea of a job as we used to know it. As jobs went to countries without good governance, decent labour laws, a boomerang
effect happened. The machine discovered that it could do in rich countries what it had done in poor ones -- and so it began stripping
away everything that made a job "a job." Because the economy was increasingly composed of monopolies, giant companies, banks, and
investors had the power to do so with impunity. Speculators began raiding pension funds. Managers began stripping away benefits of
every kind, from childcare, to vacations, to healthcare. Until, at last, in a final triumph, the "at-will job" and the "zero-hours
contract" were created -- social contracts that were only "jobs" in name, but offered less than no stability, security, mobility,
or opportunity. People who didn't have benefits could now be fired on a whim -- and so now they bore all the risk. But the risk
of what, precisely?
Remember those speculators? Taking huge risks, betting billions with each other, on exactly nothing of real value? Risk had come
full circle. Now it was the average person in the real economy who bore all the risks of these bets going bad. If the bets with south,
who'd take the hit? All those people with zero benefits, no protection, no safety, all those people for whom "a job" now meant something
more like "a temporary soul-crushing way to avoid destitution." They're the ones who'd be fired, instantly, lose what little savings
they had, have their already dwindling incomes slashed, be ruined.
And then the bets went bad. As bets tend to do, when you make too many of them, on foolish things. What had the speculators been
betting with each other on? As it turns out, largely on property prices. But people without the stable jobs that had kept such a
huge property bubble going didn't have growing incomes anymore. Property prices couldn't keep rising. Bang! The financial system
fell like a row of dominoes. It turned out that everyone had bet property prices would go on rising -- and on the other side of
that bet was everyone else. All of them had been betting on the same thing -- "we all bet prices will keep rising forever!" The
losses were so vast, and so widespread, that the whole global financial system buckled. The banks didn't have the money to pay each
other for these foolish bets -- how could they have? Each one had bet the whole house on the same thing, and they all would have
gone bankrupt to each other. LOL -- do you see the fatal stupidity of it all yet?
So in had to step governments. They bailed out the banks -- but didn't "restructure" them, which is to say, fire their managers,
wash out their shareholders, and sell off the bad loans and bets. They just threw money at them -- and took those bad bets onto
the nation's books, instead. It was the most foolish decision since the Great Depression. Why?
Well, now governments had trillions in -- pow! -- sudden debt. What were they to do? How would they pay it off? Now, you might
think that Presidents are very intelligent people, but unfortunately, they are just politicians. And so instead of doing what they
should have done -- printing money, simply cancelling each others' debts to each other, which were for fictional speculation anyways
-- they decided that they were "broke". Bankrupt, even -- even though a country can't go bankrupt, anymore than you could if you
could print your own currency at home, and spend it everywhere.
What does a bankrupt have to do? Liquidate. So governments began to slash investment in social systems of all kinds. Healthcare
systems, pension systems, insurance systems, media and energy systems. This was the fourth step in the birth of predatory capitalism:
austerity.
But people's incomes were already dwindling, thanks to the first three steps -- as jobs not just disappeared in quantity, but
also imploded in quality, as monopolies grew in power, and as pointless, destructive, zero-sum speculation sucked the life out of
the real economy. The only thing keeping the real economy going at this point was investment by the government -- after all, the
speculators were speculating, not investing for the long run. It was governments that were effectively keeping economies afloat,
by providing a floor for income, by anchoring economies with a vast pool of stable, safe, real, secure jobs, and investing dollars
back in societies short of them. And yet, at the precise moment that governments needed to create more of precisely that, they did
just the opposite.
Snap! Economies broke like twigs. The people formerly known as the middle class had been caught in between the pincers of these
four forces -- financialization, monopoly, the implosion of the job, and austerity. Together, they shattered what was left of rich
economies -- to the point that today, incomes are stagnant across the rich world, even in much vaunted Scandinavia, while living
standards are falling in many rich countries, like the US and UK.
What do people do as hardship begins to bite -- especially those who expected comfortable, easy lives? They become reactionary,
lashing out violently. They seek safety in the arms of demagogues. That doesn't mean, as American pundits naively think, that "poor
people become authoritarians!" Quite the opposite.
It's the once prosperous but now imploded middle which turns on the classes, ethnicities, groups, below it. The people who expected
and felt entitled to lives of safety and security and stability -- who anticipated being at the top of a tidy little hierarchy,
the boss of this or that, the chieftain of that or this, but now find themselves adrift and unmoored in a collapsing society, powerless.
That gap between expectation and reality is what ruinous. They retain a desperate need to be atop a hierarchy, to be above someone,
the entitled imploded middles -- and what has happened in history, time and again, is that they turn to those who promise them
just that superiority, by turning on those below them. Even if, especially if, it is in the extreme, irrational, yet perfectly logical
form of supremacy and dominion over the weak, the despised, and the impure.
And that is what all today's reactionary, extremist movements --
which I call the Faction --
really are. Predatory capitalism imploding into strange, new forms of old diseases of the body politic -- ultrauthoritarianism,
theosupremacism, kleptofascism, neofeudalism, biodominionism, hatriarchy, technotalitarianism, novel and lethal forms of ruin for
a new dark age.
And so here we are, you and I. On the cusp of that age. A time where the shadows in human hearts shine as black and blinding as
midnight. And once again, it is the folly and hubris of wise men that led us here.
"... Divine right, infalibility of Pope and Kings over the poor 99% / Divine right and infalibility of corporations and the invisible hand of the market over the 99%. Thank you ..."
"... They devised the scam of privatization to get the money and TOOK IT GLOBAL, getting money from our country and many others that could issue money with almost no constraints (meaning that the constraint is 'what is physically possible', or put another way, real resources are the constraint). ..."
"... But of course they needed plausible LIES to dupe the public, right? And so they pretended that our federal money is finite and 'like a household budget' to dupe us so they could implement their scam. They lie about our national 'debt', for example; it is actually our NATIONAL SAVINGS ACCOUNT. They lie about having to raise taxes in order to have nice things. Every fearmongering thing they tell us is a LIE – about the deficit, about 'can't afford', about 'have to make cuts to some programs', and on and on." ..."
"... I might add that we citizens of the U.S. are more often than not referred to by the media and government officials as consumers. An Orwellian shift that many haven't even noticed, yet these two definitions are so completely different, while the consequence is the denuding of the meaning of what a citizen is and is replaced with the corporate ideal that a citizen is nothing more than a cog, a consumer, and in essence citizenship is irrelevant in a globalized oligarchy. ..."
Divine right, infalibility of Pope and Kings over the poor 99% / Divine right and
infalibility of corporations and the invisible hand of the market over the 99%. Thank
you
Unfettered Fire , July 4, 2018 at 7:52 am
The latest revolt has been the Revolt of the Elites these past 40 years:
"Basically, the only reason we do not have good things like most other advanced countries
have is because the greedy sociopaths running things for decades wanted our unlimited federal
money for themselves.
Unlimited money? HOW CAN THAT BE? Yes, since the 70s, they understood that the federal
government could issue any amount of money for anything that is physically possible.* And
they wanted that money for themselves instead of using our money for the good of all as
directed by our Constitution (Article 1, Section 8).
They devised the scam of privatization to get the money and TOOK IT GLOBAL, getting money
from our country and many others that could issue money with almost no constraints (meaning
that the constraint is 'what is physically possible', or put another way, real resources are
the constraint).
But of course they needed plausible LIES to dupe the public, right? And so they pretended
that our federal money is finite and 'like a household budget' to dupe us so they could
implement their scam. They lie about our national 'debt', for example; it is actually our
NATIONAL SAVINGS ACCOUNT. They lie about having to raise taxes in order to have nice things.
Every fearmongering thing they tell us is a LIE – about the deficit, about 'can't
afford', about 'have to make cuts to some programs', and on and on."
I might add that we citizens of the U.S. are more often than not referred to by the media
and government officials as consumers. An Orwellian shift that many haven't even noticed, yet
these two definitions are so completely different, while the consequence is the denuding of
the meaning of what a citizen is and is replaced with the corporate ideal that a citizen is
nothing more than a cog, a consumer, and in essence citizenship is irrelevant in a globalized
oligarchy.
Just what have we learned over the years (or not)?
Unfortunately, economists seem to given more attention after they're deceased and it
appears Hyman P. Minsky (1919 -1986) is one in this category as well. As I read this book,
originally published in 1986, I was amazed at not only one, but the many, parallels to today
his synthesis of economic views, a blend of today's camps including the behavioral, had.
More valuable to you are his comments than mine, so I will quote Minsky as much as
possible in this review and highly suggest its reading to fill in the gaps he so well
articulates on his own. I decided to read this book because I'm not an economist and heard
how his theories may better apply today than ever.
Many years later, the preface to this edition provides an excellent summary of Minsky's
work. You do not need to be an expert to follow along. In the Introduction (8), Minsky points
out that the institutional arrangements we have today in response to the Great Depression
were set up pre-Keynes and with a pre-Keynesian understanding of the economy. ¨The
evidence from 1975 indicates that, although the simple Keynesian model in which a large
government deficit stabilizes and the helps the economy to expand is valid in a rough and
ready way, the relevant economic relations are more complicated than the simple model allows.
In particular, because what happens in our economy is so largely determined by financial
considerations, economic theory can be relevant only if finance is integrated in the
structure of the theory.¨
Minsky discusses Big Government and lender-of-last-resort (Federal Reserve or Fed) which
is enlightening is and of itself. The balance of Chapters two and three are devoted to how
these two interventions may work in theory. ¨To understand how Big Government stopped the
economy's free fall, it is necessary to delve into the different impacts of government
deficits on our economy ...¨ (24) He proceeds to define and then discuss three impacts:
income and employment effect; budget effect; and portfolio effect. The standard view only
incorporates one impact while Minsky argues and expanded view must incorporate all three
views. ¨As a result of the 1975 experience, the issues in economic theory and policy that
we should have to face are not about the ability of prodigious government deficit spending to
halt even a very sharp recession but about the relative efficiency of specific measures and
the side and after effects associated with particular policy strategies.¨ (24-25) I would
suggest this has not been done effectively in response to the 2007 recession (started in Dec
2007 and has not been declared over as of this review writing (google "nber recession dates"
for start and finish dates for this recession) which to date has had a more blind application
of Keynesian without much thought as Minsky suggested long ago. Of interest is his discussion
how Big Government entitlement programs impart an inflationary bias into the economy.
(29)
Minsky's lender-of-last-resort includes a discussion on the lack of understanding of the
inflationary side effects affects of intervention (51) and explosive growth of speculative
liability structures (52) are as applicable today as to then. ¨Unless a theory can define
the conditions in which a phenomenon occurs, it offers no guide to the control or elimination
of the phenomenon.¨ He discusses the open market and discount window functions of the Fed
and is instructive as to how the FOMC loses its power to affect member bank behavior, thus
the Fed is not acting on intimate knowledge of banking practices. (54) Wow! Wasn't that also
true this time! Minsky points out five causes of concern that the 1974 Chairman of the
Federal Reserve System had appear as relevant today as to then as well: ¨first, the
attenuation of the banking systems' base of equity capital; second, greater reliance on funds
of a potentially volatile character; third, heavy loan commitments in relation to resources;
fourth, some deterioration in the quality of assets; fifth, increased exposure to the larger
banks to risks entailed in foreign exchange transactions and other foreign
operations.¨
Minsky foresees how regulators (and politicians it seems) in imputing ¨...the
difficulties he sees to either a laxness of regulatory zeal or, perhaps, some rather trivial
mistake in how the regulatory bodies were organized, rather than to a fundamental behavioral
characteristic of our economy.¨ (58) Even today, we see more shuffling of regulatory
responsibilities and body creation rather than understand the behavior that causes the
problems first in order to develop solutions.
He also points out how real estate was a problem back then as well, as result from
explosive speculation. ¨The need for lender-of-last-resort intervention follows from an
explosive growth in speculative finance and the way in which speculative finance leads to a
crisis-prone situation.¨ (59) ¨Inasmuch as the successful execution of
lender-of-last-resort functions extends the domain of the Federal Reserve guarantees to new
markets and to new instruments there is an inherent inflationary bias to these operations; by
validating the past use of an instrument, an implicit guarantee of its future is
extended.¨ (58-59)
¨It is important to emphasize that ... any constraint placed on the Federal Reserve
flexibility (e.g. by mandating mechanical rules of behavior) attenuates its power to act.
Rules cannot substitute for lender-of-last-resort discretion.¨ Recall, the call by many
to constrain the Fed? Minsky suggests otherwise. He also states ¨Certainly the bank
examination aspects of the FDIC and the Federal Reserve should be integrated, especially if
inputs from bank examinations are to become part of an early warning system for problem
banks.¨ (64) This ties in with the idea above where the Fed has lost intimate knowledge
of the banking practices.
Minsky discusses how the behavior of many actors need to be considered in a cohesive
theory when he states ¨The dynamics of the financial system that lead to institutional
change result from profit-seeking activities by businesses, financial institutions, and
households as they manage their affairs.¨ (77) The problems that exist in the
hierarchical financial system between mainstream banks and fringe banks is also noticed by
Minsky years ago where a potential domino effect can cause serious disruptions as a result of
the lender-of-last-resort guarantee to the mainstream banks as discussed on page 58. (97)
So far Minsky has laid the groundwork for actor interactions and issues. He then proceeds
to theory. ¨In all disciplines theory plays a double role: it is both a lens and a
blinder.¨ "It is ironic that an economic theory that purports to be based on Keynes fails
because it cannot explain instability. ... Identifying a phenomenon is not enough: we need a
theory that makes instability a normal result in our economy and gives us handles to control
it." (111) "In what lies ahead, we will develop a theory explaining why our economy
fluctuates, showing that the instability and incoherence exhibited from time to time is
related to the development of fragile financial structures that occur normally within
capitalist economies in the course of financing capital asset ownership and investment. We
thus start with a bias in favor of using the market mechanism to the fullest extent possible
to achieve social goals, but with recognition that market capitalism is both intrinsically
unstable and can lead to distasteful distributions of wealth and power." (112) "The elements
of Keynes that are ignored in the neoclassical synthesis deal with the pricing of capital
assets and the special properties of economies with capitalistic financial institutions."
(114) Minsky goes on to deconstruct both pre-Keynesian and and after-Keynesian constructs and
synthesis. Minsky's "financial instability hypothesis" (127) addresses weaknesses he views in
the neoclassical model. "In the neoclassical view, speculation, financing conditions,
inherited financial obligations, and the fluctuating behavior of aggregate demand have
nothing whatsoever to do with savings, investment, and the interest rate determination."
(123) "In neoclassical theory, money does not have any significant relation to finance and
the financing activity." (124) Minsky addresses the point that Keynes thoughts came out after
government programs for reform and recovery were put into place, not the other way around and
many may think today. (134) Minsky then develops how cause and effect to lay the ground work
for his hypothesis throughout chapters 6 through 9 as he discusses in turn price relations
allowing for government, foreign trade, consuming out of profits and saving out of wages,
supply prices, taxes and government spending, financing of business spending, investment and
finance, capital asset prices, investment, cash flows, and three kinds of financing (hedge,
speculative and Ponzi: "The mixture of hedge, speculative, and Ponzi finance in an economy is
a major determinant of its stability. (232)). "The main reason why our economy behaves in
different ways at different times is that financial practices and structure of financial
commitments change." (219) He calls the economy existing always in a transitory state.
Minsky then builds a larger model by discussion Institutional dynamics in Part 4.
"Business cycles are `natural' in a investing capitalist economy, but to understand why this
is so it is necessary to deal with the financing of investment and positions in capital
assets explicitly." (249) He also recognized the distinction between commercial banks and
investment banks and that the distinction between the two were breaking down even back in the
80's. (249) "In a capitalist economy money is tied up with the process of creating and
controlling capital assets." (250) "Money is created as bankers go about their business of
arranging for the financing of trade, investment, and positions in capital assets."
(250).
Deposit (commercial banks) are emphasized in Chapter 10. Minsky's observation in the 80's
rings as true today as it did then when he says "The narrow view that banking affects the
economy only through the money supply led economists and policymakers to virtually ignore the
composition of bank portfolios." (252) The rest of Chapter 10 explains how bank portfolio
composition works and the economic effect this has.
Chapter 11 in about inflation. "My theory emphasizes the composition of financed demand
and the spending of incomes that are allocations of profits as the determinants of the prices
of consumption goods. It is compatible with the multiplier analysis in orthodox Keynesian
theory" (254) "The determination of employment, wages, and prices starts with the profit
calculations of businessmen and bankers. This proposition is in sharp contrast to the views
of neoclassical monetarist theory." (255) Milton Friedman is a monetarist that he discusses
next with this weakness in that theory in mind. Minsky develops his inflation theory by
discussing money wages, price-deflated wages, government as an inflation engine, and trade
union roles in inflation.
Part 5 is the culmination of his work where he discusses possible policy implications of
his theory through the lens of his financial instability hypothesis. "Even if a program of
reform is successful, the success will be transitory." (319) He continually reminds us that a
dynamic system will need continual monitoring, adjustment and trade offs in the attempt to
keep instability within reasonable bounds. An overarching agenda and approach should be
developed to do this. An employment strategy should be developed, financial reform should be
carefully crafted so as to not make matter worse.
**********
Conclusion:
As I mentioned at the beginning, I am not an economist. Minsky's description of the economy
as developed through his instability model appears to describe much of how the interactions
work, the inherent instability of a capitalist system, and his proposals to manage the
instability appear to have merit for consideration. Especially in light of the 2007
recession.
Minsky appears to be an interesting combination of Keynesians who look to mitigate busts,
and Austrians who look to prevent artificial booms.
For an easy read which builds a hypothetical economy, using an example of an island and
fish on up, to describe economic history through the lens of the Austrian economic model:
How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes by Peter D Schiff and Andrew J Schiff.
The USA elite might now want abandoning of GATT and even WTO as it does not like the results. That single fraud on the west has
had catastrophically perverse consequences for the coterie of killer's future and all because the designers of GATT had never thought
outside the square of economics and failed utterly to grasp the gift of scientific and manufacturing politics.
Notable quotes:
"... The US still depends heavily on oil importation -- it is not "independent" in any manner whatsoever. Here's the most current data while this chart shows importation history since 1980. ..."
"... the only time a biological or economic entity can become energy independent is upon its death when it no longer requires energy for its existence. ..."
"... A big part of the US move into the middle east post WWII was that they needed a strategic reserve for time of war and also they could see US consumption growing far larger than US production. ..."
"... The USA of WAR may have oil independence, but it is temporary. The race is on for release from oil dependency and China intends to win in my view. It is setting ambitious targets to move to electric vehicles and mass transit. That will give it a technology dominance, and perhaps a resource dominance in the EV sphere. We are in the decade of major corporate struggles and defensive maneuverings around China investments in key EV sectors. ..."
"... In ten to twenty years' time the energy story could well be significantly different. The USA and its coterie of killers are still fighting yesterday's war, yesterday's hatred of all things Russian, yesterday's energy monopoly. ..."
"... I don't believe that the USA of WAR has changed or even intends to change the way they play their 'game'. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade set the trajectory for technology transfer, fabrication skills transfer, growth of academic and scientific achievement in 'other' countries (China, Russia etc). Their thoughts in the GATT deal were trade = economics = oligarchy = good. ..."
"... That single fraud on the west has had catastrophically perverse consequences for the coterie of killer's future and all because the designers of GATT had never thought outside the square of economics and failed utterly to grasp the gift of scientific and manufacturing politics. ..."
"... Canada and the gulf monarchies are the only countries with large reserves that are not hostile as yet to the US. As the US no longer is totally reliant on imports to meet its consumption, Saudi's, Bahrain and co are now expendable assets. ..."
The US still depends heavily on oil importation -- it is not "independent" in any manner whatsoever.
Here's the most current data
while this chart shows importation
history since 1980.
As I've said before, the only time a biological or economic entity can become energy independent is upon its death when
it no longer requires energy for its existence.
What I am looking at are strategic reserves, not how much oil is currently produced. With shale it now has those reserves and
shale oil I think is now at the point where production could quickly ramp up to full self sufficiency if required. Even if the
US were producing as much oil as they consumed, they would still be importing crude and exporting refined products.
A big part of the US move into the middle east post WWII was that they needed a strategic reserve for time of war and also
they could see US consumption growing far larger than US production.
@Peter AU 1 #28 Thank you for that stimulating post. I just have to respond. And thanks to b and all the commenters here, it is
my daily goto post.
The USA of WAR may have oil independence, but it is temporary. The race is on for release from oil dependency and China intends
to win in my view. It is setting ambitious targets to move to electric vehicles and mass transit. That will give it a technology
dominance, and perhaps a resource dominance in the EV sphere. We are in the decade of major corporate struggles and defensive
maneuverings around China investments in key EV sectors.
In ten to twenty years' time the energy story could well be significantly different. The USA and its coterie of killers
are still fighting yesterday's war, yesterday's hatred of all things Russian, yesterday's energy monopoly.
I don't believe that the USA of WAR has changed or even intends to change the way they play their 'game'. The General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade set the trajectory for technology transfer, fabrication skills transfer, growth of academic and scientific
achievement in 'other' countries (China, Russia etc). Their thoughts in the GATT deal were trade = economics = oligarchy = good.
That single fraud on the west has had catastrophically perverse consequences for the coterie of killer's future and all
because the designers of GATT had never thought outside the square of economics and failed utterly to grasp the gift of scientific
and manufacturing politics.
By gross ignorance and foolish under-investment, the USA of WAR and its coterie of killers have eaten their future at their
people's expense.
Light sweet vs heavy sour. Light means it contains a lot of diesel/petrol. Sweet means low sulphur. Many oils are heavy sour.
Canada sand. the stuff they get from that is thick bitumen with high sulpher. The sulpher needs to be removed and the bitumen
broken down into light fuels like diesel and petrol.
Canada and the gulf monarchies are the only countries with large reserves that are not hostile as yet to the US. As the
US no longer is totally reliant on imports to meet its consumption, Saudi's, Bahrain and co are now expendable assets.
The great game for the US now is control or denial. Access to oil as a strategically critical resource is no longer a factor
for the US.
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as
you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're
history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." Karl Rove.
The squealing and consternation coming from the UK indicates that the empire has changed course and the UK is left sitting
on its own shit pile.
"... The loss of middle class jobs has had a dire effect on the hopes and expectations of Americans, on the American economy, on the finances of cities and states and, thereby, on their ability to meet pension obligations and provide public services, and on the tax base for Social Security and Medicare, thus threatening these important elements of the American consensus. In short, the greedy corporate elite have benefitted themselves at enormous cost to the American people and to the economic and social stability of the United States. ..."
"... With the decline in income growth, the US economy stalled. The Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan substituted an expansion in consumer credit for the missing growth in consumer income in order to maintain aggregate consumer demand. Instead of wage increases, Greenspan relied on an increase in consumer debt to fuel the economy. ..."
"... As a member of the Plunge Protection Team known officially as the Working Group on Financial Markets, the Federal Reserve has an open mandate to prevent another 1987 "Black Monday." In my opinion, the Federal Reserve would interpret this mandate as authority to directly intervene. ..."
"... As Washington's international power comes from the US dollar as world reserve currency, protecting the value of the dollar is essential to American power. Foreign inflows into US equities are part of the dollar's strength. Thus, the Plunge Protection Team seeks to prevent a market crash that would cause flight from US dollar assets. ..."
When are America's global corporations
and Wall Street going to sit down with President Trump and explain to him that his trade war is not
with China but with them?
The biggest chunk of America's trade deficit with China is
the offshored production of America's global corporations. When the corporations bring the products
that they produce in China to the US consumer market, the products are classified as imports from
China.
Six years ago when I was writing
The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism
, I concluded
on the evidence that
half of US imports from China consist of the offshored production of
US corporations.
Offshoring is a substantial benefit to US corporations because of much
lower labor and compliance costs.
Profits, executive bonuses, and shareholders' capital
gains receive a large boost from offshoring. The costs of these benefits for a few fall on the many
- the former American employees who formerly had a middle class income and expectations for their
children.
In my book, I cited evidence that during the first decade of the 21st century
"the US lost
54,621 factories, and manufacturing employment fell by 5 million employees. Over the decade, the
number of larger factories (those employing 1,000 or more employees) declined by 40 percent. US
factories employing 500-1,000 workers declined by 44 percent; those employing between 250-500
workers declined by 37 percent, and those employing between 100-250 workers shrunk by 30 percent.
These losses are net of new start-ups. Not all the losses are due to offshoring. Some are the
result of business failures"
(p. 100).
In other words, to put it in the most simple and clear terms,
millions of Americans lost
their middle class jobs not because China played unfairly, but because American corporations
betrayed the American people and exported their jobs.
"Making America great again"
means dealing with these corporations, not with China.
When Trump learns this, assuming anyone
will tell him, will he back off China and take on the American global corporations?
The loss of middle class jobs has had a dire effect
on the hopes and
expectations of Americans, on the American economy, on the finances of cities and states and,
thereby, on their ability to meet pension obligations and provide public services, and on the tax
base for Social Security and Medicare, thus threatening these important elements of the American
consensus. In short, the greedy corporate elite have benefitted themselves at enormous cost to the
American people and to the economic and social stability of the United States.
The job loss from offshoring also has had a huge and dire impact on Federal Reserve
policy.
With the decline in income growth, the US economy stalled. The Federal Reserve under Alan
Greenspan substituted an expansion in consumer credit for the missing growth in consumer income in
order to maintain aggregate consumer demand.
Instead of wage increases, Greenspan relied
on an increase in consumer debt to fuel the economy.
The credit expansion and consequent rise in real estate prices, together with the deregulation
of the banking system, especially the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, produced the real estate
bubble and the fraud and mortgage-backed derivatives that gave us the 2007-08 financial crash.
The Federal Reserve responded to the crash not by bailing out consumer debt but by
bailing out the debt of its only constituency -- the big banks.
The Federal Reserve let
little banks fail and be bought up by the big ones, thus further increasing financial
concentration. The multi-trillion dollar increase in the Federal Reserve's balance sheet was
entirely for the benefit of a handful of large banks. Never before in history had an agency of the
US government acted so decisively in behalf only of the ownership class.
The way the Federal Reserve saved the irresponsible large banks, which should have failed and
have been broken up, was to raise the prices of troubled assets on the banks' books by lowering
interest rates. To be clear, interest rates and bond prices move in opposite directions. When
interest rates are lowered by the Federal Reserve, which it achieves by purchasing debt
instruments, the prices of bonds rise. As the various debt risks move together, lower interest
rates raise the prices of all debt instruments, even troubled ones.
Raising the prices of
debt instruments produced solvent balance sheets for the big banks.
To achieve its aim, the Federal Reserve had to lower the interest rates to zero, which even the
low reported inflation reduced to negative interest rates. These low rates had disastrous
consequences. On the one hand low interest rates caused all sorts of speculations. On the other low
interest rates deprived retirees of interest income on their retirement savings, forcing them to
draw down capital, thus reducing accumulated wealth among the 90 percent.
The
under-reported inflation rate also denied retirees Social Security cost-of-living adjustments,
forcing them to spend retirement capital.
The low interest rates also encouraged corporate boards to borrow money in order to buy back the
corporation's stock, thus raising its price and, thereby, the bonuses and stock options of
executives and board members and the capital gains of shareholders. In other words, corporations
indebted themselves for the short-term benefit of executives and owners. Companies that refused to
participate in this scam were threatened by Wall Street with takeovers.
Consequently today the combination of offshoring and Federal Reserve policy has left us
a situation in which every aspect of the economy is indebted - consumers, government at all levels,
and businesses.
A recent Federal Reserve study concluded that Americans are so indebted
and so poor that 41 percent of the American population cannot raise $400 without borrowing from
family and friends or selling personal possessions.
A country whose population is this indebted has no consumer market. Without a consumer market
there is no economic growth, other than the false orchestrated figures produced by the US
government by under counting the inflation rate and the unemployment rate.
Without economic growth, consumers, businesses, state, local, and federal governments
cannot service their debts and meet their obligations.
The Federal Reserve has learned that it can keep afloat the Ponzi scheme that is the US economy
by printing money with which to support financial asset prices. The alleged rises in interest rates
by the Federal Reserve are not real interest rates rises. Even the under-reported inflation rate is
higher than the interest rate increases, with the result that the real interest rate falls.
It is no secret that the Federal Reserve controls the price of bonds by openly buying and
selling US Treasuries.
Since 1987 the Federal Reserve can also support the price of US
equities.
If the stock market tries to sell off, before much damage can be done the
Federal Reserve steps in and purchases S&P futures, thus driving up stock prices.
In recent
years, when corrections begin they are quickly interrupted and the fall is arrested.
As a member of the Plunge Protection Team known officially as the Working Group on
Financial Markets, the Federal Reserve has an open mandate to prevent another 1987 "Black Monday."
In my opinion, the Federal Reserve would interpret this mandate as authority to directly intervene.
However,
just as the Fed can use the big banks as agents for its control over the price
of gold, it can use the Wall Street banks dark pools to manipulate the equity markets.
In
this way the manipulation can be disguised as banks making trades for clients. The Plunge
Protection Team consists of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, the SEC, and the Commodity Futures
Trading Corporation. As Washington's international power comes from the US dollar as world reserve
currency, protecting the value of the dollar is essential to American power. Foreign inflows into
US equities are part of the dollar's strength.
Thus, the Plunge Protection Team seeks to
prevent a market crash that would cause flight from US dollar assets.
Normally so much money creation by the Federal Reserve, especially in conjunction with such a
high debt level of the US government and also state and local governments, consumers, and
businesses, would cause a falling US dollar exchange rate.
Why hasn't this happened?
For three reasons.
One is that the central banks of the other three reserve currencies -- the Japanese central
bank, the European central bank, and the Bank of England -- also print money. Their Quantitative
Easing, which still continues, offsets the dollars created by the Federal Reserve and keeps the
US dollar from depreciating.
A second reason is that when suspicion of the dollar's worth sends up the gold price, the
Federal Reserve or its bullion banks short gold futures with naked contracts. This drives down
the gold price. There are numerous columns on my website by myself and Dave Kranzler proving
this to be the case. There is no doubt about it.
The third reason is that money managers, individuals, pension funds, everyone and all the
rest had rather make money than not. Therefore, they go along with the Ponzi scheme. The people
who did not benefit from the Ponzi scheme of the past decade are those who understood it was a
Ponzi scheme but did not realize the corruption that has beset the Federal Reserve and the
central bank's ability and willingness to continue to feed the Ponzi scheme.
As I have explained previously,
the Ponzi scheme falls apart when it becomes
impossible to continue to support the dollar as burdened as the dollar is by debt levels and
abundance of dollars that could be dumped on the exchange markets.
This is why Washington is determined to retain its hegemony.
It is Washington's hegemony
over Japan, Europe, and the UK that protects the American Ponzi scheme.
The moment one of
these central banks ceases to support the dollar, the others would follow, and the Ponzi scheme
would unravel. If the prices of US debt and stocks were reduced to their real values, the United
States would no longer have a place in the ranks of world powers.
The implication is that war, and not economic reform, is America's most likely future.
In a subsequent column I hope to explain why neither US political party has the awareness
and capability to deal with real problems.
Roberts is totally correct that Trump's trade war is with US
corporations and their offshoring. I think Trump knows this
and that's why he's cutting regulations and red tape at
home. We've gone too far left on regs. As for labor costs,
most factories are highly automated here but labor cost
includes disability, pensions, 'diversity' harassment
lawsuits, etc. This overhead doesn't exist in China or
Vietnam where my LL Bean t-shirts are made.
Trump's war is with the a corporate ideology that says
profit is primary to nationality or normal morality. He gave
the biggest corporations a huge tax cut. Now they need to
play ball with America's workers.
They need to acknowledge that we're all Americans and our
legal system, which protects their solvency, will not
survive if today's angry politics continues for two more
years.
The S&P500 needs to think about their future and getting
Bernie or worse in 2020. There's all these trade tirades
going on - good time to give Trump a win and then another to
let him feel some support. Then let the wise men of
government policy step in for a sit-down and determine the
best policy for America's survival. Is it either becoming
fascist or a pleading for a negotiated bankruptcy with all
the geopolitical implications? It can't be either extreme so
plan and do it. Otherwise, Mr. Roberts will be remembered as
a sage.
"To continue allowing these products into our country will
ultimately bring their standard of living here also."
This
is the most incisive comment I've seen on ZH in quite awhile. It's
like a balance beam scale that swings back and forth as weight is
added to or subtracted from one side or the other. Ultimately, the
scale will balance out as everyone attains the same standard of
living . Our government and economy has been surviving on borrowed
money (ie; paper fiat currency) since at least 1971, and now even
common people are living on borrowed paper fiat currency. Most of
the common people in China that I have known live in small rented
apartments and mostly eat the cheapest foods they can find; ie,
rice, vegetables, tofu, pumpkin, etc. At least the downward
trajectory of our economy will cure the obesity epidemic, but many
will likely starve. The big question is when? We are on the
downward slope already, but how steep it will be is a question no
one seems to be able to answer.
"when I was writing
The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism
,
I concluded on the evidence that
half of US imports from
China consist of the offshored production of US corporations"
Escaping government taxes and regulations has NOTHING to do with
Laissez Faire Capitalism, it's not even capitalism at that point!
Most of the people on this site already know what Roberts just
summarized. Other than referring to the Fed as a government agency
rather than a private corporation, he was mainly correct in what he
wrote. Most of the American sheeple do not. They do know that they
were sold out, but they don't know the details; how, why, by whom.
It's common knowledge that the people's gold was stolen by the Bush
and Clinton crime families along with Robert Rubin. There is a
persistent rumor out that Trump is in the process of successfully
recovering it. If China and Russia force the world back on a real
gold standard and Trump's recovery is unsuccessful, the USA will be
swimming naked when the tide goes out.
As to how long can the Fed
keep their Ponzi going. The answer would be a lot longer if they
still controlled the planet. But they no longer do and their bluff
is being called right now by Putin, Xi and others. As Göring wrote
at his Nuremberg trial, "Truth is the enemy of the State."
Roberts should be the one explaining. He makes sweeping assertions like:
" With the decline in income growth, the US economy stalled." When
exactly? What year are you talking about? And he seemingly leaves out
demographics completely in his analysis. He's just looking at everything
through the lens of central banking, and when all you have is a hammer,
everything tends to look like a nail. I'm thinking that, like Rudy
Giuliani, he lost his fastball a while back and maybe should just stick
to writing about 1987.
Finally, we have an
economist who reveals the ugly truth behind what the criminal corporate
class has done and is doing to America. See also Dr. Michael Hudson and
his work.
As for Trump, I suspect he understands what's really going on, but a
lot of his pals are billionaires involved in this corruption. Obviously,
he can't name names otherwise, the 1% elite would eliminate his
administration.
It may be that Trump is using the only "out" left in causing these
tariff wars. If you read other online reports in China, Russia, a seldom
few from the EU, you see enormous amounts of trade between China,
Russia, Iran, Germany, and other Asian nations. This American senses we
are being left in the dust by all this vitality.
It's recognized many multi-millionaire/billionaires in both the US &
other parts of the world are making lots of money from the system.
However, I'm beginning to sense that ALL these US elites recognize
the US financial system is deteriorating and there's no way to turn
back.
It happens to every "empire" throughout history, but, other than
about 10% of population who are informed, the real tragedy is about 80%
of the American public who haven't a clue.
"With the decline in income growth, the US economy stalled. The Federal
Reserve under Alan Greenspan substituted an expansion in consumer credit
for the missing growth in consumer income in order to maintain aggregate
consumer demand. Instead of wage increases, Greenspan relied on an increase
in consumer debt to fuel the economy."
"The credit expansion and
consequent rise in real estate prices, together with the deregulation of
the banking system, especially the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act,
produced the real estate bubble and the fraud and mortgage-backed
derivatives that gave us the 2007-08 financial crash."
"The Federal Reserve responded to the crash not by bailing out consumer
debt but by bailing out the debt of its only constituency -- the big banks."
Yes, It is wash, rinse, repeat but Glass Steagal is irrelevant. The
criminaliy is the actual issue. Rules and regs are meaningless when the
bankers are also in charge of the regulation. Another layer is the
multinational corporations / banks that operate in between nations. What
may be illegal in one jurisdiction is protected in another. Without a
will to enforce, the crime is unstoppable.
The bankers did the end run round Glass Steagal long before
Clinton and his banking pals killed it officially. Killing it was
simply the formality, making things all legal like.
I had to laugh when I read it given all the irreversible mistakes that have
been made for decades in that city given how vital it once was to the U.S.
economy. But it makes you want to cry given the delusion on display of it's
leadership that could have made Ford embarrass itself like this with that
announcement so late in our "game"!
PCR of course does not explain how a nation of 320 million people with bountiful
natural resources and extensive industrial, services, and education
infrastructure would *not* be a world power, save for the fact that he really
really wishes America wasn't.
I bet what happened was these same multinationals stoked the fire about
China because they were concerned about the China 2030 plan. They wanted
China for production and a market, not for competition. They poured lots
of money into lobbying.
When Trump was elected instead of acting how they
predicted he's off script now and could hurt them. The nuisance of being a
democracy.
Barter. Happens all the time. There is NO alternative so long as we
are going to continue to believe in fantasy. Specifically, the
fantasy that economies can grow exponentially and forever in a
biosphere with finite resources. The only solution is a monetary
system that remains attached to reality, period. Keeping in mind
that no system will ever be perfect, but a system that insures bad
behavior and bad management
suffer real consequences
would be a good start! Remind me, how many bankers/financiers went to
prison for those MBS that almost destroyed the world?
A great deal of the BS is being hidden away in an explosion of large
Public-Private Partnerships projects.
Over the years we have been
hearing a lot of good things about "Public-Private Partnerships" and how they
can propel forward needed projects by adding an incentive for the private
sector to undertake projects they might choose not to do alone. Often this is
because the numbers often simply don't work. The truth is that history is
littered with these failed projects.
Often their announcements are
accompanied by promises and hype but sadly the synergy these projects are
intended to create never occurs. These so-called, "bridges to nowhere" and
boondoggles tend to be forgotten and brushed aside each time public servants
and their cronies get together. The article below delves into this tool often
used to line the pockets of those with influence.
You've well penned an Excellent Summation Piece of
not so well known behind the scenes economic conditions and factors.
As I've said many times:
UNFORESEEN WAR IS THE ONLY THING THAT DISRUPTS THE AMERICAN PONZI KNOWN AS
THE COLLUSIVE BIG BANKSTERS AKA THE FEDERAL RESERVE.
There is one point, however, where you are mistaken:
"The way the Federal Reserve saved the irresponsible large banks, which
should have failed and have been broken up, was to raise the prices of
troubled assets on the banks' books by lowering interest rates"
Wrong.
Instead, this was accomplished by the Banksters paying off the American
Congress to suspend the accounting rule called "mark to market". It was very
simple. The banks went to the government and said:
"you can print $2 trillion to bail us out, OR you can suspend mark to
market and we can show that we have NO losses on our books."
The FASB under pressure from Congress chose the prudent (at that time) but
dishonest approach and allowed the banks to suspend the mark to market
accounting rule, which is a basic rule of financial accounting. The sacrifice
was in banking transparency, which of course, is an oxymoron in 2018.
But that action essentially robbed an entire group of market speculators in
risky securities like FAZ (a 3x inverse ETF play on the banks, essentially
shorting the big banks) who bet that the US Government would not break the law
and suspend mark to market for the banks.
They were wrong and a lot of those honest speculators lost a lot of money
very quickly.
It was an "Aha!" Epiphanous moment on Thursday, April 2, 2009 for many
American equities speculators as they quickly realized that the American
government was indeed provably in the pocket of the Banksters Cartel and
likely had been for a very long time.
Interest rates way up or the dollar is toast if not for the Euro and Yen. I
have always felt the Euro was established as a shield for the USD and not so
much some European union of countries. The union of those countries will
always be difficult but controlling the currency of all those countries is
very important to the USA. Imagine all the dollar sellers today if the Euro
was not established.
Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who
makes it's laws" Roth
"Immigration" has become the dominant issue dividing Europe and the US, yet the most important matter which is driving millions
to emigrate is overlooked is wars.
In this paper we will discuss the reasons behind the massification of immigration, focusing on several issues, namely (1) imperial
wars (2) multi-national corporate expansion (3) the decline of the anti-war movements in the US and Western Europe (4) the weakness
of the trade union and solidarity movements.
We will proceed by identifying the major countries affected by US and EU wars leading to massive immigration, and then turn to
the western powers forcing refugees to 'follow' the flows of profits.
Imperial Wars and Mass Immigration
The US invasions and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq uprooted several million people, destroying their lives, families, livelihood,
housing and communities and undermining there security.
As a result, most victims faced the choice of resistance or flight. Millions chose to flee to the West since the NATO countries
would not bomb their residence in the US or Europe.
Others who fled to neighboring countries in the Middle East or Latin America were persecuted, or resided in countries too poor
to offer them employment or opportunities for a livelihood.
Some Afghans fled to Pakistan or the Middle East but discovered that these regions were also subject to armed attacks from the
West.
Iraqis were devastated by the western sanctions, invasion and occupation and fled to Europe and to a lesser degree the US , the
Gulf states and Iran.
Libya prior to the US-EU invasion was a 'receiver' country accepting and employing millions of Africans, providing them with citizenship
and a decent livelihood. After the US-EU air and sea attack and arming and financing of terrorist gangs, hundreds of thousands of
Sub-Sahara immigrants were forced to flee to Europe. Most crossed the Mediterranean Sea to the west via Italy, Spain, and headed
toward the affluent European countries which had savaged their lives in Libya.
The US-EU financed and armed client terrorist armies which assault the Syrian government and forced millions of Syrians to flee
across the border to Lebanon,Turkey and beyond to Europe, causing the so-called 'immigration crises' and the rise of rightwing anti-immigrant
parties. This led to divisions within the established social democratic and conservative parties,as sectors of the working class
turned anti-immigrant.
Europe is reaping the consequences of its alliance with US militarized imperialism whereby the US uproots millions of people and
the EU spends billions of euros to cover the cost of immigrants fleeing the western wars.
Most of the immigrants' welfare payments fall far short of the losses incurred in their homeland. Their jobs homes, schools, and
civic associations in the EU and US are far less valuable and accommodating then what they possessed in their original communities.
Economic Imperialism and Immigration: Latin America
US wars, military intervention and economic exploitation has forced millions of Latin Americans to immigrate to the US.. Nicaragua,
El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras engaged in popular struggle for socio-economic justice and political democracy between 1960 –
2000. On the verge of victory over the landed oligarchs and multinational corporations, Washington blocked popular insurgents by
spending billions of dollars, arming, training, advising the military and paramilitary forces. Land reform was aborted; trade unionists
were forced into exile and thousands of peasants fled the marauding terror campaigns.
The US-backed oligarchic regimes forced millions of displaced and uprooted pr unemployed and landless workers to flee to the US.
US supported coups and dictators resulted in 50,000 in Nicaragua, 80,000 in El Salvador and 200,000 in Guatemala. President Obama
and Hillary Clinton supported a military coup in Honduras which overthrew Liberal President Zelaya -- which led to the killing and
wounding of thousands of peasant activists and human rights workers, and the return of death squads, resulting in a new wave of immigrants
to the US.
The US promoted free trade agreement (NAFTA) drove hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers into bankruptcy and into low wage
maquiladoras; others were recruited by drug cartels; but the largest group was forced to immigrate across the Rio Grande. The US
'Plan Colombia' launched by President Clinton established seven US military bases in Colombia and provided 1 billion dollars in military
aid between 2001 – 2010. Plan Colombia doubled the size of the military.
The US backed President Alvaro Uribe, resulting in the assassination of over 200,000 peasants, trade union activists and human
rights workers by Uribe directed narco-death squad.Over two million farmers fled the countryside and immigrated to the cities or
across the border.
US business secured hundreds of thousands of Latin American low wages, agricultural and factory workers almost all without health
insurance or benefits – though they paid taxes.
Immigration doubled profits, undermined collective bargains and lowered US wages. Unscrupulous US 'entrepreneurs' recruited immigrants
into drugs, prostitution, the arms trade and money laundering.
Politicians exploited the immigration issue for political gain – blaming the immigrants for the decline of working class living
standards distracting attention from the real source : wars, invasions, death squads and economic pillage.
Conclusion
Having destroyed the lives of working people overseas and overthrown progressive leaders like Libyan President Gadhafi and Honduran
President Zelaya, millions were forced to become immigrants.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Colombia, Mexico witnessed the flight of millions of immigrants -- all victims of US and EU wars. Washington
and Brussels blamed the victims and accused the immigrants of illegality and criminal conduct.
The West debates expulsion, arrest and jail instead of reparations for crimes against humanity and violations of international
law.
To restrain immigration the first step is to end imperial wars, withdraw troops,and to cease financing paramilitary and client
terrorists.
ORDER IT NOW
Secondly, the West should establish a long term multi-billion-dollar fund for reconstruction and recovery of the economies, markets
and infrastructure they bombed The demise of the peace movement allowed the US and EU to launch and prolong serial wars which led
to massive immigration – the so-called refugee crises and the flight to Europe. There is a direct connection between the conversion
of the liberal and social democrats to war -parties and the forced flight of immigrants to the EU.
The decline of the trade unions and worse, their loss of militancy has led to the loss of solidarity with people living in the
midst of imperial wars. Many workers in the imperialist countries have directed their ire to those 'below' – the immigrants – rather
than to the imperialists who directed the wars which created the immigration problem. Immigration, war , the demise of the peace
and workers movements, and left parties has led to the rise of the militarists, and neo-liberals who have taken power throughout
the West. Their anti-immigrant politics, however, has provoked new contradictions within regimes,between business elites and among
popular movements in the EU and the US. The elite and popular struggles can go in at least two directions – toward fascism or radical
social democracy.
responding to PG's comments and the comments of Rational
Zionist, among them, being many NY Intellectuals, invented mugged reality (Neoconism) , but
party slithering is a another name for divide and conquer.
Fudmier's example as to how to control the vote:
You present an idea to 6 people (there are seven votes including yours, you are the one);
virtually everyone is indifferent or against your idea. Before the vote, how can you make the
outcome favorable to your side? Divide the opinions on a related subject so that the people
must vote for your idea if they take a side on the related subject. I am always either a
Democrat or a Republican, cannot vote for anything the other party presents, no matter how
good it is. So make the idea Republican or Democratic.
them me Total vote for against my idea
no division 1 2 3 4 5 6 ME 7 Me 6 I lose
divide by party D R D R D R ME 7 Me+3 3 I win
As the simple analysis suggests: it is easy to win a vote when the idea is Glued to the
two AAs (glue, attached, or associated). The unpopular idea Glued and attached or associated
with the political party issue splits the vote (such activity divides and weakens the
political power inherent in the voting power of the masses). For example, if we make the vote
to turn off all of the drinking water. the only vote will be mine, but if we say turn off the
drinking water to all but those who are green, we divide the vote. and control the
outcome.
This brings us to the democratic dilemma: should the non green people be included in vote
on that issue? In fact, it is exactly this problem that those who wrote the constitution
intended to establish.
The aggressive foreign policies and national security positions mentioned by PG have been
attached to the standard Jewish line; in other words the duty of a Jew to recognize
him/herself as a Jew and to vote as a member of the clan has been glued to the AAs. It is
nearly impossible to vote for Jewish interest and not vote to demolish Palestinian homes.
I am hoping this list can develop ways to analyse current events into a set of fair play
rules, reading, learning and analyzing books, journals and events and writing about them is
not enough; some kind of action is needed to bring into reality the findings of these
readings, learning and analysis produce. The best way to offset misleading, false or invented
propaganda is to force it to into a rule based debunking process. Simple rules that everyone
can learn, understand and adopt.
Capitalist Russia and its resources represent a major competitor to the resources and
schemes of the capitalist neocon led west. Hating Russia is like being a democrat or a
republican,it keeps the pharaoh options open.
DemoRats use identity politics to achieve their goals. And if it does not suit their goals it
is thrown in the garbage can as used napkin.
Also it is stupid to view candidates from the prism of identity politics: "In a mature
society, it would not matter if someone was black, white, gay, Jewish, young, old, whatever but
what policies they bring to the party. This article, going out of its way to label Nixon as LGBT
and Sanders as Jewish, really only means that they are letting the other side set the rules and
that is never a winning position. Unfortunately we do not live in a mature society."
Notable quotes:
"... Albright: "Younger women, Hillary Clinton will always be there for you" plus that other thing she said. ..."
By Gaius Publius , a professional writer living
on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby,
Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius , Tumblr and Facebook . GP article archive here . Originally published at DownWithTyranny
Albright: "Younger women, Hillary Clinton will always be there for you" plus that
other thing she said.
How cynical is the Democratic Party's support for identity politics? To this observer,
it seems impossible not to notice that those in control of the Democratic Party care about
"identity politics" -- about supporting more women, more people of color, more LGBTQ
candidates, etc. -- only when it suits them. Which means, if you take this view, that their
vocal support for the underlying principles of "identity politics" is both cynical and
insincere.
As I said, this has been apparent for some time. I've never seen it documented so well in
one place, however, until this
recent piece by Glenn Greenwald.
For example, Hillary Clinton supporters in 2016 not only encouraged a vote for Clinton
because men and women had a duty to support her as a woman, yet they attacked support for
Sanders as specifically misogynist:
The 2016 presidential election was the peak, at least thus far, for the tactics of
identity politics in U.S. elections. In the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton's potential
status as the first female candidate was frequently used not only to inspire her supporters
but also to shame and malign those who supported other candidates, particularly Bernie
Sanders.
In February 2016 -- at the height of the Clinton-Sanders battle -- former Clinton
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright introduced Hillary Clinton at a New Hampshire rally by
predicting a grim afterlife for female supporters of Sanders, while Clinton and Cory
Booker cheered: "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other!" she
announced.
Though Albright apologized
in the New York Times for her insensitive phrasing after a backlash ensued, she did
reaffirm her central point: "When women are empowered to make decisions, society benefits.
They will raise issues, pass bills and put money into projects that men might overlook or
oppose."
At roughly the same time, Clinton supporter Gloria Steinem said female supporters of
Sanders
were motivated by a primitive impulse to follow "the boys," who, she claimed, were behind
Sanders. Just this week, the Clinton loyalist and Salon writer Amanda Marcotte said Trump
won "because some dudes had mommy issues," then clarified that she
was referring to left-wing misogynists who did not support Clinton: "I also have those
moments where I'm like, 'Maybe we need to run Bland White Guy 2020 to appease the fake
socialists and jackass mansplainers.'"
Greenwald notes in passing that no one was making the case for supporting Sanders because he
would be the first Jewish president, and he doesn't expect that case to be made in 2020 should
Sanders run again.
He concludes from this that "despite the inconsistencies, one of the dominant themes that
emerged in Democratic Party discourse from the 2016 election is that it is critically important
to support female candidates and candidates of color, and that a failure or refusal to support
such candidates when they present a credible campaign is suggestive evidence of underlying
bigotry."
The Past as Prologue: Cynthia Nixon
Apparently, however, Democratic Party interest in electing strong progressive women (Hillary
Clinton includes
herself on that list) has dissipated in the smoke of the last election. As Greenwald notes,
"Over and over, establishment Democrats and key party structures have united behind straight,
white male candidates (including ones tainted by corruption), working to defeat their credible
and progressive Democratic opponents who are women, LGBT people, and/or people of color.
Clinton herself has led the way."
The article is replete with examples, from the Brad Ashford–Kara Eastman battle in
Nebraska, to the Bob Menendez–Michael Starr Hopkins–Lisa McCormick three-way
contest in New Jersey, to the Ben Cardin–Chelsea Manning primary in Maryland. In all
cases, the Party backed the white male candidate (or in Menendez's case, the whiter male
candidate) against the woman, the person of color, and the LGBTQ candidate. Not even the smoke
of 2016's identity fire remains.
Which brings us to the 2018 candidacies of Cynthia Nixon and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
Let's start with Cynthia Nixon, running against corrupt ,
anti-progressive NY Governor Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo sides with Republicans to defeat progressive
measures, rules with an iron hand, is white and male. Yet he's also supported and endorsed by
almost every national Democrat who matters:
In New York state, Cynthia Nixon is attempting to become the first female governor, as
well as the first openly LGBT governor, in the state's history. She's running against a
dynastic politician-incumbent, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whom the New York Times denounced this
year for being "tainted" by multiple corruption scandals.
But virtually the entire Democratic establishment has united behind the white male
dynastic prince, Cuomo, over his female, LGBT challenger. That includes Clinton
herself, who
enthusiastically endorsed Cuomo last month, as well as Democratic Sen. Kirsten
Gillibrand , who -- despite starting a political action committee with the explicit
purpose of supporting women running for office -- also
endorsed Cuomo over Nixon in March. [emphasis mine]
To make the main point again: How cynical and insincere is the Democratic Party's support
for identity politics? Very.
A Local Race with National Consequences: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vs. Joe Crowley
This cynical drama is also playing out in the race between corrupt
Joe Crowley , the likely next Democratic leader of the House (if he survives this election)
and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The same dynamic is now driving the Democratic Party primary campaign in New York's 14th
Congressional District, a district that is composed of 70 percent nonwhite voters. The
nine-term Democratic incumbent, Joe Crowley, is a
classic dynastic machine politician . His challenger, a 28-year-old Latina woman,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has generated nationwide excitement for her campaign after her
inspiring introduction video went viral . At a fundraising event, Crowley accused his
opponent of playing identity politics, saying she
was trying to make the campaign "about race."
Despite all that, virtually the entire Democratic establishment has united behind the
white male incumbent, and virtually none is supporting the woman of color who is challenging
him. Yesterday, the very same Gillibrand who has a PAC to support female candidates
and who endorsed Cuomo over Nixon announced that she was supporting Crowley over
Ocasio-Cortez. [emphasis added]
Note that these are not low-profile, low-consequence races. Both are positions of enormous
power -- in Nixon's case, due to the office; in Crowley's case, due to his position as the
Dauphin to Nancy Pelosi's soon-to-step-down monarch.
These are races with exponentially greater consequences than usuals. And where is the
Democratic Party in this? With the (corrupt) white male and against the woman, as always these
days.
"Identity Politics" Is Not a Cookie-Cutter Solution to Electoral Choices
I'd like to make two additional points. First, by any intelligent standard, candidates
"identities" should only be one factor only in considering support for them. Only the right
wing and 2016 Clinton advocates like Madeleine Albright, quoted above, make the most simplistic
argument about "identity" support -- and even then, the simplistic argument seemed to apply
only to support for Clinton herself and never to other women.
For example, would even Clinton supporters have supported Carly Fiorina against a male
Democrat for president? Obviously not. And Clinton herself, a former New York senator, did not
support Zephyr Teachout in 2014 when
Teachout ran against Andrew Cuomo for governor . Nor did then-Democratic primary candidate
Hillary Clinton campaign for Zephyr Teachout in her 2016 race for the the NY-19
House seat .
Ideological concerns also drive decisions like these, as in fact they should. Fiorina would
likely be too far right for Clinton to support, and Teachout too far left. This is a fair basis
on which to decide. It was also a fair basis on which to decide support for Clinton as
well.
The Ocasio-Crowley Battle Is a Very High-Leverage Fight
A second point: I recently wrote about the importance of progressive involving themselves
heavily in high-leverage races -- like the Bernie Sanders 2016 race, for example -- where the
payoff would have been huge relative to the effort. (You can read that piece and its argument
here: " Supporting
Aggressive Progressives for Very High-Leverage Offices ".)
The Ocasio-Crowley contest is similarly high-leverage -- first, because he's
perceived as vulnerable and acting like he agrees , and second because it would, to use a
chess metaphor, eliminate one of the most powerful (and corrupt) anti-progressive players from
House leadership in a single move.
Again, Crowley is widely seen as the next Democratic Speaker of the House. He would be worse
by far than Nancy Pelosi, and he's dangerous. He has blackmailed, as I see it, almost all of
his colleagues into supporting him by the implicit threat of, as Speaker, denying them
committee assignments and delaying or thwarting their legislation. He also controls funding as
Speaker via the leadership PAC and the DCCC. Even Mark Pocan, co-chair of the CPC and normally
a reliable progressive voice and vote, is reportedly whipping support for Crowley among his
colleagues.
Crowley plays for keeps. Taking him off the board entirely, removing him from the House for
the next two years, would produce a benefit to progressives far in excess of the effort
involved.
Progressives, were they truly smart, would have nationalize this race from the beginning and
worked tirelessly to win it. The payoff from a win like this is huge. Larry
Coffield ,
June 26, 2018 at 5:27 am
I think identity politics has always served as a diversion for elites to play within the
neoliberal bandwidth of decreasing public spending. Fake austerity and an unwillingness to
use conjured money for public QE are necessary for pursuing neoliberal privatization of
public enterprises. Therefore Bernie and his MMT infrastructure are anathema to corporate
democrats and their Wall St. benefactors.
Moral Monday represents what I deem as people over profit. I would rather be a spoiler
than enable corporate sociopaths to.expand mass incarceration, end welfare as we know it,
consider the killing of a half-million Iraqi children an acceptable cost, or oversee the
first inverted debt jubilee in 2008 to forgive the liabilities of fraudsters by pauperizing
debtors.
The World Cup proceeds as if carried along by an unstoppable force, pouring very positive
concrete into foundations somewhere, giving ordinary people another vision of a country that
has always fascinated me.
Graham Phillips, an Englishman and journalist, who joined with the Donbass people in their
resistance to the coup in Ukraine made an interesting podcast echoing b.'s piece about Shaun
Walker, my particular enemy. He quietly demolishes Walker's claims that Russians were singing
Nazi songs in a nightclub.
All in all there is a feeling of tensions subsiding a little, a feeling that one can carry
on a bit with one's life. The only thing I have learned is to enjoy such moments even if stuff
like Yemen is agonizing. Agonizing but not existential as Syria is. But is that not just a bit
cynical?
...Marx, after all, according to Harvey, had shown that – unlike the liberal paradigm
that was, and still is, predominant inthe social sciences – the split between fact and
value had been overcome. No longerwas it sufficient to talk about social phenomena without
invoking political evenpractical evaluations of them.
Harvey's most recent book, A Brief History of Neoliberalism , dissects the inner
workings of what has come to be one of the most salient features of late 20thand early 21st
century economic and social life: the gradual shift, throughoutthe nations of the global
economy, toward economic and social policies that havegiven an increased liberality and
centrality to markets, market processes, and to theinterests of capital. If Harvey's enduring
perspective – and one which admittedly| 23 |THOMPSON | The World According to David
Harveyechoes orthodox Marxism – has been to put the mechanics of the capitalist modeof
production at the center of every aspect of modernity (and of postmodernity aswell), then his
most recent contribution deviates little from that course. Harvey'scontention is that we are
witnessing, through this process of neoliberalisation, thedeepening penetration of capitalism
into political and social institutions as well ascultural consciousness itself. Neoliberalism
is the intensification of the influenceand dominance of capital; it is the elevation of
capitalism, as a mode of production,into an ethic, a set of political imperatives, and a
cultural logic. It is also a project:a project to strengthen, restore, or, in some cases,
constitute anew the power ofeconomic elites. The essence of neoliberalism, for Harvey, can be
characterised as arightward shift in Marxian class struggle.This analysis stems from Marx's
insight about the nature of capital itself. Capitalis not simply money, property, or one
economic variable among others. Rather,capital is the organising principle of modern society.
It should be recalled that, inhis Grundrisse , Marx explicitly argued that capital is a
process that puts into motion all of the other dimensions of modern economic, political,
social, and cultural life.It creates the wage system, influences values, goals, and the ethics
of individuals,transforms our relation to nature, to ourselves, and to our community,
andconstantly seeks to mold state imperatives until they are in harmony with its
own.Neoliberalism is therefore not a new turn in the history of capitalism. It is moresimply,
and more perniciously, its intensification, and its resurgence after decadesof opposition from
the Keynesian welfare state and from experiments with socialdemocratic and welfare state
politics.Neoliberalism, as Harvey tells us, quoting Paul Treanor in the process, 'valuesmarket
exchange as "an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide to all humanaction, and
substituting for all previously held ethical beliefs," it emphasises thesignificance of
contractual relations in the marketplace. It holds that the social goodwill be maximised by
maximising the reach and frequency of market transactions,and it seeks to bring all human
action into the domain of the market.' (p. 3)Neoliberalism is not simply an ethic in abstracto,
however. Rather, the locusfor its influence has become the 'neoliberal state', which collapses
the notion offreedom into freedom for economic elites. 'The freedoms it embodies reflect
theinterests of private property owners, businesses, multinational corporations andfinancial
capital.' (p. 7) The neoliberal state defends the new reach and depth ofcapital's interests and
is defined against the 'embedded liberalism' of the severalDemocratiya 3 | Winter 2005| 24
|decades following World War II when 'market processes and entrepreneurial andcorporate
activities were surrounded by a web of social and political constraints anda regulatory
environment that sometimes restrained but in other instances led theway in economic and
industrial strategy.' (p. 11)Neoliberalism and the neoliberal state have been able to reverse
the variouspolitical and economic gains made under welfare state policies and institutions.This
transformation of the state is an effect of the interests of capital and itsreaction to the
embedded liberalism of the post war decades. Taking the empiricalanalysis – and the
hypothesis – from the French economists Gérard Duménil andDominique
Lévy, and their important book Capital Resurgent, Harvey argues that'neoliberalisation
was from the very beginning a project to achieve the restorationof class power,' (p. 16) 'a
political project to re-establish the conditions for capitalaccumulation and to restore the
power of economic elites.' (p. 19) This notion ofa revolution from above to restore class power
is the basso ostinato of Harvey'sanalysis, the bass line continuously repeated throughout the
book that grounds theargument.He sees the first historical instance of this revolution from
above in Pinochet'sChile. The violent coup against Salvador Allende, which installed Pinochet
topower, was followed by a massive neoliberalisation of the state. The move towardprivatisation
and the stripping away of all forms of regulation on capital was oneof the key aspects of the
Pinochet regime. While the real grounding of a neoliberaltheory began much earlier with
thinkers such as Friedrich von Hayek and MiltonFriedman, among others, its first real empirical
manifestation was Pinochet's Chile.Of course, this also allows Harvey to illustrate another
crucial dimension of hisargument, namely that neoliberalism is a liberalism for economic elites
only; thatliberal aspects of the polity are decreased. It is Harvey's fear – along with
Karl Polanyi– that neoliberal regimes will slowly erode institutions of political
democracy since'the freedom of the masses would be restricted in favour of the freedoms of the
few.'(p. 70) Insulating economic institutions such as central banks from majority ruleis
central, especially since neoliberalism – particularly in developed economies
–revolves around financial institutions. 'A strong preference,' Harvey argues, 'existsfor
government by executive order and by judicial decision rather than democraticand parliamentary
decision-making.' (p. 66)America and England constitute Harvey's next two cases for his thesis.
Thatcherin Britain and Reagan in the United States were both pivotal figures, not so| 25
|THOMPSON | The World According to David Harveymuch because of their economic policies, but,
more importantly, because of theirsuccess in the 'construction of consent.' The political
culture of both countriesbegan to accept neoliberal policies. The focus on individual rights,
the centralityof property rights, a culture of individualism, consumption, and a
market-basedpopulism, all served as means by which the policies of neoliberalism – and
themassive inequalities that have emerged over the past two decades – were able togain
widespread support. Political liberalism becomes eroded by the much morepowerful forces of
economic liberalism.Another theme that Harvey explores – understandably, given his
background inhuman geography – is the phenomenon of uneven spatial development. In
China,Harvey's fourth case, we see the rapid expansion of a neoliberal ethos. Marketswere
significantly liberalised and an economic elite was reconstituted virtuallyovernight, in early
1980s, amid Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. The result hasbeen extreme inequality between
regions. Coastal urban areas, where industry andfinance are concentrated, have become massive
epicenters of economic power andactivity, sucking in surplus labor from agrarian hinterlands
which, as a result of theeconomic growth of these metro regions, have begun sinking into
poverty. Harveysees this reality in China being mirrored throughout the globe, and the
resultsare common: a pattern of rising economic and social inequality which increasesthe
marginalisation of large sectors of national populations and concentratesever more sectors of
capital within certain regions and among certain groups.Neoliberalisation, therefore, effects a
return to some of the most entrenched formsof social inequality and injustice that
characterised the industrial expansion duringthe late 19th century in the West. The story of
capitalism, for Harvey, always seemsto play the same dire tune.But the global expansion of
capital is premised on what he terms 'accumulation bydispossession.' This concept –
developed more fully in Harvey's previous book, The New Imperialism (2003) –
argues that accumulation under globalisation continues to expand by dispossessing people of
their economic rights and of various forms ofownership and economic power. Harvey defines it
best:By [accumulation by dispossession] I mean the continuation and proliferationof
accumulation practices which Marx had treated of as 'primitive' or'original' during the rise of
capitalism. These include the commodificationand privatization of land and the forceful
expulsion of peasant populations ;conversion of various forms of property rights (common,
collective, state,Democratiya 3 | Winter 2005| 26 |etc.) into exclusive private property rights
(most spectacularly representedby China); suppression of rights to the commons; commodification
oflabor power and the suppression of alternative (indigenous) forms ofproduction and
consumption; colonial, neocolonial, and imperial processesof appropriation of assets (including
natural resources); monetizationof exchange and taxation, particularly of land; the slave trade
(whichcontinues particularly in the sex industry); and usury, the national debtand, most
devastating of all the use of the credit system as a radical means ofaccumulation by
dispossession. (p. 159)But it also includes – for working people in developed nations
– the 'extraction ofrents from patents and intellectual property rights and the
diminution or erasureof various forms of common property rights (such as state pensions, paid
vacations,and access to education and health care).' (p. 160) Neoliberalism, therefore, canonly
continue its process of accumulation by dispossessing people of what theyown, or to what they
have always had rights.In the end, Harvey tells us, the way out of this situation – not
surprisingly – is areconnection of theory and practice. But his analysis is, once again,
subtle and takesstock of present political realities. The plethora of social movements need to
forma 'broad-based oppositional programme', which sees the activities of the economicelites as
fundamentally impinging on traditionally held beliefs about egalitarianismand fairness. Crisis,
for Harvey as with any orthodox Marxist, is always looming.Neoliberalism's rhetoric of
individual freedom, and equality, and its promise ofprosperity and growth, are slowly being
revealed as falsities. Soon, Harvey believes,it will become evident that all of economic life
and institutions are solely for thebenefit of a single, small social class. Therefore,
theoretical insight – such as Harveyhas proffered here – needs to constantly
nourish the various opposition movementsthat currently exist. The dialogue between theory and
practice is the only sure wayto take advantage of the moment when a new crisis –
financial or otherwise –bursts forth onto the scene. The deepest hope is that such a
moment will fostera basis 'for a resurgence of mass movements voicing egalitarian political
demandsand seeking economic justice, fair trade, and greater economic security.' (p.
204)Harvey's position is explicitly anti-capitalist, and his hope is that the rhetoric
ofneoliberalism will be unmasked by the various realities – most specifically,
massiveeconomic inequalities – that it spawns. Only then will social movements be able
togain political traction, and move society toward some form of social, economic andpolitical
transformation.| 27 |THOMPSON | The World According to David HarveyHarvey's logic is seductive,
and his ruminations on 'freedom's prospect' arecompelling. But political and cultural realities
cannot be simply reduced to themechanisms of capital and accumulation. While we can use
Harvey's brilliant anddeeply insightful analysis of the structural mechanisms of neoliberalism,
it has tobe admitted that there are only rumblings of discontent in the United States orChina,
and no hint of a mass movement against the realities of capitalism. There istoo little
attention paid – and here the deficits of the orthodox Marxist approachcan be sensed
– to the way that the culture of consent has found a deep affinity withAmerican
liberalism. Louis Hartz, in his classic, The Liberal Tradition in America , was perhaps
most correct when he predicted that the contours of Americanliberalism would lead to the
acceptance of quasi-authoritarian political and socialnorms. China – lacking any
democratic tradition – has not seen a mass movementarise to combat the inequality that
has swollen over the last two decades, either.But the question of social movements remains
open. There is no guarantee whatyou get with a mass movement of the disaffected – one can
think of Venezuela'sHugo Chavez, in this regard. Harvey does not look into such issues, but
they needto be considered since history – even the history of capitalism – cannot
be viewedas cyclical and politics does not spring mechanistically from economic conditions.But
despite this, Harvey's book is deeply insightful, rewarding and stimulating. Hisability to
thematise the imperatives of the most recent manifestation of capitalistaccumulation –
most specifically the recent trends in economic inequality, the shiftsin urban cultural and
political life, and the economic logic that currently drives theprocess of globalization
– is nothing short of virtuosic and his ideas should becomea central part of the current
discourse on globalisation, economic inequality, and theerosion of democratic politics
throughout the globe. His history of neoliberalismmay indeed be brief, but the richness and
profundity of this volume is withoutquestion.Michael J. Thompson is an advisory editor of
Democratiya and is also the founder and editor of Logos: A Journal of Modern Society
& Culture (www.logosjournal. com). He is Assistant Professor of Political Science at
William Paterson University.His next book, Confronting Neoconservatism: The Rise of the New
Right in America ,
The corporate media is reporting intrepid crusader Robert Mueller is preparing to do a
Pontius Pilate on his special council investigation of Russia and the Trump campaign.
According to WaPo, Mueller has beefed up his team with a number of prosecutors and the job
of prosecuting Russian nationals for supposedly influencing the 2016 election will be fobbed
off on them.
"The Post reports that the new hires are the first indication of Mueller preparing for the
end of his investigation," WaPo reported.
The Trump component is in the process of performing a disappearing act in slow motion. The
investigation petered out months ago. Democrats continued to pound on it. Because it's all they
have. The establishment Resistance run by Pelosi and Schumer is treading water and looking
toward the midterms.
It's like simple math. There is no evidence Trump or his associates colluded with Putin and
the Russians to somehow - through the exaggerated influence of social media - throw the
election in his favor.
This nonsense was dispelled early on.
It's true. Enterprising Russians ran a lucrative clickbait scheme on social media - just
like hundreds of other entrepreneurs. It took the the Democrats - fresh off a humiliating
defeat to a casino and real estate windbag - to make up a fantasy deserving of a novel discount
bin.
Establishment Dems counted on the corporate media to whip up the required hysteria and
frenzy among already hysterical and frenzied liberals. Many apparently sought trauma counseling
after the election.
Even with the media lavishing coverage on the Mueller investigation, it has failed to do
much of anything except get Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, and others in trouble - not for
working under Putin's direction to get the MAGA candidate elected, but for alleged bank fraud
and violation of campaign finance laws.
This is pretty routine stuff in Washington.
Mueller doesn't have a case and he knows it. Now he will save face by passing off the
investigation to underlings.
Meanwhile, the rest of us get respite - until the next drummed up load of horse manure
masquerading as high crimes and misdemeanors appears on the scene.
Not to worry. There are always stories of political intrigue to fascinate the proles - for
fifteen minutes at least - and distract from the real issues: endless war and a bankster rigged
economy slowly turning America into a third world cesspool.
I am celebrating this decision.
I am celebrating that it will mostly disappear from the news cycle.
I am celebrating petulant Democrats suffering another defeat and also celebrating denying
self-righteous Republicans a chance to climb up on their soapboxes.
Of course, they'll come up with something else, they always do.
The establishment political class is not about to stop rolling out distractions that are
poorly planned political theater stunts that could use better writing and managerial
skills.
"... A Stigler Center panel examines the influence of Big Five tech firms over political discourse and the marketplace of ideas. ..."
"... "Our country has allowed the concentration of power in giant intermediaries -- Google, Facebook, and Amazon -- vastly more powerful than the original intermediary which we fought, which was the British East India Company." ..."
"... "We have reporters, editors, and publishers of our newspapers who live in fear every day. This is true of the people who publish our books and who write our books. They live in fear [that] Amazon is going to shut them down. Whose fault is that? It's the people in the antitrust community." ..."
"... "Google not only vanquished competition. What it did is it vanquished the antitrust enforcers who are supposed to protect the process of competition." ..."
"... "Basically, Section 230 was a libertarian's dream. They got what they wanted. I am a limited government conservative. What they wanted was a no-government world." ..."
At one point during Mark Zuckerberg's
Senate hearing in April , the Facebook CEO had the following peculiar exchange with Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC):
Graham: But you, as a company, welcome regulation?
Zuckerberg: I think, if it's the right regulation, then yes.
Graham: You think the Europeans had it right?
Zuckerberg: I think that they get things right.
Graham: . So would you work with us in terms of what regulations you think are necessary in your industry?
Zuckerberg: Absolutely.
Graham: Okay. Would you submit to us some proposed regulations?
Zuckerberg: Yes. And I'll have my team follow up with you so, that way, we can have this discussion across the different
categories where I think that this discussion needs to happen.
Graham: Look forward to it.
This telling bit of dialogue was part of an overall pattern: the hearing was meant to hold Facebook (and Zuckerberg himself, as
the company's founder, CEO, and de facto
single ruler ) accountable for the
mishandling of
millions of people's private data. Yet
one after
another , the senators were asking an evasive Zuckerberg if he would be willing to endorse their bills and proposals to regulate
Facebook. This mode of questioning repeated itself (to a somewhat lesser extent) during the House's
tougher questioning of Zuckerberg the following day.
Needless to say, most company CEOs grilled by Congress following a major scandal that impacts millions of people and possibly
the very nature of
American democracy are not usually treated in this way -- as private regulators almost on equal footing with Congress.
Facebook, however, is not a typical company. As
a recent Vox piece noted, with its vast reach of more than two billion users worldwide, Facebook is more akin to
a government or a "powerful sovereign," with Zuckerberg -- due to his unusual level of control over it -- being the "key lawgiver."
Zuckerberg acknowledged as much himself when he said, in a
much-quoted moment of candor
, that "in a lot of ways Facebook is more like a government than a traditional company." More than other technology companies,
he added, Facebook is "really setting policies."
The notion that corporations can become so powerful that they are able to act as a "form of private government" (to quote
Zephyr Teachout )
has long been part of the antitrust literature. Indeed, as the Open Market Institute's Barry Lynn and Matt Stoller recently noted
during a panel at the Stigler Center's Digital Platforms and Concentration antitrust conference, it is deeply rooted in the
rich tradition of antimonopoly
in America.
That digital platforms are major political
players has also been
well documented
.
Once disdainful of politics, in the past two years Google, Facebook, and Amazon have dramatically ramped up their lobbying efforts,
as the public and media backlash against their social, economic, and political power intensified. Google, which enjoyed
unprecedented access to the Obama White House, is now the
biggest lobbyist in Washington, with other tech platforms not far behind.
Market power begetting political power is
not new in itself. As the participants
of the Stigler panel noted, it is the immense power
that concentrated digital intermediaries like Google and Facebook wield over digital markets, human interaction and the marketplace
of ideas, particularly when it comes to the distribution of political information, that presents a unique challenge. As Lina Khan
(also of Open Markets)
recently
noted , the current landscape of Internet media is one in which a handful of companies "are basically acting as private regulators,
as private governments, over the dissemination and organization of information in a way that is totally unchecked by the public."
The latter part, at least, seems to be changing rapidly, as Americans (and millions more worldwide) grapple with
ongoing revelations showing the profound
impact that digital monopolies have on political opinions and outcomes, in the US and across the world. As Congressman John Sarbanes
(D-MD) said during Zuckerberg's House hearing
in April: "Facebook is becoming a self-regulated superstructure for political discourse."
Left to right: Scott Cleland, Ellen Goodman, Matt Stoller, Barry Lynn, Guy Rolnik
The exact nature of tech platforms' political power, its roots, and how to best deal with it -- all questions debated during the
Stigler Center panel -- are complex and varied. But the key question seems rather simple. As Sarbanes put it during the same Congressional
hearing: "Are we, the people, going to regulate our political dialogue, or are you, Mark Zuckerberg, going to end up regulating the
political discourse? ״
A Private Regulator of Speech
Facebook, said Rutgers Law School professor Ellen Goodman, operates as a private speech regulator. As such, much like public governments,
it "privileges some [forms of] speech over others." Unlike governments, however, which as regulators of speech purport to support
public good, Facebook has adopted a "First Amendment-like radical libertarianism" through which it has so far refused to differentiate
between "high- and low-quality information, truth or falsity, responsible and irresponsible press."
Facebook, famously, argues that it is not a media company, but a technology company. "It's not a player, it's not a [referee],
it's just the engineer who made the field," said Goodman, the co-director of the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy & Law.
The purpose of Facebook's "First Amendment rhetoric," she noted, is "to maximize data flow on its platform," but by doing so, "it
implies, or even says explicitly, that it's standing in the shoes of the government."
Facebook and other platforms, said Goodman, have benefited from the process of deregulation and budget cuts to public media --
a process that has predated the Internet, and led to Washington essentially "giving up" on media policy. The government effectively
"exempted these platforms from the kind of ordinary regulation that other information intermediaries were subjected to." With "platforms
in the shoes of government, [and] government out of media policy," the concentration of platform power over information flows was
allowed to continue undisturbed.
The problem, however, is that much like fellow FAANGs Amazon and Google, Facebook is not just an impartial governor, but a market
participant interested in "monopolizing the time of its users," with a strong incentive to privilege its own products and business
model that "eviscerates journalism."
"It also tunes its algorithm to favor certain kinds of speech and certain speakers," added Goodman. "There's almost no transparency,
save for what it selectively, elliptically, and sometimes misleadingly posts on its blog."
"People Live in Fear"
In a seminal
1979 essay on what he termed the "political content" of antitrust, former FTC chairman Robert Pitofsky argued that "political
values," such as "the fear that excessive concentration of economic power will foster anti-democratic political pressures," should
be incorporated into antitrust enforcement. In recent years, this view has been
echoed by a
growing number of
antitrust scholars
, who argue that the way antitrust enforcement has been conducted in the US for the past 40 years -- solely through the prism of
"consumer welfare" -- is ill equipped to deal with the new
threats posed by digital platforms.
The Unites States, remarked Lynn during the panel, was born "out of rebellion against concentrated power, the British East India
Company." The original purpose of antimonopoly in America, said Lynn, was the protection of personal liberty from concentrated economic
and political power: "to give everybody the ability to manage their own property in the ways that they see fit, manage their own
lives in the way that they see fit. To be truly independent of everybody else. To not be anybody else's puppet." Liberty and democracy,
he added, "are functions of antimonopoly."
A state in which Facebook and Google wield enormous influence over the flow of information -- where, to quote
a recent piece by Wired
's Nicholas Thompson and Fred Vogelstein, "every publisher knows that, at best, they are sharecroppers on Facebook's massive
industrial farm" -- is antithetical to this ethos, said Lynn, and is firmly rooted in the "absolute, complete failure" of antitrust
in the United States. "Our country has allowed the concentration of power in giant intermediaries -- Google, Facebook, and Amazon
-- vastly more powerful than the original intermediary which we fought, which was the British East India Company." These digital
intermediaries, he added, are "using their power in ways that are directly threatening our most fundamental liberties and our democracy."
"Our country has allowed the concentration of power in giant intermediaries -- Google, Facebook, and Amazon -- vastly
more powerful than the original intermediary which we fought, which was the British East India Company."
The blame for the outsize influence that Facebook and other digital platforms have over the political discourse, said Lynn, rests
squarely on the shoulders of the antitrust community: "For 200 years in this country, antimonopoly was designed to create freedom
from masters. In 1981, when we got rid of our traditional antimonopoly and replaced it with consumer welfare, we created a system
that has given freedom to master."
In today's concentrated media landscape, he contended, "people live in fear. We have reporters, editors, and publishers of our
newspapers who live in fear every day. This is true of the people who publish our books and who write our books. They live in fear
[that] Amazon is going to shut them down. Whose fault is that? It's the people in the antitrust community."
"We have reporters, editors, and publishers of our newspapers who live in fear every day. This is true of the people
who publish our books and who write our books. They live in fear [that] Amazon is going to shut them down. Whose fault is that?
It's the people in the antitrust community."
Lynn went on to quote from Thompson and Vogelstein's Wired piece: "The social network is roughly 200 times more valuable
than the Times . And journalists know that the man who owns the farm has the leverage. If Facebook wanted to, it could quietly
turn any number of dials that would harm a publisher -- by manipulating its traffic, its ad network, or its readers."
"This was hidden in the middle of the article," said Lynn. "[Thompson], as a journalist, felt obliged to put this out there He
was crying out to the people in this community, in the antitrust community. He's saying 'protect me, the publisher, the editor of
this magazine. Protect me, the reporter. Please make sure that I have the independence to do my work.'"
The "Code of Silence" Has Been Broken
Recent
changes
to Facebook's newsfeed have caused referral traffic from Facebook to media companies' websites to
sharply decline , once again raising concerns about the significant impact that the company has on the media industry. The satirical
news site The Onion , for instance, has launched a public war against Facebook, calling it "an unwanted interloper between
The Onion and our audience." "We have 6,572,949 followers on Facebook who receive an ever-decreasing amount of the content
we publish on the network," the site's editor-in-chief, Chad Nackers, told
Business Insider .
The
backlash by major news outlets and
politicians across
the
political spectrum against the power of Facebook and other tech platforms as de facto regulators of speech on the Internet is
a new phenomenon, said Guy Rolnik, a Clinical Associate Professor for Strategic Management at the University of Chicago Booth school
of Business, during the panel. Until not too long ago, he said, Internet monopolies were the "darlings of the news media." Less than
a year ago , he noted, Zuckerberg was even
touted
by several media outlets as a viable presidential candidate. "The idea that a person who has unprecedented private control over personal
data and the public discourse at large would also be the president of the United States was totally in the realm and perimeter of
what is legitimate," he said.
What has changed? "In many ways, what has changed is that many people associate Facebook today with the election of Donald Trump.
This is why we see so much focus on those issues that were very salient and important for years," Rolnik maintained. Trump's election,
and Facebook's role in the lead-up to it, broke the "code of silence."
Nevertheless, newsrooms today, he said, still do everything in their power "to make sure that everything is shareable on Facebook."
In the words of Thompson and Vogelstein, they are still "sharecroppers on Facebook's massive industrial farm."
Google has "Politically Hijacked the US Antitrust Enforcement Process"
Scott Cleland, president of the consultancy firm Precursor LLC and former deputy US coordinator for international communications
and information policy in the George HW Bush administration, has long warned that concentration among digital platforms will negatively
impact the US economy and society at large.
In 2007, Cleland testified
before the Senate on the then-proposed Google-DoubleClick merger, calling upon antitrust enforcers to block the merger and warning
that lax antitrust enforcement (of the kind that ultimately led the Google-DoubleClick merger to be approved) would allow Google
to become the "ultimate Internet gatekeeper" and the "online-advertising bottleneck provider picking content winners and losers"
-- both of which came true. In 2011, he published the book Search & Destroy: Why You Can't Trust Google Inc . , in which he warned readers of Google's surveillance-based business
model and its "unprecedented centralization of power over the world's information."
US antitrust enforcers, he said, were initially "very tough" on Google during the first years of the George W. Bush administration.
Between 2008 and 2012, both the Bush II and Obama administrations brought "strong and consistent antitrust scrutiny and enforcement
to Google." Then, in 2013, the Federal Trade Commission decided to drop its case against the company, despite the
conclusion of its
staff that Google had used anticompetitive tactics. Following Obama's reelection, which Google at the time was credited with delivering,
antitrust enforcement against Big Tech firms essentially ceased. "They shut down all those investigations and they did nothing for
the last five years. DOJ went from very active -- four or five major antitrust actions -- to nothing. Crickets."
Back then, Google and Facebook were still "fiercely competing," he said. Google was going after Facebook's territory with Google
Plus, and Facebook countered by going after Google search with Yahoo and Bing. But then, in 2014, something happened: the large tech
firms "mysteriously stopped competing."
"Yahoo returned to working with Google. Apple dropped Bing for Siri and moved to Google search. Apple and Microsoft dropped their
patent suits, and then Microsoft and Google made peace after scratching each other's eyes out. Google went from 70 percent share
of search and search advertising in the PC market to 95 percent of that in both of those markets today," said Cleland.
What happened? Cleland points to the what he calls the "Google School of No-Antitrust," a narrative with which according to him
Google had been trying to "influence public opinion, the media, elected and government officials, and US and state antitrust enforcers,
to make the public believe Google (and other Internet platforms) have no antitrust risk or liability, because they offer free innovative
products and services, and to make conservatives believe that the Google School of No-Antitrust and the Chicago School's consumer
welfare standard and application are the same, when they are not."
Google, he asserted, "not only vanquished competition. What it did is it vanquished the antitrust enforcers who are supposed to
protect the process of competition." It did so, he argued, by "politically hijacking the most important market, which is information."
"Google not only vanquished competition. What it did is it vanquished the antitrust enforcers who are supposed to protect
the process of competition."
Cleland, who identifies as a free market conservative, argued that the current Internet is far from a free market. "Who thinks
it's a good idea that all of the world's information goes through one bottleneck?" he asked, adding that "all the bad things that
you're seeing right now are the result of policy."
One such policy is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which provided Internet companies with legal immunity
for the content their users generated or shared and is
often
credited with enabling the creation of the Internet as we know it today. Cleland sees Section 230 as "market structuring" and
has compared it to the libertarian concept of creating artificial islands outside any governmental territory, known as "
seasteading ."
"Section 230 says -- I'm paraphrasing, but that's what it says -- that US policy recognizes that the Internet is a free market
that should be unfettered by federal and state regulations," said Cleland. "Basically, Section 230 was a libertarian's dream. They
got what they wanted. I am a limited government conservative. What they wanted was a no-government world."
"Basically, Section 230 was a libertarian's dream. They got what they wanted. I am a limited government conservative.
What they wanted was a no-government world."
Much of today's problems regarding the conduct of digital platforms, he said, results from this policy. "Twenty-two years ago,
we as a nation immunized all interactive computer services from any civil liability. We said, 'It is OK. There is no accountability,
no responsibility for you looking the other way, when your platform or things that are going on on your platform harm others.'"
Section 230, he maintained, "basically created 21 st -century robber barons. Those guys know they have the full weight
of the government. If they go to court, they're going to win, and they have almost all the time."
Antitrust Is "One Part of the Answer"
When it comes to addressing these threats to free speech and democratic discourse, said Goodman, antitrust is only "one part of
the answer." The other part, she asserted, is regulation.
"The First Amendment that we have, that we know and love today," she said, "was not born in 1789 in Philadelphia. It developed
in the latter part of the 20th century against a particular set of industrial and social practices that mitigated some of the costs
of free speech and spread the benefits."
Lawmakers and policymakers, she argued, should "retrieve and resuscitate the vocabulary of media policy," focusing on three core
values: "freedom of mind and autonomy; non-market values of diversity and localism/community; and a concept of the public interest
and fiduciary responsibility."
Whenever someone makes an argument for using antitrust or regulation as a way to structure markets of information, Stoller cautioned,
there are those who will argue that this amounts to censorship. When asked how to avoid censorship when discussing the use government
power over speech, Goodman was conflicted: "There is no way around that. There's a real tension here between absolute liberty of
speech and controls on speech," she said. We cannot have this whole conference with us fantasizing about various regulatory possibilities
that involve use restrictions -- limits on the flow of data, limits on the collection of data -- without acknowledging that under
our First Amendment doctrine right now, probably none of that passes muster."
However, Goodman pointed to the Northwest Ordinance as a possible roadmap. "Nobody would say, or maybe they did, that [the Northwest
Ordinance ] was an anti-private property rule. It was structuring the market so that more people could own property. That's what
the history of media regulation in this country has been: structuring speech markets so that more people can speak."
Disclaimer: The ProMarket blog is dedicated to discussing how competition tends to be subverted by special interests. The posts
represent the opinions of their writers, not necessarily those of the University of Chicago, the Booth School of Business, or its
faculty. For more information, please visit ProMarket
Blog Policy .
"... the progressive left has been destroyed. All that's left is the Democratic Party which CALLS ITSELF "progressive" but actually acts in a way that undermines progressive ideals. ..."
"... Both Obama and Trump are faux populists. Both were probably thrust upon us in very slick operations. Proof? In hindsight, their political opponents (McCain, Hillary) were so flawed as to be ridiculous, especially because they were each the very embodiment of an establishment that most people KNOW works against them. In our current, money-driven political system electing a real progressive is virtually impossible. ..."
This shows how hypocritical and partisan the left is in the U.S. That's because the progressive left has been destroyed. All
that's left is the Democratic Party which CALLS ITSELF "progressive" but actually acts in a way that undermines progressive ideals.
karlof1 is right. Revolutions happen from the bottom up. Not by electing those who have been selected to run for office.
Both Obama and Trump are faux populists. Both were probably thrust upon us in very slick operations. Proof? In hindsight, their
political opponents (McCain, Hillary) were so flawed as to be ridiculous, especially because they were each the very embodiment
of an establishment that most people KNOW works against them. In our current, money-driven political system electing a real progressive
is virtually impossible.
The establishment agenda is agreed and enacted by BOTH parties:
neo-feudalism : low taxes on the wealthy and roll-back of social programs;
legal usury : very low interest rates for best credit / very high interest rates to ordinary people;
neolib taking of the commons ; Example from the neolib Sith Lord himself:
Obamaland
Fiasco Worsens
A presidential library became Obamaland... The center will not be a presidential library because Obama's archives
and documents won't be there there and it won't be federally run.
[Furthermore] The taxpayer bill for the Obama Center to be built on Chicago's Southside is now $224 million, not
$172 million as initially reported, and it's certainly not privately funded as initially promised.
global hegemony via massive spending on military & spying; It's for the children. No, not YOUR children.
divisive politics to keep lower classes occupied; Let's talk about bathrooms and statues and "rocketman".
militarized police & massive propaganda . You are now a consumer of government services not a citizen. Have a nice day.
the obsessive quality of the British establishment's paranoia about
Russia. That's probably because at the World Cup, the England soccer team is very
weak without its main asset, Sergey Skripal. ;-)
Can't wait until Trump invades the UK, deposes the royal family for treason,
kicks out the pakistani filth, dissolves parliament, seizes the City of
London, and restores the Stuarts to the throne.
Russiaphobes going bonkers. To damn funny. BTW Russian interference in US
elections has been internet postings only. What does that say about our
country's intelligence when some social media post sends the Snow Flakes into
a tizzy. What does that say about our future?
When I saw that Shawn Walker Tweet, and the mostly brilliant take-down responses, I hoped b
would mention it. I can think of no one better suited to address this particularly putrid
propaganda. Bravo! And to the (almost) universally excellent barfly commentariat.
BBC created a whole genre of Russian World Cup scare mongering. One they did was on the
deadly threat of "Russian Football Hooligans." RT did an excellent 4 minute job of combining
journalism with humor to expose that bit of 100% Fake News.
The Media is a complete weapon for propaganda. The "writers" are propagandists. There never
is a report on Russia from the Western media that does not vilify or demonize Russia or
Russians in some way.
The World Cup is experienced by hundreds of thousands of tourists in Russia. They are
going to be the truth-tellers.
The event, like Sochi Winter Olympics will stand for itself. It will be splendid.
And the lies will die.
Never expect the truth from the Media.
Always expect the Russian people to be extraordinary. They have demonstrated it for a
century.
Trump's "national neoliberalism" has some interesting side effects...
Notable quotes:
"... All it takes is for confidence to falter, and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down ..."
"... I have felt for a long time that our consumption based economy is a way to keep people so self absorbed that they don't ask too many questions . ..."
"... As tempting as it is to attribute this to personality failings, I don't believe that Mr. Trump's China tantrum is geopolitical one-upmanship. It is more likely a reaction to the annual Industrial Capabilities Report released on May 17 by the Pentagon's Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, in parallel to a similar review being conducted internally by the White House. ..."
"... The Pentagon has concluded that two decades of financially-engineered corporate concentration and out-sourcing of skilled work to China has stripped the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex of its "organic industrial base." It appears evident that the White House has decided that tariff barriers on China are the only way to rebuild a population of of "qualified workers to meet current demands as well as needing to integrate a younger workforce with the 'right skills, aptitude, experience, and interest to step into the jobs vacated by senior-level engineers and skilled technicians' as they exit the workforce." ..."
"... I find myself confused and in a quandary. Is it not neoliberalism and global trade that over the past 25 years or so has led to corporate mega-wealth and the beginning of the end of the US middle class, and the further impoverishment of the working class? If so, then as a good progressive, should I not welcome a trade war or whatever economic change will end this global economic tyranny? Is the skepticism or outright opposition to a trade war of so many progressives simply based on the fact taht t's being initiated by the colossal idiot in the White House who may inadvertently be doing something beneficial? ..."
The White House's tough stance represents the ascendancy, for now, of trade hawks in the administration, particularly White
House senior trade adviser Peter Navarro and U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer
"It's clear that China has much more to lose" than the U.S. from a trade fight, said Mr. Navarro.
Mr. Lighthizer said additional tariffs wouldn't be imposed until the U.S. picked the products, and received industry comment,
a process that will take months and leaves open the possibility of additional negotiations. But so far there is no indication
that such talks are on the horizon, and the Trump administration is signaling that it is increasingly confident of achieving goals
through a dramatically more confrontational approach to China
Next up from the administration is a plan to halt Chinese investment in U.S. technology, due to be released by the Treasury
Department by June 30 .
Mr. Trump has backed away from threats before .In April, Mr. Trump threatened a dramatic increase in tariffs on Chinese goods,
but didn't follow through. Instead, he approved negotiations Mr. Mnuchin led to get China to buy more U.S. goods and make changes
to its tariffs and other trade barriers. That led to a temporary reprieve in the tensions as the two sides sought to negotiate
a truce.
The White House has since judged those efforts a failure, especially after Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. Trump were criticized by cable
TV hosts and some lawmakers of being weak on China. During a June trade mission to China by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Beijing
offered to buy nearly $70 billion in U.S. farm, manufacturing and energy products if the Trump administration abandoned tariff
threats. Mr. Trump rejected that offer as another empty promise.
Trump's negotiating strategy, if you can call it that, appears unlikely to work with China . If one were to try to ascribe logic
to Trump picking and then escalating a fight with China, it is presumably in the end to bring them to the negotiating table. But
China is not North Korea, where the US threatened the Hermit Kingdom with nuclear devastation and Kim Jong Un with being the next
Gaddafi and then dialed the bluster way down as China pushed and South Korea pulled North Korea to the negotiating table. And the
good luck of the Olympics being in South Korea facilitated the process.
One could argue that all of the theatrics was to enable Trump to talk with Kim Jong Un and not look like a wus.
With China, Trump's escalation to threatening another $200 billion of Chinese goods after his initial $50 billion shot is a reaction
to China going into tit for tat mode as opposed to negotiating. This should not be a surprise. The more detailed press reports were
making clear that China was initially not engaging with the US (as in making clear that they weren't receptive to US demands and
accordingly weren't deploying meaningful resources to talks).
Even if China incurs meaningful economic costs in hitting back at the US, politically it's a no brainer. China's sense of itself
as the power that will displace the US means it's unacceptable to be bullied. China has been bizarrely sensitive to slights, for
instance, lashing out during the 2007 IPCC negotiations and getting testy when the US put countervailing duties
on a mere $224 million
of goods . Recall that when the US put sanctions on Russia, its strategists seemed to genuinely believe that Russians would rise
up and turf Putin out. Instead, his popularity ratings rose and even the Moscow intelligentsia rallied to support him.
Oh, and while we are speaking about North Korea,
Kim Jong Un is in Beijing . It's not hard to get the message: there's no reason for China to play nicely in the face of US trade
brinksmanship.
Trump appears to be relying on the idea that since the US imports more than China exports, we can do more damage to them in a
tariff game of chicken . On the one hand, as Marshall Auerback has pointed out, in trade wars, the creditor nation, which would be
China, typically fares worse than the debtor nation. However, China can do a lot a damage to US companies in China. The US has long
had a policy of promoting the interests of US multinationals based on the claim that deeper trade relations would reduce the odds
of war and make countries more disposed towards democracy. And when "free trade" ideology got a life of its own, economists and pundits
regularly treated the idea of trying to protect domestic jobs as retrograde, even when many of our trade partners negotiated their
deals with that consideration in mind.
American businesses from Apple Inc. and Walmart Inc. to Boeing Co. and General Motors Co. all operate in China and are keen
to expand. That hands Xi room to impose penalties such as customs delays, tax audits and increased regulatory scrutiny if Trump
delivers on his threat of bigger duties on Chinese trade. U.S. shares slumped Tuesday as part of a broad sell-off in global markets
in response to Trump's threat.
The total amount of U.S. goods exports to China only amounted to $130 billion last year, meaning Trump's potential tariffs
on $250 billion or more of Chinese imports can't be matched, at least directly. But if you measure both exports and sales of U.S.
companies inside China, the U.S. has a surplus of $20 billion with China, according to Deutsche Bank AG .
One advantage of this tactic for Xi is that this time the numbers are on his side, as U.S. investment in China is far larger
than the reverse. American companies had $627 billion in assets and $482 billion in sales in China in 2015, compared to just $167
billion in U.S. assets and $26 billion in U.S. sales for Chinese companies .
A change in trade priorities to focus on domestic employment isn't nuts . It's hard to know what Trump is trying to achieve as
he calls for China to reduce its trade deficit by $200 billion. Given that the Administration said it will focus on the sectors depicted
as priorities in China's "Made-in-China 2025" plans in next round to tariff targets, China has good reason to think Trump's real
aim is to check its rise as a superpower.
Even though Trump is giving trade negotiations a bad name, there's every reason to give domestic employment higher priority in
trade negotiation. The reason Trump is so fond of tariffs is that they are a weapon he can deploy quickly and unilaterally, while
negotiations and WTO cases take time. And even though the pundit class likes to decry manufacturing as oh-so-20th century, Ford's
Rouge plant employed more people than Apple does in the entire US. Restoring infrastructure would create a lot of employment, as
would increasing domestic manufacturing.
But the US has eliminated the supervisor and middle managers that once ran operations like these. If we were to seek to build
some areas of manufacturing, the US would have to engage in industrial policy, which is something we do now, but only by default,
with the defense industry, financial services, health care, housing, and higher education among the favored sectors. So given our
political constraints, it's hard to see how we get there from here.
Mr. Market is anxious . Anxious is well short of panicked. Chinese stocks took the worst hit, but the latest round of threats
took 4% off the Shanghai composite, taking it back to its level of 20 months ago.
Chinese indexes were mixed today .
By contrast, the Dow was down 1.15% and the S&P 500, 0.4%.
Having said that, the Fed is in a tightening cycle and stock valuations already looked pretty attenuated. Trade tensions and the
uncertainty over how the threat to global supply chains will play out may lead investors to curb their enthusiasm, particularly if
the Trump initiative starts looking less like another fit of pique and more like a change in the rules of the game that looks unlikely
to work out well.
I think the Chinese response depends on the great unknown of the Chinese Communist Parties long term strategy. One line of
thought is that the 'Asian model' of trade surpluses is for them just the means to an end for China to reach 'high development'
status, from which point they would seek a much more balanced internal economy. The other, sees Chinas trade surplus – in particular
the deliberate over production of strategic products such as microprocessors and pharmaceuticals as an end itself – warfare by
means of trade. Both aspects are variations on the Japanese
Yoshida Doctrine , something the Chinese have studied
in detail.
If the former, then its entirely possible that the Chinese see Trump's threat not as a challenge, but an opportunity to carry
out the necessary deep structural changes to balance their economy. A populist trade war would be the cover the government needs
to dramatically cut over-production and focus instead on ensuring China has all the strategic products it needs (the most crucial
of course is food). The CCP's fear is always inflation in food prices – this is historically the trigger for urban unrest, as
in the 1980's. But if they have a foreign scapegoat for that, they may see it as a risk worth taking. Urban riots where people
attack CCP buildings terrifies the leadership. Urban riots where people burn Trump effigies, less so.
If the true strategy is the second, then Trumps attacks are an obvious threat. The Chinese are aware now of the growing awareness
in the US of just how vulnerable the US has become to shortages of products which are now almost entirely Chinese made or controlled
– many processed metals, pharmaceuticals, key electronic components, etc. If it is indeed Chinese strategy to use these for leverage
at some future date, then they won't want to risk undermining this in a tit for tat war. In this situation, they will tread much
more carefully and won't be worried about a minor loss of face if they stand down and give Trump the victory headlines he craves.
In a broader sense, Trump believes that the biggest stick always wins a war like this, and he and his advisor clearly believe
the US has the biggest stick. But in military terms, the winner in a war is not the country who has the biggest army, but the
country that can bring the biggest army to the right field of battle. The Chinese (along perhaps with the Europeans and Mexicans)
may believe that if they fight smart and focus on specific battles – such as US farm goods or key US aerospace and consumer electronics
companies – they can make Trump and the Republicans really hurt. They know the electoral cycle in the US, which gives them a big
advantage. It will be interesting to see if Trump forces all sorts of new and unlikely alliances in opposition.
Interesting analysis. Do you think Trump's aim could be to throw a spanner into their works, whatever the plan is, thereby
buying more time to re-industrialize and wean US industries off of China? Also, it strikes me that Trump is consciously disciplining
US-based businesses like Apple every bit as much as he is China.
It would also require companies like Apple to show some interest in U.S. manufacturing, which is not the case at this time.
I'm all for whatever barriers are necessary to re-invigorate and modernize U.S. manufacturing. But it will be impossible to
make progress if U.S. multi-nationals refuse to go along. Trump doesn't play the long game and there is really no evidence that
he is willing to challenge/threaten U.S. firms in substantive ways. Remember the campaign threats against Ford? Since then, Ford
has not upped its U.S. investment but instead chosen to get completely out of the small car business. And that is a company that
still has an extensive U.S. manufacturing presence, unlike, say, Apple.
I think this is what the Chinese understand (maybe Trump does too and this is all just theater for 2020). They can play hardball
with Trump as long as US MNC's are on the side of China against the U.S. In the last 6 months, have you heard a single large U.S.
manufacturer voice support for Trump's trade policies? I haven't.
If the Chinese focus on key areas that can 'make Trump and the Republicans really hurt. They know the electoral cycle in the
US ,' wouldn't that be outright election meddling?
There is the same logic, possibility, at work in Trump's thinking (and thinking may be too generous a term for it but we do
I suppose have to assign some sort of plan being pushed through here) to that of the U.K.'s Brexit Ultras.
For the Ultras, reestablishing political and sovereignty independence is conflated and intertwined with economic independence
which all -- through a mechanism which is never adequately explained -- will result in domestic economic revitalisation that doesn't
require government direct intervention.
No, it doesn't stack up or make a great deal of sense, but having been around many hard-core Brexit'eers in the Brexit heartland
(and the Conservative party's local association in a Brexit stronghold) the people who hold this worldview do make it work
within the confines of their own minds. It goes something like: if you neutralise or at least weaken the power blocks which are
winning out politically and you'll reap a reward economically. The fallacy assumes that you can give Johnny Foreigner a good kicking
at the sovereignty and international power-broker level and because you're a geopolitical shaker and mover, that'll pay off in
trade terms. All without consequences.
But of course there are always consequences. Other countries can decide to endure downsides (not least because the
various ruling elites don't end up on the receiving end of these, usually) -- this was the same gamble the U.K. government made,
unsuccessfully, with the EU ("we're in the unassailable position because we import from them more than we export"). And so also
with China. If Beijing is prepared to play a long game, it can tough it out with the US, potentially longer than the US is prepared
to tolerate.
This has always been the case with the US (and the U.K. too, for that matter) -- they never expect anyone else to tolerate
any downside which is imposed. They're astonished when Cuba, the DPRK, Iran, Russia, China and even to a lesser extent the EU
don't simply fall into line when they click their fingers.
There are different power centers operating in the Trump administration's trade policy. Trump himself may be motivated by no
more than a desire to appear tough -- and as Yves notes, tariffs are one of the few ways a US president can act swiftly and unilaterally
to do so.
His advisers are another matter. They would like to pressure China to have more open and fair policies, but are OK with the
consequences if China refuses -- i.e., an extremely large decrease in US trade volumes with China, and, indeed, the entire world.
They have probably performed a calculation similar to the one outlined by Paul Krugman
in his June
17 column on trade wars . Basically, a global trade war would not have a giant impact on global GDP -- perhaps 2-3 percent
assuming tariffs on everything in the neighborhood of 30 percent. There would be displacement of jobs and workers while everyone
readjusted, but that's a price the Trump administration would probably be willing to pay. And, what Krugman does not mention,
the United States as a very large economy would in fact do less badly in a trade war than most others countries. By losing less,
it would "win" in the zero-sum universe Trump seems to inhabit.
That's a difference between Trumpers and Brexiters. Britain is an island that has always depended on trade. The US has two
oceans around it, still the world's largest economy (more or less), adequate natural resources, and a whole hemisphere to pick
on.
I think you are right in suggesting that the calculation is that even an all out trade war would not be catastrophic, and the
US would come out best.
I think the problem with this thinking is that it assumes symmetric actions by all the major parties, but in this sort of trade
war it will be more targeted and asymmetric. By which I mean that the Chinese and Europeans in particular have immediately targetted
more obvious, vulnerable US sectors. At first, these are just rather obvious ones, like Harley Davidson bikes or Levi Jeans, but
its not hard to see that if it gets serious there might be co-operation to target what they see as Trumps heartlands. As I suggested
above, a targeted attempt to hit key US food exports at the strategically right time could be devastating for US farmers, and
domestically China and other countries may accept the 'hit' domestically as they have a convenient scapegoat.
I should say though that whatever the outcome, the uncertainty created by Trumps action is likely to make all investors much
more wary of businesses which depend on widespread global supply chain networks, which can only be a good thing for people trying
to keep jobs local and to reduce emissions. Its unfortunate that when these come about through trade wars the impacts (as usual)
will hit ordinary people first, at least in the initial stage
I do agree that the zenith of long, complex and ultimately not especially resilient global supply chains has passed. For at
least 20, possibly 30 years these have received and been able to rely on unstinting political aircover and hidden subsidies.
Not any more. There's some minor tremors already being felt with the distinct possibility of some bigger systemic shocks in
store.
I do agree that the zenith of long, complex and ultimately not especially resilient global supply chains has passed.
Indeed – anecdotally and slightly tangentially – the days of outsourcing call-centres etc are numbered. Whilst many knowledgable
people have shown that the cost savings have not turned out to be anything like as large as the corporations predicted, consumer
hatred cannot be understated. I have gone through several weeks of arguing with Three over their service, being bounced around
various call-centres offshore. Finally, an email to the CEO, pointing out (in a measured way) how my business calls and those
of other businesses who use them will very quickly be affected, it was amazing how quickly things progressed, with my complaint
being escalated to the CEO executive group. I phrased it in terms of the fact their business model now actively encouraged (and
in many cases only supported) people to use phones known to be vulnerable to hackers and companies are really not going to like
that, even if they're cheap. Furthermore Three are immensely vulnerable come the next 5G spectrum auction (they are significantly
in trouble spectrum-wise) and I was about to be escalated to the Ombudsman, and told the CEO I'd be highlighting their security
vulnerabilities – something they really don't want, even though they'd done it to save a bob or two in outsourcing.
Things were sorted ASAP; it was obvious that a UK programmer redid the whole Three app and web interface over a weekend (I
used to program in Fortran in my PhD and diagnosed their problem straightaway). Three used to be innovative in carving out a niche
segment regarding its roaming plans – but has not kept innovating, and EU laws on roaming now mean its advantage is largely gone
whilst Vodafone staff in stores gleefully tell customers that you'll talk to a British call-centre – they have calculated that
the price premium is worth it, if people don't have to go through what I did, particularly high-value customers.
The days of long supply chains are numbered, most definitely. Systemic breakdowns would simply kill a company that operated
as they did. Now rapid changes seem to be in motion to make supply chains more robust and acceptable .
I hope its true – the fascinating shipping stats that Lambert posts in WaterCooler most days shows that transport is still
a huge and growing business, and seems to have recovered from the changes made 5 years ago when the oil price peak made a lot
of companies think twice about long supply chains. But there do seem to be a converging set of factors which must surely make
companies think twice. If you combine energy price risks, political risks, increasing tarrifs, consumer resistence, etc., there
are more and more incentives for companies to tighten and simplify supply chains. But I think it will be quite a while before
we see the impacts (and I'd never underestimate the power of inertia behind globilisation either).
Its often forgotten of course – mostly by economists who never study history – that we've been here before, most notably in
the late 19th Century when the trade was highly globilised, thanks to the major empires. That unravelled with startling speed.
Indeed, I see his statistics and agree regarding interia. But, as you say, economists are rubbish at history – and coupled
with their fascination with models that are ergodic (when the climate models suggest we are entering new territory with complete
"breaks" in the relationships and possible sudden shifts to new equilibria with associated huge, fast, cyclical changes) I can't
help but wonder if the supply chain models simply must collapse if the climate scientists are right and the economists are wrong.
But only time will tell .
Speaking of 'bigger systemic shocks,' Doug Kass puts a finer point on it [lifted from the Z site this morning]:
[Trump's] policy and negotiating tactics hold the risk that business confidence could be jeopardized and supply chains
may be disrupted.
I have long argued that the "Orange Swan" would ultimately be market unfriendly – that an untethered Trump would "Make Uncertainty
and Volatility (in the markets) Great Again." (#MUVGA)
And, I have recently argued over the last few months that the president's behavior is now beginning to impact the capital
markets.
Acting upon his impulses, growing more isolated and becoming more unhinged -- the Supreme Tweeter is now an Orange Swan
headwind.
" Rex, eat your salad " – President Trump
What numerical analyses such as Kurgman's miss is confidence. Popular mood has propelled Bubble III to stratospheric
heights, with equities and property dear worldwide.
All it takes is for confidence to falter, and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down with a crash far out of proportion
to the minor changes in economic stats that will be visible at the time. ' No one could have foreseen ' etc
Bubbles, and their aftermaths, are self-reinforcing both on the way up and the way down. A manly square jaw and a glorious
orange helmet will take you only so far when you haven't a clue what you're doing. :-(
Since Kass mentioned 'negotiating tactics,' presumably many now also are aware that factor.
Judging by how the bubble is holding up, can we say that, so far, the key market players are receiving that message and remain
(again, so far the Nasdaq dropped just a bit yesterday after the additional $200 billion tariffs news) confident on this front
(but whose confidence can be shaken on other fronts for example, perhaps by others who worry openly and warn that the sky is,
at this moment, falling).
Who needs confidence when the Fed has proved it will just step in and buy whatever's necessary to prop up the market. Loot
on the way up, loot on the way down. Fearing volatility is for smallfolk.
All it takes is for confidence to falter, and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down
But U.S. MNCs have had no confidence in U.S. manufacturing for decades. Which is why we need to never anger the bubble-driven
"confidence fairy." On the fundamentals that affect most people, the house blew down long ago.
What's amazing, is that right at the time when being part of a large trading block would seem to be an imperative and not just
an advantage, Britain decides to leave the EU. Even the very timing is wrong.
Much as I would like one, I am quite confident there will not be a global trade war. Trump has no long game and in any event
no stomach for taking on the entire U.S. business class. There will negotiations, flip-flops, photo-ops, some marginal claimed
"wins," no real change, and on to 2020.
'Basically, a global trade war would not have a giant impact on global GDP -- perhaps 2-3 percent assuming tariffs on everything
in the neighborhood of 30 percent.'
Kurgman seems to assume that the radical adjustment to supply chains is nearly frictionless. But it's not. Vast capital investment
will be needed, at a time when corporations are already highly leveraged by piling up debt to buy back shares.
A trade war is just the pin we need to pop Bubble III and send it crashing to earth like the Hindenburg -- oh the humanity!
It's a heavy price to pay, just to turf out Herbert Hoover Trump after one term and highlight Peter Rabbit Navarro as the PhD
Econ know nothing who wrecked the global economy. Even the benighted Kurgman sees that Navarro is a total charlatan.
It has been interesting for the last few years watching the pigs cotillion that passes for a "western elite" pull pin after
pin after pin on what have been assumed to be grenades thus far without any detonation.
Though we'll never know for sure, the Fed's bond dumping is a financial pin, while trade wars are a confidence smasher.
Once a stampede starts, it acquires a momentum of its own: you're obliged to run, not because you were scared, but because
a thundering herd is coming at you.
I'd agree very much with this, Clive. I would add that this sort of delusion seems largely restricted to major powers who haven't
suffered a major loss (or at least not one that couldn't be quietly forgotten) in a century or so. Those of us who live in smaller
countries always know that true absolute 'sovereignty' in the real world is a chimera. What matters is what areas you maintain
control, and which ones you let go – and its always better to let some go than have them ripped from your hands. And those countries
who have suffered humiliations in the recent past (Germany, France, China, Japan) have fewer delusions about the dangers of arrogance
and powerplay, although the French in particular are prone to forget.
An overly dynamic situation is one thing so long as it does not end up in a 'kinetic' situation. I am going to go out on a
limb here and say that Trump's threats against China are a gamble but will have to explain it a bit. For about two decades after
the collapse of the USSR we lived in a unipolar world with the axis located in Washington DC. You had people like McCain, Rubio,
Navarro, Lighthizer and Graham working through their careers in this 'golden age' but those times are now definitely over. The
world is once more reverting to its normal state of a multipolar world and people like the aforementioned people cannot tolerate
this.
To push back against this reversion, they have been trying on a wide front to use American military and economic power to make
countries bend to their will. Threatening allies if they purchase Russian weapons, blackmailing the EU to abandon Iran in preparation
for a cruel embargo, threatening Turkey by withholding sales of the F35 fighter, etc. have all been tried. For several reasons,
this approach is not working so well anymore. So at this point, after wrestling some time with countries like Russia and Iran,
the US has decided that they need to attack the center of gravity in this new multipolar world and that means China.
The US demanded that China reconfigure their entire economy to enable US corporations to have more power and say in China while
demanding that China curtail their advancing their technological development program. China balked at this but did offer compromises
to no effect. With the lunatic policy of pushing China and Russia together, a massive political and economic federation is slowly
forming on the mass of lands from Vladivosok all the way through to Europe. If that happens, then the US definitely becomes a
second rate power. The clock is ticking on this development hence the attempt to cower China which is the linchpin for this.
Trump has been convinced that the US holds the upper hand and decided on a gamble, a doubling down if you will, so that a decisive
victory will be achieved on the cusp of the 2018 US midterm elections. The trouble with all this is that the US is hemorrhaging
both soft and hard power and is in a weaker position now. There is more and more countries seeking to bypass use of the US dollar
as being too dangerous to use for some countries and working with an American company and buying America products is also being
seen as risky. An example is when the US forbid Airbus selling its own aircraft to Iran due to the presence of US parts. I am
willing to bet that a lot of other companies sat up and took notice of this. So now for Trump he is going all in to try to overturn
these developments but as we say in Australia, he has two chances – his and Buckleys
They do seem to be caught in something of a chinese finger puzzle alright. Everything they do seems to make their opponents
stronger in some fashion or another. As per PK above, I wonder if Trump is not, unwittingly, doing the Chinese a favour?
There's a reason historical trade routes followed the Silk Road, a reason horsemen swept out of the Mongolian plains to conquer
the world time and again. The axis of human trade runs through Europe/Asia. It has never run through North America and never will.
The US can't be the axis of the world because it quite simply isn't located in the right place along the right population vectors.
This is a fact the US military is well aware of. If the US tries to maintain its position in the long run it will fail. That's
just the way it is, and the sooner US stops propagandizing its own citizens to the contrary, the better.
to throw out an unconventional thought: if you're an environmentalist/anti-climate change, you should want a trade war. I guess
per the media and Democratic pundits it's: Reduce, reuse, recycle–Unless your goals align with a Trump policy on a discrete issue.
you should want to stop the government-subsidized 5/10,000-mile supply chain. Government-subsidized as in: favorable taxation
for fuel oil, government subsidized port facilities/roads, lax emissions regulations, lax labor laws, etc.
to throw out an unconventional thought: if you're an environmentalist/anti-climate change, you should want a trade war
That thought occurred to me too. Of course this is one of those situations in which the supply conditions support this but
the demands of the population ? Nasty situation ..People are going to have to learn (maybe the hard way via the oft-quoted "war-like
BREXIT economy on here") that lots of foodstuffs currently grown between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are simply going
to become unavailable. A 2-5 degree increase in average temperature in many of the countries there – particularly those with high
humidity – means that unless they have a LOT of energy to air condition people for large parts of the day, then human life will
be impossible – the body can't sweat enough to eliminate excess body heat if not cooled and death is inevitable. Nasty times ahead
for lots of countries in the "middle" of the planet ..and besides the (obviously) huge human cost to them, the days of producing
nice vegetables out of season for us at higher latitudes will soon be over.
But the US has eliminated the supervisor and middle managers that once ran operations like these. If we were to seek
to build some areas of manufacturing, the US would have to engage in industrial policy, which is something we do now, but only
by default, with the defense industry, financial services , health care, housing, and higher education among the favored
sectors. So given our political constraints, it's hard to see how we get there from here.
Perhaps, Trump is using the method of obliquity to get what is important to the powers that be, the fraudsters of Wall Street.
For instance, three nano seconds after the billionaire's tax cut was passed his top economic advisor, Gary Cohn
resigned , and the reason given was his opposition to the direction trade policy was going, but really,
who is dumb enough to believe that?
Quoting Trump:
"Gary has been my chief economic adviser and did a superb job in driving our agenda, helping to deliver historic tax
cuts and reforms and unleashing the American economy once again," Trump said in a statement to Times. "He is a rare talent,
and I thank him for his dedicated service to the American people."
Substitute "billionaire class" for "American people" to get closer to the truth. Gary is a venal mercenary that went to Washington
to get a jawb done.
Two of the "demands" by the US when it comes to "trade" is that intellectual property be respected and that US "companies"
operating in China be permitted to do so without the requirement to form partnerships with Chinese (CCP offshoots really) companies,
and to get there, my cynical self suspects that all peasants are nothing more than cannon fodder in this trade war so that the
fraudsters of Wall Street can go into China unfettered and loot the Chinese as much as they have looted Americans, and without
sharing a cut with Chinese "partners".
Sadly, the Europeans are key to preventing this. Only they have the purchasing power to offload China's current surplus, and
eventually proceed to an even trade relationship as the other terminus of the Belt.
I say sadly because they are the wimps of all time, and they will simply not let go of Mother America's apron strings. So at
least for my lifetime (another 20-30 years I'm expecting) things aren't going to change -- well, they will actually get worse
for the 90% in the US as well as everywhere else, but the overall state-level power dynamics will remain.
Funny also because the F35 sucks, you can barely tell where they detonated the MOAB, Elon Musk is building strange, badly-thought
out tunnels, our military is just tired, tired tired . yet still everybody cowers. What are they afraid of?
You make a good point in deriding Trump's vacillating positions as not a policy. (For comparison, Kirstjen Nielsen's consistent
behavior in having her dept. separate would be immigrant adults from children – without tracking who belongs to whom – is a policy.)
Trump's focus on domestic jobs would be an excellent, indeed, a necessary policy. Successful economic competitors in Asia and
Europe do exactly that. For Trump, however, it's not a policy, it's a talking point.
As you say, American mythology is that it has no industrial policy. The reality is that it has one, but it's written, implemented
and policed by the private sector. It does not want government to make a priority of domestic employment because it has largely
abandoned the idea as impossibly unprofitable.
In that, Elon Musk's reduction of at least 9% of his manufacturing workforce is the standard antediluvian response to management's
inability to meet its self-imposed objectives. He has decided, all evidence to the contrary, that his line workers and the processes
they are implementing are adequate to meet his objectives. They just need someone to crack the whip a tad harder.
But which jobs is Musk cutting? Largely middle management supervisors and technical staff. These are the people with manufacturing
know-how, the very people most likely to fix Musk's manufacturing-cum-quality process defects.
Musk is throwing out the people who could most help him meet his objectives. Adopting policies to which Detroit has long been
addicted will produce the consequences they always have before.
Krugman is not to be taken seriously on anything. He may actually know economic theory but he sold out so long ago that anything
he writes I dismiss out of hand as propaganda . I don't think he even has the potential to be stopped clock right about anything
. Every column is econo-babble designed to support whatever message his handlers need put out there. I think of him as the Baghdad
Bob of the economics bloggers.
As far as trade wars go I say bring it on. We have gotten so soft here in the US that everyone seems to walk around wringing
their hands and moaning all the time. My parents grew up during WW2 they had ration coupons and no passenger cars , no gasoline
, full on recycling of everything. I'd like to see some belt tightening of that sort in the here and now. I grew up in the 70's
I remember the energy crisis clearly, and people under 45 or 40 maybe literally have no clue what it means to have limitations
on basic necessities , not I can't afford the new Iphone but that it just can't be bought period.
Where ever one is in the golbal warming spectrum or the environmental spectrum personally , we just can not go on the way we
are . We need to put pressure on people to think about how they live and how they spend and what our government is doing in our
name.
many, many thing of which I do not approve, and wish to have no part of. However, in some manner I feel responsible as this
is a democracy, and I should have some influence (minuscule as it is).
The US is an oligarchy, even Princeton academics agree. Part of the way to end that problem, is seize control back from the
tyrants. My suggestion is to join the poor people's campaign, and do whatever you can do for them, whether it is protest, make
signs, or send small donations.
Don't let the oligarchs make you believe that what they do is in your name. It is not, and the only way to stop them is to
make them fear the population.
Elections won't do it – not as long as black-box voting machines and interstate cross-check ensure that the poor voice is as
quiet as possible.
I have felt for a long time that our consumption based economy is a way to keep people so self absorbed that they don't
ask too many questions .
WHEEE I got a new Iphone , instead of why are we bombing these people. Looking back I was a happier person when I had less
possessions. I don't know when the cut off point was though. I mean as a young man I did without and wanted things and then there
was a period of fuzziness and now my house is full of shit that I don't even care about.
I can remember waiting in line at a gas pump with my dad so we could go to nantasket beach. I didn't mind waiting in a hot
car for an hour because I was excited to go. Now you see a family out in a car everyone has their device and do they even care
where they are going?
In a world of plenty everything seems cheap and tawdry . Bring on the trade war , lets see people start to do without and then
realize the garbage they can't get isn't even important.
> One advantage of this tactic for Xi is that this time the numbers are on his side, as U.S. investment in China is far larger
than the reverse.
That's a really weird definition of the word "advantage". The factories and plants US companies built in China employ Chinese
workers and consist of infrastructure that exists in China. If China cracks down on those plants it's basically punching itself
in the face. Share prices for those US companies would fall, but as a working class American I honestly DGAF.
The American companies get far more revenue from their Chinese operations than their Chinese workers can get from their salaries.
So China's retaliation will disproportionately affect the revenue of these companies instead of the income of their Chinese workers.
As tempting as it is to attribute this to personality failings, I don't believe that Mr. Trump's China tantrum is geopolitical
one-upmanship. It is more likely a reaction to the annual Industrial Capabilities Report released on May 17 by the Pentagon's
Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, in parallel to a similar review being conducted internally by the White House.
The Pentagon has concluded that two decades of financially-engineered corporate concentration and out-sourcing of skilled
work to China has stripped the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex of its "organic industrial base." It appears evident that the
White House has decided that tariff barriers on China are the only way to rebuild a population of of "qualified workers to meet
current demands as well as needing to integrate a younger workforce with the 'right skills, aptitude, experience, and interest
to step into the jobs vacated by senior-level engineers and skilled technicians' as they exit the workforce."
It's good to have an 'organic industrial base.' And Chins is well aware of the Japanese Judo, which advocates using someone's
energy to do the work for you. Here, workers in the US can take advantage of the energy of the MIC to achieve the goal of making
American manufacturing and employment great again.
Mr. Market is anxious. Anxious is well short of panicked.
When was "the market" not anxious? It appears to me that fear, anxiety, is paramount. They, the market participants, are anxious
where they are making money, they are anxious when not making money, they are anxious when they have money, and they are anxious
when they don't have money.
I find myself confused and in a quandary. Is it not neoliberalism and global trade that over the past 25 years or so has
led to corporate mega-wealth and the beginning of the end of the US middle class, and the further impoverishment of the working
class? If so, then as a good progressive, should I not welcome a trade war or whatever economic change will end this global economic
tyranny? Is the skepticism or outright opposition to a trade war of so many progressives simply based on the fact taht t's being
initiated by the colossal idiot in the White House who may inadvertently be doing something beneficial?
"... Fact is that the Guardian and the Telegraph are full of anti-Russian propaganda. There is no piece in them about Russia or Putin that does not include snide and fear mongering or repeats long refuted claims about this or that incident for which Russia is claimed to be responsible. The military industrial complex gave order to condemn Russia and the "western" main stream media follow through. ..."
"... But don't pity them. They made their choice, and are well rewarded for their services. With respect, I would rather despise them. ..."
"... And Shaun is trying to sneak out: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/20/police-england-fans-russia-nazi-salute-world-cup ..."
"... I can't prove Shaun Walker and Luke Harding are MI5 operatives but I feel it in my gut. ..."
"... Shawn Wanker personally witnessed Russian AFVs invading Ukraine when he was 1) too far away from the border to see them 2) had amazingly forgotten to bring his smart phone so he could take a geolocated photo. So his credibility is low. As in lower than snake shit. ..."
"... What a tangled web the west has woven for itself through its deceits. How these presstitutes had to work through the night, and sweat the details, to try to patch the holes in the sinking ship - while those who were part of the truth of discovering the reality of Russia slept soundly, and probably with a great beer buzz, and the ring of real people in their ears. ..."
Andrew Roth Retweeted Shaun Walker
Absurd the responses to this incident that multiple correspondents saw. And their point is that it was an outlier in
what sounded like a fine night at the football. Context is all here, should they ignore it instead?
If two British scribes say they heard something, which each describes differently, then it must be true. "Evidence?
We don't report with evidence. Trust us."
This morning a Russian blogger posted some evidence (machine translated from Russian):
Remember yesterday there was a lot of talk about the English journalist who wrote about the alleged Russians who
sang Nazi songs in a bar in Volgograd? They found them. But they were not Russian, but... British. Actually, for
that, it's e... Lo must be beaten. This is Volgograd! Stalingrad!
The attached a video shows three drunk
British blokes in an 'Irish' pub where the menu is written in Cyrillic letters and World Cup flags hang from the
ceiling. The blokes sing a line about putting someone to Auschwitz, give the Hitler salute and shout "Sieg Heil!" The
pub where the video was taken seems to be a different one than the Harat's Walker and Luhn visited. But the point was
made.
Fact is that the Guardian and the Telegraph are full of anti-Russian propaganda. There is no piece
in them about Russia or Putin that does not include snide and fear mongering or repeats long refuted claims about this
or that incident for which Russia is claimed to be responsible. The military industrial complex gave order to condemn
Russia and the "western" main stream media follow through.
Both of the scribes quoted English fans who lament about the false picture they had when they arrived in Russia.
Might that have something to do with the constant stream of russophobe trash the British media provides? Should a
British correspondent in Russia take some time to reflect upon that?
But the two scribes go off to have lots of beer to then send spurious, late-night, anti-Russian claims to their
100,000 followers without providing any evidence. Then they lament about being called out for that.
They are mediocre propagandists who's words no one trusts or believes. One must truly pity these guys.
Posted by b on June 20, 2018 at 04:14 PM |
Permalink
Pity these guys? Not really. Remember, they are not journalists. They are propagandist,
hired mouthpieces. They say what they are scripted to say by their corporate bosses, it doesn't
matter how absurd, the point is to just hammer and hammer and hammer away and mold public
opinion via brute force. The old Soviet Union had more subtle liars.
But don't pity them. They made their choice, and are well rewarded for their services. With
respect, I would rather despise them.
I can't prove Shaun Walker and Luke Harding are MI5 operatives but I feel it in my
gut. I got banned from the Guardian for contrasting Walker's article on the supposedly
insanely loud, strident music in hotels at the Sochi Olympics with a real journalist who said
the music was quiet and varied between classical and soft pop.
Most people are reading the sports journalists, thankfully, and watching them...
Every day the NYT has one or two op-ed pieces critical of Putin/Russia. Today it was by
Alexey Kovalev, and titled "The World Cup Is Fun. Except for the Russians Being Tortured." I'm still waiting for a mention that the host team scored 8 goals in their two
matches.
Shawn Wanker personally witnessed Russian AFVs invading Ukraine when he was 1) too far away
from the border to see them 2) had amazingly forgotten to bring his smart phone so he could
take a geolocated photo. So his credibility is low. As in lower than snake shit.
Aaaaaaaaaand in the meantime, people around the world are are amazed at the beautiful
stadiums, the fantastic atmosphere, the great welcome from local people who ar suddenly
"invaded", they wonder at the well functioning machine behind it all, the wonder at the tight
security and safety of spectators and sport stars.
Congratulations Russia and Russian people, well done! You are doing this exceptionally well.
The World Cup, will be billions of dollars worth in positive reviews.
Great to see that Brit fans laid a wreath at the memorial. Shows May and Johnson are not
connected to the public,
Seeing that the homophobia and racism claims are not sticking well in their relentless
anti-Russian narrative, the MSM has dug up the case of the Ukrainian film director Oleg
Sentsov who is currently on hunger strike while in jail in Labytnangi, in northern Siberia,
for planning to carry out terrorist acts on public infrastructure and a statue in Crimea and
to set fire to government office buildings in Simferopol in 2014, and is flaying it for all
it's worth.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/ukrainian-film-director-on-hunger-strike-in-a-russian-prison-casts-dark-cloud-over-world-cup-20180620-p4zmmr.html
The sports writers are the truth, while the established anchors are the party line. It was
never any different.
We forget the upside. We forget how much energy it takes to keep a lie believable. We
forget how the west has to strain against incredulity itself in order to counter the random
and unschooled manifestations of the truth.
What a tangled web the west has woven for itself through its deceits. How these
presstitutes had to work through the night, and sweat the details, to try to patch the holes
in the sinking ship - while those who were part of the truth of discovering the reality of
Russia slept soundly, and probably with a great beer buzz, and the ring of real people in
their ears.
We have to do something, but we don't have to do everything, in order to counter the lies
of the liars. The universe itself - the very nature of reality - abhors untruth, and causes
the truth to show the shallowness of lies on countless, unscripted occasions.
And these occasions are usually a party. A celebration by ordinary people, joining in
common understanding.
What the rulers most fear.
Because all it takes is a small consensus of 10-15 percent of any population and you have
an activist force. They know this. Minions like the presstitutes mentioned here probably
don't understand this in words, but in their bowels they know.
"... However, the truth – at least in retrospect – was that, in the Cold War years, the Soviets were actually doing Washington a strange, if unnoted, favor. Across much of the Eurasian continent, and other places from Cuba to the Middle East, Soviet power and the never-ending contest for influence and dominance that went with it always reminded American leaders that their own power had its limits. ..."
"... This, as the 21st century should have (but hasn't) made clear, was no small thing. It still seemed obvious then that American power could not be total. There were things it could not do, places it could not control, dreams its leaders simply couldn't have. Though no one ever thought of it that way, from 1945 to 1991, the United States, like the Soviet Union, was, after a fashion, "contained." ..."
"... In those years, the Russians were, in essence, saving Washington from itself. Soviet power was a tangible reminder to American political and military leaders that certain areas of the planet remained no-go zones (except in what, in those years, were called "the shadows"). ..."
"... The Soviet Union, in short, rescued Washington from both the fantasy and the hell of going it alone, even if Americans only grasped that reality at the most subliminal of levels. ..."
Think of it as the all-American version of the human comedy: a great power that eternally
knows what the world needs and offers copious advice with a tone deafness that would be
humorous, if it weren't so grim.
If you look, you can find examples of this just about
anywhere. Here, for instance, is a passage in The New York Times from a piece on the
topsy-turvy Trumpian negotiations that preceded the Singapore summit. "The Americans and South
Koreans," wrote
reporter Motoko Rich, "want to persuade the North that continuing to funnel most of the
country's resources into its military and nuclear programs shortchanges its citizens' economic
well-being. But the North does not see the two as mutually exclusive."
Think about that for a moment. The US has, of course, embarked on a trillion-dollar-plus
upgrade of its already massive nuclear arsenal (and
that's before the cost overruns even begin). Its Congress and president have for years proved
eager to sink at least a
trillion dollars annually into the budget of the national security state (a figure that's
still rising and
outpaces by far that of any other power on the planet), while its own infrastructure
sags and crumbles. And
yet it finds the impoverished North Koreans puzzling when they, too, follow such an extreme
path.
"Clueless" is not a word Americans ordinarily apply to themselves as a country, a people, or
a government. Yet how applicable it is.
And when it comes to cluelessness, there's another, far stranger path the United States has
been following since at least the George W Bush moment that couldn't be more consequential and
yet somehow remains the least noticed of all. On this subject, Americans don't have a clue. In
fact, if you could put the United States on a psychiatrist's couch, this might be the place to
start.
America contained
In a way, it's the oldest story on Earth: the rise and fall of empires. And note the plural
there. It was never – not until recently at least – "empire," always "empires."
Since the 15th century, when the fleets of the first European imperial powers broke into the
larger world with subjugation in mind, it was invariably a contest of many. There were at least
three or sometimes significantly more imperial powers rising and contesting for dominance or
slowly falling from it.
This was, by definition, the history of great powers on this planet: the challenging rise,
the challenged decline. Think of it for so many centuries as the essential narrative of
history, the story of how it all happened until at least 1945, when just two "superpowers," the
United States and the Soviet Union, found themselves facing off on a global scale.
Of the two, the US was always stronger, more powerful, and far wealthier. It theoretically
feared the Russian Bear, the Evil Empire , which it
worked assiduously to " contain " behind that famed Iron
Curtain and whose adherents in the US, always modest in number, were subjected to a mania of
fear and suppression.
However, the truth – at least in retrospect – was that, in the Cold War years,
the Soviets were actually doing Washington a strange, if unnoted, favor. Across much of the
Eurasian continent, and other places from Cuba to the Middle East, Soviet power and the
never-ending contest for influence and dominance that went with it always reminded American
leaders that their own power had its limits.
This, as the 21st century should have (but hasn't) made clear, was no small thing. It still
seemed obvious then that American power could not be total. There were things it could not do,
places it could not control, dreams its leaders simply couldn't have. Though no one ever
thought of it that way, from 1945 to 1991, the United States, like the Soviet Union, was, after
a fashion, "contained."
In those years, the Russians were, in essence, saving Washington from itself. Soviet power
was a tangible reminder to American political and military leaders that certain areas of the
planet remained no-go zones (except in what, in those years, were called "the shadows").
The Soviet Union, in short, rescued Washington from both the fantasy and the hell of going
it alone, even if Americans only grasped that reality at the most subliminal of levels.
That was the situation until December 1991 when, at the end of a centuries-long imperial
race for power (and the never-ending arms race that went with it), there was just one gigantic
power left standing on Planet Earth. It told you something about the thinking then that, when
the Soviet Union imploded, the initial reaction in Washington wasn't triumphalism (though that
came soon enough) but utter shock, a disbelieving sense that something no one had expected,
predicted, or even imagined had nonetheless happened. To that very moment, Washington had
continued to plan for a two-superpower world until the end of time.
America
uncontained
Soon enough, though, the Washington elite came to see what happened as, in the phrase of the
moment, " the end of
history ." Given the wreckage of the Soviet Union, it seemed that an ultimate victory had
been won by the very country its politicians would soon come to call "the last superpower," the
"
indispensable " nation, the " exceptional
" state, a land great beyond imagining (until, at least, Donald Trump hit
the campaign trail with a slogan that implied greatness wasn't all-American any more).
In reality, there were a variety of paths open to the "last superpower" at that moment.
There was even, however briefly, talk of a "peace dividend" – of the possibility that, in
a world without contesting superpowers, taxpayer dollars might once again be invested not in
the sinews of war-making but of peacemaking (particularly in infrastructure and the well-being
of the country's citizens).
Such talk, however, lasted only a year or two and always in a minor key before being
relegated to Washington's attic. Instead, with only a few rickety "rogue" states left to deal
with – like gulp North Korea, Iraq and Iran – that money never actually headed
home, and neither did the thinking that went with it.
Consider it the good fortune of the geopolitical dreamers soon to take the reins in
Washington that the first Gulf War of 1990-1991, which ended less than a year before the Soviet
Union collapsed, prepared the way for quite a different style of thinking. That instant victory
led to a new kind of militarized dreaming in which a highly tech-savvy military, like the one
that had driven Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein's forces out of Kuwait in such short order, would
be capable of doing anything on a planet without serious opposition.
And yet, from the beginning, there were signs suggesting a far grimmer future. To take but
one infamous example, Americans still remember the Black Hawk Down moment of 1993
when the world's greatest military fell victim to a Somali warlord and local militias and found
itself incapable of imposing its will on one of the least impressive not-quite-states on the
planet (a place
still frustrating that military a quarter-century later).
In that post-1991 world, however, few in Washington even considered that the 20th century
had loosed another phenomenon on the world, that of insurgent national liberation movements,
generally leftist rebellions, across what had been the colonial world – the very world of
competing empires now being tucked into the history books – and it hadn't gone away. In
the 21st century, such insurgent movements, now largely religious, or terror-based, or both,
would turn out to offer a grim new version of containment to the last
superpower.
Unchaining the indispensable nation
On September 11, 2001, a canny global jihadist by the name of Osama bin Laden
sent his air force (four hijacked US passenger jets) and his precision weaponry (19
suicidal, mainly Saudi followers) against three iconic targets in the American pantheon: the
Pentagon, the World Trade Center, and undoubtedly the Capitol or the White House (neither of
which was hit because one of those jets crashed in a field in
Pennsylvania). In doing so, in a sense bin Laden not only loosed a literal hell on Earth, but
unchained
the last superpower.
William Shakespeare would have had a word for what followed: hubris. But give the top
officials of the Bush administration (and the neocons who supported them) a break. There had
never been a moment like it: a moment of one. A single great power left alone, triumphant, on
planet Earth. Just one superpower – wealthy beyond compare, its increasingly high-tech
military unmatched, its only true rival in a state of collapse – had now been challenged
by a small jihadist group.
To president Bush, vice-president Dick Cheney, and the rest of their crew, it seemed like
nothing short of a heaven-sent opportunity. As they came out of the shock of 9/11, of that "
Pearl
Harbor of the 21st century ," it was as if they had found a magic formula in the ruins of
those iconic buildings for the ultimate control of the planet. As secretary of defense Donald
Rumsfeld would instruct an aide
at the Pentagon that day, "Go massive. Sweep it up. Things related and not."
Within days, things related and not were indeed being swept up. The country was almost
instantly said to be "at war," and soon that conflict even had a name, the Global War on
Terror. Nor was that war to be against just al-Qaeda, or even one country, an Afghanistan
largely ruled by the Taliban. More than 60 countries said to have "terror
networks" of various sorts found themselves almost instantly in the administration's potential
gunsights. And that was just to be the beginning of it all.
In October 2001, the invasion of Afghanistan was launched. In the spring of 2003, the
invasion of Iraq followed, and those were only the initial steps in what was increasingly
envisioned as the imposition of a Pax Americana on the Greater Middle East.
There could be no doubt, for instance, that Iran and Syria, too, would
soon go the way of Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush's top officials had been nursing just such dreams
since, in 1997, many of them formed a
think-tank (the first ever to enter the White House) called the Project for the New American
Century and began to write out what
were then the fantasies of figures nowhere near power. By 2003, they were power itself and
their dreams, if anything, had grown even more grandiose.
In addition to imagining a political Pax Republicana in the United States, they truly
dreamed of a future planetary Pax Americana in which, for the first time in history, a single
power would, in some fashion, control the whole works, the Earth itself.
And this wasn't to be a passing matter either. The Bush administration's "unilateralism"
rested on a conviction that it could actually create a future in which no country or even bloc
of countries would ever come close to matching or challenging US military power. The
administration's National Security Strategy of 2002 put the
matter bluntly: The US was to "build and maintain" a military, in the phrase of the moment,
" beyond challenge
."
They had little doubt that, in the face of the most technologically advanced, bulked-up,
destructive force on Earth, hostile states would be "shocked and awed" by a simple demonstration of
its power, while friendly ones would have little choice but to come to heel as well. After all,
as Bush said at a Veterans of
Foreign Wars convention in 2007, the US military was "the greatest force for human liberation
the world has ever known."
Though there was much talk at the time about the "liberation" of Afghanistan and then Iraq,
at least in their imaginations the true country being liberated was the planet's lone
superpower. Although the Bush administration was officially considered a "conservative" one,
its key officials were geopolitical dreamers of the first order and their vision of the world
was the very opposite of conservative. It harkened back to nothing and looked forward to
everything.
It was radical in ways that should have, but didn't, take the American public's breath away;
radical in ways that had never been seen before.
Shock and awe for the last
superpower
Think of what those officials did in the post-9/11 moment as the ultimate act of greed. They
tried to swallow a whole planet. They were determined to make it a planet of one in a way that
had never before been seriously imagined.
It was, to say the least, a vision of madness. Even in a moment when it truly did seem
– to them at least – that all constraints had been taken off, an administration of
genuine conservatives might have hesitated. Its top officials might, at least, have approached
the post-Soviet situation with a modicum of caution and modesty.
But not George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and pals. In the face of what seemed
like the ultimate in possibilities they proved clueless when it came to the possibility that
anything on Earth might have a shot at containing them.
Even among their critics, who could have imagined then that, more than 16 years later,
having faced only lightly armed enemies of various sorts, still wealthy beyond compare, still
with a military funded in a way the next seven
countries couldn't cumulatively match,
the United States would have won literally nothing?
Who could have imagined that, unlike so many preceding imperial powers (including the US of
the earlier Cold War era), it would have been able to establish control over nothing at all;
that, instead, from Afghanistan to Syria, Iraq deep into Africa, it would find itself in a
state of "
infinite war " and utter frustration on a planet filled with ever more failed
states , destroyed
cities , displaced people , and
right-wing "populist" governments, including the one in Washington?
Who could have imagined that, with a peace dividend no longer faintly conceivable, this
country would have found itself not just in decline, but – a new term is needed to catch
the essence of this curious moment – in what might be called self-decline?
Yes, a new power, China, is finally rising – and doing so on a planet that seems
itself to be
going down . Here, then, is a conclusion that might be drawn from the quarter-century-plus
in which America was both unchained and largely alone.
The Earth is admittedly a small orb in a vast universe, but the history of this century so
far suggests one reality about which America's rulers proved utterly clueless: After so many
hundreds of years of imperial struggle, this planet still remains too big, too disparate, too
ornery to be controlled by a single power. What the Bush administration did was simply take one
gulp too many and the result has been a kind of national (and planetary) indigestion.
Despite what it looked like in Washington once upon a time, the disappearance of the Soviet
Union proved to be no gift at all, but a disaster of the first order. It removed all sense of
limits from America's political class and led to a tale of greed on a planetary scale. In the
process, it also set the US on a path to self-decline.
The history of greed in our time has yet to be written, but what a story it will someday
make. In it, the greed of those geopolitical dreamers will intersect with the greed of an ever
wealthier, ever more gilded 1%, of the billionaires who were preparing to swallow whole the
political system of that last superpower and grab so much of the wealth of the planet, leaving
so little for others.
Whether you're talking about the urge to control the planet militarily or financially, what
took place in these years could, in the end, result in ruin of a historic kind. To use a
favored phrase from the Bush years, one of these days we Americans may be facing little short
of "regime change" on a planetary scale. And what a piece of shock and awe that's likely to
prove to be.
All of us, of course, now live on the planet Bush's boys tried to swallow whole. They left
us in a world of infinite war, infinite harm, and in Donald Trump's America where cluelessness
has been raised to a new power.
Murphy also included the District of Columbia in his research, and found it had a
psychopathy level far higher than any other state. But this finding is an outlier, as Murphy
notes, as it's an entirely urban area and cannot be fairly compared with larger, more
geographically diverse, US states. That said, as Murphy notes, "The presence of psychopaths
in District of Columbia is consistent with the conjecture found in Murphy (2016) that
psychopaths are likely to be effective in the political sphere."
Surprised? I didn't think so. But still, fun to get some scientific confirmation.
The personality traits generally corresponding to psychopathy are low neuroticism, high
extraversion, low agreeableness, and low conscientiousness.
Of course, D.C. came in first by far. But as he notes, that this is not exactly a fair
comparison, as it is a city being compared to entire states. The study finds that urban areas,
in general, correspond to more psychopathic personality traits.
Another interesting finding is that a higher concentration of lawyers predicts higher
psychopathy prevalence. I kid you not.
So removing D.C. can you guess which states come in the top three? I bet you can.
Connecticut
California
New Jersey
New York ties for the fourth highest concentration of psychopaths among U.S. states.
Interestingly, it ties with Wyoming which I would not have expected. But the author notes there
was a relatively small sample surveyed from Wyoming.
The least psychopathic states are :
West Virginia
Vermont
Tennessee
North Carolina
New Mexico
And it should not be surprising that the main correlation was that state with the lowest
percentage of people living in urban areas also had the lowest concentration of
psychopaths.
Perhaps psychopaths need to be around more victims, or constantly switch out their friends
and acquaintances as they become wise to their antisocial behaviors. Note that antisocial does
not mean loner, it means lacking empathy, remorse, and
behaving in a manipulative way that hurts others .
But to be clear, the paper is not so much identifying where all the psychopaths live, as
much as identifying general population traits which correspond to psychopathy.
This certainly leads to a higher frequency of psychiatrically identifiable true psychopaths.
But it also means that a large percentage of the population behaves in a somewhat psychopathic
manner.
While a very small percentage of individuals in any given state may actually be true
psychopaths, the level of psychopathy present, on average, within an aggregate population
(i.e., not simply the low percentages of psychopaths) is a distinct research question. While
empirical operationalizations of psychopathy frequently treat it as a binary categorization,
the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (Hare 1991) treats it as a spectrum. The operationalization of
psychopathy found here is consistent with psychopathy as thought of as a spectrum.
The study concludes:
Areas of the United States that are measured to be most psychopathic are those in the
Northeast and other similarly populated regions. The least psychopathic are predominantly
rural areas. The District of Columbia is measured to be far more psychopathic than any
individual state in the country, a fact that can be readily explained either by its very high
population density or by the type of person who may be drawn [to] a literal seat of power (as
in Murphy 2016).
Hailing originally from Massachusetts, I can attest to the highest corresponding personality
trait being "Temperamental & Uninhibited." Where did you think the term Masshole came
from.
If you aren't a psychopath when you enter the state, you soon become one from the traffic
alone. And I wonder if just being in such close proximity to people makes it a necessary
adaptation to care a little less about how your actions affect others.
There are just too many variables, so you become numb to the plight of others, and just need
to get the hell out of this traffic jam before I go insane!
Murphy also included the District of Columbia in his research, and found it had a
psychopathy level far higher than any other state. But this finding is an outlier, as Murphy
notes, as it's an entirely urban area and cannot be fairly compared with larger, more
geographically diverse, US states. That said, as Murphy notes, "The presence of psychopaths
in District of Columbia is consistent with the conjecture found in Murphy (2016) that
psychopaths are likely to be effective in the political sphere."
Surprised? I didn't think so. But still, fun to get some scientific confirmation.
The personality traits generally corresponding to psychopathy are low neuroticism, high
extraversion, low agreeableness, and low conscientiousness.
Of course, D.C. came in first by far. But as he notes, that this is not exactly a fair
comparison, as it is a city being compared to entire states. The study finds that urban areas,
in general, correspond to more psychopathic personality traits.
Another interesting finding is that a higher concentration of lawyers predicts higher
psychopathy prevalence. I kid you not.
So removing D.C. can you guess which states come in the top three? I bet you can.
Connecticut
California
New Jersey
New York ties for the fourth highest concentration of psychopaths among U.S. states.
Interestingly, it ties with Wyoming which I would not have expected. But the author notes there
was a relatively small sample surveyed from Wyoming.
The least psychopathic states are :
West Virginia
Vermont
Tennessee
North Carolina
New Mexico
And it should not be surprising that the main correlation was that state with the lowest
percentage of people living in urban areas also had the lowest concentration of
psychopaths.
Perhaps psychopaths need to be around more victims, or constantly switch out their friends
and acquaintances as they become wise to their antisocial behaviors. Note that antisocial does
not mean loner, it means lacking empathy, remorse, and
behaving in a manipulative way that hurts others .
But to be clear, the paper is not so much identifying where all the psychopaths live, as
much as identifying general population traits which correspond to psychopathy.
This certainly leads to a higher frequency of psychiatrically identifiable true psychopaths.
But it also means that a large percentage of the population behaves in a somewhat psychopathic
manner.
While a very small percentage of individuals in any given state may actually be true
psychopaths, the level of psychopathy present, on average, within an aggregate population
(i.e., not simply the low percentages of psychopaths) is a distinct research question. While
empirical operationalizations of psychopathy frequently treat it as a binary categorization,
the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (Hare 1991) treats it as a spectrum. The operationalization of
psychopathy found here is consistent with psychopathy as thought of as a spectrum.
The study concludes:
Areas of the United States that are measured to be most psychopathic are those in the
Northeast and other similarly populated regions. The least psychopathic are predominantly
rural areas. The District of Columbia is measured to be far more psychopathic than any
individual state in the country, a fact that can be readily explained either by its very high
population density or by the type of person who may be drawn [to] a literal seat of power (as
in Murphy 2016).
Hailing originally from Massachusetts, I can attest to the highest corresponding personality
trait being "Temperamental & Uninhibited." Where did you think the term Masshole came
from.
If you aren't a psychopath when you enter the state, you soon become one from the traffic
alone. And I wonder if just being in such close proximity to people makes it a necessary
adaptation to care a little less about how your actions affect others.
There are just too many variables, so you become numb to the plight of others, and just need
to get the hell out of this traffic jam before I go insane!
"The rally featured a pointed anti-war speech from Obama, then a fairly anonymous state
lawmaker, who deemed the impending Iraq engagement 'a dumb war.'"
The political entertainer Obama gave a number of speeches advocating transparency in
government, advocating for financial reform and even mentioned "we tortured some folks"
decrying torture.
Then behind the scenes Obama did very little to back up his speeches with actions as
he went with the flow.
Obama's Illinois anti-war speech served him well, as he could milk this "anti-war" stance
for years while running military actions as President.
Obama had two groups to satisfy, the populace and the elite. The populace got empty
words, the elite got what they wanted.
Bernie Sanders actually DID vote against the Authorization to Use Military Force in
Iraq
"... It wasn't just bad intelligence, it was consistently purposeful bad intelligence. The consequences have been dire for the world, and our country as well. The Russians in that period never represented a serious military threat even to the continent of Europe, far less the US. ..."
"... You are correct. The forever wars are just one of the ways to bleed the Middle Class dry. The media propaganda and rule by the 10% can't let the suckers know what is really going on. There are always enough men to man the colonial wars but they are unwinnable unless the whole nation is involved. ..."
"... Then behind the scenes Obama did very little to back up his speeches with actions as he went with the flow. ..."
"... Obama had two groups to satisfy, the populace and the elite. The populace got empty words, the elite got what they wanted. ..."
"... The MSM is waging a propaganda campaign at every level completely obscuring the truth. And the politicians play the fear card at every level. I don't believe any of us is in "happy compliance" at the airport. I for one, grind my teeth and cuss out the crooked corporations (including that bastard "skull" Chertoff who personally benefited from the x-ray screening machines) that reap a bundle of money from the so called screening and invasive body searches. Travel has become something to dread. ..."
"... The officer corps might be an opponent but I think that America has been badly served by them due to how officers are selected & trained and who makes it to the top. The only time they balk is when some idiot in Washington pushes them to fight the Russians or the Chinese. And most people don't really care in any case so long as the US wins. Out of sight, out of mind as they say. ..."
"... It's harder and harder to sell these military actions to the public. What are we in Korea and Japan for? To contain China? If you ask most people, they'll probably tell you that China won, or at very least our bosses are in league with their bosses. ..."
"... The Borg moves without regard to public sentiment, so we have to replace politicians with those who'll bring it to heel. That's a death sentence, but I feel like enough people have the guts to try and make it happen. ..."
"... *sigh* someone please trot out that Goering quote again: To the extent that public opinion matters, public opinion is easy to arrange. ..."
"... I don't mean to suggest that there isn't a solid electoral reason to have nice vague policies, not least because a campaign against foreign wars would be an excellent way for the left to make common cause with some parts of the right, such as the paleoconservatives and isolationists. ..."
"... It did for Russia. There is now an ongoing civil war on its border in Ukraine. NATO went to war with Serbia in the later 1990's. The breakup of the Atlantic Alliance will splinter Europe. Humans being humans. The strong will try to steal from the weak. ..."
"... The old adage that our country rallies around a war president is no longer operative IMHO. In a nation tired of perpetual war, the commander-in-chief would get at best a short-term surge in public approval by opening up a new battle zone, before slipping precipitously in the polls. Why on earth have the Democrats eagerly embraced the role of the war party, while our country literally crumbles for lack of public investment? Could there be a more effective losing strategy? ..."
"... Why on earth have the Democrats eagerly embraced the role of the war party, while our country literally crumbles for lack of public investment? Could there be a more effective losing strategy? ..."
"... Those are their constituents: beltway bandits, private contractors, public/private partnerships, insurance companies, arms companies, private equity firms, military contractors, and whatever other combinations you want to come up with. ..."
"... I remember when Tim Kaine gleefully suggested that we needed an "intelligence surge" to protect the country. I almost gagged. It was a not so subtle message of "prepare for the handouts to the private military contractor industry". ..."
"... How does positioning 2,000 – 4,000 US troops in Syria fit into your "Trump is a peace-maker" narrative? How about the comment Wednesday that the US will attack Syrian forces if they attack Sunni jihadis (er "moderate rebels") in SW Syria? ..."
"... How about us aiding and abetting a famine in Yemen that could kills tens of thousands? ..."
"... I think you are attributing a sentiment to juliania that her comment does not actually contain. She doesn't say Trump is a peace-maker, she says he was far in front of Bernie in using "anti-war rhetoric as a strategy." The example of Nixon doing the same thing indicates that juliania is well aware that strategic rhetoric and actual decisions are not the same thing. ..."
"... I know a fair number of Trump voters, and my read is similar to juliania's: Trump's anti-war rhetoric was a big draw for a lot of people, and helped many be able to hold their nose and vote for him. Understanding this and commenting on it does not make one a Trump supporter, obviously, or indicate that one puts any credence in his dovish rhetoric. ..."
"... You might be correct and my apologies to juliania if I misread her post. I have heard so much of the "Trump is fighting [the deep state, Wall Street, the neocons]" on other blogs that I am a bit hypersensitive and go off on a rant when I see or perceive that argument. From my perspective, Trump is doing everything in his power to entrench Wall Street, the neocons, etc. ..."
"... The war in Yemen is to secure the Saudi monarchy and our interest in their vast reserves of oil and gas. ..."
"... Are militarism* and democracy compatible? I'm not so sure they are. ..."
"... A lot depends on how you define "democracy", "will of the people" etc.. What the role of "finance" in a context of "capitalism" and "democracy" should be, e.g., citizens united(note orwellian language) may be considered a " reason why they would not be compatible" and even antithetical. ..."
"... America itself is the most destabilizing force on the planet. i would love to see what America leaving the world to its' own devices would look like. Like Weimar/Nazi Germany, nothing good comes from these kind of "American Values." ..."
"... The military is A-ok with Trump and this is what seems to matter. The roar of hysteria from the media over Trump first 2-3 months in office died down considerably when he showed a willingness to engage in a show of force by striking Syria (remember when he was so concerned about the welfare of children?) ..."
"... Only a *faction" of the security establishment is anti-Trump because he is skeptical of *neoliberal* globalism. ..."
"... Meanwhile, the Prez who can't seem to enact *anything* to make lives better for the people who put him in office, is magically able to enact the agenda of the 1%. This repeat of the 1% 's manipulations is one I can do without. ..."
"... Regarding the question posed by this post I think there is very little evidence of an anti-war "fever" and even if there were, and if it were projected into the streets and/or ballot box, I am pessimistic that it could have any effect on the U.S. government of today. I don't think the U.S. government cares what the American people think or feel about anything -- except of course as those cares and feelings affect the mechanisms of control through the propaganda pushed through our media, the levels of surveillance and suppression, and the increased viciousness of our "laws" and their enforcement. ..."
"... I believe the U.S. government is run by several powerful and competing interests. So I think I'll ask a different question -- though in the same vein as that posed by the title of this post. Are those interests who compete with the interests of the MIC and Spook Industrial Complex (SIC) beginning to see the futility and stupidity of our endless wars? ..."
"... "Peaceniks are Kremlin stooges!" It's depressing when you can predict the media's response six months in advance. ..."
Is anti-war fever building in the U.S.? One would not think so given all the signs -- apparent public apathy toward multiple military
involvements, happy compliance with "security" at the increasingly painful airport, lack of protests and so on.
Yet there are two signs I'd like to put forward as indicating a growing willingness to forgo foreign "entanglements" (undeclared
wars), springing either from a weariness with them, a nascent abhorrence of them, or a desire to focus U.S. dollars on U.S. domestic
solutions, like the
hugely popular Medicare for All . (Click to see just how popular Medicare for All, called "Medicare Buy-In" at the link, is across
party lines.)
The first sign is Bernie Sanders, the most popular politician in America and by far its most popular senator, making statements
like these in the speech linked and discussed in the video at the top
of this piece. For example, at 9:00 in the clip, Sanders says (emphasis his):
SANDERS: In other words, what we have seen in time and time again, disasters occur when administrations, Democrat and Republican,
mislead Congress and the American people. And when Congress fails to do its constitutional job in terms of asking the questions
of whether or not we should be in a war. And I think we need to ask that very hard question today.
And here is the point that I hope the American people are asking themselves. Is the war on terror, a perpetual, never-ending
war, necessary to keep us safe?
I personally believe we have become far too comfortable with the United States engaging in military interventions all over
the world. We have now been in Afghanistan for 17 years. We have been in Iraq for 15 years. We are occupying a portion of Syria,
and this administration has indicated that it may broaden that mission even more.
We are waging a secretive drone war in at least five countries. Our forces, right now, as we speak, are supporting a Saudi-led
war in Yemen which has killed thousands of civilians and has created the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet today.
Talk like this is anathema in our militarized state, comments usually relegated to the fringes of public discourse. For Sanders
to say this (and similarly anathemic remarks elsewhere in the speech) certainly denotes a shift, especially since Sanders during
the campaign was not considered strong on foreign policy, especially progressive (non-orthodox) foreign policy.
As Jimmy Dore said in reply to the last sentence quoted above, "It's not Syria? Can you [say] "stop the butcher" is the worst?
No. Turns out what we're doing is the 'worst humanitarian crisis in the world today,' committing siege warfare in Yemen, which
is a war crime. And we're doing it, with Saudi Arabia."
Sanders also says we're "fighting terror" in 76 countries. Let that sink in, as Sanders wishes it to -- we're engaged in military
conflict in 76 countries, almost a third
of the nations in the world. I'm not sure many in the lay public appreciate the importance, or the likely consequences, of that
surprising fact. (For one example of those consequences, consider that foreign wars often
come home .)
Elsewhere in the video Dore asks, "Do you see Chuck Shumer saying our wars have had 'dire consequences'?" Sanders, it seems to
me, is launching a toe-to-toe battle with what right-wingers have lately been calling the American "deep state" and I've been calling
the security establishment.
The second sign comes from Donald Trump during the campaign. This isn't just Sanders going out on a limb -- taking a flier,
as it were -- on a deeply unpopular position. Consider how often Donald Trump, the campaign version, made similar statements:
He also famously
said this about NATO and its mission:
What I'm saying is NATO is obsolete. NATO is -- is obsolete and it's extremely expensive for the United States, disproportionately
so. And we should readjust NATO.
If the U.S. security establishment is working to get rid of Trump, to take him out by whatever means necessary, campaign
statements like that would be one of many reasons.
If Americans Could Vote Against the Forever War, Would They Do It?
I recently
noted how different the outcomes are when the public indicates policy preferences with their votes versus polling data. DC politicians
of both parties ignore polling with impunity. Votes, on the other hand, especially in party primaries, can force change -- witness
the Trump nomination and the Sanders (stolen) near-nomination.
In some ways, small but not insignificant, the 2016 election was a test of the anti-war waters, with Trump asking questions about
the need and mission of NATO, for example, that haven't been asked in over a generation, and Clinton, the proud choice of the neocon
left and right, in strong
disagreement .
It's too much or too early to say that Trump's public pullback from U.S. hegemony helped his election, though that's entirely
possible. But it's certainly true that his anti-Forever War sentiments did not hurt him in any noticeable way.
I'll go further: If Sanders runs in 2020 and adds anti-war messaging to his program, we'll certainly see the title question tested.
If the U.S. security establishment is working to get rid of Trump, to take him out by whatever means necessary, campaign
statements like that would be one of many reasons.
Bernie had better watch his back then. Make sure no one associated with him has any contact with any Russians or Iranians or
whatever.
The "security establishment/Blob" no coubt has already filled its supply chain with anti-Bernie Bernays-caliber ordnance, ready
to deploy. I don't doubt that there are plenty of James Earl Rays out there, happy to be the ones who will "rid the Blob of this
troublesome politician." Just remember that Bernie has a summer house, and his wife was president of a failed college, and he's
a GD Socialist, for Jeebus' sake!
There's far less than six degrees of separation between any one person and someone who is Russian or Chinese or Iranian or
whatever. Even two degrees of separation is enough for a headline these days.
Districts with military casualties correlate to Trump votes. I'd would be nice to see Sanders do a Town Hall on the empire,
in six months or so when this speech has time to sink in, in one such district.
Yes. Sanders is going to have to pull off a communicative high wire act bridging relatively acceptable criticism of "unnecessary
and expensive foreign entanglements" to hinting at the idea that the US citizens have to understand the expansive pressures that
flow from capitalism and the MIC. I've appreciated the regular links here to American Conservative and Unz articles. They are
valuable reminders that some on the Right aren't in complete denial, at least about the MIC.
One scenario would see a revival of the terms of discussion that briefly saw daylight in at least the late 1940s, when state
planners openly linked a "defensive" military posture with a need for markets. It would at least get the cards out on the table
and assist in clarifying how world politics isn't just a matter of great and secondary powers inevitably pushing each other around.
The idea of Realpolitik is a fundamental and fatal ground of reification.
Presidential ambitions aside, it would be a good idea to pressure trump's crew that are plotting to attack Iran. Plus, any
chance to push back against the awful Dem leadership is also a positive. We need to see more grassroots pushback against that
leadership. Sanders is the best around at generating that grassroots pushback.
Bernie makes many salient points on the Military Industrial Complex in a floor speech concerning the Defense Dept. budget bill.
I especially like the part where he is trying to add an amendment that would limit the compensation of CEOs of defense contractors
to no more than the Secretary of Defense ($205,000). This speech will not make him any friends among the military corporate contractors.
(26 min.)
We are in the world's most favorable geopolitical position. We have the Atlantic to the east, the Pacific to the West, Canada
to the North, and Mexico to the South. We have enough nukes to blow up the world many times over. I don't know why we don't don't
treat the entire imperial enterprise as a sunk cost and get out, starting with the Middle East (and by get out, I mean cut off
all funding, too).
The Taliban announced the three-day halt to hostilities earlier this month, days after a unilateral ceasefire lasting until
Wednesday was ordered by the government.
It is the Taliban's first ceasefire since the government they ran was toppled by the 2001 US-led invasion.
I don't know if it's Trump or it's just coincidence. But peace has broken out in Korea for hte first time in decades, and now
peace has broken out in Afghanistan for the first time in decades.
You should take a look at The Threat by Andrew Cockburn. Fairly exhaustive detail about how Russian military
might was inflated, in the 70s and 80s, in virtually every possible way. From badly coordinated civil defense, to the complete
inreadiness of its airforce, to the caste system pervading the army that had reduced morale to almost nothing, the overall picture
is pretty stunning, compared to the magnitude of the threat that was presented to the US public.
It wasn't just bad intelligence, it was consistently purposeful bad intelligence. The consequences have been dire for the
world, and our country as well. The Russians in that period never represented a serious military threat even to the continent
of Europe, far less the US. Nor do they now, spending less than a tenth on their military than the US. The 80 billion dollar
incease in the US military budget this year was more than the entire Russian military budget. Meanwhile,our own bases
encompass the globe, and we wage war and threaten genocide wherever we choose.
The facts are abundantly clear, that our own military represents by far the greatest threat to human life on this
planet.
I want to tell you, that you and I and everyone in this damned country, we are not just the most lied to people in the world.
We're arguably the most lied to people in history, at least if you consider the number and frequency of lies. It's a wonder we
get anything right at all! I encourage you to read more, and read more widely, and to start at a position of distrust, with any
foreign policy reporting that isn't based on first hand knowledge.
I am heartened by the position Bernie is taking, even as I disagree with him on the Russia hysteria and wonder at some of his
qualifications like "blunder" to describe out and out imperialism. We need to start somewhere, and why not start with "let the
people and the people's representatives decide when we use our military"?
I know many progressives on the left have questioned Bernie's foreign policy positions and for not going far enough in opposing
our imperial wars. Personally, I think Bernie knows exactly how stupid, immoral, illegal, and costly our wars are, especially
as it "crowds out spending" on his favored domestic policies. Bernie is also smart enough to know how he would be attacked by
our right-wing corporate media and the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex if he were too outspoken. So, he tempers his
statements, not just because his domestic agenda is most important to him, but also because he knows attacking our militarized
foreign policy will not play well with the working class base he needs to appeal to. Unlike Obama who played up his anti-Iraq
War vote, only to expand our wars across the Middle East and Africa (after collecting his Nobel Peace Prize), Bernie is holding
his cards closer to the vest.
> play well with the working class base he needs to appeal to
I think the working class in the flyover states is ready to hear that the endless war needs to end. It's tricky message to
convey, because "Are you saying my child died in vain?" But Trump saying Iraq was a strategic blunder went over very well, and
military casualties correlate with Trump votes . I think Sanders (or his as-yet-unknown successor) must deliver that
message, but it's going to be tricky, if only because it will smash an enormous number of rice bowls in the national security
and political classes (which overlap). Maybe we could move all the uniform-worshippers to an island, give them a few billion dollars,
and let them play war games among themselves. Cheap at twice the price.
UPDATE I would bet "addiction" would work as a trope in the flyover states; "the war machine is a needle in America's arm"
is the concept. Especially because
veterans are prone to opioid addiction . Again, the rhetoric would be tricky to avoid blaming victims or "hating the troops,"
but I think there's good messaging to be found here. (People do horrid things when trapped in addictive systems. That's why they
seek cure )
Sanders needs to protect the people who are part of the 95% who work for the military industrial complex. He does this not
by raising welfare (which Americans find humiliating), not by only giving extensive retraining benefits, (which in an opportunity
starved country like America, will only lead to work stints at an Amazon Warehouse) but by repurposing the capitol and retraining
the working people to issues that must be addressed for the future, such as energy sustainability or infrastructure that can resist
increasingly severe climate chaos. Furthermore, he must announce and do both simultaneously, probably via an MMT program and raising
Taxes on rhe elite 2% and via transaction taxes on all capitol outflow from the USA.
Stopping the war machine, but putting people out of work, will never be acceptable to those who work for the war machine or
the friends and family of those people.
You are correct. The forever wars are just one of the ways to bleed the Middle Class dry. The media propaganda and rule
by the 10% can't let the suckers know what is really going on. There are always enough men to man the colonial wars but they are
unwinnable unless the whole nation is involved.
The Bolshevik Revolution and the Bonus Army were within living memory of WWII leaders. The new global aristocracy has lost
all history and doesn't perceive the inevitable consequences of inequality. My personal opinion was that for Marshall and Truman
one of the reasons for the use of atomic weapons on Japan was that they did not want millions of combat tested soldiers traveling
across the USA by train with the ultimate destination a number of deadly invasions of the Japanese Islands. Each worse than Okinawa.
They were afraid of what the soldiers would do. This is also the reason why these Vets got a generous GI Bill.
You reminded me of Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq. She protesteted at the GWB TX compound if you recall and remains
an activist to this day. I can't speak for her but it seems to me like she understands that her son should not have died to further
this ugly, pointless war.
I can't begin to understand the pain of losing a child, spouse, parent, etc., but I can wrap my head around it enough that
I don't want anyone to experience it. And I have no doubt that facing the true causes of the war would make the pain worse. But
every time I hear this nonsense about how some poor kid "didn't die in vain" in VietRaq, I want to scream "yes they did! Now what
are we going to do to stop it from happening again???".
The tropes of "supporting the troops", yellow ribbons, "they are protecting us", etc. just keeps the propaganda ballon inflated.
Here is how I support the troops: I'm against war.
This reminds me of Forest Gump where some well meaning hippies call Forest Gump a baby killer. The peace activists must refrain
from blaming and shaming soldiers as a group; specfic criminals (such as those who committed crimes at my lai) should investigated,
shamed and punished, the whistleblowers should be greatly honoured, and soldiers ad a group should be respected and not blamed
for going to war, as indeed many do not know the truth for why the war was fought. On the other hand, politicians, lobby groups,
and venal media and intelligence agencies should be exorciated for the lies that they believe or spread, as indeed it should be
their business to try to discern the truth.
Hence it was very admirable when members of the Mossad leaked out facts that Iran was not pursuing development of the Nuclear
bomb, even while Netanyahoo was pursuing a media blitz to justify greater economic and ultimately military aggression against
Iran
Who is "blaming and shaming" anyone? I'm saying that I agree with this mother who lost her child that we should be extremely
skeptical about the motivation for war of any kind. And the lack of skepticism (expressed or not) impedes any real movement away
from war without end.
The Sheehans are real people who lost a son and brother. Forest Gump is just some character from a dumb movie. Good grief.
I think that you can respect the sacrifice and commitment of people who sign up to fight for their country while still criticizing
the uses that leaders have chosen to put them to. In fact I think that makes the message stronger: the willingness of our friends,
family, children etc. to sign up to fight and die for America places a duty and obligation on our leaders to ensure they are deployed
wisely and for the betterment of America and the world. Those leaders – the ones we elected – have failed in that trust, and continue
to fail. Our military friends and family haven't let us down – we've let them down, by not holding our government accountable.
It's time we changed that!
"The rally featured a pointed anti-war speech from Obama, then a fairly anonymous state lawmaker, who deemed the impending
Iraq engagement 'a dumb war.'"
The political entertainer Obama gave a number of speeches advocating transparency in government, advocating for financial reform
and even mentioned "we tortured some folks" decrying torture.
Then behind the scenes Obama did very little to back up his speeches with actions as he went with the flow.
Obama's Illinois anti-war speech served him well, as he could milk this "anti-war" stance for years while running military
actions as President.
Obama had two groups to satisfy, the populace and the elite. The populace got empty words, the elite got what they wanted.
Bernie Sanders actually DID vote against the Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq
Sadly, there is no contemporaneous transcript*
or recording . I remember the 2008 controversy vividly, because the Obama campaign released a campaign ad that purported to
be Obama delivering the Chicago 2002 speech, but it quickly emerged that he had re-recorded it for the campaign (see the link).
I think we're more than being lied to. The MSM is waging a propaganda campaign at every level completely obscuring the
truth. And the politicians play the fear card at every level. I don't believe any of us is in "happy compliance" at the airport.
I for one, grind my teeth and cuss out the crooked corporations (including that bastard "skull" Chertoff who personally benefited
from the x-ray screening machines) that reap a bundle of money from the so called screening and invasive body searches. Travel
has become something to dread.
You can tell a lot about a country's intent by the design of the army they assemble. Here is a deep technical description about
the new army the Russians are putting together. Hint: it is not designed to attack.
"The decision to create a tank army (armoured corps in Western terminology) is an indication that Russia really does fear attack
from the west and is preparing to defend itself against it. In short, Russia has finally come to the conclusion that NATO's aggression
means it has to prepare for a big war."
Interesting technical take on the whole thing. Worth a read.
Well, Russia could probably triumph over the austerity-racked countries of the EU, with the possible exception of France. But
it wouldn't be able to hold much for long if it had to occupy anything. And it would take a mauling in the process, a mauling
that would be prohibitively expensive to repair. The modern Russian military simply isn't organized in a fashion that is conducive
to large scale conquest. It has exactly one fully integrated, combined arms unit suitable for full-scale armored warfrare, the
1st Guards Tank Army, which was reactivated in 2014.
The nightmare visions of armor pouring through the Fulda Gap were basically always delusional. In 2018 they're downright laughable.
I don't think that the US can stop at this point. As an example, the one time the people were asked if they wanted to bomb
Syria the answer was a definite 'no' so the next time they never even bothered asking them. There is far too much money, power
and prestige at stake too consider stopping.
The officer corps might be an opponent but I think that America has been badly served by them due to how officers are selected
& trained and who makes it to the top. The only time they balk is when some idiot in Washington pushes them to fight the Russians
or the Chinese. And most people don't really care in any case so long as the US wins. Out of sight, out of mind as they say.
America is more likely to get single-payer health than for the US armed forces to pull back as any suggestion of the later
brings charges of being 'unpatriotic'. At least with single-payer health you only get charged with being a 'socialist'. Know a
good place to start? The US Special Operations Command has about 70,000 people in it and they want more. The US would be better
served by cutting this force in half and giving their jobs back to regular formations.
These are the people that want constant deployments in more and more countries hence cutting them back would be a good idea.
I expect things to go along until one day the US armed forces will be sent into a war where they will take casualties not seen
since the bad days on 'Nam. Then there will be the devil to pay and him out to lunch.
It's harder and harder to sell these military actions to the public. What are we in Korea and Japan for? To contain China?
If you ask most people, they'll probably tell you that China won, or at very least our bosses are in league with their bosses.
The Borg moves without regard to public sentiment, so we have to replace politicians with those who'll bring it to heel.
That's a death sentence, but I feel like enough people have the guts to try and make it happen.
One issue I have right now with 'anti-War' is that to be 'anti' is one thing, but to make serious arguments you have to be
able to present arguments about what you are actually 'for'. For example, if the US were to suddenly withdraw from the eastern
Pacific, the effect could be highly destabilising and could actually increase the chance of war. These are questions that need
to be answered.
Just to take one example of I think a positive idea – there is research
here which argues that the 'optimum' nuclear deterrent is less
than 100 warheads. This is of course a difficult argument to put into political play, but its important I think to put the militarists
on the back foot in order to make arguments for withdrawal from empire and peace mainstream.
I would bet that most people think that being anti-war encompasses the following:
-being for peace
-being for stability
-being for more social spending instead of military spending
-being for fewer civilians being killed
-being for fewer military deaths
Is that enough to meet your ridiculous threshold for 'serious arguments?'
you're being cavalier. PK makes a great point, and your vague and oyerly broad "fors" remind me of many arguments regarding
the 2016 election. The democrat side (Brock and CTR et al) couldn't say what they were for outside of abstract bernaysian generalities.
If you want to convince people (and I have this difficulty, as do I'm sure most of the readers here, trying to get dems off of
the russia russia russia putins bitch train)
You really need to focus on slow walking through complicated and dangerous waters, and just shut up sometimes when certain
people are just not going to listen, but if you can get that one cogent, not hysterical argument into the minds of the people
you want to convince, then you have a chance to stem the tide. Read some of the fantastic commentary regarding brexit from our
european commenters as an example of what works in discourse, and how to puts facts on the ground in a way people can relate to.
> You really need to focus on slow walking through complicated and dangerous waters . Read some of the fantastic commentary
regarding brexit from our european commenters as an example of what works in discourse, and how to puts facts on the ground in
a way people can relate to.
That's a cogent argument. I don't mean to imply in my comments that "getting out" will be easy. ("You must do it, Catullus,
you must do it. You must do it whether it can be done or not.")
We might begin by renaming the "Department of Defense" to the "Department of War," just to be truthful, and then ask ourselves
what kind of wars we want to fight. And I think most people would be very willing to cross anything that looked like Iraq off
the list, followed (it is to be hoped) with a willingness to rethink self-licking ice cream cones as our industrial policy. In
a way, the project would have the same feel as my hobbyhorse, gutting the administrative layers of the universities as not central
to mission.
Thanks tegnost. I don't mean to suggest that there isn't a solid electoral reason to have nice vague policies, not least
because a campaign against foreign wars would be an excellent way for the left to make common cause with some parts of the right,
such as the paleoconservatives and isolationists.
The problem as I see it with policies 'against' something is that you end up a little like Five Star in Italy – having gotten
into power on opposing everything bad about Italy, they are now facing a 'now what' moment, and are seemingly clueless about what
to do. As usual, the right makes the running.
The war-mongers will always find "serious arguments" for why we musn't end the American empire. Their arguments will be nuanced
and filled with details that would take the average citizen months, if not years, to verify and analyze. When the best minds in
the American empire can fail to forsee the fall of the Soviet Union or the response to their coup on Chavez, why should we put
credence in their "serious" analyses?
Meanwhile, the case against war is a simple and easily verifiable. "My son is dead." "My friend came home a broken person."
etc. Telling poor Americans that their family members need to keep dying because allowing them to come home would, maybe, make
war more likely in a country they've only seen on a map is an argument not likely to find much traction. It is also, in my mind,
ethically vapid -- an argument that presses for a guaranteed evil as a means of avoiding a possible evil.
Trying to forsee the outcome of major (or even minor) changes to a system as complex as the American empire is a sucker's game.
Anyone who tells you otherwise is likely a sucker themselves. In situations of such complexity, the only way forward is the ontological
one. All teleology is sheer fantasy. We should act, therefore, not on the basis of what we think will happen as a result of our
actions, but rather on the basis of what the just thing to do is. You can't base your actions on ends (as in "the ends justify
the means") because the situation is so complex that there is no way to credibly predict the ends that any action might lead to.
IMHO, the ethical policy is to bring 'em home. All of 'em. Let them protect our country, as they've sworn to do. Let us put
them to work rebuilding our infrastructure, assisting those who need it, and making the country better than it is, rather than
filling it up with more walking wounded from our endless imperial adventuring.
It did for Russia. There is now an ongoing civil war on its border in Ukraine. NATO went to war with Serbia in the later
1990's. The breakup of the Atlantic Alliance will splinter Europe. Humans being humans. The strong will try to steal from the
weak.
The question is how to restore the West's middle class. Without a middle class; revolts, religious and ethnic wars will inevitable
break out all over. The unrest right now is due to democracy not being compatible with globalization.
It was not just Bush who told lies to justify an invasion of Iraq. Members of Congress and the press did as well. Sen. Biden,
the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee then, would only allow pro-war people to testify to his committee. At the
time a lobbyist told me that the leadership of the Democratic party had decided to promote this war. They felt this would remove
this issue from the next election, which would then focus on economic issues that would play to their strength.
Thanks for this. Another reason to break up the MIC is all the money that would be freed up for health care, infrastructure
and the country's many other needs. Perhaps Sanders now realizes that the balance in USG priorities needs to be restored and he
is making an economic, and not just humanitarian argument.
As for Trump, it's just possible he meant what he said about NATO and all the rest. If one believes his real priorities are
his family and business it's hard to see what he gets out of perpetual war. That's more Obama and Hillary's bag.
Which doesn't make the above true. But we should at least entertain the possibility that it could be true.
As one who could never bring himself to vote for Trump (or for Clinton, for that matter), let me make a counter-intuitive prediction.
If Trump allows the MIC to goad him into starting a new war with Iran, he will lose if he decides to run again.
If, on the other hand, he starts no new war against Iran or any other country that does not threaten us militarily, then he
will be re-elected should he decide to go for another term.
The old adage that our country rallies around a war president is no longer operative IMHO. In a nation tired of perpetual
war, the commander-in-chief would get at best a short-term surge in public approval by opening up a new battle zone, before slipping
precipitously in the polls. Why on earth have the Democrats eagerly embraced the role of the war party, while our country literally
crumbles for lack of public investment? Could there be a more effective losing strategy?
Why on earth have the Democrats eagerly embraced the role of the war party, while our country literally crumbles for lack
of public investment? Could there be a more effective losing strategy?
They do it for the money, pretty much everyone in congress is a millionaire, including the ones who were not millionaires when
they got elected hmmmmmm .
Those are their constituents: beltway bandits, private contractors, public/private partnerships, insurance companies, arms
companies, private equity firms, military contractors, and whatever other combinations you want to come up with.
I remember when Tim Kaine gleefully suggested that we needed an "intelligence surge" to protect the country. I almost gagged.
It was a not so subtle message of "prepare for the handouts to the private military contractor industry".
> Another reason to break up the MIC is all the money that would be freed up for health care, infrastructure and the country's
many other needs
Since Federal taxes don't fund Federal spending, the connection between gutting the MIC and more money for health care is not
direct.
However, if you think in terms of real resources , the effect is as you say. (The same reasoning applies to finance,
where enormous salaries sucked in the best talent that might otherwise have been put to non-parasitical purposes.)
Mt is not yet sellable to the public, will take years. Best story is that foreign wars strip resources from local spending
and jobs, which is also what most pols seem to think. Bills should be presented as less for mil and mor for infra. Starve mic
You don't have to go back to the last campaign to see anti-war rhetoric as a strategy. Trump is already, in his meeting with
Kim, starting the ball rolling. (Moon of Alabama.com has a good recent post on the subject). Sorry Bernie, you are late to the
party, too late. Reminds me a bit of 1968. Nixon got in promising to end that war (which he didn't.) But it is good to see anti-war
stuff going mainstream at last. May it bear fruit this time around!
And yes, Gaius Publius, anti-war statements Trump made during his first campaign DID make a huge difference. They won him the
presidency, in my opinion.
How does positioning 2,000 – 4,000 US troops in Syria fit into your "Trump is a peace-maker" narrative? How about the comment
Wednesday that the US will attack Syrian forces if they attack Sunni jihadis (er "moderate rebels") in SW Syria?
How about us aiding and abetting a famine in Yemen that could kills tens of thousands?
Is setting us on a potential course for war with Iran further evidence of your "dovish" Trump?
I think you are attributing a sentiment to juliania that her comment does not actually contain. She doesn't say Trump is
a peace-maker, she says he was far in front of Bernie in using "anti-war rhetoric as a strategy." The example of Nixon doing the
same thing indicates that juliania is well aware that strategic rhetoric and actual decisions are not the same thing.
I know a fair number of Trump voters, and my read is similar to juliania's: Trump's anti-war rhetoric was a big draw for
a lot of people, and helped many be able to hold their nose and vote for him. Understanding this and commenting on it does not
make one a Trump supporter, obviously, or indicate that one puts any credence in his dovish rhetoric.
You might be correct and my apologies to juliania if I misread her post. I have heard so much of the "Trump is fighting
[the deep state, Wall Street, the neocons]" on other blogs that I am a bit hypersensitive and go off on a rant when I see or perceive
that argument. From my perspective, Trump is doing everything in his power to entrench Wall Street, the neocons, etc.
I was also receptive to the idea that Trump might be less hawkish than HRC (although I did not vote for him) but have now been
thoroughly disabused of that notion.
SW Syria does not have Kurds active, so these are Sunni jihadi-lites. They are however not HTS, which we re-branded from Al-Nusra
and had been classified as an Al Qaeda affiliate at one time. Of course we are framing it as a de-escalation zone; others call
it a jihadi base.
The war in Yemen is to secure the Saudi monarchy and our interest in their vast reserves of oil and gas. The war in
Syria is to secure our preferred pipeline feeding the EU. Our entrenched position surrounding Iran is no accident – we are an
existential threat to Iran and intend to remain that way. If China discovered a giant oil field under its western desert we'd
be there too. One rationale for all this control freakery is that we think we can maintain our "capitalist" economy, our silly
pretenses about a free market, etc. But Karma is the real truth-teller here: Free markets do not work. So it follows logically
that privatization also does not work. And to continue, at some point, forced capitalism fails. Markets fail. Profit seeking could
be the thing that brings it all down. It's a strangely comforting thought because it leaves us with a clear vision of what not
to do anymore. Unfortunately, people are not angels. If we attempt to invoke the ghost of John Foster Dulles and not engage in
little wars but just sell arms to every tin pot dictator it will be worse chaos than it is now. And worse still, chaos in a time
of environmental devastation. The only good option is the Mr. Scrooge option. Instead of arms and WMD and fascist control for
the sake of preventing uprisings, we should skip the fascist control part and directly mainline the resources to make civilization
thrive. Since that's definitely not capitalism, we'll have to think up a new ism.
Yes, let's devote enormous real resources to fabricating bespoke military aircraft that catch fire on the runway. Meanwhile,
we don't have any machine shops anymore .
> I have the feeling that Sanders here is reacting to all the ex-CIA (but not 100% ex) candidates taking over the D Party.
That is an excellent point. (I don't think it's just CIA, though; it's CIA and military personnel generally.* That's why I
voted against ranked Jared Golden low, because Golden (like Seth Moulton in MA) fits that template, which is vile.
UPDATE * "Professional authoritarians," we might call them. That would fit all this neatly into Thomas Frank's framework.
People ask if capitalism and democracy are compatible, and I think they are, at least I don't see any inherent reason why they
would not be compatible.
Another question: Are militarism* and democracy compatible? I'm not so sure they are.
Ancient Athens was on some level democratic, and the populist party typically favored war and expansion. E.g.Pericles and the
peloponesian war come to mind. By contrast, the aristocratic parties were generally less in favor of military adventurism.
However, a constitutional republic is not compatible with empire.
The link between populism and war featured prominently in "Electing to fight. Why emerging democracies go to war" This is a
fairly obscure book (one review in Amazon), but – by a wide margin – the best book I have ever read about politics or political
science. The last 100 pages are cliff notes versions of the politics underlying the start of many wars; the first 150 pages are
a really dense read.
A lot depends on how you define "democracy", "will of the people" etc.. What the role of "finance" in a context of "capitalism"
and "democracy" should be, e.g., citizens united(note orwellian language) may be considered a " reason why they would not be compatible"
and even antithetical. Noting that "militarism" depends on public funding, where should the power to influence this funding
be? Neo-cons, dominated by militarists, and neo-liberals, dominated by de-regulated banksters, may not be the same but certainly
seem like symbionts in the context of 326MM people.
America itself is the most destabilizing force on the planet. i would love to see what America leaving the world to its'
own devices would look like. Like Weimar/Nazi Germany, nothing good comes from these kind of "American Values."
the Ugly American is what American Values signify, and mostly always have. America is the most destabilizing force i ever read
of or heard of. Americans have just taken the Nazi theme of One People, One Land and One Leader on a Global scope. and it ain't
good. Either do as America tells you, or we will bring American Democracy to your country.
Maybe there's hope, as Caitlyn Johnstone implies in her last essay, i sure doubt it, though, as long as America/the Empire
continues to destabilize not just the Pacific but everywhere else in the world. Why does anything think the South/Central Americans
come to America. The American Empire has screwed up the Western Hemisphere so badly, these "refugees hope to escape from the American
made Plantations the Western Hemisphere has been carved into. These immigrants are just part of the blowback from the American
Way.
also makes me wonder if the Europeans don't understand why there are refugees coming through Greece and via boats, primarily
to Italy. dont they see it's America's Wars in MENA that are causing this "invasion." gosh, what a black and white cause and effect.
Germany needs workers due to the low birth rate. so, open the doors to the chaos America has made in the Middle East, and voila,
cheap labor and departure from an America made hell in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Palestine, Algeria, the whole "New American Century"
Project the Neocons have us in and paying for.
Doesn't the average European see how American and Apartheid Israeli support for forces like the Taliban, Al Queda, Wahabbism,
and the ongoing media censored Yemeni/Palestinian Holocaust, wars of profit, i.e. created the refugess that are streaming into
Europe. Maybe the Europeans are also stymied by the Rich who keep the wars going and the Media who profit off the death of the
"deplorables" who no longer "matter."
i know in America most Americans are ignorant due to total control of the Media and the "narrative" that controls what can
be said. Americans have no shame when it comes to getting what they want, politically. no enough blowback. no sense of connection
between here and there or anywhere outside the Media Narrative.
as a bumper sticker from long ago said, "if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." The Empire will not give up
until it can't go on.
Thanks for calling attention to this. I noticed the same thing immediately, and I gave the remainder of the article less credence
because of it. A true leftie knows the difference between Improved Medicare for All and a Medicare buy-in program.
To me, making the argument that one must be 'for' something is simply a way to dismiss whatever the 'anti' side represents,
whether or not PK meant to be dismissive.
And it reminds me of the efforts to impede and dismiss the anti-war or occupy-type movement outright – "what, you people don't
have any policies (and nothing for us to analyze to death and criticize??) !!!! How dare you speak up about something!!! Go away
until you go to Harvard and produce a few papers. Until then, your silly notions mean nothing to us!!" and the underlying elitism
of the concept.
So, that is what I am reminded of, again, whether or not PK meant it that way.
(Before reading the comments) "If Americans Could Vote Against the Forever War, Would They Do It?"
Sadly, I think the answer is no, mainly because Americans do not vote based on foreign policy unless it "comes home," eg in
the form of body bags – a lot of them. The "wasted money" argument, which brings it home, might be the most effective; that's
a pitfall of MMT. Of course, as a practical matter there's a POLITICAL choice between guns and butter, whether or not the economics
is valid.
In those remarks, Sanders is filling in the gaping hole in his resume. It may be an indication that he plans to run in 2020.
Finally: I question whether the 2016 nomination was actually "stolen." Certainly there was a good deal of cheating by the party,
but I'm not convinced it was decisive (there's no way to be sure). The actual votes ran about 47% for Sanders, and that's including
Oregon and California. I think that reflects the actual nature of the Democratic Party.
The reason is that its membership has been falling, if not plummeting, at the same time that its policies have become more
and more right-wing. Affiliation, which is a poll result, is down near 30%; I suspect registrations have fallen, too, but I haven't
seen numbers. Given the variations in state law, registrations aren't very indicative. All that means that the remaining party
members are a remnant that has been selected for conservatism. The primary vote reflects that. (This doesn't change the argument
that the Dems knowingly chose their weaker candidate; it just means that the voters did, too.)
The military is A-ok with Trump and this is what seems to matter. The roar of hysteria from the media over Trump first
2-3 months in office died down considerably when he showed a willingness to engage in a show of force by striking Syria (remember
when he was so concerned about the welfare of children?)
Only a *faction" of the security establishment is anti-Trump because he is skeptical of *neoliberal* globalism. However
this faction is doing a great job of re-enacting the framework used to deny/disrupt/disable during the Clinton administration:
scandals and selective corruption investigations. This serves a purpose: to martyr the Prez with the constituents who *should*
be holding the Prez accountable on lack of follow through and betrayal of promises made on the camapign trail.
Trump voters can't make him hold himaccountable; they are too busy feeling he has been victimized -- and many Trump voters
are victims, so the identification is real.
Meanwhile, the Prez who can't seem to enact *anything* to make lives better for the people who put him in office, is magically
able to enact the agenda of the 1%. This repeat of the 1% 's manipulations is one I can do without.
Regarding the question posed by this post I think there is very little evidence of an anti-war "fever" and even if there
were, and if it were projected into the streets and/or ballot box, I am pessimistic that it could have any effect on the U.S.
government of today. I don't think the U.S. government cares what the American people think or feel about anything -- except of
course as those cares and feelings affect the mechanisms of control through the propaganda pushed through our media, the levels
of surveillance and suppression, and the increased viciousness of our "laws" and their enforcement.
I believe the U.S. government is run by several powerful and competing interests. So I think I'll ask a different question
-- though in the same vein as that posed by the title of this post. Are those interests who compete with the interests of the
MIC and Spook Industrial Complex (SIC) beginning to see the futility and stupidity of our endless wars? Are those interests
growing anxious at enriching their share of the pie by shoving aside the budget gluttons feasting on war? Are any of those interests
whose long-term, and often short-term interests are damaged by endless wars and their ongoing deconstruction of American Empire
finally growing weary of how those wars undermine the American Empire? War may be a racket but the burning of bridges and collapse
of Empire isn't a racket I would hope even the most clueless of our masters will continue to tolerate. Have the MIC and SIC assumed
power?
"The 2008 financial crisis was the
consequence of a loosely regulated banking system
in which power was concentrated in the hands of too limited a cast of speculators,
"
Nomi Prins tell me. "And after the crisis, the way the US government and the Federal Reserve
dealt with this corrupt and criminal banking system was to give them a subsidy."
Such strong, withering analysis is, perhaps, unexpected from someone who has held senior roles
at Wall Street finance houses such as Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs. But Prins is no ordinary
former banker.
The US author and journalist left the financial services industry in 2001. She did so, in her
own words, "partly because life was too short", and
"partly out of disgust at how
citizens everywhere had become collateral damage, and later hostages, to the banking system".
Since then, Prins has chronicled the closed and often confusing world of high finance
through the 2008 crisis and beyond.
Her writing combines deep insider knowledge with
on-the-ground reporting with sharp, searing prose. Alongside countless articles for
New York
Times
,
Forbes
and
Fortune
, she has produced six books – including
Collusion:
how central bankers rigged the world
, which has just been published.
Her main target in the new work is "quantitative easing" – described by Prins as "a
conjuring trick" in which "a central bank manufactures electronic money, then injects it into
private banks and financial markets".
Over the last decade, she tells me when we meet in
London, "under the guise of QE, central bankers have massively overstepped their traditional
mandates, directing the flow of epic sums of fabricated money, without any checks or balances,
towards the private banking sector".
Since QE began, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, "the US Federal Reserve has produced a
massive $4.5 trillion of conjured money, out of a worldwide QE total of around $21 trillion", says
Prins. The combination of ultra-low interest rates and vast monetary expansion, she explains, has
caused "speculation to rage... much as a global casino would be abuzz if everyone gambled using
everyone else's money".
Much of this new spending power, though, has remained "inside the system", with banks
shoring up their balance sheets.
"So lending to ordinary firms and households has barely
grown as a result of QE," says Prins, "nor have wages or prosperity for most of the world's
population". Instead, "the banks have gone on an asset-buying spree", she explains, getting into
her stride, "with the vast flow of QE cash from central banks to private banks ensuring endless
opportunities for market manipulation and asset bubbles – driven by government support".
Prins describes "the power grab we've seen by the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank,
the Bank of Japan and other central banks".
Using QE, she argues, "these illusionists have
altered the nature of the financial system and orchestrated a
de facto
heist that has
enabled the most dominant banks and central bankers to run the world".
She says all this looking me straight in the eye, with the deadpan delivery, supreme confidence
and unflinching focus of the senior investment banker she was. But the words are those of an angry
and committed activist – someone who is absolutely determined to do what she can to reform global
finance, starting in her native country.
Nomi Prins deals in bold statements and fearless analysis. While often accused of hyperbole, her
deep research, financial expertise and former 'insider status' means only a fool would dismiss her.
She is just at home within academia as she is on the political front line – a regular on the
university lecture circuit, Prins was also a member of Senator Bernie Sanders' team of economic
experts, advising on central bank reform. Yet, such is her reputation that she commands a place
among those she chides – and is regularly consulted, formally and informally, by senior officials
at the Fed, the ECB and other major central banks.
Surveying the history of the response to the 2008 financial crisis, Prins tells me that explicit
bank bailouts were only a small part of the story. "First, there was the $700bn package agreed in
Congress to save the US banks that caused the crisis," she says.
"But the real bailout
was the trillions of dollars of QE produced by the Fed – a massive subsidy to banks and financial
markets, that has created an enormous bubble, a subsidy agreed by unelected officials and barely
debated or remarked upon."
After initiating QE in late 2008, the Fed then "exported the idea – and that required the
collusion of other major central banks", Prins argues. She points out that even though the Fed and
the Bank of England have currently stopped doing QE, new money amounting to hundreds of billions of
dollars a month is still being pumped out by central banks elsewhere, not least the ECB and the
Bank of Japan.
"When the asset bubble pops, the fragile financial system and the broader
economic environment could be thrown into deep depression and turmoil,"
she says.
"That's why the QE baton has been passed from the US to other nations, and why the
central banks are so desperate to collude."
I put to Prins the conventional wisdom: there was no alternative to QE, and without it, the
global banking system would have collapsed in 2008, causing untold economic and political damage.
While she accepts there was a need for immediate post-crisis action, she argues the time for
emergency measures has now long since passed. "If financial markets so much as wobble, the world's
leading central banks, between them, do more QE," she says. "The insiders maintain the status quo
of subsidies to the financial system – but there is no world war, aliens are not invading our
planet, this is totally unjustified."
Prins says that
QE has been "a massive deceit and a huge factor in driving inequality
– a dedicated effort by institutions with the ability to create money, deciding that it doesn't go
to ordinary people". While it was sold "as a massive trickle-down programme, helping the incomes of
regular households, the benefits have been focused at the very top".
Stock markets have benefitted, she acknowledges, "but a mere 10% of Americans own 85% of the
market". Prins also argues that low interest rates have harmed most Americans.
"We need
to normalise the rate environment, so ordinary people get some kind of return on their pensions and
savings,"
she says.
QE and low rates, says Prins, have also caused "a debt explosion" – as not only have governments
taken on more borrowing but financial institutions have too, keen to boost the scale of their
investments in QE-driven markets that look like a one-way bet. US government debt has soared from
$9 trillion to over $20 trillion since the financial crisis, Prins observes. "And public and
private debt combined amount to a staggering 225% of global GDP – much of it accumulated since the
financial crisis," she says.
"The next financial crisis will be sparked by a debt failure somewhere – then
this QE
bubble will pop very quickly,"
Prins predicts. "And
when the new crisis comes,
rates are already low and we have little in the way of fiscal ammunition, so mitigation will be
very tough – and it will be ordinary people who suffer the most".
In response to the financial crisis, Prins maintains it would have been far cheaper and more
effective for the state to intervene directly, providing explicit assistance to cash-strapped
householders struggling to service the distressed mortgages at the heart of the crisis. "There was
half a trillion dollars of sub-prime mortgages across the US in 2008," she recalls. "You could have
bought up these properties, or just temporarily covered the loans," she says. "That would have cost
much less than half a trillion, and would also have helped the banks by turning their junk assets
into performing loans."
Prins says the "banks and central banks together" instead concocted QE. "We've allowed a
grotesque $21 trillion global subsidy which has seen the bankers not only avoid punishment for the
huge mess they created, but then entrench their financial advantage even more."
What we need, she says, is "better regulation" – in particular, a return to the "Glass-Steagall
environment where investment banks can't leverage their balance sheets by so much and rely on
government support". Since the Depression-era separation between risky investment banking and
run-of-the-mill commercial banking was repealed by the Clinton administration in 1997, "a financial
crisis was unavoidable", she says.
"As long as the deposits of ordinary people and
companies can be used by investment bankers as fodder for reckless speculation, in the knowledge
those deposits are backed by the state, the world is at risk."
Prins is dismayed at how easily on-going QE, continuing years after the financial crisis, has
been accepted by the political and media classes. "There is joint approval across the middle of the
left-right spectrum," she says.
"The economics profession and almost all commentators
don't seem to care that this money is completely unaccountable and untracked – and has caused an
enormous bubble."
The reason, she observes, is that contemplating the end of QE is
too difficult. "The unwind will cause pain and could result in a meltdown, as the markets and the
debt mountain collapse."
In
Collusion
, Prins takes us on a whistle-stop tour of global finance, describing how
the leaders of the Banco de México tried to navigate their country's complicated relationship with
the Fed and how Brazil has led the charge in challenging the dollar's all-important "reserve
currency status".
The
book goes to China
, where we learn how Beijing is using "dark money" to upend dollar-hegemony,
helping to drive the country's ascent as a global superpower.
We read how Europe's response to the financial crisis has heightened tension between the ECB and
Germany – fuelling intra-EU resentments that have fuelled populism and help explain Brexit. Prins
describes how
Japan "leverages the rivalry between the US and China", while embarking on
"the most ambitious money-conjuring scheme to date".
But it is in the US where the bulk of the narrative is set and it is there the arguments Prins
makes will be most keenly read. The Federal Reserve has just lifted interest rates by a quarter
point, and signalled that two more increases are likely in 2018. As the world's most important
central bank continues the long, gradual march away from emergency measures, and with the ECB also
committed soon to ending QE, the warnings in this important book about extent of today's asset
price bubbles, and the role central banks have played in causing them, are about to be severely
tested.
"What we've witnessed, since 2008, is the unbridled ability of the so-called
people at the top to implement socialism for the banks,"
Prins tells me.
"If anyone had said we are going to give $21 trillion to the global banking sector, it
would never have happened – so we've had a backdoor process instead, under the pretense it would
help ordinary people."
Leaning forward for the first time, Prins ups the ante. "Well, real people don't believe that –
and they'll believe it even less as and when we have another crash, a crash off the back of ten
years of emergency measures that were supposed to fix the system."
"The issue isn't whether this money-conjuring game can continue," she says as she prepares to
leave. "The issue is that central banks have no plan B in the event of another crisis – and that's
going to create an even more massively negative view among ordinary people towards those who see
themselves as elites."
Listen to Liam Halligan's interview with Nomi Prins here:
One of her obfuscations is the concentrating on "asset bubbles" rather
than the fact that these Banksters are obtaining ownership of the worlds
real assets without having to pay for them. As if they didn't have
enough power.
Ownership of corporations (and control of them), is one
of the subjects carefully avoided by the Rotschild media machine.
There is only one group of people who it is illegal to question in a
good number of ethnic European countries.
Prins describes "the power grab we've seen by the US Federal Reserve,
the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and other central
banks".
Replace "....the US Federal Reserve, the European Central
Bank, the Bank of Japan and other central banks" with "....the
Rothschild Crime Family" would be a more appropriate comment.
The Rothschild Crime Family own and control every central bank on
the planet except three, Iran, North Korea and Cuba, lending money at
interest to governments everywhere. Do you have debt, a home loan, a
car loan, student debt, credit card debt?! What about the debt your
Federal, State and Local governments have on behalf of you, your
children and grand-children? Just imagine that over 50% of all that
debt is owed and the interest continually paid to the Rothschild clan
and their tight knit group of international bankers. Do you feel good
about yourself still, being nothing more than a serf to them? Money
makes money, and in this case the biggest crime syndicate that will
ever exist, one that has the military of various countries continuing
their protection racket for them as well as IRS type institutions
doing their debt collecting, will never be satisfied until they have
everything!
Alternative thinking would suggest that Prins is spot on !
The reason she gets MSM 'coverage' is because she has not
revealed the true enormity of it !
The scenario's she suggests have definitely played out !
Although, she is withholding the TRUE scale of it - it's
MASSIVE !
I just received her new book "Collusion: how the central bankers rigged the
world" through special order with my library. She is by far the best writer on
central banks and the financial crisis. Her "It Takes a Pillage" is superb and
easily followed. The problem is, hardly anyone outside of the few who care (or
know) read it.
A 1950s outlook repeated for 6 books. We are not going anywhere near 20th Century
anything and this is populist. Glass-Steagall is DEAD but promoting its return
sells!
Now the money the Fed creates is "Outside Money" injected to the banking
system which creates the "Inside Money" that usually finances the economy. The
INTENTION of the "Outside Money" being injected into the banking system is to
prevent the banking system from dying after which it would no longer be able to
create the "Inside Money" you borrow.
The Fed is NOT going to send individual citizens their mortgage payments. This
is also populist tripe.
If this were to be done Congress would have to legislate it and the Fed would
assist in arranging the financing for such a deficit.
The Congress DOES send trillions to all the people through various transfer
and entitlement programs and this coming year will be 2.8T from the federal level
alone as well as arranging all the student and mortgage loans.
As long as it is taken to be entertainment any of this is fine. Oh yeah, NO
GOLD Standard, Bimetal money, or any sort of commodity currency EVER again.
"... I encountered a wonderful concept the other day on the Keiser Report, where they said in passing that the great irony of the Hegemon's position was that it couldn't use its massive financial power because whenever it did, it simply forced alternatives to arise. ..."
"... This is why every financial move by Trump is producing the opposite result. Another ZH article says that the Russian sell-off of US Treasuries was a move to cover Rusal and the sanctions placed on its former CEO, Deripaska. Mr. Trump Attacks Aluminum, Russia Attacks The Debt . ..."
"... Every time the US flaunts its Dollar supremacy, it pushes customers away from the Dollar. ..."
"... The US has power left in the financial sector, but can't use it. The US has no power left in the military area, and cannot show it. Syria, Korea, the theaters are growing where the US has had to step down. ..."
"... Even the fog of propaganda is wearing increasingly thin. The US State Department just issued a warning to its people about traveling to Russia. It's risky, they say. But ticket sales for the World Cup are up by 25% from the US, the largest foreign customer ..."
The take away quote:
"
"What we've witnessed, since 2008, is the unbridled ability of the so-called people at the top to implement socialism for the
banks," Prins tells me. "If anyone had said we are going to give $21 trillion to the global banking sector, it would never have
happened – so we've had a backdoor process instead, under the pretense it would help ordinary people."
Excellent article, thanks for the link. Nomi knows all this stuff, and she's right. And Liam Halligan, a financial journalist
I greatly respect, wrote the article. Recommended.
~~
I encountered a wonderful concept the other day on the Keiser Report, where they said in passing that the great irony of the
Hegemon's position was that it couldn't use its massive financial power because whenever it did, it simply forced alternatives
to arise.
This is why every financial move by Trump is producing the opposite result. Another ZH article says that the Russian sell-off
of US Treasuries was a move to cover Rusal and the sanctions placed on its former CEO, Deripaska.
Mr. Trump Attacks
Aluminum, Russia Attacks The Debt .
The tariffs on aluminum compelled the Chinese to create a Yuan-denominated futures contract
on industrial metals - convertible to gold at Shanghai, of course. The instability of the overnight tariffs created a more enduring
stability than before, resting on gold, which satisfies concerns about transfers between nations.
Every time the US flaunts its Dollar supremacy, it pushes customers away from the Dollar.
~~
But it's not just Trump, nor just the financial markets. It's every theater and every plane of activity. Every use of bullying,
drives former allies away. Every posture of aggression runs the supreme risk that the US military will be exposed as ineffective,
and if that happens, the Pentagon is finished, and the generals know it.
The US has power left in the financial sector, but can't use it. The US has no power left in the military area, and cannot
show it. Syria, Korea, the theaters are growing where the US has had to step down.
Even the fog of propaganda is wearing increasingly thin. The US State Department just issued a warning to its people about
traveling to Russia. It's risky, they say. But ticket sales for the World Cup are up by 25% from the US, the largest foreign customer.
I'll have to stop, but fortunately, the examples go on and on.
Mate would have got the idea from Stephen Cohen, Russia expert, Nation contributor and husband of the Nation editor. But Cohen
has certainly got it from Alt-media - here or similar...
Today, June 16, is the 85th anniversary of the signing of the Banking Act of 1933, otherwise known as the Glass Steagall Act.
When President Franklin Roosevelt signed Glass Steagall into law, he set off a 66 year epoch of relatively sound banking, during
which time there was no big financial crash, as occurred in 1929 and again, after Glass Steagall's repeal, in 2008. Under Glass Steagall,
commercial depository banks were totally separated from investment banks. Later, insurance companies were also cut off from any ties
to commercial banks. During the same wave of early New Deal legislation, the Federal Depositors Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was
established, insuring commercial bank deposits and successfully deterring bank panics.
The repeal of Glass Steagall was a long-standing priority for Wall Street. In 1984, JP Morgan Bank launched an internal study
on how to repeal Glass Steagall. That study, "Rethinking Glass Steagall," proposed a war of attrition against the principle of complete
bank separation. The war was launched in 1987, with the appointment of Alan Greenspan as the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Greenspan had been a partner at JP Morgan and had chaired the study group which devised the war plan against Glass Steagall. As Fed
Chairman, Greenspan used his discretionary powers to increase the amount that commercial banks to lend to investment institutions.
By the mid-1990s, enforcement of Glass Steagall had eroded. Citibank at that point moved to purchase both an investment bank and
an insurance company, in violation of Glass Steagall restrictions. That set the clock going to a two-year deadline. Citi had to either
divest of the purchases or Glass Steagall had to be repealed.
Wall Street poured $300 million into a lobbying campaign to kill Glass Steagall. In 1999, both Houses of Congress passed the Gramm
Leach Bliley bill, killing Glass Steagall. For the first time in 66 years, commercial banks could merge with investment banks and
insurance companies. It was only a matter of time before the investment banking divisions devoured the commercial bank deposits and
directed them into a speculative binge beyond all previous financial bubbles. When Lehman Brothers went under in 2008, the system
crashedEnemies of Glass Steagall argued that Lehman Brothers was not a commercial bank and so the repeal of Glass Steagall had no
causal relationship with the financial crisis. Not so. It was the repeal of Glass Steagall that allowed commercial banks to pour
money into the gambling casino--including into Lehman BrothersAn article today in The Guardian by US correspondent Ganesh Sitaraman
noted that there is renewed interest in Glass Steagall today--across the political spectrum. He noted that progressive Democrats
have been pushing reinstating of Glass Steagall for years. It was included in the Republican Party platform in 2016. That is just
the tip of the iceberg. There are bills to reinstate Glass Steagall in both Houses of Congress and they are bipartisan bills. Even
candidate Donald Trump called for the reinstatement of Glass Steagall, before he was gagged by Wall Street cabinet officials like
Steven Mnuchin and Gary CohenThe IMF, the Bank for International Settlements, the Federal Reserve and Bloomberg News are all warning
that we are headed for another major financial "correction" sometime soon. They point to the consequences of a decade of post-2008
quantitative easing and zero interest rates, which led to a 63 percent jump in corporate bonds. The median bond rating today is BBB-
just one rung above junk bond status, and S&P Global estimates that more than 25 percent of all corporations can be categorized as
"zombies" because the amount they must spend servicing their corporate debt is greater than their cash flow.
There is a growing consensus that we are again headed for a big financial shock. Wouldn't it be wise to move to insulate the commercial
banking sector from another fiasco before the next crisis? Are the White House and Congress ready to act or are we heading blindly
to a replay of 2008?
Sirs;
The 'conventional' wisdom is that Franklin Roosevelt saved Capitalism from itself in the 1930s'. Glass Steagall was a big part
of that 'intervention' to save the self destructive system. When the financial sector managed to have the Glass Steagall law
removed, it might as well have said, like any addict; "I can control myself. I can stop any time I want." Any of us who have
had dealings with addictive personalities knows the folly of this claim. Well, absent Glass Steagall, the financial sector
tried to commit suicide in 2007-2008. The Fed and others managed to revive the moribund sector through QE to infinity. Now
it's going to happen again. This time, let the banks die. If you want, apply true capitalism and replace the errant institutions
with new ones. Then regulate the new actors. Keep the bottle out of the addicts reach.
I find Harper's account very clear and accurate as someone who paid close attention (watched in horror) from the time Clinton
signed the damned thing (Gramm Leach Bliley) till the inevitable taxpayer bailout of our worldwide commercial economy by indemnifying
the investment banks against their unlimited greedy speculative depredations.
The key point is that without commercial banking, business activity is not possible and would essentially cease. If, on
the other hand, all investment banking, no matter how big, were to blow up, collapse, and its minions be hunted down by wolves,
the world would feel the shock but soon turn to other forms of capital formation.
However, without Glass Steagall, commercial banks and investment banks become inextricably intertwined, and then "let the
banks fail" kills both the cancer and the patient. "Too big to fail" is a misnomer; it's not the size but the function that
matters, and until commercial banks (and insurers) are again separated from investment banking, the investment banksters have
us by the short ones, with a knife to our throat and a suicide vest around our families.
I got this from Wikipedia, does anybody know if it is correct?
n 1977, Greenspan obtained a Ph.D. in economics from New York University. His dissertation is not available from the university[17]
since it was removed at Greenspan's request in 1987, when he became Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. In April 2008, however,
Barron's obtained a copy and notes that it includes "a discussion of soaring housing prices and their effect on consumer spending;
it even anticipates a bursting housing bubble".[18
Harper, do you have any references for assertions such as the JPM internal study, the amount spent on lobbying and Greenspan's
role? It's not that I find them implausible. Just the opposite, in fact. But solid references help in convincing others.
The Democratic Party was founded in 1828. The Republican Party was founded in 1854.
Neither party serves the people. Both parties serve only themselves. They have morphed into
two sides of the same neoliberal coin. The primary reason Trump won the election was the
simple. Even though he ran on the Republican ticket, he was not a Republican. He was the best
choice open to the populist. Whether he is a populist or not does not matter. What matters is
that people want an America first, Populist Party. We are tired of the wars. We are tired of
the government. And, we are tired of the neocons...
"Ha ha ha ha ha the party of losers and users is OVER"
Instead of worrying who will fill the void, they should focus on the void of their ways.
As Nietzsche said, " And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. "
It's no wonder they are consuming themselves.
The people are starting to see through the lower end of their BS. Oddly enough, it's
figuring out the low end stuff that will create the most rage. Zombie awakening.
As for Obama, I think he realizes what's going on and probably wants no part of it.
Biggest rallies in US presidential history were for Bernie Sanders who ran as a Democrat.
Dems don't want him because they don't want to get off the corporate lobbyist gravytrain.
They would rather lose the presidency.
The republicans are the same. Crooks. All this bullshit on Zero Hedge comments about one
being better than the other is simpleton thinking.
the choice will always be between a douche and a turd sandwich.
the difference between trumps faults and clintons faults was a chasm.
if there ever was a leader for either party that halved the pentagon budget by making it
"smart", eliminating waste, repatriating troops, closing overseas bases AND came up with a
plan to make QUALITY portable and fungible across the country, AND found a way to educate
rather than indoctrinate children AND found a way to repay the national debt whilst funding
medicare/medicaid (both bankrupt) AND found a way to get the federal government completely
out of the housing market (get rid of fraudie and funny and the FHA) and, etc etc.. the
country would be back on track.
clinton wanted the opposite of all that, trump wants less of it and at least understands
what a fucking pain in the ass federal involvement in anything actually is.
Following a Monday report that President Obama is
"secretly" meeting
with top Democratic contenders for the 2020 election,
The
Hill
notes that desperate Democrats beset with
Clinton fatigue
are freaking out over the fact that the much "blue wave" appears to be
crashing
on the rocks
, and there's nobody around to salvage the party ahead of midterms and the 2020
election.
"
There's f---ing no one else
," one frustrated Democratic strategist said. "
Bill
Clinton is toxic, [former President] Carter is too old, and there's no one else around for miles
."
-
The
Hill
In the hopes of reinvigorating the DNC (of which up to 40 state chapters stand accused of
funneling up to $84 million
to the Clinton campaign), downtrodden dems are hoping that Obama
will get off the sidelines and help rally support.
"
He's been way too quiet
," said one longtime Obama bundler who rarely
criticizes the former president, according to
The Hill
. "
There are a lot of people who think he's played too little a role
or almost no role
in endorsing or fundraising and
he's done jack shit
in
getting people to donate to the party.
"
After the GOP made sweeping gains in the 2016 election, the DNC was left in disarray - and
anyone who might be able to lead the party, be it Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren, may run in 2020.
Bernie Sanders is of course out because he may run
and
he's not a Democrat.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was among five possible contenders for the Democratic crown
attending the "We the People" conference in Washington on Wednesday. He received the loudest
applause and heard chants of "Bernie."
But he can't play the elder role for the party, both because he may run for president
and because he's not a Democrat.
Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), two other possibilities,
have mass followings but also may join the 2020 race.
-
The
Hill
That leaves the spotlight squarely on Barrack Hussein Obama - whose lack of endorsements during
the primary season and general absence has frustrated Democrats.
Bill Clinton, who is more radioactive than ever after making ill-advised comments over "what you
can do to somebody against their will," has endorsed several candidates since leaving office, yet
Obama has declined to do the same thus far.
"You have all these people running for office, some of them against other Democrats, and
his strategy has been to not endorse anyone and that's what's been so f---ing ridiculous because
not only are you not helping them, you're hurting them
," said the bundler.
Former aides and Democratic strategists said Obama has sought to maintain a lower profile not
only for his party to find new life, but also to avoid playing a foil to President Trump and
Republicans.
A source close to Obama said the former president is looking forward to hitting the campaign
trail, fundraising and issuing more endorsements closer to the midterms. But the source added
that
injecting himself into day-to-day politics would do the Democratic Party a
disservice by making it more difficult for other Democratic voices to rise to prominence.
-
The
Hill
Others say that Obama has remained the unofficial leader of the Democratic Party since leaving
office.
"He always wanted to help, without a doubt. He cares tremendously about our country and our
party. But I think he always intended to be a little more on the sidelines than he's been," said
one former Obama aide. "I think he realizes he is needed and needed badly."
Former Obama aides say that the ex-President is unsettled by policies flowing from the Trump
administration, along with the "tone and tenor" of the White House (but not enough to aggressively
help active Democrats fight, apparently).
According to Democratic strategist David Wade: "
It's certainly not the post-presidency
he might've preferred.
"
Maybe Obama is just having a good time hanging out?
The Neo-cons, excuse me Democrats better get moving. (its so hard to
tell them apart these days) The clock is ticking, November is coming
and more reports showing criminal behavior are on the way.
~"Many of you impatient
homos are whining about no arrests
or indictments have been made yet.
When will it happen? I'll tell you:
Early October."~
Bingo.
The dems have another problem and
appear too stupid to focus on it.
They apparently much rather worry
about having a figurehead to lead
them, but their real problem is
much, much larger. Simply put, they
have no message, save "Hate
Trump!!!" What exactly do they
promise voters these days? Trump
impeachment as an economic program?
Also curious is the fact they
want no part of Hillary. Do they
admit she's as tainted as a leper?
The problem with that will be people
will see through it as cheap,
partisan electioneering. The result
will be an EASIER time to motivate
Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts.
There's as much chance of an
implosion of Democrats in 2018 as
there were back in 2006 when the GOP
was nearly blasted out of existence
then too. Remember how all the
predictions about the imminent doom
of the GOP were front and centre?
Journalists are so lazy, they're
just using Liquid Paper to
erase "Republican" to "Democrat" and
change the date from stuff they
wrote back in 2006.
Doesn't matter if Republicans or
Democrats win. In the end, everyone
else simply loses. How much you
lose is proportional to the distance
from the party elite you actually
are.
Rumors about the death of the US global neoliberal empire are probably slightly exaggerated.
Trump did damaged it, but the neoliberal system proved to be really resilient in 2008 and might
prove this again.
Notable quotes:
"... The overall educational level and the level of awareness of what's going on in the world in the US is dismal. Elites arranged that by maintaining pathetic education system and spreading lies via MSM; ignorant sheep are more likely to obey, and to approve of persecution of those "black sheep" who are less ignorant and don't buy the lies of the MSM. Did we see any protests against "Patriot Act" that trampled the very foundations of our Constitution? Sheep don't protest, they just follow the leader. ..."
"... However, we have to remember that clueless ignoramus in the US gets 5-10 times more than similarly clueless ignoramus in China or India. Bush junior was genuinely dumb, but would he become US President without his family's ill-gotten riches, or without his ex-CIA chief daddy becoming the President first? Of course not, most morons in the US never fly that high. The only reason for his "success" is the fact that he was born into an elite family. ..."
"... As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews in the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon Adelson. ..."
"... Elites are robbing Americans and foreigners alike. In fact, the US population gets some crumbs off elites' table, and enjoys higher living standards than it would have in fair global competition. ..."
Elites are robbing Americans and foreigners alike. In fact, the US population gets some
crumbs off elites' table, and enjoys higher living standards than it would have in fair
global competition.
The overall educational level and the level of awareness of what's going on in the world in
the US is dismal. Elites arranged that by maintaining pathetic education system and spreading
lies via MSM; ignorant sheep are more likely to obey, and to approve of persecution of those
"black sheep" who are less ignorant and don't buy the lies of the MSM. Did we see any
protests against "Patriot Act" that trampled the very foundations of our Constitution? Sheep
don't protest, they just follow the leader.
However, we have to remember that clueless ignoramus in the US gets 5-10 times more than
similarly clueless ignoramus in China or India. Bush junior was genuinely dumb, but would he
become US President without his family's ill-gotten riches, or without his ex-CIA chief daddy
becoming the President first? Of course not, most morons in the US never fly that high. The
only reason for his "success" is the fact that he was born into an elite family.
As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like
Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews in
the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon
Adelson.
See comment 51:
The problem here and abroad are elites. Elites of any kind.
Elites are robbing Americans and foreigners alike. In fact, the US population gets some
crumbs off elites' table, and enjoys higher living standards than it would have in fair
global competition.
some perhaps, but the middle class is dying (literally in the case of middle aged white
men), and the working class is languishing. It's true the 1% are gorging on a frenzy of corruption and graft, and a no doubt there are
a few who prosper by serving that class, but the Main Streets of America are not, in any way,
profiting off the exploitation of Africa or S. America or anywhere else. Indeed, it is them
that are being exploited.
The overall educational level and the level of awareness of what's going on in the world
in the US is dismal. Elites arranged that by maintaining pathetic education system and
spreading lies via MSM; ignorant sheep are more likely to obey
no argument there!
However, we have to remember that clueless ignoramus in the US gets 5-10 times more than
similarly clueless ignoramus in China or India.
India and China (and Ethiopia and Somalia and Mexico and Brazil and so many other places)
are not poor due to the oppression of Americans. Sure, Goldman Sachs and a thousand other
vultures and thieves have done a lot of damage, but no more that the leadership of those
respective lands. Has India ever heard of birth control, (for God's sake!) Or Indonesia or a hundred other
places, like Haiti, that overbreed their finite resources and limited space until their
countries are reduced to shitholes.
If a coal miner in West Virginia is doing a little better than an Untouchable in India,
then trust me when I tell you I'm not going to blame the miner (or janitor or mechanic) in
America for the poverty in the corrupt and stupid third world.
As far as the suffering that the ZUSA has actually caused, and is causing in places like
Syria and Yemen, none of that is being done on behalf of the American people, but rather the
typical American is taxed to support these wars and atrocities on behalf of Israel or Saudi
Arabia, respectively.
The only reason for his "success" is the fact that he was born into an elite family.
recently I was ranting on the terrible folly of this very thing.
As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like
Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews
in the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon
Adelson.
Yes, they're just as selfish and greedy, but they aren't as filled with genocidal
hatred.
It's because of Zionist Jews that Americans were dragged into both world wars.
It's because of Zionist Jews (and assorted corrupt Gentiles) that Israel (with help from
the CIA and ((media)), did 9/11, in order to plunge this century into horrors writ large like
the last Zio-century.
That there are legions of corrupt and soulless Gentiles willing and eager to jump on that
gravy train, is a shame and a sin, but it doesn't excuse the people who are the motivation
behind the wars.
The Kochs (and Chamber of Commerce and other Gentile scum) want massive immigration out of
pure, raw, insatiable greed.
Whereas the Jewish supremacist Zionists want it out of genocidal tribal hatreds.
The typical American middle and working class are ground into the dirt between these two
pillars of Satanic iniquity.
I agree with much of what you're saying, and it's true about the elites in general. But
the ZUSA is completely controlled by Zionist Jews, and I think that's pretty obvious.
This man knew that 9/11 was going to happen, if he wasn't part of the planning. And yet
look at how they abase themselves
Democrats can lament all they want, but they did have a very good candidate that they allowed to be thrown under the bus. That
was Bernie Sanders. Despite his "socialist" leanings, (for you conservatives), he was really fresh blood to the Democratic party.
And even though Jimmy Carter is old, he has a very good working mind, better than all that are currently in the Democratic party.
Clinton turned the Democratic party into a Mafia organization, taking orders from her, paving the way for her, knocking
off anyone that looked like potential trouble, like Seth Rich, John Ashe, Joe Montano, Victor Thorn, and Shawn Lucas. All five
of these guys died within 6 weeks of each other. Strange? Not if you are operating an old style mafia organization. Democrats
need to resign the party, and form something new, that has fresh ideas, and people who are not there for self-coronations. The
most honest democrat you have left is Jimmy Carter. Democrats are not honest today.
They need to purge the leadership of the DNC - Perez, Clinton and the gang, they are the ones that shoved Hillary Clinton down
Democrats throats instead letting Bernie Sanders, the real nominee, win the nomination. The DNC fucked over themselves, no one
else is to blame.
Howard Dean is the one that got Obama elected the first time. From 2005 to 2009, he headed the Democratic National Committee
(DNC) and successfully implemented the 50 State Strategy, which aimed for Democrats to be competitive in places considered Republican-dominated
territory. As a result, during the midterms in 2006, Democrats won the House back and gained seats in the Senate. In 2008 Barack
Obama also used the same strategy to win his presidential bid.
Just like the DNC and Democratic bourgeoise fucked over Bernie, they fucked over Howard Dean. Obama didn't select Howard Dean
for his cabinet for Secretary of Health and Human Services - even though he was a successful governor, is a medical doctor, and
was one of the main reasons Obama won in 2008.
Obama has always been about himself. I mean who publishes a memoir about yourself when you're just a nobody? Even Obama knows
a loser when he sees one...the Democratic Party. He did more for the Republican Party than any Republican could ever do. One of
the Greatest Presidents in my lifetime for the conservative movement.
The Dems are caught between a rock and a hard place. The result of losing 1000s of seats nationwide since 2010 means you've
got no farm system to develop politicians/leaders. It's no different than any sports franchise. The successful ones have a deep
bench and prospects to knock off old, overpaid, underachieving veterans. If the Dems trot out Obama, he will be a death sentence
for the Dems' chances in November. Guy is hated by almost everyone. Don't believe the approval ratings from CNN. He got more popular
towards the end when people realized he was finally leaving.
Obama and the Clinton's have DESTROYED the Democrat party!!! Leaders of the current Democratic party apparatchik, Schumer,
Pelosi, Schiff, et al , are fucking idiots!!! I see a Red tsunami wave for the mid-term election!
I can't believe in the USA the prosecutor is asking the judge
not to let the defendant see the evidence against them
.
Notable quotes:
"... "In this case it's a euphemism for sleaze." ..."
"... *Definition of pettifogger. 1 : a lawyer whose methods are petty, underhanded, or disreputable : shyster. 2 : one given to quibbling over trifles. ..."
Oh it's way more than that.
That is the kind of language Oliver Wendell Holmes would have used back in the
day. It also brings to mind Samuel Clemens. This is a very sharp team indeed.
Mule-er basically drew to an inside straight, and got busted. The Russkies
called his bluff, and his hand is 7-8-10-Jack-four. Sorry, Ereberto,
no nine, just a "nein." Discovery is a bitch! I suspect that further
developments are going to be highly entertaining. Judge: "can we see your
evidence of wrongdoing." Mule-er: "That's highly classified."
In its earliest English uses, "pettifogger" was two separate words: "pettie
fogger." "Pettie" was a variant spelling of "petty," a reasonable inclusion in
a word for someone who is disreputable and small-minded.
Who would have believed decent Americans would ever applaud Russians
kicking the shit out of federal law enforcement? Do I hear "The World
Turned Upside Down" in the distance? Should Mueller change his name
to Cornwallis?
How about "corrupt" shill? Remember, Mueller headed the FBI before and
after the 9/11 attacks. Did Mueller's FBI investigate? No; they covered up
for 9/11 perpetrators. Thanks a lot Mueller.
If I were the judge, I would refuse any motion Mueller makes to avoid
releasing evidence, and if he doesn't do it within a matter of hours, his
entire staff would be getting perp walked for contempt. Let Mueller manage
his investigation from a prison cell, like some drug kingpin.
The US government has already wasted $200 million on this stupid "pettifoggery".
Some one, any one, put an end to this ridiculous dog and pony show.
Mueller, and the Justice Dept. are now the laughing stock of the world. We
need to save a little face, and have this SOB shot for the good of the
nation. This Prick doesn't give two shits for the American people, or the
nation that he is paid to serve.
These guys were likely just pushing click-bait on Facebook. And since it is
election season, it is easy for them to riff off the candidates.
Mueller
giving it any legitimacy shows he is either out of touch with how the internet
works or has his own special case of Trump derangement syndrome.
Accuse others for which you are guilty is in the dnc handbook. The only
illegal activity involved the DNC, team Hillary, and operatives in the FBI,
CIA, DOJ, and the IRS.
This indictment is a total fujkin joke. In Mueller's world he can charge
you with a crime but refuse to show the evidence. Proves that he has no
interest in serving justice. His goals are to defame and bankrupt enemies
of the deep swamp.
It's all fun and games until the defense show up with a shit ton of lawyers too.
Thin soup is what Mueller has. Thin soup. You would think that with the idea of being compared to Benedict Arnold, Him, Clapper,
Comey, Clinton, Brennan and all the rest would take pause. Swamp doesn't even begin to describe those shitbags sucking up our
free American air every day.
PS. A note of interest, when I was somehow accidentally using Googlet to look up past CIA directors, the first line was "Save
on past CIA directors" at Amazon.com.
The root is neoliberal government that came to power in 2015
Notable quotes:
"... Why is any of this still "surprising" ..."
"... Economist Ha Joon Chang popularized the term "ladder kicking" to describe the way in which most developed countries used tariffs and trade restrictions to ascent to the top but are all for "free trade" now. ..."
"... Once again, so long as "Original Sin" is a reality, there is little hope. Keynes' BANCOR was the idea to begin to fix this, but short of some other global currency initiative, we're left to the International Finance Vultures as the primary arbiters of what's possible. ..."
Thanks for the link. I will be spending some time thinking of what Argentina would best
employ as best practices from where it is.
Would they be best off if they stopped issuing such high paying bonds? Should they pay them
all off and stop with it. It does appear to me that issuing bond after bond is one of the
single most dangerous things you can do.
It would appear to me to be a superior practice to sell what you produce for the best price
you can get on the open markets and dictate the value of your currency.
I'll have to do some more study here.
Again, thanks for the link.
You're uttering the discourse of the most recalcitrant neo-liberal cum
austerity-fundamentalists around.
The US doesn't tax soybean exports. Argentina needs to maximize its exports to earn
foreign exchange.'
it's misleading to say the least to draw a comparison between how the US handles soybean
exports and Argentina does it. They're around a quarter of the latter's exports, barely a
hundredth of the latter's.
The US will never have forex issues, Argentina does have them, and they are very serious.
You make it as if simply exporting commodities will fill the country's economy with USD,
while in truth those dollars will be neatly parked in tax heavens. Eliminating tax and
controls over Argentina's biggest exports -agricultural commodities- is in practice as if
these commodities were produced not in this country but in some foreign territory over which
only the very few who hold most of the land are sovereign. Which is what the current
administration has been doing for the past two years.
You also make it as if the current situation where the value of the peso is given over
completely to whatever short-term speculators feel like doing with it whenever LEBACs are due
is more desirable than the capital controls imposed by the previous government. These
prevented the hurtful rapid rise we're seeing in the exchange rate and reduced the negative
consequences of the fiscal deficit thus allowing significant investment in and expansion of
the real economy.
Addressing the fiscal deficit through increased value added and income tax is something
that clearly benefits the owner over the working class and depresses private consumption. I
can only sarcastically wonder who would want such a thing.
I don't feel the need or the duty to defend the previous government, but victimization of
the Sociedad Rural is something I just lack the words to condemn strongly enough
Argentina is probably the most self sufficient country on earth. It has everything,
fertile land that produces an abundance of wheat, barley, oats, rye, wine grapes. As well as
oil, gas. uranium, silver, gold, lead, copper, zinc. Foreigners are well aware of the wealth
in Argentina and are more than willing to lend to Argentinian governments and companies. This
is why Cristina Kirchner refused to give in to the US vulture funds as it dissuaded
foreigners from believing that reckless lending would always be rewarded. Macri ponied up,
restarting the old familiar economic doom cycle. As always its the old dog for the long road
and the pup for the puddle. Macri is now in a place that he chose, the puddle. As long as
foreig lenders remain reckless Argentina will remain mired in the mud, well short of its
potential. I was last there in 2008 when the country was booming. When I heard of Macri's
plan to pay the vulture funds I knew they were headed for disaster. This is just the
beginning.
Those "foreign lenders" can't be called "reckless." Some, maybe most among them always
seem to profit from the looting, whether by "bailouts" or "backstops" from governments like
the US that for "geopolitical reasons" facilitate that lending, or by extortion after the
first-round lenders (who know the risks, of course -- they are big boys and girls after all)
have been forestalled.
Call them "wreckers," maybe. Like early denizens of the Florida Keys, and other places,
who set fires or put up lamps that resembled lighthouses to lure passing ships onto the sands
and rocks where their cargoes and the valuables of their drowned passengers and crews could
be stripped.
Why is any of this still "surprising" to anyone?! Most countries in the world
(non G7/G8) are forced to go into foreign debt in order to pursue their "development"
initiatives. They are told they can export themselves out of trouble but the "free
trade" (more like unfair trade!) mantra puts them at a distinct disadvantage –
"unequal
exchange" was the term Marx used for it.
Economist Ha Joon Chang popularized the term
"ladder kicking" to describe the way in which most developed countries used tariffs and
trade restrictions to ascent to the top but are all for "free trade" now.
Once again, so long as "Original Sin" is a reality, there is little
hope. Keynes' BANCOR was
the idea to begin to fix this, but short of some other global currency initiative, we're left
to the International Finance Vultures as the primary arbiters of what's possible.
He hasn't completed it yet. But he gave us a sneak preview. Bernal is the national director of the public interest group Stop
Predatory Gambling.
If he were to call it right now, which would be the five worst states?
Oregon, West Virginia, New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania.
What about Nevada?
"We don't debate Nevada," Bernal told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. "If you were going to have
one place to gamble, have it be Nevada. I always exclude Nevada."
What are the best five?
Utah, Hawaii, Alaska, Nebraska – with New Hampshire and Vermont tied for the number five slot.
"It's hard to do a ranking," Bernal said. "Oregon has one tribal casino. But the Oregon lottery has video gambling machines. Technically
they don't have many casinos in Oregon. But Oregon is as bad as any state in the country in terms of harming the public."
"West Virginia is there as one of the worst. Oregon is right there. It's not a uniform thing."
"Our goal is to have a ranking of the biggest predatory gambling states in the country. And factor in the different forms of gambling
they have."
How would you describe the politics behind the movement to stop predatory gambling?
"We are one of the most politically diverse movements in the United States. We have people from all political stripes who work
together. You would be hard pressed to find a more diverse network of citizens involved with this."
Is your group opposed to all gambling?
"We are opposed to the role of government in actively promoting and sanctioning commercialized gambling to citizens."
Isn't that all gambling?
"If you and I went bowling or were playing golf and we had a friendly wager on the game, that is technically gambling. I'm not
talking about prohibiting that. We are talking about gambling for profit."
You would prohibit gambling for profit?
"We would prohibit running a gambling ring for profit, yes we would."
If you prohibited gambling for profit, you are prohibiting 99 percent of the gambling in the United States, right?
"Running it as a business."
Isn't that 99 percent of gambling in the United States?
"No. There are all sorts of social gambling where people have Friday night poker gamers, office Super Bowl pools."
What percentage of all gambling in the United States is gambling for profit?
"In 2016, the American people lost $117 billion to government sanctioned gambling."
How much did they lose in other gambling?
"The numbers on illegal gambling don't compare."
The legalized gambling piece is $117 billion in 2016.
"That's what they lost. What they wagered is close to $200 billion."
And illegal gambling is much less?
"Well, if you and I are in a Friday night poker game, that's gambling."
How about bookies?
"Those guys are doing it for profit. That's called illegal commercial gambling."
How big is that market?
"The American Gaming Association make up a number of $150 billion on illegal sports gambling."
Give us your argument against government sanctioned gambling.
"The American people lost $117 billion to government sanctioned gambling in 2016. At the same time one out of two citizens in
this country own zero net assets – no stocks, no property, no bonds."
"Here you have an enormous number of people who lack assets to grow into the middle class. And the public voice of government
is targeting that same constituency to play games that are rigged against them."
"We start with this moral belief that all men and women deserve a fair opportunity to have the best life possible for themselves
and their family. That's why we show up every day to compete on this."
"You have citizens losing $117 billion a year. And meanwhile, half the citizens don't have any assets at all. The public voice
of government to most citizens today no matter where you live is gambling."
"We see a lottery class of citizens. You don't have a chance to improve your life. You are stuck with a lack of mobility out of
poverty. And your best hope is to try and play a rigged game to make some cash to pay your rent every month."
"At the same time, government is advertising these games relentlessly to citizens. We spend more than $1 billion a year advertising
gambling to the American people on lotteries alone. That pales in comparison to any other form of government advertising."
"When I was a kid growing up I used to see advertisements with John Wayne saying – invest in your country – buy US Savings Bonds.
The idea behind that was to encourage citizens to build assets. Everyone points back to the 1950s where there was a growing middle
class and a chance for people to climb out of poverty."
"We had a high savings rate. People were building assets. That was an understated part of keeping people in the middle class.
We talk a lot about wages, but wages are only one part of the equation. You also have to encourage people to build assets."
"We come off the great depression during World War II. And the public voice of government then was – we have to put people to
work. Imagine government encouraging people back then to go out and spend their money on lottery tickets to raise the money for the
war. Instead they encouraged the citizens to go out and buys savings bonds, to invest in your country, invest in your neighbor. It
created this strong sense of a common good. It was stronger then than it is today."
Of the $117 billion that the American people lost, how much of that came from poor people?
"Without question, a large portion is coming from the poor. David Just and his team at Cornell have done the best research on
that. And it consistently shows that the people who are participating come from the least favored sections of our society. And they
are playing out of financial desperation. It's a Hail Mary investment strategy."
"Two-thirds of the public doesn't gamble at all. You have one third of the public participating in this government sanctioned
gambling. The messaging that is targeting those folks is – this is a chance to change your life. They sell scratch tickets that say
– money for life. This is going to be your answer to get ahead in society."
"The average person sees the lottery as Powerball and Megamillions. But the truth is that those two games represent only a small
portion of lottery revenues. Where lotteries make most of their cash are on what are called scratch tickets. Scratch tickets are
the number one money maker, unless you are a state like Oregon that has these electronic gambling machines, which are the most lucrative
of all."
"Scratch tickets are these high frequency games where you play many times a day at higher and higher wagered amounts."
What impact does gambling have on the poor?
"Government sanctioned gambling goes to the heart of many issues that the poor face. It's a big factor in the lack of mobility
out of poverty. By encouraging people to gamble on these rigged games, instead of being able to build a savings account, they are
spending on these rigged games at the street corner on a daily basis."
"What are the key elements of mobility out of poverty? Family structure. If you can keep a family unit together, you have a better
shot of getting out of poverty than if you don't. Two of the biggest factors shown to disrupt family structure are infidelity and
financial problems."
"Here you have a government program that directly attacks the family structure and the family structure is the key to pulling
people out of poverty. Government sanctioned gambling is designed to get citizens to lose their cash as frequently as possible at
higher wagered amounts. It directly intersects with rising inequality. We define it as a lack of opportunity."
[For the complete q/a format Interview with Les Bernal, see 32 Corporate Crime Reporter 24(11), June 7, 2018,
print edition only .]
Many Trump supporters, and even some on the left, like to talk about the "Deep State"
secretly having complete control of our government, thus rendering our elected leaders to be
nothing more than meaningless figureheads. Let's investigate.
Long before the term 'Deep State' became popular, the term "Military Industrial Complex" was
coined by President Dwight Eisenhower.
He gave his now famous Military Industrial Complex (MIC) speech on Jan 17, 1961.
During his ominous farewell, Ike mentioned that the US was only just past the halfway point
of the century and we had already seen 4 major wars. He then went on to talk about how the MIC
was now a major sector of the economy. Eisenhower then went on to warn Americans about the
"undue influence" the MIC has on our government. He warned that the MIC has massive lobbying
power and the ability to press for unnecessary wars and armaments we would not really need, all
just to funnel money to their coffers.
Jump to Ike's warning about the "unwarranted influence... by the Military-Industrial
Complex" at 8:41
His warning though proven correct, was sadly not heeded. Within a few years JFK was
assassinated shortly after giving his "Secret government speech" warning the American people
about "secret governments and secret organizations that sought to have undue control of the
government.
JFK was in his grave for less than 9-months before Gulf of Tonkin incident which was a
series of outlandish lies about a fictitious attack on a US naval ship that never happened,
which caused the US to enter the Vietnam war.
President Johnson lied his way into a war with North Vietnam and within less than a year
would joke that "maybe the attack never happened". By the time the war ended in 1973, Johnson's
bundle of lies had killed 2.45 million people.
The MIC however, saw the Vietnam war as a great victory and a template for the future
success to their objectives. Ever since the Vietnam War, the MIC has urged the government to
enter into as many ambiguous and unwinnable wars as possible, since unwinnable wars are also
never-ending. Never-ending wars equate to never-ending revenue streams for the war
industry.
Eisenhower warned us about the concept of one particular industry taking control of our
government, but sadly his predictions fell of deaf ears.
Since Eisenhower's time several other over "Industrial Complexes" have followed the MIC
example and taken control of our government to suit their needs as well. Their objective is to
buy out politicians in order to control the purse strings of Congress and they have been highly
successful.
The list of these ÏC industries includes, but is not limited to the companies
below:
1. The Drug Industrial Complex. (DIC)
The prescription drug industry has massive control of our government and our health care
system. A recent Mayo Clinic study concluded that 70% of Americans are on at least one
prescription drug.
The most tragic example is opioids, though similar arguments can also be made in reference
to the anti-depressant epidemic, obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
The sicker America is, the better it is for the DIC.
The drug lobby is 8x larger than the gun lobby and is indirectly responsible for the deaths
of between 59.000 and 65,000 people in 2016 alone, but if we dig deeper, that number could
easily be 2 or 3 times higher, Since deaths related to opioids from infection related to opioid
related infections are extremely common Anti-depressants are being prescribed 400% more than
they were in the 1990's. They are commonly prescribed to adolescent women and we live up to the
name "Prozac Nation" when we realize that 1 in 5 women between the ages of 40 and 59 are taking
antidepressants. The list of other prescription medicines to enhance the DIC revenue streams is
extensive.
There are two primary industrial complex rules when it comes to prescription drug centric
treatment:
Firstly, no curing is allowed, ever. Treatment of conditions with temporary benefits is
allowed, but healing is not permissible, since it interrupts revenue streams.
And second, any and all "natural" or homeopathic treatment whether it be related to diet,
supplements vitamins, anti-oxidants or physical exercise/meditation should all be relegated
to "quackery." Doctors who do not adhere to the prescription drug method of treating patients
should also be referred to as adherents to "quackery" and should be reprimanded, fined and in
extreme cases have their medical licenses revoked.
2. Real Estate Industrial Complex. (RIC)
Goal: Keep housing prices rising as much as possible, year after year after year.
How this is implemented: Endorse the borrowing of money to entice people into buying
excessively large homes in order to promote the "dream" of home ownership. Once people buy into
this scheme, they are then saddled with massive home taxes to their city and the burden of the
taxes utilities that go along with owning an excessively large home. Stigmatize anyone who is
over the age of 25 and lives in the same domicile as a parent or grandparent.
Make sure all media channels repeat over and over incessantly that high real estate prices
are "signs of a great economy," while ignoring the crippling effect high home prices have on
working class families who can barely pay their mortgage.
3. College Industrial Complex
(CIC)
The average tuition in 1971-1972 was $1832.00 and now it is officially over $31,000.00.
There are over 60 colleges and universities where the tuition has already exceeded
$60,000.00 per/year.
A college education used to be something that people saved and paid cash for, but now there
has been a cultural shift where students are expected to take out loans that are often in the
hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain a college degree.
Why is this all so expensive? When we look at our universities and colleges, we see an
obsession with elaborate new buildings and sports stadiums, more than actual learning.
There are several emerging/innovative ideas to make a college education better, faster and
far more affordable. Such concepts probably won't take hold until the inevitable collapse of
the entire educational system takes place.
4. Health Insurance Industrial Complex
(HIC)
Much of the US healthcare system is now governed by the "Healthcare Affordability Act"
passed by the Obama administration in 2010.
The HIC proved how powerful they were when Congress was not allowed to read the legislation
before voting for it, publicly displaying that the HIC who wrote the bill behind closed doors
is more powerful than Congress itself.
What transparent public committees were behind this important legislation?
In reality, there was no transparency at all, this is stated clear as day by Healthcare
Affordability Act primary architect Jonathan Gruber stated: "Lack of transparency is a huge
political advantage, Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically,
that was really, really critical for the thing to pass."
The Speaker of the House at the time was Nancy Pelosi, who famously said from the leadership
podium as House Speaker: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.'
Our elected officials were not allowed to read the most important legislation of the past 30
years before voting for or against it. There is no greater testimony to the level of
dysfunction in Congress than the Healthcare Affordability Act, formed by secret committees and
then not allowing Congress to read it before voting.
* * *
Let's think back to 1961 when Eisenhower warned us about what would become the Vietnam War.
The American people's ignoring his warning caused arms manufacturers and big business to assume
nearly complete control of US government.
If we had listened to Ike, millions of people would not have died in the wars of the last 57
years and we would have trillions of dollars less in debt. Perhaps we still have time to heed
his warning before our entire country collapses under the weight of corruption, crippling debt
and never-ending wars, let's hope so.
* * *
Kevin Paul is the founder of Alternativemediahub.com, which refers to itself as "The
megaphone of independent journalism." Born in MA, he came within 2% of winning the R party
nomination to oppose Ted Kennedy in 2006 and holds degrees in business and political
science.
"... The top White House adviser and son-in-law of Trump failed to identify his part ownership of Cadre, a real-estate startup he founded, which links him to the Goldman Sachs Group and the mega-investors George Soros and Peter Thiel, sources told The Journal. ..."
I guess the "Deep State" is deeper than the White House is reporting.....
Jared Kushner didn't disclose his business ties with George Soros, Peter Thiel, and Goldman Sachs, or that he owes $1 billion
in loans, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
The top White House adviser and son-in-law of Trump failed to identify his part ownership of Cadre, a real-estate startup
he founded, which links him to the Goldman Sachs Group and the mega-investors George Soros and Peter Thiel, sources told The Journal.
"... If Money=Debt, the battle over money can only be won by individuals wisely choosing whom they become indebted too. As the wise Michael Hudson points out, "Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid." ..."
"... Money is the creation of the elite to control the rest of the masses. It screws the rest of the masses by constraining what they can get their hands on while the elite can get their hands on anything they want. ..."
"... IMO the point of the article was to hint that objections (or refusal to engage with) MMT is largely political in nature. ..."
"... Skippy said it above: these are likely bad faith actors who disguise their classism and political desires with talk of "positive money" and the like. Debate clubs won't win this one. ..."
"... As I understand it, MMT is simply a more honest way of explaining the current reality, the problem being that the 1% would like to keep that a secret so that money is only created for the things that they can profit from, like war. ..."
"... MMT necessarily requires the exorbitant privilege of having the US dollar accounting for 60% of world trade & financial transactions with the US economy representing only 20% of world GDP. ..."
"... The Entrepreneurial State ..."
"... money and credit are used almost entirely for speculation, usury, and rent extraction ..."
"... In a normal economy, government spending is financed by taxes and borrowing, meaning that no new spending power has been created, as IS the case with new bank loans. ..."
"... You can fool part of the people all of the time, and all of the people part of the time. ..."
"... handing all credit creation to the central banks is not only technically impossible in a modern economy, it's a dangerous folly ..."
"... Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt, 2nd edition. ..."
"... The Order of Time ..."
"... "The debts are owed to government banks. A government can do what the U.S. can't do. The government can forgive debts, at least those that are owed to itself, without creating a political backlash. If a viable corporation has run up too much debt, the government can forgive it. This is better than letting the debt close down a factory or force it be sold to a predatory asset management firm as occurs in the United States. That is the advantage of having public credit and why credit should be public. That's how it was in Babylonia. Rulers were able to cancel debts all the time in the 3rd millennium and 2nd millennium BC, because most debts were owed to the palace or the temples. Rulers were cancelling debts owed to themselves. ..."
"... China can cancel business debt owed to itself. It can proclaim a clean slate. It can minimize debt service to whatever it chooses. But imagine if Chase Manhattan and Goldman Sachs are let in. It would be much harder for the government to raise real estate taxes leading to defaults on the banks. It could save the occupants by making new loans to those who default – based on lower land prices. ..."
"... Well, you can imagine the international furor that would erupt. Trump would threaten to atom bomb Peking and Shanghai to save his constituency. His constituency and that of the Democrats are the same: Wall Street and the One Percent. So China may lose its ability to write down debts if it lets in foreign banks." ..."
"... that this is a Chicago School / Friedmanesque monetary policy is made clear by Positive Money ..."
"... It seems there are greater similarities between China and the US than may be visible at first glance. China builds real estate for a shrinking population, invests for an over-indebted client (the US, which even insists on a drastic reduction of the bilateral trade deficit) and finances all this with money it does not have ..."
The same money that went into TARP would have bought a whole lot of nonperforming
mortgages. You wouldn't have needed a large bailout if the money actually made it's way to
main street.
Slightly off-topic, but if its true that this is a right wing proposal using naïve
left/Green supporters to give a progressive fig leaf, it wouldn't be the first time this has
happened. You can see the same phenomenon with Brexit, where many supposed left wingers have
often bought unthinkingly into many right/libertarian memes about 'freedom' from the EU. The
core reason they could do this is the effective abandonment by the left of arguments about
money and capital to the conservative and libertarian right from the 1980's onward.
One of the many reasons I love NC so much is that it has tried to fill the gap left by so
much of the mainstream left and much of the Greens in analysing economics issues in forensic
technical detail. Articles like this are absolutely invaluable in building up a proper
intellectual program in understanding the central importance of macroeconomics in building a
fairer society.
God, country, apple pie, balanced budget, freedom, democracy, pay-as-you-go, ingredients
in the hash of right/libertarian memes, all supposedly 'common sense' but actually
nonsense, spread thick, intended to distract us while our ruling class steals everything not
tied down.
I think the left saw its audience washed away by a tidal wave of this clever, well-funded
nonsense, so they stopped arguing about money and capital because they found it embarrassing
to be caught talking to themselves.
Of course back in the 1970s, much of the working-class had was doing well enough that they
thought the argument about money had been settled, and in their favor. Little did they know
that their 'betters' were planning on clawing-back every penny of wealth that they'd managed
to accumulate in the post-war years.
So here we are, the working class that was formerly convinced that anyone could live well
if they just worked hard, are finding that you can tug on your boot-straps with all your
might, and get no where.
I think you're right in that the wrong narrative is now dominant.
I don't think this was done intentionally – I think the people pulling the strings
don't know for sure what will happen, either.
The 'common sense' you mention is the best explanation most people have available. They
look at macroeconomics through the lens of their own household budget. Of course a balanced
budget responsible application of money makes sense Most people don't have a money printer in
their basement.
The battle is for the soul of humanity. A leadership that is working toward reducing
inequality and injustice in the world will adopt policies reflecting a more positive outlook
on the human condition. Those implementing austerity revile the masses of humanity, wether
stated or not. The masses are to be controlled, not enlightened or cared for.
The West has gained supremacy in the world by using the strategy of Divide and Conquer.
This thought process is so engrained in the psyche, that it heavily influences every form of
problem solving by using outright war and financial oppression as primary tools to achieve
these ends.
There would need to be a fundamental shift in thinking from Western leadership in order to
bring about a change that would focus on wellbeing over profit, which does not seem
forthcoming.
If Money=Debt, the battle over money can only be won by individuals wisely choosing
whom they become indebted too. As the wise Michael Hudson points out, "Debts that can't be
paid, won't be paid."
The main problem I see is the definition of what "Winning" would be. The definition
determines the policy.
"There would need to be a fundamental shift in thinking from Western leadership in order
to bring about a change that would focus on wellbeing over profit, which does not seem
forthcoming."
Money is the creation of the elite to control the rest of the masses. It screws the
rest of the masses by constraining what they can get their hands on while the elite can get
their hands on anything they want. The tipping point will be when there are sufficient
numbers who understand money isnt necessary to live and have nice things, it actually exists
to deprive them of such.
We've been fighting this same 'war' for a very long time.
Everybody now just has to make up their mind. Is money money or isn't money money.
Everybody who earns it and spends it every day in order to live knows that money is money,
anybody who votes it to be gathered in as taxes knows money is not money. That is what
makes everybody go crazy. -Gertrude Stein – All About Money
As far as I can tell, about 1% of us believe that money is not money, and the rest of us
believe that money is money.
Most of us believe that money is money because as Gertrude Stein said: Everybody who earns
it and spends it every day in order to live knows that money is money
So here's the problem: the 1% of the people, the ones who believe that money is not money,
are in charge of everything.
It's not natural that so few people should be in charge of so much, and that they should
be in charge of 'everything' is truly crazy. (Please excuse the slight digression)
The people who are in charge of everything believe that it's right, proper, indeed
'natural' that they be in charge of everything because they believe that no one could do as
good a job of being in charge of everything because they think they are smarter than
everybody else.
The reason that the 1% of people believe they are smarter than everybody else is rooted
largely in what they believe is their self-evident, superior understanding of money; that is
to say, the understanding that money is not money.
The trouble is, the difference between the 1%'s understanding of money, and the common
man's understanding of money is not evidence of the 1%'s superior intellect, so much as of
their lack of a moral compass and their ability to rationalize the depraved indifference they
show to their fellow man.
Maybe this thought is callous, but perhaps it would be useful to have a real-world
demonstration that this is a bad idea. How systemically important is the Swiss economy? US
abandoned its monetarist "quantity of reserves" experiment after a relatively short time.
Again, it sounds callous, but perhaps a year or two of distress in a small test
environment
(that is starting from a pretty good place and has a good social safety net
would be helpful to the world at large in terms of deprecating a bad idea. Perhaps MMT
will be the last approach standing?
Could it be that Wolf's "we need experiments" rhetoric is actually opposed to "positive
money", but he recognizes that the idea won't go away until it is badly spanked? Even if not,
maybe there is something to the idea that experimentation could be used to distinguish bad
ideas from less bad (the good ideas won't be tested, I reckon, until all the various flavors
of "bad" have been tried and rejected).
IMO the point of the article was to hint that objections (or refusal to engage with)
MMT is largely political in nature. See Marriner Eccles and his observation regarding
the political enemies of full employment.
Skippy said it above: these are likely bad faith actors who disguise their classism
and political desires with talk of "positive money" and the like. Debate clubs won't win this
one.
If the Swiss go through with it and it inevitably fails there will always be an excuse.
They didn't do positive money "hard enough" or whatever.
What I'd like to know is if the Swiss go through with it and it fails, is there anything
other than central bank independence that needs to be changed? Fundamentally it's still fiat,
operating within a democracy. Does it not come down to who decides how much and for what
purpose?
Maybe I'm missing something, but it strikes me as the elites getting their revenge in
first. There go my people and all that. Maybe I am missing it.
the good ideas won't be tested, I reckon, until all the various flavors of "bad" have
been tried and rejected.
So, you don't think current conditions are convincing enough?
As for me, I'm more than convinced, that left to themselves, our elites have an endless
bag of bad ideas, and every one of them results in their further enrichment at our
expense.
I'm convinced; have been persuaded that MMT is the right way to think about "money" since
shortly after I encountered it almost a decade ago.
As I understand it, this is a referendum. If the people don't like the outcome, they
presumably would have power to reverse it. Throw the bastards out and replace with new
bastards who will try something different.
As I understand it, MMT is simply a more honest way of explaining the current reality,
the problem being that the 1% would like to keep that a secret so that money is only created
for the things that they can profit from, like war.
So the issue is that since enough money can be created for the needs of the rest of us,
why is that not happening?
It would appear to me that almost any efforts by the 1% to create a 'new' plan is in
reality, an effort to make sure that the 99% never reap any advantage even if we were to
unanimously come to understand the MMT is really the most realistic perspective.
It's almost as if the 1% has decided to change the rules because the rest of us are
starting to understand that there is no technical reason we can't finance a more equitable
economy.
It's good to explain the current reality more honestly.
Even more honestly would be to explain that reality, which is a man-made system, doesn't
have to be that way, unlike scientific explanations, for example, one for how gravity works.
That particular physics explanation comes with the understanding that we can't change how
gravity works.
The word 'theory' in the sense most people with more than 10 years of education associate
with it is that
1. You will fail to advance to the next grade, or the next class if you don't understand
it.
2. If you don't understand it, you are under pressure to show you agree with the theory, lest
you fail the exam.
3. The reality described by the theory is unalterable, which is often the case with natural
science theories, but not really the case with social/economic/political theories, unless
they deal with human nature, which is hard to change.
If I say there is a theory to explain that on Mars, you drive on the right side of the
road on odd-numbered days, and on the left side on even-numbered days, you would say, I
appreciate the clear explanation of your wonderful theory, but I don't like it, I don't like
how that system is designed. And I want to change it!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yesterday, I watched one of many Mark Blyth videos on YouTube where he was talking about
why people hold on to stupid economic ideas. He offered a variety of interesting hypotheses,
most of which were not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Even a theory that fails basic tests of correspondence with reality -- neoclassical
economics being the prime example -- may prove to be a reliable means of coordinating
behavior on a huge scale. That we indoctrinate people in colleges and business schools in
neoclassical economics has been the foundation for neoliberal politics; even if the theory is
largely rubbish by any scientific standard, the rhetorical engine is easy to operate once you
have a few basic concepts down. And, immunity to evidence or critical reason may actually be
politically advantageous.
Econ 101 is taught as a dogma. The student is under pressure to learn the answers for the
exam, as you say. All the rhetorical tropes -- not just deficit hysteria, but regulatory
burdens, tax incentives, "free markets" (you see many actual markets? no, I didn't think so)
and on and on -- are as easy to recite mindlessly as it is to ride a bicycle.
We have an ideology that prevents thinking or even seeing, collectively.
Well, your wish has been answered – about 160 years ago. Lincoln's issuance of
Greenback's allowed the Union Army to exist. No borrowing, no MMT debt incurred.
MMT experts point out regularly that the Federal government spends out of nothing. Issuing
bonds is a political holdover from the Gold Standard era, but separately, those bonds do have
some use because a lot of investors like holding a risk free asset.
The government spends by the Fed debiting the Treasury's account. That's it.
We don't go around worrying about issuing bonds to pay for the next bombing run in the
Middle East. The US has all sort of official off budget activity as well as unofficial (why
do you think the DoD is not able to account for $21 trillion of spending over time? No one
points out this $21 trillion mystery is proof the USG actually runs on MMT principles).
MMT necessarily requires the exorbitant privilege of having the US dollar accounting for
60% of world trade & financial transactions with the US economy representing only 20% of
world GDP.
Such impunity is changing as we speak so for that reason only (there are others) MMT
should soon find itself non-viable.
That is not correct. Any government that issues its own currency is a sovereign currency
issuer and operates on MMT principles. Canada, Japan, England, Australia, New Zealand .the
constraint on their ability to run deficits is inflation. They will never go bankrupt in
their own currencies. They can create too much inflation.
I have the same reaction to Positive Money ideas as I do to someone who talks about
"parallel currencies". They don't understand money, banking and central banking.
While I agree whole heartedly with Clive that establishing the mini-bot currency is
subject to the law of un-intended consequences and would no doubtedly have a bumpy start and
might not even survive; but it's just another currency. Yes it would likely be subject to a
discount versus the Euro, but so what. From a banking perspective there is nothing magical
about state money or central bank money. These are the dominate means of clearing and
settling payments today, but that's because it's currently cheaper, easier and less risky.
But banking predates central banks by at least one or two hundred years (if not more).
Thinking that if you put an iron fist on the usage of state/central bank money is going to
stop banking only shows you don't understand banking. Most economies already have dual
currencies – state money and bank money – but nobody thinks of them that way
because they trade one for one. But locking the banking system out of using state money to
clear and settle payments created by lending only forces the banking system to find a new
means of acquiring liabilities (I'd suspect they get called something other than "deposits"
of course) and clearing and settling payments. It wouldn't happen overnight but it most
certainly would happen – there's too much "money" to be made.
"Most economies already have dual currencies – state money and bank money" Give me
the ratio please. Other than feeding the parking meter or doing your laundry what else do you
use state money for?
It's not exactly the gold standard, but it would have the same impact, I think. You have
to give them credit, though – they keep finding new ways to dress up this very old
idea.
Hard to get to a new answer if you don't even start with the right question.
Wolf asserts his obvious and unquestionable truth: "Money is debt".
Really?
J. P. Morgan didn't think so. When he was asked:
"But the basis of banking is credit, is it not?" , Morgan replied: "Not always. That is an evidence of banking, but it is not the money itself. Money is
gold, and nothing else" .
Ah yes, the shiny rare metal that served mankind as money for millennia.
I have a gold coin in my hand. I can exchange it for goods and services. But I can't for the
life of me figure out whose debt it is.
And no less than The Maestro (Alan Greenspan) opined the following last month:
"The gold standard was operating at its peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
a period of extraordinary global prosperity, characterised by firming productivity growth and
very little inflation.
But today, there is a widespread view that the 19th century gold standard didn't work.
I think that's like wearing the wrong size shoes and saying the shoes are uncomfortable! It
wasn't the gold standard that failed; it was politics. World War I disabled the fixed
exchange rate parities and no country wanted to be exposed to the humiliation of having a
lesser exchange rate against the US dollar than it enjoyed in 1913.
Britain, for example, chose to return to the gold standard in 1925 at the same exchange
rate it had in 1913 relative to the US dollar (US$4.86 per pound sterling). That was a
monumental error by Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. It induced a severe
deflation for Britain in the late 1920s, and the Bank of England had to default in 1931. It
wasn't the gold standard that wasn't functioning; it was these pre-war parities that didn't
work.
Today, going back on to the gold standard would be perceived as an act of desperation.
But if the gold standard were in place today we would not have reached the situation in which
we now find ourselves. We would never have reached this position of extreme indebtedness were
we on the gold standard, because the gold standard is a way of ensuring that fiscal policy
never gets out of line."
So let's start with a simpler definition of money: "Money stores labor so it can be
transported across space and time" .
I grew some wheat, and want to store my wheat-labor so I can use it later, or spend it
somewhere that is nowhere near my wheat pile.
But this points out why money that took no labor to produce cannot reliably store labor.
Our system materializes money from thin air. Which is precisely the point of gold: it takes
alot of labor to produce, so it has reliably stored labor for centuries. In A.D. 250 if I
wanted a good-quality men's costume (toga, sash, sandals) the cost was one ounce of gold.
Today one ounce of gold is +/-$1300, probably enough for a pretty good suit and pair of
shoes. That fact is incredible: every other currency, money, government, and country have
come and gone in the interim but gold reliably stored labor across the ages.
Cue the haters: "But gold money allows deadly deflation!!!". Yes, that scourge, when
people benefit from rising productivity (lower costs of goods and services) in what used to
be termed "Progress". Instead we're supposed to love being on a debt treadmill where
everything costs more every year, on purpose .
Just to be clear, I'm not arguing that credit should somehow be abolished. Credit is
critical, and hence so is banking. But separating money and credit would mean that every
banking crisis (extending too much credit) is not automatically also a monetary crisis,
affecting everyone, including people who had nothing to do with extending or accepting too
much debt.
Yes, you are correct. No one in the monetary reform movement wants to abolish credit
– an agreement between two entities – but to have that "credit" backed by the US
government as real money – what a racket!
Of course it should be noted that if you dig up a gold coin from two thousand years ago or
even older, it still has value just for its metal content alone. It still holds value. This
is never true of fiat currencies. In fact, it had never occurred to me before, but when you
think about it – the history of money over the past century has been to get actual
gold, gold coins, gold certificates, silver coins, etc. out of the hands of the average
people and to give them pieces of paper and now plastic as substitutes. Even the coins in
circulation today are only cheap remnants of coins of earlier eras that held value in itself.
I would call that a remarkable achievement.
I think you should avail yourself wrt the history of gold and how humans viewed it over
time, then again you could look at say South America from an anthro observation and the
social changes that occurred between Jade and Gold eras.
As far as value goes that is determined at the moment of price taking which can get blurry
over time and space.
Gold was used as religious iconography for a reason imo.
Just from the stand point that gold was in one anthropological observation – a flec
of gold to equal weight of wheat means the gold got its "value" from the wheat and had
nothing to do with some concept of gold having intrinsic value.
Not particularly in love with gold nor am I a gold bug. My own particular prejudice is
that any money system needs an anchor that will set some sort of boundaries to its growth.
Something that will not blow through the physical laws of natural growth and will acknowledge
that resources can and will be exhausted by limitless credit and growth. Personally I don't
care if it is gold or Electrum or Latinum or even Tribbles so long as it is something.
Yet MMT clearly states that growth is restricted to resources full stop. So I don't
understand your issues with anchor points, its right there in black and white.
Look I think there is a huge difference between informal credit [Greaber] and formal
credit [institutional] and the risk factors that they present. This is also complicated by
not all economies are the same e.g. steady state. In facilitating up lift [social cohesion
with benefits of currant knowlage] vs putting some arbitrary limit on credit because it suits
the perspective of those already with claims on wealth.
In addition I would proffer that MMT is not supply side dependent, just the opposite.
Economics would be much more regional in reference to resources and how that relates to its
populations needs, especially considering the democratic governance of those finite resources
without making money the linchpin to how distribution is afforded.
OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL
How dare you submit such irreverent goldbuggery ?
Your line of thought is not politically correct Sir.
Something for nothing is easier to sell and to live by, don´t you know ? as long as it
lasts.
Problem is ( as HAL would say ? ) the 50 years are almost through, so it just can´t
last much longer no matter how much we pussyfoot around reality.
It has nothing to do with being 'politically incorrect'. It has to do with goldbuggery
being completely ignorant of actual history and facts. It ascribes to gold attributes which
it never truly had even in the West, much less globally.
Some examples from objective reality:
When the Conquistadors arrived in the 'New World', they discovered an entire continent
filled with easily accessible gold and silver, and yet neither was treated by the natives as
money. They were shiny trinkets. Money was cocoa beans and pieces of linen.
When the Vikings reached the Eastern Mediterranean, the Byzantines had a hard time getting
them to accept gold as payment. Before that, the only 'precious' metal they had any interest
in was silver.
Going eastward, in feudal Japan currency was based on rice, not precious metals. Gold and
silver were used as representative tokens of large values of rice. The source of value wasn't
felt to be the metal, it was what the metal represented.
If civilization were to end today, the most well off survivors aren't going to be the ones
who stockpiled gold. It's going to be the ones who stockpiled food and water (and/or the
weapons to protect/seize such stockpiles). Gold has exactly zero inherent value. It's a
luxury item at best, in the same way fine art is. No one in the post-apocalyptic wasteland is
going to be impressed by your lumps of heavy, soft metal.
There's plenty of information available from historians, archaeologists, and
anthropologists (but emphatically not from mainstream economists) on the history of money. If
you want to 'free your mind', you'd best start with one of these fields. Not some libertarian
cesspit, where the 'intellectuals' are even more delusional than mainstream
neoclassicals.
I'll probably get slammed here for this but to tell you the truth, I see no justification
for the shape and character of the present money system in use around the world. In fact, I
absolutely refuse to believe that There Is No Alternative. The present system is one that has
evolved over the centuries and for the greater part was designed by those with wealth to
either solidify or expand their wealth.
Yesterday, in a comment, I made the point that for an economic and financial system to work
it has to be sustainable. Call that General Order Number One. But a survey of the present
system shows a system that by its very nature is seeking to transfer the bulk majority of
wealth to about 1% of the population while pushing about 90% of the population into a
neo-feudal poverty. This is nothing short of self-destructive and is certainly not
sustainable.
We tend to think of money as something permanent but the different currencies in existence
today make up only a fraction of the currencies that have ever existed. All the rest have
gone extinct. I am given to understand that when the US Federal Reserve meets, it is in a
room whose walls are adorned with examples of these extinct currencies. In fact, I even own a
few German Reichsmarks from the hyperinflation era of the early 1920s for an occaisional bit
of perspective.
OK, maybe the Swiss referendum is being used, misused and abused but it is a sign of an
arising discontent. It certainly surprises me that it was the Swiss as when I visited that
country, they were the most conservative people that I have ever met as far as money was
concerned. In any case, perhaps it is time that we all sat down and designed a money system
from the ground up. Throw away the rule book and just take a pragmatic approach. Forget
theories and justifications, just look for stuff that works.
There is no need to "experiment" with other systems of money use: we just need to regulate
the system we have but, unfortunately at present, we are in the midst of de-regulating
everything–finance, environmental protections, healthcare, education, etc., and getting
rid of other groups such as unions. The undermining of many (public) institutions is well on
its way and I do not see it ending well. I think the rich have won this round just as they
planned in the 1970's.
I imagine you would want to start from value (a mental state of persons) and labor, things
persons do to achieve stuff which they value. It would be convenient to have tokens which
represented social agreement about value, valued stuff, and labor. The social agreement could
be brought about by cooperative voluntary institutions ('credit unions') which would oversee
and guarantee the issuance of tokens (debts) by members (persons). We already do this on a
modest scale by writing checks, so it's not unheard-of.
If you want a system which doesn't just feed the elites, you have to create one which
doesn't rely on institutions dominated by or entirely controlled by the elites, such as the
government, the major corporations, large banks, and so on. You want something egalitarian,
democratic, and cooperative. It's not impossible.
Indeed it is possible and has been done in the recent past.
A key insight behind credit unions, mutual insurance and savings and loans back in the day
was that these institutions were loaning people their own money savings and should be run
without assigning hotshot managers the dubious incentive of a profit-motive or talking up
"innovation".
One of the things I object to in Richard Murphy's rhetoric and that of more careless
MMT'ers is that they implicitly concede the premise that Money is usefully thought of as a
quantitative thing, a pile of tokena circulating at some velocity. Financial intermediaries
(and yes, Richard, they are intermediaries) do create "money" in the form of credit by
matching ledger entries. For a savings and loan, which gives a mortgage to a depositor or
just a checking account to a saver, this can be a key idea supporting mutual assistance in
cooperative finance.
But, if you insist that the bank is "creating" a quantity of money that is then set loose
to drive up house prices or some similar narrative scenario, I do not see that your
storytelling is doing anyone any good.
Credit from institutions of cooperative finance -- shorn as they must be of the incentive
toward usury and rent extraction -- is actually a very useful application of money, enabling
people to take reasonable risks over their lifetimes. For example, to enable a young couple
to form a household and buy a house and gradually build up equity in home ownership against
later days. This is sensible and prosaic, a standard use of money to insure by letting a bank
or similar institution help individuals or small businesses to transform the maturities of
their assets and prospects, while certifying their credit. If your understanding of money
does not encompass such prosaic ideas as leverage and portfolios or their application to
improving the general welfare, then the "left" is up a creek without a paddle.
"Financial intermediaries (and yes, Richard, they are intermediaries) do create "money" in
the form of credit by matching ledger entries. "
That is NOT what is meant by the term,"intermediaries" here. The common belief is that banks
merely take in a depositor's money and, as an intermediary, lend that money out. An
intermediary, by definition, does not create anything. That is the accepted meaning of the
term when discussing banking. You are free to use your own definition but it will lead to
confusion.
You are incorrect as to how banking works, and you have also jalbroken moderation, which
is grounds for banning, as is clearly stated in our Site Policies, which you did not bother
to read.
Per your comments on banking, you are also engaging in agnotology, another violation of
site Policies.
Banks do not intermediate. They do not lend out of existing savings. Their loans create
new deposits. Not only has MMT demonstrated, and this has been confirmed empirically, but the
Bank of England has endorsed this explanation as correct.
You are presenting the loanable funds fallacy, a pet idea of monetarists. It was first
debunked by Keynes and later by Kaldor.
Your idea of "accepted meaning" is further confirmation you are way out of your depth here
and are a textbook case of Dunning Kruger syndrome.
The matter of who or what controls money is actually secondary to the matter of what money
is used for. Positive Money correctly identifies the fact that under our present arrangements
in the USA, UK, and most of the West, money and credit are used almost entirely for
speculation, usury, and rent extraction (though they do not, so far as I know, use the
terms). If "the people" somehow were able to gain control of money and credit, and money and
credit continued to be used almost entirely for speculation, usury, and rent extraction,
society and the people would see no net advance economically.
That's the simple overview. Allow me to lay out a couple scenarios to show why just
solving the problem of who controls money and credit does not really address our most urgent
problems.
For the first scenario, assume that it is right wing populists who have triumphed in the
fight to seize control of money and credit. Recall that in the first and second iterations of
the bank bailout proposals in USA, Congress was deluged by overwhelming public opposition to
the bailout. But in the second iteration, the Democrats mostly folded, while on the
Republican side, the closer you got to the Tea Party extreme, the stauncher the opposition to
the bailout you found. So, under right-wing populist control, we would probably see
prosecutions and imprisonment of banksters, which would likely have the intended effect of
lessening rent extraction. But we would probably also see that right-wing populists are not
much concerned about speculation and usury, so those would continue relatively unscathed.
More importantly, we could expect right-wing populist control to result in severe cutbacks
to both government and private funding of scientific research, most especially on climate
change. We would be hurried forward on our course toward climate disaster, not turned away
from it.
For the second scenario, let us assume it is a left-wing populist surge that achieves
control over money and credit. In this scenario, speculation and usury would be suppressed as
well as rent extraction. On science, there would no doubt be a surge in funding for climate
research. But I would greatly fear what left-wing populists might do to funding of space
exploration and hard sciences such as the large Hadron collider at CERN. And what would
happen to funding for military research programs like DARPA?
Can you imagine the implications of cutting those kinds of science programs? Try to think
of doing without all the spinoffs from the NASA Apollo moon landing program and the original
ARPAnet, which includes much of the capability of the miniaturized electronics in the
computer, servers, modems, and routers you are now using.
The point is, that without restoring an understanding of republican (NOT capital R
"R"epublican Party) statecraft, its focus on promoting the general welfare, and the
understanding that promoting the general welfare ALWAYS involves identifying and promoting
the leading edges of science and technology, any success in seizing control of money and
credit away from bankers (whether private or central) does not necessarily result in victory.
For an extended discussion of science and republicanism, see my The
Higgs boson and the purpose of a republic .
There will always be right-wingers, left-wingers, progressives, imperialists, etc.
One or more of them will seize control.
It would seem, then, the first thing to do, is to work on human nature, and not
discovering new devices for them (or us, ourselves), because we can not guarantee no harm to
Nature will come from colliding high energy particles.
I don't really see the left as being anti-science, it seems to me that it's the right that
wants to deny scientific findings such as climate change, etc. There are exceptions of
course, such as new-age/anti-vaxers, chem-trail theorists, etc but they are a small minority,
and I find it hard to envision a scenario where a leftist government would cut science
funding. As it is now, many if not most scientific and technical advances have originated
from what was originally military funding, including the internet we are using at this
moment.
This is a model that needs to change IMHO, there is no reason that cutting-edge science
has to be tied to the military, science could just as easily be funded for its own sake,
without the pentagon getting the money first and then having the tech trickle down to the
rest of us.
I am trying to come up with some examples where technological advances were not induced or
misused by warriors and/or libido, from the dawn of humanity till now.
Stone tools – misused for war.
Bronze/iron tools – the same.
The wheel – war chariots.
Writing – to lord over the illiterate
The steam engine – how the west was won with buffaloes going extinct.
Gun powder – war, and above.
The internet – surveillance and libido.
The smart phone – above.
Aspirin – that's all good .maybe the example I am looking for except I'm allergic to
it.
money and credit are used almost entirely for speculation, usury, and rent
extraction
Certainly on the leading edge, that is what money and credit are used for, but
"entirely"??? In the main, money remains the great lever of coordination in an economy of
vastly distributed decision-making.
The forces of predation and fraud are seriously out-of-control and they use money for
anti-social ends, protected by neoliberal ideology and the cluelessness of what passes for
the political left. Like any normal bank robber, the banksters want the system of money to
continue to work and it does continue to work, in the main, even as they play Jenga with the
towering structures of finance.
Well, I did qualify it with "almost" : ). Still, in the late 1990s I found that there was
around $60 (sixty dollars) of trading in financial markets (including futures and forex) for
every one dollar of GDP. That compares to 1.5 to 1 in 1960. The ratio probably dropped in the
aftermath of the 2007-2008 crashes, but I's be surprised if it has not surpassed 60 to 1 by
now. Have mercy on me: I haven't looked at a BIS report for a few years now.
So your solution is to keep it in the hands of the elite?! Please note that the "central
bank" under the Vollgeld initiative is completely redefined, not a central bank at all but a
government institution controlled by a democratic process.
Many banks around the world started out as state-owned and have been privatised.
I admit it is simplistic, but having a state-run not-for-profit bank being this "government
institution controlled by a democratic process" has a lot of merit to me.
It would have lending guidelines to aid investment in productive endeavours, limit the risk,
and have no part in the insane fringe financial transactions that brought about the GFC, and
who know how many other things that have gone under the radar.
This brings all currency creation into a single place, so it needs transparency and a
(proper) democratic governance.
There would probably be fewer jobs I admit, but many of these would be the top levels
enjoying fat bonuses based on winning zero-sum games.
And as a final comment – should GDP include the transactions within the financial
sector at all? Given the zEro-sum games involved, and the creation of losers as part of that,
does it actually "produce" anything at aLL?
I hate to be a nay-sayer, but the reason there were once many state banks in the US and
there is now only one is that they became cesspools of corruption. And having arm-wrestled
with CalPERS for over four years, which is more transparent than a lot of places, good luck
with getting transparency and good governance.
Mind you, that does not mean they might not be worth trying, but the assumption that they
can just be set up and will work just fine "because democracy" needs to be taken with a
fistful of salt. There needs to be a ton of careful thought re governance and lots of checks
(an inspector general with teeth at a minimum, we can see from CalPERS that boards are very
easily captured).
Bank of North
Dakota has a fascinating history, being founded during the Progressive Era, when ND had a
governor who was a member of the Nonpartisan League, a populist political party, and intended
to save North Dakota's farmers and laborers from the predations of the big banks in
Minneapolis and Chicago.
It remains the only state-owned bank in the country.
The populist
Nonpartisan League remains the most successful third party in history, and had remarkable
impact on politics in North Dakota and Minnesota. It merged with the Democratic Party in the
50s.
Ahem, I acknowledged that. What you miss is that pretty much every other state had a state
bank and they were shuttered because they became embarrassingly corrupt. The fact that past
"state bank" experiments almost universally failed makes me leery of the naive view that
they'll be hunky dory. They could be but the sort of cavalier attitude that they'll be
inherently virtuous is the road to abuse and misconduct.
" Money is debt. It is only created by government spending and bank lending. " --
Richard Murphy
We've jumped through the looking glass. The former money, gold, is NOT debt. Debt-based
money is ersatz, a ghastly fraud on humanity.
In a normal economy, government spending is financed by taxes and borrowing, meaning that
no new spending power has been created, as IS the case with new bank loans.
Daniel Nevins' book Economics for Independent Thinkers discusses how modern
economists got misled into believing the money supply governs everything, whereas earlier
19th century economists understood that bank lending is what drives expansions.
Poor Murphy, starting out with a wonky premise, only succeeds in careering into a briar
patch and wrecking his bike. He should post his pratfall on YouTube.
Fiat money can also be created without debt. That's the whole point of MMT, but it makes
Haygood's head explode so he never acknowledges it (without muttering about hyperinflation,
which never actually happens outside of disasters on the scale of a major war).
When the federal government spends money into existence -- which can be on the basis of a
democratic agenda, in countries that have actual democracies -- there's no need for a
corresponding issuance of government debt. Hence, spending power is indeed created. If the
government does create debt, the bond is an asset on the ledger of whoever buys it, and the
government spends the interest into existence. Which creates additional spending power for
the private sector. The government can choose to, or not, collect a portion of this as taxes,
which extinguishes the money. If the government collected as taxes everything it ever spent
there would be no money in circulation.
> In a normal economy, government spending is financed by taxes and borrowing,
meaning that no new spending power has been created, as IS the case with new bank
loans.
Er, new bank loans also represent borrowing that has to be paid back. The spending power
that gets created is extinguished by paying back the bank loan.
the federal government spends money into existence
a
That's a choice made by the designers of the current system.
But not the only choice.
The people, for example, can be empowered (or perhaps inherit that power, on the basis of
the Constitution amendment clause* that any power not given explicitly to the federal
government is reserved for the people), to spend money into existence.
*The Tenth Amendment declares, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or
to the people."
So do you gold bugs want to dispense with double entry bookkeeping or keep it and adapt it
to gold (would that entail both counterfeit money and counterfeit debt?) – gold as both
credit and debt, or just what exactly? With the gold side weighing down the ledger it's gonna
get wobbly. Maybe have to start a war to fix it? The fog of positive money. Really, JH,
you've been the best voice against war. How do you reconcile all the social imbalance that
would follow with "positive" money?
Fiat money is war finance, made permanent. Even during the gold standard, governments
would suspend gold convertibility during wars. Lincoln's greenbacks and the UK's suspension
during WW I are noteworthy examples.
So the gold standard won't stop governments declaring national security exceptions --
they've always done so. But permanent war finance is what sustains the value-subtraction US
military empire, a gross social imbalance that already plagues us by starving the US
economy of investment.
Double entry bookkeeping doesn't require that every asset have an offsetting liability. A
balance sheet with no liabilities is all equity on the right-hand side. It's what a bank
would look like if it sold off its loan portfolio and paid off its depositors -- cash on the
left side, equity on the right. If the bank then bought some gold, it would be exchanging one
asset (cash) for another (gold), with no effect on the liability/equity side.
Just look up the mintage figures, here's $20 gold coins that contain just under 1 troy oz
of pure gold in content, from 1861 to 1865. You can follow links to other denominations.
There were over 8 million ounces alone in $20 gold coins struck during the Civil War, by
the Union.
We were never on a pure gold standard, nowhere close actually.
The most common money in the land until the Federal Reserve came along, FRN's not being
backed by gold?
Why, that would've been National Banknotes, which was the currency of the land from 1863
to 1935. There were over 10,000 different banks in the country that all issued their own
currency with the same design, but with different names of banking institutions, etc.
Very hard to argue with you, but I'm tripping over this: "If the bank then bought some
gold, it would be exchanging one asset (cash) for another (gold) with no effect o the
liability equity side." Because in my mind cash isn't an asset – it's just money
– a medium of exchange and a unit of account. Where we get all messed up is when the
unit of account starts to slip (due to mismanagement) and people start to demand that money
become a store of value. When the value is society itself. And blablablah.
Sure, the value is society itself, I agree with this. But OTOH, it is for example much
better to be a woman, black person, fill in the blank, even "working class" person with a lot
of money than not in a sexist, racist, etc society.
I can't necessarily compel the forces of sexism, racism, old farts who don't agree with
me, etc through the "political process," thereby bringing my will to bear on society. But I
can move things with my dollars, This is how money gets its magic power. If people played
nice with each other, we wouldn't need money.
What about paper bugs Susan ?
Has paper buggery helped any ever ?
Why do fiat currencies always self-implode (in average) every 50 years ?
" You can fool part of the people all of the time, and all of the people part of the
time. .."
8 white men control > 50% of the world's wealth. Let's just keep going in that
direction, to where it's down to one white guy, and with debt-based money everyone else owes
him all the "money" in the world. Then we can just strangle him in the bathtub and usher in
an era of peace and prosperity.
Richard Murphy says that " handing all credit creation to the central banks is not
only technically impossible in a modern economy, it's a dangerous folly "
What is QE then, Sir ?
Our "modern" economies don´t have business cycles any more, just distorting credit
cycles.
There are no "markets" as such today, nor prices only interventions.
Even interest rates (the price of supposed "money" remember ?) are not priced by markets any
more .
Help me. Gold is not money. And it does not have and never had immutable value. Even in
the days of the gold standard, countries regularly devalued their currencies in gold terms.
It was the money that was used for commerce, not the gold. When the US government devalued
the $ in gold terms by 5%, bread at the store didn't cost more the next day, which is what
your "gold is money" amounts to. It's not correct and you need to drop it.
"The former money, gold, is NOT debt. Debt-based money is ersatz, a ghastly fraud on
humanity."
You've been on NC for years. You have to know by now that this literally, objectively,
isn't true. It just simply isn't. History and anthropology do not at all support your version
of events. People like Hudson and Graeber have extensively documented where money came from.
Debt and credit came first, then money as a token to measure them. We have warehouses full of
the freaking Sumerian transactions tablets that show it! Money is debt, always has been.
Actually, I say you have to know this by now, but given how conspicuously absent you seem
to be in the comments of Michael Hudson articles about the history of debt hosted here, maybe
you just aren't reading them. Or you are and don't like what they say and how it clashes with
your pre-established worldview, so you just ignore them. Though even if the latter, it's
still telling how you don't even attempt to refute them. Perhaps because you can't.
It's not about money; its about creating and distributing wealth. That a trivial thing
like a double-entry bookkeeping operation should stand in the way of creating the wealth the
world and its people need to survive is, of course, insane. But it is also insane to expect
different results from turning over control of the process of money creation to a wholly
owned subsidiary of governments like those of the United States and Great Britain, bent as
they are on global hegemony ("full spectrum dominance") – at ANY cost.
Whether or not China and other developing nations realize it, genuine wealth creation
– not money as debt creation ('finance capitalism') – is THE source of national
power. It is more than a little amusing to watch the neoconservatives fret about the rise of
China after having joined with their neoliberal brothers in off-shoring US and Western wealth
creation potential (in what they must have thought was an oh so clever attack on Western
living standards by forcing 'their' people to compete with the world's most desperate workers
in a global race to the bottom so their 1% patrons would have an excuse to create more money
as debt).
So long as the West remains focused on 'the price of everything and the value of nothing'
(like the human potential of their own people, for example), the developing world is soon
likely to have a monopoly that will put OPEC and its Middle Eastern dictators to shame. In
summary this is about FAR more than just about how a few 'post-industrial' democracies create
their money. The definitive work on this topic remains Soddy's Wealth, Virtual Wealth and
Debt, 2nd edition.
Just as a few days ago Carlos Rovelli, author of " The Order of Time ", has
useful insights of the political significance of LSD, he has advice for this too in the same
book:
The entire evolution of science would suggest that the best grammar for thinking about
the world is that of change, not of permanence. Not of being, but of becoming.
We can think of the world as made up of things. Of substances. Of entities. Of something
that is. Or we can think of it as made up of events. Of happenings. Of processes. Of
something that occurs. Something that does not last, and that undergoes continual
transformation, that is not permanent in time. The destruction of the notion of time in
fundamental physics is the crumbling of the first of these two perspectives, not of the
second. It is the realization of the ubiquity of impermanence, not of stasis in a
motionless time.
In other (his) words:
"The world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones."
As long as I am feting physicists, this just came over the transom from Sabine
Hossenfelder of backreaction.blogspot.com fame. She's written a book, " Lost in Math
" and was informed that a video trailer is customary in this situation. As the first comment
there says:
"Hey, that is a GREAT statement! (And it applies to SO MUCH in life, not just
physics!)
We've all been focusing on the demand side of the Fed Reserve's liquidity pump: be it for
sound business needs. Or not (pirates).
But what happens when demand for that pump disappears because everyone is over-extended?
Because this is where Bernanke and Japan and the ECB have done "whatever it takes" to keep
that pump from going in reverse. Because in an empire created on naked shorts (currency
creation today is essentially a naked shorting process), the last thing you want is that pump
to go in reverse. That's not just creative destruction. That's house-on-fire destruction.
So Bernanke et. al. have figured out how to keep that pump from going in reverse. Simply
prop up asset prices, e.g. by reducing the asset float in treasuries, MBSs, etc. And it
worked. Yay! Right? If you're an asset holder, you're aces. If you're not an asset holder,
well you're not doing so well. In particular, if you're in that part of the economy which
depends on the velocity of money. Because velocity is at a stand still. As another blogger I
used to follow would say, price sans volume is not the right price. So from my perspective,
Bernanke (and Japan) had to destroy their economies by replacing them with zombie economies
to rescue certain players. Not just players, but playahs – the pirates that pushed us
to this end-game. So the pirates are rescued. And the average joe inherits the after effects.
But hey, those with 401Ks got rescued too, so it's not all bad. And since the 401Kers are
competitive, they generally found safe harbor in the job market too. Yay for them.
If we were not on a debt-based monetary pump, we would not end up with a zombie economy.
One which the Fed Reserve can't figure out how to solve except for creating even more demand
at the debt pump, even more over extension to mask the issue only to fall back within the
same trap again. From what I can tell, we are truly in a doom loop and at present I don't see
any creativity in getting us out of this doom loop.
So the vollgeld initiative would ostensibly be a way to extricate an economy from that
doom loop. I suspect the Swiss don't really need it as much as other nations. But why get in
the way of that type of creativity?
And I would just add that supplanting the federal reserve note with a Lincoln greenback
type of approach would work just as well. Even better since it gives the monetary powers to
the fiscal side of the Fed Gov.
I posted a version of this last night in the previous thread. But suspect nobody is going
to go to that thread anymore. So apologies for a repeat of sort. Not trying to spam.
The idea of a real estate pumped perpetual notion machine, combined with essentially an
interest free savings plan for the proles, persuaded them to come through and help rise all
boats, and who could have figured on vacation rentals helping out housing bubble deux, the
sequel.
Looking @ the real estate listings here in a vacation rental hotspot is indicative, in
that there are only a few $250k-$300k homes for sale now, whereas there used to be a dozen,
always.
Now, on the other hand, we're swimming in $500k to $1m homes that don't make the rental
cut.
You probably read the Bernank's naive confession yesterday that fiscal stimulus "is going
to hit the economy in a big way this year and next year, and then in 2020 Wile E. Coyote is
going to go off the cliff."
Three hundred shocked staffers in the Eccles Building cocked their heads to the side and
gasped, "He said WHAT?" So I wrote this song Technodammerung for rogue banker
Ben:
He was just a Harvard hand
Workin' the QE he planned to try
The years went by
Every night when the sun goes down
Just another lonely quant in town
And rates out runnin' 'round
It's another tequila sunset
Fed's old scam still looks the same
Another frame
Pardners in chime
proseytizing in real time
Preaching, if you can touch a dime
Why wont paper rhyme
But in their zeal and haste
And self-righteous aversion to waste
Recruit disciples in bling bling
Preaching money is a thing thing
While finger wagging the bloat
Preaching fix the rate, dont let it float
But beyond the noise
Preaching with poise
Its all about them
Their stuff, jewels and gem
Might the actions of a bank be restrained more easily by requiring all payments and stock
issuances to the executives and directors be put directly into escrow accounts to be metered
out in small amounts if the bank stays healthy over time? If the bank suffers major losses,
the escrow accounts would be the first source of funds to make up for them. No Federal
Deposit Insurance or other government payments would be made to the bank until the escrow
accounts have been reduced to zero.
Randall Wray could be made Sec Treasury, Stephanie Melton Fed Chairman and if the
plutocrats still run the rest of the political show that sets priorities, we would still be
screwed. The full employment guaranteed jobs could just as easily be strip mining coal from
national parks and forests as installing a national solar grid. It could be done with forced
low paid labor camps that maximize rent for the plutocrats. MMT seems morally neutral on how
the money is spent. For a good portion of the plutocrats, helping the poor is morally suspect
.if they consider it at all. That is the larger problem than acceptance of MMT.
I didn't see any comment here going in depth with ideas on the binding money creation
decisions with socially useful goals (saving TBTF I dont consider such a goal, except for
emergency purposes), by what type of process and stakeholders – to avoid driving us
toward becoming a 3rd world oligarchy.
The rest is just mechanics – but the most important thing is what is the social
control and social purpose of money creation. I am sure we could do just fine even with the
present system (of course since it is a MMT system), if there were some limits on speculation
with asset prices, less military spending, more democratic control of enterprises, including
banks, severe constraints on the FIRE sector, etc, etc.
In the end the problem of managing money well is a political problem. And not much is
changing there for the better, despite a growing awareness that "we have a problem" as a
society. Where are the politicians that will connect the dots and take on the responsibility
to fix the travesty that we have?
More questions than answers, I know. But what we need a change in politics – then
banking will follow.
This is a common fallacy, that MMT is bad because it isn't about communal barter tokens or
some other thing. MMT exists to empirically describe how money works in the existing economy
today. You can be any sort of ideology and embrace it, anyone can use it, just like anyone
can use science, it's not inherently biased toward any ideology unlike neoclassical economics
and its baked in neoliberalism. That doesn't make it bad, that just shows that it is what it
purports to be, an empirical description of money in our existing economy.
You want a brand new type of currency in a whole new economy, well, start organizing your
revolutionary army, because that's what that will take.
The Battle for Money -- that much, it seems to me, is true. Neoliberalism is going down,
brought down by its own (unfortunate in my view) success and hubris, and one consequence,
on-going, is the urgent political need to re-invent the institutions of money.
The institutional systems of monetary/payment/finance systems are always under a lot of
strategic pressure: they tend to develop and evolve quickly and they do not usually last all
that long -- maybe, the span of three or four human generations -- except in the collective
memory of their artifacts and debris.
There's a natural human wish that it could all be made safely automatic -- taken out of
corruptible hands and fixed with some technical governor. Whether you are a fan of democracy
or loyal to oligarchy really doesn't take anyone very far toward devising or understanding a
workable system of money.
As I said in a comment on the earlier Richard Murphy post, money is a language in which we
write (hopefully) "true" fictions to paper over uncertainty. Much of what passes for a theory
of money is just meta-fiction, akin to literary criticism of a particular genre or era. That
is certainly true of Quantity Theory (1.0 re: gold and 2.0 Friedman). It is true of related
fables, like Krugman's favorite, loanable funds.
When Murphy rejects the quantity theory of money and then turns around and talks about the
need to create "enough" money, I pretty much write him off. When he embraces the Truth of
MMT, I know he is hopeless.
It's been discussed on NC before, but despite all the theories and figures, it's really a
battle of values. I'm not pushing religion, just saying it has all the makings of a holy
war.
(come to think of it, isn't religion a big part of the history of monetary theory?)
China has yet to fall under the thumb of private banks the way the west has. State still
holds the reins of regulation tight and the government bank maintains a robust public sector.
Michael Hudson just came back from China and has this to say:
"The debts are owed to government banks. A government can do what the U.S. can't do.
The government can forgive debts, at least those that are owed to itself, without creating a
political backlash. If a viable corporation has run up too much debt, the government can
forgive it. This is better than letting the debt close down a factory or force it be sold to
a predatory asset management firm as occurs in the United States. That is the advantage of
having public credit and why credit should be public. That's how it was in Babylonia. Rulers
were able to cancel debts all the time in the 3rd millennium and 2nd millennium BC, because
most debts were owed to the palace or the temples. Rulers were cancelling debts owed to
themselves.
China can cancel business debt owed to itself. It can proclaim a clean slate. It can
minimize debt service to whatever it chooses. But imagine if Chase Manhattan and Goldman
Sachs are let in. It would be much harder for the government to raise real estate taxes
leading to defaults on the banks. It could save the occupants by making new loans to those
who default – based on lower land prices.
Well, you can imagine the international furor that would erupt. Trump would threaten
to atom bomb Peking and Shanghai to save his constituency. His constituency and that of the
Democrats are the same: Wall Street and the One Percent. So China may lose its ability to
write down debts if it lets in foreign banks."
There are advantages to restoring financial management to the nation-state, as former
Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Frank Newman has pointed out in books and lectures. The
private banks have exhausted QE to the tune of $30 trillion, none of which was invested in
the industrial economy. Why blame the Swiss for wanting to be like China?
that this is a Chicago School / Friedmanesque monetary policy is made clear by
Positive Money
The Chicago Plan of the 1930s and the unrelated Friedman suggestion of 1948 were both
predicated on the false fractional reserve theory of banking. Given that individual banks
create credit unrestrained by reserves those plans would not have had the desired result.
Positive Money knows this, though they do sometimes carelessly use the term 'fractional
reserve banking'. They think their plan is different and, to the extent that it would
actually prevent banks creating credit, it is.
It is silly to suggest that Positive Money is some Neoliberal front. Neutering the banks
is the last thing Neoliberals want, and when they want something they don't bother with
democratic methods like public pressure groups, they use think-tanks and lobbying.
Murphy's main complaint is about handing the 'quantity' decision to the Bank. I don't
think Positive Money is wedded to that idea, it is just an attempt to defuse the 'profligate
politicians' argument.
Being that NC is the place I discovered MMT, and it's been explained and debated so for so
long here, I would have expected NC readers to more broadly understand that what we have
currently would work for everyone if only our masters would allow it.
IOW, it is not necessary to reinvent our system so much as insist that it be used to
finance material benefits for all, as opposed to endless war, political repression and
bail-outs for our criminal finance sector.
How can it be that we can we finance $trillions for war at the drop of a hat, but cannot
afford to 'fix' SS, or provide universal healthcare?
It seems to me that it's a political issue, not a technical problem, or am I missing
something here?
Cui bono?
The current mission of the custodians of our "money" is to keep banks afloat. It's not to
provide general benefit, or to even preserve the buying power of the scrip they issue,
despite what you might hear about the supposed "dual mandate" (which is now a "triple
mandate": prices, employment, and the stock market).
"Financing material benefits for all" could be a bank that extends credit to a small
business. Take a look at commercial credit creation to see how well that's been going. Take a
look at velocity.
The Fed gifted Citi $174 billion on a day when they could have purchased 100% of the Citi
Class A common stock for $4B. This is the difference Michael Hudson points about about China:
their instant ability to swap debt for equity because all banks are state-owned and
because they're Communists and nobody would blink an eye .
Most interesting in The Middle Kingdom are the moves to protect the state-owned banks.
They started about 18 months ago, when people were told they could only have one Tier 1
bank-linked e-commerce account. As a result 7.5 billion (with a B) accounts were closed. Next
they said all payments systems (including WeChat and Alipay) must clear through a new central
bank clearinghouse. Two weeks ago they said not only will everything clear through these but
the actual funds will need to be transferred to the new CB account .
Ant Financial announced that in the future they would be concentrating on services to
finance and e-commerce companies, and away from providing those services themselves. They
even anticipate a name change, from Ant Financial to Ant Lifestyle. All this makes perfect
sense: President Xi will see every financial transaction in the country, and presumably apply
a Social Score filter on whether he allows it to go through. 11 million people have already
been denied the right to purchase train tickets or buy a house because they spat on a
sidewalk, jaywalked, or made the wrong comments on social media.
Wow! We are clearly past the "First they ignore you.." stage and just on the other side of
" then they ridicule you.." phase. What a basket of slurs, gross omissions of fact and
outright falsehoods is this current blog post.
Anytime Milton Friedman is invoked to slur a concept developed before he was even born,
should be an indicator that there is no substance to the argument against the democratization
of money creation.
Thanks to the internet however, one can easily visit the Positive Money site, the American
Monetary Institute and International Movement for Monetary Reform sites to see those fake
progressives in action. While you're at it, go to the Vollgeld site yourself and read what
those wolves in sheep's clothing are really saying instead of the creative writing displayed
in the blog.
How can anyone who claims to be concerned over the excesses of capitalism prostrate
themselves in front of the current banking system, the driver of capitalism as it
rides off the rails.
I can't bring myself to respond to the stream of unsubstantiated assertions presented but
need to remind people that banks, MUST create money first for the most creditworthy. I won't
insult the readers any further by naming who that class represents. A child can see that
this, by definition, must lead to the accelerating inequality we see today.
As a challenge, I ask the author to show specifically in the US code where it permits the
Federal Government to spend before its accounts at the Fed are replenished either by
borrowing or taxing. Stay tuned to these pages for the evidence .
PM just wants OMF (Overt Monetary Financing) with ZIRP and a very small horizontal money
system. MMT analysis suggests OMF with ZIRP and a much more regulated horizontal system is
needed. There is actually very little difference in their policy prescriptions. They just
arrived at them from opposite sides of the track
I'll second that but for different reasons. Buried not far beneath the surface of this
issue (money's creation, how and how much) are hugely important issues. But the discussion
never seems to get beyond everyone's favorite system for creating money. The assumption seems
to run along the lines of: if we can just come up with some scheme for government or gold
backed money, those who possess or produce the real wealth for that money to buy will forever
be content to exchange it for the money we will forever create to pay for it. There seems to
be a belief countries like China or Russia can never escape the 'dollar trap' – or if
they try we can threaten and intimidate them back in line with our "full spectrum dominance"
military. Money IS debt – and sooner or later those who hold it are going to want to
call that debt in.
Both Positive Money and MMT appear to me to just be attempts to continue 'business as
usual', operating without a real definition of wealth and trusting / hoping 'the market' will
sort it out.
Money is debt, both functionally and conceptually. This is true for most of the money used
in the Main Street economy. It is created as debt – yours to a bank when you use your
credit card or borrow money; the bank's to you when you deposit money with one. In its role
as a medium of exchange money serves as a claim on society's goods and services, its real
wealth. You don't exchange real wealth for fiat or bank-created money without the expectation
you will at some future time be able to again exchange that money for real wealth at least
equivalent to what you had to give up in exchange for the money originally.
Rather than a claim on wealth, money could be viewed as a representation of value. Value
exchange is more like a giving/sharing economy, rather than debt-swapping. I think this
psychological improvement will lead to many physical/social/environmental improvements.
Of course, in any case, people need to be willing sellers/exchangers – it's not
automatic or universal; we need some freedom to choose, and the better the conditions are
generally, the better the freedom we will have.
OK but the term, "money is debt" is used too loosely and can be very misleading. Money
does not have to be issued as debt as claimed by MMT. In fact, money can first appear as
equity on the government's balance sheet with no counterbalancing debt. So this concept is
grossly misused to imply money must be issued as debt when, in fact, once issued it may
represent a claim on the wealth of society. Proponents of MMT first make the claim
that money is debt, and that the notion that money can be issued debt-free is therefore false
on its face. Pretty clever. They slyly blur the distinction between the creation of money by
a government and the role of that money once in the economy.
How can money first appear as equity? Isn't the other side of that the deficit? Granted I
am naive on these points but I thought money was a bond of zero duration.See skippy re time
and space
. A question for Paul: Unless it is 'privatized' is there even such a thing as 'government
equity'? The way the West's financial system works nothing that can't be sold appears to have
any value. What's missing from that system – and the discipline of economics (see
below) – is a definition of wealth.
steven –
I believe we know what wealth is – but I don't understand your claim that money needs
to be privatized to be considered equity. The government declares by fiat that the money it
creates can be used to purchase goods and services in the economy.
I don't believe this is anywhere nearly correct. From all over the political spectrum
commentators lament the lost of trillions of dollars (or euros or whatever) of wealth. At
least until the effects of a financial crisis start to take hold, no physical or intellectual
capital is lost. The only thing that is lost are a few zeros on some financial ledgers.
As for money as equity, you may be technically correct, i.e. the rules of accounting may
permit governments to count the stacks of paper currency they print (in any case, small
change in terms of the total money supply) as 'equity'. But for most of us the only thing
governments possess that we would count as equity are asset classes like public
infrastructure. And until the services they provide (or the assets themselves) are sold, that
infrastructure would, from a business accounting standpoint, technically be 'worthless'.
(that last is a question?)
tegnost – There is nothing in the accounting standards that prevents the inclusion
of equity on a balance sheet. If we were under the gold standard and you happened to find a
nugget of gold in your back yard, are you telling me that you would have to imagine some kind
of "debt" to balance your household balance sheet? When Lincoln issued the Greenbacks in the
1860's there was no bond or debt associated with it. It paid soldiers wages and goods and
services during he civil war.
Just as MMT states the government isn't a household, it also isn't a commercial bank either.
It has the constitutional power to coin money as needed, no debt involved.
presumably you bought the nugget of gold when you purchased the property and it's land use
rights so it's not a virgin birth, the debt is what you purchased the land for. Maybe one of
those diamonds in the outback that hardy souls find, but those may have some territorial
claim as well.
The gold nugget has no inherent value. It's just a lump of cold metal. It will only become
valuable when you go to someone else with it and try to exchange it for something, whether it
be a currency or some kind of good. And only if the other person agrees with you that it's
valuable. This is fundamentally what money is: a token of social interaction. The gold
becomes valuable when you go to exchange it for something else. In other words when a debt
comes into play. Money is debt. Or rather, it's a measurement of debt and credit. 'Store of
value' and all that econ 101 rot is so much gibberish.
Once you realize that, then a question arises: "Well, why bother with rare metals or
pressed coins? If it's just a token, you could literally just take a stick and carve marks
into it and it would be the same thing". Yes, exactly. Which is precisely the sort of thing
we see lots of in history.
Murphy sounds like one of those indecisive chaps who dispute with everyone but have no
ideas of their own. I shall ignore him. Good luck to Switzerland. They have the courage and
political system to try the experiment and we will all know the result in early course.
What am I missing? As far as I can tell, the proposal is just Modern Money with the
central bank substituted for the Treasury. Yes, that makes it less democratic.
MMT is inflation-limited, too. That's how you know you've overshot your resources. In
fact, MMT poses a technical problem: how do you know when you've reached resource limits,
EXCEPT by observing inflation? Because without that, you have a ratchet. Of course, that's
just what we have, usually, so maybe that's evidence for the theory.
"First, this puts inflation at the core of economic policy." – is a false claim. As
quoted, it treats inflation as a limitation. The core is promoting adequate economic
activity.
Finally, he treats "money is debt" as doctrine. he doesn't justify it and it makes little
sense, ESPECIALLY in MMT. How can you pay a debt with a debt? Someone's getting cheated. MMT
actually proposes free money, to a point. I've seen elaborations of the idea, but they use a
very extended sense of "debt." And I don't see how it's even relevant to his overall
thesis.
The Swiss are pretty conservative, so I doubt they'll pass it.
No, Positive Money is not remotely MMT. Wash your mouth out.
The Positive Money types want to limit the extension of credit and put it under the
control of what Lambert called "a magic board," a regular gimmick from his days back in
debate where someone needed to be in charge but no one wanted to think hard about who or how.
In practice, a central bank would be in charge. So how democratic is that?
MMT does not fetishize money the way the Positive Money does. MMT despite having Monetary
in the name is about the role of government spending in a fiat currency system. MMT argues
that (as Kalekci did) that businesses have strong incentive (not wanting workers to get
uppity) to keep the economy at less than full employment. So the government can and should
spend to mobilize resources. And it can because its role as the currency issuer means it can
never go bankrupt, it can only create too much inflation. Taxes are what contain inflation in
MMT.
By contrast, the Positive Money types want to do it by limiting credit creation. And thus
Murphy is correct. That means their priority is to preserve the value of financial assets,
not achieve full employment.
I don't believe it is accurate to say that Positive Money "fetishizes money". Irving
Fisher acknowledged his debt to Frederick Soddy for the concept of "100% Money", the
intellectual foundation for the Positive Money movement. Soddy's intent in limiting the
creation of money to the stock of wealth available for it to purchase was to retain
independence from the state in obtaining the means of subsistence. He compared the use of
monetary policy to goose the economy to a merchant putting his or her finger on the scale,
making it difficult to impossible for money to fulfill two of its primary functions: serving
as a medium of exchange and a store of value.
So long as there was wealth available for it to purchase, he – and presumably
Fisher's Positive Money crowd – would have no objection to creating as much money as
needed to keep the economy running. What he and every other respectable economist have been
trying to bring under control is the excess money creation fueling speculation and the
seemingly inevitable boom-bust cycle accompanying the private creation of money.
Rather than curbing that excess, however, the 'solution' that seems to have been adopted
is for the US and other Western governments to absorb the excess credit (money as debt)
creation by taking it on their (governments') own books. Government debt is I believe called
'near money' in the financial markets. But neither the governments nor the bankers of
countries that no longer create real wealth have any logical right to create the money to buy
it. Just retaining the right to 'print' more money or 'near money' doesn't change that,
except perhaps in an absurdly narrow legal sense.
There are, of course, some issues like globalization intimately connected with the
construction of a logical and fair monetary system. But underlying them all, including for
countries other than the US, is a logical definition of 'wealth':
a logical definition of wealth is absolutely needed for the basis of economics if it is
to be a science."
Frederick Soddy, WEALTH, VIRTUAL WEALTH AND DEBT, 2nd edition, p. 102
(Soddy might have added "if government is to be a science".)
Here in lies the rub economics will never be a Science.
Firstly the medium used by most economics – philosophy – does not even have a
functioning model of time and space and is prone to fads. Magnified by scale WRT elite tastes
or self dealing. Wealth or Capital is also a bit complicated by say the Cambridge Controversy
et al. So until some very fundamental flaws are sorted, that have nothing to do with –
money – the concept of "Science of Money" is going to be a non starter.
Worst is those that use such syntax and dialectal style are going to be called into
question – over it.
I mean we had political theory, then some bolted on science to it, and called it economic
science. Which then begat a whole time line of dominance front running the political process
regardless of political incumbents.
I think Scientists that dabble in monetary theory fall victim to the same dilemma that say
religious based views do – their optics are ground before looking.
Probably best to start with the first part of Soddy's (actually John Ruskin's)
observation, "a logical definition of wealth is absolutely needed ". "Most economics" may
indeed disguise its prostitution with a veneer of philosophy or mathematics. But I don't
think you can say that about Soddy's:
A definition of wealth must be based upon the nature of physical or material wealth, in
the sense of the physical requisites which empower and enable human life-that is, which
supply human beings with the means to live, and, as an after consequence of living, to
love, think and pursue goodness, beauty and truth.p. 108
(All citations are from Soddy's Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt, 2nd edition- WVWD)
For that matter, according to Michael Hudson, you can not accuse the classical economists of
just dabbling in philosophy. They were ALL about freeing society from free-lunch economic
rent seekers, freeing up the resources so they could be devoted as completely as possible to
the development of "the physical requisites which empower and enable human life".
What we have to do to develop those physical requisites – and increasingly the
limitations imposed by the requirements of sustainability – is pretty well known.
Whether a science of money can be devised to help accomplish that goal or some other
mechanism for distributing the wealth made possible by advances in science and technology is
required is increasingly open to question.
Take a look at Soddy's –THE THREE INGREDIENTS OF WEALTH (DISCOVERY, NATURAL ENERGY
AND DILIGENCE). p. 61 The first two are firmly embedded in time and space.
I have read Soddy, more so I have talked with PM sorts for a long time, hence I'm not
ignorant of the camps views or actions during said time.
Onward
"a logical definition of wealth is absolutely needed ".
I did reference the Cambridge Controversy, are you informed WRT this aspect.
"A definition of wealth must be based upon the nature of physical or material wealth, in
the sense of the physical requisites which empower and enable human life-that is, which
supply human beings with the means to live, and, as an after consequence of living, to love,
think and pursue goodness, beauty and truth.p. 108"
Sorry but . "consequence of living, to love, think and pursue goodness, beauty and truth"
has nothing scientific about it.
I reiterate – Metaphilosophy has no scientific underpinnings and attempts to "brand"
it otherwise in only to burnish its credentials without any empirical satisfaction is just
rhetorical gaming.
"you can not accuse the classical economists of just dabbling in philosophy."
Hay I respect Hudson, that does not mean I worship him, hes been invaluable to the
discovery process, but, that does not mean everything he has to say is the word of dawg, nor
would I surrender my cognitive processes just because someone uses the term classical.
If I have to go that space I would favor say Veblen or Lars P. Syll where if your to own a
thing one must accept the responsibility from a social aspect and not one of atomistic
individualism.
But hay I regress . because I'm still waiting for someone to show me a few decades of a
labour market in "action".
"BTW it would be incumbent of you to redress my concerns above without forging a new path
which excludes them." – Sorry if I did that. It was not my intent. Wikipedia is my only
exposure to the Cambridge Controversy . As
I understand it, science is supposed to be all about observing the real world and then
drawing conclusions from those observations. It looks to me like the participants in the
debate were looking at their models and maybe the logic they used to construct them, not the
world they were supposed to be modeling.
"Most of the debate is mathematical, while some major elements can be explained as part of
the aggregation problem. The critique of neoclassical capital theory might be summed up as
saying that the theory suffers from the fallacy of composition;"
This kind of cant is a far cry from something like:
"Though it was not understood a century ago, and though as yet the applications of the
knowledge to the economics of life are not generally realised, life in its physical aspect
is fundamentally a struggle for energy , in which discovery after discovery brings life
into new relations with the original source. Evolutionary development has been parasitic,
higher and higher organisms arising and obtaining the requisite supplies of energy by
feeding upon the lower. But with man and the development of conscious reason, that process
as regards energy is being reversed. "
Sorry, but where does Positive Money , in any of the publications and articles, propose
any limitations on 'credit' ?
I never saw that.
Or AMI or any of these public money types for that matter?
Thank you.
You are completely correct, they don't. This is all made up propaganda against the
democratization of the money supply. What PM proposes is sound credit creation.
PM wants to establish a non democratic administration of government issuance and then
allow a return to the free banking period of the 1800s. All based on notions of EMH and QTM
contra to all the historical data from that period. So on one had PM wants to lay claim to
scientific methodology WRT money yet still cling to scientifically refuted EMH.
As far as I can discern PM proponents advance the belief that this would compel banks to
become investment entities for "productive" activities. Don't know how that would work out
considering how corporatism views society.
The positive money people have come at it from the other angle. People like Richard Werner
have been studying the problems with privately created money since the Japanese economy blew
up in the 1980s .
They have seen all the problems with privately created money and the positive money people
were very pleased when the BoE confirmed their beliefs in 2014.
The positive money people have come to the wrong conclusion through not understanding
publicly created money.
The MMT people can learn a lot about the problems of privately created money from the
positive money people.
The two camps should merge to get the big picture.
I started looking into all the problems of privately created money after 2008 and was a
latecomer to MMT.
The two merge nicely when you think about it and realise the why the positive money people
came to the conclusion they did. They just didn't understand the way publicly created money
works now.
In the case of Japan, unless I'm misunderstanding things there, presumably they've
embraced MMT out the wazoo, in that they're willing to leverage federal gov debt out the
wazoo. And yet I think the consensus still seems to be that their economy is still zombified
(still not really recovered from the debt overhang from their go go years). In which case,
why is that?
Has Japan been hamstringing their use of MMT, so it's less effective than it could be? Do
they need to up the ante, employ MMT-on-steroids to overcome the trap that they're in, say
like the US needed WWII to get out of its trap?
Withstanding MMT-on-steroids, should it be QE-on-steroids instead that get the animal
spirits rekindled? I don't have a strong sense of whether the US central bank has done more
in that department compared to the central bank of Japan. Or if indeed, the US central bank
has been more successful on that front. It's clear that animal spirits are certainly
rekindled in the US – the usual playahs are back at it. Though whether that's
unzombified our economy, I'm not so sure – I don't think it has.
If these hurdles are so difficult, seems to me we should have a monetary system that
doesn't result in a zombified economy to begin with, per the comment I was making further
above.
And yet I think the consensus still seems to be that their economy is still zombified
(still not really recovered from the debt overhang from their go go years). In which case,
why is that?
Debt Peonage. For it to work there has to be a debt jubilee (a forgiveness of peoples
debt).
" It seems there are greater similarities between China and the US than may be visible
at first glance. China builds real estate for a shrinking population, invests for an
over-indebted client (the US, which even insists on a drastic reduction of the bilateral
trade deficit) and finances all this with money it does not have ."
MMT has always stated to whom the debt is owed is the crux of the matter and in what form
denoted.
I have trouble understanding the dramas with bank issued credit when squared with say
equities, why all the focus on one and not to be inclusive of a wide assortment of other
mediums of exchange and how they are created and why.
So tell me why J – bonds are called the death trade e.g. shorters nightmare –
albeit they will tell you their shorts are being thwarted by ev'bal forces.
Couldn't resist this. That title has me intrigued so, with apologies to Winston
Churchill-
" What (neoliberals have) called the Battle of (Credit) is over the Battle of (Money) is
about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of (world) civilisation. Upon it
depends our own (western) life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our
(civilization). The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.
(Neoliberals) knows that (they) will have to break us in this (idea) or lose the war. If we
can stand up to (them), all (the world) may be freed and the life of the world may move
forward into broad, sunlit uplands.
But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have
known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and
perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves
to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the (United Nations) and its (Countries) last
for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour." "
Yet then some say AET and Neoclassical economics just needs to implement PM and all will
be well.
I've yet to see any PM advocate or proponent criticize an executive or corporatism, only
banksters and some politicians. On the other hand I've seen many PM sorts back crypto based
on the argument of decentralization. So which is it, counterfeiting of national money with a
side of corruption or a case of counterfeiting ex nihilo via some arbitrary computational
source with a predominate side of corruption.
I am completely at a loss to understand how the debate about money proceeds things like
Marginalism, supply and demand as a monolith, rational agent models, theoclassical opinions
elevated to truisms [economic laws] and a reduction of human experience as a binary condition
set in stone.
I also have issues with PM advocates and their UBI agenda, due to its original proponents
views on the need to water down democracy more to keep the unwashed from just voting
themselves more money. It is in my opinion logically incoherent, that is just what has
occurred during the neoliberal period and corporatists via the democracy of money through
lobbyists – every dollar is a vote – et al.
In light of that I can only surmise that PM is actually pro elitist, not that I have
issues with some being elite, that is another story altogether, but money itself is not the
bar.
Looks like Trump adopted Victoria Nuland "Fuck the EU" attitude ;-). There might be nasty
surprises down the road as this is uncharted territory: destruction of neoliberal
globalization.
Trump proved to be a really bad negotiator. he reduced the USA to a schoolyard bully who
beats up his gang members because their former victims have grown too big.
As the owner of world reserve currency the USA is able to tax US denominated transactions both via conversion fees and
inflation. As long as the USA has dollar as a reserve currency the USA has so called "exorbitant priviledge" : "In the
Bretton Woods system put in place in
1944, US dollars were convertible to gold. In France, it was called "America's
exorbitant privilege"[219]
as it resulted in an "asymmetric financial system" where foreigners "see themselves supporting American living standards and
subsidizing American multinationals"."... "De Gaulle openly criticised the
United States intervention in Vietnam and the "exorbitant
privilege" of the United States dollar. In his later years, his support for the slogan "Vive
le Québec libre" and his two vetoes of Britain's entry into the
European Economic
Community generated considerable controversy." Charles de Gaulle -
Wikipedia
Notable quotes:
"... Errrr, that so-called "piggy bank' just happens to; ..."
"... have the world's reserve currency ..."
"... dominates the entire planet militarily since the end of the Cold War ..."
"... dictates "regime change" around the world ..."
"... manipulates and controls the world's entire financial system, from the price of a barrel to every financial transaction in the SWIFT system. ..."
"... And Trump has the ignorance, the arrogance and the audacity to be pleading 'poverty?' ..."
"We had productive discussion on having fair and reciprocal" trade and market access.
"We're linked in the great effort to create a more just and prosperous world. And from the
standpoint of trade and creating more prosperous countries, I think they are starting to be
committed to more fair trade. We as a nation lost $870 billion on trade...I blame our leaders
and I congratulate leaders of other countries for taking advantage of our leaders."
"If they retaliate they're making a tremendous mistake because you see we have a
tremendous trade imbalance...the numbers are so much against them, we win that war 1000 times
out of a 1000."
"We're negotiating very hard, tariffs and barriers...the European Union is brutal to the
United States....the gig is up...there's nothing they can say."
"We're like the piggy bank that everybody's robbing."
"I would say the level of relationship is a ten - Angela, Emmanuel and Justin - we have a very good relationship. I won't
blame these people, unless they don't smarten up and make the trades fair."
Trump is now making the 20-hour flight to Singapore, where he will attend a historic summit with North Korea leader Kim Jong
Un. We'll now keep our eye out for the finalized communique from the group. The US is typically a leader in the crafting of the
statement. But this time, it's unclear if the US had any input at all into the statement, as only the leaders from Britain,
Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan as well as the presidents of the European Commission and European Council remain at the
meeting. But regardless of who writes it, the statement will probably be of little consequence, as UBS points out:
Several heads of state will be heading off on a taxpayer-financed "mini-break" in Canada today. In all of its incarnations
(over the past four years, we've gone from G-8 to G-6+1) the group hasn't really accomplished much since an initial burst of
enthusiasm with the Plaza Accords and Louvre Accords in the 1980s.
By the way, Trump is right on the tariffs in my view, Europeans should lower their tariffs
and not having the US raising it.
Trump: "We're The Piggy Bank That Everybody's Robbing"
Isn't Trump great in catch phrases? Trump's base will now regurgitate it to death.
Now reconcile Trump's remarks with reality:
Professor Werner: Germany is for instance not even allowed to receive delivery of US
Treasuries that it may have purchased as a result of the dollars earned through its current
account surplus: these Treasuries have to be held in custody by the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York, a privately owned bank: A promise on a promise. At the same time, German influence
over the pyramid structure of such promises has been declining rapidly since the abolition of
the German currency and introduction of the euro, controlled by an unaccountable
supranational international agency that cannot be influenced by any democratic assembly in
the eurozone. As a result, this structure of one-sided outflows of real goods and services
from Germany is likely to persist in the short and medium-term.
To add insult to injury:
Euro-federalists financed by US spy chiefs
The documents show that ACUE financed the European Movement, the most important federalist
organisation in the post-war years. In 1958, for example, it provided 53.5 per cent of the
movement's funds.
Okay, everyone set your "team" aside for a few minutes and let's look at the facts and
reality.
Do you really believe the rest of the world has trade advantages over the US? Well, let's
consider major industries.
Agriculture.....maybe, but only sightly. Our farmers are the richest in the workd....by
far.
Manufacturers.....probably so....because we gave it away to countries with slave labor.
Manufacturers jobs were jobs where people could earn a decent living...and that had to
go..can't be cutting into corporate profits with all that high cost labor.
Defense.....need I go here? We spend more than the next 11 countries combined! We sell
more as well.
Energy.....we rule thus space because we buy it with worthless printed fiat
debt...whenever we want to....and nd if you deny us, we will bomb the hell out of you and
take it.
Technology. ....Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Google, Amazon, Oracle, Dell, Cisco.....who can
touch that line up....not to mention all the on-line outfits like Facebook and Twitter.
Finance.....the best for last. We control the printing press that prints the dollar the
rest of the world needs. We control energy and foreign policy. Don't do what we like and we
will cut you off from SWIFT and devalue the hell out of your currency...and then move in for
the "regime" change to some one who plays ball the way we like it. 85% of all international
trade takes place in dollars everyday. We have the biggest banks, Wall Street, and infest the
world with our virus called the dollar so that we can Jeri their chain at will.
Now I ask you....just where the hell is the "trade imbalances"? Sure there are some
companies or job sectors that get a raw deal because our politicians give some foreigners
unfair trade advantages here and there, but as a whole, we dominate trade by far. The poor in
our country lives like kings compared to 5.5 billion of the world's population. Trump knows
this.....or he is stupid. He is pandering to his sheeple voting base that are easily duped
into believing someone is getting what is their's.
Hey, I am thankful to be an American and enjoy the advantages we have. But I am not going
to stick my head up Trump's ass and agree with this bullshit. It is misdirection (corporate
America and politicians are the problem here, not foreign countries) and a major distraction.
Because all the trade in the world isn't going to pull us out of this debt catastrophe that's
coming.
But, if we cut through all the verbiage, we will arrive at the elephant in the room.
American manufacturing jobs have been off-shored to low wage countries and the jobs which
have replaced them are, for the most part, minium wage service jobs. A man cannot buy a
house, marry and raise a family on a humburger-flippers wage. Even those minimum wage jobs
are often unavailable to Americans because millions of illegal aliens have been allowed into
the country and they are undercutting wages in the service sector. At the same time, the
better paid positions are being given to H-1B visa holders who undercut the American worker
(who is not infrequently forced to train his own replacement in order to access his
unemployment benefits.)
As the above paragraph demonstrates the oligarchs are being permitted to force down
American wages and the fact that we no longer make, but instead import, the things we need,
thus exporting our wealth and damaging our own workers is all the same to them. They grow
richer and they do not care about our country or our people. If they can make us all into
slaves it will suit them perfectly.
We need tariffs to enable our workers to compete against third world wages in countries
where the cost-of-living is less. (American wages may be stagnating or declining but our
cost-of-living is not declining.) We need to deport illegal aliens and to stop the flow of
them over our borders. (Build the wall.) We need to severely limit the H-1B visa programme
which is putting qualified Americans out of work. (When I came to the US in 1967 I was
permitted entry on the basis that I was coming to do a job for which there were not enough
American workers available. Why was that rule ever changed?)
You are making my point. China didn't "off shore" our jobs....our politicians and
corporations did. You can't fix that by going after other countries. You fix that by
penalizing companies for using slave labor workers from other countries. Tariffs are not
going to fix this. They will just raise prices on everyone.
I can't believe you Trumptards can't see this! Once again we will focus on a symptom and
ignore the real problem. Boy, Trump and his buddies from NYC and DC have really suffered
because of unfair trade practices, right? Why can't you people see that "government is the
problem" and misdirection your attention to China, Canada, Germany, Mexico, or whomever is
just that....misdirection.
I would tax the shit out of companies like Apple that make everything overseas with slave
labor and then ship it in here to sell to Americans at ridiculous prices.
Plenty of down votes but no one has proven that I am wrong on one point.
The EU countries have free college, health care, day care and just about everything else.
All paid for because they have no military spending.
It's all on the backs of the US tax payer. Or the fed, if you prefer.
Trump is working both angles. Forcing them to pay for their own defense. Forcing them to
allow US products with no trade disadvantages. Go MAGA and fuck the EU.
This is prophetic article, no question about it. "National neoliberalism" and interesting term.
Notable quotes:
"... Political theorist Sheldon Wolin writes in Democracy, Inc. ..."
"... By contrast, in Trump's America -- where an emergent "national neoliberalism" may be gradually guiding us to a more overt and obvious totalitarian politics -- we can expect a similar fusion of state and market interests, but one in which the marketplace and big business have almost total power and freedom of movement (I think that labor will do poorly in this configuration). State and market in the U.S. will fuse further together in the coming years, leading some to make close parallels with European fascism. But it will do so not because of heavy handed government dictates and interventions, but rather because domestic privatization initiatives, appointments of businessmen to government posts, fiscal stimulus and the business community's need for protection abroad will bring them closer. Corporate interests will merge with state interests not because corporations are commanded to, but rather because the landscape of risk and reward will shift and redirect investment patterns to a similar effect. This may be where a budding U.S. totalitarianism differs most starkly from its European cousins. ..."
And why the world is about to get much more dangerous The election of Donald Trump "represents a triumph of neoliberal
thinking and values." (Photo: Carlo Allegri/ Reuters) Many writers and pundits are currently framing Trump's election in terms of
a dispossessed and disenfranchised white, male working class, unsatisfied with neoliberal globalization and the insecurity and hardship
it has unleashed -- particularly across regions of the United States that were formerly manufacturing powerhouses (like the Rust
Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, four states believed to have cost Hillary Clinton the election). While
there is much truth to this perspective and substantial empirical evidence to support it, it would be a mistake to see Trump's election
wholly in these terms.
"What Trump's election has accomplished is an unmasking of the corporate state."
Trump's election is in some ways a neoliberal apex, an event that portends the completion of the U.S. government's capture by
wealthy corporate interests. While in my opinion Trump's election does not signal the beginning of a rapid descent into European-style
fascism, it appears to be a key stage in the ongoing process of American democratic disintegration. American democracy has been under
attack from large and wealthy corporate interests for a long time, with this process accelerating and gaining strength over the period
of neoliberal globalization (roughly the early 1970s to the present). This time period is associated with the rise of powerful multinational
corporations with economic and political might that rivals that of many national governments.
In terms of the political consequences of these trends in the U.S., certain thinkers have argued that the U.S. political system
is not democratic at all, but rather an "inverted totalitarian" system. Political commentator Chris Hedges notes: "Inverted totalitarianism
is different from classical forms of totalitarianism. It does not find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader but in
the faceless anonymity of the corporate state." Citing the American political theorist Sheldon Wolin, Hedges continues, "Unlike the
Nazis, who made life uncertain for the wealthy and privileged while providing social programs for the working class and poor, inverted
totalitarianism exploits the poor, reducing or weakening health programs and social services, regimenting mass education for an insecure
workforce threatened by the importation of low-wage workers." Our inverted totalitarian system is one that retains the trappings
of a democratic system -- e.g. it retains the appearance of loyalty to "the Constitution, civil liberties, freedom of the press,
[and] the independence of the judiciary" -- all the while undermining the capacity of citizens to substantively participate and exert
power over the system.
In my view, what Trump's election has accomplished is an unmasking of the corporate state. Trump gives inverted totalitarianism
a persona and a face, and perhaps marks the beginning of a transformation from inverted totalitarianism to totalitarianism proper.
In spite of this, it makes no sense to me to call the system toward which we are heading (that is, if we do not stand up and resist
with all our might right this second) "fascism" or to make too close comparisons to the Nazis. Whatever totalitarian nightmare is
on our horizon, it will be uniquely American. And it will bear a striking resemblance to the corporate oriented system we've been
living in for decades. Indeed, if the pre-Trump system of inverted totalitarianism solidified in the context of global neoliberalism,
the period we are entering now seems likely to be one characterized by what I call "national neoliberalism."
Trump's Election Doesn't Mean the End of Neoliberalism
Trump's election represents a triumph of neoliberal thinking and values. Perhaps most importantly, we should all keep in mind
the fact that Americans just elected a businessman to the presidency. In spite of his Wall Street background and billionaire status,
Trump successfully cast himself as the "anti-establishment" candidate. This configuration -- in which a top-one-percenter real estate
tycoon is accepted as a political "outsider" -- is a hallmark of neoliberal thinking. The fundamental opposition between market and
government is a central dichotomy in the neoliberal narrative. In electing Trump, American voters are reproducing this narrative,
creating an ideological cover for the closer connections between business and the state that are in store moving forward (indeed,
Trump is already using the apparatus of the U.S. federal government to promote his own business interests). As states and markets
further fuse in coming years, this representation of Trump and his administration -- as being anti-government -- will help immunize
his administration from accusations of too-cozy relationships with big business. Trump's attempts to "drain the swamp" by imposing
Congressional term limits and constraints on lobbying activities by former political officials will also help to hide this relationship.
(Has anyone else noticed that Trump only addresses half of the "revolving door," i.e., he plans to limit the lobbying of former politicians,
but not the political roles of businessmen?)
"Whatever totalitarian nightmare is on our horizon, it will be uniquely American."
Trump's Contract with the American Voter, his plan for the first 100 days in office, discusses policies and programs many of which
are consistent with neoliberal thinking. (I understand the term "neoliberalism" to emphasize at its core the importance of private
property rights, market-based social organization, and the dangers of government intervention in the economy.) Trump's plan redirects
the activities of the U.S. government along the lines touted by neoliberal "market fundamentalists" like Milton Friedman, who advocate
limiting government's role to market-supportive functions like national defense (defense stocks are doing very well since the election)
and domestic law and order (Trump's proposals have a lot to do with altering immigration policy to "restore security"). Trump also
plans to use government monies to revitalize physical infrastructure and create jobs. Other government functions, for example, health
care provision and education as well as protecting the environment and public lands, are open for privatization and defunding in
Trump's agenda. Under Trump, the scope of federal government activities will narrow, likely to infrastructure, national defense,
and domestic policing and surveillance, even if overall government spending increases (as bond markets are predicting).
Trump also seems content to take neoliberal advice in regard to business regulation (less is best) and the role of the private
sector in regulating itself (industry insiders understand regulatory needs better than public officials). Trump's plan for the first
100 days specifies "a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated." As of the
time of this writing, his selection of cabinet appointees illustrate a broad willingness to appoint businesspeople to government
posts. As of mid-December 2016, a Goldman Sachs veteran, Steven Mnuchin, has been appointed Secretary of the Treasury; billionaire
investor Wilbur Ross has been appointed Secretary of Commerce; fossil fuel industry supporter and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott
Pruitt has been appointed as EPA administrator; and fast-food mogul Andrew Puzder has been appointed as Secretary of Labor. Trump's
business council is staffed by the CEOs of major U.S. corporations including JP Morgan Chase, IBM and General Motors. To be fair,
the "revolving door" between government and industry has been perpetuated by many of Trump's predecessors, with Trump poised to continue
the tradition. But this is not to say that neoliberalism will continue going in a "business as usual" fashion. The world is about
to get much more dangerous, and this has serious implications for patterns of global trade and investment.
Trump's Election Does Mean the End of Globalism
The nationalism, xenophobia, isolationism, and paranoia of Donald Trump are about to replace the significantly more cosmopolitan
outlook of his post-WWII predecessors. While Trump is decidedly pro-business and pro-market, he most certainly does not see himself
as a global citizen. Nor does he intend to maintain the United States' extensive global footprint or its relatively open trading
network. In other words, while neoliberalism is not dead, it is being transformed into a geographically more fragmented and localized
system (this is not only about the US election, but also about rising levels of global protectionism and Brexit, among other anti-globalization
trends around the world). I expect that the geographic extent of the US economy in the coming years will coincide with the new landscape
of U.S. allies and enemies, as defined by Donald Trump and his administration.
Trump's Contract with the American Voter outlines several policies that will make it more expensive and riskier to do business
abroad. All of these need not occur; I think that even one or two of these changes will be sufficient to alter expectations in business
communities about the benefits of certain cross-border economic relationships. Pulling the United States out of the TPP, along with
threats to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement and attempts to renegotiate NAFTA, is already signaling to other countries that
we are not interested in international cooperation and collaboration. A crackdown on foreign trading abuses will prompt retaliation.
Labelling China a currency manipulator will sour relations between the two countries and prompt retaliation by China. As Trump goes
forward with his anti-immigration and anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies, he will alienate the United States' traditional allies in
Europe (at least until Europe elects its own nationalist and xenophobic leaders) and communities across the Global South. The U.S.
election has already undermined performance in emerging markets, and bigoted rhetoric and policy will only increase anti-American
sentiment in struggling economies populated largely by people of color. Add to this the risk of conflict posed by any number of the
following: his antagonizing China, allying with Russia, deploying ground troops to stop ISIS, and pulling out of the Korean DMZ,
among other initiatives that seem likely to contribute to a more confrontational and violent international arena. All of this is
to say that Trump will not have to intervene directly in the affairs of business in order to nationalize it. The new global landscape
of conflict and risk, combined with elevated domestic spending on infrastructure and security, will bring U.S. business and investment
back home nonetheless.
National Neoliberalism and State-Market Relations
Fascist states are corporatist in nature, a state of affairs marked by a fusion of state and business functions and interests,
with an often significant role for labor interests as well. In the fascist states on the European continent in the 1930s and 1940s
-- systems that fall under the umbrella of "national socialism" -- the overwhelming power of the state characterized this tripartite
relationship. Political theorist Sheldon Wolin writes in Democracy, Inc. in regard to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy
(as well as Stalinist Russia), "The state was conceived as the main center of power, providing the leverage necessary for the mobilization
and reconstruction of society".
By contrast, in Trump's America -- where an emergent "national neoliberalism" may be gradually guiding us to a more overt
and obvious totalitarian politics -- we can expect a similar fusion of state and market interests, but one in which the marketplace
and big business have almost total power and freedom of movement (I think that labor will do poorly in this configuration). State
and market in the U.S. will fuse further together in the coming years, leading some to make close parallels with European fascism.
But it will do so not because of heavy handed government dictates and interventions, but rather because domestic privatization initiatives,
appointments of businessmen to government posts, fiscal stimulus and the business community's need for protection abroad will bring
them closer. Corporate interests will merge with state interests not because corporations are commanded to, but rather because the
landscape of risk and reward will shift and redirect investment patterns to a similar effect. This may be where a budding U.S. totalitarianism
differs most starkly from its European cousins.
Sasha Breger Bush is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Colorado–Denver and author of Derivatives
and Development: A Political Economy of Global Finance, Farming, and Poverty (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
"... our government's support for Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not exceptions to the rule at all. They are the rule ..."
"... The problem here isn't just liberal hypocrisy and double standards. The deeper issue is that, as the great American iconoclast Mark Twain knew, you cannot maintain democracy at home while conducting an authoritarian empire abroad. ..."
"... "It was impossible," Twain wrote, "to save the Great Republic. She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home." ..."
"... "Just a decade after Twain wrote those prophetic words," the historian Alfred W. McCoy has observed , "colonial police methods came home to serve as a template for the creation of an American internal security apparatus in wartime." The nation's first Red Scare, which crushed left and labor movements during and after World War One, drew heavily on the lessons and practices of colonial suppression in the Philippines and Cuba. As McCoy shows in his latest book, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power , ..."
"... "The fetters imposed on liberty at home," James Madison wrote in 1799 , "have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers abroad." Those are wise words well worth revisiting amidst the current endless Russiagate madness, calculated among other things to tell us that the FBI, the CIA, and the rest of the nation's vast and ever more ubiquitous intelligence and surveillance state are on our side. ..."
A final matter concerns the problem of imperial chickens coming home to roost. Liberals
don't like to hear it, but the ugly, richly documented historical fact of the matter is that
their party of binary and tribal choice has long joined Republicans in backing and indeed
crafting a U.S. foreign policy that has imposed
authoritarian regimes (and profoundly undemocratic interventions including invasions and
occupations) the world over . The roster of authoritarian and often-mass murderous
governments the U.S. military and CIA and allied transnational business interests have backed,
sometimes even helped create, with richly bipartisan support, is long indeed.
Last fall, Illinois Green Party leader Mike Whitney ran some fascinating numbers on the 49
nation-states that the right-wing "human rights" organization Freedom House identified as
"dictatorships" in 2016. Leaving aside Freedom House's problematic inclusion of Russia, Cuba,
and Iran on its list, the most remarkable thing about
Whitney's research was his finding that the U.S. offered military assistance to 76 percent
of these governments. (The only exceptions were Belarus, China, Central African Republic, Cuba,
Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria.). "Most
politically aware people," Whitney wrote:
"know of some of the more highly publicized instances examples of [U.S. support for
foreign dictatorships], such as the tens of billions of dollars' worth of US military
assistance provided to the beheading capital of the world, the misogynistic monarchy of Saudi
Arabia, and the repressive military dictatorship now in power in Egypt apologists for our
nation's imperialistic foreign policy try to rationalize such support, arguing that Saudi
Arabia and Egypt are exceptions to the rule. But my survey demonstrates that our
government's support for Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not exceptions to the rule at all. They
are the rule ."
The Pentagon and State Department data Whitney used came from Fiscal Year 2015. It dated
from the next-to-last year of the Obama administration, for which so many liberals recall with
misplaced nostalgia. Freedom House's list should have included Honduras, ruled by a vicious
right-wing government that Obama and his Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton helped install in a June 2009 military coup .
The problem here isn't just liberal hypocrisy and double standards. The deeper issue is
that, as the great American iconoclast Mark Twain knew, you cannot maintain democracy at home
while conducting an authoritarian empire abroad. During the United States' blood-soaked
invasion and occupation of the Philippines, Twain penned an imaginary history of the
twentieth-century United States. "It was impossible," Twain wrote, "to save the Great Republic.
She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the
helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at
home."
"Just a decade after Twain wrote those prophetic words," the historian
Alfred W. McCoy has observed , "colonial police methods came home to serve as a template
for the creation of an American internal security apparatus in wartime." The nation's first Red
Scare, which crushed left and labor movements during and after World War One, drew heavily on
the lessons and practices of colonial suppression in the Philippines and Cuba. As McCoy shows
in his latest book, In the Shadows of the
American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power , the same basic process --
internal U.S. repression informed and shaped by authoritarian and imperial practices abroad and
justified by alleged external threats to the "homeland" -- has recurred ever since. Today, the
rise of an unprecedented global surveillance state overseen by the National Security Agency has
cost the US the trust of many of its top global allies (under Bush43 and Obama44, not just
under Trump45) while undermining civil liberties and democracy within as beyond the
U.S.
"The fetters imposed on liberty at home," James Madison wrote in 1799 , "have ever
been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary
dangers abroad." Those are wise words well worth revisiting amidst the current endless
Russiagate madness, calculated among other things to tell us that the FBI, the CIA, and the
rest of the nation's vast and ever more ubiquitous intelligence and surveillance state are on
our side.
"... A lot of water muddying today - and it's being stirred from a lot of seemingly unrelated directions. Distract and confuse, great ploys - now who benefits more is the most likely source of today's leafletting. ..."
DOJ Watchdog Finds Comey "Defied Authority" And Was "Insubordinate"
by Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/06/2018 - 22:44 763 SHARES
The Department of Justice's internal watchdog has found that James Comey defied authority
several times while he was director of the FBI,
according to ABC , citing sources familiar with the draft of a highly anticipated OIG
report on the FBI's conduct during the Clinton email investigation .
One source told ABC News that the draft report explicitly used the word "insubordinate" to
describe Comey's behavior . Another source agreed with that characterization but could not
confirm the use of the term.
In the draft report, Inspector General Michael Horowitz also rebuked former Attorney
General Loretta Lynch for her handling of the federal investigation into Hillary Clinton's
personal email server, the sources said. -
ABC
President Trump complained on Tuesday of "numerous delays" in the release of the Inspector
General's report, which some have accused of being slow
walked or altered to minimize its impact on the FBI and DOJ.
"What is taking so long with the Inspector General's Report on Crooked Hillary and Slippery
James Comey," Trump said on Twitter. "Hope report is not being changed and made weaker!"
"It's been almost a year and a half and it is time that Congress receives the IG report,"
said Congressman Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who has been on the front lines of the battle against
the DOJ and FBI's stonewalling of lawmakers requesting documentation. "This has gone on long
enough and the American people's patience is wearing thin. We need accountability," said
DeSantis.
Another congressional official, who's been fighting to obtain documents from the DOJ and
FBI, said it is no surprise that they are putting pressure on Horowitz. According to the
official, "They continue to slow roll documents, fail to adhere to congressional oversight
and concern is growing that they will wait until summer and then turn over documents that are
heavily redacted."
ABC reports that there is no indication Trump has seen - or will see - the draft of the
report prior to its release. Inspector General Horowitz, however, could revise the draft report
now that current and former officials have offered their responses to the report's conclusions,
according to the sources.
The draft of Horowitz's wide-ranging report specifically called out Comey for ignoring
objections from the Justice Department when he disclosed in a letter to Congress just days
before the 2016 presidential election that FBI agents had reopened the Clinton probe,
according to sources . Clinton has said that letter doomed her campaign.
Before Comey sent the letter to Congress, at least one senior Justice Department official
told the FBI that publicizing the bombshell move so close to an election would violate
longstanding department policy , and it would ignore federal guidelines prohibiting the
disclosure of information related to an ongoing investigation, ABC News was told. -
ABC
During an April interview, Comey was asked by ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos "If
Attorney General Lynch had ordered you not to send the letter, would you have sent it?"
"No," replied Comey. "I believe in the chain of command."
Deputy Attorney General slammed Comey's letter to congress while recommending that Trump
fire Comey last year - saying it "was wrong" for Comey "to usurp the Attorney General's
authority" when he revealed in July 2016 that he would not be filing charges against Hillary
Clinton or her aides (many of whom were granted immunity).
"It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement," Rosenstein wrote in a
letter recommending that Comey be fired. "At most, the Director should have said the FBI had
completed its investigation and presented its findings to federal prosecutors."
The draft OIG report dings Comey for not consulting with Lynch and other senior DOJ
officials before making his announcement on national TV. Furthermore, while Comey said there
was no "clear evidence" that Hillary Clinton "intended to violate" the law, he also said that
Hillary Clinton had been "extremely careless" in her "handling of very sensitive, highly
classified information."
And as we now know, Comey's senior counterintelligence team at the FBI made
extensive edits to Clinton's exoneration letter, effectively decriminalizing her behavior
.
"I have not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of Justice
or any other part of the government. They do not know what I am about to say," Comey said on
live TV July 5, 2016.
By then, Lynch had taken the unusual step of publicly declaring she would accept the FBI's
recommendations in the case, after an impromptu meeting with former president Bill Clinton
sparked questions about her impartiality.
Comey has defended his decisions as director, insisting he was trying to protect the FBI
from even further criticism and "didn't see that I had a choice." -
ABC
"The honest answer is I screwed up a couple of things, but ... I think given what I knew at
the time, these were the decisions that were best calculated to preserve the values of the
institutions," Comey told ABC News. " I still think it was the right thing to do. "
Comey is currently on a tour promoting his new book, " A Higher Loyalty."
About that delay...
As many wonder just where the OIG report is after supposedly being "finished" for a while,
the Washington Examiner 's Chief political correspondent, Byron York, offers some keen insight
(tweeted before details of the draft were leaked):
• Byron York
A series of tweets on what to expect from the much-anticipated inspector general report on
DOJ/FBI handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation... 1/
10:42 AM - Jun 6, 2018
• Byron York
First, looks like it might be delayed yet again. Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled a June
5 hearing to discuss IG report.
After delay, had to be rescheduled for next Monday, June 11.
Now looks like might be delayed again.
10:42 AM-Jun 6, 2018
• Byron York
Why delays? Feet are clearly being dragged. There are snags over classified information.
Also, and this is intriguing: appears in last several weeks IG got new information, interviewed
new witnesses. Could have contributed to delay. Don't know what it's about. 3/
10:43 AM-Jun6, 2018
Byron York
@ByronYork
Replying to @ByronYork
So, when IG report is finally released-looking like mid-June -- what will it cover? Don't
know its conclusions, but here are some subjects you can expect to be reading about: 4/
10:43 AM-Jun 6, 2018
• Byron York
Expect discussion of 6/27/16 Loretta Lynch-Bill Clinton meeting on tarmac in Arizona. IG has
done extensive investigation.
What was said? What were the intentions of those involved? Expect it to be covered
carefully. 5/
10:44 AM-Jun 6, 2018
• Byron York
Expect discussion of James Comey's decision to begin drafting an exoneration memo for
Hillary Clinton long before the FBI had even interviewed her, or at least a dozen other key
figures in the case.
Also: Why hand out so much immunity? 6/
10:45 AM-Jun6, 2018
• Byron York
Expect discussion of Comey's intentions when he announced reopening of Clinton investigation
on 10/28/16, shortly before election day. Democrats specifically asked IG to investigate
that.
10:45 AM-Jun 6, 2018
• Byron York
Expect discussion of what Andrew McCabe did when he first learned about existence of Clinton
emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop in early October 2016. Did he sit on information? If so, why?
What did Comey know? 8/
10:46 AM-Jun 6, 2018
• Byron York
Expect discussion on rationale for Comey's controversial 7/5/16 statement announcing no
charges would be filed against Clinton.
To say it was unorthodox would be an understatement. What was he doing? 9/
10:46 AM-Jun 6, 2018
• Byron York
Expect discussion of Lynch's refusal to recuse herself from investigation or to appoint
special counsel. Plus, look for discussion of why McCabe waited so long to recuse himself
even after public reporting of Clinton-related political contributions to his wife. 10/
10:47 AM-Jun6, 2018
• Byron York
Finally, don't expect to learn much new about McCabe 'lack of candor' situation re:
leaks.
Not clear whether IG will reveal much beyond what has already been released in wake of
McCabe firing. End/
10:48 AM-Jun 6, 2018
Also, and this is intriguing: appears in last several weeks IG got new information,
interviewed new witnesses. Could have contributed to delay. Don't know what it's about.
How many more new witnesses with new information will crawl out of the woodwork at the
most opportune moment to delay releasing the report. I'm guessing they interviewed McCabe's
hairdresser at Sport Clips to see which direction he combs.
If the strongest language in this report to describe Comey's actions is merely
"insubordinate" and "defied authority", then it's a big, fat, nothingburger... Not a GD thing
is going to happen, lift rug, sweep vigorously...
If the blue team leaked this, then they're trying to get ahead of damaging
information. If it's the red team, then you're right Keyser and a behind the scenes agreement has been
reached letting both teams off the hook for some unleaked transgression.
"Expect discussion of what Andrew McCabe did when he first learned about existence of
Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop in early October 2016. Did he sit on
information"
I wouldn't sit on anything related to Weiner or his LAPtop.
A lot of water muddying today - and it's being stirred from a lot of seemingly unrelated
directions. Distract and confuse, great ploys - now who benefits more is the most likely
source of today's leafletting.
Your lips to God's ears! This is ridiculous! Insubordinate? That's it? 90% of the people in DC need a good wearing out with a belt! This politically correct nonsense has to end. Call it what it is you lily-livered pansies!
It's treason and sedition. It's a den of snakes!
You want to see America bounce back as a strong and proud nation? START HANDING OUT REAL
PUNISHMENT! Otherwise, it will be the same old sleazy crap over and over again.
agree...that's why we need to stay diligent and demand the proper dissemination of the
impartial facts...
with McCabe seeking immunity...and Comey playing 'Patriot'...and Brennon being and old
lair...and Clapper portraying all previous actions were 'honorable'...we have to ask
ourselves a question...
Anything I hear/see involving Clapper and Brennan I figure is a fictitious psyop. Brian
Cox and Albert Finney already portrayed them in the Bourne films.
SEVERAL Ex FBI agents and current FBI Agents are BEGGING to be subpoenaed, WHY hasn't this
happened, THEY want this MESS OUT in the open, yet TRUMP does nothing?. I would have Congress
do it asap, under OATH and with Criminal repercussions. Horowitz is a EUNUCH.
Exactly. That's why Lockheed Martin paid him $6 million a year. Does anyone think they hired him for his abilities as an attorney when he lacked any
experience in corporate law? Then he went on to Ray Dalio's Bridgewater associates. Wonder how much they paid him
there. What experience did he have for working as an attorney for a hedge fund?
Then he leaves these extremely lucrative jobs to go back to government at $170,00 a
year.
I'd be insubordinate too if Satan's Slut Hillary was breathing hellfire down my neck.
Comey probably likes living as much as the rest of us. Now that the noose is getting tighter,
will he give up the slut???? Hopefully a few of these pukes will turn on her in unison. The
Magical Homo will be tougher to snare.
The former ever-so-sanctimonious FBI Director, classified document leaker and Clinton
water boy Jimmy Comey was "Insubordinate?" Who could have guessed? But remember, Trump fired
the asswipe in order to "obstruct justice." Jail Jimmy without delay.
While we are on the subject, this shows you the type of "friends" that Saint Mueller
keeps.
If reports are true, then IG Horowitz is fudging Coney-Lynch's real crimes; namely the
events leading up to the July whitewash of Killary which include drafting the exoneration
letter before interviewing Clinton, twisting the facts to decriminalize Clinton's offenses
and pressuring FBI agents to alter reports regarding the Clinton investigation.
If the IG brushes past these matters, whatever else he says is worthless. Just tarnishes
Comey's image a tad bit and will be forgotten.
This sounds like they are trying to decriminalize Comey's actions, not indict him. How the fuck does the headline equate
to a criminal charge? Maybe they (OIG) are trying to let this asshole off the hook? What's he going to get? A severe tongue
lashing because he was insubordinate?
Neoliberals are a flavor of Trotskyites and they will reach any depths to hang on to power.
Notable quotes:
"... Just as conservative Christian theology provides an excuse for sexism and homophobia, neoliberal language allows powerful groups to package their personal preferences as national interests – systematically cutting spending on their enemies and giving money to their friends. ..."
"... Nothing short of a grass roots campaign (such as that waged by GetUp!) will get rid for us of these modern let-them-eat-cake parasites who consider their divine duty to lord over us. ..."
Just as conservative Christian theology provides an excuse for sexism and homophobia, neoliberal language allows powerful
groups to package their personal preferences as national interests – systematically cutting spending on their enemies and giving
money to their friends.
And when the conservative "Christians" form a neoliberal government, the results are toxic for all, except themselves and their
coterie.
Nothing short of a grass roots campaign (such as that waged by GetUp!) will get rid for us of these modern let-them-eat-cake
parasites who consider their divine duty to lord over us.
"... The magic of Neoliberalism is to transform acts that should be illegal into legal ones. In fact they do so explicitly as their argument for reducing taxation is exactly that of getting rid or decreasing the problem of illegal tax evasion.... so they say. Their problem is that we have no evidence that tax evasion decreases under Neoliberalism on top of the legal tax minimisation already provided. The only thing that happens under Neoliberalism is that the Tax Office tends to be under-resourced and everybody likes to conveniently look somewhere else. ..."
A "legal system of tax evasion", written like that, in quotes, is obviously a metaphor with an intended sarcasm. Clearly, logically,
if a taxation system is legal, by using it you are not "evading" taxes, which is an illegal act.... Anyway, everybody seems to
have understood my intention but you. Well, now you also know.
The magic of Neoliberalism is to transform acts that should be illegal into legal ones. In fact they do so explicitly as their
argument for reducing taxation is exactly that of getting rid or decreasing the problem of illegal tax evasion.... so they say.
Their problem is that we have no evidence that tax evasion decreases under Neoliberalism on top of the legal tax minimisation
already provided. The only thing that happens under Neoliberalism is that the Tax Office tends to be under-resourced and everybody
likes to conveniently look somewhere else.
A "legal system of tax evasion" is a non sequitur, what they have done is create a set of tax laws that enable more opportunities
for tax avoidance by the well off, and Kerry very correctly took advantage of it. If you can, get a copy of the Senate hearing
- it's gold.
For months, Colonel Robert W. Stewart dodged the subpoenas. He was in Mexico or South
America, undertaking business negotiations so sensitive that revealing his precise location
would jeopardize the national interest, or so said his lawyer. Senator Thomas J. Walsh of
Montana at last dragged the lawyer to the stand and presented him with clippings from the
gossip columns of the Havana newspapers, complete with incriminating photographs. The Colonel,
always known to appreciate a good horse, was apparently quite the fixture at the Jockey Club.
His smile had also flashed for the cameras at an impressive round of luncheons and dinners, and
an evening ball at the Havana Yacht Club.
When the senators finally roped the Colonel in for questioning about those shell-company
bonds that had spread like bedbugs through the political ecosystem, he let them know just who
was in charge. "I do not think that the line of interrogation by this committee is within the
jurisdiction of the committee under the laws of the United States," he declared. Even so, he
added, as if proffering a favor, he did not "personally receive any of these bonds." Which was
not, on any ordinary construction of the English language, true.
The twilight of the fabled Stewart dynasty was not glorious. A fancy lawyer got the Colonel
"aquibbled" from charges of contempt, as one journalist sneered, but Rockefeller Jr. wasn't
ready to forgive him the public-relations fiasco. After an epic but futile battle for the
hearts of shareholders, the Colonel hung up his spurs and retreated for life to the family
compound in Nantucket.
None of which changed the reality that the Teapot Dome scandal, with its bribes and
kickbacks and sweetheart deals for rich oilmen, made plain. Under the immense pressure of the
Gatsby Curve, American democracy was on the ropes. The people in charge were the people with
the money. Ultimately, what the moneymen of the 1920s wanted is what moneymen always want. And
their servants delivered. The Calvin Coolidge administration passed a huge tax cut in 1926,
making sure that everyone could go home with his winnings. The rich seemed to think they had
nothing else to worry about -- until October 1929.
Where were the 90 percent during these acts of plunder? An appreciable number of them could
be found at Ku Klux Klan rallies. And as far as the most vocal (though not necessarily the
largest) part of the 90 percent was concerned, America's biggest problems were all due to the
mooching hordes of immigrants. You know, the immigrants whose grandchildren have come to
believe that America's biggest problems now are all due to the mooching hordes of
immigrants.
The toxic wave of wealth concentration that arose in the Gilded Age and crested in the 1920s
finally crashed on the shoals of depression and war. Today we like to think that the
social-welfare programs that were planted by the New Deal and that blossomed in the postwar era
were the principal drivers of a new equality. But the truth is that those efforts belong more
to the category of effects than causes. Death and destruction were the real agents of change.
The financial collapse knocked the wealthy back several steps, and war empowered labor -- above
all working women.
That gilded, roaring surge of destruction was by no means the first such destabilizing wave
of inequality to sweep through American history. In the first half of the 19th century, the
largest single industry in the United States, measured in terms of both market capital and
employment, was the enslavement (and the breeding for enslavement) of human beings. Over the
course of the period, the industry became concentrated to the point where fewer than 4,000
families (roughly 0.1 percent of the households in the nation) owned about a quarter of this
"human capital," and another 390,000 (call it the 9.9 percent, give or take a few points) owned
all of the rest.
The slaveholding elite were vastly more educated, healthier, and had much better table
manners than the overwhelming majority of their fellow white people, never mind the people they
enslaved. They dominated not only the government of the nation, but also its media, culture,
and religion. Their votaries in the pulpits and the news networks were so successful in
demonstrating the sanctity and beneficence of the slave system that millions of impoverished
white people with no enslaved people to call their own conceived of it as an honor to lay down
their life in the system's defense.
That wave ended with 620,000 military deaths, and a lot of property damage. It did level the
playing field in the American South for a time -- though the process began to reverse itself
all too swiftly.
The United States, to be clear, is hardly the most egregious offender in the annals of human
inequality. The European nations from which the colonists of North America emigrated had known
a degree of inequality and instability that Americans would take more than a century to
replicate. Whether in ancient Rome or the Near East, Asia or South America, the plot remains
the same. In The Great Leveler , the historian Walter Scheidel makes a disturbingly good
case that inequality has reliably ended only in catastrophic violence: wars, revolutions, the
collapse of states, or plagues and other disasters. It's a depressing theory. Now that a third
wave of American inequality appears to be cresting, how much do we want to bet that it's not
true?
The belief in our own novelty is one of the defining characteristics of our class. It mostly
means that we don't know our predecessors very well. I had long assumed that the Colonel was
descended from a long line of colonels, each passing down his immense sense of entitlement to
the next. Aunt Sarah's propaganda was more effective than I knew.
Robert W. Stewart was born in 1866 on a small farm in Iowa and raised on the early mornings
and long hours of what Paul Henry Giddens, a historian of Standard Oil of Indiana, politely
describes as "very modest circumstances." The neighbors, seeing that the rough-cut teenager had
something special, pitched in to send him to tiny Coe College, in the meatpacking town of Cedar
Rapids. It would be hard not to believe that the urgent need to win at everything was already
driving the train when the scholarship boy arrived at Yale Law School a few years later. The
flashbulbs at the Havana Yacht Club captured a pose that was perhaps first glimpsed in a
scratchy mirror somewhere in the silent plains of the Midwest.
This article on almost a year old but thinks are developing as predicted. Which increases its
value.
"... Since when did Trump become an expert on political science and world history anyway? Who
does he think he is lecturing? Yet another US middle school classroom?! Does he not realize that
a good number of the countries represented at the UN consider themselves Socialist?! Furthermore,
while I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that Socialist and Communist ideas have often
been a disaster in the 20th century, Socialism in the 21st century is an entirely different beast
and the jury is still very much out on this issue, especially when considering the social,
political, economic, ecological, psychological and even spiritual disaster Capitalism is now
proving to be for much of the planet. Being the President of a country as dysfunctional as the
US, Trump would be well-advised to tone down his arrogant pontifications about Socialism and
maybe even open a book and read about it. ..."
"... My guess is that all they want is to send a clear messages to the Comprador elites
running most countries that this is the "official ideology of the AngloZionist Empire" and if
they want to remain in power they better toe the line even if nobody takes this stuff seriously.
Yup, back to a 1980s Soviet kind of attitude towards propaganda: nobody cares what everybody else
really thinks as long as everybody continues to pretend to believe the official propaganda.
..."
"... Ever since the Neocons overthrew Trump and made him what is colloquially referred to as
their "bitch" the US foreign policy has come to a virtual standstill. ..."
"... Because, and make no mistake here, if the US cannot get anything constructive done any
more, they retain a huge capability to disrupt, subvert, create chaos and the like. ..."
"... However, the US themselves are now the prime victim of a decapitated Presidency and a
vindictive and generally out of control Neocon effort to prevent true American patriots to "get
their country back" (as they say) and finally overthrow the regime in Washington DC. ..."
Notable quotes:
"... Since when did Trump become an expert on political science and world history anyway? Who does he think he is lecturing? Yet another US middle school classroom?! Does he not realize that a good number of the countries represented at the UN consider themselves Socialist?! Furthermore, while I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that Socialist and Communist ideas have often been a disaster in the 20th century, Socialism in the 21st century is an entirely different beast and the jury is still very much out on this issue, especially when considering the social, political, economic, ecological, psychological and even spiritual disaster Capitalism is now proving to be for much of the planet. Being the President of a country as dysfunctional as the US, Trump would be well-advised to tone down his arrogant pontifications about Socialism and maybe even open a book and read about it. ..."
"... we all know who Trump's puppet-masters are nowadays so we know what to expect ..."
"... Trump is now clearly fully endorsing that fairytale that "The West" (in which Trump now hilariously includes Poland!) has defeated Hitler and saved the world. The truth is that the Nazis were defeated by the Soviets and that all the efforts of the Poles, French, Brits and even Americans were but a minor (20% max) sideshow to the "real event" (Those who still might believe in this nonsense can simply read this ). Yet again, that the Americans would feel the need to appropriate for themselves somebody else's victory is, yet again, a clear sign of weakness. Do they expect the rest of the planet to buy into this nonsense? Probably not. ..."
"... My guess is that all they want is to send a clear messages to the Comprador elites running most countries that this is the "official ideology of the AngloZionist Empire" and if they want to remain in power they better toe the line even if nobody takes this stuff seriously. Yup, back to a 1980s Soviet kind of attitude towards propaganda: nobody cares what everybody else really thinks as long as everybody continues to pretend to believe the official propaganda. ..."
"... Ever since the Neocons overthrew Trump and made him what is colloquially referred to as their "bitch" the US foreign policy has come to a virtual standstill. ..."
"... Because, and make no mistake here, if the US cannot get anything constructive done any more, they retain a huge capability to disrupt, subvert, create chaos and the like. ..."
"... However, the US themselves are now the prime victim of a decapitated Presidency and a vindictive and generally out of control Neocon effort to prevent true American patriots to "get their country back" (as they say) and finally overthrow the regime in Washington DC. ..."
"... It appears that for the foreseeable future Trump will continue to focus his energy on beating Obama for the status of "worst President in US history" while the Neocons will continue to focus their energy on trying to impeach Trump ..."
"... I still maintain that the worst President in history (excluding possibly Woodrow Wilson) was Bill Clinton (strongly influenced, no doubt, by Hillary.) Sure, the 90′s were a great time in America, but Clinton's evil actions (signing NAFTA, the Crime Bill, ignoring Bin Laden, and repealing Glass-Steagall to name just a few) had not yet come to fruition. ..."
"... Consider that the scene he bought into is the product of 70 years of constant propaganda aimed at the American psyche and how successful that has been. ..."
"... Hillary would not have done anything different than Trump. Trump is a dumb shit sycophant of the Deep State just like Hillary. ..."
"... "Step by step the US is getting closer to a civil war" That pretty much says it all. All it will take is for US troops to get an unexpected butt kicking somewhere, sometime. ..."
Late this morning, outraged emails started pouring in. My correspondents reported "getting
sick" and having their "heart ache". The cause of all that? They had just watched Trump's
speech at the UN...
You can read the full (rush, not official) text
here or watch the video here .
Most of it is so vapid that I won't even bother posting the full thing. But there are a few
interesting moments including those:
"We will be spending almost $700 billion on our military and defense. Our military will
soon be the strongest it has ever been"
This short sentence contains the key to unlock the reason behind the fact that while the US
military is extremely good at killing people in large numbers, it is also extremely bad at
winning wars. Like most Americans, Trump is under the illusion that spending a lot of money
"buys" you a better military. This is completely false, of course. If spending money was the
key to a competent military force, the US armed forces would have already conquered the entire
planet many times over. In reality, they have not won anything meaningful since the war in the
Pacific.
...then he suddenly decided to share this outright bizarre insight of his:
The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that
socialism has been faithfully implemented. From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela,
wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and
devastation and failure.
Since when did Trump become an expert on political science and world history anyway? Who
does he think he is lecturing? Yet another US middle school classroom?! Does he not realize
that a good number of the countries represented at the UN consider themselves Socialist?!
Furthermore, while I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that Socialist and Communist
ideas have often been a disaster in the 20th century, Socialism in the 21st century is an
entirely different beast and the jury is still very much out on this issue, especially when
considering the social, political, economic, ecological, psychological and even spiritual
disaster Capitalism is now proving to be for much of the planet. Being the President of a
country as dysfunctional as the US, Trump would be well-advised to tone down his arrogant
pontifications about Socialism and maybe even open a book and read about it.
I won't even bother discussing the comprehensively counter-factual nonsense Trump has spewed
about Iran and Hezbollah, we all know who Trump's puppet-masters are nowadays so we know
what to expect . Instead, I will conclude with this pearl from The Donald:
In remembering the great victory that led to this body's founding, we must never forget
that those heroes who fought against evil, also fought for the nations that they love.
Patriotism led the Poles to die to save Poland, the French to fight for a free France, and
the Brits to stand strong for Britain.
Echoing the nonsense he spoke while in Poland, Trump is now clearly fully endorsing that
fairytale that "The West" (in which Trump now hilariously includes Poland!) has defeated Hitler
and saved the world. The truth is that the Nazis were defeated by the Soviets and that all the
efforts of the Poles, French, Brits and even Americans were but a minor (20% max) sideshow to
the "real event" (Those who still might believe in this nonsense can simply read this ). Yet
again, that the Americans would feel the need to appropriate for themselves somebody else's
victory is, yet again, a clear sign of weakness. Do they expect the rest of the planet to buy
into this nonsense? Probably not.
My guess is that all they want is to send a clear messages to the Comprador elites
running most countries that this is the "official ideology of the AngloZionist Empire" and if
they want to remain in power they better toe the line even if nobody takes this stuff
seriously. Yup, back to a 1980s Soviet kind of attitude towards propaganda: nobody cares what
everybody else really thinks as long as everybody continues to pretend to believe the official
propaganda.
[Sidebar: When my wife and I watched this pathetic speech we starting laughing about the
fact that Trump was so obscenely bad that we (almost) begin to miss Obama. This is a standing
joke in our family because when Obama came to power we (almost) began to miss Dubya. The
reason why this is a joke is that when Dubya came to power we decided that there is no way
anybody could possibly be worse than him. Oh boy where we wrong! Right now I am still not at
the point were I would be missing Obama (that is asking for a lot from me!), but I will
unapologetically admit that I am missing Dubya. I do. I really do. Maybe not the people
around Dubya, he is the one who truly let the Neocon "crazies in the basement" creep out and
occupy the Situation Room, but at least Dubya seemed to realize how utterly incompetent he
was. Furthermore, Dubya was a heck of a lot dumber than Obama (in this context being stupid
is a mitigating factor) and he sure did not have the truly galactic arrogance of Trump
(intelligence-wise they are probably on par)].
In conclusion, what I take away from this speech is a sense of relief for the rest of the
planet and a sense of real worry for the US. Ever since the Neocons overthrew Trump and
made him what is colloquially referred to as their "bitch" the US foreign policy has come to a
virtual standstill. Sure, the Americans talk a lot, but at least they are doing nothing.
That paralysis, which is a direct consequence of the internal infighting, is a blessing for the
rest of the planet because it allows everybody else to get things done. Because, and make
no mistake here, if the US cannot get anything constructive done any more, they retain a huge
capability to disrupt, subvert, create chaos and the like.
But for as long as the US remains paralyzed this destructive potential remains mostly unused
(and no matter how bad things look now, Hillary President would have been infinitely worse!).
However, the US themselves are now the prime victim of a decapitated Presidency and a
vindictive and generally out of control Neocon effort to prevent true American patriots to "get
their country back" (as they say) and finally overthrow the regime in Washington DC.
Step by step the US is getting closer to a civil war and there is no hope in sight, at least
for the time being. It appears that for the foreseeable future Trump will continue to focus
his energy on beating Obama for the status of "worst President in US history" while the Neocons
will continue to focus their energy on trying to impeach Trump , and maybe even trigger a
civil war. The rest of us living here are in for some very tough times ahead. As they say in
Florida when a hurricane comes barreling down on you "hunker down!".
Netanyahu has spoken, stating that Trump has given the boldest, most courageous UN speech
that he has ever heard. Well that settles that with the prescient oracle rendering his
definitive and omnipotent judgment!
A lot of old friends didn't like President Trump's UN speech today because it didn't
break cleanly with UniParty foreign policy! E.g. Paul Craig Roberts' comments here. But
it did contain these revolutionary comments on immigration and refugee policy ! The
latter especially significant because Trump has to set the quota for U.S. quota for
refugees (actually expedited, subsidized, politically favored immigrants) in the next few
days. Who knows what Trump will do! But Hillary would never even have said it
[...] For the cost of resettling one refugee in the United States, we can assist more than 10
in their home region.
[...] For decades, the United States has dealt with migration challenges here in the Western
Hemisphere. We have learned that, over the long term, uncontrolled migration is deeply
unfair to both the sending and the receiving countries.
For the sending countries, it reduces domestic pressure to pursue needed political
and economic reform, and drains them of the human capital necessary to motivate and
implement those reforms.
For the receiving countries, the substantial costs of uncontrolled migration are
borne overwhelmingly by low-income citizens whose concerns are often ignored by both media
and government.
I still maintain that the worst President in history (excluding possibly Woodrow
Wilson) was Bill Clinton (strongly influenced, no doubt, by Hillary.) Sure, the 90′s
were a great time in America, but Clinton's evil actions (signing NAFTA, the Crime Bill,
ignoring Bin Laden, and repealing Glass-Steagall to name just a few) had not yet come to
fruition.
Assuming the keen political insight Trump exhibited to get himself the job he sought still
exists, perhaps all this insane blather is proof it continues. Consider that the scene he
bought into is the product of 70 years of constant propaganda aimed at the American psyche
and how successful that has been.
Then imagine Trump feeding the ravenous American mindset for the status quo while actually
working around it. Brilliant! Then again, if he truly means what he says, all is lost.
Thank you Stephen Miller! He must be reading Peter Singer:
International support for countries bearing the greatest refugee burden also makes economic
sense: it costs Jordan about €3,000 ($3,350) to support one refugee for a year; in
Germany, the cost is at least €12,000.
Another threat to the Church is the illegal immigration control movement. If this movement
succeeds, and what is perceived by Latin Americans and other governments as an escape valve
is shut off, these governments would logically say, "Our demographic course cannot
continue." These governments would have little choice but to confront the Church and say,
"If we are to survive as governments, then we must get serious about population growth
control. Otherwise, we in Latin America are destined to become a sea of chaos. We, as Latin
Americans, must make family planning and abortion services fully available and encourage
their use." Turning off the valve to illegal immigration is therefore a serious threat to
the power of the Church.
President Trump's Message: Make The United Nations Great
In fact, he's strengthened our alliances in meetings in Washington with key allies, by
going to foreign capitals - the trip to France and the Bastille Day with America's
oldest ally, with which the United States has in recent years had something of a rocky
relationship – was strengthened enormously by that visit to Paris this year. And
the president has, you know, both on a personal level and on an alliance level, really
strengthened the alliance with France and with President Macron. In fact, he met with
him yesterday and had a very, extremely positive and friendly meeting where they talked
substantive business, but they also talked about the history of the alliance and reminisced
a bit about the grandeur of that trip to Paris in July.
The French president's suggestion that African women are breeding like animals and must
be restrained by an enlightened elite awakens primordial terrors in the hearts of the
mainstream Left and Right.
[...]
If Europeans are replaced with Africans, Western Civilization will disappear. The choices
are simple: The West, yes or no? The white race, yes or no? Our rulers have exhausted all
other options.
Peter Singer on How Political Correctness Let African Population Growth Run Amok for a
Generation
The outrage evoked by Macron's remark, however, appears to have little to do with its
inaccuracy. Macron violated a taboo that has been in place since the International
Conference on Population and Development, held under the auspices of the UN in Cairo in
1994. The conference adopted a Programme of Action that rejected a demographically driven
approach to population policies, and instead focused on meeting the reproductive-health
needs of individuals, especially women. Population targets were out; rights were in.
Don't lose hope
[...]
I shared this video here at the Unz Review before, but I would like to share it again,
because it best encapsulates and captures what I personally associate with term "Alt
Right"
"Step by step the US is getting closer to a civil war" That pretty much says it all.
All it will take is for US troops to get an unexpected butt kicking somewhere,
sometime.
Churchill himself, one of a long list of Anglo-genocidal killers (according to The Saker's
last post) admitted that, "The Red Army tore the guts out of The Wehrmacht." Is this even in
dispute?
In Russian thinking therefore, with only 20% contribution by American/UK Commonwealth
forces, we subtract that, and this is the diplomatic question. Why would Stalin's T34s not
have rolled up to The English Channel and installed compliant Communist regimes in
France/Belgium/Holland as they did in Eastern Europe?
They did the same in North Korea by installing the grandfather (Kim Il-Sung) of this young
'Rocket Man' in 1945 at the conclusion of the fighting against Japan in the far-east.
Economics has a lot of similarities with Theology.
People can believe whatever interpretation fits with their own indoctrination.
The difference being there is a truth to economics that seems to be invisible to most people,
major economists included.
Your post highlights some of the stark realities that people just refuse to accept for some
inexplicable reason.
Maybe the better economic managers will come to the rescue or maybe there will be a
collective awakening when in a moment of clarity we start to realise how badly we have been
conned.
There are many societies that tolerate a certain degree of economic inequality, but still
provide decent living conditions, services and infrastructure for most citizens. The notion
that we either have extreme inequality or extreme poverty is empirically and morally empty.
Further down the thread, 'Weakaspiss' makes a pertinent observation; " government has
forgotten they govern for all, and have a primary duty for those who are least able to
prosper."
In fact, they've "forgotten" nothing.
Instead, they've fallen for the self-serving blandishments of Libertarian dogma.
Where have I learned of these ?
By reading the posts of GA's resident Libertarians.
The sub-texts of which are wonderfully instructive.
1. Nothing is more important than the individual.
2. And as an individual and a Libertarian, I am infinitely superior to you.
3. Plus I resent paying taxes, which are outright theft.
4. Since I believe, utterly without basis in reality, that taxes levied on hard-working,
wonderful freedom-loving ME, sustain the likes of lazy, parasitical YOU.
5. Meanwhile, govt, if it cannot be destroyed, must always be demonised and underfunded. And
so-called 'programs of public benefit' for the parasites--like Medicare, or the ABC-- must be
sold outright to the private sector.
6. No I don't want to debate about it, if there's a chance I'll lose the argument.
My ego demands I win every time..
7. Certainly not with losers of lower social status, who were 'educated' in a union-run
public school.
8. And don't even come near me, losers. Yuk ! You're probably not even white !
9. Because I socialise only within my own tribe, thank you very much.
10. Besides, you're probably living off my taxes.
11. Did I mention taxes somewhere ?
12. Taxes are theft.
Our conservatives have "forgotten" NOTHING.
Instead, they've fallen for a sociopathic ideology which tells them their least attractive
impulses are positively praiseworthy.
Hence the nasty, ego-driven tone of current political life.
Injected directly into the bloodstream of our body politic by a Lying Rodent.
Its philosophy may be simply stated
Does your policy shit all over people you never cared for anyway ?
THEN DO IT.
This message is clear and concise. It is however never going to be heard beyond the
'Guardian'.
The MSM are hardly going to publish this article, nor are they going to
reference it, why should they? It goes against everything they have been fighting for and the
tin ear of their readership are unwilling to change teir views.
The only thing that they understand is money and the concentration of wealth. This
misonception as Dennis So far this has been handed to them on a plate, the taxation system
has enabled them to manipulate an multiply their earnings. So much of money the has nothing
to do with adding value to this countries economy but is speculative in nature based on
financial and overseas instruments.
No is the time for our government to take the lead and start as the Victorian ALP have
done and invest in people and jobs on the back of strategic investment. It is a fallacy that
governments don't create jobs they, through their policies do just that.
Friends of mine who make a living out of dealing both in stock and wealth creating schemes
have no loyalty to this country, they are self motivated and libertarian in persuasion.
"Government should get out of the way!" This is nothing short of scandalous.
Unless we stand up for our rights and a civil society that provides adequate provision for
fair and balanced policy making,xwe will continue until we will see an implosion. History is
littered with examples of revolution based on the kind of inequality we are seeing happen in
this country. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
It is indeed important to make the distinction between the ideology of neoliberalism - the
ideology of private enterprise is good, and public spending is bad - and the operational
system of crony capitalism - the game of mates played by government and the special
interests.
And it is certainly equally important to call out the monumental hypocrisy involved in the
government's application of the ideology's set of rules to the powerless and public and the
government's application of corrupt practice rules to the special interests.
The system is destroying the egalitarian character of Australia and fanning the flames of
nativist authoritarianism here.
But what's even more dangerous is the fundamental dishonesty that the system necessitates,
and the alienating influence it has - on top of the growing economic inequality.
The system has destroyed the economic and environmental viability and sustainability of
the planet on which human civilization depends.
What is becoming increasingly clear to more and more of the public is that - simple put-
the system cannot be allowed to go on as it has been proceeding because it threatens the
future of civilization on earth.
Change is imperative now. However, how that will unfold is unclear, as well as, the toll
the destruc5turing system will take.
What is clear is that a great restructuring must happen - and soon.
The neo liberals are intent on defacing Australia. Their pusstulant tentacles stretch into
our classrooms forcing our kids to believe in their god. They tell us that white millionaire
farmers deserve refugee status and all the benefits bestowed on poor persecuted minorities.
They tell us that the disgustingly rich deserve tax relief. Their's is a world where their
children are entitled to safe electoral sets. But they can be defeated and sent to misery. We
did it in the Same Sex Marriage fiasco and we can do it to their more insidious behaviours.
Write to your local member. Barrage them with emails. Write to their propaganda Letters to
the Editor. Donate to GetUp. Keep on keeping on.
Neoliberalism, the dogma was was sourced from Milton Freidman's Monetarism economic theory.
When it morphed into the 'Greed is Good' credo is unclear.
Guess you have to call the disease something, so Neoliberalism it is.
Is capitalism stuffed?
There is much debate at the moment about which Party has the best economic plan going
forward. The Coalition maintains that the best way is by giving large tax breaks to
business.
This is currently being called 'Pre GST theory or old style trickle down economics'.
Lenore Taylor writes:
"The investment bank once chaired by Malcolm Turnbull has backed the view that much of the
benefit from the Coalition's company tax cuts could flow to offshore investors, as the
prime minister insisted his plan was the best way to ensure continued economic growth".
"The domestic benefits would be far bigger if companies used the tax cut to grow their
business, but according to Goldman Sachs "survey evidence suggests that companies are less
likely to voluntarily lower the dividend payment ratio", in other words, the real-world
impact was likely to be closer to the scenario where 60% of the benefit flowed
offshore"
"Neoliberalism will literally be the death of democracy."
In fact, that's the plan.
Openly alluded to by the IPA's Gary Johns;
".... a cardinal tenet of libertarianism is to keep democracy in its place, to regard it
as an activity of limited application. Government's role is to depoliticise much of life, to
make it less amenable to public dispute....."
From Margo Kingston's 'Not happy, John !' (2005).
Get on to the 'Catallaxy' site.
You'll soon find out what Libertarian sociopaths think of democracy.
I actually think many people go along with neoliberalism because they perceive it will turn
out well for them. It's the every man for himself Darwinian approach to life, but the LNP
reflects that view most closely. It's the one where everyone is a welfare scrounger, but if
for some reason you end up needing welfare, you deserve it because of all the tax you paid,
even though you've been minimising your tax for decades.
The other great con is convincing the public that voting for anyone but the two major parties
is "wasting your vote". This political duopoly means only those interests are ever
represented and that has also led to Australia's systematic decline. Yes it's true that the
majors hold majority in parliament but we've already seen that voting below the line can
work- Labour had to take notes from the Greens last time they held power. Despite how
hopeless it all seems we do still have the power to affect change as long as we- all of us-
stop swallowing the lies.
The current two party system is like a coin. On one side we have the head of Malcolm Turnbull
and on the other Bill Shorten. When it comes to the toss up the corporations and wealthy get
to call heads.
When a country - a majority vote - knowingly, maliciously - and repeatedly - vote for an
ideology of hate, exclusion and greed then what do you expect.
What did the majority vote not get in 2013 when they elected the Abbott Regime?
The LNP IPA have a strategy of pillage and plunder - the transfer of public wealth to the
<1% richest and big corporations. They have provided the regulatory context and the ethics
and morality that has allowed Australian business, big and small across the board to
normalise wage-theft, the non payment of super, unpaid internships and the sort of behaviour
commonly seen through the Banking RC.
What does the majority vote not see?
The neoliberal did not con us all - but it is clear that the majority vote is. A vote that
has yet to account to all Australians for wrecking this country. A vote that supported the
most corrupt government Australia has ever had. Don't think for a moment that that can go
without a reckoning.
If you were even peripherally aware of history, you'd know that people subjected to
lifelong exploitation, forced into a precarious existence or buried under annually
compounding debts will, eventually, wheel guillotines into the town square and start taking
names.
How many voters even have any idea of what "neoliberalism" is? I would be thinking not many,
especially as the Murdoch press don't even use the term in their publications. They might feel
the effects , but without any conceptualisation of its underpinning ideas and ideology be
less likely to be able to identify policy which reflects neoliberal values. And I'm sure the
powers that be like it that way.
For that last 40 years some variant of neoliberalism has been the predominant dogma.
Unfortunately once we moved on from hunter gatherer to an agriculture supported society we
lost the connections to each other that existed at the tribal level. That sense of community
does not flourish in our eight thousand year experiment with city based civilisation. It
seems to only do so during times of disruption and war.
Personally my experience of living in a socially cohesive society was the 30 year period
leading up to the reinfestation of the neoliberal curse that started in the 80's with Reagan
and Thatcher.
So neoliberalism is the norm, socialism requires more work. We can't take it for granted
that society will naturally gravitate towards egalitarianism.
Turnbull and his LNP cohort can openly mock the population with impunity safe in the
knowledge that a small but powerful and rich minority, joined by group think and supported by
exclusive membership institutions, schools, corporations, have a shared goal of controlling
the monetary, economic system and government.
It's apparent that elections can be won by throwing enough resources into well aimed
propaganda, (cue Murdoch). Cambridge Analytica was brutally effective at the last elections
in the US and UK. Anyone who believes a similar scam won't be tried in Australia is being
naive.
So people will still vote against their long term interests and we will likely still get
another dose of self inflicted neoliberalism at the next election.
The real problem will be that no where near enough voters will read this article or pieces
like it. The Murdoch press for example would never publish it and the content won't be
seriously discussed on morning TV. The ABC wouldn't dare mention a word of it.
I don't think it is all doom and gloom. I have 12 grandchildren, some now teenagers. They
and their kind are smarter than we give them credit for and they won't put up with the crap
we have bequeathed them. They don't get information from main stream media and although their
social media contains an enormous amount of rubbish, embedded are real grievances about their
lot in life. Soon they will vote. Goodbye and good riddance to the conservatives.
It is actually just a pan-national oligarchy, where legislatures and media are
compromised into acceptance of destructive and unethical policies by Big Money.
Worthy of repetition since I'm not able to give you more than one 'uptick'.
In this instance, I very much suspect it will be the staggering load put on the natural
environment that will spin the current "Eternal Empires" "down the sinkhole of history".
Sadly for everyone and everything else.
Neoliberalism wins by manipulating public distraction. The so-called reality shows of
mainstream media are the furthest flight imaginable from lived experience, and even the
serious news outlets succumb to the Peyton Place of Barnaby's baby and a disappeared Melania
Trump. All of which makes a considered analysis such as the one republished here such a
notable exception.
That man has the real meaning of neoliberalism. Neoliberal way is not incompatible with
unions, wages, social services or governments that protect their citizens.
His way there should be no division and no angst of politics. Maybe that's where the problem
is/ His way is not the way of modern politics and greed. Being rich does not mean being
greedy. But that is what modern neoliberam with its free markets mantra have come to be seen
as.
My Grandfather and Great Grandfather, would see this man as being correct with a very good
attitude. He would see Wall St and many financial businesses as greedy and managed by bullies
and tyrants.
Half the population prefers a politics that is racist and unethical, that demonises the poor
and idolises the rich, that eschews community and embraces amoral individuality. These people
don't care about the economic inconsistencies of neo-liberalism, they are far more attracted
to the divisive societal aspects of free market fundamentalism.
Like Joe Hockey, Rinehart saw the problem of inequality as having more to do with the
character of the poor than with the rules of the game:
They don't "see" it this way. They just say they see it this way to perpetuate that
inequality. They know that their wealth depends on the labour of the other 95-99%.
To keep us all working and voting for their lackeys, they make promises of wealth if you
are a persistent hard worker, never mentioning that the entire game depends on only a tiny
minority ever reaching the top. No, the real people holding them back are those who don't
work hard. Who don't contribute to the game. They're the ones to blame for why you're not
levelling up. The true scapegoats.
Victim blaming is a classic neo-con tactic, they seek to deflect from the impact of their
heartless policies by demonising the victims, from the unemployed and those stuck in the
welfare cycle to refugees trapped in offshore detention, indefinitely . We've all seen how
appalling their commentary can get, from Abbott and Hockey's "lifters and leaners" to Gina
Mineheart's "two dollars a day" & "spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising"
they show just how out touch they are. They honestly believe that people can lift themselves
out of poverty if only they "spent more time working", ignoring the fact that many are
working two jobs just to stay ahead.
Seems that on planet RWNJ there are more than 24 hours in a day..
Half the population need welfare to survive.
1% have 90% of all the toys in the sandpit and won't share. They feel that they are entitled
to all the toys.
This piece is well worth the reading particularly in light of the trashing of society's
values we see played out in Trump's America. However, the writer's definition of
"ideology " as a "system of ideas and ideals" even though it accords with the
OED's, fails to take into account the current pernicious influence of the ideologue who
distorts "ideology" into the "rationalisation of a suppression" as Joseph Dunne
noted in his book, " Back to the Rough Ground" .
This is the most apt description of the modus operandi of today's neoliberalists - the
justifying of their project to maximise wealth accumulation in their own self-interest by
promoting the propaganda that we are powerless cogs in the machine of the
economy , slaves to the whim of the omnipotent market, rather than active
agents who wish to contribute to a flourishing society .
Neoliberalism idealises competition against each other to ensure the
rights of the few, by suppressing our capacity to take
responsibility together through cooperation and collaboration with each
other.
This classic divide and conquer tactic will prevail only as long as we permit
it.
I'm a conservative and I have an good economics degree. I have to say though that I don't
understand neoliberalism at all.
As a example, when I was doing economics it was made very clear to me that natural
monopolies (such as electricity and water) cannot be made into a competitive market (rather
like trying to put lipstick on a pig). Similarly oligopolies introduce opportunities for
price manipulation (e.g. the banks). The neoliberal mantra that "markets are always right" is
just rubbish. Markets work well only when certain criteria are met.
Secondly, the right of workers to collectively bargain is fundamental to a well
functioning market economy. Labour is one of the inputs to production and the workers have a
right to a proper return on their labour. Individual workers have no real bargaining power
and can only act collectively through unions.
Finally, the related casualisation of the workforce is a disaster for workers and the
long-term interests of the economy. The stagnation of wages (and inflation) is one of the
products of this strong trend to casualisation (my blood boils when I hear of examples of
wage theft affecting vulnerable workers).
Income inequality is a product of a capitalist system. However, when the distribution of
wealth becomes very badly skewed (such as in the USA) then the political system starts to
break down. Trump was a beneficiary of this flawed income distribution. All Hillary Clinton
was promising was "more of the same". In short, Bernie Sanders was right.
Walter Schadel, in his book, The Great Leveler (see below), points to the role of income
inequality in driving revolutions and disruptions. There are lessons in this book for our
current crop of politicians both on the left and the right.
Wow! Richard Denniss says it like it is, neatly summing up "the big con".
I believe Australia is being sold from under our feet. The big asset-strip is on. Why are
we not benefiting from the mining boom? The answer lies in the way Rinehart companies and
others like hers have been permitted to use Singapore or other low-taxing countries to
minimise taxes. That these large companies should have the gall to demand large tax cuts as
well is preposterous.
When headlines indulge in fear-mongering about China, why is angst directed at Dastyari
for taking a relatively small donation, whilst at the same time the Australian government has
approved a joint purchase of large swathes of the Australian outback by Rinehart and Chinese
interests? Have we already forgotten the Darwin port deal? Why were Robb, Bishop and the
Liberal Party allowed to benefit from deals or large donations from "Chinese interests"? Yet
Bob Carr is being slammed for trying over many years to develop a more harmonious
relationship with China?
Australians have told federal and state governments that they hate privatisation. Not
content with selling off profitable businesses such as Medibank Private, the Liberal/National
Party federal government is privatising its services. Detention centres and prisons acted as
a stalking-horse for the creeping privatisation of jobs. Politicians assume most voters don't
notice or care when government jobs in those sectors are privatised, but other government
departments are following suit.
By permitting the Future Fund and superannuation funds to invest in tax havens, the
federal government has opened the door to a growing trend. If my super fund uses the Cayman
Island tax haven, it is easier to justify everyone else from the PM down to evade Australian
taxes as well. More insidiously, tax havens make it easier to cheat creditors in bankruptcy
cases, launder dirty money, break trade sanctions and much more. We aren't even aware of how
these may be playing out behind closed doors in our name. The problem with allowing Rinehart
to use Singapore or Turnbull to use the Cayman Island is that other companies and individuals
will increasingly Do so, and in the end, everyone is doing it. And when will we take note of
cryptocurrencies and how they can act like tax havens?
Our participation in wars not of our own making is also having dire results. Think of all
the money spent and lives of servicemen destroyed by serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Imagine
if that money had instead been invested wisely in defence capabilities. And yet there we are,
interfering in the South China Sea, trying to provoke China at Trump's behest, and it is not
clear whether the Phillipines wants us there now anyway. And all the while, the cost of our
participation in war games is crippling our ability to acquire defence assets, making us more
reliant on the US.
The banking enquiry has only scratched the surface of how voters are being ripped off with
impunity. There are growing demands that the superannuation industry, in particular retail
funds, be subject to greater transparency and regulation. Yet Turnbull, Cash and colleagues
prefer to direct their scorn at industry funds, simply because they are controlled by
workers, via their unions.
We can sense "the big con" is all around us. We can almost smell it, so pungent is the air
of exploitation, corruption and fraud. Hopefully Denniss will join others in focussing us
more clearly on how we are being cheated of our birthright.
Despite the huge changes in communication in the last several decades
and the ever increasing levels of education in our society, politics have
failed to engage the vast majority and that cohort of the cynical, the alienated,
the disinterested, the lazy, the simply care less continues to grow.
In the last decade the only cause that evoked passion and engaged a larger
number, finally forcing our elected members to act was same sex marriage
.....a crescendo that took years to generate.
With the complicity of our media and the decline of that part of education
that teaches analysis, social psychology and political philosophy (let alone
teaches about basic political structures and mechanisms) our level of disengagement
from the political process appears to be at an all time high. The performance
of our legislators has become increasingly unaccountable and purely self interested
.... we have re-created the "political class" of pre-war times where alienation
was based on a lack of education and awareness and a sense of inferiority and
powerlessness DESPITE our vastly improved communication, access to information
and educational standards (not to mention affluence).
Basically, we have "dumbed down" to the extent where passion and ideology in
politics is now the preserve of fewer and fewer. In a democracy this trend is of
massive concern and a threat to its sustainability.... it also completely suits those
that are focused on concentrating power and wealth... the more that don't give
a toss the less likely you are to be encumbered by limitations, social considerations,
ethics and morality.
Until we re-engage far larger numbers into the political process, raise the levels
of awareness of political thought and choices, stop dumbing down and re-inject
some broader passion and participation into our political processes then vested
interests will continue to dominate.....and democracy will become increasingly
undemocratic !
Coded language:
or,
how we bade farewell to publicly-owned electricity.
Part 1
The perceptions of George Orwell seem as valid now as then
Since he dealt with sly deceptions of tyrannical men
So 'Orwellian language', though imprinted on a page
Now has impacts universal, which resound in every age
And in ours, language functions like a fingerprint-free glove
To absolve of guilt the guilty as, imposed from up above,
Has come theft of public assets, for the benefit of those
To whom money by the truckload only ever upward flows.
By subversion of our usage may such larceny be won
And I speak as a Victorian, so know how it is done.
It begins when greedy forces, with a nose for seeking rent
Need to seize and reshape language to conceal true intent
So collusion is essential, 'twixt such forces and the man
Who will slake their gross desires. He's a poll-i-tish-i-an
It is he who'll grasp the nettle, perform tasks of Hercules
Telling punters it is raining, while upon their backs he pees
Yet his task is mitigated. Because, what should hove in sight,
But the money-driven think-tanks of the predatory Right
Which have spent long hours fixated by their loathing of the State
So won't even wipe their bottoms, unless at an outsourced rate.
Now the think-tanks wunderkinden turn to '1984'
Where they find therein a tactic once employed in days of yore
It's to pick out words and phrases from contemporary use
Then submit their basic meanings to an arse-about abuse
Yet an overarching irony attends this tour de force
Since there's precedents in stating that a cart is now a horse.
For who bastardised a language, drawing from their bag of tricks ?
It was Stalin and Vyshinsky, back in 1936
O the horror ! O the shamefullness ! That, Sons Of Liberty
Must resort to basing tactics on the Kremlin's tyranny !
It's a classic situation when rent-seeking runs amuck
But there's easy money looming, so who gives a flying f**k ?
So consumers are persuaded, via mantra-laden talk
That they come before big shareholders in London or New York
Thus, a host of euphemisms sugar-coat the bitter pill
To the melodies seductive of a loudly-ringing till
Hark to incantantions joyous and of outcomes bound to please !
'Competition', 'lower prices', 'market-based efficiencies'!
(Though their very warmth and fuzziness will reinforce the fact
They've dragooned the highest language to describe the lowest act.)
"Karl Marx exposed the peculiar dynamics of capitalism, or what he called "the bourgeois mode
of production." He foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own
destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies -- think neoliberalism -- were created to serve
the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites, since "the class which has
the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means
of mental production" and "the ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the
dominant material relationships the relationships which make one class the ruling one." He
saw that there would come a day when capitalism would exhaust its potential and collapse. He
did not know when that day would come. Marx, as Meghnad Desai wrote, was "an astronomer of
history, not an astrologer." Marx was keenly aware of capitalism's ability to innovate and
adapt. But he also knew that capitalist expansion was not eternally sustainable. And as we
witness the denouement of capitalism and the disintegration of globalism, Karl Marx is
vindicated as capitalism's most prescient and important critic."
We need a Nationalist government, which will automatically see itself as the mortal enemy of
the primary Internationalist (there used to be a song about that) force in the world today,
and which affects us greatly in terms of resource exploitation: Globalisation, or what we
used to call 'multi national corporations' or 'international capital'.
Nationalism is a decision-making tool as it always poses a question; what is good for
this country ?
When/if he mentions de-Globalisation, an Aus-Indonesian defence alliance, citizen
initiated referenda, and a Constitutional ban on donations and parties , then people
may listen, however he cannot be accused of being too imaginative or bright. He is
however advocating authoritarianism not fascism.
Fascism doesn't require a state sanctioned religion or suppression of religion
That said the Catholicism/fundamentalist Christian bent of the present cabinet and the
demonisation of any green beliefs is uncomfortably close to what you describe
And the nexus between big business and govern, the destruction of public institutions, the
reduction in the capacity of media to report truth and the vitriolic attacks on opponenents
are straws in an ill wind
You are right, it's not "fascismmmmmmmmmmmmmm".... it's Fascism. Which brings back to my
memory what Tom Elliott (the son of Liberal Party former president John Elliott) wrote in the
Herald Sun on 6 February 2015: "It's time we temporarily suspended the democratic process and
installed a benign dictatorship to make tough but necessary decisions."
he first page of Tim Winton's new essay collection,
The Boy Behind the Curtain
, sets a disturbing scene. A 13-year-old boy stands at the window of a suburban
street, behind a terylene curtain, training a rifle on passersby.
"He was a fraught little thing," says Winton
of that boy – the boy he used to be. "I feel related to him but I'm no longer completely him, thank god."
The passage opens a surprisingly intimate essay about the role of guns in Australian life, setting the tone for
a collection being billed as Winton's most personal yet.
In spite of his inclination for solitude, Winton has spent much of his life in the spotlight. His first novel,
An Open Swimmer, catapulted him into the public eye when it won the Vogel literary award in 1981, but it was his
1991 novel, Cloudstreet, that cemented his place in Australian letters. Winton has won the Miles Franklin award
four times and been shortlisted twice for the Booker. His books have been adapted for film, TV and
even opera
.
ss="rich-link">
Island Home by Tim Winton review – a love song to Australia and a cry to
save it
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The contradictions of having such a high-profile career while working in a quintessentially solitary artform
are not lost on him. "I spend all day in a room with people who don't exist, and I'm not thinking about any public
– but once the thing's done it goes out there and it has a public life over which I have no, or very little,
control," he says.
On one reading, the boy with the rifle lurking out of sight, watching the world go by, could be a metaphor for
the life of a reclusive writer. But Winton is quick to distinguish himself from such a reading. "I wouldn't like
to see myself as somebody who was just cruelly observing the world behind the terylene curtain of art."
For Winton, the perceived lives of other writers always seemed completely unrelated to his own experience. "I
grew up with a kind of modernist romantic idea of the writer as some kind of high priest, someone who saw
themselves as separate and better, which I now find a bit repellent," he says. "I think that was something that
was sold to us at school and certainly at university that writers were somehow aloof from the ordinary business
of life; they didn't have to abide by the same rules as other people. The worse their behaviour off the page, the
more we were supposed to cheer them on. Once I woke up to that idea as a teenager, I think I consciously resisted
it."
Winton's own background was characterised by a working class sensibility and evangelical religion. His parents
converted to the Church of Christ when he was a small boy, the circumstances and his experiences of which form the
basis of a number of the previously unpublished essays in The Boy Behind the Curtain. As a result, when he finally
did start writing, it was with a particularly industrious work ethic.
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Tim Winton: 'There wasn't a lot of romance in my view of what writing was about.' Photograph: Hank Kordas
"I approached it like I was a tradesperson," he says. "It didn't necessarily involve FM radio played very
loudly on a worksite; it didn't always require plumbers' crack or a hard hat and there was certainly no
catcalling, but for the rest of it I went a different route. There wasn't a lot of romance in my view of what
writing was about."
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A fish called Tim Winton: scientists name new species after novelist
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Yet it was finding words, what Winton calls "the enormous luxury of language", that took him from being a
13-year-old boy who watched strangers through the eye of a rifle – a boy who was "obviously insecure and feeling
threatened and probably not quite one with the world" – to a well-adjusted adult.
The "emotional infancy of men" has a lot to answer for, he says, suggesting that it's something society would
do well to pay more attention to in its early stages. "The lumpiness and surly silence of boys is not something
we're sufficiently interested in. They're not sufficiently attractive to us until they become victims or dangerous
brutes and bullies."
ass="inline-garnett-quote inline-icon ">
I think it's a mistake to think someone who doesn't say much doesn't have strong
feelings
Tim Winton
Conflicted masculinity is recurring theme throughout Winton's fiction, and his characters often suffer as a
result of their inability to articulate their feelings. "I think it's a mistake to think someone who doesn't say
much doesn't have strong feelings," he says. "I think we stifle people's expression or we ignore people's signals
of wanting to express things at our peril."
The distinct tenor of Winton's prose, a lyricism which manages to turn even the Australian vernacular into a
kind of rough poetry, lends itself to the intimacy of the personal essay. The Boy Behind the Curtain contains a
number of vignettes that reflect the imagery and landscape that characterises his fiction: hot bitumen roads
through the desert; the churning ocean.
But there is also a clear political streak to Winton's nonfiction, and the inclusion of a number of more direct
essays in this collection mean it's difficult to collapse the work under the category of memoir. Stones for Bread,
for example, calls for a return to empathy and humanity in Australia's approach to asylum seekers. The Battle for
Ningaloo Reef is a clear-eyed account of the activism that prevented a major commercial development from
destroying a stretch of the Western Australian coastline. And Using the C-Word concerns that other dirty word that
Winton believes we are avoiding: class.
"I think there are people talking about class but they're having to do that against the flow," Winton says.
"We're living in a dispensation that is endlessly reinforcing the idea that we are not citizens but economic
players. And under that dispensation it's in nobody's interest, especially those in power, to encourage or foster
the idea that there's any class difference."
The market doesn't care about people, Winton argues, and neither is there any genius in it. "There's no
invisible hand," he says. "And if there is one, it's scratching its arse."
It's clear to Winton that neoliberalism is failing, but not without casualties, two of which are very close to
his heart: the arts and the environment.
"People in the arts are basically paying the price for this new regime where we pay no tax and where we get
less public service and more privatised service," he says. "The arts are last on, first off in people's minds and
I think that's not just sad, it's corrosive. They're just seen as fluff, as fripperies, as indulgence, as add-ons
and luxury. And I don't think the arts are luxury; I think they're fundamental to civilisation. It's just that
under our current dispensation, civilisation is not the point; civilisation is something that commerce has to
negotiate and traduce if necessary."
Winton is one of a number of high-profile critics of the Productivity Commission's proposals to allow
the parallel importation of books
, and a signatory to petitions opposing
funding cuts to the Australia Council
. But he has also been a grassroots activist in the area of marine
conservation for over 15 years.
"I don't know if I'm an activist writer or just a writer who has an activist life on the side," he says.
ass="inline-garnett-quote inline-icon ">
I don't know if I'm an activist writer or just a writer who has an activist life
on the side
Tim Winton
Years of lobbying by conservation groups and the general public contributed to the Labor government
announcement in 2012 of
42 marine reserves in Australian waters
, including over the entire Coral Sea. The Abbott government, however,
implemented a review which, in September this year, recommended
significantly scaling back those reservations
. It was, says Winton, an act of cowardice.
"The Abbott review was basically all about applying inertia to imminent progress," Winton says. "We've gone
from world leaders [in conservation] to being too frightened to lead."
When asked what role writing fiction plays in his activist work, Winton says it comes back to the idea of
"keeping people's imaginations awake".
"Imagination is the fundamental virtue of civilisation. If people can't imagine then they can't live an ethical
life."
"... By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst, Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website ..."
"... Jim Chanos, founder and managing partner of New York-based Kynikos Associates, has spent much of his career studying financial fraud. He shares his thoughts with the Institute for New Economic Thinking -- where he is a member of the ..."
"... Global Partners Council ..."
"... -- on cryptocurrency, fraud coming from China, and why fraudsters may currently be on the rise. Chanos teaches a course on the history of financial fraud at Yale University and the University of Wisconsin. ..."
Jim Chanos, founder and managing partner of New York-based Kynikos Associates, has spent
much of his career studying financial fraud. He shares his thoughts with the Institute for New
Economic Thinking -- where he is a member of theGlobal Partners Council-- on cryptocurrency, fraud coming from China, and why
fraudsters may currently be on the rise. Chanos teaches a course on the history of financial
fraud at Yale University and the University of Wisconsin.
Lynn Parramore: As someone who pays a lot of attention to financial fraud, you've noticed
that this activity has a connection to business cycles. Can you explain that and say where you
think we are right now?
Jim Chanos: I've found in my research and my teaching that what I would call the "fraud
cycle" -- instances of large-scale financial fraud over multiple platforms and companies in the
financial markets in the modern era (the last 500 years) -- follows the financial cycle with a
lag. That means that as business and particularly financial markets improve, peoples' sense of
disbelief and caution that they've often earned from the previous downturn begins to erode.
Schemes that before might have seemed too good to be true begin to be embraced.
LP: So people relax their financial vigilance.
JC: Exactly. The longer the cycle goes on, the easier it becomes for the dishonest and the
fraudsters to ply their trade because people will begin to believe in things that they
shouldn't financially. As cycles go on, we tend to see higher instances of fraud. In recent
memory, there were clearly, from a legal and prosecutorial point of view, more cases of fraud
after the dot-com bull market of the late '90s, which went from 1991 to 2000. Many of the
dot-coms turned out to be fraudulent. We then saw the Enrons and the WorldComs and the Tycos.
Frauds generally come to light after the financial cycle turns down. We saw this again after
the crisis following the bull market of 2003 to 2007.
What happens is that the new capital going into these things dries up. Many frauds are, by
their nature, Ponzi schemes that require new money and new investors to pay off the old
investors. When people want their money back, the insolvency of the venture is discovered. John
Kenneth Galbraith has this wonderful term called "the bezzle" [inventory of undiscovered
embezzlement]. That's the heart of the fraud, the nature of the fraud in the company. He points
out that in the up phase, there's this wonderful period where both the fraudsters and the
defrauded think they're getting richer. An interesting observation, right?
Of course, it works the other way on the down side. That's what I mean when I tell my
students to follow the cycles and be on guard the longer a financial and business cycle lasts
because people will get a little bit jiggy with their capital. They're willing to take risks,
willing to believe things. So today we've got bitcoin and ICOs [initial coin offerings], which
went ballistic in 2017. I suspect going forward we're going to see more and more evidence of
questionable companies as this bull market keeps advancing and aging. We're now nine years into
this bull market, same as the '90s, so I suspect that now things are starting to percolate. I
think bitcoin and the ICOs are just one manifestation of that.
LP: I just passed a huge crowd gathered around the New York Hilton Midtown for "Blockchain
Week NYC," a series of events put on to showcase the city as a hub for blockchain jobs. You
could feel the excitement in the air with all the attendees and reporters jostling on the
sidewalk. What's your take on all this hype?
JC: At one blockchain gathering there were a set of rented Lamborghinis parked outside to
entice the traders and day traders and retail investors: this, too, can be yours if you hop
aboard the blockchain and bitcoin bonanza!
I teach about a guy from the early 18th century called John Law. He was the architect of one
of the great financial frauds of all time -- the Mississippi scheme of 1718-20 in Paris. (He's
also the guy who founded New Orleans. He sent settlers there who named it after his benefactor,
the Duc d'Orléans).
Law was the first person to write about the need for foreign governments to have fiat
currencies and not be tethered to gold and silver. Because of the power of taxation and the
power of the governments through enforcement and force of arms, they could enforce their
currency to be used, and because of their ability to expand the monetary base and do all the
kinds of things that central banks now do, it was in their best interest to do so.
This was revolutionary back then. Law's failed experiment, which added lots of fraudulent
bells and whistles to that scheme in France, put the idea on the backburner for a while. But
economic historians have revisited it now and his early papers are genius. They're up there
with some of the stuff Keynes wrote in the 20th century in terms of the way he envisioned
monetary systems to work. Law points out sort of obliquely the positive ways in which the
citizenry would come to accept and trust paper money. Not only would the power of the state
compel you to accept it, but the power of the state also acted as a third party to adjudicate
problems, fraud and act as a lender of last resort in times of crisis instead of going down
into a deflationary spiral. That was the positive side.
In the new bitcoin and crypto-craze, the whole idea is that we need to get away from fiat
currencies by creating our own fiat currency for which there is no lender of last resort, no
third party adjudicator. For those who believe it's a store of value in the coming apocalypse,
the idea is that you're going to have to safeguard your key under a mountain with fingerprint
and eye scan security while the hordes are outside your bunker trying to get in to use it --
for what, I have no idea. Because for those who believe that you need to own digital currency
as a store of value in the worst-case scenario, that's exactly the case in which a digital
currency will work the least. Food would work the best!
LP: Sounds like a libertarian fantasy.
JC: That's exactly what it is. And if you say, well, fiat currency is going to bring the
world down, which could, of course, happen, then I say the last thing I'd want to own is
bitcoin if the grid goes down.
LP: It also sounds like the perfect realm for people looking to commit fraud.
JC: Well, there you go. Bitcoin is still the area for people who are trying to avoid
taxation or other examinations of their transactions. That's one thing where I think it
probably still has utility, but the governments have figured that out.
Last year, just as the mania was really going, an early convert who had gotten in early and
had made a lot of money wrote this humorous blog about trying to cash in his winnings, if you
will. He chronicled telling the exchange that he wanted to convert his bitcoins into U.S.
dollars and have them wired into his U.S. bank. It took something like eight or ten days and
numerous follow-ups and phone calls. The funniest part was his having to fax his passport to
Lithuania.
LP: That doesn't sound very high-tech or efficient.
JC: Exactly. Using a fax machine to Eastern Europe struck me as kind of the antithesis of
what you're trying to do here. So this is simply a security speculation game masquerading as a
technological breakthrough in monetary policy. Someone at Grant's interest rate conference
recently said that it was as if we had intentionally created a "monetary Somalia."
LP: So buyer beware.
JC: I think so.
LP: You recently appeared in a fascinating documentary, " The China Hustle ," which concerns the reverse
merger boom in which I believe 400 Chinese companies came to market on the U.S. stock exchange.
Can you say a bit about what these mergers are and how U.S. investors got conned?
JC: A reverse merger is simply when the company in question merges into a defunct,
U.S.-listed corporation, typically on NASDAQ, which has been moribund for years but has still
been filing with the SEC, so it may have a listing somewhere.
We can see these reverse mergers in the late '90s when they became dot-com companies, and
also in the late '70s, when gold was a hot asset and they became gold mining companies. In the
last ten years, they started to appear to take advantage of the growth of Asia and the growth
of China. It's very easy to sell small, retail investors on this idea. It sounds very
appealing.
What happens is you merge the Happy Flower High Tech Company into some defunct company and
you rename the old company with the Chinese name. Voila! The Chinese company is now public in
the U.S. without having to file an IPO [initial public offering] prospectus with the SEC. You
don't go through underwriters, a due diligence process, or a vetting process where the SEC asks
questions on the IPO. But you now have a company on NASDAQ or the U.S. Stock Exchange.
This is what "The China Hustle" was about -- this raft of companies that merged with
companies you've never heard of and created, instantaneously, reasonably large-capitalization
companies operating in China but trading in the U.S. Of course, therein lies the rub. How do
you really know what was going on in the operating company? How good was the accounting? How
good were the representations of the outside auditors and representatives of the boards? It
turned out that a lot of them were frauds.
LP: So I'm an investor and I hear that this Chinese company has come to market in the U.S.
and it has been audited by Pricewaterhouse, Deloitte, or some other well-known auditing firm. I
think it must be legit. What's wrong with this assumption?
JC: There are two big problems there. When people always ask me about the large frauds we've
dealt with, they ask, who were the auditors? And I say, who cares? Every great fraud was
basically audited, most of the time by major firms. In China it's even worse than that because
although the statements might say Pricewaterhouse, if you read the fine print it actually says,
"Pricewaterhouse reviewed the work by an affiliate in China." So it's often a smaller firm that
has a relationship with the big firm that actually does the auditing. Pricewaterhouse just puts
its stamp of approval on that.
LP: Sounds kind of like what the big credit ratings agencies did by giving triple-A ratings
to securities that were fraudulent in the lead-up to the financial crisis.
JC: Right. But you have to remember that auditors are not the financial check that most
people think they are. The financial statements are not prepared by auditors. The financial
statements in publicly traded firms are prepared by management and the auditors review the
statements. Unless they have reason to believe something is amiss or are pointed to something
being amiss by a whistleblower or short seller or journalist, they're not going to detect
anything most of the time.
LP: Auditors are not detectives.
JC: No they're not. They're really paid by the company to review the company's own financial
statements. So at the end of the day, this still comes back to the management and the board. Do
you trust them? Do you believe what they're telling you? What is your ability to check?
LP: In the case of the Happy Flower Company, I can't really check.
JC: Not only that, one of the points that the movie made very well was that even if you find
the smoking gun and the chairman runs off with all the money and you're left with nothing, the
recourse to western investors is virtually nil. None of these CEOs are prosecuted. The view of
the Chinese court system, which, I should point out, is an arm of the Communist Party, not the
Chinese state, is, "sorry, but no jurisdiction here. You're a western investor and you ought to
know better."
LP: Can the SEC do anything?
JC: The SEC did announce a crackdown after the fact, but besides monitoring companies'
ongoing disclosures and trying to halt trading in the securities if there is evidence of a
problem, there isn't a lot that the SEC can do. These are Chinese companies.
LP: How do you view the climate for financial fraud under the Trump administration? I note
that Trump's SEC nominee, who was sworn in as chair last May, was an Alibaba IPO advisor -- the
Silicon Valley lawyer Jay Clayton. You've expressed skepticism about Alibaba.
JC: I have, and so far I've been wrong, at least with respect to the stock price. But I
challenge anyone to explain to me cogently what Alibaba is doing with all its capital and
flipping companies back and forth to insider and revaluing the prices of companies upward.
Be that as it may, the real issue is, what is the sense of the administration? I'll say one
thing, when the George W. Bush administration started -- remember, he was the MBA president --
he came in on a pro-business platform and was seen as very pro-business and anti-regulation,
similar to the Trump administration. But when the wave of fraud started hitting in '01 and '02,
I have to give the John Ashcroft Justice Department a lot of credit. They did a 180 and went
after the bad guys hard.
I always joke that the two presidents who have put more executives in jail than all the rest
combined were both named Bush. W's father was instrumental in prosecuting the S&L [Saving
and Loan] crooks back in the early '90s and put about 3,000 of them in jail. I think they
realized that the public was losing money in the stock markets, not just because of the frauds,
but because the long dot-com bull market had ended. People were upset. Then when you had the
revelations of WorldCom and Enron on top of it, there was a sense that every corporation was
crooked and this was going to have exogenous impacts on the economy and the market as a whole.
I think they correctly realized that we've got to basically show that we're the cops on the
beat. And they did.
That did not happen, as you well know, after the GFC [Global Financial Crisis], for lots of
reasons, including a Justice Department that actually took the extraordinary step of admitting
that it considered economic and financial market factors in figuring out when, or if, to
prosecute a company. So justice now had an economic angle to it. We sort of know how we think
about the Trump administration -- I noted the other day that the Education Department seems to
have shut down its division investigating fraud at the for-profit education companies, which
are one of the biggest cesspools out there in terms of financial fraud and fraud upon the
taxpayer. So that's not a good sign. On the other hand, public opinion can move things quickly
as it did in the Enron case. We saw a real stepped-up effort to go after the bad guys.
I think a lot depends on circumstances at the time. We're still in the expansionary phase of
the financial cycle and, arguably, the fraud cycle, so we'll have to see what happens once that
rolls over.
LP: Let's talk about emerging markets. Do you think a big crisis could develop as investors
head back to the U.S. as the Federal Reserve raises rates here?
JC: The emerging markets are always sort of the end of the wick, right? They always go down
the most when fear is out there and they go up the most when people are euphoric. Emerging
markets had a really rough go of it from 2011 right on to 2015. They never really recovered a
lot from the GFC. Then someone hit the light switch and whether it was things changing in
Brazil or [former president] Jacob Zuma being ousted in South Africa or South America turning
the corner. I would note that Argentina issued a one hundred-year bond a year ago that was
oversubscribed, and this week Argentina went back hat in hand to the IMF [International
Monetary Fund], so we've had this amazingly quick shot across the bow in the emerging markets.
We'll see if it's the start of something bigger. But it's sort of amazing to me that after only
a two-year respite, places like Argentina and Turkey seem to find themselves in trouble again.
Time will tell.
LP: One thing you said in "The China Hustle" is that we've never seen a credit build-up like
the one we've seen in China today that hasn't been followed by a major financial crisis. That
sounds pretty worrisome.
JC: I'm always told confidently it won't matter because they owe it to themselves. Well, if
that was that were the case, then Zimbabwe would be one of the wealthiest countries in the
world today!
The build-up of China's debt and the speed of that build-up is nothing short of stunning.
There's a new book that I recommend, " China's Great Wall of
Debt ." It does a great job of chronicling just how massive this build-up has been in the
last ten years following China's stimulus in '09 to pull the world out of the GFC. You've heard
me call it the "treadmill to hell" because you have to put more and more debt on the books to
keep the growth going and this is where China is finding itself. If they don't increase the
debt, the economy hits stall speed and for all the talk about innovation and technology and
transferring to a consumer-driven, technology-driven economy, the evidence on that is kind of
scant. It's still basically an economy driven by debt-driven investment, which is still over
40% of GDP. I think when we started talk about China it was 46% and I think the most recent
number is about 43%. So it's improved slightly over the eight or nine years, but not much.
China is still basically a giant construction site and shows no signs of changing. In fact,
with the One Belt One Road Initiative [a project launched in 2013 to develop trade routes to
connect China to the world], they're trying to basically export their construction capabilities
and credit to countries along what we would call the Old Silk Road.
LP: In terms of the overall picture of fraud, are we any better off than we were after the
financial crisis?
JC: Personally, I think we're worse off. I think we were better off after the dot-com era.
Not because we enacted Sarbanes Oxley [passed by the U.S. Congress in 2002 to protect investors
from fraudulent corporate accounting activities] but because the public saw that there was
justice. The bad guys got caught and at least if I lost money, they paid the price of their
freedom. That never happened in '08 and '09 for a variety of reasons. We've just had a
continuation of the cycle and the cycle is still going.
LP: So fraudsters are emboldened?
JC: Right. And now we come back to bitcoin. What's your recourse if you lose money in an ICO
traded on an exchange offshore? If people lose lots of money, there will be an outcry, but no
recourse. So we're building into something. I suspect it's in front of us and it will be
interesting to see what happens.
LP: What happens in a capitalist system to good people who want to behave ethically? How can
they succeed in an atmosphere in which fraud and unethical behavior are constantly
happening?
JC: I think capitalism is still the best game in town, but the very best games have good
sets of rules, and, even more importantly, good umpires and referees. When the game becomes
tilted and the house has the advantage, people tend to stop playing.
When the system is seen as corrupt or dishonest, there's a political price. We saw this
after the GFC. People in New York and San Francisco and Boston might be fine with everything,
but in the South and Midwest, where you're from and where I'm from, there's still this general
sense that "the bastards got away with it and I'm still suffering." So there is an exogenous
cost to this where people don't feel that there was justice. They feel that they were taken
advantage of by those sharpies on the coasts. It brings out some of the worst in people, of
course, so that's one small step, then, away from social problems like anti-Semitism and
anti-immigrant feelings. It's us v. them. Nobody is looking after us.
Economists and financial analysts have a hard time quantifying all these things, but I think
that the point is that fair markets where there's a set of rules, where there's a cop on the
beat, where there are regulators making sure that people are adhering to the rules, are far
better markets than one in which caveat emptor is written above the casino. I think it behooves
us as a society to understand that capitalism is an amazing driver of progress and prosperity
and wealth, but it can be diverted. There's a dark side to it if we don't play by the rules and
if we don't encourage capital formation from all members of society who don't feel they're
getting a fair shake.
Everybody gets that capitalism involves risk-taking. But the asymmetric situation where
people who are dishonest get away with it while people who are honest and provide capital get
left holding the bag will really stunt capitalism. I think that's the issue which the vigilance
on fraud, why it's so important. It is part of the capitalistic system. There will always be
people trying to take advantage of other people. It's still better than when the whole system
is flawed, like totalitarian communism, where corruption starts at the very top in terms of the
planning itself. But on the other hand, the counterfactual is that it could be so much better
if everybody is participating and understands that there is a strong set of rules and penalties
when you break them and justice as well. That's what I think has been lacking in the last
generation.
Only in cryptocurrency can an enterprise that calls itself "ethical" be represented by
someone who is both an "award winning journalist" and "PR relations" pic.twitter.com/9lMcXPWSb3 -- Izabella Kaminska
(@izakaminska) June 5,
2018
Don't laugh so soon This came across my Twitter
feed a couple days ago, and I was a little taken aback.
I really like the idea of community currencies, but I'm wondering why on earth you'd want
to get them tangled up with blockchain for the purpose of trading/conversion ?
Just make a Global CC and have that be that or am I oversimplifying this?
#OrHaveIMissedSomething
PS: I also take exception to using the term Bancor as well, given what it's original purpose was. Not too sure
#JMK would be down with the blockchain .
Why wouldn't a Zimbabwe type country embrace cryptocurrency as money of the iRealm?
Seems like it wouldn't be that hard to get outsiders to believe in it, as long as it was
pretty vague, and most wouldn't know that the very same country issued $100 Trillion
banknotes not so long ago.
Zimbabwe didn't need printing facilities when they were cranking out oodles of currency,
as it was all printed in Germany. (who got stiffed on payment, if memory serves)
'John Law was the first person to write about the need for foreign governments to have
fiat currencies and not be tethered to gold and silver. Law's failed experiment, which added
lots of fraudulent bells and whistles to that scheme in France, put the idea on the back
burner for a while. But economic historians have revisited it now and his early papers are
genius.' -- Jim Chanos
This is bizarre historical revisionism. John Law didn't add "fraudulent bells and
whistles" -- fraud was the whole point of fiat currencies, then [1720 -- Mississippi
bubble] and now.
Fiat currencies were born in original sin, that is. When Bubble III blows like Kilauea,
the central banksters who engineered this global calamity may find themselves (like Law)
involuntarily expatriated by angry mobs of peasants with pitchforks.
Currency is born in sin, and may only be cleansed by the divine power of God, err, Gold.
Only by having supreme faith in its shininess will your economy be saved. Do not question how
or why, as Gold works in mysterious way. Au men.
I don't understand Jim . central banks have been staffed largely by monetarist and quasi
monetarists throughout the entire neoliberal period. Then you have the vast majority of the
politicians holding the same view.
But anyway I thought quality held true in both cases, so what agenda threatened the
quality of fiat – at onset. I mean what mob forwarded all the innovation [tm],
completely ignored poor or criminal underwriting standards, completely miss-priced risk, was
completely oblivious to obvious gaming everything for "personal" profit.
I really can't see how fiat forced some people to act in such an anti social manner by its
will alone. I mean that sort of broad social dominance is usually reserved for social
narratives.
Sorry but I really never understood the logic behind the money did it thingy .
I do wonder about folks who describe alternative forms of governance with a very clear
lack of understanding of political/economic arrangements.
You can't really have a totalitarian communism. Chanos should do some history homework on
what the USSR was, and why the system was doomed to fail starting all the way back with
Lenin. Lenin didn't believe that the Russians were ready for the revolution, he considered it
a holding pattern waiting for the revolution to happen in Germany.
Just because you (or an autocrat like Stalin) call something a communism or socialism,
doesn't make it so.
"But the asymmetric situation where people who are dishonest get away with it while people
who are honest and provide capital get left holding the bag will really stunt
capitalism."
Good. I can't think of any better evidence that the system is archaic and if left
unchecked eats itself. Chanos might think about re-reading some Marx.
"I'm always told confidently it won't matter because they owe it to themselves." Isn't
that the basis of MMT? Heck, that means Murica is heading towards eternal prosperity.
I'm still wondering if the long game is to use a crypto currency as a petro currency, to
supplant the US dollar. That way, countries (and corporations) with trade surpluses with the
US can hoard their surpluses in the crypto-cum-petro currency rather than US assets (bonds
and stocks). In an asset that has neutrality with respect to any nation state. Just like gold
used to have.
There's a book that suggests this line of thinking, but doesn't really seem to chase it
down adequately: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BPM3GZQ . See review
on Frances Coppola's website.
There is a 25 minute clip here that describes the creation of money and the recording of
transactions (the blockchain) and does not seem fraudulent in any way:
Russian president Vladimir Putin gave a tense interview to Austria's ORF television channel which
at times got so heated, he spoke in German to ask host Armin Wolf to let him finish his answers.
The interview was held ahead of Putin's Tuesday meeting with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and
Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache during a trip to Vienna, the first since Putin's March
inauguration to his second consecutive term (and fourth term in total).
After several interruptions by Wolf, Putin asked the host to "be patient," before switching to
Wolf's mother tongue of German to ask him to put a cork in it. "Seien Sie so nett, lassen Sie mich
etwas sagen (Please be so kind as to let me say something)," said Putin.
When the topic of troll farms came up, Putin said that Moscow "has nothing to do" with them,
adding that claims by Western media that a single Russian businessman, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was able
to influence the US election.
Prigozhin and Putin are associates, however Putin said he has no knowledge of his online
activities. The Russian president then brought up George Soros as an example of the double
standards being applied to those accused of meddling in foreign affairs.
"
There are rumors circulating now that Mr. Soros is planning to make the Euro highly
volatile,
" Putin said
quoted by RT.
"Experts are already discussing this. Ask the [US] State Department why he is
doing this.
The State Department will say that it has nothing to do with them - rather it
is Mr. Soros' private affair. With us, it is Mr. Prigozhin's private affair. This is my answer
.
Are you satisfied with it?"
* * *
MH17
Putin said that Russia has been blocked from participating in the ongoing international
investigation into the 2014 downing of flight MH17, which Russia has been recently blamed for.
Russian experts "have been denied access to the investigation," said Putin, while Russia's
arguments are "not taken into consideration" because nobody "is interested in hearing us out."
Ukraine, meanwhile, has been given access to the probe.
* * *
North Korea
On North Korea, Putin says that the prospect of a full-scale military conflict with Pyonyang
would be "dreadful," considering that the two nations are neighbors - and some North Korean nuclear
test sites are located near the Russian border.
Although Russia "pins great hopes on the personal meeting between [US] President
Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un," the path to the denuclearization of the Korean
peninsula is a "two-way road,"
Putin explained. "
If the North Korean leader is
backing up his intentions with practical actions, for example, giving up new tests of ballistic
missiles, new nuclear tests, the other side should reciprocate in a tangible manner
,"
he said, calling regular US military drills in the area "counterproductive." -
RT
* * *
Crimea
During perhaps the most heated moment in the interview, Putin was asked under what conditions
Russia would hand Crimea back to Ukraine, to which the Russian president firmy stated: "There are
no such conditions and there can never be."
Crimeans overwhelmingly voted to rejoin Russia in a hotly contested 2014 vote that the West
considers illegitimate and rigged. Putin stressed that the annexation happened after an
"unconstitutional armed coup" in Kiev, and it was the Crimeans who decided their own fate.
"Crimea gained independence through the free will of the Crimeans, expressed in an open
referendum, not as a result of an invasion by Russian forces." -Vladimir Putin
Following the annexation, Putin said "the first thing we did was increase our contingent to
guard our Armed Forces, our military facilities, because we immediately saw that they were being
threatened," adding that the mostly Russian population in Crimea "
sensed danger, when
trains started bringing aggressive nationalists there, when buses and personal vehicles were
blocked, people naturally wanted to protect themselves.
"
"The first thing that occurred was to restore the rights that Ukraine itself had issued by
granting Crimea autonomy."
watching the full interview. i have noticed that Putin
always shifts his posture when he wants to call
someone a fucking idiot but restrains himself with
more appropriate words. He never gets nervous or
rattled...
I watched it too. If you compare his patient,
methodical answers, based on fact (IMO) to those of
every US/EU NATO leader, then you see why he is
demonized by the parasitoid corporate fascists and
their media. They covet Russia's resources and are
desperate to control them, having brought us to the
brink of nuclear war in threatening Russian with
troops, weapons, war games and missiles on its
border. Imagine what would have happened if the
geography were the borders of the US and Canada and
Mexico.
It is possible that Putin's patience will
be taken as weakness, especially in Syria and
Ukraine. At some point he will have to give an
order to respond militarily, if he doesn't respond,
then the parasitoid corporate fascists will commit
a full scale military assault in an area of
conflict of their choice.
Lord Jacob Rothchild HATES Putin. Just look at the
Yukos Oil case in the London courts. Try to find
(keeps getting scrubbed) online
The Sunday
Times article from November 2, 2003 "Rothschild is the
New Power Behind Yukos"
for a rare
glimpse behind the curtain.
Vladimir
Vladimirovich took back for the state Ł8,000,000,000
of shares, thought to be the property of Mikhail
Khodorkovsky, but actually it emerged were controlled
by Lord Rothschild.
This is just one
Rothchild-1990s-theft-repatriated that we know of.
There would be more i suspect.
The beauty of your comments shows that you are becoming a minority by
the day. So many people are waking up to the idiocy of the propaganda
spewed by you and your "highly educated" ilk - as I suppose you view
yourself.
"America" is an Israeli colony "controlled" by mostly
Jewish Zionists
Russian ads did not have anything to do with the election results. It
was a minuscule number of ads, compared to what both of the campaigns
ran. We all comment on foreign elections, and I am sure the people in
those countries take it with a grain of salt, thinking we do not know
what we are talking about.
We have a bunch of people in the USA who take quite an interest in
saving the global people, while their own country is full of major
underemployment, with another housing crisis of an even worse type
than the one in 2008 mounting. Despite all of that, these Anericans sink
all kinds of money into trying to control what happens in foreign
countries. They think they can take on famines and dictators in
countries with very different social structures, 8,000 miles away.
Some of it is likely naively sincere and arising from a natural
interest. It is also a common PR maneuver with money-motivated
people, with everyone from rock stars to politicians getting pretty
absorbed in what goes on in other countries for whatever reason.
It is not without plausibility that a businessperson launched that ad
campaign on his own.
No wonder all US official assets are fully engaged to discourage Americans
from listening to what foreign leaders actually say. We are to rely on
our apparatchiks -- and their clerical assistants in the ever-trusty US press
corp -- to tell us what they are "really" saying and doing.
The key
word Putin uttered in this interview is that they do what is
pragmatic
.
His political party specifically eschews any particular ideological basis for
policy. That's rather novel, when you think about it. If that attitude were to
sweep the world, it seems likely diplomacy would achieve a lot more tangible
progress and require a lot less frequent fallback on primitive kinetic
"negotiations".
I don't trust Putin on much of anything but I LOVE the way he was handling
himself during that interview. Cool as a cucumber. The man deserves credit
for being that smooth. He is a master of the art of being interviewed.
The handful of other
Russian elites present at Davos-among them the oligarchs Boris Berezovsky,
VladimirGusinsky, and MikhailKhodorkovsky, and the politician
Anatoly Chubais-watched in dismay, fearing a Communist takeover,
The American billionaire George Soros feared it too and reportedly tol
the bankers and businessmen over coffee, "Boys, your time is over,"
Chubais recalled, "I saw many of my good friends, presidents of maj
American companies, European companies, who were simply dancing
around Zyuganov, trying to catch his eye, peering at him. These were
the world's most powerful businessmen, with world-famous' names.
who with their entire appearance demonstrated that they were seeking
support of the future president of Russia, because it was clear to everyone
that Zyuganov was going to be the future president of Russia, an
now they needed to build a relationship with him. So, this shook me up!"
It
was at this moment, according to Hoffman, that Chubais and the
Russian tycoons "decided on the spot to try and save Boris Yeltsin."
Chubais phoned Moscow to alert others to the situation. He then heI,
a press conference in which he denounced Zyuganov's "classic Cornmunist
lie" and warned that his election would "lead to bloodshed and
civil war." The oligarchs set aside differences and held several private
meetings in Davos hotel rooms, where they strategized over how to
defeat the Zyuganov threat. The result was the "Davos Pact": an agreement
between Chubais and the oligarchs that he would lead the anti-
Communist campaign and they would fund it-and him-generously.
The subsequent months saw a massive media offensive as "money
poured into advertising campaigns, into regional tours, into bribing
journalists"-all supported by the oligarchs (who owned the major TV
stations and newspapers) and orchestrated by Chubais. Yeltsin's subsequent
victory over Zyuganov later that summer changed the course of
Russia and can be traced back in part to the events that took place in
an otherwise sleepy alpine village that February.
Excerpted from "Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are
Making"
At last some one with
BALLS
to take on the
Mother
Fucker SOROS
, if the Sicilians do not finish the Italian job,
Soros mother fucker already has pissed off the Italians.
I believe we are prisoners of so-called "democracy"
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
July 13, 2017
The Prisoners of "Democracy"
Screwing the masses was the forte of the political establishment. It did not really matter which political party was in power,
or what name it went under, they all had one ruling instinct, tax, tax, and more taxes. These rapacious politicians had an endless
appetite for taxes, and also an appetite for giving themselves huge raises, pension plans, expenses, and all kinds of entitlements.
In fact one of them famously said, "He was entitled to his entitlements." Public office was a path to more, and more largesse
all paid for by the compulsory taxes of the masses that were the prisoners of "democracy."
[read more at link below] http://graysinfo.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-prisoners-of-democracy.html
responding to PG's comments and the comments of Rational Zionist, among them, being many
NY Intellectuals, invented mugged reality (Neoconism), but party slithering is a another name
for divide and conquer.
Fudmier's example as to how to control the vote:
You present an idea to 6 people (there are seven votes including yours, you are the one);
virtually everyone is indifferent or against your idea. Before the vote, how can you make the
outcome favorable to your side? Divide the opinions on a related subject so that the people
must vote for your idea if they take a side on the related subject. I am always either a
Democrat or a Republican, cannot vote for anything the other party presents, no matter how
good it is. So make the idea Republican or Democratic.
Here is a simple example:
no division 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Total votes 7. Voted for me 1 (myself only) I lose
divide by party D R D R D R R Total votes 7. Voted for me (3 republican votes and myself) 4 I
win
As the simple analysis suggests: it is easy to win a vote when the idea is Glued to the
two AAs (glue, attached, or associated). The unpopular idea Glued and attached or associated
with the political party issue splits the vote (such activity divides and weakens the
political power inherent in the voting power of the masses). For example, if we make the vote
to turn off all of the drinking water. the only vote will be mine, but if we say turn off the
drinking water to all but those who are green, we divide the vote. and control the
outcome.
This brings us to the democratic dilemma: should the non green people be included in vote
on that issue? In fact, it is exactly this problem that those who wrote the constitution
intended to establish.
The aggressive foreign policies and national security positions mentioned by PG have been
attached to the standard Jewish line; in other words the duty of a Jew to recognize
him/herself as a Jew and to vote as a member of the clan has been glued to the AAs. It is
nearly impossible to vote for Jewish interest and not vote to demolish Palestinian homes.
I am hoping this list can develop ways to analyze current events into a set of fair play
rules, reading, learning and analyzing books, journals and events and writing about them is
not enough; some kind of action is needed to bring into reality the findings of these
readings, learning and analysis produce. The best way to offset misleading, false or invented
propaganda is to force it to into a rule based debunking process. Simple rules that everyone
can learn, understand and adopt.
Capitalist Russia and its resources represent a major competitor to the resources and
schemes of the capitalist neocon led West. Hating Russia is like being a democrat or a
republican, it keeps the pharaoh options open.
"... Just because a country is democratic doesn't mean it is self-governing, as America is quickly discovering. ..."
"... John Adams warned that democracy "soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide." ..."
"... James Madison was equally concerned with the pernicious consequences of large-scale democracy, arguing that democracies "have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." ..."
"... Even George Washington had his doubts about whether democracy was consistent with wise government. Democracies are slow to correct their errors, and those who try to guide the public down a wise course frequently become the object of popular hatred ..."
"... What we've got now is the tyranny of the ..."
"... minority . It is not "the people" who govern the nation. Instead, the state is run by permanent civil servants, largely unaccountable to any popular control, and professional politicians who are usually hand-picked by party insiders (Hillary over Bernie, anyone?). This has made it such that the actual 2016 election was more akin to ratifying a foregone conclusion than a substantive choice over the direction of future policy. ..."
"... If you're a student of politics, you've probably heard of the iron law of oligarchy . The phrase was coined by Robert Michels, an early 20th-century social scientist, in his landmark study of political parties. The iron law of oligarchy is simple: minorities rule majorities, because the former are organized and the latter are not. This is true even within democratic institutions. As power was concentrated in the federal government, the complexity of the tasks confronting civil servants and legislators greatly increased. This required a durable, hierarchical set of institutions for coordinating the behavior of political insiders. Durability enabled political insiders to coordinate their plans across time, which was particularly useful in avoiding the pesky constraints posed by regular elections. Hierarchy enabled political insiders to coordinate plans across space, making a permanently larger government both more feasible and more attractive for elites. The result, in retrospect, was predictable: a massive executive branch bureaucracy that's now largely autonomous, and a permissive Congress that's more than happy to serve as an institutionalized rubber stamp. ..."
"... One of the cruel ironies of the political status quo is that democracy is unquestioningly associated with self-governance, yet in practice, the more democratic a polity grows, the less self-governing it remains. ..."
Just because a country is democratic doesn't mean it is self-governing, as America is
quickly discovering.
Something has gone wrong with America's political institutions. While the United States is,
on the whole, competently governed, there are massive problems lurking just beneath the
surface. This became obvious during the 2016 presidential election. Each party's nominee was
odious to a large segment of the public; the only difference seemed to be whether it was an
odious insurgent or an odious careerist. Almost two years on, things show little signs of
improving.
What's to blame? One promising, though unpopular, answer is: democracy itself. When
individuals act collectively in large groups and are not held responsible for the consequences
of their behavior, decisions are unlikely to be reasonable or prudent. This design flaw in
popular government was recognized by several Founding Fathers. John Adams warned that
democracy "soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not
commit suicide."
James Madison was equally concerned with the pernicious consequences of large-scale
democracy, arguing that democracies "have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention;
have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in
general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."
Even George Washington had his doubts about whether democracy was consistent with wise
government. Democracies are slow to correct their errors, and those who try to guide the public
down a wise course frequently become the object of popular hatred : "It is one of the
evils of democratical governments, that the people, not always seeing and frequently misled,
must often feel before they can act right; but then evil of this nature seldom fail to work
their own cure," Washington wrote. "It is to be lamented, nevertheless, that the remedies are
so slow, and that those, who may wish to apply them seasonably are not attended to before they
suffer in person, in interest and in reputation."
Given these opinions, it is unsurprising that the U.S. Constitution contains so many other
mechanisms for ensuring responsible government. Separation of powers and checks and balances
are necessary to protect the people from themselves. To the extent our political institutions
are deteriorating, the Founders' first instinct would be to look for constitutional changes,
whether formal or informal, that have expanded the scope of democracy and entrusted to the
electorate greater power than they can safely wield, and reverse them.
This theory is simple, elegant, and appealing. But it's missing a crucial detail.
American government is largely insulated from the tyranny of the majority. But at least
since the New Deal, we've gone too far in the opposite direction. What we've got now is the
tyranny of theminority . It is not "the people" who govern the nation.
Instead, the state is run by permanent civil servants, largely unaccountable to any popular
control, and professional politicians who are usually hand-picked by party insiders (Hillary
over Bernie, anyone?). This has made it such that the actual 2016 election was more akin to
ratifying a foregone conclusion than a substantive choice over the direction of future
policy.
But now we confront a puzzle: the rise of the permanent government did coincide with
increased democratization. The administrative-managerial state, and its enablers in Congress,
followed from creative reinterpretations of the Constitution that allowed voters to make
decisions that the Ninth and Tenth amendments -- far and away the most ignored portion of the
Bill of Rights -- should have forestalled. As it turns out, not only are both of these
observations correct, they are causally related . Increasing the scope of popular
government results in the loss of popular control.
If you're a student of politics, you've probably heard of the iron law of
oligarchy . The phrase was coined by Robert Michels, an early 20th-century social
scientist, in his landmark study of political parties. The iron law of oligarchy is simple:
minorities rule majorities, because the former are organized and the latter are not. This is
true even within democratic institutions. As power was concentrated in the federal government,
the complexity of the tasks confronting civil servants and legislators greatly increased. This
required a durable, hierarchical set of institutions for coordinating the behavior of political
insiders. Durability enabled political insiders to coordinate their plans across time, which
was particularly useful in avoiding the pesky constraints posed by regular elections. Hierarchy
enabled political insiders to coordinate plans across space, making a permanently larger
government both more feasible and more attractive for elites. The result, in retrospect, was
predictable: a massive executive branch bureaucracy that's now largely autonomous, and a
permissive Congress that's more than happy to serve as an institutionalized rubber
stamp.
The larger the electorate, and the more questions the electorate is asked to decide, the
more important it is for the people who actually govern to take advantage of economies of scale
in government. If the federal government were kept small and simple, there would be little need
for a behemoth public sector. Developing durable and hierarchical procedures for organizing
political projects would be unfeasible for citizen-statesmen. But those same procedures become
essential for technocratic experts and career politicians.
One of the cruel ironies of the political status quo is that democracy is
unquestioningly associated with self-governance, yet in practice, the more democratic a polity
grows, the less self-governing it remains. This is why an upsurge of populism won't cure
what ails the body politic. It will either provoke the permanent and unaccountable government
into tightening its grip, or those who actually hold the power will fan the flames of popular
discontent, channeling that energy towards their continued growth and entrenchment. We have
enough knowledge to make the diagnosis, but not to prescribe the treatment. Perhaps there is
some comfort in knowing what political health looks like. G.K. Chesterton said it best in his
insight about the relationship between democracy and self-governance:
The democratic contention is that government is not something analogous to playing the
church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping
the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at
all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own
love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if
he does them badly . In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important
things must be left to ordinary men themselves
The first step towards renewed self-governance must be to reject the false dichotomy between
populism and oligarchy. A sober assessment shows that they are one in the same.
Alexander William Salter is an assistant professor in the Rawls College of Business at
Texas Tech University. He is also the Comparative Economics Research Fellow at TTU's Free
Market Institute. See more at his website: www.awsalter.com .
This was going fine until the author decided to blame civil servants for our nation's
problems. How about an electoral system that denies majority rule? A Congress that routinely
votes against things the vast majority want? A system that vastly overpriveleges corporations
and hands them billions while inequality grows to the point where the UN warns that our
country resembles a third world kleptocracy? Nope, sez this guy. It's just because there are
too many bureaucrats.
He avoids the 17th amendment which was one of the barriers to the mob, and the 19th that
removed the power of individual states to set the terms of suffrage.
Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Katy Stanton could simply have moved to Wyoming.
It might be useful to only have property taxpayers vote.
And the problem is the left. When voters rejected Gay Marriage (57% in California!) or benefits
for illegals, unelected and unaccountable judges reversed the popular will.
I find your use of the word populism interesting. Inasmuch the word is generally used when the
decisions of the populace is different from that which the technocrats or oligarchs would have
made for them. The author being part of the technocratic elite thinks that he and his ilk know
best. This entire article is just a lot of arguments in support of this false and self serving
idea.
Making the federal government "small" will not solve the problems the author describes or
really alludes to. The power vacum left by a receding federal government will just be occupied
by an unaccountable corporate sector. The recent dismantling of Toys R Us by a spawn of Bain
Capital is the most recent manifestation of the twisted and pathological thought process that
calls itself "free market capitalism." A small federal government did not end child labor,
fight the Depression, win WW II or pioneer space exploration. Conservatives love the mythology
of a government "beast" that must be decapitated so that "Liberty" may reign. There are far
more dangerous forces at work in American society that inhibit liberty and tax our personal
treasuries than the federal government.
1) The US is not and never has been a ' democracy ' It is a Democratic Republic ' which is not
the same as a ' democracy ' ( one person -- one vote period ) of which there is only one in the
entire world . Switzerland
2) A large part of what has brought us to this point is the worn out well past its sell by
Electoral College which not only no longer serves its intended purpose .
3) But the major reason why we're here to put it bluntly is the ' Collective Stupidity of
America ' we've volitionally become : addled by celebrity , addicted to entertainment and
consumed by conspiracy theory rather than researching the facts
It's time to end the pretension that we live in a democracy. It maybe useful to claim so
when the US is trying to open markets or control resources in 3rd world countries. It's at that
time that we're 'spreading democracy'. Instead it's like spreading manure.
The managerial state arose to quell the threat of class warfare. Ironically those who sought to
organize the proletariat under a vision of class-based empowerment clamored for the same. The
response over time was fighting fire with fire as the cliche goes becoming what the opposition
has sought but only in a modified form.
If we were able to devise a way for distributive justice apart from building a bloated
bureaucracy then perhaps this emergence of oligarchy could have been averted. What
alternative(s) exist for an equitable distribution of wealth and income to ameliorate poverty?
Openly competitive (so-called) markets? And the charity of faith-based communities? I think
not.
Democracy, like all systems requires maintenace. Bernard Shaw said that the flaw of pragmatism
is that any system that is not completely idiotic will work PROVIDED THAT SOMEONE PUT EFFORT IN
MAKING IT WORK.
We have come to think that Democracy is in automatic pilot, and does not require effort of
our part See how many do not bother to vote or to inform themselves.
Democracy is a fine, shiny package with two caveats in it "Batteries not included" And "Some
assembly required" FAilure to heed those leads to disaster.
I see where you are coming from, but I must disagree. We don't have a democracy in any real
way, so how can it have failed?
Despite massive propaganda of commission and omission, the majority of the American people
don't want to waste trillions of dollars on endless pointless oversees wars. The public be
damned: Trump was quickly beaten into submission and we are back to the status quo. The public
doesn't want to give trillions of dollars to Wall Street while starving Main Street of capital.
The public doesn't want an abusively high rate of immigration whose sole purpose is to flood
the market for labor, driving wages down and profits up. And so on.
Oswald Spengler was right. " in actuality the freedom of public opinion involves the
preparation of public opinion, which costs money; and the freedom of the press brings with it
the question of possession of the press, which again is a matter of money; and with the
franchise comes electioneering, in which he who pays the piper calls the tune."
"If the federal government were kept small and simple, there would be little need for a
behemoth public sector. Developing durable and hierarchical procedures for organizing political
projects would be unfeasible for citizen-statesmen. But those same procedures become essential
for technocratic experts and career politicians."
True, but this implies retarding government power as is will lead to an ultimate solution.
It will not. The sober truth is that a massive centralized national government has been
inevitable since the onset of the second world war or even beforehand with American
intervention in the colonoal Phillippines and the Great War. Becoming an empire requires
extensive power grabbing and becoming and maintaining a position as a world power requires
constant flexing of that power. Maintaining such a large population, military, and foreign
corps requires the massive public-works projects you speak of in order to keep the population
content and foreign powers in check. Failure to do so leads to chaos and tragic disaster that
would lead to such a nation a collapse in all existing institutions due to overcumbersome
responsibilities. These cannot be left to the provinces/states due to the massive amounts of
resources required to maintain such imperial ambitions along with the cold reality of state
infighting and possible seperatist leanings.
If one wishes to end the power of the federal government as is, the goal is not to merely
seek reform. The goal is to dismantle the empire; destroy the military might, isolate certain
diplomatic relations, reduce rates of overseas trade and reduce the economy as a whole, and
then finally disband and/or drastically reduce public security institutions such as the FBI,
CIA, and their affiliates. As you well know, elites and the greater public alike consider these
anathema.
However, if you wish to rush to this goal, keep in mind that dismantling the American empire
will not necessarily lead to the end of oppression and world peace even in the short term. A
power vacuum will open that the other world powers such as the Russian Federation and the PRC
will rush to fill up. As long as the world remains so interconnected and imperialist ambitions
are maintained by old and new world powers, even the smallest and most directly democratic
states will not be able to become self-governing for long.
Well, when, statistically speaking, half of the population has an IQ of less than 100 (probably
more than half now that USA has been invaded by the Third World) then a great number of people
are uninformed and easily manipulated voters. That is one of the great fallacies of democracy.
In an era when the word "democracy" is regarded as one of our deities to worship, this article
is a breath of fresh air. Notice how we accuse the Russians of trying to undermine our hallowed
"democracy." We really don't know what we mean when we use the term democracy, but it is a
shibboleth that has a good, comforting sound. And this idea that we could extend our
"democracy" by increasing the number of voters shows that we don't understand much at all.
Brilliant insights.
I believe we are prisoners of so-called "democracy"
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
July 13, 2017
The Prisoners of "Democracy"
Screwing the masses was the forte of the political establishment. It did not really matter
which political party was in power, or what name it went under, they all had one ruling
instinct, tax, tax, and more taxes. These rapacious politicians had an endless appetite for
taxes, and also an appetite for giving themselves huge raises, pension plans, expenses, and all
kinds of entitlements. In fact one of them famously said, "He was entitled to his
entitlements." Public office was a path to more, and more largesse all paid for by the
compulsory taxes of the masses that were the prisoners of "democracy."
[read more at link below] http://graysinfo.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-prisoners-of-democracy.html
You know how missionaries used to run around the globe forcing everyone to be a Christian?
And in the process, they destroyed native cultures and traditions?
Well, the same thing is happening today with Western "teen culture." It is being exported
around the world with disastrous effects.
Manufacturing Adolescence
Preindustrial societies mostly exhibit a continuum from childhood to adulthood. There is
generally no random cut off age where suddenly teens are given rights and expected to become
adults. Children seamlessly and gradually integrate into adulthood, with puberty rites being
the only major benchmark.
These societies were
"free-range parenting" before it was cool. Even toddlers have a large degree of autonomy.
The child is allowed to explore, and the mother provides the nurturing, feeding, and love at
the child's initiation. Young children participate in the work of their parents and elders and
interact and learn from people of all ages.
Children are raised from infancy alongside adults, instead of being segregated into peer
groups of the same age. They slowly learn from adults and take on more responsibilities by
emulating what they see.
What do kids see in the USA? A bunch of other kids with whom they have been grouped by
government and industry working in tandem . Instead of emulating adults, they act like
their peers. They want to dress the same, impress others with their technology, and keep up
with the same tv shows.
This creates an artificial sub-culture based on age. And it creates a new market.
As of 2011, teens spend over $200 billion
per year . Disney and all its many subsidiaries bring in about $45 billion a year. It is
not surprising that these industries now spend several billion dollars each year advertising to
teenagers. And the most effective form of advertising is to create a sub-culture through which
to sell products.
You can trace the roots of this phenomenon way back to the industrial revolution when social
structures got a big shakeup. Kids worked less alongside adults in family work and
apprenticeships. Instead, they were shipped off to compulsory public schools. They were grouped
by age and sex, and "educated" to be factory workers.
By contrasting Western adolescence with people of the same age in societies that are just
recently modernizing, we see that "teen turmoil" is not a natural phenomenon or an issue of
hormones. It has been created by Western culture and is now infecting industrializing
societies.
A similar story has played out for Kenyans, Moroccans, Australian aborigines, Canadian
Inuits, and many other preindustrial societies recently integrated into Western culture. Their
ways of life led to few social problems like unwed pregnancy, the breakdown of the family, drug
use, depression, violence, and general teenage angst and rebellious destructive behavior. But
that changed upon the introduction of Western television, schooling, and teen culture.
What is it that preindustrial teens are seeing on those television programs? Answer: teens
being treated like, and behaving like, irresponsible children.
When teens in preindustrial society are forced to attend Western-style schools, how are
they affected? Answer: they're cut off from adults and from the centrality of adult culture;
they're prevented from working, or at least making work the center of their lives; they
become controlled by adults instead of part of adult life; teens, rather than adults, become
their role models.
When Western mechanisms delay marriage, what is the outcome? Answer: because marriage is
the hallmark of adulthood in virtually all cultures, the delay of marriage also means the
delay of adulthood. It's no coincidence that Tom Smith's recent survey showed that Americans
now think adulthood begins at age twenty-six; the median age for first marriages in the
United States is now 26.8.
Pros and Cons of Western Culture
This is not a pro-tribalism post. I am absolutely not saying that society was better off in
a pre-industrial age. This is not a black or white issue. It is not like we have to choose
between being ignorantly blissful hunter-gatherers or isolated bitter consumer-robots.
Many cultures have benefited from industrialization in that the standard of living has
increased. But industrialization does not have to be imported 20th-century style. Modernization
can be introduced without causing the collapse of the old ways of life, which kept social
problems to a minimum.
We have the ability to see both extremes, isolate the biggest detrimental factors, and
mitigate them.
While the issues are all integrated, the main three problems are:
Exporting
Hollywood around the globe is another major problem. Teens are indoctrinated with the
creepy Hollywood executives' ideas of what it means to be a teen. They are sold sex, drugs, and
irresponsibility as fun, on the silver screen. And of course, there are plenty of real-world
products that they can buy to fast-track their emulation of the TV stars.
And finally, like it or not, families are a historically effective regulator of social
behaviors.
When it comes to teens around the world, just what kinds of practices and problems are we
exporting? The answer, it seems, is crime, ennui, anger, premarital sex, pregnancy, abortion,
drug and alcohol abuse, and family conflict. Consider just one of our more subtle exports:
according to a recent book on teens by psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Barbara
Schneider, American teens are almost completely isolated from adults . Teens typically spend
more than thirty-five hours per week surrounded by their peers in school and an additional
thirty-five hours per week with peers outside of school. That's two-thirds of their waking
hours. This is, according to the researchers, twelve more hours per week than teens in other
industrialized nations such as Italy and South Korea spend together, and it is probably sixty
hours a week more than teens spend together in many preindustrial societies.
Many American teens–perhaps half or more–also grow up with little access to
their father, and "for those lucky enough to have a father, the average teenager now spends
less than half an hour a week alone with his or her father." Half of this time is spent
watching television, "a situation that does not readily lend itself to quality parent-child
interactions." Father-teen interactions in the United States are certainly "not enough to
transmit the knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills that adult males should pass on to
their children." The child-adult continuum about which Jean Liedloff wrote is almost
completely absent in the united states, and we're sending our broken model of family life to
each and every village on earth.
Through our films, television programs, laws, religious beliefs, and schooling and
marriage practices, we're exporting a wide range of mechanisms that extend childhood well
past puberty and that isolate teens from adults. We're creating prolonged, turbulent,
Western-style adolescence, with all its inherent problems. We're creating generation gaps and
family conflicts where none existed before. And because we ourselves have no idea how to deal
with those problems, we're offering no solutions to the cultures we're corrupting.
Sure, pre-industrial cultures have their weak points, but so does the new way of life. You
can't objectively say one is better without specifically defining what makes it better.
Is increased teen depression and suicide worth having access to cell phones and internet? Is
increased violence and alcohol abuse worth an overall extended lifespan because of modern
medicine?
Luckily, we don't have to choose.
You can modernize without Westernizing. The three main contributors to the torment of
adolescence, and all the social problems which accompany them, are not necessary factors of
modernization.
I mentioned
"free range parenting" earlier. It is catching on in America. In a global world with more
information at our fingertips than ever before, we can cherry pick the best parts of each
culture, and apply those lessons to the modern world.
We don't have to live in a tribal-commune with no access to modern technology in order to
give young children autonomy to roam and explore the world.
We don't have to hunt in loin clothes in order to impart fatherly wisdom to our sons and
daughters.
But we may have to reorganize our lives and get our priorities straight.
Taking Action
If you've read my articles before, you know that I am not a big fan of "top-down" solutions.
That is, the best way to deal with something is on a grassroots, individual level. Trying to
change a whole society is difficult and not at all guaranteed to succeed. If it does, you have
to guard the progress against undoing.
Better to make the changes at the individual level, where you don't have to ask permission
or get a majority to agree.
Clearly, some broad reforms would help the situation. It is not about the government "doing
something" about the problem, it is about the government undoing some of the harm they have
caused.
For instance,
abolishing public schools, or at very least compulsory schooling would be a good start.
Since that probably won't happen anytime soon, parents can homeschool, send their kids to
alternative schools, or team up with friends and neighbors to form a co-op arrangement for
education.
Removing age-based restrictions on rights, or at least moving to a competency-based model of
gaining rights and privileges would also help. Again, petitioning the governing is mostly a
waste of time. Better to work with the freedoms you can give your kids. So they still can't
drive until 16, but at least they can cut their hair how they want, and maybe even have a glass
of wine with dinner.
But as with most problems, the largest barriers to improvement are in our heads.
Why not give your kids freedom from an early age? Why not let them participate in household
work from an early age? Hell, why not let them participate in your career if they are into
it?
The cool thing is that the
modern economy seems to be reorganizing to accommodate this way of life, without
sacrificing modern comforts and efficiencies.
It is easier than ever to work from home. Imagine a setting where mom and dad do their work
while the kids independently learn, or work on easier tasks. Older kids–neighbors or
family members or even a tutor–teach the younger kids. Certain work tasks and household
chores can be done together as a family, as many hands make light work.
The whole point of this method of parenting is that you offer a continuum from childhood to
adulthood.
And without even noticing it, life lessons, love, and kinship will be passed on. You don't
have to sit a kid down at a desk to teach them how to become an adult. If you interact with
them daily, they will learn from you. You just have to allow them to participate and encourage
them to pursue whatever they get excited about.
If you can't teach it to them, the internet can.
For some parents, this might sound like a disaster attempting to work from home while
teaching kids. But it is the transition that is difficult. Once children understand the new
structure of freedom, they will occupy themselves. They will learn more and be more
independent. And when they do come to you with a question or problem, it will be a rewarding
experience for everyone to work through it.
Of course for kids and teens unaccustomed to freedom, an immediate withdrawal of authority
could have disastrous consequences. Think about the 18-year-olds with strict parents who go off
to college and go crazy with parties and alcohol. But you can gradually give your child more
freedom whatever their age. Just be honest and upfront about what you are doing and why.
The issue of extended childhood, manufactured adolescence, and the harms of teen culture are
missing from most public debates.
School shootings,
teen suicide , and low-achieving youth are products of the artificial extension of
childhood, the
oppression that teens face . But with this issue, is it easy for individuals to take
control of the situation, and refuse to be part of the problem. You can solve these problems
for your family in one generation.
You don't have to play by the rules of the corrupt politicians, manipulative media, and
brainwashed peers.
When you subscribe to The Daily Bell, you also get a free guide:
How to Craft a Two Year Plan to Reclaim 3 Specific Freedoms.
This guide will show you exactly how to plan your next two years to build the free life of
your dreams. It's not as hard as you think
Largely unbeknownst to the general public, executives and top journalists of almost all
major US news outlets have long been members of the influential Council on Foreign Relations
(CFR) .
Established in 1921 as a private, bipartisan organization to
"awaken America to its worldwide responsibilities" , the CFR and its close to 5000 elite
members have for decades shaped U.S. foreign policy and public discourse about it. As a
well-known Council member once explained , the goal
has indeed been to establish a global Empire, albeit a "benevolent" one.
Based on official membership rosters, the following illustration for the first time depicts
the extensive media network of the CFR and its two main international affiliate organizations :
the Bilderberg Group (covering mainly the U.S. and Europe) and the Trilateral Commission
(covering North America, Europe and East Asia), both established by Council leaders to
foster elite cooperation at the international level.
In a column entitled
"Ruling Class Journalists" , former Washington Post senior editor and ombudsman Richard
Harwood once described the Council and its members approvingly as "the nearest thing we have to
a ruling establishment in the United States".
Harwood continued:
"The membership of these journalists in the Council, however they may think of themselves,
is an acknowledgment of their active and important role in public affairs and of their
ascension into the American ruling class. They do not merely analyze and interpret foreign
policy for the United States; they help make it.
They are part of that establishment whether they like it or not, sharing most of its
values and world views ."
However, media personalities constitute only about five percent of the overall CFR network.
As the following illustration shows, key members of the private Council on Foreign Relations
have included:
several U.S. Presidents and Vice Presidents of both parties;
almost all Secretaries of State, Defense, and the Treasury;
many high-ranking commanders of the U.S. military and NATO;
almost all National Security Advisors, CIA Directors, Ambassadors to the U.N., Chairs of
the Federal Reserve, Presidents of the World Bank, and Directors of the National Economic
Council;
some of the most influential Members of Congress (notably in foreign & security
policy matters);
many top jounalists, media executives, and entertainment industry directors;
many prominent academics, especially in key fields such as Economics, International
Relations, Political Science, History, and Journalism;
many top executives of Wall Street, policy think tanks, universities, and NGOs;
as well as the key members of both the 9/11 Commission and the Warren Commission
(JFK)
Eminent economist and Kennedy supporter, John K. Galbraith,
confirmed the Council's influence: "Those of us who had worked for the Kennedy election
were tolerated in the government for that reason and had a say, but foreign policy was still
with the Council on Foreign Relations people."
And no less than John
J. McCloy , the longtime chairman of the Council and advisor to nine U.S. presidents,
told the New York Times about his time in Washington : "Whenever we needed a man we thumbed
through the roll of the Council members and put through a call to New York."
German news magazine Der Spiegel once described the CFR as the "most
influential private institution of the United States and the Western world" and a "politburo of
capitalism". Both the Roman-inspired logo of the Council (top right in the illustration above)
as well as its slogan ( ubique – omnipresent) appear to emphasize that ambition.
"The directors of the CFR make up a sort of Presidium for that part of the Establishment
that guides our destiny as a nation.
[I]t rarely fails to get one of its members, or at least one of its allies, into the White
House. In fact, it generally is able to see to it that both nominees are men acceptable to
it."
Until recently, this assessment had indeed been justified. Thus, in 1993 former CFR director
George H.W. Bush was followed by CFR member Bill Clinton, who in turn was followed by CFR
"family member" George W. Bush. In 2008, CFR member John McCain lost against CFR candidate of
choice, Barack Obama, who
received the names of his entire Cabinet already one month prior to his election by CFR
Senior Fellow (and Citigroup banker) Michael Froman . Froman later negotiated the
TTP and TTIP free trade agreements, before returning to the CFR as a Distinguished Fellow.
It was not until the 2016 election that the Council couldn't, apparently, prevail. At any
rate, not yet.
"... Opinions expressed in FRBSF Economic Letter do not necessarily reflect the views of the management of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco or of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. ..."
Is GDP Overstating Economic Activity?, by Zheng Liu, Mark M. Spiegel, and Eric B. Tallman
: Two common measures of overall economic output are gross domestic product (GDP) and gross
domestic income (GDI). GDP is based on aggregate expenditures, while GDI is based on
aggregate income. In principle, the two measures should be identical. However, in practice,
they are not. The differences between these two series can arise from differences in source
data, errors in measuring their components, and the seasonal adjustment process.
In this Economic Letter , we evaluate the reliability of GDP relative to two
alternatives, GDI and a combination of the two known as GDPplus, for measuring economic
output. We test the ability of each to forecast a benchmark measure of economic activity over
the past two years. We find that GDP consistently outperforms the other two as a more
accurate predictor of aggregate economic activity over this period. This suggests that the
relative weakness of GDI growth in recent years does not necessarily indicate weakness in
overall economic growth.
Discrepancies between GDP and GDI
What drives the discrepancies between GDP and GDI is not well understood. The source data for
the components that go into GDP and GDI are measured with errors, which may lead to
discrepancies between the two. Further discrepancies can arise because those different
components are adjusted for seasonality at different points in time (see, for example, Grimm
2007).
The differences between these two series can be large. For example, in the last two quarters
of 2007, inflation-adjusted or "real" GDI was declining whereas real GDP was still growing.
The year-over-year growth rate of GDP exceeded that of GDI by almost 2.6 percentage points.
Over long periods, however, final measures of growth in GDP and GDI tend to yield roughly
equivalent assessments of economic activity. Since 1985, real GDP grew at an average annual
rate of about 3.98%, while real GDI grew at a similar average rate of 4.02%.
Since late 2015, the two series have diverged, with real GDP growth consistently exceeding
real GDI growth (Figure 1). The differences in growth are significant in this period. For
example, if we used GDI growth to assess overall economic activity since July 2015, then the
size of real aggregate output by the end of 2017 would be $230 billion smaller than if GDP
growth were used. This divergence between the two sends mixed signals regarding the strength
of recent economic activity.
Figure 1
Mixed signals from GDP and GDI growth
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Evaluating GDP, GDI, combination
Researchers often debate which of these series measures economic activity more accurately.
Nalewaik (2012) argues that GDI outperforms GDP in forecasting recessions. GDI does appear to
exhibit more cyclical volatility than GDP. One reason may be that GDI is more highly
correlated with a number of business cycle indicators, including movements in both employment
and unemployment (Nalewaik 2010). On the other hand, the Bureau of Economic Analysis has
resisted this conclusion, arguing that GDP is in general based on more reliable source data
than GDI is (Landefeld 2010).
To evaluate the relative reliability of GDP versus GDI for measuring economic output, we
compare their abilities to forecast a benchmark measure of economic activity. We focus on the
Chicago Fed
National Activity Index (CFNAI) as the benchmark, since it is publicly available. The
CFNAI is a monthly index of national economic activity, generated as the common component of
85 monthly series in the U.S. economy. These underlying series include a wide variety of data
covering production and income, employment and unemployment, personal consumption and
housing, and sales and orders. The CFNAI has been shown to help forecast real GDP (Lang and
Lansing 2010). We use the CFNAI as a benchmark activity indicator to evaluate the relative
forecasting performances of GDP and GDI and their combinations. Since the discrepancy between
these two series has persisted for several years, we focus on the final releases of the GDP
and GDI series.
Some have argued that, because the GDP and GDI series contain independent information, it may
be preferable to combine the two series into a single more informative activity indicator.
One series that uses such a combination is the Philadelphia Fed's GDPplus
series, which is a weighted average of GDP and GDI, with the weights based on the approach
described by Aruoba et al. (2016). As a weighted average, GDPplus indicates activity levels
between the two individual series. We therefore also consider the forecasting performance of
the GDPplus series over this period of extended discrepancy between reported GDP and GDI
growth.
To confirm the accuracy of our approach, we repeated our investigation with two alternative
series constructed using methodologies similar to the CFNAI. The first alternative is an
aggregate economic activity index (EAI) we constructed by extracting the common components of
90 underlying monthly time series. The EAI covers a broader set of monthly indicators than
the CFNAI, since we also include information from goods prices and asset prices.
The second alternative indicator we considered is an activity index constructed by Barigozzi
and Luciani (2018), which we call the BL index. Like our index, the BL index includes price
indexes and other measures of labor costs. The authors base their estimates on the portions
of GDP and GDI that are driven by common macroeconomic shocks under the assumption that they
have equivalent effects on GDP and GDI. This restriction implies that deviations between GDP
and GDI are transitory, and that the two series follow each other over time.
The EAI and the BL index are both highly correlated with the CFNAI and thus yielded similar
conclusions. We describe the source data and our methodology for constructing the EAI as well
as the analysis using both it and the BL index in an
online appendix .
Empirical results
To examine the relative performances of GDP, GDI, and GDPplus for forecasting the CFNAI, we
first estimate an empirical model in which the CFNAI is related to four lagged values of one
of these measures of aggregate output. Ideally, we would have used the full sample of postwar
data in our model, but there are some structural breaks in the data related to factors such
as changes in the monetary policy regime since the mid-1980s and the Great Moderation that
make this challenging. We therefore choose to focus on the sample starting from the first
quarter of 1985 in this discussion; our results using the full sample are similar, as we
report in the
online appendix .
To examine how well each of the measures of aggregate output are able to forecast the CFNAI,
we estimate the model using the sample observations up to the end of 2015, the period before
GDP and GDI diverged. Once we determine the estimated coefficients that describe each
relationship, we use those values to estimate forecasts for the period when discrepancies
developed, from the first quarter of 2016 to the end of 2017. We then calculate the
prediction errors, measured by the root mean-squared errors, for each measure of aggregate
output. The smaller the prediction error, the better the forecasting performance.
In addition to examining the forecasting performance of GDP, GDI, and GDPplus for predicting
the CFNAI economic activity indicator, we also examined their forecasting performance for the
unemployment rate as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Figure 2 displays the prediction errors from 2016 to 2017 for each of the alternative output
measures -- GDP, GDI, and GDPplus -- estimated from our model for CFNAI and unemployment. For
ease of comparison, we normalize the prediction errors from the model with GDP to one. The
figure shows that the prediction errors over this period based on the GDP series are
substantively lower than those based on GDI or GDPplus. This finding holds true not just for
these proxies for economic activity but also for our EAI and the BL index (see the
online appendix ). Moreover, formal statistical tests of forecasting performance indicate
that the forecasts based on GDP are significantly better than those based on GDI or GDPplus
at the 95% confidence level. This result suggests that, in recent periods, GDP has been a
more reliable independent indicator of economic activity than either GDI or GDPplus.
Figure 2
GDP outperforms GDI, GDPplus in predicting activity
Note: Figure shows prediction errors with GDP indexed to 1.
Conclusion
While GDP and GDI are theoretically identical measures of economic output, they can differ
significantly in practice over some periods. The differences between the two series have been
particularly pronounced in the past two years, when GDP growth has been consistently stronger
than GDI growth. Based on this observation, some analysts have claimed that GDP might be
overstating the pace of growth and that GDI, or some combination of GDP and GDI, should be
used to evaluate the levels and growth rate of economic activity.
To evaluate the validity of this claim, we compared the relative performances of GDP, GDI,
and a combined measure, GDPplus, for forecasting the CFNAI, which we use as a benchmark
measure of economic activity over the past two years. We find that GDP consistently
outperforms both GDI and combinations of the two, such as GDPplus, in forecasting aggregate
economic activity during the past two years. In this sense, GDP is a more accurate predictor
of aggregate economic activity than GDI over this period. Therefore, the relative weakness of
GDI growth observed in recent years does not necessarily indicate weakness in overall
economic growth.
Zheng
Liu is a senior research advisor in the Economic Research Department of the Federal
Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Mark M. Spiegel is a
vice president in the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of San
Francisco.
Eric B. Tallman is a research associate in the Economic Research Department of the Federal
Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
References
Aruoba, S. Boragan, Francis X. Diebold, Jeremy Nalewaik, Frank Schorfheide, and Dongho Song.
2016. "Improving GDP Measurement: A Measurement-Error Perspective." Journal of
Econometrics 191(2), pp. 384–397.
Landefeld, J. Steven. 2010. "Comments and Discussion: The Income- and Expenditure-Side
Estimates of U.S. Output Growth." Brookings Papers on Economic Activity , Spring,
pp. 112–123.
Nalewaik, Jeremy J. 2010. "The Income- and Expenditure-Side Estimates of U.S. Output Growth."
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity , Spring, pp. 71–106.
Nalewaik, Jeremy J. 2012. "Estimating Probabilities of Recession in Real Time Using GDP and
GDI." Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 44, pp. 235–253.
Opinions expressed in FRBSF Economic Letter do not necessarily reflect the views of
the management of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco or of the Board of Governors of
the Federal Reserve System.
Fine, "Vickrey macro," but every time that is asserted there needs to be a reference to a
clear summary statement of what that means. A Wikipedia reference would do, but the assertion
has almost no influence unless made immediately, simply meaningful.
Just one simple reference summary will do, continually repeated.
Fifteen Fatal Fallacies of Financial Fundamentalism
A Disquisition on Demand Side Economics
By William Vickrey
Much of the conventional economic wisdom prevailing in financial circles, largely
subscribed to as a basis for governmental policy, and widely accepted by the media and the
public, is based on incomplete analysis, contrafactual assumptions, and false analogy. For
instance, encouragement to saving is advocated without attention to the fact that for most
people encouraging saving is equivalent to discouraging consumption and reducing market
demand, and a purchase by a consumer or a government is also income to vendors and suppliers,
and government debt is also an asset. Equally fallacious are implications that what is
possible or desirable for individuals one at a time will be equally possible or desirable for
all who might wish to do so or for the economy as a whole.
And often analysis seems to be based on the assumption that future economic output is
almost entirely determined by inexorable economic forces independently of government policy
so that devoting more resources to one use inevitably detracts from availability for another.
This might be justifiable in an economy at chock-full employment, or it might be validated in
a sense by postulating that the Federal Reserve Board will pursue and succeed in a policy of
holding unemployment strictly to a fixed "non-inflation-accelerating" or "natural" rate. But
under current conditions such success is neither likely nor desirable.
Some of the fallacies that result from such modes of thought are as follows. Taken
together their acceptance is leading to policies that at best are keeping us in the economic
doldrums with overall unemployment rates stuck in the 5 to 6 percent range. This is bad
enough merely in terms of the loss of 10 to 15 percent of our potential production, even if
shared equitably, but when it translates into unemployment of 10, 20, and 40 percent among
disadvantaged groups, the further damages in terms of poverty, family breakup, school truancy
and dropout, illegitimacy, drug use, and crime become serious indeed. And should the implied
policies be fully carried out in terms of a "balanced budget," we could well be in for a
serious depression.
Fallacy 1
Deficits are considered to represent sinful profligate spending at the expense of future
generations who will be left with a smaller endowment of invested capital. This fallacy seems
to stem from a false analogy to borrowing by individuals.
Fallacy 2
Urging or providing incentives for individuals to try to save more is said to stimulate
investment and economic growth. This seems to derive from an assumption of an unchanged
aggregate output so that what is not used for consumption will necessarily and automatically
be devoted to capital formation.
Fallacy 3
Government borrowing is supposed to "crowd out" private investment.
Fallacy 4
Inflation is called the "cruelest tax." The perception seems to be that if only prices
would stop rising, one's income would go further, disregarding the consequences for
income.
Fallacy 5
"A chronic trend towards inflation is a reflection of living beyond our means." Alfred
Kahn, quoted in Cornell '93, summer issue.
Fallacy 6
Fallacy 7
Many profess a faith that if only governments would stop meddling, and balance their
budgets, free capital markets would in their own good time bring about prosperity, possibly
with the aid of "sound" monetary policy. It is assumed that there is a market mechanism by
which interest rates adjust promptly and automatically to equate planned saving and
investment in a manner analogous to the market by which the price of potatoes balances supply
and demand. In reality no such market mechanism exists; if a prosperous equilibrium is to be
achieved it will require deliberate intervention on the part of monetary authorities.
Fallacy 8
If deficits continue, the debt service would eventually swamp the fisc.
Fallacy 9
The negative effect of considering the overhanging burden of the increased debt would, it
is claimed, cancel the stimulative effect of the deficit. This sweeping claim depends on a
failure to analyze the situation in detail.
Fallacy 10
The value of the national currency in terms of foreign exchange (or gold) is held to be a
measure of economic health, and steps to maintain that value are thought to contribute to
this health. In some quarters a kind of jingoistic pride is taken in the value of one's
currency, or satisfaction may be derived from the greater purchasing power of the domestic
currency in terms of foreign travel.
Fallacy 11
It is claimed that exemption of capital gains from income tax will promote investment and
growth.
Fallacy 12
Debt would, it is held, eventually reach levels that cause lenders to balk with taxpayers
threatening rebellion and default.
Fallacy 13
Authorizing income-generating budget deficits results in larger and possibly more
extravagant, wasteful and oppressive government expenditures.
Fallacy 14
Government debt is thought of as a burden handed on from one generation to its children
and grandchildren.
Fallacy 15
Unemployment is not due to lack of effective demand, reducible by demand-increasing
deficits, but is either "structural," resulting from a mismatch between the skills of the
unemployed and the requirements of jobs, or "regulatory", resulting from minimum wage laws,
restrictions on the employment of classes of individuals in certain occupations, requirements
for medical coverage, or burdensome dismissal constraints, or is "voluntary," in part the
result of excessively generous and poorly designed social insurance and relief
provisions.
It is thought necessary to keep unemployment at a "non-inflation-accelerating" level
("NIARU") in the range of 4% to 6% if inflation is to be kept from increasing
unacceptably.
"Deficits are considered to represent sinful profligate spending at the expense of future
generations who will be left with a smaller endowment of invested capital. This fallacy seems
to stem from a false analogy to borrowing by individuals."
Except, we do not say a worker with $1000 a week income buying a $100,000 home first week
in May ran a $99,200 deficit (still needed food and gas) that week.
But government might run a $10 billion per week deficit from paying workers to build
infrastructure that will last a century plus with maintenance which will be repaid with
higher taxes over the next 50 years plus higher taxes for operations,....
Or the $10 billion per week deficit might be from ending all infrastructure building and
slashing spending on operations so a $11 billion per week tax cut could be implemented ($1
billion in taxes to repay and operate the infrastructure being built at $10 billion per
week).
Households and businesses maintain four ledgers, one pair is income and expense, and the
other is assets and liabilities. Buying a car, house, factory or car is not an expense, but
an addition to assets with offsetting liability. They are expensed over time as depreciation.
Excess income over expense is added to assets, in a cash account. Paying cash for an asset
moves the value from one part of the asset ledger, unless you have a separate fund for
emergency or retire and you borrow from it to pay for the car creating two new entries, a
liability for borrowing your money offset by the asset car.
I did this in the 60s and 70s with a ledger I then punched on IBM cards so I could create
multiple reports from one set of transactions, like a business. In the 90s, I did this for a
year or two with Quicken. It was not part of the "quick" entry and report which was more like
a check register, but it had all the options for asset and liability ledgers, with tied
entries between ledgers, mostly focused on investment accounts. It lacked a comprehensive
asset ledger function to tally house, car, truck, boat, home theater, cabin, and then
depreciate them, but I'm guessing QuickBooks has these functions.
For the Federal government, and State governments, many assets are on the books of local
government or government subunits, but finance by a bigger government. For example, NH State
government funds building most of new schools out of a cash account, while half a century
ago, a local government would hike a tax to fund issuing a bond, which means the State
mandated school was easy to fund for the rich towns, but almost impossible for poor towns
with very low tax base. Once moved to the conservative State level, issuing tax backed bonds
became politically difficult.
In the 60s, government debt was for building assets and bonds had tax revenue streams to
repay them. But conservatives hated the investment part of government because while it meant
jobs, it also required taxes.
For example, the highway trust fund was based on taxes to fill it to pay States to pay
workers. If a bunch of States wanted more jobs, that led to higher taxes.
Social Security Trust funds are based on an investment asset and liability model. The
assets are the current and future workers plus trust funds and the liabilities are current
and future beneficiaries being paid and to be paid. The Trustees report on these two ledgers
annually, along with income and expense. For a number of years, they have reported the
liabilities are growing slightly faster than assets.
But the rise of free lunch economics that basically rejects capitalism and it's
accounting, simply call liabilities the FICA revenue and the expenses and claim there are no
SS assets.
Progressives seem to live hand to mouth, rejecting capitalist principles.
You make claims like this all the time. Without a shred of evidence. Why don't you
SPECIFICALLY point to a time when you think pgl misrepresented something.
You did this for me once, and it became instantly clear that you cannot read - or at least
read things into comments that are not there. What did pgl misrepresent. Waiting.
Vickrey wrote on a wide range of topics besides macroeconomics. Now he also had certain
progressive Keynesian views, which I share. Of course I'm not into the mindless name dropping
that Paine is into. I would rather actually read what economists wrote. A couple of us
provided the 1996 Fifteen Fallacies paper he wrote which is an excellent read.
I do wonder if Paine himself ever bothered to read it as he sure has never bothered to
explain what it said.
Yes, I agree with the ideas of Vickrey and can use my abstract of the 15 fallacies as a
guide. I am pleased. The post below can then be linked to in future...
Last night found and read the Vickrey reference. Made a bet with myself that the toxic
troika's response would be to hurl low quality insults and disrupt.
Looking to housework in China, and how it has been radically changed with development, I
realize to my surprise that per capita GDP growth and distribution of income surely measures
housework. A house with electricity alone allows for a revolution in housework. Detergent
(non-phosphate) works wonders...
Neoliberal Economics being the creation of middle aged upper middle class men during the
1940's through the 1990's places value of zero on 'women's work'
Despite that much of it involves supporting current workers, birthing and raising next gen
workers.
The Socialist/Communist Critique is families require some amount of resources in order to
effectively perform that work. As such if you're going to have paid work then the state
should require that the level of pay is adequate.
The neoliberal response is to get the vapors and engage in gate keeping behavior.
As a child grows up and receives all forms of social training and other preparation to
participate in society ("get a job"), it is generally a quantity of "women's' work" that is
"spent" to do this. But it's not "spent" so much as "invested", as the product of the work is
a much improved human being. The young person embodies the investment. I guess we now call
this "human capital". In any event, it's an investment of women's work that creates it.
Now, one would think that someone possessing such capital might face better prospects than
one who does not, and that seems to be true. But it seems you can look at how competitive the
asset is by looking at how it faires in the market. In recent decades, look at the gain in
starting salaries. I have not seen a good series, but it seems they have lagged inflation,
let alone GDP per capita. Thus the real yield on the asset has been negative, or one could
say the yield has been on average entirely captured by employers. Others might make
statements using "exploitation".
The job market for young people has been a cruel game of musical chairs: make a lifetime
of investment just to join a circle for which there are too few chairs, and the employer gets
all the yield.
Fifteen Fatal Fallacies of Financial Fundamentalism
A Disquisition on Demand Side Economics
By William Vickrey
Much of the conventional economic wisdom prevailing in financial circles, largely
subscribed to as a basis for governmental policy, and widely accepted by the media and the
public, is based on incomplete analysis, contrafactual assumptions, and false analogy. For
instance, encouragement to saving is advocated without attention to the fact that for most
people encouraging saving is equivalent to discouraging consumption and reducing market
demand, and a purchase by a consumer or a government is also income to vendors and suppliers,
and government debt is also an asset. Equally fallacious are implications that what is
possible or desirable for individuals one at a time will be equally possible or desirable for
all who might wish to do so or for the economy as a whole.
And often analysis seems to be based on the assumption that future economic output is
almost entirely determined by inexorable economic forces independently of government policy
so that devoting more resources to one use inevitably detracts from availability for another.
This might be justifiable in an economy at chock-full employment, or it might be validated in
a sense by postulating that the Federal Reserve Board will pursue and succeed in a policy of
holding unemployment strictly to a fixed "non-inflation-accelerating" or "natural" rate. But
under current conditions such success is neither likely nor desirable.
Some of the fallacies that result from such modes of thought are as follows.
Fallacy 1
Deficits are considered to represent sinful profligate spending at the expense of future
generations who will be left with a smaller endowment of invested capital. This fallacy seems
to stem from a false analogy to borrowing by individuals.
Fallacy 2
Urging or providing incentives for individuals to try to save more is said to stimulate
investment and economic growth. This seems to derive from an assumption of an unchanged
aggregate output so that what is not used for consumption will necessarily and automatically
be devoted to capital formation.
Fallacy 3
Government borrowing is supposed to "crowd out" private investment.
Fallacy 4
Inflation is called the "cruelest tax." The perception seems to be that if only prices
would stop rising, one's income would go further, disregarding the consequences for
income.
Fallacy 5
"A chronic trend towards inflation is a reflection of living beyond our means." Alfred
Kahn, quoted in Cornell '93, summer issue.
Fallacy 6
It is thought necessary to keep unemployment at a "non-inflation-accelerating" level
("NIARU") in the range of 4% to 6% if inflation is to be kept from increasing
unacceptably.
Fallacy 7
Many profess a faith that if only governments would stop meddling, and balance their
budgets, free capital markets would in their own good time bring about prosperity, possibly
with the aid of "sound" monetary policy. It is assumed that there is a market mechanism by
which interest rates adjust promptly and automatically to equate planned saving and
investment in a manner analogous to the market by which the price of potatoes balances supply
and demand. In reality no such market mechanism exists; if a prosperous equilibrium is to be
achieved it will require deliberate intervention on the part of monetary authorities.
Fallacy 8
If deficits continue, the debt service would eventually swamp the fisc.
Fallacy 9
The negative effect of considering the overhanging burden of the increased debt would, it
is claimed, cancel the stimulative effect of the deficit. This sweeping claim depends on a
failure to analyze the situation in detail.
Fallacy 10
The value of the national currency in terms of foreign exchange (or gold) is held to be a
measure of economic health, and steps to maintain that value are thought to contribute to
this health. In some quarters a kind of jingoistic pride is taken in the value of one's
currency, or satisfaction may be derived from the greater purchasing power of the domestic
currency in terms of foreign travel.
Fallacy 11
It is claimed that exemption of capital gains from income tax will promote investment and
growth.
Fallacy 12
Debt would, it is held, eventually reach levels that cause lenders to balk with taxpayers
threatening rebellion and default.
Fallacy 13
Authorizing income-generating budget deficits results in larger and possibly more
extravagant, wasteful and oppressive government expenditures.
Fallacy 14
Government debt is thought of as a burden handed on from one generation to its children
and grandchildren.
Fallacy 15
Unemployment is not due to lack of effective demand, reducible by demand-increasing
deficits, but is either "structural," resulting from a mismatch between the skills of the
unemployed and the requirements of jobs, or "regulatory", resulting from minimum wage laws,
restrictions on the employment of classes of individuals in certain occupations, requirements
for medical coverage, or burdensome dismissal constraints, or is "voluntary," in part the
result of excessively generous and poorly designed social insurance and relief
provisions.
Government debt is thought of as a burden handed on from one generation to its children
and grandchildren."
So, Trump, and the GOP starting with Reagan, but especially in the 21st century, have
created great fantastic wealth to lift away all burden from future generations!
Huge lifting of burden!
The future is life of ease in a huge hammock of debt!
I think Trump's victory broke the brains of the toxic trio (PGL, EMichael, kurt). They say
it's pure racism. America is racist. We knew that, but Obama won twice. Oh it was a
"backlash." Nah, Ben Rhodes knows.
How Trump's Election Shook Obama: 'What if We Were Wrong?'
By Peter Baker
May 30, 2018
WASHINGTON -- Riding in a motorcade in Lima, Peru, shortly after the 2016 election,
President Barack Obama was struggling to understand Donald J. Trump's victory.
"What if we were wrong?" he asked aides riding with him in the armored presidential
limousine.
He had read a column asserting that liberals had forgotten how important identity was to
people and had promoted an empty cosmopolitan globalism that made many feel left behind.
"Maybe we pushed too far," Mr. Obama said. "Maybe people just want to fall back into their
tribe."
His aides reassured him that he still would have won had he been able to run for another
term and that the next generation had more in common with him than with Mr. Trump. Mr. Obama,
the first black man elected president, did not seem convinced. "Sometimes I wonder whether I
was 10 or 20 years too early," he said.
In the weeks after Mr. Trump's election, Mr. Obama went through multiple emotional stages,
according to a new book by his longtime adviser Benjamin J. Rhodes. At times, the departing
president took the long view, at other points, he flashed anger. He called Mr. Trump a
"cartoon" figure who cared more about his crowd sizes than any particular policy. And he
expressed rare self-doubt, wondering whether he had misjudged his own influence on American
history.
[Obama's painfully slow recovery influenced history. Read Benjamin Friedman and Chris
Dillow]
...
Mr. Obama and his team were confident that Mrs. Clinton would win and, like much of the
country, were shocked when she did not. "I couldn't shake the feeling that I should have seen
it coming," Mr. Rhodes writes. "Because when you distilled it, stripped out the racism and
misogyny, we'd run against Hillary eight years ago with the same message Trump had used:
She's part of a corrupt establishment that can't be trusted to bring change."
Funny you call me toxic when you just posted a smear and a lie. I have NEVER said it was all
racism or only racism and you know it. What I have said is that 1. economic insecurity does
not appear - due to study as opposed to your feelings - to have been a primary factor in the
decision of Trump voters, and 2. that the studies show that the primary motivators were
racism, fear of cultural change, sexism, and fear of immigrants. Economic insecurity fell
several orders of magnitude below the primary motivators. In fact, you missed the "fall back
into tribalism" part of your own post. Then again, you have never displayed even the
slightest modicum of reading comprehension ability.
U.S. Foreclosure Activity Drops to 12-Year Low in 2017
But New York Foreclosure Auctions, New Jersey REOs Both at 11-Year High;
Biggest Backlogs of Legacy Foreclosures in New York, New Jersey, Florida
IRVINE, Calif. – Jan. 18, 2018 – ATTOM Data Solutions, curator of the nation's
largest multi-sourced property database, today released its Year-End 2017 U.S. Foreclosure
Market Report, which shows foreclosure filings -- default notices, scheduled auctions and
bank repossessions -- were reported on 676,535 U.S. properties in 2017, down 27 percent from
2016 and down 76 percent from a peak of nearly 2.9 million in 2010 to the lowest level since
2005...
*
[When people that voted for Trump answer the question "Why" would it be too much to expect
that their answer might change over time with their perception of both the economy and Donald
Trump? There has always been a shortage of real world ceteris paribus in economics going back
before Adam Smith.]
You're being obtuse again. The effect of the center left liberal (see the Toxic Troika)
campaign to mock economic anxiety's explanatory power is to deny it had anything to with
Trump winning. They (you) deny he was populist when his rhetoric was very anti-elite and he's
a new kind of Republican whose dog whistles are out in the open. THAT's why Obama was alarmed
you obtuse moron!!!!
Benjamin Friedman and Chris Dillow are not hard to understand. A stagnating economy causes
people to retreat to tribalism and become susceptible to demagogues. Of course a lot of
people were already racist, but if the recovery had been good, had the last 40 years been
prosperous for your average voter Hillary would have won instead of Trump.
Yet just yesterday the Toxic Troika's hero Krugman tweeted this straw man:
Hey, Roseanne Barr is only worth $80 million, and was being paid only 250K per episode. So
her tweets were clearly driven by economic anxiety
1:49 PM - 29 May 2018
----------------------------------------
Does Krugman understand how dislike he is by the Left? I think he does. This kind of thing
is him lashing back at the Left.
-----------------------------
As Krugman blogged about Bernie Sanders's policies during the primary, he said they didn't
combat populism in Europe which is clearly wrong.
You can keep going about your stupid meaningless studies/paid propaganda but Krugman went
on to contradict himself by saying populism in Italy WAS CAUSED by economic anxiety!!!
If the European Central Bank hadn't forced slow growth on Italy maybe the new government
wouldn't be made up of populist parties who blame immigrants and the EU.
Not hard to understand but no doubt the Italian center left party Democrats (who nobody
voted for) sad it was all about anti-immigrant racism nothing more.
Wow you are thick. You are completely unable to understand the nuance of reality. You
continue to claim things that are not true - about what I posted and about what Krugman
posted. You cannot understand that what motivated Americans was different - substantively -
than what motivated Italians. You claim that Krugman was wrong, yet provide zero evidence.
Krugman provided evidence. Where is yours. Why do you deny study. Why do you deny rigor? I
think I know - it is because your entire world view comes crashing down in the face of
evidence. The world is not binary no matter how much you want it to be. It is complicated and
messy.
I think the Toxic Troika would agree on the bad effects of Fox news and conservative UK
tabloid media. This helps translate economic stagnation into conservative majorities.
[I always thought Thoma did the website as a way to combat this with free discussion among
experts and hobbyists. Banning people as the Troika wants isn't going to help.]
Saturday, 2 December 2017
If we treat plutocracy as democracy, democracy dies
by Simon Wren-Lewis
The snake-oil salesmen
There are many similarities between Brexit and Trump. They are both authoritarian
movements, where authority either lies with a single individual or a single vote: the vote
that bindsthem all. This authority expresses the movement's identity. They are irrational
movements, by which I mean that they cast aside expertise where that conflicts with the
movements wishes. As a result, you will find their base of supporters among the less well
educated, and that universities are seen as an enemy. Both groups are intensely
nationalistic: both want to make America or England great again.
It is easy to relate each group to familiar concepts: class, race or whatever. But I think
this classification misses something important. It misses what sustains these groups in their
beliefs, allows them to maintain their world view which is so often contradicted by reality.
Both groups get their information about the world from a section of the media that has turned
news into propaganda. In the US this is Fox, and in the UK the right wing tabloids and the
Telegraph.
A profound mistake is to see this media as a symptom rather than a cause. As the study I
spoke about here clearly demonstrates, the output of Fox news is not designed to maximise its
readership, but to maximise the impact of its propaganda on its readership. I think you could
say exactly the same about the Sun and the Mail in the UK. Fox and the Sun are owned by the
same man.
Even those who manage to cast off the idea that this unregulated media just reflects the
attitude of its readers, generally think of this media as supportive of political parties.
There is the Conservative and Labour supporting press in the UK, and similarly for the US. In
my view that idea is ten or twenty years out of date, and even then it underestimates the
independence of the media organisations. (The Sun famously supported Blair in 1997). More and
more it is the media that calls the shots, and the political parties follow.
Brexit would not have happened if it had remained the wish of a minority of Conservative
MPs. It happened because of the right wing UK press. Brexit happened because this right wing
press recognised a large section of their readership were disaffected from conventional
politics, and began grooming them with stories of EU immigrants taking jobs, lowering wages
and taking benefits (and sometimes much worse). These stories were not (always) false, but
like all good propaganda they elevated a half-truth into a firm belief. Of course this
grooming played on age old insecurities, but it magnified them into a political movement.
Nationalism does the same. It did not just reflect readers existing views, but rather played
on their doubts and fears and hopes and turned this into votes.
This is not to discount some of the very real grievances that led to the Brexit vote, or
the racism that led to the election of Trump. This analysis of today's populism is important,
as long as it does not get sidetracked into debates over identity versus economics. Stressing
economic causes of populism does not devalue identity issues (like race or immigration), but
it is the economics that causes the swings that help put populists in power. It was crucial,
for example, to the trick that the media played to convince many to vote for Brexit: that EU
immigrants and payments were reducing access to public services, whereas in reality the
opposite is true.
Yet while economic issues may have created a winning majority for both Brexit and Trump,
the identity issues sustained by the media make support for both hard to diminish. Brexit and
Trump are expressions of identity, and often of what has been lost, which are very difficult
to break down when sustained by the group's media. In addition both Trump and Brexit
maintain, because their proponents want it to be maintained, the idea that it represents the
normally ignored, striking back against the government machine in the capital city with all
its experts.
But to focus on what some call the 'demand' for populism is in danger of missing at least
half the story. Whatever legitimate grievances Brexit and Trump supporters may have had, they
were used and will be betrayed. There is nothing in leaving the EU that will help the
forgotten towns of England and Wales. Although he may try, Trump will not bring many
manufacturing jobs back to the rust belt, and his antics with NAFTA may make things worse.
Identifying the left behind is only half the story, because it does not tell you why they
fell for the remedies of snake-oil salesmen.
As I wrote immediately after the vote in my most widely read post, Brexit was first and
foremost a triumph for the UK right wing press. That press first fostered a party, UKIP, that
embodied the views the press pushed. The threat of that party and defections to it then
forced the Prime Minister to offer the referendum the press wanted. It was a right wing press
that sold a huge lie about the UK economy, a lie the broadcast media bought, to ensure the
Conservatives won the next election. When the referendum came, it was this right wing press
that ensured enough votes were won and thereby overturned the government.
Equally Donald Trump was first and foremost the candidate of Fox News. As Bruce Bartlett
has so eloquently written, Fox may have started off as a network that just supported
Republicans, but its power steadily grew. Being partisan at Fox became misinforming its
viewers, such that Fox viewers are clearly less well informed than viewers of other news
providers. One analysis suggested over half of the facts stated on Fox are untrue: UK readers
may well remember them reporting that Birmingham was a no-go area for non-Muslims.
Fox became a machine for keeping the base angry and fired up, believing that nothing could
be worse than voting for a Democrat. It was Fox News that stopped Republican voters seeing
that they were voting for a demagogue, concealed that he lied openly all the time, that
incites hatred against other religions and ethnic groups, and makes its viewers believe that
Clinton deserves to be locked up. It is not reflecting the views of its viewers, but moulding
them. As economists have shown, the output of Fox does not optimise their readership, but
optimises the propaganda power of its output. Despite occasional tiffs, Trump was the
candidate of Fox in the primaries.
We have a right wing media organisation that has overthrown the Republican political
establishment, and a right wing press that has overthrown a right wing government. How some
political scientists can continue to analyse this as if the media were simply passive,
supportive or even invisible when it brings down governments or subverts political parties I
do not know.
The plutocracy
Trump and Brexit are the creations of a kind of plutocracy. Politics in the US has had
strong plutocratic elements for some time, because of the way that money can sway elections.
That gave finance a powerful influence in the Democratic party, and made the Republicans
obsessive about cutting higher tax rates. In the UK plutocracy has been almost non-existent
by comparison, and operated mainly through party funding and seats in the House of Lords,
although we are still finding out where the money behind the Brexit campaign came from.
By focusing on what some call the demand side of populism rather than the supply side, we
fail to see both Trump and Brexit as primarily expressions of plutocratic power. Trump's
administration is plutocracy personified, and as Paul Pierson argues, its substantive agenda
constitutes a full-throated endorsement of the GOP economic elite's long-standing agenda. The
Brexiteers want to turn the UK into Singapore, a kind of neoliberalism that stresses markets
should be free from government interference, rather than free to work for everyone, and that
trade should be free from regulations, rather than regulations being harmonised so that
business is free to trade.
It is also a mistake to see this plutocracy as designed to support capital. This should
again be obvious from Brexit and Trump. It is in capital's interest to have borders open to
goods and people rather than creating barriers and erecting walls. What a plutocracy will do
is ensure that high inequality, in terms of the 1% or 0.1% etc, is maintained or even
increased. Indeed many plutocrats amassed their wealth by extracting large sums from the
firms for which they worked, wealth that might otherwise have gone to investors in the form
of dividends. In this sense they are parasitic to capital. And this plutocracy will also
ensure that social mobility is kept low so the membership of the plutocracy is sustained:
social mobility goes with equality, as Pickett and Wilkinson show.
It is also a mistake to see what is happening as somehow the result of some kind of
invisible committee of the 1% (or 0.1% and so on). The interests of the Koch brothers are not
necessarily the interests of Trump (it is no accident the former want to help buy Time
magazine). The interests of Arron Banks are not those of Lloyd Blankfein. Instead we are
finding individual media moguls forming partnerships with particular politicians to press not
only their business interests, but their individual political views as well. And in this
partnership it is often clear who is dependent on whom. After all, media competition is slim
while there are plenty of politicians.
What has this got to do with neoliberalism? which is supposed to be the dominant culture
of the political right. As I argued here, it is a mistake to see neoliberalism as some kind
of unified ideology. It may have a common core in terms of the primacy of the market, but how
that is interpreted is not uniform. Are neoliberals in favour of free trade, or against? It
appears that they can be both. Instead neoliberalism is a set of ideas based around a common
belief in the market that different groups have used and interpreted to their advantage,
while at the same time also being influenced by the ideology. Both interests and ideas
matter. While some neoliberals see competition as the most valuable feature of capitalism,
others will seek to stifle competition to preserve monopoly power. Brexiters and their press
backers are neoliberals, just as the Cameron government they brought down were
neoliberals.
I think there is some truth in the argument, made by Philip Mirowski among others, that a
belief in neoliberalism can easily involve an anti-enlightenment belief that people need to
be persuaded to subject themselves fully to the market. Certainly those on the neoliberal
right are more easily persuaded to invest time and effort in the dark arts of spin than those
on the left. But it would be going too far to suggest that all neoliberals are
anti-democratic: as I have said, neoliberalism is diverse and divided. What I argued in my
neoliberal overreach post was that neoliberalism as formulated in the UK and US had made it
possible for the plutocracy we now see to become dominant.
Nobody wants you banned because you provide alternative opinions. I actually enjoy having a
well considered argument with people who have differing opinions. We want you banned because
you lie - constantly - about other peoples positions and you constantly gaslight. You are an
expert propagandist, but not an expert in much else. In fact, you get most things wrong. Also
- you are obnoxiously rude all the time. And you are always on the side of the Alex
Jones/Rush Limbaugh types.
It's not so much that he lies but that he never defends his arguments when countered with
facts and logic, basically doubling down like Trump in attacks on liberals arguing with facts
and logic.
But most important, he never explains why an African economy or Cuba economy or
Chavez-Maduro economy would be so much better. If they have such great economies, why hasn't
he moved there?
Hey Cuba is close by. And the fact trade is been cut off by the US embargo should be a big
plus given global trade is horrible for workers. The US government trade embargoes on Cuba
are providing great benefits to Cuban workers who never lose their job from evil imports from
the US.
And workers in Cuba benefit from lack of competition.
This looks like Ann Rand philosophy: "The people who needed protection were property owners,
and their rights could only be secured though constitutional limits to prevent the majority of
voters from encroaching on them, an idea Buchanan lays out in works like Property as a
Guarantor of Liberty (1993). MacLean observes that Buchanan saw society as a cutthroat realm
of makers (entrepreneurs) constantly under siege by takers (everybody else) His own language was
often more stark, warning the alleged "prey" of "parasites" and "predators" out to fleece
them."
Notable quotes:
"... By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst, Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website ..."
"... The Limits of Liberty ..."
"... Property as a Guarantor of Liberty ..."
"... Brown v. Board of Education ..."
"... Calhoun, called the "Marx of the Master Class" by historian Richard Hofstadter, saw himself and his fellow southern oligarchs as victims of the majority. Therefore, as MacLean explains, he sought to create "constitutional gadgets" to constrict the operations of government ..."
"... She argues out that unlike even the most property-friendly founders Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, Buchanan wanted a private governing elite of corporate power that was wholly released from public accountability. ..."
"... Suppressing voting, changing legislative processes so that a normal majority could no longer prevail, sowing public distrust of government institutions -- all these were tactics toward the goal. But the Holy Grail was the Constitution: alter it and you could increase and secure the power of the wealthy in a way that no politician could ever challenge. ..."
"... MacLean observes that the Virginia school, as Buchanan's brand of economic and political thinking is known, is a kind of cousin to the better-known, market-oriented Chicago and Austrian schools -- proponents of all three were members of the Mont Pelerin Society, an international neoliberal organization which included Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. But the Virginia school's focus and career missions were distinct. In an interview with the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), MacLean described Friedman and Buchanan as yin and yang: "Friedman was this genial, personable character who loved to be in the limelight and made a sunny case for the free market and the freedom to choose and so forth. Buchanan was the dark side of this: he thought, ok, fine, they can make a case for the free market, but everybody knows that free markets have externalities and other problems. So he wanted to keep people from believing that government could be the alternative to those problems." ..."
"... Buchanan's school focused on public choice theory, later adding constitutional economics and the new field of law and economics to its core research and advocacy. The economist saw that his vision would never come to fruition by focusing on who rules. It was much better to focus on the rules themselves , and that required a "constitutional revolution." ..."
"... MacLean describes how the economist developed a grand project to train operatives to staff institutions funded by like-minded tycoons, most significantly Charles Koch, who became interested in his work in the '70s and sought the economist's input in promoting "Austrian economics" in the U.S. and in advising the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. ..."
"... With Koch's money and enthusiasm, Buchanan's academic school evolved into something much bigger. By the 1990s, Koch realized that Buchanan's ideas -- transmitted through stealth and deliberate deception, as MacLean amply documents -- could help take government down through incremental assaults that the media would hardly notice. The tycoon knew that the project was extremely radical, even a "revolution" in governance, but he talked like a conservative to make his plans sound more palatable. ..."
"... At the 1997 fiftieth anniversary of the Mont Pelerin Society, MacLean recounts that Buchanan and his associate Henry Manne, a founding theorist of libertarian economic approaches to law, focused on such affronts to capitalists as environmentalism and public health and welfare, expressing eagerness to dismantle Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare as well as kill public education because it tended to foster community values. Feminism had to go, too: the scholars considered it a socialist project. ..."
"... To put the success into perspective, MacLean points to the fact that Henry Manne, whom Buchanan was instrumental in hiring, created legal programs for law professors and federal judges which could boast that by 1990 two of every five sitting federal judges had participated. "40 percent of the U.S. federal judiciary," writes MacLean, "had been treated to a Koch-backed curriculum." ..."
"... Buchanan's role in the disastrous Pinochet government of Chile has been underestimated partly because unlike Milton Friedman, who advertised his activities, Buchanan had the shrewdness to keep his involvement quiet. With his guidance, the military junta deployed public choice economics in the creation of a new constitution, which required balanced budgets and thereby prevented the government from spending to meet public needs. Supermajorities would be required for any changes of substance, leaving the public little recourse to challenge programs like the privatization of social security. ..."
"... The Limits of Liberty ..."
"... MacLean is not the only scholar to sound the alarm that the country is experiencing a hostile takeover that is well on its way to radically, and perhaps permanently, altering the society. Peter Temin, former head of the MIT economics department, INET grantee, and author of The Vanishing Middle Class ..."
"... The One Percent Solution ..."
"... She observes, for example, that many liberals have missed the point of strategies like privatization. Efforts to "reform" public education and Social Security are not just about a preference for the private sector over the public sector, she argues. You can wrap your head around, even if you don't agree. Instead, MacLean contents, the goal of these strategies is to radically alter power relations, weakening pro-public forces and enhancing the lobbying power and commitment of the corporations that take over public services and resources, thus advancing the plans to dismantle democracy and make way for a return to oligarchy. The majority will be held captive so that the wealthy can finally be free to do as they please, no matter how destructive. ..."
"... MacLean argues that despite the rhetoric of Virginia school acolytes, shrinking big government is not really the point. The oligarchs require a government with tremendous new powers so that they can bypass the will of the people. This, as MacLean points out, requires greatly expanding police powers "to control the resultant popular anger." The spreading use of pre-emption by GOP-controlled state legislatures to suppress local progressive victories such as living wage ordinances is another example of the right's aggressive use of state power. ..."
Nobel laureate James Buchanan is the intellectual lynchpin of the Koch-funded attack on
democratic institutions, argues Duke historian Nancy MacLean
Ask people to name the key minds that have shaped America's burst of radical right-wing
attacks on working conditions, consumer rights and public services, and they will typically
mention figures like free market-champion Milton Friedman, libertarian guru Ayn Rand, and
laissez-faire economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.
James McGill Buchanan is a name you will rarely hear unless you've taken several classes in
economics. And if the Tennessee-born Nobel laureate were alive today, it would suit him just
fine that most well-informed journalists, liberal politicians, and even many economics students
have little understanding of his work.
The reason? Duke historian Nancy MacLean contends that his philosophy is so stark that even
young libertarian acolytes are only introduced to it after they have accepted the relatively
sunny perspective of Ayn Rand. (Yes, you read that correctly). If Americans really knew what
Buchanan thought and promoted, and how destructively his vision is manifesting under their
noses, it would dawn on them how close the country is to a transformation most would not even
want to imagine, much less accept.
That is a dangerous blind spot, MacLean argues in a meticulously researched book,
Democracy in Chains , a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction. While Americans
grapple with Donald Trump's chaotic presidency, we may be missing the key to changes that are
taking place far beyond the level of mere politics. Once these changes are locked into place,
there may be no going back.
An Unlocked Door in Virginia
MacLean's book reads like an intellectual detective story. In 2010, she moved to North
Carolina, where a Tea Party-dominated Republican Party got control of both houses of the state
legislature and began pushing through a radical program to suppress voter rights, decimate
public services, and slash taxes on the wealthy that shocked a state long a beacon of southern
moderation. Up to this point, the figure of James Buchanan flickered in her peripheral vision,
but as she began to study his work closely, the events in North Carolina and also Wisconsin,
where Governor Scott Walker was leading assaults on collective bargaining rights, shifted her
focus.
Could it be that this relatively obscure economist's distinctive thought was being put
forcefully into action in real time?
MacLean could not gain access to Buchanan's papers to test her hypothesis until after his
death in January 2013. That year, just as the government was being shut down by Ted Cruz &
Co., she traveled to George Mason University in Virginia, where the economist's papers lay
willy-nilly across the offices of a building now abandoned by the Koch-funded faculty to a new,
fancier center in Arlington.
MacLean was stunned. The archive of the man who had sought to stay under the radar had been
left totally unsorted and unguarded. The historian plunged in, and she read through boxes and
drawers full of papers that included personal correspondence between Buchanan and billionaire
industrialist Charles Koch. That's when she had an amazing realization: here was the
intellectual lynchpin of a stealth revolution currently in progress.
A Theory of Property Supremacy
Buchanan, a 1940 graduate of Middle Tennessee State University who later attended the
University of Chicago for graduate study, started out as a conventional public finance
economist. But he grew frustrated by the way in which economic theorists ignored the political
process.
Buchanan began working on a description of power that started out as a critique of how
institutions functioned in the relatively liberal 1950s and '60s, a time when economist John
Maynard Keynes's ideas about the need for government intervention in markets to protect people
from flaws so clearly demonstrated in the Great Depression held sway. Buchanan, MacLean notes,
was incensed at what he saw as a move toward socialism and deeply suspicious of any form of
state action that channels resources to the public. Why should the increasingly powerful
federal government be able to force the wealthy to pay for goods and programs that served
ordinary citizens and the poor?
In thinking about how people make political decisions and choices, Buchanan concluded that
you could only understand them as individuals seeking personal advantage. In interview cited by
MacLean, the economist observed that in the 1950s Americans commonly assumed that elected
officials wanted to act in the public interest. Buchanan vehemently disagreed -- that was a
belief he wanted, as he put it, to "tear down." His ideas developed into a theory that came to
be known as "public choice."
Buchanan's view of human nature was distinctly dismal. Adam Smith saw human beings as
self-interested and hungry for personal power and material comfort, but he also acknowledged
social instincts like compassion and fairness. Buchanan, in contrast, insisted that people were
primarily driven by venal self-interest. Crediting people with altruism or a desire to serve
others was "romantic" fantasy: politicians and government workers were out for themselves, and
so, for that matter, were teachers, doctors, and civil rights activists. They wanted to control
others and wrest away their resources: "Each person seeks mastery over a world of slaves," he
wrote in his 1975 book, The Limits of Liberty .
Does that sound like your kindergarten teacher? It did to Buchanan.
The people who needed protection were property owners, and their rights could only be
secured though constitutional limits to prevent the majority of voters from encroaching on
them, an idea Buchanan lays out in works like Property as a Guarantor of Liberty
(1993). MacLean observes that Buchanan saw society as a cutthroat realm of makers
(entrepreneurs) constantly under siege by takers (everybody else) His own language was often
more stark, warning the alleged "prey" of "parasites" and "predators" out to fleece them.
In 1965 the economist launched a center dedicated to his theories at the University of
Virginia, which later relocated to George Mason University. MacLean describes how he trained
thinkers to push back against the Brown v. Board of Education decision to desegregate
America's public schools and to challenge the constitutional perspectives and federal policy
that enabled it. She notes that he took care to use economic and political precepts, rather
than overtly racial arguments, to make his case, which nonetheless gave cover to racists who
knew that spelling out their prejudices would alienate the country.
All the while, a ghost hovered in the background -- that of John C. Calhoun of South
Carolina, senator and seventh vice president of the United States.
Calhoun was an intellectual and political powerhouse in the South from the 1820s until his
death in 1850, expending his formidable energy to defend slavery. Calhoun, called the "Marx of
the Master Class" by historian Richard Hofstadter, saw himself and his fellow southern
oligarchs as victims of the majority. Therefore, as MacLean explains, he sought to create
"constitutional gadgets" to constrict the operations of government.
Economists Tyler Cowen and Alexander Tabarrok, both of George Mason University, have noted
the two men's affinities, heralding Calhoun "a
precursor of modern public choice theory" who "anticipates" Buchanan's thinking. MacLean
observes that both focused on how democracy constrains property owners and aimed for ways to
restrict the latitude of voters. She argues out that unlike even the most property-friendly
founders Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, Buchanan wanted a private governing elite of
corporate power that was wholly released from public accountability.
Suppressing voting, changing legislative processes so that a normal majority could no longer
prevail, sowing public distrust of government institutions -- all these were tactics toward the
goal. But the Holy Grail was the Constitution: alter it and you could increase and secure the
power of the wealthy in a way that no politician could ever challenge.
Gravy Train to Oligarchy
MacLean explains that Virginia's white elite and the pro-corporate president of the
University of Virginia, Colgate Darden, who had married into the DuPont family, found
Buchanan's ideas to be spot on. In nurturing a new intelligentsia to commit to his values,
Buchanan stated that he needed a "gravy train," and with backers like Charles Koch and
conservative foundations like the Scaife Family Charitable Trusts, others hopped aboard. Money,
Buchanan knew, can be a persuasive tool in academia. His circle of influence began to
widen.
MacLean observes that the Virginia school, as Buchanan's brand of economic and political
thinking is known, is a kind of cousin to the better-known, market-oriented Chicago and
Austrian schools -- proponents of all three were members of the Mont Pelerin Society, an
international neoliberal organization which included Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. But
the Virginia school's focus and career missions were distinct. In an interview with the
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), MacLean described Friedman and Buchanan as yin and yang: "Friedman was this genial, personable character who loved to be in the limelight and made a
sunny case for the free market and the freedom to choose and so forth. Buchanan was the dark
side of this: he thought, ok, fine, they can make a case for the free market, but everybody
knows that free markets have externalities and other problems. So he wanted to keep people from
believing that government could be the alternative to those problems."
The Virginia school also differs from other economic schools in a marked reliance on
abstract theory rather than mathematics or empirical evidence. That a Nobel Prize was awarded
in 1986 to an economist who so determinedly bucked the academic trends of his day was nothing
short of stunning, MacLean observes. But, then, it was the peak of the Reagan era, an
administration several Buchanan students joined.
Buchanan's school focused on public choice theory, later adding constitutional economics and
the new field of law and economics to its core research and advocacy. The economist saw that
his vision would never come to fruition by focusing on who rules. It was much better
to focus on the rules themselves , and that required a "constitutional
revolution."
MacLean describes how the economist developed a grand project to train operatives to staff
institutions funded by like-minded tycoons, most significantly Charles Koch, who became
interested in his work in the '70s and sought the economist's input in promoting "Austrian
economics" in the U.S. and in advising the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
Koch, whose mission was to save capitalists like himself from democracy, found the ultimate
theoretical tool in the work of the southern economist. The historian writes that Koch
preferred Buchanan to Milton Friedman and his "Chicago boys" because, she says, quoting a
libertarian insider, they wanted "to make government work more efficiently when the true
libertarian should be tearing it out at the root."
With Koch's money and enthusiasm, Buchanan's academic school evolved into something much
bigger. By the 1990s, Koch realized that Buchanan's ideas -- transmitted through stealth and
deliberate deception, as MacLean amply documents -- could help take government down through
incremental assaults that the media would hardly notice. The tycoon knew that the project was
extremely radical, even a "revolution" in governance, but he talked like a conservative to make
his plans sound more palatable.
MacLean details how partnered with Koch, Buchanan's outpost at George Mason University was
able to connect libertarian economists with right-wing political actors and supporters of
corporations like Shell Oil, Exxon, Ford, IBM, Chase Manhattan Bank, and General Motors.
Together they could push economic ideas to public through media, promote new curricula for
economics education, and court politicians in nearby Washington, D.C.
At the 1997 fiftieth anniversary of the Mont Pelerin Society, MacLean recounts that Buchanan
and his associate Henry Manne, a founding theorist of libertarian economic approaches to law,
focused on such affronts to capitalists as environmentalism and public health and welfare,
expressing eagerness to dismantle Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare as well as kill
public education because it tended to foster community values. Feminism had to go, too: the
scholars considered it a socialist project.
The Oligarchic Revolution Unfolds
Buchanan's ideas began to have huge impact, especially in America and in Britain. In his
home country, the economist was deeply involved efforts to cut taxes on the wealthy in 1970s
and 1980s and he advised proponents of Reagan Revolution in their quest to unleash markets and
posit government as the "problem" rather than the "solution." The Koch-funded Virginia school
coached scholars, lawyers, politicians, and business people to apply stark right-wing
perspectives on everything from deficits to taxes to school privatization. In Britain,
Buchanan's work helped to inspire the public sector reforms of Margaret Thatcher and her
political progeny.
To put the success into perspective, MacLean points to the fact that Henry Manne, whom
Buchanan was instrumental in hiring, created legal programs for law professors and federal
judges which could boast that by 1990 two of every five sitting federal judges had
participated. "40 percent of the U.S. federal judiciary," writes MacLean, "had been treated to
a Koch-backed curriculum."
MacLean illustrates that in South America, Buchanan was able to first truly set his ideas in
motion by helping a bare-knuckles dictatorship ensure the permanence of much of the radical
transformation it inflicted on a country that had been a beacon of social progress. The
historian emphasizes that Buchanan's role in the disastrous Pinochet government of Chile has
been underestimated partly because unlike Milton Friedman, who advertised his activities,
Buchanan had the shrewdness to keep his involvement quiet. With his guidance, the military
junta deployed public choice economics in the creation of a new constitution, which required
balanced budgets and thereby prevented the government from spending to meet public needs.
Supermajorities would be required for any changes of substance, leaving the public little
recourse to challenge programs like the privatization of social security.
The dictator's human rights abuses and pillage of the country's resources did not seem to
bother Buchanan, MacLean argues, so long as the wealthy got their way. "Despotism may be the
only organizational alternative to the political structure that we observe," the economist had
written in The Limits of Liberty . If you have been wondering about the end result of
the Virginia school philosophy, well, the economist helpfully spelled it out.
A World of Slaves
Most Americans haven't seen what's coming.
MacLean notes that when the Kochs' control of the GOP kicked into high gear after the
financial crisis of 2007-08, many were so stunned by the "shock-and-awe" tactics of shutting
down government, destroying labor unions, and rolling back services that meet citizens' basic
necessities that few realized that many leading the charge had been trained in economics at
Virginia institutions, especially George Mason University. Wasn't it just a new, particularly
vicious wave of partisan politics?
It wasn't. MacLean convincingly illustrates that it was something far more disturbing.
MacLean is not the only scholar to sound the alarm that the country is experiencing a
hostile takeover that is well on its way to radically, and perhaps permanently, altering the
society. Peter Temin, former head of the MIT economics department, INET grantee, and author of
The Vanishing Middle Class, as well as economist Gordon Lafer of the
University of Oregon and author of The One Percent Solution , have provided eye-opening analyses of where America is
headed and why. MacLean adds another dimension to this dystopian big picture, acquainting us
with what has been overlooked in the capitalist right wing's playbook.
She observes, for example, that many liberals have missed the point of strategies like
privatization. Efforts to "reform" public education and Social Security are not just about a
preference for the private sector over the public sector, she argues. You can wrap your head
around, even if you don't agree. Instead, MacLean contents, the goal of these strategies is to
radically alter power relations, weakening pro-public forces and enhancing the lobbying power
and commitment of the corporations that take over public services and resources, thus advancing
the plans to dismantle democracy and make way for a return to oligarchy. The majority will be
held captive so that the wealthy can finally be free to do as they please, no matter how
destructive.
MacLean argues that despite the rhetoric of Virginia school acolytes, shrinking big
government is not really the point. The oligarchs require a government with tremendous new
powers so that they can bypass the will of the people. This, as MacLean points out, requires
greatly expanding police powers "to control the resultant popular anger." The spreading use of
pre-emption by GOP-controlled state legislatures to suppress local progressive victories such
as living wage ordinances is another example of the right's aggressive use of state power.
Could these right-wing capitalists allow private companies to fill prisons with helpless
citizens -- or, more profitable still, right-less undocumented immigrants? They could, and
have . Might they engineer a retirement crisis by moving Americans to inadequate 401(k)s?
Done . Take away the rights of consumers and workers to bring grievances to court by
making them sign forced arbitration agreements? Check . Gut public education to the
point where ordinary people have such bleak prospects that they have no energy to fight back?
Getting it done .
Would they even refuse children clean water? Actually, yes.
MacLean notes that in Flint, Michigan, Americans got a taste of what the emerging oligarchy
will look like -- it tastes like poisoned water. There, the Koch-funded Mackinac Center pushed
for legislation that would allow the governor to take control of communities facing emergency
and put unelected managers in charge. In Flint, one such manager switched the city's water
supply to a polluted river, but the Mackinac Center's lobbyists ensured that the law was
fortified by protections against lawsuits that poisoned inhabitants might bring. Tens
of thousands of children were exposed to lead, a substance known to cause serious health
problems including brain damage.
Tyler Cowen has provided an
economic justification for this kind of brutality, stating that where it is difficult to
get clean water, private companies should take over and make people pay for it. "This includes
giving them the right to cut off people who don't -- or can't -- pay their bills," the
economist explains.
To many this sounds grotesquely inhumane, but it is a way of thinking that has deep roots in
America. In Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative (2005), Buchanan considers the charge of
heartlessness made against the kind of classic liberal that he took himself to be. MacLean
interprets his discussion to mean that people who "failed to foresee and save money for their
future needs" are to be treated, as Buchanan put it, "as subordinate members of the species,
akin to animals who are dependent.'"
Do you have your education, health care, and retirement personally funded against all
possible exigencies? Then that means you.
Buchanan was not a dystopian novelist. He was a Nobel Laureate whose sinister logic exerts
vast influence over America's trajectory. It is no wonder that Cowen, on his popular blog
Marginal Revolution, does not
mention Buchanan on a list of underrated influential libertarian thinkers, though elsewhere
on the blog, he expresses admiration for several of Buchanan's contributions and
acknowledges that the southern economist "thought more consistently in terms of 'rules of
the games' than perhaps any other economist."
The rules of the game are now clear.
Research like MacLean's provides hope that toxic ideas like Buchanan's may finally begin to
face public scrutiny. Yet at this very moment, the Kochs' State Policy Network and the American
Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group that connects corporate agents to conservative
lawmakers to produce legislation, are involved in projects that the Trump-obsessed media hardly
notices, like pumping money into state judicial races. Their aim is to stack the legal deck
against Americans in ways that MacLean argues may have even bigger effects than Citizens
United, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling which unleashed unlimited corporate spending on American
politics. The goal is to create a judiciary that will interpret the Constitution in favor of
corporations and the wealthy in ways that Buchanan would have heartily approved.
"The United States is now at one of those historic forks in the road whose outcome will
prove as fateful as those of the 1860s, the 1930s, and the 1960s," writes MacLean. "To value
liberty for the wealthy minority above all else and enshrine it in the nation's governing
rules, as Calhoun and Buchanan both called for and the Koch network is achieving, play by play,
is to consent to an oligarchy in all but the outer husk of representative form."
"... By Laura Basu, a Marie Curie Research Fellow at Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Culture. Originally published at openDemocracy ..."
"... This ideology spread through the media from the 1980s ..."
"... Fast-forward to April 2009, barely 6 months after the announcement of a £500 billion bank bailout. A media hysteria was nowraging around Britain's deficit . While greedy bankers were still taking some of the blame, the systemic problems in finance and the problems with the free-market model had been forgotten. Instead, public profligacy had become the dominant explanation for the deficit. The timeline of the crisis was being erased and rewritten. ..."
"... These measures were a ramped-up version of the kinds of reforms that had produced the crisis in the first place. This fact, however, was forgotten. These 'pro-business' moves were enthusiastically embraced by the media, far more so than austerity. Of the 5 outlets analysed (The BBC, Telegraph, Sun, Guardian and Mirror), only the Guardian rejected them more frequently than endorsing them. ..."
"... "One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." ..."
"... This post is disheartening in so many ways. Start with "media hysteria" -- adding yet another glib coinage to hide a lack of explanation behind a simple but innapt analogy like the endless "addictions" from which personifications of various abstract entities suffer. ..."
"... This coinage presupposes a media sufficiently free to be possessed by hysteria. Dancing puppets might with some art appear "hysterical". And the strange non-death of Neoliberalsm isn't so strange or poorly understood in 2018 though the detailed explanation hasn't reached as many as one might have hoped, including the authors of this brief post. Consider their unhappy mashup of thoughts in a key sentence of the first paragraph: "This power has been maintained with the help of a robust ideology centred on free markets (though in reality markets are captured by corporations and are maintained by the state) and the superiority of the private sector over the public sector." The tail of this sentence obviates the rest of the post. And we ought not ignore the detail that Neoliberalism believes in the Market as a solution to all problems -- NOT the 'free market' of neoclassical economics or libertarian ideology. ..."
"... From "media hysteria" the post postulates "amnesia" of a public convinced of "greedy bankers" who need regulation. In the U.S. the propaganda was more subtle -- at least in my opinion. We were fed the "bad apples" theory mocked in a brief series of media clips presented in the documentary film "Inside Job". Those clips suggest a better explanation for the swift media transitions from banking reform to balanced budgets and austerity with more tax cuts for the wealthy than "amnesia" or "hyper-amnesia". The media Corporations are tightly controlled by the same forces that captured Corporations and -- taking the phrase "the superiority of the private sector over the public sector" in the sense that a superior directs an inferior [rather than the intended(?) sense] -- direct and essentially own our governments. ..."
"... The remarkable thing about public discourse and political and economic news reporting is how superficial it has become, so devoid of a foundation of any kind in history or theory. You can not have an effective critique of society or the economy or anything, if you do not see a system with a history and think it matters. Neoliberalism has become what people say when they think none of it really matters; it is all just noise. ..."
"... "Neoliberalism has become what people say when they think none of it really matters; it is all just noise." ..."
"... I also think that the crisis of neoliberalism echos a problem caused by capitalism, itself. I think David Harvey stated that "capitalism doesn't solve problems, it often just moves them around". ..."
"... Matt Stoller tweet from August 2017, as germane now as ever: "The political crisis we are facing is simple. American commerce, law, finance, and politics is organized around cheating people." ..."
"... George Orwell noted that the middle class Left couldn't handle dealing with real working class people, although there isn't the same huge gulf these days, I believe there is still a vestige of it due to the British class system. The Fabians set up shop in the East End around the turn of the last century & directly rubbed shoulders with the likes of Coster Mongers – a combination that led to a strike that was one of the first success stories in the attempt to get a few more crumbs than what was usually allowed to fall from the top table. ..."
"... If Neoliberalism is now being noticed I imagine that it is because of it's success in working it's way up the food chain. After all these same Middle classes for the most part did not care much for the plight of the poor during those Victorian values. Many could not wait to employ maids of all work who slaved for up to fourteen hours a day with only Sunday afternoon's off. The Suffragettes had a real problem with this as their relatively comfortable lives would soon descend into drudgery without their servants. ..."
"... Coincidentally, the NYT article on Austerity Britain is the closest I have read to an accurate picture that I have seen for a good while. ..."
"... It's also not a new thing. British media worship of neoliberalism has been growing since the 1980s, at the same time as newspapers have been closing and media sources of all kinds laying off their staff. 2008 was a temporary blip, and since the average journalist has the attention span of a hamster, it was back to usual a few months later. Once the crash stopped being "news" old patterns reasserted themselves. I wonder, incidentally, how many economics journalists in the UK actually remember the time before neoliberalism? ..."
"... Consuming corporate media is increasingly a bizarro-world experience. Even something like the Trump scandal/constitutional crisis/investigation seems like the arrogant internecine warfare of corrupt factions of the establishment. Meanwhile, Americans are increasingly living out of their cars. ..."
"... 1. Oligarchs having captured thoroughly the media, the legislatures and the judiciary, (as well as large parts of what might be construed as "liberal" political organisations e.g. the Democratic Party of the USA) ..."
Posted on
May 29, 2018 by Yves Smith Yves here. I'm sure readers
could write a US version of this timeline despite the fact that we had a second crisis and
bailout, that of way more foreclosures than were warranted, thanks to lousy incentives to
mortgage servicers and lack of political will to intervene, and foreclosure fraud to cover up
for chain of title failures.
By Laura Basu, a Marie Curie Research Fellow at Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and
Culture. Originally published at
openDemocracy
It hasn't escaped many people's attention that, a decade after the biggest economic crash of
a generation, the economic model producing that meltdown has not exactly been laid to rest.
The crisis in the
NHS and the
Carillion and Capital scandals are testament to that. Sociologist Colin Crouch wrote a book
in 2011 about the 'strange non-death of neoliberalism', arguing that the neoliberal model is
centred on the needs of corporations and that corporate power actually intensified after the
2008 financial meltdown. This power has been maintained with the help of a robust ideology
centred on free markets (though in reality markets are captured by corporations and are
maintained by the state) and the superiority of the private sector over the public sector. It
advocates privatisation, cuts in public spending, deregulation and tax cuts for businesses and
high earners.
This ideology
spread through the media from the 1980s , and the media have continued to play a key
role in its persistence through a decade of political and economic turmoil since the 2008
crash. They have done this largely via an acute amnesia about the causes of the crisis, an
amnesia that helped make policies like austerity, privatisation and corporate tax breaks appear
as common sense responses to the problems.
This amnesia struck at dizzying speed. My research carried out at Cardiff University shows
that in 2008 at the time of the banking collapse, the main explanations given for the problems
were financial misconduct ('greedy bankers'), systemic problems with the financial sector, and
the faulty free-market model. These explanations were given across the media spectrum,
with even the Telegraph and Sun complaining about a lack of regulation . Banking reform was
advocated across the board.
Fast-forward to April 2009, barely 6 months after the announcement of a £500
billion bank bailout.
A media hysteria was nowraging around Britain's deficit . While greedy bankers were still
taking some of the blame, the systemic problems in finance and the problems with the
free-market model had been forgotten. Instead, public profligacy had become the dominant
explanation for the deficit. The timeline of the crisis was being erased and
rewritten.
Correspondingly, financial and corporate regulation were forgotten. Instead, austerity
became the star of the show, eclipsing all other possible solutions to the crisis. As a
response to the deficit, austerity was mentioned 2.5 as many times as the next most covered
policy-response option, which was raising taxes on the wealthy. Austerity was mentioned 18
times more frequently than tackling tax avoidance and evasion. Although coverage of austerity
was polarized, no media outlet rejected it outright, and even the left-leaning press implicitly
(and sometimes explicitly) backed 'austerity lite'.
In 2010, the Conservative-Lib Dem government announced £99 billion in spending cuts
and £29 billion in tax increases per year by 2014-15. Having made these 'tough choices',
from 2011 the coalition wanted to focus attention away from austerity and towards growth (which
was, oops, being stalled by austerity). To do this, they pursued a zealously 'pro-business'
agenda, including privatisation, deregulation, cutting taxes for the highest earners, and
cutting corporation tax in 2011, 2012, 2013, and in 2015 and 2016 under a Conservative
government.
These measures were a ramped-up version of the kinds of reforms that had produced the
crisis in the first place. This fact, however, was forgotten. These 'pro-business' moves were
enthusiastically embraced by the media, far more so than austerity. Of the 5 outlets analysed
(The BBC, Telegraph, Sun, Guardian and Mirror), only the Guardian rejected them more frequently
than endorsing them.
The idea behind these policies is that what's good for business is good for everyone. If
businesses are handed more resources, freed from regulation and handed tax breaks, they will be
encouraged to invest in the economy, creating jobs and growth. The rich are therefore 'job
creators' and 'wealth creators'.
This is despite the fact that these policies have an impressive fail rate. Business
investment and productivity growth remain low, as corporations spend the savings not on
training and innovation but on share buy-backs and shareholder dividends. According to the
Financial Times, in 2014, the top 500 US companies
returned 95 per cent of their profits to shareholders in dividends and buybacks. Meanwhile,
inequality is spiralling and in the UK more than a million
people are using food banks .
Poverty and inequality, meanwhile, attracted surprising little media attention. Of my sample
of 1,133 media items, only 53 had a primary focus on living standards, poverty or inequality.
This
confirms other researchshowing a lack of media attention to these issues . Of these 53
items, the large majority were from the Guardian and Mirror. The coverage correctly identified
austerity as a primary cause of these problems. However, deeper explanations were rare. Yet
again, the link back to the 2008 bank meltdown wasn't made, let alone the long-term causes of
that meltdown. Not only that, the coverage failed even to identify the role of most of the
policies pursued since the onset of the crisis in producing inequality – such as
the bank bailouts, quantitative easing, and those 'pro-business' measures like corporation tax
cuts and privatisation.
And so it seems we are living with a hyper-amnesia , in which it is increasingly
difficult to reconstruct timelines and distinguish causes from effects. This amnesia has helped
trap us in a neoliberal groundhog day. The political consensus around the free market model
finally seems to be breaking. If we are to find a way out, we will need to have a lot more
conversations about how to organise both our media systems and our economies.
Tick-Tock.
It depends. Do you believe the worst can be avoided or do you believe the world is already
knee deep in all the things we're told to be afraid will happen? There is a big difference
between organizing for reform and organizing to break capture.
" Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand "
W.B. Yeats
I suppose we can take some succour from the fact that WWI (and the Spanish flu) seemed to
be a harbinger of worse to come but we're still here
The hyper-amnesia ground hog problem described in the post happens, in part, because the
'centre continues to hold'. It demonstrates the center can, and does, hold. We don't want the
centre to hold. We want it to disappear and get replaced by policies and perspectives keen on
an economy (and society) that works for all, not just some
I know what you're saying and I tend to agree. But the centre to Yeats (my interpretation,
anyway) is that there is a cultural centre both apart from but also part of the social
centre, and when that centre goes all hell breaks loose. Meaning of events becomes very
confused or impossible to understand on many levels.
Then, it's often the little people (and don't go making jokes about leprechauns) that get
crushed in the confusion.
We should reflect about the root causes of why our information is not informing us. How
can decades go by with the meme "smoking has not been conclusively proven to cause cancer" or
now "the science of climate change is inconclusive", not to mention countless similar horror
stories in pharma. Bullshit about the effectiveness of supply side economics is no
different.
Somehow we collectively need to expect and demand more objectivity from our information
sources. We fall for the fox guarding hen houses scam over and over, from TARP bailouts, to
FDA approvals to WMD claims. Not sure of the answer, but I know from talking with my boomer
parents, skepticism about information sources is not in the DNA of many information
consumers.
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we
tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the
truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to
ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never
get it back."
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
One of Sagan's best, I loaned this out to a not terribly thoughtful acquaintance and I was
told it was "too preachy".
I guess Sagan proves himself correct time and time again.
It is also worth noting that a number of newspapers lauded Hitler's rise to power –
they overlooked violence against Jews because the trains ran on time. Nor should we ignore
disinformation campaigns, led by newspapers (e.g. Hearst and cannabis). In general, each
media outlet is a reflection of its owners, most of whom are rich and adverse to any
suggestion that we "tax the rich."
I've come to the conclusion that we don't have a media anymore. I was watching MSNBC this
AM discuss the "missing" 1500 immigrant children. The agency responsible says it calls the
people who now have the kids, but most of the people don't call back within the 30-day
requirement period.
Now the next logical questions to ask the rep would be: What happens after 30 days? Do you
keep calling them? Do send out investigators?" But are these questions asked? No. Instead we
get speculation or non-answers. It's the same with every issue.
The internet is not any better. Many articles are just repeating what appears elsewhere
with no one checking the facts, even on respected sites. I also got a chain email today
regarding petition for a Constitutional Convention. The impetus is a list of grievances
ranging from "a congressman can retire after just one term with a full pension" to "children
of congressmen don't have to pay back college loans." I already knew most of the claims
weren't true but the 131 recipients of the organization I belong to didn't. I did find out
that this chain email has been circulating on the internet for five years and it is the work
of a conservative groups whose real aim is to stop abortion and make Christianity the law of
the land. I was not surprised.
I have said for years that there is no news on the news. And I have repeated this meme for
just as long: There is a reason why America is called Planet Stupid.
Now the next logical questions to ask the rep would be: What happens after 30 days? Do
you keep calling them? Do send out investigators?" But are these questions asked? No.
Instead we get speculation or non-answers. It's the same with every issue.
Even competent reporting takes practice, time, and effort, even money sometimes. The same
with even half way competent governing. Neither is rewarded, and are often punished, for
doing nowadays; asking as a follow-up question "did you call the local police or send over a
pair of ICE officers just to politely knock on the door?" Police do people checks all the
time. "I haven't see so and so for a week", or "my relative hasn't returned my calls for a
month, can you?" It is possible that the paperwork just got lost and asking the
guardians/family some questions personally would solve.
But all that is boring bovine excrement, which is just not done.
This post is disheartening in so many ways. Start with "media hysteria" -- adding yet
another glib coinage to hide a lack of explanation behind a simple but innapt analogy like
the endless "addictions" from which personifications of various abstract entities suffer.
This coinage presupposes a media sufficiently free to be possessed by hysteria. Dancing
puppets might with some art appear "hysterical". And the strange non-death of Neoliberalsm
isn't so strange or poorly understood in 2018 though the detailed explanation hasn't reached
as many as one might have hoped, including the authors of this brief post. Consider their
unhappy mashup of thoughts in a key sentence of the first paragraph: "This power has been
maintained with the help of a robust ideology centred on free markets (though in reality
markets are captured by corporations and are maintained by the state) and the superiority of
the private sector over the public sector." The tail of this sentence obviates the rest of
the post. And we ought not ignore the detail that Neoliberalism believes in the Market as a
solution to all problems -- NOT the 'free market' of neoclassical economics or libertarian
ideology.
From "media hysteria" the post postulates "amnesia" of a public convinced of "greedy
bankers" who need regulation. In the U.S. the propaganda was more subtle -- at least in my
opinion. We were fed the "bad apples" theory mocked in a brief series of media clips
presented in the documentary film "Inside Job". Those clips suggest a better explanation for
the swift media transitions from banking reform to balanced budgets and austerity with more
tax cuts for the wealthy than "amnesia" or "hyper-amnesia". The media Corporations are
tightly controlled by the same forces that captured Corporations and -- taking the phrase
"the superiority of the private sector over the public sector" in the sense that a superior
directs an inferior [rather than the intended(?) sense] -- direct and essentially own our
governments.
The essayist complains that poverty and the manifest failures of neoliberalism get little
critical attention, but she leads off, "It hasn't escaped many people's attention . . ."
The remarkable thing about public discourse and political and economic news reporting is
how superficial it has become, so devoid of a foundation of any kind in history or theory.
You can not have an effective critique of society or the economy or anything, if you do not
see a system with a history and think it matters. Neoliberalism has become what people say
when they think none of it really matters; it is all just noise.
Another thing to recall was how quickly talk of nationalizing banks evaporated. Even Paul
Krugman, among others were supporting the idea that "real capitalists nationalize".
Once LIBOR came down, and the lending channels began to reopen, the happy talk ensued and
the amnesia kicked in strongly.
I also think that the crisis of neoliberalism echos a problem caused by capitalism,
itself. I think David Harvey stated that "capitalism doesn't solve problems, it often just
moves them around".
The financial crisis and austerity have now manifested themselves into a media crisis of
elites and elite legitimacy (BREXIT, Trump's election, etc). The ability to manufacture
consent is running into increased difficulty. I don't think the financial crisis narrative
shift helped very much at all. A massive crime requires an equally massive cover-up,
naturally.
Why, it's almost as if 90% of all media outlets are owned by 5 multibillion dollar
conglomerates, controlled by the top 0.1%, for the purposes of protecting their unearned
parasitic power, and the employees making six-to-low-seven figures are on the Upton Sinclair
"paycheck demands I not understand it" model.
Or it's amnesia.
Matt Stoller tweet from August 2017, as germane now as ever: "The political crisis we are
facing is simple. American commerce, law, finance, and politics is organized around cheating
people."
A big thumbs up for that! Sobotka was a hero in very dark times.
As my brother-in-law puts it: The American Dream used to be "work hard in a useful job,
raise a family of citizens, retire with dignity, and hand the controls to the next
generation." Now? It's just "Win the lottery."
Problem is, "The Lottery" is right out of Shirley Jackson.
Agreed. The author is inclined to interpret at the level of cumulative effect -- apparent
forgetting -- and to ignore how fear -- of editors, of owners -- plays any role. Her proposed
unveiling of a coercive process becomes yet another veiling of it.
Sadly the narrative of details is lost to history The German landesbanks who had
guaranteed payments in loan pools in the USA were allowed to skirt thru crash and burn by the
agencies (moody s&p and your little fitch too) fake and shake ratings process But all
things German are magical Having lived thru NYC Mac Corp effective bankruptcy of man hat
tan..
it was amusing watching the hand wave given when the city of Berlin actually defaulted
.
My own view for what it is worth is that the Guardian pays some lip service to the plight
of the UK's " Deplorables ", but like most of it's readership does not really give a damn. A
state of being exacerbated by Brexit similar to the situation in the US with Trump. It's much
easier to imagine hordes of racist morons who inhabit places that you have no direct
experience of, than to actually go & take a look. It's also very easy to be in favour of
mass immigration if it does not effect your employment, housing & never likely to spoil
your early morning dawn chorus with a call to prayer.
Unfortunately it has been left to the Right to complain about such things as the Rotherham
abuse scandal, which involved a couple of thousand young girls, who I suspect are worth less
to some than perhaps being mistaken as a racist. There are also various groups made up of
Muslim women who protest about Sharia councils behaviour to their sex, but nobody in the
media is at all interested.
George Orwell noted that the middle class Left couldn't handle dealing with real working
class people, although there isn't the same huge gulf these days, I believe there is still a
vestige of it due to the British class system. The Fabians set up shop in the East End around
the turn of the last century & directly rubbed shoulders with the likes of Coster Mongers
– a combination that led to a strike that was one of the first success stories in the
attempt to get a few more crumbs than what was usually allowed to fall from the top
table.
As for Mirror readers, I suspect that the majority are either the voiceless or are too
busy fighting to avoid the fate of those who find themselves availing of food banks, while
being labelled as lazy scroungers all having expensive holidays, twenty kids, about thirty
grand a year, while being subjected to a now updated more vicious regime of that which was
illustrated by " I, Daniel Blake ".
If Neoliberalism is now being noticed I imagine that it is because of it's success in
working it's way up the food chain. After all these same Middle classes for the most part did
not care much for the plight of the poor during those Victorian values. Many could not wait
to employ maids of all work who slaved for up to fourteen hours a day with only Sunday
afternoon's off. The Suffragettes had a real problem with this as their relatively
comfortable lives would soon descend into drudgery without their servants.
Coincidentally, the NYT article on Austerity Britain is the closest I have read to an
accurate picture that I have seen for a good while.
It's also not a new thing. British media worship of neoliberalism has been growing since
the 1980s, at the same time as newspapers have been closing and media sources of all kinds
laying off their staff. 2008 was a temporary blip, and since the average journalist has the
attention span of a hamster, it was back to usual a few months later. Once the crash stopped
being "news" old patterns reasserted themselves. I wonder, incidentally, how many economics
journalists in the UK actually remember the time before neoliberalism?
"And so it seems we are living with a hyper-amnesia"
Consuming corporate media is increasingly a bizarro-world experience. Even something like
the Trump scandal/constitutional crisis/investigation seems like the arrogant internecine
warfare of corrupt factions of the establishment. Meanwhile, Americans are increasingly
living out of their cars.
The corporate media forgets the causes of the worst economic crisis since the Depression,
and it put Trump in a position to be elected. Trump was the Republican nominee because he was
relentlessly promoted by the media -- because ratings, because neoliberal rigged markets.
Break up the media monopolies, roll back Citizens United, enforce the fairness
doctrine.
" Consuming corporate media is increasingly a bizarro-world experience the Trump
scandal/constitutional crisis/investigation is nothing other than internecine warfare between
corrupt factions of the establishment."
I think there are several issues here for Americans, which can partially be applied to the
Europeans.
First, the American nation as whole only has short term memory. It is our curse.
Second, those with the money spend a lot of money, time and effort the late 19th century
covering up, massaging, or sometimes just creating lies about the past. American and British
businesses, governments, and even private organizations are masters at advertising and
propaganda. Perhaps the best on Earth.
Third, the people and the institutions that would counter this somewhat, independent
unions, multiple independent media, tenured professors at functioning schools, even
non-neoliberalized churches, and social organizations like bowling, crocheting, or heck, the
Masons would all maintain a separate continuing body of memory and knowledge.
Lastly, we are all freaking terrified somewhere inside us. Those relative few who
are not are fools, and most people, whatever their faults, truly are not fools. Even if they
act like one. Whatever your beliefs, position, or knowledge, the knowing of the oncoming
storm is in you. Money or poverty may not save you. The current set of lies, while they are
lies, gives everyone a comfortable known position of supporting or opposing in the same old,
same old while avoiding thinking about whatever catastrophe(s) and radical changes we all
know are coming. The lies are more relaxing than the truth.
Even if you are one of society's homeless losers, who would welcome some changes, would
you be comfortable thinking about just how likely it is to be very traumatic? Hiding behind
begging for change might be more comfortable.
"Even if you are one of society's homeless losers, who would welcome some changes, would
you be comfortable thinking about just how likely it is to be very traumatic? Hiding behind
begging for change might be more comfortable."
On the contrary, the upheaval the "losers" have been subjected to will be turned around
and used as a just cause for rectification. Trumatic consequences can be unpredictable and
this is why society should have socio-economic checks and balances to prevent an economic
system running amok. Commonsense that necessitates amnesia for neoliberalism to seem
viable.
1. Oligarchs having captured thoroughly the media, the legislatures and the judiciary, (as
well as large parts of what might be construed as "liberal" political organisations e.g. the
Democratic Party of the USA)
2. the seemingly inexorable trend to wealth concentration in the hands of said
oligarchs
..one asks oneself.."What is one to do?"
My own response, (and I acknowledge straight off its limited impact), is to do the
following:
1. support financially in the limited ways possible media channels such as Naked
Capitalism that do their level best to debunk the lies and deceptions perpetrated by the
oligarchs
2. support financially social organisations and structures that are genuinely citizen
based and focused on a sustainable future for all
3. Do very very limited monitoring of the oligarch's "lies and deceptions" (one needs to
understand one's enemies to have a chance to counter them) and try on a personal level, in
one's day to day interactions, to present counter arguments
We cannot throw in the towel. We must direct our limited financial resources and personal
efforts to constructive change, as, for the 99%..there are no "bunker" to run to when the
"proverbial" hits the fan..as it must in the fullness of time.
Yep. One has to go ahead and do what one can. It all makes a difference. Thanks for your
strategy, Peter Phillips. Limited impact is not no impact, and we don't have the luxury of
despairing because there is only a bit we can do.
Yet this has been going on forever – – this past Sunday, for the first time I
recall, I finally heard an accurate Real News story filed on the Bobby Kennedy assassination
(50th anniversary coming this June 6, 2018) by the BBC World Service.
They actually noted that there were multiple shooters, that Sen. Kennedy was shot from
behind, not the front where Sirhan was located, etc., etc.
I guess we do occasionally witness Real News – – – just that it takes 50
years or so to be reported . . .
"... Holy fuck, do something! I heard a rumour that one of them was in a San Francisco bathhouse at the same time as Adam Schiff! Or was it sitting in the next booth at a McDonald's? ..."
I want to know what the FBI is doing about all the guys with suspicious names
playing hockey for the Washington Capitals: Orlov, Ovechkin, Kuznetsov,
Burakovsky...my God, man, they're playing for the CAPITALS in Washington DC!!
Holy fuck, do something! I heard a rumour that one of them was in a San
Francisco bathhouse at the same time as Adam Schiff! Or was it sitting in the
next booth at a McDonald's?
One practical issue is what is going to happen to European investments in Iran. The most
high profile example is French energy company Total's investment in a giant Iran gasfield.
Total said this month it would pull out of Iran and its development of the giant South Pars
gasfield unless it is specifically protected from US penalties and related sanctions (see
Financial Times article " Total threat to pull out of
Iran dents EU hopes of saving accord ", May 17, 2018).
Obviously, some form of compromise may be negotiated. But if Washington takes a hard line,
such as claiming US jurisdiction as regards dollar transfers between two sovereign countries as
was the case in 2014 with the US$9 billion fine levied on French bank BNP, then a confrontation
is seemingly inevitable and, as a result, a growing questioning of the US hegemony implied by
the US dollar paper standard, a concern which has long been shared by both China and
Russia.
QUESTIONING THE US' ROLE AS THE "ECONOMIC POLICEMAN OF THE PLANET"
In this respect, the most interesting reaction to the Iran issue since Donald Trump made his
announcement on May 8 was that of the French finance minister Bruno Le Maire when he said on
May 9 that it was not acceptable for the US to be the "economic policeman of the planet".
In this respect, France is the European country to watch since it has a history of being
willing to stand up to Washington in the post-1945 world. That cannot really be said of Germany
and certainly not of Britain.
POMPEO WARNS IRAN OF ESCALATING SANCTIONS
Staying on the subject of Iran, US Secretary of State and former CIA boss Mike Pompeo made
an ultra-aggressive speech on Monday threatening Iran with escalating sanctions. In his first
major foreign policy address as Secretary of State, Pompeo stated:
Sanctions are going back in full effect and new ones are coming This sting of sanctions
will be painful if the regime does not change its course These will indeed end up being the
strongest sanctions in history when we are complete.
The above rhetoric hardly suggests a willingness to compromise with the European position.
The significance of all of the above is that Europe and the US remain on a collision
course.
IRAN'S EXPORTS BOOMING SINCE SANCTIONS ENDED
The importance of Europe for Iran can be seen in the fact that Iran's exports to Europe have
surged almost ninefold since the end of sanctions in January 2016.
Thus, Iran's exports to the EU have risen from US$1.3 billion in 2015 to US$11.4 billion in
the 12 months to January, according to the IMF Direction of Trade Statistics (see following
chart).
There is also of course the growing trade between Iran and China. Iran's total trade with
China rose by 18%YoY to US$27.5 billion in the 12 months to January (see following chart). All
this makes Iran a good example of the increasingly multipolar world where American influence or
interests appear to be fading.
IRAN ANNUALIZED EXPORTS TO EU
Source: IMF – Direction of Trade Statistics
IRAN ANNUALIZED TOTAL TRADE WITH CHINA
Source: IMF – Direction of Trade Statistics
IRAN'S CURRENCY TAKES A HIT
Meanwhile, Iran's currency has been hit hard in recent months as a result of the uncertainty
created by Trump's previous repeated earlier threats to pull out of the nuclear deal and now
subsequent follow-through decision.
The rial has depreciated in the black market by 33% against the US dollar year-to-date (see
following chart). This followed a period of comparative stability where the currency traded in
a 13% range for two years, helped by the optimism created by the nuclear deal as well as by
very high real interest
rates . Iranian treasury bill yields peaked at 27% in early 2017 and bottomed at 16% late
last year. They are now back at 19% as a result of the market pressure created by the threat of
renewed American sanctions.
IRANIAN RIAL/US$ (INVERTED SCALE)
Note: Based on black market rate after Iran unified its dual exchange rates on 9 April.
Source: Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance, Bonbast.com
SUBSTANTIAL FOREIGN INVESTMENT IN IRAN
With a classic bullish emerging market demographic profile, in terms of a
population of 80 million, 60% of whom are under the age of 35, Iran has, naturally, attracted a
lot of foreign direct investment in recent years, most particularly following the 2015 nuclear
deal.
The biggest of late was the previously mentioned Total's US$4.8 billion investment signed in
July 2017. But Total says it has only invested under €40 million so far, according to the
above mentioned FT article, which is precisely why the French company wants to know if it can
get a specific waiver from the sanctions.
In terms of the aggregate data, Iran's actual FDI inflows surged by 64%YoY to US$3.37
biilion in 2016, according to United Nations data. While an Iranian government report published
last year disclosed that Iran has approved US$11.8 billion in FDI during the 12 months to
December 2016, with Spain and Germany accounting for US$3.2 billion and US$2.9 billion of that
total respectively.
IRAN FDI INFLOWS
Source: UNCTAD World Investment Report 2017
WILL WE SEE A RETREAT FROM PAX
AMERICANA?
The point, therefore, remains that a confrontation between the US and the Eurozone on this
issue is potentially a landmark development in the retreat from Pax Americana.
But for now it is probably the case that most of Europe, in the spirit of appeasement, will
be content to fudge the issue in the hope that Donald Trump may not be re-elected to the US
presidency for a second term and life will return to "normal".
IRAN'S ECONOMY
Turning away from geopolitical issues, Iran's economy and financial markets spring some
positive surprises. The country has an open capital account, while there is no tax on capital
gains or dividends. The Tehran Stock Exchange celebrated its 50th anniversary last year.
But if FDI has been coming into the country in recent years, foreign portfolio investment
activity has been much more limited, with estimates of only US$100 million invested in
aggregate. This is the consequence in terms of equities of both a lack of inclusion in
benchmark MSCI indices and, of course, of sanctions.
NO FOREIGN BANKS IN IRAN
There is still no foreign bank in Iran and therefore a lack of familiar custodians
acceptable to international portfolio investors. Indeed, despite the 2015 nuclear deal, it is
still not possible to use foreign credit cards to pay for hotel bills or any other
transaction.
Foreign credit rating agencies are also absent which may not surprise given the three
biggest are owned by the Americans. This is a pity for the Iranian Government given that, with
minimal foreign currency debt and total government debt to GDP of only 35% of GDP, it would
make a lot of sense to do a landmark sovereign bond issue. Total external debt is now only
US$10.8 billion or just 2.5% of GDP, according to the Central Bank of Iran (see following
chart).
So this geopolitical planning is unique To America? So... I would be shocked, shocked if China, Russia, or the Sunni/Shia diasporas
had similar plans.
Trump is non-establishment, both party establishments want him gone. He was against the Iraq War. I haven't seen evidence he
buys into expanding a US empire or joining a global one. Just another reason neocons want to get rid of him.
In his final report in a three-part series, Guccifer 2's West
Coast Fingerprint , the Forensicator discovers evidence that at least one operator behind
the Guccifer 2.0 persona worked from the West Coast of the United States.
The Forensicator's earlier findings stated that Guccifer 2.0's NGP-VAN files were
accessed locally on the East Coast, and in another analysis they suggested
that a file published by Guccifer 2.0 was created in the Central time zone of the United
States. Most recently, a former DNC official refuted the DNC's initial allegations that Trump opposition files
had been ex-filtrated from the DNC by Russian state-sponsored operatives.
So, if Guccifer 2.0's role was negated by the statements of the DNC's own former "official"
in a 2017 report by the Associated Press
, why do we now return our attention to the Guccifer 2.0 persona, as we reflect on the last
section of new findings from the Forensicator?
The answer: Despite almost two years having passed since the appearance of the Guccifer 2.0
persona, legacy media is still trotting
out the shambling corpse of Guccifer 2.0 to revive the legitimacy of the Russian hacking
narrative. In other words, it is necessary to hammer the final nail into the coffin of the
Guccifer 2.0 persona.
As previously noted, In his final report in
a three-part series, the Forensicator
discusses concrete evidence that at least one operator behind the Guccifer 2.0 persona worked
from the West Coast of the United States. He writes:
"Finally, we look at one particular Word document that Guccifer 2 uploaded, which had
"track changes" enabled. From the tracking metadata we deduce the timezone offset in effect
when Guccifer 2 made that change -- we reach a surprising conclusion: The document was likely
saved by Guccifer 2 on the West Coast, US ."
The Forensicator spends the first part of his report evaluating indications that Guccifer
2.0 may have operated out of Russia. Ultimately, the Forensicator discards those tentative
results. He emphatically notes:
"The PDT finding draws into question the premise that Guccifer 2 was operating out of
Russia, or any other region that would have had GMT+3 timezone offsets in force. Essentially,
the Pacific Timezone finding invalidates the GMT+3 timezone findings previously
described."
The Forensicator's new West Coast finding is not the first evidence to indicate that
operators behind the Guccifer 2.0 persona were based in the US. Nine months ago,
Disobedient Media , reported on the Forensicator's analysis ,
which showed (among other things) that Guccifer 2.0's "ngpvan" archive was created on the East
Coast. While that report received the vast majority of attention from the public and legacy
media,
Disobedient Media later reported on another analysis done by the Forensicator, which
found that a file published by Guccifer 2.0 (on a different occasion) was probably created in
the Central Timezone of the US.
Adding to all of this, UK based analyst and independent journalist Adam Carter presented his own analysis which also showed
that the Guccifer 2.0 Twitter persona interacted on a schedule which was best explained by
having been based within the United States.
The chart above shows a box which spans regular working hours. It indicates that unless
Guccifer 2.0 worked the night shift, they were likely working out of the US. Though this last
data point is circumstantial, it is corroborated by the previously discussed pieces of
independently verifiable hard evidence described by the Forensicator.
When taking all of these separate pieces into account, one observes a convergence of
evidence that multiple US-based operators were behind the Guccifer 2.0 persona and its
publications. This is incredibly significant because it is based on multiple pieces of concrete
data; it does not rely on "anonymous sources within the government," nor contractors hired by
the DNC. As a result, much of the prior legacy press coverage of Guccifer 2.0 as a Russia-based
agent can be readily debunked.
Such tangible evidence stands in contrast to the claims made in a recently published
Daily Beast article, which reads more
like a gossip column than serious journalism. In the Daily Beast's recital, the outlet cites an
anonymous source who claims that a Moscow-based GRU agent was behind the Guccifer 2.0
operation, writing :
"Guccifer 2.0, the "lone hacker" who took credit for providing WikiLeaks with stolen
emails from the Democratic National Committee, was in fact an officer of Russia's military
intelligence directorate (GRU), The Daily Beast has learned. It's an attribution that
resulted from a fleeting but critical slip-up in GRU tradecraft.
But on one occasion, The Daily Beast has learned, Guccifer failed to activate the VPN
client before logging on. As a result, he left a real, Moscow-based Internet Protocol address
in the server logs of an American social media company, according to a source familiar with
the government's Guccifer investigation.
Working off the IP address, U.S. investigators identified Guccifer 2.0 as a particular GRU
officer working out of the agency's headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow."
[The Daily Beast , March 22, 2018]
Clearly, the claim made in the Daily Beast's report is in direct contradiction with the
growing mound of evidence suggesting that Guccifer 2.0 operated out of the United States. A
detailed technical breakdown of the evidence confirming a West-Coast "last saved" time and how
this counters the claims of the Daily Beast can be found in the Forensicator's
work.
The Forensicator explained to Disobedient Media that their discovery process was initiated
by the following Tweet by Matt Tait ( @pwnallthings ), a security blogger and journalist.
Tait noticed a change revision entry in one of the Word documents published in Guccifer 2.0's
second
batch of documents, (uploaded 3 days after Guccifer 2.0 first appeared on the scene).
The Forensicator corrects Tait, stating that the timestamp is in "wall time," (local time)
not UTC. The Forensicator explains that Tait's mistake is understandable because the "Z" suffix
usually implies "Zulu" (GMT) time, but that isn't the case for "track changes" timestamps. The
Forensicator writes that the document Tait refers to in his Tweet is named
Hillary-for-America-fundraising-guidelines-from-agent-letter.docx ; it has Word's "track
changes" feature enabled. Guccifer 2.0 made a trivial change to the document, using the
pseudonym, "Ernesto Che," portrayed below:
The Forensicator correlated that timestamp ("12:56:00 AM") with the document's "last saved"
timestamp expressed in GMT, as shown below courtesy of the Forensicator's
study :
Based on the evidence discussed above, the Forensicator concludes that Guccifer 2.0 saved
this file on a system that had a timezone offset of -7 hours (the difference between 0:56 AM
and 7:56 AM GMT). Thus, the system where this document was last changed used Pacific Timezone
settings.
The logical conclusion drawn from the preceding analysis is that Guccifer 2.0 was operating
somewhere on the West Coast of the United States when they made their change to that document .
This single finding throws into shambles any other conclusions that might indicate that
Guccifer 2.0 was operating out of Russia. This latest finding also adds to the previously cited
evidence that the persona was probably operated by multiple individuals located in the United
States.
Taken all together, the factual basis of the Russian hacking story totally collapses. We are
left instead with multiple traces of a US-based operation that created the appearance of
evidence that Kremlin-allied hackers had breached the DNC network. Publicly available data
suggests that Guccifer 2.0 is a US-based operation. To this, we add:
The Forensicator's
recent findings that Guccifer 2.0 deliberately planted "Russian fingerprints" into his first
document, as reported by
Disobedient Media.
A former DNC official's statement that a document with so-called "Russian fingerprints"
was not in fact taken from the DNC, as reported by Disobedient
Media .
In the course of the last nine months this outlet has documented the work of the
Forensicator, which has indicated that not only were Guccifer 2.0's "ngp-van" files accessed
locally on the East Coast of the US, but also that several files published by the Guccifer 2.0
persona were altered and saved within the United States. The "Russian fingerprints" left on
Guccifer 2.0's first document have been debunked, as has the claim that the file itself was
extracted from the DNC network in the first place. On top of all this, a former DNC official
withdrew the DNC's initial allegations that supported the "Russian hack" claim in the first
place.
One hopes that with all of this information in mind, the long-suffering Guccifer 2.0 saga
can be laid to rest once and for all, at least for unbiased and critically thinking
observers.
Snowden talked about the NSA or is it CIA, had the ability to leave Russian
fingerprints.
All of this was the "insurance" to frame Trump who they knew would win when they saw that
Hillary rallies had 20 people only showing up few old lesbians and nobody else.
Meanwhile, Snowden risked his life and liberty to show us evidence that the NSA developed
technology to make it appear even with expert analysis that NSA hacking originated from a
foreign power.
Interesting, if not quite as d&mning as the East Anglia collection of emails showing
worldwide fraud among scientists who get money to hawk global warming:
"Astrophysicist -- Mini Ice Age accelerating -- New Maunder Minimum has started May 3,
2018
We are plunging now into a deep mini ice age," says astrophysicist Piers Corbyn. "And there
is no way out." For the next 20 years it's going to get colder and colder on average, says
Corbyn.
The jet stream will be wilder. There will be more wild temperature changes, more hail
events, more earthquakes, more extreme volcano events, more snow in winters, lousy summers,
late springs, short autumns, and more and more crop failures.
"Carbon dioxide levels do not have any impact -- I repeat, any impact -- on climate," says
Piers. "The CO2 theory is wrong from the start."
"The fact is the sun rules the sea temperature, and the sea temperature rules the
climate."
"The basic message is that the sun is controlling the climate, primarily via the sea."
"What we have happening -- NOW! -- is the start of the mini ice age it began around 2013.
It's a slow start, and now the rate of moving into the mini ice age is accelerating."
"The best thing to do now is to tell your politicians to stop believing nonsense, and to
stop doing silly measures like the bird-killing machines of wind farms in order to save the
planet (they say), but get rid of all those things, which cost money, and reduce electricity
prices now."
Piers Corbyn is a crank -- plenty of them out there -- most not related to someone famous.
But just a few minutes of research should raise some red flags on this guy.
Red flag #1 -- the guy leaves a physics graduate school with only a masters -- this is
normally a booby prize -- these programs are designed for PhDs.
Red flag #4 -- Piers is quoted as saying "Carbon dioxide levels do not have any impact -- I
repeat, any impact" -- this means he rejects the basic physics of radiation
absorption/reflection taught at the undergrad level.
Red flag #5 -- economic interests -- "For Corbyn, 51, all this is a lot more than an
intellectual exercise. He has his eye both on writing a new chapter in meteorological science
and on grabbing a piece of an international business worth an estimated $2 billion a year."
https://www.wired.com/1999/02/weather-2/
Red flag #6 -- "If I'm to believe Corbyn, his scrawls represent something conventional
science says cannot exist: a detailed weather forecast that reaches nearly a year into the
future." -- which for anyone familiar with the nature of coupled partial differential equations
that form chaos theory, you would know about the inability to make such forecasts. https://www.wired.com/1999/02/weather-2/
Thanx for the info. I will file it right next to the picture of Noah's ark with baby dino
heads sticking up through the deck and the latest minutes from the Flat Earth Society
meetings.
"A study by Cornell and the University of Michigan researchers found that those "highly
concerned" about climate change were less likely to engage in recycling and other eco-friendly
behaviors than global-warming skeptics.
"Belief in climate change predicted support for government policies to combat climate
change, but did not generally translate to individual-level, self-reported pro-environmental
behavior," said the paper.
As Pacific Standard's Tom Jacobs put it, "remember that conservatism prizes individual
action over collective efforts."
"So while they may assert disbelief in order to stave off coercive (in their view) actions
by the government, many could take pride in doing what they can do on a personal basis," he
said in a Friday post.
Mr. Gore, a leading climate-change activist, has long come under fire for his
carbon-emitting ways, such as burning 21 times more kilowatt hours annually at his Nashville
mansion than the average U.S. household, according to a 2017 study by the National Center for
Public Policy Research.
His swimming pool alone uses enough electricity to power six average homes for a year, the
study said."
Luke provides a perfect example of confirmation bias -- start with a predetermined position,
look for evidence that confirms that position, and reject evidence to the contrary. He quotes
The Washington Times -- a propaganda paper created by the Moonies (next time he will probably
quote Fox News -- or is it Faux Noise). Why would anyone cite this Moonie rag as a source? In
this case the Moonie paper appears to have found one example of a flawed study to attack
supporters of climate science. For those unfamiliar with propaganda techniques, check out the
wiki page which identifies this Ad Hominem attack. The Moonie article is classic propaganda --
the worst kind of corporate media dribble. The Moonie paper quotes a single study with a
statistically small sample (600) using the least reliable form of data collection --
self-reporting. There are plenty of other studies that show behavior correlates with belief.
But as with many news articles, "man bites dog" gets the headline when we all know the opposite
is more likely. The Moonie newspaper begins with an attack on a wealthy elitist politician as
an example of a climate activist -- someone who is hardly typical of climate activists.
Attacking the Democratic Party elites (who deserve our scorn) and climate activists is a
twofer. The Moonie paper's opening line combines class-envy, loaded language, name calling, red
herring, scapegoating, and transfer -- a good propagandist must have written this dribble. And
to be fair and balanced -- my repeatedly calling the Washington Times a Moonie paper is also a
form of "loaded language" -- but it was just so fun to do so I couldn't help myself. I
personally reject the premise that progressives must disarm themselves in the battle of ideas
-- as long as we acknowledge what we are doing.
"... All of this raises plenty of questions, but one conclusion about this epic fiasco requires no spying: the fingerprints of the British are all over it . - American Spectator ..."
"... GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious "interactions" between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added. ..."
"... Notice it doesn't say the "Trump campaign" but "figures connected to Trump." One of those figures was Michael Flynn, who didn't join the campaign until February 2016. But Brennan and British intelligence had already started spying on him, drawing upon sham intelligence from Stefan Halper, a long-in-the-tooth CIA asset teaching at Cambridge University whom Brennan and Jim Comey would later send to infiltrate the Trump campaign's ranks. ..."
"... It appears that Halper had won Brennan's confidence with a false report about Flynn in 2014 -- a reported sighting of Flynn at Cambridge University talking too cozily with a Russian historian ..."
A recent article by George Neumayr in The American Spectator provides an
excellent forensic dig into the earliest stages of the US Intelligence Community's surveillance
of people in Trump's orbit - and makes clear something that many pointing to a politicized
"witch hunt" have long suspected; the Obama DOJ/FBI began looking into "Trumpworld" and the
Russians long before the official timeline would suggest .
Moreover, the operation was conducted in close coordination with foreign counterparts,
primarily the United Kingdom and Australia, but primarily the former.
All of this raises plenty of questions, but one conclusion about this epic fiasco requires
no spying: the fingerprints of the British are all over it . - American Spectator
Here is George Neumayer explaining, how the "roots of Obamagate become clearer" originally
published in The American Spectator .
* * *
Even before the first Republican primary, a London-to-Langley spy ring had begun to form
against Donald Trump. British spies sent to CIA director John Brennan in late 2015 alleged
intelligence on contacts between Trumpworld and the Russians, according to the Guardian.
Here's the crucial paragraph in the story:
GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious "interactions" between figures
connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence
said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information,
they added.
Notice it doesn't say the "Trump campaign" but "figures connected to Trump." One of those
figures was Michael Flynn, who didn't join the campaign until February 2016. But Brennan and
British intelligence had already started spying on him, drawing upon sham intelligence from
Stefan Halper, a long-in-the-tooth CIA asset teaching at Cambridge University whom Brennan and
Jim Comey would later send to infiltrate the Trump campaign's ranks.
It appears that Halper had won Brennan's confidence with a false report about Flynn in 2014
-- a reported sighting of Flynn at Cambridge University talking too cozily with a Russian
historian. Halper had passed this absurdly simpleminded tattle to a British spy who in turn
gave it to Brennan, as one can deduce from this euphemistic account in the New York Times about
Halper as the "informant":
The informant also had contacts with Mr. Flynn, the retired Army general who was Mr.
Trump's first national security adviser. The two met in February 2014, when Mr. Flynn was
running the Defense Intelligence Agency and attended the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, an
academic forum for former spies and researchers that meets a few times a year.
According to people familiar with Mr. Flynn's visit to the intelligence seminar, the
source was alarmed by the general's apparent closeness with a Russian woman who was also in
attendance. The concern was strong enough that it prompted another person to pass on a
warning to the American authorities that Mr. Flynn could be compromised by Russian
intelligence, according to two people familiar with the matter [italics added].
Again, that's early 2014 and a file on Flynn is already sitting on Brennan's desk. In 2015,
as word of Flynn's interest in the Trump campaign spreads, the London-to-Langley spy ring
fattens the file with more alarmist dreck -- that Flynn had gone to a Russian Television gala
and so forth. By February 2016, when it is reported that he has joined the Trump campaign as an
adviser, the spy ring moves into more concerted action.
It had also extended its radar to Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and Paul Manafort. Peter
Strzok, the FBI's liaison to Brennan, could have already clued Brennan in to Page and Manafort
(both were already known to the FBI from previous cases), but Brennan needed British
intelligence for Papadopoulos and it delivered. Either through human or electronic intelligence
(or both), it reported back to Brennan the young campaign volunteer's meetings in Italy and
London with Professor Joseph Mifsud, whose simultaneous ties to British intelligence and Russia
are well known.
The stench of entrapment that hangs over this part of the story is unmistakable, and the spy
ring's treatment of Papadopoulos looks flat out cruel. Every figure who plays a key role in
tripping him up -- Mifsud, the Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, and Stefan Halper -- has
ties to British intelligence.
David Ignatius, who is the Washington Post's stenographer for John Brennan, dropped a
wonderful crumb in his passive-aggressive column about Stefan Halper this week -- "Stefan
Halper is just another middleman." A middleman between whom? The answer is British intelligence
and Brennan/Comey. As if to punctuate this point, Ignatius -- after belittling Halper as a
gossipy academic who is no "James Bond," a sign that his handlers will burn him and profess
ignorance of his entrapping methods (when this happens, remember Comey's "tightly regulated"
tweet) -- turns to a "former British intelligence officer" to vouch for Halper's credibility.
This unnamed former British intelligence officer adopts a very knowing, almost proprietary,
tone, as if to acknowledge that the spying on the Trump campaign was a British-American venture
from the start. Ignatius writes, "A former British intelligence officer who knows Halper well
describes him as 'an intensely loyal and trusted U.S. citizen [who was] asked by the Bureau to
look into some disconcerting contacts' between Russians and Americans."
"Intensely loyal and trusted," "asked by the Bureau" -- how would he know? These are the
insiderish phrases of a handler or fellow member of the ring.
The size of the London-Langley spy ring isn't known but its existence is no longer in doubt.
In light of it, Obama State Department official Evelyn Farkas's bragging bears reexamination.
It is obvious that gossip about the transatlantic ring had spilled out to State Department
circles and other Obama orbits, generating chatter even from a relatively minor figure like
Farkas (who may have just been repeating what she had heard at a cocktail party after she left
the administration):
I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior people who
left. So it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy, and that the Trump folks if they found
out how we knew what we knew about the Trump folks, the Trump staff's dealings with Russians,
that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have
access to that intelligence. So I became very worried because not enough was coming out into
the open and I knew there was more.
Whispers of the ring's work had picked up by the time Brennan had formed his "inter-agency
taskforce" at Langley and Comey's official probe began. Brennan was presiding over a
"turf-crossing operation that could feed the White House information," as revealingly put by
Michael Isikoff and David Corn in Russian Roulette. The operation also crossed an ocean,
placing a central scene of the spying in London as the ring oafishly built its file.
What started in late 2015 with promise ended in panic, with British sources for the alleged
Trump-Russia collusion going silent or mysteriously disappearing. A few days after Trump's
inauguration, the director of GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, abruptly resigned, prompting the Guardian
to wonder if the sudden resignation was related to "British concerns over shared intelligence
with the US." All of this raises plenty of questions, but one conclusion about this epic fiasco
requires no spying: the fingerprints of the British are all over it. Tags PoliticsNewspaper PublishingTobacco - NEC
These findings reminded me of the suggestion in Patrick Deneen's recently released
Why Liberalism Failed that the political ideology of liberalism drives us apart, making us more lonely and polarized
than ever. As Christine Emba
writes in her Washington Post review of Deneen's book:
As liberalism has progressed, it has done so by ever more efficiently liberating each individual from "particular places,
relationships, memberships, and even identities-unless they have been chosen, are worn lightly, and can be revised or
abandoned at will." In the process, it has scoured anything that could hold stable meaning and connection from our modern
landscape-culture has been disintegrated, family bonds devalued, connections to the past cut off, an understanding of the
common good all but disappeared.
likbez
Our political differences are strengthening, with an increasing number of urban Americans moving further left and more than
half of rural voters (54 percent)
There is actually no way to move to the left in the two party system installed in the USA. The Democratic Party is just another
neoliberal party. Bill Clinton sold it to Wall Street long ago.
Neoliberalism uses identity wedge to split the voters into various groups which in turn are corralled into two camps representing
on the federal level two almost identical militaristic, oligarchical parties to eliminate any threat to the status quo.
And they do very skillfully and successfully. Trump is just a minor deviation from the rule (or like Obama is the confirmation
of the rule "change we can believe in" so to speak). And he did capitulate to neocons just two months after inauguration. While
he was from the very beginning a "bastard neoliberal" -- neoliberal that denies the value of implicit coercion of neoliberal globalization
in favor of open bullying of trade partners. Kind of "neoliberalism for a single exceptional country."
The current catfight between different oligarchic groups for power (Russiagate vs. Spygate ) might well be just a smoke screen
for the coming crisis of neoliberalism in the USA, which is unable to lift the standard of living of the lower 80% of population,
and neoliberal propaganda after 40 or so years lost its power, much like communist propaganda in the same time frame.
The tenacity with which Clinton-Obama wing of Democratic Party wants Trump to be removed is just a testament of the political
power of neoliberals and neocons in the USA as they are merged with the "deep state." No deviations from the party line are allowed.
Mark Karlin: How much money has gone to the U.S. war on terror and what has been the impact of this expenditure?
Tom Engelhardt: The best figure I've seen on this comes from the Watson Institute's Costs of War Project at Brown University and
it's a staggering
$5.6 trillion , including certain future costs to care for this country's war vets. President Trump himself, with his usual sense
of accuracy, has inflated that number even more, regularly speaking of
$7
trillion being lost somewhere in our never-ending wars in the Greater Middle East. One of these days, he's going to turn out
to be right.
As for the impact of such an expenditure in the regions where these wars continue to be fought, largely nonstop, since they were
launched against a tiny group of jihadis just after September 11, 2001, it would certainly include: the spread of terror outfits
across the Middle East, parts of Asia, and Africa; the creation -- in a region previously autocratic but relatively calm -- of a
striking range of failed or failing states, of major cities that have been turned into absolute
rubble (with
no money in sight for serious
reconstruction), of internally
displaced people and waves of refugees at levels
that now match the moment after World War II, when significant parts of the planet were in ruins; and that's just to start down
a list of the true costs of our wars.
At home, in a far quieter way, the impact has been similar. Just imagine, for instance, what our American world would have been
like if any significant part of the funds that went into our fruitless, still spreading, now nameless conflicts had been spent on
America's crumbling infrastructure , instead of on the rise
of the national security state as the unofficial fourth branch of government. (At TomDispatch , Pentagon expert William Hartung
has estimated that approximately $1 trillion annually goes into that security state and, in the age of Trump, that figure is
again on the rise.)
Part of the trouble assessing the "impact" here in the U.S. is that, in this era of public demobilization in terms of our wars,
people are encouraged not to think about them at all and they've gotten remarkably little attention. So sorting out exactly how they've
come home -- other than completely obvious developments like the
militarization
of the police, the
flying of surveillance drones in our airspace, and so on -- is hard. Most people, for instance, don't grasp something I've long
written about at TomDispatch : that Donald Trump would have been inconceivable as president without those disastrous wars, those
trillions squandered on them and on the military that's fought them, and that certainly qualifies as "impact" enough.
What makes the U.S. pretension to empire different from previous empires?
As a start, it's worth mentioning that Americans generally don't even think of ourselves as an "empire." Yes, since the Soviet
Union imploded in 1991, our politicians and pundits have proudly called this country the "last" or "lone" superpower and the world's
most "exceptional" or "indispensable" nation, but an empire? No. You need to go someplace off the mainstream grid -- Truthout or
TomDispatch , for instance -- to find anyone talking about us in those terms.
That said, I think that two things have made us different, imperially speaking. The first was that post-1991 sense of ourselves
as the ultimate winner of a vast imperial contest, a kind of arms race of many that had gone on since European ships armed with cannon
had first broken into the world in perhaps the fifteenth century and began to conquer much of it. In that post-Soviet moment of triumphalism,
of what seemed to the top dogs in Washington like the ultimate win, a forever victory, there was indeed a sense that there had never
been and never would be a power like us. That inflated sense of our imperial self was what sent the geopolitical dreamers of the
George W. Bush administration off to, in essence, create a Pax Americana first in the Greater Middle East and then perhaps the world
in a fashion never before imagined, one that, they were convinced, would put the Roman and British imperial moments to shame. And
we all know, with the invasion of Iraq, just where that's ended up.
In the years since they launched that ultimate imperial venture in a cloud of hubris, the most striking difference I can see with
previous empires is that never has a great power still in something close to its imperial prime proven quite so incapable of applying
its military and political might in a way that would successfully advance its aims. It has instead found itself overmatched by underwhelming
enemy forces and incapable of producing any results other than destruction and further fragmentation across staggeringly large parts
of the planet.
Finally, of course, there's climate change -- that is, for the first time in the history of empires, the very well-being of the
planet itself is at stake. The game has, so to speak, changed, even if relatively few here have noticed.
Why do you refer to the U.S. as an "empire of chaos"?
This answer follows directly from the last two. The United States is now visibly a force for chaos across significant parts of
the planet. Just look, for instance, at the cities -- from
Marawi in the Philippines to
Mosul and
Ramadi
in Iraq,
Raqqa and
Aleppo
in Syria,
Sirte in Libya, and so on -- that have literally been -- a word I
want to bring into
the language -- rubblized, largely by American bombing (though with a helping hand recently from the bomb makers of the Islamic State).
Historically, in the imperial ages that preceded this one, such power, while regularly applied brutally and devastatingly, could
also be a way of imposing a grim version of order on conquered and colonized areas. No longer, it seems. We're now on a planet that
simply doesn't accept military-first conquest and occupation, no matter the guise under which it arrives (including the spread of
"democracy"). So beware the unleashing modern military power. It turns out to contain within it striking disintegrative forces on
a planet that can ill afford such chaos.
You also refer to Washington D.C. as a "permanent war capital" with the generals in ascension under Trump. What does that represent
for the war footing of the U.S.?
Well, it's obvious in a way. Washington is now indeed a war capital because the Bush administration launched not just a local
response to a relatively small group of jihadis in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, but what its top officials called a "Global War
on Terror" -- creating possibly the worst acronym in history: GWOT. And then they instantly began insisting that it could be applied
to at least 60 countries supposedly harboring terror
groups. That was 2001 and, of course, though the name and acronym were dropped, the war they launched has never ended. In those years,
the military, the country's (count 'em)
17
major intelligence agencies, and the
warrior
corporations of the military-industrial complex have achieved a kind of clout never before seen in the nation's capital. Their
rise has really been a bipartisan affair in a city otherwise riven by politics as each party tries to outdo the other in promoting
the financing of the national security state. At a moment when putting money into just about anything else that would provide security
to Americans (think health care) is always a desperate struggle, funding the Pentagon and the rest of the national security state
continues to be a given. That's what it means to be in a "permanent war capital."
In addition, with Donald Trump, the generals of America's losing wars have gained a kind of prominence in Washington that was
unknown in a previously civilian capital. The head of the Defense Department, the White House chief of staff, and (until recently
when he was succeeded by an even more militaristic civilian) the national security advisor were all generals of those wars -- positions
that, in the past, with rare exceptions, were considered civilian ones. In this sense, Donald Trump was less making history with
the men he liked to refer to as "
my generals " than channeling it.
What is the role of bombing in the U.S. war-making machine?
It's worth remembering, as I've written in the past, that from the beginning the war on terror has been, above all (and despite
full-scale invasions and occupations using hundreds of thousands of U.S. ground troops), an
air war . It started that way. On September 11, 2001, after all, al-Qaeda sent its air force (four hijacked passenger jets) and
its precision weaponry (19 suicidal hijackers) against a set of iconic buildings in the U.S. Those strikes -- only one of them failed
when the passengers on a single jet fought back and it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania -- may represent the most successful use
of strategic bombing (that is, air power aimed at the civilian population of, and morale in, an enemy country) in history. At the
cost of a mere $400,000 to $500,000 , Osama
bin Laden began an air war of provocation that has never ended.
The U.S. has been bombing, missiling, and
drone-assassinating ever since. Last year, for instance, U.S. planes dropped an estimated
20,000 bombs just on the Syrian city
of
Raqqa , the former "capital" of the Islamic State, leaving next to nothing standing. Since the first American planes began dropping
bombs (and cluster munitions ) in
Afghanistan in October 2001, the U.S. Air Force has been in the skies ceaselessly -- skies by the way over countries and groups that
lack any defenses against air attacks whatsoever. And, of course, it's been a kind of rolling disaster of destruction that has left
the equivalent of World Trade Center tower after tower of dead civilians in those lands. In other words, though no one in Washington
would ever say such a thing, U.S. air power has functionally been doing Osama bin Laden's job for him, conducting not so much a war
on terror as a strange kind of war for terror, one that only promotes the conditions in which it thrives best.
What role did the end of the draft play in enabling an unrestrained U.S. empire of war?
It may have been the crucial moment in the whole process. It was, of course, the decision of then-president Richard Nixon in
January 1973 , in
response to a country swept by a powerful antiwar movement and a military in near rebellion as the Vietnam War began to wind down.
The draft was ended, the all-volunteer military begun, and the American people were largely separated from the wars being fought
in their name. They were, as I said above, demobilized. Though at the time, the U.S. military high command was doubtful about the
move, it proved highly successful in freeing them to fight the endless wars of the twenty-first century, now being referred to by
some in the Pentagon (according to the Washington Post ) not as "permanent wars" or even, as General David Petraeus put it, a "
generational struggle
," but as "
infinite war ."
I've lived through
two periods of public war mobilization in my lifetime: the World War II era, in which I was born and in which the American people
mobilized to support a global war against fascism in every way imaginable, and the Vietnam War, in which Americans (like me as a
young man) mobilized against an American war. But who in those years ever imagined that Americans might fight their wars (unsuccessfully)
to the end of time without most citizens paying the slightest attention? That's why I've called the losing generals of our endless
war on terror (and, in a sense, the rest of us as well) " Nixon's
children ."
17 major intelligence agencies. For fuck's sake! It's not seventeen – it is SIXTEEN! ;-)
Looney
P.S. I hate re-posting shit or using the same joke twice, but THIS is worth re-posting (from January 13, 2017): U.S. intelligence agencies contend that Moscow waged a multifaceted campaign of hacking and other actions All Democrats, from our own MDB to Hillary and 0bama, have been citing the "
17 intelligence agencies
" that agree with their ridiculous claims.
Here's the list of "The Magnificent Seventeen", but (spoiler alert!) there are actually only SIXTEEN INTEL AGENCIES, but who
counts? The highlighted agencies have nothing to do with Hacking, Elections, Golden Showers, or whatever sick lies the Libtards
have come up with.
Each Agency's responsibilities are very clearly defined by Law and 13 out of the "17 agencies" have absolutely nothing to do
with the DNC, Wikileaks, Elections, Hillary's e-mails, the Clinton Foundation, the Russian Hacking, etc.
Twenty-Fifth Air Force - Air Force Intel only
Intelligence and Security Command (US Army) – Army Intel only
Central Intelligence Agency is prohibited by Law to conduct any activities within the US!!!
Coast Guard Intelligence – Coast Guard, really?
Defense Intelligence Agency – Military Intel only
Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (Dept. of Energy) – Nukes, Nuclear Plants
Office of Intelligence and Analysis (Homeland Security)
Bureau of Intelligence and Research - State Dept. Intel
Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (Treasury) – Treasury and Hacking/Elections? Hmm
Office of National Security Intelligence (DEA) – Drug Enforcement, really?
Intelligence Branch, FBI (DOJ)
Marine Corps Intelligence Activity - Marine Corps Intel only
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (Dept. of Defense) – Satellites, Aerial Intel
National Reconnaissance Office (Dept. of Defense) – Defense Recon Only
NSA
Office of Naval Intelligence Navy Defense – Navy only
On the rare occasions when the US halfheartedly admits that, somehow, mistakes might have been made, it cannot evade employing
important US citizenish "core values" like hypocricy and psychological projection.
Four days ago an outstanding example of this type of embarrassment,
Russia's Moral Hypocrisy , was posted by Colonel
James McDonough, US Army attaché to Poland. Its urgent bleatings display the inadequacy and extremely low level of cohesion to
which US propaganda has fallen. The short version: the US fights for all good against all bad, and the Russians disagree because
they are very bad and also mean people.
Two days ago, Colonel Cassad posted a response to McDonough's piece which skewered it like a kebab. Using a
nota bene format, each point is considered and then crushed
into a paste. Even via the Yandex machine translation, the well-deserved kicking to the curb comes through loud and clear.
Wars are always about money and control. The war machine supports so many jobs in the US from shipyards to consulting. It's
a way to pump cash into a system that essentially died after the 2001 crash.
During a memorial day conversation today, "But you live in the evil empire and reap the benefits, why are you complaining about
the democrats. Can't you see the black mark on your soul is more important because you support the Empire on either side of the
so called two party system."
More divide & conquer BS the commies are belching now that they've been caught "red handed".
If it was a family member resolve yourself that you will have to just deal with it. If only a friend or acquaintance, resolve
yourself that there may come a time in the not to distant future you will have to slit their throat lest they slit yours.
Morbid as it maybe, nmewn is still correct. It's kinda like the saying, " Two people can keep a secret, as long as one of them
is dead." You cannot truly depend on or trust anyone, except yourself. And often times family can be worse than friends.
Well, what do want me to say?...lol...I know we're all thinking the same thing, we've all had the very same conversations with
these assholes whether friends or family. They are unreachable.
Hey, don't kill the guy pointing out the elephant in the middle of the room ;-)
It's not sixteen either, it was three ...the CIA ( Brennan ) the FBI ( Comey at the time) and the NSA which in my opinion was
in a go-along-to-get-along position. Seventeen was a lie when Hillary first uttered it. "The [intelligence community assessment] was a coordinated product from three agencies: CIA, NSA and the FBI, not all 17 components
of the intelligence community," said former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper during a congressional
hearing in May. "Those three under the aegis of my former office."
He spoke the truth (that time) probably not wanting another perjury charge ;-)
It's the attitude. The American political leaders have this idea of righteousness and exceptionalism. They think they'll go
around the world telling everyone else what to do. I've got two words for them - Fuck-off:
This article could have been written by a second-year political science undergraduate at a U.S. public university. This adds
a sum total of zero to the public understanding of the rise of American imperialism.
To state the obvious; the CIA has deeply humiliated the American people in their attempt to tie the American people to be responsible
for the CIA's crimes against humanity across the world.
The CIA appears to be the world's greatest threat to peace and prosperity. It is the penultimate terrorist organization, being
the direct or indirect creator of all other terrorist organizations. It also appears to be the world's penultimate illegal drug
smuggler and pusher making all other illegal drug trading possible and instigating the horrors of addiction and suffering around
the world.
If I believed that the CIA was working in any way on behalf of the US government and the American people then it would be sad
and shameful indeed. However, it is my belief that the CIA instead was captured long ago, as was the secret military operations
and now works for a hidden power that wants to dominate or failing that, destroy humanity.
It's those Select Highly Compartmentalized Criminal Pure Evil Rogue Elements at the Deep State Top that have had control since
the JFK Execution that have entrenched themselves for decades & refuse to relinquish Control.
The Agency is Cancer. There should be no question about the CIA's future in the US.
Dissolved & dishonored. Its members locked away or punished for Treason. Their reputation is so bad and has been for so long,
that the fact that you joined them should be enough to justify arrest and Execution for Treason, Crimes Against Humanity & Crimes
Against The American People.
The author seems comfortable finding fault with Bush and Trump but can't muster up a criticism of Obama (the Cal Ripken of
presidential war mongers), Clinton, Holder, et al.
What a dichotomy. On the one hand, America self-righteously proclaiming it is the one protecting everyone's freedom, while
at the same time making war and spying and oppressing others. On the other hand, seems like America is at war with everyone to
have such a large military and 17 spy agencies, and more people in prison than any other country in the world. Really sounds like
America has got some serious problems.
Note, a majority of the Muslims living close to Iraq still held a positive view of the U.S. even after the 1990-1991 attack
on Iraq. And after 12 years of starvation sanctions, even denying Iraq baby formula with the claim that it "can be used to make
weapons". And after the UK and US bombing Iraq on average once a week for those 12 years, targeting water refineries so Iraqis
had to drink dirty water, and power plants so there was no air conditioning in the blistering summer heat. Causing the death of
half a million children, as confirmed by the U.S. ambassador to the UN, which State Secretary Madeleine Albright said was "worth
it".
Even after that mass murder, 60% of Gulf residents were generally positive toward the U.S.
"Clash of cultures," right? There wasn't much Islamism at all, except the anger directed at thieving puppet rulers installed
after the European empires withdrew. Arabs, who were mostly secular, had always loved the U.S. as an anti-imperialist country.
Thus they couldn't understand when the U.S. backed the Zio invasion of Palestine. And then started sanctioning and attacking every
Middle Eastern nation that supported the Palestinians.
The U.S. used to have many "Arabist" diplomats, those who wanted to work with Arab nationalists, especially against the Soviets.
But the pro-Arab diplomats were sidelined by the media-backed neocon line, where everything was about who were for or against
the Palestinians. Saddam Hussein in Iraq had been secular and pro-American, but he gave money to the families of Palestinian suicide
bombers - these families saw their homes razed with all their possessions, with just an hour's notice, by the Israelis. For the
crime of giving these destitute people some money, all of Iraq was targeted.
No wonder the Arabs started hating the U.S. Still even after the Iraq invasion in 2003, most Arabs just want to be left alone
by the U.S. But that is not allowed. Arab nationalism was destroyed in favor of puppet regimes.
Memorial Day should be a time of sober reflection on war's horrible costs, not a moment to
glorify war. But many politicians and pundits can't resist the opportunity...
Originally published on 5/24/2015
How best to show respect for the U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and for their
families on Memorial Day?
Simple: Avoid euphemisms like "the fallen" and expose the lies about what a great idea it
was to start those wars in the first place and then to "surge" tens of thousands of more troops
into those fools' errands.
First, let's be clear on at least this much: the 4,500 U.S. troops killed in Iraq so far and
the 2,350 killed in Afghanistan [by May 2015] did not "fall." They were wasted on no-win
battlefields by politicians and generals cheered on by neocon pundits and mainstream
"journalists" almost none of whom gave a rat's patootie about the real-life-and-death troops.
They were throwaway soldiers.
And, as for the "successful surges," they were just P.R. devices to buy some "decent
intervals" for the architects of these wars and their boosters to get space between themselves
and the disastrous endings while pretending that those defeats were really "victories
squandered" all at the "acceptable" price of about 1,000 dead U.S. soldiers each and many times
that in dead Iraqis and Afghans.
Memorial Day should be a time for honesty about what enabled the killing and maiming of so
many U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and the
senior military brass simply took full advantage of a poverty draft that gives upper-class sons
and daughters the equivalent of exemptions, vaccinating them against the disease of war.
What drives me up the wall is the oft-heard, dismissive comment about troop casualties from
well-heeled Americans: "Well, they volunteered, didn't they?" Under the universal draft in
effect during Vietnam, far fewer were immune from service, even though the well-connected could
still game the system to avoid serving. Vice Presidents Dick Cheney and Joe Biden, for example,
each managed to pile up five exemptions. This means, of course, that they brought zero military
experience to the job; and this, in turn, may explain a whole lot -- particularly given their
bosses' own lack of military experience.
The grim truth is that many of the crëme de la crëme of today's Official
Washington don't know many military grunts, at least not intimately as close family or friends.
They may bump into some on the campaign trail or in an airport and mumble something like,
"thank you for your service." But these sons and daughters of working-class communities from
America's cities and heartland are mostly abstractions to the powerful, exclamation points at
the end of some ideological debate demonstrating which speaker is "tougher," who's more ready
to use military force, who will come out on top during a talk show appearance or at a
think-tank conference or on the floor of Congress.
Sharing the Burden?
We should be honest about this reality, especially on Memorial Day. Pretending that the
burden of war has been equitably shared, and worse still that those killed died for a "noble
cause," as President George W. Bush liked to claim, does no honor to the thousands of U.S.
troops killed and the tens of thousands maimed. It dishonors them. Worse, it all too often
succeeds in infantilizing bereaved family members who cannot bring themselves to believe their
government lied.
Who can blame parents for preferring to live the fiction that their sons and daughters were
heroes who wittingly and willingly made the "ultimate sacrifice," dying for a "noble cause,"
especially when this fiction is frequently foisted on them by well-meaning but naive clergy at
funerals. For many it is impossible to live with the reality that a son or daughter died in
vain. Far easier to buy into the official story and to leave clergy unchallenged as they gild
the lilies around coffins and gravesites.
Not so for some courageous parents. Cindy Sheehan, for example, whose son Casey Sheehan was
killed on April 4, 2004, in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, demonstrated uncommon grit when
she led hundreds of friends to Crawford to lay siege to the Texas White House during the summer
of 2005 trying to get Bush to explain what "noble cause" Casey died for. She never got an
answer. There is none.
But there are very few, like Cindy Sheehan, able to overcome a natural human resistance to
the thought that their sons and daughters died for a lie and then to challenge that lie. These
few stalwarts make themselves face this harsh reality, the knowledge that the children whom
they raised and sacrificed so much for were, in turn, sacrificed on the altar of political
expediency, that their precious children were bit players in some ideological fantasy or pawns
in a game of career maneuvering.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is said to have described the military
disdainfully as "just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." Whether or
not those were his exact words, his policies and behavior certainly betrayed that attitude. It
certainly seems to have prevailed among top American-flag-on-lapel-wearing officials of the
Bush and Obama administrations, including armchair and field-chair generals whose sense of
decency is blinded by the prospect of a shiny new star on their shoulders, if they just follow
orders and send young soldiers into battle.
This bitter truth should raise its ugly head on Memorial Day but rarely does. It can be
gleaned only with great difficulty from the mainstream media, since the media honchos continue
to play an indispensable role in the smoke-and-mirrors dishonesty that hides their own guilt in
helping Establishment Washington push "the fallen" from life to death.
We must judge the actions of our political and military leaders not by the pious words they
will utter Monday in mourning those who "fell" far from the generals' cushy safe seats in the
Pentagon or somewhat closer to the comfy beds in air-conditioned field headquarters where a
lucky general might be comforted in the arms of an admiring and enterprising biographer.
Many of the high-and-mighty delivering the approved speeches on Monday will glibly refer to
and mourn "the fallen." None are likely to mention the culpable policymakers and complicit
generals who added to the fresh graves at Arlington National Cemetery and around the
country.
Words, after all, are cheap; words about "the fallen" are dirt cheap especially from the
lips of politicians and pundits with no personal experience of war. The families of those
sacrificed in Iraq and Afghanistan should not have to bear that indignity.
'Successful
Surges'
The so-called "surges" of troops into Iraq and Afghanistan were particularly gross examples
of the way our soldiers have been played as pawns. Since the usual suspects are again coming
out the woodwork of neocon think tanks to press for yet another "surge" in Iraq, some
historical perspective should help.
Take, for example, the well-known and speciously glorified first "surge;" the one Bush
resorted to in sending over 30,000 additional troops into Iraq in early 2007; and the
not-to-be-outdone Obama "surge" of 30,000 into Afghanistan in early 2010. These marches of
folly were the direct result of decisions by George W. Bush and Barack Obama to prioritize
political expediency over the lives of U.S. troops.
Taking cynical advantage of the poverty draft, they let foot soldiers pay the "ultimate"
price. That price was 1,000 U.S. troops killed in each of the two "surges."
And the results? The returns are in. The bloody chaos these days in Iraq and the faltering
war in Afghanistan were entirely predictable. They were indeed predicted by those of us able to
spread some truth around via the Internet, while being mostly blacklisted by the fawning
corporate media.
Yet, because the "successful surge" myth was so beloved in Official Washington, saving some
face for the politicians and pundits who embraced and spread the lies that justified and
sustained especially the Iraq War, the myth has become something of a touchstone for everyone
aspiring to higher office or seeking a higher-paying gig in the mainstream media.
Campaigning in New Hampshire, [then] presidential aspirant Jeb Bush gave a short history
lesson about his big brother's attack on Iraq. Referring to the so-called Islamic State, Bush
said, "ISIS didn't exist when my brother was president. Al-Qaeda in Iraq was wiped out the
surge created a fragile but stable Iraq. "
But suffice it to say that Jeb Bush is distorting the history and should be ashamed. The
truth is that al-Qaeda did not exist in Iraq before his brother launched an unprovoked invasion
in 2003. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq" arose as a direct result of Bush's war and occupation. Amid the
bloody chaos, AQI's leader, a Jordanian named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, pioneered a particularly
brutal form of terrorism, relishing videotaped decapitation of prisoners.
Zarqawi was eventually hunted down and killed not during the celebrated "surge" but in June
2006, months before Bush's "surge" began. The so-called Sunni Awakening, essentially the buying
off of many Sunni tribal leaders, also predated the "surge." And the relative reduction in the
Iraq War's slaughter after the 2007 "surge" was mostly the result of the ethnic cleansing of
Baghdad from a predominantly Sunni to a Shia city, tearing the fabric of Baghdad in two, and
creating physical space that made it more difficult for the two bitter enemies to attack each
other. In addition, Iran used its influence with the Shia to rein in their extremely violent
militias.
Though weakened by Zarqawi's death and the Sunni Awakening, AQI did not disappear, as Jeb
Bush would like you to believe. It remained active and when Saudi Arabia and the Sunni gulf
states took aim at the secular regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria AQI joined with other
al-Qaeda affiliates, such as the Nusra Front, to spread their horrors across Syria. AQI
rebranded itself "the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" or simply "the Islamic State."
The Islamic State split off from al-Qaeda over strategy but the various jihadist armies,
including al-Qaeda's Nusra Front, [then] seized wide swaths of territory in Syria -- and the
Islamic State returned with a vengeance to Iraq, grabbing major cities such as Mosul and
Ramadi.
Jeb Bush doesn't like to unspool all this history. He and other Iraq War backers prefer to
pretend that the "surge" in Iraq had won the war and Obama threw the "victory" away by
following through on George W. Bush's withdrawal agreement with Maliki.
But the crisis in Syria and Iraq is among the fateful consequences of the U.S./UK attack 12
years ago and particularly of the "surge" of 2007, which contributed greatly to Sunni-Shia
violence, the opposite of what George W. Bush professed was the objective of the "surge," to
enable Iraq's religious sects to reconcile.
Reconciliation, however, always took a back seat to the real purpose of the "surge" buying
time so Bush and Cheney could slip out of Washington in 2009 without having an obvious military
defeat hanging around their necks and putting a huge stain on their legacies.
Cheney and Bush: Reframed the history. (White House photo)
The political manipulation of the Iraq "surge" allowed Bush, Cheney and their allies to
reframe the historical debate and shift the blame for the defeat onto Obama, recognizing that
1,000 more dead U.S. soldiers was a small price to pay for protecting the "Bush brand." Now,
Bush's younger brother can cheerily march off to the campaign trail for 2016 pointing to the
carcass of the Iraqi albatross hung around Obama's shoulders.
Rout at Ramadi
Less than a year after U.S.-trained and -equipped Iraqi forces ran away from the northern
Iraqi city of Mosul, leaving the area and lots of U.S. arms and equipment to ISIS, something
similar happened at Ramadi, the capital of the western province of Anbar. Despite heavy U.S.
air strikes on ISIS, American-backed Iraqi security forces fled Ramadi, which is only 70 miles
west of Baghdad, after a lightning assault by ISIS forces.
The ability of ISIS to strike just about everywhere in the area is reminiscent of the Tet
offensive of January-February 1968 in Vietnam, which persuaded President Lyndon Johnson that
that particular war was unwinnable. If there are materials left over in Saigon for reinforcing
helicopter landing pads on the tops of buildings, it is not too early to bring them to
Baghdad's Green Zone, on the chance that U.S. embassy buildings may have a call for such
materials in the not-too-distant future.
The headlong Iraqi government retreat from Ramadi had scarcely ended when Sen. John McCain,
(R-AZ), described the fall of the city as "terribly significant" which is correct adding that
more U.S. troops may be needed which is insane. His appeal for more troops neatly fit one
proverbial definition of insanity (attributed or misattributed to Albert Einstein): "doing the
same thing over and over again [like every eight years?] but expecting different results."
As Jeb Bush was singing the praises of his brother's "surge" in Iraq, McCain and his Senate
colleague Lindsey Graham were publicly calling for a new "surge" of U.S. troops into Iraq. The
senators urged President Obama to do what George W. Bush did in 2007 replace the U.S. military
leadership and dispatch additional troops to Iraq.
But Washington Post pundit David Ignatius, even though a fan of the earlier two surges, was
not yet on board for this one. Ignatius warned in a column that Washington should not abandon
its current strategy:
"This is still Iraq's war, not America's. But President Barack Obama must reassure Prime
Minister Haider al-Abadi that the U.S. has his back, and at the same time give him a reality
check: If al-Abadi and his Shiite allies don't do more to empower Sunnis, his country will
splinter. Ramadi is a precursor, of either a turnaround by al-Abadi's forces, or an Iraqi
defeat."
Ignatius's urgent tone was warranted. But what he suggests is precisely what the U.S. made a
lame attempt to do with then-Prime Minister Maliki in early 2007. Yet, Bush squandered U.S.
leverage by sending 30,000 troops to show he "had Maliki's back," freeing Maliki to accelerate
his attempts to marginalize, rather than accommodate, Sunni interests.
Perhaps Ignatius now remembers how the "surge" he championed in 2007 greatly exacerbated
tensions between Shia and Sunni contributing to the chaos now prevailing in Iraq and spreading
across Syria and elsewhere. But Ignatius is well connected and a bellwether; if he ends up
advocating another "surge," take shelter.
Keane and Kagan Ask For a Mulligan
Jeb Bush: Sung his brother's praises. (Sun City Center, Florida, on May 9, 2006. White House
photo by Eric Draper)
The architects of Bush's 2007 "surge" of 30,000 troops into Iraq, former Army General Jack
Keane and American Enterprise Institute neocon strategist Frederick Kagan, in testimony to the
Senate Armed Services Committee, warned strongly that, without a "surge" of some 15,000 to
20,000 U.S. troops, ISIS would win in Iraq.
"We are losing this war," warned Keane, who previously served as Vice Chief of Staff of the
Army. "ISIS is on the offense, with the ability to attack at will, anyplace, anytime. Air power
will not defeat ISIS." Keane stressed that the U.S. and its allies have "no ground force, which
is the defeat mechanism."
Not given to understatement, Kagan called ISIS "one of the most evil organizations that has
ever existed. This is not a group that maybe we can negotiate with down the road someday. This
is a group that is committed to the destruction of everything decent in the world." He called
for "15-20,000 U.S. troops on the ground to provide the necessary enablers, advisers and so
forth," and added: "Anything less than that is simply unserious."
(By the way, Frederick Kagan is the brother of neocon-star Robert Kagan, whose Project for
the New American Century began pushing for the invasion of Iraq in 1998 and finally got its way
in 2003. Robert Kagan is the husband of Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs
Victoria Nuland, who oversaw the 2014 coup that brought "regime change" and bloody chaos to
Ukraine. The Ukraine crisis also prompted Robert Kagan to urge a major increase in U.S.
military spending. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's " A Family Business
of Perpetual War. "] )
What is perhaps most striking, however, is the casualness with which the likes of Frederick
Kagan , Jack Keane, and other Iraq War enthusiasts advocated dispatching tens of thousands of
U.S. soldiers to fight and die in what would almost certainly be another futile undertaking.
You might even wonder why people like Kagan are invited to testify before Congress given their
abysmal records.
But that would miss the true charm of the Iraq "surge" in 2007 and its significance in
salvaging the reputations of folks like Kagan, not to mention George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
From their perspective, the "surge" was a great success. Bush and Cheney could swagger from the
West Wing into the western sunset on Jan. 20, 2009.
As author Steve Coll has put it, "The decision [to surge] at a minimum guaranteed that his
[Bush's] presidency would not end with a defeat in history's eyes. By committing to the surge
[the President] was certain to at least achieve a stalemate."
According to Bob Woodward, Bush told key Republicans in late 2005 that he would not withdraw
from Iraq, "even if Laura and [first-dog] Barney are the only ones supporting me." Woodward
made it clear that Bush was well aware in fall 2006 that the U.S. was losing. Suddenly, with
some fancy footwork, it became Laura, Barney and new Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen.
David Petraeus along with 30,000 more U.S. soldiers making sure that the short-term fix was
in.
The fact that about 1,000 U.S. soldiers returned in caskets was the principal price paid for
that short-term "surge" fix. Their "ultimate sacrifice" will be mourned by their friends,
families and countrymen on Memorial Day even as many of the same politicians and pundits will
be casually pontificating about dispatching more young men and women as cannon fodder into the
same misguided war.
[President Donald Trump has continued the U.S.'s longest war (Afghanistan), sending
additional troops and dropping a massive bomb as well as missiles from drones. In Syria he has
ordered two missile strikes and condoned multiple air strikes from Israel. Here's hoping, on
this Memorial Day 2018, that he turns his back on his war-mongering national security adviser,
forges ahead
with a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jung-Un rather than toy with the lives of 30,000
U.S. soldiers in Korea, and halts the juggernaut rolling downhill toward war with Iran.]
It was difficult drafting this downer, this historical counter-narrative, on the eve of
Memorial Day. It seems to me necessary, though, to expose the dramatis personae who played such
key roles in getting more and more people killed. Sad to say, none of the high officials
mentioned here, as well as those on the relevant Congressional committees, were affected in any
immediate way by the carnage in Ramadi, Tikrit or outside the gate to the Green Zone in
Baghdad.
And perhaps that's one of the key points here. It is not most of us, but rather our soldiers
and the soldiers and civilians of Iraq, Afghanistan and God knows where else who are Lazarus at
the gate. And, as Benjamin Franklin once said, "Justice will not be served until those who are
unaffected are as outraged as those who are."
05/28/2018 Despite the 10-year yield's reluctance to hold above 3%, bond bears have been
reluctant to throw in the towel completely, with Bill
Gross recently changing his view to allow for a "hibernating" bear market in 2018 (he
expects the 10-year with fluctuate between 2.80% and 3.25% for the remainder of the year).
DoubleLine's
Jeffrey Gundlach has also backed away from his bearish outlook, recently declaring that the
10-year will remain "contained" if 3.22% isn't broken by the 30-year.
Meanwhile, Hoisington Investment Management's Dr. Lacy Hunt has been one of the few
unabashed Treasury bulls operating in the market, refusing to cut back on duration as his peers
warned that all hell would break loose as soon as the 10-year closed above 3%.
Of course, the aforementioned chaos hasn't materialized, and Hunt's view has been proven
correct again and again. At the root of Hunt's position is a bearish outlook for the US the
economy as it begins to buckle under the weight of rapidly rising indebtedness and demographic
headwinds like falling population growth.
While short-term fluctuations in interest rates are difficult to predict, Hunt points to the
work of Milton Friedman, which shows that reductions in monetary stimulus lead to lower
long-term interest rates as growth and inflation fall.
What Friedman had in mind is that, when the Fed engages in a tightening of monetary policy
– what he called a liquidity effect – this tends to raise the short-term rates,
but it begins to restrict the flow of money and credit. If this liquidity effect is repeated
several times, it will eventually produce a countervailing income effect in which the rate of
increase in interest will be slowed as the economy begins to moderate its rate of
expansion.
And if the monetary deceleration extends for a protracted period of time, ultimately the
inflation rate will fall. Hence Friedman's conclusion: Monetary decelerations ultimately lead
to lower interest rates, not to higher interest rates.
The problem with increasing debt, Hunt explains, is that it leads to diminishing returns. In
the beginning, debt can be a boon to growth, but as the debt burden expands, and a rising share
of national income is dedicated to servicing it, the benefits quickly begin to diminish.
Economic activity begins to weaken, causing growth to slow, inflation to recede, and long-term
interest rates to fall.
And so, while massive increases in debt can lead to a transitory boost in economic
activity, this effect is relatively short-lived. And, ultimately, higher debt undermines
economic growth. So over the longer term, extreme indebtedness leads to weaker economic
activity, which, of course, is consistent with lower inflation and lower long-term bond
yields.
Hoisington is a strict duration manager. Despite Hunt's bullish view, the fund isn't
presently positioned for maximum duration, though Hunt says they're already in excess of 20
years. However, his view has its limits. If the fund wanted to, it could go out and buy all the
no-coupon 30-year government paper in the market. But it hasn't, because, as Hunt explained
earlier, secular trends often take years to unfold.
The problem with the US economy is that forgiving debt, as some on the far left have
suggested, would destabilize the financial system. Meanwhile, allowing the Federal Reserve to
print money without restrictions - an attempt to inflate away the debt (as well as the
hard-earned savings of middle-class Americans) - would stoke inflation, but do little to
benefit growth, making life harder for most people.
Well, there are people who have called for a so-called debt jubilee. The problem is that
you bankrupt your financial institutions because they hold so much of it. There's really no
way to write it off. That's the bottom line. There is no way to do a reset. You could go down
the false road of changing the Federal Reserve Act allowing the Federal Reserve to print
money. But the only way money printing works is if you increase the use of debt capital,
which further triggers the law of diminishing returns. You will get a side effect of
inflation, but you won't boost real growth. And so, in essence, you're just going to make
people more miserable than they already are.
The only tenable solution to the debt problem, in Hunt's view, would be a prolonged period
of "living within our means." Of course, austerity measures have helped mitigate debt crises in
the European Union. But after so many years of deficit spending, it's unlikely that the US
would accept it.
In search of an answer, Hunt looked back on similar periods in US history: The US government
took on a massive amount of debt in the 1820s and 1830s while building the railways and canals.
Back then, it was the California Gold Rush that helped the US economy dig itself out of debt by
bolstering growth to such a dramatic degree.
And today, the federal government is busy slashing revenues - as the Trump tax cuts did -
while also increasing spending on the military and infrastructure. While these measures might
bolster growth in the short term, over the coming years the growing debt burden will strangle
the US economy, Hunt says.
And unless the US economy is lucky enough to experience another "gold rush," it will likely
continue to struggle with this intractable debt problem - that is, until something breaks.
"... The weakest part of this piece is that it makes all kinds of suppositions about about the true nature of mankind, that remind me of paleo diet nonsense. Humans evolved constantly so we were selected for domestication. It changed us. We are not the great apes of the savannah, but agriculturalists living in complex societies. This is our true nature and the conflict in our societies is between those who are more domesticated and those who are less domesticated. ..."
"... This text shows us a little of the biblical allegory of Pandora's box, even though we know that it is based on the sins that are present inside the box. How is a short story, so I can invent upon an invention without a known author, that in fact as we open Pandora's Box, we will not spread hatred for Earth, there is no need to spread what is already widespread, but we will find the truth. And the truth is that we are animals like those we despise. Human culture is an illusion to keep sane people. ..."
"... "Oh, well, at least Bonobo–I mean, Bonomo–didn't use the word "sheeple," so I don't have to go ballistic on him. Condescending is much too weak a word to describe this mess. Arrogant and egomaniacal fit much better." ..."
"... Despite some glaring inaccuracies and over-generalizations, overall the piece is interesting and thought-provoking. ..."
"... Freedom is in inverse proportion to security. An individual in solitary-confinement in a maximum security prison has 100% security but 0% freedom. At the opposite extreme is the "hermit" living in self-imposed exile with 100% freedom but never entirely sure of when & where his next meal is coming from and if attacked by a predator, human or animal, he is entirely on his own. Between those two extremes there is a reasonable middle-ground. ..."
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Contemporary baptized, corporatized and sanitized man rarely has the occasion to question his identity, and when he does a typical
response might be, "I am product manager for a large retail chain, married to Betty, father of Johnny, a Democrat, Steelers fan and
a Lutheran."
His answers imply not only his beliefs but the many responsibilities, rules and restrictions he is subjected to. Few if any of
these were ever negotiated- they were imposed on him yet he still considers himself free.
But is free the right adjective for him, or would modern domesticated simian be more apt? He has been told what to do, believe,
think and feel since he can remember. A very clever rancher has bred billions of these creatures around the globe and created the
most profitable livestock imaginable. They work for him, fight for him, die for him, believe his wildest tales, laugh at his jokes
and rarely get out of line. When domesticated man does break one of the rules there are armies, jailers, psychiatrists and bureaucrats
prepared to kill, incarcerate, drug or hound the transgressor into submission.
One of the most fascinating aspects of domesticated man's predicament is that he never looks at the cattle, sheep and pigs who
wind up on his plate and make the very simple deduction that he is just a talking version of them, corralled and shepherded through
his entire life. How is this accomplished? Only animals that live in hierarchical groups can be dominated by man. The trick is to
fool the animal into believing that the leader of the pack or herd is the person who is domesticating them. Once this is accomplished
the animal is under full control of its homo sapien master. The domesticated man is no different, originally organized in groups
with a clear hierarchy and maximum size of 150- it was easy to replace the leader of these smaller groups with one overarching figure
such as God, King, President, CEO etc.
The methodology for creating this exceptionally loyal and obedient modern breed, homo domesticus, can be described as having seven
pillars from which an immense matrix captures the talking simians and their conscious minds and hooks them into a complex mesh from
which few ever escape. The system is so advanced that those who do untangle themselves and cut their way out of the net are immediately
branded as mentally ill, anti-social, or simply losers who can't accept the 'complexity of modern life', i.e. conspiracy nuts.
Plato described this brilliantly in his Allegory of the Cave , where people only see man made shadows of objects, institutions,
Gods and ideas:
"–Behold! human beings living in an underground cave here they have been from their childhood necks chained so that they cannot
move, and can only see before them. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance the screen which marionette players have
in front of them, over which they show the puppets and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the
fire throws on the opposite wall "
It began with the word, which forever changed the ability of men to manipulate each other. Before language, every sensation was
directly felt through the senses without the filter of words. But somewhere around 50,000 years ago language began to replace reality
and the first pieces of code were put in place for the creation of the Matrix. As soon as the words began to flow the world was split,
and from that fracturing was born man's angst and slavery. The words separated us from who we really were, creating the first screen
onto which the images from Plato's cave were cast. Gurdjieff said it well, "Identifying is the chief obstacle to self-remembering.
A man who identifies with anything is unable to remember himself."
It's no accident that in Hesiod's ages of man the Golden Age knew no agriculture, which appeared in the Silver age, and by the
time we reach the Bronze age the dominant theme is toil and strife. The two key elements to the enslavement of man were clearly language
and agriculture. In the hunter gatherer society, taking out the boss was no more complicated than landing a well placed fastball
to the head. Only since the advent of farming was the possibility of creating full time enforcers and propagandists made possible,
and hence enslavement inevitable.
The search for enlightenment rarely if ever bears fruits in those temples of words, our schools and universities. Almost all traditions
point to isolation and silence as the only paths to awakening; they are the true antidotes to modern slavery. As Aristotle wrote,
"Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god."
So from the institution from which we are mercilessly bombarded with words and enslaved to time, we begin our descent through
the seven layers of the Matrix.
Education
There are things we are born able to do like eating, laughing and crying and others we pick up without much of an effort such
as walking, speaking and fighting, but without strict institutional education there is no way that we can ever become a functioning
member of the Matrix. We must be indoctrinated, sent to Matrix boot camp, which of course is school. How else could you take a hunter
and turn him into a corporate slave, submissive to clocks, countless bosses, monotony and uniformity?
Children naturally know who they are, they have no existential angst, but schools immediately begin driving home the point of
schedules, rules, lists and grades which inevitably lead the students to the concept of who they aren't. We drill the little ones
until they learn to count money, tell time, measure progress, stand in line, keep silent and endure submission. They learn they aren't
free and they are separated from everyone else and the world itself by a myriad of divides, names and languages.
It can't be stressed enough how much education is simply inculcating people with the clock and the idea of a forced identity.
What child when she first goes to school isn't taken back to hear herself referred to by her full name?
It's not as if language itself isn't sufficiently abstract- nothing must be left without a category. Suzy can't just be Suzy-
she is a citizen of a country and a state, a member of a religion and a product of a civilization, many of which have flags, mascots,
armies, uniforms, currencies and languages. Once all the mascots, tag lines and corporate creeds are learned, then history can begin
to be taught. The great epic myths invented and conveniently woven into the archetypes which have come down through the ages cement
this matrix into the child's mind.
Even the language that she speaks without effort must be deconstructed for her. An apple will never again be just an apple- it
will become a noun, a subject, or an object. Nothing will be left untouched, all must be ripped apart and explained back to the child
in Matrixese.
We are taught almost nothing useful during the twelve or so years that we are institutionalized and conditioned for slavery- not
how to cook, farm, hunt, build, gather, laugh or play. We are only taught how to live by a clock and conform to institutionalized
behaviors that make for solid careers as slaveocrats.
Government
In the countries that claim to be democratic the concept of a government created to serve the people is often espoused. Government,
and the laws they create and enforce are institutionalized social control for the benefit of those who have seized power. This has
always been the case and always will be. In the pre-democratic era it was much clearer to recognize who had power, but the genius
of massive democratic states are the layers upon layers of corporatocracy and special interests which so brilliantly conceal the
identify of those who really manage the massive apparatus of control.
The functions of the state are so well ensconced in dogmatic versions of history taught in schools that almost no one questions
why we need anything beyond the bare essentials of government to maintain order in the post-industrial age. The history classes never
point the finger at the governments themselves as the propagators and instigators of war, genocide, starvation and corruption. In
Hollywood's version of history, the one most people absorb, 'good' governments are always portrayed as fighting 'bad' ones. We have
yet to see a film where all the people on both sides simply disengage from their governments and ignore the calls to violence.
The state apparatus is based on law, which is a contract between the people and an organism created to administer common necessities-
an exchange of sovereignty between the people and the state. This sounds reasonable, but when one looks at the mass slaughters of
the 20th century, almost without exception, the perpetrators are the states themselves.
The loss of human freedom is the only birthright offered to the citizens of the modern nation. There is never a choice. It is
spun as a freedom and a privilege when it is in fact indentured servitude to the state apparatus and the corporatocracy that controls
it.
Patriotism
Patriotism is pure abstraction, a completely artificial mechanism of social control. People are taught to value their compatriots
above and beyond those of their own ethnic background, race or religion. The organic bonds are to be shed in favor of the great corporate
state. From infancy children are indoctrinated like Pavlov's dogs to worship the paraphernalia of the state and see it as a mystical
demigod.
What is a country? Using the United States as example, what actually is this entity? Is it the USPS, the FDA, or the CIA? Does
loving one's country mean one should love the IRS and the NSA? Should we feel differently about someone if they are from Vancouver
instead of Seattle? Loving a state is the same as loving a corporation, except with the corporations there is still no stigma attached
to not showing overt sentimental devotion to their brands and fortunately, at least for the moment, we are not obligated at birth
to pay them for a lifetime of services, most of which we neither need nor want.
Flags, the Hollywood version of history and presidential worship are drilled into us to maintain the illusion of the 'other' and
force the 'foreigner/terrorist/extremist' to wear the stigma of our projections. The archaic tribal energy that united small bands
and helped them to fend off wild beasts and hungry hordes has been converted into a magic wand for the masters of the matrix. Flags
are waved, and we respond like hungry Labradors jumping at a juicy prime rib swinging before our noses. Sentimental statist propaganda
is simply the mouthguard used to soften the jolt of our collective electroshock therapy.
Religion
As powerful as the patriotic sects are, there has always been a need for something higher. Religion comes from the Latin 're-ligare'
and it means to reconnect. But reconnect to what? The question before all religions is, what have we been disconnected from? The
indoctrination and alienation of becoming a card carrying slave has a cost; the level of abstraction and the disconnect from any
semblance of humanity converts people into nihilistic robots. No amount of patriotic fervor can replace having a soul. The flags
and history lessons can only give a momentary reprieve to the emptiness of the Matrix and that's why the priests are needed.
The original spiritual connection man had with the universe began to dissolve into duality with the onset of language, and by
the time cities and standing armies arrived he was in need of a reconnection, and thus we get our faith based religions. Faith in
the religious experiences of sages, or as William James put it, faith in someone else's ability to connect. Of course the liturgies
of our mainstream religions offer some solace and connection, but in general they simply provide the glue for the Matrix. A brief
perusal of the news will clearly show that their 'God' seems most comfortable amidst the killing fields.
If we focus on the Abrahamic religions, we have a god much like the state, one who needs to be loved. He is also jealous of the
other supposedly non-existent gods and is as sociopathic as the governments who adore him. He wipes out his enemies with floods and
angels of death just as the governments who pander to him annihilate us with cultural revolutions, atom bombs, television and napalm.
Their anthem is, "Love your country, it's flag, its history, and the God who created it all"- an ethos force fed to each new generation.
Circus
The sad thing about circus is that it's generally not even entertaining. The slaves are told it's time for some fun and they move
in hordes to fill stadiums, clubs, cinemas or simply to stare into their electrical devices believing that they are are being entertained
by vulgar propaganda.
As long as homo domesticus goes into the appropriate corral, jumps when she is told to and agrees wholeheartedly that she is having
fun, than she is a good slave worthy of her two days off a week and fifteen days vacation at the designated farm where she is milked
of any excess gold she might have accumulated during the year. Once she is too old to work and put to pasture, holes are strategically
placed in her vicinity so she and her husband can spend their last few dollars trying to get a small white ball into them.
On a daily basis, after the caffeinated maximum effort has been squeezed out of her, she is placed in front of a screen, given
the Matrix approved beverage (alcohol), and re-indoctrinated for several hours before starting the whole cycle over again. God forbid
anyone ever took a hallucinogen and had an original thought. We are, thankfully, protected from any substances that might actually
wake us up and are encouraged stick to the booze. The matrix loves coffee in the morning, alcohol in the evening and never an authentic
thought in between.
On a more primal level we are entranced with the contours of the perfect body and dream of 'perfect love', where our days will
be filled with soft caresses, sweet words and Hollywood drama. This is maybe the most sublime of the Matrix's snares, as Venus's
charms can be so convincing one willingly abandons all for her devious promise. Romantic love is dangled like bait, selling us down
the path of sentimentally coated lies and mindless consumerism.
Money
Money is their most brilliant accomplishment. Billions of people spend most of their waking lives either acquiring it or spending
it without ever understanding what it actually is. In this hologram of a world, the only thing one can do without money is breath.
For almost every other human activity they want currency, from eating and drinking to clothing oneself and finding a partner. Religion
came from innate spirituality and patriotism from the tribe, but money they invented themselves- the most fantastic and effective
of all their tools of domestication.
They have convinced the slaves that money actually has some intrinsic value, since at some point in the past it actually did.
Once they were finally able to disconnect money completely from anything other than their computers, they finally took complete control,
locked the last gate and electrified all the fences. They ingeniously print it up out of the nothing and loan it with interest in
order for 18-year-olds to spend four years drinking and memorizing propaganda as they begin a financial indebtedness that will most
likely never end.
By the time the typical American is thirty the debt is mounted so high that they abandon any hope of ever being free of it and
embrace their mortgages, credit cards, student loans and car loans as gifts from a sugar daddy. What they rarely asks themselves
is why they must work to make money while banks can simply create it with a few key strokes. If they printed out notes on their HP's
and loaned them with interest to their neighbors, they would wind up in a penitentiary, but not our friends on Wall Street- they
do just that and wind up pulling the strings in the White House. The genius of the money scam is how obvious it is. When people are
told that banks create money out of nothing and are paid interest for it the good folks are left incredulous. "It can't be that simple!"
And therein lies the rub- no one wants to believe that they have been enslaved so easily .
Culture
"Culture is the effort to hold back the mystery, and replace it with a mythology."
– Terence McKenna
As Terence loved to say, "Culture is not your friend." It exists as a buffer to authentic experience. As they created larger and
larger communities, they replaced the direct spiritual experience of the shaman with priestly religion. Drum beats and sweat were
exchanged for digitized, corporatized noise. Local tales got replaced by Hollywood blockbusters, critical thinking with academic
dogma.
If money is the shackles of the matrix, culture is its operating system. Filtered, centralized, incredibly manipulative, it glues
all their myths together into one massive narrative of social control from which only the bravest of souls ever try to escape. It's
relatively simple to see the manipulation when one looks at patriotism, religion or money. But when taken as a whole, our culture
seems as natural and timeless as the air we breathe, so intertwined with our self conception it is often hard to see where we individually
finish and our culture begins.
Escaping the Grip of Control
Some might ask why this all-pervasive network of control isn't talked about or discussed by our 'great minds'. Pre-Socratic scholar
Peter Kingsley explains it well:
"Everything becomes clear once we accept the fact that scholarship as a whole is not concerned with finding, or even looking
for, the truth. That's just a decorative appearance. It's simply concerned with protecting us from truths that might endanger
our security; and it does so by perpetuating our collective illusions on a much deeper level than individual scholars are aware
of."
Whoever discovered water, it certainly wasn't a fish. To leave the 'water', or Plato's cave takes courage and the knowledge that
there is something beyond the web of control. Over 2,300 hundred years ago Plato described the process of leaving the Matrix in the
Allegory of the Cave as a slow, excruciating process akin to walking out onto a sunny beach after spending years in a basement watching
Kabuki.
How can this awakening be explained? How do you describe the feeling of swimming in the ocean at dusk to someone who has never
even seen the sea? You can't, but what you can do is crack open a window for them and if enough windows are opened, the illusion
begins to lose its luster.
I'll take Neil Postman, Chesterton or C.S. Lewis over Bonomo any day.
His article merely takes a blowtorch to all and everything and worse showing very little understanding of the things he attacks
is cringe worthy. There's no real analysis, no consideration of the ramifications for doing away with the state, community and
faith. This is shoddy thinking at best.
And his last part "Escaping the Grip of Control" is just so much gibberish. It's not thought out at all.
The weakest part of this piece is that it makes all kinds of suppositions about about the true nature of mankind, that remind
me of paleo diet nonsense. Humans evolved constantly so we were selected for domestication. It changed us. We are not the great
apes of the savannah, but agriculturalists living in complex societies. This is our true nature and the conflict in our societies
is between those who are more domesticated and those who are less domesticated.
"I am product manager for a large retail chain, married to Betty, father of Johnny, a Democrat, Steelers fan and a Lutheran."
His answers imply not only his beliefs but the many responsibilities, rules and restrictions he is subjected to. Few if
any of these were ever negotiated- they were imposed on him yet he still considers himself free.
To talk about themselves and their superiority as human beings, civilization and biology, we have an average of 50 or more reviews.
Have to discuss the illusion of the human ego, 12 comments, some of which were based on" not-so-children's arguments."
This text shows us a little of the biblical allegory of Pandora's box, even though we know that it is based on the sins
that are present inside the box. How is a short story, so I can invent upon an invention without a known author, that in fact
as we open Pandora's Box, we will not spread hatred for Earth, there is no need to spread what is already widespread, but we will
find the truth. And the truth is that we are animals like those we despise. Human culture is an illusion to keep sane people.
Oh, well, at least Bonobo–I mean, Bonomo–didn't use the word "sheeple," so I don't have to go ballistic on him. Condescending
is much too weak a word to describe this mess. Arrogant and egomaniacal fit much better.
"Oh, well, at least Bonobo–I mean, Bonomo–didn't use the word "sheeple," so I don't have to go ballistic on him. Condescending
is much too weak a word to describe this mess. Arrogant and egomaniacal fit much better."
These "sensitive" people break my heart.
I think Mr. Bonhomme has the right to say whatever you want. Perhaps, the "descriptions" also served to you, what do you think
??
It's sadly obvious that most of the negative replies to Mr. Bonomo's article, comes from complete tools.I can see that most, if
not all of you tools have been thoroughly educated by sitting in front of your TV's and burping and farting large amount of odorous
gases from your beer infused bodies.A friendly bit of advice, remove your collective heads from your asses and get a real life.
Hahah.. did Bonomo's essay really scare you that much or did it merely strike such a chord of cognitive dissonance that it
left you squirming in mental anguish? Lighten up dude!
Despite some glaring inaccuracies and over-generalizations, overall the piece is interesting and thought-provoking.
"The system is so advanced that those who do untangle themselves and cut their way out of the net are immediately branded as
mentally ill, anti-social, or simply losers who can't accept the 'complexity of modern life', i.e. conspiracy nuts."
Perhaps he means someone like a homeless person or pan-handler living on the street. Certainly few if anyone would consider
a radical thinker like Noam Chomsky "mentally ill, anti-social, or simply losers".
Mr. Bonomo, interesting take on things but ultimately I don't quite agree. Here is the subparagraph of my worldview that addresses
the whole free-versus-slave thing: Freedom is in inverse proportion to security. An individual in solitary-confinement in
a maximum security prison has 100% security but 0% freedom. At the opposite extreme is the "hermit" living in self-imposed exile
with 100% freedom but never entirely sure of when & where his next meal is coming from and if attacked by a predator, human or
animal, he is entirely on his own. Between those two extremes there is a reasonable middle-ground.
The hunter-gatherers are (or were) about as free as it is possible to be and each individual not having to live as a hermit
– but their lives were, as per Thomas Hobbs, "nasty, brutish and short." I've read that around the time of Christ the average
lifespan was 20-22. (That's probably factoring in a lot of infant-mortality).
My life is clean, comfortable, reasonably if not perfectly safe and I'm on-track to live well into my eighties. But I'm a "wage-slave"
to a job that I hate, despise and loath and frankly, at home, my wife rules the roost. If I protest too much she could divorce
me and take much of what I've worked roughly thirty-four years for so she's got me over a barrel.
Well, years later I just want to thank you for this essay. It stated more clearly than I could the truth of the world. The only
thing missing is the identity of the perpetrators, and many of us know who they are.
Memoria day is an anti-war holiday designed to remeber horrible number of Civil war dead. But now it is converted into
something like glorification of militarism day.
Neocons are renegade Trotskyites 'aligned' with US imperialism and how fighting for "world neoliberal revolution".
Pay for their revolutionary fervor is much better though.
Notable quotes:
"... Trotsky helped create the Red Army as well as the intellectual underpinnings of the (worldwide) communist revolution. This movement destroyed/ended/ruined the lives of many millions of innocent people. Shouldn't a movement that caused this much damage ruin the reputation of its architects? ..."
"... Frunze was the real architect of the Red Army, while Trotsky's main contribution to the Red Army was getting Czarist commanders to join. Trotsky likely had Frunze assassinated, rather than Stalin. ..."
"... Considering America (and Japan's) Siberian adventure, and the mass killings involved, e.g. by Japanese and Americans, well, pots and kettles and all that. ..."
"... that today's Trotskyites come down on the side of Isramerican-backed Sunni terrorists in Syria should surprise no one. Because yesterday's Trotskyites are now called (((neo-cons))) originally via the "anti-Stalinist" Partisan Review, then Commentary, then Nat Review. ..."
"... It was quite striking how, when Gaddafi was brutally murdered, you got similar reactions from Hillary Clinton and British Socialist Workers Party honcho Alex Callinicos – malicious gloating. ..."
"... It was a bit like a flash of lightning on a dark night – a brief illumination of surroundings and what these people really stand for, as opposed to the ideological posturing. ..."
"... Whenever I read anything purporting to identify international bad guys and good guys, I always like to ask: "Who has this purported bad guy invaded recently? How many bombs has this bad guy dropped on other people's countries?" I feel it clarifies matters. ..."
"... Maybe Bronstein himself was a delusional revolutionary true believer, we'll probably never know for sure, but I doubt very much his neocon disciples are motivated by some internationalist idealism. ..."
"... A well known saying in left wing activist circles in the UK was "Never trust a Trot." ..."
"... Trotskyites, much more than Stalinists, love war, worship war, live to make war for everybody and everything they see as not theirs. Trotskyites have as large an appetite for carnage leading to their greater empire than any people that ever lived with the exception of Mongols. ..."
Trotsky helped create the Red Army as well as the intellectual underpinnings of the (worldwide) communist revolution. This
movement destroyed/ended/ruined the lives of many millions of innocent people. Shouldn't a movement that caused this much damage
ruin the reputation of its architects?
Not in the case of Trotsky. He was such a brilliant Jew!
Trotsky was not that competent militarily, and even tried to arrange a transfer of e.g. Czech troops to Vladivostok to allow
them to fight on the western front, and allowed American inspections of German prisoners of war in a hope of forestalling the
coming Allied invasion (through Siberia and the North). Frunze was the real architect of the Red Army, while Trotsky's main
contribution to the Red Army was getting Czarist commanders to join. Trotsky likely had Frunze assassinated, rather than Stalin.
Considering America (and Japan's) Siberian adventure, and the mass killings involved, e.g. by Japanese and Americans, well,
pots and kettles and all that.
If we are to compare death tolls, we could look at the US and UK armies' intervention (and Canada's!), directly (1994, from
Burundi, mainly to prevent Hutu civilians from fleeing), and, more importantly, via proxy (1990 to the present, using the Ugandan
army, armed by the former armies, with constant supply flights until at least 1994) in Rwanda and later Congo-Kinshasa. Two million
Hutu (Rwanda, 1994, from former Kagame Henchman, Eric Hakizimana) and five to ten million eastern Congolese (mainly in the Kivus),
from that intervention alone. The intervention also included the assassination of Rwandan president Habyarimana, and of former
Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira (Burundi's first democratically elected president, deposed in a baTutsi (feudal aristocrat)
coup likely sponsored by same western armies), mere days after the
death threat by former US secretary of state for
African affairs, Herman Cohen.
that today's Trotskyites come down on the side of Isramerican-backed Sunni terrorists in Syria should surprise no one. Because
yesterday's Trotskyites are now called (((neo-cons))) originally via the "anti-Stalinist" Partisan Review, then Commentary,
then Nat Review.
It was quite striking how, when Gaddafi was brutally murdered, you got similar reactions from Hillary Clinton and British
Socialist Workers Party honcho Alex Callinicos – malicious gloating.
It was a bit like a flash of lightning on a dark
night – a brief illumination of surroundings and what these people really stand for, as opposed to the ideological posturing.
Whenever I read anything purporting to identify international bad guys and good guys, I always like to ask: "Who has this
purported bad guy invaded recently? How many bombs has this bad guy dropped on other people's countries?" I feel it clarifies
matters.
@The practical result of this verbal agitation is simply to align this brand of Trotskyism with U.S imperialism.
Wasn't 'Trotskyism' 'aligned' with US imperialism from the very moment when he transported the Warburg-Schiff money to Russia
to carry on the 'permanent revolution'?
And when Stalin cut Trotsky's crap who jumped to his defense? The Dewey "Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon
Trotsky in the Moscow Trials". And who are the imperialist 'neo-cons' other than 'old Trotskyists'?
I did not read about the suspicion that Bron(f)stein in reality was a German agent. What one reads in these two books does not
make the suspicion go away
John W Wheeler-Bennett, 'Brest-Litovsk, The forgotten peace, March 1918', 1938, 1963, London
Erich Ludendorff, 'Meine Kriegserinnerungen 1914 = 1918′, Berlin, 1918
If they weren't so nefarious, the trotsies wouldn't be worth reading, let alone mentioning. Maybe Bronstein himself was a
delusional revolutionary true believer, we'll probably never know for sure, but I doubt very much his neocon disciples are motivated
by some internationalist idealism.
Neocons are jewish supremacists aided by corrupt to the core goyim, plain and simple. They do have in common with their guru
one conviction, that the end justifies the means. That is the recipe of evil.
It's a pity that so many youth are misled still today in believing in the hoax that Trotskyism is somehow something moral.
Trotsky was himself a murderer. Killing is immoral. It sometimes is necessary and cannot be avoided as with regards to the psychotic
butchers who came from abroad to Syria and are known as ISIS but it is still immoral.
Normal people sense killing as immoral therefore psychopaths have to come up with stories such as Germans slaughtering Belgian
babies with bayonets, Iraqis throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators, Serbs genociding Bosniaks or Albanians, Qadhafi readying
for genocide in Benghazi, Assad pulling children's fingernails or gassing them, Iran being responsible for 9/11 etc, all in order
to dehumanise the enemy of the moment and compel people to accept that killing "sub-humans" half way around the world is a moral
act. It isn't. Period.
Unlike all those fake atrocities, Western and Saudi trained, armed and financed foreign terrorists in Syria did film themselves
doing horrors. They videotaped themselves burning people alive, throwing people off building tops. They videotaped themselves
beheading children. Assad didn't make those videos, ISIS did, to brag. Only mentally ill people can support those "rebels" against
Assad. Yet, as a Christian, I don't consider killing them as moral, I consider it as necessary and unavoidable, but it is an act
that mandates penitence.
Trotsies ignore those qualms and, whether real or alleged followers, are sick people. End of story.
From Trotsky's doctrine of Permanent Revolution onward, the hallmark of Trotskyism has been a quest for intellectual purity in
revolution – no contradictions allowed. No mixed economies under socialism. No pragmatic alliances. No consideration of national
security. Stake everything on a worldwide wave of revolution. Every real-world tactical issue since 1939 has led to fracturing
of the Trotskyist movement, generally into a "pure" faction and a "get something done" faction. International Socialists represented
the "pure" faction after the 1939 split (after it spun off the forebears of the neoconservative movement). Its sole contribution
of significance was as an intellectual incubator for Christopher Hitchens. More "pure" factions spun off in the early 1960s, which
sooner or later degenerated into cults. Lyndon LaRouche made his mark leading one of the "pure" factions. The "get something done"
faction made its mark as highly effective organizers of protests against the war in Vietnam but started chasing silly fads of
the student New Left, trying unsuccessfully to connect them to a revolutionary strategy. Their "revolutionary" rationale for those
movements blew up when they went in a decidedly bourgeois-aligned bureaucratic direction and became adjuncts to the Democratic
Party. WSWS represents the revival of purist Trotskyism, which offers cogent critiques of the glorified left-liberal postmodernist
"Trotskyism" of Louis Proyect and Socialist Alternative, but seems to choke on the question of what they themselves actually intend
to accomplish.
The Russian revolution served German interests more than it did American ones. Germany sponsored Lenin's return from Zurich
to lead the revolution that would get Russia out of the war. It makes no sense to contend that the Russian revolution served American
interests or that Warburg-Schiff were acting on their behalf. They were acting against the US interest in keeping Russia in the
war against Germany. They had been financing anti-Tsarist activity in Russia for years.
If one wants to make the case that Trotsky was a German agent, they would have to explain his agitation for spreading the revolution
into Germany. You could make a stronger case that George Washington was a French agent against Britain. Revolutions have tended
to occur in the cracks and contradictions opened in the struggles between the great powers, including the revolutions in China
and Vietnam.
The problem is not that an ignorant, Tony McKenna, will still in 2018 be a Trotskyst , that is a defender of a mass murderer.
The problem is that the writer of this piece seems to believe that it is worth spending time writing an article about such
an ignorant and irrelevant man. Maybe because he "writes well", which, she admires.
That one can "write well" and "speak well, as intellectuals do, but be a jerk, doesn't occur to Ms Johnson.
The problem is also because the writer herself, ignores how profoundly ignorant is Tony McKenna.
"Revolution is very rare. It is more a myth than a reality "
No, Revolutions are criminal enterprises. They always were and they always will be.
Robespierre, Lenine, Trotsky, Stalin, Hitler, Mao were criminals.
The first European revolution – The French Revolution – was the first big lie and the first to put into practice the industrial
killing of a people – People of Vendée – . The first EUropean Genocide was committed by the French revolutionaries.
It is not by chance that all major criminals (Lenine etc ) studied the French Revolution and would apply later in their countries
the model that the French terrorists (Revolutionaries) applied to France.
Those who are interested in knowing the truth about the Franch Revolution (and all revolutions and why so called Trotskysts
are a bunch of fools) should read Reynald Secher – A French Genocide: The Vendee.
"In our era, the most successful revolutions have been in Third World countries"
Well, if one can write such nonsense, then when can admire Tony McKenna and waste time writing a silly article.
Great article! Thanks to Diana Johnstone for writing such a fine article which blows right out of the water so much of the BS
being bandied about in relation to the Syrian War, Stalin, etc. Ms. Johnstone is a REAL intellectual. Wish there were more like
her in the Anglosphere nowadays.
President Asad is a doctor by profession. He is a family man and has raised a beautiful family. Prior to this Saudi Terrorist
Revolution he rode his own car, at times taking his family shopping .hardly signs of a baby killer or a 'chemical animal'.
Trotskyites, much more than Stalinists, love war, worship war, live to make war for everybody and everything they see as not
theirs. Trotskyites have as large an appetite for carnage leading to their greater empire than any people that ever lived with
the exception of Mongols.
Trotskyites and WASPs – who created the largest empire in world history – in bed together, with the evil House of Saud, could
destroy civilization.
I just finished Kotkin's Stalin book chapter on the purges, which made no sense (the book is good but has no narrative). The
purges would have made more sense as a full on battle with the Trotskyite elements. My other theory is that they were a paychological
projection of guilt from the collectivization murders, realized as more murders.
Fools and idiots come in various shapes and sizes, as do socialists and wildlife. The zebra stands out from afar, its stripes
give it away. Likewise, the Trotskyites stand out markedly in the fairly jumbled-up socialist landscape, given away by their towering
stupidity and luminous obstinacy. Whenever some wretched poor, weak country is being bombed by the West, these useful idiots of
empire jump up and down in merriment. Whenever a union anywhere is trying to extort more money for less work, these fools give
their support. The burning down of churches and the spreading of atheism at gunpoint is another trait of theirs. Christian Socialists
they hate with a special vengeance, taking their cue from Marx the great "visionary", whose vision was fairly deficient in many
ways.
Stalin had Trot's head badgered-in, if I recall. Well, with a head as stupid as Trotsky's, half the world would be itching
to bash it in. One of those good things that Stalin did, IMHO.
The purges would have made more sense as a full on battle with the Trotskyite elements.
That's exactly how I interpret Stalin's purges, too. I think he was trying to wrest control of the Communist Party generally–and
the NKVD specifically–from the (((Trotskyite))) mafia which then dominated them.
I just finished Kotkin's Stalin book chapter on the purges, which made no sense (the book is good but has no narrative).
Is Kotkin Jewish? Maybe the reason his recounting of the purges doesn't make sense is because he doesn't really want to talk
about what prompted them. Like anything else in life, if you want to understand Stalin's purges, you first have to understand
the context in which they took place.
Syrians have told me that Bashar al-Assad was a decent chap. But taking his family shopping could not be different from John McCain
walking through Baghdad with one hundred soldiers around him and helicopters overhead to show how safe it was. If Bashar al-Assad
"went shopping" in Damascus (instead of London or Paris) then two thousand plain clothes were also shopping with him. And for
what would he "go shopping" in Damascus? Shopping for an illusion, that's what.
"In the context of a global neoliberalism, where governments across the board were enacting the most pronounced forms of
deregulation and overseeing the carving up of state industries by private capital, the Assad government responded to the heightening
contradictions in the Syrian economy by following suit -- by showing the ability to march to the tempo of foreign investment
while evincing a willingness to cut subsidies for workers and farmers." [ -Tony McKenna ]
This is like cursing the pizza store owner who gives 'protection' money to the mafia, without cursing the mafia which extorts
him! As Johnstone later points out, back then Assad had little choice but to try and make his peace with Uncle Scam as best he
could, since the USSR was no longer around to protect Syria.
McKenna concludes by quoting Louis Proyect: "If we line up on the wrong side of the barricades in a struggle between the
rural poor and oligarchs in Syria, how can we possibly begin to provide a class-struggle leadership in the USA, Britain, or
any other advanced capitalist country?"
Ah yes: Louis Proyect. The one and only! It was he who recently defended the 'rebels' as proletarian Bolsheviks struggling
for a new, socialist Syria:
"The Syrian rebels are generally drawn from the poor, rural and unrepresented majority of the population, the Arab version
of John Steinbeck's Joad family. Despite the tendency of some on the left to see them as sectarians who rose up against a generous
Baathist welfare state because it supported a different interpretation of who was the true successor to Muhammad, the revolutionary
struggle in Syria was fueled by class hatred."
The trouble with Trotskyists is that they are always "supporting" other people's more or less imaginary revolutions. They
are always telling others what to do. They know it all. The practical result of this verbal agitation is simply to align this
brand of Trotskyism with U.S imperialism.
Which is why, once they reach a certain age and a certain level of burn-out, rather than simply give up on politics entirely,
they usually tend to become neoconservatives , as did Chris Hitchens. For them, the Rockefeller/Rothschild 'new world order'
is the next best thing to Trotsky's 'world revolution'.
The thing that escaped the author is that Trotskyism is a dead horse. The number of Trotskyists in any country is as close to
zero as makes no difference. These deluded weirdos are outnumbered even by flat-Earthers.
I don't know if Kotkin is a member of the tribe, but he definitely is on the Putin/Russia bashing wagon and is deeply steeped
in all the classic WASP institutions.
Most of the Hoover people seem to have the anti-Russian disease.
The give away in his chapter on the purges was that he blamed it on the defective personality of Stalin, i.e. Stalin was just
crazy.
Certainly Stalin was a brutal murderer, but any time the sole reason for a historical event is someone's personality you can bet
you're reading propaganda.
If you have an sources that make for a better reading on the purges, please do post.
Absolutely. Ghadafi was sodomized by bayonet and Clinton cackled over it with malicious glee.
The posing of Assad as some kind of monster is just lynch-mob rationalization. McKenna doesn't believe what he is saying any
more than Stalin believed show trial confessions obtained under torture.
It's all the more pleasurable to these psychopaths that they cloak their crimes with phony virtue. Hence, putting Assad out
there as this cartoon villian.
As if ISIS, who we fostered and nurtured, was any better? Or communist Kurds? My God how we forget each disaster from Afghanistan
to Iraq, to Libya, to Syria now the scorched-earth war and subsequent disease, etc.? These people thrive on death and mayhem.
Excellent point. The global revolution socialists are hard core ideologies who put ideological purity over practical considerations.
Hence their failure to achieve any kind of real world success. Wherever socialists have had some sustainable success it has been
achieved by combining socialism with elements of nationalism and capitalism. The communist military successes in Russia, China
and Vietnam were achieved by appealing to nationalism. The Chinese economic miracle has been achieved through state capitalism.
The Scandinavian welfare state has depended on government support for big companies like Volvo and Nokia.
There are lessons here for English-speaking countries with their dogmatic attachment to liberal values like free trade, open
borders and anti-nationalism.
Eh No. The first *modern* European revolution was the American revolution, and it's not a joke. Fully European, of European
people and European powers. All European powers indeed, UK, France, Spain, many German states, and so on. And French revolution
was broadly more than Robespierre, it was UK, Spain, the German states, the Pope, the Austrian Empire, the many factions of the
French people (if such concept had any sense then, in a territory only less than 25% spoke French), all of them were criminals,
or only was Robespierre? Was criminal the previous kingdom, in a permanent basis of bloody wars and social injustice?
Maybe revolutions are simply a security valve, steaming a bit and that's all. By the way, the word itself goes back to Coppernicus,
a revolution is a full orbit of a planet around the Sun. It ends where started.
The entire Human History is criminal, against Humankind itself and our own planet. We must understand, not look for criminals.
You are right. I was surprised to see the article as I thought they were all in old age homes.
They really really are gone in America, even in the universities. May be because in America because our "struggle" is multi
millionaire Jews and upper middle class blacks Asians Hispanics and Indians against poor Whites.
In America a $200,000 a year black women school administrator is an opressed victim. The poorest disabled White man is a privileged
aristocrat who must be sent to the guillotine.
I'm very interested in the Vendeens. I have the memoirs of Renee Bourderau.
It's not a book. I got it from the library of Congress copying service and put the pages in a binder.
Loyola uni Los Angeles has a copy in their rare books section. UCLA and USC libraries have lots of books about it, many in
English. The Lucius Green library at Stanford has many Vendean resistance books too
Quite a different story from the conventional Masonic enlightenment narrative. Our American Whiskey rebels were lucky they
surrendered so quickly or they might have met the fate of the Vendeans. There used to be a website devoted to Renee Bourdereau
maintained by some college history department.
The trouble with Trotskyists is that they are always "supporting" other people's more or less imaginary revolutions. They
are always telling others what to do. They know it all. The practical result of this verbal agitation is simply to align this
brand of Trotskyism with U.S imperialism. The obsession with permanent revolution ends up providing an ideological alibi for
permanent war.
For the sake of world peace and progress, both the United States and its inadvertent Trotskyist apologists should go home
and mind their own business.
Trotsky was a danger to the survival USSR, because he was an internationalist as is the Israeli-allied globalist cabal that
runs the USA. His differences with Stalin and the nationalists inside the Kremlin was not a small disagreement, as you assert.
You must not have ever even picked up a book on the subject.
Would you be surprised to learn that Lenin too was conspiring with the Japanese in 1904-5?
'Revolutionary defeatism' was a central tenet of his worldview and of Trotsky's too.
As brutal as Stalin was, his rule was providential, in the sense that he saved Russian nationalism, culture, and spirituality
from absolute destruction at the hands of the usual suspects' willing instrument, Lev Davidovich Bronstein.
Bronstein was an agent of the Jewish banking cabal headquartered in New York. He was financed primarily by Jacob Schiff of
Kuehn and Loeb.
Trotsky and his acolytes desired the total destruction of Russian culture and Russian Orthodoxy in particular.
Stalin was sagacious enough to realize that the Russians would never fight against the Germans and their allies for the cause
of world revolution, but knew they would fight for their Russian motherland and its spiritual traditions and folkways. Stalin
restored the patriarchate, opened up many churches, and commissioned the composition of the "Hymn of the Soviet Union" (now the
Russian National Anthem with different lyrics) in the Orthodox chorale tradition; it would ultimately replace "The Internationale."
In the meantime, the almost entirely kosher Trotskyites became viciously anti-Soviet (actually anti-Russian) and pledged their
temporary allegiance to their great American golem.
The origins of the Cold War (and today's Russia xenophobia) was- in my humble opinion- the great schism and struggle between
the international rootless tool of Wall St. and his acolytes and the ruthless- but providential -Georgian autocrat.
This Permanent revolutions is very good. But what you going to do with the Old revolutioners..
It does not bode well. If they are in the way of more and other revolutions
This Permanent revolutions is very good. But what you going to do with the Old revolutioners..
It does not bode well. If they are in the way of more and other revolutions
Louis Proyect – this is a vile scribe, who blackens the pages of the Counterpunch. A part of the Trotskyite gang that took over
this once venerable magazine!
I remember with emotion the old days, where in Minnesota, the Communist Party with me among others, and the Trotskyist of the
WS with you, among others, if my memories are good, we were fighting inside the movement against the war from VietNam.
The Trotskyists said then that once peace is won, it would be necessary to work for the overthrow of the regime of "pro-Soviet
revisionist HoChiMinh".
Even today, most of the troskysts (and CPF Eurocommunists for that matter) still deny the socialist character of China, Viet
Nam, Cuba, North Korea, and so on.
And this is even more true since these countries are inscribing their economy in the continuity of Lenin's NEP!
We come to this fable of the end of History with "globalized capitalism", as we enter a multipolar world where the socialist
countries (China, VietNam, North Korea, Cuba, Kerala ) in alliance with the BRICS non-imperialist, take over.
Have you evolved from Minnesota, or are you still a fellow traveler on the WS Trotskyite?
Maybe you're right. The first European Revolution was the American Revolution Except that it wasn't really a Revolution. If
we want to be precise, we should call it war for "Independence"/For Power.
What is sure is that future criminals (Europeans/Asians/Africans) will have the French revolution has their model and not the
American Revolution.
Revolution or not, the fact of matter is that Americans have nothing to learn from Europeans in terms of barbarism. Indian Genocide
is an example how "revolutionary" (criminal), the American Elite were/are.
"The entire Human History is criminal" – It's false.
"We must understand, not look for criminals." Obvious. But if you understand the nature of revolution you know that revolutions
are made by criminals Not just Robespierre, of course.
Renée Bourdereau is what Howard Zinn calls "Unsung Heroine".
In France, today they prefer to celebrate criminals like Robespierre, Turreau, Westermann etc..(executioners of Vendéen Genocide)
Normal, Revolution won and French politicians and Elites are very proud of their "République".
If you're interested in Vendée, you have to read Reynald Secher. He's one of the greatest French Historian. Of course he's
almost unknown because he doesn't write the official history, which is most about propaganda and not trying to find the truth.
Yes, it was. All Revolutions are about power. Obviously the Americans could not overthrown the British Crown, an Ocean in the
Middle. But they would have do if they could. Dettaching part of the Empire was (is) a way to make easier the way for others.
And, actually, American Revolution was and is a model. It was a successful model for most of Latin American independences, many
bloodbaths and not at all exempts of tyrants and psycopaths. Nor the American Revolution was an angelical promenade.
Of course, choose a model depends on the user. In fact the point here is your meeting point, actual or pretended. The ayatollahs
cannot choose the French Revolution at all as a model, not to say the Soviet one (the American neither, obviously).
What I am trying to say it's maybe Revolutions are more an accident than a deliberate political move. Maybe if the French Revolution
had not existed, France neither nowadays. And without her, the French bourgeoise. A forgotten Revolution is the Polish one, earlier
than French too. If none speaks about it's because it was a complete failure (by the way, no violence at all), and Poland was
dismembered and ceased to exist for 125 years.
If you have such "accidents" you seriously cannot expect normal people at command. The more brutal the affair, the more brutal
the "criminals". Makes no difference being an arson or an accident. You have a fire and minimizing the disaster is over any other
considerations. Call them criminals if you want, but I guess they did not many chances to behave other way. It is a common place
to say Lenin was the saint, Trotsky the martyr, and Stalin the beast. Trostky was a toff, and Stalin was a redneck who did the
dirty job. The Central Committee under Stalin was killed more than 500 out of 600 members in 30 years, all commies and most of
them personally selected by Stalin himself, I mean, it's hard to believe any real treason beyond a paranoia of pure power. But,
Russia do exist today if things had ran other way? Can anyone say the number of dead people would be lesser? Hitler came to power
with no Revolution at all, on the contrary, the 1919 German Revolution was another failure, ending with Hitler.
Kotkin's writing is readable and the details are interesting. But he appears to be a full on propagandist on the important
details, like the Tsar, the Czech and Austrian conflicts, as well as the Stalin purges.
You tell me, a man who purges millions for no apparent reason (Kotkin gives none other than paranoia) isn't an implied psychopath?
Frankfurt School ideology replaced Marxism as the driving ideology of the American Left during the 1960s. Nominal Marxists
tried to fudge that ideology into Marxism because they thought it would help to sell Marxism, but boy were they wrong! Marxist
theory instead became a talisman for selling the various identitarian ideologies used to divide and weaken the working class –
the exact opposite of what the opportunist-identitarian Marxists had anticipated. Their claims that identitarian movements were
somehow akin to the anti-colonial nationalist movements of the postwar era were diametrically wrong. They became tools of the
ruling class in their 40+ year neoliberal campaign to impose hyper-exploitive colonial conditions on the former imperial homelands.
We are all Third World now.
The idea that Stalin was fighting a Jew-mafia takeover of the USSR has been put forth by several prominent Third Positionists,
such as Francis Parker Yockey:
We don't blame the British people anymore than the world should blame the
American people. It is these political machines filled with antisocial
sociopaths and psychopaths that gravitate to government. These people have
the following tendencies
- Power Monger - Regularly break or flouts the law
- Politician - Constantly lies and deceives others
- Conquer - Is impulsive and doesn't plan ahead
- Warlike - Can be prone to fighting and aggressiveness
- Destructive - Has little regard for the safety of others
- Deadbeat - Irresponsible, can't meet financial obligations
- Repressive - Doesn't feel remorse or guilt for what is done to people
They are all, first and foremost EXPLOITATIVE, manipulative, gas
lighting, lacking EMPATHY, regret remorse or guilt, grandiose, haughty
arrogant behavior, an overwhelming sense of entitlement, power addicted,
ruthless (however every psychopath will describe this as 'determined'),
pathological liars. Most psychopaths are NOT physically violent, the
most successful ones pass in society and sit in positions of power over
a few or millions of people. Psychopaths will only put out as little
energy as it takes to exploit and manipulate a potential partner whether
romantic or business but it's a succession of cronies and hangers on
that do the work for them as psychopaths are notoriously LAZY.
Psychopaths hurt people because it gives them a sense of overwhelming
power. The more the victim REACTS, the better for the psychopath. They
are emotionally rewarded by the pain they cause.
Imagine the psychopath who has the ability to cause reactions in
millions of people.
I see Wiki as MSM "fact checking" disinfo propaganda. VERY
important to the MSM machine.
I have--and know others who have
repeatedly contributed content which was promptly removed from
Wiki entries.
Even Snopes has been compromised.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-sno
Snopes was founded by a couple who ran it as an authentic
grass-roots research and information platform. A few years ago it
was infiltrated, the couple was split up and it's now part of the
propaganda machine.
It was discovered the Snopes was partly funded by an entity
associated with
CIA's Psych Hop
operation that
sends a flock of people to sites like Wiki to control information
that is placed there, which is entirely the opposite of the "open
source" that Wiki advertises itself to be.
Ironically but not unsurprisingly, Snopes partnered
with Facebook in it's fake anti-"fake news" campaign, which is
really just shutting down anything that disagrees with the
establishment's official narrative, which involves YouTube and
Twitter other social media platforms.
A recent literacy project is an effort to help teach students
how to distinguish what's real and what's fake in the age of
digital communications.
"That was a time when students used the internet to do research
and struggled with recognizing truth from fiction. It was well
before "fake news" was mentioned and the country found itself
facing real questions about whether "fake news" existed, what it
was or if it affected the results of the 2016 presidential
election." For those who pay attention only to MainStreamMedia,
the "fake news" noise during the 2016 election was their
introduction to "fake news".
Countries all over the world have recently enacted legislation
against fake news with high fines and prison sentences (Malaysia,
Egypt, Brazil, Honduras, Italy, Germany, France, UK).
We are now told that "fake news," specifically in the form of
alternative media (and primarily "alt-right" media) is the great
new danger facing the public.
A signal to us is the extreme campaign against the alternative
and inconvenient "fake" media. But the charges of "fake news" are
being used as an excuse to tighten censorship in the US and all
over the world.
Dolan's pieces on censorship and hate speech in the vid above
are also really great.
"... There is in the US a concerted effort to praise capitalism as some sort of god-given system and to defame all other systems. ..."
"... "Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." ..."
"... "The problem this essay addresses can be framed in terms of two quotations from Alexis de Tocqueville. The first comes from his famous speech in the French Chamber of Deputies just prior to the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848: "We are sleeping on a volcano .do you not see that the earth is beginning to tremble. The wind of revolt rises; the tempest is on the horizon." The second is from Democracy in America: "When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness." ..."
"... "These fools in Wall Street think they can go on forever! They can't!" ..."
"... "a giant suction pump had by 1929 to 1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing proportion of currently produced wealth. This served then as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied themselves the kind of effective demand for their products which would justify reinvestment of the capital accumulation in new plants. In consequence as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When the credit ran out, the game stopped" ..."
By Rob Johnson, Institute for New Economic Thinking President,
Senior Fellow and Director, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and Thomas Ferguson, Director of Research, Institute for New
Economic Thinking. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website
...
The problem this essay addresses can be framed in terms of two quotations from Alexis de Tocqueville. The first comes from his famous
speech in the French Chamber of Deputies just prior to the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848: "We are sleeping on a volcano .do
you not see that the earth is beginning to tremble. The wind of revolt rises; the tempest is on the horizon." The second is from
Democracy in America : "When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness."
In 2018, the darkness is all too palpable: A chain of economic reverses that no prominent economists, central bankers, or policymakers
anticipated has combined with other shocks from technology, wars, and migrations to produce the political equivalent of the perfect
storm. The world financial meltdown of 2008 set the cyclone spinning. As citizens watched helplessly while their livelihoods, savings,
and hopes shriveled, states and central banks stepped in to rescue the big financial institutions most responsible for the disaster.
But recovery for average citizens arrived only slowly and in some places barely at all, despite a wide variety of policy experiments,
especially from central banks.
The cycle of austerity and policy failure has now reached a critical point. Dramatic changes in public opinion and voting behavior
are battering long entrenched political parties in many countries. In many of the world's richest countries, more and more citizens
are losing faith in the very ideas of science, expertise, and dispassionate judgment -- even in medicine, as witness the battles
over vaccines in Italy, the US, and elsewhere. The failure of widely heralded predictions of immediate economic disaster when the
UK voted to leave the European Union and Donald Trump became President of the United States has only fanned the skepticism.
Placing entire responsibility for this set of plagues on bad economic theory or deficient policy evaluation does not make sense.
Power politics, contending interests, ideologies, and other influences all shaped events. But from the earliest days of the financial
collapse, reflective economists and policymakers nourished some of the same suspicions as the general public. Like the Queen of England,
they asked plaintively, "Why did no one see it coming?"
Answers were not long in arriving. Critics, including more than a few Nobel laureates in economics, pointed to a series of propositions
and attitudes that had crystallized in economic theory in the years before the crisis hit.
[1] Economists had closed ranks as though in a phalanx, but the crisis showed how fragile these tenets were. They included:
A resolute unwillingness to recognize that fundamental uncertainty shadows economic life in the real world. Neglect of the roles
played by money, credit, and financial systems in actual economies and the inherent potential for instability they create. A fixation
on economic models emphasizing full or nearly complete information and tendencies for economies either to be always in equilibrium
or heading there, not just in the present but far into the indefinite future. A focus on supply as the key to economic growth and,
increasingly after 1980, denials that economies could even in theory suffer from a deficiency of aggregate demand. Supreme confidence
in the price system as the critical ordering device in economies and the conviction that getting governments and artificial barriers
to their working out of the way was the royal road to economic success both domestically and internationally.
Initially, debates over this interlocking system of beliefs mostly sparked arguments about the usefulness of particular tools
and analytical simplifications that embodied the conventional wisdom: Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models; notions of a
"representative agent" in macroeconomics and the long run neutrality of money; icy silence about interactions between monetary rates
of interest and ruling rates of profit, or the failure of labor markets to clear.
Increasingly, however, skeptics wondered if the real problems with economics did not run deeper than that. They began to ask if
something was not radically wrong with the structure of the discipline itself that conduced to the maintenance of a narrow belief
system by imposing orthodoxies and throwing up barriers to better arguments and dissenting evidence.
The empirical evidence now seems conclusive: Yes.
"Top 5" Dominance for Promotion and Tenure
Studies by James Heckman demonstrate the critical gatekeeping role of five so-called "top journals" in recruitment and promotions
within economics as a field.
[2] Four of the journals -- the American Economic Review , the Journal of Political Economy , the Quarterly
Journal of Economics , and the Review of Economic Studies -- are Anglo-American centered and published in the US or
the UK as is the fifth, Econometrica , though it is sponsored by the Econometric Society, which has long involved scholars
from Scandinavia and other countries.
Heckman's research shows that the number of Top 5 (T5) articles published by candidates plays a crucial role in the evaluation
of candidates for promotion and tenure. This is true not only in leading departments but more generally in the field, though the
influence of the count weakens in lower ranked institutions.
The Great Disjunction
Heckman compares citations in Top 5 journals with articles frequently cited by leading specialists in various fields and with
publication histories of Nobel laureates and winners of the Clark Medal. He is crystal clear that many important articles appear
in non-T5 journals -- a finding supported by other studies.
[3] This evidence, he argues, highlights a "fundamental contradiction" within the whole field: "Specialists who themselves publish
primarily in field journals defer to generalist journals to screen quality of their colleagues in specialty fields."
Citations as Pernicious Measures of Quality in Economics
Heckman draws attention to the increase in the number of economists over time and the relative stability of the T5. He argues
that his findings imply that the discipline's "reluctance to distribute gatekeeping responsibility to high quality non-T5 Journals
is inefficient in the face of increasing growth of numbers of people in the profession and the stagnant number of T5 publications."
Other scholars who have scrutinized what citations actually measure underscore this conclusion. Like Heckman, they know that citation
indices originated from efforts by libraries to decide what journals to buy. They agree that transforming " journal impact
factors" into measures of the quality of individual articles is a grotesque mistake, if only because of quality variation
within journals and overlaps in average quality among them. Counts of journal articles also typically miss or undercount books and
monographs, with likely serious effects on both individual promotion cases and overall publication trends in the discipline. As Heckman
observes, the notion that books are not important vehicles for communication in economics is seriously mistaken.
Analytical efforts to explain who gets cited and why are especially thought provoking. All serious studies converge on the conclusion
that raw counts can hardly be taken at face value.
[4] They distort because they are hopelessly affected by the size of fields (articles in bigger fields get more citations) and
bounced around by self-citations, varying numbers of co-authors, "halo effects" leading to over-citation of well-known scholars,
and simple failures to distinguish between approving and critical references, etc. One inventory of such problems, not surprisingly
by accounting professors, tabulates more than thirty such flaws.
[5]
But cleaning up raw counts only scratches the surface. Heckman's study raised pointed questions about editorial control at top
journals and related cronyism issues. Editorial control of many journals turns over only very slowly and those sponsored by major
university departments accept disproportionately more papers from their own graduates.
[6] Interlocking boards are also fairly common, especially among leading journals.
[7] Carlo D'Ippoliti's study of empirical citation patterns in Italy also indicates that social factors within academia figure
importantly: economists are prone to cite other economists who are their colleagues in the same institutions, independently of the
contents of their work, but they are even more likely to cite economists closer to their ideological and political positions.
[8] Other research confirms that Italy is not exceptional and that, for example, the same pattern shows up in the debates over
macroeconomics in the US and the UK after 1975.
[9]
Other work by Jakob Kapeller, et al., and D'Ippoliti documents how counting citations triggers a broad set of pathologies that
produces major distortions.
[10] Investing counts with such weighty significance, for example, affects how both authors and journal editors behave. Something
uncomfortably close to the blockbuster syndrome characteristic of Hollywood movies takes root: Rather than writing one major article
that would be harder to assimilate, individual authors have strong incentives to slice and dice along fashionable lines. They mostly
strive to produce creative variations on familiar themes. Risk-averse gatekeepers know they can safely wave these products through,
while the authors run up their counts. Journal editors have equally powerful incentives: They can drive up their impact factors by
snapping up guaranteed blockbusters produced by brand names and articles that embellish conventional themes. Kapeller, et al. suggest
that this and several other negative feedback loops they discuss lead to a form of crowding out, which has particularly pernicious
effects on potential major contributions since those are placed at a disadvantage by comparison with articles employing safer, more
familiar tropes.
[11] The result is a strong impetus to conformism, producing a marked convergence of views and methods.
These papers, and George Akerlof in several presentations, also show that counting schemes acutely disadvantage out-of-favor fields,
heterodox scholars, and anyone interested in issues and questions that the dominant Anglo-Saxon journals are not.
[12] This holds true even though, as Kapeller et al. observe, articles that reference some contrary viewpoints actually attract
more attention, conditioning on appearance in the same journal -- an indication that policing the field, not simply quality control,
is an important consideration in editorial judgment. One consequence of this narrowing is its weirdly skewed international impact.
Reliance on the current citations system originated in the US and UK, but has now spread to the rest of Europe and even parts of
Asia, including China. But T5 journals concentrate on articles that deal with problems that economists in advanced Anglo-Saxon lands
perceive to be important; studies of smaller countries or those at different stages of development face higher publication hurdles.
The result is a special case of the colonial mind in action: economics departments outside the US and UK that rely on "international"
standards advantage scholars who focus their work on issues relevant to other countries rather than their own.
Oh wait, Fourcade and her colleagues are sociologists, not economists, so no reason to consider their research and thinking.
Also, and not for nothing, she and they are French, and read Pierre Bourdieu who has done a lot of work on the sociology of academics,
focused on France but widely applicable.
And here's something interesting; there is no mention of the funding of economics at universities and colleges. So, no mention
of the hundreds of millions the filthy rich have poured into the field. Of course, they heatedly deny that matters. A recent tweet
from a Geroge Mason/Mercatus prof was livid at the very suggestion that Koch money influenced hiring decisions.
And that's before we get into the gendered nature of economics, or it's political usage by ideologically-driven politicians
looking for "experts" to support their preconceptions.
There is a lot more and someone needs to say it out loud in clear, uncoded language.
Just a thought line here. I have heard and read conservatives say that "Politics is downstream from culture" and I get what
they are saying. You change the culture and that predetermines the politics that you get. In reading this article, the thought
struck me that perhaps the reason that economics as a profession has been corrupted so badly is that maybe conservatives consider
government to be downstream of economics. Thus you control what economics theories are permitted to be discussed and that gives
them the governments that they want.
I support your contention. There is in the US a concerted effort to praise capitalism as some sort of god-given system and
to defame all other systems. Venezuela's current problems are due to socialism, not bad management, of course. Of course, since
the wealthy are doing oh so well under the status quo, they are bound to favor it, but they are not just favoring it, they are
nailing it down onto our culture.
There is in the US a concerted effort to praise capitalism as some sort of god-given system and to defame all other
systems.
The Marxist economist Richard Wolff made the claim that economists are simply cheerleaders for capitalism in an interview on
Chapo Trap House, He elaborated and substantiated this claim by saying that business schools had to be founded because economics
departments were useless as a method of educating a cohort of business specialists.
Very succinct and thoughtful indeed. Remember Ronald Reagan's now infamous, "Government is the Problem" mantra. The real cultural
warriors were the neoliberal terrorists who are hell bent on commodifying the entire planet for their own exploitation- masked
in the language of "freedom" and "democracy".
This line of thought is also important in that your framing cuts to the core of the cognitive problem attempting to deal with
economics, namely, it is a religion. I would define a religion as a system of faith and worship that is driven by a particular
interest. All the wordy-ness and arm waiving is just an attempt to obfuscate this simple truth. Persecution of the unfaithful
is also a dead giveaway.
This whole notion that the current reigning economics profession is ready, or attempting to "see the light" is somewhat amusing,
or in another sense should be insulting considering the social damage they have caused, and are continuing to inflict on the broader
citizenry. Burning at the stake is more appropriate, and maybe these slight rumblings of contrition are a sign that some might
be getting worried that their "economic" program has gone too far.
When what goes on in the human mind looses connection to events in the real world, changes must be made in order to remain
sane. The current orthodoxy is also ultimately doomed to failure in that what is the point of creating and maintaining a deluded
and demoralized citizenry? That is a recipe for internal stagnation and external conquest. It would only be a successful strategy
if the elite are able to move on after the broader society falters and fails. That thought is almost too cynical to contemplate.
But that might explain why the .001% remains the .001%. The current economic priests are starting to feel the pressure because
their flocks are beginning to realize that their everyday experience no longer matches the sermons they receive.
Following Rev Kev's point and Ed Walker's third paragraph, have there been any studies of the sources of gifts, underwriting,
and other purchases of academic work at the most "influential" economics and business economics departments?
In the academic side of the economics profession, it would seem to be prudent to "go with the flow."
Even the economists who recognized problems in 2008, such as Steve Keen and Dean Baker, are not celebrated.
In our society, it seems more likely that some powerful group or individual wants to do something and then proceeds to find
an economist to support that action, via an editorial or media appearance, perhaps it is "free" trade, more immigration, easy
money, tight money, quantitative easing, outsourcing, insourcing, charter schools, or austerity.
I suspect there are economists who attempt to accurately anticipate economic events.
But they work for hedge funds and private wealth management firms.
And what is the incentive for a prominent public economist to warn of economic problems that may have been caused by government
and well-connected interests?
If someone, such as Alan Greenspan, gave early notice of sub-prime/mortgage backed security issues how would he have been better
off?
It suggests a central banker career strategy that, if one observes a large economic problem brewing, retire and publish your
book before the SHTF.
If the career central banker actually warned/took actions to circumvent a financial bubble and the bubble popped anyway, they
could be tagged as a goat for causing the crisis.
Maybe the economics profession is functioning as one would expect?
One has to wonder, if the elite economists who have defined the parochial and narrow scope of what capitalism is, how it works,
and who wins and loses in the system, and maybe in particular it's late 20th Century form, neroliberalism, had maybe expanded
their self-serving views to include a Marxian critique and analysis of they might not had been so stupid?
That's not to say the Marx had all the answers, but is only to say that if you presuppose the outcome you want and buttress
it with only the information that supports (no matter how poorly) those outcomes, you end up with crisis and the contradictions
within capitalism resulting in the failures described above.
Universities and Econ departments don't allow the wide critical view needed into their schools, and no matter what you think
of Marx and his ideas, they should at least be the starting point in the discussion when approaching economic policy. The right
wing shift in the governments and the people's of the world is not some unexpected outcome but is directly related to a system
that builds in economic disparity, short-term planning (due to emphasis on next quarters profits and stock price), and an emphasis
on winner take all rather than human needs.
It's not "the economy, stupid." It"s the stupid system.
The problem with the American system is that its founding principles, that all men are created equal, and are endowed with
certain, God given, unalienable rights, runs in contradiction to the chosen economic models of building society. Slavery and Capitalism
are antithetical to these sentiments. Capitalism might be workable if restrained and heavily regulated, but why bother with that
because human corruption will always find a way to undermine such a system; it is inherently weak and guarantees suffering will
be born by the masses- Brexit will provide the perfect example as predicted by Yves.
A heavily regulated capitalism is socialism by another name.
The same, self-serving arguments are also made about war. The thought that humans could live in peace is treated as some unrealistic
and insane idea. Instead of selecting from the human population for cooporation and peace-loving sensibilities, the minority sociopathic
murders are allowed to run wild.
Real human "progress" will be made when the peace faction gains supremacy. But that is impossible as long as the economic system
upon which all human subsistence depends remains entrenched in competition and striving to hoard against fears of scarcity.
FDR had it right, although imperfect, society was moving in the right direction. We live in a world of abundance that is being
squandered. The only way to avoid ultimate destruction is to embrace this abundance as stewards and conservators instead of fearful
exploiters.
Conserve the world by embracing sustainable living. Now that is a powerful political message. So powerful, it will be met with
the full force of the sociopathic murders currently in charge of human societies.
The equality stuff is in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. The latter is specifically devoted to protecting
the interests of property holders, specifically including slavers. This is not surprising. The Founders were heavily influenced
by John Locke. Locke was a slaver himself
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2709512?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
. And remember that Lockean ideas are based on protecting private property from the random predation of absolute monarchs.
That's an amazing slip of the keys. It explains a ton too. I love that it combines the term which the people discussed in this
article usually deride with the name of the last Roman emperor who is renowned for extravagance and tyranny.
I agree with your comment whole heartedly.
But:"the name of the last Roman emperor who is renowned for extravagance and tyranny."(& please forgive my quibble) Nero was certainly
not the last emperor to have had such characteristics.
(Elagabalus springs to mind)
It's been said that you can tell how dominated economics is by a particular minority of society, by the economists' word for
phenomena where workers are paid more for their labor being "disease". As in Baumol's Disease for example.
Both sides of the political divide often go awry simply because they refuse to acknowledge the role of human nature. We mere
mortals know this as we are the full recipients of the "free market," the good, the bad, and the extremely ugly. The likes of
Alan Greenspan in the rarified air strata were shocked, shocked, shocked! I bring you a small excerpt from Mr. Greenspan's testimony
before the Government Oversight Committee of the House of Representatives. Still clueless, he does acknowledge a flaw:
Pressed by Waxman, Greenspan conceded a more serious flaw in his own philosophy that unfettered free markets sit at the root
of a superior economy.
"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they
were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms," Greenspan said.
Waxman pushed the former Fed chief, who left office in 2006, to clarify his explanation.
"In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working," Waxman said.
"Absolutely, precisely," Greenspan replied. "You know, that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going
for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well."
In many of the world's richest countries, more and more citizens are losing faith in the very ideas of science, expertise,
and dispassionate judgment – even in medicine, as witness the battles over vaccines in Italy, the US, and elsewhere.
Might be believed by some, others might believe that more and more citizens are sceptical about the practioners ability to
provide expertise and dispassionate judgment. From my own perspective I do believe in science, expertise and dispassionate judgment
but I don't believe that many professional economists have much expertise (outside of knowledge of basic statistics and statistics
software) or that they practice dispassionate judgment.
Pharmaceutical companies are not in business to heal people, they are in business -> They do whatever they legally can to make
money and they even put pressure on the legislative to get more opportunities to legally make more money.
The article contains this link to the Lancet relating to "the reproducibility and reliability of biomedical research": https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2815%2960696-1/fulltext
The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted
by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together
with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.
If we looked and any other (social) scientific discipline, we'd get the same result.
The articles from medium and The Lancet you link highlight the problems well enough, the system is corrupt from top to bottom.
Another examples of where misguided emphasis on juicing "metrics" (for personal gain) rather than taking one's time to develop
expertise and do things correctly is literally killing people, or simply ruining lives (as if that is some consolation).
Economies are inherently cyclical. Keynesianism, in its original incarnation, envisaged surpluses during economic expansions
to offset the fiscal deficits provoked by recessions. But surpluses are a distant memory -- now it's pedal to the metal all the
time, just to keep a becalmed, debt-choked economy treading water.
Credit is also procyclical. It was severely rationed during and after the 2008 meltdown. Now covenant-lite bonds prevail for
corporate financing, while individuals can get 3 percent down FHA loans to buy houses at prices that exceed the 2006 peak, with
33 times leverage. Prudent!
What role can academics play in this endless sisyphean tragedy? None, probably. Warning of recession invites career risk for
economists, so most of them just won't do it. Like the Hazmat team, economists show up after the train wreck to help with the
cleanup. Federal Reserve economists are engineering that crack-up right now, with their fruitcake bond dumping campaign.
By 2020, they'll be tanned, rested and ready for their next exciting outing. :-)
As others have stated, there are economists out there who have already seen through the current dogmas.
Michael Hudson is one and another that comes to mind is Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef. A transcript of an interview with
him from 2010:
"I worked for about ten years of my life in areas of extreme poverty in the Sierras, in the jungle, in urban areas in different
parts of Latin America. And at the beginning of that period, I was one day in an Indian village in the Sierra in Peru. It was
an ugly day. It had been raining all the time. And I was standing in the slum. And across me, another guy also standing in the
mud -- not in the slum, in the mud. And, well, we looked at each other, and this was a short guy, thin, hungry, jobless, five
kids, a wife and a grandmother. And I was the fine economist from Berkeley, teaching in Berkeley, having taught in Berkeley and
so on. And we were looking at each other, and then suddenly I realized that I had nothing coherent to say to that man in those
circumstances, that my whole language as an economist, you know, was absolutely useless. Should I tell him that he should be happy
because the GDP had grown five percent or something? Everything was absurd.
So I discovered that I had no language in that environment and that we had to invent a new language. And that's the origin
of the metaphor of barefoot economics, which concretely means that is the economics that an economist who dares to step into the
mud must practice. The point is, you know, that economists study and analyze poverty in their nice offices, have all the statistics,
make all the models, and are convinced that they know everything that you can know about poverty. But they don't understand poverty.
And that's the big problem. And that's the big problem. And that's why poverty is still there. And that changed my life as an
economist completely. I invented a language that is coherent with those situations and conditions."
It's a good interview of someone developing an alternate view.
(There are critiques and studies of wealth that I think we need more of as well, only poverty is thought of as pathological –
a subject which he tackles.)
And just maybe, human goodness and human evil have a cyclical nature too and we are just in the bad part of the cycle right
now. However, it may be true also that the time period of 1950 to 1970 was an anomaly that may not recur, and that the true nature
of human beings is to lie, to cheat, to steal, to commit fraud and practice multifarious corruptions and violence. When you look
at the widest version of history, human nature is not so benign.
1950 to 1970 the rest of the industrial world was decimated after 2 world wars.
And more countries wanted independence from colonialism (less loot spread around, however thinly, back home – though not totally
disappeared).
Psychology turns into sociology. Either the system is making everyone prosperous and happy or it is making everyone desperate.
Desperation is the American way. The comfort of misery seen as pathological in the individual is a more general pathology. Too
much bile in the system.
"The Sticky Floor." is the phrase my cousin invented. She is a leader in Women's Studies. It may well apply more correctly that
"The Glass Ceiling". Overall the turn in the article to the dearth of women economists threw me.
As science enables engineering, economics enables financial engineering. The predominant financial engineer of our times is Meyer
Lansky. Organized business, the "real" economy of General Motors and Dow & Dupont & General Dynamics & Raytheon, ITT, Apple, Google,
Microsoft all now have adopted Meyer Lansky Financial Engineering.
It was made legal as economic theory and practice under Clinton Unit 1's reign.
The preeminent financial engineer is David Cay Johnston. He called Dean Baker a "real" economist as opposed to Michael Hudson.
I prefer Hudson to Dean myself. Nobody knows everything. This is why all you really have to know is the goal. "You cannot go wrong
if your goals are correct." is what Einstein said.
The main reason for misery is poverty, which is not having enough to operate the household without debt peonage.
The United States and the EU as run by Central Banks have it so only the selected have infinite access to currency. The States
don't have enough money so the System prefers they deny their people things like education and healthcare, and sell bonds.
It is okay for the Federal Government to tax or not tax but the States must tax to fill their treasuries.
Alan Greenspan's philosophy came from Ayn Rand whose world view encouraged the exclusive access and economic security to have
and do whatever they, the rich, people like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, envisioned as ideal for them, and them only. (They live in
airport land with a pond.)
It came from Russian Dystopian Objectivism and produces Dystopia.
The American Philosophy, that which made America loved is American Eclectic Pragmatism.
The wrong goal is to make only those in Finance rich. The right goal is to make everyone as much a jet setter as the jet setters.
Until the goal of Economists is blatantly aimed at relative equality of life, the discipline is simply on the wrong track and
is never going to be worth doing.
Thanks.
Approved economics has nothing to do with actually understanding or solving anything except be a useful smokescreen for wealthy
special interests. I have gotten a more accurate and functional understanding of overall economics from classes, and books in
anthropology, political science, and history than in any classes labeled as "economics."
That is really sad. It is also very deliberate. Those who say modern economic studies have been stripped of anything but neoliberal/libertarian
economic ideas are right. Even then, it seems that it has been either further simplified, or abstracted, to further channel any
thoughts away from real life.
Let's put it this way. Philosophy can be used to actual ask and study questions or it can be used to debate how many angels
can fit on the head of a pin. Guess what what modern mainstream economics does?
There are inherent flaws in neoclassical economics that have already been discovered.
The 1920s roared with debt based consumption and speculation until it all tipped over into the debt deflation of the Great
Depression. No one realised the problems that were building up in the economy as they used an economics that doesn't look at private
debt, neoclassical economics.
The two elements of neoclassical economics that come together to cause financial crises.
1) It doesn't consider debt
2) It holds a set of beliefs about markets where they represent the rational decisions of market participants; they reach stable
equilibriums and the valuations represent real wealth.
Everyone marvels at the wealth creation of rising asset prices, no one looks at the debt that is driving it.
The "black swan" was obvious all along and it was pretty much the same as 1929.
1929 – Inflating US stock prices with debt (margin lending)
2008 – Inflating US real estate prices with debt (mortgage lending)
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." Irving Fisher 1929.
An earlier neoclassical economist believed in price discovery, stable equilibriums and the rational decisions of market participants,
and what the neoclassical economist believes about the markets means they can't even imagine there could be a bubble.
The amount of real wealth stored in the markets becomes apparent once the bubble has burst.
The debt overhang (ref. graph above) is dragging the US economy down and is the cause of Janet Yellen's inflation mystery,
but they don't know because they don't consider debt. It's called a balance sheet recession.
The problems that led to 2008 come from private debt in the economy and the problems now come from the overhang of private
debt in the economy, but they are using an economics that doesn't consider private debt.
"The problem this essay addresses can be framed in terms of two quotations from Alexis de Tocqueville. The first comes
from his famous speech in the French Chamber of Deputies just prior to the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848: "We are sleeping
on a volcano .do you not see that the earth is beginning to tremble. The wind of revolt rises; the tempest is on the horizon."
The second is from Democracy in America: "When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness."
How about this quote ..
"These fools in Wall Street think they can go on forever! They can't!" President Theodore Roosevelt 1909.
The US has just forgotten its own history; this is what it was like at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.
Capitalism was running wild, but the difference was there used to be a critical press.
Catch up on US history.
"PR! A Social History of Spin" Stuart Ewen
Finding out what the private sector uses PR for also helps you understand their motivations, it's worth reading.
Our Esteemed Elites are mostly college educated which hopefully includes American history. But maybe it's become like modern
college economics. Stripped of inconvenient information.
I agree that beyond the normal American nation's ultra short memory, there is a regular effort by some to eliminate any inconvenience
ones. If history is a career or even a hobby you will likely know much about America history bad (and good too!) that goes zooop
into the memory hole. It becomes a boring national hagiography. Sanitized. But that shouldn't be.
But STEM courses are so much more important than fluff like history.
As with a few other commenters here, the essay puts me in mind of historiography, to wit E.H. Carr whose 'before studying history,
study the historians' became the fighting slogan for the radical history movement of the 1960s:
"The facts are really not at all like fish on the fishmonger's slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes
inaccessible ocean; and what [facts] the historian catches will depend, partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean
he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use."
"Economists had closed ranks as though in a phalanx, but the crisis showed how fragile these tenets were. They included:
1. A resolute unwillingness to recognize that fundamental uncertainty shadows economic life in the real world."
. And for this one, do I even need to requote Upton Sinclair?!
Economists and central bankers are our modern day priest-astrologers. We *need* them to know! to appease Bel-Marduk and Istar,
to ensure a fruitful harvest, the birth of worthy sons
.and also, for a small commission, to manage our tax collections/ debts/ alehouses/ brothels [hat tip to Prof Hudson].
This is about the UK, but applies equally to the US as we are all doing the same neoliberal things.
Why isn't the economy growing?
We shouldn't get side tracked with productivity as productivity is GDP per hour worked and we need to grow GDP.
What is GDP?
The amount of money spent into the economy by consumers, businesses and the Government plus the income we receive from the
trade balance with the rest of the world.
Now we know what GDP is we can immediately see why austerity is contractionary. The cut in Government spending comes straight
off GDP (someone tell Macron).
The aim is to increase the amount of goods and services within the economy at the same rate as the demand for those goods and
services, whilst increasing the money supply to allow those extra goods and services to be purchased.
Milton Freidman understood the money supply had to rise gradually to grow the economy with his "Monetarism". He thought that
central bank reserves controlled the money supply and this is why it didn't work.
The economists focus on supply (neoclassical economics) or demand (Keynesian economics) until the balance of supply and demand
gets out of step. The economy stagnates due to either insufficient supply (1970s stagflation) or insufficient demand (today's
ultra low inflation).
Money needs to enter the economy to increase the supply of goods and services, while at the same time; the increased money
supply enables the demand for those goods and services.
Banks and governments create money and this is now well understood outside the mainstream.
The banks have been creating money to lend into real estate and inflate financial asset prices. This is not what you want;
they should be creating money to increase the supply of goods and services by lending into business and industry. Their lending
hasn't been increasing GDP.
It all started going wrong when with financial liberalisation and a 1979 policy decision. The UK eliminated corset controls
on banking in 1979 and the banks invaded the mortgage market. This is the start of the real estate frenzy.
You can let bankers do what they want, but they have no idea how to grow the economy with bank credit.
Supply had outstripped demand by the 1920s in the US and they used bank credit to maintain demand, but this can never work in
the longer term as this money needs to be paid back. Government created money has to fill the gap as it doesn't need to be paid
back.
Governments can create money, jobs and wages in the public sector, building the infrastructure for the economy and looking
after the health and education of the population to provide the economic framework necessary for the private sector who can't
make a profit doing these things.
The magic number is GDP, we need to focus on what increasing that number means.
Our main problem is an ideological Left who think the answer always lies on the demand side and an ideological Right who always
think the answer lies on the supply side.
The Left think Government is the answer and the Right think the private sector is the answer.
You need both, due to the increased productivity of the private sector that cannot create the necessary demand for those goods
and services through private sector wages alone.
Understanding money is critical and this is something central bankers monitor, but they don't appear to know what it means
The flow of funds within the economy.
This helps us understand why Government surpluses precede finical crises and why balanced budgets and Government surpluses
push the private sector into debt
Richard Koo shows the graph central bankers use, the flow of funds within the economy, which sums to zero (32-34 mins.).
Government assets + corporate assets + household assets + transfers from/to the rest of the world = zero
They can't all be positive.
The US runs a large trade deficit and this money needs to come from somewhere.
It is the Government that should run the big deficit to fund the other three and if you clamp down on government spending your
economy can't grow unless it starts running on bank debt. The corporate sector and households have to get into debt to balance
this zero sum equation.
A Government surplus requires an indebted private sector unless you are Germany and run a trade surplus.
Clinton was proud of the Government surplus but he didn't realise that this meant the private sector had to go into debt. The
last Government surplus occurred in 1927 – 1930, it precedes crises.
Richard Koo's video shows the Japanese Government ran a surplus just before the Japanese economy blew up.
Neoclassical economics doesn't focus on GDP because it predates it. It was put together before they knew how to measure economic
activity.
It lets the wealthy accumulate all the money until the economy falls over though a lack of demand.
Mariner Eccles, FED chair 1934 – 48, passes comment the last time they used neoclassical economics in the US in the 1920s.
"a giant suction pump had by 1929 to 1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing proportion of currently produced wealth.
This served then as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied
themselves the kind of effective demand for their products which would justify reinvestment of the capital accumulation in new
plants. In consequence as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could
stay in the game only by borrowing. When the credit ran out, the game stopped"
This time it's global.
2014 – "85 richest people as wealthy as poorest half of the world"
2016 – "Richest 62 people as wealthy as half of world's population"
2017 – World's eight richest people have same wealth as poorest 50%
Lying, cheating, and stealing is what we human beings seem to do best, so when the pot becomes big enough, the elite [those
willing to do whatever it takes] do what the elite have done, lie, cheat and steal with reckless abandon.
Those who choose to live a noble life must always be grounded by the notion that the reward for doing such is in achieving
good night's sleep, and little more. You truly can not have your cake and eat it too, not then, not now, not ever
Before they sink beneath the waves of the latest moral panic or election horse-race hot
take, I want to draw your attention to two stories that are presented as separate but are in
fact intertwined. Both concern the Veterans Administration (VA), one of America's several
eligibility-determined single payer systems. (Like Britain's NHS, but unlike Canadian or
American Medicare, the VA owns its facilities and employs its own medical personnel. That makes
it a target-rich environment for neoliberals.)
1) A newly-signed contract with Cerner Corporation for a new VA EHR (the same as the Defense
Department's)
2) The VA Mission Act, now on President Trump's desk
The stories intertwine because they look like they're part of the
neoliberal privatization playbook , here described in a post about America's
universities:
It's almost like there's a neo-liberal playbook, isn't there? No underpants gnomes , they! [1] Defund [or sabotage], [2]
claim crisis, [3] call for privatization [4] Profit! [ka-ching]. Congress underfunds the VA,
then overloads it with Section 8 patients, a crisis occurs, and Obama's
first response is send patients to the private system . Congress imposes huge unheard-of,
pension requirements on the Post Office, such that it operates at a loss, and it's gradually
cannibalized by private entities, whether for services or property. And charters are
justified by a similar process.
(I've helpfully numbered the steps, and added "sabotage" alongside defunding, although
defunding is neoliberalism's main play, based on the ideology of austerity.) We can see this
process play out not only in public universities, public schools, the Post Office,
and the TSA , but in Britain's NHS, a national treasure that
the Tories are systematically and brutally dismantling .)
I'll begin by looking at the VA's EHR project, and then move on to the VA Mission Act.
According to the announcement -- and a budget forecast -- the Cerner EHR at the VA will be
identical to the one currently in the pilot phase at the Department of Defense. Currently,
officials at both agencies are working together to impart lessons learned into the VA
project. 'We expect this program to be a positive catalyst for interoperability across the
public and private healthcare sectors,' said Cerner President Zane Burke in a statement. 'We
look forward to moving quickly with organizations across the industry to deliver on the
promise of this Mission.'
("positive catalyst." Hoo boy). It does seem reasonable that DoD and the VA should both use
the same EHR, but there's a snag : The DoD EHR project ("MHS Genesis")
is a debacle.
HealthCare IT News , also mid-May:
The Department of Defense, along with EHR vendor Cerner and contractor Leidos, held a call
with reporters late Friday in response to a report finding that MHS Genesis implementation is
not effective and slamming the massive modernization work's survivability as well as
recommending DoD delay the project.
MHS Genesis " is not operationally suitable because of poor system usability,
insufficient training and help desk support ," according to the Initial Operational
Test and Evaluation.
Behler pointed to a lack of workplace functionality needed to document and manage patient
care as examples, and noted that clinicians using MHS Genesis only completed 56 percent
of the 197 tasks used to measure performance .
"Poorly designed user roles and workflows resulted in an increase in the time required for
healthcare providers to complete daily tasks," according to the report.
In some instances, EHR issues caused providers to work overtime or see fewer
patients . In other cases, users actually questioned that accuracy of the data
exchanged between external systems and MHS Genesis -- which could have put patient lives at
risk.
"Users generated 22 high severity incident reports that the testers attributed
to inoperability, including interoperability of medical and peripheral devices," according to
the report. Users ranked usability at 37 out of 100 on the system usability scale.
The first stage of the Pentagon's $4.3 billion MHS Genesis project has been plagued with
severe usability and interoperability problems, according to an April 30 report obtained by
POLITICO. Pentagon inspectors who visited three of the four Pacific Northwest treatment
centers in the rollout found 156 "critical" or "severe" incident reports -- i.e.
flaws typically serious enough to result in patient deaths. They canceled the fourth visit
until problems could be resolved at the first three centers.The report concluded that MHS
Genesis, is "neither operationally effective, nor operationally suitable" -- and
recommended freezing the rollout indefinitely . That, in effect, is what the MHS
Genesis project management office has done, though leader Stacy Cummings says it's still on
track to finish on time in 2022.
The report confirms and deepens findings from our March investigation, in which doctors and
IT specialists expressed alarm about the software system, describing how clinicians at one of
four pilot centers, Naval Station Bremerton, quit because they were terrified they might
hurt or even kill patients
As for negative reports, 'we're disappointed stakeholder feedback continues to be taken
out of context to present an incomplete, inaccurate and misleading narrative about the
successful completion of the MHS GENESIS initial operating capability phase,' the spokesman
continued. 'MHS GENESIS is already achieving meaningful improvements related to quality,
efficiency and safety in the initial deployment sites. We are confident MHS GENESIS remains
on track for full deployment.'
Which totally explains why clinicians decided to enter today's labor market because "they
were terrified they might hurt or even kill patients." You have to wonder why MHS Genesis
project was initiated at all.
NextGov :
DoD responds to report calling Cerner EHR 'not operationally suitable'
The VA's electronic health system was rated the best for overall user satisfaction in a
survey of more than 15,000 physicians, while the Pentagon's current platform–the Armed
Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application–scored dead last.
So, call me crazy, but why not give consideration to making the VA system the standard for
the DoD?
"It's no surprise that a program as big as MHS Genesis is going to have problems like this
-- according to all the metrics, most large federal IT programs aren't successful," said
[former VA chief information officer Roger Baker], who held the department's top tech job
from 2009 to 2013. "[VA] need[s] to remember that the probability they're flushing that $16
billion down the toilet is actually greater than 50 percent."For one, most VA doctors don't
mind the current platform.
So, replacing a system that works with a new system is a $4 billion coin-flip. Perhaps Roger
Baker asks a question that answers itself:
'What's it going to look like when VA is trying to replace the most liked [platform] out
there?' Baker said, especially when the military is having trouble convincing doctors to quit
one of the least liked.
To a cynic, it might look like Step One of the neoliberal privatization playbook: Sabotage.
Especially because the first time the VA and the DoD tried this,
it failed .
This Act may be cited as the John S. McCain III, Daniel K. Akaka, and Samuel R. Johnson VA
M aintaining I nternal S ystems and S
trengthening I ntegrated O utside N etworks Act of 2018 or
the VA MISSION Act of 2018.
(That acronym is almost as clever as "USA PATRIOT Act.") If you've been looking for an honor
roll of Democrat Senators who will defend a single payer system that actually exists,
here
it is :
The Senate easily cleared legislation on Wednesday overhauling medical care options for
veterans, sending the bill to President Trump's desk.
Senators voted 92-5 on the proposal, called the VA Mission Act, with only a simple
majority needed to pass the bill. Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Jeff
Merkley (D-Ore.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) voted against the
legislation.
I am concerned, however, that despite some very good provisions in this bill, it
continues a trend toward the slow, steady privatization of the VA . No one
disagrees that veterans should be able to seek private care in cases where the VA cannot
provide the specialized care they require, or when wait times for appointments are too long
or when veterans might have to travel long distances for that care. The way to reduce
wait times is to make sure that the VA is able to fill the more than 30,000 vacancies it
currently has . This bill provides $5 billion for the Choice program. It provides
nothing to fill the vacancies at the VA. That is wrong. My fear is that this bill will open
the door to the draining, year after year, of much needed resources from the VA.
Step One, defunding, again. And surprisngly good coverage, well worth a read, from
Mother Jones :
Congress Is Poised to Push Veterans' Health Care Closer to Privatization
The first strike in this war over privatization occurred in 2014, when Republicans blocked
a bill introduced by Bernie Sanders that would have provided the VA with much-needed funds
and expanded services to veterans. A compromise measure, the 2014 VA Choice Act, gave the VA
a fraction of the funds it needed while allocating $10 billion for care in the private
sector. (More than one-third of all VA-funded medical appointments last year took place in
the private sector.)
The Choice Act, cast initially as a temporary measure, has been extended repeatedly. The
Mission Act will make permanent its privatizing principles by allowing and even encouraging
more veterans to seek care outside the VA. The Congressional Budget Office estimates
that the act would result in 640,000 additional veterans seeking private care in the
first few years after its passage, and that the agency's current annual allocation of $9
billion for private care would increase substantially.
The bill is essentially a Trojan Horse, and the provisions tucked inside it will further
usher in privatization without meaningfully addressing core agency challenges.
Sanders was too nice when he said "very good provisions." He should have said "Trojan
horse." This sets up Step Two, crisis, and provides the "solution": Step Three:
Privatization.
According to a detailed analysis by the Veterans Healthcare Action Campaign, a veterans
advocacy group that opposes the law, the bill imposes stringent new quality metrics that are
untested and fail to consider key health outcomes such as symptom reduction. Moreover, if a
VA hospital is found to be underperforming in a certain area, a huge swath of patients can be
pushed into the private sector. The act loosens other restrictions that determine a veterans'
eligibility to seek care from a private doctor or hospital.
Without providing the funding to hire extra staff, the law also imposes new time-consuming
bureaucratic challenges on the VA (or, potentially, a contractor), including setting up
appointments with private providers, coordinating care, processing payments to private
providers and making sure they provide documentation of the care delivered.
Sabotage, crisis.
The law would also require VA employees to develop and deliver training materials for the
private sector.
The old "get them to train their replacements and fire them" ploy! It never gets old!
Finally, the bill would establish a nine-person commission, beginning in 2021, to assess
the VA's future infrastructure needs. The commission will make recommendations of facility
closures based on utilization. The upshot is that if the push to shift veterans into
private-sector care continues, the corresponding decline in utilization of VA facilities
could be used to justify closing those facilities permanently -- regardless of who's
providing the highest-quality care.
Step Four, profit. Let the looting begin!
Conclusion
It's clear the VA is an institution to watch. Note that I'm by no means an expert on the VA
-- it's seemed to work pretty well, so far, so there's been little reason to pay attention to
it, with so much else going on -- and so I'd welcome reader comments from those who have
availed themselves of its services, or work there.
APPENDIX I: Software
Remember when we could write software that worked? Good times:
APPENDIX II: Privatization
Here's a nauseating n instructive opinion piece
from Anthony Tersigni , CEO of Ascension , the world's largest
Catholic health system and the largest non-profit (so-called) health system. You can read it if
you don't already have a sense of privatizer's choice of tropes, but this caught my eye:
Ascension's mission calls us to care for all, especially the poor and vulnerable. It's for
this reason that the VA Mission Act truly resonates with us, and we are humbled to serve this
deserving population.
Well, fine, but Mattew
7:16 : "Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of
thistles?" Some coverage on Ascension, from the
St Louis Post-Dispatch , in 2014:
But under Tersigni's leadership, Ascension has emerged in the past decade as the nation's
third-largest health care system -- acquiring dozens of nonprofit hospitals and immersing
itself in numerous for-profit ventures.
That dramatic growth culminates Tuesday with the grand opening in the Cayman Islands of
the first phase of a $2 billion "health city" complex -- a project that seems far removed
from the nonprofit health system's humble origins and its Catholic mission to serve the poor
and vulnerable.
Ascension executives say they hope through this joint venture with a for-profit, India
hospital chain to learn ways to reduce medical costs.
But the Caribbean investment also illustrates how dramatically U.S. health care is
changing. In its rapid-fire evolution, Ascension has become a leading example of a nonprofit
health system that often acts like a for-profit, blurring the line between businesses
and charities . Its health ministry [!!] has drawn criticism for risk-taking and its
ties to Wall Street. And some critics have raised questions about its tax-exempt status.
By 2017, Ascension had backed out of this sketchy
venture into greenfields
medical tourism (and it certainly is odd, isn't it, that the United States doesn't have a
thriving medical tourism system, and that in fact those who can flee from the United States for
health care, do?) Apparently, the approach of Narayana Health's Dr. Devi Shetty, Ascension's
partner in this venture, was to
"standardize medical procedures to bring costs down." One might wonder whether there was a
reason Ascension did their experimentation offshore, and whether they plan to apply their
lessons learned to veterans. Interestingly, Ascension's Caymans project ("Health City") is
the subject of
a Harvard Business School case study . Jeremy Grimm ,
May 27, 2018 at 3:25 pm
We have a generation of young men and women who for various reasons join our armed
services and end up in a meat grinder of endless foreign wars protecting the Homeland from
'threats' in places far far away. These veterans were trained to kill using the latest
weapons. Some of them suffer from various forms of PTSD. We live in a country that glorifies
killing and open possession of deadly weapons. Many of the veterans are preferentially
selected to join the U.S. police forces keeping the Homeland safe at home. Now out fearless
leaders want to screw with the VA?
It's not quite the same but the situation made me think of this quote from the "Dark
Knight":
"Let me get this straight, you think that your client, one of the wealthiest and most
powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante, who spends his nights beating criminals
to a pulp with his bare hands, and your plan is to blackmail this person?"
The FBI Wasn't Spying On Trump, It Was "Benign Information Gathering"
Vietnam wasn't a war, it was "a police action"
Our politicians and judges don't accept bribes, they "receive campaign contributions"
Waterboarding isn't torture, it is "enhanced interrogation"
Our Al-Qaeda fighters we arm and train in Syria aren't terrorists, they are "moderate
rebels"
Affirmative action isn't racist, it is "embracing diversity"
Israeli soldiers aren't shooting unarmed protesters, they are "defending Israel from
terrorist attacks"
Social Security isn't a Ponzi scheme, it is "old age survivors and disability
insurance"
Abortion isn't killing an unborn baby, it is "a woman's choice"
Saudi Arabia isn't a barbaric kingdom, it is "the leader of the UN Human Rights
Council"
Representative Kevin Brady isn't a prostitute for the banks, he is "a proven
conservative"
Afghanistan isn't the longest war in American history, it is "Operation Enduring
Freedom"
The NSA isn't violating the Fourth Amendment, it is "Defending our Nation. Securing the
Future."
The National Firearms Act doesn't infringe on our right to bear arms, it is "a statutory
excise tax on the manufacture and transfer of certain firearms"
Possessing nuclear weapons while sanctioning North Korea for the same is not hypocritical,
it is "exceptional"
Seth Rich wasn't murdered for leaking Podesta's emails to Wikileaks, he was "fatally shot
in a botched robbery"
Great post. It reminded me of a joke I saw the other day:
"A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a CEO are sitting at a table.
In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches
across and takes 11 cookies, looks at the Tea Partier and says, "look out for that union guy,
he wants a piece of your cookie."
There's no real Left in the UK anymore, either. The Blairites are still a force with the
Labour party and that party is known as The Red Tories - especially in Scotland - for the
obvious reason!
Even the old Left newspapers - The Guardian, The Observer - are no longer such, as has been
evidenced of late. I no longer read the UK press - Private Eye is my 'paper' reading - and
would not trust one word broadcast by the BBC and, I am sorry to say, Channel
4.
The Guardian and The Observer have never been socialist papers. They were liberal, just like
the democrats in the United States were liberal. And liberals, who are the advance guard of
capitalism, can hardly be called 'of the left'.
The only opponents of capitalism and imperialism are socialists or nationalists, of a kind
rarely seen outside the third world periphery of the system since 1917.
Anyone who sees the fascists and crooks surrounding Trump as being opponents of anything
except the human race is almost as daft as someone who sees the Democrats as part of the
left.
But the real prize for idiocy goes to those sad souls who see the FBI, CIA, MI6 and their
clones as anything but- deepest apologies here to the Mafia and their ilk- criminal gangs, of
the worst kind.
While it is stupid to argue that neoliberalism does not exist: it exits both as ideology, economic theory and politicl
pratice (much like Marxism before it; yet another "man-made" ideology -- actually a variation of Trotskyism, this discussion does
illuminate some interesting and subtle points.
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism is a time-limited global system sustained by coercive imposition of competitive behaviour, parasitic finance & privatisation. ..."
"... But it's better to think of neoliberalism as a bunch of arrangements ("system" if you remove connotations of design) rather than as an ideology. Ed has a point when he says that almost nobody fully subscribes to "neoliberal ideology": free market supporters, for example, don't defend crony capitalism. ..."
"... Perhaps the texts of transnational trade treaties might be the best place to search for a de facto definition of neoliberalism. ..."
"... Whether or not the present neoliberal system is the result of a single coherent ideology, it emerged from the 70s on as a set of related (if not deliberately coordinated) responses to the structural crises of the older postwar Keynesian system. And there was definitely a cluster of policy-making elites in the early 70s making similar observations about the failure of consensus capitalism. ..."
"... It is possible to have 'hard' and 'soft' neoliberalism depending on whether the state employs 'carrots' or 'sticks', but essentially almost the entire UK political system agreed that 'There Is No Alternative' until Corbyn became Labour leader. ..."
"... I think Will Davies has hit the spot with his definition of neoliberalism as "the disenchantment of politics by economics". In other words, neoliberalism is first and foremost a political praxis, not an economic theory. It is about power, hence the continuing importance of the state. ..."
"... That is the Great Transformation and neoliberalism as its current phase are about turning institutions into businesses (including marriage), and part of this is "managerialism". This is not done because businesses are inherently better for every purpose than institutions, but because businesses are better vehicles than institutions for tunnelling (looting) by their managers. ..."
"... Neo-liberals are not opposed to all types of government intervention. But like neo-classical economists, they believe ultimately in the price mechanism to allocate resources - in the long run, if not the short. ..."
"... In terms of sincerity, Milton Friedman asserted in "Capitalism and Freedom" that the more a society was "free market," the more equal it was. Come the preface to 50th anniversary edition, he simply failed to mention that applying his own ideology had refuted his assertion (and it was an assertion). ..."
"... Neo-liberalism never been about reducing "the State" but rather strengthening it in terms of defending and supporting capital. Hence you see Tories proclaim they are "cutting back the state" while also increasing state regulation on trade unions -- and regulating strikes, and so the labour market. ..."
"... Somewhere along the line neo-liberalism got associated with austerity and small-government policies. The latter I think was because they are (correctly) associated with promoting privatisation and deregulation policy. ..."
"... But the market is the creation of man. It has no power, no judgement, other than that bestowed on it by us. My problem with neoliberalism is the belief that decisions can be made on the basis of a money metric whereas we know that money is not necessarily a good measure of value. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is real, but only describes background theoretical claims. It is wrong to apply the term to the broader political movement it supported. The political movement was dedicated to maximizing the power and freedom of action of large-scale capital accumulators. Lots of ideas from neoliberal intellectual argumentation were used to increase the power of capital accumulators, and neoliberal economists tended to ignore many aspects of the political movement they supported (strongr state power, crony capitalism, monopoly power) not strictly part of neoliberal theory ..."
"... usually the theory was just a weapon used in internal battles or as a PR tool to mask less savory political objectives. ..."
"... Repeating the message: "neoliberalism" has a pretty much official definition, the "Washington Consensus". And the core part of the "Washington Consensus" is "labour market reform", that is in practice whichever policies make labour more "competitive" and wages more "affordable". ..."
"... The "free markets" of neoliberalism are primarily "free" labour markets, that is free of unions. ..."
"... I would argue that, in terms of practical working definitions, Max Sawicky's definition of neo-liberalism seems to work well, at least in the U.S. context (second half of post): https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2017/04/28/remember-the-victims-of-the-nebraska-public-power-district/ ..."
Is neoliberalism even a thing? This is the question posed by Ed Conway, who
claims
it is "not an ideology but an insult." I half agree.
I agree that the economic system we have is "hardly the result of a guiding ideology" and more the result of "happenstance".
I say this because neoliberalism is NOT the same as the sort of free market ideology proposed by Friedman and Hayek. If this were
the case, it would have died on 13 October 2008 when the government bailed out
RBS .
In fact, though, as Will
Davies
and Adam Curtis
have said, neoliberalism entails the use of an active state. A big part of neoliberalism is the use of the state to increase the
power and profits of the 1% - capitalists and top managers. Increased managerialism, crony capitalism and tough benefit sanctions
are all features of neoliberalism. In this respect, the EU's treatment of Greece was neoliberal – ensuring that banks got paid at
the expense of ordinary people.
I suspect, though, that measures such as these were, as Ed says, not so much part of a single ideology as uncoordinated events.
Tax cuts for the rich, public sector outsourcing and target culture, for example, were mostly justified by appeals to efficiency,
and were not regarded even by their advocates as parts of a unified theory. To believe otherwise would be to subscribe to a conspiracy
theory which gives too much credit to Thatcher and her epigones.
Neoliberalism is a time-limited global system sustained by coercive imposition of competitive behaviour, parasitic finance
& privatisation.
I'm not sure about that word "system". Maybe it attributes too much systematization to neoliberals: perhaps unplanned order would
be a better phrase. But it's better to think of neoliberalism as a bunch of arrangements ("system" if you remove connotations
of design) rather than as an ideology. Ed has a point when he says that almost nobody fully subscribes to "neoliberal ideology":
free market supporters, for example, don't defend crony capitalism.
And it's useful to have words for economic systems. Just as we speak of "post-war Keynesianism" to mean a bundle of policies and
institutions of which Keynesian fiscal policy was only a small part, so we can speak of "neoliberalism" to describe our current arrangement.
It's a better description than the horribly question-begging "late capitalism".
This isn't to say that "neoliberalism" has a precise meaning. There are varieties of it, just as there were of post-war Keynesianism.
Think of the word as like "purple". There are shades of purple, we'll not agree when exactly purple turns into blue, and we'll struggle
to define the word (especially to someone who is colour-blind). But "purple" is nevertheless a useful word, and we know it when we
see it.
If neoliberalism is a system rather than an ideology, what role does ideology play?
I suspect it's that of post-fact justification.
Put it this way. In the mid-80s nobody argued that the share of GDP going to the top 1% should double. Of course, many advocated
policies which, it turns out, had this effect. Some of them intended this. But those policies were justified on other grounds, often
sincerely. Instead, the belief that the top 1% "deserve" 15% of total incomes rather than 7-8% has mostly followed them getting 15%,
not led it. A host of cognitive biases – the just world illusion,
anchoring
effect and status quo bias underpin
an ideology which defends inequality. John Jost calls this system
justification (pdf) . You can gather all these biases under the umbrella term "neoliberal ideology" if you want. But it follows
economic events rather than is the creator of them.
So, I half agree with Ed that neoliberalism isn't a guiding ideology. But I also agree with Paul, that it is a way of describing
a particular economic system.
I don't, however, want to get hung up on words: I'd rather leave such pedantry to the worst sort of academic. What's more important
than language is the brute fact that productivity and hence real incomes for most of us have
stagnated for years. In this sense, our existing economic system has
failed the majority of people. And this is true whatever name you give it.
Perhaps the texts of transnational trade treaties might be the best place to search for a de facto definition of neoliberalism.
There's not much room to blur, obfuscate (beyond the natural impenetrability of legalese) or wreath around with dubious ethicism
in these documents I'd imagine.
if it's a way of describing the prevailing economic system, does it make sense to describe people as neoliberals? Does that imply
that everyone who is not a radical revolutionary (i.e. anyone who if they got their way in government would still be within normal
variation in policies from a USA Republican administration to the Danish Labour party?). So the Koch brothers are neoliberals
and Brad De Long is a neoliberal despite them disagreeing vehemently about most things?
I know we have lots of other words that are used in wildly inconsistent ways (capitalism, socialism) but I can't help being
irked by the sheer incoherence of the things that neoliberals are accused of. Most recent example to come to mind, somebody in
conversation with Will Davies on Twitter claimed neoliberals oppose redistribution (and Will did not correct him). FFS.
'But, despite the fact that neoliberalism is frequently referred to as an ideology, it is oddly difficult to pin down. For
one thing, it is a word that tends to be used almost exclusively by those who are criticising it - not by its advocates, such
as they are (in stark contrast to almost every other ideology, nearly no-one self-describes as a neoliberal). In other words,
it is not an ideology but an insult.'
Well political science and history uses models too. What is the problem of say David Harvey's definition in, A Brief History
of ...that which doesn't exist (2007)?
Rather I think he means it upsets 'main stream' economics professors, to be called this term, and rather than opt for Wren
Lewis gambit (there is such a thing as 'Media Macro' or 'Tory Macro', or 'Econ 101', which I found interesting as it happens)
Conway has gone for pedantry and first year Politics student essentialism, ie what is Democracy? type stuff.
Neoliberalism, at least in the UK, was in part a reaction by Thatcher & Co to the excesses of previous Labour administrations:
excesses in the form of "if an industry looks like going bust, let's pour whatever amount of taxpayer's money into it needed to
save it". Thatcher & Co's reaction was: "s*d that for a lark – the rules of the free market are better than industrial subsidies
(especially industrial subsidies in cabinet ministers' constituencies)"
Whether or not the present neoliberal system is the result of a single coherent ideology, it emerged from the 70s on as a
set of related (if not deliberately coordinated) responses to the structural crises of the older postwar Keynesian system. And
there was definitely a cluster of policy-making elites in the early 70s making similar observations about the failure of consensus
capitalism.
"if it's a way of describing the prevailing economic system, does it make sense to describe people as neoliberals?"
Yes, these are largely people who reacted to the 'series of events' that occurred in the global economy in the 1970s by essentially
accepting a certain set of policies and responses, many of which involved seeking to insulate the state against collective popular
demands, intervening against organised labour, deregulating finance and targeting state intervention towards private business.
It is possible to have 'hard' and 'soft' neoliberalism depending on whether the state employs 'carrots' or 'sticks', but essentially
almost the entire UK political system agreed that 'There Is No Alternative' until Corbyn became Labour leader.
Many of these people were hardly hardcore ideologists but rather pragmatic
or unimaginative types that were unwilling to challenge the 'status quo' or the prevailing economic system, just as there were
very few classical liberals from WWI onwards.
I think Will Davies has hit the spot with his definition of neoliberalism as "the disenchantment of politics by economics". In
other words, neoliberalism is first and foremost a political praxis, not an economic theory. It is about power, hence the continuing
importance of the state.
This instrumentality echoes Thatcher's insistence that "Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul",
which shows that there was more in play in the late-70s and early-80s than simply responding to the "structural crises of the
older postwar Keynesian system".
You should be reading Philip Mirowski instead. The economist and historian of science Philip Mirowski is considered the foremost expert on this subject, he has written many
books on this the latest is:
"The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information: The History of Information in Modern Economics":
Neoliberalism is a philosophy based on the metaphor/idea that the "market" is an information process ad it is quasi-omniscient,
that "knows" more than any and all of us could ever know. It makes certain claims about what "information" is and what a "market"
is. It's mostly started with the Mont Perelin Society think-tank.
"productivity and hence real incomes for most of us have stagnated for years."
But for many, usually people who vote more often or more opportunistically, they have been years of booming living standards.
The core of the electoral appeal of thatcherism is that thatcherites whether Conservative or New Labour have worked hard to
ensure that upper-middle (and many middle) class voters collectively cornered the southern property market, creating a massive
short squeeze on people short housing.
So many champagne leftists of some age talk about policies and concepts, but for the many the number one problem for decades
has been managing to pay rent.
"neoliberalism is first and foremost a political praxis, not an economic theory. It is about power, hence the continuing
importance of the state."
That's a very good point, but I would rather say that's a good description of New Right/thatcherite (and "third way" clintonian/mandelsonian)
politics, and neoliberalism is the economic policy aspect.
There is after all something called "The Washington consensus" that is a "standard" set of neoliberal economic policies.
"Neoliberalism is a philosophy based on the metaphor/idea that the "market" is an information process"
Written that wait it evokes Polanyi's "Great transformation" where markets mechanisms have displaced social mechanisms in many
areas.
But Just yesterday I realized that Polanyi was subtly off-target: it is not markets-vs-society (two fairly abstract concepts)
but instead institutions-vs-businesses.
That is the Great Transformation and neoliberalism as its current phase are about turning institutions into businesses
(including marriage), and part of this is "managerialism". This is not done because businesses are inherently better for every
purpose than institutions, but because businesses are better vehicles than institutions for tunnelling (looting) by their managers.
"the "market" is an information process ad it is quasi-omniscient, that "knows" more than any and all of us could ever know"
There have been a few books arguing that "the market", being omniscient, all powerful, and just in judging everybody and giving
them exactly what they deserve, has replaced God, and today's sell-side neoliberal Economists are its preachers:
Economists started using the term neo-liberalism a bit later, after it became a derogatory term - and after 2008 began to disassociate
from it (a few, and very few, did after the Asian Financial Crisis).
It is important to realise I think that it is a term that closely linked to political science -- and in particular a branch
of international relations. The person most associated with Neo-liberalism is Francis Fukuyama. What he did was link capitalism
and democracy; both he said had triumphed and because they respect the freedom of individual liberty and they allowed markets,
which are the most efficient way of allocating resources, to operate liberally. Its heyday was at the time of the collapse of
the Berlin Wall - "the end of history" as FF famously said.
Political scientists see neo-classical economics and neo-liberalism as very compatible, because of the formers basic construct
of individual optimisation, rational choice and market efficiency. Often they are grouped together and contrasted with radical
and realist (realpolitik) approaches. For neo-liberals and neo-classicists, markets get prices right, whether they do so with
a lag is a minor point.
Neo-liberals are not opposed to all types of government intervention. But like neo-classical economists, they believe ultimately
in the price mechanism to allocate resources - in the long run, if not the short.
They have no problem with welfare states. Like neo-classical economists they accept the second welfare theorem.
They are pro-globalisation: they don't like international trade, capital or immigration controls. Why? Because they impact
on individual liberty and distort market prices.
International relations were often guiding reasons behind economic policy that were pro-globalisation. By encouraging globalisation,
you were encouraging international capitalism and thereby the spread of democracy (a la Francis Fukuyama). International relations
policy was close to the PM, and run from the Cabinet Office.
I would argue that Blair and Jonathan Portes are prime examples of neo-liberals. And indeed the Clinton/Blair years were quintessentially
neo-liberal in the formerly correct use of the term. Thatcher, as a strong opponent of the welfare state, was not.
One further point. Neo-liberals are progressively and socially liberal, as well as economically liberal. They believe in cosmopolitanism
and diversity and put much emphasis on minority and women's rights.
"In fact, though, as Will Davies and Adam Curtis have said, neoliberalism entails the use of an active state."
It has always been like that -- Kropotkin was attacking Marxists for suggesting otherwise over a hundred years ago.
"In the mid-80s nobody argued that the share of GDP going to the top 1% should double. Of course, many advocated policies which,
it turns out, had this effect. Some of them intended this. But those policies were justified on other grounds, often sincerely."
Yes, different rhetoric was often used -- but the net effect was always obvious, and pointed out at the time. But you get better
results with honey than vinegar...
In terms of sincerity, Milton Friedman asserted in "Capitalism and Freedom" that the more a society was "free market," the
more equal it was. Come the preface to 50th anniversary edition, he simply failed to mention that applying his own ideology had
refuted his assertion (and it was an assertion).
Neo-liberalism never been about reducing "the State" but rather strengthening it in terms of defending and supporting capital.
Hence you see Tories proclaim they are "cutting back the state" while also increasing state regulation on trade unions -- and
regulating strikes, and so the labour market.
"intervening against organised labour" China bans unions, doesn't it? Are they in this tent too?
"targeting state intervention towards private business" not quite sure what that means but pre-1970 import substitution industrial
policy is what?
am I a neoliberal because I think markets do process dispersed information and that competition does some good things (I am
worried about monopolies, I would be worried about non-competitive government procurement) or am I not a neoliberal because I
am nowhere near thinking markets are omniscient and could write long essays on how markets fail?
am I a neoliberal because I think the Washington Consensus is broadly sensible (with some reservations) or not a neoliberal
because I'd like to see far more social housing?
Somewhere along the line neo-liberalism got associated with austerity and small-government policies. The latter I think was
because they are (correctly) associated with promoting privatisation and deregulation policy.
But neo-liberals have never been against welfare states in principle or counter-cyclical policy in principle.
Key-neo-liberals, however, were pro-austerity policy after the Asian Financial Crisis - but this included most of the mainstream
economics establishment (most crucially of all Stanley Fischer at the IMF). Their rational (naturally enough) related to consistency,
credibility, incentives and moral hazard arguments. There were a few who protested (eg Stiglitz). But they were exceptions.
@ Luis Enrique
I don't think you'd make the grade as a 'true' neo-liberal unless you'd be happy for your social housing to be less then optimal
and only for the destitute. Do you see moral hazard if the housing market is once again sidestepped in favour of decent homes
for average every-day heroes, or do you subscribe (explicitly) to the view that the state must sanction and hurt in order that
individuals strive?
"There have been a few books arguing that "the market", being omniscient, all powerful, and just in judging everybody and giving
them exactly what they deserve, has replaced God...."
But the market is the creation of man. It has no power, no judgement, other than that bestowed on it by us. My problem with neoliberalism is the belief that decisions can be made on the basis of a money metric whereas we know that
money is not necessarily a good measure of value.
'"intervening against organised labour"
China bans unions, doesn't it? Are they in this tent too?'
Well yes. They have taken it further than most countries, stripping back their welfare system while increasing state promotion
of capitalist development.
'"targeting state intervention towards private business" not quite sure what that means but pre-1970 import substitution industrial
policy is what?'
Import substitution industrial policy is protectionism, not neoliberalism. I'm referring to governments' privatisation and
outsourcing of public services and industries, taking them out of political responsibility and collective provision, while at
the same time providing them with subsidies and guaranteed markets.
Ben, ok protectionism is a different tactic than outsourcing but it's intervention towards private business so maybe that's not
a defining characteristic of neoliberalism?
And if the Chinese Communist party is neoliberal and also the Koch brothers I am not convinced this is a useful nomenclature
Is Productivity Growth like Evolution ?
Is it possible that productivity growth is like evolution: It can be a fortitous accident or it can happen due to competitive
pressure. The fortuitous accidents are the new technologies whose advantages are so obvious they are quickly adopted.
The competitive pressures can be constraints on profits or resources that force greater efficiency. Perhaps, now, in the UK, there is no shortage of reasonably priced personnel, infrastructure and goods. So, if productivity growth is low, you can be certain neither requirement has been met.
If neither requirement has been met, then, it may well be that there is excessive unused capacity and, if that is the case,
GDP growth has been suboptimal.
Which leads to the best question: Is greater GDP growth the result of greater efficiency or is greater efficiency the result
of greater GDP growth?
The conclusion is that it may be a mistake to guide policy under the assumption that GDP growth must he preceded by productivity
growth. Failing to realize this may be a cause of unnoticed suboptimal GDP growth.
.
1. Neoliberalism is real, but only describes background theoretical claims. It is wrong to apply the term to the broader political
movement it supported. The political movement was dedicated to maximizing the power and freedom of action of large-scale capital
accumulators. Lots of ideas from neoliberal intellectual argumentation were used to increase the power of capital accumulators,
and neoliberal economists tended to ignore many aspects of the political movement they supported (strongr state power, crony capitalism,
monopoly power) not strictly part of neoliberal theory
2. The overlap and confusion between neoliberal theory and the political movement for unfettered freedom for capital accumulator
is consistent with the broader history of movement conservatism. After WW2, conservatives (broadly defined) had a fixation with
developing an intellectual foundatation/justification for their policy preferences. Partly as a reaction to the perception that
FDR-LBJ era liberalism was based on theories published by Ivy League professors. The Mont Pelerin intellectual thread that Mirowski
and others describe was part of this process. But (even for the liberals) it was always a mistake to claim that intellectual/ideological
theorizing lead to political policy and action. It was sometimes the opposite; usually the theory was just a weapon used in internal
battles or as a PR tool to mask less savory political objectives.
3. Democratic neoliberalism (Brad DeLong) was always a totally different animal. It was a reaction to the economic crises of the
70s/80s--New Deal policies written in 1934 didn't seem to be working; maybe would should incorporate market forces a bit more.
At the same time Republican neoliberalism had abandoned all pretense of detached analysis and was now strictly a tool supporting
the pursuit of power.
"Put it this way. In the mid-80s nobody argued that the share of GDP going to the top 1% should double. Of course, many advocated
policies which, it turns out, had this effect. Some of them intended this. But those policies were justified on other grounds,
often sincerely. Instead, the belief that the top 1% "deserve" 15% of total incomes rather than 7-8% has mostly followed them
getting 15%, not led it. "
This is just not true. People did argue that, did announce the intent of these policies in public. Bill Mitchell's former student
Victor Quirk is great on such declarations of war on the poor from the rich throughout history. Mitchell himself wrote that he
was surprised how many and how blatant these declarations were.
"But the market is the creation of man. It has no power, no judgement, other than that bestowed on it by us."
But the neoliberal thesis is that it is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-judging. "vox populi vox dei" taken to an extreme.
"My problem with neoliberalism is the belief that decisions can be made on the basis of a money metric"
That to me seems a very poor argument, because then many will object that ignoring the money metric means that you want someone
else to pay. Consider the statement "everybody has a right to healthcare free at the point of use": it is mere handwaving unless you explain
who and how to pay for it.
The discussion in the money yes/no terms is for me fruitless, because there are two distinct issues in a project: the motivation
for there being the project, and the business of doing the project.
Claiming that the *only* motivation for a project should be money seems to me as bad a claiming that given a good motivation
how to pay for a project does not matter.
Projects don't reduce to their motivation any more than they reduce to the business of doing them.
An extreme example I make is marriage: for me it is (also) a business, as it requires a careful look at money and organization
issues, but hopefully the motivation to engage in that business is not economic, but personal feelings.
That's why I mentioned a better-than-Polanyi duality between businesses and institutions: institutions as a rule carry out
businesses but for non-business motivations, while "pure" businesses have merely economic motivations.
For example a university setup as a charity versus one setup a a business: both carry out business activities, but the motivation
of the former is not merely to do business.
Repeating the message: "neoliberalism" has a pretty much official definition, the "Washington Consensus". And the core part
of the "Washington Consensus" is "labour market reform", that is in practice whichever policies make labour more "competitive"
and wages more "affordable".
The "free markets" of neoliberalism are primarily "free" labour markets, that is free of unions.
@ Blissex "ignoring the money metric means that you want someone else to pay."
Not sure I follow. If payment is made via money then that is not ignoring the money metric, i.e. money as a measure of value.
Do we want someone to do the project and is someone willing and able to do it? If, yes, then money is not (or at least does not
need to be) the constraint. It is a mechanism to facilitate the project. If we want universal healthcare, money is not the constraint,
the constraint is the ability of society to train and sustain (feed and house) the required expertise.
Neo-liberalism is an economic idea based on the conjecture that by reverting the level of state spending and regulation of an
economy to that which existed at an earlier stage of its economic development will produce the same level of economic growth which
the economy experienced then.
But the level of output of an economy is a reflection of the level of the efficiency of that economy, the level of economic
growth therefore reflects the rate of increase in its efficiency in terms of increased economic output as the economy develops,
a measure which inevitably reduces in its order as an economy approaches its maximum level of efficiency and output. So the rate
of economic growth of an economy will inevitably be progressively reduced as an economy matures as the opportunities for efficiency
improvements are exploited and the number that remain diminish.
The level of state spending and regulation typical of economically developed societies are responses to the social change which
economic development itself has brought about. Abolishing those responses therefore is likely only to serve to reintroduce the
social problems which led to their introduction and to make the social consequences of economic development more arduous for the
lower social and economic groups disfavoured by that process of social change.
Neo-liberalism is, like other materialist ideology of the progressive left and right, a predominantly economic idea which is
a product of the affluent and intellectual classes who themselves, being a product of their elevated economic condition, being
dependent upon it and therefore having a vested interest in its continuance, are imbued with a bias which sees the improvement
in the general economic condition as a natural unmitigated good and are therefore oblivious or apathetic to its non-material consequences
as material progress causes a society and its population to diverge from its native and surviving character as it adapts to the
historically exceptional conditions of modernity and undermines its cultural foundation and ultimately threatens its long term
cultural future.
It seems clear from the above posts that there is no clear consensus about what neo-liberalism actually is.
I suggest the use of the term is little more than a cloak used to cover up an uncomfortable reality for those on the left.
Traditional left wing policies, such as nationalisation, state intervention in the economy such as rent controls, high marginal
tax rates, and strong trade unions systematically failed to deliver prosperity. States which moved to economic models involving
more reliance on markets to shift labour and capital to new activities seemed to prosper far better. Rather than say that conservatives
such as Friedman were proved right about the fundamental propositions about how an economy should be organised, the soft left
adopted conservative policies, and have dressed it up as 'neo-liberalism' to save face.
Indeed, some on the left, such as 'filthy rich' Mandelson, embraced the market economy with the zeal of converts, and have
ignored its faults and problems, and have failed to seek to mitigate or remedy these faults and problems.
The best thing to do is consult a first or second year undergraduate political science or international relations text. Burchill
"Theories of International Relations, Palgrave is a good one, and used in many UK universities. There will be a chapter on neo-liberalism
in them. These texts give you the standard blurb on what neo-liberalism really is (as well as what the other major schools of
thoughts are together with critiques of all of them).
Neo-liberalism is very much a coherent (but by no means flawless) theory.
Neo-liberalism comes from the subject of international relations. Fukuyama is the most representative neo-liberal. Important
is the notion of 'soft power': the spread of capitalism and western culture and other forms of globalisation spreads western notions
of democracy and human rights. It was important to integrate countries into the international capitalist (and engage them in the
multilateral) system. At the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall this seemed to be a convincing theory. It was very much adopted
as a key foreign policy strategy in the UK and the US. One of its biggest blows, however, is the lack of political reform we have
seen in China. What this showed was that democratisation does not necessarily follow capitalism and globalisation.
Just to qualify what I said above - the would not use the term "western notions". Ie they would not associate democracy or human
rights with being western. They are very cosmopolitan, and believe in the notion of universal, (not relative), values.
""ignoring the money metric means that you want someone else to pay."
... then money is not (or at least does not need to be) the constraint. It is a mechanism to facilitate the project. If we want
universal healthcare, money is not the constraint,"
Oh please, this is just two-bit nominalism: "money" then is just the mechanism by which "you want someone else to pay" and
indeed:
"the constraint is the ability of society to train and sustain (feed and house) the required expertise."
That is the *physical* aggregate constraint, regardless of whoever pays, the practical constraint, given that physical stuff
is purchased with money, creating or obtaining that money.
The question is then distributional, who is going to pay the money to "train and sustain (feed and house) the required expertise".
Unless there are ample unused resources, someone will have to pay.
What right-wingers object to is the idea that "universal health care" is paid for as a percent of income, so that someone on
Ł100,000 a year pays Ł8,000 a year for exactly the same level of service that someone on Ł10,000 a year pays Ł800 a year for.
@Luis Enrique: Correct - you are not a neoliberal as you'd like to see far more social housing? A neoliberal believes in more
economic freedom, so you achieve the aim of housing people who need state help for housing, food, energy etc by giving them the
money to buy a basic level of those things. The State should not be in the business of saying this house here is not a social
housing one, but this next that gets built is.
Blissex: "Oh please, this is just two-bit nominalism: "money" then is just the mechanism by which "you want someone else to pay""
Umm, no. In real terms, the someone else who is paying in health care is mainly the health care professional treating you.
"Unless there are ample unused resources, someone will have to pay."
But in all modern capitalist countries there are ample unused resources as far as the eye can see. Medicine is one way to use
them up, nearly cost-free, and all benefit. Most people value "not being dead" highly. As Paul Samuelson said responding to stupid
worries about the cost of the US health care system, so it's 15% (or whatever). It's the best 15% of the economy.
The real problem is that "socialized medicine" is too efficient in real terms, and doesn't create corrupt and powerful satrapies
to demand public money, as the US health system does. Since the UK has the most efficient health care system, it has the least
real resource "someone has to pay" problem, but it causes the biggest demand gap, the true longterm, macro problem. The opposite
for the USA. The real right wing concern is that the underpeople get health care at all, not some smokescreen triviality about
nominal taxation.
Most written about health care, as about war, follows the backwards, mainstream way. C Adams is following the correct, MMT/Keynesian
way. If that is two-bit nominalism, we need more of it.
Until recently I haven't been closely following the controversy between Wikipedia and
popular anti-imperialist activists like John Pilger, George Galloway, Craig Murray, Neil Clark,
Media Lens, Tim Hayward and Piers Robinson.
Wikipedia has always been biased in favor of
mainstream CNN/CIA narratives, but until recently I hadn't seen much evidence that this was due to
anything other than the fact that Wikipedia is a crowdsourced project and most people believe
establishment-friendly narratives. That all changed when I
read
this article by Craig Murra
y, which is primarily what I'm interested in directing people's
attention to here.
The article, and
this one which
prompted it by
Five Filters
, are definitely worth reading in their entirety, because
their contents are jaw-dropping. In short there is an account which has been making edits to
Wikipedia entries for many nears called Philip Cross. In the last five years this account's
operator has not taken a single day off–no weekends, holidays, nothing–and according to their time
log they work extremely long hours adhering to a very strict, clockwork schedule of edits
throughout the day as an ostensibly unpaid volunteer.
This is bizarre enough, but the fact that this account is undeniably focusing with
malicious intent on anti-imperialist activists who question establishment narratives and the fact
that its behavior is being aggressively defended by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales means that
there's some serious fuckery afoot.
"Philip Cross", whoever or whatever that is, is absolutely head-over-heels for depraved Blairite
war whore Oliver Kamm, whom Cross mentioned as a voice of authority
no
fewer than
twelve times
in an entry about the media analysis duo known collectively as
Media Lens. Cross harbors a special hatred for British politician and broadcaster George Galloway,
who opposed the Iraq invasion as aggressively as Oliver Kamm cheered for it, and on whose Wikipedia
entry Cross has made an astonishing 1,800 edits.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of constant malicious editing, as well as outright admissions
of bias by the Twitter account linked to Philip Cross, Jimmy Wales has been extremely and
conspicuously defensive of the account's legitimacy while ignoring evidence provided to him.
"Or, just maybe, you're wrong,"
Wales
said
to a Twitter user inquiring about the controversy the other day. "Show me the diffs or
any evidence of any kind. The whole claim appears so far to be completely ludicrous."
"Riiiiight,"
said
the
totally not-triggered Wales in another response. "You are really very very far from the facts of
reality here. You might start with even one tiny shred of some kind of evidence, rather than
just making up allegations out of thin air. But you won't because trolling."
"You clearly have very very little idea how it works,"
Wales
tweeted
in another response. "If your worldview is shaped by idiotic conspiracy sites, you
will have a hard time grasping reality."
As outlined in the articles by Murray and
Five Filters
, the evidence is there
in abundance.
Five Filters
lays out "diffs" (editing changes) in black and white
showing clear bias by the Philip Cross account, a very slanted perspective is clearly and
undeniably documented, and yet Wales denies and aggressively ridicules any suggestion that
something shady could be afoot. This likely means that Wales is in on whatever game the Philip
Cross account is playing.
Which means the entire site is likely involved in some sort of
psyop by a party which stands to benefit from keeping the dominant narrative slanted in a
pro-establishment direction.
A 2016 Pew Research Center report found that Wikipedia was getting some
18
billion page views per month
. Billion with a 'b'. Youtube
recently
announced
that it's going to be showing text from Wikipedia articles on videos about conspiracy
theories to help "curb fake news". Plainly the site is extremely important in the battle for
control of the narrative about what's going on in the world. Plainly its leadership fights on one
side of that battle, which happens to be the side that favors western oligarchs and intelligence
agencies.
How many other "Philip Cross"-like accounts are there on Wikipedia?
Has the site always functioned an establishment psyop designed to manipulate public perception of
existing power structures, or did that start later? I don't know.
Right now all I know
is that an agenda very beneficial to the intelligence agencies, war profiteers and plutocrats of
the western empire is clearly and undeniably being advanced on the site, and its founder is telling
us it's nothing. He is lying. Watch him closely.
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reading the "talk" tab page background on ANY wiki page is ALWAYS
recommended - it shows the content war by different editors. - Anything on
Israel / Palestine for example.
Post or edit anything on that shit site that goes against the
ziomaster's narrative and you will be blocked. Wikipedia just rehashes
all the bullshit from the corporate media on Television.
Metabunk and Rationalwiki are the exact same thing too.
Does the pope shit in the woods after playing with little boys?
95% of things placed in top 3 of
Google search
are PSYOP. The remaining 5% are those pesky old
school blackhat SEO guys that know how to game the search engine.
Wikipedia is as fake as WWE is. But at least WWE has some juicy
stuff:
The Zionist side is ALWAYS the side that is
presented.
Eustace Mullins was a
truly kind individual. His only crime was to not
swallow the hogwash Koolaid of the ZioNAZI. For that
he was followed by the FBI for 30 years.
But of course all the standard tropes are
trotted out on Wikipedia. I suspect that Wiki / Wales
gets a lot of funding from YOU KNOW WHO. Same people
who has the Germans put people in jail for thought
crimes.
You are only safe when you are looking at a
page regarding theoretical mathematics. But not
mathematics about global warming.
among scientists, wiki is well known for utility
and accuracy of boring stuff like the thermal
conductivity of copper. any controversy involved,
and it is worthless.
Wikipedia is completely unreliable. Especially when it comes
to politics.
You can find LIES GALORE. You can edit the Lies out,
document them and backup with sourced justification; but within
an hour they will have reset the Lie.
Aaaand finally: James Corbett of Corbettreport.com, a prolific documentary
filmmaker--whose docs are always top rated on topdocumentaryfilms.com, doesn't
have a wikipedia page, despite MANY people trying to create one for him. Why is
that, you ask? Because they are extremely subversive to the CIA and the
established globalist order, and therefore that fact of suppression of Corbett
suggests coordination between Wikipedia and the globalist thalassocracy of the
empire of the city
How much 'filtering' is being done, and through what channels do filtering
requests arrive? (if any)
Lots of news outlets have changed over the last few years. Formerly respected
papers have been reduced to tabloids. The Washington Post is now the Bezos Blog,
for example. Twitter is popping up 'warnings' about 'fake news'. All the radio
and TV channels run identical bullshit war stories within minutes of each other.
And Wikipedia has been going downhill for years.
So, is ZH immune to the effluvia from the ministry of truth?
Nice article, but there is a much better way of proving that Wikipedia=CIA. It's
true, everybody can edit Wikipedia, but not everyone gets to keep their edits.
Here is an experiment that everyone can carry out
:
If
you edit well or create a new informative page on something of no interest to the
FBI or CIA, say astronomy or physics, no problem, your contribution stays. But
try to provide evidence--and there is plenty--that the government was involved in
the assassinations of MLK, JFK, RFK or the demolitions of 9/11, and you'll be
"reverted" (their term) within FIVE minutes. Try to quote Russia's version of
the Crimeans' overwhelming vote to join Russia, and you'll be "reverted" lickety
split. Provide evidence that Winston Churchill--lionized by our rulers--was an
imperialist, a racist, a champion of inequality, and the contribution will
disappear while you pause your honest labors for a cup of tea! Our rulers are
masters of propaganda, and Wikipedia is just one of their brilliantly vicious
outlets--created, controlled, and edited to brainwash us!
The reason we are not given a straight answer as to why we're meant to want our institutions
fighting an information war on our behalf (instead of allowing us to sort out fact from fiction
on our own like adults) is because the answer is ugly.
As
we discussed last time , the only real power in this world is the ability to control the
dominant narrative about what's going on. The only reason government works the way it works,
money operates the way it operates, and authority rests where it rests is because everyone has
agreed to pretend that that's how things are. In actuality, government, money and authority are
all man-made conceptual constructs and the collective can choose to change them whenever it
wants. The only reason this hasn't happened in our deeply dysfunctional society yet is because
the plutocrats who rule us have been successful in controlling the narrative.
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. This has always been the case. In many
societies throughout history a guy who made alliances with the biggest, baddest group of armed
thugs could take control of the narrative by killing people until the dominant narrative was
switched to "That guy is our leader now; whatever he says goes." In modern western society, the
real leaders are less obvious, and the narrative is controlled by propaganda.
Propaganda is what keeps Americans accepting things like the fake two-party system, growing
wealth inequality, medicine money being spent on bombs to be dropped on strangers in stupid
immoral wars, and a government which simultaneously creates steadily increasing secrecy
privileges for itself and steadily decreasing privacy rights for its citizenry. It's also what
keeps people accepting that a dollar is worth what it's worth, that personal property works the
way it works, that the people on Capitol Hill write the rules, and that you need to behave a
certain way around a police officer or he can legally kill you.
And therein lies the answer to the question. You are not being protected from
"disinformation" by a compassionate government who is deeply troubled to see you believing
erroneous beliefs, you are being herded back toward the official narrative by a power
establishment which understands that losing control of the narrative means losing power. It has
nothing to do with Russia, and it has nothing to do with truth. It's about power, and the
unexpected trouble that existing power structures are having dealing with the public's newfound
ability to network and share information about what is going on in the world.
I am starting wondering what was the role of intelligence agencies, especially CIA is creation of the neoliberal myths and
spreading of the ideology... What connections to CIA has such figured and Milton Friedman and Hayek? Harvard
mafia definitely has such connections.
Neoliberalism is the refinement of this basic human tendency for domination. It is a
camouflaged form of oppression that is revealed through its ultimate effect, not what it does
at the moment. A neoliberal is a disguised raider or conquerer.
Notable quotes:
"... It got to be a running joke how these gang bosses and members were always denying that the mafia was an actual thing. ..."
"... Could it be that the neoliberals took a page out of their book and adopted the same tactic of denying the existence of neoliberalism while actively pushing it at every opportunity? ..."
"... To extend your analogy, much like the mafia, there's a handful of shadowy law breakers who benefit from neoliberalism and a whole lot of people that suffer violence so that those benefits can flow up to that few. ..."
"... Like the concurrent and related "Conservative revolution"(1973-), they stole the Cell Structure from the Comintern, and bought out the competition. ..."
Hey, I just remembered something. When I was a kid growing up everybody knew all about the
mafia but all those in the know denied that there was any such thing when questioned in a
court of law. It got to be a running joke how these gang bosses and members were always
denying that the mafia was an actual thing.
Could it be that the neoliberals took a page out of their book and adopted the same
tactic of denying the existence of neoliberalism while actively pushing it at every
opportunity?
And like the line from 'fight club', the first rule of neoliberalism is that you don't
talk about it.
To extend your analogy, much like the mafia, there's a handful of shadowy law breakers
who benefit from neoliberalism and a whole lot of people that suffer violence so that those
benefits can flow up to that few.
this is why I keep Mario Puzo next to Adam and Karl on the econ shelf in my library. It's
not so much Omerta, as gobbdeygook and wafer thin platitudes.
Like the concurrent and related "Conservative revolution"(1973-), they stole the Cell
Structure from the Comintern, and bought out the competition.
I am inclined to believe that the Libertarian Party was a vehicle for this
counterrevolution, too. And finally, with the DLC, they were able to buy the "opposition
party" outright and here we are.
"... By Christine Berry. Originally published at openDemocracy ..."
"... The really fascinating battles in intellectual history tend to occur when some group or movement goes on the offensive and asserts that Something Big really doesn't actually exist." ..."
"... "a new ideology must give high priority to real and efficient limitation of the state's ability to, in detail, intervene in the activities of the individual. At the same time, it is absolutely clear that there are positive functions allotted to the state. The doctrine that, one and off, has been called neoliberalism and that has developed, more or less simultaneously in many parts of the world is precisely such a doctrine But instead of the 19 th century understanding that laissez-faire is the means to achieve this goal, neoliberalism proposes that competition will lead the way". ..."
"... Wealth of Nations ..."
"... Neoliberalism is like a Caddis Fly larvae, that sticks random objects outside its cocoon to blend in. ..."
"... Neoliberalism did not just adopt neoclassical economics, nor did it simply infest political parties of the right. Neoliberalism re-invented neoclassical economics in ways that defined not just the "right" of academic economics, but also defined the "left". Keynesian economics was absorbed and transmogrified by first one neoclassical synthesis and then a second, leaving a New Keynesian macroeconomics to occupy the position of a nominal left within mainstream economics. If you are waiting for a Krugman or even a Stiglitz to oppose neoliberalism, you will be waiting a very long time, because they are effectively locked into the neoliberal dialectic. ..."
"... If neoliberalism can be broken down to "Because markets" perhaps it could also be referred to as "Market Darwinism". ..."
"... A fundamental difference between neoliberalism and classic economists like Ricardo & Smith is the latter's adamant opposition to rent seeking and insistence on fighting it by taxation. Neoliberalism on the other hand not only accepts rent-seeking, but actively encourages it. Thus we see not only the ascendancy of of the FIRE sector, but the effective destruction of markets as mechanisms of price discovery. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is just another damn thing that externalizes and socializes costs. It is a very costly thing. ..."
"... Much as I regard your past comments, I must disagree with your assertion "Neoliberalism is just another damn thing that externalizes and socializes costs". Neoliberalism does indeed externalize and socialize costs but it is more than just another damn thing. Just the scale and scope of the think tank network assembled and well funded to promote the concepts of the Neoliberal thought collective should be adequate to convince you that it is much more than "just another damn thing". ..."
"... Consider just the visible portion of the think tanks which are part of the Neoliberal thought collective. "Today, Atlas Network connects more than 450 think tanks in nearly 100 countries. Each is writing its own story of how principled work to affect public opinion, on behalf of the ideas of a free society, can better individuals' lives." ..."
"... Next consider the state of the economics profession. Neoliberalism has taken over many major schools of economics and a large number of the economics journals. In a publish or perish world there are few alternatives to an adherence to some flavor of Neoliberal ideology. This is not "just another damn thing." Consider how many national politicians are spouting things like there is 'no such thing as society'. This is not "just another damn thing" -- it is something much much more scary. ..."
"... "I am not well qualified to criticize those theories, because as a market participant, I considered them so unrealistic that I never bothered to study them" ..."
"... "Those, like Ed Conway, who persist in claiming neoliberalism doesn't even exist, may soon find themselves left behind by history." ..."
"... "One of the great achievements of neoliberalism has been to induce such a level of collective amnesia that it's now once again possible to claim that these tenets are simply "fundamental economic rules" handed down directly from Adam Smith on tablets of stone, unchallenged and unchallengeable in the history of economic thought." ..."
"... "The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money. But every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers." ..."
"... "The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens." ..."
"... "The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it." ..."
"... "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." ..."
"... "But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin." ..."
"... A reading of Smith's 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments' written before, but revised after, WoN is also worthwhile. As is, as ever, Karl Polyani's opening salvo against Smith's take on 'human market nature' (my term). Everyone should read 'The Great Transformation' at least once. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is the refinement of this basic human tendency for domination. It is a camouflaged form of oppression that is revealed through its ultimate effect, not what it does at the moment. A neoliberal is a disguised raider or conquerer. ..."
"... Neoliberals prefer a strong state that promotes their ends, not one that opposes them, or has the ability to oppose the means and methods of private capital . That leaves the playing field with a single team. ..."
"... Homo economicus ..."
"... Neoliberals argue that since members of H. economicus ..."
"... "Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." ..."
"... "Doing the same thing again and again and expecting to get a different result" ..."
"... "[ ] Well, this one at least is half-true. Like literally every concept that has ever mattered, the concept of 'neoliberalism' is messy, it's deeply contested [ ]" ..."
"... Although it serves the purposes of the rich-and-powerful rather well, I think "neoliberalism" as a rhetorical engine and set of ideas is the ideology of the 9.9%, the chattering classes of professionals and bureaucrats who need a cover story for their own participation in running the world for the benefit of the 0.1% These are the people who need to rationalize what they do and cooperate and coordinate among themselves and that's a challenge because of their sheer numbers. ..."
"... Neoliberalism says it aims at freedom and social welfare and innovation and other good things. If neoliberalism said it aimed to make the richest 0.1% richer at the expense of everyone else, it would provoke political opposition from the 99% for obvious reasons. Including opposition from the 9.9% whom they need to run things, to run the state, run the corporations. ..."
"... The genius of neoliberalism is such that it is able to achieve a high degree of coordination in detail across large numbers of people, institutions, even countries while still professing [fake] aims and values to which few object. A high degree of coordination on implementing a political policy agenda that is variously parasitical or predatory on the 90%. ..."
"... You can say this is just hypocrisy of a type the rich have always engaged in, and that would be true. The predatory rich have always had to disguise their predatory or parasitical activity, and have often done so by embracing, for example, shows of piety or philanthropy. So, neoliberalism falls into a familiar albeit broad category. ..."
"... What distinguishes neoliberalism is how good it is at coordinating the activities of the 9.9% in delivering the goods for the 0.1%. For a post-industrial economy, neoliberalism is better for the mega-rich than Catholicism was for the feudalism of the High Middle Ages. I do not think most practicing neoliberals among the 9.9% even think of themselves as hypocrites. ..."
"... "Free markets" has been the key move, the fulcrum where anodyne aims and values to which no one can object meet the actual detailed policy implementation by the state. Creating a "market" removes power and authority from the state and transfers it to private actors able to apply financial wealth to managing things, and then, because an actual market cannot really do the job that's been assigned, a state bureaucracy has to be created to manage the administrative details and financial flows -- work for the 9.9% ..."
"... As a special bonus, the insistence on treating a political economy organized in fact by large public and private bureaucracies as if it is organized by and around "markets" introduces a high degree of economic agnatology into the conventional political rhetoric. ..."
"... Pierre Bourdieu, the great French sociologist, would say neoliberalism, like the devil, is one of those things that makes a priority of pretending it does not exist. (Bourdieu cited many others.) It makes it much harder for those whose interests it does not serve to fight it, like forcing someone to eat Jello with a single chopstick. ..."
By Christine Berry. Originally published at
openDemocracy
The really fascinating battles in intellectual history tend to occur when some group
or movement goes on the offensive and asserts that Something Big really doesn't actually
exist."
So says Philip Morowski in his book 'Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste: How
Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown' . As Mirowski argues, neoliberalism is
a particularly fascinating case in point. Just as Thatcher asserted there was 'no such thing as
society', it's common to find economics commentators asserting that there is 'no such thing as
neoliberalism' – that it's simply a meaningless insult bandied about by the left, devoid
of analytical content.
But on the list of 'ten tell-tale signs you're a neoliberal', insisting that Neoliberalism
Is Not A Thing must surely be number one. The latest commentator to add his voice to the chorus
is Sky
Economics Editor Ed Conway . On the Sky blog, he gives four reasons why Neoliberalism Is
Not A Thing. Let's look at each of them in turn:
1. It's only used by its detractors, not by its supporters
This one is pretty easy to deal with, because it's flat-out not true. As Mirowski documents,
"the people associated with the doctrine did call themselves 'neo-liberals' for a
brief period lasting from the 1930s to the early 1950s, but then they abruptly stopped the
practice" – deciding it would serve their political project better if they claimed to be
the heirs of Adam Smith than if they consciously distanced themselves from classical
liberalism. Here's just one example, from Milton Friedman in 1951:
"a new ideology must give high priority to real and efficient limitation of the
state's ability to, in detail, intervene in the activities of the individual. At the same
time, it is absolutely clear that there are positive functions allotted to the state. The
doctrine that, one and off, has been called neoliberalism and that has developed, more or
less simultaneously in many parts of the world is precisely such a doctrine But instead of
the 19 th century understanding that laissez-faire is the means to achieve this
goal, neoliberalism proposes that competition will lead the way".
You might notice that as well as the word 'neoliberalism', this also includes the word
'ideology'. Remember that one for later.
It's true that the word 'neoliberalism' did go underground for a long time, with its
proponents preferring to position their politics simply as sound economics than to admit it was
a radical ideological programme. But that didn't stop them from knowing what they stood for, or
from acting collectively – through a well-funded network of think tanks and research
institutes – to spread those ideas.
It's worth noting that one of those think tanks, the Adam Smith Institute, has in the last
couple of years consciously reclaimed the mantle .
Affiliated intellectuals like Madsen Pirie and Sam
Bowman have explicitly sought to define and defend neoliberalism. It's no accident that
this happened around the time that neoliberalism began to be seriously challenged in the UK,
with the rise of Corbyn and the shock of the Brexit vote, after a post-crisis period where the
status quo seemed untouchable.
2. Nobody can agree on what it means
Well, this one at least is half-true. Like literally every concept that has ever mattered,
the concept of 'neoliberalism' is messy, it's deeply contested, it has evolved over time and it
differs in theory and practice. From the start, there has been debate within the neoliberal
movement itself about how it should define itself and what its programme should be. And, yes,
it's often used lazily on the left as a generic term for anything vaguely establishment. None
of this means that it is Not A Thing. This is something sociologists and historians
instinctively understand, but which many economists seem to have trouble with.
Having said this, it is possible to define some generally accepted core features of
neoliberalism. Essentially, it privileges markets as the best way to organise the economy and
society, but unlike classical liberalism, it sees a strong role for the state in creating and
maintaining these markets. Outside of this role, the state should do as little as possible, and
above all it must not interfere with the 'natural' operation of the market. But it has always
been part of the neoliberal project to take over the state and transform it for its own ends,
rather than to dismantle or disable it.
Of course, there's clearly a tension between neoliberals' professed ideals of freedom and
their need for a strong state to push through policies that often don't have democratic
consent. We see this in the actions of the Bretton Woods institutions in the era of 'structural
adjustment', or the Troika's behaviour towards Greece during the Eurozone crisis. We see it
most starkly in Pinochet's Chile, the original neoliberal experiment. This perhaps helps to
explain the fact that neoliberalism is sometimes equated with libertarianism and the 'small
state', while others reject this characterisation. I'll say it again: none of this means that
neoliberalism doesn't exist.
3. Neoliberalism is just good economics
Neoliberalism may not exist, says Conway, but what do exist are "conventional economic
models – the ones established by Adam Smith all those centuries ago", and the principles
they entail. That they may have been "overzealously implemented and sometimes misapplied" since
the end of the Cold War is "unfortunate", but "hardly equals an ideology". I'm sure he'll hate
me for saying this, but Ed – this is the oldest neoliberal trick in the book.
The way Conway defines these principles (fiscal conservatism, property rights and leaving
businesses to make their own decisions) is hardly a model of analytical rigour, but we'll let
that slide. Instead, let's note that the entire reason neoliberal ideology developed was that
the older classical "economic models" manifestly failed during the Great Depression of the
1930s, leading them to be replaced by Keynesian demand-management models as the dominant
framework for understanding the economy.
Neoliberals had to update these models in order to restore their credibility: this is why
they poured so much effort into the development of neoclassical economics and the capture of
academic economics by the Chicago School. One of the great achievements of neoliberalism has
been to induce such a level of collective amnesia that it's now once again possible to claim
that these tenets are simply "fundamental economic rules" handed down directly from Adam Smith
on tablets of stone, unchallenged and unchallengeable in the history of economic thought.
In any case, even some people that ascribe to neoclassical economics – like Joseph
Stiglitz – are well enough able to distinguish this intellectual framework from the
political application of it by neoliberals. It is perfectly possible to agree with the former
but not the latter.
4. Yes, 'neoliberal' policies have been implemented in recent decades, but this has been
largely a matter of accident rather than design
Privatisation, bank deregulation, the dismantling of capital and currency controls:
according to Conway, these are all developments that came about by happenstance. "Anyone who
has studied economic history" will tell you they are "hardly the result of a guiding ideology."
This will no doubt be news to the large number of eminent economic historians who have
documented the shift from Keynesianism to neoliberalism, from Mirowski and Daniel Stedman-Jones
to Robert Skidelsky and Robert Van Horn (for a good reading list, see this
bibliographic review by Will Davies .)
It would also be news to Margaret Thatcher, the woman who reportedly slammed down Hayek's
'Constitution of Liberty' on the table at one of her first cabinet meetings and declared
"Gentlemen, this is our programme"; and who famously said "Economics is the method; the object
is to change the soul". And it would be news to those around her who strategized for a
Conservative government with carefully laid-out battleplans for dismantling the key
institutions of the post-war settlement, such as the Ridley Report on privatising state-run
entities.
What Conway appears to be denying here is the whole idea that policymaking takes place
within a shared set of assumptions (or paradigm), that dominant paradigms tend to shift over
time, and that these shifts are usually accompanied by political crises and resulting transfers
of political power – making them at least partly a matter of ideology rather than simply
facts.
Whether it's even meaningful to claim that ideology-free facts exist on matters so
inherently political as how to run the economy is a whole debate in the sociology of knowledge
which we don't have time to go into here, and which Ed Conway doesn't seem to have much
awareness of.
But he shows his hand when he says that utilities were privatised because "governments
realised they were mostly a bit rubbish at running them". This is a strong – and highly
contentious – political claim disguised as a statement of fact – again, a classic
neoliberal gambit. It's a particularly bizarre one for an economist to make at a time when
70% of UK rail
routes are owned by foreign states who won the franchises through competitive tender. Just
this week, we learned that
the East Coast main line is to be temporarily renationalised because Virgin and Stagecoach
turned out to be, erm, a bit rubbish at running it.
* * *
It may be a terrible cliché, but the old adage "First they ignore you, then they
laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" seems appropriate here. Neoliberalism
successfully hid in plain sight for decades, with highly ideological agendas being implemented
amidst claims we lived in a post-ideological world. Now that it is coming under ideological
challenge, it is all of a sudden stood naked in the middle of the room, having to explain why
it's there (to borrow a phrase from a very brilliant colleague).
There are a number of strategies neoliberals can adopt in response to this. The Adam Smith
Institute response is to go on the offensive and defend it. The Theresa May response is to pay
lip service to the need for systemic change whilst quietly continuing with the same old
policies. Those, like Ed Conway, who persist in claiming neoliberalism doesn't even exist, may
soon find themselves left behind by history. 95 comments
Neoliberalism may not exist, says Conway, but what do exist are "conventional economic
models – the ones established by Adam Smith all those centuries ago",
Um please name one "conventional economic model" established by Adam Smith. I mean,
really, who would actually write such nonsense?
In fairness, I expect Conway is referring to the "invisible hand" of market competition,
wherein the competitive market qua an institution supposedly transforms the private pursuit
of self-interest into a public benefit. From the OP, Milton Friedman saying, "instead of . .
. laissez-faire . . . neoliberalism proposes . . . competition".
A pedant can rightly claim that the actual Adam Smith had a more nuanced and realistic
view, but that does not help to understand, let alone defeat, the intellectual smoke and
mirrors of neoliberalism. And, in spirit, the neoliberals are more right than wrong in
claiming Adam Smith: on the economics, he was a champion of market competition against the
then degenerate corporate state and an advocate of a modified laissez faire against
mercantilism, not to mention feudalism.
My personal view is that you have lost the argument if you agree to the key element of
neoclassical economics: that the economy is organized around and by (metaphoric) markets and
policy is justified (sic!) by remedying market failure. If you concede "the market economy"
even as a mere convention of political speech, you are lost, because you have entered into
the Alice-in-Wonderland neoliberal model, and you can no longer base your arguments on
socially-constructed references to the real, institutional world.
Adam Smith was systematically interpreting his observed world, he kept himself honest by
being descriptively accurate. It was Ricardo who re-invented classical economics as an
abstract theory deductible from first principles and still later thinkers, who re-invented
that abstract, deductive theory as a neoclassical economics in open defiance of observed
reality. And, still later thinkers, many of them critics (Hayek being a prime example) of
neoclassical economics as it existed circa 1930, who founded neoliberalism as we know it. We
really should not blame Adam Smith.
You comment is confusing to me -- not quite sure what you are arguing. You close asserting
"We really should not blame Adam Smith." Was he blamed in this post?
I think it's the very selective reading, and quoting, of Adam Smith's writings to give
neoliberal economics more legitimacy; the parts where he mentions the supremacy of the common
good and the need to prevent too much accumulation of money in too few hands is ignored.
Restated, the free market with its invisible hand is best so long as the whole community
benefits. However, wealth and the power it brings tends to become monopolized into a very few
hands. That needs to be prevented and if needed by government.
I think I need to go back over the Wealth of Nations to be sure I am not being
too selective myself. That said, what the neoliberals are doing is like some people's very
selective reading of the New Testament to support their interests. (Like the vile
Prosperity Gospel)
There is so much claptrap in this article, on all sides of what is supposedly being
debated. Yet, the one underlying historical fact that is being completely overlooked is pure
Keynesian demand driven economics.
An economics that not only has a basis in fact, but also has an actual history of
success.
Keynesian economics did not fail. It was undermined by a movement back toward neo-liberal
Adam Smith "invisible hand of the free market" nonsense that has done nothing throughout
history except proven itself to be greed disguised as an economic theory to give the powerful
an opportunity to fleece the poor and the government treasury.
"Free markets" is incoherent, yet it is a very well accepted and unquestioned notion, to
the degree it is regularly depicted as virtuous and achieving it, a worthy policy goal.
I have written about how the East Germans were absorbed by Germany as neoliberalism was
ascendant in 1990, with such shibboleths as TINA and The End of History taken as cosmological
verities by the West German government. Now I'm doing research on Detroit, where
neoliberalism remains powerful and the source of a meretricious "renaissance" taking place
there even as it is increasingly found to be a generator of and rationalization for all
manner of class-based exploitation. Mirowski's checklist of the attributes of neoliberalism
is on display in state and local government there as they serve corporations, such as the
city "selling" the Little Ceasar's empire 39 acres of downtown land for $1 upon which was
built the new hockey arena. Detroit is a bellwether city, and despite the depredations of
corporations and government there is much organized opposition to neoliberal rule in the
city.
I believe there was an article here recently by Mirowski – The something or other
that dare not speak it's name ? I have spent quite a few hours in the past listening to his
podcasts & videos, which tend to repeat themselves, although something new slips in from
time to time, especially from Q & A's.
His assertion that economics is merely one part of a whole in the Neoliberal assault woke
me up, & indeed then appeared very obvious.
I believe I have seen an example of the Detroit devastation used as film sets in two
films: " Only Lovers Left alive " & " Don't Breathe ", which suit the darkness of them
very well.
Good to know that there is resistance & I wish you the very best outcome for your
& or their endeavours.
I too have watched many hours of Phillip Mirowski's videos, several of them more than
once. I have a little trouble with your assertion they "tend to repeat themselves, although
something new slips in from time to time". He does repeatedly emphasize points which are hard
to believe on first hearing but grow evident upon further reflection. For example his
emphasis on the concept of the Market as the Neoliberal epistemology -- an ultimate tool for
discovering Truth. A little recall of some recent and surprisingly commonplace constructs
like a "market of ideas", or various ways of suggesting we are each a commodity we need to
package, promote, and sell as exemplified by Facebook "likes" and "networking" as a way to
get ahead. Looking at the whole of the videos, and excluding obvious repetitions like
multiple versions of book promotion interviews at different venues I think the range of ideas
Mirowski explores is remarkable -- from the Neoliberal thought collective to climate change
to the Market applied to direct the truth science can discover.
[Where do you find podcasts of Mirowski? I recall collecting a few but most of what I find
are videos. He has numerous of his papers posted at academia.edu which can be downloaded for
free by signing up for the website.]
There are just a few. You may already have heard some of these: Search for Symptomatic
Redness, and search for This Is Hell. Search for [PPE Polanyi Hayek]. He talked to Doug
Henwood. He talked to Will Davies and that is audio only I believe. There's the Science Mart
talk that he gave in Australia. If you look in archive.org and soundcloud as well as youtube
and vimeo, you will find most of them. I think all four of those sites have a few recordings
that are exclusive from the others. Archive.org has a couple of his appearances on community
radio. A few are also linked from the media page for a given book on the publishers' sites,
like go to the links on the book page for Science Mart, for an appearance on I think Boston
radio.
I'm a nerd. Heh. But if you've come this far and listened to the videos (the one with
Homer's brain and markomata, the Boundary2 conference talk, the Leukana one, Prof Nik-Khah at
the Whitlam center, Sam Seder, the one on climate, talking about Cowles in Brazil), you will
enjoy the others. Hope these notes help you find a few.
I wrote a web page back in April of
2016 about the neoliberal forces in Detroit. Let me know at my twitter page what you think. Feel
free to use whatever you find helpful
I found then that the City of Detroit and the State of Michigan had been hornswaggled by
private enterprises nesting their own feathers.
Utilitarianism, expressed as the greatest aggregate well-being to humanity
(economic production and growth) and preference for economic efficiency (monopolies,
duopolies, cartels, etc.) over market competition, are two additional hallmarks of
neoliberalism.
Recognizing these two important values helps explain the growing economic and social
inequality we're witnessing around the western world.
I will checkout your recommendation and I hope that it will discuss, for instance, the
assumption that *economic* production and growth and preference for economic efficiency is
and should be the proper goal of human life.
The book is descriptive and critical, but not particularly prescriptive. But yes, one of
the real strengths of Davies' work is his documentation of the many economic, social, and
political assumptions that provide the foundations of neoliberal thought. I was impressed by
the many logical inconsistencies that advocates of neoliberalism are comfortable in
accepting. I don't believe that the bulk of neoliberal ideas could exist for long outside the
philosophical context of postmodernism as the cognitive dissonance they (should) generate
would find them quickly abandoned.
The intersection of postmodernism, neoliberalism , and neoconservatism defines our current
Western civilization, and I wish somebody would come up with a name for it. Whatever we have
now is the successor to Modernism, in its broadest sense.
I saw one of those political compass memes recently that had at the "center", "Everything
is rent seeking, except for literal rent seeking, which is okay."
Well, there is at least some labeling issue, as one of the first people to use term
"neoliberalism" (for his proposed policy) was Germany's Alexander Rustow, who hardlty anyone
knows about these days, so they don't know either that Rustow would likely sign off most of
Corbyn's proposed policies
IIRC Rustow was one of the more 'moderate' founder members of the Mont Pelerin Society.
His views did not prevail, though they initially adopted his term for their project. I wonder
if, when he saw which way the wind was blowing, he demanded it back.
The term was sometimes applied to the New Deal but didn't really catch on.
It was also used in the early '80s for a movement trying to resurrect the New Deal in the
face of Reagan but that didn't catch on either.
Hey, I just remembered something. When I was a kid growing up everybody knew all about the
mafia but all those in the know denied that there was any such thing when questioned in a
court of law. It got to be a running joke how these gang bosses and members were always
denying that the mafia was an actual thing. Could it be that the neoliberals took a page out
of their book and adopted the same tactic of denying the existence of neoliberalism while
actively pushing it at every opportunity?
And like the line from 'fight club', the first rule of neoliberalism is that you don't
talk about it.
To extend your analogy, much like the mafia, there's a handful of shadowy law breakers who
benefit from neoliberalism and a whole lot of people that suffer violence so that those
benefits can flow up to that few.
this is why I keep Mario Puzo next to Adam and Karl on the econ shelf in my library.
It's not so much Omerta, as gobbdeygook and wafer thin platitudes.
Like the concurrent and related "Conservative revolution"(1973-), they stole the Cell
Structure from the Comintern, and bought out the competition.
I am inclined to believe that the Libertarian Party was a vehicle for this counterrevolution,
too.
and finally, with the DLC, they were able to buy the "opposition party" outright and here we
are.
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! He's only here to direct you to a very
robust curtain marketplace to suit all your needs, including our newest offering for
consumers without a desire to invest in (or a steady home for) full curtain infrastructure:
Curtains-as-a-Service! Ultimate mobility! Low(ish) monthly payments forever!"
"Neoliberalism" is indeed a thing, but it is not in any way an economic model.
"Neoliberalism" is simply the ethos of Sit Back and Let the Big Dog Eat, and it wraps itself
in whatever words or models is most effective at distracting and camouflaging its rotten
core. Neoliberalism is like a Caddis Fly larvae, that sticks random objects outside its
cocoon to blend in.
So the Neoliberals talk about free markets when it suits them – and when their
wealthy patrons want to be bailed out with public funds, they talk about government
responsibility. They harp about freedom – but demand that large corporations get to use
de-jure slave labor to peel shrimp. They talk about how wonderful free trade is – and
demand that private citizens not be able to import legal pharmaceuticals because this would
destroy the freedom of big pharma to maximize profits by restricting trade and without this
new drug development would stop and anyone who believes in free trade wants a free lunch. I
could go on. It's pointless to try and refute them, because there is nothing to refute, and
they have no shame. Only brute power, but this they have in abundance.
So of course they reject the label, because co-opting and corrupting and hiding behind
legitimate philosophies is part of their modus operandi. Using the terminology of the enemy
is always a mistake. Long may the vile practitioners of 'neoliberalism' be forced to be
referred to by an accurate label!
It is. I wish he had gone on. Might we build on it? I think such examples clarify
brilliantly exactly of whom we speak:
"Neoliberals want minimal government regulation because such regulation makes the market
inefficient. Except when making dubious student loans; then they want the government to
guarantee those loans and serve as their muscle in collecting."
Excellent comment.
"It's pointless to try and refute them, because there is nothing to refute, and they have no
shame. Only brute power, but this they have in abundance."
Absolutely.
Neoliberalism: an old fashioned expression of the seemingly eternal "all for me, none for
thee".
A million tonnes of economic speciousness, the thickness of a piece of plastic wrap, covering
the bloated & putrifying zombie body of a small "elite".
"Now that it is coming under ideological challenge, it is all of a sudden stood naked in
the middle of the room, having to explain why it's there (to borrow a phrase from a very
brilliant colleague)."
One gambit in denying neoliberalism is to pretend it must be a specific doctrine and then
dispute about which that doctrine that is. Or that neoliberalism must be a specific programme
and dispute whether that programme has been consistent thru time. But, the intellectual cum
ideological history cum policy history here is that neoliberalism has been a dialectic.
There's Thatcher and then there's Blair.
It is the back-and-forth of that dialectic that has locked in "the shared set of
assumptions" and paradigm of policy inventiveness that has given neoliberalism its remarkable
ability to survive its own manifest policy-induced crises.
Neoliberalism did not just adopt neoclassical economics, nor did it simply infest
political parties of the right. Neoliberalism re-invented neoclassical economics in ways that
defined not just the "right" of academic economics, but also defined the "left". Keynesian
economics was absorbed and transmogrified by first one neoclassical synthesis and then a
second, leaving a New Keynesian macroeconomics to occupy the position of a nominal left
within mainstream economics. If you are waiting for a Krugman or even a Stiglitz to oppose
neoliberalism, you will be waiting a very long time, because they are effectively locked into
the neoliberal dialectic.
Something almost analogous happened with the political parties of the centre-left, as in
the iconic cases of Blair vs Thatcher or Clinton vs Reagan (and then, of course, Obama vs
Reagan/Bush II). In western Europe, grand coalitions figured in the process of eliminating
the ability of centre-left parties to think outside the neoliberal policy frames or to
represent their electoral bases rather than their donor bases.
Sitting here nodding my head. All the same criticisms could be made of, oh, say,
Christianity. Wars have been fought, hundreds of thousands of Christians have been persecuted
by other Christians, over the definition, but that certainly does not make it Not A
Thing.
Neoliberal thought is very deliberately projected as a many-headed Hydra. The Neoliberal
thought collective presents manifold statements and refinements of its principles. The value
of agnotology is a belief of held in sufficient regard to be deemed a principle of belief.
Just try dealing with an opponent that shifts and evaporates but never loses substance in
working toward its goals.
A fundamental difference between neoliberalism and classic economists like Ricardo &
Smith is the latter's adamant opposition to rent seeking and insistence on fighting it by
taxation. Neoliberalism on the other hand not only accepts rent-seeking, but actively
encourages it. Thus we see not only the ascendancy of of the FIRE sector, but the effective
destruction of markets as mechanisms of price discovery.
Also, Yves, thanks a million for these enlightening neoliberalism articles. I've had quite
a bit of trouble in the past putting my political beliefs in the appropriate context; a
general feeling of malaise and overall mistrust of free-trade agreements and big corporations
without anything to really back it up is usually a one-way ticket to losing an argument and
being labelled an old crank. Being able to put a name on something you know doesn't smell
right, and finding a framework that allows others to spot it, is a hell of a leg up.
It always reminds me of the index (or aside, or supplementary reading, whatever it was)
that accompanied my copy of 1984. It basically said that controlling the common language and
not allowing for terminology to define certain things (in this case, pulling the 'first two
rules of Fight Club' thing – thanks, johnnygl!) was key to keeping those things
essentially invisible, and those afflicted by the maladies off-balance and unable to organize
against them. That bit of Orwell made sense then, but it has really been hitting home after
reading some of these articles.
For anyone who missed it, this
one was also particularly great.
Neoliberalism is just another damn thing that externalizes and socializes costs. It is a
very costly thing. But I'm more inclined to think that no isms exist anywhere in the real
world in any constructive way – they are all just mental reflexes useful for
rationalizing irresponsibility and procrastination. And self interest. We might as well just
say economicism.
Interesting comment by the author about the sociology of knowledge. No doubt
there is a sensible mantra somewhere chanting: Do what works. Because if evolution had been
evolutionism we'd all be extinct. The only thing sticking in my dottering old head these days
is Ann Pettifor's last question: Please, please can you just tell us how the economy actually
works?
Much as I regard your past comments, I must disagree with your assertion "Neoliberalism is
just another damn thing that externalizes and socializes costs". Neoliberalism does indeed
externalize and socialize costs but it is more than just another damn thing. Just the scale
and scope of the think tank network assembled and well funded to promote the concepts of the
Neoliberal thought collective should be adequate to convince you that it is much more than
"just another damn thing".
Consider just the visible portion of the think tanks which are part of the Neoliberal
thought collective. "Today, Atlas Network connects more than 450 think tanks in nearly 100
countries. Each is writing its own story of how principled work to affect public opinion, on
behalf of the ideas of a free society, can better individuals' lives."
Members of the network
include: AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE, AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE COUNCIL (ALEC), AYN
RAND INSTITUTE, CATO INSTITUTE, GOLDWATER INSTITUTE, HEARTLAND INSTITUTE, HERITAGE FOUNDATION
selected members from the 177 think tanks in the U.S. which are a part of the 475 partners in
92 countries around the globe. [https://www.atlasnetwork.org/partners/global-directory]. This
is not "just another damn thing."
Next consider the state of the economics profession. Neoliberalism has taken over many
major schools of economics and a large number of the economics journals. In a publish or
perish world there are few alternatives to an adherence to some flavor of Neoliberal
ideology. This is not "just another damn thing." Consider how many national politicians are
spouting things like there is 'no such thing as society'. This is not "just another damn
thing" -- it is something much much more scary.
Thank you for this post. It is the methodical destruction of any possible alternatives to
this totalizing and dehumanizing system that is most frightening to me.
Basically the rich dismantled the New Deal and desperately are trying to hide it. The issue is that the decline in living standards for the middle class are so big that
they can no longer hide what they are. This was linked in NC a while ago:
Neoliberalism is quite fuzzy and difficult to attack. Neoliberalism intellectual framework comes from the underlying neoclassical economics that
can easily be attacked. Here's George Soros. George Soros realised the economics was wrong due to his experience with the markets. What the neoclassical economists said about markets and his experience just didn't
compare, and he knew it was so wrong he never even bothered to look into what the economics
said.
George Soros "I am not well qualified to criticize those theories, because as a market
participant, I considered them so unrealistic that I never bothered to study them"
Here is George Soros on the bad economics we have used for globalisation.
He had been complaining for years and at last in 2008 the bankruptcy of the economics
proved itself. With more widespread support, he set up INET (The Institute for New Economic
Thinking) to try and put things right. Globalisation's technocrats, trained in bad economics, never stood a chance.
"Those, like Ed Conway, who persist in claiming neoliberalism doesn't even exist, may
soon find themselves left behind by history."
During the last election, when leftist types were criticizing Hillary Clinton for her
neoliberal tendencies, the Ed Conway approach was favored by the online Dem Party shills as
the go-to response at mainstream liberal websites. In the comments sections of these
places, I read quite a lot of out-and-out bullsh*t about neoliberalism not being real, and
how charges of it had as much substance as similarly empty schoolyard taunts. If you said
someone was a neoliberal, it had no more meaning than if you'd called them "poopy pants" or
'booger breath." And all this delivered with the usual blistering abuse thrown at anyone not
willing to get down on all fours & kiss St. Hillary's blessed pants suit. It got to the
point where I finally had to stop visiting places like Lawyers, Guns and Money altogether.
They had become unbelievably nasty and unpleasant to progressives.
"One of the great achievements of neoliberalism has been to induce such a level of
collective amnesia that it's now once again possible to claim that these tenets are simply
"fundamental economic rules" handed down directly from Adam Smith on tablets of stone,
unchallenged and unchallengeable in the history of economic thought."
To prove this wrong read Adam Smith. Adam Smith observed the reality of small state, unregulated capitalism in the world around
him. Adam Smith on rent seeking:
"The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the
maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury
by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the
industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the
use of his money. But every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no
landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers."
So, landlords, usurers and taxes all raise the cost of living and minimum wage. They suck
purchasing power out of the real economy. Western housing booms have raised the cost of living and priced Western labour out of
international markets leading to the rise of the populists. Trickledown, no it trickles up.
Adam Smith on price gouging:
"The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or
manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the
public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the
dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the
public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable
the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their
own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens."
So this is why hedge funds look for monopoly suppliers of drugs. Big is not beautiful in capitalism, it needs competition and lots of it. The interests of business and the public are not aligned.
Adam Smith on lobbyists:
"The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order
ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till
after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with
the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly
the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to
oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and
oppressed it."
Not surprising TTIP and TPP didn't go down well with the public.
The interests of business and the public are not aligned.
Adam Smith on the 1%:
"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to
have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."
2017 – Richest 8 people as wealthy as half of world's population
They haven't changed a bit.
Adam Smith on Profit:
"But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and
fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and
high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to
ruin."
Exactly the opposite of today's thinking, what does he mean?
When rates of profit are high, capitalism is cannibalising itself by:
1) Not engaging in long term investment for the future
2) Paying insufficient wages to maintain demand for its products and services
Today's problems with growth and demand.
Amazon didn't suck its profits out as dividends and look how big it's grown (not so good
on the wages).
The problem with Adam Smith is the same as for Keynes: people quote what they imagine he
said, or what they want him to have said, rather than what he actually did say.
Adam Smith at least wrote more clearly than Keynes did, which makes claims like that
easier to refute.
Yet the problem with Smith is contextualizing the time and space he wrote of vs. that of
Keynes. Keynes was not addressing a burgeoning industrialist – agrarian economy that
had yet to employ oil to its potential with huge amounts of untapped natural resources still
waiting in the wings and nary any counter prevailing force to this periods philosophical
views.
Even if the whole anglophone experience had a touch of the Council of Nicea tinge to it
e.g. making nice between troublesome tribes within the fold.
Keynes at least looked at the data and attempted to reflect what he discern "at the time"
against the prevailing winds of doctrinaires contrary to all the sycophants.
This is was the lesson he attempted to forward, howls from the sycophants is a tell.
A reading of Smith's 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments' written before, but revised after,
WoN is also worthwhile. As is, as ever, Karl Polyani's opening salvo against Smith's take on 'human market nature'
(my term). Everyone should read 'The Great Transformation' at least once.
The 18th century was an interesting time. My take, only partially thought out, is that
Smith's later work was part of that move away from grand theorizing towards practical
improvement of the human condition seen in so many thinkers of the mid-century period. (With
the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 acting as something of a catalyst)
Mr. Conway must be a fan of Mr. Fukuyama and his exercises for brain stunting.
IMO, Fukuyama's success depended very much on neoliberalism becoming dominant.
In a way, this comment sums up the modern condition very well. Life is always about the
struggle between the have and the have nots. "Civilization" is the human attempt to curb, or
put a respectable face on the raw power struggle between the weak and the powerful. It is
something worth fighting for if justice, equality under the law, and relief from human
suffering is the goal. If greed and self-interest is the only goal, one can be considered a
barbarian and resisted. In such a case, might makes right and the world is full of darkness
and destruction.
Short form- The elite are failing in their duty to humanity- and the rest of life on this
planet. As a scapegoat, they call out anyone not with their agenda deplorables and double
down on their barbarous ways. Greed, exploitation, and subjugation.
Neoliberalism is the refinement of this basic human tendency for domination. It is a
camouflaged form of oppression that is revealed through its ultimate effect, not what it does
at the moment. A neoliberal is a disguised raider or conquerer.
This is an amateur take, but as I see it classical liberalism was pretty much wrecked by
the combination of WWI, great depression, and WWII. The "everything laissez faire" ideology
had simply taken too much damage from the reality of political economy. So it evolved, as it
were, into three new ideologies: libertarianism, which faulted classical liberalism for not
going far enough in reducing the state, which goes a long ways towards explaining why it's
not very popular; the liberal-left/FDR liberalism/SocDem position, which faulted classical
liberalism for ignoring the social element, where there's a heavy welfare state, enterprises
are highly regulated, labor protections, but still private ownership and a capitalist class;
and neoliberalism, which faulted classical liberalism for being ideologically unwilling to
engage in the technocratic tinkering to right the ship, but still sees TIHOTFM as the center
of the economy. The first is the religious orthodoxy response, the second is to put the
market in the sandbox, and the third puts the state in the sandbox.
My take, influenced by Polanyi, is that classical Liberalism collapsed with WWI. In Europe
it was replaced with Socialism (of a sort), Social Democracy or Fascism. Sometimes switching
around and taking a while to settle.
In the US classical Liberalism had a glorious swansong in the 1920s but it finally died in
1929, giving way to Social Democracy in the New Deal.
The Neoliberal project did not properly start until after WWII and did not take over until
around 1980.
Neoliberals prefer a strong state that promotes their ends, not one that opposes them,
or has the ability to oppose the means and methods of private capital . That leaves
the playing field with a single team.
Neoliberals would have the state oppose the goals of others in society. To nurture that
environment, neoliberals seek to redefine society and citizenship as consumerism. Woman's
only role is as one of the species Homo economicus . Neoliberals argue that since
members of H. economicus exist in isolation, they have no need for the extensive
mutual aid and support networks that neoliberals rely on to survive and prosper. Again, that
leaves a single team on the playing field.
I would add tha neoliberalism is inherently about classism. That the wealthy, because of
their education, know more than poor people because of the lack of education. So when voters
complain about the lack of jobs or the poor state of healthcare, the Clintionites wave it
away because, well what do those poor people know anyway?
One of the topics that pops up regulary, is the question "why can't poor people tell how
great the economy is doing?" -face palm- A question that took on fresh important when
Clintion lost the election.
Ironically, the conversation is now, why can't poor people tell how shitty the economy is
with Trump in charge. -dabble face palm-.
You only have to walk around San Francisco or Los Angeles to see that something is wrong
with the current economic environment. This in the wealthy parts of California. There can be
plenty of disagreement over the what, the why, and the solutions, but to demand that I ignore
my lying eyes and believe their words' truthiness is either insulting or insanity and maybe
both.
Mirowski addressed this very issue in this paper –
"The Political Movement that Dared not Speak its own Name: The Neoliberal Thought
Collective Under Erasure" – In this paper I examine the disinclination to treat the
Neoliberal political project as a serious intellectual project motivating a series of
successes in the public sphere. Economists seem especially remiss in this regard.
I disagree that neoliberalism is a thing. There are still only the conservative and
liberal view points. My interpretation of them is as follows:
-Conservative ideology stems from maintaining status quo, tradition, hierarchy and individual
growth ( even at the cost of society). Religion dovetails this ideology as it is something
passed on through generations.
-Liberal ideology stems from growing the society( even at the cost of individual),
challenging the status quo and breaking away from tradition.
Neoliberalism to me is just a part of conservatism
Here is the dictionary definition of conservatism;
" the holding of political views that favour free enterprise, private ownership, and socially
conservative ideas."
A crude example would be to say that Libertarians are closet Republicans.
If I understand neoliberalism correctly it boils down to this: Whoever has money and power gets to make the rules within certain limits which are defined
by:
Whether they get caught
Whether people understand what they are doing
How they market what they do
How much political power they have
Success of the model is defined as success of the richest, most powerful actors. Anyone
who does not succeed is labeled as having been inadequate, lazy, or
socialist/communist/etc. Have I missed anything?
The claim that neoliberalism does not exist reminds me of Baudelaire's "la plus belle des
ruses du Diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas!" ("the cleverest ruse of the Devil is to persuade you he does not exist!")
We frogs have been in the pot for so long now we've forgotten that there ever was a
pond
A priori, what motivated Hayek's, Mises' and their associates' programme from its
conception in the '30's was that it was a *reaction* against the threat to freedom (as they
defined it) which they considered to be posed by the onward march of what they termed
"collectivism", embodied not only by avowedly socialist governments (as in Austria) but also
in that ostensible bulwark of capitalism the USA (whence Mises had emigrated), in the shape
of the New Deal.
Given that genesis, it baffles me that any historian can seriously question what was the
true nature of the project which (led by Hayek) was conceived in response, which later became
known as neoliberalism. It was conceived as a counter-offensive to what they identified as an
insidious mortal threat to all the values they subscribed to – as in Hayek's phrase
"the road to serfdom". How could any such counter-offensive be implemented other than through
devising and putting into effect a plan of action? How could it ever *not* have been "a
thing" (ie not possess objective reality) yet still achieve its specified objective –
namely to defeat the chosen enemy? To assert that it was not is to fly in the face of logic
and common sense.
Doesn't any serious historian need to deploy both of those faculties in good measure?
I agree that Hayek and others were engaged in a political movement that promoted intense
opposition to social democratic experiments sweeping the West after WWII.
Their chosen enemy seems to have been collective responses generally – governmental
and social – except those that they approved of. Coincidentally, those seem to be
approved of by their wealthy patrons. I don't recall their vocal opposition to the trade
associations, for example, that cooperated to promote the interests of the companies their
patrons controlled.
Hayek and others seem to have overreacted in their opposition to collective action, even
while making exceptions for the social networking and persistent patron funding that promoted
their own endeavours.
"[ ] Well, this one at least is half-true. Like literally every concept that has ever
mattered, the concept of 'neoliberalism' is messy, it's deeply contested [ ]"
Way I see it, it happens to be extremely simple:
Classical liberalism: "The state should leave us elites alone such that we may do what we must, it's our
plantations/factories/banks anyway!"
And, when the former didn't work (the conservative/aristocratic state didn't leave them
alone), came the neo-liberalism: " We should take control of the state and insure that we are not molested by its
services and that it disciplines the lower classes in our name!"
Neo-liberalism is extremely old and the only exceptions to this "new" development were the
so called "totalitarian" states (feared, by neo-libs, most of all things), which mainly
disciplined the elites, with great success, I might add.
In reply to several commenters, who have questioned why "neoliberalism" is not simply
another name for the political expression/ambitions of the greed of the rich-and-powerful,
aka conservatism.
Although it serves the purposes of the rich-and-powerful rather well, I think
"neoliberalism" as a rhetorical engine and set of ideas is the ideology of the 9.9%, the
chattering classes of professionals and bureaucrats who need a cover story for their own
participation in running the world for the benefit of the 0.1% These are the people who need
to rationalize what they do and cooperate and coordinate among themselves and that's a
challenge because of their sheer numbers.
If you try to examine neoliberalism as a set of aims or values or interests, I think you
miss the great accomplishment of neoliberalism as a mechanism of social cooperation.
Neoliberalism says it aims at freedom and social welfare and innovation and other good
things. If neoliberalism said it aimed to make the richest 0.1% richer at the expense of
everyone else, it would provoke political opposition from the 99% for obvious reasons.
Including opposition from the 9.9% whom they need to run things, to run the state, run the
corporations.
Not being clear on what your true objectives are tends to be an obstacle to organizing
large groups to accomplish those objectives. Being clear on the mission objective is a
prerequisite for organizational effectiveness in most circumstances. The genius of
neoliberalism is such that it is able to achieve a high degree of coordination in detail
across large numbers of people, institutions, even countries while still professing [fake] aims and
values to which few object. A high degree of coordination on implementing a political policy
agenda that is variously parasitical or predatory on the 90%.
You can say this is just hypocrisy of a type the rich have always engaged in, and that
would be true. The predatory rich have always had to disguise their predatory or parasitical
activity, and have often done so by embracing, for example, shows of piety or philanthropy.
So, neoliberalism falls into a familiar albeit broad category.
What distinguishes neoliberalism is how good it is at coordinating the activities of the
9.9% in delivering the goods for the 0.1%. For a post-industrial economy, neoliberalism is
better for the mega-rich than Catholicism was for the feudalism of the High Middle Ages. I do
not think most practicing neoliberals among the 9.9% even think of themselves as
hypocrites.
"Free markets" has been the key move, the fulcrum where anodyne aims and values to which
no one can object meet the actual detailed policy implementation by the state. Creating a
"market" removes power and authority from the state and transfers it to private actors able
to apply financial wealth to managing things, and then, because an actual market cannot
really do the job that's been assigned, a state bureaucracy has to be created to manage the
administrative details and financial flows -- work for the 9.9%
As a special bonus, the insistence on treating a political economy organized in fact by
large public and private bureaucracies as if it is organized by and around "markets"
introduces a high degree of economic agnatology into the conventional political rhetoric.
[This comment sounded much clearer when I conceived of it in the shower this morning. I am
sorry if the actual comment is too abstract or tone deaf. I will probably have to try again
at a later date.]
Pierre Bourdieu, the great French sociologist, would say neoliberalism, like the devil, is
one of those things that makes a priority of pretending it does not exist. (Bourdieu cited
many others.) It makes it much harder for those whose interests it does not serve to fight
it, like forcing someone to eat Jello with a single chopstick.
"... message is clear: if one wants to defeat populism, one must defeat first economic insecurity. ..."
"... The surge of populism in Europe and the US has often put at the centre stage three ideological actors of society: the people, the elite, and the 'other' (foreigners, immigrants) to whom, in the populist narrative, the elite has sold the people out. ..."
"... The cultural backlash against globalisation, traditional politics and institutions, immigration, and automation cannot be an exogenous occurrence, it is driven by economic woes. In fact, as we show, in regions where globalisation was present but have benefited economically there is no such cultural backlash at all and the populist message has retreated. The policy implication and take-home message that stems from our results is clear: if one wants to defeat populism, one must defeat first economic insecurity. ..."
"... See original post for references ..."
"... The cultural backlash against globalisation, traditional politics and institutions, immigration, and automation cannot be an exogenous occurrence, it is driven by economic woes. In fact, as we show, in regions where globalisation was present but have benefited economically there is no such cultural backlash at all and the populist message has retreated. The policy implication and take-home message that stems from our results is clear: if one wants to defeat populism, one must defeat first economic insecurity. ..."
"... if one wants to defeat populism, one must defeat first economic insecurity. ..."
message is clear: if one wants to defeat populism, one must defeat first economic
insecurity.
The surge of populism in Europe and the US has often put at the centre stage three
ideological actors of society: the people, the elite, and the 'other' (foreigners, immigrants)
to whom, in the populist narrative, the elite has sold the people out.
Populist policies have often picked convenient scapegoats for economic grievances, while
hiding real policy trade-offs. They have mastered the art of 'follow-ship' as opposed to
leadership, where everything has become more short-term and responsive to instant polls.
National short-term concerns have become paramount and states, rather than seeing common good
for the long run, have become 'inward-focused' both in terms of time and space.
What has caused the rise of populist parties in continental Europe? Are the roots of the
success of populist platforms cultural, as some researchers advocate, or are they mainly
economic as others – us among them – have pointed out?
Rodrik (2018) distinguishes between left-wing and right-wing variants of populism, which
differ with respect to the societal cleavages that populist politicians highlight, and argues
that these different reactions are related to the relative salience of different types of
globalisation shocks. Colantone and Stanig (2018) analyse the impact Chinese import shock and
show that this triggered an increase in support for nationalist and radical right parties in
Western Europe.
In a recent paper, we show how different exposure to economic shocks and different ability
to react to them in different regions of Europe sheds light on these questions (Guiso et al.
2018). We study how the populist vote share 1 across European regions responded to
two major economic shocks: the globalisation shock (i.e. the 'China Effect') and the European
financial crisis of 2008-2013. Both shocks, in principle, caused economic distress and
insecurity, but not equally everywhere. The China Effect – the increased economic
insecurity following the globalisation shocks – is known to have boosted populist support
in Europe as much as in the US, but we provide two novel and perhaps unexpected findings.
First, the populist-boosting effect is only present in regions of Western Europe, whereas in
the industrial regions of Eastern Europe most exposed to globalisation, the globalisation shock
has instead a negative (dampening) effect on populist support and vote shares. In fact, in
Eastern Europe globalisation was good news, since it brought job opportunities thanks to the
relocation of firms from Western Europe. This strongly suggests that economic winners and
losers of globalisation are behind the ups and downs of populist voting.
Second, the globalisation shock has a substantially larger effect on populist support in
euro area countries than in other comparable Western countries. This finding may be puzzling as
all Western European countries were similarly exposed to China import competition. However,
euro area countries were not equally capable of reacting to this shock. Indeed, euro area
countries were constrained in their policies by what we call a 'policy strait jacket':
constraints imposed by the single currency which prevented adopting the 'best' domestic
policies to counteract the shock, for instance through a devaluation of the currency. We
estimate that the policy strait jacket effect explains three-quarters of the greater consensus
to populist parties in the euro area compared to Western non-euro area European countries. The
role of the policy strait jacket in fuelling populist consensus emerges most clearly during the
financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis. The financial crisis created populist
consensus across the board, but its effects were most dramatic in the euro area and
particularly in those countries, like Italy, where the strait jacket was particularly tight.
This policy strait jacket amplified the effects of the shock, or at least created the
perception that it was in part to blame for the lack of recovery. This, in turn, sparked
frustration among voters and disappointment towards the domestic and European elites opening
the ground to populist proposals.
Consistent with this interpretation, confidence in European institutions and in the ECB has
dropped dramatically in the euro area countries and only mildly in non-euro area countries (see
Figure 1). Interestingly, among the former countries the voter frustration was greater
precisely where the policy strait jacket was tighter, as Figure 2 neatly documents.
Figure 1 The populist strait jacket and trust
a) in the European Parliament
b) in the ECB
Figure 2 Trust in
a) the ECB
b) the European Commission
The above results underline the fact that the deep cause of populism cannot be culture, it
is economics. This view is confirmed in our complementary study using individual survey data
instead based on the European Social Survey (ESS), which maps the attitudes, beliefs, and
behaviour patterns of European citizens taking place every two years since September 2002, by
means of face-to-face interviews (Guiso et al. 2017). The ESS, besides reporting on voter's
attitudes towards immigration and traditional politics, also asks people whether they voted in
the last parliamentary election in their country and which party they voted for. Therefore, it
is possible to identify whether a populist party was voted for. A pseudo-panel analysis allows
to study changes in individual economic insecurity and changes in attitudes such as distrust in
political parties and anti-immigration sentiments, which are often taken as measures of
cultural traits.
Figure 3 Economic insecurity and
a) trust in political parties
b) sentiments towards immigrants
Notes : The figure shows the binned scatterplot (20 equal-sized bins) and
linear regressions of the change in economic insecurity (x-axis) and the change in trust in
political parties (y-axis, left figure, 3,134 observations) and attitudes against immigrants
(y-axis, right figure, 3,666 observations) in the synthetic cohorts panel.
We show that the populist drive comes from the 'barely coping', who have developed a disgust
with the political establishment prompting them to abstain from voting, and a disgust with
immigrants that has prompted them to vote populist. However, behind this deterioration in these
attitudes is the worsening of economic insecurity: voters who suffer from economic misfortune
lose faith in institutions and develop anti-immigrant sentiments (Figure 3). Hence, economic
insecurity drives up the populist vote both directly but also indirectly by affecting two key
sentiments: anti-immigration and distrust for traditional politics. The directimpact of
economic insecurity on the populist vote share and the indirect impact through distrust trust
in politics is just through voter apathy: economic insecurity has driven mistrust in
traditional politics which, in turn, drove down turnout for traditional parties, indirectly
increasing the vote share of populist parties. The indirectimpact, on the other hand, through
anti-immigrant sentiments is explicitly though an increase of the populist vote. Economic
insecurity has driven the anti-immigrant sentiment among the barely coping, which in turn
successfully drove up turnout for populist parties.
In sum the populist strategy of scapegoating immigrants was very successful – the
immigration card has proven to be a powerful grievance that could be awakened by economic
downturns. Moreover, countries where a populist party is present have much more anti-immigrant
sentiments, which suggests that the populist rhetoric affects greatly these sentiments.
The cultural backlash against globalisation, traditional politics and institutions,
immigration, and automation cannot be an exogenous occurrence, it is driven by economic woes.
In fact, as we show, in regions where globalisation was present but have benefited economically
there is no such cultural backlash at all and the populist message has retreated. The policy
implication and take-home message that stems from our results is clear: if one wants to defeat
populism, one must defeat first economic insecurity.
Can consensus towards populist forces persist even after economic insecurity has been
reabsorbed? This is the key question today. While the documented culture backlash cannot be the
root cause of populist success as it is itself borne out of economic insecurity, it may play a
crucial role looking forward. If the new identity politics succeeds in reshaping peoples'
beliefs and attitudes, sentiments can acquire an autonomous role and may continue to exert an
effect even when their economic cause is gone.
I don't understand why this is simply not obvious to everyone as there are historical
examples aplenty – Weimar at the end of the twenties being the most obvious & the
simple fact that when resources become scarce, it rarely brings out the best in us. My
suspicion is that policy makers who tend to be true believers looking down from their ivory
towers, would rather not be faced with the truth of the consequences of their actions, or
really do not give a damn anyway.
My eighty two year old Mother voted for Brexit & her reasons for doing so, were
because she had over the years been witness to a steady decline in her local environment,
from what was once a thriving community built around the workplace – my occasional
visits over the years only confirm this. You will have to take my word for it, but she has
not got a racist bone in her body, but her concerns over immigration were founded on a chat
to a local headmistress while picking up her Grandson, who related to her the problems they
were having teaching twelve languages, while at the same time having their funding constantly
cut – Pakistani taxi drivers using the gable end of her flat as a urinal has also not
helped matters.
She also told me that in her opinion the young do not know what has been lost, as they
have no experience of how it once was & the now for them is their everyday normal.
The article was an exercise in Bulverism. It started with the assumption that the people
the author disagreed with were fools, and quickly moved on to an explanation of why the fools
might be fools.
I suppose that my Mother could live to regret her vote, which came mainly from frustration
as she had not bothered to vote otherwise for a few years, as she is correctly of the opinion
that the Labour stronghold she lives in has not done anything for those who it purports to
support. She lives in a once thriving market town that now only the word dead could be used
to describe it adequately. Meanwhile the local Labour politicians have built themselves a
plush new HQ in the post modern European style, while leaving perfectly adequate premises to
presumably rot.
Unless they come up with something pretty quick I don't see any likelihood of a change in
the fortunes of the many & I am I believe correct that he does not see any need to
question immigration policy, but suggest that Identity Politics might save the day. Perhaps
for the young, but from my experience it is presently causing resentment, as with the
aftermath of the Rotherham sex scandal when basically nothing had been done as the
authorities were in fear of being labelled racist – i share my Mother's position of
people can be good or bad whatever shade they happen to come in.
I believe that those who are pushing the IP agenda by urging people to come out &
dumping extra labour into already stressed areas, are risking an eventual backlash which of
course will not fall on them – something which would lead to the instigators of IP
shedding crocodile tears, while feeling free to insult & rage against the remaining group
of people whose identity apparently now counts for nothing.
Politicians are taking clearly side, not for the people who voted them in the office in
the first place, but for banks, globalist foundations, cultural marxists, media and big
corporations.
Another world is betrayal.
But it is for all to see that in the Western world, "foundations" are poisoning the
population en-masse and setting up kids against parents, pupil against teachers, black
against white, poor against rich and woman against man.
The aim is chaos and uncertainty for a prolonged period so that at the end the population
will, instigated by the media, ask for a strong (paid-off) leader.
Not sure if you watched the documentary "The Century of Self": you can enslave the
population, throw them in jail, tax them 100%, beat them to pulp, etc. All fine.
But touch their culture, and you are dead. Just a matter of time.
As Hagbard Celine would observe, Marxism is the new fnord (for Illuminatus! Trilogy fans).
In other words, everyone on the right knows that Marxism is bad – so characterizing
ideas that they don't like as "Cultural Marxism" helps tag these ideas as evil encarnate in
the minds of their followers and shuts down debate.
For Democrats, the equivalent would be "Trumpian Culture."
Perhaps "culture" versus "economic" is an artificial distinction and the lowers recognize
that cultural differences are just an outward manifestation of class exploitation–a
kind of uniform or badge. In Pygmalion G.B.Shaw joked that you could give a flower girl a
posh accent and she could become an aristocrat too. That works in reverse as well and I
suspect one reason Hillary lost was that she so obviously lacked the "common touch." Boasting
about how smart you think you are is not necessarily good politics.
When times are good, people don't look for scapegoats. It's only when times are bad, and
resources are becoming increasingly scarce, that blaming their culture's favorite scapegoats
for the problems gets popular.
I recall a friend of mine who adamantly denied being racist – but would routinely
tell racial stereotypic jokes. People know racism isn't socially acceptable in corporate
circles these days, so they deny that they're racist even as they talk in terms of racist
stereotypes.
The policy implication and take-home message that stems from our results is clear: if
one wants to defeat populism, one must defeat first economic insecurity.
Two quibbles;
1. This guy is Captain Obvious.
2. How about we decide to 'cure' the cause instead of 'defeat' the symptoms.
IMO, curing our economic ills naturally calms the populist impulse. This wouldn't be an
important quibble if it wasn't for the singularly American tendency to frame our problems as
requiring some sort of violent solution. The argument could be made that Americans see every
problem as requiring some sort of war, whether starkly 'real', involving the military, or
metaphorical.
I would say that the government's coordinated take-down of the Occupy movement was a
perfect example of results of this mindset, and so are the inevitable mobs of 'security'
personel clad in black, and $10K worth of body armor and weapons deployed to counter the
populist impulse.
Last night's local news included a piece touting bullet-proof glass as a solution to
school shootings, complete with window samples, still embedded with bullets, and six or eight
proud, smiling business executives who clearly see school shootings as an opportunity to make
some money.
Need I mention the bat-sh*t crazy 'War on Drugs'?
I think we need to start thinking about fixing our problems rather than 'defeating'
them.
I was commenting over at Drums site, and a guy there was "astonished" to learn that areas
hurt by globalization was a determinant in voting for Trump.
Honest, it had never occurred to him.
So, obvious to us. Not obvious to hard core DNCers. In fact I'm pretty sure they are
innoculated not to accept it, as it means their happy little neoliberal policies have helped
create Trump.
a little of an aside, but this para ISTM describes the party of the democrats
perfectly
The cultural backlash against globalisation, traditional politics and institutions,
immigration, and automation cannot be an exogenous occurrence, it is driven by economic woes.
In fact, as we show, in regions where globalisation was present but have benefited
economically there is no such cultural backlash at all and the populist message has
retreated. The policy implication and take-home message that stems from our results is clear:
if one wants to defeat populism, one must defeat first economic insecurity.
Also, in the microcosm of the PNW the people who can still afford to live in seattle, not the
precariites but the upper crust, mostly hillarites, have no problem with globalisation, while
if you get out a little among the downtrodden globalisation is yet another unavoidable
tragicomedy so seems to support the authors of the posts point
I agree that economics can have a major effect on populist tendencies but I think to paint
economics as the SOLE driver of populist direction is a little too broad a brushstroke. Which
is what the article seemed to say to me.
I think if you went back to the US in the late sixties and early seventies, many of the
participants in the anti-war movement , given a definition of populism, would have viewed
themselves as participating in a populist cause. A cause that was driven more by a philosophy
of nonviolence than by economics albeit there was anger among some that the sons of the
elites could buy their way out of the draft. But from my perspective that was more a
secondary reason to eliminate the draft rather than being the primary driving force behind
the movement.
Further, it seems you could make the same case about the civil rights movement. While
again I believe economic standing played a significant part, the driving force behind that
movement was more about equality. Just look at the nature of the watershed moments that
triggered that movement those moments weren't about money but inequality.Granted, a case can
also be made that the civil rights movement will continue on until economic equality is
achieved. But that's not what carried it forward in the early years, which is what the
article would have implied.
TIME magazine used the term populism in 1972 when covering the McGovern candidacy
-- I remember because as a kid then, and I had to go look up the term. Maybe it had some
accuracy because McGovern did represent a state from the historic center of turn-of-the-20th
century agrarian populism, and because "the People" was often used to specify the political
subject at the heart of the New Left.
The function of the term is to allow public discussion of the political management problem
posed by things like massive militant anti-war movements in the streets, powerful
presidential candidates that have escaped elite funding trammels and vetting, or social
groups that die too young. The great piece of ideological legerdemain that "populism"
performs is that it allows discourse over controlling it without once mentioning the policies
proposed by the movements, and so delegitimizes them. It also works for actors that are so
socially cut off from the sources of social misery that they are truly ignorant -- after all,
none of their old college classmates are in trouble, so what is going on?
Populism is a tipoff that if the cat is misbehaving, the owner needs to think
about declawing her, kicking him, putting a shock collar on her, or locking him in a closet,
but not letting her out, scooping his pan, or feeding them -- that is what I take to be the
moral content of the term.
Cat:" it allows discourse over controlling it without once mentioning the policies
proposed by the movements, and so delegitimizes them."
aye. it's a deflection a red herring.
anything to avoid that damned mirror.
and, as someone said above: Captain Obvious wrote this,lol.
It has been personally painful and disillusioning to watch run of the mill "Democrats" fall
into "well they're all racist, so lets ignore them until they deservedly die".
The anti "white", anti Male, anti rural,and anti-anyone who thinks Economics Matters nonsense
makes me not want to play any more.
Rather than "Divide and Conquer" it's "Divide, and Divide again, and prevent an Unassailable
Majority"(with support beyond little old me, Bernie would have won in my blood red
county.)
Yeah, what you said. Which is why water is not wet.
It's also painful for me to see sites that I have been reading for years change into hate
sites. If I say that maybe, just possibly that Clinton lost and Trump won because of
something other than just sexism, racism, or stupidity, I become One of Those People.
Socialism is a bad. Neoliberalism is a nonsense label.
One can be cynical and suspect the elites are pricing the cost of rising populism into
their cost of doing business.
If populism leads to more funding for the police or military, that may be a feature, not a
bug, as increasing those expenditures tend to be US elite goals.
So let populism rise, in a "let them eat cake" manner and dampen its effects by political
contributions, increased police/military funding or more surveillance.
If the cost of causing populism to occur as a result of elite policies DOES hit elite
lifestyle/pocketbooks, then the USA might see some changes.
We've watched Trump play the populist and the Clinton Democratic party squash the populist
interloper Sanders.
Remember Reagan's 1980 debate with Carter?
He asked this question:
"Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment than
there was four years ago?"
One could argue this is a populist leaning question, but used by Reagan, a long-term
servant of the elite, to get elected.
Reagan or Trump using populism to get elected is the problem. It is seen as tool by the
elites to manipulate and control. And when the populace is so silly as to use it for economic
justice the marchers come out with their tiki-torches –calling up the symbolism of the
nazis. To smear and divide and conquer. Elites may use it, but you may not take it seriously
and effect change. "For me not for thee."
" to defeat populism one must first defeat economic insecurity". Yeah, except defeating
populism through a reduction in economic insecurity would require more wealth trickling down
to the "insecure" masses from the high tables of the elites and less being funneled into
offshore tax havens.
Therein lies the bind, domesticated, paid-for politicians (establishment politicians that
is) would also have to do with a little less in bribes, campaign contributions etc coming
their way if they dared to tip, through policy choices, the scales of wealth distribution
towards eliminating economic insecurity. I haven't heard of an establishment politician
willing to bite the very hand that feeds them so the prospects look dim unless there's an
uprooting of the very system that creates said economic insecurity in the first place.
The upswell of discontent driving populism will continue until rampaging mobs tired of the
unfairness and exploitation of the system demand "give us economic liberty or give us death"
or rather "give us economic liberty or we'll give YOU death" from the elites. Nothing will
change until the elites themselves feel threatened, in a very real way, by the state of
affairs, not the current situation where they're actively benefiting from it.
As for populist politicians, it's their charisma and the mastery of their rhetoric that
let's them exploit the gullibility and despondency of the "barely coping", but as recent
examples (e.g. Trump) demonstrate, give them the keys to the top office and they quickly turn
establishment.
They turn establishment with regards to making policy choices that perpetuate, rather than
eliminate, economic insecurity. Their rhetoric may still be fiercely populist, but their
policy choices betray their true allegiance and where it lies
Been saying it again and again, but the "feminists" don't want to hear it, that it was
impressively tone death to try to run for first female US president on a gender platform in
the middle of an extended recession.
Never mind doubling down on said platform upon losing
with Haspel breaking (the will) of the glass ceiling at CIA, it appears only the worst of
the worst will be allowed to fly among the carrion birds of the empire.
Next up, Kamala "I Love Private Prisons" Harris, who I will be assured is very progressive
when the time comes.
" impressively tone death to try to run for first female US president on a gender platform
in the middle of an extended recession."
The real problem -- again obfuscated by 'identity politics' -- is that the Democrats did
not think they were in the middle of an "extended recession."
The million-dollar consultants on Clinton's camapign were not in a recession. It is the rest
of us who were and are. Those who like Rove think they make reality will keep getting a rude
awakening.
The chart below from Philippa Dunne of The Liscio Report shows the ratio of workers
covered by unemployment insurance is at its lowest level in 45 years. What happens when
millions of freelancers lose their incomes?
The likely outcome is a populist backlash that installs a Democratic Congress and
president. They will then raise taxes on the "rich" and roll back some of the corporate tax
cuts and increase regulatory burdens.
From 70% of workers having unemployment benefits when the chart begins in 1970, the ratio
has now been halved to under 35% in today's gig economy.
What it means is that so-called automatic stabilizers such as unemployment benefits,
intended to keep household spending going in a recession, have been hollowed out to near
irrelevance.
Mauldin thinks Democrats will retake Congress, and then the presidency from One-term
Trump. So do I. Flake-o-nomics don't pay.
The likely outcome is a populist backlash that installs a Democratic Congress and
president. They will then raise taxes on the "rich" and roll back some of the corporate tax
cuts and increase regulatory burdens.
Like Obama did? Like Hillary probably would have done, given her financial backers'
interests? Mauldin's hopes for the Dem estab seem antiquated; this is not his father's Dem
party The current Dem estab works for the same wealth centers the GOP estab works for.
An aside: Two local esteemed academics just published a report claiming Trump populism is
cultural and not economic. Good liberal academics know how to sing for their supper.
adding: wrt job coverage of unemployment benefits dropping from 70% to 35% since 1970
– the Pres and Congress have been held by both parties by roughly same amount of times
since 1970. For this drop to happen, one party clearly hasn't been pulling its weight.
IMO, the last two graphs are misleading. The vertical scales are not the same, so it is
difficult to compare the two lines. In Figure 3a, the slope appears to be more negative than
-2. In Figure 3b, the slope appears to be less than 1. There appear to be more significant
factors contributing to the loss of trust in political parties than immigration.
--
In 2013, there were 15.9M people with a migrant background in Germany. The AfD
(Alternative for Germany political party) received 810,915 votes (1.9% of total) in the 2013
Bundestag election.
In 2016, there were 18.6M (+17%) people with a migrant background in Germany. The AfD, in
the 2017 Bundestag elections, received 5.8M votes (12.6% of total).
The source for this data is Wikipedia (for the election results) and the German Federal
Statistics Office.
--
Finally, one of the papers referenced in the paper above (see the link in the article)
contains charts showing anti-EU sentiment in individual EU countries between 1999 and 2014.
The charts show that, for most EU countries, anti-EU sentiment has been increasing since
2004, long before the current immigrant / refugee issues.
"If the new identity politics succeeds in reshaping peoples' beliefs and attitudes,
sentiments can acquire an autonomous role and may continue to exert an effect even when their
economic cause is gone."
Truly, does anyone need reminding of the spectre of Germany in 20s and 30s? Where is the
recognition that the effects of economic insecurity discussed above, anti-immigration and
anti-'other' sentiments, are deliberately *designed and encouraged.* Seems like pieces like
this serve to solidify the framing of 'populism' as threat to the elites but, really it is a
tried-and-true tool.
Those who are really hurt by the anti-immigrant scapegoating, other than the scapegoated
groups, are those in society who focus on the real causes and remedies for economic
predation. As designed -- divide and conquer.
Those who are really hurt by the anti-immigrant scapegoating, other than the scapegoated
groups, are those in society who focus on the real causes and remedies for economic
predation. As designed -- divide and conquer.
Wasn't the German Socialist Party that got deliberately crushed by the Nazis and German
Communist Party? I think that a large number of Germans prefers the Socialists over the other
Parties so it had to go away. The Socialist Party newspaper was destroyed on the first day of
the Nazis political victory as it had been very good at exposing them.
The elite know the real reasons why this is happening.
It's not that they don't know how to cure it. They don't "want" to cure it. They don't
want to give up the wealth they stole from the common citizenry. That is why we have this
current crisis. The causes are no mystery. They can see their wealth growing while ours is
shrinking as well as anyone.
I suppose a case could be made for the people who are just willfully ignorant. I think a
lot of people in the top 10% fall into this category. They don't realize or don't want to
realize how badly they have failed the bottom 90%.
In reply to several commenters, who have questioned why "neoliberalism" is not simply
another name for the political expression/ambitions of the greed of the rich-and-powerful,
aka conservatism.
Although it serves the purposes of the rich-and-powerful rather well, I think
"neoliberalism" as a rhetorical engine and set of ideas is the ideology of the 9.9%, the
chattering classes of professionals and bureaucrats who need a cover story for their own
participation in running the world for the benefit of the 0.1% These are the people who need
to rationalize what they do and cooperate and coordinate among themselves and that's a
challenge because of their sheer numbers.
If you try to examine neoliberalism as a set of aims or values or interests, I think you
miss the great accomplishment of neoliberalism as a mechanism of social cooperation.
Neoliberalism says it aims at freedom and social welfare and innovation and other good
things. If neoliberalism said it aimed to make the richest 0.1% richer at the expense of
everyone else, it would provoke political opposition from the 99% for obvious reasons.
Including opposition from the 9.9% whom they need to run things, to run the state, run the
corporations.
Not being clear on what your true objectives are tends to be an obstacle to organizing
large groups to accomplish those objectives. Being clear on the mission objective is a
prerequisite for organizational effectiveness in most circumstances. The genius of
neoliberalism is such that it is able to achieve a high degree of coordination in detail
across large numbers of people, institutions, even countries while still professing aims and
values to which few object. A high degree of coordination on implementing a political policy
agenda that is variously parasitical or predatory on the 90%.
You can say this is just hypocrisy of a type the rich have always engaged in, and that
would be true. The predatory rich have always had to disguise their predatory or parasitical
activity, and have often done so by embracing, for example, shows of piety or philanthropy.
So, neoliberalism falls into a familiar albeit broad category.
What distinguishes neoliberalism is how good it is at coordinating the activities of the
9.9% in delivering the goods for the 0.1%. For a post-industrial economy, neoliberalism is
better for the mega-rich than Catholicism was for the feudalism of the High Middle Ages. I do
not think most practicing neoliberals among the 9.9% even think of themselves as
hypocrites.
"Free markets" has been the key move, the fulcrum where anodyne aims and values to which
no one can object meet the actual detailed policy implementation by the state. Creating a
"market" removes power and authority from the state and transfers it to private actors able
to apply financial wealth to managing things, and then, because an actual market cannot
really do the job that's been assigned, a state bureaucracy has to be created to manage the
administrative details and financial flows -- work for the 9.9%
As a special bonus, the insistence on treating a political economy organized in fact by
large public and private bureaucracies as if it is organized by and around "markets"
introduces a high degree of economic agnatology into the conventional political rhetoric.
[This comment sounded much clearer when I conceived of it in the shower this morning. I am
sorry if the actual comment is too abstract or tone deaf. I will probably have to try again
at a later date.]
"... Another defect of neoliberal economics is the doctrine's denial that resources are finite and their exhaustion a heavy cost not born by those who exploit the resources. Many local and regional civilizations have collapsed from exhaustion of the surrounding resources. Entire books have been written about this, but it is not part of neoliberal economics. Supplement study of Hudson with study of ecological economists such as Herman Daly. ..."
Readers ask me how they can learn economics, what books to read, what university economics
departments to trust. I receive so many requests that it is impossible to reply individually.
Here is my answer.
There is only one way to learn economics, and that is to read Michael Hudson's books. It is
not an easy task. You will need a glossary of terms. In some of Hudson's books, if memory
serves, he provides a glossary, and his recent book "J Is for Junk Economics" defines the
classical economic terms that he uses. You will also need patience, because Hudson sometimes
forgets in his explanations that the rest of us don't know what he knows.
The economics taught today is known as neoliberal. This economics differs fundamentally from
classical economics that Hudson represents. For example, classical economics stresses taxing
economic rent instead of labor and real investment, while neo-liberal economics does the
opposite.
An economic rent is unearned income that accrues to an owner from an increase in value that
he did nothing to produce. For example, a new road is built at public expense that opens land
to development and raises its value, or a transportation system is constructed in a city that
raises the value of nearby properties. These increases in values are economic rents. Classical
economists would tax away the increase in values in order to pay for the road or transportation
system.
Neoliberal economists redefined all income as earned. This enables the financial system to
capitalize economic rents into mortgages that pay interest. The higher property values created
by the road or transportation system boost the mortgage value of the properties. The
financialization of the economy is the process of drawing income away from the purchases of
goods and services into interest and fees to financial entities such as banks. Indebtedness and
debt accumulate, drawing more income into their service until there is no purchasing power left
to drive the economy.
For example, formerly in the US lenders would provide a home mortgage whose service required
up to 25% of the family's monthly income. That left 75% of the family's income for other
purchases. Today lenders will provide mortgages that eat up half of the monthly income in
mortgage service, leaving only 50% of family income for other purchases. In other words, a
financialized economy is one that diverts purchasing power away from productive enterprise into
debt service.
Hudson shows that international trade and foreign debt also comprise a financialization
process, only this time a country's entire resources are capitalized into a mortgage. The West
sells a country a development plan and a loan to pay for it. When the debt cannot be serviced,
the country is forced to impose austerity on the population by cutbacks in education, health
care, public support systems, and government employment and also to privatize public assets
such as mineral rights, land, water systems and ports in order to raise the capital with which
to pay off the loan. Effectively, the country passes into foreign ownership. This now happens
even to European Community members such as Greece and Portugal.
Another defect of neoliberal economics is the doctrine's denial that resources are
finite and their exhaustion a heavy cost not born by those who exploit the resources. Many
local and regional civilizations have collapsed from exhaustion of the surrounding resources.
Entire books have been written about this, but it is not part of neoliberal economics.
Supplement study of Hudson with study of ecological economists such as Herman Daly.
The neglect of external costs is a crippling failure of neoliberal economics. An external
cost is a cost imposed on a party that does not share in the income from the activity that
creates the cost. I recently wrote about the external costs of real estate speculators.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/04/26/capitalism-works-capitalists/
Fracking, mining, oil and gas exploration, pipelines, industries, manufacturing, waste
disposal, and so on have heavy external costs associated with the activities.
Neoliberal economists treat external costs as a non-problem, because they theorize that the
costs can be compensated, but they seldom are. Oil spills result in companies having to pay
cleanup costs and compensation to those who suffered economically from the oil spill, but most
external costs go unaddressed. If external costs had to be compensated, in many cases the costs
would exceed the value of the projects. How, for example, do you compensate for a polluted
river? If you think that is hard, how would the short-sighted destroyers of the Amazon rain
forest go about compensating the rest of the world for the destruction of species and for the
destructive climate changes that they are setting in motion? Herman Daly has pointed out that
as Gross Domestic Product accounting does not take account of external costs and resource
exhaustion, we have no idea if the value of output is greater than all of the costs associated
with its production. The Soviet economy collapsed, because the value of outputs was less than
the value of inputs.
Supply-side economics, with which I am associated, is not an alternative theory to
neoliberal economics. Supply-side economics is a successful correction to neoliberal
macroeconomic management. Keynesian demand management resulted in stagflation and worsening
Phillips Curve trade-offs between employment and inflation. Supply-side economics cured
stagflation by reversing the economic policy mix. I have told this story many times. You can
find a concise explanation in my short book, "The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalsim." This
book also offers insights into other failures of neoliberal economics and for that reason would
serve as a background introduction to Hudson's books.
I can make some suggestions, but the order in which you read Michael Hudson is up to you. "J
is for Junk Economics" is a way to get information in short passages that will make you
familiar with the terms of classical economic analysis. "Killing the Host" and "The Bubble and
Beyond" will explain how an economy run to maximize debt is an economy that is
self-destructing. "Super Imperialism" and "Trade, Development and Foreign Debt" will show you
how dominant countries concentrate world economic power in their hands. "Debt and Economic
Renewal in the Ancient Near East" is the story of how ancient economies dying from excessive
debt renewed their lease on life via debt forgiveness.
Once you learn Hudson, you will know real economics, not the junk economics marketed by
Nobel prize winners in economics, university economic departments, and Wall Street economists.
Neoliberal economics is a shield for financialization, resource exhaustion, external costs, and
capitalist exploitation.
Neoliberal economics is the world's reigning economics. Russia is suffering much more from
neoliberal economics than from Washington's economic sanctions. China herself is overrun with
US trained neoliberal economists whose policy advice is almost certain to put China on the same
path to failure as all other neoliberal economies.
It is probably impossible to change anything for two main reasons. One is that so many
greed-driven private economic activities are protected by neoliberal economics. So many
exploitative institutions and laws are in place that to overturn them would require a more
thorough revolution than Lenin's. The other is that economists have their entire human capital
invested in neoliberal economics. There is scant chance that they are going to start over with
study of the classical economists.
Neoliberal economics is an essential part of The Matrix, the false reality in which
Americans and Europeans live. Neoliberal economics permits an endless number of economic lies.
For example, the US is said to be in a long economic recovery that began in June 2009, but the
labor force participation rate has fallen continuously throughout the period of alleged
recovery. In previous recoveries the participation rate has risen as people enter the work
force to take advantage of the new jobs.
In April the unemployment rate is claimed to have fallen to 3.9 percent, but the
participation rate fell also. Neoliberal economists explain away the contradiction by claiming
that the falling participation rate is due to the retirement of the baby boom generation, but
BLS jobs statistics indicate that those 55 and older account for a large percentage of the new
jobs during the alleged recovery. This is the age class of people forced into the part time
jobs available by the absence of interest income on their retirement savings. What is really
happening is that the unemployment rate does not include discouraged workers, who have given up
searching for jobs as there are none to be found. The true measure of the unemployment rate is
the decline in the labor force participation rate, not a 3.9 percent rate concocted by not
counting those millions of Americans who cannot find jobs. If the unemployment rate really was
3.9 percent, there would be labor shortages and rising wages, but wages are stagnant. These
anomalies pass without comment from neoliberal economists.
The long expansion since June 2009 might simply be a statistical artifact due to the
under-measurement of inflation, which inflates the GDP figure. Inflation is under-estimated,
because goods and services that rise in price are taken out of the index and less costly
substitutes are put in their place and because price increases are explained away as quality
improvements. In other words, statistical manipulation produces the favorable picture required
by The Matrix.
Since the financial collapse caused by the repeal of Glass-Steagall and by financial
deregulation, the Federal Reserve has robbed tens of millions of American savers by driving
real interest rates down to zero for the sole purpose of saving the "banks too big to fail"
that financial deregulation created. A handful of banks has been provided with free money -- in
addition to the money that the Federal Reserve created in order to take the banks' bad
derivative investments off their hands -- to put on deposit with the Fed from which to collect
interest payments and with which to speculate and to drive up stock prices.
In other words, for a decade the economic policy of the United States has been run for the
benefit of a few highly concentrated financial interests at the expense of the American people.
The economic policy of the United States has been used to create economic rents for the
mega-rich.
Neoliberal economists point out that during the 1950s the labor force participation rate was
much lower than today and, thereby, they imply that the higher rates prior to the current
"recovery" are an anomaly. Neoliberal economists have no historical knowledge as the past is of
no interest to them. They do not even know the history of economic thought. Whether from
ignorance or intentional deception, neoliberal economists ignore that the lower labor force
participation rates of the 1950s reflect a time when married women were at home, not in the
work force. In those halcyon days, one earner was all it took to sustain a family. I remember
the days when the function of a married woman was to provide household services for the
family.
But capitalists were not content to exploit only one member of a family. They wanted more,
and by using economic policy to suppress pay while fomenting inflation, they drove married
women into the work force, imposing huge external costs on the family, child-raising, relations
between spouses, and on the children themselves. The divorce rate has exploded to 50 percent
and single-parent households are common in America.
In effect, unleashed Capitalism has destroyed America. Privatization is now eating away
Europe. Russia is on the same track as a result of its neoliberal brainwashing by American
economists. China's love of success and money could doom this rising Asian giant as well if the
government opens China to foreign finance capital and privatizes public assets that end up in
foreign hands.
In an ongoing operation, the US imperialist hawks seek to wipe out the last Leftist governments in Latin America
Ten years ago, most of Latin America was governed by Center-Left progressive or even Leftist governments. For example, Cristina Fernandez
in Argentina, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Fernando Lugo in Paraguay, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Manuel Zelaya
in Honduras, and Lula da Silva in Brazil, just as an example. And Hugo Chavez, of course, in Venezuela. Since then, the so-called
'pink tide' has receded quite dramatically. Of these 10 governments that were Left of Center, only four remain. Nicolas Maduro in
Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia, Vazquez in Uruguay, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. What happened? Some would argue that the US played
an important role in at least some of these changes.
Speaking to Greg Wilpert and the RealNews , Mark Weisbrot
explains the impact of the Leftist or Center-Left governments on Latin America, as well as the US efforts to overthrow these governments
and replace them by Rright-Wing puppet regimes. This is a struggle that has become common in a region that heavily suffers for decades
by the US dirty interventions as it is considered the backyard of the US empire and the primary colonial field for the big US corporations:
If you look at the region as a whole, the poverty rate dropped from 44 to 28 percent. That was from around 2003-2013. And that
was after the two decades prior where poverty had actually increased, there was no progress at all. So that was a huge change, and
it was accomplished in different countries, in different ways.
There were large increases in public investment in Bolivia and Ecuador. In Brazil you had also some increase in public investment,
big increases in the minimum wage. Every country did different things to help bring healthcare, and increase, in some countries,
access to education. And there were a whole lot of reforms, changes in macroeconomic policy, getting rid of the IMF.
So there were a lot of different things that these governments did that prior governments were either unable, or unwilling to
do to improve people's living standards during a period of higher economic growth, which they also contributed to.
When Right-Wing governments took over most of the continent you have different things that have changed.
One is, of course, they're implementing, as you would expect, Right-Wing reforms. Trying to cut pension system, the pension in
Brazil. Passing a constitutional amendment which, even most economists in the world wouldn't support in Brazil, which prohibits the
government from increasing spending beyond the rate of inflation. You have huge increases in utility prices in Argentina, laying
off thousands of public sector workers. So, everywhere where the Right has come back, you do have some regressive changes.
The US has been involved in most of these countries in various ways. Obviously in Venezuela they've been involved since the coup
in 2002, and they tried to overthrow the government and tried to help people topple the government on several occasions there.
In Brazil, they supported the coup against Dilma, the parliamentary coup. So, they didn't do that strongly, but they sent enough
signals, for example, as the House was voting to impeach Dilma without actually presenting a crime that she committed. The head of
the Foreign Relations Committee from the Senate came and met with the No3 official from the US State Department, Tom Shannon. And
then, in August of that year, the Secretary of State, John Kerry, went down there and had a press conference with the Acting Foreign
Minister, Jose Serra. And they talked about how great relations with the US were going to be before Dilma was actually removed from
office. So these were ways of endorsing the coup.
The FBI, the Department of Justice contributed to the investigation that was instrumental in imprisoning Lula. What they did in
that investigation we don't know exactly, but we do know enough about it to know that it wasn't a neutral investigation. That is,
the investigation did end up decapitating the Workers' Party for now. First helping get rid of Dilma, but more importantly, or more
substantially, in terms of its contribution, they helped put Lula in prison and prevent him from running for office.
In Paraguay, the US helped in the consolidation of that parliamentary coup by organizing within the Organization of American States.
In Haiti, in 2004, they took the president and put him on a rendition plane, and flew him out of the country. That was in broad
daylight.
In Honduras, is probably the biggest role that the US has played, both in consolidating the military coup in 2009. Hillary Clinton
acknowledged her role in making sure that President Zelaya, the democratically elected president, would not return to office, and
then more recently, in November, they helped consolidate the results of an election which pretty much all observers regarded as stolen.
In Argentina, other branches of government were involved as well as the executive, but the executive cut off lending from multilateral
development banks such as the Inter-American Development Bank, and tried to block loans at the World Bank, as well. And they restored
everything as soon as the Right-Wing government was elected. And then, there was Judge Griesa in New York, who took over 90 percent
of Argentina's creditors hostage in order to squeeze them so that the government would pay off the vulture funds. And this was very
political, because he also lifted the injunction as soon as you had the Right-Wing government.
This is very important, because obviously it's not necessarily a conspiracy of all these branches of government. The legislative
branch was involved in this as well, in the United States. But they all have the same mindset, and they're all trying to get rid
of these Left governments, and they had a massive contribution. In Argentina, that did contribute to the downfall of Cristina Kirchner.
It contributed to balance of payments problems that they had there. So this was important, and it's totally ignored in the United
States.
You have intervention in Mexico, for example. US officials have already said how worried they are that AMLO, Andres Manuel Lopez
Obrador, who is the frontrunner in the upcoming election in July. And he's probably going to win, but they're already trying to undermine
him, lobbying accusations of Russia involvement, which is the new trend. Of course, completely unsubstantiated.
In Venezuela they're doing something probably never done in the last 50 years, openly calling for a military coup, and actually
a financial embargo they've put in place, and threatening even a worse embargo if they don't get rid of the current government. So
that's a more aggressive form of intervention than you had even under the prior administrations.
A wave of neoliberal onslaught shakes currently Latin America. While in Argentina, Mauricio
Macri allegedly took the power normally, the
constitutional
coup against Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, as well as, the
usual actions
of the Right opposition in Venezuela against Nicolás Maduro with the help of the US finger, are far more obvious.
The special weight of these three countries in Latin America is extremely important for the US imperialism to regain ground in
the global geopolitical arena. Especially the last ten to fifteen years, each of them developed increasingly autonomous policies
away from the US close custody, under Leftist governments, and this was something that alarmed the US imperialism components.
Brazil appears to be the most important among the three, not only due to its size, but also as a member of the BRICS, the team
of fast growing economies who threaten the US and generally the Western global dominance. The constitutional coup against Rousseff
was rather a sloppy action and reveals the anxiety of the US establishment to regain control through puppet regimes. This is a well-known
situation from the past through which the establishment attempts to secure absolute dominance in the US backyard.
The importance of Venezuela due to its oil reserves is also significant. When Maduro tried to approach Russia in order to strengthen
the economic cooperation between the two countries, he must had set the alarm for the neocons in the US. Venezuela could find an
alternative in Russia and BRICS, in order to breathe from the multiple economic war that was set off by the US. It is characteristic
that the economic war against Russia by the US and the Saudis, by keeping the oil prices in historically low levels, had significant
impact on the Venezuelan economy too. It is also known that the US organizations are funding the opposition since Chávez era, in
order to proceed in provocative operations that could overthrow the Leftist governments.
The case of Venezuela is really interesting. The US imperialists were fiercely trying to overthrow the Leftist governments since
Chávez administration. They found now a weaker president, Nicolás Maduro - who certainly does not have the strength and personality
of Hugo Chávez - to achieve their goal.
The Western media mouthpieces are doing their job, which is propaganda as usual. The recipe is known. You present the half truth,
with a big overdose of exaggeration.
The establishment
parrots are demonizing Socialism , but they won't ever tell you about the money that the US is spending, feeding the
Right-Wing groups and opposition to proceed in provocative operations, in order to create instability. They won't tell you about
the financial war conducted through the oil prices, manipulated by the Saudis, the close US ally.
Regarding Argentina, former president, Cristina Kirchner, had also made some important moves towards the stronger cooperation
with Russia, which was something unacceptable for Washington's hawks. Not only for geopolitical reasons, but also because Argentina
could escape from the vulture funds that sucking its blood since its default. This would give the country an alternative to the neoliberal
monopoly of destruction. The US big banks and corporations would never accept such a perspective because the debt-enslaved Argentina
is a golden opportunity for a new round of huge profits. It's
happening right
now in debt colony, Greece.
"... 'It is difficult to get Artificial Intelligence to understand something, when the Research and Development funding it depends upon its not understanding it' ..."
"... dēfenestrātiō, ..."
"... 'If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists of treating another human being as a thing ..."
"... 'The Shockwave Rider ..."
"... This small article a polemic against neoliberal hegemony; in particular the emerging issue of 'surplus population' as related to technological displacement in context of a free market, an issue purposive to such hegemony which as an 'elephant growing in the panopticon' i.e. not to be mentioned? ..."
"... – 'One dimensionality in, one dimensionality out' ..."
"... 'Farewell to the Working Class' ..."
"... It is a relatively small step from ' the death of thought' to 'the death of Life' ..."
"... Under neoliberal orthodoxy the political utility of the 'Proles' and in particular the 'Lumpenproletariat', alas, is as to but fear as a 'stick'; a basis of control and manipulation same sense as Upton Sinclair explicated 'carrot' contingent by way of synonym seen: to wit; accept control and manipulation as 'rewarded' or be 'expelled' ..."
'It is difficult to get Artificial Intelligence to understand something, when the Research and Development funding it depends
upon its not understanding it' –
'If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists of treating another human being as a thing '
John Brunner 'The Shockwave Rider '
This small article a polemic against neoliberal hegemony; in particular the emerging issue of 'surplus population' as related
to technological displacement in context of a free market, an issue purposive to such hegemony which as an 'elephant growing in the
panopticon' i.e. not to be mentioned?
The central premise is that Artificial Intelligence (AI) + Robotics comprise a nefarious as formulaic temptation to the elite
of the 'Technetronic era' as Zbigniew Brzezinski put it: this consistent with a determinism as stems ontologically from 'Empiricism'
form of a 'One Dimensionality'
as Marcuse phrased it over five Decades ago; and which thru being but mere simulacra, AI and Robotics represent an ontological imperative
potentially expropriated under pathology to denial of Kant's concept of 'categorical imperative'? (That Kant did not subscribe to
determinism is acknowledged). The neoliberal concepts of 'Corporatism' and 'free market' are powerful examples of this 'one dimensionality'
which is clearly pathological, a topic notably explored by
Joel Bakan concerning the pursuit of profit within a Corporatist framework.
– 'One dimensionality in, one dimensionality out' – so it goes ontologically as to some paraphrase of
GIGO as trending alas way of 'technological determinism'
towards an 'Epitaph for Biodiversity' as would be – way of 'Garbage' or 'Junk' un apperceived as much as 'retrospection' non occurrent
indeed -and where 'Farewell to the Working Class' as
André Gorz conceived to assume an entirely new meaning: -this to some denouement of 'Dystopian Nightmare' as opposed to 'Utopian
Dream', alas; such the 'Age of Leisure' as 'beckoning' to be not for the majority or ' Demos', but rather for the 'technetronic
elite' and their 'AI' and Robotics – such 'leisure' being as to a 'freedom' pathological and facilitated by the absence of conscience
as much as morality; such the 'farewell'; such the defenestration of 'surplus' , such the 'Age' we 'live' within as to 'expropriation'
and 'arrogation' to amount to 'Death by Panopticon' such the 'apotheosis'?
It is being so cheerful which keeps these small quarters going.
But digression.
– It is a relatively small step from ' the death of thought' to 'the death of Life' under Neoliberal Orthodoxy as
proving to be the most toxic ideology ever known – such the hegemony as a deliberative, shift of the ' Overton Window' currently
occurring as to trend deterministic; such the mere necrotrophy as a 'defenestration' – and the 'one percent' but a deadly collective
of parasitic orifice? For what is 'Empiricism' when implemented thru AI and Robotic Technology in a Corporatist economy as but a
'selective investment' as to Research and Development by elite 'private interests', which to a determinism so evidently entailing
a whole raft of 'consequence' ; such the means, such the production, such the 'phenomenology' as 'owned' indeed? Under pathology,
selectivity is impaired to point of 'militarization'?
But foremost amongst said 'raft' of consequence – the concept of 'classification' as incorporates methodological reduction of
the particular to a composite of generalities so typical of 'Science' as expropriated; the fruition thereof replicated not least
thru 'Consumerism' – and 'Lifestyle' – as much as 'Life' reduced as much as abrogated to but correlation way of 'possession' of 'things':
this as said replication expressed as much 'thru' Linnaeus as Marx concerning 'class'- and as results in concepts' Incorporated'
such as the 'Overton Window' – as will be explored by way of 'extrapolation' below? The debasing of identity as a correlate of possessions
as a necessary 'abrogation' by way of engineered 'bio hack' is only furthered, such the loss of dimensionality as a potential, by
such as social media ? An excellent multimedia illustration
of such loss is found here.
It to be noted that for Empiricism the concept of 'good' and 'evil' entails an extra dimensionality as 'metaphysical' – and that
'Politics' so deconstructed despite abuse under orthodoxy as to 'mitigation' remains as 'Moral Economics' – this despite the mitigative
contention of neoliberal orthodoxy that there no morality in the 'synonymy'; to a pragmatic as 'Utilitarian' point of a
'Killing the Host' prevailing
at paradigmatic as much as Geopolitical level as but explicative of a 'necrotrophy'; as much as the 'defenestration' as euphemism
herein proposed this small article would explicate?
Kudos to Michael Hudson for exposing, and continuing to expose, the 'death of thought' which Neoliberalism as an
orthodoxy as but a mere 'racket' of 'transfer of resources' represents.
... ... ...
Under neoliberal orthodoxy the political utility of the 'Proles' and in particular the 'Lumpenproletariat', alas, is as to
but fear as a 'stick'; a basis of control and manipulation same sense as Upton Sinclair explicated 'carrot' contingent by way of
synonym seen: to wit; accept control and manipulation as 'rewarded' or be 'expelled' ; be but as a 'Prole' subsisting and awaiting
death, such the economic incarceration as 'CAFO' epitomises the cheapening of life under a hegemony as has corollary of alienation,
marginalization and impoverishment wielded under Dystopian imperative; this to a 'transfer of resources' from ' Eros ' to
' Thanatos ' reinforced thru contingency of profit such the 'ponerology' of 'Biodiversity' reduced by way of paradigm Geopolitical?
All of these events are CIA/Mossad/MI6. All of them.
From 9/11 to mass shootings, al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, white supremecists and even
Antifa, all funded, trained by the state, with our tax dollars.
Fighting wars: The United States has been fighting wars nonstop since its military invaded
Afghanistan in October 2001. That's almost 17 years of invasions, occupations, air campaigns,
drone strikes, special operations raids, naval air and missile attacks, and so much else,
from the Philippines to Pakistan, Afghanistan to Syria, Libya to Niger isn't fighting
unending wars across thousands of miles of the planet for almost 17 years without end, while
making the president into a global assassin, just a tad extreme?
Of course it is. But despite the title of the article, I can't help but notice that most
of it concentrates on the 16 of those 17 years that happen to have occurred before the Trump
"caliphate". But why should Tom Englehardt be expected to get such trivial details correct?
After all, Tom turned out to be wrong when he ominously warned us about the dangers of Trump
getting us into another Korean war.
Tom's own words from July 9th, 2017 haven't aged well
If hostilities broke out and spiraled out of control, as they might, countless people
could die, nuclear weapons could indeed be used for the first time since 1945, and parts of
Asia could be ravaged (including possibly areas of Japan). What a second Korean War might
mean, in other words, is almost beyond imagining.
the officials he appointed went to work to transform the very refugees we had such a
hand in creating into terrifying bogeymen, potentially the most dangerous and extreme
people on the planet, and then turned to the task of ensuring that none of them would ever
arrive in this country. Doesn't that seem like an extreme set of acts and responses?
No, Tom. It seems like normal behavior from people who aren't ethnomasochists. I'm not
some kind of -phobic with an irrational fear if I want my descendants to not live in a
wartorn country they may eventually end up suffering a total genocide at the hands of these
"widows and orphans" (read: military-aged males who think European lands are up for grabs and
will be theirs in the future).
You see, the normal person who voted for Trump wanted what his surface-level politics
during the campaign trail were about. Not the stuff he's actually been doing which no one
voted for (yes, democracy is a bad system with no accountability,) but the stuff he talked
about. The end to this neoliberal insanity which you support most of. If you really cared so
much about the environment, you wouldn't be for mass migration. If you really cared about
minimizing conflict, you wouldn't be for mass migration since migration is the same as war in
its effects and eventual outcome.
It is not some arbitrary preference that I want a territory maintained for my kind and not
invaded by unending migration of alien peoples whom we are poked, prodded, pressured, coerced
and forced to miscegenate ourselves out of existence with by social engineers bent on a
European genocide, which they are beginning to get louder and louder with their intent on
with each passing year and the constant gloating that they think "in the future, there won't
BE any white people! and that's a good thing!"
The reason we care more about these terrorist attacks on our soil is that we expect them
to do as they do in their own countries, but the glaring fact is the people doing this in our
countries aren't us, and never will be us. They are interlopers we didn't invite in; they
were invited in from the top down with no consent.
Speaking of which, people own weapons in the US because they can and because they don't
trust their government. Given what that government has done for the last 50+ years, why
should they? People in other countries would do the same were they not such totalitarian
nightmare states crushing down on their native population, like in Britain. Speaking of
bogeymen by the way, you want to pin this all on Trump when the material conditions for much
of what you wring your hands about existed well before he even announced his run. Criticize
the fact that he isn't doing what he was elected to do. Don't try to concoct some lame duck
grand narrative that he caused all of these problems, because he didn't.
The reason America is becoming "extreme" is because it's no longer a real, solvent
country. No longer a nation–a coherent people with real, concrete commonalities. It is
many people vying for power and handouts and patronage, many of whom share nothing in common
at all. I share no peoplehood with Africans, Arabs, Mestizos and a host of others who've been
flooded in over the last several decades and have transformed the country into something it
manifestly as per the census data was not just decades back.
I share no peoplehood with Africans, Arabs, Mestizos and a host of others who've been
flooded in over the last several decades and have transformed the country into something it
manifestly as per the census data was not just decades back.
I'm willing to bet you share a lot more personhood with those people you listed than the
people who "own" your country. BTW, the people who "own" your country most likely hate your
guts, and consider you expendable if you ever get in their way.
" This subject came to my mind recently thanks to a story I noticed about another extreme
wedding slaughter "
Better late than never.
How long it is ago that a Malaysian president spoke to mainly western diplomats, and asked
the question 'who are the terrorists, those who, at 17 km height push buttons in
B-52′s, or those who give their lives on the ground ?', I do not remember.
The diplomats left during the speech.
UN expert on human rights De Zaya's wanted, suppose he does not live any more, Great
Britain and the USA persecuted for bombing German cities in WWII, just killing women,
children and old men.
Dresden is the best known example, alas it is not known that even small towns as Anklam were
bombed.
And then, when began all this ?
Churchill saw the genocide in what is N Afghanistan as a necessary act.
And of course the Muslim religion was to blame.
Winston Churchill, 'The Story of the Malakand Field Force', 1898, 2004, New York
Ian Hernon, 'Britain's Forgotten Wars, Colonial Campaigns of the 19th Century', 2003, 2007,
Chalford – Stroud
The last book also describes this genocide, but one of the most bloody massacres described is
against the Sikh army.
I'd like to thank Unz for this brief comic relief on their site. Sometimes the affairs in the
world seem too much and a good laugh every now and then is necessary. For example Bashir
Al-Assad killing his own people on a regular basis was hysterical!! Imagine him getting Sarin
gas from ISIS depots paid for by Israel and the United States just so he could get the same
United States to bomb him! That's like saying Obama was a weak president for NOT attacking
Syria when he was merely informed as to who was REALLY not killing Syrian civilians because,
as Putin proved, Assad didn't have those weapons. What was really funny was that America does
not have extremists in charge so when we kill civilians it must be an accident!
"Its national security budget is larger than those of the next eight countries combined "
My favourite statistic is to compare the increase in the formal US "defence" budget ($80
billion) for this year with the total Russian defence budget ($46 billion).
I couldn't agree more, Your comment sums up how a lot of people are feeling. No wonder
Nationalist or Nationalist inspired parties and leaders are emerging all over the European
world, We are waking up and beginning to take our own side
I just cannot believe that you Americans descend to squabbling about who is more virtuous
– Nero or Caligula.
Mr Putin showed that he understands the system perfectly. First he said that he sees no
point in talking to European leaders, since they all take their orders from Washington. Then
he further explained that presidents come and presidents go, but the policies remain exactly
the same.
It's a shame that so few Americans understand their own political system as well as Mr
Putin does.
"However, one thing is, almost by definition, obvious. We are not a nation of extreme acts or
extreme killers. Quite the opposite".
The USA is admirably positioned for security: it controls most of a large isolated
continent, with only Canada and Mexico as immediate neighbours and vast oceans to the sides.
As Jules Jusserand, French Ambassador to the US, remarked in 1910:
"The United States was blessed among nations. On the north, she had a weak neighbour; on
the south, another weak neighbour; on the east, fish; and on the west, fish".
Long before that, Abraham Lincoln said more or less the same thing:
"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify
against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush
us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the
treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a
commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge,
in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be
expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from
abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation
of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide".
- Abraham Lincoln; The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume
I, "Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum,of Springfield, Illinois (January 27, 1838), p.
109.
So it is surprising to find out that the USA has been at war for 93% of its existence.
That means Americans have experienced peace during only 21 years out of 239.
That's rather odd, isn't it, for a country with impregnable natural borders whom no one
has even tried to attack?
"Yes, we make mistakes. Yes, we sometimes kill. Yes, we sometimes even kill the innocent,
however mistakenly".
A very rough estimate suggests that, since 1950, the US government through its armed
forces has killed at the very least 10 million Asians alone. Three million in Korea, the same
in Vietnam and its neighbours, and the same in Iraq. That's without even considering the
dozens of other nations the USA has attacked (and with which, legally, it is still at war
since no peace treaties were ever concluded).
I recently discovered UNZ.COM and was delighted to have found a site with good intelligently
written articles, then I read this utter crap and now I'm wondering
We here in the United States are, of course, eternally shocked by their extremism, their
willingness to kill the innocent without compunction, particularly in the case of Islamist
groups, from the 9/11 attacks to ISIS's more recent slaughters.
Tom appears to be another lackey for Zionism, ready to keep telling lies about those evil
Moozies that supposedly attacked the USA on 9/11, when anyone who still has brain cells left
knows that 9/11 was an Israeli masterminded False Flag with help from traitors in the WH,
the Pentagon, CIA, FBI and NSA. With generous assistance from the Lying MSM.
Take your CIA pres releases elsewhere Mr. Tom, we no longer wish to hear your lies in
support of endless wars for the glory of Apartheid Israel realizing its YINON plan to stretch
Israel from the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates and from Turkey to Arabia.
Oded Yinon's "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties"
The nonsense that Assad's army deliberately poisons its own people with chemical weapons
is a well-known false-flag. How could he control his Syrian army if that went on? It is
absolutely ridiculous.
As for 9/11, it was an inside job – with many Israeli "students" laying the
explosives in the THREE buildings at night over a period of months. The fact that no one
lived in them and that a Bush company was responsible for security is all you need to know.
Naturally, there were no Israeli victims – a statistical impossibility if they were not
forewarned.
The most thoroughly amoral, vicious ruling group in the region is the House of Saud. And the
US and the Israelis are both deep into bed with the Saudis.
"Only to those who do not know that many people live in deserts"
People do not "live in deserts" rather they live in settlements which are located in the
desert.
They do not just go out into the blazing sand and throw down blankets and buckets, and
then start "Living in the desert".
And they do not hold bonafide "wedding parties" out in the desert, under the relentless
burning sun, rather they hold their wedding parties in settlements which are located in thte
desert with a modicum of human comforts.
Look friend myself being world traveler, I have been to north africa on more than one
occasion, and I know wtf I am talking about.
AJM "Mensa" qualified since 1973, airborne trained US army vet, and pro jazz artisit.
Today, still under central planning (if the US Government's recent statements are to be believed), it is overtaking
the USA in almost every metric, too.
We agree,
There is a "thousand" ways into relative(as compared to distinct entities) riches. For nations, for corporations (decidedly
authoritarian), for systems (Western public sector steerage of currency). All these venues are more or less "central
planning". The difference is mainly by whom.
There is no such venue-way into wealth for all(including the to be generations, understood as sustainability) spanning
the globe yet. The explanatory ambition of the art-y graphics of Rosling are equally primitive. Why? Pick any entity,
Global corporations as in the West, interacting public entities such as the World Bank, the EU "central planning economies",
economic theories. Not a single one includes the variables of population, resources, toxicity, a long-term vision. Neither
is there any hint to a clear goal such as quality of life. The funny suggestion, pushed as of lately to convert the globe's
population into eating as vegetarians. Eating as a vegetarian to obsolete cattle, has the serious drawback of now humanoids
producing the same amount of Co2 per calorie as a cow. The examples of running against the wall for not expanding the
context of theory to reality are endless.
Back to Rosling myopia: how on earth can he suggest, without questioning the basic feasibility for physical limits
of resources and toxicity a "middle class" status (a relative concept by the way), for all? This is just a single example.
Rosling is a statistics clown, proof of how numbers can lie better then words. His prowess lies in being a clown, he
made as one of the first ones, graphics, statistics sexy for the crowds.
"... There could be no eye witnesses to such sadism, and the very extremism sounds very much like war propaganda – Germans carving up Belgian babies. ..."
"... The notion that Assad himself infected the rebellion with Islamic fanaticism is at best a hypothesis concerning not facts but intentions, which are invisible. But it is presented as unchallengeable evidence of Assad's perverse wickedness. ..."
"... a beleaguered state very much at the mercy of a rapacious Western imperialism that was seeking to carve the country up according to the appetites of the US government and the International Monetary Fund ..."
"... In reality, a much more pertinent "framing" of Western intervention, taboo in the mainstream and even in Moscow, is that Western support for armed rebels in Syria was being carried out to help Israel destroy its regional enemies. ..."
"... The Middle East nations attacked by the West – Iraq, Libya and Syria – all just happen to be, or to have been, the last strongholds of secular Arab nationalism and support for Palestinian rights. ..."
"... There are a few alternative hypotheses as to Western motives – oil pipelines, imperialist atavism, desire to arouse Islamic extremism in order to weaken Russia (the Brzezinski gambit) – but none are as coherent as the organic alliance between Israel and the United States, and its NATO sidekicks. ..."
"... No other mention of Israel, which occupies Syrian territory (the Golan Heights) and bombs Syria whenever it wants to. ..."
"... The Trotskyists keep yearning for a new revolution, just like the Bolshevik revolution. Yes, but the Bolshevik revolution ended in Stalinism. Doesn't that tell them something? Isn't it quite possible that their much-desired "revolution" might turn out just as badly in Syria, if not much worse? ..."
"... In our era, the most successful revolutions have been in Third World countries, where national liberation from Western powers was a powerful emotional engine. Successful revolutions have a program that unifies people and leaders who personify the aspirations of broad sectors of the population. Socialism or communism was above all a rallying cry meaning independence and "modernization" – which is indeed what the Bolshevik revolution turned out to be. ..."
"... "In the context of a global neoliberalism, where governments across the board were enacting the most pronounced forms of deregulation and overseeing the carving up of state industries by private capital, the Assad government responded to the heightening contradictions in the Syrian economy by following suit -- by showing the ability to march to the tempo of foreign investment while evincing a willingness to cut subsidies for workers and farmers." The neoliberal turn impoverished people in the countryside, therefore creating a situation that justified "revolution". ..."
"... This is rather amazing, if one thinks about it. Without the alternative Soviet bloc, virtually the whole world has been obliged to conform to anti-social neoliberal policies. Syria included. Does this make Bashar al Assad so much more a villain than every other leader conforming to U.S.-led globalization? ..."
"... One could turn that around. Shouldn't such a Marxist revolutionary be saying: "if we can't defeat the oligarchs in the West, who are responsible for the neoliberal policies imposed on the rest of the world, how can we possibly begin to provide class-struggle leadership in Syria?" ..."
"... The trouble with Trotskyists is that they are always "supporting" other people's more or less imaginary revolutions. They are always telling others what to do. They know it all. The practical result of this verbal agitation is simply to align this brand of Trotskyism with U.S imperialism. The obsession with permanent revolution ends up providing an ideological alibi for permanent war. ..."
I first encountered Trotskyists in Minnesota half a century ago during the movement against the Vietnam War. I appreciated
their skill in organizing anti-war demonstrations and their courage in daring to call themselves "communists" in the United
States of America – a profession of faith that did not groom them for the successful careers enjoyed by their intellectual
counterparts in France. So I started my political activism with sympathy toward the movement. In those days it was in clear
opposition to U.S. imperialism, but that has changed.
The first thing one learns about Trotskyism is that it is split into rival tendencies. Some remain consistent critics
of imperialist war, notably those who write for the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS).
Others, however, have translated the Trotskyist slogan of "permanent revolution" into the hope that every minority uprising
in the world must be a sign of the long awaited world revolution – especially those that catch the approving eye of mainstream
media. More often than deploring U.S. intervention, they join in reproaching Washington for not intervening sooner on behalf
of the alleged revolution.
A recent article in the International Socialist Review (issue #108, March 1, 2018) entitled "Revolution and counterrevolution
in Syria" indicates so thoroughly how Trotskyism goes wrong that it is worthy of a critique. Since the author, Tony McKenna,
writes well and with evident conviction, this is a strong not a weak example of the Trotskyist mindset.
McKenna starts out with a passionate denunciation of the regime of Bashar al Assad, which, he says, responded to a group
of children who simply wrote some graffiti on a wall by "beating them, burning them, pulling their fingernails out". The
source of this grisly information is not given. There could be no eye witnesses to such sadism, and the very extremism
sounds very much like war propaganda – Germans carving up Belgian babies.
But this raises the issue of sources. It is certain that there are many sources of accusations against the Assad regime,
on which McKenna liberally draws, indicating that he is writing not from personal observation, any more than I am. Clearly,
he is strongly disposed to believe the worst, and even to embroider it somewhat. He accepts and develops without the shadow
of a doubt the theory that Assad himself is responsible for spoiling the good revolution by releasing Islamic prisoners
who went on to poison it with their extremism. The notion that Assad himself infected the rebellion with Islamic fanaticism
is at best a hypothesis concerning not facts but intentions, which are invisible. But it is presented as unchallengeable
evidence of Assad's perverse wickedness.
This interpretation of events happens to dovetail neatly with the current Western doctrine on Syria, so that it is impossible
to tell them apart. In both versions, the West is no more than a passive onlooker, whereas Assad enjoys the backing of
Iran and Russia.
"Much has been made of Western imperial support for the rebels in the early years of the revolution. This has, in fact,
been an ideological lynchpin of first the Iranian and then the Russian military interventions as they took the side of
the Assad government. Such interventions were framed in the spirit of anticolonial rhetoric in which Iran and Russia purported
to come to the aid of a beleaguered state very much at the mercy of a rapacious Western imperialism that was seeking
to carve the country up according to the appetites of the US government and the International Monetary Fund ", according
to McKenna.
Whose "ideological lynchpin"? Not that of Russia, certainly, whose line in the early stages of its intervention was
not to denounce Western imperialism but to appeal to the West and especially to the United States to join in the fight
against Islamic extremism.
Neither Russia nor Iran "framed their interventions in the spirit of anticolonial rhetoric" but in terms of the fight
against Islamic extremism with Wahhabi roots.
In reality, a much more pertinent "framing" of Western intervention, taboo in the mainstream and even in Moscow,
is that Western support for armed rebels in Syria was being carried out to help Israel destroy its regional enemies.
The Middle East nations attacked by the West – Iraq, Libya and Syria – all just happen to be, or to have been, the
last strongholds of secular Arab nationalism and support for Palestinian rights.
There are a few alternative hypotheses as to Western motives – oil pipelines, imperialist atavism, desire to arouse
Islamic extremism in order to weaken Russia (the Brzezinski gambit) – but none are as coherent as the organic alliance
between Israel and the United States, and its NATO sidekicks.
It is remarkable that McKenna's long article (some 12 thousand words) about the war in Syria mentions Israel only once
(aside from a footnote citing Israeli national news as a source). And this mention actually equates Israelis and Palestinians
as co-victims of Assad propaganda: the Syrian government "used the mass media to slander the protestors, to present the
revolution as the chaos orchestrated by subversive international interests (the Israelis and the Palestinians were both
implicated in the role of foreign infiltrators)."
No other mention of Israel, which occupies Syrian territory (the Golan Heights) and bombs Syria whenever it wants
to.
Only one, innocuous mention of Israel! But this article by a Trotskyist mentions Stalin, Stalinists, Stalinism no less
than twenty-two times !
And what about Saudi Arabia, Israel's de facto ally in the effort to destroy Syria in order to weaken Iran? Two mentions,
both implicitly denying that notorious fact. The only negative mention is blaming the Saudi family enterprise for investing
billions in the Syrian economy in its neoliberal phase. But far from blaming Saudi Arabia for supporting Islamic groups,
McKenna portrays the House of Saud as a victim of ISIS hostility.
Clearly, the Trotskyist delusion is to see the Russian Revolution everywhere, forever being repressed by a new Stalin.
Assad is likened to Stalin several times.
This article is more about the Trotskyist case against Stalin than it is about Syria.
This repetitive obsession does not lead to a clear grasp of events which are not the Russian revolution. And
even on this pet subject, something is wrong.
The Trotskyists keep yearning for a new revolution, just like the Bolshevik revolution. Yes, but the Bolshevik revolution
ended in Stalinism. Doesn't that tell them something? Isn't it quite possible that their much-desired "revolution" might
turn out just as badly in Syria, if not much worse?
Throughout history, revolts, uprisings, rebellions happen all the time, and usually end in repression. Revolution is
very rare. It is more a myth than a reality, especially as Trotskyists tend to imagine it: the people all rising up in
one great general strike, chasing their oppressors from power and instituting people's democracy. Has this ever
happened?
For the Trotskyists, this seem to be the natural way things should happen and is stopped only by bad guys who spoil
it out of meanness.
In our era, the most successful revolutions have been in Third World countries, where national liberation from Western
powers was a powerful emotional engine. Successful revolutions have a program that unifies people and leaders who personify
the aspirations of broad sectors of the population. Socialism or communism was above all a rallying cry meaning independence
and "modernization" – which is indeed what the Bolshevik revolution turned out to be. If the Bolshevik revolution
turned Stalinist, maybe it was in part because a strong repressive leader was the only way to save "the revolution" from
its internal and external enemies. There is no evidence that, had he defeated Stalin, Trotsky would have been more tender-hearted.
Countries that are deeply divided ideologically and ethnically, such as Syria, are not likely to be "modernized" without
a strong rule.
McKenna acknowledges that the beginning of the Assad regime somewhat redeemed its repressive nature by modernization
and social reforms. This modernization benefited from Russian aid and trade, which was lost when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Yes, there was a Soviet bloc which despite its failure to carry out world revolution as Trotsky advocated, did support
the progressive development of newly independent countries.
If Bashar's father Hafez al Assad had some revolutionary legitimacy in McKenna's eyes, there is no excuse for Bashar.
"In the context of a global neoliberalism, where governments across the board were enacting the most pronounced
forms of deregulation and overseeing the carving up of state industries by private capital, the Assad government responded
to the heightening contradictions in the Syrian economy by following suit -- by showing the ability to march to the tempo
of foreign investment while evincing a willingness to cut subsidies for workers and farmers." The neoliberal turn impoverished
people in the countryside, therefore creating a situation that justified "revolution".
This is rather amazing, if one thinks about it. Without the alternative Soviet bloc, virtually the whole world has
been obliged to conform to anti-social neoliberal policies. Syria included. Does this make Bashar al Assad so much more
a villain than every other leader conforming to U.S.-led globalization?
McKenna concludes by quoting Louis Proyect: "If we line up on the wrong side of the barricades in a struggle between
the rural poor and oligarchs in Syria, how can we possibly begin to provide a class-struggle leadership in the USA, Britain,
or any other advanced capitalist country?"
One could turn that around. Shouldn't such a Marxist revolutionary be saying: "if we can't defeat the oligarchs
in the West, who are responsible for the neoliberal policies imposed on the rest of the world, how can we possibly begin
to provide class-struggle leadership in Syria?"
The trouble with Trotskyists is that they are always "supporting" other people's more or less imaginary revolutions.
They are always telling others what to do. They know it all. The practical result of this verbal agitation is simply to
align this brand of Trotskyism with U.S imperialism. The obsession with permanent revolution ends up providing an ideological
alibi for permanent war.
For the sake of world peace and progress, both the United States and its inadvertent Trotskyist apologists should go
home and mind their own business.
"... A McClatchy journalist investigated further and came to the same conclusion as I did. The 'leak' to the New York Times was disinformation. ..."
"... Russia has not pinned the Novichok to Sweden or the Czech Republic. It said, correctly, that several countries produced Novichok. Russia did not blame the UK for the 'nerve gas attack' in Syria. Russia says that there was no gas attack in Douma. ..."
"... The claims of Russian disinformation these authors make to not hold up to scrutiny. Meanwhile there pieces themselves are full of lies, distortions and, yes, disinformation. ..."
"... Wait for an outbreak of hostilities on the Ukraine-Donbass front shortly before the beginning of the World Cup competition which is as internationally important as the Olympic Games -- as they did in 2014 with Maidan and 2016 with the Sochi Winter Olympics drug uproar, the CIA will create chaos that will take the emphasis off any Russian success, since as to them, anything negative regarding Russia is a positive for them. ..."
"... No traces of chemical weapons have been found in Douma. This means that not only the US/UK/French airstrikes were illegal under international law but even their political justification was inherently flawed. Similarly, in the Salisbury affair, no evidence of Russian involvement has been presented, while the two myths on which the British case was built (the Russian origin of the chemical substance used and the existence of proof of Russian responsibility) have been shattered. ..."
"... Given the lack of facts, the Tory leadership seems to be adopting a truly Orwellian logic: that the main proof of Russian responsibility are the Russian denials! It is hard to see how they will be able to sell this to their international partners. Self-respecting countries of G20 would not be willing to risk their reputation. ..."
"... The detail of b's analysis that stands out to me as especially significant and brilliant is his demolition of the Guardian's reuse of the Merkel "quote." ..."
"... Related to the above, consider the nature of the recently christened thought-crime, "whataboutism." The crime may be defined as follows: "Whataboutism" is the attempt to understand a truth asserted by propaganda by way of relation to other truths it has asserted contemporaneous with or prior to this one. It is to ask, "What about this *other* truth? Does this *other* truth affect our understanding of *this* truth? And if so, how does it?" ..."
"... Whataboutism seems to deny that each asserted truth stands on its own, and has no essential relation to any other past, present, or future asserted truth. ..."
"... 1984, anyone? ..."
"... The absurd story that the OPCW says there was a 100gm/100mg who knows which on the door and other sites is just so stupid its painful. ..."
"... Presumably the Skripals touch the cutlery, plates and wine glasses in the restaurant, so why weren't the staff there infected as they must have had to pick up the plates etc after the meal. Even the door to the entrance of the restaurant should be affected as they would have to push it open, thus leaving the chemical for other people to touch. Nope, nothing in this stupid story adds up and the OPCW can't even get the amounts of the chemical right. ..."
"... Biggest problem with the world today is lazy insouciant citizens. ..."
"... One very important point Lavrov made was the anti-Russian group consists of a very small number of nations representing a small fraction of humanity; ..."
"... while they have some economic and military clout, it's possible for the rest of the world's nations to sideline them and get on with the important business of forming a genuine Multipolar World Order, which is what the UN and its Charter envisioned. ..."
"... Anything that may not confirm to the 'truth' as prescribed from above must be overwhelmed with an onslaught of more lies or, if that does not work, be discredited as 'enemy' disinformation. ..."
"... Yes, exactly. The Western hegemony, i.e. the true "Axis of Evil" led by the US, and including the EU and non-Western allies, have invented the Perpetual Big Lie™. ..."
"... Witnesses? They're either confederates, dupes, or terrified by coercion. Evidence and/or technical analysis? All faked! A nominally reliable party, e.g. the president of the Czech Republic, makes statements that undermine the Big Lie Nexus? Again-- he's either been bought off or frightened into making such inconvenient claims. Or he's just a mischievous liar. ..."
"... And, as I seemingly never get tired of pointing out, the Perpetual Big Lie™ strategy arose, and succeeds, because the "natural enemies" of authoritarian government overreach have been coerced or co-opted to a fare-thee-well. So mass-media venues, and even supposedly independent technical and scientific organizations, are part of the Perpetual Big Lie™ apparatus. ..."
"... Putting Kudrin -- an opponent of de-dollarization and an upholder of the Washington Consensus -- in charge of Russia's international outreach would be equal to putting Bill Clinton in charge of a girls' school. ..."
"... In the Guardian I only read the comments, never the article. Here, I read both. That is the difference between propaganda and good reporting. ..."
The Grauniad is slipping deeper into the disinformation business:
Revealed: UK's push to strengthen anti-Russia alliance is the headline of a page one piece
which reveals exactly nothing. There is no secret lifted and no one was discomforted by a
questioning journalist.
Like other such pieces it uses disinformation to accuse Russia of spreading such.
The main 'revelation' is stenographed from a British government official. Some quotes from
the usual anti-Russian propagandists were added. Dubious or false 'western' government claims
are held up as truth. That Russia does not endorse them is proof for Russian mischievousness
and its 'disinformation'.
The opener:
The UK will use a series of international summits this year to call for a comprehensive
strategy to combat Russian disinformation and urge a rethink over traditional diplomatic
dialogue with Moscow, following the Kremlin's aggressive campaign of denials over the use of
chemical weapons in the UK and Syria.
...
"The foreign secretary regards Russia's response to Douma and Salisbury as a turning point
and thinks there is international support to do more," a Whitehall official said. "The areas
the UK are most likely to pursue are countering Russian disinformation and finding a
mechanism to enforce accountability for the use of chemical weapons."
There is a mechanism to enforce accountability for the use of chemical weapons. It is the
Chemical Weapon Convention and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
It was the British government which at first
rejected the use of these instruments during the Skripal incident:
Early involvement of the OPCW, as demanded by Russia, was resisted by the British
government. Only on March 14, ten days after the incident happened and two days after Prime
Minister Theresa may had made accusations against Russia, did the British government invite
the OPCW. Only on March 19, 15 days after the incident happen did the OPCW technical team
arrive and took blood samples.
Now back to the Guardian disinformation:
In making its case to foreign ministries, the UK is arguing that Russian denials over
Salisbury and Douma reveal a state uninterested in cooperating to reach a common
understanding of the truth , but instead using both episodes to try systematically to divide
western electorates and sow doubt.
A 'common understanding of the truth' is an interesting term. What is the truth? Whatever
the British government claims? It accused Russia of the Skripal incident a mere eight days
after it happened. Now, two month later, it admits that it
does not know who poisoned the Skripals:
Police and intelligence agencies have failed so far to identify the individual or
individuals who carried out the nerve agent attack in Salisbury, the UK's national security
adviser has disclosed.
Do the Brits know where the alleged Novichok poison came from? Unless they produced it
themselves they likely have no idea. The Czech Republic just admitted that it
made small doses of a Novichok nerve agent for testing purposes. Others did too.
Back to the Guardian :
British politicians are not alone in claiming Russia's record of mendacity is not a personal
trait of Putin's, but a government-wide strategy that makes traditional diplomacy
ineffective.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, famously came off one lengthy phone call with Putin
– she had more than 40 in a year – to say he lived in a different world.
No, Merkel never said that. An Obama administration flunky planted that
in the New York Times :
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told Mr. Obama by telephone on Sunday that after speaking
with Mr. Putin she was not sure he was in touch with reality, people briefed on the call
said. "In another world," she said.
When that claim was made in March 2014 we were immediately suspicious
of it:
This does not sound like typically Merkel but rather strange for her. I doubt that she said
that the way the "people briefed on the call" told it to the Times stenographer. It is rather
an attempt to discredit Merkel and to make it more difficult for her to find a solution with
Russia outside of U.S. control.
A day later the German government
denied (ger) that Merkel ever said such (my translation):
The chancellery is unhappy about the report in the New York Times. Merkel by no means meant
to express that Putin behaved irrational. In fact she told Obama that Putin has a different
perspective about the Crimea [than Obama has].
A McClatchy journalist investigated
further and came to the same conclusion as I did. The 'leak' to the New York Times was
disinformation.
That disinformation, spread by the Obama administration but immediately exposed as false, is
now held up as proof by Patrick Wintour, the Diplomatic editor of the Guardian , that
Russia uses disinformation and that Putin is a naughty man.
The British Defense Minister Gavin Williamson
wants journalists to enter the UK reserve forces to help with the creation of
propaganda:
He said army recruitment should be about "looking to different people who maybe think, as a
journalist: 'What are my skills in terms of how are they relevant to the armed forces?'
Patrick Wintour seems to be a qualified candidate.
Or maybe he should join the NATO for Information Warfare the Atlantic Council wants to
create to further disinform about those damned Russkies:
What we need now is a cross-border defense alliance against disinformation -- call it
Communications NATO. Such an alliance is, in fact, nearly as important as its military
counterpart.
Like the Guardian piece above writer of the NATO propaganda lobby Atlantic Council
makes claims of Russian disinformation that do not hold up to the slightest test:
By pinning the Novichok nerve agent on Sweden or the Czech Republic, or blaming the UK for
the nerve gas attack in Syria, the Kremlin sows confusion among our populations and makes us
lose trust in our institutions.
Russia has not pinned the Novichok to Sweden or the Czech Republic. It said, correctly, that
several countries produced Novichok. Russia did not blame the UK for the 'nerve gas attack' in
Syria. Russia says that there was no gas attack in Douma.
The claims of Russian disinformation these authors make to not hold up to scrutiny.
Meanwhile there pieces themselves are full of lies, distortions and, yes, disinformation.
The bigger aim behind all these activities, demanding a myriad of new organizations to
propagandize against Russia, is to introduce a strict control over information within 'western'
societies.
Anything that may not confirm to the 'truth' as prescribed from above must be overwhelmed
with an onslaught of more lies or, if that does not work, be discredited as 'enemy'
disinformation.
That scheme will be used against anyone who deviates from the ordered norm. You dislike that
pipeline in your backyard? You must be falling for
Russian trolls or maybe you yourself are an agent of a foreign power. Social Security? The
Russians like that. It is a disinformation thing. You better forget about it.
Excellent article, in an ongoing run of great journalism.
I am curious - have you read this? https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/
It purports to be a book by an American military man intimately familiar with the covert ops
portion of the US government. The internal Kafka-esque dynamics described certainly feel
true.
One of the reasons newspapers are getting worse is the economics. They aren't really viable
anymore. Their future is as some form of government sanctioned oligopoly. Two national papers
-- a "left" and a "right" -- and then a handful of regional papers. All spouting the same
neoliberal, neoconservative chicanery.
Genuine journalist Matt Taibbi warned of this sort of branding of disparate views as enemy a
month ago. He was also correct. Evil and insidious. The enemy of a free society.
Wait for an outbreak of hostilities on the Ukraine-Donbass front shortly before the beginning
of the World Cup competition which is as internationally important as the Olympic Games -- as
they did in 2014 with Maidan and 2016 with the Sochi Winter Olympics drug uproar, the CIA
will create chaos that will take the emphasis off any Russian success, since as to them,
anything negative regarding Russia is a positive for them.
I agree that it's difficult to see how the drive to renew the Cold War is going to be
stopped. I presume that, with the exception of certain NeoCon circles, there isn't a desire
for Hot War. Certainly not in the British sources you quote. Britain wouldn't want Hot War
with Russia. It's all a question of going to the limit for internal consumption. Do a 1984,
in order to keep the population in-line.
thanks b... i can't understand how any intelligent thinking person would read the guardian,
let alone something like the huff post, and etc. etc... why? the propaganda money that pays
for the white helmets, certainly goes to these outlets as well..
the uk have gone completely nuts! i guess it comes with reading the guardian, although, in
fairness, all british media seems very skewed - sky news, bbc, and etc. etc.
it does appear as though Patrick Wintour is on Gavin Williamson's propaganda
bandwagon/payroll already... in reading the comments and articles at craig murrays site, i
have become more familiar with just how crazy things are in the uk.. his latest article
freedom no
more sums it up well... throw the uk msm in the trash can... it is for all intensive
purposes, done..
Meanwhile, OPCW chief Uzumcu seems to have been pranked again, this time by his own staff
(this is how I interpret it):
He claimed that the amount of Novichok found was about 100 g and therefore more than
research laboratories would produce, i.e. this was weaponized Novichok.
Q: What is our reaction to the Guardian article on a "comprehensive strategy" to "deepen
the alliance against Russia" to be pursued by the UK Government at international forums?
A: Judging by the publication, the main current challenge for Whitehall is to preserve
the anti-Russian coalition that the Conservatives tried to build after the Salisbury
incident. This task is challenging indeed. The "fusion doctrine" promoted by the national
security apparatus has led to the Western bloc taking hasty decisions that, as life has
shown, were not based on any facts.
No traces of chemical weapons have been found in Douma. This means that not only the
US/UK/French airstrikes were illegal under international law but even their political
justification was inherently flawed. Similarly, in the Salisbury affair, no evidence of
Russian involvement has been presented, while the two myths on which the British case was
built (the Russian origin of the chemical substance used and the existence of proof of
Russian responsibility) have been shattered.
Given the lack of facts, the Tory leadership seems to be adopting a truly Orwellian
logic: that the main proof of Russian responsibility are the Russian denials! It is hard to
see how they will be able to sell this to their international partners. Self-respecting
countries of G20 would not be willing to risk their reputation.
Hmmm... My reply to c1ue went sideways it seems. Yes, The late Mr. Prouty's book's the real
deal and the website hosting his very rare book is a rare gem itself. Click the JFK at page
top left to be transported to that sites archive of writings about his murder. The very important essay by
Prouty's there too.
The detail of b's analysis that stands out to me as especially significant and brilliant is
his demolition of the Guardian's reuse of the Merkel "quote."
This one detail tells us so much about how propaganda works, and about how it can be
defeated. Successful propaganda both depends upon and seeks to accelerate the erasure of
historical memory. This is because its truths are always changing to suit the immediate needs
of the state. None of its truths can be understood historically. b makes the connection
between the documented but forgotten past "truth" of Merkel's quote and its present
reincarnation in the Guardian, and this is really all he *needs* to do. What b points out is
something quite simple; yet the ability to do this very simple thing is becoming increasingly
rare and its exercise increasingly difficult to achieve. It is for me the virtue that makes
b's analysis uniquely indispensable.
Related to the above, consider the nature of the recently christened thought-crime,
"whataboutism." The crime may be defined as follows: "Whataboutism" is the attempt to
understand a truth asserted by propaganda by way of relation to other truths it has asserted
contemporaneous with or prior to this one. It is to ask, "What about this *other* truth? Does
this *other* truth affect our understanding of *this* truth? And if so, how does it?"
Whataboutism seems to deny that each asserted truth stands on its own, and has no
essential relation to any other past, present, or future asserted truth.
The absurd story that the OPCW says there was a 100gm/100mg who knows which on the door and
other sites is just so stupid its painful. This implies that the Skripals both closed the
door together and then went off on their day spreading the stuff everywhere, yet no one else
was contaminated (apart from the fantasy policeman).
Presumably the Skripals touch the
cutlery, plates and wine glasses in the restaurant, so why weren't the staff there infected
as they must have had to pick up the plates etc after the meal. Even the door to the entrance
of the restaurant should be affected as they would have to push it open, thus leaving the
chemical for other people to touch. Nope, nothing in this stupid story adds up and the OPCW
can't even get the amounts of the chemical right.
The problem is,,, most know it's all BS but find it 'easier' to believe or at most ignore, as
then there is no responsibility to 'do something'. Biggest problem with the world today is
lazy insouciant citizens. (Yes,,, I'm a PCR reader) :))
Did you catch the Lavrov interview I linked to on previous Yemen thread? As you might
imagine, the verbiage used is quite similar. One very important point Lavrov made was the
anti-Russian group consists of a very small number of nations representing a small fraction
of humanity; and that while they have some economic and military clout, it's possible for the
rest of the world's nations to sideline them and get on with the important business of
forming a genuine Multipolar World Order, which is what the UN and its Charter
envisioned.
"I cannot sufficiently express my outrage that Leeds City Council feels it is right to ban
a meeting with very distinguished speakers, because it is questioning the government and
establishment line on Syria. Freedom of speech really is dead."
Anything that may not confirm to the 'truth' as prescribed from above must be overwhelmed
with an onslaught of more lies or, if that does not work, be discredited as 'enemy'
disinformation. _______________________________________
Yes, exactly. The Western hegemony, i.e. the true "Axis of Evil" led by the US, and
including the EU and non-Western allies, have invented the Perpetual Big Lie™.
This isn't a new insight, but it's worth repeating. It struck me anew while I was
listening to a couple of UK "journalists" hectoring OPCW Representative Shulgin, and
directing scurrilous and provocative innuendo disguised as "questions" to Mr. Shulgin and the
Syrian witnesses testifying during his presentation.
It flashed upon me that there is no longer a reasonable expectation that the Perpetual Big
Liars must eventually abandon, much less confess, their heinous mendacity. Just as B points
out, there are no countervailing facts, evidence, rebuttals, theories, or explanations
that can't be countered with further iterations of Big Lies, however offensively incredible
and absurd.
Witnesses? They're either confederates, dupes, or terrified by coercion. Evidence and/or
technical analysis? All faked! A nominally reliable party, e.g. the president of the Czech
Republic, makes statements that undermine the Big Lie Nexus? Again-- he's either been bought
off or frightened into making such inconvenient claims. Or he's just a mischievous liar.
And, as I seemingly never get tired of pointing out, the Perpetual Big Lie™ strategy
arose, and succeeds, because the "natural enemies" of authoritarian government overreach have
been coerced or co-opted to a fare-thee-well. So mass-media venues, and even supposedly
independent technical and scientific organizations, are part of the Perpetual Big Lie™
apparatus.
Even as the Big Liars reach a point of diminishing returns, they respond with more of the
same. I wish I were more confident that this reprehensible practice will eventually fail due
to the excess of malignant hubris; I'm not holding my breath.
Is Putin capitulating? Pro US Alexei Kudrin could join new government to negotiate "end of
sanctions" with the West.
Former finance minister Alexei Kudrin will be brought back to "mend fences with the West"
in order to revive Russia's economy. Kudrin has repeatedly said that unless Russia makes her
political system more democratic and ends its confrontation with Europe and the United
States, she will not be able to achieve economic growth. Russia's fifth-columnists were
exalted: "If Kudrin joined the administration or government, it would indicate that they have
agreed on a certain agenda of change, including in foreign policy, because without change in
foreign policy, reforms are simply impossible in Russia," said Yevgeny Gontmakher . . . who
works with a civil society organization set up by Mr. Kudrin. "It would be a powerful
message, because Kudrin is the only one in the top echelons with whom they will talk in the
west and towards whom there is a certain trust."
Putting Kudrin -- an opponent of de-dollarization and an upholder of the Washington
Consensus -- in charge of Russia's international outreach would be equal to putting Bill
Clinton in charge of a girls' school.
It would mark Putin's de facto collapse as a leader. We
shall know very soon. Either way, if anyone wondered what the approach to Russia would be
from Bolton and Pompeo, we now know: they will play very hard ball with Putin, regardless of
what he does (or doesn't do), and with carefree readiness to risk an eventual snap.
Certainly looks like @ 18 is a fine example of what b is presenting.
A good way to extract one's self from the propaganda is to refuse using whatever meme the
disinformation uses, e.g. that Sergei Skripal was a double agent -- that is not a known, only
a convenient suggestion.
Military intelligence is far better described as military
information needed for some project or mission. Not surreptitious cloak and dagger spying.
This is not to say Sergei Scripal was a British spy for which he was convicted, stripped of
rank and career and exiled through a spy swap. To continue using Sergei Scripal was a double
agent only repeats and verifies the disinformation meme and all the framing that goes with
it. Find some alternative to what MSM produces that does not embed truthiness to their
efforts.
I realize it's from one of the biggest propaganda organs in the world... take this New
York Times report of the OPCW's retraction with a 100 grams -- 100mg? -- of salt:
Kudrin is a neoliberal and as such is an
enemy of humanity and will never again be allowed to hold a position of power within Russia's
government. Let him emigrate to the West like his fellow parasites and teach junk economics
at some likeminded university.
Attention
Hookers : Special Counsel urgently needs your stories. We pay top dollar. Big tits, role-play,
and lying required. Television experience preferred. No drug screening. No background check.
Transportation included.
Call 1-800-George-Soros or contact the Law Offices of Wray, Mueller, and Rosenstein,
LLC.
Judge Mulls Dismissal Of Manafort Charges, "Sharply Questioned" Mueller Overreach
by Tyler Durden
Fri, 05/04/2018 - 11:39 4.1K SHARES
Like most motions to dismiss, Paul Manafort's was initially viewed as a long-shot bid to win
the political operative his freedom and get out from under the thumb of Special Counsel Robert
Mueller.
But after today's hearing on a motion to dismiss filed by Manafort's lawyers, it's looking
increasingly likely that Manafort could escape his charges - and be free of his ankle bracelets
- because in a surprising rebuke of Mueller's "overreach", Eastern District of Virginia Judge
T.S. Ellis, a Reagan appointee, said Mueller shouldn't have "unfettered power" to prosecute
over charges that have nothing to do with collusion between the Trump campaign and the
Russians.
Ellis said he's concerned Mueller is only pursuing charges against Manafort (and presumably
other individuals) to pressure them into turning on Trump. The Judge added that the charges
brought against Manafort didn't appear to stem from Mueller's collusion probe. Instead, they
appeared to be the work of an older investigation into Manafort that was eventually
dropped.
"I don't see how this indictment has anything to do with anything the special prosecutor is
authorized to investigate," Ellis said at a hearing in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia,
concerning a motion by Manafort to dismiss the case.
It got better: Ellis also slammed prosecutors saying it appeared they were using the
indictment of Manafort to pressure him to cooperate against Trump. Manafort, 69, has pleaded
not guilty and disputes Mueller's assertion that he violated U.S. laws when he worked for a
decade as a political consultant for pro-Russian groups in Ukraine.
"You don't really care about Mr. Manafort's bank fraud," Ellis said. "You really care about
what information he might give you about Mr. Trump and what might lead to his impeachment or
prosecution. "
According to Bloomberg, Ellis is overseeing one of two indictments against Manafort.
Manafort is also charged in Washington with money laundering and failing to register as a
foreign agent of Ukraine.
* * *
Manafort's lawyers had asked the judge in the Virginia case to dismiss an indictment filed
against him in what was their third effort to beat back criminal charges by attacking Mueller's
authority. The judge also questioned why Manafort's case there could not be handled by the U.S.
attorney's office in Virginia, rather than the special counsel's office, as it is not
Russia-related . A question many others have asked, as well.
Ellis has given prosecutors two weeks to show what evidence they have that Manafort was
complicit in colluding with the Russians. If they can't come up with any, he may, presumably,
dismiss the case. Ellis also asked the special counsel's office to share privately with him a
copy of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein's August 2017 memo elaborating on the scope of
Mueller's Russia probe. He said the current version he has been heavily redacted.
At that point, should nothing change materially, Manafort may be a free man; needless to
say, a dismissal would set precedent and be nothing short of groundbreaking by potentially
making it much harder for Mueller to turn other witnesses against the president.
Attention
Hookers : Special Counsel urgently needs your stories. We pay top dollar. Big tits, role-play,
and lying required. Television experience preferred. No drug screening. No background check.
Transportation included.
Call 1-800-George-Soros or contact the Law Offices of Wray, Mueller, and Rosenstein,
LLC.
"... Internet censorship is getting pretty bad, so best way to keep seeing my daily articles is to get on the mailing list for my website , so you'll get an email notification for everything I publish. My articles and podcasts are entirely reader and listener-funded, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following my antics on Twitter , checking out my podcast , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , or buying my new book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers . ..."
"... People are not turning to the MSM, they are heading straight to: MoA, ZH, PCR, RT... this is where people now turn to find the truth! The two most frequent, each appearing in six out of seven datasets? ZeroHedge and RT. ..."
"... I have never been a Trump supporter, but IMO the one positive I saw back in the elections is that his character would bring about exactly this loss of trust. Not "He's bad and we can't trust him," so much as the fact that he's polarizing, and will fight everyone, and has inadvertently caused a lot of bad people to expose themselves. ..."
I sometimes try to get
establishment loyalists to explain to me exactly why we're all meant to be terrified of this
"Russian propaganda" thing they keep carrying on about. What is the threat, specifically?
That it makes the public less willing to go to war with Russia and its allies? That it makes us
less trusting of lying, torturing, coup-staging intelligence agencies? Does accidentally catching a
glimpse of that green RT logo turn you to stone like Medusa, or melt your face like in
Raiders
of the Lost Ark
?
"Well, it makes us lose trust in our institutions,"
is the most common
reply.
Okay. So? Where's the threat there?
We know for a fact that we've been lied to
by those institutions. Iraq isn't just something we imagined
. We should be skeptical of
claims made by western governments, intelligence agencies and mass media. How specifically is that
skepticism dangerous?
When you try to get down to the brass tacks of the actual argument being made and demand
specific details about the specific threats we're meant to be worried about, there aren't any to be
found. Nobody's been able to tell me what specifically is so dangerous about westerners being
exposed to the Russian side of international debates, or of Russians giving a platform to one
or
both sides
of an American domestic debate. Even if every single one of the allegations about
Russian bots and disinformation are true (
and
they aren't
), where is the actual clear and present danger? No one can say.
In an absolutely jaw-dropping
article
that you should definitely read in its entirety
, Elizabeth Braw took it upon herself to finally
answer the question of why Russian propaganda is so dangerous, using the following hypothetical
scenario
:
What if Russia suddenly announced that its Baltic Fleet had dispatched an armada towards
Britain? Would most people greet the news with steely resolve in the knowledge that their
governments would know what to do, or would constant Kremlin-influenced reports about the
incompetence of British institutions make them conclude that any resistance was pointless?
I mean, wow. Wow! Just wow. Where to even begin with this?
Back to the aforementioned excerpt. Braw claims that if Russian propaganda isn't shut down or
counteracted, Russia could send a fleet of war ships to attack Britain, and the British people
would react unenthusiastically? Wouldn't cheer loudly enough as the British Navy fought the
Russians? Would have a defeatist emotional demeanor? What exactly is the argument here?
That's seriously her only attempt to directly address the question of where the actual
danger is. Even in the most cartoonishly dramatic hypothetical scenario this Atlantic Council
member can possibly imagine, there's
still
no tangible threat of any kind.
Even
if Russia was directly attacking the United Kingdom at home, and Russian propaganda had somehow
magically dominated all British airwaves and been believed by the entire country, that still
wouldn't have any impact on the British military's ability to fight a naval battle. There's
literally no extent to which you can inflate this "Russian propaganda" hysteria to turn it into a
possible threat to actual people in real life.
Such responses to disinformation are like swatting flies: time-consuming and ineffective. But
not addressing disinformation is ineffective, too. "Western media still have this thing where
they try to be completely balanced, so they'll say, 'the Russians say this, but on the other
hand the Americans say this is not true,' They end up giving a lie and the truth the same
value," noted Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia.
I just have so many questions. Like, how desperate does a writer have to be for an
expert who can lend credibility to their argument that they have to reach all the way over to a
former president of Estonia?
And on what planet are these people living where Russian
narratives are given the same weight as western narratives by western mainstream media? How can I
get to this fantastical parallel dimension where western media "try to be completely balanced" and
give equal coverage to all perspectives?
Braw argues that,
because Russian propaganda is so dangerous (what with the
threat of British people having insufficient emotional exuberance during a possible naval battle
and all), what is required is a "NATO of infowar", an alliance of western state media that is
tasked with combatting Russian counter-narratives.
Because, in the strange
Dungeons
& Dragons
fantasy fairy world in which Braw penned her article, this isn't already happening.
And of course, here in the real world, it
is
already happening. As
I
wrote recently
, mainstream media outlets have been going out of their minds churning out attack
editorials on anyone who questions the establishment narrative about what happened in Douma. A BBC
reporter
recently
admonished a retired British naval officer
for voicing skepticism of what we're being told
about Syria on the grounds that it might "muddy the waters" of the "information war" that is being
fought against Russia. All day, every day, western mass media are pummeling the public with stories
about how awful and scary Russians are and how everything they say is a lie.
This is because western mass media outlets are owned by western plutocrats, and those
plutocrats have built their empires upon a status quo that they have a vested interest in
preserving,
often to the point where they will
form
alliances with defense and intelligence agencies
to do so. They hire executives and editors who
subscribe to a pro-establishment worldview, who in turn hire journalists who subscribe to a
pro-establishment worldview, and in that way they ensure that all plutocrat-owned media outlets are
advancing pro-plutocrat agendas.
The western empire is ruled by a loose transnational alliance of plutocrats and
secretive government agencies. That loose alliance is your real government, and that government has
the largest state media network in the history of civilization. The mass media propaganda machine
of the western empire makes RT look like your grandmother's Facebook wall.
In that way, we are being propagandized constantly by the people who really rule us. All this
panic about Russian propaganda doesn't exist because our dear leaders have a problem with
propaganda, it exists because they believe only
they
should be allowed to propagandize us.
And, unlike Russian propaganda, western establishment propaganda actually
does
pose a
direct threat to us. By using mass media to manipulate the ways we think and vote, our true rulers
can persuade us to consent to
crushing
austerity measures and political impotence
while the oligarchs grow richer and medicine money
is spent on bombs. When we should all be revolting against an oppressive Orwellian oligarchy, we
are instead lulled to sleep by those same oligarchs and their hired talking heads lying to us about
freedom and democracy.
Russian propaganda is not dangerous. Having access to other ways of looking at
global geopolitics is not dangerous. What absolutely is dangerous is a vast empire concerning
itself with the information and ideas that its citizenry have access to.
Get your
rapey, manipulative fingers out of our minds, please.
If our dear leaders are so worried about our losing faith in our institutions, they
shouldn't be concerning themselves with manipulating us into trusting them, they should be making
those institutions more trustworthy.
Don't manipulate better,
be
better. The fact that an influential think
tank is now openly advocating the former over the latter should concern us all.
* * *
Internet censorship is getting pretty bad, so best way to keep seeing my daily articles is
to get on the mailing list for my
website
,
so you'll get an email notification for everything I publish. My articles and podcasts are entirely
reader and listener-funded, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking
me on
Facebook
,
following my antics on
Twitter
, checking
out my
podcast
, throwing some
money into my hat on
Patreon
or
Paypal
,
or
buying my new book
Woke:
A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers
.
People are not turning to the MSM, they are heading straight to: MoA, ZH, PCR, RT... this is where people now turn to find
the truth! The two most frequent, each appearing in six out of seven datasets? ZeroHedge and RT.
"Well, it makes us lose trust in our institutions," is the most
common reply.
I have never been a Trump supporter, but IMO the
one positive I saw back in the elections is that his character would
bring about exactly this loss of trust. Not "He's bad and we can't trust
him," so much as the fact that he's polarizing, and will fight everyone,
and has inadvertently caused a lot of bad people to expose themselves.
Why should you trust people who think they have the right to take
whatever amount of your money they want, use it for any purpose they
want, and also who believe they have the right to harass, torture,
stalk, or kill whoever they want, on any pretext they feel like thinking
up?
The Atlantic Council is just another tentacle of the Soros Squid. The man should
have been dealt with as a Nazi collaborator in the aftermath of World War 2.
Unfortunately for humanity, he evaded accountability for his crimes against
humanity during the war.
Stormy Daniels' legal team - led by lawyer Michael Avenatti - must be getting bored since a federal judge in Los Angeles
ordered a 90-day delay of her lawsuit against President Trump and his former personal attorney Mike Cohen (who has promised to
plead the fifth during the proceedings). Because Stormy has filed another defamation lawsuit, this time exclusively against
President Trump, as
Reuters
reports.
The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in New York on Monday, seeks damages from Trump for a
tweet he sent earlier this month where he criticized a composite sketch that, Daniels said,
depicted a man who had threatened her in 2011. He reportedly demanded that she stay quiet about her
sexual encounter with Trump. That would've been around the time she gave an interview about her
affair with Trump to In Touch magazine which wasn't published until recently.
Her previous lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles, sought to have her released from an NDA she signed
shortly before the 2016 vote where she also accepted a $130,000 "hush money" payment from Cohen.
"A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job,
playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!," Trump
said.
According to the filing, cited by the
Associate Press
and Reuters, the tweet was "false and defamatory"
arguing that Trump knew what he was saying out Daniels' claim was
false and also disparaging.
The lawsuit also claims Daniels has been exposed to death threats
and other threats of "physical violence."
Daniels, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford, is seeking a jury
trial and unspecified damages.
"We intend on teaching Mr. Trump that you cannot simply make
things up about someone and disseminate them without serious
consequences," Avenatti said.
As the
Associated Press
points out, Daniels, aided by Avenatti, has
sought to keep her case in the public eye. She revealed the sketch
that Trump mocked during an appearance on the View earlier this
month. Trump is facing another defamation lawsuit in New York, this
one filed by Summer Zervos, a former "The Apprentice" contestant who
says Trump made unwanted sexual contact with her in 2007. She sued
him after Trump dismissed her claims.
0
" Now, that your tastes at this time should incline
towards the juvenile is understandable; but for you to marry
that boy would be a disaster. Because there's two kinds of
women. There are two kinds of women and you, as we well
know, are not the first kind. You, my dear, are a slut. "
"We intend on teaching Mr. Trump that you cannot simply make things up about
someone and disseminate them without serious consequences," Avenatti said.
"We intend on teaching
THE PRESS
that you cannot simply make
things up about someone and disseminate them without serious consequences,"
Avenatti said.
An interesting new term is used in this discussion: "CIA democrats". Probably originated in Patrick Martin March 7, 2018
article at WSWS The CIA Democrats Part one - World Socialist Web
Site but I would not draw an equivalence between military and intelligence agencies.
"f the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from
the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress."
Notable quotes:
"... @leveymg ..."
"... @CS in AZ ..."
"... @CS in AZ ..."
"... @CS in AZ ..."
"... "I was truly fired up about Bernie Sanders at that time. I've come a very long ways since then." ..."
The left has never been welcome in the Republican party; and since the neoliberal Clinton machine showed up, they have not
been welcome in the Democratic party either. As Clinton debauched the historical, FDR/JFK/LBJ meaning of the word "liberal",
the left started calling itself "progressives". The left had long been the grassroots of the Democratic party; and after being
left in the lurch by John Kerry (no lawsuits against Ohio fraud), lied to by Barack Obama, and browbeaten by the increasingly
neocon Clintonite DNC, they enthusiastically coalesced around Bernie Sanders.
If our political system were honest, Bernie Sanders would have been the Democratic nominee; and Hillary Clinton and Debbie
W-S (of Aman Brothers infamy) would be on trial for violating national security and corrupting the DNC. But, our political
system isn't honest. Our political system, including the Democratic party, is completely bought and
paid for. And, unfortunately, Bernie Sanders - despite being a victim of that corruption - continues to refuse to make that point.
He refused to join the lawsuit (complete with dead process server and suspicious phone call from DWS's office) against the DNC.
All in the name of working within a party he does not even belong to.
After the 2016 election, the DNC, continuing its corrupt ways, blatantly favored Tom Perez over the "progressive" Keith Ellison,
smearing Ellison as a Moslem lover. Bernie's reaction to this continuing manipulation was muted. On foreign policy, Bernie continues
to be either AWOL or pro-MIC (F-35 plant in VT)/pro-Israel. These are not progressive positiions. AFAIAC, Bernie is half a leftist.
He is left on economics and social policy; but he is rightwing on the MIC, foreign policy, and Israel. There is very little democracy
left in this country, and I am not going to waste my time supporting Bernie, who has shown himself to be a sheepdog. That's my
take on the 2018 version of Bernie. I will always treasure the early 2016 version of Bernie, the only political candidate in my
life that I gave serious money to.
Neither will I waste my time pretending that honest, inside-the-system efforts can take the Democratic party back from the
plutocrats who own it, lock, stock, and checkbook. You might think there is a chance to work inside the system. You might think
the DNC is vulnerable because it learned nothing from the 2016 debacle; but you would be wrong. After the Hillary debacle, they
have learned how to manufacture more credible fake progressives.
------
For it seems that progressive candidates aren't the only ones who learned the lesson of Bernie Sanders in 2016; the neoliberal
Clintonites have too. So, while left-wing campaigns crop up in every corner of the country, so too do astroturf faux-progressive
campaigns. And it is for us on the left to parse through it all and separate the authentic from the frauds.
One candidate currently generating some buzz in the race is Jeff Beals, a self-identified "Bernie democrat"
whose campaign website homepage describes him as a "local teacher and former U.S. diplomat endorsed by the national organization
of former Bernie Sanders staffers, the Justice Democrats." And indeed, Beals centers his progressive bona fides to brand himself
as one of the inheritors of the progressive torch lit by Sanders in 2016. A smart political move, to be sure. But is it true?
By his own admission, Beals' overseas career began as an intelligence officer with the CIA. His fluency
in Arabic and knowledge of the region made him an obvious choice to be an intelligence spook during the latter stages of the
Clinton Administration.
Beals was not a soldier unwillingly drafted into service, but an intelligence officer who voluntarily accepted an
influential and critically important post for the Bush Administration in its ever-expanding crime against humanity
in Iraq.
Moreover, no one who knows anything about the Iraq War could possibly swallow the tripe that CIA/State Department officials
in Iraq were "looking to help our country find a way out" a year into the war. A year into the war, the bloodletting was only
just beginning, and Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the other corporate vultures had yet to fully exploit the country and make
billions off it. So, unfortunately for Beals, the historical memory of the anti-war Left is not that short.
The takeaway here is that many of these self-declared "Bernie Democrats" are, in reality, the "CIA Democrats" that we have
been warned about. And Bernie has not called them out. Another thing he has not called out is the fact that the
party leadership is still blatantly sabotaging even modestly "progressive" candidates in the primaries.
In the latest striking example of how the Democratic Party resorts to cronyism (and perhaps corruption) to ensure that its
favored candidates beat back progressive challengers in local races, a candidate for Colorado's 6th Congressional District
has leaked a recording of a conversation with Minority Leader Steny Hoyer to The Intercept which published it overnight. In
it, Hoyer can be heard essentially lecturing the candidate about why he should step aside and let the Democratic Party
bosses - who of course have a better idea about which candidate will prevail over a popular Republican in the general
election - continue pulling the strings.
The candidate, Levi Tillemann, is hardly a party outsider. Tillemann had grandparents on both sides of his family who were
elected Democratic representatives, and his family is essentially Democratic Party royalty.
Still, the party's campaign arm - the notorious Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (better known as the DCCC, or
D-trip) - refused to provide Tillemann with access to party campaign data or any of the other resources he requested.
Here is yet another thing that Bernie has not called out: The DNC, which is reportedly badly behind in fundraising, is nevertheless
willing to spend obscene amounts of money in primaries just to keep progressives out of races - even Red district races that are
guaranteed losses for Democrats.
Dan Feehan has successfully bought the Democratic nomination for Minnesota's first congressional district (MN-CD1). Dan,
having lived outside the state since the age of 14, has allegedly misled the public on his FEC form, claiming residence at
his cousin's address. Here is Dan's FEC filing form. One can see that it his cousin who lives at this address...
Mr. Feehan has no chance to win in November. While nobody likes a candidate from Washington D.C., people
hate Washington money even more. To be fair to Dan he hasn't taken super PAC money, somehow. But he
has raised 565,000 dollars, an outrageous sum for a congressional race. 94% of this money has come from outside the district,
and 79% from outside the state. Where does this money come from? Well, according to the campaign, from people around
the country who want to keep Minnesota blue. If this was the case, why not wait to give money until Minnesota voted
for a candidate in the primary and then donate? And who on earth has this much money to pour into an obscure race outside of
their state?
Dan Feehan is of the same breed that most post-Trump Democrats are. Clean cut, military experience,
stern, anti-gun, anti-crazy Orange monsters, anti-negativity, and anti-discrimination of rich people who fall under a marginalized
group. What are they for? No one knows. If pushed they want "good" education, health care, jobs, environment,
etc. But they want Big money too for various reasons, but the ones cited are: because that is the only way to win,
because rich people are smart and poor people are dumb, and because money is speech. So they cannot and will not make
any concrete commitments. Hence energy becomes "all inclusive", as if balancing clean and dirty energy was a college admissions
department diversity issue, rather than a question of life or death for the entire planet. Healthcare becomes not a right,
but a requirement with a giant handout to insurance companies. Near full employment (with the near being very important, when
we consider leverage) comes with part-time, short-term, and low paying work.
The Clintonite Democrats and their spawn are postmodern progressives. In their world, there is no way to test if one is progressive.
Within the world of the Democratic party, there is no relativity. It is merely a universe that exists only to clash with (but
mostly submit to) the parallel Republican universe. Whoever proves to be the victor should be united behind without a thought
given to their place within the political spectrum of Democrat voters. They believe, if I were to paraphrase René Descartes:
"I Democrat, therefore I progressive."
Tell me again why I must be a loyal Democrat, why I must support candidates who are corporate/MIC shills, why I must submit
to the constant harassment and sabotage of progressive efforts. Tell me again how Bernie is fighting the party leadership. (That
is, explain away all the non-activity related to the items posted above.)
I'm with Chris Hedges. Formal democracy is dead in the US; all we have left are actions in the streets (and those are being
slowly made illegal). The only people in this country who deserve my support are: 1) the striking teachers, many of them non-unionized,
2) the oil pipeline protestors, who are being crushed by police state tactics, 3) the fighters for $15 minimum wage, again non-unionized.
The Democratic Party used to stand for unions. It doesn't any more. It doesn't stand for anything except getting more money from
the 1% to sell out the 99% with fake progressive CIA candidates. Oh, and it stands for pussy hats.
Anyone who tells me to get in line behind Bernie is either a naive pollyana or a disingenuous purity troll.
leveymg on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 9:44am
We have all been here before. 1948.
That was the year that the clawback of the Democratic Party and the purge of the Left was formalized. It really dates to the engineered
hijacking of the nomination of Henry Wallace at the 1944 Democratic Convention. History does repeat itself for those who didn't
learn or weren't adequately taught it.
however tragic it is. Instead of a true leftwinger, we got Harry Truman, a naive wardheeler from corrupt Kansas City. He was
led by the nose to create the CIA.
I do take your point; but the question is, can anything be done? If democracy has become meaningless kabuki, and the neocon
warmongers are in charge no matter whom we "elect", what is there to do besides build that bomb shelter?
That is why I say that only genuine issues will galvanize the public; and even then, they can run a hybrid war against the
left. They have created this ludicrous Identity Politics boogeyman that energizes the right and makes the postmodern progressives
look stupid. No matter what tactic I think of, TPTB have already covered that base. The problem is that the left has absolutely
no base in the U.S. today.
How will the pseudo-progressives be able to justify being both "progressive" and pro-war?
Talk about cognitive dissonance. But wait. Democraps of any stripe, don't cogitate, hence no dissonance.
zoebear on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 10:12am
Appreciate you posting this essay This
is only one of the many troubling signs which convince me he is being controlled by my enemy.
The takeaway here is that many of these self-declared "Bernie Democrats" are, in reality, the "CIA Democrats" that we have
been warned about. And Bernie has not called them out.
CS in AZ on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 11:12am
Thanks for the essay, arendt I came
to this site in the great purge at daily kos, and I was truly fired up about Bernie Sanders at that time. I've come a very long
ways since then. Thanks to the people here.
And to kos, who now rather infamously said "if you think Hillary Clinton can't beat Donald Trump, you're a fucking moron. Seriously,
you're dumb as rocks." And he said if you're not going to cheerlead for democrats, "go the fuck away. This is not your place."
True words!!
So this site was here and Bernie supporters flocked here. Including me. But over this time I have seen the mistakes I made.
Such a lot of wasted time and energy.
Still searching for answers myself, but I know what doesn't work, and how important for the status quo to keep the illusion
of democracy alive. But more and more people are not buying it anymore. I suspect that a few more crumbs will be forthcoming on
some issues. That's the very best way to keep the show going. And the show must go on.
Pulling back the curtain is really the first and most important weapon we have. Thank you for doing that.
zoebear on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 11:45am zoebear on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 11:45am
Countered with Russia, Russia, Russia. God he was such a prick.
I came to this site in the great purge at daily kos, and I was truly fired up about Bernie Sanders at that time. I've come
a very long ways since then. Thanks to the people here.
And to kos, who now rather infamously said "if you think Hillary Clinton can't beat Donald Trump, you're a fucking moron.
Seriously, you're dumb as rocks." And he said if you're not going to cheerlead for democrats, "go the fuck away. This is not
your place." True words!!
So this site was here and Bernie supporters flocked here. Including me. But over this time I have seen the mistakes I made.
Such a lot of wasted time and energy.
Still searching for answers myself, but I know what doesn't work, and how important for the status quo to keep the illusion
of democracy alive. But more and more people are not buying it anymore. I suspect that a few more crumbs will be forthcoming
on some issues. That's the very best way to keep the show going. And the show must go on.
Pulling back the curtain is really the first and most important weapon we have. Thank you for doing that.
That's how I feel about it. I've been suckered one time too many. The 2016 election was a complete farce. Bernie was sabotaged.
The DNC and Hillary broke their own rules to do it. But Bernie, with a perfect opportunity and lots of support, just walked away
from the fight that he had promised his people.
Sheep dog.
TPTB want the political "fight" to be between slightly different flavors of neoliberal looting/neocon warmongering. They want
unions, teachers, environmentalists, and minorities to, in the words of a UK asshole, "shut up and go away".
The CIA literally paid $600M to the Washington Post, whose purchase price was only $300M. Bezos made 200% of his money back
in a month. The media is completely corporatized; and they are coming for the internet with censorship. Where is Bernie on this?
Haven't heard a word.
Sheep dog.
As TPTB simply buy what is left of the Democratic party, they will enforce this kabuki politics. Any deviation will be labeled
Putin-loving, Assad-loving, China-loving, etc.
You can't have a democracy when free speech is instantly labeled fake news or enemy propaganda.
"I was truly fired up about Bernie Sanders at that time. I've come a very long ways since then."
This is how I see the way some people feel about him. This same thing happened after I voted for Obama. I thought that he would
do what "I heard him say that he would", but he let me down by not even bothering to try doing anything.
What soured me on Bernie was his saying that Her won the election fair and square after everything we saw happen. Even after
learning how the primary was rigged against him. And now he has jumped on the Russian interference propaganda train when he knows
that Russia had no hand with Trump beating Her out the presidency.
Bottom line is that I no longer believe that Bernie is being up front with me. I know that others feel differently, but remember
how people changed their minds on Obama and never accepted Herheinous! People should be free here to say how they feel.
Isn't making it "easier" for them to cheat when they are already doing that. What participating in their corruption does do
is keep the illusion of democracy alive for their benefit. Easier? They're already achieving their end game. Controlling us, electing
their candidates, and collecting our taxes.
Frankly we've been participating in their potemkin village passing as democracy for decades with no effect.
First, a boycott is not "ignoring" voting. It's an organized protest against fake elections. It's actually not that uncommon
for people in other countries to call for election boycotts in protest when a significant portion of people feel the election
is staged or rigged with a predetermined outcome, or where all of the candidates are chosen by the elite so none represent the
will of the people.
In that type of situation, boycotting the election -- and obviously that means saying why, and making a protest out of it --
is really the only recourse people have. It may not be effective at stopping the fake election, but it lets the world know the
vote was fake.
If you line up to go obediently cast your vote anyway, then you are the one who is empowering the enemy, by giving the illusion
of legitimacy to the fake vote.
Now about this big worry about what "they" will say... first, look at what they already say about third party voters.
In the media and political world, third party voters are a joke, useful idiots, who can be simultaneously written off as "fringe"
wackos who can and should be ignored, and also childish spoilers who can be scapegoated and blamed for eternity for election loses.
Witness Ralph Nader and Jill Stein. Of course people should still vote third party if there's someone that truly represents them,
and if they believe the election process is genuine. Because you don't let your voting choices be dictated by what the powers
that be say about it!
For those of us who believe the election process is a sham and a scam, voting is playing into their hands, giving legitimacy
to their show. That is what makes it easier for them to keep the status quo firmly in place, and is literally helping them do
it.
As has been pointed out, if an organized protest/boycott that called the elections fake were to take root and grow, they would
not be able to say we don't care. That's a big if, obviously, but it's better than playing your assigned role in The Voting Show.
Because that show is what everyone points to as proof that the American people want this fucked up warmongering government we
keep voting back into power every two years.
Enough is enough. One of Bernie's slogans, which I still agree with.
The Carla Ortiz and Jimmy Dore exchange is fascinating. Each in her/his own way is superb.
The Guardian has become boulevard press = tabloid. Nearly every day before and even after the
US election Mrs. Clinton gloated on the front page. Bernie Sanders was no where to be seen
nearly until the election. Now the Guardian is priming its readers for the stomach-churning
royal wedding coming up. No, no more Guardian for me. And they have the gall to ask for money
to turn out articles praising the White Helemts. No! Curtis , Apr 22, 2018 12:32:23 PM |
8
Anonymous 4
BBC took on Vannessa Beeley recently, too. Will NYT and WaPo be next? The anti-Russia agenda
continues along with the anti-truth-in-Syria agenda.
AriusAmerican 5
During the Bush II fiasco, there were anti-war protests. The protests disappeared after Obama
took office. And he was given a Nobel Peace Prize for talking about peace. But everyone went
along with Obama's wars. No protests. And that's how they like it. They want support and tend
to get it from the MSM and party lackeys. And if they don't get support, the one thing they
don't want are massive protests, calls to congress, etc. As long as there's little to no
resistance their war agenda continues.
PS
The HuffPoUK article tears into Beeley but at the bottom has a Russian submission to the
Security Council of a report she did of the White Helmets. That report negates the
article/story! HuffPoUK claims this is part two of a series and that part three will "look at
evidence presented against the White Helmets." That should be interesting.
Anonymous2 | Apr 22, 2018 1:50:23 PM | 12
Curtis
"The anti-Russia agenda continues along with the anti-truth-in-Syria agenda."
I dont get it why these journalists are against finding out what happend (since we dont know that yet)? Most of
these morons have no idea about the conflict at all, and all of a sudden start writing like they are veteran journalists and
have profound knowledge about Syria.
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, ..."
"... . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com. ..."
"Together," President Macron instructed President Trump, "we can resist the rise of aggressive nationalisms that deny our history
and divide the world."
In an address before Congress on Wednesday, France's Macron denounced "extreme nationalism," invoked the UN, NATO, WTO, and Paris
climate accord, and implored Trump's America to come home to the New World Order.
"The United States is the one who invented this multilateralism," Macron went on, "you are the one now who has to help preserve
and reinvent it."
His visit was hailed and his views cheered, but on reflection, the ideas of Emmanuel Macron seem to be less about tomorrow than
yesterday. For the world he celebrates is receding into history. The America of 2018 is coming to see NATO as having evolved into
an endless U.S. commitment to go to war with Russia on behalf of a rich Europe that resolutely refuses to provide for its own defense.
Since the WTO was created in the mid-90s, the U.S. has run $12 trillion in trade deficits, and among the organization's biggest
beneficiaries -- the EU. Under the Paris climate accord, environmental restrictions are put upon the United States from which China
is exempt. As for the UN, is that sinkhole of anti-Americanism, the General Assembly, really worth the scores of billions we have
plunged into it?
"Aggressive nationalism" is a term that might well fit Napoleon Bonaparte, whose Arc de Triomphe sits on the Champs-Elysees. But
does it really fit the Hungarians, Poles, Brits, Scots, Catalans, and other indigenous peoples of Europe who are now using democratic
methods and means to preserve their national homes?
And the United States would seem an odd place to go about venting on "aggressive nationalisms that deny our history." Did Macron
not learn at the Lycee Henri IV in Paris or the Ecole Nationale d'Administration how the Americans acquired all that land? General
Washington, at whose Mount Vernon home Macron dined, was a nationalist who fought for six years to sever America's ties to the nation
under which he was born. How does Macron think Andrew Jackson acquired Florida from Spain, Sam Houston acquired Texas from Mexico,
and Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor acquired the Southwest? By bartering?
Aggressive nationalism is a good synonym for the Manifest Destiny of a republic that went about relieving Spain of Cuba, Puerto
Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. How does Macron think the "New World" was conquered and colonized if not by aggressive British,
French, and Spanish nationalists determined to impose their rule upon weaker indigenous tribes? Was it not nationalism that broke
up the USSR into 15 nations?
Was not the Zionist movement that resurrected Israel in 1948, and in 1967 captured the West Bank and then annexed East Jerusalem
and the Golan Heights, a manifestation of aggressive nationalism?
Macron is an echo of George H.W. Bush who in Kiev in 1991 warned Ukrainians against the "suicidal nationalism" of declaring independence
from the Russian Federation. "Aggressive nationalisms divide the world," warns Macron. Well, yes, they do, which is why we have now
194 members of the U.N., rather than the original 50. Is this a problem? "Together," said Macron, "we will build a new, strong multilateralism
that defends pluralism and democracy in the face of ill winds."
Macron belongs to a political class that sees open borders and free trade thickening and tightening the ties of dependency, and
eventually creating a One Europe whose destiny his crowd will forever control.
But if his idea of pluralism is multiracial, multiethnic, and multicultural nations, with a multilateral EU overlord, he is describing
a future that tens of millions of Europeans believe means the deaths of the nations that give meaning to their lives.
And they will not go gently into that good night.
In America, too, millions have come to recognize that there is a method to the seeming madness of open borders. Name of the game:
dispossessing the deplorables of the country they love.
With open borders and mass migration of over a million people a year into the USA, almost all of them from third-world countries
that vote 70 to 90 percent Democratic, the left is foreclosing the future. They're converting the greatest country of the West into
what Teddy Roosevelt called a "polyglot boarding house for the world." And in that boarding house the left will have a lock on the
presidency.
With the collaboration of co-conspirators in the media, progressives throw a cloak of altruism over the cynical seizure of permanent
power.
For, as the millions of immigrants here legally and illegally register, and the vote is extended to prison inmates, ex-cons, and
16-year-olds, the political complexion of America will come to resemble San Francisco.
End goal: ensure that what happened in 2016, when the nation rose up and threw out a despised establishment, never happens again.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President
and Divided America Forever . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists,
visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.
"... In asserting that the EU was primarily formed to divert financial gains from the US, Trump promised that what he termed "disastrous trade deals" would stop, as he was going to personally "take on" the economic European powerhouse, as well as China, the largest economy in Asia and the second largest economy in the world. ..."
As the US president struggles at home with a legislature and judiciary increasingly
unwilling to do his bidding, new bluster and threats of a trade war with other nations appear
to have become Trump's rallying cry to the faithful. US President Donald Trump, at a meeting of
his followers in Michigan on Saturday, suggested that his administration would do everything
within its power to shift what the White House terms Washington DC's trade imbalance with the
European Union, and hinted darkly that Americans must prepare for a bumpy and uncomfortable
ride, according to RT.
In asserting that the EU was primarily formed to divert financial gains from the US,
Trump promised that what he termed "disastrous trade deals" would stop, as he was going to
personally "take on" the economic European powerhouse, as well as China, the largest economy in
Asia and the second largest economy in the world.
At a carefully curated supporters-only promotional speaking event in Michigan, the
strikingly unpopular US leader claimed that EU trade policies existed only "to take advantage
of the United States," cited by RT.
The US president warned of tough economic times for residents of the wealthiest country on
earth, declaring that, "In short term you may have to take some problems, long term -- you're
going to be so happy."
In keeping with an ongoing talking point repeatedly used by the president, Trump blamed
previous US administrations for the issues he describes as problems.
"I don't blame them," the US president declared -- referring to those nations with which he
seeks to engage in trade wars -- adding, "I blame past presidents and past leaders of our
country."
A May 1 deadline has been implemented for the March 1 Trump ultimatum to various nations --
including China and the EU -- to either curb aluminum and steel exports to the US or face
sharply-increased import taxes.
The ultimatum triggered a speedy global backlash alongside threats of retaliation from
China, the EU, and most other nations.
At a meeting of EU members in Sofia on Saturday, Belgian Finance Minister Johan Van
Overtveldt noted that Trump's strong-arm tactics will backfire, adding that trade wars are a
no-win scenario over the long term.
"A trade war is a losing game for everybody," Van Overtveldt observed.
With just days left until the May 1 deadline when a temporary trade waiver expires and the
US steel and aluminum tariffs kick in, and after last-ditch attempts first by Emmanuel Macron
and then Angela Merkel to win exemptions for Europe fell on deaf ears, the European Union is
warning about the costs of an imminent trade war with the US while bracing for one to erupt in
just three days after the White House signaled it will reject the bloc's demand for an
unconditional waiver from metals-import tariffs .
"A trade war is a losing game for everybody," Belgian Finance Minister Johan Van Overtveldt
told reporters in Sofia where Europe's finance ministers have gathered. " We should stay cool
when we're thinking about reactions but the basic point is that nobody wins in a trade war so
we try to avoid it at all costs. "
Well, Trump disagrees which is why his administration has given Europe, Canada and other
allies an option: accept quotas in exchange for an exemption from the steel and aluminum
tariffs that kick on Tuesday, when the temporary waiver expires. "We are asking of everyone:
quotas if not tariffs," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Friday. This, as
Bloomberg points out , puts the EU in the difficult position of either succumbing to U.S.
demands that could breach international commerce rules, or face punitive tariffs.
Forcing governments to limit shipments of goods violates World Trade Organization rules,
which prohibit so-called voluntary export restraints. The demand is also contrary to the
entire trade philosophy of the 28-nation bloc, which is founded on the principle of the free
movement of goods.
Adding to the confusion, while WTO rules foresee the possibility of countries taking
emergency "safeguard" measures involving import quotas for specific goods, such steps are rare,
must be temporary and can be legally challenged. The EU is demanding a permanent, unconditional
waiver from the U.S. tariffs.
Meanwhile, amid the impotent EU bluster, so far only South Korea has been formally spared
from the duties, after reaching a deal last month to revise its bilateral free-trade agreement
with the U.S.
Europe, on the other hand, refuses to reach a compromise, and according to a EU official,
"Trump's demands to curb steel and aluminum exports to 90 percent of the level of the previous
two years are unacceptable." The question then is whether Europe's retaliatory move would be
painful enough to deter Trump and lift the sanctions: the official said the EU's response would
depend on the level of the quotas after which the punitive tariffs would kick in; meanwhile the
European Commission continues to "stress the bloc's consistent call for an unconditional,
permanent exclusion from the American metal levies."
"In the short run it might help them solve their trade balance but in the long run it will
worsen trade conditions," Bulgarian Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov said in Sofia. "The
tools they're using to make America great again might result in certain mistakes because free
world trade has proven to be the best solution for the development of the world so far."
Around the time of his meeting, French President Emmanuel Macron made it clear that the EU
is not afraid of an escalating trade war and will not be intimidated, saying " we won't talk
about anything while there's a gun pointed at our head. "
He may change his opinion once Trump fires the first bullet.
Adding to Europe's disappointment, during her visit to the White House on Friday, Angela
Merkel said she discussed trade disputes with Trump and that she failed to win a public
commitment to halt the tariffs.
Meanwhile, Merkel's new bffs over in France are also hunkering down in preparation for a
lengthy conflict. French economy minister Bruone Le Maire told his fellow European bureaucrats
Sofia during a discussion on taxation: "One thing I learned from my week in the U.S. with
President Macron: The Americans will only respect a show of strength."
Coming from the French, that observation is as accurate as it is delightfully ironic.
And now the real question is who has the most to lose from the imminent Transatlantic trade
war, and will surrender first.
Working-class white people may claim to be against identity politics, but they actually
crave identity politics.
I think they probably see it more of a "if you can't beat them, join them" scenario. They
see the way the wind is blowing and decide if they want representation, they have to play the
game, even if they don't really like the rules.
They know enough about the EU to know that it isn't one of their patrons and sponsors.
They also know that Westminster have been systematically misrepresenting the EU for their own
purposes for decades, and they can use the same approach.
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Not a fool and I don't hate anyone at 55 I have 1.2M in investments, I make 165k a year and
pay 40k+ a year in taxes. I to come across people who live off of we everyday and expect to
free load. I am not a blowhard just an engineer who pays for sloth.
I've met many fools like you in my over 50 years on the planet, blowhards parading their
ignorance as a badge of pride, thinking that their hatred of anyone not exactly like them is
normal, mistaking what some cretin says on the far right radio for fact.
You people would be comical if not for the toxicity that your stupidity engenders.
Al Jazeera tries to do a better job, at least providing a spectrum of opinion and a lot of
depth in quite a few issues, something most other networks fail to do these days.
Don't fall into the associated trap either, of the false equation between STATED and ACTUAL
goals.
Fox and Hunt are fully aware that to actually admit their actual goal, would be (probably)
just about the only thing which would provoke an electoral backlash which would sweep the
Conservatives from office. The NHS is proverbially "the nearest thing the English have, to a
religion" and is a profoundly dangerous subject for debate.
Fox and Hunt may be weaving an incomprehensible web of sophistry and misdirection, but no
part of it is accidental.
Please, please don't make the unfounded assumption that people like Fox, Johnson, Cameron et
al are as stupid as they sometimes appear.
Fox and Hunt, in particular, know exactly what they are engaged in - a hard-right coup
designed to destroy government control over the NHS and route its enormous cash flows into
the pockets of their private, mostly American sponsors. It isn't necessary to look far, to
discover their connections and patronage from this source.
Johnson is consumed by ambition, as was Cameron before him; like Cameron, he makes much of
his self-presumed fitness for the role, whilst producing no supporting evidence of any
description.
Brexit, as defined by its advocates, CANNOT be discussed precisely because no rational
debate exists. It hinges upon the Conservative Party's only fear, that of disunity leading to
Opposition. They see that Labour are 50-odd seats short of a majority, and that's ALL they
see.
What in God's green world are you talking about? Did you read that before pressing "Post"?
It's obvious that you have no knowledge whatsoever of the subject.
The "race riots" of the 1940s and 1950s were essentially about employment protection (the
first, regarding the importation of Yemeni seamen into the North-East of England). The mostly
Pakistani influx into the North-West of England was an attempt to cut labour costs and prop
up a dying, obsolete industry, mortally wounded by the loss of its business model in the
aftermath of Empire; an industry whose very bricks and mortar are long since gone, but the
imported labour and their descendants remain... the influx of Caribbean labour into London
and the South-East was focussed around the railways and Underground, to bolster the local
labour force which had little interest in dead-end shift-work jobs in the last days of steam
traction and the increasingly run-down Underground.
Labour, in those days, was strongly anti-immigration precisely because it saw no value in
it, to their unionised, heavy-industry voter base.
Regarding the ideological, anti-British, anti-democratic nature of Labour's conversion to
mass immigration, you need only read the writings and speeches of prominent figures of the
day such as Roy Hattersley and Harriet Harman, who say exactly this, quite clearly and in
considerable detail. Their ideological heirs, figures like Diane Abbot (who is stridently
anti-white and anti-British), Andrew Neather and Hazel Blears, can speak for themselves.
I was recently struck by this part of the Guardian obituary of Lady Farrington of Ribbleton:
' she possessed the important defining characteristic that, above others, wins admiration
across all the red leather benches in the House of Lords: she knew what she was talking
about'
Too often these days we are governed by people who don't know what they are talking about.
Never has this been truer than the likes of Fox, Davis, Johnson, and other Brexiteers.
But this doesn't seem to matter much anymore. At times it seems that anyone can make
generised assertions about something, without having to back them up with evidence, and then
wave away questions about their veracity.
Opinion now trumps evidence regularly, even on the BBC where Brexit ideology is often now
given a free pass. The problem for those of us who value expertise is that with the likes of
Trump, and some EU Leavers, we are up against a bigotry which is evangelical in nature. A
gospel that cannot be questioned, a creed that allows no other thinking.
The best you can do is complain about "this?" This WHAT? Try a noun. You're being an
embarrassment to troglodytes everywhere. Don't just point and leap up and down. Your
forefathers died in bringing you a language. Be an expressive hominid and name the thing that
hurts.
It seems at the moment the Guardian also suffers from a glut of experts without expertise.
Not a day goes by that my jaw doesn't drop at some inane claim made by what seems to be a
retinue of contributors who have neither good writing skills nor a particularly wide look on
things. An example today: "Unlike Hillary Clinton, I never wanted to be someone's wife". How
extraordinary. Who says she ever 'wanted to be someone's wife'? Maybe she fell in love with
someone all those years ago and they decided to get married? Who knows. But sweeping
statements like that do not endear you to quite a few of your once very loyal readers. It's
annoying.
I think this posits an overriding explanation for people's actions that doesn't exist. Even
the idea that immigration is a new liberal plot. Take the wind rush generation of immigrants
while there was a Tory government at the time I think the idea this was an attempt to
undermine white working class gains is provably nonsensical
The problem with this article, and the numerous other similar pieces which appear in the
various editions of the Guardian on a "regular-and-often" basis, is that it completely avoids
a very basic point, because it has no answer to it.
It is this.
The white British (and by extension, Western) populations never wanted mass immigration
because they knew from the outset, that its purpose was to undermine the social and political
gains they had wrested from the political and financial elite after 1945. They cared not at
all for the fratricidal conflicts between alien religions and cultures, of which they knew
little and regarded what they did know as unacceptable.
The US achieved a huge economic boom without it. Australia and New Zealand, Canada and the
USA were popular destinations for the British population whose goal and mantra was "no return
to the thirties" and who emigrated in large numbers.
White semi-skilled and unskilled (and increasingly, lower middle class) populations
everywhere reject, and have always rejected third world mass immigration (and more recently,
in some areas, mass emigration from the former Soviet Union) for the simple, and sufficient
reason that they have no possible reason or incentive to support or embrace it. It offers
them nothing, and its impact on their lives is wholly negative in practical terms - which is
how a social group which lives with limited or no margins between income and outgoings,
necessarily
perceives life.
Identity politics has no roots amongst them, because they correctly perceive that whatever
answer it might produce, there is no possible outcome in which the preferred answer will be a
semi-skilled, white family man. They inevitably pick up a certain level of the constant blare
of "racist bigot, homophobe, Islsmophobia" from its sheer inescapability, but they aren't
COMPLETELY stupid.
Don't fall into the associated trap either, of the false equation between STATED and ACTUAL goals.
Fox and Hunt are fully aware that to actually admit their actual goal, would be (probably) just about the only thing which
would provoke an electoral backlash which would sweep the Conservatives from office. The NHS is proverbially "the nearest thing
the English have, to a religion" and is a profoundly dangerous subject for debate.
Fox and Hunt may be weaving an incomprehensible web of sophistry and misdirection, but no part of it is accidental.
Since most progressive figures would never publicly call for extending a U.S.-led military
occupation, this petition shows that the war propaganda in Syria – particularly as it
relates to the Kurds – has been highly effective in subverting the progressive anti-war
left as it relates to the Syrian conflict.
How he's going to explain supporting kidnappers, murders, drug dealers:
Another Beautiful Soul: Counterpunching the Global Assault on Dissent
I was recently alerted to Sonali Kolhatkar's Truth Dig article, "Why Are Some on the
Left Falling for Fake News on Syria?", which Counterpunch found important enough to republish
under the title, "The Left, Syria and Fake News." Kolhatkar's article was introduced to me as
the work of a "beautiful soul."
...
The beautiful soul is consumed with "philanthropic fantasies and sentimental phrases
about fraternity", Engels once remarked. They advocate "edifying humanism" and "generic,
vague, moral appeals" not "concrete political action" to challenge "a specific social
system".* It's not clear what Counterpunch is counterpunching, but in the case of Draitser
and Kolhatkar, it's certainly not US imperialism.
Beautiful souls appear not to recognize that the war in Syria is a concrete political
struggle connected to a specific social system related to empire; it is the struggle of the
United States to extend its dictatorship over all of the Arab world and of Arab nationalists
in Damascus and their allies to counter US imperial designs. All the beautiful soul
recognizes is that people are being killed, families are being uprooted, small children are
being terrorized, and they wish it would all just end. They're not for justice, or an end to
oppression and the dictatorship of the United States, or for equality; they're for the
absence of conflict. And they don't seem to particularly care how it's brought about.
...
In any event, whatever left Kolhatkar is part of, is not a left that has much to do
with challenging and overcoming a real world system of domination, oppression and
exploitation. It's a left whose goal is the absence of conflict, not the presence of justice;
it's for pious expressions of benevolence, not engagement with a real world struggle against
dictatorship on an international level.
@Pacifica_Advocate | Apr 27, 2018 11:07:25 AM | 107
... "A long-awaited federal study finds that an estimated 32 million adults in the USA -- about
one in seven -- are saddled with such low literacy skills that it would be tough for them to
read anything more challenging than a children's picture book or to understand a medication's
side effects listed on a pill bottle."
I am not up to date with the debate but as you know, the german reunification was more like
an annexation of the GDR.
On a political level: Erich Honecker and members of the National Defense Council of East
Germany were prosecuted after reunion. Any connection to the work of the Ministry for State
Security would make a career in politics, administration or education, after reunion, difficult
or impossible (while my time in secondary school, years after reunion, at least 5 teachers were
dismissed because of that). Economical it was a buy out, in parts prepared by western intelligence before reunion and
corruption of Treuhandanstalt. Virtually none of the eastern enterprises (VEB) survived. But
preconditions in korea will be different i guess.
On a personal level: Because of structural problems, some people of lower class in east
germany, still preserve a kind of nostalgia. But in general, capitalism has won minds fast and
wide. Germany today has no left anymore.
I agree with Lil Bub the German reunification was more of an annexation.
East Germany had a much better social system than West Germany and even more so than
unified post-austerity Germany, and I have noticed time and time again that many East Germans
are much more well balanced and socially responsible people than West Germans, because they
were brought up to help each other, to work together, and to look after those who needed
assistance. There was a very good safety net. The cost of living was very low and the quality
of life very high compared to Germany today, because of the strong social services and easily
affordable accommodation. Even today, former East Germans often are much more sympathetic
towards other human beings and are always ready to help (doesn't apply to all of them! The
former party apparatchiks soon got themselves well established in the capitalist bureaucracy
and now out-do the capitalists in ruthlessness).
I can't remember the name, there was a minister in Kohl's Interior Ministry who tried to
protect East German families from being totally destroyed by the ruthless capitalist
annexation. At one point when Kohl demanded something specific (I can't remember the details
unfortunately) he said "not over my dead body" - within a couple of days he had been shot
dead in the street near his home. The police investigation was closed almost immediately with
virtually no investigation and no arrests.
The "reunification" led to massive scale sell-offs at highly depressed prices of East
German industry, which was almost always closed down and all the workers laid off - they were
bought up for next to nothing by West German competitors and just closed down to reduce
competition. Vast swathes of East Germany were left with little employment, leading to huge
social problems especially the rise of neo-nazism.
"... The ultimate goal of the new world order as an ideology is total centralization of economic and governmental power into the hands of a select and unaccountable bureaucracy made up of international financiers. This is governance according the the dictates of Plato's Republic; a delusional fantasy world in which benevolent philosopher kings, supposedly smarter and more objective than the rest of us, rule from on high with scientific precision and wisdom. It is a world where administrators become gods. ..."
"... Large corporations receive unfair legal protection under limited liability as well as outright legislative protection from civil consequences (Monsanto is a perfect example of this). They also receive immense taxpayer funded welfare through bailouts and other sources when they fail to manage their business responsibly. All this while small businesses and entrepreneurs are impeded at every turn by taxation and legal obstacles. ..."
"... Only massive corporations supported by governments are able to exploit the advantages of international manufacturing and labor sources in a way that ensures long term success. Meanwhile economic models that promote true decentralization and localism become impractical because real competition is never allowed. The world has not enjoyed free markets in at least a century. What we have today is something entirely different. ..."
"... The fact is, globalist institutions and central banks permeate almost every corner of the world. Nations like Russia and China are just as heavily tied to the IMF and the Bank for International Settlements and international financial centers like Goldman Sachs as any western government. ..."
"... The first inclination of human beings is to discriminate against ideas and people they see as destructive and counter to their prosperity. Globalists therefore have to convince a majority of people that the very tribalism that has fueled our social evolution and some of the greatest ideas in history is actually the source of our eventual doom. ..."
"... As mentioned earlier, globalists cannot have their "new world order" unless they can convince the masses to ask for it. Trying to implement such a system by force alone would end in failure, because revolution is the natural end result of tyranny. Therefore, the new world order has to be introduced as if it had been formed by coincidence or by providence. Any hint that the public is being conned into accepting global centralization would trigger widespread resistance. ..."
"... This is why globalism is always presented in the mainstream media as a natural extension of civilization's higher achievement. Even though it was the dangerous interdependency of globalism that helped fuel the economic crisis of 2008 and continues to escalate that crisis to this day, more globalism is continually promoted as the solution to the problem. It is spoken of with reverence in mainstream economic publications and political discussions. It receives almost religious praise in the halls of academia. Globalism is socioeconomic ambrosia -- the food of deities. It is the fountain of youth. It is a new Eden. ..."
"... Obviously, this adoration for globalism is nonsense. There is no evidence whatsoever that globalism is a positive force for humanity, let alone a natural one. There is far more evidence that globalism is a poisonous ideology that can only ever gain a foothold through trickery and through false flags. ..."
When globalists speak publicly about a "new world order" they are speaking about something
very specific and rather sacred in their little cult of elitism. It is not simply the notion
that civilization shifts or changes abruptly on its own; rather, it is their name for a
directed and engineered vision - a world built according to their rules, not a world that
evolved naturally according to necessity.
There are other names for this engineered vision, including the "global economic reset," or
the more general and innocuous term "globalism," but the intention is the same.
The ultimate goal of the new world order as an ideology is total centralization of economic
and governmental power into the hands of a select and unaccountable bureaucracy made up of
international financiers. This is governance according the the dictates of Plato's Republic; a
delusional fantasy world in which benevolent philosopher kings, supposedly smarter and more
objective than the rest of us, rule from on high with scientific precision and wisdom. It is a
world where administrators become gods.
Such precision and objectivity within human systems is not possible, of course . Human
beings are far too susceptible to their own biases and personal desires to be given
totalitarian power over others. The results will always be destruction and disaster. Then, add
to this the fact that the kinds of people who often pursue such power are predominantly
narcissistic sociopaths and psychopaths. If a governmental structure of high level
centralization is allowed to form, it opens a door for these mentally and spiritually broken
people to play out their twisted motives on a global stage.
It is important to remember that sociopaths are prone to fabricating all kinds of high
minded ideals to provide cover for their actions. That is to say, they will adopt a host of
seemingly noble causes to rationalize their scramble for power, but in the end these
"humanitarians" only care about imposing their will on as many people as possible while feeding
off them for as long as time allows.
There are many false promises, misrepresentations and fraudulent conceptions surrounding the
narrative of globalism. Some of them are rather clever and subversive and are difficult to pick
out in the deliberately created fog. The schemes involved in implementing globalism are
designed to confuse the masses with crisis until they end up ASKING for more centralization and
less freedom.
Let's examine some of the most common propaganda methods and arguments behind the push for
globalization and a "new world order"
Con #1: Globalism Is About "Free Markets"
A common pro-globalism meme is the idea that globalization is not really centralization, but
decentralization. This plays primarily to the economic side of global governance, which in my
view is the most important because without economic centralization political centralization is
not possible.
Free markets according to Adam Smith, a pioneer of the philosophy, are supposed to provide
open paths for anyone with superior ideas and ingenuity to pursue those ideas without
interference from government or government aided institutions. What we have today under
globalism are NOT free markets. Instead, globalism has supplied unfettered power to
international corporations which cannot exist without government charter and government
financial aid.
The corporate model is completely counter to Adam Smith's original premise of free market
trade. Large corporations receive unfair legal protection under limited liability as well as
outright legislative protection from civil consequences (Monsanto is a perfect example of
this). They also receive immense taxpayer funded welfare through bailouts and other sources
when they fail to manage their business responsibly. All this while small businesses and
entrepreneurs are impeded at every turn by taxation and legal obstacles.
In terms of international trade being "free trade," this is not really the case either. Only
massive corporations supported by governments are able to exploit the advantages of
international manufacturing and labor sources in a way that ensures long term success.
Meanwhile economic models that promote true decentralization and localism become impractical
because real competition is never allowed. The world has not enjoyed free markets in at least a
century. What we have today is something entirely different.
Con #2: Globalism Is About A "Multipolar World"
This is a relatively new disinformation tactic that I attribute directly to the success of
the liberty movement and alternative economists. As the public becomes more educated on the
dangers of economic centralization and more specifically the dangers of central banks, the
globalists are attempting to shift the narrative to muddy the waters.
For example, the liberty movement has railed against the existence of the Federal Reserve
and fiat dollar hegemony to the point that our information campaign has been breaking into
mainstream thought. The problem is that globalism is not about the dollar, U.S. hegemony or the
so-called "deep state," which in my view is a distraction from the bigger issue at hand.
The fact is, globalist institutions and central banks permeate almost every corner of the
world. Nations like Russia and China are just as heavily tied to the IMF and the Bank for
International Settlements and international financial centers like Goldman Sachs as any western
government.
Part of the plan for the new world order, as has been openly admitted by globalists and
globalist publications, is the decline of the U.S. and the dollar system to make way for one
world financial governance through the IMF as well as the Special Drawing Rights basket as a
mechanism for the world reserve currency. The globalists WANT a less dominant U.S. and a more
involved East, while the East continues to call for more control of the global economy by the
IMF. This concept unfortunately flies over the heads of most economists, even in the liberty
movement.
So, the great lie being promoted now is that the fall of the U.S. and the dollar is a "good
thing" because it will result in "decentralization," a "multi-polar" world order and the
"death" of globalism. However, what is really happening is that as the U.S. falls globalist
edifices like the IMF and the BIS rise. We are moving from centralization to
super-centralization. Globalists have pulled a bait and switch in order to trick the liberty
movement into supporting the success of the East (which is actually also globalist controlled)
and a philosophy which basically amounts to a re-branding of the new world order as some kind
of decentralized paradise.
Con #3: Nationalism Is The Source Of War, And Globalism Will End It
If there's one thing globalists have a love/hate relationship with, it's humanity's natural
tribal instincts. On the one hand, they like tribalism because in some cases tribalism can be
turned into zealotry, and zealots are easy to exploit and manipulate. Wars between nations
(tribes) can be instigated if the tribal instinct is weighted with artificial fears and
threats.
On the other hand, tribalism lends itself to natural decentralization of societies because
tribalism in its best form is the development of many groups organized around a variety of
ideas and principles and projects. This makes the establishment of a "one world ideology" very
difficult, if not impossible. The first inclination of human beings is to discriminate against
ideas and people they see as destructive and counter to their prosperity. Globalists therefore
have to convince a majority of people that the very tribalism that has fueled our social
evolution and some of the greatest ideas in history is actually the source of our eventual
doom.
Nationalism served the globalists to a point, but now they need to get rid of it entirely.
This requires considerable crisis blamed on nationalism and "populist" ideals. Engineered war,
whether kinetic or economic, is the best method to scapegoat tribalism. Every tragedy from now
on must eventually be attributed to ideas of separation and logical discrimination against
negative ideologies. The solution of globalism will then be offered; a one world system in
which all separation is deemed "evil."
Con #4: Globalism Is Natural And Inevitable
As mentioned earlier, globalists cannot have their "new world order" unless they can
convince the masses to ask for it. Trying to implement such a system by force alone would end
in failure, because revolution is the natural end result of tyranny. Therefore, the new world
order has to be introduced as if it had been formed by coincidence or by providence. Any hint
that the public is being conned into accepting global centralization would trigger widespread
resistance.
This is why globalism is always presented in the mainstream media as a natural extension of
civilization's higher achievement. Even though it was the dangerous interdependency of
globalism that helped fuel the economic crisis of 2008 and continues to escalate that crisis to
this day, more globalism is continually promoted as the solution to the problem. It is spoken
of with reverence in mainstream economic publications and political discussions. It receives
almost religious praise in the halls of academia. Globalism is socioeconomic ambrosia -- the
food of deities. It is the fountain of youth. It is a new Eden.
Obviously, this adoration for globalism is nonsense. There is no evidence whatsoever that
globalism is a positive force for humanity, let alone a natural one. There is far more evidence
that globalism is a poisonous ideology that can only ever gain a foothold through trickery and
through false flags.
We live in an era that represents an ultimate crossroads for civilization; a time of great
uncertainty. Will we seek truth in the trials we face, and thus the ability to create our own
solutions? Or, will we take a seemingly easier road by embracing whatever solutions are handed
to us by the establishment? Make no mistake -- the globalists already have a solution
prepackaged for us. They have been acclimating and conditioning the public to accept it for
decades now. That solution will not bring what it promises. It will not bring peace, but
eternal war. It will not bring togetherness, but isolation. It will not bring understanding,
but ignorance.
When globalists eventually try to sell us on a full-blown new world order, they will pull
out every conceivable image of heaven on Earth, but they will do this only after creating a
tangible and ever present hell.
* * *
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"... For example, when a Republican talks about "freedom" they don't mean "freedom from want". They mean "freedom from government oppression", but only government oppression. ..."
"... Democrats act the same way about different things. When a Democrat says "diversity", they only mean diversity of race, gender, or sexual orientation. Diversity of ideas? Diversity of class? Not so much. When a Democrat says "privilege" it refers to "white" and "male". Privilege of wealth? (i.e. like the dictionary definition) That generally gets forgotten. ..."
"... -- Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW) ..."
"... @thanatokephaloides ..."
"... -- Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW) ..."
I've come to realize that there's a lot of confusion out there due to people using words with very specific definitions.
For example, when a Republican talks about "freedom" they don't mean "freedom from want".
They mean "freedom from government oppression", but only government oppression.
Private oppression? Republicans will either deny it exists, or justify it.
When a Republican is "pro-life" it only refers to birth.
Because those very same pro-life people are generally pro-war and pro-death penalty.
Democrats act the same way about different things.
When a Democrat says "diversity", they only mean diversity of race, gender, or sexual orientation.
Diversity of ideas? Diversity of class? Not so much.
When a Democrat says "privilege" it refers to "white" and "male".
Privilege of wealth? (i.e. like the dictionary definition) That generally gets forgotten.
And then there is the bipartisan misuse of words, which revolves around war and wealth.
When they say "humanitarian war" they mean, um, some contradictory concepts that are meaningless, but are designed to make you feel
a certain way.
When they say "socialism" they really mean "state oppression" regardless of the economic system.
As for the many version of socialism with minimal or non-existent central governments? Or when socialist programs work? No one talks
about them.
Let's not forget substituting or mixing up "middle class" for "working class".
"Working class" now equals "poor", which isn't right.
They use "working class" as a smear too.
When you say "working class" some people
automatically insert certain words in front of it, as if it's generally understood.
When many hear discussion of outreach to "working class" voters, they silently add the words "white" and "male" and all too often
imagine them working on a factory floor or in construction. They shouldn't. According to another analysis by CAP from late last
year, just under 6 in 10 members of the working class are white, and the group is almost half female (46 percent).
The topic of the needs and interests of the working class is usually race and gender neutral. Only the dishonest or indoctrinated
can't wrap their minds around that fact.This is important because working class values don't require a race or gender lens.
a new report released today by the Center for American Progress makes a convincing argument, using extensive polling data, that
this divide does not need to exist. As it turns out, in many cases, voters -- both college educated and working class, and of
all races -- are in favor of an economic agenda that would offer them broader protections whether it comes to work, sickness or
retirement.
"The polling shows that workers across race support similar views on economic policy issues," said David Madland, the co-author
of the report, entitled "The Working-Class Push for Progressive Economic Policies." "They support a higher minimum wage, higher
taxes on the wealthy, and more spending on healthcare and retirement. There is broad support among workers for progressive economic
policy."
This shows that it's possible to make economic issues front and center in a campaign platform in a way that doesn't just talk
to working class whites and dismisses the concerns of female and minority voters. It also shows that the oft-discussed dilemma
among Democrats -- whether to prioritize college educated voters or working class ones -- may be a false choice.
Propaganda is all about false choices. To accomplish this, the media has created a world in which the working class
exist only in the margins .
With the working class largely unrepresented in the media, or represented only in supporting roles, is it any wonder that people
begin to identify in ways other than their class? Which is exactly what the
ruling class
wants .
I can't believe I used to fall for this nonsense! It takes a stupendous level of cognitive dissonance to simultaneously celebrate
the fortunes of someone from a specific identity while looking past the vast sea of people from said identity who are stuck in
gut-wrenching poverty. We pop champagnes for the neo-gentry while disregarding our own tribulations. It's the most stunning form
of logical jujitsu establishment shills have successfully conditioned us to accept; instead of gauging the health of the economy
and the vitality of our nation based on the collective whole, we have been hoodwinked to accept the elevation of a few as success
for us all.
Diversity has become a scam and nothing more than a corporate bamboozle and a federated scheme that is used to hide the true nature
of crony capitalism. We have become a Potemkin society where tokens are put on the stage to represent equality while the vast
majority of Americans are enslaved by diminishing wages or kneecapped into dependency. The whole of our politics has been turned
into an identity-driven hustle. On both sides of the aisle and at every corner of the social divide are grievance whisperers and
demagogues who keep spewing fuel on the fire of tribalism. They use our pains and suffering to make millions only to turn their
backs on us the minute they attain riches and status.
It's only when you see an article written by the ruling elite, or one that identifies with the ruling elite, that you realize
just how out-of-touch they can be. The rich really
are different - they are sociopaths.
They've totally and completely bought into their own
righteousness,
merit and virtue .
Class ascendance led me to become what Susan Jacoby classifies in her recent New York Times Op-Ed "Stop Apologizing for Being
Elite" as an "elite": a vague description of a group of people who have received advanced degrees. Jacoby urges elites to reject
the shame that they have supposedly recently developed, a shame that somehow stems from failing to stop the working class from
embracing Trumpism. Jacoby laments that, following the 2016 election, these elites no longer take pride in their wealth, their
education, their social status, and posits that if only elites embraced their upward mobility, the working class would have something
to aspire to and thus discard their fondness for Trump and his promises to save them.
That level of condescension just blows my mind. It occurred to me some time ago that I have much more in common with a working
class slob in France, or Mexico, or Brazil, or Russia, than I do with the wealthy elite in my own country. Don't think that the wealthy
haven't figured that out too.
That is the only word you need pay attention to.
I am inferior therefore expendable.
How the lofty will fail. They will succumb to those who are lessor in their minds.
Nice post gjohn.
That is the only word you need pay attention to.
I am inferior therefore expendable.
How the lofty will fail. They will succumb to those who are lessor in their minds.
Nice post gjohn.
It occurred to me some time ago that I have much more in common with a working class slob in France, or Mexico, or Brazil,
or Russia, than a do with the wealthy elite in my own country.
Don't think that the wealthy haven't figured that out too.
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.
There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among
millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing
class, have all the good things of life.
-- Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW) source
@thanatokephaloides I have been a worker and an employer for most of my career. I associate with many of the same ilk.
None of us working / employer types can afford to hire the millions of under employed. Maybe a few here and there. We are not
wealthy, nor are we taking advantage of the poor. Try to put this lofty idealism into perspective.
It occurred to me some time ago that I have much more in common with a working class slob in France, or Mexico, or Brazil,
or Russia, than a do with the wealthy elite in my own country.
Don't think that the wealthy haven't figured that out too.
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.
There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among
millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing
class, have all the good things of life.
-- Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW) source
pay $125K per kid for college if you earn more than 125K. That makes zero sense. A parent has no legal obligation to a child
after age 18, but the 18 year old must include parental income if they apply for PELL. If they are included in their parents family,
then the family must be legally obligated to pay for college. 18 can legally die, go to war, be incarcerated, and contractually
bound, but they can't have a drink or be legally entitled to the same rights and benefits as everyone else.
Since the college-educated express less support at any price, it reeks of pettiness and tit for tat. "I paid for mine, you
pay for yours." It is no wonder there is so much resentment at all levels and an economic coalition can't be formed. Somebody
is always measuring who mom loves best. At no time did Bernie say a word about means testing a GD thing. It is why he was able
to transcend labels.
Since the college-educated express less support at any price, it reeks of pettiness and tit for tat. "I paid for mine, you
pay for yours."
Especially when one considers the chances of that being true are really quite small.
Contrary to the Randian beLIEf, they didn't build what they have all by themselves. Society carried quite a bit of the freight
here.
pay $125K per kid for college if you earn more than 125K. That makes zero sense. A parent has no legal obligation to a child
after age 18, but the 18 year old must include parental income if they apply for PELL. If they are included in their parents
family, then the family must be legally obligated to pay for college. 18 can legally die, go to war, be incarcerated, and contractually
bound, but they can't have a drink or be legally entitled to the same rights and benefits as everyone else.
Since the college-educated express less support at any price, it reeks of pettiness and tit for tat. "I paid for mine, you
pay for yours." It is no wonder there is so much resentment at all levels and an economic coalition can't be formed. Somebody
is always measuring who mom loves best. At no time did Bernie say a word about means testing a GD thing. It is why he was able
to transcend labels.
That starts out on disparities in housing, but rounds abouts to the "Elite Class" and the urban gentrification by corporatist
democrats. It points out how the democratic party caters to this elite wing, and how the NIMBY-ism of the elites blocks affordable
housing laws. It ends up with some observations:
"Taking it a step further, a Democratic Party based on urban cosmopolitan business liberalism runs the risk not only of leading
to the continued marginalization of the minority poor, but also -- as the policies of the Trump administration demonstrate --
to the continued neglect of the white working-class electorate that put Trump in the White House."
We really can't afford the wealthy parasite class anymore nor should we suffer their think tanks that make folks worship them
and their lifestyles of indulgence and greed!
In February, 16 of 20 major cities experienced home price growth of 5.4% or higher: double
the average wage growth.
And then there was San Francisco
...
Lyapanov's work on the inherent instability of complex systems which was used as a basis
of Chaos Theory, is enough in itself to relegate predictions based on a linear model when
applied to the complex to be thrown into the dustbin of history.
LTCM L.P. Was I believe wiped out due to a combination of the 90's Asian & Russian
crisis' ( karma in the case of the latter ? ). It would be impossible to discover which tiny
flap of the butterfly's wings initiated the tipping point or to predict it beforehand.
Nudge was the title of a book by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein on how to manipulate
people in their supposed best interest, like in cafeteria lines, to put whole fruit before
desserts made with sugar.
If you liked Nudge , you'll love " cognitive infiltration ":
Conspiracy Theories
Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 08-03
Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled
epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best
response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas,
such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to
ignore them, are explored in this light.
Keywords: conspiracy theories, social networks, informational cascades, group
polarization https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585
Is not this what discerning MIC's all do these days, via FBI FB?
And of course we mopes have been "nudged" into pretty much that blind serfdom alluded to.
Back in the Cave, with not much chance of dispelling the belief in and subjection to the
shadows projected on the wall we are forced to face
I rather detest the notion of someone or entity 'nudging' me in the direction of some
behavior, especially in a paternalistic mode where the assumption is that they know better
than I what I 'should' be doing or thinking.
On one level, isn't that a working definition of advertising? On another, it smacks of
authoritarianism. Don't we have enough of this kind of thing already? Worse, what's the first
reaction one naturally has when they realize they're being manipulated? Seems to be a
strategy fraught with risk of getting exactly the wrong response.
If I'm to be encouraged to behave in a given way, show me the respect of offering a
conscious, intelligent argument to do so on the merits, or kindly go (family blog)
yourself!
In economics, the single most important thing to understand is debt.
If you understand debt; you won't have any debt.
Debt and freedom are the antithisis of each other.
Without debt; nudges have no influence.
The term scientism generally points to the facile application of science in unwarranted
situations not amenable to application of the scientific method.
Soddy's attempts at linking the physical world via a quasi scientific approach without
doing a thorough heterodox examination of our species wrt monies is my point i.e.
"Being scientist/technologists, Fuller and Soddy felt the need to define wealth, to
quantify it in an equation. They knew the components of wealth were physical resources
– matter and energy – and the level of knowledge available to most effectively
employ these resources. Simplistically stated:
WEALTH = (MATTER + ENERGY) x HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
Energy stored in fossil fuels – Earth's energy savings account – is, of
course, unavailable after the fuels are burned. But both Fuller and Soddy understood that
expanding human knowledge would eventually make it possible for humanity to operate on
Earth's energy income using solar, wind, tidal, biofuels, etc. (but for lack of political
will and resistance from the fossil fuel industry, we have reached this potential today).
Additionally, the First Law of Thermodynamics says the total amount of matter and energy in
the universe is constant and can be neither created nor destroyed, only interchanged. Since
knowledge can only grow, wealth can only grow.
It is critical to understand that wealth is governed by the laws of physics and is
incorruptible, whereas money is governed by the laws of man and is infinitely
corruptible."
I could start with models and applications of theory between interdisciplinary modes of
inquire – chalk and cheese. Was Soddy an accountant, deal with issues like sound
finance vs functional, or have any depth wrt international systems – no. Worse bit in
my book is it moralizes the money question without dealing with the broader social ethos and
how that is forwarded via dominate ideology.
To that quandary I brought up atomistic individualism on this blog some time ago, Syll has
recently mentioned it. Its in these things that proceed baked in human tool user problems
like money.
Thank you skippy and the follow-on commenters for a serious genuine reply-to-and
discussion-of my question.
It has been years since I read " Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt – – The
Solution of the Economic Paradox". In light of this subthread I will have to dig it back out
of my bookpile and read it again . . . and slower next time . . . to see what I end up
thinking.
Why would I even bother to do that? Because it still seems to me that Soddy was at least
trying to understand "economics" in terms of the biophysical world in which we all live and
in which we do everything we do, including trying to understand "economics". He was at least
trying to see how matter-and-energy harvesting in order to do thing-making and stuff-doing
could actually be reality-based understood in terms of the best actual knowledge of
matter-and-energy reality
existing in his day. If that fails to take account of all the cultural/psychomental/etc.
things that humans will do within the picture frame of nature's biophysical constraints, that
is a problem we will have to try taking account of in our own extremely troubled day.
But his scientism was at least an effort to ground "economic" understanding within real
scientific knowledge. His scientism is still better than the cardboard replica scientism
practiced by today's mainstream economists who are merely spray-painting a bunch of scientism
onto the paper-mache' sewage-filled pig which is all that their mainstream discipline of
mainstream economics ever even is.
While it is
undeniable that neoliberals routinely disparage the state, both back then and now, it does not
follow that they are politically libertarian or, as David Harvey would have it, that they are
implacably opposed to state interventions in the economy and society. Harvey's error is
distressing, since even Antonio Gramsci understood this: "Moreover, laissez-faire liberalism,
too, must be introduced by law, through the intervention of political power: it is an act of
will, not the spontaneous, automatic expression of economic facts." 6
From the 1940s onward, the distinguishing characteristic of neoliberal doctrines and practice
is that they embrace this prospect of repurposing the strong state to impose their vision of a
society properly open to the dominance of the market as they conceive it. Neoliberals from
Friedrich Hayek to James Buchanan to Richard Posner to Alexander Rüstow (who invented the
term Vitalpolitik , which became Foucault's "biopolitics") to Jacques Rueff, not to
mention a plethora of figures after 1970, all explicitly proposed policies to strengthen the
state. 7
Friedman's own trademark proposals, like putting the money supply on autopilot, or replacing
public schools with vouchers, required an extremely strong state to enforce them. While
neoliberal think tanks rile up the base with debt clocks and boogeyman statistics of ratios of
government expenditure to GDP, neoliberal politicians organize a host of new state activities
to fortify their markets. They extravagantly increase incarceration and policing of those whom
they deem unfit for the marketplace. They expand both state and corporate power to exercise
surveillance and manipulation of subject populations while dismantling judicial recourse to
resist such encroachments. Neoliberals introduce new property rights (like intellectual
property) to cement into place their extensions of market valuations to situations where they
were absent. They strengthen international sanctions such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and
investor-state dispute settlement schemes to circumvent and neutralize national social
legislation they dislike. They bail out and subsidize private banking systems at the cost of
many multiples of existing national income. And they define corporations as legal persons in
order to facilitate the buying of elections.
The blue-sky writings of neoliberals with regard to the state are, if anything, even more
daunting. In the imaginary constitution proposed in Hayek's Law, Legislation and Liberty
, he suggests that politicians be rendered more powerful : in the imagined upper
legislative house, Hayek stipulates, only men of substantial property over age forty-five would
be eligible to vote or be elected; no political parties would be allowed; and each member would
stand for a hefty fifteen-year term. 8
This illustrates the larger neoliberal predisposition to be very leery of democracy, and thus
to stymie public participation through the concentration of political power in fewer hands.
James Buchanan proposed something very similar. 9
This is just about as far from libertarianism as one could get, short of brute
dictatorship.
So here is the answer to my first question: people think the label "neoliberalism" is an
awful neologism because the neoliberals have been so good at covering their tracks, obscuring
what they stand for, and denying the level of coherence which they have achieved in their long
march to legitimacy. Back when some of these proposals were just a gleam in Hayek's eye, they
did explicitly use the term "neoliberalism" to describe the project that, back then, did not
yet exist -- even Milton Friedman used it in print! 10
But once their program looked like it would start to jell, and subsequently start reshaping
both the state and the market more to their liking, they abruptly abjured any reference to that
label, and sometime in the later 1950s, following the lead of Hayek, they began to call
themselves "classical liberals." This attempt at rebranding was an utter travesty because, as
they moved from reconceptualization of one area of human experience to another, the resulting
doctrines contradicted classical liberalism point by point, and term by term. It might be
worthwhile for us who come after to insist upon the relevance of things that put the
neo- in neoliberalism.
What's New about Neoliberalism?
In a nutshell, classical liberalism imagined a night watchman state that would set the
boundaries for the natural growth of the market, like a shepherd tending his flock. Markets
were born, not made. The principles of good governance and liberty would be dictated by natural
rights of individual humans, or perhaps by the prudent accretion of tradition. People needed to
be nurtured first to find themselves, in order to act as legitimate citizens in liberal
society. Society would be protected from the disruptive character of the market by something
like John Stuart Mill's "harm principle": colloquially, the freedom of my fist stops at the
freedom of your face. The neoliberals were having none of that, and explicitly said so.
Far from trying to preserve society against the unintended consequences of the operations of
markets, as democratic liberalism sought to do, neoliberal doctrine instead set out actively to
dismantle those aspects of society which might resist the purportedly inexorable logic of
"catallactics," and to reshape it in the market's image. For neoliberals, freedom and the
market would be treated as identical. Their rallying cry was to remove the foundation of
liberty from natural rights or tradition, and reposition it upon an entirely novel theory
concerning what a market was, or should be. They could not acknowledge individual natural
rights, because they sought to tutor the masses to become the agent the market would be most
likely to deem successful. The market no longer gave you what you wanted; you had to capitulate
to what the market wanted. All areas of life could be better configured to behave as if they
were more market-like. Gary Becker, for example, a member of the Mont Pèlerin Society,
proposed a market-based approach to allow for a socially optimal level of crime, and advocated
a revolutionary extension of marginal calculus to include the "shadow costs" and benefits
associated with "children, prestige or esteem, health, altruism, envy, and pleasure of the
senses." Becker even proposed an economic model of the "dating market," one consequence of
which was the proposition that polygamy for successful, wealthy men could be politically
rationalized. And voilà! The Sunday New York Times produced an article saying
just that, as if it were real news. Classical liberals like Mill or Michael Oakeshott would be
spinning in their graves. 11
The intellectual content of neoliberalism is something that warrants sustained discussion,
but this can only happen once critical historians can admit they are no longer basing their
evaluations on the isolated writings of a single author. There is no convenient crib sheet
describing what the modern neoliberal thought collective (for brevity, NTC) actually believes.
Nevertheless, neoliberalism does have certain themes that are regularly sounded in emanations
from the NTC:
(1) "Free" markets do not occur naturally. They must be actively constructed through
political organizing.
(2) "The market" is an information processor, and the most efficient one possible -- more
efficient than any government or any single human ever could be. Truth can only be validated by
the market.
(3) Market society is, and therefore should be, the natural and inexorable state of
humankind.
(4) The political goal of neoliberals is not to destroy the state, but to take control of
it, and to redefine its structure and function, in order to create and maintain the
market-friendly culture.
(5) There is no contradiction between public/politics/citizen and
private/market/entrepreneur-consumer -- because the lat ter does and should
eclipse the former.
(6) The most important virtue -- more important than justice, or anything else -- is
freedom, defined "negatively" as "freedom to choose," and most importantly, defined as the
freedom to acquiesce to the imperatives of the market.
(7) Capital has a natural right to flow freely across national boundaries.
(8) Inequality -- of resources, income, wealth, and even political rights -- is a good
thing ; it prompts productivity, because people envy the rich and emulate them; people who
complain about inequality are either sore losers or old fogies, who need to get hip to the way
things work nowadays.
(9) Corporations can do no wrong -- by definition. Competition will take care of all
problems, including any tendency to monopoly.
(10) The market, engineered and promoted by neoliberal experts, can always provide solutions
to problems seemingly caused by the market in the first place: there's always "an app for
that."
(11) There is no difference between is and should be : "free" markets both
should be (normatively) and are (positively) the most efficient economic system,
and the most just way of doing politics, and the most empirically true
description of human behavior, and the most ethical and moral way to live -- which in
turn explains, and justifies, why their versions of "free" markets should be and, as
neoliberals build more and more power, increasingly are universal. 12
No wonder outsiders are dazed and confused. The neoliberal revolutionaries, contemptuous of
tradition, conjured a fake tradition to mask their true intentions. They did this while
explicitly abjuring the label of "conservative." But there is one more reason that outsiders
tend to think it a mistake to posit an effective intellectual formation called "neoliberalism."
Nowadays we doubt that ideas, and particularly political ideas, are the product of the
concerted efforts of some thought collective stretching over generations, engaging in critique
and reconstruction, fine-tuning and elaborating doctrine, while keeping focused upon problems
of implementation and feasibility. Indeed, that doubt is evidence of neoliberal preconceptions
having seeped into all of our thought processes. Yet that is an exact description of how
neoliberalism developed, in the manner (as I insist on calling it) of a thought collective:
sanctioned members are encouraged to innovate and embellish in small ways, but an excess of
doctrinal heresy gets one expelled from participation. Central dogmas are not codified or
dictated by any single prophet; no one delivers the Tablets down from the "Mont"; and you
cannot adequately understand neoliberalism solely by reading Hayek or Milton Friedman, for that
matter. While we can locate its origins in 1947, it has undergone much revision since then, and
is still a hydra-headed Gorgon to this very day.
This "Number one ism" that neoloiberalism promotes is really too unhealthy. There are people who coisouly sacrifies family and other
value for the sake of achivement high status. But infection of this value of large part of the society is destructive.
Viewing people as commodity is defining feature of sociopaths. In a way we can say that neoliberalism promotes socipathy.
Notable quotes:
"... "People get so involved with playing the game of being important that they exhaust themselves and their time, and they don't do the work of actually organizing people." ..."
"... Too many people and too many entities get too comfortable fashioning themselves as leaders and viewing people as commodities... ..."
"People get so involved with playing the game of being important that they exhaust themselves and their time, and they
don't do the work of actually organizing people." -- Ella Baker
[Neoliberalism] also infiltrates our interpersonal relationships...
The ongoing questions
about how major tech corporations -- especially social media giants -- are reaching into our personal and private lives for the purpose
of extraction raises questions about where else these sorts of intrusions take place. Too many people and too many entities get
too comfortable fashioning themselves as leaders and viewing people as commodities...
... ... ...
Fame and fortune dictate far too much in our society. This happens so much that those who are famous regularly instigate public
backlash for making uninformed comments about all sorts of issues. Media outlets invite popular celebrities to comment on a wide
array of serious social issues not because they'll provide any sort of expertise, but because they are famous...
... .. ...
Fame and money do not automatically make a person insincere. The insincerity of this capitalist system, however, is certainly
upheld in part by the extravagance of fame and money. We don't have to be broke and unpopular to be genuine, but if the logic we
use to define our success resembles capitalism, we're going in a terrible circle. What separates us from the system that oppresses
us?
Neoliberal rationality is about redefining everything in economic terms. This is pretty
devious trick. As soon as you allow it you are hooked.
Notable quotes:
"... Republicans argue that their tax cut will increase GDP, reduce the deficit, and reduce taxes for the middle class. Democrats reply that the tax cut will not increase GDP, will not reduce the deficit, and will not reduce the middle-class's tax burden. Both parties are arguing around a shared premise: the goal is to cut taxes for the middle class, reduce the deficit, and grow GDP. ..."
"... What if teaching students history turns out to make them worse workers, because they begin to see a resemblance between their bosses and the robber barons? What if the study of philosophy makes laborers less compliant and docile? If we argue that music is actually economically useful, then we'll have no defense of music if it turns out not to be useful. Instead, we need to argue that whether music is economically useful has nothing to do with whether students deserve to be exposed to it. ..."
"... Here's a clear illustration. Donald Trump heavily pushes the idea that school should be job training, to the point of saying that "community colleges" should be redefined as vocational schools because he doesn't know what "community" is. (You can blame Trump's ignorance, but this is partially because the right has spent decades insisting that "society" and "community" are meaningless terms and the world consists solely of individuals, and the left has not had good explanations in response.) ..."
"... I gave a similar example recently of the difference between the way a neoliberal framework looks at things versus the way a leftist does. Goldman Sachs produced a report suggesting to biotech companies that curing diseases might not actually be profitable, because people stop being customers once they are cured and no more money can be extracted from them. The liberal response to this would be an empirical argument: "Here's why it is actually profitable to cure diseases." The leftist response would be: "We need to have a value system that goes beyond profit maximization." ..."
"... Economic values become the water we swim in, and we don't even notice them worming their way into our brains. ..."
"... The fact that everyone seems to agree that the purpose of education is "job skills," rather than say, "the flourishing of the human mind," shows the triumph of a certain new kind of liberalism, for which I can only think of one word. ..."
...For example:
Republicans argue that their tax
cut will increase GDP, reduce the deficit, and reduce taxes for the middle class. Democrats
reply that the tax cut will not increase GDP, will not reduce the deficit, and will not
reduce the middle-class's tax burden. Both parties are arguing around a shared premise: the
goal is to cut taxes for the middle class, reduce the deficit, and grow GDP.
But traditional liberalism, before the "neo" variety emerged, would have made its case on
the basis of some quite different premises. Instead of arguing that Democrats are actually the
party that will reduce the middle class' taxes, it would make the case that taxes are
important, because it's only through taxes that we can improve schools, infrastructure,
healthcare, and poverty relief. Instead of participating in the race to cut taxes and the
deficit, Old Liberalism is based on a set of moral ideas about what we owe to one
another.
Now, one reason I dislike the "neoliberalism" framework is that I'm not sure how much this
nostalgic conception of the Great Liberalism Of Times Past should be romanticized. But it's
obvious that there's a great deal of difference between New Deal/Great Society rhetoric and
"Actually We're The Real Job Creators/Tax-Cutters/GDP Growers." And it's also true that
over the last decades, certain pro-market ideological premises have wormed their way into the
mind of ordinary liberals to the point that debates occur within a very narrow economic
framework.
Let me give you a very clear example. Libertarian economist Bryan Caplan has a new book out
called The Case Against
Education . It argues that the public school system is a waste of time and money and
should be destroyed. Caplan says that students are right to wonder "when they will ever use"
the things they are being taught. They won't, he says, because they're not being taught any
skills they will actually need in the job market. Instead, education functions mostly as
"signaling": a degree shows an employer that you are the type of person who works hard and is
responsible, not that you have actually learned particular things that you need. Credentials,
Caplan says, are mostly meaningless. He argues that we should drastically cut public school
funding, make education more like job training, get rid of history, music, and the arts, and
"deregulate and destigmatize child labor." Essentially, Caplan believes that education should
be little more than skills training for jobs, and it's failing at that.
Now here's where "neoliberalism" comes in. Caplan's argument is obviously based on
right-wing economic premises: markets should sort everything out, the highest good is to create
value for your employers, etc. But let's look at a "liberal" response. In The Washington
Monthly , Kevin Carey has a biting critique of
Caplan's book, which he says is based on a "childish" philosophy. Carey says that education
is , in fact useful for more than signaling:
Caplan is not wrong about the existence of signaling and its kissing cousin,
credentialism, which describes the tendency of job categories to accrue more degree
requirements, sometimes unnecessarily, over time. But these are banal and unchallenged ideas in
the economics profession. In his 2001 Nobel lecture, [Michael] Spence warned that people who
use job markets to illustrate signaling run the risk of concluding, wrongly, that education
doesn't contribute to productivity. This wrongheaded argument is the essence of The Case
Against Education Eric Hanushek, a conservative economist and well-known skeptic of public
school funding, has documented a strong relationship between average scores on international
tests and the growth rates of national economies. Put simply, well-educated nations become
prosperous nations, and no country has become well educated without large, sustained
investments in public education.
Carey mounts a strong defense of public education against Caplan's attack. But look at how
he does it. Caplan has argued that education doesn't actually make students more productive or
give them skills useful for thriving in the economy. Carey replies that while this is partly
true, education does actually increase productivity, as we can see when we look across
nations. Everyone in the discussion, however, is operating on the implicit premise that the
measure of whether education is successful is "productivity." And because of that, no matter
how strong the liberal argument is, no matter how stingingly critical it may be of
libertarianism or privatization, it has already ceded the main point. We all agree that
education is about maximizing students' value to the economy, we just disagree about the degree
to which public education successfully does that, and whether the solution is to fix the system
or get rid of it. The debate becomes one of empirics rather than values.
Carey doesn't make a case for an alternative "liberal" notion of education, and doesn't
question the values underlying the "banal and unchallenged ideas in the economics profession."
But unless liberalism is to be something more than "a difference of opinion over the correct
way to maximize productivity," it's important to defend a wholly different set of
principles . Otherwise, what if it turns out that providing art and music classes is a drag
on productivity? What if teaching students history turns out to make them worse workers,
because they begin to see a resemblance between their bosses and the robber barons? What if the
study of philosophy makes laborers less compliant and docile? If we argue that music is
actually economically useful, then we'll have no defense of music if it turns out not to be
useful. Instead, we need to argue that whether music is economically useful has nothing to do
with whether students deserve to be exposed to it.
Here's a clear illustration. Donald Trump heavily pushes the idea that school should be
job training,
to the point of saying that "community colleges" should be redefined as vocational schools
because he doesn't know what "community" is. (You can blame Trump's ignorance, but this is
partially because the right has spent decades insisting that "society" and "community" are
meaningless terms and the world consists solely of individuals, and the left has not had good
explanations in response.) A UCLA education professor, Mike Rose,
critiques Trump and Betsy DeVos for defining vocational education "in functional and
economistic terms -- as preparation for the world of work[,] reduced to narrow job training."
Sounds right! But then here's what Rose says about why vocational education must be more than
training:
Intellectual suppleness will have to be as key an element of a future Career and Technical
Education as the content knowledge of a field. The best CTE already helps students develop an
inquiring, problem-solving cast of mind. But to make developing such a cast of mind standard
practice will require, I think, a continual refining of CTE and an excavation of the beliefs
about work and intelligence that led to the separation of the academic and the vocational
course of study in the first place. [In addition to basic skills], students will need to
learn the conceptual base of those tools and techniques and how to reason with them, for
future work is predicted to be increasingly fluid and mutable. A standard production process
or routine of service could change dramatically. Would employees be able to understand the
principles involved in the process or routine and adapt past skills to the new workplace? To
borrow a phrase from labor journalist William Serrin, we need "to give workers back their
heads" and assume and encourage the intellectual engagement of students in the world of work.
That engagement would include education in history and sociology, economics and political
science. What are the forces shaping the economy? How did we get to this place, and are there
lessons to be learned from exploring that history? Are there any pressure points for
individual or collective action? What resources are out there, what options do I have, how do
I determine their benefits and liabilities?
Rose argues that workers should be given an education in history and sociology. Why? Because
it will make them better workers. The future economy will require more adaptable minds
with better critical reasoning skills, and wider courses of study will help prepare students
for that future economy. Yet the argument is still: Education shouldn't just be job
training, it should also incorporate the liberal arts, because the liberal arts are also
helpful on the job. Our defense of a liberal education remains instrumental. Of course,
often when liberals make these arguments, they defend them by saying that instrumental
arguments are more successful than moral ones. You're not going to get anywhere arguing that
workers deserve history courses, you have to say that they need them. But I've always
been skeptical of that defense for a few reasons. First, if it turns out that learning history
won't actually produce better tech workers, your whole argument collapses. Second, it's
dishonest, and people can usually detect dishonesty. Third, it takes us yet another step
further toward the universal acceptance of the conclusion that economic values are the only
values there are. (Also, let's be real: no business is going to be fooled into thinking it's a
good idea to teach their workers how to use "collective action" to exert pressure.)
I gave a similar
example recently of the difference between the way a neoliberal framework looks at things
versus the way a leftist does. Goldman Sachs produced a report suggesting to biotech companies
that curing diseases might not actually be profitable, because people stop being customers once
they are cured and no more money can be extracted from them. The liberal response to this would
be an empirical argument: "Here's why it is actually profitable to cure diseases." The
leftist response would be: "We need to have a value system that goes beyond profit
maximization."
Neoliberalism, then, is the best existing term we have to capture the almost universal
convergence around a particular set of values. We don't have debates over whether the point of
teaching is to enrich the student's mind or prepare the student for employment, we have debates
over how to prepare students for employment. Economic values become the water we swim in,
and we don't even notice them worming their way into our brains.
he word is valuable insofar as it draws our attention to the ideological frameworks within
which debates occur, and where the outer boundaries of those debates lie. The fact that
everyone seems to agree that the purpose of education is "job skills," rather than say, "the
flourishing of the human mind," shows the triumph of a certain new kind of liberalism, for
which I can only think of one word.
We will have a more thorough examination of The Case Against Education, along with an
explanation of an alternate left conception of the purpose of schooling, in our May-June
edition. Subscribe now to
make sure you receive it when it comes out!
In a way neoliberalism is Fordism applied to humans.
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism is not just an economic policy, it is a project of "full spectrum dominance" of the human psyche. It is an indoctrination that tells people to be more efficient, to schedule and micromanage their lives as to increase productivity. One must become a widget whose sole function is to make money and whose value as a person is determined by their economic status ..."
"... Neoliberalism "refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit." The major beneficiaries of neoliberalism are large trans-national corporations and wealthy investors. The implementation of neoliberal policies came into full force during the eighties under Thatcher and Reagan. Today, the principles of neoliberalism are widely held with near-religious fervor by most major political parties in the US and Britain and are gaining acceptance by those holding power elsewhere. ..."
Neoliberalism is not just an economic policy, it is a project of "full spectrum
dominance" of the human psyche. It is an indoctrination that tells people to be more
efficient, to schedule and micromanage their lives as to increase productivity. One must
become a widget whose sole function is to make money and whose value as a person is
determined by their economic status .
Even a lot of so called liberal Democrats share these capitalist extremist beliefs because
they are actively trying to integrate the "talented tenth" of minority communities into the
ruling class.
@ 62
The IMF and The World Bank (always headed by an American) -- bastions of neoliberalism.
Robert McChesney:
Neoliberalism "refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of
private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to
maximize their personal profit." The major beneficiaries of neoliberalism are large
trans-national corporations and wealthy investors. The implementation of neoliberal
policies came into full force during the eighties under Thatcher and Reagan. Today, the
principles of neoliberalism are widely held with near-religious fervor by most major
political parties in the US and Britain and are gaining acceptance by those holding power
elsewhere.
The article does provide more context but even then competition from robots is not
defensible. The article does end by asking for a discussion about inequality which would sure
be a start......and likely a quick ending....grin
"... Last week, after a series of controversial prime-time episodes of "Tucker Carlson Tonight," which questioned whether it is in America's best national security interest to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria; what the ultimate end-game looks like, considering the post-coup mess America's made of Libya and Iraq; and if the recent alleged chemical warfare assault on children was actually the work of Assad or even if it happened -- Tucker Carlson was M.I.A. from his own show Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights. ..."
"... I hear Tucker Carlson is MIA in the USA. Has he been Arkanicided? ..."
"... He recently did an interview totally challenging the permanent state spin on world affairs. As much as I detest the conservatives I absolutely value his honesty and calm tenacity. ..."
We're nearing apocalypse if I'm out here carrying water for Fox News' Tucker Carlson, who is
hopefully not being water-boarded as I type this.
Last week, after a series of controversial prime-time episodes of "Tucker Carlson Tonight,"
which questioned whether it is in America's best national security interest to overthrow Bashar
al-Assad in Syria; what the ultimate end-game looks like, considering the post-coup mess
America's made of Libya and Iraq; and if the recent alleged chemical warfare assault on
children was actually the work of Assad or even if it happened -- Tucker Carlson was M.I.A.
from his own show Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights.
Tucker Carlson has a tweet up from four hours ago, saying that he will be back on Fox News
tonight, after three days off.
Posted by: lysias | Apr 23, 2018 4:13:07 PM | 123
Let's see if he continues to entertain any truth on Syria. One of the most outstanding
pieces of MSM busting work there recently. Thought he was on the edge of getting Ben Swann'd
on the back of that effort, or maybe even some threatened with some mild waterboarding.
Thanks for the Carla Ortiz post b. She is a great and brave reporter.
I hear Tucker Carlson is MIA in the USA. Has he been Arkanicided?
He recently did an interview totally challenging the permanent state spin on world affairs.
As much as I detest the conservatives I absolutely value his honesty and calm tenacity.
"... Ayn Rand's mythology also included a very strong emphasis on personal honor, high integrity and principles, and remaining true to one's commitments and promises (or how else can businesspeople trust one another without recourse to the use of force?). ..."
"... Her aestheticization of capitalist accumulation as the expression of a great and noble soul, as opposed to the embarrassing compulsion of the avaricious soul, is what gives her protagonists the illusion of something like heroic gravitas. Just my opinion. ..."
"... Yes, brain washed foot soldiers of Ayn Rand's mythology and Milton Friedman's theory, MBAs, have destroyed North America with their idiotic cost-minimizing, short-term profit-maximizing approach! ..."
"... Could you comment on Ayn Rand receiving social welfare payments and going on Medicare to help support her during her treatment for lung cancer near the end of her life? ..."
"... There are also many rumours flying about on the Internet that in the 1920s Ayn Rand was impressed by the serial killer William E Hickman (who kidnapped a banker's 12-year-old daughter, killed her and disembowelled and dismembered her) to the extent that he became a model for an early character in an unfinished novel. ..."
More specifically, it's the ascendency of Ayn Rand's mythology, its brainwashed economist
priests and their politico allies while dumbing down and hypnotizing a majority of the
citizenry that are responsible for quite a bit of the current malaise. But as I noted above,
the seed was bad from the outset.
Ayn Rand's mythology also included a very strong emphasis on personal honor, high integrity
and principles, and remaining true to one's commitments and promises (or how else can
businesspeople trust one another without recourse to the use of force?).
Her villains are not merely weak in terms of their personal and economic influence but
morally weak in their character, which is why they take over the government's monopoly on
force (and also symbolically why they tend to be physically described as amorphous, soft, and
fleshy).
I think it's fair to acknowledge this in what she was arguing in her works. Perhaps a
number of us will agree that the problems we often observe don't result from specific
government systems but rather the pervasive ease with which humans across cultures and
societies indulge in power, corruption, and short-sighted justifications of long-standing
vices. And where humans hold one another accountable and work to support one another's moral
development towards justice, peace, and mutually reinforced respect, it might matter less and
less how we shape our governments.
Not really a Rand apologist, though. I'm always looking for ways of understanding
similarities across worldviews.
The mythology of your first paragraph is not Rand's, but Nietzsche's; or rather, it is
first of all Nietzsche's and is secondarily Rand's interpretation of Nietzsche. The
difference between Nietzsche's "supermen" or "overmen" and "last men"--as allegorized in Thus
Spake Zarathustra, eg.--is taken over nearly exactly into Rand's imaginary social world.
The
main difference here is that for Rand the industrialist-tycoon was the paradigmatic instance
of the overman we were all to aspire to become, whereas for Nietzsche such a tycoon
represents simply the tumorous magnification of bourgeois individualism.
This is why Rand
tries to depict her heroes as much as "artists"--in the romantic and to some extent
Nietzschean sense of TSZ--as capitalists.
Her aestheticization of capitalist accumulation as
the expression of a great and noble soul, as opposed to the embarrassing compulsion of the
avaricious soul, is what gives her protagonists the illusion of something like heroic
gravitas. Just my opinion.
Yes, brain washed foot soldiers of Ayn Rand's mythology and Milton Friedman's theory,
MBAs, have destroyed North America with their idiotic cost-minimizing, short-term
profit-maximizing approach!
WJ, maybe you're on to something, but I'll also point out that the Luciferian and Promethean
allusions throughout Atlas Shrugged themselves point to an older pattern of thinking
about divine usurpation than Nietzsche, where the New Creators surpass the old, buried gods
by bringing metal and oil and fire together into new forms of life. When Hank and Dagney
finally embrace and reveal their passion for one another, they are deep in the engine room of
the locomotive, with all its pistons and steam and heat and steel.
My point, though, was just to say that it's helpful to remember that even Rand encouraged
justice and honor and personal integrity. You might say that Rand, given her
admiration for the One True Philosopher in her reckoning -- Aristotle -- thought moral
character important as something objective...
Glad that people here see through Alisa Rosenbaum's bs.
Regarding Turkey, what they mean is that Turkey may deny the use of its airstrips to NATO
forces (reneging on its NATO commitments), hence the need for an aircraft carrier as a
(partial) replacement.
Could you comment on Ayn Rand receiving social welfare payments and going on Medicare to
help support her during her treatment for lung cancer near the end of her life?
There are also many rumours flying about on the Internet that in the 1920s Ayn Rand was
impressed by the serial killer William E Hickman (who kidnapped a banker's 12-year-old
daughter, killed her and disembowelled and dismembered her) to the extent that he became a
model for an early character in an unfinished novel. Could you comment on those rumours?
Why
would Rand choose a serial killer (of all people) as a model for a "lone wolf" character at
odds with conventional society?
"... The American ruling class loves Identity Politics, because Identity Politics divides the people into hostile groups and prevents any resistance to the ruling elite. With blacks screaming at whites, women screaming at men, and homosexuals screaming at heterosexuals, there is no one left to scream at the rulers. ..."
"... Consequently, the ruling elite have funded "black history," "women's studies," and "transgender dialogues," in universities as a way to institutionalize the divisiveness that protects them. These "studies" have replaced real history with fake history. ..."
PCR's latest is really good. I love it when he gets to ripping, and doesn't stop for 2000+ words or so. It reads a lot better
than Toynbee, fersher.
The working class, designated by Hillary Clinton as "the Trump deplorables," is now the victimizer, not the victim. Marxism
has been stood on its head.
The American ruling class loves Identity Politics, because Identity Politics divides the people into hostile groups
and prevents any resistance to the ruling elite. With blacks screaming at whites, women screaming at men, and homosexuals screaming
at heterosexuals, there is no one left to scream at the rulers.
The ruling elite favors a "conversation on race," because the ruling elite know it can only result in accusations that will
further divide society. Consequently, the ruling elite have funded "black history," "women's studies," and "transgender dialogues,"
in universities as a way to institutionalize the divisiveness that protects them. These "studies" have replaced real history
with fake history.
All of America, indeed of the entire West, lives in The Matrix, a concocted [and false] reality. Western peoples are so
propagandized, so brainwashed, that they have no understanding that their disunity was created in order to make them impotent
in the face of a rapacious ruling class, a class whose arrogance and hubris has the world on the brink of nuclear Armageddon.
History as it actually happened is disappearing as those who tell the truth are dismissed as misogynists, racists, homophobes,
Putin agents, terrorist sympathizers, anti-Semites, and conspiracy theorists. Liberals who complained mightily of McCarthyism
now practice it ten-fold.
The United States with its brainwashed and incompetent population -- indeed, the entirety of the Western populations are
incompetent -- and with its absence of intelligent leadership has no chance against Russia and China, two massive countries
arising from their overthrow of police states as the West descends into a gestapo state. The West is over and done with. Nothing
remains of the West but the lies used to control the people. All hope is elsewhere.
Amazingly BBC newsnight just started preparing viewers for the possibility that there was no
sarin attack, and the missile strikes might just have been for show, i plying Trump did it
for political reasons. Narrative changing a bit.
#Germany's state media senior correspondent (who is in Damascus right now & also visited
Douma) on primetime evening news on German television: "#Douma chemical attack is most likely
staged. A great many people here seem very convinced."
I too hope he will return soon, he seems to be one of the last sane voices of the msm.
Hopefully high viewer rates help to bring him back, but he wouldn't be the first one to
vanish from the screen, despite high ratings.
"... It is perfectly possible that the British government manufactured the whole Salisbury thing. We are capable of just as much despicable behavior and murder as the next. ..."
"... Tucker Carlson of Fox News has it nailed down.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M28aYkLRlm0 ..."
"... This "civil war" has been nothing but a war for Syrian resources waged by western proxies. ..."
"... So now, In desperation borne out of their impending defeat, the imperialists have staged a chemical attack in a last throw of the dice to gain popular support for an escalation in military intervention. Like military interventions of the past, it is being justified in the name of humanitarian intervention. ..."
Why is the prime minister of the United Kinkdom on the phone discussing whether or not to bomb a Sovereign country with the highly
unstable, Donald Trump?
Can she not make up her own mind? Either she thinks it's the right thing to do or it isn't. Hopefully,
the person on the other end of the phone was not Trump but someone with at least half a brain.
Proof, let's have some proof. Is that too much to ask? Apparently so. Russia is saying it's all a put up job, show us your
facts. We are saying, don't be silly, we're British and besides, you may have done this sort of thing before.
It is perfectly possible that the British government manufactured the whole Salisbury thing. We are capable of just as
much despicable behavior and murder as the next.
Part of the Great British act's of bravery and heroism in the second world war is the part played by women agents who were
parachuted into France and helped organize local resistance groups. Odette Hallowes, Noor Inayat Khan and Violette Szabo are just
a few of the many names but they are the best known. What is not generally know is that many agents when undergoing their training
in the UK, were given information about the 'D' day landings, the approx time and place. They were then dropped into France into
the hands of the waiting German army who captured and tortured and often executed them.
The double agent, who Winston Churchill met and fully approved of the plan was Henri Dericourt, an officer in the German army
and our man on the ground in France. Dericourt organized the time and place for the drop off of the incoming agents, then told
the Germans. The information about the 'D' day invasion time and place was false. The British fed the agents (only a small number)
into German hands knowing they would be captured and the false information tortured out of them.
Source :- 'A Quiet Courage' Liane Jones.
It's a tough old world and we are certainly capable of a Salisbury set-up and god knows what else in Syria.
From The Guardian articles today that I have read on Syria, it makes absolutely clear that if you in any way question the narrative
forwarded here, that you are a stupid conspiracy theorist in line with Richard Spencer and other far-right, American nutcases.
A more traditional form of argument to incline people to their way of thinking would be facts. But social pressure to conform
and not be a conspiratorial idiot in line with the far-right obviously work better for most of their readers. My only surprise
it that position hasn't been linked with Brexit.
Did anyone see the massive canister that was shown on TV repeatedly that was supposed to have been air-dropped and smashed through
the window of a house, landed on a bed and failed to go off.
The bed was in remarkable condition with just a few ruffled bedclothes considering it had been hit with a metal object weighing
god knows what and dropped from a great height.
"More than 40 years after the US sprayed millions of litres of chemical agents to defoliate"
The Defoliant Agent Orange was used to kill jungles, resulting in light getting through to the dark jungle floors & a massive
amount of low bush regrowing, making the finding of Vietcong fighters even harder!
It was sprayed even on American troops, it is a horrible stuff. Still compared to Chlorine poison gas, let alone nerve gases,
it is much less terrible. Though the long term effects are pretty horrible.
Who needs facts when you've got opinions? Non more hypocritical than the British. Its what you get when you lie and distort though
a willing press, you get found out and then nobody believes anything you say.anymore. The white helmets are a western funded and
founded organisation, they are NOT independent they are NOT volunteers, The UK the US and the Dutch fund them to the tune of over
$40 million. They are a propaganda dispensing outlet. The press shouldn't report anything they release because it is utterly unable
to substantiate ANY of it, there hasn't been a western journalist in these areas for over 4 years so why do the press expect us
to believe anything they print? Combine this with the worst and most incompetent Govt this country has seen for decades and all
you have is a massive distraction from massive domestic troubles which the same govt has no answers too.
""I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes," [Winston Churchill] declared in one secret memorandum."
The current condemnation by the international community and international law is good and needs enforcement. But no virtue
signalling where there is none.
But we're still awaiting evidence that a chemical attack has been carried out in Douma, aren't we? And if an attack was carried
out, by whom. But before these essential points are verified, you feel that a targeted military response is justified. Are you
equally keen for some targeted military response for the use of chemical weapons, namely white phosphorus, in Palestine by the
Israaeli military? Unlike Douma, the use of these chemical weapons in the occupied territories by the IDF's personnel is well
documented. But we haven't attacked them yet. Funny that.
Instead of "chemicals" why not just firebomb them - you know like we did to entire cities full of women and children in WW2?
Hamburg 27 July 1943 - 46,000 civilians killed in a firestorm
Kassel 22 October 1943 - 9,000 civilians killed 24,000 houses destroyed in a firestorm
Darmstadt 11 September 1944 - 8,000 civilians killed in a firestorm
Dresden 13/14th February - 25,000 civilians killed in a firestorm
Obviously we were fighting Nazism and hadn't actually been invaded - and he is fighting Wahhabism and has had major cities
overrun...
Maybe if Assad burnt people to death rather than gassing them we would make a statue of him outside Westminster like the one
of Bomber Harris?
Remember the tearful Kuwaiti nurse with her heartrending story of Iraqi troops tipping premature babies out of their incubators
after the invasion in 1990? The story was published in pretty much every major Western newspaper, massively increased public support
for military intervention............................and turned out to be total bullshit.
Is it too much too ask that we try a bit of collective critical thinking and wait for hard evidence before blundering into
a military conflict with Assad; and potentially Putin?
Well, this is the sort of stuff that the Israelis would be gagging for. They want Assad neutralised and they are assisting ISIS
terrorists on the Golan Heights. They tend to their wounded and send them back across the border to fight Assad. What better than
to drag the Americans, Brits and French into the ring to finish him off. Job done eh?
Are you sure you are not promoting an Israeli agenda here Jonathan?
Incidentantally what did we in the west do when the Iraqis were gassing the Iranians with nerve agents in the marshes of southern
Iraq during the Iran Iraq War? Did we intervene then? No, we didn't we allowed it to happen.
Come on frip, you have to admit there was absolutely no motive for Assad's forces to carry out this attack. Why do you think the
Guardian and other main stream media outlets are not even considering the possibility the Jihadi rebels staged it to trigger western
intervention? I know, I know.. it's all evil Assad killing his own people for no other reason than he likes butchering people...
blah blah. The regime change agenda against Syria has been derailed, no amount of false flag attacks can change the facts on the
ground.
More than 40 years after the US sprayed millions of litres of chemical agents to defoliate vast swathes of Vietnam and in the
full knowledge it would be have a catastrophic effect on the health of the inhabitants of those area, Vietnam has by far the highest
incidence of liver cancer on the planet.
Then more recently we have the deadly depleted uranium from US shells that innocent Iraqis are inhaling as shrill voices denounce
Assad.
The Syrian people are heroically resisting and defeating western imperialism. This "civil war" has been nothing but a war
for Syrian resources waged by western proxies.
So now, In desperation borne out of their impending defeat, the imperialists have staged a chemical attack in a last throw
of the dice to gain popular support for an escalation in military intervention. Like military interventions of the past, it is
being justified in the name of humanitarian intervention.
But if we have a brief browse of history we can see that US & UK governments have brought only death, misery and destruction
on the populations it was supposedly helping. Hands off Syria.
"... I think the most amazing thing to come from this is that nobody believes politicians or the papers say, listen to any phone in radio show or read the comments below articles, nobody believes the government or msm. I wouldn't go to war for these fuckers. ..."
"... The media proclaimed the overthrow of the Mosadegh government in Iran as 'popular', the overthrow of Allende in Chile as legitimate, the Gulf of Tonkin affair as real, the WMDs of Iraq as existing, the evil of Qaddafi as intolerable, etc. ..."
"... Money, Oil, Carving Land Territory. ..."
"... Bombing a sovereign country without UN mandate is a war crime. It applies to UK and USA as well. But Brexit obsessed Brits think UK is above the International law. ..."
"... Has anyone asked.. why would Russia allow a chemical weapons attack in Syria only a few weeks after apparently launching a chemical weapons attack in Britain?.. something is not right here. ..."
"... The Putin regime may be nasty..but are they really that thick?? Remember remember 45 minutes to launch...(?) Tony Bliar is haunting me..and I suspect..the entire nation ..."
"... In the 1980s we sided with the jihadists and bin laden in Afghanistan. Which then was repaid with 9/11. Now we are siding with the jihadists in Syria. The blowback will be bigger than 9/11. ..."
"... I note it does refer (at para 44) to Assad's allegation that a video had been staged. It concludes that the patients on the video "appear relatively unaffected by the typical symptoms. No red eyes, tearing, paleness, sweating, cyanosis or breathing difficulties can be observed ..."
Not a supporter of any of the criminal operations that masquerade as governments worldwide, but it's way past the time when
I can believe a word the Western powers utter in their quest to spread their vile economic doctrine.
For me the biggest question now is how best to avoid financing the evil they perpetrate
So the Russian military claimed a month ago that Syrian rebels were planning a chlorine chemical weapon attack somewhere in Syria,
three weeks later a chemical weapon chlorine attack happens in Douma... but the UK government along with all the UK mainstream
media do not question perhaps it's the Jihadi/rebels who staged this attack, they ALL automatically blame Assad? Stinks to high
heaven.
I think the most amazing thing to come from this is that nobody believes politicians or the papers say, listen to any phone
in radio show or read the comments below articles, nobody believes the government or msm. I wouldn't go to war for these
fuckers.
The media proclaimed the overthrow of the Mosadegh government in Iran as 'popular', the overthrow of Allende in Chile as
legitimate, the Gulf of Tonkin affair as real, the WMDs of Iraq as existing, the evil of Qaddafi as intolerable, etc.
So, why is the media surprised when people lack trust in them about Syria?
Everywhere on the web the vast majority are vehemently opposed to military involvement .
Yet we have a PM and at least 300 MPs
champing at the bit to get involved in military conflict that could obliterate these islands in a few minutes.
We are not under threat there might not have been a chemical attack and if there was we have no idea who the perpetrators were
but it almost certainly was not Assad he had nothing to gain and everything to lose.
Trump announced he wanted the US out of Syria a couple of weeks ago not good news for the military industrial complex.
There is significant evidence that through the internet and social media the population are no longer fooled by the false flag
operations of the deep state.
We in the U.K. have a significant problem who is a threat to all of us and that is the PM she was exposed during the election
and over Brexit this must be the end it is totally unacceptable that we could get involved in an attack on another sovereign state
who are no threat to us on the say so of a small number of MPs in a minority Government.
The duty of the Government is to protect its citizens not put their lives at risk to engratatiate themselves to a Foreign Power
with a deranged egomaniac as it's President
Assad's not your puppy. Mohammed Bin Salman is. BAE re-arms his jets between crop-burning sorties in Yemen. When you've stopped
the Saudi starvation and brutalization of Yemen -which you can because your gavernment facilitates it - come back and we'll talk
about Syria. Until then we'll assume that your lachrimose offerings on gassed babies is propaganda. And that's because it is.
Tehran has churches and synagogues all over the city. Riyadh does not. Religious tolerance is better than religious intolerance,
IMO.
I don't have a problem with anyone talking to anyone about anything, as long as Britain hasn't declared war on the country they
are talking to.
If its down to believing Assad and common sense over Trust me Theresa and her unwillingness to refer the matter to Parliament
and democracy ... then its Assad and common sense every time ... he may be a dictator but he's no idiot
What makes chemical weapons so much worse than any others? If we go into military action over this we will kill people but we
won't use chemical weapons. Will that be alright then?
Some think this is about oil and a pipeline going through the Middle East states and if it goes through the heart of Syria then
Russia and Syria of control of the oil flow going into Europe.
Any involvement Iran has in the region good or bad is at least understandable , it's their neighborhood and they were invited
. It is more difficult to understand the presence or involvement of Britain or America or France or that other country we are
not allowed to talk about.
What many people do not fully realize is that no leader, no matter how harsh or strong would have been able to survive the destruction
that has overtaken Syria if he was considered responsible for it. His own people and armed forces would have thrown him out if
he did not have their support.
" And yet what was originally billed as a discrete military action to prevent an impending civilian slaughter in Benghazi escalated
into a bombardment that led to regime change and mayhem. '
No , Johnathan , it was planned .. see the PNAC etc ...
Why the obsession with Corbyn? He's the leader of the opposition. He's not the one clamorouring to send Britain to war on an extremely
dodgy pretext.
But if you're going with that line of argument, why not send all the hacks cheerleading for war to do some 'behind the front
lines' reportage with the Army of Islam? Always good to see things from different perspectives, though they might not survive
to tell the tale.
Bombing a sovereign country without UN mandate is a war crime. It applies to UK and USA as well. But Brexit obsessed Brits
think UK is above the International law.
She knows many of her own party won't back her and the DUP voted against bombing Syria last time. Where's the millions it's going
to cost coming from when we can't afford to give school kids a free dinner or pay for the NHS?
I really struggle to see to understand the argument for military action in Syria.
Firstly every time we intervene militarily we stuff it up and make matters ten times worse.
Gulf War 1 - left Sadam in power, tens of thousands of Iraqis killed, pushed Sadam into being a major sponsor of anti Weatern
terrorism and then the Kurds were abandoned to Sadam at the end of the war and massacred.
Afghanistan - what the hell was that about? Trillions spent and it descended into Islamist anarchy within 5 minutes of
us keaving.
Gulf War 2 - set the Middle East on fire, total disintegration of Iraq, the death of millions of Iraqis and the rise of
ISIS.
Libya - failed state, massive refugee crisis.
But even if you assume that for once we can act militarily in a way that doesn't make the situation worse - what is it that
we are trying to achieve?
Assad has won. The opposition has been killed or expelled from the country and the resistance is down to a few villages which
are being mopped up.
The time for a military response was 7 years ago - it is an absolutely pointless waste of time now - unless the point is just
to make us feel better about ourselves by "doing something".
Has anyone asked.. why would Russia allow a chemical weapons attack in Syria only a few weeks after apparently launching
a chemical weapons attack in Britain?.. something is not right here.
The Putin regime may be nasty..but are they really that thick?? Remember remember 45 minutes to launch...(?) Tony Bliar
is haunting me..and I suspect..the entire nation
In the 1980s we sided with the jihadists and bin laden in Afghanistan. Which then was repaid with 9/11. Now we are siding
with the jihadists in Syria. The blowback will be bigger than 9/11.
You either don't get it Jonathan, or you bury your head in the sand. WHO do you want to get rid of first: the head chopping thugs
or someone else you can deal with later? This is not about who is the most desirable but who is for the time being the least worst?
For a start you are ASSUMING that the now completely unproven "evidence" about chemical attacks is a given. IT IS NOT.
Almost every single point you make is based upon speculation, mainstream media assumptions or downright lies. Wake up please.
For goodness sake why doesn't your newspaper have a single journalist who actually knows what is really going on in Syria?
It is hard to be pro interventionist after the epical f up in Iraq and Libya, but it seems to me that Assad should and must get
a hard punishment. Assad should not have WMDs since those weapons were handed over to be destroyed in Russia in 2014. Russia is
a guarantor of this deal. Yet, Assad has and continues to use WMDs in the presence and I believe advice from the Russian military.
As for the military intervention itself I think Israeli's deep incursions in Syria and the bombing of military bases also used
by Russian military have provided a lot of information about the capabilities and limitations of the Russian military technology
deployed in Syria.
I couldn't find the paragraph which directly blames Assad's forces.
I note it does refer (at para 44) to Assad's allegation that a video had been staged. It concludes that the patients on
the video "appear relatively unaffected by the typical symptoms. No red eyes, tearing, paleness, sweating, cyanosis or breathing
difficulties can be observed ....
"... Sky News cuts of British General. https://southfront.org/sky-news-cuts-off-former-british-general-while-he-questiones-douma-chemical-attack / ..."
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
(@lloyd_rm)
It is worth noting that the British Government approved exports of dual use precursors for
chemical weapons including sarin to Syria between 2004 and 2012, after the civil war began
and after Assad was accused of using gas. CAEC report (2015): pic.twitter.com/TsvthAcZRR
April 13, 2018
Further down his thread is a tweet where someone has a screen-grab of a Mail Online story
from 2013. It talks about leaked information about clearance given by the US Government for a
British security company to stage a chemical weapons attack in Syria in order to provide a
pretext for bombing.
I have no idea whether this is true or whether it was genuinely from Mail Online, perhaps
someone with more know-how than me could find out.
At first, I laughed at the Russian suggestion that the attack on Douma had been staged.
Now I'm not so sure.
Orwell certainly chose his words well when he called the UK 'Airstrip One' in his book 1984.
The UK government, the US neocons yapping little poodle. All cheered on by our always on
message main stream media.
We're now in a strange position where the media is actually behind the government. May is
doubtful about bombing because she's a politician and so has to constantly monitor her
popularity, but the only people left still writing in 'newspapers' are still programmed to
want war and bombing because it always used to sell.
The UN duly investigated and in October concluded unambiguously that the Assad regime had
used sarin gas.
You omitted to mention that the same report also concludes that ISIL deployed Sulphur
Mustard, isn't this the same gas that France claims to have evidence regarding the recent
incident?
Besides, how much evidence do we need? Even before Douma, Assad's use of chemical
weapons had been documented seven times this year alone.
The link you provided to back-up this claim contains no substantiative evidence to
attribute those incidents to Assad.
Clearly both sides in this conflict appear to have used chemical weapons, making
assumptions or false accusations of blame at this stage is incredibly dangerous. I'm in total
agreement with Jeremy Corbyn, we need a solid investigation on which the international
community can act. Any potential escalation of this awful conflict must be avoided at all
costs, particularly when it involves a nuclear armed superstate, considering the on-going
humaitarian crisis in Syria and how it has already affected the world. Furthermore we must
not allow a cabinet of a minority government to make any final decisions on the UK
involvement in further militrary action, our elected representatives MUST be allowed
to debate and decide a course of action, otherwise our democracy is in a far worse state than
I could have possibly imagined.
Theresa May leads a minority government propped up by an unlawful bung to a right wing
extremist group. May, her Cabinet of half wits and her self serving party have a mandate for
sweet FA, and that includes killing people in our name.
There is massive, overwhelming opposition in the UK to May's attempt to join Trump &
Macron in bombing Syria and to by-passing our democratic parliament, but who would have
thought it?
The media are generally presenting Theresa May with a free ride to cause death and
destruction on a massive scale. Claiming she's joining an international coalition (even
though it consists of only 2 other countries) and having the backing of the Cabinet and
therefore possessing the authority to go to war.
The reality is that she's virtually politically isolated and working in defiance of the
British people. Labour - and most other opposition parties, including the Lib Dems, SNP,
Plaid, and the Greens are totally against military intervention and calling for a full,
democratic debate in Parliament.
Then the Conservative Party itself is bitterly divided over the issue.
And only 22% of British people would support the war effort, according to a poll in the
Times.
The timing is being forced by Donald Trump and the US, so where's the substance in the
Conservative claim that they're 'taking back control'?
And then any intervention is likely to cost billions, so what about The Deficit? And what
about that magic money tree?
Moreover, the Government maintain we cannot allow such inhumanity in Syria to go
unchallenged. So where is the outcry at defenceless citizens being killed in Gaza? And in
Yemen? And in Saudi Arabia? What accounts for the blatant double standards? What are they not
telling us?
And why does the British Goverment justicfy selling all these lethal and inhumance weapons
to these countries in the first place?
Where is the media reminding the Government of what happened in Iraq, in Libya and in
Afghanistan?, whenever we intervened?
Where is the media remembering the findings of the Chilcott Report?
If this was Labour nationalising the railways or expropriating land in an emergency bill
to launch a massive house-building programme, the BBC and mass media would quote every
adversary and critic they could muster and express total outrage at any attempt to by-pass
Parliament.
The Syrian conflict is a hugely complex quagmire and we enter it at our peril. We need a
much more objective Press to scrutinise Government policy, before this lunacy unravels and
triggers a seriously calamitous hot war between the Superpowers, from which we'd all be
losers.
Jeremy Corbyn is often mocked and scorned by the media for his measured reactions, but his
call for the UK to use its influence to defuse tensions makes him one of the only responsible
and mature political leaders around right now!!
The government and the BBC have been using the words "suspected chemical attack" in Syria and
that Russia is "highly likely" to be responsible for the Salisbury affair.
Now if that isn't official doubt I don't know what is.
Still May happy to drop bombs on this basis without parliamentary approval (if Donald says
so that is)!
It is getting very tiresome tying to read between the lines of what Britain, America, Russia,
etc, etc, etc spin to us in a constant barrage of disposable half truths. The worrying part
is that it is now harder then ever to gauge if these 'bastions of truth' really believe their
own bullshit or not and end up dropping us all into a war of no return.
"Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with
Eurasia."
The White Helmets were set up by a Briton (I can't remember exactly but I think he was ex
intelligence services). They've consistently been shown to have links with extremists. It
wouldn't surprise me at all if what the Russians are claiming is accurate.
Well the problem is that the vast majority of Syrians support Assad. This chemical attack, if
it is confirmed by the OPWC investigation, could have been staged by the ISIS head choppers,
or it was Assad. Nobody has a clue, so we need an investigation and see, whether, this is
just propaganda bullshit from the head choppers. One thing is sure, if you care about
civilian life, the best option is to accept that Assad and Russia won. Else, well you a
hypocrite, and you don't care about civilian lives at all, but care more about the UK/US and
France gaining the geo-political upper hand, without a care in the world about civilian life.
Hence, you just as big a sociopath than Assad.
Yes Millions of Gallons of Chemicals were rained down on Vietnam including Agent Orange and
Napalm during the war.
Plus White Phosphorous was used by the US in Iraq as an "anti-personnel" weapon.
Look, the Russians have a microscopic force in Syria, about 30 jets, very low army presence,
usually one soldier per SAA Unit. The West and especially that inadequate May can look good
by bombing some camels and then letting the Daily Mail and the BBC do the rest. Yes the
Russians have S400 missiles in Syria but only to protect important targets and they simply
don't have enough missiles to shoot down 100+ allied cruise missiles. The Russkies will just
have to take the hit (again) but it will change nothing in the long run, except relations
will deteriorate even further.
One has the impression poodles Macron and May, in their ridiculous eagerness to assist Trump
with his nice new smart shiny social media bombing of Syria, appear pathetic, even stupid,
for their precipitate grandstanding now that the USA has, for the time being, reigned back
from an immediate punishing strike on Syria.
The "slaughter his own people" phrase is western spin; even the anti-government SOHR quotes a
more or less even split between government forces, rebels and civilians, which means as civil
wars go, this one is comparatively humane.
Compare the death toll of hundreds on the final assault on Aleppo with that on Raqqa
(thousands) or Mosul (tens of thousands) or the civilian toll in Indo-China and Korea (>10
million) and you'll realise the identity of the greatest war criminal of them all
"... How about the West which has been trying to build a gas pipeline through Syria into Turkey to supply Europe with gas and break Russia's monopoly of European gas supplies. Don't believe me read the Doha agreement where the west recognised the Syrian rebels, this pipeline was a pre requisite for that recognition. ..."
"... And why would Assad who is winning the war do the one thing that would give America and other western countries the chance to get involved because of outrageous moral indignation. Assad and Outing really aren't that stupid. ..."
How about the West which has been trying to build a gas pipeline through Syria into
Turkey to supply Europe with gas and break Russia's monopoly of European gas supplies. Don't
believe me read the Doha agreement where the west recognised the Syrian rebels, this pipeline
was a pre requisite for that recognition.
Israel? which is not happy with Iran and Lebanon having a presence in Syria, worried that
America was withdrawing.
AlQaeda or the Syrian Rebels, many are both who are losing the war and this is a last
desperate attempt to drag in America and the west?
You've also got Turkey and the Kurds (the Kurds were abandoned by the West after they had
fulfilled their useful purpose), both also players in the region but I can't see a motive
here.
And why would Assad who is winning the war do the one thing that would give America
and other western countries the chance to get involved because of outrageous moral
indignation. Assad and Outing really aren't that stupid.
Any or all of the above could be the true motivation. I am no fan of Assad, Putin, or
Trump or May (or the Blair clone Macron) but the question you have to ask yourself is who
gains from this? And is. this in the interests of a resolution to a conflict, to your safety
or is it something else?
Not a supporter of any of the criminal operations that masquerade as governments worldwide,
but it's way past the time when I can believe a word the Western powers utter in their quest
to spread their vile economic doctrine.
For me the biggest question now is how best to avoid financing the evil they perpetrate
So the Russian military claimed a month ago that Syrian rebels were planning a chlorine
chemical weapon attack somewhere in Syria, three weeks later a chemical weapon chlorine
attack happens in Douma... but the UK government along with all the UK mainstream media do
not question perhaps it's the Jihadi/rebels who staged this attack, they ALL automatically
blame Assad? Stinks to high heaven.
Labour calls for the attack on Douma to be "fully investigated". That sounds unarguable.
But then what? Jeremy Corbyn issued the same call after the chemical attack that killed at
least 74 at Khan Sheikhoun a year ago: demanding there be a "UN investigation and those
responsible be held to account". The UN duly investigated and in October concluded
unambiguously that the Assad regime had used sarin gas. But Corbyn greeted that verdict
with silence.
The report that Mr Freedland provides a link to, actually says:
"5. While the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission in the Syrian Arab Republic works to establish
the facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals for hostile purposes in the
country, it is not mandated to reach conclusions about attributing responsibility for
chemical weapons use. 1 Following a determination by the FactFinding Mission that a specific
incident in the Syrian Arab Republic involved or likely involved the use of chemicals as
weapons, the Mechanism conducts an investigation to identify, to the greatest extent
feasible, the perpetrators, organizers, sponsors or those otherwise involved. In conducting
its investigation, the Mechanism relies on findings of the Fact-Finding Mission regarding the
use of chemicals as weapons in each incident and pursues a rigorous independent examination
of the available information surrounding such use so as to identify, to the greatest extent
feasible, those responsible."
It doesn't appear to be claiming to be concluding "unambiguously that the Assad regime had
used sarin gas." Am I missing something here?
Mr Freedland's allegation that "Corbyn greeted that verdict with silence" is highly
suspect:
"RT:Today, Moscow says it has evidence that rebels have used sarin gas. Earlier Britain
said that Assad forces were behind the chemical attack. But why didn't Britain and the US
come forward with the same sort of hard evidence that Russia has come forward with?
JC: That's an interesting question. I can't speak for the British or the US
governments, but they made these allegations about the use of chemical weapons – and
there are apparently stocks of chemical weapons being held in Syria, which may well have
fallen into opposition hands, or may still be in government hands, or maybe both – but
the assertion was made that they had been used. But no hard evidence came up, and indeed,
there was a great deal of skepticism surrounding the evidence that was never presented. And
the Russian evidence today appears much stronger, and they said they were going to put that
evidence in the hands of the United Nations - that has got to be a good thing. However,
proving or not proving this doesn't end the crisis, there has to be the rapid resumption of
talks by Geneva too, all parties must be involved – including Iran. If we're to bring
about a settlement, there's got to be involvement of Iran, as well as all the different
parties in Syria."
In an age of fake news and endless propaganda it's very difficult these days to see the woods
from the trees... The words butcher and thug are easily thrown around in the Syrian civil
war.
It appears some people have short memories as it wasn't that long ago when we were witnessing
the alternative world of Islamic State in Syria. Head choppers running amok and anyone
suspected of being gay being chucked off tall buildings. Women being flogged to death for
trumped up charges of adultery. Kids having their hands cut off for stealing apples.
To make matters worse these sadistic psychopaths were armed and driving around in vehicles
supplied by the West... It had developed into a living hell for many as the death cult of
Isis took hold.
I remember the so called thug Putin saying someone had to take on these terrorists...
The West were reluctant to do the dirty work required... So it came down to Russia to get
boots on the ground to help defeat Islamic State.
Why does the UK supply the terror supporters of the Arabian Peninsula with weapons while
fighting and vilifying Assad? This is real hypocrisy. Yemenis suffer horrendously from Saudi
attacks, the UK's close friends. Assad always guaranteed religious freedom and Syrians
enjoyed much more freedom than any of the Middle Eastern countries.
What's actually is disconcerting is the fact that mainline media have taken the alleged
chemical attack as a fact. They don't have their reporters on the ground or even Western
military personnel in the area. But a claim and some unauthenticated videos from headchoppers
are taken as a fact. A fact which is not allowed to be tested or critiqued. Does it mean they
just want more bombs and missiles to hammer Syria and any reason/justification would do?
On a side note I would add that 3-4 years ago when Ukraine was boiling, much of the
discussion by concerned people focused on countries outside of the US, and the damage caused by
the US. The US, in this context, was largely regarded as an evil but coherent entity.
But that coherence has now come more and more into question. Discussion shifted gradually,
as the US made more and more mistakes and lost battle after battle in so many theaters, and
revealed itself as a failing actor. And in the last year or two there's much more discussion
about the US itself, largely trying to pierce the obscurity of how that country is actually run
and by whom. This shift was already happening, and Trump of course added to the
fascination.
I was glad to see that gradual shift. To me it indicated the war itself was won, while many
battles were yet to be fought. I think it's true that Russia, China, Iran and others are
increasingly concerned with curtailing the damage that the US can still inflict. Every day they
increase in actual, effective power, and the US decreases in that power. Yesterday's battle
will be fought differently tomorrow, because the balance of that power will have shifted again
by then.
Syria has been an enormously useful magnifying glass to show us so much about the relative
power balances of many nations. And even as the US lashes out in its death throes, it is
increasingly cornered and stymied. The same is true of Israel. It's reaching the point - if not
already there - that every move made by the US will result in clear damage to itself, with no
gain, and no damage to its targets.
The other side has had sufficient time to wargame countless contingencies, and think them
through and make preparations for them. Increasingly, it gets to choose what damage to allow
and what to stop, because the costs of every action have now been calculated - and the passage
of time reduces the costs too, so the equation constantly updates.
This is true outside of Syria also, in all theaters and on many planes of
activity.
The US Deep State doesn't want to "conquer" any country. Then they'd have to pay the bill
for the destruction they caused... think an actual Marshall Plan, not the Iraq and Afghan
Debacles. It is not trying to "win". It is trying to destroy those countries' ability to
function outside the iron-fist influence of the IMF/BIS/etc. banks/economy.
... ... ..
As for US operations in Syria being handed off "to others", i.e. to Prince's latest
iteration of Blackwater/Xi/Academia, the last we heard of Erik was trying to sell a budget
airforce/drone system to countries in Africa. What a joke.
Not going to happen in Syria,
because Russia, Iran, Hezbolla and Syria would have no qualms about directly assaulting
Prince's Kurd/Arab/Wahabbist mercenaries... Eric may be a self-serving parasite, but he's not
stupid enough to directly take on the Russian military, or even the SAA for that matter.
Especially with no NATO air cover...
Killary is not around to unilaterally impose a Libya-style
no-fly-zone.
Trumpty Dumbdy is trapped, just trying to convince his base that he really is getting the US
out of being Israel's and the Rothschilds' bitch, but that is not a potential reality.
It would
involve dismantling the FED and cutting off the yearly $multi-billion military aid tap to
Israel. I doubt he is smart or informed enough to comprehend the situation he is in. Any sane,
intelligent person would walk away and tell the Zionist/Rothschild/Deep State to find another
patsy.
Trump's actions have not matched his election rhetoric. Just like faux populist Obama. Obama also "caved" to pressure, and
even set himself up for failure by emphasing "bipartisanship".
That is how the political mechanism of faux populism works.
Obama: Change you can believe in
Trump: Make America Great Again
Obama: Most transparent administration ever
Trump: Drain the Swamp
Obama: Deceiver: "Man of Peace" engaging in covert ops
Trump: Distractor: twitter, personal vendettas
Weakened by claims of unpatriotic inclinations:
Obama: Birthers (led by Trump who was close to Clinton's) - "Muslim socialist"!
Trump: Russia influence (pushed by 'NeverTrump' Clinton loyalists) - Putin's bitch!
"... American tomahawks missiles are equipped with 'special' molecular compounds imbedded in the warheads so that when they hit chemical weapons factories it produces & releases an intoxicating floral bouquet like Chanel number 5, Old Spice, or Irish Spring soap... ..."
"Warplanes and ships from the United States, Britain and France launched more than 100
missiles at three chemical weapons storage and research facilities..." ...
American tomahawks missiles are equipped with 'special' molecular compounds imbedded in
the warheads so that when they hit chemical weapons factories it produces & releases an
intoxicating floral bouquet like Chanel number 5, Old Spice, or Irish Spring soap...
The Syrians then jump up and start doing Irish jigs and proclaim "Manly yes ~ But I like
it too"!
That dastardly Assad obviously knew his chemical weapons facilities would be attacked so
he had all of his chlorine gas moved and added to his personal swimming pool. Damn the water
looks great now but don't go for a swim for at least a few days.
The blast area of just ONE cruise missile is 150ft/2 = 7000m/2
How many hit this target allegedly? You can even see the matrix caused by the layering of
the photo shopping software when you zoom right in (its not present on the first photo)
Fucking amateur hour LMAO
There really is not even a conspiracy theorist out there who would suggest it was a Syrian
government operation any way. Only batshit crazy raving lunatics have suggested it was the
Syrian government. This is clearly the stupidest thing Trump has done. It makes the USA look
like a bunch of circus freak losers. Very sad and shockingly insane. This is the stupidest
piece of propaganda in modern history. The USA looks very, very bad. It looks like, from any
reasonable perspective, that they are actively aiding terrorists on purpose. Wow. Interesting
cosmetics. Interesting optics.
Its almost as if the USA government hates itself and actually wants a nuclear war where
everyone dies. I think the only thing that should be considered is whether the nutty freaks
in charge are actually humans. Humans are a great disappointment, so likely, yes, human
beings really can be that mentally deficient. Trump really is such a level of mental retard
that he hates himself and wants to be nuked, so he bombs Syria knowing full well they have
nothing to do with it. He hates his career now and wants out.
"... For decades, a little-known section of the British Foreign Office – the Information Research Department (IRD) – carried out propaganda campaigns using the international media as its platform on behalf of MI-6. Years before Syria's Bashar al-Assad, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, and Sudan's Omar al-Bashir became targets for Western destabilization and "regime change." IRD and its associates at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and in the newsrooms and editorial offices of Fleet Street broadsheets, tabloids, wire services, and magazines, particularly "The Daily Telegraph," "The Times," "Financial Times," Reuters, "The Guardian," and "The Economist," ran media smear campaigns against a number of leaders considered to be leftists, communists, or FTs (fellow travelers). ..."
"... After the Cold War, this same propaganda operation took aim at Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Somalia's Mohamad Farrah Aidid, and Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Today, it is Assad's, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's, and Catalonian independence leader Carles Puigdemont's turn to be in the Anglo-American state propaganda gunsights. Even Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, long a darling of the Western media and such propaganda moguls as George Soros, is now being targeted for Western visa bans and sanctions over the situation with Muslim Rohingya insurgents in Rakhine State. ..."
"... Through IRD-MI-6-Central Intelligence Agency joint propaganda operations, many British journalists received payments, knowingly or unknowingly, from the CIA via a front in London called Forum World Features (FWF), owned by John Hay Whitney, publisher of the "New York Herald Tribune" and a former US ambassador to London. ..."
When it comes to creating bogus news stories and advancing false narratives, the British
intelligence services have few peers. In fact, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) has led
the way for its American "cousins" and Britain's Commonwealth partners – from Canada and
Australia to India and Malaysia – in the dark art of spreading falsehoods as truths.
Recently, the world has witnessed such MI-6 subterfuge in news stories alleging that Russia
carried out a novichok nerve agent attack against a Russian émigré and his
daughter in Salisbury, England. This propaganda barrage was quickly followed by yet another
– the latest in a series of similar fabrications – alleging the Syrian government
attacked civilians in Douma, outside of Damascus, with chemical weapons.
It should come as no surprise that American news networks rely on British correspondents
stationed in northern Syria and Beirut as their primary sources. MI-6 has historically relied
on non-official cover (NOC) agents masquerading primarily as journalists, but also humanitarian
aid workers, Church of England clerics, international bankers, and hotel managers, to carry out
propaganda tasks. These NOCs are situated in positions where they can promulgate British
government disinformation to unsuspecting actual journalists and diplomats.
For decades, a little-known section of the British Foreign Office – the Information
Research Department (IRD) – carried out propaganda campaigns using the international
media as its platform on behalf of MI-6. Years before Syria's Bashar al-Assad, Iraq's Saddam
Hussein, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, and Sudan's Omar al-Bashir became targets for Western
destabilization and "regime change." IRD and its associates at the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC) and in the newsrooms and editorial offices of Fleet Street broadsheets,
tabloids, wire services, and magazines, particularly "The Daily Telegraph," "The Times,"
"Financial Times," Reuters, "The Guardian," and "The Economist," ran media smear campaigns
against a number of leaders considered to be leftists, communists, or FTs (fellow
travelers).
These leaders included Indonesia's President Sukarno, North Korean leader (and grandfather
of Pyongyang's present leader) Kim Il-Sung, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Cyprus's Archbishop
Makarios, Cuba's Fidel Castro, Chile's Salvador Allende, British Guiana's Cheddi Jagan,
Grenada's Maurice Bishop, Jamaica's Michael Manley, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, Guinea's Sekou
Toure, Burkina Faso's Thomas Sankara, Australia's Gough Whitlam, New Zealand's David Lange,
Cambodia's Norodom Sihanouk, Malta's Dom Mintoff, Vanuatu's Father Walter Lini, and Ghana's
Kwame Nkrumah.
After the Cold War, this same propaganda operation took aim at Serbian President Slobodan
Milosevic, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Somalia's Mohamad Farrah
Aidid, and Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Today, it is Assad's, Hungarian Prime Minister
Viktor Orban's, and Catalonian independence leader Carles Puigdemont's turn to be in the
Anglo-American state propaganda gunsights. Even Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, long a darling
of the Western media and such propaganda moguls as George Soros, is now being targeted for
Western visa bans and sanctions over the situation with Muslim Rohingya insurgents in Rakhine
State.
Through IRD-MI-6-Central Intelligence Agency joint propaganda operations, many British
journalists received payments, knowingly or unknowingly, from the CIA via a front in London
called Forum World Features (FWF), owned by John Hay Whitney, publisher of the "New York Herald
Tribune" and a former US ambassador to London.
It is not a stretch to believe that similar and
even more formal relationships exist today between US and British intelligence and so-called
British "journalists" reporting from such war zones as Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan,
and the Gaza Strip, as well as from much-ballyhooed nerve agent attack locations as Salisbury,
England.
No sooner had recent news reports started to emerge from Douma about a Syrian chlorine gas
and sarin agent attack that killed between 40 to 70 civilians, British reporters in the Middle
East and London began echoing verbatim statements from the Syrian "White Helmets" and the
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
In actuality, the White Helmets – claimed by Western media to be civilian defense
first-responders but are Islamist activists connected to jihadist radical groups funded by
Saudi Arabia – are believed to have staged the chemical attack in Douma by entering the
municipality's hospital and dowsing patients with buckets of water, video cameras at the ready.
The White Helmets distributed their videos to the global news media, with the BBC and Rupert
Murdoch's Sky News providing a British imprimatur to the propaganda campaign asserting that
Assad carried out another "barrel bomb" chemical attack against "his own people." And, as
always, the MI-6 financed Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad news front claimed
to be operated by a Syrian expatriate and British national named Rami Abdel Rahman from his
clothing shop in Coventry, England, began providing second-sourcing for the White Helmet's
chemical attack claims.
With President Trump bringing more and more neo-conservatives, discredited from their
massive anti-Iraq propaganda operations during the Bush-Cheney era, into his own
administration, the world is witnessing the prolongation of the "Trump Doctrine."
The Trump Doctrine can best be explained as follows: A nation will be subject to a US
military attack depending on whether Trump is facing a severe political or sex scandal at
home.
Such was the case in April 2017, when Trump ordered a cruise missile attack on the joint
Syrian-Russian airbase at Shayrat, Syria. Trump was still reeling from the resignation of his
National Security Adviser, Lt. General Michael Flynn, in February over the mixing of his
private consulting business with his official White House duties. Trump needed a diversion and
the false accusation that Assad used sarin gas on the village of Khan Sheikoun on April 4,
2017, provided the necessary pabulum for the war-hungry media.
The most recent cruise missile attack was to divert the public's attention away from Trump's
personal attorney being raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a sex scandal involving
Trump and a porn actress, and a "tell-all" book by Trump's fired FBI director, James Comey.
Although these two scandals provided opportunities for the neo-cons to test Trump with false
flag operations in Syria, they were not the first time such actions had been carried out. In
2013, the Syrian government was blamed for a similar chemical attack on civilians in Ghouta.
That year, Syrian rebels, supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, admitted to the
Associated Press reporter on the ground in Syria that they had been given banned chemical
weapons by Saudi Arabia, but that the weapons canisters exploded after improper handling by the
rebels. Immediately, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Syrian rebel organizations
operating out of Turkey claimed that Assad had used chemical-laden barrel bombs on "his own
people." However, Turkish, American, and Lebanese sources confirmed that it was the Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) that had badly bungled a false flag sarin nerve agent
attack on Ghouta.
Few Western media outlets were concerned about a March 19, 2013, sarin nerve agent by the
Bashair al-Nasr Brigade rebel group linked to the US- and British-backed Free Syrian Army. The
rebels used a "Bashair-3" unguided projectile, containing the deadly sarin agent, on civilians
in Khan al-Assal, outside Aleppo. At least 27 civilians were killed, and scores of others
injured in the attack. The Syrian Kurds also reported the use of chemical weapons on them
during the same time frame by Syrian rebel groups backed by the United States, Turkey, and
Saudi Arabia. The usual propaganda operations – Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,
Doctors Without Borders, the BBC, CNN, and Sky News – were all silent about these
attacks.
In 2013, April 2017, and April 2018, the Western media echo chamber blared out all the same
talking points: "Assad killing his own people," "Syrian weapons of mass destruction," and the
"mass murder of women and children." Western news networks featured videos of dead women and
children, while paid propagandists, known as "contributors" to corporate news networks –
all having links to the military-intelligence complex – demanded action be taken against
Assad.
Trump, now being advised by the notorious neocon war hawk John Bolton, the new National
Security Adviser, began referring to Assad as an "animal" and a "monster." Bolton, along with
Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby, helped craft similar
language against Saddam Hussein prior to the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was
not coincidental that Trump – at the urging of Bolton and other neocons – gave a
full pardon to Libby on the very same day he ordered the cruise missile attack on Damascus and
other targets in Syria. Libby was convicted in 2005 of perjury and illegally disclosing
national security information.
The world is being asked to take, at face value, the word of patented liars like Trump,
Bolton, and other neocons who are now busy joining the Trump administration at breakneck speed.
The corporate media unabashedly acts as though it never lied about the reasons given by the
United States and Britain for going to war in Iraq and Libya. Why should anyone believe them
now?
Wayne
MADSEN Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society
of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club
"... People such as Stephen Cohen and myself, who were actively involved throughout the entirety of the Cold War, are astonished at the reckless and irresponsible behavior of the US government and its European vassals toward Russia. ..."
"... In this brief video, Stephen Cohen describes to Tucker Carlson the extreme danger of the present situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvK1Eu01Lz0 Published on Apr 13, 2018 ..."
A normal person would answer "yes" to the three questions. So what does this tell us about
Trump's government as these insane actions are the principle practice of Trump's
government?
Does anyone doubt that Nikki Haley is insane?
Does anyone doubt that John Bolton is insane?
Does anyone doubt that Mike Pompeo is insane?
Does this mean that Trump is insane for appointing to the top positions insane people who
foment war with a nuclear power?
Does this mean that Congress is insane for approving these appointments?
These are honest questions. Assuming we avoid the Trump-promised Syrian showdown, how long
before the insane Trump regime orchestrates another crisis?
The entire world should understand that because of the existence of the insane Trump regime,
the continued existence of life on earth is very much in question.
People such as Stephen Cohen and myself, who were actively involved throughout the entirety
of the Cold War, are astonished at the reckless and irresponsible behavior of the US government
and its European vassals toward Russia. Nothing as irresponsible as what we have witnessed
since the Clinton regime and which has worsened dramatically under the Obama and Trump regimes
would have been imaginable during the Cold War. In this brief video, Stephen Cohen describes to
Tucker Carlson the extreme danger of the present situation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvK1Eu01Lz0
Published on Apr 13, 2018
The failure of political leadership throughout the Western world is total. Such total
failure is likely to prove deadly to life on earth.
"... While market competitiveness is idealized as the engine to advancement for all, labor competition is circumscribed for particular groups (e.g., through a household registration system that prevent migrants from accessing certain jobs, rights, and benefits in China) and in specific ways (e.g., only certain sectors of the labor market are considered legitimate -- not sex work or surrogacy, for example). The discourse of national competitiveness and collective welfare pushes forward a conservative moral agenda in the face of these changes. ..."
The Scholar & Feminist Online is a webjournal published three times a year by the
Barnard Center for Research on Women I begin this article by reflecting on one of the biggest
professional mistakes I have ever made. I became a part of corporate humanitarianism in 2006,
when IOM Korea invited me to be part of a research project on trafficking of Korean women
overseas, sponsored by the Bom-bit Foundation, an NGO set up by the wife of the CEO of the
biggest insurance company in South Korea. She had been concerned about the barrage of news
reports that were circulating both in and out of Korea about the trafficking of Korean women
into forced prostitution overseas. She wanted a global research project, "Korean women victims
of sex trafficking in five global sites": South Korea, Japan, Australia, and the East and West
Coasts of the United States. The ultimate goal was to find solutions to end such outflow and to
save these women. The principal researcher, a male Korean academic, drafted a survey
questionnaire laden with assumptions about coercion, violence, and sexual abuse. Even though
the final reports from different sites came back with little evidence of trafficking, they did
not prevent the principal investigator from producing a final report about the "serious problem
of sex trafficking of Korean women into the global sex trade."
The first woman who I interviewed for this project was working in a massage parlor in
Queens, New York. She came to the United States after the Korean police cracked down on her in
her home, after they had obtained her address from her employer in Seoul in an antiprostitution
raid. She explained her work in the United States:
Jin: Some people only come in for table showers, massage, and chats. Interviewer: Are they the good clients? Jin: No, they are not. Interviewer: So who are the good clients? Jin: Those people who finish quickly, they are the good ones. Those who have shower
and then have sex and go. They are the best.
This response exploded the entire premise of the research and its assumptions about the
inherently victimizing nature of sexual labor for women. Those who demand sex rather than
conversations are the good clients -- if they finish quickly, get themselves cleaned before
having sex, and leave immediately after sex. Jin situated sex squarely within a repertoire of
labor performance, along with other physical and emotional work, and identified sex as more
efficient ("quick") in providing return to her labor. She made between $11,000 and $22,000 per
month. On that note, let me move on to some important points in the discussion about gender and
neoliberalism within the context of South Korea.
Neoliberalism is useful as a term only to the extent of understanding macro-historical
shifts and setting a framework for investigation. But its history, manifestation, and effects
can be so diverse in each location that it cannot be a useful analytical category without
empirical analysis. For example, contrary to the trend of de-democratization [
1 ] observed in the United States, in South Korea, neoliberal reforms coincided with
the democratization of civil society and the state in late 1990s, following four decades of
military and authoritarian rule. In 1997, just when the first civilian democratic leader Kim
Dae-jung became president, South Korea went through a major financial crisis and received the
largest IMF bailout. The president supported a new wave of civic/human-rights organizations,
set up the first National Human Rights Commission, and founded the Ministry of Gender Equality.
During the same period, structural readjustment also ensured the flexibilization of labor and
the weakening of trade unions, rendering many lives of more precarious as they became
underemployed or unemployed.
In my work, I am grappling with how individuals like Jin live and make sense of their lives
within a number of paradoxes/contradictions in neoliberalism:
1) The apparent amorality of neoliberalism and its facilitation of conservative moral
agenda. The deployment of market principles to reconfigure the relationship between
sovereignty and citizenship not only remakes economic, political, and cultural life, but also
remakes citizen-subjects as entrepreneurs and consumers. While market competitiveness is
idealized as the engine to advancement for all, labor competition is circumscribed for
particular groups (e.g., through a household registration system that prevent migrants from
accessing certain jobs, rights, and benefits in China) and in specific ways (e.g., only certain
sectors of the labor market are considered legitimate -- not sex work or surrogacy, for
example). The discourse of national competitiveness and collective welfare pushes forward a
conservative moral agenda in the face of these changes.
2) The depoliticization of social risks and the hyperpoliticization of national
security. The emergence of an ethics of self-management and risk-taking justifies some form
of retrenchment of the state in the social sphere. Yet this by no means suggests a weakening of
the state. What we witness in neoliberal transformations is the assertion of the state through
more hard-lined enforcement of criminal justice and border control. The consequence is an
uneven emphasis on and legitimation of the self-enterprising individual, invoking national
crisis, social danger, and self-harm to justify state intervention or exclusion. These measures
have significant gendered repercussions -- reshaping discourses on domesticity, sexuality, and
mobility.
3) The concomitant and continuous ravaging of vulnerable populations and celebration of
humanitarianism/human rights responses from state and civil society. Neoliberal
developments create vulnerable populations by polarizing resources and wealth, and
concomitantly generate a set of humanitarian/human rights responses from the state and civil
society. Rather than being a set of problems that are being held back or eliminated by a set of
solutions, they seem to grow symbiotically together. In effect, many humanitarian/human-rights
interventions turn out to reiterate dominant interests, reproducing conservative gender,
racial, class, and national hierarchies and divides.
How are these contradictions lived? Maybe Jin has some answers for us -- not just from her
personal trajectory, but also in what she said:
I am working hard and making money for myself. I am saving money to start my own business
back home/to further study. I am not dependent on the government or my family. I am not
harming anyone, even though this is not a job to boast about. I don't understand these
women's human rights. These activists don't understand us. They are people from good
background. I am not saying the antiprostitution laws are wrong. But do they have to go so
far?
My research since 1997 on sex work and migrant women in South Korea and the United States is
located right at the intersection of these paradoxes. As women who strategize their immigration
and labor strategies for self-advancement as sex workers, they embody the sexual limits of
neoliberalism. While they may personify the values of self-reliance, self-governance, and free
markets in a manner akin to homo economicus, they violate the neoliberal ideals of relational
sexuality and middle-class femininity. [
2 ] As many critics have attested to, even though the antitrafficking movement hails
women's human rights, gender justice, and state protection, its operation predominantly through
the crime frame reinforces gender, class, and racial inequalities. As such, antitrafficking
initiatives, as they have taken shape in the twenty-first century, are part of neoliberal
governance, and underlying the claims of equality and liberty are racial, gender, and sex
panics with nationalist overtones that justify the repression of those who step outside these
limits.
I think antitrafficking initiatives need to be situated within a broader set of political
and social transformations in order to analyze the undercurrents of gender and sexuality across
different sites. In South Korea, there was a strong gender and sexual ideology pervading the
expansion of social policies in the post-1997 era. While the government could claim credit for
addressing the needs of certain vulnerable populations (the unemployed, the homeless, migrant
wives, women leaving prostitution, etc.), public anxieties about the breakdown of the family
(runaway teenagers, old-age divorce, the fight for women's equality) that started during the
1997 crisis have continued into the new millennium (same-sex families, "multicultural
families," single women). As national boundaries seem to have weakened with the incorporation
of "multicultural families," the heteronormative nuclear family became more reified, and the
domestic sphere as the proper place for women was reinscribed in a range of social policies.
These include protection for "prostituted women," since 2004, and support provided to migrant
wives -- both policies designed to harness these women's reproductive powers for the future of
the Korean nation, and to reproduce their class location.
It is also important to be wary of claims to promote "women's human rights" and how these
claims are circumscribed within certain spheres -- only in sex work, and not in the gendered
layoffs during an economic crisis, or in relation to the homeless women who have been excluded
as legitimate recipients of government support. "Women's human rights" have been hurled around
to legitimize activism and policies that turned out to make lives more difficult for some
women, rendering them either as targets or instruments of criminal law.
We also need to ask why the law is resorted to so consistently for women activists to make
claims on the state. And why does the general public have so much faith in the law to enforce
morality?
I would like to see cultural struggles become a more important site to extend into, building
on a solid economic and political critique. As we witnessed i the Occupy movement, as well as
with the sex worker festivals in different global locations, creativity, humor, and
conviviality have a lot of power to draw attention, if not to incite solidarity. The new sex
workers' organization in South Korea calls itself the Giant Girls ("GG" also means "support" in
Korean), and organizes its own seminars, holds a sex work festival celebration, and produces
its own podcasts, in which everyday conversation and serious discussion take place in a
light-hearted manner, often with bursts of laughter. The fists-in-air protests are no longer
the main part of the movement, marking a significant departure from the victimhood discourse. I
am hopeful that this will appeal at least to a younger generation of potential coalition
partners in the LGBT community, labor movements (for women and migrants), and cultural
movements. This could be a refreshing -- and possibly transformational -- shift in feminist
politics and critique in South Korea, and in other sites in Asia.
Footnotes
Brown, Wendy (2006). "American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and
De-Democratization." Political Theory 34(6): 690-714. [
Return to text ]
Bernstein, Elizabeth (2012). "Carceral Politics as Gender Justice? The 'Traffic in
Women' and Neoliberal Circuits of Crime, Sex, and Rights." Theory and Society
41(3):233–59. [
Return to text ]
Neoliberalism has created a new political, economic, and cultural context through
deregulation, privatization, securitization, and the dismantling of the welfare state. These
changes have had a contradictory impact on women. Proponents of neoliberalism have praised the
benefits of an unfettered, market-driven economy, extolled the virtues of personal choice and
economic individualism as the keys to freedom, and argued that these ostensibly gender-blind
economic structures offer opportunities for the agency and empowerment of women. Women's human
rights have been part of the discursive and ideological justification for the implementation of
neoliberalism in many parts of the world. Some women, especially economically better-off,
educated women have benefitted from the dismantling of the old patriarchal order. However, as
many authors have argued, because neoliberalism promotes the idea of a rational individual
exercising free will while eroding social democracy, it has made life harder for most women and
has widened the race/class divide among women. I suggest that, despite the many negative
repercussions of neoliberal economic changes, these dramatic disruptions of the social order
may offer avenues for poor women's collective mobilization and progressive political
transformation.
Neoliberalism has reversed the benefits of social welfare citizenship that were a hallmark
of the twentieth-century Fordist state. Neoliberalism's dismantling of the economic safety net,
trend toward privatization, and rise of the security state have increased the burden on women.
The reduction or elimination of welfare benefits for the poor, cutback of social services,
reliance on market strategies, and mass incarceration have led to a crisis of social
reproduction and a corresponding increase in women's workloads. With a decline in social rights
and publicly-funded support services, women have access to fewer economic resources and must
either turn to the private sector or increase their own unpaid labor. In this way,
neoliberalism has intensified women's oppression and exploitation.
The rights of social citizenship instituted in the United States in the 1930s, however, were
far from egalitarian. They created and institutionalized a racialized and gendered hierarchy
with welfare policies that controlled and regulated women's behavior and reinforced the male
breadwinner/family wage model. Women were more likely to receive social benefits as dependents
rather than as independent individuals, and their benefits were stigmatized and less generous.
In addition, protective labor legislation excluded occupations such as agricultural, domestic,
part-time, and temporary work filled largely by women and people of color. These exclusions not
only left these workers in a precarious situation, but they circumscribed the very definition
of "work." Although some exclusions were eventually remedied, they had a long-lasting impact by
shaping Americans' notion of "real" work, which was most closely associated with the factory
floor, and excluded many women workers. And mainstream labor unions were only marginally
interested in organizing excluded sectors. The New Deal and other social reforms of the
mid-twentieth century naturalized a racial and gender hierarchy and established firm boundaries
for the rights of labor citizenship, which was tied to full-time, largely male employment.
Women and people of color were subordinated in this form of state-organized capitalism.
Despite its claims of race- and gender-neutrality, neoliberalism is replacing the old
hierarchies with new patterns of racism and sexism. There has been an increase in low-paid,
part-time contingent service sector and outsourced manufacturing work that relies
disproportionately on immigrant women of color. While women of color have always worked in
low-wage devalued occupations, the dramatic expansion of a low-wage service and manufacturing
sector on a global scale has intensified their exploitation and reshaped the labor market. This
has been coupled with new forms of discipline and control rooted in heightened xenophobia and
border control. These growing employment sectors tend to be without benefits or labor
protections, while full-time, well-paid, mostly male manufacturing jobs are on the decline.
This shift in the labor market has resulted in women increasingly carrying the burden of
financially supporting the family. The average American worker today is experiencing working
conditions similar to those experienced by workers excluded from the rights of labor
citizenship in the mid-twentieth century.
While the new political climate has made it more difficult for many women, it has also
generated activism among low-wage women workers at the grassroots level. The activism has been
most visible among immigrant day laborers, domestic workers, guest workers, farm workers, and
other sectors historically excluded from the protections of labor law. Neoliberalism's
dismantling of the New Deal's structured race/gender hierarchy has created an opening for
worker mobilization and may offer opportunities for rethinking work and justice. Because of
their exclusions, these workers out of necessity have developed innovative strategies for
organizing. I will draw on examples from domestic worker organizing to analyze how it offers
one model for grassroots, feminist labor organizing under neoliberalism.
New forms of domestic worker activism are flourishing outside the framework of the modern
welfare state. During the 1930s, domestic workers were excluded from New Deal social benefits
such as minimum wage, social security, unemployment compensation, and the right to organize and
bargain collectively. While they won certain of these benefits over the course of the twentieth
century, they still do not have the right to unionize and are not protected by civil rights and
occupational health and safety laws. Because they work in isolated settings in the privacy of
the home and often have multiple employers, domestic workers have generally been considered
"unorganizable."
The inability to organize into traditional unions has fostered alternative methods of
organizing. Domestic worker activists have organized by geography, rather than solely by
occupation; demanded state-based, rather than employer-based rights; developed democratic
grassroots political support, rather than relying on a union hierarchy and model of
representation and collective bargaining; and cultivated public support, rather than speaking
only to their constituency. They seek to revalue care work and regard it as legitimate work
that is entitled to the same rights and protections as other kinds of labor. Domestic worker
organizers employ an intersectional analysis that takes into account race, class, gender,
culture, and nationality that speaks to the particular needs of their immigrant, women-of-color
constituency. Through their organizing, domestic workers are challenging the neoliberal premise
of market fundamentalism and asserting the need for state regulation and protection of
labor.
In addition, domestic worker activists are modeling a notion of rights that is not
citizenship-based. Many social movements over the course of the twentieth century -- including
the civil rights and women's movements -- advocated inclusion in or expansion of the rights of
citizenship. Neoliberalism has led to population displacement and migration, and relies on
immigrant, especially undocumented immigrant, workers. These workers are usually denied
citizenship rights or state-based labor protections either because of their immigration status
or their occupation. Through organizing, however, they are pushing back against neoliberal
disciplinary mechanisms and offering new conceptualizations of justice outside the framework of
the nation-state. They seek state protections, but insist that these protections be extended
even to those outside the boundaries of state-based citizenship and, thus, may offer a way to
reconceptualize the role of the state. They organize both the documented and the undocumented
and make claims for these workers regardless of citizenship status. They have also developed
alliances with domestic workers in other parts of the world, further illustrating the way in
which their struggle is not solely a national one.
Neoliberalism's reversal of the social democratic gains of the mid-twentieth century has
created a need to consider the value of alternative strategies. As the state-protected benefits
of labor citizenship diminish, more traditional workers -- who are increasingly finding
themselves without a safety net -- are looking to previously excluded sectors as a possible
model of organizing. By breaking down the Fordist assumptions of gender and work, neoliberalism
is creating openings for a new feminist praxis and for new ways for thinking about gender,
justice, and social change.
There is no place on Earth where neo-liberalism has not poisoned. It has allowed a handful
of private interests to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize
personal profit. It has poisonous effects especially in the Third World, where imperial powers
continue to pirate natural and human resources to fill the pockets of transnational
capitalists. Initiated by Reagan and Thatcher, for the last two decades, neo-liberalism has
become the dominant economic and political trend for much of the leftist (so they identify
themselves) governments as well as the right.
However, as women fighting against global capitalism and its new phase, as women yearning
for a better world where we will not be exploited and abused, we must go a step further into
looking into this 'neo-liberalism' through the experiences of women. And it is not just about
how women linearly experience it - we must go into the depths to manifest how neo-liberalism
operates in a very gender-biased way.
WOMEN WORKERS AS SCAPEGOATS
In Korea, the process of being absorbed into global capitalism began earlier than the economic
crisis, during the economic 'hyper '-development era of military dictatorship of Park Jung-Hee,
with quite a bit of help from the US. Fluctuating together with global economic crises, the
Korean economy started to show signs of a recession from the early 90s, as rate of profit
decreased. Thus, capitalists started to adopt policies of introducing flexibility to the labour
market. It was 'experimented' on women workers first before taking full force on the entire
working class at the end of the millennium.
Jobs where women were predominant started to be transformed in the 1980s, beginning in the
form of dispatch labour and eventually expanding to generalisation of irregular labour.
However, this process was mainly targeted at women workers and the male-oriented labour
movement did not give much importance to it, even though women worker's movement consistently
called for the address of the issue.
Although the incorporation of Korean economy into the global capitalist system had already
started around a decade ago, Korean people came to experience its destructive nature during and
after the economic crisis of 1997. The structural adjustment program of the IMF shook the
labour market and massive lay-offs were implemented. In particular, women workers were laid off
first, and the working conditions of women workers fell to the ground.
The methods that the management used was subcontracting or abolishing those production lines
and business sectors where women were predominant. Women in these places were usually typists
or clerical assistants, who were considered not important and cumbersome, and thus provided the
logic and justification for the lay-offs. Many companies would lay-off these women, and instead
employ workers from dispatch companies - thus providing the management with ways in which to
decrease labour costs and evade provision of insurances and benefits. Or in the case of banks,
the same worker would be reemployed, but on a contract basis as irregular workers, again to
decrease labour costs. Another method of laying off women workers or transforming them into
irregular workers, was targeting foremost women who were married to someone in the same
workplace, and also those who were pregnant or were on their maternal leave. They provided the
management with strong justifications based on patriarchal values of 'women's place is at
home'. This process of unjust and discriminatory lay-offs at the onset of the economic crisis
saw the deterioration of maternal protection and women worker's rights in general. The
achievements that the women worker's movement had accomplished over the last couple of decades
were undermined.
"FLEXIBILITY" OF WOMEN WORKERS
The massive lay-offs that occurred after 1997 was obviously not 'inevitable' on the part of the
management, but was a calculated process of increasing the rate of profit through flexibility
of the labour market. Because the need for lay-offs did not come simply from decrease in
production, workers who were laid off were re-employed, but as irregular workers. And because
flexibility measures were implemented foremost on women, women were also absorbed again in
masses into the labour market, but this time as irregular workers with low wages and low
protection.
Attaining flexibility of women workers was backed up by the patriarchal ideology of 'male as
breadwinner' 1 . Through this ideology, women workers are considered not really as
workers, but as 'assistant income providers', the ideology that contributes to devaluation of
women's work. And this in turn provided the justification for the primary lay-offs of women and
transforming women's jobs into irregular jobs - a justification that quelled the possibility of
resistance from the working class. Recently, capitalist institutions and mainstream media
elaborate that the rate of women's employment is increasing faster that the rate of men. On one
hand, this is due to the increase in absolute number of jobs-irregular jobs for women, but also
due to the fact that women do not have much choice than take up highly unstable jobs without
any hesitation to earn a living, whereas men can afford to be more 'selective'.
Now, the percentage of irregular workers is risen to higher levels than regular workers. In
analyzing a census on the economically-active workforce implemented by the Korean Statistical
Office in August 2001, the Korea Labor & Society Institute (www.klsi.org) estimated the
number of irregular workers to be 7.37 million, constituting 55.7% of the total workforce
2 .According to studies made in 2000, out of entire irregular workers, the
percentage of women is higher than that of men at 53%, and within the entire women workforce
irregular workers take up 70%. These official statistics exclude specially employed labour (for
example, the type of jobs that capitalists characterise as self-employment) such as private
tutors, insurance sales, golf caddies etc., so if these jobs are included, the rate of
irregular women workers will definitely rocket.
Irregular work pertaining to capital's flexibility measures has brought deterioration of
working conditions and impoverishment for workers of both genders. But it has affected women
workers more severely. At the moment, most of irregular women workers are employed in small
enterprises of less than 10 employees. It has driven women's work into the ditches and has also
increased mental stress from lack of self-confidence and the fear of losing their jobs. One
feminist scholar was interviewing irregular women workers and told of how the interviewees were
in constant fear of being seen throughout the interview. Many social psychologists point out
that the increase of irregular work and the mental stress that comes from it is becoming a
serious social problem that is bound to affect the whole society.
Moreover, with the automation of production lines and transfer of factories in capital's
constant search for cheaper labour, many women workers who had originally constituted a large
proportion of the workforce in the manufacturing sector are now being absorbed into the service
sector - in areas such as the so-called 'entertainment' businesses and as domestic workers. The
service sector has rapidly expanded over the last few years in Korea, and many women are being
employed as narrator models, telemarketers, and as servers and entertainers in bars. These jobs
are not only unstable, low waged and physically strenuous, but they also enforce the use of
'femininity' and sexuality to raise sales, making women more vulnerable to possibilities of
sexual abuse and exploitation. Also, because the service sector has always shared a very thin
borderline with the sex industry, it is not very surprising that more and more women workers,
both young and aged, are being drawn into the sex industry. For example, many married women in
their 30's and 40's are employed in the so-called 'telephone rooms (jeon-hwa-bang)' and are
forced to have phone sex with men. Many other married women were employed as 'pager women', who
are paged to come to bars to 'entertain' men. This became a very heated issue when Daewoo
Motors unionists went to a bar, paged women, and came face to face with familiar faces. When
Daewoo workers were laid-off, the wives had to find jobs to sustain their families and the only
ones available were as 'pager women'. The ruling elite and the conservative media are
enthusiastically deploring the moral collapse of Korean women, but the reality is that it is
the capitalist system that is corrupting the people.
The situation is not much different on the international arena. Neo-liberal globalisation
has paved the way for increase in migrant women workers, international trafficking and enforced
sex work in the Third World. In Korea, many women from the Philippines and Russia come to Korea
as domestic workers and 'entertainers', and then are tricked into providing sexual services to
Korean men and the US military.
WIDENING GAP BETWEEN WOMEN
Neo-liberal globalisation has also impeded the widening of gap between different classes of
women. The living standard between women in the developed countries and those in the Third
World is now incomparable, as is the situation inside Korea. Rich women of the bourgeoisie can
afford to wear fur coats that cost tens of million won, shop in department stores in their
imported cars, buy US produced baby food, send their children to expensive private English
language schools so that they are reproduced as the minority elite who rule the world of
globalisation, and employ women from South-east Asia as housemaids. This is how the minority of
women in Korea live, and furthermore, they are not living on the wealth that they had
accumulated themselves, but on the wealth accumulated by their husbands. And this in turn is
the wealth accumulated from exploiting women workers in Korea and elsewhere in the Third World.
In contrast to the minority of women who enjoy the outcome of neo-liberal domination in a good
part of the world, majority of women cannot find a proper job no matter how hard they try, and
when they do find a job, it is an unstable job in slave-like conditions that can get snatched
away from them. They cannot afford domestic help or a nanny - they work for long tiring hours
outside and then come home to find piles of dishes to be washed and children to be fed. Also,
studies by women's organizations have found that domestic abuse has increased, as husbands and
fathers who have lost jobs turn to expressing their anger at their daughters and wives, and
resort to violence.
CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL BACKLASH
To quell mass resistance against economic globalisation that has brought about increase in
unemployment, decrement of public services, downfall in wages and deterioration of quality of
life, the ruling elite has manipulated cultural conservatism to solidify its dominance over
society. Cultural conservatism in Korea is represented by Confucian patriarchy. The economic
crisis of 1997 saw the rise of this ideology that came together with the capitalist form of
'male as breadwinner' model, and acted to cover up the oppression of women while highlighting
the need for women to make more sacrifices for the sake of saving the crumbling economy. In the
meanwhile, unemployment of men was highlighted as a serious social problem. Thus the role of
women was limited to that of 'comforting' the suffering man in the family, while the sufferings
of women both as wage workers and non-wage workers were ignored. The Korean mainstream media
and the conservative ruling elite alike have neglected the seriousness of women suffering from
sexual abuse on the basis that women should have perseverance, but has spotlighted those
desperate women who left home after losing all hopes as destructors of family values. Women who
had replaced their husbands as the breadwinners end up in the sex industry, after being
rejected from any other type of work, but then are stigmatised as being morally corrupt. The
severity of unemployment of male youths appear in the news everyday, whereas female students
are not only ignored but are blocked altogether from the labour market. Many right-wing
sociologists and economists actually suggested that marriage for women should be more
emphasized by the government so as to block women from entering the labour market - and thus
lowering the official unemployment rate. The media focuses evermore on the fantasies of
marriage, and the 'marriage business' is now enjoying its 'Belle Epoque'.
A CRITIQUE OF KIM DAE-JUNG'S POLICIES ON WOMEN
Kim Dae-Jung's government has been portrayed as being democratic and pro-feminist in and
outside of Korea. There were high hopes for this president with his long history of fighting
for democracy, and from the beginning, many civil and women's organizations decided to give him
'critical' support. However, his promise of establishing a ministry specific on women's issues
was replaced by the Special Committee On Women's Affairs with no legislative powers, much to
the disappointment of women's groups. As his presidential term is coming to an end, he did
launch the Ministry of Gender Equality during the first half of this year, with a prominent
figure from a major women NGO seated as the Minister. However, the policies that the Ministry
is adopting are those that will hardly benefit majority of women suffering at grassroot
levels.
This was recently manifested in the revisions that were made to the maternity clauses in the
Standard Labour Laws in June. The Ministry had announced that it will expand public childcare
so as to decrease the burden on working women. With support from major women NGOs 3
, the Ministry proposed revisions to maternity-related clauses in the Standard Labour Laws, and
the clauses were changed for the first time since 1953. There were basically two major
improvements - maternity leave was increased from the present 60 days to 90 days, and
prohibition on employment of women in hazardous workplaces was expanded. This may seem like a
big step, but the fact of the matter is, these laws came in exchange for further flexibility of
women's labour. In exchange for increase of maternal leave, the Ministry also agreed to abolish
the clauses restricting overtime work and night work, paid familycare leave and menstruation
leave.
In a situation where 70% (or perhaps even higher and ever increasing) of women workers are
irregular workers, how many women workers will actually benefit from the revision? The majority
of working class women are outside legal boundaries. The Ministry and women NGOs argue that
they will fight for the application of the laws to irregular workers, but without questioning
the neo-liberal characteristics behind the legislation, there is really no chance that this
will actually take place. Many women activists had fought hard for these laws for the last
decade and they are congratulating themselves in finally achieving their objective, but in the
meantime, a vast majority of women workers have fallen into the ditches of irregular work and
the demands of the majority have been neglected to benefit a few. Capitalists have learnt to
'sacrifice' a few laws for the sake of obtaining further flexibility. Despite the argument that
these revisions will open new opportunities for women, without questioning the essence of Kim's
government and its support for neo-liberalism, the revisions that were recently made will only
expedite the flexible usage of women workers and thus further deteriorate the working
conditions of irregular women workers. The Ministry and the NGOs do not realize that the laws,
along with others that were made during the recent years 4 , are all in compliance
with neo-liberalism.
It has only been one year since the Ministry of Gender Equality took off, but those
benefiting from it are middle-class, elite women, and only the minority of women workers who
are lucky enough to be in a regular job. The presidential elections take place next year.
Despite that the Ministry is conforming to neo-liberal policies and trying to confuse the
workers about the essence of its policies, it does have some significance amidst the severely
patriarchal political scene of Korea - which may well be undermined by any of the major
right-wing political parties that take office - including the ruling New Millenium Democratic
Party of Kim Dae-Jung, which still receive a lot of support from NGOs. This will merely lead to
more lack of hope for state-led labour policies.
FIGHTING AND ORGANISING
Neo-liberalism was not something that hit Korea suddenly in 1997, but is a historical
development of capitalism that has gradually taken form during the last few decades. It had
been women workers who had felt the effects of globalisation first and thus were the first ones
to resist. It was the women workers of Korea, who fought militantly during the 70s and early
80s for a democratic union and worker's rights. Women workers formed the foundation for the
modern labour movement, although this fact often tends to be forgotten. During the late 80's,
the Korean economy reconstructed itself into focusing on export-oriented heavy industries,
whose workers were predominantly men, and women workers were left behind.
The onslaught of neo-liberal globalisation and the impoverishment that came with it was also
felt first by women workers. Just after the economic crisis, the women worker's movement moved
a big step forward when independent women's trade unions began to beformed 5 . The
unions came out of the need to address the specific issues of women workers that could not be
properly dealt with in a general union -organising irregular workers, the unemployed, domestic
workers and those women who worked in small companies where there are no unions. The percentage
of women participating in unions still remain at a meagre 5%, due to the fact that general
unions do not accommodate workers who are not regular workers. It was only in 1997, when the
IMF enforced austerity measures and structural adjustment programs also affected male workers,
that the people's movement in Korea fully realised the destructive nature of neo-liberalism.
From then on, flexibility of labour has become the main target of struggle for the working
class. Spotlight was finally thrown on the fact that neo-liberalism attack women workers
foremost, but unfortunately the longtime demands and struggles of women workers are being put
aside, as the struggles against 'irregular labour' is again being organised in a male-oriented
fashion.
The establishments of these unions are very significant in the history of the Korean labour
movement and also in the women's movement. Just as the strategies of capitalists change, the
organisation of the working class also much change to resist effectively. The essence of
neo-liberalism and its gender-bias cannot be resisted through the traditional method of
organization concentrating on male, regular workers from big enterprises.
However, these newly formed women's unions still have further developments to make and many
obstacles to overcome, in their struggles against national and international capital. The
unions must question the role of neo-liberal globalisation and its strategy of incorporating
flexibility measures into the labour market, for a full understanding of the situation of women
workers and organizing of more radical struggles that go into the fundamental core. And at the
same time, the worker's movement of Korea must go through structural changes to accommodate the
ever increasing irregular workers, and must also make more effort into overcoming the
patriarchal values that are still prevalent inside people's movement. Many women activists and
unionists have started to address the issues of gender discrimination and sexual violence
inside the people's movement, which up until now had been covered up. Over the years, many
fervent and militant women activists have had to leave the movement because of discrimination
and violence. It was always considered women's fault, or victimized women were forced to
'forgive' for the 'greater cause'. Many women activists, workers and unionists are uniting
themselves and are calling upon the movement to tackle the problem of hierarchy, discrimination
and violence.
TOWARDS ORGANIZING GLOBAL RESISTANCE OF WOMEN
As we have seen, neo-liberal globalisation affects all areas of society, to attain flexibility
of the labour market solely for the interests of transnational capital. In the case of Korea,
this process of enforcing structural adjustment and flexibility has devastated the lives of the
people, especially women. Capitalist industrialisation has brought about the rise of the
women's proletariat and neo-liberal globalisation has further feminised the proletariat while
at the same time impoverishing the proletariat into the verge of slavery.
This is not a matter of women merely being affected 'more' - we must look at the mechanisms
of neo-liberalism that operate in a gender-biased way. Indeed, neo-liberal globalisation itself
feed upon gender discrimination and effectively use traditional patriarchal values to exploit
women further. Patriarchal ideologies act to crush any attempts of women to politicize and form
resistance.
However, the essence of neo-liberalism is slowly being manifested and women have begun to
fight back. Feminisation of labour and feminisation of poverty signify increased exploitation
of women, but precisely because of that, provide the possibility for organization and
resistance, nationally and internationally. Women must now go forth as subjects in uniting the
people in our fight against neo-liberal globalisation. Instead of being incorporated into a
ready-made movement of men or middle-class elite women, instead of taking the problems of
discrimination for granted, women workers, farmers, indigenous peoples, migrants and other
grassroot peoples of the Third World must form a broad solidarity. We must analyse
globalisation from women's perspective, plan strategies that conform with the particular needs
of women, propose alternatives that include women as equal subjects, keep to the principle of
internationalism, and unite with other oppressed groups in the mass resistance in the fight
against neo-liberalism - and go beyond in creating a world based on equality.
* Joo-Yeon Jeong & Seung-Min Choi are with the Policy & Information Center for
International Solidarity (PICIS), Korea. This paper was presented at the International South
Group Network (ISGN) Asian Workshop on Women and Globalisation, 22-24 November,
Manila.
[1] This is merely an 'ideology', because despite the fact that the state supports this
perspective, in reality many men had lost their jobs during the economic crisis and many women
are now the sole income providers in their families.
[2] The interesting thing is that government funded institutions analysed the same statistics
and came up with the percentage of 27-28%.
[3] This refers to Korea Women Associations United, an umbrella organization of women NGOs.
They identify themselves as being 'progressive' but after Kim Dae-Jung came into power, they
participated enthusiastically in his policies and have become more middle-class oriented than
ever.
[4] In Korea, already a whole series of revisions were made to the Standard Labour Laws after
the economic crisis, more than any other time in Korean history. The illegitimate passage by
ruling party members of the bill allowing layoffs and the introduction of transformational
working time system in December of 1997 was first in the series that forecasted massive
neo-liberal attacks on labour. The passage was so explicitly impudent that Korean workers went
on a massive general strike and militantly struggled throughout the winter. Now capitalists are
willing to throw a few carrots while pushing forth their interests. Then came the
maternity-related clauses, and now another revision is about to take place that will exchange
reduction of working hours for more deterioration of working conditions.
[5] Three unions were formed almost at the same time: Korean Women's Trade Union, Seoul Women's
Trade Union and Seoul Regional Women's Trade Union
Folks, like some alien abductors, the Deep State has taken the Donald hostage, and with
ball-and-chain finality. Whatever pre-election predilection he had to challenge the Warfare
State has apparently been completely liquidated.
Trump's early AM tweet yesterrday, in fact, embodies the words of a man who had more than a
few screws loose when he took the oath, but under the relentless pounding of the Imperial
City's investigators, partisans, apparatchiks and lynch-mob media has now gone stark raving
mad. To wit:
"....Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia,
because they will be coming, nice and new and "smart!" You shouldn't be partners with a Gas
Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!
Yes, maybe Wall Street has figured out that the Donald is more bluster than bite. Yet when
you consider the broader context and what the Russian side is now saying, it is just plain
idiotic to own the S&P 500 at 24X. After all , earnings that have been going nowhere for
the past three years (earnings per share have inched-up from $106 in September 2014 to $109 in
December 2017), and now could be ambushed by a hot war accident in Syria that would rapidly
escalate.
Indeed, did the robo-machines and boys and girls down in the casino not ponder the meaning
of this message from the Kremlin? It does not leave much to the imagination:
# Russian ambassador in beirut : "If there is a strike by the Americans on #Syria ,
then... the missiles will be downed and even the sources from which the missiles were fired,"
Zasypkin told Hezbollah's al-Manar TV, speaking in Arabic.
Sure, the odds are quite high that the clever folks in the Pentagon will figure out how to
keep the pending attack reasonably antiseptic. That is, they will bomb a whole bunch of places
in Syria where the Russians and Iranians are not (after being warned); and also deploy
stand-off submarine platforms to launch cruise missiles and high-flying stealth aircraft to
drop smart bombs, thereby keeping American pilots and ships out of harm's way.
Then, after unleashing the Donald's version of "shock and awe" they will claim that Assad
has just received the spanking of his life and that the Russians and Iranians have been
messaged with malice aforethought.
But our point is not that Douma is Sarajevo, and, besides, this is still April, not August.
What should be scaring the daylights out of Wall Street is that we are even at the point where
the two tweets quoted above are happening.
For crying out loud, there is a brutal, bloody and barbaric civil war raging in Syria where
both sides are bedecked in black hats; both sides have committed unspeakable atrocities; and
where it is a documented fact that the rebels possess chemical weapons and have launched false
flag gas attacks in the past---even as 1,300 tons of Assad's inventory, which may or may not
have been the totality of it, was destroyed according to the certification of the Organization
for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
In that context, who can tell whether the alleged chlorine gas release last Saturday in
Douma originated in a bomb dropped by Assad's air force or came from a rebel stockpile that was
hit by a bomb? Or whether it was another deliberate false flag attack staged by the jihadists
or perhaps that it never happened at all.
The evidence comes mainly from rebel forces opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. One
of these was the Violations Documentation Center, a virulent anti-Russian organization funded
by George Soros. Another was the White Helmets, a completely comprised operation financed by
the US and UK and which has operated only in rebel held territories--- often check-by-jowl with
the al-Nusra Front and other terrorist elements.
Indeed, Washington's fabled spies in the sky and taps on every node of the worldwide web can
read your email and spot a rogue camel caravan anywhere in a Sahara sandstorm. But they can not
tell whether dead bodies are the victims of bullets, bombs, collapsing buildings or chlorine
gas. You need to be on the ground and perform chemical tests for that, and Washington just
plain isn't there.
Besides, even if a careful investigation--like the one proposed by Sweden and which the US
and UK vetoed at the UN---were actually completed, why is it Washington's prerogative to
administer a spanking to the culprit?
For one thing, if you are in the spanking business owing to bad behavior, then just within
the region you would also need to administer the rod to al-Sisi in Egypt and Erdogan in Turkey;
and also to Washington's on and off wards in Baghdad and to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia
for his genocidal attacks on Yemen. While you were at it, why would even Bibi Netanyahu be
spared the birch---given his periodic "lawn mowing" exercises on the Gaza strip?
The point is, Assad has never attacked, threatened or even looked cross-eyed at the United
States. So you would have thought that administering spankings to international malefactors is
the business of Washington's permanent War Party, not the leader of America First.
To be sure, the only evidence we have to date is the gruesome images posted on the internet
by the "Douma Revolution", which we don't credit because it is a tool of the good folks of
Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam), who were holding 3,200 pro-Assad hostages in cages when the
attack happened. But even if Assad is culpable, why is the Donald getting out the birch switch
if he doesn't mean to effectuate regime change?
Yes, inconstancy is his middle name. But how in god's name could even the Donald have
rearranged the modest amount of gray matter under his great Orange Comb-Over so quickly and
completely with regards to Syria?
As a reminder, this is what the Donald said just last week:
"We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon," Trump said on Thursday, "Let the other
people take care of it now. Very soon, very soon, we're coming out....We're going to get back
to our country, where we belong, where we want to be."
The fact is, it's way too late to drag Bashar Assad behind the Moammar Khadafy Memorial Jeep
to be ritually sodomized by his enemies. That's because he's already won the civil war (red
area in map below).
What's left is not remotely conducive to regime change because the majority Arab population
of Syria (regardless of Alawite, Shiite, Sunni, Christian, Druse etc. religious affiliation)
would never consent to be ruled by the small minority of Kurds (who control the yellow, largely
desert areas). And besides, a Kurdish Syrian state in part or whole would guarantee a Turkish
invasion and a blue (Turkish controlled areas surrounding Afrin in the northwest) versus yellow
war where Washington would be on both sides.
Indeed, the only thing that a regime change attempt at this late date would accomplish is a
resurrection of the remnants of ISIL (small black specs) or an upwelling of chaos from the
three or four islets (green areas) that warring gangs of rebels, jihadists, salafists and
blood-thirsty warlords now nominally control.
So the map below, in fact, tells you what is really going on. To wit, the neocons and deep
staters around Trump--with the Walrus Mouth (Bolton) now literally shouting in his ear----are
really about picking a fight with Iran and Russia. These are really Imperial Washington's
designated enemies, and the purpose of the impending attack on Syrian military installations is
to intimidate them into backing down----even as they issue hostile warnings and rhetorical
fulminations (especially the Iranians) against America.
Stated differently, the Orange Comb-Over is being lured not so much into an Assad spanking
exercise or regime change maneuver as into a Proxy War with Iran and Russia. The latter is
literally manna from heaven for the Warfare State.
Indeed, with the defense budget already cranked up to the absurd level of $720 billion , the
Deep State and its military/industrial/surveillance/congressional complex allies would like
nothing better than maximum rhetorical belligerence (and occasional provocative acts) from
Russia and Iran in order to keep the national security gravy train inflating toward the $1
trillion funding mark.
Needless to say, the contractual droppings from these staggering budget levels will keep the
beltway think tanks, NGOs and pro-war lobbying apparatus in clover for years to come, thereby
fueling the ugly secret of Imperial Washington.
Namely, since America lost its only real enemy in 1991, Washington has become an unhinged
war capital. It is now endangering the entire planet in a doom-loop of expanding military
muscle, multiplying foreign interventions and occupations, intensifying blowback from the
victims of Washington's aggression and an ever greater chorus of Empire justifying experts,
apparatchiks and politicians getting fat on the banks of the Potomac.
It is difficult to ignore the cross-cultural parallels prompted by the growth of
neoliberalism, an economic and moral philosophy in which sociologist Zygmunt Bauman notes, "the
responsibilities for resolving the quandaries generated by vexingly volatile and constantly
changing circumstances is shifted onto the shoulders of individuals -- who are now expected to
be 'free choosers' and to bear in full the consequences of their choices" (Bauman
2007:3–4). Bauman essentially argues that neoliberalism's deceptively seductive offer of
increased individual choice comes at a heavy price, rendering individuals more and more
vulnerable.
Neoliberal economic policies have increasingly impacted individual lives throughout
the world through the unprecedented untethering of workers and the workplace so that those in
positions of power and privilege have less direct contact with or responsibility for those who
work at the lowest levels of the same industry. Such new labor practices are a constant
reminder to workers that they are expendable, easily replaced, and thus not in a position to
negotiate the terms and conditions under which their labor is carried out.
Such vulnerability is even more pronounced for those who already inhabit the margins of
social life because of their poverty or other forms of social exclusion. This is particularly
true for situations wherein particular types of state-endorsed socioeconomic inequalities
create a larger pool of feminized labor that is typically lower paid, less respected, and less
able to u
"... There is not a shred of independent, intelligent journalism left anywhere around here - and interestingly there is an amazing number of people who have completely given up believing the MSM and/or our government. ..."
@ BM: My take on the situation in Germany: the MSM - leftish or rightish, doesn't matter -
mindlessly repeat what our US colonial masters are telling them to.
There is not a shred of independent, intelligent journalism left anywhere around here -
and interestingly there is an amazing number of people who have completely given up believing
the MSM and/or our government.
But what can you do when the published opinions are completely manufactured and anyone has
to suppose his neighbours all believe this idiocy?
That's a bit of a stretch. Germans were demoralized long before, as each sane person knew the war will end in
defeat from mid'42 on. Back in the days I had the somewhat questionable pleasure of talking to German ex-soldiers
(two of my grand-uncles) that were deployed to the Eastern Front. Compared to the kind of warfare that was going
on there, the fighting in the west and south was almost akin to being on vacation - I'm serious about that.
On average the Soviets, mainly comprised of todays Russian peoples, lost 16-18000 people a day, this is
evidence of the fierceness of fighting and, also, to what amount of a beating the Russians can take without
losing sight of their goal.
The Soviet Union did the real fighting against German forces. At all times there'd been about 85% of all
German forces deployed to the east, without this there would had been no bombing campaign against Germany simply
because the number of fighter aircraft available against allied bombers would had been overwhelming.
Except for a few elite units, hastily re-deployed from the east, the main force was inexperienced draftees
with both a lack of proper training and equipment. All other experienced units stayed east in a desperate attempt
to hold back the red army as long as any possible.
A very good friend of mine, who died a couple years back at age 84, was one of these unfortunate souls. When
he turned 17 in late Dec.'44 he received an official letter that read 'A gift from the Fuhrer' - it was his draft
note. That's been the kind of opponent the western allies faced late in the war, a bunch of badly under-equipped
troops consisting of exhausted regulars and youths, that were scared shitless (his words, not mine).
Russia's a different kind of animal. They won WWII - European theater almost singlehandedly but had to pay
dearly.
We have moved way beyond the Skripals case now. Simply put, if US shoots in Syria, Russia
will shoot back this time, yes back at US. USS Donald Duck has been placed as a bait to be
sent to the bottom of Mediterrenain sea by the Russians, similar to Arizona et al at Pearl
Harbour.
Many dissenter websites are currently under attack by the cyber forces of the Western
regimes and Israel, one of them being this one. Another site under attack is my favorite
johnhelmer.com. In addition to saying that he is under attack, the current message from John
is:
WHEN THE RULE OF LAW WAS DESTROYED IN SALISBURY, LONDON AND THE HAGUE, AND THE RULE OF FRAUD
DECLARED IN WASHINGTON, THAT LEAVES ONLY THE RULE OF FORCE IN THE WORLD. THE STAVKA MET IN
MOSCOW ON GOOD FRIDAY AND IS READY. THE FOREIGN MINISTRY ANNOUNCED ON SUNDAY "THE GRAVEST
CONSEQUENCES". THIS MEANS ONE AMERICAN SHOT AT A RUSSIAN SOLDIER, THEN WE ARE AT WAR. NOT
INFOWAR, NOT CYBERWAR, NOT ECONOMIC WAR, NOT PROXY WAR. WORLD WAR.
The West is utterly bankrupt, morally as well as financially and we are experiencing the
Western remedial plan and actions – war!
"In 2016 an official British government inquiry determined that Bush and Blair had indeed
together rushed to war. The Global Establishment has nevertheless rewarded Tony Blair for his
loyalty with Clintonesque generosity. He has enjoyed a number of well-paid sinecures and is
now worth in excess of $100 million."
– The character of Blair and the Establishment is well established: Blair is a major
war criminal supported by the major war profiteers. His children and grandchildren are a
progeny of a horrible criminal.
What is truly amazing is the complacency of the Roman Catholic Church that still has not
excommunicated and anathematized the mass murderer. Blair should be haunted and hunted for
his crimes against humanity.
With age, Blair's face has become expressively evil. His wife Theresa Cara "Cherie" Blair
shows the same acute ugliness coming from her rotten soul of a war profiteer.
Keep in mind how long ago all this is:
Skripal was recruited around 1990 and arrested in 2004. Guess that the Russian attitude
towards Skripal took the chaos of the 90′s as mitigating circumstances into
account.
Skripal served his sentence of only 13 years till 2010 when he was pardoned and given the
option to leave. Russia did not revoke Skripal's citizenship. The UK issued Skripal a
passport too. On arrival in the UK Skripak was extensively debriefed by UK intelligence
services. Skripal has lived for 8 years in the UK now.
And now out of the blue this incident nicely dovetailing with May ratcheted up anti Russia
language only a few months before this false flag incident and the rapidly failing traction
of the Steele/Orbis/MI6 instigated Russia collusion story on the basis of that fake Trump
Dossier. By the way Orbis affiliated Steele and Miller have been among Skripal's
handlers.
Paul Craig Roberts is correct when quoting The Saker:
"The Russian view is simple: the West is ruled by a gang of thugs supported by an
infinitely lying and hypocritical media while the general public in the West has been
hopelessly zombified." -- The Saker
"... So, in a different way, were old American political operators, at least when it came to domestic politics, as they had to manage multitudes of groups who had diverse worldviews who didn't take kindly to moral lecturing by politicians. ..."
"... Nowadays, though, this seems a worldview that many in "western" societies are running low on. Too many people start their argument by asserting their beliefs, why they believe them, and, implicitly, even if not made explicit, why they are right and others should be "persuaded" to believe them (since the "others" are "obviously" irrational.) ..."
"... Condemning the other, who are "obviously wrong," I suppose, makes people feel better, all the more so if one's own worldview can be justified by the Scripture or "science." ..."
"... An important point, however, is that for action to be 'rational' in this sense, it has, in some manner, to be appropriately calculated to the purposes envisaged. A difficulty lies precisely in the ambiguity about purposes which is implicit in this whole tradition. ..."
I agree entirely with your view. In order to make sense of the "purpose" behind actions
taken by various political actors, it is necessary to take seriously their worldview and
value system. It is not necessary that one should "respect" them or believe them for oneself,
but recognize that these do actuate the choices that they do make.
I suppose this might sound
like a sort of backhanded compliment, but this is something that the old British were really
good at -- and lay behind successful management of the empire.
So, in a different way, were old
American political operators, at least when it came to domestic politics, as they had to
manage multitudes of groups who had diverse worldviews who didn't take kindly to moral
lecturing by politicians.
Nowadays, though, this seems a worldview that many in "western" societies are running low
on. Too many people start their argument by asserting their beliefs, why they believe them,
and, implicitly, even if not made explicit, why they are right and others should be
"persuaded" to believe them (since the "others" are "obviously" irrational.)
Condemning the
other, who are "obviously wrong," I suppose, makes people feel better, all the more so if
one's own worldview can be justified by the Scripture or "science." (not the science based on
logical deduction and empiricism, but something that is vaguely "right" because it "just
is.") But that certainly rules out actually dealing with the other side responsibly to
accomplish something.
I still feel that the brand of "rationality" that too many people in the West subscribe to
is a brand of smug pseudoreligious fanaticism that is itself "irrational." It may be itself
"rational," given the context, as much as beliefs in witchcraft might be, but it is not what
its believers think it is. When such beliefs clash with other, comparable beliefs, nothing
good can come out of such encounters.
'One great irony is that, at least among "serious"
academics in economics and other social sciences, the only definition of "rational" that is
accepted is that there is some purpose behind it.'
This takes me into areas where I get out of my depth.
But the link of 'rationality' to purposive action is certainly very much in keeping with
the tradition which goes, through Collingwood, into areas of British anthropology (exmples
chosen from limited knowledge, Evans-Pritchard, Wendy James, Paul Dresch.)
An important point, however, is that for action to be 'rational' in this sense, it has, in
some manner, to be appropriately calculated to the purposes envisaged. A difficulty lies precisely in the ambiguity about purposes which is implicit in this
whole tradition.
So if one of one's basic conception of human purposes is to keep a kind of social order
'on the road', then beliefs which may be 'irrational', in the sense of indefensible in terms
of canons of Western science which are, patently 'rational', may have a 'rationality' of
their own.
An example is the analysis by Evans-Pritchard of the witchcraft beliefs of the Azande.
Implicit in this is a nightmare possibility which is lurking in a manner which is often
hysterical, but not necessarily 'irrational' manner, in a tradition of conservative thought:
that what is 'rational' in terms of scientific enquiry may be subversive of what is
'rational' in terms of the need to maintain functioning societies.
One great irony is that, at least among "serious"
academics in economics and other social sciences, the only definition of "rational" that is
accepted is that there is some [market-related] purpose behind it.
Most people who rant about
what "social science" says about the universe and how it should be are sophomoric thinkers
who don't know what the "science" part of social science is. The tragedy is that they are
what the rest of society expects social science to be about, to rant about morality of this
or that mode of politics, and not engage in hard headed analysis based on logic and evidence.
"... Basically, Mirzayanov claims that it is relatively easy to make the Novichok nerve agents. So, some enterprising Arabs could buy a few chemists to make a few tons of it and then spray it all over the little Satan. Do you really think that the Jews who run the United States would allow the publication of information that could lead to thousands of deaths in Israel? ..."
"... Remember, Mirzayanov was given residence (and a University position) in the United States after he was kicked out of Russia. There are also a number of "people who should know" that have stated that there is zero solid evidence for the existence of the Novichok nerve agents. For example: Robin Black in Development, Historical Use and Properties of Chemical Warfare Agents (2016): ..."
"... "In recent years, there has been much speculation that a fourth generation of nerve agents, 'Novichoks' (newcomer), was developed in Russia, beginning in the 1970s as part of the 'Foliant' programme, with the aim of finding agents that would compromise defensive countermeasures. Information on these compounds has been sparse in the public domain, mostly originating from a dissident Russian military chemist, Vil Mirzayanov. No independent confirmation of the structures or the properties of such compounds has been published." ..."
"... "There has never been a 'Novichok' research project conducted in Russia,... But in the West, some countries carried out such research, which they called 'Novichok,' for some reason." ..."
Remember, the evil people, Theresa May, Stoltenberg, Trump and the rest, are damning
Russia with obvious lies.
The Novichok nerve agents don't even exist.
HERE IS THE PROOF:
The Novichok nerve agents are supposedly much more toxic than the nerve gases VX or Sarin
(and yet the Skripals are still alive!?).
Mirzayanov's book, published in 2008, contains the formulas he alleges can be used to
create Novichoks. In 1995, he explained that "the chemical components or precursors" of
Novichok are "ordinary organophosphates that can be made at commercial chemical companies
that manufacture such products as fertilizers and pesticides."
Basically, Mirzayanov claims that it is relatively easy to make the Novichok nerve
agents. So, some enterprising Arabs could buy a few chemists to make a few tons of it and then
spray it all over the little Satan. Do you really think that the Jews who run the United States would allow the publication of
information that could lead to thousands of deaths in Israel?
Do you really think they would protect the publisher of such information by giving him
residence in the United States?
Remember, Mirzayanov was given residence (and a University position) in the United States
after he was kicked out of Russia. There are also a number of "people who should know" that have stated that there is zero
solid evidence for the existence of the Novichok nerve agents. For example: Robin Black in
Development, Historical Use and Properties of Chemical Warfare Agents (2016):
"In recent years, there has been much speculation that a fourth generation of nerve
agents, 'Novichoks' (newcomer), was developed in Russia, beginning in the 1970s as part of
the 'Foliant' programme, with the aim of finding agents that would compromise defensive
countermeasures. Information on these compounds has been sparse in the public domain, mostly
originating from a dissident Russian military chemist, Vil Mirzayanov. No independent
confirmation of the structures or the properties of such compounds has been published."
And, Alexander Shulgin, Russia's representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons (2018):
"There has never been a 'Novichok' research project conducted in Russia,... But in the
West, some countries carried out such research, which they called 'Novichok,' for some
reason."
CONCLUSION: The Novichok nerve agents don't even exist.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has accused prominent British businessman Bill
Browder of being a "serial killer" – the latest extraordinary attempt by the Kremlin to
frame one of its most high-profile public enemies.
Court documents seen by the Observer reveal that Russian state investigators have named
Browder, a London-based hedge fund manager, as the suspect behind the mysterious murders of
three men.
All three deaths are linked to a £174m fraud believed to have involved Russian
officials -- a crime that was uncovered by Browder's Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, in
2008. Magnitsky was subsequently imprisoned on charges widely considered to be false, and died
in jail amid claims he was tortured.
Browder, once the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia, has infuriated Putin by
lobbying western governments to punish those responsible for Magnitsky's death. A number of
countries have imposed sanctions on individuals believed to be involved.
"... Without sufficient domain knowledge, you have no immunity from MSM narratives. And, to acquire that knowledge you need to read non-MSM sources (or know people with first-hand experience). ..."
Reasonably intelligent people? Like this Iranian woman (in US) whose postings during the war
for Aleppo was full of righteous indignation for the rebels. when I told her that the people
whose fate she was bemoaning would do many evil things to her as a Shia Iranian woman; she
would not hear of it.
Couldn't agree with you more Babak. My dad is a 78 year old Orthopedic physician here in the
US. He would be considered intelligent by most people. And he is. Except when it comes to
Geopolitics. He believes everything the MSM parrots and I gave up long ago in voicing my
opinion to him. It's hopeless. And consider the vast majority of the citizens of my country
are far less intelligent than him. In my opinion, the forces that push for war know they are
lying and don't care if a small percentage are on to them. They have the microphone and we do
not.
Yes, people like that. Without sufficient domain knowledge, you have no immunity from MSM
narratives. And, to acquire that knowledge you need to read non-MSM sources (or know people
with first-hand experience).
The Brits blinked and did not punish the criminal liar Blair. Since then, the war
profiteering based on false flag operations has become a national British pastime.
Notable quotes:
"... The problem for governments using false flag operations like this is many more people are no longer trusting their own governments and quite rightly so. ..."
Hi, I am from the government. I am here to lie to you. I have so many lies on top of other
lies that sometimes they are true. Even the government has lost track. I am not sure if even
MIC or Israel knows anymore.
The problem for governments using false flag operations like this is many more people are
no longer trusting their own governments and quite rightly so. Human minds are reinforcing
the concept of untrustworthy governments that actually lasts far longer than the elected
period of time of those who purport to represent the population we now know to be a
deceit.
As example, take Blair ex-UK prime minister who concocted the whole Iraq dodgy dossier in
the UK who most people I know now call him a war criminal but nobody will put on trial in the
Hague. He has not been PM since 2007 but nobody forgets the criminal acts he instigated and
supported and will be remembered for a long time for this. So how do you make Blair appear
human again to the population?
You can apply this concept to so many elected criminals in the west ... join it up those
that rule us are in fact criminals not ordinary people. The psychos rule over us and to them
we are no more than dead meat.
The mainstream media deflects attention from where power resides: corporations, not with the
leaders of the free world. The arguments posed by Chris Hedges, that the U.S. is neither a
democracy nor a republic but a totalitarian state that can now assassinate its citizens at
will, are pertinent ones. Scary ones. Especially as consecutive governments seem equally as
impotent to invoke any real change for the States. If the media won't stand up to the
marionettes who pull the strings of the conglomerates causing deep, indelible polarisation in
the world abound; then so we must act. Together.
Listen to the full interview in our weekly Newsvoice Think podcast.
We were delighted to have Chris Hedges on an episode of the Newsvoice Think podcast as we seek to broadcast
perspectives from all sides of the political spectrum. Right, left, red, blue and purple.
In our interview with Chris, we discussed a range of topics facing the U.S. today as the
Trump administration looks back at a year in power, and forward to the November '18 midterms
where Democrats will be looking to make gains. Chris was scathing of that party describing them
as a "creature of Wall Street, which is choreographed and ceased to be a proper party a long
time ago." As a columnist with Truthdig, and a big advocate of independent media. Chris Hedges
was the perfect interviewee for us to draw on the benefits of crowdsourced journalism and the
challenges facing sites at the mercy of Facebook, Google and Twitter algorithms.
Chris's ire against the corporate interest of Facebook et al didn't let up saying dissident
voices were being shut down and that corporate oligarchs were only too happy to let them. The
neutralisation of the media platforms that seek to provide independent opinion on U.S. current
affairs is in full pelt.
North Korea was the hot topic in 2017. Commentators said it was like a return to the days of
the Cold War. But Hedges pointed that we need to remember what happened during the Korean
War -- how the North was flattened by U.S. bombs -- and that as a
result they, as a nation, suffer from an almost psychosis as a result. Trump, he said, is an
imbecile and only deals in bombast, threats and rhetoric.
Not surprisingly, Trump got it hard from Hedges. Describing his administration as a
"kleptocracy" who will seek to attack immigrants and up the xenophobia stakes as it distracts
and covers for the unadulterated theft of U.S. natural resources.
As young people look to estimable journalists, activists and politicians in the States to
help give them a voice, Hedges sees the democratic system as utterly futile. Encouraging mass
civil disobedience instead, the ex-NY Times foreign correspondent states that railroads should
be blocked and shutting down corporate buildings, for example, is the only way forward.
The perennial argument between Republicans and Democrats is just that; is the U.S. a
Republic or a Democracy? Hedges thinks neither. He told Newsvoice that the States is an
inverted totalitarian country where the government regards the public as "irrelevant".
Unlike Ben Wizner from the ACLU who sees hope in delaying Net Neutrality, at least until a
new administration is in power, Chris feels it is hopeless -- that it is a dead
duck, and as Net Neutrality slows down independent media platforms, the public will be at the
behest of corporate social media sites such as Facebook who'll increasingly deem what you do
and don't read or see.
You can read more of Chris' work at Truthdig where he has a weekly
column every Monday.
Neoliberalism as a social system is self-destructive -- similar to Trotskyism from which it was derived.
World leaders urged to act as anger over inequality reaches a 'tipping point'
Typical neoliberal mantra "need to rise productivity" is a typical neoliberal fake: look at Amazon for shining example here.
Notable quotes:
"... The real focus of our taxation system should be to tax wealth and recipients of silly amounts of annual income. ..."
"... Ur talking about something called "Reagan-nomics" or what was commonly and lovingly referred to as "trickle down economics". After the destruction of unionized labor, years of globalization, record profits for corporations & wall street and a high octane doze of Reagan / Thatcher Neoliberalism, "trickle down" has obviously been a complete failure. ..."
An alarming projection produced by the House of Commons library suggests that if trends seen since the 2008 financial crash were
to continue, then the top 1% will hold 64% of the world's wealth by 2030. Even taking the financial crash into account, and measuring
their assets over a longer period, they would still hold more than half of all wealth.
Since 2008, the wealth of the richest 1% has been growing at an average of 6% a year – much faster than the 3% growth in wealth
of the remaining 99% of the world's population. Should that continue, the top 1% would hold wealth equating to $305tn (Ł216.5tn)
– up from $140tn today.
The population of third world countries is skyrocketing. The population of developed countries, outside the importation of poor
immigrants, is static. The top 1% of world population will continuously become comparatively richer as long as this is the case.
That means 6.75m households are in the top 1% of the world, At 1.94 adults per household, that's 13,000,000 people.
However, assuming households are not 'legal people' but the adults within them are, then you'd have to divide household income
by the number of adults (1.94) to get the wealth per person. So to reach Ł550,000 per person, a household would have to
have net wealth of Ł1.067m, and only 10% of households have that wealth.
10% of 27m is 2.7m and that equates to only 5,240,000 people.
So in terms of households we easily reach 10m mark, but in terms of individual people, you are correct, it is 'only' 5.24m.
Still and awful lot of people though.
A single mother get Ł20k on benefits per years. Over 18 years that is Ł360,000. She has two kids, so that iwill cost Ł3,000 in
education per years. 2 kids x 14 years x Ł3,500 per years = Ł98,000. We pay for child birth costs, free vaccinations, anti-natal
care, free prescriptions, free eye care, free dental care, free school meals, we pay her countal tax bil. Plus if she is lucky,
she get a free Ł450,000 council home.
Even if she works for a few years, it will never be enough to pay what she has received from the state. PLus we have to make
provisions for her pension and her elderly care, meals on wheels, elderly health care etc...
That is easily Ł1m to Ł2million per single mother....
The plebs are well on the way to figuring it out alright and so have the 1%. That's we now live under a militarized surveillance
state which serves the elites.. Think again if voting will ever change this.. Bernie was doomed from the getgo.
I think the principle here is that the longer this goes on and the greater inequality becomes then the more extreme will be the
countervailing force.
It is in everybody's interest that the world becomes fairer. That governments govern in the interests of as many people as
possible. That public services like health and education are available to all regardless. That taxes are progressive and that
governments have international treaties to deal with tax avoidance and evasion. That our democratic processes are as robust as
possible and that all our organs of state are as transparent as possible and open to scrutiny to the public.
If the accumulation of wealth on this scale continues unabated it will end in tears... inevitably.
Furthermore I believe that there is a relationship between inequality - and all the things that go with it and follow from
it - and environmental degradation.
Greater fairness between individuals and between countries is, in my opinion, one of the essential requirements for us to surmount
the epic problems that we face in the world today.
I think most of us have are aware of what really happens at Davos. The wealthy and powerful are cooking up more schemes to screw
the 99% over. Your Bono's and your Bill Gates are no friends to the working class or the working poor. Take Jeff Bezos for example.
He has a mass of wealth totaling $112 Billion.
To end global hunger - $30 Billion
To end homelessness in the USA - $20 Billion
Jeff Bezos, or even Bill Gates could do that in an instant and still have Billions to spare. The super rich don't care about
"regular" people, and never have.
Peter Rabbit ComfortablyPlumb 7 Apr 2018 14:25
This is the Osborne analogy regurgitated.
If you live in a Ł2.5 million house, you are wealthy, not average or poor. To be wealthy is not some form of human rights entitlement,
especially if it is at the cost of the overwhelming majority. This concept is known as "greed" and "selfishness". Obviously your
mantra is that of Gordon Gekko "greed is good".
The real focus of our taxation system should be to tax wealth and recipients of silly amounts of annual income.
All these arguments are dated and are applicable to the Thatcher era of the early 1980s which has long gone and is not going
to return. The problem facing our society currently is run away social and economic inequality and the entrenchment of substantial
wealth for a very small number of people which is fuelling generational social and inequality.
TakoradiMan BrotherLead 7 Apr 2018 14:24
I presume that most those living in the U.K. will fall within top 1% which the Guardianista loath so much.
I'm sorry but this post is utterly clueless.
To be in the top 1% you need to have a household income of well over Ł50k per annum (closer to Ł100k I suspect - no one here
has yet given very authoritative figures); only a fraction of the UK population are that well off.
AnneK1 Landlord52 7 Apr 2018 14:24
Except that they don't and the charities have to come along and ask us for more money because the public sector haven't used
tax revenue efficiently. I would say Britain's ineffective public sector are the greatest threat to Corbyn's chances of forming
the government we need to rid us of these dangerous Tories.
PeterlooSunset 7 Apr 2018 14:24
The richest 1% own the corporate media (including the private equity firms keeping the Guardian afloat) that keep telling us
we have to focus our attention on identity politics while they loot all the wealth.
prematureoptimsim -> Inthesticks 7 Apr 2018 14:23
Ur talking about something called "Reagan-nomics" or what was commonly and lovingly referred to as "trickle down economics". After the destruction of unionized labor, years of globalization, record profits for corporations & wall street and a high octane doze of Reagan / Thatcher Neoliberalism, "trickle down" has obviously been a complete failure.
U need proof ? Just examine recent history of presidential elections. . . .
Barack Obama - ( Mr. Hope and Change )
Donald Trump - ( Mr. Make America Great Again ).
And in the end it's the same as it ever was. The rich get richer and. . . . Well u know the rest. Good luck to u. Enjoy ur crumbs.
This Guardian pressitute can't even mentions the term neoliberalism, to day noting to accept that neoliberalism now experience a
crisis (which actually started in 2008)
Globalization blowback will not totally bury neoliberal globalization, but it puts some limits on transnational corporations racket...
hat is happening to national politics? Every day in the US, events further exceed the imaginations of absurdist novelists and comedians;
politics in the UK still shows few signs of recovery after the "
national nervous breakdown " of Brexit.
France "
narrowly
escaped a heart attack " in last year's elections, but the country's leading daily feels this has done little to alter the "
accelerated decomposition " of the political system. In neighbouring Spain, El País goes so far as to say that "the rule of law,
the democratic system and even the market economy are in doubt"; in Italy, "the collapse of the establishment" in the March elections
has even brought talk of a "barbarian arrival", as if Rome were falling once again. In Germany, meanwhile, neo-fascists are preparing
to take up their role as
official opposition , introducing anxious volatility into the bastion of European stability.
But the convulsions in national politics are not confined to the west. Exhaustion, hopelessness, the dwindling effectiveness of
old ways: these are the themes of politics all across the world. This is why energetic authoritarian "solutions" are currently so
popular: distraction by war (Russia, Turkey); ethno-religious "purification" (India, Hungary, Myanmar); the magnification of presidential
powers and the corresponding abandonment of civil rights and the rule of law (China, Rwanda, Venezuela, Thailand, the Philippines
and many more).
What is the relationship between these various upheavals? We tend to regard them as entirely separate – for, in political life,
national solipsism is the rule. In each country, the tendency is to blame "our" history, "our" populists, "our" media, "our" institutions,
"our" lousy politicians. And this is understandable, since the organs of modern political consciousness – public education and mass
media – emerged in the 19th century from a globe-conquering ideology of unique national destinies. When we discuss "politics", we
refer to what goes on inside sovereign states; everything else is "foreign affairs" or "international relations" – even in this era
of global financial and technological integration. We may buy the same products in every country of the world, we may all use Google
and Facebook, but political life, curiously, is made of separate stuff and keeps the antique faith of borders.
Yes, there is awareness that similar varieties of populism are erupting in many countries. Several have noted the parallels in
style and substance between leaders such as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi, Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. There
is a sense that something is in the air – some coincidence of feeling between places. But this does not get close enough. For there
is no coincidence. All countries are today embedded in the same system, which subjects them all to the same pressures: and it is
these that are squeezing and warping national political life everywhere. And their effect is quite the opposite – despite the desperate
flag-waving – of the oft-remarked "
resurgence of the nation state ".
The future of economic globalisation, for which the Davos men and women see themselves as
caretakers, had been shaken by a series of political earthquakes. "Globalisation" can mean many
things, but what lay in particular doubt was the long-advanced project of increasing free trade
in goods across borders. The previous summer, Britain had voted to leave the largest trading
bloc in the world. In November, the unexpected victory of Donald Trump , who vowed to withdraw from
major trade deals, appeared to jeopardise the trading relationships of the world's richest
country. Forthcoming elections in France and Germany suddenly seemed to bear the possibility of
anti-globalisation parties garnering better results than ever before. The barbarians weren't at
the gates to the ski-lifts yet – but they weren't very far.
In a panel titled Governing Globalisation , the economist
Dambisa Moyo , otherwise a well-known supporter of free trade, forthrightly asked the
audience to accept that "there have been significant losses" from globalisation. "It is not
clear to me that we are going to be able to remedy them under the current infrastructure," she
added. Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund,
called for a policy hitherto foreign to the World Economic Forum : "more redistribution".
After years of hedging or discounting the malign effects of free trade, it was time to face
facts: globalisation caused job losses and depressed wages, and the usual Davos proposals
– such as instructing affected populations to accept the new reality – weren't
going to work. Unless something changed, the political consequences were likely to get
worse.
The backlash to globalisation has helped fuel the extraordinary political shifts of the past
18 months. During the close race to become the Democratic party candidate, senator Bernie
Sanders relentlessly attacked Hillary Clinton on her
support for free trade . On the campaign trail, Donald Trump openly proposed tilting the
terms of trade in favour of American industry. "Americanism, not globalism, shall be our
creed," he bellowed at the Republican national convention last July.
The vote for Brexit was strongest in the regions of the UK devastated by the flight of
manufacturing. At Davos in January, British prime minister Theresa May, the leader of the party
of capital and inherited wealth, improbably picked up the theme, warning that, for many, "talk
of greater globalisation means their jobs being outsourced and wages undercut." Meanwhile,
the European far right has been warning against free movement of people as well as goods.
Following her qualifying victory in the first round of France's presidential election,
Marine Le Pen warned darkly that "the main thing at stake in this election is the rampant
globalisation that is endangering our civilisation."
It was only a few decades ago that globalisation was held by many, even by some critics, to
be an inevitable, unstoppable force. "Rejecting globalisation," the American journalist George
Packer has written, "was like rejecting the sunrise." Globalisation could take place in
services, capital and ideas, making it a notoriously imprecise term; but what it meant most
often was making it cheaper to trade across borders – something that seemed to many at
the time to be an unquestionable good. In practice, this often meant that industry would move
from rich countries, where labour was expensive, to poor countries, where labour was cheaper.
People in the rich countries would either have to accept lower wages to compete, or lose their
jobs. But no matter what, the goods they formerly produced would now be imported, and be even
cheaper. And the unemployed could get new, higher-skilled jobs (if they got the requisite
training). Mainstream economists and politicians upheld the consensus about the merits of
globalisation, with little concern that there might be political consequences.
Back then, economists could calmly chalk up anti-globalisation sentiment to a marginal group
of delusional protesters, or disgruntled stragglers still toiling uselessly in "sunset
industries". These days, as sizable constituencies have voted in country after country for
anti-free-trade policies, or candidates that promise to limit them, the old self-assurance is
gone. Millions have rejected, with uncertain results, the punishing logic that globalisation
could not be stopped. The backlash has swelled a wave of soul-searching among economists, one
that had already begun to roll ashore with the financial crisis. How did they fail to foresee
the repercussions?
"... North Korea's negotiating position has not really changed with the announcement. They have repeatedly said for years they are willing to agree to denuclearization of the Peninsula in return for security guarantees. I find the media trumpeting this as a new development rather vexing. Anyways, China has been putting the screws on them since about September/October (Apparently, they told Kim Jongun they know they can't overthrow the DPRK government, but they can get rid of him personally), which is also why there have not been any new nuclear tests. ..."
"... I think Yves has got it right: USA threatens PRC with tariffs, so PRC pressures NK to make concessions to the USA. i.e. Two big guys screwing the little guy. ..."
"... In the USA, imperialist machtpolitik is a thoroughly bipartisan affair. It doesn't matter how faithfully NK or PRC might fulfill obligations. Trump's successors, whoever they may be, will simply apply more pressure and demand more concessions. They won't stop until somebody else stops them. ..."
I believe Trump could negotiate a deal. But I also believe he could blow up the whole talk
before it even happens. He has shown that he'll bend quickly to neocon pressure, with
increased interest in foreign war (Bolton hiring) and the ramping up of hostilities by
bouncing Russians from the U.S. over the phony poisoning story in the UK.
I don't disagree with your comment, but not comfortable with the term "bend to". Trump
gets enamored with different people at different times, but he always is looking
down at them. They may get enough rope to scare the rest of us, but they are still on a
rope.
Bolton is horrible, but a lot of other horrible people have come and gone in this really
quick year.
Bolton is horrible but probably won't last long. Nobody at Trump's ear has, including his
own children.
Trump just announced that we're withdrawing from Syria. That's more than Obama ever
did.
Part of being a nationalist demagogue is that you're not as interested in foreign wars
unless they enrich the country. Not a single one of our wars does that. There's nothing
interesting in mercantilism, for instance, that we can't do at home (drill baby drill).
I'm not saying I agree with that view, I'm just saying that if he's a nationalist
demagogue, it only follows that he's not interested in, uh, "non-for-profit warmaking".
I am NO Trump fan or voter, but it does appear that he's the first one to apply sanctions
to those specific Chinese banks handling the trade with North Korea.
(Somewhat) OT, but it strikes me that the best way to look at Trump is through the lense
of what he is – the US version of Sylvio Berlusconi. A sleazy billionaire Oligarch with
no core principles and a fondness for Bunga Bunga parties.
Rather than as LITERALLY HITLER as per the verbiage of hashtag the resistance.
Thus, rather than as a crazed madman bent on "evil" at all times one wonders whether Mr.
Bunga Bunga would do a deal with Lil' Kim. Sure he would, assuming that the ruling military
Junta allows him to. It might be in the interest of the latter to de-escalate this particular
hotspot (as NK crisis/hype fatigue may set in) and simply push Iran as the next flashpoint to
hype.
Indeed! They even sound quite similar -- I recall in a speech that Berlusconi gave when he
was still the Italian president and the Italian left was screaming for his resignation,
Sylvio claimed such demands were making him uneasy, since if he was to go home, and he had 20
homes, it would be difficult for him to decide which house or mansion to go to!
It seems the bottom line for negotiations with North Korea have little to do with this
article which covers Trump's thoughts on nuclear proliferation between major powers that have
massive stockpiles.
North Korea is mainly interested in protecting itself from regime change and from becoming
a US outpost (as in target) butt up against China. It is hard to believe that Kim Jong-Un
would get any advantage whatsoever out of dismantling his nuclear arsenal, however small. One
assumes he is aware of Gaddafi in particular and US's track record on keeping it's promises
– particularly over the span of different administrations – in general.
The above comment assumes full disarmament as the minimum condition of any "negotiation"
since Trump has gone so far out of his way to make that clear.
Oh, and now see the lead story at the Financial Times, China uses economic muscle to bring
N Korea to negotiating table:
China virtually halted exports of petroleum products, coal and other key materials to
North Korea in the months leading to this week's unprecedented summit between Kim Jong Un,
the North Korean leader, and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
The export freeze -- revealed in official Chinese data and going much further than the
limits stipulated under UN sanctions -- shows the extent of Chinese pressure following the
ramping up of Pyongyang's nuclear testing programme. It also suggests that behind Mr Xi's
talk this week of a "profound revolutionary friendship" between the two nations, his
government has been playing hard ball with its neighbour.
I would normally agree but Kim Jong-Un was just summoned to China. Not even given a state
visit. The Chinese announced North Korea would denuclearlize:
North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un pledged his commitment to denuclearization and to meet
U.S. officials, China said on Wednesday after his meeting with President Xi Jinping, who
promised China would uphold friendship with its isolated neighbour.
China has heretofore pretended that it couldn't do anything about North Korea. It looks
like Trump's tariff threat extracted China jerking Kim Jong-Un's chain as a concession. I
don't see how Kim Jong-Un can defy China if China is serious about wanting North Korea to
denuclearlize. Maybe it will merely reduce its arsenal and stop threatening Hawaii (even
though its ability to deliver rockets that far is in doubt) and just stick to being able to
light up Seoul instead.
Agree. I wasn't aware of the details you mention above regarding the export freeze. (I
won't use Google and my normal 'trick' doesn't work to get around FT's paywall – and I
won't use the trial membership either). I'm hopeless.
Anyway, you make a very convincing case. I can only imagine that Kim Jong Un is one
miserable scared rat. My point about a "silk noose" below was perhaps on the mark.
Kim might agree on paper or through an insincere promise to denuclearize, but I don't see
a closed authoritarian regime like the North agreeing to an inspection regime that would
insure that such a pledge would be lived up to. Reduction, but build-up on the sly w/o
inspections.
China may be interested in a deal to the extent that it prevents a bloody war breaking out
that they'll probably expend manpower to help clean up and it insures the security of a North
Korean buffer that keeps American troops off their border; After all, they've got to keep the
powder dry for "reunification" with Taiwan.
I also don't believe that the US would agree to concessions, such as removing American
troops from the peninsula. the pentagon wouldn't like it, the hawks around Trumps wouldn't
like it, and I believe the SK leadership would not be too crazy about the potential
ramifications for their security with such an agreement.
But, can Trump (by extension, the US), make an agreement that can be relied on over its
term?
For any hope of NK trusting any deal with the US he would have to stand by the Iranian
deal. Then there's Bolton and the Neocon Will To War, for deeply pathological reasons which
by nature cannot be debated.
In this case, the mere possibility of a "deal" is possible, but only if there is a third
party to hold both of them to it.
That's the crazy thing about this. What possible inducement could Kim Jong-Un have gotten
to attend his own funeral? Why would anyone trust the US an inch?
I suppose if he can keep his own people in a suspended state of extreme propaganda, then
he might be vulnerable to his own medicine, but that seems at odds with his behavior so far
(such as the assassination of his uncle). If anything, he would be especially leery of
anything coming out of the US.
And then can he really be that psyched out by Bolton, Pompeo and Torture Lady so
that good cop Trump can hand him is own death certificate with a space for his signature?
Whatever happened during this China trip, the overarching theme must have been how to
manage the US. Here's one rough scenario:
NK 'disarms' to some definition, under the auspices of China, acquiring in return an
explicit Chinese security umbrella for the buffer it presents between them and SK. Nobody
really wants a unified Korea in any case. In return, the US vacates SK militarily, ever so
discretely and over time.
Done correctly, and with the finesse necessary for Trump, China is in a position to
extract all sorts of concessions from the US on other fronts as well. Nothing positive is
going to happen here without China, and they hold most of the cards. If nothing positive
happens, we have to consider the pressure that'd build on Trump to do something, anything,
and that probably being something rash. (Better a big disaster over there than a mammoth one
over here thinking).
"he can't go willy nilly and set nukes a-flying just because it struck him as a good idea
that day."
I mean sure. His "button" isn't literally connected to a missile somewhere, but he sure as
hell can ask that nukes be fired whenever and wherever he wants. You could argue that someone
in the chain of command would prevent that from happening, but that's more of a hope than a
guarantee. For a really good read on how this all works and the history of the nuclear
program I highly recommend https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788
With Bolton on board and seemingly everyone with half a brain, a little logic and the
ability to hold their tongue for more than about 5 seconds out, I highly doubt anything will
come of these negotiations. In fact, I'm more worried that the US will get steamrolled by
China and NK.
That isn't true. See the link I provided, which you clearly did not bother to read.
Various people can refuse his order as illegal. Former Secretary of State Jim Baker, in a
Financial Times, before Trump was elected, said the same thing. Bolton is the National
Security Adviser. He may have a lot of informal power by having direct access to the
President, but he does not tie in to the formal chain of command, either at the DoD or
State.
Oh I read it and I've read many other articles and a lot of non-fiction on the issue.
Again, I would call your position and the position of this article hopeful at best. Trump has
the football, he has the codes in his jacket pocket and everyone responsible for carrying out
the order to launch has been raised up through a military system that ensures no one
questions an order from their superior. Relying on various people to refuse his order as
illegal in this system is not a fail-safe I feel comfortable with. I do find it interesting
that you just assume I didn't read the article as if this one article is the end all be all
on the subject.
The article seems a bit confused about what it's trying to say. Stopping nuclear
proliferation has been a major policy priority of the US and other western governments since
the 1960s, and if I recall correctly it was one of Bolton's priorities when he was in Bush
the Lesser's administration. It's something in which all of the declared nuclear powers have
an interest, because the smaller the number of nuclear powers in the world, the greater the
difference between them and the rest. This is much more important than wild fantasies about
rogue attacks: if N Korea becomes a de facto nuclear power like India, Israel and Pakistan,
then all sorts of other countries might be tempted to have a go, starting with S Korea (which
has the capacity and has been caught cheating before). Whilst this risk is objectively small,
an end to the NK programme would make it even smaller. I suspect the deal will be that NK
denuclearizes and China guarantees its security: a non-nuclear NK will be even more of a
client state than it is now.
Nuclear competition among the superpowers is quite different and involves a whole set of
different issues.
Less warfare = more wall
But remember the last time Trump said something in Syria's favor? A chemical attack happened
in small village for no logical reason and the hawks immediately took to framing Assad. Trump
then backed off and took harder line on Assad, launching missiles into Syria.
So I'm inclined to think he wants a deal. But look out for screaming hawks immediately
trying to scuttle anything.
Perhaps 30 years ago, Trump was an international defense luminary, but I see little
evidence of the boasted emotional control and cool Trump claimed. He is unarguably a
successful grifter. Is that what it takes to make peace? What happens when the other guy
realizes he has been lied to by a congenital liar? Back to square 1.
In my take, the recent meeting between the heads of China and N Korea just Trumped any
leverage the US might have had in peace talks. Trump will be there only if a scapegoat is
needed. Both S. Korea and Japan have expressed doubts about our reliability as a defense
shield against powerful China – Japan and the Koreans' neighbor. What Little Rocketman
has likely achieved is diplomatically checkmating the US. Now Trump's tariff threats serve
only to push US allies in the region closer to China. Should that turn out to be the case,
the economic repercussions are as dangerous and unpredictable as nukes in the air or as Trump
himself. I sure hope I got this all wrong.
"no enduring principles" is a feature of politicians everywhere today. Their concern is to
represent the rich and their qualification is to present those biased arguments in a way that
beguiles the electorate into supposing its a good idea for them as well. Step Two is the "who
would have thought it?" response after the country catches on.
In former times the candidate for public office would assert his principles on the
hustings and the voters would remember what they knew of him before voting. Sure, there were
ambitious unreliable people who were willing to exchange their reputations for office but
they were few. We should get back to those days.
We allowed our merchants and spooks to drive USSR to the precipice without any thoughts
about the nukes they had. It appeared then that warheads supposedly in Ukraine were missing.
We will likely discover what happened to them in due course. It is possible that surveillance
of communications is the main reason they are not a thread for the time being but that does
not mean they have dropped out of existence.
Thank you NC for introducing an issue that should concern economists as much as everyone
else.
North Korea's negotiating position has not really changed with the announcement. They have
repeatedly said for years they are willing to agree to denuclearization of the Peninsula in
return for security guarantees. I find the media trumpeting this as a new development rather
vexing. Anyways, China has been putting the screws on them since about September/October
(Apparently, they told Kim Jongun they know they can't overthrow the DPRK government, but
they can get rid of him personally), which is also why there have not been any new nuclear
tests.
Don't forget the United States has itself promised to denuclearize, under the NPT.
It would certainly bring me great pleasure if Trump of all people were to bring about some
great positive change in regards to the Forever War with North Korea. Imagine all the whining
liberals if Trump, unlike Obama, actually did something worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.
I think Yves has got it right: USA threatens PRC with tariffs, so PRC pressures NK to make
concessions to the USA. i.e. Two big guys screwing the little guy.
PRC and NK leaders might think that all they have to do is get through a short patch of
bad weather until 2020. If so, they are badly kidding themselves.
In the USA, imperialist machtpolitik is a thoroughly bipartisan affair. It doesn't
matter how faithfully NK or PRC might fulfill obligations. Trump's successors, whoever they
may be, will simply apply more pressure and demand more concessions. They won't stop until
somebody else stops them.
It takes a lot of courage for an addict to recover and stay clean. And it is sadly not news that drug addiction and high levels
of prescription drug use are signs that something is deeply broken in our society. There are always some people afflicted with deep
personal pain but our system is doing a very good job of generating unnecessary pain and desperation.
Mady Ohlman was 22 on the evening some years ago when she stood in a friend's bathroom looking down at the sink.
"I had set up a bunch of needles filled with heroin because I wanted to just do them back-to-back-to-back," Ohlman recalled. She
doesn't remember how many she injected before collapsing, or how long she lay drugged-out on the floor.
"But I remember being pissed because I could still get up, you know?"
She wanted to be dead, she said, glancing down, a wisp of straight brown hair slipping from behind an ear across her thin face.
At that point, said Ohlman, she'd been addicted to opioids -- controlled by the drugs -- for more than three years.
"And doing all these things you don't want to do that are horrible -- you know, selling my body, stealing from my mom, sleeping
in my car," Ohlman said. "How could I not be suicidal?"
For this young woman, whose weight had dropped to about 90 pounds, who was shooting heroin just to avoid feeling violently ill,
suicide seemed a painless way out.
"You realize getting clean would be a lot of work," Ohlman said, her voice rising. "And you realize dying would be a lot less
painful. You also feel like you'll be doing everyone else a favor if you die."
Ohlman, who has now been sober for more than four years, said many drug users hit the same point, when the disease and the pursuit
of illegal drugs crushes their will to live. Ohlman is among at least
40 percent of active
drug users who wrestle with depression, anxiety or another mental health issue that increases the risk of suicide.
Measuring Suicide Among Patients Addicted To Opioids
Massachusetts, where Ohlman lives, began formally
recognizing
in May 2017 that some opioid overdose deaths are suicides. The state confirmed only about 2 percent of all overdose deaths as suicides,
but Dr. Monica Bhare l, head of the
Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said it's difficult to determine a person's true intent.
"For one thing, medical examiners use different criteria for whether suicide was involved or not," Bharel said, and the "tremendous
amount of stigma surrounding both overdose deaths and suicide sometimes makes it extremely challenging to piece everything together
and figure out unintentional and intentional."
Research on drug addiction and suicide suggests much higher numbers.
"[Based on the literature that's available], it looks like it's anywhere between 25 and 45 percent of deaths by overdose that
may be actual suicides," said
Dr. Maria Oquendo
, immediate past president of the American Psychiatric Association.
Oquendo pointed to one study of overdoses
from prescription opioids that found nearly 54 percent were unintentional. The rest were either suicide attempts or undetermined.
Several large studies show an increased risk of suicide among drug users addicted to opioids, especially women. In
a study of about 5 million veterans, women were eight
times as likely as others to be at risk for suicide, while men faced a twofold risk.
The opioid epidemic is occurring at the same time suicides have
hit a 30-year high , but Oquendo said few doctors
look for a connection.
"They are not monitoring it," said Oquendo, who chairs the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. "They are
probably not assessing it in the kinds of depths they would need to prevent some of the deaths."
That's starting to change. A few hospitals in Boston, for example, aim to ask every patient admitted about substance use, as well
as about whether they've considered hurting themselves.
"No one has answered the chicken and egg [problem]," said
Dr. Kiame Mahaniah , a family physician who runs the
Lynn Community Health Center in Lynn, Mass. Is it that patients "have mental health issues that lead to addiction, or did a life
of addiction then trigger mental health problems?"
With so little data to go on, "it's so important to provide treatment that covers all those bases," Mahaniah said.
'Deaths Of Despair'
When doctors do look deeper into the reasons patients addicted to opioids become suicidal, some economists predict they'll find
deep reservoirs of depression and pain.
In a seminal paper published in 2015, Princeton economists
Angus Deaton and
Anne Case tracked falling marriage rates,
the loss of stable middle-class jobs and rising rates of self-reported pain. The authors say opioid overdoses, suicides and diseases
related to alcoholism are all often "deaths of despair."
"We think of opioids as something that's thrown petrol on the flames and made things infinitely worse," Deaton said, "but the
underlying deep malaise would be there even without the opioids."
Many economists agree on remedies for that deep malaise. Harvard economics professor
David Cutle r said solutions include a good education, a steady
job that pays a decent wage, secure housing, food and health care.
"And also thinking about a sense of purpose in life," Cutler said. "That is, even if one is doing well financially, is there a
sense that one is contributing in a meaningful way?"
Tackling Despair In The Addiction Community
"I know firsthand the sense of hopelessness that people can feel in the throes of addiction," said
Michael Botticelli , executive director of the Grayken Center
for Addiction at Boston Medical Center; he is in recovery for an addiction to alcohol.
Botticelli said recovery programs must help patients come out of isolation and create or recreate bonds with family and friends.
"The vast majority of people I know who are in recovery often talk about this profound sense of re-establishing -- and sometimes
establishing for the first time -- a connection to a much larger community," Botticelli said.
Ohlman said she isn't sure why her attempted suicide, with multiple injections of heroin, didn't work.
"I just got really lucky," Ohlman said. "I don't know how."
A big part of her recovery strategy involves building a supportive community, she said.
"Meetings; 12-step; sponsorship and networking; being involved with people doing what I'm doing," said Ohlman, ticking through
a list of her priorities.
There's a fatal overdose at least once a week within her Cape Cod community, she said. Some are accidental, others not. Ohlman
said she's convinced that telling her story, of losing and then finding hope, will help bring those numbers down.
Against
the overall political pall cast by the Trump administration, there are hopeful signs. Despite
the problems I have with the DSA's failure to make a clean break with the Democratic Party, my
spirits remain lifted by their rapid growth. I also take heart in the ability of filmmakers to
produce outstanding critiques of our social system in defiance of the commercial diktats of
Hollywood. Finally, there is a bounty of radical historiography that through the examination of
our past sheds light on our present malaise.
The New Historians of Capitalism (NHC) are just one indication of this trend. Within this
school, Walter Johnson, Edward Baptist and Sven Beckert have all written about slavery and
capitalism from the perspective of how the "peculiar institution" has shaped American society
to this day. Despite their focus on the 19 th century, all are sure to "only
connect" as E.M. Forster once put it. In an article for the Boston Review titled " To Remake the
World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and Justice ", Walter Johnson put it this way:
The Movement for Black Lives proposal, "A Vision for Black Lives," insists on a
relationship between the history of slavery and contemporary struggles for social justice. At
the heart of the proposal is a call for "reparations for the historic and continuing harms of
colonialism and slavery." Indeed, the ambient as well as the activist discussion of justice
in the United States today is inseparable from the history of slavery.
While not a school in the same exact way as the NHC, the historians grouped around the
Labor and Working Class History
Association (LAWCHA) website have set themselves to the task of promoting "public and
scholarly awareness of labor and working-class history through research, writing, and
organizing." Among its members is Chad Pearson, whose "
Reform or Repression: Organizing America's Anti-Union Movement " helps us understand the
threat posed by Janus today even if the period covered in the book is over a century ago.
Pearson's LAWCHA colleague Mark A. Lause, a civil war era historian just like the NHC'ers,
has just come out with a new book titled " The Great Cowboy Strike:
Bullets, Ballots, & Class Conflicts in the American West " that should be of keen
interest to CounterPunch readers. Since American society is guided by notions of "rugged
individualism" embodied in the old West, it is high time for that mythology to be put to rest.
Reading Lause's magisterial account will leave you with only one conclusion: Billy the Kid had
more in common with Occupy Wall Street than he did with faux cowboys like Ronald Reagan
chopping wood and George W. Bush clearing bush in their respective ranches. In fact, he was
more likely to put a bullet in their counterparts way back then.
Pat Garrett, the lawman who killed Billy the Kid and who was characterized as a hero in most
Hollywood movies, mostly functioned as a hired gun for the big cattle ranchers who considered
small-time rustlers like Billy as the class enemy.
Like Billy, most cowboys were super-exploited. In many ways, working for a rancher was not
much different than doing stoop labor for a big farmer. Riding 12 to 16 hours a day in the
saddle at low pay -- often in the Texas panhandle's bitter cold–was not what you'd see in
most cowboy movies, especially those made by John Ford who romanticized their life.
In the 1880s, there was a series of cowboy strikes that were never dramatized by John Ford,
Howard Hawks, William Wellman or any other Hollywood director. In 1883, a virtual General
Strike swept across the Texas panhandle that one newspaper described as the natural outcome of
cowboys having some knowledge of the "immense profits" some bosses were making. Wasn't it to be
expected that they would "ask for fair wages for what was the hardest of hard work"?
As he does throughout his book, Lause digs deep into the historical archives and discovers
that one of the leaders was a forty-year-old Pueblo Indian from the Taos Agency named Juan
Antonio Gomez. The cowboys had no union but according to the Commissioner of Labor, they were
well organized and prepared for the strike by building a strike fund in advance. As we have seen recently from the West Virginia
teachers strike, there is no substitute for militancy and organization. Strike headquarters was
in Jesse Jenkins's saloon in Tascosa. Jenkins was sympathetic to the Greenback movement in
Texas that eventually led to the formation of a party committed to a farmer-labor alliance that
challenged the two-party system. As has generally been the case with militant labor struggles,
the bourgeois press regarded the cowboys in much the same way that the West Virginia press
viewed the teachers. The Las Vegas Gazette harrumphed that the strikers were "using unlawful
means to compel their employers to grant their request" and added that the strikes "always
result in evil and no good".
Unlike most recent strikes, the cowboys were not easy to push around. One newspaper reported
that the bosses "imported a lot of men from the east, but the cowboys surrounded the newcomers
and will not allow them to work". Of course, it also helped that, according to the Fort Collins
Courier, the strikers were "armed with Winchester rifles and six-shooters and the lives of all
who attempt to work for less than the amount demanded, are in great danger".
Another strike wave took place between 1884 and 1886. This time the cattle bosses were
better prepared. They brought in Pat Garrett to head up the strike-breaking machinery. He was
implicitly also the agent of the "Redeemer" Democrats, those politicians that supported
terrorism to break the back of Reconstruction. He led a raid on the house of strike leader Tom
Harris that led to the arrest of two strike leaders but not Harris. He and another cowboy
striker came to the jailhouse later that night and broke them out.
Get the idea? This is material for a "revisionist" movie that could shake Hollywood and the
mainstream film critics to their foundations. In fact, one was once made along these lines --
the vastly underrated 1978 "Heaven's Gate" by Michael Cimino that was widely viewed as Marxist
propaganda. The N.Y. Times's Vincent Canby was beside himself:
The point of "Heaven's Gate" is that the rich will murder for the earth they don't
inherit, but since this is not enough to carry three hours and 45 minutes of screentime,
"Heaven's Gate" keeps wandering off to look at scenery, to imitate bad art (my favorite shot
in the film is Miss Huppert reenacting "September Morn") or to give us footnotes (not of the
first freshness) to history, as when we are shown an early baseball game. There's so much
mandolin music in the movie you might suspect that there's a musical gondolier anchored just
off-screen, which, as it turns out, is not far from the truth.
"Heaven's Gate" is something quite rare in movies these days – an unqualified
disaster.
A passage on the Johnson County War, upon which "Heaven's Gate" was based (as well as
"Shane"), can be found in chapter 8 of "The Great Cowboy Strike". This was essentially an armed
struggle between wealthy ranchers and those trying to scratch out a living in Wyoming between
1889 to 1893 that Lause aptly describes as illustrating "the connections between cowboy
discontent, range wars, and political insurgency."
This go-round the bosses' enforcer was Sheriff Frank Canton (played by Sam Waterston in
"Heaven's Gate"), another cold-blooded killer like Pat Garrett. Anybody who defied the big
ranchers was immediately dubbed a "rustler" and met the same fate as a cowboy named Jim Averill
and his companion Ellen Watson who dared to defend their homestead against Johnson County's
elite. Canton led his thugs into a raid on their cabin and strung them up on a short rope, as
Lause put it.
For the final assault on the cowboys and the small homesteaders, a small army of men from
Texas was recruited. An attack party was launched on April 5 th , 1890 against Nate
Champion's Kaycee Ranch (played by Christopher Walken in "Heaven's Gate"). Surrounded by a much
larger force, Champion was fearless. Lause writes, "To the unwanted admiration of those closing
in on the cabin, the door flew open and Champion stormed out, a Winchester rifle in his left
hand and a large pistol in the other. Even those who riddled him with bullets expressed their
admiration for a man who had died 'game'".
If you want to mix solid class-oriented history with stirring tales of cowboy rebels, check
out "The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots, & Class Conflicts in the American West". It
is a reminder that once upon a time in America the Red States were really Red.
But IMHO Amazon may have a ton of exposure on privacy issues.
Didn't they start a cloud business because they were already keeping so
much data on users that they figured they should offer the service to others
as well?
First FB gets cremated over a few months - drip drip drip of all the
problems - maybe all the way down to fair value of $1.95 (VS the high of
$195).
But when news hits that Amazon not only does the same shit as FB - but on a
larger scale and worse it will drop like a rock.
That will also bring Apple and Google down.
Always wondering what causes the next market crash - it could be this.
Remember when Faceberg was below it's IPO price and heading to zero , when
magically it started to go higher and higher. Yeah, so do I. Time to go back
where it belongs Zero
Brad argues that globalization is as good for the USA as Krugman thought in the 1990s. He has three key arguments. One is that
the manufacturing employment which has been off shored is unskilled assembly and such boring jobs are not good jobs. The second is
that the problems faced by US manufacturing workers are mostly due to electing Reagan and W Bush and not trade. Finally he notes
that local economic decline is not new at all and that trade with South Carolina did it to Massachusetts long before China entered
the picture. The third point works against his general argument and is partly personal. I won't discuss it except to note that Brad
is right.
I have criticisms of Brad's first two arguments. The first is that the boring easy manufacturing jobs were well paid. They are
bad jobs in that thinking of doing them terrifies me even more than work in general terrifies me, but they are (or mostly were) well
paid jobs. There are still strong forces that make wages paid to people who work near each other at the same firm similar. As very
much noted by Dennis Drew, unions used to be very strong and used that strenth to help all employees of unionized firms (and employess
of non-union firms whose managers were afraid of unions). I think that, like Krugman, Brad assumes that wages are based on skills
importantly including ones acquired on the job. I think this leaves a lot out.
... ... ...
Kaleberg , April 1, 2018 4:03 pm
An argument no one mentions is about comparative advantage. The US had a comparative advantage in manufacturing. It had the
engineers, the technicians, the labor, the venture capital and so on. When transportation costs are low and barriers minimal,
comparative advantage is something a nation creates, not some natural attribute. The US sacrificed that comparative advantage
on the altar of ideological purity. Manufacturing advantage is an especially useful type of advantage since it can permeate the
remaining economy. We sacrificed it, and we have been paying for it. Odds are, we will continue to pay.
likbez , April 1, 2018 6:38 pm
The problem here is that neoliberalism and globalization are two sides of the same coin.
If you reject globalization, you need to reject neoliberalism as a social system. You just can't sit between two chairs (as
Trump attempts to do propagating "bastard neoliberalism" -- neoliberal doctrine is still fully applicable within the country,
but neoliberal globalization is rejected)
Rejection of neoliberal globalization also implicitly suggests that Reagan "quiet coup" that restored the power of financial
oligarchy and subsequent dismantling of the New Deal Capitalism was a disaster for common people in the USA.
While this is true, that's a very tough call. That explains DeLong behavior.
The furor is all about the "illegitimate" victories of Brexit and Trump's campaign. Does the average user care if s/he is micro-targetted
by political advertisements based on what they already believe?
No, because they already believe they're right, so what's wrong with a little confirmation bias? Most of us spend significant
amounts of energy seeking out sources of information confirming what we already believe; micro-targetting just makes our lives
that little bit less effortful.
Across the country, correctional facilities are struggling with the reality that they have
become the nation's de facto mental healthcare providers, although they are hopelessly
ill-equipped for the job. They are now contending with tens of thousands of people with mental
illness who, by some counts, make up as much as half
of their populations .
Little acknowledged in public debate, this situation is readily apparent in almost every
correctional facility in the country. In Michigan, roughly half of all people in county jails
have a mental illness, and nearly a quarter of people in state prisons do. In 2016, the state
spent nearly $4m on psychiatric medication for state prisoners. In Iowa about a third of people
in prison have a serious mental illness; another quarter have a chronic mental health
diagnosis.
Meanwhile, nearly half of the people executed nationwide between 2000 and 2015 had been
diagnosed with a mental illness and/or substance use disorder in their adult lives. When a
legal settlement required California to build a psychiatric unit on its death row at San
Quentin the 40 beds were filled immediately.
The
mental health crisis is especially pronounced among women prisoners: one study by the US
Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 75% of women incarcerated in jails and prisons had a
mental illness, as compared with just over 60% and 55% of men, respectively. A more recent
study showed that 20% of women in jail and 30% in prison had experienced "serious psychological
distress" in the month before the survey, compared with 14% and 26% of men, respectively.
Although the overall number of people behind bars in the US has decreased in recent years,
the proportion of prisoners with mental illness has continued to go up. In 2010, about 30% of
people at New York's Rikers Island jail had a mental illness; in 2014, the figure rose to 40% ,
and by 2017, it had gone up to 43%. Studies of the most frequently arrested people in New York,
Los Angeles and elsewhere have found that they are far more likely than others to have mental
illness, to require antipsychotic medications while incarcerated and to have a substance use
problem.
That there are so many people with mental illness locked in our jails and prisons is but one
piece of the crisis. Along with race and poverty, mental illness has become a salient feature
of mass incarceration, one that must be accounted for in any discussion about criminal justice
reform.
Mental illness affects every aspect of the criminal justice system, from policing to the
courts to prisons and beyond. Nor are the effects limited to the criminal justice system; many
people with mental illness cycle back and forth between jail or prison and living in the
community.
The racial inequity of the criminal justice system has been widely noted: it is estimated
that one out of every three African American men and one of every six Hispanic men born in 2001
will be arrested in their lifetimes.
But for Americans with serious mental illness, it is estimated that as many as one in two
will be arrested at some point in their lives. It's not just arrests. One in four of the nearly
1,000 fatal police shootings in 2016 involved a person with mental illness, according to a
study by the Washington Post. The Post estimated that mental illness was a factor in a quarter
of fatal police shootings in 2017, too.
People with mental illness are among the most disadvantaged members of our society, and when
they end up in the criminal justice system, they tend to fare worse than others. People with
mental illness are less likely to make bail and more likely to face longer sentences. They are
more likely to end up in solitary confinement, less likely to make parole and more likely to
commit suicide.
Yet jail and prison have become, for many people, their primary means of getting mental
healthcare. Their experiences offer an especially eye-opening view of a criminal justice system
that today houses more than two million people and costs us hundreds of billions of dollars a
year.
What a difference two months makes. Back in January, with jobs aplenty and Americans
spending like drunken sailors (sending their savings rate to the lowest on record), average
hourly earnings suddenly spiked, unleashing the February VIXplosion over concerns that the Fed
is behind the curve and will be forced to hike much more aggressively.
Well, fast forward to today, when all those "green shoots" are either dead or on the verge,
and after today's Personal Income and Spending report, it appears that it is stagflation that
is once looming.
First, core PCE, the Fed's favorite inflation gauge, rose 1.6%YoY in February 2017; the
biggest gain since April 2017. Meanwhile, the PCE deflator rose by 1.8%, coming hotter than
expected, just as the cellular service price collapse falls out of the Y/Y data, sending annual
inflation higher by 0.3%, and is set spook the next set of CPI data. In other words, inflation
is here.
Then there is the US consumer's reaction, and while until just a few months back the US
savings rate was at all time lows, it has since jumped to 3.4%, the highest since August 2017,
as households are no longer spending more than they can afford, a theme we observed at the end
of 2017. This also means that spending is lagging income for 3 consecutive months, as something
appears to have spooked American consumers.
That something may be wages and salaries themselves, because while the BLS' statistical
approximation of average hourly wages is just that, the BEA's personal income actually carries
wages and salaries data for both private and government workers. What it found is that after
peaking in December, wage growth for these two worker groups has declined for 2 consecutive
months, confirming what many have warned, namely that the recent period of benign wage increase
is over, and now the slowdown begins.
The US has been cracking down on protected First Amendment rights for years now. Just heard
that someone was kicked off the post office lawn last week for protesting, so FIrday's peace
vigil may be at risk again.We haven't had any problems with the police harassing us for
probably 12 years, but that may be raising its head again.
The US government has a lot to answer for in terms of press freedom and its reaction to
organized protest. One only need remember the clusterfuck at Standing Rock during the final
months of Obama's presidency to see that this country has major problems with racism,
violence, liberty, equality, fraternity. The US is by no means a "functioning democracy with
proper rule of law". More like a corrupt plutocracy riding full-speed into overt fascism,
where who you know and who you blow makes the most difference if you wind up in trouble with
the law.
I never take First Amendment rights for granted. I am totally aware that if you don't use
your rights, and often, you lose them. I have never had an account on Facebook, but sometimes
I cruise other people's pages to the extent that Zuckerburg will allow without gathering my
information(or maybe they can get it if you just look at a page). Always thought it was a
supremely wrong idea to allow your identity to be taken away by some fat cat with a clever
idea.
Firs of all Mark Galeotti is very weak. That's incurable.
I want your money poor Pinocchio -- that the new slogan of May government. Kind of
compensation for Brexit losses at Russian oligarchs expense.
What Russophobe Galiotti does not understand is that this another nail in the coffin of neoliberalism. As soon as you
start to distriminate between oligarche neoliberalism stops and nationalism starts
Notable quotes:
"... Of course, the irony is that by driving out Russian money, London would in part be doing Putin's work for him ..."
"... He has launched a " de-offshorization " campaign to try to persuade, cajole, and intimidate oligarchs and minigarchs into bringing their money back home. Along with the stabilization of the economy as a whole, this has had some limited success. While more than $31 billion flowed out of the country last year alone, this is a dramatic fall from 2014's $154 billion . ..."
"... The thought that Britain would actually be returning capital into Putin's grasp may be an uncomfortable one. After all, a third possible policy goal would be actively to seek to undermine the regime in Moscow. ..."
This is also a project in which further international cooperation would be crucial. Chasing
that money and the influence it buys out of London but seeing it find comfortable new homes in
Paris, Frankfurt, and New York is only half the job done and will do little to chasten Moscow.
Although it will be difficult to persuade others to turn away tempting business, the unexpected
support Britain is receiving from European Union partners in particular suggests this may be an
opportune moment to convince them that in its experience this money is too toxic to be safe and
that this is a Western, not just a British, problem.
Of course, the irony is that by driving out Russian money, London would in part be doing
Putin's work for him . Since 2014, the Russian economy has been in the doldrums.
Furthermore, Putin is a man who understands power better than economics, and he is unhappy to
see elites stash their money outside his grasp.
Putin is a man who understands power better than economics, and he is unhappy to see elites
stash their money outside his grasp.
He has launched a "
de-offshorization " campaign to try to persuade, cajole, and intimidate oligarchs and
minigarchs into bringing their money back home. Along with the stabilization of the economy as
a whole, this has had some limited success. While more than $31
billion flowed out of the country last year alone, this is a dramatic fall from 2014's
$154 billion .
The thought that Britain would actually be returning capital into Putin's grasp may be
an uncomfortable one. After all, a third possible policy goal would be actively to seek to
undermine the regime in Moscow. Overt efforts at regime change would be dangerous and
likely counterproductive, but London may feel that it should not pass up opportunities to
weaken the Kremlin
London may feel that it should not pass up opportunities to weaken the Kremlin
, in the hope that this may tame its appetite for playing confrontational
geopolitics.
... ... ...
Mark Galeotti is a senior research fellow at the Institute of International Affairs Prague and a visiting fellow with
the European Council on Foreign Relations.
As the porn star's allegations show, discourse in Washington is shifting to something more
tawdry and celebrity-oriented
... The idea of a porn star appearing on network television to share details of a sexual
encounter with the US commander in chief would have been intellectually confounding at any
other moment in time. Instead, the interview, which took place only few days after
a former Playboy playmate, Karen McDougal , talked about her affair with Trump, seemed a
part of the everyday political landscape in 2018.
... Trump may seem like an aberration but instead he may be an inflection point. It's
possible that after over two centuries of presidential campaigns with governors, senators and
the occasional general, American politics is shifting to something more tawdry and more
celebrity-oriented. The often spoken and rarely met ideal in the United States is that
political debates should be about issues. But, after a political campaign where candidates
debated penis size on a debate stage, it may be the legacy of Trump that politics has
permanently descended to locker-room talk.
I don't think that "deep state" is a correct term or that "unelected officials" are so
crucial.
What you got here is typical of any country: power elite . This elite is, in most
modern countries, comprised of big money (different sources in different lands), dominant
media & controllers of intellectual discourse through academia, military infrastructure
plus professional politicians, various intelligence agencies etc.
Only, the power elite is not eternally homogeneous & can be engaged in internal
warfare, and sometimes collapse.
Humans are primates. Thus, they are stupid, ignorant, malicious and fearful - mostly the
latter. Pretty much explains everything in human history.
I subscribe to the concept of survival at any cost. But in a rational society that would
entail being aware of the long-term consequences. This, however, is not a rational
society.
Off topic - or maybe not given the topic of human heartlessness - here we have John
Bolton:
Apparently he told the M.E.K. cult that the US would end Iran's leadership before the 40
year anniversary which is February 11, 2019.
That of course is absurd unless somehow the US manages to decapitate the Iranian
leadership with an airstrike or nuclear attack. What actually will happen if the US attacks
Iran is that Iran will fight for the next several decades until the US backs off. There is no
chance short of nuclear bombardment for the US to "defeat" Iran. The US couldn't even
"defeat" Iraq in less than five years and hasn't defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan in 17
years. Iran will be a far harder nut to crack than either of those.
(propublica.org)As the world's dominant technology firm, payrolls at International Business Machines swelled
to nearly a quarter-million U.S. white-collar workers in the 1980s. Its profits helped
underwrite a broad agenda of racial equality, equal pay for women and an unbeatable offer of
great wages and something close to lifetime employment, all in return for unswerving loyalty.
But when high tech suddenly started shifting and companies went global, IBM faced the changing
landscape with a distinction most of its fiercest competitors didn't have: a large
number of experienced and aging U.S. employees .
The company reacted with a strategy that, in the words of one confidential planning
document, would "correct seniority mix." It slashed IBM's U.S. workforce by as much as
three-quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger,
less-experienced and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas. ProPublica
estimates that in the past five years alone, IBM has eliminated more than 20,000 American
employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts during those
years. In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked U.S. laws and regulations intended
to protect later-career workers from age discrimination, according to a ProPublica review of
internal company documents, legal filings and public records, as well as information provided
via interviews and questionnaires filled out by more than 1,000 former IBM employees.
"... was developed and originated in extremist circles populated by white supremacists ..."
"... The Washington Post ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... neoliberalism versus neo-nationalism ..."
"... C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org . ..."
Thank God for the corporate media. If it wasn't for them, and the ADL, I'd have probably
never discovered that I'm a Nazi. Apparently, I've been one for quite some time which is weird,
as I had no idea. Here I was, naively believing that I'd been writing about global capitalism
and the realignment of political power and ideology in the post-Cold War world, when all along
I had really just been persecuting the Jews. I didn't think I was persecuting the Jews. But
such is the insidious nature of thoughtcrime. When you're a Nazi thought criminal (as I
apparently am), it doesn't matter what you think you're thinking. What matters is what the
global capitalist ruling classes tell you you're thinking, which it turns out is often a lot
more complicated and horrible than what you thought you were thinking.
For example, I've been thinking and writing about globalism, which most dictionaries define
as "a national policy of treating the whole world as a proper sphere for political influence,"
or "the development of socioeconomic networks that transcend national boundaries," or something
like that which was more or less my understanding of the term. Little did I know that these
fake "definitions" had been infiltrated into these dictionaries by discord-sowing Strasserist
agents to dupe political satirists like myself into unknowingly spreading anti-Semitism as part
of Putin's Master Plan to destroy the United States of America and establish worldwide Nazi
domination.
Fortunately, the lexicography experts in the corporate media and the Anti-Defamation League
cleared that up for me earlier this month. According to these experts, words like "globalist"
and "globalism" don't really mean anything. They are simply Nazi code words for "the
Jews." There is actually no such thing as "globalism," or "global capitalism," or
"transnational capitalism," or "supranational quasi-governmental entities" like the
International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the European Commission, and the
European Central Bank or, OK, sure, there are such entities, but there is no legitimate reason
to discuss them, or write about them, or even casually mention them, and anyone who does is
definitely a Nazi.
Now, imagine my horror when I took that in, especially given my repeated references to "the
corporatocracy," "global capitalism," and "the global capitalist ruling classes" in the essays I've been publishing recently . I
didn't want to accept it at first, but the more "authoritative sources" I consulted, the more
glaringly obvious my thoughtcrimes became.
These authoritative sources were reacting to Trump referring to Gary Cohn as "a globalist"
in his rambling remarks in the Oval Office, which went a little something like this: "He may be
a globalist, but I still like him. He is seriously a globalist. There's no question in his own
way. But you know what, he's also a nationalist. He loves our country and where is Gary?" While
the experts are still scouring the video for
Nazi gestures and facial expressions, there can be no doubt that Trump said the word
"globalist." The corporate media and the ADL could not allow this transgression to stand.
Peter Beinart, writing in
The Atlantic , explained that "globalist" is "an epithet a modern-day vessel for a
slur" against the Jews, and he linked to a video of Jonathan Greenblatt
, CEO of the ADL, who verified that "the term 'globalist' was developed and originated in
extremist circles populated by white supremacists " (by which I can only assume he meant
the Anti-globalization
Movement , which apparently is just a big Nazi front). Eli Rosenberg,
in The Washington Post , although allowing that "globalist" can sometimes mean
"globalist," emphasized that, "to some observers of extremism," it also "speaks to something
darker." Bret Stephens, in The New York
Times ,couldn't quite decide whether using the word makes you an official
goose-stepping Nazi or just a garden variety anti-Semite. CNN's Don Lemon,
delving into "the ugly history" of the word , explained that "it is shorthand for a
worldview based on racism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism" the worldview of "far right
conspiracy theorists obsessed with prominent Jews like George Soros." And these are just a few
of the many examples.
After processing all these "authoritative" statements by these "respected experts" and
"credible news sources," I felt like I'd been walking around with a Swastika branded into my
forehead. I was overcome by a sudden need to signal my anti-anti-Semitism to my friends,
family, and the world at large. After destroying my old Pink Floyd CDs and apologizing to Jerry
Seinfeld on Twitter , I immediately ran and confessed to my wife, who just happens to be "a
globalist," and begged her to call her family members who control the media, the banks, and
Hollywood and ask them to forgive me my thoughtcrimes. Then I drafted an email to the SPLC
asking whether they could possibly squeeze me into their interactive Hate Map somewhere, or at
least let some neo-McCarthyite hack
publish a ridiculous, paranoid smear piece about my Nazi vocabulary on their website.
Seriously, though, all satire aside, this stigmatization of terms like "globalist,"
"globalism," and "global capitalism" is a key component of The War on Dissent which the
global capitalist ruling classes have been waging against a broad assortment of insurgent
elements for the last eighteen months. It isn't just a question of delegitimizing dissidents by
smearing them as anti-Semites, Russian agents, and conspiracy theorists. The goal is also to
conceal the essential nature of the conflict itself. The essential nature of the conflict is
neoliberalism versus neo-nationalism . This is what we are experiencing currently, not
a Russian assault on Western democracy, nor even a resumption of the Cold War, but, rather, the
global capitalist ruling classes putting down a neo-nationalist insurgency the insurgency that
led to the Brexit referendum and the presidency of Donald Trump.
Now, here's where things get a little tricky, particularly for those of us on the Left
(whatever that label even means anymore). The neo-nationalists can come right out and call the
conflict what it is. It is in their interest to call it what it is. They may not be opposing
capitalism, but they are certainly opposing global capitalism. In doing so, they are
attracting people who are not so thrilled about being governed by unaccountable global
corporations and supranational non-governmental bodies, people who are still emotionally
attached to outdated concepts like national sovereignty, national culture, and crazy stuff like
that. Some of these folks are actual neo-Nazis, but most of them are just regular people who
know when they are being pissed on by global capitalism and told it's raining. The point is,
the neo-nationalists can describe their opponents as exactly what they are, global capitalists,
or just plain old globalists. Neoliberals do not have this luxury.
See, the problem for the capitalist ruling classes is that global neoliberalism (i.e.,
globalism) is a really tough sell to regular folks. They can't just come out and explain to
people that national sovereignty is essentially dead, and that political power now resides
among a network of global corporations (which couldn't care less about their "nationality")
exploiting a globalized labor market (which is why their "good jobs" are not coming back) and a
globalized financial market (which is why almost everything is being privatized and their
families are being debt-enslaved). Nor can they admit that the "War on Terror" and the European
refugee crisis it has caused, and the chaos and slaughter in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen,
Syria, et cetera, is the predictable result of global capitalism aggressively restructuring the
Greater Middle East, which it started doing more or less immediately after the collapse of the
Soviet Union (i.e., as soon as the final impediment to its pursuit of global hegemony was
removed). This kind of thing doesn't go over very well, not with most regular working class
people.
So what the global capitalist ruling classes have to do is well, they have to lie. They have
to disseminate a different narrative, a narrative that has nothing to do with the hegemony of
global capitalism, the dissolution of national sovereignty, and the privatization of virtually
everything. Because people aren't total morons, this narrative needs to bear some resemblance
to the actual conflict taking place. So, all right, a little rebranding is in order. Global
neoliberalism becomes "Western democracy," neo-nationalism becomes "Nazism," and Vladimir Putin
becomes Adolf Hitler.
Presto! Now things are nice and simple! History, geopolitics, and socioeconomics vanish into
the ether! Capitalism schmapitalism! This is no time for critical thinking, not with
Putin-Nazis coming out of the woodwork! No, this is a time to rally behind the freedom fighters
at the FBI, the CIA, the corporate media, and the rest of the military industrial complex, and
to mercilessly hunt down Russian infiltrators, Putin sympathizers, crypto-Assadists,
neo-Strasserian, alt-right entryists, and other sowers of division and discord! We need to get
these folks delegitimitized, stigmatized as racists and anti-Semites, or terrorists, or some
other type of "extremist," before they can "influence" anyone else with their Facebook ads and
subversive essays.
You will know them by the words they use, and by the words they do not use. Anybody using
words like "globalist," "global capitalism," or "neoliberal," or suggesting that anyone voted
for Trump or Brexit for any reason other than racism, you can pretty much rest assured that
they're Nazis. Also, anyone writing about "banks" or the "deep state." Absolutely Nazis. Oh
yeah, and the "corporate media," naturally. Only Putin-Nazis talk like that. Oh, and definitely
anyone who hasn't spent the last two years attacking Trump (as if there has been anything else
to focus on), or has implied that "the Russians" aren't out to destroy us, or that the
historical moment we are living through might be just a bit more complex than that well, you
know what they're really saying. They're saying, "we need to exterminate the Jews."
Look, I could go on and on with this, but I don't think I really need to. Remember, I'm a
Nazi thought criminal now. So just go back and read through some of my essays and make note of
all the coded Nazi messages, or check with the Anti-Defamation League, or the SPLC, or the
corporate media, or well, just ask the good
folks at Google .
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in
Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing
(USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is
published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org . (Republished by permission of
author or representative) ← The Cult of Authority
Authored Among
Western political leaders there is not an ounce of integrity or morality . The Western print
and TV media is dishonest and corrupt beyond repair. Yet the Russian government persists in its
fantasy of "working with Russia's Western partners." The only way Russia can work with crooks
is to become a crook. Is that what the Russian government wants?
Finian
Cunningham notes the absurdity in the political and media uproar over Trump (belatedly)
telephoning Putin to congratulate him on his reelection with 77 percent of the vote, a show of
public approval that no Western political leader could possibly attain. The crazed US senator
from Arizona called the person with the largest majority vote of our time "a dictator." Yet a
real blood-soaked dictator from Saudi Arabia is feted at the White House and fawned over by the
president of the United States.
The Western politicians and presstitutes are morally outraged over an alleged poisoning,
unsupported by any evidence, of a former spy of no consequence on orders by the president of
Russia himself. These kind of insane insults thrown at the leader of the world's most powerful
military nation -- and Russia is a nation, unlike the mongrel Western countries -- raise the
chances of nuclear Armageddon beyond the risks during the 20th century's Cold War. The insane
fools making these unsupported accusations show total disregard for all life on earth. Yet they
regard themselves as the salt of the earth and as "exceptional, indispensable" people.
Think about the alleged poisoning of Skirpal by Russia. What can this be other than an
orchestrated effort to demonize the president of Russia? How can the West be so outraged over
the death of a former double-agent, that is, a deceptive person, and completely indifferent to
the millions of peoples destroyed by the West in the 21st century alone. Where is the outrage
among Western peoples over the massive deaths for which the West, acting through its Saudi
agent, is responsible in Yemen? Where is the Western outrage among Western peoples over the
deaths in Syria? The deaths in Libya, in Somalia, Pakistan, Ukraine, Afghanistan? Where is the
outrage in the West over the constant Western interference in the internal affairs of other
countries? How many times has Washington overthrown a democratically-elected government in
Honduras and reinstalled a Washington puppet?
The corruption in the West extends beyond politicians, presstitutes, and an insouciant
public to experts. When the ridiculous Condi Rice, national security adviser to president
George W. Bush, spoke of Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction sending up a
nuclear cloud over an American city, experts did not laugh her out of court. The chance of any
such event was precisely zero and every expert knew it, but the corrupt experts held their
tongues. If they spoke the truth, they knew that they would not get on TV, would not get a
government grant, would be out of the running for a government appointment. So they accepted
the absurd lie designed to justify an American invasion that destroyed a country.
This is the West. There is nothing but lies and indifference to the deaths of others. The
only outrage is orchestrated and directed against a target: the Taliban, Saddam Hussein,
Gaddafi, Iran, Assad, Russia and Putin, and against reformist leaders in Latin America. The
targets for Western outrage are always those who act independently of Washington or who are no
longer useful to Washington's purposes.
Orchestrations this blatant demonstrate that Western governments have no respect for the
intelligence of their peoples. That Western governments get away with these fantastic lies
indicates that the governments are immune to accountability. Even if accountability were
possible, there is no sign that Western peoples are capable of holding their governments
accountable. As Washington drives the world to nuclear war, where are the protests? The only
protest is brainwashed school children protesting the National Rifle Association and the Second
Amendment.
Western democracy is a hoax. Consider Catalonia. The people voted for independence and were
denounced for doing so by European politicians. The Spanish government invaded Catalonia
alleging that the popular referendum, in which people expressed their opinion about their own
future, was illegal. Catalonian leaders are in prison awaiting trial, except for Carles
Puigdemont who escaped to Belgium. Now Germany has captured
him on his return to Belgium from Finland where he lectured at the University of Hesinki
and is holding him in jail for a Spanish government that bears more resemblance to Francisco
Franco than to democracy. The European Union itself is a conspiracy against democracy.
The success of Western propaganda in creating non-existent virtues for itself is the
greatest public relations success in history. Tags Politics
President Donald Trump has ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats and the closure of
the Russian consulate in Seattle. It comes in response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in
Salisbury, which the UK has blamed on Russia. The move follows major diplomatic pressure by the
UK on its allies to follow their lead in expelling Russian diplomats. The Russian embassy in
Washington had previously urged Trump not to heed the "fake news " on Skripal's
poisoning.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has accused Moscow of being behind the poisoning of the
former spy Skripal and his daughter in the town of Salisbury in early March.
Breaking: US to expel 48 Russian embassy workers in Washington, D.C. and 12 at the Russian
mission to the U.N. U.S. says they were intel officers using diplo status as cover.
pic.twitter.com/mRuwY8Tes6
Of the 60 diplomats expelled, 12 formed part of the Russian mission to the United Nations.
In a statement, US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said the 12 Russians in question had "
abused their privilege of residence" in the US and had "engaged in espionage
activities that are adverse to our national security."
I agree with Stephen Lendman (below) that the Russian government's efforts to deal with the
West on the basis of evidence and law are futile. There is only one Western foreign policy and
it is Washington's. Washington's "diplomacy" consists only of lies and force. It was a
reasonable decision for Russia to attempt diplomatic engagement with the West on the basis of
facts, evidence, and law, but it has been to no avail. For Russia to continue on this failed
course is risky, not only to Russia but to the entire world.
Indeed, nothing is more dangerous to the world than Russia's self-delusion about "Western
partners." Russia only has Western enemies. These enemies intend to remove the constraint that
Russia (and China) place on Washington's unilateralism. The various incidents staged by the
West, such as the Skirpal poisoning, Syrian use of chemical weapons, Malaysian airliner, and
false charges, such as Russian invasion of Ukraine, are part of the West's determined intent to
isolate Russia, deny her any influence, and prepare the insouciant Western populations for
conflict with Russia.
To avoid war Russia should turn her back, but not her eyes, on the West, stop responding to
false charges, evict all Western embassies and every other kind of presence including Western
investment, and focus on relations with China and the East. Russia's attempt to pursue mutual
interests with the West only results in more orchestrated incidents. The Russian government's
failure to complete the liberation of Syria has given Washington Syrian territory from which to
renew the conflict.
The failure to accept Luhansk and Donetsk into Russia has provided Washington with the
opportunity to arm and train the Ukrainian army and renew the assault on the Russian
populations of Ukraine. Washington has gained many proxies for its wars against Russia and
intends to use them to wear down Russia. Israel has demanded that Washington renew the attacks
on Iran, and Trump is complying. Russia faces simultaneous attacks on Syria, Iran, and the
Donatsk and Luhansk Republics, along with troubles in former Central Asian republics of the
Soviet Union and intensified accusations from Washington and NATO.
The crazed neoconservatives, such as Trump's National Security Adviser John Bolton, think
that Russia will buckle under the strains, sue for peace, and accept US hegemony. If this
assumption is incorrect, the outcome of Washington's hostile actions against Russia is likely
to be nuclear war. The side that Stephen Lendman and I are talking is neither the side of
Washington nor Russia, but the side of humanity and all life against nuclear war.
How the Russian government could ignore the clearly stated US hegemony in the 1992 Wolfowitz
Doctrine is a mystery.
The Wolfowitz doctrine states that the US's primary goal is "to prevent the re-emergence of
a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a
threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union." The doctrine stresses that
"this is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires
that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would,
under consolidated control, be sufficient to general global power." In the Middle East and
Southwest Asia, Washington's "overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in
the region and preserve US and Western access to the region's oil." The doctrine also states
that the US will act to restrain India's alleged "hegemonic aspirations" in South Asia, and
warns of potential conflicts requiring military intervention with Cuba and China.
By "threat" Wolfowitz does not mean a military threat. By "threat" he means a multi-polar
world that constrains Washington's unilateralism. The doctrine states that the US will permit
no alternative to US unilateralism. The doctrine is a statement that Washington intends
hegemony over the entire world. There has been no repudiation of this doctrine. Indeed, we see
its implementation in the long list of false accusations and demonizations of Russia and her
leader and in the false charges against Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen,
Venezuela, China, Iran, and North Korea .
If Russia wants to be part of the West, Russia should realize that the price is the same
loss of sovereignty that characterizes Washington's European vassal states.
Pompeo at State and Bolton as Trump's national security advisor completed the neocon
takeover of Trump's geopolitical agenda. Wall Street is running domestic affairs.
The combination represents a major setback for world peace and stability. Greater aggression
is likely, along with the triumph of neoliberal harshness over social justice, presenting a
dismal and frightening state of affairs.
What to expect ahead? War in Syria is more likely to escalate than wind down, an unthinkable
US/Russia confrontation ominously possible.
The Iran nuclear deal is either doomed, or likely to be gutted by Washington, accomplishing
the same thing -- with only tepid, ineffective opposition from P5+1 countries Britain, France
and Germany.
The EU most often bends to Washington's will when enough pressure is applied.
A relatively quiet Ukraine period could explode in greater Kiev war on Donbass, US-supplied
heavy weapons and training aiding the aggression.
A Kim Jong-un/Trump summit is likely to fail to step back from the brink on the Korean
peninsula, falsely blaming the DPRK for hostile US actions.
It'll prove again Washington can never be trusted, its commitments are consistently breached
when conflicting with its imperial objectives.
A possible trade war with China would be hugely destabilizing, along with being economically
harmful to both countries and the global economy.
Further EU/US sanctions and other harsh measures are likely to be imposed on Russia over the
Skripal affair, an escalated attempt to isolate the country and inflict economic harm --
despite Western nations knowing Moscow had nothing to do with what happened.
Theresa May-led Tories are considering tough actions against Russia over the incident. So
are other EU countries and Washington.
On Friday, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the Trump administration is
considering a range of options against Moscow over the Skripal affair -- "both to demonstrate
our solidarity with our ally and to hold Russia accountable for its clear breach of
international norms and agreements."
No breach occurred. Neocons running US foreign policy don't let facts and rule of law
principles compromise their imperial objectives.
Theresa May provided Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron with cooked results of Britain's
investigation so far into the Skripal affair -- "convincing" them the false accusations are
"well-grounded," despite knowing UK claims are pure rubbish.
Macron issued a deplorable statement, saying "there is no plausible explanation" for what
happened to the Skripals other than Kremlin responsibility -- abdicating to US/UK-led
Russophobic hostility.
On the world stage, Trump is hostage to neocon dark forces controlling him. Relations with
Russia, China, and other sovereign independent nations are likely to worsen, not improve.
Unthinkable nuclear war remains an ominous possibility. Russia's only option is building on
its alliance with China and other allies, staying committed to respond firmly to US-led Western
harshness against its sovereignty.
Virtually no possibility for improved Russian relations with Washington and Britain exists.
It's fruitless pursuing it.
German and other European dependence on Russian energy, mainly gas, offers only slim hope
for improving things with these countries.
Looking ahead, prospects for world peace and stability are dismal. US-led Western hostility
toward Russia could erupt in open conflict by accident or design.
The unthinkable could become reality. Preparedness should be Moscow's top priority given the
real danger it faces.
John Bolton is in all likelihood a Zionist asset due to the Israelis having some very
powerful kompromat on him.
Numerous sources allege that Bolton forced his wife (now ex-wife) into group sex at a
swinger's club. Did someone get it on film, tape, or some other recording media?
Given the extreme fervor of Bolton's Zionism, the answer seems obvious.
Bolton, to me, is worse than McMaster, is decidedly a neocon, and may well end up being the
intellectual impetus behind a shiny new war in the ME or the Korean peninsula.
Although Trump the candidate offered a sketch of his FP views, including his well known
declaration about the catastrophic Iraq war, today one can itemize where the US military is
currently robustly engaged.
If Bolton can dial back his hawkishness with respect to Russia, not mention--too
much--Iraq, he and POTUS may likely find alignment about which will be the first regime to be
targeted by our standoff capabilities. imao
I agree, people shouldn't imply, they should say straight out what they think.
So allow me.
It appears that the uber Israeli Sheldon Adelson who was the largest campaign donor to
Trump and Nikki Haley and also employs John Bolton is dictating US policy to Trump.
If it trots and barks like an Adelson, then its a Adelson poddle.
I hope Melania isn't too hurt by this. Nothing says fidelity like the tender notion of a
non-disclosure agreement with your floozies . I'm sure that's how my wife would see it.
The masses don't care about Stormy Daniels. Of course, Trump used his "art of the deal" to
score with likely a hundred of bimbos. Who cares? It preceded him being Prez.
Is like the Facebook article about privacy... most people know the truth and don't need
the media view. We know Trump cheated. We know FB is corrupt. By far, Trump is better than
the corrupt criminal Clinton's.
I have to laugh at the people trying to portray Bonkers Bolton as somehow less insane than he
is.
Yesterday in my Youtube recommended list was at least half a dozen channels with headlines
expressing horror at the appointment of Bolton as National Security Adviser. Clearly there
has been a backlash in quite a few quarters that this appointment is simply lunatic - of a
lunatic.
So naturally today we see people trying to play down the absolute stark insanity of Trump
appointing this clown.
The only thing we can hope for is that before Bolton does too much damage that Trump gets
tired of him, as he has everyone else in his administration, and fires him. But given Trump's
history, all we can expect then is that he appoints Nikki Haley to the same post.
Russia, ever patient, issued a statement saying they're ready to work with Bolton.
Privately they must be wondering why they didn't develop Novichok so they could use it on
him.
Meanwhile the Democrats are trotting out all the hot women they claim had affairs with
Trump. Hello, Democrats! Anyone remember Bill Clinton? At least Trump has a wife good-looking
enough to maybe keep him home at night.
"... When the relevant analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) refused to agree with Bolton's language, the undersecretary summoned the analyst and scolded him in a red-faced, finger-waving rage. ..."
"... The director of INR at the time, Carl Ford, told the congressional committee considering Bolton's nomination that he had never before seen such abuse of a subordinate ..."
> The most egregious recent instances of arm twisting arose in George W. Bush's
administration but did not involve Iraq. The twister was Undersecretary of State for Arms
Control and International Security John Bolton, who pressured intelligence officers to
endorse his views of other rogue states, especially Syria and Cuba. Bolton wrote his own
public statements on the issues and then tried to get intelligence officers to endorse
them.
According to what later came to light when Bolton was nominated to become ambassador to
the United Nations, the biggest altercation involved Bolton's statements about Cuba's
allegedly pursuing a biological weapons program. When the relevant analyst in the State
Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) refused to agree with Bolton's
language, the undersecretary summoned the analyst and scolded him in a red-faced,
finger-waving rage.
The director of INR at the time, Carl Ford, told the congressional committee
considering Bolton's nomination that he had never before seen such abuse of a
subordinate -- and this comment came from someone who described himself as a
conservative Republican who supported the Bush administration's policies -- an orientation I
can verify, having testified alongside him in later appearances on Capitol Hill.
> When Bolton's angry tirade failed to get the INR analyst to cave, the undersecretary
demanded that the analyst be removed. Ford refused. Bolton attempted similar pressure on the
national intelligence officer for Latin America, who also inconveniently did not endorse
Bolton's views on Cuba. Bolton came across the river one day to our National Intelligence
Council offices and demanded to the council's acting chairman that my Latin America colleague
be removed.
"... According to the British spy tale, a former Russian military intelligence colonel, Sergei Skripal, who spied for Great Britain in Russia from the early 1990s until 2004, was poisoned, along with his daughter, on March 4 in Salisbury, England, using a nerve agent "of a type developed by Russia." In 2010, Skripal had been exchanged in a spy swap between the United States and Russia. He had served six years in a Russian prison for spying for Britain. He had been living in the open in Britain for the last eight years. Skripal's MI6 recruiter and handler, Pablo Miller, listed himself as a consultant to Orbis Business Intelligence, Christopher Steele's British company, on his LinkedIn profile. When the London Daily Telegraph called attention to the Orbis reference, it was removed from the profile. Steele, who worked on the Trump dossier through his company Orbis, has denied that Miller worked directly on that dossier. ..."
"... Rather than following the protocols of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which require that evidence of the alleged agent be presented to Russia, the eccentric and unpopular May instead delivered an ultimatum to Russia, and whipped up war fever throughout the UK. She now seeks to pull Donald Trump and NATO into ever more aggressive moves against Russia. ..."
"... A short statement of the reasons why the British are now staging the Skripal provocation can be found in a March 14 London Daily Telegraph call to arms by Allister Heath, who rants: "We need a new world order to take on totalitarian capitalists in Russia and China. Such an alliance would dramatically shift the global balance of power, and allow the liberal democracies finally to fight back. It would endow the world with the sorts of robust institutions that are required to contain Russia and China. Britain needs a new role in the world; building such a network would be our perfect mission." Across the pond, as they say, a similar foundational statement was made by 68 former Obama Administration officials who have formed a group called National Security Action, aimed at securing Trump's impeachment and attacking Russia and China. ..."
"... China's "Belt and Road Initiative" now encompasses more than 140 nations in the largest infrastructure-building project ever undertaken in human history. This project is a true economic engine for the future. At the same time, the neo-liberal economies of the trans-Atlantic region continue to see their productive potentials sucked dry by the massive piles of debt they have created since the 2008 financial collapse. ..."
"... Just look at the events of February and March from this standpoint. It is no accident that Christopher Steele turns up, smack dab in the middle of the Skripal poisoning hoax. ..."
"... None of the true facts about the actual motive for, and sponsors of, the DOJ applications involving Carter Page were revealed to the FISA Court in the filings made by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former FBI Director James Comey, or current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. ..."
"... Since Steele has been discredited in the United States, a huge fawning publicity campaign has been undertaken on his behalf. The campaign involves journalists who have collaborated directly with Steele in his smear job against Trump. Books by Luke Harding and Michael Isikoff seek to rebuild Steele's reputation. ..."
"... A fawning piece by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker, as implausible as it is long, has been foisted on the public for the same reason. ..."
"... Steele described his business to Luke Harding as primarily providing research and reports to competing and feuding Russian oligarchs, many of whom use London as a base of operations. This is obviously a perfect cover for intelligence operations. It is also a very violent theater of operations. The oligarchs intersect both Western intelligence operations and Russian organized crime. They engage in deadly gang warfare. ..."
"... Steele and his partners are mentored by Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6 and a critical player in the infamous "sexing up" and fabrication of the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, ..."
"... Steele had been tasked to claim that Russia was interfering in Western elections during the entire post-Ukraine coup time-frame, when this black propaganda line began to be circulated widely. ..."
"... The background to Porton Down's reluctance, is of course former Prime Minister Blair's phony dossier on Iraqi WMD, which Lyndon LaRouche fought, alongside the late British arms expert David Kelly, who exposed the "dodgy dossier," at the time. ..."
"... Thus, after being disclosed by a dissident Russian chemist living in the United States, novichoks have been widely copied by other countries, according to the press accounts. ..."
"... The insane McCarthyite reactions to Corbyn's simple statements of fact show that he hit the nail on the head. If you want to find Skripal's poisoners, then, like Edgar Allen Poe, you must take in the whole picture first. The field of play involves the British intelligence services and the anti-Putin Russian oligarchs, each of which services the other, acting on behalf of British strategic objectives. It is no accident that the coup against Donald Trump and the latest British intelligence fraud, putting the entire world in peril, absolutely intersect one another. ..."
March 18 -- In this report, we will explore the strategic significance of major events in the world starting in February 2018.
Our goal is to precisely situate British Prime Minister Theresa May's March 12-14 mad effort to manufacture a new "weapons of mass
destruction" hoax based on the alleged Skripal poisoning, using the same people (the MI6 intelligence grouping around Sir Richard
Dearlove) and script (an intelligence fraud concerning weapons of mass destruction) which were used to draw the United States into
the disastrous Iraq War.
The Skripal poisoning fraud also directly involves British agent Christopher Steele, the central figure in the ongoing coup against
Donald Trump. This time the British information warfare operation is aimed at directly provoking Russia, while maintaining the targeting
of the U.S. population and President Trump.
As the fevered, war-like media coverage and hysteria surrounding the case make clear, a certain section of the British elite seems
prepared to risk everything on behalf of its dying imperial system. Despite the hype, economic warfare and sanctions appear to be
the British weapons of choice -- Vladimir Putin, as we shall see, recently called the West's nuclear bluff. With the British "Russiagate"
coup against Donald Trump fizzling, exposing British agent Christopher Steele and a slew of his American friends to criminal prosecution,
a new tool was desperately needed to back the President of the United States into the British geopolitical corner shared by most
of the American establishment. The tool they are using to do this is an intelligence hoax, a tried-and-true British product.
According to the British spy tale, a former Russian military intelligence colonel, Sergei Skripal, who spied for Great Britain
in Russia from the early 1990s until 2004, was poisoned, along with his daughter, on March 4 in Salisbury, England, using a nerve
agent "of a type developed by Russia." In 2010, Skripal had been exchanged in a spy swap between the United States and Russia. He
had served six years in a Russian prison for spying for Britain. He had been living in the open in Britain for the last eight years.
Skripal's MI6 recruiter and handler, Pablo Miller, listed himself as a consultant to Orbis Business Intelligence, Christopher Steele's
British company, on his LinkedIn profile. When the London Daily Telegraph called attention to the Orbis reference, it was removed
from the profile. Steele, who worked on the Trump dossier through his company Orbis, has denied that Miller worked directly on that
dossier.
Theresa May and her foreign minister, Boris Johnson, insist there is only one person who could be responsible for the poisoning
-- described as an act of war -- and that person is Vladimir Putin. No evidence has been offered to support this claim. No plausible
motive has been provided as to why Putin would order such a provocative murder now, ahead of the World Cup, when the Russiagate coup
in the United States has lost all momentum.
Rather than following the protocols of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW), which require that evidence of the alleged agent be presented to Russia, the eccentric and unpopular May instead
delivered an ultimatum to Russia, and whipped up war fever throughout the UK. She now seeks to pull Donald Trump and NATO into ever
more aggressive moves against Russia.
Thus, as with Christopher Steele's dirty dossier against Donald Trump, the British claims against Putin are an evidence-free exercise
of raw power. The Anglo-American establishment instructs us: "trust this, ignore the stinky factless content presented in this dossier
-- just note that it is backed by very important intelligence agencies which could cook your goose if you object."
A short statement of the reasons why the British are now staging the Skripal provocation can be found in a March 14 London
Daily Telegraph call to arms by Allister Heath, who rants: "We need a new world order to take on totalitarian capitalists in Russia
and China. Such an alliance would dramatically shift the global balance of power, and allow the liberal democracies finally to fight
back. It would endow the world with the sorts of robust institutions that are required to contain Russia and China. Britain needs
a new role in the world; building such a network would be our perfect mission." Across the pond, as they say, a similar foundational
statement was made by 68 former Obama Administration officials who have formed a group called National Security Action, aimed at
securing Trump's impeachment and attacking Russia and China.
Russia and China have embarked on a massive infrastructure building project in Eurasia, the center of all British geopolitical
fantasies since the time of Halford Mackinder. China's "Belt and Road Initiative" now encompasses more than 140 nations in the
largest infrastructure-building project ever undertaken in human history. This project is a true economic engine for the future.
At the same time, the neo-liberal economies of the trans-Atlantic region continue to see their productive potentials sucked dry by
the massive piles of debt they have created since the 2008 financial collapse. This debt is now on a hair trigger for implosion.
It is estimated by banking insiders that the City of London is sitting on a derivatives powderkeg of $700 trillion, with over-the-counter
derivatives accounting for another $570 trillion. The City of London will bear the major impact of the coming derivatives collapse.
In this strategic geometry, President Trump's support for peaceful collaboration with Russia during the campaign, and his personal
friendship with China's President Xi Jinping, have marked him for the relentless coup-drive waged by the British and their U.S. friends.
On top of that, President Putin delivered a mammoth strategic shock on March 1, showing new Russian weapons systems based on new
physical principles, which render present U.S. ABM systems and much of current U.S. war-fighting doctrine obsolete, together with
the vaunted first strike capacity with which NATO has surrounded Russia. Not only is the West sitting on a new financial collapse,
its vaunted military superiority has just been flanked.
It is very clear that a strategic choice now confronts the human race. In 1984, Lyndon LaRouche wrote a very profound document,
"
Draft Memorandum of Agreement Between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. " In it, he developed the concrete basis for peace between the
two superpowers at the moment when the United States had adopted the LaRouche/Reagan doctrine of strategic defense. Both Reagan and
LaRouche had proposed that the Russians and the United States cooperate in building and developing strategic defense against offensive
nuclear weapons, based on new physical principles, thereby eliminating the threat of nuclear annihilation.
According to the LaRouche Doctrine, "The political foundation for durable peace must be: a) the unconditional sovereignty of each
and all nation states, and b) cooperation among sovereign states to the effect of promoting unlimited opportunities to participate
in the benefits of technological progress, to the mutual benefit of each and all."
Both China, in President Xi's October Address to the Party Congress, and Russia, in Putin's March 1 address to the Federal Assembly,
have set a course to produce technological progress capable of being shared in by all. They both outline major infrastructure projects
and dedicating massive funding to exploring the frontiers of science, technology, and space exploration. Donald Trump, in both his
campaign and his presidency, has embraced similar views. The British and their American friends, however, are devotees of a completely
different and failing economic system, a system soundly rejected in Brexit, in the election of Donald Trump, and most recently in
the Italian elections.
Just look at the events of February and March from this standpoint. It is no accident that Christopher Steele turns up, smack
dab in the middle of the Skripal poisoning hoax.
Exposure of British as U.S. Election Meddlers Weakens Anti-Trump Coup
On Feb. 2, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a memo demonstrating that the Obama Justice Department
and FBI committed an outright fraud on the FISA court in obtaining surveillance warrants on Carter Page, a volunteer for Donald Trump's
2016 presidential campaign. The bogus warrant applications relied heavily on the dirty British dossier authored by MI6's "former"
Russian intelligence chief, Christopher Steele, who had been paid by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee
to paint Donald Trump as a Manchurian candidate -- as a pawn of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
According to the House Intelligence memo and other aspects of its investigation, Steele confided to Bruce Ohr, a high official
in the DOJ, that he, Steele, hated Trump with a passion and would do "anything" to prevent Trump's election. Steele was using the
fact of an FBI investigation of his allegations as part of a "full spectrum" British information warfare campaign conducted against
candidate Trump with the full complicity of Obama's intelligence chiefs. (See Peter Van Buren, "
Christopher Steele: The Real Foreign Influence in the 2016 U.S. Election? " The American Conservative, February 15, 2018.)
None of the true facts about the actual motive for, and sponsors of, the DOJ applications involving Carter Page were revealed
to the FISA Court in the filings made by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former FBI Director James Comey, or current
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
The House Intelligence Committee memo was quickly followed by a declassified letter on Feb. 5, in which Senators Chuck Grassley
and Lindsay Graham referred Christopher Steele to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for criminal prosecution, based on false statements
he made to the FBI about his contacts with the news media. No doubt the criminal referral sent chills down the spines not only of
Christopher Steele and his British colleagues, but also of those former Obama officials conspiring against Trump.
In the same week, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes announced that he would be conducting investigations into the role of
the Obama State Department and intelligence chiefs in the circulation and use of Christopher Steele's dirty dossier. These investigations
have been widely reported to focus on John Brennan and James Clapper -- Brennan for widely promoting the dirty British work product,
and Clapper for leaks associated with BuzzFeed's publication and legitimization of the dirty British work product. Remind yourself
every time you hear media explosions against Trump by either Clapper (congressional perjurer and proponent of the theory that the
Russians are genetically predisposed to screw the United States) or Brennan (gopher for George Tenet's perpetual war and torture
regime and Grand Inquisitor for Barack Obama's serial
assassinations by baseball card). They are next in the barrel, so to speak.
The January 11, 2017 BuzzFeed publication of the Steele dossier was meant to permanently poison Trump's incoming administration,
and is the subject of libel suits both in Florida and London. In the London case, the British are ready to invoke the Official Secrets
Act to protect Christopher Steele. In the Florida case, Steele has been ordered to sit for deposition despite numerous delays and
stalling tactics.
The Congressional investigation of the State Department is focused on John Kerry, Kerry's aide Jonathan Winer, Victoria Nuland,
and Clinton operative Cody Shearer. Nuland utilized Christopher Steele as a primary intelligence source while running the U.S. regime
change operations in Ukraine in alliance with neo-Nazis. She greenlighted Steele's initial meetings with the FBI about Donald Trump.
Winer deployed himself to vouch for Steele to various news publications collaborating with British agent Steele and his U.S. employer,
Fusion GPS, in Steele's media warfare operations against Trump.
On March 12, the House Intelligence Committee announced that it had completed its Russia investigation. It stated that it
found "no collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia." Its draft final report was to have been
provided to the Democrats on the Committee on March 13 for comment and then submitted to declassification review.
On March 15, four U.S. Senators from the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn, and Thom
Tillis, called for the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate the DOJ and FBI with respect to the Russiagate investigation.
They particularly focused on the use of the Steele dossier, FISA abuse, the disclosure of classified information to the press,
and the criminal investigation and case of former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Separately, House Oversight Chairman
Trey Gowdy and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte have asked the Justice Department to appoint a Special Counsel on similar
grounds.
On March 16, James Comey's Deputy FBI Director, Andrew McCabe, was fired as the result of recommendations by the FBI's Office
of Professional Responsibility (OPR). The OPR recommendation resulted from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's
investigation of McCabe's actions with respect to the Clinton email investigation and the Clinton Foundation. McCabe claimed that
this was part of a plot against himself, Comey, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Michael Horowitz, however, is an actual Washington
straight shooter appointed to his post by Barack Obama. The OPR is the FBI's own disciplinary agency. Horowitz's report is expected
to be extremely critical of McCabe, citing a "lack of candor" (i.e., lying) with respect to the investigation. Whatever the corrupt
media might claim, the facts here have been thoroughly investigated by McCabe's former FBI subordinates. They think his lies and
other actions disgrace the FBI and don't entitle him to a pension.
Horowitz's report on the Clinton investigations -- which have already unearthed the texts between former Russiagate lead case
agent Peter Strzok and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, proclaiming their hatred of Donald Trump and the need for an "insurance
policy" against his election -- is expected to be released very soon. According to the House Intelligence Committee, the Strzok/Page
texts also reveal that Strzok was a close friend of U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras. Contreras sits on the FISA court,
took Michael Flynn's guilty plea, and then promptly recused himself from Michael Flynn's case for reasons which remain undisclosed.
Despite its exoneration of the President and thorough discrediting of the British Steele operation, the House Intelligence Committee
dangerously accepts the myth that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,
and the emails of Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta, and then provided the hacked information to WikiLeaks for publication.
Its final report states, however, that Putin's intervention was not in support of Donald Trump, as previously claimed by Obama's
intelligence chiefs. The Senators seeking a new Special Counsel also salute this dangerous fraud.
As we have previously reported, the myth that Putin hacked the Democrats and provided the hacked emails to WikiLeaks, has been
substantively refuted by the investigations of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). In summary, the evidence
points to a leak rather than a hack in the case of the DNC. Further, the NSA would have the evidence of any such hack or hacks, according
to former NSA technical director Bill Binney, and would have provided it, even if in a classified setting. It is clear that the NSA
has no such evidence. It is also clear that the United States and the British have cyber warfare capabilities fully capable of creating
"false flag" cyber war incidents.
North Korea Talks Planned, While Russia and China Continue to Create the Conditions for a New Human Renaissance
In addition to the fizzling of the coup, the Western elites suffered through February and March for additional reasons. To the
shock of the entire, smug Davos crowd, Donald Trump, working with Russia, China, and South Korea, appears to have gotten Kim Jong-un
to the negotiating table concerning denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Substantive talks have been scheduled for May. The
breakthrough was announced by President Trump and South Korea on March 8.
On March 1, President Putin gave his historic two-hour address to the Russian Federal Assembly and the Russian people. Like President
Xi's address to the Chinese Party Congress in October 2017, Putin focused on the goal of deeply reducing poverty in Russian society.
Xi vowed in October to eliminate poverty from Chinese society altogether by 2020. In addition, Putin emphasized that Russia would
undertake a huge city-building project across its vast rural frontiers and dramatically expand its modern infrastructure, including
Russia's digital infrastructure. He put major emphasis on directing funds to basic scientific and technological progress. He emphasized
that harnessing and stimulating the creative powers of individual human beings is the true driver of all economic progress.
China's Belt and Road Initiative also continued to advance. Great infrastructure projects are popping up throughout the world,
including most specifically in Africa, which had been consigned to be a permanent, primitive looting-ground for Western interests.
Among the recent breakthroughs is the great project to refill Lake Chad, a project known as "Transaqua," involving the Italian engineering
firm Bonifica, the Chinese engineering and construction firm PowerChina, and the Lake Chad Basin Commission, which represents the
African countries directly benefiting from the project. But the biggest strategic news of the last six weeks was contained in the
last part of President Putin's speech. He showed various weapons, developed by Russian scientists in the wake of the U.S. abrogation
of the ABM treaty and the Anglo-American campaign of color revolutions and NATO base-building in the former Soviet bloc. These weapons,
based on new physical principles, render U.S. ABM defenses obsolete, together with many U.S. utopian war-fighting doctrines developed
under the reigns of Obama and Bush. Putin emphasized that the economic and "defense" aspects of his speech were not separate. Rather,
the scientific breakthroughs were based on an in-depth economic mobilization of the physical economy. He stressed that Russia's survival
was dependent upon marshalling continuous creative breakthroughs in basic science and the high-technology spinoffs which result,
and their propagation through the entire population. He stressed that such breakthroughs are the product of providing an actually
human existence to the entire society.
Compare what Russia and China have set out to accomplish with respect to the physical economy of the Earth, with the second and
third paragraphs of Lyndon LaRouche's prescription for a durable peace in the LaRouche Doctrine:
The most crucial feature of present implementation of such a policy of durable peace is a profound change in the monetary, economic,
and political relations between dominant powers and those relatively subordinated nations often classed as "developing nations."
Unless the inequities lingering in the aftermath of modern colonialism are progressively remedied, there can be no durable peace
on this planet.
Insofar as the United States and the Soviet Union acknowledge the progress of the productive powers of labor throughout the planet
to be in the vital strategic interests of each and both, the two powers are bound to that degree and in that way by a common interest.
This is the kernel of the political and economic policies of practice indispensable to the fostering of a durable peace between those
two powers.
This is the perspective which has the British terrified and acting-out, insanely. Were Trump, Putin, and Xi to enter into negotiations
based on the LaRouche Doctrine, a breakthrough will have occurred for all of mankind, a breakthrough to a permanent and durable peace.
No neo-liberal, post-industrial, unipolar order can match this, no matter how much Allister Heath, Ms. May, or Boris Johnson rant
and rave about it.
Christopher Steele's British Playground
As is well known by now, Christopher Steele was a long-time MI6 agent before "retiring" to form his own extremely lucrative private
intelligence firm. The firm is said to have earned $200 million since its formation. Steele was an MI6 agent in Moscow around the
time Skripal was recruited. He also later ran the MI6 Russia desk and would have known everything there was to know about Skripal.
Pablo Miller, who recruited Skripal, worked for Steele's firm according to Miller's LinkedIn profile, and lived in the same town
as Skripal.
Since Steele has been discredited in the United States, a huge fawning publicity campaign has been undertaken on his behalf.
The campaign involves journalists who have collaborated directly with Steele in his smear job against Trump. Books by Luke Harding
and Michael Isikoff seek to rebuild Steele's reputation.
A fawning piece by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker, as implausible as it is long, has been foisted on the public for the same
reason.
There are some fascinating facts, however, in all this fawning prose:
Steele described his business to Luke Harding as primarily providing research and reports to competing and feuding Russian
oligarchs, many of whom use London as a base of operations. This is obviously a perfect cover for intelligence operations. It
is also a very violent theater of operations. The oligarchs intersect both Western intelligence operations and Russian organized
crime. They engage in deadly gang warfare.
Steele and his partners are mentored by Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6 and a critical player in the infamous
"sexing up" and fabrication of the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, creating the rationale for
the disastrous and genocidal Iraq War.
Steele had been tasked to claim that Russia was interfering in Western elections during the entire post-Ukraine coup time-frame,
when this black propaganda line began to be circulated widely. According to Jane Mayer's account, Steele called this "Project
Charlemagne," and completed his report on it in April 2016, just before he undertook his hit job against Donald Trump. In his
report, Steele claimed that Russia was interfering in the politics of France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Turkey.
He claimed that Russia was conducting social media warfare aimed at "inflaming fear and prejudice and had provided opaque financial
support to favored politicians." He specifically targeted Silvio Berlusconi and Marine Le Pen. Steele also suggested that Russian
aid was given to "lesser known right wing nationalists" in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, implying that the Russians were behind
Brexit, with an overall goal of destroying the European Union.
Leaving aside Sergei Skripal's relationship with the central figure in the British-led coup against Donald Trump, it is clear
that the May government's claim that he and his daughter were poisoned by a "novichok" nerve-agent, even if it is true, by no means
makes a case that Putin's government was responsible. (It is of interest that as we were going to press on March 19, the foreign
ministers of the European Union, after a briefing by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson that indicted Putin as responsible,
issued a statement which condemned the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter, but pointedly failed to blame Putin or Russia.)
Craig Murray, a former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan who maintains contacts in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, wrote March
16 that Britain's chemical-warfare scientists at Porton Down, "are not able to identify the nerve agent as being of Russian manufacture,
and have been resentful of the pressure being placed on them to do so. Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation of a type
developed by Russia, after a rather difficult meeting where this was agreed as a compromise formulation. The Russians were allegedly
researching, in the novichok program, a generation of nerve agents which could be produced from commercially available precursors
such as insecticides and fertilizers. This substance is a novichok in that sense. It is of that type. Just as I am typing on a laptop
of a type developed by the United States, though this one was made in China."
The background to Porton Down's reluctance, is of course former Prime Minister Blair's phony dossier on Iraqi WMD, which Lyndon
LaRouche fought, alongside the late British arms expert David Kelly, who exposed the "dodgy dossier," at the time.
"To anybody with a Whitehall background this has been obvious for several days," Murray continues. "The government has never said
the nerve agent was made in Russia, or that it can only be made in Russia. The exact formulation of a type developed by Russia was
used by Theresa May in Parliament, used by the U.K. at the UN Security Council, used by Boris Johnson on the BBC yesterday and, most
tellingly of all, 'of a type developed by Russia,' is the precise phrase used in the joint communique‚ issued by the U.K., U.S.A.,
France, and Germany yesterday."
The main account of the chemical weapons cited by Theresa May was written by a Soviet dissident chemist named Vil Mirzayanov who
now lives in the United States and published a book about his work at the Soviets' Uzbekistan chemical-warfare laboratory. In his
much-publicized book, Mirzayanov sets out the formulas for the claimed substances. According to the March 16 Wall Street Journal,
that publicity led to the novichoks' chemical structure being leaked, making them readily available for reproduction elsewhere. Ralf
Trapp, a France-based consultant and expert on the control of chemical and biological weapons, told the Journal, "The chemical formula
has been publicized and we know from publications from then-Czechoslovakia that they had worked on similar agents for defense in
the 1980s. I'm sure other countries with developed programs would have as well."
But it does not seem that those "other countries" include Russia. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW),
the independent agency charged by treaty with investigating claims like those just made by the British government, certified in September
2017 that the Russian government had destroyed its entire chemical weapons program, inclusive of its nerve agent production capabilities.
In addition to Trapp's account, Seamus Martin, writing in the March 14 Irish Times, posits, based on personal knowledge, that novichoks
were widely expropriated by East Bloc oligarchs and criminal elements in the Russian economic chaos of the 1990s.
Thus, after being disclosed by a dissident Russian chemist living in the United States, novichoks have been widely copied
by other countries, according to the press accounts.
Further trouble for May's attempted hoax is found in the condition of the Skripals and of a police officer who went to their home.
All were made critically ill, although they are still alive. Yet the emergency personnel who treated the Skripals, allegedly the
victims of a deadly and absolutely lethal nerve poison, suffered no ill effects whatsoever.
The Skripal poisoning is being compared in the British press to the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. The former KGB
and FSB officer was granted asylum in London and worked for the infamous anti-Putin British-intelligence-directed oligarch Boris
Berezovsky in information warfare and other attacks on the Russian state, inclusive of McCarthyite accusations against any European
politician seeking sane relations with Putin.
Litvinenko's case officer was none other than Christopher Steele, and Christopher Steele conducted MI6's investigation of the
case, which, of course, found Putin himself culpable. Berezovsky's use of the disgraced British PR firm Bell, Pottinger is also credited
with a significant role in public acceptance of this result. Berezovsky was a prime suspect in organizing the murder of American
journalist Paul Klebnikov. Many believe that Berezovsky arranged Litvinenko's demise. Berezovsky himself died in Britain in mysterious
circumstances following the loss of a major court case to another Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich.
In the parliamentary debate in which Theresa May issued her provocation, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn cautioned against a rush
to judgment and pointed to the bloody playing field of Russian oligarchs and Russian organized crime as alternative areas for investigation.
Had Corbyn added to that mix, "Western intelligence agencies," he would have been entirely on the right track. Corbyn also pointed
out that these oligarchs had contributed millions to May's Conservative Party. The reaction by the British media, May's Conservatives,
and Tony Blair's faction of the Labour Party was to paint Corbyn as a Putin dupe, including photoshopped images of the Labour leader
in a Russian winter hat in front of the Kremlin.
The insane McCarthyite reactions to Corbyn's simple statements of fact show that he hit the nail on the head. If you want
to find Skripal's poisoners, then, like Edgar Allen Poe, you must take in the whole picture first. The field of play involves the
British intelligence services and the anti-Putin Russian oligarchs, each of which services the other, acting on behalf of British
strategic objectives. It is no accident that the coup against Donald Trump and the latest British intelligence fraud, putting the
entire world in peril, absolutely intersect one another.
"... President Trump was said to complain that Tillerson disagreed with him and McMaster talked too much. Bolton seems likely to combine both of those traits in one pugnacious, mustachioed package. ..."
"... Bolton may find that in this job, he's the midlevel munchkin. Remember, the national security adviser is supposed to be the coordinator, conciliator, and honest broker among Cabinet officials, managing a process by which all get a fair say and the president makes well-informed decisions. Outgoing National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster reportedly lost favor with Defense Secretary Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly for failing to defer to them, and for being too emotional . ..."
John Bolton has been one of liberals' top bogeymen on national security for more than a decade now. He seems to relish the
role, going out of his way to argue that the Iraq War wasn't really a failure, calling for U.S.-led regime change in Iran and
preventive war against North Korea, and writing the foreword for a
book
that proclaimed President Obama to be a secret Muslim. He is a profoundly partisan creature, having started a
super-PAC whose largest donor was leading Trump benefactor Rebekah Mercer and whose provider of analytics was Cambridge
Analytica, the firm alleged to have improperly used Facebook data to make voter profiles, which it sold to the Trump and
Brexit campaigns, among others.
Recently Bolton's statements have grown more extreme, alarming centrist and conservative national security professionals along
with his longtime liberal foes. He seemed to
say
that the United States could attack North Korea without the agreement of our South Korean allies, who would face the
highest risk of retaliation and casualties; just two months ago he
called for
a regime change effort in Iran that would allow the U.S. to open a new embassy there by 2019, the 40th
anniversary of the Iranian Revolution and the taking of Americans hostage in Tehran. His
hostility toward Islam
points toward a set of extreme policies that could easily have the effect of abridging American
Muslims' rights at home and alienating America's Muslim allies abroad.
As worrying as these policies are, it's worth taking a step back and thinking not about Bolton, but about his new boss, Donald
Trump. Trump reportedly considered Bolton for a Cabinet post early on, but then
soured
on him, finding his mustache unprofessional. His choice of Bolton to lead the National Security Council reinforces
several trends: right now, this administration is all about making Trump's opponents uncomfortable and angry. Internal
coherence and policy effectiveness are not a primary or even secondary consideration. And anyone would be a fool to imagine
that, because Bolton pleases Trump today, he will continue to do so tomorrow.
Yes, Bolton has taken strong stances against the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin (though he has also been
quoted
praising Russian "democracy" as recently as 2013). That's nothing new: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, incoming
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and outgoing National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster have called for greater pushback on
Russia as well. But there's every reason to think that, rather than a well-oiled war machine, what we'll get from Bolton's
National Security Council is scheming and discord – which could be even more dangerous.
President Trump was said to complain that Tillerson disagreed with him and McMaster talked too much. Bolton seems likely
to combine both of those traits in one pugnacious, mustachioed package.
Their disagreements are real – Bolton has
famously pooh-poohed the kind of summit diplomacy with North Korea that Trump is now committed to. While Trump famously backed
away from his support for the 2002 invasion of Iraq, courting the GOP isolationist base, Bolton continues to argue that the
invasion worked, and seldom hears of a war he would not participate in. Trump
attempted
to block transgender people from serving in the military, but Bolton has declined to take part in the right's
LGBT-bashing, famously hiring gay staff and
calling for
the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
That's all substance. What really seems likely to take Bolton down is his style, which is legendary – and not in a good way.
His colleagues from the George W. Bush administration responded to Trump's
announcement
with
comments like
"the obvious question is whether John Bolton has the temperament and the judgment for the job" – not exactly
a ringing endorsement. One former co-worker
described
Bolton as a "kiss up, kick down kind of guy," and he was notorious in past administrations for conniving and
sneaking around officials who disagreed with him, both traits that Trump seems likely to enjoy until he doesn't. This is a
man who can't refrain from
telling Tucker Carlson
that his analysis is "simpleminded" – while he's a guest on Carlson's show. Turns out it's not true
that he threw a stapler at a contractor – it was a
tape dispenser.
When Bolton was caught attempting to cook intelligence to suggest that Cuba had a biological weapons
program, he bullied the analyst who had dared push back, calling him a "
midlevel
munchkin
." How long until Trump tires of the drama – or of being eclipsed?
Bolton may find that in this job, he's the midlevel munchkin. Remember, the national security adviser is supposed to be
the coordinator, conciliator, and honest broker among Cabinet officials, managing a process by which all get a fair say and
the president makes well-informed decisions. Outgoing National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster reportedly lost favor with
Defense Secretary Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly for failing to defer to them, and for being
too emotional
.
Love Bolton or hate him, no one imagines he will be a self-effacing figure, and no one hires him to run a no-drama process.
It's also hard to imagine that many of the high-quality professionals McMaster brought into the National Security Council
staff will choose to stay. McMaster repeatedly had to fight for his team within the Trump administration, but Bolton seems
unlikely to follow that pattern, or to inspire the kind of loyalty that drew well-regarded policy wonks to work for McMaster,
regardless their views of Trump.
So even if you like the policies Bolton espouses, it's hard to imagine a smooth process implementing them. That seems likely
to leave us with Muslim ban-level incompetence, extreme bellicosity, and several very loud, competing voices – with
Twitter feeds
– on the most sensitive issues of war and weapons of mass destruction.
"Doom porn" argument aside it was almost 10 years since the last financial crisis. And
neoliberalism tend to produce financial crisis with amazing regularity. This is the nature of the
beast. So timing might be wrong, but the danger is here.
Tendrils of evidence point to a coordinated campaign that included the Obama White House and
the Democratic National Committee starring Hillary Clinton. Robert Mueller even comes into the
picture both at the Uranium One end of the story and the other end concerning the activities of
his old friend, Mr. Comey. Most tellingly of all, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was not shoved
out of office but remains shrouded in silence and mystery as this melodrama plays out, tick,
tick, tick.
None of this makes President Trump a more reassuring figure. His lack of decorum remains as
awesome as his apparent lack of common sense. But he has labored against the most intense
campaign of coordinated calumny ever seen against a chief executive and his fortitude, at
least, is impressive. What is unspooling for him, and the body politic, are the nation's
finances, and the dog of an economy that gets wagged by finance. Yesterday's 724-point dump in
the Dow Jones Industrial Average is liable to not be a fluke event, but the beginning of a
cascade into the pitiless maw of reality - the reality that just about everything is grossly
mispriced.
There is plenty of dysfunction in plain sight to suggest that the financial markets can't
bear the strain of unreality anymore. Between the burgeoning trade wars and the adoption in
congress this week of a fiscally suicidal spending bill, you'd want to put your fingers in your
ears to not be deafened by the roar of markets tumbling. A 40 to 75 percent drop in the equity
markets will leave a lot of one-percent big fish gasping on the beach as the tide rolls out.
But the minnows and anchovies will suffer too, as regular economic activity declines in
response to tumbling markets. And then the Federal Reserve will ride to the rescue with QE-4,
which will very sharply drive the dollar toward worthlessness. The result: a nation with a
sucking chest wound, whirling around the drain en route to political pandemonium.
Look on the bright side Kuntsler ~ You'll keep selling doom porn articles &
newsletters so you can keep playing the $2 exacta & daily double tickets at the Saratoga
Springs late summer meet.
"... Since Russia has asked Lebanon for a military cooperation agreement, which I believe was intended as a warning to Israel not to attack Lebanon again - because of the threat that Syria would become involved - I suspect that Russia is well aware of Israel's intentions. ..."
"... The addition of a US base in Israel and a commitment of US forces to support Israel in their wars means that there will be an increased likelihood of US conflict with Russia if Russia intervenes in a Israeli/US attack in Lebanon which extends into Syria. ..."
Apparently Israel held a command-level war game under cover of the Cobra exercise where
they continued to plan an attack on Lebanon and Syria, as well as what to do if "the Russian
made trouble."
"We can achieve decisive victory over Hezbollah, and we don't need help from a single
American soldier, but we cannot fight Iran alone," he stated last year. "I consider future
cooperation with the U.S. much more important than anything we've had in the past."
Reading that in reverse supports my contention that Israel both continues to intend to
degrade Hizballah and Syria's ability to be effective actors in a US/Israel war with Iran,
and also that they intend to recruit the US in their next attack on Lebanon, with the goal of
extending that war into Syria.
And that is regardless of the Russian presence in Syria.
Since Russia has asked Lebanon for a military cooperation agreement, which I believe
was intended as a warning to Israel not to attack Lebanon again - because of the threat that
Syria would become involved - I suspect that Russia is well aware of Israel's
intentions.
The addition of a US base in Israel and a commitment of US forces to support Israel in
their wars means that there will be an increased likelihood of US conflict with Russia if
Russia intervenes in a Israeli/US attack in Lebanon which extends into Syria.
I don't think Russia would come to Lebanon's aid directly in support of Hizballah, but
it's quite likely Russia would intervene if that war extended into Syria. Russia doesn't have
the forces in country in Syria to directly intervene militarily but it could add additional
forces or use its regional capabilities to intervene enough to complicate Israeli/US actions
in Syria. But not without increasing the probability of escalation to a dangerous degree.
If Israel is not persuaded to stand down on its intentions to attack Hizballah and Syria,
things could get much more ugly than the present Syrian crisis.
"... Since Russia has asked Lebanon for a military cooperation agreement, which I believe was intended as a warning to Israel not to attack Lebanon again - because of the threat that Syria would become involved - I suspect that Russia is well aware of Israel's intentions. ..."
"... The addition of a US base in Israel and a commitment of US forces to support Israel in their wars means that there will be an increased likelihood of US conflict with Russia if Russia intervenes in a Israeli/US attack in Lebanon which extends into Syria. ..."
Apparently Israel held a command-level war game under cover of the Cobra exercise where
they continued to plan an attack on Lebanon and Syria, as well as what to do if "the Russian
made trouble."
"We can achieve decisive victory over Hezbollah, and we don't need help from a single
American soldier, but we cannot fight Iran alone," he stated last year. "I consider future
cooperation with the U.S. much more important than anything we've had in the past."
Reading that in reverse supports my contention that Israel both continues to intend to
degrade Hizballah and Syria's ability to be effective actors in a US/Israel war with Iran,
and also that they intend to recruit the US in their next attack on Lebanon, with the goal of
extending that war into Syria.
And that is regardless of the Russian presence in Syria.
Since Russia has asked Lebanon for a military cooperation agreement, which I believe
was intended as a warning to Israel not to attack Lebanon again - because of the threat that
Syria would become involved - I suspect that Russia is well aware of Israel's
intentions.
The addition of a US base in Israel and a commitment of US forces to support Israel in
their wars means that there will be an increased likelihood of US conflict with Russia if
Russia intervenes in a Israeli/US attack in Lebanon which extends into Syria.
I don't think Russia would come to Lebanon's aid directly in support of Hizballah, but
it's quite likely Russia would intervene if that war extended into Syria. Russia doesn't have
the forces in country in Syria to directly intervene militarily but it could add additional
forces or use its regional capabilities to intervene enough to complicate Israeli/US actions
in Syria. But not without increasing the probability of escalation to a dangerous degree.
If Israel is not persuaded to stand down on its intentions to attack Hizballah and Syria,
things could get much more ugly than the present Syrian crisis.
At present there is no way of disciplining a retired judge who trades on his former title of
"Judge" and his rank of QC to give advice to lay people (without any up-to-date knowledge of
law or professional indemnity insurance) and then speak on their behalf as a McKenzie Friend
in Court.
I know of a case where this actually happened - a retired Chancery Circuit Judge
intervened in a case involving a religious charity when he has no known connection to the
faith in question. His intervention was distinctly unhelpful for the parties and impeded the
proper administration of justice. But nothing could be done about his unprofessional and
meddling behaviour.
Journalists are not state officials, and do not have the power to imprison citizens. There is
no right to be a judge (so state regulation of judges is legitimate) whereas there is a right
to freedom of speech (so state regulation of journalism is not legitimate).
Judges are lawyers: a rapacious breed drawn predominantly from and representing the "highest"
stratum of society. They are expert at presenting one-sided arguments, whatever the facts and
evidence. They provide "blue chip justice" favouring that social segment that can afford to
hire lawyers and so keep the legal sector in work. They know how to wear down complainants
(often of limited means) with unjustified decisions that have to be appealed at every stage
of proceedings. They are assisted by absurb laws which deem them virtually infallible in
jurisdictions such as the Employment Tribunal, where it is, in practice, not an "error of
law" to find something impossible to be true or to make a finding contrary to the weight of
evidence, or without evidential basis (and invariably favouring the employer). Even when an
indefatigable complainant succeeds in an appeal against a rotten judgement, they often find
their case "remitted" for a rehearing before the same biased tribunal or another made up of
the friends and colleagues of the first, and likewise of the employer. Many contributors
here, and all employment lawyers, know this to be true, yet this unjust system persists. What
criticisms of it there are focus on ultimately minor issues such as whether one should have
to pay fees to lodge complaints, rather than the more important issue of its institutional
racialism and the virtual impossibility of Black people being successful in complaints
against members of the establishment within it.
You also need to remember that judges work within a system which is controlled by politics,
press start complaining about high number of car thefts, car thieves suddenly start getting
jailed while house breakers do not.
There are also other parts of the system for instance social work reports, often made
about people who know the systems inside out, know exactly what to say and when to say it.
Lawyers who are simply there to lie, on both sides of the case with full knowledge they are
doing it. Police who are more concerned about getting results than actually justice. And
finally the judges themselves who all appear to have totally different interpretations of the
law, I have seen grown men break down when they find out they are getting 1 judge over
another and that was just the lawyers.
Judicial lies are far from confined to racism-motivated instances. The whole system of
"justice" is the biggest scam on the planet. That's why they don't allow recording of your
own hearing.
The judiciary regularly get away with complete and utter cheap lies in their judgments. They
are unaccountable as it only takes two more judges to refuse permission to challenge the lies
and that's the end of the matter. In one of my cases I asked to audio-record (my own case).
Both the judge and government barrister insisted I would not be alllowed to record. The
reason for this refusal of recording is so that there is no record of the filthy lies judges
deploy in the smaller civil court rooms where there are no reporters. One important subset of
lies is about the limitation act. Supposedly fact means possibility, knowledge means
suspicion, and was means might be - well that's what high court judges say these words mean,
and the fact that loads of dictionaries say otherwise is of no power against them.
We need every litigant to have the right to record their own cases.
And perhaps that needs review. After all, they are all members of same brotherhood or
society, and all operate from under Londons Bar .So is no independence at all.
My recent experience of JCIO is not entirely sanguine. I represented myself in a child
custody case in Birmingham. The Cafcass favored my child to stay with me. The Circuit Judge
presiding over the case, lied in his judgment three times in order to favor my ex. When I
took the matter to the appeal in High Court, the Law Lord presiding practically said that
because the Circuit Judge is experienced, he is entitled to lie. I was quite gobsmacked. JCIO
were completely unmoved by my protestations. It is apparent that truth is diminished if you
are a layman fighting the excesses of establishment.
The internet is awash with people who have been unfairly treated by the Justice system. Court
observers have commented on the familiarity between Judges and business men in employment
tribunal cases, and the employee losing, and also losing an appeal. Has anybody ever tried to
get an employment judge's notes from the case? Impossible. Ultimately when the judge says the
notes are not to be released under any circumstances (why not if they have nothing to hide)
and the Trbunal President when asked under a data protection request, tells you that the data
controller, is, yes the original judge who won't release them under any circumstances, is it
any wonder that people have no faith in the British Justice system, or should we rename it
Old Boys Network system?
The corrupt protecting the corrupt!
I refer to the Porton Down cover-up that involved the killing of 39 Porton Down veterans who
died as a result of being injected with a bacteria derived from salmonella - abortus equi -
in an altered state. (source FOI) Upper Tribunal Judge Edward Jacobs (unlike Judge Brian
Kennedy QC) who ordered details of the deaths to be made public) did purposely support the
MoD by allowing them to keep secret ALL facts related to the killings. Judge Edward Jacobs
also ignored a 3.72 million pounds fraudulent payment (stolen from public funds) awarded to
Martyn Day Senior Partner with the London law firm Leigh Day & Co. It was Martyn Day who
supposedly represented 39 family members of deceased veterans. In effect Jacobs by his very
silence and by allowing crimes of this nature to be kept under wraps did himself become party
to the crime.
"The comments in this section so far could hardly be more wrong" I don't know, I though
Patrick Logicman was spot on with his "But then you couldn't tell them from janitors" remark
above.
Yes but in the midst of the usual press anarchy, a few wise words from Joshua are surely not
out of order?
The predilection of cheap jack town magistrates describing themselves as Judges, takes
some beating. The powers of local authorities to press their own non-criminal "charges" can
be rather unpleasant, and quite happy to present fictitious evidence in abundance, backed up
by such "judges".
If you review most Laws in Britain,USA Canada,etc they were enacted worded and favored the
very rich and property owners when passed. Judge`s hands are really tied to the laws of the
land and it is the rich bias and regulations that keep the poor in their place that Judges
are restricted by when looking to dispense justice [as far as the law allows].
Same applies to the Police they didn`t make the laws.The Justice system and the Police
have been deliberately kept apart from society so they identify more with conservatism and
the status quo and even identify with it as elitists.
The difference is that the father needs to be suspended in case the allegations prove to be
true, because something important is alleged. Here the allegations against the judges seem to
be about nothing - nothing obviously wrong has happened even if the facts are true.
In my experience of the judiciary in criminal trials is that they do have a tendency to
protect the Police and even on the odd occasion pervert the course of justice to protect
them. You cannot assume that any judge will be impartial in any case or inquiry especially if
police corruption is being investigated or has been alleged. In my view you trust a judge to
be independent and impartial at your own risk.
Suspending a judge from duty pending investigation is rather like a judge confining a
separated father to a supervised contact centre while his ex's phony allegations are looked
into. All rather unnecessary but what do you do?
My experience of the judiciary convinces me that it functions principally to protect the
establishment. This is perhaps seen most blatantly in the employment tribunal, where judges
make virtually unchallengeable findings of "fact" that contradict incontrovertible evidence
that they simply ignore in order to exculpate defendants in race and religous discrimination
cases. Sometimes they collude with defendants to pervert the course of justice by accepting
fabricated documents as genuine, despite the existence of the genuine documents showing their
inauthenticity (which they do not mention as they are irreconcilable with the documents that
they wish to represent as genuine). Sometimes, they make important findings based on key
documents that they have never seen, which the claimant dispute ever existed and the
defendants claim they have lost. At other times, the judges just simply lie about the
evidence if that is required to discredit the complainant. Such phenomena are well-documented
(e.g.,
http://www.irr.org.uk/news/culture-of-disbelief-why-race-discrimination-claims-fail-in-the-employment-tribunal/).
However, maybe because sex, drugs and death are not involved - and it only affects Blacks,
after all - no-one seems at all interested, no programmes get made about this or articles get
written in the mainstream media even when prominent journalists have the evidence of its
occurrence.
It is a tradition in this country that, freedom of speech notwithstanding, judges do not
respond to attacks on them in the media. This means that we often hear the attack, but not
the defence. Let me illustrate this with an example from history which shows that judges can
be right, even when non-lawyers think they are obviously wrong.
If the media and some members of Parliament had got their own way, Mr. Justice Grantham
would have been sacked after instructing a jury in strong terms that a prison warder charged
with manslaughter, against whom the evidence of guilt was overwhelming, was nevertheless not
guilty. It transpired about two years later that the single prosecution witness had lied: the
"victim" was dead before the warder entered the room. I understand that the warder was named
Mitchell and, despite being acquitted, did not get his job back.
Had Mr. Justice Grantham been sacked he could not have investigated the Adolph Beck case, the true facts
might never have come out and we might still not have a criminal appeals process.
"The credit for resolving this miscarriage of justice lay firstly with the 1904 trial
judge, Mr Justice Grantham, who had lingering doubts about Beck's guilt and had delayed
concluding the case despite apparently strong prosecution evidence and procedures. It was in
this period of delay, before being sentenced, that the crucial arrest of the real offender
took place."
Source - historybytheyard.co.uk
Each? But then you couldn't tell a judge from a janitor. They tried that in China. It
didn't work. Call me old-fashioned, but I rather like the wigs and gowns.
The comments in this section so far could hardly be more wrong. Perhaps self-regulation does
not work for most professions, but in the case of judges it seems to "over-work" and the
desire to ensure that judges are seen as people of integrity seems to take over at times. On
the basis of JR's article, there seems very clearly to be no substance in the allegations
against either Fulford or Thornton. When normal people face such baseless allegations, the
case is struck out, or a responsible prosecutor stops it. So the impression here is that the
regulator is afraid to be thought to sweeping things under the carpet and so the process
continues - and absurdity is piled onto absurdity when the judges are even suspended from
work in the meantime.
Turenne and Shetreet's book, referred to in the text, notes instances when judges not only
face complaints but actually receive criticism for doing things which others can do and might
even be expected to do. For example, it seems that judges should plead guilty to minor
traffic offences if they are guilty, and should not seek technical ways that might exist to
defeat the charges (ie ways that are not based on the merits of the case). This may be a good
idea, of course, but it further ridicules any notion that the regulator is soft.
I have for many decades thought that most judges are daft old fools, out of touch with
reality. My opinion has been confirmed by many examples.
I'm not up enough with the law to be able to suggest a better alternative, those who know
what they are talking about should do that. However, I was pleased to see the web site linked to in the article ,
which seems to be a small step in the right direction.
Justice and access to it should be a cornerstone of our society - except that in its
current form, it is reduced to a cleverly disguised commodity - whereby the 'truth' /
'justice' can be purchased by paying for expensive lawyers.
This age old practice of letting "professionals" regulate themselves is thankfully in decline
but not quickly enough. They didn't regulate themselves, they protected each other like
brothers in crime. Lawyers, police, bankers, religious institutions, doctors banded together
to give themselves maximum benefit. And the pompous indignation when Joe Public dared to
question them. I have always felt that these groups pulled the wool over our eyes. I laugh at
the term "professional" often they are far from it.
Who is judging the judges?
We know a lot more about judicial complaints than we used to but it remains the case that
judges themselves judge judges
I find it amusing that a journalist in a National Newspaper is writing an article about a
group of self interested people being able to judge themselves.
Who handles complaints about newspapers? I'll give you a clue with a quote fro the Press
Complaints Commission's website:
The Press Complaints Commission is currently in a phase of transition; and it will soon
be replaced by a new structure of independent self-regulation for the newspaper and
magazine industries.
Self-regulation. Sounds a bit like what the judges do.
One of the key elements of the English judiciary is that it is NOT elected. The executive and
legislature are the elected bits and thus the judiciary must defer to them in terms of
law-making and keep to their own province of interpreting the law - true it can be a fuzzy
line at times but it is a hugely important part of the functioning of the rule of law.
Elected judges would be a disaster for many reasons.
What the UK judiciary gets away with is utterly horrifying. That they palm it off as
'isolated cases' is bad enough, but hiding behind the pretence that people 'don't know the
facts' is even worse.
The move to a system of locally elected (ie, accountable) judges is long overdue.
The rapid rise of oligarchy and wealth and income inequality is the great moral, economic, and political issue of our time. Yet,
it gets almost no coverage from the corporate media.
How often do network newscasts report on the 40 million Americans living in poverty, or that we have the highest rate of childhood
poverty of almost any major nation on earth? How often does the media discuss the reality that our society today is more unequal
than at any time since the 1920s with the top 0.1% now owning almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%? How often have you heard the
media report the stories of millions of people who today are working longer hours for lower wages than was the case some 40 years
ago?
How often has ABC, CBS or NBC discussed the role that the
Koch brothers and other billionaires play in creating
a political system which allows the rich and the powerful to significantly control elections and the legislative process in Congress?
We need to ask the hard questions that the corporate media fails to ask
Sadly, the answer to these questions is: almost never. The corporate media has failed to let the American people fully understand
the economic forces shaping their lives and causing many of them to work two or three jobs, while CEOs make hundreds of times more
than they do. Instead, day after day, 24/7, we're inundated with the relentless dramas of the Trump White House, Stormy Daniels,
and the latest piece of political gossip.
We urgently need to discuss the reality of today's economy and political system, and fight to create an economy that works for
everyone and not just the one percent.
We need to ask the hard questions that the corporate media fails to ask: who owns America, and who has the political power? Why,
in the richest country in the history of the world are so many Americans living in poverty? What are the forces that have caused
the American middle class, once the envy of the world, to decline precipitously? What can we learn from countries that have succeeded
in reducing income and wealth inequality, creating a strong and vibrant middle class, and providing basic human services to everyone?
We need to hear from struggling Americans whose stories are rarely told in newspapers or television. Unless we understand the
reality of life in America for working families, we're never going to change that reality.
Until we understand that the rightwing Koch brothers are more politically powerful than the Republican National Committee, and
that big banks, pharmaceutical companies, and multinational corporations are spending unlimited sums of money to rig the political
process, we won't be able to overturn the disastrous US supreme court decision on Citizens United, move to the public funding of
elections and end corporate greed.
Until we understand that the US federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage and that people cannot make it on $9
or $10 an hour, we're not going to be able to pass a living wage of at least $15 an hour.
Until we understand that multinational corporations have been writing our trade and tax policies for the past 40 years to allow
them to throw American workers out on the street and move to low-wage countries, we're not going to be able to enact fair laws ending
the race to the bottom and making the wealthy and the powerful pay their fair share.
Until we understand that we live in a highly competitive global economy and that it is counterproductive that millions of our
people cannot afford a higher education or leave school deeply in debt, we will not be able to make public colleges and universities
tuition free.
Until we understand that we are the only major country on earth not to guarantee healthcare to all and that we spend far more
per capita on healthcare than does any other country, we're not going to be able to pass a Medicare for all, single-payer program.
Until we understand that the US pays, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs because pharmaceutical companies
can charge whatever price they want for life-saving medicine, we're not going to be able to lower the outrageous price of these drugs.
Until we understand that climate change is real, caused by humans, and causing devastating problems around the world, especially
for poor people, we're not going to be able to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel and into sustainable forms of energy.
We need to raise political consciousness in America and help us move forward with a progressive agenda that meets the needs of
our working families. It's up to us all to join the conversation -- it's just the beginning.
"... Just like MH17, or the alleged (but fake) poison gas attacks in Syria, the policy has been to launch an initial barrage of accusations completely unsupported by the slightest shred of evidence – and then drop the matter abruptly, leaving the public with a strong impression of "Russian wickedness" although nothing has actually been proved. ..."
"... Skripal and daughter cheap, convenient, collateral damage for the warmongers. A person trained to handle organic nerve material introduces it into Skripal's car, they go for a morning drive and stop to have a pizza. After pizza, they begin to feel a little queasy. Go sit on a park bench. A passing citizen sees them, calls for medical assistance. Doctor says probably poisoned by toxic agent. Doctor knows it was not highly refined military grade. ..."
"... Car is lifted by straps so as not poison others and hauled to Potent Downs or whatever the Nerve Agent Factory is called. Now it can be doctored to fit the crime and I don't mean the Russians. How am I doing? Got a better tale? ..."
"... Now, I do understand that you – and most Brits – think that you are special. That there is one set of rules for you, and another for the ' others '. You have been conditioned by propaganda to assert this without any shame and to demonise Russia based on decades of half-witted stories (most taken out of context and exaggerated). Why would anyone take you seriously? ..."
"... People who walk around saying that they are exceptional, meaning they are 'Gods', or that they talk 'to God', are generally ignored or kept in an institution. Claiming that you are 'exceptional and special' is the same as claiming that you are divine – that's what it has meant historically. ..."
"Sir, Further to your report ("Poison exposure leaves almost 40 needing treatment", TIMES Mar
14)' may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in
Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning. Several
people have attended the emergency department concerned that they may have been exposed. None
has had symptoms of poisoning and none has needed treatment. Any blood tests performed have
shown no abnormality. No member of the public has been contaminated by the agent
involved."
Stephen Davies. Consultant in emergency medicine, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust.
Meanwhile, a doctor who was one of the first people at the scene has described how
she found Ms Skripal..She said she treated her for almost 30 minutes, saying "there was no
sign of any chemical agent on Ms Skripals face or body."
The woman, who asked not to be named, told the NNC she moved Ms Skripal into the recovery
position and opened her airway, as others tended to her father.
she said she treated her for almost 30 minutes, saying there was no sign of any chemical
agent on Ms Skripal's face or body.
The doctor said she had been worried she would be affected by the nerve agent, hut added that
she "feels fine".
Some nerve agent.
We read that Vladimir Putin's passport was found three days later at the scene.
One wonders how the Skripals are right now. Have they recovered completely, or partially? Are
they still deathly ill? Has one or both of them died?
In any case, why have there been no public announcements of these important facts? It is
useless to cite privacy, when the government hastened to trumpet the case – and its own
dubious conclusions – as publicly as possible.
Just like MH17, or the alleged (but fake) poison gas attacks in Syria, the policy has been
to launch an initial barrage of accusations completely unsupported by the slightest shred of
evidence – and then drop the matter abruptly, leaving the public with a strong
impression of "Russian wickedness" although nothing has actually been proved.
Incidentally, I wonder where the Skripals are and why. Apparently the Russian government
applied for consular access to Yulia (who is a Russian citizen) but this was bluntly refused
– against all norms of international law and civilized behaviour.
Skripal and daughter cheap, convenient, collateral damage for the warmongers. A person
trained to handle organic nerve material introduces it into Skripal's car, they go for a
morning drive and stop to have a pizza. After pizza, they begin to feel a little queasy. Go
sit on a park bench. A passing citizen sees them, calls for medical assistance. Doctor says
probably poisoned by toxic agent. Doctor knows it was not highly refined military grade.
How does the doctor know this: He is just down the street from the British Nerve Agent
Factory and has been trained to recognize and treat real exposures to potent nerve agents. A
policeman ends up in same hospital as Skripal because he sees car parked overtime or
illegally, opens door to check for ownership gets zapped by toxic agent. Car is lifted by
straps so as not poison others and hauled to Potent Downs or whatever the Nerve Agent Factory
is called. Now it can be doctored to fit the crime and I don't mean the Russians. How am I
doing? Got a better tale?
Good, understanding that you are a joke is the first step on the road to possible
recovery.
Try for once to imagine a reverse scenario: an Englishman dies under suspicious
circumstances in a provincial town in Russia. (Or 3-4 of them over 15-20 years.) He was
considered a 'traitor' by UK for whatever reason. Immediately Russia declares that it was an
' unacceptable attack on Russia's sovereignty, that Britain did it, and that it is 'highly
likely' that Teresa May ordered it herself' . Russian government also says that they will
not disclose any details, show no evidence and will not even allow basis diplomatic protocol
for UK embassy. Why? For reasons of ' state security '. Wouldn't any rational outsider
consider that a joke?
Now, I do understand that you – and most Brits – think that you are
special. That there is one set of rules for you, and another for the ' others '. You
have been conditioned by propaganda to assert this without any shame and to demonise Russia
based on decades of half-witted stories (most taken out of context and exaggerated). Why
would anyone take you seriously?
People who walk around saying that they are exceptional, meaning they are 'Gods', or
that they talk 'to God', are generally ignored or kept in an institution. Claiming that you
are 'exceptional and special' is the same as claiming that you are divine – that's what
it has meant historically.
"... Not to mention that we are currently on version #5 (poisoned in the car, where apparently a British cop and more than 30 other people rode with him, if we are to believe previous statements). Only a hopeless moron can stage a provocation without inventing a coherent set of plausible lies beforehand. He did it, right in the middle of Britain in Salisbury, next to the British chemical weapons facility. Credo quia absurdum. ..."
"... Actually, having no definite story, and constantly updating the narrative with ridiculous red herrings, is probably the best way to go with a fake terror attack. With a different herring to pursue each day, the truth seeking citizen soon becomes exhausted and relapses back into the normal pattern of going to work and feeding a family, but with a reinforced sense of their own lack of power to either control, or even understand the world in which they live. ..."
"... This is the end time of democracy. We are now entering an age of psycho-totalitarianism. People do what the elite require because their brainwashed friends, neighbors, and children otherwise turn against them. They are demonized and humiliated as racists, anti-Semites, dog whistlers and all the rest of the bullshit lexicon of political correctness not for their actions but merely for their thoughts. ..."
Anon from TN
Yes, this is the British version of Russiagate, no doubt: no evidence, numerous versions
that contradict each other, lots of hot air and finger pointing. At the moment we do not
know what Skripal was poisoned with or by whom, we can't even be sure that anyone was
poisoned with anything. All we have is hot air, just like with Iraq WMD. From the same very
"reliable" sources: British intelligence services and British PM. Neither ever lies, just
ask Tony Blair. Not to mention that we are currently on version #5 (poisoned in the
car, where apparently a British cop and more than 30 other people rode with him, if we are
to believe previous statements). Only a hopeless moron can stage a provocation without
inventing a coherent set of plausible lies beforehand. He did it, right in the middle of
Britain in Salisbury, next to the British chemical weapons facility. Credo quia
absurdum.
Actually, having no definite story, and constantly updating the narrative with
ridiculous red herrings, is probably the best way to go with a fake terror attack. With a
different herring to pursue each day, the truth seeking citizen soon becomes exhausted and
relapses back into the normal pattern of going to work and feeding a family, but with a
reinforced sense of their own lack of power to either control, or even understand the world
in which they live.
This is the end time of democracy. We are now entering an age of
psycho-totalitarianism. People do what the elite require because their brainwashed friends,
neighbors, and children otherwise turn against them. They are demonized and humiliated as
racists, anti-Semites, dog whistlers and all the rest of the bullshit lexicon of political
correctness not for their actions but merely for their thoughts.
For an extra funny, at one time, the United States was happy to supply fuel cycle capable
breeder reactors to Iran, before the 1979 Revolution intervened.
No less a personage than Dick Cheney, who was President Ford's Chief of Staff at the time,
commented at the time that he could figure out what those reactors would be used for. The
same Dick Cheney who insisted that non-fuel cycle capable reactors were somehow proof of
Iran's bad intentions.
Source: "The Silk Roads" by Professor Peter Frankopan.
"... The Iranians know how that cartoon ends, so they'd refuse, unlike Mr Saddam. And then the US would call on the client states in the EU to join them in tightening sanctions. Eventually provocation could be arranged and the US would "have no choice but to respond." - some patrol boats being shot at by Iranians as has happened. We all will recall how Obama was cast as a creampuf appeaseer when 'our boys' were caught zooming around Iranian waters. ..."
"... Too many powerful actors on the American political stage have determined hat Iran must be collapsed (It was on the famous hit-list after all) for them to let this go. ..."
What had been happening and what I expect to see is that, as during the George II
Administration, the US would loudly accuse Iran of breaking faith with agreements and demand
unlimited access for 'inspectors'.
The Iranians know how that cartoon ends, so they'd refuse, unlike Mr Saddam. And then
the US would call on the client states in the EU to join them in tightening sanctions.
Eventually provocation could be arranged and the US would "have no choice but to respond." -
some patrol boats being shot at by Iranians as has happened. We all will recall how Obama was
cast as a creampuf appeaseer when 'our boys' were caught zooming around Iranian
waters.
Too many powerful actors on the American political stage have determined hat Iran must
be collapsed (It was on the famous hit-list after all) for them to let this go.
Barely a day after President Trump outraged his political opponents by calling out Special
Counsel Robert Mueller by name in a series of angry tweets,
the Washington Post is reporting that the president's legal team has provided written
descriptions of certain key moments to the Mueller probe as they push to limit the scope of a
presidential interview, should they agree to one.
According to the
report, Trump has reportedly told aides that he's "champing at the bit" to sit for an
interview. But his lawyers, who are carefully negotiating terms, have sought to restrain the
president, worried he might inadvertently perjure himself or - worse - accidentally walk into a
perjury trap.
Given the time-sensitive nature of the investigation (Trump and his allies would like it to
end as swiftly as possible) Trump on Monday
added storied Washington lawyer Joseph diGenova, the husband of former Reagan Justice
Department official and former Senate Intelligence Committee chief counsel Victoria Toensing,
to his legal team.
Various readers, fans, blog commenters, Facebook trolls, and
auditors twanged on me all last week about my continuing interest in the RussiaRussiaRussia hysteria,
though there is no particular consensus of complaint among them -- except for a general "shut up,
already" motif. For the record, I'm far more interested in the hysteria itself than the
Russia-meddled-in the-election case, which I consider to be hardly any case at all beyond 13 Russian
Facebook trolls.
The hysteria, on the other hand, ought to be a matter of grave concern,
because it
appears more and more to have been engineered by America's own intel community, its handmaidens in the
Dept of Justice, and the twilight's last gleamings of the Obama White House, and now it has shoved
this country in the direction of war at a time when civilian authority over the US military looks
sketchy at best.
This country faces manifold other problems that are certain to reduce the
national standard of living and disrupt the operations of an excessively complex and dishonest
economy,
and the last thing America needs is a national war-dance over trumped-up grievances
with Russia.
The RussiaRussiaRussia narrative has unspooled since Christmas and is blowing back badly
through the FBI,
now with the firing (for cause) of Deputy Director Andrew McCabe hours short
of his official retirement (and inches from the golden ring of his pension). He was axed on the
recommendation of his own colleagues in the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility, and they may
have been influenced by the as-yet-unreleased report of the FBI Inspector General, Michael Horowitz,
due out shortly.
The record of misbehavior and "collusion" between the highest ranks of the FBI, the
Democratic Party,
the Clinton campaign, several top political law firms, and a shady cast of
international blackmail-peddlars is
a six-lane Beltway-scale evidence trail compared to the
muddy mule track of Trump "collusion" with Russia.
It will be amazing if a big wad of criminal cases are not dealt out of it, even as
The
New York Times
sticks its fingers in its ears and goes, "La-la-la-la-la ."
It now appears that Mr. McCabe's statements post-firing tend to
incriminate his former
boss, FBI Director James Comey
-- who is about to embark, embarrassingly perhaps, on a tour
for his self-exculpating book,
A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership
.
A great aura of sanctimony surrounds the FBI these days.
Even the news pundits
seem to have forgotten the long, twisted reign of J. Edgar Hoover (1924 – 1972), a dangerous rogue who
excelled at political blackmail. And why, these days, would any sane American take pronouncements from
the CIA and NSA at face value?
What seems to have gone on in the RussiaRussiaRussia matter
is that various parts of the executive branch in the last months under Mr. Obama gave each other tacit
permission, wink-wink, to do anything necessary to stuff HRC into the White House and, failing that,
to derail her opponent, the Golden Golem of Greatness.
The obvious lesson in all this huggermugger is that the ends don't justify the means.
I suspect
there are basically two routes through this mess
.
One is that
the misdeeds of FBI officers, Department of Justice lawyers, and Intel
agency executives get adjudicated by normal means,
namely, grand juries and courts. That
would have the salutary effect of cleansing government agencies and shoring up what's left of their
credibility at a time when faith in institutions hangs in the balance.
The second route would be for the authorities to ignore any formal response to an evermore
self-evident trail of crimes, and to
allow all that political energy to be funneled into
manufactured hysteria and eventually a phony provocation of war with Russia
.
Personally, I'd rather see the US government clean house than blow up the world over an engineered
hallucination.
Tags
Politics
Semiconductors - NEC
Having rejected a plan for imposing $30 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports last week,
saying they weren't big enough
; President Trump is
reportedly
planning to
unveil by Friday, a package of $60 billion in annual tariffs
against China
.
Trump is following through on a long-time threat that he says will punish China for
intellectual property infringement and create more American jobs,
and, as
The Washington Post reports
, the timing of the tariff package, which Trump plans to unveil by
Friday, was confirmed by four senior administration officials.
The package could be applied to more than 100 products,
which Trump argues were
developed by using trade secrets the Chinese stole from U.S. companies or forced them to hand over in
exchange for market access.
WaPo also notes
that
many of the financial ministers at the G-20 meeting have also alleged
that China should make changes to its trade policies
, but so far most have tried to cajole
Beijing multilaterally, a strategy that Trump has said doesn't work.
Trump this month announced 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and 10 percent for aluminum
and they will also take effect Friday.
As Bloomberg reminds us, Canada and Mexico are already excluded from the levies, and the Trump
administration has left the door open for Australia and possibly other allies to win a similar
concession if they can show they are trading fairly and are national-security partners. Planned
retaliation from the European Union to China has triggered concerns over a global trade war.
And as we warned previously
,
the recently announced global steel and aluminum tariffs
(with various exemptions) by the Trump administration were just a (Section 232) preview of the main
event
:
Trump's imminent trade war with China
, which as Credit Suisse
previews, will be unveiled any moment in the form of tariffs and restrictions on trade with China,
reportedly in retaliation for Chinese IP violations.
First, a reminder on the all-important Section 301:
What is Section 301?
Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act allows the President
to, among other things, "
impose duties or other import restrictions on the products of [a]
foreign country," if the President determines that that country is violating a trade agreement or
"engages in discriminatory or other acts or policies which are unjustifiable or unreasonable and
which burden or restrict United States commerce
." The U.S. relied heavily on the provision
during the Reagan era (an administration in which the current USTR Robert Lighthizer served as
Deputy USTR) into the early 1990s, but it has been used infrequently since the World Trade
Organization was formed in 1995 and provided a forum for dispute resolution.
How will Section 301 figure in the upcoming US-Chinese trade war, and what are the key points:
Last August, President Trump instructed his U.S. Trade Representative Robert
Lighthizer
to initiate a Section 301 investigation into China's forced technology transfer policies.
While the results of the 301 investigation are not due until August 2018,
the President
appears poised to act on the issue in the coming weeks.
The President is reported to be seriously considering a package of tariffs on Chinese
imports
(targeting between $30BN and $60BN worth).
Reports have stated that Administration officials have used China's manufacturing roadmap,
"Made in China 2025," in deciding what goods to impose tariffs on.
This will likely further
concern Chinese leaders
.
In addition, the Administration has discussed rescinding licenses for Chinese businesses and
employing other such methods to restrict Chinese investment in the United States
. The
President's recent decision to block a Singaporean company's bid to takeover a U.S. company
underscores his aversion to Chinese direct investment
(the company had Chinese
affiliations).
As part of the 301 action, the Administration has also reportedly discussed visa
restrictions and a mandate that U.S. stock exchanges limit who can list in a U.S. market.
It remains unclear whether the restrictions will go this far, but the President has, to date, been
hawkish in his trade policy and there seem to be fewer and fewer moderating voices in the White
House.
The 301 investigation and potential actions resulting from it seem to complement
congressional efforts to restrict Chinese investment
through legislation broadening the
jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). We believe this
legislation is on track to be signed into law in Q3 2018.
What to expect? here are some high-level thoughts from Credit Suisse:
The Chinese will likely respond in kind, beginning a succession of tit-for-tat trade
policies between the two countries.
The United States has the option to take a multilateral approach and work with allied nations
to initiate their own WTO dispute regarding Chinese technology transfer policies.
However,
at this point, the U.S. appears more likely to instead take unilateral retaliatory action without
WTO authorization, which may run afoul of the U.S.'s WTO obligations.
If the U.S. acts unilaterally (as it appears it will),
China will likely bring a
challenge before the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The President appears committed to maintaining his "tough on China" stance. Even after losing
top advisor Gary Cohn after the imposition of steel and aluminum tariffs
, the President
appears steadfast in his campaign against China's trade practices and Chinese investment in the U.S,
and we expect continued restrictive trade policies with respect to China.
The President's actions may not receive the congressional backlash that his steel and aluminum
tariffs did. Many U.S. corporations are frustrated with China's policy requiring foreign companies
to turn over source code and other proprietary technology in exchange for access to the Chinese
market.
However, if the President takes this as far as he currently seems to be planning
to, punitive measures by China coupled with the chilling of foreign investment could be a major
concern for U.S. corporations.
In terms of specifics, the US trade deficit last year hit an all time high of $375BN.
The Trump administration is planning imposing tariffs on up to $60bn of Chinese goods, or roughly
13% of goods import from China ($505BN), and 2.75% of total US goods import according to Danske Bank;
the tariffs will target tech products, telecoms & clothing.
A snapshot of the key aspect of the US-China trade relationship:
the US exports soybeans, pharmaceuticals, vehicles and aircraft.
the US imports textiles,clothing, manufactures of metals,electronics and toys.
How to trade it?
As noted
last week
, when discussing which industries and companies would be impacted, we said that there
are some obvious sectors such as industrials (cars, planes), agriculture, and technology. Below,
courtesy of Strategas,
is a list of US companies which derive the largest percentage of their
total revenue from China.
As trade war looms, it would be prudent for investors to start
thinking about potential risks to the companies they own if they have sufficient business in China.
We're witnessing classic psychopathic warfare. Psychopaths play mind games. They make
outrageous accusations and force you to spend thousands of hours spinning your wheels in an
attempt to Prove A Negative.
I know because I worked for a psychopath who did it frequently, maintaining a culture of
fear even among the executive board members. One nice fellow was so affected by the stress
that he developed cancer and died. (The manipulative SOB didn't have the balls to attend the
funeral. Too bad.)
Again, this is classic psychopathy. I was singled out at one point for something special,
being accused in front of the Board of something "Too Horrible To Describe" (those exact
words), but if I apologized for "it" then there would be an opportunity to make amends.
Obviously, I had no idea, and got so rattled (I was a stupid kid) that I nearly burst into
tears. A few minutes after I left, I heard them all laughing about it. People are not human
beings to a psychopath, they're instruments to be manipulated.
I agree with you about the psychopaths. I have worked for and with several. They are
emotionless pathological liars devoid of empathy and live each day trying to focus attention
on themselves in any way possible to feed their ego. They are born with flawed genes but
usually breed the most which is why there are so many out there, you can't avoid getting near
them.
Psychopaths enjoy the thrill of lying and sowing discord amongst anyone they can bully,
i.e. Staff in lower positions, (yes the chief burger flipper can be a psychopath to the
junior burger flippers - it's not all about CEO's). They also bully anyone smaller, weaker or
less fortunate than themselves. A lot of them do get locked up, but too many roam free.
The end of the petrodollar effectively cancels the MIC's fiat credit card. They will be
rummaging their sofas for spare change. Expect them to use whatever they can scrape together
for their own last gasp battle of the bulge.
the bulk of the article withstanding, i can't understand how someone who would put
together this article would use a sequitur such as:
Novichok (the inventor of which, by the way, lives in the US),
what fucking difference does it make where he lives? he is russian. and when he invented
the stuff he was working for the soviet union intelligence services. spots leopards. and said
inventer makes the highlighted claim from the link below. so why bring the inventer of this
stuff into the discussion. bad choice of research.
You think that someone that can reproduce this nerve agent who is now under full control
of the CIA no doubt is someone that shouldn't be mentioned? You jest!!! Oh and he knows Putin
ordered it!!! ROFLOL!!! You are full of shit up to your eyeballs!
"... Meet London-based Hakluyt & Co. , founded by three former British intelligence operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations pay huge sums. ..."
"... Hakluyt is described by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's Henry Williams as " one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world " and as "a retirement home for ex-MI6 [British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking " ..."
"... When the drunken junior Trump foreign policy adviser George Papodopoulous boasted in a London bar in May 2016 about Russian intelligence operatives peddling hacked emails that were damaging to Clinton, his most interested listener, according to The New York Times , was Alexander Downer, Australian high commissioner to the U.K. ..."
"... The News Corp. Australian Network quoted an unnamed British diplomatic source explaining that Hakluyt "operates in the shadows, it's not exactly open and transparent and so any serving, and that's the difference, serving diplomat with access to sensitive information and insight associating with the group raises a worry in Whitehall." Whitehall is the British government's equivalent to the White House. ..."
"... Downer's continued involvement with Hakluyt locates the shadowy operation in the world of the Clintons. As previously reported by LifeZette, it was Downer in 2006 who as Australian foreign minister signed a memorandum of understanding with Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. ..."
"... Downer is also connected to another firm of great importance in the international intelligence world. That would be China's telecommunications giant Huawei, on whose Australian board he served for several years, beginning in 2011. U.S. intelligence experts have long described Huawei as a tool of Chinese espionage in America. ..."
"... The link between Clinton and Hakluyt is ironic considering the former secretary of state's strong commitment to liberal Democratic environmental causes. Hakluyt's record includes being caught planting spies in Greenpeace and other environmental groups on behalf of energy giants British Petroleum (BP) and Shell. ..."
Fusion GPS has gotten all the headlines. But there was a second, even more powerful and mysterious opposition research and intelligence
firm lurking about with significant political and financial links to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her 2016 campaign
for president against Donald Trump.
Meet London-based Hakluyt & Co. , founded by three former British intelligence
operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations
pay huge sums.
Whereas Fusion GPS was created by three former Wall Street Journal reporters
with links to the U.S. intelligence community, Hakluyt -- with offices in London, New York, Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney -- was founded
by an enterprising trio of former British intelligence operatives with deep connections throughout the world's official and corporate
corridors of power and influence.
Hakluyt is described by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's
Henry
Williams as " one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world " and as "a retirement home for ex-MI6
[British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking "
The firm's "style appears to be much more in the mold of the Christopher Steele dossier. Clients pay for pages of well-sourced
prose from Hakluyt's contacts across the globe," Williams wrote.
Hakluyt isn't familiar to the American public. But what has become well-known in recent days is the role played by one of the
London firm's most visible figures in drawing the FBI into the world of Trump-Russia collusion allegations, a world largely created
by Steele in the infamous dossier bearing his name.
When the drunken junior Trump foreign policy adviser George Papodopoulous boasted in a London bar in May 2016 about Russian
intelligence operatives peddling hacked emails that were damaging to Clinton, his most interested listener, according to
The New York Times , was Alexander Downer, Australian high commissioner to the U.K.
It was Downer who told the FBI of Papodopoulos' comments, which became one of the "driving factors that led the FBI to open an
investigation in July 2016 into Russia's attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump's associates conspired,"
The Times reported.
Downer, a long-time Aussie chum of Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been on Hakluyt's advisory board since 2008. Officially, he had
to resign his Hakluyt role in 2014, but his informal connections continued uninterrupted, the News Corp. Australian Network
reported in a January 2016 exclusive:
But it can be revealed Mr. Downer has still been attending client conferences and gatherings of the group, including a client
cocktail soirée at the Orangery at Kensington Palace a few months ago.
His attendance at that event is understood to have come days after he also attended a two-day country retreat at the invitation
of the group, which has been involved in a number of corporate spy scandals in recent times.
The News Corp. Australian Network quoted an unnamed British diplomatic source explaining that Hakluyt "operates in the shadows,
it's not exactly open and transparent and so any serving, and that's the difference, serving diplomat with access to sensitive information
and insight associating with the group raises a worry in Whitehall." Whitehall is the British government's equivalent to the White
House.
Downer's continued involvement with Hakluyt locates the shadowy operation in the world of the Clintons. As previously reported
by LifeZette, it was Downer in 2006 who as Australian foreign minister signed a memorandum of understanding with Bill Clinton and
the Clinton Foundation.
The memorandum committed $25 million from the Australian government to the foundation for HIV/AIDs programs in China, Papua New
Guinea, and Vietnam. A subsequent audit was unable to account for how those funds were spent.
Earlier this year, the FBI asked retired Australian police detective Michael Smith to provide information he uncovered concerning
the 2006 deal -- suggesting the bureau's investigation of the Clinton Foundation is focused on the controversial charity's domestic
and international activities.
Downer is also connected to another firm of great importance in the international intelligence world. That would be China's
telecommunications giant Huawei, on whose Australian board he served for several years, beginning in 2011. U.S. intelligence experts
have long described Huawei as a tool of Chinese espionage in America.
But Downer is not the only Clinton fan in Hakluyt. Federal contribution
records show several of the firm's U.S. representatives made
large contributions to two of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign organizations.
Jonathan Selib of Brooklyn, New York, listed himself as a "consultant" and his employer as Hakluyt when he made four contributions
totaling $3,200 to Hillary for America and one contribution worth $2,350 to the Hillary Victory Fund during the Democratic presidential
primary. Selib also contributed to the congressional campaigns of Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and John Lewis of Montana. Selib was
formerly chief of staff for Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.).
Another Hakluyt executive, Holly Evans, contributed $500 to Hillary for America the day after Selib's June 27, 2016, donations
to the same Clinton campaign entity. Evans listed Rye, New York, as home and described herself as a Hakluyt "executive." Her résumé
includes stints advising Vice President Dick Cheney and working on the National Security Council during the second Bush administration.
The link between Clinton and Hakluyt is ironic considering the former secretary of state's strong commitment to liberal Democratic
environmental causes.
A third Hakluyt executive, Andrew Exum of Washington, D.C., made multiple contributions to several Democratic congressional candidates,
including Elisa Slotkin in Michigan and Daniel Helmer of Virginia. Exum served as a U.S. Army infantry officer and as former deputy
assistant secretary of defense under then-President Barack Obama. He has also been a contributing editor of Atlantic magazine.
The link between Clinton and Hakluyt is ironic considering the former secretary of state's strong commitment to liberal Democratic
environmental causes. Hakluyt's record includes being caught planting spies in Greenpeace and other environmental groups on behalf
of energy giants British Petroleum (BP) and Shell.
Neoliberalism as social system tend to self-destruct. Much like Bolshevism (neoliberalism actually can be viewed as Trotskyism
for the rich with the same dream of "world revolution" as the central part of the religion and a slightly modified Marxism slogan
-- "financial elites of the world unite" ).
"This week, Congressional
Democrats released a detailed tax hike plan that they
promised to implement if given majority control of the House and Senate after the 2018
midterm elections. So much for the crocodile tears about the deficit--
Democrats want to raise taxes not to reduce the debt, but rather to spend that tax hike
money on boondoggle projects.
OK. That will work. (irony) So, they will raise both corporate and personal income taxes if
they gain control of the congress. That will work as a political program (irony). The
California state government will probably back that. (no irony)
Well, there is always Stormy Daniels to fall back on as an issue. She was interviewed
outside a strip joint yesterday where she was to perform. "You call me a whore? she said. I
tell you I am a successful whore." I suppose the idea is to alienate Trump's evangelical base
from him. Oh, well, this theme rings a bit hollow. Trump's base knew what they were voting for
... pl
in fairness to our friends the democrats, the Dems. are proposing an infrastructure plan
that is woefully inadequate, and propose to rescind the recent tax cuts.
Personally, I am just not feeling the electoral excitement.
Of course those suffering TDS (trump derangement syndrome) will applaud undoing Trump
agenda, but then again, they were going to vote Democrat anyway and cut a check, which IMO is
the real point. Funny how now they want to do infrastructure, but not during the Obama
years.
Personally, wrt the tax cuts, I am ambivalent. Anyone who pays anywhere near the official
rate needs to hire a good tax accountant. Net effect on businesses that already take all
available deductions will be a percent or two on gross. A 2% weaker dollar would have a far
bigger benefit for businesses (but worse for the banks).
ISL
the only reason the individual tax rate is important is the effect on LLCs and S corps.
Nevertheless, the corporate tax rate cut is the more important. pl
Have you seen the movie "Wind River" yet? It is the best depiction I've seen of the USA
descending into tribalism due to the loss of jobs, the drug epidemic and environmental
exploitation.
NBC News daily has Kumbaya propaganda to facilitate importing of cheap labor and goods.
But, what good is a service economy if there is no service? Just like Soviet propaganda,
corporate media today is in service of the oligarch owners and sold out party elite. It tries
to avoid the truth. Although, NBC did report on the astronomical rise in cost of ambulance
service. A couple thousand dollars for mile and half trip to the hospital. They said it was
due to the 2008 recession and the cutting of local volunteer emergency services to save tax
money.
Rather than tax the wealthy and corporations, the middle class is going into debt to pay
for education, medical bills, and $40 Northern Virginia one-way tolls. Federal taxes on the
middle class support the endless wars.
I agree the Democrats shot themselves in the foot because they are unconcerned for the
bottom 80% except for their identity issues. They serve their paymasters. The recent Italian
election documents the complete collapse of left leaning parties that ignored the plight of
the workers in the West. To me, to win, the left in America must write off student debt,
implement Medicare for All, end the forever wars and tax George Soros, Jeff Bezos, Bill
Gates, Warren Buffet, Pierre Omidyar, the Koch Brothers and the Walton Family to pay for it.
To work, criminal bankers need to be jailed and corporate boards required to manage for long
term profits that benefit society not just quarterly and themselves only.
Well that settles it. I thought that maybe the Dems were just acting delusional to coddle
their base. This settles it. They actually ARE delusional.
So in addition to replacing us with an infinite number of illiterate third worlders,
taking our guns and jailing us for using the wrong pronoun out of an ever evolving list of
hundreds they are going to take more of our hard earned money. Yeah, how can they not sweep
the 2018 elections with a platform like that. Sheesh.
I never did support the Trump tax cuts. I regard them as being mainly mainstream Republican
tax cuts. President Trump supports them and signed them for all the economic benefits reasons
he cited and cites. But the Republicans' main reason for seeking them remains their long term
goal of destroying Social Security and privatizing the Social Security money . . . the money
I and everyone else have been pre-paying double for ever since the Great Reagan Rescue of
1983. They sought these tax cuts in order to increase vastly the deficit and the debt. Their
expectation is that the next inevitable recession
will make the debt so-nearly-unpayable as to give them another opportunity to accuse Social
Security of causing the debt and of being unaffordable.
So I would support cancellation of the Republican tax cuts for that reason. I would be
defending my Social Security against longstanding Republican efforts to destroy it and
retro-steal all the money I have been paying ( and will keep paying) every since 1983.
(Actually, since 1980 when I worked at half the rate of FICA taxation as after 1983). But
then, I have said years ago in comments that I would like to see taxes re-raised against the
Bush's Base class to recover all the Social Security pre-payment money which was
future-looted-from to give the Bush's Base class a tax cut instead. A tax cut which President
Obama supported and ratified when he conspired with Boehner and McConnell to make the
self-sunsetting Bush Tax cuts into permanent tax cuts. That's why I now call them the
Bushobama Tax cuts now.
There is boondoggle and there is needed repair. The "high speed railway" proposed and
haltingly begun in California is a boondoggle. Fixing all the rotting and decaying bridges
and all the potholes is needed repair. ( Come to Michigan to see some impressive potcraters).
The present and future space program is an investment in possible futures and in
technological advances. Government spending can be a boondoggle but it doesn't have to
be.
At least some of the Democrats have decided to run on something specific instead of vague
emotional appeals only. Something specific can either be voted "for" or "against".
(The Democrats should remember that "tax restoration" may not be enough to get all the
votes they think they are due. There are enough bitter berners out here who remain convinced
that applying political chemotherapy against the malignant metastatic clintonoma and the
Yersiniobama pestis plague infection afflicting the Democratic Party is more important right
now than "more democrats". There is, and will be, a growing effort to defeat every piece of
Clintonite scum and Obamazoid filth which dares to call itself a "Democrat" in every election
that one of these things runs in. The Democratic Party has to be made into a New Deal Party
again, and that means purging and burning every trace of Clinton and Obama out of the Party.
If any DLC/Third Way/Hamilton Project/ Pink Pussy Hat/ Rainbow Oligarchy Democrats are
reading this, they should consider themselves warned.)
If Trump's evangelical base was willing to ignore the p-grabber tape, I doubt this will do
much to change their minds. Don't tell CNN, they were running the story 24/7 even as the
Senate, including many Democrats such as the odious Mark Warner, was voting to roll back the
fairly toothless restrictions on the big banks passed after the 2008 financial crash.
This is the REAL reason Trump will not be removed even if impeached--he's too valuable to
the political class as a never ending media freak show that allows them to get away with
whatever they want while the idiot public is distracted.
Exactly, Sir, it is the corporate tax cut that is the big deal because it starts to level the
playing field for small businesses. The largest corporations hardly pay any tax anyway
because they have the armies of tax lawyers and accountants to leverage all the
"... The FAZ angle (and therefore the angle of Germans in Washington) is, that Tillerson was displaced because he was too bellicose towards Russia. Pompeo is seen as moderate towards Russia but as a hawk regarding Iran. The British noise about the alleged nerve gas agent is then nothing more but another attempt to force Washingtons´s hand to increase hostility towards Russia. ..."
For what its worth: there was a very long and detailed analysis by the Frankfurter Allgmeine
Zeitung yesterday regarding Tillersons dismissal. You can take this analysis as something
like the "official" German position as FAZ journalists are the equivalent of Pravda
journalists. That is fully in the know but only writing what is desired.
The FAZ angle (and therefore the angle of Germans in Washington) is, that Tillerson was
displaced because he was too bellicose towards Russia. Pompeo is seen as moderate towards
Russia but as a hawk regarding Iran. The British noise about the alleged nerve gas agent is
then nothing more but another attempt to force Washingtons´s hand to increase hostility
towards Russia.
Interestingly enough today Germany´s defense minister who is a close confident of
Merkel echoed the outrage about the alleged nerve gas attack but called for a "UN
investigation". That is she didn´t endorse the British claim.
Another background to the British provocation might be the Nord Stream gas pipeline from
Russia to Germany. Construction is to start now and once it is finished Ukraine can´t
blackmail Europe anymore by holding up gas delivery. Poland, the Baltics, the US and of
course Ukraine are violently opposed to Nord Stream 2.
...UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said on Thursday that Russia "should go away and
shut up" when asked about Moscow's possible response to British sanctions.
...Lavrov said he probably lacked education. "Well he's a nice man, I'm told, maybe he wants
to claim a place in history by making some bold statements," Lavrov said. "Theresa May's main
argument about Russia's guilt is 'Highly probable', while for him it's 'Russia should go and
shut up'. Maybe he lacks education, I don't know."
Respectfully, I think what he means is something that I've learned to do in the last few
years in a rather automatic fashion. Namely, it's to realise that, in the immediate aftermath
of any event, it's best to just sit back and wait a bit before you come to any sort of
conclusion about blame. In the very short term, the water, the stream is very muddy and
clouded as anybody and everybody who has – or think that they have – an interest
in the event du jour tries to spin it to their own advantage.
The truth will reveal itself inasmuch as the Internet is the World's best fact checker.
The initial story will *always* be shown to have a good deal of exaggerations,
contradictions, anomalies and omissions. But those revelations take a (usually relatively
short) bit of time. So better to look at whatever the immediate story might be with a good
deal of patient skepticism and not immediately fly off the rails in a fit of hand-waving,
eye-rolling and pearl-clutching hysterics.
Do this consistently, and I think you'll discover that:
-The truth of the matter is usually gray, with plenty of blame to go around.
-And/or you're being fed a line of pandering BS by people who think that you're a naive
and trusting idiot.
In short, act like an adult and not a dimwitted child. Use your brain and not your
emotions.
Hope this helps.
Just a thought.
VicB3
P.S. A pithy thought from Mike Rivero:
If it doesn't affect you directly, then it's either advertising or propaganda.
Re: "Almost from day one, the early western civilization began by, shall we say, taking
liberties with the truth, which it could bend, adapt, massage and repackage to serve the
ideological agenda of the day. It was not quite the full-blown and unapologetic relativism of
the 19th century yet, but it was an important first step. With "principles" such as the end
justifies the means and the wholesale violation of the Ten Commandants all "for the greater
glory of God" the western civilization got cozy with the idea that there was no real,
objective truth, only the subjective perception or even representation each person might have
thereof."
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
Saker is a good military analyst, but as a historian he is a laughable dilettante. He is a
very self-righteous, touchy Orthodox Christian ideologue and moralist.
Jeepers Cripes, y'all need to get a room and ass-hammer it out!
Latter Day America, there are no pristine people to choose from to populate any goddamned
post in government, period! Everybody has baggage, everybody is compromised.
This is the latter days of Rome 2.0 dipshits, got it? It is why one batch of clowns find
it impossible to see one thing Trump (or anybody in any country...except Czar Valdimir Putin
in Russia...for whatever reason...default/nobody else to pick...when the real answer even
there is none of the above though many people refuse to see it) can do right and while the
other batch is mystified at those incapable of seeing (albeit sometime thin) distinctions
between evils in the era of this-is-as-good-as-it'll-get. Cue the inevitable endless circle
jerk.
Trump, and all of DC have as much power to affect what is coming as a flea does trying to
bench press 300 lbs. Those of them who are aware of the true situation are scared shit less.
Pompeo's appointment is just validating what is really about to come down! When they can't
intimidate the public into submission, they will try using a club.
Thanks for saying that. I detest Clinton and I want JUSTICE for what the evil treasonous
psychopaths did in 2016, but I also know Bibi and MBS have Trump on a short leash and
Islamaphobes fill his home and cabinet.
The soft coup is now complete and a war with Iran inevitable.
Hmmmm.....let's see. Pompeo hates Julian Assange. Assange has told us a lot of truth but
won't even consider that 911 was an inside job. Pompeo hates Iran and Assad, but he's not
about 911 truth at all either. The 911 myth is the basis for all US foreign policy. Trump
hates Rosie O'Donnell, who seems to be about the only media figure who'll admit that the
Trade Centers came down by controlled demolition. In the midst of all these powerful world
leaders, if Rosie O'Donnel is the only person speaking the truth, i'd say we are royally
fucked. And I don't even especially like Rosie O'Donnell. Doesn't seem likely we will avoid a
catastrophic war. What a world.
Trump hates Rosie O'Donnell, who seems to be about the only media figure who'll admit
that the Trade Centers came down by controlled demolition.In the midst of all these
powerful world leaders, if Rosie O'Donnel is the only person speaking the truth, i'd say we
are royally fucked.
One Donald J Trump was interviewed on TV on the day of 9/11. He said that's not the way
planes hit buildings. There were explosives of some sort involved. Moreover, the same Donald
J Trump as a contender for the Republican nomination in the debate in South Carolina in
February 2016 stated that if he won the presidency he would publish the secret documents
about 9/11.
You have to be paying attention to figure out who Trump really is. Why is that? It is
because Judaia as a conscious policy of that quasi-state has for long had total control of
the minds of the whole West. The brains of Americans have been turned to oatmeal (as Russians
put it) and most of what Trump says has to be oatmeal-to-oatmeal. Trump's brilliance is never
challenging directly the memes (such as 9/11 or the Holocaust or false flag shootings) that
Judaia has so laboriously constructed. That would be foolish. Rather, he takes one strand of
received discourse and short circuits it with another under high voltage. Only rarely and
briefly does Trump address clued-in supporters directly (perhaps he's doing it indirectly
through Q Anon). You have to be paying attention.
A lot of Trump administration double-talk is a game, his way of strongly playing a weak
hand. The anti-Iran bit seems to be a key gambit, going all the way back to Flynn
co-authoring an anti-Iran book with Neocon Ledeen. But Tillerson seems to have turned traitor
by taking over the script. Declaring that America was going go hang on to territory in Syria
was not a 'globalist' gambit in the script. Trump had to tweet that defeating ISIS was
America's only aim in Syria and that had been almost accomplished. Similarly, a limited
anti-Russia posture is necessary to deal with the Muller caper. But supporting the Empire's
Russian poisoning absurdity seems not to be where Trump wants America to be. Tillerson had to
go.
If Pompeo is talking a load of shit, and sounding surprisingly uneducsted for someone who
was number one at West Point and an editor (unlike Obama, under his own steam) at the Harvard
Law Review, be sure there is a game involved.
I instinctively like Trump, and have over a long period, Maybe Trump is at the head of a
huge world-historical change. It's looking good, actually, and I'm willing to wait and
see.
Jeepers Cripes, y'all need to get a room and ass-hammer it out!
Latter Day America, there are no pristine people to choose from to populate any goddamned post in government, period! Everybody
has baggage, everybody is compromised.
This is the latter days of Rome 2.0 dipshits, got it? It is why one batch of clowns find it impossible to see one thing Trump
(or anybody in any country...except Czar Valdimir Putin in Russia...for whatever reason...default/nobody else to pick...when the
real answer even there is none of the above though many people refuse to see it) can do right and while the other batch is mystified
at those incapable of seeing (albeit sometime thin) distinctions between evils in the era of this-is-as-good-as-it'll-get. Cue
the inevitable endless circle jerk.
Trump, and all of DC have as much power to affect what is coming as a flea does trying to bench press 300 lbs. Those of them
who are aware of the true situation are scared shit less. Pompeo's appointment is just validating what is really about to come
down! When they can't intimidate the public into submission, they will try using a club.
Thanks for saying that. I detest Clinton and I want JUSTICE for what the evil treasonous psychopaths did in 2016, but I also
know Bibi and MBS have Trump on a short leash and Islamaphobes fill his home and cabinet.
The soft coup is now complete and a war with Iran inevitable.
Pompeo is in for a rude awakening in the diplomatic arena if he tries to spar with Lavrov.
Lavrov IMO will bloody Pomepo's nose before he knows what hit him.
J,
Haspel isn't alone in her views on torture - according to your link Mattis, Trump and Pompeo
also think waterboarding is an excellent intelligence tool.
According to your article Pompeo answered to Feinstein's torture criticism that agents who
had tortured people were " heroes, not pawns in some liberal game. "
*sob* ... poor heroes ... *sob*
Apparently it was all that heroism that made Haspel destroy evidence about the CIA torture
site in Tailand which she led.
One of the men, known as Abu Zubayda, was waterboarded 83 times in one month and was
slammed into walls by the head. He was deprived of sleep and kept in a coffin-like box.
Interrogators later decided he didn't have any useful information.
ProPublica found that Haspel personally signed cables to CIA headquarters that detailed
Zubayda's interrogation.
CIA videos of the torture were destroyed in 2005, on the orders of a cable drafted by
Haspel.
Indeed, apparently these heroes (and their leaders) needed to be protected from that odd
and unpleasant "liberal game" called 'prosecution for crimes'.
Sir,
My favorite mole in all of this is the slippery Doug Feith. He is continnues to be more
slippery than the Teflon Don, who by the way died in jail.
Another former Aipac analyst, Steve Rosen, has been accused of handing over top-secret
American documents to foreign officials and journalists. Both plead not guilty.
CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY REPORTS THAT REPRESENTATIVE JANE HARMAN WAS CAUGHT ON TAPE
PROMISING TO LOBBY FOR REDUCED CHARGES AGAINST TWO ACCUSED SPIES, IN EXCHANGE FOR HELP
SECURING THE CHAIRMANSHIP OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE:
Jeepers Cripes, y'all need to get a room and ass-hammer it out!
Latter Day America, there are no pristine people to choose from to populate any goddamned post in government, period! Everybody
has baggage, everybody is compromised.
This is the latter days of Rome 2.0 dipshits, got it? It is why one batch of clowns find it impossible to see one thing Trump
(or anybody in any country...except Czar Valdimir Putin in Russia...for whatever reason...default/nobody else to pick...when the
real answer even there is none of the above though many people refuse to see it) can do right and while the other batch is mystified
at those incapable of seeing (albeit sometime thin) distinctions between evils in the era of this-is-as-good-as-it'll-get. Cue
the inevitable endless circle jerk.
Trump, and all of DC have as much power to affect what is coming as a flea does trying to bench press 300 lbs. Those of them
who are aware of the true situation are scared shit less. Pompeo's appointment is just validating what is really about to come
down! When they can't intimidate the public into submission, they will try using a club.
Thanks for saying that. I detest Clinton and I want JUSTICE for what the evil treasonous psychopaths did in 2016, but I also
know Bibi and MBS have Trump on a short leash and Islamaphobes fill his home and cabinet.
The soft coup is now complete and a war with Iran inevitable.
J,
Haspel isn't alone in her views on torture - according to your link Mattis, Trump and Pompeo
also think waterboarding is an excellent intelligence tool.
According to your article Pompeo answered to Feinstein's torture criticism that agents who
had tortured people were " heroes, not pawns in some liberal game. "
*sob* ... poor heroes ... *sob*
Apparently it was all that heroism that made Haspel destroy evidence about the CIA torture
site in Tailand which she led.
One of the men, known as Abu Zubayda, was waterboarded 83 times in one month and was
slammed into walls by the head. He was deprived of sleep and kept in a coffin-like box.
Interrogators later decided he didn't have any useful information.
ProPublica found that Haspel personally signed cables to CIA headquarters that detailed
Zubayda's interrogation.
CIA videos of the torture were destroyed in 2005, on the orders of a cable drafted by
Haspel.
Indeed, apparently these heroes (and their leaders) needed to be protected from that odd
and unpleasant "liberal game" called 'prosecution for crimes'.
"... He has cultivated ties with Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists who are patrons of conservative causes. They invested in Thayer Aerospace, a company Pompeo started with friends from West Point in 1998. He turned to Koch Industries, the Wichita-based conglomerate which has holdings in oil and other sectors, to help bankroll his 2010 congressional race. Pompeo was criticized by liberals for hiring a Koch Industries lawyer as his chief of staff and for introducing legislation that would benefit Koch interests. ..."
"... Pompeo has hawkish views on a range of policy issues, including torture, surveillance and the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. ..."
Pompeo graduated from both the United States Military Academy at West Point and Harvard and served three terms as a representative
for Kansas's fourth district. As a member of the House select committee on intelligence, he was an aggressive critic of
US foreign policy under the Obama administration,
particularly regarding the nuclear deal with Iran.
... ... ...
He has
cultivated ties with Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists who are patrons of conservative causes. They invested
in Thayer Aerospace, a company Pompeo started with friends from West Point in 1998. He turned to Koch Industries, the Wichita-based
conglomerate which has holdings in oil and other sectors, to help bankroll his 2010 congressional race. Pompeo was criticized by
liberals for hiring a Koch Industries lawyer as his chief of staff and for introducing legislation that would benefit Koch interests.
Pompeo has hawkish views on a range of policy issues, including torture, surveillance and the National Security Agency whistleblower
Edward Snowden.
... ... ...
He has, however, diverged from Trump on Russia. In his confirmation hearing, he appeared to share with CIA staff an adversarial
view of Russia and Vladimir Putin.
The Senate approved his nomination 66-32.
The Democratic minority leader, Chuck Schumer, who voted to confirm Pompeo, said in a statement on Tuesday: "If he's confirmed [as
secretary of state] we hope that Mr Pompeo will turn over a new leaf and will start toughening up our policies towards Russia and
Putin."
"... If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in the lower chamber of Congress. ..."
"... Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are actively recruiting candidates with a military or intelligence background for competitive seats where there is the best chance of ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently clearing the field for a favored "star" recruit. ..."
"... The Democratic leaders are promoting CIA agents and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. At the same time, such people are choosing the Democratic Party as their preferred political vehicle. ..."
An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA,
Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic
candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of
military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political
history.
If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely
predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as
half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in the
lower chamber of Congress.
Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are actively recruiting
candidates with a military or intelligence background for competitive seats where there is the
best chance of ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently clearing the
field for a favored "star" recruit.
A case in point is Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative with three tours in Iraq, who
worked as Iraq director for the National Security Council in the Obama White House and as a top
aide to John Negroponte, the first director of national intelligence. After her deep
involvement in US war crimes in Iraq, Slotkin moved to the Pentagon, where, as a principal
deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, her areas of
responsibility included drone warfare, "homeland defense" and cyber warfare.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has designated Slotkin as one of its
top candidates, part of the so-called "Red to Blue" program targeting the most vulnerable
Republican-held seats -- in this case, the Eighth Congressional District of Michigan, which
includes Lansing and Brighton. The House seat for the district is now held by two-term
Republican Representative Mike Bishop.
The Democratic leaders are promoting CIA agents and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. At
the same time, such people are choosing the Democratic Party as their preferred political
vehicle. There are far more former spies and soldiers seeking the nomination of the Democratic
Party than of the Republican Party. There are so many that there is a subset of Democratic
primary campaigns that, with a nod to Mad magazine, one might call "spy vs. spy."
It's an unfortunate irony of the times in which we live that politicians are happy to bask
in the glory of Law & Order when it comes to intensifying punishments for the general
public yet simultaneously nowhere to be found when it comes to prosecuting those who commit
crimes involving corruption, fraud or abuse of power. When ratcheting up the incarceration
rate among minorities, the poor and those living in the nation's crumbling urban ghettos,
they dutifully repeat the same weary, disproved bromides about deterrence while stuffing
their campaign coffers with contributions from one of neoliberalism's most amoral sectors:
the for-profit carceral state.
Generally, then, I would reject such arguments – higher sentences, mandatory
minimums, decreasing the independence of the judiciary to decide on punishments are all
failed policies that have, under the aegis of the War on Drugs, left a trail of destruction,
generational poverty, and heartbreak. When it comes to white-collar crimes, political
corruption and abuse of power, though, I suspect that hefty sentences actually would serve as
a deterrent. If the architects of the Global Financial Crisis were currently sitting
alongside Bernie Madoff in Butner (or ADX Florence), you suspect it might cause some of their
successors to think twice about indulging in the same wanton speculation.
If the ghouls of the DoD, Pentagon and intelligence community had found themselves where
they belonged, in the dock, for their gross abuses of power and war crimes following 9/11,
one wonders whether the near-equal ghouls of the Sainted Obama's Administration would have
drawn up their illegal kill lists or celebrated the flouting of international law with quite
such levity.
All of which, of course, means that we won't ever see it happen – but it does make
me think that in some cases it is entirely justified to pursue and forcefully punish those
who break the law. It's just unfortunate that the ones whose punishment would be most
effective in deterring others are the ones who invariably get off scott free.
JEHR
What I don't understand is how Michael Shkreli, CEO, is found guilty of financial fraud against
investors in 2018 but not one CEO of a bank–not Goldman Sachs's CEO, not Citigroup's CEO, not JP Morgan
Chase's CEO, not Wells Fargo's CEO and not Lehman Brothers' CEO–was found guilty of committing Accounting
Control Fraud and/or mortgage fraud after the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-8. Amazing! But there's not
much satisfaction in such a small price to pay for fraud (7 years) that ruins other people's lives
permanently. What is also amazing is that it is not illegal to price a drug out of the reach of most users
just for the sake of making a huge profit!
perpetualWAR
Obama said "actions on Wall Street weren't illegal only immoral." And that set the tone. No one was
going to be found guilty of unlawful actions ..even though what Wall Street conducted was a racketeering
operation.
It's not the legality, or even the morality, it's not being blatantly scoffed at.
Shkreli is a slimy narcissitic toad that used, back stabbed, insulted, and annoyed everyone
which is why he got the shiv; just think of the former head of Wells Fargo, Tim Sloan, who did the
same and not only to his customers, and low level employees, but also to Congress.
Who me robbing you? Really, no, I know nothing I see nothing really! Your eyes, they must be lying
to you! And you're too stupid to see that!
That is why they got nailed. People might not like being robbed, but they really don't like being
insulted in the doing. Had they done the usual mea culpas, faux apologies, and even token restitution
of some kind, one would not be in prison, and the other still CEO.
DHG
Shkreli stupidly challenged the powers that be in public to do something and they did.
Andrew Cockburn
Surely, for the big banks the most significant part of this legislation is the provision allowing them
to count municipal bonds as "liquid assets" thus boosting their capital ratio. In reality, of course, these
are highly illiquid. Therefore, come the next crash, authorities will be faced with the prospect either of
JPM, Citi, etc, attempting to dump said bonds thereby tanking the municipal finance system of the country –
unacceptable – or yet again bailing out the banksters to the tune of $trillions. Will the guilty parties be
called to account? Don't ask.
Posted on
March 10, 2018 by Yves Smith Yves here. As depressing and
predictable as it is to see Democrats yet again prostituting themselves to financiers, payback
may finally be coming. From Lambert in Water Cooler
yesterday :
Senate: Poll: Five Senate Dems would lose to GOP challenger if elections held today" [
The Hill ]. "New polls published Thursday morning in Axios show Sens. Claire McCaskill
(D-Mo.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) and Heidi
Heitkamp (D-N.D.) would all lose reelection to GOP challengers if voters were heading to the
polls this week." Blue Dogs all. Why vote for a fake Republican when you can vote for a real
one?
So these Blue Dogs who are gutting the already underwhelming Dodd Frank may not be with us
much longer, at least politically. And even though the party is remarkably insistent on
adhering to a strategy of corporate toadying that has led it to hemorrhage seats at all levels
of government, if these seats all go red, it might be a message even the Democrats might not be
able to ignore.
By Marshall Auerback is a market analyst and commentator. Originally published at
Alternet
This act of regulatory vandalism highlights everything that is corrupt about our
political system.
As if to maximize the possibility of another major financial crisis, the Trump
administration and the GOP have recently been busy undercutting the limited safeguards
established a decade ago via Dodd-Frank. The latest example of this stealth attack on Wall
Street reform is the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act,
appropriately sponsored by Republican Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho, chairman of the Senate
Banking Committee. Appropriate, because this is literally a "crapo" bill. It provides a few
"technical tweaks" to Dodd-Frank in the same way in which protection payouts to organized crime
provide businesses with "insurance" against property damage. In reality, it is an act of
regulatory vandalism, which highlights everything that is corrupt about our political
system.
We have grown to expect no less from the GOP, whose sole r aison d'etre these days
seems to be filling the trough from which America's fat cats can perpetually gorge themselves.
What is truly disturbing, however, is that the Republican effort is being given bipartisan
cover by more than a dozen Democratic senators: Doug Jones (Ala.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Heidi
Heitkamp (N.D.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Mark Warner and Tim Kaine (both from Va.), Claire
McCaskill (Mo.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Chris Coons
(Del.), and Tom Carper of Delaware. To this esteemed group, we should also add Senator Angus
King (ME), an Independent who regularly caucuses with the Democrats. So, in reality, it's a
filibuster-proof "Baker's Dirty Dozen." Digging into the details, perhaps this is what Senator
Mitch McConnell had in mind when he predicted
more bipartisanship in Congress this year . In co-sponsoring this bill, the 13 senators are
providing cover for the GOP when the inevitable fallout comes, dissipating the Democrats'
political capital with the electorate in the process.
Yes, we get it: some of these senator incumbents are in red states that voted heavily for
Donald Trump in the last election. And
the latest polls suggest many are vulnerable in this year's elections. But the last time we
checked, there didn't seem to be an overwhelming wave of populist protest demanding regulatory
relief for banks. All 50 states -- red and blue -- suffered from the last financial crisis, and
it's hard to believe voters in Montana, West Virginia, North Dakota, Indiana or Missouri would
be more likely to support Senators Tester, Manchin, Heitkamp, Donnelly or McCaskill because
they backed a bank deregulation bill (which in reality goes well beyond helping small community
banks). Nor do the 2018 races factor as far as Senators Warner, Coons, or Bennet are concerned,
given that none are up for re-election this year.
No, the more likely answer is money, plain and simple. The numbers aren't in for 2017, but
an analysis of the Federal Election Commission data from the 2016 election appears to explain
what is driving this newfound solicitousness toward the banks. The
Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) points out that "nine of the twelve Democrats
supporting the deregulatory measure count the financial industry as either their biggest or
second-biggest donor." (At least now we have a better understanding as to why Hillary Clinton's
" responsibility
gene " induced her to select running mate Tim Kaine, who
received "large contributions from Big Law partners that represent Wall Street," as opposed
to a genuine finance reformer, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren. Senator Warren is vigorously
opposing the new bill.)
"included among his 20 largest donors the mega Wall Street banks Goldman Sachs and
JPMorgan Chase. Goldman's employees and PACs gave Warner's campaign $71,600 while JPMorgan
Chase gave the Warner campaign committees $50,566 Senator Heidi Heitkamp is also up for
reelection this year and her number one contributor at present is employees and/or PACs of
Goldman Sachs which have contributed $79,500 thus far."
Naturally, all of the senators claim their motives are pure. With no hint of irony, a
spokesman
for Tim Kaine suggested that , "Campaign contributions do not influence Senator Kaine's
policy positions." Likewise, an aide for Mark Warner vigorously
contested the idea that campaign donations from Wall Street ever influenced the Virginia
senator's decision-making on policy matters. Sure, and it was shocking to find out that
gambling took place in Rick's Café.
It is true, as Senator Jon Tester (another co-sponsor)
notes , that the proposed changes introduced in the Crapo bill (notably the increase in the
asset size from $50 billion to $250 billion of those banks that are considered "systemically
important" and therefore subject to greater oversight and tighter rules) do not affect the
likes of Wall Street banks such as Citigroup, JP MorganChase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs
and Morgan Stanley, all of which are still covered by the most stringent oversight provisions
of Dodd-Frank. But the increased asset threshold does exempt the U.S. bank holding companies of
systemically significant foreign banks: Deutsche Bank, UBS and Credit Suisse, all of whom were
implicated in multiple violations of both American and international banking laws in the
aftermath of the 2008 crisis.
Deutsche Bank alone has paid billions of dollars for its role in perpetuating mortgage
fraud,
money-laundering and interest rate manipulation (the LIBOR scandal), which ideally should
invite more regulatory scrutiny, not less. Instead, a new law ostensibly crafted to provide a
few "technical fixes" for Dodd-Frank is now reducing the regulatory oversight of a bank that
has been
cited in an IMF report as one of Germany's "global systemically important financial
institutions." Translating the couched-IMF-speak, the report suggests that Deutsche Bank on its
own has the potential to set off a new global contagion, given the scale of its derivatives
exposure. Not only too big to fail, but evidently too big to regulate properly either, aided
and abetted by members of a party who claim to be appalled at the level of corruption in the
Trump administration.
Another side-effect of raising the regulatory threshold to $250 billion in assets is that it
diminishes the chance of obtaining an early warning detection signal from somewhat smaller
financial institutions. As the experience of Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns illustrated,
smaller problems that remain hidden in the shadows can ultimately metastasize if left alone,
and become much bigger -- and more systemically dangerous -- later.
So when Senator Kaine nobly suggests
that he is merely providing relief for "small community banks and credit unions" in his home
state, or Jon Tester argues that he is only helping local banks suffering from Dodd-Frank's
regulatory overkill, both are being extraordinarily disingenuous. The reality is that
increasing the oversight threshold by 500 percent does not just help a few "small community
banks and credit unions" crawl out from a thicket of onerous and costly regulation. Even former
Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who favored some regulatory relief for community banks, felt that
$250 billion threshold
was excessive ly lax.
In fact, (
per the Americans for Financial Reform ), the increase "removes the most severe mandate for
25 of the 38 largest banks," which
together "account for over $3.5 trillion in banking assets, more than one-sixth of the U.S.
total." Additionally, as Pat Garofalo
writes : "The bill also includes an exemption from capital standards -- essentially the
amount of money that banks need to have on hand in case things go south -- that benefits some
big financial firms, and even more are lobbying to be included." In other words, this isn't
just George Bailey's friendly neighborhood bank that is getting some regulatory relief
here.
All of this newfound regulatory laxity comes at a time when many of the largest Wall Street
banks have again resurrected the same practices that almost destroyed them a decade ago. Bank
credit analyst Chris Whalen
observes : "The leader of this effort is none other than Citigroup (NYSE:C), which has
surpassed JP MorganChase (NYSE:JPM) to become the largest derivatives shop in the world. Citi
has embraced the most notorious product of the roaring 2000s, the synthetic collateralized debt
obligation or 'CDO' security, a product that fraudulently leverages the real world and
literally caused the bank to fail a decade ago."
Another example: Trump and his henchman, Mick Mulvaney, have also joined the big banks in
attacking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which by virtue of the Crapo act, will be
blocked "from collecting key data showing when and where families of color are being
overcharged for home loans or steered into predatory products."
Let's be honest here: even in its original form, Dodd-Frank was the bare minimum the
government could have done in the wake of the 2008 disaster. But lobbyists, paid-for
politicians and co-opted bank-friendly regulators have been busy "applying technical fixes" to
the bill virtually from the moment it was passed a decade ago. The upshot is that the
much-trumpeted Wall Street reform is a joke when compared to the comprehensive legislation
passed in the aftermath of the Great Depression (which set the stage for decades of relative
financial stability). Under Dodd, the banks are purportedly subject to "meaningful stress
tests" (
in the words of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell ), but the tests are neither
particularly stressful, nor do they adequately reflect today's twin dangers of off-balance
sheet leverage and the concentration of big banks' on-balance sheet assets in relatively
low-return loans.
What should have been done after the global financial crisis? Professors Eric Tymoigne and
Randall Wray
proposed the following :
"Any of the 'too big to fail' financial institutions that needed funding should have been
required to submit to Fed oversight. Top management should have been required to proffer
resignations as a condition of lending (with the Fed or Treasury holding the letters until
they could decide which should be accepted -- this is how Jessie Jones resolved the bank
crisis in the 1930s). Short-term lending against the best collateral should have been
provided, at penalty rates. A comprehensive 'cease and desist' order should have been
enforced to stop all trading, all lending, all asset sales, and all bonus payments until an
assessment of bank solvency could have been completed. The FDIC should have been called-in
(in the case of institutions with insured deposits), but in any case, the critically
undercapitalized institutions should have been dissolved according to existing law: at the
least cost to the Treasury and to avoid increasing concentration in the financial
sector."
A number of conclusions can be drawn from this whole sordid episode. An obvious one is that
our model of campaign finance is completely broken. While it is encouraging to see some
Democratic politicians increasingly adopting the Sanders model of fundraising,
swearing off large corporate donations , not enough are doing so. Democrats are united in
their concern pertaining to foreign threats that pose risks to the integrity of U.S. elections,
but the vigorous opposition to Vladimir Putin and the Russians isn't extended to the domestic
oligarchs destroying American democracy (and the economy) from within.
The whole history behind Senator Crapo's bill shows how quickly bank lobbyists can
routinely exploit their financial muscle to turn a seemingly innocuous bill into something
which pokes yet more holes into the Swiss Cheese-like rules already in place for Dodd. The
Baker's Dirty Dozen have accepted donations from Wall Street that not only constrain their
ability to implement genuine reforms in finance (and other areas) but also discourage the
mobilization of voters, who see this legislative horror show, and consequently opt out of
showing up to vote at elections because they know that the system is rigged and dominated by
corporate cash (making their votes irrelevant).
Ironically, no less a figure than Donald Trump exploited that voter cynicism in 2016. In
striking contrast to every other Republican presidential nominee since 1936, he attacked
globalization, free trade, international financiers, and Wall Street (and made effective
mockery of Hillary Clinton's ties to Goldman Sachs) and thereby mobilized blue-collar voters in
marginal Rust Belt states, giving him his path to the presidency. Of course, we now know that
this was all bait-and-switch politics, likely facilitated by forces outside the U.S., along
with large corporation donations from domestic elites. We've probably reached the endgame as
far as this "
investment approach to politics " as it disintegrates into a cesspool of corruption and
further financial fragility. It may take another crash before this problem is truly fixed.
In the meantime, this bipartisan subversion of Wall Street reform not only risks making the
next crisis at least as bad as 2008, but also reinforces the notion that both parties are
equally corrupt,
catalyzing the collapse of the American political order . In a further sick twist of fate,
the twin corrosive forces of "golden rule politics" (i.e., he who has the gold rules) and a
rapidly deflating "bubble-ized" economy could all come to a head under the watch of Donald the
Unready. But he won't own this disaster alone, thanks to the help of compromised Wall Street
Democrats.
Jen
Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan from my deep purple state of NH both, voted to allow the bill
to proceed. And of course my esteemed congress critter, Annie Kuster, did her bit in congress. Only 968
days until I can exact my retribution on Shaheen at the polls, first and foremost for her vote in favor of
fast track, but damned if she doesn't give me another good reason on almost a daily basis.
Like many high demand cults neoliberalism is a trap, from which it is very difficult to escape...
Notable quotes:
"... A large, open-border global free market would be left, not subject to popular control but managed by a globally dispersed, transnational one percent. And the whole process of making this happen would be camouflaged beneath the altruistic stylings of a benign humanitarianism. ..."
"... Globalists, as neoliberal capitalists are often called, also understood that democracy, defined by a smattering of individual rights and a voting booth, was the ideal vehicle to usher neoliberalism into the emerging world. Namely because democracy, as commonly practiced, makes no demands in the economic sphere. Socialism does. Communism does. These models directly address ownership of the means of production. Not so democratic capitalism. This permits the globalists to continue to own the means of production while proclaiming human rights triumphant in nations where interventions are staged. ..."
"... The enduring lie is that there is no democracy without economic democracy. ..."
This 'Washington Consensus' is the false promise promoted by the West. The reality is quite
different. The crux of neoliberalism is to eliminate democratic government by downsizing,
privatizing, and deregulating it. Proponents of neoliberalism recognize that the state is the
last bulwark of protection for the common people against the predations of capital. Remove the
state and they'll be left defenseless .
Think about it. Deregulation eliminates the laws. Downsizing eliminates departments and their
funding. Privatizing eliminates the very purpose of the state by having the private sector take
over its traditional responsibilities.
Ultimately, nation-states would dissolve except perhaps for armies and tax systems. A large, open-border global free
market would be left, not subject to popular control but managed by a globally dispersed, transnational one percent. And the
whole process of making this happen would be camouflaged beneath the altruistic stylings of a benign humanitarianism.
Globalists, as neoliberal capitalists are often called, also understood that democracy, defined
by a smattering of individual rights and a voting booth, was the ideal vehicle to usher
neoliberalism into the emerging world. Namely because democracy, as commonly practiced, makes
no demands in the economic sphere. Socialism does. Communism does. These models directly
address ownership of the means of production. Not so democratic capitalism. This permits the
globalists to continue to own the means of production while proclaiming human rights triumphant
in nations where interventions are staged.
The enduring lie is that there is no democracy
without economic democracy.
What matters to the one percent and the media conglomerates that disseminate their worldview is
that the official definitions are accepted by the masses. The real effects need never be known.
The neoliberal ideology (theory) thus conceals the neoliberal reality (practice). And for the
masses to accept it, it must be mass produced. Then it becomes more or less invisible by virtue
of its universality.
"... In a short span of time in the 1970s, dozens of think tanks were established across the western world and billions of dollars were spent proselytizing the tenets of the Powell Memo in 1971, which galvanized a counter-revolution to the liberal upswing of the Sixties. The neoliberal economic model of deregulation, downsizing, and privatization was preached by the Reagan-Thatcher junta, liberalized by the Clinton regime, temporarily given a bad name by the unhinged Bush administration, and saved by telegenic restoration of the Obama years. ..."
"... Today think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the Brookings Institute, Stratfor, Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Council on Foreign Relations, Carnegie Endowment, the Open Society Foundation, and the Atlantic Council, among many others, funnel millions of dollars in donations into cementing neoliberal attitudes in the American mind. ..."
"... The ideological assumptions, which serve to justify what you could call neocolonial tactics, are relatively clear: the rights of the individual to be free of overreach from monolithic institutions like the state. Activist governments are inherently inefficient and lead directly to totalitarianism. Markets must be free and individuals must be free to act in those markets. People must be free to choose, both politically and commercially, in the voting booth and at the cash register. ..."
"... This conception of markets and individuals is most often formulated as "free-market democracy," a misleading conceit that conflates individual freedom with the economic freedom of capital to exploit labor. So when it comes to foreign relations, American and western aid would only be given on the condition that the borrowers accepted the tenets of an (highly manipulable) electoral system and vowed to establish the institutions and legal structures required to fully realize a western market economy. ..."
In Christopher Nolan's captivating and visually dazzling film Inception, a practitioner of
psychic corporate espionage must plant and idea inside a CEO's head. The process is called
inception, and it represents the frontier of corporate influence, in which mind spies no longer
just "extract" ideas from the dreams of others, but seed useful ideas in a target's
subconscious.
Inception is a well-crafted piece of futuristic sci-fi drama, but some of the ideas it
imparts are already deeply embedded in the American subconscious.
The notion of inception, of hatching an idea in the mind of a man or woman without his or
her knowledge, is the kernel of propaganda, a black art practiced in the States since the First
World War. Today we live beneath an invisible cultural hegemony, a set of ideas implanted in
the mass mind by the U.S. state and its corporate media over decades. Invisibility seems to
happen when something is either obscure or ubiquitous. In a propaganda system, an overarching
objective is to render the messaging invisible by universalizing it within the culture.
Difference is known by contrast. If there are no contrasting views in your field of vision,
it's easier to accept the ubiquitous explanation. The good news is that the ideology is
well-known to some who have, for one lucky reason or another, found themselves outside the
hegemonic field and are thus able to contrast the dominant worldview with alternative opinions.
On the left, the ruling ideology might be described as neoliberalism, a particularly vicious
form of imperial capitalism that, as would be expected, is camouflaged in the lineaments of
humanitarian aid and succor.
Inception 1971
In a short span of time in the 1970s, dozens of think tanks were established across the
western world and billions of dollars were spent proselytizing the tenets of the Powell
Memo in 1971, which galvanized a counter-revolution to the liberal upswing of the Sixties.
The neoliberal economic model of deregulation, downsizing, and privatization was preached by
the Reagan-Thatcher junta, liberalized by the Clinton regime, temporarily given a bad name by
the unhinged Bush administration, and saved by telegenic restoration of the Obama years.
The
ideology that underlay the
model saturated academia, notably at the University of Chicago, and the mainstream media,
principally at The New York Times. Since then it has trickled down to the general populace, to
whom it now feels second nature.
Today think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the Brookings
Institute, Stratfor, Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Council on Foreign
Relations, Carnegie Endowment, the Open Society Foundation, and the Atlantic Council, among
many others, funnel millions of dollars in donations into cementing neoliberal attitudes in the
American mind.
The ideological assumptions, which serve to justify what you could call neocolonial tactics,
are relatively clear: the rights of the individual to be free of overreach from monolithic
institutions like the state. Activist governments are inherently inefficient and lead directly
to totalitarianism. Markets must be free and individuals must be free to act in those markets.
People must be free to choose, both politically and commercially, in the voting booth and at
the cash register.
This conception of markets and individuals is most often formulated as
"free-market democracy," a misleading conceit that conflates individual freedom with the
economic freedom of capital to exploit labor. So when it comes to foreign relations, American
and western aid would only be given on the condition that the borrowers accepted the tenets of
an (highly manipulable) electoral system and vowed to establish the institutions and legal
structures required to fully realize a western market economy.
These demands were supplemented
with notions of the individual right to be free of oppression, some fine rhetoric about women
and minorities, and somewhat more quietly, a judicial understanding that corporations were
people, too. Together, an unshackled economy and an unfettered populace, newly equipped with
individual rights, would produce the same flourishing and nourishing demos of mid-century
America that had been the envy of humanity.
Guardian is just an organ of regime propaganda like the BBC...
Notable quotes:
"... Now The Guardian is just an organ of regime propaganda like the BBC (thank God for OffGuardian) and here is the island nation AGAIN asserting its dominance over the whole world, but this time on behalf of his brawnier brother, the EUSE, aka Exceptional US Empire. ..."
"... But somewhere along the time beginning with Clinton, Americans didn't worry their pretty little heads about nuclear war or American wars on everybody anywhere any longer so long as it didn't disturb their creature comforts and shopping and lattes by coming to the homeland. ..."
"... The Nuclear Freeze movement was, after all, a direct response to Reagan's "evil empire" military buildup in the 1980s and then voila he and Gorbachev negotiated away a whole class of nuclear weapons and Old Bush promised Nato wouldn't expand. Hope. Then that sneaky little bastard Clinton started expanding Nato on behalf of the Pentagon / CKIA / NSA / military /congressional industrial complex. ..."
Cleary the Guardian was swallowed up by England's fascist regime controlled by the City of
London when it surrendered its hard drives to the regime for examination and/or destruction
in the wake of the Snowden revelations.
The Guardian ownerships also sold their souls -- although the Guardian had already been in
decline before they nabbed Glenn Greenwald. When he left, the Guardian lost ALL presumptive
credibility.
Now The Guardian is just an organ of regime propaganda like the BBC (thank God for
OffGuardian) and here is the island nation AGAIN asserting its dominance over the whole
world, but this time on behalf of his brawnier brother, the EUSE, aka Exceptional US
Empire.
One wonders how much longer the Russians will put up with this now that it is CLEAR that
-- for the first time ever -- the Russians have complete military and nuclear superiority
over "The West."
I'll bet Putin won't invade Ukraine, Germany, France, Brussels and England from the North
and from the sea in the wintertime.
The Big Problem Is That Americans are afraid -- frightened -- but they are NOT afraid or
frightened of a particular thing -- it is a generic fright. So they are no longer afraid of
nuclear war. Trotsky said America was the strongest nation but also the most terrified' and
nothing has changed except military and nuclear superiority along with economic clout has
shifted to Russia and China. Were Americans afraid of nuclear war -- or say, of an invasion
from Saskatchewan or Tamaulipas -- there might be hope.
But somewhere along the time beginning with Clinton, Americans didn't worry their pretty
little heads about nuclear war or American wars on everybody anywhere any longer so long as
it didn't disturb their creature comforts and shopping and lattes by coming to the homeland.
The Nuclear Freeze movement was, after all, a direct response to Reagan's "evil empire"
military buildup in the 1980s and then voila he and Gorbachev negotiated away a whole class
of nuclear weapons and Old Bush promised Nato wouldn't expand. Hope. Then that sneaky little
bastard Clinton started expanding Nato on behalf of the Pentagon / CKIA / NSA / military
/congressional industrial complex.
Are powerful intelligence agencies compatible even with limited neoliberal democracy, or
democracy for top 10 or 1%?
Notable quotes:
"... I recall during the George II administration someone in congress advocating for he return of debtor's prisons during the 'debat' over ending access to bankruptcy ..."
"... Soros, like the Koch brothers, heads an organization. He has lots of "people" who do what he demands of them. ..."
"... Let's give these guys (and gals, too, let's not forget the Pritzkers and DeVoses and the Walton Family, just among us Norte Americanos) full credit for all the hard work they are putting in, and money too, of course, to buy a world the way they want it -- one which us mopes have only slave roles to play... ..."
You have a good point, but I often think that, a the machinery of surveillance and repression
becomes so well oiled and refined, the ruling oligarchs will soon stop even paying lip
service to 'American workers', or the "American middle class" and go full authoritarian. Karl
Rove's dream to return the economy to the late 19th Century standard.
The Clintonoid project seems set on taking it to the late 16th century. Probably with a
return of chattel slavery. I recall during the George II administration someone in congress
advocating for he return of debtor's prisons during the 'debat' over ending access to
bankruptcy
Soros, like the Koch brothers, heads an organization. He has lots of "people" who do what he
demands of them.
Do you really contend that Soros and the Koch brothers, and people like Adelson, aren't busily "undermining American democracy," whatever that is, via their
organizations (like ALEC and such) in favor of their oligarchic kleptocratic interests, and
going at it 24/7?
The phrase "reductio ad absurdam" comes to mind, for some reason...
Let's give these guys (and gals, too, let's not forget the Pritzkers and DeVoses and the
Walton Family, just among us Norte Americanos) full credit for all the hard work they are
putting in, and money too, of course, to buy a world the way they want it -- one which us
mopes have only slave roles to play...
Loss of legitimacy of neoliberal elite reminds loss of legitimacy of Nomenklatura in the USSR.
This descent "into tribalism due to the loss of jobs, the drug epidemic and environmental exploitation " also reminds epidemic
of alcoholism due to lack of persepdtives both in job environment and housing crisis, where young families did not
have a space to live in the USSR.
The logical end on the US empire might well be the USSR style crisis. which might eventually lead to the disintegration of the country.
Notable quotes:
"... NBC News daily has Kumbaya propaganda to facilitate importing of cheap labor and goods. But, what good is a service economy if there is no service? Just like Soviet propaganda, corporate media today is in service of the oligarch owners and sold out party elite. It tries to avoid the truth. Although, NBC did report on the astronomical rise in cost of ambulance service. A couple thousand dollars for mile and half trip to the hospital. They said it was due to the 2008 recession and the cutting of local volunteer emergency services to save tax money. ..."
"... I agree the Democrats shot themselves in the foot because they are unconcerned for the bottom 80% except for their identity issues. They serve their paymasters. ..."
"... The recent Italian election documents the complete collapse of left leaning parties that ignored the plight of the workers in the West. To me, to win, the left in America must write off student debt, implement Medicare for All, end the forever wars and tax George Soros, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Pierre Omidyar, the Koch Brothers and the Walton Family to pay for it. To work, criminal bankers need to be jailed and corporate boards required to manage for long term profits that benefit society not just quarterly and themselves only. ..."
Have you seen the movie "Wind River" yet? It is the best depiction I've seen of the USA
descending into tribalism due to the loss of jobs, the drug epidemic and environmental
exploitation.
NBC News daily has Kumbaya propaganda to facilitate importing of cheap labor and
goods. But, what good is a service economy if there is no service? Just like Soviet
propaganda, corporate media today is in service of the oligarch owners and sold out party
elite. It tries to avoid the truth. Although, NBC did report on the astronomical rise in cost
of ambulance service. A couple thousand dollars for mile and half trip to the hospital. They
said it was due to the 2008 recession and the cutting of local volunteer emergency services
to save tax money.
Rather than tax the wealthy and corporations, the middle class is going into debt to pay
for education, medical bills, and $40 Northern Virginia one-way tolls. Federal taxes on the
middle class support the endless wars.
I agree the Democrats shot themselves in the foot because they are unconcerned for the
bottom 80% except for their identity issues. They serve their paymasters.
The recent Italian election documents the complete collapse of left leaning parties
that ignored the plight of the workers in the West. To me, to win, the left in America must
write off student debt, implement Medicare for All, end the forever wars and tax George
Soros, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Pierre Omidyar, the Koch Brothers and the
Walton Family to pay for it. To work, criminal bankers need to be jailed and corporate boards
required to manage for long term profits that benefit society not just quarterly and
themselves only.
"... the four largest banks in America are on average 80% bigger today than they were before we bailed them out because they were "too big to fail". Incredibly, the six largest banks in America have over 10 trillion dollars in assets, equivalent to 54% of the GDP of this nation . This is wealth, this is power, this is who owns America. ..."
"... Very conservative, anti-regulatory people hold the White House and key positions in the House and the Senate, and the first thing the industry does is gut regulation. Why? Because it makes the CEOs so wealthy to run these frauds and predation. It's not necessarily good for the banking industry, but it is extremely good for the most senior leaders and they are the ones, of course, who hire and fire the lawyers and the lobbyists, and effectively hire and fire key members of Congress. ..."
"... Apparently, our memories are indeed so short that we have learned nothing from the 2008 Wall Street crash. Bernie Sanders (and probably Elizabeth Warren to some extend), are left alone again to fight against the Wall Street mafia because, apparently, the rest of the US political class has been bought from it. ..."
The six largest banks in America have over 10 trillion dollars in assets,
equivalent to 54% of the GDP of this nation. This is wealth, this is power, this is who owns
America.
Ten years after the big crash of 2007-08, caused by the Wall Street mafia, sending waves of
financial destruction around the globe, the awful Trump administration that literally put the
Goldman Sachs banksters in charge of the US economy, wants to reset the clock bomb of another
financial disaster by deregulating the financial sector! And guess what: the corporate
Democrats followed again!
Putting aside that Russiagate fiasco, Bernie Sanders was one more time the only voice of
resistance against the Wall Street mafia in a hypnotized by the banking-corporate money US
senate.
As Bernie stated:
Just ten years ago, as a result of greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street,
this country was plunged into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The official unemployment rate soared up to 10% and the real unemployment rate jumped to over
17%. At the height of the financial crisis more than 27 million Americans were unemployed,
underemployed or stopped working altogether because they could not find employment. 15 million
families - as a result of that financial crisis - lost their homes to foreclosure, as more and
more people could not afford to pay their mortgages. As a result of the illegal behavior of
Wall Street, American households lost over 13 trillion dollars in savings. That is what Wall
Street did 10 years ago.
Believe it or not - and of course we are not going to hear any discussion of this at all -- the four largest banks in America are on average 80% bigger today than they were before we
bailed them out because they were "too big to fail". Incredibly, the six largest banks in
America have over 10 trillion dollars in assets, equivalent to 54% of the GDP of this
nation . This is wealth, this is power, this is who owns America.
If any of these financial institutions were to get into a financial trouble again, there is no
doubt that, once again, the taxpayers of this country will be asked to bail them out. Except
this time, the bail out might even be larger than it was in 2008.
Bernie is right, the facts are all there, except that, again, he is the only one who speaks
about it.
Recall that according to chapter 20 conclusions of the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, "As a result of the rescues and consolidation of financial institutions through failures
and mergers during the crisis, the U.S. financial sector is now more concentrated than ever in
the hands of a few very large, systemically significant institutions."
Recall
also that in December 1, 2010, the Fed was forced to release details of 21,000 funding
transactions it made during the financial crisis, naming names and dollar amounts. Disclosure
was due to a provision sparked by Bernie Sanders. The voluminous data dump from the notoriously
secret Fed shows just how deeply the Federal Reserve stepped into the shoes of Wall Street and,
as the crisis grew and the normal channels of lending froze, the Fed effectively replaced Wall
Street and money centers banks in terms of financing. The Fed has thus far reported, without
even disclosing specifics of its lending from its discount window, that it supplied, in
total, more than $9 trillion to Wall Street firms, commercial banks, foreign banks,
corporations and some highly questionable off balance sheet entities. (Much smaller amounts
were outstanding at any one time.)
Bill Black, Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, states:
In the savings loan debacle, a Nobel Laureate in Economics, George Akerlof and Paul Romer, who
until recently was Chief Economist to the World Bank, wrote that economists didn't realize -
because they lacked any theory of fraud - that deregulation was bound to create widespread
fraud and a crisis. Now, we know better if we learn the lessons of this crisis, we need not
recreate it.
Very conservative, anti-regulatory people hold the White House and key positions in the House
and the Senate, and the first thing the industry does is gut regulation. Why? Because it makes
the CEOs so wealthy to run these frauds and predation. It's not necessarily good for the
banking industry, but it is extremely good for the most senior leaders and they are the ones,
of course, who hire and fire the lawyers and the lobbyists, and effectively hire and fire key
members of Congress.
Apparently, our memories are indeed so short that we have learned nothing from the 2008 Wall
Street crash. Bernie Sanders (and probably Elizabeth Warren to some extend), are left alone
again to fight against the Wall Street mafia because, apparently, the rest of the US political
class has been bought from it.
"... ...Representative institutions no longer represent voters. Instead, they have been short-circuited, steadily corrupted by an institutionalized system of bribery that renders them responsive to powerful interest groups whose constituencies are the major corporations and wealthiest Americans. The courts, in turn, when they are not increasingly handmaidens of corporate power, are consistently deferential to the claims of national security. Elections have become heavily subsidized non-events that typically attract at best merely half of an electorate whose information about foreign and domestic politics is filtered through corporate-dominated media. Citizens are manipulated into a nervous state by the media's reports of rampant crime and terrorist networks, by thinly veiled threats of the Attorney General and by their own fears about unemployment. ..."
"Empire" and "superpower" accurately symbolize the projection of American power abroad, but
for that reason they obscure the internal consequences. Consider how odd it would sound if we
were to refer to "the Constitution of the American Empire" or "superpower democracy." The
reason they ring false is that "constitution" signifies limitations on power, while "democracy"
commonly refers to the active involvement of citizens with their government and the
responsiveness of government to its citizens.
For their part, "empire" and "superpower" stand for the surpassing of limits and the
dwarfing of the citizenry. The increasing power of the state and the declining power of
institutions intended to control it has been in the making for some time. The party system is a
notorious example.
...Representative institutions no longer represent voters. Instead, they have been
short-circuited, steadily corrupted by an institutionalized system of bribery that renders them
responsive to powerful interest groups whose constituencies are the major corporations and
wealthiest Americans. The courts, in turn, when they are not increasingly handmaidens of
corporate power, are consistently deferential to the claims of national security. Elections
have become heavily subsidized non-events that typically attract at best merely half of an
electorate whose information about foreign and domestic politics is filtered through
corporate-dominated media. Citizens are manipulated into a nervous state by the media's reports
of rampant crime and terrorist networks, by thinly veiled threats of the Attorney General and
by their own fears about unemployment.
What is crucially important here is not only the expansion of governmental power but the
inevitable discrediting of constitutional limitations and institutional processes that
discourages the citizenry and leaves them politically apathetic.
In the United States, however, it has been apparent for decades that
corporate power has become so predominant in the political establishment, particularly in the
Republican Party
...At the same time, it is corporate power, as the representative of the dynamic of
capitalism and of the ever-expanding power made available by the integration of science and
technology with the structure of capitalism, that produces the totalizing drive
.. a pervasive atmosphere of fear abetted by a corporate economy of ruthless downsizing,
withdrawal or reduction of pension and health benefits; a corporate political system that
relentlessly threatens to privatize Social Security and the modest health benefits available,
especially to the poor. With such instrumentalities for promoting uncertainty and dependence,
it is almost overkill for inverted totalitarianism to employ a system of criminal justice that
is punitive in the extreme, relishes the death penalty and is consistently biased against the
powerless.
Thus the elements are in place: a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both
compliant and repressive, a party system in which one party, whether in opposition or in the
majority, is bent upon reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favor a ruling
class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens
with a sense of helplessness and political despair, and, at the same time, keeping the middle
classes dangling between fear of unemployment and expectations of fantastic rewards once the
new economy recovers.
That scheme is abetted by a sycophantic and increasingly concentrated media; by the
integration of universities with their corporate benefactors; by a propaganda machine
institutionalized in well-funded think tanks and conservative foundations; by the increasingly
closer cooperation between local police and national law enforcement agencies aimed at
identifying terrorists, suspicious aliens and domestic dissidents.
What is at stake, then, is nothing less than the attempted transformation of a tolerably
free society into a variant of the extreme regimes of the past century. In that context, the
national elections of 2004 represent a crisis in its original meaning, a turning point. The
question for citizens is: Which way?
Sheldon Wolin Sheldon Wolin is the
author, most recently, of Alexis de Tocqueville: Man Between Two Worlds (Princeton). A
new edition of his book Politics and Vision is forthcoming. He is professor emeritus of
politics at Princeton University.
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Is it so difficult to understand that there are strong incentives to create the "Russia
Threat" to hide the crisis of neoliberalism in the USA. The current can of political worms
and infighting in Washington, DC between POTUS and intelligence agencies factions supporting
anti-trump color revolution clearly demonstrate that this crisis is systemic in nature. In
this sense, we can talk about the transformation of the US political system into something
new.
One feature of this new system is that the US foreign policy now is influenced, if not
controlled by intelligence agencies. The latter also proved to be capable of acting as the
kingmakers in the US Presidential elections (this time with side effects: derailing Sanders
eventually led to the election of Trump; that's why efforts to depose Trump commenced
immediately.)
A large part of the US elite is willing to create the situation of balancing on the edge
of nuclear war because it allows them to swipe the dirt under the carpet and unite the nation
on bogus premises, suppressing the crisis of confidence in the neoliberal elite.
Neo-McCarthyism witch hunt serves exactly this purpose.
Also now it is clear that the intelligence agencies and Pentagon, play active, and maybe
even decisive part in determining the US foreign policy, US population and elected POTUS be
damned.
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and his staff showed this new arrangement in Syria in July
2017. And the fact that he was not fired on the spot might well signify the change in
political power between the "deep state" and the "surface state". With the latter one step
closer to being just a Potemkin Village.
So now we are supposed to believe unquestioningly the word of torturers, perjurers and
entrapment artists, all talking about alleged evidence that we are not allowed to see?
Did you learn nothing from the "Iraqi WMD" fiasco or the "ZOMG! Assad gassed his own
peoples ZOMG!" debacle?
Funny how in each of these instances, the intelligence community's lies just happened to
coincide with the agenda of empire.
It will be interesting to see why the interviewing FBI Agents to whom Flynn has admitted to
the Mueller Op telling a lie, or lies, did not avail Flynn the opportunity of the 'lie
circumstantial." From what I think I know about the case, the answers to the questions put to
Flynn were already known to the Agents from wire overhears; and their substance did not
constitute a crime in any case. Why would not the Agents interviewing Flynn have said "If
you're telling me this, we have reason to think that you're mistaken?" If I'm correct in my
understanding, in my opinion, the Agents conducted themselves in a very chickenshit fashion
and I would suspect an Agenda was in play.
Making a more general observation regarding the Mueller Op, it seems to me that not the
least reprehensible effect of its existence is that de facto it has usurped the authority of
the White House and the State Department to conduct Foreign Policy vis a vis Russia. For
example, I doubt very much whether Mueller cleared his ridiculous indictment relating to the
Russian troll farm, a requirement that at one time would have been SOP for any FBI Office or
USAtty Office bringing an indictment of this kind. And even if Mueller did, what would, what
could the WH or State response have been given the mishapen political climate and the track
record of outrageous leaking that so far have gone on without consequence to the leaker.
So the net effect is that Mueller's office is conducting our Russian foreign policy.
Authority without either responsibility or expertise is not a desirable thing when it comes
to forging correct relations with a nuclear power.
"... he Dems disgust me with their neo-McCarthyism and the Repubs disgust me because of the way they are playing out their hand right now as well. Games within corrupt games, and yet normal behavior especially in waning empires (or other types of polities, including powerful int'l corporations). ..."
"... Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs and Steel is titled "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" and it used to be available online but my old link is dead and I couldn't find a new one. But a basic definition should suffice: "Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, is a form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of the wider population, often without pretense of honest service." I have no idea how one turns this around and I doubt it's even possible. ..."
"... The Real Reason Establishment Frauds Hate Trump and Obsess About Russia https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/02/20/the-real-reason-establishment-frauds-hate-trump-and-obsess-about-russia/ ..."
"... Blaming Russia for all the nation's problems serves several key purposes for various defenders of the status quo. For discredited neocons and neoliberals who never met a failed war based on lies they didn't support, it provides an opportunity to rehabilitate their torched reputations by masquerading as fierce patriots against the latest existential enemy. Similarly, for those who lived in denial about who Obama really was for eight years, latching on to the Russia narrative allows them to reassure themselves that everything really was fine before Trump and Russia came along and ruined the party. ..."
jsn @16 & 40, in complete agreement with you. Great comments! T he Dems disgust me
with their neo-McCarthyism and the Repubs disgust me because of the way they are playing out
their hand right now as well. Games within corrupt games, and yet normal behavior especially in
waning empires (or other types of polities, including powerful int'l corporations).
Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs and Steel is titled "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" and
it used to be available online but my old link is dead and I couldn't find a new one. But a
basic definition should suffice: "Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, is a
form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the
personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of the
wider population, often without pretense of honest service." I have no idea how one turns this
around and I doubt it's even possible.
Back when I used to subscribe to STRATFOR, founder George Friedman always made a point of
evaluating the elites of whatever country he was analyzing and how they operated amongst
themselves and relative to the people and how effective they were or were not in governing a
country. But he never did that for the US. I would have paid extra for that report! But of
course he could not stay in business if he did such a thing as those people are his
clients.
I think Mike Krieger over at Liberty Blitzkrieg nails it from another perspective with this
post:
Blaming Russia for all the nation's problems serves several key purposes for various
defenders of the status quo. For discredited neocons and neoliberals who never met a failed war
based on lies they didn't support, it provides an opportunity to rehabilitate their torched
reputations by masquerading as fierce patriots against the latest existential enemy. Similarly,
for those who lived in denial about who Obama really was for eight years, latching on to the
Russia narrative allows them to reassure themselves that everything really was fine before
Trump and Russia came along and ruined the party.
By throwing every problem in Putin's lap, the entrenched bipartisan status quo can tell
themselves (and everybody else) that it wasn't really them and their policies that voters
rejected in 2016, rather, the American public was tricked by cunning, nefarious Russians.
Ridiculous for sure, but never underestimate the instinctive human desire to deny
accountability for one's own failures. It's always easier to blame than to accept
responsibility.
That said, there's a much bigger game afoot beyond the motivations of individuals looking to
save face. The main reason much of the highest echelons of American power are united against
Trump has nothing to do with his actual policies. Instead, they're terrified that -- unlike
Obama -- he's a really bad salesman for empire. This sort of Presidential instability threatens
the continuance of their well oiled and exceedingly corrupt gravy train. Hillary Clinton was a
sure thing, Donald Trump remains an unpredictable wildcard.
... Obama said all the right things while methodically doing the bidding of oligarchy. He
captured the imagination of millions, if not billions, around the world with his soaring
rhetoric, yet rarely skipped a beat when it came to the advancement of imperial policies. He
made bailing out Wall Street, droning civilians and cracking down on journalists seem
progressive. He said one thing, did another, and people ate it up. This is an extraordinarily
valuable quality when it comes to a vicious and unelected deep state that wants to keep a
corrupt empire together.
Trump has the exact opposite effect. Sure, he also frequently says one thing and then does
another, but he doesn't provide the same feel good quality to empire that Obama did. He's
simply not the warm and fuzzy salesman for oligarchy and empire Obama was, thus his inability
to sugarcoat state-sanctioned murder forces a lot of people to confront the uncomfortable
hypocrisies in our society that many would prefer not to admit.
------------
I can't stand Kushner's smirky face and got a good chuckle from this prince's fall as I am
not a fan of his passion for Israel. But I don't think he's a stupid idiot either. He's
probably very smart in business, but he seems to have no feel for politics. Trump is much
better at it than Kushner. Of course they are going after Kushner as a way to attack and
disadvantage Trump. Politics is a form of warfare after all.
My take is that Trump survives but mostly contained by the Borg
The Iron Law of Oligarchy and the Iron Law of Institutions.
All institutions are corruptible and all institutions eventually will be corrupted, because institutions = power and power
is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats.
Some corollaries of this are:
The people who want power the most are the most inclined to abuse that power.
The principal function of any institution is to keep sociopaths out of power as much as possible for as long as possible.
There are no political or economic systems that work everywhere or at all times. Rather, a system works in a given time
and place, to the extent that they further the above principles.
The US Power Elite ... would be rightfully called the „Deep State" of the USA (
http://tinyurl.com/ho2nz87
).
And this Deep State has become more and more ruthless over the time. They have brought
nightmares over the Southern Hemisphere by installing brutal dictatorships ( http://tinyurl.com/kkpvcf7 ) in their
interest and waging bloody colonial wars, in the last one and a half decades especially with
their „War on Terror" ( http://tinyurl.com/nrxxej5 ).
One of their aims is to prevent countries of Africa, Latin America, Near and Middle East and
Southern Asia from choosing their trade partners freely and from making use of their resources
and industrialize, since that would mean a division of resources and allowing them their part
of „consuming ecologic Earth capacity".
Thank you Catte for reading Mark Galeotti's article so we didn't have to. Perfect example of
the neocon thinking dominant among the USA and UK elites.
Notable quotes:
"... He clearly lives in that well-populated Washington/Langley logic-free dream zone where Russia is both a dangerous rogue state with enough reach to "hack" the US election and "attack" America, and a silly little rusty nowhere country to be mocked and patronised into oblivion. ..."
"... A perfect example of Orwell's doublethink: "The act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct." ..."
"... But Galeotti has a job to do, which, it appears, he is perfectly suited to doing, and that job is channel state propaganda in accordance with the old American NSC 68 and the doctrinal system that that document represents. ..."
"... The entire American-led Corporatocracy is held captive to the outlook and doctrinal system stemming from that irrational anti-communist, Cold War document. As Chomsky said, the mafia don decides what the policies will be. ..."
He clearly lives in that well-populated Washington/Langley logic-free dream zone where
Russia is both a dangerous rogue state with enough reach to "hack" the US election and
"attack" America, and a silly little rusty nowhere country to be mocked and patronised into
oblivion.
A perfect example of Orwell's doublethink: "The act of simultaneously accepting two
mutually contradictory beliefs as correct."
"The tame audience dutifully applauded" – Mark Galeotti
That small phrase told me a lot. He's complaining about an audience! They sat and listened
politely like any other audience and applauded repeatedly. When Putin got into the section of
his address dealing with advanced military weapons, You could see the change in audience
members' demeanor. They couldn't contain themselves, relatively speaking. They were ecstatic.
I personally found that alarming, but understandable.
People all over the the world saw it that address. So for Galeotti to try to make
something out of nothing here, makes him look pathetic to a lot of rational, informed people.
Additionally, It appears that Mark was personally greatly annoyed by the particularly warm
reception Putin's remarks about the weaponry got from his audience. One wouldn't call the
audience, during that part of the address, one that "dutifully" applauded.
The world, especially outside the US, knows why the Russian audience appreciated the fact
that Russia under Putin did not do 'nothing' about Mr Galeotti's hero, uncle Sam, the bully.
They were relieved to learn that after the provocations they had all endured, some of which
they just heard Putin list, his public answer wasn't just "ouch." Russia – whose
soldiers won WWII for everyone, despite the fact that the Nazi bug that was squashed and
splattered ended up coming to life wherever its goo landed – has been so disrespected
and threatened by almost the entire developed world, that it was only natural that that
audience for a brief moment felt some pride in Putin's bold talk. But racist, irrational
haters of Russia don't want to see any of that. As well, that audience no doubt rationally
felt that here was some hope, in the reality that Putin here publically revealed, that the
racist warmongers in centers of power throughout the West might just back off. Would Galeotti
have the light to see that?
But Galeotti has a job to do, which, it appears, he is perfectly suited to doing, and that
job is channel state propaganda in accordance with the old American NSC 68 and the doctrinal
system that that document represents.
The entire American-led Corporatocracy is held captive
to the outlook and doctrinal system stemming from that irrational anti-communist, Cold War
document. As Chomsky said, the mafia don decides what the policies will be.
There has never been a truly communist society, and likely never will be. The paradox
is that the PRC is now being called a capitalist society when all the major banks are
state owned, as are the largest industries. What is called capitalism in the PRC would be
called communism or socialism if such a system were proposed here in the US. Perhaps it
makes it easier for our capitalists to say they are doing business with fellow
capitalists in the PRC, rather than admit they are hand in glove with state owned
enterprises over there. When was the last time you ever heard anyone in either business
or our government refer to that country by its proper name, The People's Republic of
China, preferring instead the more acceptable "China"? I'll note here that the largest
tenant in Trump Tower is a state owned bank of the PRC; what it comes down to is those at
the top, regardless of the system, are prisoners of human nature, as are we all, and thus
susceptible to plain old fashioned greed and massaging of the ego. People are not equal
in either ability or ambition and however you term the system we live under, those most
able and ambitious will game the system to their benefit.
Like the late USSR, China has become state capitalist, along with tolerating private
oligarchs. Charles Bettelheim did a 2-volme work called "Class Struggles in the USSR," in
which he posits that under Stalin the USSR was becoming state capitalist--exploiting
workers in the name of the socialist state.
What's in a name? If some call it state capitalism in the PRC, while the same thing
would be labeled socialism or communism if practiced here by the very same people who
have advocated and done trade with the PRC, who cares? No system will do anything but
exploit its workers, if only by varying degrees, and there will be a ruling class, no
matter the country or how it wishes to define itself; these ruling classes in their
respective countries have more in common with each other than with the commoners they
purport to lead.
I know a Polish woman, who, when I remarked about the fall of communism in eastern
Europe, said it would make little difference, the former heads of the communist parties
would simply take over the best state industries and still be in charge. Perhaps she was
a bit cynical, but I think she's more right than wrong.
Beyond all that, I find it peculiar that even as we continue to pursue business with
the PRC, the very political elite who advocated opening up trade with them have no
problem simultaneously citing that country as a force that must be countered, especially
militarily, the one area our political elite always fall back on to "protect" our
country, such warnings coincidentally funneling yet more money to an already bloated
MIC.
The BS of our leaders is impossible to exaggerate. You might remember that Barack
Obama, while touting the need for the TPP said it was needed to counter the growing power
of the PRC, while at the same time he was involved in behind the scenes negotiations with
the PRC on the China BIT, Bilateral Investment Treaty, that would open up both our
countries to areas of investment currently off limits to each other.
I graduated from the University of Vietnam in 1968, and if there's one thing I learned
over there, it's that you cannot possibly fathom the level of cynicism in anyone in a
position of power.
In order to build Market Economy-Capitalism, You need Capital.
China developed mostly, because the huge amount of Investment by American
Corporations.
The US Government gave also preferred trading Status to China.
I believe China accepted Political conditions, in order to receive that support from
the Empire, for example: not to confront the US at the UN.
Russia never got that help from the US. I believe this is also an strategy to weakening
Russia, who is the major US foe since WWII
"... So, you and I don't agree on a lot of issues but I think we share the same concern about this story, and that is that American journalists are being manipulated for whatever reason by the intelligence community in the United States, and I'm wondering why after years of having this happen to American journalists, they are allowing this to happen again. ..."
"... Well, that's the thing I would refrain that a little bit. I don't actually think so much that journalists are the victims in the sense of that formulation that they're being manipulated. I think at best what you can say for them is they are willingly and eagerly being manipulated. ..."
"... Because what you see is over and over they publish really inflammatory stories that turn out to be totally false and what happens in those cases? Nothing. They get enormous benefits when they publish recklessly. They get applause on social media from their peers, they get zillions of re-tweets, huge amounts of traffic, they end up on TV. They get applauded across the spectrum because people are so giddy and eager to hear more about this Russia and Trump story. ..."
Tucker
Carlson interviews Green Greenwald of The Intercept about journalists "willingly" being
taken advantage of by the intelligence community on stories about Russia to reap the benefits,
even when they know what they are publishing is "totally false."
From Tuesday's broadcast of Tucker Carlson Tonight on the FOX News Channel:
TUCKER CARLSON: So, Glenn, just to get to the facts of this story, it is conclusively shown
that the story about the 21 voting systems being hacked is untrue, correct?
GLENN GREENWALD, JOURNALIST: It's false in two ways, one is that several of the states
included in the list, such as Wisconsin, California, and Texas, said that the websites that
the Homeland Security Department cited had nothing to do with voting systems, they are
entirely unrelated.
And it's false in a second way, which is a lot of the stories, in fact, most of them said
that Russia tried to hack into the voting systems when in fact even Homeland Security, it can
only show that what they did was scan those computer systems, which is basically casing
something to say for vulnerabilities and made no attempts to actually hack into them. So, it
was false on various levels.
CARLSON: So, you and I don't agree on a lot of issues but I think we share the same
concern about this story, and that is that American journalists are being manipulated for
whatever reason by the intelligence community in the United States, and I'm wondering why
after years of having this happen to American journalists, they are allowing this to happen
again.
GREENWALD: Well, that's the thing I would refrain that a little bit. I don't actually
think so much that journalists are the victims in the sense of that formulation that they're
being manipulated. I think at best what you can say for them is they are willingly and
eagerly being manipulated.
(LAUGHTER)
Because what you see is over and over they publish really inflammatory stories that turn
out to be totally false and what happens in those cases? Nothing. They get enormous benefits
when they publish recklessly. They get applause on social media from their peers, they get
zillions of re-tweets, huge amounts of traffic, they end up on TV. They get applauded across the spectrum
because people are so giddy and eager to hear more about this Russia and Trump story.
And when their stories get completely debunked, it just kind of, everybody agrees to
ignore it and everyone moves on and they pay no price. At the same time, they are feeling and
pleasing their sources by publishing these sources that their sources want them to publish.
And so, there is huge amounts of career benefits and reputational benefits and very little
cost when they publish stories that end up being debunked because the narrative they are
serving is a popular one, at least within their peer circles.
CARLSON: Gosh! That is so dishonest. I mean, I think all of us and journalism have gotten
things wrong, I certainly have. If you feel bad about it, I mean, you really do and there's a
consequence. Do you really think there's that level of dishonesty in the American press?
GREENWALD: I think what it is more than dishonesty is a really warped incentive scheme
bolstered by this very severe groupthink that social media is fostering in ways that we don't
yet fully understand.
CARLSON: Yes.
GREENWALD: Most journalists these days are in Congressional Committees or at zoning board
meetings or using -- they're sitting on Twitter talking to one another and this produces this
extreme groupthink where these orthodoxies arise in deviating from them or questioning them
or challenging, believe me, results in all kinds of recrimination and scorn. And embracing
them produces this sort of in group mentality where you are rewarded, and I think a lot of it
is about that kind of behavior.
CARLSON: That is really deep. I mean, you live in a foreign country, I'm not on social
media, so maybe we have a little bit of distance from this, where do you think the story is
going? What's the next incarnation of it?
GREENWALD: Well, the odd part about it, and about the inpatients that journalists have in
trying to just jump to the finish line is that there are numerous investigations underway in
the city, including by credible investigators, including Senator Burr and Warner and the
Senate Intelligence Committee, which most people seem to trust and certainly Robert Mueller
who is armed with subpoena power, and everyone is really eager to lavish with praise.
So, we are going to find out presumably one way or the other soon enough. I guess that one
thing that is so odd to me Tucker, is that, this has been going on now for a year, this
accusation that the Trump administration or the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to
hack the DNC and John Podesta's email and we know that there are huge numbers of people
inside the government who are willing to leak, even at the expense of committing crimes in
order to undermine Trump and yet, there has been no leaks so far showing any evidence of that
kind of collusion leading one to wonder why that is.
So, I hope that everybody is willing to wait until the actual investigation reveals
finally the real answers. But it doesn't seem that will be the case.
CARLSON: Bravery is when you disagree in public with your peers. And by that definition,
you are a very brave man. Glenn Greenwald, thanks for joining us tonight. I appreciate
it.
Neoliberal economists are a new type of clergy. As simple as this. Neoliberal God is great that's what they are preaching to students.
Notable quotes:
"... Bronze Age: Greatest Age EVAH! ..."
"... It's surprising economists feel the need to engage in happy talk, considering that markets are supposed to be natural, just, and efficient. Like clergy preaching to a perpetually backsliding laity about the one true God, Whom only a fool would doubt. If God were so great, there'd be no need to harp on it. In any case, this goes some way toward accounting for Bennet's statement. ..."
"... It takes a half-educated person to say something like that. First you get the ideas by way of a certain education, and then you don't think about them, in part because the educators discourage that kind of thing. ..."
"[Capitalism] has been the greatest engine of, it's been the greatest anti-poverty program
and engine of progress that we've seen."
I can almost smell the economics section of my local bookstore. Strange science,
economics. Judging from the titles, much of it consists of cheerleading. Very different from
history, anthropology, or sociology.
I never see history titles like Bronze Age: Greatest Age EVAH!It's
surprising economists feel the need to engage in happy talk, considering that markets are
supposed to be natural, just, and efficient. Like clergy preaching to a perpetually
backsliding laity about the one true God, Whom only a fool would doubt. If God were so great,
there'd be no need to harp on it. In any case, this goes some way toward accounting for
Bennet's statement.
It takes a half-educated person to say something like that. First you get the ideas by
way of a certain education, and then you don't think about them, in part because the
educators discourage that kind of thing.
In Christopher Nolan's captivating and visually dazzling film Inception, a practitioner of
psychic corporate espionage must plant and idea inside a CEO's head. The process is called
inception, and it represents the frontier of corporate influence, in which mind spies no longer
just "extract" ideas from the dreams of others, but seed useful ideas in a target's
subconscious. Inception is a well-crafted piece of futuristic sci-fi drama, but some of the
ideas it imparts are already deeply embedded in the American subconscious. The notion of
inception, of hatching an idea in the mind of a man or woman without his or her knowledge, is
the kernel of propaganda, a black art practiced in the States since the First World War. Today
we live beneath an invisible cultural hegemony, a set of ideas implanted in the mass mind by
the U.S. state and its corporate media over decades. Invisibility seems to happen when
something is either obscure or ubiquitous. In a propaganda system, an overarching objective is
to render the messaging invisible by universalizing it within the culture. Difference is known
by contrast. If there are no contrasting views in your field of vision, it's easier to accept
the ubiquitous explanation. The good news is that the ideology is well-known to some who have,
for one lucky reason or another, found themselves outside the hegemonic field and are thus able
to contrast the dominant worldview with alternative opinions. On the left, the ruling ideology
might be described as neoliberalism, a particularly vicious form of imperial capitalism that,
as would be expected, is camouflaged in the lineaments of humanitarian aid and succor.
Inception 1971
In a short span of time in the 1970s, dozens of think tanks were established across the
western world and billions of dollars were spent proselytizing the tenets of the Powell
Memo in 1971, which galvanized a counter-revolution to the liberal upswing of the Sixties.
The neoliberal economic model of deregulation, downsizing, and privatization was preached by
the Reagan-Thatcher junta, liberalized by the Clinton regime, temporarily given a bad name by
the unhinged Bush administration, and saved by telegenic restoration of the Obama years. The
ideology that underlay the
model saturated academia, notably at the University of Chicago, and the mainstream media,
principally at The New York Times. Since then it has trickled down to the general populace, to
whom it now feels second nature. Today think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the Brookings
Institute, Stratfor, Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Council on Foreign
Relations, Carnegie Endowment, the Open Society Foundation, and the Atlantic Council, among
many others, funnel millions of dollars in donations into cementing neoliberal attitudes in the
American mind.
The ideological assumptions, which serve to justify what you could call neocolonial tactics,
are relatively clear: the rights of the individual to be free of overreach from monolithic
institutions like the state. Activist governments are inherently inefficient and lead directly
to totalitarianism. Markets must be free and individuals must be free to act in those markets.
People must be free to choose, both politically and commercially, in the voting booth and at
the cash register. This conception of markets and individuals is most often formulated as
"free-market democracy," a misleading conceit that conflates individual freedom with the
economic freedom of capital to exploit labor. So when it comes to foreign relations, American
and western aid would only be given on the condition that the borrowers accepted the tenets of
an (highly manipulable) electoral system and vowed to establish the institutions and legal
structures required to fully realize a western market economy. These demands were supplemented
with notions of the individual right to be free of oppression, some fine rhetoric about women
and minorities, and somewhat more quietly, a judicial understanding that corporations were
people, too. Together, an unshackled economy and an unfettered populace, newly equipped with
individual rights, would produce the same flourishing and nourishing demos of mid-century
America that had been the envy of humanity.
A False Promise
This ' Washington Consensus '
is the false promise promoted by the West. The reality is quite different. The crux of
neoliberalism is to eliminate democratic government by downsizing, privatizing, and
deregulating it. Proponents of neoliberalism recognize that the state is the last bulwark of
protection for the common people against the predations of capital. Remove the state and
they'll be left defenseless. Think about it. Deregulation eliminates the laws. Downsizing
eliminates departments and their funding. Privatizing eliminates the very purpose of the state
by having the private sector take over its traditional responsibilities. Ultimately,
nation-states would dissolve except perhaps for armies and tax systems. A large, open-border
global free market would be left, not subject to popular control but managed by a globally
dispersed, transnational one percent. And the whole process of making this happen would be
camouflaged beneath the altruistic stylings of a benign humanitarianism.
Globalists, as neoliberal capitalists are often called, also understood that democracy,
defined by a smattering of individual rights and a voting booth, was the ideal vehicle to usher
neoliberalism into the emerging world. Namely because democracy, as commonly practiced, makes
no demands in the economic sphere. Socialism does. Communism does. These models directly
address ownership of the means of production. Not so democratic capitalism. This permits the
globalists to continue to own the means of production while proclaiming human rights triumphant
in nations where interventions are staged. The enduring lie is that there is no democracy
without economic democracy.
What matters to the one percent and the media conglomerates that disseminate their worldview
is that the official definitions are accepted by the masses. The real effects need never be
known. The neoliberal ideology (theory) thus conceals the neoliberal reality (practice). And
for the masses to accept it, it must be mass produced. Then it becomes more or less invisible
by virtue of its universality.
A Pretext for Pillage
Thanks to this artful disguise, the West can stage interventions in nations reluctant to
adopt its platform of exploitation, knowing that on top of the depredations of an exploitative
economic model, they will be asked to call it progress and celebrate it.
Washington, the metropolitan heart of neoliberal hegemony, has numerous methods of
convincing reluctant developing nations to accept its neighborly advice. To be sure, the goal
of modern colonialism is to find a pretext to intervene in a country, to restore by other means
the extractive relations that first brought wealth to the colonial north. The most common
pretexts for intervention depict the target nation in three distinct fashions.
First, as an economic basket case, a condition often engineered by the West in what is
sometimes called, "creating facts on the ground." By sanctioning the target economy, Washington
can "make the economy scream," to using war criminal Henry Kissinger's elegant phrasing. Iran,
Syria, and Venezuela are relevant examples here. Second, the West funds violent opposition to
the government, producing unrest, often violent riots of the kind witnessed in Dara, Kiev, and
Caracas. The goal is either to capsize a tottering administration or provoke a violent
crackdown, at which point western embassies and institutions will send up simultaneously cries
of tyranny and brutality and insist the leader step aside. Libya, Syria, and Venezuela are
instructive in this regard. Third, the country will be pressured to accept some sort of
military fettering thanks to either a false flag or manufactured hysteria over some domestic
program, such as the WMD restrictions on Iraq, chemical weapons restrictions on Syria, or the
civilian nuclear energy restrictions on Iran. Given that the U.S. traffics in WMDs, bioweapons,
and nuclear energy itself, insisting others forsake all of these is perhaps little more than
racially motivated despotry. But significant fear mongering in the international media will
provide sufficient moral momentum to ram through sanctions, resolutions, and inspection regimes
with little fanfare.
Schooling the Savages
Once the pretext is established, the appropriate intervention is made. There's no lack of
latent racism embedded in each intervention. Something of Edward Said's
Orientalism is surely at play here; the West is often responding to a crude caricature
rather than a living people. One writer, Robert Dale Parker, described western views of Asia as
little more than, "a sink of despotism on the margins of the world." Iran is incessantly lensed
through a fearful distrust of the 'other', those abyssal Persians. Likewise, North Korea is
mythologized as a kingdom of miniature madmen, possessed of a curious psychosis that surely
bears no relation to the genocidal cleansing of 20 percent of its population in the Fifties,
itself an imperial coda to the madness of Hiroshima.
The interventions, then, are little different than the missionary work of early colonizers,
who sought to entrap the minds of men in order to ensnare the soul. Salvation is the order of
the day. The mission worker felt the same sense of superiority and exceptionalism that inhabits
the mind of the neoliberal. Two zealots of the age peddling different editions of a common
book. One must carry the gospel of the invisible hand to the unlettered minions. But the gifts
of the enlightened interloper are consistently dubious.
It might be the loan package that effectively transfers economic control out of the hands of
political officials and into the hands of loan officers, those mealy-mouthed creditors referred
to earlier. It may be the sanctions that prevent the country from engaging in dollar
transactions and trade with numberless nations on which it depends for goods and services. Or
it might be that controversial UNSC resolution that leads to a comprehensive agreement to ban
certain weapons from a country. Stipulations of the agreement will often include a byzantine
inspections regime full of consciously-inserted trip wires designed to catch the country out of
compliance and leverage that miscue to intensify confrontational rhetoric and implement even
more far-reaching inspections.
Cracking the Shell
The benign-sounding structural adjustments of the West have fairly
predictable results : cultural and economic chaos, rapid impoverishment, resource
extraction with its attendant ecological ruin, transfer of
ownership from local hands to foreign entities, and death from a
thousand causes . We are currently
sanctioning around 30 nations in some fashion; dozens of countries have fallen into '
protracted arrears ' with western creditors; and entire continents are witnessing huge
outflows of capital–on the order of $100B annually–to the global north as debt
service. The profiteering colonialists of the West make out like bandits. The usual suspects
include Washington and its loyal lapdogs, the IMF, World Bank, EU, NATO, and other
international institutions, and the energy and defense multinationals whose shareholders and
executive class effectively run the show.
So why aren't Americans more aware of this complicated web of neocolonial domination?
Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, who pioneered the concept of cultural hegemony, suggested
that the ruling ideologies of the bourgeoisie were so deeply embedded in popular consciousness
that the working classes often supported leaders and ideas that were antithetical to their own
interests. Today, that cultural hegemony is neoliberalism. Few can slip its grasp long enough
to see the world from an uncolored vantage point. You'll very rarely encounter arguments like
this leafing through the Times or related broadsheets. They don't fit the ruling dogma, the
Weltanschauung (worldview) that keeps the public mind in its sleepy repose.
But French-Algerian philosopher Louis Althusser, following Gramsci, believed that, unlike
the militarized state, the ideologies of the ruling class were penetrable. He felt that the
comparatively fluid zones of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) were contexts of class
struggle. Within them, groups might attain a kind of 'relative autonomy', by which they could
step outside of the monolithic cultural ideology. The scales would fall. Then, equipped with
new knowledge, people might stage an inception of their own, cracking open the cultural
hegemony and reshaping its mythos in a more humane direction. This seems like an imperative for
modern American culture, buried as it is beneath the hegemonic heft of the neoliberal credo.
These articles of false faith, this ideology of deceit, ought to be replaced with new
declarations of independence, of the mind if not the mainstream. Join the debate on
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"... he Dems disgust me with their neo-McCarthyism and the Repubs disgust me because of the way they are playing out their hand right now as well. Games within corrupt games, and yet normal behavior especially in waning empires (or other types of polities, including powerful int'l corporations). ..."
"... Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs and Steel is titled "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" and it used to be available online but my old link is dead and I couldn't find a new one. But a basic definition should suffice: "Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, is a form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of the wider population, often without pretense of honest service." I have no idea how one turns this around and I doubt it's even possible. ..."
"... The Real Reason Establishment Frauds Hate Trump and Obsess About Russia https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/02/20/the-real-reason-establishment-frauds-hate-trump-and-obsess-about-russia/ ..."
"... Blaming Russia for all the nation's problems serves several key purposes for various defenders of the status quo. For discredited neocons and neoliberals who never met a failed war based on lies they didn't support, it provides an opportunity to rehabilitate their torched reputations by masquerading as fierce patriots against the latest existential enemy. Similarly, for those who lived in denial about who Obama really was for eight years, latching on to the Russia narrative allows them to reassure themselves that everything really was fine before Trump and Russia came along and ruined the party. ..."
"... he doesn't provide the same feel good quality to empire that Obama did. He's simply not the warm and fuzzy salesman for oligarchy and empire Obama was, thus his inability to sugarcoat state-sanctioned murder forces a lot of people to confront the uncomfortable hypocrisies in our society that many would prefer not to admit. ..."
"... I can't stand Kushner's smirky face and got a good chuckle from this prince's fall as I am not a fan of his passion for Israel. But I don't think he's a stupid idiot either. He's probably very smart in business, but he seems to have no feel for politics. Trump is much better at it than Kushner. Of course they are going after Kushner as a way to attack and disadvantage Trump. Politics is a form of warfare after all. ..."
"... My take is that Trump survives but mostly contained by the Borg ..."
jsn @16 & 40, in complete agreement with you. Great comments! T he Dems disgust me
with their neo-McCarthyism and the Repubs disgust me because of the way they are playing out
their hand right now as well. Games within corrupt games, and yet normal behavior especially
in waning empires (or other types of polities, including powerful int'l corporations).
Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs and Steel is titled "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" and
it used to be available online but my old link is dead and I couldn't find a new one. But a
basic definition should suffice: "Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, is a
form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the
personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of
the wider population, often without pretense of honest service." I have no idea how one turns
this around and I doubt it's even possible.
Back when I used to subscribe to STRATFOR, founder George Friedman always made a point of
evaluating the elites of whatever country he was analyzing and how they operated amongst
themselves and relative to the people and how effective they were or were not in governing a
country. But he never did that for the US. I would have paid extra for that report! But of
course he could not stay in business if he did such a thing as those people are his
clients.
I think Mike Krieger over at Liberty Blitzkrieg nails it from another perspective with
this post:
Blaming Russia for all the nation's problems serves several key purposes for various
defenders of the status quo. For discredited neocons and neoliberals who never met a failed
war based on lies they didn't support, it provides an opportunity to rehabilitate their
torched reputations by masquerading as fierce patriots against the latest existential enemy.
Similarly, for those who lived in denial about who Obama really was for eight years, latching
on to the Russia narrative allows them to reassure themselves that everything really was fine
before Trump and Russia came along and ruined the party.
By throwing every problem in Putin's lap, the entrenched bipartisan status quo can tell
themselves (and everybody else) that it wasn't really them and their policies that voters
rejected in 2016, rather, the American public was tricked by cunning, nefarious Russians.
Ridiculous for sure, but never underestimate the instinctive human desire to deny
accountability for one's own failures. It's always easier to blame than to accept
responsibility.
That said, there's a much bigger game afoot beyond the motivations of individuals looking
to save face. The main reason much of the highest echelons of American power are united
against Trump has nothing to do with his actual policies. Instead, they're terrified that --
unlike Obama -- he's a really bad salesman for empire. This sort of Presidential instability
threatens the continuance of their well oiled and exceedingly corrupt gravy train. Hillary
Clinton was a sure thing, Donald Trump remains an unpredictable wildcard.
... Obama said all the right things while methodically doing the bidding of oligarchy. He
captured the imagination of millions, if not billions, around the world with his soaring
rhetoric, yet rarely skipped a beat when it came to the advancement of imperial policies. He
made bailing out Wall Street, droning civilians and cracking down on journalists seem
progressive. He said one thing, did another, and people ate it up. This is an extraordinarily
valuable quality when it comes to a vicious and unelected deep state that wants to keep a
corrupt empire together.
Trump has the exact opposite effect. Sure, he also frequently says one thing and then does
another, but he doesn't provide the same feel good quality to empire that Obama did. He's
simply not the warm and fuzzy salesman for oligarchy and empire Obama was, thus his inability
to sugarcoat state-sanctioned murder forces a lot of people to confront the uncomfortable
hypocrisies in our society that many would prefer not to admit.
------------
I can't stand Kushner's smirky face and got a good chuckle from this prince's fall as
I am not a fan of his passion for Israel. But I don't think he's a stupid idiot either. He's
probably very smart in business, but he seems to have no feel for politics. Trump is much
better at it than Kushner. Of course they are going after Kushner as a way to attack and
disadvantage Trump. Politics is a form of warfare after all.
My take is that Trump survives but mostly contained by the Borg
At the core of Trumpism is the rejection of neoliberalism
Pat Buchanan does not understand neoliberalism well and mixes apples with oranges, but the key idea expressed here stands: " Consider
this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants, not one of whom ever built
a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits since Bush I. Our cities have
been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic independence Hamilton sought and Republican
presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history."
Notable quotes:
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever." ..."
"I walk through this world with greater courage and hope when I find myself in a relation of friendship and intimacy with this
great man, whose fame has gone out not only over all Russia, but the world. We regard Marshal Stalin's life as most precious to the
hopes and hearts of all of us."
Returning home, Churchill assured a skeptical Parliament, "I know of no Government which stands to its obligations, even in its
own despite, more solidly than the Russian Soviet Government."
George W. Bush, with the U.S. establishment united behind him, invaded Iraq with the goal of creating a Vermont in the Middle
East that would be a beacon of democracy to the Arab and Islamic world.
Ex-Director of the NSA Gen. William Odom correctly called the U.S. invasion the greatest strategic blunder in American history.
But Bush, un-chastened, went on to preach a crusade for democracy with the goal of "ending tyranny in our world."
... ... ...
After our victory in the Cold War, we not only plunged into the Middle East to remake it in our image, we issued war guarantees
to every ex-member state of the Warsaw Pact, and threatened Russia with war if she ever intervened again in the Baltic Republics.
No Cold War president would have dreamed of issuing such an in-your-face challenge to a great nuclear power like Russia. If Putin's
Russia does not become the pacifist nation it has never been, these guarantees will one day be called. And America will either back
down -- or face a nuclear confrontation. Why would we risk something like this?
Consider this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants, not one
of whom ever built a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits since
Bush I. Our cities have been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic independence
Hamilton sought and Republican presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history.
But the greatest risk we are taking, based on utopianism, is the annual importation of well over a million legal and illegal immigrants,
many from the failed states of the Third World, in the belief we can create a united, peaceful and harmonious land of 400 million,
composed of every race, religion, ethnicity, tribe, creed, culture and language on earth.
Where is the historic evidence for the success of this experiment, the failure of which could mean the end of America as one nation
and one people?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and
Divided America Forever."
Pat Buchanan does not understand neoliberalism well and mixes apples with oranges, but the key idea expressed here stands:
" Consider this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants,
not one of whom ever built a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits
since Bush I. Our cities have been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic
independence Hamilton sought and Republican presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history."
The truth is that now Trump does not represent "Trumpism" -- the movement that he created which includes the following:
– rejection of neoliberal globalization;
– rejection of unrestricted immigration;
– fight against suppression of wages by multinationals via cheap imported labor;
– fight against the elimination of meaningful, well-paying jobs via outsourcing and offshoring of manufacturing;
– rejection of wars for enlargement and sustaining of neoliberal empire, especially NATO role as global policemen and wars for
Washington client Israel in the Middle East;
– détente with Russia;
– more pragmatic relations with Israel and suppression of Israeli agents of influence;
– revision of relations with China and addressing the problem of trade deficit.
– rejection of total surveillance on all citizens;
– the cut of military expenses to one third or less of the current level and concentrating on revival on national infrastructure,
education, and science.
– abandonment of maintenance of the "sole superpower" status and global neoliberal empire for more practical and less costly "semi-isolationist"
foreign policy; closing of unnecessary foreign military bases and cutting aid to the current clients.
Of course, the notion of "Trumpism" is fuzzy and different people might include some additional issues and disagree with some
listed here, but the core probably remains.
Of course, Trump is under relentless attack (coup d'état or, more precisely, a color revolution) of neoliberal fifth column,
which includes Clinton gang, fifth column elements within his administration (Rosenstein, etc) as well from remnants of Obama
administration (Brennan, Comey, Clapper) and associated elements within corresponding intelligence agencies. He probably was forced
into some compromises just to survive. He also has members of the neoliberal fifth column within his family (Ivanka and Kushner).
So the movement now is in deep need of a new leader.
That's a good summary of what the public voted for and didn't get.
And whether Trump has sold out, or was blackmailed or was a cynical manipulative liar for the beginning is really irrelevant.
The fact is that he is not doing it – so he is just blocking the way.
At some point the US public are going to have to forget about their "representatives" (Trump and Congress and the rest of
them) and get out onto the street to make themselves heard. The population of the US is 323 million people and if just 1/2
of 1% (1,6 million) of them decided to visit Congress directly the US administration might get the message.
pyrrhus, March 3, 2018 at 2:15 am GMT
@anon
Finally, Pat understands that the American [Neoliberal] Empire and habit of intervention all over the world is a disaster.
In this state the current war between factions of the US elite reminds Stalin fight against "globalists" like Trotsky, who were
hell-bent of the idea of world revolution.
Notable quotes:
"... I would define Trump_vs_deep_state as "bastard neoliberalism" which tries to combine domestic "100% pure" neoliberalism with the rejection of neoliberal globalization as well as partial rejection of expensive effort for expansion of US led neoliberal empire via color revolutions and military invasions, especially in the Middle East. ..."
"... That makes screams of "soft neoliberals" from Democratic Party at "hard neoliberals" at Republican Party really funny indeed. Both are essentially "latter-day Trotskyites", yet they scream at each other, especially Obama/Clinton supporters ;-) ..."
"... But in reality Democratic sheeple are just a different type of wolfs -- wolfs in sheep clothing. And Hillary was an old, worn "classic neoliberal" shoe, which nobody really wants to wear. ..."
"... Trump does not intend to change the neoliberal consensus of what government should do domestically, and what should be the relationship between US government and business community. ..."
I would define Trump_vs_deep_state as "bastard neoliberalism" which tries
to combine domestic "100% pure" neoliberalism with the rejection of neoliberal globalization as well
as partial rejection of expensive effort for expansion of US led neoliberal empire via color revolutions
and military invasions, especially in the Middle East.
That's what seems to be the key difference of Trump_vs_deep_state from "classic neoliberalism" or as Sklar
called it "corporate liberalism".
From Reagan to Obama all US governments pray to the altar of classic neoliberalism. Now we have
a slight deviation.
That makes screams of "soft neoliberals" from Democratic Party at "hard neoliberals" at Republican
Party really funny indeed. Both are essentially "latter-day Trotskyites", yet they scream at each
other, especially Obama/Clinton supporters ;-)
In this sense Krugman recent writings are really pathetic and signify his complete detachment
from reality, or more correctly attempt to create an "artificial reality" in which bad wolf Trump
is going to eat Democratic sheeple. And in which media, FBI, and Putin are responsible entirely for
Hillary's loss.
But in reality Democratic sheeple are just a different type of wolfs -- wolfs in sheep clothing.
And Hillary was an old, worn "classic neoliberal" shoe, which nobody really wants to wear.
Trump does not intend to change the neoliberal consensus of what government should do domestically,
and what should be the relationship between US government and business community.
But the far right movement that he created and led has different ideas.
Don't worry about republicans ..democrats are ruining themselves all alone .every time the
deplorables see something like this they will double down on anything but a Dem.
Regardless of one's view on blacks or whites this is a major Stupid for a politician.
Chuck Schumer votes against South Carolina federal judge nominee because he's
white
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer rejected President Donald Trump's nominee for a
long-vacant South Carolina federal judgeship not because of his qualifications but because of
his race.
The decision drew the quick ire of South Carolina's two U.S. senators and U.S. Rep. Trey
Gowdy, R-Spartanburg, a former federal prosecutor.
Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a Senate floor speech Wednesday he would not support
Greenville attorney Marvin Quattlebaum for a vacancy on the U.S. District Court in South
Carolina
Voting for Quattlebaum, he said, would result in having a white man replace two
African-American nominees from the state put forth by former President Barack Obama.
Schumer said he would not be a part of the Trump administration's pattern of nominating
white men.
"The nomination of Marvin Quattlebaum speaks to the overall lack of diversity in President
Trump's selections for the federal judiciary," Schumer said.
"It's long past time that the judiciary starts looking a lot more like the America it
represents," he continued. "Having a diversity of views and experience on the federal bench
is necessary for the equal administration of justice."
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the Senate's sole black Republican, pushed back on
Schumer's rationale and urged other Senate Democrats to instead address diversity issues by
starting with their offices.
"Perhaps Senate Democrats should be more worried about the lack of diversity on their own
staffs than attacking an extremely well-qualified judicial nominee from the great state of
South Carolina," Scott tweeted Thursday morning.
"... In fact not only do most Americans shy away from finding out about the truth in a country that has pushed division of labour to the maximum, they are trigger happy to be totally controlled by corporate media in a repetition of 'Iraq's weapons of mass destruction' to 'Russia and Putin the source of all evil'. ..."
"And this is why economic policy cannot not be decided by popular opinion. A typical Russian is ignorant about economics and
government finance. A typical Russian doesn't want responsibility for these decisions anyway. He would rather let someone else
(some authority figure) make these choices for him. This is why real democracy cannot work in Russia."
If you had not specified the word 'Russian', I could have guessed you were talking about the USA.
In fact not only do most Americans shy away from finding out about the truth in a country that has pushed division of labour
to the maximum, they are trigger happy to be totally controlled by corporate media in a repetition of 'Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction' to 'Russia and Putin the source of all evil'.
Beyond some truly enlightened Americans whose opinions I am honored and glad to read on this site, the majority of the
American public still go about their struggle for survival trusting the American politicians and American military are doing the
right thing.
The idea of success at any cost, trampling on other people, has always been
popular in the United States. Little or nothing ethical types like Milken and Jordan Belfort
have had many admirers in the United States.
"... The globalists envision the earth as a plantation with oligarchs (stateless corporate monopolists) as planters, former national governments as overseers and the people of earth as niggers. ..."
what is the vision, what is the historic goal our elites offer to inspire and enlist our
people?
The globalists envision the earth as a plantation with oligarchs (stateless corporate
monopolists) as planters, former national governments as overseers and the people of earth as
niggers.
"... Age of Extremes: the Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 ..."
"... Postwar: a History of Europe Since 1945 ..."
"... "After 1945-75, Western Europe's 'thirty glorious years' gave way to an age of monetary inflation and declining growth rates, accompanied by widespread unemployment and social discontent ..."
"... Hobsbawm thinks that it was only in the 1980s that it became clear that the "golden age" of the social welfare state had crumbled and disintegrated. ..."
"... In the 1970s and 1980s something new and threatening to human solidarity and well-being was wresting itself free of service to the common good and undermining the "principle of oneness." Its name was Neo-liberalism, the mighty Moloch to whom all must surrender. It also became undeniable that the "global nature" of the crisis was being uneasily recognized. One part of the world -- the USSR and E. Europe -- had collapsed entirely. And in Africa, West Asia, Latin America the growth of the GDP ceased as a severe depression settled in the lands like an unwanted damp fog. But from the corporate elite's towering vantage-point, western economies seemed to be thriving even if millions of individuals weren't. ..."
"... Buying Time: the Delayed Crisis of Capitalism ..."
"... Capital was only "buying time." It was digging a cavernous hole: debt had to be serviced and financial markets were stealing considerable economic clout. They wanted to be paid and society disciplined and returned to fiscal consolidation. Essentially, during the 1990s -- and continuing into our contemporary period -- rapidly rising income inequality (caused by the manipulation of financial markets, de-unionization and cuts to social services and grand opportunities for citizens to indebt themselves) characterized this period and first ghastly decade of the twenty-first century. Here, the crisis of public debt and the pain of cuts was temporarily resolved through "privatized Keynesianism" (that is public debt is replaced by private debt). Now, in 2018, the world has witnessed the most massive gap between the 1% rich and the rest of us poor souls in human history. ..."
"... One might argue that the present "crisis point" within the neo-liberal economic dis/ordering of the world results from the inability of the US hegemon to completely dominate the global economy ..."
"... China and Russia are seriously resisting this rather desperate attempt. All nations of the world are jumpy, edgy and confused. They haven't a clue where the globally interdependent world is heading. ..."
In his melancholic book, Age of Extremes: the
Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 (1995), British historian Eric Hobsbawm states: "The
history of the twenty years after 1973 is that of a world which lost its bearings and slid into
instability and crisis" (p. 403). American historian Tony Judt ( Postwar: a History of
Europe Since 1945 (2005) captures a widely expressed sentiment: "After 1945-75,
Western Europe's 'thirty glorious years' gave way to an age of monetary inflation and declining
growth rates, accompanied by widespread unemployment and social discontent (p. 455).
Hobsbawm
thinks that it was only in the 1980s that it became clear that the "golden age" of the social
welfare state had crumbled and disintegrated.
In the 1970s and 1980s something new and threatening to human solidarity and well-being was
wresting itself free of service to the common good and undermining the "principle of oneness."
Its name was Neo-liberalism, the mighty Moloch to whom all must surrender. It also became
undeniable that the "global nature" of the crisis was being uneasily recognized. One part of
the world -- the USSR and E. Europe -- had collapsed entirely. And in Africa, West Asia, Latin
America the growth of the GDP ceased as a severe depression settled in the lands like an
unwanted damp fog. But from the corporate elite's towering vantage-point, western economies
seemed to be thriving even if millions of individuals weren't.
Thus, by the mid-1970s the Western world had entered a period of profound change, both
economically and ideologically. Global ruling elites, with the transnational corporations as
their power base, began a complex process of dismantling social forms of capitalism to liberate
market constraints or regulations. By now we are all familiar with the brutal consequences of
global elite 'development' policies: World Bank and IMF structural adjustment programmes pushed
Southern (and Northern) economies into the dirt wreaking havoc with welfare policies. Capital
had been wrestling itself free of tutelage from either state or civil society. In fact, it was
now going to teach civil society a thing or two. Capitalism and social democracy could not be
fused any longer. The dream of the 1960s that once material needs were fulfilled we could get
on with self-fulfilment, emancipation, recognition or creating authentic community lay in ruins
by the time of the collapse of the USSR and the Berlin wall in the late 1980s.
Alas! Neo-liberalism now stood tall and arrogant in the ruble and ruin of the old Soviet
Union as its economy fell apart, the GDP plummeting by 17% in 1990-1. The US lost its dueling
partner and emerged as top-gun, the giant hegemon who could now stride the world like a
colossus and boss everyone around.
But the glory of the new Hegemon and its Neo-liberal vision of the consumer paradise for the
significant few had a dark side. In 1993 in New York City, for instance, 23,000 men and women
were homeless and out in the streets. Not everybody, it seemed, was bathing in golden tubs and
tossing money into the air. Post-war democratic capitalism, so Wolfgang Streeck argued
brilliantly ( Buying Time: the Delayed
Crisis of Capitalism [2014]), faced a series of potentially lethal crises. The first
crisis struck in the late 1970s when inflation rates began to rise rapidly throughout the
western world. Sustained growth faltered.
The governments could no longer sustain continuously rising standard of living unchecked by
fears of unemployment. By the 1980s inflation had been conquered. But with interest rates
massively increased, unemployment rates jumped to levels not seen since the Great Depression in
the US and elsewhere. Inflation receded, but public debt began to increase significantly. The
movement (or shift) from the democratic capitalist tax state to the debt state was underway. We
had plunged into the "fiscal crisis of the state". The neo-liberal state had to borrow to
accommodate demands for benefits and services from citizens.
Capital was only "buying time." It was digging a cavernous hole: debt had to be serviced and
financial markets were stealing considerable economic clout. They wanted to be paid and society
disciplined and returned to fiscal consolidation. Essentially, during the 1990s -- and
continuing into our contemporary period -- rapidly rising income inequality (caused by the
manipulation of financial markets, de-unionization and cuts to social services and grand
opportunities for citizens to indebt themselves) characterized this period and first ghastly
decade of the twenty-first century. Here, the crisis of public debt and the pain of cuts was
temporarily resolved through "privatized Keynesianism" (that is public debt is replaced by
private debt). Now, in 2018, the world has witnessed the most massive gap between the 1% rich
and the rest of us poor souls in human history.
The current global economic crisis creates and accentuates deep rifts between humankind and
banishes the core idea of social justice from political discourse. The neo-liberal global
economy prevents movement beyond the nation-state towards a new cosmopolitan world order.
Meshed and entangled in global intricacies of trade and commerce, the nation-state cannot even
make its own economic decisions. We remain locked into a world of warring nation-states.
One might argue that the present "crisis point" within the neo-liberal economic dis/ordering
of the world results from the inability of the US hegemon to completely dominate the global
economy, acting as jury, judge and keeper of democracy for all. China and Russia are seriously
resisting this rather desperate attempt. All nations of the world are jumpy, edgy and confused.
They haven't a clue where the globally interdependent world is heading.
Espionage would possibly be Steele's indictment. But nobody was 'formally' spying for another country. He was simply fed leaked
info and he put it into a document and sent it back. Is that a crime?
Notable quotes:
"... The facts are there but I see this as an incredibly difficult case to prosecute. ..."
The Obama spying is politically terrible but when I consider what is laid out I am not seeing very many crimes that would put
people in prison.
Having contractors use FISA 702 search queries – not a crime?
The president disseminating his PDB – not a crime
Unmasking people – not a crime
Submitting fraudulent info to a FISA court – probably a crime (10 yrs?), but tough to prove because submitters can just
say they believed the dossier
Using someone else's name to unmask – probably a crime (but good luck finding out who did it
Leaking FISA 702s to a british spy – probably a crime
Leaking the unmasked intel from president's PDBs – a crime (but leak crimes are tough to catch and won't end up punished
that severely.)
Consipracy/Racketeering – a crime, but a tough case to prove and even put together. That is why tax fraud is the litigator's
preferred indictment, there are just so many moving parts with a conspiracy.
This is most likely why this is taking such a long time – and I worry that most if not all conspirators will skate. They will
probably be fired and collect their retirement pensions but that may be the end of it.
Though with the next democrat president, they will make sure that all those lose ends that got them caught this time will be
perfectly legal. We have only witnessed the beginning of our own homegrown Stazi
We have already seen some of their defense through the dem memo. I am outraged at the spying scheme, but you have to recognize
that all these people involved are lawyers. They will have made sure to have possible exits when the shtf. There are still plenty
of black hats in all our gov bureaus and there will be a constant tit for tat throughout the process. The facts are there
but I see this as an incredibly difficult case to prosecute.
Sundance has summarized the scheme quite nicely. Even so, blog posts are very different than an actual indictment. I suppose there
must be more substantial crimes if they have been able to get people to flip – crimes we have not been told (I hope).
You say there are many other cases but fail to name any other crimes that have come to light. You could have enlightened me
rather than just make accusations against me and told me to 'do my homework'.
I am simply saying they have created a scheme where it is nebulously legal. They could have just leaked the 702 queries but
they laundered it through the PDB. This is all done to make it technically legal.
So far I am only seeing leaking, FISA fraud, and conspiracy/racketeering (which is next to impossible to prove). If there are
only indictments along leaking, that would easily be seen as political prosecution (dems live under a different rule book than
Trump/GoP being hounded by corrupt prosecutors ala Mueller). The Dem memo is trying to politicize the FISA fraud because they
recognize that that is the next closest to an open and shut case.
So here is my personal conclusion: democracies are political systems in which the real
ruling elites hide behind an utterly fake appearance of people power.
"what we see is that western democracies are run by gangs of oligarchs and bureaucrats who
have almost nothing in common with the people they are supposed to represent."
Latvia now is a typical neoliberal debt slave and flourishing sex trafficking market. Not
that different from other Baltic states, Ukraine, Moldavia and generally all xUSSR space.
Bill mentions the brain drain from Latvia, but I seem to recall a quite massive general
emigration from the country during austerity, which also helped to "reduce unemployment" as
well. The neoliberal "methodology" for "showing economic success" is moral and economic
bankruptcy masquerading as "science". And wow. So we have Latvia to thank for the coming
nuclear holocaust as well. A true neoliberal market miracle.
Lambert's two principles of neoliberalism are once again brought to mind:
All those 'excess' workers who left were helping keep wages low in the EU
In the sense that Latvia's future productivity is sacrificed for short-term benefits on the
books, it starts to look like another asset-stripping scheme, and the costs are borne by
workers in the EU.
Latvia already has one of the highest levels of poverty and income inequality in the EU
and its population has dropped by about a fifth in the past 18 years which is a bit of a
record considering that there was no war, that is, unless you count the neoliberal war on
people. Some moved to the capital Riga but most bailed out of the country altogether and are
not coming back. You can find whole blocks of empty buildings in some towns.
But don't worry. The Latvians are on the case. The head of the Latvian Central Bank detained
for extortion and the Latvian Ministry of Defense both blame, you guessed it, Russia!
Lambert's two principles of neoliberalism may have to be updated. He already has
#1 Because markets.
#2 Go die.
He may have to modify the second one to say
#2 Go die or get the hell outta Dodge.
Now I may be prejudiced because the Gs came from deepest darkest Lithuania–and we're
talking out in the endless woods in a village along a lake.
When people talk about population decline in Latvia, you are talking about part of the
corruption. The native Latvians wanted a way of getting rid of the Russian population, many
of whom are considered immigrants. So dropping 20 percent of the population means throwing
out the Russians. When your "population policy " is based on something like that, you can
image what the country's economic policies are like.
In contrast–although Lithuania, too, has lost some 10 – 15 percent of its
population since restored independence–the Lithuanians came to terms, imperfect terms,
with their smaller Polish and Russian minorities. Nevertheless, the Lithuanians didn't go
whole-hog free-market fundamentalism. And when a recent president was found to be corrupt,
they impeached him and threw him out.
So you have different models for how to survive as a Baltic State. Latvia has made a mess
of its "model."
"Now of course that's still in a land where they had really severely repressed wages for
the working class and for middle class, and continued to tolerate a fair degree of
unemployment and underemployment for folks, as well. So, yeah it works really well for the
oligarchs. And they do employ people. The unemployment rate drops, but the country
invariably becomes extremely corrupt."
Was he still talking about Latvia or did he switch over to the USA?
Half a decade ago when Latvia was considered a success story for neoliberal austerity, one
animator made this great satire video making fun of how farcical it was to consider it
such.
Latvia also being part of that running sore which involves according to the US state
department's last global estimate, about 800,000 to a million victims per annum of people
trafficking. Of which around 80% are female, with a not stated amount being children, used
for both labour & sexual purposes.
I suppose that it comes as little surprise that the 2 main flows of these commodities is
from East to West & South to North.
This is a dangerous development, as previously in 30th fascism played the same role.
Notable quotes:
"... Unproven allegations of meddling and illogical conclusions about dividends, considering the track record of the Trump administration in its first year in office: the dispatch of lethal military equipment to Ukraine that even Obama hesitated to approve, the extension of sanctions and a number of other measures raising the tensions with Russia in the Baltics and in Syria. ..."
"... Here we find the stubborn refusal to accept the true scale and breadth of Russia's might. We are reminded that the country's GDP is the size of Spain, a proposition that is distorted and misleading depending as it does on exchange rates rather than purchasing power parity. At last report, Spain was not supplying one-third of all the natural gas consumed in Europe; Russia was. At last report, Spain did not have a military budget that is second only to the United States; Russia has. ..."
"... Yet, the Munich Security Conference differs in an important way from the American establishment, which is today not very welcoming of "adversaries" or "competitors" who may conceptualize the world order in their own way. ..."
"... Lavrov's speech itself was a masterpiece of argumentation against the exclusion of Russia from the common European home, the descent of a divisive "us/them" thinking in Western Europe to justify the New Cold War. He specifically called out for condemnation the ongoing rewriting of history in the Baltic States, in Poland, and in Ukraine that airbrushes Russia out of the victory over Nazi Germany, encourages destruction of monuments to Soviet liberators and makes heroes of home-grown fascist movements as in Ukraine. ..."
"... the skill at debate, nerves of steel and icy reserve that Lavrov displayed in Munich show yet again that he is the right man in the right place to defend Putin's Russia. ..."
"... The problem that comes out of the Report and the body language we saw in the conference proceedings is the following: whether the opposing sides of East and West were more or less restrained in their gestures and words, there lies on each side a poisonous contempt for the other that could lead to miscalculations and rash actions in the event of some incident, some mishap between our respective armed forces in any of the theaters where they are now operating in close proximity in support of opposing sides. ..."
Let us remember that over the course of his career Ikenberry has been a
penetrating and at times courageous analyst. Back in 1992, he co-authored with Daniel Deudney a
splendid article entitled "Who Won the Cold War" ( Foreign Policy ) explaining why it
was a draw, ended by mutual agreement. He thereby went directly against the rising tide of
neoconservatism and American hubris built on falsification of modern history.
American Establishment biases, willful ignorance of realities and fake news are given free
rein in the page of the 2018 Report devoted to Russia. Here we read about the Kremlin's
"disinformation campaign" during the French presidential election of 2017 and about the
"efforts to influence the U.S. presidential election in 2016" that have "paid dividends."
Unproven allegations of meddling and illogical conclusions about dividends, considering the
track record of the Trump administration in its first year in office: the dispatch of lethal
military equipment to Ukraine that even Obama hesitated to approve, the extension of sanctions
and a number of other measures raising the tensions with Russia in the Baltics and in
Syria.
Here we find the stubborn refusal to accept the true scale and breadth of Russia's
might. We are reminded that the country's GDP is the size of Spain, a proposition that is
distorted and misleading depending as it does on exchange rates rather than purchasing power
parity. At last report, Spain was not supplying one-third of all the natural gas consumed in
Europe; Russia was. At last report, Spain did not have a military budget that is second only to
the United States; Russia has.
Yet, the Munich Security Conference differs in an important way from the American
establishment, which is today not very welcoming of "adversaries" or "competitors" who may
conceptualize the world order in their own way. Whatever its home grounds philosophically,
the Munich Security Conference does try to be inclusive and brings even troublemaker countries
and personalities into the tent. Moreover, the Security Conference, like Davos, has substantial
continuity in the attendees. You heard from the Iranian Foreign Minister last year, and you
will hear from him again this year, and probably next year as well. This does not smooth out
all the rough edges in these encounters, but it keeps them somewhat in check.
One of the "regulars," and perhaps the most remarkable performer at the 2018 Munich Security
Conference was Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. I call him remarkable because of his
ability to rise above his detractors in the hall through superior command of the facts, wit and
daring.
At last year's Munich Conference, a number of Lavrov's pronouncements were met by derisive
laughter from the Americans in the front rows, picked up by other Western diplomats and
politicians. Yet, Lavrov took it in stride, remarking acidly that he had also found some
statements by representatives of other countries to be laughable but had shown greater
restraint than members of his audience.
Heckling also took place during Lavrov's speech this year, though on a markedly lower scale.
And once again, Lavrov took the upper hand, chided his detractors for their incivility and
joked that it did not matter: "after all, they say laughter helps us live longer."
Lavrov's speech itself was a masterpiece of argumentation against the exclusion of
Russia from the common European home, the descent of a divisive "us/them" thinking in Western
Europe to justify the New Cold War. He specifically called out for condemnation the ongoing
rewriting of history in the Baltic States, in Poland, and in Ukraine that airbrushes Russia out
of the victory over Nazi Germany, encourages destruction of monuments to Soviet liberators and
makes heroes of home-grown fascist movements as in Ukraine.
It bears mention that back home in Moscow, there are voices of strident nationalists like
Vladimir Zhirinovsky who explain on national television day after day why it is time for Lavrov
to go, because he is too soft, too easy going with the nation's enemies in the West.
However, the skill at debate, nerves of steel and icy reserve that Lavrov displayed in
Munich show yet again that he is the right man in the right place to defend Putin's
Russia.
The problem that comes out of the Report and the body language we saw in the conference
proceedings is the following: whether the opposing sides of East and West were more or less
restrained in their gestures and words, there lies on each side a poisonous contempt for the
other that could lead to miscalculations and rash actions in the event of some incident, some
mishap between our respective armed forces in any of the theaters where they are now operating
in close proximity in support of opposing sides.
Gilbert Doctorow is an independent political analyst based in Brussels. His latest book,
Does the United States Have a Future? was published on 12 October 2017. Both paperback
and e-book versions are available for purchase on www.amazon.com and all affiliated Amazon
websites worldwide.
"... The two factions differ by motive. Businessmen act out of material self-interest. They want to hire people from abroad at much lower wages and benefits than most people here would accept. And they want to sell in untapped markets. Radicals, by contrast, act out of emotional self-interest. They crave total multiculturalism in one nation. ..."
"... Where these camps converge is the belief that national identity is outdated and must be replaced by an elaborate system of global coordination. A nation ought to have no right to define itself in terms of race, language or collective memory. In the world of information technology, in fact, business and radicalism now mean almost the same thing. America, in this view, has an obligation to accommodate the crush of people from abroad wanting in. We cannot discriminate. We shouldn't even ask about their motives . America is a global sanctuary, a coast-to-coast UN General Assembly. ..."
"... Mass immigration is a global way of saying "diversity." And that refers not to a diversity of opinion , but to a diversity of demography holding identical opinions. Some have likened this to a cultural equivalent of Marxism, hence the common term "cultural Marxism." Whatever one's preferred term, it is now the coin of the realm in the world of big business. ..."
Why are corporations, especially those that provide
information technology, promoting
radical politics? It's a question one increasingly hears these days. And it's a necessary
question. For it is a fact: The corporation as an institution, partly out of
self-interest and partly out of conviction, is allying itself with the hard Left. And the
consequences could be devastating for our nation.
Now when I speak of "radicalism," I'm not referring to the tradition of businessmen using
the State to achieve and maintain market advantage.
Monopoly in this country is a more than a century-old tradition, and it is
anything but radical. Nor am I referring to the more recent tradition of corporations
paying radical accusers a "diversity
tax" in hopes of shooing them away. That's capitulation, not commitment. No, what I'm referring
to is the arms-length alliance between corporations and far-Left activists to subvert deeply
ingrained human loyalties, especially those related to national identity. Most corporate
executives today see America's future as post -national, not national.
The two factions differ by motive. Businessmen act out of
material self-interest. They want to
hire people from abroad at much lower wages and benefits than most people here would
accept. And they want to sell in untapped markets. Radicals, by contrast, act out of
emotional self-interest. They crave total multiculturalism in one nation.
Where these camps converge is the belief that national identity is outdated and must be
replaced by an elaborate system of global coordination. A nation ought to have no right to
define itself in terms of race, language or collective memory. In the world of information
technology, in fact, business and radicalism now mean almost the same thing. America, in this
view, has an obligation
to accommodate the crush of people from abroad wanting in. We cannot
discriminate. We shouldn't even
ask about their motives . America is a global sanctuary, a
coast-to-coast UN General Assembly.
Mass immigration is a global way of saying "diversity." And that refers not to a
diversity of opinion , but to a diversity of demography holding identical opinions. Some
have likened this to a cultural equivalent of Marxism, hence the common term "cultural
Marxism." Whatever one's preferred term, it is now the coin of the realm in the world of
big business.
AirBnB, like Uber et al, is a company that built its fortunes by operating outside the laws
that constrained its more conventional competition why should we be surprised that
immigration law doesn't matter one whit to them?
Mind you, they haven't given up on class struggle.
Really? Have you seen any class struggle recently that would be detrimental to the top
class? Marxists are the tools of neoliberal capitalist world order. They are perfectly happy
with the system as long as it gives them a chance to join the top class.
"While the influence of the Frankfurt School of Marxism can't be ignored here, I find it
vastly overstated. The crucial game-changers have been black authors, for the most part
home-grown Americans. "
Reading Horowitz is like reading gatestone institute articles. They can be very
convincing, but the always miss the target because Jews are seeped in willful blindness. It
starts with the dual passports and allegiances. How in any sane world should dual citizen
neocons be allowed to steer foreign policy? But then it continues with the never ending
kvetching about "anti-semitism" which is used to stifle any discussion that becomes
uncomfortable for them, like how the October Revolution was little more than a jewish coup
d'etat and a succeeding genocide of millions of Christians. Why should the US be forced to
pay $3b on Oct. 1 of every fiscal year to Israel? What about the murder of the Czar by a gang
of Ashkenazi? Or the Liberty or the King David Hotel? What about 70 years of Palestinian
genocide? What about their bullying and extortion of governments and individuals to prevent
BDS?
I could go on and on, but the point I am making is that Jews know this, but outwardly they
are ignorant, at least when writing for the benefit of stupid goyim. Among themselves the
truth is often alluded to in public, and that is why reading the Jewish press is so
important. Eventually they will try to prevent goyim from accessing it, probably by claiming
its all a lie just as with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
This jewish facade of plausible deniability has to be maintained at all costs, and this is
why we always hear how jews are so persecuted, why every city is forced to have a holocaust
museum and why every few years another holocaust or nazi-genocide movie comes out. It is all
about jews maintaining this Potemkin lie and pretending its true.
Which brings me to one of their biggest lies: That Jews are semitic, that they are white
and that they are not white, all simultaneously. If every component of US culture was forced
to track the number jews receiving benefit alongside the number of "whites" and other races,
then the country would really learn what true racism and patriarchy is. That is why this is
just another part of the massive jew lie that they all pretend not to see.
Ay, PF, awesome, rad! I like it, here in the wee hours, for some reason I couldn't sleep, but
you know, I'm a old f*rt and I don't do skype, just like I don't FB, but maybe tomorrow I'll
see a granddaughter or two, and they do all that stuff. Don't worry about a slow start,
opening nights can be like that and then Boom!
I have always considered Capitalism and Communism as false oppositions to each other. People
in power use whichever of the two is useful for a particular situation, place and time to
attain certain long term aims. The future of the world is moving towards Corporate Communism
where the worst of capitalism and communism are blended to rule over and exploit the masses.
This explains why many Western crony companies had invested in the the Soviet Union in it's
earlier days of , they could never had got a more slave labour population. The same with
China recently. Crony Capitalism and Communism seem to go well together just like how big
corporations and big governments go well together. This also explains why big corporations
still hire their workforce from Western Universities which are hot beds of leftist
propaganda. On one level, it never makes any sense. But when you see the bigger picture, it
makes sense.
Besides, the false left vs right paradigm keeps the common man on the streets busy infighting
and wasting their time without realizing the big schemes being played over them.
Cultural Marxism (probably) emerged much later then economic Marxism of Karl Marx. It was
a solution to a pressing problem of why Western populations were resistant to Communism. The
problem was narrowed down to traditional Western civilization, the White race and to some
extent traditional Christianity. Cultural Marxism is a 'slow boil the frog' method unlike the
shock method unleashed on Russia and China. It also uses the tactic of communists and
communism infusing in every part of a country's institutions like blood capillaries around
muscles.
A "Chomsky" amass of evidencies, a drunk display of conclusions. This is what should be
called the bend of intellectuals, what an agenda, it hangs out on all sides. Sully,
irrelevant, cheatacious in it's intend. And yet, "let's fall for it"?
While the influence of the Frankfurt School of Marxism can't be ignored here, I find it
vastly overstated. The crucial game-changers have been black authors, for the most part
home-grown Americans. Urtexts include Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, James
Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, Malcolm X's Autobiography and Richard Hamilton & Stokely
Carmichael's Black Power. Over the next several years, as the Black Panthers turned up the
heat, Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice, Bobby Seale's Seize the Time and Huey Newton's
Revolutionary Suicide became must-reads. Recent additions to the canon have been Derrick
Bell's Faces at the Bottom of the Well, Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, and Cornel
West' s Race Matters.,
Arguably, none of the above books by black authors would have become influential had it
not been for the intellectual framework created in the postwar period by the Frankfurt School
"study," The Authoritarian Personality :
Paul Gottfried writes:
You should read my last three books, all of which stress that The Authoritarian Personality
profoundly affected American political thinking. It was essential to the postwar
reconstruction of German "civic culture' and the work was deeply admired by SM Lipset, the
sponsors of Commentary, and scads of Cold War liberals. It was not necessarily viewed as
the post-Marxist leftist source of moral corruption that I suggest it was in The Strange
Death of Marxism. What made The Authoritarian Personality particularly insidious is that it
was widely seen as a blueprint for non-totalitarian democracy both here and in Europe; and
leaders in government and in universities read the book in that way. The fact that Adorno
and Horkheimer (who later backed away from the implications of the work he had co-edited)
were at the time Soviet sympathizers did not dampen the enthusiasm of the anti-Stalinist
secularist intellectuals who tried to defend the study. Although the Jewish identity of the
Frankfurt School may not have been the only factor leading to their anti-Christian,
anti-fascist pseudo-science, denying its influence on the formation of Frankfort School
ideas is simply silly.
Christopher Lash's True and Only Heaven includes a long section detailing the mainstream
liberal support for The Authoritarian Personality in the 1950s and 1960s. Lipset, Hook,
Daniel Bell, Arthur Schlesinger, Richard Hofstadter and the members of American Jewish
Committe, who sponsored Adorno and Commentary magazine, were among the anti-Communist
liberals who admired TAP and who thought that it had relevance for our country. Although
you and I may be to the right of these celebrants, it would be hard to argue that no
anti-Communist had any use for Adorno's ideas.
America, that shining city upon a hill (Matthew 5:14), has forsaken its own blood and soil
(Luke 14.26, Matthew 19:27-30), and fully implemented the International Jew's globalist
vision (Matthew 28:19) of Communist Freaqualism (Acts 4:32, Galatians 3:28), including
acceptance of rapefugees (Matthew 25:35-36), placing blacks in leadership (Acts 13:1),
condemning normal male behavior (Mark 9:47), and promoting male castration (Matthew 19.11-12)
in favor of a androgynous utopia (Matthew 22:30).
John Gray once noted that liberal humanist values are a "hollowed-out version of a
theistic myth," but as I've shown from the Christian Holy Book , they're actually
Judeo-Christianity on sterioids.
"The liberal belief in the free and sacred nature of each individual is a direct legacy
of the traditional Christian belief in the free and eternal souls. Without recourse to
eternal souls and a Creator God, it becomes embarrassingly difficult for liberals to
explain what is so special about individual Sapiens The idea that all humans are equal is a
revamped version of the monotheist conviction that all souls are equal before God." p.
231
Yuval Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Harper Collins, 2015)
Again, I'll point out that liberal humanist Freakqualism is not a "direct legacy" of
Christianity, but an intensification.
I was born in Europe. Except for a few years in the 1960s, I have lived all my life in
Europe. I have never come across anybody in Europe "rejecting their identity". Quite the
contrary indeed! European national identities are alive and well, and thriving in the
European Union. The article itself is the usual VDare anti-EU propaganda and the article
linked to (by Pat Buchanan) doesn't support the author's argument. I don't really see why
Americans are getting so steamed up about Marxism. Nobody has taken Marxism seriously since
the collapse of the communist dictatorships 25 years ago. And, of course, I'm always amused
at the way the people who shout "America First" keep telling us Europeans how to run our
countries!
Mr. Horowitz makes good points, but many of us here have made similar observations along the
same path to understanding the world around us. Corporations have a whatever-it-takes ethos,
and if they can make money by hanging on to eternal verities, they'll hang on to them, and if
they can calculate that dumping eternal verities will serve them, they'll do that. Happy
Thanksgiving Day all, and thanks to Ron for hosting this site, and many good commenters for
illuminating our America a bit..
Companies do what is politically expedient because the people who govern them make a
rational choice to decide to the bottom line – or any short-term definition thereof
– as opposed to standing up to the mob.
Period. End of story.
Imagine you are a minimum wage employee in the neighborhood laundromat and you're 16 and
naive and you notice the kindly owner/manager pays protection money to the mob. In all other
facets he is a kindly man, a good person, a good manager, a good businessperson. You wonder
why he doesn't call the police, make a report to the FBI, call on politicians, or stand up to
the mob himself.
Of course he can do any of those things. He chooses not to.
"... In addition, financial capital leads to inequality, and that inequality, as you've seen in the United States and in Europe and many other places, it increases. And suddenly, not suddenly, but bit by bit, people begin to realize that they aren't getting their share and that means that the government, to protect capitalism, must use force to maintain the order of financial capital. And I think Trump is the fulfillment of that, and I think there are other examples too which I can go into. So, basically, my argument is that with the rise of finance and its unproductive activities, you've got the decline in living standards of the vast majority, and in order to maintain order in such a system where people no longer think that they're sort of getting their share, and so justice doesn't become, a just distribution doesn't become the reason why people support this system, increasingly it has to be done through force. ..."
"... I think that as The Real News has pointed out, that many of Trump's policies appear just to be more extreme versions of things that George Bush did, and in some cases not that much different from what Barack Obama did. ..."
"... The difference with Trump is, he has complete contempt for all of those constraints. That is, he is an authoritarian. I don't think he's a fascist, not yet, but he is an authoritarian. He does not accept that there are constraints which he should respect. There are constraints which bother him, and he wants to get rid of them, and he actually takes steps to do so. ..."
"... Erdoğan so infamously said? "Democracy is like a train. You take it to where you want to go and then you get off." No. Progressive view is that democracy is what it's all about. Democracy is the way that we build the present and we build a future. ..."
"... I think that the struggle in the United States is extremely difficult because of the role of the big money and the media, which you know more about than I do. But it is a struggle which we have to keep at, and we have to be optimistic about it. It's a good bit easier over here, but as we saw, and you reported, during the last presidential election, a progressive came very close to being President of the United States. That, I don't think was a one-off event, not to be repeated. I think it lays the basis for hope in the future. ..."
"... The democratic nation-state basically operates like a criminal cartel, forcing honest citizens to surrender large portions of their wealth to pay for stuff like roads and hospitals and schools. ..."
"... Any hierarchic system will be exploited by intelligent sociopaths. Systems will not save us. ..."
"... What I gleaned from my quick Wikiread was the apparent pattern of economic inequality causing the masses to huddle in fear & loathing to one corner – desperation, and then some clever autocrat subverts the energy from their F&L into political power by demonizing various minorities and other non-causal perps. ..."
"... Like nearly every past fascism emergence in history, US Trumpismo is capitalizing on inequality, and fear & loathing (his capital if you will) to seize power. That brings us to Today – to Trump, and an era (brief I hope) of US flirtation with fascism. Thank God Trump is crippled by a narcissism that fuels F&L within his own regime. Otherwise, I might be joining a survivalist group or something. :-) ..."
Yves here. This Real News Network interview with professor emeritus John Weeks discussed how economic ideology has weakened or
eliminated public accountability of institutions like the Fed and promote neo[neo]liberal policies that undermine democracy.
SHARMINI PERIES: It's The Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. The concept of the [neo]liberal democracy
is generally based on capitalistic markets along with respect for individual freedoms and human rights and equality in the face of
the law. The rise of financial capital and its efforts to deregulate financial markets, however, raises the question whether [neo]liberal
democracy is a sustainable form of government. Sooner or later, democratic institutions make way for the interests of large capital
to supersede.
Political economist John Weeks recently gave this year's David Gordon Memorial Lecture at the meeting of the American Economic
Association in Philadelphia where he addressed these issues with a talk titled, Free Markets and the Decline of Democracy. Joining
us now is John Weeks. He joins us from London to discuss the issues raised in his lecture. You can find a link to this lecture just
below the player, and John is, as you know, Professor Emeritus of the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies
and author of Economics of the 1%: How Mainstream Economics Serves the Rich, Obscures Reality and Distorts Policy. John, good to
have you back on The Real News.
JOHN WEEKS: Thank you very much for having me.
SHARMINI PERIES: John, let me start with your talk. Your talk describes a struggle between efforts to create a democratic
control over the economy and the interest of capital, which seeks to subjugate government to the interest, its own interest. In your
assessment, it looks like this is a losing battle for democracy. Explain this further.
JOHN WEEKS: Yeah, so I think that Marx in Capital, in the first volume of Capital, refers to a concept called bourgeois
right, by which he meant that, you said it in the introduction, that in a capitalist society there is a form of equality that mimics
the relationship of exchange. Every commodity looks equal in exchange and there is a system of ownership that you might say is the
shadow of that. I think more important, in the early stages of development of capitalism, of development of factories, that those
institutions or those factories prompted the growth of trade unions and workers' struggles in general. Those workers' struggles were
key to the development, or further development of democracy, freedom of speech, a whole range of rights, the right to vote.
However, with the development of finance capital, you've got quite a different dynamic within the capitalist system. Let me say,
I don't want to romanticize the early period of capitalism, but you did have struggles, mass struggles for rights. Finance capital
produces nothing productive, it doesn't do anything productive. So, what finance capital does basically is it redistributes the income,
the wealth, the, what Marx would call the surplus value, from other sectors of society to itself. And it employs relatively few people,
so that dynamic of the capital, industrial capital, generating its antithesis So, that a labor movement doesn't occur under financial
capital.
In addition, financial capital leads to inequality, and that inequality, as you've seen in the United States and in Europe
and many other places, it increases. And suddenly, not suddenly, but bit by bit, people begin to realize that they aren't getting
their share and that means that the government, to protect capitalism, must use force to maintain the order of financial capital.
And I think Trump is the fulfillment of that, and I think there are other examples too which I can go into. So, basically, my argument
is that with the rise of finance and its unproductive activities, you've got the decline in living standards of the vast majority,
and in order to maintain order in such a system where people no longer think that they're sort of getting their share, and so justice
doesn't become, a just distribution doesn't become the reason why people support this system, increasingly it has to be done through
force.
SHARMINI PERIES: All right, John. Before we get further into the relationship between neo[neo]liberalism and democracy, give
us a brief summary of what you mean by neo[neo]liberalism. You say that it's not really about deregulation, as most people usually conceive
of it. If that's not what it's about, what is it, then?
JOHN WEEKS: I think that if you think about the movements in the United States, and as much as I can, I will take examples
from the United States because most of your listeners will be familiar with those, beginning in the early part of the twentieth century,
in the United States you have reform movements, the breaking up of the large monopolies, tobacco monopoly, a whole range of Standard
Oil, all of that. And then of course under Roosevelt you began to get the regulation of capital in the interests of the majority,
much of that driven by Roosevelt's trade union support. So, that was moving from a system where capital was relatively unregulated
to where it was being regulated in the interests of the vast majority. I also would say, though, I won't go into detail, to a certain
extent it was regulated in the interest of capital itself to moderate competition and therefore, I'd say, ensure a relatively tranquil
market environment.
Neo[neo]liberalism involves not the deregulation of the capitalist system, but the reregulation of it in the interest of capital. So,
it involves moving from a system in which capital is regulated in the interests of stability and the many to regulation in a way
that enhances capital. These regulations, to get specific about them, restrictions on trade unions, as you, on Real News, a number
of people have talked about this. The United States now have many restrictions on the organizing of trade unions which were not present
50 or 60 years ago, making it harder to have a mass movement of labor against capital, restrictions on the right to demonstrate,
a whole range of things. Then within capital itself, the regulations on the movement of capital that facilitate speculation in international
markets. We have a capitalism in which the form of regulation is shifted from the regulation of capital in the interest of labor
to regulation of capital in the interest of capital.
SHARMINI PERIES: John, give us a brief summary of the ways in which neo[neo]liberalism undermines democracy.
JOHN WEEKS: Well, I think that there are many examples, but I'm going to focus on economic policy. For an obvious case
is the role of the Central Bank, in the case of the United States' Federal Reserve System, in which reducing its accountability to
the public, one way you can do that is by assigning goals to it, such as fighting inflation, which then override other goals. Originally,
the Federal Reserve System, its charter, or I'll say its terms of reference, if you want me to use that phrase, included full employment
and a stable economy. Those have been overridden in more recent legislation, which puts a great emphasis on the control of inflation.
Control of inflation basically means maintaining an economy at a relatively high level of unemployment or part-time employment, or
flexible employment, where people have relatively few rights at work. And that the Central Bank becomes a vehicle for enforcing a
neo[neo]liberal economic policy.
Second of all, probably most of your viewers will not remember the days when we had fixed exchange rates. We had a world of fixed
exchange rates in those days that represented the policy, which government could use to affect its trade and also affect its domestic
policy. There have been deregulation of that. We now have floating exchange rates. That takes away a tool, an instrument of economic
policy. And in fiscal policy, there the, here it's more ideology than laws, though there are also laws. There's a law requiring that
the government balance its budget, but more important than that, the introduction into the public consciousness, I'd say grinding
into the public consciousness, the idea that deficits are a bad thing, government debt is a bad thing, and that's a completely neo[neo]liberal
ideology.
In summary, one way that the democracy has been undermined is to take away economic policy from the public realm and move it to
the realm of experts. So, we have certain allegedly expert guidelines that we have to follow. Inflation should be low. We should
not run deficits. The national debt should be small. These are things that are just made up ideologically. There is no technical
basis to them. And so, in doing that, you might say, the term I like to use is, you decommission the democratic process and economic
policy.
SHARMINI PERIES: John, speaking of ideology, in your talk you refer to the challenge that fascism posed or poses to neo[neo]liberal
democracies. Now, it is interesting when you take Europe into consideration and National Socialist in Germany, for example, appeal
mostly to the working class, as does contemporary far-right leaders in Poland and Hungary, that they support more explicit neo[neo]liberal
agendas. Why would people support a neo[neo]liberal agenda that exasperate inequalities and harm public services that they depend on,
including jobs?
JOHN WEEKS: I think that to a great extent it is country-specific, but I can make generalizations. First of all, I'm talking
about Europe, because you raised a case in some European countries, and then I'll make some comments about the United States and
Trump, if you want me to. I think in Europe, a combination of three things resulted in the rise of fascism and authoritarian movements
which are verging on fascism. One is that the European integration project, which let me say that I have supported, and I would still
prefer Britain not to leave the European Union, but nevertheless, the European Union integration project has been a project run by
elites.
It has not been a bottom-up process. It has been a process very much run by elite politicians, in which they get together in closed
door, and they make policies which they subsequently announce, and many of the decisions they come to being extremely, the meaning
of them being extremely opaque. So, therefore, you have the development in Europe of the European Union which, not from the bottom
up, but very much from the top down. You might suggest from the top, but I'm not sure how much goes down. That's one.
The second key factor, I would say, for about 20 years in European integration, it was relatively benign elitism because it was social
democratic, it had the support of the working class, or the trade unions, at any rate. Then, increasingly, it began to become neo[neo]liberal.
So, you have an elite project which was turning into a neo[neo]liberal project. Specifically, what I mean by neo[neo]liberal is where they're
generating flexibility rules for the labor market, austerity policies, bank, balanced budgets, low inflation, the things I was talking
about before.
Then the third element, toxic, the most toxic of them, but the other, they're volatile, is the legacy of fascism in Europe. Every
European country, with the exception of Britain, had a substantial fascist movement in the 1920s and 1930s. I can go into why Britain
didn't sometime. It had to do with the particular class struggle of the, I mean, class structure of Britain. Poland, ironically enough,
though, is one of them. It was overrun by the Nazis, and occupied, and incorporated into the German Reich. Ironically, it had a very
right-wing government with a lot of sympathies towards fascism when it was invaded in the late summer of 1939.
France had a strong fascist movement. Of course, Italy had a fascist government, and Hungary, where now you have a right-wing
government, a very strong fascist movement. The incorporation of these countries into the Soviet sphere of influence, or the empire,
as it were, did not destroy that fascism. It certainly suppressed it, but it didn't destroy it. So, as soon as the European project
began to transform into a neo[neo]liberal project, and that gathered strength in the early 1990s, I mean, the neo[neo]liberal aspect of the
European Union gathered strength in the early 1990s, exactly when you were getting the "liberation" of many countries from Soviet
rule. And so, when you put those together, it led to, It was a rise of fascism waiting to happen and now it is happening.
SHARMINI PERIES: John, earlier, you said you'll factor in Trump. How does Trump fit into this phenomena?
JOHN WEEKS: I think that as The Real News has pointed out, that many of Trump's policies appear just to be more extreme
versions of things that George Bush did, and in some cases not that much different from what Barack Obama did. Now, though I
wouldn't go too deeply into that, I think that that is the most serious offenses by Obama that have been carried on by Trump have
to do with the use of drones and the military. But at any rate, but there's a big difference from Trump. For the most part, the previous
Republican presidents, and Democratic presidents, accepted the framework of, the formal framework of [neo]liberal democracy in the United
States. That is, formally accepted the constraints imposed by the Constitution.
Now, of course, they probably didn't do it out of the goodness of their heart. They did it because they saw that the things that
they wanted to achieve, the neo[neo]liberal goals that they wanted to achieve were perfectly consistent with the Constitution's framework
and guarantees of rights and so on, that most of those rights are guaranteed in a way that's so weak that you didn't have to repeal
the first 10 Amendments of the Constitution in order to have repressive policies.
The difference with Trump is, he has complete contempt for all of those constraints. That is, he is an authoritarian. I don't
think he's a fascist, not yet, but he is an authoritarian. He does not accept that there are constraints which he should respect.
There are constraints which bother him, and he wants to get rid of them, and he actually takes steps to do so. What you have
in Trump, I think, is a sea change. You have a, we've had right-wing presidents before, certainly. What the difference with Trump
is, he is a right-wing president that sees no reason to respect the institutions of democratic government, or even, you might say,
the institution of representative government. I won't even use a term as strong as "democratic." That lays the basis for an explicitly
authoritarian United States, and I'd say that we're beginning to see the vehicle by which this will occur, the restriction on voting
rights. Of course, that was going on before Trump, it does in a more aggressive way. I think the, soon, we will have a Supreme Court
that will be quite lenient with his tendency towards authoritarian rule.
SHARMINI PERIES: All right, John. Let's end this segment with what can be done. I mean, what must be done to prevent neo[neo]liberal
interests from undermining democracy? And who do you believe is leading the struggle for democracy now, and what is the right strategy
that people should be fighting for?
JOHN WEEKS: Well, one thing, I think, where I'd begin is that I think progressives, as The Real News represents, and Bernie
Sanders, and all the people that support him, and Jeremy Corbyn over here, I'll come back to talk about a bit about Jeremy. We must
be explicit that we view democracy, by which we mean the participation of people at the grassroots, their participation in the government,
we view that as a goal. It's not merely a technique, or a tool which, what was it that Erdoğan so infamously said? "Democracy
is like a train. You take it to where you want to go and then you get off." No. Progressive view is that democracy is what it's all
about. Democracy is the way that we build the present and we build a future.
I'm quite fortunate in that I live in perhaps the only large country in the world where there's imminent possibility of a progressive,
left-wing, anti-authoritarian government. I think that is the monumental importance of Jeremy Corbyn and his second-in-command, John
McDonnell, and others like Emily Thornberry, who is the Foreign Secretary. These people are committed to democracy. In the United
States, Bernie Sanders is committed to a democracy, and a lot of other people are too, Elizabeth Warren. So, I think that the
struggle in the United States is extremely difficult because of the role of the big money and the media, which you know more about
than I do. But it is a struggle which we have to keep at, and we have to be optimistic about it. It's a good bit easier over here,
but as we saw, and you reported, during the last presidential election, a progressive came very close to being President of the United
States. That, I don't think was a one-off event, not to be repeated. I think it lays the basis for hope in the future.
"A lot of money" in those days- Some say JI "bought land" with the shekels. An early form of asset swap? A precursor to current
financialist activities?
Good article. If it were any bleaker, I'd suspect Chris Hedges having a hand in writing it.
The democratic nation-state basically operates like a criminal cartel, forcing honest citizens to surrender large portions
of their wealth to pay for stuff like roads and hospitals and schools.
There it is, the Gorgon Thiel, surrounded by terror and rout.
"Altman felt that OpenAI's mission was to babysit its wunderkind until it was ready to be adopted by the world. He'd been reading
James Madison's notes on the Constitutional Convention for guidance in managing the transition. 'We're planning a way to allow
wide swaths of the world to elect representatives to a new governance board,' he said."
I was having trouble choosing which of the passages in this article to provide a mad quote from. Some other choices were
Altman's going to work with the Department of Defense, then help defend the world from them.
Or:
OpenAI's going to take over from humans, but don't worry because they're going to make it (somehow) so OpenAI can only terminate
bad people. Before releasing it to the world.
Or:
Altman says 'add a 0 to whatever you're doing but never more than that.'
But if this sort of wisdom (somehow) doesn't work out well for everybody and the world collapses, he's flying with Peter Thiel
in the private jet to the New Zealand's south island to wait out the Zombie Apocalypse on a converted sheep farm. (Before returning
to the Valley work with more startups?)
I think it's revealing that the only type of democracy discussed, in spite of the title, is "[neo]liberal democracy", which the
host describes as "based on capitalistic markets along with respect for individual freedoms and human rights and equality in the
face of the law."
I've always argued that [neo]liberal democracy is a contradiction in terms, and you can see why from that quotation. [neo]liberalism (leaving
aside special uses of the term in the US) is about individuals exercising their personal economic freedom and personal
autonomy as much as they can, with as little control by government as possible.
But given massive imbalances in economic power, the influence
of media-backed single issue campaigns and the growth of professional political parties, policy is decided by the interventions
of powerful and well-organised groups, without ordinary people being consulted. At the end, Weeks does start to talk of grassroots
participation, but seems to have no more in mind than a campaign to get people to vote for Sanders in 2020, which hardly addresses
the problem. The answer, if there is one, is a system of direct democracy, involving referendums and popular assemblies chosen
at random.
This has been much talked about, but since you would have the entire political class against you, it's not going to
happen. In the meantime, we are stuck with [neo]liberal democracy, whose contradictions, I'm afraid are becoming ever more obvious.
"Contradictions?" One question for me at least would be whether the features and motions of the current regime are best characterized
as "contradictions." If so, to what? And implicit in the use of the word is some kind of resolution, via actual class conflict
or something, leading to "better" or at least "different." All I see from my front porch is more of the same, and worse. "The
Matrix" in that myth gave some comforting illusions to the mopery. I think the political economy/collapsed planet portrayed in
"Soylent Green" is a lot closer to the likely endpoints.
At least in the movie fable, the C-Suite-er of the Soylent Corp. as the lede in the film, was sickened of what he was helping
to maintain, and bethought himself to blow his tiny little personal whistle that nobody would really hear, and got axed for his
disloyalty to the ruling collective. I doubt the ranks of corporatists of MonsantoDuPont and LockheedMartin and the rest include
any significant numbers of folks sickened by "the contradictions" that get them their perks and bennies and power (as long as
they color inside the lines.)
I hope I am way off the mark, but within that genre & in terms of where we could be heading, the film " Snowpiercer " sums
it up best for me- a dystopian world society illustrated through the passengers on one long train.
Thanks for the Real News Network for covering issues that never see the light of day on the corporate media and never mentioned
by the Rachel Maddow's of the "news" shows.
I actually like the term and find it useful, insofar as it describes an ideology -- as oposed a real political-economic arrangement.
The presence of "free markets" may not be a characteristic of the neo[neo]liberal phase, but the belief in them sure is.
(Which is not to say there aren't people who don't believe in free markets but do invoke them rhetorically for
other ends. That's a feature of many if not most successful ideologies.)
' Originally, the Federal Reserve charter included full employment and a stable economy. Those have been overridden in more
recent legislation, which puts a great emphasis on the control of inflation.
Eh, this is fractured history. The Fed was set up in 1913 as a lender of last resort -- a discounter of government and private
bills.
In late 1978 Jimmy Carter signed the Humphrey Hawkins Act instructing the Fed to pursue three goals: stable prices, maximum
employment, and moderate long-term interest rates, though the latter is rarely mentioned now and the Fed is widely viewed as having
a dual mandate.
The Fed's two percent inflation target it simply adopted at its own initiative -- it's not enshrined in no Perpetual Inflation
Act.
' We had a world of fixed exchange rates which government could use to affect its trade and also affect its domestic policy.
We now have floating exchange rates. That takes away a tool. '
LOL! This is totally inverted and flat wrong. The Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system prevented radical monetary experiments
such as QE which would have broken the peg. Nixon unilaterally suspended fixed exchange rates in 1971 because he was unwilling
to take the political hit of formally devaluing the dollar (or even more unlikely, sweating out Vietnam War inflation with falling
prices to maintain the peg).
Floating rates are a new and potentially lethal monetary tool which have produced a number of sad examples of "governments
gone wild" with radical monetary experiments and currency swings. Bad boys Japan & Switzerland come readily to mind.
To render history accurately requires getting hands dirty with dusty old books. Icky, I know. :-(
Yes but globalisation meant that all central banks and finance ministers had to act concertedly as in G-20 and similar meetings.
While we may talk of floating exchange rates, each country fixes its interest rate to maintain parity with the others. Isn't that
so?
I think that the key piece of info is that the Federal Reserve was created on December 23rd, 1913. That sounds like that it
was slipped in the legislative back door when everybody was going away for the Christmas holidays.
===== quote =====
Second of all, probably most of your viewers will not remember the days when we had fixed exchange rates. We had a world of fixed
exchange rates in those days that represented the policy, which government could use to affect its trade and also affect its domestic
policy. There have been deregulation of that. We now have floating exchange rates. That takes away a tool, an instrument of economic
policy. And in fiscal policy, there the, here it's more ideology than laws, though there are also laws. There's a law requiring
that the government balance its budget, but more important than that, the introduction into the public consciousness, I'd say
grinding into the public consciousness, the idea that deficits are a bad thing, government debt is a bad thing, and that's a completely
neo[neo]liberal ideology.
===== /quote =====
This makes absolutely no sense and seems to have the case exactly backward. Our federal government has no rule that the budget
must be balanced. Fixed exchange rates were not a tool that could be used to affect trade and domestic policy in a good way.
I enjoyed John Weeks' point of view. He's the first person I've read who refers to the usefulness of a fixed exchange rate.
Useful for a sovereign government with a social spending agenda. We have always been a sovereign government with a military agenda
which is at odds with a social agenda.
Guns and butter are a dangerous combination if you are dedicated to at least maintaining
the illusion of a "strong dollar." That's basically what Nixon finessed. John Conally told him not to worry, we could go off the
gold standard and it wasn't our problem since we were the reserve currency – it was everybody else's problem and we promptly exported
our inflation all around the world. And now it has come home to roost because it was fudging and it couldn't last forever.
Much
better to concede to some fix for the currency and maintain the sovereign power to devalue the dollar as necessary to maintain
proper social spending. I don't understand why sovereign governments cannot see that a deficit is just the mirror image of a healthy
social economy (Stephanie Kelton).
And to that end "fix" an exchange rate that maintains a reasonable purchasing power of the
currency by pegging it to the long term health of the economy. What we do now is peg the dollar to a "basket of goods and services"-
Ben Bernanke. That "basket" is effectively "the market" and has very little to do with good social policy.
There's no reason we
can't dispense with the market and simply fiat the value of our currency based on the social return estimated for our social investments.
Etc. Keeping the dollar stubbornly strong is just tyranny favoring those few who benefit from extreme inequality.
" Democracy is not under stress – it's under aggressive attack, as unconstrained financial greed overrides public accountability
."
I request a lessatorium* on the term 'democracy', because there aren't any democracies. Rather than redefine the term, why
not use a more accurate one, like 'plutocracy', or 'corporatocracy'.
-- -- -- -
* It's like a moratorium, you just do less of it.
I had not given much thought to "Fascist" until the term was challenged as a synonym for "bully." So, I started reading Wikipedia's
take on Fascismo. What I discovered was the foremost, my USA education did not teach jack s -- about Fascism – and I went to elite
high school in libr'l Chicago.
Is Fascism right or left? Does it matter? What goes around comes around.
What I gleaned from my quick Wikiread was the apparent pattern of economic inequality causing the masses to huddle in fear
& loathing to one corner – desperation, and then some clever autocrat subverts the energy from their F&L into political power
by demonizing various minorities and other non-causal perps.
Like nearly every past fascism emergence in history, US Trumpismo is capitalizing on inequality, and fear & loathing (his capital
if you will) to seize power. That brings us to Today – to Trump, and an era (brief I hope) of US flirtation with fascism. Thank
God Trump is crippled by a narcissism that fuels F&L within his own regime. Otherwise, I might be joining a survivalist group
or something. :-)
Neoliberalism involves not the deregulation of the capitalist system, but the reregulation of it in the interest of capital.
So, it involves moving from a system in which capital is regulated in the interests of stability and the many to regulation in
a way that enhances capital.
Prominent politicians in the US and UK have spent their entire political careers representing neoliberalism's agenda at the
expense of representing the voters' issues. The voters are tired of the conservative and [neo]liberal political establishments' focus
on neoliberal policy. This is also true in Germany as well France and Italy. The West's current political establishments see the
way forward as "staying the neoliberal course." Voters are saying "change course." See:
'German Politics Enters an Era of Instability' – Der Speigel
"... I'm also having a hard time not feeling somewhat sorry for Howe, who is the star witness. He was arrested, again, during the trial. He's been accused of any number of pejoratives, by everyone involved. He also seems to be the only one who has really lost anything -- lots of money and a career. ..."
"... They stole over 100 million dollars. Howe lied about one night at a hotel. Howe gets a jumpsuit. Cuomo is still in his office. The COR execs are still being represented by very high priced lawyers, paid for with millions that were stolen. The press gets lots of clickbait about 'ziti' and the 'fat man', that never, ever really gets anywhere near the people who should most be in jail. They have lawyers, you understand. ..."
"... I grew up in NYS and I still know one of the reporters following the trial. Even for me, the scale of the sleaziness is mindboggling. And the evidence seems quite compelling to me. I mean, the wife had a no-show job, nobody even disputes that! Will be interesting to see if guilty verdicts, if there are any, taint Cuomo. Or change anything. ..."
One story I think is very relevant that it not getting nearly enough press is the Cuomo
aide corruption trial.
It is hard to follow. The corruption is so deep and systemic that it's producing its own
gravity and realities.
I'm also having a hard time not feeling somewhat sorry for Howe, who is the star witness.
He was arrested, again, during the trial. He's been accused of any number of pejoratives, by
everyone involved. He also seems to be the only one who has really lost anything -- lots of
money and a career.
The rest of the filth are just fine. They were all more than fine to start with, and most
of that fine is in no jeopardy of ever being taken away, stolen fine included.
They stole over 100 million dollars. Howe lied about one night at a hotel. Howe gets a
jumpsuit. Cuomo is still in his office. The COR execs are still being represented by very
high priced lawyers, paid for with millions that were stolen. The press gets lots of
clickbait about 'ziti' and the 'fat man', that never, ever really gets anywhere near the
people who should most be in jail. They have lawyers, you understand.
I grew up in NYS and I still know one of the reporters following the trial. Even for me,
the scale of the sleaziness is mindboggling. And the evidence seems quite compelling to me. I
mean, the wife had a no-show job, nobody even disputes that! Will be interesting to see if
guilty verdicts, if there are any, taint Cuomo. Or change anything.
Review of: Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan
for America By Nancy
MacLean Viking , 2017 · 334 pages · $28.00
Duke University historian Nancy MacLean counted herself among those who'd never heard of
Buchanan when she began researching Jim Crow Virginia's decision to subsidize private school
vouchers for "segregation academies" in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown
v. Board of Education outlawing racial segregation in Topeka, Kansas, public schools.
References to Buchanan in the writings of the doyen of postwar neoliberal economics Milton
Friedman led her to Buchanan's former office at George Mason University. There, among huge
piles of papers, she found a confidential letter from Koch describing millions of dollars in
contributions to Buchanan's research center on the campus.
From that chance encounter with evidence connecting the unassuming professor with the
billionaire ideologue, MacLean has constructed a history of Buchanan's role as an idea merchant
for free market ideology. Over the course of nearly five decades Buchanan, his acolytes, and
associates have been key participants in a billionaire-funded campaign to promote such policies
as school vouchers for private education, privatization of Social Security, anti-union "right
to work" laws, and ideological crusades like climate science denial. That many of these
policies have been implemented at the state and local level, while perhaps the most plutocratic
administration ever inhabits the US government, is testament to the success of the Far Right's
long game.
MacLean's Democracy in Chains thus joins Jane Mayer's Dark Money and Kim
Phillips-Fein's Invisible Hands as essential reading for anyone who wants to
understand the intellectual and organizational roots of the free-market Right that has taken
hold of the modern Republican Party and much of US politics today. In contrast to the stories
that Mayer and Phillips-Fein tell, MacLean's approach is narrower -- focusing on the
career of one influential academic and his patron. But its focus on Buchanan allows MacLean to
explore other themes that aren't as central to Mayer's and Phillip-Fein's work, such as the
connection of these self-described "defenders of liberty" to an older, antidemocratic
tradition rooted in the antebellum South and the Confederacy.
Only a few years from receiving his PhD in the right-wing economics department at the
University of Chicago, Buchanan proposed to his employer, the University of Virginia, that it
support his plan to set up a research center to "produce a line of new thinkers" promoting
libertarian views then largely out of step with the mainstream of the economics profession. He
suggested in his proposal to the university president that the center be given an innocuous
name to camouflage its "extreme views . . . no matter how relevant they might be to the real
purpose of the program." University President Colgate Darden Jr. agreed to raise the money from
corporate foundations to create what MacLean rightly characterizes as "in essence a political
center at a nonprofit institution of higher learning." It was the first of many such efforts by
Buchanan and subsequent imitators to create what one of them, Murray Rothbard, openly described
as a "Leninist cadre" of free-market ideologues who could move into positions of influence in
government, business, and universities.
In reconstructing Buchanan's role in crafting academic incubators for free-market ideas
throughout his long career at UVA, UCLA, Virginia Tech, and finally at the Koch-funded Mercatus
Center at George Mason University, MacLean emphasizes two main points that rip the mask off of
these ventures' innocuous claims of devotion to "individual liberty." The first is the
inconvenient truth that they can't be separated from their origins in the defense of Jim Crow
and doctrines such as "states' rights" and "nullification" dating back to the antebellum South.
MacLean recalls historian Richard Hofstadter's characterization of John C. Calhoun (proslavery
ideologue and US vice president 1825-32) as the "Marx of the master class," and shows how
Buchanan echoed Calhoun's ideas. Like Calhoun, Buchanan assumed the supremacy of property
rights over all other rights. And like Calhoun, he developed (in The Calculus of
Consent , coauthored with Gordon Tullock in 1962) a theory of government that required all
members of society -- and most importantly, its wealthiest -- to agree before any government
action could be taken.
Buchanan's version of "public choice" posits a world in which government is a corrupt and
oppressive enterprise in which individuals and politicians adopt "rent-seeking" behavior to
channel private wealth to ends that its original owners may not support. In this world, if the
democratically determined majority supports taxation to fund public schools, but a wealthy
minority objects to paying those taxes, the wealthy minority should have the ability to veto or
opt out of support for public schools. Buchanan tested out this very idea in post-
Brown Virginia, when he coauthored a 1959 plan for the full privatization and selling
off of all public schools in the state. Although presented in race-neutral language of
"economic liberty," it presented an option to the Jim Crow Democratic Party state leadership
who urged "massive resistance" to court-ordered integration of public schools. Yet Buchanan's
proposal proved even too radical for Virginia's legislature, which narrowly rejected it.
MacLean describes how Buchanan's early failure taught him lessons that stuck with him the
rest of his life:
Faced with majority opinion as expressed in votes, politicians could not be counted on to
stand by their stated committments. . . . He learned something else, too: constitutions
matter. If a constitution enabled what he would call "socialism" (which, in Virginia's case,
meant requiring a system of public schools), it would be nearly impossible to achieve his
vision of radical transformation without changing the constitution.
Buchanan's comeuppance illustrates the second major point that MacLean draws out:
hostility to democracy, collective action, and majority rule is central to this project.
Throughout the book, MacLean quotes the principals, like Buchanan and Koch, acknowledging to
each other that their ideas are unpopular. They understand that ordinary Americans support
public goods like public education and Social Security. As a result, they resort to stealth in
advancing their agenda. They look to judicial or constitutional means to change the rules of
the game to institutionalize their far-right policies, and to place them outside the control of
elected politicians or the popular will. This is what MacLean means by placing "democracy in
chains."
So we find Buchanan writing memos and papers in support of the Koch-funded Cato Institute's
campaign for Social Security privatization in the 1980s. Knowing that a direct assault on
Social Security was political suicide, Buchanan urged a more surreptitious route: raise doubts
about the system's viability, pass incremental "reforms" to peel off groups of beneficiaries
from the system, and enlist the financial industry to offer alternatives. Anyone who followed
the George W. Bush administration's failed effort to privatize Social Security, or House
Speaker Paul Ryan's current effort to wreck Medicaid and Medicare, will recognize these
tactics.
More dramatically, we find Buchanan playing a role as adviser to that champion of economic
liberty, the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Here, where a brutal military coup allowed the
most right-wing elements of the Chilean ruling class to remake society, Buchanan found an
opportunity to test his theories of placing constitutional "locks" on democracy. The 1980
constitution, passed in a rigged referendum, had Buchanan's fingerprints on it: ridiculous
supermajorities required to raise taxes, union leaders barred from political participation, and
an electoral system designed to empower conservative minorities. Chile's return to democracy in
the 1990s overturned many of these restrictions, but others remain. And the legacy of
Pinochet-era privatizations of the country's pension and education systems -- fruit of the
policy advice of leading neoliberal ideologues -- still contributes to wide swathes of poverty
amid "economic freedom."
Buchanan's final stop was George Mason University, where Charles Koch's millions bankrolled
the transformation of a sleepy commuter college into a Beltway powerhouse that has become an
idea factory and policy mill for conservatives. Its proximity to Washington, DC, means that
politicians, congressional staffers, lobbyists, judges, and other Beltway denizens have direct
access to the latest research, talking points, and training in support of their patron's
extremist ideology.
If some of the purer libertarians worry, as MacLean quotes one of them, that they "have been
seduced by Koch money into providing intellectual ammunition for an autocratic businessman,"
Buchanan didn't seem to be one of them. But with an avowed school privatizer running the US
Department of Education, and with court cases aiming to cripple public sector unions heading to
the US Supreme Court, it's hard to argue that they've been inconsequential.
MacLean raises this dystopian prospect: "To value liberty for the wealthy minority above all
else and enshrine it in the nation's governing rules, as Calhoun and Buchanan both called for
and the Koch network is achieving, play by play, is to consent to an oligarchy in all but the
outer husk of representative form." She asks: "Is this the country we want to live in and
bequeath to our children and future generations? That is the real public choice."
"... This rings true as well; "The implications for the future of the American republic were terrifying, Tesich concluded. His words are haunting to read today: We are rapidly becoming prototypes of a people that totalitarian monsters could only drool about in their dreams. All the dictators up to now have had to work hard at suppressing the truth. We, by our actions, are saying that this is no longer necessary, that we have acquired a spiritual mechanism that can denude truth of any significance. In a very fundamental way we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world." ..."
"... This also applies to the UK. What goodwill, mythology ("worldliness, pragmatism") etc. that was attached by continentals to the UK has been "exploded". ..."
"... Lately, I've detected a certain sense of malaise among my fellow citizens. In my opinion, it's long been apparent that this won't end well. All of these factors points to a day of reckoning that is rapidly approaching. Perhaps the prevalence of school shootings is acting as the proverbial canary in the coal mine? ..."
"... Don't think that the elite have not noticed the way things are moving. In my own line of work I interact with the 1% on a regular basis. I can tell you that even though they are doing better that ever, there is a sense of discreet terror. It's obvious when they discuss all the ways that they're trying to replicating their own advantages in the education of their little darlings. ..."
"... I think it's dawning on us that we're not re-experiencing the moment before the election of Franklin Roosevelt, and the beginning of the New Deal, we're actually just now realizing the necessity of the daunting task of organizing, which makes our times resemble 1890 more than 1935. ..."
"... Even if it takes half as much time to defeat the Robber Barons this go-round, many of us will not see anything resembling ' victory ' in our lifetimes, so we have to make adjustments in our expectations, and accept the monumental nature of the tasks ahead. ..."
"... I think delegitimization is upon us. General malaise is nearly to the point of a general strike. The house of cards is in a slow motion but certain wind storm. Those thousand dollar checks at Wal-Mart payday will vanish overnight while the wealthy reap tax benefits for years on end. We are down to the twenty seven percent (Dems) waging false battles with the twenty six percent (Reps). Only the 47 percent rest of us will grow in numbers from here on out. ..."
"... The Anglo-American countries can not be anything but in a class of their own. They include the mother country with former colonies, some especially successful, and rule the world by virtue of language, wealth and, often necessarily, violence, almost always gratuitous. ..."
"... Violence has an effect on peoples lives at both the giving and receiving ends. ..."
"... Image you are in Baghdad on the glorious, glittering night of Shock and Awe to get a feel for things. That happened when the US was supposedly great. ..."
"... Intelligence makes us pessimists, and our will makes us optimists. ..."
"... But Trump is not the problem here, only the Front Man for something larger. Even during the early oughts one could perceive a fundamental societal drift, empowered by a 'conservative' (read: fascist) willingness to do whatever was necessary in pursuit of their particular vision. It is not a vision of returning disempowered white folks to some rosy past that never existed; I sense a more feudal vision, with princes and lords in gated communities, with peasants conned into doing their bidding, every day being fleeced even further. ..."
"... The angst feels not like the angst of an impending, singular catastrophe, but rather the angst of decline. There's a late empire feel to the current mood: leaders without agency, more interested in their own, internal sense of normalcy and maintaining their perches, perches that increasingly feel pointless as they're all just listless figureheads doing what the Magister Militum tells them to do. ..."
"... The military feels all-encompassing yet simultaneously incapable of exercising its will in the theater of war, so dispersed and aimless, as the missions are no longer about winning wars but about resume building ..."
"... Civililizations don't collapse like falling off a table. They stress resources of materials and people and such stresses build and build. This has serious psychological impacts. ..."
"... The moderate catastrophic disasters like Trumps election cause much bigger disruptions to the civilizational equilibrium, but only for a time. We all know deep inside that what comes next in Brexit or say Trumps removal will actually be worse than what we have now. ..."
"... For me the frame changed with the restart of the Cold War. I remember "Duck and Cover, McCarthyism, John Birchers, and Who Lost China". It has all come back. The Democrats are idiots for scapegoating Russia. President Donald Trump is incompetent. ..."
All of the warnings, predictions, knowledge, tech advances and humor of sci-fi, real
science, history, and literature alike has boiled down to this? This low quality "news" that
reports on the latest predictable, preventable outrage/injustice when it not intentionally
turning up the hysteria/fear tuner? It's like living in a simulation of a society ruled by
the insane and hearing about its unwinding day after day.
This rings true as well;
"The implications for the future of the American republic were terrifying, Tesich concluded.
His words are haunting to read today: We are rapidly becoming prototypes of a people that totalitarian monsters could only drool
about in their dreams. All the dictators up to now have had to work hard at suppressing the
truth. We, by our actions, are saying that this is no longer necessary, that we have acquired
a spiritual mechanism that can denude truth of any significance. In a very fundamental way
we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world."
Yeat's captures the inexorable feel of our times perfectly;
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
This also applies to the UK. What goodwill, mythology ("worldliness, pragmatism") etc.
that was attached by continentals to the UK has been "exploded".
This makes me wonder whether the US will exist in its current form. Is it desirable?
Genuine questions from someone who visits annually, including "fly over", and enjoys doing
so. I don't see the UK existing as currently constituted much beyond the next decade.
Lately, I've detected a certain sense of malaise among my fellow citizens. In my opinion, it's long been apparent that this won't end well.
All of these factors points to a day of reckoning that is rapidly approaching. Perhaps the
prevalence of school shootings is acting as the proverbial canary in the coal mine?
Don't think that the elite have not noticed the way things are moving. In my own line of
work I interact with the 1% on a regular basis. I can tell you that even though they are
doing better that ever, there is a sense of discreet terror. It's obvious when they discuss
all the ways that they're trying to replicating their own advantages in the education of
their little darlings.
I'm starting to think that what we are experiencing is the realization that we've spent
way too much time expecting that explaining our selves, our diverse grievances, and our
political insights would naturally result in growing an irresistible movement that would wash
over, and cleanse our politics of the filth that is the status quo.
It is sobering to realize that it took almost four decades for the original Progressive
Era organizers to bring about even the possibility of change.
I think it's dawning on us that we're not re-experiencing the moment before the election
of Franklin Roosevelt, and the beginning of the New Deal, we're actually just now realizing
the necessity of the daunting task of organizing, which makes our times resemble 1890 more
than 1935.
Government by the people, and for the people has been drowned in the bath-tub, and the
murderers have not only taken the reigns of power, but have convinced half the population
that their murderous act represents a political correction that will return America to
greatness.
It remains to be seen whether we will find it in our hearts to embrace both the hard, and
un-glamorous work of relieving the pain inflicted by the regime that has engulfed us, and the
necessity of embracing as brothers and sisters those who haven't yet realized that it is the
rich and powerful who are the problem, and not all the other poor and oppressed.
The difficulty of affecting political change might be explained the way Black-Smiths
describe their problem;
Life so short the craft so long to learn.
Even if it takes half as much time to defeat the Robber Barons this go-round, many of us
will not see anything resembling ' victory ' in our lifetimes, so we have to make
adjustments in our expectations, and accept the monumental nature of the tasks ahead.
"that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of
the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
A nice excerpt from the non-binding Gettysburg address. Too bad he was referring to a
system of governance which never existed.
In a conversation with several friends yesterday.. all of us found among our greatest
despairs the behavior of our long time friends who are Democrats. Much more pig-headed and
determined to stay that way than Republicans ever were during the Bush Jr. years. Pretending
we live in some sort of system (much less a party) which could or would possibly represent.
Seemingly incapable of listening, blinded by delusion and propaganda demanding anyone in
their presence double down on what's failed so many of us for far longer than we have
lived.
All of us men in our fifties. Hard working. None of us had kids of our own, but several
are in relationships with women who did. None of us have anything close to high living
standards. Barely getting by now with great uncertainty ahead. Hell, we all own our homes
outright, drive ten to twenty year old cars, buy most clothes second hand, grow much of our
own food, cut our own firewood, several live off the grid entirely. Only one has access to
health care and that's because he's on disability due to spinal injury on the job and an
inherited heart condition. He's also the only one who might be able to get by in 'retirement'
years on what he will receive. Every one of the rest of us realized if we lose our current
jobs we would be hard pressed to replace them at half the income we have now.
I went to orientation for jury duty this week. Out of a hundred and fifty people I was the
only man wearing a button down shirt and a sport coat. The only man who removed his hat in
the courtroom. And I felt like a freak. It was all I could do to not ask the judge about jury
nullification. The only reason I held back is because I knew every citizen in the joint just
wanted out of there.
I think delegitimization is upon us. General malaise is nearly to the point of a general
strike. The house of cards is in a slow motion but certain wind storm. Those thousand dollar
checks at Wal-Mart payday will vanish overnight while the wealthy reap tax benefits for years
on end. We are down to the twenty seven percent (Dems) waging false battles with the twenty
six percent (Reps). Only the 47 percent rest of us will grow in numbers from here on out.
Only the 47 percent rest of us will grow in numbers from here on out.
So there is our hope. Personally, I suspect that Trump's working-class supporters will join us sooner than the
deluded, diehard Clintonista faction of the democratic base. And let's hope the false battles don't turn into real battles. It's obvious there are some
who would love to have us throwing rocks at each other, or worse.
Yes, indeed, you have it. Delegitimization is the appropriate word. My thought on seeing
the headline that 17 died in the Florida school shooting was how many months to go before the
school year ends. I won't read anything about the shooter, or the deaths, or the bravery and
self sacrifice. There have been too many; there will be far too many more.
It is an end-of-Vietnam moment. It is a moment for poems such as the above mentioned, and
for me T.S.Eliot's 'Four Quartets'.
Book: The Administration of Fear – Paul Virilio.
From the back cover:
We are facing the emergence of a real, collective madness reinforced by the synchronization
of emotions: the sudden globalization of affects in real time that hits all of humanity at
the same time, and in the name of Progress. Emergency exit: we have entered a time of general
panic.
-- --
Perhaps because I live in the UK, I echo particularly what Clive, Windsock and Plutonium
Kun say.
Having spent much of the winter in Belgium, Mauritius, Spain and France, so none
Anglo-Saxon, it was a relief to get away from the UK in the same way as JLS felt. Although
these countries have their issues, I did notice their MSM appear not as venal as the UK and
US MSM and seem more focused on local bread and butter. Brexit and Trump were mentioned very
briefly, the latter nothing as hysterical and diversionary as in the UK and US. There were
little identity politics on parade. Locals don't seem as worn out, in all respects, as one
observes in Blighty.
With regard to PK's reference about Pearl Harbour, I know some well informed remainers who
want a hard Brexit just for the relief that it will bring. Others, not necessarily remainers,
have no idea what's going on and think Trump is a bigger threat. I must confess to, often,
sharing what the former think, if only to bring the neo-liberal house down once and for
all.
All this makes me think whether anglo-saxon countries are in a class of their own and how,
after Brexit, the EU27 will evolve, shorn of the UK. This is not to say that the UK (the
neo-liberal bit) is the only rotten apple in the EU.
If it was not for this site and community, I know of no other place where I would get a
better source of news, insight and sanity. I know a dozen journalists, mainly in London, well
and echo what Norello said.
The Anglo-American countries can not be anything but in a class of their own. They include
the mother country with former colonies, some especially successful, and rule the world by
virtue of language, wealth and, often necessarily, violence, almost always gratuitous.
Violence has an effect on peoples lives at both the giving and receiving ends. What was this
school shooting? The 13th or something since the beginning of the year. War. Nuclear war. A
fear of war is the undertone which has been droning (!) on long before Donald Trump took
power. Image you are in Baghdad on the glorious, glittering night of Shock and Awe to get a
feel for things. That happened when the US was supposedly great.
Is pretending all is well a rational defense against the overwhelming feeling that there
is nothing an individual can do to deflect the trajectory we are on? And the emotional energy
it takes to keep up that pretense is exhausting.
I think for myself and others that the complete hopelessness of our situation is starting
to take more of a toll. The amount of personal and social capital used to finally get some
sanity back in government after Bush and the disastrous wasted opportunity of Obama that led
to Trump is overwhelming. The complete loss of fairness is everywhere and my pet one this
week is how Experian after losing over 200 million personal financial records is now
advertising during the Olympics as the personal security service experts instead of being
prosecuted out of business.
Yesterday was peculiar, Yves Smith. You should have sent me an e-mail! My colleagues were
having meltdowns (overtired, I think). My computers were glitchy. The WWW seemed to switch on
and off all day long. I am of a mind that it has to due with the false spring: We had a thaw
in Chicago.
Like Lambert, and I won't speak for Lambert, who can speak for himself, I am guardedly
optimistic: I have attended Our Revolution meetings here in Chicago as well as community
meetings. There are many hardworking and savvy people out there. Yet I also believe that we
are seeing the collapse of the old order without knowing what will arise anew. And as always,
I am not one who believes that we should advocate more suffering so that people "learn their
lesson." There is already too much suffering in the world–witness the endless U.S.
sponsored wars in the Middle East. (The great un-covered story of our time: The horrors of
the U.S.-Israeli-Saudi sponsored massacres from Algeria to Pakistan.)
I tend to think that the Anglo-American world is having a well-deserved nervous
breakdown.
I note on my FB page that a "regular Democrat" is calling for war by invoking Orwell. When
someone has reached that point of rottenness, not even knowing that Orwell was almost by
nature anti-war, the rot can only continue its collapse.
So I offer Antonio Gramsci, who in spite of everything, used to write witty letters from
prison. >>
My state of mind brings together these two sentiments and surpasses them: I am pessimistic
because of intelligence, but a willed optimist. I think, in every circumstance, of the worst
scenario so I can marshal all of my reserves of will and be ready to overcome the obstacle. I
never allow myself illusions, and I have never had disappointments. I am always specially
armed with endless patience, not passive or inert, but patience animated by perseverance. –Antonio Gramsci, letter to his brother Gennaro, December 1929. Translation DJG.
Every collapse brings intellectual and moral disorder in its wake. So we must foster
people who are sober, have patience, who do not despair when faced with the worst horrors yet
who do not become elated over every stupid misstep. Intelligence makes us pessimists, and our
will makes us optimists. –Antonio Gramsci, first Prison Notebook, 1929-1930. Translation DJG.
So: Commenting groundlings and comrades, we must be alert, somewhat severe in our
judgments of people and of the news, and yet open to a revolution that includes bread and
roses.
Nice find, DJG: "Our intelligence makes us pessimists, and our will makes us
optimists."
Too big for a bumper sticker . but good for a bedside table or the bathroom mirror. To
remind us that, for the realists, being optimistic takes an effort of will, a determined
reach every single morning to find just one small thing that will keep us going for that day
and give us hope for the future. It could be a rosy sunrise, or the imminent arrival of a
grandchild, or a packet of seeds ready to be sown. Or meeting a good friend for coffee, or
mastering a new dance step or a difficult passage on the fiddle.
Not denial of the world's shameful faults and of our increasingly precarious position
within it, but a refusal to allow them to grind us down completely.
Intelligence makes us pessimists, and our will makes us optimists.
My favorite quote. What else is there?
And if you want to know who the enemy is, it is all those whose cure for what ails us is
either "Just going on living your life (i.e. shopping)" or "just vote". I view the current
period of disquiet and all of us wondering what we can and should do, and who will be
alongside us, or opposed to us, when we do.
> Pessimism of the the intellect, optimism of the will
I think -- call me Pollyanna if you wish -- that optimism of the intellect is warranted as
well. My only concern is that collapse will come (or be induced) when "the good guys,"* let
us say, are still to weak to take advantage of the moment. That's why I keep saying that
gridlock is our friend.
* Who in the nature of the case have been unaccustomed to wielding real power.
I have been fortunate, in the past decade, to have 'hung out' with lots of 20-somethings
(and a few older beings) who have been passionately optimistic about what they can accomplish
against the forces of darkness. From the environmentalists who are fighting the corporations
who would build pipelines and LNG terminals to activists building tiny houses for the
homeless and working with the city to find land to place them on, and those who happily get
arrested for sleeping under a blanket, in protest against 'urban camping' bans, to a woman
who for the last five years has served Friday night meals for all, on sidewalks in front of
businesses supporting the urban camping ban.
And, I have been constantly in awe of those who, in the face of centuries of being
relocated, dispossessed, despised and massacred, will not give up on protecting their lands
and their way of life. These Lakota and Kiowa and Dineh people are truly optimistic that they
will prevail. Or, perhaps fatalistic is a better description; hey know they may die
trying.
Looks like this article has a lot of legs on it but will wait to read more commentator's
thoughts and ideas before doing so myself. Too much to take in. In the meantime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WatQeG5fMU
As a New Zealander living in the USA for around 7 years now (but routinely spending
Christmas months back in NZ, and often multi month stints remote working in Europe) the
'tension' just living in the USA – NYC / LA is through the roof.
I can remember being in Vienna some time after trump won, a few days shy of returning to
the US and wondering what the hell I was thinking – and that's related to people /
media's reaction to trump just as much as trump being in charge.
It's hard to put your finger on exactly what it is – partly just the 'big
metropolis' thing.. but there's also something else nasty in the air.
Similar (but amplified) feeling at work last week at the office as one quarter of the
company were sacked on a days notice – a downsizing at a start up that supposedly has
'great culture'.
It's that nasty squeeze of fast capitalism I believe that has a grip on everyone's psyche
– elevated fear levels, etc.
Re-read Ames' 'going postal' a few weeks back, which covers brilliantly the vicious
cultural turn under Reagan.
Ps – Naked Capitalism has become my 'News refuge' having dropped off social media
entirely, and wanting to avoid the general insanity of the news cycle but not disengage,
thank you!
It's not so much the presence of angst that I see, among my working brethren we're pretty
numb to the current hopeless future and tend to focus instead on the present for efficiencies
sake, for if one thinks too much about the hopeless future it's hard to get up and get going
on fighting back the tide and muddling through the hopeless present that will be more
hopeless if you don't do anything. (as an aside my opinion is that this psychology has much
to do with the current homeless crisis it takes confidence to try and those who can delude
themselves into doing so seem to be a little better off) But now the angst is in the the
10%er's in my acquaintance, who claim to be really worried about nuclear war. Not
surprisingly they're mostly informed by npr, which as far as I can see makes people really
stupid. The trump as crazy fascist narrative has them in it's clutches so much so that his
weekend I had to give the "don't be too pessimistic b/c if the world doesn't end you will be
unprepared for it, and if it ends who cares?" speech normally reserved for youngsters who see
no point in trying due to end of the world thinking (as anecdote since when I was in college
in the early '80's I was pretty certain there would be a nuclear war and made different
choices than the best ones,, anyone remember the star wars missile defense system?). That
said I think the "we're all gonna die" theme is just more bs sour grapes and more proof that
the residence of hopelessness is actually the democrat partisans who refuse to live in the
present, so denial is where they are at. But isn't that the thing about angst, it doesn't
have to be real to effect one's life negatively, and I'm hearing it from people who I think
should know better, but I read nc daily and live out in the woods (highly recommended, almost
as good as being in another country as the rural areas of the US are actually
another country) and npr was so unhinged this weekend that I felt that even the reporters
were having a hard time mustering the outrage. As Hope said commenting on the uber series
"What a pleasure it is to read a genuine (and all too rare) piece of financial analysis."
I couldn't agree more, and I might send it on to a 10%er, but they seem kind of fragile
lately and I don't know if they could handle "uber is a failing enterprise", they might not
get out of bed
Don't know if I'm any more sensitive than you guys, and I'm certainly not that good at
articulating what's going in with something this subtle.
I will say that when the dogs stop barking its time to start getting REALLY worried. What
we may now be hearing, or not hearing, may be a sign of fatigue, but more depressingly,
impending resignation. EVERY day for the past year there's been yet another affront, and the
opposition has been ineffective in any meaningful sense. Trump has apparently learned that
the way to parry any thrust is to counter with something even more outrageous, literally in a
matter of minutes. The initiative he is thus able to maintain is scary, and something I see
no way to surmount.
But Trump is not the problem here, only the Front Man for something larger. Even during
the early oughts one could perceive a fundamental societal drift, empowered by a
'conservative' (read: fascist) willingness to do whatever was necessary in pursuit of their
particular vision. It is not a vision of returning disempowered white folks to some rosy past
that never existed; I sense a more feudal vision, with princes and lords in gated
communities, with peasants conned into doing their bidding, every day being fleeced even
further.
Hence, having the means, though by no means being rich, I began my move off-shore over ten
years ago. I now have 3 passports and permanent residency on as many continents. What
Jerri-Lynn senses is very, very real, as I learned in the US over Xmas past in a series of
vignettes I'll spare anyone reading this. I was sharing my experiences there to a local
student recently (here in South America) who had once lived in the US and who continues to be
enamored of the now frayed, and largely repudiated, American Dream. As I explained to him,
it's not a pretty picture, and hardly one to succumb to.
My sense is that the media has succeeded in instilling into the North American zeitgeist a
sense of the US being At War against the rest of the world, not unlike that of the mentality
of Israel, which has a far more real situation to contend with. The tragedy, in the case of
the US, is that it really, really does not have to be like this. This is a hole we have begun
digging ourselves into only recently, as opposed to Israel, which at this point can hardly
see the light of day.
At some point this mentality becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and while the US could
easily turn itself around, the momentum is strong and decidedly in the other direction. The
vision of the fascists and the imperatives of the media pretty much guarantee the US, and by
extension the world, is on a collision course with negative time and space.
I'm probably the last person able to comment on this topic having spent the last three
months ignoring the news and not even reading Naked Capitalism daily. I was never bothered by
the big stories like the drama over North Korea which I thought of as nothing more than a
psy-op incidentally aimed at the American populace. Nor did I find Liberal Hezbollah (The
Resistance) or #Metoo to be anything more than a joke. I kinda suspected that American
culture would be plagued by another round of hysterical superstition driven by Calvinist
social-jihadism.
If there seems to be a lack of consequential events it's because history doesn't move as
swiftly as we might want. It doesn't mean that we aren't moving towards more worldview
shattering events which will challenge the ability of our body politic to react to them. The
United States continues to collapse driven by external and internal factors. The lack of
clarity and unity of action will eventually usher in the end of the empire aboard. The
inability of our ruling class to respond to Trump's election in such a manner which would
constructively restore faith in our institutions will only accelerate the process at home.
There isn't a lack of stories which serve as a useful guide through history. The story about
American troops being ambushed and dying in Niger was significant.
A few years before the Islamic State steamrolled through Iraq and Syria it was mostly
unnoticed that the French were contending with rebels marauding through their African
protection racket in Mali and the Central African Republic. The fact that the US is having to
prop up the French and that the chaos has been migrating southward is significant especially
given the economic factors at stake. Another story I found interesting was a recent DW
article about the woeful state of readiness of the German military given it is assuming
leadership of a prominent position in NATO. It notably reveals that in the aftermath of the
2008 economic crisis and euro crisis the Germans, but probably the European countries as a
whole, have been strip-mining their military budgets which is something that America did
during the Great Depression. I'm sure there is even more stories out there that are little
pieces of a much larger puzzle but to be honest I've mostly spent my downtime playing video
games.
True enough. It shouldn't go unnoticed that Obama was calling for NATO nations to increase
their military spending 'til they reach 2% of their GDP. The Germans wouldn't theoretically
have any trouble meeting under normal circumstances. It's also a far cry from what Germany
spent on the eve of both World Wars.
"Basically everything and anything anti-Republican & anti-Trump that gets published on
Facebook gets re-posted on our church Facebook page."
Hmmm. Are you losing parishioners as a result? Or gaining them? It doesn't seem to me like
what people would be looking for in a faith community – an overload of politics –
but what do I know.
Oh, I see that you've already sort of answered that question.
the tendency to excessive rage when identity is questioned is a feature of narcissism.
excessive, misplaced, out of proportion rage (at being denied what was expected, at being
wrong, at being seen as incompetent, whatever conflicts with the rager's identity) is what
this sounds like to me. which is I guess another form of not thinking enough, unfortunately
narcissism isn't curable.
in fact so much of this thread makes me feel like we're all suffering a bit as grey rocks
in a narcissistic abuse scenario. the narcissism is at the individual level and at the
societal level; we're all just trying to keep our heads down and avoid the maelstrom, which
keeps increasing in intensity to get our attention back.
What I have noticed is: a sense of powerlessness and not being able to control basic
aspects of your life .that at any moment things could spiral widely out of control; people
have become more enraged, meaner and feel they don't even have to be polite anymore (my
friends and I have noticed this even with drivers); people who normally would be considered
comfortable are feeling more and more financially insecure. Almost everyone I know feels this
tension and is trying to figure out what they need to do to survive – I know several
who are exploring becoming expats. I think we are rapidly moving towards a breaking point
.
The angst feels not like the angst of an impending, singular catastrophe, but rather the
angst of decline. There's a late empire feel to the current mood: leaders without agency,
more interested in their own, internal sense of normalcy and maintaining their perches,
perches that increasingly feel pointless as they're all just listless figureheads doing what
the Magister Militum tells them to do.
The military feels all-encompassing yet simultaneously
incapable of exercising its will in the theater of war, so dispersed and aimless, as the
missions are no longer about winning wars but about resume building. Same for the security
agencies, whose invasive practices feel less like a preparation for a 1984-style security
state, and more a cover for their own incompetence and inability to do proper legwork, as
these mass shootings seem to inevitably come with the revelation about how authorities were
alerted prior to the fact of the shooter's warning signs and did no follow up. Meanwhile,
standards of living decline for the vast majority of Americans, the sense of national unity
is eroding as regional and rural/urban identities are superseding that of country. Not to
mention the slow simmer that is global warming and climate change.
So yeah, nothing that translates to a flashy headline or all-at-once collapse, but
definitely an angst of a slow slide down, with too much resistance to the change needed to
reverse it.
My feeling is that the U$A, along with various sovereign entities around much the planet
will, within a decade or so, cease to exist in their current form. When people coalesce and
societies reform, is when one gets/is forced .. to choose their 'new' afilliation(s) !
It will be facinating to behold, if one is alive to partake in it !
As for positive, or negative outcomes who knows ?
I believe that what is happening is that slowly but surely the numbers of people who are
subconsciously reacting to the ongoing collapse of civilization are growing. They are uneasy,
anxious, deflated, waiting for Godot, in depression and so on.
Civililizations don't collapse like falling off a table. They stress resources of
materials and people and such stresses build and build. This has serious psychological
impacts. Numbness to new is bad news. Or what used to be bad news has to be Trumped by
exceedingly bad news before folks can rise to deal with them, but for a shorter time than
they had the ability they used to. As the number of people grows who have reached their
capacity to tolerate the stress we will find more and more of them just shut down as their
subconscious tells them there is no point in caring anymore as things are just going to get
worse.
We all see things getting worse.
So we have little collapses on a regular basis which hardly ruffle anyone's feathers
anymore. The moderate catastrophic disasters like Trumps election cause much bigger
disruptions to the civilizational equilibrium, but only for a time. We all know deep inside
that what comes next in Brexit or say Trumps removal will actually be worse than what we have
now. And we know that such will be the trend for the duration. Each time we seem to overcome
a disaster we will be presented with another building disaster. A worse one. As we continue
to stair step down the long slope that our civilization climbed during the renaissance and
the enlightenment. Trump and Brexit are medium steps down.
The Black Swan is out there somewhere watching us. The big step down. We can feel it
coming and we cannot stop it. We know that what seems bad now is going to be a lot worse in
the future. We know this and it makes us helpless.
Skip above has the word on this.
"The centre does not hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world".
The Worst Well-Being Year on Record for the U.S. – Gallup
"Americans' well-being took a big hit nationally in 2017, according to the
Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index, which recorded declines in 21 states. Why did well-being
drop, and where were the declines most pronounced?"
OK- no endorsement from me re the validity of this Index, BUT the podcast raises an
important point vis a vis 2009 downturn in their Index.
I think what we have here is a Mexican standoff the likes of which has perhaps never been
seen. I am 51 years old. For most of my life there has been a polite changing of the guards
to no great effect every four years. Trump rode into Washington on a bridge burning mission
and all that has changed. Or were the bridges burned upon his approach, after which he was
framed for the crime? This is the essence of the problem we face as a country, and the world
watching on with bated breath.
I still do not know what is "true" about any of this "Russiagate" contretemps. Perhaps
none of it. Perhaps all of it. I suspect both parties and candidates were hand fed dubious
information then tried to hide the wrappers from the "authorities" who (naturally) were only
interested in how any of it impacted them personally and institutionally, and so on and so
forth, etc. etc.
But where does that get us a nation? If you are a child and you walk into your parent's
bedroom to find your mother screwing the gardener you may be upset. But then if you run down
the hall to your brother's room to tell him and find your father en flagrante with the nanny,
well where do you go from there?
We have to find a way to deescalate with each other as Americans. I find myself repeatedly
smiling blankly in conversations with family, friends, and strangers who will all equally
complain vociferously about someone who is definitely destroying the planet/country/children.
But that only gets you so far. If you do not engage after a few minutes you are viewed with
great suspicion. And then only the strongest bonds of love can save you from being cast aside
or worse.
Deescalate now. I'm gonna put it on a tshirt.
By the way, reading a lot of Jung right now. Anyone else?
For the better part of the last 45 years I have traveled the world, worked with
individuals in different cultures, walked among and shared bread and stories with many people
in their living quarters and the news of today is not so much (occasionally) about the depth
of love that exists around the world but only about the evils we are told about in pages of
the WaPo, NYTimes and even the WST. So sad because there is so much good to view but good
rarely delivers headlines and headlines sell news and make journalists.
The news is slow because the liberal media just can't dig out that one great story or
smokin' gun that brings down Trump & Co. This whole story is stale and at the point of
"who cares" ..well, the liberals seem to be the only interested parties. I am not a
Republican or Conservative or aligned with any party but an American who looks for the best
talent of any party to represent us .citizens of the U.S.A. I laugh at the whole 'Russian
Thing' . like this is NEW news when it's as old as the Roman Empire. There are many of us
true Americans that if our democracy was every challenged, threatened or in trouble would
rise up against any threat–and more than likely not with guns but with our minds, our
knowledge and our ability to talk calmly and rationally rather than shout threats on
Twitter.
The media needs to get over itself and quit trying to be the type of police we all despise
.manipulated headlines are part of the problem with the 'stillness' today. If you can't dig
up any worthy headlines that will sell the news, then go home and close the cover of your
computer and find someone to hug ..God knows we can all use an extra level of love in today's
seemingly gloomy lack of news world.
a pretty good question in the face of all the noise.
i believe it is in response to the saturated level of cognitive dissonance. an inverse
reaction to the lack of transparency and unresponsiveness of both commercial and governmental
activities.
the sensitivity of untoward persuasion on social media an indication of the fallibility of
the centralized narrative?
I have felt an eery disquiet for the last several years, more or less since the year I
retired. I think retirement finally offered me the time I needed to see and think about the
world. For the last few years I have felt a strong need to move away to higher ground and a
smaller community further out from the cities. Churchill's book title "Gathering Storm" seems
apt, but war seems only one of the many possible storms gathering and I think one of the
least likely at present although the actions and qualities of those who rule us make even
nuclear war seem possible. And I take little comfort from learning how close we came to
nuclear war in the past and how the unstable mechanisms guiding us toward this brink remain
in place with new embellishments for greater instability.
The economy is ambling a drunkard's walk climbing a knife's edge. The Corporations remain
hard at work consolidating and building greater monopoly power, dismantling what remains of
our domestic jobs and industry, and building ever more fragile supply chains. The government
is busy dismantling the safety net, deconstructing health care, public education and science,
bolstering the wealth of the wealthy, and stoking foreign wars while a tiff between factions
within those who rule us fosters a new cold war and an arms build-up including building a new
nuclear arsenal. In another direction Climate Disruption shows signs of accelerating while
the new weather patterns already threaten random flooding and random destruction of cities.
It already destroyed entire islands in the Caribbean. The government has proven its inability
and unwillingness to do anything to prepare for the pending disasters or help the areas
struck down in the seasons past. The year of Peak Oil is already in our past and there is
nothing to fill its place. The world populations continue to grow exponentially. Climate
Disruption promises to reduce food production and move the sources for fresh water and the
worlds aquifers are drying up. It's as if a whole flock of black swans is looking for places
to land.
I quit watching tv, listening to the radio, and reading newspapers long ago. The news
desert isn't new or peculiar to this moment. I haven't seen much of interest in the news from
any source since the election. The noise of social media and celebrity news does seem turned
up higher recently, although I base this judgment on occasional peeks at magazines or
snatches of NPR. After the last election I gave up on the possibility that we still had a
democracy in this country. Over the last several years I've had some expensive and unpleasant
dealings with local government, the schools, law enforcement, the courts, and government
agencies in helping one and then the other of my children through difficulties which
confirmed in the particular all my worst beliefs about the decay of our government and legal
systems. In short my personal anxiety has been at a high level for some time now and I can't
say its peaked lately. I don't get out and around enough to get a good sense of how others
feel and certainly can't judge whether this moment is a moment of peaking anxiety. When I've
been in the City and nearby cities I've long had a feeling of passing through a valley
between mountains of very dry tender. I hold my head low and walk quickly to my destinations.
Every so often I warn my children to move out, but they don't listen.
This is an excellent post and valid observations. Things don't seem right. I blame old age
and being awaken by F-16s on combat patrols out of Andrews. For me the frame changed with the
restart of the Cold War. I remember "Duck and Cover, McCarthyism, John Birchers, and Who Lost
China". It has all come back. The Democrats are idiots for scapegoating Russia. President
Donald Trump is incompetent. Scott Pruitt must fly first class because he cannot sit next to
riff-raft like me who worked at his Agency for 37 years and hear that he has sold out the
earth for short term gain and profit. America is at war, inside and out, with no way of
winning.
I am going to try to see if I can make sense of what has been happening the past few years
but I could easily be as wrong as the next person but will try nonetheless. In reading the
comments I can see the tension seeping through so to try to come to terms with it I will use
the US as my focus though I could just as easily be talking about any other western country
like the UK, Germany, Australia, France, etc. The US though is at the forefront of these
changes so should be mentioned first.
The American people are now in what the military call a fire-sac and the door has been
slammed shut behind them. What is more, I think they realize it. A few threads need
mentioning here. A study that came out last year showed that what Americans wanted their
government to do never becomes a consideration unless it aligned what some upper echelon also
wanted. People want a military pull-back but are ignored and now find that American troops
are digging into Syria and are scattered in places like Africa with the military wanting to
go head-to-head with North Korea, Russia, China and a host of other nations. It has become
blatantly obvious too that their vaunted free media has become little more than Pravda on the
Potomac and in fact has aligning with the wealthy against the interests of the American
people. The media is even helping bring in censorship as they know that their position is
untenable. The entire political establishment is now recognized as a rigged deck with radical
neoliberal politicians in charge and at the last election the best candidates that they could
find out of 330 million Americans were Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The massive industry
that built America has been mostly disassembled and shipped overseas and without the wealth
and skills that it generated, infrastructure has been left to rack and ruin when it should be
a core government function. Climate change cannot be ignored anymore and is starting to bite.
Even the Pentagon is realising that some of its vaunted bases will be underwater in decades.
I am sure other commentators can list yet more trends here but you get the picture.
OK, so there are massive problems but they can be faced and taken on but here is the kicker.
The political establishment in your country does not want anything to change but to keep
doing what is generated these problems. There is too much money at stake to change for them.
In fact, one of the two presidential candidates in 2016 was specifically chosen to keep
things going they way that they are. So where does that leave the American people? British
officers have always been taught that when their men were complaining and bitching, that that
was how it was but when the men were very quiet, that was the time to watch them carefully. I
think something similar is at work here. It has not yet coalesced but what I think we are
seeing is the beginnings of a phase shift in America. The unexpected election of Trump was a
precursor but as nothing changed after he was elected the pressure is still building.
Now here is the part where I kick over everybody's tea wagon. In looking for a root cause to
how all these challenges are being pushed down the road to an even worse conclusion, I am
going to have to say that the problem lies in the fact that representative democracy no
longer works. In fact, the representatives in the form of Senators, Reps, Judges and even the
President have been almost totally dislocated from the will of the people. The connection is
mostly not there anymore. It is this disconnection that is frustrating change and is thus
building up pressure. I am all for democracy but the democracy we have is not the only form
there is of democracy. There are others.
What this means is that somehow this is going to have to be changed and if not done
peacefully, then I suspect that it will be done in some other way. That lull in the news may
represent a general milling around if you will until some unknown catalyst appears to give
the beginnings of a push in another direction. How it will work out in practice I do not know
but if a mass of independents were elected in your mid-terms then that may be a good sign of
change coming. If both parties clamp down and continue to keep all others out and continue
with neoliberal policies, well, game on.
We have for the last generation or two, (maybe three?) been relentlessly conditioned (name
your puppet-master of choice) to equate happiness and contentment with the never ending
pursuit of keeping up with the Joneses. The competitive underpinnings encouraging our
participation in this futile contest fit well with our innate drives for "success". The race
was over-subscribed by throngs of enthusiastic participants yearning for glory.
For decades many of us did well. We ran strong and felt rewarded with the material
enhancements to our lives, which encouraged many of us to run faster, even if that motivation
was rooted more in the fear of being passed by Ron and Nancy Jones than it was for improving
our chances of ending up on the podium.
Even though we never seemed to catch or pass Ron or Nancy, surely they must have been out
there ahead in the haze somewhere? After all, this was the race that we so eagerly had
trained for. Plus, life was going well while we chased, so we figured it was a fruitful one
to be a part of. All the effort and toil would be worth it in the end.
The slow arc of realization and barely perceptible sense over time (coupled with the self
delusion that comes with resisting acceptance) that we have been duped that this Jones
Marathon has actually been taking place on a treadmill which gradually (hardly
noticeable, but cumulatively significant) has been ratcheted up in both speed and incline,
has now hit home. We have been running for years, but going nowhere. We can't find the stop
button, and don't even want to think what will happen to us if we were to slow down or stop
running! Problem is not only are we are growing physically weary, we are dejected and
defeated in spirit knowing that all our efforts have yielded little other than illusionary
gains.
Trump
Doesn't Give a Dam, by Paul Krugman, NY Times : Donald Trump doesn't give a dam. Or a
bridge. Or a road. Or a sewer system. Or any of the other things we talk about when we talk
about infrastructure.
But how can that be when he just announced a $1.5 trillion infrastructure
plan ? That's easy: It's not a plan, it's a scam. The $1.5 trillion number is just made up;
he's only proposing federal spending of $200 billion, which is somehow supposed to magically
induce a vastly bigger overall increase in infrastructure investment, mainly paid for either by
state and local governments (which are not exactly rolling in cash, but whatever) or by the
private sector.
And even the $200 billion is essentially fraudulent: The budget proposal
announced the same day doesn't just impose savage cuts on the poor, it includes sharp cuts for
the Department of Transportation, the Department of Energy and other agencies that would be
crucially involved in any real infrastructure plan. Realistically, Trump's offer on
infrastructure is this: nothing .
That's not to say that the plan is completely vacuous. One section says that it would
"authorize federal divestiture of assets that would be better managed by state, local or
private entities." Translation: We're going to privatize whatever we can. It's conceivable that
this would be done only in cases where the private sector really would do better, and contracts
would be handed out fairly, without a hint of cronyism. And if you believe that, I have a
degree from Trump University you might want to buy. ...
So why isn't Trump proposing something real? Why this dog's breakfast of a proposal that
everyone knows won't go anywhere?
Part of the answer is that in practice Trump always defers to Republican orthodoxy, and the
modern G.O.P. hates any program that might show people that government can work and help
people.
But I also suspect that Trump is afraid to try anything substantive. To do public investment
successfully, you need leadership and advice from experts. And this administration doesn't do
expertise, in any field. Not only do experts have a nasty habit of telling you things you don't
want to hear, their loyalty is suspect: You never know when their professional ethics might
kick in.
So the Trump administration probably couldn't put together a real infrastructure plan even if
it wanted to. And that's why it didn't.
We need a lot more government financed infrastructure investment. Trump the clown is selling us
a major cut in what the Federal government pays for. And some people are praising this
proposal? Pardon me for calling Trump the clown as he is playing the rest of us as clowns.
US could have Clinton blowing up the Russian Federation while doing for the Wahhabi profiting
ARAMCO as Trump does.
Federal input to roads and waterways is traditionally a small part of the total. 80% or so
funded is by state and local sources where the economic benefit arises.
IIRC "indivisible public goods" are not a federal concern........ while the common defense
is a preamble dictate.
The last Krugman criticism was about deficits hawks splurging when the economy is
"good".
Why worry infrastructure in a good economy, the states enjoy it as well as the central
government?
The private sector will usually just extract huge rents if you give them unrestricted monopoly
rights - and they will either refuse to play or go bankrupt if you put restrictions on their
ability to extract rents as they please.
If you want to make $1.5 trillion of infrastructure someone will have to borrow that money.
The government can borrow at a much lower rate than the private sector. So by moving the
project into the private sector you make them a lot more costly - its just that we will pay for
them in user fees rather than taxes. That means poor people will pay more and rich people will
pay less (and harvest profits in their investment portfolios).
"... Paul Brian is a freelance journalist. He has reported for BBC, Reuters, and Foreign Policy, and contributed to the Week, The Federalist, and others. He covered the fledgling U.S. alt-right at a 2014 conference in Hungary as well as the 2015 New Hampshire primary, and also made a documentary about his time living in the Republic of Georgia in 2012. You can follow him on Twitter @paulrbrian or visit his website www.paulrbrian.com . ..."
The hawks and internationalists who set our house on fire don't now deserve the contract to rebuild it.
While it may have significant popular support, much of the anti-Trump "Resistance" suffers from a severe weakness of message.
Part of the problem is with who the Resistance's leading messengers are: discredited neoconservative poltroons like former president
George W. Bush, unwatchable alleged celebrities like Chelsea Handler, and establishment Republicans who routinely
slash and burn the middle class like Senator Jeff Flake. Furthermore, what exactly is the Resistance's overriding message? Invariably
their sermonizing revolves around vague bromides about "tolerance," diversity, unrestricted free trade, and multilateralism. They
routinely push a supposed former status quo that was in fact anything but a status quo. The leaders of the Resistance have in their
arsenal nothing but buzzwords and a desire to feel self-satisfied and turn back to imagined pre-Trump normality. A president like
Donald Trump is only possible in a country with opposition voices of such subterranean caliber.
Remember when Trump steamrolled a crowded field of Republicans in one of the greatest electoral upsets in American history? Surely
many of us also recall the troupes of smug celebrities and Bushes and Obamas who lined up to take potshots at Trump over his unacceptably
cruel utterances that upset their noble moral sensibilities? How did that work out for them? They lost. The more that opposition
to Trump in office takes the same form as opposition to him on the campaign trail, the more hypocritical and counterproductive it
becomes. Further, the resistance to Trump's policies is coming just at the moment when principled opposition most needs to up its
game and help turn back the hands of the Doomsday Clock. It's social conservatives who are also opposed to war and exploitation of
the working class who have the best moral bona fides to effectively oppose Trump, which is why morally phrased attacks on Trump from
the corporate and socially liberal wings of the left, as well as the free market and interventionist conservative establishment,
have failed and will continue to fail. Any real alternative is going to have to come from regular folks with hearts and morals who
aren't stained by decades of failure and hypocrisy.
A majority of Democrats now have
favorable views
of George W. Bush, and that's no coincidence. Like the supposedly reasonable anti-Trump voices on their side, Bush pops up like a
dutiful marionette to condemn white supremacy and
"nativism," and to
reminisce about the good old days when he was in charge. Bush also lectures about how Russia is ruining everything by meddling in
elections and destabilizing the world. But how convincing is it really to hear about multilateralism and respect for human rights
from Bush, who launched an unnecessary war on Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and left thousands of American
servicemen and women dead and wounded? How convincing is it when former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who famously remarked
that an estimated half a million Iraqis dead from our 1990s sanctions was "worth it," haughtily claims that she's
"offended" by Trump's travel ban ? "Offended" -- is that so, Madame Secretary? I have a feeling millions of Muslims in the Middle
East may have also been "offended" when people like you helped inflame their region and turned it into an endless back-and-forth
firestorm of conflict between U.S.-backed dictators and brutal jihadists, with everyone else caught in between.
Maybe instead of being offended that not everyone can come to America, people like Albright, Kerry, and Bush shouldn't have contributed
to the conditions that wrecked those people's homes in the first place? Maybe the U.S. government should think more closely about
providing military aid to 73 percent of the world's dictatorships? Sorry, do excuse the crazy talk. Clearly all the ruthless
maneuvering by the U.S. and NATO is just being done out of a selfless desire to spread democratic values by raining down LGBT-friendly
munitions on beleaguered populations worldwide. Another congressman just gave a speech about brave democratic principles so we can
all relax.
Generally, U.S. leaders like to team up with dictators before turning on them when they become inconvenient or start to upset
full-spectrum dominance. Nobody have should been surprised to see John Kerry fraternizing in a friendly manner with Syrian butcher
Bashar al-Assad and then moralistically threatening him with war several years later, or Donald Rumsfeld grinning with Saddam Hussein
as they cooperated militarily before Rumsfeld did an about-face on the naďve dictator based on false premises after 9/11. Here's
former president Barack Obama
shaking Moammar Gaddafi's hand in 2009 . I wonder what became of Mr. Gaddafi?
It's beyond parody to hear someone like Bush sternly opine that there's
"pretty clear evidence" Russia meddled in the 2016 election. Even if that were deeply significant in the way some argue, Bush
should be the last person anyone is hearing from about it. It's all good, though: remember when Bush
laughed about how there hadn't been weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2004? It's all just a joke; don't you get it? (Maybe Saddam Hussein had already
used all the chemical weapons
the U.S. helped him get during the 1980s on Iran in the Iran-Iraq War, which killed over one million people by the time the coalition
of the willing came knocking in 2003). That's the kind of thing people like Bush like to indirectly joke about in the company of
self-satisfied press ghouls at celebratory dinners. However, when the mean man Mr. Trump pals around with Russian baddie Vladimir
Putin, mistreats women, or spews out unkind rhetoric about "shitholes," it's far from a joke: it's time to get out your two-eared
pink hat and hit the streets chanting in righteous outrage.
To be fair, Trump is worthy of opposition. An ignorant, reactive egotist who needs to have his unfounded suppositions and inaccuracies
constantly validated by a sycophantic staff of people who'd be rejected even for a reality show version of the White House, he really
is an unstable excuse for a leader and an inveterate misogynist and all the other things. Trump isn't exactly Bible Belt material
despite his stamp of approval from Jerry Falwell Jr. and crew; in fact he hasn't even succeeded in
getting rid of the Johnson Amendment and allowing churches to get more involved in politics, one of his few concrete promises
to Christian conservatives. He's also a big red button of a disaster in almost every other area as commander-in-chief.
Trump's first military action as president reportedly killed numerous innocent women and children (some unnamed U.S. officials
claim some of the women were militants) as well as a Navy SEAL. Helicopter gunships strafed a Yemeni village for over an hour in
what Trump called a
"highly successful" operation against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). A senior military official felt differently,
saying that
"almost
everything went wrong." The raid even killed eight-year-old American girl Nawar al-Awlaki, daughter of previously killed extremist
leader Anwar al-Awlaki, whose other innocent child, 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was also droned while eating outdoors at a
restaurant in 2010 (with several friends and his 17-year-old cousin). The Obama administration dismissed Abdulrahman's death at the
time as
no big deal .
The list goes on with the Trump administration, a hollow outfit of Goldman Sachs operatives and detached industry and financier
billionaires helping out their hedge fund friends and throwing a small table scrap to the peasants every now and then. As
deformed babies are born in Flint, Michigan , Ivanka grandstands about
paid parental leave
. Meanwhile, Trump and Co. work to
expand the war in Afghanistan
and Syria. It's a sad state of affairs.
So who are the right voices to oppose the mango man-child and his cadre of doddering dullards? Not degenerate celebrities, dirty
politicians of the past, or special interest groups that try to fit everyone into a narrow electoral box so mainline Democrats can
pass their own version of corporate welfare and run wars with more sensitive rhetoric and politically correct messaging. Instead,
the effective dissidents of the future will be people of various beliefs, but especially the pro-family and faith-driven, who are
just as opposed to what came before Trump as they are to him. The future of a meaningful political alternative to the underlying
liberalism, materialism, and me-first individualism on the left and right will revolve around traditionalists and pro-family conservative
individuals who define their own destinies instead of letting themselves be engineered into destinies manufactured by multinational
corporations and boardroom gremlins with diversity outreach strategies. It's possible, for example, to be socially conservative,
pro-worker, pro-environment, and anti-war. In fact, that is the norm in most countries that exist outside the false political
paradigm pushed in America.
If enough suburbanite centrists who take a break from Dancing With The Stars are convinced that Trump is bad because
George W. Bush and Madeleine Albright say so, it shows that these people have learned absolutely nothing from Trump or the process
that led to him. These kind of resistors are the people nodding their heads emphatically as they read Eliot Cohen talk about why
he and his friends
can't stomach the evil stench of Trump or
Robert Kagan whine about fascism in The Washington Post. Here's a warning to good people who may not have been following
politics closely prior to Trump: don't get taken in by these charlatans. Don't listen to those who burned your town down as they
pitch you the contract to rebuild it. You can oppose both the leaders of the "Resistance" and Trump. In fact, it is your moral duty
to do so. This is the End of the End of History As We Know It, but there isn't going to be an REM song or Will Smith punching an
alien in the face to help everyone through it.
Here's a thought for those finding themselves enthusiastic about the Resistance and horrified by Trump: maybe, just maybe
, the water was already starting to boil before you cried out in pain and alarm.
Paul Brian is a freelance journalist. He has reported for BBC, Reuters, and Foreign Policy, and contributed to the Week, The
Federalist, and others. He covered the fledgling U.S. alt-right at a 2014 conference in Hungary as well as the 2015 New Hampshire
primary, and also made a documentary about his time living in the Republic of Georgia in 2012. You can follow him on Twitter @paulrbrian
or visit his website www.paulrbrian.com .
"The future of a meaningful political alternative to the underlying liberalism, materialism, and me-first individualism on the
left and right will revolve around traditionalists and pro-family conservative individuals who define their own destinies instead
of letting themselves be engineered into destinies manufactured by multinational corporations and boardroom gremlins with diversity
outreach strategies."
They will have to lose their faith in "Free Market God" first. I don't believe that will happen.
I enjoyed the heat. The comments made are on point, and this is pretty much what my standard response to reactionary trump dissidents
are. Trump is terrible, but so is what came before him, he is just easier to dislike.
Even with inadequate opposition, Trump has managed to be the most unpopular president after one year, ever. I'm guessing this
speaks to his unique talent of messing things up.
Wow! Paul! Babylon burning. Preach it, brother! Takes me back to my teenage years, Ramparts 1968, as another corrupt infrastructure
caught fire and burned down. TAC is amazing, the only place to find this in true form.
Either we are history remembering fossils soon gone, or the next financial crash – now inevitable with passage of tax reform
(redo of 2001- the rich got their money out, now full speed off the cliff), will bring down this whole mass of absolute corruption.
What do you think will happen when Trump is faced with a true crisis? They're selling off the floorboards. What can remain standing?
And elsewhere in the world, who, in their right mind, would help us? Good riddance to truly dangerous pathology. The world
would truly become safer with the USA decommissioned, and then restored, through honest travail, to humility, and humanity.
You are right. Be with small town, front porch, family and neighborhood goodness, and dodge the crashing embers.
The Flying Burrito Brothers: 'On the thirty-first floor a gold plated door
Won't keep out the Lord's burning rain '
The depressing thing to me is how hard it is to get people to see this. You have people who still think Trump is doing a great
job and on the other side people who admire the warmongering Resistance and think Hillary's vast experience in foreign policy
was one of her strengths, rather than one of the main reasons to be disgusted by her. Between the two categories I think you have
the majority of American voters.
Note: this article is part of asymposiumincluded in the March/April 2018 issue of the National Interest .
OF COURSE there's a Deep State. Why wouldn't there be? Even a cursory understanding of human nature tells us that power corrupts,
as Lord Acton put it; that, when power is concentrated and entrenched, it will be abused; that, when it is concentrated and entrenched
in secrecy, it will be abused in secret. That's the Deep State. James Burnham saw it coming. The American philosopher and political
theorist (1905–87), first a Trotskyist, then a leading conservative intellectual, wrote in 1941 that the great political development
of the age was not the battle between communism and capitalism. Rather, it was the rise of a new "managerial" class gaining dominance
in business, finance, organized labor and government. This gathering managerial revolution, as he called it, would be resisted, but
it would be impervious to adversarial counteractions. As the managerial elites gained more and more power, exercised often in subtle
and stealthy ways, they would exercise that power to embed themselves further into the folds of American society and to protect themselves
from those who might want to bust them up.
Nowhere is this managerial elite more entrenched, more powerful and more shrouded in secrecy than in what Dwight Eisenhower called
the military-industrial complex, augmented by intelligence and law-enforcement agencies. That's where America's relentless drive
for global hegemony meshes with defense manufacturers only too willing to provide the tools of dominance.
Now we have not only a standing army, with hundreds of thousands of troops at the ready, as in Cold War days. We have also permanent
wars, nine of them in progress at the moment and not one with what could even remotely be called proper congressional approval. That's
how power gets entrenched, how the managerial revolution gains ever greater force and how the Deep State endures.
Few in the general public know what really happened with regard to the allegations of Trump campaign "collusion" with Russia,
or how the investigation into those troubling allegations emerged. But we know enough to know we have seen the Deep State in action.
We know that U.S. agencies released an "Intelligence Community Assessment" saying that Russia and President Putin were behind
the release of embarrassing Democratic emails in a plot to help Trump win the presidency. But we also know that it wasn't really
a National Intelligence Assessment (a term of art denoting a particular process of expansive intelligence analysis) but rather the
work of a controlled task force. As Scott Ritter, the former Marine intelligence officer and arms-control official,
put it , "This deliberate misrepresentation of the organizational bona fides of the Russia NIA casts a shadow over the
viability of the analysis used to underpin the assessments and judgments contained within." Besides, the document was long on assertion
and short on evidence. Even the New York Timesinitially derided
the report as lacking any "hard evidence" and amounting "essentially . . . to 'trust us.'"
We have substantial reason to believe that an unconfirmed salacious report on Trump, paid for by the Democratic Party and the
Hillary Clinton campaign (with the FBI eventually getting hold of it), was used in an effort to get a secret national-security warrant
so the government could spy on the Trump campaign. We know that the FBI went easy on Clinton in its investigation of her irresponsible
email practices, and then we find out that a top FBI official involved in both the Clinton and Trump/Russia investigations despised
Trump, liked Hillary and expressed an interest in doing what he could to thwart Trump's emergence. We know he
privately told his lover
that, while he didn't think Trump could win, he nevertheless felt a need for an "insurance policy" because "I'm afraid we can't take
that risk." We know these matters were discussed in the office of FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.
We know further that former FBI director James Comey used a cutout to leak to the press a rendition of an Oval Office conversation
with the president that could be interpreted adversely to Trump. We know he did this to set in motion the appointment of an independent
investigator, a potentially mortal threat to any president -- and perhaps particularly to this freewheeling billionaire developer.
Perhaps most significant, we know that all this had the effect of wrenching from the president the flexibility to pursue a policy
agenda on which he had campaigned -- and which presumably contributed to his election. That was his promise to work toward improved
relations between the United States and Russia. Prospects for such a diplomatic initiative now are as dead as the dodo bird. Trump
lost that one. The Deep State won.
I don't believe there is a secret 'deep state' controlling the USA from the shadows like some Bond villian.
What people call the deep state is in fact the interests of the business elite who have been granted nearly unprecedented political
influence by the American people in the form or nearly unlimited campaign contributions to politicians who promote their interests,
unregulated lobbying, control of the MSM and the funding of think tanks and other institutions that promote their interests.
When historians look back at this time it will be Madison Avenue and the revolution in persuasion that they study.
1934 Major General Smedley Butler, US Marine Corp, was asked by US Industrialists to help them overthrow the government. Roosevelt
was to remain as the figurehead of the US but the industrialists would be in charge. The industrialist would supply Butler with
a 500,000 man army that he would be in charge of. Butler's father was a congressman in the 1920's and Butler told congress of
the possible Coup. Read of The Committee of Foreign Affairs, CFA.
Teddy Roosevelt and the Presidents that followed him understood the dangers of the Robber-Barons buying the government. That's
why they launched anti-trust, income tax and estate taxes to protect democracy.
"... What kind of a moron would believe the Steele dossier on Trump and Russia? Lots of Democrat and hollywood elite morons and lots of morons at MSNBC and CNN. It's so transparently partisan, outrageous and full of fictitious claims, the dossier reads like a parody of a badly written spy novel. ..."
"... It is funny to watch how they are divided (republicans and democrats) on domestic issues but they are as one on aggressive and militaristic foreign policies. Bomb, invade, bomb... rinse and repeat. No objection from either side. ..."
"... Watch Jerome Corsi and James Kalstrom great video's about all the felony crimes Barry's DNC/DOJ/FBI were involved in including the dossier. ..."
"... to deflect the Seth Rich /WikiLeaks affair...and the Keystone Kops have been tripping all over as well as tripping up themselves ever since trying to "make it happen"...and if it was not for almost the "entire" mainstream media 'covering' for them many more people would actually realize that they are the biggest 'comedy' in town... ..."
What kind of a moron would believe the Steele dossier on Trump and Russia? Lots of Democrat
and hollywood elite morons and lots of morons at MSNBC and CNN. It's so transparently partisan, outrageous and full of fictitious claims, the dossier reads
like a parody of a badly written spy novel.
Amazingly, the dossier is what the FBI used to justify spying on American citizens.
Tucker Carlson easily debunks the many claims that Democrats in Congress repeatedly cited as
reason to stop the normal functioning of government, so that millions of tax payer dollars can
be spent trying to figure out if Trump has been a Russian spy for the last 10 years.
It is funny to watch how they are divided (republicans and democrats) on domestic issues
but they are as one on aggressive and militaristic foreign policies. Bomb, invade, bomb...
rinse and repeat. No objection from either side.
No need to convince me Tucker...have been calling them morons with regards to "Putin did
it" since the ex "moron in chief"...who by the way is now a certified fifth columnist with
the blessing of the treasonous mainstream media...insinuated as much after the "loser"
lost....to deflect the Seth Rich /WikiLeaks affair...and the Keystone Kops have been tripping
all over as well as tripping up themselves ever since trying to "make it happen"...and if it
was not for almost the "entire" mainstream media 'covering' for them many more people would
actually realize that they are the biggest 'comedy' in town...
The oligarchy's desire to turn the clock back to 'the good old days' knows no
bounds -- they want it all and they want it know; they're absolute ideal state
for all us ordinary types would be a return to feudalism, so I guess bringing back slavery,
all be it with a shiny new coat of point, is pretty much to be expected...
Once upon a time many, many years ago in the land of Anywhere, in a world long since
forgotten, there was, at one time, a kind of Golden Age. It was not, it has to be said, an
age that was Perfect but it was agreed by almost all that it was an age that was much, much
better than That Which Had Gone Before. That time is best described by quoting from a
well-known article historical document contemporaneous to the period
' after Generations Of Struggle against Social Injustice and two Catastrophic And
Immensely Bloody Wars with the nearby land of Anotherplace, in which the Ordinary Folk had
died and suffered to a catastrophic degree, it was decided by all except the Rapaciously Rich
that Things Had To Change.
From that point on, Ordinary Folk were given access to Free Education, Free Healthcare,
Pensions, Benefits to help those who fell upon Hard Times and all the advantages of what you
would know in your world as a Welfare System. New taxes were introduced to redistribute some
of the vast sums of money accumulated (mostly from Stealing, Cheating and Aggressive Tax
Avoidance) by the Wealthy and the Aristocracy (known in the land of Anywhere as The Greedy
One Percent) over the years and Political Reforms introduced to break their stranglehold over
the Political And Economic Life of the country. Additionally, the Right to Vote was given to
all.
And the land of Anywhere blossomed, for it was found that a populace Free From Hunger And
Illness, that was properly Educated and Cared For, produced huge numbers of Talented men and
women who previously had Languished due to Poverty And Lack of Opportunity. These Talented
men and women drove the land of Anywhere to new heights of success, founding businesses,
employing people, making a mark in the worlds of politics, science, medicine and culture.
Slowly but surely, the Dead Grip of The Greedy One Percent, who had dominated and controlled
the land of Anywhere for as long as anyone could remember, was broken.'
And the psychopathic Greedy One Percent, the Devil's Children, hated this new world, this
New Bargain and Better Society, and all it stood for. They vowed to destroy it
"... By Servaas Storm, Professor, Department of Economics, Faculty TPM, Delft University of Technology and co-author, with C.W. M. Naastepad, of Macroeconomics Beyond the NAIRU (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), which has just won the Myrdal Prize of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website ..."
"... Banks have long had undue influence in society. But with the rapid expansion of a financial sector that transforms all debts and assets into tradable commodities, we are faced with something far worse: financial markets with an only abstract, inflated, and destabilizing relationship with the real economy. To prevent another crisis, finance must be domesticated and turned into a useful servant of society. ..."
Posted on
February 14, 2018 by Yves Smith Yves here. Get a cup of
coffee. This is an important, one-stop treatment of how financialization has harmed the real
economy and increased inequality.
By Servaas Storm, Professor, Department of Economics, Faculty TPM, Delft University of
Technology and co-author, with C.W. M. Naastepad, of Macroeconomics
Beyond the NAIRU (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), which has just won the Myrdal
Prize of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy. Originally published at
the Institute for New Economic Thinking website
Banks have long had undue influence in society. But with the rapid expansion of a
financial sector that transforms all debts and assets into tradable commodities, we are faced
with something far worse: financial markets with an only abstract, inflated, and destabilizing
relationship with the real economy. To prevent another crisis, finance must be domesticated and
turned into a useful servant of society.
The Financialization of Everything
Ours is, without a doubt, the age of finance -- of the supremacy of financial actors,
institutions, markets, and motives in the global capitalist economy. Working people in the
advanced economies, for instance, increasingly have their (pension) savings invested in mutual
funds and stock markets, while their mortgages and other debts are turned into securities and
sold to global financial investors (Krippner 2011; Epstein 2018). At the same time, the
'under-banked' poor in the developing world have become entangled, or if one wishes,
'financially included', in the 'web' of global finance through their growing reliance on
micro-loans, micro-insurance and M-Pesa-like 'correspondent banking' (Keucheyan 2018; Mader
2018). More generally, individual citizens everywhere are invited to "live by finance", in
Martin's (2002, p. 17) evocative words, that is: to organize their daily lives around 'investor
logic', active individual risk management, and involvement in global financial markets.
Citizenship and rights are being re-conceptualized in terms of universal access to 'safe' and
affordable financial products (Kear 2012) -- redefining Descartes' philosophical proof of
existence as: 'I am indebted, therefore I am' (Graeber 2011). Financial markets are opening
'new enclosures' everywhere, deeply penetrating social space -- as in the case of so-called
'viaticals', the third-party purchase of the rights to future payoffs of life insurance
contracts from the terminally ill (Quinn 2008); or of 'health care bonds' issued by insurance
companies to fund health-care interventions; the payoff to private investors in these bonds
depends on the cost-savings arising from the health-care intervention for the insurers. Or what
to think of 'humanitarian impact bonds' used to profitably finance physical rehabilitation
services in countries affected by violence and conflict (Lavinas 2018); this latter instrument
was created in 2017 by the International Red Cross in cooperation with insurer Munich Re and
Bank Lombard Odier.
Conglomerate corporate entities, which used to provide long-term employment and stable
retirement benefits, were broken up under pressure of financial markets and replaced by
disaggregated global commodity-chain structures (Wade 2018), operating according to the
principles of 'shareholder value maximization' (Lazonick 2014) -- with the result that today
real decision-making power is often to be found no longer in corporate boardrooms, but in
global financial markets. As a result, accumulation -- real capital formation which increases
overall economic output -- has slowed down in the U.S., the E.U. and India, as profit-owners,
looking for the highest returns, reallocated their investments to more profitable financial
markets (Jayadev, Mason and Schröder 2018).
An overabundance of (cash) finance is used primarily to fund a proliferation of short-term,
high-risk (potentially high-return) investments in newly developed financial instruments, such
as derivatives -- Warren Buffet's 'financial weapons of mass destruction' that blew up the
global financial system in 2007-8. Financial actors (ranging from banks, bond investors, and
pension funds to big insurers and speculative hedge funds) have taken much bigger roles on much
larger geographic scales in markets of items essential to development such as food (Clapp and
Isakson 2018), primary commodities, health care (insurance), education, and energy. These same
actors hunt the globe for 'passive' unearthed assets which they can re-use as collateral for
various purposes in the 'shadow banking system' -- the complex global chains of credit,
liquidity and leverage with no systemic regulatory oversight that has become as large as the
regulated 'normal' banking system (Pozsar and Singh 2011; Gabor 2018) and enjoys implicit state
guarantees (Kane 2013, 2015).
Pressed by the international financial institutions and their own elites, states around the
world have embraced finance-friendly policies which included reducing cross-border capital
controls, promoting liquid domestic stock markets, reducing the taxation of wealth and capital
gains, and rendering their central banks independent from political oversight (Bortz and
Kaltenbrunner 2018; Wade 2018; Chandrasekhar and Ghosh 2018). What is most distinctive about
the present era of finance, however, is the shift in financial intermediation from banks and
other institutions to financial markets -- a shift from the 'visible hand' of
(often-times relationship) regulated banking to the axiomatic 'invisible hand' of supposedly
anonymous, self-regulating, financial markets. This displacement of financial institutions by
financial markets has had a pervasive influence on the motivations, choices and decisions made
by households, firms and states as well as fundamental quantitative impacts on growth,
inequality and poverty -- far-reaching consequences which we are only beginning to
understand.
Setting the Stage
Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1934, p. 74), the Austrian-American theorist of capitalist
development and its eventual demise, called the banker "the ephor of the exchange economy"
[2] -- someone who by creating
credit ( ex nihilo ) to finance new investments and innovation, "makes possible the
carrying out of new combinations, authorizes people, in the name of society as it were, to form
them." This same banker has, in Schumpeter's vision, "either replaced private capitalists or
become their agent; he has himself become the capitalist par excellence. He stands between
those who wish to form new combinations and the possessors of productive means." This way, the
banker becomes "essentially a phenomenon of development", as Schumpeter (1934, p. 74) argued --
fostering the process of accumulation and directing the pace and nature of economic growth and
technological progress (Festré and Nasica 2009; Mazzucato and Wray 2015). Alexander
Gerschenkron (1968) concurred, comparing the importance of investment banks in 19th-century
Germany's industrialization drive to that of the steam engine in Britain's Industrial
Revolution:
" the German investment banks -- a powerful invention, comparable in its economic effects
to that of the steam engine -- were in their capital-supplying functions a substitute for the
insufficiency of the previously created wealth willingly placed at the disposal of
entrepreneurs. [ ] From their central vantage point of control, the banks participated
actively in shaping the major [ ] decisions of individual enterprises. It was they who very
often mapped out a firm's path of growth, conceived farsighted plans, decided on major
technological and locational innovations, and arranged for mergers and capital
increases."
Schumpeter and Gerschenkron celebrated the developmental role played by bank-based
financial systems, in which banks form long-run (often personal) relationships with firms, have
insider knowledge and (as they are large creditors) are in a position to exert strategic
pressure on firms, impose market rationality on their decisions and prioritize the repayment of
their debts. However, what Schumpeter left unmentioned is that the absolute power of the
'ephors' could terribly fail: When the wrong people were elected to the 'ephorate', their
leadership and guidance did ruin the Spartan state. [3] Likewise, the --
personalized relationship-based -- banking system could ruin the development process: it could
fatally weaken the corporate governance of firms, because bank managers would be more reluctant
to bankrupt firms with which they have had long-term ties, and lead to cronyism and corruption,
as it is relatively easy for bank insiders to exploit other creditors or taxpayers (Levine
2005). Schumpeter's relationship-banker may be fallible, weak (when it comes to disciplining
firms), prone to mistakes and errors of judgment and not necessarily immune to corruptible
influences -- in short: there are reasons to believe that a bank-based financial system is
inferior to an alternative, market-based, financial system (Levine 2005; Demirgüc-Kunt,
Feyen and Levine 2012).
This view of the superiority of a 'market-based' financial system rests on Friedrich von
Hayek's grotesque epistemological claim that 'the market' is an omniscient way of knowing, one
that radically exceeds the capacity of any individual mind or even the state. For Hayek, "the
market constitutes the only legitimate form of knowledge, next to which all other modes of
reflection are partial, in both senses of the word: they comprehend only a fragment of a whole
and they plead on behalf of a special interest. Individually, our values are personal ones, or
mere opinions; collectively, the market converts them into prices, or objective facts" (Metcalf
2017). After his 'sudden illumination' in 1936 that the market is the best possible and only
legitimate form of social organisation, Hayek had to find an answer to the dilemma of how to
reformulate the political and the social in a way compatible with the 'rationality' of the
(unregulated) market economy. Hayek's answer was that the 'market' should be applied to all
domains of life. Homo œconomicus -- the narrowly self-interested subject who,
according to Foucault (2008, pp. 270-271), "is eminently governable ." as he/she "accepts
reality and responds systematically to systematic modifications artificially introduced into
the environment -- had to be universalized. This, in turn, could be achieved by the
financialization of 'everything in everyday life', because financial logic and constraints
would help to impose 'market discipline and rationality' on economic decision-makers. After
all, borrowers compete with another for funds -- and it is commercial (profit-oriented) banks
and financial institutions which do the screening and selection of who gets funded.
Hayek proved to be extremely successful in hiding his reactionary political agenda behind
the pretense of scientific neutrality -- by elevating the verdict of the market to the status
of a natural fact, while putting any value that cannot be expressed as a price "on an equally
unsure footing, as nothing more than opinion, preference, folklore or superstition" (Metcalf
2017). Hayek's impact on economics was transformative, as can be seen from how Lawrence Summers
sums up 'Hayek's legacy':
"What's the single most important thing to learn from an economics course today? What I
tried to leave my students with is the view that the invisible hand is more powerful than the
[un]hidden hand. Things will happen in well-organized efforts without direction, controls,
plans. That's the consensus among economists. That's the Hayek legacy." (quoted in Yergin and
Stanislaw (1998, pp. 150–51))
This Hayekian legacy underwrites, and quietly promotes, neoliberal narratives and discourses
which advocate that authority -- even sovereignty -- be conceded to (in our case: financial)
'markets' which act as an 'impartial and transparent judge', collecting and processing
information relevant to economic decision-making and coordinating these decisions, and as a
'guardian', impartially imposing 'market discipline and market rationality' on economic
decision-makers -- thus bringing about not just 'socially efficient outcomes' but social
stability as well. This way, financialization constitutes progress -- bringing "the advantages
enjoyed by the clients of Wall Street to the customers of Wal-Mart", as Nobel-Prize winning
financial economist Robert Shiller (2003, p. x) writes. "We need to extend finance beyond our
major financial capitals to the rest of the world. We need to extend the domain of finance
beyond that of physical capital to human capital, and to cover the risks that really matter in
our lives. Fortunately, the principles of financial management can now be expanded to include
society as a whole."
Attentive readers might argue that faith in the social efficiency of financial markets has
waned -- after all, Hayek's grand epistemological claim was falsified, in a completely
unambiguous manner, by the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-8 which brought the world economy to
the brink of a systemic meltdown. Even staunch believers in the (social) efficiency of
self-regulating financial markets, including most notably former Federal Reserve chair Alan
Greenspan, had to admit a fundamental 'flaw in their ideology'.
And yet, I beg to disagree. The economic ideology that created the crash remains intact and
unchallenged. There has been no reckoning and no lessons were learned, as the banks and their
shareholders were rescued, at the cost of about everyone else in society, by massive public
bail-outs, zero interest rates and unprecedented liquidity creation by central banks. Finance
staged a major come-back -- profits, dividends, salaries and bonuses in the financial industry
have rebounded to where they were before, while the re-regulation of finance became stuck in
endless political negotiations. Stock markets, meanwhile, notched record highs (before the
downward 'correction' of February 2018), derivative markets have been doing rather well and
under-priced risk-taking in financial markets has gathered steam (again), this time especially
so in the largest emerging economies of China, India and Brazil (BIS 2017; Gabor 2018). In the
process, global finance has become more concentrated and even more integral to capitalist
production and accumulation. The reason why even the Great Financial Crisis left the supremacy
of financial interests and logic unchallenged, is simple: there is no acceptable alternative
mode of social regulation to replace our financialized mode of co-ordination and
decision-making.
Accordingly, instead of a long overdue rethinking of Hayek's legacy, the economics
profession has gone, with renewed vigour, for an even broader push for 'financial inclusion'
(Mader 2018; Chandrasekhar and Ghosh 2018). Backed by the international financial institutions,
'social business' promotors (such as the World Economic Forum) and FinTech corporations, it
proposes to extend financial markets into new areas including social protection and poverty
alleviation (Lavinas 2018; Chandrasekhar and Ghosh 2018) and climate change mitigation (Arsel
and Büscher 2015; Keuchyan 2018). Most economists were already persuaded, by a voluminous
empirical literature (reviewed by Levine (2005)), to believe, with ample qualification and due
caution, that finance and financial markets do contribute to economic growth -- a proposition
that Nobel Laureate financial economist Merton Miller (1998, p. 14) found "almost too obvious
for serious discussion". But now greater financialization is argued to be integral to not just
'growth' but 'inclusive growth', as World-Bank economists Demirgüc-Kunt, Klapper and
Singer (2017) conclude in a recent review article: "financial inclusion allows people to make
many everyday financial transactions more efficiently and safely and expand their investment
and financial risk management options by using the formal financial system. This is especially
relevant for people living in the poorest 40 percent of households." The way to extend the good
life to more people is not to shrink finance nor restrain financial innovation, writes Robert
Shiller (2012) in a book titled Finance and the Good Society , but instead to release
it. Shiller's book celebrates finance's 'genuine beauty' and exhorts idealistic (sic)
young students to pursue careers in derivatives, insurance and related fields.
'Really-Existing' Finance Capitalism
Financialization underwrites neoliberal narratives and discourses which emphasize individual
responsibility, risk-taking and active investment for the benefit of the individual
him-/herself -- within the 'neutral' or even 'natural' constraints imposed by financial markets
and financial norms of creditworthiness (Palma 2009; Kear 2012). This way, financialization
morphs into a 'technique of power' to maintain a particular social order (Palma 2009; Saith
2011), in which the delicate task of balancing competing social claims and distributive
outcomes is offloaded to the 'invisible hand' which operates through anonymous, 'blind'
financial markets (Krippner 2005, 2011). This is perhaps illustrated clearest by Michael Hudson
(2012, p. 223):
"Rising mortgage debt has made employees afraid to go on strike or even to complain about
working conditions. Employees became more docile in a world where they are only one paycheck
or so away from homelessness or, what threatens to become almost the same thing, missing a
mortgage payment. This is the point at which they find themselves hooked on debt
dependency."
Paul Krugman (2005) has called this a 'debt-peonage society' -- while J. Gabriel Palma
(2009, p. 833) labelled it a 'rentiers' delight' in which financialization sustains the
rent-seeking practices of oligopolistic capital -- as a system of discipline as well as
exploitation, which is "difficult to reconcile with any acceptable definition of democracy"
(Mann 2010, p. 18).
In this regime of social regulation, income and wealth became more concentrated in the hands
of the rentier class (Saith 2011; Goda, Onaran and Stockhammer 2017) , and as a result,
productive capital accumulation gave way before the increased speculative use of the 'economic
surplus of society' in pursuit of 'financial-capital' gains through asset speculation (Davis
and Kim 2015). This took the wind out of the sails of the 'real' economy, and firms responded
by holding back investment, using their profits to pay out dividends to their shareholders and
to buy back their own shares (Lazonick 2014). Because the rich own most financial assets,
anything that causes the value of financial assets to rise rapidly made the rich richer
(Taylor, Ömer and Rezai 2015).
In the U.S., arguably the most financialized economy in the world, the result of this was
extreme income polarization, unseen after WWII (Piketty 2014; Palma 2011). The 'American
Dream', writes Gabriel Palma (2009, p. 842), was "high jacked by a rather tiny minority -- for
the rest, it has only been available on credit!" Because that is what happened: lower- and
middle-income groups took on more debt to finance spending on health care, education or
housing, spurred by the deregulation of financial markets and changes in the tax code which
made it easier and more attractive for households with modest incomes to borrow in order to
spend. This debt-financed spending stimulated an otherwise almost comatose U.S. economy by
spurring consumption (Cynamon and Fazzari 2015). In the twenty years before the Great Financial
Crash, debts and 'financial excess' -- in the form of the asset price bubbles in 'New Economy'
stocks, real estate markets and commodity (futures) markets -- propped up aggregate demand and
kept the U.S. and global economy growing. "We have," Paul Krugman (2013) concludes, "an economy
whose normal condition is one of inadequate demand -- of at least mild depression -- and which
only gets anywhere close to full employment when it is being buoyed by bubbles."
But it is not just the U.S. economy: the whole world has become addicted to debt. The
borrowings of global households, governments and firms have risen from 246% of GDP in 2000 to
327%, or $ 217 trillion, today -- which is $70 trillion higher than 10 years ago. [4] It means that for every
extra dollar of output, the world economy cranks out more than almost 10 extra dollars of debt.
Forget about the synthetic opioid crisis, the world's more dangerous addiction is to debt.
China, which has been the engine of the global economy during most of the post-2008 period, has
been piling up debt to keep its growth process going -- the IMF (2017) expects China's
non-financial sector debt to exceed 290% of its GDP in 2022, up from around 140% (of GDP) in
2008, warning that China's current credit trajectory is "dangerous with increasing risks of a
disruptive adjustment." China's insatiable demand for debt fueled growth, but also led to a
property bubble and a rapidly growing shadow banking system (Gabor 2018) -- raising concerns
that the economy may face a hard landing and send shockwaves through the world's financial
markets. The next global financial catastrophe may be just around the corner.
How Finance Is Reshaping the 'Rules of the Game'
To understand this debt explosion we must comprehend what is driving the financial
hyper-activity -- and how this is changing the way our economies work. For a start, the growth
of the financial industry, in terms of its size and power, its incomprehensible complexity and
its penetration into the real economy, is inseparably connected to the structural increase in
income and wealth inequalities (Foster and McChesney 2012; Storm and Naastepad 2015; Cynamon
and Fazzari 2015; Goda, Onaran and Stockhammer 2017). Richer households have a higher
propensity to save and are more likely to hold financial wealth in risky assets (such as mutual
funds, shares and bonds) and hence, more money ends up in the management of institutional
investors or 'asset managers' (Epstein 2018; Gabor 2018). As a result, a small core of the
global population, the so-called High Net Worth Individuals (Lysandrou 2011; Goda
2017), controls an increasingly larger share of incomes and wealth (Palma 2011; Saith 2011;
Piketty 2014; Taylor, Ömer and Rezai 2015). This trend was strengthened by the shift
towards capital-based pension schemes (Krippner 2011) and the structural increase in the
liquidity preference of big shareholder-dominated corporations, which came about under pressure
from activist shareholders wanting to 'disgorge the cash' within these firms (Lazonick 2014;
Epstein 2018; Jayadev et al. 2018). However, with few sufficiently profitable
investment opportunities in the "real economy", cash wealth -- originating out of a higher
profit share, dividends, shareholder payouts and capital gains on earlier financial investments
-- began to accumulate in global centrally managed 'institutional cash pools', the volume of
which grew from an insignificant $100 billion in 1990 to a systemic $6 trillion at the end of
2013 (Pozsar 2011, 2015). [5]
OTC derivative trading requires the availability of cheap liquidity on demand
(Mehrling 2012) and this means that the 'asset management complex' cannot invest the cash pools
into long-term assets, but has to keep the liquidity available -- ready to use when the
possibility for a profitable deal arises. But doing so poses enormous risks, because the global
cash pools are basically uninsured: they are far too big to fall under the coverage of normal
deposit-insurance schemes offered by the traditional banking system (Pozsar 2011). Securing
'principal safety' for the cash pools under their management thus became the main headache of
the asset managers -- which proved to be a far greater challenge than generating adequate rates
of return for the cash-owners. The reason was that the traditional way of securing principal
safety of one's cash was by putting it in very short-term government bonds which were
credit-rated as being 'safe' ( e.g. U.S. T-Bills or German Bunds ).
This way, the cash pool became 'collateralized' -- backed up by sovereign bonds. But as
inequality increased and global institutional cash pools expanded, the demand for safe
collateral began to permanently exceed the availability of 'safe' government bonds (Pozsar
2011; Lysandrou and Nesvetailova 2017).
The only way out was by putting the cash into newly developed privately guaranteed
instruments: asset-backed securities . These instruments were secured by collateral
(Lysandrou and Nesvetailova 2017) -- that is, the cash pools were lent, on a very short term
basis (often over-night), to securitization trusts, banks and other asset owners in exchange
for safe and secure collateral -- on the agreement that the borrower would repurchase the
collateral some time later (often the next day). This is called a repurchase or 'repo'
transaction (Gorton and Metrick 2009) or an 'asset-backed commercial paper' deal (Covitz, Lang
and Suarez 2013). Normally, the cash loan would be over-collateralized, with the cash provider
receiving collateral of a higher value than the value of the cash; the basic workings of the
'repo' market are further explained in Storm (2018). These (short-term) deals are generally
done within the shadow banking system, the mostly 'self-regulated' sphere of the financial
sector which arose in response to the growing demand for risk intermediation on behalf of --
and the prioritization of a 'safe parking place' for -- the global institutional cash pools
(Pozsar 2011; Pozsar and Singh 2011). The repo lender and the securities borrower -- each lends
cash and gets back securities -- can re-use those securities as collateral to get repo loans
for themselves. And the next cash lender, which gets the same securities as collateral, can
re-use them again as collateral to get a repo loan for itself. And so on. This creates a
'chain' in which one set of securities gets re-used several times as collateral for several
loans. This so-called re-hypothecation (Pozsar and Singh 2011) means that these
securities were increasingly used as 'money', a means of payment in inter-bank deals, within
the shadow banking system.
It should be clear that 'securities', which are privately 'manufactured' and guaranteed
money market instruments, form the feedstock of this complex and opaque 'profit-generating
machine' of inter-bank wheeling and dealing -- both by providing 'insurance' to the global cash
pools and by acting as an (privately guaranteed) means of payment in OTC trading.
'Securitization' is the most critical, yet under-appreciated, enabler of financialization
(Davis and Kim 2015). What then is securitization? It is the process of taking 'passive' assets
with cash flows, such as mortgages held by commercial banks, and commodifying them into
tradable securities. Securities are 'manufactured' using a portfolio of hundreds or thousands
of underlying assets, all yielding a particular return (in the form of cash flow) and carrying
a particular risk of default to their buyers. Due to the law of large numbers, the payoff from
the portfolio becomes predictable and suitable for being sliced up in different 'tranches',
each having a different risk profile. Storm (2018) provides a simple but illustrative numerical
example of how a security is manufactured using a two-asset example. As Davis and Kim (2015)
argue, securitization represents a fundamental shift in how finance is done. In the old days of
'originate-and-hold' (before the 1980s), (regulated) commercial banks would originate mortgage
loans and keep them on their balance sheets for the duration of the loan period. But now in our
era of 'originate-and-distribute', (de-regulated) commercial banks originate mortgages, but
then sell them off to securitization trusts which turn these mortgages into 'securities' and
vend them to financial investors. Securitization thus turns a concrete long-term relationship
between a bank ( i.e. Schumpeter's 'ephor') and the loan-taker into an abstract
relationship between anonymous financial markets and the loan-taker (in line with Hayek's
legacy). Commercial banks are now mere 'underwriters' of the mortgage (which is quickly sold
and securitized), while households which took the mortgage, are now de facto 'issuers
of securities' on (global) financial markets. This is the essence of the shift in financial
intermediation from banks to financial markets (Lysandrou and Nesvetailova 2017). Kane (2013,
2015) explains how this system is enjoying the implicit back-up of central banks and states and
how it is leading to predatory risk-taking by mega-banks.
This securitization fundamentally transformed the 'rules of the capitalist game', often in
rather perverse directions. For one, as finance expanded, the demand for 'investment-grade'
(AAA-rated) securities grew -- and the result was a hunt for additional collateral akin to
earlier gold rushes, write Pozsar and Singh (2011, p. 5): "Obtaining collateral is similar to
mining. It involves both exploration (looking for deposits of collateral) and extraction (the
"unearthing" of passive securities so they can be re-used as collateral for various purposes in
the shadow banking system)." Collateral is the new gold -- and this explains why banks (before
the Great Financial Crisis) gave loans to non-creditworthy (sub-prime) customers (Epstein 2018)
and why these same banks are now eager to include the poor in the financial system (Mader 2018)
and to enclose ever new spaces for profit-making (Arsel and Büscher 2012; Sathyamala 2017;
Keucheyan 2018). Mortgage loans (sub-prime or prime) or micro-credit deals derive their
systemic importance from the access they provide to the underlying collateral -- either in the
form of residential property or of high-return cash flows on micro-loans, made low-risk by peer
pressure.
This systemic importance (to the financial system, that is) by far exceeds the value of
these loans to the actual borrowers and it has led to and is still leading to an overdose of
finance -- with ruinous consequences. Likewise, one cannot understand what is going in
commodity and food markets unless one appreciates that trading in 'commodities' and 'food' is
not so much related to (present and future) consumption needs, but is increasingly dictated by
the market's alternative collateral, store-of-value, and safe-asset role in the global economy
(Clapp and Isakson 2018). That is, the commodity option or futures contract derives its value
more from its usefulness as 'collateralized securities' to back-up speculative shadow-banking
transactions than from its capacity to meet food demand or smoothen output prices for farmers.
We can add a fourth law to Zuboff's Laws (2013), namely that anything which can be
collateralized, will be collateralized. This even includes 'social policies', because the
present value of future streams of cash benefits for the poor can serve as collateral (see
Lavinas 2018). And because the major OTC markets require price volatility and spreads, exchange
rate volatility and uncertainty, which are 'bad' for the economic development of countries
attempting to industrialize (Bortz and Kaltenbrunner 2018), constitute a sine qua non
for the profitability of major OTC instruments including forex swaps and credit default swaps
(to 'hedge' the risks of the forex swaps). [7]
Perverse incentives, excessive risk-taking, fictitious financial instruments -- it appears
finance capitalism has reached its nadir. "In the way that even an accumulation of debts can
appear as an accumulation of capital," as Marx (1981, pp. 607-08) insightfully observed, "we
see the distortion involved in the credit system reach its culmination."
A 'One-Foot' Conclusion
The shift in financial intermediation from banks to financial markets, and the introduction
of financial market logic into areas and domains where it was previously absent, have not just
led to negative developmental impacts, but also changed the 'rules of the game', conduct and
outcomes -- to the detriment of 'inclusive' economic development and in ways that have helped
to legitimize -- what Palma (2009) has appositely called -- a 'rentiers' delight', a
financialized mode of social regulation which facilitated rent-seeking practices of a
self-serving global financial elite and at the same time enabled a sickening rise in
inequality. Establishment (financial) economics has helped to de-politicize and legitimize this
financialized mode of social regulation by invoking Hayek's epistemological claim that
(financial) markets are the only legitimate, reliably welfare-enhancing foundation for
a stable social order and economic progress.
It is this complacency of establishment economics which led to the global financial crash of
2008 and ten dire years of economic stagnation, high and rising inequalities in income and
wealth, historically unprecedented levels of indebtedness, and mounting uncertainty about jobs
and incomes in most nations. The crisis conditions crystalized into a steadily increasing
popular dissatisfaction of those supposedly 'left behind by (financial) globalization' with the
political and economic status quo; a dissatisfaction which amplified into a 'groundswell of
discontent' -- to use the words of the IMF's Managing Director Christine Lagarde (2016). Angry
and anxious electorates were transformed by demagogues into election-winning forces, as the
British 'Brexit' vote, Trump's (2016) and Erdogan's (2017) election victories in the U.S. and
Turkey, and recent political changes (toward authoritarianism) in Brazil, Egypt, the
Philippines and India all attest (see Becker, Fetzer and Novy (2017) for an analysis of the
Brexit vote; and Ferguson, Jorgenson and Chen (2018) for an assessment of the Trump vote).
We have to confront the Panglossian logic and arguments of (financial) economists, used to
legitimize the current financialized global order as the 'best of all possible worlds". We must
lay to rest the Hayekian claim that unregulated market-based finance is socially efficient --
as the macro- and micro-economic impacts of the rise to dominance of financial markets on
capital accumulation, growth and distribution have overwhelmingly been deleterious (Epstein
2018). Market-based finance is no longer funding the real economy (Epstein 2018; Jayadev, Mason
and Schröder 2018), but rather engages in self-serving strategy of rent-seeking
(Chandrasekhar and Ghosh 2018; Mader 2018), looting the 'fisc' (Chandrasekhar and Ghosh 2018;
Mader 2018), exchange rate and global stock market speculation (Bortz and Kaltenbrunner 2018),
OTC derivatives speculation (Keucheyan 2018; Clapp and Isakson 2018) and collateral mining
(Gabor 2018; Lavinas 2018) -- asphyxiating economic development.
This does not mean, however, that Schumpeter and Gerschenkron were wrong in calling the
banker the 'ephor' of capitalism and a 'phenomenon of development'. Finance can
positively contribute to economic development, something which indeed is "almost too obvious
for serious discussion" as Miller wrote, but only when the 'ephor' is 'governed' and 'directed'
by state regulation to structure accumulation and distribution into socially useful directions
(Epstein 2018; Jayadev, Mason and Schröder 2018). The East Asian miracle economies prove
the point that finance can be socially efficient if bankers can be made to work within the
'developmental mindset', the institutional arrangements and political compulsions of a
'developmental state', as argued by Wade (2018) -- China's recent move to (securities)
market-based finance may be the beginning of unravelling of its growth miracle (Gabor 2018; BIS
2017).
Rather than letting financial markets discipline the rest of the economy and the whole of
society, finance itself has to be disciplined by a countervailing social authority which
governs it to act in socially desirable directions. One famous account in the Talmud tells
about Rabbi Hillel, a great sage, who when he was asked to explain the Torah in the time that
he could stand on one foot, replied: "Do not do unto others that which is repugnant to you.
Everything else is commentary." If there is a one-foot summary of the literature reviewed in
this introduction, it is this: "Finance is a terrible 'ephor', but, if and when domesticated,
can be turned into a useful servant. Everything else is commentary."
"... Capitalist exploitation is based on a rigid hierarchy with its private prerogatives, which enables the oligarchs to demand their feudal privileges, their seigniorial sexual predations. ..."
"... Today, 93% of US private sector workers have no organized representation. Moreover, many of the 7% who are in unions are controlled and exploited by their corrupt union officials – in league with the bosses. ..."
"... The more egregious immorality exposes itself one time too often and is condemned, while the victims are temporality lionized for their courage to protest. The worst predators apologize, resign to their yachts and mansions and are replaced by new avatars with the same power and structures in place which had facilitated the abuse. Politicians rush to embrace the victims in a kind of political and media 'Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy' when one considers their own role as enablers of this dehumanization. ..."
"... The problem is not merely corrupt and perverted individual miscreants: It is the hierarchy of inequality which produces and reproduces an endless supply of vulnerable workers to exploit and abuse. ..."
"... Sexual abuse of an individual in the workplace is just part of a chain that begins with exploitation of workers in general and can only be stopped through collective worker organization. ..."
"... Can anyone say with a straight face that the US remains a nation of free and autonomous citizens? Servitude and moral degradation are the outcome of an atomized, impotent laboring class who may change one boss for another or one vulgar president for a moralizing hypocrite. We hope that the exposés will start something but without class conscious organizations we don't know what will arise. ..."
The public denunciation by thousands of women and a few men that they had been victims of
sexual abuse by their economic bosses raises fundamental issues about the social relations of
American capitalism.
The moral offenses are in essence economic and social crimes. Sexual abuse is only one
aspect of the social dynamics facilitating the increase in inequality and concentration of
wealth, which define the practices and values of the American political and economic
system.
Billionaires and mega-millionaires are themselves the products of intense exploitation of
tens of millions of isolated and unorganized wage and salaried workers. Capitalist exploitation
is based on a rigid hierarchy with its private prerogatives, which enables the oligarchs to
demand their feudal privileges, their seigniorial sexual predations.
US capitalism thrives on and requires unlimited power and the capacity to have the public
treasury pay for its untrammeled pillage of land, labor, transport systems and technological
development. Capitalist power, in the United States, has no counterpart; there are few if any
countervailing forces to provide any balance.
Today, 93% of US private sector workers have no organized representation. Moreover, many of
the 7% who are in unions are controlled and exploited by their corrupt union officials –
in league with the bosses.
This concentration of power produces the ever deepening inequalities between the world of
the billionaires and the millions of low-wage workers.
The much-celebrated technological innovations have been subsidized by the state and its
educational and research institutions. Although these are financed by the taxpayers, the
citizen-workers are marginalized by the technological changes, like robotics, that they
originally funded. High tech innovations flourish because they concentrate power, profits and
private privilege.
The hierarchical matrix of power and exploitation has led to the polarization of mortality
rates and moral codes. For the working poor, the absence of competent health care has led to
the massive use and abuse of prescription opioids and other addictive drugs. For the upper
class, it has led to the flagrant physical and psychological abuse of vulnerable employees,
especially, but not exclusively young working women. The prestigious bourgeois media blur the
class polarization by constant reference to what they term 'our shared traditional democratic
values.'
The pervasive and growing vulnerability of workers of both sexes coincides with the
incorporation of the latest technological innovations in production, distribution and
promotion. This includes electronic and digital advances, artificial intelligence, robotics and
extensive surveillance on workers, which incorporate high profits for the investors and long
hours of demeaning monotonous work for those who manufacture and transport the 'products'.
The proliferation of new technology has grown in direct relation with the abject debasement
of labor and the marginalization and trivialization of workers. Amazon and Walmart approach
trillions of dollars in revenue from mass consumption, even as the Chaplinesque speed-up of
robotized humans race to fill the overnight delivery orders. The entertainment industry amuses
the population across class lines with increasingly vulgar and violent offerings, while the
moguls of film entertain themselves with their young workers – who are depersonalized and
even raped.
The more egregious immorality exposes itself one time too often and is condemned, while the
victims are temporality lionized for their courage to protest. The worst predators apologize,
resign to their yachts and mansions and are replaced by new avatars with the same power and
structures in place which had facilitated the abuse. Politicians rush to embrace the victims in
a kind of political and media 'Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy' when one considers their own role
as enablers of this dehumanization.
The problem is not merely corrupt and perverted individual miscreants: It is the hierarchy
of inequality which produces and reproduces an endless supply of vulnerable workers to exploit
and abuse.
The most advanced forms of entertainment thrive in an environment of absolute impunity in
which the occasional exposé of abuse or corruption is hidden behind a monetary
settlement. The courage of an individual victim able to secure public attention is a step
forward, but will have greater significance if it is organized and linked to a massive
challenging of the power of the bourgeois entertainment industry and the system of high tech
exploitation. Sexual abuse of an individual in the workplace is just part of a chain that
begins with exploitation of workers in general and can only be stopped through collective
worker organization.
Can anyone say with a straight face that the US remains a nation of free and autonomous
citizens? Servitude and moral degradation are the outcome of an atomized, impotent laboring
class who may change one boss for another or one vulgar president for a moralizing hypocrite.
We hope that the exposés will start something but without class conscious organizations
we don't know what will arise.
Wolfe will never get it about Trump. The debt was left over by Bush and Obama in the last two
decades. Party establishment politicians who are owned by corporate donors, didn't want fair
taxes on the wealthy, but rather leave congressional budgets with large blobs of red ink. So
far, that method has worked in order for voters to be duped with lies and corporate PR stuff.
Meanwhile, Trump gets the shaft for something he didn't create in the first place. Maybe
Wolfe should be spending his time and skills criticizing the last US Presidential
Administration for grabbing the purse out of the hands of taxpayers by supporting worthless
government programs like TARP, cash for clunkers, Obamacare, and shovel ready jobs that don't
exist in reality.
The deficit is increasing.
Until Trump, the RATE of the deficit increase was declining under Obama. Now it is
increasing.
Obama - 68% increase
Bush 2 - 101% increase
Clinton - 32% increase
Bush 1 - 54% increase
Reagan - 186% increase https://www.thebalance.com/us-debt-by-president-by-dollar-and-percent-3306296
Of all the comical lies sold to us by the RepubliKlan and their Antiglobalist allies,
especially on this site and Breitshite, was that Trump the populist and Antiglobalist hero
was going to free the poor oppressed white working man. Trump and his party just raised taxes
on blue state poor, middle class, and upper middle class to give One trillion in tax cuts to
megabillion dollar publicly traded corporations sitting on piles of cash. Sorry, Los Angeles
dock worker, or New York construction worker, or New Jersey truck driver your taxes are going
to go up because human parasite Jubba the Hut Adelson needs another billion in tax cuts.
And Trump showed the elites, by appointing generals and billionaires to his cabinet and
then giving them all a big tax cut. Hurray for Antiglobalism and the white working class.
The Trump Administration and a complicit U.S. Congress is on a colossal spending spree
defiant of the USA's debt realities and unconcerned about consequences. At the same time, the
IMF, under American Government sway, lectures applicant countries on fiscal discipline and
imposes austere stabilisation & structural adjustment programs on them as a
non-negotiable condition for credit. Inequitable practice for sure.
America under Trump spends with abandon, confident that foreigners, including those in
s***ho** countries in Africa, will pour their cash savings into U.S. Treasury bonds for
peanuts in interest.
"Frugality" Mr. Wolffe? Is that your euphemism for Austerity, that nonsensical, ideologically
motivated policy pushed by the Germans and the European Central Bank because their banks are
too big to bail?
Trump is cleaning the Obama mess up, as fast as he can. Leading from the front. The US
Economy is on a fast track, and the US Military is ready again to kick some rear end.
Are you on crack?
The US Military is why we are broke and unhealthy unlike the other 1st-world countries. Do
the math. We have the huge military. They have the free healthcare and free/cheap
education.
Who is invading us? North Korea? Don't make me laugh. They are a shitty broke starving
little country on somebody else's continent. They only got nukes because GWBush declared them
an enemy out of the blue. They had been steadily disarming before that.
This isn't the 6th grade. International power comes from economic might. Money buys
weapons a lot easier than weapons brings in money.
You don't get economic might when you keep pissing away your money on a private industry
of military contractors. We should be spending that money on (non-bullshit) educations for
our population, adequate healthcare so people can do the work when they have it, and
maintaining our crumbling last-century infrastructure.
You asked a one-dimensional question: who is rich enough to own stocks? I gave you a factual
answer. Your response, while true, has nothing to do with the question asked and answered.
Here are a few reasons for the issues you correctly note: 1) Most Americans have a
pittance of their own for their retirement. Our culture is one of immediate gratification. We
are unwilling to wait. Putting money aside (no matter how small) requires patience and
discipline. Most of us have neither. (Jackpot winners are an example. Studies shown most
jackpot winners don't invest any of their winnings for retirement. On average, they blow it
all within three years.) Savings for retirement reflect that. 2) Underfunded Defined Benefit
Plans are underfunded because politicians today get re-elected by promising entitlements. If
the promise is unreasonable, they kick the can down the road for someone else to take care
of. Look at Illinois, Connecticut, and any number of cities and states in a financial bind
because of overpromising and insufficient revenue. Then there's the national debt! Some union
problems are a product of inflexibility and/or corruption (using retirement funds for other
activities and loaning money for such things as Las Vegas casinos), and they and many
companies in the private sector made two major errors. 1) They overestimated investment
returns and didn't count on 10 years of minuscule interest rates and 2) didn't anticipate
their membership/worker base would shrink so fewer people were contributing to retirement
funds as the number of retirees rose. So they faced rising expenses combined the declining
revenues. I agree that PBGC's ability to pay is questionable at best and that catching up for
many is not likely and for some impossible. Since I don't watch it, my glib comments don't
come from Fox News. They come from personal involvement with several retirement plans.
I don't have the time, I'm afraid, to answer all of the points that you raised in what was
another interesting post, but here are some New Dem/Blue Dog Democrats still serving in
Congress: Henry Cuellar, Stephanie Murphy, Cheri Bustos, Krysten Sinema, Vicente Gonzalez,
Tom O'Halleran (Republican until 2014!), Ami Bera, Gerry Connolly, and Jim Hines. They are
all in the House of Representatives; as you say, many of the most overt Blue Dog Democrats
didn't serve long in Congress, although I'd suggest that Heidi Heitkamp could be added to
Manchin in the Senate.
When replying to you, I do so - or try to do so - from two perspectives at the same time.
On the one hand, I am writing as someone far, far to the left of the Democratic Party. My
understanding of how our society works is conditioned by my understanding of how the economy
is structured according to who owns the means of production. As far as that goes, political
change within the existing system can only ever be a more or less satisfactory compromise
within a regime of exploitation and wealth extraction. The two party system, needless to say,
is totally inadequate to address the fundamental causes of human misery, injustice,
discrimination and environmental blight.
At the same time, I'm capable of temporarily swapping hats and thinking strategically
about what would work within that system. According to that, I see the Democratic Party
working to undermine its own sated aims through deal-making that is not, as you say, the
necessary back-and-forth of liberal party democracy, but a much more duplicitous function in
absorbing, then betraying, popular demands for change. One of the reasons why nominally
left-wing parties fare poorly when they make unnecessary or excessive compromises within the
existing system is because they, unlike Tories or Republicans, must also appear to represent
the interests of those who that system victimises and exploits.
Look at how the DCCC has encouraged and elevated ex-Republicans or Blue Dog Democrats at
the expense of more progressive candidates. They are well aware of what this does to the
arithmetic balance of legislative power, on a state as well as federal level. Their current
goal is to provide and validate reasons for inertia and produce cover for endless betrayals.
I'd cite, too, the state of affairs in New York, where a Democratic majority in the state
assembly has been turned into a Republican one via a collection of "independent" Democrats
choosing instead to vote according to the Republican whip. This has gone on now for several
years and has been enabled in part by Andrew Cuomo, who elsewhere and for reasons of
presidential ambition has presented himself as some sort of progressive.
My point is that the conditions for inertia and political decadence are very much still in
place within the Democratic Party as it continues to resist any movement away from its
established course despite historic losses and a potential for renewal represented by Bernie
sanders and the support that he mobilised.
A reduction in "entitlements" is always the fallback position of conservatives; but that is
not, unfortunately, what has caused, and is causing America's tremendous deficit. Military
spending is where the budget has gotten out of control. Even before Trump's proposed increase
in military spending, the U.S. budgets more than twice as much for military as the next 10
largest countries in the world COMBINED - let that sink in a minute. Undeclared wars since
George W days put us into huge deficit, and the military budget continues to grow. There was
no money to pay for those military actions so debt began to mount. It must be remembered that
when Clinton left office, there was NO debt - he left the U.S. with a SURPLUS.
"... The opioid epidemic, alcohol abuse and suicides are leading causes of death in the US. The rate of fatal drug overdoses rose by 137 percent from 2000 to 2014. In 2015 alone, more than 64,000 people died from drug overdoses, exceeding the number of US fatal casualties in the Vietnam War. The suicide rate rose by a staggering 24 percent between 1999 and 2014. ..."
"... These "deaths of despair" have disproportionately affected white Americans, including adults aged 25-59, those with limited education, and women. The sharpest increases have been in rural areas. ..."
"... As to why the rise in mortality has been greatest among white, middle-aged adults and some rural communities, the editorial points to possible factors, which all relate to class issues. They include "the collapse of industries and the local economies they supported, the erosion of social cohesion and greater social isolation, economic hardship, and distress among white workers over losing the security their parents once enjoyed." ..."
The cognitive dissonance is deafening. The FBI is a criminal organization. Trump and his
cohorts are here to stay. If you think you can change the direction of failing America, best
to organize a socialist party.
What is Mueller going to do about this?"
The opioid epidemic, alcohol abuse and suicides are leading causes of death in the US.
The rate of fatal drug overdoses rose by 137 percent from 2000 to 2014. In 2015 alone, more
than 64,000 people died from drug overdoses, exceeding the number of US fatal casualties in
the Vietnam War. The suicide rate rose by a staggering 24 percent between 1999 and
2014.
These "deaths of despair" have disproportionately affected white Americans, including
adults aged 25-59, those with limited education, and women. The sharpest increases have been
in rural areas.
As to why the rise in mortality has been greatest among white, middle-aged adults and
some rural communities, the editorial points to possible factors, which all relate to class
issues. They include "the collapse of industries and the local economies they supported, the
erosion of social cohesion and greater social isolation, economic hardship, and distress
among white workers over losing the security their parents once enjoyed."
"... The post WW2 promotion process in the armed forces has produced a group at the top with a mentality that typically thinks rigorously but not imaginatively or creatively. ..."
"... These men got to their present ranks and positions by being conformist group thinkers who do not stray outside the "box" of their guidance from on high. They actually have scheduled conference calls among themselves to make sure everyone is "on board." ..."
"... If asked at the top, where military command and political interaction intersect, what policy should be they always ask for more money and to be allowed to pursue outcomes that they can understand as victory and self fulfilling with regard to their collective self image as warrior chieftains. ..."
"... In Trump's time his essential disinterest in foreign policy has led to a massive delegation of authority to Mattis and the leadership of the empire's forces. Their reaction to that is to look at their dimwitted guidance from on high (defeat IS, depose Assad and the SAG, triumph in Afghanistan) and to seek to impose their considerable available force to seek accomplishment as they see fit of this guidance in the absence of the kind of restrictions that Obama placed on them. ..."
"... Like the brass, I, too, am a graduate of all those service schools that attend success from the Basic Course to the Army War College. I will tell you again that the people at the top are not good at "the vision thing." They are not stupid at all but they are a collective of narrow thinkers ..."
"... Academia reinforces the groupthink. The mavericks are shunned or ostracized. The only ones I have seen with some degree of going against the grain are technology entrepreneurs. ..."
"... "They are not stupid at all but they are a collective of narrow thinkers." I have found this to be the case with 80 to 90% of most professions. A good memory and able to perform meticulously what they have been taught, but little thinking outside that narrow box. Often annoying, but very dangerous in this case. ..."
"... Since Afghanistan and the brass were mentioned in the editorial statement, here is an immodest question -- Where the brass have been while the opium production has been risen dramatically in Afghanistan under the US occupation? "Heroin Addiction in America Spearheaded by the US-led War on Afghanistan" by Paul Craig Roberts: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/06/heroin-addiction-america-spearheaded-us-led-war-afghanistan/ ..."
"... A simple Q: What has been the role of the CENTCOM re the racket? Who has arranged the protection for the opium production and for drug dealers? Roberts suggests that the production of opium in Afghanistan "finances the black operations of the CIA and Western intelligence agencies." -- All while Awan brothers, Alperovitch and such tinker with the US national security? ..."
"... God help the poor people of Syria. ..."
"... thanks pat... it seems like the usa has had a steady group of leaders that have no interest in the world outside of the usa, or only in so far as they can exploit it for their own interest... maybe that sums up the foreign policy of the usa at this point... you say trump is disinterested.. so all the blather from trump about 'why are we even in syria?', or 'why can't we be friends with the russia?' is just smoke up everyone's ass... ..."
"... Predictably there is always someone who says that this group is not different from all others. Unfortunately the military function demands more than the level of mediocrity found in most groups ..."
"... A lot of technology entrepreneurs--especially those active today--are stuck in their own groupthink, inflated by their sense that they are born for greatness and can do no wrong. ..."
"... The kind of grand schemes that the top people at Google, Uber, and Facebook think up to remake the universe in their own idea of "good society" are frightening. That they are cleverer (but not necessarily wiser) than the academics, borgists, or generals, I think, makes them even more dangerous. ..."
"... They [the generals] seem to have deliberately completely ignored the issues and policy positions Trump ran on as President. It isn't a case of ignorance but of wilful disregard. ..."
"... So true and as others commented this is a sad feature of the human race and all human organizations. Herd mentality ties into social learning ..."
"... Our massive cultural heritages are learned by observing and taken in as a whole. This process works within organizations as well. ..."
"... I suspect a small percentage of the human race functions differently than the majority and retains creative thinking and openness along with more emphasis on cognitive thinking than social learning but generally they always face a battle when working to change the group "consensus", i.e. Fulton's folly, scepticism on whether man would ever fly, etc. ..."
"... This is an interesting discussion. The top in organisations (civil and military) are increasingly technocrats and thinking like systems managers. They are unable to innovate because they lack the ability to think out of the box. Usually there is a leader who depends on specialists. Others (including laymen) are often excluding from the decision-making-proces. John Ralston Saul's Voltaires Bastards describes this very well. ..."
"... Because of natural selection (conformist people tend to choose similar people who resemble their own values and ways-of-thinking) organizations have a tendency to become homogeneous (especially the higher management/ranks). ..."
"... In combination with the "dumbing" of people (also of people who have a so-called good education (as described in Richard Sale's Sterile Chit-Chat ) this is a disastrous mix. ..."
"... That's true not only of the US military but of US elites in general across all of the spectra. And because that reality is at odds with the group-think of those within the various elements that make up the spectra it doesn't a hearing. Anyone who tries to bring it up risks being ejected from the group. ..."
"... "The United States spent at least $12 billion in Syria-related military and civilian expenses in the four years from 2014 through 2017, according to the former U.S. ambassador to the country. This $12 billion is in addition to the billions more spent to pursue regime change in Syria in the previous three years, after war broke out in 2011." https://goo.gl/8pj5cD ..."
"... "They are not stupid at all but they are a collective of narrow thinkers." I've often pondered that concept. Notice how many of radical extremist leaders were doctors, engineers and such? Narrow and deep. ..."
"... Long ago when I was a professor, I advised my students that "the law is like a pencil sharpener, it sharpens the mind by narrowing it." I tried to encourage them to "think backwards". ..."
"... Col, I think it might help people to think of "the Borg" - as you have defined & applied it - in a broader context. It struck me particularly as you ID'd the launching of our modern military group-think / careerism behavior coming from the watershed of industrialized scale & processes that came out of WWII. ..."
"... We note parallel themes in all significant sectors of our civilization. The ever-expanding security state, the many men in Gray Flannel Suits that inhabit corporate culture, Finance & Banking & Big Health scaling ever larger - all processes aimed to slice the salami thinner & quicker, to the point where meat is moot ... and so it goes. ..."
"... I just finished reading Command & Control (about nuclear weapons policy, systems design & accidents). I am amazed we've made it this far. ..."
The Borgist foreign policy of the administration has little to do with the generals. To comprehend the generals one must understand their collective mentality and the process that raised them on high as a collective
of their own. The post WW2 promotion process in the armed forces has produced a group at the top with a mentality that typically
thinks rigorously but not imaginatively or creatively.
These men got to their present ranks and positions by being conformist group thinkers who do not stray outside the "box" of
their guidance from on high. They actually have scheduled conference calls among themselves to make sure everyone is "on board."
If asked at the top, where military command and political interaction intersect, what policy should be they always ask for
more money and to be allowed to pursue outcomes that they can understand as victory and self fulfilling with regard to their collective
self image as warrior chieftains.
In Obama's time they were asked what policy should be in Afghanistan and persuaded him to reinforce their dreams in Afghanistan
no matter how unlikely it always was that a unified Western oriented nation could be made out of a collection of disparate mutually
alien peoples.
In Trump's time his essential disinterest in foreign policy has led to a massive delegation of authority to Mattis and the
leadership of the empire's forces. Their reaction to that is to look at their dimwitted guidance from on high (defeat IS, depose
Assad and the SAG, triumph in Afghanistan) and to seek to impose their considerable available force to seek accomplishment as they
see fit of this guidance in the absence of the kind of restrictions that Obama placed on them.
Like the brass, I, too, am a graduate of all those service schools that attend success from the Basic Course to the Army War
College. I will tell you again that the people at the top are not good at "the vision thing." They are not stupid at all but they
are a collective of narrow thinkers. pl
IMO, this conformism pervades all institutions. I saw when I worked in banking and finance many moons ago how moving up the
ranks in any large organization meant you didn't rock the boat and you conformed to the prevailing groupthink. Even nutty ideas
became respectable because they were expedient.
Academia reinforces the groupthink. The mavericks are shunned or ostracized. The only ones I have seen with some degree of
going against the grain are technology entrepreneurs.
You remind me of an old rumination by Thomas Ricks:
Take the example of General George Casey. According to David Cloud and Greg Jaffe's book Four Stars, General Casey, upon learning
of his assignment to command U.S. forces in Iraq, received a book from the Army Chief of Staff. The book Counterinsurgency Lessons
Learned from Malaya and Vietnam was the first book he ever read about guerilla warfare." This is a damning indictment of the degree
of mental preparation for combat by a general. The Army's reward for such lack of preparation: two more four star assignments.
"They are not stupid at all but they are a collective of narrow thinkers."
I have found this to be the case with 80 to 90% of most professions. A good memory and able to perform meticulously what they
have been taught, but little thinking outside that narrow box. Often annoying, but very dangerous in this case.
Since Afghanistan and the brass were mentioned in the editorial statement, here is an immodest question -- Where the brass have
been while the opium production has been risen dramatically in Afghanistan under the US occupation? "Heroin Addiction in America
Spearheaded by the US-led War on Afghanistan" by Paul Craig Roberts:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/06/heroin-addiction-america-spearheaded-us-led-war-afghanistan/
" in 2000-2001
the Taliban government –with the support of the United Nations (UNODC) – implemented a successful ban on poppy cultivation. Opium
production which is used to produce grade 4 heroin and its derivatives declined by more than 90 per cent in 2001. The production
of opium in 2001 was of the order of a meager 185 tons. It is worth noting that the UNODC congratulated the Taliban Government
for its successful opium eradication program. The Taliban government had contributed to literally destabilizing the multibillion
dollar Worldwide trade in heroin.
In 2017, the production of opium in Afghanistan under US military occupation reached 9000 metric tons. The production of opium
in Afghanistan registered a 49 fold increase since Washington's invasion. Afghanistan under US military occupation produces approximately
90% of the World's illegal supply of opium which is used to produce heroin. Who owns the airplanes and ships that transport heroin
from Afghanistan to the US? Who gets the profits?"
---A simple Q: What has been the role of the CENTCOM re the racket? Who has arranged the protection for the opium production
and for drug dealers? Roberts suggests that the production of opium in Afghanistan "finances the black operations of the CIA and
Western intelligence agencies." -- All while Awan brothers, Alperovitch and such tinker with the US national security?
There needs to be a 're-education' of the top, all of them need to be required to attend Green Beret think-school, in other
words they need to be forced to think outside the box, and to to think on their feet. They need to understand fluid situations
where things change at the drop of a hat, be able to dance the two-step and waltz at the same time. In other words they need to
be able to walk and chew gum and not trip over their shoe-laces.
By no means are they stupid, but you hit the nail on the head when you said 'narrow thinkers'. Their collective hive mentality
that has developed is not a good thing.
thanks pat... it seems like the usa has had a steady group of leaders that have no interest in the world outside of the usa, or
only in so far as they can exploit it for their own interest... maybe that sums up the foreign policy of the usa at this point...
you say trump is disinterested.. so all the blather from trump about 'why are we even in syria?', or 'why can't we be friends
with the russia?' is just smoke up everyone's ass...
i like what you said here "conformist group thinkers who do not stray outside the "box" of their guidance from on high. They
actually have scheduled conference calls among themselves to make sure everyone is "on board." - that strikes me as very true
- conformist group thinkers... the world needs less of these types and more actual leaders who have a vision for something out
of the box and not always on board... i thought for a while trump might fill this bill, but no such luck by the looks of it now..
As a young person in eighth grade, I learned about the "domino theory" in regard to attempts to slow the spread of communism.
Then my generation was, in a sense, fractured around the raging battles for and against our involvement in Vietnam.
I won't express my own opinion on that. But I mention it because it seems to be a type of "vision thing."
So, now I ask, what would be your vision for the Syrian situation?
Westmoreland certainly, Macarthur certainly not. This all started with the "industrialization" of the armed forces in WW2.
we never recovered the sense of profession as opposed to occupation after the massive expansion and retention of so many placeholders.
a whole new race of Walmart manager arose and persists. pl
The idea of the Domino Theory came from academia, not the generals of that time. They resisted the idea of a war in east Asia
until simply ordered into it by LBJ. After that their instinct for acting according to guidance kicked in and they became committed
to the task. Syria? Do you think I should write you an essay on that? SST has a large archive and a search machine. pl
I am talking about flag officers at present, not those beneath them from the mass of whom they emerge. There are exceptions.
Martin Dempsey may have been one such. The system creates such people at the top. pl
Your usual animosity for non-left wing authority is showing. A commander like the CENTCOM theater commander (look it up) operates
within guidance from Washington, broad guidance. Normally this is the president's guidance as developed in the NSC process. Some
presidents like Obama and LBJ intervene selectively and directly in the execution of that guidance. Obama had a "kill list" of
jihadis suggested by the IC and condemned by him to die in the GWOT. He approved individual missions against them. LBJ picked
individual air targets in NVN. Commanders in the field do not like that . They think that freedom of action within their guidance
should be accorded them. This CinC has not been interested thus far in the details and have given the whole military chain of
command wide discretion to carry out their guidance. pl
"I am not sure that I understand what makes a Borgist different from a military conformist." The Borg and the military leaders
are not of the same tribe. they are two different collectives who in the main dislike and distrust each other. pl
Anna. Their guidance does not include a high priority for eradicating the opium trade. Their guidance has to do with defeating
the jihadis and building up the central government. pl
Predictably there is always someone who says that this group is not different from all others. Unfortunately the military function
demands more than the level of mediocrity found in most groups. pl
Trump would like to better relations with Russia but that is pretty much the limit of his attention to foreign affairs
at any level more sophisticated than expecting deference. He is firmly focused on the economy and base solidifying issues like
immigration. pl
The medical profession comes to mind. GP's and specialists. Many of those working at the leading edge of research seem much wider
thinking and are not locked into the small box of what they have been taught.
Combat Applications Group and SEALS don't even begin to compare, they're not in the same league as 'real deal' GBs. The GBs are
thinkers as well as doers, whereas Combat Applications Group and SEALs all they know is breach and clear, breach and clear.
There is more to life than breach and clear. Having worked with all in one manner or another, I'll take GBs any day hands down. It makes a difference when the brain is
engaged instead of just the heel.
A lot of technology entrepreneurs--especially those active today--are stuck in their own groupthink, inflated by their sense that
they are born for greatness and can do no wrong.
The kind of grand schemes that the top people at Google, Uber, and Facebook think
up to remake the universe in their own idea of "good society" are frightening. That they are cleverer (but not necessarily wiser)
than the academics, borgists, or generals, I think, makes them even more dangerous.
They are indeed "narrow thinkers", but I think the problem runs deeper. They seem to be stuck in the rut of a past era. When
the US was indeed the paramount military power on the globe, and the US military reigned supreme. They can't seem to accept the
reality of the world as it is now.
Of course, these policies ensure that they continue to be well-funded, even if the US is bankrupting itself in the process.
They [the generals] seem to have deliberately completely ignored the issues and policy positions Trump ran on as President. It isn't a case of
ignorance but of wilful disregard.
I've been reading this blog for some time. My question was facetious and written with the understanding of your statement about
the generals not having a good grasp of "the vision thing" on their own.
So true and as others commented this is a sad feature of the human race and all human organizations. Herd mentality ties into
social learning. Chimps are on average more creative and have better short term memory than humans. We gave up some short term
memory in order to be able to learn quickly by mimicking. If shown how to open a puzzle box but also shown unnecessary extra steps
a chimp will ignore the empty steps and open the box with only the required steps. A human will copy what they saw exactly performing
the extra steps as if they have some unknown value to the process. Our massive cultural heritages are learned by observing and
taken in as a whole. This process works within organizations as well.
I suspect a small percentage of the human race functions differently than the majority and retains creative thinking and openness
along with more emphasis on cognitive thinking than social learning but generally they always face a battle when working to change
the group "consensus", i.e. Fulton's folly, scepticism on whether man would ever fly, etc.
One nice feature of the internet allows creative thinkers to connect and watch the idiocy of the world unfold around us.
"A natural desire to be part of the 'in crowd' could damage our ability to make the right decisions, a new study has shown."
The military by definition is a rigid hierarchical structure.
It could not function as a collection of individuals.
This society can only breed conforming narrow leaders as an "individual" would leave or be forced out.
That part of our brain responsible for the desire to be part of the 'in crowd' may affect our decision-making process, but it
is also the reason we keep chimps in zoos and not the other way around. Or, to put it another way; if chimps had invented Facebook,
I might consider them more creative than us.
This is an interesting discussion. The top in organisations (civil and military) are increasingly technocrats and thinking like systems managers. They are unable
to innovate because they lack the ability to think out of the box.
Usually there is a leader who depends on specialists. Others (including laymen) are often excluding from the decision-making-proces.
John Ralston Saul's Voltaires Bastards
describes this very well.
Because of natural selection (conformist people tend to choose similar people who resemble their own values and ways-of-thinking)
organizations have a tendency to become homogeneous (especially the higher management/ranks).
In combination with the "dumbing" of people (also of people who have a so-called good education (as described in Richard Sale's
Sterile Chit-Chat ) this is a disastrous
mix.
Homogeneity is the main culprit. A specialists tends to try to solve problems with the same knowledge-set that created these.
Not all (parts of) organizations and people suffer this fate. Innovations are usually done by laymen and not by specialists.
The organizations are often heterogeneous and the people a-typical and/or eccentric.
(mainly the analytical parts of ) intelligence organizations and investment banks are like that if they are worth anything.
Very heterogeneous with a lot of a-typical people. I think Green Berets are also like that. An open mind and genuine interest
in others (cultures, way of thinking, religion etc) is essential to understand and to perform and also to prevent costly mistakes
(in silver and/or blood).
It is possible to create firewalls against tunnel-vision. The
Jester performed such a role. Also think of the
Emperors New Clothes . The current trend
of people with limited vision and creativity prevents this. Criticism is punished with a lack of promotion, job-loss or even jail
(whistle-blowers)
IMO this is why up to a certain rank (colonel or middle management) a certain amount of creativity or alternative thinking
is allowed, but conformity is essential to rise higher.
I was very interested in the Colonel's remark on the foreign background of the GB in Vietnam. If you would like to expand on this
I would be much obliged? IMO GB are an example of a smart, learning, organization (in deed and not only in word as so many say
of themselves, but who usually are at best mediocre)
Would you then say that a rising military officer who does have the vision thing faces career impediments? If so, would you
say that the vision thing is lost (if it ever was there) at the highest ranks? In any case, the existence of even a few at the top, like Matthis or Shinseki is a blessing.
"When the US was indeed the paramount military power on the globe, and the US military reigned supreme. They can't seem to
accept the reality of the world as it is now."
That's true not only of the US military but of US elites in general across all of the spectra. And because that reality is at
odds with the group-think of those within the various elements that make up the spectra it doesn't a hearing. Anyone who tries
to bring it up risks being ejected from the group.
I forget an important part. I really miss an edit-button. Comment-boxes are like looking at something through a straw. Its easy
to miss the overview.
Innovations and significant new developments are usually made by laymen. IMO mainly because they have a fresh perspective without
being bothered by the (mainstream) knowledge that dominates an area of expertise.
By excluding the laymen errors will continue to be repeated. This can be avoided by using development/decision-making frameworks,
but these tend to become dogma (and thus become part of the problem)
Much better is allowing laymen and allowing a-typical people. Then listen to them carefully. Less rigid flexible and very valuable.
Apparently, according to the last US ambassador to Syria Mr. Ford, from 2014-17 US has spent 12 Billion on Regime change in Syria.
IMO, combinedly Iran and Russia so far, have spent far less in Syria than 12 billion by US alone, not considering the rest of
her so called coalition. This is a war of attrition, and US operations in wars, are usually far more expensive and longer than
anybody else's.
"The United States spent at least $12 billion in Syria-related military and civilian expenses in the four years from 2014 through
2017, according to the former U.S. ambassador to the country.
This $12 billion is in addition to the billions more spent to pursue regime change in Syria in the previous three years, after
war broke out in 2011." https://goo.gl/8pj5cD
It may "demand" it - but does it get it? Soldiers are just as human as everyone else.
I'm reminded of the staff sergeant with the sagging beer belly who informed me, "Stand up straight and look like a soldier..."
Or the First Sergeant who was so hung over one morning at inspection that he couldn't remember which direction he was going down
the hall to the next room to be inspected. I'm sure you have your own stories of less than competence.
It's a question of intelligence and imagination. And frankly, I don't see the military in any country receiving the "best and
brightest" of that country's population, by definition. The fact that someone is patriotic enough to enter the military over a
civilian occupation doesn't make them more intelligent or imaginative than the people who decided on the civilian occupation.
Granted, if you fail at accounting, you don't usually die. Death tends to focus the mind, as they say. Nonetheless, we're not
talking about the grunts at the level who actually die, still less the relatively limited number of Special Forces. We're talking
about the officers and staff at the levels who don't usually die in war - except maybe at their defeat - i.e., most officers over
the level of captain.
One can hardly look at this officer crowd in the Pentagon and CENTCOM and say that their personal death concentrates their
mind. They are in virtually no danger of that. Only career death faces them - with a nice transition to the board of General Dynamics
at ten times the salary.
All in all, I'd have to agree that the military isn't much better at being competent - at many levels above the obvious group
of hyper-trained Special Forces - any more than any other profession.
That is well put.most important is the grading system that is designed to fix a person to a particular slot thereby limiting his
ability to think "outside the box" and consider the many variables that exist in one particular instant.
Creative thinking allows
you to see beyond the storm clouds ahead and realize that the connectedness of different realities both the visible and invisible.
For
instance the picture of the 2 pairs of korean skaters in the news tells an interesting story on many levels. Some will judge them
on their grade of proffiency, while others will see a dance of strategy between 2 foes and a few will know the results in advance
and plan accordingly
"They are not stupid at all but they are a collective of narrow thinkers." I've often pondered that concept. Notice how many of radical extremist leaders were doctors, engineers and such? Narrow and
deep. STEM is enormously useful to us but seems to be a risky when implanted in shallow earth.
These narrow "but deep" thinkers were unable to grasp the nature of the Iraq War for the first couple of years. They thought
of it as a rear area security problem, a combat in cities problem, anything but a popular rebellion based on xenophobia and anti-colonialism
The IED problem? They spent several billion dollars on trying to find a technology fix and never succeeded. I know because they
kept asking me to explain the war to them and then could not understand the answers which were outside their narrow thought. pl
War College selectees, the national board selected creme de la creme test out as 50% SJs (conformists lacking vision) in Myers-Briggs
terms and about 15% NTs (intellectuals). To survive and move upward in a system dominated by SJs, the NTs must pretend to be what
they are not. A few succeed. I do not think Mattis is an intellectual merely because he has read a lot. pl
Long ago when I was a professor, I advised my students that "the law is like a pencil sharpener, it sharpens the mind by narrowing
it."
I tried to encourage them to "think backwards".
My favorite example was a Japanese fisherman who recovered valuable ancient Chinese
pottery. Everyone knew where an ancient ship had sunk, but the water was too deep to dive down to the wreck. And everyone knew
the cargo included these valuable vases. And the fisherman was the first to figure out how to recover them. He attached a line
to an octopus, and lowered it in the area, waited awhile, and pulled it up. Low and behold, the octopus had hidden in an ancient
Chinese vase. The fisherman was familiar with trapping octopuses, by lowering a ceramic pot (called "takosubo") into the ocean,
waiting awhile, then raising the vase with octopus inside. His brilliance was to think backwards, and use an octopus to catch
a vase.
the original GBS were recruited in the 50s to serve in the OSS role with foreign guerrillas behind Soviet lines in th event
of war in Europe. Aaron Bank, the founder, recruited several hundred experienced foreign soldiers from the likely countries who
wanted to become American. By the time we were in VN these men were a small fraction of GBs but important for their expertise
and professionalism. pl
Col, I think it might help people to think of "the Borg" - as you have defined & applied it - in a broader context. It struck
me particularly as you ID'd the launching of our modern military group-think / careerism behavior coming from the watershed of
industrialized scale & processes that came out of WWII.
We note parallel themes in all significant sectors of our civilization.
The ever-expanding security state, the many men in Gray Flannel Suits that inhabit corporate culture, Finance & Banking & Big
Health scaling ever larger - all processes aimed to slice the salami thinner & quicker, to the point where meat is moot ... and
so it goes.
I note many Borgs... Borgism if you will. An organizational behavior that has emerged out of human nature having difficulty adapting
to rapidly accelerating complexity that is just too hard to apprehend in a few generations. If (as many commenters on STT seem
to...) one wishes to view this in an ideological or spiritual framework only, they may overlook an important truth - that what
we are experiencing is a Battle Among Borgs for control over their own space & domination over the other Borgs. How else would
we expect any competitive, powerful interest group to act?
In gov & industry these days, we observe some pretty wild outliers... attached to some wild outcomes. Thus the boring behavior
of our political industries bringing forth Trump, our promethean technology sector yielding a Musk (& yes, a Zuckerberg).
I find it hard to take very seriously analysts that define their perspective based primarily upon their superior ideals & opposition
to others. Isn't every person, every tribe, team or enterprise a borglet-in-becoming? Everybody Wants to Rule the World ... &
Everybody Must Get Stoned... messages about how we are grappling with complexity in our times. I just finished reading Command
& Control (about nuclear weapons policy, systems design & accidents). I am amazed we've made it this far.
Unfortunately, I would
not be amazed if reckless, feckless leaders changed the status quo. I was particularly alarmed hearing Trump in his projection
mode; "I would love to be able to bring back our country into a great form of unity, without a major event where people pull together,
that's hard to do.
But I would like to do it without that major event because usually that major event is not a good thing." It
strikes me that he could be exceptionally willing to risk a Major Event if he felt a form of unity, or self-preservation, was
in the offing. I pray (& I do not pray often or easily) that the Generals you have described have enough heart & guts to honor
their oath at its most profound level in the event of an Event.
As a time traveler from another age, I can only say that for me it means devotion to a set of mores peculiar to a particular
profession as opposed to an occupation. pl
Another springs to mind: James Lovelock (of Gaia hypothesis fame) was once part of the NASA team building the first probe to
go to Mars to look for signs of life. Lovelock didn't make any friends when he told NASA they were wasting their time, there was
none. When asked how he could be so sure, he explained that the composition of the Martian atmosphere made it impossible. "But
Martian life may be able to survive under different conditions" was the retort. Lovelock then went on to explain his view that
the evolution of microbial life determined the atmospheric composition on Earth, so should be expected to do the same if
life had evolved on Mars. Brilliant backwards thinking which ought to have earned him the Nobel prize IMHO (for Gaia). Lovelock,
a classic cross-disciplinary scientist, can't be rewarded with such a box-categorized honor, as his idea doesn't fit well into
any one.
Another example of cross-disciplinary brilliance was Bitcoin, which has as much to do with its creator's deep knowledge of
Anthropology (why people invented & use money) as his expertise in both Economics and Computer Science.
This is they key to creative thinking in my view - familiarity with different fields yields deeper insights.
"... think tanks are essentially lobby groups for their donors. The policy analyses and reform schemes that they produce are tailored to support the material interests of donors. None of the studies are reliable as objective evidence. They are special pleading. ..."
"... Think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, and the Atlantic Council, speak for those who fund them. Increasingly, they speak for the military/security complex, American hegemony, corporate interests, and Israel ..."
"... Bryan MacDonald lists those who support the anti-Russian think tanks such as the Atlantic Council, the Center for European Policy Analysis, German Marshall Fund of the US, and Institute for Study of War. The "experts" are mouthpieces funded by the US military security complex. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48755.htm US government agencies use taxpayer dollars to deceive taxpayers. ..."
A couple of decades or more ago when I was still in Washington, otherwise known as the snake
pit, I was contacted by a well-financed group that offered me, a Business Week and Scripps
Howard News Service columnist with access as a former editor also to the Wall Street Journal,
substantial payments to promote agendas that the lobbyists paying the bills wanted
promoted.
To the detriment of my net worth, but to the preservation of my reputation, I declined.
Shortly thereafter a conservative columnist, a black man if memory serves, was outed for
writing newspaper columns for pay for a lobby group.
I often wondered if he was set up in order to get rid of him and whether the enticement I
received was intended to shut me down, or whether journalists had become "have pen will
travel"? (Have Gun -- Will Travel was a highly successful TV Series 1957-1963).
Having read Bryan MacDonald's article on Information Clearing House, "Anti-Russia Think
Tanks in US: Who Funds them?," I see that think tanks are essentially lobby groups for their
donors. The policy analyses and reform schemes that they produce are tailored to support the
material interests of donors. None of the studies are reliable as objective evidence. They are
special pleading.
Think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, and the
Atlantic Council, speak for those who fund them. Increasingly, they speak for the
military/security complex, American hegemony, corporate interests, and Israel.
Bryan MacDonald lists those who support the anti-Russian think tanks such as the Atlantic
Council, the Center for European Policy Analysis, German Marshall Fund of the US, and Institute
for Study of War. The "experts" are mouthpieces funded by the US military security complex.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48755.htm
US government agencies use taxpayer dollars to deceive taxpayers.
In other words insouciant Americans pay taxes in order to be brainwashed. And they tolerate
this.
"... The "Newspeak" we experience is straight out of Orwell's 1984. From Wikipedia: Newspeak is the fictional language in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, written by George Orwell. It is a controlled language created by the totalitarian state Oceania as a tool to limit freedom of thought, and concepts that pose a threat to the regime such as freedom, self-expression, individuality, and peace. Any form of thought alternative to the party's construct is classified as "thoughtcrime". ..."
"... It is truly scary how Orwellian our current situation has become reminding me that there are always two two takeaways from any story or historical record. Those that view it as a cautionary tale and those who use it as an instruction manual. ..."
"... We are also controlled through Doublespeak another Orwellian concept. From Wikipedia: Doublespeak is a language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Some common examples are the branding of liberals by pundits in the media as Fascists in order to eliminate the historical understanding of exactly what that word refers to. Another example is the appearance of the term Alt Right which is used to confuse and obscure the true nature of these groups. A great example of the doublespeak the media exercises in service to the state is the instantaneous adoption of the term Alt Right and nary ever a mention of its former names such as White Supremacist, Neo Nazi, Racist, Hate Group etc. They just rename these movements and hide all the other terms from sight. Another example is scapegoating the same group of people but under a different term. Today the term is Liberal but in the past, the Nazi movement called them Jews, Communists, Intellectuals etc. Whatever the term, the target of these attacks are always the ones that threaten the Power Structure. ..."
"... Joseph Goebbels was in charge of the war propaganda for the Nazis during WWII. He said: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." ..."
The reason we are in the pickle barrel is exactly the reasons stated in the article and by Annie. We are exposed to exactly
what they want to show us and are blinded by other narratives which do not support the group think. It is as if the politicians,
the intelligence community and the media are all involved in a conspiracy. Remember that word means a plan by two or more people.
No tin foil hat required. But anyone suggesting conspiracy is instantly branded a nut hence the universal use of the term conspiracy
nut as a derogatory term to label anyone with a different message that somehow captures the attention of a wider audience. It
is not so much that all Holly Wood stars are liberal socialists. They are a diverse group. However they all have one thing in
common which is they have the public's ear. They are also not on point with the approved messaging and so must be continuously
branded as conspiracy nuts and socialist subversives. We all have seen the 24/7 bashing of these folks. Control is the reason.
The "Newspeak" we experience is straight out of Orwell's 1984. From Wikipedia: Newspeak is the fictional language in the
novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, written by George Orwell. It is a controlled language created by the totalitarian state Oceania as
a tool to limit freedom of thought, and concepts that pose a threat to the regime such as freedom, self-expression, individuality,
and peace. Any form of thought alternative to the party's construct is classified as "thoughtcrime".
It is truly scary how Orwellian our current situation has become reminding me that there are always two two takeaways from
any story or historical record. Those that view it as a cautionary tale and those who use it as an instruction manual.
I am appalled by how the media at first put Trump in the game in the first place for economic gain (see Les Moonvies article)
and then created another fictional fantasy which serves the goal of permawar and control of the citizenry through fear, confusion
and ignorance. We are all exposed to the Daily Two Minutes of Hate another Orwellian concept. From Wikipedia: The Two Minutes
Hate, from George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, is a daily period in which Party members of the society of Oceania must
watch a film depicting the Party's enemies (notably Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers) and express their hatred for them for
exactly two minutes. The difference is we can find it 24/7 on our technological wonder machines.
Another Orwellian concept is The Ministry of Truth: The Ministry of Truth (in Newspeak, Minitrue) is the ministry of propaganda.
As with the other ministries in the novel, the name Ministry of Truth is a misnomer because in reality it serves the opposite:
it is responsible for any necessary falsification of historical events. From Wikipedia: As well as administering truth, the ministry
spreads a new language amongst the populace called Newspeak, in which, for example, "truth" is understood to mean statements like
2 + 2 = 5 when the situation warrants. In keeping with the concept of doublethink, the ministry is thus aptly named in that it
creates/manufactures "truth" in the Newspeak sense of the word. The book describes the doctoring of historical records to show
a government-approved version of events.
We are also controlled through Doublespeak another Orwellian concept. From Wikipedia: Doublespeak is a language that deliberately
obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Some common examples are the branding of liberals by pundits
in the media as Fascists in order to eliminate the historical understanding of exactly what that word refers to. Another example
is the appearance of the term Alt Right which is used to confuse and obscure the true nature of these groups. A great example
of the doublespeak the media exercises in service to the state is the instantaneous adoption of the term Alt Right and nary ever
a mention of its former names such as White Supremacist, Neo Nazi, Racist, Hate Group etc. They just rename these movements and
hide all the other terms from sight. Another example is scapegoating the same group of people but under a different term. Today
the term is Liberal but in the past, the Nazi movement called them Jews, Communists, Intellectuals etc. Whatever the term, the
target of these attacks are always the ones that threaten the Power Structure.
Joseph Goebbels was in charge of the war propaganda for the Nazis during WWII. He said: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep
repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield
the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State
to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is
the greatest enemy of the State."
If these things seem eerily similar to what is going on today then we probably have a power structure which is a grave threat
for peace. Okay, we do have a power structure that is a grave threat to peace but oddly not democracy. Noam Chomsky wrote about
propaganda stating, "it's the essence of democracy" This notion is contrary to the popular belief that indoctrination is inconsistent
with democracy. The point is that in a totalitarian state, it doesn't much matter what people think because you can control what
they do. But when the state loses the bludgeon, when you can't control people by force and when the voice of the people can be
heard, you have to control what people think. And the standard way to do this is to resort to what in more honest days used to
be called propaganda. Manufacture of consent. Creation of necessary illusions.
The folks who contribute here on this website are few indeed and what lies beyond the haven of the oasis is a vast barren dessert
filled with scorpions, snakes and a whole bunch of lies.
Well said for Annie and the authors.
Democracy may be the ultimate tool of control of the masses.
More wisdom from Goebbels:
Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will
A media system wants ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity.
We are striving not for truth, but effect.
The worst enemy of any propaganda, it is intellectualism.
For the lie to be believable, it should be terrifying.
A lie repeated thousands of times becomes a truth.
Some day the lie will fall under its own weight and the truth will rise.
I like that last one a lot but unfortunately it will not come to pass until things get bad.
Citizen One – You have beautifully & precicely nailed the means ( "how" ) the
USA has gotten in such a mess : Newspeak, Daily Two Minutes of Hate, The Ministry of Truth,
DoubleSpeak and the way and why of how Propaganda actually works. George Orwell was a
seer.
AND now it would be helpful to understand "why" the USA has gotten in such a mess. The
polarity of American politics tells a very long story but in short, polarity means there are
only two ways and when the going gets tough, each way is in the extreme – the right way
or the wrong way, it flips depending on each individual's political persuasion. When the
going gets tough the extremes become the tail that wags the dog.
So my question is : WHY after the seemingly happy years under Obama did the going get so
tough so fast?
My pet theory is that Trump threatened to "drain the swamp" which was understood –
seemingly now quite rightly – that he was going to expose some very significant wrong
doing in very high places. I believe that he was on "NYC/DC" friendly terms with the Clintons
and both parties knew each other for the true devil they were. Thus the big red flag he waved
in her face brought about what is turning in to a multi billion dollar ongoing attempt to
discredit him in the eyes of the people, in the eyes of the World and in the eyes of the
highest courts " America be damned".
And politically this is quite necessary because she is not only an icon of all that is
American,"apple pie and motherhood"; she is to the under 45 age group the great white mother
of democracy via Democrat rule. And the bad part of that iconography is that if she goes down
so does the party. It was also critical for her to win because of all the swamp people who
had chosen to compromise their life's work, thus had to continue in that compromise in the
hope that they would come out clean since they believed that both Trump and the ordinary
American were so naive, thus would be easily played for fools.
So all this crap to destroy Trump is about saving her hide to save the party. Things are
so desperate now because there is nothing yet in place to replace her in the mind's eye of
the Democratic half the voting public. All who might have been in 2nd place were kept
diminished to raise her higher. It now is quite obvious that she has been told to shut up and
lie low, to come out only when she is in safe company – as at the Golden Globes. So the
big picture today as is being painted and hyped to intensify mass hysteria is that Mueller
needs to be protected from Trump where really what is needed are the names and numbers to be
called on for more $$$, more social media propaganda pages and to vote in November 2018.
Why only that? Because Trump is not going to fire Mueller; remember Mueller was a Bush man
and so was Comey. They have a long history of going both ways. Survival is tricky business
– especially in DC. The scapegoats are already cornered; possibly the new "lie" is
already in draft form. Remember – "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it,
people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as
the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of
the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress
dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is
the greatest enemy of the State."
It is going to be an interesting next few months!! But we can hope that, from this one of
many previous American political exercises in democracy, the ordinary defenders of those
democratic values (the voters) will learn some significant truths about governance,
transparency and the rule of law. The guys at the top are not gods and are not above the law;
they must not only do right but be seen to do right.
CitizenOne , February 10, 2018 at 7:57 pm
The only thing I can tell you is that the conspirators who concocted Russia Gate have
figured out all the pieces to the puzzle of how to control events via the means I mentioned
and many other means. We are as manipulated as a light switch. One way we are all fired up
about some BS and flip the switch and we are all calm and mellow. Hopefully if you follow the
threads here you will find out a lot of alternative information much of it thoroughly
researched by highly respected and qualified individuals who are in a position to know the
truth.
Mariam , February 10, 2018 at 7:11 pm
I agree with you wholeheartedly. They call themselves "liberals" in fact they are "new
liberals."
Alas, these false ("new) liberals" are very well represented by the Obamas, the Clintons, the
Trudeaus, the Macrons and so on.
If you truly believe in the "left" and call yourself "progressive" you couldn't stand for
useless and pointless wars, period.
I am posting this info. to this site, as part of personal approach as a US citizen to try to
get some REAL FACTS out into the supposedly professional platforms of economists. This
platforms are woefully lacking in good, factual information to communicate to anyone, even
amongst themselves, and especially to Joe living on an street, or hopefully any house on any
street in the US.
Now, what am I posting? The information that I am posting is an example of confusing
information that is extremely invalid and should NOT be posted by so-called reliable sources,
of professional, or "expertise" information. The reason I am posting an article that is
confusing is because this article by Krugman is also confusing, and just as unreliable as the
"confusing article" that was written by Alan Harkin at INVESTOPEDIA.
If you can't believe Investopedia's information, then who can you believe? I am posting
the article as an article that the reader can NOT believe. The linked article is absolutely
mis-stating IRS facts. This article is one of many that confuse the message about corporate
taxation.
Personally, I think it is deliberate. The title of the article: http://bit.ly/2Eof6eM
basically leads the reader "to believe" the article is about how much US corporations such as
APPLE, GOOGLE etc. "actually" bottomline- deliver to IRS. BUT, wait, when the reader "really
reads" the reader then notes, that the "charts" ONLY reflect the "tax rate". Now, that's a
whole different story. Tax rate is not bottomline taxes paid.
So, now if my "logic" and conclusion is "faulty", please enlighten me. The IRS data and
this article don't jive in the real world of statistical data. Here is link to STATISTA that
is THE data base that is used by top researchers worldwide.
This link shows the REAL data and percentage of corporate TAX PAID, AND FUTURE projections
for US etc. etc. I have selected the most obvious and easy to read chart.
The following link presents reliable fact VS The article from INVESTOPEDIA as garbage.
I am writing that the article in Investopedia by Aaron Hankin is BS. The content of the
article also attempts to establish correlations to S/P action that has absolutely NO
plausible fact to make any correlation about anything. I am also writing that most of the
media reports about "corporate tax" is BS. I also am writing that this article by Krugman is
a fluff, nonsense piece that is also BS. If Krugman were an economist that had any concern
about the US economy, he would have, and would be posting this link everywhere on earth.
All that I definitely am trying to do is to get "reasonable data" out there to influence
the public mindset to counter BS and try to present FACTS, just like a lot of other
intelligent readers are trying to do.
Basically, I am saying that the political posturing, and propaganda strategies of so many
different monied groups is demanding that any "serf" needs to present any comment as if the
"serf" is writing some sort of thesis. Really, all the "Talking Faces" are the ones who
should be doing that as they present messages to the public"serfs". Otherwise, there should
be public disclaimers as to who is paying the "Talking Faces" for delivering their
"propaganda". The "sponsored message" dynamics is so convoluted, that any viewer sure can't
presume anything. Basically, It just looks like a lot of "Talking Faces" are just making
themselves into asses, based on their assumption, and presumptions.
Why do you think anyone associated with investors is an economist rather than a snake oil
salesman in the medicine show that is extremely boring?
What to understand economics? Pay attention to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos.
They pay US workers to build productive assets like factories, transportation products,
energy harvesting products, information you want products, all of which can be matched only
by competitors paying hundreds of billions to millions of US workers just to catch up in a
decade.
"... The whole situation with Russia, of which, be it her economy, history, military, culture etc., is not known to those people, is a monstrous empirical evidence of a complete professional inadequacy of most people populating this bubble. ..."
"... Most of those people are badly educated (I am not talking about worthless formal degrees they hold) and cultured. In dry scientific language it is called a "confirmation bias", in a simple human one it is called being ignorant snobs, that is why this IC-academic-political-media "environment" in case of Russia prefers openly anti-Russian "sources" because those "sources" reiterate to them what they want to hear to start with, thus Chalabi Moment is being continuously reproduced. ..."
"... Again, the level of "Russian Studies" in Anglophone world is appalling. In fact, it is clear and present danger since removes or misinterprets crucial information about the only nation in the world which can annihilate the United States completely in such a light that it creates a real danger even for a disastrous military confrontation. I would go on a limb here and say that US military on average is much better aware of Russia and not only in purely military terms. In some sense--it is an exception. But even there, there are some trends (and they are not new) which are very worrisome. ..."
Another limitation on their understanding is that the last thing they are interested in
his how the world outside the bubbles they prefer to inhabit operates, and they commonly have
absolutely contempt for 'deplorables', be they Russian, British or American. This can lead to
political misjudgements.
It is not just "can" it very often does. The whole situation with Russia, of which, be
it her economy, history, military, culture etc., is not known to those people, is a monstrous
empirical evidence of a complete professional inadequacy of most people populating this
bubble.
Most of those people are badly educated (I am not talking about worthless formal
degrees they hold) and cultured. In dry scientific language it is called a "confirmation
bias", in a simple human one it is called being ignorant snobs, that is why this
IC-academic-political-media "environment" in case of Russia prefers openly anti-Russian
"sources" because those "sources" reiterate to them what they want to hear to start with,
thus Chalabi Moment is being continuously reproduced.
In case of Iraq, as an example, it is a tragedy but at least the world is relatively safe.
With Russia, as I stated many times for years--they simply have no idea what they are dealing
with. None. It is expected from people who are briefed by "sources" such as Russian fugitive
London Oligarchy or ultra-liberal and fringe urban Russian "tusovka".
Again, the level of
"Russian Studies" in Anglophone world is appalling. In fact, it is clear and present danger
since removes or misinterprets crucial information about the only nation in the world which
can annihilate the United States completely in such a light that it creates a real danger
even for a disastrous military confrontation. I would go on a limb here and say that US
military on average is much better aware of Russia and not only in purely military terms. In
some sense--it is an exception. But even there, there are some trends (and they are not new)
which are very worrisome.
"... We are all victims of the pernicious 24/7 scientifically-designed propaganda apparatus. It has little to do with the victim's intelligence since almost all human opinions are formed by emotional reactions that occur even before the conscious mind registers the input. ..."
We are all victims of the pernicious 24/7 scientifically-designed propaganda
apparatus. It has little to do with the victim's intelligence since almost all human opinions
are formed by emotional reactions that occur even before the conscious mind registers the
input.
Through critical thinking, we can overcome these emotional impulses, but only with effort,
and a pre-existing skepticism of all information sources. And even still, I have no doubt
that all of us who are aware of the propaganda still accept some falsehoods as true.
It could be that having former Intelligence Agency Directors as "news" presenters, and
Goldman Sachs alum and Military/Industrial complex CEOs running important government agencies
makes clear to some the reality that we live in an oligarchy with near-tyrannical powers. But
most people seem too busy surviving and/or being diverted by the circus to notice the depths
of the propaganda.
"... Yes, fundamentally, a lot of flaws are built in to how the markets operate in a "financially engineered" manner, but it blew for the simple reason that interest rates nudged upward at the end of January as soon as the Federal Reserve got serious about its quantitative squeezing. That strongly supports my central thesis of this blog that this economy, built on caverns of debt and riddled with market design flaws, is too fragile to absorb any reduction in the Fed's balance sheet. ..."
"... Carl Icahn says he expects stock markets to bounce back after the massive sell-off Friday and Monday, while warning that current market volatility is a harbinger of things to come . The volatility of recent weeks is cause for concern, Icahn said, adding that he doesn't remember a two-week period as turbulent as this one. He said the problem is that too much money is flowing into the index funds, where investors don't know what they're actually investing in. ..."
"... "Passive investing is the bubble right now, and that's a great danger," he said. Eventually, that will implode and could lead to a crisis bigger than in 2009, he added. ..."
"... Risk parity funds. Volatility-targeting programs. Statistical arbitrage. Sometimes the U.S. stock market seems like a giant science project, one that can quickly turn hazardous for its human inhabitants. ..."
"... You didn't need an engineering degree to tell something was amiss Monday. While it's impossible to say for sure what was at work when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as much as 1,597 points, the worst part of the downdraft felt to many like the machines run amok. For 15 harrowing minutes just after 3 p.m. in New York a deluge of sell orders came so fast that it seemed like nothing breathing could've been responsible. ..."
"... The result was a gut check of epic proportion for investors . "We are proactively calling up our clients and discussing that a 1,600-point intraday drop is due more to algorithms and high-frequency quant trading than macro events or humans running swiftly to the nearest fire exit ." ..."
"... "What was frightening was the speed at which the market tanked," said Walter "Bucky" Hellwig, Birmingham, Alabama-based senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management . " The drop in the morning was caused by humans, but the free-fall in the afternoon was caused by the machines. It brought back the same reaction that we had in 2010, which was 'What the heck is going on here?" ..."
"... Particular suspicion landed on trading programs tied to volatility , mathematical measures of which exploded as the day progressed . ( Newsmax ) ..."
"... The machines that now run the stock market are out of control. They do the bidding for us, but their algorithms have been designed by college sprouts who have never seen a falling market. ..."
"... Most dangerous of all, they're self-programming. They rewrite their own algorithms based on their successes and failures so that even their programmers no longer know why the machines are doing what they are doing. Even if one group of programmers does know exactly what its own algorithms are doing, they certainly don't know what is in all the others and, therefore, how they might interact to self-reinforce wrong actions. ..."
"... They don't exist in one room where you can pull a circuit breaker and disconnect them from the market. They exist in office buildings by the hundreds of thousands all over the world. Even the decisions and bids that are made by humans doing their own thinking are placed through the machines, so there is usually no way to know if a single bid coming through is by a human or is machine generated. ..."
"... The fifteen-minute, 900-point drop on Friday was a mere foreshock of that, too. We've already had a few flash-crash foreshocks that none of the experts can understand, but it hasn't slowed us from moving deeper and deeper into the machines' labyrinth. Nor have we even begun to try to work out some of the design flaws that caused those initial flash crashes. ..."
"... If the market technowizards have actually managed to get all the robo-traders unplugged or quickly reprogrammed, maybe the slide will stabilize before it becomes an all-out crash. They attempted that with some success today by stopping all volatility trading before the market opened, which I'll get into below. But, even if they've gotten the ill-programmed robots off to the side or have fixed their sizzling little heads, the market that opens tomorrow will be a whole new market -- no longer one that hyperventilates on the fumes of hope, but one that has relearned how to fear risk. ..."
Yes, fundamentally, a lot of flaws are built in to how the markets operate in a "financially
engineered" manner, but it blew for the simple reason that interest rates nudged upward at the end of
January as soon as the Federal Reserve got serious about its quantitative squeezing.
That strongly
supports my central thesis of this blog that this economy, built on caverns of debt and riddled with
market design flaws, is too fragile to absorb any reduction in the Fed's balance sheet.
And that's why I was able to time when the first crash would be likely to hit. It's simple: When is
the Fed scheduled to start getting serious in its Great Unwind? January. What week did they actually
do it in? The last week of January. Kaboom!
The Fed cannot ever unwind. It will try because it believes it can, but kaboom! We'll find ways to
recover from this first shock over what happens to interest when they stop rolling over government
debt. The government will adapt. It will find other buyers. But the cost will go up. And the kabooms
will keep happening. I've always maintained that the failure of the recovery is baked in by design and
will show when the Fed's artificial life support is actually withdrawn. (Whether it is there by
intentional design or design flaw, I'll leave up to one's conspiratorial imagination, as it doesn't
matter to me; both get you to the same place: kaboom!)
Some bigger voices than mine are saying the same thing:
Carl Icahn says he expects stock markets to bounce back after the massive sell-off
Friday and Monday, while warning that current market volatility is a harbinger of things to come .
The
volatility of recent weeks is cause for concern, Icahn said, adding that
he doesn't remember a
two-week period as turbulent as this one.
He said the problem is that too much money is
flowing into the index funds, where investors don't know what they're actually investing in.
"Passive investing is the bubble right now, and that's a great danger," he said. Eventually,
that will implode and could lead to a crisis bigger than in 2009, he added.
The fact that the market has completed its de-evolution into a casino, rather than a place to buy
ownership in a company, is part of the rickety framework I've described for our economy -- part of what
makes it easy to shove over with a nudge in interest because the entire economy has been made utterly
dependent on low interest.
... ... ...
The mechanized meltdown -- machines rule and drool
"Dow Drops 900 Points in 10 Minutes as Machines Run Amok on Wall Street"
Risk parity funds. Volatility-targeting programs. Statistical arbitrage. Sometimes the U.S.
stock market seems like a giant science project, one that can quickly turn hazardous for its human
inhabitants.
You didn't need an engineering degree to tell something was amiss Monday. While it's
impossible to say for sure what was at work when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as much as
1,597 points, the worst part of the downdraft felt to many like the machines run amok.
For
15 harrowing minutes just after 3 p.m. in New York a deluge of sell orders came so fast that it
seemed like nothing breathing could've been responsible.
The result was a gut check of epic
proportion for investors . "We are proactively calling up our clients and discussing that a
1,600-point intraday drop is due more to algorithms and high-frequency quant trading than macro
events or humans running swiftly to the nearest fire exit ."
"What was frightening was the speed at which the market tanked,"
said
Walter "Bucky" Hellwig, Birmingham, Alabama-based senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management .
"
The drop in the morning was caused by humans, but the free-fall in the afternoon was
caused by the machines.
It brought back the same reaction that we had in 2010, which
was 'What the heck is going on here?"
It may never be clear what accelerated the tumble
-- people still aren't sure what caused the flash crash on May 6, 2010.
Unlike then,
most of the theorizing about today's events centered not on the market's plumbing or
infrastructure, but on the automated quant strategies that gained popularity with the advent of
electronic markets last decade.
Particular suspicion landed on trading programs tied to
volatility
, mathematical measures of which exploded as the day progressed . (
Newsmax
)
There is some basis for saying, "this looks like a technically driven selloff," but this is another
problem for which there is no solution, and one I've written about here in the past. No solution
because they cannot even identify the problem back in 2010! You cannot solve what you cannot identify.
The machines that now run the stock market are out of control. They do the bidding for us, but their
algorithms have been designed by college sprouts who have never seen a falling market. They try to
trick each other, and try to bid the market up. They're an accelerant. Most dangerous of all, they're
self-programming. They rewrite their own algorithms based on their successes and failures so that even
their programmers no longer know why the machines are doing what they are doing. Even if one group of
programmers does know exactly what its own algorithms are doing, they certainly don't know what is in
all the others and, therefore, how they might interact to self-reinforce wrong actions.
They don't exist in one room where you can pull a circuit breaker and disconnect them from the
market. They exist in office buildings by the hundreds of thousands all over the world. Even the
decisions and bids that are made by humans doing their own thinking are placed through the machines,
so there is usually no way to know if a single bid coming through is by a human or is machine
generated. Therefore, there is not really any way to shut the machines entirely off if they get out of
control because their disjointed, convoluted, false-bidding, intentionally tricking, interacting and
over-reacting zillions of intercommunications per second all around the world add up to a sum that is
far more evil than its innumerable mischievously and deviously conceived parts. The system is built
from the core out factious parts intended to trick each other upward, but what happens if this
amalgamated beast starts tricking itself downward? Who has the authority or the controls to stop the
collapse in the microseconds in which it may originate and climax?
So, FUNDAMENTALLY, the market system, itself, is deeply and inexorably flawed by intentional human
design. It wasn't designed to destroy the world. It was merely designed with its own sinful
machinations because of the flaws of its designers. The whole beastly thing is of a corrupted nature
because of all the people who hoped to use their machines to out-game all the other people's machines.
It is a network of sparks and tricks. However, because it can multiply its devilish intentions
millions of times per nanosecond, we have no idea how much market carnage it might create if all the
algos one day just happen to line up in the wrong direction (wrong direction for humans, anyway).
The fifteen-minute, 900-point drop on Friday was a mere foreshock of that, too. We've already had a
few flash-crash foreshocks that none of the experts can understand, but it hasn't slowed us from
moving deeper and deeper into the machines' labyrinth. Nor have we even begun to try to work out some
of the design flaws that caused those initial flash crashes.
Other problems with the machines emerged when trading became so frantic that the sheer volume was
frying the brains of many computer networks, causing the financial services of several trading
companies to go offline.
Investment firms T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and Vanguard Group apologized to customers for
sporadic outages on their websites during the Dow industrials' 1600-point downturn . Online
brokerages TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab also experienced issues. (
Newsmax
)
The computers couldn't handle all the other computers.
If the market technowizards have actually managed to get all the robo-traders unplugged or quickly
reprogrammed, maybe the slide will stabilize before it becomes an all-out crash. They attempted that
with some success today by stopping all volatility trading before the market opened, which I'll get
into below. But, even if they've gotten the ill-programmed robots off to the side or have fixed their
sizzling little heads, the market that opens tomorrow will be a whole new market -- no longer one that
hyperventilates on the fumes of hope, but one that has relearned how to fear risk.
So far haven't seen anything that makes me expect US 10's to break the top of the
30-year yield downtrend channel (driven by 30+ dis-inflationary years of borrowing
growth from the future).
So if no break-out on US 10s, then what happened in previous years when US 10s
touched the top of the channel?
Equities break down, slowly at first then OMG faster. Bonds rally.
The Fed makes noises about cutting rates but markets ignore.
Fed cuts rates and markets ignore. US 10s test previous yield lows again.
Fed goes "all in" with Helicopter money. End of $ and US Treasury market.
Everything will hit the wall. Try to 'time' it if you must, but just be aware that
those last few yards come up on you real quick...that's why people always get nailed
by these events. (I'm always amused by the ones who seem to think that they can and
will time it right...do they really believe all the folks who got nailed in the past
were just stupid?...What kind of over-inflated ego would even entertain that idea?)
If it WERE possible to do that, there would BE no downturns, ever. These things do
the damage they do because you CAN'T time them. Predict, yes, but not time.
Regardless of what marky is doing, Dave's quite correct. The longtime flooring of
interest rates has created a world dependent on it continuing. Maybe if it had
something more going for it things would be different. The unwinding of the fed
balance sheet was always just a theory. No one knew if or when it would happen. Or
more important if it was even possible. But the car has no reverse gear and many
people have spoken about this. That we will only hear a grinding noise if they
try to shift into reverse. For myself, I'm certainly no expert, but I know enough
about the housing market to know that somewhere around 2.80 on the ten year the
increase will certainly be felt. And that once margin interest rates reaches parity
with dividend yields, or sooner, that one goes pear shaped as well. The engine that
has propelled housing prices to several times their real value ( granted,
not everywhere ) is now in reverse. And that, as Dave has noted, is only the tip of
the iceberg of total debt. And even if they reverse course, the debt saturation is
so widespread the patient would only barely limp forward from here. There also are
likely pension funds and others in the ICU. We won't know about everything right
away.
Yes HS, Dave called it out correctly IMHO. Here is what he wrote in three
sentences that is the sum of the whole article, and why the seeds of our
destruction as a country, and world have been fervently watered since 2008.
"No, the fundamentals do not provide reason for optimism. They provide reason
for grave concern. As I've been writing all along, the greatest fundamental
that is exerting pressure right now is the massive debt that the entire global
economy is built on."
The steam train is on the track, clickety-clack, clickety-clack,
Picking up speed as it heads down the mountain, clickety-clack, clickety-clack.
People are hanging on for dear life, clickety-clack, clickety-clack,
Won't matter none when the train runs out of track, clickety-clack,
clickety-clack.
Market participants could easily be forgiven for their early-year euphoria. After a solid
2017, key macroeconomic data – on unemployment, inflation, and consumer and business
sentiment – as well as GDP forecasts all indicated that strong growth would continue in
2018.
The result – in the United States and across most major economies – has been a
rare moment of optimism in the context of the last decade. For starters, the macro data are
positively synchronized and inflation remains tame. Moreover, the International Monetary Fund's
recent upward revision of
global growth data came at precisely the point in the cycle when the economy should be
showing signs of slowing.
Moreover, stock markets' record highs are no longer relying so much on loose monetary policy
for support. Bullishness is underpinned by evidence of a notable uptick in capital investment.
In the US, gross domestic private investment rose 5.1% year on year in the fourth quarter of
2017 and is nearly 90% higher than at the trough of the Great Recession, in the third quarter
of 2009.
This is emblematic of a deeper resurgence in corporate spending – as witnessed in
durable goods orders. New orders for US manufactured durable goods beat expectations, climbing
2.9% month on month to December 2017 and 1.7% in November.
Other data tell a similar story. In 2017, the US Federal Reserve's Industrial Production and
Capacity Utilization index recorded its largest calendar year gain since 2010, increasing 3.6%.
In addition, US President Donald Trump's reiteration of his pledge to seek $1.5 trillion in
spending on infrastructure and public capital programs will further bolster market
sentiment.
All of this bullishness will continue to stand in stark contrast to warnings by many world
leaders. In just the last few weeks, German Chancellor Angela Merkel cautioned that the current
international order is under threat. French President Emmanuel Macron noted that globalization
is in the midst of a major crisis, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has stated that
the unrest we see around the world is palpable and "isn't going away."
Whether or not the current correction reflects their fears, the politicians ultimately could
be proved right. For one thing, geopolitical risk remains considerable. Bridgewater Associates'
Developed World Populism index surged to its highest point since
the 1930s in 2017, factoring in populist movements in the US, the United Kingdom, Spain, France
and Italy. So long as populism lingers as a political threat, the risk of reactionary
protectionist trade policies and higher capital controls will remain heightened, and this could
derail economic growth.
Meanwhile the market is mispricing perennial structural challenges, in particular mounting and
unsustainable global debt and a dim fiscal outlook, particularly in the US, where the price
of this recovery is a growing deficit. In other words, short-term economic gain is being
supported by policies that threaten to sink the economy in the longer term.
The Congressional Budget Office, for example, has forecast
that the US deficit is on course to triple over the next 30 years, from 2.9% of GDP in 2017 to
9.8% in 2047, "The prospect of such large and growing debt," the CBO cautioned, "poses
substantial risks for the nation and presents policymakers with significant challenges."
The schism in outlook between business and political leaders is largely rooted in different
time horizons. For the most part, CEOs, hemmed in by the short termism of stock markets, are
focused on the next 12 months, whereas politicians are focusing on a more medium-term
outlook.
As 2018 progresses, business leaders and market participants should – and undoubtedly
will – bear in mind that we are moving ever closer to the date when payment for today's
recovery will fall due. The capital market gyrations of recent days suggest that awareness of
that inevitable reckoning is already beginning to dawn.
Dambisa Moyo, an economist and author, sits on the board of directors of a number of
global corporations. She is the author ofDead Aid,Winner Take All,
andHow the West
Was Lost.
Might be harbinger of things to come. It's 12 years since the financial crash of 2007. And
neoliberalism can't exist without stock market crashes.
Notable quotes:
"... Everyone who's asking "why did the stock market crash Monday?" is asking the wrong question; the real question, Keen exclaims, is "why did it take so long for this crash to happen? " ..."
Everyone who's asking "why did the
stock market crash Monday?" is asking the wrong question; the real question, Keen exclaims, is
"why did it take so long for this crash to happen? "
The crash itself was significant - Donald Trump's favorite index, the Dow Jones Industrial
(DJIA) fell 4.6 percent in one day. This is about four times the standard range of the index -
and so according to conventional economics, it should almost never happen.
Of course, mainstream economists are wildly wrong about this, as they have been about almost
everything else for some time now. In fact, a four percent fall in the market is unusual, but
far from rare: there are well over 100 days in the last century that the Dow Jones tumbled by
this much.
Crashes this big tend to happen when the market is massively overvalued, and on that front
this crash is no different.
It's like a long-overdue earthquake. Though everyone from Donald Trump down (or should that
be "up"?) had regarded Monday's level and the previous day's tranquillity as normal, these were
in fact the truly unprecedented events. In particular, the ratio of stock prices to corporate
earnings is almost higher than it has ever been.
More To Come?
There is only one time that it's been higher: during the DotCom Bubble, when Robert
Shiller's "cyclically adjusted price to earnings" ratio hit the all-time record of 44 to one.
That means that the average price of a share on the S&P500 was 44 times the average
earnings per share over the previous 10 years (Shiller uses this long time-lag to minimize the
effect of Ponzi Scheme firms like Enron). The S&P500 fell more than 11 percent that day, so
Monday's fall is minor by comparison. And the market remains seriously overvalued: even if
shares fell by 50 percent from today's level, they'd still be twice as expensive as they have
been, on average, for the last 140 years.
After the 2000 crash, standard market dynamics led to stocks falling by 50 percent over the
following two years, until the rise of the Subprime Bubble pushed them up about 25 percent
(from 22 times earnings to 28 times). Then the Subprime Bubble burst in 2007, and shares fell
another 50 percent, from 28 times earnings to 14 times.
This was when central banks thought The End of the World Is Nigh, and that they'd be blamed
for it. But in fact, when the market bottomed in early 2009, it was only just below the
pre-1990 average of 14.5 times earnings.
Safe Havens
That valuation level, before central banks (staffed and run by people with PhDs in
mainstream economics) decided that they knew how to manage capitalism, is where the market
really should be. It implies a dividend yield of about six percent in real terms, which is
about twice what you used to get on a safe asset like government bonds -- which are safe, not
because the governments and the politicians and the bureaucrats that run them are saints, but
because a government issuing bonds in its own currency can always pay whatever interest level
it promises. There's no risk that it can't pay, and it can't go bankrupt, whereas a company
might not pay dividends, and it can go bankrupt.
Now shares are trading at a valuation that implies a three percent return, as if they're as
safe as government bonds issued by a government which owns the bank that pays interest on those
bonds. That's nonsense.
And it's a nonsense for which, ironically, central banks are responsible. The smooth rise in
stock market prices which led to the levels that preceded Monday's crash began when central
banks decided to rescue the economy by "Quantitative Easing (QE)." They promised to do
"whatever it takes" to drive shares up from the entirely reasonable values they reached in late
2009, and did so by buying huge amounts of government bonds back from private banks and other
financial institutions (pension funds, insurance companies, etc.). In the USA's case, this
amounted to $1 trillion per year -- equal to about seven percent of America's annual output of
goods and services (GDP or "gross domestic product"). The Bank of England brought about
£200 billion worth, which was an even larger percentage of GDP.
With central banks buying that volume of bonds, private financial institutions found
themselves awash with money, and spent it buying other assets to get yields - which meant that
QE drove up share prices as banks, pension funds and the like bought them with money created by
QE.
Blind Oversight
So this is the first central bank-created stock market bubble in history, and central banks
have just had the first stock market crash where the blame is entirely theirs.
Were this a standard, private hysteria and leverage driven bubble, we could well be facing a
further 50 percent fall in the market -- like what happened after the DotCom crash. This would
bring shares back to the long-term average of 17 times earnings.
Instead, what I believe will happen is that central banks, having recently announced that
they intend to end QE, will restart it and try to drive shares back to what think are "normal"
levels, but which are at least twice what they should be.
As I said in my last book
'Can we avoid another financial crisis ?' QE was like Faust's pact with the Devil: once you
signed the contract, you could never get out of it. They'll turn on their infinite money
printing machine, buy bonds off financial institutions once more, and give them liquidity to
pour back into the markets, pushing them once more to levels that they should never rightly
have reached.
This, of course, will help to make the rich richer and the poor poorer by further increasing
inequality. Which is arguably the biggest social problem of the modern era. So, as well as
being incompetent economists these mainstreamers are today's Marie Antoinette. Let them eat
cake, indeed.
"... Things "should" be made locally. There's no reason, especially with declining energy resources, that a toaster should be shipped from thousands of miles away by boat, plane, truck, rail. That's simply ridiculous, never mind causing a ton of extra pollution. We end up working at McDonald's or Target, but, yay, we just saved $5.00 on our toaster. ..."
"... I don't know how you know about the so-called safety net. I know because I had to use it while undergoing treatment for 2 types of stage 4 breast cancer the past 4 years. It is NOT what people think. It beats the already vulnerable into the ground -- -- this is not placating -- -- it is psychological breaking of human minds until they submit. The paperwork is like undergoing a tax audit -- - every 6 months. "Technicians" decide one's "benefits" which vary between "technicians". ..."
"... Food stamps can be $195 during one period and then $35 the next. The technicians/system takes no responsibility for the chaos and stress they bring into their victims' lives. It is literally crazy making. BTW: I am white, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, have a masters' degree, formerly owned my own business and while married lived within the top 10%. ..."
"... In addition, most of those on so-called social programs are children, the elderly, chronically ill, veterans. You are correct that the middle class is falling into poverty but you are not understanding what poverty actually looks like when the gov holds out its beneficial hand. It is nothing short of cruelty. ..."
Yes, but increasingly there is no "working class" in America due to outsourcing and automation.
I hear that Trump wants to reverse all of that and put children to work in forward-to-the-past factories (versus
back-to-the-future) and mines working 12 hours a day 7 days a week as part of his Make America Great Again initiative.
With all the deregulation, I can't wait to start smoking on airplanes again. Those were great times. Flying bombs with
fifty or more lit fuses in the form of a cigarette you can smoke. The good old days.
backwardsevolution , February 5, 2018 at 5:50 pm
Cold N. Holefield -- it's like Ross Perot said re NAFTA and globalization: "When the rest
of the world's wages go up to $6.00/hour and our's come down to $6.00/hour, globalization
will end." That's what's happening, isn't it? Our wages are being held down, due in large
part to low-skilled labor and H-1B's flooding into the country, and wages in Asia are rising.
I remember Ross Perot standing right beside Bill Clinton when he said this, and I also
remember the sly smile on Bill Clinton's face. He knew.
Our technology was handed to China on a silver platter by the greedy U.S. multinationals,
technology that was developed by Western universities and taxpayer dollars, technology that
would have taken decades for China to develop on their own.
Trump is trying desperately to bring some of these jobs back. That's why he handed them
huge corporate tax breaks and cut some regulations.
Things "should" be made locally. There's no reason, especially with declining energy
resources, that a toaster should be shipped from thousands of miles away by boat, plane,
truck, rail. That's simply ridiculous, never mind causing a ton of extra pollution. We end up
working at McDonald's or Target, but, yay, we just saved $5.00 on our toaster.
Trump is trying to cut back on immigration so that wages can increase, but the Left want
to save the whole world, doing themselves in in the process. He wants to bring people in with
skills the country can benefit from, but for that he's tarred and feathered.
P.S. I remember sitting behind a drunk on a long flight, and I saw him drop his cigarette.
It rolled past me like it knew where it was going, and I couldn't find it. I called the
stewardess, and she and I searched for a few anxious seconds until we found it. Yes, the good
old days.
I don't know how you know about the so-called safety net. I know because I had to use it
while undergoing treatment for 2 types of stage 4 breast cancer the past 4 years. It is NOT
what people think. It beats the already vulnerable into the ground -- -- this is not
placating -- -- it is psychological breaking of human minds until they submit. The paperwork
is like undergoing a tax audit -- - every 6 months. "Technicians" decide one's "benefits"
which vary between "technicians".
Food stamps can be $195 during one period and then $35 the
next. The technicians/system takes no responsibility for the chaos and stress they bring into
their victims' lives. It is literally crazy making. BTW: I am white, a member of Phi Beta
Kappa, have a masters' degree, formerly owned my own business and while married lived within
the top 10%.
In addition, most of those on so-called social programs are children, the
elderly, chronically ill, veterans. You are correct that the middle class is falling into
poverty but you are not understanding what poverty actually looks like when the gov holds out
its beneficial hand. It is nothing short of cruelty.
backwardsevolution , February 6, 2018 at 4:48 pm
Diana Lee -- I hope you are well now. It breaks my heart what you went through. No, I
cannot imagine.
I didn't mean the lower class were living "well" on food stamps and welfare. All I meant
was that it helped, and without it all hell would break loose. If you lived in the top 10% at
one point, then you would surely notice a difference, but for many who have been raised in
this environment, they don't notice at all. It becomes a way of life. And, yes, you are
right, it is cruelty. A loss of life.
Whole Foods' new inventory management system aimed at improving efficiency and cutting down on waste is taking a toll on employees,
who say the system's stringent procedures and graded "scorecards" have crushed morale and led to widespread food shortages, reports
Business Insider
.
The new system, called order-to-shelf, or OTS, "has a strict set of procedures for purchasing, displaying, and storing products
on store shelves and in back rooms. To make sure stores comply, Whole Foods relies on "scorecards" that evaluate everything from
the accuracy of signage to the proper recording of theft, or "shrink."
Some employees, who walk through stores with managers to ensure compliance, describe the system as onerous and stress-inducing
. Conversations with 27 current and recently departed Whole Foods workers, including cashiers and corporate employees -- some
of whom have been with the company for nearly two decades -- say the system is seen by many as punitive. - BI
Terrified employees report constant fear over losing their jobs over the OTS "scorecards," which anything below 89.9% can qualify
as a failing score - resulting in possible firings. Whole Foods employees around the country thought that was hilarious. One such
disaffected West Coast supervisor said "On my most recent time card, I clocked over 10 hours of overtime, sitting at a desk doing
OTS work," adding "Rather than focusing on guest service, I've had team members cleaning facial-care testers and facing the shelves,
so that everything looks perfect and untouched at all times."
Many Whole Foods employees at the corporate and store levels still don't understand how OTS works, employees said.
"OTS has confused so many smart, logical, and experienced individuals, the befuddlement is now a thing, a life all its own,"
an employee of a Chicago-area store said. "It's a collective confusion -- constantly changing, no clear answers to the questions
that never were, until now."
An employee of a North Carolina Whole Foods said: " No one really knows this business model, and those who are doing the scorecards
-- even regional leadership -- are not clear on practices and consequently are constantly providing the department leaders with
inaccurate directions. All this comes at a time when labor has been reduced to an unachievable level given the requirements of
the OTS model. "
From Amazon workers, delivery drivers and now Whole Foods workers, it sounds like the Beezer is a real tyrant to work for.
I'm surprised unions haven't been able to penetrate that organization. It is certainly big enough.
Wife is an ER MD. The physician leasing firm that employs her, which has the contract at the local hospital, recently got bought
out by a new group. Suddenly she has a new director who assigns quotas to everything, and grades every aspect of her performance.
It is quite stressful, and takes much of what little joy there was in her profession, and flushes it away. She is actively entertaining
head hunters' calls again.
Just finished a two-year project building a hospital's Information Security Program....everything heading toward performance
metrics measured against some horseshit ticketing system. Such systems only encourage throwing of horseshit over the fence, by
incapable amateurs, to the people who actually know how to think. This program was put in place by a CIO who was former Air Farce.
It now takes 5 fucking hours of bureaucratic horseshit to perform 1/2 hour of actual engineering/technical work. The next step
is to automate technical work from within the change control and IT automation systems.
Mark my words....just wait until the vulnerabilities in these change control, and Information Security Automation systems are
exploited. Wait for the flaws in the code used to automate creation of entire networks, sever farms, security policies, etc.
I don't want to be within 100 miles of anything modern when this all goes to shit.
"... Consider those who in their late forties got hit by the last bank-owned/Wall Street crash. They lost a good chunk of their 401ks...and had to cash out the remainder to just cover former obligations. Then they were told to go back to school (again involving, at least here in the US, major debt to do so). Who benefited.. the same bank and Wall Street loan sharks. So now in their early fifties and competing against much younger people, they struggled to pay off their incurred re-training/education loans, with nary a penny to spare to invest for what they had after years of saving lost. It's a mugs game, with the only ones winning are the top 1-2% who are able to bet against their own investments. ..."
Both sides of Congress serve the wealthy with the intention of gaining wealth for themselves.
Trump is not much different than the dems (that's why Obama told Bernie to leave). The US is
purely capitalistic. Money is everything. People without money are nothing, but if you toss
them in prison you can make money (and make them work for free). After eight years of Obama
the US is still the world's top prison state and there's more poverty than ever. Trump,
Obama, Hillary. All very similar. I just see dollar signs.
Consider those who in their late forties got hit by the last bank-owned/Wall Street crash.
They lost a good chunk of their 401ks...and had to cash out the remainder to just cover
former obligations. Then they were told to go back to school (again involving, at least here
in the US, major debt to do so). Who benefited.. the same bank and Wall Street loan sharks.
So now in their early fifties and competing against much younger people, they struggled to
pay off their incurred re-training/education loans, with nary a penny to spare to invest for
what they had after years of saving lost. It's a mugs game, with the only ones winning are
the top 1-2% who are able to bet against their own investments.
KAYFABE: kayfabe /ˈkeɪfeɪb/ is the portrayal of staged events within the industry as "real" or "true," specifically the portrayal
of competition, rivalries, and relationships between participants as being genuine and not of a staged or pre-determined nature
of any kind.
Kayfabe has also evolved to become a code word of sorts for maintaining this "reality" within the direct or indirect
presence of the general public.
The United States is one of the most depressed countries in the world. Could it be because
of the country's adoption of neoliberal economic policies? We speak to Johann Hari, author of a
controversial new book, "Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression -- and the
Unexpected Solutions." He writes, "Junk food has taken over our diets, and it is making
millions of people physically sick. A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that
something similar is happening with our minds -- that they have become dominated by junk
values, and this is making us mentally sick, triggering soaring rates of depression and
anxiety."
TRANSCRIPT
NERMEEN SHAIKH : We turn now to mental illness and its treatment in the United
States. According to the National Institutes of Health, the disease is widely prevalent: Almost
20 percent of adult Americans suffer from mental illness every year. Anxiety disorders are the
most common mental illness in the US, affecting 40 million adults in the US, or 18 percent of
the population, every year. About 7 percent of adult Americans suffer from major depression.
According to the World Health Organization, the US is one of the most depressed countries in
the world, and, globally, depression is the leading cause of ill health and disability.
Depression is also the major contributor to suicides worldwide, which number close to 800,000 a
year. The National Alliance on Mental Illness finds that more than half of Americans don't
receive treatment for mental illness.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, we now turn to a new book that argues that people who do receive
treatment for depression and anxiety are not being treated adequately. Author Johann Hari says
too much emphasis is placed on brain chemistry, to the exclusion of equally and often more
important environmental causes. He points specifically to what he calls, quote, "junk values,"
writing, quote, "Junk food has taken over our diets, and it is making millions of people
physically sick. A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that something similar is
happening with our minds -- that they have become dominated by junk values, and this is making
us mentally sick, triggering soaring rates of depression and anxiety."
Johann Hari has experienced mental illness himself, found he was still depressed after
having been on antidepressants for well over a decade, starting when he was a teenager. In his
research, Johann Hari found his experience was far from unique and that a staggering 65 to 80
percent of people on antidepressants continue to be depressed.
Well, Johann Hari joins us now from Washington, D.C. He is a writer and a journalist. His
book on depression is called Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression --
and the Unexpected Solutions . His previous book, Chasing the Scream: The First and
Last Days of the War on Drugs .
Johann, welcome back to Democracy Now! Let's start with the title, because I think that very
much conveys what your underlying thesis is: Lost Connections .
JOHANN HARI : Yeah. So, everyone watching this knows that they have natural physical needs,
right? You need food, you need water, you need clean air, you need warmth. If I took those away
from you, things would go real wrong real fast.
One of the things I learned on the big journey I did for this book, over 40,000 miles,
interviewing the best experts in the world on what causes depression and anxiety and what
solves them, is there's equally strong evidence that we have natural psychological needs.
You've got to feel you belong. You've got to feel your life has meaning and purpose. You've got
to feel that people see you and value you. You've got to feel you've got a future that makes
sense. And our culture is good at lots of things, but we've been getting less and less good at
meeting people's deep, underlying psychological needs. And that's one of the key reasons why we
have this exploding depression and anxiety crisis.
So, that can sound a bit weird in the abstract, so I'll give you a specific example. I
noticed that lots of the people I know who are depressed and anxious, their depression and
anxiety focuses around their work. So I started to look at the evidence. How do people feel
about their work in our culture? Turns out Gallup did the best research on this. Thirteen
percent of us like our work most of the time. Sixty-three percent of us are what they called
"sleepworking" -- you don't like it, you don't hate it. Twenty-four percent of people hate
their work. So you think about that. Eighty-seven percent of people don't like the thing
they're doing most of their waking lives. I started to think, "Could that have some
relationship to our mental health crisis?"
So, I discovered the incredible Australian social scientist called Professor Michael Marmot,
who discovered the core, in the 1970s, of what makes you depressed at work. If you go to work
and you feel you have low or no control, you are significantly more likely to become depressed,
or even more likely to have a heart attack. That's because human beings have a need to feel
their life is meaningful. And if you're controlled, that disrupts your ability to create
meaning. And I started to think, chemical -- so, I believe strongly that chemical
antidepressants have a real role, they give some relief to some people. But I started to think,
"What would be the antidepressant for that problem?" Right? Which is so prevalent in our
culture. And I learned there is one.
In Baltimore, not far from where I am now, I went and met a woman called Meredith Keogh.
Meredith used to go to bed every Sunday night just sick with anxiety about her work. And one
day, with her husband Josh, she did this quite bold thing. Josh had worked in bike stores since
he was a teenager, which is, you know, insecure, controlled work. And Josh and Meredith decided
they were going to set up a bike store with their colleagues that ran on a different principle.
It's a democratic cooperative. You might call it democracy now. The way it works is they don't
have a boss. They take all the big decisions together. They share the profits, obviously. They
share out the good tasks and the less good tasks, so no one gets stuck with the, you know, more
depressing tasks. And one of the things that was so fascinating, spending time with them, and
in other democratic cooperatives, is how many of them talked about how depressed and anxious
they'd been in their previous workplace, but they weren't now, which is completely in line with
Professor Marmot's findings.
And as Josh put it to me, there's no reason why any workplace should operate like this. We
have a society that is putting in place all sorts of structures that are causing depression and
anxiety, yet we tell people this -- so, your depression and anxiety, if you're watching this --
I learned about these nine causes of depression and anxiety for which there is scientific
evidence. Two are biological, and the rest are in the way we live. If you're depressed, if
you're anxious, you're not crazy. You're not a machine with broken parts. You're a human being
with unmet needs. And there are ways we can change our society so that those needs are met and
you won't be in such pain.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Well, Johann Hari, I want to ask you about some of the criticism your book
has received. In a Guardian
piece headlined "As a psychiatrist, I know that Johann Hari is wrong to cast doubt on
antidepressants," Carmine Pariante writes, quote, "[J]ust as knowing that you have broken your
legs in a car crash does not miraculously heal your broken bones, knowing the 'rational reason'
for being depressed does not make depression any less real, or the sufferer any less in need of
support and treatment." She [ sic ] disputes the argument in your book that depression
and anxiety are treated only as a chemical problem by the psychiatric community.
She goes on to say, quote, that your "suggesting that prescribing antidepressants to a
patient who suffers from clinical depression is the equivalent of treating them as a 'machine
with malfunctioning parts' is wrong, unhelpful and even dangerous."
JOHANN HARI : Yeah, the --
NERMEEN SHAIKH : "Antidepressants are no cure-all, but demonising them plays into stigma
meaning that, tragically, more people will be held back from receiving help for a debilitating
condition."
JOHANN HARI : Yeah, the individual you're quoting -- yeah.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : So, Johann Hari, can you respond to that, and specifically --
JOHANN HARI : Yeah.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : -- the claim that she makes that your book demonizes an illness that's
already demonized and stigmatized, and that people already hesitate to go on antidepressants
precisely because of this stigma?
JOHANN HARI : Yeah. The individual you mentioned admits they've not read the book. In the
book, I'm very clear: I want to expand the menu of options for people with depression and
anxious people; I don't want to take anything off the menu. Some of the people I most love,
some of my closest relatives take chemical antidepressants. I've never urged them to stop.
Chemical antidepressants do give some relief to some people, which is really valuable. They
don't solve the problem. This isn't just my position, this is the position of the World Health
Organization. World Health Organization explains, mental health is produced socially. It is a
social indicator. It needs social as well as individual solutions. So we need to be able to
have a serious conversation about these causes that doesn't just descend into kind of
ridiculous straw men. Of course I'm not against chemical antidepressants. I took them for 13
years. Some of the people I most love take them. But we have to be able to talk about the wider
context that's happening and how we deal with that.
One thing that helped me really change how I think about this is when I went to interview a
professor called Derek Summerfield, amazing South African psychiatrist. And he explained to me
-- he was in Cambodia when they first introduced chemical antidepressants, right? And the
doctors there didn't know what they were. So he explained. And they said, "Oh, we don't need
them. We've already got antidepressants." And he said, "What do you mean?" They explained. They
talked about a farmer in their community who worked in the rice fields, who one day got blown
up by a land mine. They gave him an artificial limb. He went back to work in the fields. And he
started just to become very depressed. Apparently it's very painful to work underwater with an
artificial limb. He -- I imagine it's pretty traumatic -- starts just crying all day, didn't
want to get out of bed. They said, "We gave him an antidepressant." Derek said, "What did you
do?" They said, "We went. We sat with him. We listened to his problems. We realized that his
pain made sense. We figured if we bought him a cow, he could become a dairy farmer, he wouldn't
be so depressed." They bought him a cow. Within a few weeks, his crying stopped. Now, what
those Cambodian doctors knew intuitively is what the World Health Organization has been trying
to tell us for years, that our depression makes sense. Far from stigmatizing depressed people,
I think this destigmatizes them.
There's actually a really interesting experiment I go through in Lost Connections
that demonstrates this really powerfully. Because what we've done up to now is we've told
people an exclusively biological story about their distress. That's what my doctor told me.
Now, there are real biological factors to depression, but most of the causes are in the way we
live. And I think that's much more powerfully destigmatizing. It says it's not you. You're
actually surrounded by loads of people who feel this way. You feel this way for perfectly
understandable reasons. And, of course, Dr. Pariante, who, to be fair to him -- it's a man, not
woman -- said he agrees with me on these social causes and that we need to deal with these
deeper social causes. I think part of the problem is we've been in this funk of pessimism where
we think we can't change anything. There are loads of experiments that have demonstrated that
we can powerfully change them.
I'll give you one example. In Canada, in the 1970s -- something that's been covered by
Democracy Now! really well -- in Canada, in the 1970s, they did an experiment. They chose a
town, at random, called Dauphin -- it's near Manitoba -- and they gave a huge number of people
in this town a guaranteed basic income. It was the equivalent of $15,000 a year. They said to
them, "We're just going to give you this money in monthly installments. There's nothing you
have to do in return for it, and there's nothing you can do that means we'll take it away." And
they followed what happened over the next three years. The most powerful thing for me is, there
was a massive fall in depression and anxiety. Depression and anxiety that was so severe people
had to be hospitalized fell by 9 percent.
Now, that tells us something. It tells us the financial insecurity of neoliberalism, that
guys document so brilliantly, is causing a lot of that depression and anxiety. Firstly, it's
very empowering to people to tell them, "Your depression is caused by these factors in the way
we're living. It's not that just your brain is broken." There are factors in your brain going
on, of course. We are biological beings. But that's not the primary driver here. And there are
solutions that we can band together and fight for. That's much more destigmatizing and
empowering, and it's not a kind of straw man about saying the drugs are bad. Of course they're
not.
AMY GOODMAN : Johann, earlier this month, British Prime Minister Theresa May appointed a
minister for loneliness, following a year-long investigation which found 14 percent of the
population in the UK often or always feels lonely. Can you talk about the connection between
loneliness and depression? And you have 20 seconds.
JOHANN HARI : Yeah, we are the loneliest society there's ever been. Professor John Cacioppo,
with Chicago University, has shown that. There are doctors that have started prescribing lonely
people to take part in voluntary gardening groups. That is twice as effective as chemical
antidepressants in reducing depression. We've got to look at the wider solutions. The book goes
through the nine causes of depression and anxiety for which there is scientific evidence, and
seven different kinds of antidepressant that we should be utilizing, alongside chemical
antidepressants.
AMY GOODMAN : We're going to do Part 2 of this discussion. We'll post it online at
democracynow.org. Johann Hari's new book is out. It is called Lost Connections: Uncovering
the Real Causes of Depression -- and the Unexpected Solutions .
That does it for our broadcast. Democracy Now! is hiring a full-time
news fellow . Submit your application by February 5th to democracynow.org. This piece was
reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without
permission or license from the source. Nermeen Shaikh Nermeen Shaikh is
a broadcast news producer and weekly co-host at Democracy Now! in New York City. She worked in
research and non-governmental organizations before joining Democracy Now! She has an M.Phil.
from Cambridge University and is the author of The Present as History: Critical
Perspectives on Global Power (Columbia University Press). Amy Goodman Amy Goodman is the
host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning
news program airing on more than 1,100 public television and radio stations worldwide. Time
Magazine named Democracy Now! its "Pick of the Podcasts," along with NBC's "Meet the Press."
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"... Dimon can afford to be brazen. JPMorgan Chase is now the second most profitable company in the country. Why should he be worried about what might happen in another crisis, given that the Trump administration is in charge? With pro-business and pro-bailout thinking reigning supreme, what could go wrong? ..."
"... Rules Don't Apply ..."
"... At the Federal Reserve, Trump's selection for chairman, Jerome Powell (another Mnuchin pick ), has repeatedly expressed his disinterest in bank regulations. To him, too-big-to-fail banks are a thing of the past. And to round out this heady crew, there's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) head Mick Mulvaney now also at the helm of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), whose very existence he's mocked. ..."
"... As for Joseph Otting, though the Senate confirmed him as the new head of the OCC in November, four key senators called him "highly unqualified for [the] job." He will run an agency whose history snakes back to the Civil War. Established by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 , it was meant to safeguard the solidity and viability of the banking system. Its leader remains charged with preventing bank-caused financial crashes, not enabling them. ..."
Amid a roaring stock market and a planet of
upbeat CEOs , few are even thinking about the havoc that a multi-trillion-dollar financial system gone rogue could inflict upon
global stability. But watch out. Even in the seemingly best of times, neglecting Wall Street is a dangerous idea. With a rag-tag
Trumpian crew of ex-bankers and Goldman Sachs alumni as the only watchdogs in town, it's time to focus, because one thing is clear:
Donald Trump's economic team is in the process of making the financial system combustible again.
Collectively, the biggest U.S. banks already have their get-out-out-of-jail-free cards and are now sitting on
record profits
after, not so long ago, triggering sweeping unemployment, wrecking countless lives, and elevating global instability. (Not a single
major bank CEO was given jail time for such acts.) Still, let's not blame the dangers lurking at the heart of the financial system
solely on the Trump doctrine of leaving banks alone. They should be shared by the Democrats who, under President Barack Obama, believed,
and still believe, in the perfection of the
Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 .
While Dodd-Frank created important financial safeguards like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, even stronger long-term
banking reforms were left on the sidelines. Crucially, that law didn't force banks to separate the deposits of everyday Americans
from Wall Street's complex derivatives transactions. In other words, it didn't resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 (axed in
the Clinton era).
Wall Street is now thoroughly emboldened as the financial elite follows the mantra of Kelly Clarkston's hit song: "What doesn't
kill you makes you stronger." Since the crisis of 2007-2008, the Big Six U.S. banks -- JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup,
Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley -- have seen the share price of their stocks significantly outpace those of the S&P
500 index as a whole.
Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the nation's largest bank (that's paid
$13 billion in settlements for various fraudulent acts), recently even pooh-poohed the chances of the Democratic Party in 2020,
suggesting that it was about time its leaders let banks do whatever they wanted. As he
told Maria Bartiromo, host of Fox Business's Wall Street Week , "The thing about the Democrats is they will not have
a chance, in my opinion. They don't have a strong centrist, pro-business, pro-free enterprise person."
This is a man who was basically gifted two banks,
Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual , by the U.S government during the financial crisis. That present came as his own company
got cheap loans from the Federal Reserve, while clamoring for billions in bailout money that he swore it
didn't need .
Dimon can afford to be brazen. JPMorgan Chase is now the
second most profitable
company in the country. Why should he be worried about what might happen in another crisis, given that the Trump administration is
in charge? With pro-business and pro-bailout thinking reigning supreme, what could go wrong?
Protect or Destroy?
There are, of course, supposed to be safeguards against freewheeling types like Dimon. In Washington, key regulatory bodies are
tasked with keeping too-big-to-fail banks from wrecking the economy and committing financial crimes against the public. They include
the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
(an independent bureau of the Treasury), and most recently, under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
(an independent agency funded by the Federal Reserve).
These entities are now run by men whose only desire is to give Wall Street more latitude. Former Goldman Sachs partner, now treasury
secretary, Steven Mnuchin caught the spirit of the moment with a selfie of his wife and him
holding reams of newly printed money "like a couple of James Bond villains." (After all,
he was a Hollywood producer and even appeared in the Warren Beatty flick Rules Don't Apply .) He's making his mark on
us, however, not by producing economic security, but by cheerleading for financial deregulation.
Despite the fact that the Republican platform in election 2016
endorsed reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, Mnuchin made it clear that he has no intention of letting that happen. In a signal
to every too-big-not-to-fail financial outfit around, he also released AIG from its regulatory chains. That's the insurance company
that was at the epicenter of the last financial crisis. By freeing AIG from being monitored by the Financial Services Oversight Board
that he chairs, he's left it and others like it free to repeat the same mistakes.
Elsewhere, having successfully spun through the revolving door from banking to Washington, Joseph Otting, a
former colleague of Mnuchin's, is now running the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). While he's no household name,
he was the CEO of OneWest (formerly, the failed California-based bank
IndyMac) . That's the bank Mnuchin and his billionaire posse picked up on the cheap in 2009 before
carrying out a vast set of foreclosures on the homes of ordinary Americans (including active-duty servicemen and -women) and
reselling it for hundreds of millions of dollars in
personal profits .
At the Federal Reserve, Trump's selection for chairman, Jerome Powell (another
Mnuchin pick ),
has repeatedly
expressed
his disinterest in bank regulations. To him, too-big-to-fail banks are a thing of the past. And to round out this heady crew, there's
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) head Mick Mulvaney now also at the helm of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB),
whose very existence he's mocked.
In time, we'll come to a reckoning with this era of Trumpian finance. Meanwhile, however, the agenda of these men (and they are
all men) could lead to a financial crisis of the first order. So here's a little rundown on them: what drives them and how they are
blindly taking the economy onto distinctly treacherous ground.
Joseph Otting , Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
The Office of the Comptroller is responsible for ensuring that banks operate in a secure and reasonable manner, provide equal
access to their services, treat customers properly, and adhere to the laws of the land as well as federal regulations.
As for Joseph Otting, though the Senate
confirmed him as the new head of the OCC in November, four key senators
called him "highly unqualified for [the] job."
He will run an agency whose history snakes back to the Civil War. Established by President Abraham Lincoln
in 1863 , it was meant
to safeguard the solidity and viability of the banking system. Its leader remains charged with preventing bank-caused financial crashes,
not enabling them.
Fast forward to the 1990s when Otting held a ranking position at Union Bank NA, overseeing its lending practices to medium-sized
companies. From there he transitioned to U.S. Bancorp, where he was tasked with building its middle-market business (covering companies
with $50 million to $1 billion in annual revenues) as part of that lender's expansion in California.
In 2010, Otting was hired as CEO of OneWest (now owned by CIT Group). During his time there with Mnuchin, OneWest foreclosed on
about
36,000 people and was faced with sweeping allegations of abusive foreclosure practices for which it was
fined $89 million . Otting received
$10.5 million in an employment contract payout when terminated by CIT in 2015. As Senator Sherrod Brown
tweeted all too accurately during his
confirmation hearings in the Senate, "Joseph Otting is yet another bank exec who profited off the financial crisis who is being rewarded
by the Trump Administration with a powerful job overseeing our nation's banking system."
Like Trump and Mnuchin, Otting has never held public office. He is, however, an enthusiastic
proponent
of loosening lending
regulations . Not only is he against reinstating Glass-Steagall, but he also wants
to weaken
the "Volcker Rule," a part of the Dodd-Frank Act that was meant to place restrictions on various kinds of speculative transactions
by banks that might not benefit their customers.
Jay Clayton, the Securities and Exchange Commission
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1934, in the wake of the
crash of 1929 and in the midst of the Great Depression. Its intention was to protect investors by certifying that the securities
business operated in a fair, transparent, and legal manner.
Admittedly, its first head, Joseph Kennedy (President John F. Kennedy's father), wasn't exactly a beacon of virtue. He had helped
raise contributions for Roosevelt's
election campaign even while under suspicion for alleged
bootlegging and other illicit activities.
Since May 2017, the SEC has been run by Jay Clayton, a
top Wall Street
lawyer . Following law school, he eventually made partner
at the elite legal firm Sullivan & Cromwell. After the 2008 financial crisis, Clayton was deeply involved in dealing with the companies
that tanked as that crisis began. He advised Barclays during its acquisition of Lehman Brothers' assets and then
represented
Bear Stearns when JPMorgan Chase acquired it.
In the three years before he became head of the SEC, Clayton
represented eight of the 10 largest Wall Street banks, institutions that were then regularly being investigated and charged with
securities violations by the very agency Clayton now heads. He and his wife happen to
hold assets valued at between $12 million and $47 million in some of those very institutions.
Not surprisingly in this administration (or any other recent one), Clayton also has solid Goldman Sachs ties. On at least
seven occasions between 2007 and
2014, he advised Goldman directly or represented its corporate clients in their initial public offerings. Recently, Goldman Sachs
requested that the SEC release it from having to report its lobbying activities or payments because, it claimed, they didn't
make up a
large enough percentage of its assets to be worth the bother. (Don't be surprised when the agency agrees.)
Clayton's main accomplishment so far has been to significantly reduce oversight activities. SEC penalties, for instance,
fell by 15.5% to $3.5 billion during the first year of the Trump administration. The SEC also issued enforcement actions against
only 62 public companies in 2017, a 33% decline from the previous year. Perhaps you won't then be surprised to learn that its enforcement
division has an estimated
100 unfilled investigative and supervisory positions, while it has also
trimmed its wish list for new regulatory provisions.
As for Dodd-Frank, Clayton insists he won't "
attack " it, but thinks it should be "looked" at.
Mick Mulvaney, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of Management and Budget
As a congressman from South Carolina, ultra-conservative Republican Mick Mulvaney, dubbed "
Mick the Knife ," once even labeled himself a "
right-wing nut job ." Chosen by President Trump in November 2016 to run the Office of Management and Budget, he was confirmed
by Congress last
February
.
As he
said during his confirmation hearings, "Each day, families across our nation make disciplined choices about how to spend their
hard-earned money, and the federal government should exercise the same discretion that hard-working Americans do every day." As soon
as he was at the OMB, he
took an axe to social programs that help everyday Americans. He was instrumental in creating the GOP tax plan that will add up
to
$1.5 trillion to the country's debt in order to provide major tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals. He was also
a key figure in
selling
the plan to the media.
When Richard Cordray resigned as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in November, Trump promptly selected Mick the
Knife for that role, undercutting the
deputy director Cordray had appointed to the post. After much debate and a
court order in his favor, Mulvaney grabbed a box of
Dunkin' Donuts and headed over from his OMB office adjacent to the White House. So even though he's got a new job, Mulvaney is
never far from Trump's reach.
The problem for the rest of us: Mulvaney loathes the CFPB, an agency he
once called "a joke." While he can't unilaterally
demolish it, he's already obstructed its ability to enforce its government mandates.
Soon after Trump appointed him, he imposed a 30-day freeze on hiring and similarly
froze all further rule-making
and regulatory actions.
In his latest effort to undermine American consumers, he's working to defund the CFPB. He just sent the Federal Reserve a letter
stating that, "for
the second quarter of fiscal year 2018, the Bureau is requesting $0." That doesn't bode well for American consumers.
Jerome "Jay" Powell, Federal Reserve
Thanks to the Senate confirmation of his selection for chairman of the board, Donald Trump now owns the Fed, too. The former number
two man under Janet Yellen, Jerome Powell will be running the Fed, come Monday morning, February 5th.
Established in 1913 during President Woodrow Wilson's administration, the Fed's official
mission is to "promote a safe, sound, competitive, and accessible banking system." In reality, it's acted more like that system's
main drug dealer in recent years. In the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, in addition to buying trillions of dollars in bonds
(a strategy called "quantitative easing," or QE), the Fed supplied four of the biggest Wall Street banks with an injection of
$7.8 trillion in secret loans. The move was meant to stimulate
the economy, but really, it coddled the banks.
Powell's monetary policy undoubtedly won't represent a startling change from that of previous head Janet Yellen, or her predecessor,
Ben Bernanke. History
shows that Powell has repeatedly voted for pumping financial markets with Federal Reserve funds and, despite displaying reservations
about the practice of quantitative easing, he always voted in favor of it, too. What makes his nomination out of the ordinary, though,
is that he's a trained lawyer, not an economist.
Powell is assuming the helm at a time when deregulation is central to the White House's economic and financial strategy. Keep
in mind that he will also have a role in choosing and guiding future Fed appointments. (At present, the Fed has the smallest number
of sitting governors
in its history
.) The first such appointee, private equity investor Randal Quarles, already approved as the Fed's vice chairman for supervision,
is another major
deregulator .
Powell will be able to steer banking system decisions in other ways. In recent Senate testimony, he
confirmed his deregulatory
predisposition. In that vein, the Fed has
already announced that it seeks
to loosen the capital requirements big banks need to put behind their riskier assets and activities. This will, it claims, allow
them to more freely make loans to Main Street, in case a decade of cheap money wasn't enough of an incentive.
The Emperor Has No Rules
Nearly every regulatory institution in Trumpville tasked with monitoring the financial system is now run by someone who once profited
from bending or breaking its rules. Historically, severe financial crises tend to erupt after periods of lax oversight and loose
banking regulations. By filling America's key institutions with representatives of just such negligence, Trump has effectively hired
a team of financial arsonists.
Naturally, Wall Street views Trump's chosen ones with glee. Amid the present financial euphoria of the stock market, big bank
stock prices have soared. But one thing is certain: when the next crisis comes, it will leave the last meltdown in the shade because
our financial system is, at its core, unreformed and without adult supervision. Banks not only remain too big to fail but
are
still growing , while this government pushes policies guaranteed to put us all at risk again.
There's a pattern to this: first, there's a crash; then comes a period of remorse and talk of reform; and eventually comes the
great forgetting. As time passes, markets rise, greed becomes good, and Wall Street begins to champion more deregulation. The government
attracts deregulatory enthusiasts and then, of course, there's another crash, millions suffer, and remorse returns.
Ominously, we're now in the deregulation stage following the bull run. We know what comes next, just not when. Count on one thing:
it won't be pretty.
This is a problem because, at 4.1 percent last month, U.S. unemployment is at the lowest
level since 2000 and companies from Dallas to Denver are struggling to find the right
workers. In some cases this is constraining growth, the Federal Reserve
reported last week.
Corporate America's search for an exact match is "the number-one problem with hiring in
our country," said Daniel Morgan, a recruiter in Birmingham, Alabama, who owns an Express
Employment Professionals franchise. "Most companies get caught up on precise experience to a
specific job," he said, adding: "Companies fail to see a person for their abilities and
transferable skills."
U.S. employers got used to abundant and cheap labor following the 2007-2009 recession.
Unemployment peaked at 10 percent in October 2009, and didn't return to the lows of the
previous business cycle until last year. Firms still remain reluctant to boost pay or train
employees with less-than-perfect credentials, though recruiters say that may have to change
amid a jobless rate that's set to dip further.
The way the article is cut off with the wage gains chart makes it seem that the article is
on the Dean Baker theme of "pay higher wages and they will come," in which he argues that
there is no shortage because you can hire workers away from your competitor, thereby merely
moving the deficit from one place to another without eliminating it and unintentionally
suggesting that there is actually is a shortage after all.
Immediately after that chart, however, the article segues into a pretty intelligent
discussion of employers learning to ascertain "how can your experience be used in my
application," making it unclear why the wage chart is even there.
The "lack of trained workers" complaint has long annoyed me, with its implication that it
is the public sector's responsibility to train workers for the private sector. Why? If a
company needs welders, why should that company not train its own welders?
J.Goodwin , January 29, 2018 11:39 am
Last week we were reviewing a job description we were preparing for a role in Canada. It
was basically a super senior description, they wanted everything, specific experience, higher
education, what amounts to a black belt project management certification but also accounting
and finance background.
At the bottom it says 5 years experience.
I almost fell off my chair. That's an indicator of the pay band they were trying to fill
at (let's say 3, and the description was written like a 10-15 years 6).
I tried to explain it to the person who wrote it and I said hey if we put this out there,
we will get no hits. There is no one with this experience who will take what you are
offering. I'm afraid we're going to end up with another home country expat instead. They're
often not up the same standard you could get with a local if you reasonably scoped the job
and gave a fair offer.
I think companies have forgotten how to compete for employees, and the recruiters are
completely out of touch. Or maybe they are aware of the conditions and HR just won't sign on
to fair value.
Mona Williams , January 29, 2018 1:09 pm
Before I retired 12 years ago, on-the-job training was much more common. Borders Books
(remember them?) trained me for a week with pay for just a temporary Christmas-season job.
Employers have gotten spoiled, and I hope they will figure this out. Some of the training
programs I hear about just make me sigh. Nobody can afford to be trained while not being
paid.
axt113 , January 29, 2018 1:26 pm
My Wife works as a junior recruiter, the problem she says is with the employers, they want
a particular set of traits, and if there is even a slight deviation they balk
She says that one recent employer she worked with wanted so many particulars for not
enough pay that even well experienced and well educated candidates she could find were either
unwilling to accept the offer, or were missing one or two traits that made them unacceptable
to the company.
rps , January 29, 2018 3:58 pm
This is exciting news for many of us who've been waiting for the pendulum to swing in
favor of potential employees after a decade of reading employers help wanted Santa wish list
criteria for a minimum wage job of 40+ hours. I'd argue the unemployment rate is not 4.1%;
rather, I know of many intelligent/educated/experienced versatile people who've been cut out
of the job market and/or chose not to work for breadcrumbs.
HR's 6 second resume review rule of potential candidates was a massive failure by
eliminating candidates whose skills, experience and critical thinking abilities could've
cultivated innovation across many disciplines. Instead companies looked for drone replacement
at slave wages. HR's narrow candidate searches often focused on resume typos or perceived
grammatical errors (highly unlikely HR recruiters have an English Ph.D), thus trashing the
resume. Perhaps, HR will be refitted with critical thinking people who see a candidate's
potential beyond the forgotten comma or period.
"... In my experience as a journalist, the public have always been ahead of the media. And yet, in many news outlets there has always been a kind of veiled contempt for the public. You find young journalists affecting a false cynicism that they think ordains them as journalists. The cynicism is not about the people at the top, it's about the people at the bottom, the people that Hillary Clinton dismissed as "irredeemable." ..."
"... CNN and NBC and the rest of the networks have been the voices of power and have been the source of distorted news for such a long time. They are not circling the wagons because the wagons are on the wrong side. These people in the mainstream have been an extension of the power that has corrupted so much of our body politic. They have been the sources of so many myths. ..."
"... Media in the West is now an extension of imperial power. It is no longer a loose extension, it is a direct extension. Whether or not it has fallen out with Donald Trump is completely irrelevant. It is lined up with all the forces that want to get rid of Donald Trump. He is not the one they want in the White House, they wanted Hillary Clinton, who is safer and more reliable. ..."
"... I have found that those who voted for Clinton are very quick to swallow what mainstream media has to say, and those that voted for Trump, at this moment, hold the media in contempt, however they also very willingly accept Trump's policies and his lies ..."
"... I would like to add, that In the US most of Americans are usually ignorant of politics and government. Many believe that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about the subject. So we have a country of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. ..."
Randy Credico: A lot of mainstream journalists complain when Trump refers to them as the enemy of the people, but they
have shown themselves to be very unwilling to circle the wagons around Assange. What is the upshot for journalists of Assange being
taken down?
John Pilger: Trump knows which nerves to touch. His campaign against the mainstream media may even help to get him re-elected,
because most people don't trust the mainstream media anymore.
In my experience as a journalist, the public have always been ahead of the media. And yet, in many news outlets there has
always been a kind of veiled contempt for the public. You find young journalists affecting a false cynicism that they think ordains
them as journalists. The cynicism is not about the people at the top, it's about the people at the bottom, the people that Hillary
Clinton dismissed as "irredeemable."
CNN and NBC and the rest of the networks have been the voices of power and have been the source of distorted news for such
a long time. They are not circling the wagons because the wagons are on the wrong side. These people in the mainstream have been
an extension of the power that has corrupted so much of our body politic. They have been the sources of so many myths.
This latest film about The Post neglects to mention that The Washington Post was a passionate supporter of the Vietnam
War before it decided to have a moral crisis about whether to publish the Pentagon Papers. Today, TheWashington Post
has a $600 million deal with the CIA to supply them with information.
Media in the West is now an extension of imperial power. It is no longer a loose extension, it is a direct extension. Whether
or not it has fallen out with Donald Trump is completely irrelevant. It is lined up with all the forces that want to get rid of Donald
Trump. He is not the one they want in the White House, they wanted Hillary Clinton, who is safer and more reliable.
I've always liked Mr. Pilger, and Mr. Parry, of course, and Hedges and so on However in this statement made by Mr. Pilger,
"Trump knows which nerves to touch. His campaign against the mainstream media may even help to get him re-elected, because most
people don't trust the mainstream media anymore." I would really disagree based on my own personal experiences. I have found
that those who voted for Clinton are very quick to swallow what mainstream media has to say, and those that voted for Trump, at
this moment, hold the media in contempt, however they also very willingly accept Trump's policies and his lies, like his
climate change denial and his position on Iran. It's more about taking sides then it is in being interested in the truth.
Annie , January 24, 2018 at 4:33 pm
I would like to add, that In the US most of Americans are usually ignorant of politics and government. Many believe that
their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about the subject. So we
have a country of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know.
Joe Tedesky , January 24, 2018 at 6:28 pm
You got that right Annie. In fact I know people who voted for Hillary, and they wake up every morning to turn on MSNBC or CNN
only to hear what Trump tweeted, because they like getting pissed off at Trump, and get even more self induced angry when they
don't hear his impeachment being shouted out on the screen.
I forgive a lot of these types who don't get into the news, because it just isn't their thing I guess, but I get even madder
that we don't have a diversified media enough to give people the complete story. I mean a brilliant media loud enough, and objective
enough, to reach the mass uncaring community. We have talked about this before, about the MSM's omission of the news, as to opposed
just lying they do that too, as you know Annie, and it's a crime against a free press society. In fact, I not being a lawyer,
would not be surprised that this defect in our news is not Constitutional.
Although, less and less people are watching the news, because they know it's phony, have you noticed how political our Late
Night Talk Show Host have become? Hmmm boy, sometimes you have to give it to the Deep State because they sure know how to cover
the market of dupes. To bad the CIA isn't selling solar panels, or something beneficial like that, which could help our ailing
world.
We are living in a Matrix of left vs right, liberal vs conservative, all of us are on the divide, and that's the way it suppose
to be. You know I don't mean that, but that's what the Deep State has done to us, for a lack of a better description of their
evil unleashed upon the planet.
I like reading your thoughts, because you go kind of deep, and you come up with angles not thought of, well at least not by
me so forgive me if I reply to often. Joe
Annie , January 24, 2018 at 10:18 pm
I know I keep referring to Facebook, but it really allows you to see how polarized people have become. Facebook posts political
non issues, but nonetheless they will elicit comments that are downright hateful. Divide and conquer is something I often think
when I view these comments. I rarely watch TV, but enough to see how TV Talk Show hosts have gotten into the act, and Trump supplies
them with an endless source of material, not that their discussing core issues either.
I don't remember whether I mentioned this before in a recent article on this site, but when a cousin posts a response to a
comment I made about our militarism and how many millions have died as a result that all countries do sneaky and underhanded things,
I can only think people don't want to hear the truth either, and that's why most are so vulnerable to our propaganda, which is
we are the exceptional nation that can do no wrong. Those who are affluent want to maintain the status quo, and those that live
pay check to pay check are vulnerable to Trump's lies, and the lies of the Republican party whose interest lie with the top 1
percent.
Kiza , January 25, 2018 at 12:36 am
Talking about lies you mention only Trump and the Republicans Annie. Is this because the Democrats are such party of criminals
that you consider them worth mentioning only in the crime chronic not in the context of lies?
About that "Climate Change" religion of yours: how much does it make sense that people around US are freezing but TPTB still
want to tax fossil fuels, the only one thing which can keep people warm? Does that not look to your left-wing mind as taking
from the poor to give to the Green & Connected ? Will a wind-turbine or a solar-panel keep you warm on a -50 degree day? I
am yet to live to see one green-scheme which is not for the benefit of the Green & Connected, whilst this constant braying about
global warming renamed into climate change is simply as annoying as the crimes of the Israelis hidden by the media (Did you see
that photo of a 3-year old Palestinian child whose brain was splattered out by an Israeli sniper's bullet? She must have been
throwing stones or slapping Israeli soldiers, right?).
I am not a US voter and I do not care either way which color gang is running your horrible country, because it always turns
out the same. But the blatant criminality of your Demoncrats is only surpassed by their humanitarian sleaze – they always bomb,
kill and rape for the good of humanity or for the greenery or for some other touchy-feelly bull like that, which the left-wing
stupidos can swallow.
Annie , January 25, 2018 at 2:15 am
Oh, Kiza, are you one of those people that patrol the internet for people who dare mention climate change? I have no intentions
of changing your mind on the subject, even though my background is in environmental science with a Masters degree in the subject.
I am not a registered democrat, but an independent and didn't vote for Clinton, or Trump. I'm too much of a liberal. I'm very
aware of the many faults of the democratic party, and you're right about them. They abandoned their working class base decades
ago and they pretty much shun liberals within their own party, and pander to the top 10 percent in this country. Yes, both parties
proclaim their allegiance to their voting base, but both parties are lying, since in my opinion their base is the corporate world
and that world pretty much controls their agenda, and both parties have embraced the neocons that push for war.
P. S. However being fair, the Republican base is the top 1 percent in this country.
Kiza , January 25, 2018 at 6:46 am
Hello again Annie, thank you for your response. I must admit that your mention of climate change triggered an unhappy reaction
in me, otherwise I do think that our views are not far from each other. Thank you for not trying to change my mind on climate
change because you would not have succeeded no matter what your qualifications are. My life experience simply says – always follow
the money and when I do I see a climate mafia similar to the MIC mafia. I did think that the very cold weather that gripped US
would reduce the climate propaganda, but nothing can keep the climate mafia down any more – the high ranked need to pay for their
yachts and private jets and the low ranks have to pay of their house mortgages. But I will never understand why the US lefties
are so dumb – to be so easily taken to imperial wars and so easily convinced to tax the 99% for the benefit of 1% yet again. Where
do you think the nasty fossil fuel producers will find the money to pay for the taxes to be or already imposed? Will they sacrifice
their profits or pay the green taxes from higher prices?
Other than this, I honestly cannot see any difference between the so called Democrats and the so called Republicans (you say
that the Republicans are for the 1%). Both have been scrapping the bottom of the same barrel for their candidates, thus the elections
are always a contest between two disasters.
Sam F , January 25, 2018 at 7:02 am
Good that you both see the bipartisan corruption and can table background issues.
Joe Tedesky , January 25, 2018 at 9:09 am
Yeah Sam I was impressed by their conversation as well. Joe
Bob Van Noy , January 25, 2018 at 11:05 am
I agree, an excellent thread plus a civil disagreement. In my experience, only at CN. Thanks to all of you.
Realist , January 25, 2018 at 1:04 pm
I am with you, Annie, when you state that "They [the Democrats] abandoned their working class base decades ago and they pretty
much shun liberals within their own party, and pander to the top 10 percent in this country." And yet they are so glibly characterised
as "liberal" by nearly everyone in the media (and, of course, by the Republicans). Even the Nate Silver group, whom I used to
think was objective is propagating the drivel that Democrats have become inexorably more liberal–and to the extreme–in their latest
soireé analysing the two parties:
In reality, the Dems are only "liberal" in contrast to the hard right shift of the Republicans over the past 50-60 years. And
what was "extreme" for both parties is being sold to the public as moderate and conventional by the corporate media. It's almost
funny seeing so much public policy being knee-jerk condemned as "leftist" when the American left became extinct decades ago.
Virginia , January 25, 2018 at 12:16 pm
Annie, it's not just the Democrats who are bought and paid for.
Annie , January 25, 2018 at 2:54 pm
Virginia, I didn't say that only the democrats were bought and paid for, but said, " yes, both parties proclaim their allegiance
to their voting base, but both parties are lying, since in my opinion their base is the corporate world and that world pretty
much controls their agenda, and both parties have embraced the neocons that push for war." I also mentioned that the republicans
pander to the top 1 percent in this country.
Virginia , January 25, 2018 at 3:04 pm
And my reply was meant to say,
It's not just the Democrats who pander to the 1% who have bought and paid for them!
"... For Germany, the idea of Europeanism has provided the country's elites with the perfect alibi to conceal their hegemonic project behind the ideological veil of 'European integration' ..."
"... "That may sound absurd given that today's Germany is a successful democracy without a trace of national-socialism – and that no one would actually associate Merkel with Nazism. But further reflection on the word 'Reich', or empire, may not be entirely out of place. The term refers to a dominion, with a central power exerting control over many different peoples. According to this definition, would it be wrong to speak of a German Reich in the economic realm?" ..."
"... More recently, an article in Politico Europe ..."
"... Even though the power exercised by Europe's 'colonial masters' is now openly acknowledged by the mainstream press, it is however commonplace to ascribe Germany's dominant position as an accident of history: according to this narrative, we are in the presence of an 'accidental empire', one that is not the result of a general plan but that emerged almost by chance – even against ..."
"... Germany (and France) have been the main beneficiaries of the sovereign bailouts of periphery countries , which essentially amounted to a covert bailout of German (and French) banks, as most of the funds were channelled back to the creditor countries' banks, which were heavily exposed to the banks (and to a lesser degree the governments) of periphery countries. German policy, Helen Thompson wrote , overwhelmingly 'served the interests of the German banks'. ..."
"... This is a telling example of how Germany's policies (and the EU's policies more in general), while nominally ordoliberal – i.e., based upon minimal government intervention and a strict rules-based regime – are in reality based on extensive state intervention on behalf of German capital, at both the domestic and European level. ..."
"... German authorities have also been more than happy to go along with – or to encourage – the European institutions' 'exercise of unrestrained executive power and the more or less complete abandonment of strict, rules-based frameworks' – Storey is here referring in particular to the ECB's use of its currency-issuing monopoly to force member states to follows its precepts – 'to maintain the profitability of German banks, German hegemony within the Eurozone, or even the survival of the Eurozone itself'. ..."
"... Germany (and France) are also the main beneficiaries of the ongoing process of 'mezzogiornification' of periphery countries – often compounded by troika -forced privatisations –, which in recent years has allowed German and French firms to take over a huge number of businesses (or stakes therewithin) in periphery countries, often at bargain prices. A well-publicised case is that of the 14 Greek regional airports taken over by the German airport operator Fraport. ..."
"... France's corporate offensive in Italy is another good example: in the last five years, French companies have engaged in 177 Italian takeovers, for a total value of $41.8 billion, six times Italy's purchases in France over the same period. This is leading to an increased 'centralisation' of European capital, characterised by a gradual concentration of capital and production in Germany and other core countries – in the logistical and distribution sectors, for example – and more in general to an increasingly imbalanced relationship between the stronger and weaker countries of the union. ..."
"... In short, the European Union should indeed be viewed a transnational capitalist project, but one that is subordinated to a clear state-centred hierarchy of power, with Germany in the dominant position. In this sense, the national elites in periphery countries that have supported Germany's hegemonic project (and continue to do so, first and foremost through their support to European integration) can thus be likened to the comprador bourgeoisie ..."
"... Exportnationalismus' ..."
"... Modell Deutschland ..."
"... Even more worryingly, Germany is not simply aiming at expanding its economic control over the European continent; it is also taking steps for greater European military 'cooperation' – under the German aegis, of course. As a recent article in Foreign Policy ..."
"... In other words, Germany already effectively controls the armies of four countries. And the initiative, Foreign Policy ..."
Originally from: Germany's dystopian plans for Europe: from fantasy to reality?By Thomas
Fazi 4 December 2017
For Germany, the idea
of Europeanism has provided the country's elites with the perfect alibi to conceal their
hegemonic project behind the ideological veil of 'European integration'
After Emmanuel Macron's election in France, many (including myself) claimed that this
signalled a revival of the Franco-German alliance and a renewed impetus for Europe's process of
top-down economic and political integration – a fact that was claimed by most
commentators and politicians, beholden as they are to the Europeanist narrative, to be an
unambiguously positive development.
Among the allegedly 'overdue' reforms that were said to be on the table was the creation of
a pseudo-'fiscal union' backed by a (meagre) 'euro budget', along with the creation of a
'European finance minister', the centre-points of Macron's plans to 're-found the EU' – a
proposal that raises a number of very worrying issues from both political and economic
standpoints,
which I have discussed at length elsewhere .
The integrationists' (unwarranted) optimism, however, was short-lived. The result of the
German elections, which saw the surge of two rabidly anti-integrationist parties, the
right-wing FDP and extreme right AfD; the recent collapse of coalition talks between Merkel's
CDU, the FDP and the Greens, which most likely means an interim government for weeks if not
months, possibly leading to new elections (which polls show would
bring roughly the same result as the September election); and the growing restlessness in
Germany towards the 13-year-long rule of Macron's partner in reform Angela Merkel, means that
any plans that Merkel and Macron may have sketched out behind the scenes to further integrate
policies at the European level are now, almost certainly, dead in the water. Thus, even the
sorry excuse for a fiscal union proposed by Macron is now off the table, according to most
commentators.
At this point, the German government's most likely course in terms of European policy
– the one that has the best chance of garnering cross-party support, regardless of the
outcome of the coalition talks (or of new elections) – is the 'minimalist' approach set
in stone by the country's infamous and now-former finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, in
a 'non-paper' published shortly
before his resignation.
The main pillar of Schäuble's proposal – a long-time obsession of his –
consists in giving the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which would go on to become a
'European Monetary Fund', the power to monitor (and, ideally, enforce) compliance with the
Fiscal Compact. This echoes Schäuble's previous calls for the
creation of a European budget commissioner with the power to reject national budgets – a
supranational fiscal enforcer.
The aim is all too clear: to further erode what little sovereignty and autonomy member
states have left, particularly in the area of fiscal policy, and to facilitate the imposition
of neoliberal 'structural reforms' – flexibilisation of labour markets, reduction of
collective bargaining rights, etc. – on reluctant countries.
To this end, the German authorities even want to make the receipt of EU cohesion funds
conditional on the implementation of such reforms , tightening the existing arrangements
even further. Moreover, as noted by Simon
Wren-Lewis , the political conflict of interest of having an institution lending within the
eurozone would end up imposing severe austerity bias on the recovering country.
Until recently, these proposals failed to materialise due, among other reasons, to France's
opposition to any further overt reductions of national sovereignty in the area of
budgetary policy; Macron, however, staunchly rejects France's traditional
souverainiste stance, embracing instead what he calls 'European sovereignty', and thus
represents the perfect ally for Germany's plans.
Another proposal that goes in the same direction is the
German Council for Economic Experts' plan to curtail banks' sovereign bond holdings.
Ostensibly aimed at 'severing the link between banks and government' and 'ensuring long-term
debt sustainability', it calls for: (i) removing the exemption from risk-weighting for
sovereign exposures, which essentially means that government bonds would no longer be
considered a risk-free asset for banks (as they are now under Basel rules), but would be
'weighted' according to the 'sovereign default risk' of the country in question (as determined
by credit rating agencies); (ii) putting a cap on the overall risk-weighted sovereign exposure
of banks; and (iii) introducing an automatic 'sovereign insolvency mechanism' that would
essentially extend to sovereigns the bail-in rule introduced for banks by the banking union,
meaning that if a country requires financial assistance from the ESM, for whichever reason, it
will have to lengthen its sovereign bond maturities (reducing the market value of those bonds
and causing severe losses for all bondholders) and, if necessary, impose a nominal 'haircut' on
private creditors.
As noted by the German economist Peter Bofinger , the only member of the German Council of
Economic Experts to vote against the sovereign bail-in plan, this would almost certainly ignite
a 2012-style self-fulfilling sovereign debt crisis, as periphery countries' bond yields would
quickly rise to unsustainable levels, making it increasingly hard for governments to roll over
maturing debt at reasonable prices and eventually forcing them to turn to the ESM for help,
which would entail even heavier losses for their banks and an even heavier dose of
austerity.
It would essentially amount to a return to the pre-2012 status quo, with governments once
again subject to the supposed 'discipline' of the markets, particularly in the context of a
likely tapering of the ECB's quantitative easing (QE) program. The aim of this proposal is the
same as that of Schäuble's 'European Monetary Fund': to force member states to implement
permanent austerity.
Of course, national sovereignty in a number of areas – most notably fiscal policy
– has already been severely eroded by the complex system of new laws, rules and
agreements introduced in recent years, including but not limited to the six-pack, two-pack,
Fiscal Compact, European Semester and Macroeconomic Imbalances Procedure (MIP).
As a result of this new post-Maastricht system of European economic governance, the European
Union has effectively become a sovereign power with the authority to impose budgetary rules and
structural reforms on member states outside democratic procedures and without democratic
control.
The EU's embedded quasi-constitutionalism and inherent (structural) democratic deficit has
thus evolved into an even more anti-democratic form of 'authoritarian constitutionalism' that
is breaking away with elements of formal democracy as well, leading some observers to suggest
that the EU 'may easily become the postdemocratic prototype and even a pre-dictatorial
governance structure against national sovereignty and democracies'.
To give an example, with the launch of the European Semester, the EU's key tool for economic
policy guidance and surveillance, an area that has historically been a bastion of national
sovereignty – old-age pensions – has now fallen under the purview of supranational
monitoring as well. Countries are now expected to
(and face sanctions if they don't): (i) increase the retirement age and link it with life
expectancy; (ii) reduce early retirement schemes, improve the employability of older workers
and promote lifelong learning; (iii) support complementary private savings to enhance
retirement incomes; and (iv) avoid adopting pension-related measures that undermine the long
term sustainability and adequacy of public finances.
This has led to the introduction in various countries of several types of automatic
stabilizing mechanisms (ASMs) in pension systems, which change the policy default so that
benefits or contributions adjust automatically to adverse demographic and economic conditions
without direct intervention by politicians. Similar 'automatic correction mechanisms' in
relation to fiscal policy can be found in the Fiscal Compact.
The aim of all these 'automatic mechanisms' is clearly to put the economy on 'autopilot',
thus removing any element of democratic discussion and/or decision-making at either the
European or national level. These changes have already transformed European states into
'semi-sovereign' entities, at best. In this sense, the proposals currently under discussion
would mark the definitive transformation of European states from semi-sovereign to de
facto (and increasingly de jure ) non-sovereign entities.
Regardless of the lip service paid by national and European officials to the need for
further reductions of national sovereignty to go hand in hand with a greater 'democratisation'
of the euro area, the reforms currently on the table can, in fact, be considered the final
stage in the thirty-year-long war on democracy and national sovereignty waged by the European
elites, aimed at constraining the ability of popular-democratic powers to influence economic
policy, thus enabling the imposition of neoliberal policies that would not have otherwise been
politically feasible.
In this sense, the European economic and monetary integration process should be viewed, to a
large degree, as a class-based and inherently neoliberal project pursued by all
national capitals as well as transnational (financial) capital. However, to grasp the processes
of restructuring under way in Europe, we need to go beyond the simplistic capital/labour
dichotomy that underlies many critical analyses of the EU and eurozone, which view EU/EMU
policies as the expression of a unitary and coherent transnational (post-national) European
capitalist class.
The process underway can only be understood through the lens of the geopolitical-economic
tensions and conflicts between leading capitalist states and regional blocs, and the
conflicting interests between the different financial/industrial capital fractions located in
those states, which have always characterised the European economy. In particular, it means
looking at Germany's historic struggle for economic hegemony over the European continent.
It is no secret that Germany is today the leading economic and political power in Europe,
just as it is no secret that nothing gets done in Europe without Germany's seal of approval. In
fact, it is commonplace to come across references to Germany's 'new empire'.
A controversial Der Spiegel editorial from a few years back event went as far as
arguing that it is not out place to talk of the rise of a 'Fourth Reich':
"That may sound absurd given that today's Germany is a successful democracy without a trace
of national-socialism – and that no one would actually associate Merkel with Nazism. But
further reflection on the word 'Reich', or empire, may not be entirely out of place. The term
refers to a dominion, with a central power exerting control over many different peoples.
According to this definition, would it be wrong to speak of a German Reich in the economic
realm?"
More recently, an article in
Politico Europe – co-owned by the German media magnate Axel Springer AG
– candidly explained why 'Greece is de facto a German colony'. It noted how, despite
Tsipras' pleas for debt relief, the Greek leader 'has little choice but to heed the wishes of
his "colonial" masters', i.e., the Germans.
This is because public debt
in the eurozone is used as a political tool – a disciplining tool – to get
governments to implement socially harmful policies (and to get citizens to accept these
policies by portraying them as inevitable), which explains why Germany continues to refuse to
seriously consider any form of debt relief for Greece, despite the various commitments and
promises to that end made in recent years: debt is the chain that keeps Greece (and other
member states) from straying 'off course'.
Even though the power exercised by Europe's 'colonial masters' is now openly acknowledged by
the mainstream press, it is however commonplace to ascribe Germany's dominant position as an
accident of history: according to this narrative, we are in the presence of an 'accidental
empire', one that is not the result of a general plan but that emerged almost by chance –
even against Germany's wishes – as a result of the euro's design faults, which
have allowed Germany and its satellites to pursue a neo-mercantilist strategy and thus
accumulate huge current account surpluses.
Now, it is certainly true that the euro's design – strongly influenced by Germany
– inevitably benefits export-led economies such as Germany over more internal
demand-oriented economies, such as those of southern Europe. However, there is ample evidence
to support the argument that Germany, far from having accidently stumbled upon European
dominance, has been actively and consciously pursuing an expansionary and imperialist strategy
in – and through – the European Union for decades.
Even if we limit our analysis to Germany's post-crisis policies (though there is much that
could be said about Germany's post-reunification policies and subsequent offshoring of
production to Eastern Europe in the 1990s), it would be very naïve to view Germany's
inflexibility – on austerity, for example – as a simple case of ideological
stubbornness, considering the extent to which the policies in question have benefited Germany
(and to a lesser extent France).
Germany (and France) have been
the main beneficiaries of the sovereign bailouts of periphery countries , which essentially
amounted to a covert bailout of German (and French) banks, as most of the funds were channelled
back to the creditor countries' banks, which were heavily exposed to the banks (and to a lesser
degree the governments) of periphery countries. German policy, Helen Thompson wrote ,
overwhelmingly 'served the interests of the German banks'.
This is a telling example of how Germany's policies (and the EU's policies more in general),
while nominally ordoliberal – i.e., based upon minimal government intervention
and a strict rules-based regime – are in reality based on extensive state
intervention on behalf of German capital, at both the domestic and European level.
As Andy Storey notes, not only did the German government, throughout the crisis, show a
blatant disregard for ordoliberalism's non-interference of public institutions in the workings
of the market, by engaging in a massive Keynesian-style programme in the aftermath of the
financial crisis and pushing through bailout programmes that largely absolved German banks from
their responsibility for reckless lending to Greece and other countries; German authorities
have also been more than happy to go along with – or to encourage – the European
institutions' 'exercise of unrestrained executive power and the more or less complete
abandonment of strict, rules-based frameworks' – Storey is here referring in particular
to the ECB's use of its currency-issuing monopoly to force member states to follows its
precepts – 'to maintain the profitability of German banks, German hegemony within the
Eurozone, or even the survival of the Eurozone itself'.
Germany (and France) are also the main beneficiaries of the ongoing process of
'mezzogiornification' of periphery countries – often compounded by troika
-forced privatisations –, which in recent years has allowed German and French firms to
take over a huge number of businesses (or stakes therewithin) in periphery countries, often at
bargain prices. A well-publicised case is that of the 14 Greek regional airports taken over by
the German airport operator Fraport.
France's corporate offensive in Italy is another good example: in the last five years,
French companies have engaged in 177 Italian takeovers, for a total value of $41.8 billion, six
times Italy's purchases in France over the same period. This is leading to an increased
'centralisation' of European capital, characterised by a gradual concentration of capital and
production in Germany and other core countries – in the logistical and distribution
sectors, for example – and more in general to an increasingly imbalanced relationship
between the stronger and weaker countries of the union.
These transformations cannot simply be described as processes without a subject: while there
are undoubtedly structural reasons involved – countries with better developed economies
of scale, such as Germany and France, were bound to benefit more than others from the reduction
in tariffs and barriers associated with the introduction of the single currency – we also
have to acknowledge that there are loci of economic-politic power that are actively driving and
shaping these imperialist processes, which must be viewed through the lens of the unresolved
inter-capitalist struggle between core-based and periphery-based capital.
From this perspective, the dichotomy that is often raised in European public discourse
between nationalism and Europeanism is deeply flawed. The two, in fact, often go hand in hand.
In Germany's case, for example, Europeanism has provided the country's elites with the perfect
alibi to conceal their hegemonic project behind the ideological veil of 'European integration'.
Ironically, the European Union – allegedly created as an antidote to the vicious
nationalisms of the twentieth century – has been the tool through which Germany has been
able to achieve the 'new European order' that Nazi ideologues had theorised in the 1930s and
early 1940s.
In short, the European Union should indeed be viewed a transnational capitalist project, but
one that is subordinated to a clear state-centred hierarchy of power, with Germany in the
dominant position. In this sense, the national elites in periphery countries that have
supported Germany's hegemonic project (and continue to do so, first and foremost through their
support to European integration) can thus be likened to the comprador bourgeoisie of
the old colonial system – sections of a country's elite and middle class allied with
foreign interests in exchange for a subordinated role within the dominant hierarchy of
power.
From this point of view, the likely revival of the Franco-German bloc is a very worrying
development, since it heralds a consolidation of the German-led European imperialist bloc
– and a further 'Germanification' of the continent. This development cannot be understood
independently of the momentous shifts that are taking place in global political economy –
namely the organic crisis of neoliberal globalisation, which is leading to increased tensions
between the various fractions of international capital, most notably between the US and
Germany.
Trump's repeated criticisms of Germany's beggar-thy-neighbour mercantilist policies should
be understood in this light. The same goes for Angela Merkel's recent call – much
celebrated by the mainstream press – for a stronger Europe to counter Trump's
unilateralism. Merkel's aim is not, of course, that of making 'Europe' stronger, but rather of
strengthening Germany's dominant position vis-à-vis the other world powers (the US but
also China) through the consolidation of Germany's control of the European continental economy,
in the context of an intensification of global inter-capitalist competition.
This has now become an imperative for Germany, especially since Trump has dared to openly
challenge the self-justifying ideology which sustains Germany's mercantilism – a
particular form of economic nationalism that Hans Kundnani has
dubbed ' Exportnationalismus' , founded upon the belief that Germany's massive
trade surplus is uniquely the result of Germany's manufacturing excellence ( Modell
Deutschland ) rather than, in fact, the result of unfair trade practices.
This is why, if Germany wants to maintain its hegemonic position on the continent, it must
break with the US and tighten the bolts of the European workhouse. To this end, it needs to
seize control of the most coveted institution of them all – the ECB –, which
hitherto has never been under direct German control (though the Bundesbank exercises
considerable influence over it, as is well known). Indeed, many commentators openly acknowledge
that Merkel now has her eyes on the ECB's presidency. This would effectively put Germany
directly at the helm of European economic policy.
Even more worryingly, Germany is not simply aiming at expanding its economic control over
the European continent; it is also taking steps for greater European military 'cooperation'
– under the German aegis, of course.
As a recent article in Foreign Policy revealed , 'Germany is quietly building a
European army under its command'.
This year Germany and two of its European allies, the Czech Republic and Romania, announced
the integration of their armed forces, under the control of the Bundeswehr. In doing so, the
will follow in the footsteps of two Dutch brigades, one of which has already joined the
Bundeswehr's Rapid Response Forces Division and another that has been integrated into the
Bundeswehr's 1st Armored Division.
In other words, Germany already effectively controls the armies of four countries. And the
initiative, Foreign Policy notes, 'is likely to grow'. This is not surprising: if
Germany ('the EU') wants to become truly autonomous from the US, it needs to acquire military
sovereignty, which it currently lacks.
Europe is thus at a crossroads: the choice that left-wing and popular forces, and periphery
countries more generally, face is between (a) accepting Europe's transition to a fully
post-democratic, hyper-competitive, German-led continental system, in which member states
(except for those at the helm of the project) will be deprived of all sovereignty and autonomy,
in exchange for a formal democratic façade at the supranational level, and its workers
subject to ever-growing levels of exploitation; or (b) regaining national sovereignty and
autonomy at the national level, with all the short-term risks that such a strategy entails, as
the only way to restore democracy, popular sovereignty and socioeconomic dignity. In short, the
choice is between European post-democracy or post-European democracy.
There is no third way. Especially in view of the growing tensions between Germany, the US
and China, periphery countries should ask themselves if they want to be simple pawns in this
'New Great Game' or if they want to take their destinies into their own hands.
"Institutionally, the Democratic Party Is Not Democratic"
Very apt characterization "the Democratic Party is nothing more
than a layer of indirection between the donor class and the Democratic consultants and the
campaigns they run;" ... " after all, the Democratic Party -- in its current incarnation -- has important roles to play
in not expanding its "own" electorate through voter registration, in the care and feeding of the intelligence community, in
warmongering, in the continual buffing and polishing of neoliberal ideology, and in general keeping the Overton Window firmly
nailed in place against policies that would convey universal concrete material benefits, especially to the working class"
Notable quotes:
"... That said, the revivification of the DNC lawsuit serves as a story hook for me to try to advance the story on the nature of political parties as such, the Democratic Party as an institution, and the function that the Democratic Party serves. I will meander through those three topics, then, and conclude. ..."
"... What sort of legal entity is ..."
"... Political parties were purely private organizations from the 1790s until the Civil War. Thus, "it was no more illegal to commit fraud in the party caucus or primary than it would be to do so in the election of officers of a drinking club." However, due to the efforts of Robert La Follette and the Progressives, states began to treat political parties as "public agencies" during the early 1890s and 1900s; by the 1920s "most states had adopted a succession of mandatory statutes regulating every major aspect of the parties' structures and operations. ..."
"... While 1787 delegates disagreed on when corruption might occur, they brought a general shared understanding of what political corruption meant. To the delegates, political corruption referred to self-serving use of public power for private ends, including, without limitation, bribery, public decisions to serve private wealth made because of dependent relationships, public decisions to serve executive power made because of dependent relationships, and use by public officials of their positions of power to become wealthy. ..."
"... Two features of the definitional framework of corruption at the time deserve special attention, because they are not frequently articulated by all modern academics or judges. The first feature is that corruption was defined in terms of an attitude toward public service, not in relation to a set of criminal laws. The second feature is that citizenship was understood to be a public office. The delegates believed that non-elected citizens wielding or attempting to influence public power can be corrupt and that elite corruption is a serious threat to a polity. ..."
"... You can see how a political party -- a strange, amphibious creature, public one moment, private the next -- is virtually optimized to create a phishing equilibrium for corruption. However, I didn't really answer my question, did I? I still don't know what sort of legal entity the Democratic Party is. However, I can say what the Democratic Party is not ..."
"... So the purpose of superdelegates is to veto a popular choice, if they decide the popular choice "can't govern." But this is circular. Do you think for a moment that the Clintonites would have tried to make sure President Sanders couldn't have governed? You bet they would have, and from Day One. ..."
"... More importantly, you can bet that the number of superdelegates retained is enough for the superdelegates, as a class, to maintain their death grip on the party. ..."
"... could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we're gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. ..."
"... That's exactly ..."
"... Functionally, the Democratic Party Is a Money Trough for Self-Dealing Consultants. Here once again is Nomiki Konst's amazing video, before the DNC: https://www.youtube.com/embed/EAvblBnXV-w Those millions! That's real money! ..."
"... Today, it is openly acknowledged by many members that the DNC and the Clinton campaign were running an operation together. In fact, it doesn't take much research beyond FEC filings to see that six of the top major consulting firms had simultaneous contracts with the DNC and HRC -- collectively earning over $335 million since 2015 [this figure balloons in Konst's video because she got a look at the actual budget]. (This does not include SuperPACs.) ..."
"... One firm, GMMB earned $236.3 million from HFA and $5.3 from the DNC in 2016. Joel Benenson, a pollster and strategist who frequents cable news, collected $4.1m from HFA while simultaneously earning $3.3 million from the DNC. Perkins Coie law firm collected $3.8 million from the DNC, $481,979 from the Convention fund and $1.8 million from HFA in 2016. ..."
"... It gets worse. Not only do the DNC's favored consultants pick sides in the primaries, they serve on the DNC boards so they can give themselves donor money. ..."
"... These campaign consultants make a lot more money off of TV and mail than they do off of field efforts. Field efforts are long-term, labor-intensive, high overhead expenditures that do not have big margins from which the consultants can draw their payouts. They also don't allow the consultants to make money off of multiple campaigns all in the same cycle, while media and mail campaigns can be done from their DC office for dozens of clients all at the same time. They get paid whether campaigns win or lose, so effectiveness is irrelevant to them. ..."
"... the Democratic Party is nothing more than a layer of indirection between the donor class and the Democratic consultants and the campaigns they run; ..."
"... the Democratic Party -- in its current incarnation -- has important roles to play in not expanding its "own" electorate through voter registration, in the care and feeding of the intelligence community, in warmongering, in the continual buffing and polishing of neoliberal ideology, and in general keeping the Overton Window firmly nailed in place against policies that would convey universal concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. ..."
"... the bottom line is that if Democratic Party controls ballot access for the forseeable future, they have to be gone through ..."
"... In retrospect, despite Sanders evident appeal and the power of his list, I think it would have been best if their faction's pushback had been much stronger ..."
An alert reader who is a representative of the class that's suing the DNC Services
Corporation for fraud in the 2016 Democratic primary -- WILDING et al. v. DNC SERVICES
CORPORATION et al., a.k.a. the "DNC lawsuit" -- threw some interesting mail over the transom;
it's from Elizabeth Beck of Beck & Lee, the firm that brought the case on behalf of the
(putatively) defrauded class (and hence their lawyer). Beck's letter reads in relevant
part:
Some banks blew out the mortgage market, [and] they blew out technology investment two
decades ago. What are they doing now? They are financing energy investments, and they are
financing consumer debt. This is an almost brainless approach.
Via
Marketwatch
Jamie Galbraith states his thoughts on a how the current US economy functions. Here are a
few snippets:
University of Texas economist Galbraith, the son of the famous Harvard economist John
Kenneth Galbraith, believes mainstream economists and the Federal Reserve are too wedded to
old ideas to see what is really going on in the economy. Specifically, Galbraith is worried
that the consumer is the only game in town -- and that can't last.
Galbraith used his latest book "The End of Normal" to lay out his case that
the 2007-08 financial crisis wasn't just a brief interruption in the life of an otherwise
healthy economy but instead the latest crisis for an economy that lost its footing back in
the 1980s.
At the American Economic Association meeting in Philadelphia, MarketWatch asked Galbraith
to share his views on the economic landscape.
(On inflation and labor) There is no Phillips Curve, and there hasn't been for decades.
The supply of labor is not a constraint. If you wish to pay people higher wages, you could
lure people back out of retirement. Net immigration has basically stopped. If you needed
more workers, it would start up again. So we don't have a real labor-force constraint. We
are not going to get inflationary pressure from the labor markets. It has been 40 years.
Economists are slow learners, and central bankers are a slow-learning subset. They should
recognize that things did change in the 1980s.
(Losing ground in global trade) I think that is clearly the case in the wider world. The
Chinese have engaged in an extraordinary exercise in engineering in recent years
domestically, building 12,000 miles of high-speed rail. They now have vast engineering
capacity, and they are applying it to their periphery -- a One Belt One Road network that
will orient commerce across Eurasia and into Africa as well that is in the interest of
furthering Chinese development. This is on a scale which dwarfs anything that is being
conceived of in the United States. (Dan here This statement is before the sh**hole
storm)
(On infrastucture)Trump came in with the idea that we should be investing heavily in
infrastructure. He got no traction from the Republican Congress. Why is that? Because the
immediate beneficiaries of an infrastructure program are people who live in cities, people
who live in the expensive coastal areas of the country -- and these people don't vote
Republican. So a political obstacle that prevented the one sensible or necessary element of
Trump's political framework from getting any traction at all.
(Role of banks) You have to have a situation where banks, which are publicly chartered
institutions, serve a public purpose with some common objectives. Some banks blew out the
mortgage market, [and] they blew out technology investment two decades ago. What are they
doing now? They are financing energy investments, and they are financing consumer debt.
This is an almost brainless approach.
Deneen argues that [neo]liberal democracy has betrayed its promises. It was supposed to
foster equality, but it has led to great inequality and a new aristocracy. It was supposed to
give average people control over government, but average people feel alienated from government.
It was supposed to foster liberty, but it creates a degraded popular culture in which consumers
become slave to their appetites.
Many young people feel trapped in a system they have no faith in. Deneen quotes one of his
students: "Because we view humanity -- and thus its institutions -- as corrupt and selfish, the
only person we can rely upon is our self. The only way we can avoid failure, being let down,
and ultimately succumbing to the chaotic world around us, therefore, is to have the means
(financial security) to rely only upon ourselves."
... ... ...
When communism and fascism failed in the 20th century, this version of [neo]liberalism
seemed triumphant. But it was a Pyrrhic victory, Deneen argues.
[Neo]Liberalism claims to be neutral but it's really anti-culture. It detaches people from
nature, community, tradition and place. It detaches people from time. "Gratitude to the past
and obligations to the future are replaced by a nearly universal pursuit of immediate
gratification."
Once family and local community erode and social norms dissolve, individuals are left naked
and unprotected. They seek solace in the state. They toggle between impersonal systems:
globalized capitalism and the distant state. As the social order decays, people grasp for the
security of authoritarianism. " A signal feature of modern totalitarianism was that it
arose and came to power through the discontents of people's isolation and loneliness ," he
observes.
Social order crumbles then the elite became detached from common people and distrusted by
them, as the US neoliberal elite now is. Trump elections were mostly semi-conscious protest
against the neoliberal elite which was symbolized by Hillary candidacy.
The problem with the article is that the author mixed liberalism and neoliberalism:
Liberalism and neoliberalism are opposite. Neoliberalism has nothing to do with Christianity. It
is, in essence, a Satan-worshiping cult ("greed is good"). The fact that it is dominant in the
USA and Western Europe suggests that we can talk about persecution of Christians under
neoliberalism.
That's why neoliberal elite resorted to Russophobia -- to rally the nation against the flag
and to hash the distrust with anti-Russian hysteria.
Notable quotes:
"... It has been observed many times that liberalism is mostly a secularized version of Christianity; there's a lot of truth to that. ..."
I disagree. The problems in liberalism didn't show up until now because most people in
liberal democratic countries took the Judeo-Christian moral framework for granted. If the human
rights (for example) that liberalism enshrines are something real, then they have to be
grounded in something transcendent. It has been observed many times that liberalism is
mostly a secularized version of Christianity; there's a lot of truth to that.
As I read Why Liberalism Failed , I take Deneen as saying that liberalism had to fail
because at its core it stands for liberating the individual from an unchosen obligation.
Ultimately, it forms consumers, not citizens.
I don't see Deneen airbrushing the good parts
of liberalism from history, but rather honing his critique on what he believes are its
structural flaws that make it unsustainable. His critique is strong, certainly, and I think
dead-on, in that he sees that liberalism cannot generate within itself the virtues it needs to
survive.
Deneen's critique is also matter-of-fact. Free markets are a core part of the liberal
democratic model, but given the globalized nature of the economy, and rapid technological
changes, we have to face the possibility that liberalism as we have understood it is inadequate
to provide for the good of workers left behind by these changes.
If we have neglected the moral order embedded within liberalism itself, on what basis can we
regain it? I keep going back to Adams's line about our Constitution is only good for a "moral
and religious people," because self-government by the people can only work for people who
possess the virtues to govern their own passions. This says to me that to perceive and to
achieve the virtues embedded within liberalism, one has to be oriented towards a sense that
there really are moral and religious truths beyond ourselves that bind our conduct.
Liberalism has degenerated into Justice Anthony Kennedy's famous line:
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning,
of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
I think most Americans today would not get what the problem is with that definition. You
can't support a governing order based on something that weak. That, I believe, is Patrick
Deneen's overall point.
"If prudence and temperance are synonyms for modesty and self-restraint – the rising
generation of Americans has utterly abandoned these values."
They are not synonyms. Prudence is appropriate concern for the future. It has nothing to
so with modesty. Temperance has to do with appropriate self-restraint. It is not
temperate to constrain oneself in a way that causes oneself senseless suffering. That is what
some conservatives are asking people who don't fit into traditional gender categories to
do.
I believe Brooks is more correct than Deneen. Robert Heinlein always made the point that
liberty was not compatible with ignorance and ineptitude. Rather, liberty and self-ownership
requires a certain level of competence. Competent people are capable of self-rule.
Incompetent people are not. The problem with Deneen's ideas is that they force the competent
people to surrender a certain measure of liberty and self-ownership in order to "accommodate"
and "fit in" with the less competent, and that is a trade off that people like myself will
never accept in a million years. In other words, Deneen does not speak for competent
individuals such as myself. Hence, his ideas could never work for the likes of myself.
I believe the only solution, and a partial one at that (there is no such thing as a
perfect solution as perfection does not exist in nature) is radical decentralization on a
global scale. I call this the "thousand state sovereignty" model or the "21st century
Westphalis". Some might even call it the "Snow Crash" scenario. This is where conventional
nation-states and institutions fade away and new ones based more on networks of individual
with common interests, objectives, and character traits form. The more competent members of
the human race, who have no need to give up classical liberalism and individual
self-ownership are able to form their own societies politically and culturally autonomous
from the rest of the human species. Other factions of humanity can do the same thing. Call it
"GTOW" on a global scale. Hence, the nation-state will decline in relative importance and the
city-state will come back into vogue.
I believe this is the ONLY pathway forward to a better world for everyone. It does have
the advantage of being a "positive-sum" solution, as most everyone gets what they want.
Positive-sum solutions are always superior to zero-sum solutions, which are really
negative-sum solutions.
Even John Locke, who is basically the father of liberalism, said that the state "need not
tolerate" atheism because a state cannot rely on enforcement mechanisms alone to ensure
proper civic behavior. A citizen must have a healthy fear of some form of divine retribution
as guarantor of his behavior. It's possible, of course, to develop some form of morality
based in natural reason that can ensure proper behavior, but I think Locke was onto something
in his exhortation that the law alone is not enough.
Based on Brooks's summary, Deenen appears to believe that people in ancient Greece, ancient
Rome, and medieval times were more virtuous than people are in contemporary America.
That is not a reasonable thing to think. Maybe people in contemporary America have
different vices than people did in past societies. But vice is part of the human condition,
and people in America have not stopped caring for virtue. We value the cardinal virtues of
prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance as much as ever (though our understanding of
what these virtues require has changed in some ways).
We also continue to value kindness, though Catholic teaching regards kindness as a
theological virtue. True, as religious adherence has declined, some have joined the cult of
Ayn Rand. But a culture of charity flourishes among secular people. Witness the growth of the
effective altruism movement.
The only traditional Christian virtues that are now widely rejected are those specifically
concerning religious belief and those that concerned sexual morality. Even if you think that
sexual purity is a virtue (I don't), regarding it as among the most important virtues has
never been reasonable.
As another writer somewhere wrote on the topic of Deneen's book (or perhaps it was a quote
from the book itself, I don't remember), liberalism has until now been surviving by spending
down the store of accumulated moral norms and civic mindedness that it inherited from its
pre-modern progenitors. But since it cannot replenish those stores, it is essentially
starving itself of that which it needs to survive. Eventually we (the people) will forget
those things, and as norms break down and social trust diminishes toward the point of
anarchy, we will beg for the state to step in and protect us from our fellow citizens. And
that is when liberalism will give way to authoritarianism in what I'm sure will be an irony
appreciated by almost no one when it actually happens.
I'm afraid our gracious host has affirmed David Brooks in the substance of Rod's stated
disagreement. The Judeo-Christian moral order is as good as any moral order, and better than
most in significant aspects. Its probably not the only one that would work, but if liberalism
is a secular version of Christianity, then Brooks is right.
As a critic of liberalism from the left, but a sadder and wiser adherent of constitutional
liberty after flirting in theory with Bolshevism, I think the word "liberal" is overplayed
here. Liberalism is a political expression of laissez-faire capitalism. The concept of
individual liberty, and the concept of ordered liberty, are not the exclusive province of
liberalism.
Colonel Bogey provides a modest case in point. He is an advocate of the divine right of
kings and monarchical superiority to any parliament the king may deign to authorize although
he comfortably enjoys the privileges of living in a federal republic that prohibits any
hereditary nobility. Colonel Bogey is no liberal, yet he is an enemy of the most viable
alternatives to liberalism.
Embedded within liberalism the the emancipation of the self from constraint. How do you
maintain tradition in such a culture?
The murderer is unregulated capitalism a la Ronald Reagan, just as Reagan was the murderer
of the Savings and Loans, a true Mr. Potter. If the only virtue is getting rich at the
expense of the general community, and only a few make it, what do faith, family, and
tradition have to do with it? Now if the union hall was a center of social life, not only for
you but for your entire family, and solidarity was woven into the fabric of your life, things
might be different.
Only certain selves are liberated from restraint by liberalism. It also, historically
speaking, involves the subordination of the employee to the employer, and the consumer to the
purveyor of shoddy goods at exorbitant prices. Which has a morally degrading effect on both
the dominant and the oppressed classes. The faux-left dismissal of the "working class," or to
indulge a politically correct euphemism, the "white working class," is just another variant
on the traditional class distinctions in liberalism.
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of
meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
Nothing wrong with that statement, per se. The problem is overlooking that "one's own
concept" is not binding on anyone else, nor does a law of general application have to bend
and twist to accommodate each and every "own concept" every individual may have. Which is why
Lawrence was valid, Windsor plausible and Obergefell a terribly sloppy
application of generally valid constitutional principles.
The problem with Brooks is that he fails to realize that the things he treasures -- personal
virtue, community, self-restraint, temperance and so on -- are not actually creations of
liberalism, nor are they necessary products of it. To a large degree these came from the
pre-existing culture(s) that came to the US before the founding from non-liberal societies.
Included among these was, of course, Christianity as a prominent influence on values,
virtues, community and so on. Liberalism was draped over this, but it doesn't create this,
and none of this is inherent in liberalism. The liberal system in America has "free ridden"
on these inherited aspects, which stem from non-liberal sources, for pretty much the entire
history of the country. But they didn't come from liberalism.
The very things that Brooks values the most do not themselves come from liberalism, and it
is far from clear, particularly as Western liberalism reaches its particularly
illiberal/hegemonic phase culturally, actively seeking to strictly limit the permitted
influence of these things which glued the society together for most of our history but did
not stem from liberalism itself, that liberalism is the best system in which to preserve or
even practice these things moving forward. I think a part of Brooks's brain senses this, but
he is so committed to liberalism -- or at least so fearful of potential alternatives -- that
although he sees the problem (much of his column writing bemoans the loss of these things,
really), he can't really bring himself to see that liberalism is fundamentally indifferent as
to whether the things that David Brooks so cherishes fade into the mists of history
completely, so long as the absolute prioritization of individual freedom of action remains
paramount.
It's unfortunate, really, because it makes a lot of what he writes rather painful to read,
sadly.
The problem with the article is that the author mixed liberalism and neoliberalism:
Liberalism and neoliberalism are quite opposite ideologies. Liberalism is closer to the
now abandoned New Deal capitalism, then to neoliberalism
Moreover, Neoliberalism has nothing to do with Christianity. It is, in essence, a
Satan-worshiping cult ("greed is good"), as it rejects Christian morality. And due to that,
the notion that the USA is Christian country is false if we are talking about the elite. The
US neoliberal elite abandoned the Christianity. In total. Just look at Podesta and other
miscreants.
The fact that neoliberalism is dominant in the USA and Western Europe suggests that we can
talk about persecution of Christians under neoliberalism. Inflicting on them the epidemic of
narco-addiction, alcoholism, and conscious efforts at destruction of family ties.
The problem with Brendan is that he fails to realize that the things he treasures -- personal
virtue, community, self-restraint, temperance and so on -- are not actually creations of any
specific ideology exclusively, but have some creedence in many ideologies, religions,
cultures, and political formations, although in larger or smaller doses, and making different
appearances relative to the over-all social fabric.
Brendan and Brooks have in common a rather expansive notion of liberalism. Nobody who took
a close look could call Calvin or Luther or even Muenzer or Zwingli "liberals." I'm not sure
one could with credibility call Ethan Allen a liberal either. John Adams? Maybe kinda sorta.
John D. Rockefeller was a liberal. There was a political faction called the Liberal
Republicans, and I credit them with the title.
If we are talking about the strain of Enlightenment thinking that values each human
individual as a unique person, not merely as a useful tool, acolyte, or retainer, defined by
their utility to a master, I think that's much more enduring a principle than "liberalism." I
also consider the notion of constitutional government in which certain precepts are set forth
as not quite indispensible, but setting the bar for changing them very high, while allocating
power for those matters suitable for discretion by government, that's a much bigger deal than
"liberalism" too.
Are these crumbling? Sometimes but largely through ignorance. They can be affirmed. And I
will continue to affirm them in the face of moralistic pessimists like Deneen. Hmmm, I may be
on the very of a new label moralistic pessimistic theism?
Adamant: who are you to call anyone insane?
What do you know about the morality, or the behavior, of the 53gender crowd? Or any of the
other 'subhumans' who cause you to fleck spittle on yr keypad?
I don't know much about silicon valley peeps, and i tend to assume the worst. But i don't
know them.
College students are their own special flavor of hell.
I'm from the south, almost 50 now. I've got a Christian wing of my extended family, plus
lots of lefty eggheads and hellraisers in the tribe. I'd say the incidence of infidelity,
drug abuse, cruelty, deceit, kindness, selflessness, wisdom and compassion is not greater in
one camp than the other. Doubt that my experience is unique.
What can the [neo]liberal culture brag about? Tolerance? No. [Neo]liberals on campus and also
everywhere, do not tolerate free speech for their conservative fellow citizens. Promoting
social peace? No. [neo]liberals promote racial conflict by labeling anyone disagreeing with
their political positions without any real proof racist, especially if the person happens to
be a white male. Do progressives/ [neo]liberals promote responsible individual behavior to
advance the common good? No. [neo]liberals advocate all manner of substance abuse contrary to
applicable state and federal laws.
[Neo]liberals or progressives, if you will, succeeded to foist on the rest of us a brand
of gender ideology thereby creating real social and economic hardships for society at large.
The resulting cultural landscape is reminiscent of descriptions of mental institutions in the
middle ages where the sick were chained, beaten, and driven further out of control by the
staff put in charge to govern the hapless inmates.
Anyway, that is how it looks to me. Iranian theocracy with all its peculiar features has
nothing over what we are going to face in 5 years or less if the current disordered cultural
trend continues without major modifications. American democracy is now on life support. One
miss-step and it will expire.
Secular Humanism provides the necessary moral framework for Western Culture. People don't
need to delude themselves with Christianity to not fall into Nihilism as The author
implicitly suggests. The problem is Christians and atheists alike have been possessed by the
Ideological ghost called Cultural Marxism.
"Since there's no liberty but the liberty to do good, at the heart of liberty is the duty to
form one's conscience(*) to the truthful discernment of good and evil"
"If prudence and temperance are synonyms for modesty and self-restraint – the rising
generation of Americans has utterly abandoned these values."
They are not synonyms. Prudence is appropriate concern for the future. It has nothing to
so with modesty. Temperance has to do with appropriate self-restraint. It is not
temperate to constrain oneself in a way that causes oneself senseless suffering. That is what
some conservatives are asking people who don't fit into traditional gender categories to
do.
"... Come on dude. I mean, I really like your stuff, but get with the times -- the U.S. is "owned" whole and complete. At the risk of repeating thy self; They've got a giant segment of the population duped into believing they live in a democracy, and some of them are just dumb enough to waste their time voting. ..."
"... America is like a religion -- you are required to "believe", because the reality is absent of any kind of deity. ..."
"... If only, Americans could get the kind of understanding of how the owners think of them -- contemptuous at best -- needed for certain tasks, but expendable if required -- basically, not well liked. Akin to a dirty, smelly employee that keeps showing up as not to get fired. ..."
to finally restore the sovereignty of the US to the people of the US
Come on dude. I mean, I really like your stuff, but get with the times -- the U.S. is
"owned" whole and complete. At the risk of repeating thy self; They've got a giant segment of
the population duped into believing they live in a democracy, and some of them are just dumb
enough to waste their time voting.
The owners throw the elected(owned prostitutes) officials a bone now and then, but that's
all they get. If there ever was a corporate house negro, Obama, and the rest of them are it,
and Trump has had his dumb ass neoconed from day one.
America is like a religion -- you are required to "believe", because the reality is
absent of any kind of deity.
If only, Americans could get the kind of understanding of how the owners think of them --
contemptuous at best -- needed for certain tasks, but expendable if required -- basically,
not well liked. Akin to a dirty, smelly employee that keeps showing up as not to get
fired.
Democracy in crisis? What democracy? There has not been a democracy for quite
some time. Matter of fact it turned into a corporate oligarchy ruled by them, Wall Street and
the Pentagon and not to forget Israel.
If Trump is messing with this so called democracy so be it. He is the bull walking through
the delicate china closet the shadow rulers have set up for a long time. He smashes most of all
those delicate dishes who really did not help the regular people at all. They were just there
on display as teasers. Well Trump is smashing things left and right. "Racism" is being so
overdone that it is becoming ridiculous and that real racism is still being hidden. Don't know
about Bannon, never cared or paid much attention to him nor Breitbart news.
But believe me democracy is not in crisis because of Trump. There had to be a real democracy
to begin with in order to be in crisis. What's in crisis is the two party system, the
oligarchy, the false prophets, the media and the exceptionalism of the USA. All good things to
have a crisis over and change things towards a new awakening.
● Republicans are top 25% of society who own 75% of wealth. ● Democrats are educated middle-class who own 25% of wealth. ● Working-poor are uneducated bottom 50% who refuse to vote until they stop getting shit
upon. see more
That is true if the election really reflected the will of the American people. But do our
elections do that?
Although we have all been indoctrinated into believing that we have the best democracy in
the world, do our elections really reflect what the people want? Even if we believe
the counting of votes to be accurate , we know that
many citizens are denied their right to vote by manipulation of the voting rolls, voter
intimidation, or the engineering of long lines.
But even if these issues are ignored, there is
the two-party system that makes it so easy for big money and in particular big media to
ensure that we do not get to choose from candidates that we would really want. A good step in
moving toward a multi-party system would be to adopt
some voting system that would encourage a multi-party system.
Democracy in America? We should work to give it a try.
It's a good point. You figure that, at best, maybe 60 or 70 per cent of voters
actually participate in an election. Then, out of that, it takes only 50%+1 to win. That means
that a seat can be won with as little as perhaps 35% of all voters casting ballots.
However, first-past-the-post vote calculations are not an absolute impediment to winning
elections. In Seattle, there is a socialist on the city council. In Minneapolis, another
socialist came extremely close to a win there also. And the example of Canada's CCF/NDP cannot
be ignored. All of these examples are in the context of first-past-the-post.
Now, I am firmly in favor of RCV. But we will probably only get RCV once the American Left
gets itself to a position of power where it can make that kind of reform reality. The duopoly
powers will not concede this to us gleefully, unless they see an opportunity to benefit from it
somehow, such as gaming the system somehow (maybe setting off competition on the Left to ensure
a win for the Right during a prolonged period of Rightwing solidarity as sometimes happens...
like right now). I urge people to learn about the rise of the NDP even if they do not believe
it to be a legitimate Left party (and there is plenty to support the impression that it has
drifted to the center, sadly). I urge people to closely and carefully the Sawant win in
Seattle. We can learn from these historical lessons.
We could be winning far more often and deeply if we just had something like RCV, like
Proportional Representation (PR). But we don't. And the fact we don't have them should be that
much more fuel for ignition. We must start winning. I always suggest starting at the bottom,
not the top, where the Left could make inroads far more easily than attempting heroic battles
with the duopoly at the highest levels of government. Over time, our presence would strengthen
and our local efforts would weave a strong fabric of regional and maybe federal parties.
Getting depressed by the unfairness of the electoral college should move us in efforts to
abolish it (and that is happening, btw). But at the same time, it should not be discouraging us
from doing sensible things, like organizing local campaigns, taking over city halls, disrupting
city planning departments and planning committees, and beginning to build what will one day
become a national presence.
Yes, we should definitely give democracy a try. And we could be trying, mostly, at the local
level with an eye toward eventual coalescence into more regional bodies of power. It has
been done, and we would be wise to examine thoroughly how it was done and how we could improve
that process.
Bannon's "far right Leninism" does not read well the first time, or the
second time, or as many times as I read and re-read that phrase. I wish writers for the Left
press would take the time to carefully proofread their own work before posting.
Yeah, I think I get what the author meant , but maybe it would have read more easily
if it had been written something like "the Bannon version of authoritarianism" (or whatever it
is the author precisely meant). It would have been clearer and not have appeared to conflate a
rather Leftish ideology with some form of RW extremism.
"... The central fact of US political economy, the source of our exceptionalism, is that lower-income whites vote for politicians who redistribute income upward and weaken the safety net because they think the welfare state is for nonwhites. ..."
"... And by voting against its own interests, the white working class isn't just making itself poorer, it's literally killing itself. ..."
"... With some slight variations, Krugman was essentially re-stating the thesis of my 2004 book, What's the Matter With Kansas?, in which I declared on the very first page that working people "getting their fundamental interests wrong" by voting for conservatives was "the bedrock of our civic order; it is the foundation on which all else rests". ..."
On New Year's Day, the economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman issued a series of
tweets in which he proclaimed as follows:
The central fact of US political economy, the source of our exceptionalism, is that lower-income whites vote for politicians
who redistribute income upward and weaken the safety net because they think the welfare state is for nonwhites.
and then, a few minutes later:
And by voting against its own interests, the white working class isn't just making itself poorer, it's literally killing itself.
Was I psyched to see this! With some slight variations, Krugman was essentially re-stating the thesis of my 2004 book, What's
the Matter With Kansas?, in which I declared on the very first page that working people "getting their fundamental interests wrong"
by voting for conservatives was "the bedrock of our civic order; it is the foundation on which all else rests".
... ... ...
Let me be more explicit. We have just come through an election in which underestimating working-class conservatism in northern
states proved catastrophic for Democrats. Did the pundits' repeated insistence that white working-class voters in the north were
reliable Democrats play any part in this underestimation? Did the message Krugman and his colleagues hammered home for years help
to distract their followers from the basic strategy of Trump_vs_deep_state?
I ask because getting that point wrong was kind of a big deal in 2016. It was a blunder from which it will take the Democratic
party years to recover. And we need to get to the bottom of it.
"... Neocon power in Big Government is directly connected to neocon media access and neocon media visibility. This is why 'experts' such as Boot, Kristol, Weinstein, Cohen, Stephens, Glasser, Podhoretz, Dubowitz, etc., are not only never stepping down from their appointed roles as high media priests–they're actually failing their way into positions of tenure and (undue) respectability. ..."
"... Under any other circumstance, their bulletproof status would defy logic. But because of Israel's unique place in American life, this makes perfect–though astonishing–sense. This above list of scoundrels may resemble the guest list of a Jewish wedding, but this ongoing affair will produce no honeymoon. These operatives function as soft double agents. Their devious mission is to justify US war(s) of aggression that benefit Israel. ..."
"... More subversion and more conflict. This explains why Pres. Trump has reversed course. He's caved. Once elected, Trump decided to would be suicide to try to frustrate the Israeli Lobby. So he cucked his Presidency and dumped several major campaign pledges. ..."
"... Candidate Trump also stated: "I don't want your [Jewish] money" to an auditorium full of wealthy Jews. Well, that's changed too. Pres. Trump is now surrounded by wealthy and powerful Israeli-firsters now, including mega-billionaire, Sheldon Adelson, who ended up feeding the Trump campaign untold millions. Sadly, Trump has totally rolled over for the Israelis. ..."
"... Regarding Israel, Washington will foot their war bill, supply the arms, lend diplomatic cover and even wage war on their behalf. No country in the world receives this kind of treatment. And no country in the world deserves it. ..."
"... Ironically, US security would be improved if we simply minded our own business and did nothing in the Middle East besides pursue normal and peaceful trade policies. But that's not to be. ..."
"... America's 'special relationship' with you-know-who is the quintessential red line that no establishment figure will cross. And those who do cross that line tend to fade rapidly into oblivion. This phenomena has not gone unnoticed. ..."
"... When you control the media, you control the message. That message is that America just has to keep busting up nations for the glory of Apartheid Israel. ..."
"... Much is said about "we dumb Americans." We are not all that dumb – but we are 100% misinformed. Propaganda works. It is a fact that the human mind is susceptible to repeated lies. (It is also true, that people hate being lied too.) ..."
"... The whole US media scene can be summed up as "don't believe their pack of lies. Believe my pack of lies"! ..."
Neocon power in Big Government is directly connected to neocon media access and neocon media
visibility. This is why 'experts' such as Boot, Kristol, Weinstein, Cohen, Stephens, Glasser,
Podhoretz, Dubowitz, etc., are not only never stepping down from their appointed roles as
high media priests–they're actually failing their way into positions of tenure and
(undue) respectability.
Under any other circumstance, their bulletproof status would defy logic. But because of
Israel's unique place in American life, this makes perfect–though
astonishing–sense. This above list of scoundrels may resemble the guest list of a
Jewish wedding, but this ongoing affair will produce no honeymoon. These operatives function
as soft double agents. Their devious mission is to justify US war(s) of aggression that
benefit Israel.
Being a successful neocon doesn't require being right. Not at all. It's all about sending
the right message. Over and over. Evidence be damned. The neocon mission is not about
journalism. It's about advancing the cause: Mideast disruption and a secure Jewish state.
More importantly, Washington's impenetrable array of Zio-centric PACs, money-handlers,
bundlers, fund-raisers, and billionaires want these crypto-Israeli pundits right where they
are–on TV or in the your local newspaper–telling Americans how to feel and what
to think. And Big Media–which happens to be in bed with these same powerful
forces–needs these Zions in place to not only justify the latest Mideast confrontation,
but even ones being planned. It's one big happy effort at group-think, mass deception, and
military conquest. Unfortunately, it's not being presented that way.
So what lies ahead?
More subversion and more conflict. This explains why Pres. Trump has reversed course. He's
caved. Once elected, Trump decided to would be suicide to try to frustrate the Israeli Lobby.
So he cucked his Presidency and dumped several major campaign pledges.
The first to go was his pledge to normalize US-Russian relations ('make peace' with
Russia) and after that 2) avoid unnecessary wars abroad. That's was a huge reversal. But
Trump did it and few pundits have scolded him for it. The fix is in.
Candidate Trump also stated: "I don't want your [Jewish] money" to an auditorium full of
wealthy Jews. Well, that's changed too. Pres. Trump is now surrounded by wealthy and powerful
Israeli-firsters now, including mega-billionaire, Sheldon Adelson, who ended up feeding the
Trump campaign untold millions. Sadly, Trump has totally rolled over for the Israelis.
So Trump (the President) now sees things differently. Very differently. When it comes to
the Middle East, Trump has been Hillary-ized. This means there's no light between what Israel
desires and what Washington is willing to deliver. The hyper-wealthy, super cohesive,
extraordinarily well-positioned and diabolically cleaver Israeli lobby has Trump over a
barrel. Shocking, yes. But true.
So watch Israel's roughshod expansion continue, along with the typically meek and
accommodating responses from Washington.
Regarding Israel, Washington will foot their war bill, supply the arms, lend diplomatic
cover and even wage war on their behalf. No country in the world receives this kind of
treatment. And no country in the world deserves it.
What's worse, our 'independent' MSM will be there to sanitize Washington's pro-Israel
shenanigans and basically cheer the whole bloody process on. This is where the Zio-punditry
of Kristol, Cohen, Stephens, Dubowitz, and Co. come in. They soothe the nervous nellies as
they gently justify the death and destruction that come with these military strikes. Media
tactics include:
Don't count enemy war dead. Don't count civilian war dead. Don't count displaced refugees.
Don't connect Europe's immigration crisis to Zio-Washington's destruction of Iraq, Libya and
Syria.
At the same time: Always praise Israeli 'restraint'. Always refer to Israel as a
'democracy'. Sneer and jeer the 'terrorist' Republic of Iran. Treat every Mideast warlord or
rebellion as if it threatens the sanctity of Disneyland or even the next Superbowl. Oh
my!
It's a slick, highly-coordinated, and very manipulative affair. But the magic is working.
Americans are being fooled.
Ironically, US security would be improved if we simply minded our own business and did
nothing in the Middle East besides pursue normal and peaceful trade policies. But that's not
to be.
The reason for this phenomena is that Washington's major PACs, syndicates, heavy hitters,
influence peddlers, oligarchs, and Big Money handlers (and who also have their clutches on
our corrupt MSM) want more Mideast disruption.
Why? Israeli 'security'. Israeli 'survival'. Considering Israel's extraordinary military power, this might seem silly. But this is what
the entrenched Israeli lobby desires. And both Parties are listening. To make matters worse, how one 'thinks' and 'talks' about Israel has unacknowledged
limitations and restrictions in Big Washington as well as Big Media.
Diversity of opinion stops at Israel's doorstep. Like it or not, Zionist Israel is the
Third Rail of American discourse. Watch what you say. Even the typically rancorous disputes
between Democrats and Republicans gets warm and fuzzy when Israel's 'special place' in
American life is raised. America's 'special relationship' with you-know-who is the
quintessential red line that no establishment figure will cross. And those who do cross that
line tend to fade rapidly into oblivion. This phenomena has not gone unnoticed.
So America is stuck with pro-Israel speech codes and a militantly pro-Zionist foreign
policy that has caused immense cost, dislocation, suffering and destruction. It's been
designed that way. And 'outsider' Trump is stuck with it. Few dare examine it.
Here's the short list of Israel's primary Enemies. Significantly, these are the countries
that also get the worst press in American media:
The (anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian) Republic of Iran.
Syria, which still claims land (Golan Heights) stolen by Israel in 1967.
Lebanon (where Hezbollah roams)
Palestine (will they never give up?)
Russia (allied with Iran and Assad's Syria)
N. Korea is even a player here. Iran and N. Korea have allegedly shared nuclear
technology. This infuriates nuclear Israel.
So the Israel angle in this picture is huge. Overwhelmingly so. This is where the
oligarchs, media lords, and corrupt journalists come together.
Thus, Israel's tenured Hasbara brigade in US media will remain firmly in place.
The local DC 'conservative' radio station has Bolton as a guest all the time. Same old neocon
crap that we don't want any more. Bolton had his day 15 years ago and he sucked then; yet,
they keep bringing him on, slobbering all over him ("Ambassador Bolton"), and letting him
blather about blowing up everyone. I still see a lot of online comments about how people
would love to have John Bolton as our ambassador to the UN. Good grief wise up people.
'Stephens' article, entitled Finding the Way Forward on Iran sparkles with throwaway gems
like "Tehran's hyperaggressive foreign policy in the wake of the 2015 nuclear deal" and "Real
democracies don't live in fear of their own people" and even "it's not too soon to start
rethinking the way we think about Iran." Or try "A better way of describing Iran's
dictatorship is as a kleptotheocracy, driven by impulses that are by turns doctrinal and
venal."'
Hmmmmm . I can immediately think of another nation to which those strictures are far more
applicable.
"Hyperaggressive foreign policy"
"Kleptocracy"
Sounds more like the USA, doesn't it?
As for "Real democracies don't live in fear of their own people", that's a real home
run.
1. The USA is not, never has been, never will be, and was never meant to be "a real
democracy". (Except by unrealistic visionaries like Jefferson).
When you control the media, you control the message. That message is that America just has to
keep busting up nations for the glory of Apartheid Israel.
From an April 2003 Haaretz article:
The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them
Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. Two of them,
journalists William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, say it's possible.
This is a war of an elite. [Tom] Friedman laughs: I could give you the names of 25
people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if
you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have
happened.
If this insanity keeps up, America will either be destroyed by financial collapse from
waging all these wars or we'll stumble into WW III and the last thing we'll see is a mushroom
cloud.
Former Brit PM Tony Blair at the Chilcot inquiry:
What role did Israel play in the run-up to the Iraq war?
"As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going
to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue
at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations
that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major
part of all this."
"Whether print, air, or both the Neocons want to be players. They have the friends in high
–media– places to do it."
– They, neocons, are devoid of dignity. This explains why none of them feels any
responsibility for the mass slaughter in the Middle East -- picture Madeleine Albright near
thousands of tiny corpses of Iraqi children or the piggish Kristol next to the bloody bags
with shredded Syrian children. They are psychopaths, the profiteering psychopaths. There is
no other way to deal with neo/ziocons but through long-term incarceration.
My fine tuning of this excellent article begins, and perhaps ends, with this quote: "The fact
is that Iran is being targeted because Israel sees it as its prime enemy in the region and
has corrupted many "opinion makers" in the U.S., to include Stephens, to hammer home that
point."
The 'corruption' is not recent and is not about any one issue or series of issues. It
springs from Deep Culture. It is part of the WASP worldview.
WASP culture is the direct product of Anglo-Saxon Puritanism, which was a Judaizing
heresy. Judaizing heresy always produces culture and politics that are pro-Jewish,
pro-Semitic.
At least by the beginning of the Victorian era, virtually 100% of British Empire Elites
were hardcore pro-Semitic. Most were pro-Jewish, but a large and growing minority were
pro-Arabic and pro-Islamic.
The Saudis are Arabic. The Iranians are NOT Arabic; Iranians are Indo-European.
Siding with both wings of Semitic culture – Jewish and Arabic/Islamic –
against an Indo-European people is exactly what WASP cultural Elites will do. It is roughly
analogous to Oliver Cromwell allying with Jews to wage war against the vast majority of
natives of the British Isles.
Excellent piece. I'd just like to add that Stephens' op-ed in the NYT ought to be view like
Judith Miller's misleading articles about aluminum-tubes-for-nuclear-centrifuges which
appeared in the Times during the run up to the Iraq war: Preparation of the Times' readership
for yet another war in the middle east, this time against Iran.
Ron Unz is another courageous man. I wish and pray to God, that people like Ron Unz,
Philip M. Giraldi, Paul Craig Roberts, Saker and their likes to move away from FAKE NEWS too,
and tell us the TRUTH.
Evil can be fought only with TRUTH ..
Your idea about an article on political Islam by either Ron Unz or Philip M. Giraldi is an
excellent idea, and I am willing to help provided we keep away from sectarianism and stick to
TRUTH. The war the First Caliph abu Bakr which he fought with Yemen's Muslims within six
months of Prophet's demise is very important to show how the rights given by Prophet Mohammad
(saws) were taken away as soon as his demise. Our aim should be to shine the light on the
Prophet. This is what Yemen's war did, just to start with:
1. Prophet did away with excommuniting someone from the fold as he saw a very powerful
tool in the hands of Rabbis and Preacher. Who gave them the right to remove someone from
Synagogue or Church.
2. So abu Bakr came up with much stronger tool, he called all the Yemeni Muslims en masses as
apostate.
3. Brought back the slavery.
4. Claimed that he the Caliph abu Bakr was appointed by Will of Allah through
predestination.
5. Thus, the ideology of ISIS calling everyone kafir, kafir, kafir .. and chopping their
heads.
6. Used Islam as a disguise to bring other countries in to the fold for power and mammon
(money), thus bring Islam by Sword.
The list is extensive and I can go on and on. The divide / confuse / rule was used against
the Muslims.
The objective of the article should be to bring TRUTH about the Prophet.
Don't lose heart, Mark Green. There is a very good chance that Trump is actually with you,
and that he's winning. He cannot afford to be straight at all. His strategy is to take up
highly charged strands of the dominant discourse and to short circuit them. A strong play of
a weak hand. He's run with the demands of Adelson, Netanyahu and Kushner regarding Jerusalem
and other maximal Israeli demands. It's all in response to the worst Jews. The result is that
Shias are united with Sunnis, Hamas with PLO, Iran with Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The whole
world against America, Israel and some specks of guano. The Iran caper is the same. The
Pakistan caper even better. Trump gives the military a free hand to show what they can do in
Afghanistan. Then he blows his twitter top to insult Pakistan so there will no longer be a
land route. He's doing his damndest and always failing. What a clueless asshole. Yet every
failure is undoing the empire, and leading to a one-state resolution in Palestine.
That's just the foreign policy part.
By the time he's finished there will be no Democrat party left as we know it, and the GOP
will be transformed as well.
There will be no more Fed. No more debt based currency. A paid off national debt.
And there will be single payer medical coverage.
God willing.
That was a great summary of our foreign policy situation, Mr. Giraldi. You have a lot of guts
to write out all the truth that you see, as you have in all of the articles of yours I've
read on unz.
I really liked this line, too:
To be sure, Iran is a very corrupt place run by people who should not be running a
hot dog stand, but the same applies to the United States and Israel .
I have one question for you, Phil, and this is not hypothetical or snarky – just
looking for your opinion: What do you think the neocons' attitude about the Orient is? I
realize that China is on the road to kicking our ass economically , but
that's the "war" we need to fight, not a military war. Then, there's N. Korea, which, in my
opinion, is none of our business. Rest of the question – Trump seems to get sucked into
the standard invade-the-world mode in the Far East also – do you think that is
neocon-inspired, and, since that part of the world is no threat to Israel, if so, why? Would
they possibly be masking their intentions by expanding the range of their invade-the-world
program?
I don't usually read that filthy rag other than to skim the headlines, but this was just
so bizarre, I couldn't resist. Brooks seems to admit that they (Jewish neocons/Bolsheviks)
are losing the battle to take down Trump. He openly criticizes the media for being so obvious
and self-discrediting.
Is this a total retreat for the neocons / Bolsheviks? Or is Brooks merely rallying the
troops? Or simply a desperate attempt to regain credibility by telling the truth, for a
change?
Or maybe he is preemptively refuting Mr. Giraldi's premise in this piece, a semi-novel
tactic one might call Jewish Preemptive Vengeance getting even BEFORE the fact?
Do some research, Israel and the U.S. deep state blew up 7 buildings at the WTC on 911 and
blew up a section of the pentagram, the Saudis were the patsys , and as corrupt and evil as
the Saudis are they had on part in it.
The Zionist neocons did 911 to set the Mideast wars in motion, do some research, hell
every thinking American knows Israel did it.
Mr. Giraldi has gone after the real power center in America – the Jew controlled US
media. Much is said about "we dumb Americans." We are not all that dumb – but we are 100%
misinformed. Propaganda works. It is a fact that the human mind is susceptible to repeated
lies. (It is also true, that people hate being lied too.)
Much is said about "Christian Zionists." Why is it, that NO Christian broadcast media
tells the truth about Palestinian suffering? Of course, it is because of Jew media control.
If Christian stations were to tell the truth, there would be a lot less Christian Zionists
– they would be a small segment of Christianity.
Thanks to Mr. Giraldi and others on the internet – more and more people are
listening and learning and getting mad. A base is building. Truth will out!
The more the psychotic control freaks
publically expose themselves, what with social media, the internet, and disenchanted leakers
in their own group the more of humanity wakes up to a great sense of absolute disgust in
them. We, humanity, are gradually winning and the disgusting pyschopaths are losing.
Does Mr Giraldi really expect us to believe that the US internet is any better than the media
outlets he criticizes? The whole US media scene can be summed up as "don't believe their pack
of lies. Believe my pack of lies"!
"Controlling the narrative" is politically correct term for censorship.
Notable quotes:
"... I suspect most of the people who write all that furious invective on the Internet, professional polemicists and semiliterate commenters alike, are lashing out because they've been hurt -- their sense of fairness or decency has been outraged, or they feel personally wounded or threatened. ..."
"... "controlling the narrative" by neoliberal MSM is the key of facilitating the neoliberal "groupthink". Much like was in the USSR with "communist" groupthink. This is a step in the direction of the theocratic society (which the USSR definitely was). ..."
"... In other words "controlling the narrative" is the major form of neoliberal MSM "war on reality" as the neoliberal ideology is now completely discredited and can be sustained only by cult-style methods. ..."
Maybe this is the same kind of clinical detachment doctors have to cultivate, a way of distancing oneself from the subject,
protecting yourself against a crippling empathy. I won't say that writers or artists are more sensitive than other people, but
it may be that they're less able to handle their own emotions.
It may be that art, like drugs, is a way of dulling or controlling pain. Eloquently articulating a feeling is one way to avoid
actually experiencing it.
Words are only symbols, noises or marks on paper, and turning the messy, ugly stuff of life into language renders it inert
and manageable for the author, even as it intensifies it for the reader.
It's a nerdy, sensitive kid's way of turning suffering into something safely abstract, an object of contemplation.
I suspect most of the people who write all that furious invective on the Internet, professional polemicists and semiliterate
commenters alike, are lashing out because they've been hurt -- their sense of fairness or decency has been outraged, or
they feel personally wounded or threatened.
"controlling the narrative" by neoliberal MSM is the key of facilitating the neoliberal "groupthink". Much like was in the
USSR with "communist" groupthink. This is a step in the direction of the theocratic society (which the USSR definitely was).
In other words "controlling the narrative" is the major form of neoliberal MSM "war on reality" as the neoliberal ideology
is now completely discredited and can be sustained only by cult-style methods.
They want to invoke your emotions in the necessary direction and those emotions serve as a powerful filter, a firewall which
will prevents you from seeing any alternative facts which taken as whole form an "alternative narrative".
It also creates certain taboo, such as "don't publish anything from RT", or you automatically become "Putin's stooge." But
some incoherent blabbing of a crazy neocon in Boston Globe is OK.
This is an old and a very dirty game, a variation of method used for centuries by high demand cults:
"Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best
that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece.
Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany.
That is understood.
But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people
along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell
them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works
the same way in any country."
– Hermann Goering (as told to Gustav Gilbert during the Nuremberg trials)
You need to be able to decipher this "suggested" set of emotions and detach it from the set of facts provided by neoliberal
MSM. It might help to view things "Sine ira et studio" (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_ira_et_studio
)
That helps to destroy the official neoliberal narrative.
Here skepticism (whether natural or acquired) can be of great help in fighting groupthink pushed by neoliberal MSM.
We are all guilty of this one sidedness, but I think that we need to put some efforts to move in direction of higher level
of skepticism toward our own views and probably provide at least links to alternative views.
"... By lan Cibils and Mariano Arana, Political Economy Department, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Originally published at Triple Crisis ..."
"... desendeudamiento ..."
"... desendedudamiento ..."
"... Source: Ministry of Finance, Argentina. ..."
"... World Economic Outlook ..."
"... The grand history of Latin America: borrow billions of $$$ from U.S. banks, hand the money to the wealthy who immediately deposit it right back in American banks, and let the poor pay back the principal and interest. Hmmm . seems more and more the way this country is going. ..."
"... Brazil's recent neoliberal turn was frustrating for a variety of reasons, but being a big, diverse economy, they've got more sovereignty than their neighbors. However, the business and political elites in Brazil decided to hammer through austerity (spending cuts and interest rate hikes) because they WANTED to, not because external forces made them do it. ..."
Selling Out
Argentina's Future -- Again Posted on January 5, 2018 by
Yves Smith Yves
here. While you were busy watching Trump and the Middle East, and maybe Brexit and China once
in a while, some supposed neoliberal success stories are likely to be anything but that.
By lan Cibils and Mariano Arana, Political Economy Department, Universidad Nacional de
General Sarmiento, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Originally published at Triple Crisis
In Argentina's 2015 presidential run-off election, the neoliberal right-wing coalition
"Cambiemos" (literally, "lets change"), headed by Mauricio Macri, defeated the populist
Kirchnerista candidate by just two percentage points. Macri's triumph heralded a return to the
neoliberal policies of the 1990s and ended twelve years of heterodox economic policies that
prioritized income redistribution and the internal market. The ruling coalition also performed
well in the October 2017 mid-term elections and has since begun implementing a draconian set of
fiscal, labor, and social security reforms.
One of the hallmarks of the Cambiemos government so far has been a fast and furious return
to international credit markets and a very substantial increase in new public debt. Indeed,
since Macri came to power in 2015, Argentina has issued debt worth more than $100 billion. This
marks a clear contrast to the Kirchner administrations, during which the emphasis was debt
reduction.
The Kirchner Years: Debt Reduction?
Both Néstor and Cristina Kirchner pointed to desendeudamiento -- debt
reduction -- as one of the great successes of their administrations. To what extent was debt
reduced during the twelve years of Kirchnerismo?
Figure 1 shows the evolution of Argentina's public debt stock and the debt/GDP ratio between
2004-2017. One can see that there was a substantial reduction in the debt to GDP ratio between
2004-2011 -- the first two Kirchner terms -- due primarily to: a) the 2005 and 2010 debt
restructuring offers, b) a deliberate policy of desendedudamiento (debt cancellation),
and c) high growth rates. Indeed, debt/GDP dropped from 118.1% in 2004 to 38.9% in 2011. One
can also see that the actual stock of public debt fell after the 2005 debt restructuring
process, and then remained relatively stable until 2010. In 2011, it began a slow upward trend,
due to the re-appearance of the foreign exchange constraint once the commodity bubble burst and
capital flight increased.
Figure 1: Public Debt Stock (millions of dollars) and Debt/GDP ratio
Source: Ministry of Finance, Argentina.
An additional, fundamental change occurred during the first two Kirchner administrations:
the change in currency composition of Argentina's public debt. Indeed, as Figure 2 shows,
peso-denominated public debt reached 41% of total debt after the 2005 debt-restructuring
process. Between 2005 and 2012 it remained relatively stable, and then, after 2012,
dollar-denominated public debt began to grow again although never reaching pre-2005
debt-restructuring levels. The currency composition change is key, since it reduces
considerably the pressure on the external accounts.
Figure 2: Currency Composition of Argentina's Public Debt (as a % GDP)
Source: Ministry of Finance, Argentina.
Fast and Furious
Since Macri became president in December 2015, there has been a dramatic change in official
public debt strategy, radically reversing the process of debt reduction of the previous decade.
As shown in Figure 1, there was a substantial jump in the stock of public debt in 2016, and it
has continued to grow in 2017.The result to date has been a substantial increase in the stock
of Argentina's dollar-denominated public debt, as well as an increase of the debt service to
GDP ratio. New debt has been used to cover the trade deficit, pay off the vulture funds,
finance capital flight, and meet debt service payments. All of this has resulted in growing
concerns about Argentina's future economic sustainability, not to mention any possibility of
promoting economic development objectives.
Upon taking office, the Macri Administration rapidly implemented a series of policies to
liberalize financial flows and imports, and a 40% devaluation of the Argentine peso. [1] In
this context, it also went on a debt rampage, increasing dollar denominated debt considerably.
Between December 2015 and September 2017, Argentina's new debt amounts to the equivalent of
$103.59 billion. [2] This includes new
debt issued by the Treasury (80%), provincial governments (11%), and the private sector (9%).
While Argentina's debt had been increasing slowly since 2011, the jump experienced in 2016 was
unlike any other in Argentina's history.
If the increase in debt is alarming, the destination of those funds is also cause of
concern. Data from Argentina's Central Bank (Banco Central de la República Argentina or
BCRA) show that during the first eight months of 2017, net foreign asset accumulation of the
private non-banking sector totaled $13.32 million, 33% more than all of 2016, which itself was
17% more than all of 2015. This means that since December 2015, Argentina has dollarized assets
by approximately $25.29 billion.
According to the BCRA, during the same period there was a net outflow of capital due to debt
interest payments, profits and dividends of $8.231 billion. Additionally, the net outflow due
to tourism and travel is calculated at roughly $13.43 billion between December 2015 and August
2017.
In sum, the dramatic increase in dollar-denominated debt during the two first Macri years
served to finance capital flight, tourism, profit remittances, and debt service, all to the
tune of roughly $50 billion.
Where is This Headed?
Argentina's experience since the 1976 military coup until the crash of 2001 has shown how
damaging is the combination of unfavorable external conditions and the destruction of the local
productive structure. The post-crisis policies of the successive Kirchner administrations
reversed the debt-dependent and deindustrializing policies of the preceding decades. However,
since Macri took office in December 2015, Argentina has once again turned to debt-dependent
framework of the 1990s. Not only has public debt grown in absolute terms, but the weight of
dollar-denominated debt in total debt has also increased. Despite significant doubts regarding
the sustainability of the current situation, the government has expressed intentions of
continuing to issue new debt until 2020.
What are the main factors that call debt-sustainability into question? First, capital
flight, which, as we have said above, is increasing, is compensated with new dollar-denominated
public debt. Second, Argentina's trade balance turned negative in 2015 and has remained so
since, with a total accumulated trade deficit between 2015 and the second quarter of 2017 of
$6.53 billion. Import dynamics proved impervious to the 2016 recession, therefore it is
expected that the deficit will either persist as is or increase if there are no drastic
changes. Furthermore, in the 2018 national budget bill sent to Congress, Treasury Secretary
Nicolás Dujovne projects that the growth rate of imports will exceed that of exports
until at least 2021, increasing the current trade deficit by 68%.
Finally, according to the IMF's World Economic Outlook (October 2017), growth rate
projections for industrialized countries increase prospects of a US Federal Reserve interest
rate increase. This would make Argentina's new debt issues more expensive, increasing the
burden of future debt service and increasing capital flight from Argentina (in what is
generally referred to as the "flight to safety").
The factors outlined above generate credible and troublesome doubts about the sustainability
of the economic policies implemented by the Macri administration. While there are no signs of a
major crisis in the short term (that is, before the 2019 presidential elections), there are
good reasons to doubt that the current level of debt accumulation can be sustained to the end
of a potential second Macri term (2023). In other words, there are good reasons to believe that
Argentines will once again have to exercise their well-developed ability to navigate through
yet another profound debt crisis. This is not solely the authors' opinion. In early November
2017 Standard & Poor's placed Argentina in a list of the five most fragile economies.
[3] It looks like,
once again, storm clouds are on the horizon.
'What are the main factors that call debt sustainability into question? First, capital
flight.'
Capital flees Argentina whenever the opportunity arises because successive governments --
whether leftist or conservative -- refuse to control inflation and maintain a stable
currency.
Since 2001, the Argentine peso has slid from one-to-one with the US dollar to about 19 to
the dollar today. With Argentine inflation running in the low to mid twenties (according to
INDEC and Price Stats), the peso can be expected to carry on weakening against the dollar
indefinitely.
A hundred years during which the peso has lopped off thirteen (13) zeros owing to chronic
inflation shows that Argentina is politically and culturally incapable of responsibly
managing its own currency.
Argentines know this. Unfortunately, only the richer ones have assets they can move to
safety outside the country. The hand-to-mouth poor will continue being ravaged by inflation,
not to mention the large quantities of counterfeit pesos in circulation.
Letting Argentines play with fiat currency is like handing out loaded pistols to rowdy
5-year-olds. In both these sad cases, adult supervision is urgently needed.
The grand history of Latin America: borrow billions of $$$ from U.S. banks, hand the
money to the wealthy who immediately deposit it right back in American banks, and let the
poor pay back the principal and interest. Hmmm . seems more and more the way this country is
going.
The fixed exchange rate under Kirchner was totally unsustainable. One difference between
Macri's neoliberalism and his predecessors is Macri is allowing much more of a floating
currency than in the pre 2001 time period (We can debate how much it is actually is floating
and clearly a lot of this debt issuance is for currency stablization that I personally don't
approve of).
I'm not an expert in this at all, but in Peru, you could hold bank accounts in either
national currency or dollars. The national currency accounts spared you currency exchange
fees and also had higher interest rates. Most people who could hedged their bets by putting
money in both accounts.
It seems like a happy medium between abandoning national currencies and letting savers get
ravaged? No?
While not as spectacular of a return as Bitcoin, but impressive nonetheless, the escape
route for an Argentinean @ the turn of the century was the golden rule, an ounce of all that
glitters was 300 pesos then and now around 25,000 pesos, a most excellent 'troy' horse.
So, is austerity good or is austerity bad? And in what conditions?
I'm for expansionary government expense (and direct government ownership of some
industries, such as with an NHS) balanced by taxes on high incomes.
So in my view the problem happens when the government lowers taxes on the rich, as seems
likely in this case.
On the other hand taxes on the rich are likely to cause capital flight.
So why did Macri get elected to do this? Yeah he didn't win by much, but he won.
>The hand-to-mouth poor will continue being ravaged by inflation
Which is freaking weird. Argentina has cropland. They have energy sources (and I won't
bore everybody ok, I will with the observation that the Industrial Age is generously a
300/8000 year ratio part of human history).
And doesn't the below need some unpacking?:
>only the richer ones have assets they can move to safety outside the country
What are these assets? Why are said assets mobile? How did they come to "own" them? What
percentage of the population is encompassed by "the richer ones" phrasing?
Question: why doesn't MMT thinking work for countries like Argentina?
As wikipedia notes:
"The key insight of MMT is that "monetarily sovereign government is the monopoly
supplier of its currency and can issue currency of any denomination in physical or
non-physical forms. As such the government has an unlimited capacity to pay for the things
it wishes to purchase and to fulfill promised future payments, and has an unlimited ability
to provide funds to the other sectors. Thus, insolvency and bankruptcy of this government
is not possible. It can always pay."
Is this a general flaw in MMT? Does MMT only apply to dominant nation-states like the
U.S., who can use foreign military and financial pressures to protect the currency, aka the
petrodollar? Is the petrodollar a true 'fiat currency' or is it somehow based on control of
commodities (especially oil)? Is there something peculiar about Argentina and other countries
facing currency devaluation that MMT doesn't handle well? Any ideas on this?
That wikipedia write up isn't wrong, but it could be better. Probably need to hammer home
the point that the sovereign can always pay IN THE CURRENCY THAT IT ISSUES.
Most of the MMT related conversations on this site, and the posts that are written up on
the subject are mostly about explaining how there are constraints that many people THINK
exist in the USA, but don't actually exist, at least in economic terms (political constraints
notwithstanding). A country cannot be forced to default on a currency it issues. If the USA
had significant debts in EUR or JPY, then it'd be a very different conversation.
External constraints are a big deal for most countries, especially developing countries
that depend on exports of primary commodities. Chile, for instance, is constrained by balance
of payments problems when the price of copper declines. Also, developed countries that are
relatively smaller have much more limited sovereignty. The Swiss Central Bank has to follow
what the ECB does, to a large degree.
On the other hand, there's episodes where some countries have found room for maneuver when
they give up their sovereign currency. I didn't expect that Ecuador's economy would perform
quite as well as it has in recent years. But, they've shown that you can find ways to get
creative to compensate for loss of monetary sovereignty. Of course, the fiscal constraints
are real since Ecuador can't print USD.
Brazil's recent neoliberal turn was frustrating for a variety of reasons, but being a
big, diverse economy, they've got more sovereignty than their neighbors. However, the
business and political elites in Brazil decided to hammer through austerity (spending cuts
and interest rate hikes) because they WANTED to, not because external forces made them do
it.
No doubt an MMT prescription for Argentina would advice them to lay off the $ denominated
debt and stick to pesos as much as possible. I'd imagine Stephanie Kelton or any of the UMKC
crew would advise curtailing imports or doing some import substitution in order to take
pressure off balance of payments issues. They'd also take a look at what was driving
inflation domestically and try to find ways to relieve it with a targeted approach, instead
of risking recession and unemployment. Neoliberal/Washington Consensus type economists would
say hike interest rates, cut government spending in order to curtail demand. They'd argue
that the private sector will make the best decisions about where to reign in spending to
reduce inflation.
"... By Jon Rynn, the author of Manufacturing Green Prosperity: The power to rebuild the American Middle Class, and many other writings available at JonRynn.com . His twitter handle is @JonathanRynn. Originally published at Economic Reconstruction ..."
"... *This article is meant as a wide-ranging, 'high-altitude' look at Melman's work, not as an exhaustive survey. Please see SeymourMelman.com for more of Melman's work, as well as his many books and articles. ..."
"... perhaps the most glaring example being the Soviet Union ..."
"... Somehow he also got an audience with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as the Vietnam War heated up. Melman blamed McNamara, formerly head of Ford Motor Company, for rationalizing and systematizing the military industrial complex. After McNamara got through with it, the Department of Defense had turned into the headquarters of the military industrial complex, with the contractors as virtual divisions of the Pentagon. Melman was concerned that the military industrial complex was siphoning off much of the best and the brightest engineers and scientists, and that there was a surfeit of engineering talent available for civilian firms. "Where are the engineers?! Where are the engineers?!" Melman remembers McNamara screaming at him. It is a question we can continue to ask to this day. ..."
Yves here. Get a cup of coffee. This is a meaty and important
post.
While I agree overwhelmingly with the main points, I have a few quibbles. One is that Rynn
attributes the dollar's role as reserve currency to oil being denominated in dollars. As we've
discussed, the requirements of being a reserve currency is running persistent trade deficits so
that there is a lot of the reserve currency in foreign hands so it is tradable. The reason
foreigners are so happy to have the US run trade deficits is that pretty much everyone but us
runs mercantilist trade policies. The US is effectively exporting jobs to these countries. They
can have a higher savings rate and our exporting jobs alleviates the employment cost. What's
not to like from their perspective?
By Jon Rynn, the author of Manufacturing Green Prosperity: The power to rebuild the
American Middle Class, and many other writings available at JonRynn.com . His twitter handle is @JonathanRynn. Originally
published at Economic
Reconstruction
Seymour Melman was one of the most important political economists and peace activists of the
20th century. He would have been 100 years old on December 30, 2017 (he died in 2004),
therefore this is a good time to consider his legacy, and more importantly from his point of
view, to think about how his writings can help us achieve a more just world.
Melman always had a two-track intellectual focus, writing about both the military and the
economy. The two concepts were intertwined in his books about the deleterious economic effects
of military production, for instance, in 'Pentagon Capitalism', 'The Permanent War Economy',
and 'Profits without Production'. He sought to decrease military spending, not just because
American wars after World War II were unjust, but also because that spending constituted missed
opportunities to improve the public sphere of life, and even more fundamentally, because
military spending destroyed the core competence in manufacturing that Melman saw as the basis
of economic life.
This integration of peace activism and economics crystallized after the 1950s. In the 1950s,
Melman was involved with what became known as the 'ban the bomb' movement. There was a great
deal of concern at the time that nuclear war of any sort could lead to the destruction of most
if not all mankind, and it took quite a bit of activist effort to eventually lead to, for
instance, a ban on testing nuclear weapons overground. Melman and others, such as another
political economist born in 1917, Barry Commoner, argued that trying to survive a nuclear
strike in fallout shelters and the like was madness, and that the aftereffects of nuclear war
would make affected areas unlivable. Melman made the term 'overkill' popular, as a reference to
the idea that you only need a small number of nuclear weapons to wipe out your enemy, and any
more than that is a complete waste of money. Melman, and others such as Marcus Raskin, founder
of the Institute for Policy Studies, helped create a movement for global nuclear
disarmament.
At the same time that Melman was addressing the issue of nuclear war, academically Melman
was pursuing a production-centered understanding of the economy, as opposed to the
exchange-centered approach of mainstream economics that was then beginning to dominate
economics departments. As a professor of industrial engineering at Columbia University from
1948 on, his bread-and-butter expertise concerned how to increase productivity on the factory
floor. While he was best known for critiquing the military economy, his critiques were based on
his intimate knowledge of how things are produced.
Production and Worker Centered Economics
To understand his critique of the role of the military in the economy, therefore, it is
critical to understand his understanding of political economy. Much of his framework can be
summed up thus: the more decision-making power is given to factory workers, the better the
factory and the economy performs. In addition, the more the engineers and managers of
industrial firms are competent to organize production, the better the economy of the
country-as-a-whole performs. Military production and financial domination interfere with both
processes, and divert resources from the infrastructure, another critical part of the
production economy.
However, before we can understand why he came to these conclusions, we need to attempt an
even more fundamental question, which when answered will make the other hypotheses easier to
explore: how does an economy work? What creates economic growth? You may be thinking 'that's
what economic departments are there to explain', or, 'I took some economics courses, so I know
the answer to that question'. From Melman's perspective, mainstream economics cannot adequately
answer these questions. Actually, from my perspective as well, since I spent 20 years working
closely with Melman, and wrote a dissertation, book, and articles based on his world view.
The problem revolves around the concept of production. Usually, the concept of production
boils down to manufacturing, or 'industrial production', which also involves things like
construction and electricity generation. The epochal ideological problem, if you will, as far
as I have been able to figure it out, is this: for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the
spectacular increases in growth and standards of living that manufacturing and other industry
provided were glaringly obvious to most people, and in particular to intellectuals and urban
folk. Most people lived through big technological transformations, for instance, to an
electrical society or to one using trains, then cars, then planes . The role of manufacturing
and other industry was obvious -- maybe a little too obvious. Economics grew, not to explain
this technological explosion, but mainly to explain the market mechanisms that enveloped this
system of productive machinery.
It was into this industrial environment that people like Seymour Melman, Barry Commoner,
John Kenneth Galbraith, John Maynard Keynes, and other, what I would call,
'production-oriented' economists grew up. Indeed, Karl Marx and prewar Marxists also
experienced manufacturing transformations. What none of them developed, including Melman, was
an explicit argument or framework that manufacturing is the foundation of a wealthy economy. It
was obvious. For instance, Melman simply wrote in several books that 'In order to survive, a
society must produce'. True enough, but in the current society in which the urban population,
and professionals and intellectuals as a whole, have as much exposure to manufacturing as they
have to other exotic and remote ecosystems, this doesn't explain much. However, Melman's
writings offer a set of principles that can help us grasp the true nature of the political
economy.
Let's actually start all the way at the beginning. Humans dominate the planet because we
have hands and a brain that cooperatively are able to use tools to make other tools that then
make things that we want. This was always our advantage over other animals, and has allowed us
to create our own environments (houses and infrastructure in cities, for example), instead of
going along with whatever the ecosystem happened to provide.
I said that we make tools that are used to make other tools, not that we simply make tools.
The key to human success is ability to use a set of tools together, as a system, and to use one
set of tools to make another set. So for instance in the modern economy, there are tools called
machine tools that make all kinds of metal parts that are then used to make the machinery that
we see in factories, and more machine tools, and which eventually make the goods that we use
and the services that use those goods.
What we make depends critically, then, on what kinds of tools and machinery we use to make
them. The production machinery may be out of sight, but without it we won't have anything we
need. For instance, smart phones would not be possible without all kinds of very sophisticated
machinery that makes the small parts that go into the phone. And those machines were made using
other machines, in conjunction with workers. So let us explore a list of ten principles that we
may glean from Melman's writings.
Melman's Principles of Political Economy
The goods we use and their final price depend on what kind of tools/machinery are
available to make them. Advances in tool/machine making is basically what drives economic
growth -- you don't get electricity in your society because the market is set free, you get
electricity because the machinery is available to generate electricity, and the tools/machines
are available to make the machinery that generates the electricity. Melman was a world-leading
expert in the production of machine tools.
In order to put this machinery together, and to use the machinery in the best way
possible, engineers and managers have to have 'the competence to organize production', as Melman put it. This is the basic stuff of industrial engineering -- how do you design a
factory, or any other workplace, so that you get the most output with the least input. If you
do this better than other companies, then you can charge less for your product, and presumably
get a bigger market share and make more profit. If the country as a whole is doing is
organizing work competently, then it will do better than other countries, economically.
In order to maximize the usability of this critical production machinery, you need to
maximize the 'productivity of capital', that is, you need to keep the machinery running
(maximizing 'uptime'). If you have a car factory and the assembly line keeps breaking down, you
will get less output in a particular period of time, just as most people can't be productive
now if particular websites are 'down'. This 'uptime' is crucial to a well-functioning factory
and indeed an economy. One of the reasons that the Soviet Union collapsed, according to Melman's analysis, is that the Soviets were so focused on making military equipment that they
let their industrial machinery literally fall apart, and so they were experiencing a production
crisis when Gorbachev entered the scene and decided he needed to shake things up.
The more decision-making power you give workers on the shop floor, the better the
machinery will perform, that is, you will maximize the productivity of capital, because
well-trained and well-motivated workers will be able to prevent problems in the machinery from
happening in the first place, and will react quickly if problems arise (for instance, on the
famous Toyota assembly line, any worker can stop all production if they see a problem) . When
workers are 'dumbed-down' and have no say, machinery breaks down and the entire production
process -- the organization of work -- in not as efficient as it could be.
An economic 'virtuous cycle' emerges if you pay workers more, because competent managers
will compensate for higher wages by using more and better machinery, and by improving the way
work is organized, which will then lead to higher profits, which can lead to higher wages,
leading to better machinery/organization of work, and so on. Indeed, Melman even argued that if
you have strong unions, management will be forced to figure out more clever ways of organizing
work than just trying to decrease wages.
When wages go up faster than the price of the machinery that is being produced by
workers, then this 'virtuous cycle' is reinforced. Melman followed this ratio in various
countries starting in the 1950s. For instance, in his last published book 'After Capitalism' he
noted that the Japanese and Germans were increasing wages at a higher rate than the increase in
their machinery prices, and their machinery industries were world-leading and their workers
made more than their American counterparts. In America, on the other hand, machinery prices
were going up faster than wages. So cutting or stagnating wages reverses the 'virtuous cycle'
of increasing wages leading to better machinery and organization of work. This dynamic was one
of the themes of Melman's first book, 'Dynamic Factors in Industrial Productivity'.
A well-functioning management and concomitant organization of work is the basis of a
thriving middle class, particularly if unions are strong, that is, workers have decision-making
power in the firm. Basically, by generating more wealth, the society becomes richer, but if you
generate more wealth by at the same time increasing wages, you not only keep the virtuous cycle
of better productivity going, you obviously have a richer working class.
Management, instead of contributing to a country's economic wealth by competently
organizing production -- including giving workers more decision-making power -- usually instead
divert resources to their own 'administrative overhead', as Melman put it in his dissertation
in 1948. He continued to track this society-wide diversion of resources from production to
administration until his last book, and found that the ratio of administrative overhead to
production continued to increase (and was even worse in the Soviet Union).
Melman agreed with my hypothesis that in order to thrive, a manufacturing sector needs to
encompass a full suite of industries. A region's economy will thrive most if all the parts of
the manufacturing economy are present in some form. In other words, national manufacturing
specialization does not work. You can't be the best in making cars if someone else is making
the machine tools that you use to make the cars, or if your country isn't making its own steel.
There are relationships of positive reinforcement that occur among the various manufacturing
industries. The economy is an ecosystem (a concept Melman's mentor used and I developed further
in my writings), the important point being that you can't rip various parts of the regional
manufacturing ecosystem apart, sending them willy nilly to other countries, and expect the
surviving industries to thrive. This goes against the deification of David Ricardo and his
theory of comparative advantage in economics, which is used to justify globalization and many
trade treaties which have helped to devastate American manufacturing.
Tenth and finally for our purposes here, the United States has perhaps already reached a
'point of no return' where the managerial class has become so incompetent that the only way
they understand to increase profits is to decrease labor costs by moving factories overseas.
Not only does this rob the US of its production base, it decreases global growth by
discouraging the use of better machinery and organization of work inside the factory. The
virtuous cycle is broken. Part of the reason companies offshore factories is because they want
to break the power of unions. Melman stressed that management pursues greater power as much as
or more than they pursue greater profits -- and unions decrease managerial power. He called
this dynamic 'power extension', which he considered more important than simply the drive for
profits.
Consequences of Melman's Principles
If we apply these principles broadly, we can see that they collectively offer an alternative
to mainstream economics. In the worldview of most economists, growth magically appears if you
decrease government intervention. In the real world, economic growth appears if you create
better machinery, organize work better, and pay your workers more. In the mainstream economics
view, military production is just like anything else, in fact, any production or economic
activity is just as important as any other, whether it's providing for tourists, creating
machine tools, or making a tank. In the real world, there is a hierarchy of importance of
economic activity, and manufacturing, and in particular manufacturing machinery, is at the top
of that hierarchy. In the world of the economist, lower wages is equivalent to improving
machinery, as long as the short-term profit is the same; in the real world, cutting wages leads
to lower productivity which leads to a poorer country overall. In the view of economists,
machinery is viewed as a replacement for workers; as I hope these principles have illustrated,
machinery actually makes worker participation and decision-maker power more important, and in a
well-functioning economy, machinery innovation brings better wages and more jobs.
Since Melman was generally at least a decade or two ahead of his time, we may need to dwell
a bit on the following conundrum: in the economists' world, automation means less work, which
means less people are needed to work in an economy. In the real world, automation has been
going on since the start of the Industrial Revolution, but because of the actions of the
managerial class to outsource production and the attendant increase in inequality, in the last
few decades the standard of living of the working/middle class has stagnated or even
declined.
There has been quite a bit of discussion about automation and inequality recently. Bernie
Sanders made the problem of inequality the basis of an almost-successful run for the
Presidency, and Thomas Piketty wrote a very well reviewed book about inequality. On the other
hand, on the right (and neoliberal center), it has become an article of faith that automation
will wreak havoc on the concept of work as we have known it, and maybe a 'basic income' policy
will become necessary so that the hordes of unemployed at least can survive without work.
The problem with all of these ideas about automation, and in fact a problem with the
progressive agenda as a whole (not to mention the conservative one), is that they ignore
'production', or what I have described as Melman's principles of production (Melman would often
use the shorthand of 'they don't understand production' to dismiss someone's argument, a
problem I hope to alleviate here). If production is the central way that a society creates
wealth, and if that function is removed from an economy, then clearly you are going to have a
lot less wealth. If one quarter of the working population in the 1960s was in manufacturing and
one tenth is now, and the lost employment went into low-paying services while the income went
into finance, then no wonder there has been an increase in inequality. The part of the economy
that was producing material wealth, and that supported the backbone of the middle class, was
ripped out and thrown away. The society became poorer, and with it most of its people, except
the top 1%. (see
http://www.globalteachin.com/ for a further explanation)
The astute reader might remember his or her intellectual betters explaining that we are now
in a 'post-industrial' society -- a phrase that drove Melman crazy -- because most people work
in the service economy. Manufacturing has been 'solved', according to this line of thinking,
and is 'less advanced', so it naturally migrates to 'less advanced' countries like China --
ignoring the fact that more advanced countries like Germany and Japan have wealthier middle
classes than we do because they have much larger manufacturing sectors. But let's look at the
service economy a bit closer.
Services are what you do with goods that are manufactured, for the most part. For instance,
the retail and wholesale service sectors retail and wholesale goods. Marketers are generally
marketing goods. Airlines run a service based on the use of machinery (jets), and computers
are, well, machines. The health industry is very dependent on machinery and goods like drugs,
and the restaurant business can actually be considered a kind of manufacturing facility. The
real estate industry is based on the construction industry, which uses machinery and goods
produced in the manufacturing sector. Just about wherever you look, services mean using
goods.
If services are the act of using goods, then it should be clear that a big country can't pay
for most of its imported goods by exchanging them for services -- there simply aren't enough
exportable services to exchange for all the goods. Any other country besides the US would have
had a rude awakening of a decline in their currency had they had the level of trade deficits
the US has, that is, the amount of goods and services that are imported vs. the amount
exported. The US survives because other countries use the dollar as a medium of exchange and
need dollars to buy oil. But this state of affairs will not last forever.
Manufacturing has always contributed the bulk of productivity growth in an economy. In fact,
manufacturing productivity increases at about 3%, year after year, at least for the last 100
years. Technological improvements are made to machinery and the organization of work, year
after year. The same does not happen in services, generally, because services require human
intervention. Ah, but pundits will proclaim that artificial intelligence will replace much
human service work. The problem is that the statistics on productivity don't show it, that is,
the same amount of labor is still needed for the same amount of work, in almost all service
industries. But there is 'technological unemployment' as machines take over some jobs, as they
have been doing for almost two centuries, and often those people, unlike other decades, have
not been able to find new work. What went wrong?
The Rise and Decline of the Virtuous Cycle
This is what happened in the two decades certainly after World War II, when about the same
level of growth of automation (and mechanization) was occurring then as now: when a factory
could output more goods with the same work force (because the machinery was better or the
organization of work was improved), then the manager could offer the good for a lower price, or
he could offer a better product for the same price (common in the electronics industry). By
offering the good at a lower price or offering a better product at the same price, consumers
would want more, that is, demand would go up. In order to meet the higher demand, the manager
would actually hire more workers. In addition, some other workers would be employed in the
industries making the automation machinery. So when consumers have enough disposable income to
take advantage of advances in technology, automation actually leads to more employment, not
less. The history of industrial growth between the end of the Civil War and the 1960s are a
testament to this continually occurring (interrupted occasionally by terrible depressions).
This is the process Melman advances in his first book in the 1950s, "Dynamic Factors in
Industrial Productivity". This process breaks down when consumers are not being given their
fair share of the national income. That is, as more and more of the wealth of what is being
generated by the economy winds up with the very rich, there is less and less for the rest of
the society to spend on ever-increasing opportunities to buy stuff. Thus we have the phenomenon
of all kinds of ways for your self-respecting highly-paid professional to spend money,
including fancy goods, food, and housing, while the vast majority of the population is worried
about making it to the end of the month and can't take advantage of cheaper or better goods --
and therefore, automation now leads to less employment, instead of more employment.
John Maynard Keynes basically laid out this problem in the 1930s. I called Keynes
'production-centered' because his logic assumed that most economic activity occurred in
factories, as did most pre-WWII economists. But he also saw that warping income distribution
would lead to lower levels of production. That is, the economy produces a certain amount of
wealth, and it needs most people to have enough money in order to buy that produced wealth.
When much of that wealth winds up with the very rich, the very rich don't spend that wealth on
the produced wealth of the economy. Some goods go unbought, or what is the same thing, are
never produced in the first place, and therefore, less people are needed to produce that
wealth. Eventually, Keynes argued, the economy spins out of control and works its way into a
depression, like the Great Depression. Only the government can kick start the economy, by
supplying the demand that was sucked out by the very rich.
Although Melman did not explicitly use Keynes' formulations, he studied Keynes carefully and
Keynes' ideas inform Melman's ideas. Melman also was enamored about another theory as to causes
of depressions, one that has been mostly ignored, promulgated by the economist Leonard Ayres in
a tract called 'The chief cause of this and other depressions', written in 1935. Briefly, Ayres
argued that when the growth of consumer goods slows, then managers stop buying new factory
machinery. When they stop buying factory machinery, the factory machinery managers start laying
off factory machinery workers. When that happens, demand for all goods lessens because now less
people are employed, consumer goods managers lay off more workers, and the economy goes into a
death spiral. Since the 1960s the US economy has many fewer machinery jobs than it used to, the
US doesn't even have much of the demand from those job holders that it used to have, and the
economy becomes more brittle. But the effect Ayres writes about has a similar effect to the one
Keynes describes: there is not enough demand for all the goods people are employed to produce,
and the economy teeters toward depression.
As the rich get richer and the middle class and poor get poorer, the society-wide benefits
of productivity increase -- automation -- break down, and actually make things worse. In an
economy like the US that now imports much of its factory machinery, automation doesn't even
create many new jobs in the US, like it used to. However there is an additional problem that
Keynes could not have foreseen, that is, the decreasing competence of the American managerial
class to produce, partly because of the effects of military production. Military production
leads to a management that is not trained to produce for the civilian market, that is, it
doesn't know how to increase the quality of goods or decrease the price by improving machinery
or the organization of work, it only knows how to increase profits, often by making goods more
expensive and less reliable. Since profits are assured, much of the manufacturing sector
gravitate toward military production. The extreme case of this was the Soviet Union, whose
manufacturing prowess was almost completely destroyed by the time of its collapse.
So the problem, contra much of progressive thinking, is not simply the lack of demand or the
inequality of wealth (which leads to lack of demand). The problem in the US has gotten to the
point where supply is a problem, that is, American management doesn't know how to compete
globally. Whether the need is for industrial machinery, which mostly now comes from places like
Germany or Japan, or the demand is for mass produced consumer goods, where China currently
excels, the US is being squeezed from both the high and low quality sides, because management
has given up its historic function of organizing work and creating better machinery.
The Role of the Military Industrial Complex
For much of the 1960s and 1970s, Melman laid the most blame for the deterioration of
American manufacturing competence at the feet of the military industrial complex. His arguments
became an important part of the arsenal of progressive forces in their attempt to reign in the
military and the military industrial complex. The military did not harm the economy solely
through a creeping incompetence in the economy, however. The military also wasted a huge amount
of resources in their bloated budgets. Taking the cue from Eisenhower's famous 'Iron of Cross'
speech, in which he lamented all of the schools, roads, and other infrastructure that could be
built with the money spent on arms, Melman widely published charts and articles on the
equivalence between, say, the cost of a bomber and how many schools could be built instead.
Seconding John Kenneth Galbraith's concern about 'private opulence and public squalor', Melman
wrote the books 'Peace Race' and 'Our Depleted Society' in the first half of the 1960s in an
effort to alert the public to the fact that America had enduring social and infrastructural
problems that needed much more resources, while at the same time the monies were being wasted
on useless military equipment that was often making the US less secure. When Martin Luther King
and other civil rights leaders talked to LBJ about the problems of the cities, they brought
Melman with them to explain the spreading deterioration of urban public works.
Somehow he also got an audience with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as the Vietnam War
heated up. Melman blamed McNamara, formerly head of Ford Motor Company, for rationalizing and
systematizing the military industrial complex. After McNamara got through with it, the
Department of Defense had turned into the headquarters of the military industrial complex, with
the contractors as virtual divisions of the Pentagon. Melman was concerned that the military
industrial complex was siphoning off much of the best and the brightest engineers and
scientists, and that there was a surfeit of engineering talent available for civilian firms.
"Where are the engineers?! Where are the engineers?!" Melman remembers McNamara screaming at
him. It is a question we can continue to ask to this day.
The frustration and suffering caused by the Vietnam War buildup made a bad situation worse
for the economic fortunes of the country. Martin Luther King and other progressives were
furious that money was being taken from worthwhile domestic programs to fund the war. Melman
became deeply involved with anti-war activity along with other leading intellectuals such as
Noam Chomsky, with whom he began a long, productive friendship. As in the case of arguing for
nuclear disarmament, Melman's main public image was as an important peace activist.
This combination of concern for war and the preparation for war was complementary to his
economic thought. Indeed, the entire field of economics was formerly referred to as political
economy, because it was recognized that the state (government) was a vital actor, both good and
bad, in the economy. Thorstein Veblen founded the Journal of Political Economy (which now only
concentrates on economics), and Melman's mentor, the important industrial engineer Walter
Rautenstrauch, worked with Veblen (and also with Frederick Winslow Taylor). The economists and
sociologists that Melman encountered at Columbia and at CCNY in the 1930s and 1940s, such as
Robert Lynd and John Maurice Clark, were a more eclectic group of thinkers than would emerge in
the 1950s. Melman also worked with C. Wright Mills, whose 'Power Elite' were composed of
corporate, government, and military officials, and with Paul Goodman and non-mainstream
economists.
The Answer: More Democracy
The problem, in both economics and war, are similar: a group of elites attempt to exploit
the working people of a country, either by denying workers power over their paychecks and
working conditions, on the one hand, or by forcing them to be instruments of elite power
extension in the form of war, on the other. In both cases, the answer to Melman was clear: more
democracy.
In the case of war, democracy meant forcing the government, whether through protest or
voting, to stop an enterprise that the vast majority of people opposed. On the economic front,
the answer is to extend democracy to the level of the firm, that is workplace democracy, or a
bit more formally, employee-owned-and-operated firms. Workplace democracy is what would come
'After Capitalism', the title of his last published book.
Melman's interest in self-management was kindled in the 1930s, by the temporary success of
anarcho-syndicalists in Spain (before Franco brutally suppressed them) and by the example of
the kibbutz in what would become Israel. Melman was part of a radical Zionist group at CCNY,
and he briefly lived on a kibbutz. His second academic book in 1958, 'Decision-making and
productivity', concentrated on the Standard Motor Company in England, which gave an unusual
amount of work floor power to the union (he almost got fired from Columbia for the affront of
singing the praises of unions, until some eminent professors came to his defense). By the
1980s, he again focused on workplace democracy, exploring the Mondragon system of cooperatives
in the Basque region of Spain and the Emilia-Romagna cooperative system in Italy. In 'After
Capitalism', he devoted a great deal of space to the problem of constructing a democratic
alternative to the hierarchical, managerial structure of most firms.
His last Ph.D. student, in fact, wrote up a comparison of two shops at Ford, one in which
the workers were given a great deal of authority and training in the operation of machine
tools, and one in which they were only allowed to press an on and off button. His student found
that the shop with greater worker decision-making was much more productive, and this finding
can be found in numerous other studies.
Full-blown democracy within the firm is perhaps the ultimate manifestation of giving more
power to workers. Many of Melman's economic principles are encouraged when managers do not have
dictatorial control over the firm. The virtuous cycle, of salaries increasing more than the
prices of the produced goods, can be easily enforced, because employees will want to distribute
the income of the firm among themselves, not vacuum up most of it for the top managers and
absentee owners. Higher wages will lead to greater consumer spending in the economy as a whole,
leading to more employment and more spending. Administrative overhead will be minimized,
freeing up resources for innovation and rising wages. Employees will not allow their factories
(or service companies) to be shut down and moved abroad if they own the company (and can't sell
it, as in the Mondragon system). In no case did Melman find, in the 1980s and 1990s, that a
factory that had been closed had not been profitable. In other words, had (miraculously) all
factories been owned and operated by their workers at the start of the 1980s, no (or very few)
factories would have been shut down in the last 30 plus years, and we would have many millions
more factory jobs, a strong middle class, and my guess is, no Trump.
This last consideration was very important to Melman, although of course he did not see
Trump himself coming (who did?). Melman was very concerned, even by the 1990s, that we were
arriving at a 'Weimar moment', as he wrote about in 'The Demilitarized Society'. That is, like
1920s Germany, a large 'lumpenproletariat' appeared, to use Karl Marx's phrase, that is, a
large segment of the population who had been excised from the economy -- much of the
manufacturing working class -- and that such a group would naturally be open to the ramblings
of a demagogue -- like Trump.
By the 1980s, it was clear to Melman that the military industrial complex was not the only
major sector that was hurtling manufacturing over a cliff. In 'Profits without Production', he
linked the financial sector to the worsening situation of manufacturing. The early 1980s were
marked by disastrously high interest rates, which he worried would be the nail in the coffin of
American manufacturing exports, and he was right. About that time the Japanese came roaring
into the American market, the result of decades of American military industrial spending,
financial shenanigans, and the attempted destruction of the American working class. The
financial sector, like the military industrial complex, sucked resources out of the
manufacturing system, which was the source of the wealth, and gave nothing in return. Money
would make more money much more quickly (eventually, in nanoseconds) than building a factory
ever could. Global trade treaties, in conjunction with cheaper digital communications, would by
the 1990s lead to a rapidly sinking prognosis for manufacturing. Something had to be done, but
what?
Having witnessed Melman's attempts to start a manufacturing renaissance first hand, I can
say that 'we' (including scholars like Jonathan Feldman) tried a number of things. By the late
1980s, Melman had convinced the Speaker of the House, Jim Wright, to make what Melman called
'economic conversion' a top priority in the House. Economic conversion, as Melman conceived it,
would involve requiring every military factory to create a plan to convert that factory to some
useful civilian production. Then, if the military budget should be cut, factory workers would
not have to fear for their jobs, as they could pull out a plan to succeed in civilian markets.
This would also include training engineers and workers in civilian production techniques. Of
course, this was not something the Pentagon favored, since the great source of their power is
not the defense of the country, but the political machine for creating jobs known as the
military industrial complex. Consequently, the Representative from the defense contractor
Martin Marietta's home district, Newt Gingrich, plotted to and eventually was able to bring
down Jim Wright, torpedo economic conversion, and begin his march to right-wing Republican
domination of Congress in the 1990s.
Well, we thought, when the Soviet Union fell, since the main excuse for a large military
budget had disappeared, perhaps the American public would be open to arguments for a
well-deserved 'peace dividend', that is, the government could finally divert some of the money
the Pentagon was using to upgrade the infrastructure. We organized a 'National Town Meeting',
involving many cities and progressive politicians. But by this time, the Left as a whole had
undergone over 10 years of Reagan politics, and they didn't seem up to the challenge.
Melman also tried various ways of encouraging the unions to take a more innovative path,
that is, to work toward a reindustrialization of the US. But they, too, were doing their best
to survive the relentless assaults of offshoring and deindustrialization. Looking back on the
early 1990s, perhaps if the gravity of global warming had been clearer, it would have been
easier to formulate a framework that Melman and I evolved, but unfortunately only shortly
before he died. The formulation was the following: To rebuild the economy, rebuild
manufacturing, and to rebuild manufacturing, rebuild the infrastructure. With global warming
and all the other ecological catastrophes looming on the horizon -- warnings that Barry
Commoner and others had been broadcasting for a couple of decades -- it should be clear that
the entire infrastructure, transportation, water, energy, urban, and other systems, need to be
redesigned in order for global civilization to survive into the 22nd century (I have written a
book on this subject, " Manufacturing Green Prosperity ", and article in
an edited volume and a sample Federal budget, GreenNewDealPlan.com ).
The idea is that by spending trillions on constructing new infrastructure systems such as
high-speed rail and national wind systems, new transit systems and walkable neighborhoods, and
fixing old infrastructure, the government would supply the kind of long-term demand for
domestic manufacturing that would revive American manufacturing. This effort, in turn, could
make unemployment a thing of the past, and that kind of policy would negate the 'Weimar moment'
and bring with it enthusiastic support from the entire working class, white, African-American,
Latino, of whatever ethnicity or gender. Oh, and the oceans would not rise and wipe out all
coastal cities and turn the rest of the land into deserts.
In the 'Demilitarized Society', Melman warned that fear was not a sustainable motivation for
progressive activism. Eventually, fear turns to right-wing paranoia and the easy solution of
demagogues, a situation we more and more find ourselves in today. Instead, a concrete set of
solutions must be advanced at the same time that analysis and warnings are given.
I'm afraid that progressives are still toiling the fields of fear instead of constructing a
structure of solutions. Climate activists are warning us of frightening futures, but they have
not put forth solutions that fit the scope of the problem, such as spending trillions on
infrastructure. The Resistance to Trump and the Republicans is doing an excellent job of
rallying people to vote and protest, but they have not put forward a program, such as spending
trillions of infrastructure that would create tens of millions of jobs and rebuild
manufacturing, that would deal a death blow to the 1920s-style right-wing political revival.
Instead of simply decrying the greed and overreach of the large corporations, we should be
thinking about how to create an economic system in which employees own and operate their
enterprises (Brian D'Agostino has proposed ways to make workplace democracy society-wide in his
book 'The Middle Class Fights Back')
Melman would have urged us to understand the importance of production in the economy, of the
inner workings of manufacturing, factories and machinery, why workplace democracy leads to
greater prosperity, and how a middle class forms out of the virtuous cycle of increasing wages.
Using this understanding of the economy as a foundation, we can then propose solutions to our
biggest problems -- inequality, climate change, right-wing nationalism, militarism, and others
-- that can capture the imaginations of the world's peoples.
*This article is meant as a wide-ranging, 'high-altitude' look at Melman's work, not as
an exhaustive survey. Please see SeymourMelman.com for more of Melman's work, as well as his
many books and articles.
Ran across this a few days back – strikes me as a more fruitful line of argument for
political communication than MMT (very challenging to persuade with counterintuitive
arguments).
Thanks for this. As someone who worked for one of the few ongoing successful machine tool
manufacturers in this country as a field service engineer, I got the chance to work in
factories across the US and also got the chance to watch them shutdown throughout the
eighties and nineties. I also watched the progress of exactly what this article discusses,
bloated administrations and fewer workers, most relegated to button-pusher employment.
After 3 years of no raises at all while watching Management wages increase substantially,
I finally took heed to the writing on the wall and bailed out (luckily just in time for me)
for a better line of work within the M.I.C.
My preference would have been to stick with the factories, but unfortunately they no
longer exist at numbers that would have assured a decent working life (the Factory Service
Dept. of the company I worked for is now less than 25% of the size it was – most of it
off-loaded to low-wage distributorships and/or off-shored.
From the perspective of long-term society goodness, it was not the best decision, but from
my perspective of personal goodness – food on my table, affordable health insurance,
and a working furnace in the winter – it was my only choice of employment with decent
wages that this country offered someone with my skills.
As hedge fund managers like to say relative to the long haul, IBGYBG, but it's a crappy
philosophy to live by, especially considering that at the rate we're going, I might not be
gone.
JCC, Melman once announced to me that as far as he could tell, all machine tool companies
in the US were either foreign or foreign-owned -- although I think there were a few American
owned, like Haas. The machine tool industry is the 'canary in the coal mine', if that goes,
the rest of manufacturing competence is not far behind.
I think you and millions of others like you are making the rational decision to either get
out or not to get in in the first place, and now there is skills shortage. This will require
a strong industrial policy from the Federal government, in my opinion.
The company I worked for is still operating as an American owned company located in NY
State. It is still considered a premier Machine Tool Company (they build what are known as
Super Precision Machine Tools) and unlike many other smaller American Machine Tool Mfgs. it
actually bought some foreign companies as well as what was left of Bridgeport and one or two
others instead of being bought. There was a close call a few years ago, if I remember
correctly, when they were being courted by what I seem to recall was a foreign-owned Hedge
Fund.
I have my regrets and I still consider it to be a good company, but from a financial
standpoint, I'm also glad I left. My years there were a major wake-up call to what was
happening to Mfg., as well as large businesses in general, across the country during the late
80's through the 90's. I have a very negative attitude towards Accounting/Financial
Departments completely taking over the Management of business because of what I saw and
experienced. They've gutted the best parts of what these companies provide to their
respective communities and stake-holders, and the country.
Your article pointed out that particular problem as well as a few more of the more obvious
issues. Thanks for that. It needs wide distribution.
Having experienced all this as a manufacturer in the 70's and 80's Melman's concepts ring
true to me. I'd love to hear Michael Hudson comment on Melman's theories.
I've not encountered Melman before, and he seems like someone who I should read directly.
This site provides a real service.
However, I'll admit I just skimmed the article. My interest is history, not economics, and
the same dynamic occurs again and again and again throughout history. And there is even an
economics term that could be used for this, "the Dutch disease".
Basically, national economies over time will increasingly specialize in what is most
profitable at the moment. Other sectors will gradually be starved of capital since investment
will go to the most profitable sector, with less influence in the government, and in some
cases be plundered to provide capital for the profitable sector. This creates a cycle as
eventually even talented people who don't want to work in the specialized sectors will have
to.
The classic example of this is Hapsburg Spain. Castille in fact had a pretty diverse
economy in the 15th century, but increasingly specialized in producing soldiers and priests,
and this was widely noted in commentary at the time. Personally, having grown up in New York
City, I went into finance pretty much because it was either that or retail. New York City
actually had a diverse economy before I was born and for a little bit afterwards.
The same process occurred in early 20th century Britain, with finance being the main
specialized sector, but it was mild compared to Spain. The British wound down their empire
after mid-century. That is a key point. Empires will increasingly specialize in priests,
soldiers, and bureaucrats (financiers are are a sort of bureaucrat), finance by overt or
implied tribute, because that is what is most profitable at the center. The hollowing out of
Italian industry and agriculture was widely noted during the Roman Empire, even as people
flocked to Rome. And the only way to fix the damage caused to the center in this way is to
get rid of the empire.
IANAE. And I took macro 45 years ago, so I most likely have only the vaguest gauzy notion
of the following.
Keynes suggested that trade imbalances, which occur when A is able to produce goods more
efficiently than B will self correct as the currency of B will be devalued over time wrt the
currency of A.
When the currency of B is the global reserve currency (which, I believe, Keynes did not
address), this may result in a real constraint on this self-balancing, right? So, in this
sense, your statement:
And the only way to fix the damage caused to the center in this way is to get rid of the
empire.
might be rephrased as:
And the only way to fix the damage caused to the center in this way is to get rid of the
global reserve currency.
Actually Keynes addressed this very clearly. He knew that various policies can prevent
currencies from self regulating and so believed that supranational regulation was
required.
He argued for the IMF to be founded with the primary purpose of providing this regulation,
including the creation of a global trade currency called the Bancor
Here is a summary of the idea and why things fell apart -- leading to the IMF instead
becoming a capo for the creditor nations.
I would add that you can narrow down the causes of decline to two main sectors: the
military and finance. Basically, if manufacturing is the most important source of wealth --
or manufacturing and infrastructure more generally -- then the state will often divert the
surplus from manufacturing in order to become imperial, that is, they will take the surplus
and build a military establishment in order to further empire. This certainly happened in
Britain, and can be applied to France, Rome, etc., with perhaps the most glaring example
being the Soviet Union.
Finance also diverts resources from manufacturing, because the surplus from manufacturing
usually takes the form of money, and finance controls the money. But more importantly, the
finance sector can increase its economic power faster than manufacturing because money makes
more money much more quickly than factories can be built to create real wealth. We saw that
in Britain, and the US.
This was good except for this one glaring mishmash of a paragraph, which needs to be
either fixed or removed:
Somehow he also got an audience with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as the
Vietnam War heated up. Melman blamed McNamara, formerly head of Ford Motor Company, for
rationalizing and systematizing the military industrial complex. After McNamara got through
with it, the Department of Defense had turned into the headquarters of the military
industrial complex, with the contractors as virtual divisions of the Pentagon. Melman was
concerned that the military industrial complex was siphoning off much of the best and the
brightest engineers and scientists, and that there was a surfeit of engineering talent
available for civilian firms. "Where are the engineers?! Where are the engineers?!" Melman
remembers McNamara screaming at him. It is a question we can continue to ask to this
day.
Why was McNamara the one screaming about not having engineers, when the rest of the
paragraph says he was the engineering sink? To a lesser extent, why did Melman ("somehow" is
not satisfying) have an audience with McNamara, and was it during this audience that he
"blasted" McNamara?
I'm thinking Melman told McNamara that he (McNamara) had all the engineers, and McNamara
was denying it, but it's really hard to parse out and I don't even know why it's worth a
sitting duck paragraph in a humongous post anyway.
Point taken. I know it's unclear, and to the best of my recollection, Melman didn't know
how to respond either. I guess the point is, McNamara didn't know how to handle what Melman
was telling him. And also I have to admit I don't have the total context. Occassionally
Melman would be invited by the military to give a talk, because they figured he knew what he
was talking about and they actually wanted to know. I just thought it was an interesting
anecdote, but maybe it's a bit too confusing.
As a trained Industrial Engineer who worked in the midwest in the 90s , I can vouch for
the science behind productivity gains that come from more worker freedoms. As a untrained
economist, I can also confirm what I saw was the slow but steady destruction of rust belt and
it's middle class from globalization.
Finally, it is also evident that these same laid off workers voted for leaders who both
expanded the militiary industrial complex and globalization. Sad.
"... The reception of God's mercy in dependent upon a person's acknowledgement of his sins, Pope Francis said Wednesday, because "the proud person is unable to receive forgiveness." ..."
"... "What can the Lord give to those whose hearts are full of themselves and their own success?" the Pope asked the thousands of pilgrims gathered in the Vatican for his General Audience . "Nothing, because the presumptuous person is unable to receive forgiveness, since he is full of his supposed justice." ..."
The reception of God's mercy in dependent upon a person's acknowledgement of his sins,
Pope Francis said Wednesday, because "the proud person is unable to receive
forgiveness."
"What can the Lord give to those whose hearts are full of themselves and their own success?"
the Pope asked the thousands of pilgrims gathered in the Vatican for his General
Audience . "Nothing, because the presumptuous person is unable to receive forgiveness,
since he is full of his supposed justice."
The Pope called to mind Jesus's parable of the Pharisee and the
publican, where only the publican, or tax collector, receives forgiveness for his sins and
returns home justified.
"Those who are aware of their own miseries and lower their eyes with humility, feel the
merciful gaze of God resting on them," Francis said. "We know from experience that only those
who can acknowledge their faults and ask forgiveness receive the understanding and pardon of
others."
It you need to read a singe article analyzing current anti-Russian hysteria in the USA this in the one you should read. This is
an excellent article Simply great !!! And as of December 2017 it represents the perfect summary of Russiagate, Hillary defeat and, Neo-McCarthyism
campaign launched as a method of hiding the crisis of neoliberalism revealed by Presidential elections. It also suggest that growing
jingoism of both Parties (return to Madeleine Albright's 'indispensable nation' bulling. Both Trump and Albright assume that the
United States should be able to do as it pleases in the international arena) and loss of the confidence and paranoia of the US
neoliberal elite.
It contain many important observation which in my view perfectly catch the complexity of the current Us political landscape.
Bravo to Jackson Lears !!!
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberals celebrate market utility as the sole criterion of worth; interventionists exalt military adventure abroad as a means of fighting evil in order to secure global progress ..."
"... Sanders is a social democrat and Trump a demagogic mountebank, but their campaigns underscored a widespread repudiation of the Washington consensus. For about a week after the election, pundits discussed the possibility of a more capacious Democratic strategy. It appeared that the party might learn something from Clinton's defeat. Then everything changed. ..."
"... A story that had circulated during the campaign without much effect resurfaced: it involved the charge that Russian operatives had hacked into the servers of the Democratic National Committee, revealing embarrassing emails that damaged Clinton's chances. With stunning speed, a new centrist-liberal orthodoxy came into being, enveloping the major media and the bipartisan Washington establishment. This secular religion has attracted hordes of converts in the first year of the Trump presidency. In its capacity to exclude dissent, it is like no other formation of mass opinion in my adult life, though it recalls a few dim childhood memories of anti-communist hysteria during the early 1950s. ..."
"... The centrepiece of the faith, based on the hacking charge, is the belief that Vladimir Putin orchestrated an attack on American democracy by ordering his minions to interfere in the election on behalf of Trump. The story became gospel with breathtaking suddenness and completeness. Doubters are perceived as heretics and as apologists for Trump and Putin, the evil twins and co-conspirators behind this attack on American democracy. ..."
"... Like any orthodoxy worth its salt, the religion of the Russian hack depends not on evidence but on ex cathedra pronouncements on the part of authoritative institutions and their overlords. Its scriptural foundation is a confused and largely fact-free 'assessment' produced last January by a small number of 'hand-picked' analysts – as James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, described them – from the CIA, the FBI and the NSA. ..."
"... It is not the first time the intelligence agencies have played this role. When I hear the Intelligence Community Assessment cited as a reliable source, I always recall the part played by the New York Times in legitimating CIA reports of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's putative weapons of mass destruction, not to mention the long history of disinformation (a.k.a. 'fake news') as a tactic for advancing one administration or another's political agenda. Once again, the established press is legitimating pronouncements made by the Church Fathers of the national security state. Clapper is among the most vigorous of these. He perjured himself before Congress in 2013, when he denied that the NSA had 'wittingly' spied on Americans – a lie for which he has never been held to account. ..."
"... In May 2017, he told NBC's Chuck Todd that the Russians were highly likely to have colluded with Trump's campaign because they are 'almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favour, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique'. The current orthodoxy exempts the Church Fathers from standards imposed on ordinary people, and condemns Russians – above all Putin – as uniquely, 'almost genetically' diabolical. ..."
"... It's hard for me to understand how the Democratic Party, which once felt scepticism towards the intelligence agencies, can now embrace the CIA and the FBI as sources of incontrovertible truth. One possible explanation is that Trump's election has created a permanent emergency in the liberal imagination, based on the belief that the threat he poses is unique and unprecedented. It's true that Trump's menace is viscerally real. But the menace posed by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney was equally real. ..."
"... Trump is committed to continuing his predecessors' lavish funding of the already bloated Defence Department, and his Fortress America is a blustering, undisciplined version of Madeleine Albright's 'indispensable nation'. Both Trump and Albright assume that the United States should be able to do as it pleases in the international arena: Trump because it's the greatest country in the world, Albright because it's an exceptional force for global good. ..."
"... Besides Trump's supposed uniqueness, there are two other assumptions behind the furore in Washington: the first is that the Russian hack unquestionably occurred, and the second is that the Russians are our implacable enemies. ..."
"... So far, after months of 'bombshells' that turn out to be duds, there is still no actual evidence for the claim that the Kremlin ordered interference in the American election. Meanwhile serious doubts have surfaced about the technical basis for the hacking claims. Independent observers have argued it is more likely that the emails were leaked from inside, not hacked from outside. On this front, the most persuasive case was made by a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, former employees of the US intelligence agencies who distinguished themselves in 2003 by debunking Colin Powell's claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, hours after Powell had presented his pseudo-evidence at the UN. ..."
"... The crucial issue here and elsewhere is the exclusion from public discussion of any critical perspectives on the orthodox narrative, even the perspectives of people with professional credentials and a solid track record. ..."
"... Sceptical voices, such as those of the VIPS, have been drowned out by a din of disinformation. Flagrantly false stories, like the Washington Post report that the Russians had hacked into the Vermont electrical grid, are published, then retracted 24 hours later. Sometimes – like the stories about Russian interference in the French and German elections – they are not retracted even after they have been discredited. These stories have been thoroughly debunked by French and German intelligence services but continue to hover, poisoning the atmosphere, confusing debate. ..."
"... The consequence is a spreading confusion that envelops everything. Epistemological nihilism looms, but some people and institutions have more power than others to define what constitutes an agreed-on reality. ..."
"... More genuine insurgencies are in the making, which confront corporate power and connect domestic with foreign policy, but they face an uphill battle against the entrenched money and power of the Democratic leadership – the likes of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, the Clintons and the DNC. Russiagate offers Democratic elites a way to promote party unity against Trump-Putin, while the DNC purges Sanders's supporters. ..."
"... Fusion GPS eventually produced the trash, a lurid account written by the former British MI6 intelligence agent Christopher Steele, based on hearsay purchased from anonymous Russian sources. Amid prostitutes and golden showers, a story emerged: the Russian government had been blackmailing and bribing Donald Trump for years, on the assumption that he would become president some day and serve the Kremlin's interests. In this fantastic tale, Putin becomes a preternaturally prescient schemer. Like other accusations of collusion, this one has become vaguer over time, adding to the murky atmosphere without ever providing any evidence. ..."
"... Yet the FBI apparently took the Steele dossier seriously enough to include a summary of it in a secret appendix to the Intelligence Community Assessment. Two weeks before the inauguration, James Comey, the director of the FBI, described the dossier to Trump. After Comey's briefing was leaked to the press, the website Buzzfeed published the dossier in full, producing hilarity and hysteria in the Washington establishment. ..."
"... The Steele dossier inhabits a shadowy realm where ideology and intelligence, disinformation and revelation overlap. It is the antechamber to the wider system of epistemological nihilism created by various rival factions in the intelligence community: the 'tree of smoke' that, for the novelist Denis Johnson, symbolised CIA operations in Vietnam. ..."
"... Yet the Democratic Party has now embarked on a full-scale rehabilitation of the intelligence community – or at least the part of it that supports the notion of Russian hacking. (We can be sure there is disagreement behind the scenes.) And it is not only the Democratic establishment that is embracing the deep state. Some of the party's base, believing Trump and Putin to be joined at the hip, has taken to ranting about 'treason' like a reconstituted John Birch Society. ..."
"... The Democratic Party has now developed a new outlook on the world, a more ambitious partnership between liberal humanitarian interventionists and neoconservative militarists than existed under the cautious Obama. This may be the most disastrous consequence for the Democratic Party of the new anti-Russian orthodoxy: the loss of the opportunity to formulate a more humane and coherent foreign policy. The obsession with Putin has erased any possibility of complexity from the Democratic world picture, creating a void quickly filled by the monochrome fantasies of Hillary Clinton and her exceptionalist allies. ..."
"... For people like Max Boot and Robert Kagan, war is a desirable state of affairs, especially when viewed from the comfort of their keyboards, and the rest of the world – apart from a few bad guys – is filled with populations who want to build societies just like ours: pluralistic, democratic and open for business. This view is difficult to challenge when it cloaks itself in humanitarian sentiment. There is horrific suffering in the world; the US has abundant resources to help relieve it; the moral imperative is clear. There are endless forms of international engagement that do not involve military intervention. But it is the path taken by US policy often enough that one may suspect humanitarian rhetoric is nothing more than window-dressing for a more mundane geopolitics – one that defines the national interest as global and virtually limitless. ..."
"... The prospect of impeaching Trump and removing him from office by convicting him of collusion with Russia has created an atmosphere of almost giddy anticipation among leading Democrats, allowing them to forget that the rest of the Republican Party is composed of many politicians far more skilful in Washington's ways than their president will ever be. ..."
"... They are posing an overdue challenge to the long con of neoliberalism, and the technocratic arrogance that led to Clinton's defeat in Rust Belt states. Recognising that the current leadership will not bring about significant change, they are seeking funding from outside the DNC. ..."
"... Democrat leaders have persuaded themselves (and much of their base) that all the republic needs is a restoration of the status quo ante Trump. They remain oblivious to popular impatience with familiar formulas. ..."
"... Democratic insurgents are also developing a populist critique of the imperial hubris that has sponsored multiple failed crusades, extorted disproportionate sacrifice from the working class and provoked support for Trump, who presented himself (however misleadingly) as an opponent of open-ended interventionism. On foreign policy, the insurgents face an even more entrenched opposition than on domestic policy: a bipartisan consensus aflame with outrage at the threat to democracy supposedly posed by Russian hacking. Still, they may have found a tactical way forward, by focusing on the unequal burden borne by the poor and working class in the promotion and maintenance of American empire. ..."
"... This approach animates Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis, a 33-page document whose authors include Norman Solomon, founder of the web-based insurgent lobby RootsAction.org. 'The Democratic Party's claims of fighting for "working families" have been undermined by its refusal to directly challenge corporate power, enabling Trump to masquerade as a champion of the people,' Autopsy announces. ..."
"... Clinton's record of uncritical commitment to military intervention allowed Trump to have it both ways, playing to jingoist resentment while posing as an opponent of protracted and pointless war. ..."
"... If the insurgent movements within the Democratic Party begin to formulate an intelligent foreign policy critique, a re-examination may finally occur. And the world may come into sharper focus as a place where American power, like American virtue, is limited. For this Democrat, that is an outcome devoutly to be wished. It's a long shot, but there is something happening out there. ..."
American politics have rarely presented a more disheartening spectacle. The repellent and dangerous antics of Donald Trump are
troubling enough, but so is the Democratic Party leadership's failure to take in the significance of the 2016 election campaign.
Bernie Sanders's challenge to Hillary Clinton, combined with Trump's triumph, revealed the breadth of popular anger at politics as
usual – the blend of neoliberal domestic policy and interventionist foreign policy that constitutes consensus in Washington.
Neoliberals celebrate market utility as the sole criterion of worth; interventionists exalt military adventure abroad as a means
of fighting evil in order to secure global progress . Both agendas have proved calamitous for most Americans. Many registered
their disaffection in 2016. Sanders is a social democrat and Trump a demagogic mountebank, but their campaigns underscored a
widespread repudiation of the Washington consensus. For about a week after the election, pundits discussed the possibility of a more
capacious Democratic strategy. It appeared that the party might learn something from Clinton's defeat. Then everything changed.
Money quote: "And even given that, I would have to qualify the nature of the threats. Russia and China are best described as adversaries
or competitors rather than enemies as they have compelling interests to avoid war, even if Washington is doing its best to turn them
hostile. Neither has anything to gain and much to lose by escalating a minor conflict into something that might well start World War
3. Indeed, both have strong incentives to avoid doing so, which makes the actual threat that they represent more speculative than real.
And, on the plus side, both can be extremely useful in dealing with international issues where Washington has little or no leverage,
to include resolving the North Korea problem and Syria, so the US has considerable benefits to be gained by cultivating their cooperation."
Notable quotes:
"... And even given that, I would have to qualify the nature of the threats. Russia and China are best described as adversaries or competitors rather than enemies as they have compelling interests to avoid war, even if Washington is doing its best to turn them hostile. Neither has anything to gain and much to lose by escalating a minor conflict into something that might well start World War 3. Indeed, both have strong incentives to avoid doing so, which makes the actual threat that they represent more speculative than real. And, on the plus side, both can be extremely useful in dealing with international issues where Washington has little or no leverage, to include resolving the North Korea problem and Syria, so the US has considerable benefits to be gained by cultivating their cooperation. ..."
"... Cohen-Watnick is thirty years old and has little relevant experience for the position he holds, senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council. But his inexperience counts for little as he is good friend of son-in-law Jared Kushner. He has told the New York Times ..."
"... Both Cohen-Watnick and Harvey share the neoconservative belief that the Iranians and their proxies in Syria and Iraq need to be confronted by force, an opportunity described by Foreign Policy ..."
"... What danger to the U.S. or its actual treaty allies an Iranian influenced land corridor would constitute remains a mystery but there is no shortage of Iran haters in the White House. Former senior CIA analyst Paul Pillar sees "unrelenting hostility from the Trump administration" towards Iran and notes "cherry-picking" of the intelligence to make a case for war, similar to what occurred with Iraq in 2002-3. And even though Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster have pushed back against the impulsive Cohen-Watnick and Harvey, their objections are tactical as they do not wish to make U.S. forces in the region vulnerable to attacks coming from a new direction. Otherwise they too consider Iran as America's number one active enemy and believe that war is inevitable. Donald Trump has unfortunately also jumped directly into the argument on the side of Saudi Arabia and Israel, both of which would like to see Washington go to war with Tehran on their behalf. ..."
"... You forgot the third significant potential threat from a friendly nation, i.e. Israel. Israel will sabotage any effort to normallize relations with Russia or even Iran. They will resort to false flag operations to start a war with Iran. ..."
"... The problem with this White House, as well as the previous ones, is that none of the so-called experts really understand the Middle East. The US is not interested in having friendly relations with all nations. All her efforts are towards one goal, the world domination. Even if President Trump wanted to normalize relations with Russia, the MSM, the democrats, as well as, his republican opponents will not let him. ..."
"... That is why the constan drumbeat of Russia's meddling in the 2016 election despite the fact that no proof has been given so far. Similarly, the "Iran has nuclear weapons" narrative is constantly repeated, the reports by IAEA and the 17 Intelligence Agencies to the contrary not withstanding. ..."
"... The elevation of Muhammad bin Salman to the Crown Prince position will only make the Middle East situation worse. Israel will be able to manipulate him much more easily than the old guard. ..."
"... The titanic elephant in the room -- that US foreign policy is not governed by "rationality" but by "special interests" seems .missing ..."
"... Trump has no control of most government functions, particularly foreign affairs. The Deep State takes care of that for him. The Deep State has been calling the shots for decades and all Presidents who weren't assassinated have complied. Democracies never work and ours quit long ago. ..."
"... I fully agree that attacking Iran would be yet another disaster but I don't understand why Saudi Arabia is portrayed as an 'enemy', the 'real' one, no less, in alt-media circles like this. I mean let's be honest with ourselves. KSA is the definition of a vassal state. Has been so since the state established established relations with the USA in the 1940s and the status was confirmed during the 1960s under King Faisal. Oil for security. Why pretend that they have any operational clearance from the US? ..."
"... The BIGGEST threat to the USA is from within, as we are nothing more than an occupied colony of Apartheid Israel, paying that bastard state tributes each year in the form of free money and weapons, political backing at the UN, and never tire of fighting her wars of conquest. ..."
"... The also have a choke-hold on Congress, which is always eager to wag their tail and hope their Yid Overlord gives them a treat and not a dressing-down in the Jew MSM, which is a career killer. ..."
"... Israel's current "agreements" and its "kowtowing" to Saudi Arabia speaks VOLUMES. Once again, Israel is about to get others to do their "dirty work" for them. ..."
"... There's no alternative to Saudi royal family rule of the peninsula. Who's there to replace them? Any other group, assuming there might be one somewhere waiting in the wings, would probably be anti-American and not as compliant as the Saudis. They've spent gigantic sums in the endless billions buying military equipment from the US, weapons they can't even fully use, as a way of making themselves indispensable customers. Many other billions of petrodollars find their way westward into our financial systems. They collaborate with the US in various schemes throughout the Muslim world using their intelligence services and money in furtherance of US goals. ..."
"... Mattis still seems stuck with his Iran obsession. Shame I thought he had the intellectual curiosity to adapt. Trump has good instincts, I hope Tillerson comes to the fore, and Bannon stays influential. ..."
"... Iran is US enemy #1 not only because it is against that country smaller than New Jersey with less people (Israel) but also because Iran has been a model for other countries to follow because of its intransigence to US oppression and attacks, financial political and cyber. As the world becomes multi-polar, Iran's repeated wise reactions to the world hegemon have been an inspiration to China and others to go their own way. The US can't stand that. ..."
"... Contrary to the popular view, Wahabism is necessary to keep the local population under control. Particularly the minority Shia population who live along the eastern coast, an area, which incidentally also has the all the oil reserves. USA fully understands this. Which is why they not only tolerated Wahabism, but strongly promoted it during Afghan jihad. The operation was by and large very successful btw. It was only during the '90s when religion became the new ideology for the resistance against the empire across the Muslim world. Zero surprise there because the preceding ideology, radical left wing politics was completely defeated. Iran became the first country in this pattern. The Iranian left was decimated by the Shah, another vassal. So the religious right became the new resistance. ..."
"... And as far as the KSA is considered, Wahabi preachers aren't allowed to attack the USA anyway. If any individual preacher so much as makes a squeak, he will be bent over a barrel. There won't be any "coming down very hard on Saudi Arabia" because USA already owns that country. ..."
"... The British Empire 'made' the House of Saud. Thinking it wise to use Wahhabism to control Shia Islam is like thinking it wise to use blacks to control the criminal tendencies of Mexicans. ..."
It is one of the great ironies that the United States, a land mass protected by two broad oceans while also benefitting from the
world's largest economy and most powerful military, persists in viewing itself as a potential victim, vulnerable and surrounded by
enemies. In reality, there are only two significant potential threats to the U.S. The first consists of the only two non-friendly
countries – Russia and China – that have nuclear weapons and delivery systems that could hit the North American continent and the
second is the somewhat more amorphous danger represented by international terrorism.
And even given that, I would have to qualify the nature of the threats. Russia and China are best described as adversaries
or competitors rather than enemies as they have compelling interests to avoid war, even if Washington is doing its best to turn them
hostile. Neither has anything to gain and much to lose by escalating a minor conflict into something that might well start World
War 3. Indeed, both have strong incentives to avoid doing so, which makes the actual threat that they represent more speculative
than real. And, on the plus side, both can be extremely useful in dealing with international issues where Washington has little or
no leverage, to include resolving the North Korea problem and Syria, so the US has considerable benefits to be gained by cultivating
their cooperation.
Also, I would characterize international terrorism as a faux threat at a national level, though one that has been exaggerated
through the media and fearmongering to such an extent that it appears much more dangerous than it actually is. It has been observed
that more Americans are killed by falling furniture than by terrorists in a year but terrorism has a particularly potency due to
its unpredictability and the fear that it creates. Due to that fear, American governments and businesses at all levels have been
willing to spend a trillion dollars per annum to defeat what might rationally be regarded as a relatively minor problem.
So if the United States were serious about dealing with or deflecting the actual threats against the American people it could
first of all reduce its defense expenditures to make them commensurate with the actual threat before concentrating on three things.
First, would be to establish a solid modus vivendi with Russia and China to avoid conflicts of interest that could develop
into actual tit-for-tat escalation. That would require an acceptance by Washington of the fact that both Moscow and Beijing have
regional spheres of influence that are defined by their interests. You don't have to like the governance of either country, but their
national interests have to be appreciated and respected just as the United States has legitimate interests within its own hemisphere
that must be respected by Russia and China.
Second, Washington must, unfortunately, continue to spend on the Missile Defense Agency, which supports anti-missile defenses
if the search for a modus vivendi for some reason fails. Mutual assured destruction is not a desirable strategic doctrine
but being able to intercept incoming missiles while also having some capability to strike back if attacked is a realistic deterrent
given the proliferation of nations that have both ballistic missiles and nukes.
Third and finally, there would be a coordinated program aimed at international terrorism based equally on where the terror comes
from and on physically preventing the terrorist attacks from taking place. This is the element in national defense that is least
clear cut. Dealing with Russia and China involves working with mature regimes that have established diplomatic and military channels.
Dealing with terrorist non-state players is completely different as there are generally speaking no such channels.
It should in theory be pretty simple to match threats and interests with actions since there are only a handful that really matter,
but apparently it is not so in practice. What is Washington doing? First of all, the White House is deliberately turning its back
on restoring a good working relationship with Russia by insisting that Crimea be returned to Kiev, by blaming Moscow for the continued
unrest in Donbas, and by attacking Syrian military targets in spite of the fact that Russia is an ally of the legitimate government
in Damascus and the United States is an interloper in the conflict. Meanwhile congress and the media are poisoning the waters through
their dogged pursuit of Russiagate for political reasons even though nearly a year of investigation has produced no actual evidence
of malfeasance on the part of U.S. officials and precious little in terms of Moscow's alleged interference.
Playing tough to the international audience has unfortunately become part of the American Exceptionalism DNA. Upon his arrival
in Warsaw last week, Donald Trump doubled down on the
Russia-bashing, calling on Moscow to "cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere and its support for hostile regimes
including Syria and Iran." He then recommended that Russia should "join the community of responsible nations in our fight against
common enemies and in defense of civilization itself."
The comments in Warsaw were unnecessary, even if the Poles wanted to hear them, and were both highly insulting and ignorant. It
was not a good start for Donald's second overseas trip, even though the speech has otherwise been interpreted as a welcome defense
of Western civilization and European values. Trump also followed up with a two hour plus discussion with President Vladimir Putin
in which the two apparently agreed to differ on the alleged Russian hacking of the American election. The Trump-Putin meeting indicated
that restoring some kind of working relationship with Russia is still possible, as it is in everyone's interest to do so.
Fighting terrorism is quite another matter and the United States approach is the reverse of what a rational player would be seeking
to accomplish. The U.S. is rightly assisting in the bid to eradicate ISIS in Syria and Iraq but it is simultaneously attacking the
most effective fighters against that group, namely the Syrian government armed forces and the Shiite militias being provided by Iran
and Hezbollah. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that at least some in the Trump Administration are seeking to use the Syrian
engagement as a stepping stone to war with Iran.
As was the case in the months preceding the ill-fated invasion of Iraq in 2003, all buttons are being pushed to vilify Iran. Recent
reports suggest that two individuals in the White House in particular have been pressuring the Trump administration's generals to
escalate U.S. involvement in Syria to bring about a war with Tehran sooner rather than later. They are Ezra Cohen-Watnick and Derek
Harvey, reported to be holdovers from the team brought into the White House by the virulently anti-Iranian former National Security
Adviser Michael Flynn.
Cohen-Watnick is thirty years old and
has little relevant experience for the position he holds, senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council.
But his inexperience counts for little as he is good friend of son-in-law Jared Kushner. He has told the New York Times
that "wants to use American spies to help oust the Iranian government," a comment that reflects complete ignorance, both regarding
Iran and also concerning spy agency capabilities. His partner in crime Harvey, a former military officer who advised General David
Petraeus when he was in Iraq, is the NSC advisor on the Middle East.
Both Cohen-Watnick and Harvey share the neoconservative belief that the Iranians and their proxies in Syria and Iraq need
to be confronted by force,
an opportunity described by Foreign Policy magazine as having developed into "a pivotal moment that will determine whether
Iran or the United States exerts influence over Iraq and Syria." Other neocon promoters of conflict with Iran have described their
horror at a possible Shiite "bridge" or "land corridor" through the Arab heartland, running from Iran itself through Iraq and Syria
and connecting on the Mediterranean with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
What danger to the U.S. or its actual treaty allies an Iranian influenced land corridor would constitute remains a mystery
but there is no shortage of Iran haters in the White House. Former senior CIA analyst Paul Pillar
sees "unrelenting hostility from the Trump administration" towards Iran and notes "cherry-picking" of the intelligence to make
a case for war, similar to what occurred with Iraq in 2002-3. And even though Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Security
Advisor H.R. McMaster have pushed back against the impulsive Cohen-Watnick and Harvey, their objections are tactical as they do not
wish to make U.S. forces in the region vulnerable to attacks coming from a new direction. Otherwise they too consider Iran as America's
number one active enemy and believe that war is inevitable. Donald Trump has unfortunately also jumped directly into the argument
on the side of Saudi Arabia and Israel, both of which would like to see Washington go to war with Tehran on their behalf.
The problem with the Trump analysis is that he has his friends and enemies confused. He is actually supporting Saudi Arabia, the
source of most of the terrorism that has convulsed Western Europe and the United States while also killing hundreds of thousands
of fellow Muslims. Random terrorism to kill as many "infidels and heretics" as possible to create fear is a Sunni Muslim phenomenon,
supported financially and doctrinally by the Saudis. To be sure, Iran has used terror tactics to eliminate opponents and select targets
overseas, to include several multiple-victim bombings, but it has never engaged in anything like the recent series of attacks in
France and Britain. So the United States is moving seemingly inexorably towards war with a country that itself constitutes no actual
terrorist threat, unless it is attacked, in support of a country that very much is part of the threat and also on behalf of Israel,
which for its part would prefer to see Americans die in a war against Iran rather that sacrificing its own sons and daughters.
Realizing who the real enemy actually is and addressing the actual terrorism problem would not only involve coming down very hard
on Saudi Arabia rather than Iran, it would also require some serious thinking in the White House about the extent to which America's
armed interventions all over Asia and Africa have made many people hate us enough to strap on a suicide vest and have a go. Saudi
financing and Washington's propensity to go to war and thereby create a deep well of hatred just might be the principal causative
elements in the rise of global terrorism. Do I think that Donald Trump's White House has the courage to take such a step and change
direction? Unfortunately, no.
Saudi Arabia is THE worst nation in the Middle East.
Why does the US follow along blindly? Well, it is a WASP thing. We are the new Brit Empire. By the height of the Victorian
era, virtually all English Elites were philoSemitic. Roughly half of the UK WASP Elite philoSemitism was pro-Jewish and half was
pro-Arabic/Islamic. And by the time of WW1, the English Elite pro-Arabic/Islamic faction came to adore the house of Saud. So,
our foreign policy is merely WASP culture continuing to ruin most of the rest of the world, including all the whites ruled by
WASP Elites.
In reality, there are only two significant potential threats to the U.S. The first consists of the only two non-friendly
countries – Russia and China – that have nuclear weapons and delivery systems that could hit the North American continent and
the second is the somewhat more amorphous danger represented by international terrorism.
No, the only threats are the following three:
Too many Meso-Americans invading from the border. These people have totally changed the SW and may drastically alter parts
of US as well. This is an invasion. Meso-Americans are lackluster, but Too Many translates into real power, especially in elections.
The other threat is Hindu-Indian. Indians are just itching to unload 100s of millions of their kind to Anglo nations. Unlike
Chinese population that is plummeting, Indian population is still growing.
The other threat, biggest of all, is the Negro. It's not Russian missiles or Chinese troops that turned Detroit into a hellhole.
It is Negroes. And look at Baltimore, New Orleans, Selma, Memphis, Oakland, St. Louis, South Side Chicago, etc.
Afromic Bomb is more hellish than atomic bomb. Compare Detroit and Hiroshima.
Also, even though nukes are deadly, they will likely never be used. They are for defensive purposes only. The real missiles
that will destroy the West is the Afro penis. US has nukes to destroy the world, but they haven't been used even during peak of
cold war. But millions of Negro puds have impregnanted and colonized white wombs to kill white-babies-that-could-have-been and
replaced them with mulatto Negro kids who will turn out like Colin Kapernick.
The real missile gap is the threat posed by negro dong on white dong. The negro dong is so potent that even Japanese women
are going Negroid and having kids with Negro men and raising these kids as 'Japanese' to beat up real Japanese. So, if Japan with
few blacks is turning like this, imagine the threat posed by Negroes on whites in the West.
Look at YouTube of street life and club life in Paris and London. Negro missiles are conquering the white race and spreading
the savage genes.
Look how Polish women welcomed the Negro missile cuz they are infected with jungle fever. ACOWW will be the real undoing of
the West.
Besides what Priss Factor said above the following is to be reinforced with every real American man, woman and child.
Israel , which for its part would prefer to see Americans die in a war against Iran rather that sacrificing its
own sons and daughters.
Israel, the REAL enemy! ,
@K India is looking to unload hindus to U.S? Quite the opposite. India is 'losing' its best brains to the U.S so its
trying to attract them back to their country. For eg: The chief- architect of IBM's Watson is a Hindu Indian and so is the
head of IBM's neuro-morphic computing. These people are advancing western technology.... civilian and also defense (IBM
is collaborating with the American defense organization DARPA) instead of helping India achieve technological competence.
And most of other super intelligent Indians also India is losing them to the west.
(i dont hate the west for doing that. Any country in amercia's place would have done the same. It is india's job to keep
its best brains working for it and not for others. And india is trying its best to do that albeit unsuccessfully.)
100 Words #UNRIG adds AMERICA FIRST, NOT ISRAEL to Agenda.
."A.I.P.A.C.. you're outta business!"
Due to slanderous attacks by a Mossad internet psy-op, Steele now prioritizes Israeli malign influence on US. Also, check out
Cynthia McKinney's twitter.
#UNRIG – Robert David Steele Weekly Update
@Durruti Nice action approach
to cure ills of society.
Enclosing copy of flier we have distributed - with a similar approach at a cure.
*Flier distributed is adjusted & a bit more attractive (1 sheet - both sides).
The key is to Restore the Republic, which was definitively destroyed on November 22, 1963.
Feel free to contact.
Use this, or send me a note by way of a response.
For THE RESTORATION OF THE REPUBLIC
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles "
The above is a portion of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson.
We submit the following facts to the citizens of the United States.
The government of the United States has been a Totalitarian Oligarchy since the military financial aristocracy destroyed
the Democratic Republic on November 22, 1963 , when they assassinated the last democratically elected president, John Fitzgerald
Kennedy , and overthrew his government. All following governments have been unconstitutional frauds. Attempts by Robert
Kennedy and Martin Luther King to restore the Republic were interrupted by their murder.
A subsequent 12 year colonial war against Vietnam , conducted by the murderers of Kennedy, left 2 million dead in a
wake of napalm and burning villages.
In 1965, the U.S. government orchestrated the slaughter of 1 million unarmed Indonesian civilians.
In the decade that followed the CIA murdered 100,000 Native Americans in Guatemala .
In the 1970s, the Oligarchy began the destruction and looting of America's middle class, by encouraging the export of industry
and jobs to parts of the world where workers were paid bare subsistence wages. The 2008, Bailout of the Nation's Oligarchs
cost American taxpayers $13trillion. The long decline of the local economy has led to the political decline of our hard working
citizens, as well as the decay of cities, towns, and infrastructure, such as education.
The impoverishment of America's middle class has undermined the nation's financial stability. Without a productive foundation,
the government has accumulated a huge debt in excess of $19trillion. This debt will have to be paid, or suffered by future generations.
Concurrently, the top 1% of the nation's population has benefited enormously from the discomfiture of the rest. The interest rate
has been reduced to 0, thereby slowly robbing millions of depositors of their savings, as their savings cannot stay even with
the inflation rate.
The government spends the declining national wealth on bloody and never ending military adventures, and is or has recently
conducted unconstitutional wars against 9 nations. The Oligarchs maintain 700 military bases in 131 countries; they spend as much
on military weapons of terror as the rest of the nations of the world combined. Tellingly, more than half the government budget
is spent on the military and 16 associated secret agencies.
The nightmare of a powerful centralized government crushing the rights of the people, so feared by the Founders of the United
States, has become a reality. The government of Obama/Biden, as with previous administrations such as Bush/Cheney, and whoever
is chosen in November 2016, operates a Gulag of dozens of concentration camps, where prisoners are denied trials, and routinely
tortured. The Patriot Act and The National Defense Authorizations Act , enacted by both Democratic and Republican
factions of the oligarchy, serve to establish a legal cover for their terror.
The nation's media is controlled, and, with the school systems, serve to brainwash the population; the people are intimidated
and treated with contempt.
The United States is No longer Sovereign
The United States is no longer a sovereign nation. Its government, The Executive, and Congress, is bought, utterly owned
and controlled by foreign and domestic wealthy Oligarchs, such as the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and Duponts , to name only
a few of the best known.
The 2016 Electoral Circus will anoint new actors to occupy the same Unconstitutional Government, with its controlling International
Oligarchs. Clinton, Trump, whomever, are willing accomplices for imperialist international murder, and destruction of nations,
including ours.
For Love of Country
The Restoration of the Republic will be a Revolutionary Act, that will cancel all previous debts owed to that unconstitutional
regime and its business supporters. All debts, including Student Debts, will be canceled. Our citizens will begin, anew, with
a clean slate.
As American Founder , Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to James Madison:
"I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, 'that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living':"
"Then I say the earth belongs to each of these generations, during it's course, fully, and in their own right. The 2d. Generation
receives it clear of the debts and incumberances of the 1st. The 3d of the 2d. and so on. For if the 1st. Could charge it with
a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not the living generation."
Our Citizens must restore the centrality of the constitution, establishing a less powerful government which will ensure
President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms , freedom of speech and expression, freedom to worship God in ones own way, freedom
from want "which means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peace time life for its inhabitants
" and freedom from fear "which means a world-wide reduction of armaments "
Once restored: The Constitution will become, once again, the law of the land and of a free people. We will establish a government,
hold elections, begin to direct traffic, arrest criminal politicians of the tyrannical oligarchy, and, in short, repair the damage
of the previous totalitarian governments.
For the Democratic Republic!
Sons and Daughters of Liberty [email protected]
In reality, there are only two significant potential threats to the U.S. The first consists of the only two non-friendly
countries – Russia and China – that have nuclear weapons and delivery systems that could hit the North American continent and
the second is the somewhat more amorphous danger represented by international terrorism.
You forgot the third significant potential threat from a friendly nation, i.e. Israel. Israel will sabotage any effort
to normallize relations with Russia or even Iran. They will resort to false flag operations to start a war with Iran.
The problem with this White House, as well as the previous ones, is that none of the so-called experts really understand
the Middle East. The US is not interested in having friendly relations with all nations. All her efforts are towards one goal,
the world domination. Even if President Trump wanted to normalize relations with Russia, the MSM, the democrats, as well as, his
republican opponents will not let him.
That is why the constan drumbeat of Russia's meddling in the 2016 election despite the fact that no proof has been given
so far. Similarly, the "Iran has nuclear weapons" narrative is constantly repeated, the reports by IAEA and the 17 Intelligence
Agencies to the contrary not withstanding.
The elevation of Muhammad bin Salman to the Crown Prince position will only make the Middle East situation worse. Israel
will be able to manipulate him much more easily than the old guard.
The western world is dependent on oil, especially ME oil. Saudi Arabia was made the USA's main oil supplier at the end of 1944.
The Saud dynasty depends on the USA. That the Saudis would sponsor terrorism, why would they ? And which terrorism is Muslim terrorism
?
Sept 11 not, Boston not, Madrid and London very questionably. We then are left with minor issues, the Paris shooting the biggest.
That Saudi Arabia is waging war in Yemen certainly is with USA support. The Saudi army does what the USA wants them to do.
Mr. Giraldi, you forgot to mention Israel as one of America's biggest liabilities besides Saudi Arabia. But with such amateur
dramatics in the White House and on the Security Council, the US is destined for war but only against the wrong enemy such as
Iran. If the Saudis and the right-wing Netanyahu regime want to get after Iran they should do it alone. They surely will get a
bloody nose. Americans have shed enough blood for these rascal regimes. President Trump should continue with his rapprochement
towards Russia because both nation states have more in common than expected.
I'm a little disappointed in this article. Not that it's a bad article per se: perfectly rational, reasonable, academic even.
But unfortunately, it's simply naive.
"Realizing who the real enemy actually is and addressing the actual terrorism problem would not only involve coming down very
hard on Saudi Arabia rather than Iran, it would also require some serious thinking in the White House about the extent to which
America's armed interventions all over Asia and Africa have made many people hate us enough to strap on a suicide vest and have
a go."
Realize who the real enemy is ? Come down hard on the Saud's ? No -- really ?
The titanic elephant in the room -- that US foreign policy is not governed by "rationality" but by "special interests" seems
.missing. Israel, the Saudi's themselves, the MIC & so on & so forth ARE the special interests who literally "realise" US Policy.
Well, the real enemy of the people are the real terrorists behind the scenes. Those who planned the 9/11 false flag.
Those who sent the Anthrax letters to resisting congress members. Those who pre-planned the wars of aggression in the whole middle
east.
So any appeal to the "White House" is almost pointless since the White House is one element of the power structure captured
by the war-criminal lunatics.
To change something people in the US should at first stop buying their war criminal lying mass media.
Then they should stop supporting ANY foreign intervention by the US and should stop believing any of the preposterous lies
released by the media, the state dept., or any other neocon outlet.
Actually Trump was probably elected because he said he was anti-intervention and anti-media. But did it help?
The US needs mass resistance (demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, non-participation, sit-ins, grass-root information, or whatever)
against their neocon/zionist/mafia/cia power groups or nothing will change.
We need demonstrations against NATO, against war, against false flag terrorism, against using terrorists as secret armies,
against war propaganda!
B.t.w. Iran has always been one of the main goals. Think of it: Why did the US attack Afghanistan and Iraq? What have those
two countries in common? (Hint: a look on the map helps to answer this question.)
I am beginning to get interested in why some people are sure 9/11 was a false flag affair covered up by a lot of lies.
So may I try my opening question on you. How much, if any of it, have you read of the official 9/11 commission report? ,
"The White House is targeting Iran but should instead focus on Saudi Arabia"
Trump has no control of most government functions, particularly foreign affairs. The Deep State takes care of that for
him. The Deep State has been calling the shots for decades and all Presidents who weren't assassinated have complied. Democracies
never work and ours quit long ago.
I fully agree that attacking Iran would be yet another disaster but I don't understand why Saudi Arabia is portrayed as an 'enemy',
the 'real' one, no less, in alt-media circles like this.
I mean let's be honest with ourselves. KSA is the definition of a vassal state. Has been so since the state established
established relations with the USA in the 1940s and the status was confirmed during the 1960s under King Faisal. Oil for security. Why pretend that they have any operational clearance from the US?
Contrary to the popular view, Wahabism is necessary to keep the local population under control. Particularly the minority Shia
population who live along the eastern coast, an area, which incidentally also has the all the oil reserves.
USA fully understands this. Which is why they not only tolerated Wahabism, but strongly promoted it during Afghan jihad. The
operation was by and large very successful btw.
It was only during the '90s when religion became the new ideology for the resistance against the empire across the Muslim world.
Zero surprise there because the preceding ideology, radical left wing politics was completely defeated. Iran became the first
country in this pattern. The Iranian left was decimated by the Shah, another vassal. So the religious right became the new resistance.
And as far as the KSA is considered, Wahabi preachers aren't allowed to attack the USA anyway. If any individual preacher so
much as makes a squeak, he will be bent over a barrel. There won't be any "coming down very hard on Saudi Arabia" because USA
already owns that country.
So what's the answer? Well, props to Phillip as he understood – "it would also require some serious thinking in the White House
about the extent to which America's armed interventions all over Asia and Africa have made many people hate us enough to strap
on a suicide vest and have a go."
Your analysis starts too late. The US supports Wahhabism and the House of Saud because the pro-Arabic/Islamic English
Elites of 1910 and 1920 and 1935 supported Wahhabism and the House of Saud.
The British Empire 'made' the House of Saud,
Thinking it wise to use Wahhabism to control Shia Islam is like thinking it wise to use blacks to control the criminal
tendencies of Mexicans.
In reality, there are only two significant potential threats to the U.S. The first consists of the only two non-friendly
countries – Russia and China – that have nuclear weapons and delivery systems that could hit the North American continent and
the second is the somewhat more amorphous danger represented by international terrorism.
No, the only threats are the following three:
Too many Meso-Americans invading from the border. These people have totally changed the SW and may drastically alter parts
of US as well. This is an invasion. Meso-Americans are lackluster, but Too Many translates into real power, especially in elections.
The other threat is Hindu-Indian. Indians are just itching to unload 100s of millions of their kind to Anglo nations. Unlike
Chinese population that is plummeting, Indian population is still growing.
The other threat, biggest of all, is the Negro. It's not Russian missiles or Chinese troops that turned Detroit into a hellhole.
It is Negroes. And look at Baltimore, New Orleans, Selma, Memphis, Oakland, St. Louis, South Side Chicago, etc.
Afromic Bomb is more hellish than atomic bomb. Compare Detroit and Hiroshima.
Also, even though nukes are deadly, they will likely never be used. They are for defensive purposes only. The real missiles
that will destroy the West is the Afro penis. US has nukes to destroy the world, but they haven't been used even during peak of
cold war. But millions of Negro puds have impregnanted and colonized white wombs to kill white-babies-that-could-have-been and
replaced them with mulatto Negro kids who will turn out like Colin Kapernick.
The real missile gap is the threat posed by negro dong on white dong. The negro dong is so potent that even Japanese women
are going Negroid and having kids with Negro men and raising these kids as 'Japanese' to beat up real Japanese. So, if Japan with
few blacks is turning like this, imagine the threat posed by Negroes on whites in the West.
Look at youtube of street life and club life in Paris and London. Negro missiles are conquering the white race and spreading
the savage genes.
Look how Polish women welcomed the Negro missile cuz they are infected with jungle fever. ACOWW will be the real undoing of
the West.
Replies: @Sowhat And what grudge
is that? The only two I can find are connected. The deposing of our puppets, the Assads and the nationalization of their natural
resources. I have the impression that it removes around future hegemon and the rich gas reserves off their coast and the decades
long desire to run a pipeline west to the Mediterranean.
The BIGGEST threat to the USA is from within, as we are nothing more than an occupied colony of Apartheid Israel, paying that
bastard state tributes each year in the form of free money and weapons, political backing at the UN, and never tire of fighting
her wars of conquest.
You won't see Israeli troops in the streets, since their confederates control the economy thru their control of the FED and
US Treasury and most of those TBTF banks, which we always bail out, no matter the cost.
The also have a choke-hold on Congress, which is always eager to wag their tail and hope their Yid Overlord gives them
a treat and not a dressing-down in the Jew MSM, which is a career killer.
The WH is also Israeli territory, especially now with a Jew NYC slumlord now Trump's top adviser and his fashion model faux
Jew daughter egging Daddy on to kill more Arab babies, since she can't stand the sight of dead babies
@Paul Well, the real enemy of
the people are the real terrorists behind the scenes. Those who planned the 9/11 false flag. Those who sent the Anthrax letters
to resisting congress members. Those who pre-planned the wars of aggression in the whole middle east.
So any appeal to the "White House" is almost pointless since the White House is one element of the power structure captured
by the war-criminal lunatics.
To change something people in the US should at first stop buying their war criminal lying mass media.
Then they should stop supporting ANY foreign intervention by the US and should stop believing any of the preposterous lies
released by the media, the state dept., or any other neocon outlet.
Actually Trump was probably elected because he said he was anti-intervention and anti-media. But did it help?
The US needs mass resistance (demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, non-participation, sit-ins, grass-root information, or whatever)
against their neocon/zionist/mafia/cia power groups or nothing will change.
We need demonstrations against NATO, against war, against false flag terrorism, against using terrorists as secret armies,
against war propaganda!
B.t.w. Iran has always been one of the main goals. Think of it: Why did the US attack Afghanistan and Iraq? What have those
two countries in common? (Hint: a look on the map helps to answer this question.) I am beginning to get interested in why some
people are sure 9/11 was a false flag affair covered up by a lot of lies. So may I try my opening question on you. How much, if
any of it, have you read of the official 9/11 commission report?
@eah The WH should focus on
the USA. And what grudge is that? The only two I can find are connected. The deposing of our puppets, the Assads and the nationalization
of their natural resources. I have the impression that it removes around future hegemon and the rich gas reserves off their coast
and the decades long desire to run a pipeline west to the Mediterranean.
Israel's current "agreements" and its "kowtowing" to Saudi Arabia speaks VOLUMES. Once again, Israel is about to get others
to do their "dirty work" for them.
The point that everybody seems to miss is the fact that Judaism and Islam are inextricably linked. In fact, one could safely
argue that Islam is an arabicized form of Judaism.
1. Both Judaism and Islam promote their own forms of supremacy, relegating non-adherents as "lesser human beings", or in Judaism's
take "no better than livestock, albeit with souls, to be used for the advantage of the jew".
2. Both systems proscribe lesser (or no) punishment for those of each respective "tribe" who transgress against "outsiders"
-- goyim
or infidels. Both systems proscribe much harsher punishments against "outsiders" who transgress against those of each respective
"tribe".
3. When it comes to "equality under law", Israel is no better than Saudi Arabia, as a jew who has a disagreement with an "outsider"
will always have the advantage of a judicial system which almost always rules for the jew.
4. Both Judaism and Islam have taken it upon themselves to be arbiters of what the rest of the world should follow, demanding
that "outsiders" conform to what THEY believe, thinking that they know what is best (for the rest of us). Just look at the demands
moslems (who are guests in western Europe) make of local non-moslem populations.
Read the jewish Talmud and islamic Koran you will find virtually identical passages that demonize and marginalize those of
us who are "goyim" or "infidels".
A pox on both their houses
Now before I say what I'm going to say I want to say that Israel has the right to define and defend her interests just
as China, Russia and USA do, as Geraldi says above. No nation or people can be denied this (without force).
Having said that, I am grateful to you, anarchyst, for having pointed out the familial similarities between Islam and
Judaism. In addition to what you say there is the fact that the Jewish genome is virtually identical to that of the Palestinians--except
for that of Ashkenazi Jews who are more than half European.
As far as I can see, Ashkenazi Jews have an existential choice. They can identify with their European half whereby they
acknowledge that the Greeks and not Moses made the greatest contributions to humanity (and more particularly, their humanity)
or they can go with their atavistic Semitic side and regress to barbarism. Science, Logic, Math, History, Architecture,
Drama and Music or blowing up Buddhas and shrouding your women. Take your pick.
Of course, this is sorta unfair in as much as they were kicked out of Europe and now dwell in the ME where if they try
to act like Europeans they will be persecuted by their neighbors as apostates. The Jews do indeed have a tough row to hoe.
, @bjondo Jews/Judaism
bring death, destruction, misery.
Muslims/Islam (minus Western creation of "Muslim"terrorists) brought golden ages to many areas.
Christianity and Islam elevate the human spirit. Judaism degrades.
June 7, 2017 We Have Met the Evil Empire and It Is Us
Life in America was pure injustice, the lash and the iron boot, despite the version of history we have been given by the Ford
and Rockefeller Foundations who "re-invented" America and its history through taking control of public education in the late 1940s.
You see, the multi-generational ignorance we bask in today is not unplanned. The threat represented by advances in communications
and other technology was recognized and dealt with, utterly quashed at birth.
@anarchyst Israel's current
"agreements" and its "kowtowing" to Saudi Arabia speaks VOLUMES. Once again, Israel is about to get others to do their "dirty
work" for them.
The point that everybody seems to miss is the fact that Judaism and Islam are inextricably linked. In fact, one could safely argue
that Islam is an arabicized form of Judaism.
1. Both Judaism and Islam promote their own forms of supremacy, relegating non-adherents as "lesser human beings", or in Judaism's
take "no better than livestock, albeit with souls, to be used for the advantage of the jew".
2. Both systems proscribe lesser (or no) punishment for those of each respective "tribe" who transgress against "outsiders"--goyim
or infidels. Both systems proscribe much harsher punishments against "outsiders" who transgress against those of each respective
"tribe".
3. When it comes to "equality under law", Israel is no better than Saudi Arabia, as a jew who has a disagreement with an "outsider"
will always have the advantage of a judicial system which almost always rules for the jew.
4. Both Judaism and Islam have taken it upon themselves to be arbiters of what the rest of the world should follow, demanding
that "outsiders" conform to what THEY believe, thinking that they know what is best (for the rest of us). Just look at the demands
moslems (who are guests in western Europe) make of local non-moslem populations.
Read the jewish Talmud and islamic Koran...you will find virtually identical passages that demonize and marginalize those of
us who are "goyim" or "infidels".
A pox on both their houses... Now before I say what I'm going to say I want to say that Israel has the right to define and defend
her interests just as China, Russia and USA do, as Geraldi says above. No nation or people can be denied this (without force).
Having said that, I am grateful to you, anarchyst, for having pointed out the familial similarities between Islam and Judaism.
In addition to what you say there is the fact that the Jewish genome is virtually identical to that of the Palestinians–except
for that of Ashkenazi Jews who are more than half European.
As far as I can see, Ashkenazi Jews have an existential choice. They can identify with their European half whereby they acknowledge
that the Greeks and not Moses made the greatest contributions to humanity (and more particularly, their humanity) or they can
go with their atavistic Semitic side and regress to barbarism. Science, Logic, Math, History, Architecture, Drama and Music or
blowing up Buddhas and shrouding your women. Take your pick.
Of course, this is sorta unfair in as much as they were kicked out of Europe and now dwell in the ME where if they try to act
like Europeans they will be persecuted by their neighbors as apostates. The Jews do indeed have a tough row to hoe.
Trump is torn between Israel's permanent need to weaken its powerful neighbors (Iraq, Iran) and the necessity to protect the USA
from terrorists attacks.
Iran is an hypothetical threat to Israel, Saudi Arabia has proven to be a threat to the world.
In Tehran and other Iranian cities including Iran's holiest, that is, most conservative cities like Mashad. there are taxi
companies owned and run by women.
Tehran traffic makes NYC look like Mayberry RFD; many Iranians use small motorcycles to commute and take care of daily chores.
It's not at all uncommon to see an Iranian woman in full chador driving a motorcycle with a child and parcels in tow.
Iranian women could offer to teach the women of Saudi Arabia to drive.
@Wizard of Oz I am beginning
to get interested in why some people are sure 9/11 was a false flag affair covered up by a lot of lies. So may I try my opening
question on you. How much, if any of it, have you read of the official 9/11 commission report? A better question: Have YOU read
The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation by Phillip Shenon?
There's no alternative to Saudi royal family rule of the peninsula. Who's there to replace them? Any other group, assuming
there might be one somewhere waiting in the wings, would probably be anti-American and not as compliant as the Saudis. They've
spent gigantic sums in the endless billions buying military equipment from the US, weapons they can't even fully use, as a way
of making themselves indispensable customers. Many other billions of petrodollars find their way westward into our financial systems.
They collaborate with the US in various schemes throughout the Muslim world using their intelligence services and money in furtherance
of US goals.
They live the royal life thanks to being able to use the money from their nation's resource wealth as their own personal kitty,
living in palaces, buying obscene amounts of jewelry and other luxury goods, and so on. They'll never give that up and being a
close ally of the US affords them protection which of course they pay for. They may be seen as an enemy by the average person
but not at the elite level with whom they all consort and roll around in the money with.
Mattis still seems stuck with his Iran obsession. Shame I thought he had the intellectual curiosity to adapt. Trump has
good instincts, I hope Tillerson comes to the fore, and Bannon stays influential.
Iran is US enemy #1 not only because it is against that country smaller than New Jersey with less people (Israel) but also
because Iran has been a model for other countries to follow because of its intransigence to US oppression and attacks, financial
political and cyber. As the world becomes multi-polar, Iran's repeated wise reactions to the world hegemon have been an inspiration
to China and others to go their own way. The US can't stand that.
@Paul Well, the real enemy of
the people are the real terrorists behind the scenes. Those who planned the 9/11 false flag. Those who sent the Anthrax letters
to resisting congress members. Those who pre-planned the wars of aggression in the whole middle east.
So any appeal to the "White House" is almost pointless since the White House is one element of the power structure captured
by the war-criminal lunatics.
To change something people in the US should at first stop buying their war criminal lying mass media.
Then they should stop supporting ANY foreign intervention by the US and should stop believing any of the preposterous lies
released by the media, the state dept., or any other neocon outlet.
Actually Trump was probably elected because he said he was anti-intervention and anti-media. But did it help?
The US needs mass resistance (demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, non-participation, sit-ins, grass-root information, or whatever)
against their neocon/zionist/mafia/cia power groups or nothing will change.
We need demonstrations against NATO, against war, against false flag terrorism, against using terrorists as secret armies,
against war propaganda!
B.t.w. Iran has always been one of the main goals. Think of it: Why did the US attack Afghanistan and Iraq? What have those
two countries in common? (Hint: a look on the map helps to answer this question.) "Well, the real enemy of the people are the
real terrorists behind the scenes. Those who planned the 9/11 false flag."
Saudi Arabia is THE worst nation in the Middle East.
Why does the US follow along blindly? Well, it is a WASP thing. We are the new Brit Empire. By the height of the Victorian
era, virtually all English Elites were philoSemitic. Roughly half of the UK WASP Elite philoSemitism was pro-Jewish and half was
pro-Arabic/Islamic.
And by the time of WW1, the English Elite pro-Arabic/Islamic faction came to adore the house of Saud.
So, our foreign policy is merely WASP culture continuing to ruin most of the rest of the world, including all the whites ruled
by WASP Elites. SECOND worst,my friend.
@Chad I fully agree that attacking
Iran would be yet another disaster but I don't understand why Saudi Arabia is portrayed as an 'enemy', the 'real' one, no less,
in alt-media circles like this.
I mean let's be honest with ourselves. KSA is the definition of a vassal state. Has been so since the state established
established relations with the USA in the 1940s and the status was confirmed during the 1960s under King Faisal. Oil for security.
Why pretend that they have any operational clearance from the US?
Contrary to the popular view, Wahabism is necessary to keep the local population under control. Particularly the minority
Shia population who live along the eastern coast, an area, which incidentally also has the all the oil reserves. USA fully understands
this. Which is why they not only tolerated Wahabism, but strongly promoted it during Afghan jihad. The operation was by and large
very successful btw. It was only during the '90s when religion became the new ideology for the resistance against the empire across
the Muslim world. Zero surprise there because the preceding ideology, radical left wing politics was completely defeated. Iran
became the first country in this pattern. The Iranian left was decimated by the Shah, another vassal. So the religious right became
the new resistance.
And as far as the KSA is considered, Wahabi preachers aren't allowed to attack the USA anyway. If any individual preacher
so much as makes a squeak, he will be bent over a barrel. There won't be any "coming down very hard on Saudi Arabia" because USA
already owns that country.
So what's the answer? Well, props to Phillip as he understood - "it would also require some serious thinking in the White House
about the extent to which America's armed interventions all over Asia and Africa have made many people hate us enough to strap
on a suicide vest and have a go."
Bingo. Your analysis starts too late. The US supports Wahhabism and the House of Saud because the pro-Arabic/Islamic English
Elites of 1910 and 1920 and 1935 supported Wahhabism and the House of Saud.
The British Empire 'made' the House of Saud. Thinking it wise to use Wahhabism to control Shia Islam is like thinking it
wise to use blacks to control the criminal tendencies of Mexicans.
1,000 Words @RobinG#UNRIG
adds AMERICA FIRST, NOT ISRAEL to Agenda.
..................."A.I.P.A.C.. you're outta business!"
Due to slanderous attacks by a Mossad internet psy-op, Steele now prioritizes Israeli malign influence on US. Also, check out
Cynthia McKinney's twitter.
#UNRIG - Robert David Steele Weekly Update Nice action approach to cure ills of society.
Enclosing copy of flier we have distributed – with a similar approach at a cure.
*Flier distributed is adjusted & a bit more attractive (1 sheet – both sides).
The key is to Restore the Republic, which was definitively destroyed on November 22, 1963.
Feel free to contact.
Use this, or send me a note by way of a response.
For THE RESTORATION OF THE REPUBLIC
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles "
The above is a portion of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson.
We submit the following facts to the citizens of the United States.
The government of the United States has been a Totalitarian Oligarchy since the military financial aristocracy destroyed
the Democratic Republic on November 22, 1963 , when they assassinated the last democratically elected president, John Fitzgerald
Kennedy , and overthrew his government. All following governments have been unconstitutional frauds. Attempts by Robert
Kennedy and Martin Luther King to restore the Republic were interrupted by their murder.
A subsequent 12 year colonial war against Vietnam , conducted by the murderers of Kennedy, left 2 million dead in a
wake of napalm and burning villages.
In 1965, the U.S. government orchestrated the slaughter of 1 million unarmed Indonesian civilians.
In the decade that followed the CIA murdered 100,000 Native Americans in Guatemala .
In the 1970s, the Oligarchy began the destruction and looting of America's middle class, by encouraging the export of industry
and jobs to parts of the world where workers were paid bare subsistence wages. The 2008, Bailout of the Nation's Oligarchs
cost American taxpayers $13trillion. The long decline of the local economy has led to the political decline of our hard working
citizens, as well as the decay of cities, towns, and infrastructure, such as education.
The impoverishment of America's middle class has undermined the nation's financial stability. Without a productive foundation,
the government has accumulated a huge debt in excess of $19trillion. This debt will have to be paid, or suffered by future generations.
Concurrently, the top 1% of the nation's population has benefited enormously from the discomfiture of the rest. The interest rate
has been reduced to 0, thereby slowly robbing millions of depositors of their savings, as their savings cannot stay even with
the inflation rate.
The government spends the declining national wealth on bloody and never ending military adventures, and is or has recently
conducted unconstitutional wars against 9 nations. The Oligarchs maintain 700 military bases in 131 countries; they spend as much
on military weapons of terror as the rest of the nations of the world combined. Tellingly, more than half the government budget
is spent on the military and 16 associated secret agencies.
The nightmare of a powerful centralized government crushing the rights of the people, so feared by the Founders of the United
States, has become a reality. The government of Obama/Biden, as with previous administrations such as Bush/Cheney, and whoever
is chosen in November 2016, operates a Gulag of dozens of concentration camps, where prisoners are denied trials, and routinely
tortured. The Patriot Act and The National Defense Authorizations Act , enacted by both Democratic and Republican
factions of the oligarchy, serve to establish a legal cover for their terror.
The nation's media is controlled, and, with the school systems, serve to brainwash the population; the people are intimidated
and treated with contempt.
The United States is No longer Sovereign
The United States is no longer a sovereign nation. Its government, The Executive, and Congress, is bought, utterly owned
and controlled by foreign and domestic wealthy Oligarchs, such as the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and Duponts , to name only
a few of the best known.
The 2016 Electoral Circus will anoint new actors to occupy the same Unconstitutional Government, with its controlling International
Oligarchs. Clinton, Trump, whomever, are willing accomplices for imperialist international murder, and destruction of nations,
including ours.
For Love of Country
The Restoration of the Republic will be a Revolutionary Act, that will cancel all previous debts owed to that unconstitutional
regime and its business supporters. All debts, including Student Debts, will be canceled. Our citizens will begin, anew, with
a clean slate.
As American Founder , Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to James Madison:
"I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, 'that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living':"
"Then I say the earth belongs to each of these generations, during it's course, fully, and in their own right. The 2d. Generation
receives it clear of the debts and incumberances of the 1st. The 3d of the 2d. and so on. For if the 1st. Could charge it with
a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not the living generation."
Our Citizens must restore the centrality of the constitution, establishing a less powerful government which will ensure
President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms , freedom of speech and expression, freedom to worship God in ones own way, freedom
from want "which means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peace time life for its inhabitants
" and freedom from fear "which means a world-wide reduction of armaments "
Once restored: The Constitution will become, once again, the law of the land and of a free people. We will establish a government,
hold elections, begin to direct traffic, arrest criminal politicians of the tyrannical oligarchy, and, in short, repair the damage
of the previous totalitarian governments.
For the Democratic Republic!
Sons and Daughters of Liberty [email protected]
are studying US states and ranking them according to financial stability measures. The states with biggest problems -- Illinois,
California, New Jersey, Connecticut -- are in the mess they are in largely because of pension liability issues: some pensions
are unfunded or underfunded.
I recall that ten years ago about a dozen Jewish organizations formed the "Iran Task Force," ** whose primary activity was
to persuade managers of State pension funds to divest from Iran-connected companies; that is, corporations & banks, etc. that
did business with Iran. I recall very clearly that Arnold Schwartznegger was the poster child for California's vanguard role in
divesting from such nasty nasty companies, in accord with the wishes of Jewish Israel-firsters.
Perhaps the Mercatus scholars could prepare an exercise in alternative financial history: What shape would the US economy,
and the various States's economies, be in if the US were NOT so overwhelmingly influenced by Israel firsters, and were NOT persuaded,
Against Our Better Judgment, to entangle themselves in Israel's nefarious activities?
____
** The 2007 Iran Task Force is NOT the same as the group formed in 2015 or so, embedded in US House/Senate, with Joe Lieberman
and Michael Hayden playing prominent roles in attempting to influence the Iran Deal.
The 2007 initiative was sponsored by groups such as ZOA, RJC, AIPAC, etc., and / or spun off groups such as Foundation for
Defense of Democracy, United Against Nuclear Iran.
"... It does, after all, have deep roots in the Manifest Destiny ethos that spurred the Mexican War, drove continental and trans-Pacific expansion, and emerged as a paternalistic justification for voluminous military interventions in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. As Dick Cheney suggests, "the world needs a powerful America." In this unilateral missionizing zeal Clinton proves most typical. ..."
"... she wants the United States to be the dominant power in the world, so she doesn't question the massive sums spent on the military and on the other branches of the national-security state. ..."
"... But Clinton's brand of American exceptionalism goes beyond the issue of American military dominion and into the policy potentials of mid-century social liberalism and, more specifically, the neoliberalism that has since replaced it. Indeed, since George McGovern's failed presidential bid of 1972, neoliberals, moving decidedly rightward on economic issues, have consistently employed exceptionalist code to fight off movements, ideas, and challengers from the left. ..."
"... She is smart enough to know that women in the United States endure far more poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity than women in Denmark-yet she shamelessly made clear that she was happy to keep it that way." Indeed, Clinton's denunciation of the idea that the United States should look more like Denmark betrayed one of the glaring the fault lines within the Democratic Party, and between Clintonian liberalism and Sandersite leftism. ..."
...It's hilarious how cocky and
confident the neoliberals were throughout the election. It's amazing how wrong they were.
Trump's victory is almost worth it.
Published on
Friday, February 26, 2016
by Common Dreams
"We Are Not Denmark": Hillary Clinton and Liberal American Exceptionalism
by Matthew Stanley
Several months removed, it now seems clear that the Democratic debate on October 13
contained an illuminating moment that has come to embody the 2016 Democratic Primary and the
key differences between its two candidates. Confronting Bernie Sanders's insistence that the
United States has much to learn from more socialized nations, particularly the Nordic Model,
Hillary Clinton was direct: "I love Denmark. But we are not Denmark. We are the United States
of America."
The implication behind this statement-the reasoning that ideas and institutions (in this
case social and economic programs) that are successful in other nations are somehow
practically or ideologically inconsistent with Americans and American principles-speaks to a
longstanding sociopolitical framework that has justified everything from continental expansion
to the Iraq War: American exceptionalism. Rooted in writings of Alexis de Tocqueville and the
mythology of John Winthrop's "City Upon a Hill," the notion that the history and mission of
the United States and the superiority of its political and economic traditions makes it
impervious to same the forces that influence other peoples has coursed through Abraham
Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address," the Cold War rhetoric of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson,
and the foreign policy declarations of Barack Obama.
Despite particular historical trends-early and relatively stable political democracy,
birthright citizenship, the absence of a feudal tradition, the relative weakness of class
consciousness-historians have critiqued this "American exceptionalism" as far more fictive
than physical, frequently citing the concept as a form of state mythology. Although different
histories lead naturally to historical and perhaps even structural dissimilarities, America's
twenty-first century "exceptions" appear as dubious distinctions: gun violence, carbon
emissions, mass incarceration, wealth inequality, racial disparities, capital punishment,
child poverty, and military spending.
Yet even at a time when American exceptionalism has never been more challenged both by
empirically-validated social and economic data and in public conversation, the concept
continues to play an elemental role in our two-party political discourse. The Republican Party
is, of course, awash with spurious, almost comically stupid dialogue about a mythic American
past-"making America great again"-the racial and ethnic undertones of which are unmistakable.
Those same Republicans have lambasted Obama and other high profile Democrats for not believing
sufficiently in their brand of innate, transhistoric American supremacy.
But this Americentrism is not the sole province of the GOP. We need look no further than
bipartisan support for the military-industrial complex and the surveillance state to see that
national exceptionalism, and its explicit double-standard toward other nations, resides
comfortably within the Democratic Party as well. Russian President Vladimir Putin and
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa censured Obama's use of the term in the fall of 2013, with
the latter likening it to the "chosen race" theories of Nazi Germany. Hyperbole
notwithstanding, academics often do associate American exceptionalism with military conquest.
It does, after all, have deep roots in the Manifest Destiny ethos that spurred the
Mexican War, drove continental and trans-Pacific expansion, and emerged as a paternalistic
justification for voluminous military interventions in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle
East. As Dick Cheney suggests, "the world needs a powerful America." In this unilateral
missionizing zeal Clinton proves most typical.
As historian Michael Kazin argues in a
recent piece for The Nation: "Hillary Clinton is best described as a liberal. Like every
liberal president (and most failed Democratic nominees) since Wilson,
she wants the United
States to be the dominant power in the world, so she doesn't question the massive sums spent
on the military and on the other branches of the national-security state.
"
But Clinton's brand of American exceptionalism goes beyond the issue of American
military dominion and into the policy potentials of mid-century social liberalism and, more
specifically, the neoliberalism that has since replaced it. Indeed, since George McGovern's
failed presidential bid of 1972, neoliberals, moving decidedly rightward on economic issues,
have consistently employed exceptionalist code to fight off movements, ideas, and challengers
from the left.
The victims include leftist efforts toward both American demilitarization and the expansion
of a "socialistic" welfare state. Socialist feminist Liza Featherstone and others have
denounced Clinton's uncritical praise of the "opportunity" and "freedom" of American
capitalism vis-ŕ-vis other developed nations. "With this bit of frankness," Featherstone
explains, referring to the former Secretary of State's "Denmark" comments, "Clinton helpfully
explained why no socialist-indeed, no non-millionaire-should support her.
She is smart enough to know that women in the United States endure far more poverty,
unemployment, and food insecurity than women in Denmark-yet she shamelessly made clear that
she was happy to keep it that way." Indeed, Clinton's denunciation of the idea that the United
States should look more like Denmark betrayed one of the glaring the fault lines within the
Democratic Party, and between Clintonian liberalism and Sandersite leftism.
It also
revealed a more clandestine strain of American exceptionalism common among liberals and the
Democratic Party elite in which "opportunity" serves as a stand-in for wider egalitarian
reform. As Elizabeth Bruenig highlighted in The New Republic: "Since getting ahead on one's
own grit is such a key part of the American narrative, it's easy to see how voters might be
attracted to Clinton's opportunity-based answer to our social and economic woes, though it
leaves the problem of inequality vastly under-addressed. Indeed, a kind of American
exceptionalism does seem to underpin much opportunity-focused political rhetoric."
This preference for insider politics (rather than mass movements involving direct action)
and limited, means-tested social programs speaks to a broader truth about modern liberalism:
it functions in a way that not only doesn't challenge the basic tenets of American
exceptionalism, it often reinforces them. Whether vindicating war and torture and civil
liberties violations, talking past the War on Drugs and the carceral state, or exhibiting
coolness toward the type of popular protest seen during of Occupy Wall Street, with its direct
attacks on a sort of American Sonderweg, establishment Democrats are adept at using a more
"realistic" brand of Americentrism to consolidate power and anchor the party in the status
quo. Now the 2016 Democratic Primary has seen progressive ideas including universal health
care, tuition-free college, and a living minimum wage, all hallmarks of large swaths of the
rest of the developed world, delegitimized through some mutation of liberal exceptionalist
thinking. These broadminded reforms are apparently off limits, not because they are not good
ideas (though opponents make that appraisal too), but because somehow their unachievability is
exceptional to the United States.
All this is not to exclude (despite his "democratic socialist" professions) Sanders's own
milder brand of "America first," most evident in his economic nationalism, but to emphasize
that American exceptionalism and the logical and practical dangers it poses exist in degrees
across a spectrum of American politics. Whatever his nationalistic inclinations, Sanders's
constant reiteration of America's need to learn from and adapt to the social, economic, and
political models of other nations demonstrates an ethno-flexibility rarely seen in American
major party politics. "Every other major country " might as well be his official campaign
slogan. This bilateral outlook does not fit nearly as neatly within Clinton's traditional
liberal paradigm that, from defenses of American war and empire to the, uses American
exceptionalism tactically, dismissing its conservative adherents as nationalist overkill yet
quietly exploiting the theory when politically or personally expeditious.
In looking beyond our national shores and domestic origin-sources for fresh and functional
policy, Sanders seems to grasp that, from the so-called "foreign influences" of the Republican
free soil program or Robert La Follette's Wisconsin Idea or even Lyndon Johnson's Great
Society, American high politics have been at their most morally creative and sweepingly
influential not only when swayed by direct action and mass movements, but also when they are
less impeded by the constraints of ethnocentrism and exceptionalism. The "We are not Denmark"
sentiment might appear benign, lacking as it does the bluster of Republican claims to national
supremacy and imaginary "golden age" pasts and what economist Thomas Picketty has termed a
"mythical capitalism." But it is the "seriousness" and very gentility of liberal Americentrism
that underscores the power, omnipresence, and intellectual poverty of cultural dismissal. "I
still believe in American exceptionalism," Clinton has proclaimed in pushing for U.S. military
escalation in Syria. Indeed she does, and it is by no means relegated to the sphere of foreign
policy.
Nationalism really represent a growing threat to neoliberalism. It is clear the the rise of
nationalism was caused by the triumph of neoliberalism all over the globe. As neoliberal
ideology collapsed in 2008, thing became really interesting now. Looks like
1920th-1940th will be replayed on a new level with the USA neoliberal empire under stress from
new challengers instead of British empire.
Rumor about the death of neoliberalism are slightly exaggerated ;-). This social system still
has a lot of staying power. you need some external shock like the need of cheap oil (defined as
sustainable price of oil over $100 per barrel) to shake it again. Of some financial crisis similar
to the crisis of 2008. Currently there is still
no alternative social order that can replace it. Collapse of the USSR discredited both socialism even
of different flavors then was practiced in the USSR. National socialism would be a step back from
neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... The retreat of [neo]liberalism is very visible in Asia. All Southeast Asian states have turned their backs on liberal democracy, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar in the last decade. This NYT article notes that liberalism has essentially died in Japan, and that all political contests are now between what the west would consider conservatives: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html ..."
"... What is today called "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" both are simply corrupted labels applied to the same top-down corporate-fascistic elite rule that I think Mr. Buchanan once referred to as "two wings of the same bird of prey." ..."
"... Nobody at the top cares about 'diversity.' They care about the easy profits that come from ever cheaper labor. 'Diversity' is not suicide but rather murder: instigated by a small number of very powerful people who have decided that the long-term health of their nations and civilization is less important than short-term profits and power. ..."
"... Hillary and Obama are to the right of the President that Buchanan served in his White House. Richard Nixon was to the Left of both Hillary and Obama. I can't even imagine Hillary accepting and signing into law a 'Clean Water Act' or enacting Price Controls to fight inflation. No way. Heck would freeze over before Hillary would do something so against her Banker Backers. ..."
"... It's sure that financial (neo)liberalism was in a growth phase prior to year 2000 (under Greenspan, the "Maestro") with a general belief that the economy could be "fine tuned" with risk eliminated using sophisticated financial instruments, monetary policy etc. ..."
"... If [neo] Liberalism is a package, then two heavy financial blows that shook the whole foundation were the collapse of the dot.com bubble (2000) and the mortgage bubble (2008). ..."
"... And, other (self-serving) neoliberal stories are now seen as false. For example, that the US is an "advanced post-industrial service economy", that out-sourcing would "free up Americans for higher skilled/higher wage employment" or that "the US would always gain from tariff free trade". ..."
"... The basic divide is surely Nationalism (America First) vs. Globalism (Neo-Liberalism), as shown by the last US Presidential election. ..."
"... Neoliberalism, of which the Clintons are acolytes, supports Free Trade and Open Borders. Although it claims to support World Government, in actual fact it supports corporatism. This is explicit in the TPPA Trump vetoed. Under the corporate state, the state controls the corporations, as Don Benito did in Italy. Under corporatism, the corporations tell the state what to do, as has been the case in America since at least the Clinton Presidency. ..."
"... But I recall that Pat B also said neoconservatism was on its way out a few years after Iraq war II and yet it's stronger than ever and its adherents are firmly ensconced in the joint chiefs of staff, the pentagon, Congress and the White House. It's also spawned a close cousin in liberal interventionism. ..."
Asked to name the defining attributes of the America we wish to become, many liberals would answer
that we must realize our manifest destiny since 1776, by becoming more equal, more diverse and more
democratic -- and the model for mankind's future.
Equality, diversity, democracy -- this is the holy trinity of the post-Christian secular state
at whose altars Liberal Man worships.
But the congregation worshiping these gods is shrinking. And even Europe seems to be rejecting
what America has on offer.
In a retreat from diversity, Catalonia just voted to separate from Spain. The Basque and Galician
peoples of Spain are following the Catalan secession crisis with great interest.
The right-wing People's Party and far-right Freedom Party just swept 60 percent of Austria's vote,
delivering the nation to 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, whose anti-immigrant platform was plagiarized
from the Freedom Party. Summarized it is: Austria for the Austrians!
Lombardy, whose capital is Milan, and Veneto will vote Sunday for greater autonomy from Rome.
South Tyrol (Alto Adige), severed from Austria and ceded to Italy at Versailles, written off by
Hitler to appease Mussolini after his Anschluss, is astir anew with secessionism. Even the Sicilians
are talking of separation.
By Sunday, the Czech Republic may have a new leader, billionaire Andrej Babis. Writes The Washington
Post, Babis "makes a sport of attacking the European Union and says NATO's mission is outdated."
Platform Promise: Keep the Muslim masses out of the motherland.
To ethnonationalists, their countrymen are not equal to all others, but superior in rights. Many
may nod at Thomas Jefferson's line that "All men are created equal," but they no more practice that
in their own nations than did Jefferson in his
... ... ...
European peoples and parties are today using democratic means to achieve "illiberal" ends. And
it is hard to see what halts the drift away from liberal democracy toward the restrictive right.
For in virtually every nation, there is a major party in opposition, or a party in power, that holds
deeply nationalist views.
European elites may denounce these new parties as "illiberal" or fascist, but it is becoming apparent
that it may be liberalism itself that belongs to yesterday. For more and more Europeans see the invasion
of the continent along the routes whence the invaders came centuries ago, not as a manageable problem
but an existential crisis.
To many Europeans, it portends an irreversible alteration in the character of the countries their
grandchildren will inherit, and possibly an end to their civilization. And they are not going to
be deterred from voting their fears by being called names that long ago lost their toxicity from
overuse.
And as Europeans decline to celebrate the racial, ethnic, creedal and cultural diversity extolled
by American elites, they also seem to reject the idea that foreigners should be treated equally in
nations created for their own kind.
Europeans seem to admire more, and model their nations more, along the lines of the less diverse
America of the Eisenhower era, than on the polyglot America of 2017.
And Europe seems to be moving toward immigration polices more like the McCarran-Walter Act of
1950 than the open borders bill that Sen. Edward Kennedy shepherded through the Senate in 1965.
Kennedy promised that the racial and ethnic composition of the America of the 1960s would not
be overturned, and he questioned the morality and motives of any who implied that it would.
Liberalism is the naivete of 18th century elites, no different than today. Modernity as you
know it is unsustainable, mostly because equality isn't real, identity has value for most humans,
pluralism is by definition fractious, and deep down most people wish to follow a wise strongman
leader who represents their interests first and not a vague set of universalist values.
Blind devotion to liberal democracy is another one of those times when white people take an
abstract concept to weird extremes. It is short-sighted and autistically narrow minded. Just because
you have an oppressive king doesn't mean everyone should be equals. Just because there was slavery/genocide
doesn't mean diversity is good.
The retreat of [neo]liberalism is very visible in Asia. All Southeast Asian states have turned their
backs on liberal democracy, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar in the last decade.
This NYT article notes that liberalism has essentially died in Japan, and that all political contests
are now between what the west would consider conservatives:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html
Good riddance. The idea that egalitarianism is more advanced than hierarchy has always been
false, and flies against the long arc of history. Time for nationalists around the world to smash
liberal democracy and build a new modernity based on actual humanism, with respect to hierarchies
and the primacy of majorities instead of guilt and pathological compassion dressed up as political
ideology.
"Liberalism" is not dying. "Liberalism" is dead, and has been since at least 1970.
What is today called "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" both are simply corrupted labels applied
to the same top-down corporate-fascistic elite rule that I think Mr. Buchanan once referred to
as "two wings of the same bird of prey."
Nobody at the top cares about 'diversity.' They care about the easy profits that come from
ever cheaper labor. 'Diversity' is not suicide but rather murder: instigated by a small number
of very powerful people who have decided that the long-term health of their nations and civilization
is less important than short-term profits and power.
Its been dead for nearly 20 years now. Liberalism has long been the Monty Python parrot nailed
to its perch. At this point, the term is mainly kept alive in right-wing attacks by people who
lack the imagination to change their habitual targets for so long.
To my eye, the last 'liberal' politician died in a susupicious plane crash in 2000 as the Bush
Republicans were taking the White House by their famous 5-4 vote/coup and also needed to claim
control of the Senate. So, the last authentic 'liberal' Senator, Paul Wellstone of MN was killed
in a suspicious plane crash that was never properly explained.
Hillary and Obama are to the right of the President that Buchanan served in his White House.
Richard Nixon was to the Left of both Hillary and Obama. I can't even imagine Hillary accepting
and signing into law a 'Clean Water Act' or enacting Price Controls to fight inflation. No way.
Heck would freeze over before Hillary would do something so against her Banker Backers.
And, at the root, that is the key. The 'Liberals' that the right now rails against are strongly
backed and supported by the Wall Street Banks and other corporate leaders. The 'Liberals' have
pushed for a government Of the Bankers, By the Bankers and For the Bankers. The 'Liberals' now
are in favor of Endless Unconstitutional War around the world.
Which can only mean that the term 'Liberal' has been so completely morphed away from its original
meanings to be completely worthless.
The last true Liberal in American politics was Paul Wellstone. And even by the time he died
for his sins, he was calling himself a "progressive" because after the Clintons and the Gores
had so distorted the term Liberal it was meaningless. Or it had come to mean a society ruled by
bankers, a society at constant war and throwing money constantly at a gigantic war machine, a
society of censorship where the government needed to control all music lyrics, the same corrupt
government where money could by anything from a night in the Lincoln Bedroom to a Presidential
Pardon or any other government favor.
Thus, 'Liberals' were a dead movement even by 2000, when the people who actually believed in
the American People over the profits of bankers were calling themselves Progressives in disgust
at the misuse of the term Liberal. And now, Obama and Hillary have trashed and distorted even
the term Progressive into bombing the world 365 days a year and still constantly throwing money
at the military machine and the problems it invents.
So, Liberalism is so long dead that if you exumed the grave you'd only find dust. And Pat must
be getting senile and just throwing back out the same lines he once wrote as a speechwriter for
the last Great Lefty President Richard Nixon.
Another question is whether this is wishful thinking from Pat or some kind of reality.
I think that he's right, that Liberalism is a dying faith, and it's interesting to check the
decline.
It's sure that financial (neo)liberalism was in a growth phase prior to year 2000 (under
Greenspan, the "Maestro") with a general belief that the economy could be "fine tuned" with risk
eliminated using sophisticated financial instruments, monetary policy etc.
If [neo] Liberalism is a package, then two heavy financial blows that shook the whole foundation
were the collapse of the dot.com bubble (2000) and the mortgage bubble (2008).
And, other (self-serving) neoliberal stories are now seen as false. For example, that the
US is an "advanced post-industrial service economy", that out-sourcing would "free up Americans
for higher skilled/higher wage employment" or that "the US would always gain from tariff free
trade".
In fact, the borderless global "world is flat" dogma is now seen as enabling a rootless hyper-rich
global elite to draw on a sea of globalized serf labour with little or no identity, while their
media and SWJ activists operate a scorched earth defense against any sign of opposition.
The basic divide is surely Nationalism (America First) vs. Globalism (Neo-Liberalism),
as shown by the last US Presidential election.
A useful analogy might be Viktor Orbán. He started out as a leader of a liberal party, Fidesz,
but then over time started moving to the right. It is often speculated that he started it for
cynical reasons, like seeing how the right was divided and that there was essentially a vacuum
there for a strong conservative party, but there's little doubt he totally internalized it. There's
also little doubt (and at the time he and a lot of his fellow party leaders talked about it a
lot) that as he (they) started a family and having children, they started to realize how conservatism
kinda made more sense than liberalism.
With Kurz, there's the possibility for this path. However, he'd need to start a family soon
for that to happen. At that age Orbán was already married with children
Neoliberalism, of which the Clintons are acolytes, supports Free Trade and Open Borders.
Although it claims to support World Government, in actual fact it supports corporatism. This is
explicit in the TPPA Trump vetoed. Under the corporate state, the state controls the corporations,
as Don Benito did in Italy. Under corporatism, the corporations tell the state what to do, as
has been the case in America since at least the Clinton Presidency.
Richard Nixon was a capitalist, not a corporatist. He was a supporter of proper competition
laws, unlike any President since Clinton. Socially, he was interventionist, though this may have
been to lessen criticism of his Vietnam policies. Anyway, his bussing and desegregation policies
were a long-term failure.
Price Control was quickly dropped, as it was in other Western countries. Long term Price Control,
as in present day Venezuela, is economically disastrous.
Let's hope liberalism is a dying faith and that is passes from the Western world. If not it will
destroy the West, so if it doesn't die a natural death then we must euthanize it. For the evidence
is in and it has begat feminism, anti-white racism, demographic winter, mass third world immigration
and everything else that ails the West and has made it the sick and dying man of the world.
But I recall that Pat B also said neoconservatism was on its way out a few years after
Iraq war II and yet it's stronger than ever and its adherents are firmly ensconced in the joint
chiefs of staff, the pentagon, Congress and the White House. It's also spawned a close cousin
in liberal interventionism.
What Pat refers to as "liberalism" is now left wing totalitarianism and anti-white hatred and
it's fanatically trying to remain relevant by lashing out and blacklisting, deplatforming, demonetizing,
and physically assaulting all of its enemies on the right who are gaining strength much to their
chagrin. They resort to these methods because they can't win an honest debate and in a true free
marketplace of ideas they lose.
Nationalism really represent a growing threat to neoliberalism. It is clear the the rise of
nationalism was caused by the triumph of neoliberalism all over the globe. As neoliberal
ideology collapsed in 2008, thing became really interesting now. Looks like
1920th-1940th will be replayed on a new level with the USA neoliberal empire under stress from
new challengers instead of British empire.
Rumor about the death of neoliberalism are slightly exaggerated ;-). This social system still
has a lot of staying power. you need some external shock like the need of cheap oil (defined as
sustainable price of oil over $100 per barrel) to shake it again. Of some financial crisis similar
to the crisis of 2008. Currently there is still
no alternative social order that can replace it. Collapse of the USSR discredited both socialism even
of different flavors then was practiced in the USSR. National socialism would be a step back from
neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... The retreat of [neo]liberalism is very visible in Asia. All Southeast Asian states have turned their backs on liberal democracy, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar in the last decade. This NYT article notes that liberalism has essentially died in Japan, and that all political contests are now between what the west would consider conservatives: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html ..."
"... What is today called "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" both are simply corrupted labels applied to the same top-down corporate-fascistic elite rule that I think Mr. Buchanan once referred to as "two wings of the same bird of prey." ..."
"... Nobody at the top cares about 'diversity.' They care about the easy profits that come from ever cheaper labor. 'Diversity' is not suicide but rather murder: instigated by a small number of very powerful people who have decided that the long-term health of their nations and civilization is less important than short-term profits and power. ..."
"... Hillary and Obama are to the right of the President that Buchanan served in his White House. Richard Nixon was to the Left of both Hillary and Obama. I can't even imagine Hillary accepting and signing into law a 'Clean Water Act' or enacting Price Controls to fight inflation. No way. Heck would freeze over before Hillary would do something so against her Banker Backers. ..."
"... It's sure that financial (neo)liberalism was in a growth phase prior to year 2000 (under Greenspan, the "Maestro") with a general belief that the economy could be "fine tuned" with risk eliminated using sophisticated financial instruments, monetary policy etc. ..."
"... If [neo] Liberalism is a package, then two heavy financial blows that shook the whole foundation were the collapse of the dot.com bubble (2000) and the mortgage bubble (2008). ..."
"... And, other (self-serving) neoliberal stories are now seen as false. For example, that the US is an "advanced post-industrial service economy", that out-sourcing would "free up Americans for higher skilled/higher wage employment" or that "the US would always gain from tariff free trade". ..."
"... The basic divide is surely Nationalism (America First) vs. Globalism (Neo-Liberalism), as shown by the last US Presidential election. ..."
"... Neoliberalism, of which the Clintons are acolytes, supports Free Trade and Open Borders. Although it claims to support World Government, in actual fact it supports corporatism. This is explicit in the TPPA Trump vetoed. Under the corporate state, the state controls the corporations, as Don Benito did in Italy. Under corporatism, the corporations tell the state what to do, as has been the case in America since at least the Clinton Presidency. ..."
"... But I recall that Pat B also said neoconservatism was on its way out a few years after Iraq war II and yet it's stronger than ever and its adherents are firmly ensconced in the joint chiefs of staff, the pentagon, Congress and the White House. It's also spawned a close cousin in liberal interventionism. ..."
Asked to name the defining attributes of the America we wish to become, many liberals would answer
that we must realize our manifest destiny since 1776, by becoming more equal, more diverse and more
democratic -- and the model for mankind's future.
Equality, diversity, democracy -- this is the holy trinity of the post-Christian secular state
at whose altars Liberal Man worships.
But the congregation worshiping these gods is shrinking. And even Europe seems to be rejecting
what America has on offer.
In a retreat from diversity, Catalonia just voted to separate from Spain. The Basque and Galician
peoples of Spain are following the Catalan secession crisis with great interest.
The right-wing People's Party and far-right Freedom Party just swept 60 percent of Austria's vote,
delivering the nation to 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, whose anti-immigrant platform was plagiarized
from the Freedom Party. Summarized it is: Austria for the Austrians!
Lombardy, whose capital is Milan, and Veneto will vote Sunday for greater autonomy from Rome.
South Tyrol (Alto Adige), severed from Austria and ceded to Italy at Versailles, written off by
Hitler to appease Mussolini after his Anschluss, is astir anew with secessionism. Even the Sicilians
are talking of separation.
By Sunday, the Czech Republic may have a new leader, billionaire Andrej Babis. Writes The Washington
Post, Babis "makes a sport of attacking the European Union and says NATO's mission is outdated."
Platform Promise: Keep the Muslim masses out of the motherland.
To ethnonationalists, their countrymen are not equal to all others, but superior in rights. Many
may nod at Thomas Jefferson's line that "All men are created equal," but they no more practice that
in their own nations than did Jefferson in his
... ... ...
European peoples and parties are today using democratic means to achieve "illiberal" ends. And
it is hard to see what halts the drift away from liberal democracy toward the restrictive right.
For in virtually every nation, there is a major party in opposition, or a party in power, that holds
deeply nationalist views.
European elites may denounce these new parties as "illiberal" or fascist, but it is becoming apparent
that it may be liberalism itself that belongs to yesterday. For more and more Europeans see the invasion
of the continent along the routes whence the invaders came centuries ago, not as a manageable problem
but an existential crisis.
To many Europeans, it portends an irreversible alteration in the character of the countries their
grandchildren will inherit, and possibly an end to their civilization. And they are not going to
be deterred from voting their fears by being called names that long ago lost their toxicity from
overuse.
And as Europeans decline to celebrate the racial, ethnic, creedal and cultural diversity extolled
by American elites, they also seem to reject the idea that foreigners should be treated equally in
nations created for their own kind.
Europeans seem to admire more, and model their nations more, along the lines of the less diverse
America of the Eisenhower era, than on the polyglot America of 2017.
And Europe seems to be moving toward immigration polices more like the McCarran-Walter Act of
1950 than the open borders bill that Sen. Edward Kennedy shepherded through the Senate in 1965.
Kennedy promised that the racial and ethnic composition of the America of the 1960s would not
be overturned, and he questioned the morality and motives of any who implied that it would.
Liberalism is the naivete of 18th century elites, no different than today. Modernity as you
know it is unsustainable, mostly because equality isn't real, identity has value for most humans,
pluralism is by definition fractious, and deep down most people wish to follow a wise strongman
leader who represents their interests first and not a vague set of universalist values.
Blind devotion to liberal democracy is another one of those times when white people take an
abstract concept to weird extremes. It is short-sighted and autistically narrow minded. Just because
you have an oppressive king doesn't mean everyone should be equals. Just because there was slavery/genocide
doesn't mean diversity is good.
The retreat of [neo]liberalism is very visible in Asia. All Southeast Asian states have turned their
backs on liberal democracy, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar in the last decade.
This NYT article notes that liberalism has essentially died in Japan, and that all political contests
are now between what the west would consider conservatives:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html
Good riddance. The idea that egalitarianism is more advanced than hierarchy has always been
false, and flies against the long arc of history. Time for nationalists around the world to smash
liberal democracy and build a new modernity based on actual humanism, with respect to hierarchies
and the primacy of majorities instead of guilt and pathological compassion dressed up as political
ideology.
"Liberalism" is not dying. "Liberalism" is dead, and has been since at least 1970.
What is today called "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" both are simply corrupted labels applied
to the same top-down corporate-fascistic elite rule that I think Mr. Buchanan once referred to
as "two wings of the same bird of prey."
Nobody at the top cares about 'diversity.' They care about the easy profits that come from
ever cheaper labor. 'Diversity' is not suicide but rather murder: instigated by a small number
of very powerful people who have decided that the long-term health of their nations and civilization
is less important than short-term profits and power.
Its been dead for nearly 20 years now. Liberalism has long been the Monty Python parrot nailed
to its perch. At this point, the term is mainly kept alive in right-wing attacks by people who
lack the imagination to change their habitual targets for so long.
To my eye, the last 'liberal' politician died in a susupicious plane crash in 2000 as the Bush
Republicans were taking the White House by their famous 5-4 vote/coup and also needed to claim
control of the Senate. So, the last authentic 'liberal' Senator, Paul Wellstone of MN was killed
in a suspicious plane crash that was never properly explained.
Hillary and Obama are to the right of the President that Buchanan served in his White House.
Richard Nixon was to the Left of both Hillary and Obama. I can't even imagine Hillary accepting
and signing into law a 'Clean Water Act' or enacting Price Controls to fight inflation. No way.
Heck would freeze over before Hillary would do something so against her Banker Backers.
And, at the root, that is the key. The 'Liberals' that the right now rails against are strongly
backed and supported by the Wall Street Banks and other corporate leaders. The 'Liberals' have
pushed for a government Of the Bankers, By the Bankers and For the Bankers. The 'Liberals' now
are in favor of Endless Unconstitutional War around the world.
Which can only mean that the term 'Liberal' has been so completely morphed away from its original
meanings to be completely worthless.
The last true Liberal in American politics was Paul Wellstone. And even by the time he died
for his sins, he was calling himself a "progressive" because after the Clintons and the Gores
had so distorted the term Liberal it was meaningless. Or it had come to mean a society ruled by
bankers, a society at constant war and throwing money constantly at a gigantic war machine, a
society of censorship where the government needed to control all music lyrics, the same corrupt
government where money could by anything from a night in the Lincoln Bedroom to a Presidential
Pardon or any other government favor.
Thus, 'Liberals' were a dead movement even by 2000, when the people who actually believed in
the American People over the profits of bankers were calling themselves Progressives in disgust
at the misuse of the term Liberal. And now, Obama and Hillary have trashed and distorted even
the term Progressive into bombing the world 365 days a year and still constantly throwing money
at the military machine and the problems it invents.
So, Liberalism is so long dead that if you exumed the grave you'd only find dust. And Pat must
be getting senile and just throwing back out the same lines he once wrote as a speechwriter for
the last Great Lefty President Richard Nixon.
Another question is whether this is wishful thinking from Pat or some kind of reality.
I think that he's right, that Liberalism is a dying faith, and it's interesting to check the
decline.
It's sure that financial (neo)liberalism was in a growth phase prior to year 2000 (under
Greenspan, the "Maestro") with a general belief that the economy could be "fine tuned" with risk
eliminated using sophisticated financial instruments, monetary policy etc.
If [neo] Liberalism is a package, then two heavy financial blows that shook the whole foundation
were the collapse of the dot.com bubble (2000) and the mortgage bubble (2008).
And, other (self-serving) neoliberal stories are now seen as false. For example, that the
US is an "advanced post-industrial service economy", that out-sourcing would "free up Americans
for higher skilled/higher wage employment" or that "the US would always gain from tariff free
trade".
In fact, the borderless global "world is flat" dogma is now seen as enabling a rootless hyper-rich
global elite to draw on a sea of globalized serf labour with little or no identity, while their
media and SWJ activists operate a scorched earth defense against any sign of opposition.
The basic divide is surely Nationalism (America First) vs. Globalism (Neo-Liberalism),
as shown by the last US Presidential election.
A useful analogy might be Viktor Orbán. He started out as a leader of a liberal party, Fidesz,
but then over time started moving to the right. It is often speculated that he started it for
cynical reasons, like seeing how the right was divided and that there was essentially a vacuum
there for a strong conservative party, but there's little doubt he totally internalized it. There's
also little doubt (and at the time he and a lot of his fellow party leaders talked about it a
lot) that as he (they) started a family and having children, they started to realize how conservatism
kinda made more sense than liberalism.
With Kurz, there's the possibility for this path. However, he'd need to start a family soon
for that to happen. At that age Orbán was already married with children
Neoliberalism, of which the Clintons are acolytes, supports Free Trade and Open Borders.
Although it claims to support World Government, in actual fact it supports corporatism. This is
explicit in the TPPA Trump vetoed. Under the corporate state, the state controls the corporations,
as Don Benito did in Italy. Under corporatism, the corporations tell the state what to do, as
has been the case in America since at least the Clinton Presidency.
Richard Nixon was a capitalist, not a corporatist. He was a supporter of proper competition
laws, unlike any President since Clinton. Socially, he was interventionist, though this may have
been to lessen criticism of his Vietnam policies. Anyway, his bussing and desegregation policies
were a long-term failure.
Price Control was quickly dropped, as it was in other Western countries. Long term Price Control,
as in present day Venezuela, is economically disastrous.
Let's hope liberalism is a dying faith and that is passes from the Western world. If not it will
destroy the West, so if it doesn't die a natural death then we must euthanize it. For the evidence
is in and it has begat feminism, anti-white racism, demographic winter, mass third world immigration
and everything else that ails the West and has made it the sick and dying man of the world.
But I recall that Pat B also said neoconservatism was on its way out a few years after
Iraq war II and yet it's stronger than ever and its adherents are firmly ensconced in the joint
chiefs of staff, the pentagon, Congress and the White House. It's also spawned a close cousin
in liberal interventionism.
What Pat refers to as "liberalism" is now left wing totalitarianism and anti-white hatred and
it's fanatically trying to remain relevant by lashing out and blacklisting, deplatforming, demonetizing,
and physically assaulting all of its enemies on the right who are gaining strength much to their
chagrin. They resort to these methods because they can't win an honest debate and in a true free
marketplace of ideas they lose.
"... My predecessor Benedict XVI likewise proposed "eliminating the structural causes of the dysfunctions of the world economy and correcting models of growth which have proved incapable of ensuring respect for the environment". [10] He observed that the world cannot be analyzed by isolating only one of its aspects, since "the book of nature is one and indivisible", and includes the environment, life, sexuality, the family, social relations, and so forth. It follows that "the deterioration of nature is closely connected to the culture which shapes human coexistence" ..."
"... Patriarch Bartholomew has spoken in particular of the need for each of us to repent of the ways we have harmed the planet, for "inasmuch as we all generate small ecological damage", we are called to acknowledge "our contribution, smaller or greater, to the disfigurement and destruction of creation". [14] He has repeatedly stated this firmly and persuasively, challenging us to acknowledge our sins against creation: "For human beings to destroy the biological diversity of God's creation; for human beings to degrade the integrity of the earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the earth of its natural forests or destroying its wetlands; for human beings to contaminate the earth's waters, its land, its air, and its life – these are sins". [15] For "to commit a crime against the natural world is a sin against ourselves and a sin against God". [16] ..."
"... He asks us to replace consumption with sacrifice, greed with generosity, wastefulness with a spirit of sharing, an asceticism which "entails learning to give, and not simply to give up. It is a way of loving, of moving gradually away from what I want to what God's world needs. It is liberation from fear, greed and compulsion". ..."
"... It is possible that we do not grasp the gravity of the challenges now before us. "The risk is growing day by day that man will not use his power as he should"; in effect, "power is never considered in terms of the responsibility of choice which is inherent in freedom" since its "only norms are taken from alleged necessity, from either utility or security". [85] But human beings are not completely autonomous. Our freedom fades when it is handed over to the blind forces of the unconscious, of immediate needs, of self-interest, and of violence. In this sense, we stand naked and exposed in the face of our ever-increasing power, lacking the wherewithal to control it. We have certain superficial mechanisms, but we cannot claim to have a sound ethics, a culture and spirituality genuinely capable of setting limits and teaching clear-minded self-restraint. ..."
"... Human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational. This has made it easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth's goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit. It is the false notion that "an infinite quantity of energy and resources are available, that it is possible to renew them quickly, and that the negative effects of the exploitation of the natural order can be easily absorbed". ..."
"... We have to accept that technological products are not neutral, for they create a framework which ends up conditioning lifestyles and shaping social possibilities along the lines dictated by the interests of certain powerful groups. Decisions which may seem purely instrumental are in reality decisions about the kind of society we want to build. ..."
"... Technology tends to absorb everything into its ironclad logic, and those who are surrounded with technology "know full well that it moves forward in the final analysis neither for profit nor for the well-being of the human race", that "in the most radical sense of the term power is its motive – a lordship over all". [87] As a result, "man seizes hold of the naked elements of both nature and human nature". [88] Our capacity to make decisions, a more genuine freedom and the space for each one's alternative creativity are diminished. ..."
"... At the same time, we have "a sort of 'superdevelopment' of a wasteful and consumerist kind which forms an unacceptable contrast with the ongoing situations of dehumanizing deprivation", [90] while we are all too slow in developing economic institutions and social initiatives which can give the poor regular access to basic resources. We fail to see the deepest roots of our present failures, which have to do with the direction, goals, meaning and social implications of technological and economic growth. ..."
"... The specialization which belongs to technology makes it difficult to see the larger picture. The fragmentation of knowledge proves helpful for concrete applications, and yet it often leads to a loss of appreciation for the whole, for the relationships between things, and for the broader horizon, which then becomes irrelevant. ..."
"... It becomes difficult to pause and recover depth in life. If architecture reflects the spirit of an age, our megastructures and drab apartment blocks express the spirit of globalized technology, where a constant flood of new products coexists with a tedious monotony. Let us refuse to resign ourselves to this, and continue to wonder about the purpose and meaning of everything. Otherwise we would simply legitimate the present situation and need new forms of escapism to help us endure the emptiness. ..."
"... All of this shows the urgent need for us to move forward in a bold cultural revolution. Science and technology are not neutral; from the beginning to the end of a process, various intentions and possibilities are in play and can take on distinct shapes. Nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age, but we do need to slow down and look at reality in a different way, to appropriate the positive and sustainable progress which has been made, but also to recover the values and the great goals swept away by our unrestrained delusions of grandeur. ..."
"... Modern anthropocentrism has paradoxically ended up prizing technical thought over reality, since "the technological mind sees nature as an insensate order, as a cold body of facts, as a mere 'given', as an object of utility, as raw material to be hammered into useful shape; it views the cosmos similarly as a mere 'space' into which objects can be thrown with complete indifference" ..."
"... Once the human being declares independence from reality and behaves with absolute dominion, the very foundations of our life begin to crumble ..."
"... This situation has led to a constant schizophrenia, wherein a technocracy which sees no intrinsic value in lesser beings coexists with the other extreme, which sees no special value in human beings. But one cannot prescind from humanity ..."
"... Nor must the critique of a misguided anthropocentrism underestimate the importance of interpersonal relations. If the present ecological crisis is one small sign of the ethical, cultural and spiritual crisis of modernity, we cannot presume to heal our relationship with nature and the environment without healing all fundamental human relationships. ..."
"... The culture of relativism is the same disorder which drives one person to take advantage of another, to treat others as mere objects, imposing forced labour on them or enslaving them to pay their debts. The same kind of thinking leads to the sexual exploitation of children and abandonment of the elderly who no longer serve our interests. ..."
"... We are convinced that "man is the source, the focus and the aim of all economic and social life". [100] Nonetheless, once our human capacity for contemplation and reverence is impaired, it becomes easy for the meaning of work to be misunderstood. [101] We need to remember that men and women have "the capacity to improve their lot, to further their moral growth and to develop their spiritual endowments". [102] Work should be the setting for this rich personal growth, where many aspects of life enter into play: creativity, planning for the future, developing our talents, living out our values, relating to others ..."
"... it is essential that "we continue to prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone", [103] no matter the limited interests of business and dubious economic reasoning. ..."
"... We were created with a vocation to work. The goal should not be that technological progress increasingly replace human work, for this would be detrimental to humanity. Work is a necessity, part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to growth, human development and personal fulfilment. Helping the poor financially must always be a provisional solution in the face of pressing needs. The broader objective should always be to allow them a dignified life through work. ..."
"... The loss of jobs also has a negative impact on the economy "through the progressive erosion of social capital: the network of relationships of trust, dependability, and respect for rules, all of which are indispensable for any form of civil coexistence". [104] In other words, "human costs always include economic costs, and economic dysfunctions always involve human costs". [105] To stop investing in people, in order to gain greater short-term financial gain, is bad business for society. ..."
"... In order to continue providing employment, it is imperative to promote an economy which favours productive diversity and business creativity. For example, there is a great variety of small-scale food production systems which feed the greater part of the world's peoples, using a modest amount of land and producing less waste, be it in small agricultural parcels, in orchards and gardens, hunting and wild harvesting or local fishing. Economies of scale, especially in the agricultural sector, end up forcing smallholders to sell their land or to abandon their traditional crops. ..."
"... To ensure economic freedom from which all can effectively benefit, restraints occasionally have to be imposed on those possessing greater resources and financial power. To claim economic freedom while real conditions bar many people from actual access to it, and while possibilities for employment continue to shrink, is to practise a doublespeak which brings politics into disrepute. Business is a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving our world. It can be a fruitful source of prosperity for the areas in which it operates, especially if it sees the creation of jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good. ..."
6. My predecessor Benedict XVI likewise proposed
"eliminating the structural causes of the dysfunctions of the world economy and correcting models of growth which have proved incapable
of ensuring respect for the environment".[10]
He observed that the world cannot be analyzed by isolating only one of its aspects, since "the book of nature is one and indivisible",
and includes the environment, life, sexuality, the family, social relations, and so forth. It follows that "the deterioration of
nature is closely connected to the culture which shapes human coexistence".[11]
Pope Benedict asked us to recognize that the natural environment has been gravely damaged by our irresponsible behaviour. The social
environment has also suffered damage. Both are ultimately due to the same evil: the notion that there are no indisputable truths
to guide our lives, and hence human freedom is limitless. We have forgotten that "man is not only a freedom which he creates for
himself. Man does not create himself. He is spirit and will, but also nature".[12]
With paternal concern, Benedict urged us to realize that creation is harmed "where we ourselves have the final word, where everything
is simply our property and we use it for ourselves alone. The misuse of creation begins when we no longer recognize any higher instance
than ourselves, when we see nothing else but ourselves".[13]
United by the same concern
7. These statements of the Popes echo the reflections of numerous scientists, philosophers, theologians and civic groups, all
of which have enriched the Church's thinking on these questions. Outside the Catholic Church, other Churches and Christian communities
– and other religions as well – have expressed deep concern and offered valuable reflections on issues which all of us find disturbing.
To give just one striking example, I would mention the statements made by the beloved Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, with whom
we share the hope of full ecclesial communion.
8. Patriarch Bartholomew has spoken in particular of the need for each of us to repent of the ways we have harmed the planet,
for "inasmuch as we all generate small ecological damage", we are called to acknowledge "our contribution, smaller or greater, to
the disfigurement and destruction of creation".[14]
He has repeatedly stated this firmly and persuasively, challenging us to acknowledge our sins against creation: "For human beings
to destroy the biological diversity of God's creation; for human beings to degrade the integrity of the earth by causing changes
in its climate, by stripping the earth of its natural forests or destroying its wetlands; for human beings to contaminate the earth's
waters, its land, its air, and its life – these are sins".[15]
For "to commit a crime against the natural world is a sin against ourselves and a sin against God".[16]
9. At the same time, Bartholomew has drawn attention to the ethical and spiritual roots of environmental problems, which require
that we look for solutions not only in technology but in a change of humanity; otherwise we would be dealing merely with symptoms.
He asks us to replace consumption with sacrifice, greed with generosity, wastefulness with a spirit of sharing, an asceticism
which "entails learning to give, and not simply to give up. It is a way of loving, of moving gradually away from what I want to what
God's world needs. It is liberation from fear, greed and compulsion".[17]
As Christians, we are also called "to accept the world as a sacrament of communion, as a way of sharing with God and our neighbours
on a global scale. It is our humble conviction that the divine and the human meet in the slightest detail in the seamless garment
of God's creation, in the last speck of dust of our planet".[18]
... ... ...
I. TECHNOLOGY: CREATIVITY AND POWER
... ... ...
105. There is a tendency to believe that every increase in power means "an increase of 'progress' itself", an advance in "security,
usefulness, welfare and vigour; an assimilation of new values into the stream of culture",[83]
as if reality, goodness and truth automatically flow from technological and economic power as such. The fact is that "contemporary
man has not been trained to use power well",[84]
because our immense technological development has not been accompanied by a development in human responsibility, values and conscience.
Each age tends to have only a meagre awareness of its own limitations. It is possible that we do not grasp the gravity of the
challenges now before us. "The risk is growing day by day that man will not use his power as he should"; in effect, "power is never
considered in terms of the responsibility of choice which is inherent in freedom" since its "only norms are taken from alleged necessity,
from either utility or security".[85]
But human beings are not completely autonomous. Our freedom fades when it is handed over to the blind forces of the unconscious,
of immediate needs, of self-interest, and of violence. In this sense, we stand naked and exposed in the face of our ever-increasing
power, lacking the wherewithal to control it. We have certain superficial mechanisms, but we cannot claim to have a sound ethics,
a culture and spirituality genuinely capable of setting limits and teaching clear-minded self-restraint.
II. THE GLOBALIZATION OF THE TECHNOCRATIC PARADIGM
106. The basic problem goes even deeper: it is the way that humanity has taken up technology and its development according
to an undifferentiated and one-dimensional paradigm. This paradigm exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational
procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object. This subject makes every effort to establish the
scientific and experimental method, which in itself is already a technique of possession, mastery and transformation. It is as if
the subject were to find itself in the presence of something formless, completely open to manipulation. Men and women have constantly
intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves.
It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand. Now, by contrast, we are the ones to lay our hands
on things, attempting to extract everything possible from them while frequently ignoring or forgetting the reality in front of us.
Human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational. This
has made it easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts
in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth's goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed
dry beyond every limit. It is the false notion that "an infinite quantity of energy and resources are available, that it is possible
to renew them quickly, and that the negative effects of the exploitation of the natural order can be easily absorbed".[86]
107. It can be said that many problems of today's world stem from the tendency, at times unconscious, to make the method and aims
of science and technology an epistemological paradigm which shapes the lives of individuals and the workings of society. The effects
of imposing this model on reality as a whole, human and social, are seen in the deterioration of the environment, but this is just
one sign of a reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life. We have to accept that technological products
are not neutral, for they create a framework which ends up conditioning lifestyles and shaping social possibilities along the lines
dictated by the interests of certain powerful groups. Decisions which may seem purely instrumental are in reality decisions about
the kind of society we want to build.
108. The idea of promoting a different cultural paradigm and employing technology as a mere instrument is nowadays inconceivable.
The technological paradigm has become so dominant that it would be difficult to do without its resources and even more difficult
to utilize them without being dominated by their internal logic. It has become countercultural to choose a lifestyle whose goals
are even partly independent of technology, of its costs and its power to globalize and make us all the same. Technology tends
to absorb everything into its ironclad logic, and those who are surrounded with technology "know full well that it moves forward
in the final analysis neither for profit nor for the well-being of the human race", that "in the most radical sense of the term power
is its motive – a lordship over all".[87]
As a result, "man seizes hold of the naked elements of both nature and human nature".[88]
Our capacity to make decisions, a more genuine freedom and the space for each one's alternative creativity are diminished.
109. The technocratic paradigm also tends to dominate economic and political life. The economy accepts every advance in technology
with a view to profit, without concern for its potentially negative impact on human beings. Finance overwhelms the real economy.
The lessons of the global financial crisis have not been assimilated, and we are learning all too slowly the lessons of environmental
deterioration. Some circles maintain that current economics and technology will solve all environmental problems, and argue, in popular
and non-technical terms, that the problems of global hunger and poverty will be resolved simply by market growth. They are less concerned
with certain economic theories which today scarcely anybody dares defend, than with their actual operation in the functioning of
the economy. They may not affirm such theories with words, but nonetheless support them with their deeds by showing no interest in
more balanced levels of production, a better distribution of wealth, concern for the environment and the rights of future generations.
Their behaviour shows that for them maximizing profits is enough. Yet by itself the market cannot guarantee integral human development
and social inclusion.[89]At the same time, we have "a sort of 'superdevelopment' of a wasteful and consumerist kind which forms an unacceptable contrast
with the ongoing situations of dehumanizing deprivation",[90]
while we are all too slow in developing economic institutions and social initiatives which can give the poor regular access to basic
resources. We fail to see the deepest roots of our present failures, which have to do with the direction, goals, meaning and social
implications of technological and economic growth.
110. The specialization which belongs to technology makes it difficult to see the larger picture. The fragmentation of knowledge
proves helpful for concrete applications, and yet it often leads to a loss of appreciation for the whole, for the relationships between
things, and for the broader horizon, which then becomes irrelevant. This very fact makes it hard to find adequate ways of solving
the more complex problems of today's world, particularly those regarding the environment and the poor; these problems cannot be dealt
with from a single perspective or from a single set of interests. A science which would offer solutions to the great issues would
necessarily have to take into account the data generated by other fields of knowledge, including philosophy and social ethics; but
this is a difficult habit to acquire today. Nor are there genuine ethical horizons to which one can appeal. Life gradually becomes
a surrender to situations conditioned by technology, itself viewed as the principal key to the meaning of existence. In the concrete
situation confronting us, there are a number of symptoms which point to what is wrong, such as environmental degradation, anxiety,
a loss of the purpose of life and of community living. Once more we see that "realities are more important than ideas".[91]
111. Ecological culture cannot be reduced to a series of urgent and partial responses to the immediate problems of pollution,
environmental decay and the depletion of natural resources. There needs to be a distinctive way of looking at things, a way of thinking,
policies, an educational programme, a lifestyle and a spirituality which together generate resistance to the assault of the technocratic
paradigm. Otherwise, even the best ecological initiatives can find themselves caught up in the same globalized logic. To seek only
a technical remedy to each environmental problem which comes up is to separate what is in reality interconnected and to mask the
true and deepest problems of the global system.
112. Yet we can once more broaden our vision. We have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology; we can put it at the
service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral. Liberation from the dominant
technocratic paradigm does in fact happen sometimes, for example, when cooperatives of small producers adopt less polluting means
of production, and opt for a non-consumerist model of life, recreation and community. Or when technology is directed primarily to
resolving people's concrete problems, truly helping them live with more dignity and less suffering. Or indeed when the desire to
create and contemplate beauty manages to overcome reductionism through a kind of salvation which occurs in beauty and in those who
behold it. An authentic humanity, calling for a new synthesis, seems to dwell in the midst of our technological culture, almost unnoticed,
like a mist seeping gently beneath a closed door. Will the promise last, in spite of everything, with all that is authentic rising
up in stubborn resistance?
113. There is also the fact that people no longer seem to believe in a happy future; they no longer have blind trust in a better
tomorrow based on the present state of the world and our technical abilities. There is a growing awareness that scientific and technological
progress cannot be equated with the progress of humanity and history, a growing sense that the way to a better future lies elsewhere.
This is not to reject the possibilities which technology continues to offer us. But humanity has changed profoundly, and the accumulation
of constant novelties exalts a superficiality which pulls us in one direction. It becomes difficult to pause and recover depth
in life. If architecture reflects the spirit of an age, our megastructures and drab apartment blocks express the spirit of globalized
technology, where a constant flood of new products coexists with a tedious monotony. Let us refuse to resign ourselves to this, and
continue to wonder about the purpose and meaning of everything. Otherwise we would simply legitimate the present situation and need
new forms of escapism to help us endure the emptiness.
114. All of this shows the urgent need for us to move forward in a bold cultural revolution. Science and technology are not
neutral; from the beginning to the end of a process, various intentions and possibilities are in play and can take on distinct shapes.
Nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age, but we do need to slow down and look at reality in a different way, to appropriate
the positive and sustainable progress which has been made, but also to recover the values and the great goals swept away by our unrestrained
delusions of grandeur.
III. THE CRISIS AND EFFECTS OF MODERN ANTHROPOCENTRISM
115. Modern anthropocentrism has paradoxically ended up prizing technical thought over reality, since "the technological mind
sees nature as an insensate order, as a cold body of facts, as a mere 'given', as an object of utility, as raw material to be hammered
into useful shape; it views the cosmos similarly as a mere 'space' into which objects can be thrown with complete indifference".[92]
The intrinsic dignity of the world is thus compromised. When human beings fail to find their true place in this world, they misunderstand
themselves and end up acting against themselves: "Not only has God given the earth to man, who must use it with respect for the original
good purpose for which it was given, but, man too is God's gift to man. He must therefore respect the natural and moral structure
with which he has been endowed".[93]
116. Modernity has been marked by an excessive anthropocentrism which today, under another guise, continues to stand in the way
of shared understanding and of any effort to strengthen social bonds. The time has come to pay renewed attention to reality and the
limits it imposes; this in turn is the condition for a more sound and fruitful development of individuals and society. An inadequate
presentation of Christian anthropology gave rise to a wrong understanding of the relationship between human beings and the world.
Often, what was handed on was a Promethean vision of mastery over the world, which gave the impression that the protection of nature
was something that only the faint-hearted cared about. Instead, our "dominion" over the universe should be understood more properly
in the sense of responsible stewardship.[94]
117. Neglecting to monitor the harm done to nature and the environmental impact of our decisions is only the most striking sign
of a disregard for the message contained in the structures of nature itself. When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth
of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities – to offer just a few examples – it becomes difficult to hear the cry
of nature itself; everything is connected. Once the human being declares independence from reality and behaves with absolute
dominion, the very foundations of our life begin to crumble, for "instead of carrying out his role as a cooperator with God
in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature".[95]
118. This situation has led to a constant schizophrenia, wherein a technocracy which sees no intrinsic value in lesser beings
coexists with the other extreme, which sees no special value in human beings. But one cannot prescind from humanity. There can
be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself. There can be no ecology without an adequate anthropology.
When the human person is considered as simply one being among others, the product of chance or physical determinism, then "our overall
sense of responsibility wanes".[96]
A misguided anthropocentrism need not necessarily yield to "biocentrism", for that would entail adding yet another imbalance, failing
to solve present problems and adding new ones. Human beings cannot be expected to feel responsibility for the world unless, at the
same time, their unique capacities of knowledge, will, freedom and responsibility are recognized and valued.
119. Nor must the critique of a misguided anthropocentrism underestimate the importance of interpersonal relations. If the
present ecological crisis is one small sign of the ethical, cultural and spiritual crisis of modernity, we cannot presume to heal
our relationship with nature and the environment without healing all fundamental human relationships. Christian thought sees
human beings as possessing a particular dignity above other creatures; it thus inculcates esteem for each person and respect for
others. Our openness to others, each of whom is a "thou" capable of knowing, loving and entering into dialogue, remains the source
of our nobility as human persons. A correct relationship with the created world demands that we not weaken this social dimension
of openness to others, much less the transcendent dimension of our openness to the "Thou" of God. Our relationship with the environment
can never be isolated from our relationship with others and with God. Otherwise, it would be nothing more than romantic individualism
dressed up in ecological garb, locking us into a stifling immanence.
120. Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion.
How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be,
if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? "If personal and social sensitivity
towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away".[97]
121. We need to develop a new synthesis capable of overcoming the false arguments of recent centuries. Christianity, in fidelity
to its own identity and the rich deposit of truth which it has received from Jesus Christ, continues to reflect on these issues in
fruitful dialogue with changing historical situations. In doing so, it reveals its eternal newness.[98]
Practical relativism
122. A misguided anthropocentrism leads to a misguided lifestyle. In the Apostolic Exhortation
Evangelii Gaudium, I noted that the practical relativism typical of our age is "even more dangerous than doctrinal relativism".[99]
When human beings place themselves at the centre, they give absolute priority to immediate convenience and all else becomes relative.
Hence we should not be surprised to find, in conjunction with the omnipresent technocratic paradigm and the cult of unlimited human
power, the rise of a relativism which sees everything as irrelevant unless it serves one's own immediate interests. There is a logic
in all this whereby different attitudes can feed on one another, leading to environmental degradation and social decay.
123. The culture of relativism is the same disorder which drives one person to take advantage of another, to treat others
as mere objects, imposing forced labour on them or enslaving them to pay their debts. The same kind of thinking leads to the sexual
exploitation of children and abandonment of the elderly who no longer serve our interests. It is also the mindset of those who
say: Let us allow the invisible forces of the market to regulate the economy, and consider their impact on society and nature as
collateral damage. In the absence of objective truths or sound principles other than the satisfaction of our own desires and immediate
needs, what limits can be placed on human trafficking, organized crime, the drug trade, commerce in blood diamonds and the fur of
endangered species? Is it not the same relativistic logic which justifies buying the organs of the poor for resale or use in experimentation,
or eliminating children because they are not what their parents wanted? This same "use and throw away" logic generates so much waste,
because of the disordered desire to consume more than what is really necessary. We should not think that political efforts or the
force of law will be sufficient to prevent actions which affect the environment because, when the culture itself is corrupt and objective
truth and universally valid principles are no longer upheld, then laws can only be seen as arbitrary impositions or obstacles to
be avoided.
The need to protect employment
124. Any approach to an integral ecology, which by definition does not exclude human beings, needs to take account of the value
of labour, as Saint John Paul II wisely noted in his Encyclical
Laborem Exercens. According to the biblical account of creation, God placed man and woman in the garden he had created (cf.
Gen 2:15) not only to preserve it ("keep") but also to make it fruitful ("till"). Labourers and craftsmen thus "maintain the
fabric of the world" (Sir 38:34). Developing the created world in a prudent way is the best way of caring for it, as this
means that we ourselves become the instrument used by God to bring out the potential which he himself inscribed in things: "The Lord
created medicines out of the earth, and a sensible man will not despise them" (Sir 38:4).
125. If we reflect on the proper relationship between human beings and the world around us, we see the need for a correct understanding
of work; if we talk about the relationship between human beings and things, the question arises as to the meaning and purpose of
all human activity. This has to do not only with manual or agricultural labour but with any activity involving a modification of
existing reality, from producing a social report to the design of a technological development. Underlying every form of work is a
concept of the relationship which we can and must have with what is other than ourselves. Together with the awe-filled contemplation
of creation which we find in Saint Francis of Assisi, the Christian spiritual tradition has also developed a rich and balanced understanding
of the meaning of work, as, for example, in the life of Blessed Charles de Foucauld and his followers.
126. We can also look to the great tradition of monasticism. Originally, it was a kind of flight from the world, an escape from
the decadence of the cities. The monks sought the desert, convinced that it was the best place for encountering the presence of God.
Later, Saint Benedict of Norcia proposed that his monks live in community, combining prayer and spiritual reading with manual labour
(ora et labora). Seeing manual labour as spiritually meaningful proved revolutionary. Personal growth and sanctification came
to be sought in the interplay of recollection and work. This way of experiencing work makes us more protective and respectful of
the environment; it imbues our relationship to the world with a healthy sobriety.
127. We are convinced that "man is the source, the focus and the aim of all economic and social life".[100]
Nonetheless, once our human capacity for contemplation and reverence is impaired, it becomes easy for the meaning of work to be misunderstood.[101]
We need to remember that men and women have "the capacity to improve their lot, to further their moral growth and to develop their
spiritual endowments".[102]
Work should be the setting for this rich personal growth, where many aspects of life enter into play: creativity, planning for the
future, developing our talents, living out our values, relating to others, giving glory to God. It follows that, in the reality
of today's global society, it is essential that "we continue to prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone",[103]
no matter the limited interests of business and dubious economic reasoning.
128. We were created with a vocation to work. The goal should not be that technological progress increasingly replace human
work, for this would be detrimental to humanity. Work is a necessity, part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to growth,
human development and personal fulfilment. Helping the poor financially must always be a provisional solution in the face of pressing
needs. The broader objective should always be to allow them a dignified life through work. Yet the orientation of the economy
has favoured a kind of technological progress in which the costs of production are reduced by laying off workers and replacing them
with machines. This is yet another way in which we can end up working against ourselves. The loss of jobs also has a negative
impact on the economy "through the progressive erosion of social capital: the network of relationships of trust, dependability, and
respect for rules, all of which are indispensable for any form of civil coexistence".[104]
In other words, "human costs always include economic costs, and economic dysfunctions always involve human costs".[105]
To stop investing in people, in order to gain greater short-term financial gain, is bad business for society.
129. In order to continue providing employment, it is imperative to promote an economy which favours productive diversity
and business creativity. For example, there is a great variety of small-scale food production systems which feed the greater part
of the world's peoples, using a modest amount of land and producing less waste, be it in small agricultural parcels, in orchards
and gardens, hunting and wild harvesting or local fishing. Economies of scale, especially in the agricultural sector, end up forcing
smallholders to sell their land or to abandon their traditional crops. Their attempts to move to other, more diversified, means
of production prove fruitless because of the difficulty of linkage with regional and global markets, or because the infrastructure
for sales and transport is geared to larger businesses. Civil authorities have the right and duty to adopt clear and firm measures
in support of small producers and differentiated production. To ensure economic freedom from which all can effectively benefit,
restraints occasionally have to be imposed on those possessing greater resources and financial power. To claim economic freedom while
realconditions bar many people from actual access to it, and while possibilities for employment continue to shrink, is to
practise a doublespeak which brings politics into disrepute. Business is a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving
our world. It can be a fruitful source of prosperity for the areas in which it operates, especially if it sees the creation of jobs
as an essential part of its service to the common good.
New biological technologies
130. In the philosophical and theological vision of the human being and of creation which I have presented, it is clear that the
human person, endowed with reason and knowledge, is not an external factor to be excluded. While human intervention on plants and
animals is permissible when it pertains to the necessities of human life, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that
experimentation on animals is morally acceptable only "if it remains within reasonable limits [and] contributes to caring for or
saving human lives".[106]
The Catechism firmly states that human power has limits and that "it is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer
or die needlessly".[107]
All such use and experimentation "requires a religious respect for the integrity of creation".[108]
"... Generally speaking, neoliberalism is a set of social, cultural, and political-economic forces that puts competition at the center of social life. According to neoliberalism, government's charge is not the care and security of citizens, but rather the promotion of market competition. In the neoliberal imagination, public social infrastructures (such as social security, unemployment benefits, public education) are believed to squash entrepreneurialism and individualism and breed dependency and bureaucracy. ..."
"... Gramsci's question is still pressing: How and why do ordinary working folks come to accept a system where wealth is produced by their collective labors and energies but appropriated individually by only a few at the top? The theory of hegemony suggests that the answer to this question is not simply a matter of direct exploitation and control by the capitalist class. Rather, hegemony posits that power is maintained through ongoing, ever-shifting cultural processes of winning the consent of the governed, that is, ordinary people like you and me. ..."
"... As Figure 1.1 shows, neoliberal hegemony works to erase this line between public and private and to create an entire society -- in fact, an entire world -- based on private, market competition. In this way, neoliberalism represents a radical reinvention of liberalism and thus of the horizons of hegemonic struggle. Crucially, within neoliberalism, the state's function does not go away; rather, it is deconstructed and reconstructed tow ard the new' end of expanding private markets. ..."
"... At this point, neoliberalism was still swimming upstream, as the postwar era ushered in a new' conjuncture that David Harvey calls embedded liberalism. ..."
"... Embedded liberalism was premised on a "class compromise" between the interests of workers and those of capitalists. In the name of peace, general prosperity, and global capitalism, a hegemonic consensus emerged "that the state should focus on full employment, economic growth, and the welfare of its citizens, and that state power should be freely deployed, alongside of or, if necessary, intervening in or even substituting for market processes to achieve these ends." 4 ..."
"... Neoliberalism developed largely as a coordinated political response to the hegemony of embedded liberalism. As Harvey explains, it was a project "to disembed capital from these constraints." 6 Indeed, the struggle for neoliberal hegemony waged a robust and successful class war on the "compromise" of embedded liberalism by developing, promoting, and implementing a new version of individual-liberty liberalism. ..."
"... As the system of embedded liberalism was taking root and establishing its dominance in national and international affairs, neoliberals were working on the ground: creating think tanks, forging political alliances, and infiltrating universities. During this second phase, neoliberalism emerged as a "thought collective": a "multilevel, multiphase, multi-sector approach to the building of political capacity to incubate, critique, and promulgate ideas." 7 ..."
"... The Neoliberal Thought Collective, as Philip Mirowski coined it, was a vertically integrated network of organizations and people focused on radically shifting the [concensus. ] ..."
Generally speaking, neoliberalism is a set of social, cultural, and political-economic forces that puts competition at the
center of social life. According to neoliberalism, government's charge is not the care and security of citizens, but rather the promotion
of market competition. In the neoliberal imagination, public social infrastructures (such as social security, unemployment benefits,
public education) are believed to squash entrepreneurialism and individualism and breed dependency and bureaucracy.
Competition, on the other hand, is heralded to ensure efficiency and incite creativity. Spurred by competition, individuals, organizations,
companies, and even the government itself, will seek to optimize and innovate, creating a truly free social world where the best
people and ideas come out on top. Put a little differently, neoliberalism aims to create a market-based society, where there are
only competing private enterprises.
Since the late 1970s, neoliberal ideas have increasingly guided the policies and practices of governments and other social institutions,
and as a result, we have come to live in competition with ourselves, others, and our social world.
...In a neoliberal society, the capitalist market is no longer imagined as a distinct arena where goods are valued and exchanged;
rather, the market is, or ideally should be, the basis for all human activities.
...We are necessarily interdependent beings, vulnerable and connected to one another, as our lives are supported and made possible
by a number of infrastructures (e.g., schools, roads and bridges, communication) that bring us into relation with one another.
We need each other. We need social cooperation and a commitment to a common, collective good if we are all going to make it in
this world.
Neoliberalism and its diffusion of competition throughout society make the infrastructures that undergird our lives profoundly
unstable, while simultaneously diminishing our senses of interdependence and social connection. As we will see, living in competition
paradoxically undercuts what enables our lives -- that is, our social connections and infrastructures -- while telling us to assume
more and more responsibility through self-enclosed individualism, thereby squashing our capacities for coming together, trusting
and caring for each other, and organizing for social change.
... ... ...
In a culture composed ot anxious, sell-enclosed individuals, where market competition defines all of social life, we need now,
more than ever, to see the social constructedness of our identities, worlds, and everyday lives. For neoliberalism's culture of living
in competition is so entrenched that only a cultural studies perspective can produce the forms of knowledge we need to imagine and
build new worlds. Indeed, a cultural studies perspective understands that possibilities of resistance and transformation are everywhere.
As Grossberg puts it,
power is never able to totalize itself. There are always fissures and fault lines that may become the active sites of change.
Power never quite accomplishes everything it might like to everywhere, and there is always the possibility of changing the structures
and organization of power.7
See, here's the thing; there's a gigantic paradox at the heart of neoliberal culture. On one hand, as we will see, neoliberalism
presents itself as a totalizing situation where resistance and transformation seem impossible, as living in competition has come
to define all aspects of our lives. On the other hand, though, neoliberalism's power over our lives is incredibly tenuous; for, as
mentioned earlier, I am convinced that most of us are yearning for a vastly different world, one that is built upon and nurtures
our interdependencies and shared vulnerabilities, not self-enclosed individualism and living in competition.
... ... ...
1 should note that, within academia, neoliberalism is a controversial term. Scholars continue to debate its usefulness. On one
hand, for some, neoliberalism is a buzzword, a catchphrase; it is a term that is so often repeated and invoked that it has lost its
meaning. According to these critiques, neoliberalism is presented as a scary monster that is everywhere and nowhere all at once.
It has come to figure as shorthand for everything that is evil in our world, and as a result, it ends up teaching us very little
about what specifically is wrong, how exactly we got here, and what actually can be done to change course. Thus, many scholars advocate
not using the term at all. On the other hand, other scholars prefer not to use the term because they argue that it is misleading.
For them, neoliberalism is simply an advanced form of liberal capitalism. There's nothing really new or neo here, so why overstate
and confuse things with the prefix?
However, despite these critiques, I hang onto the term neoliberalism. My wager in doing so is that writing this book as a critical
study of neoliberal culture gives us a way to map our current conjuncture. It allows us to hold together the "specific ensemble of
social, cultural, and economic forces" at work in our world and, thus, to locate our lives in interrelation with those of others.
Indeed, I have found during my work with students over the years that studying neoliberalism enables us to see our interconnectedness
and the new ways of living that sensing our interconnectedness opens up. We all suffer when we're forced to live in competition as
self-enclosed individuals. Studying the neoliberal conjuncture allows us to clearly identify the roots of our suffering, and to tr
ace our connections with others who are also suffering, although often in variegated ways. In other words, when w'e map our conjuncture,
we can see how our different lives are lived on common ground, which is a crucial step to creating a world beyond competition.
At this point, you might have a sense of what neoliberalism is, but you're probably still fuzzy on the details. This chapter starts
to clear things up by charting the making of our neoliberal conjuncture. By tracing the history and development of neoliberalism,
we will leant how competition came to be the driving force in our everyday lives. Specifically, we will examine the rise of neoliberal
hegemony in four phases.
Table 1.1 Four Phases of Neoliberalism
Phase I 1920-1950 Theoretical innovation
Phase II 1950-1980 Organizing, institution building, and knowledge production
Phase III 1980-2000 Crisis management and policy implementation
Phase IV 2000 -- Present Crisis ordinariness and precarity
As we will see, neoliberalism is far from natur and necessary; rather, it represents a clear political project that was organized,
struggled for, and won.
A NEW HEGEMONY
We begin our investigation with a historical account of the rise of neoliberal hegemony. Hegemony is a concept developed by Italian
Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was keen to account for the definitive role that culture played in legitimizing and sustaining capitalism
and its exploitation of the working classes. In our own context of extreme economic inequality, Gramsci's question is still pressing:
How and why do ordinary working folks come to accept a system where wealth is produced by their collective labors and energies but
appropriated individually by only a few at the top? The theory of hegemony suggests that the answer to this question is not simply
a matter of direct exploitation and control by the capitalist class. Rather, hegemony posits that power is maintained through ongoing,
ever-shifting cultural processes of winning the consent of the governed, that is, ordinary people like you and me.
In other words, if we want to really understand why and how phenomena like inequality and exploitation exist, we have to attend
to the particular, contingent, and often contradictory ways in which culture gets mobilized to forward the interests and power of
the ruling classes. According to Gramsci, there was not one ruling class, but rather a historical bloc, "a moving equilibrium" of
class interests and values. Hegemony names a cultural struggle for moral, social, economic, and political leadership; in this struggle,
a field -- or assemblage -- of practices, discourses, values, and beliefs come to be dominant. While this field is powerful and firmly
entrenched, it is also open to contestation. In other words, hegemonic power is always on the move; it has to keep winning our consent
to survive, and sometimes it fails to do so.
Through the lens of hegemony, we can think about the rise of neoliberalism as an ongoing political project -- and class struggle
-- to shift society's political equilibrium and create a new dominant field. Specifically, we are going to trace the shift from liberal
to neoliberal hegemony. This shift is represented in the two images below.
Previous versions of liberal hegemony imagined society to be divided into distinct public and private spheres. The public sphere
was the purview of the state, and its role was to ensure the formal rights and freedoms of citizens through the rule of law. The
private sphere included the economy and the domestic sphere of home and family.
For the most part, liberal hegemony was animated by a commitment to limited government, as the goal was to allow for as much freedom
in trade, associations, and civil society as possible, while preserving social order and individual rights. Politics took shape largely
around the line between public and private; more precisely, it was a struggle over where and how to draw the line. In other words,
within the field of liberal hegemony, politics was a question of how to define the uses and limits of the state and its public function
in a capitalist society. Of course, political parties often disagreed passionately about where and how to draw that line. As we'll
see below, many advocated for laissez-faire capitalism, while others argued for a greater public role in ensuring the health, happiness,
and rights of citizens. What's crucial though is that everyone agreed that there was a line to be drawn, and that there was a public
function for the state.
As Figure 1.1 shows, neoliberal hegemony works to erase this line between public and private and to create an entire society
-- in fact, an entire world -- based on private, market competition. In this way, neoliberalism represents a radical reinvention
of liberalism and thus of the horizons of hegemonic struggle. Crucially, within neoliberalism, the state's function does not go away;
rather, it is deconstructed and reconstructed tow ard the new' end of expanding private markets.
Consequently, contemporary politics take shape around questions of how best to promote competition. For the most part, politics
on both the left and right have been subsumed by neoliberal hegemony. For example, while neoliberalism made its debut in Western
politics with the right-wing administrations of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, leaders associated with the left have worked
to further neoliberal hegemony in stunning ways. As we will explore in more depth below and in die coming chapters, both U.S. presidents
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have governed to create a privatized, market society. In other words, there is both a left and a right
hegemonic horizon of neoliberalism. Thus, moving beyond neoliberalism will ultimately require a whole new field of politics.
It is important to see that the gradual shift from liberal to neoliberal hegemony was not inevitable or natural, nor was it easy.
Rather, what we now r call neoliberalism is the effect of a sustained hegemonic struggle over the course of the twentieth
and twentyfirst centuries to construct and maintain a new political equilibrium. Simply put, neoliberalism was, and continues to
be, struggled over, fought for, and w'on.
In Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliheral Politics, Daniel Stedman Jones charts the history of
the neoliberal project in three phases. The first phase saw the development of neoliberal ideas and philosophies in Europe during
the years between World War I and World War II, as a relatively small group of economists (including most notably those from Austria,
Germany, and France), wrestling with the rise of fascism, communism, and socialism, sought to envision a new liberal society that
would protect individual liberties and free markets. The second phase w as a period of institution building, knowledge production,
and organizing that enabled neoliberalism to cultivate a powerful base in culture and politics, especially in the U.S. and United
Kingdom. During this phase, neoliberalism developed into a "thought collective" and full-fledged political movement. In the third
phase, neoliberal ideas migrated from the margins to the center of political life as they came to shape global trade and development
suggested by the theory of hegemony, none of these phases were neat and clean; each was shot through with struggle and contingency.
1 am adding a fourth phase, which is the focus of this book. Here neoliberalism is not only a set of economic policies and political
discourses, but also a deeply entrenched sensibility of w ho we are and can become and of what is possible to do, both individually
and collectively. It is what Raymond Williams called "a structure of feeling." Thanks to a convergence of different social, economic,
and cultural forces, which we will explore throughout the following chapters, competition has become fully embedded in our lifeworlds:
it is our culture, our conjuncture, the air we breathe. More specifically, this fourth phase is characterized by widespread precarity,
where crisis becomes ordinary, a constant feature of everyday life. As we will learn in coming chapters, we are prompted to confront
the precarity neoliberalism brings to our lives with more neoliberalism, that is, with living in competition and self-enclosed individualism.
PHASE I: THEORETICAL INNOVATION
The Crisis of Liberalism and the Birth of the Social Welfare State
Neoliberalism emerged out of the crisis of liberalism that ultimately came to a head in the early twentieth century. It is crucial
to understand that liberal hegemony was never a coherent, unified phenomenon. Rather, it developed around a central political antagonism.
On one side were those who championed individual liberty (especially private property rights and free markets) above all else. They
argued against government intervention in private life, especially in the market. On the other side, social reformers believed that
government should be pursued for the common good and not just for individual liberties. In the decades leading up to the Great Depression,
it became clear that the individual-liberty side, which had long been dominant, was inadequate for managing huge transformations
in capitalism that were underway. These transformations included industrialization, urbanization, and internationalization, as well
as the rise of large-scale corporate firms that squeezed smaller market actors. Huge gaps formed between the political-economic elite,
the middle classes, and the poor. Simply put, liberalism was in crisis.
During this time of social, cultural, and economic upheaval, those espousing the common good gained political ground. Specifically,
the misery and devastation of the Great Depression solidified the gains for social reformers, opening a new era where a new, common-good
liberalism began to prevail. In the United States, President Franklin
Roosevelt's administration passed a comprehensive set of social policies designed to protect individuals from the unpredictable
and often brutal operations of capitalism. These included the following:
Reforming banking: The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 set up regulatory agencies to provide oversight to the stock markets
and financial sector, while enforcing the separation of commercial banking and speculative investment. Simply put, banks couldn't
gamble with your savings and future.
Strengthening labor: In 1935, the National Recovery Administration and the National Labor Relations Act were passed
to recognize labor unions and the rights of workers to organize. At the same time, the administration spurred employment through
the Public Works Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration, while guaranteeing workers
a dignified retirement with the Social Security Act of 1935.
Promoting housing: A range of programs, policies, and agencies were established, including the Federal Housing Administration
and the U.S. Housing Authority, to encourage homeownership and provide housing to the poor and homeless. 1
Taken together, these policies marked the birth of the so-called social welfare state, albeit one that was limited in scope and
often highly exclusionary in practice. For example, a universal health care program was never realized. Many social groups, including
African-Americans, migrant farm workers, and women, were prohibited by law from receiving federal benefits such as social security
or unemployment. 3 Additionally, institutional racism plagued (as it still does) housing and banking institutions.
The Walter Lippmann Colloquium and the Birth of Neoliberalism
It is helpful to trace the emergence of our neoliberal conjuncture back to this moment where the common good was starting to win
the day via the establishment of a limited and exclusionary social welfare state. For, despite the fact that these social welfare
policies effectively "saved" capitalism from destroying itself, the individual-liberty side was deeply troubled. They feared that
a new and established the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) in 1947 to continue the work of dreaming up a new individual-liberty liberalism.
At this point, neoliberalism was still swimming upstream, as the postwar era ushered in a new' conjuncture that David Harvey
calls embedded liberalism.
Embedded liberalism was premised on a "class compromise" between the interests of workers and those of capitalists. In the
name of peace, general prosperity, and global capitalism, a hegemonic consensus emerged "that the state should focus on full employment,
economic growth, and the welfare of its citizens, and that state power should be freely deployed, alongside of or, if necessary,
intervening in or even substituting for market processes to achieve these ends." 4
A central piece of the embedded liberal compromise was the Bretton Woods Accord, which attempted to stabilize the global economy
by re-fixing currency rates to the gold standard. The idea was that national economies shouldn't be threatened by currency speculation
in the financial markets. All this meant that an infrastructure emerged to protect citizens' economic and social security. To ensure
the common good, capitalism must be embedded within "a web of social and political constraints." 5
Neoliberalism developed largely as a coordinated political response to the hegemony of embedded liberalism. As Harvey explains,
it was a project "to disembed capital from these constraints." 6 Indeed, the struggle for neoliberal hegemony waged a
robust and successful class war on the "compromise" of embedded liberalism by developing, promoting, and implementing a new version
of individual-liberty liberalism.
The Neoliberal Thought Collective
As the system of embedded liberalism was taking root and establishing its dominance in national and international affairs,
neoliberals were working on the ground: creating think tanks, forging political alliances, and infiltrating universities. During
this second phase, neoliberalism emerged as a "thought collective": a "multilevel, multiphase, multi-sector approach to the building
of political capacity to incubate, critique, and promulgate ideas." 7
The Neoliberal Thought Collective, as Philip Mirowski coined it, was a vertically integrated network of organizations and
people focused on radically shifting the [concensus. ]
"... Mirowski identifies three basic aspects of neoliberalism that the Left has failed to understand: the movement's intellectual history, the way it has transformed everyday life, and what constitutes opposition to it. Until we come to terms with them, Mirowski suggests, right-wing movements such as the Tea Party (a prominent player in the book) will continue to reign triumphant. ..."
"... Joining a long line of thinkers, most famously Karl Polanyi, Mirowski insists that a key error of the Left has been its failure to see that markets are always embedded in other social institutions. Neoliberals, by contrast, grasp this point with both hands -- and therefore seek to reshape all of the institutions of society, including and especially the state, to promote markets. Neoliberal ascendancy has meant not the retreat of the state so much as its remaking. ..."
"... he also recognizes that the neoliberals themselves have been canny about keeping the real nature of their project hidden through a variety of means. Neoliberal institutions tend to have what he calls a "Russian doll" structure, with the most central ones well hidden from public eyes. Mirowski coins an ironic expression, "the Neoliberal Thought Collective," for the innermost entities that formulate the movement's doctrine. The venerable Mont Pelerin Society is an NTC institution. Its ideas are frequently disseminated through venues which, formally at least, are unconnected to the center, such as academic economics departments. Thus, neoclassical economists spread the gospel of the free market while the grand project of remaking the state falls to others. ..."
"... At the same time as neoliberal commonsense trickles down from above, Mirowski argues that it also wells up from below, reinforced by our daily patterns of life. Social networking sites like Facebook encourage people to view themselves as perpetual cultural entrepreneurs, striving to offer a newer and better version of themselves to the world. Sites like LinkedIn prod their users to present themselves as a fungible basket of skills, adjustable to the needs of any employer, without any essential characteristics beyond a requisite subservience. Classical liberalism always assumes the coherent individual self as its basic unit. Neoliberalism, by contrast, sees people as little more than variable bundles of human capital, with no permanent interests or even attributes that cannot be remade through the market. For Mirowski, the proliferation of these forms of everyday neoliberalism constitute a "major reason the neoliberals have emerged from the crisis triumphant." ..."
"... Finally, Mirowski argues that the Left has too often been sucked in by neoliberalism's loyal opposition. Figures like Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman, while critical of austerity and supportive of the welfare state, accept the fundamental neoclassical economic precepts at the heart of neoliberal policy. Mirowski argues that we must ditch this tradition in its entirety. Even attempts to render its assumptions more realistic -- as in the case of behavioral economics, for example, which takes account of the ways real people diverge from the hyperrationality of homo economicus -- provide little succor for those seeking to overturn the neoliberals. ..."
"... Mirowski's insistence on the centrality of the state to the neoliberal project helps correct the unfortunate tendency of many leftists over the past decade to assent to neoliberal nostrums about the obsolescence of the state. Indeed, Mirowski goes further than many other critics who have challenged the supposed retreat of the state under neoliberalism. ..."
"... Loďc Wacquant, for instance, has described the "centaur state" of neoliberalism, in which a humanist liberalism reigns for the upper classes, while the lower classes face the punitive state apparatus in all its bestiality. ..."
"... Mirowski shows us that the world of the rich under neoliberalism in no way corresponds to the laissez-faire of classical liberalism. The state does not so much leave the rich alone as actively work to reshape the world in their interests, helping to create markets for the derivatives and securities that made (and then destroyed) so many of the fortunes of the recent past. The neoliberal state is an eminently interventionist one, and those mistaking it for the austere nightwatchman of libertarian utopianism have little hope of combating it. ..."
"... Mirowski's concern to disabuse his readers of the notion that the wing of neoliberal doctrine disseminated by neoclassical economists could ever be reformed produces some of the best sections of the book. His portrait of an economics profession in haggard disarray in the aftermath of the crisis is both comic and tragic, as the amusement value of the buffoonery on display diminishes quickly when one realizes the prestige still accorded to these figures. Reading his comprehensive examination of the discipline's response to the crisis, one is reminded of Freud's famous broken kettle. The professional economists' account of their role in the crisis went something like (a) there was no bubble and (b) bubbles are impossible to predict but (c) we knew it was a bubble all along. ..."
"... Though Krugman and Stiglitz have attacked concepts like the efficient markets hypothesis (which holds that prices in a competitive financial market reflect all relevant economic information), Mirowski argues that their attempt to do so while retaining the basic theoretical architecture of neoclassicism has rendered them doubly ineffective. ..."
"... First, their adoption of the battery of assumptions that accompany most neoclassical theorizing -- about representative agents, treating information like any other commodity, and so on -- make it nearly impossible to conclusively rebut arguments like the efficient markets hypothesis. ..."
To understand how a body of thought became an era of capitalism requires more than intellectual
history.
"What is going to come after neoliberalism?" It was the question on many radicals' lips, present
writer included, after the financial crisis hit in 2008. Though few were so sanguine about our prospects
as to repeat the suicidal optimism of previous radical movements ("After Hitler, Our Turn!"), the
feeling of the day was that the era of unfettered marketization was coming to a close. A new period
of what was loosely referred to as Keynesianism would be the inevitable result of a crisis caused
by markets run amok.
Five years later, little has changed. What comes after neoliberalism? More neoliberalism, apparently.
The prospects for a revived Left capable of confronting it appear grim.
Enter Philip Mirowski's Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived
the Financial Meltdown . Mirowski maintains that the true nature of neoliberalism has gone
unrecognized by its would-be critics, allowing the doctrine to flourish even in conditions, such
as a massive financial crisis, that would seem to be inimical to its survival. Leftists keep busy
tilting at the windmill of deregulation as the giants of neoliberalism go on pillaging unmolested.
Mirowski identifies three basic aspects of neoliberalism that the Left has failed to understand:
the movement's intellectual history, the way it has transformed everyday life, and what constitutes
opposition to it. Until we come to terms with them, Mirowski suggests, right-wing movements such
as the Tea Party (a prominent player in the book) will continue to reign triumphant.
The book begins with the war of ideas -- a conflict in which, Mirowski argues, the Left has been
far too generous in taking neoliberals at their word, or at least their best-publicized word. We
have, in effect, been suckered by kindly old Milton Friedman telling us how much better off we'd
all be if the government simply left us "free to choose." But neoliberals have at times been forthright
about their appreciation for the uses of state power. Markets, after all, do not simply create themselves.
Joining a long line of thinkers, most famously Karl Polanyi, Mirowski insists that a key error
of the Left has been its failure to see that markets are always embedded in other social institutions.
Neoliberals, by contrast, grasp this point with both hands -- and therefore seek to reshape all of
the institutions of society, including and especially the state, to promote markets. Neoliberal ascendancy
has meant not the retreat of the state so much as its remaking.
If Mirowski is often acidic about the Left's failure to understand this point, he also recognizes
that the neoliberals themselves have been canny about keeping the real nature of their project hidden
through a variety of means. Neoliberal institutions tend to have what he calls a "Russian doll" structure,
with the most central ones well hidden from public eyes. Mirowski coins an ironic expression, "the
Neoliberal Thought Collective," for the innermost entities that formulate the movement's doctrine.
The venerable Mont Pelerin Society is an NTC institution. Its ideas are frequently disseminated through
venues which, formally at least, are unconnected to the center, such as academic economics departments.
Thus, neoclassical economists spread the gospel of the free market while the grand project of remaking
the state falls to others.
At the same time as neoliberal commonsense trickles down from above, Mirowski argues that
it also wells up from below, reinforced by our daily patterns of life. Social networking sites like
Facebook encourage people to view themselves as perpetual cultural entrepreneurs, striving to offer
a newer and better version of themselves to the world. Sites like LinkedIn prod their users to present
themselves as a fungible basket of skills, adjustable to the needs of any employer, without any essential
characteristics beyond a requisite subservience. Classical liberalism always assumes the coherent
individual self as its basic unit. Neoliberalism, by contrast, sees people as little more than variable
bundles of human capital, with no permanent interests or even attributes that cannot be remade through
the market. For Mirowski, the proliferation of these forms of everyday neoliberalism constitute a
"major reason the neoliberals have emerged from the crisis triumphant."
Finally, Mirowski argues that the Left has too often been sucked in by neoliberalism's loyal
opposition. Figures like Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman, while critical of austerity and supportive
of the welfare state, accept the fundamental neoclassical economic precepts at the heart of neoliberal
policy. Mirowski argues that we must ditch this tradition in its entirety. Even attempts to render
its assumptions more realistic -- as in the case of behavioral economics, for example, which takes
account of the ways real people diverge from the hyperrationality of homo economicus -- provide
little succor for those seeking to overturn the neoliberals.
For Mirowski, these three failures of the Left go a long way toward explaining how neoliberals
have largely escaped blame for a crisis they created. The Left persistently goes after phantoms like
deregulation or smaller government, which neoliberals easily parry by pointing out that the regulatory
apparatus has never been bigger. At the same time, we ignore the deep roots of neoliberal ideology
in everyday life, deceiving ourselves as to the scale of the task in front of us.
Whatever criticisms of Mirowski's analysis are in order, much of it is compelling, particularly
in regard to the intellectual history of the NTC. Mirowski's insistence on the centrality of
the state to the neoliberal project helps correct the unfortunate tendency of many leftists over
the past decade to assent to neoliberal nostrums about the obsolescence of the state. Indeed, Mirowski
goes further than many other critics who have challenged the supposed retreat of the state under
neoliberalism.
Loďc Wacquant, for instance, has described the "centaur state" of neoliberalism, in which
a humanist liberalism reigns for the upper classes, while the lower classes face the punitive state
apparatus in all its bestiality. But Mirowski shows us that the world of the rich under
neoliberalism in no way corresponds to the laissez-faire of classical liberalism. The state does
not so much leave the rich alone as actively work to reshape the world in their interests, helping
to create markets for the derivatives and securities that made (and then destroyed) so many of the
fortunes of the recent past. The neoliberal state is an eminently interventionist one, and those
mistaking it for the austere nightwatchman of libertarian utopianism have little hope of combating
it.
It's here that we begin to see the strategic genius of neoliberal infrastructure, with its teams
of college economics professors teaching the wondrous efficacy of supply and demand on the one hand,
and the think tanks and policy shops engaged in the relentless pursuit of state power on the other.
The Left too often sees inconsistency where in fact there is a division of labor.
Mirowski's concern to disabuse his readers of the notion that the wing of neoliberal doctrine
disseminated by neoclassical economists could ever be reformed produces some of the best sections
of the book. His portrait of an economics profession in haggard disarray in the aftermath of the
crisis is both comic and tragic, as the amusement value of the buffoonery on display diminishes quickly
when one realizes the prestige still accorded to these figures. Reading his comprehensive examination
of the discipline's response to the crisis, one is reminded of Freud's famous broken kettle. The
professional economists' account of their role in the crisis went something like (a) there was no
bubble and (b) bubbles are impossible to predict but (c) we knew it was a bubble all along.
Incoherence notwithstanding, however, little in the discipline has changed in the wake of the
crisis. Mirowski thinks that this is at least in part a result of the impotence of the loyal opposition
-- those economists such as Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman who attempt to oppose the more viciously
neoliberal articulations of economic theory from within the camp of neoclassical economics. Though
Krugman and Stiglitz have attacked concepts like the efficient markets hypothesis (which holds that
prices in a competitive financial market reflect all relevant economic information), Mirowski argues
that their attempt to do so while retaining the basic theoretical architecture of neoclassicism has
rendered them doubly ineffective.
First, their adoption of the battery of assumptions that accompany most neoclassical theorizing
-- about representative agents, treating information like any other commodity, and so on -- make
it nearly impossible to conclusively rebut arguments like the efficient markets hypothesis.
Instead, they end up tinkering with it, introducing a nuance here or a qualification there. This
tinkering causes their arguments to be more or less ignored in neoclassical pedagogy, as economists
more favorably inclined toward hard neoliberal arguments can easily ignore such revisions and hold
that the basic thrust of the theory is still correct. Stiglitz's and Krugman's arguments, while receiving
circulation through the popular press, utterly fail to transform the discipline.
Mirowski also heaps scorn on the suggestion, sometimes made in leftist circles, that the problem
at the heart of neoclassical economics is its assumption of a hyperrational homo economicus
, relentlessly comparing equilibrium states and maximizing utility. Though such a revision may
be appealing to a certain radical romanticism, Mirowski shows that a good deal of work going on under
the label of behavioral economics has performed just this revision, and has come up with results
that don't differ substantively from those of the mainstream. The main problem with neoclassicism
isn't its theory of the human agent but rather its the theory of the market -- which is precisely
what behavioral economics isn't interested in contesting.
In all, Mirowski's indictment of the state of economic theory and its imbrication with the neoliberal
project is devastating. Unfortunately, he proves much less successful in explaining why
things have turned out as they have. The book ascribes tremendous power to the Neoliberal Thought
Collective, which somehow manages to do everything from controlling the economics profession to reshaping
the state to forging a new sense of the human self. The reader is left wondering how the NTC came
to acquire such power. This leads to the book's central flaw: a lack of any theory of the structure
of modern capitalism. Indeed, the NTC seems to operate in something of a vacuum, without ever confronting
other institutions or groups, such as the state or popular movements, with interests and agendas
of their own.
To be fair, Mirowski does offer an explanation for the failure of popular movements to challenge
neoliberalism, largely through his account of "everyday" neoliberalism. At its strongest, the book
identifies important strategic failures, such as Occupy's embrace of "a mimicry of media technologies
as opposed to concerted political mobilization." However, Mirowski extends the argument well beyond
a specific failure of the Occupy movement to propose a general thesis that developments like Facebook
and reality TV have transmitted neoliberal ideology to people who have never read Friedman and Hayek.
In claiming that this embodied or embedded ideology plays an important role in the failure of the
Left, he places far more explanatory weight on the concept of everyday neoliberalism than it is capable
of bearing.
At the simplest level, it's just not clear that everyday neoliberalism constitutes the kind of
block to political action that Mirowski thinks it does. No doubt, many people reading this article
right now simultaneously have another browser tab open to monster.com or LinkedIn, where they are
striving to present themselves as a fungible basket of skills to any employer that will have them.
In this economy, everyone has to hustle, and that means using all available means. That many of these
same readers have probably also done things like organize against foreclosures should give pause
to any blurring of the distinction between using various media technologies and embracing the ideology
Mirowski sees embodied in them.
Indeed, the ubiquity of participation in such technologies by people who support, oppose, or are
apathetic about neoliberalism points to a larger phenomenon on which Mirowski is silent: the labor
market. Put bluntly, it is difficult to imagine anyone engaging in the painfully strained self-advertisement
facilitated by LinkedIn in a labor market with, say, 2-percent unemployment. In such a market, in
which employers were competing for comparatively scarce workers, there would be very little need
for those workers to go through the self-abasing ritual of converting themselves into fungible baskets
of skills. In our current situation, by contrast, where secure and remunerative employment is comparatively
scarce, it is no surprise that people turn to whatever technologies are available to attempt to sell
themselves. As Joan Robinson put it, the only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism is not
being exploited by it.
In evaluating the role of everyday neoliberalism, it is also helpful to move, for the moment,
beyond the perspective of the United States, where the NTC has clearly had great success, and adopt
that of countries where resistance is significantly more developed, such as Venezuela or South Africa.
Especially in the former, popular movements have been notably successful in combating neoliberal
efforts to take over the state and reshape the economy, and have instead pushed the country in the
opposite direction. Is it really plausible that a main reason for this difference is that everyday
neoliberalism is more intense in the United States? I doubt it. For one thing, the strength of Venezuela's
radical movements, in comparison with the US, clearly antedates the developments (social media,
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo , and so on) that Mirowski discusses.
Moreover, it is just as plausible that the entrepreneurial culture he describes is even more extensive
in the slums of the global South, where neoliberal devastation has forced many poor households to
rely on at least one family member engaging in semi-legal arbitrage in goods salvaged from garbage
or made at home. Surely such activities provide a firmer foundation for commercial subjectivity than
having a 401(k). That resistance has grown in such circumstances suggests that looking to malignant
subjectivities to explain popular passivity is an analytic dead-end.
If everyday neoliberalism doesn't explain the comparative weakness of the US left, what does?
This is, of course, the key question, and I can do no more than gesture at an answer here. But I
would suggest that the specific histories of the institutions of the American left, from the Communist
Party to Students for a Democratic Society to labor unions, and the histories of the situations they
confronted, provide us with a more solid foundation for understanding our current weakness than the
hegemony of neoliberal culture does. Moreover, with a theory of capitalism that emphasizes the way
the structure of the system makes it both necessary and very difficult for most people to organize
to advance their interests, it becomes very easy to explain the persistence of a low level of popular
mobilization against neoliberalism in the context of a weakened left.
If Mirowski's account doesn't give us a good basis for explaining why popular resistance has been
so lacking in the US, it nonetheless suggests why he is so concerned with explaining the supposed
dominance of neoliberal ideology among the general population. From the beginning, he raises the
specter of right-wing resurgence, whether in the form of Scott Walker surviving the recall campaign
in Wisconsin, the Tea Party mania of 2010, or the success of right-wing parties in Europe. However,
much of this seems overstated, especially from a contemporary perspective. The Tea Party has, for
all intents and purposes, disappeared from the front lines of American politics, and the Republican
Party, while capable of enacting all kinds of sadistic policies on the state level, has remained
in a state of disarray on the national level since the 2006 congressional elections.
More fundamentally, the argument that the voting public embraces neoliberalism doesn't square
well with recent research by political scientists like Larry Bartels and Martin Gilens emphasizing
the profound disconnect between the policy preferences of the poor and what transpires in Washington.
What appears to be happening is less the general populace's incorporation into neoliberalism than
their exclusion from any institutions that would allow them to change it. Importantly, this alternative
explanation does not rely on the Left conceit that rebellion lurks perpetually just below the placid
social surface, ready to explode into radical insurgency at any moment. It simply contends that the
political passivity of neoliberalism's victims reflects a real diminution of their political options.
Mirowski's failure to address these larger institutional and structural dynamics vitiates much
of the explanatory power of his book. On a purely descriptive level, the sections on the intellectual
history of neoliberalism and the non-crisis of neoclassical economics illuminate many of the hidden
corners of neoliberal ideology. However, if Mirowski is right to suggest that we need to understand
neoliberalism better to be successful in fighting it -- and he surely is -- then much more is needed
to explain neoliberal success and Left failure.
To understand how a body of thought became an era of capitalism requires more than intellectual
history. It demands an account of how capitalism actually works in the period in question, and how
the ideas of a small group of intellectuals came to be the policy preferences of the rich. Mirowski
has given us an excellent foundation for understanding the doctrine, but it will remain for others
to explain its actual development.
"... The book was The Constitution of Liberty by Frederick Hayek . Its publication, in 1960, marked the transition from an honest, if extreme, philosophy to an outright racket. The philosophy was called neoliberalism . It saw competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. The market would discover a natural hierarchy of winners and losers, creating a more efficient system than could ever be devised through planning or by design. Anything that impeded this process, such as significant tax, regulation, trade union activity or state provision, was counter-productive. Unrestricted entrepreneurs would create the wealth that would trickle down to everyone. ..."
"... But by the time Hayek came to write The Constitution of Liberty, the network of lobbyists and thinkers he had founded was being lavishly funded by multimillionaires who saw the doctrine as a means of defending themselves against democracy. Not every aspect of the neoliberal programme advanced their interests. Hayek, it seems, set out to close the gap. ..."
"... He begins the book by advancing the narrowest possible conception of liberty: an absence of coercion. He rejects such notions as political freedom, universal rights, human equality and the distribution of wealth, all of which, by restricting the behaviour of the wealthy and powerful, intrude on the absolute freedom from coercion he demands. ..."
"... The general thrust is about the gradual hollowing out of the middle class (or more affluent working class, depending on the analytical terms being used), about insecurity, stress, casualisation, rising wage inequality. ..."
"... So Hayek, I feel, is like many theoreticians, in that he seems to want a pure world that will function according to a simple and universal law. The world never was, and never will be that simple, and current economics simply continues to have a blindspot for externalities that overwhelm the logic of an unfettered so-called free market. ..."
"... J.K. Galbraith viewed the rightwing mind as predominantly concerned with figuring out a way to justify the shift of wealth from the immense majority to an elite at the top. I for one regret acutely that he did not (as far as I know) write a volume on his belief in progressive taxation. ..."
"... The system that Clinton developed was an inheritance from George H.W. Bush, Reagan (to a large degree), Carter, with another large assist from Nixon and the Powell Memo. ..."
"... What's changed is the distribution of the gains in GDP growth -- that is in no small part a direct consequence of changes in policy since the 1970s. It isn't some "market place magic". We have made major changes to tax laws since that time. We have weakened collective bargaining, which obviously has a negative impact on wages. We have shifted the economy towards financial services, which has the tendency of increasing inequality. ..."
"... Wages aren't stagnating because people are working less. Wages have stagnated because of dumb policy choices that have tended to incentives looting by those at the top of the income distribution from workers in the lower parts of the economy. ..."
"... "Neoliberalism" is entirely compatible with "growth of the state". Reagan greatly enlarged the state. He privatized several functions and it actually had the effect of increasing spending. ..."
"... When it comes to social safety net programs, e.g. in health care and education -- those programs almost always tend to be more expensive and more complicated when privatized. If the goal was to actually save taxpayer money, in the U.S. at least, it would have made a lot more sense to have a universal Medicare system, rather than a massive patch-work like the ACA and our hybrid market. ..."
"... As for the rest, it's the usual practice of gathering every positive metric available and somehow attributing it to neoliberalism, no matter how tenuous the threads, and as always with zero rigour. Supposedly capitalism alone doubled life expectancy, supports billions of extra lives, invented the railways, and provides the drugs and equipment that keep us alive. As though public education, vaccines, antibiotics, and massive availability of energy has nothing to do with those things. ..."
"... I think the damage was done when the liberal left co-opted neo-liberalism. What happened under Bill Clinton was the development of crony capitalism where for example the US banks were told to lower their credit standards to lend to people who couldn't really afford to service the loans. ..."
The events that led to Donald Trump's election started in England in 1975. At a meeting a few months after Margaret Thatcher became
leader of the Conservative party, one of her colleagues, or so the story goes, was explaining what he saw as the core beliefs of
conservatism. She snapped open her handbag, pulled out a dog-eared book, and
slammed it on the table . "This is what we believe," she said. A political revolution that would sweep the world had begun.
The book was The Constitution
of Liberty by Frederick Hayek . Its publication, in 1960, marked the transition from an honest, if extreme, philosophy to an
outright racket.
The philosophy
was called neoliberalism . It saw competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. The market would discover a
natural hierarchy of winners and losers, creating a more efficient system than could ever be devised through planning or by design.
Anything that impeded this process, such as significant tax, regulation, trade union activity or state provision, was counter-productive.
Unrestricted entrepreneurs would create the wealth that would trickle down to everyone.
This, at any rate, is how it was originally conceived. But by the time Hayek came to write The Constitution of Liberty, the
network of lobbyists and thinkers he had founded was being lavishly funded by multimillionaires who saw the doctrine as a means of
defending themselves against democracy. Not every aspect of the neoliberal programme advanced their interests. Hayek, it seems, set
out to close the gap.
He begins the book by advancing the narrowest possible conception of liberty: an absence of coercion. He rejects such notions
as political freedom, universal rights, human equality and the distribution of wealth, all of which, by restricting the behaviour
of the wealthy and powerful, intrude on the absolute freedom from coercion he demands.
Democracy, by contrast, "is not an ultimate or absolute value". In fact, liberty depends on preventing the majority from exercising
choice over the direction that politics and society might take.
He justifies this position by creating a heroic narrative of extreme wealth. He conflates the economic elite, spending their money
in new ways, with philosophical and scientific pioneers. Just as the political philosopher should be free to think the unthinkable,
so the very rich should be free to do the undoable, without constraint by public interest or public opinion.
The ultra rich are "scouts", "experimenting with new styles of living", who blaze the trails that the rest of society will follow.
The progress of society depends on the liberty of these "independents" to gain as much money as they want and spend it how they wish.
All that is good and useful, therefore, arises from inequality. There should be no connection between merit and reward, no distinction
made between earned and unearned income, and no limit to the rents they can charge.
Inherited wealth is more socially useful than earned wealth: "the idle rich", who don't have to work for their money, can devote
themselves to influencing "fields of thought and opinion, of tastes and beliefs". Even when they seem to be spending money on nothing
but "aimless display", they are in fact acting as society's vanguard.
Hayek softened his opposition to monopolies and hardened his opposition to trade unions. He lambasted progressive taxation and
attempts by the state to raise the general welfare of citizens. He insisted that there is "an overwhelming case against a free health
service for all" and dismissed the conservation of natural resources. It should come as no surprise to those who follow such matters
that he was awarded
the Nobel prize for economics .
By the time Thatcher slammed his book on the table, a lively network of thinktanks, lobbyists and academics promoting Hayek's
doctrines had been established on both sides of the Atlantic,
abundantly financed by some of the world's richest people and
businesses , including DuPont, General Electric, the Coors brewing company, Charles Koch, Richard Mellon Scaife, Lawrence Fertig,
the William Volker Fund and the Earhart Foundation. Using psychology and linguistics to brilliant effect, the thinkers these people
sponsored found the words and arguments required to turn Hayek's anthem to the elite into a plausible political programme.
Thatcherism and Reaganism were not ideologies in their own right: they were just two faces of neoliberalism. Their massive tax
cuts for the rich, crushing of trade unions, reduction in public housing, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition
in public services were all proposed by Hayek and his disciples. But the real triumph of this network was not its capture of the
right, but its colonisation of parties that once stood for everything Hayek detested.
Bill Clinton and Tony Blair did not possess a narrative of their own. Rather than develop a new political story, they thought
it was sufficient to
triangulate
. In other words, they extracted a few elements of what their parties had once believed, mixed them with elements of what their
opponents believed, and developed from this unlikely combination a "third way".
It was inevitable that the blazing, insurrectionary confidence of neoliberalism would exert a stronger gravitational pull than
the dying star of social democracy. Hayek's triumph could be witnessed everywhere from Blair's expansion of the private finance initiative
to Clinton's
repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act , which had regulated the financial sector. For all his grace and touch, Barack Obama, who didn't
possess a narrative either (except "hope"), was slowly reeled in by those who owned the means of persuasion.
As I warned
in April, the result is first disempowerment then disenfranchisement. If the dominant ideology stops governments from changing
social outcomes, they can no longer respond to the needs of the electorate. Politics becomes irrelevant to people's lives; debate
is reduced to the jabber of a remote elite. The disenfranchised turn instead to a virulent anti-politics in which facts and arguments
are replaced by slogans, symbols and sensation. The man who sank Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidency was not Donald Trump. It
was her husband.
The paradoxical result is that the backlash against neoliberalism's crushing of political choice has elevated just the kind of
man that Hayek worshipped. Trump, who has no coherent politics, is not a classic neoliberal. But he is the perfect representation
of Hayek's "independent"; the beneficiary of inherited wealth, unconstrained by common morality, whose gross predilections strike
a new path that others may follow. The neoliberal thinktankers are now swarming round this hollow man, this empty vessel waiting
to be filled by those who know what they want. The likely result is the demolition of our remaining decencies,
beginning with the agreement to limit global warming .
Those who tell the stories run the world. Politics has failed through a lack of competing narratives. The key task now is to tell
a new story of what it is to be a human in the 21st century. It must be as appealing to some who have voted for Trump and Ukip as
it is to the supporters of Clinton, Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn.
A few of us have been working on this, and can discern what may be the beginning of a story. It's too early to say much yet, but
at its core is the recognition that – as modern psychology and neuroscience make abundantly clear – human beings, by comparison with
any other animals, are both
remarkably social and
remarkably
unselfish . The atomisation and self-interested behaviour neoliberalism promotes run counter to much of what comprises human
nature.
Hayek told us who we are, and he was wrong. Our first step is to reclaim our humanity.
justamug -> Skytree 16 Nov 2016 18:17
Thanks for the chuckle. On a more serious note - defining neoliberalism is not that easy since it is not a laid out philosophy
like liberalism, or socialism, or communism or facism. Since 2008 the use of the word neoliberalism has increased in frequency
and has come to mean different things to different people.
A common theme appears to be the negative effects of the market on the human condition.
Having read David Harvey's book, and Phillip Mirowski's book (both had a go at defining neoliberalism and tracing its history)
it is clear that neoliberalism is not really coherent set of ideas.
ianfraser3 16 Nov 2016 17:54
EF Schumacher quoted "seek first the kingdom of God" in his epilogue of "Small Is Beautiful: a study of economics as if people
mattered". This was written in the early 1970s before the neoliberal project bit in the USA and the UK. The book is laced with
warnings about the effects of the imposition of neoliberalism on society, people and the planet. The predictions have largely
come true. New politics and economics needed, by leaders who place at the heart of their approach the premise, and fact, that
humans are "by comparison with any other animals, are both remarkably social and remarkably unselfish". It is about reclaiming
our humanity from a project that treats people as just another commodity.
Filipio -> YouDidntBuildThat 16 Nov 2016 17:42
Whoa there, slow down.
Your last post was questioning the reality of neoliberalism as a general policy direction that had become hegemonic across
many governments (and most in the west) over recent decades. Now you seem to be agreeing that the notion does have salience, but
that neoliberalism delivered positive rather than negative consequences.
Well, its an ill wind that blows nobody any good, huh?
Doubtless there were some positive outcomes for particular groups. But recall that the context for this thread is not whether,
on balance, more people benefited from neoliberal policies than were harmed -- an argument that would be most powerful only in
very utilitarian style frameworks of thought (most good for the many, or most harm for only the few). The thread is about the
significance of the impacts of neoliberalism in the rise of Trump. And in specific relation to privatisation (just one dimension
of neoliberalism) one key impact was downsizing (or 'rightsizing'; restructuring). There is a plethora of material, including
sociological and psychological, on the harm caused by shrinking and restructured work-forces as a consequence of privatisation.
Books have been written, even in the business management sector, about how poorly such 'change' was handled and the multiple deleterious
outcomes experienced by employees.
And we're still only talking about one dimension of neoliberalism! Havn't even touched on deregulation yet (notably, labour
market and financial sector).
The general thrust is about the gradual hollowing out of the middle class (or more affluent working class, depending on
the analytical terms being used), about insecurity, stress, casualisation, rising wage inequality.
You want evidence? I'm not doing your research for you. The internet can be a great resource, or merely an echo chamber. The
problem with so many of the alt-right (and this applies on the extreme left as well) is that they only look to confirm their views,
not read widely. Open your eyes, and use your search engine of choice. There is plenty out there. Be open to having your preconceptions
challenged.
RichardErskine -> LECKJ3000 16 Nov 2016 15:38
LECKJ3000 - I am not an economist, but surely the theoretical idealised mechanisms of the market are never realised in practice.
US subsidizing their farmers, in EU too, etc. And for problems that are not only externalities but transnational ones, the idea
that some Hayek mechanism will protect thr ozone layer or limit carbon emissions, without some regulation or tax.
Lord Stern called global warming the greatest market failure in history, but no market, however sophisticated, can deal with
it without some price put on the effluent of product (the excessive CO2 we put into the atmosphere).
As with Montreal and subsequent agreements, there is a way to maintain a level playing field; to promote different substances
for use as refrigerants; and to address the hole in ozone layer; without abandoning the market altogether. Simple is good, because
it avoids over-engineering the interventions (and the unintended consequences you mention).
The same could/ should be true of global warming, but we have left it so late we cannot wait for the (inevitable) fall of fossil
fuels and supremacy of renewables. We need a price on carbon, which is a graduated and fast rising tax essentially on its production
and/or consumption, which has already started to happen ( http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/SDN/background-note_carbon-tax.pdf
), albeit not deep / fast / extensive enough, or international in character, but that will come, if not before the impacts really
bite then soon after.
So Hayek, I feel, is like many theoreticians, in that he seems to want a pure world that will function according to a simple
and universal law. The world never was, and never will be that simple, and current economics simply continues to have a blindspot
for externalities that overwhelm the logic of an unfettered so-called free market.
LionelKent -> greven 16 Nov 2016 14:59
And persistent. J.K. Galbraith viewed the rightwing mind as predominantly concerned with figuring out a way to justify the
shift of wealth from the immense majority to an elite at the top. I for one regret acutely that he did not (as far as I know)
write a volume on his belief in progressive taxation.
RandomLibertarian -> JVRTRL 16 Nov 2016 09:19
Not bad points.
When it comes to social safety net programs, e.g. in health care and education -- those programs almost always tend to be more
expensive and more complicated when privatized. If the goal was to actually save taxpayer money, in the U.S. at least, it would
have made a lot more sense to have a universal Medicare system, rather than a massive patch-work like the ACA and our hybrid market.
Do not forget that the USG, in WW2, took the deliberate step of allowing employers to provide health insurance as a tax-free
benefit - which it still is, being free even from SS and Medicare taxes. In the post-war boom years this resulted in the development
of a system with private rooms, almost on-demand access to specialists, and competitive pay for all involved (while the NHS, by
contrast, increasingly drew on immigrant populations for nurses and below). Next, the large sums of money in the system and a
generous court system empowered a vast malpractice industry. So to call our system in any way a consequence of a free market is
a misnomer.
Entirely state controlled health care systems tend to be even more cost-effective.
Read Megan McArdle's work in this area. The US has had similar cost growth since the 1970s to the rest of the world. The problem
was that it started from a higher base.
Part of the issue is that privatization tends to create feedback mechanism that increase the size of spending in programs.
Even Eisenhower's noted "military industrial complex" is an illustration of what happens when privatization really takes hold.
When government becomes involved in business, business gets involved in government!
Todd Smekens 16 Nov 2016 08:40
Albert Einstein said, "capitalism is evil" in his famous dictum called, "Why Socialism" in 1949. He also called communism,
"evil", so don't jump to conclusions, comrades. ;)
His reasoning was it distorts a human beings longing for the social aspect. I believe George references this in his statement
about people being "unselfish". This is noted by both science and philosophy.
Einstein noted that historically, the conqueror would establish the new order, and since 1949, Western Imperialism has continued
on with the predatory phase of acquiring and implementing democracy/capitalism. This needs to end. As we've learned rapidly, capitalism
isn't sustainable. We are literally overheating the earth which sustains us. Very unwise.
Einstein wrote, "Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to
protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate
abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures,
to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting,
strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual
can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society."
Personally, I'm glad George and others are working on a new economic and social construct for us "human beings". It's time
we leave the predatory phase of "us versus them", and construct a new society which works for the good of our now, global society.
zavaell -> LECKJ3000 16 Nov 2016 06:28
The problem is that both you and Monbiot fail to mention that your "the spontaneous order of the market" does not recognize
externalities and climate change is outside Hayek's thinking - he never wrote about sustainability or the limits on resources,
let alone the consequences of burning fossil fuels. There is no beauty in what he wrote - it was a cold, mechanical model that
assumed certain human behaviour but not others. Look at today's money-makers - they are nearly all climate change deniers and
we have to have government to reign them in.
aLERNO 16 Nov 2016 04:52
Good, short and concise article. But the FIRST NEOLIBERAL MILESTONE WAS THE 1973 COUP D'ETAT IN CHILE, which not surprisingly
also deposed the first democratically-elected socialist government.
accipiter15 16 Nov 2016 02:34
A great article and explanation of the influence of Hayek on Thatcher. Unfortunately this country is still suffering the consequences
of her tenure and Osborne was also a proponent of her policies and look where we are as a consequence. The referendum gave the
people the opportunity to vent their anger and if we had PR I suspect we would have a greater turn-out and nearly always have
some sort of coalition where nothing gets done that is too hurtful to the population. As for Trump, again his election is an expression
of anger and desperation. However, the American voting system is as unfair as our own - again this has probably been the cause
of the low turn-out. Why should people vote when they do not get fair representation - it is a waste of time and not democratic.
I doubt that Trump is Keynsian I suspect he doesn't have an economic theory at all. I just hope that the current economic thinking
prevailing currently in this country, which is still overshadowed by Thatcher and the free market, with no controls over the city
casino soon collapses and we can start from a fairer and more inclusive base!
JVRTRL -> Keypointist 16 Nov 2016 02:15
The system that Clinton developed was an inheritance from George H.W. Bush, Reagan (to a large degree), Carter, with another
large assist from Nixon and the Powell Memo.
Bill Clinton didn't do it by himself. The GOP did it with him hand-in-hand, with the only resistance coming from a minority
within the Democratic party.
Trump's victory was due to many factors. A large part of it was Hillary Clinton's campaign and the candidate. Part of it was
the effectiveness of the GOP massive resistance strategy during the Obama years, wherein they pursued a course of obstruction
in an effort to slow the rate of the economic recovery (e.g. as evidence of the bad faith, they are resurrecting a $1 trillion
infrastructure bill that Obama originally proposed in 2012, and now that they have full control, all the talk about "deficits"
goes out the window).
Obama and the Democratic party also bear responsibility for not recognizing the full scope of the financial collapse in 2008-2009,
passing a stimulus package that was about $1 trillion short of spending needed to accelerate the recovery by the 2010 mid-terms,
combined with a weak financial regulation law (which the GOP is going to destroy), an overly complicated health care law -- classic
technocratic, neoliberal incremental policy -- and the failure of the Obama administration to hold Wall Street accountable for
criminal misconduct relating to the financial crisis. Obama's decision to push unpopular trade agreements didn't help either.
As part of the post-mortem, the decision to continuing pushing the TPP may have cost Clinton in the rust belt states that went
for Trump. The agreement was unpopular, and her shift on the policy didn't come across as credible. People noticed as well that
Obama was trying to pass the measure through the lame-duck session of Congress post-election. With Trump's election, the TPP is
done too.
JVRTRL daltonknox67 16 Nov 2016 02:00
There is no iron law that says a country has to run large trade deficits. The existence of large trade deficits is usually
a result of policy choices.
Growth also hasn't gone into the tank. What's changed is the distribution of the gains in GDP growth -- that is in no small
part a direct consequence of changes in policy since the 1970s. It isn't some "market place magic". We have made major changes
to tax laws since that time. We have weakened collective bargaining, which obviously has a negative impact on wages. We have shifted
the economy towards financial services, which has the tendency of increasing inequality.
The idea too that people will be "poorer" than in the 1920s and 1930s is just plain ignorant. It has no basis in any of the
data. Wages in the bottom quartile have actually decreased slightly since the 1970s in real terms, but those wages in the 1970s
were still exponentially higher than wages in the 1920s in real terms.
Wages aren't stagnating because people are working less. Wages have stagnated because of dumb policy choices that have tended
to incentives looting by those at the top of the income distribution from workers in the lower parts of the economy. The 2008
bailouts were a clear illustration of this reality. People in industries rigged rules to benefit themselves. They misallocated
resources. Then they went to representatives and taxpayers and asked for a large no-strings attached handout that was effectively
worth trillions of dollars (e.g. hundreds of billions through TARP, trillions more through other programs). As these players become
wealthier, they have an easier time buying politicians to rig rules further to their advantage.
JVRTRL -> RandomLibertarian 16 Nov 2016 01:44
"The tyranny of the 51 per cent is the oldest and most solid argument against a pure democracy."
"Tyranny of the majority" is always a little bizarre, given that the dynamics of majority rule are unlike the governmental
structures of an actual tyranny. Even in the context of the U.S. we had minority rule due to voting restrictions for well over
a century that was effectively a tyranny for anyone who was denied the ability to participation in the elections process. Pure
majorities can go out of control, especially in a country with massive wealth disparities and with weak civic institutions.
On the other hand, this is part of the reason to construct a system of checks and balances. It's also part of the argument
for representative democracy.
"Neoliberalism" is entirely compatible with "growth of the state". Reagan greatly enlarged the state. He privatized several
functions and it actually had the effect of increasing spending.
When it comes to social safety net programs, e.g. in health care and education -- those programs almost always tend to be more
expensive and more complicated when privatized. If the goal was to actually save taxpayer money, in the U.S. at least, it would
have made a lot more sense to have a universal Medicare system, rather than a massive patch-work like the ACA and our hybrid market.
Entirely state controlled health care systems tend to be even more cost-effective. Part of the issue is that privatization
tends to create feedback mechanism that increase the size of spending in programs. Even Eisenhower's noted "military industrial
complex" is an illustration of what happens when privatization really takes hold.
daltonknox67 15 Nov 2016 21:46
After WWII most of the industrialised world had been bombed or fought over with destruction of infrastructure and manufacturing.
The US alone was undamaged. It enjoyed a manufacturing boom that lasted until the 70's when competition from Germany and Japan,
and later Taiwan, Korea and China finally brought it to an end.
As a result Americans born after 1950 will be poorer than the generation born in the 20's and 30's.
This is not a conspiracy or government malfunction. It is a quirk of history. Get over it and try working.
Arma Geddon 15 Nov 2016 21:11
Another nasty neoliberal policy of Reagan and Thatcher, was to close all the mental hospitals, and to sweeten the pill to sell
to the voters, they called it Care in the Community, except by the time those hospitals closed and the people who had to relay
on those institutions, they found out and are still finding out that there is very little care in the community left any more,
thanks to Thatcher's disintegration of the ethos community spirit.
In their neoliberal mantra of thinking, you are on your own now, tough, move on, because you are hopeless and non productive,
hence you are a burden to taxpayers.
Its been that way of thinking for over thirty years, and now the latest group targeted, are the sick and disabled, victims
of the neoliberal made banking crash and its neoliberal inspired austerity, imposed of those least able to fight back or defend
themselves i.e. vulnerable people again!
AlfredHerring GimmeHendrix 15 Nov 2016 20:23
It was in reference to Maggie slapping a copy of Hayek's Constitution of Liberty on the table and saying this is what we believe.
As soon as you introduce the concept of belief you're talking about religion hence completeness while Hayek was writing about
economics which demands consistency. i.e. St. Maggie was just as bad as any Stalinist: economics and religion must be kept separate
or you get a bunch of dead peasants for no reason other than your own vanity.
Ok, religion based on a sky god who made us all is problematic but at least there's always the possibility of supplication
and miracles. Base a religion on economic theory and you're just making sausage of your neighbors kids.
TanTan -> crystaltips2 15 Nov 2016 20:10
If you claim that the only benefit of private enterprise is its taxability, as you did, then why not cut out the middle man
and argue for full state-directed capitalism?
Because it is plainly obvious that private enterprise is not directed toward the public good (and by definition). As we have
both agreed, it needs to have the right regulations and framework to give it some direction in that regard. What "the radical
left" are pointing out is that the idea of private enterprise is now completely out of control, to the point where voters are
disenfranchised because private enterprise has more say over what the government does than the people. Which is clearly a problem.
As for the rest, it's the usual practice of gathering every positive metric available and somehow attributing it to neoliberalism,
no matter how tenuous the threads, and as always with zero rigour. Supposedly capitalism alone doubled life expectancy, supports
billions of extra lives, invented the railways, and provides the drugs and equipment that keep us alive. As though public education,
vaccines, antibiotics, and massive availability of energy has nothing to do with those things.
As for this computer being the invention of capitalism, who knows, but I suppose if one were to believe that everything was
invented and created by capitalism and monetary motives then one might believe that. Energy allotments referred to the limit of
our usage of readily available fossil fuels which you remain blissfully unaware of.
Children have already been educated to agree with you, in no small part due to a fear of the communist regimes at the time,
but at the expense of critical thinking. Questioning the system even when it has plainly been undermined to its core is quickly
labelled "radical" regardless of the normalcy of the query. I don't know what you could possibly think left-wing motives could
be, but your own motives are plain to see when you immediately lump people who care about the planet in with communist idealogues.
If rampant capitalism was going to solve our problems I'm all for it, but it will take a miracle to reverse the damage it has
already done, and only a fool would trust it any further.
YouDidntBuildThat -> Filipio 15 Nov 2016 20:06
Filipo
You argue that a great many government functions have been privatized. I agree. Yet strangely you present zero evidence of
any downsides of that happening. Most of the academic research shows a net benefit, not just on budgets but on employee and customer
satisfaction. See for example.
And despite these privitazation cost savings and alleged neoliberal "austerity" government keeps taking a larger share of our
money, like a malignant cancer. No worries....We're from the government, and we're here to help.
Keypointist 15 Nov 2016 20:04
I think the damage was done when the liberal left co-opted neo-liberalism. What happened under Bill Clinton was the development
of crony capitalism where for example the US banks were told to lower their credit standards to lend to people who couldn't really
afford to service the loans.
It was this that created too big to fail and the financial crisis of 2008. Conservative neo-liberals believe passionately in
competition and hate monopolies. The liberal left removed was was productive about neo-liberalism and replaced it with a kind
of soft state capitalism where big business was protected by the state and the tax payer was called on to bail out these businesses.
THIS more than anything else led to Trump's victory.
"... The word ["neoliberalism"] has become a rhetorical weapon, but it properly names the reigning ideology of our era – one that venerates the logic of the market and strips away the things that make us human. ..."
"... Last summer, researchers at the International Monetary Fund settled a long and bitter debate over "neoliberalism": they admitted it exists. Three senior economists at the IMF, an organisation not known for its incaution, published a paper questioning the benefits of neoliberalism ..."
"... The paper gently called out a "neoliberal agenda" for pushing deregulation on economies around the world, for forcing open national markets to trade and capital, and for demanding that governments shrink themselves via austerity or privatisation. The authors cited statistical evidence for the spread of neoliberal policies since 1980, and their correlation with anaemic growth, boom-and-bust cycles and inequality. ..."
"... In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, it was a way of assigning responsibility for the debacle, not to a political party per se, but to an establishment that had conceded its authority to the market. For the Democrats in the US and Labour in the UK, this concession was depicted as a grotesque betrayal of principle. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, it was said, had abandoned the left's traditional commitments, especially to workers, in favour of a global financial elite and the self-serving policies that enriched them; and in doing so, had enabled a sickening rise in inequality. ..."
"... Peer through the lens of neoliberalism and you see more clearly how the political thinkers most admired by Thatcher and Reagan helped shape the ideal of society as a kind of universal market ..."
"... Of course the goal was to weaken the welfare state and any commitment to full employment, and – always – to cut taxes and deregulate. But "neoliberalism" indicates something more than a standard rightwing wish list. It was a way of reordering social reality, and of rethinking our status as individuals. ..."
"... In short, "neoliberalism" is not simply a name for pro-market policies, or for the compromises with finance capitalism made by failing social democratic parties. It is a name for a premise that, quietly, has come to regulate all we practise and believe: that competition is the only legitimate organising principle for human activity. ..."
"... No sooner had neoliberalism been certified as real, and no sooner had it made clear the universal hypocrisy of the market, than the populists and authoritarians came to power ..."
"... Against the forces of global integration, national identity is being reasserted, and in the crudest possible terms. What could the militant parochialism of Brexit Britain and Trumpist America have to do with neoliberal rationality? ..."
"... It isn't only that the free market produces a tiny cadre of winners and an enormous army of losers – and the losers, looking for revenge, have turned to Brexit and Trump. There was, from the beginning, an inevitable relationship between the utopian ideal of the free market and the dystopian present in which we find ourselves; ..."
"... That Hayek is considered the grandfather of neoliberalism – a style of thought that reduces everything to economics – is a little ironic given that he was such a mediocre economist. ..."
"... This last is what makes neoliberalism "neo". It is a crucial modification of the older belief in a free market and a minimal state, known as "classical liberalism". In classical liberalism, merchants simply asked the state to "leave us alone" – to laissez-nous faire. Neoliberalism recognised that the state must be active in the organisation of a market economy. The conditions allowing for a free market must be won politically, and the state must be re-engineered to support the free market on an ongoing basis. ..."
"... Hayek had only his idea to console him; an idea so grand it would one day dissolve the ground beneath the feet of Keynes and every other intellectual. Left to its own devices, the price system functions as a kind of mind. And not just any mind, but an omniscient one: the market computes what individuals cannot grasp. Reaching out to him as an intellectual comrade-in-arms, the American journalist Walter Lippmann wrote to Hayek, saying: "No human mind has ever understood the whole scheme of a society At best a mind can understand its own version of the scheme, something much thinner, which bears to reality some such relation as a silhouette to a man." ..."
"... The only social end is the maintenance of the market itself. In its omniscience, the market constitutes the only legitimate form of knowledge, next to which all other modes of reflection are partial, in both senses of the word: they comprehend only a fragment of a whole and they plead on behalf of a special interest. Individually, our values are personal ones, or mere opinions; collectively, the market converts them into prices, or objective facts. ..."
"... According to the logic of Hayek's Big Idea, these expressions of human subjectivity are meaningless without ratification by the market ..."
"... ociety reconceived as a giant market leads to a public life lost to bickering over mere opinions; until the public turns, finally, in frustration to a strongman as a last resort for solving its otherwise intractable problems. ..."
"... What began as a new form of intellectual authority, rooted in a devoutly apolitical worldview, nudged easily into an ultra-reactionary politics ..."
The word ["neoliberalism"] has become a rhetorical weapon, but it properly names the reigning ideology of
our era – one that venerates the logic of the market and strips away the things that make us human.
Last summer, researchers at the International Monetary Fund settled a long and bitter debate over
"neoliberalism": they admitted it exists. Three senior economists at the IMF, an organisation not
known for its incaution, published
a paper questioning
the benefits of neoliberalism. In so doing, they helped put to rest the idea that the word is
nothing more than a political slur, or a term without any analytic power. The paper gently called
out a "neoliberal agenda" for pushing deregulation on economies around the world, for forcing open
national markets to trade and capital, and for demanding that governments shrink themselves via austerity
or privatisation. The authors cited statistical evidence for the spread of neoliberal policies since
1980, and their correlation with anaemic growth, boom-and-bust cycles and inequality.
Neoliberalism is an old term, dating back to the 1930s, but it has been revived as a way of describing
our current politics – or more precisely,
the range of thought allowed by our politics . In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis,
it was a way of assigning responsibility for the debacle, not to a political party per se, but to
an establishment that had conceded its authority to the market. For the Democrats in the US and Labour
in the UK, this concession was depicted as a grotesque betrayal of principle. Bill Clinton and Tony
Blair, it was said, had abandoned the left's traditional commitments, especially to workers, in favour
of a global financial elite and the self-serving policies that enriched them; and in doing so, had
enabled a sickening rise in inequality.
Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world – podcast
Over the past few years, as debates have turned uglier, the word has become a rhetorical weapon,
a way for anyone left of centre to incriminate those even an inch to their right. (No wonder centrists
say it's a meaningless insult: they're the ones most meaningfully insulted by it.) But "neoliberalism"
is more than a gratifyingly righteous jibe. It is also, in its way, a pair of eyeglasses.
Peer through the lens of neoliberalism and you see more clearly how the political thinkers most
admired by Thatcher and Reagan helped shape the ideal of society as a kind of universal market
(and
not, for example, a polis, a civil sphere or a kind of family) and of human beings as profit-and-loss
calculators (and not bearers of grace, or of inalienable rights and duties). Of course the goal
was to weaken the welfare state and any commitment to full employment, and – always – to cut taxes
and deregulate. But "neoliberalism" indicates something more than a standard rightwing wish list.
It was a way of reordering social reality, and of rethinking our status as individuals.
Still peering through the lens, you see how, no less than the welfare state, the free market
is a human invention. You see how pervasively we are now urged to think of ourselves as proprietors
of our own talents and initiative, how glibly we are told to compete and adapt. You see the extent
to which a language formerly confined to chalkboard simplifications describing commodity markets
(competition, perfect information, rational behaviour) has been applied to all of society, until
it has invaded the grit of our personal lives, and how the attitude of the salesman has become enmeshed
in all modes of self-expression.
In short, "neoliberalism" is not simply a name for pro-market policies, or for the compromises
with finance capitalism made by failing social democratic parties. It is a name for a premise that,
quietly, has come to regulate all we practise and believe: that competition is the only legitimate
organising principle for human activity.
No sooner had neoliberalism been certified as real, and no sooner had it made clear the universal
hypocrisy of the market, than the populists and authoritarians came to power. In the US, Hillary
Clinton, the neoliberal arch-villain, lost – and to a man who knew just enough
to pretend he hated free trade . So are the eyeglasses now useless? Can they do anything to help
us understand what is broken about British and American politics? Against the forces of global
integration, national identity is being reasserted, and in the crudest possible terms. What could
the militant parochialism of Brexit Britain and Trumpist America have to do with neoliberal rationality?
What possible connection is there between the president – a freewheeling boob – and the bloodless
paragon of efficiency known as the free market?
It isn't only that the free market produces a tiny cadre of winners and an enormous army of
losers – and the losers, looking for revenge, have turned to Brexit and Trump. There was, from the
beginning, an inevitable relationship between the utopian ideal of the free market and the dystopian
present in which we find ourselves; between the market as unique discloser of value and guardian
of liberty, and our current descent into post-truth and illiberalism.
Moving the stale debate about neoliberalism forward begins, I think, with taking seriously the
measure of its cumulative effect on all of us, regardless of affiliation. And this requires returning
to its origins, which have nothing to do with Bill or Hillary Clinton. There once was a group of
people who did call themselves neoliberals, and did so proudly, and their ambition was a total revolution
in thought. The most prominent among them, Friedrich Hayek, did not think he was staking out a position
on the political spectrum, or making excuses for the fatuous rich, or tinkering along the edges of
microeconomics.
He thought he was solving the problem of modernity: the problem of objective knowledge. For Hayek,
the market didn't just facilitate trade in goods and services; it revealed truth. How did his ambition
collapse into its opposite – the mind-bending possibility that, thanks to our thoughtless veneration
of the free market, truth might be driven from public life altogether?
When the idea occurred to Friedrich Hayek in 1936, he knew, with the conviction of a "sudden illumination",
that he had struck upon something new. "How can the combination of fragments of knowledge existing
in different minds," he wrote, "bring about results which, if they were to be brought about deliberately,
would require a knowledge on the part of the directing mind which no single person can possess?"
This was not a technical point about interest rates or deflationary slumps. This was not a reactionary
polemic against collectivism or the welfare state. This was a way of birthing a new world. To his
mounting excitement, Hayek understood that the market could be thought of as a kind of mind.
Adam Smith's "invisible hand" had already given us the modern conception of the market: as an
autonomous sphere of human activity and therefore, potentially, a valid object of scientific knowledge.
But Smith was, until the end of his life, an 18th-century moralist. He thought the market could be
justified only in light of individual virtue, and he was anxious that a society governed by nothing
but transactional self-interest was no society at all. Neoliberalism is Adam Smith without the anxiety.
That Hayek is considered the grandfather of neoliberalism – a style of thought that reduces
everything to economics – is a little ironic given that he was such a mediocre economist. He
was just a young, obscure Viennese technocrat when he was recruited to the London School of
Economics to compete
with, or possibly even dim, the rising star of John Maynard Keynes at Cambridge.
The plan backfired, and Hayek lost out to Keynes in a rout. Keynes's General Theory of Employment,
Interest and Money, published in 1936, was greeted as a masterpiece. It dominated the public discussion,
especially among young English economists in training, for whom the brilliant, dashing, socially
connected Keynes was a beau idéal . By the end of the second world war, many prominent free-marketers
had come around to Keynes's way of thinking, conceding that government might play a role in managing
a modern economy. The initial excitement over Hayek had dissipated. His peculiar notion that doing
nothing could cure an economic depression had been discredited in theory and practice. He later admitted
that he wished his work criticising Keynes would simply be forgotten.
... Hayek built into neoliberalism the assumption that the market provides all necessary protection
against the one real political danger: totalitarianism. To prevent this, the state need only keep
the market free.
This last is what makes neoliberalism "neo". It is a crucial modification of the older belief
in a free market and a minimal state, known as "classical liberalism". In classical liberalism, merchants
simply asked the state to "leave us alone" – to laissez-nous faire. Neoliberalism recognised that
the state must be active in the organisation of a market economy. The conditions allowing for a free
market must be won politically, and the state must be re-engineered to support the free market on
an ongoing basis.
That isn't all: every aspect of democratic politics, from the choices of voters to the decisions
of politicians, must be submitted to a purely economic analysis. The lawmaker is obliged to leave
well enough alone – to not distort the natural actions of the marketplace – and so, ideally, the
state provides a fixed, neutral, universal legal framework within which market forces operate spontaneously.
The conscious direction of government is never preferable to the "automatic mechanism of adjustment"
– ie the price system, which is not only efficient but maximises liberty, or the opportunity for
men and women to make free choices about their own lives.
As Keynes jetted between London and Washington, creating the postwar order, Hayek sat pouting
in Cambridge. He had been sent there during the wartime evacuations; and he complained that he was
surrounded by "foreigners" and "no lack of orientals of all kinds" and "Europeans of practically
all nationalities, but very few of real intelligence".
Stuck in England, without influence or respect, Hayek had only his idea to console him; an
idea so grand it would one day dissolve the ground beneath the feet of Keynes and every other intellectual.
Left to its own devices, the price system functions as a kind of mind. And not just any mind, but
an omniscient one: the market computes what individuals cannot grasp. Reaching out to him as an intellectual
comrade-in-arms, the American journalist Walter Lippmann wrote to Hayek, saying: "No human mind has
ever understood the whole scheme of a society At best a mind can understand its own version of
the scheme, something much thinner, which bears to reality some such relation as a silhouette to
a man."
It is a grand epistemological claim – that the market is a way of knowing, one that radically
exceeds the capacity of any individual mind. Such a market is less a human contrivance, to be manipulated
like any other, than a force to be studied and placated. Economics ceases to be a technique – as
Keynes believed it to be – for achieving desirable social ends, such as growth or stable money.
The only social end is the maintenance of the market itself. In its omniscience, the market constitutes
the only legitimate form of knowledge, next to which all other modes of reflection are partial, in
both senses of the word: they comprehend only a fragment of a whole and they plead on behalf of a
special interest. Individually, our values are personal ones, or mere opinions; collectively, the
market converts them into prices, or objective facts.
... ... ...
The more Hayek's idea expands, the more reactionary it gets, the more it hides behind its pretence
of scientific neutrality – and the more it allows economics to link up with the major intellectual
trend of the west since the 17th century. The rise of modern science generated a problem: if the
world is universally obedient to natural laws, what does it mean to be human? Is a human being simply
an object in the world, like any other? There appears to be no way to assimilate the subjective,
interior human experience into nature as science conceives it – as something objective whose rules
we discover by observation.
... ... ...
More than anyone, even Hayek himself, it was the great postwar Chicago economist Milton Friedman
who helped convert governments and politicians to the power of Hayek's Big Idea. But first he broke
with two centuries of precedent and declared that economics is "in principle independent of any particular
ethical position or normative judgments" and is "an 'objective' science, in precisely the same sense
as any of the physical sciences". Values of the old, mental, normative kind were defective, they
were "differences about which men can ultimately only fight". There is the market, in other words,
and there is relativism.
Markets may be human facsimiles of natural systems, and like the universe itself, they may be
authorless and valueless. But the application of Hayek's Big Idea to every aspect of our lives negates
what is most distinctive about us. That is, it assigns what is most human about human beings – our
minds and our volition – to algorithms and markets, leaving us to mimic, zombie-like, the shrunken
idealisations of economic models. Supersizing Hayek's idea and radically upgrading the price system
into a kind of social omniscience means radically downgrading the importance of our individual capacity
to reason – our ability to provide and evaluate justifications for our actions and beliefs.
As a result, the public sphere – the space where we offer up reasons, and contest the reasons
of others – ceases to be a space for deliberation, and becomes a market in clicks, likes and retweets.
The internet is personal preference magnified by algorithm; a pseudo-public space that echoes the
voice already inside our head. Rather than a space of debate in which we make our way, as a society,
toward consensus, now there is a mutual-affirmation apparatus banally referred to as a "marketplace
of ideas". What looks like something public and lucid is only an extension of our own pre-existing
opinions, prejudices and beliefs, while the authority of institutions and experts has been displaced
by the aggregative logic of big data. When we access the world through a search engine, its results
are ranked, as the founder of Google puts it, "recursively" – by an infinity of individual users
functioning as a market, continuously and in real time.
... ... ...
According to the logic of Hayek's Big Idea, these expressions of human subjectivity are meaningless
without ratification by the market – as Friedman said, they are nothing but relativism, each
as good as any other. When the only objective truth is determined by the market, all other values
have the status of mere opinions; everything else is relativist hot air. But Friedman's "relativism"
is a charge that can be thrown at any claim based on human reason. It is a nonsense insult, as all
humanistic pursuits are "relative" in a way the sciences are not. They are relative to the (private)
condition of having a mind, and the (public) need to reason and understand even when we can't expect
scientific proof. When our debates are no longer resolved by deliberation over reasons, then the
whimsies of power will determine the outcome.
This is where the triumph of neoliberalism meets the political nightmare we are living through
now. "You had one job," the old joke goes, and Hayek's grand project, as originally conceived in
30s and 40s, was explicitly designed to prevent a backslide into political chaos and fascism. But
the Big Idea was always this abomination waiting to happen. It was, from the beginning, pregnant
with the thing it was said to protect against. Society reconceived as a giant market leads to
a public life lost to bickering over mere opinions; until the public turns, finally, in frustration
to a strongman as a last resort for solving its otherwise intractable problems.
... ... ...
What began as a new form of intellectual authority, rooted in a devoutly apolitical worldview,
nudged easily into an ultra-reactionary politics. What can't be quantified must not be real,
says the economist, and how do you measure the benefits of the core faiths of the enlightenment –
namely, critical reasoning, personal autonomy and democratic self-government? When we abandoned,
for its embarrassing residue of subjectivity, reason as a form of truth, and made science the sole
arbiter of both the real and the true, we created a void that pseudo-science was happy to fill.
"... By Manuela Cadelli, President of the Magistrates' Union of Belgium ..."
"... Every totalitarianism starts as distortion of language, as in the novel by George Orwell. Neoliberalism has its Newspeak and strategies of communication that enable it to deform reality. In this spirit, every budgetary cut is represented as an instance of modernization of the sectors concerned. If some of the most deprived are no longer reimbursed for medical expenses and so stop visiting the dentist, this is modernization of social security in action! ..."
By Manuela Cadelli, President of the Magistrates' Union of Belgium
The time for rhetorical reservations is over. Things have to be called by their name to make it
possible for a co-ordinated democratic reaction to be initiated, above all in the public services.
Liberalism was a doctrine derived from the philosophy of Enlightenment, at once political and
economic, which aimed at imposing on the state the necessary distance for ensuring respect for liberties
and the coming of democratic emancipation. It was the motor for the arrival, and the continuing progress,
of Western democracies.
Neoliberalism is a form of economism in our day that strikes at every moment at every sector of
our community. It is a form of extremism.
Fascism may be defined as the subordination of every part of the State to a totalitarian and nihilistic
ideology.
I argue that neoliberalism is a species of fascism because the economy has brought under subjection
not only the government of democratic countries but also every aspect of our thought.
The state is now at the disposal of the economy and of finance, which treat it as a subordinate
and lord over it to an extent that puts the common good in jeopardy.
The austerity that is demanded by the financial milieu has become a supreme value, replacing politics.
Saving money precludes pursuing any other public objective. It is reaching the point where claims
are being made that the principle of budgetary orthodoxy should be included in state constitutions.
A mockery is being made of the notion of public service.
The nihilism that results from this makes possible the dismissal of universalism and the most
evident humanistic values: solidarity, fraternity, integration and respect for all and for differences.
There is no place any more even for classical economic theory: work was formerly an element in
demand, and to that extent there was respect for workers; international finance has made of it a
mere adjustment variable.
Every totalitarianism starts as distortion of language, as in the novel by George Orwell. Neoliberalism
has its Newspeak and strategies of communication that enable it to deform reality. In this spirit,
every budgetary cut is represented as an instance of modernization of the sectors concerned. If some
of the most deprived are no longer reimbursed for medical expenses and so stop visiting the dentist,
this is modernization of social security in action!
Abstraction predominates in public discussion so as to occlude the implications for human beings.
Thus, in relation to migrants, it is imperative that the need for hosting them does not lead to
public appeals that our finances could not accommodate. Is it In the same way that other individuals
qualify for assistance out of considerations of national solidarity?
The cult of evaluation
Social Darwinism predominates, assigning the most stringent performance requirements to everyone
and everything: to be weak is to fail. The foundations of our culture are overturned: every humanist
premise is disqualified or demonetized because neoliberalism has the monopoly of rationality and
realism. Margaret Thatcher said it in 1985: "There is no alternative." Everything else is utopianism,
unreason and regression. The virtue of debate and conflicting perspectives are discredited because
history is ruled by necessity.
This subculture harbours an existential threat of its own: shortcomings of performance condemn
one to disappearance while at the same time everyone is charged with inefficiency and obliged to
justify everything. Trust is broken. Evaluation reigns, and with it the bureaucracy which imposes
definition and research of a plethora of targets, and indicators with which one must comply. Creativity
and the critical spirit are stifled by management. And everyone is beating his breast about the wastage
and inertia of which he is guilty.
The neglect of justice
The neoliberal ideology generates a normativity that competes with the laws of parliament. The
democratic power of law is compromised. Given that they represent a concrete embodiment of liberty
and emancipation, and given the potential to prevent abuse that they impose, laws and procedures
have begun to look like obstacles.
The power of the judiciary, which has the ability to oppose the will of the ruling circles, must
also be checkmated. The Belgian judicial system is in any case underfunded. In 2015 it came last
in a European ranking that included all states located between the Atlantic and the Urals. In two
years the government has managed to take away the independence given to it under the Constitution
so that it can play the counterbalancing role citizens expect of it. The aim of this undertaking
is clearly that there should no longer be justice in Belgium.
A caste above the Many
But the dominant class doesn't prescribe for itself the same medicine it wants to see ordinary
citizens taking: well-ordered austerity begins with others. The economist Thomas Piketty has perfectly
described this in his study of inequality and capitalism in the twenty-first century (French edition,
Seuil, 2013).
In spite of the crisis of 2008 and the hand-wringing that followed, nothing was done to police
the financial community and submit them to the requirements of the common good. Who paid? Ordinary
people, you and me.
And while the Belgian State consented to 7 billion-euro ten-year tax breaks for multinationals,
ordinary litigants have seen surcharges imposed on access to justice (increased court fees, 21% taxation
on legal fees). From now on, to obtain redress the victims of injustice are going to have to be rich.
All this in a state where the number of public representatives breaks all international records.
In this particular area, no evaluation and no costs studies are reporting profit. One example: thirty
years after the introduction of the federal system, the provincial institutions survive. Nobody can
say what purpose they serve. Streamlining and the managerial ideology have conveniently stopped at
the gates of the political world.
Terrorism, this other nihilism that exposes our weakness in affirming our values, is likely to
aggravate the process by soon making it possible for all violations of our liberties, all violations
of our rights, to circumvent the powerless qualified judges, further reducing social protection for
the poor, who will be sacrificed to "the security ideal".
Salvation in commitment
These developments certainly threaten the foundations of our democracy, but do they condemn us
to discouragement and despair?
Certainly not. 500 years ago, at the height of the defeats that brought down most Italian states
with the imposition of foreign occupation for more than three centuries, Niccolo Machiavelli urged
virtuous men to defy fate and stand up against the adversity of the times, to prefer action and daring
to caution. The more tragic the situation, the more it necessitates action and the refusal to "give
up" (The Prince, Chapters XXV and XXVI).
This is a teaching that is clearly required today. The determination of citizens attached to the
radical of democratic values is an invaluable resource which has not yet revealed, at least in Belgium,
its driving potential and power to change what is presented as inevitable. Through social networking
and the power of the written word, everyone can now become involved, particularly when it comes to
public services, universities, the student world, the judiciary and the Bar, in bringing the common
good and social justice into the heart of public debate and the administration of the state and the
community.
Neoliberalism is a species of fascism. It must be fought and humanism fully restored.
CIA is actually a state within the state as Church commission revealed and it has an immanent tendency to seek control over "surface
state" and media. In other words large intelligence apparatus might well be incompatible with the democratic governance.
Notable quotes:
"... The CIA has a track record of acting out of self interest since its inception and should not be believed. That being said, the public is almost completely unaware of the agency's misdeeds. ..."
"In the long run, the CIA can't deceive the Chinese government without also deceiving, in some way, the American public. This
leaves us with an obvious problem: Should we believe anything the CIA says?" [RealClearWorld].
"It's a tough question for a democracy to answer. Trust is built on the tacit agreement that the "bad things" an agency does are
good for the country.
If the public believes that that is no longer the case – if it believes the agency is acting out of self-interest and not national
interest – then the agreement is broken. The intelligence agency is seen as an impediment of the right to national self-determination,
a means for the ends of the few."
Huey Long <
RE: Hall of Mirrors/Believing the CIA
The CIA has a track record of acting out of self interest since its inception and should not be believed. That being said,
the public is almost completely unaware of the agency's misdeeds.
I think the reason folks like Manning, Snowden and Assange are so reviled by the agency is because they are a threat to the
CIA's reputation more than anything else.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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22,361 CLICK TO READ
A Couple More Points To Consider 
130,000 homeless
children, empty food banks predicted this Christmas
sundar 
Erdogan urges Turks
to dump dollar to support lira
What I don't understand is how Michael Shkreli, CEO, is found guilty of financial fraud against investors in 2018 but not one CEO of a bank–not Goldman Sachs's CEO, not Citigroup's CEO, not JP Morgan Chase's CEO, not Wells Fargo's CEO and not Lehman Brothers' CEO–was found guilty of committing Accounting Control Fraud and/or mortgage fraud after the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-8. Amazing! But there's not much satisfaction in such a small price to pay for fraud (7 years) that ruins other people's lives permanently. What is also amazing is that it is not illegal to price a drug out of the reach of most users just for the sake of making a huge profit!